Chapter IV: Part 4

Mrs. Joyce saw that to go would be best, at least for the time, and together she and Leo went down the stairway and out into the street, leaving the stubborn youth to confront his problem alone with the phlegmatic Mrs. Post.

VII

THE RETURN OF THE SPIRIT

Youth is surrounded by mystery--nothing but magic touches him; but it is a beautiful, natural, hopeful magic. The mists of morning rise unaccountably, the rains of autumn fall without cause. The lightning, the snows, the grasses appear and vanish before the child's eyes like magical conjurations, until at last, for the most part, he accepts these miracles as commonplace because they happen regularly and often. In a world that is incomprehensible to the greatest philosopher, the lad of twenty comes and goes unmoved by the essential irresolvability of matter.

So it had been with Victor. Under instruction he had come to speak of electricity as a fluid, of steel as a metal, as though calling them by these names explained them. He discussed the ether, calmly considering it a sort of finely attenuated jelly, something which quivered to every blow and was capable of transmitting motion instantaneously. Sound, heat, and light were modes of motion, he had been told, and these words satisfied him. Food taken into the body produced power, and this power was transmitted from the stomach to the brain, and from the brain to the muscles, and so the limbs were moved. But just how the meat and potatoes got finally from the brain to the nerves and so into the swing of a baseball bat did not trouble him. Why should it?

Life and age were mere words. Death he had heard described by clergymen as something to be prepared for, a dark and dismal event reserved for old people, but which did occasionally catch a man in his arrogant youth, generally in the midst of his sins. Life meant having a good time, a succeeding in sport, business, or love. Of course certain philosophic phrases like "continuous adjustment of the organism to the environment" and "the change of the organism from the simple to the complex" had stuck in his mind. But any real thought as to what these changes actually meant had been put aside quite properly, for the pastimes and ambitions of the student to whom study is an incidental price for a joyous hour at play.

But now, here in this room, beside the motionless body of his mother, he began to think. He had a good mind. His father had left him a rich legacy in his splendid body, but also something mental--latent to this hour--which produced an irritating impatience with the vague and the mysterious. He resented the intrusion of an insoluble element into his thinking. He was repelled by the discovery that his mother was abnormal, and from the point of view of this "ghost-room" his life at the university was becoming sweeter, more precious, more normal every hour.

Then, too, his afternoon of reading at the library had put into his mind several new and all-powerful conceptions which had germinated there like the seeds which the Indian "adept" plants in pots of sand, rising, burgeoning, blossoming on the instant. He knew the names of some of those men whose words might be counted on the side of his mother's endowment, for they were famous in physical or moral science, but he had not known before that they admitted any real belief in the kind of things which his mother professed to perform.

The conception that the human soul was (as the ancients believed) a ponderable, potent entity capable of separating itself from the body, came to him with overwhelming significance. "If mother still lives," he said to the nurse, "where is she? What form has she taken?"

Mrs. Post, in her own way, was capable of expressing herself. "She is not there. So much we know. Her body is here. It is like a cloak which she has thrown down. She herself is invisible, but she will return and take up her body, and then you will see it grow warm again and her eyes will light up like lamps, and she will rise and speak to you."

Of course he did not believe this. That her body was a cast-off garment was easy to comprehend, but that her spirit hovered near and would re-enter its former habitation was incredible.

All day he remained there, pacing to and fro, or sitting bent and somber over his problem. At noon he got a little lunch for himself and for the nurse. At two o'clock Mrs. Joyce returned to take him for a drive in her car. But this he again refused. Thereupon she went away, promising to look in again later in the evening.

At dusk he stole down into the street to mail a letter to Frensen, wherein he had written: "I am a good deal of a broken reed to-day, but I am going to fight. I wish you were here to talk things over with me. I'm surrounded by people who believe in the supernatural, and I need some one like yourself to brace me up."

This was true. He had been thrust into the midst of those who dwelt upon the amazing and the inexplicable in human life. The city, which had been to him so vast, so ugly, and so menacing in a material way, now became mysterious in an entirely different way. He had now a sense of its infinite drama, its network of purpose. There was some comfort, however, in the thought that amid these swarms of people his own activities were inconspicuous. To-morrow he and his mother would be forgotten in some new sensation.

The air was delicately fresh and wholesome, and the faces of the girls he met had singular power to comfort him. The life of the city, sweeping on multitudinously, refreshed him like the spray of a mighty torrent foaming amid rocks and shadowed by lofty canyon walls. He returned to his vigil stronger and better for this momentary communion with the crowd.

Mrs. Joyce came again at nine and insisted on remaining for the night. She had quite thrown off her own gloom, being perfectly certain in her own mind that Lucy Ollnee would return with a marvelous story of her wanderings "on the other plane."

She began to make plans for Victor, "subject," she said, "to revision by your 'guides.'"

"You've said that before," he retorted, "but I have no 'guides.' I don't believe in 'guides,' and I don't intend to be ruled by a lot of spooks."

"Be careful," she warned. "They know your every thought and they may resent your attitude."

"Well, let them! What do I care? Suppose, for argument's sake, that these Voices _do_ come from my father and my grandfather. What do they know of this great city? They were country folks. How can they direct me in what I am to do?"

"They know a great deal better than any of us."

