Victor Ollnee's Discipline Part 42

"Did she give her name?"

"No, sir; but she said she was a relative, sir."

"Tell her I will see her in a moment."

As the maid left Leo rose.

"Don't go!" pleaded Victor. "My visitor can wait. You haven't said whether you will wear my ring or not. I don't know how long it may be before I can 'make good,' but it will help mightily to know that you are expecting me to do so."

She pondered, but her face was kindly and her voice very gentle as she said: "I don't want to seem unkind now in your hour of grief, but I can't wear the ring." His eyes filled with tears, and she added: "I'll keep it for you. The real question between us will have to be decided some time in the future--when we know each other better. You need not think of paying me. Go and see your relation. It may be a rich aunt come to adopt you."

"Couldn't you _learn_ to love me?" he asked, poignantly.

"I might." She smiled. "I like you already." And she went away, leaving him with stronger will to dare and do.

XVI

CONCLUSION

As Victor entered the library he was met by a very pale, wide-eyed young woman in a picturesque black hat. Her voice was deep and full of dramatic fervor as she said:

"You are Victor Ollnee?"

"I am."

Her eyes, large and very dark, almost black, gazed at him appealingly, as she said: "Pardon me for a little deception. I am your relation only in a spiritual sense--I share your sorrow, and in other ways I am related to you. I was eager to see you, and I did not send in my name for the reason that it would have repelled you, and you might have refused to meet me."

Victor thought her a very singular and very theatric young person.

Certainly she was under some strong stress of emotion which caused her lips to quiver and her voice to vibrate tensely. He knew her now. She was the girl he had confronted in the court-room, and he stared at her, uncertain of his footing. She seemed like some of the figures he had seen on the stage, vivid, swift of change, unreal, but her voice was vibrantly charming. He was sure she was the girl he had met on the street, and she had stood beside the man Aiken during their brief appearance in the court-room.

She approached a step or two, as if throwing herself on his mercy. "My name is Florence Aiken. I am a newspaper writer. I am the one who brought all this trouble to you. It was I who wrote that first article in the _Star_ denouncing your mother."

He recoiled before her quite as dramatically as she could have wished.

"You wrote that!" he exclaimed. "I thought a man did that job."

She could not help a slight expression of pride in her work. "It was mine, every word of it. I was terribly vindictive, I admit; but you must know I had some provocation. Let me tell you? Will you listen to me?

Please do! I'm not so heartless as I seemed in that article, and I cannot rest till I have made my peace with you."

Her voice, her pale face, her intense eyes, and her tense contralto voice softened his resentment.

"I'll listen, but you can't expect me to forgive a thing like that."

"May I sit?"

"Certainly," he answered, but remained standing, as if to retain his guard.

"Don't condemn me altogether," she pleaded. "Wait till you know how much reason I had to hate the whole brood of clairvoyants, seers, and psychics. My dear old grandmother was an easy mark for the cheapest of them, and I, who paid for her nurse out of my own thin little purse, and waited upon her night and day, had a right to consider her small fortune my own. It wasn't much, but it was enough to pay the cost of a flat, and to see it all going to fakers and greasy palmists--well, it was too much. It made a crusader of me--and it would have made one of you. It was not a question of your mother--alone. I went to our managing editor at last, and told him my story. I made it clear to him that the city was full of these harpies who prey on poor old women like my grandmother.

'They ought to be driven out of town,' I said. 'Cut loose,' he said; and I did. My article on your mother was honest. I believed her to be simply another one of the same sort of impostors. I took her just like three or four others whose methods I knew, and I got my cousin, Frank Aiken, to bring suit against her. I thought she was a crook. I feel differently to-day. Since talking with Judge Bartol and Mr. Stinchfield (I handled both those a.s.signments) I've changed my estimate of her. I have written a page article vindicating her. I've come to tell you that her death in that cage has changed the situation for me. I am convinced that she was sincere, and I want to humble myself before you, her son, and ask your forgiveness. I know you feel more like killing me, but here I am--I couldn't rest without letting you know that I need your pardon."

Her plea, swift, voiced in music, and ill.u.s.trated by her pale face, glowing eyes, and sensitive lips, powerfully affected him. He towered over her in savage silence for a little while, then with effort he said: "I don't see how I can do anything to you, for I felt the same way--I mean I didn't believe in my mother's business."

She became radiant. "Didn't you?"

"No. Up to the very moment when that red lamp was lit I could not believe in her. I couldn't help doubting--even now I need the photographs to bolster up my belief."

The reportorial instinct awoke in her. "I wish I might see those photographs--to rea.s.sure myself, not for publication. May I see them?"

He did not observe that her desire for his pardon seemed suddenly to be met, even though he had not yet put it in words, and his mind was wholly on the question of the photographic tests as he slowly replied:

"They are very marvelous--especially those which came on the unexposed plates."

Her eyes widened in wonder. "What do you mean?"

"Mr. Stinchfield had several packages of plates opened ready to use in his cameras, but The Voices only let him make one flashlight. It seems as if they knew the experiment would end my mother's life, and yet on each of the unexposed plates are faces and forms, some of which Mr.

Bartol 'recognized.'"

"Let me see them--please!" she pleaded, earnestly. "They will comfort me, too, for I am under conviction."

He took from his pocket a package of small photographs. "Here," he said, "are the three flashlights of my grandfather, Nelson Blodgett."

The young woman almost s.n.a.t.c.hed them in her eager haste. "Oh, wonderful!

What a doc.u.ment! The medium plainly in her cage--and this figure on the same plate."

"It is the most convincing picture in existence," he said, sadly, "but it cost me my mother."

She fixed a dreamy gaze upon him. "If this is a spirit--then your mother can return to you. Has she done so?"

He moved uneasily. "I have not asked her to do that. I don't care to be controlled or guided by spirits, not even by her spirit."

"Why?"

His voice was firm and a.s.sured as he replied: "Because I want to live and work out my career like other men. I don't want to see or hear any more of the 'astral plane'--" He checked himself. "It isn't natural for a man like me to be mixed up with all this spirit business, and I'm tired of it."

"I see what you mean. You want to work and woo and marry like other men.

You're right; of course you're right. What have we who are young and vigorous to do with the dead, anyway? Unless all human life is a mistake, a foolish thing, it's our business to live it humanly." She held out her hand for the other pictures. "Let me see them all, please!"

He handed them to her. "There were three cameras," he explained, "hence these duplicates. These faces are likenesses of Mr. Bartol's wife and two children--and these plates, remember, were not exposed--they are of Altair, one of the guides."

She studied the shadowy forms with keen gaze. "One of the strange things about this 'spirit photograph' business is the resemblance they all bear to pictures--I mean, they all look as if they were photographs of framed portraits or drawings."

Again he betrayed restlessness. "Mr. Stinchfield noticed that."

"What is his explanation?"

"He does not think they come from spirits at all."