Part 3

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

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

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

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

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

As she enlarged upon this phase of her life Victor was appalled by it. Her madness--and madness it seemed to him--was now a settled and specific part of her life. "How do they punish you?" he asked, after a pause.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

III

VICTOR MAKES A TEST

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

His smile did not last long. "Mrs. Joyce knows all about us," he admitted. "That's why she blew us to that feast. She was trying to compensate mother for her empty cupboard, which was very nice of her." Then his thought went deeper. He began to understand that it was to provide him with a larger allowance that his mother had been living alone and doing her own work. "Dear little mutter!" he said, and his heart softened toward her. "She's been walking the tight-rope, all right."

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

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

"I have sugar but no coffee. I drink--"

"Not on your life!" he cut in. "No burnt wheat for me!" And he tore down the stairs like mad.

At the shop he found himself possessed of just seventeen cents, with which he bought a half-pound of coffee.

"Now I can begin my conquest of the world as all the great men have done--penniless. It's me for a stroll down-town, I reckon."

The table was neatly set when he returned, and his mother, proud of her big and glowing boy, cheerily confronted him. "No matter how poor we are," she said, "we can be happy." And with her faith renewed she prepared the coffee for the cream.

The sun struck into the bare little dining-room with golden charm, but these two souls, so alike yet so unlike, faced each other with returning constraint. As they talked their antagonism of purpose again developed.

Victor outlined his plan of going West and starting anew. To this suggestion his mother listened, then gently replied: "There are many objections to that, Victor. First of all, I have no money."

"Can't we sell something?" She shook her head, and he, after looking around, ruefully admitted that there was nothing to sell. "But your house--" This gave him a thought. "Why don't we go back to La Crescent? I'll work on a farm, in a grocery--anything rather than have you keep on with this business. It's dangerous, and it isn't nice."

"Victor," she began, with more of self-assertion than she had hitherto voiced, "you don't understand. My mediumship is not a business, it is a sacred obligation. God has gifted me with the power of communicating with those who have passed to a higher plane, and I must respect that gift. I am in the hands of those wiser than either of us. To oppose them would be self-destruction."

He listened with growing coldness and hardness. "That's all a delusion," he repeated. "Modern science has proved that mediumship is just plain hysteria."

"We won't argue," she replied, and her tone was that of one hurt. "I _know_, for I have had the personal experience. I am only a leaf in the wind when this power sweeps over me. So long as I live I must remain the instrument of these our supernal friends--it is my work in the world, and I must execute it."

"What do you expect me to do?" he asked, almost brutally.

"I'd like you to go back to your studies--"

"That I will not do," he assured her in tones that expressed a final decision.

"Well then--will you remain here with me?"

"Not with you carrying on the business which I hate."

"Why should you hate it? To Leo and Mrs. Joyce my mission is noble."

"I hate it because I think it's foolish, unnatural, and false. I don't mean that you _consciously_ cheat, mother, but I am certain that in some way it all comes down to that."

She opened her arms in a gesture of passionate appeal. "My son, these Voices have educated you--they have helped me to feed and clothe you. Now here I am, prove me, try me, convict me if you can. I yield myself to your tests. I _know_ the spirit life is a reality. If I did not I should perish with despair. Every day, almost all hours of the day, these Voices whisper in my ears. The hands of those you call the dead caress my cheek. They cheer and admonish me. They are as real to me as you are. If you can silence them, do so. I put myself into your hands. Do what you will in proof of my powers."

The boy was rapidly changing to the man. His mother's words beating upon his brain aroused something in him which he had not hitherto acknowledged. He thought deeply as he peered into her eyes, burning with resolution.

"She is honest--but she is the victim of a fixed idea." He had heard much of "the fixed idea." "I will try her, I will rid her of her obsession." Aloud he said: "The important thing is our living. How am I to pay my way? I haven't a cent. I paid out my last penny for this coffee."

"I have a little money."

"I told you I wouldn't take another dollar of your money, and I won't," he replied, sharply. "That's settled. I must get clear and keep clear of all this 'bunk.'"

"But suppose you find my powers real?" she asked, trembling with eagerness.

He hesitated. "Then--well--if I believed in your powers I would still object to your earning money with--by means of your--your Voices. I've got to make my own way in the world, and from this moment!"

She read an unmitigable opposition in his eyes and sadly said, "You'll come here to sleep, won't you?"

He conceded so much, though reluctantly. "Yes, I'll sleep here, but as soon as I make a raise of any work I intend to pay for my board. As for carfare, I guess my junk will have to go into 'hock.'" He rose. "You see, I won a silver mug and a watch by being useful to the team. It's them to 'Uncle Jake's,'" he ended, with a return to the college youth's vocabulary, and going to his valise took out his reward for muscular merit and showed it to her. "Isn't that smooth?"

Her eyes shone with pride. "How much do you suppose you can borrow on it?" she asked.

"Oh, I don't know. Five dollars, maybe."

"Well, I'll lend you ten dollars on it."

He looked at her with musing eyes. "Say twenty, and you may have both mug and watch."

