"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 portieres 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" _him_ all 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 b.u.t.ton; 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 a.s.sumed 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 a.s.sumed 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 b.u.t.tons--money--" And then something which had been gently t.i.tillating 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 guiding _you_, 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."