"She's a niece of Mrs. Joyce. Mrs. Joyce is the widow of Joyce the
lumberman."
"She seems to have all kinds of money." His face was thoughtful again.
"Yes, she's rich, and she has been very kind to me. She took me to
California and to Europe. She is always doing things for me. It was just
like her to come to me yesterday--she is not one to fail in time of
trouble. I don't know what I should do without her."
"She certainly is nice. What about Miss Wood? Does she believe in
your--your Voices?" He asked this without direct glance.
"Yes. She doesn't say much, but she is deeply grateful to my guides."
"She's no ordinary girl, I can see that. Is she rich also?"
"Not as Mrs. Joyce is rich, but The Voices have sort of adopted her.
They say they will make her wealthy as a queen."
"What do you mean by that?"
"They are telling her from week to week just how to invest her money."
"Do you mean to tell me that _you_ advise her how to invest her money?"
"No, I mean _The Voices_ advise her."
"Why should 'they' know anything about business?"
She became evasive. "They do! They've proved it again and again. Mrs.
Joyce's income has doubled in five years by following father's advice."
He pondered on this deeply. "I don't like that. I don't see why you or
your Voices should be valuable in that way."
"There are many things in this world for you to learn, my son," she
replied with an assumption of superior wisdom.
This nettled him. "It don't take much wisdom to know that if you go on
advising people in that way you'll get into trouble. That's what that
writer said in the paper."
She closed her lips tightly as if to keep back a cutting reply, and he
rose briskly. "Well, see here, we must put away these dishes."
She acquiesced in his postponement of the discussion, and helped him
wash the dishes and set the room to rights. At last she said: "Where is
the morning _Star_? Have you seen it?"
"There's a paper at the foot of the stairs; is that yours?"
"Yes," she replied.
"I'll get it," he said, and was out of the door and back again before
she fully realized that he was gone. He opened the twist of damp paper
with haste, fully expecting to find some new attack on "Mrs. Ollnee, the
Blood-sucker," but there was nothing. "All the same, you're not safe in
this house," he said. "They threatened to arrest you, and I don't like
to leave you here alone to-day."
"You need not worry about me," she replied, quietly. "Father will take
care of me. If he saw any real danger coming my way he would warn me of
it."
"He didn't warn you of the coming of the reporter, did he?"
"No--he had some reason for permitting this cloud to come upon me. He
knows best."
"I don't believe I'd put very much faith in 'guides' that didn't keep me
out of trouble."
"Perhaps all this is a part of our discipline. They are wiser than we. I
accept even this disgrace as a good in disguise. Perhaps it was all
intended to bring you to me."
The youth sank back again baffled by this all-inclosing acceptance.
"What do you intend to do to-day?" he asked, as she rose and walked over
to the little walnut table.
"I am going to ask for advice."
"Now?"
"Yes; and I wish you would sit with me for a few moments and see if we
cannot secure direction for the day."
He was beginning to be curious--and his desire to dig deeper into his
mother's brain overcame part of his repugnance.
"All right," he boyishly answered, but his heart contracted with sudden
fear of finding her false. "Let's see what they're up to."
"Take a seat opposite me," she said, and there was something commanding
in her voice.
Drawing a chair up to the old brown table--which he remembered as one of
the pieces of furniture in his earliest childhood home--he took a seat.
"Why do you keep this rickety old thing?" he asked, shaking it
viciously.
"It was your grandfather's reading-table, and he likes me to keep it.
Besides, it is highly magnetized and very sensitive."
"Oh rats!" he irreverently burst forth. "You can't magnetize a piece of
wood. Wood is a non-conductor. You can't subvert a physical law just by
saying so."
"I don't mean it in that crude sense," she replied, quite mistress of
herself. She had taken up and was holding between her hands a small
hinged slate.
"What's that for?" asked Victor.
"To vitalize the surface. I am able to give it vitality by my touch."
She laid the slate upon the table and placed her spread hand upon it.
"Put your hand upon mine, Victor."
He did as she bade him, rebelling at the childish folly of it all. "What
do you expect to do?" he asked.
Almost immediately the slate seemed seized by a powerful hand. It began
to slide back and forth across the table violently, twisting and
clattering. The youth put forth his own great strength and stopped it,
but a crunching sound announced that the slate was broken.
His mother said, sharply, "You mustn't do that, Victor." She took up the
slate and showed one corner crushed and crumbled. "You can't hold
it--you mustn't try--it angers them."
He marveled at the strength which had resisted him, but argued that his
mother from long practice had become very muscular. Hysterical people
often displayed astounding power.
