Chapter 4

I

THE MODERNISTS

The Bacteriologic Department of the Corlear Medical School stood at this time on one of the cross-streets of the old East Side, not far from Corlear Park. It was a large, old-fashioned brick building, worn of threshold, and as ugly in line as a livery barn. Its entrance was merely a gap in the wall, its windows rectangular openings to let in the light. Not one touch of color or grace, not one dignified line could be detected throughout its whole exterior. It was constructed for use, not ornament.

Interiorly it was quite as utilitarian. Its halls, bare and cheerless, echoed to the tread and were repellent as those of a barracks. The visitor felt chilled, disappointed, as if he had been met by the insolent servant of an indifferent hostess. It seemed the home of the mathematical, the mechanical, the material; but this was a mistake. It was a house of dreams. The right knock at one of those ugly doors would permit one to step into the presence of the most cheery, the most learned, the most imaginative of individuals--the man of germs, poet, dreamer, and experimentalist, absorbed in the pursuit of the unattainable, concerned with the ultimate structure of organic life, baffled, yet toiling on for love of his work, while the sick of the world believe in him as an angel of altruism.

The far-away rivers of the world have all been traversed and mapped, but the streams of blood in the arteries of man are filled with the unknown. The habits of the Esquimaux, the customs of the dwarfs of Central Africa, the ways of the baboons of Sumatra are minutely set to book, but the wars of the phagocytes remain indeterminate, unexplained. With microscope to his eye the bacteriologist is now examining the constituent parts of the blood, isolating, breeding, and minutely studying the germs of fevers, the growths of tumors, and other elemental forms of human parasites, in order to discover their antagonisms, their likings; for in these jungles of the flesh the war of races proceeds quite as in the Amazonian forests--the white cells against the red, devouring, destroying.

The men behind these bald, bleak doors are tireless workers as well as seers and sages. They toil (at ridiculously low salaries) in the avowed hope of eradicating diseases. They do not pause in dismay of the insoluble. They--or such as they--discovered the cure for small-pox, for hydrophobia, diphtheria, and for yellow-fever. They and their like brought chloroform to the woman in travail, and ether to the wounded soldier. They have enormously reduced the number of those who die on the battle-field by their antiseptic dressings, and by one discovery after another have made infantile diseases less destructive. They already control yellow-fever and are about to eradicate typhoid--yet they say "our work is but begun."

Here one comes upon their dreams. Calm and contained as their words are, their hearts are aflame with passion for the undiscovered. They are akin to those who seek the theoretic poles of the earth, undaunted by endless defeats. With quickening breath they watch the electrons flame and fall, seeing the ultimate constitution of matter almost within their grasp, and yet they do not permit their dreams to blind or weaken them in their wearisome, hopeless quest.

They have their heroism for humanity, too. They meet death face to face, as they pry close into the cause of decay, the secret of morbid growth. There is more danger in certain germs than in lions. Blood-poisoning is to the surgeon a more constant menace than hunger to an Arctic explorer. These students never know what destroyer they may unwittingly unloose. Cross-section of abnormal tissue is more entrancing than a rose-leaf, a cluster of bacilli more beautiful than a snowflake. They have gone past all creeds, these calm young men, but they bow before the unspeakable majesty of the unknown. To them the Hebrew Scriptures are but the tales of minstrels in the childhood of the race, Mohammed a dreamer of baseless visions, and Christ but incarnate love in an age of war. The Creator they conceive is too profound to admit of any attribute. He neither thinks nor feels, and the life that pulses at the base of the first faint cell is a part of the same power that binds the stars to their circling suns.

Notwithstanding their daily contact with the most appalling cases of disease and death, they come and go briskly with jocular greetings on the stair-ways. They return to their homes each night to read, to smoke their pipes, deporting themselves like commonplace fathers and brothers and husbands. They even make love like other men; but, nevertheless, they may be overtaken in muse like alchemists, subject to fear and hope like children. To the business-man their ways are ways of silence and sorcery. Their deep-hid convictions are at variance with all theories of Christian redemption, and the realities of their realm more startling than any romance of war or peace. To them matter is as insoluble as the transforming forces which emanate from it. They play with nerves, laying bare the beating heart of life, forever finding, yet forever failing.

To this big, bare building, to one of these barren rooms, Morton Serviss returned after eight weeks study of the sands and the stars and the cave-dwellings of vanished men. From the infinitely lonely and huge and beautiful he cloistered himself to pore upon the habits of the infinitely small, to listen to the swarming, diminished tumult of the protozoa. He came back, as usual, brown, alert, and keen-eyed--eager for work, confident of some new victory, for he was an investigator of weight and standing among the younger men of science. On the street he was indistinguishable from other debonair young men of good social position; in his laboratory he was a master, absorbed, reticent, and precise of plan.

His chief, a little, gray, bent, brusque German, greeted him with absent-minded smile, remarked briefly upon his good health, and then they set to work. In thirty seconds he had forgotten the desert, the face of Viola, all his energies concentrated on the segment of cancer beneath his eye. A newly developed germ, a thousandth part the stature of a gnat's toe, shut out the valley of the Colorow. All day he moved among a wilderness of tubes, jars, and copper ovens, peering, observing--and in a sense happy.

But at night, when alone with his pipe in his study, the lavender sands, the violet peaks, the vivid saffron skies returned with power. Viola, too, came back to bewitch him from his reading, to make his microscopic world of shadowy substance and the smell of his laboratory a hateful thing.

He heard nothing further of her. Britt wrote once or twice, but did not allude to either Clarke or the Lamberts, and Serviss did not care to ask particularly about them. It was better for him not to be concerned further with the girl's singular history. He hated the irregular, the pretentious. His own life, so clear, so well regulated, made her daily performances the more monstrous. The whole had become so foolish in retrospect that he refrained from speaking of it, even to his sister.

It was not quite true that he saw little of New York, for his sister, Mrs. Rice--a widow with two children--who kept his house, or, rather, his double flat, was a social soul, and not merely went about freely, but entertained regularly. They lived handsomely, and the world in which they moved was crowded with duties as well as with sane pleasures. They entertained at their table artists from Paris, savans from Berlin, and literary lesser lights from London, and they enjoyed all this, envying the richer and more ostentatious families of the city as little as they despised the poor of Hester Street. The one quality which they insisted upon in their guests was intellectual cleverness. Perhaps they were a little severe on bores.

Their ways were quite as remote from the so-called captains of industry as from the farmers of Jersey, and the roar of Broad Street was so far away it reached them but as the hum of hornets outside their window-pane. To the explorer of Tibet this life was narrow. To the gay dinner-parties of upper Fifth Avenue it would have seemed dull. To the wrecker of railroads on Wall Street it was indubitably petty. To the merchant it was unprofitable, and yet they were quite content with it, and looked out upon the bustling throngs of fashion and the hustling world of business with equal word of good-natured contempt.

"We can't all be biologists," Serviss was accustomed to say, "and I suppose somebody must continue to steal and murder."

They came of good stock, these Servisses, and knew it and felt it. Breeding was indicated in their well-set heads, in their shapely hands, and especially in their handsome noses. "We are inclined to be stubby, that's true, but we have the noses of aristocrats--they go back to the Aryans of the Danube," said Mrs. Rice to a friend. "Morton cannot consider a girl of questionable pedigree, no matter how rich or charming she may be. We believe in stock--not in family, but _strain_; a family is an accident, a strain is a formation. The Mortons and the Servisses are _strains_. Their union in my brother will yet make itself felt." Her confidence in his powers was absolute. "He is one of the greatest young men of his day. Time will show," she added, as if to clinch her argument.

The circle of their acquaintance included, first of all--and of course--the scientific group, then in successive widening waves the general literary and educational fraternities, the artistic and musical sets, and finally they kept in touch with the old New York families, their own school-mates and friends and those related. All the details and duties of the social side of his life Morton turned over to Kate, and such was her tact, and her skill and charm as hostess, that her rooms of a Tuesday afternoon were filled with a company of men and women as cheerful and as informal as they were clever and distinguished. Among these groups Serviss moved as detached of all responsibility as any of his guests, finding in this contact with bright minds one of the greatest pleasures of his life.

These various circles moved afar from isms. They prided themselves on their balance, their commonsense, their fund of comparative ideas. True, some of the women had embraced Christian Science more or less openly, but they did not esteem it necessary to proselyte. Political creeds were but jocularly discussed. To advocate any special belief was to prick one's self down a bore, although some of those in the strictly university circles did at times become troublesomely learned in conversation. However, this was esteemed "old fogy-ism" by the younger men like Serviss, who alluded to "the days of the professional monologue" with smiling contempt. Conversation with them was a means of diversion, not of enlightenment as to any special subject.

Into these circles a thorough-going spiritualist never penetrated. To tell the truth, these modernists did not permit the hereafter to awe or affright them. Some of them went to church, but they did so calmly, patiently, as to a decorous function, and some may at times have prayed, through the medium of printed supplication, but, generally speaking, they had reached a sort of philosophic indifference as to the one-time burning question of heaven or hell. So far from acquiescing in the dictum that morality was but filthy rags, they esteemed good deeds and clean thoughts higher than any religion whatsoever.

Mrs. Rice expressed the convictions of many of her associates by saying, humorously: "No, I don't want to be saved. I'm not lost. I don't know as I care for immortality. Forever is a long time--I might get bored; anyhow, the future must take care of itself."

In all the drawing-rooms of his friends, Morton Serviss was a most welcome guest. His frank, boyish ways, his careless dress, his freedom from cant, his essential good-fellowship deceived the most of his acquaintances into thinking him a mere dabbler in science, a man of wealth amusing himself; but Weissmann, who was qualified to know, said: "He has persistency, concentration, a keen mind, a clear eye, and a _voonderful_ physique."

He belonged, moreover, to the men of imagination, not to those who write books or poems, but to those who tunnel mountains, build vast bridges, invent new motors, and play with electrical currents as if they were ribbons. The novelist basing himself on what he knows of human nature projects himself into the unknown, just as the scientist who stands on the discoveries of those before him feels out into the darkness for new stars, new forces. And yet as Clarke and his party indignantly declared, "both novelist and scientist ignore the question most vital to us all--the question of the soul's survival after death"--ignore it till some loved one dies, then they, too, agonize in secret over the mystery for a space, only to rise and go back to their work, concealing the conviction which their hour of anguish brought to them.

Perhaps it was not chance, but deep design, which had brought this vigorous young investigator face to face with a mystery crying out for solution--certainly it was not without craft that the unseen powers had baited their hook with the almost irresistible allurement of a young and ardent girl. If there is logic in the shadow, fate was on Viola's side.

II

NEWS OF VIOLA

One morning in late March, while Serviss was still at his morning's mail, Dr. Britt's card came in, bringing with it instant, vivid recollection of Colorow. The beauty of his days there had by no means faded from his mind, although he had succeeded in putting his romance in the background of his working brain, and had given up all thought of ever seeing Viola again.

He greeted Britt most cordially. "So you turned up at last! How is the lung? Isn't this a raw time of the year for you?"

"Well, yes; but my father died a few days ago, and I had to come on, and being near I ran in to see how you and the 'bugs' were getting on."

"Oh, we're thriving. Their ways are quite absorbing. How is your own 'farm'?"

"All in ruins. The fact is I've neglected the poor little brutes. I had no time for germs after I went off into the study of 'spooks.'"

"You don't tell me you've turned investigator of spirits! What have you discovered?"

"Not a thing. It's the most elusive problem I ever tackled. You remember the Lamberts?"

"Very well. I was about to ask about them."

"They're here now."

"Here! In New York?"

"Yes. They went to Boston last fall--Boston is a hot-bed of spookism, as you may know. They spent the winter there among the brethren, and have come on here for a change."

"They'll get it. What is--the girl doing?"

"Spooking mainly. That's all her 'guides' will allow her to do. Clarke still dominates the household by the aid of the ghostly granddaddy--a grim old chap that. They hold regular 'séances' now."

