The Gypsy in the Parlour (3 page)

They were no more jealous or disturbed than three big suns. When the letter came from Plymouth, whither Stephen had been sent after guano, my aunts laughed all morning. However'd he managed it, they demanded, with no woman to push him forward? “The cunning toad!” cried my Aunt Charlotte, wiping tears of laughter from her eyes. “If he b'aint the boldest Sylvester yet!”

The preparations went forward on a gale of hilarity. My aunts cooked every viand they could lay hands on, turned out the parlour, changed round all the furniture in a bedroom, and with half an hour to spare stood waiting as I have described them—hot, gorgeous and jocund—to welcome Stephen's bride.

It is 1870; I am eleven years old.

CHAPTER II

1

He entered first; then she, stepping close behind him: small, very slender, rather limply dressed in black or grey, on her head a small black straw hat. There was an air of the town about her; and of something else which I, (staring out from behind my aunts), couldn't immediately define. For an instant no one moved: the air was suddenly heavy, as though all the great house, all the broad fields beyond, pressed in upon us with a shared expectancy. From under the brim of her hat Miss Davis' swift, bright glance flickered once over the room, then dropped; my Uncle Stephen's hand never left her shoulder.—The next moment the spell was broken, my Aunt Charlotte had swooped forward—kissed the bride, kissed Stephen, passed them back to be re-kissed by Grace and Rachel, dragged me up too—but I kissed only Stephen—and the right uproar of welcome exploded like a feu de joie. I have said the parlour was like a hot-house. I was so hot myself, in my best alpaca, that I came close to being sick. I couldn't distinguish a word that was said, it was all one loud babel of greeting, questions, congratulation. Then Miss Davis was bustled away, my Uncle Stephen went to seek his brothers, and I was left alone.

I didn't know what to do with myself. So I sat down at the piano and played ‘Chopsticks.'

2

It was by now a characteristic of the Sylvester men that one could never tell what they were thinking. Such thoughts as they wished, or needed, to communicate, they put into words, otherwise they effortlessly preserved complete inscrutability. This trait was peculiarly apparent that night at supper, which was the first occasion of their meeting with Stephen's betrothed; they naturally hadn't come in, from harvesting, to see someone they would see daily for the rest of their lives. My Uncle Stephen presented her with due formality; in due order, starting with old Mr. Sylvester, the Sylvester men pronounced exactly as many words as were necessary for her due salutation; but whether Stephen's choice was any more than accepted—whether it was approved, or not approved—remained unknown. A Sylvester male was always rather silent at table, the better the fare, the less he spoke; and since my aunts had spread what was practically a marriage-feast, any apparent glumness meant nothing. But Stephen too relapsed into his home-manners, and the talk was left all to the women.

My three aunts talked splendidly.

I choose the word with intent. As a rule their continual loud conversation flowed in a spate of broad Devonian, varied by an occasional touch of Norfolk from Charlotte; but they had all received quite grand educations in their time, my Aunt Grace had even been to boarding-school, and when they chose they could out-niminy any lady in the shire. They did so now. With elegance and adjectives, with pronouns and prepositions each in the right place, they discoursed fashion, society and the arts. My Aunt Rachel had once witnessed, in Exeter, a performance of Hamlet; my Aunt Charlotte, in youth, had taken drawing-lessons with a pupil of Mr. Crome of Norwich; while my Aunt Grace shone particularly in the account of a charity-bazaar opened by the Duchess of Somerset.

I listened with awe. I peered eagerly at Miss Davis to see her bowled over. (Her first name was Myfanwy, which in Stephen's letter my aunts had hardly been able to make out; so they called her Fanny.) I couldn't see much of her, for she was placed directly the other side of my Uncle Matthew, it was like peering round a rock at a wren; but she seemed to be sitting quite composedly, attentive, but not dumbfounded … When she spoke it was always to agree: she too admired the works of Shakespeare; she too admired the landscapes of Mr. Crome; and if she had never seen the Duchess of Somerset, longed above all things to do so.…

She had a peculiarly sweet voice. I noticed it at once. It was low, small, (as one calls a singing-voice small), made musical by a faint Welsh lilt. It was a
wooing
voice. Yet when she spoke to
me
—peering in her turn round my Uncle Matthew to ask how old I was—I answered rather surlily. The voices I was used to, at the farm, were the big carrying voices of my Aunts Grace and Rachel and Charlotte; I was used to being, however lovingly,
bawled
at. This newcomer's sweetness struck me as something alien; and so I answered sulkily.

