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Title: The Tyranny of the Dark
Author: Garland, Hamlin, 1860-1940
Language: English
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[Illustration: See p. 243
"SHE CAME SLOWLY, WITH ONE SLIM HAND ON THE RAILING"]
THE TYRANNY
OF THE DARK
BY
HAMLIN GARLAND
AUTHOR OF
"THE CAPTAIN OF THE GRAY-HORSE TROOP"
"HESPER" "THE LIGHT OF THE STAR"
ETC. ETC.
[Illustration]
LONDON AND NEW YORK
HARPER & BROTHERS
PUBLISHERS :: MCMV
Copyright, 1905, by HAMLIN GARLAND.
_All rights reserved._
Published May, 1905.
CONTENTS
BOOK I
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE SETTING 1
II. THE MAID ON THE MOUNTAIN-SIDE 4
III. THE MAN 11
IV. A SECOND MEETING 15
V. PUPIL AND MASTER 23
VI. IN THE MARSHALL BASIN 42
VII. THE FORCES OF LIGHT AND DARKNESS 59
VIII. DR. BRITT EXPLAINS 68
IX. ANTHONY CLARKE, EVANGEL 83
X. CLARKE'S WOOING 94
BOOK II
I. THE MODERNISTS 103
II. NEWS OF VIOLA 112
III. BRITT COMES TO DINE 132
IV. THE PATRON OF PSYCHICS 146
V. KATE VISITS VIOLA 164
VI. SERVISS LISTENS SHREWDLY 188
VII. THE SLEEPING SIBYL 201
VIII. KATE'S INTERROGATION 213
IX. VIOLA'S PLEA FOR HELP 224
X. MORTON SENDS A TELEGRAM 245
XI. DR. BRITT PAYS HIS DINNER-CALL 251
XII. VIOLA IN DINNER-DRESS 262
XIII. THE TEST SÉANCE 283
XIV. PUZZLED PHILOSOPHERS 307
XV. VIOLA REVOLTS FROM CLARKE 328
XVI. THE HOUSE OF DISCORD 337
XVII. WHEN DOCTORS DISAGREE 353
XVIII. LAMBERT INTERVENES 370
XIX. SERVISS ASSUMES CONTROL 386
XX. THE MOTHER'S FAITH 399
XXI. CLARKE SHADOWS THE FEAST 413
XXII. THE SPIRITUAL RESCUE 429
ILLUSTRATIONS
"SHE CAME SLOWLY, WITH ONE SLIM HAND ON THE
RAILING" _Frontispiece_
"THERE WAS IN HIS LOOK AN EXPRESSION OF
ACKNOWLEDGED KINSHIP" _Facing p._ 6
"SERVISS LISTENED WITH GROWING AMAZEMENT" _Facing p._ 36
"VIOLA, TOO, CAME BACK TO BEWITCH HIM FROM
HIS READING" _Facing p._ 108
"'WHAT DO YOU MEAN? DO YOU WANT TO KILL
THE PSYCHIC?'" _Facing p._ 212
"'BUT, TELL ME, HOW DID THE CHANGE COME?
WHAT BEGAN TO HAPPEN?'" _Facing p._ 276
"THE GIRL'S EYES WERE OPENING AS FROM
NATURAL SLUMBER" _Facing p._ 308
"'YOU NEED NOT SPEAK--JUST PUT YOUR HAND
IN MINE AND I WILL UNDERSTAND'" _Facing p._ 436
BOOK I
THE CHARACTERS CONCERNED
{ VIOLA LAMBERT, the subject
{ MRS. LAMBERT, her mother
{ JOS. LAMBERT, her step-father
Those { ANTHONY CLARKE, her pastor
in { DR. BRITT, her physician
the Light { MORTON SERVISS, her lover
{ KATE RICE, her friend
{ DR. WEISSMANN, her investigator
{ SIMEON PRATT, her patron
{ WALDRON, her father
Those { MCLEOD, her "control"
in { WALTIE, her poltergeist
the Dark { JENNIE PRATT, Pratt's eldest daughter
{ MRS. PRATT, "Loggy," and others dimly felt
THE TYRANNY OF THE DARK
I
THE SETTING
The village of Colorow is enclosed by a colossal amphitheatre of
dove-gray stone, in whose niches wind-warped pines stand like
spectators silent and waiting. Six thousand feet above the valley
floor green and orange slopes run to the edges of perennial
ice-fields, while farther away, and peering above these almost
inaccessible defences, like tents of besieging Titans, rise three
great mountains gleaming with snow and thunderous with storms.
Altogether a stage worthy of some colossal drama rather than the calm
slumber of a forgotten hamlet.
The railway enters the valley from the south by sinuously following
the windings of a rushing, foam-white stream, and for many miles the
engines cautiously feel their way among stupendous walls, passing
haltingly over bridges hung perilously between perpendicular cliffs by
slender iron rods, or creep like mountain-cats from ledge to ledge,
so that when they have reached safe harbor beside the little red depot
they never fail to pant and wheeze like a tired, gratified dog beside
his master's door. Aside from the coming and going of these trains,
the town is silent as the regarding pines.
The only other ways of entrance to this deep pocket lie over
threadlike trails which climb the divide from Silver City and Toltec
and Vermilion, and loop their terrifying courses down the declivities
trod only by the sturdy burro or the agile, sure-footed
mountain-horse. These wavering paths, worn deep and dusty once, are
grass-grown now, for they were built in the days when silver was
accounted a precious metal, and only an occasional hunter or
prospector makes present use of them.
Colorow itself, once a flaming, tumultuous centre of miners, gamblers,
and social outcasts, is now risen (or declined) to the quiet of a New
England summer resort, supported partly by two or three big mines
(whose white ore is streaked with gold), but more and more by the
growing fame of its mountains and their medicinal springs, for these
splendid peaks have their waters, hot and cold and sweet and bitter,
whose healing powers are becoming known to an ever-growing number of
those Americans who are minded to explore their native land.
This centre of aërial storms, these groups of transcendent summits,
would be more widely known still, but for the singular sense of
proprietorship with which each discoverer regards them. The lucky
traveller who falls into this paradise is seized with a certain
instant jealousy of it, and communicates his knowledge only to his
family and his friends. Nevertheless, its fame spreads slowly, and
each year new discoverers flock in growing numbers to the one little
hotel and its ramshackle bath-house, so that the community once
absolutely and viciously utilitarian begins to take timid account of
its aesthetic surroundings, and here and there a little log-cabin (as
appropriate to this land as the chalet to the Alps) is built beside
the calling ripples of the river, while saddled horses, laden burros
in long lines, and now and then a vast yellow or red ore-wagon
creaking dolefully as it descends, still give evidence of the mining
which goes on far up the zigzag trails towards the soaring, shining
peaks of the Continental Divide.
II
THE MAID ON THE MOUNTAIN-SIDE
One day in July a fair young girl, with beautiful gray eyes, sat
musingly beside one of these southern trails gazing upon the inverted
pyramid of red sky which glowed between the sloping shoulders of the
westward warding peaks. Her exquisite lips, scarlet as strawberry
stains, were drawn into an expression of bitter constraint, and her
brows were unnaturally knit. Her hat lay beside her on the ground, her
brown hair was blowing free, and in her eyes was the look of one
longing for the world beyond the hills. She appeared both lonely and
desolate.
It was a pity to see one so young and so comely confronting with sad
and sullen brow such aërial majesty as the evening presented. It was,
indeed, a sort of impiety, and the girl seemed at last to feel this.
Her frowning brow smoothed out, her lips grew more girlish of line,
and at length, rapt with wonder, she fixed her eyes on a single purple
cloud which was dissolving, becoming each moment smaller, more remote,
like a fleeing eagle, yet burning each instant with even more dazzling
flame of color than before--hasting as if to overtake the failing day.
A dream of still fairer lands, of conquest, and of love, swept over
her--became mirrored in her face. She had at this moment the wistful
gaze which comes to the eyes of the young when desire of the future is
strong.
Upon her musings a small sound broke, so faint, so far, she could not
tell from whence it came nor what its cause might be. It might have
been the rattle of a pebble under the feet of a near-by squirrel or
the scrambling rush of a distant bear. A few moments later the voice
of a man--very diminished and yet unmistakable--came pulsing down the
mountain-side.
The girl rose as lightly, as gracefully as a fawn who, roused but not
affrighted, stands on her imprint in the grass and waits and listens.
The man or men--for another voice could now be heard in answer--came
rapidly on, and soon a couple of men and a small pack-train came out
of a clump of thick trees at the head of a gulch, and, doubling
backward and forward, descended swiftly upon the girl, who stood, with
some natural curiosity, to let the travellers, whoever they might be,
pass and precede her down to the valley. She resented them, for the
reason that they cut short her reverie, her moment of spiritual peace.
The man who first appeared was a familiar type of the West, a small,
lean, sharp-featured, foxy-eyed mountaineer, riding gracefully yet
wearily--the natural horseman and trailer. Behind him two tired
horses, heaped with a camp outfit, stumbled, with low-hanging heads,
while at the rear, sitting his saddle sturdily rather than with
grace, rode a young man bareheaded, but otherwise in the
rough-and-ready dress of a plainsman. His eyes were on the sunset
also, and something in the manner of his beard, as well as in the
poise of his head, proclaimed him to be the master of the little
train, a man of culture and an alien.
At sight of the girl he smiled and bowed with a look of frank and most
respectful admiration, quite removed from the impudent stare of his
guide. His hands were gloved, he wore a neat shirt, and his tie was in
order--so much the girl saw as he faced her--and as he passed she
apprehended something strong and manly in the lines of his back and
shoulders. Plainly he was not to the saddle born, like the man ahead,
and yet he was quite as bronzed and travel-worn.
A turn in the trail brought them both close under her feet, and again
the man in the rear glanced up at the figure poised on the bowlder
above him, and his eyes glowed once more with pleasure. There was in
his look an expression of acknowledged kinship, as of one refined soul
to another, a kind of subtle flattery which pleased while it puzzled
the girl. Men with eyes of that appeal were not common in her world.
The bitter look vanished out of her face. She gazed after the trailer
with the unabashed interest of a child, wondering who he might be. In
that instant her soul, impressionable and eager, received and
retained, like a sensitive plate, every line of his figure, every
minute modelling of his face--even his fashion of saddle and the
leather of his gun-case remained with her as food for reflection, and
as she loitered down the trail a wish to know more about him rose in
her heart. There was a kind of smiling ecstasy on his face before he
saw her--as if he, too, were transported by the scene, and this
expression came at last to be the chief revelation of his character.
[Illustration: "THERE WAS IN HIS LOOK AN EXPRESSION OF
ACKNOWLEDGED KINSHIP"]
The red went out of the sky. The golden eagle of cloud flew home over
the illimitable seas of saffron, the purple shadows rose in the
valleys, the lights of the town began to sparkle. Engine-bells clanged
to and fro, and the strains of a saloon band rose to vex the girl's
poetic soul with repugnant remembrances of the dance-hall. "I suppose
he is only camping through," she thought, a little wistfully,
referring back to the stranger. "I wish I knew who he is."
As she came down to the level of the stream its friendly roar cut off
the ribald music and the clamor of the engines precisely as the bank
shut away the visible town, leaving the little row of pretty cottages
in the ward of the mountains and the martial, ranked, and towering
firs.
At the foot of the trail a gray-haired woman met her. It was her
mother, disturbed, indignant. "Viola Lambert, what do you mean by
staying up there after dark? I'm all a-tremble over you."
"It isn't dark, mother," answered the girl; "and if it were, it isn't
the first time I've been out alone."
Mrs. Lambert's voice softened. "Child, I can hardly see your face!
You must not do such things. I don't mind your being out on horseback,
but you must not go up there afoot. It is dangerous with all these
tramp miners coming and going."
"Well, don't scold--I'm here safe and sound."
"I haven't had such a turn for years, Viola," the mother explained, as
they waited side by side along the narrow walk. "I had an
_impression_--so vivid--that I dropped my work and ran to find you. It
was just as if you called me, asking for help. It seemed to me that
some dreadful thing had happened to you."
"But nothing did. I went up to see the sunset. I didn't meet a soul."
She ended abruptly, for she did not wish to retrace her sad reverie.
"Who were the two men who came down just now? They must have passed
you."
"Yes, they passed me--I didn't know them. The one behind looked like
an 'expert.' Perhaps he has come to examine the San Luis mine. Some
one said they were expecting a man from England."
"He looked more like a Frenchman to me."
"It may be he is," answered Viola, restrainedly.
They turned in at a rustic gateway opening into the yard of a small
and very pretty log-cabin which seemed a toy house, so minute was it
in contrast to the mighty, fir-decked wall of gray and yellow rock
behind it. Flowers had been planted along the path, and through the
open door a red-shaded lamp shone like a poppy. Plainly it was the
home of refined and tasteful women, a place where tall, rude men
entered timidly and with apologies.
"Was there any mail?" asked the girl, as she put aside her hat.
"Not a thing."
The shadow deepened on her small, sensitive face. "Oh, why _don't_ the
girls write? they should know how horribly lonely it is here. I'm
tired of everything to-day, mother--perfectly stone-blue. I don't like
what I am; I'm tired of church-work and the people here. I want to go
back East; I want to change my life completely."
The mother, a handsome woman, with fresh, unlined face, made no reply
to this outburst. "Gusta won't be back until late; we will have to get
our own supper."
The girl seemed rather pleased at this opportunity to do something,
and went to her work cheerfully, moving with such grace and lightness
that the mother stood in doting admiration to watch her; she was so
tall and lithe and full-bosomed--her one treasure.
As she worked, the shadow again lifted from the girl's face, a smile
came back to her scarlet lips, and she sang underbreath as only a
young maiden can sing to whom love is a wonder and marriage a far-off
dream.
She recalled the look which lay on the face of the man who was riding
with bared head in ecstasy of the scene above and below him; but, most
of all, she dwelt upon the gracious and candid glance of admiration
with which he greeted her and which he repeated as he disappeared
below her to be seen no more.
This look went with her to her room, and as she sat at her window,
which opened upon the river, she wondered whether he had gone into
camp in the pine groves just below the bridge, or whether he had taken
lodgings at the hotel.
She had lovers--no girl of her charm could move without meeting the
admiring glances of men; but this stranger's regard was so much more
subtly exalting--it held an impersonal quality--it went beyond her
entire understanding, adding an element of mystery to herself, to him,
and to the sunset.
III
THE MAN
Meanwhile the young tourist had alighted before the door of the
principal hotel, and, after writing his name in a clear and precise
hand on the book in the office, had hastened to his supper, carrying a
most vivid recollection of the slender figure and flushed and speaking
face of the girl on the trail. That moment of meeting, accidental and
fleeting, had already become a most beautiful climax of his
pilgrimage. "She was born of the sunset; she does not really exist,"
he said, with unwonted warmth of phrase. "How could this little mining
town produce so exquisite a flower?"
His grosser needs supplied, he lit his big student's pipe and went out
upon the upper story of the hotel's rude porch, and there sat,
listening to the rush of the stream, while the great yellow stars
appeared one by one above the lofty peaks, and the air grew crisp to
frostiness. He was profoundly at peace with the world and himself, his
physical weariness being just sufficient to give this hour a sound
completeness of content.
As the beauty of the night deepened, the girl's beauty allured like
the moon. He still sought to explain her. "She is some traveller like
myself," he said, "Bret Harte to the contrary, notwithstanding, the
wilderness does not produce maids of her evident refinement and grace.
She comes of a long line of well-bred people."
He was not an emotional person, and had not been permitted to consider
pleasure the chief object, even of a vacation, but he went to his bed
that night well pleased with Colorow, and with a half-defined sense
that this was, after all, the point towards which his long journey,
with all its windings, had really tended. However, he was not ready to
acknowledge that a large part of the charm of the place was due to the
glamour of a slender maid lit by the sunset light.
This delight in the town and its surroundings gained a new quality
next morning as he looked from his window upon a single white cloud
resting like a weary swan on the keen point of old Kanab. Though the
mesas of New Mexico and the deserts of Arizona were his special field,
he bared his head to the charm of "the high country."
Each summer, after months of prolonged peering into the hidden heart
of microscopic things in his laboratory (he was both analytical
chemist and biologist), it was his custom to return for a few weeks to
huge, crude synthetic, nature for relief. After endless discussion of
"whorls of force" and of "the office of germs in the human organism,"
he enjoyed the racy vernacular of the plainsman, to whom bacteria
were as indifferent as blackberry-seeds. Each year he resolved to go
to the forest, to the lake regions, or to the mountains; but as the
day of departure drew near the desert and the strange peoples living
thereon reasserted their dominion, and so he had continued to return
to the sand, to the home of the horned toad and the rattlesnake. These
trips restored the sane balance of his mind. To camp in the chaparral,
to explore the source of streams, and to relive the wonder of the boy
kept his faculties alert and keen.
His love of the sands and the purple buttes of the plain did not blind
him to the beauty of coloring and the gracious majesty of these peaks,
clothed as they were with the russet and gold and amber of ripened
grasses, which grew even to the very summits (only the kingliest of
the peaks were permitted to wear the ermine robes which denoted
sovereignty); the Continental Divide was, indeed, much more impressive
than he had expected it to be.
He was not one of those who seek out strange women, and he had no hope
of meeting the girl of the mountain-side again. He was content to have
her remain a poem--a song of the sunset--a picture seen only for a
moment, yet whose impression outlasts iron. Everything in nature had
converged to make her momentous. His long stay among the ugly, dusky
women of the desert, his exultant joy in the mountain sunset, and his
abounding health (which filled his heart with the buoyancy of a
boy)--all these causes combined to revive emotions which his absorption
in scientific investigation had set in the background--emotions which
concern the common man, but which the deeply ambitious chemist, eager
to discover the chemical molecular structure of the plasm, must put
aside with a firm hand.
IV
A SECOND MEETING
Viola was just leaving her mother's gate the following afternoon when
a man's voice, cordial, assured, and cultivated, startled her.
"Good-morning. Is this your home?"
She looked up to meet the smiling eyes of the stranger horseman. Again
an indefinable charm of manner robbed his greeting of offence, and
quite composedly she replied:
"Yes, this is our home."
"What a view you have, and what music!" He indicated the river which
ran white and broad over its pebbles, just below the walk. "I am
enchanted with the place. I think you must love it very much."
Her face expressed a qualified assent. "Oh yes, but I get tired of it
sometimes, especially in winter when we are all shut in with snow."
"Then you really are a year-round resident? I suppose my view _is_ the
tourist's view. I can't believe anybody lives here in winter. I hope
you won't mind my introducing myself"--he handed her a card. "You made
such a pretty picture up there beside the trail yesterday that I
couldn't forbear speaking to you on a second meeting. I wanted to
know whether you were real or just a fragment of sunset cloud."
The ease and candor of his manner, joined to the effect of the name on
the card, fully reassured her, and she looked up with a smile. "Won't
you come in and rest?"
"Thank you, I should like particularly to do so, I've been for a climb
up that peak behind your cottage and I'm tired."
Her reserve quite melted, the girl led the way to the door where her
mother stood in artless wonder.
"Mother, this is Dr. Serviss, of Corlear College."
"I'm glad to know you, sir," said Mrs. Lambert, with old-fashioned
formality. "Won't you come in?"
"Thank you. It will be a pleasure."
"Are you a physician?" she asked, as she took his hat and stick.
"Oh, dear, no! Nothing so useful as that. I'm a doctor by brevet, as
they say in the army." Then, as though acknowledging that his hostess
was entitled to know a little more about her intrusive guest, he
added: "I am a student of biology, Mrs. Lambert, and assistant to Dr.
Weissmann, the head of the bacteriological department of Corlear
Medical College. We study germs--microscopic 'bugs,'" he ended, with
humorous glance at Viola. "What a charming bungalow you have here! Did
you gather those wild flowers?"
Viola answered in the tone of a pupil to her master, "Yes, sir."
"But some of them grow high. You must be a mountaineer. Pardon my
curiosity--it is inexcusable--but how long have you lived here?"
The mother looked at her daughter for confirmation. "Eight years."
"Of course you are from the East?"
"Yes, from Wisconsin."
He laughed. "_We_ call Wisconsin a Western State. Of course, it's the
ignorant prejudice of the New-Yorker, but I find it hard to think of
you as actual residents of this far-away little town. I thought only
miners lived here?"
"We are miners. My husband has a mine up in the Basin, but he's
putting in some new machinery just now and is unable to come down but
once a week." Then mildly resenting his implied criticism of the town,
she added: "We have just as nice people here as you'll find anywhere."
He responded gallantly, "I am quite prepared to believe that, Mrs.
Lambert. But do many nice people like you live here all the year
round?" He was bent on drawing the girl out, but she did not respond.
The mother answered: "I haven't been away except to take my daughter
East to school."
He was cautious. "By East you mean Milwaukee?"
"Diamond Lake, Wisconsin."
He turned to the girl. "How long were you away?"
"Four years."
"Did you like it?"
"Very much."
"That is the reason you find it lonesome here." Up to this moment his
attitude was that of a teacher towards a pretty pupil. "You miss your
classmates, I suppose? Still there must be diversions here, even for a
young girl."
The mother sighed. "It really is very lonesome here for Viola--if it
weren't for her church work and her music I don't know what she'd do.
There are so few young people, and then her years at the seminary
spoiled her for the society out here, anyway."
"So much the worse for Colorow society," laughed Serviss. Then, to
clear the shadow which had gathered on the girl's face, he said: "I
see a fine piano, and shelves of music books. This argues that you
love music. Won't you sing for me? I am hungry for a song."
"I do not sing," she replied, coldly, "I have no voice."
"Then play for me. I have been for eight weeks on the desert and I am
famishing for music."
"Are you a musician?" asked Mrs. Lambert.
"Oh no, only a music-lover."
"My daughter is passionately fond of the piano," the mother explained,
"and her teachers advised her to go on and make a specialty of it.
They recommended Boston, but Viola wants to go to New York. She wanted
to go last year, but I couldn't let her go. I'd been without her for
four years, and Mr. Lambert's affairs wouldn't permit us both to go,
and so she had to stay; but it _does_ seem too bad for one as gifted
as she is to give it up."
At this moment Serviss changed his entire attitude towards these
people. They were too genuine, too trustful, and too fine to permit of
any patronization, and the girl's dignified silence and the charm of
her pellucid eyes and rose-leaf lips quite transmuted him from the
curious onlooker to the friend. "I can understand your dilemma," he
said, with less of formal cheer and more of genuine sympathy. "And
yet, if your daughter has most decided talent it is only fair to give
her a chance to show what she can do."
The girl flushed and her eyes fell as the mother bent towards her
visitor.
"I wish you would listen to her play, Dr. Serviss, and tell me what
you think of her talent."
His eyes shone with humor. "I will listen with great pleasure; but
don't ask a chemist to judge a pianist. I love music--it is a sweet
noise in my ears--but I can hardly distinguish Chopin from Schumann."
He faced the girl. "Play for me. I shall be very deeply indebted." As
she still hesitated he added: "Please do, or I will certainly think
you consider me intrusive."
As Viola slowly rose, Mrs. Lambert said: "You must not feel that way,
Dr. Serviss. We are highly honored to entertain one so eminent as you
are. I was brought up to value learning. Play for him, Viola."
"What is the reason for her reluctance?" Serviss asked himself. "Is it
shyness? Or does she resent me?"
With a glance of protest at her mother the girl took her seat at the
piano. "I will try," she said, bluntly. "But I know I shall fail."
Twice she laid her hands upon the keys only to snatch them away again
as if they were white-hot metal, and Serviss fancied her cheek grew
pale. The third time she clashed out a few jarring chords intermixed
with quite astonishing roulade on the treble--an unaccountable
interruption, as if a third hand had been thrust in to confuse her.
She stopped, and he began to share her embarrassment.
She tried again, shaking her head determinedly from side to side as if
to escape some invisible annoying object. It seemed as if some mocking
sprite in the instrument were laboring to make her every harmony a
discord, and Serviss keenly regretted his insistence.
Suddenly she sprang up with an impatient, choking cry. "I can't do it!
He won't let me!" she passionately exclaimed, and rushed from the room
leaving her visitor gazing with pity and amazement into the face of
the mother, who seemed troubled but in no wise astounded by her
daughter's hysterical action. She sat in silence--a painful silence,
as if lacking words to express her thought; and Serviss rose, rebuked,
and for the first time ill at ease.
"I beg your pardon, Mrs. Lambert; I didn't intend to embarrass your
daughter."
"She is very nervous--"
"I understand. Being a complete stranger, I should not have insisted.
One of the best singers I ever knew was so morbidly shy that on the
platform she was an absolute failure. Her vocal chords became so
contracted that she sang quite out of tune, and yet among friends she
was magnificent."
The mother's voice was quite calm. "It was not your fault, sir.
Sometimes she's this way, even when her best friends ask her to play.
That's why I fear she will never be able to perform in concerts--she
is _liable_ to these break-downs."
He was puzzled by something concealed in the mother's tone, and pained
and deeply anxious to restore the peaceful charm of the home into which
he had, in a sense, unbiddenly penetrated. "I am guilty--unpardonably
guilty. I beg you to tell her that my request was something more than
polite seeming--I was sincerely eager to hear her play. Perhaps at
another time, when she has come to know me better, she will feel like
trying again. I don't like to think that our acquaintance has ended
thus--in discord. May I not come in again, now that I am, in a sense,
explained?"
He blundered on from sentence to sentence, seeking to soften the
stern, straight line on the mother's lips--a line of singular
repression, sweet but firm.
"I wish you _would_ come again. I should really like your advice about
Viola's future. Can't you come in this evening?"
"I shall be very glad to do so. At what hour?"
"At eight. Perhaps she will be able to play for you then."
With a feeling of having blundered into a most unpleasant predicament,
through a passing interest in a pretty girl, Serviss retreated to his
hotel across the river.
V
PUPIL AND MASTER
Once out of the spell of the immediate presence of this troubled
mother and her appealing daughter, Serviss began to doubt and to
question. "They are almost too simple, too confiding. Why should Mrs.
Lambert, at a first meeting, accidental and without explanation, ask
me to take thought of her daughter's future?" The fact that his
connection with an institution of learning gave him a sort of sanctity
in their eyes did not weigh with him. He was of those who take
professorships in the modern way--with levity, either real or assumed.
"I think, on the whole, I'd better keep out of this family
complication, whatever it may be," he concluded. "This absence of the
husband in the hills may be more significant than at present
appears--it may be a voluntary sequestration. I take the hint. I am
not seeking new responsibilities, and I don't care to act as adviser,
even to a pretty girl--especially _not_ to a pretty girl." And he
waved his hand in the manner of one declining a doubtful cigar.
But this slim young witch, with the scarlet lips and pleading gray
eyes, was not so easily banished. His inward eye dwelt upon her with
increasing joy, "How beautiful she was, as she stood there on that
bowlder! Perhaps she was posing? She is now at the very height of her
girlish charm. What an appeal she must make to the men of this
region--those exquisite lips--that pliant waist--that full bosom!
There is some antagonism between mother and daughter--something more
than appears on the surface. She is both sullen and hysterical. What a
pity!"
She continued to trouble him as he sat again after his evening meal on
the veranda of the hotel. He could hear the slow tramp of heavy boots
along the sidewalks beneath him, and the roar of the Colorow, softened
by distance, rose and fell like a drowsy tune. On the highest peaks
the after-glow still lingered, and from one of the little cottages
deep in the shadow across the stream a light appeared like a signal,
an invitation, and, the blood in him being young, accepted the lure.
He rose with the impulse. "I'm going! Why not? 'Tis a night for
adventure. There's no need of involving myself in any wise with their
future. I'm an outsider, and will take precious good care to stay so."
His face was impassive, but his heart was quick within him as he set
foot on the bridge. "Perhaps this is my Rubicon?" he said, and paused
with a moment's irresolution.
His doubt, his suspicion, instantly vanished as he re-entered the
pretty little sitting-room and faced the sweet-visaged mother, who
tacitly acknowledged her daughter as the cause of his coming by
saying:
"Viola has just stepped over to the parsonage. She will return in a
moment. Won't you please be seated?"
Serviss took a chair, quite ready--even eager--to listen to the
further confidences which he perceived his hostess was about to give
him.
"I hope you won't think it strange, professor--"
He interrupted her. "Please don't call me professor."
"I beg your pardon, sir. I understood that you were a professor in a
university."
She seemed disappointed, and he explained: "It's true I am in the
hand-book as a member of the faculty, and I plead guilty to the degree
of doctor of philosophy--_that_ I am proud of; but to be called
professor robs me of my young humanity." This humorous explanation
seemed to confuse her, and he added, kindly and naturally: "Really,
Mrs. Lambert, I am a chemist and experimentalist in biology. I have no
class-room work, because the college prefers to have me make what they
call 'original investigation.' And, pray, let me say that while I am
very willing to assist your daughter, or to advise you in any way, I
see very little of musical New York. My work confines me to my 'shop'
very closely, and when I go out I associate almost wholly with my
peculiar kind. However, I can easily secure information as to the best
schools of music, for I have several friends who know all about it. I
interrupted you--please continue."
This pleasant, straightforward speech restored her confidence. "I
think I was about to say, sir, that it may seem strange to you that I
should so suddenly ask your advice, but, you see--"
"Oh, not at all," he genially interrupted. "I am consulted on all
kinds of matters; in fact, I pass for a real doctor--out on the trail.
I carry a little medicine-case for emergencies, and I assume all the
authority of the regular practitioner--on occasion. I shall be very
sorry if my distaste for the title 'professor' leads you to think me
unsympathetic. I shall be very glad to assist you in any way."
"Thank you. You see, I was brought up to esteem learning, and we
seldom meet one of your eminence--we are so completely out of the
world here--it is a great pleasure to us--"
Footsteps just outside of the screen-door announced the return of the
girl, who entered composedly, followed by a young man. Her manner was
cold, her glance aloof, as she greeted Serviss.
"I'm glad you came," she said. "I was afraid you would forget us." She
turned towards her escort, who had halted in the doorway. "Professor
Serviss, this is the Reverend Mr. Clarke, the pastor of our church."
As Serviss shook hands with the Reverend Clarke he experienced a
distinct shock of repulsion--an unaccountable feeling, for the
clergyman was decidedly handsome, at first sight. But his hand was
cold, his face pallid, and a bitter line, the worn pathway of a sneer,
curved at one corner of his mouth. "Unwholesome, anæmic," was
Serviss's inward comment as he turned away to address the girl, whose
change of manner exerted a new witchery over him.
She was dressed in black for some reason, and her face seemed both sad
and morose, but the graceful dignity of her strong young body was
enhanced by her dark gown. Her hands, her feet, were shapely, without
being dainty. "Plainly these women come of good stock, no matter what
the husband and father may be," Serviss thought. He resented the
clergyman's intrusive presence more and more. "Is he brought in as a
safeguard?" he asked himself.
Mr. Clarke's attitude was certainly forbidding. He perched in grim,
expectant silence on the edge of his chair, waiting, watching. His
lean face had the blue-white look of the much-shaven actor, and his
manner was as portentous as that of a tragedian.
"What the devil does he mean by staring at me like that?" Serviss
continued to ask himself. "Does he expect me to go off like a bomb?"
He had started a discussion of the weather or some other harmless
topic, when Clarke began, in a deep voice, with the formal inflections
of the parson: "Miss Lambert tells me you are from Corlear University,
professor?"
Serviss groaned and threw up his hands with a comical gesture. "Well,
let it go at that. I suppose it explains me to call me 'professor.'
Yes, I have a connection there--I draw a salary from the
institution."
The clergyman regarded him soberly, as did the women, without sharing
his humor in the least. Evidently being a professor in a university
was no light thing to a Western preacher. "She tells me you have
proposed to act as her adviser--"
Again Serviss protested. "Oh, nothing so formidable as that, my dear
sir. I have promised to make inquiries for her." Then, obscurely moved
to create a better impression in the girl's mind, he added: "I shall
be very happy, of course, to do all that is in my power to aid you,
Miss Lambert, but, as I have just been saying to your mother, I can
only act through my friends. Nobody enjoys music more than I, but no
one can possibly know less about it. In these days of specialization
one is forced to one's own little groove in order to achieve practical
results. General culture is impossible to specially trained sharps
like myself."
"What _is_ your specialty, may I ask?" inquired Clarke, remotely.
"I usually answer 'bugs,' but when I wish to be quite understood I
explain that I am a physiological chemist and biologist. At the
present moment I am assistant in the pathological department of the
Corlear Medical College."
The preacher seemed to lighten a little. "Ah! that is a noble study, a
study of incalculable service to mankind. I am deeply interested in
that line of thought myself--I may say _vitally_ interested, for I
suffer from lung trouble. One by one the germs of disease are being
discovered and their antitoxins catalogued." It was evident that he
was anxious to impress the women with his wonderful understanding of
the scientist's work and aims.
His tone was so sententious that Serviss instantly became flippant, as
an offset. "Yes, one by one we round 'em up! But don't think me
unfriendly to the 'beasts.' They have their uses. I'd no sooner kill a
bacterium than a song-bird. I think we care too highly for the
cancerous and the consumptive. I'm not at all sure that humanity
oughtn't to be hackled like weeds, and so toughen its hold on life.
Germs may be blessings in disguise."
Clarke pursued his way. "How little we know about their
reactions--their secretions. You've given some attention to the X-ray
and its effect on these cells, I presume?"
Serviss inwardly grinned to think what Weissmann would say at sight of
his assistant sitting in solemn discussion of the germs and X-rays
with a village clergyman and two reverential women. "Why, yes, I've
considered it. Naturally, any new thing that bears on my specialty
makes me sit up. I've even done a little experimenting with it."
"But have you considered the bearing of all these subtleties of
science upon"--he hesitated--"a--upon certain--a--occult phenomena?"
Serviss eyed him non-committally. "Well, what, for instance?"
"Well, upon, say, telepathy--and--a--well, upon spiritual healing--and
the like."
"I can't say that I have; I don't exactly see the connection.
Furthermore, I don't believe in these particular delusions. My work
concerns the material facts of life, not the dying superstitions of
the race. I have no patience with any morbid theory of life."
This remark plainly produced a sensation. The preacher cast a
significant glance at the mother, and the girl looked away at the
lamp, a flush upon her face.
"Hello!" exclaimed Serviss, under his breath. "Have I discovered a
neat of cranks? I've been enlisted on somebody's side--I wonder
whose?"
The clergyman faced him again and calmly asked: "Have you ever
_investigated_ these occult phenomena?"
"Certainly not. I have no time to waste on such imaginings. My time is
all taken in a study of certain definite processes in the living
organism."
A light began to glow in the eyes of the young clergyman. "I suppose
you class mental healing among the delusions?"
"Most assuredly I do," answered Serviss, with the remorselessness of
youth.
"You would say that the mind of man cannot mend the body of another--"
"If you mean directly--in the manner of 'faith cures' and the like--I
would answer certainly not, unless the disorder happens to be in
itself due to a delusion. I can imagine the hypochondriac being cured
by mental stimulus." He felt that he was drawing near the point at
issue, and his eyes shone with glee.
The preacher set his trap. "You believe in the action of a drug--say,
prussic acid--you believe it will kill?"
"Yes, and quite irrespective of the opinion of the one who takes it.
His thinking it water will not check or change its action in the
slightest degree."
"But _how_ does it kill?" persisted Clarke. "What does it _do_?"
"If you mean why, at the last analysis, does one drug attack cells and
the other nourish them, I answer, frankly, I don't know--nobody
knows."
Clarke pursued his point. "Under the microscope, the germ of, say,
tetanus is a minute bar with spore at the end like the head of a
tadpole. Of what is this cell composed?"
"Probably of a jelly-like substance with excessively minute filaments,
but we don't know. We are at the limit of the microscope. We trace
certain processes, we even dissect certain cells, but elemental
composition of plasm remains a mystery."
The preacher glowed with triumph. "Then you confess yourself baffled?
The union of matter and spirit is beyond your microscope. What do you
know about a drop of water? You say it is formed of hydrogen and
oxygen in such and such proportions. What _is_ hydrogen? Why do they
unite?"
"I don't know," calmly replied Serviss. "We admit that any material
substance remains inexplicable. The molecule lies far below the line
of visibility. We only push the zone of the known a little farther
into the realm of the unknown; but how does that serve your argument?"
"By demonstrating that the mind of a man is simply the mastering
mystery in a world of mysteries, and that there is no known limit to
what it may do. We say that at the point where life enters to
differentiate the germ is beyond science--there of necessity faith is
born."
"You say 'we'--are you an apostle of 'the new church'?" asked Serviss,
abruptly.
The preacher visibly shrank. "I do not care to announce my growing
conviction to my congregation, at present; but I find many things
about the doctrine which appeal to me. Some form of spiritism is the
coming religion--in my judgment. The old order changeth. The
traditional theology--the very faith I preach--has become too gross,
too materialistic, for this age; some sweeter and more mystic faith is
to follow. Even science is prophesying new power for man, new realms
for the spirit. You men of science pretend to lead, but you are
laggards. You pore upon the culture of germs, but shut your eyes to
the most vital of all truths. Is the life beyond the grave of less
account than the habits of animalculæ?"
The young scientist listened to this query with outward courtesy, but
inwardly his gorge rose. "I see one gain in your new position," he
answered, lightly. "Matter is no longer the dead, inorganic, 'godless
thing' which the old-time theologians declared it to be. Matter, so
far from being some inert lump, is permeated with life--is life
itself. So far as we now know, all the visible and tangible universe
is resolvable into terms of force--that is to say, chemical process.
There may be no line of demarcation between the organic and the
inorganic."
"And yet with your knowledge of the inscrutable final mystery of
matter you set a mark at the grave! You condemn all manifestation of
the spirit, all the phenomena of spiritism, for example?"
"Condemn is not the word--we simply say the phenomena are absurd, the
spirit cannot exist without the body--"
"Have you ever investigated a single form of spirit manifestation?
Have you studied the claims of those who are in touch with the spirit
world?"
"No."
The preacher's sneer broke forth. "I can't see but you scientists are
quite as dogmatic, quite as bigoted as the theologians."
Serviss laughed. "It does look a little that way. However, I'm not as
uninformed as I seem. It happens that I am in close personal contact
with men whose specialty is the study of morbid psychology, and I know
the quality of those who act as mediums for the return of the dead."
The intensity of the interest on the part of the little group before
him was astonishing, not to say appalling. "It is evident that the
mother and her pastor are both of the new dispensation or worse," was
his thought, but his natural courtesy led him to say, placably: "There
are mysteries in the world, I admit--in chemistry as in biology--but
they seem to me to be different in very essence from the 'mysteries'
of spiritualism and all allied 'psychic phenomena,' which appear to me
essentially absurd, ignoble--'ratty,' to use a slang phrase--a faith
founded upon things done in the dark, always in the dark."
The preacher flamed out at this. "I knew you would get round to that;
that is the reason why I began by drawing you out on the X-ray. How
little do we know of motion! The X-ray moves in straight lines, I
understand, while light has a wave motion. Hence they are
antagonistic. May it not be that the spirits of those gone before
manifest by means of an unknown force which light neutralizes? May
this not be the explanation why the phenomena of the spirit world
require darkness?"
"It may," answered Serviss, dryly; "but there is a far easier
explanation--But, see here," he returned to his boyish humor, "this is
my vacation. I came out here to escape 'shop,' and here we are wasting
time on X-rays and spiritism, and boring our patient hostess besides.
Miss Lambert, won't you play for us and clear the air of our
controversial dust?"
The girl, who had been sitting during this conversation in rigid
immobility, intent on every word, now turned towards Clarke as if
asking his consent. The mother, too, seemed to wait anxiously for the
minister's answer, as if wondering whether he would willingly cut
short his interrogation.
His eyes were still glowing with the heat of controversy, but he
gravely said: "I hope you will give me another opportunity to discuss
this matter. It is very important to me."
"Certainly, with pleasure," answered Serviss, glad to rid himself of
the discussion of the moment.
As Viola stood slowly turning the leaves of her music, three loud
knocks sounded upon the inner door, as if an insistent neighbor had
entered and signalled for help. The mother rose and went out
hurriedly, but the clergyman merely glanced after her, and said to the
girl:
"You would better play, Viola."
The girl dashed into a stormy Polish march, which she played very
well, but with a mechanical precision which seemed to offend Clarke,
who rose and laid his hand on her arm. "Wait, you're not in the mood
yet." He turned to Serviss. "The spirit of our discussion is upon her.
She is very sensitive to such things. I will sing first--if you don't
object," he added, in a new tone, a touch of apology in his voice, and
he gave out the effect of addressing an unseen auditor--some one in
the inner room.
"I shall be delighted," replied Serviss, with formal politeness,
though he began to apprehend something morbidly forbidding in the
minister and in his influence on the girl. An extraordinary intimacy
was revealed, not so much in the words he spoke as in the tones he
used. "Here is the girl's lover," he decided.
There was no timidity or hesitation in Viola's manner as she struck
the first chords of an old ballad, and Clarke, transformed by a new
and lofty mood, sang, with notable beauty of phrasing, "The Banks o'
Ben Lomond." Something in the melancholy of the lover's cry seemed to
fit with this singular young preacher's mood. His voice searched the
heart, his eyes misted with feeling, and when he finished Serviss
applauded most fervently, "Bravo!" and impulsively offered his hand.
"My dear fellow, you have a wonderful voice. _You_ are the one to go
to New York; you'd make Carolus look to his laurels. Sing something
else--something of Strauss. Do you know Strauss?"
Clarke smiled with wistful sadness. "I sing very few ballads. My voice
was given me to use in Christ's service, not for the gratification of
my pride."
Serviss recoiled before this sanctimonious speech, and the light went
out of his face. A disgust which he could not entirely conceal crossed
his lips. "My dear sir, you can't serve the Lord better than by
singing beautiful songs to the weary people of this earth. To wear out
a voice like that on pinchbeck hymn tunes is a crime." Then, as if
becoming conscious of a neglect of the girl, he added: "Now that you
are in the mood, Miss Lambert, you must try that sonata again."
The girl seemed not to be offended by his enthusiasm over the
minister's singing, and with a word in a low voice to Clarke, who
placed a sheet of music before her, she began to play, opening the
composition with unexpected breadth and dignity of phrasing. Serviss
listened with growing amazement. Her hands were not large, but they
had ample spread and were under perfect control. There was power in
the poise of her head and in the rhythmic swaying of her body, but her
playing was curiously unfeminine. There was no touch of girlish grace,
of sentiment, in her performance, and with a sudden enlightenment
Serviss inwardly exclaimed: "Aha! A clerical Svengali! This musical
preacher has trained his pupil till she plays as _he_ would play if he
had the digital facility. It's all fine, but it is not the girl," and
the question of their relationship again engaged him.
[Illustration: "SERVISS LISTENED WITH GROWING AMAZEMENT"]
When the final stormy note was still, Viola remained on her stool, as
though waiting for her critic to applaud.
Serviss broke the silence by exclaiming: "See here, you people are
making game of me. You are both professionals in disguise. Come now,
'fess up," he challenged Clarke. "You are Señor Del Corte, barytone of
the Salt-Air Opera Company; and you, Miss Lambert, belong to the Arion
Ladies' Orchestra. I have found you both out!"
The girl smiled with pleasure, but Clarke remained so unassailably
serious that Serviss was moved to further deeps of audacity. "Don't
tell me you are a comedian, also! You certainly have me guessing. Who
are you, really?"
Clarke answered, resentfully: "I am the pastor of the Presbyterian
church in this village, as Miss Lambert has told you, and she is my
organist."
Again that thump three times repeated sounded upon the door. Serviss,
baffled and silenced by Clarke's impenetrable gravity, and by
something inexplicably submissive, yet watchful, in the face of the
girl, felt himself confronted by an intangible, sinister, and
inescapable influence. The young clergyman seemed to darken and
oppress both women. It was as if they were all leagued in a conspiracy
to deceive and cajole. This bewilderment lasted but a moment, and he
rose from his chair with a spring. "Well, now, play something
else--give us a bit of rag-time; that last piece has left us all a
little dashed--try a cake-walk."
Clarke interposed. "Miss Lambert does not play those trashy melodies.
I consider them essentially irreligious."
Serviss resented the preacher's tone, but quickly answered: "They're
not exactly reverent, I'll admit; but without them American music
would be but a poor reflection of the German."
As if to save his reputation the preacher sang "The Palms," and sang
it magnificently; and the girl accompanied him with such accuracy and
good judgment that Serviss was able to infer long hours of practice,
and this did not please him.
"His influence on her and on this household is not good," he decided.
"That chap is decidedly morbid. If he is married, so much the worse.
He's far too handsome to be a safe guide to an impressionable young
girl. There is some mystery here," and he recalled that Viola's face
was troubled when first he saw it. And at the close of this song,
without a glance at the preacher, he offered a parting hand to Viola.
"If I can be of any aid in putting you in touch with a teacher in New
York, please write me. I think you have my card. You play with
astonishing power and brilliancy. You would certainly interest a man
like Greer."
Her face flamed with color--all her sullen restraint vanished, all her
girlish charm came back. "Oh, do you think so? Do you suppose I could
get him to teach me?"
"I don't say that--he is a very busy man--but I think you are
decidedly to be encouraged. But I may be able to hear you again before
I go. I want to hear you play alone."
"I wish you would come again." There was a subtle entreaty in her
voice, almost a prayer; and in her uplifted face was expressed the
respect and confidence of a child. His heart was moved with pity as
well as with admiration, and, turning to the mother, he added: "I
shall probably remain over Sunday, and it would be a pleasure if I
might come again to your pretty home."
Mrs. Lambert's face glowed with pleasure. "It will be a great honor to
have you, sir."
In this spirit he went away, without again taking Clarke's hand, with
a last glance at the girl's face as she stood at the open door to let
him pass. He turned from the gate with a sense of having been
permitted a glance into the very heart of a secret drama which might
at any moment become a tragedy. His interest was profoundly stirred,
his sympathies wholly enlisted in behalf of this girl, so young and so
aspiring.
As he stood above the roaring water he formulated a theory with regard
to the relationship of the personalities he had just left behind him.
"The girl is being persecuted by this man Clarke, who is madly in love
with her. She has an inner repugnance to him; but he is a clergyman,
and that means a great deal to a girl in the adoration stage. Her
mother, a nice, religious sort of person, favors the preacher, of
course; but the father probably despises him. Clarke is evidently
losing his hold on the rock-ballasted keel of his creed, and in his
shipwreck he may carry that girl down with him; such cases are all too
common. If he is married, he is all the more dangerous. But it is not
my duty to interfere." He ended, resolute to put the whole problem
from him: "The girl has legal guardians--on them rests the blame if
she is corrupted. To reform this world has never been my call."
But he could not rid himself of a growing sense of responsibility. His
mind returned again and again to the complication into which he had
suddenly been thrust. "Perhaps this desire on the part of the girl to
go away to study is only an instinctive desire to escape. It would be
like that preacher to have a worn, little, commonplace wife. What can
Lambert be thinking of to let such a man come into his home and direct
the daily life of both his wife and daughter? He is neglecting his
plain duty."
He fell asleep, fancying himself on the way up the trail to the mine,
and when he woke to find the good, rectifying rays of the morning sun
filling his room the theories of the night were absurd. He desired to
see the girl again, not to warn her of her peril, but because she was
piquant and lovely, as befitted her romantic surroundings.
VI
IN THE MARSHALL BASIN
It must have been about eleven o'clock next morning when Serviss rode
up and dismounted at the Lambert gate, and in the flaming light of
mid-day the sense of mystification, the feeling that the girl was in
the coils of some invisible menace, had entirely vanished. The
preacher had sunk to the rôle of a conceited clerical ass who regarded
science as an enemy to his especial theories and the visible universe
as an outlying province of Calvinism; while Viola, who came to the
door, was again most humanly charming, delighting his eyes like the
morning.
She smiled blithely and spoke collectedly, in response to his
greeting; but when he asked her to be his guide to the wonders of the
region her face clouded in dismay.
"Oh, I'm sorry; I wish I could; but I must carry a message up to my
father at the mine."
"Very well, why not take me? I infer you go on horseback?"
She hesitated. "Yes, but it's a long, hard ride--and you said you were
tired of the saddle."
"I was yesterday; but I feel quite rested now. By all means let me
accompany you. I should particularly enjoy mounting high to-day. I
should also like to meet your father."
"Very well, I will speak to mother," she replied, with shining face,
and disappeared within.
The mother, mindful of Serviss's connection with a great university,
made no objection to the plan. On the contrary, she was pleased and
flattered by his interest in her daughter, and a few moments later the
young people rode off up the mountain road side by side and in high
spirits.
Serviss winced at times at the childish flatness of Viola's comment,
but her voice was musical and her face flower-like--therefore he
forgave her. With all his knowledge of the constitution of matter, he
was still young and in the mating mood.
They talked of the flowers, of the trails, of the birds to be found on
the heights for a time; but soon, inevitably, they came to talk of
themselves. Under his questioning she outlined her plans for a musical
education, and this led at last to a consideration of the Reverend Mr.
Clarke.
At the first mention of his name the girl's face distinctly darkened
and her answers became curiously studied, almost evasive--or so it
seemed to Serviss.
"Yes, I play in his church," she said, "and he teaches me. He is a
splendid musician--don't you think so? I owe a great deal to him. He
has helped me so much--especially in my phrasing. He is a wonderful
man. We are fortunate in having him with us."
"He struck me as a little morbid, not to say morose. Has he had
trouble in his church?"
Her answer was deep-toned and affectedly solemn in one so young. "No,
but his wife passed out last year."
"Passed out? What do you mean by that?"
"I mean she died."
"Oh, I see!" His inflection checked her confidence, and they rode for
a little way in silence.
Serviss was thinking. The situation is now clear. Clarke is working
upon this sweet and charming girl in order to have her take the place
of his dead wife. A sorrowful thing to think of, but not so bad as I
have been imagining. At length he asked: "What else can you tell me
about this Mr. Clarke? Is he a native of the West?"
"Oh no, he is from the East. He had a big church in Brooklyn; but his
health gave out and he was forced to leave it. He came here for the
baths and the air. He is much better now."
"He retains all his intellectual diseases, however. What medicine will
he find for those?" Meeting the girl's startled glance, he hastened to
add: "I beg your pardon, I was just wondering if he were as morbid
when he came as he now seems."
"Oh no! He was quite cheerful till his wife went away. That changed
him greatly. For months he hardly left his study. He reads too much
even now. That is why he looks so pale. His house is packed with
books."
"He seems in need of fresh air. How does your father get on with him?"
"Not at all well."
"I inferred that. Your father is a man of deeds--of open air--I take
it."
"Mr. Lambert isn't my own father," she took this opportunity to
explain. "My own father passed to the other side when I was eleven."
"Pardon my curiosity, Miss Lambert, but you've used a phrase once or
twice which I've heard the people of a certain faith use. Is your
mother a spiritualist?"
She looked at him with timid eyes, then turned quickly away. "She--she
used to be; she's studying theosophy now."
"And the minister is trying to convert you all to his especial theory!
I can imagine his discourses. No wonder you want to flee."
The girl's whole face, voice, and manner changed--became bitter,
passionate. "Oh, I hate it! I hate it! I want to be free of it all!"
The intensity of her utterance amazed Serviss, and he studied her
profile in silence before he answered. "I think I know what you mean,
and I sympathize with you. You're too young to be troubled by the
doubts and dismays of men like Clarke. He is preposterous in the face
of a landscape like this. Let us forget him and his 'isms.'" With
these words he straightened in his saddle and lifted his eyes towards
the height before them. "Isn't that superb!"
They were drawing near the great gray boundary-wall of the valley,
and the sound of roaring water grew tumultuous as they rounded the
curve in the road and came into the little triangular nook which had
been anciently formed by the Colorow as it descended in power from its
source in the high parks. On the left the ledges rose almost sheer for
a thousand feet, and from the edge of this cliff ore-buckets, a-slide
on invisible cables, appeared in the sky, swooping like eagles,
silently dropping one by one, to disappear, tamely as doves, in the
gable end of a huge, drab-colored mill which stood upon the flat
beside the stream. Beyond the mill Mount Ignacio rose darkly purple,
hooded in white clouds.
The entire scene was typical of the West, of its energy, its greed,
and its faith. Here was life--life and buoyant health--and the blood
of the young scientist quickened as he comprehended the daring, the
originality of the miner's plan.
"Is this your father's enterprise?" he asked, in the hope of an
affirmative answer. A man of this quality would hang the minister if
necessary.
"Oh no. We've got to climb the hill and cross the upper Basin before
we reach our mine. This is the ore from the San Luis tunnel."
She was, happily, of the sunny world now, and, with a gay smile,
turned her horse into a narrow trail and called back to him: "We climb
here." He followed, admiring the strength and grace of her rounded
figure as her horse zigzagged up the steep acclivity. She was troubled
by no problems at this moment. She was rather a daughter of the
mountains, a sister to the eagles.
She stopped once or twice to permit him to locate the far-famed peaks
rising one by one to the south of them, and the third time she drew
rein he was a-foot, and she said, "We're almost to the top of this
grade; it's easier in the Basin."
"I am thinking only of my horse," he answered. "You see, he is
carrying a forty-pound saddle, and is not so fresh as yours. I'm sorry
to delay you."
The Basin was a most glorious valley, bowl-shaped, green with grass
and groves of aspen and fir, and flooded with a cataract of sunshine.
All about it ran a rim of lofty summits, purple in shadow, garnet and
gold and green in the sun. Here and there a prospect-hole showed like
a scar, or a gray, dismantled stamp-mill stood like a disintegrating
bowlder beside its yellow-gray dump of useless ore. Serviss, familiar
with the rise and fall of the silver-miner, looked over the lovely
valley with a certain sense of satisfaction, for he was able to
reconstruct its beauty before that flood of devastating humankind
swept up from the eastern plain. "Nature is reasserting her dominion,"
he said, aloud. "Mining is a wounding business--like murder."
The girl glanced away to the south. "We'll have to hurry if we reach
camp by one o'clock," she called, and he waved his hand as a sign of
surrender to her leadership.
They overtook a long train of burros bearing a most miscellaneous
cargo of odds and ends of machinery, nail-kegs, iron-rods, bundles of
bolts, lumber, oil, and boxes of groceries.
"This is all father's--all for the new mill," said the girl, nodding
and smiling at the Mexicans in charge of the donkeys. "Hello, Clint!"
she called, cheerily, to another muleteer, a little farther up the
trail, a brown, good-looking young fellow, who saluted her joyfully,
his eyes aglow with adoration.
"Every man is her suitor," thought Serviss, with a twinge of
disapproval. "Think what she must seem to that leather-colored Arab
urging forward those donkeys!" And a knowledge of her danger--he put
it that way--began to oppress him. "She is too fine and sweet to marry
among these rough miners."
She, it seemed, was not afraid of mountaineers, for she had a gay nod
and a bright word for every one she met, though some of them were
brutal-mouthed and grimy and sullen. Serviss derived no comfort from
the fact that the most sinister of them brightened for an instant in
the light of her adorable smile.
At last, far ahead, they came in sight of the mill on a bare peak. The
white clouds which had been silently gathering round the great domes
swiftly overspread the whole sky. The air grew chill as November. The
wind began to roar in the firs with a stern mournfulness which went to
the heart of the man; but the girl, without once stopping her horse,
unrolled her raincoat and put it on, calling back at her cavalier as
she did so with a fine, challenging, gleeful shout.
They were very high now. Perennial ice lay in the gullies and on the
north side of the cliffs, and the air was light and keen. Suddenly the
wind died away. A gray hush came over the valley. The water in the
streams lost its vivid green and became lead-color streaked with white
foam. One by one the mountains were blotted out by the storm. The
world of sky and rocks grew mysterious, menacing; but the girl pushed
fearlessly forward, singing like a robin, while the rain slashed over
her, and the thunder boomed and re-echoed from crag to crag like
warning guns in magnificent alarums. "I love this!" she cried, her
clear voice piercing the veil of water like a flute note. "Don't you?"
Serviss was not without imagination, and the contrast of this jocund,
fearless, free young maid with the silent, constrained girl of the
night before moved him to wonder. "Here she is herself--nature's own
child," he thought. "Last night she was a 'subject'--a plaything of
the preacher's. Strange the mother does not realize her daughter's
danger."
The storm passed as quickly as it came, and when they drew rein at the
mine the sun was shining. The mill, standing on a smooth, steep slope,
and sheltered on the north by a group of low firs, seemed half a ruin,
but was, in fact, being rebuilt and enlarged. All about it were dumps
of clay, slippery with water, and rough bunk-houses and ore-sheds. All
the structures were rude, masculine, utilitarian, and the girl grew
each moment in delicacy and refinement by contrast.
In answer to her halloo a plainly clad man came to the door, his face
set in amazement.
"Why--see here--daughter! I wasn't looking for you to-day."
"I'm here just the same," she laughingly replied. "Here are some
telegrams. Professor Serviss, this is my father."
Joseph Lambert was a small man, with shy, blue eyes and a low and
gentle utterance. He carried his head leaning a little to the left and
seemed a shade discouraged, almost melancholy. He was, however, a
brave, silent, tireless little man, who had made one great fortune in
silver-mines only to lose it in the panic. He was now cannily working
a vein which had a streak of gold in it, and, like all miners, was
just on the point of making a "strike." He was distracted with work,
and, though cordial, could not at the moment give much time to his
visitor.
"Well, now, Viola, you take Professor Serviss into the cook-house and
feed him. I guess you'll find something left over. If not, you will
have to scratch up something."
Viola thereupon led the way into the kitchen, greeting each man she
met, cooks and waiters alike, with impartial, clear-eyed joyousness
and trust, and when the food came on she ate without grimace or
hesitation. The cook, a big, self-contained Chinaman, came in with a
china cup.
"Use this klup--tin klup no good for lady." His voice was gruff and
his manner that of one who compels a child to use a napkin; but it
was plain he adored her. As she thanked him he shuffled away with an
irrepressible grin.
All this produced in Serviss an uneasiness. To him she was a lamb
venturing among wolves. "She should not expose herself to the coarse
comment, the seeking eyes of these fellows," he indignantly commented,
blaming the acquiescent mother and the absent-minded step-father.
"This childlike trust is charming, but it is not war."
Her essential weakness of defence, her innocence, began to move him
deeply, dangerously. He began to understand how she had turned to
Clarke for companionship, not merely because he was a clergyman, but
because he was a young man of more than usual culture and attainment,
whose sympathy and counsel promised aid and comfort in her loneliness.
"She does not love him; she merely admires certain sides of his
character; she fears to marry him, and quite properly. His morbid
faith would destroy her."
As they were returning to the office they met the young driver of the
mule-train, and Viola introduced him as "Mr. Ward, of Boston."
He was tall and spare, with a fine, sensitive, boyish face--a face of
refinement which his rough, gray shirt, faded leggings, and badly
battered hat belied.
"Mr. Ward is out here for his health, also," Viola explained. "All the
really nice people are 'one-lungers.'"
"Isn't it sad?" said Ward, gravely. "However, Miss Lambert is only
partly right. I made my health an excuse. I'm here because I like it."
Serviss bent a keen look upon him. "You don't look as if you had ever
been sick."
"I'm not. I came out here to escape college--and my father's
business." He laughed. "But don't betray me. I'm supposed to be
'slowly improving.'"
There was something fine and hawklike in the young fellow's profile as
he stood negligently leaning on the door-frame, his eyes on the
flushed face of the girl; and Serviss experienced another pang of
jealous pain--they were so young, so comely, so full of the fire and
imagination of youth. At the moment his own fame and special tasks
were of small account.
Upon their return to the office Lambert met them in the same
absent-minded, apologetic way. "I'm just getting some new machinery
into place and haven't a minute, but you must make yourself as much at
home as you can. Viola will show you around."
Serviss protested that he needed no entertainment, that he was not
tired, and that he was well content to sit in the door and smoke and
watch the changing glory of the peaks, and this he did while Viola
moved about among the workmen in earnest conversation with her
step-father.
"She is explaining me," Serviss reasoned. "I wish I could hear what
she says. It would be amusing to know myself as she sees me. I hope
she doesn't think me middle-aged as well as wise."
Lambert listened to his daughter's words with attention, for a
professor in a college was an exalted person in his eyes, and one of
his chief regrets at the moment was that he was unable to say to
Serviss, "I am a college man myself"; but this he could not do for the
reason that the death of his father had taken him out of his class at
the beginning of his third year, and put him at the head of a large
family as its breadwinner.
"He looks like a very young man, almost a boy--too young to be a
professor; but then"--here his eyes twinkled--"when I was at Jefferson
all professors seemed old to me. What's he doing here?"
"Just riding through the mountains on his vacation."
"What does your mother think of him?"
"She likes him very much."
"Well, I won't make any objection, then."
Viola stared--then blushed furiously. "What do you mean?"
"Why, didn't you bring him up here to see how I liked him?"
She pounded him with her little brown fist while tears of
mortification filled her eyes. "Now, you stop that! You're teasing me.
Why, I've only known him three days."
He laughed silently, shaking his head. "Well, these things move
quickly sometimes--and how was I to know but you'd known him in the
East--you seemed so chummy-like--"
"You've spoiled everything," she wailed, deeply disturbed and
painfully self-conscious. "You're mean to me."
He became instantly contrite. "There, now, don't you mind my joking.
Of course I was fooling. It's all safe between us, anyway."
But the mischief was done. She forgave him, but never again would she
be the same to him, to her mother, or to the imperturbable young man
smoking his pipe beneath the firs. He _was_ young--that was only too
plain to her now; not so young as Clinton, but not the middle-aged
person she had been fancying him to be.
As they were about to start on their homeward trail, Serviss sought
opportunity to say: "Mr. Lambert, I met this man Clarke at your house
last night, and I want to say that I don't think his influence on your
family is particularly wholesome. He's morbid and given to fads."
