“Edwin!” he cried. “If you don’t see the harm of your damn fool experiments when you hear what she’s been up to, then by God, you’ve lost your senses completely.”
Professor Edwin Friend glanced up from a stack of undergraduate term papers, over which he was bent with a blue fountain pen, and smiled.
“Why, Miss Allston!” Friend said, breaking into a smile, eyes crinkling with pleasure. He stood, tossing the pen down. “Do come in! And you might as well bring Professor Derby with you. We can put up with him for a little while, can’t we?”
Sibyl laughed but brought her gloved fingertips to her lips with a hasty glance at Benton. Their merriment only seemed to make him angrier. His ears were deep scarlet, and his nostrils flared. Sibyl placed her hands on Benton’s shoulders, and felt them drop in response to her touch. She moved around him, edging into the office and beckoning him to follow with her eyes.
“Tell him,” Benton said, his voice tight with rage as he took a seat across from the philosopher’s desk. “Go on. Tell him what you’ve been doing.”
“Professor Derby is terribly uncomfortable with madness as a general rule,” Professor Friend remarked. “But in any event, I’d love to hear about whatever you’ve been up to. I did hope you’d stop by my class, you know.”
“We were dining downtown,” she said, “and I told Professor Derby about a recent experience of mine. But I’m afraid he doesn’t approve.”
“Approve!” Benton burst, smacking his hand on the armrest of his chair. “My God, spit it out already!”
Professor Friend looked mildly on his colleague, and then leaned toward Sibyl with confidential interest. “I’m fascinated. Anything that could get Professor Derby so riled up must be worth doing.”
“Well,” she began, “you recall that I had been involved with a . . .” She cleared her throat, glancing at Benton. His pupils formed pinpoints of rage. “A Spiritualist gathering.”
“Yes, of course,” Professor Friend said, nodding his encouragement. “As so many of us are.”
“Yes,” she faltered. “Well. The medium presented me with a present. A sort of crystal ball.”
The philosopher’s eyes gleamed. “Oh, really? Not one of those glass balls that gypsies use?”
“Oh, no,” Sibyl protested. “This one is small, just a toy, really. I didn’t think much of it at first.”
Benton drummed his fingers on the armrest of his chair. “That’s it, just work your way up to it slowly, no rush at all,” he said. Sibyl scowled at him.
“How big is it?” Friend asked.
“Small. It can fit in a palm. But I usually keep it in the box. Mrs. Dee told me that—” Sibyl stopped, clapping her hand over her mouth when she realized what she had done. The name didn’t seem to mean anything to the professors, however.
“She told me that it was a tool,” Sibyl continued. “For seeing.”
“Clairvoyance,” Friend exclaimed. Benton made a pshawing sound and rolled his eyes. “Now, Professor Derby,” the philosopher said, his voice friendly, “surely you know what clairvoyance is?”
“I suppose there’s no stopping your telling me,” Benton said, rolling his head against the backrest of the chair in exasperation.
“Clairvoyance,” Friend said, “is the ability of gifted individuals in a mesmeric state to see beyond the normal realm of perception. Often by using tools like tea leaves, cards, or a glass.”
“Just so!” Sibyl exclaimed. “At first I didn’t think I could do it. But lately I’ve been seeing the most remarkable things, Professor Friend.”
“Like what?” he asked, eyes gleaming with excitement.
“Well,” Sibyl said, relieved at having an appreciative audience, “as you know, I’d been trying to contact my mother and sister for some time. I’d grown terribly frustrated, and I was skeptical of ever being able to accomplish anything like that on my own. After all, I have no special gifts.”
“That’s not true at all,” Benton growled.
She glanced at him, surprised, but made no comment. Then she turned back to Professor Friend. “At first, I just saw water. Or at least, I thought it was water.”
The philosophy professor leaned forward on his desk as Benton squeezed the bridge of his nose between finger and thumb.
“Lately,” Sibyl whispered. “I’ve been seeing the ship. I can see it down to every detail. The hull, the dining room, the clock in the stairwell . . .” She trailed off, eyes shining. “I’ve been amazed. I think . . . I think I’ll be able to see them. If I only practice a bit more.”
