"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 pa.s.s."
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 c.o.c.k-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. _G.o.d 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 it; 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 pa.s.sing, if we may give it the term, I thought a.s.suredly 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 G.o.d, 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 G.o.d is at work. That----"