Kitabı oku: «The Witches of New York», sayfa 7
CHAPTER VIII.
MRS. HAYES, A CLAIRVOYANT, No. 176 GRAND STREET
Gives a history of how Mrs. Hayes, the Clairvoyant, of No. 176 Grand Street, does the Conjuring Trick
There are a dozen or more of these “Clairvoyants” in the city who profess to cure diseases, and to work other wonders by the aid of their so-called wonderful power. As their mode of proceeding is very much the same in all cases, a description of one or two will give an idea of the whole. Their principal business is to prescribe for bodily ills, and did they confine themselves to this alone, they would not be legitimate subjects of mention in this book. But in addition to their medical practice they also tell about “absent friends;” tell whether projected business undertakings will fall out well or ill; whether contemplated marriages will be prosperous or otherwise: whether a person will be “lucky” in life, whether his children will be happy, and, in short, they do pretty much the regular fortune-telling routine, whenever the questions of the customer lead that way.
The theory as given by them, of a Clairvoyant diagnosis of a malady, is this: that the Clairvoyant, when thrown by mesmeric influence into the “trance” state, is enabled to see into the body of the patient and discern what organs, if any, are deranged, and in what manner; or to ascertain precisely the nature of the morbific condition of the body, and having thus discovered what part of the vital mechanism is out of order, they are able, they argue, to prescribe the best means for restoring the apparatus to a normal state.
There are many thousands of persons who believe this stuff, and endanger their lives and health by trusting to these empirics. Several of the most popular of them have as many patients as they can attend to, and are rapidly amassing fortunes. Most of them have a superficial knowledge of Medicine, and are thus enabled to do, with a certain amount of impunity, many dark deeds. It is reported of more than one of these women that she has done as many deeds of child-murder as did even the notorious Madame Restell.
In this regard, they are among the most dangerous and criminal of all the Witches.
The “Individual” visited Mrs. Hayes, who is one of the most ignorant of the whole lot, and Mrs. Seymour, who is one of the most intelligent of all. He sets down the particulars of his visit to the former, in the words following:
How the “Individual” sees a Clairvoyant – How he pays a Dollar, and what he gets for his money.
Not all the sorcery of all the sorcerers; not all the necromancy of all the necromancers; not all the conjurations of all masculine conjurers; not all the magic of all male magicians; not all the charming of all the charmers, charm they never so wisely, could have induced Johannes to ever more place the slightest trust in a wizard, or repose in any wonderworker of the bearded sex the merest trifle of faith, even the most infinitesimal trituration of the homœopathicest grain. The single dose he had received from the renowned Doctor Wilson was quite enough, and had satisfied all his longings for wisdom of that sort.
Besides, his coming events cast such peculiar and very unpleasant shadows before, that he preferred to keep out of the grim presence of such shady men, and for all after time to bask him only in the sunshine of smiling women.
“Pizon his first wife,” would he? Well, he could have taken that “pizon” with tolerable composure from the lips of lovely woman, but to receive it from the mumbling mouth of a skinny old man, was too much to accept without divers rebellious grins.
A peach-cheeked witch, a cherry-lipped conjuress; a Circe, with only enough charms to make a respectable photograph, might with impunity have called him a counterfeiter, or a horse-thief, or even a thimble-rigger; or might have told him that he would, upon opportunity, garotte his grandmother for the small price of seventy cents and her snuff-box; or that he was in the habit of attending funerals to pick the pockets of the mourners, and of going to church that he might steal the pennies from the poor-box, all this would he have borne uncomplainingly from a woman; but these unpalatable statements from one of the masculine gender would be “most tolerable and not to be endured.”
He felt that if he had not rushed incontinently from the presence of that underground star-gazer Dr. Wilson, he must either have punched that respected person’s venerated head, or have laughed in his honored face. In either case he would, of course, have roused the extensive ire of that potent worthy, and have been at once exposed to a fire of supernatural influences that would have been probably unpleasant, to say the least.
