Colonel Count Cruttz looked sober enough tonight; of course, that was subject to change, although it was customary for nothing but champagne to be served at such soirees, and it was not in accordance with his reputation to become shooting-drunk (even gas-mantle-shooting drunk) on such a ladies’ drink as champagne. Still. If a bullet from a revolver-pistol, or two or three, could solve a certain problem of which signs were likely to be shown tonight—if so, gladly would Doctor Eszterhazy ply Colonel Count Cruttz with brandy, vodka, rum, gin, schnapps, and whiskey. Or, for that matter, alcohol absolutus. As, however, it was not to be more than thought of, he would have to . . . what would he have to do?
. . . something else.
In one half of the great salon, the soiree looked like any and every other soiree in Bella: that is, an imitation of a soiree in Vienna, which in turn would be an imitation of one in Paris. Few things bored Eszterhazy more than a Bellanese soiree, though they were, barring boredom, harmless. The other half of the great salon, under the soaring gaslights, was not in the least like every other soiree in Bella, for everyone in that half of the room was gathered around one sole person: a breach of good manners indeed. One might give a ‘reception’ for a particular person and that person might be lionized, surrounded; this was to be expected. But a soiree was not a reception, at least it was not intended to be, and it was good manners neither in those gathered round one person nor for that one person to allow it. But—allow it?
Mr. Mudge reveled in it.
Those in the other half of the room strolled around for the most part by ones and twos, now and then uttering polite words to those they walked with or to those they encountered. What was going to happen? By now Doctor Eszterhazy knew. Someone would give a polite hand-clap. Others would fall silent. Someone would say what good luck they all had. Someone would speak, obliquely, of the Spirits which—or who—had ‘crossed over,’ and how, for reasons not only not made clear but never mentioned, they sometimes were pleased to make use of the “the justly famous Mr. Mudge” as the medium of their attempts to contact the living. Eszterhazy had, he hoped, a most open mind: the received opinion of thousands of years to the contrary, the spirits of the dead were not where they could neither reach nor be reached? Very well. Let the evidence be presented, and he would form . . . perhaps . . . an opinion. But he knew no evidence that any of the so-called spirits had passed their time, whilst living, in tipping tables or sounding very tatty-looking trumpets or ringing lots of little bells; and so he did not think they would do so, now that they were dead, as a means of proving that they were not really entirely dead after all. Mr. Mudge did it (assuming it to be Mr. Mudge who did it); Mr. Mudge did it all very well.
But did any of it need to be done at all? Eszterhazy could not think so. He was not altogether alone.
“Engli, need we got to have all this?” asked a man, no longer at all young, with a weather-beaten and worn . . . worn? eroded! . . . face, stopping as he strolled.
“Not if you do not wish it had, Count.”
The Count almost doubled over in an agony of conviction. “I don’t! I don’t! Oh, I thought nothing when Olga Pensk asked it of me, that was a month ago, always have had a soft spot in me heart for her, lovely young girl her daughter is—But oh I’ve heard such a lot in that month. And I can’t get back to talk to Olga about it. She won’t see me. She’s become that creature’s creature. Look at her, doesn’t take her eyes off him, let me tell you what I have heard.”
But Eszterhazy, saying that perhaps he had heard it, too, urged that this be put off to another time.
“Do something, do something, do something,” begged the Count and Colonel. “I know what I’d love to do, and would do, hadn’t all of us in the Corps of Officers given our solemn vow and oath to his Royal and Imperial Majesty neither to fight duels nor commit homicides; wish I hadn’t. Engli. Engli. You’re a learned chap. You lived how many a month was it with the Old Men of the Mountains, didn’t you learn—”
But Eszterhazy was lightly clapping his hands.
Afterwards, he had brief misgivings. Had he been right to have done it at all? To have done it the way he had done? That Melanchthon Mudge thought this-or-that about it: on this he did not need to waste thought. The Sovereign Princess of Damrosch-Pensk, would she ever forgive him? Too bad, if she would not. But suppose that collegium of white wizards, the Old Men of the Mountains, to hear of it; what would they think? Well, well, he had not depended on what they had taught him for everything he’d done in the great salon of Colonel Count Cruttz’s townhouse. Even the common sorcerers of the Hyperborean High Lands dearly loved the rude, the bawdy, the buffoon; they did not rank with the Old Men, but he had taken some pains to learn from them, too.
And though he told himself that he did not need think about Mr. Mudge, think about Mr. Mudge he did. If he had denounced Mr. Mudge as a heretic; a heresiarch, satanist, and diabolist; if he had made him seem black and scarlet with infamously classical sins? Why, certainly the man would have loved it. Swelled with pride. Naturally. But he, Eszterhazy, had not done it. Nothing of the sort. He had parodied the usual ritual of the séance. He had reduced the introductory words to gibberish and, worse by far than merely that, to funny gibberish. He had made the table tip, totter, fall back, to the audible imitation of an off-color street-song, as though accompanied on, not one trumpet, but a chorus of trumpets, as played by a chorus of flatulent demons. He had done something similar with his summoning-up, in mockery, of the spirit bells. Was it not enough to show how others could do it? Did he have to have them ring in accompaniment to the naughty (recognizable—but who would admit it?) song on the ‘trumpet’?
Well, ‘need.’ Need makes the old dame trot, went the proverb.
He had done it.
The whole doing was a mere five minutes long; but it had, of course, made it utterly impossible for Mudge, with or without others, to give his own performance. Absolutely impossible, right afterwards. And who knows for how long impossible, subsequently? He had lost the best part of his audience, for certainly the effect was ruined. If he would indeed try a repetition, elsewhere, a week, a fortnight, even a month, months later, he would hardly dare do so in the presence of any who had been there then. A single guffaw would have meant death.
And eloquent of death was the man’s face as his eyes met Eszterhazy’s. It was but for a moment; then the face changed. No hot emotion showed as he came up to Eszterhazy, the Colonel Count rather hastily stepping up to be ready, in case of need, to step between them. But no. “Very amusing, Doctor,” said Mr. Mudge. He bowed and said a few courteous words to the host. Then he left. Leaving with him, her own face as though carved in ice, was the Sovereign Princess Olga Helena. Not icy, but perhaps rather confused, was the face of her daughter, the Highlady Charlotte, own cousin to Eszterhazy’s own cousin. Had she, too, believed? Well, it were better she should now doubt. That there were sincere people in the ranks of the spiritualists, the doctor did not doubt. That some were not alone sincere, but, also, even, good, he was prepared to admit. But Mr. Mudge was something else, and if indeed he were sincere, it was in the sincerity of evil.