"But how can they?"

"Because they are free from the limitations of the flesh."

"I don't see how that is going to help them. Their minds are just the same as they were, aren't they?"

"Indeed no! We grow inconceivably in knowledge and power to discern the moment we drop the flesh."

"I don't see why? If they are existing they're in a world so different from this that their experience here won't help them over there, and their experience over there is of no value to us here, and even if it were, they could not express it."

During their talk the night had deepened into darkness, and now, as they reached a pause in their discussion, a measured rapping could be heard, as though some one were striking with a small wand upon the brass rod of the bed.

Without knowing exactly why, a thrill very like fear passed over Victor, but Mrs. Joyce smiled. "They are here! Don't you hear them? They want to communicate with us."

The youth's high heart sank. His boyish dread of darkness began to people this death-chamber with monstrous shadows, with malignant forces. He was very grateful for the presence of this cheery and undismayed believer in the spirit world. Without her he would have been panic-stricken.

She rose to enter the bedroom, and he followed as far as the threshold.

It was very dark in there, and for a moment he could see nothing, could hear nothing. Then a faint whisper made itself distinctly audible just above his head. "_Victor, my boy_," it said.

He did not reply for a moment, and Mrs. Joyce eagerly called, "Did you hear that whisper, Victor?"

"Yes, I heard it," he replied.

"It was Lucy. Was it you, Lucy?" asked Mrs. Joyce.

"_Yes_," came the answer.

"Are you still out of the body, Lucy?"

"_Yes._"

"What shall we do?"

"_Wait._"

"Is there anything you want to say to Victor?"

"_No, not now. Father will speak._"

Silence again fell, and in this pause Mrs. Joyce took the chair which stood close beside the bed and motioned Victor to another near the foot. He sat with thrilling nerves, moved, trembling in spite of himself. The room was now quite dark, save for a faint patch of light on the ceiling and another on the carpet. His mother's body could not be distinguished from the covering of the bed.

As they waited, a singular, cold, and aromatic breeze began to blow over the bed from the dark corner, and then a small, brilliant, bluish flame arose near the sleeper's head, and, floating upward to the ceiling, vanished silently. It was like the flame of a candle twisted and leaping in a breeze.

"The spirit light!" exclaimed Mrs. Joyce, ecstatically. "Wasn't it beautiful? And see, there is a hand holding it!" she whispered, as another flame arose. "Can't you see it?"

"I see the light, but no hand," he replied.

"I can see more. I see the dim form of an old man outlined on the wall. It must be your grandsire, Nelson Blodgett. Am I right?" she asked, apparently of the dark.

Victor could now perceive a thin, bluish, wavering shape, like a cloud of cigar smoke, and from this a whisper seemed to come, strong and clear. "_Yes, I have come to speak to my grandson._"

"Don't you see him now?" asked Mrs. Joyce.

"I see nothing," he repeated; and as he spoke the misty shape vanished.

"But you heard the whisper, did you not?" Mrs. Joyce persisted.

He did not reply to her, but rose and bent above his mother. "Mother, did you speak?" he asked.

Mrs. Joyce excitedly restrained him. "Sit down! You must not touch her now."

"Why not?"

"Because it is very dangerous while the spirits are using her organism."

"I don't know what you mean!" he retorted, angrily. "I know that that voice sounded exactly like my mother's voice, and I want to know--"

"_Silence, foolish boy!_" was sternly breathed into his ear.

A cloud passed over the sky, and as the room became perfectly black a fluttering gray-blue cloud developed out of the darkest corner. It had the movement of steam-wreaths, with each convolution faintly edged with light. At one moment it resembled a handful of lines, fine as cobweb, looping and waving, as if blown upward from below, and the next moment it floated past like the folds of some exquisite drapery, lifting and falling in gentle undulations. At last it rose to the height of a man, drifted across the bed, and there hung poised over the head of the sleeper. As it swung there for an instant Victor could plainly detect a man's figure and face. His eyelids were closed and his features vague, but his chin and the spread of his shoulders were clearly defined. "Who are you?" Victor demanded, as if the apparition were an intruder.

The answer came in a flat, toneless voice, neither male nor female in quality. "_I am your father._"

Victor leaped up impulsively, his hair on end with fright, and the apparition vanished precisely as though an open door had been closed between it and the observer.

Again Mrs. Joyce clutched him. "Be careful! Sit down; don't stir!"

"Somebody is playing a joke on me," he insisted, hotly. "I'm going to strike a light."

Again a voice, this time almost full-toned, but with a metallic accompaniment, as though it had passed through a horn, poured into his ear, "_You shall bow to our wisdom._"

He braced himself to receive a blow, and answered through his set teeth: "I will not. I am master of myself, and I don't intend to take orders from you."

"_You are fighting great powers. You will fail_," the voice replied. "_Your heart is defiant. Expect punishment._"

Victor threw out his left hand in rage. It came into contact with something in the air, something light and hollow, which fell crashing to the floor, and a faint, gasping, indrawn breath from the sleeper on the bed followed it. For an instant all was silent; then Mrs. Joyce cried out:

"She has returned! Your mother has returned! Don't strike a light. Wait a moment." She moved forward a little. "May I touch her?" she asked.

