The Card Dealer

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXXVII, Issue 15, 13 October 1906, Page 34

The Card Dealer

A Story With a Most Unexpected Ending

By

ALICE and CLAUDE ASKEW

8 HE though it would be amusing—something to ta'k about afterwards—and also she was a girl always ready for any wild jest, even to that of personating an absentee fortune-teller at a baza r, and saving the situation. “For everybody is counting on that woman with her cards.” so ISdy*Moresby, who had been responsible for getting up the bazaar, declared with a shake of her head; “and if someone isn’t in the little red and yellow tent ready to delude silly people ( am sure the whole affair will be a failure.” So she had said to her godchild. Joyce Mercclith. with a shrug of her anqde shoulders, a wave of her beringed and carefully manicured hands. And tl<n suddenly a bright idea had struck Lady Moresby. “Why shouldn't you dress up and play the part, Joyce?" she had exclaimed, with some animation.” “You pretend to tell fortunes yourself, you know. You could disguise your voice, dear, and wear a little velvet mask, and who eojild recognise you? Joyce dirlnig, you must really be an' angel arid help nie our of an awkward hole.' I e ni’t imagine why I ever wanted to get up a wretched bazaar. and most of all for primitive blacks, wl o. I dare say, w ml be a Irit pleas d with the mission ry sent o it to them.” Lady Moresby clasped her hands as she ended her long spec h. and looked at Joyce beseechingly. “You really might, c’arlirg.” she added - “you really might.” . Joyce smiled, and her black eyes twinkled. She was'exceedingly fond of her plump.' good-nat tirc.l godraot her, and the idea of playing the part of fortunetiller at this local bazaar templed her. Lady Moresby lived in the Manor house of a sleepy, old fashioned Sussex village, and the bazaar was to be held in the Manor house grounds. It was an invitation one. and would only be attended by the county families; amf, Joyce, who often came down to stay with her godmother, knew encugh of the history and position of Lady Moresby’s friends and acquaintances to feel pretty

certain that she would make a successful hit as a fortune-teller. Also, she was learned in the meaning of the cards, and had once or twice made curiously successful divinations; but Joyce laughed at her own powers as a witch, though sometimes she had been a little startled when certain wild predictions had fulfilled themselves. “Don’t worry. Lady Moresby!” she now cried cheerfully, an arch smile lighting up her piquante, pretty little face. “I’ll be a gipsy for the occas’on. Dress me up in picturesque garments, shroud me with a mask, and I’ll sc re the people pretty well out of their wits. But you must promise never, r.cver to let out the truth, or to give me away afterwards.” . “Of course, I wouldn’t!” exclaimed Lady. Moresby with conviction. “Why, people might think 1 had been getting their money out of them l.y Iran 1. For, of course, you are not the real thing, Joyce, dear.” She smiled at her goddaughter complacently,- and Joyce smiled and twinkled back. ■” And so it came to pass, through the sudden decision of Madame Cartini, the, well-known Bond-street clairvoyant, that it would not be worth her while to .go down to Sussex after a'l, even for the comfortable fee Lady Moresby’ had promised. that Joyce—dressed in the conventional gipsy 7 costume, spee’ally hired for the occasion, and wearing the daintiest of little black ve v“L masks—stood in the doorway of tne tel and yellow tent, a captivating and claiming little: figure, the daintiest and most enticing cf witches. In fact, Joyce looked so charming that Lady Moresby, who would have . made a good business woman, promptly’ decided to double the fortuneteller’s charges. “For 1 am sure the men, at any rate, will want to hear all you have got to tell them,” she smiled. “Ycu make a perfectly bewitching gipsy.” “I believe 1 do,” answered Joyce. '•Even though I have to wear a silly little mask!” She laughed as she spoke, fully aware of the charms of her neat, round little

