HIS FIRST CALL
Dear Mr. Blake (read the letter): It was nice to get your note and to know that you are back in town so soon. Of course you must come to see me. I want Aunt Paula to know that all the complimentary things I have said about you are true. We are never at home in the conventional sense—but I hope Wednesday evening will do.
Cordially,
ANNETTE MARKHAM.
He had greeted this little note with all the private follies of lovers. Now for the hundredth time, he studied it for significances, signs, pretty intimacies; and he found positively nothing about it which he did not like. True, he failed to extract any important information from the name of the stationer, which he found under the flap of the envelope; but on the other hand the paper itself distinctly pleased him. It was note-size and of a thick, unfeminine quality. He approved of the writing—small, fine, legible, without trace of seminary affectation. And his spirits actually rose when he observed that it bore no coat-of-arms—not even a monogram.
At last, with more flourishes of folly, he put the note away in his desk and inspected himself in the glass. To the credit of his modesty, he was thinking not of his white tie—fifth that he had ruined in the process of dressing—nor yet of the set of his coat. He was thinking of Mrs. Paula Markham and the impression which these gauds and graces might make upon her.
"What do you suppose she's like?" he asked inaudibly of the correct vision in the glass.
He had exhausted all the possibilities—a fat, pretentious medium whom Annette's mind transformed by the alchemy of old affection into a presentable personage; a masculine and severe old woman with the "spook" look in her eyes; a fluttering, affectedprecieuse, concealing her quackery by chatter. Gradually as he thought on her, the second of these hypotheses came to govern—he saw her as the severe and masculine type. This being so, what tack should she take?
The correct vision in the glass vouchsafed no answer to this. His mood persisted as his taxicab whirled him into the region which borders the western edge of Central Park. The thing assumed the proportions of a great adventure. No old preparation for battle, no old packings to break into the unknown dark, had ever given him quite such a sense of the high, free airs where romance blows. He was going on a mere conventional call; but he was going also to high and thrilling possibilities.
The house was like a thousand other houses of the prosperous middle class, distinguishable only by minor differences of doors and steps and area rails, from twenty others on the same block. He found himself making mystery even of this. Separate houses in New York require incomes.
"Evidently it pays to deal in spooks," he said to himself.
His first glimpse of the interior, his subsequent study of the drawing-room while the maid carried in his name, made more vivid this impression. The taste of the whole thing was evident; but the apartment had besides a special flavor. He searched for the elements which gave that impression. It was not the old walnut furniture, ample, huge, upholstered in a wine-colored velours which had faded just enough to take off the curse; it was not the three or four passable old paintings. The real cause came first to him upon the contemplation of a wonderful Buddhist priest-robe which adorned the wall just where the drawing-room met the curtains of the little rear alcove-library. The difference lay in the ornaments—Oriental, mostly East Indian and, all his experience told him, got by intimate association with the Orientals. That robe, that hanging lantern, those chased swords, that gem of a carved Buddha—they came not from the seaports nor from the shops for tourists. Whoever collected them knew the East and its peoples by intimate living. They appeared like presents, not purchases—unless they were loot.
And now—his thumping heart flashed the signal—the delicate feminine flutter that meant Annette, was sounding in the hall. And now at the entrance stood Annette in a white dress, her neck showing a faint rim of tan above her girlish decolletage; Annette smiling rather formally as though this conventional passage after their unconventional meeting and acquaintance sat in embarrassment on her spirits; Annette saying in that vibrant boyish contralto which came always as a surprise out of her exquisite whiteness:
"How do you do, Dr. Blake—you are back in the city rather earlier than you expected, aren't you?"
He was conscious of shock, emotional and professional—emotional that they had not taken up their relation exactly where they left it off—professional because of her appearance. Not only was she pale and just a little drawn of facial line, but that indefinable look of one "called" was on her again.
All this he gathered as he made voluble explanation—the attendance at the sanitorium had fallen off with the approach of autumn—they really needed no assistant to the resident physician—he thought it best to hurry his search for an opening in New York before the winter should set in. Then, put at his ease by his own volubility, and remembering that it is a lover's policy to hold the advantage gained at the last battle, he added:
"And of course you may guess another reason."
This she parried with a woman-of-the-world air, quite different from her old childlike frankness.
"The theatrical season, I suppose. It opens earlier every year."
He pursued that line no further. She took up the reins of the conversation and drove it along smooth but barren paths. "It's nice that you could come to-night. Looking for a practice must make so many calls on your time. I shouldn't have been surprised not to see you at all this winter. No one seems able to spare much time for acquaintances in New York."
"Not at all," he said, ruffling a little within, "I shall find plenty of time for myfriendsthis winter." Deliberately he emphasized the word. "I hope nothing has happened to change our—friendship. Or does Berkeley Center seem primitive and far away?"
For the first time that quality which he was calling in his mind her "society shell" seemed to melt away from her. She had kept her eyelids half closed; now they opened full.
"I am living on the memory of it," she said.
Here was his opening. A thousand incoherences rushed to his lips—and stopped there. For another change came over her. Those lids, like curtains drawn by stealth over what must not be revealed, sank half-way over her eyes. An impalpable stiffening ran over her figure. She became as a flower done in glass.
Simultaneously, an uneasiness as definite as a shadow, fell across his spirit. He became conscious of a presence behind him. Involuntarily he turned.
A woman was standing in the doorway leading to the hall.
