Tipping the Velvet Read Online Free PDF Page B

said I was too tired. That day was cooler, and by Monday the weather seemed really to have broken. Father came back to the Parlour full-time, and I spent the day in the kitchen, gutting and filleting. We worked till almost seven: I had just enough time between the closing of the shop and the leaving of the Canterbury train to change my dress, to pull on a pair of elastic-sided boots and to sit down with Father and Mother, Alice, Davy and Rhoda for a hasty supper. They thought it more than strange, I knew, that I should be returning to the Palace yet again; Rhoda, in particular, seemed greatly tickled by the story of my ‘mash’. ‘Don’t you mind her going, Mrs Astley?’ she asked. ‘My mother would never let me go so far alone; and I am two years older. But then, Nancy is such a steady sort of girl, I suppose.’ I had been a steady girl; it was over Alice - saucy Alice - that my parents usually worried. But at Rhoda’s words I saw Mother look me over and grow thoughtful. I had on my Sunday dress, and my new hat trimmed with lavender; and I had a lavender bow at the end of my plait of hair, and a bow of the same ribbon sewn on each of my white linen gloves. My boots were black with a wonderful shine. I had put a spot of Alice’s perfume - eau de rose - behind each ear; and I had darkened my lashes with castor oil from the kitchen.
    Mother said, ‘Nancy, do you really think -?’ But as she spoke the clock on the mantel gave a ting! It was a quarter-past seven, I should miss my train.
    I said, ‘Good-bye! Good-bye!’ - and fled, before she could delay me.
    I missed my train anyway, and had to wait at the station till the later one came. When I reached the Palace the show had begun: I took my seat to find the acrobats already on the stage forming their loop, their spangles gleaming, their white suits dusty at the knees. There was clapping; Tricky rose to say - what he said every night, so that half the audience smiled and said it with him - that You couldn’t get many of those to the pound! Then - as if it were part of the overture to her routine and she could not work without it - I gripped my seat and held my breath, while he raised his gavel to beat out Kitty Butler’s name.
    She sang that night like - I cannot say like an angel, for her songs were all of champagne suppers and strolling in the Burlington Arcade; perhaps, then, like a fallen angel - or yet again like a falling one: she sang like a falling angel might sing with the bounds of heaven fresh burst behind him, and hell still distant and unguessed. And as she did so, I sang with her - not loudly and carelessly like the rest of the crowd, but softly, almost secretly, as if she might hear me the better if I whispered rather than bawled.
    And perhaps, after all, she did. I had thought that, when she walked on to the stage, she had glanced my way - as much as to say, the box is filled again. Now, as she wheeled before the footlights, I thought I saw her look at me again. The idea was a fantastic one - and yet every time her gaze swept the crowded hall it seemed to brush my own, and dally with it a little longer than it should. I ceased my whispered singing and merely stared, and swallowed. I saw her leave the stage - again, her gaze met mine - and then return for her encore. She sang her ballad and plucked the flower from her lapel, and held it to her cheek, as we all expected. But when her song was finished she did not peer into the stalls for the handsomest girl, as she usually did. Instead, she took a step to her left, towards the box in which I sat. And then she took another. In a moment she had reached the corner of the stage, and stood facing me; she was so close I could see the glint of her collar-stud, the beat of the pulse in her throat, the pink at the corner of her eye. She stood there for what seemed to be a small eternity ; then her arm came up, the flower flashed for a second in the beam of the lime