IV. THE MIXED FORTUNES.

     
     
          “Thus spoke the king to the great Master: 'Thou didst bless and ban
    the people; thou didst give benison and curse, luck and sorrow, to
    the evil or the good.'
          “And the Master said, 'It may be so.'
          “And the king continued, 'There came two men, and one was good and
    the other bad. And one thou didst bless, thinking he was good; but
    he was wicked. And the other thou didst curse, and thought him bad;
    but he was good.'
          “The Master said, 'And what came of it?'
          “The king answered, 'All evil came upon the good man, and all
    happiness to the bad.'
          “And the Master said, 'I write letters, but I am not the messenger; I
    hunt the deer, but I am not the cook; I plant the vine, but I do not
    pour the wine to the guests; I ordain war, yet do not fight; I send
    ships forth on the sea, but do not sail them. There is many a slip
    between cup and lip, as the chief of the rebel spirits said when he
    was thrown out of heaven, and I am not greater nor wiser than he was
    before he fell. Hast thou any more questions, O son?'
          “And the king went his way.”
      One afternoon I was walking with three ladies. One was married, one was a young widow, and one, no longer very young, had not as yet husbanded her resources. And as we went by the Thames, conversation turned upon many things, and among them the mystery of the future and mediums; and the widow at last said she would like to have her fortune told.
      “You need not go far to have it done,” I said. “There is a gypsy camp not a mile away, and in it one of the cleverest fortune-tellers in England.”
      “I am almost afraid to go,” said the maiden lady. “It seems to me to be really wrong to try to look into the awful secrets of futurity. One can never be certain as to what a gypsy may not know. It's all very well, I dare say, to declare it's all rubbish, but then you know you never can tell what may be in a rubbish-heap, and they may be predicting true things all the time while they think they're humbugging you. And they do often foretell the most wonderful things; I know they do. My aunt was told that she would marry a man who would cause her trouble, and, sure enough, she did; and it was such a shame, she was such a sweet-tempered, timid woman, and he spent half her immense fortune. Now wasn't that wonderful?”
      It would be a curious matter for those who like studying statistics and chance to find out what proportion in England of sweet-tempered, timid women of the medium-middle class, in newly-sprouted families, with immense fortunes, do not marry men who only want their money. Such heiresses are the natural food of the noble shark and the swell sucker, and even a gypsy knows it, and can read them at a glance. I explained this to the lady; but she knew what she knew, and would not know otherwise.
      So we came along the rippling river, watching the darting swallows and light water-gnats, as the sun sank afar into the tawny, golden west, and Night, in ever-nearing circles, wove her shades around us. We saw the little tents, like bee-hives,—one, indeed, not larger than the hive in which Tyll Eulenspiegel slept his famous nap, and in which he was carried away by the thieves who mistook him for honey and found him vinegar. And the outposts, or advanced pickets of small, brown, black-eyed elves, were tumbling about as usual, and shouted their glad greeting; for it was only the day before that I had come down with two dozen oranges, which by chance proved to be just one apiece for all to eat except for little Synfie Cooper, who saved hers up for her father when he should return.
      I had just an instant in which to give the gypsy sorceress a “straight tip,” and this I did, saying in Romany that one of the ladies was married and one a widow. I was indeed quite sure that she must know the married lady as such, since she had lived near at hand, within a mile, for months. And so, with all due solemnity, the sorceress went to her work.
      “You will come first, my lady, if you please,” she said to the married dame, and led her into a hedge-corner, so as to be remote from public view, while we waited by the camp.
      The hand was inspected, and properly crossed with a shilling, and the seeress began her prediction.
      “It's a beautiful hand, my lady, and there's luck in it. The line o' life runs lovely and clear, just like a smooth river from sea to sea, and that means you'll never be in danger before you die, nor troubled with much ill. And it's written that you'll have another husband very soon.”
      “But I don't want another,” said the lady.
      “Ah, my dear lady, so you'll say till you get him, but when he comes you'll be glad enough; so do you just get the first one out of your head as soon as you can, for the next will be the better one. And you'll cross the sea and travel in a foreign land, and remember what I told you to the end of your life days.”
      Then the widow had her turn.