An instant she looked at Blake and an instant he looked at her. What she gained from her scrutiny showed in no change of expression. What he gained showed only in a quick flutter of the eyelids. He had, in fact, taken an impression of mental power as startling as a sudden blow in the face. She had a magnificent physique, preserved splendidly into the very heart of middle age; yet her foot had made no sound in her approach. Her black velvet draperies trailed heavy on the floor, yet they produced not the ghost of a rustle. Jet-black hair coiled in ropes, yet wisped white above the temples; light gray eyes, full and soft, yet with a steady look of power—all this came in the process of rising, of stepping forward to clasp a warm hand which lingered just long enough, in hearing Annette say in tones suddenly dead of their boyish energy:
"Aunt Paula, let me introduce Dr. Blake." With one ample motion, Mrs. Markham seated herself. She turned her light eyes upon him. He had a subconscious impression of standing before two searchlights.
HE HAD TAKEN AN IMPRESSION OF MENTAL POWER AS STARTLING AS A SUDDEN BLOW IN THE FACE
HE HAD TAKEN AN IMPRESSION OF MENTAL POWER AS STARTLING AS A SUDDEN BLOW IN THE FACE
"My niece has told me much about Dr. Blake," she said in a voice which, like Annette's, showed every intonation of culture; "I can't thank you enough for being kind to my little girl. So good in you to bother about her when"—Aunt Paula gave the effect of faltering, but her smile was peculiarly gracious—"when there were no other men nearer her own age."
Curiously, there floated into Blake's mind the remark which Annette made that first day on the train—"I should think you were about twenty-eight—and that, according to 'Peter Ibbertson,' is about the nicest age." Well, Annette at least regarded him as a contemporary! He found himself laughing with perfect composure—"Yes, that's the trouble with these quiet country towns. There neverareany interesting young men."
"True," Mrs. Markham agreed, "although it makes slight difference in Annette's case. She is so little interested in men. It really worries me at times. But it's quite true, is it not so, dear?"
Mrs. Markham had kept her remarkable eyes on Dr. Blake. And Annette, as though the conversation failed to interest her, had fallen into a position of extreme lassitude, her elbow on the table, her cheek resting on her hand.
At her aunt's question, she seemed to rouse herself a little. "What is it that's quite true, Auntie?" she asked.
Mrs. Markham transferred her light-gray gaze to her niece's face. "I was saying," she repeated, speaking distinctly as one does for a child, "that you are very little interested in men."
"It is perfectly true," Annette answered.
Mrs. Markham laughed a purring laugh, strangely at variance with her size and type. "You'll find this an Adam-less Eden, Dr. Blake. I'll have to confess that I too am not especially interested in men."
This thrust did not catch Dr. Blake unawares. He laughed a laugh which rang as true as Mrs. Markham's. He even ventured on a humorous monologue in which he accused his sex of every possible failing, ending with a triumphant eulogy of the other half of creation. But Mrs. Markham, though she listened with outward civility, appeared to take all his jibes seriously—miscomprehended him purposely, he thought.
Whereupon, he turned to the lady's own affairs.
"Miss Markham told me something about your stay in India. I've never been there yet. But of course no seasoned orientalist has any idea of dying without seeing India. I gathered from Miss Markham that you had some unusual experiences."
"It's the dear child's enthusiasm," Mrs. Markham said. And it came to Blake at once that she was a little irritated. "I assure you we did not stir out of the conventional tourist route." Then came a few minutes about the beauties of the Taj by moonlight.
Blake listened politely. "Your loot is all so interesting," he said, when she had finished. "Do tell me how you got it? Have you ever noticed what bully travelers' tales you get out of adventures in bargaining? Or better—looting? Those Johnnies who came out of Pekin—I mean the allied armies—tell some stories that are wonders."
"That is true generally," Mrs. Markham agreed. "But I must confess that I did nothing more wonderful than to walk up to one of the bazaars and buy everything that I wanted."
"That," Dr. Blake said mentally, "is a lie."
Almost as if Annette had heard his thought—were answering it—she spoke for the first time with something of the old resiliency in her tone. "Auntie, do tell Dr. Blake about some of your adventures with those wonderful Yogis, and that fascinating rajah who was so kind to us."
"The Yogis!" commented Dr. Blake to himself; "Ha, ha, and ho, ho! I bet you learned a bag of tricks there, madam."
"Why, Annette, dear." Mrs. Markham laughed her purring laugh—that laugh could grow, Dr. Blake discovered, until it achieved a singularly unpleasant quality. "Your romantic ideas are running away with you. Whenever we arrived anywhere, of course, like anybody else, I called at Government House and the authorities there always put me in the way of seeing whatever sights the neighborhood afforded. I met one rajah in passing and visited one Yogi monastery. Do tell me about the Philippines!" Annette settled back into her appearance of weariness.
Dr. Blake complied.
He had intended to stay an hour at this first formal call. He had hoped to be led on, by gentle feminine wiles, to add another hour. He had even dreamed that Aunt Paula might be so impressed by him as to hold him until midnight. As a matter of fact, he left the house just thirty-five minutes after he entered. Just why he retreated so early in the engagement, he had only the vaguest idea. Even fresh from it as he was, he could not enumerate the small stings, the myriad minor goads, by which it became established in his mind that his call was not a success, that he was boring the two ladies whom he was trying so hard to entertain. At the end, it was a labored dialogue between him and Mrs. Markham. Again and again, he tried to drag Annette into the conversation. She was tongue-tied. The best she did was to give him the impression that, deep down in her tired psychology, she was trying to listen. As for Aunt Paula—if his gaze wandered from her to Annette and then back, he caught her stifling a yawn. Her final shot was to interrupt his best story a hair's breadth ahead of the point. When he said good-night, his manner—he flattered himself—betrayed nothing of his sense of defeat. But no fellow pedestrian, observing the savage vigor of his swift walk homeward, could have held any doubt as to his state of mind.
