CHAPTER XV

THE GIPSY

I went to Alice’s cabin, where I found Mrs. Lee writing in what appeared to be a diary, took from a shelf the book Alice had asked me to fetch, and returned to her side; and I had opened the volume and had found the place where I had left off when I last read to her, and was beginning to read aloud when I found my attention disturbed by the sound of voices behind our chairs. I turned my head, and observed that Mr. Wedmold and Mr. Clack had seated themselves, regardless of the heat of the sun, upon a grating near the wheel. They were arguing.

‘It is impossible for me to read,’ I exclaimed, ‘while those men are talking so loud.’

‘What are they arguing about?’ said Alice Lee; ‘let us listen.’

‘Yes, I am with you there,’ said Mr. Wedmold. ‘Defoe’s English is admirable. But “Robinson Crusoe” is full of blunders.’

‘Blunders,’ cried Mr. Clack, whose collars held his neck so rigid that he could not turn his head without moving his body from the waist. ‘I have read “Robinson Crusoe” often enough, and cannot recollect a single blunder for the life of me.’

‘Will you bet?’

‘No, I will not bet.’

‘Will you bet there are no absurdities in “Robinson Crusoe”?’

‘I will stand a drink,’ said Mr. Clack, ‘if you can point out--so as to convince me--a single absurdity in “Robinson Crusoe”.’

‘Right you are!’ exclaimed Mr. Wedmold, with an accent of victorious elation; ‘what about the mark of the foot?’

‘What d’ye mean?’ said Mr. Clack.

‘“It happened one day about noon,” I know the passage by heart,’ said Mr. Wedmold, ‘“it happened one day about noon,” says Robinson Crusoe, “going towards my boat, I was exceedingly surprised with the print of a man’s naked foot on the shore, which was very plain to be seen in the sand.”’

‘Well!’ said Mr. Clack.

‘Well,’ said Mr. Wedmold, ‘what are we to suppose? That the savage who made that mark with his foot had a wooden leg? Only think of a single imprint! Even two would have been unpardonable; there should have been a whole flight of them. Could you walk upon sand capable of receiving the imprint of your foot and stamp one impress only? Impossible!’

‘In all probability,’ said Mr. Clack, ‘the savage landed upon some flat rocks which were skirted by sand; and in his walk he happened to put his foot upon the sand once only, and hence Robinson Crusoe saw but a single imprint.’

‘He evidently does not intend that Mr. Wedmold shall drink at his expense,’ said Alice.

The two gentlemen continued to argue. It was impossible to read aloud. It was impossible indeed not to listen to them, for they often raised their voices so high that people at the other end of the deck turned in their chairs to view them. The discussion was ended at last--so far at least as Alice and I were concerned--by Mr. Clack telling Mr. Wedmold that he did not believe he had quoted correctly from the story. On this they both rose and walked away to seek through the ship for a copy of ‘Robinson Crusoe.’

There was now peace at our end of the vessel, and opening the book afresh I began to read aloud, but before I had read two pages, Alice, with the capricious taste of the invalid, though her manner was never wanting in perfect sweetness and gentleness, stopped me.

‘I do not feel in the humour to listen to that book,’ said she. ‘It is a book for the quietude of the evening, for the lamplight, a book for the open window through which you can see the stars shining. It is not a book for a sunny joyous morning like this. One should not be able to see gay figures moving about, and hear the sound of laughter when one reads it.’

I closed the volume and she talked of the sea and the wonder and beauty of it, and recited some passages from the ‘Ancient Mariner’; but in the midst of her recitation she was seized with a cough that almost convulsed her. I raised her veil that she might breathe easily. She sought to reassure me with a smile during the convulsions of her cough, but it shook her to the heart. I seemed to hear death in the rattle of that terrible cough. Never before in my presence had she been so suddenly and violently seized.

The fit passed and she lowered her veil, breathing quickly, and for some moments she was speechless. Presently I said to her; ‘Has this attack been caused by your coming on deck?’

She shook her head and answered in a low voice, as though speaking with difficulty. ‘No, I often cough, but chiefly during the night. Do not tell mother of this attack.’

One might have imagined her cough noisy and distressing enough to win the attention of everybody upon deck, and that nobody heeded it, unless it was the sailor who stood a little distance behind us grasping the wheel, was because, whilst Alice was coughing the passengers had left their seats, had thrown down their books or work, had forsaken their game of deck quoits to crowd about the head of the ladder on the right-hand side of the deck--the ladder that conducted from the poop on to the quarterdeck below. I was too much grieved and concerned by Alice’s attack to notice this movement of the passengers; but now that she had recovered and was able to speak and get her breath freely, I looked at the people and wondered what had drawn them in a body to that particular part of the deck.