Victor thought she was speaking to him, but before he could reply the invisible one whispered: "_Yes. Approach slowly._"

Mrs. Joyce laid her hand on the sleeper's brow. "She's warmer, Victor! She's breathing! She has certainly come back to us."

"_Approach_," whispered the voice in Victor's ear.

He moved forward now, in awe and wonder, and stood beside the bed. Slowly the room lightened, and out of the darkness the pallid face of his mother developed like the shadowy figures on a photographic plate. She was lying just as before, save for one hand, which Mrs. Joyce had taken. He laid his own vital, magnetic palm upon her arm, and finding it still cold and pulseless, called out:

"Mother, do you hear me? It is Victor."

Her fingers moved slightly in response, and this minute sign of life melted his heart. He fell upon his knees beside her bed, weeping with gratitude and joy.

VIII

VICTOR REPAIRS HIS MOTHER'S ALTAR

In consenting to the removal of his mother to Mrs. Joyce's home Victor had no intention of receding from his position. On the contrary, he considered it merely a temporary measure--for the night, or at most for a few days. He entered the car, thinking only of her wishes, and when he watched her sink to sleep in her spacious and luxurious bed under Mrs. Joyce's generous roof he couldn't but feel relieved at the thought that she was safe and on the way back to health. It was only when he left her and went to his own splendid chamber that his nervousness returned.

Every day, every hour plunged him deeper into debt to these strangers; and the fact that they were treating him like a young duke was all the more disturbing. He fancied Carew saying of him, as he had said of another, "Oh, he's merely one of Mrs. Joyce's pensioners," and the thought caused him to burn with impatience.

Nevertheless he slept, and in the morning he forgot his perplexities in the joy of taking his breakfast with Leonora. He admired her now so intensely that his own weakness, irresolution, and inactivity seemed supine. He was impatient to be doing something. His hands and his brain seemed empty. With no games, no tasks, he was disordered, lost.

They were alone at the table, these young people, and naturally fell to discussing Mrs. Ollnee's marvelous return to life. This led him to speak of his own plans. "My course at Winona fitted me for nothing," he acknowledged, bitterly. "I should have gone in for something like mechanical engineering, but I didn't. I had some fool notion of being a lawyer, and mother, I can see now, was all for having me a preacher of her faith. So here I am, helpless as a blind kitten."

It was proof of his essential charm that Leonora not only endured his renewed harping on this harsh string, but encouraged him to continue. "I know you chafe," she said. "I had that feeling till I began my course in cooking, and just to assure myself that I am not entirely useless and helpless in the world, I'm now going in for a training as a nurse."

"A nurse!" he exclaimed. "Oh, that explains something."

"What does it explain?"

"I wondered how you could be so calm and so efficient yesterday."

She seemed pleased. "Was I calm and efficient? Well, that's one result of my study. I can at least keep my head when anything goes wrong."

"I don't think I like your being a trained nurse," he said.

She smiled. "Don't you? Why not?"

"You're too fine for that," he answered, slowly. "You were made to command, not to serve. You should be the queen of some castle."

His frankly expressed admiration did not embarrass her. She accepted his words as if they came from a boy. "Castles are said to be draughty and dreadfully hard to keep in order, and besides, a queen's retainers are always getting sick, or killed, or something, so I think I'll keep on with my training as a nurse."

"But there must be a whole lot of unpleasant, nasty drudgery about it."

"Sickness isn't nice, I'll admit, but there is no place in the world where care and sympathy mean so much."

"You don't intend to go out and nurse among strangers?"

"I may."

"I bet you don't--not for long. Some fellow will come along and say 'No more of that,' and then you'll stay home."

"What sort of fiction do you read?" she asked, with the air of an older sister.

"The truthful sort. Your nursing is nothing but a fad."

"What a wise old gray-beard you are!"

He was nettled. "You need not take that superior tone with me. I'm two years older than you are."

"And ten years wiser, I suppose you would declare if you dared."

"I didn't say that."

"No; your tone was enough. I admit you know a great deal more about baseball than I do."

He winced. "That was a side-winder, all right. If I knew as much about the carpenter's trade or the sale of dry goods as I do about 'the national game' I'd stand a chance of earning my board."

"Why not join the league?" she suggested. "They pay good wages, I believe."

He took this seriously. "I thought of that, but even if I could get into a league team, which is hardly probable, it wouldn't lead anywhere. You see, I'm getting up an ambition. I want to be rich and powerful."

"Football players have always been my adoration," she responded, heartily. "You'd look splendid in harness. Why don't you go in for that?"

"You may laugh at me now," he replied, bluntly. "But give me ten years--"

"Mercy, I'll be too old to admire even a football captain by that time."

"You'll be only thirty-one."

She sobered a little. "Men have the advantage. You will be young at thirty-three, and I'll be--well, a matron. No, I'm afraid I can't wait that long. I must find my admirable short-stop or half-back, whichever he is to be, long before that."

He changed his tone and appealed to her seriously. "Really now, what can I do? So long as this persecution of my mother keeps up I'm in for a share of it. I can't run away, for I promised I wouldn't. So I remain, like a turkey with a string to his leg, walking round and round my little stake. What would you do in my place? Come now, be good and tell me."

