"Pooh, pooh!" snorted Tabitha and Amanda hysterically.
"Pooh, pooh! if you like; but if I find out which one of you sent that box, I"ll--I"ll shake every bone in her old body into a match!" shouted Mrs. Winslow, dancing up and down against the counter and working her fingers savagely.
"Match?" responded Hannah, the least ancient and most fiery of the three virgins, and who entered at this critical moment; "match indeed! you"re a match for anything villainous!" and then she too trotted behind the counter to throw the weight of her presence into the conflict.
By this time the interested customers had gathered around, and people from the street, noticing the unwonted enthusiasm awakened in the Washington Hall restaurant, were rapidly collecting upon the outside and flattening their curious noses against the intervening panes.
Mrs. Winslow could no more control herself than could the old maids, and quickened by the presence of the increasing crowd, burst into a screaming demand for the person who sent the "dead" beet to her.
"Dead beat!--ha, ha, ha!" laughed the three sisters convulsively, at once realizing the appropriateness of the joke and excitedly enjoying it; "dead beat, eh? we didn"t do it!" "But," added Hannah, maliciously, "if you do find the person as did send it, Mrs. Winslow, and will send "em around, we"ll board "em for a month free!"
There was war, direful war, imminent; and no one could imagine what might have resulted had the conflict of tongues culminated in a conflict of hands. But to have seen the three ancient, prim, and trembling women on the one side, and the ponderous, though handsome Mrs. Winslow on the other--the old maids either with arms akimbo or with hands firmly clenched upon the counter"s edge as if to compel restraint, their bodies weaving back and forth, their heads bobbing up and down, and their stray frills and curls wildly dancing as if each particular hair was in a mad ecstasy of its own; and Mrs. Winslow, upon her side of the counter, in a perfect frenzy of excitement, stamping her feet, jumping backward and forward, bringing her clenched hand down upon the counter with terrible force for a woman, and shaking it furiously at the agitated row of old maids, would be to have witnessed a marvellous improvement upon any form of the Punch and Judy show ever exhibited.
[Ill.u.s.tration: _"A marvelous improvement over any form of the Punch and Judy show ever exhibited."--_]
Bristol saw that unless they were separated he would become implicated in a case of a.s.sault and battery, and after great effort pacified the women sufficiently to enable him to pilot his landlady out of the restaurant, through the streets and finally into her own apartments, where she pa.s.sed the remainder of the dreary day in weeping, storms of baffled rage, or protracted applications to the spirits which can be controlled, whether one is a spiritualist or not, so long as money lasts and total prohibition is not enforced.
CHAPTER XXIII.
Cast down.-- "Trifles."-- A charitable Offering.-- Dreariness.-- Going Crazy.-- An interrupted Seance.-- A new Form of the Devil.-- The Red-herring Expedition and its Result.-- A mad Dutchman.-- Desolation.-- An order for a Coffin.-- The sympathizing Undertaker, Mr. Boxem.
Mrs. Winslow now began to show great perturbation of spirits. In conversation with my detectives, who endeavored to cheer her up and lead her to regard these surprises as mere jokes not worth any person"s notice, she constantly argued the opposite, and thus arguing, conjured up countless possibilities of harm, gradually working herself into that condition of mind where every little unusual noise or movement of any person in the building or upon the street was a signal for some querulous inquiry or complaint.
She was also very much worried concerning her suit, and went about among the Spiritualists seeking their advice and encouragement, and giving and receiving a good deal of scandal concerning the case. From one she would hear that Lyon was employing certain other mediums in his behalf, and that she had better look out for them. Another would inform her that Lyon had several other mistresses, among them a Miss Susie Roberts, and a Madame La Motte, both Spiritualists and mediums, from whom Lyon intended to prove her bad character, and whom she, in turn, vowed she would have subpnaed in her own behalf, and impeach their testimony through what she could compel them to admit of both themselves and Lyon.
At other places she learned that these persecutions were Lyon"s work entirely, or rather, the work of his agents, princ.i.p.al among whom were the two ladies mentioned. And, in fact, wherever she went she heard or found something to give her uneasiness or cause her unrest.
"Yes," she said sadly to my operatives, "I can"t stand this sort of thing much longer."
"Oh, nonsense!" rejoined Bristol; "you haven"t been hurt, have you?"
"No; but I can"t tell when I shall be. That"s what I can"t bear."
"But I thought you were a woman of too great force of character to allow trifles to trouble you," exclaimed Fox tauntingly.
"Trifles!" said she hotly; "trifles! Is expecting every moment to be murdered, or blown up, a trifle? Is fearing that everything you taste will poison you, or everything you touch do you deadly harm, a trifle?"
"People will think you deserve to be annoyed if you show them you are annoyed," argued Fox.
"I have long since ceased to care what people think. Sometimes I am sure I hate every human being; and I do believe the more the world hates me, the more money I make. If these things are not stopped soon, I tell you," she continued in a tone of voice that seemed to say they could stay the annoyances if they would, "I"ll go to St Louis and attend to my cases there!"
This opened the eyes of my operatives, and they simultaneously conveyed the intimation to each other that careful working might secure some information about any St. Louis cases the woman might have which would be desirable; and in a short time, by gradually leading Mrs. Winslow on, they discovered that the brazen adventuress, according to her own story, had pending no less than seven cases in the Circuit Court at St. Louis, every one of them being suits on some trivial, trumped-up charge.
It seemed fated that Mrs. Winslow should leave Rochester, if her remaining depended upon these mysterious offerings ceasing, for while they were yet in conversation upon the subject, a colored porter called with a great basket-load of provisions, and without a word, after spreading a newspaper upon the carpet, began unloading his store.
"In heaven"s name, who sent you here with those?" she entreated of the colored gentleman.
