Voodoo Tales: The Ghost Stories of Henry S Whitehead (Tales of Mystery & The Supernatural) (17 page)

Tea Leaves

The Spanish War had not yet broken in upon the late nineties when the great day came for Miss Abby Tucker – the day on which she deposited the last fifteen dollars which completed her Europe Fund. Five hundred dollars. At last the end of that desperate scrimping! Here was the price completed of a Cook’s Tour, and an extra hundred for presents, every expenditure planned and polished to a hard brilliancy in the imagination-mill of a frugal little New England school-teacher.

Few people had heard of ‘nervous reactions’ in 1897, but Miss Abby had one as she stepped out of the bank. Perhaps a too-steady diet of bread and tea had something to do with it. But for all her meager little body, Miss Abby possessed a soul above nervous reactions. She stopped, and drew several deep breaths when her heart began to flutter and race, but she soon dispelled the effects of her ‘turn’ by the recollection that it was now only the beginning of the Easter vacation. She had three whole months left in which to arrange the last, fascinating detail of her tour!

There was, for example; the Tower of London. There was also Stratford-on-Avon. There was Vesuvius, and the Temples at Paestum. Miss Abby did hope they might go to Paestum. That was culture! She had steeped her soul in culture, at second-hand, chiefly through the works of Miss Constance Fenimore Woolson, of which Sophia Granniss approved strongly. Miss Granniss, who taught English Literature at the High School, insisted, too, on the necessity of a sojourn on or near the Grand Canal, the study of the Doge’s Palace, and at least slight cultural familiarity – as she called it – with the great Church of Santa Maria della Salute. There were, too, the pigeons on the Piazza. That Piazza! Miss Abby’s thoughts carried her happily to all these, and to other, anticipated delights. There was the Campanile, and the Four Bronze Horses of San Marco. Napoleon, she knew, had either brought them there or carried them away! She never could remember which. She must look that up. Anyhow, they were there now to be gazed at. Sophia Granniss said that the glimpse one had of Monte Rosa over in Italy, as one traversed the Gemmi Pass from Spiess to Kandersteg, was ‘sublime’, and urged Miss Abby not to miss that whatever else she might do. ‘You simply must take that walk, Miss Tucker,’ she had remarked. ‘If you don’t, you’ll live to regret it. Now mark my words!’

The nervous reaction had gone about its business. Miss Abby picked her careful way along the muddy street to her boarding-house. It would not be necessary to crimp quite so closely during the last school term before vacation in June. Miss Abby gained a pound and a quarter during that term.

It was a happy period for her, what with its constant references to the guide-books she got in turn from the public library of the little Vermont town, the minute arrangements for her departure, and especially, the high lights of certain necessary purchases. These included a steamer-rug, a shawl-strap with a leather handle, which Sophia Granniss had insisted upon, and a new valise. Then there was finally the almost suffocating experience of drawing the four hundred dollars for Thomas Cook and Sons and sending it off in four postal money orders at one fell swoop.

The next day after the closing of school she went to Boston to interview the agent of the steamship line about her accommodations. Sophia Granniss had insisted that ‘the personal touch’ in all such matters was absolutely necessary, and Miss Abby, feeling – a little goaded, went. She did not succeed in interviewing the steamship agent himself, although she inquired for him. She did see a very polite young English clerk, however. He was very polite indeed.

‘I’ve come to see about my accommodations on board the
Ruritania
sailing the twenty-third, from Hoboken, New Jersey,’ began Miss Abby. The clerk smiled delightfully, Miss Abby thought.

‘I’m sorry. There are no accommodations on board the
Ruritania
. That is a “one-class” ship, you know, and Cook and Sons have booked her all up.’

‘Yes, thank you, I know that. You see, I’m going with that – ah – group. I only wish to make the arrangements about my cabin.’

The clerk disclaimed responsibility.

‘That, you see, is all arranged between the agency and the – that, ah – tou – their clients, you know. I mean to say we only make over the entire ship to them and they make the individual arrangements.’

