The Gypsy in the Parlour (7 page)

“Fanny's not found herself quite so well,” said my Aunt Charlotte, carefully. She didn't make any move towards the house; perhaps she meant to answer all my questions first. “From the very morning after the Assembly, her found herself very poorly indeed.… So us had Dr. Lush over from Frampton, who bade she wait a while, before so great an undertaking as marriage …”

“But that's a year ago,” said I—scarcely less bewildered. “Isn't she better
yet?
”

“Us do greatly fear,” said my Aunt Charlotte gravely, “her be in a decline.”

At these solemn words—amongst the most solemn in the whole medical vocabulary of the period—my heart, I regret to say, not only quivered in sympathy, but also, very slightly, leapt. Declines were scarcely less interesting than marriages to me, and in any case Fanny's wedding would have been over.—I suppose my excitement must have shown in my face, for Charlotte immediately added.

“And 'ee b'aint to go bothering and questioning she, since peacefulness be her only hope, if she'm ever to wed without disaster; and when 'ee sees her after tea, 'ee must mind and speak softly, for noise her cannot abide.”

We went into the house. Usually I
rushed
in—calling out to my aunts, clattering up the stairs, dashing down again to the kitchen—but Charlotte's quiet, almost cautious step controlled mine. We went upstairs quietly. My new bed-chamber flaunted its promised new curtains, big pink roses on a yellow ground, and a new square of pink carpet made a rosy island in the middle of the floor. I so genuinely admired these beauties, my praises satisfied everyone. (The door of my old chamber was shut; I tiptoed past, under the mistaken impression that Fanny lay resting behind it. She in fact lay resting in the parlour.) Tea was magnificent, with all my favourite cakes, to show how glad my aunts were to have me back.—But in a sense all this was but my journey over again; I now longed only to see, and talk with, Fanny Davis.

The promised moment, like the moment of my arrival, was reached at last. My Aunt Rachel slipped into the parlour, and emerged with a tray; my Aunt Charlotte led me to the door. “Fanny?” called my Aunt Charlotte softly. “Can 'ee see a visitor from London?” Within, a low affirmative murmur replied. I pushed open the door, and shot through.

2

All poised as I was to fly to Fanny's side, I was nonetheless pulled up, held a moment absolutely dumb and motionless on the threshold, by the changed aspect of my aunts' parlour.

It had turned into a sick-room.

It was a most minor detail that I noticed first: the lustre-ware was no longer in the cabinet. Nothing replaced it, the shelves were empty; and this at once gave the whole room an air, not of disuse, but of being used for some unaccustomed purpose.—Very noticeably, there was less light: the red brocade curtains, that used to be caught back by gilt rosettes, hung almost across the windows. Thus much less sun could enter, and what did missed, by intent, both prisms and andirons; in the hearth burned a small fire, fire- and sun-light oppose each other. Everything was
dimmed
. If I hadn't known already that the person on the sofa was sick, I should have guessed it at once.…

“Is that my little friend?” breathed Fanny Davis. “Come closer, dear.”

I advanced. She was lying on a sofa. I recognized it as new. She was fully dressed, but had arranged over her knees, as a coverlet, my Aunt Charlotte's Paisley shawl. On a little table at her side a novel and a plate of plums completed the picture.

I was most relieved to see she didn't
look
as ill as might have been expected. She had never had much colour, and now had no less; she didn't even look much thinner. What startled me was her hair, which was cropped short.—In those days, I think invalids were cropped almost on principle; certainly cropping—
“All her pretty hair cut off!”
—featured regularly in cooks' novelettes. But since Fanny Davis' hair hadn't been pretty at all, the damage to her appearance was trifling. All in all, I, who hated, like most children, the ugliness of the sick, was enormously relieved.

“My little friend from London!” whispered Fanny Davis.

She held out her hand. I took it cautiously. It lay in my own small and weightless as a bird's claw.

“I'm so sorry to hear you're not well,” said I. (The scene was really solemn; I felt it called for formality. Of course if it had been Charlotte lying there I would have cast myself into her lap, I would have cried and hugged and kissed, and probably been turned out.) And evidently I struck the right note: with a gentle smile Fanny pressed my hand, and observed that my coming was a great comfort to her.