THE LIGHT WAVERS
As Blake drove the runabout north through the fine autumn morning, he perceived suddenly that his subconscious mind was playing him a trick. He had started out to get light, air, easement of his soul among woods and fields. And now, instead of turning into Central Park at Columbus Circle, he was following Upper Broadway, where, in order to reach the great out-of-doors, he must dodge trucks and cabs between miles of hotels and apartment houses. In fact, he had been manoeuvering, half-unconsciously, so that he might turn into the park at the Eighty-Sixth Street entrance and so pass that most important of all dwellings in Manhattan, the house where Annette Markham lived. Any irritation which he had felt against her, after the unpleasant evening before, was lost in his greater irritation with her aunt. Annette appeared to him, now, as the prize, the reward, of a battle in which Mrs. Paula Markham was his antagonist.
As he turned the corner into her street, ten years rolled away from him; he dreamed the childish, impossible dreams of a very youth. She might be coming down the steps as he passed. Fate might even send a drunkard or an obstreperous cabman for him to thrash in her service. But when he reached the house, nothing happened. The front door remained firmly shut; no open window gave a delicious glimpse of Annette. After his machine had gone ahead to such position that he could no longer scan the house without impolite craning of his neck, he found that his breath was coming fast. Awakened from his dream, a little ashamed of it, he opened the control and shot his machine ahead to the violation of all speed laws. He was crossing Central Park West, and the smooth opening of the park driveway was before him, when he looked up and saw—Annette.
Her honey-colored hair, glistening dull in the autumn sunshine, identified her even before he caught her characteristic walk—graceful and fast enough, but a little languid, too. She was dressed in a plain tailor suit, a turban, low, heavy shoes.
He slowed down the automobile to a crawl, that he might enter the park after her. A boyish embarrassment smote him; if he drove up and spoke to her, it would look premeditated. So he hesitated between two courses, knowing well which he would pursue in the end. As he entered the park, still a dozen yards behind her, he saw that the footpath which she was following branched out from the automobile drive. Within a few paces, she would disappear behind a hydrangea bush. On that perception, he gave all speed to his machine, shot alongside and stopped.
Even before he reached her, she had turned and faced him. He fancied that the smile of recognition on her face had started even before she began to turn; she did not appear surprised, only pleased. Beating around in his mind for a graceful word of introduction, he accomplished an abrupt and ungraceful one.
"Will you ride?" he asked.
"With pleasure," she responded simply, and in one light motion she was in the seat beside him. He turned at low speed north, and as his hands moved over wheels and levers, she was asking:
"How did you happen to be here?"
He put a bold front on it.
"I drove past your home, by instinct, because I was coming north. And I saw you. Which of your spirits"—he was bold enough for the moment to make light of her sacred places—"sent you out-of-doors just before I passed?"
"The spirit of the night before," she answered, passing from smiles to gravity. "That long sleep without rest has been troubling me again. I remembered how exercise set me up in the country, and I started out for a little air. Aunt Paula is out this morning—something about the plumbing. Dear Auntie, how I'd love to take those cares off her shoulders. She'll never let me, though. And next week our housekeeper, whom we've held for two years, is leaving; she must advertise and receive applicants—and likely get the wrong one. So that's another worry for her. I was alone in the house when I awoke, and I could not waste such autumn weather as this!"
He looked at her with anxiety—the physician again.
"I saw trouble in your face last night. It isn't normal that you should be tired out so soon after the perfect condition you achieved at Berkeley Center."
"No, it isn't. I know that perfectly, and I'm resigned to it."
"I won't ask you to letmetreat you—but why don't you go to some physician about it? You know how much this case means to me."
For a time she did not reply. She only kept her eyes on the autumn tints of the park, streaking past them like a gaudy Roman scarf.
"No," she said at length, "no physician like you can heal me. Greater physicians, higher ones, for me. And they will not—will not—" She was silent again.
"Are you coming back again to that queer business of which you told me—that day on the tennis court?"
"To just that."
"What can such a thing have to do with your physical condition?"
"You will not laugh?"
"At you and yours and anything which touches you—no. You know I could not laugh now. Little as I respect that obstacle, it is the most serious fact I know."
His eyes were on the steering of the automobile. He could not see that her lips pursed up as though to form certain low and tender words, and that her sapphirine eyes swept him before she controlled herself to go on.
"Aunt Paula says it is part of the struggle. Some people, when the power is coming into them, are violent. Men, she says, have smashed furniture and torn their bodies. I am not strong to do such things, but only weak to endure. And so it takes me as it does.
"Don't you see?" she added, "that if I'm to give up so many powers of my mind, so many needs of my soul, to this thing, I can afford to give up a few powers of my body? Am I to become a Light without sacrificing all? So I keep away from physicians. It is Aunt Paula's wish, and she has always known what is best for me."
The automobile was running at an even fifteen miles an hour down a broad, unobstructed parkway. He could turn his eyes from his business and let his hands guide. So he looked full at her, as he said:
"She may have a hard time keeping you away from this physician!"
That, it seemed, amused her. The strain in her face gave way to a smile.
"For yourself, she likes you, I think," said Annette.
"She has a most apt and happy way of showing it," he responded, his slights rising up in him.
"You mustn't judge her by last night," replied Annette. "Aunt Paula has many manners. I think she assumes that one when she is studying people. Then think of the double reason she has for receiving you coldly—my whole future, as she plans it, hangs on it—and she spoke nicely of you. She likes your eyes and your wit and your manners. But—"
"But I am an undesirable acquaintance for her niece just the same!"
"Have I not said that you are—the obstacle? Haven't her controls told her that? If not, why did she telegraph to me when she did?" Then, as they turned from the park corner and made towards Riverside Drive, something in her changed.
"Must we talk this out whenever we meet? You said once that you would teach me to play. Ah, teach me now! I need it!"
And though he turned and twisted back toward the subject, she was pure girl for the next hour. The river breezes blew sparkle into her eyes; the morning intoxicated her tongue. She chattered of the trees, the water, the children on the benches, the gossiping old women. She made him stop to buy chestnuts of an Italian vendor, she led him toward his tales of the Philippines. He plunged into the Islands like a white Othello, charming a super-white Desdemona. It was his story of the burning of Manila which brought him back to the vexation in his mind.
