Dr Porhoët had asked Arthur to bring Margaret and Miss Boyd to see him
on Sunday at his apartment in the Île Saint Louis; and the lovers
arranged to spend an hour on their way at the Louvre. Susie, invited to
accompany them, preferred independence and her own reflections.
To avoid the crowd which throngs the picture galleries on holidays,
they went to that part of the museum where ancient sculpture is kept.
It was comparatively empty, and the long halls had the singular
restfulness of places where works of art are gathered together.
Margaret was filled with a genuine emotion; and though she could not
analyse it, as Susie, who loved to dissect her state of mind, would
have done, it strangely exhilarated her. Her heart was uplifted from
the sordidness of earth, and she had a sensation of freedom which was
as delightful as it was indescribable. Arthur had never troubled
himself with art till Margaret’s enthusiasm taught him that there was a
side of life he did not realize. Though beauty meant little to his
practical nature, he sought, in his great love for Margaret, to
appreciate the works which excited her to such charming ecstasy. He
walked by her side with docility and listened, not without deference,
to her outbursts. He admired the correctness of Greek anatomy, and
there was one statue of an athlete which attracted his prolonged
attention, because the muscles were indicated with the precision of a
plate in a surgical textbook. When Margaret talked of the Greeks’
divine repose and of their blitheness, he thought it very clever
because she said it; but in a man it would have aroused his impatience.
Yet there was one piece, the charming statue known as _La Diane de
Gabies_, which moved him differently, and to this presently he insisted
on going. With a laugh Margaret remonstrated, but secretly she was not
displeased. She was aware that his passion for this figure was due, not
to its intrinsic beauty, but to a likeness he had discovered in it to
herself.
It stood in that fair wide gallery where is the mocking faun, with his
inhuman savour of fellowship with the earth which is divine, and the
sightless Homer. The goddess had not the arrogance of the huntress who
loved Endymion, nor the majesty of the cold mistress of the skies. She
was in the likeness of a young girl, and with collected gesture
fastened her cloak. There was nothing divine in her save a sweet
strange spirit of virginity. A lover in ancient Greece, who offered
sacrifice before this fair image, might forget easily that it was a
goddess to whom he knelt, and see only an earthly maid fresh with youth
and chastity and loveliness. In Arthur’s eyes Margaret had all the
exquisite grace of the statue, and the same unconscious composure; and
in her also breathed the spring odours of ineffable purity. Her
features were chiselled with the clear and divine perfection of this
Greek girl’s; her ears were as delicate and as finely wrought. The
colour of her skin was so tender that it reminded you vaguely of all
beautiful soft things, the radiance of sunset and the darkness of the
night, the heart of roses and the depth of running water. The goddess’s
hand was raised to her right shoulder, and Margaret’s hand was as
small, as dainty, and as white.
“Don’t be so foolish,” said she, as Arthur looked silently at the
statue.
He turned his eyes slowly, and they rested upon her. She saw that they
were veiled with tears.
“What on earth’s the matter?”
“I wish you weren’t so beautiful,” he answered, awkwardly, as though he
could scarcely bring himself to say such foolish things. “I’m so afraid
that something will happen to prevent us from being happy. It seems too
much to expect that I should enjoy such extraordinarily good luck.”
She had the imagination to see that it meant much for the practical man
so to express himself. Love of her drew him out of his character, and,
though he could not resist, he resented the effect it had on him. She
found nothing to reply, but she took his hand.
“Everything has gone pretty well with me so far,” he said, speaking
almost to himself. “Whenever I’ve really wanted anything, I’ve managed
to get it. I don’t see why things should go against me now.”
He was trying to reassure himself against an instinctive suspicion of
the malice of circumstances. But he shook himself and straightened his
back.
“It’s stupid to be so morbid as that,” he muttered.
Margaret laughed. They walked out of the gallery and turned to the
quay. By crossing the bridge and following the river, they must come
eventually to Dr. Porhoët’s house.