‘Can an accident have happened?’ said I.

‘Will you go and see what is the matter, dear?’ exclaimed Alice.

I at once arose and walked along the deck, keeping on the side opposite that which was thronged with the passengers. When I arrived at the brass rail that protected the extremity of the deck, I looked over and saw a great crowd of emigrants gathered about the central mast and hatchway. They grinned and elbowed amongst themselves as they stared at the concourse of passengers upon the poop. Half-way up the ladder on that side stood the swarthy fierce-looking gipsy, who had ejaculated on catching sight of my face when I first came on board, and who had watched me with eyes of fire when I had walked the deck with Mrs. Lee. She appeared to be haranguing the passengers on the poop. Her voice was a peculiar whine, and she showed a set of white strong teeth as she grinned up at them. Fearing if she saw me that she would point or call, or in some way direct attention to me, I returned to Alice, seated myself at her side, and told her what I had seen. After a few minutes the crowd of passengers at the head of the poop-ladder drew back, so as to allow the gipsy woman to step on to the deck. The whole mob, with the fierce-looking woman in the heart of them, then came surging to the skylight lying nearest to the edge of the poop, and here all the people halted, with the woman still in the thick of them. Mr. Harris hovered on the skirts of the crowd, taking a peep now and again over one or another’s shoulder with his acid, dry, twisted face; and great was the curiosity of the poor emigrants; for unheeded, or at least unrebuked by the mate, they thronged the poop-ladder on either hand to look on and hear what was said.

The tawny, flashing-eyed woman could now and again be seen by us as the people about her moved the better to hear or to accommodate one another with room. Her white teeth gleamed; a fierce smile was fixed upon her face; her eyes of Egyptian blackness sparkled under the red hood or handkerchief that covered her head, her skin looked of the colour of pepper in the sunlight; she talked incessantly, with frequent exhortatory flourishings of her arms, and distant as she was--almost the whole length of the long poop-deck separating us--I could see how wild, fierce, and repellant was her smile, whilst she glanced from one face to another as she jabbered and gesticulated.

Frequent laughter broke from the passengers, and sometimes one or two of the ladies recoiled by a step, though they would thrust in again a minute after.

‘What can they be doing with the woman?’ said Alice.

‘They seem to be making fun of her,’ said I.

‘It is more likely that she is making fun of them,’ said Alice. ‘Is she a gipsy? She has the appearance of one.’

‘What is a gipsy?’ I asked.

‘A person who belongs to a strange wandering tribe; whether there are more tribes than one I do not know. They are to be found everywhere, I believe. They look like Jews, but they are not Jews. It is supposed that they originally came from Egypt or India. I used to take a great interest in reading about them. I never can pronounce the word gipsy without an English country picture rising before me; a wayside tract of grass off a dusty road, clumps of trees here and there, the trickling sound of a little brook mingled with the humming of bees and the lowing of cattle in a near pasture, a waggon covered with canvas, two or three dark-skinned little children playing on the grass, a tawny woman like that creature there, bending over an iron pot dangling above a gipsy fire, a fierce, bushy-whiskered, chocolate-faced man, mending chairs, or making baskets, or tinkering at a little forge.’

She gazed at me earnestly when she ceased to speak. I knew that she sought in the expression of my face for some sign of my recognition of the picture she had drawn, for some hint of recollection in my looks. A sudden burst of laughter broke from the people gathered about the gipsy.

‘I believe she is telling fortunes,’ said Alice; ‘shall we go and listen to her, dear?’

She took my arm and we approached the crowd. It was as Alice had said: the woman was telling fortunes. She was holding the delicate white fingers of the elder Miss Glanville, whose handsome face was rosy red. Everybody was on the broad grin. The gipsy woman holding the girl’s fingers talked with her eyes upon the palm of the hand, but sometimes she would flash a look into Miss Glanville’s face. The creature spoke deliberately, with a slow drawling whine. She seemed to heartily enjoy her task, and to be in no hurry to proceed with her business of divination. Her face was heavy, the features strong and coarse, and the whole head would have better suited a man’s than a woman’s figure; yet the countenance was not wanting in a certain wild comeliness. The nose was of the true Egyptian pattern as we are taught to understand the meaning of the word Egyptian by ancient chiselling and inscriptions, and her hair, or as much as was visible of it, resembled a wig manufactured from a horse’s tail.