"That yarn seemed to make a very small hit last night," he said, turning suddenly upon her.
"I didn't like it so much last night," she answered frankly.
"What was the matter?" he asked. "Why were you so far away? Were you afraid of Mrs. Markham? I felt like the young man of a summer flirtation calling in the winter. What was it?"
"I don't know," she answered.
"No—tell me."
"There wasn't any reason. I liked you last night as I always like you. But we were far away. Shall I tell you how it seemed to me? I was like an actress on the stage, and you like a man in the audience. I was speaking to you—a part. In no way could you answer me. In no way could I answer you directly. We moved near to each other, but in different worlds. It was something like that."
"I suppose"—bitterly—"your Aunt Paula had nothing to do with that?"
"You must like Aunt Paula if you are to like me," she warned. "Yet that may have something to do with it. I am wonderfully influenced by what she thinks—as is right."
"Then it's coming to a fight between me and your Aunt Paula? For I'll do even that."
"Must we go all over it again? Oh like me, like me, and give me a rest from it! I think of nothing but this all day—why do you make it harder? I do not know if I can renounce and still have you in my life. Won't you wait until I know? It will be time enough then!"
"'Renounce,'" he quoted. "Then you know that there is something to renounce—and that means you love me!" So giddy had he become with the surge of his passion that his hands trembled on the steering-wheel. Afraid of losing all muscular control, he brought the automobile to a full stop at the roadside. Her sapphirine eyes were shining, her hands lay inert in her lap, her lips quivered softly.
"Have I ever denied it—can I ever deny it to you?"
The pure accident of location gave him opportunity for what he did next. For they were in one of those country lanes of Upper Manhattan which, though enclosed by the greatest city, seem still a part of remote country. Heavy branches of autumn foliage guarded the road to right and left; from end to end of the passage was neither vehicle nor foot-passenger. One faculty, standing unmoved in the storm of emotions which had overwhelmed him, perceived this.
He reached for the trembling hands which gave themselves to his touch. She swayed against him. Her hands had snatched themselves away now—only to clasp his neck. And now her lips had touched his again and again and somehow between kiss and kiss, she was murmuring, "Oh, I love you—I love you—I love you. I love you so much that life without you is a perfect misery. I love you so much that my work now seems stale and dreary. I love you so much that I don't want ever to go away from you. I want to stay here forever and feel your arms about me, for that is the only way that I shall ever know happiness—or peace. I wake in the morning with your name on my lips. I wander through the day with you. If I try to read, you come between me and the page. If I try to play you come between me and the notes. You are my books. You are my music—my—my—everything. I go to bed early at night often so that I can lie in the dusk and think of you. And oh, the only nights that rest me are those filled with dreams of the poem we would make out of life—if—if—"
Her voice faltered and he felt the exquisite caress of her lips trembling against his cheek. As though she were utterly spent, she ended where she had begun, "I love you—I love—I love you."
He was aware now that another car whirred behind them. He managed—it took all the force in his soul—to put her from him. He turned to see if they had been observed; the passengers in the other car, intent on their own chatter, did not look; only the chauffeur regarded their chassis with a professional eye, as though wondering if they were stalled. When Blake drew a long breath and looked back at Annette, her face was buried in her hands. And now, when he touched her, she drew slowly away.
"Oh, drive on—drive on!" she said.
"Oh, Annette—dearest."
"Don't speak. I beg you—drive on or I shall die!"
And though the car wavered dangerously under his unsteady touch, he obeyed, managed to gain the highroad without a spill, and to turn north.
She wept silently. When at last she took her hands away and turned her face on him, his lover's observation saw how beautifully she wept. Her eyes were not red, her face was calm. He took heart from her glance, began to babble foolish love words. But she stopped him.
"You are driving away from home," she said. "Drive back, and don't speak yet."
After he had turned, her tears ceased. She dried her eyes. Now she smiled a little, and her voice grew natural.
"I must never be weak again," she said. "But it was sweet. Dear, might I touch your arm? No, you must not stop again. Just my hand on your arm."
"Dearest, why do you ask?" She drew off her glove, and all the way a light, steady pressure made uncertain his wheel-hand. They drove a mile so—two miles—and neither spoke until they came out into inhabited Upper Broadway. At the appearance of crowds, trucks and the perils of the highway, that silver thread of silence broke. She drew her hand away, and took up the last word of ten minutes ago.
"It was sweet—but no more. How long it is since I kissed you! I am glad. I shall pay for it heavily—but I am glad!"
He smiled on her as on a child who speaks foolishness.
"You cannot renounce now!" he said.
"I shall renounce. I have stolen this morning—would you rob me in turn?"
"It will be the first kiss of a million," he said.
"It will be the last forever," she answered. "But remember, if you do not kiss me, no man ever shall."
He busied himself with guiding the automobile; it was no time to hurl out the intense things which he had to say. But when they had entered the smooth park driveway, he came out with it:
"Do you think that I respect that obstacle? Can you think that I believe such moonshine even if you do? And do you suppose that I am going to let Aunt Paula keep you now?"
She touched his arm again; let her hand rest there as before.
"Dear," she said, "I have never thought that you believed. I have felt this always in the bottom of your heart. I only ask you not to spoil this day for me. I have stolen it. Let me enjoy it. I shall not put you out of my life—at least not yet. Later, when we are both calm, we will talk that out. But let it rest now, for I am tired—and happy."
So they drove along, her light hand making warm his arm, and said no word until they came near the Eighty-Sixth Street entrance. He looked at her with a question in his eyes.
"Leave me where you found me," she answered; "I shall go in alone."
"But will you tell your Aunt Paula that you met me?"
