Stephen
    Johnson, at the parish church of Bishop’s Crossing, between
    Aloysius Xavier Lana, son of Don Alfredo Lana, formerly Foreign
    Minister of the Argentine Republic, and Frances Morton, only
    daughter of the late James Morton, J.P., of Leigh Hall, Bishop’s
    Crossing, Lancashire. PLAYING WITH FIRE


I cannot pretend to say what occurred on the 14th of April last at No. 17, Badderly Gardens. Put down in black and white, my surmise might seem
too crude, too grotesque, for serious consideration. And yet that
something did occur, and that it was of a nature which will leave its
mark upon every one of us for the rest of our lives, is as certain as
the unanimous testimony of five witnesses can make it. I will not enter
into any argument or speculation. I will only give a plain statement,
which will be submitted to John Moir, Harvey Deacon, and Mrs. Delamere,
and withheld from publication unless they are prepared to corroborate
every detail. I cannot obtain the sanction of Paul Le Duc, for he
appears to have left the country. It was John Moir (the well-known senior partner of Moir, Moir, and
Sanderson) who had originally turned our attention to occult subjects. He had, like many very hard and practical men of business, a mystic side
to his nature, which had led him to the examination, and eventually to
the acceptance, of those elusive phenomena which are grouped together
with much that is foolish, and much that is fraudulent, under the common
heading of spiritualism. His researches, which had begun with an open
mind, ended unhappily in dogma, and he became as positive and fanatical
as any other bigot. He represented in our little group the body of men
who have turned these singular phenomena into a new religion. Mrs. Delamere, our medium, was his sister, the wife of Delamere, the
rising sculptor. Our experience had shown us that to work on these
subjects without a medium was as futile as for an astronomer to make
observations without a telescope. On the other hand, the introduction of
a paid medium was hateful to all of us. Was it not obvious that he or
she would feel bound to return some result for money received, and that
the temptation to fraud would be an overpowering one? No phenomena could
be relied upon which were produced at a guinea an hour. But,
fortunately, Moir had discovered that his sister was mediumistic—in
other words, that she was a battery of that animal magnetic force which
is the only form of energy which is subtle enough to be acted upon from
the spiritual plane as well as from our own material one. Of course,
when I say this, I do not mean to beg the question; but I am simply
indicating the theories upon which we were ourselves, rightly or
wrongly, explaining what we saw. The lady came, not altogether with the
approval of her husband, and though she never gave indications of any
very great psychic force, we were able, at least, to obtain those usual
phenomena of message-tilting which are at the same time so puerile and
so inexplicable. Every Sunday evening we met in Harvey Deacon’s studio
at Badderly Gardens, the next house to the corner of Merton Park Road. Harvey Deacon’s imaginative work in art would prepare any one to find
that he was an ardent lover of everything which was _outré_ and
sensational. A certain picturesqueness in the study of the occult had
been the quality which had originally attracted him to it, but his
attention was speedily arrested by some of those phenomena to which I
have referred, and he was coming rapidly to the conclusion that what he
had looked upon as an amusing romance and an after-dinner entertainment
was really a very formidable reality. He is a man with a remarkably
clear and logical brain—a true descendant of his ancestor, the
well-known Scotch professor—and he represented in our small circle the
critical element, the man who has no prejudices, is prepared to follow
facts as far as he can see them, and refuses to theorize in advance of
his data. His caution annoyed Moir as much as the latter’s robust faith
amused Deacon, but each in his own way was equally keen upon the matter. And I? What am I to say that I represented? I was not the devotee. I was
not the scientific critic. Perhaps the best that I can claim for myself
is that I was the dilettante man about town, anxious to be in the swim
of every fresh movement, thankful for any new sensation which would take
me out of myself and open up fresh possibilities of existence. I am not
an enthusiast myself, but I like the company of those who are. Moir’s
talk, which made me feel as if we had a private pass-key through the
door of death, filled me with a vague contentment. The soothing
atmosphere of the séance with the darkened lights was delightful to me. In a word, the thing amused me, and so I was there. It was, as I have said, upon the 14th of April last that the very
singular event which I am about to put upon record took place. I was the
first of the men to arrive at the studio, but Mrs. Delamere was already
there, having had afternoon tea with Mrs. Harvey Deacon. The two ladies
and Deacon himself were standing in front of an unfinished picture of
his upon the easel. I am not an expert in art, and I have never
professed to understand what Harvey Deacon meant by his pictures; but I
could see in this instance that it was all very clever and imaginative,
fairies and animals and allegorical figures of all sorts. The ladies
were loud in their praises, and indeed the colour effect was a
remarkable one. “What do you think of it, Markham?” he asked. “Well, it’s above me,” said I. “These beasts—what are they?”

“Mythical monsters, imaginary creatures, heraldic emblems—a sort of
weird, bizarre procession of them.”

“With a white horse in front!”

“It’s not a horse,” said he, rather testily—which was surprising, for he
was a very good-humoured fellow as a rule, and hardly ever took himself
seriously. “What is it, then?”

“Can’t you see the horn in front? It’s a unicorn. I told you they were
heraldic beasts. Can’t you recognize one?”

“Very sorry, Deacon,” said I, for he really seemed to be annoyed. He laughed at his own irritation. “Excuse me, Markham!” said he; “the fact is that I have had an awful job
over the beast. All day I have been painting him in and painting him
out, and trying to imagine what a real live, ramping unicorn would look
like. At last I got him, as I hoped; so when you failed to recognize it,
it took me on the raw.”

“Why, of course it’s a unicorn,” said I, for he was evidently depressed
at my obtuseness. “I can see the horn quite plainly, but I never saw a
unicorn except beside the Royal Arms, and so I never thought of the
creature. And these others are griffins and cockatrices, and dragons of
sorts?”

“Yes, I had no difficulty with them. It was the unicorn which bothered
me. However, there’s an end of it until to-morrow.” He turned the
picture round upon the easel, and we all chatted about other subjects.