The Gypsy in the Parlour (5 page)

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. They 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 …

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.…