CHAPTER XXXI

BARTRAM-HAUGH

In a moment a tall, lithe girl, black-haired, black-eyed, and, as I thought, inexpressibly handsome, was smiling, with such beautiful rings of pearly teeth, at the window; and in her peculiar accent, with a suspicion of something foreign in it, proposing with many courtesies to tell the lady her fortune.

I had never seen this wild tribe of the human race before—­children of mystery and liberty.  Such vagabondism and beauty in the figure before me!  I looked at their hovels and thought of the night, and wondered at their independence, and felt my inferiority.  I could not resist.  She held up her slim oriental hand.

‘Yes, I’ll hear my fortune,’ I said, returning the sibyl’s smile instinctively.

‘Give me some money, Mary Quince.  No, not that,’ I said, rejecting the thrifty sixpence she tendered, for I had heard that the revelations of this weird sisterhood were bright in proportion to the kindness of their clients, and was resolved to approach Bartram with cheerful auguries.  ’That five-shilling piece,’ I insisted; and honest Mary reluctantly surrendered the coin.

So the feline beauty took it, with courtesies and ‘thankees,’ smiling still, and hid it away as if she stole it, and looked on my open palm still smiling; and told me, to my surprise, that there was somebody I liked very much, and I was almost afraid she would name Captain Oakley; that he would grow very rich, and that I should marry him; that I should move about from place to place a great deal for a good while to come.  That I had some enemies, who should be sometimes so near as to be in the same room with me, and yet they should not be able to hurt me.  That I should see blood spilt and yet not my own, and finally be very happy and splendid, like the heroine of a fairy tale.

Did this strange, girlish charlatan see in my face some signs of shrinking when she spoke of enemies, and set me down for a coward whose weakness might be profitable?  Very likely.  At all events she plucked a long brass pin, with a round bead for a head, from some part of her dress, and holding the point in her fingers, and exhibiting the treasure before my eyes, she told me that I must get a charmed pin like that, which her grandmother had given to her, and she ran glibly through a story of all the magic expended on it, and told me she could not part with it; but its virtue was that you were to stick it through the blanket, and while it was there neither rat, nor cat, nor snake—­and then came two more terms in the catalogue, which I suppose belonged to the gipsy dialect, and which she explained to mean, as well as I could understand, the first a malevolent spirit, and the second ‘a cove to cut your throat,’ could approach or hurt you.