The Gypsy in the Parlour Read online

  I don’t know if Clara generously polished up this speech too, I can say only that it sounds exactly like Fanny Davis. And I think Charles really must have spoken at last. Almost incredibly, my Cousin Charles hadn’t yet uttered a single word; but I think he must have spoken then—only Taffy Griffiths saved him.

  3

  “Which was really a riot, dear,” said Clara Blow. “Not that I refer to any roughness—far from it! I mean just the way your Auntie handled matters. Six-to-seven-to-eight, Jackson’s commonly quiet as a graveyard, chaps never as a rule turning up much before nine; only it just so happened—as it would so happen—Taffy Griffiths brought some friends in for a sausage-and-mash before the fight. I think it was the Welterweight. And being mostly Welsh, dear, they do incline to sing a bit; which I must say, their voices being almost professional, I’ve always looked on it as rather an attraction. It was the words, dear,” said Clara frankly, “upset your Auntie. So she told them to clear out.”

  “Did they?” asked I, enthralled.

  “That’s the funny part,” said Clara Blow. “They did. Without Charlie raising a finger, what’s more. Of course they saw him ready, but really he wasn’t needed. Your Auntie just gave ’em a proper tongue-lashing, and out they skedaddled—five bob lost to the till, but I still say well worth it …”

  And when Taffy Griffiths and his friends had vanished, so had my Cousin Charles. With them, in fact. Under cover of the riot, mingling with Taffy’s friends, my Cousin Charles simply walked out.

  “Clara!” I protested. “Oh, Clara, how could he?”

  “Well, dear, he never did like an upset,” said Clara tolerantly. “That’s what made him such a splendid chucker-out.”

  So my Cousin Charles walked quietly out; and the three women left behind, their bone of contention no less than the arbiter of their fates withdrawn, faced something of an anticlimax. (The shepherd Paris on Mount Ida might equally have discountenanced three goddesses.) Fanny Davis was probably quite right to grow hysterical again, she could have done nothing more socially useful. By common consent the whole debate was postponed; and Clara Blow went out and found another cab, and in it my Aunt Charlotte and Fanny Davis returned to the Flower in Hand.

  I have omitted the fact that they there shared a room. Economy, prudence, convention—every possible consideration made it inevitable. But I have often wondered what sort of a night they spent, side by side in the same double bed.

  CHAPTER XXIV

  1

  My Aunt Charlotte at least slept sufficiently well to have energy, next day, for quite extensive sight-seeing.

  She visited the Tower of London, Madame Tussaud’s Waxworks, St. Paul’s Cathedral and Westminster Abbey; and if such a programme in the circumstances smacks of frivolity, I can but repeat her subsequent explanation to my Aunts Grace and Rachel: she had never visited London before, and in all probability never would again. My Aunts Grace and Rachel accepted this unhesitatingly, and only marvelled how Charlotte got about. (She got about in omnibuses. She found their conductors very civil. She found the police very civil also. In fact, my Aunt Charlotte found all London very civil to her. I see the trail of staggered Cockneys in her wake. She was such a great, good-humoured, handsome Whopper.) Moreover, she had already complete faith in Clara Blow’s ability to produce Charlie when and as required; and so after a substantial breakfast off her own eggs and bacon set out to see the sights.

  Fanny Davis, on the other hand, relapsing into fragility, took breakfast in bed, and didn’t set off on her own account until considerably later. Thus their paths for the major part of Wednesday diverged; and in any case I very much doubt whether Charlotte would have followed Fanny Davis’. My Aunt Charlotte’s big nature included several delicacies: I was domiciled at the farm summer after summer, but she never felt this gave her a claim to my parents’ London hospitality, because I was paid for at some infinitesimal sum per week. Fanny Davis’ object, that Wednesday, was to visit my father and cadge free legal advice.

  2

  Of this episode I heard far more than I wished as soon as I got home.

  “If you have ever insinuated,” said my father, “to any of your mother’s down-at-heel Devonshire connections, that I am open to a little pettifogging rural business—such as might arise, for example, over a parcel of disputed hen-coops, or some bucolic breach-of-promise—I shall be greatly obliged if you will disillusion them.”