Miss Abby was distinctly disappointed. The ‘personal touch’ then, would involve going on to New York and interviewing Messrs Cook and Sons. That was out of the question, impossible – financially impossible. She ruminated, a gloved finger against her lips.

‘But I’m certain to have a cabin to myself, am I not?’ she asked anxiously.

‘Well, you see – I mean to say – that – ah – depends! Might I venture to inquire – ah – how much – hm! I – ah – mean to say – ’

Miss Abby relieved the embarrassment of the young Englishman.

‘I am paying four hundred dollars,’ she informed him.

‘I fear – I really am afraid – that you wouldn’t have the sole use of a cabin. These tours are very popular, you know, and there will be a good many people. Probably they will pack you in, rather.’

Miss Abby thanked him, and took advantage of being in Boston to visit her married sister in Medford. She returned two days later, regretting the certainty that at the price she had paid she could not have the privacy of even the tiniest cabin, but resolved that, come what might, the strong-minded Miss Granniss should keep her finger out of the pie from then on! It was to be
her
tour; not Sophia Granniss’s. Sophia Granniss had had hers!

At last the day of departure dawned. Several friends came to the station to see her off, proffering advice to the very last. The traveler for foreign parts sighed with relief as the train chug-chugged its deliberate way out of the railroad station with stentorian whoopings from the engine-whistle. She settled herself luxuriously to the perusal of a newly-bought magazine, but the perusal was sketchy for her heart was singing within her exultantly.

In a kind of happy daze she braved the unaccustomed terrors of crossing New York City, of threading the mazes of an uncharted Hoboken, of finding the right pier, and finally, of making herself known to the tour conductor. If anybody had taken especial notice of Miss Abby – which nobody did – while the liner was slipping down the bay with her nose to the open sea, such person would have caught a glimpse of a perfect, whole-souled happiness.

She was, indeed, far too happy to be seasick! She ate every meal with a sound appetite, and she liked everything but the coffee. That was, to her boarding-house nurtured palate, altogether too powerful a drink, and she soon reverted to her more accustomed tea.

Her attention to the tea leaves diverted her fellow travelers greatly. By long practice she had become accustomed to mixing the tea about with her spoon so that the tea leaves would accumulate on the bottom of the cup, and then, deftly she would drink the remaining tea and set the cup down with a kind of snap and peer at the picture on the bottom. She had acquired great skill in discerning the meanings in these omens! Now for the first time in her life however, the patterns puzzled her. The word ‘bow’ kept turning up with monotonous frequency. Sometimes it would be an arrangement of the tea leaves like a tied ribbon; sometimes the very letters themselves made their appearance. One day she blushed to herself over the implication which she found. A queer little homunculus near the side of the cup bowed grotesquely to the figure of a seated figure at the bottom, and ‘beau’ was inevitable! Miss Abby hastily disarranged this embarrassing scene with her teaspoon lest any prying, neighborly eye should see it too and, perhaps, think her somehow unmaidenly!

Then, too, the numbers four and seven would get themselves mixed in with the ‘bow’ pictures. Miss Abby went the length of publicity interpreting this to mean, under pressure of onlookers, that when
her
beau appeared he would be forty-seven years of age. ‘Or,’ said she archly, ‘perhaps it means that I shall be forty-seven when he makes his appearance!’ and she smiled at her fancy to the verge of blushing.

She enjoyed every minute of that propitious voyage.

At Gibraltar, she secured, after considerable bargaining with an opal-eyed nondescript, a lace mantilla for her cousin Emmaline in Bellow’s Falls, and this at a price thirty-five cents less than she had planned on for Emmaline’s present.

This securing of presents for relatives and friends was part of a long-made plan. From Salviati’s in Venice she added largely to her store in the matter of mosaic brooches. In Bavaria she loaded up her luggage with somewhat bulkier gifts for the juvenile nieces and nephews in the shape of wooden toy-animals.

Nearly every place contributed its quota to this impedimenta, until as the tour neared its end the list at last became complete. Every single present was bought. Everybody had been remembered. The list was checked.

It was not, indeed, until that tour drew to a triumphant close with what has sometimes been described as ‘Seeing England in Five Days’, that it occurred to Miss Abby that in her concern for the others she had quite forgotten to expend the two dollars and a half which she had mentally set aside for the purchase of something for herself.

