Two mornings after, Ricardo, whilst on his way to his professional
duties, met Mrs. Battleby on the staircase, with a very stiff lip.
“May I make so bold as to ask, Sig-nor,” she commenced, “’ow long the
Doctor means to be a’curing Hannah Stubbs?”
Ricardo stopped short, looking much like a school boy detected in some
forbidden pleasure.
“_How long?_” he stammered. “Really, Mrs. Battleby, that is a strange
question to put to me! How should I know? I am not a medical man, and
if I were, it is a thing on which I should find it impossible to speak
with certainty. A long time, Doctor Steinberg anticipates, I suppose,
since he offered to pay you for the investigation by the week. Surely,
you are not tired of your agreement already.”
“I didn’t say so, Sig-nor,” replied the landlady, with the same stiff
manner, “but Hannah Stubbs, she is a very young girl, placed under my
charge, as you may say, by ’er mother, and I think it is only proper
as I should know what sort of physic it is, as Doctor Steinberg is
a’treating ’er with!”
The Professor actually trembled. Had this woman obtained any knowledge
of their proceedings, and was she about to draw back from her bargain,
and forbid the girl visiting them any more?
“What a very strange lady you are!” he answered (Mrs. Battleby would
have flown in his face, had he called her a “woman”). “I know nothing
of medicines. How can I say if it be one thing or another? You must
ask the Doctor! But it seems to have done Hannah good already. You
should be satisfied with that!”
“Perhaps I should be, if I were sure of it,” said Mrs. Battleby
oracularly, “but I ain’t sure. I was kep’ up late last night, and she
was sayin’ some very queer things in ’er sleep, as I didn’t quite
like! You gentlemen must be keerful what you do with a young gal like
Hannah, for she ain’t too strong in ’er ’ead, as any one can see.”
“Of course we will be--we are, very careful,” replied Ricardo, as he
shuffled down the stairs as quickly as he could.
This unexpected interview with his landlady kept haunting him all day.
Whilst he was attempting to instil the liquid Italian accents into the
ear of the high-born, but dull Lady Alethea De Ruben, his thoughts
were wandering back to Soho, and he was speculating what Mrs. Battleby
meant by her sudden interest in Hannah Stubbs, and whether she
intended to make a fuss about the girl visiting two men by herself, or
to try and strike a higher bargain for her services.
Ricardo felt as if he were prepared to pay any price within his means,
sooner than part with Hannah Stubbs, before she had fulfilled his
dearest wishes, by bringing his dead wife back to him. Better a crust
of dry bread and a glass of water, he thought, than to lose the
knowledge which seemed just within his grasp. To know Leonora pure and
good, and that after years of purgatory he might be reunited to a
faithful wife--or to have the stain of innocent blood lifted from his
brow--the mark of Cain wiped out for ever! One of these two things it
must be, and he thirsted to ascertain which! He was so self-absorbed
and _distrait_, that even Lady Alethea perceived the difference in her
tutor and asked him kindly if he were ill.
“O! nothing! nothing! only a slight headache, dear Lady Alethea,” he
murmured, as he made a violent effort to collect his wandering
thoughts, and fix them on the Italian grammar.
On his way home that evening, he called for Karl Steinberg, and asked
him to walk back with him, whilst he confided his fears and asked what
steps they should take, to prevent such a calamity as the loss of
Hannah’s services.
“It merely means,” replied the Doctor, “more money. Mrs. Battleby has
perceived the satisfaction we feel in Hannah’s society, and judges
wisely, that it does not all proceed from giving her medicine! My
friend! these women are too sharp for us! Their brains are very light,
but they make up for that deficiency by the cunning of the lower
animals. After all, when you come to consider it, why should we
interest ourselves because a maid-of-all-work is anæmic, hysterical?
Had we not better make a clean breast of it at once, and tell the good
woman what we do with Hannah during her evenings with us?”
