by Anya Seton
‘Come, love,’ said Mrs. Wilson to her husband, faintly astonished that he continued to stand in the middle of the kitchen staring at Fey.
‘Well, what do you think of her?’ said the lady eagerly as soon as the door closed. ‘Don’t you think she looks quite aristocratic and the story might be true?’
The captain cleared his throat, pulled a cigar from a china jar, and clipped the end. ‘ She’s a devilish attractive little piece, at any rate.’
Mrs. Wilson’s jaw dropped, then she swallowed. ‘I shouldn’t think so at all—so small and pale and thin, scarcely more than a child.’
‘True. True,’ said the captain, hastily redeeming himself. ‘ Certainly not my type. I like an armful.’ He winked coarsely at his wife, who had grown plump as a quail on years of Mexican cooking.
Minnie Wilson was mollified, but she decided not to go to Governor Mitchell with Fey’s story just yet; there was plenty of time. Some days later, when the young lawyer from Scotland appeared, she regretted this decision, for by then it was too late and Fey had gone.
It was on the following afternoon that Fey, returning from the Wilsons’ at about five, passed through the plaza. It seemed unnaturally quiet—deserted except for two nuns nervously scurrying past La Fonda on the way to the Parroquia for vespers. Even the sidewalks beneath the portales were bare of their usual groups of monte players and sprawling beggars.
Fey stopped and looked around, and the reason became clear. All the usual loungers and passers-by were huddled in a group at the west end of the Governor’s Palace. Fey, craning to see what held their attention, caught a glimpse of a tall, bearded figure in a long red coat and a black stovepipe hat. The figure was standing in a wagon and brandishing its arms. Fey walked over and pushed through the edges of the crowd. She still could not see, so she edged to one of the palace’s wide window-sills and mounted on that. This brought her up on a level with the bearded face and only about twenty feet away from him. He was waving a brown bottle.
‘Now, folks,’ said a deep voice issuing from the beard, ‘before I give you the wonderful chance of a lifetime to buy Doctor Xavier T. Dillon’s Extra Special Elixir, positively guaranteed to cure any cough or cold, night sweats, kidney stone, backache, rheumatism, and female complaint, I’ll put on a little show for you.’
This speech was delivered in a mixture of English and very bad Spanish, and the faces of the crowd showed interested incomprehension. Traveling medicine shows did not usually hit Santa Fe.
‘I myself, yo mismo, am Doctor Xavier T. Dillon,’ shouted the figure, with a touch of desperation, thumping its red-coated breast. ‘I invented this marvelous elixir to help suffering humanity. I am a great doctor, I make medicines but I can also ’—here the voice sank to a bloodcurdling eerie note—‘read your minds! Because the spirits in the other world—assist me!’
The crowd continued to stare at him blankly, on the fringe a few began to drift away.
‘Damn these greaser yokels!’ said Doctor Xavier T. Dillon.
Fey heard him distinctly and was puzzled. Why was the doctor angry? What did he want them to do? She understood no better than the rest of the crowd, but she felt sorry for him. He was a doctor like her father, and she knew what a hard time Andrew had often had. Besides, she liked this strange bearded man’s voice, it was deep and magnetic—in English, that is; in Spanish, it was all barbarous Americano accent.
‘Look!’ cried the doctor, waving a pack of greasy cards, ‘any one of you can pick out a card with-out-my-seeing-it! And I’ll tell you what it is.’
Cards! That was different. Everybody understood those. The crowd pressed closer again. After much urging and signals from the doctor, a sheepish youth stepped up, selected a card, and showed it to those around him.
‘The trey of hearts,’ announced the doctor, and there were murmurs of wonder. This performance he repeated three times, then he quickly shoved the pack into a black satchel.
That was marvelous, thought Fey, glowing. That faculty then that she sometimes had of seeing things without actually using her eyes, it wasn’t a peculiarity of which she need be faintly ashamed. Others had it, too. And she felt for the doctor a grateful sympathy.
