"My dear boy," said Mrs. Joyce, "I insist on staying. I cannot leave Lucy in her present condition, and I refuse to leave you alone. She is coming back to you soon, and then we will plan for the future. As for the message, you will do well to take its word to heart. It is plainly a warning that you must not leave the city."
"But, Mrs. Joyce, think what it involves to believe that that letter dropped out of the air!"
"The world has grown very vast and very mysterious to me," she solemnly responded. "I've had even more wonderful things than that take place in my own home."
Mrs. Joyce saw that to go would be best, at least for the time, and together she and Leo went down the stairway and out into the street, leaving the stubborn youth to confront his problem alone with the phlegmatic Mrs. Post.
VII
THE RETURN OF THE SPIRIT
Youth is surrounded by mystery – nothing but magic touches him; but it is a beautiful, natural, hopeful magic. The mists of morning rise unaccountably, the rains of autumn fall without cause. The lightning, the snows, the grasses appear and vanish before the child's eyes like magical conjurations, until at last, for the most part, he accepts these miracles as commonplace because they happen regularly and often. In a world that is incomprehensible to the greatest philosopher, the lad of twenty comes and goes unmoved by the essential irresolvability of matter.
So it had been with Victor. Under instruction he had come to speak of electricity as a fluid, of steel as a metal, as though calling them by these names explained them. He discussed the ether, calmly considering it a sort of finely attenuated jelly, something which quivered to every blow and was capable of transmitting motion instantaneously. Sound, heat, and light were modes of motion, he had been told, and these words satisfied him. Food taken into the body produced power, and this power was transmitted from the stomach to the brain, and from the brain to the muscles, and so the limbs were moved. But just how the meat and potatoes got finally from the brain to the nerves and so into the swing of a baseball bat did not trouble him. Why should it?
Life and age were mere words. Death he had heard described by clergymen as something to be prepared for, a dark and dismal event reserved for old people, but which did occasionally catch a man in his arrogant youth, generally in the midst of his sins. Life meant having a good time, a succeeding in sport, business, or love. Of course certain philosophic phrases like "continuous adjustment of the organism to the environment" and "the change of the organism from the simple to the complex" had stuck in his mind. But any real thought as to what these changes actually meant had been put aside quite properly, for the pastimes and ambitions of the student to whom study is an incidental price for a joyous hour at play.
But now, here in this room, beside the motionless body of his mother, he began to think. He had a good mind. His father had left him a rich legacy in his splendid body, but also something mental – latent to this hour – which produced an irritating impatience with the vague and the mysterious. He resented the intrusion of an insoluble element into his thinking. He was repelled by the discovery that his mother was abnormal, and from the point of view of this "ghost-room" his life at the university was becoming sweeter, more precious, more normal every hour.
Then, too, his afternoon of reading at the library had put into his mind several new and all-powerful conceptions which had germinated there like the seeds which the Indian "adept" plants in pots of sand, rising, burgeoning, blossoming on the instant. He knew the names of some of those men whose words might be counted on the side of his mother's endowment, for they were famous in physical or moral science, but he had not known before that they admitted any real belief in the kind of things which his mother professed to perform.
The conception that the human soul was (as the ancients believed) a ponderable, potent entity capable of separating itself from the body, came to him with overwhelming significance. "If mother still lives," he said to the nurse, "where is she? What form has she taken?"
Mrs. Post, in her own way, was capable of expressing herself. "She is not there. So much we know. Her body is here. It is like a cloak which she has thrown down. She herself is invisible, but she will return and take up her body, and then you will see it grow warm again and her eyes will light up like lamps, and she will rise and speak to you."
Of course he did not believe this. That her body was a cast-off garment was easy to comprehend, but that her spirit hovered near and would re-enter its former habitation was incredible.
All day he remained there, pacing to and fro, or sitting bent and somber over his problem. At noon he got a little lunch for himself and for the nurse. At two o'clock Mrs. Joyce returned to take him for a drive in her car. But this he again refused. Thereupon she went away, promising to look in again later in the evening.
At dusk he stole down into the street to mail a letter to Frensen, wherein he had written: "I am a good deal of a broken reed to-day, but I am going to fight. I wish you were here to talk things over with me. I'm surrounded by people who believe in the supernatural, and I need some one like yourself to brace me up."