  It was then I knew Fanny Davis had visited him. He couldn’t possibly so refer to my Aunt Charlotte—and how strongly I wished it had been she, not Fanny, who bearded him! I felt even my father must have recognized Charlotte’s quality. I was too much afraid of him to point out that Fanny Davis wasn’t a Sylvester at all. I simply stammered I was sorry, I hadn’t insinuated anything …

  My father had nonetheless been subjected to persecution. I felt at the time, as I feel now, his language exaggerated. Fanny Davis merely caught him at lunch. By a piece of luck, she found him lunching at home. (He in fact quite often came home to lunch while my mother was away, to enjoy the emptiness of the house. There could have been no other reason, since all our cooks thought he did it to keep them up to the mark, and in revenge served specially unappetising food.) Nor did Fanny actually interrupt his repast; our experienced parlourmaid Toptree kept her waiting in the hall till he had finished, and announced her only with the coffee. (This again an act of revenge: one glance must have identified Fanny Davis, to any experienced eye, as a person one wasn’t at home to. Top-tree hadn’t quite the audacity to interrupt the master’s lunch, so compromised on annoying him at his coffee. Parlourmaids also resent being kept up to the mark.) To my father at his coffee, and at his first cigar of the day, Fanny Davis therefore entered; and instantly made on him the worst possible impression.

  “I admit,” said my father, with elaborate irony, “to a certain astonishment. Some moon-calf charged with poaching, even with manslaughter: some collapsed hayrick of a rustic matron, anxious for her young at the Assizes: either well-worn character, however hopelessly beyond my aid, would have surprised me less. Indeed, would have offended me less. A milliner involved in breach-of-promise I found offensive absolutely …”

  How did he guess Fanny Davis a milliner? I didn’t like to ask. And as I didn’t think she’d told, I could only imagine Fanny Davis’ millinerishness undisguisable as ineradicable. Leaving the point aside, I nervously enquired what my father had said.

  “I instructed her, naturally, to go away,” said he, “and take advice of some local man.”

  So my father and Miss Jones agreed. Miss Jones also was a milliner; I didn’t think my father would be quite pleased to know of this second opinion, so to speak, so thoroughly in agreement with his own. At the time—for this particular conversation took place in the autumn, all the events of the summer behind me—I was chiefly concerned to re-establish Sylvester repute. It wasn’t easy. Toptree, who listened throughout at the dining-room door, reported Fanny Davis’ recital of her wrongs enough to blacken every Sylvester living. (“Crimes you usually find only in the Bible,” said Toptree, with relish. “Only to think, miss, of a young lady among such folk! I wonder your Ma don’t shudder.”) My father undoubtedly took much the same view. (Allying himself, however unconsciously, now with a parlourmaid. No one ever pointed this sort of thing out to him, which was a pity. His opinion of himself, because never challenged, in time led him to such impatience with the slightest opposition that we couldn’t even have people to dinner.) Fortunately my mother proved more broad-minded: she hadn’t encountered Fanny Davis personally, and my own healthy looks afforded so good an excuse for not taking me to Bournemouth with the boys, she would never hear an anti-Sylvester word. All county families, said she, had their hangers-on: my father had acted with exactly his usual good judgment in warning off one of the Sylvesters’: so there was no reason in the world for my ceasing to frequent them. “I don’t suppose the child knows a thing about it—whatever the imbroglio may be,” said my mother; in which o
pinion, as may be imagined, I loyally backed her. In time, the row subsided.

  The fact relevant to Fanny Davis’ and my Aunt Charlotte’s London expedition was that Fanny failed to enlist my father’s aid.

  She thus wasted the major part of Wednesday altogether. (Charlotte at least saw the sights.) They rejoined forces, if such a term may stand, late that afternoon: when Charlotte coming in to rest her feet found Fanny once more prone upon the double bed. After a short breathing-space Charlotte again ordered a cab capable of penetrating to Brocket Place.

  “Though if ’ee don’t wish to accompany I,” said she considerately, “I’ll bear Charlie your kind regards.”

  Of course Fanny Davis accompanied her.

  3

  My Cousin Charles was upstairs, sleeping it off.

  Clara Blow told Charlotte this at once. Where he’d been, night before, she couldn’t say, except with Taffy Griffiths—and undoubtedly up to no good, because he hadn’t come back till after noon. “And then sick as a dog, dear,” said Clara Blow, with less than her usual tolerance. “I don’t say he can’t take it, Mrs. Sylvester, no more’n I’d say a man ain’t ’titled, time to time, to his skinful. Only Charlie I must say can take it …” “Devon cider be a powerful brew,” said my Aunt Charlotte, perhaps a touch complacently. “London gin’s a sight worse,” retorted Clara, suddenly sharp. “Which Charlie ought to be got off. I must say this is the first time I’ve ever seen signs on him; and I must say I don’t like it.”

