Works of Ellen Wood

by Ellen Wood

  “Then I should like my fortune told again.”

  “Oh, Helen, how can you be so silly!” cried Lady Whitney.

  “Silly! Why, mamma, it is good fun. You go and fetch the cards, Mrs. Ness.”

  “I and Johnny nearly had our fortune told to-day,” put in Bill, while Mrs. Ness stood where she was, hardly knowing what to be at. “We came upon a young gipsy woman in the wood, and she wanted to promise us a wife apiece. A little girl was with her that may have been stolen: she was too fair to be that brown woman’s child.”

  “It must have been the Norths,” exclaimed Mrs. Ness. “Was there some tinware by ‘em, sir; and some rabbit skins?”

  “Yes. Both. The rabbit skins were hanging out to dry.”

  “Ay, it’s the Norths,” repeated Mrs. Ness. “Rednal said he saw North yesterday; he guessed they’d lighted their campfire not far off.”

  “Who are the Norths? Gipsies?”

  “The wife is a gipsy, sir; born and bred. He is a native of these parts, and superior; but he took to an idle, wandering life, and married the gipsy girl for her beauty. She was Bertha Lee then.”

  “Why, it is quite a romance,” said Miss Deveen, amused.

  “And so it is, ma’am. Rednal told me all on’t. They tramp the country, selling their tins, and collecting rabbit skins.”

  “And is the child theirs?” asked Bill.

  “Ay, sir, it be. But she don’t take after her mother; she’s like him, her skin fair as alabaster. You’d not think, Rednal says, that she’d a drop o’ gipsy blood in her veins. North might ha’ done well had he only turned out steady; been just the odds o’ what he is — a poor tramp.”

  “Oh, come, never mind the gipsies,” cried Helen, impatiently. “You go and bring the cards, Mrs. Ness.”

  One can’t go in for stilts at a picnic, or for wisdom either; and when Mrs. Ness brought her cards (which might have been cleaner) none of them made any objection. Even Cattledon looked on, grimly tolerant.

  “But you can’t think there’s anything in it — that the cards tell true,” cried Lady Whitney to the old woman.

  “Ma’am, be sure they do. I believe in ’em from my very heart. And so, I make bold to say, would everybody here believe, if they had read the things upon ’em that I’ve read, and seen how surely they’ve come to pass.”

  They would not contradict her openly; only smiled a little among themselves. Mother Ness was busy with the cards, laying them out for Helen’s fortune. I drew near to listen.

  “You look just as though you put faith in it,” whispered Bill to me.

  “I don’t put faith in it. I should not like to be so foolish. But, William, what she told Helen before did come true.”

  Well, Helen’s “fortune” was told again. It sounded just as uneventful as the one told that rainy afternoon long ago — for we were now some years older than we were then. Helen Whitney’s future, according to the cards, or to Dame Ness’s reading of them, would be all plain sailing; smooth and easy, and unmarked alike by events and by care. A most desirable career, some people would think, but Helen looked the picture of desolation.

  “And you say I am not to be married!” she exclaimed.

  Dame Ness had her head bent over the cards. She shook it without looking up.

  “I don’t see a ring nowhere, young lady, and that’s the blessed truth. There ain’t one, that’s more. There ain’t a sign o’ one. Neither was there the other time, I remember: that time in London. And so — I take it that there won’t never be.”

  “Then I think you are a very disagreeable story-telling old woman!” flashed Helen, all candour in her mortification. “Not be married, indeed!”

  “Why, my dear, I’d be only too glad to promise you a husband if the cards foretelled it,” said Dame Ness, pityingly. “Yours is the best fortune of all, though, if you could but bring your mind to see it. Husbands is more plague nor profit. I’m sure I had cause to say so by the one that fell to my share, as that there dear good lady knows,” pointing to Miss Deveen.

  In high dudgeon, Helen pushed the cards together. Mrs. Ness, getting some kind words from the rest of us, curtsied as she went off to the cottage to see about the kettles for our tea.

  “You are a nice young lady!” exclaimed Bill. “Showing your temper because the cards don’t give you a sweetheart!”

