The strange transfiguration of Hannah Stubbs
“O! she ain’t no better nor wuss than others. Them gals are all
alike--a set of sloppy, dirty, careless ’ussies, as don’t care if you
go to gaol next week all along of their breakages and lies. In course
you can interlude Hannah whenever you choose, Sig-nor. I’ll send ’er
up to clear as soon as you’ve ’ad your tea, and then you can ’ave a
talk with ’er. But you won’t make nothink out of it, them’s my words!
But that’s the Doctor’s knock, as sure as sure! Well! he is a good
friend to you, Sig-nor, and no mistake!”
“Yes! I am glad he has come! I hardly expected him after last night,”
replied the Professor, who was quite excited at his new thoughts
regarding Hannah Stubbs.
Karl Steinberg entered the room with an outstretched hand, as the
landlady curtsied and disappeared.
“Forgive me, Ricardo!” he exclaimed; “I was a fool last night, and
worse than that, too great a coward to confess it! I was horribly
nervous and alarmed, but thinking the matter over has made me see the
folly of which I was guilty. But I am convinced, that if you were, as
you declared yourself to be (and I cannot doubt your word), in the
centre of the floor, there was some force ulterior to my own in that
little room last night, and I will not rest till I have found out the
truth. Will you re-admit me to your séances? Will you forgive my
first alarm, and let me pursue the study of the Occult with you?”
“My dear Karl!” exclaimed Ricardo, heartily shaking his proffered
hand, “nothing would give me greater pleasure. But if we are to go in
for these researches together, and in earnest, we must try and think
of some plausible excuse for our spending our nights together, as I
find my landlady, Mrs. Battleby, is much opposed to anything that she
cannot understand. We have just been holding a conversation respecting
her maid-of-all-work, Hannah Stubbs.”
Ricardo then went into the subject of his talk with Mrs. Battleby at
some length, and was pleased to see the interest which it excited in
Doctor Steinberg.
“Have the girl up by all means,” he said eagerly, “she may be what I
have heard you call a physical medium, and we may evolve great things
from her. She is countrified and stupid, you say! She probably in that
case knows nothing of her own powers, and is frightened at the effects
which she produces. I saw her last evening, did I not? She is just an
animal, with grand vitality and perhaps magnetism--with any amount of
bodily strength, and no brain. Have her up, Ricardo, by all means, and
let us see something of these mysterious powers of hers.”
“If she will display them,” replied his friend, as he rang the bell.
Hannah appeared, looking as stolid as before, but with a faint smile
for the gentleman who had promised to intercede for her.
“Shut the door, Hannah, and sit down. I want to have a little talk
with you,” commenced the Professor, gently, “I have been having a few
words with Mrs. Battleby, and she says the only fault she has to find
with you is that you can make the chairs and tables dance. Will you
try and make them dance now, that my friend and I may see?”
The girl looked startled and edged towards the wall as if she wished
to avoid contact with any of the furniture of the room.
“O! no, Sir, please don’t arsk me,” she said in a scared voice, as she
glanced timidly in the direction of the tea-table, “’tain’t my fault
indeed, I’ve told the missus that over and over again. I don’t know
nothink about it, and I wish they wouldn’t come after me--I do
indeed!”
All this while, with her skirts gathered up tightly in her hand,
Hannah was looking fearfully in the direction of the table, which now
commenced slowly, but perceptibly, to move towards her.
“O! it’s a’coming,” she screamed. “O! stop it, Sir, do, for the Lord’s
sake! What do it want with me? I ain’t got nothing to say to it! O my!
O my!”
Meanwhile the table had advanced to her until its edge was against her
body.
“Do you see that, Steinberg?” observed Ricardo, “The furniture has
actually moved without contact. This is very marvellous!”
“Go away! go away!” cried Hannah, as she kicked at the legs of the
table which was now pressing her against the wall. “O! Sir, please
don’t go to tell the missus, for it never was so bad as this
before--never!”
“By Jove! look there!” exclaimed the Doctor, as a sound drew their
attention in another direction, and they turned to see the Professor’s
rocking chair, quietly rocking by itself in the corner of the room.
“I never saw such a thing in my life before,” said Ricardo.
“Steinberg, this is a very wonderful girl. We must try to keep her to
ourselves, at all events until we have solved the reason of her
powers.”
Then he turned to Hannah, who presented a ludicrous spectacle,
squeezed up in a corner of the room by the table, and crying loudly
without any means of drying her eyes.
“Stop that noise, my dear girl, do!” he said. “Don’t be afraid! No one
shall hurt you, and you cannot suppose that a table could! But my
friend and I are very much interested in this strange power of yours,
and would like to see some more of it. I shall ask Mrs. Battleby to
let you come up here in the evenings when she does not require your
services, and we will see that you are rewarded for your trouble. You
are not afraid of Doctor Steinberg and me, are you?”
“O! no, Sir--only afeared of the tables and things as will foller me
about whether I will or no! And it’s not the fust time as the beastly
things ’ave got me into trouble, neither!”
“O! it’s not the first time, is it, Hannah?” inquired Steinberg, “and
what harm did they do you before, my girl!”
“Harm enough,” replied Hannah, blubbering, “they parted my Joe and me!
His family was so nasty about it! They said they wouldn’t ’ave their
furniture broken for nothing, else maybe Joe and me could ’ave lived
along of ’is mother, and I’d never gone to service at all!”