"You don't mean it!" Serviss grew graver yet of countenance. "I had hoped they would spare her that humiliation. I haven't seen her name in the papers."

"Oh, they don't go quite so far as that. The circles are 'very select.' Only the priests of the faith and their friends are invited--no admission fee--you understand?"

"I'm glad of that. It would be too bad to put that child forward in the double rôle of fakir and money-breeder; but, tell me, have you any fresh light on the subject of her mediumship?"

"Well, yes. I've changed my point of view slightly. I'm inclined to think there is pretty generally some basis for the faith. The literature of the subject is immense, and some of it is as well authenticated as any physical treatise. I'm convinced that Miss Lambert has no intent to deceive--she has no possible motive to do so--but Clarke has, and yet I cannot connect him directly with the phenomena."

"How is her health?"

"Very good, apparently. She is quite as blooming as when you saw her, and is immensely more mature mentally."

"Is she resigned to her life?"

"Sometimes she is and sometimes not. She is very sensitive to influences, and at times when Clarke is near she grows almost as enthusiastic as he--at other times she bitterly complains. I tried to free her from Clarke, but she wouldn't give me the authority necessary."

"What do you mean by that?"

There was something both sad and mocking in Britt's face as he answered: "I offered to marry her--wasn't that generous of me? She spurned my humble offer, intimating that there was small choice between me and Clarke and the spooks. No, I'll be honest, she was very nice and kind about it, and added that perhaps Mr. Clarke was right--her duty in the world was to 'convince people of the reality of the forces,' or something like that. 'I shall never marry,' she added, to soften the blow, and really she does seem a person set apart."

Serviss looked down at his book. "I suppose she imagines herself stricken with a mortal illness. I confess I sometimes think of her in that way. I can't understand why her parents--" He checked himself. "Where are they stopping?"

"They're housed over near the Riverside Drive with a wild enthusiast who has oodles and wads of money--old Simeon Pratt."

"I've heard of Simeon--Uncle Simeon the reporters call him on 'the Street.' I remember now about his spiritualism. He had some remarkable experiences after his wife's death--drowned, wasn't she?"

"You can't afford to be indefinite about Simeon's sorrows, doctor, for they made him what he is. I find these believers all start in about the same way. Simeon's wife and two daughters were lost in the English Channel. Simeon became a believer the following Monday--or maybe it was Tuesday."

"I recall the story of his life now. It was all very tragic. I wonder he didn't become a maniac."

"Some people think he did," answered Britt, dryly.

"So they're with Simeon. He lives gorgeously, I'm told."

"About like a lone American guest in a twenty-franc-per-day hotel in Paris. Why, yes, they're very comfortable there--all but the girl. She's discontented and unhappy, if I'm any judge, and is besieged day and night by the mourning faithful, not to speak of certain amorous males."

This hurt, and Serviss shifted ground. "Does she keep up her music?"

Again Britt smiled, but not humorously. "She plays the harp--in the dark."

"You mean--"

"She's taken on a lot more of the regulation tricks--materializing flowers, slate-writing, music without hands, etc."

"You don't mean it! I can hardly associate such doings with her," sorrow and indignation mingled in his voice.

"I assure you I was there last night at a 'circle,' and these things took place with Clarke as ring-master. There wasn't a particle of originality--it was the same old mill, and the same old grist, yet I don't hold her responsible in any harmful degree. I can't believe she designedly tricks, but she's surrounded now by a gang of chattering, soft-pated women, and men with bats in their belfry, who unite in assuring her that her God-given powers must be fostered. They've cut her off from any decent marriage--she's virtually a prisoner to their whims. What they may induce her to do next I don't know. I'm going to hang round here for a week or two and see." A violent fit of coughing interrupted him. When he recovered he looked up sidewise. "Isn't this a peach of a climate? Wouldn't you think they'd build at least one of their big cities where microbes couldn't fatten on genius?"

"What led Clarke to consent to leaving the West? When I was there he bitterly opposed her going."

"Oh, it's very simple. He has written a book on _The Physical Proof of Immortality_, and, being anxious for a publisher, withdrew his opposition to her plan, and declared himself willing to go to Boston--at Lambert's expense."

"Is he out of the Church?"

"Absolutely. You should have heard his farewell sermon. It really was as dramatic a speech as I ever heard. He went on to declare that the Hebrews were not the only seers, that the wells of inspiration were not yet dry, that revelation was waiting upon every soul to-day, and that he had been led by sorrow to listen at the key-hole, and so on. I trembled for the girl's secret, but he had himself in hand, and did not betray her. No one out there knows for certain what her abnormalities are."

"How about Lambert? Why didn't he take a hand?"

"He seemed bewildered by it all, and overawed by Clarke and the girl's 'controls.' 'It's all above timber-line for me,' he said, but he didn't like their coming away a little bit. He was angry with Clarke for breaking up his home, and if the girl had been his own I think he would have stopped the business long ago. Then there was a young fellow, Clinton Ward, who was working for Lambert, a fine young fellow--"

"I remember him."

"Well, it seems that his father is a partner in a publishing firm in Boston, and Clarke tried to make use of him to get his book published, and I believe his firm is to take it. Meanwhile the young fellow is in love with Viola, and willing to marry her and take chances, but his family is very properly aghast. Viola, knowing this--or for some other reason--refuses him. And there you are! The girl seems cursed on all sides, and, worst of all, has to endure Clarke and his ravings twelve hours of every mortal day."

"What is her relation to Clarke?" asked Serviss, hesitatingly.

"Well, now, I don't know. Sometimes I think he controls her by some infernal hypnotic power; and then again, from some phrase of her own, I think she considers her mind diseased, and marriage with any one else impossible."

"I don't see how the mother can stand by and see her daughter's life burned away."

"She, in her turn, seems enslaved to the dead. She has often told me that her father's spirit is leading her every movement."

"That particular ghost is Clarke--don't you think?"

Britt's eyes narrowed. "I don't know. I have never been able to connect him directly with a single one of these manifestations, and yet he must be at the bottom of part of it."

"It all comes back, then, to the girl herself."

Britt rose uneasily. "I repeat I am completely at sea. I have studied every line of old Randall's notes till I'm 'dopy' myself. Everything has conspired to make the girl hysterical--to fasten some accursed mental weakness upon her. If I could have stopped it two years ago she might have outgrown it. Every year now makes it less easy for her to shake it off--whatever it is."

"Atrocious!" exclaimed Serviss. "Has no one authority to act?"

Britt shrugged his shoulders. "What would you do when both parents--the living and the dead--consent? Only a husband could intervene, and Clarke seems to be about to claim that place. No, I see no hope for the girl. She may be right, after all, in joining Clarke."

Serviss rose to release the emotional tension under which he had kept his limbs. "You don't know their present plans?"

"No, only that Clarke is going to publish soon." He looked round the room. "What a development since my time! Bacteriology and auto-transportation are neck and neck in their amazing expansion."

Thereupon they dropped all reference to the Lamberts and their trials, and turned their minds upon phagocytes and other ravening mites whose likes and dislikes, minute as they are, work more devastation than cannon.

Serviss's work was over for that day; after Britt went away he sat idly at his desk, his mind busy with the revolting pictures called up by what he had heard of Viola. "They are destroying a beautiful soul," he exclaimed, bitterly, as he recalled the charm of her face and voice on that ride to the mine. "They are forcing a charming girl into an abominable life, they are warping her moral fibre into ugliness and death--and Clarke is the fanatic devil of the scheme."

The desire to see her, to talk with her, to measure the change in her grew very strong--so strong that he meditated a call, but the thought of Clarke cut the resolution off before it was fully formed. "Probably Britt is right--Clarke's rotten soul has fatally infected hers."

When Weissmann came in Serviss turned to him and said: "Doctor, I want to ask you a very unusual question."

"Proceed," replied the old man, who spoke with a little touch of the German now and then.

"What do you think of the claims of spiritualism?"

Weissmann did not smile as Serviss had expected. He became grave. "I am not qualified to judge. Speaking generally, I would say there are many phases to be considered. There are some millions of people who believe in it--which would argue some small basis of truth to start with. On the other hand, the extraordinary credulity of these people is to be taken into account."

"You mean they are those bereaved and anxious to believe?"

"Precisely. Again, speaking generally, I find few things impossible in this world of mystery. To take an old metaphor, I would not be surprised to find a grain of wheat in all this bushel of chaff. Every genuine phenomenon in the world stands related to every other phenomenon, and I believe that the truth or falsity of the spiritualistic hypothesis can be determined in accordance with physical science. If I were young and strong like you I would devote myself to the study of this delusion. It should be studied by one like yourself--to whom death is no near presence; as for me, I have two sons and one wife dead; my judgment would be vitiated therewith. You have no dead; you would make an admirable student of these spirit-voices and signs."

Serviss, though a little awed by the old man's unexpectedly solemn manner, ventured further. "Have you ever witnessed any of these unaccountable doings which Crookes and Zöllner instance?"

"I have had them in my own chamber." The old man's eyes twinkled. "Once, as I was dozing on my bed, one morning early, a faint cloud, like a puff of smoke, began to form above my head. It became pendulous, reaching towards me, and out of it a hand developed and extended. I said: 'It is an hallucination--very curious! I will touch it and it will vanish.' I reached--I grasped the hand--_it was warm and solid!_ I leaped from my bed with a yell." He chuckled at his keenly remembered discomfiture.

"How do you account for it? It was an illusion, of course. You thought the illusion only ocular--it extended to the sense of touch."

Weissmann's eyes gleamed speculatively. "We will let it go so. The world of sense and the world of spirit curiously intermingle--as we know."

"But these manifestations, so far as I have any knowledge, are so foolish and childish--"

"Well, so many foolish and childish persons have gone to the other world. Death is not the beginning of wisdom. I am an old man, Serviss, and already many of my loved ones are dead. I should like to believe they are still sentient, and maybe they are. I am German. The blood of Kant is in my veins." He seemed to be speaking partly to himself. "I do not dogmatize so gladly as I once did. As I do not know the essence of matter, it would be folly for me to assume to fathom the depth of spirit. The essential hopelessness of science is coming to render me humble. Spiritualism certainly is a comfortable belief. I would gladly embrace it if I could. I suspend judgment. This desire for another life may be only a survival of a more unreasoning time, something we will outgrow."

Serviss was profoundly surprised by his chief's attitude. He had expected a large, calm, and rather contemptuous reply to his question. In place of decision he encountered a doubt, a hesitancy, which betrayed weakness. Rudolph Weissmann, great as he was, belonged to the innumerable throng of the bereaved whose judgments are clouded by passion. He, too, was growing old, his all-embracing mind had yielded to an hallucination.

The young man's respect for his chief did not diminish, but a feeling of sadness swept over him as he realized that another renowned and fearless investigator was nearing the end of his great usefulness, and that upon the clear blue steel of his intelligence the rust of age had begun to fall. Truly the power of his early training, his worship of Kant and his school was still vital.

Then he pondered his words. "If I were a young man like you I would investigate this thing," and recalled that no young man of science had ever devoted himself to it. "They all came to it late in life, after bereavement."

The bereaved! The whole stupendous delusion seemed to rest upon the overmastering desire of the bereaved for their beloved. The great and good men and women among the believers (he was willing to admit there were such) came to investigation weakened by sorrow, made illogical by loss. They put their sane judgment, their strength, their calm patience aside and grasped eagerly at the lying comfort extended to them. They were not merely deceived, they developed fraud by their blindness, by their hunger for consolation, and by their crass credulity. He was still young enough to have inexorable theories--to be of single-hearted loyalty to his creed. To him as a monist, the soul (as an entity apart from the body) did not exist. Consciousness was a physical disturbance of the higher nerve centres, and thought a secretion of the brain. He acknowledged no line of demarcation between the crystal and the monera--and no chasm (of course) between man and the animals. The universe was a unit--and all its forms and forces differentiations of one substance and that substance too mysterious to be analyzed or named. In such a philosophy as this there could be no room for any hypothesis which even so much as squinted towards dualism, or that permitted a conception so childish as the persistence of the individuality after death.

