CHAPTER XXI.
Mrs. Winslow, under the Influence of "Spirits" of an earthly Order, becomes romantic, religious, and poetical.—A Trance.—Detective Bristol also proves a Poet.—A Drama to be written.
WHEN the evening came and Mrs. Winslow came with it, she was observed to be in a high state of nervous and vinous excitement, and at such times she contrived to inaugurate a series of actions which proved not only interesting, but illustrative of her strange character.
She declared to Bristol and Fox that the Lord was hardening Lyon's heart as in the olden times the heart of Pharaoh was hardened, so that he should rush upon his fated disgrace as the Egyptian king rushed upon his fate while forcing the children of Israel into deliverance, and destruction upon himself; and like the unrelenting Mrs. Clennam in "Little Dorrit," had at command any number of scriptural parallels to prove the righteousness of her sin. This sort of blasphemy is the most pitiable imaginable, and to hear the woman in her semi-intoxicated, semi-crazed condition, mingling her vile catch-words with scraps of spiritualistic sayings, snatches of holy songs, couplets of roystering ballads, and crowning the hideousness of the whole with countless Bible quotations, was to be in the presence of supreme garrulousness, temperamental religious frenzy, and superstitious vileness.
It appeared that after she had escaped from the excitement she had created in the Arcade, she had been driven to the apartments of every clairvoyant of note in the city and had a "sitting" with each. In her excited condition, and being noted for having plenty of money, it was both easy to rob her and secure what was uppermost in her mind. Consequently, it was revealed to her by every medium that Lyon would settle with her for a large sum of money.
One medium averred that in her vision Lyon was seen, as it were, bending a suppliant at her feet, and, at the last moment, admiring her character as much as fearing the nature of the testimony he knew she could bring against him, he declared his love for her and begged that they might be married in open court.
Another depicted the sorrows she would be obliged to endure before her affairs culminated. She would be watched, annoyed, harassed; but her way would be well watched by the spirit-forms which were evidently floating around promiscuously to protect the pests of society; and, whether she got the man or not, she should share his fortune. This much could be surely promised.
Another was wonderfully favored with divine "spirit light" upon the subject—so favored, indeed, that time without number her other-life had insensibly and unconsciously wandered away in search of correct information regarding the result of the Winslow-Lyon suit, and, without her volition or bidding, it had delved into the mysteries for her suffering sister. She could assure her suffering sister, the clairvoyant said, that Lyon was spiritually at her feet. All the trouble had arisen between them from Mrs. Winslow's standing upon a higher spiritual plane than Mr. Lyon. He, as was natural to man, had more of the sensual element beclouding his spirit-life. Now, pleaded the clairvoyant, couldn't she adjust an average between them? She was certain—yes, the spirits, who never lie, had positively revealed to her that all that was needed was some one to properly discover each of these affinities to the other. In any case, all would eventually be well, and there was peace, prosperity, and a large amount of money in waiting for her.
This sort of absurdity was related by Mrs. Winslow to an unlimited extent that evening, as the three sipped the liquor she had provided, and she insisted with great fervor that all these revelations strongly corroborated the light she herself had received on the same subject.
As a long pause ensued after one of these heated asseverations, Bristol ventured to ask how she had been enlightened concerning the matter.
Raising her flushed face towards the ceiling, then lifting her right arm above her head and holding it there for a moment, she allowed it to slowly descend with a coiling, serpentine motion, when she burst into a sudden ecstasy of speech, movement and feature, and partly as in answer to the inquiry, and partly as if struck with a swift and irresistible inspiration, she said in a low, unearthly voice, and with weird effect:
"Yes, yes, I hear your angel voices calling; I see your beautiful forms; I feel your tender fingers touching my aching head; I am listening to your sweet, soft whispers. Ah! what is it you say?—yes, yes, yes! You are with me. You will watch over and guard me. You will ward off the evil influences that surround me, and despite the darkness which envelops me, even as the glorious sun leaps from his couch of crimson and with his burnished lances drives the grim hosts of shadows before him with the speed of the light!—What! are you now leaving?"