  From a person who wouldn’t take Charlie as a gift, this was disinterested. Charlotte looked at her kindly; and after remarking there was plenty of time to let he slumber an hour or two more, tactfully asked to see the kitchen. Clara flounced ahead, with some difficulty my Aunt Charlotte was manoeuvred down a ladder-like stair into Jackson’s subterranean base of operations. (What she saw there was never described. But recalling subsequent, reiterated exclamations of thankfulness that they’d borne their own provision, I suspect every horror save cockroaches. I don’t think there could have been cockroaches, because the exterminator was in that Spring.) Fanny Davis, who refused to accompany them, remained seated above in the Saloon.

  There they left her, and there she stayed. She didn’t take the bolder step of going up to Charlie. Delicacy forbade. Victoria was on the throne, and Fanny Davis nothing if not refined. She was greatly ambitious, and quite ruthless, she would have sold up the Sylvester farm, thrust, ruthlessly, all Sylvesters into whatever almshouse could accommodate them: delicacy nonetheless forbade her to risk encountering Charlie unbreeched. So she sat and waited; and doubtless fretted, and felt angry as I did at my Aunt Charlotte’s lavish attitude to time. Fanny Davis, to be sure, fretted only an hour or so, whereas I, two summers before, fretted months; but hers was the more painful suspense.

  When Clara and my Aunt Charlotte returned, they made a light supper. After what Charlotte must have seen below, I find her appetite for sausage-rolls, (as reported to me by Clara), little short of heroic. Heroic in courtesy, she ate five. Clara, equally courteous, but more easily, ate Charlotte’s cold chicken; and Fanny Davis ate nothing. If all ears pricked equally at any sound from above—and Clara told me she once quite jumped, but it was only Charlie falling off the bed—at least Clara and Charlotte had chat to cover their preoccupation.—Quite possibly my Aunt Charlotte wasn’t preoccupied at all; she never could think of two things at once, she knew Charlie safe to hand upstairs, and the notion of supplying Jackson’s with poultry was one to appeal to her most strongly. She had an excellent business-sense, unfortunately frustrated by her epoch; she could have run the farm, but for her sex, as well as any Sylvester male. The possibility of purveying Jackson’s opened as it were a door; to-day I see her supplying half London’s hotels …

  So the hour, the hours passed insensibly: a scattering of early customers called Clara to duty, my Aunt Charlotte noted thoughtfully what each one ate, and what each one paid. The money thrown about astonished her—a penny for a saveloy, a halfpenny for pease-pudding; all mounting up to shillings. (I may say that she kept an eye on Jackson’s thenceforward. My Aunt Charlotte was a pioneer of the country-to-London catering trade.) Nor was she in the least put out by the raffish aspect of most of Jackson’s customers. She expected raffishness, in London; and since even the ungodly had to eat, why shouldn’t the righteous profit? Moreover—and this sentiment, uttered some months later, I particularly cherish—why shouldn’t even the ungodly, if they paid, purchase wholesome food? “Did our Lord, when Him so miraculously multiplied loaves and fishes,” enquired Charlotte pertinently, “enquire which mouths belonged to church-goers? Wherefore no boiling-fowl goes forth as a roaster, even into the jaws of London chaps …”

  I glance too far ahead. We are still in Jackson’s Economical Saloon, Wednesday evening, waiting for Charlie to sleep it off.

  He appeared about nine o’clock: washed, dressed, in the pink of condition, and obviously prepared with some arrangement of words. He had something in his mind to utter; and surveying the three women ranged before him, but with an eye seeking Clara Blow, immediately spoke.

  “Do Taffy Griffiths look in ere midnight,” said my Cousin Charles, “him’ll require hot food for eight.”

  To both Clara Blow and my Aunt Charlotte these words were absolutely welcome. Each felt towards Charles identically. Each in her way desired nothing so much as to see him accept responsibility. He was now doing so, as regarded Jackson’s Economical Saloon; and though but upon a trifle, his words, after the long winter of his indifference, were like snowdrops, presaging a better season. Clara Blow’s swift rejoinder, up till one-two-three kitchen’s ready for ’em, was a blackbird’s shout.…

  Then it was—upon this springtide, and possibly to find Charlie’s London spring-tide run against her—that my Aunt Charlotte spoke out.

