Chapter XII

FANNY LEMON RELATES HOW HER HUSBAND, AFTER BECOMING BETTER ACQUAINTED WITH DEVLIN THE BARBER, SEEMED TO BE HAUNTED BY SHADOWS AND SPIRITS.

"I had my way about my hair before I went to bed. I waited till Lemon was asleep, and then I brushed all the serpents out, and did it up in a plain knot behind. I felt then like a Christian, and I said my prayers before I stepped in between the sheets. I didn't sleep much; Lemon was that restless he torsed and torsed the whole night long, and his eyes was quite bloodshot when he got up. While he was dressing I heard Devlin call out:

"'Lemon, I'm coming down to have breakfast with you.'

"'Do,' cried Lemon. 'You're heartily welcome.'

"I was down-stairs at the time--I always git up before Lemon, to make the place straight and cook the breakfast--and I heard what passed. Lemon, half-dressed, come running down to me, and told me to be sure to git something nice for breakfast, and not to cut the rashers too thin.

"'Go to the fish-shop,' he said, 'and git a haddick. We must treat him well, Fanny, or he might cry off the bargain he made with me last night.'

"I thought to myself I knew how I'd treat him if I had my way, but it wouldn't have done jest then for me to go agin Lemon. There was times when he said a thing that it had to be done, and that was one of 'em. So I goes to the fishmonger's and gits a haddick, and I cooks three large rashers and six eggs--three fried and three biled--and then Lemon and Devlin they come in together as thick as thieves. Devlin had been telling Lemon something as had made him laugh till his face was purple.

"'You never heard sech a man,' said Lemon to me. 'He's one in a thousand.'

"'He's one in millions,' I thought, and I kep my head down for fear Devlin should suspect what I was thinking of; 'and there's only one as ever _I_ heard of.'

"Devlin give me good morning and shook hands with me; I didn't dare to refuse him. If he'd offered to kiss me, Lemon wouldn't have objected, I believe, though there was a time when he was that jealous of me that a man hardly dared to look at me. But those happy days was gone for ever.

"I didn't have much appetite for breakfast, and no more had Lemon, but Devlin made up for the pair of us. There was the haddick, and there was the three rashers, and there was the six eggs. Devlin pretty well cleared the lot. It was Lemon, I _must_ say, who pushed him on to it, though it didn't seem to me as he wanted much persuading. He had the appetite of a shark. It didn't give me no pleasure to hear him praise my cooking and to hear him say to Lemon that he'd got a treasure of a wife.

"'I have,' said Lemon; 'Fanny's a good sort.'

"When breakfast was over and everything cleared away Lemon asked Devlin if he was ready, and Devlin said he was, and they went out arm in arm jest as if they was brothers.

"They come home late, and Lemon was more excited than ever.

"'It's all settled, Fanny,' he said, 'I've taken another shop, and Devlin and me's gone into partnership. We're going to work together, and we'll astonish your weak nerves.'

"As if they hadn't been astonished enough already.

"I asked Lemon where the shop was that he'd taken, but he wouldn't tell me.

"'It's a secret,' he said, 'between Devlin and me. What an egstrordinary man he is, Fanny! What a glorious, glorious fellow! What a fortunate thing that he saw the bill in our winder of a room to let, and that he didn't go somewheres else! It's a providence, Fanny, that's what it is.'

"I wasn't to be put down so easy, and I tried my hardest to git out of Lemon where the shop was, but he wouldn't let on.

"'I've promised Devlin,' he said, 'not to say a word about it to a living soul. Perhaps we sha'n't keep it open long; perhaps we shall shut it up after a month or two and take another; perhaps we shall do a lot of trade at private houses. It's all as Devlin likes. I've give him the lead. There never was sech a man.'

"That was all I could git out of him. Devlin had him tight; 'twas nothing but Devlin this, and Devlin that, and Devlin t'other. Devlin was as close as he was; I couldn't git nothing out of him.

"'I love wimmin,' he said, 'but they must be kep in their place. Eh, Lemon?'

"That was a nice thing for a wife to hear, wasn't it?

"'Yes,' said Lemon: 'you mind your business, Fanny, and we'll mind our'n.'

"They went out the next morning together, and kep out late agin; and so it went on for a matter of four or five weeks. Then there come a change. From being in love with Devlin, Lemon begun to be frightened of him. I saw it in his face every morning when they went away. Instead of Lemon's taking Devlin's arm as he did at first, it was Devlin who used to take Lemon's arm, jest above the elber jint, as much as to say:

"'I've got you, and I'm not going to let you escape me.'

"And instead of Lemon being brisk and lively and egscited of a morning, as though he was going for an excursion in a pleasure van, he got grumpy and dull, as though he was going to the lock-up to answer for some dreadful thing he'd done. I spoke to him about it, but if he was close before, he was a thousand times closer now.