The unmusical Johannes looks upon accordeons as cruel instruments of refined torture, and detests them as the vilest of all created or invented things, and he had been very careful to offend none of the magic community, lest he should, by some high-pressure power of their enchanted spells, be transformed into an accordeon, and be condemned to eternally have shrieking music pulled out of his bowels by unrelenting boys.
Having this terrible possible doom continually before his mind’s optics, he felt that it would be only the part of prudence to avoid the company of those black art professors in whose presence he could not keep all his feelings well in hand. So, no more wizards would he visit, but the witches should henceforth have his entire attention.
It is a fortunate circumstance that there are no other men than the aforesaid Doctor Wilson, in the witch business in New York, so that there would be no temptation to break this resolve, and he probably would not be troubled to keep it.
There is one breed of the modern witch that pretends to a sort of superiority in blood and manners, and those who practise this peculiar branch of the business put on certain aristocratic airs and utterly refuse to consort with those of another stamp. They disdain the title of “Astrologers,” or “Astrologists,” as most of them phrase it, and in their advertisements utterly repudiate the idea that they are “Fortune Tellers.”
These are the “Clairvoyants,” who do business by means of certain select mummeries of their own, and who make a great deal of money in their trade. There are a great number of these in the city, so many indeed that the business is over-done, and the price of retail clairvoyance has come materially down. The same dose of this article that formerly cost five dollars, may now be had for fifty cents, and the quality is not deteriorated, but is quite as good now as it ever was.
To one of these supernatural women did the hero resolve to pay his next visit, and he selected the abode of Mrs. Hayes, of 176 Grand Street, for his initiatory consultation.
With the mysterious psychological phenomena denominated by those who profess to know them best, “clairvoyant manifestations,” Johannes had nothing to do, and was content, as every one of the uninitiated must perforce be, to accept the say-so of the spiritualistic journals that there are such phenomena and that they are unexplained and mysterious. No outside unbelievers in Spiritualism and the kindred arts may ever know anything of clairvoyant developments and demonstrations, save such one-sided varnished statements as the journals that deal in that sort of commodities choose to lay before the world. Every man must be spiritually wound up to concert pitch before he is in a condition to receive the highest revelations of the clairvoyant speculators. So that, whether the clairvoyance that is sold for money be a spurious or a superfine article few can tell. Certain it is that it is the same sort of stuff that has ever been retailed to the public under the name of clairvoyance, ever since the discovery of that remunerative humbug. It is more than likely that the twaddle of Mrs. Hayes, Mrs. Seymour, and the rest of the fortune-telling crew, would be repudiated by Andrew Jackson Davis and the rest of the spiritualistic firstchoppers, but it is none the less true that these gifted women sell their pretended knowledge of spirits and spiritual persons and things, with as much pretentiousness to unerring truth, as that veritable seer himself, and at a much lower price.
The clairvoyant department of modern witchcraft is necessarily carried on by a partnership, and one which is not identical with the legendary league with the devil. Two visible persons constitute the firm, for it takes a double team to do the work, and if the amiable gentleman just referred to makes a third in the concern, he is a silent partner who merely furnishes capital, while his name is not known in the business. The whole theory of clairvoyance as applied to fortune-telling and other branches of cheap necromancy, seems to be somewhat like this.
A strong-minded person, generally a man with a physique like a Centre-Market butcher boy, obtains by some means possession of an extra soul or two, or spirit, or whatever else that intangible thing may be called. These spirits are always second-rate articles, not good enough to be put into vigorous and strong bodies, and which have been therefore hastily cased up in an inferior kind of human frame as a sort of make-shift for men and women.
Your professional clairvoyant is always, both as to soul and body, a botched-up job that nature ought to be ashamed of, and probably is, if she’d own up.
