Free The Gypsy in the Parlour by Margery Sharp

never danced at all; possibly they knew themselves more impressive, at a ball, in repose.—But when Charles asked her, Fanny stood up; and made a wonderful show too, whisking her peacock train over the floor.…
    â€œâ€™Twas then I gave Charlotte best,” said my Aunt Grace, who at, this point joined our conversation. “Right and left beside me I heard females guessing to its price. ‘’Tis a proper piece of Sylvester pride,’ I heard ’un say; naturally taking no note.”
    Fanny had in fact been the belle of the ball—dancing, when the Lord-Lieutenant asked her, with him too, and dancing after that with her own Stephen. (“Who made a proper bees’-nest of it,” said my Aunt Grace. “No Sylvester knowing straw-foot from hay-foot—save Charlie, who’m travelled.”) So they came home in great triumph; my Aunt Charlotte particularly glorying in the figure cut by her son.…
    It was like her that she gloried almost as much in Fanny. She had indeed in a sense made Fanny, re-created Fanny’s whole personality, by the gift of the peacock gown; a lesser woman might still have been jealous.—They were none of them jealous. Even Fanny’s break with tradition by dancing delighted them—all Sylvesters reflecting each other’s glory: whatever the neighbourhood expected, it hadn’t expected that , and its bedazzlement was the completer. “What did I tell ’ee!” cried Charlotte, beaming right and left like a midnight sun. “What did I say to ’ee, Mrs. Brewer? Mrs. Pomfret, what did I tell ’ee? Haven’t our Stephen brought home the beautifullest bride yet?”
    So they returned in great triumph. It was upon the heels of triumph, not of failure, that Fanny’s illness struck.
    Next morning, as Charlotte had told me, she didn’t find herself so well. This was at first put down to natural fatigue; she was given breakfast in bed. But she couldn’t stomach it. She wasn’t queasy, she just had no appetite. This again at first occasioned no alarm; Fanny always ate like a wren. But when by night-fall she still hadn’t eaten, and when, attempting to get up, she could totter no more than half-a-dozen steps, my aunts began to look at each other. The wedding was but two days off; a very poor thing ’twould look, if Fanny couldn’t march smartly up the aisle.…
    By the following afternoon they had the doctor over from Frampton. For all his cleverness—and no one set a broken leg, or a broken collar-bone, more expeditiously—he couldn’t put a name to what ailed Fanny. The one thing he said for certain was that it wasn’t catching; and advised, sensibly enough, a week’s repose in a darkened room.
    When Charlotte pointed out that Fanny couldn’t repose next day, because she was going to be married, Dr. Lush pulled at his beard and said he’d better have a word with the patient alone. This Charlotte naturally refused, seeing no reason in the world to do otherwise; moreover Fanny from her bed stretched a hand—a hand already pale, already an invalid’s—to detain her. (“And very right and proper too,” said my Aunt Charlotte. “Fanny behaved most proper all along.”)
    â€œDear Dr. Lush,” whispered Fanny Davis, “dear Mrs. Toby knows all. I would go to my Stephen if it meant my death. If I can be carried into church—let me be carried.”
    Charlotte and Dr. Lush looked at each other. What risk he might run, if he let Fanny be put on a stretcher and so borne to her wedding, I suppose he didn’t quite know. No doctor likes a patient to die in public, especially with, so to speak, his permission. Charlotte’s answering glance put him out of a dilemma.
    â€œUs must wait,” said Charlotte decidedly. “Let a week pass: ’twill do no harm. Let Fanny get back her strength, which have so mysteriously departed, by