The Gypsy in the Parlour (24 page)

I have always thought Clara Blow remarkably generous in her reporting of Fanny's speeches. She never played them down, if anything she polished them up. (She was a great patron of melodrama.) This one, said Clara, would have touched a heart of stone.

Fortunately my Aunt Charlotte's partook more of the nature of oak.

“What my brother Stephen be ignorant of as yet,” said she stolidly, “him shall learn upon the instant us returns. That is, do 'ee return with I, Fanny Davis; and for all his kind, forgiving nature, knowing what him shall, and against the word of all his kindred, him'll not take 'ee to wife, Fanny Davis. Howsoever—” the oak being the noblest of trees, and my Aunt Charlotte carved from its heartwood—“howsoever,” continued she, “I do acknowledge, and with Miss Blow a most sensible and experienced person to witness, certain lightness on my son Charlie's part in his dealings wi' 'ee. Therefore, morning-time, us may make rounds of a milliner or two, I having noted more than one announcement on my travels, seeking experienced bonnet-hands. And do a matter of five-ten pounds be needed, to give 'ee proper standing or partnership, that Sylvesters shall furnish. Now b'aint it getting late?”

This unexpected conclusion, rhetorically perhaps weak, in effect couldn't have been bettered, because it
was
. Even for Jackson's, it was getting late. Tables were filling, Taffy Griffiths was due, and the life of the Saloon, like the life of the farm, carried on across all human hazards. Charlotte, who had been listened to by both Charlie and Clara Blow with extreme admiration, by these last words returned them to their proper business. Clara started towards the kitchen, my Cousin Charles flexed his shoulders; and this sudden switch took the wind from Fanny's sails. It was as though the strong vitality of the Sylvesters, of Clara Blow, even of the Saloon itself, once again and for the last time elbowed her aside.

“Speak out your mind if 'ee wish, though there be none to hear,” said my Aunt Charlotte comfortably. “In my opinion, 'ee'd do better to revolve what all must consider very fair words; which, in my opinion again, 'ee can do best in bed. Can 'ee endure to pass another night with I, Fanny Davis?”

Fanny snapped. Caught in a trap of her own making, she snapped.

“Certainly!” said she. “Just so Sylvesters can foot the bill, certainly!—if you're not afraid I'll stuff
poison
down your throat!”

“Did I think 'ee had means of procuring it, maybe I'd not take the chance,” said Charlotte placidly. “Moreover, I hear London police-chaps be uncommon sharp. Charlie bor, fetch we a cab.”

So that night too they slept side by side.

2

My Aunt Charlotte devoted the whole of Thursday to Fanny Davis.

She was no longer worried about Charles. She knew where he was, and why, and perceived his return home now simply a matter of paying his railway-fare: Fanny she had still on her hands, a Sylvester responsibility. A lesser woman might have felt all responsibility cancelled by Fanny's behaviour; my Aunt Charlotte worked it out in her mind, and could subsequently give Grace and Rachel excellent reasons for every act. Stephen undeniably bore Fanny from Plymouth, her native place—where presumably she would have behaved better, and Charlie undeniably turned her head at the Assembly, and made she promises he'd no business to, and by raising her ambitions paved the way to all following wickedness: wherefore Sylvesters, though naturally anxious, and entitled, to rid themselves of she, had still the duty to Fanny Davis of seeing her decently placed.

The pair of them therefore spent Thursday going round bonnet-shops.

Fanny Davis went because there was nothing else she could do. She had no money, and even her return-ticket was in Charlotte's pocket. She had lost, and at some point during the night must have faced the fact. But she went unwillingly. Charlotte was astonished: to her mind the prospect of living in London should have been Fanny's best cure—so sophisticated as she was, with such a taste for urban life. In shop after shop, however, Fanny seemed determined to make the worst possible impression. When asked what experience she had, she replied, Only in the country. (“Plymouth be by some considered a town of size,” suggested Charlotte. “Not as regards fashion,” said Fanny Davis loudly. “As regards fashion, it's a
wilderness
.”) When asked if she were strong, she instantly said no, she was subject to fainting-fits; and in fact felt worse for London air. Only when asked what wages she would take were her standards metropolitan; and then so outrageously so, every prospective employer at once showed her the door.

The truth of course was that London had rebuffed Fanny Davis too thoroughly. She had been rebuffed at Jackson's, and rebuffed by my father. Even the streets rebuffed her; after her two-years' seclusion in our parlour she understandably found their noise and bustle terrifying. (She never summoned Charlotte's courage to see the sights. Except for her one foray to my home, and her cab-journeys to Jackson's, she spent her every London-moment in a double bedroom at the Flower in Hand.) And when at the end of Thursday's reconnoitring she cast all sophistication aside, and whimpered that if she were left in London she would die, my Aunt Charlotte, considering her peaked white face, was reluctantly forced to admit it possible.

