"I've changed my mind about 'e, Mary," said the wise woman. "I'm terrible
unwilling to tell young people concerning the future as a rule--for why?
Because the future of most people be cruel miserable, and it knocks the
heart out of the young to hear of what's coming; but you'm a sensible
girl, and don't want to go through life blind. And another thing is this:
'tis half the battle to be fore-warned; and a brave man or woman can often
beat the cards themselves, and alter their own fate--if they only know it
in time."
After all this rigmarole Charity Badge bade Mary take a seat at the table.
Then she drawed the blind, and lighted a lamp; and then she fetched out a
pack of cards and her seeing-crystal. 'Twas all done awful solemn, and
Mary Tuckett without a doubt felt terrible skeered even afore t'other
began. Then Mrs. Badge poured a drop of ink into her crystal--some said
'twas only the broken bottom of an old drinking glass; but I don't know
nothing about that. Next she dealt out the cards, and fastened on the Jack
o' hearts and the Jack o' oaks,[1] and made great play with 'em. And,
after that, she sat and gazed upon the crystal with all her might, and
didn't take her eyes off of it for full five minutes.
[1] Oaks--Clubs.
"Now list to me, Mary Tuckett," she says, "and try to put a bold face on
what be coming, for there's trouble brewing for 'e--how much only you
yourself can tell."
With that she read out the fortune.
"There's a dark, rich man after you, Mary. He's fierce as a tiger, and the
folk don't like him, but he's good at bottom, and he'll make you a proper
husband. But there's another chap who have more right to you according to
the cards, and I see him in the crystal very plain. He's flaxen curled
with a straight back and a fighting nose, and blue eyes. Very great at
horsemanship seemingly, and he'll have you for a wife, so sure as death,
unless something happens to prevent it. He's on the way to you this
minute. He's the Jack o' hearts; and t'other man's Jack o' oaks. Now hold
your breath a bit while I look in the crystal and see what happens.
"Good powers!" cried the girl, creaming with terror down her spine. "'Tis
Nathan Coaker as you be seeing! I thought he'd forgot me a year agone!"
"Hush! Don't be talking. No, he ain't forgot you by the looks of it. Quite
the contrary."
Mary went white as curds, and sat with her hands forced over her heart to
hear what the wise woman would see next.
"Them men will meet!" she said, presently. "There! They crash together and
fight like dragons! There'll be murder done, but which beats t'other I
can't tell yet. The picture's all ruffled with waves. That means the
future's to be hid--even from me. But one thing is only too clear;
there'll be a gashly upstore and blood spilled when Jack o' oaks meets
Jack o' hearts; and the end of it so far as you be concerned is that
you'll have no husband at all, I'm afeared--poor girl."
So that was the end of the fortune-telling, and Mary wept buckets, and
Mrs. Badge reminded her of the florin but wouldn't take it.
"No," she said, "money like that be nought in such a fix as you find
yourself. The thing is to help you if I can. I don't want to know no
names. 'Tis better I should not; but 'tis clear there's a fair, poor man
coming here to marry you; and there's a dark, rich man also wants to do
so. Now maybe I can help. Which of 'em is it you want to take? Don't tell
me no names. Just say dark or pale."
"The d-d-d-dark one," sobs out Mary. "I thought 'twas all off with the
pale one years ago, and I wouldn't marry him for anything
n-n-n-now--specially if he's so poor as when he went."
"And what'll you do for me if I can save you from him? I don't say I can,
for 'tis a pretty stiff job; but I might do so if I took a cruel lot of
trouble."
"I'll give you everything I've got, Charity--everything!" cries the girl.
"I'm afraid that ban't enough, my dear. Will you give me ten pound the day
you'm married to the dark one? That's a fair offer; and if I don't
succeed, I'll ax for nothing."
The girl jumped at that, and said she thankfully would do so; and Mrs.
Badge bade her keep her mouth close shut--knowing she would not--and let
her go. Poor Mary went off expecting to meet Nathan Coaker at every step
o' the road, and little knowing that the poor blid was sleeping his last
sleep in a grave in foreign parts to Ireland.
The very same evening she met Peter Hacker himself; and though he was a
chap without much use for religion, yet, like a good few other godless
men, he believed in a good bit more than he could understand, and hated to
spill salt, or see a single pie, and wouldn't have cut his nails on a
Friday for a king's ransom.