Lambert replied: "I know what you mean, professor, and I believe
you're right. I don't believe in him myself, and I don't take any
stock in any of his notions, but my wife does. She thinks he's of the
Covenant, somehow. I wish you'd talk with her and try to have her let
up on Viola. I don't think they're doin' right by her. If she was my
own girl I'd stop it--I would so." Then he added, in a curious tone,
this vague defence: "As for Viola, she would be all right if they
would leave her alone. She's gifted in a way I don't understand; but
if she isn't twisted by Clarke's foolishness she's going to make some
man a good wife. She's a good girl, and, as I say, if she was my own
child I'd serve notice that this circle business should stop. I wish
you'd talk to 'em. I don't count--but they'll listen to you. I'm glad
to have met you. I hope you'll come up again. I'd like to mill that
business over with you; it's all very curious, but I'm just plumb
distracted with work now."
"I beg you not to apologize--it's time to start back, anyhow."
As they rode away down the valley, the girl silent and constrained,
Serviss pondered Lambert's words, which were plainly directed against
Clarke. His sense of responsibility was increased by Lambert's trust
in him. "This won't do," he decided; "I must pull out or I will find
myself laden with the woes of the entire family, and Clarke's
distresses besides."
The girl was invested now with compelling pathos. Each mile they
descended seemed to deepen the returning shadow on her face. The
gayety, the buoyancy of the upward trail was gone. She was silent,
constrained, and sad; and he set to work to restore her to the simple
and girlish candor of the morning. He called attention to the wonders
of the western sky. He shouted to induce echoes, and challenged her to
a race, and at the last descent dared her to ride down in one of the
ore-buckets, seeking to bring the smiles back to her lips.
She responded to his cheer, but not as before. Something clouded her
clear glance--her smiles died quickly, and the poise of her head was
less alert.
When they had reached the wagon-road and he could ride by her side,
he, too, became serious. "I hope I haven't given offence in any way,
Miss Lambert? If I have, I assure you it was entirely unintentional,
and I beg your pardon."
She looked away. "You have done nothing," she said, slowly.
"But you seem distinctly less friendly to me. I hope you didn't take
anything I said concerning your mother's faith to heart. I had no
intention of attacking her beliefs, but I must be honest with you--I
don't like Mr. Clarke. There's something unwholesome about him, and
what you've told me to-day is not reassuring. Evidently he took the
death of his wife very hard, and it has added to his natural tendency
towards a sort of spiritual monomania. As a matter of fact, he's more
Spiritualist than Calvinist at present. Isn't that so?"
The girl's face grew sullen and weary. "Oh, I don't know, I'm tired of
it all."
"He endlessly talks his grind, I suppose. How foolish, how sickly it
all seems--here in the presence of uncontaminated nature! In such
sunlight as this it seems insanity to sit in a book-walled room and
grow bloodless with dreaming over insoluble problems. And yet a friend
of mine told me that these towns, and especially California towns,
were filled with seers and prophets. The occult flourishes in the
high, dry atmosphere, those of the faith say. Don't you permit Clarke
to destroy your love of nature, Miss Lambert; you belong to the sane
and sunny world, and he has no right to bring his gloomy conceptions
home to you. You are too young and too naturally joyous to be
concerned with the problems of disease and death. You were made to be
happy."
He ended with greater earnestness than he had intended to use, and the
effect of his words on the girl was very great. She could not speak;
tears were in her eyes, and her bosom heaved most piteously. His sense
of her helplessness deepened, and he added, "Will you permit me to
talk to Mr. Clarke about you and your plans?"
This seemed to alarm her. "No, no!" she cried out, distressfully.
"Please don't say anything to him about me. It will do no good. You
don't understand, and I can't tell you," she added, breathlessly.
"Very well," he said, soothingly; "but, remember, your case interests
me exceedingly, and you may call on me at any time and I will gladly
help."
She turned a pale and tearful face towards him and extended her hand.
"I thank you very, very much. You _have_ helped me more than I can
say."
During the remainder of the ride he discussed the springs, the source
of the streams, the caverns, and other natural features of the scene,
and had the satisfaction of seeing her face in a smile before he left
her.
He went back to his hotel with a feeling of having spent six days in
her company rather than six hours. She absorbed his entire thought,
and so keen was his sense of her beleaguerment that he resolved to
call upon Clarke in order to define his character and to understand
his motives. "His passions or his doubt overshadow the girl's sky, and
I'm going to find out whether his designs are those of friend or
fiend." At the moment he had a feeling that they were those of a
devouring fiend.
VII
THE FORCES OF LIGHT AND DARKNESS
Clarke's church typified the decaying faith of its pastor. Grass was
serenely pushing up through the rotting planks of the walk which led
from the street to the basement "study" just as the natural goodness
and cheer of man returns to dominion through the barriers of custom.
The paint was blistering and peeling from the clap-boarding on the
sunny side of the main building, and in one of the windows a piece of
shingle had been set to repair a broken pane. It had the appearance of
neglected age.
"The preacher was right--the creed of his church, as of all others, in
a lesser degree perhaps, is too crass, too mechanical, too childish to
tally the ideals of a generation which is each day awakening to some
new potency of matter, some wider conception of the universe."
On the study door, checked by the sun and worn by the rain, the
tourist applied his knuckle, and a voice, formal and sonorous, called
out, "Come in!"
Opening the door, which led directly into a dark little den with only
one window, Serviss confronted Clarke reading by a green-shaded lamp,
in whose light he appeared as pallid, as remote from the sun, as a
monk of the Middle Ages.
He rose quickly upon recognizing his visitor. "I'm glad to see you,
professor; I beg your pardon for not rising. I thought the knock came
from my janitor. Take a seat, please." He gathered a handful of books
from a yellow arm-chair and pushed it forward with his foot. "Your
visit is most opportune. I was meditating a call at your hotel
to-night. I wanted to get your idea concerning two or three scientific
discoveries which seem to me to have a most important bearing on the
welfare of the race."
Serviss became each moment more keenly aware of being face to face
with a task which required all his tact, his self-possession, and his
wit, for the man before him was immured in self-conceit, accustomed to
carrying his point by a rush of words, and was, withal, a student
possessed of unusual intellectual resource. He made a very handsome
figure as he took his seat amid his books. His face, freshly shaven,
gleamed like blue-white marble, and his abundant dark hair, drawn away
from his brow by careless fingers, lay in a tumbled mass above his
ear, adding a noticeably sculptural finish to his shapely head. His
hands, thin, long, and restless, alone betrayed the excitement which
the coming of this Master of the Germ engendered in him. He was eager
to question, but he waited for his visitor to begin, which he did with
manly directness.
"I have called to talk with you about Miss Lambert. She and her mother
having honored me by asking my advice as to her study in New York, I
would like to know whether you, as their pastor, counsel this movement
on her part?"
The clergyman's sentient fingers sought, found, and closed tightly
upon a ruler. "That I cannot answer directly," he said, slowly. "Miss
Lambert's case is not simple. She is a very remarkable musician, that
you know, and yet her talent is fitful. She sometimes plays very
badly. I am not at all sure she has the temperament which will succeed
on the music-stage."
"I made a somewhat similar remark to the mother myself."
"Moreover, her interests are not the only factors in the problem. Mrs.
Lambert's life is bound up in her daughter, and without her she would
suffer. The well-being of the family as a whole is against her going."
"You have your own interests, too, I dare say."
Clarke's eyes narrowed. "What do you mean?"
"It would be difficult to replace her here in your church-work, would
it not?"
The clergyman returned to his candid manner. "It would, indeed. She is
the only organist in the village, and is invaluable to me, especially
in the Sunday-school."
"I am disposed to consider her interests, and not those of the mother
and father, or even the church," pursued Serviss. "I am of those who
recognize the rights of the young as of chief importance to the race."
Clarke seized upon this as a gage of battle. "The race! Oh, you
inexorable men of science! What do we care for the race? We would save
individuals. The race can take care of itself. The race is only an
abstraction--it cannot suffer. Of what avail to the individual to know
that the race is to be perfected a thousand years hence?"
"We wander," interposed Serviss, with decision. "The question is
really quite simple. Shall we advise the Lamberts to send their
daughter to New York to study music, or shall we counsel her to remain
here, and in marriage to some good, honest young miner resign herself
to the common lot of women. Her talent should determine."
A dull flush rose to the cheek of the preacher, his eyes fell and his
voice unconsciously softened. "Marriage is still a long way off for
Viola Lambert; she is but a child, and, besides--" He paused.
Serviss smiled. "They marry young in the West, I believe. Besides, she
must be twenty, and quite robust."
"She seems but a child to me," repeated Clarke, returning to his
clerical manner, and something in the hypocritical tone of his speech
angered and disgusted Serviss, and to himself he said: "He is a fraud.
He does not intend to let the girl pass out of his control." Then
aloud he reopened the discussion: "It all comes back to a question of
the girl's talent. If it is sufficient to enable her to earn a living
in some larger community, she has a right to go; if not, she should
certainly stay here. I believe in the largest possible life for every
human being, and Miss Lambert's ambition is a perfectly legitimate
craving. Furthermore, she seems eager to escape from this life. She
hints at some sort of mysterious persecution. She has not defined her
troubles in detail, but I inferred that some undesirable suitor made
life miserable for her." With these words he bent a keen glance at
Clarke.
"You are quite mistaken, sir. Miss Lambert has many admirers but no
suitors. I have cautioned her against entanglements of that kind. I
have shown how they would interfere with her work."
"You mean her work in your church?"
Clarke's eyes again took on the narrowed glance of suspicion. "Partly
that, but more on account of other and higher work which I hope to see
her do."
"To what do you refer?"
"Pardon me, of that I cannot at present speak; I can only say that it
is a work whose preliminary stages can be passed as well here as in
New York City--better, in fact."
"You arouse my curiosity--"
Clarke suddenly awoke from his musing and became aggressive. He
resolutely changed the subject. "Before you go I want to ask you--do
you, as a chemist, deny the immortality of the soul?"
"Chemistry does not concern itself with the soul."
"Do you, as a _man_, deny the immortality of the soul?"
"I neither deny nor affirm. I have never concerned myself with the
question."
Clarke was a little daunted. "You leave the most vital question in all
this world uninvestigated!"
"Yes, because I was long ago convinced that the problem of death, like
the origin of life, is insoluble, and why waste time on the insoluble?
To pore upon the constitution of matter is a species of mediævalism. I
am concerned with what bacteria do--not what they are."
"I deny that the question of immortality _is_ insoluble!" replied
Clarke, his eyes glowing with the fire of his faith. "It is because
you scientists ignore the phenomena of spiritism that you remain
ignorant of the messages which come from the other side."
"What other side?"
"The realm of those you call 'the dead.'" He caught up a book. "There
is the word of a German scientist, a hundred times more eminent than
you, and here are the conclusions of two great Englishmen, members of
the Royal Academy, who have investigated and have been convinced of
the return of the dead."
"I know those men," replied Serviss, coldly. "The common opinion is
that they ceased to be scientists when they wrote these volumes. All
were past their prime and bereaved, and one was nearly blind. Their
true balance of judgment was lost before they set to work on what you
call their investigations. The German was considered insane on the
'Fourth Dimension.' But what has this girl to do with your 'realm of
the dead' or my study of cancerous tissue? She belongs to the realm
of music and flowers. I beg you to remember that. You have no right to
throw over her the shadow of your religious perplexities any more than
I would have the right to lay before her my knowledge of parasitic
growths. Youth, and especially young womanhood, has its rights, and
one of them is to be blithe. You admit that you are losing faith; why
destroy hers? Your doubts and despairs should not touch her. But they
have. She is troubled and sad by reason of your attitude towards life,
and especially by your insistence upon the presence of death in the
world."
This was not precisely what Serviss had started out to say, but as he
went on a sense of being misled, a suspicion that he was playing into
the hands of the enemy, kept him from putting into words the strong
conviction which had seized him.
The preacher put his interlocked fingers behind his head, and, looking
at his visitor beneath lowered, contemptuous lids, replied: "My dear
sir, you don't know a thing of what you're talking about."
The note of patronization, the tone of superior wisdom, stung the
scientist. He felt in the clergyman's reply not merely opposition, but
insult. His very pose was an affront.
"I don't know your motives, that is perfectly true, but I can infer
them. It is due me to say that I am not in the habit of mixing in
where I am not wanted; but as Mr. and Mrs. Lambert have both asked my
advice, I shall give it. The girl is morbid and unhappy here, and I
shall tell them to send her away for a time. She has musical talent. I
shall advise them to allow her to go East to study."
The preacher's smile deepened into a sneer. "I think I understand
_your_ motives, and I shall oppose her going. What is there to
restrain a man who recognizes neither spirit nor God?"
Serviss was at first astounded, then hot at the grossness of this
insinuation, and his strong, brown hands clinched in the instinct to
punish--to retaliate--but his anger cooled to the level of words, and
he said: "This interview has more than convinced me of the justice of
Lambert's distrust of you. I shall see him again and repeat the
warning I have already given." And with these words he turned and went
out.
It was with a sense of astonishment and relief that he re-entered the
daylight, for the sunset glow was not yet out of the sky. A moment
before the world had seemed enveloped in midnight darkness, and lo!
here now were the splendid peaks, the singing river, all aglow with
golden light. The encounter of the moment before receded swiftly,
became incredible, but the preacher remained squat in his den like a
vampire in his cave.
As he went slowly up the street he acknowledged a feeling of growing
weight, of uncertainty. Having given his word in such wise, he had
become the defender, the protector of one of whom he knew nothing that
was reassuring. His youth seemed to have suddenly taken on care. His
vacation had ended in a cloud of distrust. From the detachment of the
scientist he had descended to the level of a moralist and meddler,
and, most significant of all, a meddler in the affairs of a young and
attractive girl.
VIII
DR. BRITT EXPLAINS
Serviss had just written and sealed a letter to his sister, wherein he
said, "I shall remain a few days longer here in the mountains--they
interest me greatly," when a knock on the door announced the bell-boy
bearing a card.
"Dr. Britt!" exclaimed Serviss, with pleasure. "Bring him up, please,"
and to himself added, "Now we will learn something definite about this
amazing group of people."
The manner in which Britt entered the room proclaimed a distinctive
character. He edged himself through the door, not stealthily, but
carelessly, casually. He, too, was tall, with a wide, dark beard
curling over very pink and rather plump cheeks, and in his bright
black eyes a sardonic sheen played as he loosely shook his host's
hand. His expression was that of a man perpetually amused, as if
anticipating a joke or recollecting a mockery. His voice was as
languid as his limbs, but his words were precise and to their mark.
Serviss greeted him heartily. "I am glad to meet you, Dr. Britt; take
a seat. I have heard of you through Miss Lambert."
"I saw you on the street," replied Britt, without change of
expression, "so I looked over the register to find out who you were.
I'm mighty glad to meet up with you. I know you very well by
reputation, and Weissmann is an old acquaintance of our family's. What
are you doing out here? Visiting the Lamberts?"
For some reason this directness disturbed Serviss a little. "No--oh
no! I just drifted in over the divide from the desert, and met Miss
Lambert by accident, quite by accident. I dropped into Colorow to rest
and rinse the desert dust away, before returning East. Turn about is
fair play--what are you doing here?"
Britt struck his left breast with his thumb. "Same old story--busted
lung. Whenever you strike a suspicious character out here he's either
a 'one-lunger' or a 'remittance man.'"
"That's what makes your country worth while."
"I don't know about that, but you'll find a good many of us waiting.
When you fellows develop an anti-toxin for the consumption 'bug,'
we're all going back to God's country."
"We're hot on its trail," replied Serviss, jocularly.
"I know you are. I 'read after you,' as they say out here. In fact,
I've got a little 'farm,' and take a shy at breeding the beasts
myself. I'd like you to come in and give me a hint or two."
"With pleasure," Serviss heartily responded. "So you know Weissmann?"
"I used to. My father was an attaché of the embassy at Berlin at one
time, and was a factor in getting old 'Hair and Goggles' to come
over; he was a conceited ass at that time, with more wool than brains,
the governor always said; but the governor wanted to do something for
the college."
Serviss studied the card. "Do I know your father?--is he still in
public life?"
"He is not." Britt's glance veered. "The governor, I'm sorry to say,
has a weakness for toddy, and I've retired him. He boards in White
Plains with Patsy Cline summers, and relapses winters."
Serviss changed the subject. "By-the-way, I want to ask you about this
man Clarke. What kind of a chap is he?"
Britt's answer was languid but adequate. "Three parts fakir and the
rest fanatic."
"I was afraid so--and the Lamberts, what of them?"
"Mrs. Lambert is a dear old ninny. Viola is a mighty bright girl
suffering from a well-developed case of hysteria and auto-hypnosis."
"What do you mean?" asked Serviss, sharply.
Britt checked himself. "I ought not to speak of it, I suppose, but, as
you are a stranger and can keep a professional secret, I will explain.
The mother is a spiritualist--has been for years--and, being on the
lookout for it, naturally discovered what she calls 'mediumship' in
Viola when a child. By carefully nursing the delusion in herself and
in her subject, she has been able to develop a rare 'up-rush of the
subliminal,' as Myers would say. When I came here to take Dr.
Randall's practice, I found among his papers elaborate notes on the
girl's development."
"You amaze me!" exclaimed Serviss. "She seems so normal and so
charming."
"In reality she's the most extraordinary puzzle I have ever undertaken
to solve. It seems, according to Randall, that this power came upon
her soon after the death of her little brother--a couple of years
younger than herself. I'll let you see these notes if you like.
They're very curious; in fact, I brought the book along--I wanted your
opinion of them and your advice as to the girl's treatment."
Serviss leaned forward in growing interest. "By all means let me see
the notes. You begin to throw light on something that puzzled me."
Britt drew a small brown book from his pocket and said: "Your first
thought will be to relate this business to hysteria, and one of
Randall's first entries is a reflection along these lines: 'There is
much inconclusive literature on the shelves of medical libraries on
the subject of hysteria, and many diverse ailments are thrown into
that box of explanations.'" Britt looked up. "He's right there, but he
goes on to slate the medical profession thus: 'The mind of a child,
like any other expanding, growing thing, tends to depart from the
norm--loves apparently to surprise its progenitors. Holding in its
grasp latent tendencies of all ages, of all the race, it may at any
time astound by its sudden expansion in unexpected directions, as well
as by its inexplicable failure to follow ordained grooves.'" Here
Britt paused again. "You can see the old chap was hard hit. He now
gets evolutionary. 'We are all goats, satyrs, and serpents
potentially--even from the neurologist's point of view our minds are
infinitely complex.'"
Serviss said, "All this is wise, but is it pertinent?"
"He's coming at it. 'Now, what we men of medicine call hysteria seems
to be a violent and, in a sense, unaccountable departure from the
norm, induced by the removal of some check--by some deep change in the
nervous constitution. Thus a girl suddenly refuses to eat, has
visions, shouts, and sings uncontrollably, perhaps speaks in an
unknown tongue--she is said to be hysterical. A mother, hearing of the
death of her child, begins to laugh, passes at length into a
cataleptic state, during which a child's voice sounds from her throat;
this, too, is hysteria. A man of forty-five becomes melancholy,
professes to hear music inaudible to others, develops automatic
writing, and trances in which he is able to hear distant voices, and
to read sealed letters; this, too, is hysteria. In reality, nothing is
explained.'"
"What of it?" interrupted Serviss. "Let's have the application."
"He makes his point in the next paragraph: 'In conformity with this
habit, when called in by Mrs. Lambert to study her daughter, who had
passed suddenly into deep sleep and was speaking with the voice of her
grandfather, I, with owlish gravity, pronounced her attack a case of
hysteria. "Take her on a little trip," said I. "Keep her well
nourished and out-of-doors, and she will outgrow it."'"
"Very good advice."
"So it was, but mark the sequel: '_She did not outgrow it._' He puts
this in italics. 'The power within her gained in mastery, and, what is
most singular and baffling to me, she continues to be a hearty,
healthy child in all other ways, and yet at times she seems the calm
centre of a whirlwind of invisible forces. Chairs, books, thimbles,
even the piano, move to and fro without visible pushing. Electric
snapping is heard in the carpet under her little feet, and loud
knocking comes upon the walls--'"
"Ah!" exclaimed Serviss, and recalled the knocking at his first visit,
while the girl was at the piano.
"Here he drops into italics again. '_One by one all the familiar
manifestations of the spiritualistic medium are being reproduced by
this pretty maiden here in this mountain home._'"
"Good Lord, what a pity!" exclaimed Serviss.
Britt read on: "'The mother, aggrieved and alarmed by the rude way in
which the girl is buffeted, has been put to her paces to conceal the
topsy-turvy doings of her household. Stones are hurled through the
windows, cabinets are opened by invisible and silent locksmiths, _and
I have seen these things and can offer no explanation_.'" Britt closed
the book. "Right here the old doctor lost his nerve, up to this time
he was a fairly acute observer. His next entry is evidently some weeks
or, possibly, months later. He says: 'Slowly we have learned to
understand the phenomena, but we cannot control them, and the child is
still cruelly embarrassed by intrusive tappings and cracklings as she
visits her friends or as she sits in her seat in school. She has
become afraid to sleep alone, and calls piteously for a light whenever
the noises begin.'"
"The poor child--"
"You may well say that," replied Britt. "She has told me that her time
of greatest trial comes just after the family have had their evening
meal, and while she is seated at her book; but Randall grows eloquent
in his description of what took place: 'Almost every night at seven
o'clock the obscure powers begin their uncanny and invisible riot,
ending by seizing upon the child as if to destroy her, compelling her
in the end to sleep. Then her voice, her limbs, seem at the disposal
of some invisible intelligence.' You see, the old man is weakening. He
says no more of hysteria, and nothing about taking the girl away."
"Do you mean to tell me he joined in fostering this delusion?"
"Mark his change of tone. He goes on: 'The mother, convinced by her
reading, as well as by messages in writing, believes that the spirits
of her dead are trying to communicate with her, and so sits night
after night terrified yet hoping, waiting for further instructions
from the imponderable ones.'" Britt turned a few pages rapidly.
"Listen to this. Here is the key to the old man's change of heart:
'To-night the child began to speak to me in the voice of a man.
Hoarse words rose from deep in her throat, a voice and words
impossible to her in her normal condition. The voice purported to be
my father's. It is all very singular. I do not understand how she
could know the things this voice uttered to me.' You see," said Britt,
"he has ceased to be the medical adviser." He turned a number of pages
slowly. "Well, the girl passed rapidly through these various phases,
according to Randall. She wrote messages with her left hand, wherein
her grandfather McLeod detailed the method of treating her, and
Randall was so far gone that he acquiesced. From her eleventh to her
fifteenth year she lived under this 'control.' The manifestations
increased in power and definiteness. The 'controls' at last were
three--her grandfather, her brother, and her own father. At sixteen
the most violent of the manifestations ceased, and the girl went away
to school. At this point Joe Lambert enters--he married the mother."
"How did he take these doings?"
"He seems to have been a silent and reluctant witness; the doctor only
mentions him incidentally. There are one or two pitiful letters from
the girl written while at school, detailing several embarrassing
returns of the 'spirits,' but, on the whole, she was happy. According
to the record, her vacations must have been a torment, for 'Waltie,'
that's no _Polter-geist_, seemed determined to make up for lost time.
He came every night, making life a hell for his sister. She could go
nowhere, and it was with the greatest difficulty that the mother kept
her dreadful secret."
Serviss, with darkened brow, writhed uneasily in his chair. "I have
heard of these things before now, but this is a new view of a medium's
development. I don't understand the mother's attitude."
"Randall notes that the mother was resigned and content as soon as she
was convinced of the return of her dead father and husband and son,
and at present will not think of giving up her fancied communion,
especially as the 'guides' constantly assure her that 'they' will
protect the girl. But observe the senility of this note in Randall's
diary: 'Martha comes regularly to me now, and I am happy in a renewed
sense of her companionship. Indeed, I fancy at times that I can see
her. She showed me her hands last night; I could see them plainly
against the window. I had quite a controversy with Lambert after the
sitting. "It's all bad business," he said. "I am scared when I think
of what's going to become of Viola. Here she is growing to be a big
girl, and a pretty girl, and she ought to be out in company--she ought
to be singing and dancing like other girls. She ought to marry like
other girls and be happy, and she can't be so long as these things are
going on. It isn't right."'"
"No more was it," said Serviss. "It was villainous."
"Randall was too far gone to even agree. 'But it hasn't hurt her,' I
replied; 'and, indeed, this marvellous fact resigns me to the
practice. I can't endure now the thought of being cut off from Martha
and Paul, our precious boy. It would be like shutting the door in
their faces. Besides, they are in control; we could not stop their
use of the girl if we were to try. As for me, it is now my life. I am
old. My friends, my dear ones, are all on that side. I have only a few
more days to live, and then--' Right here the old man stopped. He
lived a month or two after that, but he made no more notes, and when I
came on the scene Clarke was in control of the situation. I had no
acquaintance with the family and no personal knowledge of the case
till Lambert called one day and told me of the sittings going on in
the little cottage. He had a notion that I might be able to cure the
girl."
Serviss had listened to Britt with growing pain and indignation--pain
at thought of Viola's undoing, indignation that the mother and her
physician could so complacently join in the dark proceedings. "Of
course, you took hold of the case."
"I tried to, but Mrs. Lambert and Clarke would not admit that the girl
was in need of my care. They invited me to join the circle as a
spectator, which I did. I am still the onlooker--merely."
"You don't mean to say they are still experimenting with her?"
"You may call it that. They sit regularly two or three nights each
week. Clarke is preparing to renounce his pulpit and startle the world
by a book on 'spiritism,' as he calls his faith. The girl is his
source of thunder."
Serviss sank back into his chair and darkly pondered. "That explains a
number of very strange words and actions on the girl's part. What is
her attitude? She seemed to me extremely discontented and unhappy."
"She _is_ unhappy. She understands her situation and has moments of
rebellion. She knows that she is cut off from her rightful share in
the world of young people, and feels accursed."
"I can understand that, and several things she said to me corroborate
your analysis of her feeling. But tell me--you have attended these
sittings--what takes place--what does the girl profess to do?"
"I don't know. I can't determine Clarke's share in the hocus-pocus. It
all takes place in the dark."
"It always does. It belongs there."
"Many of the good old 'stunts' of the professional medium are
reproduced. Lights dance about, guitars are played, chairs nose about
your knees, hands are laid on your cheek, and so on."
"You don't think she is wilfully tricking?" Serviss asked this with
manifest anxiety.
"There's every inducement--darkness, deeply anxious friends. It would
not be strange if she did 'help on' now and then."
"What a deplorable thing!"
"And yet I'm not so sure that she wilfully deceives, though I have
detected her in fraud. Probably the whole thing began in some childish
disorder which threw her system out of balance. There are hundreds of
such cases in medical literature. She was 'possessed,' as of old, with
a sort of devilish 'secondary personality.' She probably wrote
treatises left-handed and upside-down. They often begin that way. The
mother, lately bereaved, was convinced of her daughter's occult
powers. She nursed the delusion, formed a circle, sat in the darkness,
petting the girl when things happened, mourning when the walls were
silent--and there you are! 'Sludge the Medium' all over again, in a
small way. Probably the girl didn't intend to deceive anybody at
first, but she was tolled along from one fakery to another, till at
last she found herself powerless in the grasp of her self-induced
coma. She is anxious to escape her slavery; she revolts, and is most
unhappy, but sees no way out. That's my present understanding of the
case. Now, what is your advice? What can I do? I am deeply interested
in the girl, but I have no authority to act."
"You shock and disgust me," said Serviss, profoundly moved. "The girl
seems too fine for such chicanery. Who is this man Clarke?"
"He was a sensational preacher in Brooklyn a few years ago, but a
hemorrhage in the pulpit cut short his career in the East. He came out
here and got better, but his wife, who had a weak heart, couldn't
stand the altitude. She died--a sacrifice to her husband. He's the
kind of a man who demands sacrifice. After his wife's death, he fairly
lived at the Lambert cottage, and is now in full control. The girl's
will is so weakened that she is but a puppet in the grasp of his
powerful personality."
Serviss was now absorbed in reconstructing his conception of Viola.
Her situation appealed to him with the greatest poignancy, but his
ability to help her seemed gone. Fair as she looked, she was to be
avoided, as one tainted with leprosy. His impression that first
afternoon had been true--she was beleaguered, if not lost.
Britt was saying: "If the girl were under age I'd appeal to the health
authorities of the state--I really would, much as I like Mrs.
Lambert--but she is of age, and, what is more to the point, Clarke has
won her love and confidence, and what can you do? He fills her
horizon, and the mother favors him. He talks to her of her daughter's
'mission to the world,' and such-like vapor, and has the girl herself
half convinced that her cataleptic states are of divine origin. I
confess I haven't felt free to make any real tests--you can't treat
her like a professional, you know--but she seems to have induced by
long practice a genuine coma, and until some clamp is applied I can't
say whether she or Clarke is the chief offender. Now what would you
do?"
Serviss burned with the heat of his anger. "Don't reveal to me any
more of this wretched business. I can't advise. If you, her physician,
and Lambert, her step-father, can't put a stop to it, what can I, a
passing stranger, do? I don't want to know anything more about it.
Why, man, it's diabolical! To warp and imprison a girl like that! To
think of that bewitching creature as a common trickster--appalls me.
And to think that good people, millions of them, believe in such
mummery! It is incredible!"
"You'd be surprised at the number of somewhat similar cases we find
among our patients. Since coming here I've gone in for a little
library of books on the subject. Every physician during his practice
comes upon one or more of these abnormal cases which, as Randall says,
we label, for convenience, '_hysteria_,' and I'm free to say that I
don't think we're at the bottom of the matter. Let's be just to this
girl. There are points in her favor."
Serviss protested. "Not another word. It's too painful."
Britt persisted. "I was merely going to say that I think there is some
basis for all this humbuggery. These mediums don't start from nothing.
They nearly all begin with some abnormality. Some submerged power
rises to the surface of their minds like a sea-serpent, and that
distinguishes them as seers. Curious friends crowd around, then the
lying begins. It's going to be worth while to take the subject up,
by-and-by. I'd do it myself if I could live in New York City." He
rose. "Well, I don't blame you for not going into this case--I wish I
were clear of it myself--but I was hoping you'd had some experience
that would help me." Thereupon the conversation shifted to other
grounds.
After Britt went out Serviss sat in brooding uneasiness over his
visitor's sad revelations. He had known Viola Lambert but three days,
and yet these revelations concerning her affected him most painfully,
quite vitally. His pleasure in her and in the mother and their pretty
home was utterly gone, and the breaking-off of this acquaintance left
an ache in his heart.
Of course he put all this on very general grounds. "I hate to lose
faith in any one. It is a shock to know that I can be so wholly
deceived by appearance. Clarke is really the one to blame in the
deception. I can't believe the girl wilfully deceives, and yet Britt
was explicit, and he seems to be a keen, dispassionate observer."
Thereupon he began to pack in order to take the early morning train
for the East. He decided not to see her again, and posted a polite
note saying he had been obliged to return to New York, and that he
regretted his inability to call.
As he stood on the rear platform of his train next day, looking back
up the cañon towards the shining crest of Colorow, he had a craven
sense of having deserted a helpless young girl in the hour of her
greatest trial.
IX
ANTHONY CLARKE, EVANGEL
Mr. Britt was right. Mrs. Lambert was very fond of Clarke--had,
indeed, quite taken him into her heart. He was at once son and
spiritual adviser, and his wishes had the force of commands. His
bereavement could not have anguished her much more keenly had Adele
been her own daughter, and this affliction still lay like a mist
between them, preventing even a foreboding of his impending confession
of desire. Her remembrance of the beauty and high character of his
wife made Viola seem doubly the child; and so when, from time to time,
some busybody hinted at the minister's marked intimacy with her
daughter, she put the covert insinuation away with a frank word--"You
mustn't even think such a thing."
Viola, too, from the very beginning of their acquaintance, had admired
the young minister quite as deeply as Serviss imagined, and had
humbled herself before Adele as to a very wonderful lady of the
mysterious outer world, whose deportment, dress, and speech had been
sources of enlightenment; and when she passed away, the land of the
shadow became just that much richer, more complete in its dominion
over her. Almost at once Adele spoke through the vale, saying, "I am
here to help and guide."
Thus all powers of earth and heaven had combined to make Clarke the
ruler of Viola Lambert's little world. He stood between her and young
Clinton Ward and all other suitors--he absorbed her thought. She
admired his gifts, and trembled beneath the power of his dark eyes,
his magnetic hands, and especially responded to the music of his deep
voice, which was very enthralling when it took on the pleading melody
of the lover. At times he filled her with such passion of vague unrest
that life became a torment, for she was of the age when the world is
for the lover's conquest, and the cadence of love's song means most
and is least understood; and yet at times she felt a fear of him which
chilled her. She was struggling, too, with growing ambitions, and with
an expanding knowledge of the world which was beginning to make her
critical--the wonder of the child was giving place to the insight of
the woman. The wish to shake off her invisible tormentors and be like
other girls was in reality a demand for the right to be loved and
valued for her own natural self, entirely free from the touch of
spectral hands.
She was disappointed that Clarke did not understand and sympathize
with this wish, but that he desired her in marriage had never once
entered her mind. He was a minister, and she reverenced his office,
and, besides, she considered herself but a girl, too ignorant and too
trivial to be the wife of one so high in holy service.
With the coming of the young professor a new force seemed entered upon
the saner side of her life. She recognized in him a master of the
great outer world--the Eastern world, the world of the unafraid--and
her determination to at least subordinate her "controls" had expanded
swiftly to a most dangerous height during the few hours of her
companionship with him. She felt that he would sympathize with
her--that he would help her. The clear positiveness of his speech, his
health, his humor, grew upon her each moment, and she resolved to
confide in him when next they met.
Part of this upspringing revolt, this antagonism, Clarke divined, and
the determination to arrest her purpose, the desire to possess her
entirely and at once, excluded every other wish or plan, and to feel
was to act with Anthony Clarke, for he was born to emotional
experience as the sparks fly upward. He had ever been a creature of
unreason, morbidly conscious of self--and naturally, for in him
struggled the blood of three races. His father was Scotch, and his
mother--Spanish on the spindle side and Irish by way of a most
mercurial father--remained an unsolved problem all her days, even to
her husband. Her laughter was as illogical as her tears. Her household
could never tell what the next hour would bring forth, so ready were
her sympathies, so instant her despairs. She lived all her life at the
heights or the depths, with never a day of serene, womanly, reasonable
action, and when she died her passing was of the same emotional
stress. She clung to earth like one whose body was about to drop into
soundless deeps.
Her son had inherited all her fervency, her inconstancy of purpose, as
well as her tendency to collapse under pressure. Physically he had
always been of slender figure, with weak lungs, and these weaknesses
he had used to free himself from work, from responsibility.
He was not a hypocrite--in that Britt was mistaken. He was by nature
deeply religious. His soul aspired, at times, to high things. He was
sympathetic to actual pain, and had always been morbidly in awe of
death. The sight of any poor, lost, and suffering man threw him into
instant, profound, and melancholy pity. A dead beetle in the road, a
fly caught in a spider's web, a young robin water-soaked and
bedraggled, appalled him, even as a boy, and he pondered them with sad
and questioning eyes long after his young companions had forgotten
them. Where had the light of their eyes fled? he asked himself. He
found no sport in killing any creature, and more than once he used all
his slender force to defend a cat from stoning; and yet he was known
to have joined the worst youths of his native town in secret
drinking-bouts, thereby acquiring the reputation of a liar and sneak,
as well as that of licentiate. At seventeen, just when the appetite
for liquor seemed beyond his control, a great "revivalist" won his
soul, as the saying went, and at twenty-three he assumed his first
pastorate.
Success as a pulpit orator was assured by the charm of his voice, the
magnetism of his manner. His head was singularly handsome, and often
when he spoke his face was irradiated like that of a seraph, and the
women of all his congregations adored him from the first glance,
embarrassing him with their ardent praises. That he had remained
faithful to his wife in spite of this adoration was evidence of her
great beauty of character. She was, indeed, his safeguard and his
hourly monitor while she lived.
For him she had sacrificed all her friends in the East. She came to
the mountains without a murmur, she bore with him, cheered him, upheld
him in a hundred ways--and when she died his world went black as
midnight. It was as if in the midst of a monster, interminable cavern
his one starlike light had gone out in his hand. For days he beat his
head against the wall, crying defiant curses against his God; but in
the end he sank into voiceless despair. Then it was, as he lay prone
and passive, that he began to hear mysterious whisperings and tappings
on the walls of his cavern of despond. He rose and listened. He groped
his way towards the dim light. He returned to the world of men. His
faith in the Scriptures was weakened; but he soon discovered a
wondrous change of heart towards those who claimed to be
intermediaries between the worlds of matter and of spirit. He turned
his attention to the study of the physical evidences of life after
death.
Up to that moment he had given but little credence to Mrs. Lambert's
half-hearted confidences concerning her own change of faith, and, as
Viola had been away at school much of the time, he had forgotten that
she was concerned in the mother's confession.
The disclosure of her powers, as he told Dr. Britt--after they were
both involved in the curious case--came violently, without warning, a
few days after Adele's death. "I was sitting with Mrs. Lambert in sad
conversation, seeking her aid and comfort. Viola occupied a low chair
beside the shaded lamp, a book upon her knee. She was listening to me.
I had just finished saying, in deeply passionate tones, 'I would give
all my hope of life for one whisper from the lips of my Adele,' when
the room began to darken. At first I thought the effect lay in my own
brain, but a moment later I perceived that the light had actually
begun to fail. We all watched it in silence for a moment, then Mrs.
Lambert remarked, 'Viola, Mary forgot to fill the lamp.'
"Even as she spoke a cool wind blew over my head and lay along my
hands. The flame leaped into the air, the room went black, save where
a pale glow coming from the street lay upon the floor. A faint
rustling arose, a hand touched my cheek, soft lips brushed my ear, and
a whisper that stopped the beating of my heart began. A vague,
inarticulate murmur, at first; but at last I plainly heard my
spirit-wife speaking in gentle reproof--'Tony, Tony, I am always with
you.'
"The whisper ceased. The hand was taken away. A deep sigh came to my
ear. My Adele was gone! The moment of ecstasy was over. I sat stunned,
inert, my brain whirling with the far-reaching import of this
experience. Before I could drag myself to my feet Mrs. Lambert,
practical and undisturbed, threw open the door and let the light of
the street in. Only then, as I looked on Viola, lying in trance with
white, set face, did I first connect her in any way with my sweet
communion with Adele.
"Then, like a flash of joyous light irradiating my soul, came the
conviction that she was the medium through whom my Adele had
spoken--that she had opened the gates of silence for me.
"I was no longer body--I was a brain suspended in some invisible sea
of force. Here was the reality of religion. Here was the answer to the
anguished cry of humanity--an answer to my prayers which the Hebrew
Scriptures could not give. There _was_ a life beyond the grave. The
spirit _did_ persist after the decay of the body. And here in this
little room, when my despair was deepest, the proof had come, blinding
me with its beauty.
"Then I said: 'Viola, you have given me the most wonderful moment of
all my life. You brought my Adele and put her hand in mine. Through
you I heard her voice again. God has chosen you for a great work; I
feel it. You should not repel these powers; your gift may mean the
most exquisite comfort to thousands--nay, millions--of bereaved
souls.'
"I was amazed at the vehement unreason of her reply. 'I don't want
it!' she cried. 'I hate it! I won't sit again!' Then I tried to
persuade her of her great mission, to no result. The following night
I came, and we pleaded with her to act again with us, but she still
passionately refused. 'Why don't they come to you or to mother,' she
complained, 'instead of to me?' To this I said: 'There is no answer.
They have made you their instrument, and it is your duty to do their
will.'
"That night the little parlor became a battle-field. Mrs. Lambert had
invoked the aid of Donald McLeod, her father, the girl's 'control.'
Viola resisted almost to the death. It seemed as if a strong hand
clutched her throat, commanding obedience. I feared she would be torn
to pieces, and at last I protested. 'She is suffering too much; let us
give over the sitting.' But Mrs. Lambert said, quietly: 'It is her own
fault. She is being punished for her obstinacy. Father is disciplining
her--he will not harm her.' In the end the power conquered, and the
girl lay back in slumber so deep, so dead, that her breath seemed
stilled forever--her hands icily inert, her face as white as marble."
"Why didn't you interfere?" asked Britt, sternly.
"How could I, when the mother and the girl's 'controls' were minded
otherwise? Besides, I began to believe in the girl's mission--I began
to understand the enormous value of her work. My God, Dr. Britt, had I
that girl's gift I would engross the world. I would write such words
across the tomb that death would seem as sweet as baby slumber. I
would make the grave a gateway to the light. I would eliminate sorrow
from the earth. The Bible no longer satisfies me. I want something
more than cold, black letters on a printed page. I want to know! I
want to thrill the world with a new message; and here, now, at my
hand, is a medium. I can never have this power--perhaps it is only
given to babes and to sucklings, but I can spread the light. You, Dr.
Britt, shall help me. Let us study this wonderful gift. Let us
concentrate our energies upon this supreme problem. I will note all
that comes to us, and I will write a burning book--a revelation that
shall go round the globe, guiding and gladdening every human soul.
Think of it! There is no mightier mission on earth. This girl can be,
and must be, made a savior, a hope-bringer, to thousands of despairing
souls!"
To this fervid appeal Britt remained impassive and coldly
critical--till, chilled and repelled, Clarke had withdrawn his
confidence. The two still met occasionally in Mrs. Lambert's home, but
their antagonism had deepened to actual hatred. Britt, impotent to
help, had long since ceased to protest, even to the girl herself; for
he had learned that every revolt on her part brought keener pain and
deeper humiliation in its train. He entered upon a study of the
subject, and thus far had found little to encourage the hope of the
girl's redemption from her maladies.
Clarke, too, had surrounded himself with every available book which
bore upon these baffling phases of human experiences, and had put
himself in touch with every society organized for the investigation of
occult phenomena--and in his dark little den brooded day and night
over the dimly apprehended laws of the unseen universe. He left his
studies only to be with Viola, who had become as necessary to him as
his daily food--as indispensable as air. She was at once his hope and
his very present help. How to keep her, how to mould her to his will,
how to use her to his great purpose of ridding the world of the fear
of death--these became his hourly care, his only interest.
To these ends he strove to enthrall her by his singing, by his
oratory, and by his love of poetry, knowing well that to drum
constantly upon the harsh string of her "mission" would revolt her;
and she, thus beset, thus beleaguered, gave over her rebellion,
resigning herself to her guides till this ruddy and powerful young man
of science came into her world to fill her with new determination to
escape from her mental slavery.
Clarke loved this girl, not as he had loved Adele, of course, but
quite as humanly. Her mediumship, so vital to the world, so sacred in
his eyes, had but added to her allurement. "All that I am, and all I
hope to be, is bound up in the possession of that sweet, wonderful
child," he said, in acknowledgment of his discovery. In a very subtle
way he now apprehended a change in the girl, and, realizing how
utterly his aims, his daily happiness, his future depended upon her,
he rose from his seat resolved not merely to advise against her going
away, but to claim her as his own--his wife.
"My wife!" At this deeply significant word Adele's pleading face rose
vividly before him. Writhing with shame before her reproachful glance,
he cried out: "But I cannot live alone! And then consider--I shall be
able to meet you each day, perhaps each hour, and as I myself develop
in grace of soul I may come to you without any medium. I am not
disloyal to you, Adele. I love this girl, I confess that; but not as I
loved you. You were my true wife, the only spouse I can ever have--you
filled my soul. My love for this girl is that of a father--a teacher.
I need her for--Oh, my Adele, I will confess, before you came back to
me through this child I was weary of the earth, ready to violently end
my anguish. Viola put your hand again in mine--she gave me to hear
your voice. I cannot bear to lose those priceless moments, and yet I
must do so if she goes from me. Am I not justified in desiring her
presence? Come to me; tell me, to-night, what you would have me do. Be
merciful, my angel spouse. Remember my empty, desolate heart. Remember
the greatness of the work I have set myself to do. Oh, my sweet
spirit, if you could only put an arm about my neck _now_, without any
other interposing soul! Come to me, whisper to me--now! Let me know
your presence here as I sit alone and despairing--"
He ceased to pray, and bowed his head upon his desk and waited in an
agony of hope--waited while the darkness deepened and the splendid
eternal song of the river proclaimed the futility and folly of man. A
cricket sang with heart-piercing cheer, as if to say, "I die
to-morrow, but I never despair." But no silken rustle, no whispering
voice came to still the agony welling in bitter sighs from the lips of
the tempted man.
X
CLARKE'S WOOING
Mrs. Lambert was face to face with a decision of almost equal
moment--was, indeed, in the midst of formulating the question which
perplexed her, in order that she might lay it before her invisible
guides for their consideration. She had just written upon a slate
these words: "Shall I take Viola and go East, or shall I send her on
alone?" when Clarke's foot was heard outside her door. Hastily hiding
the slate, she rose to meet her visitor.
He was very pale, and something in his glance made her aware that his
call was of no ordinary intent.
"Where is Viola?" he asked, abruptly.
"She has gone to the street with a friend. She will return soon."
"I am glad you are alone; I want to talk with you. I don't like the
condition of mind Viola is in to-day. The coming of this Eastern
professor seems to have stirred her to another fit of restless desire
to go away. I can't think of this, Julia; she is too precious to me to
lose. She has become a part of my very heart's blood, and I am afraid
to let her go out of my sight. She is young and very impressionable.
If she goes away into the city we may both lose her forever. The time
has come to tell you that I love her--not precisely as I loved Adele,
but deeply, passionately. I want her as my wife. I ask your consent to
tell her so--to-night. Will you give that permission?"
Mrs. Lambert gazed up at him with such fixity of surprise that the
rush of his forthright appeal weakened towards its end. She was
overwhelmed by the intensity of passion in his voice, as well as by
surprise that he, so soon after his bitter loss, could turn to
another--to her daughter, a child. And, at last, she whispered, "What
will _they_ say, Anthony?"
This question he had anticipated, and his reply was ready. "_They_
will advise it, I am sure. For does it not fit to their purpose? Does
not my great book depend on Viola's daily co-operation? I have no fear
of _their_ answer; I fear what she will say." He began to pace up and
down the room. "What, from _their_ point of view, does her musical
education signify? Think of it! She holds the key to the gates of
death. On her the hopes of millions hang. She is the most wonderful
organism in this world--so normal in all other ways, so trustworthy.
She will convince all who come into her presence; and then, have not
her 'controls' chosen me to publish their discoveries to the world? It
is ordained that we work together in this way. She must not go to New
York, that vast caldron which destroys all that is spiritual. She
should go only when closely guarded by those who love her and
understand her exquisite nature, her gifts. Some day I will take her
there. Alone she will be prevented from her grand mission, her message
lost, her faith destroyed. Can't you see she must not go?"
"I have done my best to keep her."
"I know you have," he answered, quickly; "and now you must give me
authority over her--the authority of a husband. I am willing to put
the whole matter to the test this night. She knows that I love her,
and I think she honors and respects me--perhaps she may already love
me, unworthy as I am."
The mother began now to tremble. "I don't know, Anthony; she
thought--we all understood--that you--"
"I know what you mean," he irritably exclaimed. "Why will you persist
in misreading me? I am not disloyal to Adele. Can't you see that my
devotion for her remains, and that my regard for Viola is no treason
to the dead? Adele will understand how vital, how necessary, Viola is
to me, for does she not know that I could not even communicate with
her if Viola went away? I do not love Viola as a boy loves, but as a
man who understands himself and her--as one who understands her
duties. It is a different love, but it is just as true, and it is high
and holy. Without her I would have gone mad. She saved me from
despair. Her union with me will make her an evangel to the earth-bound
millions."
Flattered as well as awed by this disclosure of her daughter's power,
the mother consented to his demand. Marriage with him would
safe-harbor Viola, would establish her in life, and would also carry
forward the work which she, too, considered of greater importance than
any other concern of her life.
"I don't know her mind, Anthony," she said, after a silence. "She
worries and puzzles me lately by her opposition to all our plans; but
I don't think she is attached to any of the young men she knows.
Still, she is not one to speak of such things. And if she consents--"
"When she comes, leave her to me," answered he, with returning
confidence. Deep in the man's egotistic soul lay the thought, "I know
why this girl is restless and uneasy--I know why she seeks afar off;
it is because she thinks me indissolubly bound to Adele. When she
finds that I love her, that I want her for my wife, she will come--her
vague rebellions will cease. Her longings will close round me--"
When the door opened and Viola stepped into the room, so tall, so
vivid, so tingling with life, the very force of his desire rendered
Clarke outwardly humble, drove him to a feigning of sadness and to the
voicing of desolate weakness. After the mother left them alone he
began speaking in a low voice with deep-dropping cadences.
"Viola, I have something important to say to you. I am much disturbed
over your renewed determination to go away. In the face of the great
work which is yours to do I do not understand how you can think of
dropping it in mid-air, so to speak, to go away on an errand which is
essentially selfish--as well as most unwise and full of danger. I
don't understand this renewal of restlessness on your part."
The girl's face was clouded, for she had just learned of Serviss's
departure and was deeply hurt. She drew the pin from her hat and
silently laid it on the table, and in this gesture was something of
the resolution of the warrior who divests himself of his cumbering
plumed helmet. "It's very simple," she curtly answered. "I want to get
away from here for a while. I can't endure my life here any longer."
"Why not? Why are you so unhappy?" he asked, with an accent of stern
reproof. "It is a beautiful land--you are among your own people, you
have your music, your work, and you are young. You ought to be happy."
"That's just it," she interrupted, quite fiercely. "It is because I am
young that I want to do something. It seems to me to-day as if I were
losing the best years of my life here in this little town, and I want
to get away. I _must_ get away!"
"Does your work with me seem of no value?" His glowing eyes sought
hers. He approached her. "Do I weary you? Am I an irritation?"
Her face softened. "No, you have helped me very much. I couldn't have
endured this life without you and my music; but this other life--these
sittings--I can't go on with them."
"Don't you feel that you must? Don't you feel their enormous
importance?"
"No, I don't! I begin to doubt myself--everybody. What have _they_
done for you, for anybody, that I should sacrifice nay whole life to
them and their wishes?"
"They brought me healing; they made Dr. Randall happy in his last
years; they are a daily solace to your mother; they will comfort
millions through our agency." He bent towards her. "Viola, my girl,
God has designed for you and me a closer union than even this. You say
I have comforted you, that I have made life happier for you. I have
come to-night to tell you that I love you, and that I want you to be
my wife."
The girl recoiled from the touch of his hand, uttering a low cry of
surprise, of question.
He went on: "Yes, I have grown to care for you beyond any other human
being. You are my staff, my stay. God sent you to my spiritual
healing. I should have gone mad but for you." He bent upon her a look
of passion and command. "You must not think of going away. You belong
to me." Her face warned him that his appeal was being misinterpreted,
and he added, quickly: "I know this comes to you abruptly, and yet you
must have felt my love, you must have read my heart."
"Not in that way," she answered, in a low voice. "I thought you--I
always understood--" The memory of his professed suffering, his
oft-expressed adoration for the dead Adele, checked her, filled her
with a storm of doubt, and she could not finish her accusation.
He caught up the thread she dropped. "I _did_ love Adele, I love her
still--a holy, mysterious love--a love you cannot understand; my
feeling for you is different, but no less high. It is the cry of a
lonely, desolate man. Come to me, Viola; do not question; follow your
heart's leadings, as I do." The light of her accusing young eyes
pierced the armor of his defence, and he fell upon his knees before
her. "I can't explain it, but it is true, Viola. I have not deceived
you. I loved her--I love her still. She is vital in my life. I was
sincere in all I said; but you are flesh and she is spirit. Don't you
see? You can comfort me--assist me, work with me as she cannot."
As he poured out his passionate plea, a sense of injury, of
disillusionment, overran the girl. She revolted from the touch of his
head against her knee. "You must not talk to me that way--you belong
to her." She pushed him away. "Get up. Go away from me. I hate you
now."
There was something so final, so convicting in her gesture of
repulsion that the man's head dropped. He covered his face and uttered
a groaning cry, and so lay silently sobbing, while she looked down at
him--woman-grown in that instant. His passion moved her to pity, not
to love, and she put him aside gently and left the room without
further word. Her master, her highest earthly guide, had fallen from
his lofty place and lay grovelling at her feet. This conception, vague
but massive, oppressed her heart, and lay upon her brain like a leaden
cap.
At the moment she, too, despaired of life and knew not where to turn
for aid.
BOOK II
I
THE MODERNISTS
The Bacteriologic Department of the Corlear Medical School stood at
this time on one of the cross-streets of the old East Side, not far
from Corlear Park. It was a large, old-fashioned brick building, worn
of threshold, and as ugly in line as a livery barn. Its entrance was
merely a gap in the wall, its windows rectangular openings to let in
the light. Not one touch of color or grace, not one dignified line
could be detected throughout its whole exterior. It was constructed
for use, not ornament.
Interiorly it was quite as utilitarian. Its halls, bare and cheerless,
echoed to the tread and were repellent as those of a barracks. The
visitor felt chilled, disappointed, as if he had been met by the
insolent servant of an indifferent hostess. It seemed the home of the
mathematical, the mechanical, the material; but this was a mistake. It
was a house of dreams. The right knock at one of those ugly doors
would permit one to step into the presence of the most cheery, the
most learned, the most imaginative of individuals--the man of germs,
poet, dreamer, and experimentalist, absorbed in the pursuit of the
unattainable, concerned with the ultimate structure of organic life,
baffled, yet toiling on for love of his work, while the sick of the
world believe in him as an angel of altruism.
The far-away rivers of the world have all been traversed and mapped,
but the streams of blood in the arteries of man are filled with the
unknown. The habits of the Esquimaux, the customs of the dwarfs of
Central Africa, the ways of the baboons of Sumatra are minutely set to
book, but the wars of the phagocytes remain indeterminate,
unexplained. With microscope to his eye the bacteriologist is now
examining the constituent parts of the blood, isolating, breeding, and
minutely studying the germs of fevers, the growths of tumors, and
other elemental forms of human parasites, in order to discover their
antagonisms, their likings; for in these jungles of the flesh the war
of races proceeds quite as in the Amazonian forests--the white cells
against the red, devouring, destroying.
The men behind these bald, bleak doors are tireless workers as well as
seers and sages. They toil (at ridiculously low salaries) in the
avowed hope of eradicating diseases. They do not pause in dismay of
the insoluble. They--or such as they--discovered the cure for
small-pox, for hydrophobia, diphtheria, and for yellow-fever. They and
their like brought chloroform to the woman in travail, and ether to
the wounded soldier. They have enormously reduced the number of those
who die on the battle-field by their antiseptic dressings, and by one
discovery after another have made infantile diseases less destructive.
They already control yellow-fever and are about to eradicate
typhoid--yet they say "our work is but begun."
Here one comes upon their dreams. Calm and contained as their words
are, their hearts are aflame with passion for the undiscovered. They
are akin to those who seek the theoretic poles of the earth, undaunted
by endless defeats. With quickening breath they watch the electrons
flame and fall, seeing the ultimate constitution of matter almost
within their grasp, and yet they do not permit their dreams to blind
or weaken them in their wearisome, hopeless quest.
They have their heroism for humanity, too. They meet death face to
face, as they pry close into the cause of decay, the secret of morbid
growth. There is more danger in certain germs than in lions.
Blood-poisoning is to the surgeon a more constant menace than hunger
to an Arctic explorer. These students never know what destroyer they
may unwittingly unloose. Cross-section of abnormal tissue is more
entrancing than a rose-leaf, a cluster of bacilli more beautiful than
a snowflake. They have gone past all creeds, these calm young men, but
they bow before the unspeakable majesty of the unknown. To them the
Hebrew Scriptures are but the tales of minstrels in the childhood of
the race, Mohammed a dreamer of baseless visions, and Christ but
incarnate love in an age of war. The Creator they conceive is too
profound to admit of any attribute. He neither thinks nor feels, and
the life that pulses at the base of the first faint cell is a part of
the same power that binds the stars to their circling suns.
Notwithstanding their daily contact with the most appalling cases of
disease and death, they come and go briskly with jocular greetings on
the stair-ways. They return to their homes each night to read, to
smoke their pipes, deporting themselves like commonplace fathers and
brothers and husbands. They even make love like other men; but,
nevertheless, they may be overtaken in muse like alchemists, subject
to fear and hope like children. To the business-man their ways are
ways of silence and sorcery. Their deep-hid convictions are at
variance with all theories of Christian redemption, and the realities
of their realm more startling than any romance of war or peace. To
them matter is as insoluble as the transforming forces which emanate
from it. They play with nerves, laying bare the beating heart of life,
forever finding, yet forever failing.
To this big, bare building, to one of these barren rooms, Morton
Serviss returned after eight weeks study of the sands and the stars
and the cave-dwellings of vanished men. From the infinitely lonely and
huge and beautiful he cloistered himself to pore upon the habits of
the infinitely small, to listen to the swarming, diminished tumult of
the protozoa. He came back, as usual, brown, alert, and
keen-eyed--eager for work, confident of some new victory, for he was
an investigator of weight and standing among the younger men of
science. On the street he was indistinguishable from other debonair
young men of good social position; in his laboratory he was a master,
absorbed, reticent, and precise of plan.
His chief, a little, gray, bent, brusque German, greeted him with
absent-minded smile, remarked briefly upon his good health, and then
they set to work. In thirty seconds he had forgotten the desert, the
face of Viola, all his energies concentrated on the segment of cancer
beneath his eye. A newly developed germ, a thousandth part the stature
of a gnat's toe, shut out the valley of the Colorow. All day he moved
among a wilderness of tubes, jars, and copper ovens, peering,
observing--and in a sense happy.
But at night, when alone with his pipe in his study, the lavender
sands, the violet peaks, the vivid saffron skies returned with power.
Viola, too, came back to bewitch him from his reading, to make his
microscopic world of shadowy substance and the smell of his laboratory
a hateful thing.
He heard nothing further of her. Britt wrote once or twice, but did
not allude to either Clarke or the Lamberts, and Serviss did not care
to ask particularly about them. It was better for him not to be
concerned further with the girl's singular history. He hated the
irregular, the pretentious. His own life, so clear, so well regulated,
made her daily performances the more monstrous. The whole had become
so foolish in retrospect that he refrained from speaking of it, even
to his sister.
It was not quite true that he saw little of New York, for his sister,
Mrs. Rice--a widow with two children--who kept his house, or, rather,
his double flat, was a social soul, and not merely went about freely,
but entertained regularly. They lived handsomely, and the world in
which they moved was crowded with duties as well as with sane
pleasures. They entertained at their table artists from Paris, savans
from Berlin, and literary lesser lights from London, and they enjoyed
all this, envying the richer and more ostentatious families of the
city as little as they despised the poor of Hester Street. The one
quality which they insisted upon in their guests was intellectual
cleverness. Perhaps they were a little severe on bores.
Their ways were quite as remote from the so-called captains of
industry as from the farmers of Jersey, and the roar of Broad Street
was so far away it reached them but as the hum of hornets outside
their window-pane. To the explorer of Tibet this life was narrow. To
the gay dinner-parties of upper Fifth Avenue it would have seemed
dull. To the wrecker of railroads on Wall Street it was indubitably
petty. To the merchant it was unprofitable, and yet they were quite
content with it, and looked out upon the bustling throngs of fashion
and the hustling world of business with equal word of good-natured
contempt.
"We can't all be biologists," Serviss was accustomed to say, "and I
suppose somebody must continue to steal and murder."
[Illustration: "VIOLA, TOO, CAME BACK TO BEWITCH HIM FROM HIS
READING"]
They came of good stock, these Servisses, and knew it and felt it.
Breeding was indicated in their well-set heads, in their shapely
hands, and especially in their handsome noses. "We are inclined to be
stubby, that's true, but we have the noses of aristocrats--they go
back to the Aryans of the Danube," said Mrs. Rice to a friend. "Morton
cannot consider a girl of questionable pedigree, no matter how rich or
charming she may be. We believe in stock--not in family, but _strain_;
a family is an accident, a strain is a formation. The Mortons and the
Servisses are _strains_. Their union in my brother will yet make
itself felt." Her confidence in his powers was absolute. "He is one of
the greatest young men of his day. Time will show," she added, as if
to clinch her argument.
The circle of their acquaintance included, first of all--and of
course--the scientific group, then in successive widening waves the
general literary and educational fraternities, the artistic and
musical sets, and finally they kept in touch with the old New York
families, their own school-mates and friends and those related. All
the details and duties of the social side of his life Morton turned
over to Kate, and such was her tact, and her skill and charm as
hostess, that her rooms of a Tuesday afternoon were filled with a
company of men and women as cheerful and as informal as they were
clever and distinguished. Among these groups Serviss moved as detached
of all responsibility as any of his guests, finding in this contact
with bright minds one of the greatest pleasures of his life.
These various circles moved afar from isms. They prided themselves on
their balance, their commonsense, their fund of comparative ideas.
True, some of the women had embraced Christian Science more or less
openly, but they did not esteem it necessary to proselyte. Political
creeds were but jocularly discussed. To advocate any special belief
was to prick one's self down a bore, although some of those in the
strictly university circles did at times become troublesomely learned
in conversation. However, this was esteemed "old fogy-ism" by the
younger men like Serviss, who alluded to "the days of the professional
monologue" with smiling contempt. Conversation with them was a means
of diversion, not of enlightenment as to any special subject.
Into these circles a thorough-going spiritualist never penetrated. To
tell the truth, these modernists did not permit the hereafter to awe
or affright them. Some of them went to church, but they did so calmly,
patiently, as to a decorous function, and some may at times have
prayed, through the medium of printed supplication, but, generally
speaking, they had reached a sort of philosophic indifference as to
the one-time burning question of heaven or hell. So far from
acquiescing in the dictum that morality was but filthy rags, they
esteemed good deeds and clean thoughts higher than any religion
whatsoever.
