Victor Ollnee's Discipline

"I see you can, and I'll thank you not to try any new ones," she protested. "Can you ride a horse?"

His face fell a bit. "There I am a 'mutt,'" he confessed. "I never was on a horse except the wooden one in the Gym."

"I'm glad I can beat you at something," she said, with exultant cruelty. "I know you can row."

"Shall we try another set?" he asked.

"Not to-day, thank you. My self-respect will not stand another such drubbing. I'm going in for a cold plunge. After that you may read to me on the porch."

"I'll be there with the largest tome in the library," he replied.

Mrs. Joyce stopped him as he was going up-stairs to his room. "Victor, don't worry about me. While it looks as though I have lost a good deal of money through Pettus, I am by no means bankrupt. I am just about where I was when I met your mother. She has not enriched me – I mean The Voices have not – neither have they impoverished me. It's just the same with Leo. She's almost exactly where she was when she came East. It would seem as if they had been playing with us just to show us how unsubstantial earthly possessions are."

There was a certain comfort in this explanation, and yet the fact that her losses had not eaten in upon her original capital did not remove the essential charge of dishonesty which the man Aiken had brought against the ghostly advisers. Florence and Thomas Aiken could not afford to be so lenient. They were disinherited, cheated of their rightful legacy, by the lying spirits.

He was anxious, also, to know just how deeply Leo was involved in the People's Bank; and when she came down to the porch he led her to a distant chair beside a hammock on the eastern side of the house, and there, with a book in his hand, opened his interrogations.

He began quite formally, and with a well-laid-out line of questions, but she was not the kind of witness to permit that. She broke out of his boundaries on the third query, and laughingly refused to discuss her losses. "I am holding no one but myself responsible," she said. "I was greedy – I couldn't let well enough alone, that's all."

"No, that is not all," he insisted. "My mother is charged with advising people to put money into the hands of a swindler – "

"I don't believe that. I think she was honest in believing that Pettus would enrich us all. She was deceived like the rest of us."

"But what becomes of the infallible Voices?"

She laughed. "They are fallible, that's all. They made a gross blunder in Pettus."

"Mr. Bartol suggests that my mother may have been hypnotized by Pettus and made to work his will, and I think he's right. He thinks the whole thing comes down to illusion – to hypnotic control and telepathy."

She looked thoughtful. "I had a stage of believing that; but it doesn't explain all, it only explains a small part. Does it explain Altair to you?"

His glance fell. "Nothing explains Altair – nor that moaning wind – nor the writing on the slates."

"And the letter – have you forgotten that?"

"Half an hour ago, as we were playing tennis, I had forgotten it. I was cut loose from the whole blessed mess – now it all comes back upon me like a cloud."

"Oh, don't look at it that way. That's foolish. I think it's glorious fun, this investigating."

He acknowledged her rebuke, but added, "It would be more fun if the person under the grill were not one's own mother."

"That's true," she admitted; "and yet, I think you can study her without giving offense. I began in a very offensive way – I can see that now – but she met my test, and still meets every test you bring. The faith she represents isn't going to have its heart plucked out in a hurry, I can tell you that."

"The immediate thing is to defend her against this man Aiken. Mr. Bartol said he would order up a lot of books, and I'm to cram for the trial. If you have any book to suggest, I wish you'd write its title down for me."

"What's the use of going to books? The judges will want the facts, and you'll have to convince them that she is what she claims to be."

"How can we do that? We can't exhibit her in a trance?"

"You might. Perhaps her guides will give her the power." She glowed with anticipatory triumph. "Imagine her confounding the jury! Wouldn't that be dramatic! It would be like the old-time test of fire."

He was radiant, too, for a moment, over the thought. Then his face grew stern. "Nothing like that is going to happen. She would fail, and that would leave us in worse case than before. Our only hope is to convince the jury that she is not responsible for what her Voices say. We've got to show she's auto-hypnotic."

"I hope the trial will come soon."

"So do I, for here I am eating somebody else's food, with no prospect of earning a cent or finding out my place in the world. I don't know just what my mother's idea was in educating me in classical English instead of some technical course, but I'm perfectly certain that I'm the most helpless mollusk that was ever kicked out of a school."

