The Gypsy in the Parlour Read online

  Thus to hear Charlotte speak so placidly of going to London naturally astounded us all. Fanny Davis recovered her wits first.

  “To London!” cried she. “You go to London? Dear Charlotte, but why?”

  “To have a word wi’ my son Charlie,” returned Charlotte calmly. Still calmly—how we had under-estimated her!—she surveyed the china-wreckage about the sink, and with a casual gesture intimated that Rachel might put all away. “Naturally save what be damaged,” said she, with a lightness to rival Fanny’s. “That throw out, bor; Sylvesters b’aint used to mended crockery.… Yes, b’aint it true,” said my Aunt Charlotte, “only thought brings wisdom how to act? So my thoughts be come to their issue: all ’ee tells of you and he do still seem so astounding, and so full of import moreover to all of we, and so unvouched for moreover by Charlie’s own self, I’ve a mind to seek he out in London, if but to set my own thoughts at rest.”

  “Charlotte!” breathed my Aunt Rachel. “Oh, Charlotte, b’aint ’ee the masterpiece!—and ’ee shall have my beaver muff.”

  2

  It took five days to get my Aunt Charlotte and Fanny off to London.—For Fanny went too. Upon this she was absolutely determined, her pretext being to take care of Charlotte on the journey; and though all strongly suspected the more interested motive of aiming to stiffen Charlie’s neck, there were reasons why no one attempted to stop her. Charlotte was by no means averse from company, even in her heyday a trip to London would have seemed a very venturesome act, and from a practical point of view Fanny was obviously best spared at the farm. (I spent all my eloquence begging Charlotte to take me—pressing my claims as native Londoner, seasoned train-catcher, friend of Clara Blow. To no avail. It was not a matter for children.) In addition my Aunts Grace and Rachel wanted to turn out the parlour, which they could do far best in Fanny’s absence. They were so in love with this project I believe they would actually have pressed Fanny’s going, had she needed it; oblivious of the situation’s irony. For quite possibly they would be readying the same chamber to receive again, after two years, a same bride, but different groom.…

  It took five days to get Charlotte and Fanny off, because there was so much to prepare.

  In the first place, they took their food.

  Neither I believe contemplated a stay of more than two or three nights at most. They still took food. All knew there was food to be had, in London; I myself, for example, somehow subsisted through each winter; still, they took provisions.

  We baked. Large pasties, in form borrowed from our Cornish neighbours, we acknowledged the most nourishing food portable. We therefore baked pasties. My Aunt Charlotte, I think with some idea of bearing gifts, ordained cakes also: the kitchen smelled like Christmas. There was also the matter of breakfast; so they took eggs, and a tea-caddy.

  There was, also, the matter of their costumes. My Aunt Charlotte’s wardrobe was perfectly adequate to her station, and Rachel lent her beaver muff; certain froggings of black braid were nonetheless transferred from a mantle of Grace’s to Charlotte’s Sunday-best; the whole presenting a rather military, hussar-like effect, on Charlotte’s tall figure undeniably impressive. All the flowers were cut from her best bonnet, steamed, and re-attached; the strings were treated similarly, also ironed. Her skirt and bodice were sponged with vinegar. Her under-linen required no attention at all, the store was so great and so immaculate we had but to pick out the best: two of each, and one dozen cambric handkerchieves, still bearing her maiden-cypher.…

  My aunts were wonderfully fair-minded women. Thoroughly as they now disliked and distrusted her, everything that could be done was done for Fanny also.—Or was this but one more manifestation of the Sylvester pride? Looking back, I think it may have been; I cannot recall anything they did for Fanny with their own hands, as they so eagerly laboured for Charlotte. What I do recall is the point of irony in Grace’s voice as she remarked—Fanny possessing no mantle at all, only a shawl—’twas pity Charlotte spent all on a ball-gown.… They allowed her, however, full turn at the ironing-board, and the use of a kettle to steam her black straw hat—only it was too far gone to respond—and the use of their work-baskets; which Fanny, with a small smile, accepted. She withdrew, during these days, a great deal of her pretensions: I thought biding her time. So far as millinery went, she could have none: it appeared that the contents of her carpet-bag had never been augmented by so much as a shift from the first-class dressmaker in Plymouth. Fanny possessed the dress she stood up in, and two limp dresses more, and a peacock silk ball-gown. Her underlinen all charitably agreed to ignore.