‘He will make you unhappy,’ she was saying in her drawling whining voice, ‘but you will be true to him. Yet you will not be sorry when he dies, and a handsome man will be your second. But he will have to wait for you, and cheerfully will he wait for you, my lady, for he’s waiting for you now. True love is never in a ’urry.’ There was a laugh. ‘He will not bring you money. No, it is your ladyship that will set him up; but he’ll never be made to feel his want of money, for your ’art beats fond.’

‘What stuff!’ said Alice.

‘It makes her blush, yet she does not look displeased,’ I whispered.

‘Can’t you name the two fortunate gentlemen, mother?’ exclaimed a tall, slender young man known to me as simply Mr. Stinton.

‘Names is nothing,’ answered the gipsy woman, without lifting her eyes from the girl’s hand, ‘it’s persons, not names, as my art deals with.’ And then she went on to tell the blushing Miss Glanville that her home after her second marriage would not be in England but in Italy. She would live by a lake; an Italian nobleman would fall in love with her, and though there would be no reason for jealousy the Italian nobleman would cause a little unhappiness between her and her second. The Italian nobleman would praise her singing and excite a passion in her for the stage, but it would not come to the stage, for her second’s wishes would prevail, and the Italian nobleman after a time would withdraw and never more be heard of.

Other rubbish of this sort did the fierce-looking gipsy woman drawl and whine out, sometimes in language very well expressed, and sometimes using slang or cant words which never failed to provoke the laughter of the gentlemen.

Amongst those who pressed most eagerly forward to harken to the gipsy was Mrs. Webber. She was dressed in white, and a very pretty straw hat was perched on her high-dressed hair. Her pale face wore an expression of enthusiastic credulity, and she kept her eyes fastened upon the gipsy as though she devoured every word the creature uttered. Alice and I stood on the other side of the crowd, and Mrs. Webber did not observe us. I speak of ourselves as a crowd, and indeed we looked so on the white deck of the ship and under the shadow of the awning which produced an atmospheric effect of compression, diminishing the width and even the length of the ship to the eye. I had no doubt that Mrs. Webber would ask to have her fortune told, and I loitered, Alice leaning on my arm, with some curiosity to hear what the gipsy would say; but when the woman had dropped the hand of Miss Glanville, and while she swept the adjacent faces with brilliant eyes as though she should say, Whose turn next? the tall, slim young gentleman known to me by the name of Mr. Stinton pressed forward close to the woman and exclaimed:

‘I say, mother, I know something about you gipsy folks. My father was a magistrate,’ and dropping his head on one side he smiled at her.

‘What you know about us is that we are a very respectable, honest people,’ said she, grinning at him, with her large, strong, glaring white teeth.

‘Do you still steal pigs?’ said he.

‘Oh, no, no,’ she cried with a vehement shake of the head and an equally vehement motion of her hand before her face.

‘You no longer poison pigs and beg the carcases of the poor people to whom they belonged and then clean them of the poison and roast them and eat them, eh?’ said Mr. Stinton.

A general laugh arose on either hand from the emigrants who swarmed upon the two ladders.

‘Oh, no, no,’ cried the woman, ‘we are respectable, hard-working people, and get our money honestly.’

‘You no longer steal horses, then?’

‘Oh, no, no.’

‘Nor children?’

‘Why do you say such things?’ shrieked the woman, and her eyes blazed as she looked at Mr. Stinton, and the flush that entered her cheeks deepened her swarthy, ugly complexion by several shades. ‘By my God, if you ask me any more such questions I will do you some mischief.’

‘None of that!’ cried Mr. Harris.

‘My father is a magistrate,’ said Mr. Stinton, who had stepped backwards and now spoke over the shoulders of Mr. Webber.

‘It is a pity to insult the poor creature,’ said one of the ladies.

The gipsy looked for an instant at Mr. Stinton, her eyes then went to Mrs. Webber, and her manner changed; it grew suppliant and cringing; the fierce expression of her lips softened into a fawning smile.

‘Let me tell you your fortune, my gorgeous angel,’ she exclaimed, resuming her former drawling, whining voice. ‘Oh, but I can see that there is a happy fortune for that sweet face. Pull off your beautiful little glove that I may see your hand, and whatever you crosses my own hand with shall be welcome for the sake of your lovely eyes. Ah, what mischief has my lady’s eyes done in their day, and what mischief are they yet to do,’ and thus the woman proceeded.

I could not forbear a smile at the manner in which Mr. Webber readjusted the glass in his eye, as though to obtain a clearer sight of the gipsy, whilst he stroked down one of his whiskers.

‘This is sad nonsense,’ said Alice; ‘and I am a little weary of standing. Shall we return to our seats, dear?’

