Madame lived in a furtive, retiring house, situated behind high walls in Endor’s Grove, N.W. A long glass tunnel led from the garden gate to the street door, for the convenience of Mahatmas and other persons who preferred privacy. I was one of those persons, for not for spirit worlds would I have had Vavasour know of my repeated visits to Endor’s Grove. Before these were over I had grown quite indifferent to supernatural manifestations, banjos and accordions that were thrummed by invisible performers, blood-red writing on mediums’ wrists, mysterious characters in slate-pencil, Planchette, and the Table Alphabet. And I had made and improved upon acquaintance with Simon.
Simon was a spirit who found me attractive. He tried in his way to make himself agreeable, and, with my secret motive in view—let me admit without a blush—I encouraged him. When I knew I had him thoroughly in hand, I attended no more séances at Endor’s Grove. My purpose was accomplished upon a certain night, when, feeling my shoulder violently shaken, I opened the eyes which had been closed in simulated slumber to meet the indignant glare of my husband. I glanced over his shoulder. Katie did not occupy her usual place. I turned my glance towards the armchair which stood at my side of the bed. It was not vacant. As I guessed, it was occupied by Simon. There he sat, the luminously transparent appearance of a weak-chinned, mild-looking young clergyman, dressed in the obsolete costume of eighty years previously. He gave me a bow in which respect mingled with some degree of complacency, and glanced at Vavasour.
“I have been explaining matters to your husband,” he said, in that soundless spirit-voice with which Katie had first made me acquainted. “He understands that I am a clergyman and a reputable spirit, drawn into your life-orbit by the irresistible attraction which your mediumistic organization exercises over my——”
“There, you hear what he says!” I interrupted, nodding confirmatively at Vavasour. “Do let me go to sleep!”
“What, with that intrusive beast sitting beside you?” shouted Vavasour indignantly. “Never!”
“Think how many months I have put up with the presence of Katie!” said I. “After all, it’s only tit for tat!” And the ghost of a twinkle in Simon’s pale eye seemed to convey that he enjoyed the retort.
Vavasour grunted sulkily, and resumed his recumbent position. But several times that night he awakened me with renewed objurgations of Simon, who with unflinching resolution maintained his post. Later on I started from sleep to find Katie’s usual seat occupied. She looked less pert and confident than usual, I thought, and rather humbled and fagged, as though she had had some trouble in squeezing her way into Vavasour’s sleeping thoughts. By day, after that night, she seldom appeared. My husband’s brain was too much occupied with Simon, who assiduously haunted me. And it was now my turn to twit Vavasour with unreasonable jealousy. Yet though I gloried in the success of my stratagem, the continual presence of that couple of spooks was an unremitting strain upon my nerves.
But at length an extraordinary conviction dawned on my mind, and became stronger with each successive night. Between Simon and Katie an acquaintance had sprung up. I would awaken, or Vavasour would arouse, to find them gazing across the barrier of the bolster which divided them with their pale negatives of eyes, and chatting in still, spirit voices. Once I started from sleep to find myself enveloped in a kind of mosquito-tent of chilly, filmy vapor, and the conviction rushed upon me that He and She had leaned across our couch and exchanged an intangible embrace. Katie was the leading spirit in this, I feel convinced—there was no effrontery about Simon. Upon the next night I, waking, overheard a fragment of conversation between them which plainly revealed how matters stood.
“We should never have met upon the same plane,” remarked Simon silently, “but for the mediumistic intervention of these people. Of the man”—he glanced slightingly towards Vavasour—“I cannot truthfully say I think much. The lady”—he bowed in my direction—“is everything that a lady should be!”
“You are infatuated with her, it is plain!” snapped Katie, “and the sooner you are removed from her sphere of influence the better.”