Mrs. Rice expressed the convictions of many of her associates by
saying, humorously: "No, I don't want to be saved. I'm not lost. I
don't know as I care for immortality. Forever is a long time--I might
get bored; anyhow, the future must take care of itself."
In all the drawing-rooms of his friends, Morton Serviss was a most
welcome guest. His frank, boyish ways, his careless dress, his freedom
from cant, his essential good-fellowship deceived the most of his
acquaintances into thinking him a mere dabbler in science, a man of
wealth amusing himself; but Weissmann, who was qualified to know,
said: "He has persistency, concentration, a keen mind, a clear eye,
and a _voonderful_ physique."
He belonged, moreover, to the men of imagination, not to those who
write books or poems, but to those who tunnel mountains, build vast
bridges, invent new motors, and play with electrical currents as if
they were ribbons. The novelist basing himself on what he knows of
human nature projects himself into the unknown, just as the scientist
who stands on the discoveries of those before him feels out into the
darkness for new stars, new forces. And yet as Clarke and his party
indignantly declared, "both novelist and scientist ignore the question
most vital to us all--the question of the soul's survival after
death"--ignore it till some loved one dies, then they, too, agonize in
secret over the mystery for a space, only to rise and go back to their
work, concealing the conviction which their hour of anguish brought to
them.
Perhaps it was not chance, but deep design, which had brought this
vigorous young investigator face to face with a mystery crying out for
solution--certainly it was not without craft that the unseen powers
had baited their hook with the almost irresistible allurement of a
young and ardent girl. If there is logic in the shadow, fate was on
Viola's side.
II
NEWS OF VIOLA
One morning in late March, while Serviss was still at his morning's
mail, Dr. Britt's card came in, bringing with it instant, vivid
recollection of Colorow. The beauty of his days there had by no means
faded from his mind, although he had succeeded in putting his romance
in the background of his working brain, and had given up all thought
of ever seeing Viola again.
He greeted Britt most cordially. "So you turned up at last! How is the
lung? Isn't this a raw time of the year for you?"
"Well, yes; but my father died a few days ago, and I had to come on,
and being near I ran in to see how you and the 'bugs' were getting
on."
"Oh, we're thriving. Their ways are quite absorbing. How is your own
'farm'?"
"All in ruins. The fact is I've neglected the poor little brutes. I
had no time for germs after I went off into the study of 'spooks.'"
"You don't tell me you've turned investigator of spirits! What have
you discovered?"
"Not a thing. It's the most elusive problem I ever tackled. You
remember the Lamberts?"
"Very well. I was about to ask about them."
"They're here now."
"Here! In New York?"
"Yes. They went to Boston last fall--Boston is a hot-bed of spookism,
as you may know. They spent the winter there among the brethren, and
have come on here for a change."
"They'll get it. What is--the girl doing?"
"Spooking mainly. That's all her 'guides' will allow her to do. Clarke
still dominates the household by the aid of the ghostly granddaddy--a
grim old chap that. They hold regular 'séances' now."
"You don't mean it!" Serviss grew graver yet of countenance. "I had
hoped they would spare her that humiliation. I haven't seen her name
in the papers."
"Oh, they don't go quite so far as that. The circles are 'very
select.' Only the priests of the faith and their friends are
invited--no admission fee--you understand?"
"I'm glad of that. It would be too bad to put that child forward in
the double rôle of fakir and money-breeder; but, tell me, have you any
fresh light on the subject of her mediumship?"
"Well, yes. I've changed my point of view slightly. I'm inclined to
think there is pretty generally some basis for the faith. The
literature of the subject is immense, and some of it is as well
authenticated as any physical treatise. I'm convinced that Miss
Lambert has no intent to deceive--she has no possible motive to do
so--but Clarke has, and yet I cannot connect him directly with the
phenomena."
"How is her health?"
"Very good, apparently. She is quite as blooming as when you saw her,
and is immensely more mature mentally."
"Is she resigned to her life?"
"Sometimes she is and sometimes not. She is very sensitive to
influences, and at times when Clarke is near she grows almost as
enthusiastic as he--at other times she bitterly complains. I tried to
free her from Clarke, but she wouldn't give me the authority
necessary."
"What do you mean by that?"
There was something both sad and mocking in Britt's face as he
answered: "I offered to marry her--wasn't that generous of me? She
spurned my humble offer, intimating that there was small choice
between me and Clarke and the spooks. No, I'll be honest, she was very
nice and kind about it, and added that perhaps Mr. Clarke was
right--her duty in the world was to 'convince people of the reality of
the forces,' or something like that. 'I shall never marry,' she added,
to soften the blow, and really she does seem a person set apart."
Serviss looked down at his book. "I suppose she imagines herself
stricken with a mortal illness. I confess I sometimes think of her in
that way. I can't understand why her parents--" He checked himself.
"Where are they stopping?"
"They're housed over near the Riverside Drive with a wild enthusiast
who has oodles and wads of money--old Simeon Pratt."
"I've heard of Simeon--Uncle Simeon the reporters call him on 'the
Street.' I remember now about his spiritualism. He had some remarkable
experiences after his wife's death--drowned, wasn't she?"
"You can't afford to be indefinite about Simeon's sorrows, doctor, for
they made him what he is. I find these believers all start in about
the same way. Simeon's wife and two daughters were lost in the English
Channel. Simeon became a believer the following Monday--or maybe it
was Tuesday."
"I recall the story of his life now. It was all very tragic. I wonder
he didn't become a maniac."
"Some people think he did," answered Britt, dryly.
"So they're with Simeon. He lives gorgeously, I'm told."
"About like a lone American guest in a twenty-franc-per-day hotel in
Paris. Why, yes, they're very comfortable there--all but the girl.
She's discontented and unhappy, if I'm any judge, and is besieged day
and night by the mourning faithful, not to speak of certain amorous
males."
This hurt, and Serviss shifted ground. "Does she keep up her music?"
Again Britt smiled, but not humorously. "She plays the harp--in the
dark."
"You mean--"
"She's taken on a lot more of the regulation tricks--materializing
flowers, slate-writing, music without hands, etc."
"You don't mean it! I can hardly associate such doings with her,"
sorrow and indignation mingled in his voice.
"I assure you I was there last night at a 'circle,' and these things
took place with Clarke as ring-master. There wasn't a particle of
originality--it was the same old mill, and the same old grist, yet I
don't hold her responsible in any harmful degree. I can't believe she
designedly tricks, but she's surrounded now by a gang of chattering,
soft-pated women, and men with bats in their belfry, who unite in
assuring her that her God-given powers must be fostered. They've cut
her off from any decent marriage--she's virtually a prisoner to their
whims. What they may induce her to do next I don't know. I'm going to
hang round here for a week or two and see." A violent fit of coughing
interrupted him. When he recovered he looked up sidewise. "Isn't this
a peach of a climate? Wouldn't you think they'd build at least one of
their big cities where microbes couldn't fatten on genius?"
"What led Clarke to consent to leaving the West? When I was there he
bitterly opposed her going."
"Oh, it's very simple. He has written a book on _The Physical Proof of
Immortality_, and, being anxious for a publisher, withdrew his
opposition to her plan, and declared himself willing to go to
Boston--at Lambert's expense."
"Is he out of the Church?"
"Absolutely. You should have heard his farewell sermon. It really was
as dramatic a speech as I ever heard. He went on to declare that the
Hebrews were not the only seers, that the wells of inspiration were
not yet dry, that revelation was waiting upon every soul to-day, and
that he had been led by sorrow to listen at the key-hole, and so on. I
trembled for the girl's secret, but he had himself in hand, and did
not betray her. No one out there knows for certain what her
abnormalities are."
"How about Lambert? Why didn't he take a hand?"
"He seemed bewildered by it all, and overawed by Clarke and the girl's
'controls.' 'It's all above timber-line for me,' he said, but he
didn't like their coming away a little bit. He was angry with Clarke
for breaking up his home, and if the girl had been his own I think he
would have stopped the business long ago. Then there was a young
fellow, Clinton Ward, who was working for Lambert, a fine young
fellow--"
"I remember him."
"Well, it seems that his father is a partner in a publishing firm in
Boston, and Clarke tried to make use of him to get his book published,
and I believe his firm is to take it. Meanwhile the young fellow is in
love with Viola, and willing to marry her and take chances, but his
family is very properly aghast. Viola, knowing this--or for some other
reason--refuses him. And there you are! The girl seems cursed on all
sides, and, worst of all, has to endure Clarke and his ravings twelve
hours of every mortal day."
"What is her relation to Clarke?" asked Serviss, hesitatingly.
"Well, now, I don't know. Sometimes I think he controls her by some
infernal hypnotic power; and then again, from some phrase of her own,
I think she considers her mind diseased, and marriage with any one
else impossible."
"I don't see how the mother can stand by and see her daughter's life
burned away."
"She, in her turn, seems enslaved to the dead. She has often told me
that her father's spirit is leading her every movement."
"That particular ghost is Clarke--don't you think?"
Britt's eyes narrowed. "I don't know. I have never been able to
connect him directly with a single one of these manifestations, and
yet he must be at the bottom of part of it."
"It all comes back, then, to the girl herself."
Britt rose uneasily. "I repeat I am completely at sea. I have studied
every line of old Randall's notes till I'm 'dopy' myself. Everything
has conspired to make the girl hysterical--to fasten some accursed
mental weakness upon her. If I could have stopped it two years ago she
might have outgrown it. Every year now makes it less easy for her to
shake it off--whatever it is."
"Atrocious!" exclaimed Serviss. "Has no one authority to act?"
Britt shrugged his shoulders. "What would you do when both
parents--the living and the dead--consent? Only a husband could
intervene, and Clarke seems to be about to claim that place. No, I see
no hope for the girl. She may be right, after all, in joining Clarke."
Serviss rose to release the emotional tension under which he had kept
his limbs. "You don't know their present plans?"
"No, only that Clarke is going to publish soon." He looked round the
room. "What a development since my time! Bacteriology and
auto-transportation are neck and neck in their amazing expansion."
Thereupon they dropped all reference to the Lamberts and their trials,
and turned their minds upon phagocytes and other ravening mites whose
likes and dislikes, minute as they are, work more devastation than
cannon.
Serviss's work was over for that day; after Britt went away he sat
idly at his desk, his mind busy with the revolting pictures called up
by what he had heard of Viola. "They are destroying a beautiful soul,"
he exclaimed, bitterly, as he recalled the charm of her face and voice
on that ride to the mine. "They are forcing a charming girl into an
abominable life, they are warping her moral fibre into ugliness and
death--and Clarke is the fanatic devil of the scheme."
The desire to see her, to talk with her, to measure the change in her
grew very strong--so strong that he meditated a call, but the thought
of Clarke cut the resolution off before it was fully formed.
"Probably Britt is right--Clarke's rotten soul has fatally infected
hers."
When Weissmann came in Serviss turned to him and said: "Doctor, I want
to ask you a very unusual question."
"Proceed," replied the old man, who spoke with a little touch of the
German now and then.
"What do you think of the claims of spiritualism?"
Weissmann did not smile as Serviss had expected. He became grave. "I
am not qualified to judge. Speaking generally, I would say there are
many phases to be considered. There are some millions of people who
believe in it--which would argue some small basis of truth to start
with. On the other hand, the extraordinary credulity of these people
is to be taken into account."
"You mean they are those bereaved and anxious to believe?"
"Precisely. Again, speaking generally, I find few things impossible in
this world of mystery. To take an old metaphor, I would not be
surprised to find a grain of wheat in all this bushel of chaff. Every
genuine phenomenon in the world stands related to every other
phenomenon, and I believe that the truth or falsity of the
spiritualistic hypothesis can be determined in accordance with
physical science. If I were young and strong like you I would devote
myself to the study of this delusion. It should be studied by one like
yourself--to whom death is no near presence; as for me, I have two
sons and one wife dead; my judgment would be vitiated therewith. You
have no dead; you would make an admirable student of these
spirit-voices and signs."
Serviss, though a little awed by the old man's unexpectedly solemn
manner, ventured further. "Have you ever witnessed any of these
unaccountable doings which Crookes and Zöllner instance?"
"I have had them in my own chamber." The old man's eyes twinkled.
"Once, as I was dozing on my bed, one morning early, a faint cloud,
like a puff of smoke, began to form above my head. It became
pendulous, reaching towards me, and out of it a hand developed and
extended. I said: 'It is an hallucination--very curious! I will touch
it and it will vanish.' I reached--I grasped the hand--_it was warm
and solid!_ I leaped from my bed with a yell." He chuckled at his
keenly remembered discomfiture.
"How do you account for it? It was an illusion, of course. You thought
the illusion only ocular--it extended to the sense of touch."
Weissmann's eyes gleamed speculatively. "We will let it go so. The
world of sense and the world of spirit curiously intermingle--as we
know."
"But these manifestations, so far as I have any knowledge, are so
foolish and childish--"
"Well, so many foolish and childish persons have gone to the other
world. Death is not the beginning of wisdom. I am an old man, Serviss,
and already many of my loved ones are dead. I should like to believe
they are still sentient, and maybe they are. I am German. The blood of
Kant is in my veins." He seemed to be speaking partly to himself. "I
do not dogmatize so gladly as I once did. As I do not know the essence
of matter, it would be folly for me to assume to fathom the depth of
spirit. The essential hopelessness of science is coming to render me
humble. Spiritualism certainly is a comfortable belief. I would gladly
embrace it if I could. I suspend judgment. This desire for another
life may be only a survival of a more unreasoning time, something we
will outgrow."
Serviss was profoundly surprised by his chief's attitude. He had
expected a large, calm, and rather contemptuous reply to his question.
In place of decision he encountered a doubt, a hesitancy, which
betrayed weakness. Rudolph Weissmann, great as he was, belonged to the
innumerable throng of the bereaved whose judgments are clouded by
passion. He, too, was growing old, his all-embracing mind had yielded
to an hallucination.
The young man's respect for his chief did not diminish, but a feeling
of sadness swept over him as he realized that another renowned and
fearless investigator was nearing the end of his great usefulness, and
that upon the clear blue steel of his intelligence the rust of age had
begun to fall. Truly the power of his early training, his worship of
Kant and his school was still vital.
Then he pondered his words. "If I were a young man like you I would
investigate this thing," and recalled that no young man of science had
ever devoted himself to it. "They all came to it late in life, after
bereavement."
The bereaved! The whole stupendous delusion seemed to rest upon the
overmastering desire of the bereaved for their beloved. The great and
good men and women among the believers (he was willing to admit there
were such) came to investigation weakened by sorrow, made illogical by
loss. They put their sane judgment, their strength, their calm
patience aside and grasped eagerly at the lying comfort extended to
them. They were not merely deceived, they developed fraud by their
blindness, by their hunger for consolation, and by their crass
credulity. He was still young enough to have inexorable theories--to
be of single-hearted loyalty to his creed. To him as a monist, the
soul (as an entity apart from the body) did not exist. Consciousness
was a physical disturbance of the higher nerve centres, and thought a
secretion of the brain. He acknowledged no line of demarcation between
the crystal and the monera--and no chasm (of course) between man and
the animals. The universe was a unit--and all its forms and forces
differentiations of one substance and that substance too mysterious to
be analyzed or named. In such a philosophy as this there could be no
room for any hypothesis which even so much as squinted towards
dualism, or that permitted a conception so childish as the persistence
of the individuality after death.
However, he did not carry his implacable principles into the homes of
his friends, and seldom permitted them to interfere with his enjoyment
of wines or good dinners, the theatre or the drawing-room. This fact,
from a cynical point of view, proved his faith to have been as truly
of his laboratory as that of a bishop, with Spencer and Darwin and
Koch and Haeckel as the founders of its articles.
He went home that night with the words of both Weissmann and Britt
intermingling in his mind, strongly tempted to tell Viola's story to
his sister, and so enlist her sympathy for the poor girl.
But it happened that an engagement to dine filled Kate's mind, and he
had no time to open the subject till they were on the way, and by that
time he had concluded not to involve her in his perplexity.
By a curious coincidence one of the guests at the dinner brought a
hush of expectancy over the entire company by relating a series of
experiences he had been privileged to share with a "psychic" some
years before. He told of his mystification with a laugh in his eyes
and with racy vigor of tongue, but Serviss, newly alive to the topic,
could not but marvel at the intensity of interest manifested by every
soul present. "Disguise it as we may," said the narrator, "this
question of the life beyond the grave is chief of all our problems. It
is the sovereign mystery, after all."
At this the hostess spoke: "I wish _we_ could see some of these
things. You make us shudder deliciously. Can't you sometime bring
this remarkable young woman--they're always women, aren't they?"
"Oh no," laughingly replied the young fellow. "One of the most amusing
'stunts' I ever saw was that of a man in Washington, who made a banjo
play behind a curtain while holding both your hands."
"Why _do_ the spirits do such foolish things? I should think they'd be
ashamed to act so 'frivolous like.'"
"They always talk like Indians, don't they? It's a pity. Why aren't
they dignified and sincere?"
The young story-teller went on. "That's just it. The mediums are so
nonchalant while causing these marvels that they fail to convince.
Why, when I was holding a slate in order that they might write upon
it, I minded the scratching no more than a clock a-ticking, they had
made me that careless of their hocus-pocus. A voice in my ear can't
make me start, and nothing, absolutely nothing, can now 'rouse my fell
of hair.' You put a potato in the ashes of the hearth and it will
ultimately pop into something to eat. You put a medium in a dark place
and she will set your soul's nerves a-tingle."
Under all this banter Serviss perceived the pulse of an interest which
laid hold on the most secret hopes and fears of the youngest and shook
the eldest with an elemental dread and longing. It was as if the
flood-gates of a sea of doubt and wonder had been turned in upon a
dozen minds hitherto as well kept as lawns. Questions popped like
corks and answers were as vivacious as the gurgle of wine, but the
topic remained indeterminate--the argument inconclusive.
On their way home, Serviss said to his sister: "Did you notice how
profound the silence became when Ralph started that discussion of the
occult?"
"It is always so."
"Is it, really? I hadn't noticed it particularly."
"That's because people are afraid to talk such things before you
scientists. Why, every woman there has been to a palmist or
mind-reader or something."
"You astonish me. Have you?"
"Of course! I go every little while just for fun. We all pretend that
we don't believe in it, but we do. I'm scared blue every time I go to
a new one--they're all such creepy creatures. The last one I went to
was positively weird."
Serviss was severe. "Kate, I am ashamed of you. To think that you, a
woman of penetration, associating with people of rare intelligence
like myself--"
"But why don't you people of rare intelligence look into these things?
Why do you leave us poor untrained emotional creatures to suffer
befoolment when you could so easily instruct us and shield us?"
"Because, while we could easily prove you befooled, you would still
follow after your saw-dust idols. We prefer to save you from your
_bodily_ infirmities and contagions, and so react on your minds."
She laughed. "That's very clever of you, and very decent. Stay with
your germs, rob us of our diseases, but leave us, oh, leave us our
delicious _thrills_!" She became grave. "The fact is, Morton, we all
have moments when we feel the presence of the dead. I do. Father and
mother never seem away off in our Graceland vault; sometimes they seem
to be in the room with me. It's all a fancy, you'll say, and very
foolish, but I believe mother actually comes to help me with Georgie
when he is ill. Sometimes in the deep of the night I thrill as if she
touched me."
He was not unsympathetic as he said: "You never hinted at this
before."
"I was afraid to do so. If mother exists somewhere, and in some
etherealized form, why can't she come back? Why couldn't her mind act
on mine and produce the sensation of her presence?"
"Perhaps it could. Only there is no proof of its ever happening."
"Now see here, Morton, so long as we are on this subject at last, I
want to ask you, do you believe mother is gone--absolutely blotted out
of existence?" She waited in tense silence, and as they passed a
street-lamp, and the light fell on his face, he seemed to have grown
suddenly pale. "Do you believe Darwin and Spencer and Victor Hugo have
gone to nothingness?"
"No, at the bottom of my heart I can't think that, and yet
theoretically I cannot conceive of the existence of any soul apart
from the body. Think of it! If mother lives, so do all the billions of
cannibals, negroes, Bushmen--you can't draw a line and say 'here
begins the immortal souls.'"
"That isn't the question. I do not believe that father and mother and
Hayward have vanished into a handful of dust, I cling to a belief in
their living selves, not because the bishop and the prayer-books say
so, but just because my own mind says so. I won't surrender them,
that's all."
"And yet a faith springing from such a desire is not well based. I
want to tell you about some people I met last summer. They will
interest you." Thereupon he pictured his first meeting with Viola. He
described the mother and Clarke. He told of his interview with Britt
and of Randall's revelations concerning Viola's life. "And now they
have convinced the girl that she should extend her sphere of influence
and bring her chicanery to bear on the metropolis."
"How do you know it is chicanery?"
"Britt said--"
"I don't care what Britt said. You found the mother sweet, and you
admit the girl is charming. I'll trust your instinct in such matters,
Mort; you've never been one to run after frumps and minxes. She had
good eyes?"
"Beautiful eyes, steady, blue-gray, wistful. She quite enchanted me at
first--"
"And you're sentimental over her still?"
"I didn't say that I was sentimental over her at any time."
"I don't care what you said. I can tell by your voice that she is a
lost, sweet dream. What do you want me to do?"
"Nothing."
"Yes, you do. You want me to see her and find out what she's doing
here. It is Kate to the rescue! I will go to-morrow."
"You are too precipitate! You might wait and get my mind."
"I have your mind already, and I believe in doing things vigorously.
Besides, you've roused my curiosity. After all these years of waiting
to see you get interested in something besides your 'bugs'!--I'm
delighted to know you're human, and that there is one woman in the
world who can make you moan. You are hit--don't deny it! You've been
brooding on that girl all this time. I've known you were hit, but I
thought I would wait till you cared to speak. I'm crazy to see her. I
shall act at once."
"It's too much to ask of you, but I hope you will consider me to the
extent--"
"If your theory is correct that girl ought to be snatched away before
the mob of occultists, freaks, and flatterers of this city utterly
spoil her. Anyhow, I'm going to look into her case on my own account."
And in this determination she snuggled into the corner of the carriage
and became silent.
Serviss found that sharing his experience with his sister had
enormously increased the weight and importance of his doubt. Viola and
her singular beleaguerment had suddenly grown to be a vital
problem--something to be immediately seized upon, and he casually
added: "It is only fair to say that the Lamberts are above the need
of taking money for any display of 'psychic force.'"
Suddenly Kate sat up. "Suppose the girl really _has_ these powers?"
"That is impossible!"
"Why impossible? Do you men of science pretend to know _all_ there is
to know?"
"Certainly not; but think what such an admission involves."
"No matter _what_ it involves. You don't ask what the X-ray involves;
you ask, first of all, is it a fact? If the girl has these powers,
then what? You don't even know what she claims, do you?"
"Not in detail."
"Well, then, don't condemn her till you know what you're condemning
her for."
"Kate, you amaze me. I thought you would commend my cool judgment, my
sanity, and lo and behold! as Aunt Celina says, you have become the
girl's advocate and the assailant of science."
"Not at all. I merely say you scientific people should not be so
insultingly sure that people with a faith are fools."
"We don't say fools--we merely say misinformed."
"Anyhow, you've interested me in this medium--"
"For Heaven's sake, don't call her that if you're going to see her. To
apply such a name to that sweet child is an outrage."
Kate's voice was exultant as she cried out: "Now I know you're in love
with her."
"Mrs. Rice, you are a very wise woman."
"I hope I shall not find you a very silly scientist," she replied,
with several implications of superiority in both words and tone.
III
BRITT COMES TO DINE
His sister's blunt words brought Morton face to face with himself. His
heart had been touched, his imagination fired by Viola, hence his
discontent, his heat of anger towards the unlovely side of her life.
It was the memory of her that had kept him half-hearted to the claims
of several comely women of his circle whom Kate had advocated.
And now his mind (which ought to have been given up entirely to
bacteria) was filled with the face and fortunes of one who was either
living a lie or suffering from an abnormally developed brain. Singular
and sad predicament for a man who had determined to move slowly and
with calm foresight. Furthermore, the whole world in which his love
lived and moved was repellent, silly, and morbid. Since his meeting
with her he had tried to read some of the journals devoted to her
faith, and had found them incredibly inane--smudgily printed, slovenly
of phrase, and filled with messages from Aristotle, Columbus, and
Confucius, which would have been discouraging in a boy of twelve years
old. The phraseology, the cant terms, nauseated him. The
advertisements of "Psychics," "World-famous Mediums," "Palmists,"
"Horologists," and only the devil himself knows what else, filled him
with disgust, added to his already poor opinion of sick humanity. Of
these Viola now formed a part--as an actress shares the envy, the
brag, the selfish, blatant struggle for success which is reflected in
the advertising columns of dramatic journals. He ran down each column
of "display ads" of _The World of Spirit_, timorously, almost
expecting to see a notice of "the marvellous psychic Miss Viola
Lambert, the mountain seeress"--and so on.
On deeper thought he found these papers shrewdly contrived to take
human beings at their weakest point, their most unguarded moment; they
had the boldness of the juggler who knows the blind spot in the eyes
of his spectators. They occupied a field apart from all other
periodicals in the world. Science, literature, and art concerned them
only so far as they touched upon, illuminated, or strengthened faith
in "the farther shore." They were as special as a trade-journal--far
more so, indeed, for the _Boot and Shoe News_ prints occasional
reviews of books, and some admirable stories may be found within its
pages side by side with notes on "Burnishers" and stitching-machines.
The accounts of circles, sittings, and "séances"--good Lord, how he
hated that word!--were almost comic, and yet to think of Viola and her
gracious mother concerned with these meetings, even as spectators,
filled him with angry disgust.
According to Britt, the girl was a self-deluded fakir at the best--at
the worst, an habitual, hysterical trickster, avid for notoriety. In
either case a tainted, leprous thing--a woman to be shunned by every
man who valued a dignified and wholesome life. It was worse than folly
to permit such a creature to break in on his work, to draw his mind
from his reading; nevertheless she continued to do both these things.
The next morning, as he was leaving the house for his office, he
stepped into the dining-room and took a seat by his sister's side.
"Kate," he said, and his voice was stern, "you must not call upon Miss
Lambert."
"Why not, Morton?"
"Because it would prove a snare to you and an embarrassment to me. She
is a singularly attractive girl. No one can face her and accuse her.
Britt says she is much more mature than when I saw her; and by that he
meant to convey that she had grown clever, if not tricky. There is a
bad streak in her, I'm afraid, for all her charm, and you would better
let her entirely alone. Upon the most charitable construction she is
hysterical, and her deception probably arises, as Britt says, from a
diseased brain. In any case she is not a fit person for you to meet."
"But you said she has good eyes?"
"She has. She is bewitchingly pretty, but that only makes her case the
more perplexing. Why trouble ourselves about her?"
"I'm going to call upon her, anyway. I'm not afraid. I am wild to see
a girl who can upset you so completely. You are upset; I can see
that."
Morton laughed, rather sadly. "That's a fine, womanly reason, and may
be sufficient for you; but, if you go, understand, Kate, it is against
my wish. I do not care to know anything more about her and her
problems; she has interfered too much with my work already."
She looked deep into his soul, then took another tack. "Well, then,
bring on this man Britt; he's the only witness for the prosecution,
isn't he? Let's have him to dinner. I want to interrogate him, as the
lawyers say. I want to know what kind of a man he is before I take his
word against a girl who rejected him. He may be only jaundiced."
"He was their family physician."
"I don't care if he was, he may be seeking revenge on the girl." She
put her arm about his neck. "You poor boy, that girl's troubles have
upset you. I'm delighted to find you so humanly romantic--at least I
would be if she weren't so questionable. But we'll find out. I'm on
her side till I know more of Britt; besides, I'm not sure that her
mysterious powers are not real," and she sent him away less keenly
concerned. With all her impulse and zeal of friendship she was a woman
of sense and power.
* * * * *
Britt came to dinner promptly, gratified for a chance to wear his
evening dress. Kate received him gladly, but was taken aback by his
languid elegance of manner. He really looked distinguished, and she
rather hastily explained, "Our dinner is only a family affair, Dr.
Britt. We wanted to have you all to ourselves."
"Nothing could be better for me, Mrs. Rice, I assure you," he
answered, gallantly. "A formal dinner would embarrass me. I've been so
long in the hills I feel like a Long Island hermit. It's a far halloo
from Colorow to the Bowery."
"It's farther still from the Bowery to Colorow. That's what makes you
Western people so interesting to us of the East."
"Please don't make me out an honored son of the West, Mrs. Rice. I was
born in New Jersey."
"Were you, indeed? Oh, I'm so sorry."
"I regret it myself. The West would have fitted me out with better
lungs."
Kate never went round when she could wade across. Therefore, no sooner
were they inhaling the savor of the soup than she began her
interrogation. "I am very much interested in occult affairs, Dr.
Britt, and my brother tells me you were the family physician of this
remarkable Miss Lambert. Tell us about her."
Britt considered a moment. "It is true that Mrs. Lambert confided in
me and permitted me to take a part in Viola's sittings; but I can
hardly be called her physician. In the first place, the girl seems so
perfectly well physically that medicine is unnecessary, and then, too,
I never had her confidence. To be plain, I think she hated the sight
of me."
"Why was that?"
He cast a curious sidewise glance. "Well, I'm not pretty to look at,
and then, I reckon she thought I was investigating her."
"I hope you were."
"I was, but I didn't get very far."
"What barred you?"
"Well, to begin with, pretty nearly everything took place in the
dark."
"It's always so," exclaimed Kate. "I wonder why?"
He shrugged his shoulders. "They all say 'light is antagonistic to the
power.' You can draw your own inference."
Morton spoke. "I never could understand why they didn't make a special
effort to avoid that criticism."
"Well, tell us what happened," cried Kate. "I'm on the edge of my
chair with interest."
Britt looked at Morton. "That's the curious thing, isn't it? People
_are_ interested. The fact is, we all secretly hope the ghost-story
may turn out to be true."
Kate laughed. "You're perfectly right. We all pooh-pooh, but we'd be
bitterly disappointed if all spirit footsteps turned out to be rats
rolling nuts. But please hurry--wasn't _any_ of it true?"
"Now, I'm going to be candid--"
At this Morton leaned forward with excess of interest, and Kate
exulted. "Good! Now it's coming. Be as candid as you can."
Britt went on musingly. "One night as I sat between Viola and the
closed piano, the spook, or whatever it was, ran up and down the
keys--now on the treble, now on the bass--keeping time to my
whistling."
Morton interrupted. "Did you _know_ that the lid was closed?"
"Yes, I laid my hand on it while the keys were drummed."
"Where was Miss Lambert?"
"Apparently at my left, sleeping. It didn't really matter where she
was, for the lid was down. When the lights were turned on she was in
deep trance--apparently. That one fact of the closed piano being
played in that way remains inexplicable."
"Was that all?" cried Kate, in a most disappointed way.
"Oh no. There were marvels to raise your hair, but that was all that I
really valued."
Morton answered quickly. "It was enough, if properly conditioned. The
theory is--I've been reading up on it--that these spook brethren of
ours attack their doubters in different ways. Knowing you to be a man
of materialistic and rather methodical habit of mind, the powers
essayed a material test. Perhaps it was a mouse?"
"Or the cat?" suggested Kate.
"They must have been musical and of exceptional intelligence, then,"
put in Britt, "for they played up and down on the key-board at my
request, and kept time to 'Yankee Doodle.'"
Kate exulted. "What do you think of that, Morton? If one is true, then
all may be true."
Britt went on. "No. Whatever the power was, it was controlled by human
intelligence. It answered to my will."
"You were convinced of that." Morton's glance was keen, keener than he
knew. "If you admit that one of these manifestations is true you open
the door for the witches."
Britt was a little nettled. "All this took place precisely as I relate
it, in the dark, of course. But one sense, that of touch, controlled
the situation--hearing took the rest."
"It all shows the inadequacy of human evidence. You must not expect
any one to believe that such a manifestation took place. It is like
the stories we hear of haunted houses. A friend of mine the other day
was telling me of a ghost that frequented an Australian bungalow where
he was visiting last year. Said he: 'I saw vases thrown from the
mantel-piece in broad daylight. I've heard invisible feet tramping all
about my chair in a vividly lighted room.' I didn't believe him, of
course. The fact is, we don't know our own capacity for being
deceived. We are each a microcosm--a summing-up of all our forebears,
and in the obscure places of our brains are the cells of cavemen,
nooks troubled by shadows and inhabited by strange noises. If you come
at me in the right way you can raise a terrifying echo deep in some
knot of my brain-cells; but it is only the echo of a far-away cry--it
is not even the cry."
Britt poised himself. "Let me tell you this. I have started in to
understand this thing. It isn't a haphazard series of deceits, of that
I am at this moment convinced. The most amazing consideration to my
mind is this: there is _system_ in their fool-tricks. I don't mean
Miss Lambert alone, I mean in all the best-authenticated
manifestations. As you say, they know how to attack the public; the
ones who don't are exposed and drop out; but, generally speaking, they
go on smoothly because they know just what can be safely attempted and
what can't. Now in Miss Lambert's case the same system appears. Her
alleged phenomena fit into the scheme, her development is according to
the spiritualistic Hoyle. No originality is permitted, hence no
failure of effect."
"And yet my brother tells me she is quite young and engaging."
"Altogether charming in body, and in every other thought most
ingenuous."
Morton interposed mockingly. "And you think she has built up this most
elaborate system of deceit?"
"Somebody has. I lay a good part of it to Clarke, but most of it to
hysteria and the suggestion of _The Flag of Truth_ and other similar
sheets."
"But she already had all these manifestations before Clarke's coming,
and presumably before she read _The Flag of Truth_."
"They say so. I don't know that. Many of the tricks are noted in
Randall's notes."
"Who was Randall?" asked Kate.
"Their family physician--my predecessor. Some of her phenomena
convinced him. He put himself on record in his notes as a convert.
However, that was after his wife died."
"They all weaken when their wives die."
"Not all; some are not anxious to bridge the gulf," answered Britt,
lightly. "I'm told Clarke's communion with his dead wife is now as
cool as friendship."
Kate faced him. "It's only fair to say, Dr. Britt, that I, too, am one
of the 'bereaved,' and that if I seem more hospitable to these
messages than my brother you will understand. My husband died two
years ago."
"I beg your pardon, Mrs. Rice, if I've seemed too harsh in my zeal to
explain--"
"Oh, I'm not one to fear the truth," she answered, quickly. "I come of
a family of questioners. It's only now and then that I waver--for a
moment. My husband said he would come back to me if he could, and I've
been half hoping--not really expecting it, you know--"
She did not complete her sentence, and Morton spoke with tender
reproach. "I am being profoundly illumined, Kate. Why didn't you tell
me that?"
"Because it was only a jocular remark. I didn't intend you should know
it. I don't know how I came to let it slip from my mouth. He has never
returned, strange to say. I feel mother, but never Hayward."
They had reached a very tender and solemn pause--so self-revealing had
been the woman's admission--and Britt was looking at his plate as his
hostess began again with assumed brightness. "Well, now, about this
girl. Can you take me to see her? She interests me beyond anything."
"Certainly. I should be delighted. But your brother knows her--she
would be pleased to see you both, I've no doubt."
"My brother thinks she is a fraud, and does not wish to see her--"
"I derive my knowledge from you, Dr. Britt."
Britt was undisturbed. "I think she is a fraud, too, but a very
charming one."
"That ought to make her all the more convincing," said Kate.
"And all the more dangerous," replied Britt. "She baffles me--when
face to face with her."
"What are they going to do with her--exhibit her to the public?"
"Not for the present. Clarke has been making notes industriously all
the year and is about ready to publish. He now wants a few of the big
fellows, like Uncle Simeon Pratt, to help boom his book. The Lamberts
are not in this for money--please give them credit for that--and as
for the mother, she is entirely honest--she believes implicitly in her
spirits."
"That puts the girl in a horrible position--if she _is_ deceiving,"
Morton interposed. "Imagine her state of mind if she realizes that her
own mother has come to rest upon her system of deceit. The thought is
horrible."
"It is quite as bad at that," returned Britt. "You see, the mother has
been for years in close daily communion--as she supposes--with her
husband, her little son, and others of her dead. Half of her daily
life is in these joys, the other half in her daughter. There stood the
wall that stopped me. I couldn't express my doubt to the mother. I
couldn't apply the clamps. I simply withdrew. I do not intend to
pursue the matter to a finish so long as the mother is alive."
Morton's face was clouded with pain. "Let us drop the Lamberts as a
subject; they are too distressing, especially as I see no way of
helping them. When do you return?"
Kate acquiesced in her brother's diversion of the stream of talk, but
an hour later, as Britt was about to go, she seized the opportunity to
say: "You must not fail to take me to see this girl. I have never been
so excited about any one in my life. Can't you take me to-morrow?"
"I am entirely at your service. Suppose I call at four--will that do?"
"Perfectly. I'm very grateful to you."
"I hope you won't come to curse me for it. I warn you, the girl is
damnably convincing. She may enamour you."
"No fear of that," she cried, in defiant brightness. "I'm not so
easily fooled."
She re-entered the library with the flush of an excited conviction in
her face. "Morton, I feel as if I had taken part in the dissection of
a human soul."
He threw up his hand with a gesture of pain and despair. "Don't! I can
only hope that girl is utterly bad. Otherwise she is the sport of
devils. Help me forget the whole uncanny business."
"You're wrong," she said, firmly. "It is just such men as you and Dr.
Weissmann who should snatch the pearl of truth from this bucket of
mental mire."
"That's a very good phrase, Kate--if only I was sure of the pearl."
There really was no way out for him. His mind utterly discredited the
phenomena Viola claimed to produce, and that left but one other
interpretation. She was a trickster and auto-hypnotist--uncanny as the
fabled women who were fair on one side but utterly foul and corrupt on
the other. In his musing her splendid, glowing, physical self drew
near, and when he looked into her sweet, clear eyes his brain reeled
with doubt of his doubt. If there were any honest eyes in the world,
she was innocent, and a tortured victim, as Kate had so quickly
decided; and his plain duty was to beat back the forces seeking to
devour her.
"The mind is an obscure kingdom subject to inexplicable revolts and
sudden confusions," he thought. "Delusions are easy to foment, and at
the last are indistinguishable from the fact, so far as the mind which
gave them being is concerned. The body of this girl is young, but her
brain may be cankered by the sins and lies of a long line of decadent
ancestry." The thought was horrible, but it was less revolting than
the alternative--in no other way could her life be explained and
excused. In any case it was highly courageous in her to put marriage
away as decisively as if it were a crime. And this she must have done,
for even Clarke, according to Britt, had thus far sued in vain. There
was a heroic strain in the girl somewhere. Was it too late to rescue
her from the mental gangrene eating its way to the very centre of her
soul? This was the question which only a renewed acquaintance, a
careful study could resolve.
IV
THE PATRON OF PSYCHICS
Up to the hour of his wife's death Simeon Pratt had been but the
business-man, large of appetite, pitiless, self-sufficient, and
self-absorbed--the type of man often described by amiable critics as
"a hard citizen, but good to his family, you know," as if the fact of
his not beating his wife were adequate excuse for railway wrecking.
He might be seen taking the 7.49 train at Eighty-sixth Street each
week-day morning with a bundle of newspapers under his arm, a man of
depending jowls and protuberant belly, who never offered any one a
seat and did not expect such courtesy from others. He was burly and
selfish as a hog, and was often so designated by work-weary women,
whom he forced to stand while he read his market reports in callous
absorption.
His associates greeted him with a nod, unsmiling and curt, and the
elevator-boys at the Pratt building were careful not to elbow him. He
had the greed of a wolf and the temper of an aging bear, and yet his
business ability admittedly commanded respect. Everything he did had a
certain sweep. He was not penurious or mean in his wars. On the
contrary, he despised the small revenges; but in a strife with his
equals he was inexorable--he pushed his adversaries to the last ditch,
and into it, remorseless as a mountain land-slide.
All the tenderness in his nature, all his faith in goodness and
virtue, he reserved for his home. To his wife (a woman of simple
tastes and native refinement) and to his children, bright and buxom
girls of twenty-odd, he was a fond and gruffly indulgent provider,
making little protest over new gowns and parties. He had no sons, and
this was a hidden sorrow to him, and had the effect of centring all
his paternal pride and care in his daughters. He could deny them
nothing when they wheedled him, and they were nearly always humorously
and brazenly trying to "work him," as he called it. Only in one
particular had he been granite. With means to build on the east side
of the Park, he had deliberately chosen the Riverside Drive in order
to show his contempt for the social climbers of upper Fifth Avenue,
and neither smiles nor tears had availed to change his plan.
His house was a dignified structure exteriorly, but within was
dominated by his taste rather than by that of his daughters, who were
quite unable to change his habits after they were once set. He refused
to consider their suggestions as to furniture. The interior was, as
Britt had said, not unlike a very ornately formal French hotel, and
this resemblance arose from the fact that he had once enjoyed a
pleasant stay in a house of this sort; and when the decorator
submitted a number of "schemes," he chose the one which made the
pleasantest impression on his mind.
With three women at the table, he habitually took charge of the
dinner, controlling the menu and the decorations as well. It amused
outsiders to see him in wordy consultation with the head-waiter and
the butler while his guest of honor vainly tried to continue some
story he had begun, but his wife suffered in silence. In short, Simeon
proceeded precisely as he would have done at a restaurant or at his
club, and his family stood clear of his elbow, the girls with sly
shrugs of their rounded shoulders, the wife meekly, but ineffectually,
protesting against his usurpation of her domain.
He was not politically ambitious, and was in a fair way to grow old as
one of the obscure millionaires of New York City when death reached a
sable hand and smote him full in the front of his pride and
assurance--his wife and daughters were lost in the sinking of a boat
off the coast of France.
The news of this disaster came to him as he sat at his desk--the
morning papers had given no hint of it. "I don't believe it," he said,
quietly, and began pressing the buttons of his desk with the same
swift calmness he would have used had the markets been going against
him. Messages flew to and fro, the wires pulsed with his imperious
anxiety. The manager of the steamboat company answered--denied. The
news was confirmed, all to the same end; and when Simeon Pratt rose
from his desk that night his jaw hung lax, his big form stooped and
shambled as though twenty additional years had suddenly been heaped
upon his shoulders. He went back to his splendid, lonely palace (where
the servants huddled and whispered and hastened) with a hard, dry knot
in his throat, and with eyes heavy and hot and tearless confronted his
ruined altar. From one to be feared he had fallen in a day to the most
desolate of beings.
Messengers pursued him. The bodies were recovered. He gave orders for
them to be shipped by the first boat. In the blaze of the electric
light, with horrid, staring eyes and stiffly moving lips, he cursed
himself and God. He cursed himself for letting his treasures go from
him, he cursed God for permitting such outrages upon justice. At last
he fell silent, but he did not sleep nor eat till the end of the
second day. Then he rose, took the 7.49 train as usual, and returned
to his desk--unshaved, with creased and crumpled clothing, a gray and
battered man, sustained by habit, seeking relief in work.
His associates, with forced cheerfulness, professed pleasure at his
return, carefully avoiding mention of his appalling loss. To those who
did speak of it he returned no word or glance. With fumbling, thick,
and nerveless fingers he took up the purple-lettered ribbon of his
trade. He fixed his dim eyes on market reports and dictated notes and
orders, but it was a poor show. Even those who hated him as a gross,
unlovely character were shocked at his shrunken form, his grayed and
grizzled cheek. When death deals a blow like that the defeated one
acquires a certain majesty.
Gradually the old man regained ability to compute and combine, and to
converse with his partners concerning the affairs of the house; but
his keen interest, his prompt decision of utterance, were all gone.
His presence in the office was the result of habit merely. In reality
he was waiting the return of the steamer which bore his precious clay.
This boat was delayed by storms, and for three days the broken
financier, unable to remain in his office, walked to and fro between
Broad Street and Bowling Green, haunting the office of the steamship
company until the bloodless manager, nervous and irritated, left his
chair to avoid him, unable to endure the sight of his haggard face and
piteous eyes.
When the boat arrived, Simeon met it with his own yacht, and, with a
return of his iron resolution, stood by to protect the graves of his
hopes as they slid across the rail. Then, ordering every soul from the
cabin, he sat down beside the caskets. He _knew_ that his loved ones
were there, and yet he could not realize it. He was filled with a
desire to prove it all a mistake, but the fear--the certainty of the
disfigured faces--deterred him.
He took them home. Nothing could have been more piercingly pathetic
than that flabby, gray old man, sitting alone amid the tawdry splendor
of his drawing-room with the remains of all he loved in this world
shut away from him by rosewood and silver. When the last pale and
shaking servant had left the room, the father gave one long, hoarse,
choking wail, and fell upon his face on the floor, crushed and utterly
despairing.
When he rose he was calmer. He began to give orders for a sumptuous
funeral, taking charge of every detail in his familiar way. The
ceremony was magnificent and profoundly affecting. Every one present
in the great church shed tears of heartfelt sorrow, pitying the great
banker, quite humanly; but he himself did not weep, he sat limply with
eyes on the floor, in a daze of internal emotion; but when the door of
the vault closed on his dead a final terrible cry burst from him, the
cry of one who realizes to the last and to the full the emptiness, the
futility of a life without love, an old age without hope.
His interest in the material world, in the war of trade, was gone. His
vast wealth would still bring him dividends, and his clerks and
partners would still consult him, still demand his signatures, but the
ones who made all these matters worth doing had vanished.
Life seemed utterly useless, a vain effort, but while yet he struggled
with the fear of death and a hate of the day, a delegation of those
who claim to hold communion with the dead came to him with a greeting
from his wife. This message contained words which startled him. He was
persuaded to seek confirmation. He was convinced and became the most
fervent of spiritualists. His form lifted, his eyes brightened. A new
world opened for him. He announced his intention to use his vast
wealth for the faith which had comforted him. He built a magnificent
temple to the unseen. He hired speakers and musicians to entertain and
instruct those who came to hear. He sought out and entertained scores
of mediums, psychics, sensitives, inspiritual speakers, and natural
healers--all were welcome at his hearth. He might have been called,
and was called, "the prey of harpies," but, as his interests now were
in these matters, and as he had the means wherewithal to amuse
himself, surely he was not a loser. True, he was many times deceived
by false prophets and wronged by fraudulent seers, but still he
enjoyed the exquisite solace which the voice of his wife unfailingly
brought when the conditions were favorable. He was no longer hopeless;
on the contrary, he was reanimated, made over in the faith of the
spirit-world. The daughters came less often to speak to him, but when
they did come they made his dark, cold heart glow with their gay
words. At times it seemed that he could reach out his hands and touch
their soft cheeks, so palpable were they, so intimate and familiar
were their voices.
Gradually a part of his old-time business shrewdness came to his aid
in these intangible matters, and he began to distinguish and to cast
out the base and parasitic prestidigitators who infested his house. He
grew discerning, and was able to weed the tares from the wheat, and
with this discernment came the conviction that it was his duty to
violently expose those who sought to cheat him. He became a terror to
the fraudulent, and by his vigorous denouncement of this and that
performer raised storms of opposition; for it seemed that no
trickster, no matter how base, was without a following. His purposes
clarified. Aided by cunning counsel, he began to conceive of himself
as one called to a great mission; and, resigned to his lot, he set
himself to the work of furthering in every possible way the reign of
the spirit-world.
It was into the hands of this shattered yet still powerful man that
Viola Lambert had been persuaded to deliver herself, and Simeon,
convinced of her powers by experiment, and charmed by her girlish
grace and dignity, had pushed all other keepers of the door of silence
from his house, thereby arousing a tempest of denunciation; for these
sibyls gave up the luxury of his table, the munificence of his purse,
only after persuasion, and in bitterness and wrath.
Viola's meeting with Pratt was brought about by Clarke, who was aware
through the special organs of the faith that the great merchant and
promoter was not merely insatiable in his thirst for new sources of
solace, but exceedingly generous with his comforters. No sooner had he
secured the girl's consent to go than he wrote to Pratt asking him to
meet them in Boston. Receiving no answer (Pratt was afflicted with
such letters), he wrote again, detailing the experiments he had made,
laying great stress upon the fact that the psychic was the daughter of
a well-to-do Western mine-owner, that she was a cultured young girl,
and that her mother (a distinguished evangel in the cause) was devoted
even to the point of submitting her daughter to a series of absolutely
convincing tests. He made mention also of his book, which was nearly
ready for the press, and which he hoped would create a great stir
among scientists.
Simeon did not answer this letter, but sent a representative to
Colorow to investigate the writer's claims. The detective returned to
say that "the parties" had gone to Boston, but that they had a fine
reputation in the region, and that the father was a rich and
well-considered citizen. "No one knows anything out o' the way with
the girl," the spy added.
Simeon now flamed with eagerness and set out to find Viola and to test
her. It was not easy to locate her, for Clarke had proceeded with
caution in Boston. After consultation with the editor of _The
Spiritist_, and at his suggestion, he had given only a few very
private sittings to a few very discreet friends. These evenings,
however, had been very successful, and those who had been permitted to
attend them had jealously guarded the jewel they had found, selfishly
urging continued secrecy. Nevertheless, the circle had spread, and
Viola, apparently resigned to her singular function, was patiently
sitting night after night in stuffy, darkened rooms, while Clarke,
vivid as ever, sonorous as ever, declaimed in passionate rhythms the
promise of a new era for spiritism to be inaugurated by the message of
"this wonderful organism." He had, indeed, laid out an elaborate
programme for the capture of Boston, but this he instantly dropped
when Simeon Pratt sent up his card and asked to see what the girl
could do. He demanded a sitting much as a dealer in horses would ask
the hostler to drive the proffered animal before him in order that he
might judge of her paces. He did not intend to offend; on the
contrary, he was instantly consumed with anxiety lest this splendid
young creature should refuse to perform.
Viola was deeply offended by his first manner and coldly said: "I am
not sitting for money, and I will not be put on exhibition for any
one."
Simeon ended by pleading with her for one sitting--one short hour; but
she refused, and he went away dejected, flabby with defeat. He
returned next day, and still a third time; and at last, to work on her
sympathies, he told her how he came to enter the faith, and with
broken voice and quivering lips displayed his sorrows.
His weakness availed. The utter tragedy of his life brought the ready
tears to Viola's eyes and quite melted her opposition. She saw him in
a new light, understood him for what he really was, a lonely, broken
old man hastening to the grave, and in her pity consented.
The manifestation which followed he reported as the most marvellous he
had ever had. "Jennie, my eldest daughter, spoke from the megaphone
for more than an hour, minutely detailing the circumstances of her
death, giving orders for the disposition of their jewels and
trinkets, and in other ways most completely satisfied me of her
identity."
He rose from this sitting exalted, comforted beyond measure,
pathetically happy, quite ready to embrace the blessed girl who had
made his hour of sweet communion possible. His home, his private car,
his yacht were all at her disposal. No queen, however powerful, could
have won such homage from him. "You must come to my home," he said. "I
will enlarge your work. I will meet every wish of your 'guides'."
With Clarke and the mother on his side, he prevailed. Viola consented
to go to New York as his guest, provided her secret powers were not
revealed. "I will not be advertised," she said. "Too many people are
coming to see me now. If you publish me I will never sit again."
This threat threw Simeon into a panic. "Of course you will remain
private. You will be my guest, the same as your mother. No one but my
own family shall know of your wonderful powers. I will see to that."
Perhaps he was honest in this promise, but his habit of entertaining
"Arabian Priestesses," "Crystal Gazers," and other women of singular
endowments was too well known to permit of the fulfilment of his
agreement. No sooner was Viola seen on the drive in his carriage than
his friends and hangers-on began to smile and say: "Simeon has a new
enchantress. I wonder who she is?" And those remarks aroused the
curiosity of the ubiquitous workers for the press. Furthermore, the
directors of the temple, of course, must needs be told, and the other
seeresses, neglected by their once-idolized patron, did not need to be
told; so that long before Serviss had a hint of her coming the news of
Viola's domestication with Simeon was widely disseminated among the
faithful, who hurried at once to meet her.
These seekers went with smiling faces and hastening feet, but they
came away laggardly, reproaching the master of the temple for a
selfish brute. Some few were admitted, stayed, and met the girl and
Clarke--for Clarke fairly divided the honors, so vivid, so picturesque
was he. He did not hesitate to speak of his great work, a work which
would astound the world, and to announce the title of his great
oration which Simeon had engaged for the temple. This was the first
big gun of his campaign, this compelling oration; but he must have
Viola's consent to the use of her name--her consent also to sit with a
group of chosen great men of the city in order to issue a defiant
challenge to science. From these special sittings he expected to
deduce the final and greatest chapter of his book.
From this public test of her power Viola still shrank, but Pratt's
wealth and power, which Clarke continually emphasized, fairly stunned
her into acquiescence. So far from being a faith of the poor, the
obscure, a faith that lurked in dark corners, avoiding the direct gaze
of men, spiritualism from the portals of a resplendent temple appeared
to be not merely respectable but triumphant. From this sacred
meeting-place of the angelic forces, from the windows of Pratt's
palatial home, she looked out upon the city with more of content with
her mission than she had ever known before--troubled only by a deeply
hidden wish to see again the man whose buoyant health and smiling eyes
had so strongly impressed her on their ride into the Marshal Basin.
But this sense of security of power did not last. As the novelty of
her position in Pratt's household wore away she found her duties
irksome. She resented the flocks of curious or melancholy visitors and
began to perceive the bitter truth--that she was only a servant, after
all, ministering to the pleasures of Pratt and his friends. She had
very little time to herself, and could not escape her masters even for
a drive in the Park--one or the other of them was always at her side.
She attempted to withdraw her consent to the use of her name, but
Clarke, the guides, even her mother, insisted on the test. Britt alone
of all her friends took the side of her fears. They were in
correspondence of a formal sort, and when he reached the city he went
straight to her, anxious to know what Clarke's plans actually were. To
him she spoke more freely than ever before, expressing her dread of
the flaring light which Clarke was about to turn upon her.
Britt listened gravely. "There is one way of escape," he said at last,
with a smile, both mocking and tender. "I don't pretend to say it's to
your mind, but want to remind you that my offer is still open. If you
give me the necessary authority I will stop this crusade with a jolt."
"I'm grateful to you, Dr. Britt, truly I am, but I can't do what you
ask--not even--" She hesitated and fell silent.
"Not even to save your life or mine. I don't blame you--I am but a
poor thing."
"I didn't mean it that way. I respect you very, very much; but you
must know Anthony depends on me, and, besides, maybe it _is_ my duty
to go on the platform. Father and grandfather both say it is. To them
it seems small and selfish of me to want to be happy in my own home
while the millions weep uncomforted; but oh, if I could only live my
own life _part_ of the time! If I could feel free of this terrible
weight one day in seven."
Britt, looking into her clear eyes, acquired a new confidence in her.
"Tell me, Miss Lambert, do you really believe that your father comes
to you in this way?"
"I dare not doubt it," she answered, with evasive eyes.
"Some of the messages are not specially--"
"I know," she acquiesced, with a shudder. "There are evil spirits as
well as good, and sometimes the bad ones come. I don't see why
grandfather permits them to use me. He says he can't always help it if
there are bad people in the circle. That is another reason why I dread
this public test--there is no knowing what the evil spirits might make
me say or do. If it did not mean so much to Anthony I would
refuse--even if grandfather asked it."
"I saw Professor Serviss to-day."
"Did you?" Her eyes were instantly alight. "Where did you see him?
Does he know we are here?"
"He didn't know till I told him. I called at his laboratory."
"Did you tell him where we are?"
"Yes; and he felt as I do, that this is not a good place for you.
Pratt has the reputation of entertaining sensational characters, and
it will be a miracle if you are not exploited to the press."
Her face clouded again. "Oh, I am so tired of having people look at me
and shrug and whisper. I am so tired of having this abnormal thing
reflected in the eyes of all my visitors. I wish I could become
commonplace--without the slightest thing queer about me. Sometimes I
feel like taking a dose of poison and ending it all."
"Don't do that," Britt replied, soberly. "You mustn't even say such a
thing. I wish I could help you, but I see no way so long as your own
parents and Clarke himself are your guides; but if at any time you
will give me the authority"--here his voice became stern--"I will see
that you are not troubled by any outside influence."
"You are very kind," she said, but her face expressed only a troubled
liking, and he pressed her hand in both of his and silently went away.
Young Clinton Ward also came seeking, boyish, eager, contemptuous of
any barrier so illusory as the fact of her trances, which she
confessed to him. Her words hardly impressed themselves on his mind,
and he replied, flippantly: "That cuts no ice with me. You couldn't be
anything I wouldn't like. You're living too close and your nerves are
sort of frazzled. What you need is a jolly good time. Come back to
Boston and forget all about this business. Come, I want folks to meet
you. My mother knows how I feel about you, and is crazy to see you."
"What would she say if she knew what I have told you?" she asked,
bitterly.
"She won't mind--after she sees you," he answered, loyally. "No one
can know you without--without--Oh, hang it, Viola, you know what I
mean. Nothing matters when you love a person. I want you, no matter
what any one says. And, besides, I don't see why you can't just chuck
the whole blooming business. I'll chuck Clarke out o' the window, if
you say the word. He's just trying to work you, and--"
"You mustn't talk that way, Clinton."
"Why not? It's true."
"Well, because--" She hesitated, then said, as if to end her own
uncertainty: "I am committed to this life--and to him. My way is
marked out, and I must walk in it."
The young fellow was hard hit. He sat looking at her with eyes of
consternation and awe. He tried to speak, but could not for a little
while; at last he made a second trial. "Do you mean--you _don't_
mean--"
"Yes, I mean--all you think I mean," she answered, and then her
fortitude failed her, and she turned away, her eyes filled with hot
tears.
He rose awkwardly, all his jaunty self-confidence gone. "I take my
medicine. It's all right. I hope you'll be happy--" He broke off with
quivering lips.
"I shall never be happy," she said, and the very calmness of her voice
went to the boy's heart. "I've given up all hope of being anything but
an instrument--a thing whose wishes do not count. Good-bye, Clint,"
and she gave her hand.
He took it and pressed it hard and went out into the street,
staggering under the weight of the revelation he had received.
Viola was fond of Clinton--his simple, wholesome, untroubled nature
appealed to her--and yet this very ingenuousness, this ready
confidence, made her own life and daily habit seem the more
forbidding. She understood now the insuperable barrier which had been
raised between herself and the careless youth of the normal world.
In this hour of depression, as in many others, her mind went out
towards Morton Serviss. Britt's mention of the young scientist's name
seemed to bring him very near, and she wondered again for the
hundredth time whether he had entirely forgotten her or not. Would he
call, now that he was informed of her presence in the city? She knew
(almost as well as if he had written it) the reason for his hasty
flight from Colorow, and with a knowledge that he considered her a
freak if not something worse she could not write to him, although she
still had his card and address.
He was a greater man in the world than when he visited their mountain
home, for he had written a book which the critics called "a great and
implacable study of diseases and their uses." She had not been able to
read it, but she treasured it, nevertheless, and longed to meet him
again, to lay her case before him, to ask his advice, not with regard
to whether she should go on with her music, but whether her life was
worth continuing--for there were times when she secretly considered
the morality of making an end of it. It was in the hope of drawing him
again to her side that she asked Clarke to include him in the list of
scientific men to whom he was planning to send a printed copy of his
oration and challenge--after their delivery--and to her mother she
said: "I would not be so nervous if I knew that Dr. Serviss were on
the committee; I know he would be just and considerate, even if he
does despise mediums."
"He's exactly the one," responded Mrs. Lambert, with enthusiasm. "I
wonder Tony hasn't spoken of him. Grandfather will be delighted, I'm
sure."
V
KATE VISITS VIOLA
Towards Simeon's portal, held sacred to "The Keepers of the Keys of
the Silent House," Kate Rice and Dr. Britt set their faces at the
appointed hour.
"The plot thickens round the girl," began Britt, with a kind of
mocking levity. "Mrs. Lambert has done it now!"
They had reached the comparative quiet of the cross-street. "What has
she done?"
"She has delivered her ewe-lamb over to this ancient wolf of Wall
Street, who will eat her up for a Little Red Riding-hood. I've been
looking into Pratt's record. He has a cheerful way, I'm told, of
treating his 'psychics' like oranges--squeezing them and throwing them
into the street. He has become so sensitive to the sneers of the
outsiders that he fears to be 'done.' After getting all that a medium
can give him, he 'exposes' her elaborately, and sets her adrift, and
so guards himself from the possible accusation of having been
deceived. If there is any question of the medium's powers, he can then
come out with a card saying: 'I knew So-and-so was a fraud. I exposed
her two years--or two months--ago.' I see the girl's finish right
here."
"The dreadful old man! Does the girl know this?"
"I don't think she does, but she ought to. I hate to see a nice girl,
who would make some one a charming wife, perverted to these unholy
uses. The crowning infamy heaped upon her head will be a full page in
the _Sunday Blast_--'Another Harpie Exposed'--and it will come, Mrs.
Rice, I am sure of it. Pratt fairly fawns before her now. She is his
princess, his seeress, his chief jewel; but woe to her if she
displeases him or fails to meet his requirements."
"You appall me, Dr. Britt. Some one should at least warn her."
"I've already done so; but with the mother, Clarke, and Pratt to war
against, the case seems hopeless. Besides, she believes in herself--up
to a certain point. She'll never degenerate into one of those frumps
who go from city to city playing to the foolish women and tack-headed
men, but she will certainly be corrupted. If she marries Clarke her
future will be woful. She has entered in so far I don't see how she
can retreat. She is bound to keep on for his sake and her mother's
sake."