One naturally hadn't the least idea what the Sylvester men made of this cultured flow. If they were proud of their womenfolk they didn't show it, and if they were bored or bothered they didn't show that either. They simply and Homerically ate. I couldn't see my Uncle Stephen at all, he was on Miss Davis' farther side; whatever looks or words of affection they might have been exchanging, I couldn't see, or hear, either.

Immediately after the meal I was sent to bed. The consequences were as one would expect: I had consumed—my uncles, however otherwise oblivious of me, never neglected to heap my plate—enough rich and varied food to upset an alderman. I had wolfed raised-pie and custard-pie, spiced ham and cheese-cakes. I awoke, at what seemed to me long after midnight, still so oppressed by goblin-dreams that I slipped out of my bed and crept for reassurance to the never-failing succour of my Aunt Charlotte's strong hand.

(In the upbringing of children all that matters is love. My Aunt Charlotte encouraged me to over-eat, sent me over-early to bed, and when nightmares chased me out of it, smacked me. Each stage of this deplorable sequence was so informed by love that I never failed to return to peaceful sleep. Her big, offhand smack, like the cuff of an amiable lioness, carried more love with it than most kisses I have known since.)

As soon as I reached the landing, my mistake was apparent; even eleven hadn't struck. From below came the rumbling voices of my uncles—their tongues at last released from ceremony. I knew then that I had stumbled on the best time of all; the women had just come upstairs, I should find my Aunt Charlotte alone; she wouldn't have to lean out and just smack me cursorily, over my Uncle Tobias' huge bulk. She might even, after smacking me, let me stay and watch while she unplaited and brushed her hair. I padded on, already assuaged. But of the two doors I had first to pass, one stood ajar; curiosity impelled me to pause, and ferret a step forward, and look in; and at once the new, sweet voice addressed me.

“Is that the little girl? Come in, dear.”

I hesitated. But I had no reason to draw back, I was inquisitive, and my new aunt's voice was peculiarly alluring. (So soon I forgot that it was alien.) I went in. The room that had been given her wasn't small, none of the rooms were small, but it was comparatively bare; an enormous amount of space stretched in all directions round the shabby carpetbag half-emptied in the middle of the floor. Shyness made me fix my eyes on it: it had a pattern of big purplish roses, faded almost to the buff of the ground.

“Come closer, dear,” said Fanny Davis.

I approached. The dressing-table before which she sat was candle-lit; by their double flames we contemplated each other through the mirror. Without her hat, without the net she had worn at supper, my new aunt looked much younger. Her short dark hair, which she was brushing, stood out in a smoky bush, very soft and fine, yet peculiarly alive—as though it would crackle under the brush as mine did sometimes in a thunderstorm. But it wasn't what I have been brought up to consider pretty hair. It couldn't compare with my Aunt Charlotte's. The face it haloed was small and pale; the eyes looking back at me through the glass, grey, with short dark lashes, were to me unbeautiful. Altogether I marvelled how my Uncle Stephen, used to the splendid Sylvester women, could have fallen in love with such a thin, pale, dusky little gypsy.

Miss Davis smiled, and from the littered dresser picked out a small paper bag.

“Do you like sweets, little girl?”

This put me in something of a quandary. I did like sweets, and though I couldn't have eaten one exactly then, might have saved it till morning; but all my real aunts set their faces against shop-made confectionery. (They said it was kept under the shop-keepers' beds. Now and again, when they had time, they made me toffee; or sometimes I was allowed to make it for myself, from sugar and our own butter.) The sweets in the proffered bag were fat satiny cushions, suspiciously striped, and moreover the bag itself was imperfectly clean. I felt quite certain that my Aunt Grace would immediately have put all behind the fire. I was also afraid of catching scarlet fever. (Scarlet fever germs notoriously pullulating beneath shop-keepers' beds.) However, I had been specially instructed to be polite; so I took one, with an appropriate mumble.

