Mrs. Jencken’s coming was unexpected to her sister, and it will surprise the enemies of both.
The blow to Spiritualism which Maggie Fox struck not long ago, caused a good deal more of consternation than spiritualists generally have cared to confess. There is ample reason for stating that underneath a plausible surface of enforced calm there have been the hurried exchange of forbodings and doubtings, and many consultations and goings to and fro. It is known that an overture was made to Maggie Fox suggestive of a money consideration for her silence, and that she rejected it with much indignation.
Mrs. Jencken walked into the parlor where Mrs. Kane was sitting about five o’clock yesterday, and the sisters at once fell on each other’s necks, in an ecstasy of affection and delight at being together once again. Mrs. Kane had but just been talking to me about her projected lecture on “The Curse of Spiritualism,” and Mrs. Jencken, who had heard nothing of the proposed exposé, except as it was casually rumored in her ear at the steamship dock, promptly gave her acquiescence to it as soon as she understood the situation.
“I do not care a fig for Spiritualism,” she said, “except so far as the good will of its adherents may affect the future of my boys. They are all I have in this life, and I live or die for them.”
Mrs. Jencken looks a far different person than she was when in deep trouble in this city and when she had to do with the rather unsympathetic measures of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. No matron could bear a more placid and comely expression, and she declares with heartfelt earnestness that she is done forever with her once-besetting vice.
“Mrs. Jencken, are you willing to join with your sister in exposing the true modus operandi of Spiritualism?” I asked.
“I care nothing for Spiritualism,” was her reply. “So far as I am concerned I am done with it. I will say this, I regard it as one of the very greatest curses that the world has ever known. If I knew those powerful spiritualists who have done their utmost to harm me in the past could not do so in the future, I would not hesitate a moment to expose it. The worst of them all is my eldest sister, Leah, the wife of Daniel Underhill. I think she was the one who caused my arrest last spring, and the bringing of the preposterous charge against me that I was cruel to my children and neglectful of them. I don’t know why it is, she has always been jealous of Maggie and me; I suppose because we could do things in Spiritualism that she couldn’t.”
“Why don’t you come squarely out, then, with the truth, and make the public your friends? You needn’t fear any persecution if you do that.”
“Well, if my sister’s health were only fully restored and I knew she was fully herself I would certainly join her in showing Spiritualism to be what it really is. I want to be sure of that, however. I want the thing done properly when it is done.”
“Then you will not deny that what she has said of Spiritualism is true?”