"Is she in love with Clarke?"
"That I haven't been able to determine, but she is under his control,
or she wouldn't be here."
With these gloomy words in her ears Kate entered the big, cold
drawing-room to wait for the coming of the master of the house.
"Pratt is the one to whom you are to pay your first respects--he is
master," warned Britt. "Ask to see his collections--that always
pleases him. If you will permit, I will lead the way."
"I am trusting you."
"You may do so."
Pratt came in quite briskly, a heavy-faced, white-bearded man, wearing
a sack-suit and an old-fashioned turn-down collar. He greeted Britt
with a casual hand-shake, looking at Kate suspiciously. "And who is
this?" he asked, bluffly.
"A friend of mine, a Mrs. Rice, who desires to see your wonderful
collection of slates and paintings."
Pratt softened a little. "I'll be very glad to show them," he said,
"but not now. I'll have to ask you to excuse me just now. I am in
consultation with my directors."
"Certainly," said Britt, and, after Pratt went out, he added: "That
means that Clarke is going to launch his thunderbolt. He's going to
defy the scientific world in the most burning oration since Cicero."
At this moment two ladies, in superb wraps, descended the stairway on
their way to their carriages, and one of them said, "I think it's a
shame--as long as we've known Simeon Pratt--to be turned away like a
tramp!"
"Oh, I don't blame her," said the other.
"Some disappointed callers," said Britt.
A moment later several other curious ones were ushered into the
drawing-room. Britt kept up a low-toned comment. "All these
rubber-necks are here to see the girl. You will be surprised to know
how many there are with a sneaking belief in these revelations."
It was a singular situation in which to find Simeon Pratt--major-domo
to a crowd of idle curiosity-seekers--and when he returned, with an
assumption of haste and bustle, Britt saw him in a new light--that of
a poor, lonely, broken old man, weary of life, yet living on in daily
hope of communion with the dead, stuffing his heart with dreams and
delusions, walking mechanically round, interested only in death.
He had forgotten Kate's name, but he remembered her wish to see his
treasures.
"Come to my library," he said; "but first let me call your attention
to this remarkable painting."
The painting--or rather wash-drawing in black-and-white--hung over the
grand-piano in the light of the west windows. It was globular in form,
and represented, Simeon explained, the "War of Light and Darkness."
One-half of the globe was darkly shaded, curiously fretted by the
lighter half. Above sat a snow-white eagle. Beneath, with prodigious
wings outspread, and eyes gleaming like points of fire, hovered a
mysterious bat.
"Look closer," commanded Simeon.
Narrower scrutiny brought out, even in the darker half of the globe, a
multitude of intertwined forms, outlined with pen and ink. Those of
the lighter hemisphere were beautiful as angels, with faint stars in
their hair. All were singing. The others, the denizens of the dark,
were twisted and contorted in agony, and each was drawn with such
certainty of prearrangement that the line which formed the arm of one
outlined the head of another. There were hundreds of them, and the
whole work was as intricate in design as the engraving on a bank-note,
and so packed with symbolism--according to Simeon's exegesis--that one
might study it for days. "Observe," said he, "the innumerable faces
formed by the line which divides the two worlds. Take these glasses."
Kate, by means of the powerful instrument which he thrust upon her,
was able to detect hundreds of other faces invisible to the unaided
eye. "It is wonderful. Who did it?"
"A Swedish servant-girl," answered Simeon, loudly, addressing every
one in the room. "She couldn't write her name; but when the spirit of
Raphael controlled her she could do this with her eyes shut. There's
nothing like that picture in the world. It cannot be duplicated by any
artist in the flesh."
"That's no dream," murmured Britt.
Pratt hurried them on, past many other equally wonderful paintings, to
his library, and as his guests filed in he faced them. "The things I
am about to show you have no equal anywhere. They have taken years to
collect, and have cost me more than a hundred thousand dollars. I can
show you but a few."
The library was a splendid room, rich with the light of the western
sun, whose arrangement instantly struck Kate Rice as unusual, for the
book-shelves were precisely like those of a butler's pantry. They
began at about four feet from the floor and reached entirely to the
ceiling, and were filled with splendid, neglected books, while beneath
a broad shelf, at their base, were rows of little brass knobs, each of
which indicated a shallow drawer. Each drawer had a lock and a small
plate which bore a letter and a number, not unlike the cabinet of a
numismatist.
"There are but two keys in existence," explained Simeon, with shining
face. "The one I now hold and the one in my safety vaults. No one is
permitted in this room without my secretary or myself." He moved down
the room between the cabinet and the big table. "Here is a message
from Columbus." He unlocked and drew out one of the drawers and laid
it upon the table. It was exquisitely made, and contained two ordinary
hinged school-slates, with the inner sides visible, but protected by a
heavy plate of glass. "This message came to me through Angelica
Cox--under test conditions," Pratt further explained, as Kate bent
above it.
"What do you mean by test conditions?" asked Britt.
"I mean, sir, that I bought and took these slates to the medium, and
held them in my hands while that message was written." There was
irritation in his voice. He replaced the drawer. "But here is a
painting from Murillo, the great artist. He painted the face of one of
the ancients." He laid before his silent auditors another drawer which
contained a sheet of card-board on which was a fairly good pastel of
an Arab in a burnouse. It had the weak and false drawing which would
result in the attempt of an amateur to copy an engraving in color.
"This came in broad daylight while I held the clean card-board on my
head," explained Simeon.
Britt looked at Kate. "The painter might have stood on his head," he
blasphemously whispered.
And so down through that splendid room the host moved, exhibiting
letters from Napoleon, flowers from Marie Antoinette, verses from Mary
Queen of Scots, together with paternal advice from many others equally
eminent in history.
"You keep good company," ventured Kate. "Have you anything from
Shakespeare?"
"Certainly; and from Edwin Forrest and Lincoln and Grant."
"Anything from Admiral Kidd?" asked Britt.
"Or from Mary Jane Holmes?" added Kate.
Simeon looked at the jokers in silence, not quite sure whether they
intended to trap him or not. "No, I save only the words of the most
eminent persons in history, outside my own family--I have wonderful
testimony from them."
"Ah, show us those, please," cried Kate.
He hesitated, pondering Britt's face, and at last said, "I will show
you some materializations," and led the way to some cases filled with
pressed flowers. "These are from India and Tibet," he explained.
Kate was getting bored, but Britt seemed fascinated by both Pratt and
the exhibit. "To think of one human being possessing a collection like
that--painfully amassing it. It's too beautiful!"
"But the girl--ask him to let us see the girl," she urged.
"Don't hurry; he can't be turned aside from his groove."
The treasures of the drawers hinted at, Simeon proceeded to exhibit
other wonders. He possessed a coin brought from the sacred city of
Lhasa and dropped through the ceiling into a closed and sealed box.
"There is no other known to the Western Hemisphere," he said. "The
British Museum offered me a thousand pounds for it."
To his mind all these slates, pictures, and flowers were evidences of
the interest the great shades had taken in the work of converting
Simeon Pratt to the faith, and the messages were intended to steady
him in his convictions and to furnish him material with which to bring
the world to his view. The man's faith was like to madness--without
one ray of humor.
At any other time this astounding museum would have been a most
absorbing study to Kate, but she was tingling with desire to get at
the young seeress and her mother. "What must they be," she asked
herself, "to mix with this kind of idiocy?"
At last, when the favoring pause came, Britt explained to Pratt that
Mrs. Rice was the sister of one who had known Viola in the West, and
that she very much wished to see the psychic for a moment.
"I think Miss Lambert is engaged," replied Simeon, sulkily; "but I'll
see," and he led the way to a small sitting-room on the same floor.
"Stay here and I'll send your card up."
"Tell her a sister of Professor Serviss."
Simeon turned quickly. "Serviss--ain't he one of the men that Clarke
talks of having on the committee? Are you his sister?"
Kate bowed. "Yes; my brother met Miss Lambert in the West."
Pratt's face cleared. "Well, well! I will send her right down. Your
brother is the kind of man we want to reach," he added, as he went
out.
"Now, Dr. Britt," began Kate, firmly, "I want you to keep that
boresome old man occupied while I talk with these women. I don't want
him putting in his oar."
"I'll do my best," he answered, manfully, "up to the measure of
gagging him. I can't agree to order him out of the house."
Kate was on her chair's edge with interest as she heard the rustle of
skirts and the murmur of a pleasant voice, and when Viola, flushed,
smiling, beautifully gowned, entered the room with outstretched hand,
she rose with a spring, carried out of her well-planned reserve by the
warmth and charm of the girl's greeting. She closed her gloved palm
cordially on the fine hand so confidingly given. "I am glad to know
you. My brother has spoken so enthusiastically of you."
Viola's flush deepened. "Has he? I assure you we speak often of him.
I suppose he is too busy with his wonderful microbes to come and see
poor, commonplace creatures like us."
"He _is_ busy, but he only learned of your presence a few days ago."
Viola turned. "Mother, this is Mrs. Rice, Professor Serviss's sister."
Kate liked Mrs. Lambert also, for she was looking remarkably handsome
in a black gown of simple pattern. "If these are adventuresses they
are very clever in dress," was her inward comment. "I don't wonder
Morton was captivated." And she presently said: "Can't you take me to
your own room? I want to talk secrets with you."
"Yes, let us do that." Viola turned to her mother. "Let's take Mrs.
Rice to our sitting-room."
Mrs. Lambert assented timidly, with a quick glance towards Simeon, who
was garrulously declaiming to Britt concerning the wonders of another
painting by the Swedish cook.
Pratt, seeing the women rise, approached. "Where are you going?" he
asked, with a note of impatience in his voice.
"To my room," answered Viola, firmly, and led the way up-stairs in
silence; but when they were beyond earshot in the hall above she
bitterly exclaimed: "He spies on everything I do. He will hardly let
me out of his sight. I am beginning to hate him, he has so little
sense of decency."
"Viola!" warned the mother.
"I don't care," retorted the girl, defiantly. "Why do we endure
him--we are not dependent on him. He treats us precisely as if he
owned us, and I'm tired of it. I wish papa would come on and take us
home."
"He may be a bore, but he houses you like royalty," Kate remarked, as
she glanced about the suite which Viola and her mother occupied. It
formed the entire eastern end of the third floor of the house, and the
decorations were Empire throughout, with stately canopied beds and a
most luxurious bath-room.
"Oh yes, it's beautiful; but I would rather be this minute in our
little log-cabin in the West," answered the girl, with wistful
sadness. "Oh, these warm days make me homesick. When I was there I
hated it, now I long to get back. I seem five years older--this winter
has been terribly long to me."
"Well, now, lock the door," exclaimed Kate, excitedly, "and tell me
all about yourself. Start at the very beginning. Dr. Britt has told me
something, but I want to know everything. When did you first know you
had this power? That's the first question."
Mrs. Lambert began in the tone of one retelling an old story. "Up till
the day my little son Walter died, Viola was just like any other girl
of her age--healthy and pretty--a very pretty child."
"I can believe it." Kate's eyes dwelt admiringly on the girl.
"My husband and I were good Presbyterians, and I had never given much
thought to spirits or spiritualism, but after our little boy died
Robert began to study up, and every time we went to the city he'd go
to see a psychic, and that troubled me. As a good church-member I
thought he ought not to do it, and so one day I said, 'Robert, I think
you ought to tell Mr. McLane'--that was our minister--'what you are
doing. It isn't right to visit mediums and go to church, too--one or
the other ought to be given up.' He said--I remember his exact words:
'I can't live without these messages of comfort from my boy. They say
he is going to manifest himself soon--here in our own home.' I
remember that was his exact expression, for I wondered what it was to
manifest. That very night things began."
Kate's eyes snapped. "What things?"
"Well, Waltie had a little chair that he liked--a little reed
rocking-chair--and my husband always kept this chair close by where he
sat reading. That night I saw the chair begin to rock all by
itself--and yet, some way, it didn't scare me. 'Robert, did you move
Waltie's chair?' I asked. 'No,' he said. 'Why?' 'Because it rocked.'
Robert threw down his book and looked at the chair. 'Viola must have
moved it,' he said. 'Viola was in her own little chair on the other
side of the table,' I said. 'It must have been the cat, then.'
"And then, just while we both looked at it, it began to move again
exactly as if Waltie were in it. It creaked, too, as it used to when
he rocked."
"I should have been frightened stiff," exclaimed Kate, whose eyes were
beginning to widen.
"Nothing that has happened since has given me such a turn. Robert
jumped up and felt all about the chair, sure that Viola had tied a
string to it--and still she was no child for tricks. Then Robert bent
right down over the chair, and it stopped for a moment, and then slid
backward under the table, just as our own boy used to do. He loved to
play tent. Robert looked up at me as white as the dead. 'It is Waltie,
mother; he has come back to us,' he said, and I believed it, too."
In spite of herself, Kate shivered with a keen, complete comprehension
of the thrilling joy and terror of that moment, but Viola sat
listlessly waiting the end of her mother's explanation. Plainly, it
was all a wearisome story to her.
Mrs. Lambert went on: "After that he came every night, and soon the
tappings began, and finally we got into communication with my father,
who told us to be patient and wait and Waltie would speak to us. Then
the power took hold of Viola and frightened her almost into fits."
The girl visibly shuddered and her eyes fell.
"How did it begin?" asked Kate, breathless with interest.
"The first we noticed was that her left arm began to twitch so that
she couldn't control it. Then she took to writing with her left hand,
exactly like my father's hand-writing. She could write twenty
different kinds of writing before she was twelve. These messages were
all signed, and all said that she was to be a great medium. Then
began the strangest doings. My thimbles would be stolen and hidden,
vases would tumble off the mantels, chairs would rock. It was just
pandemonium there some nights. They used to break things and pound on
the doors; then all of a sudden these doings stopped and Viola went
into deathly trances. I shall never forget that first night. We
thought she was dead. We couldn't see her breathe, and her hands and
feet were like ice."
The girl rose, her face gray and rigid. "Don't mother, don't!" she
whispered. "_They are here!_" She shook her head and cried out as if
to the air: "No, no, not now! No, no!"
The mother spoke. "She is being entranced. Some one has a message for
you, Mrs. Rice?"
For the first time, Kate had a suspicion of both mother and daughter.
This action of the girl seemed a thought too opportune and much too
theatric. Now that her splendid eyes were clouded she lost confidence
in her, and as she waited she grew cold with a kind of disgust and
fear of what was to follow.
The mother gently sided with her daughter against the control, and,
taking both her hands, said, quietly: "Not now, father, not now." But
in vain. The girl sank back into her chair rigid. "They have something
they insist on saying, Mrs. Rice," said Mrs. Lambert, after a silence.
"Is it some one for Mrs. Rice?" Three loud snapping sounds came from
the carpet under Viola's feet.
"Good gracious! What is that?" exclaimed Kate, a cold tremor passing
up her spine.
"It is my father," answered Mrs. Lambert, quite placidly. "Can't you
write, father? Be easy on Viola to-day.--He is very anxious to
converse with you for some reason, Mrs. Rice."
Again a creeping thrill made Kate's hair rise, and she bit her
finger-tip. "Am I dreaming?" she asked herself, as she listened to the
mother talking to the air, only to be answered by rappings from the
table and thumpings from the chairs. "How absurd, how childish it all
is!" she thought.
Even as this thought passed through her mind, the room seemed to
darken, the air to thicken. The girl's proud young body sank, doubled
till she seemed a crone, old and withered and jocose; a sneering laugh
came from her drawn lips; her hands, trembling together, hookedly
reached towards Kate; the eyes were sunk lidless and gleaming with
malice; a voice that was like the croak of a raven sounded forth: "You
got my money, Kit--but you didn't get it all." And from the young,
distorted lips a disgusting laugh issued, a laugh that froze Kate's
blood and stiffened her tongue so that she could not cry out. She
gasped and sank back into her chair, while the voice went on: "You
know me. I always hated you--you wasted my money--you poisoned my
pets--I hated your husband--he cheated me once--you'll get no joy of
my money till you pay that debt."
Kate, inert, aghast, sat blindly staring while this vindictive,
remorseless voice went on; only when it stopped was she aware of the
mother's serene attitude of waiting, of polite regret at being present
at a disagreeable scene; then the girl's lips resumed their sweetness,
the beautiful hands fell slack upon her knees, the head lifted and,
turning, rested peacefully against the cushion of her chair. The table
was violently shaken. A small ornament upon it leaped into the air and
fell in Kate's lap. She sprang to her feet with a cry of alarm,
shaking the thing away as if it were a toad, and was about to flee
when Mrs. Lambert's voice struck her into immobility, so unconcerned
was it, so utterly matter of fact.
"Did you know the spirit visitor?" she asked.
With the question Kate's panic ceased. Her awe, her fright, passed
into wonder and amazement.
"It was exactly like my great-aunt," she gaspingly admitted. "But, oh,
it was terrible! Why _do_ you let her go into such states?"
"We cannot control these manifestations. Hush! They are not yet
finished. They are about to write for you."
Still lying in languid ease, the girl lifted one hand to the table--to
Kate it seemed that the hand was raised by some outside invisible
power--and there it rested, as though weary and meditating. As it
paused thus the girl's eyes opened, and she sat regarding it as though
it belonged to some other intruding self. Mrs. Lambert brought a
pencil and a pad of paper, and laid them upon the stand.
Suddenly the hand woke to vigorous action. Seizing the pencil as a dog
might lay hold upon a bone, it began to write slowly, firmly, while
Viola watched it, quietly, detachedly, as if it were something
entirely separate from her brain. At the end it tore the leaf from the
pad and flung it to the floor.
Mrs. Lambert picked it up. "It is from father," she said; "but it is
for you."
Kate took the leaf, on which was written, in a firm, round,
old-fashioned hand, these words: "Your aunt is here, and asks that you
and your brother pay her debt. She is angry because it has not been
done."
"I have no knowledge of any such debt," said Kate. "I don't understand
this."
The hand was writing again, busily, imperturbably, and the color was
coming back into Viola's face. As Kate waited, her awe began to pass,
and doubts came thronging back upon her. There was something farcical
in all this.
Again the hand flung its message, and again the mother picked it from
the floor.
"This also is from father," she announced, with more of excitement
than she had hitherto betrayed.
The message began abruptly: "The doubter may be convinced if he will
but put himself in the way of it. The life of my granddaughter is more
valuable to-day than that of any king or queen. Her mission is to open
the door between the two worlds. She is here ready for the test. Let
the men of science come to her and be convinced of the life beyond
the grave." It was signed with an elaborate rubric "McLeod."
"Who is this message for, father?" asked Mrs. Lambert. "Mrs. Rice?"
A violent thump answered "No."
"Maybe it's for my brother," suggested Kate.
Three tremendous thumps upon the underside of the table gave
affirmative answer.
Kate was quite restored to her ruddy self. "Very well, I will see that
he gets it."
Viola now spoke wearily, but quite in her natural voice again. "There
is no test in that kind of a message. I didn't write it--I had nothing
to do with it; but you or Professor Serviss would be justified in
thinking I did. Grandpa wanted me to go into a trance. This kind of
writing is a compromise."
"But what of my aunt who spoke through you?" asked Kate.
Viola stared at her blankly, and her mother laid a warning hand on
Kate's arm. "She knows nothing of these impersonations," she said.
"What did I do?" asked Viola. "I hope nothing ridiculous."
"Mrs. Rice's aunt spoke through you, that's all," answered Mrs.
Lambert, reassuringly.
"Tell me more," said Kate, eagerly. "It is all so unreal to me--I want
to see more. Dr. Britt has told us wonderful things of you. Do you
really believe the dead speak to you?"
"They are with us all the time," placidly, yet decisively, answered
Mrs. Lambert. "We are never alone. I can feel them always near."
Kate shrank. "I don't believe I like that--altogether. Don't you feel
oppressed by the thought?"
"Yes, I do," answered Viola; "they take all the joy out of my life."
"Dearest!" warned the mother.
"It is true, and I want Mrs. Rice to know it. Since I was ten years
old I have not been free of the thing for a day--only in the high
mountains. There I could always draw a long breath. I am glad you've
come, Mrs. Rice. I want you to ask Professor Serviss to come and
investigate me. My only hope is in the men of science. Tell him I want
him to help me understand myself." She was speaking now with force and
heat. "I want him to padlock me and nail me down. I want to know
whether I am in the hands of friends or enemies. Sometimes I think
devils are playing with me. All my life I've been tortured by these
powers; even at school they came banging about my bed, scaring my
room-mates. They disgraced me before my teacher, the one I loved best.
They interfered with my music, they cut me off from my friends, and
now they've landed me here in this strange house with this dreadful
old man, and I want some one, some good man who knows, some one who is
not afraid, to come and test me. Mamma never doubts, Mr. Clarke is
entirely satisfied, and this Mr. Pratt is worse than all. I don't
believe in his pictures, I don't believe in what I do--I don't know
what I believe," she ended, despairingly; then added, fiercely: "This
I _do_ know, I want to be free from it--free, free--absolutely free. I
pray to God to release me, but He does not, and my slavery grows worse
every day."
The girl's intensity of utterance thrilled Kate to the heart. Here was
the cry of a tortured soul, the appeal of one in bondage. Dr. Britt
was right, she was a victim.
"You poor thing. I begin to understand. _I_ will help you, and so will
my brother. He is already interested in you. He is just the one to
advise with you. If any one can help you he can. He is so keen-eyed,
so strong."
"I know he is. Have him come soon, won't you?"
The mother interposed. "But, dearie, you know Mr. Clarke says--"
"I know what he says," the girl answered, her face sullen and weary
again. "He and all of you have no regard for me. You pretend to have,
but you are all willing to sacrifice me to prove a theory. I don't
care whether spiritualism is true or not, I want to have one single
day when I can be sure of being myself, free to come and go like other
girls. I feel as if I had a band of iron around my neck. I shall go
mad with it some day."
Kate, usually ready, blunt, and fearless, sat in silence, perfectly
convinced by the fury of the girl's protest, stunned by a belief in
the complete truth of her indignant accusations. These devotees, these
fanatics, were immolating a beautiful young life on the altar of
their own selfish faith. The virgin was already bound to the rock, and
the priest, torch in hand, was about to apply the flame.
"What can _I_ do? I want to help you--"
An imperious knock at the door interrupted her, and for an instant
Kate thought this another spirit message, but Mrs. Lambert called out,
"Is that you, Anthony?"
A deep voice answered, "Yes, it is I. I have something to tell you."
Clarke opened the door and stepped within, a handsome, dark,
theatrical figure.
Mrs. Lambert rose to meet him. "What is it, Anthony?"
"We've decided on the date. I am to speak on the second," he answered
exultantly.
Viola started up. "You shall not use my name. I forbid it!" Her hands
were clinched, her eyes blazed with the fury of her determination, and
she struck her heel upon the floor. "I tell you I forbid it!"
Clarke pushed Mrs. Lambert aside and strode to the centre of the room;
his face was hard, his tone contemptuous. "You forbid it! What is your
puny will against the invisible ones? You forbid it?" His voice
changed as he asked, "Who has influenced you to _this_ childish
revolt?" He turned to Kate. "Have you, madam?"
Kate Rice was not one to be outfaced. "If I have, I shall be most
happy," she answered. "Who are you that demand so much of this poor
girl?"
"I am the one chosen by her 'control' to convey their message to the
world."
Kate recoiled a little. "Oh, you are? Well, I don't care if you are.
You have no right to use her name in this way without her consent."
"Her consent! What she desires or what I desire is of small account.
We are both in the grasp of the invisible forces, making for the
happiness of the race. She can't refuse to go on. It is her duty.
There are millions of other women to sing, to dance, to amuse
men--there is only one Viola Lambert in the world. Nothing in the
annals of the occult exceeds her wonderful mediumship. She _must_ give
herself to the world of science. She _must_ help us to prevail over
the terrors of the grave. Her mission is magnificent. Her fame will
fill the earth."
Kate stoutly confronted him. "Perhaps the fame you give her will
destroy her. It sounds to me like notoriety rather than fame. This
poor child has a right to herself, and I will help her assert it."
Clarke's eloquent hand fell to his side. Something in Kate's calm,
matter-of-fact speech reached his shrewder self. He perceived here no
mean antagonist. "You need not take the trouble, madam. I am guarding
her. _They_ are guarding her."
It was plain that both Mrs. Lambert and her daughter were profoundly
in obedience if not in terror of this wild young evangel, and Kate, to
test her divination, said, "Suppose she refuses?"
"She dare not refuse. Her 'control' would cut her down where she
stands. She has no choice where they are concerned. The hands are upon
her this moment," he ended, triumphantly.
A shudder of despair went over the girl. "It's true; I feel them
here." She touched her throat. "They are all against me--the living
and the dead," and she fell into her chair with a moan of despair, her
beauty, her shining garments adding to the pity of her fate. Kate's
heart went out to her without reservation as she knelt beside her.
"I am for you, my dear, and so is my brother; we will help you, I give
you my word. Be brave. You must see Morton and Dr. Weissmann. They
will know what to do."
Viola turned upon her mother with a wail of supplication. "Take me
home, mother, take me home!"
Mrs. Lambert herself was weeping now. "I dare not, dearie, not till
_they_ consent. Be patient--they have promised to release you after
this test."
Over the girl's face a stony rigidity spread, her eyelids drooped, her
head rolled from side to side, a pitiful, moaning cry came from her
pinched lips, and then, at last, drawing a long, peaceful sigh, she
slept.
Kate, in terror, stood watching, waiting till the lines of struggle,
of pain, smoothed out, and the girl, doubly beautiful in her
resignation, lay like one adorned for the angel of death. Then Clarke
said, solemnly: "She has ceased to struggle. She is in good hands, in
the care of those who love her and understand her; when she wakes she
will be newly consecrated to her great work. Come."
Kate, awed and helpless, permitted him to lead her from the room, but
when fairly outside she turned upon him fiercely: "Don't touch me. I
despise you. You are all crazy, a set of fanatics, and you'd sacrifice
that poor girl without a pang. But you sha'n't do it, I tell you--you
sha'n't do it!"
And with that defiant phrase she swept past him down to the street,
forgetting Dr. Britt in her frenzy of indignation and defeat.
VI
SERVISS LISTENS SHREWDLY
Meanwhile Morton, with an armful of the publications of "The Society
for Psychical Research" before him, was busied with the arguments of
the spiritists and their bearings on Viola Lambert's case.
The thing claimed--that the dead spoke through her--he could not for a
moment entertain. Such a claim was opposed to all sound thinking, to
every law known to science--was, in short, preposterous.
He had acquired all the prejudices against such a faith from Emerson's
famous phrase, "rat-hole philosophy," down to the latest sneer in the
editorial columns of _The Pillar_, to the latest "exposé" in _The
Blast_. Upon the most charitable construction, those who believed in
rappings, planchettes, materialized forms, ghosts, messages on slates,
and all the rest of the amazing catalogue, were either half-baked
thinkers, intellectual perverts, or soft-pated sentimentalists, whose
judgment was momentarily clouded by the passing of a grief.
"And yet," said one author, "go a little deeper and you will find in
the very absurdities of these phenomena a possible argument for their
truth. A manufactured system would be careful to avoid putting
forward as evidence a thing so childish and so ludicrous as a spirit
tipping a table, writing in a bottle, or speaking through a tin horn.
Who but a childlike and trusting soul would expect to convince a man
of science of the immortality of the soul by causing a message from
his grandfather to appear in red letters on his arm? The hit-or-miss
character of all these phenomena, the very silliness and stupidity
which you find in the appeal, may be taken as evidence of the
sincerity of the psychic."
To this Morton took exception. "I don't see that. There has never been
a religion too gross, too fallacious, to fail of followers. Remember
the sacred bull of Egypt and the snake-dance of the Hopi. The whole
theory, as Spencer says, is a survival of a more primitive life and
religion."
Finding himself alone with Weissmann during the afternoon, he said,
carelessly:
"If you were called upon to prove the falsity or demonstrate the truth
of the spiritualistic faith--how would you set to work?"
Weissmann was a delicious picture as he stood facing his young
colleague. He was dressed to go home, and was topped by a low-crowned,
broad-brimmed, black hat, set rather far back on his head, and
floating like a shallop on the curling wave of his grizzled hair. His
eyebrows, gray, with two black tufts near the nose, resembled the
antennæ of a moth. His loose coat, his baggy trousers, and a huge
umbrella finished the picture. He was a veritable German professor--a
figure worthy of _Die Fliegende Blätter_.
"I can't say exactly," he replied, thoughtfully. "In general I would
bring to bear as many senses as possible. I would see, I would hear, I
would touch. I would make electricity my watch-dog. I would make
matter my trap."
"But how?"
"That, circumstances would determine. My plan would develop to fit the
cases. I would begin with the simplest of the phenomena."
"Do you know Meyers's book?"
"Bah! No."
"And yet they say it is a careful and scientific study."
"They say! Who say?"
Serviss smiled. "The spiritualists." Then lightly added: "What would
you and the rest of the scientific world do to me if I should go into
this investigation and come out converted?"
The old man's eyes twinkled and his mustache writhed in silent
enjoyment. "Burn you alive, as we did Bent and Zöllner."
"Of course you would. What you really want me to do is to go in and
smash the whole thing, eh?"
"That's about it."
"Clarke, that crazy preacher, said we men of science were just as
dogmatic in our way as the bishops, and I begin to think he's right.
We condemn without investigation--we play the heretic, just as they
did. Could you--could any man--go into this thing and not lose
standing among his fellows?"
"No." The old figure straightened, and his mustache bristled sternly.
"No; he who goes into this arena invites a kind of martyrdom--that is
also why I say you, a _young_ man--you might live to see your
vindication, but I would die in my disgrace as Zöllner did."
So they parted, Serviss admiring his chief's blunt honesty and vast
learning, Weissmann busy with the thought that his eyes were failing,
and his work nearly done, "and so little accomplished," he sadly
added.
Kate met her brother at the door in a kind of fury. "Something must be
done for that girl. I have had a perfectly nerve-racking time. We must
get her out of that house before they drive her crazy."
The sincerity of her rage froze the smile on his face. "Is it as bad
as that?"
"It is as bad as you can imagine. That man Clarke has some kind of
baneful influence over her. He seems able to control her by just
waving his hand at her. And the mother is such a dear old silly--she
trusts to him completely. But go and dress and we will talk it all
over. I'm all of a-tremble yet with what I've seen. I feel as if I had
been to an insane asylum and witnessed a strangling."
He went away to his room, deeply perturbed, resentful of all this
ill-regulated human nature which could so upset his sane sister and
come between his own mind and his work. He believed in orderly and
humorous human life. Why should this teasing, tormenting girl from the
mountains come with her trances and tricks to make life furious and
antic where it had been amusing and accountable? To what would a
closer acquaintance lead? What would become of his studies if he gave
himself to her case? "To disillusionment, I sincerely hope," he said.
As he joined his sister at dinner, he began, "Well, now, sis, I'll
listen."
Kate had lost a little of her excitement under the influence of her
toilet-table, but she was still tense and flushed, as she hesitated,
her heart overflowing with sisterly admiration, so handsome, so
strong, and so very established did Morton appear at the moment. His
tone still further calmed and reassured her, and she began:
"In the first place, I like the girl very much; she is very pretty and
much more _au fait_ than you had led me to suppose. Her manner is
extremely good. The mother is dear and sweet, but deluded. Clarke and
that old man Pratt ought to be in an asylum--or the calaboose."
Morton laughed harshly. "Your succinct statement puts me in complete
possession of the case. They're all fakirs together."
"No, I didn't mean that. They're all fanatics. You should see the
spirit-paintings and the slate-writings in that house! It was like a
journey to a far country. Really, Morton, it staggers belief to think
that within twenty blocks of where we sit such a man and such a home
can exist. They _do_ exist, and it only makes me realize how small a
part of the city we know, after all. And some things I heard there
to-day make me wonder if science _isn't_ shutting its eyes--as these
people say--to a world right under its nose. Morton, those people
_believe_ what they talk. That girl is honest; she may be
self-deceived, but her sufferings are real. I can't believe that she
is wicked."
"Weissmann practically advised me to go into a study of these morbid
conditions."
"He did? Well, that from Rudolph Weissmann, after what I've _seen_
to-day, unsettles my reason. Maybe those people really have a message.
But, Morton, you really must do something for that girl. Her condition
is pitiful. One of the plans of that lunatic Clarke is to issue a
challenge to the world of science and to throw that girl into the
arena for you scientists to tear."
Morton started--stared. "No! Not a public challenge."
"Isn't it pitiful? Yes, he's going to speak on the second of next
month at the Spirit Temple, and he's going to publicly describe
Viola's powers, and, as her manager, challenge the world to prove her
false."
As Morton's mind flashed over the consequences of this challenge, his
face paled. "Good God, what an ordeal! But the girl, does she
consent?"
"She does and she doesn't. As a sweet, nice child she shrinks from it;
but as a 'psychic,' as they call her, she has no choice. These inner
forces seem able to take her by the throat any minute. They seized
her while I was there. Morton, she impersonated Aunt Dosia, and
delivered the most vindictive message--she scared me blue. You never
saw anything more dramatic--more awful."
"What was the message?"
"Something about a debt she wanted us to pay. She was furious about
it. I don't know of any debt; do you?"
"No. How did the message come?"
As Kate described it, the impersonation grew grotesque, lost much of
its power to horrify, and Morton, though he writhed at thought of the
girl's depravity, blamed the mother and Clarke for it. Kate made end
by saying: "It _was_ horrible to see, and it startled me. Then the
other messages, those written ones, came through her hand--"
"Automatic writing, they call it. That has no value--none whatever.
The whole programme was arranged for your benefit."
"No, it wasn't. The girl was carried out of herself. She is somehow
enslaved by Clarke, and she wants help. She wants to be investigated;
but she wants it done privately. She wants you to do it. She begs you
to do it."
"Begs me?" His eyebrows lifted.
"Yes, she passionately desires your advice. The poor thing made an
appeal that would have touched your heart. She wants to be cured of
this horrid thing--whatever it is. She wants to escape from Pratt and
Clarke and all the rest of those queer people. You must take it up,
Morton. _You_ must make up a committee and take charge of her."
"Clarke is mad. No reputable man of science will go on such a
committee. The girl will fall into the hands of notoriety-seekers--men
of position do not meddle with such questions."
Kate flared forth. "Why don't they? It is their duty just as much as
it is Viola's duty to offer herself. That is where I lose patience
with you men of science. Why _don't_ you meet these people half-way?
Women wouldn't be such bigots--such cowards. If you don't help this
poor girl I'll consider you a bigot and coward with the rest."
"Your whole position is most feminine," said Morton, arguing as much
against himself as against Kate. "You've only seen this girl once--you
have witnessed only one of her performances, and yet you are ready to
champion her before the world. I wish you'd tell me how you arrived at
a conviction of her honesty. Think of it! She assumes to be the
mouth-piece of the dead. The very assumption is a discredit."
"I don't care; she has good, honest, sweet eyes."
"I bow to the force of the eyes, but over against her claim I put the
denials of science. The phenomena these fanatics base their hopes upon
science has already proven to be tricks, illusions, deceits."
"I don't care, her story, her own attitude towards the thing,
convinced me that she is _honest_."
"It's the rogue who looks like a gentleman who runs the longest race."
"Well," ended Kate, rather helplessly, "see her--see her before you
condemn her."
"But I _have_ seen her--I've spent more days in her company than you
have hours."
Kate looked at him with new interest. "You didn't tell me that before.
You said you'd met her casually."
"She is enormously interesting, but"--his voice changed to earnest
protest--"but, Kate, the thing the girl claims to be is out of key
with all organized human knowledge. It is a survival of the past. It
belongs to a world of dreams and portents. It is of a piece with the
old crone's tales, fortune-telling, palmistry, and all the rest of the
hodge-podge or hocus-pocus which makes up the world of the unlearned.
I've given a great deal of thought to her fate. My heart bleeds for
her, but what can I do? She really needs the care of a great
physician, like Tolman. She should be snatched from her unwholesome
surroundings and sent away to Europe or back to her hills. When I saw
her last she was as sweet and blithe as a bobolink--we were on the
trail together, so far above the miasma of humankind that her girlhood
seemed uncontaminated by any death-affrighted soul. Why don't she go
back? She is vigorous and experienced in travel. Her step-father is
not poor; he is rich. Why don't she pull away and go back to her
valley?"
"Do you know what a 'control' is?"
"I believe that is the name they give the particular spirits which
assume to advise and guide a medium. Why?"
"Well, that poor thing is in mortal terror of her 'control,' who is
her grandfather. She was quite defiant till Clarke reminded her that
her guide would cut her down in her tracks if she refused. Then she
wilted--went right off into death-like sleep. It was pitiful to see
her. Clarke was terrible when he said it--he is a regular Svengali, I
believe, and the mother is completely dominated by him. One of the
spooks is her own father, the other her first husband. It seems that
they are willing to sacrifice the girl to _their_ science, for it
seems they are leagued to dig a hole through to us from their side,
and Viola is their avenue of communication. Then, too, the girl
believes in it all. She rebels at times, but she has been having these
trances ever since she was ten years old." As the memory of the
mother's tale freshened, Kate changed her tone. "You needn't tell me,
Morton Serviss, that these people are frauds. They may be mistaken,
but they're horribly in earnest. They believe in those spirits as you
do in germs, and Viola is absolutely helpless in their hands, if you
can say they have hands. They can throw her into a trance at any
moment. They've made her life a misery. She is absolutely enslaved to
them."
"That, too, could be a delusion--medical science is full of cases of
auto-hypnotism."
"Viola Lambert is not a medical case. It's astonishing what a
blooming beauty she is in the midst of it all. In fact, her health
gives Clarke and the mother an argument--they say 'it hasn't hurt her,
you see.' But what future has the poor girl? Think of going through
life in that way!"
Morton's eyes were sad as he said: "Her future is a dark one, from our
point of view, but she may be earning a crown to be given in the land
of shadows. She is beautiful, but it is the beauty of a blighted
flower."
Kate regarded him with affectionate eyes. "I don't wonder that she has
bewitched you, Morton. She can never be anything to you, of course.
But we must help her, just the same, and I confess I am crazy to see
one of her 'performances,' as you call them." Her face lightened. "How
would it do to invite them to dinner and have a séance afterwards? You
could judge then of her truth."
"Sacrifice her to make _our_ holiday, eh? Kate, I thought better of
you than that. Isn't that precisely the poor girl's complaint that
everybody wants to use her as a sort of telephone connection with the
other world? No. If you invite her here, receive her as a lady, not as
a pervert. But, now, let us see. You say Clarke is going to issue his
challenge soon?"
"On the second."
"And that she has consented?"
"Consented? Poor thing, she has no choice."
"If he issues that challenge, she is lost." His brows knitted. "To
defy the world of science in that way will make her fair game for
every charlatan in the city. The press will unite to destroy her. I
will see Clarke and Pratt myself. For the sake of their own cause they
must not enter on such a foolish plan. Unless this life has already
eaten deep into the essential purity of the girl's nature, she will be
corrupted. This public-test business will drive her into all kinds of
artifices and shifts. Her exposure will be swift and sure. Yes, I will
see Clarke. If necessary I will undertake to secure a purely private
investigation of her claims--"
Kate rose and came round to his chair. "Will you? Oh, that will be
good of you, Mort. I can't begin to tell you how that girl's face has
worked on me to-day. I feel that it would be criminal in you not to do
something when she expects it of you. She looks to us to save her. She
passionately desires your help. Go over there to-morrow. Don't delay;
they may issue that challenge any minute. Clarke was angry and alarmed
at my attitude, and may send out the notice to-night. Do go, Morton.
You can't afford to stand on ceremony when a soul is in danger."
He rose. "Very well, I will go; but I never embarked on an enterprise
that seemed more dangerous, more futile. My heart says go, but my
reason is against it."
"Follow your heart in this instance."
"If I did that wholly, I would go straight to this dragon's den and
snatch the fair maiden home to my castle."
"That would be romantic, but a little too daring, even for my
enthusiasm."
"You may be reassured. No one really follows the heart in these
days--at least, those who do land in jail Of the almshouse."
As he lit his cigar he observed that his hand trembled. For the first
time in his life his nerves were over-charged and leaping with
excitement just above control.
VII
THE SLEEPING SIBYL
The following evening, after much debate with himself, Serviss,
armored in scientific reflection, set forth towards the unknown
country wherefrom his sister had brought report of a maiden dwelling
in the power of giants, pitiably ensnared by evil-minded enchanters.
The errand, in Kate's mind, was as chivalric as any of the olden time,
but the knight's progress was lit by the green and red lamps of trade,
and threaded only the brazen jungles of traffic. For dragons he had
but the overhead monsters of iron and brass--monsters too intent on
their own mad game to take account of such small deer as this footman
picking his road beneath. It was half-past eight of the night-watch.
Serviss began to realize that his reawakened interest in this girl was
not purely impersonal and scientific. It had become, indeed, a most
disquieting, intimate concern, and every step towards the West
sharpened the sense of his folly. Had it not been for the memory of
that ride up the mountains--his keen remembrance of that day of joyous
youth--he could have easily dismissed Viola's case from his mind; but
as he permitted himself to dwell upon her rosy, rain-wet face, her
bird-like ecstasy of voice, her splendid defiance of the sun and wind,
a desire that was as fierce as anger actuated him, making his proffer
of aid not a gallantry but a duty. "I will defend her from herself.
Though a liar, she is still worth redemption. In a certain sense the
despicable rôle she is playing has been forced upon her."
As he mounted Simeon's steps he observed that awnings covered the
adjacent carriage-block, and that some young people, all in party
dress, were entering--a merry, chattering group--whereas the Pratt
mansion towered gloomily, unlighted, unalluring as a prison.
He was about to touch the bell when the door opened and a porter
softly greeted him. "The meeting has begun, sir. Step right in, sir.
This way, sir. Softly, please."
Before he was fairly aware of his attendant's meaning Serviss found
himself thrust through a heavily curtained archway into a large room
dimly lighted by a single lamp at the farther end. It contained about
twenty people, and he hesitated in embarrassment and some amazement at
the threshold.
Beneath the light, on a reclining-chair, lay a woman with closed eyes
and folded hands. Beside this figure stood Clarke in the midst of an
address, every word of which was made dramatically effective by a
forced calmness, an elocutionary trick.
"Some of you, my friends, may never have seen any of these mysterious
things. So many people say to me, 'Nothing supernatural ever happens
where I am.' To you I repeat my answer to them. Have you ever tried
to enter the right conditions? Here is a caravan of Arabs on the
desert. The road, hard-beaten, is wide and dusty, the necks of the
camels sway, the drivers shout, there is the smell of sweat, of
leather, of oil. The alkaline dust blinds and blisters. Physical
weariness and suffering shut out all else. This is no place to look
for heavenly visitors. You would be a fool to expect a demonstration
there. But at night when the beasts are at rest, when the cool, starry
sky bends close, when the tent-flaps are closed, then the old men sit
about and commune with their dead--as all primitive, natural peoples
do.
"So with you. You say to me, 'I have no heavenly visions in my life.'
I answer: Do you expect them on Broadway or in your business office?
You are on the dusty, weedy, noisy high-road, my friends, and you will
never hear a spirit voice or catch the flutter of a hand till you
retire to the dusk and the quiet. Enter the land of meditation.
Manifest a willingness to meet the angel visitors half-way, and then
the wings of the unseen will rustle about you, the cool and scented
winds of the invisible universe will kiss your cheeks. Shadowy voices
will be wafted from the dark. Song will break from the silences to
comfort and heal you.
"We see only what we _will_ to see--that is a known law of psychology.
Electricity was a force in the world six thousand years before man
really saw it. Now we hear it crackle in our hair and stir in our
garments. By studying the conditions of its manifestation we are able
to call it forth in giant power. So of these invisible ones--they are
all about us, eager to bless, to prove their presence. They are here
now. Around each one of you there are throngs hovering to manifest
their love; they will do so, by the aid of this wonderful psychic who
has consented to sit for us to-night. Let me repeat that she does this
because the dead demand and the living beseech her to act as their
intermediary." With abrupt, almost ludicrous change to a
matter-of-fact tone, he added, "Henry, turn the light a little lower."
As the attendant glided to his task, Serviss was mightily moved to
rise in his seat and cry out against the foolish, profaning business.
They were putting the girl into the exact attitude of the paid
trickster. At college he had attended a few of these séances, where
vulgar and immoral women had furthered their trade; and to see Viola,
whom he still believed to be essentially sweet, or at least
reclaimable, thrown into this most dubious posture, disgusted and
angered him. "But I am an uninvited guest. My rising would precipitate
a scene, involving Viola," he reasoned, and so kept his seat, though
his hands clinched and his teeth set with the effort at control.
Some one commenced to play softly upon a harp, and a little sigh like
a breeze passed over the group. The women had begun to respond to the
manager's emotional appeal. "I can feel them gathering," he called,
softly, from his seat beside the motionless girl. "The spirit host
are about us. I can almost hear the rustle of their wings."
The harpist stopped abruptly, and an echoing strain of faint music
continued to sound, seemingly from the ceiling--a fairy harp
exquisitely clear. "That is my Adele," announced Clarke, in a voice so
convincing in its tone of satisfied longing that the women of his
audience again rustled with ecstasy.
"I think he is beautiful!" exclaimed one.
"A voice is whispering to me," Clarke continued. "It is asking for
some one--I cannot quite make out. Who is it? Again, please. Morton
Serviss?" His voice rose in surprise. "He is not here. You are surely
mistaken. Certainly, I will ask. Is Professor Serviss here?"
Serviss replied, with a slight note of annoyance in his voice, "Yes, I
am here."
Again the little group shivered with excitement--not because they were
acquainted with the name and fame of the scientist, but because they
anticipated some especially wonderful manifestation of the psychic's
power. Serviss, irritated and puzzled, waited in silence.
Clarke's voice trembled with his effort to appear calm as he said:
"Professor Serviss, I am glad to welcome you. Won't you please come
forward? The 'control' desires it."
For a full minute, in dead silence, Serviss debated the matter, then
rose to comply. Mrs. Lambert met him with cordial hand, saying, in a
whisper: "We did not know you were coming; but they knew. They want
you closer to the manifestation."
He, sick at heart at her connivance in the trick, made no reply, but
silently took the seat which Clarke indicated.
Viola lay as silent as a statue, her face faintly showing, a diamond
in her corsage emitting a momentary gleam as she breathed tranquilly
at long intervals. There was nothing of the professional sibyl in her
dress, and her tall figure was very beautiful in this attitude of deep
sleep.
Clarke, mindful of effect, made explanation: "Professor Serviss, as
many of you know, is renowned in science, and the 'controls' are
especially anxious that he shall have the best possible opportunity to
hear and see. Will you play again, Mrs. Robinson?"
As the harp resumed its sadly sweet pulsations, the dead matter in the
room seemed to awake. Cracklings, snappings, as of a fire-log, arose
from the carpet. Rappings resounded from the walls. The piano began to
thrill as if a roguish child were thumping it.
"That's my little boy," whispered Mrs. Lambert.
Clarke shut off the light above his head till it was but a faint point
of yellow light, and then a hand, firm and broad, was laid for an
instant on Serviss's shoulder. Stars of phosphorescent fire floated
about. A small hand fluttered in a caress about the face of the
sleeping girl.
"That is her father's hand," again murmured Mrs. Lambert.
Serviss was willing to believe the girl's trance real, and that she
had no part in the hocus-pocus up to this point; but even as he leaned
forward to peer into the faintly visible face of the sleeper a voice,
breathy yet metallic, as though coming through the horn of a
phonograph, sounded in his ear. "Be not so doubting, my boy. I, too,
doubted."
"Who are you?" he asked.
"Loggy," answered the voice, with a chuckle.
This answer, so unexpected, this chuckle, so familiar, startled him,
for it was his pet name for an uncle, a professor of mathematics who
used to call himself "Old Logarithms" when in play with his nephews;
but, before Serviss had time to put out his hand, the horn came down
softly on his head, then withdrew, and a boyish voice laughed in his
ear, "You're a dunce!"
Mrs. Lambert bent towards him. "Did some dear one speak to you? I hope
so. We are so anxious to have you one of us."
He did not reply, for a third voice, seemingly that of an old man, was
issuing from the horn in pompous, stolid, old-fashioned utterance.
"The reality of all you see, young man, can be proven. Set yourself to
the grand task of destroying all fear of the change men call death.
Science is hopeless. We alone can save the world from despair."
"That is my father," explained Mrs. Lambert, "he is my daughter's
chief 'control,' He cares for her--teaches her."
Again the floating horn passed Morton's face, and a boyish voice
called, "Mamma, are you happy?"
"Yes, dear, when you are with me."
"We're always with you. We're glad P'ofessor Serviss came."
"So are we, Waltie."
"Papa says, 'Tell him to watch--tell him--to be patient--'" The voice
hesitated, murmured, and was silent, then added, plaintively: "Oh,
dear, there are so many who want to talk--they take my strength away.
Good-bye."
The horn dropped with a clang, but was at once caught up and floated
away over the circle. Dear names were whispered, secrets recalled.
Loved voices, long stilled by the grave, were heard again. Hands that
the earth had covered touched tear-wet cheeks, and with these caresses
sobbing outcries burst from the women.
"I believe. Yes, yes! I know you, darling," called a man's voice, and
his accent was more moving than the cries of the women.
Pratt, in wistful accents, asked, "Is there no one for me to-night?"
"Yes, father," answered a girl's voice from the megaphone, now hanging
almost directly in front of Serviss, "we are all here. I'm going to
sing for you--the song you liked the best."
This she did in a far-away voice, sweetly and with excellent
vocalization, but the first notes startled Serviss. They were from
"The Banks of Loch Lomond," the very song Clarke sang to Viola's
accompaniment that night in the little cabin in Colorow. "And yet she
told me she had no voice!" he said to himself, and a bitter heat
overcame the chill of his disgust, "What unconscionable trickery!"
This last piece of deception seemed to involve the girl more directly
than any other of the evening's accursed jugglery.
Pratt was pleading, brokenly: "My old paw is open, Jennie; put your
hand in it--just for a moment--as you used to. I'm so lonely without
you. Girls, can't you touch your old father? Give me a kiss--and
mother, is she with you to-night?"
"Yes, we're all here. I can't kiss you to-night, father; sometime I
will," the gentle voice replied. "I'm not strong enough to-night."
There was infinite regret in the tone, which conveyed to Serviss, with
singular vividness, a virginal charm, united to something very sweet,
almost saintly. Every sentiment had been beautifully voiced--no
actress could have done it better.
Clarke spoke gently, solemnly: "Professor Serviss, will you now take a
seat beside the psychic. Her 'controls' wish to make some special
demonstration for you."
With reluctance and loathing, the young scientist moved forward,
guided by the mother, and placed his seat at the right side of Viola,
whose daintily robed, graceful figure he could still detect. Her
wrists appeared to be lying on the broad arms of her reclining-chair
and her head was turned away from him. She seemed very feminine, very
lovely, and very helpless, and he had a definite and powerful desire
to take her in his arms, to wake her, to snatch her from this most
revolting drama of the dark.
He was now seated directly between the sibyl and Clarke, her manager,
and every sense was keenly awake. A tapping, metallic sound at once
arose either upon his chair or Viola's, and the horn, or whatever it
was, floated dimly into view, then vanished, and a moment later the
voice of the chief "control" entered his right ear: "Man of science,
do not shirk your duty. Here now we offer you a chance to solve the
great mystery. Will you accept?"
To this he made no answer, for his widely opened eyes were strained in
the effort to locate Viola's hands, eager to determine her part in the
phenomena, and as the moving megaphone again touched his right temple
he laid a quick hand lightly on her white wrist.
She leaped convulsively with a gasping cry, the horn tumbled to the
floor with prodigious clatter, and the women all shrieked and rose to
their feet.
"Fool! What have you done?" cried Clarke, in a terrible voice.
Serviss's tone expressed only contempt as he answered, "No great harm,
I think."
The clergyman pushed him aside rudely, and knelt beside the girl, who
was writhing and moaning in her chair, as though contorted with pain.
Words of indignation arose from the circle, and one or two shouted,
"Run him out! He has no business here." But Clarke cried out, in a
commanding voice: "Remain where you are, friends! Be quiet for a few
minutes." They obeyed, and Serviss was about to withdraw when Pratt
confronted him. "What do you mean? Do you want to kill the psychic?"
The mother was bending above her daughter with soothing words. "There,
there, dearie! It will soon pass. You may turn on the light, Anthony."
Clarke turned the cock of the burner till a faint glow revealed the
girl, white, suffering, her left side convulsed. "You can't do things
like that," he went on, addressing himself to Serviss. "In these
trances the nervous system is in a state of enormous tension. The
psychic must not be mishandled."
"I merely touched her arm," answered Serviss, quietly.
The mother answered: "The lightest touch is sufficient to convulse
her, professor. You should have asked permission of the 'control,'
then it would not have shocked her."
"I hope it has done no lasting harm." His voice, in spite of himself,
took on sympathy, though he believed the girl's shock to have been
grossly exaggerated for some reason of her own. "I thought I was
invited to make the test."
The mother's calm voice was thrilling as she said: "She's better now.
You may turn the light on full."
Viola was a most appealing figure as she bloomed from the dark, pure
and pale as a lily. She was dressed exquisitely in white, and seemed
older, more worldly wise, and more bewitching than when he had last
seen her; but with a feeling of profound contempt and bitterness
Serviss shrank from meeting her gaze. He slipped away into the hall
and out of the house--back into the cool, crisp air of the night,
ashamed of himself for having yielded again to the girl's disturbing
lure, burning with disappointment, and sad and grieving over the loss
of his last shred of respect for her.
"Britt was right," he exclaimed, drawing a deep breath as if to free
his lungs of the foul air of deceit. "They are all frauds together,"
and with this decision came a sense of relief as well as of loss.
[Illustration: "'WHAT DO YOU MEAN? DO YOU WANT TO KILL THE
PSYCHIC?'"]
VIII
KATE'S INTERROGATION
Kate, waiting impatiently in her turn, met him at the door. "Well, did
you see her? What did she say?" Her voice rose in excitement, for she
perceived unusual gravity in the lines of his face.
"Your 'far country' lies on the borders of hell," he replied, with
disconcerting succinctness. "Yes, I saw her--or, rather, the ruin of
her."
She recoiled before this tone. "What do you mean?"
He shook himself free of his coat. "She has descended swiftly. She now
lends herself to the shallowest, basest trickery."
"I don't believe it. What has happened to make you so bitter?"
"I will tell you presently," he replied, hanging up his hat with
aggravating deliberation. "But not here. Come to the library." He led
the way and she followed quite meekly, for she perceived in him
something new and harsh. She sat quite still while he filled his pipe
and lit it, waited until the soothing flow of smoke through its stem
had softened his face. He began, sadly: "The girl has gone beyond our
interference, Kate; and if she weren't so pretty, if I hadn't seen
her when she was wholesome and altogether charming, I would not have
wasted this evening on her. To-night's doings were unforgivable."
"Did she give you a sitting?"
"No, but they were in the midst of a _séance_"--he spoke this word
with infinite disgust--"and the usher, mistaking me for an invited
guest, thrust me into the very centre of the circle."
"How lucky! I wish I had been there."
"Well, that's as you look at it. When I realized what was going on I
wanted to leave, and, I repeat, had the chief actress been an old hag
or the usual sloven who plays this game, I would have fled; but she
was as beautiful as a statue as she lay there, professedly in deep
trance."
"You're sure it was Viola?"
"I wish there were a doubt! Yes, she was there, surrounded by a group
of Pratt's friends, giving a _performance_." This word, too, expressed
his contempt, his pain. "She went the whole length--lent herself to
the cheapest kind of jugglery, playing with horrible adroitness upon
the emotions of a lot of bereaved men and women. It was revolting,
Kate. It shakes one's faith in humanity to see such a girl in such a
position--and that nice-appearing old mother sat there serene as a
tabby-cat while her daughter bamboozled a dozen open-faced ninnies."
"Tell me exactly what happened; I can't share your horror till I know
what the girl actually did."
He approached the details with a grimace.
"First of all, imagine a little half-circle of well-dressed men and
women, in a big drawing-room, enclosing a girl lying on a low chair
under a single gas-jet, and a man standing beside her speechifying."
"That was Clarke, of course."
"Of course. Then imagine the light turned down, and the usual floating
guitar--in the dark, of course--and rappings and whispers and the
touch of hands--all in the dark. Then imagine--this will make you
laugh--some kind of horn or megaphone of tin, that rambled around
invisibly, distributing voices of loved ones here and there like
sweetmeats out of a cornucopia--"
"You mean the spirits _spoke_ through that thing?"
"That's what they all believed."
"But you don't think the girl--"
"Who else? Some of the voices were women's and one or two were
children's. Clarke couldn't do the children's voices."
"I can't believe it of her! Clarke must have done them. He's capable
of anything, but I don't, I won't believe such baseness of that girl."
"It hurts me to admit it, Kate, but I am forced to believe that she
not only sang through that horn to-night, but that she lied to me. She
told me once that she had no voice, and yet 'by request' she sang into
that horn, and very sweetly, too, the very song to which she played an
accompaniment when Clarke and I met for the first time. The effrontery
of it was confounding."
"Maybe there was a confederate."
"That doesn't sweeten the mess very much."
"No, and yet it wouldn't be quite so bad. But go on--what else?"
"Then I was invited by the 'controls'--so Clarke said--to come up and
sit beside the medium, which I did, very loathly. It gave me a keen
pang to look down on that lovely creature pretending to sleep, knowing
perfectly well that she was planning some deep deception."
"You _are_ bitter. What next?"
"I took a seat beside her, determined to see if she really had a hand
in the deception. I thought I could prevent anything happening."
"Did you?"
"No. Everything went on quite as briskly as before, and all the while
I thought I could see her arms lying limp along her chair--lovely arms
they were, too. She isn't poor, you must understand that, Kate; and
that really makes the crime worse, for she has not the usual
excuse--she is not doing it for her daily bread."
Kate sat like a judge, "Go on. You seized her, of course?"
"Yes; just when the cone was emitting an old man's pompous harangue I
laid my hand on her arm. The horn dropped, the circle rose in
confusion, and I came away."
"I expected you'd do that. All sceptics do, I believe. But I want to
know _all_ that took place. You're so concise. You say the cone
emitted a man's voice. Now, how could--"
"It produced the _impression_ of a man's voice. It is easy to deceive
under such conditions. The cone was passed from her hand to Clarke's
at the proper moments, and, as you say, there might have been a
child--"
"You must not infer, Mort--my faith in that girl is at stake. Was
there nothing in her favor? Nothing that justified her claim?"
He hesitated and Kate leaned forward in excess of interest. "Go on,
Morton, be honest."
"Well, now, as I think of it there was one little thing which was
rather curious. I don't know how she or Clarke or any one there should
know what we used to call Uncle Ben."
"What? Did you get a message from him?"
"A voice from the megaphone asked for me, and when I requested the
name of 'the party speaking,' as Clarke says, it replied with an oily
chuckle, exactly like the old duffer, '_It's old Loggy._'"
"It did?" Her voice was sharp with surprise. "Well, now, that is as
wonderful as my experience. How do you account for _that_? How _do_
you account for such things?" she repeated, insistently.
"Clarke must have known--"
"Nonsense. No one outside our immediate family knows of that nickname.
Besides, how would he know the way 'Loggy' laughed? I'd forgotten it
myself."
"So had I. But what would you say? Would you jump to the conclusion--"
"_You_ are jumping at the conclusion, Mort. If there is one single
thing that you can't understand, you must give that girl the benefit
of the doubt. What did 'Loggy' say?"
"There you go! You're ready to swallow the whole lump of humbuggery,
just because there is one little puzzling plum in it."
Kate was not to be put down. "What did uncle _say_?"
He submitted. "Nothing else. Like most of those dead folk, he was
there just to manifest, not to impart wisdom."
Kate leaned back in her chair and grew thoughtful. "Morton, that was
wonderful. No one knew you were coming, no one knew you except those
people, and they're from, the other end of the earth--and yet
_somebody_ speaks, using a pet name we've both forgotten. Now, I call
that a most important thing to dwell upon. How can _you_, a scientist,
overlook it?"
"But you must remember all this happened in the house of jugglery.
There is no value in a performance of that kind. There was no test
applied. Confederates had full opportunity to come and go. To have
weight with me these wonders must take place under conditions of my
making, not theirs."
"That's what she wants."
"I don't believe it. Pardon me, Kate, but you've been taken in.
Whatever this girl was two years ago, she is now a part of Clarke's
scheme, which is to secure a tremendous lot of advertising and
then--emit a book."
Kate transfixed him with a finger. "Morton Serviss, there is nothing
so convincing as a tone. I know that girl is honest--she may be
deceived, she may be made a tool of, unconsciously, by Clarke, but she
does not wilfully deceive. I will not let you off with this
experience; you must see her in private--talk with her as I did."
"I will have nothing further to do with her or hers," he replied, with
determined quiet, knocking the ashes from his pipe. "I have other and
better business in the world."
"I don't believe it is better business. Now, wait a moment, I have
something to tell of my own evening. While you were gone I 'phoned
Uncle Harrison and Aunt Nancy about that debt of my great-aunt--who
came to me through Viola to-day; they knew nothing about it, but they
set to work looking over her old papers, and found that there was a
sealed letter addressed to a doctor in Michigan, and in the letter was
a check made out to him and which she intended to send him. Now, what
do you think of that?"
"I don't see that that has any necessary connection with your
experience this afternoon."
"But it does. I'm sure of it. Auntie felt grateful to this young
doctor and wanted to reward him. Morton, it was a big check!" She
uttered this impressively.
"Was it? How much?"
"Five thousand dollars."
He faced her with a whistle of surprise. "Well, well! that isn't so
amusing. Are we to pay it? Is that the idea?"
