Linnet: A Romance
evening.
Mrs Sartoris curled her lip. “Oh, she’s pretty enough,” she answered;
“pretty enough, after her fashion. I could see that the first time; and
she’s got nice manners. She lights up well, too; women of her age always
do light up well. They look better by night, even in the searching glare
of these electric lamps, than in full broad sunshine. But, of course,
she hasn’t got quite the tone of _our_ set; you couldn’t expect it. A
faded air of drapery clings about her to the end. That’s the way with
these people; they may be ever so rich, they may be ever so
fascinating—but a discriminating nose still scents trade in them
somewhere.”
Will smiled a quiet smile of suppressed amusement. He didn’t care to
answer her. Rue’s father, he knew, had been an episcopal clergyman in
New York, and she herself, though she married a dry-goodsman, had been
every bit as well brought up as Will and his sister. But ’tis a sisterly
way to say these disparaging things about women whom one’s brother might
be suspected of marrying. Will didn’t mean to marry Rue, it is true; but
Maud thought he might; and that idea alone was more than enough to give
a caustic tone to her critical comments.
The feature of the evening, it seemed, was to be a peculiar _séance_ of
a new American phenomenon, who had come over to Europe with a wonderful
reputation for thought-reading, hypnotism, and what he was pleased to
style “magnetic influences.” Like most of her countrymen and
countrywomen, Rue had a sneaking regard, in the background of her soul,
for mesmerism, spiritualism, psychic force, electro-biology, and the
occult and mysterious in human nature generally. She was one of those
impressionable women, in short, who fall a ready prey to plausible
impostors with voluble talk about ethereal vibrations, telepathic
energy, the odic fluid, and the rest of such rubbish, unless
strong-minded male friends intervene to prevent them. The medium on this
occasion, it appeared, was one Joaquin Holmes, otherwise known as the
Colorado Seer, who professed to read the inmost thoughts of man or woman
by direct brainwaves, without contact of any sort. The guests that night
had been specially invited to meet Mr Holmes on this his first
appearance at a _séance_ in London; so about ten o’clock, all the world
trooped down to the dining-room, which Florian had cunningly arranged as
a temporary lecture-hall, with seats in long rows, and an elevated
platform at one end for the medium.
“What an odd-looking man!” Mrs Sartoris exclaimed, as the Colorado Seer,
in full evening dress, bowed a graceful bow from his place on the
platform. “He’s handsome, though, isn’t he? Such wonderful eyes! Just
look! And such a Spanish complexion!”
“A Hidalgo, every inch!” Florian assented gravely, nodding his head, and
looking at him as he would have looked at a Velasquez. “That olive-brown
skin points back straight to Andalusia. It doesn’t want his name to tell
one at a glance that if his father was an American of English descent,
his mother’s folk must have emigrated from Cordova or Granada. I see a
Moslem tinge in cheek and eye; those dusky thin fingers are the Moor all
over!”
“For Moor, read blackamoor,” Colonel Quackenboss, the military _attaché_
to the American Legation, murmured half under his breath to his
next-door neighbour.
And they were each of them right, in his own way and fashion. The
Colorado Seer was a very handsome man, somewhat swarthier than is usual
with pure-blooded Europeans. His eyes were large and dark and brilliant;
his abundant black hair fell loose over his brow with a graceful
southern curl; a heavy moustache fringed his upper lip; he looked to the
unsophisticated European eye like a pleasing cross between Buffalo Bill
and a Castilian poet. But his Christian name of Joaquin and his southern
skin had descended to him, not from Andalusian Hidalgos, but from a
mother who was partly Spanish and partly negress, with a delicate
under-current of Red Indian ancestry. As he stood there on the platform,
however, in his becoming evening dress, and flooded them with the light
of his lustrous dark eyes—’twas a trick of the trade he had learned in
Colorado—every woman in the room felt instinctively to herself he was a
superb creature, while every man admitted with a grudging smile that the
fellow had at least the outward air of a gentleman.
The Seer, stepping forward with a genial smile, entertained them at
first with some common little tricks of so-called thought-reading,
familiar enough to all those who have ever attempted to watch the ways
of that simple exhibition. He found pins concealed in ladies’ skirts,
and guessed the numbers of bank-notes in financiers’ pockets. Florian’s
mouth curled incredulity; why, these were just the same futile old games
as ever, the well-known and innocent little conjuring dodges of the
Bishops and the Stuart Cumberlands! But after awhile, Mr Joaquin Holmes,
waking up all at once, proceeded to try something newer and more
original. A pack of cards was produced. To avoid all suspicion of
collusion or trickery, ’twas a brand-new pack—observe, there’s no
deception—bought by Rue herself that afternoon in Bond Street. With
much air of serious mystery, the Colorado Seer pulled off the stamped
cover before their very eyes, gave the cards themselves to Will to
shuffle, and then proceeded to offer them to every member of the company
one by one in order. Each drew a card, looked at it, and replaced it in
the pack. Instantly, the Seer in a very loud voice, without one moment’s
hesitation, announced it correctly as ten of spades, ace of clubs, five
of hearts, or queen of diamonds. It was an excellent trick, and the
performer could do it equally well with open eyes or blindfolded; he
could offer the cards behind his back, after the pack had been shuffled
and handed him unseen; he could even succeed in the dark, he said, if
the lights were lowered, and each person in the company took his own
card out to inspect it in the passage.
