The last phrase an aside to the moved audience. “She” was his so-called “dearest Jane”! We thrilled at the perfidy, which lost nothing from my mother’s delivery.
And then poor Jane’s reproaches, and his impudent defence.
“Oh Charles, I wonder that the earth
Don’t open where you stand!
By the Heaven that’s above us both,
I saw you kiss her hand!”
“You didn’t dear, and if you did,
Supposing it is true,
When a pretty woman shows her rings
What can a poor man do!”
But it was always the last lines of the last verse that touched the fount of tears. Charles, with specious excuses, has made his farewells; she watches him from the window (still closed, no doubt).
“Goodbye, goodbye, we’ll meet again
On one of these fine days!”
he has warbled and departed. And then her cry (to the audience):
“He’s turned the street, I knew he would!
He’s gone to Fanny Grey’s!
He’s turned the street, I knew he would,
He’s gone—to Fanny Grey’s!”
I shall never forget that absurd tune, and its final feeble wail of despair; and inextricably blended with it is the memory of how lusciously my brother and I used to weep, even while we clamoured for an encore.
CHAPTER VII
MY MOTHER
The men and women, but more specially the women, of my mother’s family and generation are a lost pattern, a vanished type.