When my Aunt Charlotte thought of Plymouth, it seemed a better plan still—so obviously, she wondered she hadn't pitched on it sooner. For wasn't Plymouth Fanny's home? (Charlotte, I believe, to the end of her days blamed Fanny's uprooting for all that followed. She was extraordinarily cautious, at the farm, of transplanting so much as a bush. She said all plants throve best where they rooted.) Wasn't Plymouth Fanny's home—filled with old friends, old associations? Wouldn't all old acquaintance there remember her, and cry, “Look, here's Fanny Davis back”?

These very considerations made Fanny prefer death in London. She had quitted Plymouth in some glory: cocked aloft, both physically and socially, upon a bridegroom's pony-cart; off to her wedding, bound for the desirable state of matrimony. One or two spinster-cronies, yellow with envy, actually threw old shoes … To return amongst them still spinster-named was more than flesh and blood, said Fanny Davis, could possibly endure; and hinted at making away with herself altogether in preference.

My Aunt Charlotte, munching pastry in the Flower in Hand's best bedroom, (Fanny too nervous to eat downstairs), after due consideration admitted this natural enough.

So it was they came round to Frampton; where Miss Jones, said Fanny Davis, had long sought genteel assistance; and whose privity to Fanny's sad past, by offering the relief of confidence, would make Fanny's present sad lot less totally unendurable …

3

I still find it almost incredible that this was in fact the solution.

Fanny Davis returned with Charlotte as far as Frampton, and was there set down to join forces with her friend Miss Jones. Some five-ten pounds was I believe put up for her, buying her into this most modest partnership, and in Frampton Fanny Davis, through all the years of my adolescence, fabricated bonnets for local swells.—Even for the Sylvesters. Her tongue never for a day left them alone, and the Sylvesters cared so little, my aunts regularly bought their bonnets from her. (“
Charlotte, what's she to do here?” “Trim up our bonnets,” said Charlotte, laughing
.) After my Cousin Charles married, his wife bought bonnets. I myself occasionally bought a chip straw hat. An extraordinary indifference to opinion, an unawareness of anything not directly touching
land
, carried my Sylvester connections through, or over, all.…

My Uncle Stephen's passage must have been the most painful; but he was so nearly a saint, he traversed it. We had to tell him. My Aunt Charlotte, I am sure with the greatest sympathy and feeling, told him—if not all, at least enough to make him resign himself. Fanny Davis was indeed recovered; but not sufficiently so to contemplate matrimony; and so preferred to return to her old avocation. “Her requiring,” explained my Aunt Charlotte, “some little bustle of business to keep up her spirits; which in our quiet life, how can us hope to furnish?” My Uncle Stephen, Sylvester-like, nodded a big, resigned head. He didn't seem very much put out. Bachelorhood was become second nature to him, and he never had thought himself worthy of Fanny Davis.—To her my Aunt Charlotte spoke less smoothly. “Though 'ee mayn't think Sylvesters able for much,” said she, “us can still run 'ee out of Frampton, do us care to tell a tale or two.” “Of Charles' jilting me?” rejoined Fanny coolly. “Can't
I
tell a tale of
him?
” “Ah, but 'ee be on the losing end of it,” said my Aunt Charlotte. “Live and let live, Fanny Davis; and before all things keep your wiles from my brother Stephen, for I'll not see he fooled twice. Why not have a try for Mr. Pascoe?” suggested my Aunt Charlotte. “'Ee be no worse-looking than Miss Jones?”

So Fanny Davis left my Uncle Stephen alone, while continuing to loose her venom on the Sylvesters. This proved extremely good for trade. In so quiet a neighbourhood any fresh local feud was always welcome as a source of entertainment, and if no one ever got to this one's exact root, no one the less enjoyed Fanny's shafts, so that it became rather a popular thing to buy bonnets off her, to hear what she'd say next.—Of this whole tale, I sometimes see this the most remarkable chapter. Fanny Davis, set up with Miss Jones as Frampton's fashionable milliner, to the end of her life enjoyed all Sylvester custom. Her tongue was never still, she abused, in casual conversation, to each least, casual customer, every one of my aunts. The stream of libel issuing from her shop supplied the scandal-pool of Frampton. My aunts never ceased to buy their bonnets from her. They said she made them fit properly to the back of the head. They cared no more for what Fanny said of them than for the braying of a gypsy's donkey, strayed back into the Sylvester court.

