“Daughter! daughter! What is the meaning of this?” exclaimed the woman, in surprise and displeasure, rising as she spoke, and advancing toward Adele, with the evident belief that if she could get her hands upon her she could more effectually bring the full power of her strong will to bear in subduing her rebellious spirit. But Adele retreated into the next room, saying, in a quick, decided voice,—
“I’m getting heart-sick of all this, mother! There is in it more of evil than good, I sadly fear. I don’t like the people who come here. Some of them may mean all right; but some of them, I know, mean all wrong; and your Mrs. Fordham is one of them. And so is Mr. Dyer. I hate the very sight of him! He said something to me last night.”
“What did he say?” eagerly asked the mother.
“I can’t tell you now, because I promised him that I would not. But if he says it again I’ll dash the first thing into his face that I can lay my hands on.”
Just then the door-bell rang, and Adele answered the summons. The very man about whom they were speaking entered. The moment Adele saw him she started back, and, running along the passage, escaped from his presence up-stairs.
“Mr. Dyer!” said the mother, with a pleased familiarity of manner, singular under the circumstances, to say the least of it. She gave him her hand, which he grasped hard, and retained while they walked back into the darkened parlors.
“Mrs. Weir!” was his simple response. His tone was low, penetrating, agreeable. Let us describe Mr. Dyer. It is the countenance that indicates the man. Chin, mouth, nostrils, eyes, forehead,—on these each one writes his character, though he tries never so hard to play the hypocrite. The lineaments of the face never lie. But in the present instance the face was so much hidden by a hairy veil that much of its true expression was concealed. Intellectually, taking his rather low forehead as a guide, Mr. Dyer was not a man of superior endowments. But his small brown eyes, shining out from their hollow recesses, indicated mental activity and alertness. The skin of his face was colorless, and had a bleached appearance, all the lines running down, as if it had been rained upon every day for a dozen years. High up, reaching nearly to the cheek-bones, the hairy investure began, and that seemed to have yielded also to the causes which made all the facial lines perpendicular. It was guiltless of curl, or curving line of beauty, but shot down, straight and thick, a dark brown mass, wiry and unsightly. The hair upon his head was long, dry, harsh, and straight, lying like the mane of some beast upon his shoulders. His full, pouting lips indicated sensuality. Yet even this countenance had been schooled by a sinister purpose so as to deceive some by its meek expression of goodness.
Mr. Dyer was that intellectual, strong-willed woman’s plaything, a biologist,—we use one of the names assumed by a modern sect of pseudo-spiritualists,—a getter-up of circles, and a leader in the insane orgies of mesmerism run mad. He was wonderfully given to trance-ecstasies, and could elevate himself into the highest of the spiritual spheres in a moment and at will. Familiar tête-à-têtes with Adam, Noah, Moses, Socrates, Washington, and the world’s hosts of worthies and heroes, were had by him daily; and most of them honored him as the medium of important communications to the world. From some cause, however, by the time these communications reached the sphere of nature, they had lost all meaning and coherence. Still, Mr. Dyer enunciated them with oracular gravity, and many who listened imagined a deep symbolical meaning.
Not possessing that strong, masculine, reasoning mind which gives man power over man by virtue of superior intellectual force, and yet having a large share of that bad ambition of which Milton’s Satan was a type, Mr. Dyer sought influence over others—females particularly—by means of modern witchcraft, going from house to house “and leading silly women captive,” and, by his devilish arts, withering or destroying the budding germs of rational freedom in little children, whenever they chanced to come within the sphere of his blasting influence. He was one of a bad class of sensualists, whose active propensities gain power by cunning and hypocrisy. It was a day of evil triumph with him when he discovered that he was a “powerful medium,” and could subdue by means of his stronger will the consciousness of sickly, nervous women, and so control the wonderful organism of their spirits as to make them speak and act like mere automatons. It was a vast improvement on Maelzel and Kempelon!
At the time of his introduction to the reader, Dyer had already been the instrument of promoting four separations between husband and wife. He was himself a married man; but, having discovered that another, a handsomer, brighter, and more attractive woman than his lawful partner, was conjoined to him as to the spirit, and therefore, according to his reading of the matter, his real wife, he had separated himself from the heart-broken woman against whom he had committed one of the most grievous sins in the crowded calendar of human wrongs. In the eye of the law he was a vagrant, for he had no apparent means of support. But he managed to get his share of worldly gear from his duped or corrupt admirers. It was sufficient for some of them that the familiar spirits, or demons, required their favorite instrument to be clothed and fed and supplied with needful money.