Kitabı oku: «The Witches of New York», sayfa 12
CHAPTER XV.
MADAME CLIFTON, 185 ORCHARD STREET
Perhaps there is no class of men brought constantly and prominently before the public eye, that is so great a puzzle to that public, as the class popularly denominated “sporting men.” There is not a corner on Broadway where they do not congregate; there is not a theatre where they do not abound, and there is not a concert-room that does not overrun with them. There is a uniformity in their appearance that makes them easily recognised, for they all affect the ultra stylish in costume, even to the extreme of light kid gloves in the street; they all have the crisp moustache, the smooth-shaven cheeks, and the same keen, ever-watchful eye, constantly on the look-out for a “customer,” that respectable word meaning, in their slang, a person to be victimized and swindled. Every lady who walks the street has to run the gauntlet of their insolent glances, and not unfrequently to hear their vulgar and offensive criticisms on her personal appearance; and every gentleman whose business calls him into Broadway of a pleasant day, has seen these persons grouped on the corner leisurely surveying the passers-by, or gathered into a little knot before some favorite rum-shop, discussing what is, to them, the absorbing topic of the day – probably the “good strike” Blobbsby made, “fighting the tiger,” the night before; the “heavy run” a favorite billiard-player made on a certain occasion, or the respective chances of success of the two distinguished gentlemen who may chance at that time to be in training with a view of battering each other’s heads until one concedes his claim to the brutal “honors” of the prize ring.
No gentlemen of fashion and fortune are more expensively dressed than these men; no class of people wear more finely stitched and embroidered linen, more costly broadcloth, more showy golden ornaments, or more brilliant diamonds; but for all, the man is yet to be found who has ever seen one of them put his hand or his brain to one single hour’s honest work. Unsophisticated persons are often puzzled to account for the apparently irreconcilable circumstances of no work, and plenty of money, and in their endeavors to invent a plausible hypothesis on the basis of honesty, must ever be bewildered. The city man knows them at a glance to be “sporting men.”
This phrase is a particularly comprehensive one; the “sporting man” is a gambler by profession, and therefore a swindler by necessity, for an “honest gambler” would fill a niche in the scale of created beings that has never yet been occupied; in addition to this, nearly every sporting man is a thief whenever opportunity offers. They probably would not pick a sober man’s pocket, or knock him down at night and take his watch and money, for the risk of detection would be too great; but they are kept from downright stealing by no excess of virtue.
These remarks apply to the “sporting men,” by profession – to those plausible gallows-birds who have no other ostensible means of getting a living. There are many men who sometimes spend an hour or two at a faro table, or who occasionally pass an evening in gambling at some other game, who do all fairly, and are above all suspicion of foul play; these persons are of course plundered by sharpers who surround them, and are called “good fellows” because they submit to their losses without grumbling.
The “sporting men” all have mistresses, on whom they sometimes rely for funds whenever an “unlucky hit,” or a “bad streak of luck,” has run their own purses low.
It is not part of the present purpose of this book to give particulars as to who and what their mistresses are, further than to state that at least one or two of the “Witches” described herein, officiate in that capacity. It is true, that the most of them are not of a style to tempt the lust of any man, but there are certain exceptions to the general rule, and in one or two instances the “Individual” found the fortune-teller to be comely and pleasant to the eye. As these women generally have plenty of money, they are very eligible partners for gamblers, who are liable to as many reverses as ever Mr. Micawber encountered, and who, when once down, might remain perpetually floored, did not some kind friend set them on their financial feet again.
And this is one of the duties of the monied mistress. When the “sporting man” is in funds, no one is more recklessly extravagant than he, and no one cuts a greater dash than his “ladye-love,” if he chooses so to do; but when the cards run cross, and the purse is empty, it devolves upon her to furnish the capital to start in the world again.
The fact is well known to those who have taken the trouble to inquire into the subject, that several of the more fashionable fortune-tellers of the city sustain this sort of illicit relation to certain “sporting men,” whose faces a man may see, perhaps, half a dozen times in the course of a lounge up and down Broadway of a pleasant afternoon.
Madame Clifton is, on the whole, a comely woman, and does a good business, but of course no sane person will think of applying these remarks personally to that respected matron.
The “Individual” paid a lengthened visit to Madame Clifton, and his remarks are recorded below. Because he met a sleek, close-shaved, finely moustached gentleman coming away from the door, he was of course not justified in believing that the said gentleman belonged to the establishment. Of course not.
The female professors of the black art hitherto visited by the Cash Customer, had not impressed him with a profound belief in their supernatural powers; he was “anxious,” and was “awakened to inquiry,” but he still had doubts, and there was great danger of his backsliding if there wasn’t something immediately done for him.
