Saturday had been a strenuous day for the baseball team of Winona
University, and Victor Ollnee, its redoubtable catcher, slept late.
Breakfast at the Beta Kappa Fraternity House on Sunday started without
him, and Gilbert Frenson, who never played ball or tennis, and Arnold
Macey, who was too effeminate to swing a bat, divided the Sunday morning
_Star_ between them.
"See here, Gil," called Macey, holding up an illustrated page, "do you
suppose this woman is any relation to Vic?"
Frenson took the paper and glanced at it casually. It contained a
full-page lurid article, printed in two colors, with the picture of a
tall, serpentine, heavy-eyed, yet beautiful woman, whose long arms
(ending in claws) reached for the heart of a sleeping man. "What is it
all about?" asked Frenson, as his eyes roamed over the text.
"It seems to be an attack on a medium named Ollnee who pretends to be
able to bring the dead to life. According to this article, she's the
limit as a fraud. You don't suppose--Ollnee is an unusual name--"
"Oh, not so very. I suppose it's another way of spelling Olney. I don't
see any reason to connect old Vic with any such woman as that."
"No, only he's always been kind of secretive about his folks. You'll
admit that. Why, we don't even know where he came from! Nobody does,
unless you do."
Frensen dipped into the article. "Wow! this _is_ a hot one! Lucile has a
case for libel all right--unless the reporter happens to be telling the
truth."
"Hello, Vic!" he shouted, as a tall, broad-shouldered, but rather lean
young fellow entered the room. "Vic, you are discovered!"
"What's the excitement?" asked the newcomer.
"Here's an article in the Sunday paper you should see. It's all about a
woman namesake of yours, a medium named Lucile Ollnee. The name is
spelled exactly like yours. Say, old man, I didn't know you were the son
of an 'infamous faker.' Why didn't you let us know." His tone was
comic.
Young Ollnee took the paper quietly, but, as he read, a look of
bewilderment came upon his face.
"How about it, Vic?" repeated Macey. "You seem to be hard hit. Is she an
aunt or a sister?"
Rising abruptly, Victor left the room, taking the paper with him.
Macey uttered a word of astonishment, but Frensen, after a pause, said,
soberly, "There's something doing here, Sissy. He didn't act a bit
funny; but it's up to us to keep quiet till we know just where we stand.
If that woman _is_ related to Vic he's going to be fighting mad. I guess
I'd better go up and see how he's taking it. He certainly did seem
jolted." He turned to utter a warning. "Don't say anything to the other
fellows till I come back."
Macey promised, and Frenson went up the stairs and into the little study
which he and Victor shared in common. The windows were open and the
bird-songs and the fragrance of a glorious May morning flooded the room
with joy, but in the midst of its radiance young Ollnee sat, bent above
the fateful printed page.
As Frenson entered he raised his head. "Have you read this thing,
Frens?" he asked, tremulously.
"Part of it."
"Frens, Lucy Ollnee is my mother. This article is full of lies, but it's
based on facts. I'd like to kill the man that wrote it," he added,
savagely.
"Let me look at it again," said Frenson.
Victor handed the paper to him and sat in silence while Frenson went
over the article with studious care. It was an exceedingly able and
bitter presentation of the opposition side. It left no excuse, no
palliation for a career such as that of Lucile Ollnee.
"She is fraudulent from beginning to end," the writer passionately
declared. "From her heart outward she is as vile, as remorseless, as
mysterious as a vampire. No one knows from what foul nest she sprang.
She battens upon the sick, the world-weary, the sorrowing. Her
hokus-pokus is so simple that it would deceive no one but those who are
blinded by their own tears. She has just one human trait. She is said to
be educating a son at an Eastern university on the profits of her vile
trade. It is said that she is keeping him in ignorance of her way of
life."
Frenson looked up at his friend. "Vic, what do you know of this
business?"
"Almost nothing. I don't know very much of even my mother's relations.
The first that I can remember is our home in La Crescent. My father's
name was Paul Ollnee, but I can't remember him. He died before I was
three years old. We left La Crescent when I was about eight and went to
the city. I can't remember very much previous to that time, but after we
moved to the city I know my mother set up her 'ghost-room' again."