In a low voice, I said I was glad. There was a brief pause, like a pause on the stage.—I cannot tell why I thought of this, but for a moment we really did seem like characters in a play—Fanny the heroine, I her little comfort. Perhaps it was because I had spoken so beautifully; certainly Fanny's long sigh, at last breaking silence, was beautiful and artistic too.

“For here I lie alone all day,” sighed she, “
all
too busy, most naturally, to come near! But now I've my little friend back; and what more can a poor invalid ask?”

I was so moved, I couldn't speak. Still holding Fanny's hand, I dropped to my knees by her sofa; and as she gently stroked my hair thrust my head closer, to spare her effort.—So pressing a cheek to Charlotte's Paisley shawl; but how oblivious, for the moment, of Charlotte!

“This,”
said Fanny softly, “is what I have so longed for! I've always felt, dear, such sympathy between us … And mayn't we have pleasant times together still—weak and dull as I am—so long as we can share sympathy?”

I enthusiastically agreed. I already yearned to do all in my power to console her.—It was perhaps witless, however—I actually made the offer still in my new, low voice—to propose playing ‘Chopsticks' to her straight away. She shuddered. But seeing my crestfallen look at once put out her hand again, and again smoothed back my hair.

“Such pretty, pretty hair!” murmured Fanny Davis. “And such pretty, pretty music! It's just that a bird at the window, dear, sets my foolish nerves a-flutter. But you shall be with me, if you will, all day long; and amuse me with London talk, and tell me just how many parties your mamma gave last winter; and run in and out from the house, like a little Queen's Messenger, bringing me all the news … Will you, dear?”

I promised eagerly. I promised to run in and out continually, even when there was no news at all.

“Just what's said, just what's thought, will interest me,” breathed Fanny Davis. “My little friend!”

I don't remember our talking, that evening, very much more. I just sat by the sofa holding Fanny's hand. Though there were a great many questions I longed to ask—whether it didn't feel very dreadful, for instance, suddenly
not
to get married; and why, and what had happened—not delicacy alone, nor my Aunt Charlotte's injunctions, tied my tongue. The whole atmosphere of the parlour, dim, over-warm, which I wasn't then accustomed to, conduced to a mood I can only, and best, describe as—
accepting
. As Fanny, apparently, accepted her affliction, so I accepted it too. (I was later to discover the same attitude in my Uncle Stephen.) Even the changed aspect of the parlour was acceptable; its new quiet, its new dimness, so obviously necessary to sustain Fanny's flickering spark of life. I noticed my aunts' famous clock no longer ticking, its sun suspended in mid-course; when Fanny told me how the chimes bruised her nerves, I instantly accepted its silencing as necessary … Unless we spoke, the parlour was perfectly still; which stillness only a boor could have broken with interrogations.

So I didn't put any questions to Fanny. I still didn't want to go away. The fascination of Fanny Davis' society had never depended on straight answers to straight questions: it lay rather in questions
un
answered, in the aura of mystery with which everything about her, even to her illness, seemed to surround itself. (Might I not perhaps, in the long summer that stretched ahead,
find out
?) I should have been quite happy sitting on and on till bed-time, I felt reluctant as though it were winter to leave Fanny's fire; and when my Aunt Charlotte fetched me for supper, scuffed reluctantly out.

3

Something else was changed, at the farm: my Uncle Tobias sat in his father's place.

Seeing him that night at supper at the head of the table, I didn't think much of it. My mind was full of Fanny Davis: I had forgotten, during a year's absence, how ritually old Mr. Sylvester's chair, when he didn't eat with us, was left vacant. Latterly he had occupied it less and less; my aunts put him to bed like a baby. Tobias heading the table therefore seemed matter-of-course to me; of my uncles I had eyes only for Stephen, whom I was rather pleased than not to find interestingly haggard. (What
he
must have suffered! That was something else I had to find out.) My uncles, always silent, were no more so than usual, my aunts as usual conversed between themselves. But I think my Aunt Charlotte was watching me; I think she observed that I did
not;
and that night after I was in bed came with practical kindness to tell me as much as I needed to know.

