Memoirs of a Midget Part 49

"Contrast, f.a.n.n.y?"

"No, _no_, now, my dear! Not quite so disingenuous as all that, _please_. You can't have quite forgotten the last time we met."

"There was nothing in that, f.a.n.n.y. Only that the midge was drunk. You should see the wasps over there in the nectarines."

"Only?" she echoed lightly, raising her eyebrows. "I am not sure that every one would put it quite like that. You couldn't see yourself, you see. They call you little Miss Ca.s.sandra now. Woe! Woe! you know. Mrs Monnerie asked me if I thought you were--you know--'all there,' as they say."

"I don't care what they say."

"If I weren't an old friend," she returned with crooked lip, "you might be made to care. I have brought the money you were kind enough to lend me; I'll give it you when I have unpacked--to-morrow night."

My body sank into a stillness that might well have betrayed its mind's confusion to a close observer. _Had_ she lingered satirically, meaningly, on those two last words? "I don't want the money, f.a.n.n.y: aren't you generous enough to accept a gift?"

"Well," said she, "it needs a good deal of generosity sometimes. Surely, a gift depends upon the spirit in which it is given. That last little message, now--was that, shall we say, an acceptable gift?" Her tones lost their silkiness. "See here, Midgetina," she went on harshly, "you and I are going to talk all this out. But I'm thirsty. I hate this sp.a.w.ning sun. Where are the nectarines?"

Much against my will I turned my back on her, and led her off to the beehives.

"One for you," she said, stooping forward, balancing the sheeny toe of her shoe on the brown mould, "and the rest for me. Catch!" She dropped a wasp-bitten, pulpy fruit into my hands. "Now then. It's shadier here. No eavesdroppers. Just you and me and G.o.d. _Please_ sit down?"

There was no choice. Down I sat; and she on a low wooden seat opposite me in the shade, her folded parasol beside her, the leaf-hung wall behind. She bit daintily into the juicy nectarine poised between finger and thumb, and watched me with a peculiar fixed smile, as if of admiration, on her pale face.

"Tell me, pretty Binbin," she began again, "what is the name of that spiked red and blue and violet thing behind your back? It colours the edges of your delicate china cheeks. Most becoming!"

It was viper's bugloss--a stray, I told her, shifting my head uneasily beneath her scrutiny.

"Ah, yes, _viper's_ bugloss. Personally I prefer the common variety.

Though no doubt that may stray, too. But fie, fie! You naughty thing,"

she sprang up and plucked another nectarine, "you have been blacking your eyebrows. I shouldn't have dreamt it of you. What would mother say?"

"Listen, f.a.n.n.y," I said, p.r.o.nouncing the words as best I could with a tongue that seemed to be sticking to the roof of my mouth; "I am tired of the garden. What do you really want to say to me? I don't much care for your--your fun."

"And I just beginning to enjoy it! There's contrariness!--To _say_?

Well, now, a good deal, my dear. I thought of writing. But it's better--safer to talk. The first thing is this. While you have been malingering down here I have had to face the whole Monnerie orchestra.

It hasn't been playing quite in tune; and you know why. That lovesick Susan, now, and her nice young man. But since you seem to be quite yourself again--more of yourself than ever, in fact: listen." I gazed, almost hypnotized, through the sunshine into her shady face.

"What I am going to suggest," she went on smoothly, "concerns only you and me. If you and I are to go on living in the same house--which heaven forbid--I give you fair warning that we shall have nothing more to do with one another than is absolutely inevitable. I am not so forgiving as I ought to be, Midgetina, and insults rankle. Treachery, still more."

The low voice trembled.

"Oh, yes, you may roll your innocent little eyes and look as harmless as a Chinese G.o.d, but answer me this: Am _I_ a hypocrite? Am I? And while you are thinking it over, hadn't you better tumble that absurd little pumpkin off your knee? It's staining your charming frock."

"I never said you were a hypocrite," I choked.

"No?" The light gleamed on the whites of her eyes as they roved to and fro. "Then I say, _you_ are. Fair to face, false to back. Who first trapped me out star-gazing in the small hours, then played informer? Who wheedled her way on with her mincing humbug--poof! _navete!_--and set my own mother against me? Who told some one--_you_ know who--that I was not to be trusted, and far better cast-off? Who stuffed that lackadaisical idiot of a Sukie Monnerie with all _those_ old horrors?

Who warned that miserable little piece of deformity that I might come--borrowing? Who hoped to betray me by sending an envelope through the post packed with mousey bits of paper? Who made me a guy, a laughing-stock and poisoned---- Oh, it's a long score, Miss M. When I think of it all, what I've endured--well, honestly when a wasp crawls out of my jam, I remind myself that it's stinged."

