This walk completed the severance of the ties which bound him to the university. His desire to return to his games weakened. His ambition to shine as an athlete faded. He wished to prove to this proud girl that he was neither boy nor dreamer, and that he was competent to take care of himself and his mother as well.
As they were re-entering the house, he said: "Don't utter a word of what I've told you. I'm going to test whether my mother has the power to read my mind or not."
"I understand," she returned, "and I'm glad you're going to share in our séance to-night."
He frowned. "Don't say 'séance.' I hate that word."
She laughed. "Aren't you fierce! But I'll respect your prejudices so far as an utterly unprejudiced person can."
"Do you call yourself an unprejudiced person?"
"I try to be."
"But you're not. You have a prejudice against me," he insisted, forcing the personal note.
"Oh, you're quite mistaken," she replied; "in fact I think you're rather nice – for a boy." And she went away, leaving him to fume under this indignity.
Mrs. Joyce and Mrs. Ollnee came in soon afterward, and they all took tea together quite as casually as if they were not on the edge of something very thrilling and profoundly mysterious. Mrs. Joyce politely asked Victor what he had been doing, but his answers were evasive. He made no mention of Pettus, though he was burning with desire to warn her against him.
Soon afterward they went to his mother's room, and once safely inside the door he turned upon her. "Mother, are you going to sit for Pettus to-night?"
"I expect him, but I'm not sitting for him specially."
"I won't have him in the circle! He is a slimy old beast. I hate him – and Mr. Carew warned us against him. He wasn't guessing, mother, he knows that this old four-flusher is up to some deviltry. How did he find you?"
"He called us up."
"I simply will not have him sit with you again, and you must not advise any one to put a cent into his concern. Where are you going to have this performance?"
"I thought of sitting here, but I need the old table. You mended it, didn't you?"
"Yes, I mended it."
"And you had a message from Altair?"
"How did you learn that?"
"I felt it," she answered, gravely. "She said danger threatened – did she tell you what the danger was?"
"No; who is Altair supposed to be?"
"She is a very pure and high spirit – a girl of wonderful beauty – so they say. I have never seen her myself – she told me to-day that she would watch over you."
At this moment a whisper was heard in the air just above her head.
"Lucy!"
"Yes, father."
"Take the boy – sit – the old place. Leave Pettus out."
"Yes, father."
"I will be there. Pettus is under investigation."
"Much obliged," said Victor; and then he heard close to his ear a faint whisper: "Victor, you shall see me – Altair."
He was staring straight at his mother's lips at the moment, and yet he was unable to detect any visible part in the production of the voice. She explained the whisper. "Altair is smiling at you. She says she will be with us to-night."
All this was very shocking to Victor. Utterly disconcerted and unable to confront her at the moment, he left the room. The whole problem of her mental condition, the central kernel of her philosophy was involved in that one whisper. To solve that was to solve it all. It was not so much a question of how she did it, it was a question of her right to deceive him.
He seized the time between tea and dinner to return to the library. For an hour he dug into the spongy soil of metaphysics, and it happened that he fell at last upon the Crookes and Zöllner experiments (quoted at greater length in a volume of collected experience) and found there clear and direct testimony as to the mind's mastery of matter. There was abundant evidence of the handling of fire by the medium Home, and Slade's ability to float in the air was attested by well-known witnesses, but beyond this and closer to his own day, he came upon a detailed study of an Italian psychic with her "supernumerary hands," a story which should have made the materialization of a letter seem very simple. But it did not. All the testimony of these great men, abundant as it was, slid from his mind as harmlessly as water from oiled silk. Apparently, it failed to alter the texture of his thought in the slightest degree. His world was the world of youth, the good old wholesome, stable world, and he refused to be convinced.
At dinner he was angered, in spite of Leo's presence, by his mother's returning confidence and ease of manner. His own position had been weakened, he felt, by his acquiescence in the sitting. His desire to satisfy himself, to solve his mother's mystery, had led him to abandon his stern resolution – and he regretted it. He ate sparingly and took no wine, being resolved to retain a perfectly clear head for the evening's experiment. He was grateful to Leo for keeping the talk on subjects of general interest, even though he had little part in it, and his liking for her deepened.
