Chapter 7

"What do you want?" she asked again, without moving.

"Mr. Bott give me two tickets to his seance tonight,"--Sam called it "seeuns,"--"and I thought mebbe you'd like to go."

There was silence for a moment. Maud was thinking: "At any rate it will be better than to sit here alone and cry all the evening." So she said: "I'll come down in a minute." She heard Sam's heavy step descending the stairs, and thought what a different tread another person had; and she wondered whether she would ever "do better" than take Sam Sleeny; but she at once dismissed the thought. "I can't do that; I can't put my hand in a hand that smells so strong of sawdust as Sam's. But he is a good soul, and I am sorry for him, every time I look in the glass."

Looking in the glass, as usual, restored her good humor, and she started off to the ghostly rendezvous with her faithful attendant. They never talked very much when they were alone together, and this evening both were thoughtful. Maud had never taken this commerce with ghosts much to heart. She had a feeling, which she could hardly have defined, that it was a common and plebeian thing to believe in it, and if she ever heard it ridiculed she joined in the cry without mercy. But it was an excitement and an interest in a life so barren of both that she could not afford to throw it away. She had not intelligence enough to be disgusted or shocked by it. If pressed to explain the amount of her faith in the whole business, she would probably have said she thought "there was something in it," and stopped at that. In minds like hers, there is no clearly drawn line between the unusual and the supernatural. An apparent miracle pleased her as it would please a child, without setting her to find out how it was done. She would consult a wizard, taking the chances of his having occult sources of information, with the same irregular faith in the unlikely with which some ladies call in homoeopathic practitioners.

All the way to the rooms of Bott, she was revolving this thought in her mind: "Perhaps he could tell me something about Mr. Farnham. I don't think much of Bott; he has too many knuckles on his hands. I never saw a man with so many knuckles. I wouldn't mention Mr. Farnham to him to save his life, but I might get something out of him without telling him anything. He is certainly a very smart man, and whether it's spirits or not, he knows lots of things."

It was in this mood that she entered the little apartment where Bott held what he called his "Intermundane Seances." The room was small and stuffy. A simulacrum of a chest of drawers in one corner was really Bott's bed, where the seer reposed at night, and which, tilted up against the wall during the day, contained the rank bedclothes, long innocent of the wash-tub. There were a dozen or so of cane-bottom chairs, a little table for a lamp, but no other furniture. At one side of the room was a small closet without a door, but with a dark and dirty curtain hung before its aperture. Around it was a wooden railing, breast high.

A boy with a high forehead, and hair combed behind ears large and flaring like those of a rabbit, sat by the door, and took the tickets of invited guests and the half-dollars of the casuals. The seer received everybody with a nerveless shake of a clammy hand, showed them to seats, and exchanged a word or two about the weather, and the "conditions," favorable or otherwise, to spiritual activity. When he saw Maud and Sam his tallowy face flushed, in spots, with delight. He took them to the best places the room afforded, and stammered his pleasure that they had come.

"Oh! the pleasure is all ours," said Maud, who was always self-possessed when she saw men stammering. "It's a great privilege to get so near to the truth as you bring us, Mr. Bott."

The prophet had no answer ready; he merely flushed again in spots, and some new arrivals called him away.

The room was now pretty well filled with the unmistakable crowd which always attend such meetings. They were mostly artisans, of more intellectual ambition than their fellows, whose love of the marvellous was not held in control by any educated judgment. They had long, serious faces, and every man of them wore long hair and a soft hat. Their women were generally sad, broken-spirited drudges, to whom this kind of show was like an opera or a ball. There were two or three shame-faced believers of the better class, who scoffed a little but trembled in secret, and a few avowed skeptics, young clerks on a mild spree, ready for fun if any should present itself.