Meanwhile Susie wandered down the Boulevard Saint Michel, alert with
the Sunday crowd, to that part of Paris which was dearest to her heart.
L’Île Saint Louis to her mind offered a synthesis of the French spirit,
and it pleased her far more than the garish boulevards in which the
English as a rule seek for the country’s fascination. Its position on
an island in the Seine gave it a compact charm. The narrow streets,
with their array of dainty comestibles, had the look of streets in a
provincial town. They had a quaintness which appealed to the fancy, and
they were very restful. The names of the streets recalled the monarchy
that passed away in bloodshed, and in _poudre de riz_. The very plane
trees had a greater sobriety than elsewhere, as though conscious they
stood in a Paris where progress was not. In front was the turbid Seine,
and below, the twin towers of Notre Dame. Susie could have kissed the
hard paving stones of the quay. Her good-natured, plain face lit up as
she realized the delight of the scene upon which her eyes rested; and
it was with a little pang, her mind aglow with characters and events
from history and from fiction, that she turned away to enter Dr
Porhoët’s house.
She was pleased that the approach did not clash with her fantasies. She
mounted a broad staircase, dark but roomy, and, at the command of the
_concierge_, rang a tinkling bell at one of the doorways that faced
her. Dr Porhoët opened in person.
“Arthur and Mademoiselle are already here,” he said, as he led her in.
They went through a prim French dining-room, with much woodwork and
heavy scarlet hangings, to the library. This was a large room, but the
bookcases that lined the walls, and a large writing-table heaped up
with books, much diminished its size. There were books everywhere. They
were stacked on the floor and piled on every chair. There was hardly
space to move. Susie gave a cry of delight.
“Now you mustn’t talk to me. I want to look at all your books.”
“You could not please me more,” said Dr Porhoët, “but I am afraid they
will disappoint you. They are of many sorts, but I fear there are few
that will interest an English young lady.”
He looked about his writing-table till he found a packet of cigarettes.
He gravely offered one to each of his guests. Susie was enchanted with
the strange musty smell of the old books, and she took a first glance
at them in general. For the most part they were in paper bindings, some
of them neat enough, but more with broken backs and dingy edges; they
were set along the shelves in serried rows, untidily, without method or
plan. There were many older ones also in bindings of calf and pigskin,
treasure from half the bookshops in Europe; and there were huge folios
like Prussian grenadiers; and tiny Elzevirs, which had been read by
patrician ladies in Venice. Just as Arthur was a different man in the
operating theatre, Dr Porhoët was changed among his books. Though he
preserved the amiable serenity which made him always so attractive, he
had there a diverting brusqueness of demeanour which contrasted
quaintly with his usual calm.
“I was telling these young people, when you came in, of an ancient
Korân which I was given in Alexandria by a learned man whom I operated
upon for cataract.” He showed her a beautifully-written Arabic work,
with wonderful capitals and headlines in gold. “You know that it is
almost impossible for an infidel to acquire the holy book, and this is
a particularly rare copy, for it was written by Kaït Bey, the greatest
of the Mameluke Sultans.”
He handled the delicate pages as a lover of flowers would handle
rose-leaves.
“And have you much literature on the occult sciences?” asked Susie.
Dr Porhoët smiled.
“I venture to think that no private library contains so complete a
collection, but I dare not show it to you in the presence of our friend
Arthur. He is too polite to accuse me of foolishness, but his sarcastic
smile would betray him.”
Susie went to the shelves to which he vaguely waved, and looked with a
peculiar excitement at the mysterious array. She ran her eyes along the
names. It seemed to her that she was entering upon an unknown region of
romance. She felt like an adventurous princess who rode on her palfrey
into a forest of great bare trees and mystic silences, where wan,
unearthly shapes pressed upon her way.
“I thought once of writing a life of that fantastic and grandiloquent
creature, Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Paracelsus Bombast von
Hohenheim,” said Dr Porhoët, “and I have collected many of his books.”
