"If there is the slightest doubt--" Mrs. Joyce began.
"Oh, I didn"t mean to convey that, Mrs. Joyce. I was merely giving you the exact point--"
"She shall lie precisely as she is till to-morrow," announced Mrs.
Joyce, firmly. "I have an "impression" that she wishes to have it so.
Will you permit this?" She confronted the two physicians. "Will you wait till to-morrow before reporting?"
Doctor Eberly considered a moment. "If you insist, Mrs. Joyce, and if it is Mr. Ollnee"s wish--"
"Yes, yes," Victor cried, "I"ve heard of people being buried alive. It is too horrible to think about! Leave us alone till to-morrow."
The physicians conferred apart, and at last Eberly turned to say: "It seems to us a perfectly harmless concession. We will not report the case till to-morrow. Doctor Sill will call in the morning and decide what further course to take."
"Thank you," repeated Mrs. Joyce.
After the doctors had gone she turned to Victor, saying: "There is nothing for us to do now but to wait. If Lucy has gone out of her body forever she will manifest to us here in some familiar way. If she intends to return she will revive the body and speak from it sometime between now and dawn."
"She seems to sleep," he said; and now that his awe and terror were lessened by his hope, he was able to study her face more exactly. "How peaceful she seems--and how little she is!"
"A great soul in a dainty envelope," Mrs. Joyce replied. "Would you mind taking my car and going to my home to tell Leonora where I am? I wish also you would bring Mrs. Post, my seamstress, back with you. She"s a good, strong, kindly soul and will be most helpful to-day."
He consented readily and went away in the car, with the bright spring sunlight flooding the world, feeling himself snared in an invisible net. All thought of leaving the city pa.s.sed out of his mind. He thought only of his mother and of her possible revivification. "I will fight the world here if only she will return," he said.
It seemed years since the ball game of Sat.u.r.day wherein he had taken such joyous and honorable part. At that time his universe held no sorrow, no care, no uncertainty. Now here he sat, plunged deep in mystery and confusion, face to face with death, penniless, beleaguered, and alone.
"What would I do without Mrs. Joyce?" he asked himself. "She is a wonderful woman." Strange that in a single hour he should come to lean upon her as upon an elder sister.
He suddenly remembered that she had probably come away from home without her breakfast, and that she would find not so much as a crust of bread in his mother"s kitchen, and the thought made him flush with shame.
"What a selfish fool I am," he said, and seized the speaking-tube with intent to order the chauffeur to turn, but, reflecting that it would take only a few minutes longer to go on, he dropped the mouth-piece and the machine whirled steadily forward.
As he ran up the wide steps Leonora opened the door for him, looking very alert and capable, her face full of wonder and question. "How is your mother?" she quickly, tenderly, asked.
He choked in his reply. "The doctors say she is--dead, but your aunt insists that it is only a trance." He turned away to hide his tears. "I am hoping she"s right, but I"m afraid that the doctors--"
"Is there anything I can do?" she asked, her voice tremulous with sympathy.
"Yes, if you will please send Mrs. Post, the seamstress, over with me.
We have no one in the house, and Mrs. Joyce needs help."
"I will go, too," she responded, quickly. "Please be seated while I call Mrs. Post. Have you had breakfast?"
"Yes; but Mrs. Joyce has not, and I"m afraid there isn"t a thing in our house to eat."
"I"ll take something over," she replied, and hastened away.
He did not sit, he could not even compose himself to stand, but walked up and down the hall like a leopard in its cage. Now and again a liveried servant pa.s.sed, glancing at him curiously, but he did not mind.
Mingled with other whirling emotions was a feeling of grat.i.tude toward Leonora, whose air of conscious superiority had given place, for the moment, to exquisite gentleness and pity. She soon had the seamstress and some lunch bestowed in the car. "We are ready, Mr. Ollnee," she called.
She said very little during their ride. Occasionally she made some remark of general significance, or spoke to Mrs. Post upon the duties which she might expect to meet, and for this reserve Victor was grateful. She understood him through all his worry. Though he did not directly study her, he was acutely conscious of her every movement. Her unruffled precision of action, her calmness, her consideration for his grief appealed to him as something very womanly and sweet.
