VI

SERVISS LISTENS SHREWDLY

Meanwhile Morton, with an armful of the publications of "The Society

for Psychical Research" before him, was busied with the arguments of

the spiritists and their bearings on Viola Lambert's case.

The thing claimed--that the dead spoke through her--he could not for a

moment entertain. Such a claim was opposed to all sound thinking, to

every law known to science--was, in short, preposterous.

He had acquired all the prejudices against such a faith from Emerson's

famous phrase, "rat-hole philosophy," down to the latest sneer in the

editorial columns of _The Pillar_, to the latest "exposé" in _The

Blast_. Upon the most charitable construction, those who believed in

rappings, planchettes, materialized forms, ghosts, messages on slates,

and all the rest of the amazing catalogue, were either half-baked

thinkers, intellectual perverts, or soft-pated sentimentalists, whose

judgment was momentarily clouded by the passing of a grief.

"And yet," said one author, "go a little deeper and you will find in

the very absurdities of these phenomena a possible argument for their

truth. A manufactured system would be careful to avoid putting

forward as evidence a thing so childish and so ludicrous as a spirit

tipping a table, writing in a bottle, or speaking through a tin horn.

Who but a childlike and trusting soul would expect to convince a man

of science of the immortality of the soul by causing a message from

his grandfather to appear in red letters on his arm? The hit-or-miss

character of all these phenomena, the very silliness and stupidity

which you find in the appeal, may be taken as evidence of the

sincerity of the psychic."

To this Morton took exception. "I don't see that. There has never been

a religion too gross, too fallacious, to fail of followers. Remember

the sacred bull of Egypt and the snake-dance of the Hopi. The whole

theory, as Spencer says, is a survival of a more primitive life and

religion."

Finding himself alone with Weissmann during the afternoon, he said,

carelessly:

"If you were called upon to prove the falsity or demonstrate the truth

of the spiritualistic faith--how would you set to work?"

Weissmann was a delicious picture as he stood facing his young

colleague. He was dressed to go home, and was topped by a low-crowned,

broad-brimmed, black hat, set rather far back on his head, and

floating like a shallop on the curling wave of his grizzled hair. His

eyebrows, gray, with two black tufts near the nose, resembled the

antennæ of a moth. His loose coat, his baggy trousers, and a huge

umbrella finished the picture. He was a veritable German professor--a

figure worthy of _Die Fliegende Blätter_.

"I can't say exactly," he replied, thoughtfully. "In general I would

bring to bear as many senses as possible. I would see, I would hear, I

would touch. I would make electricity my watch-dog. I would make

matter my trap."

"But how?"

"That, circumstances would determine. My plan would develop to fit the

cases. I would begin with the simplest of the phenomena."

"Do you know Meyers's book?"

"Bah! No."

"And yet they say it is a careful and scientific study."

"They say! Who say?"

Serviss smiled. "The spiritualists." Then lightly added: "What would

you and the rest of the scientific world do to me if I should go into

this investigation and come out converted?"

The old man's eyes twinkled and his mustache writhed in silent

enjoyment. "Burn you alive, as we did Bent and Zöllner."

"Of course you would. What you really want me to do is to go in and

smash the whole thing, eh?"

"That's about it."

"Clarke, that crazy preacher, said we men of science were just as

dogmatic in our way as the bishops, and I begin to think he's right.

We condemn without investigation--we play the heretic, just as they

did. Could you--could any man--go into this thing and not lose

standing among his fellows?"

"No." The old figure straightened, and his mustache bristled sternly.

"No; he who goes into this arena invites a kind of martyrdom--that is

also why I say you, a _young_ man--you might live to see your

vindication, but I would die in my disgrace as Zöllner did."

So they parted, Serviss admiring his chief's blunt honesty and vast

learning, Weissmann busy with the thought that his eyes were failing,

and his work nearly done, "and so little accomplished," he sadly

added.

Kate met her brother at the door in a kind of fury. "Something must be

done for that girl. I have had a perfectly nerve-racking time. We must

get her out of that house before they drive her crazy."

The sincerity of her rage froze the smile on his face. "Is it as bad

as that?"

"It is as bad as you can imagine. That man Clarke has some kind of

baneful influence over her. He seems able to control her by just

waving his hand at her. And the mother is such a dear old silly--she

trusts to him completely. But go and dress and we will talk it all

over. I'm all of a-tremble yet with what I've seen. I feel as if I had

been to an insane asylum and witnessed a strangling."

He went away to his room, deeply perturbed, resentful of all this

ill-regulated human nature which could so upset his sane sister and

come between his own mind and his work. He believed in orderly and

humorous human life. Why should this teasing, tormenting girl from the

mountains come with her trances and tricks to make life furious and

antic where it had been amusing and accountable? To what would a

closer acquaintance lead? What would become of his studies if he gave

himself to her case? "To disillusionment, I sincerely hope," he said.

As he joined his sister at dinner, he began, "Well, now, sis, I'll

listen."

Kate had lost a little of her excitement under the influence of her

toilet-table, but she was still tense and flushed, as she hesitated,

her heart overflowing with sisterly admiration, so handsome, so

strong, and so very established did Morton appear at the moment. His

tone still further calmed and reassured her, and she began:

"In the first place, I like the girl very much; she is very pretty and

much more _au fait_ than you had led me to suppose. Her manner is

extremely good. The mother is dear and sweet, but deluded. Clarke and

that old man Pratt ought to be in an asylum--or the calaboose."

Morton laughed harshly. "Your succinct statement puts me in complete

possession of the case. They're all fakirs together."

"No, I didn't mean that. They're all fanatics. You should see the

spirit-paintings and the slate-writings in that house! It was like a

journey to a far country. Really, Morton, it staggers belief to think

that within twenty blocks of where we sit such a man and such a home

can exist. They _do_ exist, and it only makes me realize how small a

part of the city we know, after all. And some things I heard there

to-day make me wonder if science _isn't_ shutting its eyes--as these

people say--to a world right under its nose. Morton, those people

_believe_ what they talk. That girl is honest; she may be

self-deceived, but her sufferings are real. I can't believe that she

is wicked."

"Weissmann practically advised me to go into a study of these morbid

conditions."

"He did? Well, that from Rudolph Weissmann, after what I've _seen_

to-day, unsettles my reason. Maybe those people really have a message.

But, Morton, you really must do something for that girl. Her condition

is pitiful. One of the plans of that lunatic Clarke is to issue a

challenge to the world of science and to throw that girl into the

arena for you scientists to tear."

Morton started--stared. "No! Not a public challenge."

"Isn't it pitiful? Yes, he's going to speak on the second of next

month at the Spirit Temple, and he's going to publicly describe

Viola's powers, and, as her manager, challenge the world to prove her

false."

As Morton's mind flashed over the consequences of this challenge, his

face paled. "Good God, what an ordeal! But the girl, does she

consent?"

"She does and she doesn't. As a sweet, nice child she shrinks from it;

but as a 'psychic,' as they call her, she has no choice. These inner

forces seem able to take her by the throat any minute. They seized

her while I was there. Morton, she impersonated Aunt Dosia, and

delivered the most vindictive message--she scared me blue. You never

saw anything more dramatic--more awful."

"What was the message?"

"Something about a debt she wanted us to pay. She was furious about

it. I don't know of any debt; do you?"

"No. How did the message come?"

As Kate described it, the impersonation grew grotesque, lost much of

its power to horrify, and Morton, though he writhed at thought of the

girl's depravity, blamed the mother and Clarke for it. Kate made end

by saying: "It _was_ horrible to see, and it startled me. Then the

other messages, those written ones, came through her hand--"

"Automatic writing, they call it. That has no value--none whatever.

The whole programme was arranged for your benefit."

"No, it wasn't. The girl was carried out of herself. She is somehow

enslaved by Clarke, and she wants help. She wants to be investigated;

but she wants it done privately. She wants you to do it. She begs you

to do it."

"Begs me?" His eyebrows lifted.

"Yes, she passionately desires your advice. The poor thing made an

appeal that would have touched your heart. She wants to be cured of

this horrid thing--whatever it is. She wants to escape from Pratt and

Clarke and all the rest of those queer people. You must take it up,

Morton. _You_ must make up a committee and take charge of her."

"Clarke is mad. No reputable man of science will go on such a

committee. The girl will fall into the hands of notoriety-seekers--men

of position do not meddle with such questions."

Kate flared forth. "Why don't they? It is their duty just as much as

it is Viola's duty to offer herself. That is where I lose patience

with you men of science. Why _don't_ you meet these people half-way?

Women wouldn't be such bigots--such cowards. If you don't help this

poor girl I'll consider you a bigot and coward with the rest."

"Your whole position is most feminine," said Morton, arguing as much

against himself as against Kate. "You've only seen this girl once--you

have witnessed only one of her performances, and yet you are ready to

champion her before the world. I wish you'd tell me how you arrived at

a conviction of her honesty. Think of it! She assumes to be the

mouth-piece of the dead. The very assumption is a discredit."

"I don't care; she has good, honest, sweet eyes."

"I bow to the force of the eyes, but over against her claim I put the

denials of science. The phenomena these fanatics base their hopes upon

science has already proven to be tricks, illusions, deceits."

"I don't care, her story, her own attitude towards the thing,

convinced me that she is _honest_."

"It's the rogue who looks like a gentleman who runs the longest race."

"Well," ended Kate, rather helplessly, "see her--see her before you

condemn her."

"But I _have_ seen her--I've spent more days in her company than you

have hours."

Kate looked at him with new interest. "You didn't tell me that before.

You said you'd met her casually."

"She is enormously interesting, but"--his voice changed to earnest

protest--"but, Kate, the thing the girl claims to be is out of key

with all organized human knowledge. It is a survival of the past. It

belongs to a world of dreams and portents. It is of a piece with the

old crone's tales, fortune-telling, palmistry, and all the rest of the

hodge-podge or hocus-pocus which makes up the world of the unlearned.

I've given a great deal of thought to her fate. My heart bleeds for

her, but what can I do? She really needs the care of a great

physician, like Tolman. She should be snatched from her unwholesome

surroundings and sent away to Europe or back to her hills. When I saw

her last she was as sweet and blithe as a bobolink--we were on the

trail together, so far above the miasma of humankind that her girlhood

seemed uncontaminated by any death-affrighted soul. Why don't she go

back? She is vigorous and experienced in travel. Her step-father is

not poor; he is rich. Why don't she pull away and go back to her

valley?"

"Do you know what a 'control' is?"

"I believe that is the name they give the particular spirits which

assume to advise and guide a medium. Why?"

"Well, that poor thing is in mortal terror of her 'control,' who is

her grandfather. She was quite defiant till Clarke reminded her that

her guide would cut her down in her tracks if she refused. Then she

wilted--went right off into death-like sleep. It was pitiful to see

her. Clarke was terrible when he said it--he is a regular Svengali, I

believe, and the mother is completely dominated by him. One of the

spooks is her own father, the other her first husband. It seems that

they are willing to sacrifice the girl to _their_ science, for it

seems they are leagued to dig a hole through to us from their side,

and Viola is their avenue of communication. Then, too, the girl

believes in it all. She rebels at times, but she has been having these

trances ever since she was ten years old." As the memory of the

mother's tale freshened, Kate changed her tone. "You needn't tell me,

Morton Serviss, that these people are frauds. They may be mistaken,

but they're horribly in earnest. They believe in those spirits as you

do in germs, and Viola is absolutely helpless in their hands, if you

can say they have hands. They can throw her into a trance at any

moment. They've made her life a misery. She is absolutely enslaved to

them."

"That, too, could be a delusion--medical science is full of cases of

auto-hypnotism."

"Viola Lambert is not a medical case. It's astonishing what a

blooming beauty she is in the midst of it all. In fact, her health

gives Clarke and the mother an argument--they say 'it hasn't hurt her,

you see.' But what future has the poor girl? Think of going through

life in that way!"

Morton's eyes were sad as he said: "Her future is a dark one, from our

point of view, but she may be earning a crown to be given in the land

of shadows. She is beautiful, but it is the beauty of a blighted

flower."

Kate regarded him with affectionate eyes. "I don't wonder that she has

bewitched you, Morton. She can never be anything to you, of course.