He took down a slim volume in duodecimo, printed in the seventeenth
century, with queer plates, on which were all manner of cabbalistic
signs. The pages had a peculiar, musty odour. They were stained with
iron-mould.
“Here is one of the most interesting works concerning the black art. It
is the _Grimoire of Honorius_, and is the principal text-book of all
those who deal in the darkest ways of the science.”
Then he pointed out the _Hexameron_ of Torquemada and the _Tableau de
l’Inconstance des Démons_, by Delancre; he drew his finger down the
leather back of Delrio’s _Disquisitiones Magicae_ and set upright the
_Pseudomonarchia Daemonorum_ of Wierus; his eyes rested for an instant
on Hauber’s _Acta et Scripta Magica_, and he blew the dust carefully
off the most famous, the most infamous, of them all, Sprenger’s
_Malleus Malefikorum_.
“Here is one of my greatest treasures. It is the _Clavicula Salomonis_;
and I have much reason to believe that it is the identical copy which
belonged to the greatest adventurer of the eighteenth century, Jacques
Casanova. You will see that the owner’s name had been cut out, but
enough remains to indicate the bottom of the letters; and these
correspond exactly with the signature of Casanova which I have found at
the Bibliothéque Nationale. He relates in his memoirs that a copy of
this book was seized among his effects when he was arrested in Venice
for traffic in the black arts; and it was there, on one of my journeys
from Alexandria, that I picked it up.”
He replaced the precious work, and his eye fell on a stout volume bound
in vellum.
“I had almost forgotten the most wonderful, the most mysterious, of all
the books that treat of occult science. You have heard of the Kabbalah,
but I doubt if it is more than a name to you.”
“I know nothing about it at all,” laughed Susie, “except that it’s all
very romantic and extraordinary and ridiculous.”
“This, then, is its history. Moses, who was learned in all the wisdom
of Egypt, was first initiated into the Kabbalah in the land of his
birth; but became most proficient in it during his wanderings in the
wilderness. Here he not only devoted the leisure hours of forty years
to this mysterious science, but received lessons in it from an obliging
angel. By aid of it he was able to solve the difficulties which arose
during his management of the Israelites, notwithstanding the
pilgrimages, wars, and miseries of that most unruly nation. He covertly
laid down the principles of the doctrine in the first four books of the
Pentateuch, but withheld them from Deuteronomy. Moses also initiated
the Seventy Elders into these secrets, and they in turn transmitted
them from hand to hand. Of all who formed the unbroken line of
tradition, David and Solomon were the most deeply learned in the
Kabbalah. No one, however, dared to write it down till Schimeon ben
Jochai, who lived in the time of the destruction of Jerusalem; and
after his death the Rabbi Eleazar, his son, and the Rabbi Abba, his
secretary, collected his manuscripts and from them composed the
celebrated treatise called _Zohar_.”
“And how much do you believe of this marvellous story?” asked Arthur
Burdon.
“Not a word,” answered Dr Porhoët, with a smile. “Criticism has shown
that _Zohar_ is of modern origin. With singular effrontery, it cites an
author who is known to have lived during the eleventh century, mentions
the Crusades, and records events which occurred in the year of Our Lord
1264. It was some time before 1291 that copies of _Zohar_ began to be
circulated by a Spanish Jew named Moses de Leon, who claimed to possess
an autograph manuscript by the reputed author Schimeon ben Jochai. But
when Moses de Leon was gathered to the bosom of his father Abraham, a
wealthy Hebrew, Joseph de Avila, promised the scribe’s widow, who had
been left destitute, that his son should marry her daughter, to whom he
would pay a handsome dowry, if she would give him the original
manuscript from which these copies were made. But the widow (one can
imagine with what gnashing of teeth) was obliged to confess that she
had no such manuscript, for Moses de Leon had composed _Zohar_ out of
his own head, and written it with his own right hand.”
Arthur got up to stretch his legs. He gave a laugh.
“I never know how much you really believe of all these things you tell
us. You speak with such gravity that we are all taken in, and then it
turns out that you’ve been laughing at us.”
