The Seance (12 page)

‘There was very little air, even at first, and it soon grew stiflingly hot. As my eyes adjusted to the dark I became aware of a faint glimmer, and discovered that by standing upon tiptoe I could see, through the slits in the visor, the glow of my uncle’s candle – at least, I assumed it was my uncle – moving around the room. Once it paused directly in front of me – even on tiptoe I could only see upward – and I waited for what seemed like minutes for the plates to spring open. At last the light retreated, and then vanished in a muffled clatter of locks and bolts. But I dared not move immediately. As the silence returned, I was seized by a creeping, mortal dread, coiled around the words I had just copied: “For as a young
Tree
may be grafted upon an
Old
. . .” I imagined black clouds boiling up above the Hall ...

‘But enough of that. I mention it only to explain why, when I at last
emerged from that suffocating confinement, I thought only of escape. Suffice to say that the descent proved even more precarious than the climb, and that I reached the ground a good deal scraped and bloodied. My uncle did not, to my relief, come in search of me the next morning. I thought of taking Drayton into my confidence, but I doubted his ability to conceal anything from his master and so I confined myself to saying that I was worried about my uncle’s health. Drayton has promised to wire me in London if anything untoward occurs.

‘Which brings me, at last, to the purpose of my visit. As you may know, I have a particular interest in heart disease, and am often called away from town when an opinion is wanted. So I can’t always be found at short notice, in which case Drayton would of course come straight to you. But beyond acquainting you with the situation, I wonder – though perhaps, as my uncle’s representative, you may think it improper to advise me – whether you can suggest any legal means by which we might forestall disaster, rather than simply waiting – the phrase comes all too aptly – for the storm to break.’

The fire had burned low; I vaguely recalled having heard Josiah depart some time ago.

‘I don’t think it at all improper,’ I said as I refilled our glasses, ‘to advise you, given the extraordinary circumstances. But the only course that suggests itself is the very drastic one of committing him to an asylum; and of course the risk from your point of view is that if the attempt didn’t succeed he might very well take his revenge by disinheriting you. Do you think that two of your colleagues – as the prospective heir, you couldn’t very well be party to it yourself – would be likely to sign a certificate?’

‘I’m not at all certain they would,’ he replied. ‘We can’t prove that he means to use the armour for any sinister purpose; he could plausibly claim to be engaged in a scientific investigation into the effects of lightning. As for his demand that no one enter his domain for three days after he (presumably) ceases to answer his door; supposing he does put that in writing, am I legally bound either to abide by it, or lose the estate?’

‘If he brought such a provision to me,’ I said, after thinking it over for some time, ‘I would refuse to write it into the will, because it’s contradictory. A will has no force until proven; it can’t be proven until the testator is dead; you can’t know whether he’s dead or not until you enter the gallery, which he wants to forbid you to do; but if you believe he’s ill or dying, you have a moral duty – which the law would certainly recognise – to go to his assistance. The risk you face, of course, is that if you break in and he
isn’t
dead, he could well carry out his threat to disinherit you. In fact ... supposing Drayton came to me, and said that he was anxious about your uncle, it would be better if
I
broke in. The worst he could do is dismiss me, assuming he was still alive; and if he was dead, well, it would avoid any complications ...’

It struck me as I made the offer that I was being rather reckless, but Magnus thanked me so warmly that it would have seemed churlish to retract. There we left the matter for the time being, and went out into the chill night air to walk the few hundred yards up to my house.

I had grown unused to company, but Magnus drew me out that night; I found myself speaking of Phoebe and Arthur as I had not done in years, and of the great darkness of spirit that had followed their deaths. I spoke, too, of the strange loss of facility that had followed the painting of
Wraxford Hall by Moonlight
, and of how, in my efforts to outflank the inhibition – or curse, as I sometimes thought of it – I had abandoned first oils, then watercolours, and eventually confined myself to pencil and charcoal, as if relinquishing all but the plainest of techniques might somehow break its grip.

‘I am sure you are on the right track,’ said Magnus. ‘Indeed, I have had similar thoughts about my own profession. For all our talk of progress, I cannot see that medicine has advanced very far since the time of Galen. We can inoculate against smallpox, or remove a gangrenous limb in thirty
seconds; but when it comes to many diseases we are no better equipped than an old village woman with a cupboard full of simples. And we – that is to say, the majority of my colleagues – seem positively to spurn any treatment, however effective, for which we cannot account in material terms.

‘Consider mesmerism, for example: all the rage twenty years ago; now dismissed by many in the profession as no more scientific than spirit-rapping; yet it offers incalculable benefits in the relief of pain, and quite possibly in the cure of chronic illness, including heart disease. I have had remarkable results with some of my patients, yet I would hesitate to describe them in print. I am regarded as quite enough of a mountebank as it is.’

We had taken our coffee and brandy into the study – Magnus, like myself, did not smoke – and settled ourselves in armchairs by the fire. Two candles burned on the mantelpiece; the rest of the room was in darkness.

I asked him how mesmerism could help in curing disease.

‘Consider,’ he said, ‘that your mind influences the action of your heart, whether or not you are aware of the effect. If you are possessed by fearful thoughts, for instance, your pulse accelerates; your breathing becomes shallower and more rapid. We are accustomed to think of such reactions as involuntary, but cause and effect are here reversible: you could conjure up a fearful scene
in order
to accelerate your pulse. The fakirs of India have extended this control – as we may call it – a great deal further, so that all the bodily processes we regard as autonomous can be brought under conscious command: not only the action of heart and lungs, but digestion, sensation, the temperature of the body, and so on. Thus a Hindu monk can walk unharmed over a bed of red-hot coals; or place himself in a state akin to hibernation, remain buried alive for hours, or even days, and emerge unscathed, where you or I would suffocate within a few minutes.

