Victor Ollnee's Discipline Part 22

His morning mood was eager and searching. He was quite ready to see Leo, ready to talk with her of all that had taken place. Hitherto he had avoided any detailed story of his mother's evocations, but now he was violently curious to know whether or no she had ever performed these particular rites before. He wished to hear all that Leo had to say, and he was deeply disappointed when neither she nor his hostess appeared at the breakfast table.

He finished his meal hurriedly (as soon as it became evident that he was to be alone), and instead of going down-town returned to the library to re-read the famous story of Sir William Crookes and "Katie King"--every word of which had acquired new meaning to him. He thrilled now to the calm, bald narrative, reading between the lines the inner story of the great scientist's bewildered love for the stainless vision which he had evoked but could not endow with lasting life.

The boy dwelt upon the scene of their parting with peculiar pain, perceiving in it new pathos. A throb of sorrow came into his throat. Was Altair but a transitory flower of the dark--aloof, intangible, and sad?

What meant the wistful sweetness of her smile? Was she unhappy in the icy realms from which she came? Did she long for human companionship?

Would she come again? He found himself longing for the night and another sitting with his mother. He felt vaguely the disappointment which comes to those who listen to the messages of these celestial apparitions, so commonplace, so vaporous, so inane. "Katie King," surpa.s.sing all earthly women in her physical loveliness, brought no sentence of intellectual distinction from the mysterious void which was her home.

In the midst of this astounding narrative he heard Leo's voice in the hall, and with a guilty start put his book away and rose to meet her, remembering that he had not treated her very well after the sitting, though he could not recall the precise reason for it. Gradually her step, the sound of her voice, rea.s.serted their charm, and he returned to the breakfast-room like a boy who has been sullen and knows it, but hopes to be forgiven.

His shamefaced entrance disarmed her resentment, and in her merry smile of greeting the dream face faded away. The marvelous vision of the night lost its dominion over him, and he became again the son of the morning.

The girl openly mocked him. "You look pale and sheepish. What have you been doing?"

"I've been reading about 'Katie King.' Do you believe that story?"

"We must believe it when a man like Sir William Crookes tells it. Do you believe what you saw and heard last night?"

"No, I don't. How can I?"

"You seemed to believe in the vision of Altair," she persisted, eying him archly. "You were carried away by her wonderful beauty. I don't blame you. Her loveliness is beyond anything on this earth. A vision like that of sublimated womanhood, purified of all its dross, is very hard on us mortals. Altair doesn't find it necessary to eat eggs and toast, as I am doing this minute. I'm a horribly vulgar and common creature I know, and I ought to apologize, but I won't. I like being a normal human being, and if you don't like to see me eat you may go away."

"I like nothing better than to see you eat, and I've just had a couple of eggs myself. I was hoping all the time you would come down and join me, but you didn't."

"I didn't get to sleep as usual last night," she confessed, with a change of tone. "Altair came to me and kept me stirred up till nearly two o'clock."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean she hung about my bed, tapping and sighing incessantly for what seemed like hours."

"Could you see her?"

"Part of the time. Finally I turned up the light and got rid of her."

He sat in silence for a few moments, then burst out wildly: "Are we all going crazy together? When I hear you talk like that it makes me angry, and it makes me sad. I never met such people before. What does it all mean? Seems like everybody around my mother is bitten by this ghost-bug."

"You, too," she accused. "You caught a little of the madness last night."

"I did, I admit it; but I'm going to throw it off. I won't have any more of it."

"Is your curiosity satisfied?"

"No, it is not; but I'm not going to desert the good old sunny world I know for the kind of windy graveyard we faced last night. Even the eyes of Altair were sad. Did you notice it?"

"Yes, I did," she admitted. "And that's one of the things I can't understand. The spirits all _say_ they are happy, but they _look_ wistful, and their voices indicate that they are filled with longing to return."

"I'm going to break out of this circle of my mother's converts," he pa.s.sionately declared. "I've got to do it, or 'll get all twisted out of shape like the rest of you. I'm going to try again to-day to reach some man who has never heard of a psychic. I'm going to some big mill and apply for manual labor. There's something uncanny in the way I'm kept circling around mother's cranky patrons. I'll get batty in the steeple if I don't get help. Let's go out for a walk in the park. Let's forget we're immortal souls for an hour or two. I want to see a tree. Let's go to the ball game--and to the theater to-night--that'll take all the money I have left, and leave me just square with the world, so I can jump into the lake to-morrow without anybody else's money in my pocket.