I wished to hear Mrs. Webber’s fortune told, but Alice was not to be kept standing, and together we walked to our chairs at the after-end of the deck and seated ourselves. Just then Mrs. Lee came up from the saloon. She inquired what the passengers were doing.

‘They are having their fortunes told, mother,’ answered Alice.

‘By our staring gipsy friend, no doubt,’ said Mrs. Lee, addressing me. ‘Well, certainly life at sea is very dull, and you cannot wonder that people should try to kill an hour, however stupidly.’ I fetched a chair, and she sat down. ‘And yet,’ continued she thoughtfully, letting her eyes rest upon her child, ‘I ought to be one of the last to ridicule fortune-telling. When I was a girl of sixteen I was walking with my mother--where we then lived--on the outskirts of Gateshead, when we came across a gipsy encampment. A dreadful old hag stumbled out of a group of dirty people, and begged to let her tell me my dukkerin, as she called it--strange that I should remember the word after all these years! My mother was for going on, but I stopped and put a shilling into the old creature’s hand, and she told me my fortune.’

‘Was it a true fortune?’ said Alice.

‘It was true, every word,’ answered Mrs. Lee; ‘it was wonderfully true. She described the man that I was to marry, and had she spoken with your dear father’s portrait in her hand she could not have been more accurate. She told me how many children I should have; but, what is more extraordinary, she named not only the year but the month of the year in which I should be married. And it came to pass exactly as she had predicted.’

‘And what more did the gipsy tell you, mother?’ said Alice.

‘No more, my love,’ answered Mrs. Lee, but with a note of hesitation, which made me suspect that more had been told to her by that old gipsy than she was now willing to reveal.

Meanwhile there was much laughter amongst the passengers at the other end of the deck. I could occasionally distinguish an hysterical giggle uttered by Mrs. Webber, and once a deep unquiet Ha! ha! delivered by her husband.

‘A ship seems a strange place for gipsies and fortune-telling,’ said Alice. ‘Why is that woman going to Australia, I wonder? Are there any of her tribe there?’

‘Probably some ancestor of hers was transported,’ answered Mrs. Lee. ‘He left descendants, and the woman is going to settle down amongst them. Gipsies were constantly being transported for theft of all sorts when I was a girl, in days when there were convict ships and when unhappy wretches were banished for life from their country for crimes which are now visited with a few months’ imprisonment. I am amazed that there should be any gipsies left. There was more prejudice against them than even against the Jews. They were hunted from town to town, the parish eye was never off them, and they were really so wicked, they committed so many sins, that it is amazing there should be any survivors of the prisons.’

Whilst Mrs. Lee was thus speaking, Mrs. Webber came sailing out of the crowd with a flushed face and a smile of excitement. Her flowing robe of white cashmere fluffed out in ample winding folds as she advanced, and she approached with an airy, floating gait that was like dancing.

‘Oh, Miss C----,’ she exclaimed, eagerly bending towards me, ‘I have been having my fortune told; and, do you know, the ugly creature is a witch; she is positively a witch! She has told me some extraordinary things, I assure you. My poor husband was silly enough to “hem” once or twice as though her prophecies disquieted him. Now, Miss C----, I want you to let the woman tell you your fortune.’

‘No, if you please, Mrs. Webber,’ I exclaimed.

‘Oh, but you must let her tell you your fortune,’ she repeated. ‘Mrs. Lee, I protest the creature is a witch. Do help me to persuade Miss C---- to let the woman look at her hand.’

‘These people profess to tell the future only,’ said Mrs. Lee smiling. ‘Can that woman there read the past--a past that is hidden in darkness? If she can,’ she continued, turning to me, ‘no harm can be done by your crossing her hand.’

‘Only think,’ cried Mrs. Webber, ‘if something she said, some question she put to you, should light up your memory.’

‘What could she invent that you or Mrs. Lee or Miss Lee could not ask?’ said I.

‘The woman is quite a witch,’ said Mrs. Webber, ‘you should give yourself a chance. How can you tell who may help you or what may inspire you?’

I looked at Alice. ‘I think Mrs. Webber is right,’ said she; ‘you never can tell what may awaken recollection.’

‘I will not go amongst that crowd and have my fortune told,’ said I.

‘I will bring the woman to you,’ exclaimed Mrs. Webber; and, full of curiosity and excitement, and with her eyes bright with the animal spirits which had been excited by the gipsy’s flattering observations, she sailed away from us.

