In truth, Victor had not kept his head--how could he when each day
brought some new temptation, some unexpected danger, or an unforeseen
barrier? Was ever such a week of trial and perplexity thrust upon a
youth? And the worst of it lay in the fact that there were no signs of a
release from these baffling foes. Love's distress now came to add to his
bewilderment and alarm.
Leo did not appear at luncheon, and her absence gave him great
uneasiness till Mrs. Joyce explained that she had only gone to town to
fetch some needed clothing. He still carried the little breast-pin in
his pocket, but it no longer seemed the gage of a lovely girl's
affection. He began to admit that he might be mistaken, and that his
dream-woman and the jewel had no necessary connection. "One of the
servants may have dropped it there," he now admitted; "and yet how could
that be? It was under my pillow when I woke, and I am sure it was not
there when I went to sleep. Perhaps I am the one who walks in sleep.
Can it be possible that I took it from her room?"
It was all very puzzling, but he no longer possessed the fatuous
self-conceit necessary to charge Leo with such self-abandonment as the
dream and the discovery of the brooch had at first seemed to indicate.
He sat among his elders at table, silent and depressed, very far from
the triumphant mood of the morning, and yet the stream of his admiration
set toward the absent one with ever stronger current. The most important
thing in all the world, at the moment, was the winning of her forgiving
smile.
Bartol was equally distraught, and though he remained politely attentive
to his guests, he was plainly absorbed by some inner problem, and left
to Mrs. Joyce the burden of the conversation.
Mrs. Ollnee, listless and remote, glanced at her host occasionally in
the manner of one who awaits an expected sign. To her son this attitude
on her part was repellant, for he understood it to mean that she was
neither mother nor guest, but an instrument. He wondered whether Bartol
had not, by some overmastering power of the mind, already assumed
control of her thoughts as well as of her actions; and he chafed under
the pressure of his host's abstraction. "Oh, why can't she quit this
business? She must stop it!" he furiously declared.
Altogether they made a serious and restrained company, and all felt the
loss of Leo. As the meal progressed Mrs. Joyce tried to secure from
Bartol some notion of what his plans were, and he gravely replied:
"None of you must know. No one shall enter my 'ghost-room' till I am
ready for my tests. In fact, I think I shall send you all out for a
drive this afternoon so that you may not even _hear_ the tap of a
hammer."
Victor protested that he ought to study, and to this Bartol replied:
"Very well. Take a book with you, but go off the farm. I want to be able
to say that not one of the persons most interested were on the place
while my preparations were going on."
In truth, the man of law was not merely puzzled by the method of
transmitting the messages; he had been profoundly affected by the words
themselves. His wife and daughter had apparently spoken to him again,
each in distinctive way, upon matters which no one but himself could
recognize.
But it was not alone what he had himself seen and heard and felt. The
reading to which he had set himself had opened a new world of science
for him. He was amazed at the enormous amount of direct evidence
gathered and presented by careful men. Chemists applying the methods of
the retort, biologists working in their own laboratories, psychologists
and medical experts experimenting as upon a clinical subject, presented
the same or similar facts. In Austria, in Russia, in England, the
results were identical. To his mind, accustomed to sift and relate
evidence, the most convincing thing of all was the substantial agreement
of each and all of these investigators. In a certain sense the sneer of
the faithful was deserved. These men of X-ray penetration and electrical
annunciators had succeeded only in paralleling the phenomena of the
early days of the healer and the magician.
At its lowest terms--or, as some would say, at its highest terms--Mrs.
Ollnee's power was related to a sort of transcendental physics. Her
magic refilled the most ordinary block of wood or crumb of granite with
all its ancient potency. It widened and deepened the physical universe
inimitably. It discovered the human organism to be unspeakably subtle
and complicate, and made of the soul a visible demonstrable entity.
