Almost immediately the slate seemed seized by a powerful hand. It began to slide back and forth across the table violently, twisting and clattering. The youth put forth his own great strength and stopped it, but a crunching sound announced that the slate was broken.
His mother said, sharply, "You mustn't do that, Victor." She took up the slate and showed one corner crushed and crumbled. "You can't hold it—you mustn't try—it angers them."
He marveled at the strength which had resisted him, but argued that his mother from long practice had become very muscular. Hysterical people often displayed astounding power.
After preparing a new slate she put it on the table as before, saying to the air, "Please don't be rough, father—Victor can't prevent his skepticism."
Three loud raps answered, and she smiled. He says, "All right. He understands."
"Seems to me he's mighty touchy for one on the heavenly plane," Victor retorted, maliciously. "Seems to me an all-seeing spirit ought to get my point of view."
A vigorous tapping on the table responded to this speech.
"What's that?" asked Victor.
"That is your father saying yes, hedoesget your point of view."
Victor had a feeling that his mother was receding from him as he faced her across the table. She became the professional medium in her manner and tone. He, too, changed. He hardened, assuming the attitude of the scientific observer—hostile and derisive. His keen hazel-gray eyes grew penetrating and his lips curled in scorn. His tone hurt her, but she persisted in her sitting, and at last the slate began to tremble throughout all its parts, and a grating sound like slow writing with a pencil went on beneath it. Victor could plainly follow the dotting of the i's and the crossing of the t's, till at the end a tapping indicated that it was finished.
"You may take the slate, Victor," said Mrs. Ollnee.
He took it from the table and opened it. On one side, in bold script—a bit old-fashioned—stood these words: "Stay where you are. Let the boy adventure into the city. Await results. I will be near. FATHER."
Victor, astounded, mystified, confronted his mother with wide eyes. "Now, what does that mean?"
"It means that I am to keep this house just as it is and you are to seek work in the city. Is that right, Paul?"
Three taps made answer.
The youth was stunned by the boldness and cleverness of all this. He was pained, too. He perceived no sign of abnormal thinking in his mother's action. She was not hysterical.She was not entranced.Whatever she did she did consciously—and the thought that she could deliberately deceive him was shocking. He breathed quickly and a nervous clutch came into his hands. He resented being fooled. "Let's try that again," he said; and his tone was precisely that of the child who sees a grown person swallow a coin and take it out of his ear. He was angry as well as sad. "Don't put your hand on it," he protested. "I don't like the looks of that."
She submitted, and then as he was putting it down on the table the sound of writing was heard within it. He laid his hand on the slates, and still the writing went on! With amazement he realized that both her hands were in sight and in no wise concerned in the writing. The right rested lightly and quietly on the frame of the slate, but the left, which lay on the opposite corner of the table, was quivering throughout all its minute muscles.
Amazed beyond words, excited, breathing deep, with a shudder of nervous excitement running over his entire body, Victor listened to the mystic pencil. "Howdoyou work that?" he asked, in a whisper.
"I don't know. I have nothing to do with it," she answered; and taking the upper hinge of the slate between her fingers and thumb she slowly raised it.
And still the writing went on!
Victor, holding his breath in awe, bent to look within, but as the opening grew wider the writing stopped.
He snatched the slates from the table and studied the lines, which were made up of minute dots. It was all perfectly legible: "Son. I doubted. Now I know."
Victor sank back into his seat and stared speechlessly at the slate and the table. The problem of his mother's mediumship had taken on new elements of mystery. This physical test brought it into the range of his knowledge and interest. It was no longer a question of her honesty or sanity, it had become a problem in dynamics.
How was that bit of pencil moved? The messages he ignored—they didn't matter—but the method of their production seemed to eliminate all trickery, conscious or unconscious. Why did his mother's left hand quiver—and how could that writing shape itself?
His voice was husky with emotion as he said: "Mother, I don't understand that. You've got to tell me how that is done."
She felt the desperate resolution in his voice and she solemnly answered, "My son, I don'tknowhow it is done."
"But youmustknow! Who moves that pencil! Your hand quivered all the time."
"Yes, I seem to have some physical connection with it—at times. Other times all that takes place has no more connection with me than the sunlight on the floor. The world is a very mysterious place to me, Victor. I don't pretend to know anything. I do as I am told."
He fell silent again while his mind reviewed the entire process. Then he burst out, vehemently, on a new line. "I can't believe my eyes. You've hypnotized me. Mother, for God's sake don't juggle with me—don't play tricks with me. I won't stand for it. It hurts me—" He paused, confused, baffled, ready to weep.
"Can you, my own son, accuse me of trickery?" she asked.
"Youthinkyou're honest, mother—but don't you see you've become anunconscious hypnotist? It's your subconscious self deceiving us both. I don't know how you do it, but I know it must be a fraud."
"Victor," she said, solemnly, "what this power is you shall have full opportunity to determine, but I say to you that for more than twenty years I've been guided by these unseen presences. I've tested their wisdom and lived under their care. So far as this message is concerned I accept it. I was confused and frightened yesterday, but this morning I am calm. I shall do as they bid. I shall stay here while you go down into the city and see what you can find to do, and together we will test these voices."
There was a ring of new-found decision in her tone that quite dashed him. He sat dumbly facing her, helpless in a whirl of mental storm. "Is she more cunning than I thought? Is she playing a more complex game than appears?" These thoughts vaguely shaped themselves. Then his filial self answered: "But what has she to gain? She loves me. She has sacrificed herself to keep me at school—why should she deceive me?"
Here again a third conception came to embitter him. He spoke. "You don't seem to mind my loss of a degree?"
"Yes, I do, Victor. I feel that very deeply, but the higher wisdom of your grandfather resigns me. I cannot tell what is behind it. By his power to read the future he may be preventing some terrible accident, some calamity by fire or water—I have an impression that it is something of that sort."
"No," came a whisper from the air.
She turned her face upward, and, listening intently, asked, "What is the reason, father?"
"Discipline," the whisper replied.
"He says 'discipline,' Victor."
"Discipline!" he echoed. "Why should I be disciplined? What have I done?"
"It is not what you've done—it's what you are to do."
The Voice did not reply to further questions, and the silence gave out a kind of cold contempt, which cut the boy as he waited.
"Let's try that slate business again," he said at last. But to this his mother would not consent.
"It's of no use," she said. "They are gone. There is no 'power' present."
He again faced her with alien, accusing eyes. "When will you try this again?"
"To-night, when you come home."
"Home!" he sneered, looking about. "Do you expect me to call this place home? Do you expect me to hang about this scrubby hole to be disciplined by your Voices?"
The sound of a knock at the door gave her a moment's respite. "The postman," she explained as she rose to go to the door.
She was gone for several minutes and Victor heard her in friendly conversation with a pleasant male voice. Some way this added to his anger and disgust.
