The following evening, after much debate with himself, Serviss, armored in scientific reflection, set forth towards the unknown country wherefrom his sister had brought report of a maiden dwelling in the power of giants, pitiably ensnared by evil-minded enchanters. The errand, in Kate's mind, was as chivalric as any of the olden time, but the knight's progress was lit by the green and red lamps of trade, and threaded only the brazen jungles of traffic. For dragons he had but the overhead monsters of iron and brass—monsters too intent on their own mad game to take account of such small deer as this footman picking his road beneath. It was half-past eight of the night-watch.
Serviss began to realize that his reawakened interest in this girl was not purely impersonal and scientific. It had become, indeed, a most disquieting, intimate concern, and every step towards the West sharpened the sense of his folly. Had it not been for the memory of that ride up the mountains—his keen remembrance of that day of joyous youth—he could have easily dismissed Viola's case from his mind; but as he permitted himself to dwell upon her rosy, rain-wet face, herbird-like ecstasy of voice, her splendid defiance of the sun and wind, a desire that was as fierce as anger actuated him, making his proffer of aid not a gallantry but a duty. "I will defend her from herself. Though a liar, she is still worth redemption. In a certain sense the despicable rôle she is playing has been forced upon her."
As he mounted Simeon's steps he observed that awnings covered the adjacent carriage-block, and that some young people, all in party dress, were entering—a merry, chattering group—whereas the Pratt mansion towered gloomily, unlighted, unalluring as a prison.
He was about to touch the bell when the door opened and a porter softly greeted him. "The meeting has begun, sir. Step right in, sir. This way, sir. Softly, please."
Before he was fairly aware of his attendant's meaning Serviss found himself thrust through a heavily curtained archway into a large room dimly lighted by a single lamp at the farther end. It contained about twenty people, and he hesitated in embarrassment and some amazement at the threshold.
Beneath the light, on a reclining-chair, lay a woman with closed eyes and folded hands. Beside this figure stood Clarke in the midst of an address, every word of which was made dramatically effective by a forced calmness, an elocutionary trick.
"Some of you, my friends, may never have seen any of these mysterious things. So many people say to me, 'Nothing supernatural ever happens where I am.'To you I repeat my answer to them. Have you ever tried to enter the right conditions? Here is a caravan of Arabs on the desert. The road, hard-beaten, is wide and dusty, the necks of the camels sway, the drivers shout, there is the smell of sweat, of leather, of oil. The alkaline dust blinds and blisters. Physical weariness and suffering shut out all else. This is no place to look for heavenly visitors. You would be a fool to expect a demonstration there. But at night when the beasts are at rest, when the cool, starry sky bends close, when the tent-flaps are closed, then the old men sit about and commune with their dead—as all primitive, natural peoples do.
"So with you. You say to me, 'I have no heavenly visions in my life.' I answer: Do you expect them on Broadway or in your business office? You are on the dusty, weedy, noisy high-road, my friends, and you will never hear a spirit voice or catch the flutter of a hand till you retire to the dusk and the quiet. Enter the land of meditation. Manifest a willingness to meet the angel visitors half-way, and then the wings of the unseen will rustle about you, the cool and scented winds of the invisible universe will kiss your cheeks. Shadowy voices will be wafted from the dark. Song will break from the silences to comfort and heal you.
"We see only what wewillto see—that is a known law of psychology. Electricity was a force in the world six thousand years before man really saw it. Now we hear it crackle in our hair and stir in our garments.By studying the conditions of its manifestation we are able to call it forth in giant power. So of these invisible ones—they are all about us, eager to bless, to prove their presence. They are here now. Around each one of you there are throngs hovering to manifest their love; they will do so, by the aid of this wonderful psychic who has consented to sit for us to-night. Let me repeat that she does this because the dead demand and the living beseech her to act as their intermediary." With abrupt, almost ludicrous change to a matter-of-fact tone, he added, "Henry, turn the light a little lower."
As the attendant glided to his task, Serviss was mightily moved to rise in his seat and cry out against the foolish, profaning business. They were putting the girl into the exact attitude of the paid trickster. At college he had attended a few of these séances, where vulgar and immoral women had furthered their trade; and to see Viola, whom he still believed to be essentially sweet, or at least reclaimable, thrown into this most dubious posture, disgusted and angered him. "But I am an uninvited guest. My rising would precipitate a scene, involving Viola," he reasoned, and so kept his seat, though his hands clinched and his teeth set with the effort at control.
Some one commenced to play softly upon a harp, and a little sigh like a breeze passed over the group. The women had begun to respond to the manager's emotional appeal. "I can feel them gathering," he called, softly, from his seat beside the motionless girl."The spirit host are about us. I can almost hear the rustle of their wings."
The harpist stopped abruptly, and an echoing strain of faint music continued to sound, seemingly from the ceiling—a fairy harp exquisitely clear. "That is my Adele," announced Clarke, in a voice so convincing in its tone of satisfied longing that the women of his audience again rustled with ecstasy.
"I think he is beautiful!" exclaimed one.
"A voice is whispering to me," Clarke continued. "It is asking for some one—I cannot quite make out. Who is it? Again, please. Morton Serviss?" His voice rose in surprise. "He is not here. You are surely mistaken. Certainly, I will ask. Is Professor Serviss here?"
Serviss replied, with a slight note of annoyance in his voice, "Yes, I am here."
Again the little group shivered with excitement—not because they were acquainted with the name and fame of the scientist, but because they anticipated some especially wonderful manifestation of the psychic's power. Serviss, irritated and puzzled, waited in silence.
Clarke's voice trembled with his effort to appear calm as he said: "Professor Serviss, I am glad to welcome you. Won't you please come forward? The 'control' desires it."
For a full minute, in dead silence, Serviss debated the matter, then rose to comply. Mrs. Lambert met him with cordial hand, saying, in a whisper: "We did notknow you were coming; but they knew. They want you closer to the manifestation."
He, sick at heart at her connivance in the trick, made no reply, but silently took the seat which Clarke indicated.
Viola lay as silent as a statue, her face faintly showing, a diamond in her corsage emitting a momentary gleam as she breathed tranquilly at long intervals. There was nothing of the professional sibyl in her dress, and her tall figure was very beautiful in this attitude of deep sleep.