"Ghost-room?"
"Yes, that's what I called it. I can't remember when there was not a
'ghost-room' in our house. As far back as when I was five years old we
had it, and I was just getting old enough to wonder about it when we
moved to the city."
"What kind of a den was this ghost-room?"
"It looked like any other bright and pretty room, but I never got more
than a glimpse of it, for I was afraid of it. There was nice paper on
the wall, I remember, and a desk with books, and there were some tall
tin horns standing in the corner. Oh yes, and always an old walnut
table. There's something queer about that. I don't understand why my
mother should have taken that table down to the city with her, but she
did. It was just an old, battered-up walnut stand, and yet she seemed to
think the world of it. She put it in the center of her room in the city
just as she used to have it in our old home. Oh, how I hated that room!
There was something uncanny about it. There was always a string of
strange men and women going into it with my mother, and I was always
sent away to play when they came. Oh, Gil"--his voice broke--"she is a
medium, but she's not the awful creature they make her out."
"Of course not. We all know how these things go."
"You see, I went away to boarding-school when I was ten. This paper
says I was sent away to keep me clear of the business that went on at
home. I'm not sure but that is true, for I've seen very little of my
mother's home life since."
"Didn't you visit her during vacations?"
"No, she always came to see me, and we took trips here and there. We'd
go East, or to Colorado somewhere. Oh, we've had such splendid times
together, Gil. She brought me presents and sent me money--" He looked
out of the window for a few moments before he could go on. "And now--The
other fellows will see that article, of course."
"Yes, the whole town will be reading it in an hour. However, they may
not connect you with it."
"Oh yes, they will, and they'll believe every word of it, and they'll
understand that I am Lucy Ollnee's son. This finishes me, Gil. Everybody
will think I _knew_ how my mother earned her money, and they'll despise
me for taking it." He rose in an agony of shame. "I might as well be at
the bottom of the lake."
"Don't take it so hard, old man. You're a big favorite here," said
Frenson, with intent to offer consolation. "The work you've done on the
team will go a long ways toward carrying you through this thing. Brace
up; all is not lost."
The stricken youth was not listening. "Just think, Gil, she's been doing
all this for me! I knew she claimed to have messages, but I didn't know
that I was living on money earned in that way. You see, we own some
houses in La Crescent, and I just took it for granted that our living
came from them." He was white with pain now. "This ends my career here.
I've got to get out, and do it quick. I'll be the laughing stock of the
whole town by noon."
Frenson, deeply sympathetic, did his best to minimize the effect of the
disclosure, but with Victor's corroboration of the reporter's charges,
he was forced to admit that Mrs. Ollnee was either an imposter or a
woman of unsound mind. Little by little he drew from the stricken youth
other interesting details.
"I remember having a fight with a city boy by the name of Barker," said
Victor, "because he yelled at me 'sonova medium' till I stopped his
mouth with my fist. It seems to me as if it were the very next day that
my mother took me to Mirror Lake and put me in a boarding-school. That
fight must have influenced her. Perhaps up to that moment our neighbors
had let us alone. I can understand now why she always visited me and why
she never offered to take me to the city."
He did not say that this very aloofness had made of her, to him, a
serene and lofty figure, but so it was. She had come to him out of the
unknown distance, a mysterious queen of the fairies, with something very
sad and very sweet in her face and something very appealing in her
voice. There was nothing commonplace, nothing associated with toil or
worry in his memory of her. Her broad, full brow, her deep-blue eyes,
and her frail little body put her apart from other women. As he dwelt
now on her dignity, her loving care, his heart grew strong with
resolution. "Gilbert," he called, suddenly, "I'm going down there and
defend her from those beasts."
Frenson was not surprised. "I reckon that's your little stunt," he
retorted, student-fashion, but he was very much in earnest,
nevertheless. "I'm wondering what old Boyden will say."
Victor believed in Professor Boyden and honored him, but at the moment
the thought of facing him was painful. Boyden was one of those who
tested the human soul with the electric bell, the clock, and the
spymograph. Delusions were among his hobbies. Hysteria was a great word
with him. Man lived among appearances. Personality was not a unit, but
an aggregate, liable to disassociation, and the hysterical girl was
capable of deceiving the very elect. To him, mediumship was merely the
sign of immorality or epilepsy.
