Victor Ollnee's Discipline Part 32

XII

A MOONLIGHT CALL AND A VISION

Upon rising from the dinner table the young people returned to their books, and at ten o'clock Leo lifted her eyes from her page. "Did some one drive up?"

Victor looked at her dazedly. "I didn't hear anybody. Proceed."

"Mercy! It's ten o'clock. Where are Aunt Louise and your mother? I hear Mr. Bartol's voice!" she exclaimed, rising hastily. "Let's go get the latest news."

The master of the house entered before the young people could shake off the spell of what they had been imagining.

"What a waste of good moonlight!" he exclaimed, with smiling sympathy.

"Why aren't you youngsters out on the lawn?"

"It's all your fault," responded Leo. "We've been absorbing one of the books you sent up."

"Have you? It must have been a wonderful romance. I can't conceive of anything but a love-story keeping youth indoors on a night like this."

Victor defended her. "We've been reading of Morselli's wonderful experiments. It's in Italian, and Miss Wood has been translating it for me."

"What luck you have!" exclaimed Mr. Bartol. "I engage her to re-translate it for me at the same rate."

Mrs. Ollnee and Mrs. Joyce came in as he was speaking, and Mrs. Joyce, after disposing herself comfortably, said, "Well, what is your report?"

He confessed that he had been too busy with other matters to give the Aiken accusation much thought. "However, I sent an armful of books out to my a.s.sistant attorney." He waved his hand toward Victor.

"You don't mean to read books," protested Mrs. Joyce, energetically, "when you've the very source of all knowledge right here in your own house? Why don't you study your client and convince yourself of her powers?--then you'll know what to do and say."

"I had thought of that," he said, hesitantly. "But--"

"You need not fear," Mrs. Joyce a.s.sured him. "It's true Lucy cannot always furnish the phenomena on the instant. In fact, the more eager she is the more reluctant the forces are; but you can at least try, and she is not only willing but eager for the test."

Bartol turned to Mrs. Ollnee. "Are you prepared now--to-night?" he asked.

"Yes, this moment," she answered.

Mrs. Joyce exulted. "The power is on her. I can see that. See how her hand trembles! One finger is signaling. Don't you see it?"

Mr. Bartol rose. "Come with me into my study. Mrs. Joyce may come some other time. I do not want any witnesses to-night," he added, with a smile.

Victor watched his mother go into Bartol's study with something of the feeling he might have had in seeing her enter the den of a lion. She seemed very helpless and very inexperienced in contrast with this great inquisitor, so skilled in cross-examination, so inexorable in logic, so menacing of eye.

Leo, perceiving Victor's anxiety, proposed that they return to the porch, and to this he acceded, though it seemed like a cowardly desertion of his mother. "Poor little mother," he said. "If she stands up against him she's a wonder."

The girl stretched herself out on the swinging couch, and the youth took his seat on a wicker chair close beside her. Mrs. Joyce kept at a decent distance, so that if the young people had anything private to say she might reasonably appear not to have overheard it.

Talk was spasmodic, for neither of them could forget for a moment the duel which was surely going on in that inner room. Indeed, Mrs. Joyce openly spoke of it. "If Lucy is not too anxious, too eager, she will change Alexander's whole conception of the universe this night."

"Of course you're exaggerating, Aunt Louise; but I certainly expect her to shake him up."

"It only needs one genuine phenomenon to convince him of her sincerity.

What a warrior for the cause he would make! She must stay right here in his house till she utterly overwhelms him. He took up her case at first merely because I asked him to do so; but he likes her, and is ready to take it up on her own account if he finds her sincere. But I want him to believe in the philosophy she represents."

Half an hour pa.s.sed with no sign from within, and Mrs. Joyce began to yawn. "That ride made me sleepy."

"Why don't you go to bed?" suggested Leo.

She professed concern. "And leave Lucy unguarded?"

"Nonsense! Go to bed and sleep. Mr. Ollnee and I will stand guard till the ordeal is ended."

"I believe I'll risk it," decided Mrs. Joyce. "I can hardly keep my eyes open."

"Nor your mouth shut," laughed Leo. "Hasten, or you'll fall asleep on the stair."

Left alone, the young people came nigh to forgetting that the world contained aught but dim stretches of moonlit greensward, dewy trees, and the odor of lilac blooms. In the dusk Victor stood less in fear of the girl, and she, moved by the witchery of the night and the melody of his voice (into which something new and masterful had come), grew less defiant. "How still it all is?" she breathed, softly. "It is like the Elysian Fields after the city's noise and grime."

"It's more beautiful out there." He motioned toward the lawn. "Let's walk down the drive."

And she complied without hesitation, a laugh in her voice. "But not too far. Remember, we are guardian angels."

As she reached his side he took her arm and tucked it within his own.

"You might get lost," he said, in jocular explanation of his action.

"How considerate you are!" she scornfully responded, but her hand remained in his keeping.

There were no problems now. Down through the soft dusk of the summer night they strolled, rapturously listening to the sounds that were hardly more than silences, feeling the touch of each other's garments, experiencing the magic thrill which leaps from maid to man and man to maid in times like these.

"How big you are!" exclaimed the girl. "I didn't realize how much you overtopped me. I am considered tall."

"And so you are--and divinely fair."

"How ba.n.a.l! Couldn't you think of a newer one?"

"It was as much as ever I remembered, that. I'm not a giant in poetry.

I'm a dub at any fine job."

Of this quality was their talk. To those of us who are old and dim-eyed, it seems of no account, perhaps, but to those who can remember similar walks and talks it is of higher worth than the lectures in the Sorbonne.

Learning is a very chill abstraction on such a night to such a pair.

Would we not all go back again to this sweet land of love and longing--if we could?

Victor did not deliberately plan to draw Leonora closer to his side, and the proud girl did not intend to permit him to do so; but somehow it happened that his arm stole round her waist as they walked the shadowy places of the drive, and their laggard feet were wholly out of rhythm to their leaping pulses.

The proof of Victor's naturally dependable character lay in the fact that he presumed no further. He was content with the occasional touch of her rounded hip to his, the caressing touch of her skirt as it swung about his ankle. To have attempted a kiss would have broken the spell, would have alarmed and repelled her. He honored her, loved her, but he was still in awe of her proud glance and the imperious carriage of her head. He preferred to think she suffered rather than invited the clasp of his arm.