Wilbur sighed. For an envious moment he thought wistfully of the delights of a bachelor existence.
His musings centered on one Joe Blodget, an unmarried young devil with a low-slung car, a bachelor apartment, and hosts of friends.
Joe Blodget had a much better job than himself. He had a much better existence. He had much more fun. He enjoyed life to the full and did whatever he wanted to do.
It wasn’t fair, he thought darkly, that one human being should be so happy and another human being be so miserable. He could be like Joe Blodget, if—
He derailed that particular train of thought with a jerk and hurried on homeward. Wilhelmina would be waiting for him to peel the potatoes for supper, and if he wasn’t there on the dot there’d be an eruption to make Vesuvius pale into insignificance. With a frantic glance at his watch, he broke into a trot...
He stumbled up the steps of his modest bungalow with twenty seconds to spare. He let himself in quietly, but before he could take off his damp brown overcoat or kick off his muddy rubbers, his wife’s shrill voice cut through the stillness of the house like a knife.
“Wilbur! Is that you?”
She asked or rather bawled the same question every night. Once Wilbur had answered: “No, it’s Santa Claus!” but he had never tried it again.
He answered now: “Yes, my dear,” as he shrugged out of his coat and scuffed off his rubbers with a resigned, hangdog listlessness.
“Wilbur,” his wife’s voice conveyed a note of suspicious cordiality, “come into the front room at once. There’s someone here I’m just dying to have you meet.”
Wilbur struggled against a sputtering, growing feeling of outrage. It was supper time, but that didn’t bother Wilhelmina, oh no. Her friends could lounge around the house from morning till night, and that was just fine. He didn’t count. His friends were treated as if they had the mange.
“Coming, my dear,” he said in a resigned voice.
He forced a weak smile over his features, then marched through the hall into the front room and into the presence of his wife and another sour-looking female lounging complacently in his armchair.
His wife stood up, and he wondered for the four-hundred-fifty-fifth time what he had ever seen in her. She was a tall, thin creature with a strong hatchet face that seemed to be waiting to chop at something. She wore her black hair pulled into a tight knot at the back of her leathery neck, and her gray lips were usually pressed tightly together. Now they were parted slightly in a poor facsimile of a welcoming smile.
“Wilbur,” she said sharply, “I want you to meet Miss Elvira Chittling. Miss Chittling, my husband.”
Wilbur nodded and tried to look as if it were a great privilege. Miss Chittling was a huge, lumpy woman with a dull, bovine expression and coarse yellow hair that drooped discouragingly about her sloping shoulders.
She was looking at him appraisingly, he noticed.
“What house?” she asked suddenly.
“H-house,” floundered Wilbur, “what do you mean?”
“I mean, what house were you influenced by,” she repeated in a slightly exasperated voice. “What stellar combinations guide your destiny? Sagittarius, Capricorn, Scorpio—”
“I’m sorry, Elvira.” His wife was acidly apologetic. “My husband knows nothing of astrology. He refused to take lessons with me, refused to avail himself of the guidance of the stars — and look at him! Barely able to keep soul and body together. And as for me,” she stared heavenward like a martyr, “only they know what I’ve been through.”
Wilbur sighed despairingly.
“Who are they?” he asked.
“The stars,” his wife said, in the voice of one who has learned not to look for intelligence in her listeners. “The stars that guide our destiny know the suffering I’ve seen.”
She bowed her head, and Miss Chittling bowed her head, and Wilbur thought forlornly of his delayed supper.
“Will you excuse me,” he said timidly, “you two girls probably have some er — er — stars stuff to talk over, so I’ll just step—”
“Mr. Wunch,” the lumpy Miss Chittling’s voice disorganized his retreat, “have you ever been cast?”
“You mean thrown?” Wilbur offered blankly.
“I mean,” Miss Chittling gathered volume and dignity, “have you ever had your horoscope cast?”
“Well, no,” Wilbur admitted.
Miss Chittling surveyed him through narrowed lids and then beckoned imperatively.
“Come here,” she said softly. “Your time has come. The time for the stars to make known to you their will and desires has arrived. Sit beside me.”
“But,” Wilbur protested feelingly, “I don’t care what the stars have in store for me. I want my supper.”
“Wilbur!”
Wilbur flinched at the lash of his wife’s tone. When her voice developed that particular edge, it was no time to quibble.
“All, right,” he said wearily. With a last wistful look in the direction of the kitchen, he seated himself before the hefty figure of Miss Chittling.
She opened a leather portfolio and pulled out a number of sheets of heavy paper with intricate designs and circles drawn upon them. Wilbur noticed a clock-wise arrangement on the largest sheet of paper. It was crisscrossed by a half-dozen lines, and in each division of the circle there was the picture of some animal. Bulls, goats, and other animals that Wilbur couldn’t get a good look at.
“Astrology,” he mumbled.
He noticed that his wife and Miss Chittling looked up rather sharply at him, so he laughed weakly. “Heh, heh. Astrology, great stuff. Fine hobby.”
“Astrology,” Miss Chittling informed him sternly, “is no hobby.[11] Mr. Wunch, I want you to answer some questions for me. First the date of your birth.”
Wilbur told her. He also confided rather reluctantly a number of other things which Miss Chittling digested in somber silence.
“Hmmm.” She pursed her lips and frowned. “Very interesting, very interesting.” Her fingers ran up and down the various charts like plump rabbits chasing one another, finally stopped in one of the divisions of the largest circle. The one with animals, Wilbur noticed.
Miss Chittling then proceeded to take down some figures on a piece of scratch paper, then closed her eyes and leaned back in the chair.
Wilbur watched her furtively. Her lips were moving, and he could hear her breath whistling through her uneven teeth. She seemed to be mumbling some strange words that made no sense at all to Wilbur. It might be, Wilbur thought, that there was something to this astrology business after all. Maybe—
“Incredible!” Miss Chittling’s shout blasted through his furtive thoughts.
“It’s incredible, simply incredible,” Miss Chittling repeated again with less volume but considerably more feeling. “In all my years of astrological research I have never encountered a more remarkable phenomenon.”
“Elvira,” Wilhelmina Wunch snapped out the word, “what is it? What is so remarkable about Wilbur’s horoscope?”
Wilbur squirmed uneasily. Maybe he had been tried and found wanting by some unfriendly star.
“It is one of those things,” Miss Chittling informed the world in general and Wilhelmina Wunch in particular, “that occurs but once in millions of years.” She turned to Wilbur. “You are very fortunate, Mr. Wunch, that you have the benefit of this information.”
“Am I?” Wilbur asked without enthusiasm.
11
Astrology is not regarded generally as a true science, but as a pseudo science. Many people believe the stars do have an influence on events, and science itself does not deny that this may be the case. Certainly powerful radiations are emanated by all super-heated bodies, such as the stars are, and conceivably, they may effect our bodies and minds, and in that manner, events. However, cold bodies, like the planets, on which astrology is largely based, cannot affect us that way, and the powers attributed to them are largely mythical, and not to be confused with the science of astronomy.