Page:Once a Week Volume 7.djvu/621

 . 22, 1862.] say “You are a very fine fellow, well-born, rich, in all human probability the future possessor of a title, and a first-rate match for my daughter. Baiting with Alice we have hooked you, but such delicate fish have fine mouths, and I am dreadfully afraid lest you should break away after all; so pray take all the line you require,” but she looked and smiled all this. When she had got her salmon into a comfortable still pool, she turned to me, poor worthless trout. Not that she was not glad to see me; on the contrary, I was a favourite of hers, and in my childhood she had been like a mother to me, dear old aunt! But, you see, business is business. After a kind welcome, she drew me mysteriously on one side, to ask, I supposed, some questions relative to the weight, haunts, or habits of her salmon; but no, her first inquiry was:

“Are you a medium?”

“A medium! what medium?”

“A spirit-medium, to be sure.”

I could only think that she suspected me of being engaged in some conspiracy of a smuggling nature, and answered, with the indignation of a patriot who finds taxes a luxury, in the negative.

“Is Mr. Ormond?”

Before I could reply, the dressing bell rang, and my aunt hurried off to give directions about some domestic matters which were probably in perfect order already.

This gave me an opportunity for a few words with Alice, who seemingly did not consider it the duty of a bait to make itself agreeable to the fish whose capture was intended—that was the fisherwoman’s business—so she treated Ormond in a very polite, cold, easy way, as a stranger of whom she had not seen much, but to whom a hospitable reception under her father’s roof was due, while she greeted me with a warmth of sisterly affection more marked than usual, keeping hold of my hand after shaking it, and giving me her lips instead of her cheek—my usual allowance—to kiss. She seemed more thoughtful, and a trifle thinner in the face, than when I had seen her last. Not that there were any signs of fretting about her; she looked rather as if her will had been opposed, and her majesty consequently offended about something or other.

I sat next to her at dinner, and directly the conversation was general enough for her to address me without being overheard, she asked:

“Are you a medium?”

“I don’t know!” I cried, quite bothered.

“Is your friend?”

My friend! What a way of alluding to the man she was to marry!

“I don’t know,” I repeated. “What on earth are you talking about? Are you all cracked? First of all my uncle, then my aunt, and now you want to know whether Ormond or I are mediums. What is a medium?”

“What! have you heard nothing of spiritualism and table-turning?”

“Oh, ah!” I cried, suddenly enlightened, “now I knew what you mean; but the fact is that I am such a humdrum material sort of animal that I take very little interest in the supernatural.”

“But do you believe that there is anything in it?”

“Well, I don’t know. It is rude to tell people that they are not telling the truth, or that they have been humbugged, when they recount their experiences on the subject; but still I own that the idea of my soul becoming eventually part of the stock-in-trade of a Yankee conjuror does not coincide with my views of immortality, and would not tend to rob the grave of its terrors, and so I hope that I may be excused for being hard to convince.”

She was silent for a minute, and then replied:

“We have been trying to turn a table, but without success. Now, if some night we should be more happy, I hope you will not be too inquiring or sceptical. You may not believe that it is all fair-play, but—”

“But what?”

“Could you not make believe to believe it? To turn a table and hear it rap would so please dear papa.”

“Dutiful child!”

“Am I not?” and she glanced across at Ormond, looked down demurely, and added, “He is not a shy gentleman, your friend!”

“Not very; but why do you persist in calling him my friend?”

“Is he not? You brought him here.”

“In the first place, he is far too great a swell to honour me with his friendship; next But I must not abuse him to you. However, I have a friend—an old, tried, real friend—after whom you have not inquired.”

“Whom do you mean?” she asked, in so quiet, indifferent a tone that I thought I had missed; but no, a pink spot came out on her neck and ear.

“Frank Jackson, Jackson of the Engineers,” I answered.

“Ah, yes! I remember him,” said the jilt; “he went out to India, or China, or somewhere, did he not?”

“Yes; but he returned to England six weeks ago.”

“Dear me! I suppose he has changed a good deal, has he not?”

“I have not seeseen [sic] him yet.”

“I wonder if one would know him again, if one met him unexpectedly.”

“I should certainly. I do not forget my friends so quickly as that!”

“Really!” she replied, rising from the table, and adding with emphasis as she swept past me, “Even when they do not wish to be remembered?”

And then she vanished, leaving me woefully puzzled. Why should my oldest friend and constant correspondent wish me to forget him? Pooh! there was probably no meaning in her words; but she just uttered any nonsense which first came into her head to hide her confusion. For the slight blush I had detected showed that she still thought with kindness of poor Frank, and that was probably the reason of the cool greeting given by her to Harold Ormond.

Self-possessed as he was, that deliberate lover was slightly disconcerted by the indifference with which the lady to whom he had deigned to throw