Part 10

Before the crowd became aware of her, the keen-eyed girl had discovered the objects of their search. "There they are," she whispered, pointing to the corner at the judge's right, where Mrs. Joyce and Mrs. Ollnee were seated, in close conversation with a dark, smoothly-shaven man of middle age. "Oh, I'm so glad," she added, "Mr. Bartol is with them."

She led the way, quite fearlessly, through the aisle and directly up to the gate, where she was met by the bailiff, or warden of the room, a sullen-faced, sloppy Irishman. He was too keen-eyed not to be immediately impressed by her beauty and something strong and clear and fine in her glance, but before he had time to ask her what she wanted the gentleman whom she called Bartol came forward, and at his touch the officer gave way respectfully, and the two young people entered the inclosure.

Mrs. Ollnee rose upon seeing Victor, and lifted her arms to his neck. "Oh, I'm so glad you've come," she murmured, in deep relief.

A rustle of profound interest passed over the court-room, and such shuffling of feet and murmur of voices arose that the bailiff rapped querulously on the railing with the handle of his mallet and glared, in a vain effort to restore silence. Even the judge, accustomed as he was to every phase of the human comedy, turned a sympathetic gaze upon the girl. He was a middle-aged man, with a pale and sensitive careworn face, and as he resumed his address to the men before him his gentle voice could be heard above the roar of the street in grave reprimand. The sodden convicts who stood unshaved and spiritless before him excited his pity not his wrath.

Victor sat down beside his mother, whispering, "What is it all about?"

Mr. Bartol answered: "Pettus, the president of the People's Bank, has absconded; the bank is closed, and your mother has been arrested for complicity in his frauds."

Victor understood almost instantly, for this was exactly what Carew had warned him about on the night of his first dinner in Mrs. Joyce's house. "What can we do?" he asked.

"Leave that to me," replied Bartol. "I will see that your mother is protected."

As they sat thus, waiting, while the judge disposed of a wife-beating case, Victor thought of Altair and the mournful and exquisite smile with which she had greeted him. What a frightful gulf gaped between these savage and bestial men--these sullen, pinched, grimy, and malodorous street-walkers, these sottish, half-human creatures, torn and bloody with one another's claws--and the celestial vision which his mother, by some inexplicable necromancy, had been able to create from the sunless world of her magic! What a measureless stretch lay between this clamorous, automatic, pitiless court (with its weary judge) and the sunny bank beside the lagoon, whereon the birds were singing and where he and Leo had so lately lain to gaze on the far horizon land of wedded happiness and love!

Upon his musing the sounding voice of the clerk broke. "_Thomas Aiken_ vs. _Lucile Ollnee._"

Led by Mr. Bartol, Mrs. Ollnee and Mrs. Joyce moved through the gate and stood before the judge, while from the right the complainant and his witnesses and his lawyer came to oppose them. Victor followed his mother and stood at the extreme left, with Leo by his side. He had no care of what the miserable spectators in the seats would think of them. He was only concerned with the judge and the opposing counsel.

Upon the motion of the clerk, the bailiff called out, "Hold up your hands, everybody," and so they all, including even Leo, held up their right hands and took the oath that what they were about to say would be the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help them God.

The judge, worn by the ceaseless stream of diseased, ineffectual, and halting humanity passing daily before his eyes, gazed in surprise and growing interest upon this group of handsome and well-dressed people while the prosecuting attorney presented the claims of the complaining witness, charging the defendant with conspiring to rob or defraud one, Mary Aiken.

"Where is Mrs. Aiken?" asked the judge.

"She is too ill to appear, your honor," replied the prosecuting attorney, "but her granddaughter is here prepared to give in detail the story of how the defendant, who professes to be a medium, induced her aged and infirm grandmother to withdraw her money from certain investments in her native town and put them into the hands of another--namely, the absconding president of the People's Bank, thereby impoverishing her. Thomas Aiken, the complainant, charges that the said defendant, Lucile Ollnee, has by her uncanny powers obtained large sums of money, and that she should be punished as a swindler."

