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 Angélique, the Fairy Princess of Andalusia in Spain." So at any rate declares the printed handbill.
In the attitude of Madame Recamier in the picture, I reclined on a lustrous 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 crêpe-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 passing moment, is lost like that, out of time and space, 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 butterflies 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 Fanny. 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 advertisement than drum or panpipes. The showman had discovered an oracle! For the next half-hour my booth was a mass 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.