FANNY LEMON RELATES UNDER WHAT CIRCUMSTANCES SHE RESOLVED TO LET HER
SECOND FLOOR FRONT.
"I must go back sir," she commenced, "a few years, else you won't be
able to understand it properly. I'll run over them years as quick as
possible, and won't say more about e'm than is necessary, because I
know you are as anxious as I am to come to the horrible thing that has
just happened. I was a happy woman in your angel father's house, but
when Lemon come a-courting me I got that unsettled that I hardly knew
what I was about. Well, sir, as you know, we got married, and I
thought I was made for life, and that honey was to be my portion
evermore. I soon found out my mistake, though I don't suppose I had
more to complain of than other women. In the early days things went
fairly well between me and Lemon. We had our little fall-outs and our
little differences, but they was soon made up. We ain't angels, sir,
any of us, and when we're tied together we soon find it out. I daresay
it's much of a muchness on the men's side as well as on our'n. Lemon
is quick-tempered, but it's all over in a minute, and he forgits and
forgives. Leastways, that is how it used to be with him; he would fly
out at me like a flash of lightning, and be sorry for it afterwards;
and one good thing in him was that he never sulked and never brooded.
It ain't so now; he's growed that irritable that it takes more than a
woman's patience to bear with him; he won't stand contradiction, and
the littlest of things'll frighten him and make him as weak as a child
unborn. There was only a couple of nights ago. He'd been going on that
strange that it was as much as I could do to keep from screaming out
loud and alarming the neighbourhood, and right in the middle of it all
he fell asleep quite sudden. It was heavenly not to hear the sound of
his voice, but I couldn't help pitying him when I saw him laying
there, with the prespiration starting out of his forehead, and I took
a cool handkercher and wiped the damp away, and smoothed his hair back
from his eyes.
"He woke up as sudden as he went off, and when he felt my hand on his
head he burst out crying and begged me to forgive him. Not for the way
he'd been storming at me--no, sir, he didn't beg my forgiveness for
that, but for something else he wouldn't or couldn't understandingly
explain."
"'What do you mean by it all?' I said. 'What do you mean by it all?'
"But though I as good as went on my bended knees to git it out of him,
it wasn't a bit of good. I might as well have spoke to a stone
stature. Lemon's had a scare, sir, a frightful awful scare, and I
don't know what to think.
"When I married him, sir, he kep a saloon, as I daresay you remember
hearing of; shaving threepence, hair-cutting fourpence, shampooing
ditter. He had a wax lady's head in the winder as went round by
machinery, and Lemon kep it regularly wound up with her hair dressed
that elegant that it would have been a credit to Burlington Arcade.
There used to be a crowd round his winder all day long, and girls and
boys 'd come a long way to have a good look at it; and though I say
it, she was worth looking at. Her lips was like bits of red coral, and
you could see her white teeth through 'em; her skin was that pearly
and her cheeks that rosy as I never saw equalled; and as for her eyes,
sir, they was that blue that they had to be seen to be believed. She
carried her head on one side as she went round and round, looking
slantways over her right shoulder, and, taking her altogether, she was
as pritty a exhibition as you could see anywheres in London. It
brought customers to Lemon, there was no doubt of that; he was doing a
splendid trade, and we put by a matter of between four and five pounds
a week after all expenses paid. It _did_ go agin me, I own, when I
discovered that Lemon had female customers, and, what's more, a
private room set apart to do 'em up in; but when I spoke to him about
he said, with a stern eye:
"'What do you object to? The ladies?'
"'Not so much the ladies, Lemon,' I answered, 'as the private room.'
"'O,' said he, 'the private room?'
"'Yes,' said I; 'I don't think it proper.'
"'Don't you?' said he, getting nasty. 'Well, I do, and there's a end
of it. You mind your business, Fanny, and I'll mind mine.'
"I saw that he meant it and didn't intend to give way, and I
consequenchually held my tongue. Even when I was told that Lemon often
went out to private houses to dress ladies' hair I thought it best to
say nothing. I had my feelings, but I kep 'em to myself. I'm for peace
and harmony, sir, and I wish everybody was like me.
