Victor Ollnee's Discipline
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"Let her show herself. How do I know who is speaking to me? Let me see her face again." He added this in a gentler voice, being moved by a vivid memory of the exquisite picture Altair had made.
After another pause Mrs. Ollnee answered: "She will do so. She says soon. She has gone; but your father wants to speak to you."
Victor rose impatiently. "Tell him to come again some other time. I'm sleepy now."
She turned away saddened by his manner, and with a gentle "good-night" went softly from the room.
Victor regretted his bluntness, but could not free himself from a feeling that his mother's Voices were deceptive or imaginary, and her visit hurt and disgusted him so deeply that the charm of his evening's companionship with Leo was all but lost. "Part of her phenomena are real, but these Voices – " He broke off and went to his bed with a vague feeling of loss weighing him down.
For a half-hour he lay in growing bitterness, and then quite suddenly he thought he detected a thin, blue vapor rising from the rag rug at the side of his bed, and for an instant he was startled. "Is it smoke? Or do I imagine it?" As it rose and sank, expanded and contracted, he studied it closely. It was not smoke, for it did not ascend. It was more like filmy drapery tossed by a wind from a hidden aperture in the floor. Motionless, amazed, and awed, he watched it, till out of it the face of a woman looked, her wistful eyes touched with an accusing sorrow. It was Altair, and her form became more real from moment to moment, until at last he could detect the swell of her bosom, draped with the folds of a shimmering white robe. As he waited a hand appeared at her side, vaguely outlined, yet alive. He could see the fingers loosely clasped about a rose. She was so beautiful that he lay gazing at her in speechless wonder. "Am I dreaming?" he asked himself. "I must be dreaming." And yet he could feel the air from the window.
In the light of her glance he forgot all his other loves and cares. His worship for her returned like swift hunger, and he yearned to touch her, to hear her voice. "She is a dream," he decided, and his hand, lifted to test the vision, fell back upon the coverlet.
As if reading his thought, Altair put out her right arm and touched his wrist with a caress like the stroke of a beam of moonlight, so light and cold it was.
"Victor," she seemed to say, and his whisper was almost as light as her own.
"Who are you?"
"Don't you know me? I am Altair. Do not forget me."
"I will not forget you," he answered. "I can't forget you. Why do you look so sad?"
"It is cold and empty where I dwell. I come to you for happiness and warmth. You had forgotten me. You would not listen to my voice." Her reproach moved him almost to tears.
"I could not see you. I was not sure."
"I do not accuse you. It is natural for you to love. When the day comes you will seek another. One whose flesh is warm. Mine is cold. She is of the day. I am of the night. But do not refuse to speak to me."
Her bust had grown fuller, more complete as she spoke, and yet from the waist downward she seemed but a trailing garment of convoluting, phosphorescent gauze. Her left hand still hung at her side, vague, diaphanous, but her right lay upon her breast, as beautiful, as real as firelit ivory, and her face seemed to glow as though with some inward radiance.
Victor could follow the exquisite line of her brow, and her eyes were glorious pools of color, deep and dark with mystery and passion. Slowly she sank as if kneeling, her stately head lowered, bent above him, and he felt the touch of soft lips upon his own – a kiss so warm, so human that it filled his heart with worship. Gently he lifted his hand, seeking to draw her to him, and for an instant he felt her pliant body in the circle of his arms – then she dissolved, vanished – like some condensation of the atmosphere, and he was left alone, aching with longing and despair.
For a long time he waited, hoping she would return. He saw the moonlight fade from the carpet. He heard the night wind amid the maple leaves, and he knew he had not been dreaming, for that strange Oriental perfume lingered in the air, and on the coverlet where her exquisite hand had rested a white bloom lay, mystic and wonderful. He lifted it, and its breath, sweeter than that of any other flower he had ever held, filled him with instant languor and happy release of care.
His next perception was that of sunlight. It was morning, and the kine and fowls were astir.
He looked for the mysterious flower, but it was gone. He sprang from his bed and searched the room for it. "It did not exist," he sadly concluded. "It has returned to the mysterious world from whence it came."