She came back with a letter in her hand which she began at once to open. "It is from Louise, I mean Mrs. Joyce."
She read it through with smiling face, then said, "Victor, you must be nice to Louise, she has doneeverythingfor us."
This brought him to his feet. "I understand all that now. It ishermoney I've been living on—I won't touch another cent that comes from her. Understand that! I won't eat another dinner that she pays for."
"Why, Victor, you should not feel that way! What has she done to make you bitter?"
"Nothing. I refuse to live on her charity, that's all, and I want you to find out just how much I owe her—how muchyouowe her—for I intend to pay her back every dollar with interest."
"But she considers I've already paid her. She feels that I have always given her bounteous return for all her aid."
"I don't figure it that way," he said. "She's just amusing herself—"
She interrupted. "Listen to what she says." She read: "'I want to tell you how much I like your son. He is so vivid and so powerful. I'm sorry he is to miss his degree. Can't you persuade him to go back? I'll be glad to advance what is necessary—'"
"There it is, you see! There's the rich lady helping a poor relation."
"Wait, son!" she pleaded, and read on. "'I feel that I owe you ten times what you've permitted me to do for you.'"
"That's all very nice of her, mother, but I won't have any more of it." He pounded out the sentence with his fist.
She looked up at him with mingled fear and pride. "You are exactly like your father as you say that," she declared. "Oh, Victor, my son! Ifyouleave me in anger I shall be desolate indeed. I can't live without you. Please believe in me—and love me—for you're all I have on this earth."
His anger died away. He saw her again as she really was, a pale, devoted little saint, with troubled brow and quivering lips, one who had shed her very life-blood for him—to doubt her became a monstrous cruelty.
He put his arms about her and hugged her close. "I didn't mean to hurt you, mother—but your world is so strange to me. I'll stay, I'll do the best I can here; only don't work this slate trick any more. Don't sit for any one but me. Will you promise that?"
"May I not sit for Louise?"
"Not without me."
"I dare not promise, Victor. Father may insist. If he doesnotinsist I will do as you wish. I will give it up."
He kissed her. "Dear little mother, you sha'n't live alone any more, and you shall soon have a home that is worthy of you."
She was weeping, and a big lump in his own throat made speech difficult. To cover his emotion he slangily said: "Well, now, it's me to the marts of trade. Perhaps I'll fool The Voices yet."
"How do people get jobs," he asked himself as he set forth. "'Want ads,' I suppose." He went deeper. "What am I fitted for? I can keep books—in a fashion—or I can clerk. My training has not fitted me for any special thing, unless to sell sporting-goods." This was a "lead," and his face brightened. "My work on the team ought to help me in that direction. Good idea! I'll hie me to the sporting-goods houses."
The first two managers with whom he talked, while much impressed by him, were completely manned, but the third was disposed to consider him till he told him his name. "No relation to Mrs. Ollnee, the medium?" he asked, with a grin, while poising his pencil to write.
For an instant Victor hesitated, then took the leap. "Well, yes, I am, but then you don't want to believe that report; it's more than half a lie."
The manager's smile vanished. He left the address half finished. "So you are the son they spoke of?" he said, with a cold, keen glance.
"Yes, I am," Victor boldly answered.
He closed his book. "I don't believe we can trade," he announced. "Of courseIdon't consider all mediums frauds and liars, but this house is very particular about its help—"
Victor turned and walked away, bitterly rebellious of soul and disheartened. For a time his anger burned so hotly within him that he meditated taking the train and leaving the city and all it held behind him. Again and again his thought returned to the picture his gentle little mother had made as she had said good-by to him at the head of the stairs. To accuse her of conscious deception was like accusing a sweet girl of infanticide. How could she build up a system of fraudulent fortune-telling, so intricate, so subtle, that it baffled the eye of the reporter, who confessed that he had not been able to detect the trickery. "It is only by induction, by inference, that one gets at themodus operandi," he admitted.
In his perturbation he walked away to the east and soon came out upon the lake-front. A bunch of men and boys of all types and sizes were playing ball on the barren ground, and with the athlete's undying love of the sport he rose and edged into the game. He could not resist showing his prowess by means of a few curves, and the crowd with instant perception began to take a vivid interest in him.
A half-hour of this restored his good-nature and he returned to the cañons to the west, determined to find an opening somewhere. He was never dismissed rudely—he was too big and well-dressed for that—but the fact that he had no experience shut him out in most cases, and for the rest the departments were filled with salesmen. Twice when he seemed about to be taken on, his name and his mothers reputation shut the door of opportunity in his face.
At four o'clock he started slowly homeward, discouraged, not so much by his failure as by the fact that everybody seemed to have a knowledge of the article in theStar. It was evident that even when a manager did not at the moment make the connection between his name and Mrs. Ollnee's it would certainly come out later and he would be called upon to defend himself and his mother from the sneers and jeers of his fellow-salesmen. "I'm a marked man, that's sure," he said, in dismay.
All day his mind had dwelt in flashes on the glorious life at Winona, but now his memory of it was poisoned by the thought that he had been a pensioner on the bounty of Mrs. Joyce. "The easy thing would be to change my name and skip out for the plains," he said again, "but I won't. I'll stay and fight it out right here some way."
He was passing the public library at the moment and was moved to go in and look up the "want ads" in the papers. Ten minutes' reading of these filled him with despair. There were so many wanting work! His feet were tired with walking and his brain weary with the movement of the street, therefore he moved on to the reference room where he found an atmosphere of study that was very grateful.
Accustomed to work of this kind, he asked the attendant to bring him catalogues, and was soon surrounded with books and magazines which dealt with the modern study of psychic phenomena. He fell upon one or two of these which gave exhaustive generalizations, and he was astounded to find that European men of science of the loftiest type were engaged in the study of precisely the same phenomena which his mother claimed to produce.
Careless of all else, he remained until six o'clock absorbed and confused by what he read. Words and phrases like "telekinesis," "teleplastic," "parasitic personalities," "externalized motricity," "bio-psychic energy" danced about in his brain like fantastic insects. He fairly staggered with the weight of the conceptions laid upon him, and when at last he went out into the streets he had forgotten his race for place behind the counter.
It was nearly sunset, and his afternoon—his day—had gone for naught! He was as far as ever from securing work—and wages—to keep his little mother and himself from the corrupting care of charity. He was a bit disgusted with himself, too, for wasting valuable time, and yet he was enough of the scholar to feel a glow of delight in the company he had been keeping. There was something large and free in the attitude of those Italian men toward the universe, and before he had walked far he promised himself to go again and continue that line of investigation. As he walked up the avenue he came face to face with the dark, thin-faced girl who had knocked at his mother's door the day before. She seemed about to speak, but he passed her with blank look.
He found his mother at the window waiting for him, and upon seeing him she hurried to meet him at the head of the stairs.
