The strange transfiguration of Hannah Stubbs

the key of her own bedroom proved an “Open Sesame” to the séance chamber. On her first view of the interior, Mrs. Battleby screamed aloud, so gloomy and funereal was its aspect. But when she had somewhat recovered her nerve, its appearance inspired her with but one notion----all this want of light and air meant the Devil, and nothing else! They were practising Sorcery in this mysterious little chamber, and had dragged the poor gal, with her dancing tables and chairs, and her “shadders” and “woices” into it, with themselves. And yet, after all, the landlady was not sufficiently sure to feel brave enough to accuse her lodger of mal-practices. So she resolved to wait for the next opportunity, and find out what she could for herself. She had the resolution to hold her tongue about her intentions--not only to the Professor, but to Hannah and her next-door neighbour, and when the Signor’s door had been locked upon the succeeding séance, Mrs. Battleby knelt outside in the darkness, with her ear applied to the keyhole. CHAPTER VII. At first she heard nothing but the ordinary salutations that passed between the Professor and the serving-maid, but she was patient and long-suffering in the cause of Curiosity, and after a while, she was rewarded. Silence ensued;--next, furtive whisperings between the two conspirators--then, a few words of awed surprise--and lastly, the Victory! “Leonora!” she heard the Professor say, “Leonora! come to me!” “My gracious!” thought the landlady, “if they ain’t got another gal in there! ’Oo’d ’ave thought it, and the Sig-nor looking so grave and solemn the while? I was a green’orn to have believed as they would ’ave been satisfied with Hannah between the two. That’s the Doctor’s doings, I’ll be bound! Them medicals are hup to heverythink. ’Ow did ’e smuggle the ’ussy in under my very eyes? In an ’amper, I suppose, which no more comes into my ’ouse. And I, who ’ave tried so ’ard to keep it quiet and respectable! I’ll ‘Nora’ them, when we meets again. And as for that there Hannah, ’ome she goes to-morrer.” Mrs. Battleby, having applied her ear again to the keyhole, and heard Steinberg speak of “Mrs. Carlile,” and being convinced that the villainies going on were not confined to unmarried girls, bundled downstairs shaking with indignation, and began to seek industriously for pen, ink and paper, wherewith to inscribe a letter to Mrs. Stubbs of Settlefield. She was some time before she found what she sought, letter-writing not being an every-day habit with her. At last, however, in a corner of the kitchen dresser, she unearthed the penny bottle of ink, which had remained there, without a cork, a couple of months, and been well thickened by the addition of a dozen flies, and in a drawer of the same article of furniture she discovered a steel pen with only one nib, with which she scratched as with a pin, on a dirty half sheet of paper, the following words, “Dear Mrs. Stubbs, “If you will please to come to London tomorrer, and fetch ’ome your daughter Hannah, I shall be obliged, as there is goings on hupstairs wich I don’t approve of, and I’m afraid she ain’t no good with the gentlemen. “Your loving friend, “Martha Battleby.” The consternation which this mysterious epistle caused in the cottage home in Settlefield, may be better imagined than described. Mrs. Stubbs, who was a laundress, and trying hard, with the assistance of her husband, to keep five or six hungry mouths full, was like many ignorant country people, excessively stern upon a lapse from Virtue. These brawny-armed daughters of the soil, who are spoilt for love-making before they are five-and-twenty--who deteriorate in every direction as soon as they become mothers, and remain like sacks of meal for ever afterwards--are invariably unable to understand how any women can be tempted to deviate from the straight and narrow path, from which they have never had the opportunity to swerve by so much as a hair’s breadth. When Mary Stubbs therefore received Martha Battleby’s letter and had mastered its contents, she was more than angry with her recreant daughter. “Look ’ere! John Stubbs,” she exclaimed, as she waved the epistle towards her husband, with a hand immersed in soap suds; “just see what your darter ’as been a’doin’ of! Gallivanting along with gentlemen, which never did no gal any good yet, and she keeping company with Joe Brushwood all the while. Let me git ’old of the ’ussy and I’ll kill ’er--see if I don’t. My family ’ave always been brought up honest and respectable, and I won’t ’ave any light-a-loves among ’em. I’ll go up to Lunnon by the fust train and give Miss Hannah sich a thrashing as she never ’ad in ’er days before.” “Now! now!” replied Stubbs _père_, “be easy, my lass! The gal’s done no ’arm as I can see! She’s a nice-looking gal, and the gennelmen ’ave paid ’er a compliment or two, p’r’aps. And no wonder! They’re all the same when they sees a nice, fresh country lass, a’bringing in their tea, or what-not. Let it alone! The ould woman will write agen and apologise in a day or two.” “_Let it alone!