The strange transfiguration of Hannah Stubbs
“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