For a long time afterward he suffered with a sense of loss, while the sunlight deepened in his room and the sounds of the barn-yard brought back to him the realization that he was in effect a fugitive in the house of a stranger. Slowly the normal action of his mind and body resumed its sway, and he dressed, quite sure that something abnormal had brought this vision to him. He wondered if he, too, were getting mediumistic. "Am I to be a son of my mother? Am I to hear voices and see visions?" he asked himself, with a note of alarm. He began to fear the disintegrating effects of these experiences. His personality; his body hitherto so solid, so stable, seemed about to develop disturbing capabilities.
He was profoundly pleased and reassured to find on his dressing-room table a large white rose, a rose precisely like that which had been laid upon his coverlet by the hand of the dream-woman. It's odor was the same, and its petals were as fresh as if it had just been cut. It reassured him by convincing him that his vision was real – that it had a basis of physical change; but it also started a perplexing chain of thought. "How came the rose here? Who brought it?" was his question. "It certainly was not there when I went to bed."
With the flower in his hand, he still stood looking down at the place where the hand of Altair had rested – still marveling at this mingling of the real and the fantastic, the dream and the rose, when something shining revealed itself half concealed by the pillow; and putting out his hand he took up a little brooch of turquoise set with diamonds, which he recognized instantly as one that Leo had worn at her throat when she said good-night.
Sinking into a chair, he stared now at the jewel, now at the rose, while a thrill of pride, of mastery, of joy stole through him. His blood warmed. His heart quickened its beat. Could it be that Leo had been his visitor? Was it possible that she, burning with hidden love of him, had stolen to his room, and there at his bedside, masking herself as Altair, had bent to his drowsy eyes, and laid upon his lips that fervid kiss? The thought confused him, overpowered him, exalted him.
His was a chivalrous nature, therefore this act, at the moment, seemed neither unmaidenly nor wrong – indeed, it appeared very beautiful in his eyes. It humbled him, made him wonder if he were worth the risk she had run? He was not abnormally self-appreciative, but he had not been left unaware of his appeal to women. His previous love-affairs had been those of the undergraduate, proceeding under the jocular supervision of his watchful fellows. His present case was in wholly different spirit. He was a man now – in fact, his quarrel with Leo from the first had been over her evident determination to treat him as a lad.
The memory of her serene self-possession made her self-surrender of the night all the more amazing to him. "It is cold and empty where I dwell," she had said. This meant that she loved him – longed for him – it could mean nothing else. Her love had begun during their ride on the lagoon, in their delicious drowse on the grass. It had been deepened by their afternoon of sweet companionship at tennis and over their books; then came the walk in the moonlight and her acceptance of his caress in the dusky place in the path – all were preparatory to this final wondrous visit and confession.
And yet her eyes had never been other than those of a friend. Seemingly she had laughed at herself for the momentary weakness of yielding to his arm. Her daylight expression had always been that of the humorous, self-reliant, rather intellectual girl, who acknowledges no fear of man and no sudden rush of passion, and yet – How reconcile the facts!
He smiled to think how he had been deceived by her imperious air, by her expressed contempt for his interest. "And all the while she was really waiting for me to break through her reserve," he said; and this delicious explanation satisfied him for a few moments, till he went deeper into his memory of what she had said and done.
He was forced to reassure himself again by the jewel and the rose that she had really come to him, so dream-like did the whole ethereal episode now seem. The more he dwelt upon the vision the deeper it moved him. It's growing significance set his blood aflame. In fiction and poesy women often sacrifice their reserve, moved by uncontrollable longing, like the heroine of mad Ophelia's song, because commanded by something stronger than their sweet selves. It was hard to think of Leo as one carried out of herself by love – and yet here lay the jewel of her bosom in his hand! How to meet her puzzled and excited him.
Up to this minute he had admired her and had paid court to her as a young man naturally addresses a handsome girl, but he was not violently in love with her; indeed, she had interested him rather less than a girl in Winona, daughter of Professor Boyden; but now, as he was about to meet her in the breakfast-room, she possessed more power, more significance, than any woman in the world. He recalled how fine and helpful she had been during the few days of their acquaintance – her serenity, her good sense, her pungent comment began to seem very wonderful.