_ you fool! What are you talking on? Let it alone, till our Hannah comes back to us with a babby at ’er back, like Emily Marks did last year! Will I let it alone? You wait and see,” cried Mrs. Stubbs, as she energetically wiped her steaming arms and hands on a coarse towel. “And there’s Joe Brushwood, too,” she continued, “I wonders what _he’ll_ say to Miss Hannah’s goings-on!” “Sure! you’d never go to make mischief atween the young people?” exclaimed the father. “If anybody makes mischief it’ll be Hannah herself. You mind what she left ’er ’ome for, father! She wouldn’t give up them devilries of hern, not for Joe, nor me, nor no one, but went on talkin’ about woices and shadders till she made me sick. I said I’d ’ave none of it in _my_ ’ouse, and so did Mrs. Brushwood, else Hannah might ’ave been a married woman by this time and safe out of ’arm’s way. But no! she wouldn’t, so I sent ’er to Lunnon to shake the nonsense out of ’er, and this is my reward. She’s a’going to the bad! But she is my lawfully begotten child, and I’ll murder ’er, but she shall give it all up from this day,--gentlemen and shadders and woices, and the whole bag-o’-tricks!” “Well! well! I don’t say nothing against your going,” replied her husband, who like many of his kind was terribly hen-pecked, and afraid to interfere in any matter from fear of making it worse, “but take young Joe along of you. He’ll look arter your traps, for you must stay a night in Lunnon, I guess, and he’ll be powerfully persuasive with the gal, and help you to bring ’er to ’er right senses, eh?” “Yes! that be wise on you, father,” responded his wife, as she put on her linen bonnet and went in search of her neighbour, Mrs. Brushwood. It was soon arranged that young Joe, Hannah’s sweetheart, should accompany his prospective mother-in-law to Town, and convey the two women safely back again to Settlefield. Joseph Brushwood, the younger, was not a bad fellow for his station in life. His parents were well-to-do farmers, and the young man’s prospects were as bright as he had any right to expect. He was good-looking, too, in his countrified fashion, with bold black eyes and a thick bush of curling hair, and a ruddy complexion--a “follower” of whom any girl, like Hannah Stubbs, might have been proud, and for having attracted whom, she was much envied in the neighbourhood of Settlefield. But Joe had been brought up “pious”, and stuck to the Bible as his rule in all perplexities of life. He was like many other people in this world. He called himself a Christian, yet possessed not one virtue of the Great Lover of mankind. He did not regard the Almighty as a reality--he only knew Him through the Bible. He never prayed from his heart, nor because he felt the actual necessity of prayer. But he went to church every Sunday afternoon, because he had been reared to consider it his duty. He sat there, with his Sunday clothes on,--his dark hair well-oiled, and a bright blue or crimson tie beneath his turned-down collar, and all the young women thought how nice Joe Brushwood looked and wondered what he could see in that stout, awkward Hannah Stubbs to take his fancy. And Joe slumbered through the greater part of the service, and returned home with the comfortable feeling that he had performed his weekly duty, and was a pattern Christian. He was the sort of bucolic ignoramus, who would be more “down” upon anything which was Greek to him, than any other man. He had no humility, though he had a good deal of rough good humour. He was flattered by Hannah’s undoubted affection for himself, but he did not care enough for her to give up anything for her sake. He dressed himself in his smartest clothes to go to London with Mrs. Stubbs, though she told him as little as she could of her errand. They arrived in Soho about five o’clock, and presented themselves at Mrs. Battleby’s door. They were received by the landlady herself. “O! there, I _am_ glad to see you!” she exclaimed; “come in, do, and sit down and have your tea. Hannah has just gone on an errand for me, but she’ll be back in a jiffey. O! Mrs. Stubbs, ma’am, she ’ave give me sich a scare!” “Well! I’m sure your letter give _me_ a scare, Mrs. Battleby,” replied the visitor, as she settled herself in a chair, “and me and this gentleman, which he is my Hannah’s young man, started off as quick as we could to ’ear the rights and wrongs of it!” “Lor! is this ’er sweetheart?” interposed Mrs. Battleby admiringly, “well, she have an inducement to keep straight, if any gal on hearth ’ave!” Joe settled his collar and tie and looked conscious of the compliment, as Mrs. Stubbs proceeded: “And keep straight she ’ave, I will take my solemn hoath of it, though I’m her lawful mother.” “Lor! Mrs. Stubbs, you mustn’t take my words for more than meant,” said Mrs. Battleby, as she placed the tea-tray in front of her guests, “but Hannah, she do give me the squirms, there’s no denying of it, what with her ghosties and her woices, and now these gentlemen--till she’s a’most too much for me!” At the word “ghosties” Mrs. Stubbs put down her teacup, and said solemnly, “You don’t mean for to go to tell me, Mrs. Battleby, as she’s seen them shadders and things again!” “_Seen ’em!_ why, she’s allays on about ’em, till she makes my flesh creep. But I wouldn’t have writ to you, Mrs. Stubbs, if it ’adn’t been for the gentlemen upstairs--that is my hattic lodger Sig-nor Ricardo, and ’is friend Doctor Steinberg--which they arsks for leave to cure your gal of ’er seeing of things, which they calls highstrikes,--and gets ’er upstairs of evenings to sit with them, under pertence of physicking ’er, so the night before last I makes bold to listen at the door to see what they was a’doing with the gal, and I ’eard--well, Mrs. Stubbs, ma’am, I ’ardly likes to tell you _what_ I ’eard!” “But you must, ma’am, but you must!” exclaimed the other, eagerly, “I’ve come to Lunnon with this young man, a puppuss to ’ear all as you can tell us!” “Well! then, Mrs. Stubbs, I must tell you fust, as the Sig-nor kep’ one of ’is rooms locked, night and day, but arter ’e got ’old, as I may say, of Hannah, I considered it my dooty to see what they did for myself, and I got another key fitted, and unlocked the door!” “Which you did right, Mrs. Battleby!” agreed Mrs. Stubbs. “And what did I find, but the ’ole room was hung with black curtings--walls, floor and winder--and sich a ’orrid smell, something between musk and cockroaches! Thinks I to myself, this ain’t for no