"So I understand. Nevertheless, this is something more than trance. So
far as I can determine, this body is without a tenant."
"The tenant may come back," she insisted.
He looked away. "I know your faith, but I am quite sure all is over.
_Rigor mortis_ has set in."
She rose emphatically. "I have a feeling that you are both mistaken. Let
me see her. Come, Victor, why do you shrink? It is but her garment lying
there."
She led the way to the bedside and laid her warm, plump hands on the
pale, thin, cold, and rigid fingers of her friend. She stooped and
peered into the sightless visage. "Lucy, are you present? Can you see
me?"
Doctor Sill then said: "The eyes alone puzzle me. The pupils are not
precisely--"
"If there is the slightest doubt--" Mrs. Joyce began.
"Oh, I didn't mean to convey that, Mrs. Joyce. I was merely giving you
the exact point--"
"She shall lie precisely as she is till to-morrow," announced Mrs.
Joyce, firmly. "I have an 'impression' that she wishes to have it so.
Will you permit this?" She confronted the two physicians. "Will you wait
till to-morrow before reporting?"
Doctor Eberly considered a moment. "If you insist, Mrs. Joyce, and if it
is Mr. Ollnee's wish--"
"Yes, yes," Victor cried, "I've heard of people being buried alive. It
is too horrible to think about! Leave us alone till to-morrow."
The physicians conferred apart, and at last Eberly turned to say: "It
seems to us a perfectly harmless concession. We will not report the case
till to-morrow. Doctor Sill will call in the morning and decide what
further course to take."
"Thank you," repeated Mrs. Joyce.
After the doctors had gone she turned to Victor, saying: "There is
nothing for us to do now but to wait. If Lucy has gone out of her body
forever she will manifest to us here in some familiar way. If she
intends to return she will revive the body and speak from it sometime
between now and dawn."
"She seems to sleep," he said; and now that his awe and terror were
lessened by his hope, he was able to study her face more exactly. "How
peaceful she seems--and how little she is!"
"A great soul in a dainty envelope," Mrs. Joyce replied. "Would you mind
taking my car and going to my home to tell Leonora where I am? I wish
also you would bring Mrs. Post, my seamstress, back with you. She's a
good, strong, kindly soul and will be most helpful to-day."
He consented readily and went away in the car, with the bright spring
sunlight flooding the world, feeling himself snared in an invisible
net. All thought of leaving the city passed out of his mind. He thought
only of his mother and of her possible revivification. "I will fight the
world here if only she will return," he said.
It seemed years since the ball game of Saturday wherein he had taken
such joyous and honorable part. At that time his universe held no
sorrow, no care, no uncertainty. Now here he sat, plunged deep in
mystery and confusion, face to face with death, penniless, beleaguered,
and alone.
"What would I do without Mrs. Joyce?" he asked himself. "She is a
wonderful woman." Strange that in a single hour he should come to lean
upon her as upon an elder sister.
He suddenly remembered that she had probably come away from home without
her breakfast, and that she would find not so much as a crust of bread
in his mother's kitchen, and the thought made him flush with shame.
"What a selfish fool I am," he said, and seized the speaking-tube with
intent to order the chauffeur to turn, but, reflecting that it would
take only a few minutes longer to go on, he dropped the mouth-piece and
the machine whirled steadily forward.
As he ran up the wide steps Leonora opened the door for him, looking
very alert and capable, her face full of wonder and question. "How is
your mother?" she quickly, tenderly, asked.
He choked in his reply. "The doctors say she is--dead, but your aunt
insists that it is only a trance." He turned away to hide his tears. "I
am hoping she's right, but I'm afraid that the doctors--"
"Is there anything I can do?" she asked, her voice tremulous with
sympathy.
"Yes, if you will please send Mrs. Post, the seamstress, over with me.
We have no one in the house, and Mrs. Joyce needs help."
"I will go, too," she responded, quickly. "Please be seated while I call
Mrs. Post. Have you had breakfast?"
"Yes; but Mrs. Joyce has not, and I'm afraid there isn't a thing in our
house to eat."
"I'll take something over," she replied, and hastened away.
He did not sit, he could not even compose himself to stand, but walked
up and down the hall like a leopard in its cage. Now and again a
liveried servant passed, glancing at him curiously, but he did not mind.
Mingled with other whirling emotions was a feeling of gratitude toward
Leonora, whose air of conscious superiority had given place, for the
moment, to exquisite gentleness and pity. She soon had the seamstress
and some lunch bestowed in the car. "We are ready, Mr. Ollnee," she
called.
She said very little during their ride. Occasionally she made some
remark of general significance, or spoke to Mrs. Post upon the duties
which she might expect to meet, and for this reserve Victor was
grateful. She understood him through all his worry. Though he did not
directly study her, he was acutely conscious of her every movement. Her
unruffled precision of action, her calmness, her consideration for his
grief appealed to him as something very womanly and sweet.
