seemed to settle the matter as far as the aunt was concerned. The inn was a mere jumble of tatty structures, glued together with whitewash, which were heaped upon the edge of the quay, so that the greater part of it fronted the water directly, and was inaccessible on foot. But this was no impediment to a seasoned sailor such as Davey, who took the waves to be just another thoroughfare, and he quickly formulated a plan to present himself to the lovely object of his fascination— who had become still more fascinating for the suggestion that she might be considering him with a similar interest.
He easily persuaded the aunt, with the application of more earnestness and wine, to tell Artemisia to look out of her bedroom window the next day as the clock struck twelve; and if she should see the very man who had occupied her thoughts all week, she should relay the message back through the aunt to the eager Davey.
Well, you may be sure that the young man wasted no time the next morning, and was ready to turn out into the harbour at the helm of his little fishing vessel, just at five minutes to midday; and he timed it so perfectly, that he was sailing immediately beneath the windows of the Red Ship inn exactly as the tolls from the steeple began to reverberate over the town. He looked up, scanning the building, uncertain which was the room. Nobody appeared at any, but one casement was thrown open, and a light curtain fluttered at it. He dared not linger, lest he be observed by some uncharitable spy of the husband’s, but in reluctantly steering starboard, he strained to discern whether that thin veil of muslin concealed his Artemisia. He peered and peered, almost passing beyond his imperfect view of the interior— when suddenly an amorous breeze lifted the gauze aside— she was discovered— their gazes locked, for an instant— she started forward, as though to lean out, checked herself, hid her glowing cheek with her hand, caught down the curtain and withdrew.
Now then, after that he had no need of the aunt’s report— though he gobbled up her confirmation that afternoon in any case— Artemisia was undoubtedly his (as he considered it) and he was more determinedly hers than ever.
Nevertheless, however hooked he might be, the fact remained that a meeting was apparently impossible; but this frustration was amply assuaged, at first, by the messages of timid tenderness, and indeed hope (as Davey had predicted) that Artemisia began to transmit to him through her aunt. These murmurs nourished him, and fanned his desire to a blaze with the softest breaths— which goes to show how dry the tinder of his emotions were, that the merest puffs, even through the intermediary bellows of the aunt, were capable of such furnace-making.
Very soon, relayed words would not suffice, and Davey hurried to write down his feelings for his lover’s perusal— which the aunt, like a true pander, delivered— but Artemisia never once deigned to reply in the same mode, depending instead on her relative to convey her thoughts by word of mouth— and this naturally aggravated the hungry young man.
‘She does write to me,’ he insisted, at one of his rendezvous with the aunt, ‘you’re keeping her letters from me, Jenny, to read them yourself!’
‘Why would I want them?’ she exclaimed. ‘Don’t you think I have enough of you two already, running back and forth, deceiving Tom, keeping secrets? If I wanted to read love letters, I’d get a lover of my own, I assure you!’
‘Then why doesn’t she send me a single note, even a line?’ he demanded, agonised.
‘Do you think she’s a fool? Do you think I’d let her be? She’d be mad to commit herself to paper. A letter to you in her handwriting would be her own death warrant, and yours too, if he came to see it.’ (He was Mr. Parnell, of course.)
‘He never would— do you think I’d betray her?’ He was outraged.
‘Letters go astray, don’t they?’ she reasoned. ‘They get lost, they get stolen— who knows what might happen? I’m amazed you can expect her to risk herself!’
Reasoning like this seemed to suffice in the short term, but Davey could not survive on words alone— and certainly not this Aunt Jenny’s— for long. The affair (such as it was) could lead nowhere without a meeting— lovers must meet, after all— and Davey brought all his persuasive powers to bear until Artemisia was conjured to surmount her fear and bashfulness together, and consent to a liaison. But even so, the difficulty of effecting it remained, until the helpful aunt finally suggested a solution.
‘I’ve an idea,’ she told Davey, ‘but you’ll have to be clever— and quick.’
‘You be quick, and tell me!’ he demanded, impatiently.
‘Well, here it is. Once a fortnight, without fail, Tom is away from the inn for a whole half hour. He walks down the main street to the barber’s shop, and gets his hair cut.’