"If I am sure--if the letter is what they 'phoned it to be, we've got
to pay it, I'm her sole legatee, and she was very angry because it
hadn't been paid; but that's not the really important part. How did
Viola Lambert know of that letter--and that check?"
He was deeply impressed, and did not try to conceal it. "That is very
puzzling; but it may be a case of mind-reading, which, I believe, the
modern psychologists admit has been proved." He began to muse. "It may
be, as Weissmann says, that there is always some basis for a claim
such as Clarke makes for this girl. It may be that she has a faculty
for reading what lies in the brain of another--"
"Morton Serviss, you shall not condemn that girl unheard. You have
taken Britt's word about her, and you've listened to my story, but you
must see her yourself and talk with her alone, so that she will be
free to tell you just how she feels."
"No. I am going to bed and try to forget the whole disconcerting
group."
"That's the way with you scientists. You'll pursue the tail of a
comet--or a germ--till you're black in the face, but when something
really important to the human race comes under your nose you can't see
it."
"You're forceful but not elegant, sis."
"I'm out of all patience with you."
He laughed. "Good-night."
"I hope that girl's face will haunt you," she replied.
It did. From the moment he turned off his light his mind leaped into
the most restless activity. Taking up the scroll of the night's
events, he read and reread it with minutest care. A voice seemed to
present the girl's case, arguing that she had no conscious part in the
manifestations. "It is possible for one in deep trance to rise and
manipulate horns, bells, and guitars at the suggestion of another
precisely as a somnambulist walks without intention of wrong-doing,
without conscious knowledge of what is being done. She might have had
a veritable hand in to-night's drama and still be innocent. Hypnotism
is now pretty thoroughly proven--and to Clarke you must look for the
real offender.
"The human brain, which is marvellous enough when in health and
singing merrily forward like a cunningly constructed and jewelled
time-piece, becomes, in disease, as baffling, as hopeless of solution
as the laws of the unfathomable sky. Beyond the utmost sweep of the
imagined lies the marvel of fact. The beliefs, the vagaries, the
hallucinations of the insane have never been co-ordinated, perhaps
they never will be. It is possible that this girl, so normal in
appearance, has a rotten strand in her--some weakness inherited from
her father. This is the only way in which to account for her glowing
physical health and her manifest mental disorder. She has her father's
mind in a body drawn from her mother. One-half of her is pure and
sweet and girlish, the other is old, decayed, lying, and
irresponsible. Can she be reclaimed?
"It is now known that the conscious mind is but a pin's-point of the
mind's activity, the conscious state being but one of an infinite number
of possible states--that the submerged, unconscious self is a million
times more complex than the chain of those conscious states which makes
up the normal or orderly life of an individual. May it not be that this
girl, by reason of her long practice of submission--induced by
others--has dethroned her conscious, higher self, making of her
subliminal self a tyrant? This submerged self, holding, as it does, all
the experiences of the dark past, all the lusts, deceits, and
subterfuges, all the cruelties and shameless potentialities of her
animal and semicivilized forebears, and being but a mass of discordant
impulses--states almost entirely disassociated from her conscious
life--has all but taken possession of her higher self. The restraint of
the later-developed, governing, moral self being weakened, the witches
and wolves are leaping forth to vex and destroy. Over this fortuitous
subversion of her soul's kingdom Clarke now rules like a demon
councillor.
"Considered in the light of a study in morbid psychology, her case is
enthralling. From the standpoint of human pity this use of her is a
diabolical outrage. Suppose Kate to be right--suppose the girl has
awakened to a full realization of her danger? Suppose that her cry for
succor is real, can I, can any man who hears it, refuse to heed?
Would I ever sleep in peace again?"
He went further, he admitted that her beauty was the deciding element.
"She is too lovely to be left to a fanatic's designs. She has matured
in body, grown more womanly, since we rode the trail together; may it
not be that her mind, maturing even more rapidly, has come to perceive
the crumbling edge of the abyss before it stands and turns to science
as the only rescuer? No matter what her past deceptions have been, is
it not my duty to help her?"
His anger and contempt dissolved into compassion. He recalled her
youth, her inexperience. "I will at least see her again," he decided,
deep in the night. "I will talk with her. I will draw her out. I will
study her. All will depend upon her attitude towards me and towards
her own soul." And in that softened mood sleep came to him.
IX
VIOLA'S PLEA FOR HELP
Morton went to his work next morning quite unfitted for an especially
delicate piece of dissection which he had in hand. He bungled it, and
Weissmann transfixed him with a glare of disapproval. "My boy, these
social gayeties do not consort well with science."
The young man smiled to think how wide of the mark his chief was. He
held up both hands. "I swear, it shall not happen again." Then, moved
by a desire to secure a comment on the curious phenomena of the
séance, he related the story of his brief interview with his uncle
Ben's ghost. "Now, do you suppose that Clarke, or the 'medium,' could
dig around among the dusty, forgotten lumber of my mind and get hold
of a queer fact like that nickname?"
"Why go so far round?" inquired Weissmann. "Why not say it was your
uncle Ben who spoke?"
"You are joking."
"I am _not_ joking. If the facts are as you say, then one explanation
is as reasonable as the other."
Serviss was amazed. "You don't really mean it!"
"If you say it was an illusion of the sense of hearing, I agree; but
do we not stagger among illusions? Who so well as we know the
illusory nature of every fact? Nothing is stable under our hands. Of
what avail to reduce the universe to one substance, as the monists do?
We pry, we peer into that substance--it fades like smoke. Forty years
I have probed among the cells of the body--the final mystery remains
insoluble. Why? Because the atom, the thing once demonstrated 'the
final division of matter,' is itself an illusion, made up of the
intangible and the imponderable. This I have given my whole life to
discover. Life is an illusion--why not death? Shall we dogmatize,
especially on the one thing of which we know nothing? The spirit world
is unthinkable, but so, at the last analysis, is the world of matter."
The young man, believing this to be only the mocking mood of one who
knew the argument of the dualists better than they knew it themselves,
remained silent, and Weissmann composedly resumed: "The dogmatism of
Haeckel is as vain as the assumption of Metchnikoff. We shall forever
discover and forever despair. Such is the life of man."
When he went home Morton found a note from his sister saying that she
had received a message from Viola and that she would be at home at
five. "Now don't fail to go. I have to pour tea for Sally, or I would
go with you. I'm crazy to see the girl again. I spent the morning
talking the whole thing over with Doctor Safford. She thinks as I do,
that the girl is exactly what she claims to be, a _medium_, and that
while it is her duty to go on, she ought to be protected from the
vulgar public. We both want you to take her in hand. Certainly there
_ought_ to be no disgrace in standing as interpreter between the
living and the dead. Isn't it just our foolish prejudice? If the girl
_can_ bring messages from the other world, she ought to be honored
above all other women. Seriously, Morton, her plea the other day wrung
my heart. I don't want you to get _too_ interested in her, of course,
but what we call a _disease_ may be a God-given power. Think of the
way we run after a foolish, vulgar woman who has married into
millions, and then think of the way we sniff at this girl because she
has some gift which science doesn't understand. If one teenty, tiny
bit of what they claim about her is true, science ought to cherish
her. As Marion said, if she had discovered a star so far off and so
faint it wouldn't matter in the least to any one but a few cranks
whether it existed or not, she would be honored all over the world;
but as she claims to have discovered something vital to every human
soul, she is despised. It is your duty to help her. I had her over the
'phone just now, and her voice was trembling with eagerness as she
said, 'Do tell him to please come and see me.'"
This note, so like his sister, so full of her audacities, touched
Morton on the quick. It was plain that she was more than half-seas
over towards faith in the girl, and quite ready to take her up and
exhibit her among her friends. Her use of the word "disease" was
intended as a mockery of his theories. He knew that she was quite
capable of talking over the 'phone precisely as she had written
(reserve was not her strong point), and that she had undoubtedly given
Viola reason to expect him. However, having concluded on his own
account to see her once more, Kate's exhortation merely confirmed him
in a good intention, "I will confront Clarke, and try to pluck the
heart out of this mystery, but I will keep clear of any personal
relation with the girl and her mother," he said, as if in answer to
his sister's admonition.
It was about five o'clock of the afternoon as he again mounted to
Pratt's portico, recalling, as he did so, the dramatic contrasting
scenes of the evening before--on this side of the brick wall a
communion with the dead, on that the throbbing, gay life of a
ballroom. Truly a city street was a microcosm.
A solemn-visaged colored man--not the officious usher of the night
before--took his card and led him into a gorgeous, glacial
reception-room on the left. The house was very still and cold and
gloomy, for the day was darkening and the lights were not yet on. It
impressed him as a vast and splendid tomb, and with a revived
knowledge of Simeon Pratt's tragic history he chilled with a
premonition of some approaching shadow. "What a contrast to the sunlit
cabin of the Colorow!" he inwardly exclaimed, and the thought of the
mountain girl housed in this grim and sepulchral mansion deepened his
wonder.
A gruff voice above inquired: "Who is it? Let me see the card.
Serviss, eh? Tell him--No, wait, I'll go down and see him myself."
Morton smiled grimly, realizing perfectly the manner in which Pratt
had intercepted his card. "The old watch-dog," he exclaimed.
A heavy tread descending the stairs announced the approach of his
host, whose sullen face was by no means engaging as he entered. "Are
you Professor Serviss?"
"I am."
The flabby lips curled in scorn. "You are one of those scientific
gentlemen who know it all, aren't you?"
"I sent my card to Miss Lambert," replied Serviss, with cutting
formality.
Pratt's face darkened. "_I_ am the master of this house."
"But not of your guests, I hope."
"I have a right to know who calls, and I intend to protect Miss
Lambert from such as you. You were not invited here last night."
"Not by you, I admit. I owe you an explanation for that. I came to
call on Miss Lambert. Your man shouldered me into the room before I
knew what was going on. I didn't intend to 'butt in,' as they say. I
was afterwards invited forward by Mr. Clarke, as you will remember,
and later by the 'control.'"
"Clarke is not running things here."
"Ah, but the spirits? Would you question their judgment? They insisted
on making me the guest of honor, you will remember. They played to me,
you may say."
Pratt was daunted by his visitor's mocking tone. "You should have had
more sense of honor than to grab the medium the way you did."
"Being invited to sit near, I took it as an invitation to make a test.
I wanted to know who held that horn. How can you hope to convince a
sane mind of the truth of such an exhibition as that last night unless
you permit tests?"
The colored man had returned. "Miss Lambert will see you, sir. This
way, please."
For a moment Pratt meditated interference, but something in the
movement and face of the visitor deterred him. As Serviss followed his
guide up the great stairway, he asked himself: "What will she be like?
She must be changed--deeply changed. How will she meet me?" He
acknowledged a growing excitement.
She met him so simply, so cordially, with such frank pleasure, that
his own restraint gave way at first glance. In her glowing color, in
the tones of her voice, lay a charm which carried him back to
Colorow, linking the mature and splendid woman with the unformed girl
of the mountain-cabin. He took her hand with a keen thrill of
admiration--whatever had come to her she had gained in grace without
apparent loss of sincerity.
His eyes disturbed her, and she stammered some commonplace expression
of pleasure, and he replied almost as lamely, then turned to the
mother. "I hope you have forgiven me for my action of last night?"
Then again to Viola. "I only intended to touch your arm. I trust you
suffered no lasting ill effects."
Again something that was at once attraction and repulsion passed
between them. She perceived in his tone a note of mockery, involuntary
in its expression, but all the more significant on that account.
"I am sorry you were there," she quickly replied. "I don't blame you.
No, it did not hurt me--I mean, it was all over in half an hour. The
contraction is very painful while it lasts. It's just like a cramp. I
didn't intend to give the sitting, but Mr. Pratt requested it for a
few of his friends and I couldn't well refuse. I didn't know you were
there till mamma told me afterwards. There is no value in such a
sitting to you."
With a dim suspicion of her wish to cover some deception, he answered:
"My entrance was quite as unpremeditated, I assure you." He spoke with
returning humor. "I really came to call upon you, to welcome you to
the city and to talk of the West. The usher mistook me for one of the
seekers and thrust me bodily into the circle. Please believe that I
acted upon sudden impulse in seizing your wrist. I am heartily ashamed
of myself. I was an intruder, and had no right, no excuse--although
your 'guides,' as you call them, seemed eager to have me sit beside
you."
"I do not blame you," she repeated, and fell strangely silent.
He studied her with mounting pleasure. The flower-like line of her
lips, her glorious bosom, the poise of her head, all the lines that
had meant so much to him at their first meeting, were there, more
womanly, more dangerous in their witchery than ever. For two years
their thoughts had subtly crossed and intertwined, and she now felt
his doubt, his question, almost as keenly as if he had uttered them.
He broke the momentary silence by saying, with a distinctly tender
tone, "Are you thinking of Colorow? I am."
She flushed and started a little. "Yes."
"I was recalling my first view of you--a fragment of sunset cloud
caught on a mountain-crag."
Her face grew wistful. "That seems a long time ago to me."
"It doesn't to me. It seems but yesterday. My trip that year was a
symphonic poem with a most moving final movement. I have thought of it
a thousand times." He paused a moment, then added: "Well, now, here
you are in New York, and here I am, and what of your music? I was to
advise you, you remember."
Her head lifted in defiance, an adorable gesture. "You know my secret
now." It was as if she said, "Come, let us have it over."
He replied, very gently; "I knew something of it then. Dr. Britt told
me something of it at the time."
Her eyes bravely searched his. "Was that why you did not come to say
good-bye to us?" His glance fell in a wish that she had been less
cruelly direct. She went on: "You needn't answer. I'm used to being
treated that way. I knew somebody had told you I was a medium. You
despised me when you found out about me--everybody does, except those
who want to use me. All the people I really want to know go by on the
other side as if I were a leper. It was so in Boston; it is going to
be the same here."
Mrs. Lambert interposed. "That is not true, Dr. Serviss. We met many
nice people in Boston."
"Yes, mamma--nice people who wanted me to tell their fortunes."
Her tone went to Serviss's heart. She was so young to be so bitter;
but he could think of nothing at the moment which would not add to her
chagrin, for was not his own interpretation of her quite as hard to
bear?
She went on: "No, I don't blame you or any one for avoiding me. But I
wish they would let me have one or two friends. But they won't. Lots
of people like me at first, but they surely find out after a while,
and then they change towards me. Sometimes I think I might as well
publish my name as a medium and let everybody know it at once."
"You must not permit that, Miss Lambert," he earnestly said. "That is
what I came to say. Don't allow them to use you so."
"How can I help it?" she passionately exclaimed, "when they all demand
it--mother, Mr. Clarke. Mr. Pratt, grandfather--everybody. They think
I owe it to the world."
"I don't. I think it is your right to say--"
"I have no rights. Listen." She leaned towards him, her face paling,
her eyes big and soft and terrified. "I want you to understand me,
Dr. Serviss. You must know all about me." Her voice fell to a husky
murmur. "You must know that I can't direct my own life. My 'guides'
can do what they please with me. Can you understand that?"
"I confess I cannot."
"It is true. My grandfather insists on these public tests. He is
determined to 'convict the men of science,' and Mr. Clarke is only too
glad to agree with him. Mother is controlled entirely by what
grandfather says. My wishes don't count with anybody. But I think I've
done my share in this work." She faced her mother in challenge and
appeal. "Ever since I was ten years old I've given myself up to it;
but now I'm afraid to go on. I don't want to be a medium all my life.
They all say it is hard to change after one is grown up, and I'm
afraid," she repeated, with a perceptible shudder.
The mother, undisturbed by this plea, turned to Serviss with an
exultant smile. "Does she look like one breaking down?"
The girl rose from her chair like a tragedienne. "It isn't my body,
it's my mind!" she cried, with poignant inflection, clasping her head
with both her hands; and her look transformed her in the eyes of the
young scientist. It was the tragic gaze of one who confronts insanity
and death at a time when life should be at its sweetest. For an
instant she stood there absorbed in her terror, then dropped her
hands, and in a voice of entreaty, which melted all his distrust,
hurried on. "I want to know what is going on in my brain. I am losing
control of my _self_! I want some man of science like you to study me.
Your sister said you would help me, and you must! You think I
deceive--you thought so last night--but I don't. I knew nothing of
what went on. I didn't know that you were there. I don't know what I
do nor what I am. I want you men of science to investigate me. I will
submit to any test you like. You may fasten me in a cage, or padlock
me down--anything!--but I will not be advertised to the world as a
medium, and I must have rest from this strain. Don't you understand?
Can't you see how it will be?"
"I do," he answered, quickly. "I understand perfectly, and I will go
at once to see Mr. Clarke and intercede--"
"That is not enough. You must intercede with my grandfather and his
band, they are the ones who control me. Ask him to release me."
This request staggered the scientist. "My dear Miss Lambert, you will
pardon me, but I can't do that--I do not even believe in the existence
of your grandfather."
She stood in silence for a moment and then answered; "You would if his
hands were at your throat as they are at mine. He is just as real to
me as you are. He is listening this minute."
"That is a delusion."
"I wish it were," she bitterly and tragically answered. "The hands are
so real they choke me--that I know. I am helpless when he demands
things of me. He can lead me anywhere he wants me to go. He can use my
arms, my voice, as he wills. You must believe in him to help me. He
will listen to you, I feel that." She grew appealing again. "Your
sister believes in me--I am sure of that--and my heart went out to
her. Sometimes it seems as if all the world, even my own mother, were
willing to sacrifice me."
"Viola!" cried Mrs. Lambert, sharply. "You shall not say things like
that."
"They're true. You know they're true!" the girl passionately retorted.
"You all treat me as if I had no more soul than a telephone."
"That is very unjust," declared Mrs. Lambert. "This is only one of her
dark moods, doctor. You must not think she really means this."
The girl's brows were now set in sullen lines which seemed a
profanation of her fair young face. "But I _do_ mean it, and I want
Dr. Serviss to know just what is in my heart." Her voice choked with a
kind of helpless, rebellious anger as she went on: "I'm tired of my
life. I am sick of all these moaning people that crowd round me. It's
all unnatural to me. I want to touch young people, and have a share in
their life before I grow old. I want to know healthy people who don't
care anything about death or spirits. It's all a craze with people
anyway--something that comes after they lose a wife or child. They are
very nice to me then, but after a few weeks they despise me as the
dust under their feet--or else they make love to me and want to marry
me."
Mrs. Lambert rose. "I will not allow you to go on like this, Viola. I
don't understand you to-day. You'll give Dr. Serviss a dreadful
opinion of us all."
"I don't care," the girl recklessly replied, "I am going to be honest
with Dr. Serviss. I don't like what I do, and I don't intend to trust
my whole life to the spirits any longer. They may all be devils and
lying to us. I don't believe my own grandfather would be so cruel as
to push me into this public work."
Mrs. Lambert again warned Serviss from taking this outburst too
seriously. "She is possessed, doctor. Some bad spirit is influencing
her to say these things to you. She's not herself."
Viola seized on this admission. "That's just it. They've destroyed my
own mind so that I don't know my own thoughts. If there are good
spirits, there must be bad spirits--don't you think so, Dr. Serviss?"
His eyes did not waver now. His voice was very quiet, but very
decisive, as he replied: "My training, my habit of thinking, excludes
all belief in the return of the dead either as good spirits or bad,
but if there are spirits I should certainly think evil of them if they
were to force you into a service you abhor. I do not pretend to pass
judgment on your case--I know so little about it--but I do sympathize
with you. I deeply feel the injustice of these public tests, and I
will do all I can to prevent them."
Mrs. Lambert interrupted: "But, Dr. Serviss, my father's advice has
always been good; to question it now would be to question my faith.
His wish is my law."
Serviss shrugged his shoulders a little impatiently. "My dear lady, we
have no common ground there. The wishes of the dead have no weight
with me when set against the welfare of the living. The question which
I beg you to consider is whether you wish your daughter to continue in
this mental torture? Do you want her name blazoned to the world as a
public medium? You cannot afford to add disgrace to her private
torment."
The mother held her ground. "Her 'guides' say she will be taken care
of, and as for the disgrace, that is all imaginary. It is an honor--"
Viola again burst forth: "They are always talking to me about the
honor of being a medium, about the distinction of it, and when I ask
what distinction the world gave to the Fox sisters or Home or Madame
Cerillio, they answer that the world has changed since then. But it
has not changed enough to make my work respected. Mr. Clarke says it
ought to be; but saying so does not make it so. Every time I read of a
medium exposed I turn cold and hot, for I know people consider all
mediums alike. I don't want to go about all my life like an outcast. I
don't want to be happy after I'm dead; I want to be happy now. I don't
want to be different from other girls; I want to be like them. If they
publish me, I will be a medium forever. I will be in constant terror
of attack, and that will drive me insane--they _must_ set me free!
Dr. Serviss," she pleaded, as if she were the victim of some murderous
design, "you are wise and strong. There must be some way for you to
help me."
All of Serviss's well-ordered sympathetic phrases failed him as he
listened to the storm of her plea and felt the flame of her passionate
protest. All doubt of her sincerity, her own honesty, vanished, being
utterly burned away by the light in her lovely eyes. Her mental
bondage was real, her desire to escape contamination indubitable. He
met her gaze with tender gravity. "I believe in you," he said, as if
committing himself to a most momentous enterprise, "and I will help
you."
His voice, so manly, so strong, so tender, robbed her of the power to
speak. She seized his extended hand in both of hers and pressed it
hard, the tears in her eyes veiling her soul from the passion that
filled his glance.
As she faced him thus, leaning to him trustfully, so vivid, so
magnetic, so much the woman, so little the sibyl, that he forgot all
his hesitations and doubts, filled for an instant with an irrational
impulse to seize her, claiming her as his own, in defiance of the
mandates of her world and the conventions of his own. But she dropped
his hand and turned away, and he went out in a maze of conflicting
desires, his judgment sadly clouded by the youthful riot in his blood.
At the moment he was in love with her and single-minded in his desire
to aid her, to defend her, but the door had hardly closed behind him
when his questionings, his suspicions began to file back, stealthily,
silently, along the underways of his brain. Her distress began to seem
a little too theatric, her troubles self-induced--all but one--madness
did in very truth seem to hover over her, a baleful, imminent shadow.
Clarke, looming darkly, confronted him in the lower hall. "Well met,
Dr. Serviss. I'd like a word with you."
"I have a request to make of you," responded Serviss. "Miss Lambert
has expressed to me her great distress of mind as concerns the public
tests you are planning and has asked me to intercede for her. She
profoundly objects to the use of her name, and I ask--"
Clarke's voice was harsh and sullen as he interrupted: "I have
considered her objections and find them insufficient."
Serviss's voice rose slightly. "Her lightest objection should be
insuperable. I don't understand your point of view. I can't see by
what right you ignore the wish of the human soul most vitally
concerned in your crusade. You treat her as if she were a rabbit
dedicated to the use of a biologic laboratory. I am better informed
now than when we met in your church-study, Mr. Clarke. I know, not
merely Miss Lambert's secret, but your own. It may be that you
honestly think this challenge will confer great distinction upon her,
but, let me assure you, it will put an ineffaceable stain upon her.
Furthermore, your tests will end in disaster to yourself and to your
cause."
"What do you mean by that?" interposed Pratt, who had come up and
stood listening. "Do you doubt her powers?"
"I do. She will fail, and the failure will be crushing. The thing you
claim is preposterous. Every time science has taken one of your
mediums in hand he or she has suffered extinguishment. It is the
grossest outrage to ask this girl to face certain exposure. A
challenge of this blatant kind will rouse the most violent antagonism
among scientists, and if you succeed in getting any really good man to
take it up--which I doubt--he will be merciless."
"We want him to be," declared Clarke. "We glory in your defiance. Let
your scientific men come with their bands of steel, their bolts and
bars, their telephones, and their electric traps. We defy every
material test."
"You are fools--madmen," hotly answered Serviss. "You would sacrifice
this girl to a brazen scheme of self-advertising?"
Clarke was contemptuous. "That is your point of view. From our side
there is no greater glory than to be an Evangel of the New Faith. What
matters the comment of the gross and self-satisfied to us who work for
the happiness of those who mourn? The world in which _we_ live
despises the materialism of yours."
At this moment a new conception of Clarke's plan crossed Serviss's
mind. "He is deeper than I thought. He would discredit the girl in the
eyes of normal suitors, thereby assuring her to himself." Aloud he
said: "Miss Lambert's right to herself should be your first
consideration. She is something more than a trumpet for sounding your
fame."
Clarke's resounding voice had drawn Mrs. Lambert from her room, and
she now hurried down the stairway with intent to calm him.
Serviss turned to her. "Again I beg of you, Mrs. Lambert, to consider
well before you consent to this plan. Your daughter's name will be a
jest from one end of the country to the other. It doesn't matter how
sincere and earnest you are, the public will regard this challenge as
a seeking for notoriety. Your daughter is about to be flung to the
beasts." Seeing something unyielding in her eyes, he added, with such
intensity his own heart responded: "Will you stake your daughter's
reputation, her health, her reason, upon the issue of a voice in the
dark?"
"Yes, when the voice is that of her own father. He knows the future.
He will protect her. I have no fear."
There was such conviction, such immutable faith in her gentle voice,
that Serviss was confounded. When he spoke, in answer, his voice was
lower in key, with a cadence of hopeless appeal.
"How do you know these advisers are your husband and your father? You
must be very certain of them."
"I am certain. I believe in them as I believe in my own existence."
The line of her mouth lost something of its sweetness, and Serviss,
seeing this, took another tack.
"Granted these voices are genuine, they may be mistaken--rash with
zeal. You wouldn't say that they have gained infallibility--a
knowledge of both past and future--merely by passing to the shadow
world?"
To this Clarke made answer: "That is precisely what we do believe.
They have predicted our future, they have laid out all our plans.
Their advice has brought us to our present high place, and we shall
continue in our course, despite you or any other doubter."
"They have brought you to a very dubious sort of success," Serviss
cuttingly replied, "But what about your victim? I know this city and
its ways. I realize, as none of you seem to do, the wasting injustice
you are about to inflict. Let me intercede--let me arrange some other
plan--"
On Clarke's face a sneering, one-sided smile crept as he answered:
"You are too late. Our plans are made, our programme published."
"What do you mean?"
"The reporters have just been here. The notice of my speech and a
broad hint of the nature of my challenge will appear in four of the
leading papers to-morrow morning--"
"But Viola's--Miss Lambert's name! You surely haven't used that?"
"Oh no. That is to follow. The challenge, with her name and defiance,
form the climax to my oration." He swelled with pride as he spoke, as
if visualizing himself on the platform, the centre of thousands of
eyes, the champion of reviving faith.
"Thank God for your vanity! There is still time for some one to
intervene," responded Serviss, minded to thrust him through.
Pratt shouldered in again. "What have you got to do with it, anyway?
Who asked you to interfere?"
"The chief person concerned--Miss Lambert herself."
Pratt was about to utter some further insult when Clarke
diplomatically interposed. "We want you to have a part in the work,
Dr. Serviss. We will welcome you to a committee of investigation, but
we cannot permit you to interfere with our plan. The 'Forces' are bent
on the work, and they are inexorable."
"It is you who are inexorable," replied the young scientist--"you and
this deluded mother."
This rapid dialogue had taken place in the wide hall just beneath the
huge chandelier whose light fell on Serviss's white forehead and
square, determined face. Pratt was confronting him with lowering brow,
a bear-like stoop in his shoulders, and the muttering growl of his
voice was again filling the room as Viola appeared upon the great
stairway. She came slowly, with one slim hand on the railing, as
though feeling her way, and at every step mysterious, jarring sounds
came from beneath her feet and from the walls; her eyes were shut, her
chin lifted, and on her face, white and tense, lay the expression of a
sorrowful dreamer. Her mouth, drooping at the corners, was pitiful to
see. All her vivid youth, her flaming rebellion, had been frozen into
soulless calm by the implacable powers which reigned above and beneath
her in the dark.
In horror and fierce, impotent rage, Serviss watched her descend. It
was plain that she was again in the grasp of some soul stronger than
herself; and he believed this obsession, close akin to madness, to be
due to a living, overmastering magician--to Clarke, whose voice broke
the silence. "There is your answer!" he called, and his voice rang
out, with triumphant glee. "Her 'guides' have brought her to show you
the folly of human interference. She is only an instrument like
myself--clay to the hands of the invisible potters."
Once again a flaming desire to seize the girl with protecting hands
filled Serviss's young and chivalric heart; but a sense of his
essential helplessness, a knowledge of his utter lack of authority,
stayed his arm, while his blaze of resolution went out like a flame in
the wind. Sick with horror, he stood till Mrs. Lambert took Viola in
her arms, then, in a voice that shook with passion, he said: "Madam,
your faith in your spirits passes my understanding. Only devils from
hell would demand such torture from a blithe young girl."
And so saying, with shame of his impotence, and with a full
realization of Viola's mental bondage to Anthony Clarke, he turned
away. "I now understand Britt's words--only the authority of the
husband can save her from her all-surrounding foes," and at the moment
his fist doubled with desire to claim and exercise that power.
X
MORTON SENDS A TELEGRAM
The harsh reality of the outside world was like the hard-driven, acrid
spray of the ocean in a wintry storm, it stung yet calmed with its
grateful, stern menace. A thin drizzle of rain was beginning to fall,
and the avenues were filled with the furious clamor of belated
traffic. The clangor of the overhead trains--almost incessant at this
hour--benumbed the ear, and every side-street rang with the hideous
clatter of drays and express-carts, each driver, each motor-man,
laboring in a kind of sullen frenzy to reach his barn before six
o'clock, while truculent pedestrians, tired, eager, and exacting, trod
upon one another's heels in their homeward haste.
This tumult of turbulent, coarse, unthinking life seemed at the moment
not merely normal but wholesome and admirable by force of contrast
with the morbid, unnatural, and useless scenes through which he had
just passed. Better to be a burly, unreflecting truckman than a
troubled, unresting soul like Anthony Clarke, "Yes, and better for
Viola Lambert to be the wife of one of these rude animal types,
suffering a life of physical hardship, than to continue the sport of
a man who, having lost the true values out of his own life, is
remorselessly distorting those of the woman he professes to love."
His mind then went back, by the same law of contrast, to his momentous
ride across the Sulphur Spring trail. "To think on how small a chance
my share in this girl's singular history hangs! Had I taken 'the
cut-off,' as my guide suggested, had I camped in the log-cabin at the
head of the cañon, or had I saddled up the next morning and ridden
over to Silver City, as I had planned, we would never have met; and I
would not now be involved in her hysterical career."
But he had done neither of these things. He had camped in the town, he
had sought her, and in this seeking lay something more than chance.
His second meeting was an acknowledgment of his youth and her beauty.
She had held him in the village day by day, because she was lithe of
body and fair of face and because her eyes were unaccountably wistful.
Yes, he had sought her that night when the river sang with joyous,
immemorial clamor, and the lamp beckoned like a hand. He had gone to
her for diversion--that he now acknowledged--and he had grown each day
more deeply concerned with her life and its burdens.
And now here she was at his door, more dangerously enthralling than
ever, involved in a snare of most intricate pattern, calling upon him
through some hidden affinity of their natures as no woman had ever
called him before--calling so powerfully, so insistently, that to
save her from her peril, as pressing as it was intangible, seemed the
one and only task at his hand.
In this mood, sustained by the memory of her anguished face, he sent a
telegram to Lambert, urging him to come at once to the relief of his
wife and daughter.
He did not appreciate the full force of this act until he left the
office and resumed his walk homeward. Then, like a shock from a
battery, came the realisation. "I have now definitely intervened; but
how weakly, how ingloriously!"
This thought grew less agreeable and more humiliating as he dwelt upon
the possible consequences. "Will Lambert remember me? Will he take my
warning to heart?"
In imagination he followed the small envelope as it passed to the hand
of a messenger and started up that fearsome, splendid trail towards
the mill. The world was stern and cold and white and still up there in
the Basin--winter yet reigned in majesty and the pathways were deep
sunk in heaped and sculptured snows.
Up to the half-buried office the courier would ride, and with a cheery
halloo call Lambert to the door. What would he think upon receiving
such an imperative summons from a stranger? "Did I make the situation
clear? He may imagine that some dire physical disaster has overtaken
his women. But that would be true. Their peril is none the less real
because intangible, and yet my part in it may not seem either wise or
manly."
In truth every step towards his own door removed him an emotional
league from the scene in the hall, and as the throb of Viola's
agonized voice died out of his ears the crisis in her life grew
hysteric, unsubstantial, and at last unreal. Her gestures, her plea
for help, her descent of the stairway, came to seem like the climaxes
in a singular drama powerfully acted. "God! what an actress--if she
_is_ an actress!" he exclaimed, as the tragic intensity of her face
returned upon him.
He passed from this to the next phase of his development. In a certain
good-humored way he had accepted his friend Tolman's theories of
hypnotic control, but had never taken them into serious account till
this moment. He was forced now to admit the entire truth of
"suggestion" or to charge this girl, whose character so bewitched him,
with being an impostor. She was either a marvellous artist in
deception or Clarke controlled her through some sinister and
little-understood law of the mind. What else could have brought her
creeping like a somnambulist down the stairway to demonstrate her
tormentor's demoniacal sovereignty? And if he could call her to him in
such wise, then all the weird tales of the romancers, all the
half-mythical doings of Mesmer and Charcot, were true, and the feet of
Bulwer Lytton's remorseless lover solidly set upon the rock of fact.
"My school of thought is very exact and very dogmatic. It prides
itself on not looking beyond its nose. There is no room in our
text-books for this girl and her claims. But--" He stood on the
corner and surveyed the familiar scene, the rushing, commonplace men,
the commonplace horses, the commonplace, ugly walls and signs, and for
an instant they lost substance, became as shadowy as drifting mist,
the men were of no more bulk than phantoms, the walls and pavements
but the effluvia of the commonplace perceiving mind. All were as
transitory as smoke, as illusionary as the opium-eater's mid-day
dream. What did it signify--this mad rush to get round a corner to
creep into a hole? Why should he trouble himself about one of the
millions of women, evanescent as butterflies, with which the earth
continually replenished its swarms of men?
He walked on, eager to return to his own little nest, to his books,
his easy-chair, his glowing fire. What folly to go out of his own
life, to profess accountability for the welfare of a girl whom he had
seen but a few hours in all his life. Why trouble to explain her case?
Was it worth while to dethrone Spencer in order to defend the action
of a child's disordered mind.
This mood gave way to one far less philosophical--he permitted himself
a moment of exultation over his youth. Science had not yet taken out
of him the nerves that leap to the touch of a woman's palm--the right
woman. Ten years' deep, patient, absorbing dissection of pathologic
tissue had not rendered the gloss and glow of a girl's cheek less
velvet-soft. On the contrary, the healthy, wholesome flesh, the
matured beauty of this mountain maid seemed of more worth than any
fame to be wrung from the niggard hands of the Royal Academy. The
absorption of the true scientist was completely broken up. "Love is
worth while," he said, in answer to himself, "and to serve others the
only solace in the end."
XI
DR. BRITT PAYS HIS DINNER-CALL
Kate had not returned, and he was glad of this, for it gave him time
in which to recover his normal serenity of mind. He met her at dinner
with an attempt at humor, but she was not to be deceived nor put off
from the main subject. He was forced to make instant report, which he
did, leaving out, however, all the deeply emotional passages. He fell
silent in the midst of this story--profoundly stirred by the memory of
Viola's confiding gesture as she leaned to him, awed by the essential
purity of the soul he perceived lying deep in her eyes. How blue, how
profound they seemed at the moment!
Kate, if she perceived his abstraction, ignored it. "Well, I hope you
agree with me now. Clarke is her control, her black beast."
"Yes; that is the only explanation at this moment, the only solution
which leaves her innocent."
"But to admit that is to admit a good deal, Mr. Scientist."
"I know that, Mrs. Precipitancy; but what would you have me do? I
don't want to believe the girl a trickster." After a pause he said:
"Kate, I never felt less of a man than I acknowledged myself to be as
I turned away, leaving her in the clutches of those accursed
fanatics."
"Why did you do it?"
"What else could I do? She was entranced--I had no authority. My
attempt at a rescue would have created a disgusting scene and put
Clarke on his guard. My native caution and my conventional training
combined to paralyze me."
Kate, fired with reckless ardor, said, "Let's go and snatch her
away--now!"
"No, my second thought is best. Think of what Clarke's arrest would
mean to the girl and to us? No, we must wait for Lambert. Clarke at
present has all the authority. It won't do to push him. He would
instantly trumpet her name to the four winds of heaven if he thought
we were about to interfere. If Lambert heeds my warning, he will
arrive on Friday, and that will prevent the challenge."
"What sort of person is this Mr. Lambert?"
Serviss pondered, "He's a small, mild-mannered man--not unlike a nice,
thoughtful country doctor in appearance."
"I wish he were six feet high, and fierce as his inches," said Kate.
"If he had been that, this preacher fellow would never have been able
to run away with his family." He sighed. "Well, he's all we have to
conjure with. If he fails us we must resort to craft."
"I wish we could get Viola and her mother here. Would they come to
dinner if I should ask them? If we could get them here once we might
be able to persuade them to stay."
"That would not save her from the pillory in which Pratt and Clarke
design to set her. We must be careful not to anger them. The girl
hates and fears Pratt."
"I know she does."
"His air of proprietorship is fairly indecent. We must be especially
careful not to rouse him. He has millions to use in asserting his
claims, and is as vindictive as a wolf."
Kate sat in silence for a few moments--a very unusual state with
her--and at last announced her purpose. "Leave the whole thing to me.
We will have Dr. Weissmann, and I will ask Clarke to come to meet you
in order to talk over his plans for a committee. I'll just ignore
Pratt. He's nothing but an old kill-joy, anyway."
"He's worse than that. Don't brush him the wrong way. We're going to
have trouble with him before we are out of this."
"I don't care. I will not have him in my house," responded Kate.
"Very well. He's eliminated. I hope Clarke will permit them to come."
"Oh, they'll come unless Pratt absolutely locks them in their rooms.
Shall I ask Marion and Paul?"
"No. I want a chance to talk to our 'psychic' alone."
"Very well. The table just balances, anyway. Now, about your
telegram, are you going to speak to Mrs. Lambert about that?"
"No. It is all up to Lambert. He can act or not, as he sees fit. He
will probably wire them that he is coming, and as there can be no
explanations till he arrives you will please say nothing of my share
in the warning."
They had just risen from the table when Britt sent in his card.
"Excuse my calling so early," he began, with tranquil drawl, "but I'm
going back to the West to-night. I've got to get out of this climate
or join the spooks. I'm thinking of doing that, anyway, just to see
what it's like 'round the corner in the 'fourth dimension,' and also
because I'd like a change of climate."
"You look well--exceedingly well," Kate cheerily replied.
"You're very good; but I don't feel as well as I look. My poor one
lung is working overtime, and a collapse is imminent. I don't see how
my beloved brother Clarke bears up. He must get help from the 'other
side.' You see, _he_ spent the winter in Boston--think o' that! But
it's telling on him. If I wished him well--which I don't--I'd advise
him to return to Colorado and to his Presbyterianism by the limited
mail."
"Could he do that--I mean go back to his church?"
"I don't suppose he could. You see, he went out under a cloud--took
the whole window-sash with him, you might say--and I don't think the
elders would welcome his relapse. Furthermore, he has embraced
'spiritism,' as he calls it, with both arms. By-the-way, professor,
I've been talking about these psychic matters with Weissmann and
others, and I agree with him that you're the very man to go into an
investigation of these occult forces."
"And be called insane, as Zöllner was?"
"Oh, well, times have softened since then. Now, really, what do _you_
think of Zöllner's experiments?"
"I wish he hadn't been so eager to demonstrate the fourth
dimension--that vitiated everything he did."
"Oh, I don't know. I've been rereading Lodge and Wallace and Meyer. We
studied them when I was at college, mainly to click our tongues--'poor
old chaps!'" He smiled. "You understand? Of course, I can't go the
whole length, but I must say I don't know what you're going to do with
the evidence Crookes collected."
"But Slade and Home and the Fox sisters, from whom he drew his
'facts,' were exposed again and again, and one of the Fox sisters
confessed to fraud, didn't she?"
"M--yes. But afterwards recanted and re-recanted. They were all a
dubious lot, I'll admit. That is why I hate to see a girl like Viola
Lambert put in their class by a self-seeking fakir like Clarke."
"_Is_ he self-seeking--or is he only a fanatic?" asked Kate. "I
believe him to be quite sincere--that's why he's so dangerous. He is
willing to walk hot plough-shares to advance his faith. What _are_ his
relations to Viola? Do you suppose she has actually promised to marry
him?"
Serviss waited for his reply in such suspense that his hands clutched
his chair. Britt's face lost its gleam. "I'm afraid she has--or at
least she feels herself 'sealed to him' by her 'controls.'" Serviss
rose and took a turn about the room as Britt went on. "You see, this
sweet-tempered old ghost McLeod is anxious to have his granddaughter
unite her powers with Clarke's in order to 'advance the Grand Cause.'
McLeod, it seems, was a Presbyterian clergyman himself here 'on the
earth plane,' and has carried his granitic formation right along with
him. I've argued with the old man by the hour, but his egotism is
invincible."
Serviss faced him abruptly. "Now, see here, Britt. You've seen a good
deal of Miss Lambert's performances--what's your honest opinion of
them?"
"Frankly, I don't know," he answered, with a smile. "Since rereading
Zöllner and Crookes and going over my notes and those of Dr. Randall,
I'm a little shaken, I confess. So far as human evidence goes these
men prove that there is a world of phenomena ignored by science. I
don't go so far as to say that these doings were the work of
disembodied spirits, but I do admit that I am puzzled by things which
I have witnessed with one sense or another. The things seem to tally
in a most convincing way. This girl is repeating, substantially, the
same phenomena witnessed by Crookes twenty-five years ago. The
singular thing about the whole subject is that one man can't convince
another by any amount of evidence. A personal revelation is necessary
for each individual."
"Isn't that true of other faiths?" asked Kate.
"No, there's a difference. For example, I would take your brother's
evidence as to a new germ; but as to a spirit--no. And yet one is
quite as incredible as another. Crookes applied the same methods to
the study of these manifestations that he used in his other
researches, and piled up a mass of evidence, yet his fellows of the
Royal Academy sneered or haw-hawed--and do yet. Do you know, doctor,"
he continued, "I have moments when I dimly suspicion that we
scientists are a thought too arrogant. We lose the expectant mind. We
assume that we've corralled and branded all facts, when, as a matter
of history, there are scattered bunches of cattle all through the
hills. Take Haeckel, for instance. He talks very like the head of a
church laying down the law to you and to me as well as to the ignorant
outsider. Spencer was a good deal less sure of himself. It takes a
physical specialist to be cock-sure. Darwin never professed to solve
the final mystery of life or death, but Haeckel and Metchnikoff do.
They are so militant against religion that they become intolerant of
their colleagues who presume to differ with them on matters that are
purely speculative. Any one attempting to discuss new phases of human
thought is a fakir. I am not willing to say that all the notions of
the 'dualists' are survivals of the age of superstition, as Haeckel
does. It may be that in the midst of all their fancies which _are_
survivals there are some subtle perceptions of the future."
Serviss lifted his eyebrows in surprise. "That's a whole lot for you
to concede. Weissmann must have been corrupting you."
Britt went on: "We must always remember that every age is an age of
transition. We are losing faith in the revelations of the past, but we
should not presume to define the faith of the future. Men will not
live in the hopelessness which the monists would thrust upon them,
they will not patiently wait while Pasteur and Koch and the other germ
theorists labor to prolong the life of some other generation. They
will always insist on having something to live for and to die for. I
don't pretend to say what this faith will be, but it will be
sufficing."
Kate exclaimed with glowing eyes: "And all this change in you two men
has come about through the influence of a pretty girl!"
The two inexorables looked at each other with a certain air of
timidity, and Britt's face expanded in a slow, sly smile. "You've
discovered us. We are human, like the rest of our sex, if you catch us
out of our laboratories. Theoretically we hold life of no account
actually we're all lovers or husbands." A mockery more moving than
tears came into his voice. "My hopeless philosophy, dear lady, arises
from weak nerves and a poor digestion. I would give all I know of
science, all I expect to be in my profession, and all I hope to be
after I am dead, for just five years of health, such as Lambert's
miners squander in carousals every Saturday night in the saloons of
Colorow. I hold with Haeckel in one thing--I believe in a man's right
to suicide, and when I find myself of no further use to the sick I
shall slip quietly out. I hope I won't have to poison Clarke before I
go. I'd do it cheerfully if I thought it the only way to rid that girl
of him." Seeing that his hostess was really shocked by these words, he
lightly ended: "However, I think such extreme measures unnecessary.
I'm going to send Lambert on to kill him for me."
Kate looked at Morton with inquiring eye--he shook his head.
Britt resumed: "I am trusting in you, Serviss. If I could be sure of
living two weeks longer I would stay and help, but money and breath
are now vital to me, and I must go. However, I'm perfectly willing to
put Clarke out of the way if you advise it. He really ought to die,
Mrs. Rice," he gravely explained as he rose to go. "He is a male
vampire. To think of him despoiling that glorious young soul maddens
me. I am the son of a coarse, powerful, sensual, drunken father; but
he neglected to endow me with his brutal health. My mother was an
invalid; therefore, here am I, old and worn out at forty--that's why I
worship youth and beauty. Health is the only heaven I know, and that
is denied me." Here his smile died, his eyes softened, and his face
set in impenetrable gravity. "Had I the power I would keep Viola
Lambert forever young and forever virgin." Then, with a quick return
to his familiar drawl: "But I am going away without even killing
Clarke, to plod my little round in Colorow and wait news from you. If
I do not see you again, Mrs. Rice, keep me in mind. I make the same
promise your husband made--I will 'manifest' to you if I can."
"I would rather you came in the flesh," she replied.
He bowed deeply. "I thank you both for a very satisfying glimpse of a
civilised home."
"Sometimes I think we're over-civilized," she replied, quickly. "But
come and see us again."
"I fear it will be as a spook--they laugh at microbes as well as
locks. However, I promise to rap when I call."
"Thank you, that will make you a most considerate ghost."
When they were alone together Kate said, with a sigh: "What an amount
of sin and sickness and trouble and death there is in the world!"
"That's a sign we're getting on," he replied. "When we're young we
laugh at the falling leaves--they are only a sign of some new sport.
When I'm as old as you are I suppose I'll begin to observe all the
bald-heads at the theatre."
"Well, now, for our dinner-party. I must write to Mrs. Lambert
to-night."
"You'd better take second thought about this matter--'Reckless Kate.'"
"I have."
"Take a third. Consider this--the girl may go into a trance at the
table."
"Oh, if she only would! My fear is she'll be like other amateur
performers--'subject to a cold' or something. These gifted people are
so often disappointing."
"Now, see here, Kit, seriously, if you invite Miss Lambert to our
house it must be as any other charming guest--"
"You didn't suppose I was _really_ going to ask her to spookle?" she
indignantly answered; then added, with a smile: "Of course, if she
_insists_ on reading my palm--or--any little thing like that, it
wouldn't be nice to refuse, would it?"
"I knew it! You have designs upon her. Don't do it. It would be too
gross after your protest against others for using her. She herself
complained bitterly of just this treatment. You must not even speak of
her powers."
She lifted her hand solemnly. "_I swear!_"
"I mistrust you even when you swear," he ended, doubtfully. "There's a
tell-tale gleam in your eyes."
And at this moment of banter they both lost their sense of the girl's
imminent peril and thought of her only as a most entertaining
possibility as a guest.
XII
VIOLA IN DINNER-DRESS
Viola glowed with joy over Kate's invitation to dinner, and, flying to
the telephone (as she was requested to do), accepted without
consulting either her mother or Clarke, and fell immediately into
wonder whether she possessed a gown becoming enough to fit the golden
opportunity.
Mrs. Lambert was also pleased, but at once said, "I hope Tony will
feel like going."
Viola resented the implied doubt of their own acceptance. "I am going,
anyhow. I will not be shut up here any longer like a convict. I like
Mrs. Rice very much, and I want to see her house. I know it will be
just as nice as she is."
"But we can't go without Anthony, my dear."
Clarke came to the door a little later to say that he had received
Mrs. Rice's invitation, but that he did not care to feed the curiosity
of such people. "You would better plead a previous engagement," he
added to Viola.
"I'll do nothing of the sort," she indignantly answered. "Indeed, I've
already accepted. You needn't look black--I'm going," she added, in
pouting defiance.
Something in her look as well as in her tone convinced him that wisdom
lay in not attempting to restrain her, therefore he gave assent,
gloomily and with a sense of loss. "I don't know how Pratt will feel
about it. He don't like those people, and, besides, he has invited
some friends in to see you this evening."
"He said nothing to me about it," Viola responded, curtly, "and,
besides, how can he expect me to be always at his command? He is not
my jailer. I'm tired of his demands, they are so unreasonable."
Mrs. Lambert, as usual, entered to soothe and heal. "Viola's been very
good about meeting Mr. Pratt's friends, Tony. We've hardly been out to
dinner since we came here, and it really seems to me as if we had the
right to go out to-night."
"We ought to have Thursdays, anyway," the girl scornfully added. "We
have less liberty than our maids. The whole situation is becoming
intolerable."
Clarke acknowledged that Pratt demanded a good deal, and was gracious
enough to say: "It won't be necessary much longer. I'll go down and
try to arrange the matter, and report what he says."
"I don't care what he says, I'm going," Viola repeated. "I'm going if
he locks us out. I wish he would."
Pratt was resentful at once. "I don't want her to go to-night. I have
some people coming in to see her. I don't want them disappointed; she
must remain."
"She feels aggrieved because she has been kept so close here, and I
must say--"
"I don't see why she feels that way, she has every luxury. She goes
for a drive every afternoon, and there is hardly a night that I don't
bring home somebody to dinner. It seems to me she's seeing all the
people she ought to see. I don't believe in having her mix with those
sceptics too freely."
He went up-stairs sulkily, quite in the mood to bully, but Mrs.
Lambert turned away his wrath with a smile and several soft words, and
Viola did not see him till she was on her way to the carriage. He was
lurking in the hall below, waiting for her surly and sour and
insulting.
Viola, perceiving his humor, said to herself: "I will not let you
spoil my evening by making me angry. I will not listen to you," and
she didn't, though she could not help hearing his warning growl.
"I'll expect you home early."
Once safely out of the house she said to Clarke: "This really is too
much, Anthony. He is insufferable. If you don't tell him so, and teach
him better manners, I will leave the house. But there! I said I
wouldn't let him spoil our evening, and I won't--I won't even think of
him again."
Serviss expected her to show some signs of the deep emotional stress
of his former interview, but in this he was most pleasurably
surprised. He marvelled at the height of her rebound from the wan
helplessness of her mood upon the stairs. She was, indeed, a totally
different being--a radiant, blooming creature belonging wholly to the
world of youth--and he was scarcely able to relate the two scenes to
the same girl, and again he exclaimed, "What an actress--if she is an
actress!" She was very simply attired in pale blue with but few
ornaments, but she bore herself like a queen demanding homage--and he
gave it. He was all the lover and nothing of the scientist as he stood
to greet her.
She, on her part, behind her proud mask, was breathing quick with
pleasure. To meet Professor Serviss in dinner-dress, in his own home,
exalted her above the pupil and transformed him into something more
intimate than the master--something more dangerously compelling than
friend.
Kate, quite carried away by her enthusiasm, caught the girl again in
her arms. "You dear, sweet thing! I wish I had made a big party for
you; you're too fine to be wasted on three cranky old scientists."
Serviss met Clarke with less of repulsion than he had anticipated,
for, notwithstanding the preacher's haggard cheeks and a certain set
glare which came into his eyes occasionally, he was a handsome figure.
He was plainly on guard, however, and extremely ill at ease, and his
eyes kept furtive watch on Viola's every movement.
Kate at once engaged him in conversation in order that he and Morton
might not fall into argument, and with the further purpose of
permitting her young people a little time for mutual explanation. She
was glad when Weissmann came in, brisk as a boy, his keen eyes
peering alertly through his horn-bowed glasses; he not merely proved a
diversion, he completed her party. The great man was as animated as a
cricket (this was his society manner), and upon being presented to
Viola began paying her the most marked and absorbed attention, hopping
briskly from one heavy German compliment to another, quite unaware,
apparently, that she was anything more than a very pretty girl.
He took her out to dinner, with elaborate courtesy, and divided his
attentions between his partner and his hostess with mathematical
precision, beaming now upon Viola, now upon Kate, with such
well-calculated intervals that Serviss broke into a broad smile.
"You find yourself well placed, Dr. Weissmann?"
"Well placed and well pleased," he responded, quickly, "with no thanks
to you, I suspect."
Kate was much relieved by Weissmann's liking for Viola--it made her
party a little less difficult; but she was anxious to have Morton free
to talk with Viola, and to that end drew the good doctor into
conversation with Clarke, who was not at all pleased with his seat,
which was by design at the farthest remove from his psychic. He saw no
reason why they might not have been seated side by side.
As Kate remarked to Marion afterwards, it was a hard team to drive,
for the table was too small to permit anything like private
conversation at either end, and to enter upon general topics was to
start Clarke and Weissmann into dialectic clamor. "I trusted in the
food," she answered to Marion's query. "It was a good dinner and kept
even the preacher silent--part of the time."
Clarke's face was flushed with wine, and his glance, which rested
often on Viola, was not pleasant. He was afraid of her when she shone
thus brightly among careless, worldly, sceptical people. She seemed to
forget her work, her endowments, and to think only of flattering
speeches and caresses. It was all so childish, so foolish in her, so
undignified in one who meant so much to the sin-darkened world.
Mrs. Lambert, on the contrary, was humanly glad (for the moment, at
least) of her daughter's respite from her grave duties, and sat
blandly smiling while the young people talked animatedly on a wide
list of subjects.
Morton was delighted to find that Viola had read a good many books,
not always the best books, but of such variety that her mind was by no
means that of the school-girl. Her experience in life was very slight,
but her hunger to know was keen. He was eager to draw her out on her
morbid side, but, as he had said to Kate, "We must not permit anything
to rob her of one evening of unbroken normal intercourse. If you can
manage Clarke, I will do the rest."
Kate tried hard to "manage Clarke," and was succeeding rather
adroitly. Whenever he seemed about to enter upon a discourse she
interrupted him, met his ponderous phrases with flippancies, plied him
with food (for which he had a singular weakness), and in many other
womanly ways discouraged and, in the end, intimidated him. He was at a
distinct disadvantage and knew it, and the knowledge irritated him.
However, with all his eccentricities he was a man of considerable
social experience, and, while he was not at any time joyous of
countenance, he did not in open guise offend, though he sank at last
into a glowering silence, leaving the talk to Weissmann.
Morton gave much attention to Mrs. Lambert, securing from her, almost
before she realized it, a promise to join a theatre-party, and
thereupon turned to Viola to say, "I hope you will consent."
"Consent?" she cried, with shining eyes. "I should like it above
everything. You see I've never really _lived_ in a big city, and it's
all so new and splendid to me."
Morton responded lightly. "I wish I could see it with your eyes. I
suppose New York is a wonderful city, and I'm sure all this chaos is
making towards something unparalleled in beauty, but just now I take
the point of view of a native who has been driven out of the good old
down-town streets by vulgar trade. The Servisses lived for forty years
at the corner of Corlear Square, but four years ago a big apartment
hotel rose next door, shutting off our light, and we had to move.
Hence our acrimony. The city grows more and more a show-place, wherein
the prodigal American may buy the pleasure he thinks commensurate.
Most of us who were born here have quite lost our hold on the earth;
for instance, here we are, Kate and I, treed in a ten-story hotel on
ground from which we used to gather huckleberries, and therein lies
the history of many another New York family."
Viola looked round the spacious and handsome dining-room. "I think
this way of living is beautiful. I want mamma to take an apartment
over here on the Park. I love the Park, although it makes me homesick
for the West sometimes."
"If you do decide to take an apartment, consult Kate. What she doesn't
know of New York isn't lady-like for any one to know. Frankly, Mrs.
Lambert, I should be very glad to see you get away from Pratt's house.
He is, I fear, a selfish, brutal business-man--an egotist who would
sacrifice you both instantly if it would add to his comfort of mind or
body. But wait. I am forgetting my duties as host--we are to avoid all
unpleasant topics," and thereupon he led the conversation back to
impersonal discussions of books and music.
All through this exquisite little dinner Viola sat with a
strengthening determination to assert her right to leave her gloomy
prison-house on the Drive, a house in which there was neither
wholesome conversation nor privacy nor order. An ambition to live
humanly and harmoniously in an apartment like this grew each moment in
definiteness. She appreciated the delicacy of the centre-piece of
maidenhair-fern, veiling with its cloud of green a few flame-like
jonquils. She took a woman's joy in the immaculate napery and in the
charm and variety of the china. Such housekeeping was an art, and
quite impossible without the personal touch of the mistress, and, as
she looked across towards Kate's homely, pleasant face, her heart went
out to her in gratitude and love. She could be trusted, this frank,
laughing, graceful woman. She represented a most modern union of
housewife and intellectual companion. No wonder Dr. Serviss remained
unmarried.
Clarke's forbidding, unrelenting face, looming darkly at Kate's side,
was revealed to her in a new and most unpleasant light. She resented
his scowling glances, and pitied his failure to glow in such genial
company. She saw him for the first time the prosing bigot, narrow and
repulsive. She resented his failure to subordinate his theories. Up to
this moment she had supposed herself respecting him; now she began to
realize that she had lost even that, and the thought made her shiver
with foreboding. How different were the men of science, with their
jocular, irrelevant, but always illuminating comment on whatever
subject they handled! It was all touch and go with them, and yet they
were quite as serious as he.
As the coffee came in Kate rose with a word of caution: "Morton, we'll
expect you to join us soon--"
"You may depend upon us," replied Weissmann.
"And you mustn't talk out all the interesting subjects--save some of
them for us to hear."
"We shall not be able to talk on any other subject than yourselves,"
retorted Weissmann, gallantly, "and that would not be good for you to
hear."
Kate laughed. "I know what that means. These Western girls are
compelling creatures. Well, I will not complain if she only shakes you
out of your scientific complacency."
They were hardly out of the room before Weissmann asked, "Is Miss
Lambert from the West?"
"From the Rocky Mountains."
"So? I find her quite charming."
Morton dryly answered: "I noticed that. Yes, she's Western born, but
of Eastern stock. Mr. Clarke is a New-Yorker, I believe."
"I was born in Maryland, sir, but all my early life was spent in
Brooklyn."
Weissmann turned his telescopic eyes upon Clarke and studied him in
silence somewhat as a pop-eyed crab might regard a clam. "So, so," he
said, softly. "You are the one who is preparing to assault the
scientific world--the Clarke mentioned in the papers to-day?"
Clarke folded his arms in defiant mood. "I am."
"And this charming girl is your victim--the one for whom you make such
claims, eh?"
Clarke regarded the old man with imperious lift of the head. "She is,
without question, the most marvellous psychic in the world."
"'Psychic!'" Weissmann barked this word at him like an angry mastiff.
"'Psychic!' What business has she to be a 'psychic'? She is too lovely
to be anything but a wife and mother--a happy hausfrau. And you would
make her infamous? My friend, I do not understand you."
Clarke's eyes blazed. "If I had the power I would lay her message
before every living soul on the globe. Infamy? Sir, I know no higher
honor than that of being cup-bearer to despairing souls thirsting for
the water of life." Then a direct answer to the old man's prolonged
stare: "You need have no fear. I will not go one jot beyond the advice
of her 'guides.'"
"Her 'guides'? Who are they?"
"I mean her invisible ministers, compared with whose wisdom our
learning is child's prattle for they are one with the sages of
history. Their minds drink of the limitless ocean of all past
knowledge and catch the gleam of discovery to come. Furthermore"--here
his voice grew hard and his glance shifted to Serviss--"no one living
has a more vital interest in her welfare than I. Surely I may be
trusted to guard and cherish one who is soon to be my wife."
This blow, delivered with the orator's telling arrangement of phrase,
fell with tremendous force upon Serviss, towards whom it was
vengefully directed. With a heart filled with anger and disgust and
pain the young host responded: "I am glad to have this assurance from
you, for your action has seemed to me calculated to do Miss Lambert
irreparable injury. Of course, I do not doubt your good intentions as
regards her--I cannot do that after your final statement--but I think
you underestimate your opposing force."
"We expect battle, but nothing can really harm us. What do we care for
the puerile dispraise of the press? We are doing God's work in the
world, and as for the scientists, they are as moles in the dark."
Weissmann's voice became reflective. "Do the parents of the girl not
object?"
"Quite the contrary. Her mother trained her for this great work."
"That is very strange--this mother _seems_ nice and sensible."
Clarke sneered. "You physicists think nothing is natural or sensible
but your own grubbing. You nose in the mire studying parasites of
decaying flesh, while we are lifting wing into the world of spirit
where neither pain nor death is known. You are blinded by your
bigotry, or you would see the leading of every new discovery in the
modes of motion. Heat, light, the X-ray, the emanation of radium--do
they not all point to new subtleties of the physical universe? The
power which the spirits use to communicate with us, the world which
they inhabit, is only a higher evolution, a more potent condition--"
Weissmann arrested him in full flight and began to question him about
Viola's powers, drawing from him rapidly, and with the precision of a
great lawyer, all that he would say of her case, while Serviss,
smoking quietly, listened in deep amazement, so candid, so sincere did
Clarke seem to be in his answers. He was more--he became eloquent,
almost convincing; and the young scientist was forced to acknowledge
once more that appearances were deceitful. "Can this man be the fakir
I have thought him? He is a bigot, a crazy fool, but he does not fit
the rôle of villain; and yet--"
He could not put the alternative into words, so deeply did it involve
Viola herself.
