“Have you my record?” was his first question.
Mrs. Mailey, smiling, handed him an envelope. “We kept it all ready for you but you can read it at home. You see,” she explained, “poor Mr. Terbane is in trance and knows nothing of the wonderful work of which he is the instrument, so after each sitting my husband and I draw up an account for him.”
“Very much astonished I am when I read it,” said Terbane.
“And very proud, I should think,” added Mason.
“Well, I don’t know about that,” Terbane answered humbly. “I don’t see that the tool need to be proud because the worker happens to use it. Yet it is a privilege, of course.”
“Good old Terbane!” said Mailey, laying his hand affectionately on the railwayman’s shoulder. “The better the medium the more unselfish. That is my experience. The whole conception of a medium is one who gives himself up for the use of others, and that is incompatible with selfishness. Well, I suppose we had better get to work or Mr. Chang will scold us.”
“Who is he?” asked Malone.
“Oh, you will soon make the acquaintance of Mr. Chang! We need not sit round the table. A semi-circle round the fire does very well. Lights half-down. That is all right. You’ll make yourself comfortable, Terbane. Snuggle among the cushions.”
The medium was in the corner of a comfortable sofa, and had fallen at once into a doze. Both Mailey and Malone at with notebooks upon their knees awaiting developments.
They were not long in coming. Terbane suddenly sat up, his dreamy self transformed into a very alert and masterful individuality. A subtle change had passed over his ace. An ambiguous smile fluttered upon his lips, his eye seemed more oblique and less open, his face projected. The two hands were thrust into the sleeves of his blue lounge jacket.
“Good evening,” said he, speaking crisply and in short staccato sentences. “New faces! Who these?”
“Good evening, Chang,” said the master of the house. “You know Mr. Mason. This is Mr. Malone who studies our subject. This is Lord Roxton who has helped me to-day.”
As each name was mentioned, Terbane made a sweeping Oriental gesture of greeting, bringing his hand down from his forehead. His whole bearing was superbly dignified and very different from the humble little man who had sat down a few minutes before.
“Lord Roxton!” he repeated. “An English milord! I knew Lord—Lord Macart No! I cannot say it. Alas! I called him ‘foreign devil’ then. Chang, too, had much to learn.”
“He is speaking of Lord Macartney. That would be over a hundred years ago. Chang was a great living philosopher then,” Mailey explained.
“Not lose time!” cried the control. “Much to do to-day. Crowd waiting. Some new, so
me old. I gather strange folk in my net. Now I go.” He sank back among the cushions.
A minute elapsed, then he suddenly sat up.
“I want to thank you,” he said, speaking perfect English. “I came two weeks ago. I have thought over all you said. The path is lighter.”
“Were you the spirit who did not believe in God?”
“Yes, yes! I said so in my anger. I was so weary—so weary. Oh, the time, the endless time, the grey mist, the heavy weight of remorse! Hopeless! Hopeless! And you brought me comfort, you and this great Chinese spirit. You gave me the first kind words I have had since I died!”
“When was it that you died?”
“Oh! It seems an eternity. We do not measure as you do. It is a long, horrible dream without change or break.”
“Who was king in England?”
“Victoria was queen. I had attuned my mind to matter and so it clung to matter. I did not believe in a future life. Now I know that I was all wrong, but I could not adapt my mind to new conditions.”
“Is it bad where you are?”
“It is all—all grey. That is the awful part of it. One’s surroundings are so horrible.”
“But there are many more. You are not alone.”
“No, but they know no more than I. They, too, scoff and doubt and are miserable.”
“You will soon get out.”