The Lock and Key Library: Classic Mystery and Detective Stories: Modern English
Mrs. Fairbank points mysteriously to the chaise--with Francis Raven
(hitherto our hostler, now our coachman) waiting for us to get in. The
chaise has a seat for two in front, and a seat for one behind. My wife
casts a warning look at me, and places herself on the seat in front.
The necessary consequence of this arrangement is that Mrs. Fairbank sits
by the side of the driver during a journey of two hours and more. Need I
state the result? It would be an insult to your intelligence to state the
result. Let me offer you my place in the chaise. And let Francis Raven
tell his terrible story in his own words.
THE SECOND NARRATIVE
THE HOSTLER'S STORY.--TOLD BY HIMSELF
IV
It is now ten years ago since I got my first warning of the great trouble
of my life in the Vision of a Dream.
I shall be better able to tell you about it if you will please suppose
yourselves to be drinking tea along with us in our little cottage in
Cambridgeshire, ten years since.
The time was the close of day, and there were three of us at the table,
namely, my mother, myself, and my mother's sister, Mrs. Chance. These two
were Scotchwomen by birth, and both were widows. There was no other
resemblance between them that I can call to mind. My mother had lived all
her life in England, and had no more of the Scotch brogue on her tongue
than I have. My aunt Chance had never been out of Scotland until she came
to keep house with my mother after her husband's death. And when _she_
opened her lips you heard broad Scotch, I can tell you, if you ever heard
it yet!
As it fell out, there was a matter of some consequence in debate among us
that evening. It was this: whether I should do well or not to take a long
journey on foot the next morning.
Now the next morning happened to be the day before my birthday; and the
purpose of the journey was to offer myself for a situation as groom at a
great house in the neighboring county to ours. The place was reported as
likely to fall vacant in about three weeks' time. I was as well fitted to
fill it as any other man. In the prosperous days of our family, my father
had been manager of a training stable, and he had kept me employed among
the horses from my boyhood upward. Please to excuse my troubling you with
these small matters. They all fit into my story farther on, as you will
soon find out. My poor mother was dead against my leaving home on the
morrow.
"You can never walk all the way there and all the way back again by
to-morrow night," she says. "The end of it will be that you will sleep
away from home on your birthday. You have never done that yet, Francis,
since your father's death, I don't like your doing it now. Wait a day
longer, my son--only one day."
For my own part, I was weary of being idle, and I couldn't abide the
notion of delay. Even one day might make all the difference. Some other
man might take time by the forelock, and get the place.
"Consider how long I have been out of work," I says, "and don't ask me to
put off the journey. I won't fail you, mother. I'll get back by to-morrow
night, if I have to pay my last sixpence for a lift in a cart.
My mother shook her head. "I don't like it, Francis--I don't like it!"
There was no moving her from that view. We argued and argued, until we
were both at a deadlock. It ended in our agreeing to refer the difference
between us to my mother's sister, Mrs. Chance.
While we were trying hard to convince each other, my aunt Chance sat as
dumb as a fish, stirring her tea and thinking her own thoughts. When we
made our appeal to her, she seemed as it were to wake up. "Ye baith refer
it to my puir judgment?" she says, in her broad Scotch. We both answered
Yes. Upon that my aunt Chance first cleared the tea-table, and then pulled
out from the pocket of her gown a pack of cards.
Don't run away, if you please, with the notion that this was done lightly,
with a view to amuse my mother and me. My aunt Chance seriously believed
that she could look into the future by telling fortunes on the cards. She
did nothing herself without first consulting the cards. She could give no
more serious proof of her interest in my welfare than the proof which she
was offering now. I don't say it profanely; I only mention the fact--the
cards had, in some incomprehensible way, got themselves jumbled up
together with her religious convictions. You meet with people nowadays who
believe in spirits working by way of tables and chairs. On the same
principle (if there _is_ any principle in it) my aunt Chance believed in
Providence working by way of the cards.
"Whether _you_ are right, Francie, or your mither--whether ye will do weel
or ill, the morrow, to go or stay--the cairds will tell it. We are a' in
the hands of Proavidence. The cairds will tell it."
Hearing this, my mother turned her head aside, with something of a sour
look in her face. Her sister's notions about the cards were little better
than flat blasphemy to her mind. But she kept her opinion to herself. My
aunt Chance, to own the truth, had inherited, through her late husband, a
pension of thirty pounds a year. This was an important contribution to our
housekeeping, and we poor relations were bound to treat her with a certain
respect. As for myself, if my poor father never did anything else for me
before he fell into difficulties, he gave me a good education, and raised
me (thank God) above superstitions of all sorts. However, a very little
amused me in those days; and I waited to have my fortune told, as
patiently as if I believed in it too!
My aunt began her hocus pocus by throwing out all the cards in the pack
under seven. She shuffled the rest with her left hand for luck; and then
she gave them to me to cut. "Wi' yer left hand, Francie. Mind that! Pet
your trust in Proavidence--but dinna forget that your luck's in yer left
hand!" A long and roundabout shifting of the cards followed, reducing them
in number until there were just fifteen of them left, laid out neatly
before my aunt in a half circle. The card which happened to lie outermost,
at the right-hand end of the circle, was, according to rule in such cases,
the card chosen to represent Me. By way of being appropriate to my
situation as a poor groom out of employment, the card was--the King of
Diamonds.
