CHAPTER XVI

MY FORTUNE

The gipsy woman stooped and stared at me. Her face was close to mine, I seemed to feel her hot breath and shrunk in my chair. Never can I forget those eyes of hers. To this day do they revisit me in my sleep and glare upon me in dreams. Oh, such eyes as that woman had! The pupils were like liquid indigo; they contracted and enlarged as though they were fluid, indeed, upon the orange ground of the balls. They seemed on fire as their gaze flashed deep and full into my own vision. The scrutiny swiftly grew intolerable and I dropped my veil.

‘That will do, my sweet lady,’ said she, preserving the horrid whining note in her voice, and then, taking my hand, she feigned to explore it for some moments, perhaps minutes, so long did the pause seem.

She stood with my fingers in her hand, poring upon the palm. I cast a look around me, and in spite of my nervousness and uneasiness, that amounted to positive distress, I had some difficulty to prevent myself from breaking into an hysterical laugh at the countenances which surrounded us. Mrs. Webber seemed unable to draw her breath; the Miss Glanvilles stood with their mouths partly open; Sir Frederick Thompson’s face was distorted by a grin of expectation; but it would need the brush of a great comic artist to reproduce the looks of those people whilst they waited for the gipsy to speak.

She suddenly let fall my hand, drew herself erect and receded a step, causing a momentary confusion amongst the passengers who stood immediately behind her. She muttered awhile, and then in a sort of singsong, drawling voice addressed me, as nearly as I can recollect, as follows:--

‘It is not true that you are a single woman as they are saying throughout this ship. It is nothing to me that you have no wedding ring, for what signifies the want of a wedding ring when a poor lady is found as you were, bleeding and insensible? What signifies a wedding ring, I say, to such as you, found as you were, my sorrowful lady?--for are there not thieves upon the sea as there are thieves upon the land? And I do not need to be told that a sailor may be a good man until he is tempted, and then he will turn thief; yes, he will turn thief, even though he would give all that he has stolen for a drink of water and a piece of biscuit.’

‘How extraordinary!’ I heard Mrs. Webber say.

‘Oh yes,’ continued the gipsy, slightly gesticulating with her right hand, ‘the wedding ring does not signify. You are a married woman. I have looked into your eyes and I have seen a husband there; I have looked into your eyes and I have seen children there. You are a married woman, my lady. I tell you that, and I will tell you more; you are a young married woman. You have not long been married. Your husband is mourning for you, but he will not mourn long. Give me your hand.’ She seized my hand with impassioned energy, and continued to speak with her eyes fixed upon the palm of it. ‘You will be long separated from your husband. A dark shadow will stand between you. Oh, it is very clear--here is the sign: it is the shadow of death, that will stand between you. It will roll away, but another shadow of death will take its place, and though it will not stand between you and your husband, it will be dark upon your soul, aye, even unto the grave.’

‘The woman certainly talks poetically,’ said Mrs. Lee, in a low voice in my ear, ‘and it is clever of her to say what it has not occurred to other people to think of.’

The gipsy viewed me with her bright eyes and her teeth bared, but apparently she had no more fortune to tell me.

‘I say, missis,’ exclaimed Sir Frederick Thompson, ‘I should like to have your opinion upon the lady’s quality. If she ain’t a titled woman, don’t she spring from a noble stock now?’

‘Ah, my pretty gentleman,’ whined the gipsy turning to view him, ‘The duckkerin dook does not tell me that.’

‘You’ve told fortunes enough in your time to be able to tell breeding, I hope, when you see it,’ said Sir Frederick.

‘Oh, my pretty gentleman,’ drawled the woman, ‘to us poor gipsies all the world is alike. We are all brothers and sisters, and those that are kind,’ said she, bobbing a curtsey at him, ‘we love best and think most of, and they are the true quality people of the earth.’

‘But you have not done with the lady yet, I hope?’ cried Mrs. Webber. ‘You have told her nothing.’

‘My gorgeous angel,’ answered the woman, ‘I have told the sorrowful lady all I know, and what I know is the truth.’

‘What’s her country, mother?’ inquired Mr. Stinton.

She eyed him sideways with a cat-like look, but made no reply.