  My Aunt Charlotte, in all this bustle, was rejuvenated.

  I can see now that bustle, during the last two years, had been precisely what she lacked: quietude was more than unnatural, it was unwholesome to her. The bare effort of keeping her voice down, so as not to upset Fanny’s nerves, had worked seriously upon Charlotte’s: the necessity of avoiding all housework-noise made her natural avocation a burden almost unendurable. Like Clara Blow, Charlotte needed to bang about; but let bang could throw off two women’s work with one hand, and play ‘Chopsticks’ with me after supper. Undoubtedly, over the past two years, all female within-door work had been properly done; but unless they made their usual noise about it, unless their own particular racket accompanied their labours, all three of my aunts were left, at the day’s end, with too much unexpended energy … Now, cooking for the journey, dressmaking till all hours, re-trimming bonnets and sorting linen—vociferous again from one end of the house to the other, because if Fanny was on her feet why should she be treated as an invalid?—my aunts released a two-years’ accumulation of noise. To Charlotte, it was like water to a plant. In five days, she looked five years younger.

  Fanny Davis, with her small smile, observed and said nothing. I alone, I think, observed her. Our relations had cooled; she felt me under her thumb again, but so to speak on my promotion. I was no longer so unquestionedly her little friend: she suspected me still of a weakness for Clara Blow.—Which indeed I still harboured, to my unhappiness; for I alone—again—saw Fanny likelier than Charlotte to win the battle in London.

  Because I knew Fanny Davis so well. The scales of romantic attachment dropped from my eyes as completely as suddenly: children so hate duplicity. I couldn’t forgive her two-years’ foxing of me, her joining with me in surmise as to my Cousin Charles’ whereabouts—as she had done, more than once, probably with a letter from him in her pocket. I nonetheless admitted her cleverness—because she had foxed me. Upon perfectly dispassionate reflection, I rated her so much cleverer than my Cousin Charles, or my Aunt Charlotte, or Clara Blow, I didn’t see how one of them, or all combined, stood a chance against her.

  Moreover, if Charlotte looked rejuvenated, Fanny Davis looked pretty.

  Bustle, astonishingly enough, appeared to suit her also. Dipping between work-basket and kettle—all her movements informed by what I can only describe as irony—Fanny Davis also, quietly, bloomed. She found a way of arranging her short hair that was almost fashionable: an Alexandra fringe kissed her eyebrows. I thought of Clara’s galumphing coiffure, and hoped Charles insensible to elegance. Hoped, but unconvincedly; all male Sylvesters having a curious knack of seizing upon the currently admired.…

  There arose also, discussed against the smell of baking and hot irons, the question of where Fanny and Charlotte should lodge.

  Here Charlotte spoke strongly: all reputable Norfolk having from time immemorial put up at the Flower in Hand, by Bishopsgate Station. My Aunt Grace proposed the Bush, time immemorial used by Devon folk, hard by Paddington; so that one felt as ’twere the West Country backing one, by its regular service of powerful trains.—Most quietly, now, most insinuatingly, Fanny Davis put in her words; weren’t both these nice places, however nice, really no more nor less than public houses? For two females alone perhaps—unsuitable? “A small, quiet hotel,” suggested Fanny Davis, “if one can’t stay with one’s friends, or relations—wouldn’t some small, quiet hot
el be really more suitable?”

  I felt her eye on me as she spoke. She had already breathed to me a plan which I at once saw impossible, of staying with my parents. I said firmly that I knew of several small, quiet hotels. Fortunately no one took any notice of me; pressed, I could have named only Claridge’s.

  “Where Fanny bides I naturally mayn’t control,” said Charlotte more firmly still. “Where I bide will be the Flower in Hand.”

  Of course Fanny had no choice, because Charlotte would be paying. They went to the Flower in Hand.

  3

  I can no better describe the scope of these preparations than by saying that my uncles noticed them; with the consequence that Charlotte was forced into the first untruth I ever heard her tell.

  She said she was taking Fanny to London to see a doctor.