The judge studied the faces of the witnesses before him, then asked, "What have you to say to this, Mrs. Ollnee?"

"It is false," she replied.

The prosecution put in a word. "You will not deny that you advised these investments?"

"I advised nothing," she retorted. "What my controls advised I only know in a general way."

"What do you mean by 'controls'?" inquired the judge.

"I am a spirit medium, and sometimes a trance medium," she replied, facing him steadily. "Those whom men call the dead speak through me."

"In what way?"

"Partly by writing, partly by means of voices."

"Do you mean to say that the dead speak in voices audible to others than yourself?"

"Yes, your honor, they often speak so loud that any one may hear them. For the most part they whisper."

The prosecution again struck in. "These voices are a part of the trick, a part of her method of luring her victims on to do her will."

The judge turned to the complainant, Thomas Aiken, a dark-faced, sullen young man. "Have you heard these voices, Mr. Aiken?"

"No, sir; I never had a seance; but my sister has had a number of interviews with this woman. I know that in spite of the advice of her friends my grandmother has been induced to give away her money to this woman and to that scoundrel, Pettus. We have been robbed by her. It amounts to that, and we intend to stop it."

The judge turned back to Mrs. Ollnee. "Do you wish to be tried here and now on this charge?"

Mr. Bartol interposed. "No, your honor, we do not. This case is a very peculiar one. My client is a lady, as you may see, and should never have been brought into this court in this fashion. That she is a medium is probably true; but there is no evidence of deceit on her part. She assures me of her absolute faith in these Voices, and her manner carries conviction. Her friends believe in her also. She claims to be nothing more than the means of communication between this world and the world of the dead."

The judge smiled faintly. "That is claiming a good deal--from my point of view. What have you to say to that?" he demanded, turning again to the complainants.

A clear, low, musical voice, the voice of a young woman, answered, "The case is not uncommon, your honor."

Victor, craning his head forward, found himself looking directly into the big, intense black eyes of the girl he had rebuffed on the stairway the first day of his stay. She was vivid, intense, and very indignant as she said: "The woman pretends to be possessed of the power of communication with the dead, and by her arts she convinced my grandmother that her dead husband wished the withdrawal of her money from a bank in Moline, and that he recommended its investment in this traction company. She played remorselessly upon the most sacred emotions of my poor old grandmother, and I have evidence to prove that this advice has been a part of a general scheme whereby this traction company, a fake concern, has been able to delude other credulous souls."

As she paused her lawyer said, wearily: "It is a plain case of swindling, your honor, and we desire to press the case to its limit at once, for Pettus cannot be found, and we fear the flight of the defendant."

Mr. Bartol spoke suavely. "Your honor, it is not 'a plain case of swindling.' Mrs. Ollnee is the personal friend of Mrs. John H. Joyce, whose name you know very well. It is true that messages were given advising the investment of funds in the traction company, but not only has this advice been followed by Mrs. Joyce, but by the defendant herself, who has kept all her own small savings in the same bank."

The judge turned to Mrs. Ollnee. "Is this true?"

"It is, your honor."

The judge spoke to Mrs. Joyce. "You believe in this woman's Voices?"

"I do."

"Yet they have advised you to put your money into the hands of a swindler."

"Her Voices seem to have done this, yes, sir; but she herself has never advised in any way."

"You distinguish between the Voices of your friend and her own personality, do you?"

"I do, yes, sir."

The prosecuting attorney inserted a sneering word. "Your honor, Mrs. Joyce is known to be credulous and under the influence of this trickster. She is not a competent witness. She has permitted herself to be deluded to the point where she will not believe anything ill of her medium. Thomas Aiken is not the only one ready to press this charge against the defendant. Four others to my knowledge stand ready to testify to this woman's uncanny power for deluding and defrauding. My client finds herself stripped of her little fortune and helpless in her declining years. The acting of this medium is criminal, and we demand that she be punished."

The judge turned his musing eyes upon Mrs. Ollnee's pale face. "Have you anything further to say, Mrs. Ollnee?"