  Helen threw her fan at him. “Mind your own business,” returned she. And he went away laughing.

  “And, my dear, I say the same as William,” added Lady Whitney. “One really might think that you were — were anxious to be married.”

  “All cock-a-hoop for it,” struck in Cattledon: “as the housemaids are.”

  “And no such great crime, either,” returned Helen, defiantly. “Fancy that absurd old thing telling me I never shall be!”

  “Helen, my dear, I think the chances are that you will not be married,” quietly spoke Miss Deveen.

  “Oh, do you!”

  “Don’t be cross, Helen,” said her mother. “Our destinies are not in our own hands.”

  Helen bit her lip, laughed, and recovered her temper. She was like her father; apt to flash out a hot word, but never angry long.

  “Now — please, Miss Deveen, why do you think I shall not be?” she asked playfully.

  “Because, my dear, you have had three chances, so to say, of marriage, and each time it has been frustrated. In two of the instances by — if we may dare to say it — the interposition of Heaven. The young men died beforehand in an unexpected and unforeseen manner: Charles Leafchild and Mr. Temple — —”

  “I was never engaged to Mr. Temple,” interrupted Helen.

  “No; but, by all I hear, you shortly would have been.”

  Helen gave no answer. She knew perfectly well that she had expected an offer from Slingsby Temple; that his death, as she believed, alone prevented its being made. She would have said Yes to it, too. Miss Deveen went on.

  “We will not give more than an allusion to Captain Foliott; he does not deserve it; but your marriage with him came nearest of all. It may be said, Helen, without exaggeration, that you have been on the point of marriage twice, and very nearly so a third time. Now, what does this prove?”

  “That luck was against me,” said Helen, lightly.

  “Ay, child: luck, as we call it in this world. I would rather say, Destiny. God knows best. Do you wonder that I have never married?” continued Miss Deveen in a less serious tone.

  “I never thought about it,” answered Helen.

  “I know that some people have wondered at it; for I was a girl likely to marry — or it may be better to say, likely to be sought in marriage. I had good looks, good temper, good birth, and a good fortune: and I dare say I was just as willing to be chosen as all young girls are. Yes, I say that all girls possess an innate wish to marry; it is implanted in their nature, comes with their mother’s milk. Let their station be high or low, a royal princess, if you will, or the housemaid Jemima Cattledon suggested just now, the same natural instinct lies within each — a wish to be a wife. And no reason, either, why they should not wish it; it’s nothing to be ashamed of; and Helen, my dear, I would rather hear a girl avow it openly, as you do, than pretend to be shocked at its very mention.”

  Some gleams of sunlight flickered on Miss Deveen’s white hair and fine features as she sat under the trees, her bronze-coloured silk gown falling around her in rich folds, and a big amethyst brooch fastening her collar. I began to think how good-looking she must have been when young, and where the eyes of the young men of those days could have been. Lady Whitney, looking like a bundle in her light dress that ill became her, sat near, fanning herself.

  “Yes, I do wonder, now I think of it, that you never married,” said Helen.

  “To tell you the truth, I wonder myself sometimes,” replied Miss Deveen, smiling. “I think — I believe — that, putting other advantages aside, I was well calculated to be a wife, and should have made a good one. Not that that has anything to do with i
t; for you see the most incapable women marry, and remain incapable to their dying day. I could mention wives at this moment, within the circle of my acquaintance, who are no more fitted to be wives than is that three-legged stool Johnny is balancing himself upon; and who in consequence unwittingly keep their husbands and their homes in a state of perpetual turmoil. I was not one of these, I am sure; but here I am, unmarried still.”

  “Would you marry now?” asked Helen briskly: and we all burst into a laugh at the question, Miss Deveen’s the merriest.

  “Marry at sixty! Not if I know it. I have at least twenty years too many for that; some might say thirty. But I don’t believe many women give up the idea of marriage before they are forty; and I do not see why they should. No, nor then, either.”

  “But — why did you not marry, Miss Deveen?”

