Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters Page A

me on my way down to the kitchen to draw me into the parlour where it was quiet and still, his face was sad and serious, but kind. He asked me, first, whether I had not changed my mind? I shook my head, and he sighed. He said, if I was quite decided, then Mother and he could not keep me; that I was a grown-up woman, almost, and should be allowed to know my own mind; that they had thought to see me marry a Whitstable boy, and settle close at hand, and so have a share in my little happinesses and troubles - but that now, he supposed, I would go and hitch up with some London fellow, who wouldn’t understand their ways at all.
    But children, he concluded, weren’t made to please their parents; and no father should expect to have his daughter at his side for ever... ‘In short, Nance, even was you going to the very devil himself, your mother and I would rather see you fly from us in joy, than stay with us in sorrow - and grow, maybe, to hate us, for keeping you from your fate.’ I had never known him so grave before, nor so eloquent. I had never seen him weep either; but now as he spoke his eyes glistened, and he blinked, twice or thrice, to hold the tears back, and his voice grew thin. I placed my head against his shoulder and let my own tears rise and spill. He put an arm about me, and patted me. ‘It breaks our hearts to lose you, dear,’ he went on. ‘You know it does. Only promise us that you won’t forget us, quite. That you’ll write to us, and visit us. And that, if things don’t turn out as you might, quite, wish them, you won’t be too proud to come home to those that love you -’ Here his voice failed utterly, and he shuddered; and I could only nod against his neck and say, ‘I will, I will; I promise you, I will.’
    But oh! hard-hearted daughter that I was, when he had left me my tears dried at once, and I felt the return of all my gladness of the night before. I hugged myself in pleasure, and danced a jig around the parlour - but delicately, on tiptoe, so that they wouldn’t hear me in the dining-room below. Then quickly, before I should be missed, I ran to the post office and sent Kitty a card at the Palace - a picture of a Whitstable oyster-smack, upon whose sail I inked ‘To London’, and on the deck of which I drew two girls with bags and trunks and outsize, smiling faces. ‘I can come!!!’ I wrote upon the back, and added that she must do without her dresser for a few nights while I made all ready ... and I finished it ‘Fondly’, and signed it, ‘Your Nan’.
    I had to be glad only in snatches that day, for the scene that I had passed with Father, after breakfast, had to be undergone again with Mother - who hugged me to her, and cried that they must be fools to let me go; and Davy - who said, quite absurdly, that I was too little to go to London, and would be run down by a tram in Trafalgar Square the minute I set foot in it; and Alice - who said nothing at all when she heard the news, but ran from the kitchen in tears, and could not be persuaded to take up her duties in the Parlour until lunch-time. Only my cousins seemed happy for me - and they were more jealous than happy, calling me a lucky cat, and swearing that I would make my fortune in the city, and forget them all; or else that I would be ruined utterly, and come sneaking back to them in disgrace.
    That week passed quickly. I spent my evenings in calling on friends and family, and bidding them farewell; and in washing and patching and packing my dresses, and sorting out which little items to take with me, which to leave behind. I visited the Palace only once, and that was in the company of my parents, who came to reassure themselves that Miss Butler was still sensible and good, and to ask for further particulars of the shadowy Walter Bliss.
    I had Kitty to myself for no more than a minute, while Father chatted with Tony and Tricky, after the show. I had feared all