The Gypsy in the Parlour Read online

  She was expecting her first child in two months. She must have looked, as she faced her menfolk, a very Ceres, a very Venus Genetrix indeed. They knew she hadn’t so far ailed a day; they also recognized the validity of her claim. Not a word was said, but all eyes turned on Matthew; seniority has duties as well as rights. To do him justice, he went through his courting like a man. The next three Sundays in succession saw him driving doggedly over beyond Frampton in best coat, clean shirt, brushed hat; he heard the banns called without flinching, and in due course was got to church on time. The Sylvester defences thus doubly breached, my Uncle Luke, when Charlotte a year later produced my future Aunt Rachel, went to the slaughter like a lamb.

  Rachel’s chief (and complementary) talent was for dairy-work. She also was exceedingly handsome, built on the same lavish scale as her sisters-in-law, fair, kind, and gentle in her ways; so my Uncle Luke had no bad bargain.

  I am told that for the next few years one couldn’t set foot in the farm without treading an infant. They were all—as though the tamed Sylvester men in this reasserted themselves—males. Loudly as my aunts complained, religiously as they followed every local rite of girl-producing birth-magic, boy after boy swarmed from his cradle. (At one time there were no less than three a-rock together: in due course no fewer than seven urchins made a bedlam of the farmyard.) I think now this was partly the reason why I myself was made so welcome. I should have been made welcome in any case, from sheer goodness of heart, because I looked so small and sickly; but I was also a girl-child, such as those three fecund women had never been able to produce.… Moreover, by the time I appeared not even a son was left to them; it being a characteristic of the Sylvester male that he needed plenty of room. The farm couldn’t hold them, and their Dads—no Sylvester minced words—seeming so solid as rocks, the young ones scattered—as far off as Canada and Australia, there to set up, on opposite sides of the globe, new robber-households of their own. Thus I was doubly welcome; and though I was ever the young lady, the bird of passage, my aunts loved me as a last child of the house. What their love meant to me is something I cannot yet assess.

  I had never before encountered love. In London, at home, I was being well brought up, and well educated; but I wasn’t being loved. Ours was a cold household, in London; though my mother loved both my brothers, so well that in due course both their wives left them. My father I think loved no one. What I found at the farm was something so new, so excellent, that my summers there now appear to me like summers in a golden age. Yet how would I have described, at the time, that honey-gold warmth of love?—I should have said merely that my aunts were very kind to me, and got on together very well.

  That of course is the clue. They got on together, the three big women, so famously. They liked each other. All through the day their loud cheerful talk ran in one long triple conversation, shouted, if necessary, between room and room, so that no one missed anything. Charlotte always and naturally held rather the upper hand. She was the first of the Sylvester women. It was she who drove out the donkeys. Proper marriage-feasts, proper marriage-chambers, welcomed first Grace, then Rachel: if they didn’t realise, she soon enough told them what barbarity they’d been spared. But she never played the despot; it was essentially as equals that they presented a solid front to their five wild men, it was essentially as equals that they now enjoyed such pride in their house and their husbands and their parlour.—Rachel contributed the lustre-ware: Grace, the furniture for the hearth. When they’d burnished the place for Sunday they used to stand so proud as three peacocks. And when, once a month, they’d stood prouder still, nudging their three big husbands into the Sylvester pew—“Only us could have tamed ’em!” triumphed my Aunt Charlotte. “Us three Sylvester women!”

  5

  She didn’t bother to marry Stephen. There seemed no point in it. Stephen was left in peace, at thirty-five still the solitary bachelor, the perpetual youngest brother—and my favourite uncle.

  This was inevitable, since none of the others took the least notice of me. I think they regarded me much as they would have regarded a pet lamb, brought in by the women and to be brought up by them. I regarded them with awe: to me they were like forces of nature—huge, silent, unarguable. Certainly I shouldn’t have described them as particularly tame; on the other hand, they had stopped being wild as hawks. (Their father, eighty-odd, was like a little old falcon: white with age, blinking on his perch by the fire.) They had come to partake, under their wives’ influence and with their own maturity, more of the nature of tors, or rocks. I suppose my Uncle Tobias, when I first knew him, wasn’t much over fifty; to me he was old as the hills. My Uncle Stephen, on the other hand, partly because he wasn’t married, partly because he hadn’t a beard, I regarded almost as a contemporary. But undoubtedly I loved him best for the one simple reason, that he noticed me.