He had been greatly disappointed by the absence from the domiciles of these good ladies of all the traditional necromantic implements and tools. His disposition to adhere to the modern witch-faith would have been greatly strengthened by the sight of a skull and cross-bones; a tame snake, or a little devil in a bottle, would have fixed his wavering belief; and his conversion would have been thoroughly assured by the timely exhibition of a broomstick on which he could see the saddle-marks.
None of these things had as yet been forthcoming, and the anxious inquirer, mourning the departure of all the romance of the art of witchcraft, was fast sinking into a state of incurable scepticism on the subject of even its utility, in the degenerate hands of modern practitioners. Hope had not, however, entirely deserted his heart, but still retained her fabled position in the bottom of his chest, near that important viscus, and he, therefore, courageously continued his pursuit of witchcraft under difficulties.
His next visit was to Orchard street, and he was induced to expect favorable results by the encouraging and positive assertion which concludes the subjoined advertisement, that “Madame Clifton is no humbug:”
“An Astrologist that beats the World, and $5,000 reward is offered to pay any person who can surpass her in giving correct statements on past, present, and future events, particularly absent friends, losses, lawsuits, &c. She also gives lucky numbers. She surpasses any person that has ever visited our city. She is also making great cures. All persons who are afflicted with consumption, liver complaint, scrofula, rheumatism, or any other lingering disease, would do well to call and see this wonderful and natural gifted lady, and you will not go away dissatisfied. N.B. – Madame Clifton is no humbug. Call and satisfy yourselves. Residence No. 185 Orchard-st., between Houston and Stanton.”
Although Orchard Street is by no means so objectionable a thoroughfare as human ingenuity might make it, still, in spite of its pleasant-sounding name, it is not altogether a vernal paradise. If there ever was any fitness in the name it must have been many years ago, and the ancient orchard bears now no fruit, but low brick houses of assorted sizes and colors, seedy, and, in appearance, semi-respectable. Occasionally a blacksmith’s shop, a paint room, or a livery stable, lower or meaner and more contracted than their neighbors, look as if they never got ripe, but had shrivelled and dropped off before their time.
The street is in a state of perennial bloom with half-built dwellings like gaudy scarlet blossoms, which are ripened into tenements by the fostering care of masons and carpenters with the most industrious forcing; and buds of buildings are scattered in every direction, in the shape of mortar-beds and piles of brick and lumber, waiting the due time for their architectural sprouting.
The house of Madame Clifton is of moderate growth, being but two stories high; it has a red brick front and green window-blinds, and is so ingeniously grafted to its nearest neighbor that some little care is necessary to determine which is the parent stock. It presents a fair outside, is but little damaged by age or weather, and is seemingly in a state of good repair.
A neat-looking colored girl answered the bell, and, showing our reporter into the parlor, asked his business, and if he “knew Madame Clifton’s terms?”
Now when it is understood that fortune-telling is by no means the only, or the most lucrative part of Madame Clifton’s business, it will be perceived that this inquiry had a peculiar significance. Having the fear of libel suits before his eyes, the Individual cannot state in precise and plain terms the exact nature of the business which the colored girl evidently thought had brought him there; he will content himself with delicately insinuating, that if his errand had been of the nature insinuated by that female delegate from Africa, there would have been a “lady in the case.”
Fortunately the Cash Customer had erred not thus, but he made known to the colored lady his simple business.
Learning that he only wanted to have his fortune told by the Madame, and had no occasion to test her skill in the more expensive departments of her profession, the girl appeared to be satisfied of the responsibility of her visitor for that limited amount, and departed to inform her mistress.
The customer took an observation.
The room was a neatly-furnished parlor, a little flashy perhaps in the article of mirrors, but the sofas, chairs, carpet, &c., were plain and not offensive to good taste. A piano was in the room, but it was closed, and its tone and quality are unknown. One curious article, for a parlor ornament, stood in the corner of the room; it was the huge sign-board of a perfumery store, and bore in large letters the name of a dealer in sweet-scented merchandise, blazoned thereon in all the finery of Dutch metal and bronze. This conspicuous article, though mysterious and unaccountable, was not cabalistic, and savored not of witchcraft.
Presently the quiet colored girl returned, and in a low voice, and with a subdued well-trained manner, invited her visitor to follow her; meekly obeying, he was led up two flights of respectable stairs into a room wherein there was nothing mysterious, nor was there anything particularly suggestive except a large glass case filled with a stock of perfumery. What was the propriety of so very many bottles filled with perfumes and medicines did not at first appear; but the assortment of imprisoned odors, and liquid drugs, and the store-sign down stairs, and Madame Clifton, and a certain perfumery store in Broadway, and the proprietor thereof, so tangled themselves together in the brain of the inquirer that he has never since that time been able to disconnect one from the other.