She responded to his appeal. "Don't be impatient. That's the first thing. Be resigned to this luxury for a few days. The Voices will tell you what to do. They may be planning a surprise for you."

"All I ask of them is to quit the job and let me plan things for myself," he slowly protested.

The entrance of Mrs. Wood, senior, ended their dialogue, and he went away with a sense of having failed to win Leo's respect and confidence, as he had hoped to do. "She considers me a kid," he muttered, discontentedly. "But she will change her mind one of these days."

He spent the morning with his mother, but toward noon he grew restless and went down into the library, wherein he had observed several bound volumes of the report of The Psychical Society. He fell to reading a long article upon "multiple personality," and followed this by the close study of an essay on hysteria, and when Mrs. Joyce called him to lunch he was like a man awakened from deep sleep. These articles, filled with new and bewildering conceptions of the human organism, were after all entirely materialistic in their outcome. Personality was not a unit, but a combination, and the whole discussion served but to throw him into mental confusion and dismay.

At lunch Mrs. Joyce proposed that they all take an automobile ride round the city and end up with a dinner at the Club; and seeing no chance for doing anything along the line of securing employment, Victor consented to the expedition.

The weather was glorious, and the troubled youth's brain cleared as if the sweet, cool, lake wind had swept away the miasma which his experience of the darker side of the city had placed there. He surrendered himself to the pleasure, the luxury of it recklessly. How could he continue to brood over his future with a lovely girl by his side and a sweet and tender spring landscape unrolling before him?

They fairly belted the city in their run, and in the end, as they went sweeping down the curving driveway of the lake, Mrs. Ollnee's face was delicately pink and her eyes were bright with happiness. To her son she seemed once more the lovely and delicate figure of his boyhood's admiration. It seemed that her death-like trance had been a horrible dream.

The ride, the club-house, the dinner, were all luxurious to the point of bewilderment to Victor, but he did not betray his uneasiness. He was only a little more silent, a little more meditative, as he took his place at the finely decorated table in the pavilion which faced upon the water. He determined (for the day at least) to accept everything that came his way. This recklessness completely dominated him as he looked across the board at Leonora, so radiant with health and youth.

No one would have detected anything morbid in Mrs. Ollnee. She was prettily dressed and not in the least abnormal, and Victor was proud of her, even though he knew that her dresses were earned by a sort of necromancy.

Mrs. Joyce carefully avoided any discussion of his problem, and the dinner ended as joyfully at it began. They rode home afterward, under the bright half moon, silent for very pleasure in the beautiful night.

The park was full of loiterers, two and two, and on the benches under the trees others sat, two and two together. It was mating-time for all the world, and Victor's blood was astir as he turned toward the stately girl whose face had driven out all others as the moon drowns out the stars. His audacity of the morning was gone, however. He looked at her now with a certain humble appeal. His subjugation had begun.

At the house they all lingered for an hour on the back porch, which looked out upon a little formal garden. Two slender trees stood there, and their silken rustling filled in the pauses of the conversation like the conferring voices of a distant multitude of infant seraphim.

"Those must be cottonwoods," Victor remarked.

"They are," replied Mrs. Joyce. "I love them. When I was a child I used to visit a farm-house in whose yard were two tall trees of this sort, and their murmur always filled me with mystical delight. I used to lie in the grass under them, hour by hour, trying to imagine what they were saying to me. Ever since I had a place of my own I've had cottonwood-trees in my yard. I know they're a nuisance with their fuzz, but I love their rustling."

As she paused, the leaves uttered a pleased murmur, and Victor, listening with a new sense of the sentiment which his hostess concealed in a plump and unimposing form, thought he heard a sibilant whispered word in his car. "Victor," it said, "I love you."

He turned quickly toward his mother, but she seemed not to be listening, and a moment later she spoke to Mrs. Joyce, uttering some pleasant commonplace about the night.

This whisper was so clear, so unmistakable, that Victor could not doubt its reality. The question was which of the women had spoken it. He had a foolish wish to believe that Leo had uttered it. He listened again, but heard nothing.

As he was helping his mother slowly up the stairs to her room, he said: "This is all very beautiful, mother, but I can't enjoy it as I ought. I feel like a fraud every time I see Mrs. Joyce handing out one of those big bills. I suppose she can afford it, but I can't. We must get back to the old place, or to some new place, and live on our own resources."

"We can't do that till morning, dear. Let us wait until The Voices speak. They have been silent to-day. Perhaps they will advise us to-morrow."

Here was the place to tell her of the whispers he had heard, but he could not bring himself to do so.

She went on: "I wish you would repair my table, your grandfather's table, as you promised, Victor. I don't know why, but it helps me. But you must be careful not to use any metal about it."

"Why not?"

"Oh, that's another one of the mysteries. They seem to object to metal."

"Well, I'll get at it to-morrow," he said, and kissing her good-night, went to his own room.

He was awake and dressed before six the next morning, and leaving a note for Mrs. Joyce, set out for California Avenue. On the way he dropped into a cheap cafe and got a breakfast which cost him twenty cents. He enjoyed this keenly, because, as he said, it was in his class and was paid for out of the money his mother had given him for his trophy.

