THE SPHINX.
The morning after the circus had left the town, as the older girls
were going into one of the smaller recitation-rooms to the English
literature class, Edna whispered to Addie in the five minutes that were
always allowed on every change of room:
“Hasn’t the circus gone?”
“Yes; went last night.”
“And now we can’t have our fortunes told!”
“Yes, you can, for Madame Belotti hasn’t gone.”
“O, good!”
“I thought you’d be glad, and she and her sister have promised to come
up to the grove by the back gate at twelve o’clock. Of course she can’t
be fixed up as a sphinx, because her rigging had to go off in the vans.
She’s great fun any way; for one thing she can give you lucky numbers.
But she wants Elfie to come. She says she saw her once when you all
walked to the village, and she says there’s something uncommon in her
eyes that shows she’s got second sight.”
“I don’t know as we can bring Elfie, and I don’t believe she ever saw
her, either.”
“Then we’d better stay away ourselves, for Madame Belotti will get out
of temper and not tell us any thing.”
“Well, we must manage it somehow, but I do wish I could have seen
madame as a sphinx.”
“Yes, that was a real good rig, but she’s a Spanish gypsy, and she can
tell fortunes just as well in a basque and skirt.”
“She must have looked awfully funny,” said Edna. “I told the girls I
didn’t care about seeing her, but I really did want to fearfully.”
“She was very well made up,” said Addie. “All you saw was just a real
head on a table; there were books and bric-a-brac and flowers on the
table, and this head right in the middle of them. There were curtains
in front, and a man drew these on one side to show us there was no
deception, and we seemed to be looking right under the table. Of course
we were not allowed to step near.”
“Well, I am determined to have my fortune told, even if I can’t see her
as a sphinx,” said Edna.
“I don’t believe you will get it told unless you bring Elfie.”
“I don’t see why she makes such a point of having Elfie come. It’s
going to be a great bother! What did she say about it, anyway?”
“Well, I guess it is only some superstitious idea of hers about
numbers. She told me a lot of stuff about a large sum of money she
could get if she had a certain number, and the way to get the lucky
number is to get a blonde orphan girl under six years old to be
blindfolded and draw it out of a hundred others in a box.”
“O, what stuff!” said Edna. “That’s all bosh.”
“I suppose it is; but she’s awfully stubborn, and says she wont come
out at all if she can’t have such a little thing as that done to oblige
her.”
“Well, it was kind of nice in them to stay a day after the circus just
for us, but I don’t see how it’s to be managed. Candace is sick, that’s
one good thing; but that sneaky Mary Ann Stubbs is her guardian fiend
and would tell of us quick as a wink if she saw us taking the child out
of the yard.”
“I don’t think Marion is given to tale-telling,” said Addie,
significantly, and Edna had the grace to color with shame at the
memory of her own meanness in that matter of the composition when
Marion refused to tell of her, for that, she knew, was in Addie’s mind
as she spoke.
“Well, anyway, I don’t want the impertinent thing to know any thing
about it. If I felt sure of Lily it would be all right. They will
always leave Elfie with her any length of time; but Lily is queer
sometimes, and I guess I’d better manage it myself.”
“I thought Lily was coming with us.”
“Lily, Katie, Delia, and Bell are all coming, and if Lily sees Elfie
there with us she wont say any thing about it afterward, even if she
does make a little fuss just at first; but I know she wont take her
herself.”
“Well, manage it your own way. Instead of going home I’ll just walk
down through the grove and meet you at the little iron gate. You must
go right down as soon as recess begins, so as to have time to get
through and back here to your dinner.”
There was no one but Addie at the little gate when the girls ran
through the grove, but in a moment two bold-looking young women, very
flashily dressed, appeared, walking leisurely toward them on the other
side.
“There they come,” said Addie. “Have you got the key to the padlock,
Edna?”
“I haven’t got the key that belongs to it, of course, but I have
brought one that fits it perfectly well.”
“O, dear, suppose it shouldn’t?”
“Never fear, I’ve tried it before,” said Edna, nodding her head wisely
and fitting the key into the lock, which it turned easily.
“These ladies are Madame Belotti and her sister,” said Addie, as a sort
of introduction.
“But where is the spazinx?” asked Elfie, looking greatly disappointed.
“I am de sphinx, young lady,” said one of the women.
“But you’ve got legs and arms. Spazinxes don’t have any thing but heads
an’ a big lace collar. I did see one in a picture.”
“I don’t have any ding but a head ven I is professional,” said the
woman, affably, but glancing around hurriedly as if she feared a
possible interruption, “but of course I can’t walk widout my legs.”
“But I don’t see how you pull them off and put them on again,” said
Elfie, sidling away with some timidity from a creature whose anatomy
was so foreign to the established usages of humanity, “and I don’t
want my fortune told. I’d rather go back.”
“O, don’t be afraid,” said Madame Belotti, sweetly. “I have nice little
girls of my own at home, and here’s my sister; she has lots of pretty
dings in her bag. She’ll show dem to you while dese young ladies let me
read deir palms.”
Elfie felt less dread of a person who made no pretension to being a
sphinx, and was soon examining with great interest a box of trinkets
which the woman told her were genuine gypsy-queen adornments, worn at
gypsy courts on great occasions.