The senior partner of the clairvoyant fortune-telling firm, the strong-minded one, according to their professions, has the arbitrary control of the cast-off souls that animate these refuse bodies. By what spiritual hocus-pocus this is managed is not known to those outside the trade. He uses their half-baked spirits at his will, and makes his living by farming them out to do dirty jobs for the paying public. He disconnects them from their mortal vehicles, and sends them on errands in the spirit-land in behalf of his customers, looking up their “absent friends,” both in and out of the body – telling of their health and prosperity if they are still alive, and picking up little bits of scandal about their angels if they are dead. The senior partner also sends his abject two-and-sixpenny souls to explore the bodies of his sick customers and examine their internal machinery, point out any little defects or disarrangements, and suggest the proper remedies therefor, and in short, to do whatever other dirty work the customer may choose to pay for.
The senior partner of course pockets all the money, merely keeping the mortal tenement in which the working partner dwells in a good state of repair, in consideration of services rendered.
Such a partnership is the one of Mr. and Mrs. Hayes, whose place of business is advertised every day in the morning papers in the words following:
“Clairvoyance. – Astonishing cures and great discoveries daily made by Mrs. Hayes, that superior and wonderful clairvoyant. All diseases discovered and cured (if curable). Unerring advice given respecting persons in business, absent friends, &c. Satisfactory examinations given in all cases, or no charge made. Residence, 176 Grand St. N. Y.”
Johannes, whose general health was excellent, and whose internal apparatus was all right so far as heard from, had therefore no occasion to be astonishingly cured, or to have any great discoveries made in him by Mrs. Hayes; still he was desirous of a little “unerring advice about absent friends,” etc., from “that superior and wonderful clairvoyant.”
Besides, it was barely possible that in the person of the superior and wonderful Mrs. Hayes, he might find the bride for whom he pined. With hope slightly renewed within his speculative breast, he set off joyfully for the designated domicile, which he achieved in the due course of travel.
The house No. 176 Grand Street is a brick two-story dwelling, of a dingy drab color, as though it had been steeped in a Quaker atmosphere and had there imbibed its color, which had since been overlaid with “world’s people’s” dirt.
The door was opened by Mrs. Hayes in person, her body on this occasion being sent with her spirit to do a bit of drudgery.
She is a woman of the most abject and cringing manner imaginable; a female counterpart of Uriah Heep, with an unknown multiplication of that vermicular gentleman’s writhings; she wore no hoops, she would have squirmed herself out of them in an instant; her dress was fastened securely on with numerous visible hooks and eyes, and pins, and strings, in spite of which precautions her visitor expected to see her worm out of it before she got up stairs, and would scarcely have been astonished to see her jerk her skeleton out of her skin, and complete her errand in her bones.
With a propitiating bow, whose intense servility would have become Mr. Sampson Brass in the day of his discomfiture, she asked her customer into the house, cringingly preceded him up stairs, deferentially placed a chair, and abjectly departed into an inner room, pausing at the door to execute an obsequious wriggle, and to once more humble herself in the dust (of which there was plenty) before her astonished visitor.
The reception-room to which she led him, is an apartment of moderate size, from the front windows of which the beholder may regale his eyes with a comprehensive view of Centre Market and its charming surroundings; Mott and Mulberry Streets lie just beyond, and the Tombs are visible in the dim distance. The room was furnished with a superfluity of gaudy furniture; and sofas, tables, chairs and pictures, crowded and elbowed each other, showing plainly that the upholstery of a couple, at least, of parlors had been there compressed into a bedroom.
From the inner room came a great sound, made up of so many household ingredients as to defy accurate analysis – but the crying of babies, the frizzling of cooking meat, the scraping of saucepans, and a sound of somebody scolding everybody else, predominated.
The voyager was unprepared for any Mister Hayes, having taken it for granted that the Mrs. of the superior and wonderful clairvoyant did not imply a husband, but was merely assumed because it looks more dignified in the advertisement. But there was a Mr. Hayes, and presently the door opened and that worthy appeared; he was surrounded by an atmosphere of fried onions, and the fragrant and greasy perspiration in his face seemed to have been distilled from that favorite vegetable.
