The Gypsy in the Parlour Read online

  But we didn’t often touch on anything so sordid. Our conversation in general was high-minded, sentimental, and unreal, like the conversations in cook’s novelettes.

  We talked, in fact, just like a couple of milliners.

  That we didn’t talk much about my Uncle Stephen at first both surprised and disappointed me; gradually I came to suspect that Fanny herself, in a different way, had been surprised and disappointed too. I thought she must have expected to see more of him: she wasn’t used to farm ways, to the two modes of life, the male and the female, running concurrently, but almost separately. Moreover, little as we saw any of the men, (except at table, where they silently filled themselves, and on Sundays, when they mostly slept), we saw Stephen even less. He had returned to his natural place as youngest—took naturally all the hardest tasks, stayed longest with the harvesters, turned out earliest to the cows; and on Sundays did duty for four. No Sylvester saw any reason why he shouldn’t. His courting was presumed to have been got over in Plymouth, his wedding was settled; how then could his status as Fanny’s betrothed affect his primary status as youngest brother?—So would have reasoned, I have no doubt, any Sylvester who thought about it; I have equally no doubt they never thought about it at all.

  All the same, I saw how natural it was for Fanny to be a little dissatisfied. I wondered if they met again sometimes, by night, under the crab. I wondered if they met every night … I longed to find out, but honour forbade spying; also I was a very sound sleeper.—Just once, about mid-month, after a supper of cold goose, I did wake up at the right time—at least all the house was still—and did slip to the window; but the night was so dark I could see nothing, had there been anything for me to see.

  CHAPTER IV

  1

  I was Fanny Davis’ little friend; I might have been her little bridesmaid. She suggested it with flattering diffidence, hoping I wasn’t too grand, so that besides achieving an ambition I should have had also the pleasant sense of conferring a favour.—But alas for us both! At last I realised, or rather faced, the lamentable fact that I shouldn’t even be at the wedding. Dates defeated us. My day of departure couldn’t be postponed, because of the opening of school-term, nor Fanny’s marriage-day put forward, because of the banns. Exactly five days defrauded me of pink spotted muslin and a rose-bud wreath, or, alternatively, blue, with forgetmenots.…

  When I wistfully enquired where these glories would have been procured, Fanny Davis instantly explained that she meant to send my measurements to Plymouth, to the first-class dressmaker engaged on her trousseau.

  “Any way, I’ll be able to see that,” said I.

  Fanny Davis laughed lightly.

  “Don’t you know, dear, all real lace has to be whipped on? I expect nothing till the last moment—and if I walk up the aisle with tackings in, Madame Rose will still have worked wonders.”

  When I repeated this to my aunts, I was surprised to see how little impressed they were. They merely looked at each other, for once silent, until my Aunt Grace rather sharply bade me run and play.

  As I see now, they were in a quandary.

  Though the news of our bride’s arrival naturally aroused a great deal of local interest, she had not so far been presented to the neighbourhood.

  The fact was that my aunts, in their first flush of enthusiasm, had talked a little rashly. Expectation was pitched too high. They were so sure Stephen would bring home another beauty like themselves, they boasted in advance of Fanny’s handsomeness—loudly prophesying, and with equal complacency, their own eclipse and the bedazzlement of their friends. To make matters worse, such was their prestige that the very fact that they didn’t at once take Miss Davis round visiting merely heightened expectation again. It was the general opinion that she was being kept back for the Assembly, there to burst upon, and bedazzle, the whole neighbourhood at once.

  Certainly the timing would have been perfect; the Assembly Ball, held at the George Hotel in Frampton, would take place just three days before the wedding.—I should miss that too, but this ordinarily would have been no loss. I was used to missing Assemblies, I was in any case too young to go, and my aunts’ descriptions of them had hitherto satisfied me. Almost too well: their triple account, reiterated and expanded year by year, offered a picture so splendid and complex—such a farrago of light, colour, music and movement—that my own first dance in London was a bitter disappointment. (Indeed, in all my life, the only function that ever came up to my idea of Frampton Assembly was the third act of The Sleeping Beauty, as performed by the Ballet Russe.) This year, however, I fretted almost as much over the Assembly as I fretted over the wedding. I caught the infection from my aunts, who themselves came as near to fretting as their constitutions allowed.

