With easy, leisurely steps, constantly stopping to look into the windows
of the quaint shops they passed on the way, Sylvia Bailey and Anna Wolsky
walked up the steep, the almost mountainous byways and narrow streets
which lead to the top of Montmartre.
The whole population seemed to have poured itself out in the open air on
this sunny day; even the shopkeepers had brought chairs out of their
shops and sat on the pavement, gaily laughing and gossiping together in
the eager way Parisians have. As the two foreign ladies, both young, both
in their very different fashion good-looking, walked past the sitting
groups of neighbours--men, women, and children would stop talking and
stare intently at them, as is also a Parisian way.
At first Sylvia had disliked the manner in which she was stared at in
Paris, and she had been much embarrassed as well as a little amused by
the very frank remarks called forth in omnibuses as well as in the street
by the brilliancy of her complexion and the bright beauty of her fair
hair. But now she was almost used to this odd form of homage, which came
quite as often from women as from men.
"The Rue Jolie?" answered a cheerful-looking man in answer to a question.
"Why, it's ever so much further up!" and he vaguely pointed skywards.
And it was much further up, close to the very top of the great hill! In
fact, it took the two ladies a long time to find it, for the Rue Jolie
was the funniest, tiniest little street, perched high up on what might
almost have been a mountain side.
As for No. 5, Rue Jolie, it was a queer miniature house more like a Swiss
châlet than anything else, and surrounded by a gay, untidy little garden
full of flowers, the kind of half-wild, shy, and yet hardy flowers that
come up, year after year, without being tended or watered.
"Surely a fortune-teller can't live here?" exclaimed Sylvia Bailey,
remembering the stately, awe-inspiring rooms in which "Pharaoh" received
his clients in Bond Street.
"Oh, yes, this is evidently the place!"
Anna Wolsky smiled good-humouredly; she had become extremely fond of the
young Englishwoman; she delighted in Sylvia's radiant prettiness, her
kindly good-temper, and her eager pleasure in everything.
A large iron gate gave access to the courtyard which was so much larger
than the house built round it. But the gate was locked, and a pull at the
rusty bell-wire produced no result.
They waited a while. "She must have gone out," said Sylvia, rather
disappointed.
But Madame Wolsky, without speaking, again pulled at the rusty wire, and
then one of the châlet windows was suddenly flung open from above, and a
woman--a dark, middle-aged Frenchwoman--leant out.
"_Qui est là?_" and then before either of them could answer, the woman
had drawn back: a moment later they heard her heavy progress down the
creaky stairs of her dwelling.
At last she came out into the courtyard, unlocked the iron gate, and
curtly motioned to the two ladies to follow her.
"We have come to see Madame Cagliostra," said Sylvia timidly. She took
this stout, untidily-dressed woman for the fortune-teller's servant.
"Madame Cagliostra, at your service!" The woman turned round, her face
breaking into a broad smile. She evidently liked the sound of her
peculiar name.
They followed her up a dark staircase into a curious little sitting-room.
It was scrupulously clean, but about it hung the faint odour which the
French eloquently describe as "shut in," and even on this beautiful hot
day the windows were tightly closed.
On the red walls hung various drawings of hands, of hearts, and of heads,
and over the plain mantelpiece was a really fine pastel portrait of a
man, in eighteenth century dress and powdered hair.
"My ancestor, Count Cagliostro, ladies!" exclaimed the fat little woman
proudly. "As you will soon see, if you have, as I venture to suppose,
come to consult me, I have inherited the great gifts which made Count
Cagliostro famous." She waited a moment. "What is it you desire of me?
Do you wish for the Grand Jeu? Or do you prefer the Crystal?"
Madame Cagliostra gave a shrewd, measuring glance at the two young women
standing before her. She was wondering how much they were good for.
"No doubt you have been told," she said suddenly, "that my fee is five
francs. But if you require the Grand Jeu it will be ten francs. Come,
ladies, make up your minds; I will give you both the Grand Jeu for
fifteen francs!"