Mr. Hayes is a tall, fierce, sharp-spoken man, of manners so very rough and bearish that his wife and children quailed when he spoke as if they expected an instant blow. We don’t know that it ever will be possible for a man to garrote his guardian angel for the sake of her golden crown, but the idea occurred to Johannes that if that amiable feat is ever accomplished, it will be by such another man as this. He seemed as unable to speak a kind or gentle word as to pull his boots off over his ears. He is an Englishman, and speaks with the most intolerable cockney accent. Moderating his harsh tones until they were almost as pleasant as the threatenings of an ill-natured bull-dog, and addressing his auditor, he growled out the following specimen of delectable English:
“There is lots of folks goin’ round town pretendin’ to do clairvoyance, and to cure sick folks, and to tell fortunes, and business, and journeys, and stole property; but we ain’t none of them people. We only do this for the sake of doin’ good, and we don’t want to do nothin’ that will make any trouble. We used to tell things about stole property, and about family troubles, and so we sometimes used to get folks into musses, but we don’t do nothin’ of that kind now. If your business is about any kind of muss and trouble in your family we don’t want nothin’ to do with it. Sometimes folks that has quarrelled their wives away come to us and wants us to get them back again, but we don’t do nothing of that sort. We can tell ’em if their wives are well, or if they’re sick and all about what ails ’em, and so we can about any people that is gone off anywhere, and them’s what we call ‘absent friends.’ So if you’ve got any trouble with your wife we can’t do nothin’ for you.”
The love-lorn visitor had no wives, a fact known to the reader already, and when he does accumulate a help-meet, he sincerely trusts she may not be so unruly as to require the interference of outsiders to preserve harmony in the family. He expressed himself to that effect, and added that his business was to find out about the well-being of some friends in Minnesota, and to ascertain particulars about some other trifles necessary to his peace of mind.
Hereupon Mr. Hayes, with a growl like a sulky rhinoceros, opened the door which cut off the pot-and-kettle Babel of the other room, and commanded his wife to come, and that estimable lady, who is evidently in a state of excellent subordination, instantly writhed herself into the room. She sat down in an armchair, and began to evolve a most remarkable series of inane smiles, each one of which began somewhere down her throat, rose to her mouth by jerks, and finally faded away at the top of her head and the tips of her ears. It was a purely spasmodic thing of disagreeable habit, without a particle of geniality or feeling about it.
While this curious process was going on, the Doctor had drawn down the window-shades, thus darkening the room, and now approached for the purpose of unhooking from its earthly tabernacle the soul that was to step up to Minnesota and bring back word to his customer “how all the folks got along.” This he accomplished by a few mysterious mesmeric passes, and when the trance was induced, and the spirit had, so to speak, tucked its breeches into its boots ready for the muddy journey, he placed in the hand of Johannes that of the corpus which still remained in the armchair, and said to the disembodied spirit:
“Now, I want you to go with this gentleman to Brooklyn and take a fair start from there, and then go where he tells you to, and tell him what things there is there that you see.”
Having delivered this injunction in a tone so indescribably savage that he had better a thousand times have struck her in the face, this amiable animal retired to the Babel, taking with him the fried-onion atmosphere.
Then the woman in the chair began to speak, in a style the most disagreeable and affected that anybody ever listened to. It was more like that sickening gibberish that nurses call “baby-talk,” than anything else in the world. She spoke with a detestable whine, and pronounced each syllable of every word separately, as if she feared a two-syllable word might choke her. Sick at the stomach as was her visitor at the whole babyish performance, he so far controlled his qualms as to note down the words hereunder written.
Whoever has heard this woman in a professional way can testify to the verbatim truth of this sketch.