Upon a small stand were two packs of cards – the one an ordinary playing pack, and the other what are known sometimes as fortune-telling cards. The devices on these latter differed materially from those in ordinary use; there were no plain cards; every one was ornamented with some kind of a significant design; there were pictures of women, of men, of ships and raging seas, of hearses, and sickbeds, and shrouds, and coffins, and corpses, and graves, and tombstones, and similar cheerful objects; then there were squares, and circles, and hands with scales, and hands with daggers, and hands sticking through clouds, and purses of money, and carriages, and moons, and suns, and serpents, and hearts, and Cupids, and eyes, and rays of light coming from nowhere, and shining on nothing, and Herculeses with big clubs, and big arms, bigger than the clubs, and big legs, bigger than both together, and swords, and spears, and sundials, and many other designs equally intelligible and portentous.
Soon the Madame appeared, and the attention of the Individual was immediately diverted from surrounding objects and riveted on the incomprehensible woman who was “no humbug,” and who, according to her own opinion of herself, would have exactly realized Mr. Edmund Sparkler’s idea of a “dem’d fine woman, with nobigodnonsense about her.”
On the first glance, Madame Clifton is what would be called “fine-looking,” but she does not analyse well. She is of medium height, aged about thirty-five years, with very light, piercing blue eyes, and very black hair, one little lock of which is precisely twisted into a very elaborate little curl, which rests in the middle of her forehead between her eyes, as if to keep those quarrelsome orbs apart. Her eyebrows are unusually heavy, so much so as to give a curious menacing look to the upper part of her face, which disagreeable expression is intensified by the extreme paleness of her countenance.
Her dress was unassuming, neat, and tasteful, save in the one article of jewelry, of which she wore as much as if the stock in trade at the Broadway perfumery store had been pearls, and gold, and diamonds, instead of perfumes and essences. Her deportment was self-possessed and lady-like, that is, if an expression of tireless watchfulness and unsleeping suspicion are consistent with refined and easy manners. She never took her steel-blue eyes from her visitor’s face; she did not for an instant relax her confident smile; she did not speak but in the lowest softest tones; but her auditor felt every instant more convinced that the voice was the falsest voice he ever heard, the smile the falsest smile he ever saw, and that the cold piercing eye alone was true, and that was only true because no art could conceal its calculating glitter.
If one could imagine a smiling cat, Madame Clifton would resemble that cat more than any one thing in the world. Neat and precise in her outward appearance; not a fold of her garments, not a thread of lace or ribbon, not a hair of her head, but was exactly smooth and orderly, and in its exact place; not a glance of her eye that was not watchful and suspicious; not a tone or word that was not treacherous in sound; not a movement of body or of limb that was not soft and stealthy; her feline resemblances developed themselves more and more every instant, until at last the Individual came to regard her as some kind of dangerous animal in a state of temporary and perfidious repose. And this impression deepened every instant, so much so, that when the small soft hand was laid in his, he almost expected to see the sharp claws unsheathe themselves from the velvet finger-tips and fasten in his flesh.
The language she used, when freed from the technical phrases of her trade, was good enough for every day, and she did not distinguish herself by any specialty of bad English.
She asked her customer, with her most insinuating smile, if he would have her “run the cards for him,” and on receiving an affirmative answer she took the pack of playing cards into her velvet hands, pawed them dexterously over a few times to shuffle them, laid them in three rows with the faces upward, and softly purred the following words:
“I am uncertain whether to run you a club or a diamond, for I do not exactly see how it is; but I will run you a club first, and if you find that it does not tell your past history, please to mention the fact to me, and I will then run you a diamond.”
She then proceeded to mention a number of fictitious events which she asserted had happened in the past life of her listener, but that individual, who did not find that her revelations agreed with his own knowledge of his former history, tremblingly informed her of that fact; and she then, with a most vicious contraction of the overhanging eyebrows, broke short the thread of her fanciful story, and proceeded to “run him a diamond.”
She evidently was determined to make the diamond come nearer the truth – to which end she dexterously strove by a series of very sharp cross-questionings to elicit some circumstance of his early history, on which she might enlarge, or to get some clue to his present circumstances, and hopes, and aspirations, that she might find some peg on which to hang a prediction with an appearance of probability. The Individual – with humiliation he confesses it – was a bachelor. His heart had proved unsusceptible, and Cupid had hitherto failed to hit him. On this occasion he proved characteristically unimpressible; and the insinuating smile, the inquiring look, and the winning manner, all failed of effect, and he remained pertinaciously non-committal.