  One thing was certain: to the Assembly Fanny must go. The Sylvester women hadn’t missed one in years. They were a part of the spectacle themselves, their size, and their handsomeness, and the fact that there were three of them, made them as much looked-out-for as the Lord-Lieutenant. (The Lord-Lieutenant looked out for them. He used to pay them a compliment apiece every year.) When they sat all in a row, their three big husbands standing behind them, they were the finest sight in Devonshire. No doubt it was this completeness of social success that cast such a glow over their accounts to me: my aunts envied no one, were not shocked by the gentry’s bare shoulders, (their own so richly covered), and in fact enjoyed Frampton Assembly just as I imagined it—that is, ideally.

  This year they had to take Fanny.

  No one felt the situation more keenly than Charlotte. She hadn’t a jealous bone in her body: to produce one sister-in-law after the other, each as striking as herself, had been to Charlotte both a glorious joke and a Sylvester triumph. If she could have turned Fanny Davis into a beauty she would have done so at once, sooner than disappoint the Assembly with an emmet.

  Witchcraft lacking, Fanny Davis continued small, plain, and—thin.

  This last was her worst disability of all. It was irretrievable. What cannot be triumphed in may still be carried off, a sister-in-law merely small and plain reflects no positive discredit. Fanny Davis, at least by local standards, looked half-starved as well. She had wrists and ankles like chicken-bones, arms like wands. She looked as though she didn’t get enough to eat. And with the best will in the world Charlotte could do nothing about that either. She knew, her eye for stock told her, that no amount of good feeding ever would flesh Fanny up; but the eyes of the Assembly might be less informed.…

  As always, the sisters-in-law thought as one.

  “If folks declare we’m starving her,” stated my Aunt Grace baldly, “they’ll have every right and reason.”

  “Couldn’t ’ee drop a word as to my cream?” suggested Aunt Rachel. “Fanny gets my cream to her porridge every breakfast—fourpennyworth.”

  “Us never talked dairy-maid at the Assembly yet,” said my Aunt Grace proudly. “I say, let ’em take she as they find she—as we’m bound to do; and if any unkind, malicious word be said, I’m sure the Sylvester back’s strong enough to bear it.”

  They spoke; my Aunt Charlotte acted. She went alone into Frampton and came back with a length of silk brocade for which she had paid two guineas a yard.

  2

  We were all summoned to the parlour to see it unwrapped. The great broad folds were peacock-coloured, changing at every ripple from blue to amethyst: figured with a small golden sprig, and so stiff that they fell in pyramids. It came from France, but there was also something of the East in it; and if Charlotte had been the greatest dressmaker in the world, she could have found nothing better suited to beautify a gypsy.

  “There ’tis, bors,” said my Aunt Charlotte. “Fanny’s dress for the Assembly—and it cost two guineas a yard.”

  I think that was the only time I ever saw Fanny Davis show gratitude.—Not in words: but she dropped to her knees, and pulled a stiff, glowing fold across her mouth, while her eyes, (they looked like eyes above a yashmak), burned with pleasure …

/>   “Charlotte!” breathed my Aunt Rachel. “’Tis fit—’tis fit for the Queen!”

  “’Ee never found that to Frampton,” stated my Aunt Grace.

  “Brewers’ in High Street,” retorted Charlotte coolly. “See what ’tis to have a long memory. Thomas Brewer laid it in ten years back, looking to Mrs. Pomfret being Mayor’s lady. But the dropsy took her first, poor toad, and he’s been loaded with it ever since. He’d ha’ charged her three.”

  “Three or two, who’m be paying for it?” demanded Grace sharply.

  “I be,” said my Aunt Charlotte, with Norfolk aplomb. “’Tis my wedding-gift to Fanny, with which I trust she be content.”