This was true. He had been thrust into the midst of those who dwelt upon the amazing and the inexplicable in human life. The city, which had been to him so vast, so ugly, and so menacing in a material way, now became mysterious in an entirely different way. He had now a sense of its infinite drama, its network of purpose. There was some comfort, however, in the thought that amid these swarms of people his own activities were inconspicuous. To-morrow he and his mother would be forgotten in some new sensation.
The air was delicately fresh and wholesome, and the faces of the girls he met had singular power to comfort him. The life of the city, sweeping on multitudinously, refreshed him like the spray of a mighty torrent foaming amid rocks and shadowed by lofty cañon walls. He returned to his vigil stronger and better for this momentary communion with the crowd.
Mrs. Joyce came again at nine and insisted on remaining for the night. She had quite thrown off her own gloom, being perfectly certain in her own mind that Lucy Ollnee would return with a marvelous story of her wanderings "on the other plane."
She began to make plans for Victor, "subject," she said, "to revision by your 'guides.'"
"You've said that before," he retorted, "but I have no 'guides.' I don't believe in 'guides,' and I don't intend to be ruled by a lot of spooks."
"Be careful," she warned. "They know your every thought and they may resent your attitude."
"Well, let them! What do I care? Suppose, for argument's sake, that these Voices do come from my father and my grandfather. What do they know of this great city? They were country folks. How can they direct me in what I am to do?"
"They know a great deal better than any of us."
"But how can they?"
"Because they are free from the limitations of the flesh."
"I don't see how that is going to help them. Their minds are just the same as they were, aren't they?"
"Indeed no! We grow inconceivably in knowledge and power to discern the moment we drop the flesh."
"I don't see why? If they are existing they're in a world so different from this that their experience here won't help them over there, and their experience over there is of no value to us here, and even if it were, they could not express it."
During their talk the night had deepened into darkness, and now, as they reached a pause in their discussion, a measured rapping could be heard, as though some one were striking with a small wand upon the brass rod of the bed.
Without knowing exactly why, a thrill very like fear passed over Victor, but Mrs. Joyce smiled. "They are here! Don't you hear them? They want to communicate with us."
The youth's high heart sank. His boyish dread of darkness began to people this death-chamber with monstrous shadows, with malignant forces. He was very grateful for the presence of this cheery and undismayed believer in the spirit world. Without her he would have been panic-stricken.
She rose to enter the bedroom, and he followed as far as the threshold.
It was very dark in there, and for a moment he could see nothing, could hear nothing. Then a faint whisper made itself distinctly audible just above his head. "Victor, my boy," it said.
He did not reply for a moment, and Mrs. Joyce eagerly called, "Did you hear that whisper, Victor?"
"Yes, I heard it," he replied.
"It was Lucy. Was it you, Lucy?" asked Mrs. Joyce.
"Yes," came the answer.
"Are you still out of the body, Lucy?"
"Yes."
"What shall we do?"
"Wait."
"Is there anything you want to say to Victor?"
"No, not now. Father will speak."
Silence again fell, and in this pause Mrs. Joyce took the chair which stood close beside the bed and motioned Victor to another near the foot. He sat with thrilling nerves, moved, trembling in spite of himself. The room was now quite dark, save for a faint patch of light on the ceiling and another on the carpet. His mother's body could not be distinguished from the covering of the bed.
As they waited, a singular, cold, and aromatic breeze began to blow over the bed from the dark corner, and then a small, brilliant, bluish flame arose near the sleeper's head, and, floating upward to the ceiling, vanished silently. It was like the flame of a candle twisted and leaping in a breeze.
"The spirit light!" exclaimed Mrs. Joyce, ecstatically. "Wasn't it beautiful? And see, there is a hand holding it!" she whispered, as another flame arose. "Can't you see it?"
"I see the light, but no hand," he replied.
"I can see more. I see the dim form of an old man outlined on the wall. It must be your grandsire, Nelson Blodgett. Am I right?" she asked, apparently of the dark.
Victor could now perceive a thin, bluish, wavering shape, like a cloud of cigar smoke, and from this a whisper seemed to come, strong and clear. "Yes, I have come to speak to my grandson."
"Don't you see him now?" asked Mrs. Joyce.
"I see nothing," he repeated; and as he spoke the misty shape vanished.