The light smouldering eyes held me fast. "You mean, I suppose, f.a.n.n.y, that you'd just kill it," I mumbled, looking up into her distorted face.

"I don't think I should much mind even that. But it's no use. It would take hours to answer your questions. You have only put them your own way. They may sound true. But in your heart you know they are false. Why should you bother to hurt me? You know--you know how idiotically I loved you."

"_Loved me, false, kill_," echoed f.a.n.n.y scornfully, with a leer which transformed her beauty into a mere vulgar grimace. "Is there any end to the deceits of the little gaby? Do you really suppose that to be loved is a new experience for me; that I'm not smeared with it wherever I go; that I care a snap of my fingers whether I'm loved or not; that I couldn't win through without that? Is that what you suppose? Well, then, here's one more secret. Open your ears. I am going to marry Percy Maudlen. Yes, _that_ weed of a creature. You may remember my little prophecy when he brought his Aunt Alice's manikin some lollipops. Well, the grace of G.o.d is too leisurely, and since you and I are both, I suppose, of the same s.e.x, I tell you I care no more for him than that----" She flung the nectarine stone at the beehive. "And I _defy_ you, defy you to utter a word. I am glad I was born what I am. All your pretty little triumphs, first to last, what are they?--accidents and insults. Isn't half the world kicking down the faces of those beneath them on the ladder? _I_ have had to fight for a place. And I tell you this: I am going to teach these supercilious money-smelling ladies a lesson. I am going to climb till I can sneer down on _them_. And Mrs Monnerie is going to help me. She doesn't care a jot for G.o.d or man. But she enjoys intelligence, and loves a fighter. Is that candour? Is it now?"

"I detest Percy Maudlen," I replied faintly. "And as for sneering, that only makes another wall. Oh, f.a.n.n.y, do listen to yourself, to what you are. I swear I'm not the sneak you think me. I'd help you, if I could, to my last breath. Indeed, I would. Yes, and soon I _can_."

"Thank you: and I'd rather suffocate than accept your help--now. Listen to myself, indeed! That's just the pious hypocrite all over. Well, declarations of love you know quite enough about for your--for your age.

Now you shall hear one of a different kind. I tell you, Midgetina, I hate you: I can't endure the sight or sound or creep or thought of you any longer. Why? Because of your unspeakable masquerade. You play the pygmy; pygmy you are: carried about, cosseted, smirked at, fattened on nightingales' tongues--the last, though, you'll ever eat. But where have you come from? What are you in your past--in your mind? I ask you that: a thing more everywhere, more thief-like, more detestable than a conscience. Look at me, as we sit here now. _I_ am the monstrosity. You see it, you think it, you hate even to touch me. From first moment to last you have secretly despised me--me! I'm not accusing you. You weren't your own maker. As often as not you don't know what you are saying. You are just an automaton. But these last nights I have lain awake and thought of it all. It came on me as if my life had been nothing but a filthy, aimless nightmare; and chiefly because of you.

I've worked, I've thought, I've contrived and forced my way. Oh, that house, the wranglings, the sermons. Did I make myself what I am, ask to be born? No, it's all a devilish plot. And I say this, that while things are as they are, and this life is life, and this world _my_ world, I refuse to be watched and taunted and goaded and defamed."

Her face stooped closer, fascinating, chilling me like a cold cloud with its bright, hunted, malevolent stare. She stretched out a hand and wrung my shoulder. "Listen, I say. Come out of that trance! I loathe you, you holy imp. You haunt me!"

My eyes shut. I sat shivering, empty of self, listening, as if lost in a fog in a place desperately strange to me; and only a distant sea breaking and chafing on its stones far below. Then once more I became conscious of the steady and resolute droning of the bees; felt the breathing of actuality on my hair, on my cheek. My eyes opened on a garden sucked dry of colour and reality, and sought her out. She had left me, was standing a few paces distant now, looking back, as if dazed, her lips pale, her eyes dark-ringed.

"Perhaps you didn't quite hear all that, Midgetina. You led me on. You force things out of me till I am sick. But some day, when you are as desperate as I have been, it will come back to you. Then you'll know what it is to be human. But there can't be any misunderstanding left now, can there?"

I shook my head. "No, f.a.n.n.y. I shall know you hate me."

"And I am free?"

What could she mean? I nodded.

She turned, pushed up her parasol. "What a talk! But better done with."

"Yes, f.a.n.n.y," said I obediently. "Much better done with."

She gave me an odd glance out of the corner of her eye. "The queer thing is," she went on, "what I wanted to say was something quite, quite different. To give you a friendly word of warning, entirely on your own account.... You have a rival, Midgetina."

