“O! no, Sir—only afeared of the tables and things as will foller me about whether I will or no! And it’s not the fust time as the beastly things ’ave got me into trouble, neither!”
“O! it’s not the first time, is it, Hannah?” inquired Steinberg, “and what harm did they do you before, my girl!”
“Harm enough,” replied Hannah, blubbering, “they parted my Joe and me! His family was so nasty about it! They said they wouldn’t ’ave their furniture broken for nothing, else maybe Joe and me could ’ave lived along of ’is mother, and I’d never gone to service at all!”
“Well! never mind, Hannah! If Joe is a wise young man, he will come after you and marry you, whether his tables dance or not. And, meanwhile, my friend and I would like to see all that you can do!”
“I can’t do nothing, Sir!”
“Then who is it that does it?”
“Ah! that I can’t tell you,—only that it’s always been the same with me from a child! I’ve had many a beating for it! I often wish I’d been dead afore they’ve come after me!”
“What! the tables and chairs?”
“Yes, Sir! and other things as well—shadders and the like, as come round me of nights, and woices as talk to me. I ’ates them woices more than anythink, for Mrs. Brushwood (that’s Joe’s mother, please, Sir), it was all along of ’er ’earing one, one day, as made the rumpus between us. And then mother said I must go to service and shake it off. But they’ve been just as bad here as in Settlefield.”
“Well, Hannah, will you take my advice?” said the Professor, “trust yourself to the Doctor and me and we’ll cure you of this nonsense. It’s all due to your health, you know!”
“Thank ye, Sir, but I can’t take no pills, please! Mother, she’s tried ’em with me scores of times but they always sticks in my throat till I retches ’em up again. Nor I can’t swaller jalap. It goes against my stummick. But anything else, gentlemen——”
“Be easy, Hannah, we will not ask you to take either pills, or jalap. All we want is an hour or two of your time now and then! But I will arrange all that with Mrs. Battleby.”
As the girl left the room, scrambling sideways, much after the manner of a crab, and glancing behind her the while, as if she feared the table might take a fancy to follow her downstairs, the two men looked to each other and smiled.
“I fancy you have lit on a gold mine there, Ricardo,” said the Doctor, “there is something very marvellous about that girl. She must be a well of magnetism. I never saw such an effect produced upon inanimate objects before. Do you think there can be any trickery about it? These brainless creatures are sometimes uncommonly cunning.”
The Professor was leaning back in his chair thoughtfully, supporting his chin on his hand.
“I don’t know what to think about it,” he said at length, “but I am determined to see more of her powers. Now, the question is, what excuse can we make to Mrs. Battleby for asking this girl to give us a few hours of her time, every now and then.”
“The landlady has seen something of it already, I think you told me, and does not approve of the proceedings.”
“Very strongly disapproves of them! Declares that Hannah must go back to her people in the country—that she is a fool, or a cunning trickster, or the Devil is in the whole concern.”
“And I am much of Mrs. Battleby’s opinion,” remarked Steinberg.
“What! that it is done by agency of the Devil? Nonsense! man, nonsense! If the Devil was all that was required to produce such marvels, we should all do the same. No! no! the girl is a medium—but of what kind, I am as yet unable to determine.”
“I’ll tell you what we can say,” interposed the Doctor, “if the landlady is opposed to the girl’s practices, she will not be sorry to have them cured. Tell her that I attribute the whole business to the state of Hannah’s nerves—that she is a victim to what we call hysteria—and that if she will allow me to treat her for the complaint, I will undertake to cure her. And I say it with truth, Ricardo, for should she be shamming, I will soon find it out, and expose her; and should she be as you conclude, a medium, the exercise of her powers will be a drain upon her system, and prevent the exhibition of them elsewhere.”
“I believe you are right, Steinberg, but where have you derived so much knowledge about media and their powers, considering that until this evening, you have refused to approach the subject of Spiritualism at all.”
“I have declined to join in the pursuit of it, my friend, you mean. You cannot suppose that I have not heard, nor conceived some interest in, a matter which half the world is talking of to-day. But what I have read has predisposed me against it. I feel that it is fraught with more danger than good. For a sensitive man like yourself, I am sure it might, under certain circumstances, be very dangerous. That is one reason that I have determined to join you in your studies. If there is any fear of harm, I will share it with you. What you said last night concerning your desire to open out a communication with your late wife, set me thinking deeply. If you draw her spirit back to earth, how can you tell that it will be for her good, or yours—how can you tell, indeed, that it is her spirit or that of some wandering Elemental (as you called them yesterday) who may take her shape? This is the danger I would share with you! If, on the other hand, good and pure spirits can return to earth, I am anxious to have the privilege of speaking to them. Do you understand my motives now?”
“Perfectly,” said the Professor, grasping his hand. “And now for Mrs. Battleby.”
But they found the landlady rather hard of conviction. In the first place she did not believe the phenomena were due to anything but Hannah’s “cussedness”, and if the gentlemen only knew as much of gals as she did, they would think the same; “wants to shirk ’er work, that’s what she do, and leave all the washin’ up and dirty work to ’er missus”; and in the second, she did not see how she could afford to spare her for two or three evenings a week, when there was more work than they could get through together now.
“What should I want to ’ave ’er cured for?” she demanded, “it’ll be better and cheaper for me to send the ’ussy ’ome to ’er mother, who ought to be ashamed for having sent ’er my way at all, than to keep ’er here, a’worritin’ me day and night, and spending ’alf ’er time up with you gentlemen. Which I’m much obliged, I’m sure, and so Hannah ought to be, for your kind intentions, but in my opinion, she ain’t worth curing!”
The Professor looked in despair at the Doctor, and Steinberg gallantly came to the rescue.
“You forget, my dear Mrs. Battleby,” he commenced softly, “that I, as a medical man, take the greatest interest in a case like this. In fact, it is not too much to say that I would pay a good deal to keep Hannah Stubbs under my own eye for a few months. If you are determined to part with her, of course there is nothing more to be said about it, but I shall endeavour, in that case, to re-engage her for some of my brother professionals. But I thought I might manage to see her here and more conveniently, and benefit you a little into the bargain. Now—supposing you agree to let Hannah remain under your protection, what would be the cost of having in a woman to look after the house during your possible absence, and do her work, every evening for a couple of hours?”
“I don’t know, I’m sure, Sir,” replied the landlady with a sniff, for she did not like the interest being excited by “that ’ussy Hannah”, “there’s more things to be considered than the work. I may not care, nor more I don’t, to ’ave a stranger a’messing over my property, and a’picking up everything as she can lay ’er ’ands on whilst I’m away.”
“I see!” replied the Doctor, thoughtfully, “then name your own conditions, Mrs. Battleby, and I will see if I can agree to them.”
“I don’t know as I have any conditions to name, Sir,” said the woman, still more ruffled, “the gal’s my servant, and can’t leave me any’ow under ’er month, and me without ’elp of any kind. But if you wants to ’ave ’er up here of an evening, and physic ’er and all that sort of thing, why I don’t like to refuse a offer made in kindness, and p’r’aps you wouldn’t consider as to pay ’er wages would be too much compensation for all the trouble and ill-convenience it’ll put me to.”
“Perhaps not!” replied Steinberg, who had taken upon himself to be spokesman on the occasion, “but what are her wages?”
