The Parasite | Page 5

of ten women she
would have been the last whom one would have picked out. Her eyes
were perhaps her most remarkable, and also, I am compelled to say, her
least pleasant, feature. They were gray in color,--gray with a shade of
green,--and their expression struck me as being decidedly furtive. I
wonder if furtive is the word, or should I have said fierce? On second
thoughts, feline would have expressed it better. A crutch leaning
against the wall told me what was painfully evident when she rose: that
one of her legs was crippled.
So I was introduced to Miss Penclosa, and it did not escape me that as
my name was mentioned she glanced across at Agatha. Wilson had
evidently been talking. And presently, no doubt, thought I, she will
inform me by occult means that I am engaged to a young lady with
wheat-ears in her hair. I wondered how much more Wilson had been
telling her about me.
"Professor Gilroy is a terrible sceptic," said he; "I hope, Miss Penclosa,
that you will be able to convert him."

She looked keenly up at me.
"Professor Gilroy is quite right to be sceptical if he has not seen any
thing convincing," said she. "I should have thought," she added, "that
you would yourself have been an excellent subject."
"For what, may I ask?" said I.
"Well, for mesmerism, for example."
"My experience has been that mesmerists go for their subjects to those
who are mentally unsound. All their results are vitiated, as it seems to
me, by the fact that they are dealing with abnormal organisms."
"Which of these ladies would you say possessed a normal organism?"
she asked. "I should like you to select the one who seems to you to
have the best balanced mind. Should we say the girl in pink and
white?--Miss Agatha Marden, I think the name is."
"Yes, I should attach weight to any results from her."
"I have never tried how far she is impressionable. Of course some
people respond much more rapidly than others. May I ask how far your
scepticism extends? I suppose that you admit the mesmeric sleep and
the power of suggestion."
"I admit nothing, Miss Penclosa."
"Dear me, I thought science had got further than that. Of course I know
nothing about the scientific side of it. I only know what I can do. You
see the girl in red, for example, over near the Japanese jar. I shall will
that she come across to us."
She bent forward as she spoke and dropped her fan upon the floor. The
girl whisked round and came straight toward us, with an enquiring look
upon her face, as if some one had called her.
"What do you think of that, Gilroy?" cried Wilson, in a kind of ecstasy.

I did not dare to tell him what I thought of it. To me it was the most
barefaced, shameless piece of imposture that I had ever witnessed. The
collusion and the signal had really been too obvious.
"Professor Gilroy is not satisfied," said she, glancing up at me with her
strange little eyes. "My poor fan is to get the credit of that experiment.
Well, we must try something else. Miss Marden, would you have any
objection to my putting you off?"
"Oh, I should love it!" cried Agatha.
By this time all the company had gathered round us in a circle, the
shirt-fronted men, and the white-throated women, some awed, some
critical, as though it were something between a religious ceremony and
a conjurer's entertainment. A red velvet arm-chair had been pushed into
the centre, and Agatha lay back in it, a little flushed and trembling
slightly from excitement. I could see it from the vibration of the
wheat-ears. Miss Penclosa rose from her seat and stood over her,
leaning upon her crutch.
And there was a change in the woman. She no longer seemed small or
insignificant. Twenty years were gone from her age. Her eyes were
shining, a tinge of color had come into her sallow cheeks, her whole
figure had expanded. So I have seen a dull-eyed, listless lad change in
an instant into briskness and life when given a task of which he felt
himself master. She looked down at Agatha with an expression which I
resented from the bottom of my soul--the expression with which a
Roman empress might have looked at her kneeling slave. Then with a
quick, commanding gesture she tossed up her arms and swept them
slowly down in front of her.
I was watching Agatha narrowly. During three passes she seemed to be
simply amused. At the fourth I observed a slight glazing of her eyes,
accompanied by some dilation of her pupils. At the sixth there was a
momentary