THE FAMILIAR SPEAKS.
So the excommunicated William, with his feet upon the fender, leaning
upon his elbow in the great chair, made himself comfortable by the fire,
and heard his aunt propound the questions, and the answers by the
previously appointed manifestations, duly noted down.
“Is there a spirit present?”
“Yes.”
“Are there more than one?”
“No.”
“Is it a male or female spirit?”
No answer.
“Is it Henbane?”
“Yes” (emphatically).
William _was_ surprised. All was now going smoothly, and he could not
for a moment suspect a gentleman of Dr. Drake’s respectability of
participating in a trick. But there was a monotony in the matter of a
quieting kind, and William grew too drowsy to keep his eyes long open.
“Did you give Miss Dinah Perfect a message on Monday last?”
“Yes.”
“Did it concern her death?”
“Yes.”
“Is her death to take place at the time then appointed?”
Here the table made a positive jump, and in spite of a grasp made at it
by the doctor’s fingers, it fell flat on the floor, and it must have
been a very violent impulse, for Dr. Drake’s slipper was off, and he,
very red, no doubt from his effort to prevent the wilful fall of the
table.
“Very extraordinary!” exclaimed he, standing up.
“Most wonderful!” said my aunt.
Good old fat Winnie sat with her fingers raised in the air, looking at
the prostrate table with placid astonishment.
“That’s a tilt,” said the doctor, “that means _no_—a very _emphatic_
tilt.”
“I think it was a _jump_,” said my aunt, sadly.
“No, Ma’am, no—a tilt, a tilt, I’ll take my oath. Besides a _jump_ has
no meaning,” urged he with energy.
“Pardon me: when a question is received with marked impatience a jump is
no unfrequent consequence.”
“Oh, ho!” groaned the doctor reflectively. “Then it counts for nothing.”
“Nothing,” said Miss Perfect in a low tone. “Winnie, get the table up
again.”
“Suppose, Ma’am, to avoid mistakes,” said the doctor, after reflection,
“suppose we put it upon it to express itself in language. Just ask it
what about Miss Dinah Perfect’s death.”
“I’ve no objection,” said Miss Perfect; and in the terms prescribed by
Dr. Drake the momentous question was put.
Hereupon the spelling commenced—
“A-D-J-O-U-R-N-E-D.”
“Postponed, put off, Ma’am!” said the doctor, expounding eagerly.
“I know; good Heaven! I understand,” answered Aunt Dinah faintly.
“Give her some water. _Here_, Ma’am,” said he, presenting a glass of
water at her pale lips. She sipped a little.
“Now we’ll ask, Ma’am, please, for how long?” suggested the doctor.
And this question likewise having been propounded, the table proceeded
once more to spell—
“S-I-N-E D-I-E.”
“It ends with _die_,” said my poor aunt, faintly.
“_Sine die_, Ma’am. It means indefinitely, Ma’am; your death is
postponed without a day named—for ever, Ma’am! It’s all over; and I’m
very happy it has ended so. What a marvellous thing, Ma’am—give her some
more water, please—those manifestations are. I hope, Ma’am, your mind is
quite relieved—perfectly, Ma’am.”
Miss Dinah Perfect was taken with a violent shivering, in which her very
teeth chattered. Then she cried, and then she laughed; and finally
Doctor Drake administered some of his ammonia and valerian, and she
became, at last, composed.
With audible thanksgivings old Winnie accompanied her mistress up stairs
to her room, where Aunt Dinah herself, who, notwithstanding her
necromancy, was a well-intending, pious Churchwoman, descended to her
knees at her bedside, and poured forth her gratitude for the reprieve,
and then in a loud and distinct voice read to old Winnie Dobbs the
twentieth chapter of the Second Book of Kings, in which we read how the
good king Hezekiah obtained by prayer ten years more of the light of
life.
Then old Winnie persuaded her to have a glass of very hot port
wine-negus, which agreed with her so well that she quickly fell asleep;
and never did poor lady need repose more, or drink deeper and more
tranquil draughts of that Lethe.
William Maubray was now wide awake, and he and the doctor, being a
little chilly, sat before the study fire.
“It’s jolly, isn’t it?” exclaimed William for the seventh time. “But
isn’t it all very odd, Sir, and very unaccountable—I—I think?”
“Very, very odd, to be sure,” said the doctor, poking the corner of a
lump of coal—“very, no doubt.”
“I wish I had been awake. I should like to see one of those things—those
_séances_. I had no idea there really was anything so coherent.”
“Very lucky for her,” replied the doctor, with a sly little wink to
William.
William looked inquiringly at the doctor, who smiled on the poker’s end,
and pushed the embers gently with it.
“You don’t believe in it, Sir—do you?” inquired William, puzzled.
“I? Well, I don’t know exactly what to say, you know. I put my foot in
it on Sunday last, when I told her I did not believe a bit of it; nor
more I _did_. Egad, you never saw a woman so angry, when I called it all
bosh. You’d better not vex her that way, my boy—d’ye see? She lent me
one of those wonderful queer books from America—very odd they are—and I
read it to please her. So, you see, that’s how we stand; very good
friends again.”
“And you are convinced it’s true?” urged William, who, like other young
men who sit up late, and read wild books, and drink strong coffee, was,
under the rose, addicted to the supernatural.
“Why, you see, as Shakespeare says, there are more bubbles between
heaven and earth than are dreamt of by the philosophers,” observed the
doctor with a little paraphrase. “I wish to live at peace with my
neighbours; and I’d advise you to think over this subject, old fellow,
and not to tease the old lady up stairs about it—that’s all.”
“I wish he’d speak out, and tell me what happened to-night, and tell me
his real opinion,” thought William Maubray. “I’ve read in some old
medical book,” he continued aloud, “that the vital electricity escapes
and diffuses itself at the finger-tips.”
“Oh, to be sure! All sorts of theories. The hand’s a very mysterious
organ. The hand of glory, you may be certain, was not altogether a
story. The electric light has been seen at the finger-tips in
consumptive cases in the dark; and a patient convulsed, or in a state of
extreme nervous exhaustion, will clench the hand so as to prevent the
escape of this influence at the finger-points, and then joining hands,
in love, you know, or friendship—and in fact it is, Sir, a very
mysterious organ; and I’m prepared to believe a great deal that’s
curious about its occult powers. Your aunt told you about the toad she
saw climb over her coverlet one night, and turn into a hand and grasp
her wrist.”
“No,” said William.
“Egad, she’s ready to swear to it. Last winter she was so frightened,
she was not fit to stand for a week after. She reads too much of those
books. Egad, Sir, she’ll turn her head, and that will be the end of it.
However, we’ve pulled her through this, and I hope she’ll give it up,
true or false. You see, there’s no good in it; and if she goes on,
sooner or later she’ll frighten herself out of her wits.”
“But that toad was a very curious idea,” said William. “What does she
make of it? Does she think it was a fancy only, or a real thing?”
“Pooh! A spirit of course. She calls it the key-spirit that unlocks the
spirit-world, you see; and from the time it touches you, you are in
rapport with the invisible world, and subject, as she says she is, to
their visitations, you see—ha, ha, ha!”
William laughed too.
“Last winter?” he said. “She never told me.”
“Pooh! All fancies,” observed the doctor. “Better she should not talk of
them. Those American people are all going mad. She’ll get touched in the
upper story if she does not mind.”
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