Victor Ollnee's Discipline

"This is one way. They write sometimes, and sometimes they speak through a megaphone; sometimes they materialize a face or a hand."

He remained in profound thought for a few moments, then starting up, spoke with decision: "You are tired. Go to bed. We'll have plenty of time to take up these matters to-morrow. Please feel at home here and stay as long as you wish."

A little later he took Victor to his room, and as they stood there he remarked, "Of course, all this may be and probably is mind-reading and ventriloquism – subconscious, of course."

"But the writing," said Victor. "You must see that. That is the weirdest thing she does. It is baffling."

"My boy, the whole universe is baffling to me," his host replied, and into his voice came that tone of tragic weariness which affected the youth like a strain of solemn music. "The older I grow the more senseless, hopelessly senseless, human life appears; but I must not say such things to you. Good-night."

"Good-night," responded Victor, with swelling throat. "We owe you a great deal."

"Don't speak of it!" the lawyer commanded, and closed the door behind him.

Victor dropped into a chair. What a day this had been! Within twenty-four hours he had seen and loved the dream-face of Altair and had been blown upon by the winds from the vast chill and empty regions of space. He had resented Leo's voice in the night, but had returned to her in the light of the morning. On the dreamy lagoon he had been her lover again, pulling at the oar with savage joy, and on the grass in the sunlight he had been the man unafraid and victorious. Then came the hurried return, the visit to the court, the rescue of his mother – and here now he lay in the charity bed of his mother's lawyer! "Truly I am being hurried," he said; and recalling Miss Aiken's final menacing remark, he added: "And if that girl and her brother can do it mother will be sent to prison." Much as he feared these accusing witnesses, he acknowledged a kind of fierce beauty in Florence Aiken's face.

As he lay thus, thinking deeply yet drowsily upon his problems, he heard a faint ticking sound beneath his head. It was too regular and persistent to be a chance creaking of the cloth, and he rose and shook the pillow to dislodge the insect which he imagined might have flown in at the window.

The ticking continued. "I wonder if that is a fly?"

The ticking seemed to reply, "No," by means of one decided rap. To test it, he asked, "Are you a spirit?"

The tick counted one, two, three – "Yes."

"Some one to speak to me?"

Tick, tick, tick– "Yes."

The answer was so plainly intelligent that the boy, silent with amazement, not unmixed with fear, lay for a few minutes in puzzled inaction. At length he asked, "Who is it – Father?"

"Tick" – No.

"Grandfather?"

"No."

He hesitated before asking the next question. "Is it Altair?"

"No."

He thought again. "Is it Walter Bartol?"

The answer was joyously instant. "Yes, yes, yes!"

"Do you wish to speak to me?"

"Yes."

"About your father?"

"Yes."

"Through my mother?"

Now came one of those baffling changes. The answer was faintly slow, "Tick, tick," betraying uncertainty – and succeeding queries elicited no response.

Victor, excited and eager, would have gone to his mother for aid had he known where to find her room. The mood for marvels was upon him now, and Altair and Margaret, and all the rest of the impalpable throng, seemed waiting in the dusk and silence to communicate with him. Hopelessly wide awake, he lay, while the big clock on the landing rang its little chime upon the quarter hours, but no further sign was given him of the presence of his intangible visitor; and at last the experience of the day became as unsubstantial as his dreams.

He was awakened by the cackling of fowls and the bleating of calves and lambs. The sun was shining through the leafy top of a tree which lay almost against his window, and happy shadows were dancing like fairies on the coverlet of his bed.

"It sounds like a real farm!" he drowsily murmured, filled with the peace of those cries, which typify the most ancient and unchanging parts of the cottager's life.

He had known only the poetic side of farm life. He had seen it, heard it, tasted it only as the lad out for a holiday, and it all seemed serene and joyous to him. To his mind the luxury of quietly dozing to the music of a barn-yard was the natural habit of the farmer. He did not attempt to rise till he heard the voice of his host from the lawn beneath his window.

A half an hour later he found Bartol in the barn-yard surveying a span of colts which his farmer was leading back and forth before him. They were lanky, thin-necked creatures, but Victor knew enough of horses to perceive in them signs of a famous breed of trotters.

"You are a real farmer," he said, as he came up to his host.