"'Don't ask me nothing, Fanny,' he'd say; 'don't put questions to me about _him_. I daren't say a word, I daren't, I daren't!'

"That didn't stop me; he was my husband, and if strange things was being done, who had a better right than me to know all about 'em? But it was all no use; I couldn't git nothing out of him.

"'If you don't shut up,' he said, quite savage like, 'I'll set Devlin on to you, and you'll have cause to remember it to the last day of your life!'

"Jest as if I haven't got cause to remember it! If I lived a thousand years I couldn't forgit what's happened.

"If I could have got rid of my lodger I shouldn't have thought twice about it; out he'd have gone; but he paid me reg'lar, did Devlin, and always in advance, so that I had no egscuse for giving him notice. And even if I had, I ain't at all sure that I should have had the courage to do it.

"It begun to trouble me more than I can say, that I never heard him come in or go out, and that I never caught the sound of his footsteps on the stairs or in the passage, and that, when he might have been in the Canary Islands for all I knew, I'd turn my head and see him standing at the back of me, without my having the least idea how he got into the room.

"'Here I am, you see, Mrs. Lemon,' he'd say; 'back agin, like a bad penny. You're glad to see me, I'm sure. Say you're glad.'

"And I had to, whether I liked it or not. Then he'd grin and wag his head at me, and sometimes say if he knew where there was another woman like me he'd stick up to her. 'Lord have mercy,' I used to think, 'on the woman who'd give you a second look unless she was obliged to!'

"I grew to be that shaky and trembly that my life was a perfect misery; and so was Lemon's. But I used to speak about it, which was a little relief, while poor Lemon would never so much as open his lips. I pitied him a deal more than I did myself. I did say to him once:

"'Lemon, let's call a broker in when Devlin's not here, and sell the furniture, and run away.'

"'You talk like a fool,' said Lemon. 'If we was to hide ourselves in the bowels of the earth he'd ferret us out.'

"Then Lemon said one night that Devlin was going to paint our portraits.

"'He sha'n't paint mine,' I cried, 'not if he orfered to frame it in dymens!'

"The words was no sooner out of my lips than I turned almost to a jelly at hearing Devlin's voice at the back of me, saying,

"'Nonsense, nonsense, Mrs. Lemon! Surely it ain't me you're speaking of? Don't they paint all the Court beauties, and ain't you as good as the best of them? Your face is like milk and roses, and I'm the artist that's going to do justice to it. You can't refuse me; you won't have the heart to refuse me.'

"Which I hadn't, with him so close to me. He seemed to take the backbone out of me; I used to feel quite limp when he took me up like that. He _did_ paint my picture, and there it is, stuck on the wall; and though it's come over me a hunderd times to drag it down and burn it, it's more than I dare do for fear of something dreadful happening.

"I can't describe what I went through while that picture was being painted. There was I, setting like a stature in the position that Devlin placed me; and there was Lemon, leaning for'ard, with his hands clarsping the arms of his chair, and his eyes glaring like a ghost's; and there was Devlin, waving his brush and painting me, making all sorts of strange remarks, and singing all sorts of songs in all sorts of languages. He could do that, sir; I don't believe there's a language in the world that he can't speak, and I don't believe there's anything in the world, or out of it, for that matter, that he doesn't know. "_Now, where did he get it all from?_

"I used to wonder about his age. It was a regular puzzler. Sometimes he looked quite young, and sometimes he looked as old as Methusalem. I plucked up courage once to ask him.

"'What do you say to twenty?' he answered. 'Or if that won't do, what do you say to eighty, or a couple of hunderd?'

"When my portrait was finished he pretended to go into egstacies over it, and said that it really ought to be egshibited.

"'Mind you keep it as a airloom,' he said. 'You've no notion what it's worth.'

"Then he took Lemon's picture, and it was a comfort to me that he painted my husband up-stairs. Every night for a fortnight Lemon went up to Devlin's room, and set there for two or three hours, and then he'd slide into this room looking as if he'd jest come out of his corfin. It give me such a shock when I first saw the picture that I threw my apern over my head.

"'Ah,' said Devlin with a grin, pulling my apern away, 'I thought you'd be overcome when you set eyes on it. It's a rare piece of work, ain't it? Why, it almost speaks!'

"It was as like Lemon as like could be--I couldn't deny that; but there was the sly, wicked look which you've noticed in that there stuffed bird and in the stone image on the mantelshelf. Devlin made us a present of them things after he'd painted the portraits, and told me to treasure 'em for his sake, and that whenever I looked at 'em I was to think of him. He said they was worth ever so much money, but that I was never, never to part with 'em.