He looked at himself in the glass, finding there a very good-looking, stalwart youth, but could not discover anything to account for the sudden blaze of Leonora's self-sacrificing passion. He was neither a fool nor a peacock, and he tried to account for her love on the ground of her regard for his mother. Then, like a flash of light, came the thought, "She was sleep-walking!"
He had read of the marvels of hypnotism and somnambulism. Perhaps in some strange way his mother's desire to have Leo love her son had sent the girl straight to his bedside. There was something uncanny in her speech and in her gestures – only in her kiss had she been solidly, warmly human.
And yet all this seemed so difficult to believe – and besides, if the girl came in her sleep, did it not prove her love quite as conclusively? It might be unconscious, but it was there.
With heart pounding mightily, and face set and stern, he left his room and began descending the stairway, uncertain still of the way in which he should meet her.
Happily he found no one in the dining-room but the maid, who said to him, "Mr. Bartol would like to see Mr. Ollnee in his study as soon as Mr. Ollnee has had his breakfast."
"Very well," he replied; "I will make short work of breakfast this morning."
As he sat thus awaiting Leo, his mind filled with the wonder of her self-surrender, he considered carefully in what way he should greet her. "She must not know that I know," he decided. "I will greet her as if I had not found the brooch, and I will leave it where she will happen upon it accidentally."
XIII
VICTOR TESTS HIS THEORY
He was still at breakfast, deeply engaged with his alluring vision, when Mrs. Joyce and his mother entered the room. As he rose to greet them Mrs. Joyce asked, "Have you seen Mr. Bartol?"
"Not yet – but he is up. I am to see him soon. Where is Leo?"
"She is not feeling very brisk this morning, and is taking her coffee in bed."
He said no more, but resumed his seat, richer by this added proof of the deep perturbation through which the girl had passed. He was disappointed, and eager to see her, but the conviction that she had been sleepless from love of him put him among the clouds. He would have forgotten his appointment with Bartol had not the maid reminded him of it. Even then he tried to avoid it. "You're sure he wanted me? Didn't he mean my mother?"
"I'm quite sure he said Mister Ollnee."
"Mother, what do you suppose he wants of me?"
"I don't know, Victor. Perhaps he wants to talk over the trial."
"Come back and tell us as soon as you can," commanded Mrs. Joyce. "I'm crazy to know what he did last night, and what he really thinks of us?"
Victor promised to report, and went away to his interview with a vague alarm disturbing the blissful self-satisfaction of the early morning.
He found Bartol seated at a big table with a writing-pad before him and four or five open volumes disposed about as if for reference. He, too, looked old and worn and rather grim, but he greeted his guest politely. "Good-morning. Have you seen your mother this morning?"
"Yes, I have just left her at breakfast."
"How is she?"
"She seems quite herself – a little pale, perhaps."
"Be seated, please. I want to go over our case with you. First of all, I want you to tell me once more, and in full detail, all you know of your mother's life. Begin at the beginning and leave nothing out. Don't theorize or try to explain – give me the facts as you have observed them."
This was not the kind of business to which a love-exalted youth would set himself, but Victor squared himself before the brooding face and deep-set eyes of his host, and entered once more upon the story of the "ghost-room," which had been the one dark spot in his childhood, and which became again in a moment the overshadowing torment of his young manhood.
As he talked the intent look of the man before him, his short, sharp, significant questions inspired him. He poured forth in eloquent and moving phrase the story of his sudden awakening to a knowledge that his mother was a paid medium, and under persecution by the press of the city. He told of his sittings with her, wherein he had savagely determined to unmask her for her own good. He admitted his complete failure. He related his experiences during the time she lay in deathly trance, and his voice lost its smooth flow as he approached the most marvelous experience of all, when the vast and murmuring wind blew through the small room and Altair came with sad, sweet face, to bewitch him and to shake his conceptions of the universe to their foundation stones. He confessed his bewilderment and confusion, and ended by saying: "It's all unnatural, diseased. I can't believe it is the real side of things."
