“SURE, miss,” Jenny allowed herself to say, as she set down the tea-tray before her mistress, “’tis a sight for sore eyes ye are! You seeming so natural-like, after all the signs and wonders. And the rooms and all just the same! However did it happen I don’t know. Up till you touched the bell, I says to meself, ‘Jenny, ye’re dreaming!’”
“A great poet said, ‘The earth hath bubbles, as the water hath, and these are of them,’” replied Miriam. “Nobody really knows the difference between what seems and what is. We may be content if they seem as we would wish to have them. But I suppose you know how you got here?”
“’Deed, miss, and I don’t, then! I’d been sorrowing that ye weren’t at home these last days, and the poor master taking on so; and last evening, I think it was, I was saying me prayers, and, of a sudden, ‘What’s that?’ I says. Whether I saw it or I heard it, I couldn’t rightly tell, miss, but somebody was in the room; and what did I do but shut my eyes so as I’d see better—if ye understand how I mean, miss. And there was a lady there—fine and stately she was, but not the blessed Mary, for she had on black in place of white, and no glory round her head; but oh, ’twas the face of somebody great and good, I’ll go bail for that! And whether she spoke or not I don’t know; but seems like I knew what was in her mind—all calmness and kindness, and ‘Don’t be afeared, Jenny, ye’re in friendly hands’—it came to me like that. And it seemed like I wasn’t to open my eyes, but leave it all to her; a kind of lullaby like, miss, the way my mother—God rest her soul—would sing me asleep when I was a wee colleen, back in the ould sod.
“‘Sure,’ says I to meself, ‘it’s dying I am,’ I says; it was a sort of drawing out through the top of me head, but soft and gentle, and me not a bit frighted, but easy and pleased like never before in all me life; and the next minute what did I see but meself sitting there in the rocker, and meself standing beside her—if you understand me, miss. ‘If I’m dead,’ I says, ‘however would I be alive?’ I says; and with that I looks round and sees you your own self, miss, but oh, ever and ever so far off—standing here by the table, you were, and a thoughtful and sad look on the sweet face of ye. ‘Sure, ’tis going to her I’ll be,’ I says, forgetting the distance; but the wish in me was like wings, and me like outside meself. Howandever, going I was, not like flying, but what was before me one minute was behind me in another, with me standing still all the time and the things moving past me. ‘Sure,’ I says to meself, ‘Jenny,’ I says, ‘ye’ll never see yourself again,’ I says, thinking of meself sitting there in the rocker. But I’ll be talking too much miss,” said Jenny, interrupting herself and handing her mistress the napkin.
Jenny’s voice had the flow and modulations of bubbling waters and singing birds, and it was no hardship to listen to her even on ordinary topics.
“It’s a wonderful story, Jenny,” Miriam said. “Wishes, after all, are the greatest power in the world; they are in science and art and deeds, like the soul in the body. But time and space, like veils, keep us from recognizing the miracle of it. But sometimes the veils may be lifted, and then we see. I’m glad you are here.”
“So am I, miss,” returned Jenny. “But how will we be getting back again?”
“By wishing, perhaps,” said Miriam, with a smile. “But we’ll have to help ourselves a little, too, I think. So it was Mary Faust, after all,” she said to herself; “but she must have somehow cooperated with Torpeon. Lamara, also, perhaps. Oh, I hope Jack does nothing rash! But I must do my part! Is any one beside yourself here, Jenny?”
“’Tis that puzzles me, miss,” answered the girl. “Times I’ll be wanting something, and looks round; there it sits, like it had been there all the time, but never a body have I seen to bring it. ’Tis a queer place entirely! More like dreams than any living place I know of. Sure I’m wondering, now and again, will I wake up of a sudden and find meself asleep!”
“I have felt that in other places before this,” said Miriam. “But if you can get what you want by wanting it, perhaps I can do the same. You may take back the things; the tea tasted very good.”
“I found the tea in the caddy, miss, but I made it meself,” said Jenny, showing her milk-white teeth between her red lips; and she departed with the tray.
Miriam leaned her head on her hand and remained quiescent for a while. Presently she loosened the fastenings of her hair, and let the magnificent flood of it tumble down past her shoulders to her flanks. She took a brush and began to brush it with long, sweeping movements. As the delicate silken filaments responded to the treatment with increased softness and luster, her mind became composed, and her thoughts clear and orderly. In times past she had solved many a problem with a hair-brush.
She looped the great, black strands round her wrist, and by some feminine sleight of hand caused it to coil itself upon her head; her supple fingers pierced the mounded mass with fairy poniards and lightly patted it into symmetry. She contemplated the effect in the glass with approval; but the red mark of Torpeon caused a frown to flit over her brow.
