"Long ago, and also until not very long ago, when I added a new effect or movement it fell into its proper place and troubled me no more. Now, when I am away from my clock, when I cannot see and touch it, I often forget a movement, or give it a wrong direction, draw from it a false result.
"I am too much a man of one idea. I have imagination enough for a score of hands and ten stout bodies, and I have only a pair of hands and THIS!"
He paused and looked down at his protuberant chest and twisted trunk, and shrunken, bent legs, and enormous feet.
"I am a bad specimen of the work of Nature's journeyman, to put it as some one does, and I am abominably made-all except the head!"
He threw up his head and glanced around with scornful challenge in his eye.
"Hey!" cried a man's voice in alarm.
He looked up.
The chest of a horse was within a hand's breadth of his shoulder. The horse's head was flung aloft. The horse snorting and quivering, and bearing back upon his haunches.
Leigh sprang aside and looked around. He was in the middle of Piccadilly at Hyde Park Corner. He had almost been ridden over by a group of equestrians.
The gentleman whose horse had nearly touched him, took off his hat and apologised.
"You stopped suddenly right under the horse's head," said the gentleman. "I am extremely sorry."
Leigh raised his stick to strike the head of the horse.
The rider pulled his horse sharply away and muttered something under his breath.
"Oh, Sir Julius," cried a voice in terror, "it's Mr. Leigh!"
The dwarf's stick fell from his hand. "God's mercy in Heaven!" he cried in a whisper, as he took off his hat slowly, "Miss Ashton!"
Then, bareheaded and without his stick, he went up to the side of her horse, and said in a hoarse whisper, "I will have nothing to do with that Miracle Gold!"
A groom who had dismounted handed him his stick, and putting on his hat, he hastened away through the crowd which had begun to gather, leaving Dora in a state of mingled alarm and pity.
"Is he mad?" said Sir Julius Whinfield as the dwarf disappeared and the equestrians moved on.
"I'm sure I don't know. I think not. For a moment he terrified me, and now he breaks my heart!"
"Breaks your heart?"
"Oh, he ought not to be human! There surely can be no woe like his!"
CHAPTER XXX DORA ASHTON ALONE
"I am sure, Miss Ashton, I hope you will not imagine for a moment either that I was riding carelessly or that I recognised Mr. Leigh until you spoke. I saw him plainly enough as he was crossing the road. He was not minding in the least where he was going. He would have got across us in good time if he had only kept on; but he pulled up suddenly right under my horse's nose. I am sure I was more frightened than he. By Jove! how he glared at me. I think he would have killed me there and then if he could. He was going to strike my horse with that dreadful bludgeon of his. I am sure I was much more frightened than he was," said Sir Julius, in a penitential
tone of voice, as the two rode on side by side.
The other members of the party, including Mr. Ashton, had fallen behind and were also discussing the incident among themselves.
"You were quite blameless," said the girl, who was still pale and trembling. "I don't suppose the poor man was much afraid. Of what should he be afraid?"
"Well," said the baronet, stroking the arching neck of his bay, "he was within an ace of being ridden over, you know."
"And suppose he had been knocked down and ridden over, what has he to fear, poor man?" she said. Her eyes were fixed, and she was speaking as if unconscious she uttered her words. The group had turned out of the noise of Piccadilly and were riding close together.
"He might have been hurt, I mean seriously hurt. Particularly he?"
"Hurt! How could he be hurt? You might be hurt, or I might be hurt, but how could he be hurt. Particularly he! You fancy because he is maimed and misshapen he is more likely to be hurt than a sound man?"
"Assuredly."
"I cannot see that. When people say a man was hurt, they do not mean merely or mostly that he endured pain. They mean that he was injured or disabled in some way. How can you injure or disable him? He is as much injured and disabled as a man can be and live."
"That is very true; but he might have been killed. Miss Ashton, you do not mean to say you think it would be better he had been killed?" cried Sir Julius in a tone of one shocked and surprised.
"I do not know. Surely death and Heaven must be conditions of greater ease and happiness for him than for ordinary mortals."
"I am entirely of your opinion there. But from what I saw and heard of this man yesterday and to-day, I am disposed to think he has self-esteem enough to sustain him in any difficulty and carry him through any embarrassment."
"How are we to know how much of this self-esteem is assumed?"
"It does not matter whether it is assumed or not, so long as it is sustaining."
"What! Does it not matter at what expense it is hired for use? You amaze me, Sir Julius. You are generally sympathetic and sound, I think you have not been taking your lessons regularly under Lady Forcar. She would be quicker sighted in a matter of this kind." The girl shook off her air of abstraction and smiled at the young man.