As he neared the test he began to sharply realize that for the first time in all his life he was about to take part in one of his mother's hated "performances," and his breath was troubled by the excitement of it. "I will make this test conclusive," he said to himself, and his jaw squared. "There will be no nonsense to-night."
The papers of the day had remained free from any further allusion to "the Spiritual Blood-Suckers," and it really seemed as if the cloud might be lifting, and this consideration made his participation in the sitting all the more like a return to a lower and less defensible position. He was irritated by the methodical action with which his mother proceeded to set the stage for her farce. Wood, who seemed quite at home, assisted in these preparations, leaving Victor leaning in sullen silence against the wall.
Mrs. Joyce took a seat directly opposite the little psychic, Wood sat at her left, while Victor, with Leo at his right, completed the little crescent. Mrs. Ollnee, with her small, battered table before her, faced them across its top. Victor made no objection to this arrangement, but kept an alert eye on every movement. He watched her closely. She first breathed into one of the horns and put it beside her, then held one of the slates between her palms for a little time. "I hope this will be illuminated to-night," she said.
This remark gave Victor a twinge of disgust and bewildered pain. "She is too little and sweet and fine to be the high priest of such jugglery," 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 space, 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-assurance 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 relationship 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 relationship, 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!
His morning mood was eager and searching. He was quite ready to see Leo, ready to talk with her of all that had taken place. Hitherto he had avoided any detailed story of his mother's evocations, but now he was violently curious to know whether or no she had ever performed these particular rites before. He wished to hear all that Leo had to say, and he was deeply disappointed when neither she nor his hostess appeared at the breakfast table.
He finished his meal hurriedly (as soon as it became evident that he was to be alone), and instead of going down-town returned to the library to re-read the famous story of Sir William Crookes and "Katie King" – every word of which had acquired new meaning to him. He thrilled now to the calm, bald narrative, reading between the lines the inner story of the great scientist's bewildered love for the stainless vision which he had evoked but could not endow with lasting life.
The boy dwelt upon the scene of their parting with peculiar pain, perceiving in it new pathos. A throb of sorrow came into his throat. Was Altair but a transitory flower of the dark – aloof, intangible, and sad? What meant the wistful sweetness of her smile? Was she unhappy in the icy realms from which she came? Did she long for human companionship? Would she come again? He found himself longing for the night and another sitting with his mother. He felt vaguely the disappointment which comes to those who listen to the messages of these celestial apparitions, so commonplace, so vaporous, so inane. "Katie King," surpassing all earthly women in her physical loveliness, brought no sentence of intellectual distinction from the mysterious void which was her home.
In the midst of this astounding narrative he heard Leo's voice in the hall, and with a guilty start put his book away and rose to meet her, remembering that he had not treated her very well after the sitting, though he could not recall the precise reason for it. Gradually her step, the sound of her voice, reasserted their charm, and he returned to the breakfast-room like a boy who has been sullen and knows it, but hopes to be forgiven.
His shamefaced entrance disarmed her resentment, and in her merry smile of greeting the dream face faded away. The marvelous vision of the night lost its dominion over him, and he became again the son of the morning.
The girl openly mocked him. "You look pale and sheepish. What have you been doing?"
"I've been reading about 'Katie King.' Do you believe that story?"
"We must believe it when a man like Sir William Crookes tells it. Do you believe what you saw and heard last night?"
"No, I don't. How can I?"
"You seemed to believe in the vision of Altair," she persisted, eying him archly. "You were carried away by her wonderful beauty. I don't blame you. Her loveliness is beyond anything on this earth. A vision like that of sublimated womanhood, purified of all its dross, is very hard on us mortals. Altair doesn't find it necessary to eat eggs and toast, as I am doing this minute. I'm a horribly vulgar and common creature I know, and I ought to apologize, but I won't. I like being a normal human being, and if you don't like to see me eat you may go away."
"I like nothing better than to see you eat, and I've just had a couple of eggs myself. I was hoping all the time you would come down and join me, but you didn't."