Bott stepped inside the railing by the closet, and placing his hands upon it, addressed the assembly. He did not know what peculiar shape the manifestations of the evening might take. They were in search of truth; all truth was good. They hoped for visitors from the unseen speers; he could promise nothing. In this very room the spirits of the departed had walked and talked with their friends; perhaps they might do it again; he knew not. How they mingled in the earth-life, he did not pretend to say; perhaps they materialized through the mejum; perhaps they dematerialized material from the audience which they rematerialized in visible forms; as to that, the opinion of another--he said with a spacious magnanimity--was as good as his. He would now request two of the audience to step up and tie him. One of the long-haired ruminant men stood up, and a young fellow, amid much nudging and giggling among the scorners, was also forced from his chair. They came forward, the believer with a business-like air, which showed practice, and the young skeptic blushing and ill at ease. Bott took a chair inside the curtain, and showed them how to tie him. They bound him hand and foot, the believer testified that the binding was solid, and the skeptic went to his seat, playfully stepping upon the toes of his scoffing friends. The curtain was lowered, and the lamp was turned down.

In a few moments, a scuffling sound was heard in the closet, and Bott's coat came flying out into the room. The believer pulled back the curtain, and Botts sat in his chair, his shirt sleeves gleaming white in the dust. His coat was laid over his shoulders, and almost as soon as the curtain was lowered he yelled for light, and was disclosed sitting tied as before, clothed in his right coat.

Again the curtain went down amid a sigh of satisfaction from the admiring audience, and a choking voice, which tried hard not to sound like Bott's, cried out from the closet: "Turn down the light; we want more power." The kerosene lamp was screwed down till hardly a spark illumined the visible darkness, and suddenly a fiery hand appeared at the aperture of the closet, slowly opening and shutting its long fingers.

A half dozen voices murmured: "A spirit hand"; but Sam Sleeny whispered to Maud: "Them are Bott's knuckles, for coin." The hand was withdrawn and a horrible face took its place--a pallid corpse-like mask, with lambent fire sporting on the narrow forehead and the high cheek-bones. It stayed only an instant, but Sam said, "That's the way Bott will look in----"

"Hush!" said Maud, who was growing too nervous to smile, for fear of laughing or crying.

A sound of sobbing came from a seat to the right of them. A poor woman had recognized the face as that of her husband, who had died in the army, and she was drawing the most baleful inferences from its fiery adjuncts.

A moment later, Bott came out of the closet, crouching so low that his head was hardly two feet from the ground. He had a sheet around his neck, covering his whole person, and a white cap over his head, concealing most of his face. In this constrained attitude he hopped about the clear space in front of the audience with a good deal of dexterity, talking baby-talk in a shrill falsetto. "Howdy, pappa! Howdy, mamma! Itty Tudie tum adin!"

A rough man and woman, between joy and grief, were half hysterical. They talked to the toad-like mountebank in the most endearing tones, evidently believing it was their dead baby toddling before them. Two or three times the same horrible imposture was repeated. Bott never made his appearance without somebody recognizing him as a dear departed friend. The glimmering light, the unwholesome excitement, the servile credulity fixed by long habit, seemed to produce a sort of passing dementia upon the regular habitues.

With these performances the first part came to an end. The light was turned on again, and the tying committee was requested to come forward and examine the cords with which Bott still seemed tightly bound. The skeptic remained scornfully in his seat, and so it was left for the believer to announce that not a cord had been touched. He then untied Bott, who came out from the closet, stretching his limbs as if glad to be free, and announced that there would be a short intermission for an interchange of views.

As he came toward Maud, Sam rose and said:

"Whew! he smells like a damp match. I'll go out and smoke a minute, and come back."

Bott dropped into the seat which Sleeny had left.

To one who has never attended one of these queer _cenacula_, it would be hard to comprehend the unhealthy and even nauseous character of the feeling and the conversation there prevalent. The usual decent restraints upon social intercourse seem removed. Subjects which the common consent of civilized creatures has banished from mixed society are freely opened and discussed. To people like the ordinary run of the believers in spiritism, the opera, the ballet, and the annual Zola are unknown, and they must take their excitements where they can find them. The dim light, the unhealthy commerce of fictitious ghosts, the unreality of act and sentiment, the unwonted abandon, form an atmosphere in which these second-hand mystics float away into a sphere where the morals and the manners are altogether different from those of their working days.