‘Tell us, my good woman, in what country you think her home is?’ said Mr. Webber.

‘Who can tell? I will not answer that,’ said the gipsy. ‘There are many countries for the likes of such as the sorrowful lady to have a home in. There is Russia and Spain and ’Olland. In them countries are plenty of English gorgios. Where her home may be I cannot tell, for the dook is silent.’

‘What Dook is she talking of?’ exclaimed Sir Frederick Thompson.

‘Oh, sweet gentleman,’ she said, turning upon him again, ‘the dook is the spirit that enables me to tell dukkeripen.’

‘Hearing you speak of Spain, mother, I thought you might have meant the Dook of Wellington,’ said Sir Frederick.

Mrs. Webber looked at her husband with a face of vexation, as though irritated by the vulgar jokes of the little city gentleman at such a moment of romance.

‘Your dook is but a shabby expounder of riddles if he cannot tell us why the lady should be found insensible and washing about the ocean in a little bit of an open boat,’ said Mr. Wedmold. ‘Can’t the dook make a guess?’

‘You forget, Mr. Wedmold, that fortune-telling means reading the future, not the past,’ said Mrs. Webber.

‘And that is right, my beautiful lady,’ cried the gipsy; ‘but I have told the sorrowful lady her past too, and by-and-bye the dook may tell me what her name is and where her ’ome is, and how many childer she has; and if I enable her to return to her friends, I hope,’ said she, sinking her knees in a curtsey, ‘that the poor gipsy woman will be remembered.’

Captain Ladmore, who had been looking on and listening all this while, stalked away from the crowd of us to the rail, and remained there, gazing seawards.

‘And shall I tell you your fortune, my sweet young lady?’ exclaimed the gipsy, addressing Alice Lee. ‘Give me your poor thin hand, and though you cross mine with the littlest bit you have, you shall have your fortune as truly told as though you gave me gold.’

‘My daughter does not require her fortune told,’ exclaimed Mrs. Lee, jumping up with an air of mingled consternation and excitement, and planting herself between the gipsy and Alice.

‘I think we have had about enough of her for one watch,’ exclaimed Mr. Harris, in his sourest voice. ‘Suppose you go forward now.’

‘Let me tell you your fortune, my pretty gentleman,’ exclaimed the gipsy; ‘you are an officer of the ship, and I will tell you your fortune for nothing.’

‘Get along forward to your quarters,’ said Mr. Harris. ‘When I want lies told about me I’ll get ’em from somebody who’ll have sense enough to fit my tiptop wishes. What can ye tell me? That after this voyage I’m going to marry a German princess and be voted ten thousand a year by the British House of Commons? You’d want sixpence to tell me that lie, and there’s never a man for’ards that wouldn’t spin me fifty better yarns about my prospects for a single tot of grog. So away with you to your quarters,’ and he made as though he would drive her; whereupon, dropping curtsies to me, to Mrs. Webber, and to one or two others, the gipsy walked forward with a face rendered extraordinary by the wild grin on her lips and the scowl upon her brow like a visible shadow there, sharpening and brightening the fiery glancings of her eyes.

The crowds of emigrants on the two ladders melted away, the mob of passengers broke up, but Mrs. Webber remained.

Mrs. Webber, as I have said, remained; but for some moments neither she nor Mrs. Lee nor her daughter spoke. Their eyes were bent upon my face, and they waited, hoping no doubt that when I aroused myself from the reverie into which I had sunk I would exhibit some sign of returning memory. I held my head down, and kept my gaze fixed upon the deck, and, rightly guessing that I would not be the first to speak, Mrs. Webber said:

‘Tell me now, has the gipsy woman helped you at all?’

I looked at her, and after a pause shook my head and answered, ‘She has not helped me in the least.’

‘What could have put the idea of your being married into the creature’s head?’ exclaimed Mrs. Lee.

‘It is a strange idea,’ said Alice, looking at me earnestly; ‘but I suppose those gipsy people understand the need of saying strange things. They cannot be too dark and mysterious and startling to please the sort of folks who cross their hands.’

‘But why should not Miss C---- be married?’ said Mrs. Webber.