‘Consider, too, that a mesmerised subject can be commanded not to feel pain, and will feel none: it is often done on stage, and can be just as effective in surgery. Now it does not seem so fanciful, does it, to suppose that if I suggest to a subject that his blood will circulate more freely
after
he wakes from the trance, a real improvement will follow? Indeed I see
no reason why, on the same principle, a malignant tumour could not be commanded to shrink, as happens spontaneously from time to time.’

‘But if this is true,’ I exclaimed, ‘and you say that you have had remarkable results with your patients, you have made a great discovery. Why is it not generally accepted?’

‘Well first, it is not my discovery. Elliotson said as much thirty years ago, but he made a circus of his demonstrations and was forced to resign his post. Second, and principally, because we do not know
how
the mind influences the body; we can speak of electrobiological influence, or ideo-motor force, but these are mere labels applied to a mystery. I can see the improvement; my patients feel the benefit of the treatment, but to a sceptic it is mere spontaneous healing, and I cannot prove otherwise. Until a physical mechanism is discovered, anatomised and dissected, it will never be accepted by the profession.’

‘But won’t the sceptics’ patients all desert them and come to you?’

‘Let me put a question in return: if you had felt out of sorts this morning, and a mesmerist had offered his services, would you have accepted?’

‘Well, no—’

‘Precisely; you would have dismissed him as a charlatan.’

‘But now that I know—’

‘You know only because you have met me; if you were to ask your physician, he would most likely assure you that the whole thing had been discredited years ago. Besides, there are numerous cases where orthodox methods must be applied; you would be most ill-advised to command an inflamed appendix not to burst, rather than removing it on the spot.’

I went on to ask what were doubtless the usual questions about mesmerism, and was assured that no, a person could not be mesmerised against their will, or compelled to do anything they would not consent to do in waking life. In the deepest state of trance, however, a subject could be instructed to see scenes and persons who were not actually present.

‘So if you were to mesmerise me,’ I said, a trifle uneasily, ‘you could suggest to me that Arthur Wilmot’ – I had wanted to say ‘Phoebe’, but feared I might break down – ‘was about to enter this room, and he would then appear – very much as spirit mediums claim to be able to summon the dead.’

I could not help glancing into the shadows beyond the firelight as I spoke.

‘Yes,’ said Magnus, ‘but the man you saw in a state of trance would not be a spirit. He would be an image composed of your memories of him.’

‘But would I be able to talk to him? touch him? hear him speak? Would he appear to me as a living man?’

‘As in a dream, yes; but as with a dream, he would vanish at the instant of waking.’

‘But supposing,’ I persisted, ‘you instructed me to wake from the trance, whilst retaining the facility of seeing—’

‘It could not be done. The facility, as you call it, is as specific to the state of trance as dreaming is to sleep. Supposing you were now in a trance, I could suggest that upon waking you would rise, go to the shelf over there, and bring me a certain volume; and most likely you would do so, and then be puzzled as to why you had done it. But I could not command you to wake and find your friend entering the room; or rather, I could command it, but he would not appear ... I fear the subject is distressing to you.’

I assured him it was not, even as I struggled to subdue the emotion which had threatened to overwhelm me.

‘Tell me,’ he asked after a pause, ‘have you ever attended a séance?’

A spark of firelight caught on the gold signet as he raised his glass.

‘No,’ I said, ‘though I have been tempted. I lost what remained of my faith when Phoebe and Arthur died, and yet I cannot altogether relinquish the feeling that something of us survives beyond the grave. So much depends upon the circumstances. That night I spent sketching at
the Hall, for example ... it would be very easy, there, to believe that ghosts walk.’

‘Indeed,’ said Magnus. ‘As you may have heard, the gallery where my uncle works is supposedly haunted by the ghost of the boy Felix, Thomas Wraxford’s son. Curiously enough—’ he broke off, as if suddenly struck by something.

‘Curiously enough?’ I prompted.

‘Well, only that the boy died during a thunderstorm; or so my uncle once told me.’

The room seemed suddenly darker; I noticed that one of the candles had sunk to a thin blue flame.

‘How old was your uncle when Felix died?’ I asked.

‘About eleven; he was a year older than Felix. He says that Thomas Wraxford left an account of his son’s death, but I have never seen it.’

‘How exactly did he die? – according to your uncle?’ I asked.

‘One of the servants happened to be polishing the banister on the main staircase as the storm broke. She saw the boy rush from the gallery and hurtle across the landing as if the Devil himself were after him. He ran straight into the railing with such force that it gave way, and he broke his neck in the fall.’

‘What could have frightened him so badly?’

‘My uncle did not say; he comes out with these snippets at odd times, but he will never answer a direct question. Quite possibly the storm itself. Thomas Wraxford, you’ll recall, had the lightning rods fitted in the first place, and perhaps he communicated his own fear to his son.’

‘And – the haunting?’

‘Sarah, the maid, claims that she has twice heard footsteps running across the gallery floor while she was in the dining-room below; followed, on both occasions, by a peal of thunder. But the story of the footsteps has come down from the previous generation of servants.’