Victor Ollnee's Discipline Part 25

"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 pa.s.s 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 cla.s.sy 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--b.e.s.t.i.a.l, 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 crus.h.i.+ng 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 a.s.sault. 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 mediums.h.i.+p. 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 n.o.bly 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 s.n.a.t.c.hed 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--"