Spiritualism, and all things pertaining to it, swept over Riseholme
like the amazing growth of some tropical forest, germinating and
shooting out its surprising vegetation, and rearing into huge fantastic
shapes. In the centre of this wonderful jungle was a temple, so to
speak, and that temple was the house of Mrs Quantock....
A strange Providence was the origin of it all. Mrs Quantock, a week
before, had the toothache, and being no longer in the fold of Christian
Science, found that it was no good at all to tell herself that it was a
false claim. False claim it might be, but it was so plausible at once
that it quite deceived her, and she went up to London to have its
falsity demonstrated by a dentist. Since the collapse of Yoga and the
flight of the curry-cook, she had embarked on no mystical adventure,
and she starved for some new fad. Then when her first visit to the
dentist was over (the tooth required three treatments) and she went to
a vegetarian restaurant to see if there was anything enlightening to be
got out of that, she was delighted to find herself sitting at a very
small table with a very communicative lady who ate cabbages in
perfectly incredible quantities. She had a round pale face like the
moon behind the clouds, enormous eyebrows that almost met over her
nose, and a strange low voice, of husky tone, and a pronunciation quite
as foreign as Signor Cortese's. She wore some very curious rings with
large engraved amethysts and turquoises in them, and since in the first
moments of their conversation she had volunteered the information that
vegetarianism was the only possible diet for any who were cultivating
their psychical powers, Mrs Quantock asked her if these weird
finger-ornaments had any mystical signification. They had; one was
Gnostic, one was Rosicrucian, and the other was Cabalistic.... It is
easy to picture Mrs Quantock's delight; adventure had met her with
smiling mouth and mysterious eyes. In the course of an animated
conversation of half an hour, the lady explained that if Mrs Quantock
was, like her, a searcher after psychical truths, and cared to come to
her flat at half-past four that afternoon, she would try to help her.
She added with some little diffidence that the fee for a seance was a
guinea, and, as she left, took a card out of a case, encrusted with
glowing rubies, and gave it her. That was the Princess Popoffski.
Now here was a curious thing. For the last few evenings at Riseholme,
Mrs Quantock had been experimenting with a table, and found that it
creaked and tilted and tapped in the most encouraging way when she and
Robert laid their hands on it. Then something--whatever it was that
moved the table--had indicated by raps that her name was Daisy and his
Robert, as well as giving them other information, which could not so
easily be verified. Robert had grown quite excited about it, and was
vexed that the seances were interrupted by his wife's expedition to
London. But now how providential that was. She had walked straight from
the dentist into the arms of Princess Popoffski.
It was barely half-past four when Mrs Quantock arrived at the
Princess's flat, in a pleasant quiet side street off Charing Cross
Road. A small dapper little gentleman received her, who explained that
he was the Princess's secretary, and conducted her through several
small rooms into the presence of the Sybil. These rooms, so Mrs
Quantock thrillingly noticed, were dimly lit by oil lamps that stood in
front of shrines containing images of the great spiritual guides from
Moses down to Madame Blavatski, a smell of incense hung about, there
were vases of flowers on the tables, and strange caskets set with
winking stones. In the last of these rooms the Princess was seated, and
for the moment Mrs Quantock hardly recognised her, for she wore a
blue robe, which left her massive arms bare, and up them writhed
serpent-shaped bracelets of many coils. She fixed her eyes on Mrs
Quantock, as if she had never seen her before, and made no sign of
recognition.
"The Princess has been meditating," said the secretary in a whisper.
"She'll come to herself presently."
For a moment meditation unpleasantly reminded Mrs Quantock of the Guru,
but nothing could have been less like that ill-starred curry-cook than
this majestic creature. Eventually she gave a great sigh and came out
of her meditation.
"Ah, it is my friend," she said. "Do you know that you have a purple
halo?"
