She laughed. "Aren't you fierce! But I'll respect your prejudices so far
as an utterly unprejudiced person can."
"Do you call yourself an unprejudiced person?"
"I try to be."
"But you're not. You have a prejudice against me," he insisted, forcing
the personal note.
"Oh, you're quite mistaken," she replied; "in fact I think you're rather
nice--for a boy." And she went away, leaving him to fume under this
indignity.
Mrs. Joyce and Mrs. Ollnee came in soon afterward, and they all took tea
together quite as casually as if they were not on the edge of something
very thrilling and profoundly mysterious. Mrs. Joyce politely asked
Victor what he had been doing, but his answers were evasive. He made no
mention of Pettus, though he was burning with desire to warn her against
him.
Soon afterward they went to his mother's room, and once safely inside
the door he turned upon her. "Mother, are you going to sit for Pettus
to-night?"
"I expect him, but I'm not sitting for him specially."
"I won't have him in the circle! He is a slimy old beast. I hate
him--and Mr. Carew warned us against him. He wasn't guessing, mother, he
_knows_ that this old four-flusher is up to some deviltry. How did he
find you?"
"He called us up."
"I simply will not have him sit with you again, and you must not advise
any one to put a cent into his concern. Where are you going to have this
performance?"
"I thought of sitting here, but I need the old table. You mended it,
didn't you?"
"Yes, I mended it."
"And you had a message from _Altair_?"
"How did you learn that?"
"I felt it," she answered, gravely. "She said danger threatened--did she
tell you what the danger was?"
"No; who is _Altair_ supposed to be?"
"She is a very pure and high spirit--a girl of wonderful beauty--so they
say. I have never seen her myself--she told me to-day that she would
watch over you."
At this moment a whisper was heard in the air just above her head.
"_Lucy!_"
"Yes, father."
"_Take the boy--sit--the old place. Leave Pettus out._"
"Yes, father."
"_I will be there. Pettus is under investigation._"
"Much obliged," said Victor; and then he heard close to his ear a faint
whisper: "_Victor, you shall see me--Altair._"
He was staring straight at his mother's lips at the moment, and yet he
was unable to detect any visible part in the production of the voice.
She explained the whisper. "Altair is smiling at you. She says she will
be with us to-night."
All this was very shocking to Victor. Utterly disconcerted and unable to
confront her at the moment, he left the room. The whole problem of her
mental condition, the central kernel of her philosophy was involved in
that one whisper. To solve that was to solve it all. It was not so much
a question of how she did it, it was a question of her right to deceive
him.
He seized the time between tea and dinner to return to the library. For
an hour he dug into the spongy soil of metaphysics, and it happened that
he fell at last upon the Crookes and Zollner experiments (quoted at
greater length in a volume of collected experience) and found there
clear and direct testimony as to the mind's mastery of matter. There was
abundant evidence of the handling of fire by the medium Home, and
Slade's ability to float in the air was attested by well-known
witnesses, but beyond this and closer to his own day, he came upon a
detailed study of an Italian psychic with her "supernumerary hands," a
story which should have made the materialization of a letter seem very
simple. But it did not. All the testimony of these great men, abundant
as it was, slid from his mind as harmlessly as water from oiled silk.
Apparently, it failed to alter the texture of his thought in the
slightest degree. His world was the world of youth, the good old
wholesome, stable world, and he refused to be convinced.
At dinner he was angered, in spite of Leo's presence, by his mother's
returning confidence and ease of manner. His own position had been
weakened, he felt, by his acquiescence in the sitting. His desire to
satisfy himself, to solve his mother's mystery, had led him to abandon
his stern resolution--and he regretted it. He ate sparingly and took no
wine, being resolved to retain a perfectly clear head for the evening's
experiment. He was grateful to Leo for keeping the talk on subjects of
general interest, even though he had little part in it, and his liking
for her deepened.
As he neared the test he began to sharply realize that for the first
time in all his life he was about to take part in one of his mother's
hated "performances," and his breath was troubled by the excitement of
it. "I will make this test conclusive," he said to himself, and his jaw
squared. "There will be no nonsense to-night."
The papers of the day had remained free from any further allusion to
"the Spiritual Blood-Suckers," and it really seemed as if the cloud
might be lifting, and this consideration made his participation in the
sitting all the more like a return to a lower and less defensible
position. He was irritated by the methodical action with which his
mother proceeded to set the stage for her farce. Wood, who seemed quite
at home, assisted in these preparations, leaving Victor leaning in
sullen silence against the wall.
Mrs. Joyce took a seat directly opposite the little psychic, Wood sat at
her left, while Victor, with Leo at his right, completed the little
crescent. Mrs. Ollnee, with her small, battered table before her, faced
them across its top. Victor made no objection to this arrangement, but
kept an alert eye on every movement. He watched her closely. She first
breathed into one of the horns and put it beside her, then held one of
the slates between her palms for a little time. "I hope this will be
illuminated to-night," she said.
This remark gave Victor a twinge of disgust and bewildered pain. "She is
too little and sweet and fine to be the high priest of such jugglery,"
he thought, but did not cease his watchful attention, even for an
instant.
The locking of the door, the turning out of the light and the taking
hands in the good old traditional way all irritated and well-nigh
estranged him. Why should his life be thrown into the midst of such
cheap and ill-odored drama? "This shall never happen again," he vowed,
beneath his breath.
There was not much talk during the first half-hour, for the reason that
Victor was too self-accusing to talk, and the others were too solemn and
too eager for results to enter upon general conversation. For the most
part, they spoke in low voices and waited and listened.
The first indication of anything unusual, aside from the tapping, was a
breeze, a deathly cold wind, which began to blow faintly over the table
from his mother, bearing a peculiar perfume (an odor like that from
some Oriental rug), which grew in power till each of the sitters
remarked upon it. This current of air continued so long and so
uninterruptedly that Victor began to wonder. Could it be his mother's
breath? If she were not fraudulently producing it, then it must be that
some window had been opened. The network of her deceit--if it was
deceit--thickened.
Mrs. Joyce then said, in a low voice: "We are to have celestial visitors
to-night. That is the wind which accompanies the astral forms."
"Yes," said Leo, "and that perfume always accompanies Altair. Are we to
see Altair?" she softly asked.