"I was in my first job as secretary. I was with Miss Opal Fawcett. When it was Ben Ali's day out—Ben Ali was her Arab butler, you know—I used to open the door. I opened it for you and—and Lady June Dana when you came. I remember quite well, though I never thought you would."
Why did the girl blush so? I wondered. Could it be that she was ashamed of having been with Opal Fawcett, or—was it something to do with the mention of June? Miss Arnold had evidently just left her place with Robert Lorillard and probably the name of his wife had been "taboo" between them, for I couldn't fancy Robert talking of June with any one—unless with some old friend who had known her well.
"Ah, that's it!" I exclaimed. "Now I do remember. June and I spoke of you afterward, as we were going away. We said, 'What an interesting girl!' Nearly five years ago! It seems a hundred."
Miss Arnold didn't speak, and again my thoughts flew back.
Opal Fawcett suddenly sprang into fame with the breaking out of the war, when all the sweethearts and wives of England yearned to give "mascots" to their loved men who fought, or to get news from beyond the veil, of those who had "gone west." Opal had, however, been making her weird way to success for several years before. She had a strange history—as strange as her own personality.
A man named Fawcett edited a Spiritualistic paper, called the Gleam. One foggy October night (it was All Hallow E'en) he heard a shrill, wailing cry outside his old house in Westminster. (Naturally it was a haunted house, or he wouldn't have cared to live in it!) Someone had left a tiny baby girl in a basket at his door, and with it a letter in a woman's handwriting. This said that the child had been born in October, so its name must be Opal.
Fawcett was a bachelor; but he imagined that spirit influences had turned the unknown mother's thoughts to him. For this reason he kept the baby, obligingly named it Opal, and brought it up in his own religious beliefs.
Opal was extremely proud of her romantic début in life, and when she had decided upon a career for herself, she wrote her autobiography up to date. As she was quite young at the time—not more than twenty-five—the book was short. She had a certain number of copies bound in specially dyed silk supposed to be of an opal tint, changeable from blue to pinkish purple, and these she gave to her friends or sold to her clients.
I say "clients," because, after being a celebrated "child medium" during her foster father's life, and then failing on the stage as an actress, she discovered that palmistry was her forte. At least it was one among several others. You told her the date when you were born, and she "did" your horoscope. She advised people also what colours they ought to wear to "suit their aura," and what jewels were lucky or unlucky. Later, when the war came, she took to crystal gazing. Perhaps she had begun it before, but it was then that she suddenly "caught on." One heard all one's friends talking about her, saying, "Have you ever been to Opal Fawcett? She's absolutely wonderful! You must go!" Accordingly we went.
When June and Lorillard were waiting in secret suspense for their special license, June implored Robert to let Opal look into the crystal for him, and read his hand. He tried to beg off, because he had met Miss Fawcett during her disastrous year on the stage. In a play of ancient Rome in which he was the star, Opal Fawcett had been a sort of walking-on martyr, and he had a scene with her in the arena, defending her from a doped, milk-fed lion. Opal had acted, clung, and twined so much more than necessary that Robert had disliked the scene intensely, always fearing that the audience might "queer" it by laughing. He would not complain to the management, because the girl had been given the part through official friendship, and was already marked down as prey by the critics. He hadn't wished to do her harm; but neither did he care to have his future foretold by her.