"I tak' up the King o' Diamants," says my aunt. "I count seven cairds fra'
richt to left; and I humbly ask a blessing on what follows." My aunt shut
her eyes as if she was saying grace before meat, and held up to me the
seventh card. I called the seventh card--the Queen of Spades. My aunt
opened her eyes again in a hurry, and cast a sly look my way. "The Queen
o' Spades means a dairk woman. Ye'll be thinking in secret, Francie, of a
dairk woman?"
When a man has been out of work for more than three months, his mind isn't
troubled much with thinking of women--light or dark. I was thinking of the
groom's place at the great house, and I tried to say so. My aunt Chance
wouldn't listen. She treated my interpretation with contempt. "Hoot-toot!
there's the caird in your hand! If ye're no thinking of her the day, ye'll
be thinking of her the morrow. Where's the harm of thinking of a dairk
woman! I was ance a dairk woman myself, before my hair was gray. Haud yer
peace, Francie, and watch the cairds."
I watched the cards as I was told. There were seven left on the table. My
aunt removed two from one end of the row and two from the other, and
desired me to call the two outermost of the three cards now left on the
table. I called the Ace of Clubs and the Ten of Diamonds. My aunt Chance
lifted her eyes to the ceiling with a look of devout gratitude which
sorely tried my mother's patience. The Ace of Clubs and the Ten of
Diamonds, taken together, signified--first, good news (evidently the news
of the groom's place); secondly, a journey that lay before me (pointing
plainly to my journey to-morrow!); thirdly and lastly, a sum of money
(probably the groom's wages!) waiting to find its way into my pockets.
Having told my fortune in these encouraging terms, my aunt declined to
carry the experiment any further. "Eh, lad! it's a clean tempting o'
Proavidence to ask mair o' the cairds than the cairds have tauld us noo.
Gae yer ways to-morrow to the great hoose. A dairk woman will meet ye at
the gate; and she'll have a hand in getting ye the groom's place, wi' a'
the gratifications and pairquisites appertaining to the same. And, mebbe,
when yer poaket's full o' money, ye'll no' be forgetting yer aunt Chance,
maintaining her ain unblemished widowhood--wi' Proavidence assisting--on
thratty punds a year!"
I promised to remember my aunt Chance (who had the defect, by the way, of
being a terribly greedy person after money) on the next happy occasion
when my poor empty pockets were to be filled at last. This done, I looked
at my mother. She had agreed to take her sister for umpire between us, and
her sister had given it in my favor. She raised no more objections.
Silently, she got on her feet, and kissed me, and sighed bitterly--and so
left the room. My aunt Chance shook her head. "I doubt, Francie, yer puir
mither has but a heathen notion of the vairtue of the cairds!"
By daylight the next morning I set forth on my journey. I looked back at
the cottage as I opened the garden gate. At one window was my mother, with
her handkerchief to her eyes. At the other stood my aunt Chance, holding
up the Queen of Spades by way of encouraging me at starting. I waved my
hands to both of them in token of farewell, and stepped out briskly into
the road. It was then the last day of February. Be pleased to remember, in
connection with this, that the first of March was the day, and two o'clock
in the morning the hour of my birth.
V
Now you know how I came to leave home. The next thing to tell is, what
happened on the journey.
I reached the great house in reasonably good time considering the
distance. At the very first trial of it, the prophecy of the cards turned
out to be wrong. The person who met me at the lodge gate was not a dark
woman--in fact, not a woman at all--but a boy. He directed me on the way
to the servants' offices; and there again the cards were all wrong. I
encountered, not one woman, but three--and not one of the three was dark.
I have stated that I am not superstitious, and I have told the truth. But
I must own that I did feel a certain fluttering at the heart when I made
my bow to the steward, and told him what business had brought me to the
house. His answer completed the discomfiture of aunt Chance's
fortune-telling. My ill-luck still pursued me. That very morning another
man had applied for the groom's place, and had got it.
I swallowed my disappointment as well as I could, and thanked the steward,
and went to the inn in the village to get the rest and food which I sorely
needed by this time.
Before starting on my homeward walk I made some inquiries at the inn, and
ascertained that I might save a few miles, on my return, by following a
new road. Furnished with full instructions, several times repeated, as to
the various turnings I was to take, I set forth, and walked on till the
evening with only one stoppage for bread and cheese. Just as it was
getting toward dark, the rain came on and the wind began to rise; and I
found myself, to make matters worse, in a part of the country with which I
was entirely unacquainted, though I guessed myself to be some fifteen
miles from home. The first house I found to inquire at, was a lonely
roadside inn, standing on the outskirts of a thick wood. Solitary as the
place looked, it was welcome to a lost man who was also hungry, thirsty,
footsore, and wet. The landlord was civil and respectable-looking; and the
price he asked for a bed was reasonable enough. I was grieved to