However, he did not carry his implacable principles into the homes of his friends, and seldom permitted them to interfere with his enjoyment of wines or good dinners, the theatre or the drawing-room. This fact, from a cynical point of view, proved his faith to have been as truly of his laboratory as that of a bishop, with Spencer and Darwin and Koch and Haeckel as the founders of its articles.

He went home that night with the words of both Weissmann and Britt intermingling in his mind, strongly tempted to tell Viola's story to his sister, and so enlist her sympathy for the poor girl.

But it happened that an engagement to dine filled Kate's mind, and he had no time to open the subject till they were on the way, and by that time he had concluded not to involve her in his perplexity.

By a curious coincidence one of the guests at the dinner brought a hush of expectancy over the entire company by relating a series of experiences he had been privileged to share with a "psychic" some years before. He told of his mystification with a laugh in his eyes and with racy vigor of tongue, but Serviss, newly alive to the topic, could not but marvel at the intensity of interest manifested by every soul present. "Disguise it as we may," said the narrator, "this question of the life beyond the grave is chief of all our problems. It is the sovereign mystery, after all."

At this the hostess spoke: "I wish _we_ could see some of these things. You make us shudder deliciously. Can't you sometime bring this remarkable young woman--they're always women, aren't they?"

"Oh no," laughingly replied the young fellow. "One of the most amusing 'stunts' I ever saw was that of a man in Washington, who made a banjo play behind a curtain while holding both your hands."

"Why _do_ the spirits do such foolish things? I should think they'd be ashamed to act so 'frivolous like.'"

"They always talk like Indians, don't they? It's a pity. Why aren't they dignified and sincere?"

The young story-teller went on. "That's just it. The mediums are so nonchalant while causing these marvels that they fail to convince. Why, when I was holding a slate in order that they might write upon it, I minded the scratching no more than a clock a-ticking, they had made me that careless of their hocus-pocus. A voice in my ear can't make me start, and nothing, absolutely nothing, can now 'rouse my fell of hair.' You put a potato in the ashes of the hearth and it will ultimately pop into something to eat. You put a medium in a dark place and she will set your soul's nerves a-tingle."

Under all this banter Serviss perceived the pulse of an interest which laid hold on the most secret hopes and fears of the youngest and shook the eldest with an elemental dread and longing. It was as if the flood-gates of a sea of doubt and wonder had been turned in upon a dozen minds hitherto as well kept as lawns. Questions popped like corks and answers were as vivacious as the gurgle of wine, but the topic remained indeterminate--the argument inconclusive.

On their way home, Serviss said to his sister: "Did you notice how profound the silence became when Ralph started that discussion of the occult?"

"It is always so."

"Is it, really? I hadn't noticed it particularly."

"That's because people are afraid to talk such things before you scientists. Why, every woman there has been to a palmist or mind-reader or something."

"You astonish me. Have you?"

"Of course! I go every little while just for fun. We all pretend that we don't believe in it, but we do. I'm scared blue every time I go to a new one--they're all such creepy creatures. The last one I went to was positively weird."

Serviss was severe. "Kate, I am ashamed of you. To think that you, a woman of penetration, associating with people of rare intelligence like myself--"

"But why don't you people of rare intelligence look into these things? Why do you leave us poor untrained emotional creatures to suffer befoolment when you could so easily instruct us and shield us?"

"Because, while we could easily prove you befooled, you would still follow after your saw-dust idols. We prefer to save you from your _bodily_ infirmities and contagions, and so react on your minds."

She laughed. "That's very clever of you, and very decent. Stay with your germs, rob us of our diseases, but leave us, oh, leave us our delicious _thrills_!" She became grave. "The fact is, Morton, we all have moments when we feel the presence of the dead. I do. Father and mother never seem away off in our Graceland vault; sometimes they seem to be in the room with me. It's all a fancy, you'll say, and very foolish, but I believe mother actually comes to help me with Georgie when he is ill. Sometimes in the deep of the night I thrill as if she touched me."

He was not unsympathetic as he said: "You never hinted at this before."

"I was afraid to do so. If mother exists somewhere, and in some etherealized form, why can't she come back? Why couldn't her mind act on mine and produce the sensation of her presence?"

"Perhaps it could. Only there is no proof of its ever happening."

"Now see here, Morton, so long as we are on this subject at last, I want to ask you, do you believe mother is gone--absolutely blotted out of existence?" She waited in tense silence, and as they passed a street-lamp, and the light fell on his face, he seemed to have grown suddenly pale. "Do you believe Darwin and Spencer and Victor Hugo have gone to nothingness?"

"No, at the bottom of my heart I can't think that, and yet theoretically I cannot conceive of the existence of any soul apart from the body. Think of it! If mother lives, so do all the billions of cannibals, negroes, Bushmen--you can't draw a line and say 'here begins the immortal souls.'"

"That isn't the question. I do not believe that father and mother and Hayward have vanished into a handful of dust, I cling to a belief in their living selves, not because the bishop and the prayer-books say so, but just because my own mind says so. I won't surrender them, that's all."

"And yet a faith springing from such a desire is not well based. I want to tell you about some people I met last summer. They will interest you." Thereupon he pictured his first meeting with Viola. He described the mother and Clarke. He told of his interview with Britt and of Randall's revelations concerning Viola's life. "And now they have convinced the girl that she should extend her sphere of influence and bring her chicanery to bear on the metropolis."

"How do you know it is chicanery?"

"Britt said--"

"I don't care what Britt said. You found the mother sweet, and you admit the girl is charming. I'll trust your instinct in such matters, Mort; you've never been one to run after frumps and minxes. She had good eyes?"

"Beautiful eyes, steady, blue-gray, wistful. She quite enchanted me at first--"

"And you're sentimental over her still?"

"I didn't say that I was sentimental over her at any time."

"I don't care what you said. I can tell by your voice that she is a lost, sweet dream. What do you want me to do?"

"Nothing."

"Yes, you do. You want me to see her and find out what she's doing here. It is Kate to the rescue! I will go to-morrow."

"You are too precipitate! You might wait and get my mind."

"I have your mind already, and I believe in doing things vigorously. Besides, you've roused my curiosity. After all these years of waiting to see you get interested in something besides your 'bugs'!--I'm delighted to know you're human, and that there is one woman in the world who can make you moan. You are hit--don't deny it! You've been brooding on that girl all this time. I've known you were hit, but I thought I would wait till you cared to speak. I'm crazy to see her. I shall act at once."

"It's too much to ask of you, but I hope you will consider me to the extent--"

"If your theory is correct that girl ought to be snatched away before the mob of occultists, freaks, and flatterers of this city utterly spoil her. Anyhow, I'm going to look into her case on my own account." And in this determination she snuggled into the corner of the carriage and became silent.

Serviss found that sharing his experience with his sister had enormously increased the weight and importance of his doubt. Viola and her singular beleaguerment had suddenly grown to be a vital problem--something to be immediately seized upon, and he casually added: "It is only fair to say that the Lamberts are above the need of taking money for any display of 'psychic force.'"

Suddenly Kate sat up. "Suppose the girl really _has_ these powers?"

"That is impossible!"

"Why impossible? Do you men of science pretend to know _all_ there is to know?"

"Certainly not; but think what such an admission involves."

"No matter _what_ it involves. You don't ask what the X-ray involves; you ask, first of all, is it a fact? If the girl has these powers, then what? You don't even know what she claims, do you?"

"Not in detail."

"Well, then, don't condemn her till you know what you're condemning her for."

"Kate, you amaze me. I thought you would commend my cool judgment, my sanity, and lo and behold! as Aunt Celina says, you have become the girl's advocate and the assailant of science."

"Not at all. I merely say you scientific people should not be so insultingly sure that people with a faith are fools."

"We don't say fools--we merely say misinformed."

"Anyhow, you've interested me in this medium--"

"For Heaven's sake, don't call her that if you're going to see her. To apply such a name to that sweet child is an outrage."

Kate's voice was exultant as she cried out: "Now I know you're in love with her."

"Mrs. Rice, you are a very wise woman."

"I hope I shall not find you a very silly scientist," she replied, with several implications of superiority in both words and tone.

III

BRITT COMES TO DINE

His sister's blunt words brought Morton face to face with himself. His heart had been touched, his imagination fired by Viola, hence his discontent, his heat of anger towards the unlovely side of her life. It was the memory of her that had kept him half-hearted to the claims of several comely women of his circle whom Kate had advocated.

And now his mind (which ought to have been given up entirely to bacteria) was filled with the face and fortunes of one who was either living a lie or suffering from an abnormally developed brain. Singular and sad predicament for a man who had determined to move slowly and with calm foresight. Furthermore, the whole world in which his love lived and moved was repellent, silly, and morbid. Since his meeting with her he had tried to read some of the journals devoted to her faith, and had found them incredibly inane--smudgily printed, slovenly of phrase, and filled with messages from Aristotle, Columbus, and Confucius, which would have been discouraging in a boy of twelve years old. The phraseology, the cant terms, nauseated him. The advertisements of "Psychics," "World-famous Mediums," "Palmists," "Horologists," and only the devil himself knows what else, filled him with disgust, added to his already poor opinion of sick humanity. Of these Viola now formed a part--as an actress shares the envy, the brag, the selfish, blatant struggle for success which is reflected in the advertising columns of dramatic journals. He ran down each column of "display ads" of _The World of Spirit_, timorously, almost expecting to see a notice of "the marvellous psychic Miss Viola Lambert, the mountain seeress"--and so on.

On deeper thought he found these papers shrewdly contrived to take human beings at their weakest point, their most unguarded moment; they had the boldness of the juggler who knows the blind spot in the eyes of his spectators. They occupied a field apart from all other periodicals in the world. Science, literature, and art concerned them only so far as they touched upon, illuminated, or strengthened faith in "the farther shore." They were as special as a trade-journal--far more so, indeed, for the _Boot and Shoe News_ prints occasional reviews of books, and some admirable stories may be found within its pages side by side with notes on "Burnishers" and stitching-machines.

The accounts of circles, sittings, and "séances"--good Lord, how he hated that word!--were almost comic, and yet to think of Viola and her gracious mother concerned with these meetings, even as spectators, filled him with angry disgust.

According to Britt, the girl was a self-deluded fakir at the best--at the worst, an habitual, hysterical trickster, avid for notoriety. In either case a tainted, leprous thing--a woman to be shunned by every man who valued a dignified and wholesome life. It was worse than folly to permit such a creature to break in on his work, to draw his mind from his reading; nevertheless she continued to do both these things.

The next morning, as he was leaving the house for his office, he stepped into the dining-room and took a seat by his sister's side.

"Kate," he said, and his voice was stern, "you must not call upon Miss Lambert."

"Why not, Morton?"

"Because it would prove a snare to you and an embarrassment to me. She is a singularly attractive girl. No one can face her and accuse her. Britt says she is much more mature than when I saw her; and by that he meant to convey that she had grown clever, if not tricky. There is a bad streak in her, I'm afraid, for all her charm, and you would better let her entirely alone. Upon the most charitable construction she is hysterical, and her deception probably arises, as Britt says, from a diseased brain. In any case she is not a fit person for you to meet."

"But you said she has good eyes?"

"She has. She is bewitchingly pretty, but that only makes her case the more perplexing. Why trouble ourselves about her?"

"I'm going to call upon her, anyway. I'm not afraid. I am wild to see a girl who can upset you so completely. You are upset; I can see that."

Morton laughed, rather sadly. "That's a fine, womanly reason, and may be sufficient for you; but, if you go, understand, Kate, it is against my wish. I do not care to know anything more about her and her problems; she has interfered too much with my work already."

