Victor Ollnee's Discipline Part 4

The ride back to California Avenue was less festive, for Mrs. Joyce took occasion to say: "My advice is this. Return to college and obtain your degree. I will take care of your dear little mother."

"I can't do that," he said. "I've quit. There is no use talking about that."

"You shouldn't take this newspaper attack too seriously," remarked Miss Wood. "Reporters are always exposing mediums. It is quite habitual with them, and besides, your mother has been through it before."

"Is that true?" he asked, with sharpened a.s.sault.

"Yes," Mrs. Ollnee admitted. "I've been attacked in this way twice."

"Since I have been grown up?"

"Yes; once since you went to Winona."

"I didn't know that. Why didn't you tell me?"

Mrs. Joyce interposed. "What was the use? You could have done nothing.

We who understand these matters make allowances for the reporter's trade. He must earn a living some way."

As she said this Victor recalled the cynical close of the article.

"Probably the true-blue believer will condemn the detective and not the culprit," the lines ran. "There are dupes so purblind, so infatuated that nothing, not even the boldest chicanery can shake their faith; nevertheless, a few will take this article for what it is, a full and clear expose of a shrewd and conscienceless trickster." And yet, as he faced these intelligent women, Victor could not think of them as being deceived by open chicanery, much less could he admit for a moment that his mother was capable of resorting to it.

It was a dramatic and moving experience for him to go from this cushioned, splendid chariot back to the shabby little apartment which was the only home in the wide world for either his mother or himself. He was filled with a kind of rage at her, at fate, and at himself, and no sooner were they inside the door than he turned upon her with a note of resentful resolution in his voice.

"Mother, how could you let me in for all of this? Why did you send me to college, knowing that sooner or later exposure must come?"

"I trusted the voices," she replied, "just as I must continue to trust them in the future."

"Now, mother," he rejoined with a certain foreboding grimness of inflection, "we've got to get right down to bra.s.s tacks on that business. I can't go on any longer in ignorance of who I am and what you are. I want to know all about you and all about my father. Who was my father? What was he? Did he believe in this thing?"

Her eyes fell. "No, not while he was on this life's plane. Indeed, it was my 'work' that--that separated us. He hated it and was very harsh about it. But the first thing he did after he pa.s.sed on was to come back and tell me that I was right after all. He asked me to forgive him."

"Is that his picture up there on the wall? What did he do for a living?"

"He was a really fine mind, Victor; one of those men who might have been eminent had they gone out into the world. He was a student and a thinker, but he was not ambitious. He was content to be the princ.i.p.al of a village school and live quietly; and we were very happy till The Voices began."

"Did he know you had The Voices when he married you?"

"Yes, I told him all about them, but he only laughed at me. I suppose he thought it was just a fancy on my part. Anyhow, he did not take them seriously, and during our courtship they gave me freedom. My guide said I need not sit for a while and father guarded me from all the evil ones on that side who are so ready to rush in and take possession of a medium. For two years I had no touch of 'the power,' and I really thought it had all gone away from me. Then you came and I was very ill, and father, my control, returned to tell me that you would be a great man. 'Hereafter,' he said, 'I will direct you in the education of your son.' Why, Victor, he named you. He said you should be called Victor because you would overcome all opposition."

"Well, just how did your separation come about?"

"When my control began to demand things from me your father accused me of playing tricks and sternly forbade any more of it. I tried not to go into trance. I fought 'the power' and this angered father. He came upon me so strong that I could do nothing with him. I heard The Voices all the time and your father thought me crazy. I had what seemed like epileptic fits. I seemed to lose my ident.i.ty--but I didn't; I knew all that was going on. It seemed as if I went out of my body while others entered it and used it to torment and perplex your father. Then he became convinced that I was abnormal in some way and experimented with me--all in a very skeptical spirit--and gradually he lost his regard for me. I became only 'a case of hysteria' to him. I could see him change from day to day. He grew colder and more critical and more aloof all the time. This made me so ill that I was unable to keep my feet--I grew old rapidly, and another younger and prettier woman, one of his teachers, gained the love I had lost and at last he went away with her."

There was a little silence before Victor was able to ask, "Where did he go?"

"He went to Denver, and I never saw him again. He died not long after."

"Then did you take to making a living out of the ghost-room?"

