Now the first gentleman with the letter W is going over to him and putting his arm round his shoulder, and he is putting his arm round the gentleman's back. Feda feels like a string round her head; a tight feeling in the head, and also an empty sort of feeling in the chest, empty, as if sort of something gone. A feeling like a sort of vacant feeling there; also a bursting sensation in the head. But he does not know he is giving this. He has not done it on purpose, they have tried to make him forget all that, but Feda gets it from him. There is a noise with it too, an awful noise and a rushing noise.
He has lost all that now, but he does not seem to know why Feda feels it now. "I feel splendid," he says, "I feel splendid! But I was worried at first. I was worried, for I was wanting to make it clear to those left behind that I was all right, and that they were not to worry about me."
You may think it strange, but he felt that you would not worry so much as some one else; two others, two ladies, Feda thinks. You would know, he says, but two ladies would worry and be uncertain; but now he believes they know more.
Then, before Mrs. Leonard came out of trance, came the description of a falling dark cross which twisted round and became bright, as reported in [Chapter III.]
After the sitting, and before I went away, I asked Mrs. Leonard if she knew who I was. She replied, "Are you by chance connected with those two ladies who came on Saturday night?" On my assenting, Mrs. Leonard added, "Oh! then I know, because the French lady gave the name away; she said 'Lady Lodge' in the middle of a French sentence."
I also spoke to her about not having too many sittings and straining her power. She said she "preferred not to have more than two or three a day, though sometimes she could not avoid it; and some days she had to take a complete rest." But she admitted that she was going to have another one that day at two o'clock. I told her that three per day was rather much. She pleaded that there are so many people who want help now, that she declined all those who came for only commercial or fortune-telling motives, but that she felt bound to help those who are distressed by the war. I report this to show that she saw many people totally disconnected with Raymond or his family: so that what she might say to a new unknown member of the family could be quite evidential.
Footnotes
[12] Note this, as an elucidatory statement.