“Ten poun’ a year, and heverythink found!”
“Now, look here, Mrs. Battleby,” continued the Doctor, “as this is a case which promises to afford me some interest and to be phenomenal——”
“Lor! is it raly?” exclaimed the landlady. “I didn’t think the pore gal was as bad as that!”
“——I am willing to pay you ten shillings a week so long as we shall require her services—I mean, until I shall have cured her complaint, or pronounced it incurable! We doctors are always ready to pay for our little fads, you know!”
“And ’andsomely, too, I’m sure, Sir,” exclaimed Mrs. Battleby, now wreathed in smiles at the prospect of getting her drudge for nothing, “and I gives my full permission for Hannah to attend on you here hevery evening, if so be you wishes it!”
“O! no! thank you! Three times a week will be quite sufficient, if you will give us the whole evening from after tea to supper. I am so often with my friend Signor Ricardo, that it will be more convenient for me to operate on her here, than at the hospital.”
“O! lor, Sir, you’re never a’going to cut up the pore gal, sure-ly!”
“No! no! indeed! Make your mind easy, Mrs. Battleby! I intend to treat her by an entirely new process which, if I am not mistaken, will have an almost immediate effect in preventing those nervous tremors which seem to assail her.”
“O! Sir, if you’ll cure ’er of them, I shall be thankful, for she must shake like an aspen leaf. I found ’er in the kitchen jest now, a’laying with ’er arms over the table trying to keep it down, and it was bumping under ’er as if it ’ad gone mad!”
“Ah! Electricity does wonders in these days, you know, Mrs. Battleby, and I promise Hannah shall be quite herself again in a short time.”
“And now, my dear Professor,” he said, as the landlady took her departure, “having settled Mrs. Battleby, what means shall we try by which to make the girl hold her tongue downstairs, about anything she may see or hear whilst with us?”
“These means,” replied Ricardo, as he chinked the loose coins in his pocket.
“They do not always answer,” said his friend, “and this seems a very simple and innocent sort of girl, who might be terrified out of her life if she guessed the real reason of our getting her to sit with us. I think it would be better to persuade her that she has a species of St. Vitus’s dance, and that it will get worse and worse unless I cure it in time. I’ll tell her, too, that she must be a little worse before she’s better, and, between the dread of being sent home again and the dread of becoming incapacitated for work, I think we shall manage to make her hold her tongue.”
“I shall leave that part of the business to you,” said Ricardo. “You are more used to wheedle the ladies than I am. You doctors are terrible fellows! You keep a dozen weapons in your pocket for assuaging feminine fears, but I fancy you’ll have to use them all upon poor Hannah.”
The upshot proved that the Professor was right. The friends agreed to meet again upon the following evening, when Hannah was summoned as soon as she had cleared away their tea, and introduced to their designs.
At first the case seemed hopeless. Nothing would induce the girl to permit her powers to be used as a proof of what she could do. She declared that she was too much frightened of herself—that her one desire was to prevent such incomprehensible things occurring—and that she was sure, like Mrs. Battleby, that the Devil was in it, and prepared to drag her down to destruction.
Her tears and entreaties were pitiable to see and listen to, and for a while, the men thought their endeavours had been in vain. But when she was a little quieter, the Doctor took her in hand, and having commenced his practice by the administration of a composing draught, he explained to her, after his own fashion, that he and his friend only meant kindness by her, and wanted to cure the very things of which she complained. If she would place herself under their guidance, he said, he would guarantee to send her back to her family, quite cured of the annoyance she objected to.
Hannah opened her beautiful eyes wide, and listened. To be cured meant to be in favour again with Joe’s people, and perhaps to become Joe’s wife much sooner than she anticipated.
“But how can you cure me, Sir?” she asked, wonderingly. “It’s summat in my fingers as makes the things dance! I don’t do nothing, Sir, I assures you, and I ’ates it, I do, like cold pison.”
“Then you’ll be all the better pleased to get rid of it, Hannah,” he replied, “but that is quite impossible unless you will give way to the feeling at first, and let me see just how it acts. Now! don’t be frightened when you see the articles approach you! The Professor and I do not scream and run away. Stay by us, and let them do as they choose!”
“But I can’t, Sir,” cried the girl, breathlessly, as she attempted to evade the close attentions of an arm-chair, “they frightens me out of my wits. I wonder whatever I’ve done that dumb brutes won’t leave me alone.”
But though Hannah, with the assistance of her new friends, managed to set all the furniture in the room spinning, without being more alarmed than was evinced by her gasping and screaming and clutching either one or other of them by the arm, nothing would induce her to enter the séance room. As soon as the door was opened and she saw the black funereal hangings, she gave a shriek, and fell backwards into the Doctor’s arms.
“In there?” she screamed, “but what for? I’ve never been in sich a dark ’ole in all my life! And what do you want to do with me there? Are you going to cut me up? O! Mrs. Battleby! Mrs. Battleby!”
Her yells alarmed the two scientists, who feared all their plans would be knocked on the head by an untimely irruption on the part of the landlady. So they slammed the door to, and pulled Hannah into the lighted room again, and tried to compose her by slapping her on the back and addressing her with soothing words.
The girl lay in the arm-chair in which they had placed her, seemingly more dead than alive. Fearing that the shock had really injured her, they were just about to call for help, when a gruff, manly voice spoke at a distance of two or three feet above her head.
“Don’t be fools! Leave her alone! She’ll go into the cabinet when I tell her to do so.”
The Professor and the Doctor looked around them in amazement. Who had addressed them? The room was empty. Their faces now began to look scared at this new Mystery, until Steinberg whispered to his friend,
“She spoke to us last evening of ‘Voices.’ This must be one of them! I am certain it did not emanate from her own lips. Ricardo, this is better than I anticipated! Light is already breaking through the darkness. Depend upon it, this girl has been a medium for years, without knowing it, and we shall be the means of developing her occult faculties. Let us interrogate our unknown ally. Are you a friend?” he continued, addressing the invisible owner of the voice, “will you tell us your name? Are we doing right? Will you help us in our researches?”
But to these questions there came no reply. Hannah seemed to be sleeping in the chair, but presently she rose to her feet and with a deep sigh, as though she was doing something against her own inclination, staggered into the dark séance room, and seated herself upon the cushions.
“Shall we follow her?” demanded Steinberg of Ricardo.
“I suppose so! I do not know what to think. This is a totally new experience to me!”
Notwithstanding they did follow the girl, whom they found apparently sleeping on the floor, her figure being thrown across the cushions. Something awed them to that extent, that they did not dare close the door and shut out all the light, but left it slightly ajar, so that a ray from the gas lamp was thrown like a bar of pale gold into the gloomy room.
Then they crept up to Hannah’s side, expecting they knew not what, and bent over her prostrate form.
“What will happen next?” said Steinberg.
“We must wait and see!” replied Ricardo.
“You won’t have to wait long!” exclaimed the same voice which had addressed them before, “didn’t I tell you that when I chose the medium would enter the séance room?”
“She is a medium, then?” said the Professor.
“Rather! One of the finest mediums this world has ever produced. But you must be careful how you use her! She will assimilate with any spirit that possesses her!”