But we must help her, just the same, and I confess I am crazy to see

one of her 'performances,' as you call them." Her face lightened. "How

would it do to invite them to dinner and have a séance afterwards? You

could judge then of her truth."

"Sacrifice her to make _our_ holiday, eh? Kate, I thought better of

you than that. Isn't that precisely the poor girl's complaint that

everybody wants to use her as a sort of telephone connection with the

other world? No. If you invite her here, receive her as a lady, not as

a pervert. But, now, let us see. You say Clarke is going to issue his

challenge soon?"

"On the second."

"And that she has consented?"

"Consented? Poor thing, she has no choice."

"If he issues that challenge, she is lost." His brows knitted. "To

defy the world of science in that way will make her fair game for

every charlatan in the city. The press will unite to destroy her. I

will see Clarke and Pratt myself. For the sake of their own cause they

must not enter on such a foolish plan. Unless this life has already

eaten deep into the essential purity of the girl's nature, she will be

corrupted. This public-test business will drive her into all kinds of

artifices and shifts. Her exposure will be swift and sure. Yes, I will

see Clarke. If necessary I will undertake to secure a purely private

investigation of her claims--"

Kate rose and came round to his chair. "Will you? Oh, that will be

good of you, Mort. I can't begin to tell you how that girl's face has

worked on me to-day. I feel that it would be criminal in you not to do

something when she expects it of you. She looks to us to save her. She

passionately desires your help. Go over there to-morrow. Don't delay;

they may issue that challenge any minute. Clarke was angry and alarmed

at my attitude, and may send out the notice to-night. Do go, Morton.

You can't afford to stand on ceremony when a soul is in danger."

He rose. "Very well, I will go; but I never embarked on an enterprise

that seemed more dangerous, more futile. My heart says go, but my

reason is against it."

"Follow your heart in this instance."

"If I did that wholly, I would go straight to this dragon's den and

snatch the fair maiden home to my castle."

"That would be romantic, but a little too daring, even for my

enthusiasm."

"You may be reassured. No one really follows the heart in these

days--at least, those who do land in jail Of the almshouse."

As he lit his cigar he observed that his hand trembled. For the first

time in his life his nerves were over-charged and leaping with

excitement just above control.

VII

THE SLEEPING SIBYL

The following evening, after much debate with himself, Serviss,

armored in scientific reflection, set forth towards the unknown

country wherefrom his sister had brought report of a maiden dwelling

in the power of giants, pitiably ensnared by evil-minded enchanters.

The errand, in Kate's mind, was as chivalric as any of the olden time,

but the knight's progress was lit by the green and red lamps of trade,

and threaded only the brazen jungles of traffic. For dragons he had

but the overhead monsters of iron and brass--monsters too intent on

their own mad game to take account of such small deer as this footman

picking his road beneath. It was half-past eight of the night-watch.

Serviss began to realize that his reawakened interest in this girl was

not purely impersonal and scientific. It had become, indeed, a most

disquieting, intimate concern, and every step towards the West

sharpened the sense of his folly. Had it not been for the memory of

that ride up the mountains--his keen remembrance of that day of joyous

youth--he could have easily dismissed Viola's case from his mind; but

as he permitted himself to dwell upon her rosy, rain-wet face, her

bird-like ecstasy of voice, her splendid defiance of the sun and wind,

a desire that was as fierce as anger actuated him, making his proffer

of aid not a gallantry but a duty. "I will defend her from herself.

Though a liar, she is still worth redemption. In a certain sense the

despicable rôle she is playing has been forced upon her."

As he mounted Simeon's steps he observed that awnings covered the

adjacent carriage-block, and that some young people, all in party

dress, were entering--a merry, chattering group--whereas the Pratt

mansion towered gloomily, unlighted, unalluring as a prison.

He was about to touch the bell when the door opened and a porter

softly greeted him. "The meeting has begun, sir. Step right in, sir.

This way, sir. Softly, please."

Before he was fairly aware of his attendant's meaning Serviss found

himself thrust through a heavily curtained archway into a large room

dimly lighted by a single lamp at the farther end. It contained about

twenty people, and he hesitated in embarrassment and some amazement at

the threshold.

Beneath the light, on a reclining-chair, lay a woman with closed eyes

and folded hands. Beside this figure stood Clarke in the midst of an

address, every word of which was made dramatically effective by a

forced calmness, an elocutionary trick.

"Some of you, my friends, may never have seen any of these mysterious

things. So many people say to me, 'Nothing supernatural ever happens

where I am.' To you I repeat my answer to them. Have you ever tried

to enter the right conditions? Here is a caravan of Arabs on the

desert. The road, hard-beaten, is wide and dusty, the necks of the

camels sway, the drivers shout, there is the smell of sweat, of

leather, of oil. The alkaline dust blinds and blisters. Physical

weariness and suffering shut out all else. This is no place to look

for heavenly visitors. You would be a fool to expect a demonstration

there. But at night when the beasts are at rest, when the cool, starry

sky bends close, when the tent-flaps are closed, then the old men sit

about and commune with their dead--as all primitive, natural peoples

do.

"So with you. You say to me, 'I have no heavenly visions in my life.'

I answer: Do you expect them on Broadway or in your business office?

You are on the dusty, weedy, noisy high-road, my friends, and you will

never hear a spirit voice or catch the flutter of a hand till you

retire to the dusk and the quiet. Enter the land of meditation.

Manifest a willingness to meet the angel visitors half-way, and then

the wings of the unseen will rustle about you, the cool and scented

winds of the invisible universe will kiss your cheeks. Shadowy voices

will be wafted from the dark. Song will break from the silences to

comfort and heal you.

"We see only what we _will_ to see--that is a known law of psychology.

Electricity was a force in the world six thousand years before man

really saw it. Now we hear it crackle in our hair and stir in our

garments. By studying the conditions of its manifestation we are able

to call it forth in giant power. So of these invisible ones--they are

all about us, eager to bless, to prove their presence. They are here

now. Around each one of you there are throngs hovering to manifest

their love; they will do so, by the aid of this wonderful psychic who

has consented to sit for us to-night. Let me repeat that she does this

because the dead demand and the living beseech her to act as their

intermediary." With abrupt, almost ludicrous change to a

matter-of-fact tone, he added, "Henry, turn the light a little lower."

As the attendant glided to his task, Serviss was mightily moved to

rise in his seat and cry out against the foolish, profaning business.

They were putting the girl into the exact attitude of the paid

trickster. At college he had attended a few of these séances, where

vulgar and immoral women had furthered their trade; and to see Viola,

whom he still believed to be essentially sweet, or at least

reclaimable, thrown into this most dubious posture, disgusted and

angered him. "But I am an uninvited guest. My rising would precipitate

a scene, involving Viola," he reasoned, and so kept his seat, though

his hands clinched and his teeth set with the effort at control.

Some one commenced to play softly upon a harp, and a little sigh like

a breeze passed over the group. The women had begun to respond to the

manager's emotional appeal. "I can feel them gathering," he called,

softly, from his seat beside the motionless girl. "The spirit host

are about us. I can almost hear the rustle of their wings."

The harpist stopped abruptly, and an echoing strain of faint music

continued to sound, seemingly from the ceiling--a fairy harp

exquisitely clear. "That is my Adele," announced Clarke, in a voice so

convincing in its tone of satisfied longing that the women of his

audience again rustled with ecstasy.

"I think he is beautiful!" exclaimed one.

"A voice is whispering to me," Clarke continued. "It is asking for

some one--I cannot quite make out. Who is it? Again, please. Morton

Serviss?" His voice rose in surprise. "He is not here. You are surely

mistaken. Certainly, I will ask. Is Professor Serviss here?"

Serviss replied, with a slight note of annoyance in his voice, "Yes, I

am here."

Again the little group shivered with excitement--not because they were

acquainted with the name and fame of the scientist, but because they

anticipated some especially wonderful manifestation of the psychic's

power. Serviss, irritated and puzzled, waited in silence.

Clarke's voice trembled with his effort to appear calm as he said:

"Professor Serviss, I am glad to welcome you. Won't you please come

forward? The 'control' desires it."

For a full minute, in dead silence, Serviss debated the matter, then

rose to comply. Mrs. Lambert met him with cordial hand, saying, in a

whisper: "We did not know you were coming; but they knew. They want

you closer to the manifestation."

He, sick at heart at her connivance in the trick, made no reply, but

silently took the seat which Clarke indicated.

Viola lay as silent as a statue, her face faintly showing, a diamond

in her corsage emitting a momentary gleam as she breathed tranquilly

at long intervals. There was nothing of the professional sibyl in her

dress, and her tall figure was very beautiful in this attitude of deep

sleep.

Clarke, mindful of effect, made explanation: "Professor Serviss, as

many of you know, is renowned in science, and the 'controls' are

especially anxious that he shall have the best possible opportunity to

hear and see. Will you play again, Mrs. Robinson?"

As the harp resumed its sadly sweet pulsations, the dead matter in the

room seemed to awake. Cracklings, snappings, as of a fire-log, arose

from the carpet. Rappings resounded from the walls. The piano began to

thrill as if a roguish child were thumping it.

"That's my little boy," whispered Mrs. Lambert.

Clarke shut off the light above his head till it was but a faint point

of yellow light, and then a hand, firm and broad, was laid for an

instant on Serviss's shoulder. Stars of phosphorescent fire floated

about. A small hand fluttered in a caress about the face of the

sleeping girl.

"That is her father's hand," again murmured Mrs. Lambert.

Serviss was willing to believe the girl's trance real, and that she

had no part in the hocus-pocus up to this point; but even as he leaned

forward to peer into the faintly visible face of the sleeper a voice,

breathy yet metallic, as though coming through the horn of a

phonograph, sounded in his ear. "Be not so doubting, my boy. I, too,

doubted."

"Who are you?" he asked.

"Loggy," answered the voice, with a chuckle.

This answer, so unexpected, this chuckle, so familiar, startled him,

for it was his pet name for an uncle, a professor of mathematics who

used to call himself "Old Logarithms" when in play with his nephews;

but, before Serviss had time to put out his hand, the horn came down

softly on his head, then withdrew, and a boyish voice laughed in his

ear, "You're a dunce!"

Mrs. Lambert bent towards him. "Did some dear one speak to you? I hope

so. We are so anxious to have you one of us."

He did not reply, for a third voice, seemingly that of an old man, was

issuing from the horn in pompous, stolid, old-fashioned utterance.

"The reality of all you see, young man, can be proven. Set yourself to

the grand task of destroying all fear of the change men call death.

Science is hopeless. We alone can save the world from despair."

"That is my father," explained Mrs. Lambert, "he is my daughter's

chief 'control,' He cares for her--teaches her."

Again the floating horn passed Morton's face, and a boyish voice

called, "Mamma, are you happy?"

"Yes, dear, when you are with me."

"We're always with you. We're glad P'ofessor Serviss came."

"So are we, Waltie."

"Papa says, 'Tell him to watch--tell him--to be patient--'" The voice

hesitated, murmured, and was silent, then added, plaintively: "Oh,

dear, there are so many who want to talk--they take my strength away.

Good-bye."

The horn dropped with a clang, but was at once caught up and floated

away over the circle. Dear names were whispered, secrets recalled.

Loved voices, long stilled by the grave, were heard again. Hands that

the earth had covered touched tear-wet cheeks, and with these caresses

sobbing outcries burst from the women.

"I believe. Yes, yes! I know you, darling," called a man's voice, and

his accent was more moving than the cries of the women.

Pratt, in wistful accents, asked, "Is there no one for me to-night?"

"Yes, father," answered a girl's voice from the megaphone, now hanging

almost directly in front of Serviss, "we are all here. I'm going to

sing for you--the song you liked the best."

This she did in a far-away voice, sweetly and with excellent

vocalization, but the first notes startled Serviss. They were from

"The Banks of Loch Lomond," the very song Clarke sang to Viola's

accompaniment that night in the little cabin in Colorow. "And yet she

told me she had no voice!" he said to himself, and a bitter heat

overcame the chill of his disgust, "What unconscionable trickery!"

This last piece of deception seemed to involve the girl more directly

than any other of the evening's accursed jugglery.

Pratt was pleading, brokenly: "My old paw is open, Jennie; put your

hand in it--just for a moment--as you used to. I'm so lonely without

you. Girls, can't you touch your old father? Give me a kiss--and

mother, is she with you to-night?"