This was very gratifying, especially when it was explained that only
the most elect had purple halos, and soon other elect souls assembled
for the seance. In the centre of the table was placed a musical box and
a violin, and hardly had the circle been made, and the lights turned
down, when the most extraordinary things began to happen. A perfect
storm of rappings issued from the table, which began to rock violently,
and presently there came peals of laughter in a high voice, and those
who had been here before said that it was Pocky. He was a dear naughty
boy, so Mrs Quantock's neighbour explained to her, so full of fun, and
when on earth had been a Hungarian violinist. Still invisible, Pocky
wished them all much laughter and joy, and then suddenly said "'Ullo,
'ullo, 'ere's a new friend. I like her," and Mrs Quantock's neighbour,
with a touch of envy in her voice, told her that Pocky clearly meant
her. Then Pocky said that they had been having heavenly music on the
other side that day, and that if the new friend would say "Please" he
would play them some of it.
So Mrs Quantock, trembling with emotion, said "Please, Pocky," and
instantly he began to play on the violin the spirit tune which he had
just been playing on the other side. After that, the violin clattered
back onto the middle of the table again, and Pocky, blowing showers of
kisses to them all, went away amid peals of happy laughter.
Silence fell, and then a deep bass voice said, "I am coming, Amadeo!"
and out of the middle of the table appeared a faint luminousness. It
grew upwards and began to take form. Swathes of white muslin shaped
themselves in the darkness, and there appeared a white face, in among
the topmost folds of the muslin, with a Roman nose and a melancholy
expression. He was not gay like Pocky, but he was intensely impressive,
and spoke some lines in Italian, when asked to repeat a piece of Dante.
Mrs Quantock knew they were Italian, because she recognised "notte" and
"uno" and "caro," familiar words on Lucia's lips.
The seance came to an end, and Mrs Quantock having placed a guinea with
the utmost alacrity in a sort of offertory plate which the Princess's
secretary negligently but prominently put down on a table in one of the
other rooms, waited to arrange for another seance. But most
unfortunately the Princess was leaving town next day on a much needed
holiday, for she had been giving three seances a day for the last two
months and required rest.
"Yes, we're off tomorrow, the Princess and I," said he, "for a week at
the Royal Hotel at Brinton. Pleasant bracing air, always sets her up.
But after that she'll be back in town. Do you know that part of the
country?"
Daisy could hardly believe her ears.
"Brinton?" she said. "I live close to Brinton."
Her whole scheme flashed completely upon her, even as Athene sprang
full-grown from the brain of Zeus.
"Do you think that she might be induced to spend a few days with me at
Riseholme?" she said. "My husband and I are so much interested in
psychical things. You would be our guest, too, I hope. If she rested
for a few days at Brinton first? If she came on to me afterwards? And
then if she was thoroughly rested, perhaps she would give us a seance
or two. I don't know--"
Mrs Quantock felt a great diffidence in speaking of guineas in the same
sentence with Princesses, and had to make another start.
"If she were thoroughly rested," she said, "and if a little circle
perhaps of four, at the usual price would be worth her while. Just
after dinner, you know, and nothing else to do all day but rest. There
are pretty drives and beautiful air. All very quiet, and I think I may
say more comfortable than the hotel. It would be such a pleasure."
Mrs Quantock heard the clinking of bracelets from the room where the
Princess was still reposing, and there she stood in the door, looking
unspeakably majestic, but very gracious. So Mrs Quantock put her
proposition before her, the secretary coming to the rescue on the
subject of the usual fees, and when two days afterwards Mrs Quantock
returned to Riseholme, it was to get ready the spare room and Robert's
room next to it for these thrilling visitors, whose first seance
Georgie and Piggy had attended, on the evening of the Italian
debacle....
The Quantocks had taken a high and magnificent line about the "usual
fees" for the seances, an expensive line, but then Roumanian oils had
been extremely prosperous lately. No mention whatever of these fees was
made to their guests, no offertory-plate was put in a prominent
position in the hall, there was no fumbling for change or the discreet
pressure of coins into the secretary's hand; the entire cost was borne
by Roumanian oils. The Princess and Mrs Quantock, apparently, were old
friends; they spoke to each other at dinner as "dear friend," and the
Princess declared in the most gratifying way that they had been most
intimate in a previous incarnation, without any allusion to the fact
that in this incarnation they had met for the first time last week at a
vegetarian restaurant. She was kind enough, it was left to be
understood, to give a little seance after dinner at the house of her
"dear friend," and so, publicly, the question of money never came up.