"I wonder that you kept your head at all," remarked Bartol. "Your youth and good, hot blood protect you. Have you talked with your mother about our sitting?"
"Only a few words. She came to my room last night and told me she had only a dim recollection of what took place. She said The Voices wanted to talk to me – but I didn't want them to talk to me – and said so – and she went away."
Bartol mused. "Belief is not a matter of evidence; it is a habit of mind. I find myself unable to follow the evidence of my own senses. My tests of your mother last night convinced me at the moment that she had the right to claim supernormal powers. She seemingly turned matter into a mere abstraction, and made the learning of physicists the chatter of children." As he spoke his memory of what he had seen freshened and his excitement increased. His voice deepened and his eyes glowed. "Here are my notes of what took place, and I have spent the night in comparing my observations with those of Sir William Crookes concerning the medium Home. In a certain very real sense the phenomena I witnessed were quite as marvelous as those Crookes chronicled." He rose and began to walk up and down the room. "And yet this morning I do not believe – I cannot believe – that writing was precipitated in a closed book held in my hand, that a pen rose of its own volition and tapped upon the table.
"The tendency of any mind, any science, is to harden, to crystallize, to reach a stopping point. The student is prone to think that the knowledge of the physical universe which we have must be the larger part of all that is knowable – and that soon we will have gathered it all into our text-books. Of course this is the sheerest self-delusion. A little thought will make clear that all we know is as nothing compared to that which remains to be known. Up to ten o'clock last night I was one of those who believe that the domain of nature is pretty thoroughly mapped out, staked, and plowed by the investigator, but this morning I find my horizons again extended. It would be foolish to say that an hour's experiments and a night of reading along new lines had overturned all the landmarks of biologic science; but I confess that the world for me has greatly changed. I held in my hand last night a force in action for which science has no name and no place – and yet thirty years ago Sir William Crookes wrote of this same force in the spirit with which he discussed other elements and powers, and yet his testimony is not accepted by his fellows even to-day.
"Your mother met every test cheerfully and instantly, and demonstrated to me, as Home did to Crookes, as Slade did to Zöllner, that matter, as we think we know it, does not exist. She convinced me not merely of her honesty, but of her high powers as a psychic. A calm, persistent, logical purpose ran through all her manifestations, and her Voices – whatever they may mean to you – advised me to sit again with her and to have you and Miss Wood, Mrs. Joyce, and Marie always in the circle. This I intend to do. I feel at this moment as if no other business mattered. I have been here at my desk since midnight, reading, comparing notes, trying to convince myself that I have not gone suddenly mad.
"If I was not utterly deceived, if your fresh, keen young eyes are of any use whatsoever, if the words of Crookes, Wallace, Lombroso, and their like are of any weight, then we have in your mother a rare and subtle organism whose powers are of more importance than the rings of Saturn or the canals of Mars."
Victor was awed, carried out of himself and his small concerns by the deep voice of the great lawyer as he formulated his impassioned yet restrained musings. It was evident that he welcomed this opportunity of putting his thoughts into words, of ordering his words into argument. Half in reverie and half in conscious statement to the entranced youth, he poured forth his troubled soul.
"I was a materialist when your mother entered my house. I believed that the man who died went out like a candle. The grave was the end. To me the so-called revelations of Buddha, Gautama, Christ, were the vague dreams of the heart-sick, the stricken mourners of the earth – not one of them brought a beam of hope – but in this modern spirit of experimentation, in the work of Crookes and his like, I see a ray of light. Your mother's impersonations of my wife, her messages – Voices – may be due to mind-reading, to clairvoyance, but the method of their delivery certainly lies beyond any known law. In that glows my hope. Grant the possibility of direct writing, of the power of the mind to think its will upon paper without the aid of hand or pen, and a whole new world is opened up, the horizons of life are infinitely extended."
