The strange transfiguration of Hannah Stubbs
about them at ’ome, cos they do go on so dreadful about it, I’m quite
afeared on ’em. But I haven’t often seen ’em so distinct-like as since
I’ve been ’ere, and they scare me mortal. The other evening I seen
that lady I spoke of, on the landing, and blest if she ain’t been to
my bed each night since, and looking at me terrible with ’er big,
black eyes through ’er voil.”
“Big, black eyes,” reiterated the Professor. “O! Hannah! do try to
remember what she was like!”
“I ain’t no cause to remember, Sir,” replied the girl, “she’s scared
me too much for that! I only wishes as I could forget ’er. She is a
tall lady, and foreign looking, summat like an Injun with a white
skin. She’s got big, black eyes as look you through and through, and a
thin nose, pointed-like, and little white ’ands, O! so small, and long
black ’air ’anging down ’er back, and plaited in a tail. There was a
white voil over her face and ’ead, but I could see ’er quite plain
under it.”
“And what age--how old should you say she was, Hannah?” asked the
Professor, breathlessly.
“Well, Sir, I ain’t good at ages, but somwheres between twenty-five
and thirty, I should say she was. She ain’t old anyways, nor yet so
very young, neither!”
“My God!” cried Ricardo, as he bent his face over his hands. “It is
she--it is my Leonora!”
“I wish she’d come to you, Sir, then, instead of me!” said Hannah,
stolidly, with her mouth full of buttered crumpet.
“Ricardo!” exclaimed Steinberg, laying his hand on the shoulder of his
friend. “Calm yourself! Do not be too sanguine! This may be a wrong
description, or if correct, that of another person. Remember, that any
unusual anxiety to see any particular person, is more apt to mar than
to promote your desire.”
“Yes! yes! I know, but to think she may be so near me!”
“She has probably, if your own theories are correct, been always near
you, though you have been unable to discern it. We must expect this
girl to see a great deal more than we can ever hope to do.”
“No doubt, but the description is so like! Those little white hands!
how well I recall them, and the piercing, black eyes. Hannah! did this
lady say nothing to you?”
“No! Sir, nuffin, she only stood there, pointing up to ’eaven with ’er
’and. Leastways she might ’ave been a’pointing to the hattics, but it
was uppards any ’ow. But I didn’t see no more of ’er than I could
’elp, for I screamed so loud and ’id myself under the bedclothes, and
the next time I looked, she was gone. ‘Thank Goodness!’ said I.”
“Don’t be afraid of her, she will not hurt you,” said the Professor,
earnestly, “she was a friend of mine, Hannah--a dear friend, and the
next time you see her, if you will only speak to her and ask her name,
I will give you half a sovereign.”
“’Alf a suvvering,” repeated Hannah, wonderingly, “well, I should like
to ’ave that, I must say, but I can’t do it, Sir,”--shaking her
head--“not for a bag of gold, I couldn’t. I don’t mind a’coming up
here to be physicked by the Doctor, for the missus says if I don’t,
she’ll send me ’ome--but to talk to sperrits and sich-like I can’t.
I’ve never done it, a’cause I’m afeared they’re the Devil, and I can’t
begin it now. I should think they would carry me away if I did!”
“Still the same old theory,” said Steinberg to Ricardo, in French,
“with rich and poor, wise and ignorant--that the Devil is at the
bottom of everything that promises to let in a little light upon the
other world. Ricardo, if nothing else prompted me to go on with this
inquiry, it would be the hope of finding out if there is a Devil at
all, or whether the evil in our own natures is not sufficient to do
all the mischief in this world, that is attributed to him!”
During this short colloquy, Hannah Stubbs had displayed no curiosity
by look or word, to learn what was going on, but as Steinberg
concluded, she said,
“I suppose, Sir, as you’ve been putting some of your physic in my tea,
for I feel uncommon sleepy, jest as I did the other night.”
The Professor seized upon the opportunity.
“We thought it would be less unpleasant for you to take in that way,
Hannah,” he commenced, but he spoke to an unconscious hearer. The girl
was already lying back in her chair, without sense or motion.
Steinberg hastened to lower the gas.
“How quickly she has gone off to-night,” he remarked, “I wonder if
this is Leonora’s doing!”
“No! it is not Leonora’s doing,” echoed the Voice after him, “it is
mine! And now as you want a test, Mr. Doctor, as to whether I speak
through the medium’s organs, or she speaks for me, please fill half a
tumbler with water and pour it into her mouth.”
“Pour it into her mouth!” exclaimed Steinberg, “but I may choke her!”
“Just do as you’re told,” said “James,” “and leave the consequences to
me! We’re better doctors than you are, in the Spiritual world. We know
what we’re about and don’t go by guessing. Now, where’s the water?”
Thus adjured, Ricardo fetched a tumbler of water from the adjoining
room and emptied half the contents into Hannah’s mouth. She did not
seem to resist the action. Her mouth was like a carved piece of
marble. The fluid filled it, but did not attempt to pass down the
throat.
As the operation was finished, she closed her lips again with a sigh.
“Well, that’s a strong test,” remarked Steinberg. “If any voice speaks
now, it certainly cannot be that of the medium.”
“O! you think that, do you?” almost immediately exclaimed the Voice,
which they now called “James”, “well, then, who am I?”
“That is just what we are trying to find out, James,” replied Ricardo.
“You are certainly not a mortal. Are you the spirit of a dead person,
or an emissary of the Devil? Tell us the truth.”