Clarke, mindful of effect, made explanation: "Professor Serviss, as many of you know, is renowned in science, and the 'controls' are especially anxious that he shall have the best possible opportunity to hear and see. Will you play again, Mrs. Robinson?"
As the harp resumed its sadly sweet pulsations, the dead matter in the room seemed to awake. Cracklings, snappings, as of a fire-log, arose from the carpet. Rappings resounded from the walls. The piano began to thrill as if a roguish child were thumping it.
"That's my little boy," whispered Mrs. Lambert.
Clarke shut off the light above his head till it was but a faint point of yellow light, and then a hand, firm and broad, was laid for an instant on Serviss's shoulder. Stars of phosphorescent fire floated about. A small hand fluttered in a caress about the face of the sleeping girl.
"That is her father's hand," again murmured Mrs. Lambert.
Serviss was willing to believe the girl's trance real, and that she had no part in the hocus-pocus up to this point; but even as he leaned forward to peer into the faintly visible face of the sleeper a voice, breathy yet metallic, as though coming through the horn of a phonograph, sounded in his ear. "Be not so doubting, my boy. I, too, doubted."
"Who are you?" he asked.
"Loggy," answered the voice, with a chuckle.
This answer, so unexpected, this chuckle, so familiar, startled him, for it was his pet name for an uncle, a professor of mathematics who used to call himself "Old Logarithms" when in play with his nephews; but, before Serviss had time to put out his hand, the horn came down softly on his head, then withdrew, and a boyish voice laughed in his ear, "You're a dunce!"
Mrs. Lambert bent towards him. "Did some dear one speak to you? I hope so. We are so anxious to have you one of us."
He did not reply, for a third voice, seemingly that of an old man, was issuing from the horn in pompous, stolid, old-fashioned utterance. "The reality of all you see, young man, can be proven. Set yourself to the grand task of destroying all fear of the change men call death. Science is hopeless. We alone can save the world from despair."
"That is my father," explained Mrs. Lambert, "he is my daughter's chief 'control,' He cares for her—teaches her."
Again the floating horn passed Morton's face, and a boyish voice called, "Mamma, are you happy?"
"Yes, dear, when you are with me."
"We're always with you. We're glad P'ofessor Serviss came."
"So are we, Waltie."
"Papa says, 'Tell him to watch—tell him—to be patient—'" The voice hesitated, murmured, and was silent, then added, plaintively: "Oh, dear, there are so many who want to talk—they take my strength away. Good-bye."
The horn dropped with a clang, but was at once caught up and floated away over the circle. Dear names were whispered, secrets recalled. Loved voices, long stilled by the grave, were heard again. Hands that the earth had covered touched tear-wet cheeks, and with these caresses sobbing outcries burst from the women.
"I believe. Yes, yes! I know you, darling," called a man's voice, and his accent was more moving than the cries of the women.
Pratt, in wistful accents, asked, "Is there no one for me to-night?"
"Yes, father," answered a girl's voice from the megaphone, now hanging almost directly in front of Serviss, "we are all here. I'm going to sing for you—the song you liked the best."
This she did in a far-away voice, sweetly and with excellent vocalization, but the first notes startled Serviss. They were from "The Banks of Loch Lomond,"the very song Clarke sang to Viola's accompaniment that night in the little cabin in Colorow. "And yet she told me she had no voice!" he said to himself, and a bitter heat overcame the chill of his disgust, "What unconscionable trickery!" This last piece of deception seemed to involve the girl more directly than any other of the evening's accursed jugglery.
Pratt was pleading, brokenly: "My old paw is open, Jennie; put your hand in it—just for a moment—as you used to. I'm so lonely without you. Girls, can't you touch your old father? Give me a kiss—and mother, is she with you to-night?"
"Yes, we're all here. I can't kiss you to-night, father; sometime I will," the gentle voice replied. "I'm not strong enough to-night." There was infinite regret in the tone, which conveyed to Serviss, with singular vividness, a virginal charm, united to something very sweet, almost saintly. Every sentiment had been beautifully voiced—no actress could have done it better.
Clarke spoke gently, solemnly: "Professor Serviss, will you now take a seat beside the psychic. Her 'controls' wish to make some special demonstration for you."
With reluctance and loathing, the young scientist moved forward, guided by the mother, and placed his seat at the right side of Viola, whose daintily robed, graceful figure he could still detect. Her wrists appeared to be lying on the broad arms of her reclining-chair and her head was turned away from him. She seemed veryfeminine, very lovely, and very helpless, and he had a definite and powerful desire to take her in his arms, to wake her, to snatch her from this most revolting drama of the dark.
He was now seated directly between the sibyl and Clarke, her manager, and every sense was keenly awake. A tapping, metallic sound at once arose either upon his chair or Viola's, and the horn, or whatever it was, floated dimly into view, then vanished, and a moment later the voice of the chief "control" entered his right ear: "Man of science, do not shirk your duty. Here now we offer you a chance to solve the great mystery. Will you accept?"
To this he made no answer, for his widely opened eyes were strained in the effort to locate Viola's hands, eager to determine her part in the phenomena, and as the moving megaphone again touched his right temple he laid a quick hand lightly on her white wrist.
She leaped convulsively with a gasping cry, the horn tumbled to the floor with prodigious clatter, and the women all shrieked and rose to their feet.
"Fool! What have you done?" cried Clarke, in a terrible voice.
Serviss's tone expressed only contempt as he answered, "No great harm, I think."
The clergyman pushed him aside rudely, and knelt beside the girl, who was writhing and moaning in her chair, as though contorted with pain.
Words of indignation arose from the circle, and one or two shouted, "Run him out! He has no businesshere." But Clarke cried out, in a commanding voice: "Remain where you are, friends! Be quiet for a few minutes." They obeyed, and Serviss was about to withdraw when Pratt confronted him. "What do you mean? Do you want to kill the psychic?"
The mother was bending above her daughter with soothing words. "There, there, dearie! It will soon pass. You may turn on the light, Anthony."
Clarke turned the cock of the burner till a faint glow revealed the girl, white, suffering, her left side convulsed. "You can't do things like that," he went on, addressing himself to Serviss. "In these trances the nervous system is in a state of enormous tension. The psychic must not be mishandled."
"I merely touched her arm," answered Serviss, quietly.