  He used sometimes to set me to ride home on a haywain. He quite often used to take me to see birds’-nests. Once he even took me fishing—when I disgraced myself by falling in, and he plunged after, and we returned in equal disgrace to the scoldings of Aunt Charlotte. She instantly flung me into a boiling-hot bath before the kitchen-fire, then hurled me into bed with a cup of black-currant tea. I do not imagine she personally soused my Uncle Stephen also, but when I asked him, next day, whether he’d been made to drink the tea, he admitted that he had.

  As he was the youngest of the brothers, so he was the smallest: by Sylvester standards, small absolutely. His black thatch of hair came to Tobias’ shoulder, Matthew’s chin, Luke’s ear; that they were all exceptionally tall, giants even in a countryside of giants, did not make Stephen’s lack of stature, among his kindred, any less noticeable. He was the lightweight Sylvester—lanky as his brothers were ponderous, sallow rather than swarthy, narrower as to skull and cheekbone, less voluntary as to mouth and eye. I secretly considered his appearance interesting; my aunts openly lamented he’d never got his full growth. They loved him and laughed at him and spoiled him; and when he at last, all on his own, found himself a wife, thought it the greatest joke in the world.

  They were no more jealous or disturbed than three big suns. When the letter came from Plymouth, whither Stephen had been sent after guano, my aunts laughed all morning. However’d he managed it, they demanded, with no woman to push him forward? “The cunning toad!” cried my Aunt Charlotte, wiping tears of laughter from her eyes. “If he b’aint the boldest Sylvester yet!”

  The preparations went forward on a gale of hilarity. My aunts cooked every viand they could lay hands on, turned out the parlour, changed round all the furniture in a bedroom, and with half an hour to spare stood waiting as I have described them—hot, gorgeous and jocund—to welcome Stephen’s bride.

  It is 1870; I am eleven years old.

  CHAPTER II

  1

  He entered first; then she, stepping close behind him: small, very slender, rather limply dressed in black or grey, on her head a small black straw hat. There was an air of the town about her; and of something else which I, (staring out from behind my aunts), couldn’t immediately define. For an instant no one moved: the air was suddenly heavy, as though all the great house, all the broad fields beyond, pressed in upon us with a shared expectancy. From under the brim of her hat Miss Davis’ swift, bright glance flickered once over the room, then dropped; my Uncle Stephen’s hand never left her shoulder.—The next moment the spell was broken, my Aunt Charlotte had swooped forward—kissed the bride, kissed Stephen, passed them back to be re-kissed by Grace and Rachel, dragged me up too—but I kissed only Stephen—and the right uproar of welcome exploded like a feu de joie. I have said the parlour was like a hot-house. I was so hot myself, in my best alpaca, that I came close to being sick. I couldn’t distinguish a word that was said, it was all one loud babel of greeting, questions, congratulation. Then Miss Davis was bustled away, my Uncle Stephen went to seek his brothers, and I was left alone.

  I didn’t know what to do with myself. So I sat down at the piano and
played ‘Chopsticks.’

  2

  It was by now a characteristic of the Sylvester men that one could never tell what they were thinking. Such thoughts as they wished, or needed, to communicate, they put into words, otherwise they effortlessly preserved complete inscrutability. This trait was peculiarly apparent that night at supper, which was the first occasion of their meeting with Stephen’s betrothed; they naturally hadn’t come in, from harvesting, to see someone they would see daily for the rest of their lives. My Uncle Stephen presented her with due formality; in due order, starting with old Mr. Sylvester, the Sylvester men pronounced exactly as many words as were necessary for her due salutation; but whether Stephen’s choice was any more than accepted—whether it was approved, or not approved—remained unknown. A Sylvester male was always rather silent at table, the better the fare, the less he spoke; and since my aunts had spread what was practically a marriage-feast, any apparent glumness meant nothing. But Stephen too relapsed into his home-manners, and the talk was left all to the women.

  My three aunts talked splendidly.