The suggestion conveyed by Jenny’s story that Mary Faust might have had some share at least in the preparation of her present surroundings had opened the way to fresh thoughts and hopes. It somewhat modified her view of Torpeon’s chivalric initiative, though she could still concede him whatever credit was due to his accepting a happy proposal. It was out of the question, of course, that he and Mary Faust could have in view the same ultimate objects; but Mary’s was the deeper nature, and doubtless the profounder science, and she might have led him to play unawares into her hands. She rose and went into the laboratory.
Miriam selected from the instruments on the table a small machine with a four-sided crystal cup at one end and a retort at the other; these were connected by metal parts which included two balls a third of an inch in diameter, which ran up and down in grooves that were tipped rhythmically to right and left by the action of fine-toothed gear; a closely coiled gold wire connected the cup and the retort, and yielded to the stress applied and relaxed by the seesaw movement of the grooved shafts. The whole contrivance was embraced in a magnetic field created by a bar of iron alloyed with another metal isolated by Miriam herself, bent into the form of a horseshoe.
She uncorked a vial containing a transparent but very heavy liquid, colorless and sparling, and carefully counted seventeen drops of it into the crystal cup. As it fell, it had the peculiar consistency of quicksilver; but the drops immediately resolved themselves into a homogeneous mass. She next armed herself with a delicate pair of pincers, and with them picked out a grain of what looked like black powder from a box partly filled with them. She dropped this grain into the cup of liquid.
For a moment it lay of the surface, causing a slight depression to appear beneath it, a miniature dimple. Then it seemed to be attacked by the liquid, which was seen to gyrate around it from left to right, and this movement spread until the entire surface was agitated. The black particle first became red, like heated iron, and finally burned with a clear flame until it was wholly consumed; the liquid meanwhile becoming clouded, but finally assumed a brilliant blue color. At the same time, there appeared in the retort two small globes of fire, intensely bright, which revolved round each other with gradually increasing speed.
When the rapidity of their motion had caused them to take the aspect of a ring, Miriam nodded to herself with murmur of satisfaction, lifted back the magnet, and the flames vanished, the gyration of the liquid ceased, and the experiment was over.
“Everything seems right,” she said to herself. “I have only to reverse the circuit, and it is done! But Torpeon must be either very ignorant or very confident to allow me access to these things. Or he may imagine they are mere toys that I amuse myself with. He is himself planning something—I feel sure of that! Perhaps, after all,” she went on after a pause, “Mary Faust has more control over him than he suspects. She certainly knows my predicament. Why did she send no message by Jenny? Perhaps she thought her too simple to risk in these intrigues. But I need some one—some one that I can trust. Suppose Torpeon should put me where I could not get to my laboratory! If he were certain I would never yield to him, he might do anything! If I cannot find an assistant, I must devise some way of acting from a distance—and that might miscarry! Terrible, either way! But I must do my best! What if I should do it now!” she suddenly exclaimed aloud, rising to her feet, her cheeks paling and her eyes dark under the influence of a powerful emotion. Her hand crept toward the instrument and laid hold of the magnet. “This may be my last opportunity! Jack—Jack, my own darling, you will know I could never love any one but you!”
She had begun to turn the magnet back to its original position when she felt three light touches on her breast. Mary Faust’s warning once more!
She had nerved herself to a desperate act, and the reaction caused by this admonition, with its reassuring implication, shook her to the soul. She sank down in her chair, buried her face in her hands, and sobbed uncontrollably.
The paroxysm did not last long. She mastered herself with a feeling of self-contempt and sat up, wiping her eyes and pressing her cold hands against her hot cheeks.
“Yes, it was wicked and cowardly—God forgive me!” she said. “I am not brave; I must be prevented and led, like a spoiled child! Jack, I’m not worthy of you!”
She walked up and down the room, calming herself, her courage revived. She had not been abandoned; there would be some way out. The irrevocable deed she had contemplated could be at least postponed. Wiser and stronger spirits than hers were aware of her extremity, and were working for her.
“I will see Torpeon,” she decided. “He must understand that, in spite of appearances, we are on equal ground.”
She passed into the adjoining room, and was about to press the bell to summon Jenny, when that rosy-cheeked young woman knocked and opened the door.
“If you please, miss, a young man outside would like to speak with ye. He’s a funny kind of young man, miss, if ye please,” she added, breaking into a smile.
“How so, Jenny?” demanded Miriam. “Who sent him here?”
“He’s from New York, miss, and I think he come of himself.”
“From New York? Come of himself: Consider what you are saying, Jenny!” Then the thought of her lover leaped up in her. She seized the girl by the shoulders. “You don’t mean—not Mr. Jack Paladin?”
Jenny was frightened by the passion in her look and voice.
“Oh, no, miss! I’m sorry, miss. It isn’t that sort of gentlemen—just a young man, and he hasn’t only one leg!”
Miriam dropped her arms with a heavy sigh. “Oh—Jim!” The intonation was not complimentary. Yet her face lightened up a little as Jim, with his indomitable grin, hobbled briskly into the room.