"What luck?" she called, with a smile.
He shook his head. "Nothing doing," and received her caress rather coldly, for he perceived Mrs. Joyce in the room. "It isn't so easy to find a job. I'll be lucky if I dig one up in a week, I suppose."
Mrs. Joyce greeted him cordially. "I've just been making a proposition to your mother, Victor—I hope you'll let me call you Victor—which is, that we all go abroad for a few months till this storm blows over."
He looked at her with gravely interrogating glance. "How could we do that?"
She explained. "You both go as my guests, of course. We can motor through France in June and get up into Switzerland in July."
He sank into a chair and dazedly studied her. "Why should you offer to do all that for us?"
"Because I am very grateful to your mother for what she has done for me. She not only cured my mother of cancer—she has cured me of despair. She has taught me to believe again in the mystery of the world."
"You mean she has done this as—as a medium?"
"Yes—through her guides she has given me faith in the hereafter. Their advice on a hundred different things has made life easy for me. My wealth is largely due to the wisdom of Mr. Astor, who speaks through her. He advises, and so does your grandfather, that I take you all abroad this summer, and I think it a very nice suggestion."
"Oh, the suggestion came from The Voices, did it?" His voice was full of scornful suggestion.
"Yes; but I thought of it myself yesterday as I read that terrible article. You see, I'm told by Mr. Bartol, my lawyer, that the city officials are about to start another campaign against all forms of mediumship. I think it best, and so does your father, that we all leave the city for a time, and escape this persecution."
The beleaguered youth was not a polite deceiver at his best, and this proposal appeared to him not merely chimerical, but immoral, for the reason that his mother must have really proposed it. Through her uncanny power of hypnosis, of suggestion, she had put the idea into her rich friend's head. "I won't consider any such proposition," he bluntly answered. "I don't recognize my mother's claim. You owe her nothing. I don't believe she can cure cancer, and she has no right to advise anybody in business matters."
"You say that because you know nothing of the facts," Mrs. Joyce briskly replied. "I understand your situation perfectly. Your mother has kept me informed of her worries—she has no secrets from me—and I must say I foresaw this antagonism on your part. I felt that you were growing away from her, and yet The Voices advised her to keep you at school and to say nothing. To show you how close they watch you I can tell you that we've been informed of your whereabouts several times to-day. You met a young man at noon, a pale, serious young man, whose name is Gilmer, who said he would help you. Isn't that true?"
He was properly surprised. "Yes, I did meet such a man."
"Then you went to the library and read for a long time?"
He sneered. "Did The Voices tell you that I was turned down everywhere on account of my mother's reputation as a medium?"
"No; but they said you would oppose the idea of our going abroad, and that you were under discipline."
"You're tired, Victor," interposed the mother. "Don't worry over me any more now. I'll get you some coffee."
While she was gone on this errand Mrs. Joyce leaned toward Victor and said: "I can understand a part of your feeling, because there was a time when I lived in the world of definite, commonplace things—but you must not oppose your mother's Voices. They are as real to her as anything in this universe. I'veprovedtheir reality again and again. As I say, they have advised me in my investments and always right. In a sense—in a very real sense—I owe a part of my wealth to your mother, and the little that she has permitted me to do in return for her aid is trifling. I want to do more. Please be just to your dear little mother, who is truly a marvelous creature and loves you beyond all other earthly things. She lives only for you. If it were not for you she would pass on to the spirit plane to-night."
Victor listened to her in a sullen meditation. The whole situation was becoming incredibly fantastic, vaporous as the texture of a dream.
Mrs. Joyce went on: "Come to my house to-night for dinner. Never mind the morrow till the morrow comes. Come and talk with some friends of mine—they may help you."
He spoke thickly: "I'm much obliged, Mrs. Joyce. I'm grateful for what you've done for us, but to take her money or yours now would be—would be dishonest. I can't let you feed us any longer—we've got to fight this out alone."
"What will you do with her Voices?" she asked.
"Forget 'em," he answered, curtly.
"They'll force you to remember them," she warningly retorted. "I assure you they hold your fate in their hands."
Mrs. Ollnee, returning, cut short the discussion, which was growing heated.
As he drank his coffee Victor recovered a part of his native courtesy. "I'm going to win out," he said, with kindling eyes. "It would have been a wonder if I had found a job the first day. I'm going to keep going till I wear out my shoes."
A knock at the door made his mother start.
"Another reporter!" she whispered. "They're pestering me still."
Victor rose with a spring. "I'll attend to this reporter business," he said, hotly.
"No," interposed Mrs. Joyce; "let me go, please!"
He submitted, and she went to meet the intruder. Her quiet, authoritative voice could be heard saying: "Mrs. Ollnee is not able to see any one. That cruel and false article of yesterday has completely upset her.—No, I am only her friend and nurse. I have nothing to say except that the article in theStarwas false and malignant."
Thereupon she closed and locked the door and came back quite serious. "They've been coming almost every hour, determined to see your mother. I would have taken her away, only she persisted in saying she must remain here till you returned."
"Have you been here all day?" he asked, moved by the thought of her loyalty.
His mother answered. "Louise came about ten this morning—and except for an hour at lunch we've both been here waiting, listening."
This devotion on the part of a rich and busy woman was deeply revealing. The youth was being educated swiftly into new conceptions of human nature. His mother was neither beautiful nor wise nor witty. Why should she attract and hold a lady like Mrs. Joyce? He wondered if she had been quite honest with him. Would her interest be the same if The Voices had not enriched her?
She returned to her invitations. "Now put on your dinner-suit and come with us," she insisted. "My niece, Leo, will be there—surely you will respond to that lure?"
His mother laid her small hand upon his arm. "Let us go, Victor. I am in terror here."
"Why did you stay? Why didn't you go before?" he demanded.
"Because The Voices said 'Wait!'—and besides, I wanted to be here when you came."
He rose. "You go. I will come after dinner and bring you home."
Mrs. Joyce was quick on the trail of his intent. "You refuse to eat my bread! Youarerigorous. Very well. Let it be so. Come, Lucy, let us go."
Mrs. Ollnee seemed to listen a moment, then rose. "You'll surely come after dinner, Victor?"
"Yes, I'll come about nine," he replied, in a tone that was hard and cold. And she went away deeply hurt.
Left alone, he walked about the "ghost-room" with bitterness deepening into fury. What were these invisible, intangible barriers which confined him? He stood beside the old brown table which he had hated and feared in his boyhood. What silliness it represented. The pile of slates, some of them still bearing messages in pencil or colored crayon, offered themselves to his hand. He took up one of these and read its oracular statement: "He will come to see the glory of the faith. His neck will bow. It is discipline. Do not worry. FATHER." Here was the source of his troubles!