It was three days before the date set for sailing for home when this fact popped into her head. They were in London. The Tower had been viewed
en masse
. So had St Paul’s Cathedral, The Houses of Parliament, and Westminster Abbey, Poet’s Corner and all! Hampton Court had got a glance. So had several other places of interest, which had passed under the breathless purview of those personally conducted. The next day they were to journey to Limehouse and London Docks. Miss Abby thought of her souvenir at luncheon. They had come back to their hotel direct from Trafalgar Square, the party joker, who had urged the conductor to show them Sherlock Holmes’s house in Baker Street, having failed dismally! She decided that she would skip the regular program for the afternoon, and go shopping instead. It was the first item she had missed, that afternoon’s fly-about.

At dinner, later, she seemed preoccupied. Bewildered among the riches of London town after a long shopping trip upon which she had looked at many things and had bought nothing, she had at last realized that she was ‘as good as lost’, and had enquired of a policeman the shortest route back to the hotel. He directed her, and the route led through a narrow, dingy street, little more than an alley, connecting two great thoroughfares. She had been much nearer the hotel than she had imagined. She had traversed this short-cut about halfway when she came before a small shop on the corner formed by the intersection of another alleyway. In the shop-window was displayed a miscellaneous collection of merchandise. There were ladies’ watches, paper-cutters, bangles of many kinds, old rings, silver and wooden book-markers, pocketbooks, various set and unset semi-precious stones of dubious appearance, umbrellas, a lone lorgnette which appeared second-hand, and a bead necklace. This last caught Miss Abby’s eye and she stopped to look at it. It was of medium-sized, pinkish beads. It was dusty and badly soiled, but it had a tiny gilt clasp which seemed to Miss Abby to set it off very well, and the beads themselves were well proportioned and nicely graded.

Miss Abby had always – all her life – wanted a pink bead necklace. Here was one, modest, commending itself therefore to the taste of a self-respecting spinster a little past the first bloom of youth. This, too, it was probable, would be inexpensive, and that was a strong recommendation for it!

Miss Abby, always a cautious soul, took rapid stock of the small shop, and decided that it appeared respectable. In this process she glanced at the doorway, which bore the number forty-seven. She smiled, remembering the omen of the tea-leaves. Across the alleyway her swiftly roving eye caught a street sign. It was dingy and the lettering was almost obliterated, but seeing it, Miss Abby came very near to having one of her ‘turns’. For the faded letters spelled BOW LANE!

She gasped for breath, pressed her hand against her fluttering heart, and entered the shop almost grimly. The proprietor, wiping the crumbs of a tea-cake from his narrow face, and aroused by the tinkle of the little bell which the opening of the door sounded in his back room, emerged from that mysterious recess.

‘I’d like to look at that necklace, please,’ said Miss Abby, pointing to it where it hung in the shop-window.

The shopkeeper detached the necklace from where it hung on a wire, blew upon it to free it from the surface dust, and placed it on the counter. Miss Abby picked it up and looked at it closely. Save that it badly needed a good scouring it was precisely what she wanted.

‘How much is it, please?’ she enquired.

‘Well now, nobody’s asked to see that there necklace,’ remarked the proprietor, as he poked at it with a soiled forefinger, ‘since I bought this ’ere shop with its stock and fixtures, nineteen year now come Michaelmas. It was one bit of the old stock at that, Miss. I’ll let you ’ave it for – well – say sixteen bob. ’Ow’s that, Miss?’

Miss Abby did some mental arithmetic. Sixteen shillings! That would be about four dollars – three eighty-four. That was rather more than she had planned to spend on herself. Then she remembered that this was Old England and not New England! Here one was expected to ‘bargain’.

‘I’ll give you eight shillings,’ she said, crisply . . .

They came to an agreement on the sum of twelve shillings, but Miss Abby could not quite bring herself to the point of closing the bargain and walking off with the necklace. She examined it again, the shopkeeper waiting in silence. It was fifty cents, or thereabouts, more than she had planned. Still!  . . .