"Yes, we're all here. I can't kiss you to-night, father; sometime I

will," the gentle voice replied. "I'm not strong enough to-night."

There was infinite regret in the tone, which conveyed to Serviss, with

singular vividness, a virginal charm, united to something very sweet,

almost saintly. Every sentiment had been beautifully voiced--no

actress could have done it better.

Clarke spoke gently, solemnly: "Professor Serviss, will you now take a

seat beside the psychic. Her 'controls' wish to make some special

demonstration for you."

With reluctance and loathing, the young scientist moved forward,

guided by the mother, and placed his seat at the right side of Viola,

whose daintily robed, graceful figure he could still detect. Her

wrists appeared to be lying on the broad arms of her reclining-chair

and her head was turned away from him. She seemed very feminine, very

lovely, and very helpless, and he had a definite and powerful desire

to take her in his arms, to wake her, to snatch her from this most

revolting drama of the dark.

He was now seated directly between the sibyl and Clarke, her manager,

and every sense was keenly awake. A tapping, metallic sound at once

arose either upon his chair or Viola's, and the horn, or whatever it

was, floated dimly into view, then vanished, and a moment later the

voice of the chief "control" entered his right ear: "Man of science,

do not shirk your duty. Here now we offer you a chance to solve the

great mystery. Will you accept?"

To this he made no answer, for his widely opened eyes were strained in

the effort to locate Viola's hands, eager to determine her part in the

phenomena, and as the moving megaphone again touched his right temple

he laid a quick hand lightly on her white wrist.

She leaped convulsively with a gasping cry, the horn tumbled to the

floor with prodigious clatter, and the women all shrieked and rose to

their feet.

"Fool! What have you done?" cried Clarke, in a terrible voice.

Serviss's tone expressed only contempt as he answered, "No great harm,

I think."

The clergyman pushed him aside rudely, and knelt beside the girl, who

was writhing and moaning in her chair, as though contorted with pain.

Words of indignation arose from the circle, and one or two shouted,

"Run him out! He has no business here." But Clarke cried out, in a

commanding voice: "Remain where you are, friends! Be quiet for a few

minutes." They obeyed, and Serviss was about to withdraw when Pratt

confronted him. "What do you mean? Do you want to kill the psychic?"

The mother was bending above her daughter with soothing words. "There,

there, dearie! It will soon pass. You may turn on the light, Anthony."

Clarke turned the cock of the burner till a faint glow revealed the

girl, white, suffering, her left side convulsed. "You can't do things

like that," he went on, addressing himself to Serviss. "In these

trances the nervous system is in a state of enormous tension. The

psychic must not be mishandled."

"I merely touched her arm," answered Serviss, quietly.

The mother answered: "The lightest touch is sufficient to convulse

her, professor. You should have asked permission of the 'control,'

then it would not have shocked her."

"I hope it has done no lasting harm." His voice, in spite of himself,

took on sympathy, though he believed the girl's shock to have been

grossly exaggerated for some reason of her own. "I thought I was

invited to make the test."

The mother's calm voice was thrilling as she said: "She's better now.

You may turn the light on full."

Viola was a most appealing figure as she bloomed from the dark, pure

and pale as a lily. She was dressed exquisitely in white, and seemed

older, more worldly wise, and more bewitching than when he had last

seen her; but with a feeling of profound contempt and bitterness

Serviss shrank from meeting her gaze. He slipped away into the hall

and out of the house--back into the cool, crisp air of the night,

ashamed of himself for having yielded again to the girl's disturbing

lure, burning with disappointment, and sad and grieving over the loss

of his last shred of respect for her.

"Britt was right," he exclaimed, drawing a deep breath as if to free

his lungs of the foul air of deceit. "They are all frauds together,"

and with this decision came a sense of relief as well as of loss.

[Illustration: "'WHAT DO YOU MEAN? DO YOU WANT TO KILL THE

PSYCHIC?'"]

VIII

KATE'S INTERROGATION

Kate, waiting impatiently in her turn, met him at the door. "Well, did

you see her? What did she say?" Her voice rose in excitement, for she

perceived unusual gravity in the lines of his face.

"Your 'far country' lies on the borders of hell," he replied, with

disconcerting succinctness. "Yes, I saw her--or, rather, the ruin of

her."

She recoiled before this tone. "What do you mean?"

He shook himself free of his coat. "She has descended swiftly. She now

lends herself to the shallowest, basest trickery."

"I don't believe it. What has happened to make you so bitter?"

"I will tell you presently," he replied, hanging up his hat with

aggravating deliberation. "But not here. Come to the library." He led

the way and she followed quite meekly, for she perceived in him

something new and harsh. She sat quite still while he filled his pipe

and lit it, waited until the soothing flow of smoke through its stem

had softened his face. He began, sadly: "The girl has gone beyond our

interference, Kate; and if she weren't so pretty, if I hadn't seen

her when she was wholesome and altogether charming, I would not have

wasted this evening on her. To-night's doings were unforgivable."

"Did she give you a sitting?"

"No, but they were in the midst of a _séance_"--he spoke this word

with infinite disgust--"and the usher, mistaking me for an invited

guest, thrust me into the very centre of the circle."

"How lucky! I wish I had been there."

"Well, that's as you look at it. When I realized what was going on I

wanted to leave, and, I repeat, had the chief actress been an old hag

or the usual sloven who plays this game, I would have fled; but she

was as beautiful as a statue as she lay there, professedly in deep

trance."

"You're sure it was Viola?"

"I wish there were a doubt! Yes, she was there, surrounded by a group

of Pratt's friends, giving a _performance_." This word, too, expressed

his contempt, his pain. "She went the whole length--lent herself to

the cheapest kind of jugglery, playing with horrible adroitness upon

the emotions of a lot of bereaved men and women. It was revolting,

Kate. It shakes one's faith in humanity to see such a girl in such a

position--and that nice-appearing old mother sat there serene as a

tabby-cat while her daughter bamboozled a dozen open-faced ninnies."

"Tell me exactly what happened; I can't share your horror till I know

what the girl actually did."

He approached the details with a grimace.

"First of all, imagine a little half-circle of well-dressed men and

women, in a big drawing-room, enclosing a girl lying on a low chair

under a single gas-jet, and a man standing beside her speechifying."

"That was Clarke, of course."

"Of course. Then imagine the light turned down, and the usual floating

guitar--in the dark, of course--and rappings and whispers and the

touch of hands--all in the dark. Then imagine--this will make you

laugh--some kind of horn or megaphone of tin, that rambled around

invisibly, distributing voices of loved ones here and there like

sweetmeats out of a cornucopia--"

"You mean the spirits _spoke_ through that thing?"

"That's what they all believed."

"But you don't think the girl--"

"Who else? Some of the voices were women's and one or two were

children's. Clarke couldn't do the children's voices."

"I can't believe it of her! Clarke must have done them. He's capable

of anything, but I don't, I won't believe such baseness of that girl."

"It hurts me to admit it, Kate, but I am forced to believe that she

not only sang through that horn to-night, but that she lied to me. She

told me once that she had no voice, and yet 'by request' she sang into

that horn, and very sweetly, too, the very song to which she played an

accompaniment when Clarke and I met for the first time. The effrontery

of it was confounding."

"Maybe there was a confederate."

"That doesn't sweeten the mess very much."

"No, and yet it wouldn't be quite so bad. But go on--what else?"

"Then I was invited by the 'controls'--so Clarke said--to come up and

sit beside the medium, which I did, very loathly. It gave me a keen

pang to look down on that lovely creature pretending to sleep, knowing

perfectly well that she was planning some deep deception."

"You _are_ bitter. What next?"

"I took a seat beside her, determined to see if she really had a hand

in the deception. I thought I could prevent anything happening."

"Did you?"

"No. Everything went on quite as briskly as before, and all the while

I thought I could see her arms lying limp along her chair--lovely arms

they were, too. She isn't poor, you must understand that, Kate; and

that really makes the crime worse, for she has not the usual

excuse--she is not doing it for her daily bread."

Kate sat like a judge, "Go on. You seized her, of course?"

"Yes; just when the cone was emitting an old man's pompous harangue I

laid my hand on her arm. The horn dropped, the circle rose in

confusion, and I came away."

"I expected you'd do that. All sceptics do, I believe. But I want to

know _all_ that took place. You're so concise. You say the cone

emitted a man's voice. Now, how could--"

"It produced the _impression_ of a man's voice. It is easy to deceive

under such conditions. The cone was passed from her hand to Clarke's

at the proper moments, and, as you say, there might have been a

child--"

"You must not infer, Mort--my faith in that girl is at stake. Was

there nothing in her favor? Nothing that justified her claim?"

He hesitated and Kate leaned forward in excess of interest. "Go on,

Morton, be honest."

"Well, now, as I think of it there was one little thing which was

rather curious. I don't know how she or Clarke or any one there should

know what we used to call Uncle Ben."

"What? Did you get a message from him?"

"A voice from the megaphone asked for me, and when I requested the

name of 'the party speaking,' as Clarke says, it replied with an oily

chuckle, exactly like the old duffer, '_It's old Loggy._'"

"It did?" Her voice was sharp with surprise. "Well, now, that is as

wonderful as my experience. How do you account for _that_? How _do_

you account for such things?" she repeated, insistently.

"Clarke must have known--"

"Nonsense. No one outside our immediate family knows of that nickname.

Besides, how would he know the way 'Loggy' laughed? I'd forgotten it

myself."

"So had I. But what would you say? Would you jump to the conclusion--"

"_You_ are jumping at the conclusion, Mort. If there is one single

thing that you can't understand, you must give that girl the benefit

of the doubt. What did 'Loggy' say?"

"There you go! You're ready to swallow the whole lump of humbuggery,

just because there is one little puzzling plum in it."

Kate was not to be put down. "What did uncle _say_?"

He submitted. "Nothing else. Like most of those dead folk, he was

there just to manifest, not to impart wisdom."

Kate leaned back in her chair and grew thoughtful. "Morton, that was

wonderful. No one knew you were coming, no one knew you except those

people, and they're from, the other end of the earth--and yet

_somebody_ speaks, using a pet name we've both forgotten. Now, I call

that a most important thing to dwell upon. How can _you_, a scientist,

overlook it?"

"But you must remember all this happened in the house of jugglery.

There is no value in a performance of that kind. There was no test

applied. Confederates had full opportunity to come and go. To have

weight with me these wonders must take place under conditions of my

making, not theirs."

"That's what she wants."

"I don't believe it. Pardon me, Kate, but you've been taken in.

Whatever this girl was two years ago, she is now a part of Clarke's

scheme, which is to secure a tremendous lot of advertising and

then--emit a book."

Kate transfixed him with a finger. "Morton Serviss, there is nothing

so convincing as a tone. I know that girl is honest--she may be

deceived, she may be made a tool of, unconsciously, by Clarke, but she

does not wilfully deceive. I will not let you off with this

experience; you must see her in private--talk with her as I did."

"I will have nothing further to do with her or hers," he replied, with

determined quiet, knocking the ashes from his pipe. "I have other and

better business in the world."

"I don't believe it is better business. Now, wait a moment, I have

something to tell of my own evening. While you were gone I 'phoned

Uncle Harrison and Aunt Nancy about that debt of my great-aunt--who

came to me through Viola to-day; they knew nothing about it, but they

set to work looking over her old papers, and found that there was a

sealed letter addressed to a doctor in Michigan, and in the letter was

a check made out to him and which she intended to send him. Now, what

do you think of that?"

"I don't see that that has any necessary connection with your

experience this afternoon."

"But it does. I'm sure of it. Auntie felt grateful to this young

doctor and wanted to reward him. Morton, it was a big check!" She

uttered this impressively.

"Was it? How much?"

"Five thousand dollars."

He faced her with a whistle of surprise. "Well, well! that isn't so

amusing. Are we to pay it? Is that the idea?"

"If I am sure--if the letter is what they 'phoned it to be, we've got

to pay it, I'm her sole legatee, and she was very angry because it

hadn't been paid; but that's not the really important part. How did

Viola Lambert know of that letter--and that check?"