Miss Matchin had not usually joined in these morbid discussions. She was of too healthy an organization to be tempted by so rank a mental feast as that, and she had a sort of fierce maidenhood about her which revolted at such exposures of her own thought. But to-night she was sorely perplexed. She had been tormented by many fancies as she looked out of her window into the deepening shadows that covered the lake. The wonders she had seen in that room, though she did not receive them with entire faith, had somewhat shaken her nerves; and now the seer sat beside her, his pale eyes shining with his own audacity, his lank hair dripping with sweat, his hands uneasily rubbing together, his whole attitude expressive of perfect subjection to her will.

"Why isn't this a good chance?" she thought. "He is certainly a smart man. Horrid as he looks, he knows lots. May be he could tell me how to find out."

She began in her airiest manner: "Oh, Mr. Bott, what a wonderful gift you have got! How you must look down on us poor mortals!"

Bott grew spotted, and stammered:

"Far from it, Miss Matchin. I couldn't look down on you."

"Oh, you are flattering. That's not right, because I believe every word you say--and that ain't true."

She rattled recklessly on in the same light tone.

"I'm going to ask you something very particular. I don't know who can tell me, if you can't. How can a young lady find out whether a young gentleman is in love with her or not? Now, tell me the truth this time," she said with a nervous titter, "for it's very important."

This question from any one else would not have disconcerted Bott in the least. Queries as absurd had frequently been put to him in perfect good faith, and answered with ready and impudent ignorance. But, at those giggling words of Maud Matchin, he turned livid and purple, and his breath came heavily. There was room for but one thought in that narrow heart and brain. He had long cherished a rather cowardly fondness for Maud, and now that this question was put to him by the agitated girl, his vanity would not suffer him to imagine that any one but himself was the subject of her dreams. There was, to him, nothing especially out of the way in this sort of indirect proposal on the part of a young woman. It was entirely in keeping with the general tone of sentiment among the people of his circle, which aimed at nothing less than the emancipation of the world from its old-fashioned decencies.

But he would not answer hastily; he had a coward's caution. He looked a moment at the girl's brilliant color, her quick, high breathing, her eager eyes, with a gloating sense of his good luck. But he wanted her thoroughly committed. So he said, with an air in which there was already something offensively protecting:

"Well, Miss Matchin, that depends on the speer. If the affection be unilateral, it is one thing; if it be recippercal, it is another. The currents of soul works in different ways."

"But what I mean is, if a young lady likes a young gentleman pretty well, how is she going to find out for sure whether he likes her?" She went intrepidly through these words, though her cheeks were burning, and her eyes would fall in spite of her, and her head was singing.

There was no longer any doubt in Bott's mind. He was filled with an insolent triumph, and thought only of delaying as long as possible the love chase of which he imagined himself the object. He said, slowly and severely:

"The question is too imperious to be answered in haste. I will put myself in the hands of the sperruts, and answer it as they choose after the intermission."

He rose and bowed, and went to speak a word or two to his other visitors. Sam came back and took his seat by Maud, and said:

"I think the fun is about over. Less go home."

"Go home yourself, if you want to," was the petulant reply. "I am going to stay for the inspirational discourse."

"Oh, my!" said Sam. "That's a beautiful word. You don't know how pretty your mouth looks when you say that." Sam had had his beer, and was brave and good-natured.

Bott retired once more behind the railing, but took his seat in a chair outside the curtain, in full view of the audience. He sat for some minutes motionless, staring at vacancy. He then slowly closed his eyes, and a convulsive shudder ran through his frame. This was repeated at rapid intervals, with more or less violence. He next passed his hands alternately over his forehead, as if he were wiping it, and throwing some invisible, sticky substance, with a vicious snap, to right and left. At last, after a final shudder, which stiffened him into the image of death for a moment, he rose to his feet and, leaning on the railing, began to intone, in a dismal whine, a speech of which we need give only the opening words.

