A Question of Marriage. Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
stared out into the night with rapt, unseeing eyes. Life, which a few minutes ago had seemed so dreary in the flat barrenness of outlook, became suddenly illumined with interest. She felt the stirrings within of new life, new powers, and reached out eagerly to meet them.
“You have had experiences yourself—personal experiences—which prove to you the existence of such powers. Can you tell me about them? I don’t ask out of curiosity alone; but if it is too sacred, too private, I shall quite understand.”
He smiled at her with an utter absence of embarrassment.
“Oh, there is nothing private. My convictions are not founded on any definite occurrence; but as it happens, I have had one experience which defies explanation. Not in India, but by all that is mal à propos and out of place, in the most modern and material of cities—New York. I’ll tell it to you with pleasure. It’s an uncommonly good tale, and it has the merit of being first-hand, and capable of proof. It came about like this. A man asked me to dine in a private room at a hotel with two or three other men, bachelors—mutual friends. While we were sitting over dessert, he said, ‘I’ve got a little excitement for you fellows this evening. I’ve engaged a conjurer—thought-reading sort of fellow, to come in and give you an exhibition. He’s quite the most uncanny thing in that line that I’ve ever met. I never believed in second-sight before, but it makes one think. He’ll give you a new sensation; I can promise you that.’
“Well, he came about half an hour after that. An ordinary-looking fellow—a white man; nothing in the least unusual about him except his eyes—light, colourless-looking eyes, extraordinarily wide and clear—eyes that gave one an uncanny sort of thrill when they were fixed upon you. You felt that those eyes could see a lot more than would ever fall to your own vision. Well, he told us to sit against the wall at the far end of the room, and each to write something as personal as possible on slips of paper, which were afterwards to be shuffled and handed round. While we were writing he would leave the room. When we had finished, we were to ring a bell and he would return. We ranged our chairs as he said. There were no windows on that side, only the bare papered wall. I couldn’t think what to write. It puzzles one when one is suddenly told to do a thing like that. Eventually I put my mother’s maiden name, ‘Mary Winifred Fielding,’ and the date of her marriage, 1822. The fellow next me showed me his slip, ‘I don’t believe in any of this trickery.’ We chuckled together while I read it. We folded up the papers, put them in a bowl, and drew out the first that came. Then we rang the bell, and the fellow came back. He first shut the door and leant back against it. There were a good eight or ten yards between him and the end of the room where we sat. He looked across at me, and we all laughed together.
“ ‘The words written on the paper in your hand are: “Burmah! To the memory of a good old time!” You did not write it yourself—you have never been in Burmah; it was the gentleman to your left who wrote it—the gentleman with the grey hair. Am I not right, sir?’
“ ‘You are,’ said my friend, gasping. We did not laugh any more. He pointed to another fellow, and read out what I had written.
“ ‘That was written by the gentleman with the brown eyes. It is his mother’s name,’ he said; and I felt cold all down my spine. The man who had showed me his paper had drawn his own slip when they were shuffled together in the bowl. The conjurer knew that too. He pointed at him and said: ‘You have written your own opinion of me in the paper you hold. “I don’t believe in any of this trickery.” ’ He paused for a moment, and then said quietly: ‘You are prejudiced, sir; but you will learn wisdom. A year from to-day you will understand my secrets.’ He drew himself up, and his eyes flashed; he turned to us, each in turn, and said a few, short, prophetic words. There was a poor barrister among us, a clever fellow, but he had no luck; he was in a very tight place at that time. He said to him: ‘on the 2nd of February, 1862, you will put your foot on the first step of the ladder which leads to fortune.’ That was five years later on. The poor fellow smiled and said: ‘can’t you hurry it on a bit?’ The man who was dining us came next. He didn’t like his share. It sounded cryptic enough to the rest of us, but he understood. You could see that by his face. My own message—”
He stopped short, laughing softly, but with an utter absence of embarrassment, and Vanna’s eager glance bespoke her curiosity.
“My own message was equally cryptic, but I did not understand. I don’t understand it now. I have not been too fortunate in money matters, and it refers to that, no doubt. He said: ‘you will seek fortune, and find it not. Where the rose blooms beneath the palm, there awaits your treasure.’ ”
“ ‘Where the rose blooms beneath the palm!’ ” Vanna repeated the words in a breathless whisper. “But how thrilling—how exciting! What could he mean? Aren’t you anxious; aren’t you curious? Don’t you go about daily waiting to see what will happen?”
Mr. Gloucester laughed with boyish abandon.
“Rather not! It is a good eight years ago, and it has less chance of being fulfilled at this moment than it has ever had before, for I have said goodbye to the land of palms. I should never think of it again but for the fact,”—his face sobered swiftly—“that two out of those five prophecies did, as a matter of fact, come true. Three out of the six men who were there that evening I have never seen again. I can’t tell you what happened in their cases, but by the most absolute chance I ran up against the barrister fellow two years ago. We talked about our last meeting, and he said:
“ ‘You remember what that fellow said to me? It came true to the very hour. I had to speak in my first good brief that morning. I made a hit, carried the case, got a heap of kudos, and have never looked back from that hour.’ The second man was the one who had said he did not believe in such trickery. He—”
“Yes?”
“He died. Within a year from our meeting.”
Vanna shivered, and drew her scarf more closely round her shoulders. There was silence for several minutes, while the beating of invisible wings seemed to throb in the air around. Her thoughts strayed away on a long, rambling excursion, from which a sudden crash of music from the band awoke her with a shock of remembrance.
“You look quite scared. I hope I haven’t depressed you with my reminiscences. It was an uncanny experience, but you said you were interested.”
“And I am. Immensely. Thank you so much for telling me. I only hope your fulfilment, when it comes, may be as satisfactory as your barrister friend’s. Are you sorry to leave India and settle at home? Most men seem to find it difficult to get back into the old ways.”
Mr. Gloucester shrugged carelessly.
“Oh, I don’t mind. It doesn’t trouble me. One does one’s work; one is tired; one rests. What does it matter what country one does it in? They both have their points. I can be happy in either.”
A glance at his face proved the truth of his words. His was one of the unexacting, sweet-tempered natures, which was content to take life as it was; enjoying each good which came, and troubling nothing for sorrows ahead.
“If he were in my place he would not be sad! His life has not gone too smoothly; he has not found success, but he is content. I must learn his lesson,” Vanna told herself mentally.
“Go on talking!” she said dreamily. “Do you mind? Tell me about things that have happened. I have lived all my life in a little English hamlet, and it’s so good to hear. I could listen for hours.”
He gave her a bright, pleased look, and without question or protest went on talking easily and pleasantly about Indian customs, peculiarities, and rites. He had lived in the great cities and in the wilds; had worked and played, hunted elephants and climbed Himalayan peaks; had come through hair-breadth dangers, had drunk Bass’s beer on a steaming plain, and, as he himself expressed it, “come out smiling every time.”
“I’m as strong as a horse,” he added. “A fellow has no right to grumble when he doesn’t know the meaning of pain.”
“I