She had purchased a large stone church in West Halkin Street and made it over into one of the strangest homes ever conceived by woman. The gallery of the church had been continued all around it and divided into bedrooms and bathrooms. The organ had been retained, and when it was played all the partitions of the rooms seemed to throb. On the ground floor was a grand reception room with art treasures fit for a museum; among them was a splendid collection of clocks; a large one struck the quarter-hours, and the front of the clock opened and a gold and ivory bird came out and sang lustily. Lady Caillard also collected scissors. Whoever came to that home was at once presented with a copy of the late husband’s poems, also a copy of her ladyship’s pamphlet entitled: Sir Vincent Caillard Speaks from the Spirit World. If you could devise a new kind of praise for either of these volumes it would be equivalent to a meal-ticket for the rest of your life—or, at any rate, of Lady Caillard’s life.
Mr. and Mrs. Dingle and Madame Zyszynski were comfortably ensconced in this former house of God, and Beauty had had time to collect all the delicious gossip concerning its affairs. Pausing only for a tribute of grief to Freddi, she opened up to her son a truly thrilling line of conversation. Lady Caillard had become a convert to spiritualism, and now lived as completely surrounded by angels and ministers of grace as William Blake in his most mystical hours. She maintained a troop of mediums, and one of the spirits had directed the invention of a machine called the "Communigraph," whereby Sir Vincent, called "Vinny," could send messages to his wife, called "Birdie." The machine had been set up in "The Belfry," as this home was called, and had been blessed by Archdeacon Wilberforce in a regular service; thereafter the seance room, known as the "Upper Room," was kept sacred to this one purpose, and at a regular hour every Wednesday evening Sir Vincent gave his wife a communication which he signed V.B.X., meaning "Vinnie, Birdie, and a Kiss." These messages were now being compiled into a book entitled A New Conception of Love.
But, alas, love did not rule unchallenged in these twice-consecrated premises. There was a new favorite among the mediums, a woman whom the others all hated. Beauty’s voice fell to a whisper as she revealed what huge sums of money this woman had been getting, and how she had persuaded her ladyship to bequeath her vast fortune to the cause of spiritualism, with the spirits to control it. Lady Caillard’s two children, lacking faith in the other world, wanted their father’s money for themselves, and had quarreled with their mother and been ousted from her home; they had got lawyers, and had even called in Scotland Yard, which couldn’t help. There was the most awful pother going on!
Into this seething caldron of jealousies and hatreds had come Mabel Blackless, alias Beauty Budd, alias Madame Detaze, alias Mrs. Dingle, herself an object of many kinds of suspicion; also her husband, teaching and practicing love for all mankind, including both adventuresses and defrauded children; also a Polish woman medium with an unspellable name. Beauty, of course, was looked upon as an interloper and intriguer, Parsifal Dingle’s love was hypocrisy, and Madame’s mediumship was an effort to supplant the other possessors of this mysterious gift. Beauty was as much pleased over all this as a child at a movie melodrama. Her tongue tripped over itself as she poured out the exciting details. "Really, my dears, I wouldn’t be surprised if somebody tried to poison us!" Her manner gave the impression that she would find that a delightful adventure.
One of the guests in this strange ex-church was the Grand Officer of the Legion d’Honneur and Knight Commander of the Bath. He appeared to be failing; his skin had become yellowish brown, with the texture of parchment; his hands trembled so that he kept them against some part of his body, and would not attempt to write in the presence of anyone. He had grown much thinner, which accentuated the prominence of his eagle’s beak. As usual, Zaharoff kept himself out of all sorts of trouble, and took no sides in this family row; his interest was in getting messages from the duquesa, and he would sit tirelessly as long as any medium would stand it. But he still hadn’t made up his mind entirely; he revealed that to Lanny, not by a direct statement, but by the trend of the questions he kept putting to the younger man.
It was permissible for Lanny to mention that a young friend of his had not been heard from in Germany; whereupon this hiveful of mediums set to work secreting wax and honey for him. Most of it appeared to be synthetic; Lanny became sure that some clever trickster had guessed that the missing person was a relative of Johannes Robin, himself recently named in the newspapers as missing, and now suddenly arriving with the Budds. Since Hansi had been interviewed in Paris on the subject, it couldn’t be he who was lost. Since Freddi had been in London and was known to all friends of the Budds, it really wasn’t much of a detective job to get his name. Every issue of the Manchester Guardian was full of stories about concentration camps and the mistreatment of the Jews; so the spirits began pouring out details—the only trouble being that no two of them agreed on anything of importance.
There was only one medium whom Lanny knew and trusted, and that was Madame; but her control, Tecumseh, was still cross with Lanny and wouldn’t take any trouble for him. In New York the control had been willing to repeat French sentences, syllable by syllable, but now he refused to do the same for German. He said it was too ugly a language, with sounds that no civilized tongue could get round—this from a chieftain of the Iroquois Indians! Tecumseh said that Freddi was not in the spirit world, and that the spirits who tried to talk about Freddi didn’t seem to know anything definite. Tecumseh got so that he would say to a sitter: "Are you going to ask me about that Jewish fellow?" It threatened to ruin Madame’s mediumship and her career.
VIII
Marceline had been invited to spend the summer with the Pomeroy-Nielsons, as a means of making up for the yacht cruise which had been rudely snatched away. Marceline and Alfy, having the same sixteen years, were shooting up tall and what the English call "leggy." It is the age of self-consciousness and restlessness; many things were changing suddenly and confusing their young minds. With other friends of the same age they played with delicate intimations of love; they felt attraction, then shied away, took offense and made up, talked a great deal about themselves and one another, and in various ways prepared for the serious business of matrimony. Marceline exercised her impulse to tease Alfy by being interested in other boys. She had a right to, hadn’t she? Did she have to fall in love the way her family expected? What sort of old-fashioned idea was that? The future baronet was proud, offended, angry, then exalted. Himmelhoch jauchzend, zum Tode betrübt!
Irma and Lanny motored up for a week end, to see how things were going. A lovely old place by the Thames, so restful after the storms and strains of the great world; especially after Berlin, with its enormous and for the most part tasteless public buildings, its statues, crude and cruel, celebrating military glory. Here at The Reaches everything was peaceful; the little old river seemed tame and friendly, safe to go punting on, just right for lovers and poets.
It had been here a long time and would stay while generation after generation of baronets appeared, grew up and studied at the proper schools, wore the proper comfortable clothes, established "little theaters," and wrote articles for newspapers and weeklies proving that the country was going to pot.