The extraordinary thing, she learned as she read on, was that Home, far from having been put in prison or drummed out of English society, was still residing in England and practising as a medium. He continued to enjoy the confidence of the public and basked in the attention of eminent scientists. Even a claim that he had been detected in imposture at a séance had been swept aside by his adherents who stated that the light on that occasion had been so dim that it was impossible to tell one way or the other whether fraud had been used. Spiritualists, it seemed, saw everything as marvellous, but were blind to the mundane.
Mrs Browning, the poet’s wife, who had received wreaths of flowers from spirit hands at Home’s séances and had been told that there were rays of glory pouring from a crown over her head that only the medium could see, had to the end of her life remained unreservedly convinced. When Home’s critics denounced him as morally worthless, she had riposted that even if he was morally worthless it would not impugn his being a true medium any more than her dentist’s ability as a dentist would be held suspect if he were caught shoplifting. Mina at once saw the fatal flaws in this argument. Dentistry was a demonstrable medical skill based on knowledge and dexterity, whereas mediumship was a matter of trust and belief. The point at issue was not whether Home was skilled, but whether he was trustworthy, and on the evidence before her, he clearly was not.
A Professor William Crookes was currently subjecting Home to an impressive array of tests, which Dr Rand earnestly hoped would show the charlatan for what he was, but he was not sanguine that this would be the result. Dr Rand felt, and Mina was obliged to agree, that Professor Crookes’s interest was probably aroused by a willingness to believe, which would make him an easy dupe for a fraud of more than twenty years’ experience. It was often assumed, declared Rand, that frauds most easily deluded the unintelligent, and that the best witnesses were men of science. In reality the man of science was often the easiest mark since he thought too much and tried to find a beautiful explanation for what he had observed that could be fashioned into a scholarly paper while ignoring the sordid and simple truth.
Since the damning episode with Mrs Lyon, Home had not to anyone’s knowledge perpetrated a scheme on a similar scale, but memories were short and believers many. Dr Rand ended his document by issuing a warning, especially to women, against entering into any financial arrangements with Home. Rumours were afoot that the adventurer, who still had youth and celebrity on his side, was looking for a wealthy wife.
Mina was still digesting this information when a great deal of clattering and loud exclamations from downstairs announced that her brother Richard had made one of his impromptu visits. Wondering what he was up to this time, Mina eased herself down the staircase, but had yet to reach the lowest step when she was swept up into his arms and lifted from the ground. ‘How is my best girl?’ he asked, planting smacking kisses on her cheeks.
The question may have seemed no more than a brotherly greeting, but she knew that there lay underneath it a real concern for her health. She reassured him that she was well, which of course meant that she was no worse, and importantly, no shorter.
Richard had been favoured with the willowy height and fair hair and complexion of his mother, and the frank and somewhat raffish charm of his father. He was only a year younger than Mina, and the proximity of age meant that they had, until he was sent to school – or to be more accurate a series of schools – been brought up in each other’s company. He deposited Mina very carefully on her feet, held her at arm’s length and gazed at her affectionately, then smiled and nodded as he saw that she was indeed well.
With his usual excellent timing he had arrived just in time to enjoy luncheon, and as they ate, their mother talked with some enthusiasm of the rarefied circle of which she was now a member, and the accomplishments of Miss Eustace, who was, she thought, not above thirty and with good connections. Edward, she said, with a very pointed glance in Richard’s direction, was in a fair way to achieving the hand of Miss Hooper, who would be an ornament to the family, and she looked to have some happy news from him in the near future. Richard smiled, but would not be drawn, and turned the conversation to his business interests, which he described as in a flourishing state but in need of liquid capital to ensure that he became an established success. He spoke vaguely of partners and offices, and clerks but in insufficient detail to enable his listeners to determine the exact nature of his enterprise. One certainty that accompanied all of Richard’s schemes was that they were in want of investment, and his mother promised to transfer funds to him the next day. Unlike the depredations of the egregious Mr Home, Richard only asked for small sums that their mother could easily afford, and Mina comforted herself with the fact that the funds were at least going to a loved and undoubtedly loving son and not a lying adventurer.
