Memoirs of a Midget by Walter de la Mare

Author:Walter de la Mare [Mare, Walter de la]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Tags: Psychological fiction, Young women -- Fiction, Bildungsromans, Circus performers -- Fiction, Difference (Psychology) -- Fiction, Short people -- Fiction, Dwarfs -- Fiction
Publisher: Standard Ebooks
Published: 2022-04-04T21:08:40+00:00

XXVII

I stumbled off, feeling smaller and smaller as I went, more and more ridiculous and insignificant, as indeed I must have appeared; for distance can hardly lend enchantment to any view of me. Not one single look did I cast behind; but now that my feelings began to quiet down, I began also to think. And a pretty muddle of mind it was. What had enraged and embittered me so? If only I had remained calm. Was it that my pride, my vanity, had in some vague fashion been a punishment of him for Fanny’s unkindness to me?

“But he stole, he stole my letter,” I said aloud, stamping my foot on a budding violet; and—there was Mrs. Bowater. Evidently she had been watching my approach, and now smiled benignly.

“Why, you are quite out of breath, miss; and your cheeks! … I hope you haven’t been having words. A better-spoken young fellow than I had fancied; and I’m sure I ask his pardon for the ‘gentleman.’ ”

“Ach,” I swept up at my beech-tree, now cautiously unsheathing its first green buds in the lower branches, “I think he must be light in his head.”

“And that often comes,” replied Mrs. Bowater, with undisguised bonhomie, “from being heavy at the heart. Why, miss, he may be a young nobleman in disguise. There’s unlikelier things even than that, to judge from that trash of Fanny’s. While, as for fish in the sea—it’s sometimes wise to be contented with what we can catch.”

Who had been talking to me about fish in the sea—quite lately? I thought contemptuously of Pollie and the Dream Book. “I am sorry,” I replied, nose in air, “but I cannot follow the allusion.”

The charge of vulgarity was the very last, I think, which Mrs. Bowater would have lifted a finger to refute. My cheeks flamed hotter to know that she was quietly smiling up there. We walked on in silence.

That night I could not sleep. I was afraid. Life was blackening my mind like the mould of a graveyard. I could think of nothing but one face, one voice—that scorn and longing, thought and fantasy. What if he did love me a little? I might at least have been kind to him. Had I so many friends that I could afford to be harsh and ungrateful? How dreadfully ill he had looked when I scoffed at him. And now what might not have happened to him? I seemed lost to myself. No wonder Fanny. … My body grew cold at a thought; the palms of my hands began to ache.

Half-stifled, I leapt out of bed, and without the least notion of what I was doing, hastily dressed myself, and fled out into the night. I must find him, talk to him, plead with him, before it was too late. And in the trickling starlight, pressed against my own gatepost—there he was.

“Oh,” I whispered at him in a fever of relief and shame and apprehensiveness, “what are you doing here? You must go away at once, at once.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.