“Are we doing right?” demanded the Doctor, “will our curiosity injure this girl?”
“I will take care that you do not injure her! That is what I am here for.”
“Who are you?”
“The guiding control of this medium.”
“I mean, who were you, when you lived upon this earth? Or did you ever live here?”
“Did I ever live here? How do you suppose I found my way back if I had never lived here? Of course I did. But as for your other question, I don’t see that it is any concern of yours. I might deceive you so easily, that I had better begin by telling you the truth, and that is that I have no intention you shall know my real name. You can call me James.”
“Will you tell us, then, why you come to us?”
“I did not come to you! I accompanied my medium. I led her to you. I have long wished to place her suitably, and I think you will treat her gently and use her well.”
“I hope we may. We are both much interested in the Science of Spiritualism, and want to find out all about it. Do you think we shall succeed?”
“Everyone would succeed who put a great discovery for the good of mankind in the first place, and their own selfish interests in the second.”
“Are our desires selfish?”
“I fear they will become so, if you do not put a check upon them.”
“Teach us how to pursue our inquiries,” said Steinberg.
“Show me my Leonora!” cried the Professor.
“There it begins, you see,” replied the Voice. “The second speaker wants to see his wife again, never mind at what cost or risk to others. Was I not right in saying your desires would become selfish? It has not taken long either!”
“But, Spirit (if you are a Spirit),” exclaimed Ricardo, “you must read my thoughts and know what prompted my request. Surely nothing could be more innocent than the desire of a husband to see his wife again?”
“I am not sure of that!” replied the Voice, “however, if you persevere, I have no doubt that your wish will be gratified. It is impossible to credit what would occur, if people would only have the patience to wait for it.”
“I could have the patience to wait for ages if necessary,” said the poor Professor.
“You will not have to wait so long as that,” said the Voice, “she is nearer to you than you think.”
Whilst Ricardo remained silent under this unexpected joy, Steinberg put a few questions to the influence that was controlling the medium.
“Will you answer me a few questions, James?”
“Certainly! If I am able.”
“Are you speaking to us in your own voice—I mean, have you a throat with gullet and larynx fully formed of your own?”
“No! I am talking now through the medium, that is, I am using her vocal organs—perhaps you perceive the difference in my voice. When I spoke to you in the other room, I had materialised a gullet and larynx of my own, but I could not sustain a lengthened conversation through them!”
“Will Hannah know what has happened to her, when she awakes?”
“No, and I beg you will not tell her. She is very ignorant and simple, and the effect might be harmful. Let her believe that she has merely been to sleep. And now I have used her long enough for the first time and had better go. Do not try to rouse her. Let her wake of herself. She will be hysterical, but the Doctor will know how to deal with that. Good evening!”
And here the Voice ceased. Though they addressed it several times, no sound or sign of any kind came through Hannah. She slept on like an infant, while the two men whispered to one another.
“Wonderful! Marvellous! I could not have believed such a thing, unless I had heard it myself! What a grand prospect lies before us! How glad I am, Ricardo, that I overcame my cowardly fears, and agreed to join you in searching out these mysteries!”
“The Voice said that Leonora was near me! I feel sure that before long I shall see her again, and all my cruel doubts will be set at rest,” said Ricardo, with suppressed emotion.
“Yes! yes! never fear. We shall see all who have preceded us!” replied Steinberg, “and through the agency of this uncouth, barbaric girl. It is almost too wonderful for belief.”
At this juncture, Hannah roused herself, and gave a shriek at feeling the darkness by which she was surrounded.
“O! lor! O! my! Where am I? O! wot is all this about? O! wot ’ave you bin a’doing of with me? O! please, Sirs, take me out of this ’ole, for if there is one thing which I can’t a’bear, it is to be in the dark. It’s ’orrible!”
She struggled to her feet and stumbling to the door, threw it wide open, admitting a full light into the séance chamber. Then she glanced round at the black hangings and with another violent shriek, rushed helter-skelter into the adjoining apartment, and fell into a chair, kicking her huge feet against the floor in a kind of Devil’s tattoo.
“My dear girl! my dear Hannah! pray compose yourself! Nothing is wrong,” exclaimed the Professor, as he patted her kindly on the head. “You’ve had a nice little sleep. The Doctor gave you some medicine for the purpose, because he thought it would do you good. You’d rather go to sleep for a little while than take bitter physic, wouldn’t you, Hannah?”
“P’r’aps Sir, but I do feel so queer-like, as if my legs was all bruised. And my eyes seems weighted, as if I had lead on ’em. It’s a rummy sorter sleep I’ve had, and I think I’ll go downstairs and git into bed, for I’ve got no use of my legs at all.”
“Good-night, Hannah! You won’t mind the Doctor’s medicine so much next time, will you?”
“I’m sure I don’t know, Sir!” said the girl drowsily, as she passed the threshold, but the next minute she had started backwards with another scream.
“Why! what’s the matter now?” cried the men simultaneously.
Hannah was standing near the door with her hand pressed against her heart.
“O! lawks! there’s a lady standing on the landing a’waiting for me—sich a ’ansome lady, with a voil”—(so Hannah pronounced “veil”)—“over her face. O! lor! I shall never be able to git to bed to-night!”
“A lady!” exclaimed Ricardo, eagerly, “what was she like, Hannah?”
“O! I’m sure I don’t know,” replied the girl, testily, “I only wish she wouldn’t come bothering me like that, jist when I was a’going to my bed. No! I don’t know nuffin about her, Sir, nor don’t want to either, a nasty black-eyed creetur, with a beastly voil. Here! let me go, please, Sir, or I’ll never git downstairs to-night.”
And so she left the mystified men to themselves.
The Professor and the Doctor sat up late that night, talking over the wonders they had experienced.
“Do you believe that the spirits of the dead can return to earth now?” demanded Ricardo of his friend.
“I am hardly prepared to answer you,” replied Steinberg. “Certainly, the Voice we heard to-night was very marvellous. I am persuaded that, in normal circumstances, such a gruff, bass voice could not proceed from the chest of a woman. But there have been abnormal cases of the kind, therefore it is not impossible!”
“Good Heavens! Do you mean to suggest that this girl is tricking us?”
“Not exactly. We have had no proofs of it, still, in an investigation of this sort, one needs to be very careful. We must try and think of some test by which we should render it impossible for Hannah to speak whilst under trance.”
“That will be difficult!” said Ricardo.
“But feasible,” replied his companion, “if necessary, we must apply a gag whilst she is unconscious. Nothing short of that, or something equally efficacious, will make me give undoubted testimony to the honesty of her mediumship.”
“My books tell me that such stringent tests are very apt to prevent all spiritual manifestations whatever,” said the Professor, with a sigh.
“Then I should not believe in the manifestations, Ricardo! True spirit intercourse could not possibly be prevented by earthly means. Have we not heard of a heavy table with people seated on it, being lifted by invisible force, and transported to another part of the room? If spirits can accomplish that, they can speak through a gag. Did not ‘James’ tell us that, when we first heard him, he was speaking with a materialised gullet and thorax? If he will speak through them again if only a couple of words, whilst Hannah is gagged, I will not doubt her honesty. But in any circumstances, it is wonderful—wonderful!”
