The Gypsy in the Parlour Read online

  “And what do I get, for my bag of sweets?” she asked. “Don’t I get a kiss?”

  I wasn’t sufficiently fascinated not to hesitate. She rose, and swiftly, soundlessly, like a moth, dipped towards me past the candles. Her kiss was pressing, and very soft. As I bundled myself from the room I heard her laugh.

  I didn’t pad on, that night, to my Aunt Charlotte’s room beyond. I went back to my own.

  3

  What I am now about to relate is what I physically saw.

  My window overlooked a small grass-plot in which grew a crab-apple. That I have not mentioned this crab before must not be allowed to diminish its importance: in a way it was as much a triumph of my Aunt Charlotte’s as was her parlour, for a pippin would have flourished there equally: the crab grubbed up, one might have planted a Cox’s Orange. My Aunt Charlotte kept the crab, for no other reason than its prettiness.

  It was the prettiest thing I had ever seen. (Or, for that matter, ever have seen.) Its slender trunk was most exquisitely canopied by a small pagoda of brilliant, rustling leaves: for its fruits, delicately warming, with summer, from ivory to coral, I never found a comparison until many years later I observed the bill of a black swan. Charlotte, when they were ripe, could have made jelly from them—which would have given the tree some sort of economic standing; that she didn’t was yet one more proof of her remarkable character. She’d made Tobias spare that tree, she once told me, for its prettiness alone, when she came as a bride; she wouldn’t climb down now and make jelly.—I threw myself into eager support of such aestheticism, and strove for hours, with a paper and a box of crayons, to immortalise the beauty of our crab.

  That night, (I return to my return to my own room), a brilliant moonlight drew me irresistibly to the window. It had been so hot all day that the wood of the window-seat was still faintly warm; I tucked up my nightgown to kneel on bare knees; the sill was warm under my elbows. Yet in the court below—what ravishment!—the crab-tree appeared frosted, so meticulously did the moon’s white light rime every bough and twig. It was a little tree done in silver-point; and so beautiful, thus colourless, that I mentally renounced my chalks for ever. I stared out, ravished—and as I gazed, saw the tree’s cast shadow, (where it lay most spreadingly, a stencilled pagoda), disengage a shadow that moved.

  Out of the shadow of the crab-tree stepped first the shadow, then the figure, of Fanny Davis, whom I had just left seated at her dressing-table.

  She stood looking at the house. I saw her plainly. It was no trick of moonlight; no moon-trick ever produced image so solid, likeness so doppelgänger-exact. I saw her.

  My panic, for it was panic, fixed itself on one point: that she might see me. I crouched down on the window-seat, flattening myself below the sill; thence at last to slide stiffly to the floor, and creep into my cold bed.

  4

  With morning, of course, everything became explicable. I saw that I had made an error in judging what time elapsed since I left Miss Davis’ room. No doubt I ran straight from her door to the window-seat: but quite probably fell straight asleep on it. It could have been an hour later, or two hours, before I awoke to see Fanny Davis under the crab. (I was perfectly certain it was no dream.) As to why she was there, my romantic imagination easily supplied an answer: she had gone to meet my Uncle Stephen.—I have already described the milling jollity of their welcome; the one thing no one seemed to have imagined, for one instant, was that the lovers might wish some little time alone …

  I was so pleased with my perspicacity, I ran out early to examine the ground under the little tree. I hoped to find footprints—hers narrow and pointed, my Uncle Stephen’s horseshoe-broad. But there had been no rain for a week, the ground about the crab was like iron: Assemblies could have danced there, without leaving a trace.

  CHAPTER III

  1

  The wedding was set for a month off, just time, (so all Sylvesters wedded), to call the banns; the betwixt-and-between interval, while Fanny Davis hung poised between maiden- and matron-hood, was characterized, so to speak, by being uncharacterized.

  It was a month just like any other. Nothing was changed. The torrent of my aunts’ talk rushed loud and unceasing through the house with never a new note in it. Admittedly one had to be quick, one had to shout, to get a word in, and Miss Davis’ voice was peculiarly soft; but in the early days at least my aunts used actually to pause, to check themselves and wait, to give her a chance. Miss Davis never seemed to wish to take it.

