MIRIAM
“SURE, miss,” Jenny allowed herself to say, as she set down the tea-tray
before her mistress, “’tis a sight for sore eyes ye are! You seeming so
natural-like, after all the signs and wonders. And the rooms and all just
the same! However did it happen I don’t know. Up till you touched the
bell, I says to meself, ‘Jenny, ye’re dreaming!’”
“A great poet said, ‘The earth hath bubbles, as the water hath, and these
are of them,’” replied Miriam. “Nobody really knows the difference between
what seems and what is. We may be content if they seem as we would wish to
have them. But I suppose you know how you got here?”
“’Deed, miss, and I don’t, then! I’d been sorrowing that ye weren’t at
home these last days, and the poor master taking on so; and last evening,
I think it was, I was saying me prayers, and, of a sudden, ‘What’s that?’
I says. Whether I saw it or I heard it, I couldn’t rightly tell, miss, but
somebody was in the room; and what did I do but shut my eyes so as I’d see
better—if ye understand how I mean, miss. And there was a lady there—fine
and stately she was, but not the blessed Mary, for she had on black in
place of white, and no glory round her head; but oh, ’twas the face of
somebody great and good, I’ll go bail for that! And whether she spoke or
not I don’t know; but seems like I knew what was in her mind—all calmness
and kindness, and ‘Don’t be afeared, Jenny, ye’re in friendly hands’—it
came to me like that. And it seemed like I wasn’t to open my eyes, but
leave it all to her; a kind of lullaby like, miss, the way my mother—God
rest her soul—would sing me asleep when I was a wee colleen, back in the
ould sod.
“‘Sure,’ says I to meself, ‘it’s dying I am,’ I says; it was a sort of
drawing out through the top of me head, but soft and gentle, and me not a
bit frighted, but easy and pleased like never before in all me life; and
the next minute what did I see but meself sitting there in the rocker, and
meself standing beside her—if you understand me, miss. ‘If I’m dead,’ I
says, ‘however would I be alive?’ I says; and with that I looks round and
sees you your own self, miss, but oh, ever and ever so far off—standing
here by the table, you were, and a thoughtful and sad look on the sweet
face of ye. ‘Sure, ’tis going to her I’ll be,’ I says, forgetting the
distance; but the wish in me was like wings, and me like outside meself.
Howandever, going I was, not like flying, but what was before me one
minute was behind me in another, with me standing still all the time and
the things moving past me. ‘Sure,’ I says to meself, ‘Jenny,’ I says,
‘ye’ll never see yourself again,’ I says, thinking of meself sitting there
in the rocker. But I’ll be talking too much miss,” said Jenny,
interrupting herself and handing her mistress the napkin.
Jenny’s voice had the flow and modulations of bubbling waters and singing
birds, and it was no hardship to listen to her even on ordinary topics.
“It’s a wonderful story, Jenny,” Miriam said. “Wishes, after all, are the
greatest power in the world; they are in science and art and deeds, like
the soul in the body. But time and space, like veils, keep us from
recognizing the miracle of it. But sometimes the veils may be lifted, and
then we see. I’m glad you are here.”
“So am I, miss,” returned Jenny. “But how will we be getting back again?”
“By wishing, perhaps,” said Miriam, with a smile. “But we’ll have to help
ourselves a little, too, I think. So it was Mary Faust, after all,” she
said to herself; “but she must have somehow cooperated with Torpeon.
Lamara, also, perhaps. Oh, I hope Jack does nothing rash! But I must do my
part! Is any one beside yourself here, Jenny?”
“’Tis that puzzles me, miss,” answered the girl. “Times I’ll be wanting
something, and looks round; there it sits, like it had been there all the
time, but never a body have I seen to bring it. ’Tis a queer place
entirely! More like dreams than any living place I know of. Sure I’m
wondering, now and again, will I wake up of a sudden and find meself
asleep!”
“I have felt that in other places before this,” said Miriam. “But if you
can get what you want by wanting it, perhaps I can do the same. You may
take back the things; the tea tasted very good.”
“I found the tea in the caddy, miss, but I made it meself,” said Jenny,
showing her milk-white teeth between her red lips; and she departed with
the tray.
Miriam leaned her head on her hand and remained quiescent for a while.
Presently she loosened the fastenings of her hair, and let the magnificent
flood of it tumble down past her shoulders to her flanks. She took a brush
and began to brush it with long, sweeping movements. As the delicate
silken filaments responded to the treatment with increased softness and
luster, her mind became composed, and her thoughts clear and orderly. In
times past she had solved many a problem with a hair-brush.
She looped the great, black strands round her wrist, and by some feminine
sleight of hand caused it to coil itself upon her head; her supple fingers
pierced the mounded mass with fairy poniards and lightly patted it into
symmetry. She contemplated the effect in the glass with approval; but the
red mark of Torpeon caused a frown to flit over her brow.