Bartol seemed pleased. "I made it pay five per cent. last year," he responded, with pride. "Of course that means counting in my time as a farmer, and not as a lawyer. How did you sleep?"

"Pretty well – when I got at it. I was a little excited and didn't go off as I usually do when I hit the pillow."

"No wonder! I had a restless night myself." He nodded to the hostler. "That will do," and turned away. "I gave a great deal of thought to your mother's case. The fact seems to be that the human organism is a great deal more complicated than we're permitted ourselves to admit, and the tendency of the ordinary man is to make the habitual commonplace, no matter how profoundly mysterious it may be at the outset. Of course at bottom we know very little of the most familiar phenomenon. Why does fire burn and water run? No one really knows."

They were facing the drive, which curved like a lilac ribbon through the green of the lawn, and the estate to Victor's eyes had all the charm of a park combined with the suggestive music of a farmstead.

"It's beautiful here!" he exclaimed.

"I'm glad you like it, and I hope you and your mother will stay till we have put you both straight with the world."

"If I could only do something to pay my freight, Mr. Bartol. I feel like a beggar and a fool to be so helpless. I was not expecting to be kicked out of college, and I'm pretty well rattled, I'll confess."

"You keep your poise notably," the lawyer replied, with kindly glance. "To be so suddenly introduced to the mystery and the chicanery of the world would bewilder an older and less emotional man."

They breakfasted in a big room filled with the sunlight. Through the open windows the scent of snowy flowers drifted, and the food and service were of a sort that Victor had never seen. A big grape-fruit, filled with sugar and berries; corn-cakes, crisp and golden; bacon delicately broiled, together with eggs (baked in little earthen cups), and last of all, coffee of such fragrance that it seemed to vie with the odor of the flowers without. Each delicious dish was served deftly, quietly, by a sweet-faced maid, who seemed to feel a filial interest in her master.

The service was a revelation of the perfection to which country life can be brought by one who has both wealth and culture; and Victor wondered that any one could be sad amid such radiant surroundings.

"I can't see why you ever return to the city," he said, with conviction.

Bartol smiled. "That's the perversity of our human nature. If I were forced to live here all the time the farm might pall upon me, just as if all seasons were spring. As it is, I come back to it from the turmoil of the town with never-cloying appetite. Per contra, these maids and my farm-hands find a visit to the city their keenest delight. To them the parks and the artificial ponds are more beautiful than anything in nature." His tone changed. "In truth, I live on and do my work more from force of habit than from zest. So far as I can, I get back to the simple animal existence, where sun and air and food are the never-failing pleasures. I try to forget that I am a pursuer of criminals. I return to my work in the city, as I say, because it helps to keep my appetite for the rural things. I can't afford to let silence and green trees pall upon me. If I were a little more of a believer," he smiled, "I would say that you and your mother had been sent to me, for of late I have been in a deeper slough of despair than at any time since the death of my wife. I am curious to see how all this is going to affect your mother. She may find it very lonely here."

"Oh, I'm sure she will not."

"Well, now, I must be off. But before I go I will show you the catalogues of my library; and perhaps I can bring home some books which will bear on these occult subjects. I have given orders that no information as to you shall go off the place; and your mother is safe here. You may read, or hoe in the garden, or ride a horse."

"I wish I might go to the city with you."

"My judgment is against it. Stay here for a few days till we see which way the wind is blowing." And with a cheery wave of his hand he drove away, leaving Victor on the porch with the feeling of being marooned on an island – a peaceful and beautiful island, but an island nevertheless.

XI

LOVE'S TRANSLATION

To tell the truth, Victor dreaded being left alone with his mother in this way. He was fully aware now of the invisible barrier between them. No matter what explanation was finally offered, she could never be the same to him again, for whether it was her subconscious self which had cunningly lured them all to the verge of disaster, or some uncontrollable impulse coming from without, in the light any explanation, she was no longer the sweet, gentle, normal mother he had hitherto thought her to be.

It was not a question of being in possession of strange abilities, it was a question of being obsessed by some diabolical power – of being the prey of malignant demons avid to destroy.