The mother answered: "The lightest touch is sufficient to convulse her, professor. You should have asked permission of the 'control,' then it would not have shocked her."
"I hope it has done no lasting harm." His voice, in spite of himself, took on sympathy, though he believed the girl's shock to have been grossly exaggerated for some reason of her own. "I thought I was invited to make the test."
The mother's calm voice was thrilling as she said: "She's better now. You may turn the light on full."
Viola was a most appealing figure as she bloomed from the dark, pure and pale as a lily. She was dressed exquisitely in white, and seemed older, more worldlywise, and more bewitching than when he had last seen her; but with a feeling of profound contempt and bitterness Serviss shrank from meeting her gaze. He slipped away into the hall and out of the house—back into the cool, crisp air of the night, ashamed of himself for having yielded again to the girl's disturbing lure, burning with disappointment, and sad and grieving over the loss of his last shred of respect for her.
"Britt was right," he exclaimed, drawing a deep breath as if to free his lungs of the foul air of deceit. "They are all frauds together," and with this decision came a sense of relief as well as of loss.
"What do you mean? do you want to kill the psychic?""'WHAT DO YOU MEAN? DO YOU WANT TO KILL THE PSYCHIC?'"ToList
"'WHAT DO YOU MEAN? DO YOU WANT TO KILL THE PSYCHIC?'"ToList
Kate, waiting impatiently in her turn, met him at the door. "Well, did you see her? What did she say?" Her voice rose in excitement, for she perceived unusual gravity in the lines of his face.
"Your 'far country' lies on the borders of hell," he replied, with disconcerting succinctness. "Yes, I saw her—or, rather, the ruin of her."
She recoiled before this tone. "What do you mean?"
He shook himself free of his coat. "She has descended swiftly. She now lends herself to the shallowest, basest trickery."
"I don't believe it. What has happened to make you so bitter?"
"I will tell you presently," he replied, hanging up his hat with aggravating deliberation. "But not here. Come to the library." He led the way and she followed quite meekly, for she perceived in him something new and harsh. She sat quite still while he filled his pipe and lit it, waited until the soothing flow of smoke through its stem had softened his face. He began, sadly: "The girl has gone beyond our interference, Kate; and if she weren't so pretty, if I hadn't seen herwhen she was wholesome and altogether charming, I would not have wasted this evening on her. To-night's doings were unforgivable."
"Did she give you a sitting?"
"No, but they were in the midst of aséance"—he spoke this word with infinite disgust—"and the usher, mistaking me for an invited guest, thrust me into the very centre of the circle."
"How lucky! I wish I had been there."
"Well, that's as you look at it. When I realized what was going on I wanted to leave, and, I repeat, had the chief actress been an old hag or the usual sloven who plays this game, I would have fled; but she was as beautiful as a statue as she lay there, professedly in deep trance."
"You're sure it was Viola?"
"I wish there were a doubt! Yes, she was there, surrounded by a group of Pratt's friends, giving aperformance." This word, too, expressed his contempt, his pain. "She went the whole length—lent herself to the cheapest kind of jugglery, playing with horrible adroitness upon the emotions of a lot of bereaved men and women. It was revolting, Kate. It shakes one's faith in humanity to see such a girl in such a position—and that nice-appearing old mother sat there serene as a tabby-cat while her daughter bamboozled a dozen open-faced ninnies."
"Tell me exactly what happened; I can't share your horror till I know what the girl actually did."
He approached the details with a grimace.
"First of all, imagine a little half-circle of well-dressed men and women, in a big drawing-room, enclosing a girl lying on a low chair under a single gas-jet, and a man standing beside her speechifying."
"That was Clarke, of course."
"Of course. Then imagine the light turned down, and the usual floating guitar—in the dark, of course—and rappings and whispers and the touch of hands—all in the dark. Then imagine—this will make you laugh—some kind of horn or megaphone of tin, that rambled around invisibly, distributing voices of loved ones here and there like sweetmeats out of a cornucopia—"
"You mean the spiritsspokethrough that thing?"
"That's what they all believed."
"But you don't think the girl—"
"Who else? Some of the voices were women's and one or two were children's. Clarke couldn't do the children's voices."
"I can't believe it of her! Clarke must have done them. He's capable of anything, but I don't, I won't believe such baseness of that girl."
"It hurts me to admit it, Kate, but I am forced to believe that she not only sang through that horn to-night, but that she lied to me. She told me once that she had no voice, and yet 'by request' she sang into that horn, and very sweetly, too, the very song to which she played an accompaniment when Clarke and I met for the first time. The effrontery of it was confounding."
"Maybe there was a confederate."
"That doesn't sweeten the mess very much."
"No, and yet it wouldn't be quite so bad. But go on—what else?"
"Then I was invited by the 'controls'—so Clarke said—to come up and sit beside the medium, which I did, very loathly. It gave me a keen pang to look down on that lovely creature pretending to sleep, knowing perfectly well that she was planning some deep deception."
"Youarebitter. What next?"
"I took a seat beside her, determined to see if she really had a hand in the deception. I thought I could prevent anything happening."
"Did you?"
"No. Everything went on quite as briskly as before, and all the while I thought I could see her arms lying limp along her chair—lovely arms they were, too. She isn't poor, you must understand that, Kate; and that really makes the crime worse, for she has not the usual excuse—she is not doing it for her daily bread."
Kate sat like a judge, "Go on. You seized her, of course?"
"Yes; just when the cone was emitting an old man's pompous harangue I laid my hand on her arm. The horn dropped, the circle rose in confusion, and I came away."
"I expected you'd do that. All sceptics do, I believe. But I want to knowallthat took place. You'reso concise. You say the cone emitted a man's voice. Now, how could—"
"It produced theimpressionof a man's voice. It is easy to deceive under such conditions. The cone was passed from her hand to Clarke's at the proper moments, and, as you say, there might have been a child—"
"You must not infer, Mort—my faith in that girl is at stake. Was there nothing in her favor? Nothing that justified her claim?"
He hesitated and Kate leaned forward in excess of interest. "Go on, Morton, be honest."
"Well, now, as I think of it there was one little thing which was rather curious. I don't know how she or Clarke or any one there should know what we used to call Uncle Ben."
"What? Did you get a message from him?"
"A voice from the megaphone asked for me, and when I requested the name of 'the party speaking,' as Clarke says, it replied with an oily chuckle, exactly like the old duffer, 'It's old Loggy.'"