  It was either tell that, my aunts agreed amongst themselves, or tell all, and Fanny Davis acquiesced in the deception. She was I think no more eager than they to thrust enlightenment upon Stephen any sooner than necessary; for all her confidence in his understanding—which she never ceased to affirm—she could not fail to anticipate a painful moment. “Only that, dear, no more,” she assured me more than once. “That it must be painful, to both of us, goes without saying; but as soon as the first shock is over, Stephen will understand. Indeed, I sometimes think he has forgotten me already!—during this last year almost ceasing to visit my couch! Still, it will be better all the same to have Charles at my side—such a weak little person as I am! Don’t imagine for one moment, dear, I accuse my poor Stephen of fickleness: it’s just that I know he’ll regard it as a happy release …”

  Fanny therefore practised her powers only when the men were abroad; retreating, at their return, from the ironing-board in the kitchen to the parlour-couch; and only occasionally, to demonstrate the improvement on which. Charlotte based her great plan, making a sort of official appearance on the landing.—The first time my Uncle Stephen saw her there I happened to be present; and as he slowly, almost timidly mounted towards her—Fanny at last on her feet again, though at this moment a little drooping—I felt the pain already on us. My Uncle Stephen’s face was so set in lines of patience, he could hardly achieve a smile; but his patient voice lifted.

  “Be ’ee truly better, Fanny, my dear?” said he. “Be ’ee truly on the way to recovery?”

  Fanny Davis drooped a little more.

  “Who knows?” she murmured. “Oh, Stephen, who can tell? Pray, pray don’t build your hopes!”

  He reached her side and cautiously took her hand. Fanny allowed it to rest passive on his enormous palm.

  “I was never a chap hopeful beyond measure,” said he. “But if this London doctor be all Charlotte hears of he, and seeing ’ee already so strengthened of your own nature, give I leave to hope proportionately. Take every care upon the journey, my dear, and confide all troublesomeness to Charlotte.”

  I learnt, long afterwards, that he sought out Charlotte that same night and pressed upon her his personal fortune of twenty pounds as fee and journey-money. Charlotte took it. Money was short all round, just then, at the farm, and she had contemplated selling the pair to her tallboy. So she took Stephen’s savings because it was the practical thing to do.

  My other uncles, as usual, afforded us no clue to their sentiments. Tobias, upon the prospect of his wife’s absence for a period of several days, became silent absolutely. (“Charlotte’ll win his consent a-bed,” said my Aunt Grace—practically.) At least no obstacle was placed in our travellers’ path: the baking and dressmaking proceeded in full vigour, I drew several maps, the last shaded, indicating the locality of Brocket Place, five days passed and all was ready.

  My Uncle Stephen drove them to the station in our trap. My Aunts Grace and Rachel, and of course myself, trooped out to see Charlotte and Fanny climb up. I remember, crossing the bitterness of being left behind, a sensation of extreme pride in my Aunt Charlotte’s splendid, hussar-like appearance. The flowers in her bonnet garlanded her like a victorious warrior; stacked about with baskets of food, as it might have been with the spoils of war, she sat perfectly erect, perfectly composed, perfectly, (to all outward seeming), confident. Beside her Fanny Davis huddled in her shawl, all features extinguished under the limp, drooping brim of her black straw hat. I, and I think I only, caught her glance as the vehicle was set in motion: from under that limp black brim she shot me a look as full of triumph, as of malice.

  We who were left behind could now do no more than wait.

  CHAPTER XXII

  1

  While we waited, an odd thing happened. There sprung up at the farm a spirit of gaiety. All our official looks were sober, we never ceased, at least to begin with, to cast most anxious thoughts after Charlotte; thrusting up from which, as snowdrops from hardest winter-soil, gaiety nonetheless peered. My Aunts Grace and Rachel, passing each other in hall or passageway, exchanged involuntary smiles. Their new-old shouting matches grew gradually hilarious, they began to laugh at anything, at nothing, simply to catch up, as it were, on laughter. Rachel, with no need to bake at all, frivolously made dough to cut me a family of cat and kittens: Grace, from the breast-bone of a goose, made me a jumping frog. Also, of course, they turned out the parlour.