The words glided away into silence. The doves crooned on the housetop.

The sky was empty above the distant hills. I did not stir, and am thankful I had the cowardice to ask no questions.

"Her name is Angelique. She lives in a Castle in Spain"; sighed the calm, silky voice, with the odd break or rasp in it I knew so well. "Oh, I agree a circus-rider is nothing better than a mongrel, a pariah, worse probably. Yet this one has her little advantages. As Midgets go, she beats you by at least four inches, and rides, sings, dances, tells fortunes. Quite a little Woman of the World. The only really troublesome thing about it is that she makes you jiltable, my dear. They are so very seductive, these flounced up, painted things. _No_ principle! And, oh, my dear; all this just as dear Mrs Monnerie has set her heart on finding her Queen Bee a nice little adequate drone for a husband!"

It was her last taunt. It was over. I had heard the worst. The arrow I had been waiting for had sprung true to its mark. Its barb was sticking there in my side. And yet, as I mutely looked up at her, I knew there was a word between us which neither could utter. The empty air had swallowed up the sound of our voices. Its enormous looking-gla.s.s remained placid and indifferent. It was as if all that we had said, or, for that matter, suffered, was of no account, simply because we were not alone. For the first instant in the intimacy of my love and hatred, f.a.n.n.y seemed to be just any young woman standing there, spiteful, meaningless. The virtue had gone out of her. She made up her mouth, glanced uneasily over her shoulder and turned away.

We were never again to be alone together, except in remembrance.

I sat on in the garden till the last thin ray of sunlight was gone.

Then, in dread that my enemy might be looking down from the windows of the house, I slipped and shuffled from bush to bush in the dusk, and so at last made my way into the house, and climbed the dark polished staircase. As, stealthily, I pa.s.sed a bedroom door ajar, my look pierced through the crevice. It was a long, stretching, shallow room, and at the end of it, in the crystal quiet, stood f.a.n.n.y, her arms laid on the chimney-piece, her shoulder blades sticking out of her muslin gown, her face hidden in her hands.

Why did I not venture in to speak to her? I had never seen a figure so desolate and forsaken. Could things ever be so far gone as to say No to that? I hesitated; turned away: she would think I had come only to beg for mercy.

For hours I sat dully brooding. What a trap I was in. In my rummagings in the Monnerie library I had once chanced on a few yellow cardboard-covered novels tucked away in a cupboard, and had paddled in one or two of them. Now I realized that my life also was nothing but "a Shocker." So people actually suffered and endured the horrible things written about in cheap, common books.

One by one I faced f.a.n.n.y's charges in my mind. None was true, yet none was wholly false. And none was of any consequence beside the fact that she execrated the very self in me of which I could not be conscious. And what would she do? What did all those covert threats and insinuations mean? A "husband"--why had that such a dreadful power to wound me? I heard my teeth begin to chatter again. There was no defence, no refuge anywhere. If I could get no quiet, I should go mad. I looked up from my stool. It was dark. It was a scene made for me. I could watch the miserable little occupant of its stage roving to and fro like one of my showman's cowed, mangy beasts.

The thought of the day still ahead of me, through which I must somehow press on, keep alive, half stupefied me with dread. We can shut our eyes and our mouths and our hearts; why cannot we stop thinking? The awful pa.s.sive order of life: its mechanicalness. All that I could see was the blank white face of its clock--but no more of the wheels than of the Winder. No haste, no intervention, no stretching-out beyond one's finger tips. So the world wore away; life decayed; the dunghill smoked. Mrs Monnerie there; stepping into her brougham, ebony cane in hand, Marvell at her elbow; Mrs Bowater languishing on board ship, limp head in stiff frilling; Sir Walter dumb; the showman cursing his wretched men; the bills being posted, the implacable future mutely yawning, the past unutterable. Everything in its...o...b..t. Was there no help, no refuge?

The door opened and the skimpy little country girl who waited on me in Fleming's absence, brought in my supper. She bobbed me a scared curtsey, and withdrew. Then she, too, had been poisoned against me. I flung myself down on the floor, crushing my hands against my ears. Yet, through all this dazed helplessness, in one resolve I never faltered. I would keep my word to the showman, and this night that was now in my room should be the last I would spend alive in Monk's House. f.a.n.n.y must do her worst. Thoughts of her, of my unhappy love and of her cruelty, could bring no good. Yet I thought of her no less. Her very presence in the house lurked in the air, in the silence, like an apparition's.

Still stretched on the floor, I woke to find the September constellations faintly silvering the pale blue crystal of the Northern Lights; and the earth sighing as if for refuge from the rising moon. My fears and troubles had fallen to rest beneath my dreams, and I prepared myself for the morrow's flight.