"It did?" Her voice was sharp with surprise. "Well, now, that is as wonderful as my experience. How do you account forthat? Howdoyou account for such things?" she repeated, insistently.
"Clarke must have known—"
"Nonsense. No one outside our immediate family knows of that nickname. Besides, how would he know the way 'Loggy' laughed? I'd forgotten it myself."
"So had I. But what would you say? Would you jump to the conclusion—"
"Youare jumping at the conclusion, Mort. If there is one single thing that you can't understand, you must give that girl the benefit of the doubt. What did 'Loggy' say?"
"There you go! You're ready to swallow the whole lump of humbuggery, just because there is one little puzzling plum in it."
Kate was not to be put down. "What did unclesay?"
He submitted. "Nothing else. Like most of those dead folk, he was there just to manifest, not to impart wisdom."
Kate leaned back in her chair and grew thoughtful. "Morton, that was wonderful. No one knew you were coming, no one knew you except those people, and they're from, the other end of the earth—and yetsomebodyspeaks, using a pet name we've both forgotten. Now, I call that a most important thing to dwell upon. How canyou, a scientist, overlook it?"
"But you must remember all this happened in the house of jugglery. There is no value in a performance of that kind. There was no test applied. Confederates had full opportunity to come and go. To have weight with me these wonders must take place under conditions of my making, not theirs."
"That's what she wants."
"I don't believe it. Pardon me, Kate, but you've been taken in. Whatever this girl was two years ago,she is now a part of Clarke's scheme, which is to secure a tremendous lot of advertising and then—emit a book."
Kate transfixed him with a finger. "Morton Serviss, there is nothing so convincing as a tone. I know that girl is honest—she may be deceived, she may be made a tool of, unconsciously, by Clarke, but she does not wilfully deceive. I will not let you off with this experience; you must see her in private—talk with her as I did."
"I will have nothing further to do with her or hers," he replied, with determined quiet, knocking the ashes from his pipe. "I have other and better business in the world."
"I don't believe it is better business. Now, wait a moment, I have something to tell of my own evening. While you were gone I 'phoned Uncle Harrison and Aunt Nancy about that debt of my great-aunt—who came to me through Viola to-day; they knew nothing about it, but they set to work looking over her old papers, and found that there was a sealed letter addressed to a doctor in Michigan, and in the letter was a check made out to him and which she intended to send him. Now, what do you think of that?"
"I don't see that that has any necessary connection with your experience this afternoon."
"But it does. I'm sure of it. Auntie felt grateful to this young doctor and wanted to reward him. Morton, it was a big check!" She uttered this impressively.
"Was it? How much?"
"Five thousand dollars."
He faced her with a whistle of surprise. "Well, well! that isn't so amusing. Are we to pay it? Is that the idea?"
"If I am sure—if the letter is what they 'phoned it to be, we've got to pay it, I'm her sole legatee, and she was very angry because it hadn't been paid; but that's not the really important part. How did Viola Lambert know of that letter—and that check?"
He was deeply impressed, and did not try to conceal it. "That is very puzzling; but it may be a case of mind-reading, which, I believe, the modern psychologists admit has been proved." He began to muse. "It may be, as Weissmann says, that there is always some basis for a claim such as Clarke makes for this girl. It may be that she has a faculty for reading what lies in the brain of another—"
"Morton Serviss, you shall not condemn that girl unheard. You have taken Britt's word about her, and you've listened to my story, but you must see her yourself and talk with her alone, so that she will be free to tell you just how she feels."
"No. I am going to bed and try to forget the whole disconcerting group."
"That's the way with you scientists. You'll pursue the tail of a comet—or a germ—till you're black in the face, but when something really important to the human race comes under your nose you can't see it."
"You're forceful but not elegant, sis."
"I'm out of all patience with you."
He laughed. "Good-night."
"I hope that girl's face will haunt you," she replied.
It did. From the moment he turned off his light his mind leaped into the most restless activity. Taking up the scroll of the night's events, he read and reread it with minutest care. A voice seemed to present the girl's case, arguing that she had no conscious part in the manifestations. "It is possible for one in deep trance to rise and manipulate horns, bells, and guitars at the suggestion of another precisely as a somnambulist walks without intention of wrong-doing, without conscious knowledge of what is being done. She might have had a veritable hand in to-night's drama and still be innocent. Hypnotism is now pretty thoroughly proven—and to Clarke you must look for the real offender.
"The human brain, which is marvellous enough when in health and singing merrily forward like a cunningly constructed and jewelled time-piece, becomes, in disease, as baffling, as hopeless of solution as the laws of the unfathomable sky. Beyond the utmost sweep of the imagined lies the marvel of fact. The beliefs, the vagaries, the hallucinations of the insane have never been co-ordinated, perhaps they never will be. It is possible that this girl, so normal in appearance, has a rotten strand in her—some weakness inherited from her father. This is the only way in which to account for her glowing physical health and her manifest mental disorder. She has her father's mind in a bodydrawn from her mother. One-half of her is pure and sweet and girlish, the other is old, decayed, lying, and irresponsible. Can she be reclaimed?
"It is now known that the conscious mind is but a pin's-point of the mind's activity, the conscious state being but one of an infinite number of possible states—that the submerged, unconscious self is a million times more complex than the chain of those conscious states which makes up the normal or orderly life of an individual. May it not be that this girl, by reason of her long practice of submission—induced by others—has dethroned her conscious, higher self, making of her subliminal self a tyrant? This submerged self, holding, as it does, all the experiences of the dark past, all the lusts, deceits, and subterfuges, all the cruelties and shameless potentialities of her animal and semicivilized forebears, and being but a mass of discordant impulses—states almost entirely disassociated from her conscious life—has all but taken possession of her higher self. The restraint of the later-developed, governing, moral self being weakened, the witches and wolves are leaping forth to vex and destroy. Over this fortuitous subversion of her soul's kingdom Clarke now rules like a demon councillor.
"Considered in the light of a study in morbid psychology, her case is enthralling. From the standpoint of human pity this use of her is a diabolical outrage. Suppose Kate to be right—suppose the girl has awakened to a full realization of her danger? Suppose that her cry for succor is real, can I, can any manwho hears it, refuse to heed? Would I ever sleep in peace again?"