“That looks like genuine thought-reading,” Will was compelled to admit,
thinking it over in his own mind; “but perhaps he forces his cards. One
knows conjurers can do such wonderful things in the way of forcing.”
Instantly the Seer turned upon him with an air of injured innocence. “If
you think there’s any conjuring about this performance,” he exclaimed,
with much dignity, drawing himself up to his full height of six feet
two, “you can offer them yourself, and allow each lady and gentleman in
the room to pick as they choose for themselves among them. I’ll take
each card, blindfold, as fast as they pick, hold it up behind my back,
with my hands tied, without seeing it myself, and read off for you what
it is by direct thought-transference.”
Will accepted the test—a fairly severe one; and, sure enough, the Seer
was right. Carefully blindfolded with one of those moulded wraps,
invented for the purpose, which prevent all possibility of looking down
through the chinks, he yet took each card behind his back in one hand,
held it up before their eyes without moving his head, and gave out its
name distinctly and instantly. The audience was impressed. There was a
touch of magic in it. But the Seer smiled blandly.
“Oh, that’s nothing,” he murmured aloud, with a deprecating little
laugh; “a mere matter of choosing between fifty-two alternatives—which,
after all, is easy. With Mrs Palmer’s consent,” and he turned in a
gracefully deferential attitude to Rue, “I can show you something a
great deal more remarkable. Here are pencils and papers. Each lady or
gentleman will please take a sheet as I hand them round. Write anything
you like, in English, French, German or Spanish, on the piece of paper.
Then fold it up, so, and put it into one of these envelopes gummed down
and fastened. After that, as this experiment requires very great
concentration of thought”—he knitted his brows, and assumed an
expression of the intensest internal effort—“with Mrs Palmer’s kind
leave, we will turn out the electric light, which confuses and distracts
one by revealing to the eye so many surrounding visible objects. And
then, without breaking the envelopes in which you have enclosed the
pieces of paper, I will read out to you, in the dark, what each of you
has written.”
He spoke deliberately, with slow western American distinctness, though
with a pleasing accent. That accent, superimposed on his native negro
dialect, had cost him no small effort. The guests, half-incredulous,
took the sheets of paper he distributed to them one by one, and wrote
down a sentence or two, according to taste, after a little interval of
whispered consultation. Then, by the Seer’s direction, they folded the
slips in two and placed them in their envelopes, each bearing outside
the name of the person who wrote it. Florian collected the papers, all
carefully gummed down, and handed them to the Seer, who stood ready to
receive them at his place on the platform. Without one moment’s delay,
the lights were turned out. It was the instantaneousness, indeed, and
the utter absence of the usual hocus-pocus, that distinguished Mr
Joaquin Holmes’s unique performance from the ordinary style of
spiritualist conjuring. In a second, the Seer’s voice rang out clear
from his place: “First envelope, Mrs Palmer, containing inscription in
French—very prettily written:
‘La vie est brève:
Un peu d’amour,
Un peu de rêve,
Et puis—bonjour.
La vie est vaine:
Un peu d’espoir,
Un peu de haine,
Et puis—bonsoir.’
“Extremely graceful verses; I don’t know the author. However, no matter!
. . . Second envelope, Colonel Marchmont, containing inscription in
English, ‘The general immediately ordered an advance, and the gallant
21st, regardless of danger, charged for the battery in magnificent
style, sabring the enemy’s gunners in a wild outburst of military
enthusiasm.’ Very characteristic! A most soldierly choice. And boldly
written. . . . Third envelope, Mrs Sartoris,—stop, please! the lady’s
thoughts are wandering; kindly fix your attention for a moment, Madam,
on the words you have given me. Ah, so; that’s better.—‘The curfew
tolls the knell of parting day; The lowing herd winds slowly o’er the
lea; The ploughman homeward wends’—wends? wends? it should have been
‘plods’; but ‘wends’ is what you thought—‘The ploughman homeward wends
his weary way, And leaves the world to darkness and to me.’ Very
appropriate; it’s dark enough here! And I am the only speaker. Bend your
minds to what you have written, please, or I may have to hesitate. Each
think of your own. . . . Fourth envelope, Mr Florian Wood, containing
inscription:
‘We struggle fain to enlarge
Our bounded physical recipiency,
Increase our power, supply fresh oil to life,
Repair the waste of age and sickness: no,
It skills not! life’s inadequate to joy,
As the soul sees joy, tempting life to take.’
An exceedingly appropriate quotation! I forget where it comes from. Try
to concentrate your mind, Mr Wood. Ah, now I know!—from Browning’s
_Cleon_.”
Florian’s mellifluous voice broke the silence in the auditory. “This is
wonderful!” he said, in his impressive tone, “most wonderful!
miraculous! I never heard anything in my life to equal it.”
The Seer, noting his advantage, didn’t pause for a moment to answer the
interruption, but, smiling a self-satisfied though invisible smile,
which could be heard in his voice in spite of the dense darkness, went
on still more rapidly, “Fifth envelope, Lady Martindale, a familiar