Victor Ollnee's Discipline Part 21

he thought, but did not cease his watchful attention, even for an instant.

The locking of the door, the turning out of the light and the taking hands in the good old traditional way all irritated and well-nigh estranged him. Why should his life be thrown into the midst of such cheap and ill-odored drama? "This shall never happen again," he vowed, beneath his breath.

There was not much talk during the first half-hour, for the reason that Victor was too self-accusing to talk, and the others were too solemn and too eager for results to enter upon general conversation. For the most part, they spoke in low voices and waited and listened.

The first indication of anything unusual, aside from the tapping, was a breeze, a deathly cold wind, which began to blow faintly over the table from his mother, bearing a peculiar perfume (an odor like that from some Oriental rug), which grew in power till each of the sitters remarked upon it. This current of air continued so long and so uninterruptedly that Victor began to wonder. Could it be his mother's breath? If she were not fraudulently producing it, then it must be that some window had been opened. The network of her deceit--if it was deceit--thickened.

Mrs. Joyce then said, in a low voice: "We are to have celestial visitors to-night. That is the wind which accompanies the astral forms."

"Yes," said Leo, "and that perfume always accompanies Altair. Are we to see Altair?" she softly asked.

A sibilant whisper replied, "_Yes, soon._"

A moment later, another and distinctly different voice called softly, "_My son._"

"Who is it?" asked Victor.

"_Your father._"

"What have you to say to me?"

"_The power of the mind is limitless_," the whispered voice replied.

"_Matter, the strongest steel, is but a form of motion._"

"What is all that to me?" asked Victor.

"_As you think so you will be. Be strong and constant._"

The vagueness of all this increased Victor's irritation. "What about Pettus?"

The voice hesitated, weakened a little. "_I can't tell--not now--I will ask._"

What followed did not come clearly and consecutively to Victor, for Mrs.

Joyce (who was expert in hearing and reporting the whispers) repeated each sentence or the substance of it to him. But he himself heard a considerable part of it. In the very midst of a sentence the voice stopped. It was as if a wire had been cut, or the receiver hung up; the silence was like death itself.

Victor called out to his mother: "Can you hear The Voices, mother? They seem to come from where you are."

She did not reply, and Mrs. Joyce explained. "She is gone."

Again the cold breeze set in, with a strong, steady swell, and with it was borne a low, humming note, which grew in volume and depth till it resembled the roaring rush of a November blast through the branches of an oak. It became awesome at last, with its majesty of moaning song, and saddening with its somber suggestion of autumn and of death. It opened the shabby little room upon an empty and limitless s.p.a.ce, upon an infinite and vacant and obscure desert wherein night and storms contended. It died away at last, leaving the air chill and pulseless, and the chamber darker than before.

Before any comment could be made upon this astounding phenomenon, Victor perceived a faint glow of phosphorus upon the table. It increased in brilliancy till it presented a clear-cut square of some greenish glowing substance, and then a large hand in a ruffled sleeve appeared above it as if in the act of writing.

"It is Watts," whispered Leo. "He is writing for us."

Bending forward, Victor was able to read this message outlined in dark script on the glowing surface of what seemed to be the slate: "_The dreams of to-day are the realities of to-morrow._" These words faded and again the shadowy hand swept over the table, and this companion sentence followed: "_The realities of to-day will be but the half-truths or the gross errors of the future._

"_WATTS._"

Victor was strongly tempted to clutch this hand, but fear of something unpleasant prevented him from doing so. He was sick with apprehension, with dread of what might happen next. A feeling of guilt, of remorse, came upon him. "I am to blame for this!" he thought, and was on the point of rising and calling for the lights, when something happened which changed not merely his feeling at the moment, but the whole course of his life, so incredible, so destructive of all physical laws, of all his scientific training was the phenomenon. A hand, large and shapely, took up the glowing slate and held it like a lamp to his mother's face, so that all might see her. She sat with hands outspread upon the table, her head thrown back, her eyes closed. Her arms extended in rigid lines.

It seemed that the invisible ones desired to prove to Victor that his mother could not and was not holding the slate.

Swift as light the glowing mirror disappeared, and then, as if through a window opened in the air before his eyes, Victor perceived a strange face confronting him, the face of a girl with deep and tender eyes, incredibly beautiful. Her eyes were in shadow, but the pure oval of her cheeks, the dainty grace of her chin, the broad, full brow and something ineffably pure in the faintly happy smile, stopped his breath with awe.