"I shall tell her—yes. Not all, perhaps, but that I rode with you. What is the use of concealment? She will know—"
"Her spirits?"
"Dear, do not mock me. They tell her everything she wants to know about me." They had drawn up at the park entrance now; before he could assist, she had jumped down.
"Good-by—I must go quickly—you must come soon—I will write."
He stood beside his car, watching her back. Once she turned and waved to him; when she went on, she walked with a spring, an exultation, as though from new life. He watched until she was only a blue atom among the foot-passengers, until a park policeman thumped him on the shoulder and informed him that this was not an automobile stand.
When Dr. Blake woke next morning, it was with a sense of delicious expectancy. He formulated this as his eyes opened. She had promised to write; the mail, due for distribution in the Club at a quarter past eight, might bring a note from her. He timed his dressing carefully, that he might arrive downstairs neither before nor after the moment of fulfilment or disappointment. He saw, as he crossed the corridor to his mail-box, that the clerk was just dropping a square, white envelope. He peered through the glass before he felt for his keys. It was Annette's hand.
So, glowing, he tore it open, and read:
DEAR MR. BLAKE:
I think it best never to see you again. Aunt Paula approves of this; but it is done entirely of my own accord. My decision will not change. Please do not call at my house, for I shall not see you. Please do not write, for I shall send your letters back unopened. Please do not try to see me outside, for I shall not recognize you. I thank you for your interest in me; and believe me, I remain,
Your sincere friend,
ANNETTE MARKHAM.
After a dreadful day, he came back to the Club and found a package, addressed in her hand. Out fell a little bundle of rags, topped by a comical black face, and a note. The letter of the morning was in a firm, correct hand. This was a trembling scrawl, blotted with tears. And it read:
Dear, I have something terrible to write you. I must give you up. I cannot go into all the reasons now, and after all that would not help any, for it all comes to this—we must never see each other again. Please do not send me a letter, for though I should cover it with my kisses, in the end I would have to send it back unopened. I send you Black Dinah as I promised. It's all that's left of me now, and I want you to have it. Dearest, dearest, good-by.
ENTER ROSALIE LE GRANGE
"Cut, dearie," said Rosalie Le Grange, trance and test clairvoyant, to Hattie, the landlady's daughter. "Now keep your wish in your mind, remember. That's right; a deep cut for luck. U-um. The nine of hearts is your wish—and right beside it is the ace of hearts. That means your home, dearie—the spirits don't lie, even when they're manifestin' themselves just through cards. They guide your hand when you shuffle and cut. Your wish is about the affections, ain't it, dearie?"
The pretty slattern across the table nodded. She had put down her dust-pan and leaned her broom across her knees when she sat down to receive the only tip which Rosalie Le Grange, in the existing state of her finances, could give.
"I got your wish now, dearie," announced Rosalie Le Grange. "The spirits sometimes help the cards somethin' wonderful. Here it comes. I thought so. The three of hearts for gladness an' rejoicin' right next to the ace, which is your home. Now that might mean a little home of your own, but the influence I git with it is so weak I don't think it means anythin' as strong an' big as that. Wait a minute—now it comes straight an' definite—he'll call—rejoicin' at your home because he'll call. Do you understand that, dearie?"
"Sure!" Hattie's eyes were big with awe.
"Hat-tie!" came a raucous voice from outside.
"Yes-m!" answered Hattie.
"Are you going to be all day redding up them rooms?" pursued the voice.
"Nearly through!" responded Hattie. Rosalie Le Grange made pantomime of sweeping; and—
"I'll help you red up, my dear," she whispered. Forthwith, they fell to sweeping, dusting, shaking sheets.
As she moved about the squeezed little furnished rooms and alcove, which formed her residence and professional offices in these reduced days, Rosalie Le Grange appeared the one thing within its walls which was not common and dingy. A pink wrapper, morning costume of her craft, enclosed a figure grown thick with forty-five, but marvelously well-shaped and controlled. Her wrapper was as neat as her figure; even the lace at the throat was clean. Her long, fair hands, on which the first approach of age appeared as dimples, not as wrinkles or corrugations of the flesh, ran to nails whose polish proved daily care. Her hair, chestnut in the beginning, foamed with white threads. Below was a face which hardly needed, as yet, the morning dab of powder, so craftily had middle age faded the skin without deadening it. Except for a pair of large, gray, long-lashed eyes—too crafty in their corner glances, too far looking in their direct vision—that skin bounded and enclosed nothing which was not attractive and engaging. Her chin was piquantly pointed. Beside a tender, humorous, mobile mouth played two dimples, which appeared and disappeared as she moved about the room delivering monologue to Hattie.
"I see a dark gentleman that ain't in your life yet. He's behind a counter now, I think. He ain't the one that the ace of hearts shows is goin' to call. I see you all whirled about between 'em, but I sense nothin' about how it's goin' to turn out—land sakes, child, don't you ever dust behind the pictures? You'll have to be neater if you expect to make a good wife to the dark gentleman—"
"Will it be him?" asked Hattie, stopping with a sheet in her hands.
"Now the spirits slipped that right out of me, didn't they?" pursued Rosalie. "Land sakes, you can't keep 'em back when they want to talk. Now you just hold that and think over it, dearie. No more for you to-day." Rosalie busied herself with pinning the faded, dusty pink ribbon to a gilded rolling pin, and turned her monologue upon herself:
"I ain't sayin' nothin' against this house for the price, dearie, but my, this is a comedown. The last time I done straight clairvoyant work, it was in a family hotel with three rooms and a bath and breakfast in bed. Well, there's ups an' downs in this business. I've been down before and up again—"
Hattie, her mouth relieved of a pillowcase, spoke boldly the question in her mind.
"What put you down?"