She looked deep into his soul, then took another tack. "Well, then, bring on this man Britt; he's the only witness for the prosecution, isn't he? Let's have him to dinner. I want to interrogate him, as the lawyers say. I want to know what kind of a man he is before I take his word against a girl who rejected him. He may be only jaundiced."

"He was their family physician."

"I don't care if he was, he may be seeking revenge on the girl." She put her arm about his neck. "You poor boy, that girl's troubles have upset you. I'm delighted to find you so humanly romantic--at least I would be if she weren't so questionable. But we'll find out. I'm on her side till I know more of Britt; besides, I'm not sure that her mysterious powers are not real," and she sent him away less keenly concerned. With all her impulse and zeal of friendship she was a woman of sense and power.

* * * * *

Britt came to dinner promptly, gratified for a chance to wear his evening dress. Kate received him gladly, but was taken aback by his languid elegance of manner. He really looked distinguished, and she rather hastily explained, "Our dinner is only a family affair, Dr. Britt. We wanted to have you all to ourselves."

"Nothing could be better for me, Mrs. Rice, I assure you," he answered, gallantly. "A formal dinner would embarrass me. I've been so long in the hills I feel like a Long Island hermit. It's a far halloo from Colorow to the Bowery."

"It's farther still from the Bowery to Colorow. That's what makes you Western people so interesting to us of the East."

"Please don't make me out an honored son of the West, Mrs. Rice. I was born in New Jersey."

"Were you, indeed? Oh, I'm so sorry."

"I regret it myself. The West would have fitted me out with better lungs."

Kate never went round when she could wade across. Therefore, no sooner were they inhaling the savor of the soup than she began her interrogation. "I am very much interested in occult affairs, Dr. Britt, and my brother tells me you were the family physician of this remarkable Miss Lambert. Tell us about her."

Britt considered a moment. "It is true that Mrs. Lambert confided in me and permitted me to take a part in Viola's sittings; but I can hardly be called her physician. In the first place, the girl seems so perfectly well physically that medicine is unnecessary, and then, too, I never had her confidence. To be plain, I think she hated the sight of me."

"Why was that?"

He cast a curious sidewise glance. "Well, I'm not pretty to look at, and then, I reckon she thought I was investigating her."

"I hope you were."

"I was, but I didn't get very far."

"What barred you?"

"Well, to begin with, pretty nearly everything took place in the dark."

"It's always so," exclaimed Kate. "I wonder why?"

He shrugged his shoulders. "They all say 'light is antagonistic to the power.' You can draw your own inference."

Morton spoke. "I never could understand why they didn't make a special effort to avoid that criticism."

"Well, tell us what happened," cried Kate. "I'm on the edge of my chair with interest."

Britt looked at Morton. "That's the curious thing, isn't it? People _are_ interested. The fact is, we all secretly hope the ghost-story may turn out to be true."

Kate laughed. "You're perfectly right. We all pooh-pooh, but we'd be bitterly disappointed if all spirit footsteps turned out to be rats rolling nuts. But please hurry--wasn't _any_ of it true?"

"Now, I'm going to be candid--"

At this Morton leaned forward with excess of interest, and Kate exulted. "Good! Now it's coming. Be as candid as you can."

Britt went on musingly. "One night as I sat between Viola and the closed piano, the spook, or whatever it was, ran up and down the keys--now on the treble, now on the bass--keeping time to my whistling."

Morton interrupted. "Did you _know_ that the lid was closed?"

"Yes, I laid my hand on it while the keys were drummed."

"Where was Miss Lambert?"

"Apparently at my left, sleeping. It didn't really matter where she was, for the lid was down. When the lights were turned on she was in deep trance--apparently. That one fact of the closed piano being played in that way remains inexplicable."

"Was that all?" cried Kate, in a most disappointed way.

"Oh no. There were marvels to raise your hair, but that was all that I really valued."

Morton answered quickly. "It was enough, if properly conditioned. The theory is--I've been reading up on it--that these spook brethren of ours attack their doubters in different ways. Knowing you to be a man of materialistic and rather methodical habit of mind, the powers essayed a material test. Perhaps it was a mouse?"

"Or the cat?" suggested Kate.

"They must have been musical and of exceptional intelligence, then," put in Britt, "for they played up and down on the key-board at my request, and kept time to 'Yankee Doodle.'"

Kate exulted. "What do you think of that, Morton? If one is true, then all may be true."

Britt went on. "No. Whatever the power was, it was controlled by human intelligence. It answered to my will."

"You were convinced of that." Morton's glance was keen, keener than he knew. "If you admit that one of these manifestations is true you open the door for the witches."

Britt was a little nettled. "All this took place precisely as I relate it, in the dark, of course. But one sense, that of touch, controlled the situation--hearing took the rest."

"It all shows the inadequacy of human evidence. You must not expect any one to believe that such a manifestation took place. It is like the stories we hear of haunted houses. A friend of mine the other day was telling me of a ghost that frequented an Australian bungalow where he was visiting last year. Said he: 'I saw vases thrown from the mantel-piece in broad daylight. I've heard invisible feet tramping all about my chair in a vividly lighted room.' I didn't believe him, of course. The fact is, we don't know our own capacity for being deceived. We are each a microcosm--a summing-up of all our forebears, and in the obscure places of our brains are the cells of cavemen, nooks troubled by shadows and inhabited by strange noises. If you come at me in the right way you can raise a terrifying echo deep in some knot of my brain-cells; but it is only the echo of a far-away cry--it is not even the cry."

Britt poised himself. "Let me tell you this. I have started in to understand this thing. It isn't a haphazard series of deceits, of that I am at this moment convinced. The most amazing consideration to my mind is this: there is _system_ in their fool-tricks. I don't mean Miss Lambert alone, I mean in all the best-authenticated manifestations. As you say, they know how to attack the public; the ones who don't are exposed and drop out; but, generally speaking, they go on smoothly because they know just what can be safely attempted and what can't. Now in Miss Lambert's case the same system appears. Her alleged phenomena fit into the scheme, her development is according to the spiritualistic Hoyle. No originality is permitted, hence no failure of effect."

"And yet my brother tells me she is quite young and engaging."

"Altogether charming in body, and in every other thought most ingenuous."

Morton interposed mockingly. "And you think she has built up this most elaborate system of deceit?"

"Somebody has. I lay a good part of it to Clarke, but most of it to hysteria and the suggestion of _The Flag of Truth_ and other similar sheets."

"But she already had all these manifestations before Clarke's coming, and presumably before she read _The Flag of Truth_."

"They say so. I don't know that. Many of the tricks are noted in Randall's notes."

"Who was Randall?" asked Kate.

"Their family physician--my predecessor. Some of her phenomena convinced him. He put himself on record in his notes as a convert. However, that was after his wife died."

"They all weaken when their wives die."

"Not all; some are not anxious to bridge the gulf," answered Britt, lightly. "I'm told Clarke's communion with his dead wife is now as cool as friendship."

Kate faced him. "It's only fair to say, Dr. Britt, that I, too, am one of the 'bereaved,' and that if I seem more hospitable to these messages than my brother you will understand. My husband died two years ago."

"I beg your pardon, Mrs. Rice, if I've seemed too harsh in my zeal to explain--"

"Oh, I'm not one to fear the truth," she answered, quickly. "I come of a family of questioners. It's only now and then that I waver--for a moment. My husband said he would come back to me if he could, and I've been half hoping--not really expecting it, you know--"

She did not complete her sentence, and Morton spoke with tender reproach. "I am being profoundly illumined, Kate. Why didn't you tell me that?"

"Because it was only a jocular remark. I didn't intend you should know it. I don't know how I came to let it slip from my mouth. He has never returned, strange to say. I feel mother, but never Hayward."

They had reached a very tender and solemn pause--so self-revealing had been the woman's admission--and Britt was looking at his plate as his hostess began again with assumed brightness. "Well, now, about this girl. Can you take me to see her? She interests me beyond anything."

"Certainly. I should be delighted. But your brother knows her--she would be pleased to see you both, I've no doubt."

"My brother thinks she is a fraud, and does not wish to see her--"

"I derive my knowledge from you, Dr. Britt."

Britt was undisturbed. "I think she is a fraud, too, but a very charming one."

"That ought to make her all the more convincing," said Kate.

"And all the more dangerous," replied Britt. "She baffles me--when face to face with her."

"What are they going to do with her--exhibit her to the public?"

"Not for the present. Clarke has been making notes industriously all the year and is about ready to publish. He now wants a few of the big fellows, like Uncle Simeon Pratt, to help boom his book. The Lamberts are not in this for money--please give them credit for that--and as for the mother, she is entirely honest--she believes implicitly in her spirits."

"That puts the girl in a horrible position--if she _is_ deceiving," Morton interposed. "Imagine her state of mind if she realizes that her own mother has come to rest upon her system of deceit. The thought is horrible."

"It is quite as bad at that," returned Britt. "You see, the mother has been for years in close daily communion--as she supposes--with her husband, her little son, and others of her dead. Half of her daily life is in these joys, the other half in her daughter. There stood the wall that stopped me. I couldn't express my doubt to the mother. I couldn't apply the clamps. I simply withdrew. I do not intend to pursue the matter to a finish so long as the mother is alive."

Morton's face was clouded with pain. "Let us drop the Lamberts as a subject; they are too distressing, especially as I see no way of helping them. When do you return?"

Kate acquiesced in her brother's diversion of the stream of talk, but an hour later, as Britt was about to go, she seized the opportunity to say: "You must not fail to take me to see this girl. I have never been so excited about any one in my life. Can't you take me to-morrow?"

"I am entirely at your service. Suppose I call at four--will that do?"

"Perfectly. I'm very grateful to you."

"I hope you won't come to curse me for it. I warn you, the girl is damnably convincing. She may enamour you."

"No fear of that," she cried, in defiant brightness. "I'm not so easily fooled."

She re-entered the library with the flush of an excited conviction in her face. "Morton, I feel as if I had taken part in the dissection of a human soul."

He threw up his hand with a gesture of pain and despair. "Don't! I can only hope that girl is utterly bad. Otherwise she is the sport of devils. Help me forget the whole uncanny business."

"You're wrong," she said, firmly. "It is just such men as you and Dr. Weissmann who should snatch the pearl of truth from this bucket of mental mire."

"That's a very good phrase, Kate--if only I was sure of the pearl."

There really was no way out for him. His mind utterly discredited the phenomena Viola claimed to produce, and that left but one other interpretation. She was a trickster and auto-hypnotist--uncanny as the fabled women who were fair on one side but utterly foul and corrupt on the other. In his musing her splendid, glowing, physical self drew near, and when he looked into her sweet, clear eyes his brain reeled with doubt of his doubt. If there were any honest eyes in the world, she was innocent, and a tortured victim, as Kate had so quickly decided; and his plain duty was to beat back the forces seeking to devour her.

"The mind is an obscure kingdom subject to inexplicable revolts and sudden confusions," he thought. "Delusions are easy to foment, and at the last are indistinguishable from the fact, so far as the mind which gave them being is concerned. The body of this girl is young, but her brain may be cankered by the sins and lies of a long line of decadent ancestry." The thought was horrible, but it was less revolting than the alternative--in no other way could her life be explained and excused. In any case it was highly courageous in her to put marriage away as decisively as if it were a crime. And this she must have done, for even Clarke, according to Britt, had thus far sued in vain. There was a heroic strain in the girl somewhere. Was it too late to rescue her from the mental gangrene eating its way to the very centre of her soul? This was the question which only a renewed acquaintance, a careful study could resolve.

IV

THE PATRON OF PSYCHICS

Up to the hour of his wife's death Simeon Pratt had been but the business-man, large of appetite, pitiless, self-sufficient, and self-absorbed--the type of man often described by amiable critics as "a hard citizen, but good to his family, you know," as if the fact of his not beating his wife were adequate excuse for railway wrecking.