The preacher was in full flow--turgid, studiedly ornate, egotistical,
and bombastic, but the final effect, even upon Weissmann, was that of
one deluded, rather than of one carrying on a deep and far-reaching
system of deception. He bodied forth the emotional moralist seeking
escape from the ferocity of the creed in which his youth had been
nurtured, rather than the self-seeking, coldly calculating
fortune-hunter. With lofty courage he concluded:
"Now to you, gentlemen of science, we say: We respect your methods,
but not your subjects of study. Nothing gives me greater pleasure than
a perusal of your books. The patient way in which you pursue some clew
in the labyrinth of biology is admirable. I met a man last week--a man
I knew in college--and upon my asking what he was doing he replied,
gravely, 'For the last six months I've been making a study of the
parasites in the abdomen of the flea!'" Here Clarke's sneering laugh
broke out. "Yet that man despised me--called me a fool--because I,
forsooth, was intent on the laws which govern the return of the dead."
His laugh died, he became very earnest and very sincere. "Now, men of
science, all we ask of you is to apply your precision of handling to
subjects a little more worth while than the putrid body of an
insect."
Serviss laughed, but Weissmann, with true German contrariety, returned
the compliment gravely. Being confronted with a true believer, he
automatically assumed the opposite position, and with searching scorn
assailed the whole spiritist camp with merciless knowledge of every
defenceless portal.
For a time Morton enjoyed Clarke's discomfiture, but at last his sense
of duty as host awoke and he was about to come to the preacher's
relief when Kate appeared in the doorway, and the old warrior lowered
his lance and rose politely.
Kate gave him a reproving glance. "You've been arguing--I can tell by
your guilty looks."
"Oh no, not at all; a mere statement of opinion--of no interest, I
assure you."
Kate's voice was eager. "Mr. Clarke, Viola wants to sit for us--have
you any objections?"
"Kate!" called Serviss. "I am ashamed of you--"
"I assure you I didn't ask it--I didn't even hint towards it. 'Cross
my heart--hope to die.'"
Morton was at the moment displeased, for he had been looking forward
to a long and intimate conversation with Viola in the drawing-room,
and would have been glad if Clarke had opposed it firmly--which he did
not. Perhaps he saw a chance to turn the tables on his critics; at any
rate, he rose, saying, "I will talk with her and decide the matter,"
and followed Kate out of the room.
"What is it? What did she say?" queried Weissmann, bewilderedly.
Morton explained that Miss Lambert had particularly requested him to
sit with her and talk to her "guides," and that she had expressed a
particular desire for an immediate test.
Weissmann's eyes glittered with new interest. "Very good. Why not? It
is a fine opportunity. Do you not feel so?"
In truth he did not. The intrusion of the abnormal side of Viola's
life seemed at the moment not merely inopportune but repulsive. As he
entered the drawing-room he found her sitting in a low chair beside a
small table on which stood a shaded lamp. Clarke was talking with her,
and Serviss could detect even at a distance the depressing change
which had come to her. Her girlish ecstasy was quite gone and in its
place lay pallid languor and a look of appeal.
Clarke moved away as his host approached, and Viola, glancing up wanly
and wistfully, said: "Isn't it stupid? Just when I was so happy. I
wanted this evening free, but they would not have it so. No sooner was
I seated here than they began to work on me. They say they want to
talk with you--my grandfather especially--and I, too, want you to do
so--only I didn't intend to ask it to-night. Please be patient with
me, won't you?"
"Do not distress yourself about that. I shall be very glad to sit. I
was afraid Kate might be requesting it. I particularly warned her
against mentioning the subject, but if your 'guides' wish it, and you
are willing, be sure Dr. Weissmann and I will be most pleased. But,
tell me, how did the change come? What began to happen?"
[Illustration: "'BUT, TELL ME, HOW DID THE CHANGE COME? WHAT
BEGAN TO HAPPEN?'"]
"The usual tapping--here on the table--then my hand wanted to write. I
ignored it--I fought it. I didn't intend to yield, but they set to
work undermining my will, and then I knew that I must consent or be
strangled. As soon as I gave up they took their fingers from my
throat, but they are here--my grandfather is just back of me--I can
feel his heavy hand on my head. I'm sorry, Professor Serviss. I was
having such a good time. I hope you won't despise me."
"You are entirely too modest," he answered, cheerily. "We are highly
favored. It's like having Paderewski volunteer to play for his
dinner."
His lightness of tone hurt her a little. "You don't believe in me in
the least, do you? You think I am an impostor?"
"Oh no. I believe in _you_."
"But you've got to believe in these manifestations if you believe in
me."
"No, no, that does not follow," he replied, quickly; then, perceiving
that this involved him, "All you do may possibly be explained without
resort to the spiritualistic hypothesis--" He was embarrassed by her
gaze.
"Why are you so contemptuous of spiritualists? It is very hard to
bear."
He felt the rebuke. "I am not contemptuous--"
"Yes, you are. Scientific people never speak of us without a laugh or
a sneer, and it hurts. It confuses me, too. If good people like you
care nothing about death--if you only laugh--"
"I beg your pardon, Miss Lambert, I never intended to be either harsh
or contemptuous. I do not accept--I mean to say I am _unable_ to
accept--your faith. I confess that my mind refuses to entertain the
postulates of what Clarke considers a religion. I must be honest. I am
a 'sceptic,' so far as your faith goes, but that does not mean that I
do not believe in the sincerity of your mother; and as to your own
powers--I do not wish to dogmatize, for the physical universe is a
very large and complicate thing, and, young as I am"--here he
smiled--"I don't pretend to a knowledge of all it contains."
She accepted his explanation, and, with musing candor, replied: "I
don't really blame you. I suppose if these things had happened to some
one else I would not have believed in them. I have thought a great
deal of what you said to me. I want to get away from that house; I am
hating Mr. Pratt more and more, and I will leave to-morrow if
grandfather will only consent. If he comes to you to-night, tell him
so--maybe my father will come, too. I want you to know my father. I'm
sure you will like him. Isn't it strange that I have never been able
to hear his voice?"
He ignored her question. "I do not understand the motives of your
'guides'--I cannot conceive of myself sacrificing you to any cause
whatsoever."
"Don't awaken my doubts," she cried, despairingly. "I don't know why
it is, but you always rouse in me something that makes war."
"I'm sorry if I seem to corrupt you."
"I don't mean that," she hastened to say. "The life which you and your
sister represent is the life I love. I was almost resigned to my fate
when your sister called upon me. Now I'm all rebellion again. Being
here to-night makes me hate all that I am. I hate my very name. I hate
Pratt and his horrible house--I almost hate my mother. Sometimes she
is so cruel to me. She don't mean to be, but she is."
His face grew reflective, almost stern. "I wish there were some way of
taking you out of the world in which you now suffer. I wish--" He
paused, checked by the thought of Clarke's claims upon her.
"There is only one way--my grandfather must consent to my release; he
rules us all."
This delusion rose like a stone wall at the end of every avenue, and
Morton turned to a personal explanation. "I cannot associate what you
seem to me now with what you were when I last saw you. What would you
have said had I seized you the other day--snatched you from the stairs
and ran--"
Her eyes opened wide. "The stairs?"
"Had you no knowledge of following your mother down the stairway after
our interview?"
"I knew I was entranced, but I didn't know--What did I do?" She asked
this anxiously.
"Nothing." He hastened again to change the current. "We were in hot
argument. You came down as peace-maker. I went away cravenly, most
impotently, leaving you there like a captive."
"I don't remember a word of it. I came to myself in my own room, and
only mother was with me." Her rebellious fire blazed up again. "Oh,
Dr. Serviss, I was resigned yesterday, but to-night I am in terror
again, and they know it. They are eager to show their power, to
confound you and convert Dr. Weissmann. I'm sure they will do some
wonderful thing for you to-night if you will let them."
"The best thing 'they' could do for me would be to let you sit and
talk to me," he replied in the voice of a lover.
She seemed to listen to some interior voice. "They are insisting. They
are here--listen!"
As he listened a series of throbbing raps seemed to come from the
chair beneath her hand.
"Very well, we will sit." As he said this three heavy, rending, low
thuds sounded on the under side of the table.
"That is grandfather," she said. "He wants you to be very rigid, and
so do I," she said. "Sometimes it seems as if I did these things
myself--I mean certain physical things--and I get all mixed in my
mind. I want you to study me." She passed her hand wearily over her
face, and Morton looked at her in sorrow, meditating a firm, decisive
assault on her hallucination, but checked himself. "If I am to help
you, I must know all about you," he said at last, "and a sitting may
help."
"You wonder at my fear of my grandfather, but that's because you don't
realize his power. Let me tell you what happened to me once, when I
tried to run away from him. I became desperate one summer vacation and
determined to get away from it all. Without telling mother, I took the
train one morning--" She paused abruptly and pressed both hands to her
burning cheeks. "Oh, it was horrible! My grandfather threw me into a
trance on the train, and the conductor thought I was drunk--" She
shuddered with the memory of it, and could not finish. "Since then I
have never dared to really oppose him."
He pondered her blush, the quiver of her lips, and the timid look of
her eyes, and gravely answered: "I share your horror of an experience
like that. But it does not endear your malevolent grandfather to me.
He must be a kind of male witch--"
"You mustn't feel that way towards him," she cried out in some alarm.
"He is firm because he feels that I should be doing my work--"
"I'd like to talk this matter over with him, but I don't like to have
you entranced. Is that necessary?"
"Yes, to get the voices. The writing we can have any time."
"What do you do to induce this coma--this sleep?"
"Just fold my hands and give myself up."
"It seems a desecration of you; but if there is no other way we will
grant 'the powers' audience."
At his word her face cleared, her fingers relaxed, and she smiled.
"Thank you. He has taken away his hand."
As she rose and stood before him she seemed again the buoyant,
care-free girl, and he could only weakly say, "It seems so ungracious,
so inhospitable in us," as they walked side by side across the room to
Kate.
Clarke was sitting in silence, without pretence of listening to his
hostess, watching Serviss with gloomy, uneasy eyes--a fierce flame of
jealousy burning in his brain. He recalled the change in Viola which
had followed this man's visit to Colorow, and associated her first
persistent revolt with him; and now, seeing her beside him, in his own
house, looking up into his face, absorbed, fascinated, utterly
forgetful of her duty, oblivious to every one else, was maddening. Her
gown angered him. "Why did she wear that dress?" he fiercely asked
himself. "She does not do that for me. She is in love with him--that
is why. She shall not come here again. These people are destructive to
her higher aims."
In this mood he changed his mind, opposed the sitting; but Viola
convinced him that it was the will of her 'guides' and that it was a
splendid opportunity to interest two renowned sceptics, and in that
spirit he again reluctantly consented.
XIII
THE TEST SÉANCE
Morton's study was decided upon as the most suitable place in which to
experiment, for the reason that it had but one exit, a sliding double
door, which led to the library, and its windows all opened upon the
street, six stories below. A burglar could not have entered with full
license to do so.
Viola assisted Morton and Kate in clearing the big mahogany table,
while Weissmann conferred with Clarke. To judge from the girl's gayety
and eager interest the preparations were for a game of cards rather
than for a test séance in which her love and honor were at stake. Mrs.
Lambert was quite serene; Clarke alone seemed anxious and ill at ease.
Weissmann, at Morton's request, assumed general direction, and
betrayed an astonishing familiarity with the requirements. Under his
direction they grouped themselves about the table as for whist, Viola
at the north end, with Clarke directly opposite, and Kate and Mrs.
Lambert on either side and quite near him. The two inquisitors then
took seats--Morton at the psychic's right, Weissmann at her left.
When the positions were all decided upon, Viola, with a note of
disappointment in her voice, asked, "Aren't you going to tie me?"
"Oh no," replied Morton, "the conditions are yours to-night. You are
our guest. Our tests will be made at some other time."
"Please make them to-night," she pleaded. "Please make them as hard as
you can."
Weissmann's glasses glistened upon her with joyful acclaim. "Very
good, your wishes shall be met. Let us see--we shall tie you. Have you
something suitable?" he asked of his assistant.
Morton took from his desk a roll of white tape. "How will this do?"
"Just the thing," Weissmann replied; "but we must have no knots, no
tying. Kate, get your needle, we must fasten Miss Lambert in such wise
that no one can say, 'Oh, she untied the knots!'"
Under his supervision Kate looped the tape about Viola's wrists and
sewed it fast to her close-fitting satin cuffs. She then encircled her
ankles with the tape, and Morton drew the long ends under and far back
of the chair and nailed them to the floor. Thereupon Weissmann said,
"I wish to nail these wristbands to the chair-arm.--Do we sacrifice
the cuffs?" he asked of Viola.
"Yes, yes--anything. Nail as hard as you please."
"And the chair?" pursued the old man, glancing at Morton.
"Oh, certainly," replied he. "Science goes before furniture in this
house," and a couple of long brass tacks were driven firmly down
through both tape and sleeve.
"You poor child!" exclaimed Kate. "If they hurt you, cry out, and I
will free you."
Weissmann then fastened a silk thread to her wrist and gave one end to
Morton. "We will keep this taut," he said; "every motion will be
felt."
As they worked the enthusiasm of investigation filled their eyes. They
lost sight of the fact that all this precaution implied a doubt of the
girl, and Viola on her part remained as blithe as if it were all a
game of hide-and-seek.
Clarke, too, became exultant. "McLeod, now is your opportunity," he
called to the invisible guide. "Bring your band and put the monist
bigots to rout."
Morton moved about the girl with growing excitement, a subtle fire
mounting to his brain each time his fingers touched her smooth, round
wrists. Once she said, "I have never had a real test like this--this
is what I wanted you to do. If anything happens now it will be outside
of me, won't it?"
"We must be cruel in order to be kind," he answered, enigmatically.
At last Weissmann stood clear of her. "Now we are ready," he said,
beaming with satisfaction. "You see I lock this door and here is the
key." He held it up in confirmation. "I pocket the key. Now what?"
"Turn down the gas," replied Clarke. "Do not use electricity--the room
must be perfectly dark."
"Why _perfectly_ dark? I don't like that." Weissmann spoke with
manifest irritation. "We should be able to see something."
Clarke shrugged his shoulders. "You can do as you wish. The guides say
their manifestations are antagonized by light--and that darkness is
necessary for these special phenomena of the cone."
"Oh, we _have_ no cone!" exclaimed Mrs. Lambert.
"Cone? What cone?" asked Weissmann.
"We need some sort of megaphone to enlarge the spirit-voices."
"Make one of card-board," suggested Viola. "Any sort of horn will do."
Morton rose and took down a horn from the top of a bookcase. "Here is
the megaphone of my phonograph; will it do?"
Clarke examined it. "It's rather heavy, but I think they will use it.
Place it on the table. Put a pad and pencil there also," he added. "We
may get some writing."
"Anything else?"
"No--now we are quite ready," replied Clarke, in his exhibition voice.
"It is well to touch hands for a time--until the psychic sinks into
her trance."
"With your permission," said Morton to Viola.
A faint flush came into her face. "Certainly, professor," and a touch
of emphasis on his title had the effect of a slight, a very slight
rebuff.
Clarke turned the light down to a mere point of yellow fire, and in
the sudden gloom all were plunged into silence. "Now, whatever you
do, gentlemen, don't startle the psychic after she goes into sleep."
Morton, with his fingers resting lightly on Viola's soft hand,
experienced a keen, pang of sympathetic pain. "She is so charming!
What profanation to develop the seamy side of her nature! What pitiful
tomfoolery! She is in the lion's mouth now--and yet how eagerly she
seemed to desire it. Weissmann has made anything but the simplest
ventriloquistic performance impossible--she cannot lift a hand. To
save her from herself, as well as from Clarke, it is necessary to
expose her weakness as well as his trickery."
She was saying, in answer to a question: "No, Dr. Weissmann, I have no
control over the manifestations; in fact, the more anxious I am, the
longer we have to wait. I cannot promise anything to-night--"
Morton, hearing this, inwardly commented; "These obscure forms of
hysteria often possess the cunning, the dissimulation of madness. Poor
girl! She is beginning to realize her predicament, and is preparing us
for disappointment," and a return of his doubt kept him silent.
Weissmann spoke. "Shall we not sing something--'We Shall Meet Beyond
the River,' or some ditty like that?"
Thereat Kate said: "Doctor, you betray astonishing familiarity with
the ways of 'spooks.'"
"Oh, I know everything."
"I begin to believe it," she retorted. "I begin to suspect that you
are a secret adherent. Morton, you would better tie Dr. Weissmann,
otherwise he may speak from the cone himself."
As if to counteract this banter Clarke began a discourse on the
leadings of the most recent discoveries:
"The X-ray is a mode of motion, as light is a mode of motion, but the
waves of light move in such a way as to clash with and weaken those of
the X-ray; so we argue that the mode of motion, through which
disembodied souls manifest themselves, being far subtler than the
X-ray, is neutralized--though by no means destroyed--by the motion
called light. Furthermore, there seems to be a reluctance on the part
of the invisible ones to have the actual processes scrutinized. I once
laid a pencil on the table and asked for a visible action of writing,
vainly, so long as it was completely exposed, but upon being covered
with a silk handkerchief it plainly rose and wrote. It could be
distinctly seen moving beneath the cloth. Sir William Crookes had a
similar experience, except in his case he saw the pencil move, prop
itself against a ruler, and try three times to write--all in the
light. I have seen letters form on an exposed surface of a slate, I
have had hands appear through a curtain and write in the light, but
the power must always be generated in shadow."
Kate shuddered. "Woo! It gives me the shivers to think of such things.
Will anything as wonderful happen to-night?"
"I cannot tell--the conditions are severe, but I think we will have
something. Viola?" he called, softly.
"Yes," she answered, faintly.
"Would you like us to sing?"
"No--I'd rather you'd all talk. Perhaps they will let me take part in
the demonstration to-night. They promised to do so, you remember."
Weissman recounted some of the experiences Zöllner had enjoyed in
Germany shortly after the Fox sisters became so celebrated in America.
"Crookes and Wallace and several others went into the whole question
at that time--the world rang with the controversy. But the clamor
passed, the phenomena passed. It is like an epidemic, it comes and it
goes, and in the end is humanity the wiser? No."
"Yes, it is," broke in Clarke. "We are just that much more certain of
the indestructible life of the soul--every wave of this spirit-sea
leaves a deposit of fact on the beach of time, makes death that much
less dreadful. We make gains each decade. Sir William Crookes, Sir
Oliver Lodge, Alfred Russel Wallace, Lombroso have all been convinced
of the reality of these phenomena. Surely such men must influence the
thought of their time. Experimental psychology is on the right road--"
Morton was suffering with the girl, whose hand was beginning to
tremble beneath his palm. She no longer replied to his questions, but
that she was still awake he knew, for he could hear her sighing
deeply, so deeply that the sound troubled him almost as if she were
weeping. His impulse was to rise and turn on the light and give over
this trial, which could only end in humiliating her. "Her temerity is
a part of her malady," he argued. "It has arisen through years of
misconceived petting and nursing on the part of her mother. Up to this
moment her performances have always been in the presence of friends
and relatives, or for the consolation of those eager to believe, and
therefore easily deluded. Every sitter has conspired to practically
force her into an elaborate series of deceptions, each deceit being
built upon and made necessary by the other. It is pitiful, but she now
believes in herself--that is pathetically certain. Otherwise she would
not have yielded herself so completely into the hands of an inexorable
investigator like Weissmann. She must take the consequences," he
ended, with grim closing of the lips. "We must be cruel in order to be
kind. This night may be her salvation."
Weissmann was replying to Mrs. Lambert. "I do not care for a return of
my dead, madam; what I wish your daughter to do is quite simple. I
would like her to move a particle of matter from A to B, without a
known push or a pull--that is to say, by a power not known to
science--as Zöllner claimed Slade was able to do for him."
"She can do it," cried Clarke. "She can move a chair from A to B
without bringing to bear any of the known forces. She can suspend the
law of gravity. She can make a closed piano play, and she can read
sealed letters in an ebony box tightly closed and locked."
"You claim too much, my friend," replied Weissmann, ironically. "We
shall be satisfied with much less. If she will change one
one-hundredth part of a grain from one scale to another, under my
conditions, I will be satisfied. The most wonderful phenomena taking
place in the dark have no value to me."
Mrs. Lambert interposed. "Please don't argue--it prevents the coming
of the spirits."
Both men felt rebuked and the group again settled into silence.
Suddenly, Kate began to laugh, "Isn't it childish? Really, Morton, if
our friends could see us sitting around here in the dark, as we are
now, they would roar. Why should it all be so silly, Mr. Clarke?"
"It is _not_ silly if we take the right view. We must sit together in
order to get into harmony. We further these conditions by sitting in
subdued light with fingers touching. Song adds still more to this
concert of thought. Nothing is really silly or prosaic--all depends
upon the minds of those--"
He was in the midst of an elaborate defence of spirit methods when
Viola's hand began to leap as if struggling to be free. She moaned and
sighed and writhed so powerfully that her chair creaked. "Oh, dear!
Oh, dear!" she cried, gaspingly.
"Is she trying to free her hands?" Morton asked himself, with roused
suspicion. "Is this a ruse to cover some trick?"
Mrs. Lambert spoke quietly. "She is going! Sing something, Anthony."
Clarke began to hum a monotonous tune, while Morton, bending towards
the girl, listened to her gurgling moans with growing heartache. "She
seems in great pain, Mrs. Lambert. Don't you think we'd better release
her? I do not care to purchase sensation so clearly at her expense."
"Don't be alarmed, she always seems to suffer that way when some great
manifestation is about to take place."
The poor girl's outcries so nearly resembled those of a death struggle
that Kate at last rose. "Turn up that light! She is being strangled!"
"Please be silent!" said Clarke, almost angrily. "Take your hands from
her, gentlemen! You are too 'strong'--and do not startle her! Be quiet
everybody!"
Morton took his hand away in anger and disgust. "All this is a ruse to
weaken our grasp upon her," he thought. "Even the mother, so serene,
so candid, is aiding the deception."
"Things will happen now," remarked Mrs. Lambert, confidently; "she is
giving herself up at last."
The girl drew a long, deep, peaceful sigh, and became silent, so
silent that Morton, leaning far over, with suspended breath, his ear
almost to her lips, could detect no sound, no slightest movement, and
listening thus he had for an instant a singular vision of her. He
seemed to see her laughing silently at him from a distant upper corner
of the room, and for the moment secured a glimpse into a new and
amazing world--the world of darkness and silence wherein matter was
fluid, imponderable, an insubstantial world peopled, nevertheless,
with rustling, busy souls.
A sharp rapping began on the cone, a measured beat, which ended in a
clang, which startled Kate into a shriek. "Who is doing that?" she
asked, nervously.
"They are here," Clarke solemnly announced.
"Is that you, Waltie?" asked Mrs. Lambert, sweetly.
Three raps, loud and clear, answered "yes." A drumming on the cone
followed, and Mrs. Lambert, her voice full of maternal pride,
remarked: "Waltie is the life of our sittings--he's _such_ a rogue!
You must be a nice boy to-night--on account of these very
distinguished men."
"Rap, rap!" went the cone.
"Does that mean 'all right'?"
"Rap, rap, rap!" Yes.
"Is grandfather there?"
"Yes."
"Does he wish to speak to the gentlemen?"
"Yes."
"Are we sitting right?"
A decided thump--"No."
Guided by the rapping Mrs. Lambert and Kate moved down to the foot of
the table, sitting close beside Clarke, thus leaving Morton and
Weissmann alone with the sleeping girl. No sooner were they rearranged
than the table began to move, precisely as though pushed by the girl's
feet. Still guided by the rapping, Weissmann and Morton moved with the
table, but retained their threads of silk. Morton's pity had given
place to a feeling of resentment at this device to get them farther
away, and he drew his tell-tale thread tight across his finger. "If
she moves she is betrayed," he thought with hardening heart.
No sooner were they settled than a fumbling sound began in the middle
of the table, and the pencil was twice lifted and dropped. Following
this the leaves of the writing-pad rustled as though being thumbed by
boyish hands.
Kate shivered and cried out: "This is uncanny! Morton, are you doing
this?"
"Certainly not," he replied, curtly.
"Do you feel any motion in your thread?" asked Weissmann, in a quiet
voice.
"None whatever," Morton replied.
"Then the psychic is not moving."
Again they sat in silence, and after some minutes the fumbling began
again and the horn was heard scraping slowly about, as if being lifted
with effort only to fall back with a clang.
"Is it too heavy?" asked Clarke.
Three sharp raps replied--an angry "yes"--and then, with a petulant
swing, the instrument apparently left the table and floated upon the
air. In deep amazement Morton listened for some movement, some sound
from Viola, but there was none, not a breath, not a rustle of motion
where she sat, and the silk thread was tight and calm. "She has
nothing to do with _that_," he said, beneath his breath.
Kate called excitedly, "Oh! It touched me."
"What touched you?" asked Weissmann.
"The horn."
"Did it bump you?"
"No, it seemed to float against me."
Morton spoke out sharply: "Where is Mr. Clarke?"
"Right here on my right," replied Kate.
"What idiotic business!" he exclaimed, mystified, nevertheless.
The horn dropped to the middle of the table, but was immediately swept
into the air again as if by a new and more vigorous hand, and a voice
heavily mixed with air, but a man's voice unmistakably, spoke directly
to Morton, sternly, contemptuously.
"We meet you on your own level. You asked for material tests, and now
conditions being as you have made them--proceed. What would you have
us do?"
"Who are you?"
"I am Donald McLeod--grandfather to the psychic."
At this moment Morton became seized of the most vivid realization of
the physical characteristics of the man back of the voice. In some
mysterious way, through some hitherto unknown sense, he was aware of a
long, rugged face, with bleak and knobby brow. The lips were thin, the
mouth wide, the dark-gray eyes contemptuous. "It is all an inner
delusion caused by some resemblance of this voice to that of some one
I have known," he said to himself; but a shiver ran over him as he
questioned the old man. "If you are the grandfather of the psychic,"
he said, "I would like to ask you if you think it fair to a young girl
to use her against her will for such foolery as this?"
"The purposes are grand, the work she is doing important--therefore I
answer yes. She is yet but a child, and the things she does of her own
motion trivial and vain. We make of her an instrument that will enable
man to triumph over the grave. You will observe that we do not harm
her, we take but little of her time, after all. You are unnecessarily
alarmed. Our regard for her welfare far exceeds yours. Her troubles
arise from her resistance. If she would yield herself entirely, she
would be happy."
As the voice paused, Morton asked, "Weissmann, can you hear what is
being said to me?"
"Very indistinctly," answered Weissmann.
"What does it say?" asked Kate. "I can only hear a kind of jumble."
Weissmann interjected; "I must ask you, Mrs. Rice, have you tight hold
of Mr. Clarke's hand?"
"Yes," answered Kate.
Morton's brain whirled in confusion and conjecture. He believed the
whole thing to be a piece of juggling, and yet he could not connect
Viola in any way with it, and it seemed impossible, also, for Mrs.
Lambert to sit where she was and handle the cone, to say nothing of
the ventriloquistic skill necessary to carry on this conversation. He
again addressed the voice: "You consider your control of the psychic
to be justified?"
"We do."
"Do you know, also, what perilous notoriety, what positive
disgrace--from every human point of view--you are about to bring upon
her?"
The hidden old man pondered a moment, as if to master a profound
contempt, then answered: "We have taken all things into account. When
she has grown to years of sobriety she will thank us that we turned
her aside from dancing and from light conversation, and from all
loose-minded companions. All the sane pleasures are now hers. She is
soon to be idolized by thousands. Her playing on the piano, her
singing are as the rustle of leaves in the forest compared to her
mediumship, which is as a trumpet-blast opening the gates of the city
of refuge to let the weary traveller in." The voice weakened a little.
"The earth-life is but a school--the real life is here. Besides, when
she has completely subordinated her will to ours, when she has given
our message--" The spirit grand-sire seemed to falter and diminish.
"My power is waning, but I will again manifest. We will try--" The
voice stopped as though a door had been shut upon the speaker, and the
megaphone dropped upon the table.
"All that is very interesting," commented Weissmann, "but
inconclusive. Is it all over?"
"Oh no," answered Mrs. Lambert. "They are uniting upon something
wonderful--I feel it."
As they listened the horn moved feebly, uneasily rising a few inches,
only to fall as though some weak hand were struggling with it; but at
last it turned towards Weissmann, and from it issued the voice of a
little girl, thrillingly sweet and so clear that Serviss could hear
every word. She addressed Weissmann in German, calling him father,
asking him to tell mother not to grieve, that they would soon all be
together in a bright land.
To this Weissmann replied in harsh accent: "You assert you are my
daughter?"
The voice sweetly answered: "Yes, I am Mina--"
"But Mina could not understand a word of English--how is that?"
The little voice hesitated. "It is hard to explain," she replied,
still in German. "I can _understand_ you in any language--but I can
only speak as you taught me."
Thereupon he addressed her in French, to which she replied easily, but
in her native tongue.
As this curious dialogue went on Serviss was searching vainly for an
explanation. "Mr. Clarke, will you kindly speak at the same time that
this voice appears?"
Clarke began a discourse, and the two voices went on at the same time.
The young scientist then said: "Mrs. Lambert, will you permit Kate to
lay her hand over your lips? You understand, it is for the sake of
science--"
"Certainly," said Mrs. Lambert.
Here the test failed of completeness, it was so difficult to get the
three voices precisely together; but at last it seemed that the
child's voice was produced at the same time that Clarke spoke and
while Kate's hand covered the mother's mouth.
Thereupon the little voice said farewell, and all was silent for a few
moments. The cone rose again into the air and a soft, sibilant voice
addressed Mrs. Lambert.
"Oh!" she cried, joyfully. "It is Robert!--Yes, dear, I'm listening.
I'm so glad you've come. Can't you talk with Professor Serviss?--He
says he will try," she said to the company.
As Morton waited the cone gently touched him on the shoulder, and a
moment later a man's voice, utterly different from the first one and
of most refined accent, half spoke, half whispered: "We are glad to
meet you, professor. I am deeply gratified by your interest in our
dear girl."
"Who are you?" he asked, moved, in spite of himself, by a liking for
this new personality, so distinct from the others.
"I am R.M. Waldron--Viola's father."
He seemed to wait for questions, and Serviss asked: "How do _you_ feel
about your daughter's mediumship? Are you not uneasy when you think of
what you are demanding of her?"
The invisible one sighed, hesitated, and replied with evident sadness:
"It troubles me to find her reluctant. I wish she were happier in the
work. It seems so important to us." Then the voice brightened. "But
perhaps it is only for a little while. After the public test--after
the truth of her mediumship is made manifest--I think, I hope, we will
ask less of her. Perhaps it will be possible to release her altogether
for a time; but for the present she is too valuable--" The sentence
was lost in a buzz of inarticulate whispering, as if two or three
friends were consulting. The opening and closing of lips could be
heard, and a stir within the horn was curiously trivial in effect, as
if a mouse were at play with a dry leaf.
"If I were to organize a committee of men like Weissmann and Tolman,
and other men of international fame, willing to test your daughter's
powers, will you give over this public demonstration--this publishing
of a challenge?"
Clarke interrupted almost angrily. "Not unless you promise to--"
"Be silent!" commanded Weissmann.
From the horn came a faint murmur, so dim, so far, Serviss could, with
difficulty, distinguish the words. "We will consider that. I am going.
Guard my girl. Good-bye."
The horn, again seemed to rest, and for a long time no sound or stir
broke the silence, till at last Viola began to writhe in her chair in
greater agony than before.
"I think she is waking," said Morton.
Mrs. Lambert answered, quickly: "No. Some great event is
preparing--when this paroxysm passes some very beautiful test will
come."
While Morton and Weissmann were considering this the girl again became
silent as a stone, and a moment later a clear, sweet sound pulsed
through the air as if an exquisite crystal bell had been struck. Then,
while still this signal trembled in his ear, a whispering noise
developed just before the young man's face, as if tremulous lips were
closing and unclosing in anxious effort to communicate a message
without the use of the trumpet.
"Is some one trying to speak to me?" he asked, gently.
Three measured strokes upon, the tiny bell replied, and with their
pulsations the room seemed to stir with a new and different throng of
winged memories. The very air took on mystery and beauty and a sweet
gravity. Matter was for the moment as subtle, as imponderable as soul.
"Who is it?" he asked, and into his voice, in spite of himself, crept
a note of awe.
The answer came instantly, faint as the fall of an autumn leaf on the
grass.
"Mother."
Kate bent eagerly forward, "Who was it, Morton?"
Ignoring her question Morton addressed the invisible one. "Can't you
speak again?"
There was no reply and the whispering ceased. Almost instantly the
horn seemed grasped by a firm and masterful hand, and the rollicking
voice of a man broke startlingly from the darkness in words so clear,
so resonant, that all could hear them.
"Hello, folks. Is this a Quaker meeting?"
"Who are you?" asked Morton.
"Can't you guess?"
Kate gasped. "Why, it's Uncle Ben Roberts!"
The voice chuckled. "Right the first time. It's old 'Loggy'--true
bill. How are you all?"
Kate could hardly speak, so great was her fear and joy. "Morton
Serviss, what do you think now? Ask him--"
The voice from the trumpet interposed. "Don't ask me a word about
conditions over here--it's no use. I can't tell you a thing."
"Why not?" asked Morton.
"Well, how would you describe a Connecticut winter to a Hottentot? Not
that you're a Hottentot"--the voice broke into an oily chuckle--"or
that I'm in a cold climate." The chuckle was renewed. "I'm very
comfortable, thank you." Here the invisible one grew tender. "My boy,
your mother is here and wants to speak to you but can't do so. She
asked me to manifest for her. She says to trust this girl and to carry
a message of love to Henry. I brought one of her colonial wineglasses
with me--as a sign of her presence and as a test of the power we have
of passing through matter."
For nearly an hour this voice kept up a perfectly normal conversation
with a running fire of quips and cranks--recalling incidents in the
lives of both Kate and Morton, arguing basic principles with Weissmann
yet never quite replying to the most searching questions, and finally
ended by saying: "Your conception of matter is childish. There is no
such thing as you understand it, and yet the universe is not as Kant
conceived it. As liberated spirits we move in an essence subtler than
any matter known to you--ether is a gross thing compared to spirit.
Your knowledge is merely rudimentary--but keep on. Take up this work
and my band will meet you half-way. My boy, the question of the
persistence of the individual after death is the most vital of all
questions. Apply your keen mind to it and depend on old 'Loggy.'
Good-by!"
Kate was quivering with excitement. "Morton, that settles it for me.
That certainly was 'Loggy.' Oh, I wish mother could have spoken."
Morton's voice was eager and penetrating as he said: "Mrs. Lambert, I
would like to place my hand on your daughter's arm again, I must be
permitted to demonstrate conclusively that she has had nothing to do
with the handling of the horn."
"I will ask the 'guides.' Father, can Professor Serviss--"
Three feeble raps anticipated her question.
"They say 'yes'--but they are very doubtful--so please be very
gentle."
Serviss rose, his blood astir. At last he was about to remove his
doubt--or prove Viola's guilt. "Doctor," he said, and his voice was
incisive, "take the other side and place a hand on her wrist. That
will be permitted?" he asked.
Three raps, very slow and soft, assented.
Clarke interposed. "I am impressed, gentlemen, to say: Let each of you
put one hand on the psychic's head, the other on her arm."
"We will do so," replied Weissmann, cheerfully.
With a full realization of the value of this supreme test of Viola's
honor, Morton laid his right hand lightly on her wrist. At the first
contact she started as though his fingers had been hot iron, and he
was unpleasantly aware that her flesh had grown cold and inert. He
spoke of this to Weissmann, who replied: "Is that so! The hand which I
clasp is hot and dry, which is a singular symptom." Then to the
others: "I am now holding both her hands. One is very hot, the other
cold and damp and I feel no pulse."
"She is always so," Mrs. Lambert explained. "She seems to die for the
time being."
"That is very strange," muttered Weissmann. "May I listen for her
heart-beat?" Three raps assented, and a moment later he said, with
increased excitement: "I cannot detect her heart-beat."
Clarke reassured him. "Do not be alarmed. She is not dead. Proceed
with your experiment." There was a distinct note of contempt in his
voice.
As Morton laid his hand upon the soft coils of her hair Viola again
moved slightly, as a sleeper stirs beneath a caress, disturbed yet not
distressed--to settle instantly into deeper dream.
"We are ready," called Weissmann. "Whatever happens now Miss Lambert
is not the cause. Take Mr. Clarke's hands in yours--"
"Mrs. Lambert's also," added Morton.
"Our hands are all touching," answered Kate.
"Now, let us see!" cried Weissmann, and his voice rang triumphantly.
"Now, spirits, to your work!"
Clarke laughed contemptuously. "You scientists are very amusing. Your
unbelief is heroic."
As they stood thus a powerful revulsion took place in Morton's mind,
and with a painful constriction in his throat he bowed to the silent
girl, and with an inconsistency which he would not have published to
the world, he prayed that something might happen--not to demonstrate
the return of the dead but to prove her innocence.
As he waited the pencil began to tap on the table, and with its stir
his nerves took fire. A leaf of paper flew by, brushing his face like
the wing of a bird. A hand clutched his shoulder; then, as if to make
every explanation of no avail, the room filled with fairy unseen folk.
Books began to hurtle through the air and to fall upon the table. A
banjo on the wall was strummed. The entire library seemed crowded with
tricksy pucks, a bustling, irresponsible, elfish crew, each on some
inconsequential action bent; until, as if at a signal, the megaphone
tumbled to the floor with a clang, and all was still--a silence
deathly deep, as if a bevy of sprites, frightened from their play, had
whirled upward and away, leaving the scene of their revels empty,
desolate, and forlorn.
"That is all," said Clarke.
"How can you tell?" asked Kate, her voice faint and shrill with awe.
"The fall of the horn to the floor is a sure sign of the end. You may
turn up the gas, but very slowly."
Stunned by the significance, the far-reaching implications of his
experiment, Morton remained standing while Weissmann turned on the
light.
Pale, in deep, placid sleep, Viola sat precisely as they had left her,
bound, helpless, and exonerated. She recalled to Morton's mind a
picture (in his school-books) of a martyr-maiden, who was depicted
chained to the altar of some hideous, heathen deity, a monster who
devoured the flesh of virgins and demanded with pitiless lust the
fairest of the race.
Of her innocence he was at that moment profoundly convinced.
XIV
PUZZLED PHILOSOPHERS
While he still stood looking down upon her Viola began to moan and
toss her head from side to side.
"She is waking," cried Mrs. Lambert. "Let me go to her."
"No!" commanded Weissmann, "disturb nothing till we have examined all
things."
"Make your studies quickly," said Morton, his heart tender to the
girl's sufferings. "We must release her as soon as possible."
Weissmann was not to be hastened. "If we do not now go slowly we lose
much of what we are trying to attain. We must take her pulse and
temperature, and observe the position of every object."
"Quite right," agreed Clarke, "Do not be troubled--the psychic is
being cared for."
Thus reassured the two investigators scrutinized, measured, made
notes, while Kate and Mrs. Lambert stood waiting, watching with
anxious eyes the changes which came to Viola's face. Weissmann talked
on in a disjointed mutter. "You see? She has no pulse. The threads are
unbroken. The table is thirty inches from her finger-tips. Observe
this pad, forty-eight inches from her hand--and which contains a
message."
"Read it!" demanded Kate.
He complied. "'_You ask for a particle of matter to be moved from A to
B without the use of any force known to science. Here in this
wineglass is the test. Oh, men of science, how long will you close
your eyes to the grander truths._'"
"That is from father," remarked Mrs. Lambert.
"It is signed 'McLeod,' and under it are two words, 'Loggy' and
'Mother,' each in different handwriting."
"Give it to me!" cried Kate, deeply moved.
"And here is the wineglass," replied Weissmann, extracting from among
the books a beautiful piece of antique crystal.
Kate took it reverentially, as if receiving it from the hand of her
dead mother. "How came that here?"
"You recognize it? It was not left here by mistake?"
"Oh no. There are only four of them left and I keep them locked away.
I have not had them out in months."
Clarke smiled in benign triumph. "That is why they brought it--to show
you that matter is an illusion and to prove that dematerialization and
transubstantiation are facts. That was the bell we heard."
"Morton, what do _you_ think? How could--"
But Morton was bending above Viola and did not heed his sister. The
girl's eyes were opening as from natural slumber, and he said, gently:
"I hope you are not in pain? We will release you in a moment."
[Illustration: "THE GIRL'S EYES WERE OPENING AS FROM NATURAL
SLUMBER"]
She smiled faintly as she recognized him. "My arms are numb, and my
feet feel as if strips of wood were nailed to my soles," she answered,
wearily, "and my head is aching dreadfully; but that will soon pass."
"She always complains of her feet," the mother explained. "She can't
walk for quite a little while afterwards."
"You poor thing!" exclaimed Kate. "You are a martyr--that's what you
are."
Viola looked up with sweet and anxious glance. "Did anything happen?
Did your friends come to you, Mrs. Rice?"
"No, but several voices spoke to Morton."
"I'm sorry no one came to you. I've been a long way off this time,"
she continued, with dreamy, inward glance, "into a beautiful country
from which I hated to return. I wouldn't have come back to you at all
only a thread of light tied my soul to my body and drew me down to
earth in spite of myself."
"What was it like--that far country?" asked Morton.
She pondered sleepily. "I can't tell you--only it was very beautiful
and I was happy. Every one lived in the light with nothing to fear. I
had no memory of the earth--only of my body which I was sorry for.
There was no death, no cold, no darkness up there. I was very happy
and free."
"You should be free and happy here," answered Morton, gravely. "Come,
doctor, can't we free her now?"
"Yes, you may do so," he replied, still busy with his note-book.
The young host, with a feeling of having been unnecessarily brutal,
ripped the tape loose from the floor, and Kate slipped the loops from
Viola's ankles. Then, leaning on her hostess's arm, she rose slowly,
smiling brightly, her weakness most appealing. "I hope a great deal
happened--it means so much to me. I want to talk, but I can't now, my
head is too thick. You must tell me all about it pretty soon."
"A great deal happened--you are quite clear of any connection with
it."
Her face lit with placid joy. "Oh, I'm so glad! It must be very late,"
she added, turning to her mother.
"Yes, and we must be going," responded Mrs. Lambert, nervously. "Mr.
Pratt will be impatient."
"I wish you'd stay with me to-night," pleaded Kate. "It was all so
wonderful. I can't let you go. Please stay! Both of you. You're too
tired to go out into the raw air."
"Oh no, we can't do that--not to-night," Viola answered, decisively.
Morton threw back the doors. "Kate, take Miss Lambert into the
dining-room and give her something to drink. She is quite exhausted.
Let me steady you," he said, tenderly, touching her arm. "You fairly
reel with weakness."
"I will be as well as ever as soon as my blood begins to circulate,"
she bravely answered, and his touch quickened her pulse miraculously.
As soon as Weissmann had finished taking his notes and measurements,
he locked the door of the library and joined them all in the
dining-room, where they were sipping coffee and nibbling cake. Morton
was sitting beside Viola (who had entirely regained her girlish
lightness of mood), and was chafing her cold hand in the effort to
restore the circulation as well as to remove the deep mark the silken
thread had made about her wrist.
"We shall be obliged to shut out all young men from our committee,"
the old scientist jocularly remarked, as he stood looking down at
them. "Lovely psychics like you would put the whole American Academy
of Science in disorder."
Clarke, raging with jealous fire, turned to Weissmann in truculent
mood. "Well, Dr. Weissmann, how do you account for these phenomena? To
whose agency do you ascribe these marvels?"
"Spooks!" answered the old man, with cheerful promptness.
Clarke reeled before this laconic admission. "What! You agree? You
admit the agency of spirits?"
"Certainly--unless I say Miss Lambert wriggled herself out of her
skin, which would not be nice of me, or that you are the greatest
ventriloquist in the world. No, I prefer to compliment the spirits."
Clarke's face darkened. The old man's face and voice were too jocose.
"I see you do not value our wonderful experiences to-night."
Viola, pinching her sleeve about her wrist, looked up roguishly. "I
couldn't possibly wriggle out of my gown, could I, Dr. Weissmann? And
if I did, how could I get the tacks back without a hammer?"
"Precisely. You would be more burglarious than the ghosts which walk
through the key-holes," he answered.
"And the little girl who spoke German--who was she?" asked Kate.
The hour that followed was a delicious one for the young people, for
they had come at last to some sweet and subtle understanding. As she
recovered the use of her limbs Viola glowed with joy of Morton's
change of attitude towards her. He, on his part, was puzzled by this
mood. It was as if she had been vindicated to herself--liberated from
some dead body of doubt.
Clarke glowered in silence; disapproving, with manifest disdain, the
levity of the scientists, and resenting bitterly Viola's growing trust
and confidence in Serviss. Each moment his anger took on heat, and he
found it hard to reply even to his hostess, who tried to interest him
in a deeper discussion of the evening's marvels. He seemed to have but
one desire--to get away and to take Viola with him.
"Tell me," said Viola to Morton, "did papa speak to you?"
"A voice purporting to be your father spoke a few words."
"He is very nice. Didn't you think so?"
"The voice was very gentle and refined, and expressed a very tender
regard for you."
She sighed. "I have never heard my father's voice, for he always comes
when I am in my deepest trances. They say that I will be permitted
some day to hear all the voices through the cone--I only hear them now
in an interior way."
"Do you really suffer as you seem to do?" he asked, the echo of his
pity still in his tone.
"Not after I am really gone. Did I groan?"
"Horribly! My heart was filled with remorse--"
"I'm sorry. It doesn't really hurt me--physically. You see I am
perfectly well again. And yet I hate more and more to give myself up.
I can't explain it, but I seem to be losing more and more of
_myself_--that is the thought that scares me. I hate to think of being
so helpless. It seems to me as if I were becoming like--like a hotel
piano--for any one to strum on--I mean that any one in the other
world--It is so crowded over there, you know!" Her brows drew together
in momentary disgust.
"I _don't_ know, but it must be so if all the myriads of past humanity
are living there. If I had my way you would never sit again," he
declared, most fervently.
"I wouldn't mind so much," she went on, "if I were not marked out for
suspicion--if people would only talk to me of nice earthly things part
of the time as they would to any other girl--but they never do.
Everybody wants to talk to me about death and spirits--"
"That's what gives edge to my remorse," he interrupted. "Here am I
doing the very things you abhor. To think that we who have made such
a protest against your slavery could not allow you one free evening! I
will not say another word on these uncanny subjects."
"But I _want_ to talk of them to _you_! I wanted to tell you all about
myself that day we rode up to the mine--but I could not."
"I wish you had. It might have made a great deal of difference in your
life--and mine. I have been thinking of that ride to-night, as we sat
in the darkness. If I could, I would keep you as girlish, as gay, as
you were that day. This business is all a desecration to me. I love to
think of you as you were then--when you laughed back at me in the
rain. I wish we were both there this minute."
She smiled. "You forget the time of night!" Her face grew wistful.
"I've been getting homesick for the mountains lately--and yet I like
it here. I love this beautiful room. I adore your sister. I know I
could have a delightful time if only my guides weren't so anxious to
have me convert the world."
"I grow more and more conscience-smitten!" he exclaimed. "To think we
should be the ones to tie and torture you, and at our first
dinner-party!"
"Please don't blame yourself. It was not your fault; grandfather
insisted on talking with you, and I--I wished it very much." Her face
grew radiant with pleasure. "Oh, I'm so glad you made it a
test-sitting!--I want you to believe in me. I mean that I don't
deceive--"
"I am sure of that."
"There are so many things I want to talk with you about--but not
now--it is late."
Clarke, who had grown too restless to remain seated, interrupted a
story which Kate was relating, and rose, saying, harshly: "It is time
for us to be going. Pratt will lock us out if we don't."
The cloud again fell on Viola's face--her little hour of freedom from
her keeper was over. Morton felt the change in her, and so did Kate,
who fairly pleaded with the mother to remain. "It is late and you are
tired, and after this wonderful evening you ought not to go back to
that gloomy place."
Mrs. Lambert looked at Clarke, whose reply was stern. "No, we must
return."
Something very sweet and intimate was in Morton's voice as he found
opportunity to say to Viola: "I don't like to think of you returning
to that gilded mausoleum. It is a most unwholesome place for you. You
are too closely surrounded with morbid influences."
"I know it. I dread to go back--I admit that. I suppose Mr. Pratt is a
good man, I know he does a great deal for the faith, and he is very
generous to us, but oh, he is so vulgar, so impertinent! He bores me
nearly frantic by being always at my elbow. I shudder when he touches
me as if he were some sort of evil animal. Mother can't realize how he
annoys and depresses me, and Anthony insists that we must endure it."
"I wish you'd stay here!" he exclaimed, impulsively. "Accept my
sister's invitation--it would give us such an opportunity to talk of
this sitting. Come, let me send for your trunks."
She shrank a little from his eager eyes, and Mrs. Lambert again
interposed. "It is quite impossible, professor; perhaps some other
time."
Viola yielded to her mother and went away to get her cloak, and Morton
turned to Clarke. "One of the conditions of my promise to organize a
committee is this: you and Pratt must be excluded from the circle."
Weissmann echoed this. "Quite right! That we demand."
The clergyman's face hardened. "You ask the impossible. It is
necessary for me to be present at each sitting. I have the right to be
there as the historian of the case. Furthermore, I add to the strength
of the manifestations--that I have fully demonstrated."
"I appreciate your position, but in order to avoid criticism, to make
the tests perfect, it will be necessary to hold the sittings either
here or at Weissmann's, and to exclude every one connected with Miss
Lambert. In no other way can we convince ourselves or the public."
Clarke's face was darkly stubborn. "Then you will have no sittings. My
challenge will go forth next Sunday afternoon, and one of the
unchangeable clauses of that challenge will be this: the sittings must
take place in Pratt's library and I must be present."
"I hope you will not insist on that," Morton further urged; "for Miss
Lambert's sake you must not. To incorporate such terms in your
challenge will brand her as an impostor and you and Pratt as her
confederates. In this statement I think you will find her 'controls'
agreeing. They were undecided to-night, but when they consider
carefully they will see that my advice is sound."
Clarke's eyes were aflame. "You have my terms. Accept them or refuse
them, as you please."
Viola, returning, extended her hand to Morton with a trustful smile.
"I've had a beautiful evening."
"To say that after we have tied you hand and foot till you were numb,
and kept you in the dark all the evening, is very gracious of you. I
feel very much the brutal host. But you must come again. I swear Kate
shall not pester you next time."
Kate was indignant. "Well, I like that! when _you_ were the one crazy
to experiment. Of course they're coming, coming to stay to-morrow
night, and any one who dares to talk ghosts to her will be sent to
bed."
And so in a hearty, cordial clangor of farewells they got out into the
hall, and Morton, seeing Viola in her handsome cloak, her eyes
shining, her face once more gay and smiling, was again filled with
wonder at her astounding resiliency of mood. It was as if two sharply
differentiated souls alternated in the possession of her body.
Clarke, wearing a cape overcoat and a soft hat, was far less admirable
in appearance than when, with head uncovered, he sat within. He
resembled a comic picture of an old-fashioned tragedian--a man glad
to feel the finger of remark directed towards him, but his face was
bitter, his eyes burning with anger, his lips white with pain.
Serviss relented as he studied him. "You'd better take Britt's trail
and return to the mountains," he said, kindly. "This is a bad climate
for you."
"My work is here," he replied, curtly. "I have no fear," and so they
parted.
Weissmann was sitting in silent meditation in one corner of the
dining-room when Serviss returned. "Well, master, what do you think of
to-night's performance?"
Weissmann replied, in ironical phrase: "Hearing in civilized man is
vague and indefinite. Spooks do well to limit their manifestations to
a sense which most powerfully appeals to the imagination."
Morton spoke with great earnestness. "Weissmann, that girl could not
move a limb. She positively remained where we put her. So far as I am
concerned, to-night's test eliminated her from the slightest
complicity, and I confess it rejoices me greatly; but who was
responsible for the prestidigitation?"
Weissmann replied, slowly: "It is very puzzling," and fell into a muse
which lasted for several minutes. At last he roused to say: "Well, we
will see. Next time Clarke and the mother must be eliminated."
"You don't think evil of her?" exclaimed Morton.
"She is very anxious, you know--"
Kate put in her word. "It's all very simple," she said; "the spirits
did it. You needn't tell me that Clarke or Mrs. Lambert got up and
skittered around the room doing those things. I held their hands--and
know they didn't get away. Besides, how did that glass come there? and
how could they make those voices sound so natural? What is the use of
being stupidly stubborn? If you treat Viola fairly she will confound
your science."
"You base all this on one imperfect test?"
"I don't know what you'd call a _perfect_ one. Anyhow, that child is
absolutely honest."
"I hope you are right, Kate; but there are some serious
discrepancies--even in to-night's performances. Nothing took place
which I could not do sitting in her chair with my hands free."
"But her hands weren't free! If there is any virtue in cotton fibre or
steel she remained precisely where we set her at the beginning."
"But to admit that one book was moved from its place is to admit that
a force exists unknown to science."
"But what are you going to do? Did you do it? Or did I? Did Clarke
reach from where he sat and manipulate the horn? Who brought the old
wine-glass from the china-closet? No one entered from the
outside--that is certain. And then the things 'Loggy' said?"
"What do you think, Dr. Weissmann?"
Weissmann looked up abstractedly. "If Clarke performed these feats
to-night he is wasting his time in any profession but jugglery. You
said the cone touched you?" he asked of Morton.
"Several times."
"To do that he must have left his seat."
"I am perfectly sure he did not," replied Kate, firmly.
Morton insisted. "He must have done so, Kate--there is no other
explanation of what took place. It was very dark and the rug soft.
There is another important point--all of the books came from within a
radius of a few feet of the psychic, so that if she _were_ able to
rise and free her hands--"
"Which she did not do," answered Weissmann. "She remained precisely
where we put her; but we should have nailed Clarke to the floor also."
"How about the child who spoke German?" asked Kate. "Was she--"
Weissmann replied slowly, with a little effort, "I had a little girl
of the name Mina who died at eight years of age."
Kate's voice expressed sympathy. "I didn't know that. She must have
been a dear. The voice was very sweet. I could almost touch the little
thing."
"I do not see how Clarke or any one here knew of my daughter or her
name. Clarke may be a mind-reader. The voice did not prove itself."
"Neither was 'Loggy' quite convincing," said Morton. "And yet I cannot
understand how those voices were produced. Our imaginations must have
been made enormously active by the dark. As scientists we cannot admit
the slightest of those movements without the fall of some of our most
deeply grounded dogmas. What becomes of Haeckel's dictum--that matter
and spirit are inseparable?"
"There is matter and matter," replied Weissmann. "To say that spirit
and flesh is inseparable is to claim too much. We can say that we have
no proof of such separation, but Crookes and others claim the
contrary. It is curious to observe that we to-night have trenched on
the very ground Crookes trod. I am very eager now to sit with this
girl--the mother and Clarke being excluded."
"Of one thing I am more than half persuaded, and that is that Clarke
is a mind-reader; for how else could he know the things which the
supposed ghost of my uncle recounted?"
"It is very puzzling," repeated Weissmann, deep-sunk in speculation;
and in this abstraction he took himself silently away.
Kate, with an air of saying, "Now that we are alone, let's know your
real mind," faced her brother with eyes of wonder. "Morton, what do
you honestly think of it? Viola had nothing to do with it, did she?"
"No; but are you absolutely sure Clarke did not get loose and do
things?"
"Mort, I was never more alert in my life, and I _know_ he didn't move
out of his chair."
"But think what it involves!"
"I don't care what it involves. So far as the senses of touch and
hearing go, Clarke remained seated every minute of the time, and I
certainly held both his and Mrs. Lambert's hands the whole time while
the books were being thrown."
"Well, there you are. Somebody did it." He shrugged his shoulders in
an unwonted irritation.
"Why not say the spirits did it all?"
"Because that is unthinkable."
"Sir William Crookes and Dr. Zöllner, you say, believed in these
disembodied intelligences--"
"Yes, but they belong to what Haeckel calls the imaginative
scientists."
"You needn't quote Haeckel to me, Morton. If I believed what he
preaches I would take myself and my children out of the world. I don't
see how a man can look a child in the face and say such things. I
can't read any of your scientific friends straight along. Their jargon
is worse than anything, but I pick out enough to know that they don't
believe in anything they can't see, and they won't go out of their way
to see things. Do you suppose I'm going to believe that Robbie is
nothing but a little animal, and that if he should die his soul would
disappear like a vapor?"
"I can only repeat that the converse is unthinkable. There is no room
in my philosophy for the re-entrance of the dead."
"Why not? It's all very simple. We're creatures of our surroundings,
aren't we? Now, sitting there in the dark to-night, it seemed to me
that the people we think of as dead were all about me. It scared me at
first; but, really, isn't it the most comforting faith in the world?
I've always liked the idea of the Indian's happy 'hunting-grounds'--and
this is something like it."
He smiled shrewdly. "That performance to-night and this conversation
would make a pretty story to lay before the president of Corlear--now
wouldn't it?"
"How do you suppose he will take your going into this investigation?"
"I don't know, but I think he'll 'fire' me instanter."
"Well, let him try it! He wouldn't _dare_--"
"Oh yes, he would, if he thought I was hurting the institution. See
what they did to poor little Combes, who mildly claimed to be able to
hypnotize people."
"Yes, but he made himself ridiculous in the papers."
"You mean the papers made him ridiculous. Couldn't they do the same
with Weissmann and me? Think of a big, sprawling, sketchy drawing in
the _Blast_, with Weissmann glaring at a strangely beautiful young
lady in scanty gown--his hands spread like claws upon the table, while
another younger man (myself) catches at a horn floating overhead. Oh
yes, there are great possibilities in to-night's entertainment. May I
ask you, Mrs. Rice, to be more than usually circumspect?"
"You may, Dr. Serviss."
He rose gravely. "Very good. Now I think you would better go to bed."
"I wish your Mr. Lambert would come."
"So do I. I'm afraid he is going to ignore my summons. Unless I hear
from him to-morrow I shall consider him craven or indifferent."
"What will you do then?"
His brows contracted into a frown. "I don't know. She should be freed
from Clarke's immediate influence, but I don't see how I can
interfere."
"I can't believe that she really cares for him; in fact, from things
she said to-night, I think she fears him. He was furiously jealous of
you, I could see that. And I must say you gave him cause."
He turned and looked at her in affected amazement. "Where are you
heading now?"
She laughed. "Where are you drifting, my boy? I never saw any one more
absorbed, and I can't say I blame you; she was lovely. Good-night."
And so she left him.
Sitting thus alone in the deep of the night, the flush of his joy at
the proof of Viola's innocence grew gray and cold in a profound
disbelief in the reality of his experiences. "_Did_ anything really
happen?" he asked himself. Returning to the library with intent to
study the situation he mused long upon the tumbled books, the horn,
the tables, and the chairs. He put himself in Viola's seat in the
attempt to conceive of some method whereby even the most skilful
magician would be able to pull out tacks, rip stitches, and break
tape--and then--more difficult than all, after manipulating the horn,
reseat himself and restore his bonds, every tack, to its precise
place. And his conversation with "Loggy," most amazing of all, came
back to plague him. What could explain that marvellous simulation of
his uncle's chuckling laugh?
Yes, Viola was clearly innocent. It was impossible for her to have
lifted a hand; that he decided upon finally--and yet it was almost as
difficult for Clarke or Mrs. Lambert to have performed all the tricks,
"Unless Kate"--he brought himself up short--"in the end, my own
sister, is involved in the imposture," he exclaimed, with a sense of
bewilderment.
When he dwelt on Viola's delight in her own vindication, and
remembered her serene, sweet, trustful glance, a shiver of awe went
over him, and the work of saving her, of healing her, seemed greater
than the discovery of any new principle; but whenever his keen,
definite, analytic mind took up the hit-or-miss absurd caperings of
"the spirits" he paced the floor in revolt of their childish
chicanery. That the soul survived death he could not for an instant
entertain. Every principle of biology, every fibre woven into his
system of philosophy repelled the thought. To grant one single claim
of the spiritists was disaster. "No, the mother and Clarke are in
league, and when the bonds are on one the other acts. I see no other
explanation. I distrust Clarke utterly--but the mother is apparently
very gentle and candid, and yet--Weissmann may be right. Maternal love
is a very powerful emotion. That second voice was like hers. And yet,
and yet, to suspect that gentle soul of deliberate deception is a
terrible thing. What a world of vulgarity and disease and suspicion it
all is! An accursed world, and the history of every medium is filled
with these same insane, foolish, absurd doings."
And so he trod in weary circles, returning always to the same point,
with an almost audible groan. "Why, _why_ was that charming girl
involved in all this uncanny, hellish, destructive business? Clarke
claims her. On him her fate depends. Perhaps at this moment her name
and hideous reproductions of her face are being printed in all the
sensational papers of the city. Oh, that crazy preacher! It may be
that he has already made her rescue impossible." And always the dark,
disturbing thought came at the end to trouble him. "Can she ever
regain a normal relation with the world--even if I should interfere?
She should have been freed from this traffic long ago. Can the science
of suggestion reach her? Am I already too late?"
The conception that sank deepest and remained most abhorrent in his
musings was that conveyed in her own tragic words: "_It seems to me I
am becoming more and more like a public piano, an instrument on which
any one can strum--and the other world is so crowded, you know!_"
"If there is any manhood left in Lambert he must assert it or I will
throttle Clarke myself," he muttered through clinched teeth. "I ran
away two years ago--I evaded my duty yesterday, but I do not intend to
do so now. I will not sit by and see that sweet girl's will, her very
reason, overthrown by a fanatic preacher eager for notoriety. I will
see her again and demand to know from her own lips whether she is in
consent to be his wife. I cannot believe it till she tells me so, and
then I can decide as to future action."
