Kate gave him a reproving glance. "You"ve been arguing--I can tell by your guilty looks."
"Oh no, not at all; a mere statement of opinion--of no interest, I a.s.sure you."
Kate"s voice was eager. "Mr. Clarke, Viola wants to sit for us--have you any objections?"
"Kate!" called Serviss. "I am ashamed of you--"
"I a.s.sure you I didn"t ask it--I didn"t even hint towards it. "Cross my heart--hope to die.""
Morton was at the moment displeased, for he had been looking forward to a long and intimate conversation with Viola in the drawing-room, and would have been glad if Clarke had opposed it firmly--which he did not. Perhaps he saw a chance to turn the tables on his critics; at any rate, he rose, saying, "I will talk with her and decide the matter,"
and followed Kate out of the room.
"What is it? What did she say?" queried Weissmann, bewilderedly.
Morton explained that Miss Lambert had particularly requested him to sit with her and talk to her "guides," and that she had expressed a particular desire for an immediate test.
Weissmann"s eyes glittered with new interest. "Very good. Why not? It is a fine opportunity. Do you not feel so?"
In truth he did not. The intrusion of the abnormal side of Viola"s life seemed at the moment not merely inopportune but repulsive. As he entered the drawing-room he found her sitting in a low chair beside a small table on which stood a shaded lamp. Clarke was talking with her, and Serviss could detect even at a distance the depressing change which had come to her. Her girlish ecstasy was quite gone and in its place lay pallid languor and a look of appeal.
Clarke moved away as his host approached, and Viola, glancing up wanly and wistfully, said: "Isn"t it stupid? Just when I was so happy. I wanted this evening free, but they would not have it so. No sooner was I seated here than they began to work on me. They say they want to talk with you--my grandfather especially--and I, too, want you to do so--only I didn"t intend to ask it to-night. Please be patient with me, won"t you?"
"Do not distress yourself about that. I shall be very glad to sit. I was afraid Kate might be requesting it. I particularly warned her against mentioning the subject, but if your "guides" wish it, and you are willing, be sure Dr. Weissmann and I will be most pleased. But, tell me, how did the change come? What began to happen?"
[Ill.u.s.tration: ""BUT, TELL ME, HOW DID THE CHANGE COME? WHAT BEGAN TO HAPPEN?""]
"The usual tapping--here on the table--then my hand wanted to write. I ignored it--I fought it. I didn"t intend to yield, but they set to work undermining my will, and then I knew that I must consent or be strangled. As soon as I gave up they took their fingers from my throat, but they are here--my grandfather is just back of me--I can feel his heavy hand on my head. I"m sorry, Professor Serviss. I was having such a good time. I hope you won"t despise me."
"You are entirely too modest," he answered, cheerily. "We are highly favored. It"s like having Paderewski volunteer to play for his dinner."
His lightness of tone hurt her a little. "You don"t believe in me in the least, do you? You think I am an impostor?"
"Oh no. I believe in _you_."
"But you"ve got to believe in these manifestations if you believe in me."
"No, no, that does not follow," he replied, quickly; then, perceiving that this involved him, "All you do may possibly be explained without resort to the spiritualistic hypothesis--" He was embarra.s.sed by her gaze.
"Why are you so contemptuous of spiritualists? It is very hard to bear."
He felt the rebuke. "I am not contemptuous--"
"Yes, you are. Scientific people never speak of us without a laugh or a sneer, and it hurts. It confuses me, too. If good people like you care nothing about death--if you only laugh--"
"I beg your pardon, Miss Lambert, I never intended to be either harsh or contemptuous. I do not accept--I mean to say I am _unable_ to accept--your faith. I confess that my mind refuses to entertain the postulates of what Clarke considers a religion. I must be honest. I am a "sceptic," so far as your faith goes, but that does not mean that I do not believe in the sincerity of your mother; and as to your own powers--I do not wish to dogmatize, for the physical universe is a very large and complicate thing, and, young as I am"--here he smiled--"I don"t pretend to a knowledge of all it contains."