“Well! never mind, Hannah! If Joe is a wise young man, he will come
after you and marry you, whether his tables dance or not. And,
meanwhile, my friend and I would like to see all that you can do!”
“I can’t do nothing, Sir!”
“Then who is it that does it?”
“Ah! that I can’t tell you,--only that it’s always been the same with
me from a child! I’ve had many a beating for it! I often wish I’d been
dead afore they’ve come after me!”
“What! the tables and chairs?”
“Yes, Sir! and other things as well--shadders and the like, as come
round me of nights, and woices as talk to me. I ’ates them woices more
than anythink, for Mrs. Brushwood (that’s Joe’s mother, please, Sir),
it was all along of ’er ’earing one, one day, as made the rumpus
between us. And then mother said I must go to service and shake it
off. But they’ve been just as bad here as in Settlefield.”
“Well, Hannah, will you take my advice?” said the Professor, “trust
yourself to the Doctor and me and we’ll cure you of this nonsense.
It’s all due to your health, you know!”
“Thank ye, Sir, but I can’t take no pills, please! Mother, she’s tried
’em with me scores of times but they always sticks in my throat till I
retches ’em up again. Nor I can’t swaller jalap. It goes against my
stummick. But anything else, gentlemen----”
“Be easy, Hannah, we will not ask you to take either pills, or jalap.
All we want is an hour or two of your time now and then! But I will
arrange all that with Mrs. Battleby.”
CHAPTER IV.
As the girl left the room, scrambling sideways, much after the
manner of a crab, and glancing behind her the while, as if she feared
the table might take a fancy to follow her downstairs, the two men
looked to each other and smiled.
“I fancy you have lit on a gold mine there, Ricardo,” said the Doctor,
“there is something very marvellous about that girl. She must be a
well of magnetism. I never saw such an effect produced upon inanimate
objects before. Do you think there can be any trickery about it? These
brainless creatures are sometimes uncommonly cunning.”
The Professor was leaning back in his chair thoughtfully, supporting
his chin on his hand.
“I don’t know _what_ to think about it,” he said at length, “but I am
determined to see more of her powers. Now, the question is, what
excuse can we make to Mrs. Battleby for asking this girl to give us a
few hours of her time, every now and then.”
“The landlady has seen something of it already, I think you told me,
and does not approve of the proceedings.”
“Very strongly disapproves of them! Declares that Hannah must go back
to her people in the country--that she is a fool, or a cunning
trickster, or the Devil is in the whole concern.”
“And I am much of Mrs. Battleby’s opinion,” remarked Steinberg.
“What! that it is done by agency of the Devil? Nonsense! man,
nonsense! If the Devil was all that was required to produce such
marvels, we should all do the same. No! no! the girl is a medium--but
of what kind, I am as yet unable to determine.”
“I’ll tell you what we can say,” interposed the Doctor, “if the
landlady is opposed to the girl’s practices, she will not be sorry to
have them cured. Tell her that I attribute the whole business to the
state of Hannah’s nerves--that she is a victim to what we call
hysteria--and that if she will allow me to treat her for the
complaint, I will undertake to cure her. And I say it with truth,
Ricardo, for should she be shamming, I will soon find it out, and
expose her; and should she be as you conclude, a medium, the exercise
of her powers will be a drain upon her system, and prevent the
exhibition of them elsewhere.”
“I believe you are right, Steinberg, but where have you derived so
much knowledge about media and their powers, considering that until
this evening, you have refused to approach the subject of Spiritualism
at all.”
“I have declined to join in the pursuit of it, my friend, you mean.
You cannot suppose that I have not heard, nor conceived some interest
in, a matter which half the world is talking of to-day. But what I
have read has predisposed me against it. I feel that it is fraught
with more danger than good. For a sensitive man like yourself, I am
sure it might, under certain circumstances, be _very_ dangerous. That
is one reason that I have determined to join you in your studies. If
there is any fear of harm, I will share it with you. What you said
last night concerning your desire to open out a communication with
your late wife, set me thinking deeply. If you draw her spirit back to
earth, how can you tell that it will be for her good, or yours--how
can you tell, indeed, that it is her spirit or that of some wandering
Elemental (as you called them yesterday) who may take her shape? This
is the danger I would share with you! If, on the other hand, good and
pure spirits can return to earth, I am anxious to have the privilege
of speaking to them. Do you understand my motives now?”
“Perfectly,” said the Professor, grasping his hand. “And now for Mrs.
Battleby.”
But they found the landlady rather hard of conviction. In the first
place she did not believe the phenomena were due to anything but
Hannah’s “cussedness”, and if the gentlemen only knew as much of gals
as she did, they would think the same; “wants to shirk ’er work,
that’s what she do, and leave all the washin’ up and dirty work to ’er
missus”; and in the second, she did not see how she could afford to
spare her for two or three evenings a week, when there was more work
than they could get through together now.
“What should I want to ’ave ’er cured for?” she demanded, “it’ll be
better and cheaper for me to send the ’ussy ’ome to ’er mother, who
ought to be ashamed for having sent ’er my way at all, than to keep
’er here, a’worritin’ me day and night, and spending ’alf ’er time up
with you gentlemen. Which I’m much obliged, I’m sure, and so Hannah