‘I hope she is not--but I am _sure_ she is not!’ exclaimed Mrs. Lee.

Mrs. Webber ran a curious eye over me, and said: ‘I had my theory, but I own the gipsy creature has driven it out of my head. Is it _quite_ impossible, my dear Mrs. Lee, that Miss C---- may have been robbed of her rings? Why should she be found without any jewellery upon her? Your station in society is easily guessed, Miss C----, and I must say, now the gipsy woman has suggested the idea, that your having been found without rings, without a watch and chain, without earrings or brooch, without, in short, a single ornament such as one might most reasonably expect to find a lady wearing, looks uncommonly like as though you had been robbed. In which case,’ she added, somewhat breathlessly, ‘you _may_ have worn a wedding ring.’

‘Miss C---- had a purse with money in it in her pocket,’ said Mrs. Lee, who never called me by the name her daughter had given to me before strangers. ‘A thief who would steal rings or a watch and chain would certainly steal a purse with money in it.’

‘But--forgive me for being candid, Miss C----; whatever I say, whatever I may say, is _wholly_ for your sake--is wholly with the idea of helping you to remember,’ said Mrs. Webber; ‘is it likely that a lady occupying your position in society would be without a single ring?’ She glanced at her own plump white hands, upon which sparkled a variety of valuable gems.

Alice Lee pulled off her silk gloves, and, lifting up her poor thin hands, exclaimed with a smile in her voice--her face was concealed by her veil--‘You may see, Mrs. Webber, that I do not wear rings.’

‘There may be a reason,’ exclaimed Mrs. Webber, looking a little nonplussed.

‘Yes, there is a reason to be sure,’ said Mrs. Lee, bringing her eyes away from her daughter’s hands with a look of pain in her face, ‘Alice never cared for jewellery of any sort.’

‘I could name two girls of my acquaintance, Mrs. Webber,’ said Alice, putting on her gloves, ‘who do not wear rings, not because they cannot get them, their fathers are rich merchants at Newcastle-on-Tyne, but because, like me, they do not care for rings. I dare say we could name others, mother, if we were to take the trouble to think.’

‘But would you be without a watch, Miss C----?’ said Mrs. Webber.

‘Do not ask me!’ I cried. ‘All the while you are conversing I am struggling with my mind.’

‘Take a few turns with me, dear,’ said Alice, rising, ‘and then we will go downstairs and lunch together quietly in our cabin. I do not feel well enough to lunch in the saloon.’

So I gave her my arm, and we paced the deck. Mrs. Webber took my chair and talked with Mrs. Lee in a voice which she softened as we approached, gesticulating with considerable energy, as though she sought to convince her companion. After we had taken four or five turns, Alice complained of feeling weary; we then descended into the saloon and passed into the cabin.

* * * * *

At about nine o’clock that evening I went to my berth in the steerage, having spent the greater part of the day since the hour of lunch with Alice Lee and her mother. The girl’s cough had been somewhat troublesome during the afternoon. It had abated, but it had left her weak, and there had been a hint of querulousness in her manner, but scarcely so much as to vex her sweetness; nay, I could liken it to nothing better than to the passage of a summer breath of night-wind over some exquisitely calm breast of water, causing the reflection of the stars to tremble in the pure mirror, and shaking a little further sweetness yet out of the lilies.

I helped her to undress, and saw her into bed, and I sat and read aloud to her until she fell asleep. Her mother had sat in an armchair watching her, until some one began to play on the piano, whilst I was reading to Alice, on which Mrs. Lee softly went out to silence the music, as I might suppose, for it presently ceased, and before she returned Alice had fallen asleep; whereupon, creeping from the berth, I whispered to Mrs. Lee that her daughter slumbered, and went to my own cabin.

The bracket lamp was alight, but it burnt dimly, and I brightened it for the sake of the cheerfulness and the companionship of the flame. I was sad at heart, and my head ached, but I was not sleepy. Secretly I had been greatly agitated by what the gipsy had said. Of course I knew it was pure invention on the woman’s part; but even as mere suggestions her words had sunk deep. Could it be that I was a married woman? Could it be that I had children? The thought raised an agony of desire to _know_--to be _sure_; but it brought with it no other yearning. I knew not that there were dear ones at home mourning over me as dead, and therefore my heart could not crave for them. To my eclipsed and blackened mind my husband and my children were as the unborn infant is to the mother that may yet bear it. I was without memory and, no matter what might be the imaginations infixed in my mind by the suggestions and conjectures of others, I was without the power to realise.