“Not for the world,” cried the Professor, hastily, “the more ignorant
the mind, the more opposed it is to anything it cannot understand! We
should not only lose Mrs. Battleby’s patronage (if I may call her
concession by such a name), but Hannah’s also. For she would, of
course, tell the girl everything, and she would refuse to sit with us
any more.”
“I see!” replied Steinberg, thoughtfully, “then my advice is to take
no notice whatever of Mrs. Battleby’s hints, which were probably only
thrown out in order to make you betray yourself. She is curious, my
dear friend--all women are--she fancies there must be something more
going on than the curative process, and thought to bully you into
telling her what it is. Keep your own counsel! She may suspect, but so
long as the door of your inner chamber is kept locked, she cannot find
out!”
“How I wish I was rich enough to hire this girl as my own servant,”
observed Ricardo, “and defy Mrs. Battleby, or leave her lodgings
altogether! Then I would take a little house of my own, and people
might say what they liked!”
“And what they liked would be, to spread a pretty tale of scandal
about you and this country girl. I, too, wish that I were rich enough
to settle her down in rooms of her own, where we could visit her at
stated periods, and hold our séances, but it is impossible! I can
only manage to support myself--much less another person. Attached to
the Hospital as I am, I have my lodgings free, but I fear my salary as
House surgeon would not go very far in an establishment of my own.”
“Never mind, Steinberg! We will not anticipate evil, but do as well as
we can with the means before us! This is our séance evening! From the
progress we have already made, I anticipate great things to-night.”
They hastened their steps as he spoke, and in a short time, they found
themselves once more closeted with Hannah Stubbs.
Mrs. Battleby was evidently very curious on that occasion, and very
unwilling to leave them alone. She brought up the tea-tray herself,
and took it down again, and insisted upon conducting Hannah to their
presence--a thing she had never done before.
“’Ere is Hannah, gentlemen,” she commenced, as she shouldered the
red-cheeked maid into the room, “I’ve bin a’arsking ’er what the
physic as the Doctor gives ’er tastes like, and she can’t remember
nothink about it, but says as ’ow it allays makes ’er go to sleep,
which seems very cur’ous to me.”
Steinberg having been in a measure prepared for an onslaught of this
kind, had primed himself with a list of names, unintelligible to the
landlady.
“Hannah is perfectly right, Mrs. Battleby,” he said, gravely. “In
order to cure the very unusual form of hysteria to which she is
subject, I am compelled to treat her with Ilex aquifolium, Conium
maculatum, and Æthusa cynapium, which drugs, though most valuable in
themselves, always have the effect of producing a quiescent state in
the patient, after which they are unable to recall what has passed.
But I trust--more, I am sure--that my treatment will eventually dispel
her symptoms. But ‘Rome was not built in a day,’ Mrs. Battleby, as
doubtless you know well, and I warn you that to effect a complete cure
in this case, will take some time. That is why I proposed to recoup
you for the loss of her services.”
“O! yes, Sir, I understand perfectly well,” replied Mrs. Battleby,
looking round the room the while, as though she would spy out the
truth of the Doctor’s specious argument. “But in course as I am sure
neither of you gentlemen won’t forget Hannah, she’s but a child as you
may say, and knows nothink of the world, and I ’opes you will be very
careful of ’er!”
“Of course, of course! You could not trust her to better hands than
those of my friend Doctor Steinberg,” said the Professor, as the
landlady was at last persuaded to leave them to themselves.
“By Jove!” exclaimed Steinberg in French, “I do believe the old woman
imagines we intend to seduce this poor child! Heavens! what an idea!
With all the beautiful women you see in Town, to fancy one ever
bestowing a thought in that way upon this ungainly, uncouth girl! Your
landlady is not so cute in this as in most things, Ricardo!”
“I only hope she may not prove to be _too_ cute,” replied his friend,
“I fear she smells a rat, as the English say--that is, that she has a
strong suspicion what we are about, and if that is so, she will put a
stop to it.”