He might be seen taking the 7.49 train at Eighty-sixth Street each week-day morning with a bundle of newspapers under his arm, a man of depending jowls and protuberant belly, who never offered any one a seat and did not expect such courtesy from others. He was burly and selfish as a hog, and was often so designated by work-weary women, whom he forced to stand while he read his market reports in callous absorption.

His associates greeted him with a nod, unsmiling and curt, and the elevator-boys at the Pratt building were careful not to elbow him. He had the greed of a wolf and the temper of an aging bear, and yet his business ability admittedly commanded respect. Everything he did had a certain sweep. He was not penurious or mean in his wars. On the contrary, he despised the small revenges; but in a strife with his equals he was inexorable--he pushed his adversaries to the last ditch, and into it, remorseless as a mountain land-slide.

All the tenderness in his nature, all his faith in goodness and virtue, he reserved for his home. To his wife (a woman of simple tastes and native refinement) and to his children, bright and buxom girls of twenty-odd, he was a fond and gruffly indulgent provider, making little protest over new gowns and parties. He had no sons, and this was a hidden sorrow to him, and had the effect of centring all his paternal pride and care in his daughters. He could deny them nothing when they wheedled him, and they were nearly always humorously and brazenly trying to "work him," as he called it. Only in one particular had he been granite. With means to build on the east side of the Park, he had deliberately chosen the Riverside Drive in order to show his contempt for the social climbers of upper Fifth Avenue, and neither smiles nor tears had availed to change his plan.

His house was a dignified structure exteriorly, but within was dominated by his taste rather than by that of his daughters, who were quite unable to change his habits after they were once set. He refused to consider their suggestions as to furniture. The interior was, as Britt had said, not unlike a very ornately formal French hotel, and this resemblance arose from the fact that he had once enjoyed a pleasant stay in a house of this sort; and when the decorator submitted a number of "schemes," he chose the one which made the pleasantest impression on his mind.

With three women at the table, he habitually took charge of the dinner, controlling the menu and the decorations as well. It amused outsiders to see him in wordy consultation with the head-waiter and the butler while his guest of honor vainly tried to continue some story he had begun, but his wife suffered in silence. In short, Simeon proceeded precisely as he would have done at a restaurant or at his club, and his family stood clear of his elbow, the girls with sly shrugs of their rounded shoulders, the wife meekly, but ineffectually, protesting against his usurpation of her domain.

He was not politically ambitious, and was in a fair way to grow old as one of the obscure millionaires of New York City when death reached a sable hand and smote him full in the front of his pride and assurance--his wife and daughters were lost in the sinking of a boat off the coast of France.

The news of this disaster came to him as he sat at his desk--the morning papers had given no hint of it. "I don't believe it," he said, quietly, and began pressing the buttons of his desk with the same swift calmness he would have used had the markets been going against him. Messages flew to and fro, the wires pulsed with his imperious anxiety. The manager of the steamboat company answered--denied. The news was confirmed, all to the same end; and when Simeon Pratt rose from his desk that night his jaw hung lax, his big form stooped and shambled as though twenty additional years had suddenly been heaped upon his shoulders. He went back to his splendid, lonely palace (where the servants huddled and whispered and hastened) with a hard, dry knot in his throat, and with eyes heavy and hot and tearless confronted his ruined altar. From one to be feared he had fallen in a day to the most desolate of beings.

Messengers pursued him. The bodies were recovered. He gave orders for them to be shipped by the first boat. In the blaze of the electric light, with horrid, staring eyes and stiffly moving lips, he cursed himself and God. He cursed himself for letting his treasures go from him, he cursed God for permitting such outrages upon justice. At last he fell silent, but he did not sleep nor eat till the end of the second day. Then he rose, took the 7.49 train as usual, and returned to his desk--unshaved, with creased and crumpled clothing, a gray and battered man, sustained by habit, seeking relief in work.

His associates, with forced cheerfulness, professed pleasure at his return, carefully avoiding mention of his appalling loss. To those who did speak of it he returned no word or glance. With fumbling, thick, and nerveless fingers he took up the purple-lettered ribbon of his trade. He fixed his dim eyes on market reports and dictated notes and orders, but it was a poor show. Even those who hated him as a gross, unlovely character were shocked at his shrunken form, his grayed and grizzled cheek. When death deals a blow like that the defeated one acquires a certain majesty.

Gradually the old man regained ability to compute and combine, and to converse with his partners concerning the affairs of the house; but his keen interest, his prompt decision of utterance, were all gone. His presence in the office was the result of habit merely. In reality he was waiting the return of the steamer which bore his precious clay.

This boat was delayed by storms, and for three days the broken financier, unable to remain in his office, walked to and fro between Broad Street and Bowling Green, haunting the office of the steamship company until the bloodless manager, nervous and irritated, left his chair to avoid him, unable to endure the sight of his haggard face and piteous eyes.

When the boat arrived, Simeon met it with his own yacht, and, with a return of his iron resolution, stood by to protect the graves of his hopes as they slid across the rail. Then, ordering every soul from the cabin, he sat down beside the caskets. He _knew_ that his loved ones were there, and yet he could not realize it. He was filled with a desire to prove it all a mistake, but the fear--the certainty of the disfigured faces--deterred him.

He took them home. Nothing could have been more piercingly pathetic than that flabby, gray old man, sitting alone amid the tawdry splendor of his drawing-room with the remains of all he loved in this world shut away from him by rosewood and silver. When the last pale and shaking servant had left the room, the father gave one long, hoarse, choking wail, and fell upon his face on the floor, crushed and utterly despairing.

When he rose he was calmer. He began to give orders for a sumptuous funeral, taking charge of every detail in his familiar way. The ceremony was magnificent and profoundly affecting. Every one present in the great church shed tears of heartfelt sorrow, pitying the great banker, quite humanly; but he himself did not weep, he sat limply with eyes on the floor, in a daze of internal emotion; but when the door of the vault closed on his dead a final terrible cry burst from him, the cry of one who realizes to the last and to the full the emptiness, the futility of a life without love, an old age without hope.

His interest in the material world, in the war of trade, was gone. His vast wealth would still bring him dividends, and his clerks and partners would still consult him, still demand his signatures, but the ones who made all these matters worth doing had vanished.

Life seemed utterly useless, a vain effort, but while yet he struggled with the fear of death and a hate of the day, a delegation of those who claim to hold communion with the dead came to him with a greeting from his wife. This message contained words which startled him. He was persuaded to seek confirmation. He was convinced and became the most fervent of spiritualists. His form lifted, his eyes brightened. A new world opened for him. He announced his intention to use his vast wealth for the faith which had comforted him. He built a magnificent temple to the unseen. He hired speakers and musicians to entertain and instruct those who came to hear. He sought out and entertained scores of mediums, psychics, sensitives, inspiritual speakers, and natural healers--all were welcome at his hearth. He might have been called, and was called, "the prey of harpies," but, as his interests now were in these matters, and as he had the means wherewithal to amuse himself, surely he was not a loser. True, he was many times deceived by false prophets and wronged by fraudulent seers, but still he enjoyed the exquisite solace which the voice of his wife unfailingly brought when the conditions were favorable. He was no longer hopeless; on the contrary, he was reanimated, made over in the faith of the spirit-world. The daughters came less often to speak to him, but when they did come they made his dark, cold heart glow with their gay words. At times it seemed that he could reach out his hands and touch their soft cheeks, so palpable were they, so intimate and familiar were their voices.

Gradually a part of his old-time business shrewdness came to his aid in these intangible matters, and he began to distinguish and to cast out the base and parasitic prestidigitators who infested his house. He grew discerning, and was able to weed the tares from the wheat, and with this discernment came the conviction that it was his duty to violently expose those who sought to cheat him. He became a terror to the fraudulent, and by his vigorous denouncement of this and that performer raised storms of opposition; for it seemed that no trickster, no matter how base, was without a following. His purposes clarified. Aided by cunning counsel, he began to conceive of himself as one called to a great mission; and, resigned to his lot, he set himself to the work of furthering in every possible way the reign of the spirit-world.

It was into the hands of this shattered yet still powerful man that Viola Lambert had been persuaded to deliver herself, and Simeon, convinced of her powers by experiment, and charmed by her girlish grace and dignity, had pushed all other keepers of the door of silence from his house, thereby arousing a tempest of denunciation; for these sibyls gave up the luxury of his table, the munificence of his purse, only after persuasion, and in bitterness and wrath.

Viola's meeting with Pratt was brought about by Clarke, who was aware through the special organs of the faith that the great merchant and promoter was not merely insatiable in his thirst for new sources of solace, but exceedingly generous with his comforters. No sooner had he secured the girl's consent to go than he wrote to Pratt asking him to meet them in Boston. Receiving no answer (Pratt was afflicted with such letters), he wrote again, detailing the experiments he had made, laying great stress upon the fact that the psychic was the daughter of a well-to-do Western mine-owner, that she was a cultured young girl, and that her mother (a distinguished evangel in the cause) was devoted even to the point of submitting her daughter to a series of absolutely convincing tests. He made mention also of his book, which was nearly ready for the press, and which he hoped would create a great stir among scientists.

Simeon did not answer this letter, but sent a representative to Colorow to investigate the writer's claims. The detective returned to say that "the parties" had gone to Boston, but that they had a fine reputation in the region, and that the father was a rich and well-considered citizen. "No one knows anything out o' the way with the girl," the spy added.

Simeon now flamed with eagerness and set out to find Viola and to test her. It was not easy to locate her, for Clarke had proceeded with caution in Boston. After consultation with the editor of _The Spiritist_, and at his suggestion, he had given only a few very private sittings to a few very discreet friends. These evenings, however, had been very successful, and those who had been permitted to attend them had jealously guarded the jewel they had found, selfishly urging continued secrecy. Nevertheless, the circle had spread, and Viola, apparently resigned to her singular function, was patiently sitting night after night in stuffy, darkened rooms, while Clarke, vivid as ever, sonorous as ever, declaimed in passionate rhythms the promise of a new era for spiritism to be inaugurated by the message of "this wonderful organism." He had, indeed, laid out an elaborate programme for the capture of Boston, but this he instantly dropped when Simeon Pratt sent up his card and asked to see what the girl could do. He demanded a sitting much as a dealer in horses would ask the hostler to drive the proffered animal before him in order that he might judge of her paces. He did not intend to offend; on the contrary, he was instantly consumed with anxiety lest this splendid young creature should refuse to perform.

Viola was deeply offended by his first manner and coldly said: "I am not sitting for money, and I will not be put on exhibition for any one."

Simeon ended by pleading with her for one sitting--one short hour; but she refused, and he went away dejected, flabby with defeat. He returned next day, and still a third time; and at last, to work on her sympathies, he told her how he came to enter the faith, and with broken voice and quivering lips displayed his sorrows.

His weakness availed. The utter tragedy of his life brought the ready tears to Viola's eyes and quite melted her opposition. She saw him in a new light, understood him for what he really was, a lonely, broken old man hastening to the grave, and in her pity consented.

The manifestation which followed he reported as the most marvellous he had ever had. "Jennie, my eldest daughter, spoke from the megaphone for more than an hour, minutely detailing the circumstances of her death, giving orders for the disposition of their jewels and trinkets, and in other ways most completely satisfied me of her identity."

He rose from this sitting exalted, comforted beyond measure, pathetically happy, quite ready to embrace the blessed girl who had made his hour of sweet communion possible. His home, his private car, his yacht were all at her disposal. No queen, however powerful, could have won such homage from him. "You must come to my home," he said. "I will enlarge your work. I will meet every wish of your 'guides'."

With Clarke and the mother on his side, he prevailed. Viola consented to go to New York as his guest, provided her secret powers were not revealed. "I will not be advertised," she said. "Too many people are coming to see me now. If you publish me I will never sit again."

This threat threw Simeon into a panic. "Of course you will remain private. You will be my guest, the same as your mother. No one but my own family shall know of your wonderful powers. I will see to that."