Sylvia Bailey's lip quivered; she felt a wild wish to burst out
laughing. It was all so absurd; this funny queer house; this odd, stuffy,
empty-looking room; and this vulgar, common-looking woman asserting that
she was descended from the famous Count Cagliostro! And then, to crown
everything, the naïve, rather pathetic, attempt to get an extra five
francs out of them.
But Sylvia was a very kindly, happy-natured creature, and she would not
have hurt the feelings of even a Madame Cagliostra for the world.
She looked at her friend questioningly. Would it not be better just to
give the woman five francs and go away? They surely could not expect to
hear anything of any value from such a person. She was evidently a fraud!
But Anna Wolsky was staring at Madame Cagliostra with a serious look.
"Very well," she exclaimed, in her rather indifferent French. "Very well!
We will both take the Grand Jeu at fifteen francs the two."
She turned and smiled at Sylvia. "It will be," she said, quaintly, and in
English, "my 'treat,' dear friend." And then, as Sylvia shook her head
decidedly--there were often these little contests of generosity between
the two women--she added rather sharply,
"Yes, yes! It shall be so. I insist! I see you do not believe in our
hostess's gift. There are, however, one or two questions I must ask, and
to which I fancy she can give me an answer. I am anxious, too, to hear
what she will say about _you_."
Sylvia smiled, and gave way.
Like most prosperous people who have not made the money they are able to
spend, Mrs. Bailey did not attach any undue importance to wealth. But she
knew that her friend was not as well off as herself, and therefore she
was always trying to pay a little more of her share than was fair. Thanks
to Madame Wolsky's stronger will, she very seldom succeeded in doing so.
"We might at least ask her to open the window," she said rather
plaintively. It really was dreadfully stuffy!
Madame Cagliostra had gone to a sideboard from which she was taking two
packs of exceedingly dirty, queer-looking cards. They were the famous
Taro cards, but Sylvia did not know that.
When the fortune-teller was asked to open the window, she shook her head
decidedly.
"No, no!" she said. "It would dissipate the influences. I cannot do that!
On the contrary, the curtains should be drawn close, and if the ladies
will permit of it I will light my lamp."
Even as she spoke she was jerking the thick curtains closely together;
she even pinned them across so that no ray of the bright sunlight outside
could penetrate into the room.
For a few moments they were in complete darkness, and Sylvia felt a
queer, eerie sensation of fear, but this soon passed away as the
lamp--the "_Suspension_," as Madame Cagliostra proudly called it--was
lit.
When her lamp was well alight, the soothsayer drew three chairs up to the
round table, and motioned the two strangers to sit down.
"You will take my friend first," said Anna Wolsky, imperiously; and then,
to Sylvia, she said, in English, "Would you rather I went away, dear? I
could wait on the staircase till you were ready for me to come back. It
is not very pleasant to have one's fortune told when one is as young and
as pretty as you are, before other people."
"Of course I don't mind your being here!" cried Sylvia Bailey,
laughing--then, looking doubtfully at Madame Cagliostra, though it was
obvious the Frenchwoman did not understand English, "The truth is that I
should feel rather frightened if you were to leave me here all by myself.
So please stay."
Madame Cagliostra began dealing out the cards on the table. First slowly,
then quickly, she laid them out in a queer pattern; and as she did so she
muttered and murmured to herself. Then a frown came over her face; she
began to look disturbed, anxious, almost angry.
Sylvia, in spite of herself, grew interested and excited. She was sorry
she had not taken off her wedding-ring. In England the wise woman always
takes off her wedding-ring on going to see a fortune-teller. She was
also rather glad that she had left her pearls in the safe custody of
M. Girard. This little house in the Rue Jolie was a strange, lonely
place.
Suddenly Madame Cagliostra began to speak in a quick, clear, monotonous
voice.