Come, what do you say?"

She perceived something more than humor in his noisy declamation, and accepted his challenge. "I'll go you," she slangily replied; "just wait till I get my walking-togs on."

"You've got to hurry," he warned. "I'm going to get out of this house before anything crazy happens to me. Meet me down at the corner of the boulevard."

He left the room with intent to avoid both his mother and Mrs. Joyce. At the moment he wished to remove himself from any further argument, and his longing for the trees and the park was a genuine reaction from his long stress of the supernatural. "My search for a job can go over till to-morrow," he decided.

He was sufficiently recovered from his bewilderment, his pain of the night before, to glow with pleasure as he saw Leonora swinging along toward him. "She carries herself well," he said.

She was dressed in a light-gray skirt and jacket, and her white hat had a long, gray quill which waved back over the rim, giving her the jaunty air of a yacht under reefed sail. Her face was brilliant with color, and her eyes were alight with humor. "Aunt Louise wanted to know where we were going, and I said 'St. Joe, Michigan.'"

He pretended not to see the joke. "St. Joe; why St. Joe?"

As she caught his stride she demurely answered, "If you don't know, it's not for me to explain."

"I suppose people _do_ go to St. Joe for other purposes than marriage?"

"It is possible, but they never get into the newspapers. We only hear of the young things who beat their angry parents by just one boat." She changed her tone. "Where _shall_ we go?"

"I don't object to St. Joe."

She pretended to be shocked. "How sudden you are! We've only known each other two days."

"Three. However, we might make it a trial marriage. You could put me on probation."

"After your display of inconstancy last night I wouldn't trust you even for a probationary engagement."

He harked back to the vision of Altair. "She _was_ beautiful, wasn't she? Did she really exist, or was it merely some sort of hallucination?"

"I thought you weren't going to discuss these subjects?"

He a.s.sented instantly. "Quite right. Give me a crack on the ear every time I break out. I wish I were a robin. See that chap on the lawn! His clothes grow of themselves, and as for food, all he has to do is to tap on the ground, and out pops a worm."

"I prefer roast beef and asparagus tips; and as for wearing the same feathers all the time--horrible!"

In such wise they talked, touching lightly on a hundred trivial subjects, yet carrying the remembrance of Altair as an undertone to every word. They walked up the boulevard to the Midway, then through the park to the lagoon, and the sight of the water cheered Victor. "A boat!"

he cried. "Us for a boat-ride."

He was a skilled and powerful oarsman (she had never seen his equal), and his bared arms, the roll of his splendid muscles, were a delight to her eyes.

He exulted as the water cried out under the keel. "This is what I needed. I've been without a chance to kill something, or beat somebody, for three or four days. I am cracking for lack of exercise. Walking isn't exercise."

The heavy boat, under his sweeping strokes, cut through the water like a canoe, and the girl on the stern seat watched him with dreaming eyes, her air of patronization lost in contemplation of his skill, her hands on the tiller-rope, her att.i.tude of ease and irresponsibility typifying the American woman, just as his intense and driving action represented the American man.

He traversed the entire length of the lagoon before his need of muscular activity was met; then they drifted, exclaiming with pleasure over the charming vistas which every turn of their boat afforded. The catbirds were singing in the willows, and the banks were white and yellow with flowering shrubs, and over all the clear sunlight fell in cascades of gold. The wind was from the lake, cool but not chill; and every leaf glistened as if newly burnished. The day was perfect spring, and under its influence the two beings, young and ardent, inclined irresistibly toward each other.

The girl, who, up to this moment, had been indifferent, not so say scornful, of the advances of men, gave herself up to the pleasure which the companionship of this young giant afforded her. Altair and all that she represented were very far and faint, dimmed, burned away into nothingness by the vivid sun of this entrancing day.

For hours they explored the lagoons, talking nonsense, the divine nonsense of youth, or sitting idly and gazing at each other with the new-born frankness of lovers. At last she said, "I'm hungry, aren't you?"

"As a wolf," he responded.