"After your father left I asked my guides why they permitted him to leave me, and they said it was considered necessary to keep me in 'the work.' 'You were too happy,' they said. 'You are too valuable an instrument to live out your life simply as wife and mother. You are now to be devoted to higher aims.' Since then whenever I have tried to get out of 'the work' they have brought me back. Oh, you don't know what a clutch they have on me. They know my income to a dollar. They let me have just enough to live on and to educate you, but they won't let my rich friends provide me with an income. I must do their will exactly or they punish me."

As she enlarged upon this phase of her life Victor was appalled by it.

Her madness--and madness it seemed to him--was now a settled and specific part of her life. "How do they punish you?" he asked, after a pause.

"They do not hesitate to throw me into convulsions, or make me do things that rob me of my friends. They bring disaster upon me whenever I try to walk my own road. Every investment I make on my own judgment they defeat. Did you ever plague an ant or a bug by putting something in its way, checking its advance, no matter in which direction it went?"

He nodded. "Yes, I've done that as a boy."

"Well, that is exactly how they treat me. I've given up trying to do anything in opposition to their wishes. I do the work that is laid out for me." She sighed. "Yes, I've ceased to rebel. I am resigned. But, Victor, you must not fail me. I shall be perfectly happy if only you will be content to go with me and to grant at least that the work I am doing is worth while. You're all I have now, and when I see you frowning at me, so like your father, I am scared. That black look is on your face this moment."

"You need not be afraid of me, mother," he replied, wearily; "but you must not ask me to believe in your voices and all the rest of it. It's too unnatural and too foolish. But you're my good little mother all the same, and I'm not going to desert you. I'm going to stay right here and help you fight it out."

She took his words to mean something sweet and filial and went to his arms with happiness.

As she lifted her head from his shoulder he looked round the room and said, "But, mother, this ghost-room has got to go."

"Oh, Victor, don't say that. I am ready to promise not to take money for my work, but I can't promise anything further; and as for my ghost-room, as you call it, it has so many a.s.sociations with Paul and your grandfather that I cannot think of giving it up. I dare not give it up."

"You must quit it," he repeated. "If you give another seance--for money--I will leave you and I will never come back." And on his face was the stubborn look of his father.

III

VICTOR MAKES A TEST

That night was a long and restless one for the mother, but the son, with the healthy boy's power of forgetfulness, slept dreamlessly, waking only when the morning light struck beneath his eyelids. For a moment the thunder of the elevated trains in the alley puzzled him, and he rose dazedly on his elbow expecting to catch Frenson at some practical joke, but as his eyes took in the faded carpet, the cheap curtains, the decrepit furniture, his brain cleared and his beleaguering worries came back upon him like a swarm of vultures.

He recalled the terror of his mother's trance, the coming of her lovely friends, the ride, the luxurious dinner, and, last of all, the significant words with which they had parted.

In the light of the day his situation did not seem so complicated. "We must leave this city and go out West somewhere--get shut of the whole bunch. Father was right--this trance business is intolerable."

His natural vigor and decision returned to him. He rose with a bound, calling to his mother with a realization of the fact that she had no cook. "Who gets breakfast, you or I?"

She replied, with a little flutter of dismay in her voice, "I don't believe there is a crumb of bread in the house."

"Never mind," he replied; "I'll go to the corner and negotiate a roll."

The neighborhood did not improve with daylight acquaintance, and on his way back from the shop with a jug of cream and a paper bag in his hands he dwelt again upon his motor-car ride to the Palace Hotel and reviewed the eighteen-dollar meal they had eaten. He possessed sufficient sense of humor to grin as he clutched his parcels. "If Miss Wood were to see me now she'd experience a jolt."

His smile did not last long. "Mrs. Joyce knows all about us," he admitted. "That's why she blew us to that feast. She was trying to compensate mother for her empty cupboard, which was very nice of her."

Then his thought went deeper. He began to understand that it was to provide him with a larger allowance that his mother had been living alone and doing her own work. "Dear little mutter!" he said, and his heart softened toward her. "She's been walking the tight-rope, all right."

She was up and at work in the tiny kitchen as he came in. "I forgot to get my supplies Sat.u.r.day--and yesterday I was so upset--"

"Never mind," he replied, gaily. "The 'royal gorge' we had last night makes breakfast supererogatory. I've attached some rolls and a bottle of cream, and if you've any coffee and sugar we're fixed."