"Dear brothers and sisters of the earth-life! On pearly wings of gossamer-down we float down from our shining speers to bring you messages of the higher life. Let your earth-soul be lifted to meet our sperrut-soul; let your earth-heart blend in sweet accordion with our heaven-heart; that the beautiful and the true in this weary earth-life may receive the bammy influence of the Eden flowrets, and rise, through speers of disclosure, to the plane where all is beautiful and all is true."

He continued in this strain for some time, to the evident edification of his audience, who listened with the same conventional tolerance, the same trust that it is doing your neighbor good, with which the ordinary audience sits under an ordinary sermon. Maud, having a special reason for being alert, listened with a real interest. But during his speech proper he made no allusion to the subject on which she had asked for light. It was after he had finished his harangue, and had gone through an _entr'acte_ of sighs and shudders, that he announced himself once more in the hands of the higher intelligences, and ready to answer questions. "It does not need," he whined, "the word of the month or the speech of the tongue to tell the sperruts what your souls desire. The burden of your soul is open to the sperrut-eye. There sits in this room a pure and lovely soul in quest of light. Its query is, How does heart meet heart in mutual knowledge?"

Maud's cheek grew pale and then red, and her heart beat violently. But no one noticed her, and the seer went on. "If a true heart longs for another, there is no rest but in knowledge, there is no knowledge but in trewth, there is no trewth but in trust. Oh, my brother, if you love a female, tell your love. Oh, my sister, if you love--hum--if you love--hum--an individual of the opposite sex--oh, tell your love!--Down with the shams of a false-hearted society; down with the chains of silence that crushes your soul to the dust! If the object of your hearts' throbs is noble, he will respond. Love claims love. Love has a right to love. If he is base, go to a worthier one. But from your brave and fiery heart a light will kindle his, and dual flames will wrap two chosen natures in high-menial melodies, when once the revelating word is spoke."

With these words he subsided into a deep trance, which lasted till the faithful grew tired of waiting, and shuffled slowly out of the door. When the last guest had gone, he rose from his chair, with no pretence of spiritual dignity, and counted his money and his tickets. He stretched himself in two chairs, drew his fingers admiringly through his lank locks, while a fatuous grin of perfect content spread over his face, as he said aloud to himself, "She has got it bad. I wonder whether she will have the nerve to ask me. I'll wait awhile, anyhow. I'll lose nothing by waiting."

Meanwhile, Maud was walking rapidly home with Sam. She was excited and perplexed, and did not care to answer Sam's rather heavy pleasantries over the evening's performance. He ridiculed the spirit-lights, the voices, and the jugglery, without provoking a reply, and at last he said:

"Well, what do you think of his advising the girls to pop? This ain't leap year!"

"What of that?" she answered, hastily. "I don't see why a girl hasn't as good a right to speak her mind as a man."

"Why, Mattie," said Sam, with slow surprise, "no decent girl would do that."

They had come to Matchin's gate. She slipped in, then turned and said:

"Well, don't be frightened, Mr. Sleeny; I'm not going to propose to you," and she was gone from his sight.