Keeping her eyes fixed on the cards, which now and again she touched with
a fat finger, and without looking at Sylvia, she said:
"Madame has led a very placid, quiet life. Her existence has been a boat
that has always lain in harbour--" She suddenly looked up: "I spent my
childhood at Dieppe, and that often suggests images to me," she observed
complacently, and then she went on in quite another tone of voice:--
"To return to Madame and her fate! The boat has always been in harbour,
but now it is about to put out to sea. It will meet there another craft.
This other craft is, to Madame, a foreign craft, and I grieve to say it,
rather battered. But its timbers are sound, and that is well, for it
looks to me as if the sails of Madame's boat would mingle, at any rate
for a time with this battered craft."
"I don't understand what she means," said Sylvia, in a whisper. "Do ask
her to explain, Anna!"
"My friend asks you to drop metaphor," said the older woman, drily.
The soothsayer fixed her bright, beady little eyes on Sylvia's flushed
face.
"Well," she said deliberately, "I see you falling in love, and I also see
that falling in love is quite a new experience. It burns, it scorches
you, does love, Madame. And for awhile you do not know what it means, for
love has never yet touched you with his red-hot finger."
"How absurd!" thought Sylvia to herself. "She actually takes me for a
young girl! What ridiculous mistakes fortune-tellers do make, to be
sure!"
"--But you cannot escape love," went on Madame Cagliostra, eagerly. "Your
fate is a fair man, which is strange considering that you also are a fair
woman; and I see that there is already a dark man in your life."
Sylvia blushed. Bill Chester, just now the only man in her life, was a
very dark man.
"But this fair man knows all the arts of love." Madame Cagliostra sighed,
her voice softened, it became strangely low and sweet. "He will love you
tenderly as well as passionately. And as for you, Madame--but no, for me
to tell you what you will feel _and what you will do_ would not be
delicate on my part!"
Sylvia grew redder and redder. She tried to laugh, but failed. She felt
angry, and not a little disgusted.
"You are a foreigner," went on Madame Cagliostra. Her voice had grown
hard and expressionless again.
Sylvia smiled a little satiric smile.
"But though you are a foreigner," cried the fortune-teller with sudden
energy, "it is quite possible that you will never go back to your own
country! Stop--or, perhaps, I shall say too much! Still if you ever do go
back, it will be as a stranger. That I say with certainty. And I add that
I hope with all my heart that you will live to go back to your own
country, Madame!"
Sylvia felt a vague, uneasy feeling of oppression, almost of fear, steal
over her. It seemed to her that Madame Cagliostra was looking at her with
puzzled, pitying eyes.
The soothsayer again put a fat and not too clean finger down on the
upturned face of a card.
"There is something here I do not understand; something which I miss when
I look at you as I am now looking at you. It is something you always
wear--"
She gazed searchingly at Sylvia, and her eyes travelled over Mrs.
Bailey's neck and bosom.
"I see them and yet they are not there! They appear like little balls of
light. Surely it is a necklace?"
Sylvia looked extremely surprised. Now, at last, Madame Cagliostra was
justifying her claim to a supernatural gift!
"These balls of light are also your Fate!" exclaimed the woman
impetuously. "If you had them here--I care not what they be--I should
entreat you to give them to me to throw away."
Madame Wolsky began to laugh. "I don't think you would do that," she
observed drily.
But Madame Cagliostra did not seem to hear the interruption.
"Have you heard of a mascot?" she said abruptly. "Of a mascot which
brings good fortune to its wearer?"
Sylvia bent her head. Of course she had heard of mascots.
"Well, if so, you have, of course, heard of objects which bring
misfortune to their wearers--which are, so to speak, unlucky mascots?"
And this time it was Anna Wolsky who, leaning forward, nodded gravely.
She attributed a run of bad luck she had had the year before to a
trifling gift, twin cherries made of enamel, which a friend had given
her, in her old home, on her birthday. Till she had thrown that little
brooch into the sea, she had been persistently unlucky at play.