Real bitterness was in his voice, and she hastened to add a word of comfort. "All you need is a chance to show your powers."

"What powers?"

"Latent powers," she smiled. "We are all supposed to have latent powers. I am seeking a career, too."

He forgot himself in a return of his admiration of her. "Oh, you don't have to seek. A girl like you has her career all cut out for her."

She caught his meaning. "That's what I resent. Why should a woman's career mean only marriage?"

"I don't know – I guess because it's the most important thing for her to do."

"To be some man's household drudge or pet?"

"No, to be some man's inspiration."

"Fudge! A woman is never anybody's inspiration – after she's married."

"How cynical you are! What caused it?"

"Observing my married friends."

"Oh, I am relieved! I was afraid it was through some personal experience – "

This seemed funny to them both, and they laughed together. "There's nothing of 'the maiden with reluctant feet' about me," she went on. "I simply refuse to go near the brink. I find men stupid, smelly, and coarse."

"I hate girls in the abstract – they giggle and whisper behind their hands and make mouths; but there is one girl who is different." He tried to be very significant at the moment.

She ignored his clumsy beginning of a compliment. "All the girls who giggle should marry the men who 'crack jokes' – that's my advice."

"'Pears like our serious conversation is straggling out into vituperation."

"Whose fault is it?"

"Please don't force me to say it was not my fault. I'm like Lincoln – I joke to hide my sorrows."

"Don't be irreverent."

Through all this youthful give and take the boy and girl were studying each other minutely, and the phrases that read so baldly came from their lips with so much music, so much of hidden meaning (at least with displayed suggestion), that each was tingling with the revelation of it. The words of youth are slight in content; it is the accompanying tone that carries to the heart.

She recovered first. "Now let's stop this school-boy chatter – "

"You mean school-girl chatter."

"Both. Your mother is in a very serious predicament. We must help her."

He became quite serious. "I wish you would advise me. You know so much more about the whole subject than I do. I'm eager to get to work on the books. I suppose it is too much to expect that they will come up to-day?"

"They might. I'll go and inquire."

"No indeed, let me go. Am I not an inmate here?" He disappeared into the house, leaving her to muse on his face. He began to interest her, this passionate, self-willed, moody youth. She perceived in him the soul of the conqueror. His swift change of temper, his union of sport-loving boy and ambitious man made him as interesting as a play. "He'll make his way," she decided, using the vague terms of prophecy into which a girl falls when regarding the future of a young man. It's all so delightfully mysterious, this path of the youth who makes his way upward to success.

A shout announced his return, and looking up she perceived him bearing down upon her with an armful of books.

"Here they are!" he exulted. "Red ones, blue ones, brown ones – which shall we begin on?"

"Blue – that's my color."

"Agreed! Blue it is." He dumped them all down on the wide, swinging couch and fell to turning them over. "Dark blue or light blue?"

"Dark blue."

He picked up a fat volume. "Mysterious Psychic Forces. Know this tome?"

"Oh yes, indeed! It's wonderfully interesting."

"I choose it! This color scheme simplifies things. Now, here's another —The Dual Personality. How's that?"

"Um! Well – pretty good."

"Dual Personality to the rear. Here's a brown book —Metaphysical Phenomena."

"That's a good one, too."

"I'm sorry they didn't bind it in blue – and here's a measly, yellow, paper-bound book in some foreign language – Italian, I guess, author, Morselli."

"Oh, that's a book I want to read. Let me take it?"

"Do you read Italian?"

"After a fashion."

"Then I engage you at once to translate that book to me. What is it all about?"

He abandoned his seat on the couch and drew a chair close to hers. "Begin at the first page and read very slowly all the way through. I wish it were a three volume edition."

She looked at him with side glance. "You're not in the least subtle."

"I intended to have you understand that I enjoy the thought of your reading to me. Did you catch it?"

"I caught it. No one else ever suggested that I was stupid."

"I didn't call you stupid. I think you're haughty and domineering, but you're not stupid."

"Thank you," she answered, demurely.