“My dear friend, I never know myself how much I believe,” returned Dr
Porhoët.
“I wonder if it is for the same reason that Mr Haddo puzzles us so
much,” said Susie.
“Ah, there you have a case that is really interesting,” replied the
doctor. “I assure you that, though I know him fairly intimately, I have
never been able to make up my mind whether he is an elaborate practical
joker, or whether he is really convinced he has the wonderful powers to
which he lays claim.”
“We certainly saw things last night that were not quite normal,” said
Susie. “Why had that serpent no effect on him though it was able to
kill the rabbit instantaneously? And how are you going to explain the
violent trembling of that horse, Mr. Burdon?”
“I can’t explain it,” answered Arthur, irritably, “but I’m not inclined
to attribute to the supernatural everything that I can’t immediately
understand.”
“I don’t know what there is about him that excites in me a sort of
horror,” said Margaret. “I’ve never taken such a sudden dislike to
anyone.”
She was too reticent to say all she felt, but she had been strangely
affected last night by the recollection of Haddo’s words and of his
acts. She had awakened more than once from a nightmare in which he
assumed fantastic and ghastly shapes. His mocking voice rang in her
ears, and she seemed still to see that vast bulk and the savage,
sensual face. It was like a spirit of evil in her path, and she was
curiously alarmed. Only her reliance on Arthur’s common sense prevented
her from giving way to ridiculous terrors.
“I’ve written to Frank Hurrell and asked him to tell me all he knows
about him,” said Arthur. “I should get an answer very soon.”
“I wish we’d never come across him,” cried Margaret vehemently. “I feel
that he will bring us misfortune.”
“You’re all of you absurdly prejudiced,” answered Susie gaily. “He
interests me enormously, and I mean to ask him to tea at the studio.”
“I’m sure I shall be delighted to come.”
Margaret cried out, for she recognized Oliver Haddo’s deep bantering
tones; and she turned round quickly. They were all so taken aback that
for a moment no one spoke. They were gathered round the window and had
not heard him come in. They wondered guiltily how long he had been
there and how much he had heard.
“How on earth did you get here?” cried Susie lightly, recovering
herself first.
“No well-bred sorcerer is so dead to the finer feelings as to enter a
room by the door,” he answered, with his puzzling smile. “You were
standing round the window, and I thought it would startle you if I
chose that mode of ingress, so I descended with incredible skill down
the chimney.”
“I see a little soot on your left elbow,” returned Susie. “I hope you
weren’t at all burned.”
“Not at all, thanks,” he answered, gravely brushing his coat.
“In whatever way you came, you are very welcome,” said Dr Porhoët,
genially holding out his hand.
But Arthur impatiently turned to his host.
“I wish I knew what made you engage upon these studies,” he said. “I
should have thought your medical profession protected you from any
tenderness towards superstition.”
Dr Porhoët shrugged his shoulders.
“I have always been interested in the oddities of mankind. At one time
I read a good deal of philosophy and a good deal of science, and I
learned in that way that nothing was certain. Some people, by the
pursuit of science, are impressed with the dignity of man, but I was
only made conscious of his insignificance. The greatest questions of
all have been threshed out since he acquired the beginnings of
civilization and he is as far from a solution as ever. Man can know
nothing, for his senses are his only means of knowledge, and they can
give no certainty. There is only one subject upon which the individual
can speak with authority, and that is his own mind, but even here he is
surrounded with darkness. I believe that we shall always be ignorant of
the matters which it most behoves us to know, and therefore I cannot
occupy myself with them. I prefer to set them all aside, and, since
knowledge is unattainable, to occupy myself only with folly.”
“It is a point of view I do not sympathize with,” said Arthur.
“Yet I cannot be sure that it is all folly,” pursued the Frenchman
reflectively. He looked at Arthur with a certain ironic gravity. “Do
you believe that I should lie to you when I promised to speak the
truth?”