All was quiet at the flat, and setting to work on the table with glue and stout cord, he soon had it on its legs. Looking down upon it as a completed job, he marveled at the reverence which his mother seemed to have for it, and his mind reverted to the astounding phenomena which he himself had witnessed over its top.

Picking up one of the folded slates, he opened it with intent to see if it held any hidden springs or false surfaces. Out fluttered a folded paper. This he snatched up and studied with interest. It was a peculiar sort of parchment, veined like a bit of corn-husk, and on it, written in delicate and beautiful script, were these words: "_Go to Room 70, Harwood Bldg., to-day. Danger threatens. Altair._"

"I wonder who Altair is," he mused, staring at the bit of paper, "and what is the danger that threatens?"

While still he stood debating whether to go down-town or to warn his mother, a heavy step on the stairs announced a visitor. The man (for it was plainly the tread of a man, and a fat man) knocked on the door, but did not pause for reply. "Are you there, Lucy?" he called, and came in.

Victor faced him with instant resentment of this familiarity. "Who are you? What do you want here?" he demanded.

The other, a tall, clumsy, broad-faced individual in costly clothing, seemed surprised and a little alarmed. "I came to see Mrs. Ollnee," he explained. "Who are you?"

"I am her son--and I want to know how you dare to push into my mother's house like this!"

"My name is Pettus," he answered, pacifically. "No doubt you've heard your mother speak of me."

"Oh yes," responded the youth. "I heard Mr. Carew speak of you. You're president of that Transportation Company they're all so wild about."

A shade of apprehension passed over Pettus's fat, ugly face. "Carew! You've seen him? I suppose he gave me a bad name? But never mind--where will I find your mother?"

Victor didn't like the man, and he remained silent till Pettus repeated his question, then he answered, "I can't tell you where my mother is."

"You mean you won't!"

"Well, yes, that's what I do mean."

Pettus turned away. "I can find her without your aid."

"What do you want with her?"

"I want a sitting at once!"

"You keep away from her!" Victor blazed out. "I don't want her sitting for you. She's mixed up too deeply in your affairs already. Carew said--"

"I don't care what Carew said--and I don't care whether you approve of your mother's sitting for me or not. Her controls will decide that question."

He tramped out and down the stairway, and from the window Victor saw him whirl away in his automobile. "That man's a scoundrel and a slob," he said; "a greasy old slob. I will not have my mother sitting for such people. Can't I head him off somehow?"

With sudden resolution he ran down the stairway and over to the telephone booth on the corner. He got the butler at once, and was deeply relieved to find that his mother was out with Mrs. Joyce. "He can't see her before I do," he concluded, as he hung up the receiver. "I'll go over there and wait for her to return."

As he neared the house he met Leo coming out with some letters in her hand, and with the swift resiliency of youth, he asked if he might not walk with her.

"Certainly," she said; "I want to talk with you about your plans."

"I haven't any plans," he said.

"What have you been doing this morning?"

He hesitated a moment, then answered: "I've been mending that old table--I suppose you heard about my smashing it?"

"Yes; and it seemed a very childish thing to do."

"If you knew how I hate that business and everything connected with it!"

"I do, and it seems absurd to me. Your mother's life is very wonderful and very beautiful to me."

He changed the subject. "Did that man Pettus call just now?"

"Yes."

"He's a scoundrel--that chap. A four-flusher."

"What makes you think that?"

"Well, the very looks of the man."

She laughed. "He isn't pretty, but he's a very decent citizen--and has a lovely wife and two daughters."

"He's a slob--his face gives him away--and besides, Mr. Carew the other night--"

"I know," she interrupted; "Mr. Carew is sure we're all going to be ruined by your mother and the Universal Transportation Company."

"I hope you haven't put your money into anything Pettus has control of?"

"Oh, don't let's talk business on a morning like this. It's criminal--let's talk about trees and birds and flowers." She might have added "and love," for when youth and springtime meet, even on a city boulevard, love is the most important subject in the encyclopedia of life. So they walked and talked and jested in the way of young men and maidens, and Victor talked of himself, finding his life-history vastly absorbing when discussed by a tall girl with a splendid profile and a cultivated voice. He watched her buy her stamps at the drug-store, finding in her every movement something adorable. The poise of her bust and her fine head appealed to him with power; but her humor, her cool, clear gaze, checked the crude compliments which he was moved to utter. She could not be addressed as he had been accustomed to address his girl classmates at Winona.

This walk completed the severance of the ties which bound him to the university. His desire to return to his games weakened. His ambition to shine as an athlete faded. He wished to prove to this proud girl that he was neither boy nor dreamer, and that he was competent to take care of himself and his mother as well.

As they were re-entering the house, he said: "Don't utter a word of what I've told you. I'm going to test whether my mother has the power to read my mind or not."

"I understand," she returned, "and I'm glad you're going to share in our seance to-night."

He frowned. "Don't say 'seance.' I hate that word."

She laughed. "Aren't you fierce! But I'll respect your prejudices so far as an utterly unprejudiced person can."

"Do you call yourself an unprejudiced person?"

"I try to be."

"But you're not. You have a prejudice against me," he insisted, forcing the personal note.

"Oh, you're quite mistaken," she replied; "in fact I think you're rather nice--for a boy." And she went away, leaving him to fume under this indignity.

