CHAPTER IX.
Karl Steinberg’s negociations for the cottage at Hampstead, proved eminently successful. The rooms were too small for most tenants, so it was still unlet, and before the end of the week, he had signed the agreement for it, and had such articles of furniture as were absolutely necessary, put in. Ricardo and Hannah moved to their new abode on the appointed day--their departure being loudly lamented by Mrs. Battleby, who, finding her quiet, well-behaved lodger had taken her at her word, was very doubtful where she should find such another occupant for her attics.
The Professor was delighted at the prospect of the change. He had seen the black draperies carefully taken down from the séance chamber--had packed his precious books himself--and put together his few articles of furniture, and now had the pleasure of looking forward to arranging them in their place again, without any prospect of being turned out at a moment’s notice.
Hannah also, though still in great grief for the loss of her young man and the anger of her mother, was much cheered by the idea of having twenty pounds a year, and reigning sole mistress over the little domicile at Hampstead.
It was a tiny house, consisting of a sitting-room and kitchen on the ground floor, with two bedrooms and two dressing-rooms above--the larger of which were to belong to Ricardo and his friend, whilst Hannah slept in one of the smaller, and the other was to be hung with the black draperies and devoted to their séances.
There was so much to do on first taking possession of the cottage, that they determined to postpone the pursuit of their studies until they felt more at home. The Professor had his teaching to attend to, as usual, and the Doctor his hospital, and when they met in the evenings they were too much engaged in carpentering and painting to be able to attend to anything else. Meanwhile, however, the resolution he had arrived at respecting Hannah Stubbs, had not deserted the Professor’s mind, and it was not long before he mooted the question to her.
He saw more of the girl than the Doctor did. Steinberg had his hospital duties to attend to, and occasionally they kept him from home all the evening, but Ricardo’s work was more irregular. Sometimes he had but two or three lessons to give during the day--sometimes eight or nine. One day he would be employed all the morning and have his afternoon free--on another, he would lounge in his arm-chair, robed in a dressing-gown, and reading his favourite authors, until noon, and rush away directly after his luncheon, not to appear again until it was time for supper.
Hannah had but little hard work to do, as neither of the gentlemen took dinner at home, and their morning and evening meals were very light.
She had the whole day to scrub and polish the rooms, and being a clean girl by nature, she took a pride in making them as bright as it was in the power of soap and water to do.
It was one of the Professor’s afternoons at home, and she was in the midst of cleaning her little kitchen when he called her into the front room.
“Hannah, I feel lonely,” he said, “I want you to leave off work and come and sit with me!”
“Lor! Sig-nor, it’s impossible! I’se all of a muck, and the kitchen’s flooded with water!”
“Then wipe it up as soon as you can, and come to me. I want you to sew some buttons on my clean shirt!”
The girl did as she was desired, for amongst the anomalies that beset this strange creature, was her capacity for needlework, the most delicate of which did not seem to come amiss to her clumsy fingers. As soon as she had mopped up her kitchen floor, she put on a clean apron and brought her work basket into the Professor’s room. There she found various articles awaiting her, to mend, and taking a chair at the furthest end of the little apartment, she applied herself to her work.
“Hannah!” said the Professor, presently, between the puffs of his meerschaum pipe, “have you ever thought about getting married?”
The girl reddened; looked up quickly; and then dashed her hand across her eyes to brush away a tear.
“Lor! Sir, in course I ’ave! You’re a’forgetting of Joe!”
“To be sure! You must forgive me, Hannah! But you will never see any more of Joe, you tell me!”
“I don’t think so, Sig-nor! ’E’s a young man of ’is word, Joe is, and what ’e says ’e sticks to,” replied Hannah, with a heavy sigh.
“But you don’t mean to remain unmarried for ever, for his sake, do you, Hannah? He is not worth it!”
“I don’t suppose as any one else will want to marry me,” replied the girl, humbly, “I knows as I ain’t much to look at, nor clever, nor nothink of that sort, but I loved ’im, Sir, true, only ’e didn’t seem to vally it!”
“No! He was a fool,” said the Professor, “but all men are not the same, Hannah! There are plenty that may want to marry you yet--and I am one!”
Hannah looked up quickly, as if she did not believe she could have heard aright.
“I begs your pardin, Sir, what did you say?”
“I said that _I_ would marry you, if you are willing, Hannah, and then you will at least be provided for, for life!”
“But you’re quite an old man,” replied the girl, naïvely.
Ricardo winced under the truth.