“There is wa-ter that we must cross, we must go in a boat musn’t we? Now we’re in the boat, and O I see so many put-ty things, men, and dogs, and ships and things going up and down; such beau-ti-ful things I have never seened before. Now we are a-cross the riv-er, and now we must get on the car, musn’t we? What car must we get on? O I see it now, the yellow car. Now we are going a-long and I can see – O what a pret-ty dress in that store. O what real nice can-dy that is. I wish I had some don’t you? Now we’re at the house. Is it the one on the cor-ner, or the next one to it, or is it the brick house with the green blinds? No, the wood one with green blinds; so it is, but I didn’t be here be-fore ev-er in my life. Now we will go in-to the house; I see a car-pet there and some chairs and some – O what a pret-ty pic-ture, and what a nice fire. I see a la-dy of ver-y pret-ty ap-pear-ance. She is a young la-dy; she has got blue eyes, she is stand-ing sideways so I can’t see noth-ing of her but one side of her face. There is al-so an el-der-ly la-dy, but I can’t see much of her. They appear to be go-ing on a jour-ney, shall I go with them? Yes, well I will. Now we are on the wa-ter and – O what a pret-ty boat – now we are get-ting off of the boat – I didn’t nev-er be here be-fore. Now we are on a rail-road, I nev-er seened this rail-road be-fore but – O what a pret-ty ba-by. Now we go along, along, along, along, and now we are at the de-pot. I didn’t ev-er be here ei-ther – there is a riv-er here, and a mill and a – O what a pret-ty cow – somebody is go-ing to milk the cow. There is a town here – it seems as if I did be here before – yes I am sure – O what a pret-ty lit-tle car-riage, and what a pret-ty dog. Yes I am sure I seened this town be-fore, but these rail-roads didn’t be here then.”
By this time the travellers were supposed to have reached St. Paul, and the reliable clairvoyant then proceeded to describe that interesting young city; and in the course of her speech made more improvements there than will be accomplished in reality in less than a year or two certainly.
Among other things, Mrs. Hayes described as at present existing in St. Paul, two Colleges, a City Hall built of white marble, a locomotive factory, and a place where they were building seven ocean steamers.
She then, when she arrived at the house, in the course of her mesmeric journey, where the people concerning whom Johannes had inquired were supposed to be at that present domiciled, proceeded to give descriptions of those whom she saw there, of the looks of the country and of the house.
And such descriptions, as much like the truth as a ton of “T” rail is like a boiled custard.
By asking leading questions the seeker after clairvoyant knowledge got some very original information. He only began this course after he found that she, if left to herself, could describe nothing, and could utter no speech more coherent or sensible than that already set down as coming from her illustrious lips.
In fact, the policy of the clairvoyant-witch in every case, is to wait for leading questions from the anxious inquirer, so that the answers may be framed to suit the exigencies of the case. Johannes was not slow to perceive this, and by way of testing the science, or rather, art of clairvoyance, he put a series of questions which established the following interesting facts, all of which were positively averred to be true by Mrs. Hayes, “that superior and wonderful clairvoyant.”
Minnesota Territory is a small town situated 911 miles south-east of the mouth of the Mississippi River – its officers are a chief cook and 23 high privates, besides the younger brother of Shakspeare, who is the Mayor of the Territory, and whose principal business it is to keep the American flag at half-mast, upside down.
When this last important information had been elicited, Johannes, who thought he had got the worth of his money, recalled Dr. Hayes, who reappeared, surrounded by the same old atmosphere of the same old onions; to him the customer resigned the hand of the twaddling adult baby who had held his hand for an hour and a half, paid his dollar, and then prepared to depart.
The soul of the woman then returned from its long journey, and was locked up in its squirmy body by the Doctor, ready to serve future customers at one dollar a head.
She didn’t seem glad to get her soul back again, there probably not being enough to give her any great joy, after she had got it.
Johannes turned moodily away, feeling that the conjuress, his future bride, the renovator of his broken fortunes, and the ready relief to his present necessities, was as far distant as ever.