He was deeply impressed, and did not try to conceal it. "That is very

puzzling; but it may be a case of mind-reading, which, I believe, the

modern psychologists admit has been proved." He began to muse. "It may

be, as Weissmann says, that there is always some basis for a claim

such as Clarke makes for this girl. It may be that she has a faculty

for reading what lies in the brain of another--"

"Morton Serviss, you shall not condemn that girl unheard. You have

taken Britt's word about her, and you've listened to my story, but you

must see her yourself and talk with her alone, so that she will be

free to tell you just how she feels."

"No. I am going to bed and try to forget the whole disconcerting

group."

"That's the way with you scientists. You'll pursue the tail of a

comet--or a germ--till you're black in the face, but when something

really important to the human race comes under your nose you can't see

it."

"You're forceful but not elegant, sis."

"I'm out of all patience with you."

He laughed. "Good-night."

"I hope that girl's face will haunt you," she replied.

It did. From the moment he turned off his light his mind leaped into

the most restless activity. Taking up the scroll of the night's

events, he read and reread it with minutest care. A voice seemed to

present the girl's case, arguing that she had no conscious part in the

manifestations. "It is possible for one in deep trance to rise and

manipulate horns, bells, and guitars at the suggestion of another

precisely as a somnambulist walks without intention of wrong-doing,

without conscious knowledge of what is being done. She might have had

a veritable hand in to-night's drama and still be innocent. Hypnotism

is now pretty thoroughly proven--and to Clarke you must look for the

real offender.

"The human brain, which is marvellous enough when in health and

singing merrily forward like a cunningly constructed and jewelled

time-piece, becomes, in disease, as baffling, as hopeless of solution

as the laws of the unfathomable sky. Beyond the utmost sweep of the

imagined lies the marvel of fact. The beliefs, the vagaries, the

hallucinations of the insane have never been co-ordinated, perhaps

they never will be. It is possible that this girl, so normal in

appearance, has a rotten strand in her--some weakness inherited from

her father. This is the only way in which to account for her glowing

physical health and her manifest mental disorder. She has her father's

mind in a body drawn from her mother. One-half of her is pure and

sweet and girlish, the other is old, decayed, lying, and

irresponsible. Can she be reclaimed?

"It is now known that the conscious mind is but a pin's-point of the

mind's activity, the conscious state being but one of an infinite number

of possible states--that the submerged, unconscious self is a million

times more complex than the chain of those conscious states which makes

up the normal or orderly life of an individual. May it not be that this

girl, by reason of her long practice of submission--induced by

others--has dethroned her conscious, higher self, making of her

subliminal self a tyrant? This submerged self, holding, as it does, all

the experiences of the dark past, all the lusts, deceits, and

subterfuges, all the cruelties and shameless potentialities of her

animal and semicivilized forebears, and being but a mass of discordant

impulses--states almost entirely disassociated from her conscious

life--has all but taken possession of her higher self. The restraint of

the later-developed, governing, moral self being weakened, the witches

and wolves are leaping forth to vex and destroy. Over this fortuitous

subversion of her soul's kingdom Clarke now rules like a demon

councillor.

"Considered in the light of a study in morbid psychology, her case is

enthralling. From the standpoint of human pity this use of her is a

diabolical outrage. Suppose Kate to be right--suppose the girl has

awakened to a full realization of her danger? Suppose that her cry for

succor is real, can I, can any man who hears it, refuse to heed?

Would I ever sleep in peace again?"

He went further, he admitted that her beauty was the deciding element.

"She is too lovely to be left to a fanatic's designs. She has matured

in body, grown more womanly, since we rode the trail together; may it

not be that her mind, maturing even more rapidly, has come to perceive

the crumbling edge of the abyss before it stands and turns to science

as the only rescuer? No matter what her past deceptions have been, is

it not my duty to help her?"

His anger and contempt dissolved into compassion. He recalled her

youth, her inexperience. "I will at least see her again," he decided,

deep in the night. "I will talk with her. I will draw her out. I will

study her. All will depend upon her attitude towards me and towards

her own soul." And in that softened mood sleep came to him.

IX

VIOLA'S PLEA FOR HELP

Morton went to his work next morning quite unfitted for an especially

delicate piece of dissection which he had in hand. He bungled it, and

Weissmann transfixed him with a glare of disapproval. "My boy, these

social gayeties do not consort well with science."

The young man smiled to think how wide of the mark his chief was. He

held up both hands. "I swear, it shall not happen again." Then, moved

by a desire to secure a comment on the curious phenomena of the

séance, he related the story of his brief interview with his uncle

Ben's ghost. "Now, do you suppose that Clarke, or the 'medium,' could

dig around among the dusty, forgotten lumber of my mind and get hold

of a queer fact like that nickname?"

"Why go so far round?" inquired Weissmann. "Why not say it was your

uncle Ben who spoke?"

"You are joking."

"I am _not_ joking. If the facts are as you say, then one explanation

is as reasonable as the other."

Serviss was amazed. "You don't really mean it!"

"If you say it was an illusion of the sense of hearing, I agree; but

do we not stagger among illusions? Who so well as we know the

illusory nature of every fact? Nothing is stable under our hands. Of

what avail to reduce the universe to one substance, as the monists do?

We pry, we peer into that substance--it fades like smoke. Forty years

I have probed among the cells of the body--the final mystery remains

insoluble. Why? Because the atom, the thing once demonstrated 'the

final division of matter,' is itself an illusion, made up of the

intangible and the imponderable. This I have given my whole life to

discover. Life is an illusion--why not death? Shall we dogmatize,

especially on the one thing of which we know nothing? The spirit world

is unthinkable, but so, at the last analysis, is the world of matter."

The young man, believing this to be only the mocking mood of one who

knew the argument of the dualists better than they knew it themselves,

remained silent, and Weissmann composedly resumed: "The dogmatism of

Haeckel is as vain as the assumption of Metchnikoff. We shall forever

discover and forever despair. Such is the life of man."

When he went home Morton found a note from his sister saying that she

had received a message from Viola and that she would be at home at

five. "Now don't fail to go. I have to pour tea for Sally, or I would

go with you. I'm crazy to see the girl again. I spent the morning

talking the whole thing over with Doctor Safford. She thinks as I do,

that the girl is exactly what she claims to be, a _medium_, and that

while it is her duty to go on, she ought to be protected from the

vulgar public. We both want you to take her in hand. Certainly there

_ought_ to be no disgrace in standing as interpreter between the

living and the dead. Isn't it just our foolish prejudice? If the girl

_can_ bring messages from the other world, she ought to be honored

above all other women. Seriously, Morton, her plea the other day wrung

my heart. I don't want you to get _too_ interested in her, of course,

but what we call a _disease_ may be a God-given power. Think of the

way we run after a foolish, vulgar woman who has married into

millions, and then think of the way we sniff at this girl because she

has some gift which science doesn't understand. If one teenty, tiny

bit of what they claim about her is true, science ought to cherish

her. As Marion said, if she had discovered a star so far off and so

faint it wouldn't matter in the least to any one but a few cranks

whether it existed or not, she would be honored all over the world;

but as she claims to have discovered something vital to every human

soul, she is despised. It is your duty to help her. I had her over the

'phone just now, and her voice was trembling with eagerness as she

said, 'Do tell him to please come and see me.'"

This note, so like his sister, so full of her audacities, touched

Morton on the quick. It was plain that she was more than half-seas

over towards faith in the girl, and quite ready to take her up and

exhibit her among her friends. Her use of the word "disease" was

intended as a mockery of his theories. He knew that she was quite

capable of talking over the 'phone precisely as she had written

(reserve was not her strong point), and that she had undoubtedly given

Viola reason to expect him. However, having concluded on his own

account to see her once more, Kate's exhortation merely confirmed him

in a good intention, "I will confront Clarke, and try to pluck the

heart out of this mystery, but I will keep clear of any personal

relation with the girl and her mother," he said, as if in answer to

his sister's admonition.

It was about five o'clock of the afternoon as he again mounted to

Pratt's portico, recalling, as he did so, the dramatic contrasting

scenes of the evening before--on this side of the brick wall a

communion with the dead, on that the throbbing, gay life of a

ballroom. Truly a city street was a microcosm.

A solemn-visaged colored man--not the officious usher of the night

before--took his card and led him into a gorgeous, glacial

reception-room on the left. The house was very still and cold and

gloomy, for the day was darkening and the lights were not yet on. It

impressed him as a vast and splendid tomb, and with a revived

knowledge of Simeon Pratt's tragic history he chilled with a

premonition of some approaching shadow. "What a contrast to the sunlit

cabin of the Colorow!" he inwardly exclaimed, and the thought of the

mountain girl housed in this grim and sepulchral mansion deepened his

wonder.

A gruff voice above inquired: "Who is it? Let me see the card.

Serviss, eh? Tell him--No, wait, I'll go down and see him myself."

Morton smiled grimly, realizing perfectly the manner in which Pratt

had intercepted his card. "The old watch-dog," he exclaimed.

A heavy tread descending the stairs announced the approach of his

host, whose sullen face was by no means engaging as he entered. "Are

you Professor Serviss?"

"I am."

The flabby lips curled in scorn. "You are one of those scientific

gentlemen who know it all, aren't you?"

"I sent my card to Miss Lambert," replied Serviss, with cutting

formality.

Pratt's face darkened. "_I_ am the master of this house."

"But not of your guests, I hope."

"I have a right to know who calls, and I intend to protect Miss

Lambert from such as you. You were not invited here last night."

"Not by you, I admit. I owe you an explanation for that. I came to

call on Miss Lambert. Your man shouldered me into the room before I

knew what was going on. I didn't intend to 'butt in,' as they say. I

was afterwards invited forward by Mr. Clarke, as you will remember,

and later by the 'control.'"

"Clarke is not running things here."

"Ah, but the spirits? Would you question their judgment? They insisted

on making me the guest of honor, you will remember. They played to me,

you may say."

Pratt was daunted by his visitor's mocking tone. "You should have had

more sense of honor than to grab the medium the way you did."

"Being invited to sit near, I took it as an invitation to make a test.

I wanted to know who held that horn. How can you hope to convince a

sane mind of the truth of such an exhibition as that last night unless

you permit tests?"

The colored man had returned. "Miss Lambert will see you, sir. This

way, please."

For a moment Pratt meditated interference, but something in the

movement and face of the visitor deterred him. As Serviss followed his

guide up the great stairway, he asked himself: "What will she be like?

She must be changed--deeply changed. How will she meet me?" He

acknowledged a growing excitement.

She met him so simply, so cordially, with such frank pleasure, that

his own restraint gave way at first glance. In her glowing color, in

the tones of her voice, lay a charm which carried him back to

Colorow, linking the mature and splendid woman with the unformed girl

of the mountain-cabin. He took her hand with a keen thrill of

admiration--whatever had come to her she had gained in grace without

apparent loss of sincerity.

His eyes disturbed her, and she stammered some commonplace expression

of pleasure, and he replied almost as lamely, then turned to the

mother. "I hope you have forgiven me for my action of last night?"

Then again to Viola. "I only intended to touch your arm. I trust you

suffered no lasting ill effects."

Again something that was at once attraction and repulsion passed

between them. She perceived in his tone a note of mockery, involuntary

in its expression, but all the more significant on that account.

"I am sorry you were there," she quickly replied. "I don't blame you.

No, it did not hurt me--I mean, it was all over in half an hour. The

contraction is very painful while it lasts. It's just like a cramp. I

didn't intend to give the sitting, but Mr. Pratt requested it for a

few of his friends and I couldn't well refuse. I didn't know you were

there till mamma told me afterwards. There is no value in such a

sitting to you."

With a dim suspicion of her wish to cover some deception, he answered:

"My entrance was quite as unpremeditated, I assure you." He spoke with

returning humor. "I really came to call upon you, to welcome you to

the city and to talk of the West. The usher mistook me for one of the

seekers and thrust me bodily into the circle. Please believe that I

acted upon sudden impulse in seizing your wrist. I am heartily ashamed

of myself. I was an intruder, and had no right, no excuse--although

your 'guides,' as you call them, seemed eager to have me sit beside

you."

"I do not blame you," she repeated, and fell strangely silent.

He studied her with mounting pleasure. The flower-like line of her

lips, her glorious bosom, the poise of her head, all the lines that

had meant so much to him at their first meeting, were there, more

womanly, more dangerous in their witchery than ever. For two years

their thoughts had subtly crossed and intertwined, and she now felt

his doubt, his question, almost as keenly as if he had uttered them.

