Midway on our journey Adam climbed over a stile to rest a while, and, pushing back a corner of the sacking, he asked me how I did.
"Fine, Adam," said I, panting. "We are getting along famously."
The fields were sweet and dusky. It was a clear evening, and refreshingly cool.
"You may smoke a pipe, Adam, if you wish," I called softly. And while he puffed, and I listened to the chirping of a cricket, he told me of a young housemaid that was always chaffing and ridiculing him at No. 2.
"It may be that she has taken a pa.s.sing fancy to you," said I, looking up into the silent oak tree under which we were sitting. "On the other hand, you may deserve it. What is she like, Adam?"
"Black eyebrows," said Adam. "Shows her teeth when she laughs. But that"s no reason why she should make a fool of a fellow."
"The real question is, is she a nice modest girl?" said I, and my bangles jangled as I raised my hand to my hair. "Come, Adam, there"s no time to waste; are you ready?"
He grunted, his mind still far away. "She"s a fair sneak," he said, rapping his pipe-bowl on a stone. And so, up and on.
Time seemed to have ceased to be, in this jolting monotony, unbroken except by an occasional giddying swing of my universe as Adam transferred the cage from hand to hand. Swelteringly hot without, but a little cold within, I was startled by a far-away blare of music. I clutched tight the slender bars; the music ceased, and out of the quiet that followed rose the moaning roar of a wild beast.
My tongue pressed itself against my teeth; the sacking trembled, and a faint luminousness began to creep through its hempen strands. Shouting and screaming, catcalls and laughter swelled near. And now by the medley of smells and voices, and the glint of naked lights floating in on me, I realized that we had reached our goal.
Adam came to a standstill. "Where"s the boss?" The tones were thick and m.u.f.fled. A feeble smile swept over my face: I discovered I was holding my breath.
A few paces now, the din distanced a little and the glare diminished.
Then sounded another voice hoa.r.s.e and violent, high above my head.
The cage b.u.mped to the ground. And I heard Adam cringingly explain: "I"ve got a bird here for you, mister."
"A bird," rang the jeer, "who wants your b.l.o.o.d.y bird? Be off."
"Ay, but it won"t be a b.l.o.o.d.y bird," gasped Adam cajolingly, "when you"ve seen her pretty feathers."
At this, apparently, recollection of Adam"s face or voice returned to the showman. He remained silent while with palsied fingers Adam unlatched my bolts and bars. Bent almost double and half-stifled, I sat there in sight, my clothes spread brightly out about me. The cool air swirled in, and for a while my eyes dazzled at the bubbling blaze of a naphtha lamp suspended from the pole of the tent above the criss-cross green-bladed gra.s.s at my feet. I lifted my head.
There stood Adam, in his black tail-coat rubbing his arm; and there the showman. Still to the tips of my fingers, I sat motionless, gazing up into the hard, high-boned, narrow-browed face with its small restless eyes voraciously taking me in. Fortunately the choked beating of my heart was too small a sound for his ear; and he was the first to withdraw from the encounter.
"My G.o.d," he muttered, and spat into a corner of the canvas booth--with its one dripping lamp, its rough table and chair, and a few oddments of his trade.
"And what, my handsome young lady," he went on in a low, carneying tone, and fidgeting with his hands, "what might be your little imbroglio?"
In a gush, presence of mind returned to me, and fear pa.s.sed away. I quietly listened to myself explaining without any concealment precisely what was my little imbroglio. He burst out laughing.
"Stage-struck, eh? There"s a young lady now! Well, who"s to blame "ee?"
He asked me my age, my name, where I came from, if I could dance, sing, ride; and stared so roundly at me that I seemed to see my garish colours reflected in the metallic grey of his eyes.
All this was on his side of the bargain. Now came mine. I folded tight my hands in my lap, glanced up at the flaming lamp. How much would he pay me?
It was as if a shutter had descended over his face. "Drat me," said he, "when a young lady comes selling anything, she _asks_ her price."
