‘Why, Myra,’ said Uncle Giles, rising hurriedly, and smoothing the worn herring-bone tweed of his trouser leg, ‘I thought you said you were going to be out all day.’
He sounded on the whole pleased to see her, although perhaps a trifle put out that she should have turned up just at that moment. He would very occasionally, and with due warning, produce an odd male acquaintance for a minute or two, never longer, usually an elderly man, probably a retired accountant, said to possess ‘a very good head for business’, but never before had I seen him in the company of a woman not a member of the family. Now as usual his habitual air of hardly suppressed irritation tended to cloak any minor emotion by the strength of its cosmic resentment. All the same, a very rare thing with him, faint patches of colour showed for a moment in his cheeks, disappearing almost immediately, as he fingered his moustache with a withered, skinny hand, as if uncertain how best to approach the situation.
‘This is my nephew Nicholas,’ he said; and to me: ‘I don’t think you have met Mrs. Erdleigh.’
He spoke slowly, as if, after much thought, he had chosen me from an immense number of other nephews to show her at least one good example of what he was forced to endure in the way of relations Mrs. Erdleigh gazed at me for a second or two before taking my hand, continuing to encircle its fingers even after I had made a slight effort to relax my own grasp. Her palm felt warm and soft, and seemed to exude a mysterious tremor. Scent, vaguely Oriental in its implications, rolled across from her in great stifling waves. The huge liquid eyes seemed to look deep down into my soul, and far, far beyond towards nameless, unexplored vistas of the infinite.
‘But he belongs to another order,’ she stated at once.
She spoke without surprise and apparently quite decisively; indeed as if the conclusion had been the logical inference of our hands’ prolonged contact. At the same time she turned her head towards Uncle Giles, who made a deprecatory sound in his throat, though without venturing to confirm or deny her hypothesis. It was evident that he and I were placed violently in contrast together in her mind, or rather, I supposed, her inner consciousness. Whether she referred to some indefinable difference of class or bearing, or whether the distinction was in moral standards, was not at all clear. Nor had I any idea whether the comparison was in my uncle’s favour or my own. In any case I could not help feeling that the assertion, however true, was untimely as an opening gambit after introduction.
I had half expected Uncle Giles to take offence at the words, but, on the contrary, he seemed not at all annoyed or surprised; even appearing rather more resigned than before to Mrs. Erdleigh’s presence. It was almost as if he now knew that the worst was over; that from this moment relations between the three of us would grow easier.
‘Shall I ring for some more tea?’ he asked, without in any way pressing the proposal by tone of voice.
Mrs. Erdleigh shook her head dreamily. She had taken the place beside me on the sofa.
‘I have already had tea,’ she said softly, as if that meal had been for her indeed a wonderful experience.
‘Are you sure?’ asked my uncle, wonderingly; confirming by his manner that such a phenomenon was scarcely credible.
‘Truly.’
‘Well, I won’t, then.’
‘No, please, Captain Jenkins.’
I had the impression that the two of them knew each other pretty well; certainly much better than either was prepared at that moment to admit in front of me. After the first surprise of seeing her, Uncle Giles no longer called Mrs. Erdleigh ‘Myra’, and he now began to utter a disconnected series of conventional remarks, as if to display how formal was in fact their relationship. He explained for the hundredth time how he never took tea as a meal, however much encouraged by those addicted to the habit, commented in desultory phrases on the weather, and sketched in for her information a few of the outward circumstances of my own life and employment.
‘Art books, is it?’ he said. ‘Is that what you told me your firm published?’
‘That’s it.’
‘He sells art books,’ said Uncle Giles, as if he were explaining to some visitor the strange habits of the aborigines in the land where he had chosen to settle.
‘And other sorts too,’ I added, since he made the publication of art books sound so shameful a calling.
In answering, I addressed myself to Mrs. Erdleigh, rather in the way that a witness, cross-questioned by counsel, replies to the judge. She seemed hardly to take in these trivialities, though she smiled all the while, quietly, almost rapturously, rather as if she were enjoying a warm bath after a trying day’s shopping. I noticed that she wore no wedding ring, carrying in its place on her third finger a large opal, enclosed by a massive gold serpent swallowing its own tail.
‘I see you are wondering about my opal,’ she said, suddenly catching my eye.
‘I was admiring the ring.’
‘Of course I was born in October.’
‘Otherwise it would be unlucky?’
‘But not under the Scales.’
‘I am the Archer.’
I had learned that fact a week or two before from the astrological column of a Sunday newspaper. This seemed a good moment to make use of the knowledge. Mrs. Erdleigh was evidently pleased even with this grain of esoteric apprehension. She took my hand once more, and held the open palm towards the light.
‘You interest me,’ she said.
‘What do you see?’
‘Many things.’
‘Nice ones?’
‘Some good, some less good.’
‘Tell me about them.’
‘Shall I?’
Uncle Giles fidgeted. I thought at first he was bored at being momentarily out of the conversation, because, in his self-contained, unostentatious way, he could never bear to be anything less than the centre of interest; even when that position might possess an unpleasant significance as sometimes happened at family gatherings. However, another matter was on his mind.