He dashed the slate to the floor and ground it under his heel. Catching the table by the side and up-ending it, he wrenched its legs off as he would have wrung the neck of a vulture. He breathed upon it a blast of contempt and hate, and, gathering it up in fragments, was starting to throw it into the alley when the door burst open and his mother reappeared, white, breathless, appalled.
"Victor; what are you doing?" she called, with piercing intonation.
He was shaken by her tone, her manner, but he answered, "I'm going to throw this accursed thing into the alley."
She put herself before him with one hand pressed upon her bosom, her breath weak and fluttering.
"You—shall—not! You are killing me. Don't you see that is a part of me. Don't you know—Put it down instantly!My very life and soul are in it."
He dropped the broken thing in a disordered pile at her feet. Her anguish, which seemed both physical and mental, stunned him. As they stood thus confronting each other Mrs. Joyce returned. She seemed to comprehend the situation instantly, and, putting her arm about the little psychic's waist, gently said, "You'd better lie down, Lucy, you are hurt."
Mrs. Ollnee permitted herself to be led to the little couch silently sobbing.
It was growing dusky in the room, and the youth, though still rebellious, was profoundly affected by this action. His hot anger died away and a swift repentance softened him. "Don't cry, mother," he said, clumsily kneeling beside her. "I didn't think you cared so much about the old thing."
Mrs. Joyce broke forth in scorn: "What a crude young barbarian you are! That table is something more than a piece of wood to her. It is a sacred altar. It is the place where the quick and the dead meet. It is sentient with the touch of spirit hands—and you have desecrated it. You have laid violent hands upon your mother's innermost heart. You will destroy her if you keep on in this way."
At these words the youth for the first time caught a glimpse of the vital faith which lay behind and beneath these foolish and ridiculous practices. No matter what that worn table was to him, it stood for his mother's faith—that he now saw—and he was sorry.
"I can rebuild it again," he said. "It is not hopelessly smashed. I will repair it to-morrow."
The symbolism which could be read in his words seemed to comfort his mother and she grew quieter, but her face remained ghastly pale and her breathing troubled.
Mrs. Joyce turned to him again. "You can't deceive her. She knew the instant you laid your destroying hands on that slate."
He did not doubt this. In some hidden way his action had reached and acted upon his mother as she was speeding down the avenue. Her sudden return proved this—and his hair rose at the thought of her clairvoyancy, and in answer to Mrs. Joyce's question, "Why did you do it?" he replied, sullenly, but not bitterly:
"I did it because I detest the thing and all that goes with it. I have hated that table all my life."
"What did you think your mother would do?"
"I didn't stop to think. I only wanted to get the brute out of sight. I wanted to end the whole trade at once."
"You've got to be careful or you'll end your mother's earth-life. Let me tell you, boy, if you want to keep her on this plane with you you must be gentle with her. Any shock, especially when she is in trance, is very dangerous to her."
Victor began to feel his helplessness in the midst of the intangible entangling threads of his mother's faith. He now saw the folly of his action, and took an unexpected way of showing his contrition.
"If you'll forgive me, mother, I'll go with you to Mrs. Joyce's dinner. Come, let's get away from here for a little while; I feel stifled."
This pleased and comforted her amazingly. She rose and placed one frail, cold hand about his neck. "Dear boy! I forgive you. You didn't realize what you were doing."
Releasing himself he gathered up the fragments of the table and tenderly examined them. "It can be mended," he reported. "I'll do it the first thing in the morning."
A faint smile came back to his mother's face. "I don't mind, Victor. I feel already that this has brought us closer together. Your father is here—he is smiling—and I am happier than I've been for weeks."
Victor dressed for his party with trembling limbs. It seemed as if he had passed through a tremendous battle wherein he had been defeated—and yet his heart was strangely light.
Mrs. Joyce's house was a stone structure of rather characterless design which stood at the intersection of a wide boulevard and one of the narrower crosstown streets, but it seemed very palatial to Victor as he wonderingly entered its looming granite portal. His mother tripped up the stairs with the air of one who feels very much at home.
A man in snuff-colored livery took his hat and coat and ushered him into a large reception-room on the left, and there his hostess found him some ten minutes later. "Come and meet my brother from California," she said, and led the way across the hall into the library, where a tall man with gray hair and mustache was talking with a dark, alert and smoothly shaven man of middle age. The one Mrs. Joyce introduced as her brother, Mr. Wood, and the other as Mr. Carew.
Victor was relieved to have Miss Wood enter and greet him cordially, for the men did not seem to value him sufficiently to include him in their conversation. Mr. Wood was reserved and the tone of Carew's voice was cynical.
Leonora Wood was of that severe type of beauty which requires stately gowns, and Victor confessed that she was quite the finest figure of a girl he had ever met, but when Mrs. Joyce said, "You are to take Leo out to dinner" he merely bowed, resenting her amused smile.
His seat at table brought him next a very old lady—Mrs. Wood, senior—who beamed upon him with cheerful interest. There were several other women of that vague middle age which does not interest youth.
Miss Wood talked extremely well, and he became interested in spite of himself.
"I wonder how much longer we're going to believe in 'luck' and 'coincidence,'" she said, after some remark of his. "Maybe it's all thought transference or telepathy or something."
"Don't tell me you really believe in such things. Professor Boyden says they are all a part of the spineless mysticism which is sweeping over the country."
She assumed a patronizing air. "It's natural for undergraduates to quote their teachers. I wonder how long it will be before you will consider them all old fogies."
He rose to the defense of his hero. "Boyden will never be an old fogy. He's the most up-to-date man in America. He really is the only experimentalist along these lines. He's out for the facts."
"Your mother's Voices say he is as blind as the rest, wilfully blind."
"Do you really hold stock in my mother's Voices?"
She gazed upon him in large-eyed wonder. "Yes, don't you?"
"No. How can they be anything but a delusion?"
"I don't know. I only know they are profoundly mysterious and that they tell me things which convince me. They seem to know my most secret thought. I have beenforcedto believe in them. My aunt's fortune has been doubled and my own income greatly augmented by their advice."
He took this up. "Tell me more about that. What did they advise you to do?"
"They advised buying certain stocks in a machine for making paper boxes and recommended the Universal Traction Company."
At this moment Mrs. Wood, senior, plucked at his sleeve. "Louise tells me you're the son of our dear medium, Lucy Ollnee."
"I am, yes," he replied, rather ungraciously, for he was eager to revert to Leo.
"Perhaps you're a medium yourself," the old lady pursued.
"Thank the Lord, no! I haven't the ghost of a Voice about me."
She chuckled. "At your age one thinks only of love and dollars. When you are as old as I am the next world will interest you a great deal more than it does now. Besides, you must believe in spirits after they have made you rich. They've made Louise and Leo rich—I suppose you know that?"
He soon turned back to Leo. "I wish people would not talk my mother's Voices to me. I hear nothing else now."
