"You're too fine for that," he answered, slowly. "You were made to
command, not to serve. You should be the queen of some castle."
His frankly expressed admiration did not embarrass her. She accepted his
words as if they came from a boy. "Castles are said to be draughty and
dreadfully hard to keep in order, and besides, a queen's retainers are
always getting sick, or killed, or something, so I think I'll keep on
with my training as a nurse."
"But there must be a whole lot of unpleasant, nasty drudgery about it."
"Sickness isn't nice, I'll admit, but there is no place in the world
where care and sympathy mean so much."
"You don't intend to go out and nurse among strangers?"
"I may."
"I bet you don't--not for long. Some fellow will come along and say 'No
more of that,' and then you'll stay home."
"What sort of fiction do you read?" she asked, with the air of an older
sister.
"The truthful sort. Your nursing is nothing but a fad."
"What a wise old gray-beard you are!"
He was nettled. "You need not take that superior tone with me. I'm two
years older than you are."
"And ten years wiser, I suppose you would declare if you dared."
"I didn't say that."
"No; your tone was enough. I admit you know a great deal more about
baseball than I do."
He winced. "That was a side-winder, all right. If I knew as much about
the carpenter's trade or the sale of dry goods as I do about 'the
national game' I'd stand a chance of earning my board."
"Why not join the league?" she suggested. "They pay good wages, I
believe."
He took this seriously. "I thought of that, but even if I could get into
a league team, which is hardly probable, it wouldn't lead anywhere. You
see, I'm getting up an ambition. I want to be rich and powerful."
"Football players have always been my adoration," she responded,
heartily. "You'd look splendid in harness. Why don't you go in for
that?"
"You may laugh at me now," he replied, bluntly. "But give me ten
years--"
"Mercy, I'll be too old to admire even a football captain by that time."
"You'll be only thirty-one."
She sobered a little. "Men have the advantage. You will be young at
thirty-three, and I'll be--well, a matron. No, I'm afraid I can't wait
that long. I must find my admirable short-stop or half-back, whichever
he is to be, long before that."
He changed his tone and appealed to her seriously. "Really now, what can
I do? So long as this persecution of my mother keeps up I'm in for a
share of it. I can't run away, for I promised I wouldn't. So I remain,
like a turkey with a string to his leg, walking round and round my
little stake. What would you do in my place? Come now, be good and tell
me."
She responded to his appeal. "Don't be impatient. That's the first
thing. Be resigned to this luxury for a few days. The Voices will tell
you what to do. They may be planning a surprise for you."
"All I ask of them is to quit the job and let me plan things for
myself," he slowly protested.
The entrance of Mrs. Wood, senior, ended their dialogue, and he went
away with a sense of having failed to win Leo's respect and confidence,
as he had hoped to do. "She considers me a kid," he muttered,
discontentedly. "But she will change her mind one of these days."
He spent the morning with his mother, but toward noon he grew restless
and went down into the library, wherein he had observed several bound
volumes of the report of The Psychical Society. He fell to reading a
long article upon "multiple personality," and followed this by the close
study of an essay on hysteria, and when Mrs. Joyce called him to lunch
he was like a man awakened from deep sleep. These articles, filled with
new and bewildering conceptions of the human organism, were after all
entirely materialistic in their outcome. Personality was not a unit, but
a combination, and the whole discussion served but to throw him into
mental confusion and dismay.
At lunch Mrs. Joyce proposed that they all take an automobile ride round
the city and end up with a dinner at the Club; and seeing no chance for
doing anything along the line of securing employment, Victor consented
to the expedition.
The weather was glorious, and the troubled youth's brain cleared as if
the sweet, cool, lake wind had swept away the miasma which his
experience of the darker side of the city had placed there. He
surrendered himself to the pleasure, the luxury of it recklessly. How
could he continue to brood over his future with a lovely girl by his
side and a sweet and tender spring landscape unrolling before him?
They fairly belted the city in their run, and in the end, as they went
sweeping down the curving driveway of the lake, Mrs. Ollnee's face was
delicately pink and her eyes were bright with happiness. To her son she
seemed once more the lovely and delicate figure of his boyhood's
admiration. It seemed that her death-like trance had been a horrible
dream.
The ride, the club-house, the dinner, were all luxurious to the point of
bewilderment to Victor, but he did not betray his uneasiness. He was
only a little more silent, a little more meditative, as he took his
place at the finely decorated table in the pavilion which faced upon the
water. He determined (for the day at least) to accept everything that
came his way. This recklessness completely dominated him as he looked
across the board at Leonora, so radiant with health and youth.
No one would have detected anything morbid in Mrs. Ollnee. She was
prettily dressed and not in the least abnormal, and Victor was proud of
her, even though he knew that her dresses were earned by a sort of
necromancy.
