The Gypsy in the Parlour Read online

  “Uncle Stephen, if Fanny gets better, do you mind what she does at all?”

  “Not so be it suits she,” said my Uncle Stephen, gently.

  At least I had prepared him. If the hope that sprung up in my mind, actually during our conversation—the hope that Stephen might by some violent act of will prevent Fanny and Charles from marrying—if this hope was dashed as soon as formed, at least I had prepared him. It seemed unlikely that he would be forced to leave home. But when I said something of the sort to my Aunt Grace, she absently retorted—and only absence could have made her speak so, to me—that ’twould be a very different case altogether, did Stephen ever see Charles and Fanny bedded. I could only hope her mistaken.

  2

  Two days passed. Three days passed: my Aunt Rachel at least began to wonder had our travellers borne sufficient provision. I confident in the hospitality of Jackson’s Economical Saloon, grimly suggested the greater danger of their being run over by omnibuses—because they wouldn’t take me with them. Both my aunts regarded this as a joke.—Their laughter rang now continuously as of old, as in the days when I first knew them: each hour of this period carrying so great a respite. Their spirits soared. The parlour, reaching its former pitch of perfection, made their increasing joy. My uncles, stuffed with rich food, yawned contentedly. Lolled in a sunny doldrums, thoughtlessly the Sylvesters took their ease …

  I was almost lulled into ease myself when on the fourth day Miss Jones called.

  It wasn’t her usual day. She called as a regular thing, with Mrs. Brewer, because Mrs. Brewer had a pony-cart, on Tuesdays and Thursdays. It may be remembered that it was on a Thursday that I cured Fanny Davis: she and Charlotte left for London the Tuesday following, in which bustle we quite failed to notice the non-appearance of Jones and Brewer. They were sulking because Fanny put them off the Thursday before. (What they missed! For months all Frampton exclaimed it—what they missed!) By the next Thursday, their next regular calling-day, all Frampton knew Fanny and Charlotte set out for London: my Aunt Charlotte’s appearance on Exeter station having been relayed back to a Frampton-dwelling cousin by the porter she so majestically commanded there. The presence of Fanny, to him but incidental, naturally whetted local inquisitiveness extremely. In a moment of social honesty, Miss Jones and Mrs. Brewer refrained from calling on that day either. But by the Friday Miss Jones’ curiosity got the better of her; and feigning complete ignorance, and a cold in the head to excuse Thursday, on Friday up she drove, lifted by Mr. Simnel the chemist, Taunton-bound.

  I was pleased to hear my Aunt Grace dismiss her instantaneously. After in the fewest possible words supplying the least possible information, my Aunt Grace strongly advised Miss Jones to stay by the gate and get a lift back. The Frampton butcher, said my Aunt Grace, should drive past in no more than ten-twenty minutes; and if Miss Jones overlooked a carcase or two from Beer’s, there’d easily be room for she. Miss Jones was left at the gate, Grace returned withindoors, myself at her heels. Unluckily, Miss Jones had seen me; and calling out, wouldn’t Fanny’s little friend bear her company, put me in the helpless position of an elder-summoned child. I halted instinctively; my Aunt Grace, sailing on, left me defenseless. When an elder calls, a child’s feet instinctively obey. I turned back to the gate—with what I hoped was a rather cool, ironic look. I nonetheless turned back.

  I was at this time continually learning things I didn’t want to know.

  “So Fanny and Mrs. Toby are gone to London?” said Miss Jones sharply—fixing me with her sharp, blackberry eye. “That’s a new departure!—Dear me, have I made a pun?”

  I elaborately refrained from smiling. I said sulkily, yes, Fanny and my Aunt Charlotte were in Town. I said ‘Town,’ instead of ‘London’ to point my own metropolitan superiority. The hit was apparently lost: Miss Jones’ blackberry glance looked farther.

  “Not, I hope, to consult lawyers?” said she swiftly. “Such in-gratitude it would be to Mr. Pascoe! Have they, do you think?”

  This speech simply baffled me. I knew who Mr. Pascoe was, of course, he was the Frampton attorney my uncles threw out when he approached them after old Mr. Sylvester’s death: but why he should be owed gratitude, or what place he could have in our affairs at all, was beyond my comprehension. I maintained however a sulky silence. Miss Jones—and memory dimly recalls some rumour of some attachment, some projected Pascoe-Jones alliance—looked at me impatiently.