  I choose the word with intent. As a rule their continual loud conversation flowed in a spate of broad Devonian, varied by an occasional touch of Norfolk from Charlotte; but they had all received quite grand educations in their time, my Aunt Grace had even been to boarding-school, and when they chose they could out-niminy any lady in the shire. They did so now. With elegance and adjectives, with pronouns and prepositions each in the right place, they discoursed fashion, society and the arts. My Aunt Rachel had once witnessed, in Exeter, a performance of Hamlet; my Aunt Charlotte, in youth, had taken drawing-lessons with a pupil of Mr. Crome of Norwich; while my Aunt Grace shone particularly in the account of a charity-bazaar opened by the Duchess of Somerset.

  I listened with awe. I peered eagerly at Miss Davis to see her bowled over. (Her first name was Myfanwy, which in Stephen’s letter my aunts had hardly been able to make out; so they called her Fanny.) I couldn’t see much of her, for she was placed directly the other side of my Uncle Matthew, it was like peering round a rock at a wren; but she seemed to be sitting quite composedly, attentive, but not dumbfounded … When she spoke it was always to agree: she too admired the works of Shakespeare; she too admired the landscapes of Mr. Crome; and if she had never seen the Duchess of Somerset, longed above all things to do so.…

  She had a peculiarly sweet voice. I noticed it at once. It was low, small, (as one calls a singing-voice small), made musical by a faint Welsh lilt. It was a wooing voice. Yet when she spoke to me—peering in her turn round my Uncle Matthew to ask how old I was—I answered rather surlily. The voices I was used to, at the farm, were the big carrying voices of my Aunts Grace and Rachel and Charlotte; I was used to being, however lovingly, bawled at. This newcomer’s sweetness struck me as something alien; and so I answered sulkily.

  One naturally hadn’t the least idea what the Sylvester men made of this cultured flow. If they were proud of their womenfolk they didn’t show it, and if they were bored or bothered they didn’t show that either. They simply and Homerically ate. I couldn’t see my Uncle Stephen at all, he was on Miss Davis’ farther side; whatever looks or words of affection they might have been exchanging, I couldn’t see, or hear, either.

  Immediately after the meal I was sent to bed. The consequences were as one would expect: I had consumed—my uncles, however otherwise oblivious of me, never neglected to heap my plate—enough rich and varied food to upset an alderman. I had wolfed raised-pie and custard-pie, spiced ham and cheese-cakes. I awoke, at what seemed to me long after midnight, still so oppressed by goblin-dreams that I slipped out of my bed and crept for reassurance to the never-failing succour of my Aunt Charlotte’s strong hand.

  (In the upbringing of children all that matters is love. My Aunt Charlotte encouraged me to over-eat, sent me over-early to bed, and when nightmares chased me out of it, smacked me. Each stage of this deplorable sequence was so informed by love that I never failed to return to peaceful sleep. Her big, offhand smack, like the cuff of an amiable lioness, carried more love with it than most kisses I have known since.)

  As soon as I reached the landing, my mistake was apparent; even eleven hadn’t struck. From below came the rumbling voices of my uncles—their tongues at last released from ceremony. I knew then that I had stumbled on the best time of all; the women had just come upstairs, I should find my Aunt Charlotte alone; she wouldn’t have to lean out and just smack me cursorily, over my Uncle Tobias’ huge bulk. She might even, after smacking me, let me stay and watch while she unplaited and brushed her hair. I padded on, already assuaged. But of the two doors I had first to pass, one stood ajar; curiosity impelled me to pause, and ferret a step forward, and look in; and at once the new, sweet voice addressed me.

  “Is that the little girl? Come in, dear.”

  I hesitated. But I had no reason to draw back, I was inquisitive, and my new aunt’s voice was peculiarly alluring. (So soon I forgot that it was alien.) I went in. The room that had been given her wasn’t small, none of the rooms were small, but it was comparatively bare; an enormous amount of space stretched in all directions round the shabby carpetbag half-emptied in the middle of the floor. Shyness made me fix my eyes on it: it had a pattern of big purplish roses, faded almost to the buff of the ground.

  “Come closer, dear,” said Fanny Davis.