His mother's neighbors had been aroused to a staring heat of interest,
and from almost every window curious faces peered. Victor perceived and
resented their scrutiny, but Leonora seemed not to mind. She alighted
calmly and carried the basket of lunch in her own hands to the stairway,
though she permitted Victor to lead the way.
Mrs. Joyce met them with a grave smile. "You are prompt. I am glad to
see you, Leo, and you, too, Mrs. Post. We have a long watch before us."
* * * * *
It was a singular and absorbing vigil to which Victor and the three
women now set themselves. While Greek and Italian hucksters lamentably
howled through the alleys and the milk-wagons and grocers' carts
clattered up the streets, they waited upon the invisible and listened
for the inaudible--so thin is the line between the prosaic and the
mystic!
Each minute snap or crackle in the woodwork was to Mrs. Joyce a sign
that the translated spirit was struggling to manifest itself; but the
seamstress, stolid with years of toil and trouble, sat beside the bed
with calm gaze fixed upon the small, clear-cut face half hid in the
pillows, as if it mattered very little to her whether she watched with
the dead or sewed robes of velvet for the living. "It's all in the day's
work," she was accustomed to say.
Leo, with intent to comfort Victor, told of several notable cases of
"suspension of animation" with which the literature of the Orient is
filled, and Victor took this to be, as she intended it to be, an attempt
to comfort and sustain.
At times it seemed that he must be dreaming, so unreal was the scene and
so extraordinary was the composure of these women. They had the air of
those who await in infinite calm leisure the certain return of a friend.
Now and again Mrs. Joyce rose and looked down upon the motionless form,
and then perceiving no change resumed her seat. From time to time
intruders mounted the stairs, knocked, and, getting no reply, tramped
noisily down again.
Victor was all for throwing things in their faces, but Mrs. Joyce
interposed. When he looked from the windows he saw grinning faces turned
upward, and waiting cameras could be seen on the walk opposite, ready to
snap every living thing that entered--or came from--the house. In truth,
Victor and his friends were enduring a state of siege.
At last Mrs. Joyce said: "Nothing is gained by your staying here,
Victor. Why don't you go for a ride in the park? Leo, take him down to
the South Side Club."
Victor protested. "I cannot go for a pleasure trip at such a time as
this. It is impossible!"
She met him squarely. "Victor, death to me is merely a passing from one
plane to another. Besides, I don't think your mother has altogether left
us. But if she has, you can do no good by remaining here. Mrs. Post and
I are quite sufficient. It is a glorious spring day. I beg you to go out
and take the air. It will do you infinite good."
"If there is nothing I can do here then I ought to resume my search for
work," he replied, sturdily. "Now that I cannot take my mother away with
me, there is nothing for me to do but to find employment here and face
our enemies as best I can."
She opposed him there also. "Don't do that--not now. Wait. I have a
plan. I'll not go into it now, but when you come back, if there is no
change, we will all go home and I will explain."
The young people had risen and were starting toward the door when an
imperative, long drawn-out rapping startled them.
"That's no reporter's rap. There is authority in that," remarked Mrs.
Joyce, as she hurried to the door.
A very tall man with a long gray beard stood there. "Good-day, madam,"
he began, in a husky voice. "I hear that my friend, Mrs. Ollnee, is
sick, and I've come to see about it. I'm her friend these many years and
of her faith, and I think I can be of some assistance."
Mrs. Joyce dimly remembered having seen him in the house before, so she
replied, very civilly, "Mrs. Ollnee lies in what seems to be deep
trance, although the doctors say that life is extinct."
"Will you let me see her?" he inquired. "I know a great deal about these
conditions. My daughter was subject to them."
"You may come in," she said, for his manner was gentle. "This is her
son, Victor."
Victor was vexed by the stranger's intrusion, but could not gainsay Mrs.
Joyce.
"My name is Beebe, Doctor Beebe," he explained. "Mrs. Ollnee has given
me many a consoling message, and I believe I've been of help to her.
You're her son, eh?"
"I am," replied Victor, shortly.
"You were the vein of her heart," the old man solemnly assured him. "Her
guides were forever talking of you. And now may I see her?"
Mrs. Joyce, after a moment's hesitation, led him to the door of the room
and stood aside for him to enter. After looking down into the silent
face for a long time he asked, in stately fashion, "May I make momentary
examination of the body?"
Mrs. Joyce glanced at Victor. "I see no objection to your feeling for
her pulse or listening for her breath."
"I wish to lift her eyelids," he explained.
"You must not touch her!" Victor broke forth. "Two doctors have examined
her already. Why should you?"
"Because I, too, am one of the mystic order. I am a healer. Life's
mysteries are as an open book to me."
As he spoke a folded paper appeared to develop out of thin air above the
bed, and fell gently upon the coverlet.