  “Don’t answer if you don’t want to,” said she. “Such a cross little thing as you are!—Though I may tell you I know all about Fanny and Mr. Charles too; and have done these eighteen months; and have a pretty shrewd idea why she and Mrs. Toby are gone to London. There I think Fanny quite right; it certainly isn’t a wedding for Frampton St. Paul’s! But I trust she doesn’t set off among the lawyers; and when you write to her, if you won’t give me her address, you might just remind our dear Fanny that in anything regarding custom, a local man is always best.”

  I should have done better to continue silent. I felt knowledge I didn’t want, knowledge I would be happier without, dangerously close. (Not of Miss Jones’ complicity; that I had guessed long since, ever since I realised her post-mistress between Fanny and Charles.) Unluckily, the desire to score off her was too strong to be resisted, and I said smartly,

  “Customs are something you go through when you come back from France. I don’t see that has anything to do with Fanny, or Aunt Charlotte.”

  Miss Jones laughed.—It was curious; she had picked up, almost exactly, Fanny Davis’ laugh. It didn’t ripple quite so sweetly, but it was a recognizable echo.

  “Indeed no, dear child,” rippled—a trifle shrilly—Miss Jones. “I speak of another kind of custom altogether. Entail-by-custom, in fact; which if Charles don’t establish he may find himself fixed here as hind for ever and a day! They won’t be able to sell, my dear, when Tobias pops off; and how will Fanny like that? No London-lawyer can possibly handle it; only a person like Mr. Pascoe, who’s seen Sylvesters inherit eldest after eldest just like peers of the realm, has any possible chance of establishing Charles’s claim. Write that to Fanny Davis, my dear, and I’m sure she’ll thank you!”

  I stood dumb. Enlightenment—light complex, broken and refracted, like the light struck from our parlour prisms—enlightenment, however broken, struck me. Half-a-dozen scraps of Fanny’s talk dropped together and made sense. I saw how Charles, pleading entail-by-custom, might hope to take the farm absolutely.—Only hope to: lawyer’s child that I was, used all my life to overhearing legal gossip, legal comment, I instantly and precociously perceived a case of entail-by-custom, dragging on perhaps for years, a very pretty thing for Mr. Pascoe. It might well ruin the farm, did the Sylvesters contest; it would be a very pretty thing for a local man.…

  What dismayed me far more than even this possibility was the revelation of such new treachery as no Sylvester yet dreamed of. Fanny and Charles designed to sell the land.—This thought formulated, I found my tongue.

  “But Charlie won’t sell!” I cried. “He won’t want to! I think you’d better tell Mr. Pascoe that!”

  Miss Jones laughed again.

  “And I believed you in Fanny’s confidence!” said she. “Why, it was all agreed between them upon their very engagement!—But never mind, my dear; we shall all meet yet at their Plymouth villa. Do I see my horrid chariot approach? Add, when you write, I shall expect in future a dog-cart at least!”

  Mr. Granville the butcher halted at her gesticulations; and took her up, and they drove off towards Frampton. I went back into the house, to my Aunt Grace, and said baldly,

  “Aunt Grace, suppose Fanny makes Charles sell the farm?”

  It was like asking, suppose the skies fall? My question made no more, and no less impression. My Aunt Grace took me by the shoulders, turned my face to the window, and called to Rachel to put hot bricks in my bed. “’Tis but a chill ’ee’ve taken,” said my Aunt Grace reassuringly. “Twelve hours’ sleep, and ’ee’ll be brave as ever!�
�� I reiterated a desperate, probably incoherent warning. “Us have allowed ’ee to fret beyond measure,” said Rachel anxiously. “Bide still, my lamb, till I bring ’ee a cup of hot milk.…” Between warmed sheets, fed hot milk, and bread and honey, I couldn’t but take a little comfort before I slept; but slept only to wake again, long before midnight struck.

