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.
A charm like that, she gave me to understand, I must by hook
or by crook obtain. She had not a second. None of her people
in the camp over there possessed one. I am ashamed to confess
that I actually paid her a pound for this brass pin! The purchase
was partly an indication of my temperament, which could
never let an opportunity pass away irrevocably without a struggle, and always apprehended 'Some day or other I'll reproach myself tor having neglected it!' and partly a record of the trepidations of that period of my life. At all events I had her pin, and she my pound, and I venture to say I was the gladder of the two.
She stood on the road-side bank courtseying and smiling, the
first enchantress I had encountered, and I watched the receding
picture, with its patches of firelight, its dusky groups and donkey
carts, white as skeletons in the moonlight, as we drove rapidly
away.
They, I suppose, had a wild sneer and a merry laugh over
my purchase, as they sat and ate their supper of stolen poultry, about their fire, and were duly proud of belonging to the superior race.
Mary Quince, shocked at my prodigality, hinted a remonstrance.