She went to her purse and handed to him the money.

He took it without hesitation. "Well, here's where I hit the pavement for a job."

She confronted him in a final appeal. "Oh, Victor, I can't bear to have you doubt me even for an hour. Stay with me to-day. Stay and let me talk with you. I've had so little of you. Just think! for more than twelve years I've kept you away from me--I've starved myself--my mother-self--in order that you might grow to manhood untroubled by my faith, and I can't bear to have you doubt me now."

He understood something of her emotion and responded to it. "You dear, faithful little mother, I realize now what I have cost you, and I'm grateful; but that's the very reason why I can't let you do any more of it. I must begin to pay you back."

"All you need to do to pay me is to let me look at you," she fondly replied. "I'm proud of you, Victor. I was proud of you last night. I saw Leo admiring you, and Mrs. Joyce thinks you are splendid."

He was interested. "By the way, who is Miss Wood?"

"She's a niece of Mrs. Joyce. Mrs. Joyce is the widow of Joyce the lumberman."

"She seems to have all kinds of money." His face was thoughtful again.

"Yes, she's rich, and she has been very kind to me. She took me to California and to Europe. She is always doing things for me. It was just like her to come to me yesterday--she is not one to fail in time of trouble. I don't know what I should do without her."

"She certainly is nice. What about Miss Wood? Does she believe in your--your Voices?" He asked this without direct glance.

"Yes. She doesn't say much, but she is deeply grateful to my guides."

"She's no ordinary girl, I can see that. Is she rich also?"

"Not as Mrs. Joyce is rich, but The Voices have sort of adopted her. They say they will make her wealthy as a queen."

"What do you mean by that?"

"They are telling her from week to week just how to invest her money."

"Do you mean to tell me that _you_ advise her how to invest her money?"

"No, I mean _The Voices_ advise her."

"Why should 'they' know anything about business?"

She became evasive. "They do! They've proved it again and again. Mrs. Joyce's income has doubled in five years by following father's advice."

He pondered on this deeply. "I don't like that. I don't see why you or your Voices should be valuable in that way."

"There are many things in this world for you to learn, my son," she replied with an assumption of superior wisdom.

This nettled him. "It don't take much wisdom to know that if you go on advising people in that way you'll get into trouble. That's what that writer said in the paper."

She closed her lips tightly as if to keep back a cutting reply, and he rose briskly. "Well, see here, we must put away these dishes."

She acquiesced in his postponement of the discussion, and helped him wash the dishes and set the room to rights. At last she said: "Where is the morning _Star_? Have you seen it?"

"There's a paper at the foot of the stairs; is that yours?"

"Yes," she replied.

"I'll get it," he said, and was out of the door and back again before she fully realized that he was gone. He opened the twist of damp paper with haste, fully expecting to find some new attack on "Mrs. Ollnee, the Blood-sucker," but there was nothing. "All the same, you're not safe in this house," he said. "They threatened to arrest you, and I don't like to leave you here alone to-day."

"You need not worry about me," she replied, quietly. "Father will take care of me. If he saw any real danger coming my way he would warn me of it."

"He didn't warn you of the coming of the reporter, did he?"

"No--he had some reason for permitting this cloud to come upon me. He knows best."

"I don't believe I'd put very much faith in 'guides' that didn't keep me out of trouble."

"Perhaps all this is a part of our discipline. They are wiser than we. I accept even this disgrace as a good in disguise. Perhaps it was all intended to bring you to me."

The youth sank back again baffled by this all-inclosing acceptance. "What do you intend to do to-day?" he asked, as she rose and walked over to the little walnut table.

"I am going to ask for advice."

"Now?"

"Yes; and I wish you would sit with me for a few moments and see if we cannot secure direction for the day."

He was beginning to be curious--and his desire to dig deeper into his mother's brain overcame part of his repugnance.

"All right," he boyishly answered, but his heart contracted with sudden fear of finding her false. "Let's see what they're up to."

"Take a seat opposite me," she said, and there was something commanding in her voice.

Drawing a chair up to the old brown table--which he remembered as one of the pieces of furniture in his earliest childhood home--he took a seat.

"Why do you keep this rickety old thing?" he asked, shaking it viciously.

"It was your grandfather's reading-table, and he likes me to keep it. Besides, it is highly magnetized and very sensitive."

"Oh rats!" he irreverently burst forth. "You can't magnetize a piece of wood. Wood is a non-conductor. You can't subvert a physical law just by saying so."

"I don't mean it in that crude sense," she replied, quite mistress of herself. She had taken up and was holding between her hands a small hinged slate.

"What's that for?" asked Victor.

"To vitalize the surface. I am able to give it vitality by my touch." She laid the slate upon the table and placed her spread hand upon it. "Put your hand upon mine, Victor."

He did as she bade him, rebelling at the childish folly of it all. "What do you expect to do?" he asked.

Almost immediately the slate seemed seized by a powerful hand. It began to slide back and forth across the table violently, twisting and clattering. The youth put forth his own great strength and stopped it, but a crunching sound announced that the slate was broken.