Eventually they drew together, and she began to read the marvelous story of the crucial experiments which Morselli and his fellows laid upon Eusapia Palladino. Two hours passed. The robins and thrushes began their evensong, the shadows lengthened on the lawn, and still these young folk remained at their reading – Victor sitting so close to his teacher's side that his cheek almost touched her shoulder. The sunset glory of the material world was forgotten in the tremendous conceptions called up by the author of this far-reaching book.

Sweeter hours of study Victor never had. Seeing the rise and fall of his interpreter's bosom and catching the faint perfume of her hair, he heard but vaguely some of the sentences, and had to have them repeated, what time her eyes were looking straight into his. At such moment she reminded him of the dream-face that had bloomed like a rose in the black night, for she was then very grave. Less ardent of blood than he, she succeeded in giving her whole mind to the great Italian's thesis, and the point of view – so new and so bold – stirred her like a trumpet.

"I like this man," she said. "He is not afraid."

Once or twice Mrs. Joyce looked out at them, but they made such a pretty picture she had not the heart to disturb them.

At seven o'clock she was forced to interrupt: "What are you children up to?"

"Improving our minds," answered Leo. "Are we starting back? What time is it?"

Mrs. Joyce smiled. "That question is a great compliment to your company. It's dinner-time."

"Are we starting now?"

"No; we're going to stay all night."

"Fine!" shouted Victor. "I was wondering how I could put in the evening."

"It's time to dress," warned Mrs. Joyce. "This is no happy-go-easy establishment. I never saw such perfection of service as Alexander always has. I can't get it, or if I get it I can't keep it; while here, with the master gone half the time, the wheels go like a chronometer."

"It's all due to Marie. She worshiped Mrs. Bartol, and she venerates Mr. Bartol."

Mrs. Joyce cut her short. "Skurry to your room. We must not be late."

As they were going into the house together, Leo said: "I think we would better not let our elders read this book of Morselli's. It's too disturbing for them – don't you think so?"

"It certainly is a twister. However, mother doesn't read any foreign language, so she's safe."

XII

A MOONLIGHT CALL AND A VISION

Upon rising from the dinner table the young people returned to their books, and at ten o'clock Leo lifted her eyes from her page. "Did some one drive up?"

Victor looked at her dazedly. "I didn't hear anybody. Proceed."

"Mercy! It's ten o'clock. Where are Aunt Louise and your mother? I hear Mr. Bartol's voice!" she exclaimed, rising hastily. "Let's go get the latest news."

The master of the house entered before the young people could shake off the spell of what they had been imagining.

"What a waste of good moonlight!" he exclaimed, with smiling sympathy. "Why aren't you youngsters out on the lawn?"

"It's all your fault," responded Leo. "We've been absorbing one of the books you sent up."

"Have you? It must have been a wonderful romance. I can't conceive of anything but a love-story keeping youth indoors on a night like this."

Victor defended her. "We've been reading of Morselli's wonderful experiments. It's in Italian, and Miss Wood has been translating it for me."

"What luck you have!" exclaimed Mr. Bartol. "I engage her to re-translate it for me at the same rate."

Mrs. Ollnee and Mrs. Joyce came in as he was speaking, and Mrs. Joyce, after disposing herself comfortably, said, "Well, what is your report?"

He confessed that he had been too busy with other matters to give the Aiken accusation much thought. "However, I sent an armful of books out to my assistant attorney." He waved his hand toward Victor.

"You don't mean to read books," protested Mrs. Joyce, energetically, "when you've the very source of all knowledge right here in your own house? Why don't you study your client and convince yourself of her powers? – then you'll know what to do and say."

"I had thought of that," he said, hesitantly. "But – "

"You need not fear," Mrs. Joyce assured him. "It's true Lucy cannot always furnish the phenomena on the instant. In fact, the more eager she is the more reluctant the forces are; but you can at least try, and she is not only willing but eager for the test."

Bartol turned to Mrs. Ollnee. "Are you prepared now – to-night?" he asked.

"Yes, this moment," she answered.

Mrs. Joyce exulted. "The power is on her. I can see that. See how her hand trembles! One finger is signaling. Don't you see it?"