But not the less was the struggle after recollection a dreadful anguish. Sometimes I sat and sometimes I paced the deck of the cabin, and all the while I was saying to myself, ‘Suppose that I am a wife! Suppose that I have left a husband and children behind me at my home, wherever it may be!’ And then I would come to a stand, and fold my arms tightly across my breast, and close my eyes and with knitted brow search in the blackness within me, till the fruitless quest grew into physical pain unendurable as though some cruel hand were upon my heart.

And there was something more than my own intolerable mental condition to depress me. I could not doubt that Alice Lee was dying. She might be spared for some weeks; she might even be spared to find a grave in Australia. But when I had looked at her after her fits of coughing that afternoon, and when I had taken a final glance at her as she lay sleeping, I could not doubt that her time was short, that whether or not she should live to reach Australia she would certainly never behold her native country again. Short as had been our association, I could not have loved her more had she been known to me and had she been dear to me all her life. I loved Mrs. Lee, but I loved Alice Lee more than I loved her mother. My grief was selfish, but then all grief is more or less so. When this girl dies, I thought to myself, what friends shall I have? Who will compassionate my loneliness as she does? Who will make me feel as she does, whilst my memory remains black, that I am not utterly solitary? I know that whilst she lives I shall have a friend, someone who will care for me, someone who will not lose sight of me when this voyage is ended and the homeless world is before me. But she will die before the voyage is ended, and what then will become of me? O God, take pity upon me! I cried out of the anguish of my soul; and, throwing myself upon my knees, I clasped my hands and prayed for mercy and for help to Him to whom Alice Lee had taught me to pray.

The night was very quiet. The steerage was silent; one man I had observed reading at a table under the lamp; but the fine night, as I might suppose, detained his fellow-passengers on deck. There was a bright moon; the silver sheen lay upon the glass of the cabin porthole and so obscured it with misty radiance that the stars and the dark line of the horizon were invisible. The wind was fair and fresh, and the noise of the water washing past penetrated the silence. The ship rocked stately and slow; indeed it was true tropic sailing, with a tropic temperature in the cabin and a tropic night without, to judge by the glory of the moonlight upon the cabin window.

The minutes crept on, but feeling sleepless I had no mind to undress myself. Indeed, I had a longing to go on deck, for the temperature of the berth was uncomfortably warm; I did not know how to open the porthole, nor, though I had been able to open it, should I have dared to do so lest a sudden roll of the ship might submerge the orifice and fill the berth with water. The temptation, therefore, to go on deck was keen, and it was rendered the keener by my hot brow and headache; in imagination I tasted the sweet night wind cool with dew, and beheld the wide-spread splendour cast by the moon upon the vast dark surface of the sea. But then it would shortly be ten o’clock, at which hour a man regularly tapped upon my door and bade me extinguish my lamp; and then, again, I remembered how Mr. Harris and Mrs. Richards had stated that it was against the rules of the ship for women to wander alone upon the decks after the hour for extinguishing the lights had been struck upon the ship’s bell.

Suddenly I heard a voice calling down the hatchway at the forward end of the steerage; someone gruffly replied, possibly the man who had been seated reading under the lamp. I paid no heed to these cries; they were frequent enough down in this part of the ship. But about five minutes after the cry had sounded my cabin door was lightly beaten and opened, and Mrs. Richards entered.

‘I am glad to find you dressed,’ she exclaimed. ‘I believed you would have been in bed in spite of your light burning. There is a fine sight to be seen on deck. What do you think it is? A ship on fire! You may make many voyages without seeing such a sight.’

‘A ship on fire!’ I exclaimed. ‘Oh, I should greatly wish to see it! But it is nearly ten o’clock.’

‘And what of that?’ said she.

‘Why, did I not understand you to say that women are not allowed to be alone on deck after the lights are out?’