Perhaps he was honest in this promise, but his habit of entertaining "Arabian Priestesses," "Crystal Gazers," and other women of singular endowments was too well known to permit of the fulfilment of his agreement. No sooner was Viola seen on the drive in his carriage than his friends and hangers-on began to smile and say: "Simeon has a new enchantress. I wonder who she is?" And those remarks aroused the curiosity of the ubiquitous workers for the press. Furthermore, the directors of the temple, of course, must needs be told, and the other seeresses, neglected by their once-idolized patron, did not need to be told; so that long before Serviss had a hint of her coming the news of Viola's domestication with Simeon was widely disseminated among the faithful, who hurried at once to meet her.

These seekers went with smiling faces and hastening feet, but they came away laggardly, reproaching the master of the temple for a selfish brute. Some few were admitted, stayed, and met the girl and Clarke--for Clarke fairly divided the honors, so vivid, so picturesque was he. He did not hesitate to speak of his great work, a work which would astound the world, and to announce the title of his great oration which Simeon had engaged for the temple. This was the first big gun of his campaign, this compelling oration; but he must have Viola's consent to the use of her name--her consent also to sit with a group of chosen great men of the city in order to issue a defiant challenge to science. From these special sittings he expected to deduce the final and greatest chapter of his book.

From this public test of her power Viola still shrank, but Pratt's wealth and power, which Clarke continually emphasized, fairly stunned her into acquiescence. So far from being a faith of the poor, the obscure, a faith that lurked in dark corners, avoiding the direct gaze of men, spiritualism from the portals of a resplendent temple appeared to be not merely respectable but triumphant. From this sacred meeting-place of the angelic forces, from the windows of Pratt's palatial home, she looked out upon the city with more of content with her mission than she had ever known before--troubled only by a deeply hidden wish to see again the man whose buoyant health and smiling eyes had so strongly impressed her on their ride into the Marshal Basin.

But this sense of security of power did not last. As the novelty of her position in Pratt's household wore away she found her duties irksome. She resented the flocks of curious or melancholy visitors and began to perceive the bitter truth--that she was only a servant, after all, ministering to the pleasures of Pratt and his friends. She had very little time to herself, and could not escape her masters even for a drive in the Park--one or the other of them was always at her side.

She attempted to withdraw her consent to the use of her name, but Clarke, the guides, even her mother, insisted on the test. Britt alone of all her friends took the side of her fears. They were in correspondence of a formal sort, and when he reached the city he went straight to her, anxious to know what Clarke's plans actually were. To him she spoke more freely than ever before, expressing her dread of the flaring light which Clarke was about to turn upon her.

Britt listened gravely. "There is one way of escape," he said at last, with a smile, both mocking and tender. "I don't pretend to say it's to your mind, but want to remind you that my offer is still open. If you give me the necessary authority I will stop this crusade with a jolt."

"I'm grateful to you, Dr. Britt, truly I am, but I can't do what you ask--not even--" She hesitated and fell silent.

"Not even to save your life or mine. I don't blame you--I am but a poor thing."

"I didn't mean it that way. I respect you very, very much; but you must know Anthony depends on me, and, besides, maybe it _is_ my duty to go on the platform. Father and grandfather both say it is. To them it seems small and selfish of me to want to be happy in my own home while the millions weep uncomforted; but oh, if I could only live my own life _part_ of the time! If I could feel free of this terrible weight one day in seven."

Britt, looking into her clear eyes, acquired a new confidence in her. "Tell me, Miss Lambert, do you really believe that your father comes to you in this way?"

"I dare not doubt it," she answered, with evasive eyes.

"Some of the messages are not specially--"

"I know," she acquiesced, with a shudder. "There are evil spirits as well as good, and sometimes the bad ones come. I don't see why grandfather permits them to use me. He says he can't always help it if there are bad people in the circle. That is another reason why I dread this public test--there is no knowing what the evil spirits might make me say or do. If it did not mean so much to Anthony I would refuse--even if grandfather asked it."

"I saw Professor Serviss to-day."

"Did you?" Her eyes were instantly alight. "Where did you see him? Does he know we are here?"

"He didn't know till I told him. I called at his laboratory."

"Did you tell him where we are?"

"Yes; and he felt as I do, that this is not a good place for you. Pratt has the reputation of entertaining sensational characters, and it will be a miracle if you are not exploited to the press."

Her face clouded again. "Oh, I am so tired of having people look at me and shrug and whisper. I am so tired of having this abnormal thing reflected in the eyes of all my visitors. I wish I could become commonplace--without the slightest thing queer about me. Sometimes I feel like taking a dose of poison and ending it all."

"Don't do that," Britt replied, soberly. "You mustn't even say such a thing. I wish I could help you, but I see no way so long as your own parents and Clarke himself are your guides; but if at any time you will give me the authority"--here his voice became stern--"I will see that you are not troubled by any outside influence."

"You are very kind," she said, but her face expressed only a troubled liking, and he pressed her hand in both of his and silently went away.

Young Clinton Ward also came seeking, boyish, eager, contemptuous of any barrier so illusory as the fact of her trances, which she confessed to him. Her words hardly impressed themselves on his mind, and he replied, flippantly: "That cuts no ice with me. You couldn't be anything I wouldn't like. You're living too close and your nerves are sort of frazzled. What you need is a jolly good time. Come back to Boston and forget all about this business. Come, I want folks to meet you. My mother knows how I feel about you, and is crazy to see you."

"What would she say if she knew what I have told you?" she asked, bitterly.

"She won't mind--after she sees you," he answered, loyally. "No one can know you without--without--Oh, hang it, Viola, you know what I mean. Nothing matters when you love a person. I want you, no matter what any one says. And, besides, I don't see why you can't just chuck the whole blooming business. I'll chuck Clarke out o' the window, if you say the word. He's just trying to work you, and--"

"You mustn't talk that way, Clinton."

"Why not? It's true."

"Well, because--" She hesitated, then said, as if to end her own uncertainty: "I am committed to this life--and to him. My way is marked out, and I must walk in it."

The young fellow was hard hit. He sat looking at her with eyes of consternation and awe. He tried to speak, but could not for a little while; at last he made a second trial. "Do you mean--you _don't_ mean--"

"Yes, I mean--all you think I mean," she answered, and then her fortitude failed her, and she turned away, her eyes filled with hot tears.

He rose awkwardly, all his jaunty self-confidence gone. "I take my medicine. It's all right. I hope you'll be happy--" He broke off with quivering lips.

"I shall never be happy," she said, and the very calmness of her voice went to the boy's heart. "I've given up all hope of being anything but an instrument--a thing whose wishes do not count. Good-bye, Clint," and she gave her hand.

He took it and pressed it hard and went out into the street, staggering under the weight of the revelation he had received.

Viola was fond of Clinton--his simple, wholesome, untroubled nature appealed to her--and yet this very ingenuousness, this ready confidence, made her own life and daily habit seem the more forbidding. She understood now the insuperable barrier which had been raised between herself and the careless youth of the normal world.

In this hour of depression, as in many others, her mind went out towards Morton Serviss. Britt's mention of the young scientist's name seemed to bring him very near, and she wondered again for the hundredth time whether he had entirely forgotten her or not. Would he call, now that he was informed of her presence in the city? She knew (almost as well as if he had written it) the reason for his hasty flight from Colorow, and with a knowledge that he considered her a freak if not something worse she could not write to him, although she still had his card and address.

He was a greater man in the world than when he visited their mountain home, for he had written a book which the critics called "a great and implacable study of diseases and their uses." She had not been able to read it, but she treasured it, nevertheless, and longed to meet him again, to lay her case before him, to ask his advice, not with regard to whether she should go on with her music, but whether her life was worth continuing--for there were times when she secretly considered the morality of making an end of it. It was in the hope of drawing him again to her side that she asked Clarke to include him in the list of scientific men to whom he was planning to send a printed copy of his oration and challenge--after their delivery--and to her mother she said: "I would not be so nervous if I knew that Dr. Serviss were on the committee; I know he would be just and considerate, even if he does despise mediums."

"He's exactly the one," responded Mrs. Lambert, with enthusiasm. "I wonder Tony hasn't spoken of him. Grandfather will be delighted, I'm sure."

V

KATE VISITS VIOLA

Towards Simeon's portal, held sacred to "The Keepers of the Keys of the Silent House," Kate Rice and Dr. Britt set their faces at the appointed hour.

"The plot thickens round the girl," began Britt, with a kind of mocking levity. "Mrs. Lambert has done it now!"

They had reached the comparative quiet of the cross-street. "What has she done?"

"She has delivered her ewe-lamb over to this ancient wolf of Wall Street, who will eat her up for a Little Red Riding-hood. I've been looking into Pratt's record. He has a cheerful way, I'm told, of treating his 'psychics' like oranges--squeezing them and throwing them into the street. He has become so sensitive to the sneers of the outsiders that he fears to be 'done.' After getting all that a medium can give him, he 'exposes' her elaborately, and sets her adrift, and so guards himself from the possible accusation of having been deceived. If there is any question of the medium's powers, he can then come out with a card saying: 'I knew So-and-so was a fraud. I exposed her two years--or two months--ago.' I see the girl's finish right here."

"The dreadful old man! Does the girl know this?"

"I don't think she does, but she ought to. I hate to see a nice girl, who would make some one a charming wife, perverted to these unholy uses. The crowning infamy heaped upon her head will be a full page in the _Sunday Blast_--'Another Harpie Exposed'--and it will come, Mrs. Rice, I am sure of it. Pratt fairly fawns before her now. She is his princess, his seeress, his chief jewel; but woe to her if she displeases him or fails to meet his requirements."

"You appall me, Dr. Britt. Some one should at least warn her."

"I've already done so; but with the mother, Clarke, and Pratt to war against, the case seems hopeless. Besides, she believes in herself--up to a certain point. She'll never degenerate into one of those frumps who go from city to city playing to the foolish women and tack-headed men, but she will certainly be corrupted. If she marries Clarke her future will be woful. She has entered in so far I don't see how she can retreat. She is bound to keep on for his sake and her mother's sake."

"Is she in love with Clarke?"

"That I haven't been able to determine, but she is under his control, or she wouldn't be here."

With these gloomy words in her ears Kate entered the big, cold drawing-room to wait for the coming of the master of the house.

"Pratt is the one to whom you are to pay your first respects--he is master," warned Britt. "Ask to see his collections--that always pleases him. If you will permit, I will lead the way."

"I am trusting you."

"You may do so."

Pratt came in quite briskly, a heavy-faced, white-bearded man, wearing a sack-suit and an old-fashioned turn-down collar. He greeted Britt with a casual hand-shake, looking at Kate suspiciously. "And who is this?" he asked, bluffly.

"A friend of mine, a Mrs. Rice, who desires to see your wonderful collection of slates and paintings."

Pratt softened a little. "I'll be very glad to show them," he said, "but not now. I'll have to ask you to excuse me just now. I am in consultation with my directors."

"Certainly," said Britt, and, after Pratt went out, he added: "That means that Clarke is going to launch his thunderbolt. He's going to defy the scientific world in the most burning oration since Cicero."

At this moment two ladies, in superb wraps, descended the stairway on their way to their carriages, and one of them said, "I think it's a shame--as long as we've known Simeon Pratt--to be turned away like a tramp!"

"Oh, I don't blame her," said the other.

"Some disappointed callers," said Britt.

A moment later several other curious ones were ushered into the drawing-room. Britt kept up a low-toned comment. "All these rubber-necks are here to see the girl. You will be surprised to know how many there are with a sneaking belief in these revelations."

It was a singular situation in which to find Simeon Pratt--major-domo to a crowd of idle curiosity-seekers--and when he returned, with an assumption of haste and bustle, Britt saw him in a new light--that of a poor, lonely, broken old man, weary of life, yet living on in daily hope of communion with the dead, stuffing his heart with dreams and delusions, walking mechanically round, interested only in death.

