The Cure for Dreaming(69)
Sadie, decked out in a straw hat and red gingham, lifted her hand and asked, “Will this demonstration be disgusting?”
“Only if we badger her with the words too long,” said Henry. “Go ahead, Mademoiselle Eiderling. Say something to her yourself. Try the word that starts with an s —the one those singing women out there adore.”
Sadie shrugged. “Song?”
“No”—Henry helped her along—“s-u-f-f . . .”
“Ohhh.” Sadie balled her hands into fists and drew a large intake of air through her nose. “Suffrage,” she said with the breath of a birthday-candle wish.
I covered my mouth and made yet another gagging racket, and I glared at Henry out of the tops of my eyes. Do not prolong this part of the demonstration, I mentally willed him. Do not.
“Susan B. Anthony,” called Mrs. Underhill from her new position down below the stage, and I coughed into my hand until my throat hurt. “Votes for women,” she also added. “Women’s rights.”
“Merci.” Henry held up his hands. “Thank you, ladies, for helping me with that particular demonstration. I am proud to say that with the subtlest of commands”—he circled around me with solid thumps of his soles—“I have also instilled in Miss Mead a higher moral standard. This virtuous girl before you now possesses a hatred of higher education, bicycle bloomers, and dalliances with the wrong sorts of boys.”
I sank my teeth into my bottom lip to keep from grinning at those last parts. My nerves settled a tad, and the audience shifted back to its regular appearance. Rich folk in ball gowns and evening suits.
Henry stopped right beside me and clasped hold of his lapel. “However, as Madame Underhill so eloquently stated, one of the most pressing problems with these suff—” He cut the word short. “The problem with these young ladies is that they are loud. They certainly want to have a voice, don’t they?”
“They certainly do,” shouted a red-cheeked gentleman in the midst of the nodding male and female heads.
“Wouldn’t it be magnifique if we could silence these girls?” asked Henry in a tone that worried me a little with its seriousness. “Simply take away their voices and make them as quiet and gentle as women ought to be?”
Another round of applause echoed across the room.
“Would you like me to prove to you that the silencing of wayward young women is a genuine possibility in this modern era of hypnosis?”
The applause strengthened in volume—its vibrations trembled in the soles of my shoes and the surfaces of my teeth.
“Monsieur Conductor . . .” Henry whisked around to face the orchestra. “Would you kindly have your orchestra play a soothing piece of music for me? A lullaby, if you please.”
The conductor and the orchestra flipped through their sheet music, and Henry peeked at me for the swiftest of moments. His gallant stage voice and mannerisms failed to conceal the dark circles beneath his eyes or the fact that his bottom lip was so dry and cracked, it now bled almost as much as when Father had gagged him. I wondered when he last took a sip of water, and I sealed my mouth shut so I wouldn’t feel compelled to ask.
The conductor must have raised his baton and signaled to his orchestra to commence, for the strings played a lullaby that filled the room with the delicacy of the fog settling over the roofs and the pines and the big-leaf maples of my street.
“Miss Mead.” Henry faced me with his side to the audience. He bumped his fingers against my wrist so that I would position myself the same way.
I hesitated. A spark of fear shot through me. Before I could even think to try the tongue trick, he grabbed my wrist and pulled me toward him.
“Sleep!”
My face smashed against his shoulder blade, and I dropped down, down, down, until the orchestra’s lullaby folded over me in black sheets of musical ecstasy. Henry turned me toward the audience and tipped me backward, dragging me with my heels skiing across the stage. My arms flopped below me, and my fingertips skated along the wood.
“Olivia,” said Henry with his mouth behind my head. The strings of the orchestra nearly swallowed up his voice, but I heard him say, for my ears alone, “You no longer feel compelled to cover your mouth and make a gagging sound when you hear the words suffrage, women’s rights, suffragist, votes for women, Susan B. Anthony, or college. You can argue with your father as much as you’d like and be as angry as you’d like.”
He draped my body in a chair in front of the gentle purr of the violins. My utter lack of control over my limbs sent my legs falling open and my head tipping backward, and I could feel him hurrying to close my knees and reposition my torso.
“Stop.” He took his hands off me. “Wait, wait, wait. Stop the music. I’m sorry, but this particular feat seems ridiculously easy. Hypnotizing one girl into losing her voice means nothing to the giant world outside those doors. Hundreds to thousands of suffragists are busily working away right now, spinning their webs, making their next plans to slap another referendum onto your ballots. If we want to rid this state and this country of suffragists, I need to prove to you that I can hypnotize an entire stage full of women into silence.”
Henry’s hand cupped my forehead.
“Awake,” he said while sitting me upright. “Please stand, Miss Mead, to allow room for more chairs.”