"I didn't get to sleep as usual last night," she confessed, with a change of tone. "Altair came to me and kept me stirred up till nearly two o'clock."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean she hung about my bed, tapping and sighing incessantly for what seemed like hours."
"Could you see her?"
"Part of the time. Finally I turned up the light and got rid of her."
He sat in silence for a few moments, then burst out wildly: "Are we all going crazy together? When I hear you talk like that it makes me angry, and it makes me sad. I never met such people before. What does it all mean? Seems like everybody around my mother is bitten by this ghost-bug."
"You, too," she accused. "You caught a little of the madness last night."
"I did, I admit it; but I'm going to throw it off. I won't have any more of it."
"Is your curiosity satisfied?"
"No, it is not; but I'm not going to desert the good old sunny world I know for the kind of windy graveyard we faced last night. Even the eyes of Altair were sad. Did you notice it?"
"Yes, I did," she admitted. "And that's one of the things I can't understand. The spirits all say they are happy, but they look wistful, and their voices indicate that they are filled with longing to return."
"I'm going to break out of this circle of my mother's converts," he passionately declared. "I've got to do it, or 'll get all twisted out of shape like the rest of you. I'm going to try again to-day to reach some man who has never heard of a psychic. I'm going to some big mill and apply for manual labor. There's something uncanny in the way I'm kept circling around mother's cranky patrons. I'll get batty in the steeple if I don't get help. Let's go out for a walk in the park. Let's forget we're immortal souls for an hour or two. I want to see a tree. Let's go to the ball game – and to the theater to-night – that'll take all the money I have left, and leave me just square with the world, so I can jump into the lake to-morrow without anybody else's money in my pocket. Come, what do you say?"
She perceived something more than humor in his noisy declamation, and accepted his challenge. "I'll go you," she slangily replied; "just wait till I get my walking-togs on."
"You've got to hurry," he warned. "I'm going to get out of this house before anything crazy happens to me. Meet me down at the corner of the boulevard."
He left the room with intent to avoid both his mother and Mrs. Joyce. At the moment he wished to remove himself from any further argument, and his longing for the trees and the park was a genuine reaction from his long stress of the supernatural. "My search for a job can go over till to-morrow," he decided.
He was sufficiently recovered from his bewilderment, his pain of the night before, to glow with pleasure as he saw Leonora swinging along toward him. "She carries herself well," he said.
She was dressed in a light-gray skirt and jacket, and her white hat had a long, gray quill which waved back over the rim, giving her the jaunty air of a yacht under reefed sail. Her face was brilliant with color, and her eyes were alight with humor. "Aunt Louise wanted to know where we were going, and I said 'St. Joe, Michigan.'"
He pretended not to see the joke. "St. Joe; why St. Joe?"
As she caught his stride she demurely answered, "If you don't know, it's not for me to explain."
"I suppose people do go to St. Joe for other purposes than marriage?"
"It is possible, but they never get into the newspapers. We only hear of the young things who beat their angry parents by just one boat." She changed her tone. "Where shall we go?"
"I don't object to St. Joe."
She pretended to be shocked. "How sudden you are! We've only known each other two days."
"Three. However, we might make it a trial marriage. You could put me on probation."
"After your display of inconstancy last night I wouldn't trust you even for a probationary engagement."
He harked back to the vision of Altair. "She was beautiful, wasn't she? Did she really exist, or was it merely some sort of hallucination?"
"I thought you weren't going to discuss these subjects?"
He assented instantly. "Quite right. Give me a crack on the ear every time I break out. I wish I were a robin. See that chap on the lawn! His clothes grow of themselves, and as for food, all he has to do is to tap on the ground, and out pops a worm."
"I prefer roast beef and asparagus tips; and as for wearing the same feathers all the time – horrible!"
In such wise they talked, touching lightly on a hundred trivial subjects, yet carrying the remembrance of Altair as an undertone to every word. They walked up the boulevard to the Midway, then through the park to the lagoon, and the sight of the water cheered Victor. "A boat!" he cried. "Us for a boat-ride."
He was a skilled and powerful oarsman (she had never seen his equal), and his bared arms, the roll of his splendid muscles, were a delight to her eyes.