‘Every fortnight?’
‘Without fail,’ she nodded. Tom Parnell, you should know, was endowed with thick, black, vigorous locks, which grew so rampantly that this regular trim was a necessity, rather than an indulgence of fashion, lest he break his comb in the thicket.
Davey scratched his head. ‘But even when he’s gone, one of the barmen will be there, and all of them are so in his pocket they’ll never let me upstairs. And the street door will be locked as always, won’t it?’
‘Yes, without doubt— and Tom always carries the key. But he carries it on a string around his neck, and the barber, you know, is an old friend of mine— well, he’s been more than that, off and on— and he’s not in Tom’s pocket, by any means.’
Davey took the hint, and began to plot. He went to the barber immediately, and by whatever method— bribery, coercion, blackmail, I never heard— made a new ally and accomplice. And so deftly did the sailor lay his plans, that by the following fortnight, the day appointed for Tom’s next shearing, all was ready. And this, you should know, was already close on midsummer, which lapse of time goes to show how difficult and lengthy the correspondence of speech and missives had been, and how faithfully Davey had adhered to his passion so far.
The day— or rather, the late afternoon— arrived, and Tom waved a brawny hand at his regulars, quit the bar, and proceeded down the street, whistling. The barber was re-sharpening his scissors as the landlord entered the shop, and seeing how the man’s fine mane had flourished under the summer sun, resigned himself to the loss of another pair, the latest blunted sacrifice to Tom’s hirsute prowess.
Tom took the chair, submitted to the adornment of the gown, and settled into bland, aimless chatter as the snipping began. The barber acted according to his word to Davey, and was both swift and sly. Before his hands had even begun to ache (which was pretty quickly, as he sawed at Tom’s sturdy thatch), he drew his customer’s attention to a newspaper close by, and recommended an article therein— some report of a wedding day tragedy, I believe, which had lately occurred. No sooner did the barber see in the mirror that he was distracted, than he deftly snipped the string encircling Tom’s bullish neck. The key, resting outside the shirt collar, slipped free and dropped soundlessly beneath the gown into the thick mound of cut hair on the floor below. In that instant, the barber’s assistant skimmed near with his broom, swept the jetty heap clear, and brushed it out the back door. The clippings tumbled over the threshold into the yard, where Davey, in wait, picked out the key from their midst. Then he bolted like a sprinter down an alley, out onto the shopping street, and into a key cutter’s.
How he drummed his fingers, and kicked at the floor, while the copy was made! How precipitately he threw over a note in payment, without waiting for change! How tearingly he made his way up the street again— but how his heart jumped when, as he was making to dodge into the back alley once more, he glanced up to see Tom’s bulk emerging from the front entrance of the barber shop! The newly-cropped landlord had paused, turning back in, as the barber was no doubt attempting to detain him with some prattle or other. Davey was out of time— in a desperate gesture he flung the original key forward, and dived into the alley out of sight. The key span through the air and hit the barber’s doorstep; Tom heard the ping, turned, looked down and saw his key at his feet. In surprise he felt to his throat,
found the string broken, and congratulated himself on having found his key as soon as it was lost.
Davey was jubilant: he possessed a key to his beloved’s door, and his rival was ignorant of it. A fortnight later, as the master of the house set out once again for his haircut, where do you suppose Davey was, if not, with Artemisia’s hesitant consent, unlocking that too-long steadfast door, creeping inside, mounting the stairs and entering at last the prison-sanctuary of that same ravishing Artemisia?
He advanced with some caution into the first room he found, which was a sort of parlour. He called softly to announce his arrival, and in response heard a little, stifled gasp nearby. Then, timidly, the lady emerged from an interior door.
She was wearing a delicate white tunic, long skirt, and her hair in rich tresses down her back— and Davey was as stunned by the modesty and fragility of her attire as if she had come adorned with diamonds and wreathed in silks. The violence of his passion, and the impatience of his long perseverance, were stunned likewise, and paralysed: the gentleness and beauty of her presence charmed him into gentleness himself, so that, far from rushing into an embrace, he cautiously, humbly took her hand, kissed it, and fixed his eyes
The Sleight of Heart: a modern folk tale Page 3