Here Mrs. Winslow gasped and kicked with her pretty feet alarmingly.
"What—what is that?—that rosy, effulgent light that fills all space? Ah, yes! I see they beckon for me to look up, to not be cast down or despair. I will look up. See! in their hands are long, feathery wands with which they sweep the flaming sky, while across its burnished arc I see, yes, I see in letters of purple that oft-recurring legend—Twenty-five thousand dollars!"
Now, although I am not arguing this question of Spiritualism, and am only giving to the public the history so far as I dare of an extraordinary woman and practical Spiritualist, I cannot resist asking the question, or putting forward the theory, which, during the progress of this case particularly, and a thousand times before and since in a general way, has irresistibly forced itself into my mind. I give it in all fairness, I am sure, and only with a view that it may dispel certain feelings of squeamishness with which a good many people approach the subject to investigate it. I may be accused of presenting it with too little delicacy; but the public must recollect that the nature of my business compels me to get at the truth of things, and to do that, matters must in a majority of cases be handled without gloves. This is my only excuse, and perhaps it may be a good defence; but in any event this is the question: Has there ever been a so-called Spiritual "manifestation" that has not subsequently been explained as trickery by persons more credible of belief than its medium or originator? After that has been answered in the affirmative, for it can be answered in no other way, all there is left of this Spiritualistic structure is, how account for such exhibitions as that given by Mrs. Winslow and those given by others of her craft, even granting their personal purity, which is undoubtedly exceptional?
This is the question which has oftenest come into my mind in my necessarily almost constant study of these people, and the answers, though continually varying, have all eventually forced upon me the conviction that this religion, as it is sacrilegiously called, only takes hold of people of abnormal or diseased temperaments—people diseased in mind, in morals, in body, or in all; and if that is true, as I sincerely believe it to be, the dignifying of a disease or infirmity as a religion is simply an absurdity too foolish for even ridicule.
She sat rigid as a church-spire for a few moments, as if the sight of so much money, even if only in purple letters upon a burnished sky, had transfixed her, and then, after a little hysterical struggling, became as limp as a camp-meeting tent after a thunder-storm; and after a few passes of her long, white and deft fingers over her eyes in a scared way, asked, "Oh, gentlemen, where—where am I?"
"On the boundaries of the spirit-land," gravely replied Bristol, pushing the bottle of liquor to the side of the table.
The woman was certainly exhausted, for she had worked herself into such a state mentally—precisely the same as in all similar demonstrations, whether visions are claimed to be seen, or not—that she was completely enervated physically, and said in a really grateful tone, "Thank you, Mr. Bristol," and, pouring out a large portion of liquor, tossed it off at one gulp, like a well-practised bar-room toper.
"Yes, yes," she continued languidly, "I have a certain promise of eventually being victorious. When the good spirits are with one, there's no cause for fear."
"Not the slightest," affirmed Fox sympathetically.
"But it seems," replied Mrs. Winslow in a discouraged, desolate tone, "as though everybody's hand is raised against me—as though the dreary days pass so slowly—and that I haven't a true friend in the world!"
"My dear Mrs. Winslow," interrupted Bristol in a calm, fatherly, even affectionate tone, "that melancholy's all very fine; but we are your friends, and we will stand by you through thick and thin to the end of the suit. A few fast friends, you know, are better than a thousand sunny-weather friends."
"Oh, yes; oh, yes," returned the woman in a tone of voice that said, "I can't argue this, but I somehow know you are both betraying me," and then, closing her eyes, and clasping her hands tightly together, sang in a weird contralto voice, cracked and unsteady from her excitement and exhaustion, some stanza of an evidently religious nature, the burden of which was:
"I am weary, weary waiting
While the shadows deeper fall;
I am weary, weary waiting
For some holy voice's call!"
Undoubtedly the song, though desecrated by the singer, the place, and the occasion, was a wailing plaint from the depths of the woman's soul, for moments of utter desolation and absolute remorse come to even such as she.