He went further, he admitted that her beauty was the deciding element. "She is too lovely to be left to a fanatic's designs. She has matured in body, grown more womanly, since we rode the trail together; may it not be that her mind, maturing even more rapidly, has come to perceive the crumbling edge of the abyss before it stands and turns to science as the only rescuer? No matter what her past deceptions have been, is it not my duty to help her?"
His anger and contempt dissolved into compassion. He recalled her youth, her inexperience. "I will at least see her again," he decided, deep in the night. "I will talk with her. I will draw her out. I will study her. All will depend upon her attitude towards me and towards her own soul." And in that softened mood sleep came to him.
Morton went to his work next morning quite unfitted for an especially delicate piece of dissection which he had in hand. He bungled it, and Weissmann transfixed him with a glare of disapproval. "My boy, these social gayeties do not consort well with science."
The young man smiled to think how wide of the mark his chief was. He held up both hands. "I swear, it shall not happen again." Then, moved by a desire to secure a comment on the curious phenomena of the séance, he related the story of his brief interview with his uncle Ben's ghost. "Now, do you suppose that Clarke, or the 'medium,' could dig around among the dusty, forgotten lumber of my mind and get hold of a queer fact like that nickname?"
"Why go so far round?" inquired Weissmann. "Why not say it was your uncle Ben who spoke?"
"You are joking."
"I amnotjoking. If the facts are as you say, then one explanation is as reasonable as the other."
Serviss was amazed. "You don't really mean it!"
"If you say it was an illusion of the sense of hearing, I agree; but do we not stagger among illusions? Whoso well as we know the illusory nature of every fact? Nothing is stable under our hands. Of what avail to reduce the universe to one substance, as the monists do? We pry, we peer into that substance—it fades like smoke. Forty years I have probed among the cells of the body—the final mystery remains insoluble. Why? Because the atom, the thing once demonstrated 'the final division of matter,' is itself an illusion, made up of the intangible and the imponderable. This I have given my whole life to discover. Life is an illusion—why not death? Shall we dogmatize, especially on the one thing of which we know nothing? The spirit world is unthinkable, but so, at the last analysis, is the world of matter."
The young man, believing this to be only the mocking mood of one who knew the argument of the dualists better than they knew it themselves, remained silent, and Weissmann composedly resumed: "The dogmatism of Haeckel is as vain as the assumption of Metchnikoff. We shall forever discover and forever despair. Such is the life of man."
When he went home Morton found a note from his sister saying that she had received a message from Viola and that she would be at home at five. "Now don't fail to go. I have to pour tea for Sally, or I would go with you. I'm crazy to see the girl again. I spent the morning talking the whole thing over with Doctor Safford. She thinks as I do, that the girl is exactly what she claims to be, amedium, and that while it is her duty to go on, she ought to be protectedfrom the vulgar public. We both want you to take her in hand. Certainly thereoughtto be no disgrace in standing as interpreter between the living and the dead. Isn't it just our foolish prejudice? If the girlcanbring messages from the other world, she ought to be honored above all other women. Seriously, Morton, her plea the other day wrung my heart. I don't want you to gettoointerested in her, of course, but what we call adiseasemay be a God-given power. Think of the way we run after a foolish, vulgar woman who has married into millions, and then think of the way we sniff at this girl because she has some gift which science doesn't understand. If one teenty, tiny bit of what they claim about her is true, science ought to cherish her. As Marion said, if she had discovered a star so far off and so faint it wouldn't matter in the least to any one but a few cranks whether it existed or not, she would be honored all over the world; but as she claims to have discovered something vital to every human soul, she is despised. It is your duty to help her. I had her over the 'phone just now, and her voice was trembling with eagerness as she said, 'Do tell him to please come and see me.'"
This note, so like his sister, so full of her audacities, touched Morton on the quick. It was plain that she was more than half-seas over towards faith in the girl, and quite ready to take her up and exhibit her among her friends. Her use of the word "disease" was intended as a mockery of his theories. He knew that she was quite capable of talking over the 'phoneprecisely as she had written (reserve was not her strong point), and that she had undoubtedly given Viola reason to expect him. However, having concluded on his own account to see her once more, Kate's exhortation merely confirmed him in a good intention, "I will confront Clarke, and try to pluck the heart out of this mystery, but I will keep clear of any personal relation with the girl and her mother," he said, as if in answer to his sister's admonition.
It was about five o'clock of the afternoon as he again mounted to Pratt's portico, recalling, as he did so, the dramatic contrasting scenes of the evening before—on this side of the brick wall a communion with the dead, on that the throbbing, gay life of a ballroom. Truly a city street was a microcosm.
A solemn-visaged colored man—not the officious usher of the night before—took his card and led him into a gorgeous, glacial reception-room on the left. The house was very still and cold and gloomy, for the day was darkening and the lights were not yet on. It impressed him as a vast and splendid tomb, and with a revived knowledge of Simeon Pratt's tragic history he chilled with a premonition of some approaching shadow. "What a contrast to the sunlit cabin of the Colorow!" he inwardly exclaimed, and the thought of the mountain girl housed in this grim and sepulchral mansion deepened his wonder.
A gruff voice above inquired: "Who is it? Let me see the card. Serviss, eh? Tell him—No, wait, I'll go down and see him myself."
Morton smiled grimly, realizing perfectly the manner in which Pratt had intercepted his card. "The old watch-dog," he exclaimed.
A heavy tread descending the stairs announced the approach of his host, whose sullen face was by no means engaging as he entered. "Are you Professor Serviss?"
"I am."
The flabby lips curled in scorn. "You are one of those scientific gentlemen who know it all, aren't you?"
"I sent my card to Miss Lambert," replied Serviss, with cutting formality.
Pratt's face darkened. "Iam the master of this house."
"But not of your guests, I hope."
"I have a right to know who calls, and I intend to protect Miss Lambert from such as you. You were not invited here last night."
"Not by you, I admit. I owe you an explanation for that. I came to call on Miss Lambert. Your man shouldered me into the room before I knew what was going on. I didn't intend to 'butt in,' as they say. I was afterwards invited forward by Mr. Clarke, as you will remember, and later by the 'control.'"
"Clarke is not running things here."
"Ah, but the spirits? Would you question their judgment? They insisted on making me the guest of honor, you will remember. They played to me, you may say."