The two men were so anxious to pursue their researches, that they would have gladly asked for Hannah’s services on the following day, but were afraid of raising Mrs. Battleby’s suspicions by displaying too much eagerness to effect her cure. On the third evening, however, the landlady was all smiles and assurances that the girl was ready to wait upon them, but when the time came for her appearance Hannah Stubbs was nowhere to be found. Mrs. Battleby screamed her name from basement to attic, but neither sight nor sound rewarded her assiduity. The Professor and the Doctor had begun to fear lest their medium should have run away from them altogether, when Mrs. Battleby discovered her in her own bedroom, which was next the cellar, with her head wrapped up in the bedclothes, lest she should hear them calling for her.
“Well, of all the ungrateful, bad-natured ’ussies as ever I see, if you’re not the wust,” cried the landlady, as she seized hold of her arm and wrenched her from under the bedclothes. “Wot right ’ave you, I should like to know, to go to bed at this time of day, and not a single cup nor saucer washed up yet? Do you think I keep you to look at, you ugly, squab-faced creetur? Get up do, at once, and don’t keep the gentlemen waiting a minute longer!”
But Hannah was sullen. She only shook herself free of Mrs. Battleby’s grasp, and sat on the side of the bed, with her lips stuck out like those of a negress.
“Now then,” exclaimed her mistress, “wot’s this for, I’d like to know! If the Doctor is good enough to try and cure you (which I’m sure, I wonders he takes the trouble to do it), the least thing you can do in return, is to be grateful.”
“Well! then, I ain’t,” replied the girl, “I’d rather wash up dishes or scrub floors a ’undred times over, than be physicked. I never could abear it! It give me a ’eadache last time, and I don’t want no more of it.”
But Mrs. Battleby had become reconciled to the arrangement, and had no intention of breaking it. She found that she got quite as much work out of Hannah as before, and she was not going to let the chance of keeping her at the Professor’s expense, slip.
“Well! then,” she commenced, “you’ll do as you’re told, Hannah Stubbs, or back you goes to Settlefield to-morrer, and with sich a character at your back as you won’t easy get rid of! You’ll please to remember that whilst you’re here you’re my servant, and bound to do my bidding, and I orders you to smooth your ’air, and go up to the gentlemen at onst, as they’re ready and waiting for you.”
Hannah burst into tears and muttered something about not having come out to service to be cut up, or pisened, just as the missus chose, but she crawled upstairs after a while, all the same, and presented herself at the door of the Professor’s room, where she clung to the lintel as if she dared advance no further.
“Good evening, my dear,” said the Professor, kindly, “you are rather late. Did not you remember that you were to see Doctor Steinberg again to-night?”
“I don’t want to be doctored,” said the girl, in the same tone she had used downstairs, “it don’t do me no good, it makes me wuss!”
“You have not tried it long enough to know if it will do you any good,” replied Steinberg.
“And what do you mean by its making you worse?” interposed Ricardo, “how can it make you worse, Hannah?”
“Well, then, it do, a deal,” said the girl. “I’ve been worritted out of my life since I been here, night afore last. That there lady as I met on the stairs has follered me like my shadder. She ain’t no good, I know, and she gives me the creeps, and if that’s wot the physic’s going to do for me, I’d rayther leave it alone.”
“No! no! no! it was not the medicine,” said the Doctor, quickly. “You would have been much worse without it, Hannah! The lady and everybody who worries you will soon disappear, if you will go on with my cure.”
“Come in and sit down, and tell us all about the lady,” exclaimed Ricardo, eagerly. “There’s plenty of nice hot tea left in the teapot, and here is some buttered cake! Sit down beside me, Hannah, and have some tea, and whilst you are taking it, we will hear all about this tiresome lady.”
Hannah’s eyes looked greedy, and her big mouth commenced to work in anticipation. She was thoroughly sensual, and the good things before her appealed to her senses much more than the honour of being asked to take a chair in the presence of gentlemen.
She sidled into a seat next the Professor, and having drunk a large cup of tea, found her tongue and her presence of mind, simultaneously.
“Well! Sir, it’s this way,” she commenced, “I’ve been in the ’abit, as I told you and this gennelman, of seeing shadders, and ’earing woices and sich-like ever since I was a kiddy, but I don’t dare say nothing about them at ’ome, cos they do go on so dreadful about it, I’m quite afeared on ’em. But I haven’t often seen ’em so distinct-like as since I’ve been ’ere, and they scare me mortal. The other evening I seen that lady I spoke of, on the landing, and blest if she ain’t been to my bed each night since, and looking at me terrible with ’er big, black eyes through ’er voil.”
“Big, black eyes,” reiterated the Professor. “O! Hannah! do try to remember what she was like!”
“I ain’t no cause to remember, Sir,” replied the girl, “she’s scared me too much for that! I only wishes as I could forget ’er. She is a tall lady, and foreign looking, summat like an Injun with a white skin. She’s got big, black eyes as look you through and through, and a thin nose, pointed-like, and little white ’ands, O! so small, and long black ’air ’anging down ’er back, and plaited in a tail. There was a white voil over her face and ’ead, but I could see ’er quite plain under it.”
“And what age—how old should you say she was, Hannah?” asked the Professor, breathlessly.
“Well, Sir, I ain’t good at ages, but somwheres between twenty-five and thirty, I should say she was. She ain’t old anyways, nor yet so very young, neither!”
“My God!” cried Ricardo, as he bent his face over his hands. “It is she—it is my Leonora!”
“I wish she’d come to you, Sir, then, instead of me!” said Hannah, stolidly, with her mouth full of buttered crumpet.
“Ricardo!” exclaimed Steinberg, laying his hand on the shoulder of his friend. “Calm yourself! Do not be too sanguine! This may be a wrong description, or if correct, that of another person. Remember, that any unusual anxiety to see any particular person, is more apt to mar than to promote your desire.”
“Yes! yes! I know, but to think she may be so near me!”
“She has probably, if your own theories are correct, been always near you, though you have been unable to discern it. We must expect this girl to see a great deal more than we can ever hope to do.”
“No doubt, but the description is so like! Those little white hands! how well I recall them, and the piercing, black eyes. Hannah! did this lady say nothing to you?”
“No! Sir, nuffin, she only stood there, pointing up to ’eaven with ’er ’and. Leastways she might ’ave been a’pointing to the hattics, but it was uppards any ’ow. But I didn’t see no more of ’er than I could ’elp, for I screamed so loud and ’id myself under the bedclothes, and the next time I looked, she was gone. ‘Thank Goodness!’ said I.”
“Don’t be afraid of her, she will not hurt you,” said the Professor, earnestly, “she was a friend of mine, Hannah—a dear friend, and the next time you see her, if you will only speak to her and ask her name, I will give you half a sovereign.”
“ ’Alf a suvvering,” repeated Hannah, wonderingly, “well, I should like to ’ave that, I must say, but I can’t do it, Sir,”—shaking her head—“not for a bag of gold, I couldn’t. I don’t mind a’coming up here to be physicked by the Doctor, for the missus says if I don’t, she’ll send me ’ome—but to talk to sperrits and sich-like I can’t. I’ve never done it, a’cause I’m afeared they’re the Devil, and I can’t begin it now. I should think they would carry me away if I did!”