“If you're my little friend, you shall have sweets every day,” promised Miss Davis. “Sit down, dear, on the bed, and talk to me.”

I sat, but found I had nothing to say. I was quite glad when she began to ask me questions.

“I suppose
I
must be causing a great flutter here?” suggested she.

I thought this over. Children often understand, when an adult questions them, what meaning underlies the surface words. Recalling my aunts' enormous activities both above and below stairs, I nonetheless replied, No. I said everyone just seemed pleased.

“Which is the very sweetest thing I could have heard!” cried Miss Davis; but paused a moment, while she brushed her hair right and left into a new halo. I waited. “My dear Stephen told me what I might expect,” said Miss Davis, brushing away, “but really, three such beauties!” Gathering that she meant my aunts, I nodded. “Still, Mrs. Toby is by far the handsomest. I'm sure
that's
generally accepted?”

Translating Mrs. Toby into my Aunt Charlotte, I muttered that I liked her hair.

“Beside which
mine
is no more than a sweep's mop?” agreed Miss Davis—I thought very properly. Even when she fluffed it out, it wasn't thick. “And as
Mr
. Toby's the eldest, and
she's
his wife—I suppose she has things pretty much her own way?”

I didn't know what to answer. Of course my Aunt Charlotte had things her own way—in the house; but as
her
way was so identically that of my other aunts Grace and Rachel, the implication—which I sensed—was quite wrong. I picked my words.

“I don't think there's any difference,” I explained. “I mean, all my aunts get their way, because it's the same.…”

My new Aunt Fanny regarded me, I thought, impatiently.

“The eldest is always the eldest,” said she—and suddenly, with that little characteristic flicker, dropped her eyes. “And which of your
uncles
do you think the handsomest?” she asked.

I said, Stephen. I knew he wasn't really, but I wished to give her pleasure. I thought it was with pleasure that she laughed.—Just a little jet of laughter, higher-pitched than her usual tones.

“So we agree on all points,” said Miss Davis. “I see you really
are
to be my little friend …”

I shifted uneasily on the bed. I was conscious that I ought really to be in my own. I was conscious that I hadn't, somehow, given the right answers to her questions. At the same time—and how often, during our relationship, was that phrase, that alternative, to recur!—at the same time, I was fascinated. The semi-secrecy of the whole episode: the swift motion of Miss Davis' fingers as, still earnestly regarding me, she plaited up her hair; even the two big tortoiseshell combs with which at last she pinned it—all was unusual, and therefore fascinating. At last she fell silent, sitting to look, with a long scrutinizing gaze, at her own reflection; and I got up off the bed. She turned.

“And what do I get, for my bag of sweets?” she asked. “Don't I get a kiss?”

I wasn't sufficiently fascinated not to hesitate. She rose, and swiftly, soundlessly, like a moth, dipped towards me past the candles. Her kiss was pressing, and very soft. As I bundled myself from the room I heard her laugh.

I didn't pad on, that night, to my Aunt Charlotte's room beyond. I went back to my own.

3

What I am now about to relate is what I physically saw.

My window overlooked a small grass-plot in which grew a crab-apple. That I have not mentioned this crab before must not be allowed to diminish its importance: in a way it was as much a triumph of my Aunt Charlotte's as was her parlour, for a pippin would have flourished there equally: the crab grubbed up, one might have planted a Cox's Orange. My Aunt Charlotte kept the crab, for no other reason than its prettiness.

It was the prettiest thing I had ever seen. (Or, for that matter, ever have seen.) Its slender trunk was most exquisitely canopied by a small pagoda of brilliant, rustling leaves: for its fruits, delicately warming, with summer, from ivory to coral, I never found a comparison until many years later I observed the bill of a black swan. Charlotte, when they were ripe, could have made jelly from them—which would have given the tree some sort of economic standing; that she didn't was yet one more proof of her remarkable character. She'd made Tobias spare that tree, she once told me, for its prettiness alone, when she came as a bride; she wouldn't climb down now and make jelly.—I threw myself into eager support of such aestheticism, and strove for hours, with a paper and a box of crayons, to immortalise the beauty of our crab.