He broke the momentary silence by saying, with a distinctly tender

tone, "Are you thinking of Colorow? I am."

She flushed and started a little. "Yes."

"I was recalling my first view of you--a fragment of sunset cloud

caught on a mountain-crag."

Her face grew wistful. "That seems a long time ago to me."

"It doesn't to me. It seems but yesterday. My trip that year was a

symphonic poem with a most moving final movement. I have thought of it

a thousand times." He paused a moment, then added: "Well, now, here

you are in New York, and here I am, and what of your music? I was to

advise you, you remember."

Her head lifted in defiance, an adorable gesture. "You know my secret

now." It was as if she said, "Come, let us have it over."

He replied, very gently; "I knew something of it then. Dr. Britt told

me something of it at the time."

Her eyes bravely searched his. "Was that why you did not come to say

good-bye to us?" His glance fell in a wish that she had been less

cruelly direct. She went on: "You needn't answer. I'm used to being

treated that way. I knew somebody had told you I was a medium. You

despised me when you found out about me--everybody does, except those

who want to use me. All the people I really want to know go by on the

other side as if I were a leper. It was so in Boston; it is going to

be the same here."

Mrs. Lambert interposed. "That is not true, Dr. Serviss. We met many

nice people in Boston."

"Yes, mamma--nice people who wanted me to tell their fortunes."

Her tone went to Serviss's heart. She was so young to be so bitter;

but he could think of nothing at the moment which would not add to her

chagrin, for was not his own interpretation of her quite as hard to

bear?

She went on: "No, I don't blame you or any one for avoiding me. But I

wish they would let me have one or two friends. But they won't. Lots

of people like me at first, but they surely find out after a while,

and then they change towards me. Sometimes I think I might as well

publish my name as a medium and let everybody know it at once."

"You must not permit that, Miss Lambert," he earnestly said. "That is

what I came to say. Don't allow them to use you so."

"How can I help it?" she passionately exclaimed, "when they all demand

it--mother, Mr. Clarke. Mr. Pratt, grandfather--everybody. They think

I owe it to the world."

"I don't. I think it is your right to say--"

"I have no rights. Listen." She leaned towards him, her face paling,

her eyes big and soft and terrified. "I want you to understand me,

Dr. Serviss. You must know all about me." Her voice fell to a husky

murmur. "You must know that I can't direct my own life. My 'guides'

can do what they please with me. Can you understand that?"

"I confess I cannot."

"It is true. My grandfather insists on these public tests. He is

determined to 'convict the men of science,' and Mr. Clarke is only too

glad to agree with him. Mother is controlled entirely by what

grandfather says. My wishes don't count with anybody. But I think I've

done my share in this work." She faced her mother in challenge and

appeal. "Ever since I was ten years old I've given myself up to it;

but now I'm afraid to go on. I don't want to be a medium all my life.

They all say it is hard to change after one is grown up, and I'm

afraid," she repeated, with a perceptible shudder.

The mother, undisturbed by this plea, turned to Serviss with an

exultant smile. "Does she look like one breaking down?"

The girl rose from her chair like a tragedienne. "It isn't my body,

it's my mind!" she cried, with poignant inflection, clasping her head

with both her hands; and her look transformed her in the eyes of the

young scientist. It was the tragic gaze of one who confronts insanity

and death at a time when life should be at its sweetest. For an

instant she stood there absorbed in her terror, then dropped her

hands, and in a voice of entreaty, which melted all his distrust,

hurried on. "I want to know what is going on in my brain. I am losing

control of my _self_! I want some man of science like you to study me.

Your sister said you would help me, and you must! You think I

deceive--you thought so last night--but I don't. I knew nothing of

what went on. I didn't know that you were there. I don't know what I

do nor what I am. I want you men of science to investigate me. I will

submit to any test you like. You may fasten me in a cage, or padlock

me down--anything!--but I will not be advertised to the world as a

medium, and I must have rest from this strain. Don't you understand?

Can't you see how it will be?"

"I do," he answered, quickly. "I understand perfectly, and I will go

at once to see Mr. Clarke and intercede--"

"That is not enough. You must intercede with my grandfather and his

band, they are the ones who control me. Ask him to release me."

This request staggered the scientist. "My dear Miss Lambert, you will

pardon me, but I can't do that--I do not even believe in the existence

of your grandfather."

She stood in silence for a moment and then answered; "You would if his

hands were at your throat as they are at mine. He is just as real to

me as you are. He is listening this minute."

"That is a delusion."

"I wish it were," she bitterly and tragically answered. "The hands are

so real they choke me--that I know. I am helpless when he demands

things of me. He can lead me anywhere he wants me to go. He can use my

arms, my voice, as he wills. You must believe in him to help me. He

will listen to you, I feel that." She grew appealing again. "Your

sister believes in me--I am sure of that--and my heart went out to

her. Sometimes it seems as if all the world, even my own mother, were

willing to sacrifice me."

"Viola!" cried Mrs. Lambert, sharply. "You shall not say things like

that."

"They're true. You know they're true!" the girl passionately retorted.

"You all treat me as if I had no more soul than a telephone."

"That is very unjust," declared Mrs. Lambert. "This is only one of her

dark moods, doctor. You must not think she really means this."

The girl's brows were now set in sullen lines which seemed a

profanation of her fair young face. "But I _do_ mean it, and I want

Dr. Serviss to know just what is in my heart." Her voice choked with a

kind of helpless, rebellious anger as she went on: "I'm tired of my

life. I am sick of all these moaning people that crowd round me. It's

all unnatural to me. I want to touch young people, and have a share in

their life before I grow old. I want to know healthy people who don't

care anything about death or spirits. It's all a craze with people

anyway--something that comes after they lose a wife or child. They are

very nice to me then, but after a few weeks they despise me as the

dust under their feet--or else they make love to me and want to marry

me."

Mrs. Lambert rose. "I will not allow you to go on like this, Viola. I

don't understand you to-day. You'll give Dr. Serviss a dreadful

opinion of us all."

"I don't care," the girl recklessly replied, "I am going to be honest

with Dr. Serviss. I don't like what I do, and I don't intend to trust

my whole life to the spirits any longer. They may all be devils and

lying to us. I don't believe my own grandfather would be so cruel as

to push me into this public work."

Mrs. Lambert again warned Serviss from taking this outburst too

seriously. "She is possessed, doctor. Some bad spirit is influencing

her to say these things to you. She's not herself."

Viola seized on this admission. "That's just it. They've destroyed my

own mind so that I don't know my own thoughts. If there are good

spirits, there must be bad spirits--don't you think so, Dr. Serviss?"

His eyes did not waver now. His voice was very quiet, but very

decisive, as he replied: "My training, my habit of thinking, excludes

all belief in the return of the dead either as good spirits or bad,

but if there are spirits I should certainly think evil of them if they

were to force you into a service you abhor. I do not pretend to pass

judgment on your case--I know so little about it--but I do sympathize

with you. I deeply feel the injustice of these public tests, and I

will do all I can to prevent them."

Mrs. Lambert interrupted: "But, Dr. Serviss, my father's advice has

always been good; to question it now would be to question my faith.

His wish is my law."

Serviss shrugged his shoulders a little impatiently. "My dear lady, we

have no common ground there. The wishes of the dead have no weight

with me when set against the welfare of the living. The question which

I beg you to consider is whether you wish your daughter to continue in

this mental torture? Do you want her name blazoned to the world as a

public medium? You cannot afford to add disgrace to her private

torment."

The mother held her ground. "Her 'guides' say she will be taken care

of, and as for the disgrace, that is all imaginary. It is an honor--"

Viola again burst forth: "They are always talking to me about the

honor of being a medium, about the distinction of it, and when I ask

what distinction the world gave to the Fox sisters or Home or Madame

Cerillio, they answer that the world has changed since then. But it

has not changed enough to make my work respected. Mr. Clarke says it

ought to be; but saying so does not make it so. Every time I read of a

medium exposed I turn cold and hot, for I know people consider all

mediums alike. I don't want to go about all my life like an outcast. I

don't want to be happy after I'm dead; I want to be happy now. I don't

want to be different from other girls; I want to be like them. If they

publish me, I will be a medium forever. I will be in constant terror

of attack, and that will drive me insane--they _must_ set me free!

Dr. Serviss," she pleaded, as if she were the victim of some murderous

design, "you are wise and strong. There must be some way for you to

help me."

All of Serviss's well-ordered sympathetic phrases failed him as he

listened to the storm of her plea and felt the flame of her passionate

protest. All doubt of her sincerity, her own honesty, vanished, being

utterly burned away by the light in her lovely eyes. Her mental

bondage was real, her desire to escape contamination indubitable. He

met her gaze with tender gravity. "I believe in you," he said, as if

committing himself to a most momentous enterprise, "and I will help

you."

His voice, so manly, so strong, so tender, robbed her of the power to

speak. She seized his extended hand in both of hers and pressed it

hard, the tears in her eyes veiling her soul from the passion that

filled his glance.

As she faced him thus, leaning to him trustfully, so vivid, so

magnetic, so much the woman, so little the sibyl, that he forgot all

his hesitations and doubts, filled for an instant with an irrational

impulse to seize her, claiming her as his own, in defiance of the

mandates of her world and the conventions of his own. But she dropped

his hand and turned away, and he went out in a maze of conflicting

desires, his judgment sadly clouded by the youthful riot in his blood.

At the moment he was in love with her and single-minded in his desire

to aid her, to defend her, but the door had hardly closed behind him

when his questionings, his suspicions began to file back, stealthily,

silently, along the underways of his brain. Her distress began to seem

a little too theatric, her troubles self-induced--all but one--madness

did in very truth seem to hover over her, a baleful, imminent shadow.

Clarke, looming darkly, confronted him in the lower hall. "Well met,

Dr. Serviss. I'd like a word with you."

"I have a request to make of you," responded Serviss. "Miss Lambert

has expressed to me her great distress of mind as concerns the public

tests you are planning and has asked me to intercede for her. She

profoundly objects to the use of her name, and I ask--"

Clarke's voice was harsh and sullen as he interrupted: "I have

considered her objections and find them insufficient."

Serviss's voice rose slightly. "Her lightest objection should be

insuperable. I don't understand your point of view. I can't see by

what right you ignore the wish of the human soul most vitally

concerned in your crusade. You treat her as if she were a rabbit

dedicated to the use of a biologic laboratory. I am better informed

now than when we met in your church-study, Mr. Clarke. I know, not

merely Miss Lambert's secret, but your own. It may be that you

honestly think this challenge will confer great distinction upon her,

but, let me assure you, it will put an ineffaceable stain upon her.

Furthermore, your tests will end in disaster to yourself and to your

cause."

"What do you mean by that?" interposed Pratt, who had come up and

stood listening. "Do you doubt her powers?"

"I do. She will fail, and the failure will be crushing. The thing you

claim is preposterous. Every time science has taken one of your

mediums in hand he or she has suffered extinguishment. It is the

grossest outrage to ask this girl to face certain exposure. A

challenge of this blatant kind will rouse the most violent antagonism

among scientists, and if you succeed in getting any really good man to

take it up--which I doubt--he will be merciless."

"We want him to be," declared Clarke. "We glory in your defiance. Let

your scientific men come with their bands of steel, their bolts and

bars, their telephones, and their electric traps. We defy every

material test."

"You are fools--madmen," hotly answered Serviss. "You would sacrifice

this girl to a brazen scheme of self-advertising?"

Clarke was contemptuous. "That is your point of view. From our side

there is no greater glory than to be an Evangel of the New Faith. What

matters the comment of the gross and self-satisfied to us who work for

the happiness of those who mourn? The world in which _we_ live

despises the materialism of yours."

At this moment a new conception of Clarke's plan crossed Serviss's

mind. "He is deeper than I thought. He would discredit the girl in the

eyes of normal suitors, thereby assuring her to himself." Aloud he

said: "Miss Lambert's right to herself should be your first

consideration. She is something more than a trumpet for sounding your

fame."

Clarke's resounding voice had drawn Mrs. Lambert from her room, and

she now hurried down the stairway with intent to calm him.

