The Gypsy in the Parlour (11 page)

My Aunt Grace laughed again. There was such an edge to her laugh, it was like a whip.—Yet it wasn't loud. They all, still, kept their voices down. It made the quarrel more dreadful than ever.

“I took what I'd a mind to,” said she. “I took 'un drunken, I took 'un unlettered as a hind, for that I fancied the black Sylvester looks. I could ha' picked he up any day after market, Charlotte, wi' my father and brothers to back I …”

“'Ee were glad enough still of my favour,” said Charlotte. I couldn't see, I only heard and felt her pain. But she controlled it, as she controlled her voice. She said steadily, “Leave that all aside, bor, with the rest. 'Ee knows as well as I the thing be impossible, for whither would Fanny go?”

“Back whence her came. To Plymouth.”

“To fare how in Plymouth? B'aint her little shop sold up this twelvemonth?”

“Then halt the first gypsy-van past our gate,” said my Aunt Grace, “and let 'em take back their own.”

I didn't realise, then, all the words implied. I knew only that they were a threat. I waited most anxiously for Charlotte to turn it aside.

“Superstitiousness belongs to maids and fools,” said she greatly. “I be neither. And if maybe I care no more for Fanny Davis than 'ee do, I care much for Sylvester standing. To turn her away, so sick as she be, scarce able to set foot to ground, would be accounted by all a very shameful, unchristian act. 'Twould be said, at best, we'm so skinflint as misers, grudging her bite and sup; or that maybe we'm struck down by sudden poverty, and ourselves be open to parish-aid.”

So, and so overwhelmingly, spoke my Aunt Charlotte. Yet Grace answered her.

“'Tis maids and fools also,” said she, “fear hard words.
I
care for Sylvester standing no less than 'ee do. Maybe more: for I see most plainly, and be ready to bear all cost, that 'less Fanny be rooted from amongst we, us may pay in more than unkind talk.”

In the final silence that ensued I crept quietly out, and slid through the door, and ran to the only place about the farm I knew to be unhappy in.

3

This was a stone-walled, slate-roofed outhouse, open on one side, accommodating a pump now in disuse: therefore no longer kept in repair, and left standing only because its extreme solidity made it troublesome to pull down. Moss-grown, damp and dilapidated, it had witnessed, from my first visit to the farm, what few tears I ever shed there.—Tears only once, as I remember, of remorse or guilt, after I spoiled a whole baking by opening the oven-door to look inside; but tears almost regularly on the day before I went home. Misery now drove me thither by instinct, not to weep but to think.

And rightly: my thoughts were most wretched. It wasn't only the revelation of my aunts' disunity that shook me, though this was quite bad enough. It wasn't only the revelation of their dislike for Fanny Davis. I didn't even begin, (pressing my forehead against the cold iron upright of the pump, scuffing a heel over the flags, cruelly scarring the moss), to examine either. I accepted, for the moment, both dislike and disunity as facts, but beyond comprehension. My most pressing trouble was purely personal.

I was Fanny Davis' little friend, and I was her little Queen's Messenger.

I had promised to bring her word of all everyone did, and thought.

Hitherto, at the news of a setting of eggs, or the sale of a chicken, Fanny had raised whimsical, disappointed brows. I now, for the first time, found myself in possession of
information
. I had such information, I could turn informer.

I felt like a person who, accepting for prestige and excitement the rôle of spy, suddenly finds himself called upon to betray.

—But betray whom? Two loyalties equally divided my soul. Fanny's absolute ignorance of what threatened made her to me a more pathetic figure than ever. I didn't minimize the threat; I sensed Rachel at heart Grace's ally. I saw Charlotte, however formidably, facing them alone. I saw also how Rachel might possibly be detached; when I thought what Fanny could
do
, the trivial conclusion was not so trivial as it may seem. Fanny could stop having callers, and so stop using Rachel's china: Rachel, thus touched, might very well veer to Charlotte.…

Moreover I also knew Fanny's callers to be a point of annoyance all round, as a sort of dereliction from Sylvester standards. I thought I might do quite a lot of good, if by
telling
Fanny, I ridded us all of Mrs. Brewer and Miss Jones. In this way my informing could produce nothing but benefit.

