"And I'm sure if she came every week she'd be welcome to a meal," spoke
Miss Deveen. "Ah now, young ladies," she went on in a joking tone, "if
you wanted your fortunes told, Mrs. Ness is the one to do it."
"Does she tell truth?" asked Helen eagerly.
"Oh, very true, of course," laughed Miss Deveen. "She'll promise you
a rich husband apiece. Dame Ness is a good woman, and has had many
misfortunes. I have known her through all of them."
"And helped her too," resentfully put in Cattledon.
"But does she _really_ tell fortunes?" pursued Helen.
"She thinks she does," laughed Miss Deveen. "She told mine once--many a
year ago."
"And did it come true?"
"Well, as far as I remember, she candidly confessed that there was not
much to tell--that my life would be prosperous but uneventful."
"I _don't_ think, begging your pardon, Miss Deveen, that it is quite a
proper subject for young people," struck in Cattledon, drawing up her
thin red neck.
"Dear me, no," replied Miss Deveen, still laughing a little. And the
subject dropped, and we finished luncheon.
The rain had come on, a regular downpour. We went into the
breakfast-room: though why it was called that, I don't know, since
breakfast was never taken there. It was a fair-sized, square room, built
out at the back, and gained by a few stairs down from the hall and a
passage. Somehow people prefer plain rooms to grand ones for everyday
use: perhaps that was why we all took a liking to this room, for it was
plain enough. An old carpet on the floor, chairs covered with tumbled
chintz, and always a good blazing fire in the grate. Miss Deveen would
go in there to write her business letters--when she had any to write; or
to cut out sewing with Cattledon for the housemaids. An old-fashioned
secretary stood against the wall, in which receipts and other papers
were kept. The French window opened to the garden.
"Pour, pour, pour! It's going to be wet for the rest of the day," said
Tod gloomily.
Cattledon came in, equipped for church in a long brown cloak, a pair
of clogs in her hand. Did none of us intend to go, she asked. Nobody
answered. The weather outside was not tempting.
"You must come, Janet Carey," she said very tartly, angry with us all,
I expect. "Go and put on your things."
"No," interposed Miss Deveen. "It would not be prudent for your niece
to venture out in this rain, Jemima."
"The church is only over the way."
"But consider the illness she has only just recovered from. Let her stay
indoors."
Cattledon went off without further opposition, Janet kneeling down
unasked, to put on her clogs, and then opening her umbrella for her in
the hall. Janet did not come in again. Miss Deveen went out to sit with
a sick neighbour: so we were alone.
"What a cranky old thing that Cattledon is!" cried Bill, throwing down
his newspaper. "She'd have walked that girl off in the wet, you see."
"How old is Cattledon?" asked Tod. "Sixty?"
"Oh, you stupid fellow!" exclaimed Helen, looking up from the stool on
the hearthrug, where she was sitting, nursing her knees. "Cattledon
sixty! Why, she can't be above forty-five."
It was disrespectful no doubt, but we all called her plain "Cattledon"
behind her back.
"That's rather a queer girl, that niece," said Tod. "She won't speak to
one: she's like a frightened hare."
"I like her," said Anna. "I feel very sorry for her. She gives one the
idea of having been always put upon: and she looks dreadfully ill."
"I should say she has been kept in some Blue Beard's cupboard, amongst a
lot of hanging wives that have permanently scared her," remarked Bill.
"It's Cattledon," said Tod; "it's not the wives. She puts upon the
girl and frightens her senses out of her. Cattledon's a cross-grained,
two-edged----"
He had to shut up: Janet Carey was coming in again. For about five
minutes no one spoke. There seemed to be nothing to say. Bill played
at ball with Miss Deveen's red penwiper: Anna began turning over the
periodicals: Helen gave the cat a box when it would have jumped on her
knee.
"Well, this is lively!" cried Tod. "Nothing on earth to do; I wonder why
the rain couldn't have kept off till to-morrow?"
"I say," whispered Helen, treason sparkling from her bright eyes, "let
us have up that old fortune-teller! I'll go and ask Lettice."
She whirled out of the room, shutting the tail of her black silk dress
in the door, and called Lettice. A few minutes, and Mrs. Ness came in,
curtsying. A stout old lady in a cotton shawl and broad-bordered cap
with a big red bow tied in front.
"I say, Mrs. Ness, can you tell our fortunes?" cried Bill.
"Bless you, young gentlefolks, I've told a many in my time. I'll tell
yours, if you like to bid me, sir."
"Do the cards tell true?"
"I believe they does, sir. I've knowed 'em to tell over true now and
again--more's the pity!"
"Why do you say more's the pity?" asked Anna.
"When they've fortelled bad things, my sweet, pretty young lady. Death,
and what not."
"But how it must frighten the people who are having them told!" cried
Anna.
"Well, to speak the truth, young gentlefolks, when it's very bad, I
generally softens it over to 'em--say the cards is cloudy, or some'at
o' that," was the old woman's candid answer. "It don't do to make
folks uneasy."
"Look here," said Helen, who had been to find the cards, "I should not
like to hear it if it's anything bad."
"Ah, my dear young lady, I don't think _you_ need fear any but a
good fortune, with that handsome face and them bright eyes of yours,"
returned the old dame--who really seemed to speak, not in flattery, but
from the bottom of her heart. "I don't know what the young lords 'ud be
about, to pass _you_ by."