He exulted as the water cried out under the keel. "This is what I needed. I've been without a chance to kill something, or beat somebody, for three or four days. I am cracking for lack of exercise. Walking isn't exercise."
The heavy boat, under his sweeping strokes, cut through the water like a canoe, and the girl on the stern seat watched him with dreaming eyes, her air of patronization lost in contemplation of his skill, her hands on the tiller-rope, her attitude of ease and irresponsibility typifying the American woman, just as his intense and driving action represented the American man.
He traversed the entire length of the lagoon before his need of muscular activity was met; then they drifted, exclaiming with pleasure over the charming vistas which every turn of their boat afforded. The catbirds were singing in the willows, and the banks were white and yellow with flowering shrubs, and over all the clear sunlight fell in cascades of gold. The wind was from the lake, cool but not chill; and every leaf glistened as if newly burnished. The day was perfect spring, and under its influence the two beings, young and ardent, inclined irresistibly toward each other.
The girl, who, up to this moment, had been indifferent, not so say scornful, of the advances of men, gave herself up to the pleasure which the companionship of this young giant afforded her. Altair and all that she represented were very far and faint, dimmed, burned away into nothingness by the vivid sun of this entrancing day.
For hours they explored the lagoons, talking nonsense, the divine nonsense of youth, or sitting idly and gazing at each other with the new-born frankness of lovers. At last she said, "I'm hungry, aren't you?"
"As a wolf," he responded.
"Shall we go home?"
"Home? I have no home. No, let's camp right here in the park. There must be a lunch counter somewhere."
"There's something better than a lunch counter. There's the German Building."
"I'll stand you for a beer and sandwich," he shouted. "Show it to me."
Returning the boat to the landing, he paid his fee with a satisfied smile. "I never gave up forty-five cents with better grace in my life," he said to her.
She led the way to the café in the German Building, and there they ate and drank in modest fashion, while he expressed his gratitude for her guidance. "I owe you all I've got," he declared, displaying his little handful of money. "You've shown me another side of the city's life. It isn't so bad, this wild life of Chicago. We'll come again. Will you come again?" He bent a frankly pleading gaze upon her.
"Indeed I will. I love it here; but Aunt Louise prefers to ride about in the car. However, you haven't seen all the park yet. You must see the prairies at the south end, and the Spanish caravels, the convent – all the marine side of it. Let's walk down the beach."
He was glad to accept her guidance in this matter also, and they set off down the curving walk, slowly, as if they found each new rood of ground more enjoyable than that already traversed. He had a feeling that nothing so sweet, so perfect as this day's companionship could ever again come to him, and he lingered over each view as if determined to extract its every possible phase of enjoyment, and when two paths presented themselves, he shamelessly advised taking the longer one. So they came to The Old Convent, to The Caravels in The South Lagoon, and at last to The Sand Hills. This was the climax of their walk. These dunes were so different from anything he had ever seen, so remote, so suggestive, and so flooded with the light of his own growing romance, that they seemed of another and strangely beautiful land.
Taking seats upon the grass in the sunlight, which was just warm enough to be delightful, they absorbed the scene in silence, entranced by the sails, the far water-line, the sun, the wind, and the fluting of the birds. The few people who drifted by were unimportant as shadows; and Leo took no thought of time till a cloud crossed the sun and the wind felt suddenly chill; then she rose. "We must go home, or they'll certainly think we've gone to St. Joe."
He returned to his jocular mood. "If I had ten dollars I'd ask you 'why not?'"
"I wouldn't consent if you had a million."
He pretended to be astonished. "You would not? Why?"
"Because I believe in the pomp and circumstance of matrimony. No runaway marriages for me! When I marry, it shall be in a vast cathedral, with a mighty organ thundering and a long procession of awed and shivering brides-maids."
"I'm sorry your tastes run in that way. I don't, at this time, feel able to gratify them."
"Nobody asked you, sir," she said; then looking about her, she sighed deeply. "I hate to leave this place. It seems as though it could never be so beautiful again. Haven't we had a heavenly day?"
"I dread going back to the town, for then my needs and all my life problems will swarm."