Finding this to be the case, the feline Madame changed her tactics, and, as if to spite her intractable customer, began to prophesy innumerable ills and evils for him. She apparently strove to mitigate, in some degree, the sting of her predictions by an increased softness of manner, which was only a more cat-like demeanor than ever. She spoke as follows – the cold eye growing more cruel, and the wicked smile more treacherous every instant. First, however, came this guileful question, which was but a declaration of war under a flag of truce:
“You do not want me to flatter you, do you? You want me to tell you exactly what I see in the cards, do you not?” The customer stated that he was able to bear at least the recital of his future adversity, even if, when the reality came, he should be utterly smashed; whereupon she proceeded:
“I see here a great disappointment; you will be disappointed in business, and the disappointment will be very bitter and hard to bear – but that is not all, nor the worst, by any means. I see a burial – it may be only a death of one of your dearest friends, or some near relative, such as your sister, but I see that you yourself are weak in the chest and lungs; you are impulsive, proud, ambitious, and quick-tempered, which last quality tends much to aggravate any diseases of the chest, and I fear that the burial may be your own. Your disease is serious, you cannot live long, I think – I do not think you will live a year – in fact, there is the strongest probability that you will die before nine months. I think you will certainly die before nine months, but if you survive, it will only be after a most severe and painful illness, in the course of which you will undergo the extreme of human suffering. I see that you love a light-complexioned lady, but her friends object to her marriage with you, and are doing all they can to prevent it. A dark-complexioned man is trying to get her away from you; you must beware of him or he will do you great injury, for he has both the will and the power; he has already deceived and injured you, and will do so again even more deeply than he has yet. I see a journey, trouble, and misfortune, grief, sorrow, heavy loss, and heaviness of heart. I again tell you that you will die before nine months; but if you chance to survive, it will only be to encounter perpetual crosses and misfortunes. I might, if I was disposed to flatter you and give you false hopes, tell you that you will be lucky, fortunate in business, that you will get the lady, and I might promise you all sorts of good luck, but I don’t want to flatter you; it would be much more agreeable to me to tell you a good life, for it sometimes pains me more than I can tell you to read bad lives to people, and I feel it very deeply; but I assure you that I never saw anybody’s cards run as badly as do yours – I never saw so many losses and crosses, and so much trouble and misfortune in anybody’s cards in my whole life – even if you outlive the nine months you will have the greatest trouble in getting the lady, and will always have bad luck.”
She then tried by means of the cards to spell out the Inquirer’s name, but failed utterly, not getting a single letter right; then she recommenced and threatened him with so much bad luck that he began almost to fear that he would break his leg before he rose from his chair, or would instantly fall down in a fit and be carried off to die at the Hospital. She told him that his lucky days were the 1st, 5th, 17th, 27th, and 29th of every month. Then perceiving that his feelings were deeply moved by the intractability of the “cruel parients” of the light-complexioned lady, and the black look of things generally, she slightly relented, and went on to say:
“If you will put your trust in me, and take my advice as a friend, I can sell you something that will surely secure you the lady, and thwart all your enemies – it is not for my interest that I tell you this, for upon my honor I make only five shillings upon fifty dollars’ worth – it is no trick, but it is a charm which you must wear about you, and which you must wish over about the girl at stated times, and it will be sure to have the desired effect.”
The customer asked the price of this wonderful charm.
“It is from five to fifty dollars, but as you are so extraordinarily unlucky I would advise you to take the full charm. It is the Chinese Ruling Planet Charm, and I import it from China at great expense. You must wear it about you, and every time you use it you must do it in the name of God; so you see there can be no demon about it. By means of this charm I have brought together husbands and wives who have been apart for three years, and I say a woman who can do that is doing good, and there is no demon about her. While you wear it you will not die or meet with bad luck, but it will change the whole current of your life.”
She then told her unlucky hearer to make a wish and she would tell him by the cards whether he could have it or not. The answer was in the negative, and it was evident that nothing but the Chinese Ruling Planet Charm would save him, and no less than $50 worth of that. So the smiling Madame returned to the charge. “If you will take my advice as a friend, take the charm; it is for your sake only that I say this, for I make nothing by it – but I feel an interest in you, and I wish you would buy the charm for my sake as well as your own, for I want to see its effect on a fortune so bad as yours. If you don’t buy it, and all kinds of ill-fortune befalls you, don’t say I didn’t warn you, and don’t call Madame Clifton a humbug; but if you do buy it, you may be sure that you will ever bless the day you saw Madame Clifton.”
It is, perhaps, needless to state that the Individual didn’t have with him the fifty dollars to pay for the charm, but intimated that he would call again, after he got his year’s salary.
She then said: “If you happen to call when I am engaged, tell the girl to say that you want to see me about medicine, and I will see you, for I never put off anybody who wants medicine, no matter who is with me, say medicine, and I will see you instantly.” Here she softly showed her visitor to the door, and smiled on him until he stood on the outside steps. He then departed, secretly wondering what kind of “medicine” she was prepared to furnish in case any unlooked for occasion should suggest a second call. Her last remark suggested that Madame Clifton derives a larger profit from the peculiar kinds of “medicine” she deals in, than from all her other witchery.
