Produced by David Edwards, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from scanned images of public domain material from the Google Print project.) VICTOR OLLNEE'S DISCIPLINE BY HAMLIN GARLAND AUTHOR OF "THE CAPTAIN OF THE GRAY-HOUSE TROOP" "MAIN-TRAVELLED ROADS" ETC. HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS NEW YORK AND LONDON MCMXI CONTENTS I. VICTOR READS THE FATEFUL STAR II. VICTOR INTERROGATES HIS MOTHER III. VICTOR MAKES A TEST IV. VICTOR THROWS DOWN THE ALTAR V. VICTOR RECEIVES A WARNING VI. VICTOR IS CHECKED IN HIS FLIGHT VII. THE RETURN OF THE SPIRIT VIII. VICTOR REPAIRS HIS MOTHER'S ALTAR IX. THE LAW'S DELAY X. A VISIT TO HAZEL GROVE XI. LOVE'S TRANSLATION XII. A MOONLIGHT CALL AND A VISION XIII. VICTOR TESTS HIS THEORY XIV. THE ORDEAL XV. THE RING XVI. CONCLUSION VICTOR OLLNEE'S DISCIPLINE I VICTOR READS THE FATEFUL STAR Saturday had been a strenuous day for the baseball team of Winona University, and Victor Ollnee, its redoubtable catcher, slept late. Breakfast at the Beta Kappa Fraternity House on Sunday started without him, and Gilbert Frenson, who never played ball or tennis, and Arnold Macey, who was too effeminate to swing a bat, divided the Sunday morning _Star_ between them. "See here, Gil," called Macey, holding up an illustrated page, "do you suppose this woman is any relation to Vic?" Frenson took the paper and glanced at it casually. It contained a full-page lurid article, printed in two colors, with the picture of a tall, serpentine, heavy-eyed, yet beautiful woman, whose long arms (ending in claws) reached for the heart of a sleeping man. "What is it all about?" asked Frenson, as his eyes roamed over the text. "It seems to be an attack on a medium named Ollnee who pretends to be able to bring the dead to life. According to this article, she's the limit as a fraud. You don't suppose--Ollnee is an unusual name--" "Oh, not so very. I suppose it's another way of spelling Olney. I don't see any reason to connect old Vic with any such woman as that." "No, only he's always been kind of secretive about his folks. You'll admit that. Why, we don't even know where he came from! Nobody does, unless you do." Frensen dipped into the article. "Wow! this _is_ a hot one! Lucile has a case for libel all right--unless the reporter happens to be telling the truth." "Hello, Vic!" he shouted, as a tall, broad-shouldered, but rather lean young fellow entered the room. "Vic, you are discovered!" "What's the excitement?" asked the newcomer. "Here's an article in the Sunday paper you should see. It's all about a woman namesake of yours, a medium named Lucile Ollnee. The name is spelled exactly like yours. Say, old man, I didn't know you were the son of an 'infamous faker.' Why didn't you let us know." His tone was comic. Young Ollnee took the paper quietly, but, as he read, a look of bewilderment came upon his face. "How about it, Vic?" repeated Macey. "You seem to be hard hit. Is she an aunt or a sister?" Rising abruptly, Victor left the room, taking the paper with him. Macey uttered a word of astonishment, but Frensen, after a pause, said, soberly, "There's something doing here, Sissy. He didn't act a bit funny; but it's up to us to keep quiet till we know just where we stand. If that woman _is_ related to Vic he's going to be fighting mad. I guess I'd better go up and see how he's taking it. He certainly did seem jolted." He turned to utter a warning. "Don't say anything to the other fellows till I come back." Macey promised, and Frenson went up the stairs and into the little study which he and Victor shared in common. The windows were open and the bird-songs and the fragrance of a glorious May morning flooded the room with joy, but in the midst of its radiance young Ollnee sat, bent above the fateful printed page. As Frenson entered he raised his head. "Have you read this thing, Frens?" he asked, tremulously. "Part of it." "Frens, Lucy Ollnee is my mother. This article is full of lies, but it's based on facts. I'd like to kill the man that wrote it," he added, savagely. "Let me look at it again," said Frenson. Victor handed the paper to him and sat in silence while Frenson went over the article with studious care. It was an exceedingly able and bitter presentation of the opposition side. It left no excuse, no palliation for a career such as that of Lucile Ollnee. "She is fraudulent from beginning to end," the writer passionately declared. "From her heart outward she is as vile, as remorseless, as mysterious as a vampire. No one knows from what foul nest she sprang. She battens upon the sick, the world-weary, the sorrowing. Her hokus-pokus is so simple that it would deceive no one but those who are blinded by their own tears. She has just one human trait. She is said to be educating a son at an Eastern university on the profits of her vile trade. It is said that she is keeping him in ignorance of her way of life." Frenson looked up at his friend. "Vic, what do you know of this business?" "Almost nothing. I don't know very much of even my mother's relations. The first that I can remember is our home in La Crescent. My father's name was Paul Ollnee, but I can't remember him. He died before I was three years old. We left La Crescent when I was about eight and went to the city. I can't remember very much previous to that time, but after we moved to the city I know my mother set up her 'ghost-room' again." "Ghost-room?" "Yes, that's what I called it. I can't remember when there was not a 'ghost-room' in our house. As far back as when I was five years old we had it, and I was just getting old enough to wonder about it when we moved to the city." "What kind of a den was this ghost-room?" "It looked like any other bright