  “Ah, my dear, if you wish for an answer to that question, you must ask it of Heaven. I cannot give one. All I can tell you is, that I did hope to be married, and expected to be married, waited to be married; but here you see me in my old age — Miss Deveen.”

  “Did you — never have a chance of it — an opportunity?” questioned Helen with hesitation.

  “I had more than one chance: I had two or three chances, just as you have had. During the time that each ‘chance’ was passing, if we may give it the term, I thought assuredly I should soon be a wife. But each chance melted away from this cause or that cause, ending in nothing. And the conclusion I have come to, Helen, for many a year past, is, that God, for some wise purpose of His own, decreed that I should not marry. What we know not here, we shall know hereafter.”

  Her tone had changed to one of deep reverence. She did not say more for a little time.

  “When I look around the world,” she at length went on, “and note how many admirable women see their chances of marriage dwindle down one after another, from unexpected and apparently trifling causes, it is impossible not to feel that the finger of God is at work. That — —”

  “But now, Miss Deveen, we could marry if we would — all of us,” interrupted Helen. “If we did not have to regard suitability and propriety, and all that, there’s not a girl but could go off to church and marry somebody.”

  “If it’s only a broomstick,” acquiesced Miss Deveen, “or a man no better than one. Yes, Helen, you are right: and it has occasionally been done. But when we fly wilfully in the teeth of circumstances, bent on following our own resolute path, we take ourselves out of God’s hands — and must reap the consequences.”

  “I — do not — quite understand,” slowly spoke Helen.

  “Suppose I give you an instance of what I mean, my dear. Some years ago I knew a young lady — —”

  “Is it true? What was her name?”

  “Certainly it is true, every detail of it. As to her name — well, I do not see any reason why I should not tell it: her name was Eliza Lake. I knew her family very well indeed, was intimate with her mother. Eliza was the third daughter, and desperately eager to be married. Her chances came. The first offer was eligible; but the two families could not agree about money matters, and it dropped through. The next offer Eliza would not accept — it was from a widower with children, and she sent him to the right-about. The third went on smoothly nearly to the wedding-day, and a good and suitable match it would have been, but something occurred then very unpleasant though I never knew the precise particulars. The bridegroom-elect fell into some trouble or difficulty, he had to quit his country hastily, and the marriage was broken off — was at an end. That was the last offer she had, so far as I knew; and the years went on, Eliza gadding out to parties, and flirting and coquetting, all in the hope to get a husband. When she was in her thirtieth year, her mother came to me one day in much distress and perplexity. Eliza, she said, was taking the reins into her own hands, purposing to be married in spite of her father, mother, and friends. Mrs. Lake wanted me to talk to Eliza; she thought I might influence her, though they could not; and I took an opportunity of doing so — freely. It is of no use to mince matters when you want to save a girl from ruin. I recalled the past to her memory, saying that I believed, judging by that past, that Heaven did not intend her to marry. I told her all the ill I had heard of the man she was now choosing; also that she had absolutely thrown herself at him, and he had responded for the sake of the little money she possessed; and that if she persisted in marrying him she would assuredly rue it. In language as earnest as I knew how to choose, I laid all this before her.”

  “And what was her answer to you?” Helen spoke as if her breath was short.

  “Just like the reckless answer that a blinded, foolish girl would make. ‘Though Heaven and earth were against me, I should marry him, Miss Deveen. I am beyond the control of parents, brothers, sisters, friends; and I will not die an old maid to please any of you.’ Those were the wilful words she used; I have never forgotten them; and the next week she betook herself to church.”

  “Did the marriage turn out badly?”

  “Ay, it did. Could you expect anything else? Poor Eliza supped the cup of sorrow to its dregs: and she brought bitter sorrow and trouble also on her family. That, Helen, is what I call taking one’s self out of God’s hands, and flying determinedly in the face of what is right and seemly, and evidently appointed.”

  “You say yourself it is hard not to be married,” quoth Helen.

  “No, I do not,” laughed Miss Deveen. “I say that it appears hard to us when our days of youth are passing, and when we see our companions chosen and ourselves left: but, rely upon it, Helen, as we advance in years, we acquiesce in the decree; many of us learning to be thankful for it.”