Serviss turned to her. "Again I beg of you, Mrs. Lambert, to consider

well before you consent to this plan. Your daughter's name will be a

jest from one end of the country to the other. It doesn't matter how

sincere and earnest you are, the public will regard this challenge as

a seeking for notoriety. Your daughter is about to be flung to the

beasts." Seeing something unyielding in her eyes, he added, with such

intensity his own heart responded: "Will you stake your daughter's

reputation, her health, her reason, upon the issue of a voice in the

dark?"

"Yes, when the voice is that of her own father. He knows the future.

He will protect her. I have no fear."

There was such conviction, such immutable faith in her gentle voice,

that Serviss was confounded. When he spoke, in answer, his voice was

lower in key, with a cadence of hopeless appeal.

"How do you know these advisers are your husband and your father? You

must be very certain of them."

"I am certain. I believe in them as I believe in my own existence."

The line of her mouth lost something of its sweetness, and Serviss,

seeing this, took another tack.

"Granted these voices are genuine, they may be mistaken--rash with

zeal. You wouldn't say that they have gained infallibility--a

knowledge of both past and future--merely by passing to the shadow

world?"

To this Clarke made answer: "That is precisely what we do believe.

They have predicted our future, they have laid out all our plans.

Their advice has brought us to our present high place, and we shall

continue in our course, despite you or any other doubter."

"They have brought you to a very dubious sort of success," Serviss

cuttingly replied, "But what about your victim? I know this city and

its ways. I realize, as none of you seem to do, the wasting injustice

you are about to inflict. Let me intercede--let me arrange some other

plan--"

On Clarke's face a sneering, one-sided smile crept as he answered:

"You are too late. Our plans are made, our programme published."

"What do you mean?"

"The reporters have just been here. The notice of my speech and a

broad hint of the nature of my challenge will appear in four of the

leading papers to-morrow morning--"

"But Viola's--Miss Lambert's name! You surely haven't used that?"

"Oh no. That is to follow. The challenge, with her name and defiance,

form the climax to my oration." He swelled with pride as he spoke, as

if visualizing himself on the platform, the centre of thousands of

eyes, the champion of reviving faith.

"Thank God for your vanity! There is still time for some one to

intervene," responded Serviss, minded to thrust him through.

Pratt shouldered in again. "What have you got to do with it, anyway?

Who asked you to interfere?"

"The chief person concerned--Miss Lambert herself."

Pratt was about to utter some further insult when Clarke

diplomatically interposed. "We want you to have a part in the work,

Dr. Serviss. We will welcome you to a committee of investigation, but

we cannot permit you to interfere with our plan. The 'Forces' are bent

on the work, and they are inexorable."

"It is you who are inexorable," replied the young scientist--"you and

this deluded mother."

This rapid dialogue had taken place in the wide hall just beneath the

huge chandelier whose light fell on Serviss's white forehead and

square, determined face. Pratt was confronting him with lowering brow,

a bear-like stoop in his shoulders, and the muttering growl of his

voice was again filling the room as Viola appeared upon the great

stairway. She came slowly, with one slim hand on the railing, as

though feeling her way, and at every step mysterious, jarring sounds

came from beneath her feet and from the walls; her eyes were shut, her

chin lifted, and on her face, white and tense, lay the expression of a

sorrowful dreamer. Her mouth, drooping at the corners, was pitiful to

see. All her vivid youth, her flaming rebellion, had been frozen into

soulless calm by the implacable powers which reigned above and beneath

her in the dark.

In horror and fierce, impotent rage, Serviss watched her descend. It

was plain that she was again in the grasp of some soul stronger than

herself; and he believed this obsession, close akin to madness, to be

due to a living, overmastering magician--to Clarke, whose voice broke

the silence. "There is your answer!" he called, and his voice rang

out, with triumphant glee. "Her 'guides' have brought her to show you

the folly of human interference. She is only an instrument like

myself--clay to the hands of the invisible potters."

Once again a flaming desire to seize the girl with protecting hands

filled Serviss's young and chivalric heart; but a sense of his

essential helplessness, a knowledge of his utter lack of authority,

stayed his arm, while his blaze of resolution went out like a flame in

the wind. Sick with horror, he stood till Mrs. Lambert took Viola in

her arms, then, in a voice that shook with passion, he said: "Madam,

your faith in your spirits passes my understanding. Only devils from

hell would demand such torture from a blithe young girl."

And so saying, with shame of his impotence, and with a full

realization of Viola's mental bondage to Anthony Clarke, he turned

away. "I now understand Britt's words--only the authority of the

husband can save her from her all-surrounding foes," and at the moment

his fist doubled with desire to claim and exercise that power.

X

MORTON SENDS A TELEGRAM

The harsh reality of the outside world was like the hard-driven, acrid

spray of the ocean in a wintry storm, it stung yet calmed with its

grateful, stern menace. A thin drizzle of rain was beginning to fall,

and the avenues were filled with the furious clamor of belated

traffic. The clangor of the overhead trains--almost incessant at this

hour--benumbed the ear, and every side-street rang with the hideous

clatter of drays and express-carts, each driver, each motor-man,

laboring in a kind of sullen frenzy to reach his barn before six

o'clock, while truculent pedestrians, tired, eager, and exacting, trod

upon one another's heels in their homeward haste.

This tumult of turbulent, coarse, unthinking life seemed at the moment

not merely normal but wholesome and admirable by force of contrast

with the morbid, unnatural, and useless scenes through which he had

just passed. Better to be a burly, unreflecting truckman than a

troubled, unresting soul like Anthony Clarke, "Yes, and better for

Viola Lambert to be the wife of one of these rude animal types,

suffering a life of physical hardship, than to continue the sport of

a man who, having lost the true values out of his own life, is

remorselessly distorting those of the woman he professes to love."

His mind then went back, by the same law of contrast, to his momentous

ride across the Sulphur Spring trail. "To think on how small a chance

my share in this girl's singular history hangs! Had I taken 'the

cut-off,' as my guide suggested, had I camped in the log-cabin at the

head of the cañon, or had I saddled up the next morning and ridden

over to Silver City, as I had planned, we would never have met; and I

would not now be involved in her hysterical career."

But he had done neither of these things. He had camped in the town, he

had sought her, and in this seeking lay something more than chance.

His second meeting was an acknowledgment of his youth and her beauty.

She had held him in the village day by day, because she was lithe of

body and fair of face and because her eyes were unaccountably wistful.

Yes, he had sought her that night when the river sang with joyous,

immemorial clamor, and the lamp beckoned like a hand. He had gone to

her for diversion--that he now acknowledged--and he had grown each day

more deeply concerned with her life and its burdens.

And now here she was at his door, more dangerously enthralling than

ever, involved in a snare of most intricate pattern, calling upon him

through some hidden affinity of their natures as no woman had ever

called him before--calling so powerfully, so insistently, that to

save her from her peril, as pressing as it was intangible, seemed the

one and only task at his hand.

In this mood, sustained by the memory of her anguished face, he sent a

telegram to Lambert, urging him to come at once to the relief of his

wife and daughter.

He did not appreciate the full force of this act until he left the

office and resumed his walk homeward. Then, like a shock from a

battery, came the realisation. "I have now definitely intervened; but

how weakly, how ingloriously!"

This thought grew less agreeable and more humiliating as he dwelt upon

the possible consequences. "Will Lambert remember me? Will he take my

warning to heart?"

In imagination he followed the small envelope as it passed to the hand

of a messenger and started up that fearsome, splendid trail towards

the mill. The world was stern and cold and white and still up there in

the Basin--winter yet reigned in majesty and the pathways were deep

sunk in heaped and sculptured snows.

Up to the half-buried office the courier would ride, and with a cheery

halloo call Lambert to the door. What would he think upon receiving

such an imperative summons from a stranger? "Did I make the situation

clear? He may imagine that some dire physical disaster has overtaken

his women. But that would be true. Their peril is none the less real

because intangible, and yet my part in it may not seem either wise or

manly."

In truth every step towards his own door removed him an emotional

league from the scene in the hall, and as the throb of Viola's

agonized voice died out of his ears the crisis in her life grew

hysteric, unsubstantial, and at last unreal. Her gestures, her plea

for help, her descent of the stairway, came to seem like the climaxes

in a singular drama powerfully acted. "God! what an actress--if she

_is_ an actress!" he exclaimed, as the tragic intensity of her face

returned upon him.

He passed from this to the next phase of his development. In a certain

good-humored way he had accepted his friend Tolman's theories of

hypnotic control, but had never taken them into serious account till

this moment. He was forced now to admit the entire truth of

"suggestion" or to charge this girl, whose character so bewitched him,

with being an impostor. She was either a marvellous artist in

deception or Clarke controlled her through some sinister and

little-understood law of the mind. What else could have brought her

creeping like a somnambulist down the stairway to demonstrate her

tormentor's demoniacal sovereignty? And if he could call her to him in

such wise, then all the weird tales of the romancers, all the

half-mythical doings of Mesmer and Charcot, were true, and the feet of

Bulwer Lytton's remorseless lover solidly set upon the rock of fact.

"My school of thought is very exact and very dogmatic. It prides

itself on not looking beyond its nose. There is no room in our

text-books for this girl and her claims. But--" He stood on the

corner and surveyed the familiar scene, the rushing, commonplace men,

the commonplace horses, the commonplace, ugly walls and signs, and for

an instant they lost substance, became as shadowy as drifting mist,

the men were of no more bulk than phantoms, the walls and pavements

but the effluvia of the commonplace perceiving mind. All were as

transitory as smoke, as illusionary as the opium-eater's mid-day

dream. What did it signify--this mad rush to get round a corner to

creep into a hole? Why should he trouble himself about one of the

millions of women, evanescent as butterflies, with which the earth

continually replenished its swarms of men?

He walked on, eager to return to his own little nest, to his books,

his easy-chair, his glowing fire. What folly to go out of his own

life, to profess accountability for the welfare of a girl whom he had

seen but a few hours in all his life. Why trouble to explain her case?

Was it worth while to dethrone Spencer in order to defend the action

of a child's disordered mind.

This mood gave way to one far less philosophical--he permitted himself

a moment of exultation over his youth. Science had not yet taken out

of him the nerves that leap to the touch of a woman's palm--the right

woman. Ten years' deep, patient, absorbing dissection of pathologic

tissue had not rendered the gloss and glow of a girl's cheek less

velvet-soft. On the contrary, the healthy, wholesome flesh, the

matured beauty of this mountain maid seemed of more worth than any

fame to be wrung from the niggard hands of the Royal Academy. The

absorption of the true scientist was completely broken up. "Love is

worth while," he said, in answer to himself, "and to serve others the

only solace in the end."

XI

DR. BRITT PAYS HIS DINNER-CALL

Kate had not returned, and he was glad of this, for it gave him time

in which to recover his normal serenity of mind. He met her at dinner

with an attempt at humor, but she was not to be deceived nor put off

from the main subject. He was forced to make instant report, which he

did, leaving out, however, all the deeply emotional passages. He fell

silent in the midst of this story--profoundly stirred by the memory of

Viola's confiding gesture as she leaned to him, awed by the essential

purity of the soul he perceived lying deep in her eyes. How blue, how

profound they seemed at the moment!

Kate, if she perceived his abstraction, ignored it. "Well, I hope you

agree with me now. Clarke is her control, her black beast."

"Yes; that is the only explanation at this moment, the only solution

which leaves her innocent."

"But to admit that is to admit a good deal, Mr. Scientist."

"I know that, Mrs. Precipitancy; but what would you have me do? I

don't want to believe the girl a trickster." After a pause he said:

"Kate, I never felt less of a man than I acknowledged myself to be as

I turned away, leaving her in the clutches of those accursed

fanatics."

"Why did you do it?"

"What else could I do? She was entranced--I had no authority. My

attempt at a rescue would have created a disgusting scene and put

Clarke on his guard. My native caution and my conventional training

combined to paralyze me."

Kate, fired with reckless ardor, said, "Let's go and snatch her

away--now!"

"No, my second thought is best. Think of what Clarke's arrest would

mean to the girl and to us? No, we must wait for Lambert. Clarke at

present has all the authority. It won't do to push him. He would

instantly trumpet her name to the four winds of heaven if he thought

we were about to interfere. If Lambert heeds my warning, he will

arrive on Friday, and that will prevent the challenge."

"What sort of person is this Mr. Lambert?"