      “This is a lucky hand, and little need you had to have your fortune told. You've been well married once, and once is enough when it's all you need. There's others as is never satisfied and wants everything, but you've had the best, and more you needn't want, though there'll be many a man who'll be in love with you. Ay, indeed, there's fair and dark as will feel the favor of your beautiful eyes, but little good will it do them, and barons and lords as would kiss the ground you tread on; and no wonder, either, for you have the charm which nobody can tell what it is. But it will do 'em no good, nevermore.”
      “Then I'm never to have another husband,” said the widow.
      “No, my lady. He that you married was the best of all, and, after him, you'll never need another; and that was written in your hand when you were born, and it will be your fate, forever and ever: and that is the gypsy's production over the future, and what she has producted will come true. All the stars in the fermentation of heaven can't change it. But if you ar'n't satisfied, I can set a planet for you, and try the cards, which comes more expensive, for I never do that under ten shillings.”
      There was a comparing of notes among the ladies and much laughter, when it appeared that the priestess of the hidden spell, in her working, had mixed up the oracles. Jacob had manifestly got Esau's blessing. It was agreed that the bonnes fortunes should be exchanged, that the shillings might not be regarded as lost, and all this was explained to the unmarried lady. She said nothing, but in due time was also dukkered or fortune-told. With the same mystery she was conducted to the secluded corner of the hedge, and a very long, low-murmuring colloquy ensued. What it was we never knew, but the lady had evidently been greatly impressed and awed. All that she would tell was that she had heard things that were “very remarkable, which she was sure no person living could have known,” and in fact that she believed in the gypsy, and even the blunder as to the married lady and the widow, and all my assurances that chiromancy as popularly practiced was all humbug, made no impression. There was once “a disciple in Yabneh” who gave a hundred and fifty reasons to prove that a reptile was no more unclean than any other animal. But in those days people had not been converted to the law of turtle soup and the gospel of Saint Terrapin, so the people said it was a vain thing. And had I given a hundred and fifty reasons to this lady, they would have all been vain to her, for she wished to believe; and when our own wishes are served up unto us on nice brown pieces of the well-buttered toast of flattery, it is not hard to induce us to devour them.
      It is written that when Ashmedai, or Asmodeus, the chief of all the devils of mischief, was being led a captive to Solomon, he did several mysterious things while on the way, among others bursting into extravagant laughter, when he saw a magician conjuring and predicting. On being questioned by Benaiah, the son of Jehoiada, why he had seemed so much amused, Ashmedai answered that it was because the seer was at the very time sitting on a princely treasure, and he did not, with all his magic and promising fortune to others, know this. Yet, if this had been told to all the world, the conjurer's business would not have suffered. Not a bit of it. Entre Jean, passe Jeannot: one comes and goes, another takes his place, and the poor will disappear from this world before the too credulous shall have departed.
      It was on the afternoon of the following day that I, by chance, met the gypsy with a female friend, each with a basket, by the roadside, in a lonely, furzy place, beyond Walton.
      “You are a nice fortune-teller, aren't you now?” I said to her. “After getting a tip, which made it all as clear as day, you walk straight into the dark. And here you promise a lady two husbands, and she married already; but you never promised me two wives, that I might make merry withal. And then to tell a widow that she would never be married again! You're a bori chovihani [a great witch],—indeed, you aren't.”
      “Rye,” said the gypsy, with a droll smile and a shrug,—I think I can see it now,—“the dukkerin [prediction] was all right, but I pet the right dukkerins on the wrong ladies.”
      And the Master said, “I write letters, but I am not the messenger.” His orders, like the gypsy's, had been all right, but they had gone to the wrong shop. Thus, in all ages, those who affect superior wisdom and foreknowledge absolute have found that a great practical part of the real business consisted in the plausible explanation of failures. The great Canadian weather prophet is said to keep two clerks busy, one in recording his predictions, the other in explaining their failures; which is much the case with the rain-doctors in Africa, who are as ingenious and fortunate in explaining a miss as a hit, as, indeed, they need be, since they must, in case of error, submit to be devoured alive by ants,—insects which in Africa correspond in several respects to editors and critics, particularly the stinging kind. “Und ist man bei der Prophezeiung angestellt,” as Heine says; “when a man has a situation in a prophecy-office,” a great part of his business is to explain to the customers why it is that so many of them draw blanks, or why the trains of fate are never on time.