"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 a.s.sumption 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, a.s.suming the att.i.tude 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."