A part of this disrupting philosophy had entered Victor's head, and as
he slowly and minutely re-read that cruel newspaper analysis of his
sweet and gentle mother he was startled, but a little comforted by the
thought that she might be the victim of her subconscious self, "She
can't mean to cheat. Of that I am certain. But she needs me just the
same. I'm going to earn her living and mine in some honest way."
Two or three of his most intimate friends came up after breakfast and
started in to chaff, but, being far past the stage of evasion, Victor
frankly confessed his relationship to the medium and hotly defended her,
ending by mournfully, declaring his intention of leaving school at once
and forever.
Thereupon, his visitors also became very serious, perceiving the tumult
of doubt and despair into which he had been thrown, and one by one they
fell into awkward silence and slipped away, leaving him alone with
Frenson, who had been giving the most careful thought to the whole
situation.
"Of course the fellow who wrote this article had his own private grouch.
Any one can see that. And your friends are not going to condemn your
mother on what he says. But all the same, you're wound up pretty tight,
Vic; there's no two ways about that. According to your own statement she
does claim to hear voices, and she does claim to give messages from the
dead. Now, I'm not saying all this is impossible, but you know as well
as I do that Boyden and his kind say 'Nitsky' to the whole business."
"I don't care what she's done," retorted Victor; "she has stood by me
like a brick all these years, and now it's up to me to do something for
her when she's in trouble."
Frenson admitted that this was a human and righteous resolution on the
part of his chum and offered to help in any possible way.
Victor, too full of grief and despair to think clearly, went about his
packing with swollen throat. There was keen pain in the thought of
abandoning this bright room, of discarding all his trophies, books, and
pictures, but this he did, putting nothing into his trunk but his
clothing and a few photographs of his dearest girl friends. "What's the
use?" he said to Frenson. "It's me to the spade or the ice-tongs, now. I
won't need these things any more. It's battle in the arena of trade for
Vic from this time on."
Frenson looked around at the little library. "Well, I'll hold them
together for a while. Maybe you'll be able to come back and graduate,
after all."
"Never! Don't you see I can't take another cent of my mother's money now
that I know how it's earned?"
Frenson listened unexcitedly. "Well, now, suppose these voices should
turn out to be real? Suppose these messages have been from the dead?"
"It wouldn't make any difference."
"Oh yes, it would. At least it would to me. Scientific men have been
against a whole lot of things in the past that turned out to be true.
Natural selection, for instance, and X-rays and the wireless telephone."
"I see your drift, Gil. You want to be a comfort to me, but I've been
digging down into my memory, and I know now that my mother has been
trained into these habits, these delusions, for over twenty years. It
won't be an easy thing to get her out of them. She is as much deceived
as the rest. I am sure of that."
"Well, why don't you experiment with her? Make a test," suggested
Frenson.
"Would you experiment with your own mother?" asked Victor.
"I'd make a case out of my grandmother if as much hinged on her as
swings on this question of your mother's honesty. You can't blink these
charges, Vic, they'll have to be met if she remains in the city."
Victor sat in silence for a few moments, then broke out again. "Gil, I
begin to understand a hundred things that have always seemed queer to
me. She has kept me away from her because she _knew_ I would not
sanction her way of earning money. Why, I haven't slept in her house but
once since I was ten years old, and that was just before I entered here.
I hated where she lived; it was a ratty little hole down on the south
side, and the people with her were sloppy Sals. I refused to stay a
second night. I can see it all now. She was living there in that way to
save money for me, to keep me here. She wanted me to have just as good
a chance as any of the rest of you. This room, the clothes I have on, my
trinkets, everything came from her, and now there's no telling what may
happen to her. That article threatens all kinds of persecution. I ought
to be there this minute. I must take the very next train."
"I guess you're right there, old man. It's likely to be a pretty
exciting day for her. This article is apt to bring all kinds of trouble
to her as well as to you."
