The Tyranny of the Dark Part 27

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 pa.s.sionately 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 pa.s.sionately 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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.sionate 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 pa.s.sion 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 a.s.sure 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 a.s.suring 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."