The Gypsy in the Parlour (10 page)

Fanny could thus receive her callers in style—on a sofa, in a parlour, best china to hand. When she had me too, she had a maid. I was in attendance Tuesday and Thursday, when Mrs. Brewer and Miss Jones always came together, to make their tea. (Gooseberry-wine wasn't smart enough.) Since other ladies might appear Monday, Wednesday or Friday, on those days too I held myself in readiness—hair brushed, hands washed, best blue alpaca. I got no enjoyment from these parties. Indeed, it was the unfortunate fact that no one liked Fanny's callers except Fanny: my aunts despised them for gadabouts, while I positively detested them because they reminded me of my mother's visitors in London. Now I come to think of it, it may have been just such ladies they incompetently aped, when they tinkled with affected laughter, and told me not to listen, and pinched my cheek with their gloves on. I would have had nothing to do with them, if I hadn't been putting Fanny first.

She, to my surprise, never seemed tired by these visits at all. She seemed if anything better, and stronger for them.—I remember with what a look of life, almost of energy, she once called me back from seeing Miss Jones and Mrs. Brewer out.

“Sit down, dear, another moment,” cried Fanny Davis, “before Mrs. Toby calls you to the great, groaning board.” (She meant our supper. Her guests often stayed so late, they smelled cooking as they left. My Aunt Grace used to affirm they'd be glad enough to stay for that also, but Fanny herself could endure pork no more than noise.) “If
you
, dear, find my little parties rather dull and lifeless,” continued Fanny Davis, quite sharply, “that's just your London breeding. Just reflect how
much
duller we should be without them! Has there ever been
any
society here before?—Though Sylvesters are almost
County?
So I really must ask you not to pull quite such a long face again, when Miss Jones offers to kiss you.…”

It was the measure of her emotional empire over me that I didn't protest. Because to speak of Miss Jones or Mrs. Brewer in the same breath as County was simply fantastic. County didn't even shop at their shops. If Sylvesters wanted County-callers my Aunt Charlotte had only to pay one visit-in-form upon the Lord-Lieutenant's lady, to be sure of
her
return visit at least once every two years.… I didn't protest, because Fanny's callers gave her pleasure. But I wasn't blind. I saw more than Fanny perhaps thought. Miss Jones, and Mrs. Brewer, produced a little illusion of society; Miss Jones also, occasionally, brought Fanny a letter.

2

I naturally wasn't cut off from my aunts entirely. I recall in particular, about mid-August, one specially enjoyable conversation with Charlotte.

It was a very warm, still evening: I, glancing from the window of Fanny's bedroom, (where I had been sent after a fresh handkerchief), saw her standing for once idle beside the little crab; and for once letting Fanny wait, ran down, and out, to join her.

(To reach the crab-apple plot from any upstairs-room one had to go down the main stair, then out through the kitchen, and round the whole west wing of the house. By the great front door it would have been quicker, but that door was always barred. It had been barred on the night of Fanny's arrival; like all Sylvester brides, she had entered by the court. I remembered this as I ran down, because I was also remembering seeing Fanny there, under the crab; looking up at the house, as though—why should the childish fancy strike me now? It certainly hadn't
then
—as though putting a spell on it.)

My Aunt Charlotte turned as I approached, and, smiling, laid a hand to the tree's slender trunk.

“Be 'ee come to portray our crab at last?” said she.

I was a little disconcerted. It hadn't occurred to me that my absorption in Fanny Davis, and my consequent neglect not only of my aunts, but of all my usual occupations, might have been in any resentful sense noticed. Certainly my Aunt Charlotte didn't sound resentful, now. But because the handkerchief wasn't my sketching-block, I held it behind me. I said, awkwardly,

“I just saw
you
, so I came out.”

“So I be still worth coming out for, that's better than portraying the crab,” said my Aunt Charlotte.

I cannot describe with what simplicity she said it. I think, now, that she felt quite acutely my defection from her to Fanny Davis. I think, now, that she waited for me to run, at bed-time, to her room—I running instead to Fanny's. (To talk about the man of my choice.) But nothing whatever of this showed in her tone, there wasn't a breath of reproach in it, nor a note of chiding. She said simply, what she simply meant; that if I still wanted to be with her, she was glad.