After preparing a new slate she put it on the table as before, saying to
the air, "Please don't be rough, father--Victor can't prevent his
skepticism."
Three loud raps answered, and she smiled. He says, "All right. He
understands."
"Seems to me he's mighty touchy for one on the heavenly plane," Victor
retorted, maliciously. "Seems to me an all-seeing spirit ought to get my
point of view."
A vigorous tapping on the table responded to this speech.
"What's that?" asked Victor.
"That is your father saying yes, he _does_ get your point of view."
Victor had a feeling that his mother was receding from him as he faced
her across the table. She became the professional medium in her manner
and tone. He, too, changed. He hardened, assuming the attitude of the
scientific observer--hostile and derisive. His keen hazel-gray eyes
grew penetrating and his lips curled in scorn. His tone hurt her, but
she persisted in her sitting, and at last the slate began to tremble
throughout all its parts, and a grating sound like slow writing with a
pencil went on beneath it. Victor could plainly follow the dotting of
the i's and the crossing of the t's, till at the end a tapping indicated
that it was finished.
"You may take the slate, Victor," said Mrs. Ollnee.
He took it from the table and opened it. On one side, in bold script--a
bit old-fashioned--stood these words: "_Stay where you are. Let the boy
adventure into the city. Await results. I will be near. FATHER._"
Victor, astounded, mystified, confronted his mother with wide eyes.
"Now, what does that mean?"
"It means that I am to keep this house just as it is and you are to seek
work in the city. Is that right, Paul?"
Three taps made answer.
The youth was stunned by the boldness and cleverness of all this. He was
pained, too. He perceived no sign of abnormal thinking in his mother's
action. She was not hysterical. _She was not entranced._ Whatever she
did she did consciously--and the thought that she could deliberately
deceive him was shocking. He breathed quickly and a nervous clutch came
into his hands. He resented being fooled. "Let's try that again," he
said; and his tone was precisely that of the child who sees a grown
person swallow a coin and take it out of his ear. He was angry as well
as sad. "Don't put your hand on it," he protested. "I don't like the
looks of that."
She submitted, and then as he was putting it down on the table the sound
of writing was heard within it. He laid his hand on the slates, and
still the writing went on! With amazement he realized that both her
hands were in sight and in no wise concerned in the writing. The right
rested lightly and quietly on the frame of the slate, but the left,
which lay on the opposite corner of the table, was quivering throughout
all its minute muscles.
Amazed beyond words, excited, breathing deep, with a shudder of nervous
excitement running over his entire body, Victor listened to the mystic
pencil. "How _do_ you work that?" he asked, in a whisper.
"I don't know. I have nothing to do with it," she answered; and taking
the upper hinge of the slate between her fingers and thumb she slowly
raised it.
_And still the writing went on!_
Victor, holding his breath in awe, bent to look within, but as the
opening grew wider the writing stopped.
He snatched the slates from the table and studied the lines, which were
made up of minute dots. It was all perfectly legible: "_Son. I doubted.
Now I know._"
Victor sank back into his seat and stared speechlessly at the slate and
the table. The problem of his mother's mediumship had taken on new
elements of mystery. This physical test brought it into the range of his
knowledge and interest. It was no longer a question of her honesty or
sanity, it had become a problem in dynamics.
How was that bit of pencil moved? The messages he ignored--they didn't
matter--but the method of their production seemed to eliminate all
trickery, conscious or unconscious. Why did his mother's left hand
quiver--and how could that writing shape itself?
His voice was husky with emotion as he said: "Mother, I don't understand
that. You've got to tell me how that is done."
She felt the desperate resolution in his voice and she solemnly
answered, "My son, I don't _know_ how it is done."
"But you _must_ know! Who moves that pencil! Your hand quivered all the
time."
"Yes, I seem to have some physical connection with it--at times. Other
times all that takes place has no more connection with me than the
sunlight on the floor. The world is a very mysterious place to me,
Victor. I don't pretend to know anything. I do as I am told."
He fell silent again while his mind reviewed the entire process. Then
he burst out, vehemently, on a new line. "I can't believe my eyes.
You've hypnotized me. Mother, for God's sake don't juggle with me--don't
play tricks with me. I won't stand for it. It hurts me--" He paused,
confused, baffled, ready to weep.
"Can you, my own son, accuse me of trickery?" she asked.
"You _think_ you're honest, mother--but don't you see you've become an
_unconscious hypnotist_? It's your subconscious self deceiving us both.
I don't know how you do it, but I know it must be a fraud."