  I find it hard to discover a comparison for the zeal with which my aunts set about this work. (Or perhaps the mother of a child stolen by gypsies, her offspring regained, might so set about cleansing its body, burning its rags, clothing it afresh.) Every single portable object was carried out onto the landing, and thence, as space became congested, into Fanny’s bedroom. The vacant floor was then swept, then polished; the Turkey carpet, hung over a line in the court, beaten into insensibility. We washed each lustre separately. We rubbed the fire-irons till they shone like gold. Grace took the cabinet-doors off their hinges, the better to scour their panes. Every item of Rachel’s lustre-ware was washed in Castile-soap shavings and warm water, before being set back in place. I won delighted praise for my notion of re-stringing the harp, to make it look more seemly, with lengths of discarded fishing-twine. Fanny’s sofa was beaten, and polished. The needlework-chair was brushed with two sets of clean brushes—one hard, one soft. We didn’t move out the piano, but we polished that too; and I distinctly remember employing my tooth-powder on its keys.

  When all was finished, and set back in place, my aunts decided that the carpet should have been washed; so took it up again, and while they were about it gave the floor a second beeswaxing, for good measure, and out of sheer light-heartedness.

  Even amongst the men I recall, if not gaiety, at least a certain relaxation. Our mealtimes were no less silent, but an over-flow of cake and pastry loaded the table, and my uncles were cheered by nothing so much as food. They ate even more than usual, it may be their contentment had no other spring; but for whatever reason, whether from appetites ideally satisfied, or because they too felt Fanny’s absence a relief, the clouds about their heads perceptibly lifted.—The reason for Stephen’s lightening of spirit of course needed no conjecture; and shadowed my days.

  I felt he should be prepared.

  This notion, carried from my Aunt Grace scouring the china-cabinet to my Aunt Rachel washing lustre-ware, received small encouragement. Since all things must take their course, said Grace, and Rachel echoed her, no use to meet trouble halfway—a retreat from reality which shocked me deeply. I forgot that no Sylvester could do two things at once: they couldn’t think about Stephen, because their minds were fixed on their parlour. They said Charlotte had bade all keep still tongues. When I persisted that Charlotte had said nothing against Stephen’s being prepared, only against his being told, they didn’t, I think, even hear me. I therefore loitered down to the pig-styes, at the appropriate hour, on a private mission.

  My Uncle Stephen was still far easier to draw into conversation than Tobias: he noticed me almost at once, and to my opening remark, that I hoped Charlotte and Fanny got to London safely, replied after only a moment or two, most like they had.<
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  (I should say that I alone, during these few momentous days, watched for a letter. No Sylvester did. I had begged Charlotte to write, or even telegraph to us; she nodded the proposal aside as a childish fancy. Even shyer of a pen than most Sylvesters—shy as of some black art—she had neither written to Charlie to meet her, nor allowed me to do so on her behalf. I still hoped for a line from Fanny; which didn’t come.)

  “How did they look, Uncle Stephen?” I asked cautiously. “How did Aunt Charlotte and Fanny seem, when they got to the station?”

  He considered. I saw him withdraw his thoughts from me, from the present, and cast them back towards Exeter station. It naturally took a little time.

  “Charlotte,” said my Uncle Stephen at last, “commanded a chap to bear in their belongings just as ’twere her natural right.… As to Fanny, her appeared most amazingly upheld. Also hopeful,” added my Uncle Stephen, after a moment’s further research. “In fact, I b’aint able to remember she, my little dear; so uplifted, and so hopeful-seeming, since our first Plymouth meeting …”

  I was twelve, he nearing forty. I trembled for him. I said impetuously,

  “Uncle Stephen, if you don’t marry Fanny ever, will it wreck your life?”

  Like one of our huge farm-horses, like the very incarnation of all docile strength, my Uncle Stephen bent his big head.

  “B’aint us all as grass?” said he gravely. “As weeds to be cut down and put in the Lord’s oven? Do Fanny grow brave enough to wed, most gladly will I wed she; do her still decline, b’aint I in the happy situation to offer she for ever a kindly home? Where be the wreckage of my life in that?”

  He spoke poetry, he spoke like the Bible; I nonetheless felt slightly impatient with him. I wished him more, at that moment, the legendary black Sylvester male. I didn’t put my last question—what if Fanny, recovered, married anyone else?—I felt so sure he would have a fresh New Testament answer for me. Sylvesters weren’t New Testament, they were Old: Tobias, I was certain, would never so tamely have acquiesced in the rape of his bride. (The point wasn’t, I in justice repeat, put to Stephen directly; I still, I think accurately, perceived the trend of his mind. My Uncle Stephen was already one step removed from human failings, or feelings. He was Christian. From a worldly standpoint, from the farm’s standpoint, a smack of pagan self-regarding would have been more useful.) I said,