And at the moment he was comforted by the recollection of something
timidly confiding in her parting smile.
XV
VIOLA REVOLTS FROM CLARKE
No sooner were they seated in their carriage than Clarke broke forth
in harsh protest. "You must not think of leaving Pratt's house at this
time."
"Why not?" asked Viola, roused by the tone of his voice, which was
even less considerate than his words.
"Because it will displease him--may possibly alienate him just at a
moment when we need him most. He will not consent to be shut out from
these test-sittings; on the contrary, he is likely to insist on their
taking place in his own library. Furthermore, I don't see why you are
in haste to leave so sumptuous an abode."
"Because I hate him, and all connected with him." Her voice was
colored with a fierce disgust. "That is the reason, and reason
enough."
"You must not let him know that."
"I don't care if he knows it or not. We are not dependent on him or
his house."
"Yes, we are! He is most important to all of us until our tests are
over and my book in type. I need his indorsement besides. He is very
bitter and vindictive with those whom he thinks should be very
grateful, and we must not anger him; we can't afford it."
Mrs. Lambert mildly protested. "I'm sure Mr. Pratt will not think of
detaining us if father thinks it best for us to go, and I confess I am
anxious to get away myself, Tony. He has been very disagreeable
lately."
Clarke went on: "We must continue to let him think his advice and aid
invaluable till our book is out, then we can cut loose from him. Our
policy--"
Rebellion was in Viola's heart as she cuttingly interrupted: "You
speak as if we were in league to cheat him of something. You have
always told me that my powers were 'dedicated to the good of the
world,' but lately you talk as if they were dedicated to your personal
advancement in some way. Now which do you really mean?"
He saw his mistake. Once or twice before he had met her complete
opposition, and he feared it. His voice suppled, became persuasive. "I
mean, Viola, that in entering upon a great contest--one whose issue is
to electrify the civilized world--"
"I don't believe it. What does the world care about a little speck of
humanity like me? Professor Serviss is nearer right when he says that
converting people to any creed is a thankless task. Ask grandfather to
let me live my own life. He listens to you. Tell him I'm tired and--"
"He has promised to be easier on you after we have won our battle."
"But I dread the battle--oh, how I dread it! Professor Serviss says we
will lose."
Clarke broke in, sharply: "Please don't quote what Serviss says. His
view is that of the worldly wise materialist. You should listen to my
advice--not his."
"You said you were anxious to have him on the committee."
"Yes, because I thought his name would count, and that he could bring
Weissmann--but now I distrust him. He is too bigoted."
As he continued in this strain he stood in dark contrast to Morton,
and the girl could not but wince under the revelation he was
unconsciously making. "Anthony, you have talked in that strain ever
since we came East. Nothing but using people, using people, all the
time. You've been constantly running after those who could 'be of use
to us!' and I don't like it. Every word you're saying now makes me
doubt your sincerity. I was ashamed of you to-night--I am ashamed of
you now. How can I respect you when you say things like that?"
He again tacked. "I do it all for the furtherance of our faith. To do
our work we _must_ have authority. It is always necessary to make a
big stir in the world in order to do good--think of Christ defying the
money-changers and making a scene in the temple!"
She pursued her way. "It's the tone of your voice that scares me.
You're a different person since we came here--you've been harsh and
cruel to me." Her voice choked, and yielding to a flood of doubt she
cried out: "I've lost faith in you. This ends it all, I will never
marry you! I don't care what my 'guides' say. I daren't trust myself
to you--now that's the truth."
The mother was aghast. "Why, Viola Lambert! What a terrible thing to
say!"
"I can't help it, mother--that is my decision."
Clarke blundered a third time. "I won't release you! This mood is all
the influence of those accursed pagans we have just left. That man
Serviss has been an evil influence upon you from the very first. He
has no God in his heart. You must keep away from that home--it is
destructive."
"It is not!" she retorted, fiercely. "It is beautiful and honest
and--sane, and I'm going there as often as they will let me--and I'm
going to leave the Pratt house to-morrow! I will not stay there
another day."
"There are others to be consulted about this," he grimly answered.
"You have tried playing truant before."
She was now in full tide of revolt. "I am going to leave that house if
I fall dead in the streets. I am going if 'they' choke me black in the
face."
He sneered. "I know where you are going!"
At this moment she hated him and everything he stood for, and her
voice was hoarse with her passion. "I don't care what you say or what
you do, I will not be hounded and driven around like a slave by you or
Simeon Pratt any longer. I'm going to have a little life of my own if
'they' tear me in pieces for it."
This outburst, so much more intense than any which had preceded it,
alarmed Clarke and appalled Mrs. Lambert, who took her daughter in
her arm with soothing words and caresses. "There, there, dearie! Don't
worry--don't excite yourself. Father will not insist on your doing
anything that will be harmful. He will protect you."
The girl, sobbing in reaction, bowed to the maternal bosom, feeling
once more her own helplessness, receiving no help from her mother's
sympathy, which was merely superficial. Her only hope of release lay
in the strong, bright, self-reliant, humorous people she had just
left, those to whom her grandfather and his "band" were less than
shadows. They alone could save her from the despairing madness which
she felt creeping upon her like a beast in the night. Her nerves,
strung to dangerous tension, gave away utterly, and Clarke, realizing
this, ceased to chide, and the ride ended without another word.
Pratt, who had been waiting for hours with the angry impatience of
senility, met them at the door, truculent as a terrier. "What time o'
night do you call this?" he asked, with insulting inflection.
Mrs. Lambert answered: "I'm very sorry, but we had a sitting, and it
took longer--"
"A sitting!" He faced Viola. "What did you do that for? I told you I
didn't want any sittings given unless I was present, and you promised
not to give any."
"I did not!" she replied, lifting a tear-stained but imperious face to
him.
"Well, Clarke did."
Clarke hastily interposed: "The 'chief control' asked for it--said he
wanted to talk to some of those present."
"I don't care what the 'chief control' said--"
Viola, thoroughly roused, now faced him, pale and scornful. "What
right have you to ask where I've been or what I've done? I am not your
servant--nor one of your poor relatives. You seem to forget that. I
will not be your guest another day! I'd leave this house this instant
if I could. I came here against my wish, and I will not be insulted by
you any longer. I wish I had never seen you." And with haughty step
she started to pass him.
He put out a hand to stay her. "Hold on, now!"
With flashing eyes and a voice that smote him like a whip, she cried
out, "Leave me alone, please!" He fell back against the wall, and she
passed on and up the stairway, leaving him leaning there in dismay,
his jaw lax.
The mother hastily followed, and as the door closed behind them Viola
turned with blazing eyes. "This is horrible--disgraceful! I hope you
enjoy being treated like that! How can you endure it? How can you ask
me to endure it? If Anthony Clarke possessed one shred of real
manhood--But he hasn't. He's so selfishly bent on his own plans he's
willing to let me suffer anything. I'm done with him, mother. You
needn't try to find excuse for him. I don't see how I endured him so
long. He must never touch me again."
"Don't do anything rash, child."
"Will you submit to more insult? You can stay on till you are ordered
out of the house if you like, but I will not!"
"But you know they advise it."
The girl turned, a new tone in her voice. "There, now, mother, we come
back to that again! I'm tired of hearing that. If they insist on our
staying here I will be sure they are the voices of devils and not
those they claim to be. I don't believe my father would ask me to stay
in a house where the very servants sniff at us. I don't believe he
would let Anthony make use of me in this way. Professor Serviss calls
our faith a delusion, and to-night I almost hope he's right. I have
lost the spirit of the martyr, and everything seems foolish to me."
Mrs. Lambert regarded her daughter with horror. "Child, some
earth-bound spirit has surely taken possession of you."
"I hope it will stay till to-morrow--till I get out of this house,"
she replied, and went to her own room without a good-night kiss,
leaving her mother hurt and dismayed.
A few moments later Clarke knocked at the sitting-room door. "Julia,
here is a message I want you to give to Viola."
As she opened to him he faced her, pale and tremulous, all his anger,
all his resolution gone. "She was unjust to me," he said, humbly;
"take her this." He extended a folded leaf of paper in a hand that
partook of the pallor of his face.
"You poor boy," she exclaimed, her heart wrung by his suffering, "you
mustn't mind what she said--it was only a girlish pet."
"Mother," he cried, passionately, "to lose her now would kill me. She
is my hope, my stay, my God! She has stabbed me to the heart to-night.
Did she mean it? She can't mean it!"
She patted him on the shoulder. "Go to bed, laddie, it's only a mood.
She will be all sunshine to-morrow. It's only a reaction from a
wearisome day--be patient and don't worry."
"She tortured me deliberately," he went on, wildly. "She let that man
take her hand. She smiled at him in a way that set my brain on fire. I
tried to be calm. I didn't intend to speak harshly, but I wanted to
kill him when he said good-night to her. May God eternally damn his
soul if he tries to steal her from me!"
She recoiled from his fury. "Tony! What are you saying?"
"I mean it! Do you think I will submit to his treachery? I told him
she was mine, and yet he took her hand--he leaned to her--he looked
into her face." His eyes blazed with such wild light that the gentle
woman shrank and shivered.
"Tony, you are letting your imagination run away with you. Go to bed
this instant," she commanded, in a voice that trembled.
He went away at last, weeping, miserably maudlin, almost incoherent,
and when she closed and locked the door upon him she dropped into a
chair, and for the first time since her husband's death gave way to
tears of bewilderment and despair.
XVI
THE HOUSE OF DISCORD
Surely Simeon's house that night was a place of tormenting and
tumult--the meeting-place of spirits whose dispositions were to evil
fully inclined, and of mortals whose natures were upon the edge of
combat. Viola, in full revolt, would not even permit her mother to
come to her. Clarke, in an agony of love and hate, paced his room or
sat in dejected heap before his grate. Mrs. Lambert, realizing that
something sorrowful was advancing upon her, lay awake a long time
hoping her daughter would relent and steal in to kiss her good-night,
but she did not, and at last the waters of sleep rolled in to submerge
and carry away her cares.
Viola, made restless by her disgust of Pratt as well as by her loss of
respect and confidence in Clarke, did not lose herself till nearly
dawn. Her mind was at first busy with the past, filled with a
procession of the many things he had done to enrich her life. She was
troubled by the remembrance of the grave, sad courtesy of his
intercourse in the days just following his wife's death. At that time
his kindly supervision of her music and his suggestions for her reading
had given him dignity and romantic charm. "He was nice then," she said
to herself. "If only he had stopped there." When he fell at her feet in
the attempt to rouse her pity he had been degraded in her eyes. His
whole manner towards her became that of suppliant--beseeching the
"guides" to sanction their ultimate union. She burned with shame as she
thought of her tacit acquiescence in this arrangement. "You have no
right to interfere with my--with such things," she now said to the
invisible ones. "I do not love Anthony Clarke. I don't even respect him
any longer."
He had, indeed, become almost as offensive to her as Pratt, and the
picturesque, soulful presence which he affected was at the moment
repugnant. In contrast to the young scientist he was mentally and
morally sick, and the world which he inhabited (and which she shared
with him) hopelessly askew. Of this she had a clear perception as her
mind recalled and dwelt upon the taste, the comfort, the orderly cheer
of the Serviss home.
"We never made the spirit-world so awful. Mamma did not take such an
excited view of it all. What has produced this change in us? Tony has.
He has carried us out into a nasty world and he has set us among
frauds and fanatics, and I will not suffer it any longer."
She did him an injustice, but she was at the same time right. Mrs.
Lambert, left to herself, would have kept a serene mind no matter what
the manifestations might be. With her the world of spirit
interpenetrated the world of every-day life, and the one was quite as
natural as the other and of helpful, cheering effect. She had remained
quite as normal in her ways of thought as when in Colorow, and aside
from her dependence upon the spirit-world for guidance would not have
seemed at any point to be akin to either fraud or fanatic.
At last the girl's restless mind, cleared of its anger, its doubts and
its doles, came back to rest upon the handsome, humorous, refined face
of young Dr. Serviss. She felt again the touch of his deft, strong
hands, and heard again the tender cadence of his voice as he said: "I
hope you are not in pain? We will release you very soon." She dwelt
long upon the final scene at the table, when, with a jesting word on
his lips, but with love in his eyes, he took her hand to remove the
marks of her bonds; and the flush that came to her was not one of
anger--it rose from the return of her joy of those few moments of
sweet companionship.
How sane and strong and safe he was. "He does not believe in our
faith, but he does not hate me. How Dr. Weissmann loves him! They are
like father and son."
Thinking upon these people and their home, with their griefs, their
easy, off-hand, penetrating comments, their laughter filling her ears,
the girl grew drowsy with some foreknowledge of happier days to come,
and fell asleep with a faint smile upon her lips.
She woke late to find her mother bending over her, and lifting her
arms she drew the gray head down to her soft, young bosom and
penitently said: "Mamma, forgive me. I am sorry I spoke as I did. I am
not angry this morning, but I am determined. We must go away from here
this very day."
The mother did not at once reply, but when she spoke her voice
trembled a little. "I guess you're right, dearie. This house seems
like a prison to me this morning. But what troubles me most is this:
Why do Maynard and father permit us to stay here? I am afraid of Mr.
Pratt--everybody says he will make us trouble, and yet our dear ones
urge us to remain."
"Mamma," gravely replied Viola, "I want to tell you something that
came to me this morning. I wonder if _what grandfather says is not
made up of what Pratt and Anthony want_?"
"What do you mean, child?" asked the mother, sitting back into a chair
and staring at her daughter with vague alarm.
"I mean that--that--grandfather, strong as he seems to be, is
influenced in some way by Tony. He goes against my wishes and against
your wishes, but _he never goes against Tony's_."
The mother pondered. "But that is because Tony is content to follow
_his_ will."
The girl lost her firm tone. "I know that interpretation can be given
to it, but to-day I _feel_ that it is the other way, and, besides, it
may be that grandfather doesn't realize all our troubles."
The mother rose. "It's all very worrisome, and I wish some change
would come. I dread to meet Mr. Pratt, but I suppose I must."
"Don't go down. I don't intend to see him again if I can avoid it.
Ring for your coffee and take your breakfast here with me this
morning."
"No. That would only make him angry. I'll go down."
"I don't care what he says, mamma, I shall do as I like hereafter."
With this defiant reply ringing in her ears, Mrs. Lambert went slowly
down the stairs to find the master of the house, sullen, sour, and
vindictive, breakfasting alone in his great dining-room. As she
timidly entered he looked up from his toast with a grunt of greeting,
and Mrs. Lambert, seeing that his resentment still smouldered, stopped
on the threshold pale with premonition of assault. She would have fled
had she dared to do so, but the maid drew a chair for her, and so she
seated herself opposite him in silence.
"Where's that girl?" he asked, harshly.
"She's not feeling very well this morning, so I told her she needn't
come down to breakfast."
He grunted in scorn. "What happened over there last night? Everybody
seems upset by it. I want to know all about it. You had a sitting, did
you?"
"Yes."
"Whose idea was that--Clarke's?"
"No, father wanted to speak with Dr. Serviss and Dr. Weissmann."
"Weissmann was there, was he? What did _he_ say?"
"He seemed impressed."
"What happened?"
"Father came, as usual--"
"I mean what happened outside the séance? Something set that girl
against me and upset Clarke. I want to know what it was."
"I don't think anything was said of you at all."
"Yes, there was. You can't fool me. Somebody warned that girl against
me. The whole thing seems funny to me." (By funny he meant strange.)
"You go away from my house for a dinner against my will--leave me in
the lurch--and come home at one o'clock in the morning with faces that
would sour milk, and now here you are all avoiding me this morning. It
just convinces me that if we're going to carry on this work together
we've got to have a definite understanding. You've got to stop going
to such houses and giving séances without my permission. I won't have
that under any conditions."
Clarke, who had appeared at the doorway, a worn, and troubled spectre
of dismay, now put in a confirmatory word. "You are quite right,
Simeon. That house reeks with the talk of wine-bibbers and those who
make life a witticism. Such an atmosphere profoundly affects Viola."
Pratt glowered at him with keen, contemptuous glance. "You look as if
you'd been drawn through a knot-hole. What happened to _you_?" As
Clarke did not reply to this he took another line of inquiry. "About
this sitting, what was the upshot?"
"It was a very remarkable test-sitting, and seemed to make a profound
impression. The conditions were severe--"
"Why was I left out? That's what I want to know."
"That's what puzzles me. McLeod, who promised us never to have a
circle without you, insisted on the sitting there--"
"How do you know he did? Did he write or speak to you?"
"No--he _impressed_ the psychic."
"I don't trust that girl in such a house. Did you talk with Weissmann
about heading the committee?"
"Yes, but"--he hesitated--"they both insisted that if they took the
matter up both of us must be excluded."
Pratt bristled. "And you consented to that?"
"I did not. I insisted that the sittings take place here and that we
be present. They would not listen to that, so I think I'll go ahead on
my programme and decide upon the personnel of the committee
afterwards."
Pratt regarded him fixedly. "I'm not sure I like your programme, my
friend. I've been thinking it over lately, and I've just about come to
the conclusion that you'd better not issue that challenge."
"Why not?"
Pratt snapped like a peevish bull-dog. "Because I don't want it
done--that's all the reason you need. I've never made any concessions
to reach these damn scientists, and I don't intend to begin now. You
are planning to involve us in a whole lot of noise and sensation, and
I don't like it. Furthermore, I don't intend to submit to it."
Clarke was too irritable to take this quietly, and his eyes blazed.
"You're very sensitive all at once. When did you reach this new point
of view?"
"Never you mind about that; I've reached it, and I intend to maintain
it. Why, you simple-minded jackass, these scientists will eat you up.
They'll make a monkey of me and disgrace the girl. They'll pretend to
expose her--the press will be on their side--and I will be made the
butt of all their slurring gibes. I won't have it!"
"You're too nervous about the press," replied Clarke, loftily. "You're
all wrong about the papers. They'll take a malicious joy in girding at
the scientists as 'the men who know it all.' They'll have their fling
at us, of course, but it won't hurt."
"Oh, it won't! Well, it may not hurt you--it's a fine stroke of
advertising for you--but I don't need that kind of publicity. That's
settled! Now, about this man Serviss"--he turned to Mrs. Lambert--"is
he married?"
"No."
"I thought not. How long has he known Viola?"
"It's nearly two years since he came to Colorow; but he has only seen
her a few times--"
Pratt cut her short. "I begin to understand. You'd better not let him
mix in here--he's too young and too good-looking to conduct
experiments of this kind with your girl. If you had any sense,
Clarke, you'd see that for yourself."
Clarke's expression changed. His cheeks grew livid with his passion,
and his eyes burned with the same wild light that had filled them as
he looked across the room at Morton bending over Viola's hand. Pratt's
brutal frankness had cleared his own thought and re-aroused his sense
of proprietorship in the girl. Until that dinner came with its
revelation, he had thought of Serviss merely as the scientist to be
used to further his own plans. Now he knew him for what he was--a
young and dangerous rival. With a sinking of the heart he suspected
him to be a successful rival.
He rose from the table and left the room, and Mrs. Lambert followed
him fearful of what he might do in his rage.
"Tony, Tony!" she called.
He turned and faced her, his face set in horrible lines, his fists
clinched. "I've been a fool, a fool!" he declared, through set teeth.
"Why didn't you warn me? I should have made her safely my own before I
came East. She loves him, but he shall not have her--by God he shall
not! Where is she? Tell her I must see her!"
She pleaded for delay, and at last calmed him so that he left her and
went to his room. She then hastened to Viola and locked the door
behind her.
"Viola, dear, get ready! We must leave this house at once," she said,
breathlessly.
"What has happened?" asked Viola.
Mrs. Lambert took time to think. "It was very disagreeable. They are
wrangling again about that challenge and about you."
"About me! Yes, that's what wears on me--they wrangle about me as if I
had no right to say what part I am to take. But it's all over, mother;
unless grandfather holds me by the throat every mortal minute to-day
I'm going into the street--"
A knock at the door startled them both, but it proved to be the maid,
who said, "Here is a note from Mr. Clarke, miss; he said, 'be sure and
bring an answer,' miss."
The note was a passionate appeal for a meeting, but Viola wrote across
it in firm letters, "No. It is useless," and returned it to the girl.
"Take that to him," she said, careless of the fact that her refusal
was open to the eyes of the messenger.
When they were again in private she said: "We'll go if we have to
telephone the police to help us. And I'm going to wire Papa-Joe to
come and take us home."
"You are cruel to Tony, child."
"No, I'm not! He must understand, once for all, that I belong to
myself. I never really cared for him. Deep in my heart I was afraid of
him, and now he has grown so egotistical that he is willing to
sacrifice me to his own aims, and I hate him. I will not see him again
if I can avoid it."
The mother protested less and less strongly, for she was forced to
admit that something fine and true had gone out of her idol, and that
he now stood in a new and harsh light. All the hard lines of his face
appeared to her, and his pallor, his deep-set eyes were those of a
sick and restless soul. She no longer rejoiced at the thought of
giving her daughter into his hands.
Clarke was truly in a pitiable state of incertitude and despair. His
oration, his interdicted challenge, his book, his religion were all
swallowed in by the one great passion which now flooded and filled his
brain--his love for Viola. "She belongs to me," he repeated, as he
walked his room with shaking limbs, a dry, hard knot in his throat,
his eyes hot with tears that would not fall. "She must surrender
herself to me--finally and now--to-day, I will wait no longer. She
must leave this house at once--but she must go as my wife! She is
right. Pratt is a beast--a savage. He will rage--he will vilify us
both, but we will defy him. Our 'guides' will confound him. We are,
after all, not dependent upon him. We can go on--" The maid,
returning, handed him Viola's answer and went hastily out. He read it
and reread it till its finality burned into his brain, then dropped
into a deep chair and there lay for a long time in despairing stupor.
Was it all over, then? Was her final decision in that curt scrawl? She
had returned his own note as if with intent to emphasize her refusal
to see him, and yet only a few days ago she had assented to all his
plans, leaning upon his advice. What had produced this antagonism?
What evil influence was at work?
He rose on a sudden, fierce return of self-mastery, and went to Mrs.
Lambert's door and knocked, and when she opened to him demanded of her
a full explanation. "What is the matter? Is she sick or is she
hatefully avoiding me?"
"She's all upset, Anthony. Don't worry, she will see you by-and-by."
"She _must_ see me! After what she said last night I can't think--I am
in agony. What is the matter with us all? Yesterday we were
triumphant; to-day I feel as if everything were sinking under my feet.
She shall not leave me! I will not have it so! Tell her I insist on
seeing her! I beg her to speak to me if only for a moment."
"I will tell her you are here." She left him at the threshold, a
haggard and humble suitor, while she knocked at her daughter's door.
"Viola, child, Anthony is here. Let me in just a moment."
As he waited the half-frenzied man noted the absence of certain family
portraits and cried aloud, poignantly: "She is packing! She is going
away!" And when Mrs. Lambert returned he seized her by the arm, his
eyes wild and menacing. "Tell me the truth! She is preparing to
leave."
Mrs. Lambert looked away. "I tried to reason with her, Anthony. I
wanted her to 'sit for council,' but she's so crazy to get away she
will not do it. She will hardly speak to _me_."
"She must not go--she shall not leave me! I will not permit her to go
to him!" His voice rose and his lifted hand shook.
"Hush, Tony! She will hear you. Please go away and let me deal with
her."
He lifted his face and spoke with closed eyes. "Donald McLeod, if you
are present, intercede for me. Bring her to me. Command her to remain.
You gave her to me. You led us here. Will you permit her to ruin all
our plans? Stretch out your hand in power. Do you hear me?" There was
no answer to his appeal, neither tap nor rustle of reply. In the
silence his heart contracted with fear. "Have you deserted me, too?"
Then his brain waxed hot with mad hate. His hand clinched in a savage
vow. "I swear I will kill her before I will let her go to that man!
Together we will enter the spirit-world."
He sprang towards the door, but Mrs. Lambert, with eyes expanded in
horror, caught him by the arm. "Tony, Tony! What are you doing? Are
you crazy?"
Her hand upon his arm, her face drawn and white with fear, recalled
him to himself. He laughed harshly. "No--oh no; I'm not mad, but it's
enough to make me so. I didn't mean it--of course I didn't mean it."
"You are dreadfully wrought up, Tony. Go out and walk and clear your
brain, and by-and-by we'll sit for council."
In the end she again persuaded him to return to his chamber, but he
did not leave the house--neither could he rest. Every word the girl
had said of his selfishness, his egotism, burned like poison in his
brain. Had his hold on her been so slight, after all? "She despises
me. She hates me!" And in his heart he despised and hated himself. He
cursed his poverty, his lack of resource. "Why am I, the evangel of
this faith, dependent on others for revelation. Why must I beg and
cringe for money, for power?" He was in the full surge of this flood
of indignant query when Pratt shuffled into his room.
"Some reporters below want to see you. I guess you better--"
Clarke turned, the glare of madness in his eyes. "Curse you and your
reporters! Go away from me! I don't want to be bothered by you nor by
them."
Pratt stared in dull surprise, which turned slowly to anger. "What's
the matter with you _now_?" he roared. "Damn you, anyway. You've upset
my whole house with your crazy notions. Everything was moving along
nicely till you got this bug of a big speech into your head, and then
everything in my life turns topsy-turvy. To hell with you and your
book! You can't use me to advertise yourself. I want you to understand
that right now. I see your scheme, and it don't work with me."
He was urging himself into a frenzy--his jaws working, his eyes
glittering, like those of a boar about to charge, all his concealed
dislike, his jealousy of the preacher's growing fame and of his
control of Viola turning rapidly into hate. "I don't know why you're
eating my bread," he shouted, hoarsely. "I've put up with you as long
as I am going to. You're nothing but a renegade preacher, a dead-beat,
and a hypocrite. Get out before I kick you out!"
This brought the miserable evangel to a stand. "I'll go," he said,
defiantly, "but I'll take your psychic with me--we'll go together."
"Go and be damned to the whole tribe of ye!" retorted Pratt, purple
with fury. "Go, and I'll publish you for a set o' leeches--that's what
I'll do," and with this threat he turned on his heel and went out,
leaving Clarke stupefied, blinded by the force of his imprecations.
The situation had taken another turn for the worse. To leave the house
of his own will was bad enough; to be kicked out by his host, and to
be followed by his curse was desolating. "And yet this I could endure
if only she would speak to me--would go with me."
He fell at last into a deep gulf of self-pity. Yesterday, now so far
away, so irrevocable, was full of faith, of promise, of happiness, of
grand purpose; now every path was hid by sliding sand. The world was a
chaos. His book, his splendid mission, his communion with Adele, his
very life, depended upon this wondrous psychic. Without her the world
was a chaos, life a failure, and his faith a bitter, mocking lie. With
a sobbing groan he covered his face, his heart utterly gone, his brain
benumbed, his future black as night.
And yet outside the window, in reach of his hand, the spring sunlight
vividly fell. The waves of the river glittered like glass and ships
moved to and fro like butterflies. The sky was full of snowy
clouds--harbingers of the warm winds of spring. Sparrows twittered
along the eaves, and the mighty city, with joy in its prosaic heart,
was pacing majestically into the new and pleasant month.
XVII
WHEN DOCTORS DISAGREE
At breakfast next morning Morton took up the paper with apprehension,
and though he found Clarke's name spread widely on the page, he was
relieved to find only one allusion to the unknown psychic on whose
mystic power the orator was depending.
"She has another day of grace," he said to himself, thinking of
Lambert.
All the way down to his laboratory he pretended to read the news, but
could not succeed in interesting himself in the wars and famines of
the world, so much more vital and absorbing were his own passions and
retreats, so filmy was the abstract, so concrete and vital the
particular. A million children might be starving in India, a thousand
virgins about to be sold to slavery in Turkestan; but such
intelligence counted little to a man struggling with doubt of the
woman he loves, and questioning further the right of any philosopher
to marry and bring children into a life of bafflement and pain and
ultimate annihilation.
This must ever be so. The particular must outweigh the general, and
philosophers, even the monists, must continue to be inconsistent. The
individual must of necessity consider himself first and humanity
afterwards; for if all men considered the welfare of the race to the
neglect of self, the race would die at the root and the individual
perish of his too-widely diffused pity. To be the altruist, one must
first be the egoist (say the philosophers), to give, one must first
have.
The questions which filled this implacable young investigator's mind
were these: Is my love worthy? And again: Dare I, insisting on man's
unity with all other organisms and subject to the same laws of
extinction, entertain the idea of marriage? If the theories I hold are
true--if the soul of a child is no more than the animating principle
of the ant or the ape (and this I cannot deny)--then of what avail is
human life? By what right do men bring other organisms into being
knowing that they will only flutter a little while in the sun like
butterflies and die as unavailingly as moths?
Up to this time he had accepted with a certain calm pitilessness the
most inexorable tenets of the evolutionists, and had defended them
with remorseless zeal; but on this fair spring morning, with love for
Viola stirring in his heart, he found himself far less disposed to
crush and confound. He acknowledged a growing sympathy with those who
mourn the tragic fact of death.
All that he had read concerning clairvoyance, telepathy, hypnotism,
and their allied subjects began to assume new significance and a
weightier importance. He was annoyed to find himself profoundly
concerned as to whether the power of "suggestion" was anything like as
coercive as many eminent men believed it to be, and in this awakened
interest he 'phoned Tolman (upon reaching his desk), asking him to
lunch with him at the club. "If there is anything in his philosophy I
want to know it," he said, as he turned to his desk.
He found no word from Lambert, and this troubled him. "If he does not
come to-day I must act alone," he concluded, and attempted to take up
his work, but found his brain preoccupied, his hand heavy.
Weissmann came in late, looking old and worn. He, too, had passed a
restless night. He nodded curtly to his assistant and set to work
without reference to the sitting or the psychic; and yet Morton was
very sure his chief's mind was as profoundly engaged as his own, and a
little later in the forenoon he stopped at his desk and said: "Lunch,
with me, doctor; I have asked Tolman, and I want to talk things over
with you both."
Weissmann consented in blunt abstraction, and the work proceeded quite
in the regular routine so far as he was concerned.
Tolman was the farthest remove from the traditional mesmerist in
appearance, being a brisk, blond man of exceeding neatness and taste
in dress. He wore the most fashionable clothing, his hair and beard
were in perfect order, and his hands were very beautiful. He was,
indeed, vain of his slender fingers and gesticulated overmuch. His
voice also was a little over-assertive, but his eyes were clear,
steady, and strong.
As they took seats in the cheerful sunlit dining-room of the Mid-day
Club, the three theorists formed a notable group and one that
attracted general comment, but their conversation would have
astonished the easygoing publishers and professional men who were
chatting at neighboring tables, so full of interrogation and assertion
was each specialist.
As Tolman rose to speak to a friend at a table across the room,
Weissmann confidentially remarked: "I did not sleep last night, not a
wink. I could not satisfy myself about those performances. Therefore I
smoked and studied. Last night's test proved nothing to me except that
the girl had nothing to do with the phenomena."
The young man's heart glowed at these words and he feelingly replied.
"To prove that would mean a great deal to me, doctor."
Weissmann's tired face lighted up. "So! Then you are interested in
her? You love her? I was right, eh?" he asked, with true German
directness.
Serviss protested. "Oh no! I haven't said that; but it troubled me to
think of her as a possible trickster. Please don't hint such a thing
in Tolman's hearing."
As the hypnotist returned to his seat, Serviss opened up the special
discussion by asking him his opinion of the claims of spiritualists.
This question threw Tolman into a roar. "That from you, and in the
presence of Weissmann, is a 'facer'! What has come over Morton
Serviss that he should invite me to a lunch to talk over a case of
hysterico-epilepsy, and start in by asking my opinion of spiritualism?
Come, now, out with the real question."
Serviss perceived the folly of any subterfuge, and briefly presented
Viola's history, without naming her, of course, and ended by
describing in detail the sitting of the night before, while Tolman ate
imperturbably at his chop and toast with only now and then a word or a
keen glance.
When the story was finished, he looked up, like a lawyer assuming
charge of a witness. "Now there's a whole volume to say upon what
you've told me, and our time is limited to a chapter. Make your
questions specific. What point do you particularly want my opinion
on?"
"First of all, has the preacher in this case been controlling the
girl?"
"Undoubtedly, but not to the extent you imagine."
"Has the mother?"
"Yes. She has been a great and constant source of suggestion."
"You would advise taking the patient out of her present surroundings,
would you not?"
"Yes, that would be helpful, but is not absolutely necessary. The
essential step is to fill her mind with counter-suggestions." Here he
launched into an exposition of the principles and potentialities of
hypnotism, and was in full tide of it when Weissmann interrupted to
ask:
"But suppose these phenomena actually and independently exist? Suppose
that they are not illusions but objective realities, how then will
your suggestion help?"
This put Tolman on his mettle. He entered into a discourse filled with
phrases like "secondary consciousness," "collective hallucinations,"
"nerve-force," wherein, while admitting that great and good men
believed in the phenomena of "spiritism," he concluded that they were
overhasty in assigning causes. For his part, the realm of
hallucination was boundless. "The mind has the power to create a world
of its own--it often does so, and--"
Here Weissmann again broke in. "You will enroll yourself with Aksakof
and Von Hartmann and Lombroso?"
"Not precisely. They admit the reality of the appearances. I do not
believe that the mind has power to dematerialize objects, as in the
case of your wine-glass last night, which was a trick."
"But the mind can produce a blister without external cause," said
Serviss. "You hypnotic sharps have proved that it can also deaden
nerves and heal skin diseases, if not bone fractures."
"Yes, we produce marvellous cures within the organism, but we draw the
line at the periphery of the body. Telekinesis is to me the word of a
lively fictionist."
"One is as easy to believe as the other, and Crookes, Lodge, Lombroso,
Tamburini, Aksakof, Von Hartmann, all believe in the reality of these
happenings," retorted Serviss. "They differ only in their
explanations. One party believes them due to disembodied spirits, the
other relates them to the inexplicable action of a certain psychic
force generated within the sitters and acting on objects at a
distance. I am not yet persuaded of the phenomena, but I am
progressing. I am willing to admit that these gentlemen are entitled
to a respectful hearing."
Tolman resumed his own explanation, and after several premises and
general statements put a case. "For example, take automatic writing.
You begin by placing a pad and pencil before the mind. That suggests
writing--sets up a certain train of associated ideas. These ideas have
the innate tendency to realize themselves, the will of the subject
being weakened. This is why the left hand is often used. These ideas
disassociate themselves from the rest of the mental organism and may,
in highly developed cases, become what is called a 'secondary
personality.' They may give a weak imitation of discourse. They may
assume a vague resemblance to some other individual, but they can
never give a full statement or a new statement. This is why all the
so-called spirit communications are so fragmentary and so futile. The
cure of any such state is to set up a strong current of
counter-suggestion."
Weissmann asked: "Is it not extravagant to say that there can exist in
the unconscious mind of a young girl, a skill so great as will enable
her to draw intricate patterns, manipulate objects at a distance, and
impersonate dead persons unknown to her?"
"But there you have passed into the region of hallucination or
deceit."
"I'm not so sure of that. I do not see how fraud or hallucination can
come into the most of what we saw last night. I will admit that coming
alone by itself the test would have little weight; but it does not
come alone. The literature of the subject is great and growing."
Tolman smiled. "Yes, the newspapers are filled with accounts of
mediums exposed."
They entered then upon a discussion of the trance, and passed to a
consideration of multiple personality, which brought out many singular
facts. "We learned also," Tolman said in discussion of a certain case
which he had studied, "that certain drugs have the power of arousing
specific nerve-centres, and that in cases of alternating personality
by flooding the brain with blood we were able to bring back the normal
self."
"Doesn't that weaken your argument of the power of mind over matter?"
asked Serviss, profoundly interested in this assertion.
"Not at all. It is my belief in the drug that influences the patient."
Serviss laughed and Weissmann's mouth twitched. "You cannot head them
off--these modern mind-specialists! They plunge into the subconscious
like prairie-dogs into the sod, only to come up at a new point."
Tolman's interest in the unknown psychic was now keen, and he asked
for a chance to try his powers.
To this Serviss was strongly averse. "I have never had a chance at a
case of this kind and I would very much like to experiment. Perhaps I
may need you; but if suggestion is what you claim it to be, if the
power is really in the mind of the subject, I can arouse it as well as
any one. But as a believer in matter I would like to ally myself with
the drug you mention."
"Very well, here is the prescription." He jotted down on a card a few
hieroglyphic phrases. "And now I must hurry away. I'm sorry, but I
have an engagement."
Serviss took his hand cordially. "I'm glad to have had this talk with
you. It has suggested a new train of thought to me."
"If you need me on the case you mention, be sure to let me know. It
sounds mighty interesting, and I'd like a hand in it."
After Tolman left, Weissmann remarked: "There is a school of thinkers
which believes that exceptional individuals may have the power to
effect molecular changes in matter at a distance."
"Yes, I know that. I spent most of the night reading the Proceedings
of the Society for Psychical Research, in which that theory has a
large place."
"Well, may it not be that Miss Lambert has this power? May it not be
that she is able in some such way as that suggested by Lombroso, to
impart cerebral movements to the ether and so modify matter as to
produce movement of objects, telekinetic writing, and all the rest of
it?"
"That is too violent an assumption. We might as well surrender to the
spiritists at once. What evidence have we that Clarke did not rise and
tiptoe about the room manipulating the horn himself?"
"We have our own observation, joined to the report of Crookes and
Richet."
"But Crookes is discredited on this score. He belongs to what Haeckel
calls 'the imaginative scientists.' So do Von Hartmann, Lombroso,
Wallace, and Lodge."
"Why should that be? Why should we accept their testimony on gases and
the spectrum, and exclude it when it comes to a question of phenomena
new to us? 'This man is a great chemist and physicist,' you say,'but a
crazy ass when he sets to work to examine the claims of spiritism,'
which is absurd and unjust. So far as I can see, he examined the
phenomena of spiritism quite as a scientist should."
Morton believed that his chief was taking the opposing side out of
perversity and replied: "I admit that as you read, they seem
reasonable, and I also admit that the experiments with Eusapia,
especially the recent ones, ought to be conclusive to my mind, but
they are not. That is the singular thing--they do not convince."
"That is because we do not clear our minds of prejudice. These men are
far-sighted and profound in their own lines. They have exposed
themselves to sneers by going into these new fields. They are to be
honored as pioneers. Why not believe the phenomena they discuss are at
least worth our attention?"
"That is Clarke's plea."
"Precisely! And he is right. I am less critical of him to-day than I
was last night. He gave his psychic over into our hands. What more
could we ask?"
"He might have absented himself."
"He may do that next time."
"No; he was furious when I suggested the idea."
"My interest is awakened. It may be, as Clarke says, that this young
lady is about to give the world of science a new outlook. It may be
that she is to out-do Home and Eusapia."
Morton's face was cold and his voice firm as he said: "Not if I can
prevent it. My zeal as an investigator does not go so far as that. I
intend to free her from all connection with this uneasy world, and to
that end I have wired her step-father to come on, and with his
assistance I hope to end Clarke's control of her and set to work upon
the cure she expects of me."
Weissmann smiled indulgently. "The scientist is defeated by the lover.
I see; you would exclude all others from the sitting. Very well! that
shall be as you wish; but it seems a shame now when we have such a
wonderful chance to duplicate the Crookes' experiments. But, as you
say, it would be too much to ask of a young and lovely girl. We will
sacrifice only men and the ugly crones, eh?" Morton smiled faintly
and his chief went on: "Well, now, in case you find yourself
sitting--" he held up a warning hand--"I say if you find yourself
unable to stop these trances--"
"I have no doubt of that--provided I can take her out of her present
associations."
"Very good! I was about to say that all, or nearly all, of the
phenomena of last night took place within a limited radius of the
psychic. The books all came from behind her. The horn hovered near
her--all of which would support the arguments of the 'psychic force'
advocates. Lombroso and Tamburini both suggest that it is not absurd
to say that possibly the subconscious mind may be able not merely to
transmit energy, but to produce phantasmal forms, and I wondered last
night whether there might not be some supernormal elongation of the
psychic's arms which might enable her to seize and manipulate the horn
at a distance beyond her normal reach."
"It is easier for me to believe that Mrs. Lambert did it. I am
convinced that Clarke in some way played us false."
"I'm not sure of that. I am willing to grant that it is possible for
the mind to alter the circulation of the blood, even to accelerate or
decrease the up-building processes among the cells. If the mind can
produce a pathologic process like a blister, it can also remove warts
or cancer, as the hypnotists of the Charcot school claim. If the mind
can move a book or a pencil without the intervention of any known form
of matter, then Clarke (as well as his psychic) may be innocent, and
all that happened last night be due to thought-transference and
telekinesis."
The young man shrugged his shoulders. "To admit a single one of your
premises would turn all our science upside down."
Weissmann smiled musingly. "So said the Ptolmaic philosophers when
Copernicus came. Yet nothing was destroyed but error--they established
the truth."
"I didn't mean what I said, exactly. I meant that the whole theory is
opposed to every known law of physics."
"I'm not so certain of that, I can imagine a subtler form of force
than magnetism. I can imagine the mind reacting upon matter, creating
in its own right by the displacement and rearrangement of the
molecules of a substance--say of wood. What is a wine-glass but an
appearance? No, no! It will not do to be dogmatic. We must not assume
too much. We must keep open minds. Are we not advancing? Is any one
nearing the farther wall? No, my boy, each year should make us less
arrogant. Ten thousand years from now men will still be discovering
new laws of nature just as they were ten thousand years ago. It is
childish to suppose that we or any other generation will know all that
is to be known. Infinite research is before us just as infinite
painful groping is behind us. I do not assume to say what the future
will bring to mankind. Perhaps soon--very soon, science will shift its
entire battle-line from matter to mind. To say the mind is conditioned
in a certain way to-day does not mean that these conditions may not
utterly change to-morrow. Great discoveries wait in the future."
"But you would not say that a new way of squaring the circle would
appear--or that perpetual motion--"
"Oh no, no! Error is not a product of enlightenment. I only say that
the problem which is insoluble to you and to me may be quite simple to
the biologist of the twenty-second century. Once I thought I might
come to know much of the universe, now I am quite certain I shall
never know but a few processes--never the mystery itself."
As the old man talked with the light of prophecy in his gaunt face,
the young man's imagination took wing into the future, that mighty and
alluring void, black as night, yet teeming with transcendent,
potential unborn men and women, and his brain grew numb with the
effort and his heart humble with the moments' prophetic glance. Ay, it
was true! He in his turn would seem a child of the foolish past--a
fond old man to the wise future. His complacence was lost. His faith
in his authorities violently shaken. He recalled a line from Whitman:
"Beyond every victory there are other battles to be fought, other
victories to be won." And his eyes grew dim and his thought filled
with reverence for those seers of the future, and with awe of the
inscrutable and ever-beckoning and ever-retiring mystery of life.
His chief resumed: "No, we pretend to larger knowledge of living
organisms; but how will our text-books be regarded by the teachers of
the future? Will they not read us and smile over us as curious
mixtures of truth and error--valuable as showing the state of science
in our day? Do you dream of solving the mystery of life? Of bridging
the chasm between the crystal and the non-nucleated cell? I do not. As
I sat alone last night unable to sleep, my eyes ran over the backs of
the books on my shelves--they were all there, all the great ones,
Laplace, Spinoza, Descartes, Goethe, Spencer, Hegel, Kant, Darwin, all
the wonder-workers. How masterful each had been in his time. How
complacent of praise; how critical of the past! But here now they all
stood gathering dust, and I thought: so will the unborn philosophers
of the next century fold me up and put me away beside the other mouldy
ones--curious but no longer useful. My book will be but an empty shell
on the reef of human history. Of such cruelty are the makers of
scientific advance."
Morton was profoundly moved by the note of pathos, of disillusionment
in the old man's voice. "Would you have me believe that these men we
doubt to-day are forerunners of the future?"
"I feel so. The materialists have had their day. Some subtler
expression of matter is about to be given to the world, not as Kant
gave it, but through experiment, and to men like Myers and Sir William
Crookes may come great honor some day."
"You would not have us weaken in our method?"
Weissmann's manner changed. He resumed his most peremptory tone. "By
no means. We must not relax our vigilant scrutiny of fact one atom's
weight, but we must keep our minds open to new messages--no matter how
repulsive the source."
Morton sat for a moment in deep study, then said: "If I fail to stop
the public announcement of Miss Lambert's powers, if Clarke's
challenge is issued in spite of my protest, I shall ask the privilege
of heading the committee in order to be present and shield her. If it
comes to this, will you join me and support me?"
"With pleasure."
"But suppose the president and our board object?"
"What right have they to object? So long as I do not neglect my duties
they will not dare to object."
"They will be scandalized. Two of us going into an investigation of
this sort will seem to involve the whole school, and they may insist
on our keeping out of it, so long as we are connected with the
institution. If they ask for our resignation, the public will side
with us, but all other institutions, and probably the bulk of our
colleagues, will go against us. I hesitate, therefore, to ask you to
take up this work. It is not a matter of bread and butter to me. I can
resign, and I am thinking this is my best plan. At the same time I
hope, for Miss Lambert's sake, that the public test will not be made."
Weissmann's shaggy old head lifted like that of a musing lion. "What
is this opposition to me? I too can resign. What my colleagues say
will not matter if I feel that I am advancing the cause of science.
Their flames will scorch, but I have a thick skin. Besides, I am old,
with only a few more years to work, and if I felt I could better serve
the world by going into this investigation than by remaining in the
one in which I now am, I would gladly do it. I will not utterly
starve."
"Not while I am able to share a crust," quickly exclaimed Serviss. "If
they ask for your resignation, give it and come with me. Together we
will found an institute for the study of the supra-normal. What do you
say?"
Weissmann's eyes glowed with the quenchless zeal of the
experimentalist. "My dear boy, I would resign now for that purpose;
but I hope it will not be necessary, for your sake."
They shook hands like two adventurers setting out on their joint
exploration of a distant and difficult country; but this moment of
exaltation was followed in Serviss's mind by a sense of having in some
way dedicated Viola to the advancement of science rather than to the
security of the fireside and to the joys of wife and mother.
XVIII
LAMBERT INTERVENES
Upon his return to his desk Serviss was delighted to find a telegram
from Lambert, stating the time of his arrival, and asking for a
meeting. There was a note of decision, almost command, in the wording
of the despatch, which denoted that the miner had taken his warning to
heart and was prepared for prompt and authoritative action.
The time of the train being near, Serviss closed the lid of his desk
and took a car for the station--immensely relieved of responsibility,
yet worn and troubled by a multitude of confused and confusing
speculations. All the way to the depot, and while he stood waiting
outside the gates, he pondered on the surprising change in Weissmann's
thought, and also upon the momentous covenant between them. More than
ever before he felt the burden and the mystery of organic life. Around
him flowed an endless stream of humankind, rushing, spreading--each
drop in the flood an immortal soul (according to the spiritist),
attended by invisible guardians, watching, upholding, warning--"and
the whole earth swarms with a billion other similar creatures with the
same needs, the same destiny; for, after all, the difference between
a Zulu and a Greek is not much greater than that between a
purple-green humming-bird and a canary; and to think that this wave of
man appearing to-day on the staid old earth, like the swarms of
innumerable insects of June, is but one of a million other waves of a
million other years. To consider, furthermore, that all those who have
lived and died are still sentient! What a staggering, monstrous
conception! Nor is this all. According to the monist conception there
is no line at which we can say here the animal stops and the soul of
man begins, so that ants and apes are claimants for immortality. If
the individual man persists after death, why not his faithful collie?
No, this theory will not do. It is far less disturbing to think of all
these hurrying bipeds as momentary nodes of force--minute eddies on
the boundless stream of ether."
The gates opened and another river of travellers, presumably from the
great plains of the Middle West, poured forth, quite undistinguishable
in general appearance from those which had preceded them; and,
dropping his speculation, Morton peered among these faces, not quite
sure that he would know Lambert if he saw him. As a matter of fact, he
would have missed him had not the miner laid a hand upon his arm,
saying, quaintly: "Howdy, professor, howdy! What's the state of the
precinct?"
He was quite conventional in all outward signs, save for his red-brown
complexion and the excessive newness of his hand-bag. "How are all
the folks?" he went on to ask, with a keen glance.
"They were quite well when I saw them, but they need you. You're not
an hour too soon."
"Is it as bad as that?" he exclaimed, anxiously. "What is it all
about?"
"Wait till we reach a carriage, then I'll put you in possession of all
the facts," replied Serviss, and led the way to a cab. "I am greatly
relieved to see you to-day."
"I came as soon as your wire reached me; but the messenger arrived
during a big snow-storm, and the trail was impassable for a day. Now,
then, professor, let's have the whole story," he said, as the driver
slammed the door. "Where are they and what is the matter?"
"They are here in New York, housed with a man named Pratt, a wealthy
spiritist, and they are in excellent bodily health, but your daughter
is threatened with a publicity which is most dangerous."
"How is that?"
"Clarke has decided to give an oration in the Spirit Temple announcing
his faith and defying the unbeliever. As the climax of this discourse
he intends to announce your daughter's name and her willingness to
meet any test. She objects to this publicity, but Pratt, your wife,
and the 'guides' all unite in forcing her into acquiescence."
"I see," said Lambert, reflectively. "When does this speech come
off?"
"Sunday morning at eleven."
"I reckon I can stop that," was the miner's laconic comment.
"But this is not the only danger," Serviss hurried on to say. "This
man Pratt is a rankly selfish old man, who is surrounded by flatterers
and those who live off his desire to commune with his dead wife and
daughters. He is accustomed to have his own private 'mediums' and to
appropriate their entire time and energy till he is weary of them--or
till a new one comes to his knowledge--then it is his pitiless habit
to 'expose' them and throw them into the street. He is the worst
possible man for your daughter to know, and to be in his house is a
misfortune."
"How does she happen to be there?"
"Clarke took them there. He was eager to secure Pratt's endorsement of
your daughter, and also of the book he is about to publish. Your
daughter hates Pratt, and is very anxious to leave, but is afraid to
do so for fear of him and of her 'controls.' Pratt has threatened to
denounce her if she leaves him."
"Is he in love with her?"
"I don't think so--not in the way you mean. He is bound up in her
powers, and would do anything to keep her. But she must be taken away
at once and Clarke's oration stopped. I would have interfered, but I
had no authority to act. Your wife is satisfied to remain, and the
'chief control,' her father, insists upon their remaining, and Clarke
told me last night that your daughter was his affianced wife. You can
see how helpless I am, even though your daughter in her normal mood
begged me to save her from madness. I regard her condition as very
critical. To expose her to a public trial of her powers may unsettle
her reason."
Lambert was profoundly moved by Morton's rapid statement. "What would
you advise me to do?"
"Take her away from that house and Clarke's influence instantly, no
matter if your wife opposes it."
"Are we on our way there now?"
"Yes, we'll be there in a few minutes. My sister likes your wife and
daughter and has invited them to stay with her for a few days. This
they have promised to do. I suggest, therefore, that you take them
immediately to our home and so get your daughter into a totally
different mental atmosphere. This plan will give you time to decide on
future action."
"Do they know I'm coming?"
"No, I was afraid you might not come, and--"
"I'm glad you didn't tell them. I wanted to test whether that ghostly
grandfather would inform them. I'm mightily obliged to you,
professor," he said, after a pause, and his eyes were moist with his
emotion. "I never had a child of my own, and I'm fond of Viola. I've
always resented this mediumistic business--she's too fine to be
spoiled by it--but she wasn't mine, and Julia was so wrapped up in the
faith I couldn't stop it. Then Clarke came, and Julia minded what I
said no more than if I'd been a chipmunk. So I climbed into the hills
and stayed there."
"You believe in your daughter's powers?"
"In her powers, yes; but not in every voice that speaks through her.
Have you attended any of her sittings?"
"We had one in my house last night. I laid the burden of the
performance to Clarke. He was the juggler."
"Oh no, you're wrong there. I have cause enough to hate Clarke, but
he's honest. No, the power is all in Viola. I've had those things go
on with nobody but Julia and the girl in the room. No, Clarke is a
crazy fool in some ways, but he don't cheat."
His words were so direct, so weighted with conviction, that their
force staggered Serviss, causing him to doubt his new explanation.
Tolman's generalizations ceased at the moment to convince.
Lambert went on. "I suppose she _is_ committed to him. She wrote me
that she guessed she might as well; so long as she was a medium nobody
else would ever want her--or something like that. I feel guilty, I'll
admit, but you see how it was. The girl belongs to Julia, and since
Clarke came into the family our correspondence has been pretty well
confined to checks on my part and receipts on hers; but she's had
plenty of money, professor. There wasn't any need of her going into
anybody's house. She could have gone to the best hotels--"
"I don't see how you could have acted differently," said Serviss, with
intent to comfort. "But I am sure that Viola"--he spoke the name with
a little hesitation--"will eagerly go with you now. She begins to
doubt Clarke and to realize the fearful mental peril in which she
stands."
"That's what I don't understand, professor. This spiritualistic faith
is mighty pretty on the face of it, but it seems to unhinge people's
minds. I've known two or three to go 'locoed' with it; that's what
kept me from interfering. It isn't for miners to monkey with; but I
was in hopes that you would go into it. In fact, I was in hopes you'd
got sort o' interested in Viola, and she in you, and that you'd help
her someway."
"I am interested in her," replied Serviss, quickly, "and I want to
help her; but so long as she is where she is, and acknowledges
Clarke's claims, I can do nothing.--Here we are!"
As they drew up before the looming front of Pratt's house the miner
whistled, "Must be one of those Wall Street pirates we read about.
Nothing spirit-like about this castle, eh?"
"Nor about its lord."
"Why, this beats the Palace Hotel in Salina," he continued, his wonder
increasing, then he smiled. "What'll you bet I don't catch the
'guides' napping! You send up word you're here and leave me out o'
sight somewhere. I'd like to show Julia that her daddy don't know all
that blows over the roof."
Again Serviss doubted the husband's ability to dominate the forces in
opposition--so small and inoffensive did he seem and so ill-timed was
his joke.
The colored man, more funereally dignified than before, showed them
into the reception-room. "I'm afraid the ladies are out, sir, but if
you'll wait a moment I'll see."
"Be sure Mrs. Lambert gets my card," said Serviss, with a note of
warning in his voice. After the man left the room he turned to
Lambert. "Pratt has a habit of intercepting the cards of visitors, and
deciding who shall and who shall not see your daughter. He hates me
and may order me out of the house." As they listened, the master's
deep grumbling vibrated through the ceiling. "You see! my card has
gone to him, not to your wife. The old ruffian is probably giving
instructions to have me shown the door."
To this Lambert made no reply other than to say: "We'll soon know, the
nigger is returning."
Some shade of the master's mood was reflected in the voice of the
servant, as he said: "The ladies are out and Mr. Pratt is engaged." He
had the air of waiting for them to go.
"Out, are they?" remarked Lambert, casually. "Then we'll wait till
they come in. When did you say they'll return?"
"I didn't say, sir; probably not till very late."
"Is Clarke in?"
"I don't know, sir. I think not."
"But your boss is in?"
The man hesitated. "Yes, sir; but I told you he's engaged."
Lambert changed his tone. "Now, see here, Charley, you go right back
and tell him that Joe Lambert, of Fremont Basin, is here on business,
and would like to have a word with him if he don't mind."
The colored man saw a light, and visibly weakened. "I--I'll tell him,"
he stammered, and retired.
Lambert followed him to the door and called after him, in a clear
tone: "You tell him to come down or I'll go up. Now mind you say just
those words."
Morton smiled with joy in Lambert's decisive utterance. "So much for
having authority, as well as the will to act!"
Pratt appeared at the head of the stairs. "What is it now, Jenkins?"
"The gentleman insists on seeing you, sir; it's Mr. Lambert."
"Stay where you are," commanded Pratt, "I'll come down and see what's
wanted."
Lambert, with quiet, upturned face, watched the master of the house
descend slowly step by step, and Morton, contrasting the two men,
awaited the collision with rising apprehension. The Western man seemed
so small, so inoffensive in manner, in contrast with the grizzled,
insolent face of the sullen old man approaching with heavy jaw set at
a bull-dog angle. "Well, sir, what is it?" he contemptuously inquired.
Lambert waited so long that his questioner began to wonder, and then
remarked, quietly: "So you're Pratt!"
"I am."
"Well, I'm Joe Lambert, of Fremont, and I've come to relieve you of
the keep of my wife and daughter." Nothing could have been more
telling, more admirable, than his tone. Every word told, and as Pratt
stood in a daze of surprise Lambert turned to the servant. "Now,
George, you try again. You tell Mrs. Lambert her husband wants to see
her, and you may ask Clarke to come along. I want a word or two with
him."
"Wait!" called Pratt. "I want to know--"
Lambert pointed a finger like a pistol. "You _go_!" and the man went.
The Westerner then turned to the owner of the house and said: "Out
where I live a husband has some rights which he can enforce if he is
minded to do so. I haven't looked after my family as closely as I
might, but I'm going to do better hereafter. I believe my wife and
daughter are in this house, and I intend to see them, and your wishes
don't count in the matter. I'd advise you not to interfere."
Pratt began to retreat. "I didn't know--"
"But suppose you didn't--what right have you to supervise my wife's
affairs? Why didn't you send Professor Serviss's card to her? What
business had you to say she was out?"
Pratt came down from his lofty pose. "So many strangers insist on
seeing the psychic--"
"But Professor Serviss is not a stranger, and, furthermore, unless my
wife's mind has weakened, she's quite competent to turn down any one
she don't want to see. I can't understand why she is here, but I
intend to find out. So long as she bears my name I don't want her to
be under any obligation to a man of your stamp."
There was power and a quiet dignity in the little man, and Pratt began
to plead his case. "I've tried to make it comfortable for them, and
help on their work--"
Lambert looked up and down the splendid hall, and in a softer tone
replied: "So far I'm in your debt, but I don't like it. I am able to
provide for my family and I don't intend to share their supervision
with you nor any other man. So far as I know, my wife still considers
me the head of the family--anyhow, that's what I'm here to find out."
Mrs. Lambert appeared at the head of the stairs and called, in a
tremulous voice: "Is that you, Joe?"
"It is, Julia. Come down."
Viola, with a cry of joy, left her mother's side and running down the
steps, flung herself into Lambert's arms like a frightened child. "Oh,
Papa-Joe--I'm so glad to see you!"
Lambert was astonished by the warmth of her greeting, and while she
hid her face on his shoulder patted her awkwardly with soothing words
of endearment until at last she lifted her pale and tear-wet face and
whispered:
"Oh, it's been a terrible day--take me away, quick!"
Lambert looked up at his wife. "Julia, what's been going on here? You
both look like the dead."
Mrs. Lambert's face was wrinkled and haggard and wan like that of one
grown suddenly old, and Morton was aware that her serenity was utterly
gone before she spoke. Her voice was weak and piteous. "I thought it
was all for the best, Joe. I followed the 'guides'--"
"Follow them a little longer and you'll all land in the mad-house," he
replied. Then to Viola he tenderly said: "Don't you worry any more,
girlie. Old Papa-Joe's going to take you home."
Serviss spoke. "You're to come to us to-night. Kate expects you both."
At the sound of his voice Viola turned with an impulsive reaching of
the hands. "Oh, Dr. Serviss, that would be heavenly! I love your
sister and her beautiful home."
Lambert issued his command. "Get your outfits together. I don't
understand how you got here, but you're going to get out with me
within the next half-hour."
Viola's spirit rose like flame. "We're all ready--this moment. I sent
our trunks away this morning. They went to the West Park. I'll be down
instantly," and she turned to run up the stairs, just as Clarke
appeared at their head. His face was white and wild and his voice
hoarse with fear and reproach as he intercepted her.
"What has happened? Who is below?"
"My step-father," she answered, curtly, and fled away to her room.
Mrs. Lambert was about to follow when she saw Clarke descending, and
drew back with a look of appeal at her husband. It was evident to
Serviss that her confidence in Clarke had given place to fear.
During all this time Pratt had been standing meditatively swaying to
and fro on his feet, chewing upon something which he held far back in
his cheek. He resembled a sullen, chained, and vindictive elephant
meditating murder. He watched Clarke descend the stairs with very
little change of expression; but Lambert's face darkened as the
minister called out:
"What are you going to do?"
"That does not concern you," he replied, and his voice cut. "Your
control of my household stops right here! Julia, go get your things."
He laid an imperative hand on Clarke's arm. "Clear the way for her!"
With a look of alarm Mrs. Lambert started to follow her daughter.
"Don't be harsh, Joe." Then to Clarke she said, pleadingly: "It's
best, Anthony, for a little while. Viola is so nervous and morbid."
"I know what it means," he passionately answered. "It means the wreck
of all my hopes. It means ruin to all my plans--"
Lambert again interfered. "Julia! get dressed. I will attend to Mr.
Clarke." As she hurried up the stairs he turned to Morton in apology.
"I've been to blame for this separation. I should have asserted my
rights before. No man has the right to shirk his family duty. My duty
was to look after the welfare of my wife and daughter, and now see
their faces! This year has made Julia an old woman." His voice
choked. When he could speak he addressed himself to Clarke. "You
promised me that you wouldn't use the girl's name in any way, and yet
I'm told you're about to publish it broadcast."
"The control consents--"
Here Lambert's wrath broke bonds. "Damn the control! I don't consent.
And I serve notice on you, and on you too"--he directed a menacing
look upon Pratt--"to respect the name of my wife as well as that of my
daughter. Clarke has lived long enough in the West to know what I
mean, but I'll explain to you." He faced Pratt, and with easy, almost
gentle utterance, continued: "I've spent some thirty-five years on the
border, where a man is called upon now and then to serve as his own
judge, jury, and hangman. Perhaps we're a little prone to take matters
into our own hands; but be that as it may, the professor here has
posted me about you and your ways, and I merely want to state, once
for all, that if you utter one word public or private against my wife
or daughter I'll kill you as I would a wolf."