Helen liked that; she was just as vain as a peacock, and thought no
little of herself. "Who'll begin?" asked she.
"Begin yourself, Helen," said Tod. "It's sure to be something good."
So she shuffled and cut the cards as directed: and the old woman,
sitting at the table, spread them out before her, talking a little bit
to herself, and pointing with her finger here and there.
"You've been upon a journey lately," she said, "and you'll soon be going
upon another." I give only the substance of what the old lady said,
but it was interspersed freely with her own remarks. "You'll have a
present before many days is gone; and you'll--stay, there's that black
card--you'll hear of somebody that's sick. And--dear me! there's an
offer for you--an offer of marriage,--but it won't come to anything.
Well, now, shuffle and cut again, please."
Helen did so. This was repeated three times in all. But, so far as we
could understand it, her future seemed to be very uneventful--to have
nothing in it--something like Miss Deveen's.
"It's a brave fortune, as I thought, young lady," cried Mrs. Ness. "No
trouble or care in store for you."
"But there's _nothing_," said Helen, too intently earnest to mind any of
us. "When am I to be married?"
"Well, my dear, the cards haven't told so much this time. There'll be an
offer, as I said--and I think a bit of trouble over it; but----"
"But you said it would not come to anything," interrupted Helen.
"Well, and no more it won't: leastways, it seemed so by the cards; and
it seemed to bring a bother with it--old folks pulling one way maybe,
and young 'uns the other. You'll have to wait a bit for the right
gentleman, my pretty miss."
"What stupid cards they are!" cried Helen, in dudgeon. "I dare say it's
all rubbish."
"Any ways, you've had nothing bad," said the old woman. "And that's a
priceless consolation."
"It's your turn now, Anna."
"I won't have mine told," said Anna. "I'm afraid."
"Oh, you senseless donkey!" cried Bill. "Afraid of a pack of cards!" So
Anna laughed, and began.
"Ah, there's more here," said the old woman as she laid them out. "You
are going through some great ceremony not long first. See here--crowds
of people--and show. Is it a great ball, I wonder?"
"It may be my presentation," said Anna.
"And here's the wedding-ring!--and there's the gentleman! See! he's
turning towards you; a dark man it is; and he'll be very fond of you,
too!--and----"
"Oh, don't go on," cried Anna, in terrible confusion as she heard all
this, and caught Tod's eye, and saw Bill on the broad laugh. "Don't,
pray don't; it must be all nonsense," she went on, blushing redder than
a rose.
"But it's true," steadily urged the old lady. "There the wedding is. I
don't say it'll be soon; perhaps not for some years; but come it will
in its proper time. And you'll live in a fine big house; and--stay a
bit--you'll----"
Anna, half laughing, half crying, pushed the cards together. "I won't be
told any more," she said; "it must be all a pack of nonsense."
"Of course it is," added Helen decisively. "And why couldn't you have
told me all that, Mrs. Ness?"
"Why, my dear, sweet young lady, it isn't me that tells; it's the
cards."
"I don't believe it. But it does to while away a wet and wretched
afternoon. Now, Miss Carey."
Miss Carey looked up from her book with a start. "Oh, not me! Please,
not me!"
"Not you!--the idea!" cried Helen. "Why, of course you must. I and my
sister have had our turn, and you must take yours."
As if further objection were out of the question, Miss Carey stood
timidly up by the table and shuffled the cards that Dame Ness handed to
her. When they were spread out, the old woman looked at the cards longer
than she had looked for either Helen or Anna, then at the girl, then at
the cards again.
"There has been sickness and trouble;--and distress," she said at
length, "And--and--'tain't over yet. I see a dark lady and a fair man:
they've been in it, somehow. Seems to ha' been a great trouble"--putting
the tips of her forefingers upon two cards. "Here you are, you see,
right among it,"--pointing to the Queen of Hearts. "I don't like the
look of it. And there's money mixed up in the sorrow----"
A low, shuddering cry. I happened to be looking from the window at the
moment, and turned to see Janet Carey with hands uplifted and a face of
imploring terror. The cry came from her.
"Oh don't, don't! don't tell any more!" she implored.
"I--was--not--guilty."
Down went her voice by little and little, down fell her hands; and down
dropped she on the chair behind her. The next moment she was crying and
sobbing. We stood round like so many helpless simpletons, quite put down
by this unexpected interlude. Old Dame Ness stared, slowly shuffling the
cards from hand to hand, and could not make it out.
"Here, I'll have my fortune told next, Mother Ness," said Bill Whitney,
really out of good nature to the girl, that she might be left unobserved
to recover herself. "Mind you promise me a good one."
"And so I will then, young gentleman, if the cards 'll let me," was the
hearty answer. "Please shuffle 'em well, sir, and then cut 'em into
three."
Bill was shuffling with all his might when we heard the front-door open,
and Cattledon's voice in the hall. "Oh, by George, I say, what's to be
done?" cried he. "She'll be fit to smother us. That old parson can't
have given them a sermon."
Fortunately she stayed on the door-mat to take off her clogs. Dame Ness
was smuggled down the kitchen stairs, and Bill hid the cards away in his
pocket.
And until then it had not occurred to us that it might not be quite the
right thing to go in for fortune-telling on Good Friday.