"But you heard the whisper, did you not?" Mrs. Joyce persisted.
He did not reply to her, but rose and bent above his mother. "Mother, did you speak?" he asked.
Mrs. Joyce excitedly restrained him. "Sit down! You must not touch her now."
"Why not?"
"Because it is very dangerous while the spirits are using her organism."
"I don't know what you mean!" he retorted, angrily. "I know that that voice sounded exactly like my mother's voice, and I want to know – "
"Silence, foolish boy!" was sternly breathed into his ear.
A cloud passed over the sky, and as the room became perfectly black a fluttering gray-blue cloud developed out of the darkest corner. It had the movement of steam-wreaths, with each convolution faintly edged with light. At one moment it resembled a handful of lines, fine as cobweb, looping and waving, as if blown upward from below, and the next moment it floated past like the folds of some exquisite drapery, lifting and falling in gentle undulations. At last it rose to the height of a man, drifted across the bed, and there hung poised over the head of the sleeper. As it swung there for an instant Victor could plainly detect a man's figure and face. His eyelids were closed and his features vague, but his chin and the spread of his shoulders were clearly defined. "Who are you?" Victor demanded, as if the apparition were an intruder.
The answer came in a flat, toneless voice, neither male nor female in quality. "I am your father."
Victor leaped up impulsively, his hair on end with fright, and the apparition vanished precisely as though an open door had been closed between it and the observer.
Again Mrs. Joyce clutched him. "Be careful! Sit down; don't stir!"
"Somebody is playing a joke on me," he insisted, hotly. "I'm going to strike a light."
Again a voice, this time almost full-toned, but with a metallic accompaniment, as though it had passed through a horn, poured into his ear, "You shall bow to our wisdom."
He braced himself to receive a blow, and answered through his set teeth: "I will not. I am master of myself, and I don't intend to take orders from you."
"You are fighting great powers. You will fail," the voice replied. "Your heart is defiant. Expect punishment."
Victor threw out his left hand in rage. It came into contact with something in the air, something light and hollow, which fell crashing to the floor, and a faint, gasping, indrawn breath from the sleeper on the bed followed it. For an instant all was silent; then Mrs. Joyce cried out:
"She has returned! Your mother has returned! Don't strike a light. Wait a moment." She moved forward a little. "May I touch her?" she asked.
Victor thought she was speaking to him, but before he could reply the invisible one whispered: "Yes. Approach slowly."
Mrs. Joyce laid her hand on the sleeper's brow. "She's warmer, Victor! She's breathing! She has certainly come back to us."
"Approach," whispered the voice in Victor's ear.
He moved forward now, in awe and wonder, and stood beside the bed. Slowly the room lightened, and out of the darkness the pallid face of his mother developed like the shadowy figures on a photographic plate. She was lying just as before, save for one hand, which Mrs. Joyce had taken. He laid his own vital, magnetic palm upon her arm, and finding it still cold and pulseless, called out:
"Mother, do you hear me? It is Victor."
Her fingers moved slightly in response, and this minute sign of life melted his heart. He fell upon his knees beside her bed, weeping with gratitude and joy.
VIII
VICTOR REPAIRS HIS MOTHER'S ALTAR
In consenting to the removal of his mother to Mrs. Joyce's home Victor had no intention of receding from his position. On the contrary, he considered it merely a temporary measure – for the night, or at most for a few days. He entered the car, thinking only of her wishes, and when he watched her sink to sleep in her spacious and luxurious bed under Mrs. Joyce's generous roof he couldn't but feel relieved at the thought that she was safe and on the way back to health. It was only when he left her and went to his own splendid chamber that his nervousness returned.
Every day, every hour plunged him deeper into debt to these strangers; and the fact that they were treating him like a young duke was all the more disturbing. He fancied Carew saying of him, as he had said of another, "Oh, he's merely one of Mrs. Joyce's pensioners," and the thought caused him to burn with impatience.
Nevertheless he slept, and in the morning he forgot his perplexities in the joy of taking his breakfast with Leonora. He admired her now so intensely that his own weakness, irresolution, and inactivity seemed supine. He was impatient to be doing something. His hands and his brain seemed empty. With no games, no tasks, he was disordered, lost.
