The strange transfiguration of Hannah Stubbs
ought to be, for your kind intentions, but in my opinion, she ain’t
worth curing!”
The Professor looked in despair at the Doctor, and Steinberg gallantly
came to the rescue.
“You forget, my dear Mrs. Battleby,” he commenced softly, “that I, as
a medical man, take the greatest interest in a case like this. In
fact, it is not too much to say that I would pay a good deal to keep
Hannah Stubbs under my own eye for a few months. If you are determined
to part with her, of course there is nothing more to be said about it,
but I shall endeavour, in that case, to re-engage her for some of my
brother professionals. But I thought I might manage to see her here
and more conveniently, and benefit you a little into the bargain.
Now--supposing you agree to let Hannah remain under your protection,
what would be the cost of having in a woman to look after the house
during your possible absence, and do her work, every evening for a
couple of hours?”
“I don’t know, I’m sure, Sir,” replied the landlady with a sniff, for
she did not like the interest being excited by “that ’ussy Hannah”,
“there’s more things to be considered than the work. I may not care,
nor more I don’t, to ’ave a stranger a’messing over my property, and
a’picking up everything as she can lay ’er ’ands on whilst I’m away.”
“I see!” replied the Doctor, thoughtfully, “then name your own
conditions, Mrs. Battleby, and I will see if I can agree to them.”
“I don’t know as I have any conditions to name, Sir,” said the woman,
still more ruffled, “the gal’s my servant, and can’t leave me any’ow
under ’er month, and me without ’elp of any kind. But if you wants to
’ave ’er up here of an evening, and physic ’er and all that sort of
thing, why I don’t like to refuse a offer made in kindness, and
p’r’aps you wouldn’t consider as to pay ’er wages would be too much
compensation for all the trouble and ill-convenience it’ll put me to.”
“Perhaps not!” replied Steinberg, who had taken upon himself to be
spokesman on the occasion, “but what are her wages?”
“Ten poun’ a year, and heverythink found!”
“Now, look here, Mrs. Battleby,” continued the Doctor, “as this is a
case which promises to afford me some interest and to be
phenomenal----”
“Lor! is it raly?” exclaimed the landlady. “I didn’t think the pore
gal was as bad as that!”
“----I am willing to pay you ten shillings a week so long as we shall
require her services--I mean, until I shall have cured her complaint,
or pronounced it incurable! We doctors are always ready to pay for our
little fads, you know!”
“And ’andsomely, too, I’m sure, Sir,” exclaimed Mrs. Battleby, now
wreathed in smiles at the prospect of getting her drudge for nothing,
“and I gives my full permission for Hannah to attend on you here
hevery evening, if so be you wishes it!”
“O! no! thank you! Three times a week will be quite sufficient, if you
will give us the whole evening from after tea to supper. I am so often
with my friend Signor Ricardo, that it will be more convenient for me
to operate on her here, than at the hospital.”
“O! lor, Sir, you’re never a’going to cut up the pore gal, sure-ly!”
“No! no! indeed! Make your mind easy, Mrs. Battleby! I intend to treat
her by an entirely new process which, if I am not mistaken, will have
an almost immediate effect in preventing those nervous tremors which
seem to assail her.”
“O! Sir, if you’ll cure ’er of them, I shall be thankful, for she must
shake like an aspen leaf. I found ’er in the kitchen jest now,
a’laying with ’er arms over the table trying to keep it down, and it
was bumping under ’er as if it ’ad gone mad!”
“Ah! Electricity does wonders in these days, you know, Mrs. Battleby,
and I promise Hannah shall be quite herself again in a short time.”
“And now, my dear Professor,” he said, as the landlady took her
departure, “having settled Mrs. Battleby, what means shall we try by
which to make the girl hold her tongue downstairs, about anything she
may see or hear whilst with us?”
“These means,” replied Ricardo, as he chinked the loose coins in his
pocket.
“They do not always answer,” said his friend, “and this seems a very
simple and innocent sort of girl, who might be terrified out of her
life if she guessed the real reason of our getting her to sit with us.
I think it would be better to persuade her that she has a species of
St. Vitus’s dance, and that it will get worse and worse unless I cure
it in time. I’ll tell her, too, that she must be a little worse before
she’s better, and, between the dread of being sent home again and the
dread of becoming incapacitated for work, I think we shall manage to
make her hold her tongue.”
“I shall leave that part of the business to you,” said Ricardo. “You
are more used to wheedle the ladies than I am. You doctors are
terrible fellows! You keep a dozen weapons in your pocket for
assuaging feminine fears, but I fancy you’ll have to use them all upon
poor Hannah.”
The upshot proved that the Professor was right. The friends agreed to
meet again upon the following evening, when Hannah was summoned as
soon as she had cleared away their tea, and introduced to their
designs.
At first the case seemed hopeless. Nothing would induce the girl to
permit her powers to be used as a proof of what she could do. She
declared that she was too much frightened of herself--that her one
desire was to prevent such incomprehensible things occurring--and that
she was sure, like Mrs. Battleby, that the Devil was in it, and
prepared to drag her down to destruction.