Old Mr. Sylvester was dead; but it made no difference.

I understood at once. Even I had seen that for years he played no part in life:
I
remembered him only as the little old, white falcon, blinking on his perch in a warm corner. In his warm corner, I heard now, he had at last blinked out his life; departing so quietly, with so little warning, there wasn't even time to call his sons. Charlotte alone saw him away—Grace running out to the fields, Rachel to the byres, when they so suddenly perceived his hands loosen on his knees, and his head drop down on his breast, and the death-sweat break on his forehead, just as he sat, just as usual, in the sun, by the kitchen-window. My Aunt Charlotte stayed to ease him with a grip of her hand.—“So large-fisted as I be,” said Charlotte, “and so dim his poor eyes at last, I do trust he took I for Tobias.” For by the time his sons tramped in, he was gone.

If I was a good deal affected, it was chiefly for the simple reason that old Mr. Sylvester was the first person I ever knew who had died. He had
been
, and no longer was. I was also, at this time, slightly religious, with a tendency to contemplate hell; and I had liked Mr. Sylvester just sufficiently to worry, just a little, about where he'd gone. My Aunt Charlotte relieved me at once.

“'Ee and I, I do trust, be both Christians,” said she. “Mr. Sylvester, by token of all him ever said or acted, was so pagan as a savage. Nonetheless, seeing what fine property him bequeathed Tobias, and regarding moreover the gentleness of his latter years, us may hope to meet he in Paradise. Be us worthy,” added my Aunt Charlotte severely, “for ruffian as he was, on my first acquaintance wi' he, his last days gave no more offence than a babe unborn's.…”

She had the largest charity of any woman I have ever known.—Long afterwards I learned that she first supported, then apprenticed, no fewer than three of his bastards in Frampton. It didn't cost so much, in those days; but my Aunt Charlotte also dispatched to each, each Christmas, a fine fruity cake; and still held her father-in-law's memory respectable.

CHAPTER VII

1

So the summer, my long, golden, love-filled summer—the period of the year I lived by, the months that sustained me through the winter—opened again. I laid my rather shabby, rather mended summer-garments in an unfamiliar bureau; each drawer nonetheless breathed lavender—even the bottom one, which had some men's shirts in it. My unfamiliar room was so pretty, I soon grew fond of it. I ran to see the new calves, and found one kept for me to christen. I chose the name of Hercules, which my aunts found remarkably clever. The farm cat had kittens, and I christened them too, with what names I cannot recall; they were probably drowned immediately afterwards. All was just as beautiful as I remembered it, and just the same—with the added interest of Fanny's decline.

I spent at least half my day in the parlour, outwardly a ministering child, amusing her with London talk, but secretly studying her case; for it had early occurred to me what a wonderful thing it would be
if I could cure her
.

I knew a good deal about declines. A friend of my mother's had a daughter who had been in one for years. Declines also occurred frequently in cooks' novelettes: the symptoms therein described tallied accurately with Miss Agnew's. So did the causes—disappointment in love, or parental worldliness. Mrs. Agnew went to the opera, and Susan Agnew was so plain no suitor ever jilted her, for the reason that she never had one—so she was disappointed as completely as possible. With all this expertise at my finger-tips I felt I knew just as much about declines as Dr. Lush; and I dare say I was right.

What chiefly baffled
me
, in Fanny's case, was the cause. I couldn't discover one to fit. Fanny hadn't been disappointed in love, quite the contrary: she had been on the very brink of getting married to the man of her choice. (The question whether her parents had been worldly I sensibly put out of court.) I racked my brains, but found them stupider than I'd expected. All I could imagine was that something had
happened
.—But what, and when? I remembered the Assembly, on the very morrow of which Fanny had been struck down. I remembered a harrowing title—
Cut by the County
. The heroine of this tragedy, beautiful and virtuous but of humble birth, was cut almost to death. It occurred to me that if Fanny's first public appearance had in any spectacular way failed, if
she
had been generally snubbed, that might at least have started her off.

This theory was instantly exploded—for if I couldn't question Fanny I could at least question my aunts, and did, remorselessly—this theory was instantly exploded by my Aunt Rachel.