The E. Nesbit Megapack: 26 Classic Novels and Stories (190 page)

ZAÏDA, THE MYSTERIOUS PROPHETESS OF THE GOLDEN ORIENT

This is the story of how we were gipsies and wandering minstrels. And, like everything else we did about that time, it was done to make money for Miss Sandal, whose poorness kept on, making our kind hearts ache.

It is rather difficult to get up any good game in a house like Miss Sandal’s, where there is nothing lying about, except your own things, and where everything is so neat and necessary. Your own clothes are seldom interesting, and even if you change hats with your sisters it is not a complete disguise.

The idea of being gipsies was due to Alice. She had not at all liked being entirely out of the smuggling affray, though Oswald explained to her that it was her own fault for having been born a girl. And, of course, after the event, Dicky and I had some things to talk about that the girls hadn’t, and we had a couple of wet days.

You have no idea how dull you can be in a house like that, unless you happen to know the sort of house I mean. A house that is meant for plain living and high thinking, like Miss Sandal told us, may be very nice for the high thinkers, but if you are not accustomed to thinking high there is only the plain living left, and it is like boiled rice for every meal to any young mind, however much beef and Yorkshire there may be for the young insides. Mrs. Beale saw to our having plenty of nice things to eat, but, alas! it is not always dinner-time, and in between meals the cold rice-pudding feeling is very chilling. Of course we had the splendid drawings of winged things made by our Flying Lodger, but you cannot look at pictures all day long, however many coloured chalks they are drawn with, and however fond you may be of them.

Miss Sandal’s was the kind of house that makes you wander all round it and say, “What shall we do next?” And when it rains the little ones get cross.

It was the second wet day when we were wandering round the house to the sad music of our boots on the clean, bare boards that Alice said—

“Mrs. Beale has got a book at her house called ‘Napoleon’s book of Fate.’ You might ask her to let you go and get it, Oswald. She likes you best.”

Oswald is as modest as any one I know, but the truth is the truth.

“We could tell our fortunes, and read the dark future,” Alice went on. “It would be better than high thinking without anything particular to think about.”

So Oswald went down to Mrs. Beale and said—

“I say, Bealie dear, you’ve got a book up at your place. I wish you’d lend it to us to read.”

“If it’s the Holy Book you mean, sir,” replied Mrs. Beale, going on with peeling the potatoes that were to be a radiant vision later on, all brown and crisp in company with a leg of mutton—“if it’s the Holy Book you want there’s one up on Miss Sandal’s chest of drawerses.”

“I know,” said Oswald. He knew every book in the house. The backs of them were beautiful—leather and gold—but inside they were like whited sepulchres, full of poetry and improving reading. “No—we didn’t want that book just now. It is a book called ‘Napoleon’s book of Fate.’ Would you mind if I ran up to your place and got it?”

“There’s no one at home,” said Mrs. Beale; “wait a bit till I go along to the bakus with the meat, and I’ll fetch it along.”

“You might let me go,” said Oswald, whose high spirit is always ill-attuned to waiting a bit. “I wouldn’t touch anything else, and I know where you keep the key.”

“There’s precious little as ye don’t know, it seems to me,” said Mrs. Beale. “There, run along do. It’s on top of the mantelshelf alongside the picture tea-tin. It’s a red book. Don’t go taking the ‘Wesleyan Conference Reports’ by mistake, the two is both together on the mantel.”

Oswald in his macker splashed through the mud to Mrs. Beale’s, found the key under the loose tile behind the water-butt, and got the book without adventure. He had promised not to touch anything else, so he could not make even the gentlest booby-trap as a little surprise for Mrs. Beale when she got back.

And most of that day we were telling our fortunes by the ingenious means invented by the great Emperor, or by cards, which it is hard to remember the rules for, or by our dreams. The only blights were that the others all wanted to have the book all the time, and that Noël’s dreams were so long and mixed that we got tired of hearing about them before he did. But he said he was quite sure he had dreamed every single bit of every one of them. And the author hopes this was the truth.

We all went to bed hoping we should dream something that we could look up in the dream book, but none of us did.

And in the morning it was still raining and Alice said—

“Look here, if it ever clears up again let’s dress up and be gipsies. We can go about in the distant villages telling people’s fortunes. If you’ll let me have the book all to-day I can learn up quite enough to tell them mysteriously and darkly. And gipsies always get their hands crossed with silver.”

Dicky said that was one way of keeping the book to herself, but Oswald said—

“Let her try. She shall have it for an hour, and then we’ll have an exam. to see how much she knows.”