Rosalie, her head on one side, considered the arrangement of the pink ribbon, before she answered:
"Jealousy, dearie; perfessional jealousy. The Vango trumpet seances were doin' too well to suit that lyin', fakin', Spirit Truth outfit in Brooklyn—wasn't that the bell?"
It was. Hattie patted the pillow into place, and sped for the door.
"If it's for me," whispered Rosalie, "don't say I'm in—say you'll see." Rosalie bustled about, putting the last touches on the room, pulling shut the bead portières which curtained alcove and bed.
Hattie poked her head in the door.
"It's a gentleman," she said.
"Well, come inside and shut the door—no use tellin'himall about himself," said Rosalie. "I'm—I'm kind of expectin' a gentleman visitor I don't want to see yet. It's a matter of the heart, dearie," she added. "What sort of a looking gentleman?"
Hattie stood a moment trying to make articulate her observations.
"He's got nice eyes," she said. "And he's dressed quiet but swell. Sort of tall and distinguished."
"Did you look at his feet?" For the moment, Rosalie had taken it for granted that all women knew, as she so well knew, the appearance of police feet.
"No 'm, not specially," said Hattie.
"Well, you'd 'a' noticed," said Rosalie, covering up quickly. "The gentleman I don't want to see has a club foot—show him up, dearie."
As Madame Le Grange sat down by the wicker center table and composed her features to professional calm, she was thinking:
"If he's a new sitter, I'll have to stall. There's nothing as hard to bite into as a young man dope."
The expected knock came. Entered the new sitter—him whom we know as Dr. Walter Huntington Blake, but a stranger to Rosalie. During the formal preliminaries—in which Dr. Blake stated simply that he wanted a sitting and expressed himself as willing to pay two dollars for full trance control—Rosalie studied him and mapped her plan of action. There was, indeed, "nothing to bite into." His shapely clothes bore neither fraternity pin nor society button; his face was comparatively inexpressive; to her attempts at making him chatter, he returned but polite nothings. Only one thing did she "get" before she assumed control. When she made him hold hands to "unite magnetisms," his finger rested for a moment on the base of her palm. She put that little detail aside for further reference, and slid gently into "trance," making the most, as she assumed the slumber pose, of her profile, her plump, well-formed arms, her slender hands. This sitter was "refined"; not for him the groans and contortions of approaching control which so impressed factory girls and shopkeepers.
Peeping through her long eyelashes, she noted that his face, while turned upon her in close attention, was without visible emotion.
"I must fish," she thought as she began the preliminary gurgles which heralded the coming of Laughing Eyes, her famous Indian child control—"I wonder if I've got to tell him that the influence won't work to-day and I can't get anything? Maybe I'd better."
A long silence, broken here and there by guttural gurglings; then Laughing Eyes babbled tentatively:
"John—Will—Will—" she choked here, as though trying to add a syllable which she could not clearly catch. And at this point, Rosalie took another look through her eyelashes. She had touched something! He was leaning forward; his mouth had opened. Before she could follow up her advantage, he had thrown himself wide open.
"Wilfred—is it Wilfred?" he asked.
Laughing Eyes was far too clever a spirit to take immediately an opening so obvious.
"You wait a minny!" she said. "Laughing Eyes don't see just right now. Will—Will—he come, he go. Oh—oh—I see a ring—maybe it's on a finger, maybe it ain't—Laughing Eyes kind of a fool this morning—Laughing Eyes has got lots to do for a 'itty girl—" Rosalie had essayed another glance as she spoke of the ring. It brought no visible change of expression; and from the success of her shot with Wilfred she knew that this, in spite of first impressions, was a sitter whose expression betrayed him. "Then it's business troubles," she thought, "unless he's a psychic researcher. And if he was, he wouldn't be so easy with his face."
So Laughing Eyes burbled again, and then burst out:
"I see a atmosphere of trouble!" The young man's countenance dropped, whereupon Laughing Eyes fell to chattering foolishly before she went on: "Piles of bright 'itty buttons—money—" And then something which had been gently titillating Rosalie's sense of smell made a sudden connection with her memory, Iodoform—the faintest suggestion. She linked this perception with his appearance of having been freshly tubbed, his immaculate finger nails, shining as though fresh from the manicure, his perfectly kept teeth and—yes—the pressure of a finger on her pulse. Upon this perception, Laughing Eyes spoke sharply:
"Wilfred says your sick folks don't always pay like they ought. He says when they're in danger they can't do too much for the doctor, but when they're well, he's—he—he—Wilfred is funny—a old sawbones!"
"Ask fa—ask him about the patient," faltered Rosalie's sitter.
"Wilfred says, 'My son, it's comin' out all right if you follow your own impulses,'" responded Laughing Eyes. "You do the way the influences guide you. They 're guidingyou, not them other doctors that you're askin' advice from." Laughing Eyes shifted to babbling of the bright spirit plane beyond, and all that the patient was missing by delay in translation, while Rosalie took another glance of observation, and thought rapidly. Was this patient a medical or surgical case? Two chances out of three, surgical; it would take remorse and apprehension over a mistake with the scalpel to drive a medical man medium-hunting. Her glance at his hands confirmed her determination to venture. They were large and heavy, yet fine, the hands of a craftsman, a forger, a surgeon, anyone who does small and exact work. Rosalie had been in a hospital in her day, and she had studied doctors, as she studied the rest of humanity, with an eye always to future uses. Having a pair of hands like that, a doctor must inevitably choose surgery.
"Trust your papa!" babbled the Control. "Laughing Eyes trusted her papa—ugh!—he big Chief. He here now! Your papa knows my papa! Your papa says you didn't cut too deep!"
The young man let out an agitated "didn't I?"
"You was guided," pursued Laughing Eyes. "What you might'a' thought was a mistake was all for the best. Those in the spirit controlled your hands. Wilfred says 'three'—oh—oh I know what Wilfred means—ugh—get out bad spirit—Wilfred means three days—you wait three days—you wait three days and it will be right."