figure, slight ankles, mil si m feet. Also her chin looked round and dimpled under the velvet mask, and she wore her really beautiful black hair flowing loos? over her shoulders, simply co.ifined by a little cap of glittering sequins. She wished for the. second, as she surveyed her image in the glass, that someone could be there to see her, someone whom she had not seen for many a weary week, a man she had met in London that season, a man she wanted to meet again. People kept trooping up, and Joyce had her hands full. She soon had to say that she couldn’t allow anyone more than a ten-niinutes’ foitunc —tint was when they began to stand in a long queue outside the tent, just like “pitites” at a theatre. Joyce thoroughly enjoyed herself. She spread out the cards for the people she knew so intimately, and with tho. e whose history she was so well acqu inted, and told their fortunes with a r e discretion, astonishing and startling some of the good fclk nearly out of their wits by her intimate knowledge on their .-flairs. It was a glorious opportunity’ for mis-chief-making. but Joyce was too goedhuuioured a little person to play’ the part of a malicious fay. Instead, sin gave wise and sensible advice, ai d was instrumental at least in one case in patch ng up a quarrel which had exist d for years between two neighbours. In matters of the h'art she was especially discreet and guarded. It was ihe gipsy’s characterisation and knowledge of tiie past which was so wcr.derful, people told themselves afterwards. She was a little vague arid n’elnite abort the future, they’ thought, though liberal in her promises of happy years day s free from disease; fortune, and legacies. All at once, just as Joyce was gett’ng a little tired, the faintest degree weary., the blood rushed to her cheeks under her little mask, and her heart began tabcat and flutter painfully. -She had caught sight of the man of whom she had been thinking as she sti ol before the mirror that morning—the man she had wanted to see so badly.

He had come over in a motor, so «h* learnt from overhearing what he said to a friend as he joined the ranka of those writing to have their fortunes told, come over with his hostess and her houseparty from quite a distant part cf the county, and, having come, found the bazaar beastly slow, and thought he would have his fortune toll just to pass away the time. Joyce shivered and trembled. Shjhad not realised till this moment how much she cared, and she felt sick and giddy. She hurried matters shimefnlly for the next 20 minutes, hardly allowing her client's five minutes each, and her re-J marks were short and jerky. She swept up the cards with nervous, impatient fingers, and talked wild nonsense. The people who had been told how wonderf.il the gipsy’ girl was, left the tent with disapproval and disappointment writ largo on their faces, some of thc.n coming to the conclusion that she must be play'd out, others calling her a sill little impostor. Then he came in. and Joyce’s heart gave a wild leap, and h r voice wh?n she asked him to sit down and cut the cards was just a little unsteady. The man sat down. He was tall and broad-shouldered, the sort of healthy, clean-living man any girl might have fallen in love with. Also, he had p’.caty of money and his full sin re of brains, but it was not for that that Joyce loved him—it was just fcr h’s big, st. o g self. “I expect you are rather tired, aren’t you?” he said kindly, noticing tin trembling of the little fo. tune-r -Hera hands and the quivering cf the red mouth under the black n ask. Joyce shook her head, f-he was horribly afraid that her voice might bitray her.. She had disguised it well encugh with other people, but could she disguise it with him? “Will .you cut the cards three times, and shuttle them?” she asked in a low tone; “and cut with your left hind, please.” She did not know wiiat she was going to say when he had cnt them, only’ r omehow she felt it would be impossible to make up stories to him, or talk of thingi she knew; She mi st tell him the re. 1 meaning of the cards, the can lid trut . —- that is, if she had sen- e cnougli to remember what the cards inecnt., He cut the. ten of heaits, the ace of hearts, and the spade queen. Joyee’s heart beat rapidly, for she a'ways called herself queen of spades in cards, bxause of her dark hair and eyes. “There’s your wish,” she said, “facing you. A change of residence, and a dark woman —a girl. Are you fond of her?” She asked the question timidly, wondering at herself for her daring, but somehow the words had to come. “A dark girl,” answered the man slowly, knitting his brows a little. “I am awfully good friends with a dark girl; she is a dear little person, and I saw a lot of her in town last season. But she wouldn’t be concerned with my wish. We are simply friends—good friends.” Joyce's heart grew quite cold for the moment, and then it began to ache —to ache to ache. She felt very’ weary, and would have given worlds to be able to cry. But she cut the cards and began

