Victor Ollnee's Discipline Part 37

These physical marvels were kept very near to him, as he sat at his desk, by minute tappings on his penholder, on his chair-back, and by fairy chimes rung on the cut-gla.s.s decanter at his elbow. At times he felt the light touch of hands, and once, as he returned to his seat after a visit to the library, he found a sheet of strange parchment thrust under his book, and on this was written in exquisite old-fas.h.i.+oned script: "_Thou hast thy comfort and thy instrument. Hold not thy hand._" And it was signed "Aurelius."

This was all very startling; but he referred it to Mrs. Ollnee herself.

To imagine it a direct message from the dead was beyond him.

At four o'clock the road-wagon brought from the station a small, alert, and business-like young fellow, accompanied by various boxes, parcels, and bags. Bartol met him at the door and took him at once to his study.

Neither of them was seen again till dinner-time.

The servants were profoundly excited by all this, but were too well trained to betray their curiosity above stairs. They knew now who Mrs.

Ollnee was, but they believed in their master's government and listened to the hammering in the study with impa.s.sive faces--while at their duties in the hall or dining-room--but permitted themselves endless conjecture in their own quarters. Marie alone took no part in these discussions, though she seemed more excited than any of the others.

Meanwhile, Victor watched and waited in a fever of anxiety for Leo's return. At five o'clock she came, but went directly to her room.

Marie met her tense with excitement. "Oh, Miss Leo, Master has asked me to sit in the circle to-night, and I'm scared."

"You mean Mr. Bartol has asked you?"

"Yes--Miss."

"Well, you should feel exalted, Marie. It will be a wonderful experience."

"I suppose so, Miss, but my hands are all cold and my stomach sick with thinking of it."

Leo laughed. "You're psychic, that's what's the matter with you."

"Oh, do you think so!"

"Let me take your hands." Marie gave them. Leo smiled. "Cold and wet!

Yes, you are _it_! But don't let it interfere with dinner. I'm hungry as a bear. Cheer up. I'd give anything to be a psychic."

"I shall flunk it, Miss; I can't go through it, really."

"Nonsense! It will be good as a play."

Half an hour later the others came in, and Leo heard Victor's voice in the hall with a feeling of distaste. She had gone out to him during that moonlit walk, and was suffering now a natural revulsion. It had not been love; it had been (she admitted) only physical attraction, and the fault, the weakness, had been hers. His presuming upon her moment of compliance was of the nature of man. It had frightened her to discover such deeps within herself. "We are all animals at bottom," she charged, in the unnatural cynicism of youth.

Notwithstanding this mood, she clothed herself handsomely in a gown which lent beauty to the exceedingly dignified role she designed to play, and so costumed went to her aunt's room to hear the news.

Mrs. Joyce was lying down, and her voice sounded tired as she said: "We were ordered out of the house at three, and have been driving ever since. Alexander, so Marie says, has had strange men working all the afternoon on some contrivance in his study. Evidently he is going to be very scientific."

Leo exclaimed with delight. "Now we'll see if these faces and forms are real or not."

"Why, Leo! Do you doubt?"

"Yes, deep in my heart I do. I cannot quite free myself from the belief that in some way Lucy produces all these effects."

"Of course she transmits them. She's a medium."

"I don't mean it that way--and I don't mean that she cheats; but somehow I never feel as if anything real came to me direct."

Mrs. Joyce did not feel able to pursue this line of argument. "What's the matter between you and Victor?"

"Who told you anything was the matter?"

"I sensed it."

"Well, why didn't you sense the cause?"

"He's a nice boy; you mustn't ill-treat him, Leo."

"Your solicitude is misplaced; you should be concerned about me."

"You? Trust you to take care of yourself! I never knew a more self-sufficient young person. I am only waiting for some man to teach you your place."

This was a frequent subject of very plain though jocular allusion between them. "A man may--some time--but not a rowdy boy. How does Lucy take the promise of a test?"

"Very calmly. She is relying wholly on her 'band' to protect her. She feels the importance of the trial, and does not shrink from it."

The Miss Wood whom Victor met as he entered the dining-room that night was precisely the young lady he had first seen, a calm, smiling, superior person who looked down upon him with good-humored tolerance of his youth and s.e.x, putting him into the position of the bad little boy who has promised not to do so again. She not merely loftily forgave him, she had apparently minimized the offense, and this hurt worst of all.

"I'm sorry not to have been able to work to-day," she said; "but I really had to go to town."

This lofty, elderly sister air after her compliance to his arm eventually angered him. His awe, his grat.i.tude of the morning were turned into the man's desire to be master. He set his jaws in sullen slant and bided his time. "You can't treat me in this way when we're alone," he said, beneath his breath.

Later he was hurt by her vivid interest in the young inventor, whom Bartol introduced as Stinchfield. He was a small man with a round, red face and laughing blue eyes, but he spoke with authority. His knowledge was amazing for its wide grasp, but especially for its precision. He guessed at nothing; he knew--or if he did not know he said so frankly.

In the few short years of his professional career he had been a.s.sociated with some of the greatest masters of matter. His acquaintances were all men of exact information and trained judgment, men who lived amid physical miracles and wrought epics in steel and stone.

Naturally he absorbed the attention of the table, for in answer to questions he touched upon his career, and his talk was absorbing. He had been a year at Panama. He had helped to survey the route for a vast Colorado irrigating tunnel, and in his spare moments had perfected a number of important inventions in automobile construction.

It was for all these reasons that Bartol had 'phoned him, urging him to come out and a.s.sist in the infinitely more important work of reducing to law the phenomena which sprang, apparently without rule or reason, from the trances of his latest and most interesting client. "Here is your chance to get a grip on the phenomena that have puzzled the world for centuries," he said.

When Mrs. Joyce asked Stinchfield if he knew anything about spirit phenomena, he replied, candidly:

"Not a thing, directly, Mrs. Joyce. Of course I have read a good deal, but I have never experimented. It is not easy to secure co-operation on the part of those gifted with these powers. The trouble seems to be they consider themselves in a sense priests, keepers of a faith, whereas I have the natural tendency to think of them in terms of physics."

Bartol, smiling, raised a hand. "I don't want the company drawn into controversy. Experts agree that argument defeats a psychic."

Mrs. Ollnee still wore the look of one who but half listens to what is said, and Mrs. Joyce slyly touched her hand with the tips of her fingers. "Do you want to go to your room?" she asked.

Mrs. Ollnee shook her head. "No, I am all right."

"We will have better results if we 'cut out' dessert," Mrs. Joyce explained to Bartol. "Over-eating has spoiled many a seance."

"Is it as physical as that?" exclaimed Stinchfield.

"I never eat when I am on a hard case," said Bartol.

Victor began to awaken to the crucial nature of the test which was about to be made of his mother's powers. This laughing young physicist was precisely the sort of man to put the screws severely on. It was all a problem in mechanics for him. Whether the psychic suffered or rejoiced in the operation did not concern him. "If she is deceiving us in any way he will discover it," the son forecasted, with a feeling of fear at his heart. "And yet how can I defend her?"

Bartol said to Mrs. Ollnee: "Would you mind dressing for the performance? I'd like you to go with Mrs. Joyce and Marie, and clothe yourself in all black if possible, so that I can say you came into my study not merely searched, but re-clothed."