His mother said, sharply, "You mustn't do that, Victor." She took up the slate and showed one corner crushed and crumbled. "You can't hold it--you mustn't try--it angers them."

He marveled at the strength which had resisted him, but argued that his mother from long practice had become very muscular. Hysterical people often displayed astounding power.

After preparing a new slate she put it on the table as before, saying to the air, "Please don't be rough, father--Victor can't prevent his skepticism."

Three loud raps answered, and she smiled. He says, "All right. He understands."

"Seems to me he's mighty touchy for one on the heavenly plane," Victor retorted, maliciously. "Seems to me an all-seeing spirit ought to get my point of view."

A vigorous tapping on the table responded to this speech.

"What's that?" asked Victor.

"That is your father saying yes, he _does_ get your point of view."

Victor had a feeling that his mother was receding from him as he faced her across the table. She became the professional medium in her manner and tone. He, too, changed. He hardened, assuming the attitude of the scientific observer--hostile and derisive. His keen hazel-gray eyes grew penetrating and his lips curled in scorn. His tone hurt her, but she persisted in her sitting, and at last the slate began to tremble throughout all its parts, and a grating sound like slow writing with a pencil went on beneath it. Victor could plainly follow the dotting of the i's and the crossing of the t's, till at the end a tapping indicated that it was finished.

"You may take the slate, Victor," said Mrs. Ollnee.

He took it from the table and opened it. On one side, in bold script--a bit old-fashioned--stood these words: "_Stay where you are. Let the boy adventure into the city. Await results. I will be near. FATHER._"

Victor, astounded, mystified, confronted his mother with wide eyes. "Now, what does that mean?"

"It means that I am to keep this house just as it is and you are to seek work in the city. Is that right, Paul?"

Three taps made answer.

The youth was stunned by the boldness and cleverness of all this. He was pained, too. He perceived no sign of abnormal thinking in his mother's action. She was not hysterical. _She was not entranced._ Whatever she did she did consciously--and the thought that she could deliberately deceive him was shocking. He breathed quickly and a nervous clutch came into his hands. He resented being fooled. "Let's try that again," he said; and his tone was precisely that of the child who sees a grown person swallow a coin and take it out of his ear. He was angry as well as sad. "Don't put your hand on it," he protested. "I don't like the looks of that."

She submitted, and then as he was putting it down on the table the sound of writing was heard within it. He laid his hand on the slates, and still the writing went on! With amazement he realized that both her hands were in sight and in no wise concerned in the writing. The right rested lightly and quietly on the frame of the slate, but the left, which lay on the opposite corner of the table, was quivering throughout all its minute muscles.

Amazed beyond words, excited, breathing deep, with a shudder of nervous excitement running over his entire body, Victor listened to the mystic pencil. "How _do_ you work that?" he asked, in a whisper.

"I don't know. I have nothing to do with it," she answered; and taking the upper hinge of the slate between her fingers and thumb she slowly raised it.

_And still the writing went on!_

Victor, holding his breath in awe, bent to look within, but as the opening grew wider the writing stopped.

He snatched the slates from the table and studied the lines, which were made up of minute dots. It was all perfectly legible: "_Son. I doubted. Now I know._"

Victor sank back into his seat and stared speechlessly at the slate and the table. The problem of his mother's mediumship had taken on new elements of mystery. This physical test brought it into the range of his knowledge and interest. It was no longer a question of her honesty or sanity, it had become a problem in dynamics.

How was that bit of pencil moved? The messages he ignored--they didn't matter--but the method of their production seemed to eliminate all trickery, conscious or unconscious. Why did his mother's left hand quiver--and how could that writing shape itself?

His voice was husky with emotion as he said: "Mother, I don't understand that. You've got to tell me how that is done."

She felt the desperate resolution in his voice and she solemnly answered, "My son, I don't _know_ how it is done."

"But you _must_ know! Who moves that pencil! Your hand quivered all the time."

"Yes, I seem to have some physical connection with it--at times. Other times all that takes place has no more connection with me than the sunlight on the floor. The world is a very mysterious place to me, Victor. I don't pretend to know anything. I do as I am told."

He fell silent again while his mind reviewed the entire process. Then he burst out, vehemently, on a new line. "I can't believe my eyes. You've hypnotized me. Mother, for God's sake don't juggle with me--don't play tricks with me. I won't stand for it. It hurts me--" He paused, confused, baffled, ready to weep.

"Can you, my own son, accuse me of trickery?" she asked.

"You _think_ you're honest, mother--but don't you see you've become an _unconscious hypnotist_? It's your subconscious self deceiving us both. I don't know how you do it, but I know it must be a fraud."

"Victor," she said, solemnly, "what this power is you shall have full opportunity to determine, but I say to you that for more than twenty years I've been guided by these unseen presences. I've tested their wisdom and lived under their care. So far as this message is concerned I accept it. I was confused and frightened yesterday, but this morning I am calm. I shall do as they bid. I shall stay here while you go down into the city and see what you can find to do, and together we will test these voices."