The Gypsy in the Parlour Read Online Free Page B

my other aunts Grace and Rachel, the implication—which I sensed—was quite wrong. I picked my words.
    â€œI 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.
    â€œThe 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.
    â€œSo 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.
    â€œAnd 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.
    That night, (I return to my return to my own room), a brilliant moonlight drew me irresistibly to the window. It had been so hot all day that the wood of the window-seat was still faintly warm; I tucked up my nightgown to kneel on bare knees; the sill was warm under my elbows. Yet in the court below—what ravishment!—the crab-tree appeared frosted, so meticulously did the moon’s white light rime every bough and twig. It was a little tree done in silver-point; and so beautiful, thus colourless, that I mentally renounced my chalks for ever. I stared out, ravished—and as I gazed, saw the tree’s cast shadow, (where