  She seemed to have nothing to say. She had neither opinions nor tastes. She hadn’t even an appetite. The amount she left on her plate would have fed a plough-boy—I believe often did feed a plough-boy; she made no more impression on the viands than did her extra place at the table itself. It was such a large table, it could easily have accommodated, besides the eight Sylvesters and myself, half-a-dozen more such wrens as Fanny.

  So the Sylvester women came gradually to ignore her. They didn’t mean to. The original joke, the joke of Stephen’s finding himself a wife, still aroused in them the old hilarity. (It was odd, sometimes, to hear them go off in a reminiscent gale of laughter, of which the very cause and spring sat quietly by.) They had meant to cosset Stephen’s bride uncommonly, perhaps spoil her a little, as they spoilt him. But how could they, when she slipped so unobtrusively about that one never knew, without looking, whether she was or wasn’t in the room?—When she uttered never a ‘no’, always a ‘yes’, to every proposal? She didn’t even choose her marriage chamber. I knew I was to be dispossessed, as soon as I went home, of my room above the grassplot—but on the say-so of my Aunt Charlotte. “’Tis the best that’s left,” she coaxed me. “’Tis the one most fitting. When ’ee comes back next year, us’ll hang new curtains for ’ee where Fanny bides now; maybe there’ll be a new carpet. ’Twill be so pretty, ’ee did never see the like …”

  If I didn’t protest, it was because I knew something my aunts didn’t; and I thought Fanny Davis must have said something—uttered perhaps no more than some half-caught words which nonetheless lodged in Charlotte’s memory—denoting a wish to look out for ever on our crab. If so, I considered it highly romantic. (I was as avid, that year, for romances, lent me by our cook at home, as I had once been for fairy-tales.)—I think now that perhaps Fanny shared my taste, for as the days passed, as it became increasingly obvious that she understood nothing whatever of the female work of a farm, my aunts’ uninhibited questioning drew forth a highly romantic history.

  It was romantically vague. Of her childhood, even of her young girlhood, the most that could be discovered was a sort of shadow-novelette. A father deceased before she could remember him nonetheless trailed clouds of glory: hints of aristocratic connections at once explained and made impressive an absence of paternal relations so complete as to have been otherwise suspicious. Her mother, also in the grave, had been so distinguished for ethereal beauty that her early death occasioned no surprise. If it seemed likely that she had also been a milliner, that was simply because Fanny Davis herself was so apprenticed.—This last was the single fact possible to check, impossible of disguise: my Uncle Stephen having first encountered her in a milliner’s shop.

  “Whatever was he at, dear souls?” marvelled my Aunt Rachel.

  “Him saw she through the window,” said my Aunt Grace.

  “And what did he see? I be proper baffled,” said my simple Aunt Rachel. “If ’twas any one of we, for example, ’twould make sense …” She turned—I was with them in the kitchen, for baking-day, so I saw her—and in a scrap of mirror preened her long, milk-coloured throat. She was in fact the beauty of them all; and modestly but thoroughly knew it.

  “Hark to me, bors,” said my Aunt Charlotte. “There’s women catch men by beauty, and others that catch ’em by worth. Us three, and why not speak it, caught our men by both.”

  “So far as concerns Matthew, ’twas all made up ’twixt ’ee and I,” said my Aunt Grace calmly.

  “Ah, but he’d never have taken �
��ee without your beauty,” retorted Charlotte. “That’s a Sylvester male all over—wants the earth and also the moon. But there’s some women catches ’em by something other; ’tis not beauty—for to me Fanny’s no more than an emmet—and not by worth, for she knows naught to any purpose. ’Ee might call it a kind of female charm; which I say she must possess, or how would young Stephen be so beguiled?”

  “You say it, but do ’ee see it?” demanded my Aunt Grace.

  “No,” said my Aunt Charlotte. “But I might, were I a male.”

  There was a short pause. I think I was forgotten—by this time I was under the table, cutting cats out of pastry.

  “Charlotte: what’s she to do here?” asked my Aunt Grace point-blank.

  “Trim up our bonnets,” said Charlotte, laughing.

  Thus good-humouredly, tolerantly, almost off-handedly, they accepted Stephen’s choice: no doubt feeling the Sylvesters strong enough to afford, as a sort of luxury, this little, last, useless bride.

  2

  She did nothing all day long.