and pretty room, but I never got more than a glimpse of it, for I was afraid of it. There was nice paper on the wall, I remember, and a desk with books, and there were some tall tin horns standing in the corner. Oh yes, and always an old walnut table. There's something queer about that. I don't understand why my mother should have taken that table down to the city with her, but she did. It was just an old, battered-up walnut stand, and yet she seemed to think the world of it. She put it in the center of her room in the city just as she used to have it in our old home. Oh, how I hated that room! There was something uncanny about it. There was always a string of strange men and women going into it with my mother, and I was always sent away to play when they came. Oh, Gil"--his voice broke--"she is a medium, but she's not the awful creature they make her out." "Of course not. We all know how these things go." "You see, I went away to boarding-school when I was ten. This paper says I was sent away to keep me clear of the business that went on at home. I'm not sure but that is true, for I've seen very little of my mother's home life since." "Didn't you visit her during vacations?" "No, she always came to see me, and we took trips here and there. We'd go East, or to Colorado somewhere. Oh, we've had such splendid times together, Gil. She brought me presents and sent me money--" He looked out of the window for a few moments before he could go on. "And now--The other fellows will see that article, of course." "Yes, the whole town will be reading it in an hour. However, they may not connect you with it." "Oh yes, they will, and they'll believe every word of it, and they'll understand that I am Lucy Ollnee's son. This finishes me, Gil. Everybody will think I _knew_ how my mother earned her money, and they'll despise me for taking it." He rose in an agony of shame. "I might as well be at the bottom of the lake." "Don't take it so hard, old man. You're a big favorite here," said Frenson, with intent to offer consolation. "The work you've done on the team will go a long ways toward carrying you through this thing. Brace up; all is not lost." The stricken youth was not listening. "Just think, Gil, she's been doing all this for me! I knew she claimed to have messages, but I didn't know that I was living on money earned in that way. You see, we own some houses in La Crescent, and I just took it for granted that our living came from them." He was white with pain now. "This ends my career here. I've got to get out, and do it quick. I'll be the laughing stock of the whole town by noon." Frenson, deeply sympathetic, did his best to minimize the effect of the disclosure, but with Victor's corroboration of the reporter's charges, he was forced to admit that Mrs. Ollnee was either an imposter or a woman of unsound mind. Little by little he drew from the stricken youth other interesting details. "I remember having a fight with a city boy by the name of Barker," said Victor, "because he yelled at me 'sonova medium' till I stopped his mouth with my fist. It seems to me as if it were the very next day that my mother took me to Mirror Lake and put me in a boarding-school. That fight must have influenced her. Perhaps up to that moment our neighbors had let us alone. I can understand now why she always visited me and why she never offered to take me to the city." He did not say that this very aloofness had made of her, to him, a serene and lofty figure, but so it was. She had come to him out of the unknown distance, a mysterious queen of the fairies, with something very sad and very sweet in her face and something very appealing in her voice. There was nothing commonplace, nothing associated with toil or worry in his memory of her. Her broad, full brow, her deep-blue eyes, and her frail little body put her apart from other women. As he dwelt now on her dignity, her loving care, his heart grew strong with resolution. "Gilbert," he called, suddenly, "I'm going down there and defend her from those beasts." Frenson was not surprised. "I reckon that's your little stunt," he retorted, student-fashion, but he was very much in earnest, nevertheless. "I'm wondering what old Boyden will say." Victor believed in Professor Boyden and honored him, but at the moment the thought of facing him was painful. Boyden was one of those who tested the human soul with the electric bell, the clock, and the spymograph. Delusions were among his hobbies. Hysteria was a great word with him. Man lived among appearances. Personality was not a unit, but an aggregate, liable to disassociation, and the hysterical girl was capable of deceiving the very elect. To him, mediumship was merely the sign of immorality or epilepsy. A part of this disrupting philosophy had entered Victor's head, and as he slowly and minutely re-read that cruel newspaper analysis of his sweet and gentle mother he was startled, but a little comforted by the thought that she might be the victim of her subconscious self, "She can't mean to cheat. Of that I am certain. But she needs me just the same. I'm going to earn her living and mine in some honest way." Two or three of his most intimate friends came up after breakfast and started in to chaff, but, being far past the stage of evasion, Victor frankly confessed his relationship to the medium and hotly defended her, ending by mournfully, declaring his intention of leaving school at once and forever. Thereupon, his visitors also became very serious, perceiving the tumult of doubt and despair into which he had been thrown, and one by one they fell into awkward silence and slipped away, leaving him alone with Frenson, who had been giving the most careful thought to the whole