A discreditable and disordered head now thrust itself out of the mysterious closet, opened its mouth, and the vicious voice said: “I will see you now, sir.” The sighing swain, with a fluttering heart and unsteady steps, summoned his courage and entered the place, to him as mysterious as was Bluebeard’s golden-keyed closet to his ninth wife. The first glance at Madame Widger at once scattered again all his dreams of love and of happiness with that potent and fearful female.
He encountered a cadaverous bony-looking woman, very tall, very old, though with hair still black; with grey eyes, and false gleaming teeth. She was attired in calico; quality, ten cents a yard; appearance, dirty. Hardly was the door closed, when the vicious voice spitefully remarked, “Sit down, sir;” and a skinny finger pointed to a cane-bottomed chair. While seating himself and taking off his gloves, he took an observation.
The apartment was not large; in an unfurnished state, a moderately-hooped belle might have stood in it without serious damage to her outskirts, but there would be little extra room for any enterprising adventurer to circumnavigate her. In one corner was a small pine light-stand, on which was a sceptical looking Bible, with a very black brass key tied in it; a volume of Cowper bound in full calf; a little lamp with a single lighted wick, and a pile of the Madame’s business hand-bills.
She at once showed her experience of human nature and her distrust of her present visitor by her practical and matter-of-fact conduct.
She sat uncomfortably down on the very edge of an angular chair, folded her hands, shut herself half up like a jack-knife, and the vicious voice mentioned this fearful fact: “My terms are a dollar for gentlemen;” and the grey eyes stonily stared until the dollar aforesaid was produced.
The voice then prepared for business by sundry “Ahems!” and when fairly in working order it proceeded: “Give me your hand—your left hand.”
The Widger took the extended palm in her shrivelled fingers and made four rapid dabs in the middle of it with the forefinger of her other hand, as if she were scornfully pointing out defects in its workmanship; then she opened the drawer of the little stand with a spiteful jerk, and withdrew thence something which she put to her sinister optic, and began rapidly screwing it round with both hands, as if she had got water on the brain and was trying to tap herself in the eye.
Then the vicious voice began, in a loud mechanical manner, to speak with the greatest volubility, running the sentences together, and not thinking of a comma or a period till her breath was exhausted, in a manner that would have fairly distanced Susan Nipper herself, even if that rapid young lady had twenty seconds the start.
“I see by looking in this stone that you was born under two planets one is the planet Mars you will die under the planet Jupiter but it won’t be this year or next you have seen a great deal of trouble and misfortune in your past life but better days are surely in store for you you have passed through many things which if written in a book would make a most interesting volume I see by looking more closely in the stone that you are about to receive two letters one a business letter the other a let—”
Here her breath failed, and as soon as it came back the voice continued—