He paused abruptly. "I was weary of my days. Yesterday I moved as a creature of habit. This morning it seems that I have a new interest. I am convinced that in defending your mother I am defending something precious to the human race; but I must be very sure of my ground. I must scrutinize every phase of her power, and you must help me. You are young and well-trained. You have a good mind, and I am persuaded you will go far. Your mother worships you, lives for you. Now, you and I together must make such study of her mediumship as America has never seen – a study which shall have nothing to do with any ism, fad, or prejudice. Will you help me?"
Victor, overwhelmed by the confidence of the great lawyer, by the honor which this plea laid upon his young shoulders, could only stammer, "I will do my best."
Bartol thanked him. "I see now, as I never did before, that this power is a subtle, personal, psychical adjustment, and the part you are to play is a double one. First, you are her son, and your presence and influence are indispensable. Secondly, you are vigorous and alert, comparatively free from the wrecking effect of bereavement such as mine. I confess I cannot trust myself in the face of the supposed appeal of my dead. I am like the doctor who refuses to practise upon his own child – my desires blind me. At the same time I see that we cannot thrust strangers upon your mother, especially in her present excited state. What I propose is a series of private experiments, including chemical tests, instantaneous photographs, and the like, which shall convince both judge and jury of the reality of these phenomena. This case will come before my friend, Judge Matthews, and we have in him a just and penetrating mind. If I can make him feel my own present conviction we may rest our case safely with any unprejudiced jury."
He paused and picked up a volume from the table. "Crookes is explicit. He says he saw the lath move without visible cause, he saw Home thrust his hand into the hearth and stir the coals, he saw the accordion play without any reason; and in all this he is sustained by other men testing each phenomenon by means of electrical registering devices. Now we must duplicate these. We must go into court armed with photographs, records, and witnesses. We will make this a cause célèbre– doing our small part to forward this superb and fearless European movement. I intend to be both lawyer and physicist hereafter," he ended, with a smile.
That the great lawyer was now completely engaged upon his mother's defense Victor exultantly perceived, and it gave him a feeling of pride and security, but this was followed by a sense of being uprooted. The sight of this man, inspired yet confounded by what had come to him in a single sitting, brought new and disturbing force to all that had happened to himself. Was it possible that thought could be precipitated like dew upon a sheet of paper?
"Now," resumed Bartol, "I have made a further discovery. There is a brotherhood of what we may call true experimentalists – beginning with Marc, Thury, and the Count de Gasparin, and running to Flammarion and Richet, in Paris; the Dialectical Society, Sir William Crookes, Alfred Russell Wallace, Sir Oliver Lodge, in England; thence back to the Continent, to Zöllner, Aksakof, Ochorowicz, De Rochas, Maxwell, Morselli, and Lombroso. I need a condensed record of these experiments, and a synopsis of each theory. Once within this group, you will learn by cross-reference the names of all those whom each of these experimentalists regard as reliable. You can work here or take the books to your room – perhaps, on the whole, Morselli's record is first in importance. Bring me a clear and full abstract of that as soon as you can."
"I do not read Italian," confessed Victor; "but Leo – Miss Wood – does; perhaps she will help me."
"Very good. Now as to the mechanical side of this matter. I have a nephew who is an expert photographer and a clever electrician. With your permission, I will send for him and see what he can do. He is a man of high standing in his profession, and a quiet personality – one that will not irritate or alarm your mother. Shall I bring him in and give her over to all?"
"Certainly. I'm sure mother wants you to have full charge."
"Very well. We will set to work at once, for our case may come up this week. At its lowest terms, the Aiken charge involves – to us – the admission that our client is highly suggestible and that she has been used as an unconscious stool-pigeon by Pettus. For the present we must proceed upon this basis. Suggestion is more or less accepted at the present time, and we may be able to get the jury to admit our plea; but I will not conceal from you the fact that your mother stands in danger of severe punishment. The Star has singled her out as a scapegoat, and is behind the Aikens. They will push her hard. I do not think they will follow her here, but if they do I shall send you to my nephew's home. – Now to Morselli. We must know just where he stands on this amazing branch of biology. Will you make this synopsis to-day?"