Her tears and entreaties were pitiable to see and listen to, and for a
while, the men thought their endeavours had been in vain. But when she
was a little quieter, the Doctor took her in hand, and having
commenced his practice by the administration of a composing draught,
he explained to her, after his own fashion, that he and his friend
only meant kindness by her, and wanted to cure the very things of
which she complained. If she would place herself under their guidance,
he said, he would guarantee to send her back to her family, quite
cured of the annoyance she objected to.
Hannah opened her beautiful eyes wide, and listened. To be cured meant
to be in favour again with Joe’s people, and perhaps to become Joe’s
wife much sooner than she anticipated.
“But how can you cure me, Sir?” she asked, wonderingly. “It’s summat
in my fingers as makes the things dance! I don’t do nothing, Sir, I
assures you, and I ’ates it, I do, like cold pison.”
“Then you’ll be all the better pleased to get rid of it, Hannah,” he
replied, “but that is quite impossible unless you will give way to the
feeling at first, and let me see just how it acts. Now! don’t be
frightened when you see the articles approach you! The Professor and I
do not scream and run away. Stay by us, and let them do as they
choose!”
“But I can’t, Sir,” cried the girl, breathlessly, as she attempted to
evade the close attentions of an arm-chair, “they frightens me out of
my wits. I wonder whatever I’ve done that dumb brutes won’t leave me
alone.”
But though Hannah, with the assistance of her new friends, managed to
set all the furniture in the room spinning, without being more alarmed
than was evinced by her gasping and screaming and clutching either one
or other of them by the arm, nothing would induce her to enter the
séance room. As soon as the door was opened and she saw the black
funereal hangings, she gave a shriek, and fell backwards into the
Doctor’s arms.
“In there?” she screamed, “but what for? I’ve never been in sich a
dark ’ole in all my life! And what do you want to do with me there?
Are you going to cut me up? O! Mrs. Battleby! Mrs. Battleby!”
Her yells alarmed the two scientists, who feared all their plans would
be knocked on the head by an untimely irruption on the part of the
landlady. So they slammed the door to, and pulled Hannah into the
lighted room again, and tried to compose her by slapping her on the
back and addressing her with soothing words.
The girl lay in the arm-chair in which they had placed her, seemingly
more dead than alive. Fearing that the shock had really injured her,
they were just about to call for help, when a gruff, manly voice spoke
at a distance of two or three feet above her head.
“Don’t be fools! Leave her alone! She’ll go into the cabinet when I
tell her to do so.”
The Professor and the Doctor looked around them in amazement. Who had
addressed them? The room was empty. Their faces now began to look
scared at this new Mystery, until Steinberg whispered to his friend,
“She spoke to us last evening of ‘Voices.’ This must be one of them! I
am certain it did not emanate from her own lips. Ricardo, this is
better than I anticipated! Light is already breaking through the
darkness. Depend upon it, this girl has been a medium for years,
without knowing it, and we shall be the means of developing her occult
faculties. Let us interrogate our unknown ally. Are you a friend?” he
continued, addressing the invisible owner of the voice, “will you tell
us your name? Are we doing right? Will you help us in our researches?”
But to these questions there came no reply. Hannah seemed to be
sleeping in the chair, but presently she rose to her feet and with a
deep sigh, as though she was doing something against her own
inclination, staggered into the dark séance room, and seated herself
upon the cushions.
“Shall we follow her?” demanded Steinberg of Ricardo.
“I suppose so! I do not know what to think. This is a totally new
experience to me!”
Notwithstanding they did follow the girl, whom they found apparently
sleeping on the floor, her figure being thrown across the cushions.
Something awed them to that extent, that they did not dare close the
door and shut out all the light, but left it slightly ajar, so that a
ray from the gas lamp was thrown like a bar of pale gold into the
gloomy room.
Then they crept up to Hannah’s side, expecting they knew not what, and
bent over her prostrate form.
“What will happen next?” said Steinberg.
“We must wait and see!” replied Ricardo.
“You won’t have to wait long!” exclaimed the same voice which had
addressed them before, “didn’t I tell you that when I chose the medium
would enter the séance room?”
“She _is_ a medium, then?” said the Professor.
“Rather! One of the finest mediums this world has ever produced. But
you must be careful how you use her! She will assimilate with any
spirit that possesses her!”
“Are we doing right?” demanded the Doctor, “will our curiosity injure
this girl?”
“I will take care that you do not injure her! That is what I am here
for.”
“Who are you?”
“The guiding control of this medium.”
“I mean, who were you, when you lived upon this earth? Or did you ever
live here?”
“Did I ever live here? How do you suppose I found my way back if I had
never lived here? Of course I did. But as for your other question, I
don’t see that it is any concern of yours. I might deceive you so
easily, that I had better begin by telling you the truth, and that is
that I have no intention you shall know my real name. You can call me
James.”
“Will you tell us, then, why you come to us?”
“I did not come to you! I accompanied my medium. I led her to you. I
have long wished to place her suitably, and I think you will treat her
gently and use her well.”
“I hope we may. We are both much interested in the Science of
Spiritualism, and want to find out all about it. Do you think we shall
succeed?”
“Everyone would succeed who put a great discovery for the good of
mankind in the first place, and their own selfish interests in the
second.”
“Are our desires selfish?”
“I fear they will become so, if you do not put a check upon them.”
“Teach us how to pursue our inquiries,” said Steinberg.