She told him that her old sweetheart, Nathan Coaker, was coming back, and
that blood would be spilled, and that the wise woman didn't know for
certain whether 'twas his blood or Nathan's. She wept a lot, and told him
about Coaker, and what a strong, hard chap he was, and how he had the
trick to ride over a woman's heart and win 'em even against their wills.
And altogether she worked upon the mind of Peter Hacker so terrible, that
he got into a proper sweat of fear and anger--but chiefly fear. And the
next day--unknown to Mary--he rode up along to Walna, and had a tell with
Charity Badge on his own account.
Peter began in his usual way with women. He blustered a lot, and talked
very loud and stamped his foot and beat his leg with his riding-whip.
"What's all this here tomfoolery you've been telling my girl?" he says. "I
wonder at you, Mrs. Badge, a lowering yourself for to do it--frightening
an innocent female into fits. You ought to know better."
Of course Charity did know better, and she knowed Peter and his character
inside out as well.
She looked at him, calm as calm, and smiled.
"I wish 'twas tomfoolery, Mr. Hacker. I wish from my heart that the things
I see didn't happen; but they always do, if the parties ban't warned in
time; though now and again, when a sensible creature comes to me and hears
what's going to overtake 'em, they can often escape it--as we can escape a
storm if we look up in the sky and know the signs of thunder and lightning
soon enough."
"'Tis all stuff and rubbish, I tell you," he said, "and I won't have it!
Fortune-telling be forbidden by law, and if I hear any more about you and
your cards and your crystal, I'll inform against you."
"You'd better be quick and do it, then, master," she answers him, still
mild and gentle, "for I'm very sorry to say there's that be going to
happen to you, as will spoil your usefulness for a month of Sundays or
longer; and that afore a fortnight's out. Of course, if you don't believe
what I know too well to be the truth, then you'll go your rash way and
meet it; but so sure as Christmas Day be Quarter Day, I'm right, and
you'll do far wiser to look after your own affairs than to trouble about
mine. And now I'll wish you good evening."
She made to go in, for Hacker was sitting on his horse at her very door;
but that weren't enough for him. His cowardly heart was shaking a'ready.
"Don't you go," he said. "I'll onlight and hear more of this."
He dismounted and came in the house; and Charity Badge bade me go out of
the kitchen, where I was to work, and leave 'em together, but I catched
what came after through the keyhole.
"Now," he said. "It lies in a nutshell. My Mary was tokened in a sort of
childish way to a man called Nathan Coaker--a horse-stealer or little
better, and a devil of a rogue, anyway. But it seems you looked in your
bit of glass and pretended to see--"
"Stop!" cried Charity, putting on her grand manner and making her eyes
flash like forked lightning at the man. "How do you dare to talk about
'pretending' to me? Begone, you wretched creature! I'll neither list to
you, nor help you now. Go to your death--and a good riddance. You to talk
about 'pretending' to me!"
He caved in at that, and grumbled and growled, but she'd hear nought more
from him till he'd said he was sorry, and that so humbly as he knowed how.
"Now you can go on again," she said, "but be civil, or I'll not lift a
finger to aid you."
"'Tis like this," he went on. "It do look as if that man, Nathan Coaker,
was coming back."
"That's so. I never seed the fellow myself, but his name certainly was
Nathan Coaker, and Mary called him home in a minute from my picture in the
crystal. They was certainly tokened, and if she's forgot it, he haven't;
and such is the report I hear of him, that 'tis sure he'll overmaster such
a man as you by force of arms. No woman can resist him. I guess he's made
his fortune and be coming in triumph to marry her."
"She's going to marry me, however."
"So you think."
The man began to grow more and more cowed afore her cold, steady eyes, and
the scorn in her voice.
"The strongest will win," he said.
"Yes," she answered him, "that's true without a doubt--so the cards
showed."
"And what's stronger than money?" he axed.
"A man in a righteous rage," she replied; "and a charge of heavy shot with
gunpowder behind 'em."
"Lord save us! You don't mean he'd lie in a hedge for me?"
"He'd do anything where his own promised woman was concerned," she said.
"But 'tis more likely, from what I hear, that he'd meet you face to face
in the open street, and hammer you to death for coming between him and
her."
"She's my side."
"Now she may be, but wait till she sets eyes on him again. He's well
knowed to be so handsome as Apollyon."
Peter Hacker got singing smaller and smaller then.
"'Tis a thousand pities the wretched fellow can't be kept away."
"For your sake it is, without a doubt--a thousand pities," admitted
Charity. "She loves you very well, and a good wife she'll make--and a
thrifty--but she won't trust herself if that man's curly hair and blue
eyes turn up here again."