‘Now,’ said Doctor Dillon, taking a dramatic step to the edge of his wagon, ‘ one of you come up here, and I will show you that with the spirits’ help I can actually see into your pockets! You cannot see into mine, oh, no!—not one of you in all this crowd could tell what, for instance, I have in here ——’ He pointed at the breast pocket of his red coat, and paused, hand uplifted.
Fey leaned forward, obediently staring like everyone else at the pocket, then she raised her eyes to the bearded profile, and a vivid impression came to her.
‘Yes,’ she called clearly in English, ‘I know what you have in the pocket. You have a small yellow pencil, a photograph of a lady, and one peso, but the peso is not real, it is made of lata ’ •— she thought a second and found the word—‘of tin.’
The doctor swung violently around on his heel and stared at Fey. He saw a small figure perched on a window-sill and a pair of inquiring gray eyes under a faded pink rebozo. The crowd also turned its collective head, then looked back at the wagon. Some of them knew the little Torres girl, but nobody knew what she had said. Interest was waning again.
‘I’ll be damned,’ murmured the doctor in a fierce and shaken voice. He dived through the wagon curtains and reappeared with a banjo. ‘We’ll have some music!’ he cried, and broke immediately into a galloping rendition of ‘Oh, Susannah.’ Coincidental with the last bar, he seized the brown bottle again and waved it. ‘Now, folks, step up while they last, only one peso, Doctor Dillon’s famous Elixir. The chance of a lifetime! ’
The crowd evaporated. One old woman sidled up, examined the bottle, handed it back with a contemptuous sniff. ‘Only Americanos rot their bellies with strange medicines,’ she said and hobbled off.
Fey got down off the window-sill. She felt very sorry for the doctor, who stood all alone on the wagon.
‘Hey, you, come here!’ he called suddenly.
Fey turned and walked over to him, stood looking up quietly.
‘How the devil did you know what was in my pocket, and what do you mean by queering my show? ’
Fey was puzzled and distressed. Strange that he seemed to be angry with her now, and how odd he looked seen near to. The black beard and the black stovepipe hat hid most of his face, and they didn’t match his eyes, which were greenish-hazel under heavy auburn eyebrows.
She didn’t answer him because she did not know what to say. The doctor made an impatient exclamation and, reaching down a muscular hand covered by fine golden hairs, said, ‘ Come up into the wagon. Don’t stand gawking there!’
She stepped nimbly up onto the wheel and followed him through the canvas curtains. The wagon was furnished with a cot, a stool, a large trunk, and neat boxed piles of the Extra Special Elixir. A riñe, a frying pan, and a coffee-pot stood in the corner on the floor.
The doctor was over six feet, and his head grazed the canvas ceiling, even though he at once flung the stovepipe hat on the floor beside the frying pan. This disclosed a great deal of curly dark auburn hair, very much the color of the maple dresser of which Mrs. Wilson was so proud, and which she had transported from her New England home. Fey was amazed, and still more so when the doctor unhooked the luxuriant black beard from around his ears and flung that after the hat.
Fey stood by the curtains, staring. Terry Dillon was unlike any man she had ever seen, and from that moment he captured her imagination. He was twenty-three and of that dashing Irish type which rouses many a woman’s imagination. He had, in fact, done very well along that line. The chin was pugnacious, the mouth, warmly sensual, also showed humor, while the greenish eyes, ill-tempered now, as they often were, seldom produced that impression on women because of their romantic setting of thick dark lashes.
He was vivid and very male. Fey, unaccustomed to height and breadth of shoulder, gaze
d at the ripple of muscles beneath his white silk shirt, and thought him miraculous.
Xavier Terence Dillon had been born in Baltimore to roving actor parents whose dramatic talents he had not inherited, though not for want of trying, since he had been playing bit parts with them from the cradle. The Dillons had wandered to California in the wake of the gold rush, and Terry had grown up in San Francisco. A year ago his parents had died in an epidemic of yellow jack and Terry had decided to head East.
There were many ways of accomplishing this, but few congenial ones. The one-man medicine show had been a happy solution. He had procured a sturdy spring wagon, a pair of mules, and a great many empty bottles, then set forth eastward on the Overland Trail. The costumes and the banjo he already had.