Now the Princess was to stay three nights, and therefore, as soon as
Mrs Quantock had made sure of that, she proceeded to fill up each of
the seances without asking Lucia to any of them. It was not that she
had not fully forgiven her for her odious grabbing of the Guru, for she
had done that on the night of the Spanish quartette; it was rather that
she meant to make sure that there would by no possibility be anything
to forgive concerning her conduct with regard to the Princess. Lucia
could not grab her and so call Daisy's powers of forgiveness into play
again, if she never came near her, and Daisy meant to take proper
precautions that she should not come near her. Accordingly Georgie and
Piggy were asked to the first seance (if it did not go very well, it
would not particularly matter with them), Olga and Mr Shuttleworth were
bidden to the second, and Lady Ambermere with Georgie again to the
third. This--quite apart from the immense interest of psychic
phenomena--was deadly work, for it would be bitter indeed to Lucia to
know, as she most undoubtedly would, that Lady Ambermere, who had cut
her so firmly, was dining twice and coming to a seance. Daisy, it must
again be repeated, had quite forgiven Lucia about the Guru, but Lucia
must take the consequences of what she had done.
It was after the first seance that the frenzy for spiritualism seized
Riseholme. The Princess with great good-nature, gave some further
exhibitions of her psychical power in addition to the seances, and even
as Georgie the next afternoon was receiving Lucia's cruel verdict about
Debussy, the Sybil was looking at the hands of Colonel Boucher and Mrs
Weston, and unerringly probing into their past, and lifting the corner
of the veil, giving them both glimpses into the future. She knew that
the two were engaged for that she had learned from Mrs Quantock in her
morning's drive, and did not attempt to conceal the fact, but how could
it be accounted for that looking impressively from the one to the
other, she said that a woman no longer young but tall, and with fair
hair had crossed their lives and had been connected with one of them
for years past? It was impossible to describe Elizabeth more accurately
than that, and Mrs Weston in high excitement confessed that her maid
who had been with her for fifteen years entirely corresponded with what
the Princess had seen in her hand. After that it took only a moment's
further scrutiny for the Princess to discover that Elizabeth was going
to be happy too. Then she found that there was a man connected with
Elizabeth, and Colonel Boucher's hand, to which she transferred her
gaze, trembled with delightful anticipation. She seemed to see a man
there; she was not quite sure, but was there a man who perhaps had been
known to him for a long time? There was. And then by degrees the
affairs of Elizabeth and Atkinson were unerringly unravelled. It was
little wonder that the Colonel pushed Mrs Weston's bath-chair with
record speed to "Ye signe of ye daffodil," and by the greatest good
luck obtained a copy of the "Palmist's Manual."
At another of these informal seances attended by Goosie and Mrs
Antrobus, even stranger things had happened, for the Princess's hands,
as they held a little preliminary conversation, began to tremble and
twitch even more strongly than Colonel Boucher's, and Mrs Quantock
hastily supplied her with a pencil and a quantity of sheets of foolscap
paper, for this trembling and twitching implied that Reschia, an
ancient Egyptian priestess, was longing to use the Princess's hand for
automatic writing. After a few wild scrawls and plunges with the
pencil, the Princess, though she still continued to talk to them,
covered sheet after sheet in large flowing handwriting. This, when it
was finished and the Princess sunk back in her chair, proved to be the
most wonderful spiritual discourse, describing the happiness and
harmony which pervaded the whole universe, and was only temporarily
obscured by the mists of materiality. These mists were wholly withdrawn
from the vision of those who had passed over. They lived in the midst
of song and flowers and light and love.... Towards the end there was a
less intelligible passage about fire from the clouds. It was rendered
completely intelligible the very next day when there was a
thunderstorm, surely an unusual occurrence in November. If that had not
happened Mrs Quantock's interpretation of it, as referring to
Zeppelins, would have been found equally satisfactory. It was no wonder
after that, that Mrs Antrobus, Piggy and Goosie spent long evenings
with pencils and paper, for the Princess said that everybody had the
gift of automatic writing, if they would only take pains and patience
to develop it. Everybody had his own particular guide, and it was the
very next day that Piggy obtained a script clearly signed Annabel
Nicostratus and Jamifleg followed very soon after for her mother and
sister, and so there was no jealousy.