The news that Victor Ollnee was the son of a notorious medium ran
rapidly among his classmates, and while they honored him and prized his
skill on the team, they felt a certain resentment toward him. Some of
them thought he had not been quite honest with them, and a violent
controversy was thundering in the dining-room as Frenson re-entered it
at one o'clock. He took Victor's part, of course. "He can't help what
his mother's done," he argued. "He didn't choose his mother. Why slam
into Vic?"
"We aren't slamming into him. We're sorry for him," responded one of the
fellows.
"But we don't see how we can afford to have him in the frat," said
another. "He's a ripping good fellow and a wonder at the bat, but what
can we do? He should have told us about himself. The paper here says
that his mother makes a living by cheating people, by tapping spirit
wires and blowing horns and hearing voices in the dark: and all that
shady business is sure to reflect on us. He's a marked man which ever
way you look at it. You'll see everybody rubber-necking over our fence
to-day. They've begun it already."
"That's so," agreed a third man. "Why didn't he tell us the truth before
we voted him in here?"
Frenson explained. "He's been telling me all about it. He says he didn't
know his mother was earning her money that way."
"That's the part that looks queer to us," accused the opposition. "How
could he help knowing it? Looks to us as if he'd been covering it up all
along. This writer says the woman is a regular 'battle-ax.'"
The current was setting strongly against Victor, and Frenson, seeing
this, rose to go. "Well, there's no need of taking action. Poor Vic is
heart-broken over the whole business and is leaving on the three-o'clock
train."
This silenced even his critics. They began to remember what a jolly good
fellow he was, and how important his work in "the diamond" had been. It
was all very sad business, and they relented. "We don't want to be hard
on him," they said.
Frenson went up to Victor. "See here, Captain, you must be hungry. I'll
push a tray for you if you don't feel like going down among those
'Indians.' I'll have to be honest with you. They're all up in the air
down there and howling something fierce. I reckon I'd better hustle a
turkey-leg for you."
"I wish you would, Gil. I can't bear to see any one but you. If I can, I
want to sneak out and get to the train without catching anybody's eye.
All I need now is to kill that reporter. He has smashed my world, sure
thing, and I may find my poor little mother crushed under it, too." He
tore the paper into little bits, snarling through his set teeth. "The
fellows may believe what they please. I've done with them all. They're
all against me but you, I can see that."
Frenson got out his pipe and filled it while his partner raged up and
down the room. At last he said: "Now, Vickie, when you get calmed down
you just remember that you've a lot of mighty good friends up here.
There'll be dozens of them that this thing won't change a little bit.
They'll talk, but they'll be sympathetic."
Victor's wrath burned itself out at last, and he consented to Frenson's
bringing the tray of food. But he declined to go down-stairs till the
time came to start for the train.
As they were crossing the hall they met little Macey, who, with a
startled look in his eyes, intercepted Victor's passage. "I'm awfully
sorry, Vic," he began. "I wish I could do something for you."
There was something so sincere and moving in his tone that Victor's
stern mood melted. His voice grew husky as he tried to jocularly reply.
"Never mind, Sissy, I'm down, but I'm not out. Good-by till next time."
"That's the spirit," cheered Frenson from the doorway.
Out on the walk a couple of the older fraternity men stood talking in
low voices (of Victor, of course), and as they fell apart one of them
had the grace to say: "Don't stay away too long, Vic. We'll need you
Saturday."
Victor waved a hand. "I hope you'll be here when I return," he retorted;
but as he entered the hack (which Frenson had provided, as though he
were taking an invalid or a lady to the train) his composure utterly
gave way. "I could have stood it if the boys hadn't welched," he sobbed.
"But they did; you can't fool me. They threw me down hard."
"Some of them did," admitted Frenson. "But they were the hollow ones.
The solid chaps are all right yet."
"I can't blame them very much. If they believe all that stuff about my
mother and think that I knew it, why of course they're right in feeling
as they do."
At the train the loyal Frenson said, "Well now, Vic, if you need help
any time you let me know and I'll come galloping."
"That's real bold in you, Gil, and if I get where I can't see my way out
I'll shout."
And so they parted--Victor with a feeling that their companionship was
ended forever, Gilbert with a sense of having failed of his intent to
comfort and sustain.