"Your friend," murmured Madame Cagliostra, now addressing herself to
Anna and not to Sylvia, "should dispossess herself as quickly as possible
of her necklace, of these round balls. They have already brought her
ill-fortune in the past, they have lowered her in the estimation of an
estimable person--in fact, if she is not very careful, indeed, even if
she be very careful--it looks to me, Madame, as if they would end by
strangling her!"
Sylvia became very uncomfortable. "Of course she means my pearls," she
whispered. "But how absurd to say they could ever do me harm."
"Look here," said Anna Wolsky earnestly, "you are quite right, Madame;
my friend has a necklace which has already played a certain part in her
life. But is it not just because of this fact that you feel the influence
of this necklace so strongly? I entreat you to speak frankly. You are
really distressing me very much!"
Madame Cagliostra looked very seriously at the speaker.
"Well, perhaps it is so," she said at last. "Of course, we are sometimes
wrong in our premonitions. And I confess that I feel puzzled--exceedingly
puzzled--to-day. I do not know that I have ever had so strange a case
as that of this English lady before me! I see so many roads stretching
before her--I also see her going along more than one road. As a rule, one
does not see this in the cards."
She looked really harassed, really distressed, and was still conning her
cards anxiously.
"And yet after all," she cried suddenly, "I may be wrong! Perhaps the
necklace has less to do with it than I thought! I do not know whether the
necklace would make any real difference! If she takes one of the roads
open to her, then I see no danger at all attaching to the preservation of
this necklace. But the other road leads straight to the House of Peril."
"The House of Peril?" echoed Sylvia Bailey.
"Yes, Madame. Do you not know that all men and women have their House of
Peril--the house whose threshold they should never cross--behind whose
door lies misery, sometimes dishonour?"
"Yes," said Anna Wolsky, "that is true, quite true! There has been, alas!
more than one House of Peril in my life." She added, "But what kind of
place is my friend's House of Peril?"
"It is not a large house," said the fortune-teller, staring down at
the shining surface of her table. "It is a gay, delightful little
place, ladies--quite my idea of a pretty dwelling. But it is filled with
horror unutterable to Madame. Ah! I entreat you"--she stared sadly at
Sylvia--"to beware of unknown buildings, especially if you persist
in keeping and in wearing your necklace."
"Do tell us, Madame, something more about my friend's necklace. Is it,
for instance, of great value, and is it its value that makes it a source
of danger?"
Anna Wolsky wondered very much what would be the answer to this question.
She had had her doubts as to the genuineness of the pearls her friend
wore. Pearls are so exquisitely imitated nowadays, and these pearls, if
genuine, were of such great value!
At first she had not believed them to be real, then gradually she had
become convinced of Sylvia's good faith. If the pearls were false, Sylvia
did not know it.
But Madame Cagliostra's answer was disappointing--or prudent.
"I cannot tell you that," she said. "I cannot even tell you of what the
necklace is composed. It may be of gold, of silver, of diamonds, of
pearls--it may be, I'm inclined to think it is, composed of Egyptian
scarabei. They, as you know, often bring terrible ill-fortune in their
train, especially when they have been taken from the bodies of mummies.
But the necklace has already caused this lady to quarrel with a very good
and sure friend of hers--of that I am sure. And, as I tell you, I see in
the future that this necklace may cause her very serious trouble--indeed,
I see it wound like a serpent round her neck, pressing ever tighter and
tighter--"
She suddenly began shuffling the cards. "And now," she said in a tone of
relief, "I will deal with you, Madame," and she turned to Anna with a
smile.
Sylvia drew her chair a little away from the table.
She felt depressed and uncomfortable. What an odd queer kind of fortune
had been told her! And then it had all been so muddled. She could
scarcely remember what it was that _had_ been told her.
Two things, however, remained very clear in her mind: The one was the
absurd prediction that she might never go back to her own country; the
second was all that extraordinary talk about her pearls. As to the
promised lover, the memory of the soothsayer's words made her feel very
angry. No doubt Frenchwomen liked that sort of innuendo, but it only
disgusted her.