Serviss pondered, "He's a small, mild-mannered man--not unlike a nice,

thoughtful country doctor in appearance."

"I wish he were six feet high, and fierce as his inches," said Kate.

"If he had been that, this preacher fellow would never have been able

to run away with his family." He sighed. "Well, he's all we have to

conjure with. If he fails us we must resort to craft."

"I wish we could get Viola and her mother here. Would they come to

dinner if I should ask them? If we could get them here once we might

be able to persuade them to stay."

"That would not save her from the pillory in which Pratt and Clarke

design to set her. We must be careful not to anger them. The girl

hates and fears Pratt."

"I know she does."

"His air of proprietorship is fairly indecent. We must be especially

careful not to rouse him. He has millions to use in asserting his

claims, and is as vindictive as a wolf."

Kate sat in silence for a few moments--a very unusual state with

her--and at last announced her purpose. "Leave the whole thing to me.

We will have Dr. Weissmann, and I will ask Clarke to come to meet you

in order to talk over his plans for a committee. I'll just ignore

Pratt. He's nothing but an old kill-joy, anyway."

"He's worse than that. Don't brush him the wrong way. We're going to

have trouble with him before we are out of this."

"I don't care. I will not have him in my house," responded Kate.

"Very well. He's eliminated. I hope Clarke will permit them to come."

"Oh, they'll come unless Pratt absolutely locks them in their rooms.

Shall I ask Marion and Paul?"

"No. I want a chance to talk to our 'psychic' alone."

"Very well. The table just balances, anyway. Now, about your

telegram, are you going to speak to Mrs. Lambert about that?"

"No. It is all up to Lambert. He can act or not, as he sees fit. He

will probably wire them that he is coming, and as there can be no

explanations till he arrives you will please say nothing of my share

in the warning."

They had just risen from the table when Britt sent in his card.

"Excuse my calling so early," he began, with tranquil drawl, "but I'm

going back to the West to-night. I've got to get out of this climate

or join the spooks. I'm thinking of doing that, anyway, just to see

what it's like 'round the corner in the 'fourth dimension,' and also

because I'd like a change of climate."

"You look well--exceedingly well," Kate cheerily replied.

"You're very good; but I don't feel as well as I look. My poor one

lung is working overtime, and a collapse is imminent. I don't see how

my beloved brother Clarke bears up. He must get help from the 'other

side.' You see, _he_ spent the winter in Boston--think o' that! But

it's telling on him. If I wished him well--which I don't--I'd advise

him to return to Colorado and to his Presbyterianism by the limited

mail."

"Could he do that--I mean go back to his church?"

"I don't suppose he could. You see, he went out under a cloud--took

the whole window-sash with him, you might say--and I don't think the

elders would welcome his relapse. Furthermore, he has embraced

'spiritism,' as he calls it, with both arms. By-the-way, professor,

I've been talking about these psychic matters with Weissmann and

others, and I agree with him that you're the very man to go into an

investigation of these occult forces."

"And be called insane, as Zöllner was?"

"Oh, well, times have softened since then. Now, really, what do _you_

think of Zöllner's experiments?"

"I wish he hadn't been so eager to demonstrate the fourth

dimension--that vitiated everything he did."

"Oh, I don't know. I've been rereading Lodge and Wallace and Meyer. We

studied them when I was at college, mainly to click our tongues--'poor

old chaps!'" He smiled. "You understand? Of course, I can't go the

whole length, but I must say I don't know what you're going to do with

the evidence Crookes collected."

"But Slade and Home and the Fox sisters, from whom he drew his

'facts,' were exposed again and again, and one of the Fox sisters

confessed to fraud, didn't she?"

"M--yes. But afterwards recanted and re-recanted. They were all a

dubious lot, I'll admit. That is why I hate to see a girl like Viola

Lambert put in their class by a self-seeking fakir like Clarke."

"_Is_ he self-seeking--or is he only a fanatic?" asked Kate. "I

believe him to be quite sincere--that's why he's so dangerous. He is

willing to walk hot plough-shares to advance his faith. What _are_ his

relations to Viola? Do you suppose she has actually promised to marry

him?"

Serviss waited for his reply in such suspense that his hands clutched

his chair. Britt's face lost its gleam. "I'm afraid she has--or at

least she feels herself 'sealed to him' by her 'controls.'" Serviss

rose and took a turn about the room as Britt went on. "You see, this

sweet-tempered old ghost McLeod is anxious to have his granddaughter

unite her powers with Clarke's in order to 'advance the Grand Cause.'

McLeod, it seems, was a Presbyterian clergyman himself here 'on the

earth plane,' and has carried his granitic formation right along with

him. I've argued with the old man by the hour, but his egotism is

invincible."

Serviss faced him abruptly. "Now, see here, Britt. You've seen a good

deal of Miss Lambert's performances--what's your honest opinion of

them?"

"Frankly, I don't know," he answered, with a smile. "Since rereading

Zöllner and Crookes and going over my notes and those of Dr. Randall,

I'm a little shaken, I confess. So far as human evidence goes these

men prove that there is a world of phenomena ignored by science. I

don't go so far as to say that these doings were the work of

disembodied spirits, but I do admit that I am puzzled by things which

I have witnessed with one sense or another. The things seem to tally

in a most convincing way. This girl is repeating, substantially, the

same phenomena witnessed by Crookes twenty-five years ago. The

singular thing about the whole subject is that one man can't convince

another by any amount of evidence. A personal revelation is necessary

for each individual."

"Isn't that true of other faiths?" asked Kate.

"No, there's a difference. For example, I would take your brother's

evidence as to a new germ; but as to a spirit--no. And yet one is

quite as incredible as another. Crookes applied the same methods to

the study of these manifestations that he used in his other

researches, and piled up a mass of evidence, yet his fellows of the

Royal Academy sneered or haw-hawed--and do yet. Do you know, doctor,"

he continued, "I have moments when I dimly suspicion that we

scientists are a thought too arrogant. We lose the expectant mind. We

assume that we've corralled and branded all facts, when, as a matter

of history, there are scattered bunches of cattle all through the

hills. Take Haeckel, for instance. He talks very like the head of a

church laying down the law to you and to me as well as to the ignorant

outsider. Spencer was a good deal less sure of himself. It takes a

physical specialist to be cock-sure. Darwin never professed to solve

the final mystery of life or death, but Haeckel and Metchnikoff do.

They are so militant against religion that they become intolerant of

their colleagues who presume to differ with them on matters that are

purely speculative. Any one attempting to discuss new phases of human

thought is a fakir. I am not willing to say that all the notions of

the 'dualists' are survivals of the age of superstition, as Haeckel

does. It may be that in the midst of all their fancies which _are_

survivals there are some subtle perceptions of the future."

Serviss lifted his eyebrows in surprise. "That's a whole lot for you

to concede. Weissmann must have been corrupting you."

Britt went on: "We must always remember that every age is an age of

transition. We are losing faith in the revelations of the past, but we

should not presume to define the faith of the future. Men will not

live in the hopelessness which the monists would thrust upon them,

they will not patiently wait while Pasteur and Koch and the other germ

theorists labor to prolong the life of some other generation. They

will always insist on having something to live for and to die for. I

don't pretend to say what this faith will be, but it will be

sufficing."

Kate exclaimed with glowing eyes: "And all this change in you two men

has come about through the influence of a pretty girl!"

The two inexorables looked at each other with a certain air of

timidity, and Britt's face expanded in a slow, sly smile. "You've

discovered us. We are human, like the rest of our sex, if you catch us

out of our laboratories. Theoretically we hold life of no account

actually we're all lovers or husbands." A mockery more moving than

tears came into his voice. "My hopeless philosophy, dear lady, arises

from weak nerves and a poor digestion. I would give all I know of

science, all I expect to be in my profession, and all I hope to be

after I am dead, for just five years of health, such as Lambert's

miners squander in carousals every Saturday night in the saloons of

Colorow. I hold with Haeckel in one thing--I believe in a man's right

to suicide, and when I find myself of no further use to the sick I

shall slip quietly out. I hope I won't have to poison Clarke before I

go. I'd do it cheerfully if I thought it the only way to rid that girl

of him." Seeing that his hostess was really shocked by these words, he

lightly ended: "However, I think such extreme measures unnecessary.

I'm going to send Lambert on to kill him for me."

Kate looked at Morton with inquiring eye--he shook his head.

Britt resumed: "I am trusting in you, Serviss. If I could be sure of

living two weeks longer I would stay and help, but money and breath

are now vital to me, and I must go. However, I'm perfectly willing to

put Clarke out of the way if you advise it. He really ought to die,

Mrs. Rice," he gravely explained as he rose to go. "He is a male

vampire. To think of him despoiling that glorious young soul maddens

me. I am the son of a coarse, powerful, sensual, drunken father; but

he neglected to endow me with his brutal health. My mother was an

invalid; therefore, here am I, old and worn out at forty--that's why I

worship youth and beauty. Health is the only heaven I know, and that

is denied me." Here his smile died, his eyes softened, and his face

set in impenetrable gravity. "Had I the power I would keep Viola

Lambert forever young and forever virgin." Then, with a quick return

to his familiar drawl: "But I am going away without even killing

Clarke, to plod my little round in Colorow and wait news from you. If

I do not see you again, Mrs. Rice, keep me in mind. I make the same

promise your husband made--I will 'manifest' to you if I can."

"I would rather you came in the flesh," she replied.

He bowed deeply. "I thank you both for a very satisfying glimpse of a

civilised home."

"Sometimes I think we're over-civilized," she replied, quickly. "But

come and see us again."

"I fear it will be as a spook--they laugh at microbes as well as

locks. However, I promise to rap when I call."

"Thank you, that will make you a most considerate ghost."

When they were alone together Kate said, with a sigh: "What an amount

of sin and sickness and trouble and death there is in the world!"

"That's a sign we're getting on," he replied. "When we're young we

laugh at the falling leaves--they are only a sign of some new sport.

When I'm as old as you are I suppose I'll begin to observe all the

bald-heads at the theatre."

"Well, now, for our dinner-party. I must write to Mrs. Lambert

to-night."

"You'd better take second thought about this matter--'Reckless Kate.'"

"I have."

"Take a third. Consider this--the girl may go into a trance at the

table."

"Oh, if she only would! My fear is she'll be like other amateur

performers--'subject to a cold' or something. These gifted people are

so often disappointing."

"Now, see here, Kit, seriously, if you invite Miss Lambert to our

house it must be as any other charming guest--"

"You didn't suppose I was _really_ going to ask her to spookle?" she

indignantly answered; then added, with a smile: "Of course, if she

_insists_ on reading my palm--or--any little thing like that, it

wouldn't be nice to refuse, would it?"

"I knew it! You have designs upon her. Don't do it. It would be too

gross after your protest against others for using her. She herself

complained bitterly of just this treatment. You must not even speak of

her powers."

She lifted her hand solemnly. "_I swear!_"

"I mistrust you even when you swear," he ended, doubtfully. "There's a

tell-tale gleam in your eyes."

And at this moment of banter they both lost their sense of the girl's

imminent peril and thought of her only as a most entertaining

possibility as a guest.

XII

VIOLA IN DINNER-DRESS

Viola glowed with joy over Kate's invitation to dinner, and, flying to

the telephone (as she was requested to do), accepted without

consulting either her mother or Clarke, and fell immediately into

wonder whether she possessed a gown becoming enough to fit the golden

opportunity.

Mrs. Lambert was also pleased, but at once said, "I hope Tony will

feel like going."

Viola resented the implied doubt of their own acceptance. "I am going,

anyhow. I will not be shut up here any longer like a convict. I like

Mrs. Rice very much, and I want to see her house. I know it will be

just as nice as she is."

"But we can't go without Anthony, my dear."

Clarke came to the door a little later to say that he had received

Mrs. Rice's invitation, but that he did not care to feed the curiosity

of such people. "You would better plead a previous engagement," he

added to Viola.

"I'll do nothing of the sort," she indignantly answered. "Indeed, I've

already accepted. You needn't look black--I'm going," she added, in

pouting defiance.

Something in her look as well as in her tone convinced him that wisdom

lay in not attempting to restrain her, therefore he gave assent,

gloomily and with a sense of loss. "I don't know how Pratt will feel

about it. He don't like those people, and, besides, he has invited

some friends in to see you this evening."

