The Gypsy in the Parlour (6 page)

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.

They were, naturally, mahogany. All the furnishings were excellent, which was another reason why our house was so dark. What was good, at that period,
was
dark. Dark mahogany, dark oak; dark wallpapers, dark velvet curtains; even the most violent aniline dyes—purple and magenta and spinach-green—soon darkened, in London, to a uniform prune-colour. All our clothes were dark too, so as not to show the dirt. It was a curious yet typical fact that what might have been my one touch of exoticism—the one garment my mother brought me home from Paris—was a black school-child's blouse. I wore it to do my home-work.

The winter passed. I had nothing to complain of. I wasn't actively unhappy at school. I was rather a clever child. I never knew the misery of a bad report. Also I had a friend. Her name was Marguerite, her father was an important banker, so I was allowed to bring her home to tea on Saturdays. I didn't like her much, but she was my friend. On my other half-holiday, Wednesday, I was walked in Kensington Gardens by a cook. I necessarily employ the indefinite article because my mother changed them, or they changed her, so constantly. Most little girls walked with a governess or parlourmaid; I went to school, and our own Toptree was so experienced and well-trained, my mother wouldn't risk losing her by even suggesting a duty she would certainly have refused. Cooks were another matter; cooks simply couldn't be kept at all. (Fortunately for myself they all took in novelettes. I got on with them all.) Our regular promenade was the Broad Walk, the grass being nearly always considered too damp for my boots: cooks also liked the Broad Walk because it led insensibly towards Kensington, with its High Street and its drapers, and also, I fear, its public houses. A cook abandoning me, as sometimes happened, to go and ‘look at the shops,' more often than not returned smelling strongly of trifle. I naturally never mentioned this. Children and servants have to connive, and I was always glad of the opportunity to run on grass. Some cooks looked at my boots, some didn't. Some brought me back peppermints, accepting one themselves. I grew, in time, as expert on cooks as other children on guinea-pigs; a cook-fancier.…

I had nothing to complain of, but I dreamed of the farm almost every night.

I also, once, dreamed of my Cousin Charles.

I dreamed that one evening, when my parents were dining out, I drifted alone into the empty drawing-room. It was about eight o'clock: I had had my supper. I didn't go to bed till half-past. So I wandered into the drawing-room, and thence looked out through a window upon the street below.

A man stood looking up at me.

Or if not at me, at our house. He stood just as Fanny Davis stood under the crab, motionless, most fixedly at gaze. I recognized him for Charles immediately. I put my hand on the sash to throw up the window and call out to him; once again I was too late. The glass was still between us as I called ‘Charles!' to him, as
he
moved, turned, and with his swift, lounging stride walked away.

I never dreamed of him again, much as I tried. I thought about him whenever I thought of the farm. But I was still too essentially a child to fit him into the shape one might have expected, I never imagined him the man of my choice adumbrated by Fanny Davis. Charles was real, and a real suitor would have terrified me. I did most earnestly hope he would be
there
, when I got back, but chiefly because I hoped he might take me fishing. I didn't think my Uncle Stephen would. I already foresaw matrimony, even with my beloved Fanny Davis, ranging him with his elder brothers as a silent, adult Sylvester. I was rather remarkably well prepared for his taking no further notice of me; but I thought that if Charles, (so much nearer to me in age), was at all interested in fishing, or birds'-nests, he might make my next summer at the farm the best summer of all …

So the winter wore away. At Easter, I coughed noticeably. I didn't cough enough to be sent to Devon. My brothers came home for the holiday, and as usual ignored me. Their grander friends occasionally lunched with us; I was permitted to invite Marguerite, (her father so prominent a banker), and found a certain satisfaction in seeing her ignored too. (Prematurely; my elder brother Frederick eventually married her. It was she who left him, in 1906, for a dubious Austrian count.) Summer term received me willingly back to school; I got through it, did well in my examinations, and began to cough again. Actually I needn't have bothered: it was thoroughly accepted, it was found an admirable trouble-saving arrangement, that I should spend my summers at the farm.

I now travelled alone. I was twelve, and had made the journey so many times before. By the time I reached Exeter my ankles ached through pushing the floor with my feet, to make the train go faster: whenever a London-bound train rattled past, I quivered with apprehension lest my Cousin Charles should be among its passengers. But I arrived, at last I arrived—and there, at the gate, stood my Aunt Charlotte.

3

She had thrown over her head a light scarf or shawl, which made her look a little different; but her big welcoming hug winded me just as usual. I gasped, half-smothered, on her bosom—hay and lavender, hay and lavender!—kissed her, came up for air, and instantly asked if Charles was still there.

She laughed.

“What a memory 'ee do have! No, my lamb, Charlie b'aint here. He bided no more than two-three weeks.…”

I felt my heart drop. I was so chagrined, and I knew so unreasonably, that to cover my disappointment I said the first thing that came into my mind. I asked if Fanny had a baby.

My Aunt Charlotte hesitated.—I looked at her in astonishment. It always and beautifully happened that the moment I reached the farm every London-inhibition dropped from tongue and spirit. In London, I still officially believed in gooseberry-bushes, and never dreamed for a moment of admitting to better sense; at the farm, I interestedly worked out dates. Now, to my enormous surprise, my Aunt Charlotte turned on me a look as disconcerted, as embarrassed, as would have been my mother's.…

But at least she explained. Obviously she had to. For her explanation—which included another, why Fanny Davis never wrote to me about her wedding—was simply that no wedding had taken place.

Fanny Davis and my Uncle Stephen weren't married. Fanny was still living at the farm, and still as Stephen's betrothed; but the wedding hadn't taken place.

CHAPTER VI

1

There was enough in this to drive all else from my mind. I stood there at the gate, staring up at my Aunt Charlotte, waiting for her to go on. Fanny hadn't married my Uncle Stephen, but was still betrothed to him; there hadn't been a wedding—so
I
shouldn't have been bridesmaid; so no wonder Fanny never wrote to me.… If I set down such phrases, so disjointedly, it is to mirror my absolute bewilderment. “But
why
—?” I demanded of my Aunt Charlotte. “What
happened?
” I had some idea, I leapt to some wild notion, of aristocratic relations belatedly springing up to forbid Fanny's vows; my Aunt Charlotte's further explanation quelled it.