She laughed and answered, ‘The Captain would not like women to be wandering on deck alone at one o’clock in the morning as you were, my dear; but there are always passengers about in warm weather at ten o’clock, and sometimes after midnight, and whilst there are passengers on deck no notice will be taken of your being there.’

‘If I had known that,’ said I, ‘I should have gone on deck half an hour ago.’

I put on my shawl and hat--I call them mine--and, parting with Mrs. Richards at her own cabin door, went on to the poop by one of the ladders conducting to that raised platform from the quarter deck. It was a very fine glorious night. The moon rode high, and under her the sea lay brightly silvered. The sky was rich with stars, some of them a delicate green and two or three of them rose, and the firmament in which they sparkled had a soft and flowing look as though the velvet dusk were liquid. The ship was clothed with canvas to the starry altitude of her trucks. The swelling sails reflected the light of the moon, and their gleam was as that of snow against the dark sky as they rose with an appearance of cloud-like floating one above another, dwindling until the topmost sail seemed no more than a fragment of fleecy mist wan in the dusky heights. There was a pleasant breeze, and it blew over the rail cool with dew and sweet with that flavourless freshness of ocean air that is to the nostrils as a glass of water from a pure crystal spring is to the mouth.

I stood at the corner of the poop near the head of the ladder in the shadow made by the great sail called the mainsail, one wing or extremity of which was stretched a long way beyond the shrouds. Many passengers were on the poop; they were whitened by the moonlight, and as they moved here and there their figures showed as though beheld through a very delicate silver mist, but their shadows swayed black and firm from their feet upon the white planks. The forecastle of the ship was crowded with emigrants. The moonshine was raining down in silver upon that part of the vessel, and the people had a ghostly appearance, every face whitened, and their clothes white as though they had been powdered, as they stood staring across the dark sweep of sea upon the right-hand bow of the ship.

Woman-like I gazed everywhere but in the right direction when I first gained the poop; but, observing some people on the other side of the deck to point with shadowy hands, I immediately beheld what resembled a globe of red fire upon the sea. It looked like a huge star setting red as blood. I could not imagine how far off it might be, nor, but for the stewardess’s information, should I have supposed it to be a ship on fire. I had expected to see a great conflagration, a wide space of the night sky crimsoned with forked and writhing tongues of flame, and I was disappointed; but after I had stood gazing for a few minutes alone, for there was nobody in that corner of the deck where I had planted myself, a feeling of dismay, of consternation, even of horror possessed me. I knew that the dark red globe burning upon the sea yonder was a ship on fire, and knowing this I imagined that there might be living people on board of the flaming mass. The whole spirit of the solitude of this mighty scene of night, beautiful as it was with moonlight and with starlight, seemed to be centred in that distant point of fire; and the thought of the helplessness of the people on board the flaming fabric amid so vast a field, their horrible loneliness, the awful despair which that loneliness must excite--this thought, and other thoughts which visited me from that distant mass of fire, presently grew so insupportable to the deep melancholy which was upon me and which had been upon me throughout the evening that I crossed the deck in the hope of finding Mrs. Lee, that I might forget something of myself in conversing with her.

But Mrs. Lee was not to be seen. She was in her berth, probably in bed, and they would not give her the news of the ship on fire for fear of disturbing her daughter. The passengers stood in groups, pointing to the burning vessel and speaking in tones of excitement. I went from one to another, gazing into their faces and receiving nods and enquiries as to what I thought of the ship on fire. Captain Ladmore walked the hinder part of the deck alone. But as there was nobody near him who resembled Mrs. Lee, I returned to that part of the deck where I had first stationed myself, being in no humour to mingle with the passengers on the other side.

The sea was smooth, the wind fair and fresh, the spread of canvas vast, and the ship was sweeping through the water at a rapid rate. She was going through it clean as a sharp-built yacht would, making no noise save under the bows, whence arose a sound of shearing as though produced by a knife passing through thin ice. The marbled waters, moon touched, whirled past alongside, softly hissing as they fled by, and from the flight of those glimmering wreaths and eddies of foam I judged of the fast pace at which the ship was sailing.