“Certainly not.”
“I should like to tell you of an experience that I once had in
Alexandria. So far as I can see, it can be explained by none of the
principles known to science. I ask you only to believe that I am not
consciously deceiving you.”
He spoke with a seriousness which gave authority to his words. It was
plain, even to Arthur, that he narrated the event exactly as it
occurred.
“I had heard frequently of a certain shiekh who was able by means of a
magic mirror to show the inquirer persons who were absent or dead, and
a native friend of mine had often begged me to see him. I had never
thought it worth while, but at last a time came when I was greatly
troubled in my mind. My poor mother was an old woman, a widow, and I
had received no news of her for many weeks. Though I wrote repeatedly,
no answer reached me. I was very anxious and very unhappy. I thought no
harm could come if I sent for the sorcerer, and perhaps after all he
had the power which was attributed to him. My friend, who was
interpreter to the French Consulate, brought him to me one evening. He
was a fine man, tall and stout, of a fair complexion, but with a dark
brown beard. He was shabbily dressed, and, being a descendant of the
Prophet, wore a green turban. In his conversation he was affable and
unaffected. I asked him what persons could see in the magic mirror, and
he said they were a boy not arrived at puberty, a virgin, a black
female slave, and a pregnant woman. In order to make sure that there
was no collusion, I despatched my servant to an intimate friend and
asked him to send me his son. While we waited, I prepared by the
magician’s direction frankincense and coriander-seed, and a
chafing-dish with live charcoal. Meanwhile, he wrote forms of
invocation on six strips of paper. When the boy arrived, the sorcerer
threw incense and one of the paper strips into the chafing-dish, then
took the boy’s right hand and drew a square and certain mystical marks
on the palm. In the centre of the square he poured a little ink. This
formed the magic mirror. He desired the boy to look steadily into it
without raising his head. The fumes of the incense filled the room with
smoke. The sorcerer muttered Arabic words, indistinctly, and this he
continued to do all the time except when he asked the boy a question.
“‘Do you see anything in the ink?’ he said.
“‘No,’ the boy answered.
“But a minute later, he began to tremble and seemed very much
frightened.
“‘I see a man sweeping the ground,’ he said.
“‘When he has done sweeping, tell me,’ said the sheikh.
“‘He has done,’ said the boy.
“The sorcerer turned to me and asked who it was that I wished the boy
should see.
“‘I desire to see the widow Jeanne-Marie Porhoët.’
“The magician put the second and third of the small strips of paper
into the chafing-dish, and fresh frankincense was added. The fumes were
painful to my eyes. The boy began to speak.
“‘I see an old woman lying on a bed. She has a black dress, and on her
head is a little white cap. She has a wrinkled face and her eyes are
closed. There is a band tied round her chin. The bed is in a sort of
hole, in the wall, and there are shutters to it.’
The boy was describing a Breton bed, and the white cap was the _coiffe_
that my mother wore. And if she lay there in her black dress, with a
band about her chin, I knew that it could mean but one thing.
“‘What else does he see?’ I asked the sorcerer.
“He repeated my question, and presently the boy spoke again.
“‘I see four men come in with a long box. And there are women crying.
They all wear little white caps and black dresses. And I see a man in a
white surplice, with a large cross in his hands, and a little boy in a
long red gown. And the men take off their hats. And now everyone is
kneeling down.’
“‘I will hear no more,’ I said. ‘It is enough.’
“I knew that my mother was dead.
“In a little while, I received a letter from the priest of the village
in which she lived. They had buried her on the very day upon which the
boy had seen this sight in the mirror of ink.”
Dr Porhoët passed his hand across his eyes, and for a little while
there was silence.
“What have you to say to that?” asked Oliver Haddo, at last.
“Nothing,” answered Arthur.
Haddo looked at him for a minute with those queer eyes of his which
seemed to stare at the wall behind.
“Have you ever heard of Eliphas Levi?” he inquired. “He is the most
celebrated occultist of recent years. He is thought to have known more
of the mysteries than any adept since the divine Paracelsus.”
