Miss Climpson considered this. Certainly it would be less wearisome, but she was not sure of being able to manipulate it.
Miss Booth put the kettle on the fire and glanced at the clock.
“Dear me! it’s nearly eleven. How the time has flown! I must run up and see to my old dear. Would you like to read through the questions and answers? I don’t suppose I shall be many minutes.”
Satisfactory, so far, thought Miss Climpson. Confidence was well established. In a few days’ time, she would be able to work her plan. But she had nearly tripped up over George. And it was stupid to have said “Helen.” Nellie would have done for either—there was a Nellie in every school forty-five years ago. But after all, it didn’t much matter what you said—the other person was sure to help you out of it. How desperately her legs and arms were aching. Wearily she wondered if she had missed the last bus.
“I’m afraid you have,” said Miss Booth, when the question was put to her on her return. “But we’ll ring up a taxi. At my expense, of course, dear. I insist, as you were so good in coming all this way, entirely to please me. Don’t you think the communications are too marvellous? Harry would never come before—poor Harry! I’m afraid I was very unkind to him. He married, but you see he has never forgotten me. He lived at Coventry and we used to have a joke about it—that’s what he meant by saying that. I wonder which Alice and Mabel that was. There was an Alice Gibbons and an Alice Roach—both such nice girls; I think Mabel must be Mabel Herridge. She married and went out to India years and years ago. I can’t remember her married name and I’ve never heard from her since, but she must have passed to the other side. Pongo is a new control. We must ask him who he is. Mrs. Craig’s control is Fedora—she was a slave girl at the court of Poppaea.”
“Really!” said Miss Climpson.
“She told us her story one night. So romantic. She was thrown to the lions because she was a Christian and refused to have anything to do with Nero.”
“How very interesting.”
“Yes, isn’t it? But she doesn’t speak very good English, and it’s sometimes rather hard to understand her. And she sometimes lets the tiresome ones in. Pongo was very quick at getting rid of George Washington. You will come again, won’t you? Tomorrow night?”
“Certainly, if you like.”
“Yes, please do. And next time you must ask for a message for yourself.”
“I will indeed,” said Miss Climpson. “It has all been such a revelation—quite wonderful. I never dreamed that I had such a gift.”
And that was true, also.
XVIII
It was, of course, useless for Miss Climpson to try to conceal from the boardinghouse ladies where she had been and what she had been doing. Her return at midnight in a taxi had already aroused the liveliest curiosity, and she told the truth to avoid being accused of worse dissipations.
“My dear Miss Climpson,” said Mrs. Pegler, “you will not, I trust, think me interfering, but I must caution you against having anything to do with Mrs. Craig or her friends. I have no doubt Miss Booth is an excellent woman, but I do not like the company she keeps. Nor do I approve of spiritualism. It is a prying into matters which we are not intended to know about, and may lead to very undesirable results. If you were a married woman, I could explain myself more clearly, but you may take it from me that these indulgences may have serious effects upon the character in more ways than one.”
“Oh, Mrs. Pegler,” said Miss Etheredge, “I don’t think you should say that. One of the most beautiful characters I know—a woman whom it is a privilege to call one’s friend—is a spiritualist, and she is a real saint in her life and influence.”
“Very likely, Miss Etheredge,” replied Mrs. Pegler, drawing her stout figure to its most impressive uprightness, “but that is not the point. I do not say that a spiritualist may not live a good life, but I do say that the majority of them are most unsatisfactory people, and far from truthful.”
“I have happened to meet with a number of so-called mediums in the course of my life,” agreed Miss Tweall, acidly, “and all of them, without any exception, were people I would not have trusted any further than I could see them—if as far.”
“That is very true of a great many of them,” said Miss Climpson, “and I am sure nobody could have better opportunities of judging than myself. But I think and hope that some of them are at least sincere if mistaken in their claims. What do you think, Mrs. Liffey?” she added, turning to the proprietress of the establishment.
“Well,” said Mrs. Liffey—obliged, in her official capacity, to agree as far as possible with all parties. “I must say, from what I have read, and that is not a great deal, for I have little time for reading—still, I think there is a certain amount of evidence to show that, in certain cases and under strictly safeguarded conditions, there is possibly some foundation of truth beneath the spiritualists’ claims. Not that I should care to have anything to do with it personally; as Mrs. Pegler says, I do not as a rule care very much for the sort of people who go in for it, though doubtless there are many exceptions. I think perhaps that the subject should be left to properly qualified investigators.”
“There I agree with you,” said Mrs. Pegler. “No words can express the disgust I feel at the intrusion of women like this