  It was astonishing to me, in an adult. I suppose that in a sense I did nothing either—or nothing useful; but I was so perpetually running after my aunts, or strumming on the piano, or loitering about the yard or drawing the crab-tree, that I certainly couldn’t have been called inactive. Fanny Davis did nothing but sit at a window, or wander about the house. (She liked to look at things, particularly in the parlour: she liked looking at the lustre-ware in the cabinet, which I once or twice found her handling, and at the big unstrung harp.) This moony behaviour took us some little time to get used to; but my aunts had decided upon tolerance, and they were also, I feel, a trifle guiltily aware that they ought to take her more firmly in hand. The truth was that they were all too efficient to make good teachers, save of underlings who could be bawled at; it cost them so much not to bawl at Fanny—when she bungled her first baking of bread, for instance, or when her butter wouldn’t come, or when she couldn’t tell a pullet from a cockerel—that they tacitly agreed to spare their pains. In addition, my Aunt Charlotte produced what today would be called an alibi, by declaring that Fanny would soon find business of her own.

  “They small, delicate souls being often remarkable breeders,” stated my Aunt Charlotte. “I’ve seen ’em time without number bring forth twins like Bible ewes. Wait till this time twelve-months, bors, and see if she b’aint able for that!”

  It occurred to no one that Fanny Davis possessed at least one quite striking capacity besides: the ability to seize a chance. No doubt it meant little enough, when Stephen stared at her through a window, that she smiled modestly back; not much more that she allowed him, (he, thus encouraged, waiting outside the shop), to escort her for a stroll along the waterfront; the milliner-society of Plymouth no doubt winked at such slight irregularities. But it was actually the same evening that Stephen made his bid for her, and she took him next day. She had nothing but her wits to guide her. If it is just possible some Plymouth tradesman knew the Sylvesters by repute, Fanny had hardly time to make enquiry. Stephen himself no doubt bore certain marks of prosperity, and there was the Sylvester gig stabled at his inn; his person was good, particularly if one hadn’t seen his brothers, and his intention plain. But essentially Fanny had to rely on her own wits, and her decision to take him was uncommonly quick, bold and opportunist. With equal boldness, that decision once taken, she burnt her boats—abandoned her shop, packed her bag, and got into the gig.…

  My aunts put all this down to Stephen’s masterfulness; saw Fanny idle, passive, will-less as a weather-vane; and came gradually to ignore her.—I must remember that they were also, at this time, pre-occupied by a slight skirmish with my uncles; a belated engagement, so to speak, after long armistice, in the old Sylvester war.

  3

  It began with a letter.—Everything happened, that summer; this letter arrived immediately upon Stephen’s. Letters came more rarely to the farm than might be supposed: we had, or should have had, seven over-seas correspondents. But all Sylvesters shared an ineradicable distaste for penmanship, and if their sons scrawled a line apiece each Christmastide my aunts were perfectly content. They wrote no oftener themselves—though they, at Christmas, also dispatched parcels. To receive a letter in mid-August was therefore almost a cause for alarm: big and brave as she was, Charlotte opened it qualmishly. How extra-joyful then its contents! It was from Australia: her eldest son Charlie was coming home.

  Charlotte bawled the good news from one end of the house to the other; her sisters-in-law rejoiced with her. The male Sylvesters, however, were less responsive; Tobias in particular showing no enthusiasm whatever at the prospect of his son’s return. For once one could tell what he was thinking: one gathered the impression—he emanated, still silently, the strong impression—that he disapproved. Charlie’s letter spoke of no business to bring him home. Except on business, Sylvesters didn’t voyage. They didn’t so squander their cash. If they had cash to spare, they put it into land. Somehow, behind Tobias’ silence, some such thoughts could be felt astir; and my Aunt Charlotte lost patience with him.

  “What all they Sylvesters overlook,” observed she tartly, “is the fact that they be mortal. B’aint Charlie eldest son of eldest son? B’aint he in due course to rule after Tobias? ’Twas never a very clever act to me, to let ’un go foreign; and ’tis but nature he’ve a longing to watch over what in time’s to be his own.”