The more deeply he thought upon all that had come to him, the more bewildered he became; and to avoid this tumult, which brought no result, he went out and wandered about the farm. His experience was like visiting a foreign country, for the men were either Swiss or German; and the walls of the farm-yard quite as un-American in their massiveness and their formal arrangement – a vivid contrast to the flimsy structures of the neighboring village. The servants (that is what they were, servants) treated him with the trained deference of those who for generations have touched their caps to the more fortunate beings of the earth, and these signs of subordination were distinctly soothing to the youth's disturbed condition of mind. Instantly, and without effort, he assumed the air of the young aristocrat they thought him.

He strolled down the road to the village, which was a collection of small frame cottages in neat lawns, surrounding a few general stores and a greasy, fly-specked post-office. Here was the unimaginative, the prosaic, perfectly embodied. Old men, bent and gray, were gossiping from benches and boxes under the awnings. Clerks in their shirt-sleeves were lolling over counters. A few farmers' teams stood at the iron hitching-posts with drowsy, low-hanging heads. Neither doubt nor dismay nor terror had footing here. The majesty of dawn, the mystery of midnight, did not touch these peaceful and phlegmatic souls. The spirit of man was to them less than an abstraction and the tumult of the city a far-off roar as of distant cataracts.

Furthermore, these matter-of-fact folk had abundant curiosity and no reverence, and they all stared at Victor with round, absorbent gaze, as if with candid intent to take full invoice of his clothing, and to know him again in any disguise. He heard them say, one after the other, as he passed along, "Visitor of Bartol's, I guess." And he could understand that this explanation really explained, for Bartol's "Castle" was the resting-place of many strange birds of passage.

Bartol was, indeed, the constant marvel of Hazel Grove. Why had he bought the place? Why, after it was bought, should he spend so much money on it? And finally, why should he employ "foreigners"? These were a few of the queries which were put and answered and debated in the shade of the furniture store and around the air-tight store of the grocery. His farm was their never-failing wonder tale. The building of a new wall was an excitement, each whitewashing of a picket fence an event. They knew precisely the hour of departure of each blooded ram or bull, and the birth of each colt was discussed as if another son and heir had come to the owner.

Naturally, therefore, all visitors to "Hazeldean" came in for study and comment – especially because it was well known that Bartol stood high in the political councils of the party (was indeed mentioned for senator), and that his guests were likely to be "some punkins" in the world. "This young feller is liable to be the son of one of his millionaire clients," was the comment of the patient sitters. "Husky chap, ain't he?"

Feeling something of this comment, and sensing also the sleepy materialism of the inhabitants, Victor regained much of his own disbelief in the miraculous, and yet just to that degree did the pain in his heart increase, for it made of his mother something so monstrous that the conception threatened all his love and reverence for her. Pity sprang up in place of the filial affection he had once known. He began to make new excuses for her. "It must be that she has become so suggestible that every sitter's mind governs her. In a sense, that removes her responsibility." And so he walked back, with all his pleasure in the farm and village eaten up by his care.

His mother was waiting for him on the porch, and as he came up, asked with shining face:

"Isn't this heavenly, Victor?"

"It is very beautiful," he replied, but with less enthusiasm than she expected.

"To think that yesterday I was threatened with the prison, and now – this! We have much to thank Mr. Bartol for."

"That's just it, mother. What claim have we on this big, busy man? What right have we to sit here?"

The brightness of her face dimmed a little, but she replied bravely: "I have always paid my way, Victor, and I am sure last night's message meant much to Mr. Bartol. I always help people. If I bring back a belief in immortality do I not make fullest recompense to my host? My gift is precious, and yet I cannot sell it – I can only give it – and so when I am offered bed and board in return for my work I am not ashamed to take it. The kings of the earth are glad to honor those who, like myself, have the power to penetrate the veil."

Never before had she ventured upon so frank a defense of her vocation, and Victor listened with a new conception of her powers. As she continued she took on dignity and quiet force.

"The medium gives more for her wages than any earthly soul; and when you consider that we make the grave a gateway to the light, that our hands part the veil between the seen and the unseen, then you will see that our gifts are not abnormal, but supernormal. God has given us these powers to comfort mankind, to afford a new revelation to the world."

"Why didn't you make me a medium?" he asked, thrusting straight at her heart. "Why did you send me away from it all?"