The suggestion conveyed by Jenny’s story that Mary Faust might have had
some share at least in the preparation of her present surroundings had
opened the way to fresh thoughts and hopes. It somewhat modified her view
of Torpeon’s chivalric initiative, though she could still concede him
whatever credit was due to his accepting a happy proposal. It was out of
the question, of course, that he and Mary Faust could have in view the
same ultimate objects; but Mary’s was the deeper nature, and doubtless the
profounder science, and she might have led him to play unawares into her
hands. She rose and went into the laboratory.
Miriam selected from the instruments on the table a small machine with a
four-sided crystal cup at one end and a retort at the other; these were
connected by metal parts which included two balls a third of an inch in
diameter, which ran up and down in grooves that were tipped rhythmically
to right and left by the action of fine-toothed gear; a closely coiled
gold wire connected the cup and the retort, and yielded to the stress
applied and relaxed by the seesaw movement of the grooved shafts. The
whole contrivance was embraced in a magnetic field created by a bar of
iron alloyed with another metal isolated by Miriam herself, bent into the
form of a horseshoe.
She uncorked a vial containing a transparent but very heavy liquid,
colorless and sparling, and carefully counted seventeen drops of it into
the crystal cup. As it fell, it had the peculiar consistency of
quicksilver; but the drops immediately resolved themselves into a
homogeneous mass. She next armed herself with a delicate pair of pincers,
and with them picked out a grain of what looked like black powder from a
box partly filled with them. She dropped this grain into the cup of
liquid.
For a moment it lay of the surface, causing a slight depression to appear
beneath it, a miniature dimple. Then it seemed to be attacked by the
liquid, which was seen to gyrate around it from left to right, and this
movement spread until the entire surface was agitated. The black particle
first became red, like heated iron, and finally burned with a clear flame
until it was wholly consumed; the liquid meanwhile becoming clouded, but
finally assumed a brilliant blue color. At the same time, there appeared
in the retort two small globes of fire, intensely bright, which revolved
round each other with gradually increasing speed.
When the rapidity of their motion had caused them to take the aspect of a
ring, Miriam nodded to herself with murmur of satisfaction, lifted back
the magnet, and the flames vanished, the gyration of the liquid ceased,
and the experiment was over.
“Everything seems right,” she said to herself. “I have only to reverse the
circuit, and it is done! But Torpeon must be either very ignorant or very
confident to allow me access to these things. Or he may imagine they are
mere toys that I amuse myself with. He is himself planning something—I
feel sure of that! Perhaps, after all,” she went on after a pause, “Mary
Faust has more control over him than he suspects. She certainly knows my
predicament. Why did she send no message by Jenny? Perhaps she thought her
too simple to risk in these intrigues. But I need some one—some one that I
can trust. Suppose Torpeon should put me where I could not get to my
laboratory! If he were certain I would never yield to him, he might do
anything! If I cannot find an assistant, I must devise some way of acting
from a distance—and that might miscarry! Terrible, either way! But I must
do my best! What if I should do it now!” she suddenly exclaimed aloud,
rising to her feet, her cheeks paling and her eyes dark under the
influence of a powerful emotion. Her hand crept toward the instrument and
laid hold of the magnet. “This may be my last opportunity! Jack—Jack, my
own darling, you will know I could never love any one but you!”
She had begun to turn the magnet back to its original position when she
felt three light touches on her breast. Mary Faust’s warning once more!
She had nerved herself to a desperate act, and the reaction caused by this
admonition, with its reassuring implication, shook her to the soul. She
sank down in her chair, buried her face in her hands, and sobbed
uncontrollably.
The paroxysm did not last long. She mastered herself with a feeling of
self-contempt and sat up, wiping her eyes and pressing her cold hands
against her hot cheeks.
“Yes, it was wicked and cowardly—God forgive me!” she said. “I am not
brave; I must be prevented and led, like a spoiled child! Jack, I’m not
worthy of you!”
She walked up and down the room, calming herself, her courage revived. She
had not been abandoned; there would be some way out. The irrevocable deed
she had contemplated could be at least postponed. Wiser and stronger
spirits than hers were aware of her extremity, and were working for her.
“I will see Torpeon,” she decided. “He must understand that, in spite of
appearances, we are on equal ground.”
She passed into the adjoining room, and was about to press the bell to
summon Jenny, when that rosy-cheeked young woman knocked and opened the
door.
“If you please, miss, a young man outside would like to speak with ye.
He’s a funny kind of young man, miss, if ye please,” she added, breaking
into a smile.
“How so, Jenny?” demanded Miriam. “Who sent him here?”
“He’s from New York, miss, and I think he come of himself.”
“From New York? Come of himself: Consider what you are saying, Jenny!”
Then the thought of her lover leaped up in her. She seized the girl by the
shoulders. “You don’t mean—not Mr. Jack Paladin?”
Jenny was frightened by the passion in her look and voice.
“Oh, no, miss! I’m sorry, miss. It isn’t that sort of gentlemen—just a
young man, and he hasn’t only one leg!”
Miriam dropped her arms with a heavy sigh. “Oh—Jim!” The intonation was
not complimentary. Yet her face lightened up a little as Jim, with his
indomitable grin, hobbled briskly into the room.