  Nothing can speak more strongly for the relations between the three women, than that my Aunts Grace and Rachel thoroughly agreed with her.—It was always understood among them that all cousins together retained right, so to speak, of return. If they prospered and took root over-sea, well and good; if not, the farm should receive them back. What my aunts visualised, and I think almost hoped for, was a new-old pattern repeating itself: Charlie in his father’s place, with his kinsmen to back him. They were all a good deal younger than their husbands—Sylvester men marrying late, Sylvester women early; it was natural in them to look to the future. But one couldn’t put such a view to Tobias, or Matthew, or Luke; all male Sylvesters, as my Aunt Charlotte observed, resolutely considering themselves immortal.

  She didn’t attack her Tobias directly: she merely prepared, rather elaborately, the big southward-looking attic. She merely said a word or two in Frampton—so that Tobias, on market-day, had a word or two said to him. But she neither sought nor allowed argument, and after the first day or two my Cousin Charles wasn’t much spoken of. There was no exact date to look forward to—there wasn’t even a date on his letter; and Stephen’s marriage was imminent.

  My aunts were determined to spread the grandest marriage-feast yet, a feast to astound all Frampton. They were so busy from morning till night, they hadn’t time for Fanny Davis. Admittedly there could be no feast without her; but except for her mere physical presence, they needed her no more, within-doors, than their menfolk needed her without.

  4

  All therefore conspired to make me Fanny’s little friend.

  To me, and to me alone, Fanny talked. We had long conversations together, chiefly in the parlour, where I, drifting in for a bout of ‘Chopsticks’, so often found her before me. I remember the first of these sessions most accurately, from its unpromising beginning to its delicious close.

  She began by questioning me about my life in London, a topic which I disliked. While I was at the farm I wanted to be at the farm, altogether, as though I lived there. But Miss Davis’ sharp little questions prodded the answers out of me, she was soon in possession of our address, (Bayswater), the size of our house, (seven bedrooms), the number of maids we kept, (three), and my father’s profession. When I told her he was a Queen’s Counsel, she looked impressed.

  “He’ll be quite in the top set amongst lawyers, then?”

  I said I supposed so.

  “And no doubt your mother’s a smart lady? Gives dinner-parties and all that?”

  I nodded dumbly. My mother did give dinner-parties; I hated them. Th
ey made the servants cross all day, cook grumbled about bricks without straw; the guests, invited on the strict cutlet-for-a-cutlet system, never generated the least social warmth.—I used to look down at them through the banisters as they went cheerlessly home, and wonder not only why my mother asked them, but why they came …

  “If ever I’m in London, perhaps she’ll ask me,” suggested Fanny Davis.

  I couldn’t think of anything less likely. My mother’s cutlet-for-a-cutlet rule was abrogated only in the case of judges. Moreover, why should Fanny Davis ever be in London? No Sylvester travelled farther than Plymouth—or, of course, Australia. Perhaps something of this showed in my face: some dubiety, even scorn; at once my new Aunt Fanny, changing her whole aspect, bent on me a most sweet and romantic look.

  “It’s just that I should be so proud,” she explained, “to show off my handsome hubby. If you ever love, dear, and are fortunate enough to win the man of your choice, you will enter into my feelings.”

  All my defences fell. I thrilled responsively. How could I not? Cook had been lending me two novelettes a week all winter.

  “I don’t suppose I’ll ever have the chance,” I mumbled.

  “Of course you will, dear,” affirmed Miss Davis positively. “With those eyes, and that hair, I’ve no doubt you’ll be quite pursued. It’s only that your unusual character may make you difficult to please; which is why perhaps he may need winning …”

  When she said things like that to me—and she was to say them constantly—I was her little friend indeed. For she made me too a figure of romance—at least potentially. In time the man of my choice took recognizable shape: I decided that he would be a medical missionary. This rather bothered Fanny, because I was going to be so beautiful; we compromised on the hope that my beauty would be the saintly kind, leading men’s thoughts to higher, not lower levels.—She often warned me on this point, telling me beauty was a fatal snare; more colloquially adding that a pretty friend of hers used to be so pestered by chaps in Plymouth, she married in haste to repent at leisure. When I offered the example of my aunts, whose looks seemed to have done them no harm at all, Fanny merely sighed that some had all the luck—but consider Lady Hamilton. Under Fanny’s guidance, I willingly did so. She was quite strong on one sort of history, the sort my schoolbooks left out, and recounted poor Emma’s tale with real feeling. Her beauty hadn’t been the saintly kind at all, and see what came of it. She died in debt. “Debts!” cried Fanny Davis bitterly; and for once broke off her flow to brood …