"It"s all right; it"s all right," he said soothingly, and winking hard at my operatives.
"But it isn"t all right; it"s all wrong!" she retorted, warming.
"Guess not, missus; lemme see: Quart split peas, quart beans, one punking, jug m"la.s.ses, "n a mackerel. Done got "em all, sure!"
"Where did they come from, you black imp?" the woman demanded, advancing threateningly.
He grabbed his basket quickly, and, slowly retreating towards the door, winked again very knowingly at Bristol and Fox, tapped his forehead and shook his head deploringly, and then nodded towards Mrs. Winslow, very plainly saying in pantomime, "Poor thing!--badly demented!" and, as Mrs.
Winslow, in the excess of her anger, made a dive at him, he sprang back through the door, ejaculating, "Lo"d, _ain"t_ she crazy, though!" and made good his escape, laughing with that expression of complete enjoyment which only an Ethiopian can give.
Mrs. Winslow was now thoroughly convinced that the two men who had been her constant companions of late had had something to do with annoying her, and she cunningly followed the negro to the store where he was employed, where she at once sharply questioned the proprietor, who told her just as sharply that only a few minutes before, a ministerial-looking man, claiming to be city missionary for some church up-town, called and purchased the goods, remarking that they were for some crazy woman living in the block next to Meech"s opera-house, whom he had just visited, and found to be possessed of the peculiar mania that she would receive no provisions save in full dress in the presence of her physicians, and that it was his desire to so humor her. So he had entrusted the errand to the colored man, who had carried out the instructions given him; and that that was all there was about it.
When she returned crestfallen to the apartments, and Bristol and Fox had heard her story, they so derided it, claiming that the groceryman had fallen in love with her and invented the story upon the spur of the moment, fearing to disclose his languishing affection, she now believed that they were innocent of complicity in the matter and seemed to lapse into a bewildered sort of condition, where she would wander about the rooms, suspiciously pa.s.s and repa.s.s my operatives and searchingly scrutinize their faces, and for long periods stand at the dreary window peering into the street as if into a dead blank, never noticing the scurrying snow-flakes which were coming as a silent prelude to another winter, and only occasionally breaking the silence by murmuring, "Crazy?
crazy? Yes, I _shall_ become so if these terrible things are not stopped!"
But Mrs. Winslow had seen too much of life and was too hard a citizen generally to be terribly borne down by these manifestations for any great length of time, though they completely overpowered her at their occurrence, and she was allowed to become quite cheery before being favored with another materialization, which came in the following manner.
They were having a pleasant little seance in the rooms one evening soon after the colored grocery porter had accused Mrs. Winslow of being crazy, and the several ladies and gentlemen collected there were engaged in communing with the Spiritualistic heaven in the old and very common table-rapping method. They were, as a rule, lank, lean people, the ladies wearing short hair, and the gentlemen wearing long hair. This, with a few other affectations and irregularities, was nothing against them, had it not been equally as true that, according to my operatives"
subsequent inquiries, every member of this company was either living in open adultery or practising all manner of lewdness without even the convenient cloak of an a.s.sumption or pretension that the marriage relations existed. But, good or bad as they were, they were at the threshold of heaven, and had very appropriately darkened the room to get as near to it as possible without being seen, and only the faintest possible jet flickered in the chandelier. They had all, save Mrs.
Winslow, been served with a message, and she was now the inquirer, solemnly asking of another medium some information from the dear departed from over the river.
"Shall I soon receive word from an absent friend?"--(evidently meaning Le Compte, who had disappeared a month or two previous). Three affirmative raps followed.
"Shall I succeed in my case against Lyon?" The spirits were certain that she would.
"Shall I be rewarded for all my trouble?" she asked, waiting tremblingly for an answer.
To this inquiry three thundering raps were heard at the door.
What could it mean?
The members of the little circle were completely unnerved. And it was not strange either. Here were nearly a dozen people closely huddled in the centre of a room so dark that only the dim, indistinct outline of any person, or thing, could be seen in the ghostly gloaming. They believed, pretended they believed, or acquiesced in the belief or pretension, that they were in direct communication with the spirit-land.
In the most ridiculous condition of mind which any person might enter into such a performance, the secrecy and mysteriousness of the seance, the hushed silence, the darkness, and that tension of the mind caused by a constant expectation of some startling manifestation, will compel in the most sceptical mind a strange feeling of solemnity akin to awe; so that when Mrs. Winslow"s last inquiry was answered so pat, as well as with such an alarming loudness, the entire company sprang to their feet, and on this occasion there was genuine surprise in the faces of my detectives.
Bang, bang, bang! came the second series of raps, which promised Mrs.
Winslow she should be "rewarded for all her trouble."
But the answer, in the way it came, didn"t seem to satisfy her. Somebody stepped to the chandelier and turned on the light, which showed all the company to have been considerably startled; but the hostess was white from fear.
"Won"t _somebody_ see what new form of the devil has been sent here to annoy me?" she asked pa.s.sionately.
Fox, as "somebody," stepped briskly to the door and turned the key just as the first "Bang!" of another series of raps was begun, and opening it quickly discovered a dapper young fellow with a big black bottle held by the neck in his hand, which was raised for the purpose of giving the door bang number two.
In response to Fox"s loud and sharp inquiry as to what on earth was wanted, he reversed the position of the bottle with the dexterity of a bar-tender, took from the floor a huger basket than that brought by the colored porter, and slipping into the room, nodded familiarly to Mrs.
Winslow, and then coolly to the company, after which he quietly proceeded to unload his store.
"Great heavens!" said she despairingly, "I _don"t_ want those things left here. I have no need for anything of the kind. I take my meals at the Osborne House!"