She went directly to her room, and walked up and down a few moments without taking off her hat, moving with the easy grace and the suppressed passion of an imprisoned panther. Then she lighted her lamp and placed it on her bureau at one side of her glass. She searched in her closet and found a candle, which she lighted and placed on the other side of the glass. She undressed with reckless haste, throwing her clothes about on the floor, and sat down before her mirror with bare arms and shoulders, and nervously loosened her hair, watching every movement with blazing eyes. The thick masses of her blue-black curls fell down her back and over her sloping shoulders, which glowed with the creamy light of old ivory. The unequal rays of the lamp and candle made singular effects of shadow on the handsome face, the floating hair, and the strong and wholesome color of her neck and arms. She gazed at herself with eager eyes and parted lips, in an anxiety too great to be assuaged by her girlish pride in her own beauty. "This is all very well," she said, "but he will not see me this way. Oh! if I only dared to speak first. I wonder if it would be as the spirits said. 'If he is noble he will respond!' He _is_ noble, that's sure. 'Love claims love,' they said. But I don't know as I love him. I _would_, if that would fetch him, quick enough;" and the hot blood came surging up, covering neck and brow with crimson.

VIII.

A BUD AND A BLOSSOM.

Farnham was sitting the next evening in his library, when Budsey entered and said Mr. Ferguson desired to see him. The gaunt Scotchman came in and said with feverish haste: "The cereus grandiflorus will be goin' to bloom the night. The buds are tremblin' and laborin' now." Farnham put on his hat and went to the conservatory, which was separated from the house by the entire extent of the garden. Arriving there, the gardener took him hurriedly to an inner room, dimly lighted,--a small square piece between the ferns and the grapes,--where the regal flower had a wall to itself. Two or three garden chairs were disposed about the room. Ferguson mounted on one of them, and turned up the gas so that its full light shone upon the plant. The bud was a very large one, perfect and symmetrical; the strong sheath, of a rich and even brown, as yet showed only a few fissures of its surface, but even now a faint odor stole from the travailing sphere, as from a cracked box of alabaster filled with perfume.

The face of the canny Fergus was lighted up with an eager joy. He had watched the growth and progress of this plant from its infancy. He had leaned above its cradle and taken pride in its size and beauty. He had trained it over the wall--from which he had banished every rival--in large and graceful curves, reaching from the door of the fernery to the door of the grapery, till it looked, in the usual half light of the dim chamber, like a well-regulated serpent maturing its designs upon the neighboring paradise; and now the time was come when he was to see the fruit of his patience and his care.

"Heaven be thankit," he murmured devoutly, "that I was to the fore when it came."

"I thank you, Fergus, for calling me," said Farnham, smiling. "I know it must have cost you an effort to divide such a sight with any one."

"It's your siller bought it," the Scotchman answered sturdily; "but there's nobody knows it, or cares for it, as I do,--and that's the truth."

His glance was fixed upon the bud, which seemed to throb and stir as he spoke. The soft explosive force within was at work so strongly that the eye could watch its operation. The fissures of the sheath widened visibly and turned white as the two men looked at them.

"It is a shame to watch this beautiful thing happening for only us," Farnham said to the gardener. "Go and tell Mrs. Belding, with my compliments, and ask her and Miss Belding to come down." But observing his crestfallen expression, he took compassion on him and said: "No, you had better remain, for fear something should happen in your absence. I will go for the ladies."

"I hope ye'll not miss it," said Fergus, but his eyes and his heart were fixed upon the bud, which was slowly gaping apart, showing a faint tinge of gold in its heart.

Farnham walked rapidly up the garden, and found the Beldings at the door, starting for evening service with their prayer-books in their hands.

"Do you wish to see the prettiest thing you ever saw in your lives? of course I except your mirrors when in action," he began, without salutation. "If so, come this moment to my conservatory. My night-blooming cereus has her coming-out party tonight."

They both exclaimed with delight, and were walking with him toward the garden. Suddenly, Mrs. Belding stopped and said:

"Alice, run and get your sketch-book and pencil. It will be lovely to draw the flower."

"Why, mamma! we shall not have time for a sketch."

"There, there! do as I tell you, and do not waste time in disputing."

The young girl hesitated a moment, and then, with instinctive obedience, went off to fetch the drawing materials, while her mother said to Farnham:

"Madame de Veaudrey says Alice is very clever with her pencil; but she is so modest I shall have to be severe with her to make her do anything. She takes after me. I was very clever in my lessons, but never would admit it."