"How do people get jobs," he asked himself as he set forth. "'Want ads,'
I suppose." He went deeper. "What am I fitted for? I can keep books--in
a fashion--or I can clerk. My training has not fitted me for any special
thing, unless to sell sporting-goods." This was a "lead," and his face
brightened. "My work on the team ought to help me in that direction.
Good idea! I'll hie me to the sporting-goods houses."
The first two managers with whom he talked, while much impressed by him,
were completely manned, but the third was disposed to consider him till
he told him his name. "No relation to Mrs. Ollnee, the medium?" he
asked, with a grin, while poising his pencil to write.
For an instant Victor hesitated, then took the leap. "Well, yes, I am,
but then you don't want to believe that report; it's more than half a
lie."
The manager's smile vanished. He left the address half finished. "So you
are the son they spoke of?" he said, with a cold, keen glance.
"Yes, I am," Victor boldly answered.
He closed his book. "I don't believe we can trade," he announced. "Of
course _I_ don't consider all mediums frauds and liars, but this house
is very particular about its help--"
Victor turned and walked away, bitterly rebellious of soul and
disheartened. For a time his anger burned so hotly within him that he
meditated taking the train and leaving the city and all it held behind
him. Again and again his thought returned to the picture his gentle
little mother had made as she had said good-by to him at the head of the
stairs. To accuse her of conscious deception was like accusing a sweet
girl of infanticide. How could she build up a system of fraudulent
fortune-telling, so intricate, so subtle, that it baffled the eye of the
reporter, who confessed that he had not been able to detect the
trickery. "It is only by induction, by inference, that one gets at the
_modus operandi_," he admitted.
In his perturbation he walked away to the east and soon came out upon
the lake-front. A bunch of men and boys of all types and sizes were
playing ball on the barren ground, and with the athlete's undying love
of the sport he rose and edged into the game. He could not resist
showing his prowess by means of a few curves, and the crowd with instant
perception began to take a vivid interest in him.
A half-hour of this restored his good-nature and he returned to the
canyons to the west, determined to find an opening somewhere. He was
never dismissed rudely--he was too big and well-dressed for that--but
the fact that he had no experience shut him out in most cases, and for
the rest the departments were filled with salesmen. Twice when he seemed
about to be taken on, his name and his mothers reputation shut the door
of opportunity in his face.
At four o'clock he started slowly homeward, discouraged, not so much by
his failure as by the fact that everybody seemed to have a knowledge of
the article in the _Star_. It was evident that even when a manager did
not at the moment make the connection between his name and Mrs. Ollnee's
it would certainly come out later and he would be called upon to defend
himself and his mother from the sneers and jeers of his fellow-salesmen.
"I'm a marked man, that's sure," he said, in dismay.
All day his mind had dwelt in flashes on the glorious life at Winona,
but now his memory of it was poisoned by the thought that he had been a
pensioner on the bounty of Mrs. Joyce. "The easy thing would be to
change my name and skip out for the plains," he said again, "but I
won't. I'll stay and fight it out right here some way."
He was passing the public library at the moment and was moved to go in
and look up the "want ads" in the papers. Ten minutes' reading of these
filled him with despair. There were so many wanting work! His feet were
tired with walking and his brain weary with the movement of the street,
therefore he moved on to the reference room where he found an atmosphere
of study that was very grateful.
Accustomed to work of this kind, he asked the attendant to bring him
catalogues, and was soon surrounded with books and magazines which dealt
with the modern study of psychic phenomena. He fell upon one or two of
these which gave exhaustive generalizations, and he was astounded to
find that European men of science of the loftiest type were engaged in
the study of precisely the same phenomena which his mother claimed to
produce.
Careless of all else, he remained until six o'clock absorbed and
confused by what he read. Words and phrases like "telekinesis,"
"teleplastic," "parasitic personalities," "externalized motricity,"
"bio-psychic energy" danced about in his brain like fantastic insects.
He fairly staggered with the weight of the conceptions laid upon him,
and when at last he went out into the streets he had forgotten his race
for place behind the counter.
It was nearly sunset, and his afternoon--his day--had gone for naught!
He was as far as ever from securing work--and wages--to keep his little
mother and himself from the corrupting care of charity. He was a bit
disgusted with himself, too, for wasting valuable time, and yet he was
enough of the scholar to feel a glow of delight in the company he had
been keeping. There was something large and free in the attitude of
those Italian men toward the universe, and before he had walked far he
promised himself to go again and continue that line of investigation. As
he walked up the avenue he came face to face with the dark, thin-faced
girl who had knocked at his mother's door the day before. She seemed
about to speak, but he passed her with blank look.
He found his mother at the window waiting for him, and upon seeing him
she hurried to meet him at the head of the stairs.
"What luck?" she called, with a smile.
He shook his head. "Nothing doing," and received her caress rather
coldly, for he perceived Mrs. Joyce in the room. "It isn't so easy to
find a job. I'll be lucky if I dig one up in a week, I suppose."
Mrs. Joyce greeted him cordially. "I've just been making a proposition
to your mother, Victor--I hope you'll let me call you Victor--which is,
that we all go abroad for a few months till this storm blows over."
He looked at her with gravely interrogating glance. "How could we do
that?"
She explained. "You both go as my guests, of course. We can motor
through France in June and get up into Switzerland in July."
He sank into a chair and dazedly studied her. "Why should you offer to
do all that for us?"
"Because I am very grateful to your mother for what she has done for me.
She not only cured my mother of cancer--she has cured me of despair. She
has taught me to believe again in the mystery of the world."
"You mean she has done this as--as a medium?"
"Yes--through her guides she has given me faith in the hereafter. Their
advice on a hundred different things has made life easy for me. My
wealth is largely due to the wisdom of Mr. Astor, who speaks through
her. He advises, and so does your grandfather, that I take you all
abroad this summer, and I think it a very nice suggestion."
"Oh, the suggestion came from The Voices, did it?" His voice was full of
scornful suggestion.
"Yes; but I thought of it myself yesterday as I read that terrible
article. You see, I'm told by Mr. Bartol, my lawyer, that the city
officials are about to start another campaign against all forms of
mediumship. I think it best, and so does your father, that we all leave
the city for a time, and escape this persecution."
The beleaguered youth was not a polite deceiver at his best, and this
proposal appeared to him not merely chimerical, but immoral, for the
reason that his mother must have really proposed it. Through her
uncanny power of hypnosis, of suggestion, she had put the idea into her
rich friend's head. "I won't consider any such proposition," he bluntly
answered. "I don't recognize my mother's claim. You owe her nothing. I
don't believe she can cure cancer, and she has no right to advise
anybody in business matters."
"You say that because you know nothing of the facts," Mrs. Joyce briskly
replied. "I understand your situation perfectly. Your mother has kept me
informed of her worries--she has no secrets from me--and I must say I
foresaw this antagonism on your part. I felt that you were growing away
from her, and yet The Voices advised her to keep you at school and to
say nothing. To show you how close they watch you I can tell you that
we've been informed of your whereabouts several times to-day. You met a
young man at noon, a pale, serious young man, whose name is Gilmer, who
said he would help you. Isn't that true?"