So I asked mine--fifteen guineas for four nights" hire.... To look at that human animal you might have supposed the actual guineas had lodged in his throat. It may be that Shylock"s was a more modest bargain. I cannot say.
At first thought it had seemed to me a monstrous sum, but at that time I was ignorant of what a really fine midget fetched. It was but half my old quarterly allowance, with 2 over for Adam. I should need every penny of it. And I had not come selling my soul without having first decided on its value. The showman fumed and bl.u.s.tered. But I sat close on Chakka"s abandoned stage, perfectly still, making no answer; finding, moreover, in Adam an unexpected stronghold, for the wider gawked his frightened eyes at the showman"s noise and gesticulations, the more resolved I became. With a last dreadful oath, the showman all but kicked a hole in my cage.
"Take me away, Adam," I cried quaveringly; "we are wasting this gentleman"s time."
I smiled to myself, in spite of the cold tremors that were shaking me all over; with every nerve and sinew of his corpulent body he was coveting me: and with a curse he at last accepted my terms. I shrugged my shoulders, but still refused to stir a finger until our contract had been written down in black and white. Maybe some tiny love-bird of courage roosts beneath every human skull, maybe my mother"s fine French blood had rilled to the surface. However that may be, there could be no turning back.
He drew out a stump of pencil and a dirty envelope. "That, my fine c.o.c.k," he said to Adam, as he wrote, "that"s a woman; and you make no mistake about it. To h.e.l.l with your fine ladies."
It remains, if not the most delicate, certainly one of the most substantial compliments I ever earned in my life.
"That"s that," he pretended to groan, presenting me with his scrawl.
"Ask a shark for a stamp, and if ruined I must be--ruined I am."
I leapt to my feet, shook out my tumbled finery, smiled into his stooping face, and tucked the contract into my bodice. "Thank you, sir," I said, "and I promise you shan"t be ruined if _I_ can help it."
Whereupon Adam became exceedingly merry, the danger now over.
Such are the facts concerning this little transaction, so far as I can recall them; yet I confess to being a little incredulous. Have I, perhaps, gilded my side of the bargaining? If so, I am sure my showman would be the last person to quarrel with me. I am inclined to think he had taken a fancy to me. Anyhow I had won--what is, perhaps, even better--his respect. And though the pay came late, when it was no longer needed, and though it was the blackest money that ever touched my fingers, it came. And if anybody was the defaulter, it was I.
There was no time to lose. My gipsy woman was sent for from the shooting gallery. I shook hands with her; she shook hands with Adam, who was then told to go about his business and to return to the tent when the circus was over. The three of us, showman, woman, and I, conferred together, and with extreme cordiality agreed what should be my little part in the performance. The booth in which we had made our bargain was hastily prepared for my "reception." Its table was to be my das. A loose flap of canvas was hung to one side of it to screen me off from prying eyes when I was not on show. My only dangerous rival, it appeared, was the Spotted Boy.
There followed a deafening pealing of panpipes, drumming of drum, and yelling of voices. In that monstrous din I was past thinking, just _being_; and I bridled to myself like a schoolgirl caught in a delicious naughtiness, to hear the fine things--the charms and marvels--which my showman was bawling about me. Then one by one, at first a little owlishly, the Great Public, at the charge of 6d. per adult and half price for children (or "full-growns under 3 foot") were admitted to the presence of the "_Signorina Donna Angelique, the Fairy Princess of Andalusia in Spain_." So at any rate declares the printed handbill.
In the att.i.tude of Madame Recamier in the picture, I reclined on a l.u.s.trous spread of crimson satin and rabbit-skin draped over a small lump of wood for bolster to give support to my elbow. And out of my paint and powder, from amid this oasis--and with repeated warnings "not to touch" screamed by my gipsy--I met as pleasantly and steadily as I could the eyes of the grinning, smirking, awestruck faces--townsfolk and village folk, all agape and all sound Kentish stock.