  All eyes, naturally, turned upon Fanny, who rose to the occasion by weeping.—She would actually have wiped her eyes on the silk, had not my Aunt Grace snatched it away and substituted her own handkerchief.

  “’Ee’ll have to make it up yourself,” warned Charlotte. “All Frampton’s busy for the Assembly. Can ’ee do it in the time?”

  “Yes, indeed!” breathed Fanny Davis. (No one except myself, even at the time I thought it odd, seemed to remember the first-rate dressmaker in Plymouth.) “Dear Mrs. Toby,” breathed Fanny Davis, “I shall labour night and day!”

  3

  So she did; and so did I.

  We had no sewing-machine. Every stitch in that dress had to be put in by hand, and the stitches were innumerable. Distrustful as she proved of my abilities, Fanny Davis nonetheless needed me; I could at least oversew a seam. I worked, during those last days, like—a milliner’s apprentice. I am sure my mother would have disapproved; I doubt whether my aunts knew. I am sure at least they didn’t know I worked in bed, sitting up beside a candle.

  It was simply necessary.—I recall a fashion only just less remote than the crinoline: an enormous skirt, seamed, gored and flounced, gathered back, over the rudimentary bustle, below a bodice skin-tight and provocatively scooped. A milliner and a milliner’s apprentice could only just stitch such a dress in the time.

  I sewed until my thimble-finger was ridged. Outside, the last splendid days of summer shouted to me; I couldn’t listen. We worked in Fanny’s own room; neither parlour nor kitchen knew me more. We even ate in Fanny Davis’ room—I sent down to beg a tray from the big table. I remember that once my Aunt Charlotte took it from my hands, and told me to take my usual place, and after sent me in to Frampton with my Aunt Grace. I remember also the sense of guilt with which I later presented myself to Fanny Davis, to resume my seam.…

  I was quite happy as a milliner’s apprentice. Our endless flow of gossip—studded with illustrious names, spiced with mondain scandal—kept my mind as amused as my fingers were busy; the man of my choice lurked always in the background, ever ready to spring forward and revive my flagging interest. If that last week at the farm was unlike any other week I ever spent there—nonetheless I enjoyed it.

  As a consolation for not seeing her go to the Assembly my new Aunt Fanny, the afternoon before I left, put on her tacked-up gown for me to admire our joint handiwork. I gazed and gazed. The stiff peacock-blue stuff showed up her tiny bosom whiter than ivory; the enormous spreading skirt not only gave her whole person substance, but made the smallness of her waist appear unnatural, the result of tight-lacing, therefore desirable. I stammered out quite honestly that she would be the best of them all.

  4

  All the same, it was only my Aunt Charlotte who that night could console me. I was mourning a little, in my bed—pushing my face into the pillow, snivelling a little—when she came to my room to bid me an extra good-night.

  “’Ee’ll be back next year, my lamb,” she assured me. “’Ee’ll see, ’twill be all the same.…”

  Wretched as I was, her mere presence, as always, made me feel better. I put up my hand and pulled, as I had been used to do when I was much smaller, at one of her big plaits—for she was ready for bed herself, with no more than a Paisley shawl over her flannel nightgown. At my gentle tug she laughed, and bent over me, and gave me one of her rare kisses., Her big body smelled of hay and lavender, her thick tawny fringe tickled my face: I had once again the sensation of being loved and protected (and almost smothered) by a great golden, benevolent cat.…

  “Your hair’s like fur,” I said. “Like a lion’s mane.”

  She laughed again, and sat back, and in turn pulled at a thick braid. Then I saw her face change; she had found, among the tawny, strands of grey.

  “I’m an old woman, dear heart,” sighed my Aunt Charlotte. “I’m nigh on fifty … I’d pull ’un out, save that seven would come to the funeral.”

  “Fanny’s is black as the men’s,” I remarked idly.