Yet it was really very strange that Madame Cagliostra had known, or
rather had divined, that she possessed a necklace by which she laid great
store. But wasn't there such a thing as telepathy? Isn't it supposed by
some people that fortune-tellers simply see into the minds of those who
come to them, and then arrange what they see there according to their
fancy?
That, of course, would entirely account for all that the fortune-teller
had said about her pearls.
Sylvia always felt a little uncomfortable when her pearls were not lying
round her pretty neck. The first time she had left them in the hotel
bureau, at her new friend's request, was when they had been together to
some place of amusement at night, and she had felt quite miserable, quite
lost without them. She had even caught herself wondering whether M.
Girard was perfectly honest, whether she could trust him not to have her
dear pearls changed by some clever jeweller, though, to be sure, she felt
she would have known her string of pearls anywhere!
* * * * *
But what was this that was going on between the other two?
Madame Cagliostra dealt out the pack of cards in a slow, deliberate
fashion--and then she uttered a kind of low hoarse cry, and mixed the
cards all together, hurriedly.
Getting up from the table, she exclaimed, "I regret, Madame, that I can
tell you nothing--nothing at all! I feel ill--very ill!" and, indeed, she
had turned, even to Sylvia's young and unobservant eyes, terribly pale.
For some moments the soothsayer stood staring into Anna Wolsky's
astonished face.
"I know I've disappointed you, Mesdames, but I hope this will not prevent
your telling your friends of my powers. Allow me to assure you that it is
not often that I am taken in this way!"
Her voice had dropped to a whisper. She was now gazing down at the pack
of cards which lay on the table with a look of horror and oppression on
her face.
"I will only charge five francs," she muttered at last, "for I know that
I have not satisfied you."
Sylvia sprang to the window. She tore apart the curtains and pulled up
the sash.
"No wonder the poor woman feels faint," she said quickly. "It's absurd to
sit with a window tight shut in this kind of room, which is little more
than a box with three people in it!"
Madame Cagliostra had sunk down into her chair again.
"I must beg you to go away, Mesdames," she muttered, faintly. "Five
francs is all I ask of you."
But Anna Wolsky was behaving in what appeared to Sylvia a very strange
manner. She walked round to where the fortune-teller was sitting.
"You saw something in the cards which you do not wish to tell me?" she
said imperiously. "I do not mind being told the truth. I am not a child."
"I swear I saw nothing!" cried the Frenchwoman angrily. "I am too ill to
see anything. The cards were to me perfectly blank!"
In the bright sunlight now pouring into the little room the soothsayer
looked ghastly, her skin had turned a greenish white.
"Mesdames, I beg you to excuse me," she said again. "If you do not wish
to give me the five francs, I will not exact any fee."
She pointed with a shaking finger to the door, and Sylvia put a
five-franc piece down on the table.
But before her visitors had quite groped their way to the end of the
short, steep staircase, they heard a cry.
"Mesdames!" then after a moment's pause, "Mesdames, I implore you to come
back!"
They looked at one another, and then Anna, putting her finger to her
lips, went back up the stairs, alone.
"Well," she said, briefly, "I knew you had something to tell me. What is
it?"
"No," said Madame Cagliostra dully. "I must have the other lady here,
too. You must both be present to hear what I have to say."
Anna went to the door and called out, "Come up Sylvia! She wants to see
us both together."
There was a thrill of excitement, of eager expectancy in Madame Wolsky's
voice; and Sylvia, surprised, ran up again into the little room, now full
of light, sun, and air.
"Stand side by side," ordered the soothsayer shortly. She stared at them
for a moment, and then she said with extreme earnestness:--
"I dare not let you go away without giving you a warning. Your two fates
are closely intertwined. Do not leave Paris for awhile, especially do not
leave Paris together. I see you both running into terrible danger! If you
do go away--and I greatly fear that you will do so--then I advise you,
together and separately, to return to Paris as soon as possible."
"One question I must ask of you," said Anna Wolsky urgently. "How goes my
luck? You know what I mean? I play!"