Later that day Louisa went to take tea with Miss Whinstone and Mrs Bettinson, and Richard and Mina strolled arm-in-arm along the seafront, where gaily coloured posters were advertising the new attractions on the West Pier. Richard was careful to match his long stride to Mina’s short steps, and for a time they were happy just to walk and enjoy the sun and tranquil air.
‘Now then,’ said Mina after a while, ‘you do not deceive me and I want the truth. What is this business for which you need Mother to supply yet another investment? If it is gambling debts I shall be very annoyed.’
‘Oh, I have been bitten too many times by that horrid monster,’ Richard assured her, ‘and have no pleasure in it any more. I am doing what I can to move in the best society and put on a brave show in the hopes of charming myself into a fortune. But it is very costly and dreadful dull work.’
‘I despair of you sometimes!’ Mina exclaimed.‘Do you really intend to cheat some unfortunate lady of her fortune with winning smiles?’
‘Oh, as to that, there will be no cheating. If a rich lady wants a young husband to dance attendance on her then she knows what the bargain is. And I would be a model of the type, and act my part to her satisfaction.’ He raised his hat and directed his appreciation to two prettily dressed ladies in a passing carriage, who were unable to resist laughing and blushing in return.
Richard, Mina was obliged to admit, had a curious yet consistent idea of morality. She knew that he would never steal from or blatantly defraud anyone, had never borrowed money without the intention of repaying it, although he invariably failed to do so, and was quite incapable of committing an act of unkindness. ‘But you are not yet engaged?’ she asked.
‘No, and neither is there any prospect of it at present. There are rich enterprises I have in my sights, but I fear that the odds are against me.’
‘Have the ladies found you out as an adventurer?’ she teased. ‘If they are clever they will hold on to their money. If I wanted a handsome face in my drawing room I would purchase a painting. That would be far less trouble than a husband.’
‘The London ladies of fortune are like castles moated about with lawyers,’ he said gloomily. ‘If I have no success there then I might come to Brighton for the high season and lurk around the pavilion, where I might discover a dowager duchess taking the air, and win her hand.’
Mina looked at him carefully and saw that for all the outward show of elegance his garments were not as fresh or as fashionable as they needed to be for such an undertaking. ‘I hope you are not in debt for lodgings,’ she said, ‘or do you remain with Edward?’
‘Edward vouchsafes me a corner of his attic,’ said Richard. ‘He is well, but his talk is all about work. It is a subject for which I feel very little enthusiasm, and I can contribute nothing to the conversation.’
‘That does not bode well for Miss Hooper,’ said Mina. ‘A woman should expect her husband to have more than one subject on which he can talk with some authority, preferably several.’
‘I have met the lovely Miss Hooper,’ said Richard, ‘and I think she will not be very demanding in the area of conversation. I can see why Edward is so much in love with her; her father is rea
lly quite rich. But that china doll kind of beauty has never appealed to me. I like the kind of girl who—’ He hesitated.
‘The kind of girl you could not introduce to Mother?’ ventured Mina.
He laughed. ‘You have it, my dear.’ He squeezed her hand affectionately. ‘But Mina, you must be very dull here. Do you really wish to wait on Mother forever? She has Simmons now, and she can do very well without you, you know. You should think of marrying.’
‘Oh come, now, who would have me?’ said Mina with a smile. ‘A miser looking for an unpaid drudge perhaps, who would expect me to be grateful that he has deigned to look at me? No, I shall never marry, and I am perfectly content with that.’ She did not say it but sometimes she felt almost fortunate, enjoying unimaginable freedom for a respectable single young lady. No one, seeing the little woman with the crooked body and curious gait, could suppose her to be anything other than honest. No one would press her to marry a tedious man or allow children to command her time and absorb her strength. By not being constrained into the narrow sphere of wife and mother she had discovered that she had the choice of being almost anything else she pleased.