The small, the so elegant tree—the tree so admired of us both—stood like a gay and elegant friend to ease my awkwardness. I went up close to my Aunt Charlotte and pushed my free hand into hers. I didn't try to explain anything. There was no need. I could straightaway
tell
her something.

“Aunt Charlotte,” I said, “when Charles came home last year, was it the day I left?”

“Sure as daylight 'twas,” said she. “However did 'ee guess?”

“I saw him at the station,” I announced conceitedly. “I saw him get out of the train.”

“Did 'ee now!” marvelled my Aunt Charlotte. “And how did 'ee know 'twas he?”

When I said, because he was such a Sylvester, she immediately looked round for something to give me to eat. But the crabs weren't ripe, and would in any case have been sour, so she just knocked the breath out of my body with a hug.

“Ain't it true!” cried my Aunt Charlotte. “B'aint he a Sylvester all over? And b'aint he the very handsomest of all?”

I violently agreed. I asked eagerly, didn't everyone think he was wonderful, at the Assembly?

“Sure as daylight they did,” said my Aunt Charlotte—with such a lift in her voice as I can only describe by the word
seagulls:
seagulls, in London, on the river, or on the ponds in the parks, being my highest simile for all that was proud and glorious. “Him showed to all what son I bore for my eldest,” said Charlotte. “To see 'un dance, all rejoiced!”

I had always wanted to hear more about the Assembly. I asked now, did he dance with anyone besides Fanny?

My Aunt Charlotte laughed her old big laugh.—We were a long way from the parlour, so Fanny couldn't hear us.

“He asked his old mother,” said she. “He invited I, my lamb, to stand up wi' him for the Lancers! As the handsomest woman present, said he! Goes wi'out saying I denied 'un, so he took Fanny again; but I'll lay there be few females in Devon have refused both Lord-Lieutenant and their own big, handsome son.”

We didn't stay much longer. When I asked where Charlie was now, and why he'd gone off, she simply shrugged her big shoulders. All Sylvesters being so wild as hawks, and in particular so hating any authority over them, Charlie'd gone off as 'twere by nature. When him wrote, she'd a good mind to summon him back; but in the meantime contentedly basked in the recollection of his, and her, Assembly-triumphs. She could recall every single one of his partners—including the Lord-Lieutenant's daughter. “Bred just as 'ee, my lamb,” gloried my Aunt Charlotte, “in the best of London schools—yet not too proud to stand up wi' my Charlie, and indeed complimenting he after the valse, upon his remarkable stepping!”

It was a pity we couldn't stay longer; she had her multifarious duties, I a handkerchief to take to Fanny. But we had recaptured, if only for minutes, the old, golden happiness: as my Aunt Charlotte stood laughing beside the crab-tree, with its leaves in her hair.—I remember the incident particularly, as one remembers a last up-shooting ray, before the sun sets.

CHAPTER X

1

The first time I heard my aunts quarrel, it was as though the skies fell.

They were all upstairs in the great linen-closet. There was an enormous quantity of linen at the farm, each aunt having her separate store, marked with her own maiden initials; about once a year, when they needed new pudding-cloths, it was all taken out, and gone through, and regraded from unused best to ready for cutting up. As a rule my aunts enjoyed this business enormously: they had a great feeling for linen, and so loyally and lengthily admired each other's double-damask napkins, or hand-worked runners or Irish linen sheets, it was often a couple of hours before the last pile was hoisted back in place. On this occasion, to make things even pleasanter, they were replenishing the lavender-bags at the same time: when I looked in all the small muslin sacks lay empty in a neat pile, their contents tipped into, and almost filling, a two-quart measure, and my Aunt Rachel stood spoon in hand beside a great fragrant purple mound on a great wooden tray.

The scent was indescribably delicious. I determined to stay and help. Just as I was about to advance this proposal, my Aunt Rachel, turning to smile at me, with a brush of her big arm sent a sprinkle of lavender over Grace's counted napkins; and Grace called her a clumsy fool.

“Grace Beer, hold thy tongue,” said Charlotte.

“Then let Rachel hold her great fist. My stars, so mad I be driven by her clumsiness, 'tis like working with a bullock.”