"Victor," she said, solemnly, "what this power is you shall have full
opportunity to determine, but I say to you that for more than twenty
years I've been guided by these unseen presences. I've tested their
wisdom and lived under their care. So far as this message is concerned I
accept it. I was confused and frightened yesterday, but this morning I
am calm. I shall do as they bid. I shall stay here while you go down
into the city and see what you can find to do, and together we will test
these voices."
There was a ring of new-found decision in her tone that quite dashed
him. He sat dumbly facing her, helpless in a whirl of mental storm. "Is
she more cunning than I thought? Is she playing a more complex game than
appears?" These thoughts vaguely shaped themselves. Then his filial self
answered: "But what has she to gain? She loves me. She has sacrificed
herself to keep me at school--why should she deceive me?"
Here again a third conception came to embitter him. He spoke. "You don't
seem to mind my loss of a degree?"
"Yes, I do, Victor. I feel that very deeply, but the higher wisdom of
your grandfather resigns me. I cannot tell what is behind it. By his
power to read the future he may be preventing some terrible accident,
some calamity by fire or water--I have an impression that it is
something of that sort."
"_No_," came a whisper from the air.
She turned her face upward, and, listening intently, asked, "What is the
reason, father?"
"_Discipline_," the whisper replied.
"He says 'discipline,' Victor."
"Discipline!" he echoed. "Why should I be disciplined? What have I
done?"
"_It is not what you've done--it's what you are to do._"
The Voice did not reply to further questions, and the silence gave out a
kind of cold contempt, which cut the boy as he waited.
"Let's try that slate business again," he said at last. But to this his
mother would not consent.
"It's of no use," she said. "They are gone. There is no 'power'
present."
He again faced her with alien, accusing eyes. "When will you try this
again?"
"To-night, when you come home."
"Home!" he sneered, looking about. "Do you expect me to call this place
home? Do you expect me to hang about this scrubby hole to be disciplined
by your Voices?"
The sound of a knock at the door gave her a moment's respite. "The
postman," she explained as she rose to go to the door.
She was gone for several minutes and Victor heard her in friendly
conversation with a pleasant male voice. Some way this added to his
anger and disgust.
She came back with a letter in her hand which she began at once to open.
"It is from Louise, I mean Mrs. Joyce."
She read it through with smiling face, then said, "Victor, you must be
nice to Louise, she has done _everything_ for us."
This brought him to his feet. "I understand all that now. It is _her_
money I've been living on--I won't touch another cent that comes from
her. Understand that! I won't eat another dinner that she pays for."
"Why, Victor, you should not feel that way! What has she done to make
you bitter?"
"Nothing. I refuse to live on her charity, that's all, and I want you to
find out just how much I owe her--how much _you_ owe her--for I intend
to pay her back every dollar with interest."
"But she considers I've already paid her. She feels that I have always
given her bounteous return for all her aid."
"I don't figure it that way," he said. "She's just amusing herself--"
She interrupted. "Listen to what she says." She read: "'I want to tell
you how much I like your son. He is so vivid and so powerful. I'm sorry
he is to miss his degree. Can't you persuade him to go back? I'll be
glad to advance what is necessary--'"
"There it is, you see! There's the rich lady helping a poor relation."
"Wait, son!" she pleaded, and read on. "'I feel that I owe you ten times
what you've permitted me to do for you.'"
"That's all very nice of her, mother, but I won't have any more of it."
He pounded out the sentence with his fist.
She looked up at him with mingled fear and pride. "You are exactly like
your father as you say that," she declared. "Oh, Victor, my son! If
_you_ leave me in anger I shall be desolate indeed. I can't live without
you. Please believe in me--and love me--for you're all I have on this
earth."
His anger died away. He saw her again as she really was, a pale, devoted
little saint, with troubled brow and quivering lips, one who had shed
her very life-blood for him--to doubt her became a monstrous cruelty.
He put his arms about her and hugged her close. "I didn't mean to hurt
you, mother--but your world is so strange to me. I'll stay, I'll do the
best I can here; only don't work this slate trick any more. Don't sit
for any one but me. Will you promise that?"
"May I not sit for Louise?"
"Not without me."
"I dare not promise, Victor. Father may insist. If he does _not_ insist
I will do as you wish. I will give it up."
He kissed her. "Dear little mother, you sha'n't live alone any more, and
you shall soon have a home that is worthy of you."
She was weeping, and a big lump in his own throat made speech difficult.
To cover his emotion he slangily said: "Well, now, it's me to the marts
of trade. Perhaps I'll fool The Voices yet."