“I met him once,” interrupted Dr Porhoët. “You never saw a man who
looked less like a magician. His face beamed with good-nature, and he
wore a long grey beard, which covered nearly the whole of his breast.
He was of a short and very corpulent figure.”
“The practice of black arts evidently disposes to obesity,” said
Arthur, icily.
Susie noticed that this time Oliver Haddo made no sign that the taunt
moved him. His unwinking, straight eyes remained upon Arthur without
expression.
“Levi’s real name was Alphonse-Louis Constant, but he adopted that
under which he is generally known for reasons that are plain to the
romantic mind. His father was a bootmaker. He was destined for the
priesthood, but fell in love with a damsel fair and married her. The
union was unhappy. A fate befell him which has been the lot of greater
men than he, and his wife presently abandoned the marital roof with her
lover. To console himself he began to make serious researches in the
occult, and in due course published a vast number of mystical works
dealing with magic in all its branches.”
“I’m sure Mr Haddo was going to tell us something very interesting
about him,” said Susie.
“I wished merely to give you his account of how he raised the spirit of
Apollonius of Tyana in London.”
Susie settled herself more comfortably in her chair and lit a
cigarette.
“He went there in the spring of 1856 to escape from internal
disquietude and to devote himself without distraction to his studies.
He had letters of introduction to various persons of distinction who
concerned themselves with the supernatural, but, finding them trivial
and indifferent, he immersed himself in the study of the supreme
Kabbalah. One day, on returning to his hotel, he found a note in his
room. It contained half a card, transversely divided, on which he at
once recognized the character of Solomon’s Seal, and a tiny slip of
paper on which was written in pencil: _The other half of this card will
be given you at three o’clock tomorrow in front of Westminster Abbey_.
Next day, going to the appointed spot, with his portion of the card in
his hand, he found a baronial equipage waiting for him. A footman
approached, and, making a sign to him, opened the carriage door. Within
was a lady in black satin, whose face was concealed by a thick veil.
She motioned him to a seat beside her, and at the same time displayed
the other part of the card he had received. The door was shut, and the
carriage rolled away. When the lady raised her veil, Eliphas Levi saw
that she was of mature age; and beneath her grey eyebrows were bright
black eyes of preternatural fixity.”
Susie Boyd clapped her hands with delight.
“I think it’s delicious, and I’m sure every word of it is true,” she
cried. “I’m enchanted with the mysterious meeting at Westminster Abbey
in the Mid-Victorian era. Can’t you see the elderly lady in a huge
crinoline and a black poke bonnet, and the wizard in a ridiculous hat,
a bottle-green frock-coat, and a flowing tie of black silk?”
“Eliphas remarks that the lady spoke French with a marked English
accent,” pursued Haddo imperturbably. “She addressed him as follows:
‘Sir, I am aware that the law of secrecy is rigorous among adepts; and
I know that you have been asked for phenomena, but have declined to
gratify a frivolous curiosity. It is possible that you do not possess
the necessary materials. I can show you a complete magical cabinet, but
I must require of you first the most inviolable silence. If you do not
guarantee this on your honour, I will give the order for you to be
driven home.’”
Oliver Haddo told his story not ineffectively, but with a comic gravity
that prevented one from knowing exactly how to take it.