Mrs. Joyce carefully avoided any discussion of his problem, and the
dinner ended as joyfully at it began. They rode home afterward, under
the bright half moon, silent for very pleasure in the beautiful night.
The park was full of loiterers, two and two, and on the benches under
the trees others sat, two and two together. It was mating-time for all
the world, and Victor's blood was astir as he turned toward the stately
girl whose face had driven out all others as the moon drowns out the
stars. His audacity of the morning was gone, however. He looked at her
now with a certain humble appeal. His subjugation had begun.
At the house they all lingered for an hour on the back porch, which
looked out upon a little formal garden. Two slender trees stood there,
and their silken rustling filled in the pauses of the conversation like
the conferring voices of a distant multitude of infant seraphim.
"Those must be cottonwoods," Victor remarked.
"They are," replied Mrs. Joyce. "I love them. When I was a child I used
to visit a farm-house in whose yard were two tall trees of this sort,
and their murmur always filled me with mystical delight. I used to lie
in the grass under them, hour by hour, trying to imagine what they were
saying to me. Ever since I had a place of my own I've had
cottonwood-trees in my yard. I know they're a nuisance with their fuzz,
but I love their rustling."
As she paused, the leaves uttered a pleased murmur, and Victor,
listening with a new sense of the sentiment which his hostess concealed
in a plump and unimposing form, thought he heard a sibilant whispered
word in his car. "Victor," it said, "I love you."
He turned quickly toward his mother, but she seemed not to be listening,
and a moment later she spoke to Mrs. Joyce, uttering some pleasant
commonplace about the night.
This whisper was so clear, so unmistakable, that Victor could not doubt
its reality. The question was which of the women had spoken it. He had a
foolish wish to believe that Leo had uttered it. He listened again, but
heard nothing.
As he was helping his mother slowly up the stairs to her room, he said:
"This is all very beautiful, mother, but I can't enjoy it as I ought. I
feel like a fraud every time I see Mrs. Joyce handing out one of those
big bills. I suppose she can afford it, but I can't. We must get back to
the old place, or to some new place, and live on our own resources."
"We can't do that till morning, dear. Let us wait until The Voices
speak. They have been silent to-day. Perhaps they will advise us
to-morrow."
Here was the place to tell her of the whispers he had heard, but he
could not bring himself to do so.
She went on: "I wish you would repair my table, your grandfather's
table, as you promised, Victor. I don't know why, but it helps me. But
you must be careful not to use any metal about it."
"Why not?"
"Oh, that's another one of the mysteries. They seem to object to metal."
"Well, I'll get at it to-morrow," he said, and kissing her good-night,
went to his own room.
He was awake and dressed before six the next morning, and leaving a
note for Mrs. Joyce, set out for California Avenue. On the way he
dropped into a cheap cafe and got a breakfast which cost him twenty
cents. He enjoyed this keenly, because, as he said, it was in his class
and was paid for out of the money his mother had given him for his
trophy.
All was quiet at the flat, and setting to work on the table with glue
and stout cord, he soon had it on its legs. Looking down upon it as a
completed job, he marveled at the reverence which his mother seemed to
have for it, and his mind reverted to the astounding phenomena which he
himself had witnessed over its top.
Picking up one of the folded slates, he opened it with intent to see if
it held any hidden springs or false surfaces. Out fluttered a folded
paper. This he snatched up and studied with interest. It was a peculiar
sort of parchment, veined like a bit of corn-husk, and on it, written in
delicate and beautiful script, were these words: "_Go to Room 70,
Harwood Bldg., to-day. Danger threatens. Altair._"
"I wonder who Altair is," he mused, staring at the bit of paper, "and
what is the danger that threatens?"
While still he stood debating whether to go down-town or to warn his
mother, a heavy step on the stairs announced a visitor. The man (for it
was plainly the tread of a man, and a fat man) knocked on the door, but
did not pause for reply. "Are you there, Lucy?" he called, and came in.
Victor faced him with instant resentment of this familiarity. "Who are
you? What do you want here?" he demanded.
The other, a tall, clumsy, broad-faced individual in costly clothing,
seemed surprised and a little alarmed. "I came to see Mrs. Ollnee," he
explained. "Who are you?"
"I am her son--and I want to know how you dare to push into my mother's
house like this!"
"My name is Pettus," he answered, pacifically. "No doubt you've heard
your mother speak of me."
"Oh yes," responded the youth. "I heard Mr. Carew speak of you. You're
president of that Transportation Company they're all so wild about."
A shade of apprehension passed over Pettus's fat, ugly face. "Carew!
You've seen him? I suppose he gave me a bad name? But never mind--where
will I find your mother?"
Victor didn't like the man, and he remained silent till Pettus repeated
his question, then he answered, "I can't tell you where my mother is."
"You mean you won't!"
"Well, yes, that's what I do mean."