Their colloquy was interrupted by seeing Hannah suddenly leave her
seat and going to the séance chamber, pass in to the darkness beyond,
without a word, closing the door after her.
“Why! what is she about, now? This is quite a new departure,”
exclaimed the Doctor, “shall we follow her, or remain here?”
“I think we had better remain here, and lower the gas,” said Ricardo,
“perhaps James will tell us what to do. Fancy! Hannah going into that
dark room of her own accord! She has refused even to look into it
before!”
“She did not go of her own accord,” replied the Spirit Voice, “I sent
her. Lower the gas more. Leave only a glimmer! That’s right! Now open
the séance room door a little, and take your seats at the further end
of the room and wait! Some one is coming to see you to-night!”
The two men did as was desired of them, whilst the Professor was
putting up an inward prayer that the “some one” who was coming, might
prove to be Leonora.
“No! it isn’t,” answered the Voice, which now appeared to proceed from
the dark chamber which they thenceforth called the “cabinet”--“don’t
you be in such a hurry to see Leonora, Professor! You’ll have more
than enough of her, when she does come. It is not any one whom you
know, as far as I am aware, but it is not the medium. Mind that!”
And then the Voice ceased, and for half an hour all was silence. Then
Steinberg, nudging the Professor, whispered,
“What is that?”
Ricardo glanced towards the cabinet, and perceived a faint filmy
figure standing beside the half-opened door.
“Can it be James?” he whispered back again. They were too much awed to
speak aloud.
The figure shook its head.
“Who are you? Cannot you come nearer to us? Cannot you give us your
name?” urged Steinberg, and in his anxiety to learn more, he left his
seat and approached the cabinet. The figure instantly disappeared.
“Forgive me!” he said, as he rejoined his friend, “I have stupidly
been the means of that figure disappearing. I ought not to have left
my chair, but my curiosity got the better of me. I hope it will come
again.”
A few minutes’ patience was rewarded by the same apparition standing
in the doorway, and holding out, as it seemed, its hand toward the
Doctor.
Steinberg, not daring to move again, stared through his glasses at the
outstretched arm, and then sinking suddenly towards the Professor, he
leant heavily upon his shoulder, and exclaimed,
“My God! It is Mrs. Carlile!”
“And who is Mrs. Carlile?” asked Ricardo, who had never heard the name
before.
“A patient and friend of mine! She had her hand amputated--I performed
the operation under chloroform--and she never recovered from the
anæsthetic. Look! don’t you see her arm is without a hand! Good
Heavens! I never thought I should feel a thing like this! Have you any
brandy? Can you get it? I feel as though I should faint!”
The figure had retreated again by this time and Ricardo procured
Steinberg what he asked for. As soon as he had drunk the stimulant,
his courage returned.
“Come back!” he cried, “dear Mrs. Carlile, my poor friend, come back
and assure me of your forgiveness! Tell me that you know it was an
accident due to the chloroform. It made me so unhappy! I did not sleep
for weeks afterwards, thinking you might attribute your untimely death
to my negligence. Poor girl! It was a crushing blow to me at the
time.”
The figure appeared for the third time, and waved its left hand and
nodded its head, and the Professor declared he distinctly saw it
smile. As for the Doctor, he was too prostrate for the moment to see
anything.
They waited for some time after that, in hopes that the spirit of Mrs.
Carlile might return, but all was darkness. At last, just as they were
thinking of breaking up the séance, a white-robed form again made its
appearance on the threshold of the cabinet.
“Mrs. Carlile!” cried the Doctor, in a fervent voice, “speak to me!
Convince me of Immortality, and your forgiveness at one and the same
time.”
But there was no response. The spirit, whoever it might be, could not
speak, but the head was turned towards the Professor.
“Perhaps she could communicate better with you than with me!” said
Steinberg. “Speak to her, Ricardo, ask her to give me some
unmistakable token of her friendship and belief!”