Mr. Bartol rose. "Come with me into my study. Mrs. Joyce may come some other time. I do not want any witnesses to-night," he added, with a smile.

Victor watched his mother go into Bartol's study with something of the feeling he might have had in seeing her enter the den of a lion. She seemed very helpless and very inexperienced in contrast with this great inquisitor, so skilled in cross-examination, so inexorable in logic, so menacing of eye.

Leo, perceiving Victor's anxiety, proposed that they return to the porch, and to this he acceded, though it seemed like a cowardly desertion of his mother. "Poor little mother," he said. "If she stands up against him she's a wonder."

The girl stretched herself out on the swinging couch, and the youth took his seat on a wicker chair close beside her. Mrs. Joyce kept at a decent distance, so that if the young people had anything private to say she might reasonably appear not to have overheard it.

Talk was spasmodic, for neither of them could forget for a moment the duel which was surely going on in that inner room. Indeed, Mrs. Joyce openly spoke of it. "If Lucy is not too anxious, too eager, she will change Alexander's whole conception of the universe this night."

"Of course you're exaggerating, Aunt Louise; but I certainly expect her to shake him up."

"It only needs one genuine phenomenon to convince him of her sincerity. What a warrior for the cause he would make! She must stay right here in his house till she utterly overwhelms him. He took up her case at first merely because I asked him to do so; but he likes her, and is ready to take it up on her own account if he finds her sincere. But I want him to believe in the philosophy she represents."

Half an hour passed with no sign from within, and Mrs. Joyce began to yawn. "That ride made me sleepy."

"Why don't you go to bed?" suggested Leo.

She professed concern. "And leave Lucy unguarded?"

"Nonsense! Go to bed and sleep. Mr. Ollnee and I will stand guard till the ordeal is ended."

"I believe I'll risk it," decided Mrs. Joyce. "I can hardly keep my eyes open."

"Nor your mouth shut," laughed Leo. "Hasten, or you'll fall asleep on the stair."

Left alone, the young people came nigh to forgetting that the world contained aught but dim stretches of moonlit greensward, dewy trees, and the odor of lilac blooms. In the dusk Victor stood less in fear of the girl, and she, moved by the witchery of the night and the melody of his voice (into which something new and masterful had come), grew less defiant. "How still it all is?" she breathed, softly. "It is like the Elysian Fields after the city's noise and grime."

"It's more beautiful out there." He motioned toward the lawn. "Let's walk down the drive."

And she complied without hesitation, a laugh in her voice. "But not too far. Remember, we are guardian angels."

As she reached his side he took her arm and tucked it within his own. "You might get lost," he said, in jocular explanation of his action.

"How considerate you are!" she scornfully responded, but her hand remained in his keeping.

There were no problems now. Down through the soft dusk of the summer night they strolled, rapturously listening to the sounds that were hardly more than silences, feeling the touch of each other's garments, experiencing the magic thrill which leaps from maid to man and man to maid in times like these.

"How big you are!" exclaimed the girl. "I didn't realize how much you overtopped me. I am considered tall."

"And so you are – and divinely fair."

"How banal! Couldn't you think of a newer one?"

"It was as much as ever I remembered, that. I'm not a giant in poetry. I'm a dub at any fine job."

Of this quality was their talk. To those of us who are old and dim-eyed, it seems of no account, perhaps, but to those who can remember similar walks and talks it is of higher worth than the lectures in the Sorbonne. Learning is a very chill abstraction on such a night to such a pair. Would we not all go back again to this sweet land of love and longing – if we could?

Victor did not deliberately plan to draw Leonora closer to his side, and the proud girl did not intend to permit him to do so; but somehow it happened that his arm stole round her waist as they walked the shadowy places of the drive, and their laggard feet were wholly out of rhythm to their leaping pulses.

The proof of Victor's naturally dependable character lay in the fact that he presumed no further. He was content with the occasional touch of her rounded hip to his, the caressing touch of her skirt as it swung about his ankle. To have attempted a kiss would have broken the spell, would have alarmed and repelled her. He honored her, loved her, but he was still in awe of her proud glance and the imperious carriage of her head. He preferred to think she suffered rather than invited the clasp of his arm.