“Still the same old theory,” said Steinberg to Ricardo, in French, “with rich and poor, wise and ignorant—that the Devil is at the bottom of everything that promises to let in a little light upon the other world. Ricardo, if nothing else prompted me to go on with this inquiry, it would be the hope of finding out if there is a Devil at all, or whether the evil in our own natures is not sufficient to do all the mischief in this world, that is attributed to him!”
During this short colloquy, Hannah Stubbs had displayed no curiosity by look or word, to learn what was going on, but as Steinberg concluded, she said,
“I suppose, Sir, as you’ve been putting some of your physic in my tea, for I feel uncommon sleepy, jest as I did the other night.”
The Professor seized upon the opportunity.
“We thought it would be less unpleasant for you to take in that way, Hannah,” he commenced, but he spoke to an unconscious hearer. The girl was already lying back in her chair, without sense or motion.
Steinberg hastened to lower the gas.
“How quickly she has gone off to-night,” he remarked, “I wonder if this is Leonora’s doing!”
“No! it is not Leonora’s doing,” echoed the Voice after him, “it is mine! And now as you want a test, Mr. Doctor, as to whether I speak through the medium’s organs, or she speaks for me, please fill half a tumbler with water and pour it into her mouth.”
“Pour it into her mouth!” exclaimed Steinberg, “but I may choke her!”
“Just do as you’re told,” said “James,” “and leave the consequences to me! We’re better doctors than you are, in the Spiritual world. We know what we’re about and don’t go by guessing. Now, where’s the water?”
Thus adjured, Ricardo fetched a tumbler of water from the adjoining room and emptied half the contents into Hannah’s mouth. She did not seem to resist the action. Her mouth was like a carved piece of marble. The fluid filled it, but did not attempt to pass down the throat.
As the operation was finished, she closed her lips again with a sigh.
“Well, that’s a strong test,” remarked Steinberg. “If any voice speaks now, it certainly cannot be that of the medium.”
“O! you think that, do you?” almost immediately exclaimed the Voice, which they now called “James”, “well, then, who am I?”
“That is just what we are trying to find out, James,” replied Ricardo. “You are certainly not a mortal. Are you the spirit of a dead person, or an emissary of the Devil? Tell us the truth.”
“I am certainly not an emissary of the Devil, who never existed except in your own bad thoughts,” replied James. “When people do wrong, they say they were tempted of the Devil. That’s only an excuse for not confessing that they tempted themselves. But I’ve never seen the Devil, nor seen anybody who has seen him, so I can’t tell you anything about that. And I am not the spirit of a dead person, for the good reason that there are no dead persons. Everybody is alive for evermore, and the only ‘dead ’uns’ are the poor bigotted ignorant fools who are content to believe any fable that is told them, and never to find out the truth for themselves.”
“Then you must not call us ‘dead ’uns,’ James, for we are only too anxious to find out everything about the next World, and are ready to believe all that you can teach us!”
“That’s all very fine, but it’s not my mission to teach you, even if I could! But I’ve had no opportunities yet of learning even as much as you have. You’re educated gentlemen, as can read books for yourselves, but I was only a poor costermonger, as could neither read nor write whilst on earth, and had to begin at A.B.C. when I came over here.”
“You speak better than most costermongers,” observed Steinberg.
“Of course I do! Didn’t I say I had everything to learn when I came to this world. If you took a costermonger in hand and taught him how to speak, he’d take after your pronunciation, wouldn’t he? That’s what I did. It was a gentleman bred that taught me. I guess he hadn’t done as much as he might for his fellow-creatures when he was here, so they put him on to my little job.”
“And why have you come to us then, James?”
“Didn’t I tell you the other night, that I hadn’t come for you. I came with this medium. I’ve been attached to her for several years past.”
“Did you know her on earth?”
“No! I passed over years before she was born.”
“Why did you attach yourself to her then?”
“Because I was told to do so. Things are very different here from what you earth-people expect. You do pretty much as you choose in this world, but you’ll have to obey when you pass over. I was told off to control this girl I suppose, because she’s likely to encounter the same sort of troubles as I did. Any way I’m here, and now I must go! Light the gas and turn the water out of her mouth, that you may be convinced she is not a fraud, and then lower it again and sit round the table in the dark, and I’ll see if I can show you something.”
The Voice ceased, and the men doing as they were desired, were astonished to receive back the half tumbler of water from Hannah’s mouth, just as they had placed it there. Steinberg could not conceal his surprise. He sat gazing at the fluid as if it had been some sacred water brought from Jordan or Bethsaida, to cleanse him from his sins.
“Well! I couldn’t have believed it possible unless I had seen it with my own eyes,” he exclaimed. “Ricardo, this is the most wonderful, incomprehensible, astonishing——”
“Yes! my dear friend, but let us lower the light, now, and talk of these things afterwards. James has promised we shall see something! Supposing it should be my Leonora!”
Steinberg turned off the gas altogether, and sat mute as a mouse, till something should arise from the darkness. Presently, the two friends perceived a bluish mist, like the smoke from a cigarette, rise from the other side of the table, and hover between the ceiling and the floor.
“It is my wife, I am sure of it!” said the Professor in an agitated whisper, to the Doctor, “can’t you see the long white veil which Hannah described to us, and which she was so often in the habit of wearing. Wait a moment and we shall see her beautiful face peeping through the mist. How gracefully it rises—just like the swaying figure of a slender woman, such as she was! And now, cannot you see two eyes forming in the cloud—Leonora! my Beloved, speak to me, show yourself to me! O! I am as certain as I am of my own existence, that it is she!”
“I cannot say that I see any features,” replied Steinberg, “but the form is certainly moving, and coming nearer to us! How cold the room seems to have suddenly become! My hands are like ice! What can be the reason of it? Surely, not the presence of a gentle woman spirit!”
“No!” returned the voice of James from out the darkness, “but perhaps the presence of a gentle spirit man!!! It is I, after all, whom you mistook for that which you are looking for. So do you mortals continually deceive yourselves and bring the science of Spiritualism into disrepute. It was my graceful figure which you saw floating in mid air, but don’t be disheartened. Remember! if you can see a costermonger, you can also see a Queen! There is no difference here, of rank or sex! Good-night! The medium has had enough for this evening! I am off! Light up the gas and let her come to herself.”
Hannah did not seem to be half so frightened this time as she had been on the first occasion, and, after a few yawns, said she was all right and felt much refreshed by the sleep the Doctor’s physic had given her.
“ ’Tis ever so much better nor jalap,” she said, grinning from ear to ear, “and so be it brings Joe and I together agin, why, I don’t mind ’ow many evenin’s I comes up ’ere, and goes to sleep.”
“Have you and your young man quarrelled, then, Hannah?” demanded the Professor.
“Not exactly quarrelled, Sir, but we ain’t as we was, not by no manner of means, and it has cut me up sorely. My mother, she wouldn’t keep nothin’ to ’erself, but kep’ on tellin’ the neighbours as I see wisions and things, and then Mrs. Brushwood, she cut up rough and says as she wouldn’t have no ghosties nor sich-like about ’er ’ouse, and Joe, he lives on ’is mother, so ’e can’t but side with ’er!”
“Poor child! And so they turned you out of your home for a power which is no fault of yours,” said Ricardo.