"And now," thought Rosalie Le Grange, "he's got his money's worth, and I'll take no more risks for any two dollars!" Forthwith, she let the voice of Laughing Eyes chuckle lower and lower. "Good-by!" whispered the control at length, "I'm goin' away from my medie!" Then, with a few refined convulsions, Rosalie awoke, rubbed her eyes, and said in her tinkling natural voice:
"Was I out long? I hope the sitting was satisfactory."
No change came over the young man's face as he said:
"From my standpoint—very!"
"Thank you," murmured Rosalie. "I was afraid, when you come in, that the influences wasn't going to be strong. A medium can sense them."
"Very satisfactory—with modifications," responded the sitter. "For instance, it is absolutely true that I had a father. His name wasn't Wilfred, it was James. And he died before I was born. But don't let that discourage you. I can prove his existence. The other true thing was the corker. I've been to fifty-seven varieties of mediums in the course of this experiment, and you're the first to jump at the widest opening I gave. I am a physician. I've put iodoform on my handkerchief every morning to prove it. I've been listed six times as a commercial traveler, twice as a con man, eight times as a clerk, three times as a policeman, with scattering votes for a reporter, a clergyman, an actor and an undertaker. But you're the first to roll the little ball into the little hole. I am a physician, or was. Better than that, you got it that I specialized on surgery—and I didn't plantthat. You draw the capital prize."
"Young man," asked Rosalie with an air of shocked and injured innocence, "are you accusing me offakery?" But despite her stern lips, in Rosalie's cheeks played the ghost of a pair of dimples. They were reflected, so to speak, by twin twinkles in the eyes of her sitter. And he went straight on:
"In addition, you're the prettiest of them all, and a cross-eyed man with congenital astigmatism could see that you're a good fellow. Do!Mycontrols tellmethat you're about to be offered a good job."
"My controls tellme," responded Rosalie Le Grange, "that if you don't quit insultin' a lady in her own house and disgracin' her crown of mediumship, out you go. There's those here that will defend me, I'll have you know!"
The young man's face sobered. "I beg your pardon, Mme. Le Grange," he said, "I have been sudden. Would you mind my coming to the point at once? I'm here to offer you a job."
Rosalie looked him sternly over a moment, but in the end her dimples triumphed. She lifted her right hand as though to arrange her hair, two fingers extended—the sign in the Brotherhood of Professional Mediums to recognize a fellow craftsman. The young man made no response; Rosalie's eyes flashed back on guard.
"How much is this business worth to you?" pursued the young man.
"Mediums ain't measuring their rewards by earthly gains," responded Rosalie; and now she made no secret of her dimples. "If we wanted to water our mediumship, couldn't we get rich out of the tips we give people on their business?"
"But getting down to the earth plane," the young man continued—and perhaps the twinkles in his eyes were never more obstreperous—"how much would you ask to take a nice, easy job of using your eyes for me?"
"Well," said Rosalie, "if there was nothin' unprofessional about it, I should say fifty dollars a week." She smiled on him now openly. "You're a doctor. I don't have to say, as one professional person to another, that there's such a thing as ethics."
The young man smiled back. "Oh, certainly!" he said. "I understand that!" Quite suddenly he leaned forward and clapped Rosalie's shoulder with a motion that had nothing offensive about it—only good fellowship and human understanding—"I want you to help me expose Mrs. Paula Markham."
The announcement stiffened Rosalie. She sat bolt upright. "There ain't nothin' to expose!" she said.
"Now let's get on a business basis," said the young man.
"Well, you let me tell you one thing first. If you're pumpin' me for evidence, it don't go, because you've got no witnesses."
"I'm not pumping you for anything. I'm willing to admit that the spirits, not you, smelled the iodoform—"
"An' noticed that you was scrubbed clean as a whistle and that when we held hands to unite our magnetism, you was pawing for my pulse," pursued Rosalie, dropping her defences all at once. Thereupon, Roman haruspex looked into the eyes of Roman haruspex, and they both laughed. But Rosalie was serious enough a moment later.
"Now when you come to talk about exposing Mrs. Markham, you've got to show me first why you want her exposed, and you've got to let me tell you that you're wastin' your money. There's enough that's fake about this profession, but I know two mediums I'd stake my life on; barring of course myself"—here Rosalie smiled a smile which might have meant a confession or a boast, so balanced was it between irony and sweetness—"Mrs. Markham and Mrs. Anna Fife. They'rereal."
She peered into the face of her investigator. His expression showed skeptical amusement. She knew that her passion for talking too much was her greatest professional flaw; though had she thought it over maturely, she would have realized that she had never got into trouble through her tongue. Her trained instinct for human values led her inevitably to those who would appreciate her confidences and keep them. So the sudden retreat within her defences, which followed, proved irritation rather than suspicion.
"See here," she pursued, "are you a psychic researcher?"
"Cross my heart," answered the young man, "I never associated with spooks in my life until this week. I did it then because I wanted a first-class professional medium to take a good job."
"Investigating Mrs. Markham? What for? Has she got a cinch on a relative of yours?"
"Well, I'd like her for a relative," started the young man. Then he hesitated and for the first time faltered. A light blush began at the roots of his hair and overspread his face.
"I got that you were a physician," said Rosalie, "but there's one place I got you plumb wrong. I thought it was business troubles. So the trouble's your heart and affections! It's that big-eyed blonde niece of Markham's, of course. Well, you ain't the first. The best way to bring the young men like a flock of blackbirds is to shut a girl away from 'em."
Now the young man showed real surprise.
"How did you know?" he enquired.
"My controls an' guides, of course," responded Rosalie. "They couldn't find anybody else to fall in love with around the Markham house—ain't as smart as you thought you was, are you?"