They were alone at the table, these young people, and naturally fell to discussing Mrs. Ollnee's marvelous return to life. This led him to speak of his own plans. "My course at Winona fitted me for nothing," he acknowledged, bitterly. "I should have gone in for something like mechanical engineering, but I didn't. I had some fool notion of being a lawyer, and mother, I can see now, was all for having me a preacher of her faith. So here I am, helpless as a blind kitten."
It was proof of his essential charm that Leonora not only endured his renewed harping on this harsh string, but encouraged him to continue. "I know you chafe," she said. "I had that feeling till I began my course in cooking, and just to assure myself that I am not entirely useless and helpless in the world, I'm now going in for a training as a nurse."
"A nurse!" he exclaimed. "Oh, that explains something."
"What does it explain?"
"I wondered how you could be so calm and so efficient yesterday."
She seemed pleased. "Was I calm and efficient? Well, that's one result of my study. I can at least keep my head when anything goes wrong."
"I don't think I like your being a trained nurse," he said.
She smiled. "Don't you? Why not?"
"You're too fine for that," he answered, slowly. "You were made to command, not to serve. You should be the queen of some castle."
His frankly expressed admiration did not embarrass her. She accepted his words as if they came from a boy. "Castles are said to be draughty and dreadfully hard to keep in order, and besides, a queen's retainers are always getting sick, or killed, or something, so I think I'll keep on with my training as a nurse."
"But there must be a whole lot of unpleasant, nasty drudgery about it."
"Sickness isn't nice, I'll admit, but there is no place in the world where care and sympathy mean so much."
"You don't intend to go out and nurse among strangers?"
"I may."
"I bet you don't – not for long. Some fellow will come along and say 'No more of that,' and then you'll stay home."
"What sort of fiction do you read?" she asked, with the air of an older sister.
"The truthful sort. Your nursing is nothing but a fad."
"What a wise old gray-beard you are!"
He was nettled. "You need not take that superior tone with me. I'm two years older than you are."
"And ten years wiser, I suppose you would declare if you dared."
"I didn't say that."
"No; your tone was enough. I admit you know a great deal more about baseball than I do."
He winced. "That was a side-winder, all right. If I knew as much about the carpenter's trade or the sale of dry goods as I do about 'the national game' I'd stand a chance of earning my board."
"Why not join the league?" she suggested. "They pay good wages, I believe."
He took this seriously. "I thought of that, but even if I could get into a league team, which is hardly probable, it wouldn't lead anywhere. You see, I'm getting up an ambition. I want to be rich and powerful."
"Football players have always been my adoration," she responded, heartily. "You'd look splendid in harness. Why don't you go in for that?"
"You may laugh at me now," he replied, bluntly. "But give me ten years – "
"Mercy, I'll be too old to admire even a football captain by that time."
"You'll be only thirty-one."
She sobered a little. "Men have the advantage. You will be young at thirty-three, and I'll be – well, a matron. No, I'm afraid I can't wait that long. I must find my admirable short-stop or half-back, whichever he is to be, long before that."
He changed his tone and appealed to her seriously. "Really now, what can I do? So long as this persecution of my mother keeps up I'm in for a share of it. I can't run away, for I promised I wouldn't. So I remain, like a turkey with a string to his leg, walking round and round my little stake. What would you do in my place? Come now, be good and tell me."
She responded to his appeal. "Don't be impatient. That's the first thing. Be resigned to this luxury for a few days. The Voices will tell you what to do. They may be planning a surprise for you."
"All I ask of them is to quit the job and let me plan things for myself," he slowly protested.
The entrance of Mrs. Wood, senior, ended their dialogue, and he went away with a sense of having failed to win Leo's respect and confidence, as he had hoped to do. "She considers me a kid," he muttered, discontentedly. "But she will change her mind one of these days."
He spent the morning with his mother, but toward noon he grew restless and went down into the library, wherein he had observed several bound volumes of the report of The Psychical Society. He fell to reading a long article upon "multiple personality," and followed this by the close study of an essay on hysteria, and when Mrs. Joyce called him to lunch he was like a man awakened from deep sleep. These articles, filled with new and bewildering conceptions of the human organism, were after all entirely materialistic in their outcome. Personality was not a unit, but a combination, and the whole discussion served but to throw him into mental confusion and dismay.