‘What will the gipsy be able to say?’ exclaimed Mrs. Lee, laughing a little nervously. ‘But more wonderful than her predictions must be the credulity that can listen to such stuff. And stuff I call it, in spite of the old woman who told my fortune rightly. Poor Mrs. Webber! There are many ladies after her kind in this world, perfectly good-hearted creatures, but----My husband used often to say that the strongest of all human passions is curiosity, and that the speediest and surest way of making money is to work upon that passion.’

‘Here comes the gipsy woman,’ said Alice.

I felt extremely nervous and uneasy. I did not like the idea of being stared at close by that flaming-eyed toad-coloured woman. And neither did I like the idea of being stared at close by the passengers whilst the gipsy whined at me. But it was now too late to draw back; Mrs. Webber and the gipsy were coming along the deck, followed by at least two-thirds of the passengers, and now the fierce-looking woman was dropping curtsies to me and to Mrs. Lee and to Alice. She instantly addressed me in a drawling, fawning voice.

‘Ah, my sorrowful angel, it has been a bad time for you, and when I first saw your ladyship I said to myself, She’s of Egypt, and if she has bantlings they are tawny, and I cried, Tiny Jesus, what a face! for the sight of it was like poison to my heart. Oh yes, my sorrowful angel, I did think you one of us, and Roman you might well be,’ she cried with her flashing eyes fastened upon my veil, ‘but for your delicate skin and a look of high-born beauty which the likes of us never has. Come, sweet lady, cross my hand, and let it be silver, that I may tell ye your true fortune.’

By this time, we were pretty fairly surrounded by the passengers, and a little way back, with his eyes fixed full upon me, was Mr. Harris, the chief officer. The gipsy stood unpleasantly close. Her features were more massive and coarse, her complexion more loathsome, her teeth bigger and stronger if not whiter, and her eyes wilder, more flaming and more searching than I had imagined them, though I had not stood far from her when she was telling fortunes in the crowd. I remember observing many minute dots of black upon her chin, as though she shaved or had been pricked by a needle dipped in India ink. Her figure was lame and muscular, her bust enormous and slack, her whole appearance indeed so repellent now that she was close to me that I heartily wished myself in my cabin out of sight.

‘You do not mean to tell us,’ exclaimed Mr. Webber, ‘that you mistook the lady for a gipsy.’

‘Indeed I did, dear gentleman,’ she answered; ‘when she first came on board I took her for one of my people.’

‘Chaw!’ exclaimed Mr. Harris over the shoulder of Mr. Stinton.

Mrs. Lee felt for her purse.

‘Let the poor sorrowful lady cross my hand with a piece of money of her own,’ said the gipsy.

I put my hand in my pocket and drew out a shilling and placed it in the broad palm of the gipsy’s outstretched hand. The passengers gazed with excitement. Mr. Harris drew closer by a stride. The two ladders at the forward end of the deck and the bulwark rail that rose to midway the height of the ladders on either hand were still crowded with emigrants, none of whom, however, trespassed an inch beyond the topmost step. All this keen interest was easy enough to understand. Was it possible that the gipsy, though she should be unable to restore my memory, would be able to peer into the darkened mirror of my past and witness there what was hidden from myself?

‘You must lift up your veil, dear lady,’ said the gipsy, ‘there are signs in your face that I shan’t be able to find in your hand.’

‘What is this?’ suddenly exclaimed the grave voice of Captain Ladmore. ‘Whom have we here? And what is she doing?’

‘She’s telling fortunes, sir,’ answered Mr. Harris, in a voice of disgust.

‘Who brought her on to the poop,’ exclaimed Captain Ladmore.

‘I did,’ said Mrs. Webber. ‘Pray do not meddle, my dear captain. The interest is just now red hot.’

The gipsy woman ducked with a wild sort of curtsey at the captain, grinning with all her teeth at him as she did so. He gazed at her with a sober frown, and I hoped that he would order her off the deck, but he said nothing, merely stood looking gravely on, towering half a head above the people who stood in front of him, whilst Mr. Harris, at his side, scarcely removed his eyes from my face.

‘Lift up your veil, if you please, my dear lady, that I may see your eyes,’ said the gipsy.

‘I had supposed that the sight of my hand would be enough for you,’ said I.

‘I can tell your ladyship’s fortune by your hand,’ said she, ‘but the past lies in your eyes. They are the windows of your memory, and I must look through them to see what’s indoors.’

‘What do you think of that for a poetical touch, Kate?’ I heard Mr. Webber say.

‘Raise your veil, Agnes,’ whispered Alice softly, ‘if it is only for a moment, dear. I am curious to hear what the woman means to tell you. There may be a meaning in this--something may come of it.’

So I put my hand to my veil and raised it above my eyes, contriving that it should keep my scarred forehead screened.