"It's your mother's 'atmosphere.' No one thinks of anything else when in her presence."
"Don't you see how intolerable all that is going to be for me?" he asked, with bitter gravity. "I can see that she isn't exactly human even to you. She's just a sort of a freak. No one loves her or seeks her for herself alone, only for what she can do. That's another reason why I must insist on her getting away from this. I will not have her treated like a wireless telephone."
Her eyes expressed more sympathy than she put into her voice. "I see what you mean; but, believe me, I had not thought of her in just that light, and I think you're quite wrong about my aunt. She is really very fond of your mother."
He was eager to know more of what this clear-sighted girl had seen, but her neighbor, Mr. Carew, claimed her, and he was forced back upon Grandmother Wood, who talked of her new faith to him for nearly half an hour.
After dinner, while the ladies were in the drawing-room and the men were smoking their cigars, the perturbed youth expected to be freed from any further inquisition, for Philo Wood was apparently of that type of man who has no interest in the things he cannot turn into hard cash. The merits of a new strawboard box-machine was engaging his attention at this time, but, after a few minutes of polite discussion of the weather and other general topics, Carew, the lawyer, turned to Victor and began an interrogation which made him wince. Carew was very nice about it, but he pursued such a well-defined line of inquiry that it amounted to a cross-examination. He soon possessed himself of the fact that Victor did not approve of his mother's way of life and that he was trying to secure employment in order to stop all further "fortune-telling" on his mother's part. "I don't believe in it," he reiterated.
"The amazing thing to me," interposed Wood, with quiet emphasis, "is that her predictions come true. I 'play the ponies' a bit"—he smiled—"and I have tried to draw Mrs. Ollnee into partnership with me. 'You have the spooks point out the winning horse to me,' said I to her, 'and I'll share the pot with you.'"
"And she wouldn't do it?" asked Carew.
Wood seemed to be highly amused. "No, she says her guides do not sanction gambling of any sort. And yet she advises Louise to buy into a new transportation scheme that looks to me like the worst kind of a gamble. My advice counts for nothing against these Voices."
"That's true," admitted Carew. "You might as well be the west wind so far as influencing her goes. Since 'Mr. Astor' butted into the game my services are good only in so far as they drive tandem with his! Now you say you have no belief in the thing," he said, turning again to Victor. "How is that? How did that come about?"
"Well, in the first place, I've given some study to what Professor Boyden calls delusional hysteria," Victor responded.
Wood smiled cynically. "My sister won't mind what you call it so long as it enables your mother to designate the winning stocks."
The attitude of each of these men was that of watchful tolerance, and Victor chafed under their assumption of superior wisdom. He plainly perceived that Wood was using the psychic for his own ends, and this angered him. He shut up like a clam and left the room as soon as he could decently do so.
He made his way to where Leonora was sitting on a sofa in the library and took his seat beside her, with intent to continue the conversation which they had begun at the dinner, but he forgot his problems as he looked into her merry, candid eyes.
Her first word was a compliment to his mother. "How pretty she looks to-night! No one would suspect her of being 'the dark and subtle siren' of yesterday'sStar. Her face is positively angelic at this moment. How beautiful she must have been as a girl! I must say you do not resemble her."
"Thank you," he said.
She laughingly explained. "I mean you are so tall and dark. You must resemble your father."
"I believe I do, although I cannot remember him."
"I wonder if he had your absurd pride. Aunt Louise tells me you absolutely refuse to accept any favor from her, and that you were practically forced into coming to dinner to-night. Is that true?"
He leaned toward her with intense seriousness. "How would you feel if you had suddenly learned that all your clothing, your food, your theater tickets—everything had been paid for in money drawn from strangers by means of—well—hypnotism."
"If I believed that I should feel as you do, but I don't. It is not so simple as all that. Your mother's power seems very real to me, and so far as I can now see she has given us all value received for every dollar. By rights one-half of all our profits belongs to her, or, if you prefer, to her Voices. Do you know that these Voices will not permit her to retain more than a scanty living out of all the wealth she makes for others? Did you know that?"
"I know she lives in a shabby apartment, and she tells me that she is entirely under the control of these 'guides.'"
"Yes, they refuse to let her keep anything beyond what she actually needs for herself and your education. I think all that should be counted in on her side, don't you? The fact that she is not enriching herself surely makes her part in the transaction a clean one."
He sank away from her and brooded over this thought for a minute or two before he replied. "But the whole thing is so preposterous. Have you seen her slate-writing 'stunt'?"
"Many times; but I don't think you should call it a 'stunt.'"
"Come, now, give me your honest opinion. Do you think my mother unconsciously cheats?"
She faced him with convincing candor. "No, I don't. I think she is perfectly simple and straightforward, and I believe the writing is supernormal."
"How can you believe that? You're a college girl, mother tells me. Don't the belief in these things wipe out everything you have been taught at school? It certainly rips science into strips for me, or would—if I believed it. It makes a fool of a man like Boyden, that's a sure thing."
Mrs. Joyce, looking across the room, smiled in delight at the charming picture these young people made in their animated conversation. Doubtless they were glowing over Tennyson's position in modern poetry or the question of Meredith's ultimate standing in fiction.
What the youth was really saying to the maid was this: "What did you get out of it all? What did The Voices give you?"
"They told me to study composition, for one thing. They told me I would compose successful songs, with the aid of—of Schubert." She was a little embarrassed at the end.
"And you took all that in?"
She colored. "I'm afraid I didn't really believe the Schubert part. However, I'm studying composition on thechanceof their being right."
"You say they advise you on money matters. How do they do that?"
"They advise my uncle through me to sell stock in a certain company and buy in another. They told me to withdraw my money from my California bank and put it into this Universal Traction Company."
"Did you do that?"
"Yes."
"I'm sorry. I wish you wouldn't take their advice. I wish you would put your money back where it came from at once."
"Why?"
"Because it scares me to think of your going into anything on my mother's advice."
"But it wasn't your mother's advice. It was the advice of a great financier."
"You mean a dead financier?"
"Yes."
He did not laugh at this; on the contrary, his face darkened. "I've heard about that. Did he advise your uncle to go into this same transportation company?"
"Yes; all our friends are in it."
"You mean everybody that went to my mother for advice?"
"Yes."
"Do many go to her for help of this kind?"
"No, not many; she gives sittings only to my aunt and her friends now. There were several big business men of the city who went regularly. Why, Mr. Pettus, the president of the Traction Company, relies upon her."
The absurdity of these great capitalists going to his mother's threadbare little apartment for counsel in ways to win millions made Victor smile. He said, with a mock sigh, "I wish these Voices would tell me where to find a job that would pay fifteen dollars a week."
"They will—if you give yourself up to them. You must have faith."
