IN A MOMENT a tall, lithe girl, black-haired, black-eyed, and, as I though, 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 slip 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 rendered, 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 head 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 supposed 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 and 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 for 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 courtesying 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 supposed, 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.
“It went to my heart, Miss, it did. They’re such a lot, young and old, all alike thieves and vagabonds, and many a poor body wanting.”
“Tut, Mary, never mind. Everyone has her fortune told some time in her life, and you can’t have a good one without paying. I think, Mary, we must be near Bartram now.”
The road now traversed the side of a steep hill, parallel to which, along the opposite side of a winding river, rose the dark steeps of a corresponding upland, covered with forest that looked awful and dim in the deep shadow, while the moonlight rippled fitfully upon the stream beneath.
“It seems to be a beautiful country,” I said to Mary Quince, who was munching a sandwich in the corner, and thus appealed to, adjusted her bonnet, and made an inspection from her window, which, however, commanded nothing but the heathy slope of the hill whose side we were traversing.
“Well, Miss, I suppose it is; but there’s a deal o’ mountains — is not there?”
And so saying, honest Mary leaned back again, and went on with her sandwich.
We were now descending at a great pace. I knew we were coming near. I stood up as well as I could in the carriage, to see over the postilions’ heads. I was eager, but frightened too; agitated as the crisis of the arrival and meeting approached. At last, a long stretch of comparatively level country below us, with masses of wood as well as I could see irregularly overspreading it, became visible as the narrow valley through which we were speeding made a sudden bend.
Down we drove, and now I did perceive a change. A great grass-grown park-wall, overtopped with mighty trees; but still on an don we came at a canter that seemed almost a gallop. The old grey park-wall flanking us at one side, and a pretty pastoral hedgerow of ash-trees, irregularly on the other.
At last the postilions began to draw bridle, and at a slight angle, the moon shining full upon them, we wheeled into a wide semicircle formed by the receding park-walls, and halted before a great fantastic iron gate, and a pair of tall fluted piers, of white stone, all grass-grown and ivy-bound, with great cornices, surmounted with shields and supporters, the Ruthyn bearings washed by the rains of Derbyshire for many a generation of Ruthyns, almost smooth by this time, and looking bleached and phantasmal, like giant sentinels, with each a hand clasped in his comrade’s, to bar our passage to the enchanted castle — the florid tracery of the iron gate showing like the draperies of white robes hanging from their extended arms to the earth.
Our courier got down and shoved the great gate open, and we entered, between sombre files of magnificent forest trees, one of those very broad straight avenues whose width measures the front of the house. This was all built of white stone, resembling that of Caen, which parts of Derbyshire produce in such abundance.
So this was Bartram, and here was Uncle Silas. I was almost breathless as I approached. The bright moon shining full on the white front of the old house revealed not only its highly decorated style, its fluted pillars and doorway, rich and florid carving, and balustraded summit, but also its stained and moss-grown front. Two giant trees, overthrown at last by the recent storm, lay with their upturned roots, and their yellow foliage still flickering on the sprays that were to bloom no more, where they had fallen, at the right side of the court-yard, which, like the avenue, was studded with tufted weeds and grass.
All this gave to the aspect of Bartram a forlorn character of desertion and decay, contrasting almost awfully with the grandeur of its proportions and richness of its architecture.
There was a ruddy glow from a broad window in the second row, and I thought I saw some one peep from it and disappear; at the same moment there was a furious barking of dogs, some of whom ran scampering into the court-yard from a half-closed side door; and amid their uproar, the bawling of the man in the back seat, who jumped down to drive them off, and the crack of the postilions’ whips, who struck at them, we drew up before the lordly door-steps of this melancholy mansion.
Just as our attendant had his hand on the knocker the door opened, and we saw, by a not very brilliant candle-light, three figures — a shabby little old man, thin, and very much stopped, with a white cravat, and looking as if his black clothes were too large, and made for some one else, stood with his hand upon the door; a young, plump, but very pretty female figure, in unusually short petticoats, with fattish legs, and nice ankles, in boots, stood in the centre; and a dowdy maid, like an old charwoman, behind her.
The household paraded for welcome was not certainly very brilliant. Amid the riot the trunks were deliberately put down by our attendant, who kept shouting to the old man at the door, and to the dogs in turn; and the old man was talking and pointing stiffly and tremulously, but I could not hear what he said.
“Was it possible — could that mean-looking old man be Uncle Silas?”
The idea stunned me; but I almost instantly perceived that he was much too small, and I was relieved, and even grateful. It was certainly an odd mode of procedure to devote primary attention to the trunks and boxes, leaving the travellers still shut up in the carriage, of which they were by this time pretty well tired. I was not sorry for the reprieve, however: being nervous about first impressions, and willing to defer mine, I sat shyly back, peeping at the candle and moonlight picture before me, myself unseen.
“Will you tell — yes or no — is my cousin in the coach?” screamed the plump young lady, stamping her stout black boot, in a momentary lull.
Yes, I was there, sure.
“And why the puck don’t you let her out, you stupe, you?”
“Run down, Giblets, you never do nout without driving, and let Cousin Maud out. You’re very welcome to Bartram.” This greeting was screamed at an amazing pitch, and repeated before I had time to drop the window, and say “thank you.” “I’d a let you out myself — there’s a good dog, you would na’ bite Cousin” (the parenthesis was to a huge ma............