"Now," said Bristol, becoming suddenly interested, "I'm something of a poet myself. When the seat of government was moved from Quebec to Ottawa, I constructed a lampoon on the government that set all Canada awhirl. Really, Mrs. Winslow, I'm surprised at your poetical nature."
"Poetical nature?" repeated the woman excitedly. "Why! that is what Lyon loved in me most. My trance-sittings are wonderful exhibitions of poetical power. In that state I can compose poems of great length and power."
The gentlemen of course seemed incredulous at this statement, and challenged her to a test of her poetical trance-power, which she instantly accepted, the wager being a quart of the best brandy that could be had in the city of Rochester.
Putting herself in position, she asked: "What subject?" Bristol replied, "Lyon," when she struggled a little in her chair, kicked the floor a little with her heels, rubbed up her eyes, gasped, and after a moment of rest began to incant in a kind of monotone tenor:
"Oh, Lyon, Lyon! don't you run;
The suit's begun; we'll have our fun
Before we're done. I'll tell your son
That I have won, although you shun
Your darling one!"
"Oh, Lyon, pray, why speed away?
To fight a woman is but play.
Although you're old, and bald, and gray,
Do right by your Amanda J.—
You'll soon be clay!"
Amanda J. Winslow, for this was the woman's assumed name in full, might have continued in this divine strain for an indefinite period, had not the operatives burst into loud and prolonged laughter at her ludicrous appearance, which so disgusted the woman that, though communicating with celestial spheres, as she assumed to be, and undoubtedly was doing as much as any of her craft ever did, she jumped up with a bound, savagely told the men they were a brace of fools, and with a lively remark or two, which had something very like an oath in it, went to bed, leaving the men to finish the bottle and the poetry as they saw fit.
Mrs. Winslow was a thorough church-goer, and distributed the favor of her attendance among the orthodox churches and the "meetings" of the members of her own faith, quite fairly—perhaps, as was natural, giving the Washington Hall Sunday evening Spiritualistic lectures a slight preference; and soon after the Arcade affair, which had launched her into poetry, she returned to the rooms one Sunday evening, declaring that all her evil spirits had left her, and that her former passionate love for Lyon had also departed, her only desire now being for his money.
To show how thoroughly she had been dispossessed of her evil spirits, she remarked that she now thoroughly hated Lyon, but it would not do to let this appear on trial, or she would lose the sympathy of the jury. Every effort should now be bent towards compelling him to divide his wealth with her, whom he had so deeply wronged. There should be no compromise; she would not even be led to the altar by him now. She would have from him what would most annoy him, and that was his money.
Having resolved on this, the darkness that surrounded her was dispelled and the spirits of light rallied as a sort of standing army; and in this beneficent condition she wished to either go into the country to recuperate for a few weeks, or seek the retirement of Fox's room and there expend her superfluous brain and spirit power upon a play to be entitled "His Breach of Promise." To this end she proposed removing the elegant furnishings of her apartments and storing them in a spare room, giving out to callers that she was absent from the city, and then, after having secured Fox's room, she would be able to burn the midnight oil unmolested so long as her inspiration might continue.
She also favored Fox and Bristol with a sketch of the play, which was to be a sort of spectacular comedy-drama, which, according to the lady's description, would contain certainly seven acts of five scenes each, and would be preceded by a prologue which would play at least an hour; in fact, it seemed that the great play "His Breach of Promise" was to be constructed on the Chinese plan, to be continued indefinitely, and admission only to be secured in the form of course tickets. Outside of these great aids to the popularity of the play, it was to have the additional startling and novel attractions of representations of her first meeting with Lyon, his regret because she was married, his copious tears whenever in her presence, his securing her divorce, the death of Lyon's wife, and every manner of pathetic and ludicrous incident connected with the case; how they each wooed and won the other, including a grand transformation scene typical of Lyon's subsequent treachery, and her reward of virtue in a fifty thousand dollar verdict for damages.