“Having given the required promise Eliphas Levi was shown a collection
of vestments and of magical instruments. The lady lent him certain
books of which he was in need; and at last, as a result of many
conversations, determined him to attempt at her house the experience of
a complete evocation. He prepared himself for twenty-one days,
scrupulously observing the rules laid down by the Ritual. At length
everything was ready. It was proposed to call forth the phantom of the
divine Apollonius, and to question it upon two matters, one of which
concerned Eliphas Levi and the other, the lady of the crinoline. She
had at first counted on assisting at the evocation with a trustworthy
person, but at the last moment her friend drew back; and as the triad
or unity is rigorously prescribed in magical rites, Eliphas was left
alone. The cabinet prepared for the experiment was situated in a
turret. Four concave mirrors were hung within it, and there was an
altar of white marble, surrounded by a chain of magnetic iron. On it
was engraved the sign of the Pentagram, and this symbol was drawn on
the new, white sheepskin which was stretched beneath. A copper brazier
stood on the altar, with charcoal of alder and of laurel wood, and in
front a second brazier was placed upon a tripod. Eliphas Levi was
clothed in a white robe, longer and more ample than the surplice of a
priest, and he wore upon his head a chaplet of vervain leaves entwined
about a golden chain. In one hand he held a new sword and in the other
the Ritual.”
Susie’s passion for caricature at once asserted itself, and she laughed
as she saw in fancy the portly little Frenchman, with his round, red
face, thus wonderfully attired.
“He set alight the two fires with the prepared materials, and began, at
first in a low voice, but rising by degrees, the invocations of the
Ritual. The flames invested every object with a wavering light.
Presently they went out. He set more twigs and perfumes on the brazier,
and when the flame started up once more, he saw distinctly before the
altar a human figure larger than life, which dissolved and disappeared.
He began the invocations again and placed himself in a circle, which he
had already traced between the altar and the tripod. Then the depth of
the mirror which was in front of him grew brighter by degrees, and a
pale form arose, and it seemed gradually to approach. He closed his
eyes, and called three times upon Apollonius. When he opened them, a
man stood before him, wholly enveloped in a winding sheet, which seemed
more grey than black. His form was lean, melancholy, and beardless.
Eliphas felt an intense cold, and when he sought to ask his questions
found it impossible to speak. Thereupon, he placed his hand on the
Pentagram, and directed the point of his sword toward the figure,
adjuring it mentally by that sign not to terrify, but to obey him. The
form suddenly grew indistinct and soon it strangely vanished. He
commanded it to return, and then felt, as it were, an air pass by him;
and, something having touched the hand which held the sword, his arm
was immediately benumbed as far as the shoulder. He supposed that the
weapon displeased the spirit, and set it down within the circle. The
human figure at once reappeared, but Eliphas experienced such a sudden
exhaustion in all his limbs that he was obliged to sit down. He fell
into a deep coma, and dreamed strange dreams. But of these, when he
recovered, only a vague memory remained to him. His arm continued for
several days to be numb and painful. The figure had not spoken, but it
seemed to Eliphas Levi that the questions were answered in his own
mind. For to each an inner voice replied with one grim word: dead.”
“Your friend seems to have had as little fear of spooks as you have of
lions,” said Burdon. “To my thinking it is plain that all these
preparations, and the perfumes, the mirrors, the pentagrams, must have
the greatest effect on the imagination. My only surprise is that your
magician saw no more.”
“Eliphas Levi talked to me himself of this evocation,” said Dr Porhoët.
“He told me that its influence on him was very great. He was no longer
the same man, for it seemed to him that something from the world beyond
had passed into his soul.”
“I am astonished that you should never have tried such an interesting
experiment yourself,” said Arthur to Oliver Haddo.
“I have,” answered the other calmly. “My father lost his power of
speech shortly before he died, and it was plain that he sought with all
his might to tell me something. A year after his death, I called up his
phantom from the grave so that I might learn what I took to be a dying
wish. The circumstances of the apparition are so similar to those I
have just told you that it would only bore you if I repeated them. The
only difference was that my father actually spoke.”
“What did he say?” asked Susie.
“He said solemnly: ‘_Buy Ashantis, they are bound to go up._’
“I did as he told me; but my father was always unlucky in speculation,
and they went down steadily. I sold out at considerable loss, and
concluded that in the world beyond they are as ignorant of the tendency
of the Stock Exchange as we are in this vale of sorrow.”
Susie could not help laughing. But Arthur shrugged his shoulders
impatiently. It disturbed his practical mind never to be certain if
Haddo was serious, or if, as now, he was plainly making game of them.