“You are right,” he answered, presently, “I am old, at least compared with that young cub who has kicked you off. But men older than myself marry young wives every day, and I should make you a kind husband. I am a gentleman also--you know that without my telling you--and a gentleman raises the woman he marries, to his own position, and though I am not a rich man, I am better off than you would ever be if you married a man of your own standing. I am a very lonely man now, Hannah, and you are a kind, amiable girl, and I am sure you would make me a good wife. What do you say to my proposal? Shall we be married?”
“You’re joking with me, Sig-nor,” said Hannah, “it can’t never be!”
“Why not?” inquired Ricardo.
“O! ’cos I’m so different from you every ways, and you’d be ashamed to say I was your wife. And what would the Doctor say, too?”
“Never mind the Doctor! This is a matter that concerns you and me only. I don’t mean that we should go on differently from what we are doing now. I am not rich enough to keep a servant to wait upon you! You would have to look after the house and get the breakfast, just as you do now. Only--you would be my wife and bear my name, and if I am ever better off than I am at present, you will share my good fortune with me.”
“O! I’d be glad and proud to do all I can for you and the Doctor, Sig-nor,--now and allays--” replied the girl. “Only--for ’tother--why I can’t speak like a lady--you’d laugh at me for my hignorance and I’d be shamed to open my mouth afore you, if so be I was, what you say.”
“I know you have not had any advantages in the way of education, Hannah, but I should be willing to teach you many things, and being always with me, and hearing me talk, you would soon improve yourself. Is it a bargain, or not?”
“O! lor! Sir, I don’t know what to say, sure,” cried Hannah, in a frightened voice. “It’s a honner, I know, but it don’t seem nateral-like. And I’m not sure as it would be right, neither, for I can’t ’elp thinking of Joe, and his falseness to me, and I can’t promise to give it up, neither!”
“I like you all the better for saying so, Hannah, and don’t imagine that I shall expect you to love me! If you continue kind and attentive, that is all that I shall ask. And if I did not believe that you would be so, I should not wish you to be my wife, even if you were a Princess of the Blood Royal. Cannot you make up your mind on the subject?”
“Well! I don’t suppose as I could do better,” replied the girl, with another deep sigh, “so p’r’aps I’d better say ‘Yes’, Sir!”
It was not a very ardent way of accepting his proposal, but Ricardo wanted no more than her acquiescence. He did not even put down his pipe to kiss the girl, nor press her hand. He only smiled and said,
“Well! I’m glad you’ve come to that conclusion, and you and I will go out together some day and get it quietly over.”
He said nothing to Karl Steinberg on the subject until a week afterwards, when he came in one morning, with the girl, from the Registrar’s office, and told him that they were man and wife.
Hannah grinned as the news was made public, but disappeared immediately afterwards into the kitchen, to prepare the family breakfast.
Ricardo waited for Steinberg to speak, but he sat silent and apart, with knitted brows, and a perplexed countenance.
“And so, my dear friend, you have no congratulations to offer me?” said the Professor at length.
“Frankly, my dear Ricardo, no! You know what my sentiments are regarding the step you have taken, which appears an act of madness to me. However, it is done and cannot be undone, so the less said the better.”
“And you know the motives which induced me to propose it,” replied the Professor. “They are not altered, Karl, they never will be! I feel as if the ceremony of this morning had united me to Leonora over again. I am as rapturously happy as if the grave had restored her to me. There is no such thought as love, or any other nonsense, for this girl. I will be good to her, but to me she is Leonora’s medium--nothing more! Come! at least congratulate me on having reached the climax of my desires regarding Occultism.”
“I wish you all happiness and success in every possible way, my dear Ricardo,” exclaimed Steinberg, as he stretched his hand across the table and grasped that of his friend. “But here is Mrs. Ricardo with our breakfast. I hope your morning stroll has given you a good appetite, Professor!”
“The best in the world,” cried the older man, gaily, as he drew his chair to the table.
Hannah had placed the coffee and rolls and eggs before them and was about to return to the kitchen.
“But surely your wife will breakfast with us, now?” remarked Steinberg.
“Of course! to be sure,” said the Professor. “Hannah, my dear, sit down and take your breakfast with the Doctor and me!”
“O! no, Sir, indeed I’d rayther not!” exclaimed the girl, as she beat a retreat to her own quarters. Her husband smiled and shrugged his shoulders.