"I have never been guilty of any deception, your honor. I claim no wisdom for myself. If it is true that the traction company is a fraud, then it must be that lying spirits have spoken impersonating my husband and my father."

"That is a subterfuge," interposed the young woman, Miss Aiken. "She is responsible for her Voices."

"You accept money for your services, do you not?" the judge asked of Mrs. Ollnee.

"Not now, no sir."

"Did you formerly?"

"Yes, sir, after my husband died, I was forced to do so in order to educate my son."

"Is this your son?"

"Yes, sir."

The judge addressed himself to Victor. "What do you know of your mother's power as a medium? Do you share her faith?"

Victor felt the burning eyes of the angry girl upon him as he replied: "I know very little about it, your honor. I have been away to school ever since I was ten years old."

"Mrs. Joyce, you are a believer in Mrs. Ollnee's powers?"

"I am, a firm believer."

"You've had no reason to doubt the genuineness of these messages?"

"Up to the present time I have not."

"You will lose heavily in this traction swindle, if it is a swindle, will you not?"

"If it has failed, yes, sir."

"Does that shake your faith in the medium?"

"Not in the slightest, your honor. It is a well-known fact that lying spirits sometimes interpose."

During this interrogation, which had proceeded in conversational tone, they had all remained standing before the judge, whose speculative eyes wandered from face to face with growing interest. At last he said to the prosecuting attorney: "From your own statement of it, this case is not to be tried here. I do not feel myself competent at this time to pass upon the questions involved."

"She shall not escape," said Miss Aiken, with bitter menace.

Mr. Bartol interposed. "We demand a trial by jury, your honor."

"You shall have it," responded the judge.

The Aikens withdrew sullenly, and the bailiff indicated that the defendant and her party might retire to an inner office while papers were being prepared; and this they did. This room proved to be a bare, bleak place, with benches and yellow wooden chairs, as ugly as a country railway station, wherein a few officers were carelessly lounging about. They all gazed curiously at Mrs. Ollnee and Leo, and one of them muttered to the other, "It's not often that a classy bunch like that comes into court."

The indignity of it all caused Leo to forget her own share in the traction company's failure. "It is shameful that you should be dragged here," she said, when the door closed behind them.

"Leo!" cried Mrs. Ollnee, in agonized voice. "Do you realize that this failure means almost as much of a loss to you as it does to Louise?"

This affected the girl only for an instant. Then she loyally said: "Yes, I know. But I do not blame you for it."

Mrs. Ollnee turned to her son. "If all they say is true, Victor, we are the victims of some lying devils--"

Leo soothingly laid her hand on her arm. "Let us not think about that just now. Let us wait until we are safely out of this dreadful place."

Victor perceived that his mother was shaken to the very deeps of her faith. She was trembling with excitement and weakness, and his anxiety deepened into a fear that she might faint. "There are devils here," she whispered. "I feel them all about me--bestial, horrible--take me away!"

"Can't we go now?" he asked of the officer, who seemed to have an eye on them. "My mother is not well."

"Wait till the bail is fixed up," the officer replied, pleasantly but inexorably.

They remained in silence till Mrs. Joyce and Mr. Bartol appeared. Then Victor hurried his mother out into the street, eager to escape the desolating air of this moral charnel-house. It was by no means a perfectly pure atmosphere without, but it was fresher than within, and Mrs. Ollnee revived almost instantly. "Oh, the swarms of unclean spirits in there!" she said, looking back with a face of horror.

Mrs. Joyce put her into the car with Leo and told them to go directly home, while she, with Victor, took Mr. Bartol to his office. Victor, stunned by the new and crushing blow which had fallen upon him, turned to the great lawyer with a boy's trust and admiration. "What can we do?" he asked, as soon as they had taken their seats in the car.