Meantime Madame Belotti was gazing with mysterious scrutiny upon the
lines of Katie’s pretty pink palm and predicting a mosaic of ill and
good fortune so nicely blended that Katie felt that her future life, as
thus set before her, had little to embitter it.
“Now try mine,” said Lily, “and be sure you put in a trip to Europe,
with a winter in Rome and another in Paris.”
“Dere is much pleasure for you, my pretty young lady,” said the
prophetess, “and some pain to endure before the pleasure comes, but
dere’s money and fame for you finally, and great prosperity and a long
life wid somebody.”
“Why, there’s a mysterious somebody in every one’s hand, is there?”
asked Lily. “I wonder who my somebody is.”
“A tall, fair man, wid a long mustache,” said the fortune teller,
oracularly.
“Well,” said Lily, “you may keep that young man yourself, for of all
things I hate tall, fair men. My papa is little and broad, and he’s my
type of every thing good; and I wouldn’t marry a man who wasn’t just
like him for the whole world.”
“O, Lily, do shut up!” whispered Edna. “You’ll make her angry, and then
she wont finish.”
But madame seemed in no way disconcerted or offended by Lily’s
trifling, and continued to promise her quite an extensive variety
of experiences. Then Edna offered her hand with its too ample
embellishment of rings, and madame gave them quite a little turn by the
excitement she manifested on studying its interesting lines.
“A most wonderful hand, lady. I have never seen but one like it. It
holds a destiny dat frightens me. Do I dare to tell you? Let me dink a
moment.”
Here she grew so awful and mysterious in her manner, while she turned
the hand one way and the other as if to get new light upon the doom
there depicted, and the girls grew deeply absorbed in their attention,
clustering close around her in forgetfulness of every thing else.
The air was heavy with the August noonday heat. Above in the grove the
meeting branches hardly stirred. Even the birds and the insect world
were still, and the only sound that broke upon the oppressive silence
was the distant rush of water that fell over the little dam, half a
mile away from them.
“I tinks I cannot tell you it all,” said the fortune-teller, raising
her head and looking about her hurriedly. “Some young ladies when
dey hears what is not good dey faints and goes on very bad, and deir
friends makes a fuss and scolds de poor gypsy, who only tells what she
reads; an’ it is not her fault if it is not good.”
“But I will not faint or make a fuss,” said Edna, looking pale and
frightened. “I am not afraid.”
“No, you needn’t be,” said Lily, making an effort to throw off an
uncomfortable feeling that the woman’s intense manner had given them
all. “I don’t believe in fortune-telling any way.”
“But it is true. I have de power to see de future, to see de past too,”
said the woman. “Shall I tell you all about your past life?”--this to
Edna, who murmured an assent.
“Well, den, you haf live in fine house and had much fine dresses and
jewels, and you haf lost a friend, and you haf lately had a letter.”
These shrewd guesses, based on the sight of Edna’s showy rings and very
light mourning, seemed like very conclusive evidence that her father’s
wealth and her grandmother’s death last year were entries in the book
of fate that was open to the bold black eyes, and Edna became almost
afraid to hear the dark prophecy that she was threatened with.
“’Tis a strange fate, very strange,” said the woman, again musing over
the hand she held, but stealing an anxious glance at a little nickel
watch that hung by her side.
“I will hear it,” said Edna, tragically, nerving herself for the worst.
“Nonsense,” said Lily, catching a glimpse of her ghastly, agitated
face. “You are taking all this stuff in dead earnest, Edna, and it will
make you sick. O, dear, I wish we hadn’t come! Mrs. Abbott will be so
displeased! Come, girls, let’s go right home;” and she pulled out her
pocket-book. “You shall have money for each of us, Madame Belotti, but
I think we don’t want to hear any more solemn truths to-day.”
Edna, who was rather a nervous girl, was beginning to cry, and the
others, frightened lest she should treat them to a fit of hysterics
such as she had once in a thunder-storm, and make it difficult to get
her home quietly, began to soothe her and try to coax her back to the
gate. Madame seemed a little indifferent about the money Lily and Katie
fumbled in their purses to collect. Suddenly Katie exclaimed:
“Elfie! Why, where is the child?”
“Gone back into the grove, probably,” said Addie, quietly, who felt
calmer than the others because less responsible.
“She must be with Madame Belotti’s sister,” said Lily, not yet feeling
very much worried. “Where is she, madame?”
The sphinx was thrusting the money into her pocket-book and bowing as
if to say farewell. Her face wore an anxious look, but she replied very
civilly, pointing in the opposite direction from the road that led to
the station:
“De little one is all safe. My sister gets her to draw for us some
lucky numbers out of a bag, so we may get a great fortune from dem. De
drawing must be made unter a red oak-tree and in de sound of running
water. Dat is very important. And hark! I hears running water off dere,
and as we walks up I say to my sister, ‘Some water-fall is down dat
way, and you must take de little girl dere to draw de numbers from de
bag.’ Shall I go look for her, young ladies, or vill you go yourselves
and find her unter some big red oak-tree near de falling water?”
The girls were running down the hill toward the little mill before
madame quite finished speaking, but that oracular person did not seem
disturbed at being left. She gave one glance at Edna, who, after a
moment of hesitation, rather sulkily followed the others, and fleetly
disappeared in the other direction.