Her eyes fell, her voice wavered. "Because I was weak – an earthly mother. My selfish love and pride overpowered me. I could not see you made ashamed – and besides my controls advised it for the time."

He took a seat where he could look up into her face. "Mother, tell me this – haven't you noticed that your controls generally advise the things you believe in?"

She was stung by his question. "Yes, my son, generally; but sometimes they drive me into ways I do not believe in. Often they are in opposition to my own will."

He was silenced for the moment, and his mind took a new turn. "When did Altair first come?"

"Soon after I met Leo. She came with Leo. She attends Leo."

"Have you seen her?"

"No. I am always in deepest trance when she shows herself. I hear her voice, though."

"Mother," he said, earnestly, "if Mr. Bartol gets us out of this scrape will you go away with me into some new country and give up this business?"

"You don't seem to understand, Victor. I can no more escape from these Voices than I can run away from my own shadow. I don't want to run away. I love the thought of them. I have innumerable sweet friends on the other side. To close the door in their faces would be cruel. It would leave me so lonely that I should never smile again."

"Then they mean more to you than I do!" he exclaimed.

"No, no! I don't mean that!" she passionately protested. "You mean more to me than all the earthly things, but these heavenly hosts are very dear – besides, I shall go to them soon and I want to feel sure that I can come back to you when I have put aside the body. I fear now that our separation was a mistake. In trying to shield you from the transient disgrace of being a medium's son, I have put your soul in danger. I was weak – I own it. I was an earthly mother. I wanted my boy to be respected and rich and happy here in the earth-life. I did not realize the danger I ran of being forever separated from you by the veil of death. Oh, Victor, you must promise me that should I pass out suddenly you will try to keep the spirit-way open between us – will you promise this?"

Strange scene! Strange mother! All about them the orioles were whistling, the robins chirping, and farther away the beasts of the barn-yard were bawling their wants in cheerful chorus, but here on this vine-shaded porch a pale, small woman sought a compact with her son which should outlast the grave and defy time and space.

He gave his word. How could he refuse it? But his pledge was half-hearted, his eyes full of wavering. It irked him to think that in a month of bloom and passion, a world of sunny romance, a world of girls and all the sweet delights they conveyed to young men, he should be forced to discuss matter which relates to the charnel-house and the chill shadow of the tomb.

He rose abruptly. "Don't let's talk of this any more. Let's go for a walk. Let's visit the garden."

She was swifter of change than he. She could turn from the air of the "ghost-room" to the glory of the peacock as swiftly as a mirror reflects its beam of light, and she caught a delightful respite from the flowers. She was accustomed to the lavish greenhouses of her wealthy patrons, but here was something that delighted her more than all their hotbeds. Here were all the old-fashioned out-of-door plants and flowers, the perennials of her grandfather, to whom hot-houses were unknown. This Colonial garden was another of Bartol's peculiarities. He had no love for orchids, or any exotic or forced blooms. His fancy led to the glorification of phloxes, to the ripening of lilacs, and to the preservation of old-time varieties of roses – plants with human association breathing of romance and sorrow – hence his plots were filled with hardy New England roots flourishing in the richer soils of the Western prairies.

These colors, scents, and forms moved Victor markedly, for the reason that in La Crescent, as a child, he had been accustomed to visit a gaunt old woman, the path to whose door led through cinnamon roses, balsam, tiger-lilies, sweet-william, bachelor-buttons, pinks, holly-hocks, and the like – a wonderland to him then – a strange and haunting pleasure now as he walked these graveled ways and mingled the memories of the old with the vivid impressions of the new.

Back to the house they came at last to luncheon, and there, sitting in the beautiful dining-room, so cool, so spacious, so singularly tasteful in every detail, they gazed upon each other in a delight which was tinged with pain. Such perfection of appointment, such service, all for them (two beggars), was more than embarrassing; it provoked a sense of guilt. The pretty, low-voiced, soft-soled maid came and went, bringing exquisite food in the daintiest dishes (enough food for six), anticipating every want, like the fairy of the story-books. "Mother," said the youth, "this is a story!"

Mrs. Ollnee was accustomed to the splendor of Mrs. Joyce's house, but she was almost as much moved as Victor. She perceived the difference between the old-world simplicity of this flawless establishment and the lavish, tasteless hospitality of men like Pettus.