His mother"s neighbors had been aroused to a staring heat of interest, and from almost every window curious faces peered. Victor perceived and resented their scrutiny, but Leonora seemed not to mind. She alighted calmly and carried the basket of lunch in her own hands to the stairway, though she permitted Victor to lead the way.
Mrs. Joyce met them with a grave smile. "You are prompt. I am glad to see you, Leo, and you, too, Mrs. Post. We have a long watch before us."
It was a singular and absorbing vigil to which Victor and the three women now set themselves. While Greek and Italian hucksters lamentably howled through the alleys and the milk-wagons and grocers" carts clattered up the streets, they waited upon the invisible and listened for the inaudible--so thin is the line between the prosaic and the mystic!
Each minute snap or crackle in the woodwork was to Mrs. Joyce a sign that the translated spirit was struggling to manifest itself; but the seamstress, stolid with years of toil and trouble, sat beside the bed with calm gaze fixed upon the small, clear-cut face half hid in the pillows, as if it mattered very little to her whether she watched with the dead or sewed robes of velvet for the living. "It"s all in the day"s work," she was accustomed to say.
Leo, with intent to comfort Victor, told of several notable cases of "suspension of animation" with which the literature of the Orient is filled, and Victor took this to be, as she intended it to be, an attempt to comfort and sustain.
At times it seemed that he must be dreaming, so unreal was the scene and so extraordinary was the composure of these women. They had the air of those who await in infinite calm leisure the certain return of a friend.
Now and again Mrs. Joyce rose and looked down upon the motionless form, and then perceiving no change resumed her seat. From time to time intruders mounted the stairs, knocked, and, getting no reply, tramped noisily down again.
Victor was all for throwing things in their faces, but Mrs. Joyce interposed. When he looked from the windows he saw grinning faces turned upward, and waiting cameras could be seen on the walk opposite, ready to snap every living thing that entered--or came from--the house. In truth, Victor and his friends were enduring a state of siege.
At last Mrs. Joyce said: "Nothing is gained by your staying here, Victor. Why don"t you go for a ride in the park? Leo, take him down to the South Side Club."
Victor protested. "I cannot go for a pleasure trip at such a time as this. It is impossible!"
She met him squarely. "Victor, death to me is merely a pa.s.sing from one plane to another. Besides, I don"t think your mother has altogether left us. But if she has, you can do no good by remaining here. Mrs. Post and I are quite sufficient. It is a glorious spring day. I beg you to go out and take the air. It will do you infinite good."
"If there is nothing I can do here then I ought to resume my search for work," he replied, st.u.r.dily. "Now that I cannot take my mother away with me, there is nothing for me to do but to find employment here and face our enemies as best I can."
She opposed him there also. "Don"t do that--not now. Wait. I have a plan. I"ll not go into it now, but when you come back, if there is no change, we will all go home and I will explain."
The young people had risen and were starting toward the door when an imperative, long drawn-out rapping startled them.
"That"s no reporter"s rap. There is authority in that," remarked Mrs.
Joyce, as she hurried to the door.
A very tall man with a long gray beard stood there. "Good-day, madam,"
he began, in a husky voice. "I hear that my friend, Mrs. Ollnee, is sick, and I"ve come to see about it. I"m her friend these many years and of her faith, and I think I can be of some a.s.sistance."
Mrs. Joyce dimly remembered having seen him in the house before, so she replied, very civilly, "Mrs. Ollnee lies in what seems to be deep trance, although the doctors say that life is extinct."
"Will you let me see her?" he inquired. "I know a great deal about these conditions. My daughter was subject to them."
"You may come in," she said, for his manner was gentle. "This is her son, Victor."
Victor was vexed by the stranger"s intrusion, but could not gainsay Mrs.
Joyce.
"My name is Beebe, Doctor Beebe," he explained. "Mrs. Ollnee has given me many a consoling message, and I believe I"ve been of help to her.
You"re her son, eh?"
"I am," replied Victor, shortly.