Chapter IX

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."