"Oh, but the whole thing is dotty. Why should a poor farmer like my grandfather by just merely dying become a great financier?" Again his brow darkened and his voice deepened with contempt. "It's all poppycock! If he knows so much about the future why didn't he warn my mother against that reporter that came in the other day to do her up? Why didn't he permit me to stay on at Winona and get my degree?"
The girl was troubled by his questions and evaded them. "It must have been hard to leave in the midst of your final term."
"It was punishing. It was like being yanked out of the box in the middle of an inning, with the game all coming your way."
She knew enough of baseball slang to catch his meaning and she smiled as she asked, "Why don't you go back?"
"Simply because I couldn't stand the chinning I'd get from my classmates."
"Can't you go on with your studies here and pass your examination?"
"I might do that if I could get a job that would pay me my board and leave me a little time to study."
She looked up at him with smiling archness. "Why not drive an automobile? You could carry your books around under the seat and study while waiting outside the shops or the theaters."
"Good idea!" he exclaimed, responding to her humor. "I'm pretty handy with the machine. One of my friends up at Winona had one. I hope you own a car." He said this with intent to indicate his growing desire to be near her.
Mrs. Joyce came over at this moment to inquire what they were so jolly about.
Leo answered: "I was just suggesting that Mr. Ollnee become a chauffeur. He could go on with his studies—"
"Capital!" exclaimed Mr. Joyce. "The man I have is liable to drink and very crusty in the bargain. You may have his place."
"I'm afraid I wouldn't do," he responded. "I might get crusty, too."
"I hope you are not liable to drink," said Leo.
"No, sarsaparilla is my only tipple. But this is all Miss Wood's joke," he explained.
"I'm not joking, indeed I'm not," the girl retorted. "I don't know of any skill that is more in demand just now than that of a chauffeur. I know of one who is studying the piano. I don't see any reason why Mr. Ollnee should not take it up temporarily. It's perfectly honorable. Witness Bernard Shaw's play."
"Oh, I'm not looking down on any job just now," he disclaimed. "All I ask is a chance to earn a living while I'm finding out what my best points are."
Mr. Wood beckoned and Leo rose to meet him. "We must be off," he said.
Victor bade Leo good-night with such feeling of intimacy and friendliness as he had not hoped to attain for any one connected with Mrs. Joyce. There was something in the pressure of her hand and in the sympathetic tone of her voice at the last that he remembered with keen pleasure.
Mr. Carew was deep in conversation with Mrs. Ollnee, and Victor drew near with intent to know what was being said. The lawyer was very gentle, very respectful, but Mrs. Ollnee was undergoing a thorough investigation at his hands. He represented the calm, slow-spoken, but very keen inquisitor, and the psychic was already feeling the force of his delicate, yet penetrating sarcasm.
"I would advise you not to trust your Voices in matters that relate to life, limb, or fortune," he said, suavely, and a veiled threat ran beneath his words. "These Voices may be deceiving you."
Mrs. Ollnee protested with vehemence. "Mr. Carew, I am content to put mysoulinto their keeping."
He bowed and smiled. "Your faith is very wonderful." Then he added, with a glance at Mrs. Joyce, who was listening, "For myself, I would not put my second-best coat in their keeping."
Mrs. Joyce intervened at this point, and, after some little discussion of a conventional topic, offered to send Victor and his mother home in her car. Victor was not pleased by her offer. It was only putting him just that much deeper into her debt, but he could not well refuse, especially as his mother accepted it as a matter of course.
On the way he took up the question of Carew's warning. "He's right, mother. You must stop advising people to buy or sell."
"Why so, Victor?"
"Suppose you should advise buying the wrong thing?"
"But they don't advise the wrong thing, Victor. They are always right."
"Always?"
"Nobody has ever reported a failure," she declared.
"Well, it's sure to come. Why should father or grandfather know any more about stocks now than he did before he died?"
She was a little nettled by his tone. "They have the constant advice of a great financier on that side."
"So Miss Wood told me. Who is this great financier who is so willing to help you decide what to do with other people's money?" he asked, cuttingly.
She hesitated a little before saying "Commodore Vanderbilt."
He could not keep back a derisive shout. "Vanderbilt! Well, and you believe 'the great commodore' comes to our little hole of a home to advise us? Oh, mother, that's too ridiculous."
"My son," she began with some asperity, "we've been all over that ground before. You don't realize how you hurt, how you dishonor me when you doubt me and laugh at me."
He felt the pain in her voice and began an apology. "I don't mean to laugh at you, mother. But you must remember that I have been a student for four years in the atmosphere of a great university, and all this business—I've got to be honest with you—it's all raving madness to me. You certainly must stop advising in business matters. Mr. Carew to-night intended to give you warning."
"I know he did," she quietly responded.
"He meant to be kind. He meant to say that you were liable at any moment to be held accountable for advice that went wrong. He told me that the courts were full of cases where mediums had led people into willing their property away, or where they had juggled with somebody else's fortunes. He told me of having convicted one woman of this and of having sent her to jail."
"But have I prospered from these advices?" she asked, indignantly. "Can any one accuse me of getting rich out of my 'work'? Please consider that."
"That does puzzle me. I can't see why 'they' help others and leave us with a bare living. And, most important of all, why do 'they' permit you to be hounded this way? Why didn't 'they' warn you? Why don't 'they' help me?"
She sighed submissively. "Of course they have their own reasons. In good time all will be revealed to us. They are wiser than we, for all the past and all the future are unrolled before their eyes."
This reply silenced him. Small and gentle as she was, Victor realized that she could resist with the strength of iron when it came to an assault upon her faith.
Above the knob of their own door they found a folded newspaper, and this Victor seized with misgiving. "I wonder what is coming next?" he said.
She paled with a definite premonition of trouble. "Open it at once," she commanded.
He was as eager as she, for he, too, foresaw some new attack upon their peace. Lighting the gas, he opened the paper with trembling hands. On the first page was his own photograph and the story of his leaving college to defend his mother. Everything, even to the parting with Frenson, was set down, luridly, side by side with the report of a celebrated murder trial.
At sight of this new indignity his sense of youth and weakness came back upon him and, crumpling up the paper, he flung it upon the floor in impotent rage.
"That ends the fight here," he said. "How can I go about this town seeking work to-morrow? Everybody will know my story, and, what's more, here is your address given in full. Don't you see that makes it impossible for either of us to remain here another day?"
For the first time in her life the indomitable little psychic quailed before the persistent malice of her foes. The splintered altar of her faith lying in a disordered heap upon the floor symbolized the estrangement which she felt between her invisible guides, her son, and herself. Her maternal anxiety had developed swiftly in these few hours of blissful companionship, and the world of wealth and comfort—for her boy's sake—had become suddenly of enormous importance to her. She wished him to be a happy man, and this desire weakened her abstract sense of duty to the race. She spoke aloud in a tone of entreaty, addressing herself to the intangible essences about her. "Father, are you here? Speak to me, help me, I need you."