She, on her part, was astonished and a little scared by her own complaisant weakness, and as they came out into the lighter part of the walk she disengaged herself with a self-derisive remark, and asked, "Do you always take such good care of the arms of your girl friends?"

"Always," he replied, instantly, though his heart was still in the clutch of his new-born passion.

"I shall be on my guard next time… I see Mr. Bartol in the doorway. Don't you think we'd better go in? What time do you suppose it is?"

"The saddest time in the world for me if you are going to leave me."

"Don't be maudlin." She had recovered her self-command, and was disposed to be extra severe. "Sentimental nothings is hardly your strong point."

"What is my strong point?"

She was ready with an answer. "Plain down-right impudence."

He, too, was recovering speech. "I'm glad I have one strong trait. I was afraid there was nothing about me to make a definite impression on a proud beauty like you."

"Please don't try to be literary. Stick to your oars and your baseball raquet."

"Bat," he corrected.

"I meant bat."

"I know you did; but you said raquet."

In this juvenile spat they approached the porch where Mr. Bartol stood waiting for them.

"Young people," he called, in a voice that somehow voiced a deep emotion, "do you realize that it is midnight?"

Protesting their amazement, they mounted the steps and entered the house; but the moment they looked into their host's face they became serious, perceiving that something very tremendous had taken place in his laboratory.

"What has happened?" asked Leo. "What did she do?"

"I don't know yet," he replied, strangely inconclusive in tone and phrase. "I must think it all over. If I can persuade myself that the marvels which I have witnessed are realities, the universe is an entirely new and vastly different machine for me."

Thrilling to the excitement in his face and in his voice, they passed on. At the top of the stairs Leo faced Victor with eyes big with excitement. "What do you suppose came to him?"

"I haven't an idea. He seemed terribly wrought up, though."

"We must say good-night." She held out her hand, and he took it.

"This has been the finest, most instructive day of my life."

She released her hand with a little decisive, dismissing movement. "How nice of you! Signor Morselli should know of it. Good-night!" And the smile with which she left him was delightfully provoking and mirthful.

Victor would have gone straight to his mother had he known where to find her, for he was eager to know what had taken place in the deeps of Bartol's study. That she had been able to mystify the great lawyer, he was convinced; and yet, perhaps, this was only temporary. "He will go further. What will he find?"

He was standing before his dresser slowly removing his collar and tie when the door opened and his mother entered. She was abnormally wide awake, and her eyes, violet in their intensity, betrayed so much excitement that he exclaimed: "Why, mother, what's the matter? What kind of a session did you have? What has happened to you?"

"Victor, father tells me that Mr. Bartol will be convinced. He is the greatest mind I have ever met. If I can bring him to a belief in the spirit world it will be the most important victory of my life."

"What did he say to you? What did he think?"

"I don't know; and strange to say, I cannot read his mind. He seems convinced of the phenomena, and yet I can't tell for certain. He was skeptical at the beginning, as nearly every one is."

Hitherto, at every such opening, Victor had rushed in to pluck the heart out of her mystery, but now he restrained himself, for fear of trapping her into some admission, which would make his own testimony more difficult in court. He took a seat on the bed and regarded her with meditative eyes, and she went on.

"The Voices are clamoring round me still. They want to speak to you."

"I don't want to hear them – not to-night," he replied, coldly. "Tell them to wait and talk to me when Mr. Bartol is listening."

She seemed disappointed and a little hurt by his tone. "Altair is here. She wishes most to speak."

Interest awoke in him. "What does she want of me?"

She listened. "She says, 'Trust Mr. Bartol.'"

He could see nothing, hear nothing, therefore his face lost its light.

"Well, we've got to trust him. He's all the help in sight."

Something, a breath, the light caress of a hand, passed over his hair, and a whisper that was almost tone spoke in his ear, "Fear nothing, if you will be guided and protected."

Sweet as this voice was, it irritated him, for he could not disassociate his mother from it. Indeed, it had something subtly familiar in its utterance, and yet he could not accuse her of deceit. He only roughly said: "Don't do that! I don't like that!"

Silence followed, and then his mother sadly said: "You have hurt her. She will not speak again."