Mrs. Joyce and Mrs. Ollnee came in soon afterward, and they all took tea together quite as casually as if they were not on the edge of something very thrilling and profoundly mysterious. Mrs. Joyce politely asked Victor what he had been doing, but his answers were evasive. He made no mention of Pettus, though he was burning with desire to warn her against him.

Soon afterward they went to his mother's room, and once safely inside the door he turned upon her. "Mother, are you going to sit for Pettus to-night?"

"I expect him, but I'm not sitting for him specially."

"I won't have him in the circle! He is a slimy old beast. I hate him--and Mr. Carew warned us against him. He wasn't guessing, mother, he _knows_ that this old four-flusher is up to some deviltry. How did he find you?"

"He called us up."

"I simply will not have him sit with you again, and you must not advise any one to put a cent into his concern. Where are you going to have this performance?"

"I thought of sitting here, but I need the old table. You mended it, didn't you?"

"Yes, I mended it."

"And you had a message from _Altair_?"

"How did you learn that?"

"I felt it," she answered, gravely. "She said danger threatened--did she tell you what the danger was?"

"No; who is _Altair_ supposed to be?"

"She is a very pure and high spirit--a girl of wonderful beauty--so they say. I have never seen her myself--she told me to-day that she would watch over you."

At this moment a whisper was heard in the air just above her head.

"_Lucy!_"

"Yes, father."

"_Take the boy--sit--the old place. Leave Pettus out._"

"Yes, father."

"_I will be there. Pettus is under investigation._"

"Much obliged," said Victor; and then he heard close to his ear a faint whisper: "_Victor, you shall see me--Altair._"

He was staring straight at his mother's lips at the moment, and yet he was unable to detect any visible part in the production of the voice. She explained the whisper. "Altair is smiling at you. She says she will be with us to-night."

All this was very shocking to Victor. Utterly disconcerted and unable to confront her at the moment, he left the room. The whole problem of her mental condition, the central kernel of her philosophy was involved in that one whisper. To solve that was to solve it all. It was not so much a question of how she did it, it was a question of her right to deceive him.

He seized the time between tea and dinner to return to the library. For an hour he dug into the spongy soil of metaphysics, and it happened that he fell at last upon the Crookes and Zollner experiments (quoted at greater length in a volume of collected experience) and found there clear and direct testimony as to the mind's mastery of matter. There was abundant evidence of the handling of fire by the medium Home, and Slade's ability to float in the air was attested by well-known witnesses, but beyond this and closer to his own day, he came upon a detailed study of an Italian psychic with her "supernumerary hands," a story which should have made the materialization of a letter seem very simple. But it did not. All the testimony of these great men, abundant as it was, slid from his mind as harmlessly as water from oiled silk. Apparently, it failed to alter the texture of his thought in the slightest degree. His world was the world of youth, the good old wholesome, stable world, and he refused to be convinced.

At dinner he was angered, in spite of Leo's presence, by his mother's returning confidence and ease of manner. His own position had been weakened, he felt, by his acquiescence in the sitting. His desire to satisfy himself, to solve his mother's mystery, had led him to abandon his stern resolution--and he regretted it. He ate sparingly and took no wine, being resolved to retain a perfectly clear head for the evening's experiment. He was grateful to Leo for keeping the talk on subjects of general interest, even though he had little part in it, and his liking for her deepened.

As he neared the test he began to sharply realize that for the first time in all his life he was about to take part in one of his mother's hated "performances," and his breath was troubled by the excitement of it. "I will make this test conclusive," he said to himself, and his jaw squared. "There will be no nonsense to-night."

The papers of the day had remained free from any further allusion to "the Spiritual Blood-Suckers," and it really seemed as if the cloud might be lifting, and this consideration made his participation in the sitting all the more like a return to a lower and less defensible position. He was irritated by the methodical action with which his mother proceeded to set the stage for her farce. Wood, who seemed quite at home, assisted in these preparations, leaving Victor leaning in sullen silence against the wall.

Mrs. Joyce took a seat directly opposite the little psychic, Wood sat at her left, while Victor, with Leo at his right, completed the little crescent. Mrs. Ollnee, with her small, battered table before her, faced them across its top. Victor made no objection to this arrangement, but kept an alert eye on every movement. He watched her closely. She first breathed into one of the horns and put it beside her, then held one of the slates between her palms for a little time. "I hope this will be illuminated to-night," she said.

This remark gave Victor a twinge of disgust and bewildered pain. "She is too little and sweet and fine to be the high priest of such jugglery," he thought, but did not cease his watchful attention, even for an instant.

The locking of the door, the turning out of the light and the taking hands in the good old traditional way all irritated and well-nigh estranged him. Why should his life be thrown into the midst of such cheap and ill-odored drama? "This shall never happen again," he vowed, beneath his breath.

There was not much talk during the first half-hour, for the reason that Victor was too self-accusing to talk, and the others were too solemn and too eager for results to enter upon general conversation. For the most part, they spoke in low voices and waited and listened.

The first indication of anything unusual, aside from the tapping, was a breeze, a deathly cold wind, which began to blow faintly over the table from his mother, bearing a peculiar perfume (an odor like that from some Oriental rug), which grew in power till each of the sitters remarked upon it. This current of air continued so long and so uninterruptedly that Victor began to wonder. Could it be his mother's breath? If she were not fraudulently producing it, then it must be that some window had been opened. The network of her deceit--if it was deceit--thickened.