"'If you do,' he said, laughing in my face, 'I'll haunt you day and night.'

"So things went on, gitting worser and worser every day, and Lemon got that thin that you could almost blow him away. And now, sir, I'm coming to the most dreadful part of the whole affair, something that has frightened me more than all the rest put together. What I'm going to speak of now is that awful murder in Victoria Park. Don't think I'm making it up out of my head. I ain't clever enough or wicked enough. If I was I should deserve a judgment to fall on me.

"I've told you of Lemon speaking in his sleep--never did he go to bed without saying things in the night that'd send my heart into my mouth. He seemed as if he was haunted by shadders and spirits, and as if there was always something weighing on his soul that he daren't let out when he was awake. When I found it was no good arguing with him I give it up, and I bore with his writhes and groans, without telling him in the morning of the dreadful night I'd passed. But the day before yesterday, sir, things come to a head.

"He went out early with Devlin as usual, and they both come home together a deal later than they was in the habit of doing. I fixed the time in my dairy, sir; it was half-past eight o'clock. Before that I'd wrote my letter to you and posted it--the letter you got yesterday morning. Little did I dream of what was going to happen after I sent it off.

"I noticed that Lemon was more trembly than ever, and there was that in his eyes which made my heart bleed for him. It wasn't a wandering look, because he was afraid to look behind him; it was as if he was trying to shut out something horrible. But I didn't say a word to him while Devlin was with us. He didn't remain long.

"'I'm going to my room,' he said; 'I've got a lot of writing to do. Bring me up a pot of tea before you go to bed. Lemon and me's been spending a pleasant hour at the Twisted Cow.'

"'Lemon looks as if he'd been spending a pleasant hour,' I thought, as I looked at his white face.

"Then Devlin went to his room on the second floor, and I breathed more free.

"The Twisted Cow, sir, is a public which Devlin is fond of. You may be sure he'd pick out a house with a outlandish name.

"'O, Lemon, Lemon,' I said, 'you look like a ghost!'

"'Hush!' he said, with his hand to his ear; he was afraid Devlin might be listening. 'Don't speak to me, Fanny; I want to be quiet, very quiet. How horrible, how horrible!'

"'What's horrible. Lemon?' I asked, putting my arms round his neck.

"He pushed me away and asked what I meant.

"'You said "How horrible, how horrible!" jest now, Lemon.'

"To my surprise, he answered 'I didn't. You must have fancied it. Let me be quiet.'

"I didn't dispute with him, and we set here in the parlour for more than an hour without saying a word to each other. Lemon hadn't been drinking, sir; he was as sober as I am this minute.

"'I think I'll go to bed, Fanny,' he said.

"The tears come into my eyes, he spoke so soft.

"'Shall I go and git your supper-beer, Lemon?' I asked.

"'No,' he said, ketching hold of me. 'I won't be left alone in the house with that--that devil up-stairs! I don't want no supper-beer.'

"It was the first time he'd ever spoke of Devlin in that way, and I knew that something out of the common must have happened. Perhaps they'd quarrelled. O, how I hoped they had! It might put a end to their partnership, and there would be a chance of peace and happiness once more.

"'I won't leave you. Lemon,' I said. 'I'll take that wretch his tea, and I hope it'll choke him, and then I'll come to bed too. Shall I make you some gruel, Lemon, or anything else you fancy?'

"'No,' he answered. 'I don't want nothing--only to sleep, to sleep!'

"I made the tea for Devlin, and it's a mercy I didn't have any poison in the house, because I might have been tempted to put it in the pot--though perhaps that wouldn't have hurt him. I knocked at his door, and he said as pleasant as pleasant can be, 'Come in, Mrs. Lemon. What a treasure you are! How happy Lemon ought to be with sech a wife!'

"But I didn't stop to talk to him. I put the tea on the table and went down to Lemon. He was already in bed, and his head was covered with the bedclothes.

"'I'll jest run down,' I whispered, 'and put up the chain on the street-door. I won't be a minute. Lemon.'

"I was back in less than that, and I went to bed. Lemon never moved. I spoke to him, but he didn't answer me; and after a little while I went to sleep.

"I woke up as the clock struck twelve all in a prespiration. Lemon was talking in his sleep, and this is what he said:

"'Victoria Park. Eighteen years old. Golden hair. With a bunch of daisies in her belt. A bunch of white daisies, with blood on 'em! With blood on 'em! With blood on 'em! O Lord, have mercy on her! Near the water. Lord, have mercy on her! Lord, have mercy on her!'

"And then, sir, he give a scream that curdled right through me, and cried, 'Don't let him--don't let him! Save her--save her!'

"How would _you_ feel, sir, if you heard some one laying by your side saying sech things in the dead of night?"