‘Why not put the cards out?’ he broke in all at once with forced cheerfulness. ‘That is, if you’re in the mood.’
Mrs. Erdleigh did not reply immediately to this suggestion. She continued to smile, and to investigate the lines of my palm.
‘Shall I?’ she again said softly, almost to herself. ‘Shall I ask the cards about you both?’
I added my request to my uncle’s. To have one’s fortune told gratifies, after all, most of the superficial demands of egotism. There is no mystery about the eternal popularity of divination. All the same, I was surprised that Uncle Giles should countenance such pursuits. I felt sure he would have expressed loud contempt if anyone else had been described to him as indulging in efforts to foretell the future. Mrs. Erdleigh pondered a few seconds, then rose, still smiling, and glided away across the room. When she had shut the door we remained in silence for some minutes. Uncles Giles grunted several times. I suspected he might be feeling rather ashamed of himself for having put this request to her. I made some enquiries about his friend.
‘Myra Erdleigh?’ he said, as if it were strange to meet anyone unaware of Mrs. Erdleigh’s circumstances. ‘She’s a widow, of course. Husband did something out in the East. Chinese Customs, was it? Burma Police? Something of the sort.’
‘And she lives here?’
‘A wonderful fortune-teller,’ said Uncle Giles, ignoring the last question. ‘Really wonderful. I let her tell mine once in a while. It gives her pleasure, you know—and it interests me to see how often she is right. Not that I expect she will have much to promise me at my time of life.’
He sighed; though not, I thought, without a certain self-satisfaction. I wondered how long they had known one another. Long enough, apparently, for the question of fortune-telling to have cropped up between them a number of times.
‘Does she tell fortunes professionally?’
‘Has done, I believe, in the past,’ Uncle Giles admitted. ‘But of course there wouldn’t be any question of a five guinea consultatio
n fee this evening.’
He gave a short, angry laugh to show that he was joking, adding rather guiltily: ‘I don’t think anyone is likely to come in. Even if they did, we could always pretend we were taking a hand at cut-throat.’
I wondered if Mrs. Erdleigh used Tarot cards. If so, three-handed bridge might not look very convincing to an intruder; for example, should one of us try to trump ‘the drowned Phœnician Sailor’ with ‘the Hanged Man’. In any case, there seemed no reason why we should not have our fortunes told in the lounge. That would at least be employing the room to some purpose. The manner in which Uncle Giles had spoken made me think he must enjoy ‘putting the cards out’ more than he cared to acknowledge.
Mrs. Erdleigh did not come back to the room immediately. We awaited her return in an atmosphere of expectancy induced by my uncle’s unconcealed excitement. I had never before seen him in this state. He was breathing heavily. Still Mrs. Erdleigh did not appear. She must have remained away at least ten minutes or a quarter of an hour. Uncle Giles began humming to himself. I picked up one of the tattered copies of The Lady. At last the door opened once more. Mrs. Erdleigh had removed her hat, renewed the blue make-up under her eyes, and changed into a dress of sage green. She was certainly a conspicuous, perhaps even a faintly sinister figure. The cards she brought with her were grey and greasy with use. They were not a Tarot pack. After a brief discussion it was agreed that Uncle Giles should be the first to look into the future.
‘You don’t think it has been too short an interval?’ he asked, obviously with some last-moment apprehensions.
‘Nearly six months,’ said Mrs. Erdleigh, in a more matter-of-fact voice than that she had used hitherto; adding, as she began to shuffle the pack: ‘Although, of course, one should not question the cards too often, as I have sometimes warned you.’
Uncle Giles slowly rubbed his hands together, watching her closely as if to make certain there was no deception, and to ensure that she did not deliberately slip in a card that would bring him bad luck. The rite had something solemn about it: something infinitely ancient, as if Mrs. Erdleigh had existed long before the gods we knew, even those belonging to the most distant past. I asked if she always used the same pack.
‘Always the same dear cards,’ she said, smiling; and to my uncle, more seriously: ‘Was there anything special?’
‘Usually need to look ahead in business,’ he said, gruffly. ‘That would be Diamonds, I suppose. Or Clubs?’
Mrs. Erdleigh continued to smile without revealing any of her secrets, while she set the cards in various small heaps on one of the Moorish tables. Uncle Giles kept a sharp eye on her, still rubbing his hands, making me almost as nervous as himself at the thought of what the predictions could involve. There might always be grave possibilities to be faced for someone of his erratic excursion through life, however I was naturally much more interested in what she would say about myself. Indeed, I was then so far from grasping the unchanging mould of human nature that I found it even surprising that at his age he could presuppose anything to be called ‘a future’. So far as I myself was concerned, on the other hand, there seemed no reason to curb the wildest absurdity of fancy as to what might happen the very next moment.
However, when Uncle Giles’s cards were examined, their secrets did not appear to be anything like so ominous as might have been feared. There was a good deal of opposition to his ‘plans’, perhaps not surprisingly; also, it was true, much gossip, even some calumny surrounded him.
‘Don’t forget you have Saturn in the Twelfth House,’ Mrs. Erdleigh remarked in an aside. ‘Secret enemies.’