  “And you young people little think what great cause you have to be thankful for it,” cried Lady Whitney, all in a heat. “Marriage brings a bushel of cares: and no one knows what anxiety boys and girls entail until they come.”

  Miss Deveen nodded emphatically. “It is very true. I would not exchange my present lot with that of the best wife in England; believe that, or not, as you will, Helen. Of all the different states this busy earth can produce, a lot such as mine is assuredly the most exempt from trouble. And, my dear, if you are destined never to marry, you have a great deal more cause to be thankful than rebellious.”

  “The other day, when you were preaching to us, you told us that trouble came for our benefit,” grumbled Helen, passing into rebellion forthwith.

  “I remember it,” assented Miss Deveen, “and very true it is. My heart has sickened before now at witnessing the troubles, apparently unmerited, that some people, whether married or single, have to undergo; and I might have been almost tempted to question the loving-kindness of Heaven, but for remembering that we must through much tribulation enter into the Kingdom.”

  Anna interrupted the silence that ensued. She came running up with a handful of wild roses and sweetbriar, gathered in the hedge below. Miss Deveen took them when offered to her, saying she thought of all flowers the wild rose was the sweetest.

  “How solemn you all look!” cried Anna.

  “Don’t we!” said Helen. “I have been having a lecture read to me.”

  “By whom?”

  “Every one here — except Johnny Ludlow. And I am sure I hope he was edified. I wonder when tea is going to be ready!”

  “Directly, I should say,” said Anna: “for here comes Mrs. Ness with the cups and saucers.”

  I ran forward to help her bring the things. Rednal’s trim wife, a neat, active woman with green eyes and a baby in her arms, was following with plates of bread-and-butter and cake, and the news that the kettle was “on the boil.” Presently the table was spread; and William, who had come back to us, took up the baby’s whistle and blew a blast, prolonged and shrill.

  The stragglers heard it, understood it was the signal for their return, and came flocking in. The Squire and Sir John said they had been sitting under the trees and talking: our impression was, they had been sleeping. The young Whitneys appeared in various stages of heat; Tod an
d Featherston’s nephew smelt of smoke. The first cups of tea had gone round, and Tod was making for Rednal’s cottage with a notice that the bread-and-butter had come to an end, when I saw a delicate little fair-haired face peering at us from amid the trees.

  “Halloa!” cried the Squire, catching sight of the face at the same moment. “Who on earth’s that?”

  “It’s the child we saw this morning — the gipsy’s child,” exclaimed William Whitney. “Here, you little one! Stop! Come here.”

  He only meant to give her a piece of cake: but the child ran off with a scared look and fleet step, and was lost in the trees.

  “Senseless little thing!” cried Bill: and sat down to his tea again.

  “But what a pretty child it was!” observed the mater. “She put me in mind of Lena.”

  “Why, Lena’s oceans of years older,” said Helen, free with her remarks as usual. “That child, from the glimpse I caught of her, can’t be more than five or six.”

  “She is about seven, miss,” struck in Rednal’s wife, who had just come up with a fresh supply of tea. “It is nigh upon eight years since young Walter North went off and got married.”

  “Walter North!” repeated Sir John. “Who’s Walter North? Let me see? The name seems familiar to me.”

  “Old Walter North was the parish schoolmaster over at Easton, sir. The son turned out wild and unsteady; and at the time his father died he went off and joined the gipsies. They had used to encamp about here more than they do now, as Rednal could tell you, Sir John; and it was said young North was in love with a girl belonging to the tribe — Bertha Lee. Any way, they got married. Right-down beautiful she was — for a gipsy; and so young.”

  “Then I suppose North and his wife are here now — if that’s their child?” remarked Sir John.

  “They are here sure enough, sir; somewhere in the wood. Rednal has seen him about this day or two past. Two or three times they’ll be here, pestering, during the summer, and stop ten or twelve days. Maybe young North has a hankering after the old spots he was brought up in, and comes to see ‘em,” suggestively added Rednal’s wife; whose tongue ran faster than any other two women’s put together. And that’s saying something.