After a little, with nothing apparently following, the girl's expectancy
faded; her expression grew petulant once more, and she drew sharply away
from McGeorge, exactly as if he had forced a kiss on her and she was
insulted by the indignity. Lord! he thought, with an inward sinking,
what she'll do to me now will be enough!
He rose uneasily and walked to the mantel, where he stood with his back
to Jannie, looking down absently at the fringed gray asbestos of a gas
hearth. An overwhelming oppression crept over him when there was a
sudden cold sensation at the base of his neck, and a terrific blow fell
across his shoulders.
McGeorge wheeled instinctively, with an arm up, when he was smothered in
a rain of stinging, vindictive battering. The blows came from all about
him, a furious attack against which he was powerless to do anything but
endeavor to protect his head. No visible person, he said solemnly, was
near him. Jannie was at the other side of the room.
"Did you see her clearly while this was going on?" I asked.
Oh, yes, he assured me sarcastically; he had as well glanced at his
diary to make sure of the date. He then had the effrontery to inform me
that he had been beaten by Mr. Meeker's cane without human agency. He
had seen it whirling about him in the air. McGeorge made up his mind
that the hour of his death had arrived. A fog of pain settled on him,
and he gave up all effort of resistance, sinking to his knees, aware of
the salt taste of blood. But just at the edge of unconsciousness the
assault stopped.
After a few moments he rose giddily, with his ears humming and his ribs
a solid ache. The cane lay in the middle of the room, and Jannie stood,
still across the parlor, with her hands pressed to scarlet cheeks, her
eyes shining, and her breast heaving in gasps.
"Why not after such a violent exercise?"
McGeorge ignored my practical comment.
"She was delighted," he said; "she ran over to me and, throwing her arms
about my neck, kissed me hard. She exclaimed that I had helped Jannie
when everything else had failed, and she wouldn't forget it. Then she
rushed away, and I heard her falling up-stairs in her high-heeled
slippers."
Naturally he had half collapsed into a chair, and fought to supply his
laboring lungs with enough oxygen. It's an unpleasant experience to be
thoroughly beaten with a heavy cane under any condition, and this, he
was convinced, was special.
I asked if he was familiar with Havelock Ellis on hysterical impulses,
and he replied impatiently that he wasn't.
"There are two explanations," I admitted impartially, "although we each
think there is but one. I will agree that yours is more entertaining.
Jannie was jealous again. The Roman orgies, the young person from the
_grands boulevards_, were more than she could accept; and she tried, in
the vocabulary lately so prevalent, a reprisal. But I must acknowledge
that I am surprised at the persistent masculine flexibility of Stepan."
"It was at the next sitting," McGeorge concluded, "that Stepan
announced the wedding of Ena and me. The spirits awaited it. There was a
row in the Meeker circle; but he dissolved, and refused to materialize
in any form until it was accomplished."
"To the music of the spheres," I added, with some attempt at ordinary
decency.