As against these threatening possibilities, someone was going to give him a present, probably money; a small sum, but acceptable. It looked as if this gift might come from a woman. Uncle Giles, whose cheeks had become furrowed at the thought of all the gossip and calumny, cheered up a little at this. He was told he had a good friend in a woman—possibly the one who was to make him a present—the Queen of Hearts, in fact. This, too, Uncle Giles accepted willingly enough.
‘That was the marriage card that turned up, wasn’t it?’ he asked at one point.
‘Could be.’
‘Not necessarily?’
‘Other influences must be taken into consideration.’
Neither of them commented on this matter, though their words evidently had regard to a question already reconnoitred in the past. For a moment or two there was perhaps a faint sense of additional tension. Then the cards were collected and shuffled again.
‘Now let’s hear about him,’ said Uncle Giles.
He spoke more with relief that his own ordeal was over, rather than because he was seriously expressing any burning interest in my own fate.
‘I expect he wants to hear about love,’ said Mrs. Erdleigh, beginning to titter to herself again.
Uncle Giles, to show general agreement with this supposition, grunted a disapproving laugh. I attempted some formal denial, although it was perfectly true that the thought was uppermost in my mind. The situation in that quarter was at the moment confused. In fact, so far as ‘love’ was concerned, I had been living for some years past in a rather makeshift manner. This was not because I felt the matter to be of little interest, like a man who hardly cares what he eats provided hunger is satisfied, or one prepared to discuss painting, should the subject arise, though never tempted to enter a picture gallery. On the contrary, my interest in love was keen enough, but the thing itself seemed not particularly simple to come by. In that direction, other people appeared more easily satisfied than myself. That at least was how it seemed to me. And yet, in spite of some show of picking and choosing, my experiences, on subsequent examination, were certainly no more admirable than those to which neither Templer nor Barnby, for example, would have given a second thought; they were merely fewer in number. I hoped the cards would reveal nothing too humiliating to my own self-esteem.
‘There is a link between us,’ said Mrs. Erdleigh, as she set out the little heaps. ‘At present I cannot see what it is—but there is a link.’
This supposed connexion evidently puzzled her.
‘You are musical?’
‘No.’
‘Then you write—I think you have written a book?’
‘Yes.’
‘You live between two worlds,’ she said. ‘Perhaps even more than two worlds. You cannot always surmount your feelings.’
I could think of no possible reply to this indictment.
‘You are thought cold, but you possess deep affections, sometimes for people worthless in themselves. Often you are at odds with those who might help you. You like women, and they like you, but you often find the company of men more amusing. You expect too much, and yet you are also too resigned. You must try to understand life.’
Somewhat awed by this searching, even severe analysis, I promised I would do better in future.
‘People can only be themselves,’ she said. ‘If they possessed the qualities you desire in them, they would be different people.’
‘That is what I should like them to be.’
‘Sometimes you are too serious, sometimes not serious enough.’
‘So I have been told.’
‘You must make a greater effort in life.’
‘I can see that.’
These strictures certainly seemed just enough; and yet any change of direction would be hard to achieve. Perhaps I was irrevocably transfixed, just as she described, half-way between dissipation and diffidence. While I considered the matter, she passed on to more circumstantial things. It turned out that a fair woman was not very pleased with me; and a dark one almost equally vexed. Like my uncle—perhaps some family failing common to both of us—I was encompassed by gossip.
‘They do not signify at all,’ said Mrs. Erdleigh, referring thus rather ruthlessly to the women of disparate colouring. ‘This is a much more important lady—medium hair, I should say—and I think you have run across her once or twice before, though not recently.
But there seems to be another man interested, too. He might even be a husband. You don’t like him much. He is tallish, I should guess. Fair, possibly red hair. In business. Often goes abroad.’
I began to turn over in my mind every woman I had ever met.
‘There is a small matter in your business that is going to cause inconvenience,’ she went on. ‘It has to do with an elderly man—and two young ones connected with him.’
‘Are you sure it is not two elderly men and one young man?’
It had immediately struck me that she might be en rapport with my firm’s growing difficulties regarding St. John Clarke’s introduction to The Art of Horace Isbister. The elderly men would be St. John Clarke and Isbister themselves—or perhaps St. John Clarke and one of the partners—and the young man was, of course, St. John Clarke’s secretary, Mark Members.
‘I see the two young men quite plainly,’ she said. ‘Rather a troublesome couple, I should say.’
This was all credible enough, including the character sketch, though perhaps not very interesting. Such trivial comment, mixed with a few home truths of a personal nature, provide, I had already learnt, the commonplaces of fortune-telling. Such was all that remained in my mind of what Mrs. Erdleigh prophesied on that occasion. She may have foretold more. If so, her words were forgotten by me. Indeed, I was not greatly struck by the insight she had shown; although she impressed me as a woman of dominant, even oddly attractive personality, in spite of a certain absurdity of demeanour. She herself seemed well pleased with the performance.
At the end of her sitting it was time to go. I was dining that evening with Barnby, picking him up at his studio. I rose to say good-bye, thanking her for the trouble she had taken.