He had done fairly well in the small mining camps, and had had a spectacular success in Salt Lake City where he wintered. The decision to see something of New Mexico before picking up the Santa Fe Trail he now regretted. Business had been exceedingly bad, but never as bad as today in the capital itself, and this little Mexican chit, standing with her mouth open and staring at him as though she wanted to eat him, had been part of the trouble.
‘Sit down, child,’ he said irritably flinging himself on the cot, ‘ and take that pink rag off your head. Why in hell do all women tie their heads up in this blasted place! ’
Fey’s American was still rusty, but she understood him after a moment. She sat down on the stool and lowered the rebozo.
Terry surveyed the result in a mild astonishment. ‘You’re older than I thought,’ he said accusingly.
‘Seventeen,’ returned Fey with composure. She was relaxed and perfectly happy, experiencing new delightful sensations. All the gropings and rebellions and desires of her life were in the process of merging into one passionate channel.
Terry sat up, his original purpose in inviting her into the wagon momentarily forgotten. The little creature was a bit scrawny, but she was not unattractive as he had first thought. Her bare feet were well-shaped. She had beautiful skin and eyes, and those long braids of black hair might be seductive if loosened.
She didn’t twitter like most of the Mexican girls either, though on the other hand she lacked their lusciousness. By a natural sequence of thought, he mentally undressed Fey. The result was quite appealing, and he considered it briefly, but he had been given the name of a famous beauty in Burro Alley, the echo of whose superlative charms had reached as far as Salt Lake, and his plans for the evening were made. Besides, tomorrow he’d be on his way, since this town was obviously a financial dud. This reminded him of the afternoon’s failure.
‘How in the world did you know what was in my pocket?’ he said, leaning forward.
A warm pink stained Fey’s cheeks; she gave him a faint, shy smile. ‘I can sometimes, you know. You can too. I saw you.’
‘Can what? ’ said Terry.
‘Why—know things without really seeing them,’ she answered, astonished. ‘Like you did with the cards.’
‘Holy Saint Bridget!’ cried Terry, laughing.
Fey continued to look at him in wide-eyed candor.
‘That’s probably the hoariest card trick known to the profession, my dear,’ he said. ‘I learned it from a monte dealer in Canon City, and I’m not very good at it.’ He added, scowling, ‘Are you by any chance making fun of me?’
The girl’s eyes widened still further, and Terry was astonished to see a hurt bewilderment cloud them.
‘How could I be? I don’t understand,’ she said.
Terry was discomfited; a rare feeling for him. The girl seemed completely sincere, and the whole thing didn’t make sense; moreover, the obvious admiration for himself which he saw in her face was beginning to have an effect.
‘Look,’ he said, smiling, ‘I can see you’re a nice girl and I like you. I won’t give you away, I promise, but I sure am curious. So far as I know, I never laid eyes on you before this afternoon, so will you kindly tell me how you knew exactly what was in my pocket? ’
‘I just did. I told you I can sometimes. I thought you wanted someone to tell you, and I thought’—she added wistfully—‘ you’d understand.’
Terry sat and looked at her. Then he stood up and, walking to the corner of the wagon, he reached into a box and brought up one of the brown bottles flamboyantly labeled ‘ Doctor Xavier T. Dillon’s Extra Special Elixir.’ Under the list of symptoms for which it guaranteed cure, the label asserted in larger type, ‘This miraculous elixir is composed of the most expensive secret remedies discovered by Doctor Dillon after years of research.’
‘Can you tell me what’s in this bottle? ’ said Terry, putting it in Fey’s hand.
She looked down at the brown bottle, then up at Terry’s quizzical face. Uncertainty and an obscure reluctance seized her. She had never deliberately tried to use the gift; it had always come spontaneously and usually when she least expected it. But she wanted very much to please him and to remove his obvious skepticism. This hurt her, not that he should disbelieve her faculty, but that he should doubt her for any reason.
‘Well,’ said Terry, sitting down on the cot again, ‘if you could see what was in my pocket, you certainly ought to be able to see what the Elixir is made of—maybe.’
‘I can, I think,’ she said. She looked steadily at Terry, then again at the bottle for an instant of quivering, receptive blankness. I mustn’t try too hard, she thought, and she waited. There came the sensation of light and a swift impression which she translated into words.