  3

  Such wakings belong to childhood: because their character is universal—the strangeness of a room unlit, all other rooms of a house still bright, the sense of adult life still active, even the world without still about its business—I lay a moment or two back in London, where I waked so not uncommonly. Dim window-shape, dim shapes of furniture, told me where I was; recollection rushed in upon me and I remembered danger, and my Aunt Charlotte absent; and myself of all Sylvester kin the only one on guard.…

  From no sensible motive, I slipped from my bed to the window. I had forgotten—half-asleep—that it no longer looked out upon the crab-tree court. Only small nondescript roofings met my eye, between which no doppelganger started. But it was again a very hot, still night. The wood of the window-seat again warmed my knees, as the wood of the sill warmed my elbows. I was in the attitude for prayer; I prayed.

  I prayed no prayer that had been taught me. Church twice-on-Sunday furnished no suitable form. We had prayers, at school, each morning, rather beautifully spoken by our headmistress, from which I personally derived an emotion rather aesthetic than religious. I now petitioned my Maker crudely as a missionary’s first convert, baldly as an Archbishop in time of war. I prayed help us, defeat them; and in return I will be good.

  Then I went back to bed; and the next day Charlotte came home.

  CHAPTER XXIII

  1

  What passed in London, during those five days, I learned, essentially, from two sources: Clara Blow and my father. My Aunt Charlotte wasn’t uncommunicative by intent: she was simply incapable of detailed, coherent narrating, all we were to learn from Charlotte came out piecemeal, over a period, literally, of years. Moreover she couldn’t possibly, because she had no idea of it, give us any proper account of her own personal impact upon Jackson’s Economical Saloon.

  I wish I had seen my Aunt Charlotte in London. She must have cut through our streets like a ship in full sail. Even Clara Blow’s vocabulary could scarcely do her justice—as Clara was first to admit. “Chrissake!” said Clara—repeatedly. “If you’d been there when she sailed in! I mean, Charlie we’d sort of got used to, after all he’s a man, but when your Auntie sailed in, dear, my word, didn’t Jackson’s look small!”

  I prefer to go back a little further: to the descent of Fanny and my Aunt Charlotte upon the Flower in Hand. Here Charlotte, with her Norfolk connections, was immediately recognized as a guest not to be trifled with; and one very old waiter, who remembered her father, was more or less detailed to her service. My Aunt Charlotte looked him over, put a searching question or two, and handed over the egg-basket. All other fare, said she, they’d eat cold; but he might make them tea as required, the caddy to be returned at their departure. (She left the last half-dozen eggs as a vail, also the heel of a pasty.) I imagine Fanny impressed at once by this display of authority. I imagine her no less impressed, for all her Plymouth sophistication, when Charlotte, their baggage deposited and their subsistence assured, commanded a cab to bear them to Brocket Place.

  This was on the day of their arrival; they reached Jackson’s Economical Saloon at a rather good moment—tables set, all culinary preparations under way, the evening mob not yet in evidence. I suppose Jackson’s looked as well as ever it could; and Clara Blow had just done her hair.

  You could have knocked her down with a feather; chiefly, she subsequently assured me, from the shock of recognition.

  “’Cause I recognized her, naturally, straight off,” said Clara Blow. “I mean, there can’t be many of ’em, can there? I mean, that size! I’m fairly whopping myself,” said Clara Blow, “but I give you my word, dear, when your Auntie sailed in, I felt no bigger than a cat.—There was two little fellows eating saveloys, and Chrissake, they looked like mice.”

  So my Aunt Charlotte’s introduction of herself was superfluous—and of Fanny Davis scarcely less so. Clara took a dislike to Fanny at once. Addressing Charlotte, she said she was Miss Blow; and if Mrs. Sylvester wanted Charlie, he’d be down in two shakes. (There was never any mention, in all Clara’s highly detailed narrative, of her having given Charlie a shout. I presumed her not unwilling to see him knocked down by a feather too.) Charlotte and Fanny then accepted seats, and what immediately ensued was a contest in hospitality, country versus town.