They strolled on a little further. There was a long pause in the conversation, and into the cheerful enjoyment of the early summer weather there crept a grey chill. ‘What is it, Mina?’ said Richard. ‘I am not a fool and I can see that something is making you unhappy.’
They stopped walking, and gazed out across the beach to the distant glitter of the sea. Pleasure boats were drawn up on to the shore like the drying carcasses of stranded porpoises, and there was an almost endless line of freshly painted bathing machines ready to trundle into the water, their large wheels and small bodies making them look like colourful spiders.
Mina looked further, to where the bright water met the soft cloudy horizon, then closed her eyes and thought of sea-spirits and mermaids and kings with green hair and enchanted reefs of pearl and coral.
‘Do you still go sea-bathing?’ asked Richard. ‘I have heard it is very beneficial.’
‘So all the medical men say, but I have had my fill of medical men and their opinions,’ said Mina. ‘I get neither pleasure nor relief from sea-water, warm or cold. There was a time when I bathed once a week when the weather was fine, but that was only to please Mother, and I was able eventually to persuade her not to be too disappointed if I stopped.’ She turned to him. ‘I am perfectly well, but if you must know I am concerned about Mother’s enthusiasm for Miss Eustace. I am far from convinced that she is not a charlatan preying on the superstitious.’
‘Oh, I have no doubt that she is,’ said Richard, airily. ‘These people are all cheats and conjurers, but they provide amusement and I really think they do no harm. There is a new sensation on the West Pier – did you see the posters? Madame Proserpina the fortune teller. Guaranteed genuine. I am sure the crowds will flock to her.’
‘But that is a matter of a few pence, and I have no quarrel with that if folk get enjoyment from it,’ said Mina. ‘If Miss Eustace asks for a shilling or two, or even half a guinea at the end of the evening, then it is worth it for the improvement in Mother’s health and happiness. But there are villains who prey on widows with money, and try to filch their entire fortunes from them.’ Mina took the booklet from her pocket and showed Richard the story of Mr Home.
He read it, she thought, with rather greater interest than she might have wished. As he did so, Mina watched a few early summer families trudge out on to the beach, the children bringing fistfuls of seaweed as proud offerings to their less-than-delighted mothers, while distant bells announced the approach of the first caravans of donkeys. The warm, furred flanks of the donkeys and the slippery dark weed could not, she thought, have been more different, yet the weed – while it remained wet – could live on the beach and the donkeys could tread some way into the water. The land and the sea; life and death. Where did one end and the other start? It was not a simple question. Was there a clear-cut boundary like the line of markers where one might go from Brighton to Hove in a single step, or was there a wide borderland of sea-washed pebbles where two worlds became one? Were they really so incompatible that a fleshless spirit could not co-exist with the living?
‘Mrs Lyon had a lucky escape from ruin,’ said Richard at last. ‘Has Miss Eustace tried to persuade Mother that she can pass on messages from Father or Marianne, or demanded large sums of money?’
‘Not as far as I am aware, and she may not; after all, Mother has a family to protect her, and poor Mrs Lyon had none. But there are many ladies in Brighton in Mrs Lyon’s position, and they may be in danger.’
He looked serious and thoughtful. ‘Have you shown Mother this booklet?’
‘No, do you think I should? I am not sure it would do any good.’
‘I agree. She would only see it as a criticism of her new favourite. And she would tell you that whatever Mr Home did – and he has many defenders – has nothing to do with Miss Eustace. It would not change her mind.’
‘Has Mother ever changed her mind?’ asked Mina, although she knew the answer.
‘Not by persuasion, no. In order for Mother to change her mind she must come to believe that the view she has just adopted is the one she has always held. Mere printer’s ink won’t do it.’
Mina sighed. ‘I fear you are right.’
‘And if you say anything to the detriment of Miss Eustace, Mother will have the perfect reply – that you have not seen the lady for yourself and therefore can know nothing about the matter.’