He forgot his mother, his problems, his doubts, in study of the unearthly beauty of this vision.

Mrs. Joyce whispered in ecstasy, "It is Altair!"

The angelic lips parted, and a low voice, so gentle it was like the murmur of a leaf, replied, "_Yes, it is Altair._" And to Victor her voice was of exquisite delicacy. "_Believe, be faithful._"

No one breathed. It was as if they had been permitted to gaze upon one of heaven's angelic choir. How came she there? Who was she? Before these questions could be framed she disappeared, silently as a bubble on the water, leaving behind only that delicious, subtle, unaccountable odor as of tropic fruits and unknown flowers.

Leo, breathing a sigh of sad ecstasy, exclaimed: "Is she not beautiful?

Never has she shown herself more glorious than to-night."

Victor was like one drugged and dreaming. There was no question of his mother's honesty in his mind. He did not relate the vision to her, and he winced with pain as Leo spoke. He wished to recall the face, to hear that whisper again. The effect upon him was enormous, instant, unfolding. In all his life nothing mystic, nothing to disturb or rouse his imagination had hitherto come to him, and now this transcendent marvel, this face born of the invisible and intangible essence of the air, beat down his self-a.s.surance and destroyed his smug conception of the universe. He lost sight of his hypothesis and accepted Altair for what she seemed, a gloriously beautiful soul of another world, a world of purity and light and love.

He remained silent as Mrs. Joyce rose and went to his mother. He was still in his seat when they turned up the lights. Leo spoke to him, but he did not answer. Strange transformation! At the moment her voice jarred upon him. She seemed commonplace, prosaic, in contrast with the woman who had looked upon him from the luminous shadow.

Gradually the walls he hated, the entangling relations.h.i.+p he feared, returned upon him; and though he realized something of the revealing character of his reticence, he had not the will to break it. He watched his mother return to her normal self with such detachment that she at last became aware of it and lifted her feeble hands in search of him.

"Victor, come to me!" she pleaded.

He went to her then, still in a daze, and to her question, "Did your father come?" he replied, brokenly, "A voice came, but I can't talk about that now--I must go out into the air."

All perceived the tumult--the strange psychic condition into which he had been thrown, and were considerate enough to refrain from pressing him with inquiry. "He has been touched by 'the power,'" whispered Mrs.

Joyce to Leo. "He's under conviction."

The cool, clear air and the material rush of the city throbbing in upon his brain restored the youth to something like his normal self; but he remained silent and distraught all the way home.

As they entered the hall Leo glanced at his face with unsmiling, penetrating intensity, and in that moment perceived that Victor the boy had given place to Victor the man. She experienced a swift change of relations.h.i.+p, and a pang of jealousy shot through her heart. She realized that the wondrous spirit face was the power that had so wrought upon and transformed him. She, too, had thrilled to the mystical beauty of the phantom, and she had read in the tremulous lips the hesitating whisper, a love for the young mortal, which had troubled her at the moment, and which became more serious to her now.

They said good-night as strangers; he absorbed, absent-minded; she resentful and a little hurt.

To his mother, when they were alone in her room, he said, haltingly: "Mother, you must forgive me. I thought you did those things--unconsciously cheating--but now--I--give it up. I believe in you absolutely."

She raised her eyes to his wet with happy tears. "My son! My splendid boy!" she said, and in her voice was song.

IX

THE LAW'S DELAY

"Belief," says the wise man, "is not a matter of evidence; it is a habit of mind." And notwithstanding his confession of inward transformation, Victor found doubt still hidden deep in his brain when he woke the following morning. His conviction had been temporary.

In his musing upon Altair he began to remember some very curious details. He recalled that at first glance he had inwardly exclaimed, "How much she looks like Leo!" The lips and chin were similar, only sadder, sweeter--and the poise of the head was like hers also. But the brow and the eyes were more like his mother's. It was as though Altair were at once the heavenly sister of Leonora and the spirit daughter of his mother, and the love which lay on the tremulous lips, the deep, serious eyes, moved him still with almost undiminished power. He was eager to see the celestial face again.

He was less clear about his own physical condition at the time. He remembered feeling weak and chilled, as though some of his own vitality had gone out of his blood in the attempt to warm that unaccountable being into life. He recalled his parting with his mother as if it were the incident in a painful dream. It was all impossible, incredible, and yet--it happened!