He had forgotten Kate's name, but he remembered her wish to see his treasures.

"Come to my library," he said; "but first let me call your attention to this remarkable painting."

The painting--or rather wash-drawing in black-and-white--hung over the grand-piano in the light of the west windows. It was globular in form, and represented, Simeon explained, the "War of Light and Darkness." One-half of the globe was darkly shaded, curiously fretted by the lighter half. Above sat a snow-white eagle. Beneath, with prodigious wings outspread, and eyes gleaming like points of fire, hovered a mysterious bat.

"Look closer," commanded Simeon.

Narrower scrutiny brought out, even in the darker half of the globe, a multitude of intertwined forms, outlined with pen and ink. Those of the lighter hemisphere were beautiful as angels, with faint stars in their hair. All were singing. The others, the denizens of the dark, were twisted and contorted in agony, and each was drawn with such certainty of prearrangement that the line which formed the arm of one outlined the head of another. There were hundreds of them, and the whole work was as intricate in design as the engraving on a bank-note, and so packed with symbolism--according to Simeon's exegesis--that one might study it for days. "Observe," said he, "the innumerable faces formed by the line which divides the two worlds. Take these glasses."

Kate, by means of the powerful instrument which he thrust upon her, was able to detect hundreds of other faces invisible to the unaided eye. "It is wonderful. Who did it?"

"A Swedish servant-girl," answered Simeon, loudly, addressing every one in the room. "She couldn't write her name; but when the spirit of Raphael controlled her she could do this with her eyes shut. There's nothing like that picture in the world. It cannot be duplicated by any artist in the flesh."

"That's no dream," murmured Britt.

Pratt hurried them on, past many other equally wonderful paintings, to his library, and as his guests filed in he faced them. "The things I am about to show you have no equal anywhere. They have taken years to collect, and have cost me more than a hundred thousand dollars. I can show you but a few."

The library was a splendid room, rich with the light of the western sun, whose arrangement instantly struck Kate Rice as unusual, for the book-shelves were precisely like those of a butler's pantry. They began at about four feet from the floor and reached entirely to the ceiling, and were filled with splendid, neglected books, while beneath a broad shelf, at their base, were rows of little brass knobs, each of which indicated a shallow drawer. Each drawer had a lock and a small plate which bore a letter and a number, not unlike the cabinet of a numismatist.

"There are but two keys in existence," explained Simeon, with shining face. "The one I now hold and the one in my safety vaults. No one is permitted in this room without my secretary or myself." He moved down the room between the cabinet and the big table. "Here is a message from Columbus." He unlocked and drew out one of the drawers and laid it upon the table. It was exquisitely made, and contained two ordinary hinged school-slates, with the inner sides visible, but protected by a heavy plate of glass. "This message came to me through Angelica Cox--under test conditions," Pratt further explained, as Kate bent above it.

"What do you mean by test conditions?" asked Britt.

"I mean, sir, that I bought and took these slates to the medium, and held them in my hands while that message was written." There was irritation in his voice. He replaced the drawer. "But here is a painting from Murillo, the great artist. He painted the face of one of the ancients." He laid before his silent auditors another drawer which contained a sheet of card-board on which was a fairly good pastel of an Arab in a burnouse. It had the weak and false drawing which would result in the attempt of an amateur to copy an engraving in color. "This came in broad daylight while I held the clean card-board on my head," explained Simeon.

Britt looked at Kate. "The painter might have stood on his head," he blasphemously whispered.

And so down through that splendid room the host moved, exhibiting letters from Napoleon, flowers from Marie Antoinette, verses from Mary Queen of Scots, together with paternal advice from many others equally eminent in history.

"You keep good company," ventured Kate. "Have you anything from Shakespeare?"

"Certainly; and from Edwin Forrest and Lincoln and Grant."

"Anything from Admiral Kidd?" asked Britt.

"Or from Mary Jane Holmes?" added Kate.

Simeon looked at the jokers in silence, not quite sure whether they intended to trap him or not. "No, I save only the words of the most eminent persons in history, outside my own family--I have wonderful testimony from them."

"Ah, show us those, please," cried Kate.

He hesitated, pondering Britt's face, and at last said, "I will show you some materializations," and led the way to some cases filled with pressed flowers. "These are from India and Tibet," he explained.

Kate was getting bored, but Britt seemed fascinated by both Pratt and the exhibit. "To think of one human being possessing a collection like that--painfully amassing it. It's too beautiful!"

"But the girl--ask him to let us see the girl," she urged.

"Don't hurry; he can't be turned aside from his groove."

The treasures of the drawers hinted at, Simeon proceeded to exhibit other wonders. He possessed a coin brought from the sacred city of Lhasa and dropped through the ceiling into a closed and sealed box. "There is no other known to the Western Hemisphere," he said. "The British Museum offered me a thousand pounds for it."

To his mind all these slates, pictures, and flowers were evidences of the interest the great shades had taken in the work of converting Simeon Pratt to the faith, and the messages were intended to steady him in his convictions and to furnish him material with which to bring the world to his view. The man's faith was like to madness--without one ray of humor.

At any other time this astounding museum would have been a most absorbing study to Kate, but she was tingling with desire to get at the young seeress and her mother. "What must they be," she asked herself, "to mix with this kind of idiocy?"

At last, when the favoring pause came, Britt explained to Pratt that Mrs. Rice was the sister of one who had known Viola in the West, and that she very much wished to see the psychic for a moment.

"I think Miss Lambert is engaged," replied Simeon, sulkily; "but I'll see," and he led the way to a small sitting-room on the same floor. "Stay here and I'll send your card up."

"Tell her a sister of Professor Serviss."

Simeon turned quickly. "Serviss--ain't he one of the men that Clarke talks of having on the committee? Are you his sister?"

Kate bowed. "Yes; my brother met Miss Lambert in the West."

Pratt's face cleared. "Well, well! I will send her right down. Your brother is the kind of man we want to reach," he added, as he went out.

"Now, Dr. Britt," began Kate, firmly, "I want you to keep that boresome old man occupied while I talk with these women. I don't want him putting in his oar."

"I'll do my best," he answered, manfully, "up to the measure of gagging him. I can't agree to order him out of the house."

Kate was on her chair's edge with interest as she heard the rustle of skirts and the murmur of a pleasant voice, and when Viola, flushed, smiling, beautifully gowned, entered the room with outstretched hand, she rose with a spring, carried out of her well-planned reserve by the warmth and charm of the girl's greeting. She closed her gloved palm cordially on the fine hand so confidingly given. "I am glad to know you. My brother has spoken so enthusiastically of you."

Viola's flush deepened. "Has he? I assure you we speak often of him. I suppose he is too busy with his wonderful microbes to come and see poor, commonplace creatures like us."

"He _is_ busy, but he only learned of your presence a few days ago."

Viola turned. "Mother, this is Mrs. Rice, Professor Serviss's sister."

Kate liked Mrs. Lambert also, for she was looking remarkably handsome in a black gown of simple pattern. "If these are adventuresses they are very clever in dress," was her inward comment. "I don't wonder Morton was captivated." And she presently said: "Can't you take me to your own room? I want to talk secrets with you."

"Yes, let us do that." Viola turned to her mother. "Let's take Mrs. Rice to our sitting-room."

Mrs. Lambert assented timidly, with a quick glance towards Simeon, who was garrulously declaiming to Britt concerning the wonders of another painting by the Swedish cook.

Pratt, seeing the women rise, approached. "Where are you going?" he asked, with a note of impatience in his voice.

"To my room," answered Viola, firmly, and led the way up-stairs in silence; but when they were beyond earshot in the hall above she bitterly exclaimed: "He spies on everything I do. He will hardly let me out of his sight. I am beginning to hate him, he has so little sense of decency."

"Viola!" warned the mother.

"I don't care," retorted the girl, defiantly. "Why do we endure him--we are not dependent on him. He treats us precisely as if he owned us, and I'm tired of it. I wish papa would come on and take us home."

"He may be a bore, but he houses you like royalty," Kate remarked, as she glanced about the suite which Viola and her mother occupied. It formed the entire eastern end of the third floor of the house, and the decorations were Empire throughout, with stately canopied beds and a most luxurious bath-room.

"Oh yes, it's beautiful; but I would rather be this minute in our little log-cabin in the West," answered the girl, with wistful sadness. "Oh, these warm days make me homesick. When I was there I hated it, now I long to get back. I seem five years older--this winter has been terribly long to me."

"Well, now, lock the door," exclaimed Kate, excitedly, "and tell me all about yourself. Start at the very beginning. Dr. Britt has told me something, but I want to know everything. When did you first know you had this power? That's the first question."

Mrs. Lambert began in the tone of one retelling an old story. "Up till the day my little son Walter died, Viola was just like any other girl of her age--healthy and pretty--a very pretty child."

"I can believe it." Kate's eyes dwelt admiringly on the girl.

"My husband and I were good Presbyterians, and I had never given much thought to spirits or spiritualism, but after our little boy died Robert began to study up, and every time we went to the city he'd go to see a psychic, and that troubled me. As a good church-member I thought he ought not to do it, and so one day I said, 'Robert, I think you ought to tell Mr. McLane'--that was our minister--'what you are doing. It isn't right to visit mediums and go to church, too--one or the other ought to be given up.' He said--I remember his exact words: 'I can't live without these messages of comfort from my boy. They say he is going to manifest himself soon--here in our own home.' I remember that was his exact expression, for I wondered what it was to manifest. That very night things began."

Kate's eyes snapped. "What things?"

"Well, Waltie had a little chair that he liked--a little reed rocking-chair--and my husband always kept this chair close by where he sat reading. That night I saw the chair begin to rock all by itself--and yet, some way, it didn't scare me. 'Robert, did you move Waltie's chair?' I asked. 'No,' he said. 'Why?' 'Because it rocked.' Robert threw down his book and looked at the chair. 'Viola must have moved it,' he said. 'Viola was in her own little chair on the other side of the table,' I said. 'It must have been the cat, then.'

"And then, just while we both looked at it, it began to move again exactly as if Waltie were in it. It creaked, too, as it used to when he rocked."

"I should have been frightened stiff," exclaimed Kate, whose eyes were beginning to widen.

"Nothing that has happened since has given me such a turn. Robert jumped up and felt all about the chair, sure that Viola had tied a string to it--and still she was no child for tricks. Then Robert bent right down over the chair, and it stopped for a moment, and then slid backward under the table, just as our own boy used to do. He loved to play tent. Robert looked up at me as white as the dead. 'It is Waltie, mother; he has come back to us,' he said, and I believed it, too."

In spite of herself, Kate shivered with a keen, complete comprehension of the thrilling joy and terror of that moment, but Viola sat listlessly waiting the end of her mother's explanation. Plainly, it was all a wearisome story to her.

Mrs. Lambert went on: "After that he came every night, and soon the tappings began, and finally we got into communication with my father, who told us to be patient and wait and Waltie would speak to us. Then the power took hold of Viola and frightened her almost into fits."

The girl visibly shuddered and her eyes fell.

"How did it begin?" asked Kate, breathless with interest.

"The first we noticed was that her left arm began to twitch so that she couldn't control it. Then she took to writing with her left hand, exactly like my father's hand-writing. She could write twenty different kinds of writing before she was twelve. These messages were all signed, and all said that she was to be a great medium. Then began the strangest doings. My thimbles would be stolen and hidden, vases would tumble off the mantels, chairs would rock. It was just pandemonium there some nights. They used to break things and pound on the doors; then all of a sudden these doings stopped and Viola went into deathly trances. I shall never forget that first night. We thought she was dead. We couldn't see her breathe, and her hands and feet were like ice."

The girl rose, her face gray and rigid. "Don't mother, don't!" she whispered. "_They are here!_" She shook her head and cried out as if to the air: "No, no, not now! No, no!"