‘In this bottle, there is river water——’ She paused, then amplified, ‘Water from the Rio Grande where you filled it.’
Terry made an exclamation and uncrossed his legs.
Fey continued calmly, ‘ There is also whiskey, a little sugar and—chile powder. No more.’ She put the bottle on the floor beside her stool, and raised her eyes.
Terry said nothing. He stared at the bottle as though he expected to see it ringed with unholy incandescence, and for an instant he felt a shiver of awe. She really did it, he thought, in amazement. Might be different if she had tasted the stuff, but she hadn’t even touched the cork. And then that item about Rio Grande water! There was certainly no way for the girl to know that he made up a fresh batch of Elixir before entering each town.
He thought of the little he had heard about mesmerism and spiritualism. The latter movement had begun nearly twenty years ago when the Fox sisters started their spirit rappings in New York State, and every now and then someone had held a'séance in San Francisco. But I don’t believe in that rubbish, thought Terry, and this girl certainly isn’t controlled by any Laughing Water or Little Bright-Eyes.
Still there was the incontrovertible fact. She had known what was in his pocket and she had known what was in the Elixir.
‘Could you do it once more?’ he said suddenly. ‘Please,’ he added, on a soft, coaxing note, for Fey shrank back and looked distressed. She didn’t want to go on doing tricks for him, she wanted him to look at her and talk to her as a girl—as a woman.
Terry rummaged in his pants pocket and brought out a notebook and pencil. He scribbled quickly, shielding the page with his hand so that she could not possibly see. ‘What number did I write here? ’ he asked.
Fey drew her brows together; she gave an unconscious tired little sigh. But after a second she answered, ‘Seven, one, nine, I think—no, two.’
Terry nodded, his eyes were elated. ‘ Seven, one, two, is right, but I thought nine first. You read my mind—that’s what it is. Heavenly saints, that’s a useful talent you’ve got there! Have you any idea how you do it?’ He spoke with excitement. His quick but unanalytical brain had already accepted the fact and now he had the glimmering of a brilliant idea.
‘I don’t know,’ answered Fey unhappily. ‘I guess it’s just that sometimes I see the truth in people’s minds or hearts. I guess it’s just a special thing like being able to play the guitar right off or smelling when there’s snow in the air on a sunny morning.’
‘Maybe,’ agreed Terry. He was not interested in the mechanics of her gift, but he was very much interested in its possibilities.
‘Please don’t talk of it any more,’ said Fey, with a mixture of pleading and dignity, and she gave him an uncertain little smile.
‘All right,’ said Terry promptly, though he intended to talk about it a great deal more in the future. ‘ Come over here beside me and tell me about yourself. How come you speak English? ’ He took her hand, noting the flicker of delight in her eyes when he touched her, and he pulled her down beside him on the cot.
Under his adroit questioning, Fey willingly told her life story—all but the episode at Tesuque pueblo with Natanay, of which she had never spoken to anyone.
Terry, child of the stage and accustomed to spinning some pretty tall stories himself when it suited his purpose, discounted most of what she told him. If the girl wanted to represent herself as the forsaken daughter of Scotch and Spanish nobility forced into lowly life by cruel fate, it was all right with him. He’d walked on in a dozen melodramas that had the same plot. The important and gratifying fact was that she apparently had no family, no strong ties in Santa Fe, and a further bit of luck—she had no wish to stay in Santa Fe either.
‘Though I don’t see why not,’ said Terry, still cautious. ‘After all, you were born here, you’re even named for the place. And you don’t know what the country’s like outside.’
‘But I want to find out,’ said Fey. The expression of docility, of childlike admiration, left her. Her eyes grew dark and intense. She threw her head back and her arms wide in a passionate gesture. ‘I’m not me, yet. I want to come through—to be somebody. To be mel’ She spoke in a quick, vehement voice. ‘I want much—many things. I want a silk dress and to give orders instead of taking them. I want poder—power—and -’ Her eyes focused again on Terry, their look, though halfunconscious, was unmistakable, ‘Most I want—love.’
