Part 14 (2/2)

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 a.s.sured 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 pract.i.tioners. 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 a.s.sertion which concludes the subjoined advertis.e.m.e.nt, that ”Madame Clifton is no humbug:”

”AN ASTROLOGIST THAT BEATS THE WORLD, and $5,000 reward is offered to pay any person who can surpa.s.s her in giving correct statements on past, present, and future events, particularly absent friends, losses, lawsuits, &c. She also gives lucky numbers. She surpa.s.ses 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 a.s.sorted 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 gla.s.s 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 a.s.sortment 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 s.h.i.+ps and raging seas, of hea.r.s.es, 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 s.h.i.+ning 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 n.o.biG.o.dnonsense about her.”

On the first glance, Madame Clifton is what would be called ”fine-looking,” but she does not a.n.a.lyse 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 una.s.suming, 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.

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