Mr. Bartol did not attempt to make light of the case. His dark, strong face was very grave as he answered: "For the present we can do very little beyond getting our bearings. It seems to me at the moment as though the whole question hinged upon the possibility of dual personality, and so far as I am concerned, I have no mind upon that matter. I must give it attention before I can reply. Our immediate concern is to keep your mother from further trouble and assault. If, as the prosecution stated, there are others in this fight, they and the press can make it very unpleasant for you all. Miss Florence Aiken has a powerful and vindictive pen. She will not cease her persecution--for she is at the bottom of the case."

Mrs. Joyce turned to him with eager face. "I wish you would invite Mrs. Ollnee and her son up to your farm for a few days."

"I do so with pleasure. I am going up to-night on the eight-o'clock train, and I shall be very glad to have them go with me, if they care to do so. We can then talk the whole case over at our leisure and in quiet. Perhaps you can run up and stay over Sunday with us."

"That is the very thing," she responded; "and I'm very grateful to you."

Again Victor felt himself helpless, whirling along in a stream of alien purpose like a leaf in a mountain torrent, and again he abandoned himself to its sweep. "I will do anything to get away from here," he replied.

Mr. Bartol went on: "Your mother's case will not come up for some days, and the rest and quiet of the farm will do you both good." To Mrs. Joyce he added, privately: "The whole matter interests me vastly. I don't at all mind giving some time to it, and, besides, I like the young man."

Mrs. Joyce dropped the lawyer at his office door and sped homeward swiftly, with intent to overtake Leo. She did not attempt to conceal her anxiety. "The truth is, Victor, Pettus and his friends called into our circle a throng of wicked, deceiving spirits. They were not what they claimed to be. They were cheats, and they have almost ruined us. Your poor, sweet mother is not to blame, and I can't blame the Aikens. What I cannot understand is this--Why did your father and his band permit these treacherous personalities to intervene? Why did they not defend her from these demons?"

Victor listened to her with a complete reversal to disbelief as regards his mother's mediumship. He forgot the marvels of the direct writing, the mighty murmuring wind, the dream-face of Altair; all these insubstantial and evanescent perceptions were lost, submerged by the returning sea of his doubt. He saw, too, that Leo's faith was shaken. He felt it beneath her brave-spoken words. The whole question of the process, as well as the content of the messages, was reopened for her. His situation grew ever darker. His way was again blocked. He could not leave his mother to her fate, and yet he could not see his way to earning a cent of money while this horrible accusation was hanging over her. He acknowledged, too, a very definite feeling of sympathy with those who had been defrauded. There was moral indignation in Miss Aiken's tremulous eagerness to punish. "She's not to blame," he said. "I'd do exactly as she is doing if I were in her place."

X

A VISIT TO HAZEL GROVE

Bartol, attended by porters and greeted by conductors and brakemen, led the way to the parlor-car in a stern abstraction, which was his habit. Victor studied him closely and with growing admiration. He was not tall, but his head was nobly formed and his broad mask of face lion-like in its somber dreaming. In repose it was sad, almost bitter, and in profile clear-cut and resolute. His dress was singularly tasteful and orderly, with nothing of the careless celebrity in its color or cut, and yet no one would accuse him of being the dandy. He was naturally of this method, and gave little direct thought to toilet or dress.

Mrs. Ollnee looked upon him as her rescuer, one who had snatched her from loathsome captivity; but his manner did not invite repeated and profuse thanks. With a few words of polite explanation, he took a seat behind his wards, unfolded his newspaper, and forgot them till the conductor came through the car; then he remembered them and paid their fares.

Mrs. Ollnee was not merely awed by his powerful visage and searching eyes; she was profoundly stirred by some psychic influence which emanated from him. She whispered to Victor: "He is very sad. He is all alone. He has lost his wife and both his children. He has no hope, and often feels like leaving this life."

Victor did not take this communication as a "psychometric reading," for he had been able to discern almost as much with his own eyes, and, besides, all of its definite information Mrs. Joyce might have furnished; but his mother added something that startled him. She said: "The Voices say, '_Obey this man; study him. He will raise you high!_'"

"What do you mean by that?"

