CHAPTER IV.

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.