But the crown and apex of these manifestations was undoubtedly the
three regular seances which took place to the three select circles
after dinner. Musical boxes resounded, violins gave forth ravishing
airs, the sitters were touched by unseen fingers when everybody's hands
were touching all around the table, and from the middle of it
materialisations swathed in muslin were built up. Pocky came, visible
to the eye, and played spirit music. Amadeo, melancholy and impressive,
recited Dante, and Cardinal Newman, not visible to the eye but audible
to the ear, joined in the singing "Lead, Kindly Light," which the
secretary requested them to encourage him with, and blessed them
profusely at the conclusion. Lady Ambermere was so much impressed, and
so nervous of driving home alone, that she insisted on Georgie's going
back to the Hall with her, and consigning her person to Pug and Miss
Lyall, and for the three days of the Princess's visit, there was
practically no subject discussed at the parliaments on the Green,
except the latest manifestations. Olga went to town for a crystal, and
Georgie for a planchette, and Riseholme temporarily became a
spiritualistic republic, with the Princess as priestess and Mrs
Quantock as President.
Lucia, all this time, was almost insane with pique and jealousy, for
she sat in vain waiting for an invitation to come to a seance, and
would, long before the three days were over, have welcomed with
enthusiasm a place at one of the inferior and informal exhibitions.
Since she could not procure the Princess for dinner, she asked Daisy to
bring her to lunch or tea or at any hour day or night which was
convenient. She made Peppino hang about opposite Daisy's house, with
orders to drop his stick, or let his hat blow off, if he saw even the
secretary coming out of the gate, so as possibly to enter into
conversation with him, while she positively forced herself one morning
into Daisy's hall, and cried "Margarita" in silvery tones. On this
occasion Margarita came out of the drawing-room with a most determined
expression on her face, and shut the door carefully behind her.
"Dearest Lucia," she said, "how nice to see you! What is it?"
"I just popped in for a chat," said she. "I haven't set eyes on you
since the evening of the Spanish quartette."
"No! So long ago as that is it? Well, you must come in again sometime
very soon, won't you? The day after tomorrow I shall be much less busy.
Promise to look in then."
"You have a visitor with you, have you not?" asked Lucia desperately.
"Yes! Two, indeed, dear friends of mine. But I am afraid you would not
like them. I know your opinion about anything connected with
spiritualism, and--isn't it silly of us?--we've been dabbling in that."
"Oh, but how interesting," said Lucia. "I--I am always ready to learn,
and alter my opinions if I am wrong."
Mrs Quantock did not move from in front of the drawing-room door.
"Yes?" she said. "Then we will have a great talk about it, when you
come to see me the day after tomorrow. But I know I shall find you hard
to convince."
She kissed the tips of her fingers in a manner so hopelessly final that
there was nothing to do but go away.
Then with poor generalship, Lucia altered her tactics, and went up to
the Village Green where Piggy was telling Georgie about the script
signed Annabel. This was repeated again for Lucia's benefit.
"Wasn't it too lovely?" said Piggy. "So Annabel's my guide, and she
writes a hand quite unlike mine."
Lucia gave a little scream, and put her fingers to her ears.
"Gracious me!" she said. "What has come over Riseholme? Wherever I go I
hear nothing but talk of seances, and spirits, and automatic writing.
Such a pack of nonsense, my dear Piggy. I wonder at a sensible girl
like you."
Mrs Weston, propelled by the Colonel, whirled up in her bath-chair.
"'The Palmist's Manual' is too wonderful," she said, "and Jacob and I
sat up over it till I don't know what hour. There's a break in his line
of life, just at the right place, when he was so ill in Egypt, which is
most remarkable, and when Tommy Luton brought round my bath-chair this
morning--I had it at the garden-door, because the gravel's just laid at
my front-door, and the wheels sink so far into it--'Tommy,' I said,
'let me look at your hand a moment,' and there on his line of fate, was
the little cross that means bereavement. It came just right didn't it,
Jacob? when he was thirteen, for he's fourteen this year, and Mrs Luton
died just a year ago. Of course I didn't tell Tommy that, for I only
told him to wash his hands, but it was most curious. And has your
planchette come yet, Mr Georgie? I shall be most anxious to know what
it writes, so if you've got an evening free any night soon just come
round for a bit of dinner, and we'll make an evening of it, with table
turning and planchette and palmistry. Now tell me all about the seance
the first night. I wish I could have been present at a real seance, but
of course Mrs Quantock can't find room for everybody, and I'm sure it
was most kind of her to let the Colonel and me come in yesterday
afternoon. We were thrilled with it, and who knows but that the
Princess didn't write the Palmist's Manual for on the title page it
says it's by P. and that might be Popoffski as easily as not, or
perhaps Princess."