"One night Lemon give me a most agreeable surprise. He came home and
said:
"'Fanny, what would you like best in the world?'
"There was a question to put to a woman! I thought of everything,
without giving anything a name. The truth is I was knocked over, so to
speak.
"Lemon spoke up agin. 'What would you say, Fanny, if I told you I was
going to sell the business and retire?'
"'No, Lemon!' I cried, for I thought, he was trying me with one of his
jokes.
"'Yes, Fanny,' he said, 'it's what I've made up my mind to. I've been
thinking of it a long time, and now I'm going to do it.'
"I saw that he was in real rightdown earnest, and I was that glad that
I can't egspress.
"'Lemon,' I said, when I got cool, 'can we afford it?'
"'Old woman,' he answered 'we've got a matter of a hundred and fifty
pound a year to live on, and if that ain't enough for the enjoyment of
life, I should like to know how much more you want?'
"He had his light moments had Lemon before certain things happened.
People as didn't know him well thought him nothing but a grumpy,
crusty man. Well, sir, he _was_ that mostly, but with them as was
intimate he cracked his joke now and then, and it used to do my heart
good to hear him.
"So it was settled, sir. Lemon actually sold his business, and we
retired. Five year ago almost to the very day we took this house and
become fashionable.
"It was a bit dull at first. Lemon missed his shop, and his customers,
and his wax lady, that he'd growed to look upon almost like flesh and
blood; but he practised on my head for hours together with his
crimping irons and curling tongs, and that consoled him a little. He
used to pretend it was all real, and that I was one of his reg'lars,
and while he was gitting his things ready he'd speak about the weather
and the news in a manner quite perfessional. When he come into the
room of a morning at eleven or twelve o'clock with his white apern on
and his comb stuck in his hair, and say, 'Good morning, ma'am, a
beautiful day,'--which was the way he always begun, whether it was
raining or not--I'd take my seat instanter in the chair, and he'd
begin to operate. I humoured him, sir! it was my duty to; and though
he often screwed my hair that tight round the tongs that I felt as if
my eyes was starting out of my head, I never so much as murmured.
"We went on in this way for nearly three years, and then Lemon took
another turn. Being retired, and living, like gentlefolk, on our
income, we got any number of circulars, and among 'em a lot about
companies, and how to make thousands of pounds without risking a
penny. I never properly understood how it came about; all I know is
that Lemon used to set poring over the papers and writing down figgers
and adding 'em up, and that at last he got speculating and dabbling
and talking wild about making millions. From that time he spoke about
nothing but Turks, and Peruvians, and Egyptians, and Bulls, and Bears,
and goodness only knows what other outlandish things; and sometimes
he'd come home smiling, and sometimes in such a dreadful temper that I
was afraid to say a word to him. One thing, after a little while, I
did understand, and that was that Lemon was losing money instead of
making it by his goings on with his Turks, and Peruvians, and
Egyptians, and his Bulls and Bears; and as I was beginning to git
frightened as to how it was all going to end, I plucked up courage to
say,
"'Lemon, is it worth while?'
"And all the thanks I got was,
"'Jest you hold your tongue. Haven't I got enough to worrit me that
you must come nagging at me?'
"He snapped me up so savage that I didn't dare to say another word,
but before a year was out he sung to another tune. He confessed to me
with tears in his eyes that he'd been chizzled out of half the money
we retired on, and it was a blessed relief to me to hear him say,
"'I've done with it, Fanny, for ever. They don't rob me no longer with
their Bulls and their Bears.'
"'A joyful hour it is to me. Lemon,' I cried, 'to hear them words. The
life I've led since you took up with Bulls and Bears and all the other
trash, there's no describing. But now we can be comfortable once more.
Never mind the money you've lost; I'll make it up somehow.'
"It was then I got the idea of letting the second floor front. As it's
turned out, sir, it was the very worst idea that ever got into my
head, and what it's going to lead to the Lord above only knows."