Pratt was daunted by his visitor's mocking tone. "You should have had more sense of honor than to grab the medium the way you did."
"Being invited to sit near, I took it as an invitation to make a test. I wanted to know who held that horn. How can you hope to convince a sane mind of the truth of such an exhibition as that last night unless you permit tests?"
The colored man had returned. "Miss Lambert will see you, sir. This way, please."
For a moment Pratt meditated interference, but something in the movement and face of the visitor deterred him. As Serviss followed his guide up the great stairway, he asked himself: "What will she be like? She must be changed—deeply changed. How will she meet me?" He acknowledged a growing excitement.
She met him so simply, so cordially, with such frank pleasure, that his own restraint gave way at first glance. In her glowing color, in the tones of her voice, lay a charm which carried him back to Colorow, linking the mature and splendid woman with the unformed girl of the mountain-cabin. He took her hand with a keen thrill of admiration—whatever had come to her she had gained in grace without apparent loss of sincerity.
His eyes disturbed her, and she stammered some commonplace expression of pleasure, and he replied almost as lamely, then turned to the mother. "I hope you have forgiven me for my action of last night?"Then again to Viola. "I only intended to touch your arm. I trust you suffered no lasting ill effects."
Again something that was at once attraction and repulsion passed between them. She perceived in his tone a note of mockery, involuntary in its expression, but all the more significant on that account.
"I am sorry you were there," she quickly replied. "I don't blame you. No, it did not hurt me—I mean, it was all over in half an hour. The contraction is very painful while it lasts. It's just like a cramp. I didn't intend to give the sitting, but Mr. Pratt requested it for a few of his friends and I couldn't well refuse. I didn't know you were there till mamma told me afterwards. There is no value in such a sitting to you."
With a dim suspicion of her wish to cover some deception, he answered: "My entrance was quite as unpremeditated, I assure you." He spoke with returning humor. "I really came to call upon you, to welcome you to the city and to talk of the West. The usher mistook me for one of the seekers and thrust me bodily into the circle. Please believe that I acted upon sudden impulse in seizing your wrist. I am heartily ashamed of myself. I was an intruder, and had no right, no excuse—although your 'guides,' as you call them, seemed eager to have me sit beside you."
"I do not blame you," she repeated, and fell strangely silent.
He studied her with mounting pleasure. The flower-like line of her lips, her glorious bosom, the poise of her head, all the lines that had meant so muchto him at their first meeting, were there, more womanly, more dangerous in their witchery than ever. For two years their thoughts had subtly crossed and intertwined, and she now felt his doubt, his question, almost as keenly as if he had uttered them.
He broke the momentary silence by saying, with a distinctly tender tone, "Are you thinking of Colorow? I am."
She flushed and started a little. "Yes."
"I was recalling my first view of you—a fragment of sunset cloud caught on a mountain-crag."
Her face grew wistful. "That seems a long time ago to me."
"It doesn't to me. It seems but yesterday. My trip that year was a symphonic poem with a most moving final movement. I have thought of it a thousand times." He paused a moment, then added: "Well, now, here you are in New York, and here I am, and what of your music? I was to advise you, you remember."
Her head lifted in defiance, an adorable gesture. "You know my secret now." It was as if she said, "Come, let us have it over."
He replied, very gently; "I knew something of it then. Dr. Britt told me something of it at the time."
Her eyes bravely searched his. "Was that why you did not come to say good-bye to us?" His glance fell in a wish that she had been less cruelly direct. She went on: "You needn't answer. I'm used to being treated that way. I knew somebody had told you I was a medium. You despised me when you found outabout me—everybody does, except those who want to use me. All the people I really want to know go by on the other side as if I were a leper. It was so in Boston; it is going to be the same here."
Mrs. Lambert interposed. "That is not true, Dr. Serviss. We met many nice people in Boston."
"Yes, mamma—nice people who wanted me to tell their fortunes."
Her tone went to Serviss's heart. She was so young to be so bitter; but he could think of nothing at the moment which would not add to her chagrin, for was not his own interpretation of her quite as hard to bear?
She went on: "No, I don't blame you or any one for avoiding me. But I wish they would let me have one or two friends. But they won't. Lots of people like me at first, but they surely find out after a while, and then they change towards me. Sometimes I think I might as well publish my name as a medium and let everybody know it at once."
"You must not permit that, Miss Lambert," he earnestly said. "That is what I came to say. Don't allow them to use you so."
"How can I help it?" she passionately exclaimed, "when they all demand it—mother, Mr. Clarke. Mr. Pratt, grandfather—everybody. They think I owe it to the world."
"I don't. I think it is your right to say—"
"I have no rights. Listen." She leaned towards him, her face paling, her eyes big and soft and terrified. "Iwant you to understand me, Dr. Serviss. You must know all about me." Her voice fell to a husky murmur. "You must know that I can't direct my own life. My 'guides' can do what they please with me. Can you understand that?"
"I confess I cannot."
"It is true. My grandfather insists on these public tests. He is determined to 'convict the men of science,' and Mr. Clarke is only too glad to agree with him. Mother is controlled entirely by what grandfather says. My wishes don't count with anybody. But I think I've done my share in this work." She faced her mother in challenge and appeal. "Ever since I was ten years old I've given myself up to it; but now I'm afraid to go on. I don't want to be a medium all my life. They all say it is hard to change after one is grown up, and I'm afraid," she repeated, with a perceptible shudder.
The mother, undisturbed by this plea, turned to Serviss with an exultant smile. "Does she look like one breaking down?"
The girl rose from her chair like a tragedienne. "It isn't my body, it's my mind!" she cried, with poignant inflection, clasping her head with both her hands; and her look transformed her in the eyes of the young scientist. It was the tragic gaze of one who confronts insanity and death at a time when life should be at its sweetest. For an instant she stood there absorbed in her terror, then dropped her hands, and in a voice of entreaty, which melted all his distrust, hurried on. "Iwant to know what is going on in my brain. I am losing control of myself! I want some man of science like you to study me. Your sister said you would help me, and you must! You think I deceive—you thought so last night—but I don't. I knew nothing of what went on. I didn't know that you were there. I don't know what I do nor what I am. I want you men of science to investigate me. I will submit to any test you like. You may fasten me in a cage, or padlock me down—anything!—but I will not be advertised to the world as a medium, and I must have rest from this strain. Don't you understand? Can't you see how it will be?"