“Do not be afraid of us!” commenced Ricardo, in his gentle voice. “If
you are Mrs. Carlile, give my friend here some sign that you have
forgiven the past!”
“That you are reconciled to your cruel fate,” interposed the Doctor,
“that you did not mourn too much at leaving your husband and your
infant children--that you know now that all things are ordered for the
best and by a Wiser Law than ours.”
But the figure kept its head turned in the direction of the Professor.
At last, as though with a violent effort, it pronounced the word
“Paolo” and immediately disappeared. Ricardo sank on his knees in an
attitude of prayer.
“Leonora!” he cried, “Leonora! I have found you at last.”
Steinberg was about to address him, when they were startled by a
sudden and violent knocking at the outer door.
“Who is that?” asked Steinberg, whilst he whispered to his friend,
“Calm yourself, Ricardo. Some one is asking for admittance. What is to
be done?”
The Professor started to his feet.
“They cannot--shall not--come in,” he exclaimed. “It is an outrage! I
gave strict orders that we were never to be disturbed. Tell them so,
Steinberg! And at such a moment, too!” he added, as he wiped the beads
of sweat from his brow.
“Who is it? What do you want?” demanded the Doctor, of the intruder.
“It’s me, Sir,” replied the voice of Mrs. Battleby, “which there’s a
lady downstairs as wants to see Hannah Stubbs most particular! Will
you please to open the door, Sir?”
“No! Mrs. Battleby, I cannot! The lady must call another time! My
patient is asleep from the effects of the medicine I have given her,
and I cannot have her awakened. It might be dangerous!”
“I won’t waken her, Sir, if you’ll kindly let me have a look at her,
so as I may tell the lady as I see her asleep with my own eyes!”
“You must tell her so on my authority,” replied Steinberg, “I cannot
have Hannah disturbed on any account!”
“What! not when I, as is her own mother’s friend, ask to look at her
for a moment as she is asleep. Well! all I can say, Sir, is that I
never ’eard tell of sich a thing--not in my borned days--and I can’t
believe as any gentleman as calls ’isself sich, would keep a pore gal
from ’er friends, when they arsks to see ’er.”
“If the lady is a lady, she will not wish the girl to run the risk of
danger from being roused, as your loud talking is likely to do now,”
replied Steinberg, angrily, “and if you do not go away, or hold your
tongue, Mrs. Battleby, and any harm comes to my patient from your
intrusion, I shall report your behaviour to the Hospital authorities.
How do you suppose I can administer such drugs as Colium maculatum and
Æthusa cynapium, if the patient is to be disturbed whilst under their
influence. If Hannah Stubbs dies from your violence I will have you
indicted for man-slaughter.”
“Lawk-a-me!” exclaimed the landlady, as she stumbled down the stairs
again, “that would be a pretty thing to bring against Martha Battleby,
as never hurted a wurrum in ’er life! But I believe as you’re capable
of that, or any other villainy,” she continued, as she reached the
kitchen again.
Needless to say that the lady, who was so desirous of interviewing
Hannah Stubbs, existed in her brain only, and that her sudden
irruption upon the “foreign gents” as she sometimes designated Ricardo
and his friend, had been induced solely from her intense curiosity to
find out what these nightly visitations on the part of her “slavey”
meant.
“Which I don’t believe, Mrs. Blamey,” she confided to her crony, “as
it’s for the purpuss of curing that gal of her highstrikes, not if you
was to tell me ever so! They’ve got some designs on the pore gal, mark
my words! I never did think much of foreigners, for they’re a wicious,
immoral lot, as ’ow could you expect anythink else from a nation as
lives on frogs and sour wine. Not but what I ’olds the Sig-nor to be a
quiet, and respectable gentleman,--least-ways ’e ’ave been so
’itherto, but that there German doctor with ’is long ’air, and his
glasses, is enough to demoralise the best man living. We hadn’t
nothink of these evenin’s alone with gals on pertence of curin’ their
illnesses, before ’e came. The Sig-nor, ’e allays was a Mystery, and
I’ve said as much before,--but a gentleman as is a Mystery with ’is
books and ’is larning, is a very different thing from a gentleman as
is a Mystery with gals. Hannah Stubbs, she’s hignorant and hidle, but
she ain’t no more hill than you or me! We all ’ave our crosses in this
life, Mrs. Blamey, but we don’t go and sit alone with gents to cure
’em, and I don’t like it, and that’s the fact!”