The mother spoke. "She is being entranced. Some one has a message for you, Mrs. Rice?"

For the first time, Kate had a suspicion of both mother and daughter. This action of the girl seemed a thought too opportune and much too theatric. Now that her splendid eyes were clouded she lost confidence in her, and as she waited she grew cold with a kind of disgust and fear of what was to follow.

The mother gently sided with her daughter against the control, and, taking both her hands, said, quietly: "Not now, father, not now." But in vain. The girl sank back into her chair rigid. "They have something they insist on saying, Mrs. Rice," said Mrs. Lambert, after a silence. "Is it some one for Mrs. Rice?" Three loud snapping sounds came from the carpet under Viola's feet.

"Good gracious! What is that?" exclaimed Kate, a cold tremor passing up her spine.

"It is my father," answered Mrs. Lambert, quite placidly. "Can't you write, father? Be easy on Viola to-day.--He is very anxious to converse with you for some reason, Mrs. Rice."

Again a creeping thrill made Kate's hair rise, and she bit her finger-tip. "Am I dreaming?" she asked herself, as she listened to the mother talking to the air, only to be answered by rappings from the table and thumpings from the chairs. "How absurd, how childish it all is!" she thought.

Even as this thought passed through her mind, the room seemed to darken, the air to thicken. The girl's proud young body sank, doubled till she seemed a crone, old and withered and jocose; a sneering laugh came from her drawn lips; her hands, trembling together, hookedly reached towards Kate; the eyes were sunk lidless and gleaming with malice; a voice that was like the croak of a raven sounded forth: "You got my money, Kit--but you didn't get it all." And from the young, distorted lips a disgusting laugh issued, a laugh that froze Kate's blood and stiffened her tongue so that she could not cry out. She gasped and sank back into her chair, while the voice went on: "You know me. I always hated you--you wasted my money--you poisoned my pets--I hated your husband--he cheated me once--you'll get no joy of my money till you pay that debt."

Kate, inert, aghast, sat blindly staring while this vindictive, remorseless voice went on; only when it stopped was she aware of the mother's serene attitude of waiting, of polite regret at being present at a disagreeable scene; then the girl's lips resumed their sweetness, the beautiful hands fell slack upon her knees, the head lifted and, turning, rested peacefully against the cushion of her chair. The table was violently shaken. A small ornament upon it leaped into the air and fell in Kate's lap. She sprang to her feet with a cry of alarm, shaking the thing away as if it were a toad, and was about to flee when Mrs. Lambert's voice struck her into immobility, so unconcerned was it, so utterly matter of fact.

"Did you know the spirit visitor?" she asked.

With the question Kate's panic ceased. Her awe, her fright, passed into wonder and amazement.

"It was exactly like my great-aunt," she gaspingly admitted. "But, oh, it was terrible! Why _do_ you let her go into such states?"

"We cannot control these manifestations. Hush! They are not yet finished. They are about to write for you."

Still lying in languid ease, the girl lifted one hand to the table--to Kate it seemed that the hand was raised by some outside invisible power--and there it rested, as though weary and meditating. As it paused thus the girl's eyes opened, and she sat regarding it as though it belonged to some other intruding self. Mrs. Lambert brought a pencil and a pad of paper, and laid them upon the stand.

Suddenly the hand woke to vigorous action. Seizing the pencil as a dog might lay hold upon a bone, it began to write slowly, firmly, while Viola watched it, quietly, detachedly, as if it were something entirely separate from her brain. At the end it tore the leaf from the pad and flung it to the floor.

Mrs. Lambert picked it up. "It is from father," she said; "but it is for you."

Kate took the leaf, on which was written, in a firm, round, old-fashioned hand, these words: "Your aunt is here, and asks that you and your brother pay her debt. She is angry because it has not been done."

"I have no knowledge of any such debt," said Kate. "I don't understand this."

The hand was writing again, busily, imperturbably, and the color was coming back into Viola's face. As Kate waited, her awe began to pass, and doubts came thronging back upon her. There was something farcical in all this.

Again the hand flung its message, and again the mother picked it from the floor.

"This also is from father," she announced, with more of excitement than she had hitherto betrayed.

The message began abruptly: "The doubter may be convinced if he will but put himself in the way of it. The life of my granddaughter is more valuable to-day than that of any king or queen. Her mission is to open the door between the two worlds. She is here ready for the test. Let the men of science come to her and be convinced of the life beyond the grave." It was signed with an elaborate rubric "McLeod."

"Who is this message for, father?" asked Mrs. Lambert. "Mrs. Rice?"

A violent thump answered "No."

"Maybe it's for my brother," suggested Kate.

Three tremendous thumps upon the underside of the table gave affirmative answer.

Kate was quite restored to her ruddy self. "Very well, I will see that he gets it."

Viola now spoke wearily, but quite in her natural voice again. "There is no test in that kind of a message. I didn't write it--I had nothing to do with it; but you or Professor Serviss would be justified in thinking I did. Grandpa wanted me to go into a trance. This kind of writing is a compromise."

"But what of my aunt who spoke through you?" asked Kate.

Viola stared at her blankly, and her mother laid a warning hand on Kate's arm. "She knows nothing of these impersonations," she said.

"What did I do?" asked Viola. "I hope nothing ridiculous."

"Mrs. Rice's aunt spoke through you, that's all," answered Mrs. Lambert, reassuringly.

"Tell me more," said Kate, eagerly. "It is all so unreal to me--I want to see more. Dr. Britt has told us wonderful things of you. Do you really believe the dead speak to you?"

"They are with us all the time," placidly, yet decisively, answered Mrs. Lambert. "We are never alone. I can feel them always near."

Kate shrank. "I don't believe I like that--altogether. Don't you feel oppressed by the thought?"

"Yes, I do," answered Viola; "they take all the joy out of my life."

"Dearest!" warned the mother.

"It is true, and I want Mrs. Rice to know it. Since I was ten years old I have not been free of the thing for a day--only in the high mountains. There I could always draw a long breath. I am glad you've come, Mrs. Rice. I want you to ask Professor Serviss to come and investigate me. My only hope is in the men of science. Tell him I want him to help me understand myself." She was speaking now with force and heat. "I want him to padlock me and nail me down. I want to know whether I am in the hands of friends or enemies. Sometimes I think devils are playing with me. All my life I've been tortured by these powers; even at school they came banging about my bed, scaring my room-mates. They disgraced me before my teacher, the one I loved best. They interfered with my music, they cut me off from my friends, and now they've landed me here in this strange house with this dreadful old man, and I want some one, some good man who knows, some one who is not afraid, to come and test me. Mamma never doubts, Mr. Clarke is entirely satisfied, and this Mr. Pratt is worse than all. I don't believe in his pictures, I don't believe in what I do--I don't know what I believe," she ended, despairingly; then added, fiercely: "This I _do_ know, I want to be free from it--free, free--absolutely free. I pray to God to release me, but He does not, and my slavery grows worse every day."

The girl's intensity of utterance thrilled Kate to the heart. Here was the cry of a tortured soul, the appeal of one in bondage. Dr. Britt was right, she was a victim.

"You poor thing. I begin to understand. _I_ will help you, and so will my brother. He is already interested in you. He is just the one to advise with you. If any one can help you he can. He is so keen-eyed, so strong."

"I know he is. Have him come soon, won't you?"

The mother interposed. "But, dearie, you know Mr. Clarke says--"

"I know what he says," the girl answered, her face sullen and weary again. "He and all of you have no regard for me. You pretend to have, but you are all willing to sacrifice me to prove a theory. I don't care whether spiritualism is true or not, I want to have one single day when I can be sure of being myself, free to come and go like other girls. I feel as if I had a band of iron around my neck. I shall go mad with it some day."

Kate, usually ready, blunt, and fearless, sat in silence, perfectly convinced by the fury of the girl's protest, stunned by a belief in the complete truth of her indignant accusations. These devotees, these fanatics, were immolating a beautiful young life on the altar of their own selfish faith. The virgin was already bound to the rock, and the priest, torch in hand, was about to apply the flame.

"What can _I_ do? I want to help you--"

An imperious knock at the door interrupted her, and for an instant Kate thought this another spirit message, but Mrs. Lambert called out, "Is that you, Anthony?"

A deep voice answered, "Yes, it is I. I have something to tell you." Clarke opened the door and stepped within, a handsome, dark, theatrical figure.

Mrs. Lambert rose to meet him. "What is it, Anthony?"

"We've decided on the date. I am to speak on the second," he answered exultantly.

Viola started up. "You shall not use my name. I forbid it!" Her hands were clinched, her eyes blazed with the fury of her determination, and she struck her heel upon the floor. "I tell you I forbid it!"

Clarke pushed Mrs. Lambert aside and strode to the centre of the room; his face was hard, his tone contemptuous. "You forbid it! What is your puny will against the invisible ones? You forbid it?" His voice changed as he asked, "Who has influenced you to _this_ childish revolt?" He turned to Kate. "Have you, madam?"

Kate Rice was not one to be outfaced. "If I have, I shall be most happy," she answered. "Who are you that demand so much of this poor girl?"

"I am the one chosen by her 'control' to convey their message to the world."

Kate recoiled a little. "Oh, you are? Well, I don't care if you are. You have no right to use her name in this way without her consent."

"Her consent! What she desires or what I desire is of small account. We are both in the grasp of the invisible forces, making for the happiness of the race. She can't refuse to go on. It is her duty. There are millions of other women to sing, to dance, to amuse men--there is only one Viola Lambert in the world. Nothing in the annals of the occult exceeds her wonderful mediumship. She _must_ give herself to the world of science. She _must_ help us to prevail over the terrors of the grave. Her mission is magnificent. Her fame will fill the earth."

Kate stoutly confronted him. "Perhaps the fame you give her will destroy her. It sounds to me like notoriety rather than fame. This poor child has a right to herself, and I will help her assert it."

Clarke's eloquent hand fell to his side. Something in Kate's calm, matter-of-fact speech reached his shrewder self. He perceived here no mean antagonist. "You need not take the trouble, madam. I am guarding her. _They_ are guarding her."

It was plain that both Mrs. Lambert and her daughter were profoundly in obedience if not in terror of this wild young evangel, and Kate, to test her divination, said, "Suppose she refuses?"

"She dare not refuse. Her 'control' would cut her down where she stands. She has no choice where they are concerned. The hands are upon her this moment," he ended, triumphantly.

A shudder of despair went over the girl. "It's true; I feel them here." She touched her throat. "They are all against me--the living and the dead," and she fell into her chair with a moan of despair, her beauty, her shining garments adding to the pity of her fate. Kate's heart went out to her without reservation as she knelt beside her.

"I am for you, my dear, and so is my brother; we will help you, I give you my word. Be brave. You must see Morton and Dr. Weissmann. They will know what to do."

Viola turned upon her mother with a wail of supplication. "Take me home, mother, take me home!"

Mrs. Lambert herself was weeping now. "I dare not, dearie, not till _they_ consent. Be patient--they have promised to release you after this test."

Over the girl's face a stony rigidity spread, her eyelids drooped, her head rolled from side to side, a pitiful, moaning cry came from her pinched lips, and then, at last, drawing a long, peaceful sigh, she slept.

Kate, in terror, stood watching, waiting till the lines of struggle, of pain, smoothed out, and the girl, doubly beautiful in her resignation, lay like one adorned for the angel of death. Then Clarke said, solemnly: "She has ceased to struggle. She is in good hands, in the care of those who love her and understand her; when she wakes she will be newly consecrated to her great work. Come."

Kate, awed and helpless, permitted him to lead her from the room, but when fairly outside she turned upon him fiercely: "Don't touch me. I despise you. You are all crazy, a set of fanatics, and you'd sacrifice that poor girl without a pang. But you sha'n't do it, I tell you--you sha'n't do it!"

And with that defiant phrase she swept past him down to the street, forgetting Dr. Britt in her frenzy of indignation and defeat.

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