“Remarkable,” the philosopher breathed. “Seen Titanic, have you? As though you were there yourself ? Simply remarkable.”
“Remarkable!” Benton grumbled. “Tell him how you attain the mesmeric state necessary for these remarkable visions of yours, Miss Allston.” When he said the phrase mesmeric state, Benton waved his fingers on either side of his head, as though they were quotation marks.
“Well, Professor Derby, it’s usual for clairvoyants to experience visions in a trance state,” Professor Friend said. “I can think of a number of your colleagues who’ve done research into hypnotism and altered consciousness. I understand it has tremendous therapeutic potential.”
“Tell him,” Benton said to Sibyl, ignoring him.
Sibyl ducked her head, looking sheepish. “I assure you, Benton, there’s no harm in it.”
“Tell him,” Benton hissed, “or I’ll tell him myself.”
“He’s very concerned,” she said to Friend. “Though frankly I can’t imagine why.”
“Because it’s against the law, for one thing,” Benton burst, “and because of the unpardonable risk to your health for another!”
“Whatever is he talking about?” Professor Friend wondered, looking at Sibyl.
“In truth,” she confessed, “the first few times I tried to use the glass nothing happened.”
“Why, that’s not unusual,” the professor said. “Like any mental exercise, clairvoyance requires patience. And practice. And a certain amount of innate capacity. Occasionally, the skill is found in families. Some people try for years before achieving even modest success. Most never succeed at all.”
“You see, Benton? It’s not so terrible as all that,” Sibyl said, wishing to elide the question of how she might have discovered this innate capacity of hers.
Unable to restrain himself, Benton leaned forward into Professor Friend’s face. “She’s been smoking opium, Edwin. She!” He pointed at Sibyl, who sat, prim and ladylike, shoulders drawn back as though prepared for a ballet recital. “That’s how she’s been accessing your so-called mesmeric state. And you’re encouraging her! I can’t believe it. The unmitigated gall!”
He turned to Sibyl. “I suppose you know that everything you think you’ve seen with this so-called scrying glass has been a fever dream, don’t you? That’s all opiates do—create vivid dreams. Same kind of thing you’d get with scarlet fever. There’s no reason to give it any credence whatsoever.”
Scarlet fever. The disease that had taken his wife in Rome. He never mentioned it, never mentioned Lydia at all. The comparison hung there, in the room.
“Now, Professor Derby,” Friend started to mollify.
“And you! Doesn’t this bother you at all? How would a woman like her even go about obtaining opium, I ask you? What sort of people must she be coming in contact with? You haven’t seen what addiction can do to a person. But I have.”
He got to his feet and strode over to Friend’s bookshelf, leaning on it and resting his forehead on the back of his hand.
“They become hollow shells of people, Sibyl,” he said without looking at her. “They lose their very humanity. I can’t believe you’d dabble in such things. I won’t tolerate it. Certainly not in the name of pseudoscience. You’re far too . . . you’re . . .” Benton trailed off, helpless in his rage. His shoulders moved under his suit jacket, as if they could roll off his anger.
“You see.” She smiled, turning
to Professor Friend. “He’s terribly upset.”
“So I see, so I see,” Friend remarked, brushing his fingers over his mustache in thought. “I must say, Miss Allston, he makes a point. I share his worry about the people you might encounter with such an experiment. But”—he turned his cool gaze on Benton—“I differ from Professor Derby in one important respect. I don’t think your experiences aren’t legitimate. Perhaps the answer lies in a change of venue, rather than method.”
“Preposterous,” Benton said, still by the bookshelf, hands clenched at his sides.
“Now, see here, Benton,” Friend said, weary of Benton’s outburst. “There’s nothing wrong with opiates per se. So they’ve instituted a licensing scheme. Better to keep unscrupulous doctors from creating addicts just to bolster business. But Miss Allston isn’t putting her health in danger, necessarily.”
“It’s true, Ben,” she said. “Why, Papa takes laudanum almost every day, for his rheumatism. It’s in the tonic we give him, which his doctor prescribed. He’s taken it for years. It’s all perfectly natural.”