“Let her do as she likes,” he observed; “she will be happier in the pursuits of her old life. And it would be most awkward to have her always listening to our conservation, particularly at this juncture. Steinberg, I must have a séance to-night. Will you try and come home early? I have married to-day, not Hannah Stubbs, but my Leonora, and I shall not close my eyes until I have seen and spoken to her again. The last séance! I shall never forgive Mrs. Battleby for having interrupted us! In another moment I should have held my wife in my arms. But I will sit and sit for her, until that happy moment arrives. Is the room quite ready?”
“I finished it yesterday, and it is one of my leisure evenings, so that I shall be back as soon as yourself. Tell Hannah--I beg your pardon, I must call her Mrs. Ricardo now----”
“No such thing!” cried the Professor, “continue to call her Hannah as usual. I wish all things to go on exactly as before!”
“Tell Hannah, then, to be sure and get us a good supper, for I feel so much exhaustion after these séances, as if my brain and body were alike scooped out and empty.”
“Yes! yes! I will see to all that!” replied Ricardo, as they parted to pursue their avocations.
The Professor ordered his wife to procure a couple of fowls for supper, which Hannah quite imagined was in honour of the morning ceremony, and gave her five pounds as a wedding present, which delighted the simple creature as much as if he had settled an income upon her.
But when he and Steinberg returned home and intimated their intention to hold a séance in the dark chamber, Mrs. Ricardo showed signs of insubordination, and vehemently opposed their desire.
“O! no!” she exclaimed; “nothink won’t ever make _me_ henter that dark ’ole again! Wasn’t it that as brought the whole of my misfortins on my ’ead? It lost me Joe and mother and the rest, and I won’t never try it again. You didn’t ought to arsk me, Sig-nor! You deceived me onst, and I said it should be for the larst time. If I’d a known as when I went to sleep, ghosties and sperrits and shadders walked about the room, I’d ’ave chucked all the physic out of the winder. But never again--no! not if you paid me a ’undred pounds!”
And turning her back, Mrs. Ricardo walked away into her kitchen.
The Professor and the Doctor looked at each other with comical dismay.
“Is she in earnest, do you think?” whispered Ricardo to his friend.
Steinberg made a grimace.
“I don’t know I’m sure. I don’t know enough of women, but one thing is certain--performing the office of a medium does not come within the legalities of Marriage, and if she will not do it of her own free will you have no means by which you can compel her!”
The men were silent for a few minutes, and then the Professor exclaimed,
“Karl! don’t look at me in that way, as if you thought I’d bought ‘a pig in a poke!’”
“I don’t say that, but I think you have a difficult task before you--to convince Ignorance that it is a duty which it owes to Mankind, to sacrifice itself for the good of the Human Race. However, Hannah has a kind heart and an amiable nature, and if you will have patience, I daresay you may be able to induce her to do, for love of you, what she would refuse on compulsion. Cheer up, Ricardo. Don’t look so down-hearted, man, but tell your wife to get the supper ready and let us all try to be jolly together!”
“But I shall not see Leonora!” said the Professor, in a tone of disappointment.
“Not to-night, that’s certain, unless she comes to you in your dreams. But it is only a pleasure deferred! Hannah will come round after a while. Take my advice, and don’t mention the subject again to-night.”
Ricardo did as his friend suggested, and when the supper was ready, he insisted upon Hannah coming into the room and sitting down to table with them. She was very shy and awkward, and looked all the time as if she longed to bolt back to her own domains, but the two gentlemen reassured her, by taking no notice of her ignorance of their ways, and talking to each other, rather than to her. When the supper table was cleared, Ricardo asked her to bring in her needle-work and sit with them, but though she acquiesced in his desire, she did not reappear, and the friends finished the evening alone.
She felt that she had wounded her husband, and disappointed him in some way, by refusing to go into the séance chamber, and she was fearful of the request being renewed.
The next day passed much the same. The Professor spoke kindly to her, when he had occasion to speak, but he addressed her as seldom as possible, and sat for the greater part of the time that he spent at home, with his head buried in his hands.
On the third day, whilst the Doctor was out, Hannah brought her husband an apple-green merino dress, and a bright blue bonnet, and some under-linen which she had purchased with part of the money he had given her.
“I never ’ad sich beautiful things in my life afore,” she said, with a broad grin, as she displayed them for his approval, “ain’t they ’ansome?”
“Very pretty, indeed, Hannah--very pretty!” replied the Professor, as he returned to his book.
“I never ’ad so much money in my ’and at a time afore either,” continued Hannah, “and I thought these would be nice for me to walk out with you, Sig-nor, in the Parks or elsewheres!”