Victor turned upon her with darkened brow. "Oh, for God's sake, stop that! I don't want any advice from the air."
She persisted. "Paul, come to me! Tell me what to do. Please come!"
Her voice was thrilling with its weakness and appeal, but Victor was furious. He refused to listen. His brow was set and stern.
At last she cried out, poignantly, "They are not here. They have deserted us. What shall I do?" She turned toward the table. "Rebuild my altar. You said you would. Restore that and perhaps they will come to us again. They are angry with me now. They have left me, perhaps forever."
"If 'they' have I shall be glad of it," he returned, brutally. "'They' have been a curse to you and to me, also. We are better off without them. Come, let us pack up the few things we have and go away into the West, where no one will know even so much as our name. That is the only way left open for us."
"No, no," she cried out, "that is impossible. I must remain here. I must wait until they come back to me. I can't go now, and you must not desert me," she ended, and in her voice was something very pitiful.
He moved away from her and took his seat in sullen rage. For a long time he did not even look at her, though he knew she was waiting and listening.
At last he rose, and his voice was harsh and hoarse. "Mother, my mind is made up. There's no use talking against it. I leave this city to-morrow morning. I shall go as far as my money will carry me. I shall change my name and get rid of this whole accursed business. I've hated it, I've hated your 'ghost-room' and your Voices all my life, and this is the end of it for me. If you will not go with me then I must leave you behind."
She uttered a moaning cry of grief and ran like one stricken into her room, flinging herself face downward upon her bed. He listened for a few moments with something tugging at his heart-strings, but his face was set in unrelenting lines. Then he rose and set to work repacking his trunk.
When Victor woke from his uneasy sleep next morning his first glance was toward his mother's room wherein he had seen her vanish in an agony of grief and despair. All was quiet, and after dressing himself—still firmly resolved upon flight—he went to the door and silently peered in.
She was sleeping peacefully, her thin hands folded on her breast, and he drew a sigh of relief.
"I am glad she's able to sleep," he said, and stole back to the pantry.
He studied its sparse supplies with care. There was not much to do with, but he boiled some eggs and made coffee very quietly, with intent to let his mother sleep as long as she could. He found himself less savage than the night before.
"I can't leave till she wakes," he said to himself, "but I'm going, all the same."
In order to pass the time of waiting he went down to the foot of the stairs to find the morning paper. He opened it with apprehension, but breathed a sigh of relief upon finding no further "scare heads" of himself. The only reference to his mother came in the midst of an editorial advocating the cleaning out of all the healers, palmists, fortune-tellers, and mediums in the city. With lofty virtue the writer went on to say that theStarhad refused to advertise the business of these people, no matter what the pecuniary reward, and that it purposed a continuous campaign. "We intend to pursue all such women as Mrs. Ollnee, who fasten upon their credulous dupes like leeches," he declared.
As Victor read this paragraph he caught again the violence of contrast between the woman pictured by the pen of the editor and the pale, sweet, mild-voiced little woman who was his mother. It would have been funny had it not been so serious and so personal. Furthermore, the paragraph strengthened him in his determination to leave the city, and he still hoped to be able to persuade his mother to go with him.
At eight o'clock he once more tiptoed in to see if she still slept, and finding her in the same position his heart softened with pity. "She must have been completely tired out, poor little mother! I'm afraid what I said to her worried her."
After another hour of impatient waiting he again entered her room and studied her more intently. There was something suggestive of death in the folded hands and he could detect no breathing. Her face was as pale as that of a corpse, and his blood chilled a little as he approached her. He called to her at last, but she did not stir.
Stepping to her bedside, he laid his palm upon her wrist. It was cold as ice, and he started back filled with fear. "Mother!mother!Are you ill?" he called. She gave no sign of life.
For a long time he stood there, rigid with fear, not knowing what to do. He knew no one in all the city upon whom he could call save Mrs. Joyce and Leo, and he did not know their street or number. He felt himself utterly alone, helpless, ignorant as a babe, and in the presence of death.
Gradually his brain cleared. Sorrow overcame his instinctive awe of a dead body. He felt once more the pulseless arm and studied closely the rigid face. "She is gone!" he sobbingly cried, "and I was so cruel to her last night!"
The memory of his harsh voice, his brutal words, came back to plague him, now that she was deaf to his remorse. How little, how gentle she was, and how self-sacrificing she had been for him! "She burned out her very soul for me," he acknowledged.
He remained beside her thus till the sound of a crying babe on the floor below suggested to him the presence of neighbors. Hastening down-stairs, he knocked upon the first door he came to with frantic insistence.
A slatternly young woman with a crown of flaming red-gold hair came to the door. She smiled in greeting, but his first words startled her.
"My mother is dead. Come up and help me. I don't know what to do."
His tone carried conviction, and the girl did not hesitate a moment. She turned and called: "Father, come here quick. Mrs. Ollnee is dead."
An old man with weak eyes and a loose-hung mouth shuffled forward. To him the girl explained: "This is Mrs. Ollnee's son. He says his mother is dead. I'm going up there. You look out for the baby." She turned back to Victor. "When did she die?"
"I found her cold and still this morning."
"Have you called a doctor?"
"No, I don't know of any to call."
"Jimmie!" she shrieked.
A boy's voice answered, "What ye want, maw?"
"Jimmie, you hustle into your clothes and run down the street to Doctor Sill's office and tell him to come up here right away. Hurry now!"
Closing the door behind her, she started resolutely up the stairway, and her action gave Victor a grateful sense of relief.
"What do you think ailed her?" she asked.
"I don't know. She seemed all right last night when I went to bed."
This woman, young in years, was old in experience, that was evident, for she proceeded unhesitatingly to the silent bedside with that courage to meet death which seems native to all women. She, too, listened and felt for signs of life and found none. "I reckon you're right," she said, quietly. "She's cold as a stone."
At her words the strong young fellow gave way. He turned his face to the wall, sobbing, tortured by the thought that his bitter and savage assault and expressed resolve to leave her had been the cause of his mother's death. "What can I do?" he asked, when he was able to speak. "I must do something—she was so good to me."
The young woman, looking upon him with large tolerance and a certain measure of admiration, replied: "There's nothing to do now but wait for the doctor. You'd better come down with me and have some coffee."
He did not feel in the least like eating or drinking, but he needed human companionship. Therefore he followed his neighbor down the stairs and into her cluttered little living-room with submissive gratitude. The home was slovenly, but it was glorified by kindliness. A tousled baby of eighteen months was keeping the old man busy and a small boy of eight or nine was struggling into his knickerbockers, and Victor, thrust into the midst of this hearty, dirty, noisy household, remembered with increasing respect his mother's dainty housekeeping. "She was a lady," he said to himself, in definition of the difference between her apartment and this. "Her home was poor, but it was never ratty."