“Yes, Sir. Mother, she said I must go, an’ p’r’aps they’d forget it arter a while. Mother was allays terrible angered if I said I had seen anythink. But ’twarn’t my fault, for I ’ated it, and do so to this day, and all I ’opes is, as the Doctor’s physic will cure me of seein’ ’em, so that I may go ’ome to mother and Joe. Good-night, Sir, and thank ye kindly.”
As the girl disappeared, Ricardo turned to Steinberg and said,
“I have half a mind to give it all up, my friend, at all events with this medium. I am afraid we are not doing right in deceiving her! She is so simple she takes our word for everything, and all the while instead of curing her, we are urging on the development of her magnificent powers.”
“You may well say ‘magnificent,’ ” replied the Doctor, “and if you give them up, I shall call you a fool. Supposing she does not wish to be developed, what of that, compared to the advancement of Science? She is like an ignorant person who shrinks from having an operation performed that will restore him to health and strength. Should I be justified, because the patient did not understand the value of what I was doing, in allowing him to have his own way and die? This young woman has a splendid future. She may be the means of regenerating mankind. Are we to let the interests of a Joe Brushwood, or her supposed passion for her bucolic lover stand in her way? Certainly not! For the sake of the world, you must not let her go. If you do, I venture to say you will never get such another medium—such an embodiment of animal health and vigour, combined with the psychic forces which make such demands upon them. With Hannah Stubbs under our own eyes, we may be the pioneers of a new Science. Without her we sink down where we were before, into a slough of uncertainty and disbelief. My dear friend, whatever you do, do not let your natural goodness of heart lead you to throw away a grand chance, which may never be renewed. Besides, do you not depend upon her offices, to restore your lost wife to you?”
“Yes! yes!” exclaimed Ricardo, “it is what I have been working and studying for, for the last ten years. I cannot give up that hope, whoever’s happiness stands in the way. We must raise Hannah Stubbs above her low tastes, Steinberg! We must give her something better instead—a love of the Unseen—an ambition to benefit her fellow-creatures—a sense of the high duties to which she has been called.”
“True!—if we can,” replied the Doctor, thoughtfully; “but she is terribly ignorant and gross. Fancy! a maid-of-all-work being called to undertake a Mission—a creature without an idea beyond her breakfast and her dinner—without an ambition, higher than to become the wife of a farm labourer! It is enough to make one laugh, until one thinks with what it is coupled—the Power, denied to so many, to pierce the Infinite! She is as good and pure a girl as ever breathed, that I fully believe—and she seems very docile and good-tempered—but she is a hopeless clod!”
“No! no! not hopeless,” exclaimed the Professor, quickly, “when once she is sufficiently developed for good and high spirits to control her, she must become refined and softened under their influence. If my Leonora, for example, who came of one of the noblest families in Italy, should speak through Hannah, the mere contact must intuitively teach her much that she never knew before.”
“I expect that your Leonora could teach Hannah much in every way,” thought Doctor Steinberg to himself, but he did not say so to his friend.
Two mornings after, Ricardo, whilst on his way to his professional duties, met Mrs. Battleby on the staircase, with a very stiff lip.
“May I make so bold as to ask, Sig-nor,” she commenced, “ ’ow long the Doctor means to be a’curing Hannah Stubbs?”
Ricardo stopped short, looking much like a school boy detected in some forbidden pleasure.
“How long?” he stammered. “Really, Mrs. Battleby, that is a strange question to put to me! How should I know? I am not a medical man, and if I were, it is a thing on which I should find it impossible to speak with certainty. A long time, Doctor Steinberg anticipates, I suppose, since he offered to pay you for the investigation by the week. Surely, you are not tired of your agreement already.”
“I didn’t say so, Sig-nor,” replied the landlady, with the same stiff manner, “but Hannah Stubbs, she is a very young girl, placed under my charge, as you may say, by ’er mother, and I think it is only proper as I should know what sort of physic it is, as Doctor Steinberg is a’treating ’er with!”
The Professor actually trembled. Had this woman obtained any knowledge of their proceedings, and was she about to draw back from her bargain, and forbid the girl visiting them any more?
“What a very strange lady you are!” he answered (Mrs. Battleby would have flown in his face, had he called her a “woman”). “I know nothing of medicines. How can I say if it be one thing or another? You must ask the Doctor! But it seems to have done Hannah good already. You should be satisfied with that!”
“Perhaps I should be, if I were sure of it,” said Mrs. Battleby oracularly, “but I ain’t sure. I was kep’ up late last night, and she was sayin’ some very queer things in ’er sleep, as I didn’t quite like! You gentlemen must be keerful what you do with a young gal like Hannah, for she ain’t too strong in ’er ’ead, as any one can see.”
“Of course we will be—we are, very careful,” replied Ricardo, as he shuffled down the stairs as quickly as he could.
This unexpected interview with his landlady kept haunting him all day.
Whilst he was attempting to instil the liquid Italian accents into the ear of the high-born, but dull Lady Alethea De Ruben, his thoughts were wandering back to Soho, and he was speculating what Mrs. Battleby meant by her sudden interest in Hannah Stubbs, and whether she intended to make a fuss about the girl visiting two men by herself, or to try and strike a higher bargain for her services.
Ricardo felt as if he were prepared to pay any price within his means, sooner than part with Hannah Stubbs, before she had fulfilled his dearest wishes, by bringing his dead wife back to him. Better a crust of dry bread and a glass of water, he thought, than to lose the knowledge which seemed just within his grasp. To know Leonora pure and good, and that after years of purgatory he might be reunited to a faithful wife—or to have the stain of innocent blood lifted from his brow—the mark of Cain wiped out for ever! One of these two things it must be, and he thirsted to ascertain which! He was so self-absorbed and distrait, that even Lady Alethea perceived the difference in her tutor and asked him kindly if he were ill.
“O! nothing! nothing! only a slight headache, dear Lady Alethea,” he murmured, as he made a violent effort to collect his wandering thoughts, and fix them on the Italian grammar.
On his way home that evening, he called for Karl Steinberg, and asked him to walk back with him, whilst he confided his fears and asked what steps they should take, to prevent such a calamity as the loss of Hannah’s services.
“It merely means,” replied the Doctor, “more money. Mrs. Battleby has perceived the satisfaction we feel in Hannah’s society, and judges wisely, that it does not all proceed from giving her medicine! My friend! these women are too sharp for us! Their brains are very light, but they make up for that deficiency by the cunning of the lower animals. After all, when you come to consider it, why should we interest ourselves because a maid-of-all-work is anæmic, hysterical? Had we not better make a clean breast of it at once, and tell the good woman what we do with Hannah during her evenings with us?”
“Not for the world,” cried the Professor, hastily, “the more ignorant the mind, the more opposed it is to anything it cannot understand! We should not only lose Mrs. Battleby’s patronage (if I may call her concession by such a name), but Hannah’s also. For she would, of course, tell the girl everything, and she would refuse to sit with us any more.”
“I see!” replied Steinberg, thoughtfully, “then my advice is to take no notice whatever of Mrs. Battleby’s hints, which were probably only thrown out in order to make you betray yourself. She is curious, my dear friend—all women are—she fancies there must be something more going on than the curative process, and thought to bully you into telling her what it is. Keep your own counsel! She may suspect, but so long as the door of your inner chamber is kept locked, she cannot find out!”