This was done, but while she was swatting the thing up with her fingers in her ears we began to talk about how gipsies should be dressed.

And when we all went out of the room to see if we could find anything in that tidy house to dress up in, she came after us to see what was up. So there was no exam.

We peeped into the cupboards and drawers in Miss Sandal’s room, but everything was grey or brown, not at all the sort of thing to dress up for children of the Sunny South in. The plain living was shown in all her clothes; and besides, grey shows every little spot you may happen to get on it.

We were almost in despair. We looked in all the drawers in all the rooms, but found only sheets and tablecloths and more grey and brown clothing.

We tried the attic, with fainting hearts. Servants’ clothes are always good for dressing-up with; they have so many different colours. But Miss Sandal had no servant. Still, she might have had one once, and the servant might have left something behind her. Dora suggested this and added—

“If you don’t find anything in the attic you’ll know it’s Fate, and you’re not to do it. Besides, I’m almost sure you can be put in prison for telling fortunes.”

“Not if you’re a gipsy you can’t,” said Noël; “they have licences to tell fortunes, I believe, and judges can’t do anything to them.”

So we went up to the attic. And it was as bare and tidy as the rest of the house. But there were some boxes and we looked in them. The smallest was full of old letters, so we shut it again at once. Another had books in it, and the last had a clean towel spread over what was inside. So we took off the towel, and then every one said “Oh!”

In right on the top was a scarlet thing, embroidered heavily with gold. It proved, on unfolding, to be a sort of coat, like a Chinaman’s. We lifted it out and laid it on the towel on the floor. And then the full glories of that box were revealed. There were cloaks and dresses and skirts and scarves, of all the colours of a well-chosen rainbow, and all made of the most beautiful silks and stuffs, with things worked on them with silk, as well as chains of beads and many lovely ornaments. We think Miss Sandal must have been very fond of pretty things when she was young, or when she was better off.

“Well, there won’t be any gipsies near by to come up to us,” said Oswald joyously.

“Do you think we ought to take them, without asking?” said Dora.

“Of course not,” said Oswald witheringly; “we ought to write to her and say, ‘Please, Miss Sandal, we know how poor you are, and may we borrow your things to be gipsies in so as we get money for you—— All right! You go and write the letter, Dora.”

“I only just asked,” said Dora.

We tried the things on. Some of them were so ladylike that they were no good—evening dresses, and things like that. But there were enough useful things to go round. Oswald, in white shirt and flannel knee-breeches, tied a brick-coloured silk scarf round his middle part, and a green one round his head for a turban. The turban was fastened with a sparkling brooch with pink stones in it. He looked like a Moorish toreador. Dicky had the scarlet and gold coat, which was the right length when Dora had run a tuck in it.

Alice had a blue skirt with embroidery of peacock’s feathers on it, and a gold and black jacket very short with no sleeves, and a yellow silk handkerchief on her head like Italian peasants, and another handkie round her neck. Dora’s skirt was green and her handkerchiefs purple and pink.

Noël insisted on having his two scarves, one green and one yellow, twisted on his legs like putties, and a red scarf wound round his middle-part, and he stuck a long ostrich feather in his own bicycle cap and said he was a troubadour bard.

H.O. was able to wear a lady’s blouse of mouse-coloured silk, embroidered with poppies. It came down to his knees and a jewelled belt kept it in place.

We made up our costumes into bundles, and Alice thoughtfully bought a pennyworth of pins. Of course it was idle to suppose that we could go through the village in our gipsy clothes without exciting some remark.

The more we thought of it the more it seemed as if it would be a good thing to get some way from our village before we began our gipsy career.

The woman at the sweet shop where Alice got the pins has a donkey and cart, and for two shillings she consented to lend us this, so that some of us could walk while some of us would always be resting in the cart.

And next morning the weather was bright and blue as ever, and we started. We were beautifully clean, but all our hairs had been arranged with the brush solely, because at the last moment nobody could find it’s comb. Mrs. Beale had packed up a jolly sandwichy and apply lunch for us. We told her we were going to gather bluebells in the woods, and of course we meant to do that too.

