CHAPTER V.

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.