Benton prowled the narrow office like a caged panther, muttering. Sibyl glanced at the philosopher, who sat back in his desk chair, fingers still grooming his mustache, watching.
Finally, Benton stopped.
“All right,” he said. “I can see there’s only one way to convince you both that this is folly.”
“What do you mean?” Sibyl asked, twisting in her seat to look up at him.
“We’ll call on this Dee woman,” Benton announced. “Then you’ll see.”
“Call on her!” Sibyl exclaimed, aghast.
“That’s an excellent idea,” Friend said, getting to his feet. “But we must go immediately. I leave for New York tomorrow.”
“Immediately?” Sibyl repeated, eyes widening with panic.
“Immediately,” Benton affirmed, and stepped forward with a hand to pull her to her feet.
Chapter Eighteen
An interminable span of time had passed since Benton rang the bell, and Sibyl drew herself behind his bulk, as if she could swallow herself up and disappear. They hadn’t even phoned. Sibyl was appalled at herself for leading them to Mrs. Dee. The three of them, Sibyl, Benton, and Edwin, had piled into a taxicab in the trolley-heavy heart of Harvard Square, and Benton turned to her, saying only, “Go ahead. Give him the address.”
And she did.
Sibyl knew that the medium would be angry with her, but in a secret corner of her heart Sibyl was excited. She thrilled at the idea of revealing Mrs. Dee’s talents to the skeptical psychologist, thrilled at the prospect of Professor Friend’s legitimizing their work, and was also anxious to unveil her own recent discoveries to the woman who had guided her.
Sibyl always felt as though she were a disappointment to Mrs. Dee. Not that Mrs. Dee ever said so, but Sibyl feared that she wasn’t sufficiently committed to the work of their séance circle, and that her detachment indicated a failing of character. She worried that she was not a true enough person, a good enough daughter and sister, to be worth reaching. As though her soul were deficient.
Sibyl was so tired of disappointing people.
But the past few weeks had transformed Sibyl’s feelings about herself. First, that tantalizing moment when her mother’s manifested hand reached out for her, almost near enough to touch. Then, the deepening images revealed in the scrying glass. She could feel the contours of her world changing. For a long time Sibyl had felt imprisoned within herself, locked in a room she couldn’t get out of. But now, for the first time since she was a girl, she felt alive to possibility. Loosed.
Almost . . . free.
“Well?” Benton said, turning to Sibyl. He wasn’t going to let her hide behind him.
Sibyl squared her shoulders and said, “I suppose you could ring again.”
“You’re certain she’s home, Miss Allston?” Professor Friend asked, peering up at the forbidding face of the town house.
“I’ve never known her not to be,” Sibyl said. All three of them turned pale faces to the door, and Benton reached a hand up to grasp the knocker. It was brass, the shape of a spiny pineapple.
As Benton’s hand hesitated, the door squeaked open to reveal the watchful stare of the butler. Disapproval glimmered across the man’s face.
“Welcome,” he intoned, a flicker of recognition in his eyes as he surveyed Sibyl’s upturned face. “If you will follow me into the drawing room, please.”
Sibyl muttered, “Thank you,” in the butler’s direction and allowed herself to be shown through the door, the two professors following close on her heels.
Sibyl watched Benton out of the corner of her eye as he surveyed the room with a curled lip of skepticism. Professor Friend wore a bemused smile as he circumnavigated the room, bending for a closer look first at a book, then at one of the sparkling, opened geodes on the fireplace mantel.
Benton brushed a fingertip along the carved back of the medium’s Gothic armchair, lost in thought. Then he sauntered from the table to the cabinet at the far corner of the room. He stood, hands folded behind his back, gazing at it for a while. Sibyl thought she caught him steal a glance at her before turning his attention back to the cabinet, but she couldn’t be certain.
“Ah!” Mrs. Dee announced from her position in the doorway, the butler looming behind her. “My dear! What a pleasant surprise. And you’ve brought some gentlemen with you, I see.”
The small woman’s eyes roved over first Benton, and then Professor Friend, with a gleam of interest overlying a deeper suspicion. She was in her ermine-lined tapestry dressing gown; in fact, she looked so similar to the way she appeared when Sibyl last called on her that the effect was disconcerting.