Mrs. Bowers was kindness and consideration itself. Her father, deaf and partly paralytic, was treated gently, although he was irritatingly slow of comprehension and insisted on knowing all about what had taken place up-stairs. It pained and disgusted Victor inexpressibly to have his mother's condition bawled into the old man's ears, but he could not reasonably interfere.
He thought of Mrs. Joyce, knowing that his mother would want to have her instantly informed. "I ought to telephone some friends," he said to Mrs. Bowers. "Where is the nearest 'phone?"
She told him, and he went out and down the steps in haste to let Mrs. Joyce know of his tragic bereavement, and when at the drug-store near by he finally succeeded in getting communication with the house he was deeply disappointed to be told by the butler that Mrs. Joyce was not down and could not be disturbed so early in the morning.
"But Imustsee her," he insisted. "My mother, Mrs. Ollnee, her friend, is—is—very sick. I am Victor, her son, and I'm sure Mrs. Joyce would want to speak to me."
The butler's voice changed. "Oh, very well, Mr. Ollnee," he replied, knowing the intimacy which existed between his mistress and the psychic. "Just hold the line; I'll call her."
It was a long time before the calm, cultivated voice of Mrs. Joyce came over the 'phone, but it was worth the waiting for. "Who is it?" she asked.
"Mrs. Joyce, this is Victor Ollnee. My mother is very, very ill. I'm afraid she's dead."
He heard her gasp of pain and surprise as she called: "Your mother! Why she seemed perfectly well last night."
"I found her lying cold and still this morning. I can't detect any pulse or any breathing. Can't you come over at once? Please do. I don't know a soul in the city but you, and I'm in great trouble."
"You poor boy! Of course I'll come. I'll be over instantly. Have you called a doctor?"
"No, I don't know of any."
"Where are you now?"
"At the corner drug-store."
"Is any one with your mother?"
"No, but the woman below has been up. She is quite sure my mother is dead."
"Gracious heavens! I can't realize it. Good-by for a few minutes. I'll come at once."
Victor returned to Mrs. Bowers' apartment with a glow of grateful affection for Mrs. Joyce. It was wonderful what comfort and security came to him with her voice so sincerely filled with compassion and desire to help. He wondered if Leo would come with her, and asked himself how the news of his bereavement would affect her. Her attitude toward him had been that of the elder sister who felt herself also to be the wiser, but he did not resent that now.
He thought of the effect of his mother's death upon the press. Would theStarforego its malignant assault upon her character now that she was gone beyond its reach? Would those who threatened her with arrest be remorseful?
Mrs. Bowers persuaded him to take another cup of hot coffee, and then together they returned to the little apartment above to wait for the coming of the doctor and Mrs. Joyce. The young mother became philosophical at once. "After a body gets to be forty I tell you he don't know what's going to happen next. I reckon you better set here where you can't see the bed," she added, kindly. "It don't do any good, and it only makes you grieve the harder."
He obeyed her like a child and listened through his mist of tears as she rambled on. "I've had my share of trouble," she explained. "First my mother went, then my oldest boy, then my husband took sick. Yes, a body has to face trouble about so often, anyway, and, besides, I don't suppose your mother was afraid of death, anyhow. I've known all along what her business was, ever since I came into the house, and I've been up to see her a few times. Still I'm not much of a believer. Dad is, though. It's his greatest affliction that he can't hear The Voices any more. I want to say I believe in your mother. She was a mighty fine woman; but the docterin of spiritualism I never could swaller, notwithstanding I grew up 'longside of it."
The sound of a decisive step on the stairs cut her short. "I bet a cookie that's the doctor!"
A clear, crisp, incisive voice responded to her greeting at the door, and a moment later a beardless, rather fat young fellow was confronting Victor with professional, smiling eyes. "You're not the patient," he stated, rather than asked. Victor shook his head and pointed to the bed.
With quick step the physician entered the bedroom and set to work upon the motionless form with methodical haste. He was still busy in this way when the whir of a motor car announced Mrs. Joyce.
Victor was at the door to meet her, and when she saw him she opened her arms and took him to her broad, maternal bosom. "You poor boy!" she said, patting his shoulder. "You're having more than your share of trouble."
He frankly sobbed out his penitence and grief. "Oh, Mrs. Joyce! She's gone, and I was so hard last night. I'll never forgive myself for what I said to her."
She again patted him on the shoulder with intent to comfort him. "There, there! I don't believe you have anything to reproach yourself for, and, then, remember your mother's beautiful faith. She has not gone far away. Her heaven is not distant. She is very near. She has merely cast off the garment we call flesh. She is here, close beside you, closer than ever before, touching you, knowing what you think and feel."
In this way she comforted him, and in a measure drew his mind away from the memory of his cruel and unfilial words.
Sill approached her with thoughtful glance. "Are you related to this woman?"
"No, I am only a friend," replied Mrs. Joyce; "but this is her son."
"When did you discover your mother's present condition?"
"This morning."
"Did you fold her hands and put her in the position she occupies?"
"No, that is the strange thing. When I left her last night she was—she was lying across the bed, face downward. I had just told her that I was going away and that I wanted her to go with me. She refused to do this and tried to get The Voices to speak to her. They would not come, and so she, being hurt, I suppose, by what I said, ran into the room and flung herself down on the bed, weeping. I was angry at her and did not speak to her again. I went to sleep out here on the couch, and did not see her again till morning. When I looked in at eight o'clock she was lying just as she is now."
Sill eyed him keenly. "Do you mean that you quarreled?"
Mrs. Joyce interposed. "I can explain that," she said. "Mrs. Ollnee was my friend. She was what is called a medium. She is the Mrs. Ollnee you may have read about in the papers."
"Ah!" Sill's tone conveyed a mingling of surprise and increased interest. "So you are the son of Mrs. Ollnee?" he said, turning to Victor.
Mrs. Joyce again answered for him. "Yes; he has been away at school; he came home Sunday to comfort and protect his mother; but, unfortunately, he does not accept her faith. He rebelled against her work, and demanded that she give up her Voices. I can understand his wanting her to go away with him, and I can understand also how painful it was to her; but I don't believe that what he said had anything to do with her passing out. She was very frail at best, and has many times said that she expected to leave the body in one of her trances and never again resume her worn-out garment."
"She was subject to trances, then?"
"Yes, though not strictly a trance-medium, she did occasionally pass out of the body."
"May I take your name?"
"Certainly; I am Mrs. John H. Joyce, of Prairie Avenue."
His manner changed. "Oh yes. I should have known you, Mrs. Joyce, I have seen you before. What you tell me does not explain the disposal of Mrs. Ollnee's body. She must have gone to her death consciously, as if preparing to sleep. Perhaps she intended only to enter a trance."