A photograph of My Lady of the Sapphires is hung immediately opposite to the writing-table in my private office. It is there much on the principle which compels a monk to set a skull upon his praying-stool, or a son of Mohammed to ejaculate pious phrases at the call of the muezzin. "Nemo solus sapit," wrote Plautus. Had Fate cast him in the mould of a jeweler, rather than that of a playwright, he would have set down a stronger phrase.
I first saw My Lady two years ago, though it was only upon the day of my introduction that I learnt her name. She had then, though I knew it not, been before the town for many weeks as a physiognomist, a mistress of the stars, a reader of faces, and in many other capacities interesting to the idle and the credulous. Society, which laughed at her predictions, paid innumerable guineas for the possession of them; great dames sat in her boudoir and discussed amatory possibilities; even the youth of the city, drawn by the prettiness of her manner and her unquestionable good looks, came cheerfully to hear that they would have money "from two sources," or had passed through the uninteresting complaints of infancy without harm. In her way, she was the event of the season. Dowagers scolded her, but came again and again to probe family secrets, and learn the hidden things about their husbands; men flocked to her to know what possibility there was of an early return to the bliss of single life; mere boys ventured upon the hazard of a little mild flirtation—and were at once shown the door by a formidable lackey. Throughout her career scandal never lifted its voice against her. She was engaged ultimately to Jack Lucas, and her marriage was as brilliant as her career had been fortunate.
When a curious chance and combination of events first brought me to acquaintance with her she was in the very height of her practice. Carriages crowded daily in Dover Street where, with her mother, she had rooms—and it was the thing to consult her. Yet, until I dined casually one night with Colonel Oldfield, the collector of cat's-eyes, and Bracebridge, at the Bohemian Club, hard by her house, I had never heard of her. The conversation turned during the soup—when talk is always watery—upon the press of broughams in the street without, and Oldfield mentioned her history to me, and the surprising nature of many things she had told him.
"It is easy enough," said he, "to look at a man's hand and deduce scarlet-fever and measles somewhere between two and twelve years of age; but when a woman tells you calmly that you were ready to die for two other women at the age of one-and-twenty, it's a thing to make you pause."
"Which I hope you did," exclaimed Bracebridge. "Love is distinctly a matter for specialization."
"I did pause, sir," said the colonel severely, "and that's where her cleverness comes in. She told me that neither of the women cared the snap of a finger for me, and I have really come to the conclusion that she was right. Years put a glamour upon most things, but it is hard, even at fifty, to recall a woman's 'no' of thirty years ago."
"Memory is a dangerous vice which should be controlled," said Bracebridge; "if you want peace, you must learn to forget. There should be no yesterday for the man of the world. But I know the morbid kind of recollection you speak about. There was a fellow here only the other night who kept a proposal book. He put the 'noes' on one side, and the 'ayes' on the other, and balanced the columns every Christmas. One day he left the book in a cab, and has spent his time since going to Scotland Yard for it. That comes of reminiscences!"
"I agree with you in the main," said the Colonel! "there is very little in any man's private life which is of concern to any one but himself. The lady we are speaking of knows this, and makes her fortune by her knowledge. The truth is that we all love a little plain-spokenness. There is far too much praise about. Tell a fool that he is not a clever man discreetly, and you flatter him; inform him that he is a brainless ass, and he will kick you. But when you put a black cap on your head, and take a wand in your hand, and charge a guinea for the spectacle, the fool will hear of his folly cheerfully."
"Then the girl you mention is a mere vulgar fortune-teller," said I, intervening for the first time. "It's astonishing how little difference there is, when you come to reckon it up, between the tastes of a grand dame and the tastes of her cook. The one goes in at the front door to get her hand read for a guinea; the other goes out of the back to have an equally plausible delineation for sixpence. Credulity does not know any distinction of class; in the case I mention rank is represented by one pound odd. Those of us who have no particular objection to spill salt, shiver to see the new moon through glass. That man alone who tells you frankly that he believes in all superstitions is free from the blemish. But common fortune-telling, I confess, leaves me unmoved."
"If it began and ended in the mere vulgar allotment of tragedy and of marriage, I should agree with you," said Bracebridge, speaking with unusual seriousness; "but I am inclined to think that this is a case of noteworthy cleverness, or at least of uncommon wit. The girl, possibly, is a charlatan: but if one half said of her be true, she is the best at the profession we have known. And after all, it's an achievement to be the best at some occupation, if it's only that of picking pockets."