The cruel stupidity of it! With head bent low and burning cheek I heard his harsh voice knell on and on—not persuading or conciliating, or pleading with me—I could have forgiven him that easily enough; but flatly commanding me to listen and obey.
“For mercy’s sake,” I broke in hurriedly at last, “that’s enough of that. If just sitting here and talking to one’s fellow-creatures has smeared me over, as you say it has, why, I must wait till Jordan to be clean. You should have seen that great wallowing sow this evening. She wasn’t ashamed of herself. Can’t you understand that I simply had to get free? You’d see it was for your sake, too, perhaps, if you had had the patience to listen. But there; never mind. I understand. You can’t endure my company any longer. That’s what it means. Well, then, if that is so, there’s no help for it. You must just go. And I must be alone again.”
But no: there was a difference, he stubbornly maintained. What was done, was done. He was not speaking of the past. I knew nothing about the world. It was my very innocence that had kept me safe; “and—well, the courage.” My innocence! and the “courage” thrown in! But couldn’t I, wouldn’t I see? he argued. The need was over now; he was with me; there was nothing to be afraid of; he would protect me. “Surely—oh, you know in your heart you couldn’t have enjoyed all that!”
“Oh,” said I poisonously, “so you don’t think that to cheat the blackguard, as you call him, at the last moment—and please don’t suppose I have forgotten what you have called other friends of mine—you don’t think that to break every promise I have made wouldn’t be wallowing worse than—Oh, thank you for the wallowing, I shall remember that.”
“But, my dear, my dear,” he began, “I never—”
“I say I am not your dear,” I broke in furiously. “One moment you dictate to me as if I were a child, and the next—As if I hadn’t been used to that pretence, that wheedling all my life long. As if I had ever been treated like an ordinary human being—coddled up, smuggled about, whispered at! Why, a scullery maid’s is Paradise compared with the life I’ve led. And as for the vile mob and the rest of it, I tell you I’ve enjoyed every minute of them. I make them clap their great ugly hands: I make them ashamed of themselves; they can’t help themselves; they just—And I’ve comforted some of them too. What’s more, I tell you I love them. They are my own people; and I’d die for them if they would only forget what’s between us and—and share it all. You be careful; maybe I shall stay here for good. They don’t wince at my company; they don’t come creeping and crawling. Why! aren’t we all on show? Who set the world spinning? I tell you I hate that—that hypocrisy. What does it amount to, pray, but that you’d like the pretty, simpering doll all to yourself?”
A hooting screech broke the quiet that followed. The merry-go-round had set to its evening’s labours. Faster and faster jangled the pipes and chiming:—
“I dreampt that I dwe‑elt in mar‑ar‑ble halls,
With vassals and serfs by my si‑i‑ide. …”
And at the sound, anger and pride died down in me. I lifted my face from the ground.
“I’m sorry,” I muttered. “But you don’t know what I have gone through these last weeks. And even if I were a hundred times as ashamed of myself as you think I ought to be, I couldn’t—I can’t go back. I have promised. It’s written down. Only once more—this one night, and I swear it shall be the last.” My mouth crooked itself into a smile. “You shall pray for me on the hill,” I said, “then lead me off to a Nunnery yourself.”
And still I could not whisper—Money. The word stuck in my throat.
He seemed not to have heard the miserable things I had been saying. Without a syllable of retaliation, he came a little nearer, and stood over me. We were all but in darkness now, though lights were beating on the canvas of our tent. It was quite, quite simple, he said. The showman was no fool. He couldn’t compel me to exhibit myself against my will. A contract was a contract, of course, but what if both parties to it agreed to break it? And supposing the showman refused to agree—what then? There was a far better plan, if only I would listen. As soon as he had been made to realize that nothing on earth could persuade me to show myself again, he would accept any alternative: “I’ll take your place,” smiled Mr. Anon.
Take my place!
So this was the plan he had been brooding over on our journey. No wonder he had been absentminded. Cold with dread I gazed at him in the obscurity of the tent. A glimpse of Adam’s rabbit face as he had stood brazening out his fears of the showman on that first night of adventure had darted through my mind. And this man—dwarfed, shrunken, emaciated.
A terrifying compassion gushed up into my heart, breaking down barriers that I never knew were there. It was the instant in my life, I think, when I came nearest to being a mother.
“S-sh,” I implored him. “You don’t understand. You can have no notion of what you are saying. I am a woman.