“I am certainly not an emissary of the Devil, who never existed except
in your own bad thoughts,” replied James. “When people do wrong, they
say they were tempted of the Devil. That’s only an excuse for not
confessing that they tempted themselves. But I’ve never seen the
Devil, nor seen anybody who has seen him, so I can’t tell you anything
about that. And I am not the spirit of a dead person, for the good
reason that there are no dead persons. Everybody is alive for
evermore, and the only ‘dead ’uns’ are the poor bigotted ignorant
fools who are content to believe any fable that is told them, and
never to find out the truth for themselves.”
“Then you must not call us ‘dead ’uns,’ James, for we are only too
anxious to find out everything about the next World, and are ready to
believe all that you can teach us!”
“That’s all very fine, but it’s not my mission to teach you, even if I
could! But I’ve had no opportunities yet of learning even as much as
you have. You’re educated gentlemen, as can read books for yourselves,
but I was only a poor costermonger, as could neither read nor write
whilst on earth, and had to begin at A.B.C. when I came over here.”
“You speak better than most costermongers,” observed Steinberg.
“Of course I do! Didn’t I say I had everything to learn when I came to
this world. If you took a costermonger in hand and taught him how to
speak, he’d take after your pronunciation, wouldn’t he? That’s what I
did. It was a gentleman bred that taught me. I guess he hadn’t done as
much as he might for his fellow-creatures when he was here, so they
put him on to my little job.”
“And why have you come to us then, James?”
“Didn’t I tell you the other night, that I _hadn’t_ come for you. I
came with this medium. I’ve been attached to her for several years
past.”
“Did you know her on earth?”
“No! I passed over years before she was born.”
“Why did you attach yourself to her then?”
“Because I was told to do so. Things are very different here from what
you earth-people expect. You do pretty much as you choose in this
world, but you’ll have to obey when you pass over. I was told off to
control this girl I suppose, because she’s likely to encounter the
same sort of troubles as I did. Any way I’m here, and now I must go!
Light the gas and turn the water out of her mouth, that you may be
convinced she is not a fraud, and then lower it again and sit round
the table in the dark, and I’ll see if I can show you something.”
The Voice ceased, and the men doing as they were desired, were
astonished to receive back the half tumbler of water from Hannah’s
mouth, just as they had placed it there. Steinberg could not conceal
his surprise. He sat gazing at the fluid as if it had been some sacred
water brought from Jordan or Bethsaida, to cleanse him from his sins.
“Well! I couldn’t have believed it possible unless I had seen it with
my own eyes,” he exclaimed. “Ricardo, this is the most wonderful,
incomprehensible, astonishing----”
“Yes! my dear friend, but let us lower the light, now, and talk of
these things afterwards. James has promised we shall see something!
Supposing it should be my Leonora!”
Steinberg turned off the gas altogether, and sat mute as a mouse, till
something should arise from the darkness. Presently, the two friends
perceived a bluish mist, like the smoke from a cigarette, rise from
the other side of the table, and hover between the ceiling and the
floor.
“It is my wife, I am sure of it!” said the Professor in an agitated
whisper, to the Doctor, “can’t you see the long white veil which
Hannah described to us, and which she was so often in the habit of
wearing. Wait a moment and we shall see her beautiful face peeping
through the mist. How gracefully it rises--just like the swaying
figure of a slender woman, such as she was! And now, cannot you see
two eyes forming in the cloud--Leonora! my Beloved, speak to me, show
yourself to me! O! I am as certain as I am of my own existence, that
it is she!”
“I cannot say that I see any features,” replied Steinberg, “but the
form is certainly moving, and coming nearer to us! How cold the room
seems to have suddenly become! My hands are like ice! What can be the
reason of it? Surely, not the presence of a gentle woman spirit!”
“No!” returned the voice of James from out the darkness, “but perhaps
the presence of a gentle spirit man!!! It is I, after all, whom you
mistook for that which you are looking for. So do you mortals
continually deceive yourselves and bring the science of Spiritualism
into disrepute. It was _my_ graceful figure which you saw floating in
mid air, but don’t be disheartened. Remember! if you can see a
costermonger, you can also see a Queen! There is no difference here,
of rank or sex! Good-night! The medium has had enough for this
evening! I am off! Light up the gas and let her come to herself.”
Hannah did not seem to be half so frightened this time as she had been
on the first occasion, and, after a few yawns, said she was all right
and felt much refreshed by the sleep the Doctor’s physic had given
her.
“’Tis ever so much better nor jalap,” she said, grinning from ear to
ear, “and so be it brings Joe and I together agin, why, I don’t mind
’ow many evenin’s I comes up ’ere, and goes to sleep.”
“Have you and your young man quarrelled, then, Hannah?” demanded the
Professor.
“Not exactly quarrelled, Sir, but we ain’t as we was, not by no manner
of means, and it has cut me up sorely. My mother, she wouldn’t keep
nothin’ to ’erself, but kep’ on tellin’ the neighbours as I see
wisions and things, and then Mrs. Brushwood, she cut up rough and says
as she wouldn’t have no ghosties nor sich-like about ’er ’ouse, and
Joe, he lives on ’is mother, so ’e can’t but side with ’er!”
“Poor child! And so they turned you out of your home for a power which
is no fault of yours,” said Ricardo.
“Yes, Sir. Mother, she said I must go, an’ p’r’aps they’d forget it
arter a while. Mother was allays terrible angered if I said I had seen
anythink. But ’twarn’t my fault, for I ’ated it, and do so to this