Unthinkably swift as are the vibrations of the radium ray, this
substance called the brain is capable of receiving, recording, giving
off still more intricate and marvelous motions. Of what avail to call it
"material"?
At times he glimpsed (as through a narrow opening) unknown regions of
space, not of three or four dimensions, but an infinite number of worlds
within worlds interpenetrating, undying, yet forever changing. At such
moments he perceived that the scientists of to-day were but children
groping among the set scenery of a dark stage, their text-books like
their Bibles, the records of the bewildered and stumbling myriads of
the past.
"How absurd," he said, "to attempt to make the present conform with the
past! The Hebrew scriptures, the Vedas, the Sagas of the North, are all
useful as records of the aspirations of primitive men, but the real
understanding of the universe is to be obtained now or in the future.
The present contains all that the past has possessed and more. Men are
less of the beast and more of the spirit. Their powers have intensified,
grown psychic, compelling, revealing, and yet the mystery of the
universe remains and must remain."
In such ways and others his mind ran as he read swiftly through the
wondrous record of experiments made in Rome, in Naples, in Milan. He
liked these Italians better than the greatest of the Englishmen for the
reason that they uttered no apology to the Pope. They proceeded on the
assumption that they were biologists, not priests. They had no care
whether their discoveries harmonized with some man's Bible, or whether
they did not. The question was simple: Could the human organism put
forth from itself a supernumerary hand or arm? Could it project an
etheric double of itself? Could it interpenetrate matter?
Along these lines he proposed (with Victor's aid) to study his psychic
guest. He had lost sight of the fact that he was to be her defender in
court--or if he remembered it, it was only as a secondary consideration.
He had no faintest hope of directly proving the continued existence of
his wife and children; but he could see that a demonstration of the
power of the living body to project and maintain at a distance an
etheric brain, a voice, made (by inference) a belief in immortality
possible.
This belief, this possible life of the soul, had nothing to do with the
systems of celestial cosmogony built up by the followers of Christ or
Gautama, its world was not peopled with angels, gods, or devils; it was
merely another and inter-fusing material region wherein the spirit of
man could move, retaining at least a dim memory of the grosser material
plane from which it fled. It was inconceivable, of course, when
scrutinized directly; but he caught a glint of its wonders now and then,
as if from the corner of his half-closed eye.
These physical marvels were kept very near to him, as he sat at his
desk, by minute tappings on his penholder, on his chair-back, and by
fairy chimes rung on the cut-glass decanter at his elbow. At times he
felt the light touch of hands, and once, as he returned to his seat
after a visit to the library, he found a sheet of strange parchment
thrust under his book, and on this was written in exquisite
old-fashioned script: "_Thou hast thy comfort and thy instrument. Hold
not thy hand._" And it was signed "Aurelius."
This was all very startling; but he referred it to Mrs. Ollnee herself.
To imagine it a direct message from the dead was beyond him.
At four o'clock the road-wagon brought from the station a small, alert,
and business-like young fellow, accompanied by various boxes, parcels,
and bags. Bartol met him at the door and took him at once to his study.
Neither of them was seen again till dinner-time.
The servants were profoundly excited by all this, but were too well
trained to betray their curiosity above stairs. They knew now who Mrs.
Ollnee was, but they believed in their master's government and listened
to the hammering in the study with impassive faces--while at their
duties in the hall or dining-room--but permitted themselves endless
conjecture in their own quarters. Marie alone took no part in these
discussions, though she seemed more excited than any of the others.
Meanwhile, Victor watched and waited in a fever of anxiety for Leo's
return. At five o'clock she came, but went directly to her room.
Marie met her tense with excitement. "Oh, Miss Leo, Master has asked me
to sit in the circle to-night, and I'm scared."
"You mean Mr. Bartol has asked you?"
"Yes--Miss."
"Well, you should feel exalted, Marie. It will be a wonderful
experience."
"I suppose so, Miss, but my hands are all cold and my stomach sick with
thinking of it."