If he missed the mark he at least did no harm, which was more than could be said for the charlatans who charged outrageous sums of money to conduct theatrical séances rigged by cables and hidden trapdoors and electrical effects. A reprehensible practice.
Amelia wasn’t really here for the lecture. What she looked for were the other people standing in the back of the room, the ones in practical suits and walking dresses, with their amulets and charms discreetly hidden under ties and scarves, or inside the cuffs of sleeves. The ones who frowned and unconsciously shook their heads at what the lecturer said, rather than staring raptly with unquestioning acceptance. The ones like her, in other words.
As the lecturer went on about wire gauge and strength of current as it related to strength of ectoplasmic presence, one of these others caught her studying the audience rather than the lecturer and held her gaze when it passed to him.
He was a Caucasian gentleman in his thirties, clean shaven, with a beige suit and a high-collared shirt, a plain tie around his neck. His dark hair was ruffled, and the lines around his eyes indicated he smiled often. His walking stick had a smooth silver head engraved with a pattern she couldn’t quite make out. It was the walking stick that intrigued her—both elegant and unobtrusive, it jostled her instincts. There was more to this man. She wondered what detail about herself had attracted his attention. He nodded at her, and she returned the gesture. A secret recognition of their secret avocation.
When the lecture ended and the audience began to disperse, she waited, and as she thought he would, the man approached, bowler hat tucked under his arm, walking stick loose in his hand.
“Good afternoon, ma’am. Did you enjoy the talk?” He had a delightful American accent, with just that little bit of a drawl that stage actors made so much of.
“Yes, it amused me,” she said. “But I’m not sure I agree that science is yet able to measure all that is measurable.”
He smiled politely. “I hear you share a country of origin with this evening’s scholar. May I welcome you to the fair shores of America?”
“You may,” she said.
“Welcome,” he said, bowing politely. “I’ll go one step further and say that there is an aspect of the universe that is unmeasurable.”
“Such as. . . .”
“The soul, ma’am.”
“Ah. Yes, that. I would also say art, perhaps.”
“Oh? How so? That painting over there seems to be about forty inches by thirty inches, I’d reckon.”
He was joking, of course; she smiled in appreciation, and studied the painting he had indicated: a small copy of Leutze’s “Washington Crossing the Delaware.”
“I don’t mean the physical object, but rather the feeling it evokes,” she said. “This particular scene, for example, evokes little emotion in me. It is a fair representation of an incident that is part of another nation’s history, nothing more. However, for you and for most of the Americans in the room, for the people who chose to hang it here at all, I expect this piece evokes a great upwelling of patriotic feeling, pride in the scene and adm
iration for the man portrayed. That is the mystery, and those feelings cannot always be predicted or measured. That, sir, is the mystery that represents the gap between science and magic that our esteemed lecturer this evening has failed to address.”
He regarded her with an interest that bordered on insulting, as if she were some foreign curiosity and not a respected colleague. She suppressed the incipient blush spreading across her cheeks and also the urge to apologize for her forwardness. This was what her older brother James meant when he said she would never attract a husband. She merely had to speak and instantly became an oddity to men.
But then the charming American said, “Did you know it’s said that President Washington had wooden teeth? I admit, I can’t look at a picture of him without thinking about that.”
She laughed as she was meant to, and thought no more about what James would say.
The American gentleman, Mr. Roland Langley, invited her to tea at a nearby café. She accepted, and they discussed the quantifiable power of art and many other ideas besides. She no longer remembered which of them claimed the status of magician first. They seemed to slip into conversation about amulets, wardings, arcane circles, summoning, banishments, and all the rest of it without conscious acknowledgement. They simply recognized that part of themselves in the other. It had been like this at other times during her travels; she recognized a magic symbol carved above a door or the particular scent of incense drifting from an otherwise unremarkable bookshop, and known that something more lurked behind the façade. She always looked for such places, such moments. This was how she learned.
Mr. Langley was also a pleasure to talk to, and this delighted her. He asked her where she had traveled from—he would have expected her to travel across the Atlantic to America, not the Pacific, and she explained that she had set off from Britain to the east rather than the west, across Europe, the Slavic countries, Turkey, and then the British colonies of the Middle East and South Asia before reaching Singapore, Hong Kong, and then the ship bound for Seattle. She had almost completed the circle back home, but she planned on spending a good deal of time in the Americas first.
“And do you travel, Mr. Langley?”
“I do, but maybe not as widely as you.”
“Tell me where you were before you came to Seattle, then.”
“Well, this may interest you, now that I think of it. I’ve just come from California, a spot in the Sierra Nevada mountains called Donner Pass. I don’t suppose you’ve heard of the tragedy of the Donner Party?” he asked.
“I certainly have. This is where I will be forced to reveal my secret vice of reading penny dreadfuls.”
“Well, I’ll try not to judge you too harshly for that. Fifty years gone and fascination with the Donner Party seems to only grow in the public imagination.” He was no longer smiling, and his voice had taken on a serious cast. She had thought of him as affable, without care. Perhaps his public demeanor was a mask for more studious depths.
“That seems to worry you.”
“It’s like you said about art. Maybe we can’t measure it, but there’s power, when people react to something. Something beautiful, or something awful.”‘