“Hideous! monstrous!” murmured Mrs. Monnerie to the tall, expressionless figure that stood beside her. “The abject evil of the creature!”
Her dark, appraising glance travelled over me—feet, hands, body, lace-draped head. It swept across my eyes as if they were less significant than bits of china stuck in a coconut.
“No, Miss Bowater,” she turned massively round on her, “you were perfectly right, it seems. As usual—but a dangerous habit, my dear. My little ransoming scheme must wait a bit. Just as well, perhaps, that our patient’s dainty nerves should have been spared this particular little initiation—. Could one have imagined it?”
Mr. Padgwick-Steggall merely raised his eyebrows. “I shouldn’t have cared to try,” he drawled. And the lady beside him made a little mouth and laid her gloved hand on his arm.
“But, Madame is forgetting,” whined the Signorina in a broken nosy English over her outspread fan, “Madame is forgetting. It’s alive! Oh, truly!” and I clasped my arms even tighter across my padded chest, my body involuntarily rocking to and fro, though not with amusement.
“Madame is forgetting nothing of the kind,” retorted Mrs. Monnerie heartily. “The princess is an angel—Angélique—adorable.” She turned to the gipsy woman and slipped a coin into the clawlike fingers. “Well, good night,” she nodded at me. “We are perfectly satisfied.”
“La, la, Madame,” my stuttering voice called after her, the words leaping out from some old hiding-place in my mind. “Je vous remercie, madame. Rien ne va plus. … Noir gagne!”
Her ebony stick shook beneath her hand. “Unspeakable,” she angrily ejaculated, stumping her way out. “A positive outrage against humanity.”
I shut my eyes, but the silent laughter that had once overtaken me in my bedroom at Mrs. Bowater’s scarcely sounded in my head. And Mrs. Monnerie could more easily survive the little exchange than I. My body was dull and aching as if after a severe fall. The booth was filling for the last time.
Little life was left in the inert figure that faced this new assortment of her fellow-creatures: how strangely dissimilar one from another; how horrifyingly alike. A faint premonition bade me be on my guard. Under the wavering flame of the lamp, my glance moved slowly on from face to face, eye on to eye; and behind everyone a watcher whom now I dared not wait to challenge. Empty or cynical, disgusted, malevolent, or blankly curious, they met me: none pitiful; none saddened or afflicted. On former nights—Why had they grown so hostile? This, then, was to smother in the bog.
But one face there was known to me, and that known well. Hoping, perhaps, to take me unaware, or may it have been to snatch a secret word with me; Fanny had slipped back into the tent again, and was now steadily regarding me from behind the throng. A throng so densely packed together that the canvas walls bulged behind them, and the tent-pole bent beneath the strain. Yet so much alone were she and I in that last infinite moment that we might have been whispering together after death. And this time, suddenly overwhelmed with self-loathing, it was I who turned away.
When, stretching my cramped limbs, I drew back, exhausted and shivering, from the empty tent, I thought for an instant that the figure which sat crouching in the corner of the recess was asleep. But no: with head averted, sweat gleaming on his forehead, he rose to his feet. His consciousness had been my theatre in a degree past even my realization.
“Then, that is over,” was all he said. “Now it is my turn.”
The voice was flat and indifferent, but he could not conceal his disgust of what had passed, nor his dread of what was to come. Why, I thought angrily once more as I looked at him, why did he exaggerate things like this? Even a drowning man can sink three times, and still cheat the water. What cared I?—the night was nearly over. We should have won release. Why consider it so deeply? But even while I pleaded with him to let me finish the wretched business—every savour of adventure and daring and romance gone from it now—I was conscious of the trussed-up monstrosity that confronted him. He could not endure even a glance at my painted face. I stepped back from him with a hidden grimace. Past even praying for, then. So be it.
I heard the nimble stepping of the pony’s hoofs on the worn turf. A sullen malice smouldered in its reddish, luminous eyes. When I clutched at its bridle it jerked back its sensitive head as if teased with a gadfly. The gipsy daubed vermilion on my friend’s sallow cheeks. She shook out the tarnished finery she had brought with her and hung it round the stooping shoulders. She plastered down his black hair above his eyes, and thrust a riding-whip into his hand.
“There, my fine pretty gentleman,” she smirked at him. “King of the Carrots! I lay even your own mammie wouldn’t know you now, not even if you tried it straddle-legs. Tug at the knot, lovey; it’s fast, but it won’t strangle you. As for you, you—!” she suddenly flamed at me, “all very fly and cunning, but if I’d had the fixing of it, you wouldn’t have diddled me: not you. I know your shop. Slick off double quick, I warn you, or you’ll have the mob at your heels. Now then, master!”
She grasped at the bridle, slapped the tooth-bared sensitive muzzle with her hand. I drew back, cowed and speechless. The sour thought died in my mind—Better, perhaps, if we had missed each other on the road. The pony jerked and snatched back its head.
He was gone, and now I was quite alone. What was there to fear? Only his contempt, his loathing of