  “’Twill still show grey before Stephen’s, as mine do ere Tobias’,” said Charlotte. “Females age sooner, my lamb; females bear and wither and age …”

  I had never, as I have never yet, seen anyone look less withered than she, as she took up her candle and stood, half-smiling, half-sighing, beside my bed. The mild yellow light gilded her tawny head—gilded even the grey in it; her Paisley shawl glowed plum-colour, her broad ruddy cheeks shone to match; even her sighs were so big and whole-hearted, the candle was nearly blown out.

  I left her, next morning, in such a blaze of sunshine as dazzled all our eyes. When the cart came to take me to the station she stood waving from the gate—tall as a sunflower, headed like Ceres; a step behind my Aunts Grace and Rachel backed her, big and comely and confident as herself. A sudden school-book memory darted into my mind: I thought they looked like the Three in Horatius who kept the bridge … My new Aunt Fanny hovered in their rear, and also waved to me, rather timidly.

  5

  As I waited on the platform at Exeter—I was always deposited there half-an-hour early—a train came in from Plymouth. Quite a number of passengers emerged, among them a young man whose black-thatched head so easily overtopped all others that my eye naturally followed it.—Followed it, and was fixed: fascinated, half-incredulous, at the same time wholly certain, I stared and stared.…

  There was no mistaking him, he was a Sylvester all over. He was my Aunt Charlotte’s son Charles.

  If I had been quicker, or bolder, I could have spoken to him. I could have been the first to greet him! But he was off while I hesitated, lounging rapidly down the platform—his stride was so long, he moved fast, but at the same time so peculiarly loose and easy, he still seemed to lounge—with never a glance left or right. (As though he returned from Australia every day—and that too was a Sylvester all over.) Just too late, I started to run after him; he was already past the barrier, and gone.

  PART TWO

  CHAPTER V

  1

  No one at the farm ever wrote to me in London. I had tried hard, before I left, to make my Aunt Charlotte promise to send me a letter about the wedding, but she would say only that she might if she had time, so I knew that she would not. Nor would my Aunts Grace and Rachel promise either—pointing out that I’d hear all about it next year; and though this was no more than their usual lavish handling of time, for once I found it irritating. Even Fanny Davis’ oath to write immediately and at length could not entirely console me; I feared, or rather confidently expected, that she would be too much bemused by bliss to remember details.

  In fact no one wrote to me. Evidently Fanny was too much bemused to remember anything. The usual winter-silence dropped like a curtain of fog between the life that I loved, and the life that I led.

  2

  To remember all London winters as fog-bound is doubtless as untruthful as to remember all Devon summers as radiant. At the same time, the coal-burning London of my childhood was undoubtedly foggier than the London of to-day: the legend of the pea-souper, like all legends, has roots in fact. Once or twice each winter fog gathered, thickened, solidified into an element: omnibuses lost their way, horses stood pawing in the streets, clerks walking home from the City clubbed to hire linkboys; indoors, life was gas-lit and stuffily cold.—We did not, as I say, experience more
than one or two such fogs in a winter; but even the intervals between them appear, (to my recollection), uniformly dark.

  This was possibly due to the arrangement of our house. Its front faced south, its back north: we children lived at the back. Our day-nursery or schoolroom looked out across no more than a few yards at the back of the terrace paralleling our row: half-out of the window, one still saw nothing but brick. Moreover, to say ‘we children’ is inaccurate; both my brothers were at boarding-school, and I, once returned from my inferior day-establishment, did my home-work, and employed my leisure, alone. (One reason I enjoyed cook’s novelettes was that their heroines were so often, like myself, lonely—at any rate to begin with. They finished as duchesses or opera-singers, with villas in sunny Italy—which was encouraging.) Only on Sundays did I take any meal with my parents; I do not count breakfast, which I took with my father, (my mother always breakfasted in bed), because he never spoke to me at it. He read the Times; I had to kiss him over its top, aiming vaguely at his forehead, as I left for school. On Sundays we all ate roast beef and Yorkshire pudding at the big dining-room table, when I was questioned briefly yet searchingly on my week’s school-work. If our dining-room chairs still exist, one has scuffed legs.