Gradually the distant globe of fire enlarged, and now the sky was reddened all about it, and as I gazed there stole out of the blood red haze of light the dark shadow of a ship lying within a quarter of a mile of the burning vessel. Mr. Harris, who stood near some passengers on the opposite side of the deck, let fall a night-glass that he had been holding to his eyes and called out to the captain,

‘There’s a barque hove to close alongside of the burning vessel, sir.’

‘I see her, sir,’ answered the captain; and in a few moments the palpitating fiery mass upon the sea slided a little away from the bow. I was sailor enough to understand that our ship had been steered for the burning vessel, but that Captain Ladmore, now perceiving that assistance was close at hand, had resumed his course. Every five minutes of sailing was rendering that picture of fire more splendid and awful. She seemed a large ship, three-masted like our own. Great columns of smoke rose from her, and into these sooty volumes the flames would leap out of the burning hold, turning them crimson to a great height, and the smoke hung like a thunder-cloud over the sea where the ship lay burning; it eclipsed the stars, and it reverberated in lightning-like flashes the darting of the red flames; and so exactly did these flames resemble lightning that I heard some of the passengers, who believed the cloud of smoke to be an electric storm, express surprise that no thunder was to be heard.

But the sublimity of the scene lay chiefly in the effect of contrast. In one part of the ocean was the silver reflection of the moon, with the bright, serene orb poised high and small over her own wake; the dark waters streamed into that brilliant reflection which trembled with the racing of the silver lines; and in another part of the ocean lay the great flaming ship, with her masts and yards all on fire, and showing as though they were painted upon the darkness in flames; and a little distance from her hung the shadow of a large vessel, whose canvas stole out in spaces of dim red, and then darkened again as the flames soared and sank; and behind and over the mastheads of the two vessels floated a huge dark body of smoke, which came and went to the eye with its sudden sullen colouring as from lightning; and the whole picture was made awful by its suggestions of terror and of destruction.

It was a scene to hold the most thoughtless mute and to detain the most wandering eye. But whilst I stood gazing two figures drew near; as they approached I could hear they were arguing.

‘You can never persuade me,’ said Mr. Wedmold, ‘that the Americans have humour in the true meaning of the word, and there is but one meaning. They are funny, but they are not humorous. Their fun is either purely verbal or ridiculous exaggeration.’

‘What humourist have we ever produced,’ exclaimed Mr. Clack, ‘who can compare with ----’ and he named a funny American writer.

Mr. Wedmold’s silence was expressive of disgust.

‘Or take Holmes,’ said Mr. Clack.

‘Holmes’s humour is entirely English,’ said Mr. Wedmold; ‘by mentioning Holmes you strengthen my argument.’

‘What do you mean by verbal humour?’ said Mr. Clack.

‘The Yankee gets his grins out of odd words, some few of which still survive in our kitchens,’ said Mr. Wedmold; ‘or he gets his grins out of exaggerating or understating a situation. He will tell you, for instance, that, two men falling out, one threw the other over Niagara Falls, and the fellow got wet. The Yankee will look for a loud laugh at _got wet_; but there is no humour in it. A Yankee in telling a story will wind up by saying “So I said you git, and he got.” The laugh must come in here, for this “git” and “got” is the point of the story. But this sort of thing--and American humour is all this sort of thing--is by no means humour, and very little indeed of it is even fun. One page of Elia is worth the productions of the whole of the American humourists put together, from the date of Bunker’s Hill down to the latest effort of ----,’ and he again mentioned the name of a funny American writer.

I walked away and took up a position on the deck where I was unable to hear this argument on American humour, and where I could watch the burning ship in peace.

Very suddenly the great blaze upon the sea vanished. My eyes were upon the strong wild light when it went out, and I noticed that just before it disappeared the flaming masts of the vessel reeled so as to form a fiery arc, and then all was blackness where the light had been; whence it was to be supposed that the ship, in filling with water, had heeled over, and gone down like a stone. The vessel that hung near showed now very distinctly by the moonlight, and immediately over the spot where the burning ship had foundered, hung a great dim white cloud, which reflected the moonbeams as a cobweb might; but as I gazed this immense body of steam melted away, and nothing was to be seen but the pallid sails of the befriending vessel showing out against the dark cloud of smoke.