sorting them with a steady resolution, and then as she rayed them.in Fong rows, a curious ledge of what, they meant, came home to her, and she read the bits of painted pasteboard like a_book. “There’s a girl,” she said slowly—“a fair girl, and you love her dearly.” She pointed out the queen of diamonds. Her fingers didn’t tremble how, but they were as cold as ice. “That’s true enough, little fortuneteller,” the man answered slowly. “I love a fair girl—but what you have to find out is if she loves me. That’s the crux of the whole matter, isn’t it?” Joyce bent her Head over the cards. For a second they swain before her. And then —why, then she might have been gazing into a mirror. ..She could never understand afterwards what really had happened. Had she yielded herself up to her strong imagination, or had she suddenly been gifted with the power of vision? She couldn’t tell, she didn’t know, but, for a few moments at any rate, calm little everyday Joyce Meredith found herself possessing all the weird powers of an Eastern sybil, able to describe minutely, even to the shading of her hair and her long, tapering fingers, a girl she had never seen and a girl she never wanted to see. She was constrained, too, to tell the man who hung over her, listening to her words, gazing at her in aw-ed astonishment, that he must speak to this girl at onee if he wanted to win her, for there was someone else who loved her, someone for whom she did not care much herself, but might marry, it' the other did not come forward soon. "For she eares for you,” Joyee said steadily, raising her eyes and looking him in the face. “She loves you in her pretty, placid way, but not as the dark girl does.” "Never mind the dark girl,” interrupted the man hurriedly. "Tell me more about her.” Joyce told him more, told him, with a know ledge she could not explain or understand, that the fair girl had come to the bazaar with him, and was even now mooning round the stalls, a little annoy; cd by his apparent 'desertion, not realising. in the least that' he' had been afraid of boring Tier too much with his‘company. "And’if .ybu are wise you will go and find her now,” Joyce said'slowly, though every word’was a fine torture to pronounce. "You Will go straight'out and fell her that you love'her, and she will smile up at you in her soft, pretty way, and blush'all over her delicate, fair face. I suppose you will give her an engagement ring—turquoises and dianionds perhaps. She would like turquoises. And later on there will be a big wedding at St. George’s, and then—why, then you will live happily ever after, 1 suppose.” And here, for all her efforts after selfcontrol, Joyce’s voice suddenly failed her, and she bowed her dark head down upon the cards and began to weep silently and softly. The man watched the heaving of her shoulders ami. -for all the passionate exhilaration and hope .which her prophecy had aroused, felt oddly distressed and dismayed, strangely pitiful for the little fortune-teller, the card-dealer, whose dark eyes he seemed to know so well, and yet whom he had never met before and was never likely to meet again. He was glad that they were in a tent by themselves, and that the yellow’ and red curtains were closely drawn, for he would not have liked anyone to witness the gipsy’s tears. She had touched his heart in a quaint way; she was so small, so tenderly, pathetically small, and such a pretty little thing. . rU "Poor little woman, you are worn out,” he said gently. "The strain of telling fortunes must be awful, for upon my soul I believe you are inspired, or else your cards are bewitched.” . ‘ " He laid his hand tentatively on the girl’s shoulder. He would have liked to soothe her just as if she had been a child. His touch recalled Joyce to herself. She sprang back, nearly upsetting the card-table, then laughed a little ly“I am tired,” she confessed. “Fortunetelling takes-more out of one than people think; and for the moment I felt—oh, stupid and silly. But please go out now,” she added, “for there are hosts of people waiting for their fortunes to be told. I think I gave you rather an extra long one.” She was standing up, her calm, collected little self by now, and what did it matter how pale her cheeks were since .•he wore a mask? “I’ll go—l’ll go at onee!” murmured the man penitently. Then he turned to

the card dealer and took her hands in his. Howecht tfiey'were, those little hands! “I am going to her, straight to her. as you advised me,” he whis]>ered, "and if it is all right, welt .-you- -will -hear from, me.” He smiled, his big, honest smile, but Joyee shivered. She didn’t want to hear from him—she didn't want to see him again, all she wanted to do now was to forget—forget. She felt as if the world had suddenly gone wrong; grown cold and grey. She did hear from him again, though, for later on when the long, weary afternoon had pretty well come to its close, and the bazaar was nearly over—when the Moorish silver bowl by her side was full of gold and silver, the money she had earned for the charity, earned, as Joyee felt, in rather a dubious manner—a letter was brought the little card dealer, a. letter directed to the fortune teller in a handwriting she knew quite well. She took the envelope mechanically from the small boy who bad brought it -—a smart ami resettl'd little bazaar helper; then, when she was alone in the tent she opened it. Two bank notes fell out. and a sheet of paper on which a few lines were scrawled: — “You were quite right, absolutely, splendidly right, dear little fortuneteller,” so he had written. “She is going to marry me, and everything feels grand. I am inclosing two ten-pound bank notes, for I want yon to buy yourself that turquoise and diamond-ring you spoke of. She has chosen pearls as it happens. Please accept the only way I have of saying thank you.” Joyce tore the note up into little fragments, tiny scraps of paper—then she slipped the bank notes into the silver bowl which stood on the card-table. “You made more than anyone else at the bazaar, dear,” so Lady Moresby informed Joyee with a smile a few hours later. “And I am simply delighted with you and the success of your fortune-tell-ing. But how on earth did you manage to* wheedle ten-pound bank notes out of anyone, Joyee? That's what I want-to know-, dear.” She asked the question curiously. “I let the cards speak,” answered the card dealer slowly; “and. as it happened, they told the truth!”