This allusion to there not being room for everybody was agony to Lucia.
She laughed in her most silvery manner.
"Or, perhaps Peppino," she said. "I must ask _mio caro_ if he
wrote it. Or does it stand for Pillson? Georgino, are you the author of
the Palmist's Manual? Ecco! I believe it was you."
This was not quite wise, for no one detested irony more than Mrs
Weston, or was sharper to detect it. Lucia should never have been
ironical just then, nor indeed have dropped into Italian.
"No" she said. "I'm sure it was neither Il Signer Peppino nor Il Signer
Pillson who wrote it. I believe it was the Principessa. So, ecco! And
did we not have a delicious evening at Miss Bracely's the other night?
Such lovely singing, and so interesting to learn that Signor Cortese
made it all up. And those lovely words, for though I didn't understand
much of them, they sounded so exquisite. And fancy Miss Bracely talking
Italian so beautifully when we none of us knew she talked it at all."
Mrs Weston's amiable face was crimson with suppressed emotion, of which
these few words were only the most insignificant leakage, and a very
awkward pause succeeded which was luckily broken by everybody beginning
to talk again very fast and brightly. Then Mrs Weston's chair scudded
away; Piggy skipped away to the stocks where Goosie was sitting with a
large sheet of foolscap, in case her hand twitched for automatic
script, and Lucia turned to Georgie, who alone was left.
"Poor Daisy!" she said. "I dropped in just now, and really I found her
very odd and strange. What with her crazes for Christian Science, and
Uric Acid and Gurus and Mediums, one wonders if she is quite sane. So
sad! I should be dreadfully sorry if she had some mental collapse; that
sort of thing is always so painful. But I know of a first-rate place
for rest-cures; I think it would be wise if I just casually dropped the
name of it to Mr Robert, in case. And this last craze seems so terribly
infectious. Fancy Mrs Weston dabbling in palmistry! It is too comical,
but I hope I did not hurt her feelings by suggesting that Peppino or
you wrote the Manual. It is dangerous to make little jokes to poor Mrs
Weston."
Georgie quite agreed with that, but did not think it necessary to say
in what sense he agreed with it. Every day now Lucia was pouring floods
of light on a quite new side of her character, which had been
undeveloped, like the print from some photographic plate lying in the
dark so long as she was undisputed mistress of Riseholme. But, so it
struck him now, since the advent of Olga, she had taken up a critical
ironical standpoint, which previously she had reserved for Londoners.
At every turn she had to criticise and condemn where once she would
only have praised. So few months ago, there had been that marvellous
Hightum garden party, when Olga had sung long after Lady Ambermere had
gone away. That was her garden party; the splendour and success of it
had been hers, and no one had been allowed to forget that until Olga
came back again. But the moment that happened, and Olga began to sing
on her own account (which after all, so Georgie thought, she had a
perfect right to do), the whole aspect of affairs was changed. She
romped, and Riseholme did not like romps; she sang in church, and that
was theatrical; she gave a party with the Spanish quartette, and
Brinton was publicly credited with the performance. Then had come Mrs
Quantock and her Princess, and, lo, it would be kind to remember the
name of an establishment for rest-cures, in the hope of saving poor
Daisy's sanity. Again Colonel Boucher and Mrs Weston were intending to
get married, and consulted a Palmist's Manual, so they too helped to
develop as with acid the print that had lain so long in the dark.
"Poor thing!" said Lucia, "it is dreadful to have no sense of humour,
and I'm sure I hope that Colonel Boucher will thoroughly understand
that she has none before he speaks the fatal words. But then he has
none either, and I have often noticed that two people without any sense
of humour find each other most witty and amusing. A sense of humour, I
expect, is not a very common gift; Miss Bracely has none at all, for I
do not call romping humour. As for poor Daisy, what can rival her
solemnity in sitting night after night round a table with someone who
may or may not be a Russian princess--Russia of course is a very large
place, and one does not know how many princesses there may be
there--and thrilling over a pot of luminous paint and a false nose and
calling it Amadeo the friend of Dante."