  I approached. The dressing-table before which she sat was candle-lit; by their double flames we contemplated each other through the mirror. Without her hat, without the net she had worn at supper, my new aunt looked much younger. Her short dark hair, which she was brushing, stood out in a smoky bush, very soft and fine, yet peculiarly alive—as though it would crackle under the brush as mine did sometimes in a thunderstorm. But it wasn’t what I have been brought up to consider pretty hair. It couldn’t compare with my Aunt Charlotte’s. The face it haloed was small and pale; the eyes looking back at me through the glass, grey, with short dark lashes, were to me unbeautiful. Altogether I marvelled how my Uncle Stephen, used to the splendid Sylvester women, could have fallen in love with such a thin, pale, dusky little gypsy.

  Miss Davis smiled, and from the littered dresser picked out a small paper bag.

  “Do you like sweets, little girl?”

  This put me in something of a quandary. I did like sweets, and though I couldn’t have eaten one exactly then, might have saved it till morning; but all my real aunts set their faces against shop-made confectionery. (They said it was kept under the shop-keepers’ beds. Now and again, when they had time, they made me toffee; or sometimes I was allowed to make it for myself, from sugar and our own butter.) The sweets in the proffered bag were fat satiny cushions, suspiciously striped, and moreover the bag itself was imperfectly clean. I felt quite certain that my Aunt Grace would immediately have put all behind the fire. I was also afraid of catching scarlet fever. (Scarlet fever germs notoriously pullulating beneath shop-keepers’ beds.) However, I had been specially instructed to be polite; so I took one, with an appropriate mumble.

  “If you’re my little friend, you shall have sweets every day,” promised Miss Davis. “Sit down, dear, on the bed, and talk to me.”

  I sat, but found I had nothing to say. I was quite glad when she began to ask me questions.

  “I suppose I must be causing a great flutter here?” suggested she.

  I thought this over. Children often understand, when an adult questions them, what meaning underlies the surface words. Recalling my aunts’ enormous activities both above and below stairs, I nonetheless replied, No. I said everyone just seemed pleased.

  “Which is the very sweetest thing I could have heard!” cried Miss Davis; but paused a moment, while she brushed her hair right and left into a new halo. I waited. “My dear Stephen told me what I might expect,” said Miss Davis, brushing away, “but really, three such beauties!” Gathering that she meant my aunts, I nodded. “Still, Mrs. Toby is by far the handsomest. I’m sure that’s generally accepted?”
/>   Translating Mrs. Toby into my Aunt Charlotte, I muttered that I liked her hair.

  “Beside which mine is no more than a sweep’s mop?” agreed Miss Davis—I thought very properly. Even when she fluffed it out, it wasn’t thick. “And as Mr. Toby’s the eldest, and she’s his wife—I suppose she has things pretty much her own way?”

  I didn’t know what to answer. Of course my Aunt Charlotte had things her own way—in the house; but as her way was so identically that of my other aunts Grace and Rachel, the implication—which I sensed—was quite wrong. I picked my words.

  “I don’t think there’s any difference,” I explained. “I mean, all my aunts get their way, because it’s the same.…”

  My new Aunt Fanny regarded me, I thought, impatiently.

  “The eldest is always the eldest,” said she—and suddenly, with that little characteristic flicker, dropped her eyes. “And which of your uncles do you think the handsomest?” she asked.

  I said, Stephen. I knew he wasn’t really, but I wished to give her pleasure. I thought it was with pleasure that she laughed.—Just a little jet of laughter, higher-pitched than her usual tones.

  “So we agree on all points,” said Miss Davis. “I see you really are to be my little friend …”

  I shifted uneasily on the bed. I was conscious that I ought really to be in my own. I was conscious that I hadn’t, somehow, given the right answers to her questions. At the same time—and how often, during our relationship, was that phrase, that alternative, to recur!—at the same time, I was fascinated. The semi-secrecy of the whole episode: the swift motion of Miss Davis’ fingers as, still earnestly regarding me, she plaited up her hair; even the two big tortoiseshell combs with which at last she pinned it—all was unusual, and therefore fascinating. At last she fell silent, sitting to look, with a long scrutinizing gaze, at her own reflection; and I got up off the bed. She turned.