The Seance Read Online Free PDF

séances I would sometimes sit with Mrs Veasey on the bench outside the Foundling Hospital. There she would instruct me in the arts of mediumship, always on the understanding that we were simply helping the spirits in their task, and suggest messages that Alma might give to other sitters. I came to realise that she had chosen me as her successor, though I was never sure of her motives, just as Iwas never quite certain whether she believed or not: I suspect that like me she had had glimpses of a power, fleeting and uncertain, coming upon one when you least expected it.
    There was, she insisted, an affinity between us; but I was aware, too, that we were bound by our mutual confidences; neither could afford to expose the other, and I sometimes wondered if this was why she had chosen me. I noticed, too, that the contributions increased as our partnership developed; all of the money, of course, went to Mrs Veasey, but though my conscience often troubled me, the deception did not seem wicked, since it was done for Mama’s sake. Our Society was far from grand; it admitted both impoverished gentry and respectable women of the housekeeping class, people on the fringe of their station. Most of the sitters, including of course Mama, were eager, if not determined, to believe whatever the medium told them, and with Mrs Veasey’s assistance I began to gain a reputation, which was both exhilarating and alarming. I enjoyed, I confess, the power conferred upon me by having grown men and women hang upon my words. And sometimes – though I was never sure of it – I felt that my feigned trance was becoming a real one. Sounds would grow louder: the creaking of the coals in the grate, the faint whistle of Mr Carmichael’s asthmatic breathing, until the blood seemed to wash and boom in my ears, and then the sounds would begin to shape themselves into words, or rather the shadow of words, like conversation heard a long way off. And yet the more I practised, the less I believed in anything like the realm of spirits we invoked with such assurance.
    I had hoped that Mama would be content with regular messages from Alma, but as the autumn advanced and the days grew shorter, the old haunted look crept back into her eyes. How could she be certain, she would ask, that it was really Alma speaking? And why could I not summon her at home? I had tried to forestall this by insisting that the first time had been Alma’s way of drawing us into Mrs Veasey’s circle, but myreassurances sounded hollow even to my own ears. Hearing Alma’s voice was no longer proof enough; my mother wanted to see, to touch, to hold her, and having learned from the other sitters that there were mediums who could make spirits visible, she began to wonder aloud why I would not take her to see one. Mrs Veasey disapproved of manifestations: the use of the cabinet, she would declare in righteous tones, was a sure sign of trickery. This was not an argument I wished to pursue with Mama; I thought of contriving a message from Alma along the lines of ‘Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed’, but I doubted whether it would subdue her craving. And so I decided to attend a manifestation séance myself, in the hope that I might stumble upon someone who could present a convincing Alma to my mother’s fading sight.
    Several members of our circle had spoken, though not within Mrs Veasey’s hearing, of a Miss Carver, whose sittings were held in her father’s house in Marylebone High Street. Katie Carver was said to be very pretty, and capable of summoning not only her ‘control’, an equally attractive spirit by the name of Arabella Morse, but a whole troop of them. Only after I had secured my place at a sitting, and handed over a guinea (‘for charitable causes’), did it strike me that I should have given a false name. Miss Lester, the young woman who had taken my money, showed me into a dimly lit room furnished, like our own in Lamb’s Conduit Street, with a