“Yes! my girl, yes!” he said, as he raised his head for an instant and smiled at her.
Ricardo’s smile was very sweet. It broke Hannah down completely, and she began to sob.
“Why! what’s the matter now?” he inquired. “Is there anything more that you want, my dear? If there is, and I can afford it, it shall be yours.”
“O! no! no! ’tain’t that,” cried the girl, “but you’ve been that good to me, Sig-nor, and I can see as you’re not ’appy, and I’m afeared you’re sorry now that you was so foolish as to marry a pore, ignorant creetur like me. I’d been fitter for Joe, Sir, but even ’_e_ didn’t think me good enough, and I’m so feared you’ve repented of your goodness to me.”
And Hannah wept unaffectedly. The Professor drew her towards him and kissed her wet cheek. “You are quite mistaken, my dear. I do not regret, nor repent, anything. But if you really think that I have been kind to you, wouldn’t you like to do something for me in return?”
“I’d cut off my right ’and for you this moment,” replied Hannah, with fervour.
“Well, sit down by my side, and let me tell you a little story. When I was a young man, Hannah, five-and-twenty years ago, I married a young lady, whom I loved very much indeed!”
“Lor!” cried the girl, “you was married to a real lady, and yet you can bear with me!”
“Well! she died! I need not tell you how she died, but her death made me a very miserable man, because we had had a little misunderstanding beforehand, and it happened so suddenly, that there was no time for a reconciliation. The wish to see her, or hear from her again, haunted me for years, but I thought there was no hope of it, until I fell upon some old scientific books and learned that it is possible for those whom we call dead, to re-visit this earth!”
“Lor!” exclaimed Hannah, with wide open eyes, “but that’s all rubbidge, sure-ly!”
“Why! how can you ask me such a question? What do you suppose the apparitions--the ladies and gentlemen--whom you see sometimes, are?”
“I dunno, I’m sure! Shadders, I s’pose, but they gives me the creeps! O! Sig-nor I can’t abear ’em! I’d rayther run a hundred miles the other way.”
“But why do you fear them, Hannah? They cannot harm you!”
“I dunno that! They looks very queer sometimes, and the woices as I ’ears--gruff ’uns and squeaky ’uns!--they makes me trimble all over, as if I’d got cold!”
“But they cannot hurt you, Hannah,” persisted the Professor, “and when I met you at Mrs. Battleby’s, and heard that you possessed that wonderful capacity for seeing spirits, I was delighted. I felt that my dead wife would come back to me through you, and she has! On three occasions I have communicated with her, but not long enough to hear her say that she has forgiven me, and loves me still--and now, just when I hoped I should see her as often as I chose, you tell me you will not sit with me any more! That is what has made me sad, Hannah.”
Notwithstanding her rough training and ignorance, Hannah had much natural intelligence, and she realised the situation at once.
“That’s what you married me for, then,” she remarked.
The Professor felt ashamed. He did not know what to say. He began by answering, “No! no!” but broke off short.
“I will not tell you a lie,” he said. “When I married you, my dear, I certainly did hope that, having you always with me, I should also have the constant pleasure of communicating with my dead wife. For I am getting an old man now, Hannah, and I should like to make sure that there is another life, before I quit this one. But all that I said to you, when I asked you to become my wife, was true. I will make your future my care to the utmost of my ability, and when I die, you will find that you are not left quite penniless. My savings have been scanty, but, such as they are, they will all be yours. It was your mediumship (by which I mean your power of seeing and attracting spirits from the other world), that first drew me to you, Hannah, but if you really dislike sitting with me, I will not ask you to do so again. And in all other things, you will find me the same, I hope, and your friend, my dear, till Death parts us.”
“I see,” said the girl, thoughtfully, “I’m to take all, as you may say, and give nothink in return. I see it plain now, Professor, and I’m not that sort, as you’ll find. I know you’re good and true, and that you’ll take care as the sperrits and things don’t ’urt me, while I’m asleep. So, if you please, I’ll sit as often as you wishes, and we’ll go into the dark room to-night, as soon as the Doctor returns ’ome. I couldn’t ’ave ever wore this beautiful gownd,” added Hannah with a sob in her throat, “and remembered the while as you give it me, and I ’ad done nothink for you in return. So that’s settled, ain’t it?--and you won’t never ’ear me say again as I won’t do anythink as you arsk me!”
And from that day the séances commenced anew.