“How I wish I was rich enough to hire this girl as my own servant,” observed Ricardo, “and defy Mrs. Battleby, or leave her lodgings altogether! Then I would take a little house of my own, and people might say what they liked!”
“And what they liked would be, to spread a pretty tale of scandal about you and this country girl. I, too, wish that I were rich enough to settle her down in rooms of her own, where we could visit her at stated periods, and hold our séances, but it is impossible! I can only manage to support myself—much less another person. Attached to the Hospital as I am, I have my lodgings free, but I fear my salary as House surgeon would not go very far in an establishment of my own.”
“Never mind, Steinberg! We will not anticipate evil, but do as well as we can with the means before us! This is our séance evening! From the progress we have already made, I anticipate great things to-night.”
They hastened their steps as he spoke, and in a short time, they found themselves once more closeted with Hannah Stubbs.
Mrs. Battleby was evidently very curious on that occasion, and very unwilling to leave them alone. She brought up the tea-tray herself, and took it down again, and insisted upon conducting Hannah to their presence—a thing she had never done before.
“ ’Ere is Hannah, gentlemen,” she commenced, as she shouldered the red-cheeked maid into the room, “I’ve bin a’arsking ’er what the physic as the Doctor gives ’er tastes like, and she can’t remember nothink about it, but says as ’ow it allays makes ’er go to sleep, which seems very cur’ous to me.”
Steinberg having been in a measure prepared for an onslaught of this kind, had primed himself with a list of names, unintelligible to the landlady.
“Hannah is perfectly right, Mrs. Battleby,” he said, gravely. “In order to cure the very unusual form of hysteria to which she is subject, I am compelled to treat her with Ilex aquifolium, Conium maculatum, and Æthusa cynapium, which drugs, though most valuable in themselves, always have the effect of producing a quiescent state in the patient, after which they are unable to recall what has passed. But I trust—more, I am sure—that my treatment will eventually dispel her symptoms. But ‘Rome was not built in a day,’ Mrs. Battleby, as doubtless you know well, and I warn you that to effect a complete cure in this case, will take some time. That is why I proposed to recoup you for the loss of her services.”
“O! yes, Sir, I understand perfectly well,” replied Mrs. Battleby, looking round the room the while, as though she would spy out the truth of the Doctor’s specious argument. “But in course as I am sure neither of you gentlemen won’t forget Hannah, she’s but a child as you may say, and knows nothink of the world, and I ’opes you will be very careful of ’er!”
“Of course, of course! You could not trust her to better hands than those of my friend Doctor Steinberg,” said the Professor, as the landlady was at last persuaded to leave them to themselves.
“By Jove!” exclaimed Steinberg in French, “I do believe the old woman imagines we intend to seduce this poor child! Heavens! what an idea! With all the beautiful women you see in Town, to fancy one ever bestowing a thought in that way upon this ungainly, uncouth girl! Your landlady is not so cute in this as in most things, Ricardo!”
“I only hope she may not prove to be too cute,” replied his friend, “I fear she smells a rat, as the English say—that is, that she has a strong suspicion what we are about, and if that is so, she will put a stop to it.”
Their colloquy was interrupted by seeing Hannah suddenly leave her seat and going to the séance chamber, pass in to the darkness beyond, without a word, closing the door after her.
“Why! what is she about, now? This is quite a new departure,” exclaimed the Doctor, “shall we follow her, or remain here?”
“I think we had better remain here, and lower the gas,” said Ricardo, “perhaps James will tell us what to do. Fancy! Hannah going into that dark room of her own accord! She has refused even to look into it before!”
“She did not go of her own accord,” replied the Spirit Voice, “I sent her. Lower the gas more. Leave only a glimmer! That’s right! Now open the séance room door a little, and take your seats at the further end of the room and wait! Some one is coming to see you to-night!”
The two men did as was desired of them, whilst the Professor was putting up an inward prayer that the “some one” who was coming, might prove to be Leonora.
“No! it isn’t,” answered the Voice, which now appeared to proceed from the dark chamber which they thenceforth called the “cabinet”—“don’t you be in such a hurry to see Leonora, Professor! You’ll have more than enough of her, when she does come. It is not any one whom you know, as far as I am aware, but it is not the medium. Mind that!”
And then the Voice ceased, and for half an hour all was silence. Then Steinberg, nudging the Professor, whispered,
“What is that?”
Ricardo glanced towards the cabinet, and perceived a faint filmy figure standing beside the half-opened door.
“Can it be James?” he whispered back again. They were too much awed to speak aloud.
The figure shook its head.
“Who are you? Cannot you come nearer to us? Cannot you give us your name?” urged Steinberg, and in his anxiety to learn more, he left his seat and approached the cabinet. The figure instantly disappeared.
“Forgive me!” he said, as he rejoined his friend, “I have stupidly been the means of that figure disappearing. I ought not to have left my chair, but my curiosity got the better of me. I hope it will come again.”
A few minutes’ patience was rewarded by the same apparition standing in the doorway, and holding out, as it seemed, its hand toward the Doctor.
Steinberg, not daring to move again, stared through his glasses at the outstretched arm, and then sinking suddenly towards the Professor, he leant heavily upon his shoulder, and exclaimed,
“My God! It is Mrs. Carlile!”
“And who is Mrs. Carlile?” asked Ricardo, who had never heard the name before.
“A patient and friend of mine! She had her hand amputated—I performed the operation under chloroform—and she never recovered from the anæsthetic. Look! don’t you see her arm is without a hand! Good Heavens! I never thought I should feel a thing like this! Have you any brandy? Can you get it? I feel as though I should faint!”
The figure had retreated again by this time and Ricardo procured Steinberg what he asked for. As soon as he had drunk the stimulant, his courage returned.
“Come back!” he cried, “dear Mrs. Carlile, my poor friend, come back and assure me of your forgiveness! Tell me that you know it was an accident due to the chloroform. It made me so unhappy! I did not sleep for weeks afterwards, thinking you might attribute your untimely death to my negligence. Poor girl! It was a crushing blow to me at the time.”
The figure appeared for the third time, and waved its left hand and nodded its head, and the Professor declared he distinctly saw it smile. As for the Doctor, he was too prostrate for the moment to see anything.
They waited for some time after that, in hopes that the spirit of Mrs. Carlile might return, but all was darkness. At last, just as they were thinking of breaking up the séance, a white-robed form again made its appearance on the threshold of the cabinet.
“Mrs. Carlile!” cried the Doctor, in a fervent voice, “speak to me! Convince me of Immortality, and your forgiveness at one and the same time.”
But there was no response. The spirit, whoever it might be, could not speak, but the head was turned towards the Professor.
“Perhaps she could communicate better with you than with me!” said Steinberg. “Speak to her, Ricardo, ask her to give me some unmistakable token of her friendship and belief!”
“Do not be afraid of us!” commenced Ricardo, in his gentle voice. “If you are Mrs. Carlile, give my friend here some sign that you have forgiven the past!”
“That you are reconciled to your cruel fate,” interposed the Doctor, “that you did not mourn too much at leaving your husband and your infant children—that you know now that all things are ordered for the best and by a Wiser Law than ours.”