Unfortunately I was equally conscious that my Aunts Charlotte, Grace and Rachel would have forbidden me, had the notion entered their heads that I might do so, to repeat a single one of their words. That they didn't think of such a thing was because they trusted me.—I remembered with accuracy my Aunt Charlotte's look as I slipped from the kitchen: of surprise, because she had forgotten I was there, and of distress, at the distress she guessed at in myself; but no hint of warning, of hold-your-tongue. She could most easily have called me back, to warn me in words; it simply hadn't occurred to her to do so …

I scuffed at the mossy flags. (The scars so criss-crossed each other, I could have played myself noughts-and-crosses.) My forehead grew cold, and probably dirty, from contact with cold iron. I still didn't know what to do. Fanny Davis was waiting for me to make tea: my Aunt Charlotte, very likely, was waiting for me to run and be comforted—waiting perhaps with some word that would make all right again. But for once, for the first time, I doubted my Aunt Charlotte's powers; I felt that what I had heard would take as long to heal over, as the scarred moss underfoot.

CHAPTER XI

1

The court, as I recrossed it, was extraordinarily quiet. So was the whole house; there seemed to be no one about at all. (Long afterwards, I learnt that my Aunt Grace had taken out the pony-trap, and my Aunt Charlotte gone down to the hen-runs, and my Aunt Rachel to her own room. It was the Sylvester women's tragedy that the first real threat to their house found them disunited.) I washed my face in the empty kitchen: mounted, noiselessly, the silent stair. Evidently no one had called; when I as quietly as possible pushed open the parlour-door, there lay Fanny Davis silent and alone.

“Fanny?” I whispered. “Shall I make your tea?”

She raised her head, painfully. The short, smoky fringe of her hair clung in uncombed wisps about her forehead; she had no colour whatever. I saw at once it was one of her worst days—and my heart went out to her.

“Then I'm not quite forgotten, after all?” said she—not crossly, pathetically. “The fire is almost out, dear; but blow, and it may still boil my little cup …”

Guilty and wretched, I hastened to the bellows. Fortunately only a puff was needed. From the logs brought in each morning I pulled out oak and ash, for substance and flame, and let the kettle down on its chain. Fanny Davis watched me fondly.

“What in the world should I do, dear,” she murmured, “without my little friend? How sweet you look there, just like a little Cinderella!—Isn't the house very quiet to-day?”

I mumbled that everyone seemed to be out. I added that it wasn't Miss Jones' and Mrs. Brewer's afternoon.

“So we may be all the snugger by ourselves,” said Fanny Davis. “Really, dear, if the man of your choice were to see you now, I'm sure he'd pop at once! The firelight, on your pretty hair, is quite enchanting!”

She had the most caressing voice I have ever heard. Indeed, indeed we could be snug together … Have I not described already the
snugness
of the parlour—Fanny and I nested before the fire? If only my mind hadn't been so distracted I could have asked for nothing more than to sit so beside her for ever …

“Where have they gone?” enquired Fanny, rather abruptly.

I knew she referred to my aunts. I said they hadn't told me.

“
That
's unusual,” said Fanny Davis.

She was of course right. The kettle began to sing, I busied myself with warming the tea-pot. I felt her scrutinising me rather closely; I hoped she was still admiring my hair, and consciously tossed back a braid.

“In four or five years,” said I, “I expect I'll have it up.”

“When you'll look sweeter than ever, dear,” Fanny Davis assured me. “We must hope chignons are still in …
I
, of course—” she rubbed her head carelessly against the cushions—“I, of course, with
my
poor crop, must remain
completely
indifferent. But you shall bring me your first hair-pins, dear, and let Fanny transform you!”

I had to turn my face away. She spoke with such innocent confidence, in such complete assurance that any number of years would find her still there for me … But in even one year, where would poor Fanny be? Luckily I now had the tea to make, and made it, and looked about for the cream. For once there wasn't any. Rachel, who usually brought up a special little jug after dinner, had forgotten. Well I knew why!—and with the knowledge heavy on my heart, heard Fanny excuse her.…

“Forgotten?” smiled Fanny Davis. “Quite natural, if they're all, as you say, abroad. No invalid can hope to be remembered
every
day; that's asking too much altogether!”