4

I return again to London. My Aunt Charlotte is not yet home.

She could really have come back on Friday. The several small matters to be settled with Clara Blow might have been attended to on Thursday evening, by cabbing round to the Saloon as usual. (My Aunt Charlotte's insouciant use of this phrase was a wonder and a joy.) That she didn't, and that she chose to spend a whole day more in London, was due solely to the fact that she was enjoying herself. Unlike Fanny Davis, she found London purely delightful—not that she'd care to bide there, she reassured us, but as a most wonderful, interesting sight to which even three-four days barely did justice. Her strong nerves, her strong self-confidence, carried her easily through all noise and bustle; she found Londoners, as has been said, most 'mazingly civil, and their shops proper masterpieces. Her own anxieties relieved, the thought that we at home might be anxious still never crossed her mind. (As regards all except myself she was of course right.) So she took Friday morning as a holiday, to look at the shops.

This morning Fanny Davis did not accompany her. She was too fatigued to stir, even at Charlotte's reminder that it was probably their first-and-last chance. Charlotte set out for Regent Street leaving Fanny Davis still in bed. (“I trust 'ee don't aim to play the same game twice,” said Charlotte. “If 'ee can't accompany I to the train tomorrow morning, Fanny Davis, in London 'ee'll have to bide.” Fanny murmured, for once sincerely, all she needed was a single day's rest.) Charlotte therefore set out alone, passed a most enjoyable morning, returned to the Flower in Hand for the only food she trusted, and there, to set the crown on her pleasure, and make her feel a proper Londoner indeed, found a note from Clara Blow.

Clara invited her specially to Jackson's that afternoon, because it was then Mr. Isaacs came in for his weekly review of the takings. Clara thought Mrs. Sylvester and Mr. Isaacs ought to meet. The urchin who bore this missive still lurked about the entry; Charlotte rewarded him with a slice of fruitcake, and cabbed round to Jackson's as usual.

The gist of what passed between her and Mr. Isaacs was of course known to all of us later; Clara Blow's own, more general report was that they got together straight off. They got together on chickens, and pigs; my Aunt Charlotte at once expanding Clara's original thought of chicken-dinners, (which both she and Mr. Isaacs saw as idealistic), to embrace such more workaday viands as sausages, trotters, and Bath chaps. Whatever she said, Mr. Isaacs listened to. (“Him 'course not half her size,” related Clara Blow, “and your Auntie, I don't know if you've ever noticed it, kind of naturally behaving like as if wherever she is belongs to her.”) For whatever reason, my Aunt Charlotte rapidly established over Mr. Isaacs such an empire, he readily agreed to accept, in London, whatever comestibles she could dispatch to him; which commercial treaty happily agreed, Charlotte retired to the kitchen with Clara Blow, took two-three minutes to settle two-three small matters of business with
her
, and cabbed it, (as usual), back to the Flower in Hand.

Her parting remark to Clara was that she'd had a very nice time.

Back at the Flower in Hand, she found Fanny Davis still prostrate. A whole last evening in London offered possibilities only to Charlotte. We never knew, we never knew for certain; but we think she went to a Music Hall.

CHAPTER XXVI

1

Thus when on the Saturday my Aunt Charlotte returned, she bore none but good news. Fanny Davis, shed on the way, at Frampton, at Miss Jones', was already paying her entertainment in scandal. What mattered it to us, at the farm? We had Charlotte's heartening tale to hear, we had the parlour to show Charlotte, I recall my Aunt Rachel and myself playing ‘Chopsticks' so late as seven o'clock. Even my uncles appeared pleased, by Charlotte's return: and she had all arguments out at once, publicly, over the supper-table, the moment she reassumed her place there. “Tobias,” said she, “your son Charlie have made the greatest fool of he alive, but what's past's to be let go by.” She paused; Tobias didn't speak. His side of the argument was conducted as usual in silence.—And indeed hardly existed: Charlotte, thoroughly back to her old form, rejuvenated by her London exploits, was in fettle to tame all my uncles put together, and in their prime, and the old man to boot, just as she'd tamed them thirty years earlier. “Howsoever,” continued Charlotte, “him being protected by what us may only call the natural Sylvester thick-headedness, all may yet turn for the best; so I'll just tell 'ee now all 'ee needs to know. Firstly, 'ee owes Stephen twenty pound. Secondly, Fanny Davis bides at Frampton, trimming bonnets wi' Miss Jones. Third and lastly, Charlie's to wed, and such a wife as him scarce deserves. Now let one of 'ee great images speak grace.”