What the Gipsy did not mention.

“Won’t the pretty lady let the poor old gipsy tell her fortune?”  Blushes, giggles, protestations.  Gallant gentleman friend insists.  A dark man is in love with pretty lady.  Gipsy sees a marriage not so very far ahead.  Pretty lady says “What nonsense!” but looks serious.  Pretty lady’s pretty friends must, of course, be teasing.  Gallant gentleman friend, by curious coincidence, happens to be dark.  Gipsy grins and passes on.

Is that all the gipsy knows of pretty lady’s future?  The rheumy, cunning eyes!  They were bonny and black many years ago, when the parchment skin was smooth and fair.  They have seen so many a passing show—do they see in pretty lady’s hand nothing further?

What would the wicked old eyes foresee did it pay them to speak:—Pretty lady crying tears into a pillow.  Pretty lady growing ugly, spite and anger spoiling pretty features.  Dark young man no longer loving.  Dark young man hurling bitter words at pretty lady—hurling, maybe, things more heavy.  Dark young man and pretty lady listening approvingly to comic singer, having both discovered: “That’s what it’s like when you’re married.”

My friend H. G. Wells wrote a book, “The Island of Dr. Moreau.”  I read it in MS. one winter evening in a lonely country house upon the hills, wind screaming to wind in the dark without.  The story has haunted me ever since.  I hear the wind’s shrill laughter.  The doctor had taken the beasts of the forest, apes, tigers, strange creatures from the deep, had fashioned them with hideous cruelty into the shapes of men, had given them souls, had taught to them the law.  In all things else were they human, but their original instincts their creator’s skill had failed to eliminate.  All their lives were one long torture.  The Law said, “We are men and women; this we shall do, this we shall not do.”  But the ape and tiger still cried aloud within them.

Civilization lays her laws upon us; they are the laws of gods—of the men that one day, perhaps, shall come.  But the primeval creature of the cave still cries within us.