Memoirs of a Midget

Some few years ago a brief account of me found its way into one or two country newspapers. I have been told, that it reappeared, later, in better proportion, in the Metropolitan Press! Fortunately, or unfortunately, very little of this account was true. It related, among other things, that I am accustomed to wear shoes with leaden soles to them to keep me from being blown away like thistledown in the wind, that as a child I had narrowly escaped being scalded to death in a soup tureen, that one of my ancestors came from Poland, that I am an expert painter of miniatures, that I am a changeling and can speak the fairy tongue. And so on and so forth.

I think I can guess where my ingenuous biographer borrowed these fables. He meant me no harm; he was earning his living; he made judicious use of his “no doubts” and “it may be supposed”; and I hope he amused his readers. But by far the greater part of his account was concerned with mere physical particulars. He had looked at me in fancy through spectacles which may or may not have been rosy, but which certainly minified. I do not deserve his inches and ounces, however flattering his intentions may have been. It is true that my body is among the smaller works of God. But I think he paid rather too much attention to this fact. He spared any reference not only to my soul (and I am not ungrateful for that), but also to my mind and heart. There may be too much of all three for some tastes in the following pages, and especially, perhaps, of the last. That cannot be helped. Finally, my anonymous journalist stated that I was born in Rutlandshire⁠—because, I suppose, it is the smallest county in England.

Troubled in mind by my illness and other worries and mortifications, my mother, not fully aroused perhaps, got up in the small hours and mounted the stone staircase in order to look in on me. I was awake, and heard the rustling of her nightdress and the faint touch of her slippered feet ascending from stone to stone. I guessed her errand, and in my folly thought I would pretend to be asleep and give her a “surprise.” I drew my curtains and lay motionless on my back as if I were dead. With eyes closed, listening, I smilingly waited.

Then suddenly I heard a muffled, gasping cry; and all was utterly, icily still. I flung aside the silk curtains and leapt out of bed.

The moonlight was streaming in a lean ray across the floor of my room. I ran down this luminous pathway into the dusk at the open door. At the stairhead beyond, still and silent, I saw my poor dear. On through the cold dark air I ran, and stood in her loosened hair beside her head. It lay unstirring, her cheek colourless, her hand stretched out, palm upward, on the stone. I called into her ear, first gently and pleadingly, then loud and shrill. I ran and chafed her fingers, then back again, and stooped, listening with my cheek to her lips. She exhaled a trembling sigh. I called and called; but my shrillness was utterly swallowed up in the vast night-hung house. Then softly in the silence her lids unsealed and her eyes, as if wonderful with a remote dream, looked up into my face. “My dear,” she whispered, wakefulness gathering faintly into her gaze, “my dear, is it you?”

But now the novelty of this present experience, the flowery cottages, Mr. Waggett’s square, sorrel nag, the ballooning northwesterly clouds, the aromatic rusty hedgerows, the rooks in the cornfields⁠—all these sights and sounds called joy into my mind, and far too soon the bright-painted railway station at the hill-bottom hove into sight, and our drive was over. I was lifted down into Pollie’s arms again. Then followed a foolish chaffering over the tickets, which Mr. Waggett had volunteered to purchase for us at the rounded window. The looming face beyond had caught sight of me, and the last words I heard bawled through for any to hear were: “Lor, Mr. Waggett, I’d make it a quarter for ’ee if it was within regulations. But ’tain’t so, the young lady’s full natural size in the eye of the law, and I couldn’t give in to ’ee not even if ’twas a honeymooning you was after.” No doubt it was wholesome to learn as quickly as possible how easy a butt I was to be for the jests of the good-humoured. On that occasion it was a bitter pill. I felt even Pollie choke down a laugh into her bosom. My cheek whitened, but I said nothing.

An enormous din at the moment shattered around me, ten thousand times harsher to my nerves than any mere witticism could be. My first “steam-monster” was entering the station. All but stunned by its clatter, I barely had the presence of mind to thank Mr. Waggett for the little straw basket of three greengages, and the nosegay of cherry-pie which he had thrust into my arms.

Early in the afternoon on finding that her patient was little better, my landlady went off to the chemist’s to get me some physic; I could bear inactivity no longer, and rose and dressed. The fire was low, the room sluggish, when in the dusk, as I sat dismally brooding in my chair, the door opened, and a stranger came in with my tea. She was dressed in black, and was carrying a light. With that raised in one hand, and my tea-tray held between finger and thumb of the other, she looked at me with face a little sidelong. Her hair was dark above her clear pale skin, and drawn, without a fringe, smoothly over her brows. Her eyes were almost unnaturally light in colour. I looked at her in astonishment; she was new in my world. She put the tray on my table, poked the fire into a blaze, blew out her candle at a single puff from her pursed lips, and seating herself on the hearthrug, clasped her hands round her knees.

“Mother told me you were in bed, ill,” she said. “I hope you are better.”

I assured her in a voice scarcely above a whisper that I was quite well again.

She nestled her chin down and broke into a little laugh: “My! how you startled me!”

“Then it was you,” I managed to say.

“Oh, yes; it was me, it was me.” The words were uttered as if to herself. She stooped her cheek over her knees again, and smiled round at me. “I’m not telling,” she added softly.

Then instantly I discovered the cause of the bird’s alarm. At first I fancied that this strange figure was at some little distance. Then I realized that his stature had misled me, and that he could not be more than twenty or thirty yards away. Standing there, with fixed, white face and black hair, under a flowering blackthorn, he remained as motionless and as intent as I. He was not more than a few inches, apparently, superior in height to myself.

“So,” I seemed to whisper, as gaze met gaze, “there!” hardly certain the while if he was real or an illusion. Indeed, if, even then before my eyes, he had faded out into the tangle of thorn, twig, and thin-spun blossom above and around him, it would not have greatly astonished, though it would have deeply disappointed me. With a peculiar, trembling curiosity, I held him with my gaze. If he would not disclose himself, then must I.

Slowly and deliberately my cold hand crept out and grasped my parasol. Without for a moment removing my eyes from this interloper’s face, I pushed its ribbed silk tent taut into the air. Click! went the tiny spring; and at that he stirred.

“Who are you: watching me?” I cried in a low, steady voice across the space that divided us. His head stooped a little. I fancied⁠—and feared⁠—that he was about to withdraw. But after a pause he drew himself up and came nearer, casting, as he approached, his crooked shadow away from the sun on the close-cropped turf beside him.