"It is not your luck that is threatened," replied the fortune-teller,
solemnly; "on the contrary, I see wonderful luck; packets of bank-notes
and rouleaux of gold! It is not your luck--it is something far, far more
important that is in peril. Something which means far more to you even
than your luck!"
The Polish woman smiled rather sadly.
"I wonder what that can be?" she exclaimed.
"It is your life!"
"My life?" echoed Anna. "I do not know that I value my life as much as
you think I do."
"The English have a proverb, Madame, which says: 'A short life and a
merry one.'"
"Can you predict that I shall have, if a short life, then a merry one?"
"Yes," said Madame Cagliostra, "that I can promise you." But there was no
smile on her pale face. "And more, I can predict--if you will only follow
my advice, if you do not leave Paris for, say"--she hesitated a moment,
as if making a silent calculation--"twelve weeks, I can predict you, if
not so happy a life, then a long life and a fairly merry one. Will you
take my advice, Madame?" she went on, almost threateningly. "Believe me,
I do not often offer advice to my clients. It is not my business to do
so. But I should have been a wicked woman had I not done so this time.
That is why I called you back."
"Is it because of something you have seen in the cards that you tender us
this advice?" asked Anna curiously.
But Madame Cagliostra again looked strangely frightened.
"No, no!" she said hastily. "I repeat that the cards told me nothing.
The cards were a blank. I could see nothing in them. But, of course, we
do not only tell fortunes by cards"--she spoke very quickly and rather
confusedly. "There is such a thing as a premonition."
She waited a moment, and then, in a business-like tone, added, "And now
I leave the question of the fee to the generosity of these ladies!"
Madame Wolsky smiled a little grimly, and pulled out a twenty-franc
piece.
The woman bowed, and murmured her thanks.
When they were out again into the roughly paved little street, Anna
suddenly began to laugh.
"Now, isn't that a typical Frenchwoman? She really did feel ill, she
really saw nothing in my cards, and, being an honest woman, she did not
feel that she could ask us to pay! Then, when we had gone away, leaving
only five francs, her thrift got the better of her honesty; she felt she
had thrown away ten good francs! She therefore called us back, and gave
us what she took to be very excellent advice. You see, I had told her
that I am a gambler. She knows, as we all know, that to play for money
is a foolish thing to do. She is aware that in Paris it is not very easy
for a stranger to obtain admittance--especially if that stranger be a
respectable woman--to a gambling club. She therefore said to herself,
'I will give this lady far more than ten francs' worth of advice. I will
tell her not to go away! As long as she remains in Paris she cannot lose
her money. If she goes to Dieppe, Trouville, any place where there is a
Casino, she will lose her money. Therefore I am giving her invaluable
advice--worth far more than the ten francs which she ought to be made
to give me, and which she shall be made to give me!'"
"I suppose you are right," said Sylvia thoughtfully. "And yet--and
yet--she certainly spoke very seriously, did she not, Anna? She seemed
quite honestly--in fact, terribly afraid that we should go away
together."
"But there is no idea of our going away together," said Madame Wolsky,
rather crossly. "I only wish there were! You are going on to Switzerland
to join your friends, and as for me, in spite of Madame Cagliostra's
mysterious predictions, I shall, of course, go to some place--I think it
will be Dieppe (I like the Dieppe Casino the best)--where I can play. And
the memory of you, my dear little English friend, will be my mascot. You
heard her say that I should be fortunate--that I should have an
extraordinary run of good fortune?"
"Yes," said Sylvia, "but do not forget"--she spoke with a certain
gravity; death was a very real thing to her, for she had seen in the last
two years two deathbeds, that of her father, that of her husband--"do not
forget, Anna, that she told you you would not live long if you went
away."
"She was quite safe in saying that to me," replied the other hastily.
"People who play--those who get the gambling fever into their system when
they are still young--do not, as a rule, live very long. Their emotions
are too strong, too often excited! Play should be reserved for the
old--the old get so quickly deadened, they do not go through the terrible
moments younger people do!"