"That isn"t real, she"s a doll," lisped a crepe-bonneted little girl who with skimpy legs dangling out of her petticoat had been hoisted up under her armpits for a clearer view. I let a little pause come, then turned my head on my hand and smiled, leaned over and eased my tinselled slipper. An audible sigh, sweet as incense, went up under the hollow of the booth. I looked on softly from face to face--another dream. Some captive beast mewed and brushed against the sides of a cage drawn up a yard or two from where I lay. The lamp poured flame and smoke. The canvas quietly flapped, and was still. Wild ramped the merry-go-round with its bells and hootings; and the panpipes sobbed their liquid decoy.
The Signorina"s first reception was over.
News of her spread like wildfire. I could hear the showman bellowing at the press of people. His guineas were fructifying. And a peculiar rapturous gravity spread over me. When one"s very self is wrapt in the ordeal of the pa.s.sing moment, is lost like that, out of time and s.p.a.ce, it seems, well--another presence had stolen into my mind, had taken possession. I cannot explain. But in this, it may be, all men _are_ equal, whatever their lot. So, I suppose, a flower breaks out of the bud, and b.u.t.terflies put off the mask of the chrysalis, and rainbows mount the skies. But I must try not to rhapsodize. All I know is that even in that low self-surrender, some tiny spark of life in me could not be content to let my body remain a mere mute stock for the ignorant wonder of those curious eyes.
The actual impulse, however, came from a young woman who, when next the people had streamed in, chanced to be standing close beside me. She was a weak-looking thing, yet reminded me in a sorrowful fashion of f.a.n.n.y.
Caught back by her melancholy, empty eyes, I seemed to lose myself in their darkness; to realize that she, too, was in trouble. I craned up from my wooden bolster and whispered in her hair: "Patience, patience.
There shall be a happy issue, my dear, out of all your afflictions."
Only she herself and a weedy, sallow young man in her company could have heard these words. A glint of fright and desperation sprang into her large-pupilled eyes. But I smiled, and we exchanged kindness. She moistened her lips, turned from me, and clutching at the young man"s arm, edged her way out of the throng and vanished.
"And what sort be this un?" roared an ox-faced, red-haired man from the back. "This un" hung on his shoulder, tiptoe, fair, young, and blowsy.
"She"ll _coin_ you money," I cried pleasantly, "and spend it. The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world."
"And him, and him? the toad!" cried the girl half-angrily at the shout of merriment that had shaken the tent.
"Why, pretty maid," piped I, "the nearer the wine the sweeter the cork; the plumper the pig the fatter the pork." The yell that followed was a better advertis.e.m.e.nt than drum or panpipes. The showman had discovered an oracle! For the next half-hour my booth was a ma.s.s of "Sixpennies"--the squirming Threepennies were told to wait. It filled and emptied again and again like a black bottle in the Dog Days. And when the spirit moved me, I singled out a tell-tale face and told its fortune--not less shrewdly on the whole, I think, than Mrs Ballard"s _Book of Fate_.
But it was a strangely exhausting experience. I was inexpressibly relieved when it was over; when the tent-flap descended for the last time, and I could rest from my labours, puffed up, no doubt, with far too rich a conceit of myself, but immeasurably grateful and happy.
Comparative quiet descended on the meadows. From a neighbouring tent broke shattering bursts of music, clapping and thumping, the fretful growling of the beasts, the elephant"s trumpeting, the firing of guns, whoops, caterwauling, and the jangling of harness. The Grand Circus was in progress, and fantasy made a picture for me of every sound.
Presently my showman reappeared, leading in a pacing, smooth-skinned, cinnamon-and-milk-dappled pony, bridled and saddled with silver and scarlet, his silky mane daintily plaited, his tail a sweeping plume. He stood, I should guess, about half a hand higher than my childhood"s Mopsa--the prettiest pygmy creature, though obviously morose and unsettled in temper. I took a good long look at his pink Albino eye. But a knack once acquired is quickly recovered. I mounted him. The stirrup was adjusted, one of my German plaits was dandled over my shoulder, and after a leisurely turn or two in the open, I nodded that the highborn Angelique was ready.