"Is it to be done--can we keep him off--pay him off--bribe him--anything?"
"Now you talk sense. There's very few things can't be done in this world,
Mr. Hacker, if you get a determined man and a determined woman pulling the
same way. Man's strength and woman's wit together--what's ever been known
to stand against 'em?"
"Help me, then," he said.
"Me! You want me to help--with my 'tomfoolery'?"
She roasted him proper for a bit, then came to business.
"I can't work for nought, and since 'tis the whole of your future life
that depends upon it, I reckon you'll be generous. If I succeed I shall
look to you for thirty pound, Peter Hacker; if I fail, I'll ax for
nothing. Still, I do believe I may be able to get you out of this, though
'twill call for oceans of trouble."
He tried to haggle, but she'd none of that--wouldn't bate her offer by a
shilling. So he came to it.
"Thirty pound I must have the day you marry Mary," she said. "And now tell
me all you know about this rash, savage man, Nathan Coaker. The more I
understand the better chance shall I have of keeping him off your throat."
With that Peter explained how t'other fellow was the young brother of Mrs.
Sarah White; and he went on to say that Sarah was one of his tenants; but
he didn't mention the row about Sarah's cottage.
Mrs. Badge then took up the story, and made it look as clear as daylight.
"My gracious!" she said, "why now you can see how the crash be coming!
'Tis a terrible poor look-out for you every way. Sarah's writ to him, of
course, to say as you won't let her have the cottage your father
faithfully promised to her husband, and Coaker's coming over with
threatenings and slaughters about that job. And then, as if that weren't
enough, he'll find what a crow he's got to pluck with you on his own
account about Mary."
"The more comes out, the more it looks as if he'd better be kept away,"
said Mr. Hacker.
"And the harder it looks to do it," added Charity. "You lie low, anyway.
The next step is for me. I'll see Sarah and tell her that you've changed
your mind about the cottage--to call it a cottage, for 'tis no better than
a pig's lew house. You'll give it her, of course, for her life and the
life of that man French, as she wants to marry. That's the first step."
"Why should I?"
"What a fool you are! Why, for two reasons I should think. Firstly,
because your father promised her husband; secondly, because 'tis half the
way to keeping Nathan Coaker in Ireland. If she lets him know as you be
going to do the rightful thing, he'll have no more quarrel with you, since
he don't know about you and Mary. Then, what you've got to do is to hurry
on the match with her; and when you'm once married, 'tis all safe. Very
like you'll not have to offer the man a penny after all."
"You'd best see Mrs. White to-morrow then," said Peter.
"I'll see her this very night," answered the wise woman. "In kicklish
matters of this kind an hour may make all the difference for good or evil.
To-night I'll tell her that the house is hers on condition that her
brother Nathan don't come from Ireland this side o' Christmas; and she'll
bless your name and do her best to keep him away altogether. In fact, I
wouldn't be surprised if she succeeded, and it might even happen that when
he comes to know of your marriage and hears that 'tis over and done, that
he'll give up the thought of coming at all, and you'll get out of it with
credit and a whole skin."
Peter thanked her a lot, and she was as good as her word, and went to see
Widow White that very same evening.
She didn't put it to Sarah quite like she'd promised; but she explained
that Mr. Hacker was quite a reasonable man in some ways, even where
females were concerned, and that he had undertaken to let Sarah keep her
house so long as she and Mr. French should live. Which, of course, was all
that Mrs. White or her Johnny cared about.
"Hacker naturally thinks that your brother is still living," explained
Charity. "And mind you take mighty good care not to tell him 'tisn't so.
The longer he supposes that Nathan is alive, the better for us all. And
what you've got to say presently be this--that so soon as you told Nathan
'twas all right about the cottage, he changed his mind about coming to
Postbridge for the present."
"'Twill be a lie," said Mrs. White.
"'Twill be a white lie, however," answered Charity; "and 'twill help a
good many people out of a hobble and do harm to none; so I advise you to
tell it."
And Sarah did tell it--with wonderful, far-reaching results, I'm sure; for
it meant that she had her cottage for life; and that she had Johnny French
for life also; and it meant that Mary married Peter Hacker afore the next
Christmas and went honeymooning to London town for a week with the man;
and it meant that, unbeknownst each to t'others, Sarah and Mary and Peter
gived my mistress the money they promised her. So Charity Badge came out
of the maze with flying colours, you might say, not to mention fifty
golden pounds, all made out of her own head.
And many such like things she did, though never did they fetch such a
dollop of money again.