She wasn't even vexed. When—I offering to run for it—she stopped me, saying perhaps after all Mrs. Luke hadn't the cream to spare, she looked almost gay.

“Indeed, there may be other reasons still,” added Fanny Davis lightly, “such as the success of my poor little tea-parties: jealousy often—as I hope you, dear, may never live to find-taking the most trivial form imaginable. So just pour me a horrid creamless cup—which I believe is at least fashionable—and let the rest of the world sulk as it likes. What an oasis of peace this is!” exclaimed Fanny Davis, casting an affectionate glance over her parlour. “My own, own room, sacred to me and my own little friend!—For if I let in Joneses and Brewers, dear, it's but to keep
just
in touch with the world beyond; really and truly, this room belongs to you and me.”

With passionate sincerity I cried yes, that was what I wanted too: Fanny always there for me in our parlour, for ever and ever.…

She drew me closer to her side. Her fingers, smoothing back my hair, offered the gentlest caress I ever knew; as different from my Aunt Charlotte's loving hug as from my mother's cool kiss. Smiling again, sitting a little more erect, she said softly,

“Do you ever recollect, dear, our first conversation of all? In my bedroom, the night I arrived?”

I said I remembered it very well. Even in the midst of so much distress my conceit hoped she was going to remind me how she had asked me to be her little friend, and perhaps thank me because I so beautifully
was
. But she skipped that part.

“I asked whether I wasn't causing a great flutter here,” pursued Fanny Davis. “And I remember that you—dear honest little creature!—said no. What should you say to-day?”

This time I answered unhesitatingly. Had I not a lustre-ware plate actually in my hand?—And though this was but a trifle beside the changes in my aunts, and the changed aspect of the parlour, and the changed bearing of my Uncle Stephen, it somehow symbolised all.

“You've changed
everything
,” said I.

She laughed softly, and lay back again on her cushions. I have said that illness made very little difference to her looks: I never saw her so nearly pretty, as at that moment.

2

I didn't tell her.

Not because my aunts trusted me, nor because I feared the effect of what I had to tell upon Fanny's innocent confidence; simply because I couldn't. All children know this tongue-tiedness. (All children keep a great deal in their lives dark, not because they wish to, but because an almost physical impediment stops their mouths. Children are bullied by schoolmates, or mistreated by servants, without telling;
sooner
than tell—since a word in the right quarter might end their pains.) I, in my dilemma, simply found myself as it were over-ruled by this universal law of childhood; and didn't tell, because I couldn't.

My distress of mind was no less acute. I knew that Grace wasn't to be under-estimated, however boldly Charlotte fronted her: if Rachel was a reed, reeds, breaking, prick the hand. It was only by contemplating my Uncle Stephen that I was able to hold my spirits at anything like their normal pitch.

What the rest of the Sylvester men thought, or felt, at this time, I naturally didn't know. Fortunately Stephen was the only one who mattered, and recalling our conversation by the pig-styes I saw
him
—if all else failed, if he at last had to be brought into the quarrel—an ally perfectly indomitable. So long as he lived, he would never let Fanny be turned away. (Angrily—if
he
was content, why couldn't my aunts be? thought I. That his name hadn't been figured in their argument was something I forgot.) When I thought of my Uncle Stephen I grew almost comfortable again; saw my fears perhaps foolish, my aunts' angry words perhaps but an over-flow of ill-temper. (Never examining its roots: my aunts essentially the three most even-tempered women alive.) Shutting my eyes, then, blindfolding them as best I could, instead of
telling
Fanny I did exactly as my Uncle Stephen had urged me, and as my own amateur-doctoring prompted: I gave her what to-day would be called a build-up.

I expressed constant admiration of her short-cut hair. I said it looked like several pictures in the National Gallery.

Instead of persuading her to discourage her visitors, I became more than ever assiduous at their tea-table.

I let Miss Jones kiss me.

I changed library-books in Frampton even if I had to walk both ways.

I unweariedly filled my rôle of little friend, little maid, little toady. If I didn't quite fill my rôle of little messenger, it was because, as I have explained, I couldn't. I did everything possible for Fanny except tell; and if the omission sometimes made me feel guilty, at least I had my confidence in Stephen as excuse.