Each time they have been turned the darkness has increased. Nothing can show worse than they do now.”
“Never mind that,” gaily returned Ann. “You undertook to tell my fortune, sir; and you ought not to make excuses in the middle of it. Let the cards be as dark as night, we must hear what they say.”
He drew in his thin lips for a moment, and then spoke, his tone quiet, calm, unemotional.
“Some great evil threatens you,” he began; “you seem to be living in the midst of it. It is not only you that it threatens; there is another also–”
“Oh, my goodness!” interrupted Nancy, in her childish way. “I hope it does not threaten Edwin. What is the evil?—sickness?”
“Worse than that. It—is–” Signor Talcke’s attention was so absorbed by the aspect of the cards that, as it struck me, he appeared hardly to heed what he was saying. He had a long, thin black pencil in his long, thin fingers, and kept pointing to different cards as if in accordance with his thoughts, but not touching them. “There is some peculiar form of terror here,” he went on. “I cannot make it out; it is very unusual. It does not come close to you; not yet, at any rate; and it seems to surround you. It seems to be in the house. May I ask”—quickly lifting his eyes to Ann—“whether you are given to superstitious fears?”
“Do you mean ghosts?” cried Ann, and Charley Palliser burst out laughing. “Not at all, sir; I don’t believe in ghosts. I’m sure there are none in our house.”
Remembering my own terror in regard to the house, and the nervous fancy of having seen Captain Fennel in it when he was miles away, a curious impression came over me that he must surely be reading my fortune as well as Nancy’s. But I was not prepared for her next words. Truly she has no more reticence than a child.
“My sister has a feeling that the house is lonely. She shivers when she has to go into it after night-fall.”
Signor Talcke let his hands fall on the table, and lifted his face. Apparently, he was digesting this revelation. I do not think he knew the “sister” was present. For my part, disliking publicity, I slipped behind Anna Bosanquet, and stood by Charley Palliser.
“Shivers?” repeated the Italian.
“Shivers and trembles, and turns sick at having to go in,” affirmed Nancy. “So she told me when I arrived home from England.”
“If a feeling of that sort assailed me, I should never go into the house again,” said the signor.
“But how could you help it, if it were your home?” she argued.
“All the same. I should regard that feeling as a warning against the house, and never enter it. Then you are not yourself troubled with superstitious fears?” he broke off, returning to the business in hand, and looking at the cards. “Well—at present—it does not seem to touch you, this curious terror which is assuredly in the house–”
“I beg your pardon,” interrupted Ann. “Why do you say ‘at present’? Is it to touch me later?”
“I cannot say. Each time that the cards have been spread it has shown itself nearer to you. It is not yet very near. Apart from that terror—or perhaps remotely connected with it—I see evil threatening you—great evil.”
“Is it in the house?”
“Yes; hovering about it. It is not only yourself it seems to threaten. There is some one else. And it is nearer to that person than it is to you.”
“But who is that person?—man or woman?”
“It is a woman. See this ugly card,” continued he, pointing with his pencil; “it will not be got rid of, shuffle as you will; it has come nearer to that woman each time.”
The card he pointed to was more curious-looking than any other in the pack. It was not unlike the nine of spades, but crowded with devices. The gentleman opposite, whom I did not know, leaned forward and touched the card with the tip of his forefinger.
“Le cercueil, n’est-ce-pas?” said he.
“My!” whispered an English lad’s voice behind me. “Cercueil? that means coffin.”
“How did you know?” asked Signor Talcke of the grey-bearded man.
“I was at the Sous-Préfect’s soirée on Sunday evening when you were exhibiting. I heard you tell him in French that that was the ugliest card in the pack: indicating death.”
“Well, it is not this lady the card is pursuing,” said the signor, smiling at Ann to reassure her. “Not yet awhile, at least. And we must all be pursued by it in our turn, whenever that shall come,” he added, bending over the cards again. “Pardon me, madame—may I ask whether there has not been some unpleasantness in the house concerning money?”
Nancy’s face turned red. “Not—exactly,” she answered with hesitation. “We are like a great many more people—not as rich as we should wish to be.”
“It does not appear to lie precisely in the want of money: but certainly money is in some way connected with the evil,” he was beginning to say, his eyes fixed dreamily on the cards, when Ann interrupted him.
“That is too strong a word—evil. Why do you use it?”
“I use it because the evil is there. No lighter word would be appropriate. There is some evil element pervading your house, very grave and formidable; it is most threatening; likely to go on to—to—darkness. I mean that it looks as if there would be some great break-up,” he corrected swiftly, as if to soften the other word.
“That the house would be broken up?” questioned Ann.
He stole a glance at her. “Something of that sort,” he said carelessly.
“Do you mean that the evil comes from an enemy?” she went on.
“Assuredly.”
“But we have no enemy. I’m sure we have not one in all the world.”
He slightly shook his head. “You may not suspect it yet, though I should have said”—waving the pencil thoughtfully over some of the cards—“that he was already suspected—doubted.”
Nancy took up the personal pronoun briskly. “He!—then the evil enemy must be a man? I assure you we do not know any man likely to be our enemy or to wish us harm. No, nor woman either. Perhaps your cards don’t tell true to-night, Signor Talcke?”
“Perhaps not, madame; we will let it be so if you will,” he quietly said, and shuffled all the cards together.
That ended the séance. As if determined not to tell any more fortunes, the signor hurriedly put up the cards and disappeared from the recess. Nancy did not appear to be in the least impressed.
“What a curious ‘future’ it was!” she exclaimed lightly to Mary Carimon. “I might as well not have had it cast. He told me nothing.”
They walked away together. I went back to the sofa and Anna Bosanquet followed me.
“Mrs. Fennel calls it ‘curious,’” I said to her. “I call it more than that—strange; ominous. I wish I had not heard it.”
“Dear Miss Preen, it is only nonsense,” she answered. “He will tell some one else the same next time.” But she only so spoke to console me.
A wild wish flashed into my mind—that I should ask the man to tell my future. But had I not heard enough? Mine was blended with this of Ann’s. I was the other woman whom the dark fate was more relentlessly pursuing. There could be no doubt of that. There could be as little doubt that it was I who already suspected the author of the “evil.” What can the “dark fate” be that we are threatened with? Debt? Will his debts spring upon us and break up our home, and turn us out of it? Or will it be something worse? That card which followed me meant a coffin, they said. Ah me! Perhaps I am foolish to dwell upon such ideas. Certainly they are more fitting for the world’s dark ages than for this enlightened nineteenth century of it.
Charley