The slow pulsing flow of the miner's voice, the absence of all oaths
or justifying gesture, froze Pratt into immobility and thrilled
Serviss with joy, for he, too, perceived that every word came from the
heart of a very determined and very dangerous man.
Clarke started forward. "You wrong me! Everything I have done has been
for their good--for the good of the world."
Lambert stopped him with a gesture. "Right here you quit, my friend.
I don't question your good intentions, but I'm sick of the whole crazy
business, and so is Julia. Why, good God, man! she looks ten years
older since she left the valley. You've been nothing but a curse to
her and the girl from the very start, and here is where your trail
forks."
The preacher's hollow cheeks were ashen gray and his throat thick with
passion as he cried: "You can't do that! You must not separate us. I
love her--she is mine! The spirit forces have promised her to me. They
will resent your interference, they will over-ride your puny
opposition."
"I take the consequences. They go and you stay!"
Clarke turned to Morton in a frenzy, his eyes flaming, his lips dry
and contorted. "I see your hand in this! You stand there silent, but
you are the machinator of this plot. You are stealing her away--"
"Be quiet!" commanded Morton, with a gesture towards the stairway.
"Don't you see them coming?"
Viola, fully dressed, and breathless with eagerness to flee, was
hurriedly descending.
As she neared him, Clarke cried out, with lamentable, despairing wail:
"Viola, you are leaving me!"
She gave him one awed, pitying backward glance and passed on, hurrying
as if to escape his outspread hand, swift to outrun the inevitable
tragic shadow of his faith.
For an instant he reeled back against the wall, then sprang to
follow, but the young scientist intervened and thrust him back.
"Keep to your own trail," he sternly said, and as he opened the door
for the girl, she seemed to pass at once into the sunlit spring-time
world of common life.
XIX
SERVISS ASSUMES CONTROL
At the carriage-door Mrs. Lambert halted, her heart sorely smitten by
the vision of Clarke's agonized face. "Wait a moment!" she cried out.
"We were too cruel. Let me say good-bye."
"No," Lambert replied, firmly. "You are done with him." And with these
words he gently assisted her into the coach. "Get in, professor," he
added, with a touch of the same command. "We must be moving."
With a succinct phrase of direction to the driver, Serviss complied,
taking the front seat, opposite Viola. He was horrified to find her
shaking violently as if with cold, her face white, her eyes big and
wild. Her physical rescue was accomplished, but it was immediately
made plain to him that the invisible bonds which linked her to Clarke
were being drawn upon with merciless power, for with the first motion
of the vehicle she fixed a look of terror and entreaty upon her
mother, exclaiming, huskily: "They are calling me! They will not let
me go."
Lambert stared in helpless dismay as he realized the force of this
inner struggle; but the young scientist, filled with fierce rage at
this assertion of the dark forces, met them promptly in pride of his
own resources, his own desire.
"Give me your hands!" he commanded, sharply. She obeyed like a child
in a stupor of pain, her breath coming through her pallid lips with a
hissing sound as if she were sinking each moment deeper into an icy
flood.
With both her inert hands in his, with love and mastering will in his
eyes, he bent a deep, piercing gaze upon her with intent to rouse her
and sustain her. "You must not give way. You are too strong, too
brave, to yield to this delusion. You are clear of it all
now--entering upon a free and happy life.... Think of the new
conditions into which you are going.... Kate is waiting you. No one
can control you if you set your will sharply against it.... Remember
the Marshall Basin and the splendid sunshine.... You are leaving all
hateful, evil influences behind." In this way he labored to fill her
mind with new conceptions, building up in her a will to resist, and as
he felt the tremor die out of her hands and saw the color coming back
into her face he smiled with a sense of victory. "You see!" he
resumed, in triumph. "You are better. Your hands are warmer. You are
breathing naturally again. Your enemies are being left behind."
It was true. The hunted, piteous look had left her eyes. She seemed
drowsy, but it was the languor of relief. The vital force, the sanity,
the imperious appeal of the man before her had rolled back the cloud
of fear which had all but closed over her head. He released her hands,
saying: "We must have no more backward glances. Remember Lot's wife."
Lambert, filled with satisfaction, laid a silencing hand upon his
wife's arm. His faith in science, in the force of exact learning, was
being met, and he was resolved to leave the hypnotist free to act, to
control.
Roused and confident, the young scientist continued his appeal,
leaving her no time to dwell upon the past. "You are young," he said
in effect, "and it is spring. You are false to yourself if you permit
yourself to lose through any such morbid imagining a single hour of
joy. All depends on your own will, your own desire to be free.
Henceforth you are never to be sad or afraid. I will you to be happy
and you must obey."
She rose from the deep of her depression as a lily rises from the sod
after the trampling storm-wind has passed. Her response to his call
filled him with hope as well as with astonishment. It was as if he had
torn from her throat the hands of some hideous beast, half-man,
half-devil, and they entered Kate's home in such normal, cheerful
relationship that no one could possibly have associated any hidden
grief with either of them, not even with Mrs. Lambert, and Viola met
her hostess with the gay spirits of an unexpected but confident guest.
Kate was both amazed and delighted by their sudden irruption, and
being eager to know all the details of their escape from the Pratt
stronghold hurried Viola and her mother away to their rooms, leaving
Lambert in Morton's care.
"Well, professor," said the miner, when they were alone, "we made the
break and won out. I reckon they're side-tracked now."
"Yes, and I hope we are done with both Pratt and Clarke; but they'll
both bear watching. Pratt I especially fear."
"He's had his notice," Lambert grimly replied. "As for Clarke, it
looks as though even Julia had got enough of him. He looked like a man
on the road to the mad-house, and I reckon she's convinced of it now."
"I pitied him, but I do not feel that you are in any sense indebted to
him. On the contrary, a large part of your daughter's slavery to the
trance is due to his pernicious influence."
"You must be something of an influence yourself, professor. It was
wonderful the way you brought her out of that trance. I never saw that
done before. I reckon you must have some kind of mesmerism about you."
"Not a particle more than you have. However, I should like to believe
in my power to help her. In fact, I do believe that. It is really a
question of her own will. The old idea of some subtle physical force
or fluid passing from the operator to the subject is no longer held.
It is not even necessary to make passes nor to put the subject in a
trance. All we need to do is suggest to her that no one, not even her
ghostly grandfather, can control her against her will. We must keep
her mind full of bright and cheerful thoughts, and convince her that
by leaving the Pratt house she has attained freedom."
"I will do what I can," said Lambert; "but I've seen her taken down so
many times, I'm a little doubtful. She's in a bad way, I admit. It has
its bad side as well as its pretty side, this religion. It unhinges a
lot of people, and I reckon Clarke's a little off or he wouldn't have
got my folks into that mess."
"Don't let Viola feel your doubt; present a confident face to her.
There is nothing supernatural in the world, nothing lying outside of
nature or outside of law. Many diseases which were once considered
demoniacal possessions we now know to be quite as natural as any other
in fact. Disease is only health gone wrong; and the mental disorder in
which Viola now stands is certainly curable if we proceed properly and
with confidence."
"I like to have you say these things, professor. They kind o' fit in
with what I've thought over all by myself out there in the mountains.
I like the man who says 'such and such a thing is so-and-so, because I
can prove it.' That's what science is, I take it. There's altogether
too much guess-work about this spiritualistic religion--it needs some
engineer like you to get down to the bed-rock. Clarke is the kind of
man who thinks he's on the vein when he ain't."
"I'm giving it a good deal of thought, and may be I will some day take
up the experimentation--but not with your daughter as a subject.
However, we'll discuss that later. You are tired and I'll show you
your room and bath, and after you freshen up a bit we'll discuss our
next movement."
Lambert turned as he entered the room assigned to him, and said, with
deep feeling: "I'm trusting in you, professor. I'm out o' my latitude
in this spirit enterprise. As I say, I've neglected my family since
Clarke came into it, and it was all wrong. I should have asserted my
rights. I don't blame Julia as much as I did. Women are kind o' weak
in some ways--more religious, you may say--and Clarke got hold of
Julia in a way that I couldn't understand. I didn't mind her thinking
more of Waldron than of me--that's natural, we all have our first
loves--but I couldn't stand Clarke's overbearing ways in my own
house." His voice grew firm. "Well, now, here I am with time and
money. Tell me what to do and I'll do it."
Morton's liking for the Western man was raised almost to affection, as
he looked into his earnest, remorseful eyes and listened to his
low-toned confession. "You may depend on my help," he responded,
heartily, extending his hand in token. "Your step-daughter interests
me deeply. There is something for you to do, but I will not ask it
now."
"Yes, tell me, so I can be thinking it over."
Morton pondered a moment, then said: "I had a consultation to-day with
a great nerve specialist, a man who uses hypnotism, or 'suggestion,'
as he calls it, in his practice. He is perfectly sure that your
daughter can be restored to mental health, but she must have a
complete change of companionship and environment. He agrees with me
that she must be separated not merely from Pratt and Clarke, but from
her mother also. I need your help in this."
"That will be hard on Julia," Lambert slowly responded. "She hasn't
much else but the girl and her religion." He looked down at the floor.
"Yes, that is a rough sentence, professor, but I shouldn't wonder if
you were right."
"It must be done, Lambert; and the very best service you can render is
to take your wife and go home, leaving Viola here in our care--But
that can wait till after you are rested." And with this final word he
closed the door and returned to his library to await Kate's return and
her inevitable demand for the story of what had taken place.
He took up one of the most recent books treating of Suggestion, and
resumed consideration of a paragraph which had arrested him as if a
hand had been placed upon his shoulder. "Suggestion does not limit or
depress the subconscious self, it sets it free, exalts its powers,
making it not something less, but something vastly more than the
normal and the conscious self."
Could it be possible that Viola, in common with hundreds of other
apparently well-authenticated cases, possessed the "psychic force"
which Maxwell, Richet, and Lombroso recognized? The hypothesis,
difficult as it was, profoundly inexplicable from every point of view,
was, after all, less of a wrench to the reason, came closer to the
frame of his philosophy than the claims of Crookes and Wallace. To
accept the spiritist faith even as a "working hypothesis" was
impossible to his definite type of mind.
If these raps, movements, voices, could be related to the working of
the subconscious mind, or, as Meyers called it, the "subliminal self,"
then the power of the hypnotist might be able to control their order
and to a certain extent their character. They were not signs of a
diseased brain (according to Meyers again), but were the
manifestations of a power scattered here and there among men, without
system, without known law. Maxwell agreeing with this, ends by saying:
"These mysterious phenomena are due, therefore, neither to spirits nor
disease, but to a perfectly natural force lying within the minds of
the sitters and exercised by the psychic."
He had already derived much hope from the monumental work of Meyers
and his school. Hundreds of cases of hallucinations, alternating
personality, hysterio-epilepsy, and other kindred apparent
abnormalities, had been studied by means of hypnotism, and certain
processes inhibited or set going at the will of an operator. The
latest word of these masters was most heartening. They had
demonstrated that the trance was no longer a necessary part of
hypnotism. That the subject would not follow out in trance any
improper or criminal suggestion which he would not do in conscious
state; and, "There is no great physical difference between the normal
and the hypnotic state," he read; "the real mental difference lies in
the temporary removal of motives tending to counteract the suggestion,
and this removal does not imply an inhibition of faculty, but an
actual extension or liberation of faculty."
In fine, these men agreed that the mind, reaching back, by its very
structure, to the beginning of organic life, was limited by
consciousness to a comparatively small number of its potentialities,
whereas its subliminal life (on the contrary) was infinite and
unsearchably subtle. All minds partook, in varying degrees, of these
baffling powers, but only now and then, through unusual favoring
circumstances, was the brain able to manifest its depth and subtlety.
Sickness, sleeplessness, physical shock, some accidental series of
events now and then permitted a display of these hidden acquirements,
and thereafter the individual was marked as abnormal, possessed,
according to the ancient view, by angels or devils.
Others still, by putting themselves deliberately into the study, had
been able to subordinate the conscious mind, little by little
liberating their subliminal forces by practice, attaining thus almost
miraculous powers. In this way the "medium" became clairvoyant,
clairaudient, telekinetic. In other cases still, as in Viola's case,
this subordination of the supra-liminal self had been accomplished by
the suggestion of others, by submission to the will of others.
He had been profoundly instructed by Tolman's account of a case of
alternating personality which he had studied with so much care. The
fact that the secondary self appeared when the subject's life seemed
at a lower ebb, and when the cerebral centres were sparsely supplied
with the life-current, and the further fact that the use of a certain
substance which stimulated (without poisoning) the higher
brain-centres, was able to bring back the primary or supra-liminal
self, was of the utmost value. It threw a flood of light upon Viola's
condition, for had she not in her trance become inert, cold, and
almost without pulse? He had provided himself with this drug, and as
he studied its appearance in the phial, so minute, so colorless, so
helpless in its prison, he felt once again the mystery of matter, and
smiled to think how childish was the popular conception of the
physical universe as something dead and inorganic. Nothing is more
mysterious.
"The office of this drug can be twofold. It has the power in itself to
flush the cerebral centres with fresh blood, and it can also serve as
a point of support for the suggestion I am about to give. It does not
really matter whether she has any phase of what they call mediumistic
power or not. To rid her of her trances will liberate her from a
belief in her ills, and that is the main consideration."
He found the greatest encouragement at this point in the many cases
where perfect mental health had been restored by means of a complete
change of mental stimuli. "All hypnotic methods," he read, "have one
thing in common, and that is the diversion of attention from the
insistency of external surroundings.... The hypnotic state has one
broad characteristic, and that is the working of the subliminal
consciousness in directions unusual in ordinary life."
"The way to help her is to cut off every suggestion which leads to the
trance and to the thought of the dead; to centre her mind on the
serene, the busy, the sunny. Thus flooding her brain with sights and
sounds utterly disassociated with her past."
The realization that she was at last domesticated under his roof made
her redemption seem easy, certain, almost accomplished. There remained
only the painful duty of separating her from her mother. He could see
that this would bring keen sorrow upon them both, but that if she
could be brought to consider him in the light of her future husband,
the change would seem less violent; for, after all, it was the law of
life which subordinated the claims of the mother to those of the
husband.
"At any rate, the issue is now clear in my mind. A powerful chain of
suggestion has been formed and fastened upon her by her own mother and
by Clarke. That chain must be broken; it is broken in Clarke's case,
and no matter what the pain, the fear, this course may cause the
mother, it must be pursued in order to restore Viola to health."
He passed from this to a forecast of the radical changes in his own
life which an avowal of love would make, and his mood chilled. He had
always imagined the announcement of his engagement, falling into a
sober and decorous paragraph among the society notes, and had figured
himself receiving with dignified composure the congratulations of his
associates and club-fellows. He had never considered the possibility
of shrinking from these publicities, nor fancied himself in the light
of finding excuses to justify or explain his marriage. He now clearly
foresaw, foreheard the comment, the surprise, the opposition of his
family.
He pulled himself up short with a word of derision at the length to
which he had permitted his mind to run. "All this for the future. The
immediate question is, Can she be freed from her bonds?"
He was deep in his book when Kate entered with excited greeting.
"Morton, do you know that those women have been locked in their rooms
all day for fear of Clarke and Pratt? Well, they were! Clarke has gone
stark mad with jealousy, and even that besotted mother was afraid of
him, and admits it. They would be there in that house prisoners this
minute only for you."
"Don't lay your wreath on my head; keep it for Lambert. Really, Kate,
he was magnificent. Little as he is, he towered. I had no doubt of his
willingness and ability to kill either Pratt or Clarke; and I don't
think they questioned the integrity of his promise."
Kate's mind took a new turn. "She's broken with Clarke, thank Heaven!
But the mother clings to him in spite of all."
"I am about to suggest to Mrs. Lambert that she go West with her
husband, leaving the girl in your care for a little while."
"I wish they would!"
"She must be freed from even her mother's presence for a while--that
is, if they really want to have her cured of her trances."
"I see," said Kate, thoughtfully. "The mother is so closely associated
with all that tapping."
"Precisely. I wish, when Mrs. Lambert is rested, you would ask her to
let me see her here. I want to talk these matters over with her in
private."
"They're both lying down, but I'll tell her when she rises. Don't do
anything rash," she added, with a reaction towards caution which
amused him.
"You may trust me."
She came back a few steps, and hesitatingly said. "For, after all,
Morton, the girl _is_ abnormal."
"So are we all--under abnormal conditions. I am going to see if I
can't so change the current of her thought that she will forget her
besetments--and you must help me."
"She's shockingly pretty and it will be very dangerous having her
beneath your very roof." She gave a warning backward look. "How dare
you permit it?"
"I am a very brave man," he replied, with a smile, and an inflection
that puzzled her.
XX
THE MOTHER'S FAITH
Mrs. Lambert entered timidly, her gentle face sadder and its lip-line
firmer than he had ever seen it. It was evident that the experiences
of the last few days had touched her and shaken her.
Up to this time Morton had considered her as a genial but rather
negative personality, a soul naturally subordinate to others, but she
now rose to an importance in his life which made her real self of the
highest significance. His first glance was one of sincerest
admiration. Doubtless she had once been as slender and quite as tall
as her daughter, and though increasing age and weight had combined to
rob her of height and grace, she was, nevertheless, still a distinctly
commanding figure. Her head was nobly fashioned, her eyes a candid
blue, and her glance clear and unworn in its appeal.
Altogether he could not but acknowledge in her a mother of which no
man need be ashamed, and in this spirit he met her and invited her to
a seat. "Mr. Lambert and I have been talking of the mountains to-day,"
he began. "I wish we were on our way out there this moment, for I am
tired of the city."
She brightened under his smile. "I wouldn't mind going home at once,
but I know Viola would be disappointed. She has seen so little of the
city, and then Mr. Clarke--" She broke off in some confusion as if in
sudden recollection of the chasm which had opened between the young
clergyman and her daughter.
He seized upon this allusion to say: "I did not think of including Mr.
Clarke, Mrs. Lambert. I think you and your daughter have both had too
much of him. I do not doubt his sincerity, but I am quite certain that
he was leading you both into an abyss. I hope you will make the most
of this chance to free yourself from his influence. I quite stand with
your husband in that resolution."
Her face grew cold again. "As to that, I must wait for further
illumination. These last few hours have been so disturbed we are quite
cut off from our guides."
"You depend upon them--they are very real to you, are they not?" He
spoke musingly.
"They are just as real to me as you are--or any one."
"Did you not doubt their wisdom to-day?"
She drew herself up. "Why should I?"
"They knew nothing of your husband's coming?"
"Oh yes, they did, only they couldn't communicate on account of
Viola's mental condition." Then, with unshakable conviction, she
added: "If I doubted them I should doubt everything."
"I am sorry to trouble you. I am not one to needlessly destroy a
comforting faith, and yet I confess I thought the time had come to
invoke your husband's aid. It was in that spirit I sent the telegram."
"I am very glad you did, although I had no fear. I knew my father
would find the right way when the time came. Let me tell you, sir,"
she replied, expanding in the warmth of his interest. "Before these
revelations came to me I had no real faith in God or heaven. The world
beyond the grave was dark and cold. It seemed to me as if my little
boy and my husband were in the cruel, wet ground. I couldn't feel that
they had gone to Christ. But now the tomb is but a portal to the
light. The spirit-plane is as real as the earth-plane, and filled with
joyous souls. I can hear them sing sometimes when I hold Viola's hand,
and the sound is very beautiful and very comforting."
"I can understand that," he answered, but quietly, critically, still
studying her face. "It has a warmer charm than any other religion I
know."
She went on, eagerly: "I wish you could come to believe. Your sister
said your mother and your uncle spoke last night. Why can't you accept
the faith?"
The young philosopher gained, as she spoke, a new conception of her
character, and chilled with a growing sense of the difficult and
ungracious task which lay before him. He began to perceive that her
awe of him had kept her silent, thus concealing from him the spirit of
the evangelist which he now saw she possessed. She counted more
largely in Viola's development than he had hitherto granted. Her
faith was solidly based on years of experience and was not to be
easily moved. As she went on he perceived that her daughter's
mediumship was much more than a theory in her thought; it was a fact,
and a daily, almost an hourly, necessity. He lost his last suspicion
of her, and caught a glimpse of the larger aspect of her relationship
to his future. She was deceived, of course, but she was honest in
every fibre. He could not accuse her of the slightest deceit or
falsification.
In her lame way she tried to argue the question, quoting the
platitudes of the "inspirational speakers," as well as the pompous
phrases of her spirit-father, while he listened courteously.
When she paused, he said, gravely: "My dear Mrs. Lambert, I can't
leave you in any doubt of my position. I cannot for a single instant
accept what happened last night as the manifestation of the
disembodied. I cannot think that the phenomena exist. I must rather
think they were performed by Clarke, or my sister, or Weissmann, in
joke." She looked at him with an expression of horror, of incredulity,
and he went on, quickly: "Even if I admitted the fact of direct
writing or the movement of the horn, I should not by any means be
driven to accept your spirit-hypothesis. There are men, and very great
investigators, who would say that your daughter's trances and all
phenomena connected therewith were pathologic, explainable on the
grounds of some obscure neural derangement. I do not say this is the
case, but I do say that if she persists in these practices she will
lose control of her mental faculties. I have had a consultation to-day
with Dr. Tolman, a man who makes a specialty of such cases, and when I
had laid the whole matter before him, he and Dr. Weissmann both
advised the immediate stopping of these trances."
"We can't do that. They come from the other side. My father induces
the trance, and it is entirely in his hands."
He fixed a keen look upon her. "Did it ever occur to you that the
words of your 'guides' were, in reality, but a reflex of the wishes of
Pratt or Clarke?"
"How could that be when they came to me long before I even knew
Anthony?"
"But was not the advice of a different quality at that time? Maybe
your father yields to the will of living people when they are strong
enough."
"Oh no, quite the contrary. He opposes Mr. Clarke often. Sometimes he
opposes us all."
"I am perfectly sure that the voices that spoke to us last night were
a subtle delusion, an emanation from our own bodies--or the work of a
joker. My reason repels them as spirits."
She smiled a little. "I think you scientific people go a long way
round to explain a very simple thing. I've read some of the
explanations of the way in which you think these phenomena come, but
they are harder to understand than the thing itself. My father, my
husband, and my little son are alive. I know that. No one can destroy
that faith in me."
"I do not wish to destroy that faith--only so far as it seems to
threaten your daughter."
"I am perfectly sure they know better what we should do than any one
on the earth-plane. I cannot see why you people oppose the idea of the
spirit-world when it is so beautiful and could fill the world with
hope. The Bible teaches it when you read it right. It is full of
references to spirits. Did not Christ rise from the dead and manifest
to His disciples?"
"And did He not cast out devils?"
She was momentarily at a loss, but soon recovered. "But if you admit
there are _evil_ spirits--"
"But I don't. I said that merely to show you that a sceptic can quote
Scripture to his purpose. There is no place in my philosophy for the
supernatural."
"That is what we believe," she eagerly responded. "I used to be
frightened by the things that happened to Viola, but now I know they
are natural, just as natural as anything else. My loved ones are not
far away, they are very near, but, oh, so intangible. If I could only
touch them!" In this was the cry of her soul. She deeply sighed. "I am
growing old, and that means I live in the past more and more. When
Waltie comes I can imagine myself as I was when we first went to the
mountains. Robert means more and more to me, and all fear of 'the
change' is gone. Really, if it were not for Viola I would like to go
over to the other side to-night. The spirit-plane seems so much more
care-free and bright. This life is but a preparatory school at best."
"That is all wrong," he decisively replied. "Very wrong. Even if your
idea of the other world were right, you should not abandon your hold
on this till your work was done. A general condition of mind like
yours would stop all invention, all discovery, and especially all
philanthropy. In fact, the only philanthropy would be murder. To end
man's suffering here would be a duty. War would be a blessing, and
disease a rescue. No, no. You must not talk like that."
"Oh, I'm not really thinking of going. I feel that I must stay a
little while longer to see Viola settled in life."
"What do you mean by that? Do you mean married, and happy, or do you
mean given over entirely to the trance?"
"I suppose she ought to marry--she is very unhappy as she is."
"Now, that is what I especially wanted to talk with you about. I have
decided to ask your daughter to put herself into my hands, and I hope
you will give your consent."
"I shall be glad to have you take charge of her, professor, and
father, I know, is anxious to have you head the committee."
"Oh, I don't mean that! I mean something much more intimate, much more
important." This brought him face to face with himself and the
decision over which he had agonized for so long, and for an instant he
hesitated, then took the plunge bravely. "I love your daughter, Mrs.
Lambert, and I want your permission to tell her so."
She drew back into her chair with a gasp of surprise and a look of
alarm.
"Oh, I didn't understand! I thought you meant--I don't know--I--" She
was utterly at a loss for words, but he understood her.
"Your hesitation is not flattering to me. I hope you don't absolutely
distrust me."
Her embarrassment was pitiful. "Oh no, indeed! But you are a sceptic.
You don't believe in us--in her."
"Oh yes, I do!"
"And, besides, she has been promised for two years to Tony--Mr.
Clarke."
He grew a little hard at mention of the preacher's name. "But she
fears and hates Clarke. She has broken with him. She told my sister
that she was done with him forever. You will not ask her to marry a
man she distrusts?"
She flew to Clarke's defence. "That was only a mood, a lover's
quarrel. He was all upset by Pratt and--and other things. I will not
allow her to desert him when he is in trouble. He has been so much to
us, and he is a noble character in spite of all."
"All this is very disturbing to me," he answered, more humorously than
he felt. "But, nevertheless, I also claim to be a noble character."
She began once more to realize his place in the world and his kindness
to Viola. "I know that, professor, I fully recognize the honor you do
her and me, but she is not like other girls. She is set aside to do
God's work, and ought not to marry at all. That is why the 'guides'
have given her to Anthony; he, too, is consecrated."
"Dear Mrs. Lambert, you shock me when you say such things. I don't
believe it is your daughter's duty to convert people to a belief in
immortality. I don't believe in teaching men and women to depend upon
an unseen world for guidance; and especially do I despise any faith
which makes this life less important than some other just beyond. I
love this life, and do not intend to trouble myself about what lies
beyond the grave. That is really not my concern. To regard this world
as a vale of tears leading to a shining heaven is a species of
mediævalism from which I revolt."
She caught this up. "That is just the reason why Viola would be
unhappy with a sceptic."
"But I am not a sceptic. I have the greatest faith. I am certain I can
make her happy here and now. You surely would not permit her to go
back to Anthony Clarke!"
She was troubled and confused. "I don't know. Perhaps it would be
best, after all. A great deal of her 'power' comes from him." She
brightened. "But I will leave all that to father."
Again he leaned to her with tender gravity. "You must not do that.
Unless you deny the value of all life here on the earth, you are an
unnatural mother to devote your child to such a career as Clarke
holds out to her. I love your daughter because she is a beautiful
girl, a charming personality, and I am able to give her security and
comfort. I will be perfectly frank with you. I think these trances
have been fastened upon her by those about her, and if she consents to
come to me I shall stop them forever. My aim will be to delude her
into thinking life with me of more value than the highest eminence as
a 'medium.' Now, if this seems treason to you, I cannot soften it. I
want you to fully understand my position. My schooling has been all in
the exact sciences, and what skill I possess I am using to make the
world a healthier and happier place to live in. Your way of life (and
Clarke's philosophy of life) seems to me weak and morbid, and your
treatment of your daughter mistakenly cruel. I intend to take her out
of it, if I can. And, furthermore, dear lady, if you withhold your
consent, which I profoundly hope you will not, I must proceed without
it. If she comes to me, she ceases to be a psychic. If I can prevent
it, she will never sit again."
The mother sat as if stunned by the weight of his will, the rush of
his words, the decision of his glance. She fully understood the
situation. She knew that Viola already leaned upon and trusted this
man more than any other being in the world, and knowing this she felt
the full force of the tragic situation. It was not a question of a
temporary separation, that she foresaw as by some prophetic vision.
Her baby, her clinging, loving girl-child was about to pass from her
arms forever, carrying with her all interest in life and all means of
communication with her dead. With her she was about to lose husband,
son--and all the blessed music of the happy multitudes of those on the
spirit-plane. It was as if the shining portals to the world of light
were about to be closed to her forever, closed and barred by the hand
of this implacable young lover, and with a sudden, most lamentable cry
she sobbed forth: "Oh, I can't consent! I can't bear to think of it!"
The sight of that placid, motherly face breaking into lines of anguish
while the gray old head bowed in weakness, completely unmanned the
self-centred young scientist, and bending above her, he tenderly
pleaded.
"Dear Mrs. Lambert, you wring my heart with your weeping. Don't cry, I
beg of you! I didn't intend to be harsh. I only intended to be honest
with you. I wish you would trust me. Let me be a son to you. Even if
Viola does not care for me as I hope she does, I can help you, and
even if she consents to my treatment, the separation will only be for
a few months or a year."
"You would take my hope from me. You would rob me!" She challenged him
with white and distorted face. "You are hard and cruel, and I will not
give her up. I know her nature. She is necessary to the spirit-world
and you have no right to destroy her power."
"I am sorry if I seemed to attack your faith. It has many beautiful
things inwoven with its morbidities. I would believe it if I could,
but I can't, and in my present state of mind I can only repeat that,
however painful it may be to you, I see no other way to save your
daughter from insanity. Yes, my dear Mrs. Lambert, the case is quite
as desperate as that, to my thinking, and as I am beginning to centre
my life in her also, you will see that I am quite as deeply concerned
as any one. She has reached a danger-point. She must not go on in this
way another month."
Again those lines of serene obstinacy came back into her face, and the
gentle bigot looked from her eyes. "You are all wrong. These trances
are as natural as sleep. They rest her, do her good--father says so.
He treats her from that side and is watching over her. I admire you,
Professor Serviss, I appreciate the honor you do me, but I cannot
consent to have Viola go from me. I can't endure the thought. If you
believed in the spirit-world and the guides consented, I would be
glad; but you don't. You hate everything concerning our faith, and I
am afraid of you. I wish my girl had never seen you." She rose in a
panic of growing alarm. "Let me go to her!"
He detained her gently. "Just a moment. Remember I have not said a
word of all this to her, and your alarm may be quite groundless. What
do you fear if your 'guides' are so wise and powerful? Where is your
proselyting zeal? Am I not worthy of being converted? Why not let
Viola influence me towards your path?"
She sank back into her chair bewildered by his tone, and he went on:
"You considered Mr. Clarke a most important instrument for spreading
the light, but I am egotistic enough to say that my conversion would
mean more to your cause than fifty Clarkes. You forget also that your
father was very anxious to have me brought into the circle. You recall
that?"
She faintly answered, "Yes."
"Well, then, let that count in my favor. You call me a sceptic, but I
am really a slave to evidence. I will go wherever the evidence leads.
I have no proof of the spirit-world, but I am of open mind. Can you
ask any more of me than that? I have said that I intend to end Viola's
career as a psychic, if I can; but if I can't, if the manifestations
go on in spite of me, I will study them faithfully, glad of any
revelation of a new world which they may bring. If you are so clear in
your confidence, so certain of your faith, why not consent to let me
speak to her?"
She rose again. "I can't do that. I _must_ not."
He offered his hand with a smile. "Your lack of confidence in me I
forgive, for I think I understand your feeling. Do not be deceived, my
suit does not end here. I intend, at the earliest moment, to win your
daughter's consent to my plan. There is only one thing I would like
you to promise, and that is this: Don't prejudice her against me. Let
me speak to her first. Will you promise that?"
She shook her head. "I must tell her, and we must sit for council."
"Well, then, will you promise to let me sit with you? Will you promise
to put off that sitting till I can be present? It is only fair to me,
as I am quite as vitally affected as any one in the result. Come! Will
you promise?"
She bowed her head in sign of consent and hastened towards the door.
He stood aside to let her pass, pitying her because understanding her.
"And please don't distress her to-night. Let her live this evening as
a joyous girl, undisturbed even by my question."
She went out fear-stricken by the power of his glance, the persuasion
of his voice. Her instinct at the moment was to take her child and
flee, immuring herself far from those who would rob her of her only
remaining interest in the world.
XXI
CLARKE SHADOWS THE FEAST
Viola, looking up from a piece of antique jewelry which Kate was
displaying, was startled by the sadness of her mother's face, and
directed her next glance upon Morton, in the wish to discover the
cause of her trouble. That the interview had been very grave and
personal was evident, and with a sense of having been the subject of
discussion, she rose to meet them.
Kate did not permit any explanations, for dinner was waiting and time
limited. "Go fetch Mr. Lambert, Morton: unless we want to be late at
the play we must go out at once."
Morton was glad of the interruption, for he was eager to have his
understanding with Viola before the mother could bring any adverse
influence to bear upon her. As they went out into the dining-room,
side by side, he found her nearness sweeter and more concerning than
ever before; and with a realization of having in a very vital way
staked his immediate future upon her word, he was unusually gay,
masking his persistent, deep-hid doubt in jocose remarks. Lambert
seconded him with quiet humor, and together they caused even the
mother's face to relax its troubled lines, while Viola, yielding to a
sense of freedom and of youth, shook off all constraint, responding to
Morton's unspoken suggestion, thinking only of him and of the secure,
bright world in which he dwelt (and in which he seemed so large and so
handsome a figure), and in this confidence and comfort they came to
the mixing of the salad, which Kate slangily explained to be Morton's
"particular stunt." He had fully assembled his ingredients, and was
about to approach the actual, delicate blending when the maid appeared
at his elbow to say that he was wanted at the telephone.
"Well, tell them to wait," he replied, testily. "This is a very
precise moment."
"I told them you were at dinner, sir, but they said it was important."
He rose with a sigh. "I hope my 'whiff of garlic' won't settle into a
steady breeze. Be patient a moment, kind people."
With mild wonder as to what the news might be, he took a seat at his
desk and put the receiver to his ear.
"Hello. Who is it?"
A hurried, eager, almost breathless boyish voice responded. "Is this
Dr. Serviss?"
"It is."
"Can you tell me where Miss Viola Lambert and her mother are?"
"I cannot." By which he meant he was not empowered to do so.
"I was told they left Pratt's house with you sometime this afternoon."
"Have you inquired at the Courtleigh?"
"No. I was so sure--"
"Try either the Courtleigh or the Colorado," replied Morton, in the
tone of authority.
The voice then asked: "Can you tell me where Clarke's Brooklyn
relatives can be found?"
"I cannot. I know nothing whatever of Mr. Clarke's family."
"I must find them. Clarke has committed suicide, and it is necessary
to notify his friends and--"
Morton's brain blurred with the force of this blow, "You don't mean
it! When did it happen?"
"About an hour ago. We must find the Lamberts, and if you can give us
any information--"
"Who are you?"
"I'm a representative of _The Recorder_. Can I see you for a few
minutes, Dr. Serviss?"
"I am just starting for the theatre," hurriedly answered Morton, his
voice as casual as he could make it; "and I fear it is impossible."
"It is very important, Dr. Serviss, for Pratt has told me that you
know the Lamberts and all about their relationship to Clarke. If
you--"
"It is quite impossible," replied Morton, with decision, and hung up
the receiver. For a few moments he sat in deep thought, his mind
leaping from point to point of this new complication. As he analyzed
the far-reaching consequences of this tragic and terrible deed he
bitterly exclaimed: "You've reached us now, Anthony Clarke! You have
involved the woman you pretended to love and all her friends in a
screaming sensation. Your name will be writ larger to-morrow than at
any time during your whole life. You could not have hit upon a more
effective revenge."
The situation grew each moment more satanic. "My name will be involved
quite as prominently as hers. The mother, frantic with grief and
remorse, will hate me and bitterly reproach us all. She will accuse us
of causing his death. But, most important of all, what will be the
effect of this news on Viola's mental condition?" His thought ran to
her as he had just left her radiant with hope and new-found happiness,
and it seemed as though the dead man had reached a remorseless,
clutching hand to regain final dominion over her. His shadow hovered
in the air above her head ready to envelop her.
"If I can only keep this from her for a few days, till my own control
of her has strengthened. I _must_ keep it from her. She must not see
to-morrow's papers with their ghastly story." He chilled with a fuller
sense of the suicide's power to torture her. "She must leave the city
to-night. She will be called before the coroner, her mediumship and
Clarke's control of her will be howled through the street--" He
groaned with the shame and anguish of the scene his imagination bodied
forth. "Pratt's hand will also be felt. He will have his own tale, his
own method of evasion, and will not hesitate to dishonor her."
Furthermore, this threatening shame so far from arousing a new
distrust and a desire to escape further connection with her, swept him
into a profounder desire to serve and shield her. His heart filled
with pity and love, and into his eyes a stern light--the light of
battle--came. "She shall not be tortured so, if I can defend her or
lead the way to escape. Lambert must leave the city at once and take
them both with him."
He rose and walked about the room in order to recover command of his
face and voice. "Truly the miserable fanatic has wrought well. He has
promised himself that his spirit, freed from the body, will be able to
possess and control his victim. The mother will understand and accept
this. Will Viola?" The thought of her, dominated by this new and
revolting delusion, filled him with dismay and horror. "She, too, will
be smitten with remorse, and the scale may be turned against me and my
influence." This was indeed the most disturbing consideration of all.
Realizing at length that every additional minute of absence made his
explanation more difficult, he returned to his guests with impassive
face and resolute determination to control his thought even from
Viola's mind-reading power.
Kate saw at once that some dark thing shadowed him, "What is it,
Morton?"
"One of my acquaintances has met with trouble--financial trouble--and
wants my help. I'll tell you about it later," he curtly replied,
attacking the salad again. She was silenced though not satisfied, and
dinner was resumed in almost painful silence and in general
depression.
Viola was especially troubled by the change in Morton's face, and with
a desire to be of some comfort to him softly said: "Perhaps you would
rather not go to the theatre to-night. Please don't do so on our
account."
Her glance and her tone, both more intimately sympathetic than she had
hitherto permitted them to be, touched him deeply, and with an effect
of throwing off his gloom he cheerily responded: "We will not let any
outside matter interfere with our happiness. There is nothing to be
gained by staying at home. Please forget all about this interruption."
As he spoke she sat with hands before her, gazing straight at him with
eyes that slowly lost their outward look. Her eyelids fell, she began
to whiten and to droop, and her hands twitched and trembled.
Seized for an instant with an unreasoning fear--a belief that she had
been able, after all, to penetrate his mind and read its dreadful
secret, Morton sat irresolute, in the grasp of a blind despair, a
palsy of the will. Clarke's dead hand seemed at the instant more
powerful than the living man had been. This stupefaction lasted but a
single second, for back to the young scientist's heart, like a
swelling wave, came the red blood of his anger, his love, his
mastering will. Rising swiftly but calmly, he caught her hands in his
saying, gently: "You are forgetting your promise to me. Look at me. I
want to see if you are really going to disobey my commands."
She slowly raised her face to him, but only faintly responded to his
voice. "I cannot permit this," he went on. "You have left this behind
you, I will not permit you to give way. It is a kind of treason to
me--your physician. For my sake you must put this weakness aside and
assert your real self." He spoke gently, tenderly, as the lover,
rather than as the man of science, and the mysterious power of his
hand, the passionate pity of his eyes restored her to self-mastery,
and she murmured:
"Please forgive me. I didn't mean to do this."
"I know that. But you must not invite your trouble. You laid your
hands upon the table. You must not do that. I'll order you to eat off
the mantel-piece, if you do that again," he added, with intent to make
her smile.
Mrs. Lambert, who had risen to go to Viola's relief, sank back into
her seat with a sense of being forgotten at a time when she should
have been her daughter's first thought. She was no longer necessary.
Her place had been taken by another, a man and a stranger, hostile to
her faith, and with this knowledge her heart grew cold and bitter with
defeat and despair, the anguish and the neglect which are to be
forevermore the darker side of the mother's glory had come to her at
last with cruel force.
The entire attack lasted but a few minutes, but it served to bring
Viola nearer to her lover than all the hours of their more formal
intercourse, though the full revelation of his true relationship was
yet to come.
She loved and trusted him, but as her friend, her defender. She rose
at last to demonstrate that she was entirely herself again. "I am
ashamed of myself," she said, humbly. "Please don't look so
concerned." She turned to Kate. "I assure you it was only a little
faintness. You see I didn't sleep very well last night."
"Let's not try to go out," interposed Kate. "You're tired."
"Oh no; please, _please_ don't let me spoil the evening. I will never
forgive myself. Truly I want to go."
Morton's glance instructed Kate, and she said: "Very well. We will go
dress while the men finish their coffee. Come, Mrs. Lambert."
Mrs. Lambert rose silently and the three women left the room together
with an effect of haste.
No sooner were they out of the room than Morton turned to his guest
with most serious look and tone. "Come to my study, Mr. Lambert, I
want a few very private words with you."
The miner followed his host with mild wonder expressed on his face,
and as the door closed behind them and they were secure of being
overheard, he remarked, with a chuckle: "You headed off old Daddy
McLeod out there. First it was Clarke and then Daddy. I thought he had
her this time."
Morton ignored this remark and, with most decisive utterance, said:
"You must take your wife and daughter out of town by the very next
train. Clarke has killed himself, and Viola will be the centre of a
flaming sensation to-morrow morning. She must be taken away to-night."
Lambert remained standing, perfectly rigid, for a few moments then
slowly seated himself. "Was that your trouble over the 'phone?"
"Yes."
"Who told you?"
"A reporter 'phoning from Pratt's house apparently."
"When did it happen?"
"He said an hour ago. That may mean more or less--A fiend could not
have planned a more inclusive revenge. We will all be involved in it.
If he died by poison we may even be accused of killing him. They are
already in pursuit of you, and the police may arrive at any moment. At
the least we will all be summoned before the coroner." He paused a
moment. "But that isn't all. I fear the effect of this news on Viola's
mind."
Lambert's eyes lost their keen glitter, and his facial muscles fell
slack. He spoke in a low voice weighted with deepest conviction. "_He
will manifest._" Then, as a light came into his eyes, he exclaimed:
"He was trying to control her just now!"
Morton ignored this remark. "If we can keep this news from her for a
few days, I defy any of her so-called 'controls' to affect her."
Lambert stirred uneasily in his chair. "I don't know about that.
Clarke had a strong hold on her."
"He is dead. He has done his worst," responded Morton. "I tell you,
it is your business to get as far from the city to-night as you can
and keep ahead of the news if possible."
"That won't do any good. She is clairvoyant. She'll know of it."
"She didn't know you were coming to-day, did she?"
"No."
"And she has no knowledge yet of Clarke's death. Her attack at the
table may have been, as she says, only a feeling of faintness.
Besides, he's been dead two hours, and these manifestations always
take place at the exact moment of death, do they not?"
Lambert brightened. "That's so! But I'm scared of what'll happen if he
_should_ manifest."
"Be assured. He can no more 'manifest,' as you call it, than a dead
dog. Keep the newspapers from your wife and daughter, and it will be a
long time before they learn of his death through any occult channel. I
stake my reputation on that."
"I wish I felt as certain of that as you do," the miner answered.
"I've seen so many impossible things happen. I'm kind o' shaky. I wish
I could have your help." He rose with a shiver of dread. "You're
right. I see that. We've got to get out of here, but it won't do to go
back home."
"Take ship and go abroad."
"I can't do that. I can't leave my business so long." He paced up and
down. "Suppose I had a telegram to meet a man in Montreal--a mining
man."
"A good idea!" exclaimed Morton. "You could cross the border before
the news could overtake you. The Canadian papers will make little of
the suicide. But will your people go?"
"They'll have to go," replied Lambert, firmly. "Leave that to me." He
took a telegram from among several old ones in his pocket. "I've just
received this, you understand?"
Kate knocked, and called; "We're all ready, Morton?"
He opened the door. "Come in, Kate, I want to talk with you. I'm
afraid our theatre-party is off. Mr. Lambert has received a very
important message which may take him out of town."
"Oh, I'm so sorry!" cried Kate. "Can't you wait till to-morrow?"
"I'm afraid not," replied Lambert. "Looks like I'd have to go
to-night, and I want the girls to go along with me." And so saying,
with the telegram open in his hand, he went out into the sitting-room
where Viola and her mother were standing dressed for the carriage.
"Girls," he called, persuasively. "Don't you want to go to Montreal?"
"When?" inquired Viola.
"To-night."
"Oh, not to-night! We want to go to the theatre. Wait till to-morrow."
Kate was about to join in this protest when Morton drew her into his
study and shut the door. "Don't stop them!" he said, almost fiercely.
"They must go."
"Do you mean to escape Clarke?"
"Yes, Clarke, or rather his ghost."
"His ghost! What do you mean?" she asked, with startled eyes.
"He has killed himself--hush, now! they must not know it, and they
must flee. Don't you see that this may undo all my plans for the
girl's redemption and may enslave her more deeply than ever? The
papers will be full of Clarke to-morrow morning. Pratt's wealth, my
connection, with an institution, insures a tremendous scare-head. The
mother will be conscious-wrung, and the whole weight of the infernal
tragedy will crush down on Viola. The only possible respite for her is
to cross the border into Canada, outrun the newsmongers, and trust in
time to heal her mental derangements."
Kate's eyes expanded with the same fear that filled Lambert. "You
don't suppose he will be able to haunt her? Was that what happened at
the table?"
"No, not in the sense you mean. He is dead, and I have no fear of his
ghost, but the memory of him will torture her soul; and if she
_believes_ that he is able to come to her, the belief will be almost
as tragic as the fact."
"Morton, it is a test!" she exclaimed, with breathless solemnity. "If
there is any truth in spiritualism, he will manifest himself to her
and you cannot prevent it."
"I know it is a test and I welcome it! I stake all that I am on the
issue. She was at her merriest when he was dying. She has no hint of
his deed at this moment, and with all her clairvoyance I am perfectly
certain she will not be able to read what is in our minds if you can
restrain your tongue. If you can't do that, I beg of you to stay in
your room." He was harsh and curt in his tone; and she shrank from
him. "Her mental health, her sanity, may be in peril."
"I can keep silence," she replied, "But, oh, Morton, think of that
poor girl--up there in some bleak hotel in Canada, with only these two
old people! Suppose _he does_ come to her there, what can they do?
Wouldn't it be better to keep her here--let her learn it here--where
you can help her?"
"And be haled before the coroner, to be charged perhaps with poisoning
Clarke, or some other equally monstrous thing? No, I have been all
over the ground, and I tell you there is no other way. She must go
to-night. The police may arrive at any moment."
"Then you must go with her," she retorted, with a decision almost
equal to his own. "She needs you."
"No, no. I can't do that," he replied, impatiently, almost angrily. "I
would be accused of abducting her. It is utterly out of the question."
Kate, knowing that she was asking a good deal, went resolutely on:
"She has no one but you to lean upon. She trusts you, and she ought to
have some strong, sane person on whom to rely. I would be worse than
useless up there. I am scared out of my wits at thought of Clarke's
possible revenge upon _her_! Besides, by going with her you will
escape some of the notoriety about to thrust upon you."
He was plainly vacillating. "Think of the fat news-items my flight
will add to the stew."
Kate shuddered. "Oh, I know! I hope you don't blame me.--It's true, I
_am_ to blame. I _did_ insist on your going to see her." She was
beginning to suffer with this thought, when he put out his hand and
drew her to him with affectionate wish to comfort her.
"Don't assume that worry, Kit. She profoundly interested me from the
first, and I do not regret my acquaintance with her--even at this
moment. I believe she is essentially untouched by this business and
that she can be cleansed of all Clarke's influence. His death removes
her worst enemy; and if I can persuade her parents to leave her with
us, I am perfectly certain I can root out the deepest of her
delusions."
"Then go," she said, in final surrender. "Conventions ought not to
count against saving a sweet, good girl. Go and help her, and if you
bring her back here, I'll receive her gladly."
Morton opened the door, and while Kate went to Viola he said: "Mr.
Lambert, if you will add me to your party, I will be glad to go with
you."
Lambert seized his host's hand and wrung it hard. "My boy, you save my
life! I thought of asking you, but I couldn't find the nerve. We'll
all need you--the girl worst of all." Tears were in his eyes as he
added, huskily; "Yes, we need you."
Viola, with shining face, came running towards them, "Oh, Professor
Serviss! Is it true? Are you going?"
"Yes, if you will let me."
"Let you! Oh, you don't know what it means to have you with us."
He looked down upon her with a smile whose full message she could not
read, but it expressed something very tender and disconcerting. "You
can't know what it means to me to go. You see, I daren't quite trust
you alone with these indulgent parents and as your physician it is my
duty to see that my prescriptions are fully carried out."
During the bustle of preparation for the journey, he found opportunity
to reassure Kate: "Thus far, she has no inkling of what is in our
minds." He closed his fist as if shaking it in the face of an
implacable foe, and, through his set teeth, added: "I accept the
challenge! I welcome you and all your dark band to the utterance!"
Kate turned pale. "Don't say that!" she whispered. "It's like tempting
Providence."
"I fear neither Providence nor demons; but I am afraid of you. Keep
away from Viola as much as you can. If there is any truth in
mind-reading she is likelier to divine your thought than mine."
Kate's eyes suddenly grew dim. "Morton, I brought this on you, and I'm
beginning to doubt. I don't believe I want you to go with her, after
all." She put her hands on his shoulders and gave way to a feeling of
loss and loneliness. "I've always hoped--I've always looked forward
to your having a splendid, dignified wife; and though I like her. I
don't believe--she's up to you."
"Now, don't trouble about that, sis. The important thing to me is, am
I worthy of her? She entered my heart the first time I saw her, and
has never left it. She came at a time when I was certain no woman
would ever move me again. I am indebted to her--now, that's the truth.
And so"--he stooped and kissed her--"if she decides to come to me, I
shall feel grateful to you. If she decides not to come--you can be
grateful to her!"
XXII
THE SPIRITUAL RESCUE
With a conviction that he was entering upon a new order in his life,
Morton Serviss opened the door of the coach for Viola and her mother.
Never before had he evaded a contest, or asked for consideration from
authority, and deceit had been quite foreign to him; but now, after a
deceptive word to the hall-boy, he was conscious of furtively scanning
the people approaching on the walk, aware of his weakness and his
doubt, for no man of regular and candid life can become a fugitive
with entire belief in the righteousness of his flight. He must
perforce of conscience look back for a moment.
Once within the carriage he put all question aside and joined Lambert
in his attempt to keep from the women the slightest suspicion that his
sudden departure involved any serious change in their fortunes. The
miner had taken his place beside his wife, thus bringing the young
people side by side on the forward seat, and this arrangement had much
to do with filling Morton's mind with a new and delicious content, for
Viola's face was almost constantly lifted to his, and at every lurch
of the vehicle her soft shoulder touched his arm, while the faint
perfume of her garments rose like some enchanter's incense, dulling
his sense of duties abandoned, quickening his delight in her beauty,
and restoring his joy in his own youth. What did the judgment of the
world matter at such a time?
He said little on the ride, just enough to hold the conversation to
subjects far removed from the causes of their retreat. He was
convinced of Viola's ability to read (in a vague way) what lay in his
thought, but he also believed in his power to prevent this by a
positive and aggressive attitude of mind. Beneath his silences, as
beneath his words, ran an undercurrent of suggestion from his
subliminal self to hers. Lambert rose nobly to his duty and directed
the conversation to the mine and its increasing generosity of output,
and to news of the men and their families in whom Viola took deep
interest. In the midst of this most wholesome recollection they ended
their drive.
At the station Morton remained on guard with the women, while Lambert
attended to the trunks and boxes, and at the earliest moment, with
care not to betray haste, they passed through the gates and into their
car, but no feeling of relief came to either of the men till the train
began to move. Then Lambert, with a profound sigh, exclaimed: "Well,
now we're off and we've got the trunks, so let's be happy."
Mrs. Lambert alone remained sad and distraught, and her husband soon
drew her away to their own seat, leaving the young people together, a
deed for which Morton silently, but none the less fervently, thanked
him, affording as it did the chance for his long-desired personal
explanation.
The car was sparsely occupied and the section opposite was quite
empty, and, with a sense of being quite alone with Viola, he lightly
began: "I feel like a truant school-boy, and I'm wondering what
Weissmann will say to-morrow morning when his 'first-assistant' fails
to appear."
"I hope you are not neglecting your work for--for us," she said,
losing a little of her brightness.
"Nothing will suffer. I do not profess to be the main prop of our
laboratory, and, besides, I don't care. I'm off for a holiday, whether
or no." At the word "holiday" Clarke's grisly shadow rose between them
and would not down. To the suicide his holiday was due.
Viola again seemed to dimly divine his thought, for she hesitatingly
said: "I am troubled about Mr. Clarke. I must write him a letter and
tell him that I don't hate him now. I really begin to feel sorry for
him, and I wish I hadn't been so hard."
"You have nothing to reproach yourself for, and you would better let
him pass entirely out of your life, and be glad the wrench is over,"
he decisively replied.
She sighed and shivered a little. "He knew we were deserting him. His
look haunts me. I wish I had stopped to say good-bye. He will be very
lonely without us."
"He is too fanatic to win my sympathy, and he has forfeited yours."
"But he was sincere, professor. He really wanted to make the world
happier."
He was resolute to keep her mind clear of all thought of Clarke, and
imperiously said: "Don't call me professor, and let's talk of other
and pleasanter things than Clarke. We are well out of his
shadow-world, and you are never to re-enter it. I want you to forget
that you ever sat in a 'circle' or heard a 'voice.'"
"Oh, I can't expect to pass entirely out of that," she exclaimed, as
though the possibility came near her for the first time. "On mother's
account I must continue to sit now and then. She couldn't live without
her communion with papa and Waltie."
This brought him face to face with his opportunity, and he seized it
manfully. "Your saying that, gives me opportunity for saying something
which has been taking shape in my mind since last night. I do not
pretend to fully understand the basis of your mother's faith, and I do
not blame her, but I am filled with indignation that you should be
called upon to suffer bondage to the dead. I rebel against it." His
voice was tense with feeling. "And I will not have it so. I lunched
to-day with Dr. Tolman, of whom you've heard me speak, and after
describing your case to him--without using your name, of course--I
asked his opinion. In reply he gave me every encouragement. The fact
that you are young and in good physical health, he said, makes it
possible for you to become as normal as any other girl."
"Do you believe that, Dr. Serviss?"
"I am perfectly certain of it, if you will meet my conditions. I am
confident of my power to free you from your trances and all their
phenomena, but you must, at once and for all time, break every tie
that binds you to your 'controls.'"
"I'm afraid they will not consent."
"You must not say such a thing, much less think it," he sharply
interrupted. "Your soul, your mind, should be sovereign. You should
look rather to science for guidance"--here he smiled meaningly--"and
to me, of course, as a representative of science. If you acknowledge
the authority of the dead, or even that of your mother, my power is to
that extent curtailed. It is to be in effect a war of light and
darkness, science and superstition. We are willing to join issue with
your shadow foes, provided your best self is with us in the struggle.
I engage myself to free you if you will permit me to act."
She leaned towards him with pale face and limpid, heavenly eyes. "You
have been good to me, but I cannot ask you to fight my battles. You
have so much else to do in the world."
"I have nothing better to do," he responded, with a lover's glance.
"Nothing can interest me so profoundly; nothing will give me greater
pleasure."
She went on, fervently: "I can't tell you how you comfort me. When you
are near me I have no fear of anything; but you oughtn't to give up
your work to treat me. We can never pay you for what you've already
done for us."
"Don't try, and pray don't exaggerate my sacrifices. You must remember
I am an investigator, and you--are a most absorbing problem." She drew
away from him slightly, and he returned to a more serious tone. "The
influence of mind over mind is the present, or at least the coming,
problem, and you have opened a new world to me. The question of your
future, your cure, absorbs me, and while I am by no means a rich man,
as money runs these days, I am quite able to follow out any line of
investigation which may interest me."
Her face clouded, "I wish I didn't have to be investigated."
"So do I, and that brings up something which I must say, even at the
risk of seeming hard and cruel. If you wish to live your full, free
life, you must cut yourself off from _all_ of your old associations.
Clarke and Pratt have passed out of your life, but your mother--" He
paused abruptly. When he resumed his tone was almost pleading: "You
have said that you trusted me, that you wished for my help. Did you
mean it?"
"I did, indeed I did!"
"Very well, then," he went on, "I will speak my mind. I must be very
candid, even if I seem harsh. When I say you must cut yourself off
from all the associations of the past, I mean your mother also."
She started up in dismay, understanding his full meaning at last. "Oh
no, not that!"
"Yes, just that, and finally that. She is your mother, and you love
her; but you are a human soul as well as she, with a right to healthy,
normal life. It is contrary to the law of progress to sacrifice the
young to the old. Your mother's comfort has been your undoing, and I
cannot for an instant agree to your submission of this question to
her. You must assert your right to yourself, and she must surrender
her authority to me, and she must leave you for a time. I would say
this even if my own mother spoke to me through you. Your struggles
tear my heart, and your mother's presence only prolongs your
sufferings."
"You must not blame her," she loyally insisted. "I am to blame. My
guides tell me that if I would surrender myself completely to them I
would find peace," she ended, slowly, sadly, as if in confession.
"Peace! Yes, the peace of the epileptic or the mad. No, no, joy and
health do not lie that way. If I were the scientist merely, I would
say, 'Keep on, and I will stand by to observe your struggles.' But I
am not, I am something else than scientist. It angers and agonizes me
to see you tortured. I cannot endure it and I will not. In order that
I may do all that I hope for, you must give yourself wholly into my
care." He was speaking now in a low and throbbing voice, oblivious of
time and space. "I must be something more than physician or friend. I
have been saying 'must' to you, but I am, after all, a very strange
autocrat. My power is dependent on you." Then, in answer to her
questioning eyes, he hurried on: "I love you, dear girl, and if you
find you can trust yourself to me, fully, in this way, then I am sure
of victory. Can you say this? I hope you can, for then I will have the
most powerful magician in all the world fighting on my side. Are you
able to do this? Can you say you love me and that you will come to me,
trusting in me as in a husband?"
No one was astir in the car but the porter, but had it been filled
with clamoring tongues and seeking, impertinent eyes, she would have
been conscious only of his tender glance, his earnest voice, and the
momentous question being pressed upon her. She struggled to speak, but
could not, and he hastened on: "I will be honest with you. Your mother
does not trust me. She knows and resents my feeling towards you. She
knows also that I consider her separation from you necessary, for a
time, and is hurt and saddened by it; but she will come to see the
necessity of this measure. I do not ask an immediate answer--though I
wish your heart were mine this minute--but I do want you to know that
from the first moment I saw you your life has been a part of mine. I
could not forget you, though I tried to do so, and I will not now give
you up."
She still sat like an exquisite statue of meditation, looking out into
the night, benumbed and breathless with the passion his words evoked.
Suddenly she turned and vehemently exclaimed: "You ought not to ask me
this. I'm not fit to be your wife."
"Let me be the judge of that."
[Illustration: "'YOU NEED NOT SPEAK--JUST PUT YOUR HAND IN MINE
AND I WILL UNDERSTAND'"]
"But you don't realize what I am. You must not think of me in that
way. I can't let you. I _am_ different from other women. You must not
deceive yourself."
"I do not. I know, to my joy, that you are different from other girls;
that is why I am here and asking you to be my wife. That is why I
loved you that day on the mountain-side, because you were different."
"No, no!" she despairingly exclaimed. "You don't understand. I mean
that I _am_ surrounded by spirits, and they will make you ashamed of
me. Think what your friends would say?"
"I am not responsible to my friends. I don't care what they say. They
are not choosing my wife for me. I _do_ know what you mean, and your
protest increases my love for you. I am not concerned with your
ghosts--only with your character."
"But I am a _medium_!" she went on, desperately. "I have this awful
power. You're all wrong about mother and Mr. Clarke. They have nothing
to do with what happens." Her beautiful hands were clinched and her
face set in the resolution to force her confession upon him. Her bosom
rose and fell piteously as she struggled for words, "You must not
misunderstand me. I believe in the spirit-world. Sometimes I say I
don't, but I do."
He spoke soothingly: "There is nothing wrong or disgraceful in your
theory; it is your practice of trance, of mediumship, to which I
object, and which I intend to prevent."
"I want you to do that. I hate my trances and those public circles.
But will that put an end to the rappings and other things that go on
around me when I am awake? That is the question."
This was the question, but he rode sturdily over it, resolute to
subordinate it if not to trample it under foot.
"Not at all. The real question is very simple: can you trust yourself
to me, fully, because you love me? If you do I will answer for the
rest. I do not know why you meant so much to me that day. I do not
know why, out of all the women I know, you move me most profoundly;
but so it is and I am glad to have it so." He said this with a grave
tenderness which moved her like a phrase from some great symphony, and
as she raised her tear-stained, timid face to his she saw him as he
seemed at that first meeting on the mountain-side, in the sunset glow,
so manly, so frank, so full of power that he conquered her with a
glance, and with that vision she knew her heart. Her eyes fell, her
throat thickened, and her bosom throbbed with a strange yearning. She
loved, but the way of confession was hard.
Understanding her emotion, and mindful of the place in which they sat,
he softly said: "You need not speak--just put your hand in mine and I
will understand."
Her hand, like some shy sentient thing, first drew away, fell
hesitant, then leaped to his and nestled in his palm. He had planned
to be very restrained and very circumspect, but the touch of her
trembling fingers moved him out of his predetermined self-possession,
and, careless of all the surroundings, he stooped and kissed her, then
exultantly, warningly said: "Remember, I am now your chief 'control,'
and there are to be no other 'guides' but me."
With those words, all fear, all question, all care (save that vague
distrust which the maiden feels when yielding herself to the first
caress of the lover) dropped from her. The powers, the hallucinations,
which had separated her from the world of womankind were forgotten,
lost in the glow of her confidence and love.
THE END
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