“Good evening, Mrs. Dee,” Sibyl said. Her voice pierced the thick atmosphere of the room, sounding loud to her ears. She paused, unsure how to account for their sudden appearance in Beacon Hill, or how it would be received. “You know I would never wish to interrupt you—” she began.
The medium made a mild snorting noise of disapproval as she moved into the room.
“You know I always so enjoy your visits, Miss Allston. Though I prefer to be given a bit more warning if I will be entertaining guests.” She settled her eyes on Professor Friend first, moving toward him with her small hand outstretched.
“I confess the responsibility lies with me, madam,” Professor Friend said, his voice injected with a warmth that even Sibyl found reassuring. “You see, we were most anxious to speak with you, and as I’ll be traveling abroad on an extended trip tomorrow, it necessitated our sudden appearance on your doorstep.”
“If I may,” Sibyl interjected, “this is Professor Edwin Friend, of the Harvard philosophy department.”
“Ah! But not only the Harvard philosophy department, surely,” Mrs. Dee said with a knowing smile.
“Indeed not, madam,” Friend said, executing a courtly bow. “I have long been involved as well with . . .”
“. . . the American Society for Psychical Research,” Mrs. Dee finished for him. “Of course. Professor Friend. How good of you to come. To my home.” She accepted the young professor’s hand while also casting her eyes toward Sibyl, so that she would feel that the imposition wrought on the medium had not gone unnoticed.
“And . . . and this is Benton Derby. Professor of psychology,” Sibyl added, gesturing in a helpless way toward Benton, who still loitered by the cabinet in the far corner of the room.
“Derby! Why, that’s an old seafaring name, isn’t it?” The medium smiled. “You are a voyager, then. I can see it in your very bearing.”
Benton cleared his throat with mixed aggravation and discomfort, and managed to say, “You’re very good to welcome us on such little notice. Miss Allston spoke so highly of you, my colleague and I were most anxious to start right away.”
“Well!” Mrs. Dee exclaimed, moving to her customary chair, eyes downcast in false modesty. “Miss Allston is very kind. I only hope that I can be of help to you. Do join
me.”
While speaking she had settled at the head of the table, her hands folded in her tapestried lap. Sibyl dragged her hassock over, placing it in her usual spot, while Professor Friend seated himself in a side chair. Benton lingered for another moment, rubbing a thumb with close attention over a hinge in the cabinet, and then, nodding with satisfaction, strode to join them. He sat, leaning his chin in a cupped hand, leveling his pale gaze on the medium with a smile that struck Sibyl as almost smug.
“I must say, Mrs. Dee,” Professor Friend began, “it’s amazing to me that you’ve been able to escape the Society’s notice.”
She smiled, dimpling at the perceived compliment. “Well, I’m afraid I have a very exclusive circle, Professor Friend. The people who come into my home insist on my absolute discretion. And in return I expect the same from them. We’ve had no wish to draw attention to ourselves.”
The medium settled a pointed look on Sibyl, who lowered her gaze to the surface of the table. The hassock was low, and the effect of this position was childlike, making Sibyl feel smaller than she was. She felt chastened by the medium’s rebuke.
“Of course,” Professor Friend agreed, nodding. “These matters always require tact and understanding. You must be of particularly keen sensitivity.”
Mrs. Dee watched the professor with the faintest air of suspicion but softened as he spoke. Even gifted mediums, it seemed, were susceptible to flattery.
“Yes.” She sniffed. “Well.”
A moment of quiet settled on the table as Professor Friend beamed on the woman in the Gothic throne, and Mrs. Dee enjoyed his attention. Benton cleared his throat, edging Sibyl’s foot under the table with a nudge of his toe. She gurgled at the suggesting pressure, and then brought herself to speak.
“I was telling them, before we arrived, how invaluable your friendship and guidance have been to me and my family since the sinking,” Sibyl said. “The scrying glass, in particular, has— Well. You must know. I was—at first, that is . . .” In her enthusiasm Sibyl stumbled over her words.