The donkey-cart drew up at the door and we started. It was found impossible to get every one into the cart at once, so we agreed to cast lots for who should run behind, and to take it in turns, mile and mile. The lot fell on Dora and H.O., but there was precious little running about it. Anything slower than that donkey Oswald has never known, and when it came to passing its own front door the donkey simply would not. It ended in Oswald getting down and going to the animal’s head, and having it out with him, man to man. The donkey was small, but of enormous strength. He set all his four feet firm and leant back—and Oswald set his two feet firm and leant back—so that Oswald and the front part of the donkey formed an angry and contentious letter V. And Oswald gazed in the donkey’s eyes in a dauntless manner, and the donkey looked at Oswald as though it thought he was hay or thistles.

Alice beat the donkey from the cart with a stick that had been given us for the purpose. The rest shouted. But all was in vain. And four people in a motor car stopped it to see the heroic struggle, and laughed till I thought they would have upset their hateful motor. However, it was all for the best, though Oswald did not see it at the time. When they had had enough of laughing they started their machine again, and the noise it made penetrated the donkey’s dull intelligence, and he started off without a word—I mean without any warning, and Oswald has only just time to throw himself clear of the wheels before he fell on the ground and rolled over, biting the dust.

The motor car people behaved as you would expect. But accidents happen even to motor cars, when people laugh too long and too unfeelingly. The driver turned round to laugh, and the motor instantly took the bit between its teeth and bolted into the stone wall of the churchyard. No one was hurt except the motor, but that had to spend the day at the blacksmith’s, we heard afterwards. Thus was the outraged Oswald avenged by Fate.

He was not hurt either—though much the motor people would have cared if he had been—and he caught up with the others at the end of the village, for the donkey’s pace had been too good to last, and the triumphal progress was resumed.

It was some time before we found a wood sufficiently lurking-looking for our secret purposes. There are no woods close to the village. But at last, up by Bonnington, we found one, and tying our noble steed to the sign-post that says how many miles it is to Ashford, we cast a hasty glance round, and finding no one in sight disappeared in the wood with our bundles.

We went in just ordinary creatures. We came out gipsies of the deepest dye, for we had got a pennorth of walnut stain from Mr. Jameson the builder, and mixed with water—the water we had brought in a medicine-bottle—it was a prime disguise. And we knew it would wash off, unlike the Condy’s fluid we once stained ourselves with during a never-to-be-forgotten game of Jungle-Book.

We had put on all the glorious things we had bagged from Miss Sandal’s attic treasures, but still Alice had a small bundle unopened.

“What’s that?” Dora asked.

“I meant to keep it as a reserve force in case the fortune-telling didn’t turn out all our fancy painted it,” said Alice; “but I don’t mind telling you now.”

She opened the bundle, and there was a tambourine, some black lace, a packet of cigarette papers, and our missing combs.

“What ever on earth——” Dicky was beginning, but Oswald saw it all. He has a wonderfully keen nose. And he said—

“Bully for you, Alice. I wish I’d thought it myself.”

Alice was much pleased by this handsome speech.

“Yes,” she said; “perhaps really it would be best to begin with it. It would attract the public’s attention, and then we could tell the fortunes. You see,” she kindly explained to Dicky and H.O. and Dora, who had not seen it yet—though Noël had, almost as soon as I did—“you see, we’ll all play on the combs with the veils over our faces, so that no one can see what our instruments are. Why, they might be mouth-organs for anything any one will know, or some costly instruments from the far-off East, like they play to sultans in zenanas. Let’s just try a tune or two before we go on, to be sure that all the combs work right. Dora’s has such big teeth, I shouldn’t wonder if it wouldn’t act at all.”

So we all papered our combs and did “Heroes,” but that sounded awful. “The Girl I Left Behind Me” went better, and so did “Bonnie Dundee.” But we thought “See the Conquering” or “The Death of Nelson” would be the best to begin with.

It was beastly hot doing it under the veils, but when Oswald had done one tune without the veil to see how the others looked he could not help owning that the veils did give a hidden mystery that was a stranger to simple combs.

We were all a bit puffed when we had played for awhile, so we decided that as the donkey seemed calm and was eating grass and resting, we might as well follow his example.

“We ought not to be too proud to take pattern by the brute creation,” said Dora.

So we had our lunch in the wood. We lighted a little fire of sticks and fir-cones, so as to be as gipsyish as we could, and we sat round the fire. We made a charming picture in our bright clothes, among what would have been our native surroundings if we had been real gipsies, and we knew how nice we looked, and stayed there though the smoke got in our eyes, and everything we ate tasted of it.

The woods were a little damp, and that was why the fire smoked so. There were the jackets we had cast off when we dressed up, to sit on, and there was a horse-cloth in the cart intended for the donkey’s wear, but we decided that our need was greater than its, so we took the blanket to recline on.