She accepted his explanation, and, with musing candor, replied: "I don"t really blame you. I suppose if these things had happened to some one else I would not have believed in them. I have thought a great deal of what you said to me. I want to get away from that house; I am hating Mr. Pratt more and more, and I will leave to-morrow if grandfather will only consent. If he comes to you to-night, tell him so--maybe my father will come, too. I want you to know my father. I"m sure you will like him. Isn"t it strange that I have never been able to hear his voice?"
He ignored her question. "I do not understand the motives of your "guides"--I cannot conceive of myself sacrificing you to any cause whatsoever."
"Don"t awaken my doubts," she cried, despairingly. "I don"t know why it is, but you always rouse in me something that makes war."
"I"m sorry if I seem to corrupt you."
"I don"t mean that," she hastened to say. "The life which you and your sister represent is the life I love. I was almost resigned to my fate when your sister called upon me. Now I"m all rebellion again. Being here to-night makes me hate all that I am. I hate my very name. I hate Pratt and his horrible house--I almost hate my mother. Sometimes she is so cruel to me. She don"t mean to be, but she is."
His face grew reflective, almost stern. "I wish there were some way of taking you out of the world in which you now suffer. I wish--" He paused, checked by the thought of Clarke"s claims upon her.
"There is only one way--my grandfather must consent to my release; he rules us all."
This delusion rose like a stone wall at the end of every avenue, and Morton turned to a personal explanation. "I cannot a.s.sociate what you seem to me now with what you were when I last saw you. What would you have said had I seized you the other day--s.n.a.t.c.hed you from the stairs and ran--"
Her eyes opened wide. "The stairs?"
"Had you no knowledge of following your mother down the stairway after our interview?"
"I knew I was entranced, but I didn"t know--What did I do?" She asked this anxiously.
"Nothing." He hastened again to change the current. "We were in hot argument. You came down as peace-maker. I went away cravenly, most impotently, leaving you there like a captive."
"I don"t remember a word of it. I came to myself in my own room, and only mother was with me." Her rebellious fire blazed up again. "Oh, Dr. Serviss, I was resigned yesterday, but to-night I am in terror again, and they know it. They are eager to show their power, to confound you and convert Dr. Weissmann. I"m sure they will do some wonderful thing for you to-night if you will let them."
"The best thing "they" could do for me would be to let you sit and talk to me," he replied in the voice of a lover.
She seemed to listen to some interior voice. "They are insisting. They are here--listen!"
As he listened a series of throbbing raps seemed to come from the chair beneath her hand.
"Very well, we will sit." As he said this three heavy, rending, low thuds sounded on the under side of the table.
"That is grandfather," she said. "He wants you to be very rigid, and so do I," she said. "Sometimes it seems as if I did these things myself--I mean certain physical things--and I get all mixed in my mind. I want you to study me." She pa.s.sed her hand wearily over her face, and Morton looked at her in sorrow, meditating a firm, decisive a.s.sault on her hallucination, but checked himself. "If I am to help you, I must know all about you," he said at last, "and a sitting may help."
"You wonder at my fear of my grandfather, but that"s because you don"t realize his power. Let me tell you what happened to me once, when I tried to run away from him. I became desperate one summer vacation and determined to get away from it all. Without telling mother, I took the train one morning--" She paused abruptly and pressed both hands to her burning cheeks. "Oh, it was horrible! My grandfather threw me into a trance on the train, and the conductor thought I was drunk--" She shuddered with the memory of it, and could not finish. "Since then I have never dared to really oppose him."
He pondered her blush, the quiver of her lips, and the timid look of her eyes, and gravely answered: "I share your horror of an experience like that. But it does not endear your malevolent grandfather to me.
He must be a kind of male witch--"
"You mustn"t feel that way towards him," she cried out in some alarm.
"He is firm because he feels that I should be doing my work--"
"I"d like to talk this matter over with him, but I don"t like to have you entranced. Is that necessary?"
"Yes, to get the voices. The writing we can have any time."
"What do you do to induce this coma--this sleep?"
"Just fold my hands and give myself up."