Mina was reluctant to go and see a spirit medium and be ranked with the gullible, but she thought that unless the danger passed it must come to that. She was not, however, as she soon found, the only person in Brighton with doubts. The activities of Miss Eustace had provoked a correspondence in the newspapers in which a number of people who had not been to her séances denounced them as mere conjuring tricks, and others who had been, while unable to explain what they had seen, nevertheless entertained grave suspicions. When Mina’s mother read the letters she was scathingly contemptuous about those who talked of what they did not know, or were so closed of mind that they could not see what was before their eyes. There was a strong implication in her tone that she considered Mina to be a member of that offending class. When Mina suggested that she might venture to experience a séance for herself, her mother was surprised but not displeased, and said that it would be easy to arrange. All her friends had gone there or were about to go; even the nervous Miss Whinstone, who was hoping for a message from her late brother Archibald, had finally been persuaded.
Four
Miss Eustace held her séances at the simple lodgings taken by Professor and Mrs Gaskin near Queen’s Park. Mina, her mother, Mrs Bettinson and Miss Whinstone travelled there by cab one evening, with Miss Whinstone protesting all the way that she was afraid her heart would stop with fright, and Mrs Bettinson looking as though she rather hoped it would.
They were ushered into a small parlour arranged in unconventional style. Two rows of five plain chairs had been placed in a semi-circle, sufficiently far apart that no seated person could reach out and touch another, but they might, if both extended their arms, hold hands with those on either side. The chairs faced a corner of the room, which was obscured by a pair of curtains of some dark opaque material that hung from a cord fastened to a bracket on the wall at either end, and overlapped in the centre. Mina found herself curiously attracted to the curtains, and had she been alone in the room would undoubtedly have pulled them aside to make a close examination of what lay behind them and determine for herself whether what was supposed to have been moved by spirits showed evidence of a more corporeal hand. The sun had set and the window curtains had been closely drawn, but the light in the room was fairly good from the gas lamps. The only other furniture was a sideboard on which stood a water carafe, a tray of glasses, a candlestick fitted with a new wax candle, and a box of matches.
Louisa introduced her daughter and Miss Whinstone to the Gask
ins, who received them with friendly but slightly exaggerated politeness.
The professor was a tall man of about fifty-five, with a cloud of peppery grey hair, eyebrows like the wings of a small bird, and abundant whiskers. One might almost imagine that his head was stuffed full of hair, since it had also sought an exit by bursting through his nostrils and ears, the latter organs being of elephantine construction with undulating edges.
He both walked and stood with a stoop, not, thought Mina, from any fault with his spine, but from a poor habit of posture. It always surprised her to see a person who was blessed with the ability to walk straight but had chosen not to. Either his head was being borne down by the weight of his powerful scientific brain, or he needed to hover over everyone around him the better to impress them with his superior knowledge. Mina’s diminutive stature was a particular challenge to him, and he raised his voice as he spoke to her, whether to better cover the distance between them, or because he thought that her bodily deformity meant that she also had some defect of the intellect, she could not determine. His artificially bright, almost simpering smile as he addressed her, drew her towards the latter conclusion. Mina gave him only the most perfunctory greeting, and made no attempt to impress upon him the fact that she was not an imbecile; rather she hoped that he might remain in ignorance of this for as long as possible, as it would give her more freedom to observe the proceedings unimpeded.
Mrs Gaskin, who appeared to be the same age as her husband, was an excessively plain woman, inclining to stoutness and heavily whaleboned. She dressed in an unflattering style suggestive of the most uncompromising virtue and carried herself like a duchess. Her smiles of greeting lacked warmth, and were dispensed by way of charity, serving to enhance her own position. She remained close to the professor, attached by invisible chains of ownership as if his scientific eminence made him a valuable prize amongst husbands. Mina, who thought herself as good as the next person and needed no husband, professorial or otherwise, was unimpressed. More importantly, she had learned long ago that scholarship did not always mean that a man was right in his pronouncements, and neither did it ensure common sense, or knowledge of character.
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