"I do," he answered, quickly. "I understand perfectly, and I will go at once to see Mr. Clarke and intercede—"
"That is not enough. You must intercede with my grandfather and his band, they are the ones who control me. Ask him to release me."
This request staggered the scientist. "My dear Miss Lambert, you will pardon me, but I can't do that—I do not even believe in the existence of your grandfather."
She stood in silence for a moment and then answered; "You would if his hands were at your throat as they are at mine. He is just as real to me as you are. He is listening this minute."
"That is a delusion."
"I wish it were," she bitterly and tragically answered. "The hands are so real they choke me—thatI know. I am helpless when he demands things of me. He can lead me anywhere he wants me to go. He can use my arms, my voice, as he wills. You must believe in him to help me. He will listen to you, I feel that." She grew appealing again. "Your sister believes in me—I am sure of that—and my heart went out to her. Sometimes it seems as if all the world, even my own mother, were willing to sacrifice me."
"Viola!" cried Mrs. Lambert, sharply. "You shall not say things like that."
"They're true. You know they're true!" the girl passionately retorted. "You all treat me as if I had no more soul than a telephone."
"That is very unjust," declared Mrs. Lambert. "This is only one of her dark moods, doctor. You must not think she really means this."
The girl's brows were now set in sullen lines which seemed a profanation of her fair young face. "But Idomean it, and I want Dr. Serviss to know just what is in my heart." Her voice choked with a kind of helpless, rebellious anger as she went on: "I'm tired of my life. I am sick of all these moaning people that crowd round me. It's all unnatural to me. I want to touch young people, and have a share in their life before I grow old. I want to know healthy people who don't care anything about death or spirits. It's all a craze with people anyway—something that comes after they lose a wife or child. They are very nice to me then, but after a few weeks they despise me as the dust undertheir feet—or else they make love to me and want to marry me."
Mrs. Lambert rose. "I will not allow you to go on like this, Viola. I don't understand you to-day. You'll give Dr. Serviss a dreadful opinion of us all."
"I don't care," the girl recklessly replied, "I am going to be honest with Dr. Serviss. I don't like what I do, and I don't intend to trust my whole life to the spirits any longer. They may all be devils and lying to us. I don't believe my own grandfather would be so cruel as to push me into this public work."
Mrs. Lambert again warned Serviss from taking this outburst too seriously. "She is possessed, doctor. Some bad spirit is influencing her to say these things to you. She's not herself."
Viola seized on this admission. "That's just it. They've destroyed my own mind so that I don't know my own thoughts. If there are good spirits, there must be bad spirits—don't you think so, Dr. Serviss?"
His eyes did not waver now. His voice was very quiet, but very decisive, as he replied: "My training, my habit of thinking, excludes all belief in the return of the dead either as good spirits or bad, but if there are spirits I should certainly think evil of them if they were to force you into a service you abhor. I do not pretend to pass judgment on your case—I know so little about it—but I do sympathize with you. I deeply feel the injustice of these public tests, and I will do all I can to prevent them."
Mrs. Lambert interrupted: "But, Dr. Serviss, myfather's advice has always been good; to question it now would be to question my faith. His wish is my law."
Serviss shrugged his shoulders a little impatiently. "My dear lady, we have no common ground there. The wishes of the dead have no weight with me when set against the welfare of the living. The question which I beg you to consider is whether you wish your daughter to continue in this mental torture? Do you want her name blazoned to the world as a public medium? You cannot afford to add disgrace to her private torment."
The mother held her ground. "Her 'guides' say she will be taken care of, and as for the disgrace, that is all imaginary. It is an honor—"
Viola again burst forth: "They are always talking to me about the honor of being a medium, about the distinction of it, and when I ask what distinction the world gave to the Fox sisters or Home or Madame Cerillio, they answer that the world has changed since then. But it has not changed enough to make my work respected. Mr. Clarke says it ought to be; but saying so does not make it so. Every time I read of a medium exposed I turn cold and hot, for I know people consider all mediums alike. I don't want to go about all my life like an outcast. I don't want to be happy after I'm dead; I want to be happy now. I don't want to be different from other girls; I want to be like them. If they publish me, I will be a medium forever. I will be in constant terror of attack, andthat will drive me insane—theymustset me free! Dr. Serviss," she pleaded, as if she were the victim of some murderous design, "you are wise and strong. There must be some way for you to help me."
All of Serviss's well-ordered sympathetic phrases failed him as he listened to the storm of her plea and felt the flame of her passionate protest. All doubt of her sincerity, her own honesty, vanished, being utterly burned away by the light in her lovely eyes. Her mental bondage was real, her desire to escape contamination indubitable. He met her gaze with tender gravity. "I believe in you," he said, as if committing himself to a most momentous enterprise, "and I will help you."
His voice, so manly, so strong, so tender, robbed her of the power to speak. She seized his extended hand in both of hers and pressed it hard, the tears in her eyes veiling her soul from the passion that filled his glance.
As she faced him thus, leaning to him trustfully, so vivid, so magnetic, so much the woman, so little the sibyl, that he forgot all his hesitations and doubts, filled for an instant with an irrational impulse to seize her, claiming her as his own, in defiance of the mandates of her world and the conventions of his own. But she dropped his hand and turned away, and he went out in a maze of conflicting desires, his judgment sadly clouded by the youthful riot in his blood.
At the moment he was in love with her and single-minded in his desire to aid her, to defend her, but the door had hardly closed behind him when hisquestionings, his suspicions began to file back, stealthily, silently, along the underways of his brain. Her distress began to seem a little too theatric, her troubles self-induced—all but one—madness did in very truth seem to hover over her, a baleful, imminent shadow.
Clarke, looming darkly, confronted him in the lower hall. "Well met, Dr. Serviss. I'd like a word with you."
"I have a request to make of you," responded Serviss. "Miss Lambert has expressed to me her great distress of mind as concerns the public tests you are planning and has asked me to intercede for her. She profoundly objects to the use of her name, and I ask—"
Clarke's voice was harsh and sullen as he interrupted: "I have considered her objections and find them insufficient."