This was too much for Georgie.
"But you asked Mrs Quantock and the Princess to dine with you," he
said, "and hoped there would be a seance afterwards. You wouldn't have
done that, if you thought it was only a false nose and a pot of
luminous paint."
"I may have been impulsive," said Lucia speaking very rapidly. "I
daresay I'm impulsive, and if my impulses lie in the direction of
extending such poor hospitality as I can offer to my friends, and their
friends, I am not ashamed of them. Far otherwise. But when I see and
observe the awful effect of this so-called spiritualism on people whom
I should have thought sensible and well-balanced--I do not include poor
dear Daisy among them--then I am only thankful that my impulses did not
happen to lead me into countenancing such piffle, as your sister so
truly observed about POOR Daisy's Guru."
They had come opposite Georgie's house, and suddenly his drawing-room
window was thrown up. Olga's head looked out.
"Don't have a fit, Georgie, to find me here" she said. "Good morning,
Mrs Lucas; you were behind the mulberry, and I didn't see you. But
something's happened to my kitchen range, and I can't have lunch at
home. Do give me some. I've brought my crystal, and we'll gaze and
gaze. I can see nothing at present except my own nose and the window.
Are you psychical, Mrs Lucas?"
This was the last straw; all Lucia's grievances had been flocking
together like swallows for their flight, and to crown all came this
open annexation of Georgie. There was Olga, sitting in his window, all
unasked, and demanding lunch, with her silly ridiculous crystal in her
hand, wondering if Lucia was psychical.
Her silvery laugh was a little shrill. It started a full tone above its
normal pitch.
"No, dear Miss Bracely," she said. "I am afraid I am much too
commonplace and matter-of-fact to care about such things. It is a
great loss I know, and deprives me of the pleasant society of Russian
princesses. But we are all made differently; that is very lucky. I must
get home, Georgie."
It certainly seemed very lucky that everyone was not precisely like
Lucia at that moment, or there would have been quarrelling.
She walked quickly off, and Georgie entered his house. Lucia had really
been remarkably rude, and, if allusion was made to it, he was ready to
confess that she seemed a little worried. Friendship would allow that,
and candour demanded it. But no allusion of any sort was made. There
was a certain flush on Olga's face, and she explained that she had been
sitting over the fire.
The Princess's visit came to an end next day, and all the world knew
that she was going back to London by the 11.00 a.m. express. Lady
Ambermere was quite aware of it, and drove in with Pug and Miss Lyall,
meaning to give her a lift to the station, leaving Mrs Quantock, if she
wanted to see her guest off, to follow with the Princess's luggage in
the fly which, no doubt, had been ordered. But Daisy had no intention
of permitting this sort of thing, and drove calmly away with her dear
friend in Georgie's motor, leaving the baffled Lady Ambermere to follow
or not as she liked. She did like, though not much, and found herself
on the platform among a perfect crowd of Riseholmites who had strolled
down to the station on this lovely morning to see if parcels had come.
Lady Ambermere took very little notice of them, but managed that Pug
should give his paw to the Princess as she took her seat, and waved her
hand to Mrs Quantock's dear friend, as the train slid out of the
station.
"The late lord had some Russian relations," she said majestically. "How
did you get to know her?"
"I met her at Potsdam" was on the tip of Mrs Quantock's tongue, but she
was afraid that Lady Ambermere might not understand, and ask her when
she had been to Potsdam. It was grievous work making jokes for Lady
Ambermere.
The train sped on to London, and the Princess opened the envelope which
her hostess had discreetly put in her hand, and found that _that_
was all right. Her hostess had also provided her with an admirable
lunch, which her secretary took out of a Gladstone bag. When that was
finished, she wanted her cigarettes, and as she looked for these, and
even after she had found them, she continued to search for something
else. There was the musical box there, and some curious pieces of
elastic, and the violin was in its case, and there was a white mask.
But she still continued to search....
