Prelude to Eternity. Brian Stableford
he said.
“What do you think, Laurel?” Hope suddenly demanded, although he could not have seen the raised eyebrows.
“I don’t know,” Michael admitted, trying not to stammer. “Perhaps I’ll be able to form a better judgment when I’ve seen Dr. Carp in action. He’s due to entrance his somniloquist tomorrow night, I believe, immediately after Signor Monticarlo’s recital?”
Signor Monticarlo obligingly nodded in confirmation of Michael’s presumption, but seemed pained at the thought that his pioneering revelation of a new variation of a Pietro Locatelli capriccio was to be followed by a display of Mesmeric somniloquism. Lady Phythian nodded too, with far greater conviction. Carmela Monticarlo smiled.
“Very wise, Laurel,” said Escott. “Keep your powder dry. Don’t fire until you have the bird in your sights.”
“For a man who’s never yet hit a bird in flight,” Hope put in, “Mr. Escott is very free with his sporting metaphors—but he’s right about your being wise to reserve judgment, Laurel. You might learn a great deal this weekend, if you’re lucky. When the Sir Richard Trevithick carries us home again on Tuesday, we might all be a little wiser. I certainly hope so.”
CHAPTER FIVE
THE DISPIRITED MESMERIST
By the time the Sir Richard Trevithick pulled into York station, dead on time, having failed to come off the rails yet again, Hope and Escott had tired somewhat of their perpetual performance, and had lapsed into a sort of weary torpor. No one had attempted to take on the burden of keeping the conversation going, so the last few miles had been covered in near-funereal silence.
Rather than continue their journey immediately in the hired diligence that was waiting for them in the station forecourt, the company decided—with not a single dissenting voice—to take an early dinner. They voted to take temporary refuge in a Coaching Inn that was situated less than a hundred yards from the railway station, set back slightly from the road. It seemed rather as if the august institution were staring at its new neighbor, obliquely and resentfully, from what would henceforth be the wrong side of the dusty highway.
While his companions from the carriage made ready to execute this plan, Michael went to collect his bags and equipment from the luggage van. Those of his traveling companions who had left trunks there were content to rely on the labels they bore to ensure that they were transferred to the diligence. The only person who joined him was Augustus Carp, to whom he had just been introduced for the first time.
Carp was considerably older than Hope, Escott or Monticarlo, or even Lady Phythian; Michael judged that he must be at least seventy, even if the snowy whiteness of his hair was slightly deceptive. Michael had expected the celebrated Mesmerist to have strikingly penetrative eyes, but Carp’s gaze actually seemed quite meek, and his dull pupils did not give the least hint of any capacity for flashing fire.
“Have you been to Langstrade Hall before, Mr. Laurel?” Carp asked him, by way of making polite conversation, while the porters were busy unloading the luggage van.
“This is my first time,” Michael admitted, “but I hope it won’t be the last.”
“It’s my first time too,” Carp said, dolefully. “I’ve visited many places in Yorkshire, but never Langstrade. I wish I might share your hope, but when one reaches my age, the likelihood that everything one does is being done for the last time becomes difficult to dispute.”
“Mastery of animal magnetism does not confer exceptional longevity, then?” Michael observed, a trifle mischievously—then cursed himself immediately for having allowed a little of Escott’s subversive personality to rub off on him during the train journey.
Carp did not take seem to take offense. “Only to a small degree, I fear,” he said, with a faint sigh. “The effects of magnetism have kept me healthy and alert in the meantime, though, and have given me many other privileges denied to the ignorant and the contemptuous.”
Michael assumed that the old man was referring to the conversations he supposedly held with the dead via his somniloquist. He had also been introduced to the woman currently playing that role: a buxom Frenchwoman named Jeanne Evredon, not much older than Carmela Monticarlo, to whose reluctant care the old man had confided his ward before coming to supervise the transfer of his luggage.
Michael’s equipment was unloaded first, and Michael had to leave the old man alone temporarily in order that he might transfer the fragile items to the diligence personally. He took great care to check that the tools of his trade were safely stowed on top of the coach. By the time he was satisfied, Augustus Carp had finished supervising the securing of his own trunks to the postilion’s station, and the two were able to walk to the Inn together.
The low ceiling of the inn’s dining-room was stained yellow between its oaken beams by tobacco-smoke, and the walls were hung with a random admixture of horse-brasses and prints reproducing badly-painted hunting-scenes or steeplechases. There was a strong odor typical of such institutions, which Michael always took care to think of as the odor of oxtail soup, although he knew that it was really the olfactory ambience of human body-odor.
The Minotaur’s refuge would doubtless have emitted a more intense version of the same odor, he thought. But one always gets used to it after ten minutes or so—unless, of course, mine host takes it into his head to serve oxtail soup.
Fortunately, this being Yorkshire, the innkeeper’s wife was busy serving plates loaded with mutton chops, potatoes and Yorkshire pudding to all the diners.
Their companions had secured a trestle-table long enough to accommodate the entire party, but the two seats still vacant were positioned at one corner, between Mademoiselle Evredon and Lady Phythian. Politely standing aside to let the Mesmerist sit next to his protégée—although Carp hesitated before accepting the invitation—Michael sat down between the old man and the dowager.
Revived by the change of scene, Hope and Escott had begun holding forth again, but the size and shape of the table were such that other conversations could be comfortably undertaken in parallel. Lady Phythian did not seem ill-disposed toward Michael any longer, having obviously found his relative quietness and amiability a welcome contrast to Hope and Escott’s warmongering in the railway-carriage, but she did not seem inclined to talk to him either, evidently preferring to cultivate the acquaintance of her other neighbor, Signor Monticarlo. Michael had no alternative but to resume his interrupted conversation with Augustus Carp, but he did not mind that; he was still curious to know more about the vocation of Mesmerism.
“It must be uncommon, Mr. Laurel,” Carp suggested, before Michael could frame a question of his own, “for you to receive a commission to paint a building like Langstrade Keep. Recently-elevated aristocrats often have their brand new stately homes painted, I believe, but not their Follies.”
“Do you consider the Keep to be a Folly, then, Dr. Carp?” Michael asked. “Hope and Escott do, of course, but I thought that you might be more sympathetic to Lord Langstrade’s…eccentricities.”
“I have long since learned to keep an open mind,” Carp replied, with another sigh, “and I would not be so impolite as to say so to Lord Langstrade, but yes, I do consider the Keep to be a Folly, and I fear that the likelihood of my satisfying his lordship’s expectations is far less than the likelihood of you completing the commission that he has imposed on you. If Jeanne were actually able to contact the spirit of Harold Longstride, I would be utterly amazed.”
“But Lady Phythian is convinced that there really are ghosts haunting Langstrade,” Michael told him. “She was telling us during the journey that she has seen them several times over, albeit in the grounds rather than in the Hall itself.”
“There are ghosts everywhere,” Carp said, morosely, “but they rarely turn out to be the shades we expect and desire them to be. Revenants have their own reasons for visiting the mundane world, and our ability to fathom those reasons is far more limited than we might wish. Thanks to the great Anton Mesmer, we have recently opened up channels of communication with the dead, but the inhabitants of the afterlife have,