Mrs. Joyce then said, in a low voice: "We are to have celestial visitors to-night. That is the wind which accompanies the astral forms."

"Yes," said Leo, "and that perfume always accompanies Altair. Are we to see Altair?" she softly asked.

A sibilant whisper replied, "_Yes, soon._"

A moment later, another and distinctly different voice called softly, "_My son._"

"Who is it?" asked Victor.

"_Your father._"

"What have you to say to me?"

"_The power of the mind is limitless_," the whispered voice replied. "_Matter, the strongest steel, is but a form of motion._"

"What is all that to me?" asked Victor.

"_As you think so you will be. Be strong and constant._"

The vagueness of all this increased Victor's irritation. "What about Pettus?"

The voice hesitated, weakened a little. "_I can't tell--not now--I will ask._"

What followed did not come clearly and consecutively to Victor, for Mrs. Joyce (who was expert in hearing and reporting the whispers) repeated each sentence or the substance of it to him. But he himself heard a considerable part of it. In the very midst of a sentence the voice stopped. It was as if a wire had been cut, or the receiver hung up; the silence was like death itself.

Victor called out to his mother: "Can you hear The Voices, mother? They seem to come from where you are."

She did not reply, and Mrs. Joyce explained. "She is gone."

Again the cold breeze set in, with a strong, steady swell, and with it was borne a low, humming note, which grew in volume and depth till it resembled the roaring rush of a November blast through the branches of an oak. It became awesome at last, with its majesty of moaning song, and saddening with its somber suggestion of autumn and of death. It opened the shabby little room upon an empty and limitless space, upon an infinite and vacant and obscure desert wherein night and storms contended. It died away at last, leaving the air chill and pulseless, and the chamber darker than before.

Before any comment could be made upon this astounding phenomenon, Victor perceived a faint glow of phosphorus upon the table. It increased in brilliancy till it presented a clear-cut square of some greenish glowing substance, and then a large hand in a ruffled sleeve appeared above it as if in the act of writing.

"It is Watts," whispered Leo. "He is writing for us."

Bending forward, Victor was able to read this message outlined in dark script on the glowing surface of what seemed to be the slate: "_The dreams of to-day are the realities of to-morrow._" These words faded and again the shadowy hand swept over the table, and this companion sentence followed: "_The realities of to-day will be but the half-truths or the gross errors of the future._

"_WATTS._"

Victor was strongly tempted to clutch this hand, but fear of something unpleasant prevented him from doing so. He was sick with apprehension, with dread of what might happen next. A feeling of guilt, of remorse, came upon him. "I am to blame for this!" he thought, and was on the point of rising and calling for the lights, when something happened which changed not merely his feeling at the moment, but the whole course of his life, so incredible, so destructive of all physical laws, of all his scientific training was the phenomenon. A hand, large and shapely, took up the glowing slate and held it like a lamp to his mother's face, so that all might see her. She sat with hands outspread upon the table, her head thrown back, her eyes closed. Her arms extended in rigid lines. It seemed that the invisible ones desired to prove to Victor that his mother could not and was not holding the slate.

Swift as light the glowing mirror disappeared, and then, as if through a window opened in the air before his eyes, Victor perceived a strange face confronting him, the face of a girl with deep and tender eyes, incredibly beautiful. Her eyes were in shadow, but the pure oval of her cheeks, the dainty grace of her chin, the broad, full brow and something ineffably pure in the faintly happy smile, stopped his breath with awe. He forgot his mother, his problems, his doubts, in study of the unearthly beauty of this vision.

Mrs. Joyce whispered in ecstasy, "It is Altair!"

The angelic lips parted, and a low voice, so gentle it was like the murmur of a leaf, replied, "_Yes, it is Altair._" And to Victor her voice was of exquisite delicacy. "_Believe, be faithful._"

No one breathed. It was as if they had been permitted to gaze upon one of heaven's angelic choir. How came she there? Who was she? Before these questions could be framed she disappeared, silently as a bubble on the water, leaving behind only that delicious, subtle, unaccountable odor as of tropic fruits and unknown flowers.

Leo, breathing a sigh of sad ecstasy, exclaimed: "Is she not beautiful? Never has she shown herself more glorious than to-night."

Victor was like one drugged and dreaming. There was no question of his mother's honesty in his mind. He did not relate the vision to her, and he winced with pain as Leo spoke. He wished to recall the face, to hear that whisper again. The effect upon him was enormous, instant, unfolding. In all his life nothing mystic, nothing to disturb or rouse his imagination had hitherto come to him, and now this transcendent marvel, this face born of the invisible and intangible essence of the air, beat down his self-assurance and destroyed his smug conception of the universe. He lost sight of his hypothesis and accepted Altair for what she seemed, a gloriously beautiful soul of another world, a world of purity and light and love.

He remained silent as Mrs. Joyce rose and went to his mother. He was still in his seat when they turned up the lights. Leo spoke to him, but he did not answer. Strange transformation! At the moment her voice jarred upon him. She seemed commonplace, prosaic, in contrast with the woman who had looked upon him from the luminous shadow.