  My Aunt Charlotte had in a basket cheese, cold chicken and fruit-cake. Clara Blow had Jackson’s. As Charlotte pressed chicken on Clara, Clara pressed sausage-rolls on Charlotte. It was a form of courtesy understood and appreciated by both, and smoothed over any slight awkwardness; indeed, food being to both a natural preoccupation, and with so many varieties of it at hand, they rapidly fell into a very enjoyable exchange. It became technical: Clara Blow detailed Jackson’s catering-system, with a side-glance at the bandit-like practices of London tradespeople, and Charlotte told how Sylvesters, but for salt and sugar, could live fatly off their own land. They interested each other; they stimulated each other. Ideas began to form—the idea, for example, of Jackson’s serving chicken on Sundays, the fowls to be sent direct from Devon, thus cutting out the middle-man. “I do believe it might catch on,” said Clara Blow, concentrating. “Let alone raising the tone, I do believe it might pay. I’ve a good mind to speak to Mr. Isaacs.…”

  I can well imagine how irritating this was to Fanny Davis. Too ladylike to eat, strung to a high pitch of emotional tension, she had to sit and listen to the best ways of packing poultry. Also, she was being ignored. I feel certain that my Aunt Charlotte was quite unsubtle in this, that she talked catering to Clara because catering interested her, not to irritate Fanny Davis; but the effect on Fanny must have been irritating nonetheless. As for Clara—“Here, let’s hear what you say!” shouted she to the saveloy-eaters. “How’d you fancy a proper Sunday dinner—chicken and all trimmings, ninepence a plate?”—and when they doubtfully shook their heads, found time, even as Charlie’s foot shook the stair, to shout back, “All right, then, a tanner; with bread.”

  Then Charlie came in.

  2

  You could have knocked him down with a feather. He admitted it himself, when Clara asked him afterwards. At the moment, however, he simply stood. They all stood, even the genuine customers, who rather hastily paid and left. (“As though they expected something to happen, dear,” reported Clara Blow. “Though what I’m sure I can’t say. There was nothing like a row.”)

  What did happen was that Charlotte walked up to her son, and took a good, close look at him, and kissed him, as she did so rarely, only when he left home or returned to it, once on the cheek. Neither of them spoke; but their bearing made on Clara at least a very strong impression. She said she half-expected to see them turn about and walk off together, as though there was no one else in the Saloon. And so I too think they might have done—but for Fanny Davis.

  At last seizing her cue, Fanny flung herself forward upon Charlie’s neck, and hung there like a bat, and burst into a flood of happy tears. Clara Blow instantly plucked her away and dropped her back upon a chair. There, Fanny’s happy tears turned to hysteria. Clara, no doubt swearing like a trooper, dashed a glassful of water over her, then from an ingrained habit of cleaning up rubbed her dry with a napkin. When all this was over Charlie and my Aunt Charlotte still hadn’t stirred.

  “Charlie bor,” said my Aunt Charlotte moderately, “it seems ’ee be a bone of contention.”

  She had to speak rather loudly, to top Fanny’s sobs; but as she turned enquiringly to Clara, these rapidly diminished.

  Fanny Davis too turned to Clara Blow; who was fortunately able to repeat to me her very words. I didn’t wonder she remembered them, for they were notable.

  “Mrs.
Sylvester, I wouldn’t take him as a gift,” said Clara Blow. “I am a person never wanted bread yet, nor ever will. I make no claim upon him whatsoever; if he has accepted of my hospitality, he’s earned, with a bit of pushing, his keep. Far be it from me to offend a lady I both esteem and admire, and I hope we may still have a mutual business connection in the future; but I wouldn’t take Charlie as a gift.”

  So spoke, or said she spoke, Clara Blow. (Doubtless she polished it up a bit afterwards. I have equally no doubt that she gave me a generally accurate outline.)

  “That be plain talk at least,” said my Aunt Charlotte approvingly, “and seems the field be left clear for Fanny Davis. (Who’m miraculously recovered,” threw in Charlotte superfluously.) “Well, Charlie bor?”

  What Charles would have answered was never known, Fanny Davis being now in full voice again.

  “Field left clear, indeed!” cried she. “Oh, what hypocrites am I fallen among! Are not Charles and I engaged? Haven’t we been engaged these two years? Haven’t we but waited till I regained strength, to marry? Charles, my love, tell your mother the truth! Admit your debts, which we have come to pay! Let Miss Blow list every last item—since for all her fine talk don’t we know how she holds you? For heaven’s sake, my love, speak!”