At lunch Mrs. Joyce proposed that they all take an automobile ride round the city and end up with a dinner at the Club; and seeing no chance for doing anything along the line of securing employment, Victor consented to the expedition.
The weather was glorious, and the troubled youth's brain cleared as if the sweet, cool, lake wind had swept away the miasma which his experience of the darker side of the city had placed there. He surrendered himself to the pleasure, the luxury of it recklessly. How could he continue to brood over his future with a lovely girl by his side and a sweet and tender spring landscape unrolling before him?
They fairly belted the city in their run, and in the end, as they went sweeping down the curving driveway of the lake, Mrs. Ollnee's face was delicately pink and her eyes were bright with happiness. To her son she seemed once more the lovely and delicate figure of his boyhood's admiration. It seemed that her death-like trance had been a horrible dream.
The ride, the club-house, the dinner, were all luxurious to the point of bewilderment to Victor, but he did not betray his uneasiness. He was only a little more silent, a little more meditative, as he took his place at the finely decorated table in the pavilion which faced upon the water. He determined (for the day at least) to accept everything that came his way. This recklessness completely dominated him as he looked across the board at Leonora, so radiant with health and youth.
No one would have detected anything morbid in Mrs. Ollnee. She was prettily dressed and not in the least abnormal, and Victor was proud of her, even though he knew that her dresses were earned by a sort of necromancy.
Mrs. Joyce carefully avoided any discussion of his problem, and the dinner ended as joyfully at it began. They rode home afterward, under the bright half moon, silent for very pleasure in the beautiful night.
The park was full of loiterers, two and two, and on the benches under the trees others sat, two and two together. It was mating-time for all the world, and Victor's blood was astir as he turned toward the stately girl whose face had driven out all others as the moon drowns out the stars. His audacity of the morning was gone, however. He looked at her now with a certain humble appeal. His subjugation had begun.
At the house they all lingered for an hour on the back porch, which looked out upon a little formal garden. Two slender trees stood there, and their silken rustling filled in the pauses of the conversation like the conferring voices of a distant multitude of infant seraphim.
"Those must be cottonwoods," Victor remarked.
"They are," replied Mrs. Joyce. "I love them. When I was a child I used to visit a farm-house in whose yard were two tall trees of this sort, and their murmur always filled me with mystical delight. I used to lie in the grass under them, hour by hour, trying to imagine what they were saying to me. Ever since I had a place of my own I've had cottonwood-trees in my yard. I know they're a nuisance with their fuzz, but I love their rustling."
As she paused, the leaves uttered a pleased murmur, and Victor, listening with a new sense of the sentiment which his hostess concealed in a plump and unimposing form, thought he heard a sibilant whispered word in his car. "Victor," it said, "I love you."
He turned quickly toward his mother, but she seemed not to be listening, and a moment later she spoke to Mrs. Joyce, uttering some pleasant commonplace about the night.
This whisper was so clear, so unmistakable, that Victor could not doubt its reality. The question was which of the women had spoken it. He had a foolish wish to believe that Leo had uttered it. He listened again, but heard nothing.
As he was helping his mother slowly up the stairs to her room, he said: "This is all very beautiful, mother, but I can't enjoy it as I ought. I feel like a fraud every time I see Mrs. Joyce handing out one of those big bills. I suppose she can afford it, but I can't. We must get back to the old place, or to some new place, and live on our own resources."
"We can't do that till morning, dear. Let us wait until The Voices speak. They have been silent to-day. Perhaps they will advise us to-morrow."
Here was the place to tell her of the whispers he had heard, but he could not bring himself to do so.
She went on: "I wish you would repair my table, your grandfather's table, as you promised, Victor. I don't know why, but it helps me. But you must be careful not to use any metal about it."
"Why not?"
"Oh, that's another one of the mysteries. They seem to object to metal."
"Well, I'll get at it to-morrow," he said, and kissing her good-night, went to his own room.
He was awake and dressed before six the next morning, and leaving a note for Mrs. Joyce, set out for California Avenue. On the way he dropped into a cheap café and got a breakfast which cost him twenty cents. He enjoyed this keenly, because, as he said, it was in his class and was paid for out of the money his mother had given him for his trophy.
All was quiet at the flat, and setting to work on the table with glue and stout cord, he soon had it on its legs. Looking down upon it as a completed job, he marveled at the reverence which his mother seemed to have for it, and his mind reverted to the astounding phenomena which he himself had witnessed over its top.
