Maurice felt the chair against which his fingers rested shaken by a movement of awe or of impatience. He flushed with indignation. It was Miss Morison to whom the medium was directing this childish impertinence. He longed to interfere, and even made so brusque a movement that Mrs. Staggchase leaned over and whispered to him to remain quiet.
"There are many spirits here," the medium went on with increasing fervor, "but none of them are so clear. She is speaking to you, but you cannot hear her. She is grieved that you do not understand her. Oh, try to listen so that you may hear her message with the spiritual ear. She is so anxious."
The audience seemed to quiver with excitement. Simply because a woman whom Maurice knew to be capable of any falsehood sat here in the darkness and pretended to see visions, these men and women were apparently carried out of themselves. It seemed to him at once monstrous and pitifully ridiculous.
"It must be your grandmother," spoke again the voice of Mrs. Singleton, now thick with emotion. "Yes, she nods her head. She is so anxious to reach through your unconsciousness. Wait! she is going to do something.
I think she is going to give you some token. Let me rest a moment, so that I can help her. She wants to materialize something."
Heavy silence, but a silence which seemed alive with excitement, once more prevailed. Maurice began himself to feel something of the influence pervading the gathering, and was angry with himself for it.
Suddenly a cry from the medium, earnest and full of feeling, broke out shrilly.
"Oh, she has something in her hand. Try to a.s.sist her. She will succeed in materializing it fully if we can help her with our wills. I can see it becoming clearer--clearer--clearer! Now she is smiling. She is happy. She knows she will succeed. Yes; it is--Oh, what beautiful roses! They are changing from white to red in her hands. She holds them up for me to see; she is lifting them up over your head. Now, now she is going to drop them! Quick! The light!"
The voice of Mrs. Singleton had risen almost to a scream, and bit the nerves of the hearers. As she ended Maurice heard the soft sound of something falling, and felt Miss Morison start violently. The gas was at once lighted, and there in the lap and at the feet of Berenice, who regarded them with an expression of mingled disgust and annoyance, lay scattered a handful of crimson roses.
The company broke into expressions of admiration, of belief, of awe.
Mrs. Singleton had played to her audience with evident success. Miss Morison gathered up the flowers without a word, and held them out to the medium, who lay back wearied in her chair.
"Don"t give them to me," Mrs. Singleton said in a faint voice. "They were brought for you."
"How can you bear to give them up?" a woman said. "It must be your grandmother that brought them."
"My grandmother was in very good health in Brookfield yesterday,"
Berenice responded. "I hardly think that they come from her."
The tone was so cold that Mrs. Singleton was visibly disconcerted.
"Of course I don"t know the spirit," she said. "But are both your grandmothers living?"
"She nodded her head, you know," put in another.
To this Miss Morison did not even reply; but the awkwardness of the situation was relieved by Mrs. Rangely, who broke into conventional phrases of admiration and wonder.
"Yes, Frances," Mrs. Staggchase observed dryly, "as you say, it couldn"t be believed if one hadn"t seen it."
Her manner was unheeded in the flood of praise and congratulation with which Mrs. Singleton was being overwhelmed.
"It is what I"ve longed for all my life," one lady declared, wiping her eyes. "I never could have confidence in professional mediums, but this is so perfectly satisfactory. Oh, I _do_ feel that I owe you so much, Mrs. Singleton!"
"Yes, this we have seen with our own eyes," another added. "It is impossible for the most skeptical to doubt this."
To this and more Maurice listened in amazement, until he rather thought aloud than consciously spoke:--
"But it all depends upon the unsupported testimony of the medium."
Mrs. Rangely drew herself up with much dignity.
"That," she said, "I will be responsible for."
"It isn"t unsupported," chimed in one of the ladies. "Here are the roses."
At the sound of Maurice"s voice Mrs. Singleton had turned toward him, and he saw that she recognized him. She looked around with a glance half terrified, half appealing.
"It is so kind in you to believe in me," she murmured pathetically. "I don"t ask you to. I only tell you what I see, and"--
Maurice rose abruptly and strode forward.
"Alice," he exclaimed, "what do you mean by this humbug? Don"t you see that they take it seriously? Tell them it"s a joke."
Again Mrs. Singleton looked around as if to see whether she had support.
"It is manly of you to attack me," she answered, evidently satisfied with the result of her survey. "I cannot defend myself."
"Do you mean to insist?" he demanded, with growing anger.
"If the roses do not justify what I said," responded she, sinking back as if exhausted, "it may be that I saw only imaginary shapes."
A sharp murmur ran around the room. The believers were evidently rallying indignantly to the support of their sibyl, and cast upon Wynne glances of bitter reproach. He looked at Mrs. Staggchase, but it was impossible to judge from her expression whether she approved or disapproved of what he had done. He was suddenly abashed, and stood speechless before the rising tide of outraged remonstrance. Then unexpectedly came from behind him the clear voice of Miss Morison.
"It is unfortunate that the roses should have been given to me," she said, "for by an odd chance I saw them bought a couple of hours ago on Tremont Street."
There was an instant of hushed amazement, and then the medium fled from the parlor in hysterics.
IV
SOME SPEECH OF MARRIAGE Measure for Measure, v. 1.
"O thou to the arch of whose eyebrow the new moon is a slave!"
Philip Ashe colored with self-consciousness as the words came into his mind. He felt that he had no right to think them, and yet as he looked across the table at his hostess it seemed almost as if the phrase had been spoken in his ear by the seductive voice of Mirza Gholan Rezah. He sighed with contrition, and looked resolutely away, letting his glance wander about the room in which he was sitting at dinner. He noted the panels of antique stamped leather, and although he had had little artistic training, he was pleased by the exquisite combination of rich colors and dull gold. Some Spanish palace had once known the glories which now adorned the walls of Mrs. Fenton"s dining-room, and even his uneducated eye could see that care and taste had gone to the decoration of the apartment. Jars of Moorish pottery, few but choice, and pieces of fine Algerian armor inlaid with gold were placed skillfully, each displayed in its full worth and yet all harmonizing and combining in the general effect. Ashe knew that the husband of Mrs. Fenton had been an artist of some note, and so strongly was the skill of a master-hand visible here that suddenly the painter seemed to the sensitive young deacon alive and real. It was as if for the first time he realized that the beautiful woman before him might belong to another. By a quick, unreasonable jealousy of the dead he became conscious of how keenly dear to him had become the living.
Ashe had met Mrs. Fenton a number of times during the week which had intervened since the Persian"s lecture at Mrs. Gore"s. He had seen her once or twice at the house of his cousin, with whom Mrs. Fenton was intimate, and chance had brought about one or two encounters elsewhere.
He had until this moment tried to persuade himself that his admiration for her was that which he might have for any beautiful woman; but looking about this room and realizing so completely the husband dead half a dozen years, he felt his self-deception shrivel and fall to ashes. With a desperate effort he put the thought from him, and gave his whole attention to the talk of his companions.
"Yes, Mr. Herman is in New York," Mrs. Herman was saying. "He has gone on to see about a commission. They want him to go there to execute it, but I don"t think he will."
"Doesn"t he like New York?" asked Mr. Candish, the rector of the Church of the Nativity, who was the fourth member of the little company.
Mrs. Herman and Mrs. Fenton both laughed.
"You know how Grant feels about New York, Edith," the former said. "If anything could spoil his temper, it is a day in what he calls the metropolis of Philistinism."
"I never heard Mr. Herman say anything so harsh as that about anything," Candish responded. "Do you feel in that way about it?"