But the figure kept its head turned in the direction of the Professor. At last, as though with a violent effort, it pronounced the word “Paolo” and immediately disappeared. Ricardo sank on his knees in an attitude of prayer.
“Leonora!” he cried, “Leonora! I have found you at last.”
Steinberg was about to address him, when they were startled by a sudden and violent knocking at the outer door.
“Who is that?” asked Steinberg, whilst he whispered to his friend, “Calm yourself, Ricardo. Some one is asking for admittance. What is to be done?”
The Professor started to his feet.
“They cannot—shall not—come in,” he exclaimed. “It is an outrage! I gave strict orders that we were never to be disturbed. Tell them so, Steinberg! And at such a moment, too!” he added, as he wiped the beads of sweat from his brow.
“Who is it? What do you want?” demanded the Doctor, of the intruder.
“It’s me, Sir,” replied the voice of Mrs. Battleby, “which there’s a lady downstairs as wants to see Hannah Stubbs most particular! Will you please to open the door, Sir?”
“No! Mrs. Battleby, I cannot! The lady must call another time! My patient is asleep from the effects of the medicine I have given her, and I cannot have her awakened. It might be dangerous!”
“I won’t waken her, Sir, if you’ll kindly let me have a look at her, so as I may tell the lady as I see her asleep with my own eyes!”
“You must tell her so on my authority,” replied Steinberg, “I cannot have Hannah disturbed on any account!”
“What! not when I, as is her own mother’s friend, ask to look at her for a moment as she is asleep. Well! all I can say, Sir, is that I never ’eard tell of sich a thing—not in my borned days—and I can’t believe as any gentleman as calls ’isself sich, would keep a pore gal from ’er friends, when they arsks to see ’er.”
“If the lady is a lady, she will not wish the girl to run the risk of danger from being roused, as your loud talking is likely to do now,” replied Steinberg, angrily, “and if you do not go away, or hold your tongue, Mrs. Battleby, and any harm comes to my patient from your intrusion, I shall report your behaviour to the Hospital authorities. How do you suppose I can administer such drugs as Colium maculatum and Æthusa cynapium, if the patient is to be disturbed whilst under their influence. If Hannah Stubbs dies from your violence I will have you indicted for man-slaughter.”
“Lawk-a-me!” exclaimed the landlady, as she stumbled down the stairs again, “that would be a pretty thing to bring against Martha Battleby, as never hurted a wurrum in ’er life! But I believe as you’re capable of that, or any other villainy,” she continued, as she reached the kitchen again.
Needless to say that the lady, who was so desirous of interviewing Hannah Stubbs, existed in her brain only, and that her sudden irruption upon the “foreign gents” as she sometimes designated Ricardo and his friend, had been induced solely from her intense curiosity to find out what these nightly visitations on the part of her “slavey” meant.
“Which I don’t believe, Mrs. Blamey,” she confided to her crony, “as it’s for the purpuss of curing that gal of her highstrikes, not if you was to tell me ever so! They’ve got some designs on the pore gal, mark my words! I never did think much of foreigners, for they’re a wicious, immoral lot, as ’ow could you expect anythink else from a nation as lives on frogs and sour wine. Not but what I ’olds the Sig-nor to be a quiet, and respectable gentleman,—least-ways ’e ’ave been so ’itherto, but that there German doctor with ’is long ’air, and his glasses, is enough to demoralise the best man living. We hadn’t nothink of these evenin’s alone with gals on pertence of curin’ their illnesses, before ’e came. The Sig-nor, ’e allays was a Mystery, and I’ve said as much before,—but a gentleman as is a Mystery with ’is books and ’is larning, is a very different thing from a gentleman as is a Mystery with gals. Hannah Stubbs, she’s hignorant and hidle, but she ain’t no more hill than you or me! We all ’ave our crosses in this life, Mrs. Blamey, but we don’t go and sit alone with gents to cure ’em, and I don’t like it, and that’s the fact!”
“And I don’t blame you for one, Mrs. Battleby, ma’am,” replied her friend, “I never did like secret ways and never shall. Where there’s secrets and mysteries, I says, there’s summat wrong. And how you could have stood being locked out of your own room for so long, beats me! It’s a puffect insult to a lady of your position, the mistress of her own ’ouse, and left a widder with an independency, and though I’m only an ’umble and down-trodden wife, I wouldn’t have stood it, not if I entered under their very eyes!”
“But it was a sort of agreement-like, Mrs. Blamey, as the Sig-nor was to ’ave them three rooms to ’isself, and open or shut, they’re ’is. And ’ow could I enter when he keeps the key in ’is pocket, night and day.”
“And ain’t there no other keys in the ’ouse as would fit that room, Mrs. Battleby, ma’am?” insinuated Mrs. Blamey. “Couldn’t you try anyways, or get another key fitted whilst the gentleman is hout, and so look into it without his knowing nothink about it.”
“Well, so I could, to be sure!” exclaimed the other, “but I never thought of trying yet. But it seems to me a plain duty, Mrs. Blamey, to find out what they’re going to do with that there pore gal! Why! ’oo knows? that Doctor might be Jack the Ripper—which many said ’e was a doctor—and going to cut up Hannah into bits. And whatever should I say to ’er mother, which was my friend when we was little gals together, if her daughter disappeared under my roof and wasn’t never ’eard of again?”
“It is your dooty, Mrs. Battleby, there’s no doubt of that, and if so be you’re afeared to enter the room by yourself, why, I’ll go with you as soon as look at you.”
“Bless you, Mrs. Blamey, I ain’t afeared, no more than of a black beadle, but now you’ve put it straight afore me, I will find out what them two is a’doing with that gal, as sure as my name’s Martha Battleby! You never know what men are, till you find them out, and though these look so respectable and dull, they may be villains for all that. Keep a gal in the dark, indeed, and give ’er summat to make ’er go to sleep—I’ve ’eard summat like that afore, Mrs. Blamey, and no good come of it! So if there ain’t a key in the ’ouse as will fit that door, I’ll ’ave one made, afore I’m a day older. Good-night, and if I discovers any of their willainies, you’ll be the first to ’ear of it, you may depend on that!”
Consequently, as soon as the Professor had departed on his round of teaching the following morning, Mrs. Battleby sent Hannah on an errand, and commenced her tour of inspection. As was to be expected, a common house had common locks to the doors, and she soon found that the key of her own bedroom proved an “Open Sesame” to the séance chamber.
On her first view of the interior, Mrs. Battleby screamed aloud, so gloomy and funereal was its aspect. But when she had somewhat recovered her nerve, its appearance inspired her with but one notion——all this want of light and air meant the Devil, and nothing else! They were practising Sorcery in this mysterious little chamber, and had dragged the poor gal, with her dancing tables and chairs, and her “shadders” and “woices” into it, with themselves. And yet, after all, the landlady was not sufficiently sure to feel brave enough to accuse her lodger of mal-practices. So she resolved to wait for the next opportunity, and find out what she could for herself. She had the resolution to hold her tongue about her intentions—not only to the Professor, but to Hannah and her next-door neighbour, and when the Signor’s door had been locked upon the succeeding séance, Mrs. Battleby knelt outside in the darkness, with her ear applied to the keyhole.