Gradually the walls he hated, the entangling relationship he feared, returned upon him; and though he realized something of the revealing character of his reticence, he had not the will to break it. He watched his mother return to her normal self with such detachment that she at last became aware of it and lifted her feeble hands in search of him. "Victor, come to me!" she pleaded.

He went to her then, still in a daze, and to her question, "Did your father come?" he replied, brokenly, "A voice came, but I can't talk about that now--I must go out into the air."

All perceived the tumult--the strange psychic condition into which he had been thrown, and were considerate enough to refrain from pressing him with inquiry. "He has been touched by 'the power,'" whispered Mrs. Joyce to Leo. "He's under conviction."

The cool, clear air and the material rush of the city throbbing in upon his brain restored the youth to something like his normal self; but he remained silent and distraught all the way home.

As they entered the hall Leo glanced at his face with unsmiling, penetrating intensity, and in that moment perceived that Victor the boy had given place to Victor the man. She experienced a swift change of relationship, and a pang of jealousy shot through her heart. She realized that the wondrous spirit face was the power that had so wrought upon and transformed him. She, too, had thrilled to the mystical beauty of the phantom, and she had read in the tremulous lips the hesitating whisper, a love for the young mortal, which had troubled her at the moment, and which became more serious to her now.

They said good-night as strangers; he absorbed, absent-minded; she resentful and a little hurt.

To his mother, when they were alone in her room, he said, haltingly: "Mother, you must forgive me. I thought you did those things--unconsciously cheating--but now--I--give it up. I believe in you absolutely."

She raised her eyes to his wet with happy tears. "My son! My splendid boy!" she said, and in her voice was song.

IX

THE LAW'S DELAY

"Belief," says the wise man, "is not a matter of evidence; it is a habit of mind." And notwithstanding his confession of inward transformation, Victor found doubt still hidden deep in his brain when he woke the following morning. His conviction had been temporary.

In his musing upon Altair he began to remember some very curious details. He recalled that at first glance he had inwardly exclaimed, "How much she looks like Leo!" The lips and chin were similar, only sadder, sweeter--and the poise of the head was like hers also. But the brow and the eyes were more like his mother's. It was as though Altair were at once the heavenly sister of Leonora and the spirit daughter of his mother, and the love which lay on the tremulous lips, the deep, serious eyes, moved him still with almost undiminished power. He was eager to see the celestial face again.

He was less clear about his own physical condition at the time. He remembered feeling weak and chilled, as though some of his own vitality had gone out of his blood in the attempt to warm that unaccountable being into life. He recalled his parting with his mother as if it were the incident in a painful dream. It was all impossible, incredible, and yet--it happened!

His morning mood was eager and searching. He was quite ready to see Leo, ready to talk with her of all that had taken place. Hitherto he had avoided any detailed story of his mother's evocations, but now he was violently curious to know whether or no she had ever performed these particular rites before. He wished to hear all that Leo had to say, and he was deeply disappointed when neither she nor his hostess appeared at the breakfast table.

He finished his meal hurriedly (as soon as it became evident that he was to be alone), and instead of going down-town returned to the library to re-read the famous story of Sir William Crookes and "Katie King"--every word of which had acquired new meaning to him. He thrilled now to the calm, bald narrative, reading between the lines the inner story of the great scientist's bewildered love for the stainless vision which he had evoked but could not endow with lasting life.

The boy dwelt upon the scene of their parting with peculiar pain, perceiving in it new pathos. A throb of sorrow came into his throat. Was Altair but a transitory flower of the dark--aloof, intangible, and sad? What meant the wistful sweetness of her smile? Was she unhappy in the icy realms from which she came? Did she long for human companionship? Would she come again? He found himself longing for the night and another sitting with his mother. He felt vaguely the disappointment which comes to those who listen to the messages of these celestial apparitions, so commonplace, so vaporous, so inane. "Katie King," surpassing all earthly women in her physical loveliness, brought no sentence of intellectual distinction from the mysterious void which was her home.

In the midst of this astounding narrative he heard Leo's voice in the hall, and with a guilty start put his book away and rose to meet her, remembering that he had not treated her very well after the sitting, though he could not recall the precise reason for it. Gradually her step, the sound of her voice, reasserted their charm, and he returned to the breakfast-room like a boy who has been sullen and knows it, but hopes to be forgiven.

His shamefaced entrance disarmed her resentment, and in her merry smile of greeting the dream face faded away. The marvelous vision of the night lost its dominion over him, and he became again the son of the morning.

The girl openly mocked him. "You look pale and sheepish. What have you been doing?"

"I've been reading about 'Katie King.' Do you believe that story?"

"We must believe it when a man like Sir William Crookes tells it. Do you believe what you saw and heard last night?"

"No, I don't. How can I?"

"You seemed to believe in the vision of Altair," she persisted, eying him archly. "You were carried away by her wonderful beauty. I don't blame you. Her loveliness is beyond anything on this earth. A vision like that of sublimated womanhood, purified of all its dross, is very hard on us mortals. Altair doesn't find it necessary to eat eggs and toast, as I am doing this minute. I'm a horribly vulgar and common creature I know, and I ought to apologize, but I won't. I like being a normal human being, and if you don't like to see me eat you may go away."