Picking up one of the folded slates, he opened it with intent to see if it held any hidden springs or false surfaces. Out fluttered a folded paper. This he snatched up and studied with interest. It was a peculiar sort of parchment, veined like a bit of corn-husk, and on it, written in delicate and beautiful script, were these words: "Go to Room 70, Harwood Bldg., to-day. Danger threatens. Altair."
"I wonder who Altair is," he mused, staring at the bit of paper, "and what is the danger that threatens?"
While still he stood debating whether to go down-town or to warn his mother, a heavy step on the stairs announced a visitor. The man (for it was plainly the tread of a man, and a fat man) knocked on the door, but did not pause for reply. "Are you there, Lucy?" he called, and came in.
Victor faced him with instant resentment of this familiarity. "Who are you? What do you want here?" he demanded.
The other, a tall, clumsy, broad-faced individual in costly clothing, seemed surprised and a little alarmed. "I came to see Mrs. Ollnee," he explained. "Who are you?"
"I am her son – and I want to know how you dare to push into my mother's house like this!"
"My name is Pettus," he answered, pacifically. "No doubt you've heard your mother speak of me."
"Oh yes," responded the youth. "I heard Mr. Carew speak of you. You're president of that Transportation Company they're all so wild about."
A shade of apprehension passed over Pettus's fat, ugly face. "Carew! You've seen him? I suppose he gave me a bad name? But never mind – where will I find your mother?"
Victor didn't like the man, and he remained silent till Pettus repeated his question, then he answered, "I can't tell you where my mother is."
"You mean you won't!"
"Well, yes, that's what I do mean."
Pettus turned away. "I can find her without your aid."
"What do you want with her?"
"I want a sitting at once!"
"You keep away from her!" Victor blazed out. "I don't want her sitting for you. She's mixed up too deeply in your affairs already. Carew said – "
"I don't care what Carew said – and I don't care whether you approve of your mother's sitting for me or not. Her controls will decide that question."
He tramped out and down the stairway, and from the window Victor saw him whirl away in his automobile. "That man's a scoundrel and a slob," he said; "a greasy old slob. I will not have my mother sitting for such people. Can't I head him off somehow?"
With sudden resolution he ran down the stairway and over to the telephone booth on the corner. He got the butler at once, and was deeply relieved to find that his mother was out with Mrs. Joyce. "He can't see her before I do," he concluded, as he hung up the receiver. "I'll go over there and wait for her to return."
As he neared the house he met Leo coming out with some letters in her hand, and with the swift resiliency of youth, he asked if he might not walk with her.
"Certainly," she said; "I want to talk with you about your plans."
"I haven't any plans," he said.
"What have you been doing this morning?"
He hesitated a moment, then answered: "I've been mending that old table – I suppose you heard about my smashing it?"
"Yes; and it seemed a very childish thing to do."
"If you knew how I hate that business and everything connected with it!"
"I do, and it seems absurd to me. Your mother's life is very wonderful and very beautiful to me."
He changed the subject. "Did that man Pettus call just now?"
"Yes."
"He's a scoundrel – that chap. A four-flusher."
"What makes you think that?"
"Well, the very looks of the man."
She laughed. "He isn't pretty, but he's a very decent citizen – and has a lovely wife and two daughters."
"He's a slob – his face gives him away – and besides, Mr. Carew the other night – "
"I know," she interrupted; "Mr. Carew is sure we're all going to be ruined by your mother and the Universal Transportation Company."
"I hope you haven't put your money into anything Pettus has control of?"
"Oh, don't let's talk business on a morning like this. It's criminal – let's talk about trees and birds and flowers." She might have added "and love," for when youth and springtime meet, even on a city boulevard, love is the most important subject in the encyclopedia of life. So they walked and talked and jested in the way of young men and maidens, and Victor talked of himself, finding his life-history vastly absorbing when discussed by a tall girl with a splendid profile and a cultivated voice. He watched her buy her stamps at the drug-store, finding in her every movement something adorable. The poise of her bust and her fine head appealed to him with power; but her humor, her cool, clear gaze, checked the crude compliments which he was moved to utter. She could not be addressed as he had been accustomed to address his girl classmates at Winona.