Who had planned and organized this wide-walled, low-toned room, this marvelously effective cuisine? How was it possible for such service to go on during the master's absence with apparently the same unerring precision of detail?

These questions remained unanswered, and they rose at last with a sense of having been, for the moment at least, in the seats of those who command the earth wisely.

Hardly were they returned to their hammocks on the porch when a swiftly driven car turned in at the gate.

"It is Louise!" exclaimed Mrs. Ollnee.

"And Leo!" added Victor.

With streaming veils the travelers swept up to the carriage steps covered with dust, yet smiling.

"How are you?" called Mrs. Joyce; and then with true motor spirit, addressed the driver: "What's the time, Denis?"

"Two hours and ten minutes from North Avenue."

"Not so bad, considering the roads."

Leo had sprung out and was throwing off her cloak and veil. "I hope we're not too late for luncheon. Mr. Bartol has the best cook, and I'm famished."

Her coming swept Victor back into his other and normal self, and he took charge of her with a mingling of reverence and audacity which charmed her. He went out into the dining-room with her and sat beside her while she ate. "I hope you're going to stay," he said, earnestly.

"Stay! Of course we'll stay. It's hot as July in the city – always is with the wind from the southwest. Isn't it heavenly out here?"

"Heavenly is the word; but who did it? Who organized it?"

"Mrs. Bartol. She had the best taste of any one – and her way with the servants was beyond imitation. They all worship her memory."

"I can't make myself believe I deserve all this," he said. "Your coming puts the frosting on my bun."

It was as if some new and utterly different spirit, or band of them, had come with this glowing girl. She radiated the vitality and the melody of youth. Without being boisterous or silly, she filled the house with laughter. "There's something about Hazeldean that always makes me happy. I don't know why," she said.

"You make all who inhabit this house happy," said Mrs. Ollnee. "I can hear spirit laughter echoing to yours."

"Can you? Is it Margaret?"

"Yes, Margaret and Philip."

Victor did not smile; on the contrary, his face darkened, and Mrs. Joyce changed the tone of the conversation by asking: "Did you see the paper this morning? They say you have skipped to join Pettus." This seemed so funny that they all laughed, till Victor remembered that both these women had lost much money through Pettus.

Mrs. Joyce sobered, too. "The Star is against you, Lucy, and you must keep dark for a time. They are denouncing you as a traitor and all the rest of it. Did Paul, or any one, advise you last night?"

"No, nothing was said. I suppose they are considering the matter also. Those deceiving spirits must be hunted out and driven away."

"I'm going to lie down for a while," Mrs. Joyce announced. "My old waist-line is jolted a bit out o' plumb. Leo, will you stretch out, too?"

"No indeed. What I need is a walk or a game of tennis. I'm cramped from sitting so long."

So it fell out that Victor (penniless youth, hedged about with invisible walls, pikes, and pitfalls) was soon galloping about a tennis court in the glories of a new pair of flannel trousers and a lovely blue-striped outing shirt, trying hard not to win every game from a very good partner, who was pouting with dismay while admiring his skill.

"It isn't right for any one to 'serve' as weird a ball as you do," she protested. "It's like playing with loaded dice. I begin to understand why you were not renowned as a scholar."

"Oh, I wasn't so bad! I stood above medium."

"How could you? It must have taken all your time to learn to play tennis in the diabolical way you do – it's conjury, that's what it is!"

They were in the shade, and the fresh sweet wind, heavy with the scent of growing corn and wheat, swept steadily over the court, relieving it from heat, and Victor clean forgot his worriments. This girlish figure filled his eyes with pictures of unforgetable grace and charm. The swing of her skirts as she leaped for the ball, the free sweep of her arm (she had been well instructed), and the lithe bending of her waist brought the lover's sweet unease. When they came to the net now and again, he studied her fine figure with frank admiration. "You are a corker!" was his boyish word of praise. "I don't go up against many men who play the game as well as you do. Your 'form' is a whole lot better than mine. I am a bit lucky, I admit. You see, I studied baseball pitching, and I know the action of a whirling sphere. I curve the ball – make it 'break,' as the English say. I can make it do all kinds of 'stunts.'"