The Return of the Gypsy by Philippa Carr Page B

of caring … with Evie and with me. Evie was afraid to tell her. I shall never forget the day she learned that her lover was dead and we shouldn’t be going away with him after all. She kept saying, ‘What shall I do?’ I said we’d tell Granny and we’d stand together and we’d manage somehow. But, you see, she could not bring herself to tell Granny. She chose to drown in the river instead. Granny blamed herself for that, and when she knew that I was going to have a child it brought it all back to her. She was going to stand by me. That was why she went to Polly Crypton’s on that night.”
    “I’m so sorry, Dolly. You know we’ll do everything … everything we possibly can.”
    “Yes. Madame Sophie wants to help me. So do the two Mrs. Frenshaws. I’ll be all right.”
    Jeanne was calling that Aunt Sophie was ready to see me. I touched Dolly’s hand gently and as I ran into the house I was still seeing Romany Jake standing there in the light of the bonfire and wondering what would have happened … if I had danced with him as Dolly had done.
    By the time spring came, people ceased to talk much about Dolly and her coming child. No one seemed to think very harshly of her. I suppose it is only when people envy others that they revel in their misfortunes. Nobody ever envied Dolly. “Poor Dolly,” they all said, even the most humble of them. So if she had had her hour of abandoned passion and this was the result—about which she was delighted—who was to grudge her that?
    She spent a great deal of time at Enderby. Aunt Sophie was quite excited at the prospect of the coming child. Jeanne Fougere made all sorts of nourishing dishes, and Dolly seemed to like to be cossetted. Aunt Sophie said that when the time came she must go to Enderby. The midwife should be there and Jeanne would look after her. My mother commented that she had rarely seen Sophie so happy.
    Soon it was summer. The war with France dragged on. One grew used to it and a little bored by it. It seemed there was always war with France and always would be.
    It was the end of June. Dolly’s baby was expected in July. Aunt Sophie insisted that Dolly leave Grasslands and take up her residence at Enderby and Dolly seemed happy to do so. She was completely absorbed in the coming baby and it was wonderful to see her so contented. For as long as I could remember she had been mourning her sister Evie and had been very much her grandmother’s prisoner. Now she was free and that which she wanted more than anything—a child of her own—was about to come to her.
    “It’s a strange state of affairs,” said my mother. “That poor girl with her illegitimate child … the child of a wandering gypsy… and there she is for the first time in her life really happy.”
    “Yes,” added Claudine, “even in the days when Evie was alive, she was overshadowed by her. Now she is a person in her own right… about to be a mother, no less.”
    “I do hope all goes well for her,” said my mother fervently.
    Jeanne had taken one of the cradles from the Eversleigh nursery and had made flounces of oyster-coloured silk for it. It was a glorious affair by the time Jeanne had finished with it. There was a room at Enderby called “the nursery”; and Aunt Sophie talked of little else but the baby. Jeanne was making baby clothes—very beautiful ones at that—and Aunt Sophie embroidered them.
    It certainly was an extraordinary state of affairs, as my mother said.
    The few servants who had been at Grasslands resided chiefly at Enderby now, going to Grasslands only a few times a week to be sure the place was kept in order.
    When I walked past it I thought it had a dead look. It would soon have the reputation Enderby used to have. David had said that a house acquired a ghostly reputation because the shrubs were allowed to enshroud it, giving it a dark and sinister appearance. It was not the houses themselves which were haunted; it was the reputation they were given, and people