  “Charlie bor,” said she, “to see ’ee completely master of all business here be most peculiarly gratifying. And do ’ee choose to bide in London, where Miss Blow reports ’ee already so looked up to, no word of mine shall call ’ee home. But do ’ee aim to return, I’ll not deny ’twill rejoice all hearts; seeing the farm also in sad need of management. And do ’ee return wedded to Fanny Davis, again no word shall be spoke. All us asks be, how do ’ee decide?”

  She took a risk, and she must have known it, in putting the alternative so squarely to him. It would have been so easy for my Cousin Charles, that easy-going male, to loll a little longer on Clara Blow’s, and Jackson’s, ample bosom. He took by nature the line of least resistance. My Aunt Charlotte put it to him squarely—with a rider.

  “Though this I must state also,” said she, “that do ’ee choose to remain from home, I b’aint able to promise ’ee any ’countable inheritance. Your father Tobias ain’t able, bor; and what’s masterless land but common? So why not wed wi’ Fanny Davis, and return?”

  I cannot imagine, even now, how she guessed Fanny Davis keeping him away. Obviously her whole gamble was based on the assumption; but to every other view Fanny was drawing him back. Charlotte couldn’t tell herself; she simply guessed it. And having guessed, how bold was her approach! She wanted Charles home, without Fanny; backed her guess, and by opening her arms to both, forced Charles at last to frankness, and the point.—That Fanny Davis was instantly on his neck probably rather helped than hindered.

  “Yes, Charles, yes!” cried Fanny wildly. “Oh, what a relief, what a blessing, to find your mother take our part! Hasn’t it been but my weakness kept you from me?—Now what shall prevent our marriage, and your return?”

  So at last Charlie spoke to the point. He had to. He saw his mother pressing on his marriage to Fanny Davis, with what consequences he alone knew; he saw Clara determined to cast him off for ever; his nostrils smelled Devon soil, he saw the weeds over-grow his own rightful Sylvester land. So he spoke. He said baldly,

  “I be more anxious to return than words can tell. Two years since I saw my Dad not able. I be more anxious to return than all the world. But not
do it mean wedding Fanny.”

  The ensuing confusion of sound must have been immense. “Charles, Charles, my love!” shrieked Fanny Davis. “Chris-sake, what the, hell’s he at now?” shouted Clara Blow. “Bor, think what ’ee say!” adjured my Aunt Charlotte. “Why shouldn’t ’ee wed the poor toad?”

  I imagine the straggle of early patrons—for this whole interesting scene was not unwitnessed: Clara Blow, from her trade, and all Sylvesters by nature, had an aristocratic indifference to publicity—I imagine Jackson’s few early patrons awaiting Charlie’s reply almost as eagerly as his interlocutors.

  “Ask she,” said my Cousin Charles, “what Plymouth-town have to offer a chap like I.”

  So broke upon my Aunt Charlotte what I already knew: Fanny Davis’ intent to see the farm abandoned. Fanny instantly, naturally denied it; my Cousin Charles, with equal stubbornness, persisted in full confession. He wanted to get all out and done with; and as late as the following summer was still relieving his mind to myself.

  4

  “’Twas all her doing,” said my Cousin Charles, “as I don’t now mind telling’ee.…”

  When I heard my Cousin Charles’ tale, it surprised me even more than had Fanny’s. For love at first sight, for the coup de foudre, how many novelettes had not prepared me? Not one of them had prepared me for Charles’ peculiarly unromantic rôle of hero in spite of himself.

  As a lover, he was modest, opportunist, easy-going and unconvinced.

  He never attempted to deny making love to Fanny Davis. What astounded me was to hear him say he thought ’twould be respectful. “Respectful?” I repeated incredulously. “Seeing she bound to my Uncle Stephen,” explained Charles. “I thought to pleasure ’em both by my attentions.…” He was one of the stupidest men, my Cousin Charles, I have ever met. But he was also honest. “I’ll not deny,” he admitted, “that Fanny in her fine blue gown made it easy to I. I’d seen no such fashionable females in Australia. And her have a trick of looking beneath her eyelids, ’ee can call naught but enticing … Her enticed I,” said my Cousin Charles frankly.