“And I don’t blame you for one, Mrs. Battleby, ma’am,” replied her
friend, “I never did like secret ways and never shall. Where there’s
secrets and mysteries, I says, there’s summat wrong. And how you could
have stood being locked out of your own room for so long, beats me!
It’s a puffect insult to a lady of your position, the mistress of her
own ’ouse, and left a widder with an independency, and though I’m only
an ’umble and down-trodden wife, _I_ wouldn’t have stood it, not if I
entered under their very eyes!”
“But it was a sort of agreement-like, Mrs. Blamey, as the Sig-nor was
to ’ave them three rooms to ’isself, and open or shut, they’re ’is.
And ’ow could I enter when he keeps the key in ’is pocket, night and
day.”
“And ain’t there no other keys in the ’ouse as would fit that room,
Mrs. Battleby, ma’am?” insinuated Mrs. Blamey. “Couldn’t you try
anyways, or get another key fitted whilst the gentleman is hout, and
so look into it without his knowing nothink about it.”
“Well, so I could, to be sure!” exclaimed the other, “but I never
thought of trying yet. But it seems to me a plain duty, Mrs. Blamey,
to find out what they’re going to do with that there pore gal! Why!
’oo knows? that Doctor might be Jack the Ripper--which many said ’e
was a doctor--and going to cut up Hannah into bits. And whatever
should I say to ’er mother, which was my friend when we was little
gals together, if her daughter disappeared under my roof and wasn’t
never ’eard of again?”
“It is your dooty, Mrs. Battleby, there’s no doubt of that, and if so
be you’re afeared to enter the room by yourself, why, I’ll go with you
as soon as look at you.”
“Bless you, Mrs. Blamey, I ain’t afeared, no more than of a black
beadle, but now you’ve put it straight afore me, I will find out what
them two is a’doing with that gal, as sure as my name’s Martha
Battleby! You never know what men are, till you find them out, and
though these look so respectable and dull, they may be villains for
all that. Keep a gal in the dark, indeed, and give ’er summat to make
’er go to sleep--I’ve ’eard summat like that afore, Mrs. Blamey, and
no good come of it! So if there ain’t a key in the ’ouse as will fit
that door, I’ll ’ave one made, afore I’m a day older. Good-night, and
if I discovers any of their willainies, you’ll be the first to ’ear of
it, you may depend on that!”
Consequently, as soon as the Professor had departed on his round of
teaching the following morning, Mrs. Battleby sent Hannah on an
errand, and commenced her tour of inspection. As was to be expected, a
common house had common locks to the doors, and she soon found that
the key of her own bedroom proved an “Open Sesame” to the séance
chamber.
On her first view of the interior, Mrs. Battleby screamed aloud, so
gloomy and funereal was its aspect. But when she had somewhat
recovered her nerve, its appearance inspired her with but one
notion----all this want of light and air meant the Devil, and nothing
else! They were practising Sorcery in this mysterious little chamber,
and had dragged the poor gal, with her dancing tables and chairs, and
her “shadders” and “woices” into it, with themselves. And yet, after
all, the landlady was not sufficiently sure to feel brave enough to
accuse her lodger of mal-practices. So she resolved to wait for the
next opportunity, and find out what she could for herself. She had the
resolution to hold her tongue about her intentions--not only to the
Professor, but to Hannah and her next-door neighbour, and when the
Signor’s door had been locked upon the succeeding séance, Mrs.
Battleby knelt outside in the darkness, with her ear applied to the
keyhole.