"He said nothing to me about it," Viola responded, curtly, "and,

besides, how can he expect me to be always at his command? He is not

my jailer. I'm tired of his demands, they are so unreasonable."

Mrs. Lambert, as usual, entered to soothe and heal. "Viola's been very

good about meeting Mr. Pratt's friends, Tony. We've hardly been out to

dinner since we came here, and it really seems to me as if we had the

right to go out to-night."

"We ought to have Thursdays, anyway," the girl scornfully added. "We

have less liberty than our maids. The whole situation is becoming

intolerable."

Clarke acknowledged that Pratt demanded a good deal, and was gracious

enough to say: "It won't be necessary much longer. I'll go down and

try to arrange the matter, and report what he says."

"I don't care what he says, I'm going," Viola repeated. "I'm going if

he locks us out. I wish he would."

Pratt was resentful at once. "I don't want her to go to-night. I have

some people coming in to see her. I don't want them disappointed; she

must remain."

"She feels aggrieved because she has been kept so close here, and I

must say--"

"I don't see why she feels that way, she has every luxury. She goes

for a drive every afternoon, and there is hardly a night that I don't

bring home somebody to dinner. It seems to me she's seeing all the

people she ought to see. I don't believe in having her mix with those

sceptics too freely."

He went up-stairs sulkily, quite in the mood to bully, but Mrs.

Lambert turned away his wrath with a smile and several soft words, and

Viola did not see him till she was on her way to the carriage. He was

lurking in the hall below, waiting for her surly and sour and

insulting.

Viola, perceiving his humor, said to herself: "I will not let you

spoil my evening by making me angry. I will not listen to you," and

she didn't, though she could not help hearing his warning growl.

"I'll expect you home early."

Once safely out of the house she said to Clarke: "This really is too

much, Anthony. He is insufferable. If you don't tell him so, and teach

him better manners, I will leave the house. But there! I said I

wouldn't let him spoil our evening, and I won't--I won't even think of

him again."

Serviss expected her to show some signs of the deep emotional stress

of his former interview, but in this he was most pleasurably

surprised. He marvelled at the height of her rebound from the wan

helplessness of her mood upon the stairs. She was, indeed, a totally

different being--a radiant, blooming creature belonging wholly to the

world of youth--and he was scarcely able to relate the two scenes to

the same girl, and again he exclaimed, "What an actress--if she is an

actress!" She was very simply attired in pale blue with but few

ornaments, but she bore herself like a queen demanding homage--and he

gave it. He was all the lover and nothing of the scientist as he stood

to greet her.

She, on her part, behind her proud mask, was breathing quick with

pleasure. To meet Professor Serviss in dinner-dress, in his own home,

exalted her above the pupil and transformed him into something more

intimate than the master--something more dangerously compelling than

friend.

Kate, quite carried away by her enthusiasm, caught the girl again in

her arms. "You dear, sweet thing! I wish I had made a big party for

you; you're too fine to be wasted on three cranky old scientists."

Serviss met Clarke with less of repulsion than he had anticipated,

for, notwithstanding the preacher's haggard cheeks and a certain set

glare which came into his eyes occasionally, he was a handsome figure.

He was plainly on guard, however, and extremely ill at ease, and his

eyes kept furtive watch on Viola's every movement.

Kate at once engaged him in conversation in order that he and Morton

might not fall into argument, and with the further purpose of

permitting her young people a little time for mutual explanation. She

was glad when Weissmann came in, brisk as a boy, his keen eyes

peering alertly through his horn-bowed glasses; he not merely proved a

diversion, he completed her party. The great man was as animated as a

cricket (this was his society manner), and upon being presented to

Viola began paying her the most marked and absorbed attention, hopping

briskly from one heavy German compliment to another, quite unaware,

apparently, that she was anything more than a very pretty girl.

He took her out to dinner, with elaborate courtesy, and divided his

attentions between his partner and his hostess with mathematical

precision, beaming now upon Viola, now upon Kate, with such

well-calculated intervals that Serviss broke into a broad smile.

"You find yourself well placed, Dr. Weissmann?"

"Well placed and well pleased," he responded, quickly, "with no thanks

to you, I suspect."

Kate was much relieved by Weissmann's liking for Viola--it made her

party a little less difficult; but she was anxious to have Morton free

to talk with Viola, and to that end drew the good doctor into

conversation with Clarke, who was not at all pleased with his seat,

which was by design at the farthest remove from his psychic. He saw no

reason why they might not have been seated side by side.

As Kate remarked to Marion afterwards, it was a hard team to drive,

for the table was too small to permit anything like private

conversation at either end, and to enter upon general topics was to

start Clarke and Weissmann into dialectic clamor. "I trusted in the

food," she answered to Marion's query. "It was a good dinner and kept

even the preacher silent--part of the time."

Clarke's face was flushed with wine, and his glance, which rested

often on Viola, was not pleasant. He was afraid of her when she shone

thus brightly among careless, worldly, sceptical people. She seemed to

forget her work, her endowments, and to think only of flattering

speeches and caresses. It was all so childish, so foolish in her, so

undignified in one who meant so much to the sin-darkened world.

Mrs. Lambert, on the contrary, was humanly glad (for the moment, at

least) of her daughter's respite from her grave duties, and sat

blandly smiling while the young people talked animatedly on a wide

list of subjects.

Morton was delighted to find that Viola had read a good many books,

not always the best books, but of such variety that her mind was by no

means that of the school-girl. Her experience in life was very slight,

but her hunger to know was keen. He was eager to draw her out on her

morbid side, but, as he had said to Kate, "We must not permit anything

to rob her of one evening of unbroken normal intercourse. If you can

manage Clarke, I will do the rest."

Kate tried hard to "manage Clarke," and was succeeding rather

adroitly. Whenever he seemed about to enter upon a discourse she

interrupted him, met his ponderous phrases with flippancies, plied him

with food (for which he had a singular weakness), and in many other

womanly ways discouraged and, in the end, intimidated him. He was at a

distinct disadvantage and knew it, and the knowledge irritated him.

However, with all his eccentricities he was a man of considerable

social experience, and, while he was not at any time joyous of

countenance, he did not in open guise offend, though he sank at last

into a glowering silence, leaving the talk to Weissmann.

Morton gave much attention to Mrs. Lambert, securing from her, almost

before she realized it, a promise to join a theatre-party, and

thereupon turned to Viola to say, "I hope you will consent."

"Consent?" she cried, with shining eyes. "I should like it above

everything. You see I've never really _lived_ in a big city, and it's

all so new and splendid to me."

Morton responded lightly. "I wish I could see it with your eyes. I

suppose New York is a wonderful city, and I'm sure all this chaos is

making towards something unparalleled in beauty, but just now I take

the point of view of a native who has been driven out of the good old

down-town streets by vulgar trade. The Servisses lived for forty years

at the corner of Corlear Square, but four years ago a big apartment

hotel rose next door, shutting off our light, and we had to move.

Hence our acrimony. The city grows more and more a show-place, wherein

the prodigal American may buy the pleasure he thinks commensurate.

Most of us who were born here have quite lost our hold on the earth;

for instance, here we are, Kate and I, treed in a ten-story hotel on

ground from which we used to gather huckleberries, and therein lies

the history of many another New York family."

Viola looked round the spacious and handsome dining-room. "I think

this way of living is beautiful. I want mamma to take an apartment

over here on the Park. I love the Park, although it makes me homesick

for the West sometimes."

"If you do decide to take an apartment, consult Kate. What she doesn't

know of New York isn't lady-like for any one to know. Frankly, Mrs.

Lambert, I should be very glad to see you get away from Pratt's house.

He is, I fear, a selfish, brutal business-man--an egotist who would

sacrifice you both instantly if it would add to his comfort of mind or

body. But wait. I am forgetting my duties as host--we are to avoid all

unpleasant topics," and thereupon he led the conversation back to

impersonal discussions of books and music.

All through this exquisite little dinner Viola sat with a

strengthening determination to assert her right to leave her gloomy

prison-house on the Drive, a house in which there was neither

wholesome conversation nor privacy nor order. An ambition to live

humanly and harmoniously in an apartment like this grew each moment in

definiteness. She appreciated the delicacy of the centre-piece of

maidenhair-fern, veiling with its cloud of green a few flame-like

jonquils. She took a woman's joy in the immaculate napery and in the

charm and variety of the china. Such housekeeping was an art, and

quite impossible without the personal touch of the mistress, and, as

she looked across towards Kate's homely, pleasant face, her heart went

out to her in gratitude and love. She could be trusted, this frank,

laughing, graceful woman. She represented a most modern union of

housewife and intellectual companion. No wonder Dr. Serviss remained

unmarried.

Clarke's forbidding, unrelenting face, looming darkly at Kate's side,

was revealed to her in a new and most unpleasant light. She resented

his scowling glances, and pitied his failure to glow in such genial

company. She saw him for the first time the prosing bigot, narrow and

repulsive. She resented his failure to subordinate his theories. Up to

this moment she had supposed herself respecting him; now she began to

realize that she had lost even that, and the thought made her shiver

with foreboding. How different were the men of science, with their

jocular, irrelevant, but always illuminating comment on whatever

subject they handled! It was all touch and go with them, and yet they

were quite as serious as he.

As the coffee came in Kate rose with a word of caution: "Morton, we'll

expect you to join us soon--"

"You may depend upon us," replied Weissmann.

"And you mustn't talk out all the interesting subjects--save some of

them for us to hear."

"We shall not be able to talk on any other subject than yourselves,"

retorted Weissmann, gallantly, "and that would not be good for you to

hear."

Kate laughed. "I know what that means. These Western girls are

compelling creatures. Well, I will not complain if she only shakes you

out of your scientific complacency."

They were hardly out of the room before Weissmann asked, "Is Miss

Lambert from the West?"

"From the Rocky Mountains."

"So? I find her quite charming."

Morton dryly answered: "I noticed that. Yes, she's Western born, but

of Eastern stock. Mr. Clarke is a New-Yorker, I believe."

"I was born in Maryland, sir, but all my early life was spent in

Brooklyn."

Weissmann turned his telescopic eyes upon Clarke and studied him in

silence somewhat as a pop-eyed crab might regard a clam. "So, so," he

said, softly. "You are the one who is preparing to assault the

scientific world--the Clarke mentioned in the papers to-day?"

Clarke folded his arms in defiant mood. "I am."

"And this charming girl is your victim--the one for whom you make such

claims, eh?"

Clarke regarded the old man with imperious lift of the head. "She is,

without question, the most marvellous psychic in the world."

"'Psychic!'" Weissmann barked this word at him like an angry mastiff.

"'Psychic!' What business has she to be a 'psychic'? She is too lovely

to be anything but a wife and mother--a happy hausfrau. And you would

make her infamous? My friend, I do not understand you."

Clarke's eyes blazed. "If I had the power I would lay her message

before every living soul on the globe. Infamy? Sir, I know no higher

honor than that of being cup-bearer to despairing souls thirsting for

the water of life." Then a direct answer to the old man's prolonged

stare: "You need have no fear. I will not go one jot beyond the advice

of her 'guides.'"

"Her 'guides'? Who are they?"

"I mean her invisible ministers, compared with whose wisdom our

learning is child's prattle for they are one with the sages of

history. Their minds drink of the limitless ocean of all past

knowledge and catch the gleam of discovery to come. Furthermore"--here

his voice grew hard and his glance shifted to Serviss--"no one living

has a more vital interest in her welfare than I. Surely I may be

trusted to guard and cherish one who is soon to be my wife."

This blow, delivered with the orator's telling arrangement of phrase,

fell with tremendous force upon Serviss, towards whom it was

vengefully directed. With a heart filled with anger and disgust and

pain the young host responded: "I am glad to have this assurance from

you, for your action has seemed to me calculated to do Miss Lambert

irreparable injury. Of course, I do not doubt your good intentions as

regards her--I cannot do that after your final statement--but I think

you underestimate your opposing force."

"We expect battle, but nothing can really harm us. What do we care for

the puerile dispraise of the press? We are doing God's work in the

world, and as for the scientists, they are as moles in the dark."

Weissmann's voice became reflective. "Do the parents of the girl not

object?"

"Quite the contrary. Her mother trained her for this great work."

"That is very strange--this mother _seems_ nice and sensible."