“Sure enough 'ee should know their ways,” retorted Charlotte, “only bullocks buying damask so shoddy 'tis damaged by a blossom. Sweep away the mighty disaster, Rachel, ere Grace's bed-linen also reveals its cheap worth.…”

I stared incredulously at the tiny palmful of lavender Rachel managed to scoop up. I could almost count the grains: a dozen, no more, and most sweet-scented. I couldn't believe they had caused the first quarrel I ever heard between my aunts.

2

As of course they had not. The roots of the quarrelling lay far deeper. But it was some time before I realised what these were: even after I had overheard, more than once, my Aunt Grace snap that Fanny should be sent away, I was still so far from comprehending that I thought she meant Fanny should be sent to the sea, to try sea-air, or even to London, to consult some famous doctor. (I freely proffered advice, and was snubbed for my pains.) The tiny, foolish quarrel in the linen-closet as its first result simply drove me more than ever in on Fanny's parlour, away from the house.

Or had I already, subconsciously, felt the house divided? Its citadel of content mind, its golden solidarity split? I find the question hard to answer: yet surely, had my aunts' abundant mirth still showered like the honey-fountain of old, I must have abandoned Fanny Davis to run out and play in it. I think I felt, long before I consciously recognized them, such changes in the farm's life as I did not wish to face. Heaven should be immutable.

I therefore ran to Fanny's parlour, and shut my eyes.

My aunts, I am quite sure, did their best to promote my blindness. They did their best to keep their dissension from me. But after I had witnessed that first quarrel—first to me—they grew a little careless, as they grew a little careless of me altogether. They were never unkind, but I felt myself no longer quite so much their pet. (I was Fanny Davis' pet.) They always tried not to quarrel when I was there, but their bickering grew to be so continual, nothing could conceal the fact that there was now dissension between my aunts.

It was appalling, it was incredible, but it was so. Only to the outside world did they still present the united front of the three Sylvester women: within doors they were divided—Charlotte ranged against Grace, Rachel an unhappy trimmer. There were days when Charlotte and Grace would not speak to each other. There were days when the quarrel flared—yet could not flare out, into the shouting and loudness that would have relieved them both. I see now how much their natures must have been exasperated by the constant effort after quiet, by the constant frustration of their natural tendency to noise and clatter. They were not naturally quiet women. But how could they shout their day-long argument, when even a banging door made Fanny ill? How, above all, could they shout a quarrel—so, at last I comprehended—of which Fanny Davis was the argument?

What at last opened my eyes began as no more than a trivial passage of words, such as I was now unhappily accustomed to, between my Aunts Rachel and Grace.

“See there, now!” mourned my Aunt Rachel—handling a chipped lustre plate above her own private wash-bowl in the kitchen. “If I h'ain't damaged 'un at last!”

“So more fool 'ee,” snapped my Aunt Grace. “Why did 'ee ever fetch 'un forth, as I warned 'ee 'gainst, from its rightful situation? Why don't 'ee put all back and turn the key?”

“Fanny sets such store by the use of 'em,” said my Aunt Rachel weakly.

“Then let Fanny save 'em from destruction by swallowing her conceit. However, 'ee knows my opinion ere this.”

“Sure as daylight us do: 'ee've dinned it often enough in our ears,” said my Aunt Charlotte—who happened also to be in the kitchen, raising pastry for a pie.—So was I in the kitchen too, under the table with a stolen handful of dough. Two inches of oak sheltered me from the storm about to break above: I nonetheless cowered. I sensed, without actually anticipating, the imminence of thunderbolts. For a moment all was still—just as in nature; then I heard my Aunt Grace, who was stuffing a fowl, deliberately throw down, like a gauntlet, her big metal spoon.

“Din it I may have, into ears so deaf as adders',” said she. “I'll din it yet again, for the Sylvester good. I'll say now as I've said before: I say go her must and shall.”

“And I say, she shall stay,” said my Aunt Charlotte.

Again there was a pause; then Grace laughed, a short, bitter laugh. It was so unlike her old hilarious gust that had I not known for certain, I could never have believed she uttered it.

“And who be
'ee
, Charlotte, so to lay down the law?”

“I be Tobias' wife,” returned Charlotte. “I be wife to the eldest son, and accordingly head in this house. 'Twas I, for example, wedded 'ee to Matthew, Grace Beer—as 'ee was once very grateful to acknowledge.”