About the same time as she gave up the search, Mrs Quantock wandered
upstairs to the Princess's room. A less highly vitalised nature than
hers would have been in a stupor of content, but she was more in a
frenzy of content than in a stupor. How fine that frenzy was may be
judged from the fact that perhaps the smallest ingredient in it was her
utter defeat of Lucia. She cared comparatively little for that glorious
achievement, and she was not sure that when the Princess came back
again, as she had arranged to do on her next holiday, she would not ask
Lucia to come to a seance. Indeed she had little but pity for the
vanquished, so great were the spoils. Never had Riseholme risen to such
a pitch of enthusiasm, and with good cause had it done so now, for of
all the wonderful and exciting things that had ever happened there,
these seances were the most delirious. And better even than the
excitement of Riseholme was the cause of its excitement, for
spiritualism and the truth of inexplicable psychic phenomena had
flashed upon them all. Tableaux, romps, Yoga, the Moonlight Sonata,
Shakespeare, Christian Science, Olga herself, Uric Acid, Elizabethan
furniture, the engagement of Colonel Boucher and Mrs Weston, all these
tremendous topics had paled like fire in the sunlight before the
revelation that had now dawned. By practice and patience, by zealous
concentration on crystals and palms, by the waiting for automatic
script to develop, you attained to the highest mysteries, and could
evoke Cardinal Newman, or Pocky....
There was the bed in which the Sybil had slept; there was the fresh
vase of flowers, difficult to procure in November, but still
obtainable, which she loved to have standing near her. There was the
chest of drawers in which she had put her clothes, and Mrs Quantock
pulled them open one by one, finding fresh emanations and vibrations
everywhere. The lowest one stuck a little, and she had to use force to
it....
The smile was struck from her face, as it flew open. Inside it were
billows and billows of the finest possible muslin. Fold after fold of
it she drew out, and with it there came a pair of false eyebrows. She
recognised them at once as being Amadeo's. The muslin belonged to Pocky
as well.
She needed but a moment's concentrated thought, and in swift succession
rejected two courses of action that suggested themselves. The first was
to use the muslin herself; it would make summer garments for years. The
chief reason against that was that she was a little old for muslin. The
second course was to send the whole paraphernalia back to her dear
friend, with or without a comment. But that would be tantamount to a
direct accusation of fraud. Never any more, if she did that, could she
dispense her dear friend to Riseholme like an expensive drug. She would
not so utterly burn her boats. There remained only one other judicious
course of action, and she got to work.
It had been a cold morning, clear and frosty, and she had caused a good
fire to be lit in the Princess's bedroom, for her to dress by. It still
prospered in the grate, and Mrs Quantock, having shut the door and
locked it, put on to it the false eyebrows, which, as they turned to
ash, flew up the chimney. Then she fed it with muslin; yards and yards
of muslin she poured on to it; never had there been so much muslin nor
that so exquisitely fine. It went to her heart to burn it, but there
was no time for minor considerations; every atom of that evidence must
be purged by fire. The Princess would certainly not write and say that
she had left some eyebrows and a hundred yards of muslin behind her,
for, knowing what she did, it would be to her interests as well as Mrs
Quantock's that those properties should vanish, as if they never had
been.
Up the chimney in sheets of flame went this delightful fabric;
sometimes it roared there, as if it had set the chimney on fire, and
she had to pause, shielding her scorched face, until the hollow
rumbling had died down. But at last the holocaust was over, and she
unlocked the door again. No one knew but she, and no one should ever
know. The Guru had turned out to be a curry-cook, but no intruding
Hermy had been here this time. As long as crystals fascinated and
automatic writing flourished, the secret of the muslin and the eyebrows
should repose in one bosom alone. Riseholme had been electrified by
spiritualism, and, even now, the seances had been cheap at the price,
and in spite of this discovery, she felt by no means sure that she
would not ask the Princess to come again and minister to their
spiritual needs.
She had hardly got downstairs when Robert came in from the Green, where
he had been recounting the experiences of the last seance.
"Looked as if there was a chimney on fire," he said. "I wish it was the
kitchen chimney. Then perhaps the beef mightn't be so raw as it was
yesterday."
Thus is comedy intertwined with tragedy!