"Beside you," he responded, "I'm Beppo the Missing Link."
Rosalie acknowledged the compliment, and turned to business.
"I ain't asking you how I'm going about it," she said; "probably you've planted that. Iamasking you if you're willing to risk fifty a week on a pig in a poke? I know about her; we all do. She's just like Mrs. Fife. The Psychic Researchers have written up Mrs. Fife, but they ain't got half of her. They miss the big things, just like they get fooled on the little things.Weknow. And we know about Mrs. Markham, too, though she's had sense enough to keep shut up from the professors.
"You're a skeptic," pursued Rosalie, "and I'm blowin' my breath to cool a house afire when I talk to you. I guess I just talk to hear myself talk. We start real. I did; we all do. With some of us it's a big streak an' with some it's a little. I was pretty big—pretty big. Things happen; voices and faces. Things that are true right out of the air, and things that ain't true—all mixed up with what you're thinking yourself. It comes just when it wants to, not when you want it. And the longer you go on, and the more horse sense you get, the less it comes."
Rosalie stopped a moment, and veiled her eyes with her lashes, as though speaking out of trance.
"Everyone of us says to herself, 'It won't leave me!' An' we start to practice. What are we goin' to do then? You git a sitter. She pays her two dollars. Andtheydon't come perhaps. Not for that sitter, or the next sitter, or the next. But you have to give the value for the two dollars or go out of business. So some day, you guess. That's the funny thing about this business, anyway. Lots of times you ain't quite sure whether guessing did it, or spirits. I've glimpsed the ring on a girl's left hand, and right then my voices have said, 'Engaged!' Now was it me makin' that voice, or the spirit? I don't know. But when you begin to guess, you find how easy people are—how they swallow fakes and cry for more. As sitters go, fakin' gets 'em a lot harder than the real stuff. An' before long—it's easy—you're slipping the slates or bringing spooks from cabinets—let me tell you no medium ever did that genuine. But it's funny how long the real thing stays. Now you—I called your father Wilfred. Maybe I'll wake up to-morrow night, seein' your face, and a voice will come right out of the air and say a name—and it'll be yours. It's happened; it will happen again; but generally when I can't make any use of it.
"I'm goin' a long way round to get home. There's some so big that they don't have to fake. Sometimes, of course, the controls won't come to them, but they can afford to tell a sitter they can't sense nothin', because the next sitter will get the real stuff—the stuff you can't fake. Mrs. Fife is that way. I've seen her work and I know. I know just as well about Mrs. Markham, though I haven't seen her. She keeps tight shut up away from the rest of us. She never mixes. But some of us have seen her, they've passed it on.
"Mediums," added Rosalie Le Grange, after a pause, "is a set of pipe dreamers as a class, but there's one place where you can take their word like it was sworn to on the Bible. It's when they say somebody has the real thing. Because mediums is knockers, and when they pass out a bouquet, you can bet they mean it. No, young man, Mrs. Markham, if shedoesplay a lone hand, is the real thing. But I may help you waste your money."
The young man had lost his air of cynical levity, he was regarding Rosalie Le Grange somewhat as a collector regards a new and unclassified species.
"Why?" he asked.
"Who's the greatest doctor in the world?" asked Mme. Le Grange.
"Watkins, I suppose," responded the young man.
"What'd you give for a chance to stay in his office a month and see him work? See?"
He nodded his head.
"Of course."
"I was a darned little fool when I was young," pursued Rosalie Le Grange, "an' now that I'm gettin' on in years I'm just as darned an old one. I like to take chances. See?"
"Mme. Le Grange," said her sitter, again clapping her rounded shoulder, "you're a fellow after my heart."
"Just a second before we come to the bouquets," responded Rosalie Le Grange, "there's another reason. Can you guess it?"
"I've already given up guessing on you."
On the table beside Mme. Le Grange lay an embroidery frame, the needle set in a puffy red peony. Mme. Le Grange picked it up and took a stitch or two. Her head bent over her work, so that the playful light made gold of the white in her chestnut hair, she pursued:
"Maybe you specialize on mendin' people's bones and maybe your specialty is their insides. I've got a specialty, too. You see, in this business it's easy to go all to the bad unless you do somethin' for other people. You have to have a kind of religion to tie to. Mine is unitin' and reunitin' lovin' hearts. Of course you're saying that this is a lot of foolishness. Never mind." She paused a moment, and plied the needle. "What's the trouble between you and that slim little niece of Mrs. Markham's that you want her aunt exposed? An' can't I fix it some other way?"
"What do you know about Miss Markham?" asked the sitter.
"I've opened myself up to you like a school-girl in a cosey corner chat," said Rosalie Le Grange; "ain't it timeyouwas doin' some confidin'?"
"Did you ever hear that Miss Markham had been brought up to be a medium? That she mustn't marry because it would destroy her powers? That she's been taught to believe that she will never develop fully until she's put aside an earthly love?"
"O-ho!" quoth Rosalie; "so that's the way the wind sets! My! I must say that's the fakiest thing I ever heard about Mrs. Markham. We all know that a medium's born. This dark room developin' seance work is bosh to stall the dopes along. Still, Mrs. Markham has always played a lone hand. She's never mixed with other mediums, which is why I'll be safe in goin' into her house—she won't recognize me. Probably she's kept some fool notions that the rest of us lost long ago. But the poor little puss!"—her voice sank to a ripple—"the poor little puss!" Her eyes grew tender, and tenderly they met the softened eyes of the young man. "Just robbin' her of her girlhood! I wonder"—her voice grew harder as she turned to practical consideration of the subject—"if Mrs. Markham got the idea from them Yogis and adepts and things that she mixed with in India. Just like 'em. They've got the real thing, but they're little, crawling Dagoes with no more blood in 'em than a swarm of horseflies."
"It is terrible to think of," said the sitter.