"I don't know," she replied. "That is the way I hear it. I hear other Voices--they say to me, '_Comfort him._'"

Victor was not in a mood for "voices," and cut her short by asking in detail about her arrest. "Who came for you? A policeman?"

"Yes, but not in uniform. They were very nice about it. At first I was terribly frightened. I was afraid I should have to go in the patrol-wagon, but we were allowed to ride in the car, the policeman sitting with the driver--"

Victor groaned. "Oh, mother, why did you give out _business_ advice!"

"I gave what was given to me," she responded.

"Think of the disgrace of being in that court-room!"

"I didn't mind the disgrace," she replied; "but it swarmed with horrible spirits. Each one of those poor criminals had a cloud of other base, distorted, half-formed creatures hovering about him. It was like being in a cage with a host of obscene bats fluttering about." She shuddered. "It was horrible! It was a sweet relief when you and Leo came, for a new and happy band came with you. You helped my band drive away the cloud of low beings that oppressed me; and now there is something calming and serenely helpful all about me. It comes from Mr. Bartol. I am no longer afraid; I am perfectly serene."

Victor made no attempt at elucidating her exact meaning; there was something depressing to him in this continued dependence upon spirit guidance, a guidance that had led them into so much trouble and discredit. He sat by the window, watching the faintly-outlined moonlit landscape flowing past, feeling himself to be a very small insect riding on the chariot of the king of tempests, with no power to check the speed or direct the course of his inflexible driver. His own future was but a flutter of vague shadows, his boyhood a serene, sun-warm meadow, now swiftly receding into the darkness of night. Would anything so beautiful ever come again?

His mother, sitting as if entranced, was looking down at her folded hands, her brow unlined; but a plaintive droop in the lines of her sensitive mouth told that she was wearied and secretly disheartened.

"Poor little mother!" he said, laying a hand on her arm, "you are tired."

The tears came to her eyes, but she smiled back radiantly. "I don't care what comes, if only you believe in me," she said, simply; and he took her hand in both of his and pressed it like a lover.

At last Mr. Bartol folded his paper and put away his glasses. "Well, we are nearing Hazel Grove," he announced, smilingly. "It's only a little village, a meeting of cross-roads, but I think you'll like the country; it's the fine old rolling prairie of which you've heard."

The moon was riding high as they alighted from the coach upon the platform of a low, wooden station in the midst of green fields. A clump of trees, and the lights in dimly discerned houses, gave only a faint suggestion of a town; but an open carriage was waiting for them, and entering this, they were driven away into the most delicious and fragrant silence.

Instantly the last trace of Victor's anger and unrest fell away from him. Of this simple quality had been the scenes of his life at school. In such peace and serenity his earlier years had been spent; indeed, all his life, save for the few tumultuous days in the city--and he was immediately restored and comforted by the sounds, sights, and odors of the superb spring night.

"Isn't it glorious!" he cried. "I feel as if I were reaching God's country again."

The swiftly stepping horses whirled them up the street through a bunch of squat buildings and out along a gently rising lane to the south. Ten minutes later the driver turned into a large, tree-shaded drive, and over a curving graveled drive approached a spreading white house, whose porticos shone pleasantly in the moonlight. A row of lighted windows glowed with hospitable intent, and tall vases of flowers showed dimly.

"Here we are!" called Mr. Bartol, with genial cordiality. "Welcome to Hazeldean."

To dismount before this wide porch in the midst of the small innumerable voices of the night was like living out some delicious romance. To come to it from the reek and threat of the court-room made its serene expanse a heavenly refuge, and the beleaguered mother paused for a moment at the door to look back upon the lawn, where opulent elms and maples dreamed in the odorless gloom. "I have never seen anything so peaceful," she breathed. "Only heavenly souls inhabit here."

The interior was equally restful and reassuring. Large rooms with simple and substantial furnishings led away from a short entrance hall. The ceilings were low and dark, and the lamps shaded. Books were everywhere to be seen, many of them piled carelessly convenient to lights and chairs, as if it were both library and living-room.

The first word Victor spoke related to the books, and Mr. Bartol replied with a smile.