Serviss's voice rose slightly. "Her lightest objection should be insuperable. I don't understand your point of view. I can't see by what right you ignore the wish of the human soul most vitally concerned in your crusade. You treat her as if she were a rabbit dedicated to the use of a biologic laboratory. I am better informed now than when we met in your church-study, Mr. Clarke. I know, not merely Miss Lambert's secret, but your own. It may be that you honestly think this challenge will confer great distinction upon her, but, let me assure you, it will put an ineffaceable stain upon her. Furthermore, your tests will end in disaster to yourself and to your cause."
"What do you mean by that?" interposed Pratt,who had come up and stood listening. "Do you doubt her powers?"
"I do. She will fail, and the failure will be crushing. The thing you claim is preposterous. Every time science has taken one of your mediums in hand he or she has suffered extinguishment. It is the grossest outrage to ask this girl to face certain exposure. A challenge of this blatant kind will rouse the most violent antagonism among scientists, and if you succeed in getting any really good man to take it up—which I doubt—he will be merciless."
"We want him to be," declared Clarke. "We glory in your defiance. Let your scientific men come with their bands of steel, their bolts and bars, their telephones, and their electric traps. We defy every material test."
"You are fools—madmen," hotly answered Serviss. "You would sacrifice this girl to a brazen scheme of self-advertising?"
Clarke was contemptuous. "That is your point of view. From our side there is no greater glory than to be an Evangel of the New Faith. What matters the comment of the gross and self-satisfied to us who work for the happiness of those who mourn? The world in whichwelive despises the materialism of yours."
At this moment a new conception of Clarke's plan crossed Serviss's mind. "He is deeper than I thought. He would discredit the girl in the eyes of normal suitors, thereby assuring her to himself." Aloud he said:"Miss Lambert's right to herself should be your first consideration. She is something more than a trumpet for sounding your fame."
Clarke's resounding voice had drawn Mrs. Lambert from her room, and she now hurried down the stairway with intent to calm him.
Serviss turned to her. "Again I beg of you, Mrs. Lambert, to consider well before you consent to this plan. Your daughter's name will be a jest from one end of the country to the other. It doesn't matter how sincere and earnest you are, the public will regard this challenge as a seeking for notoriety. Your daughter is about to be flung to the beasts." Seeing something unyielding in her eyes, he added, with such intensity his own heart responded: "Will you stake your daughter's reputation, her health, her reason, upon the issue of a voice in the dark?"
"Yes, when the voice is that of her own father. He knows the future. He will protect her. I have no fear."
There was such conviction, such immutable faith in her gentle voice, that Serviss was confounded. When he spoke, in answer, his voice was lower in key, with a cadence of hopeless appeal.
"How do you know these advisers are your husband and your father? You must be very certain of them."
"I am certain. I believe in them as I believe in my own existence." The line of her mouth lost something of its sweetness, and Serviss, seeing this, took another tack.
"Granted these voices are genuine, they may be mistaken—rash with zeal. You wouldn't say that they have gained infallibility—a knowledge of both past and future—merely by passing to the shadow world?"
To this Clarke made answer: "That is precisely what we do believe. They have predicted our future, they have laid out all our plans. Their advice has brought us to our present high place, and we shall continue in our course, despite you or any other doubter."
"They have brought you to a very dubious sort of success," Serviss cuttingly replied, "But what about your victim? I know this city and its ways. I realize, as none of you seem to do, the wasting injustice you are about to inflict. Let me intercede—let me arrange some other plan—"
On Clarke's face a sneering, one-sided smile crept as he answered: "You are too late. Our plans are made, our programme published."
"What do you mean?"
"The reporters have just been here. The notice of my speech and a broad hint of the nature of my challenge will appear in four of the leading papers to-morrow morning—"
"But Viola's—Miss Lambert's name! You surely haven't used that?"
"Oh no. That is to follow. The challenge, with her name and defiance, form the climax to my oration." He swelled with pride as he spoke, as if visualizing himself on the platform, the centre of thousands of eyes, the champion of reviving faith.
"Thank God for your vanity! There is still time for some one to intervene," responded Serviss, minded to thrust him through.
Pratt shouldered in again. "What have you got to do with it, anyway? Who asked you to interfere?"
"The chief person concerned—Miss Lambert herself."
Pratt was about to utter some further insult when Clarke diplomatically interposed. "We want you to have a part in the work, Dr. Serviss. We will welcome you to a committee of investigation, but we cannot permit you to interfere with our plan. The 'Forces' are bent on the work, and they are inexorable."
"It is you who are inexorable," replied the young scientist—"you and this deluded mother."
This rapid dialogue had taken place in the wide hall just beneath the huge chandelier whose light fell on Serviss's white forehead and square, determined face. Pratt was confronting him with lowering brow, a bear-like stoop in his shoulders, and the muttering growl of his voice was again filling the room as Viola appeared upon the great stairway. She came slowly, with one slim hand on the railing, as though feeling her way, and at every step mysterious, jarring sounds came from beneath her feet and from the walls; her eyes were shut, her chin lifted, and on her face, white and tense, lay the expression of a sorrowful dreamer. Her mouth, drooping at the corners, was pitiful to see. All her vivid youth, her flaming rebellion, had been frozeninto soulless calm by the implacable powers which reigned above and beneath her in the dark.
In horror and fierce, impotent rage, Serviss watched her descend. It was plain that she was again in the grasp of some soul stronger than herself; and he believed this obsession, close akin to madness, to be due to a living, overmastering magician—to Clarke, whose voice broke the silence. "There is your answer!" he called, and his voice rang out, with triumphant glee. "Her 'guides' have brought her to show you the folly of human interference. She is only an instrument like myself—clay to the hands of the invisible potters."
Once again a flaming desire to seize the girl with protecting hands filled Serviss's young and chivalric heart; but a sense of his essential helplessness, a knowledge of his utter lack of authority, stayed his arm, while his blaze of resolution went out like a flame in the wind. Sick with horror, he stood till Mrs. Lambert took Viola in her arms, then, in a voice that shook with passion, he said: "Madam, your faith in your spirits passes my understanding. Only devils from hell would demand such torture from a blithe young girl."
And so saying, with shame of his impotence, and with a full realization of Viola's mental bondage to Anthony Clarke, he turned away. "I now understand Britt's words—only the authority of the husband can save her from her all-surrounding foes," and at the moment his fist doubled with desire to claim and exercise that power.