situation. "Of course the fellow who wrote this article had his own private grouch. Any one can see that. And your friends are not going to condemn your mother on what he says. But all the same, you're wound up pretty tight, Vic; there's no two ways about that. According to your own statement she does claim to hear voices, and she does claim to give messages from the dead. Now, I'm not saying all this is impossible, but you know as well as I do that Boyden and his kind say 'Nitsky' to the whole business." "I don't care what she's done," retorted Victor; "she has stood by me like a brick all these years, and now it's up to me to do something for her when she's in trouble." Frenson admitted that this was a human and righteous resolution on the part of his chum and offered to help in any possible way. Victor, too full of grief and despair to think clearly, went about his packing with swollen throat. There was keen pain in the thought of abandoning this bright room, of discarding all his trophies, books, and pictures, but this he did, putting nothing into his trunk but his clothing and a few photographs of his dearest girl friends. "What's the use?" he said to Frenson. "It's me to the spade or the ice-tongs, now. I won't need these things any more. It's battle in the arena of trade for Vic from this time on." Frenson looked around at the little library. "Well, I'll hold them together for a while. Maybe you'll be able to come back and graduate, after all." "Never! Don't you see I can't take another cent of my mother's money now that I know how it's earned?" Frenson listened unexcitedly. "Well, now, suppose these voices should turn out to be real? Suppose these messages have been from the dead?" "It wouldn't make any difference." "Oh yes, it would. At least it would to me. Scientific men have been against a whole lot of things in the past that turned out to be true. Natural selection, for instance, and X-rays and the wireless telephone." "I see your drift, Gil. You want to be a comfort to me, but I've been digging down into my memory, and I know now that my mother has been trained into these habits, these delusions, for over twenty years. It won't be an easy thing to get her out of them. She is as much deceived as the rest. I am sure of that." "Well, why don't you experiment with her? Make a test," suggested Frenson. "Would you experiment with your own mother?" asked Victor. "I'd make a case out of my grandmother if as much hinged on her as swings on this question of your mother's honesty. You can't blink these charges, Vic, they'll have to be met if she remains in the city." Victor sat in silence for a few moments, then broke out again. "Gil, I begin to understand a hundred things that have always seemed queer to me. She has kept me away from her because she _knew_ I would not sanction her way of earning money. Why, I haven't slept in her house but once since I was ten years old, and that was just before I entered here. I hated where she lived; it was a ratty little hole down on the south side, and the people with her were sloppy Sals. I refused to stay a second night. I can see it all now. She was living there in that way to save money for me, to keep me here. She wanted me to have just as good a chance as any of the rest of you. This room, the clothes I have on, my trinkets, everything came from her, and now there's no telling what may happen to her. That article threatens all kinds of persecution. I ought to be there this minute. I must take the very next train." "I guess you're right there, old man. It's likely to be a pretty exciting day for her. This article is apt to bring all kinds of trouble to her as well as to you." The news that Victor Ollnee was the son of a notorious medium ran rapidly among his classmates, and while they honored him and prized his skill on the team, they felt a certain resentment toward him. Some of them thought he had not been quite honest with them, and a violent controversy was thundering in the dining-room as Frenson re-entered it at one o'clock. He took Victor's part, of course. "He can't help what his mother's done," he argued. "He didn't choose his mother. Why slam into Vic?" "We aren't slamming into him. We're sorry for him," responded one of the fellows. "But we don't see how we can afford to have him in the frat," said another. "He's a ripping good fellow and a wonder at the bat, but what can we do? He should have told us about himself. The paper here says that his mother makes a living by cheating people, by tapping spirit wires and blowing horns and hearing voices in the dark: and all that shady business is sure to reflect on us. He's a marked man which ever way you look at it. You'll see everybody rubber-necking over our fence to-day. They've begun it already." "That's so," agreed a third man. "Why didn't he tell us the truth before we voted him in here?" Frenson explained. "He's been telling me all about it. He says he didn't know his mother was earning her money that way." "That's the part that looks queer to us," accused the opposition. "How could he help knowing it? Looks to us as if he'd been covering it up all along. This writer says the woman is a regular 'battle-ax.'" The current was setting strongly against Victor, and Frenson, seeing this, rose to go. "Well, there's no need of taking action. Poor Vic is heart-broken over the whole business and is leaving on the three-o'clock train." This silenced even his critics. They began to remember what a jolly good fellow he was, and how important his work in "the diamond" had been. It was all very sad business, and they relented. "We don't want to be hard on him," they said. Frenson went up to Victor. "See here, Captain, you must be hungry. I'll push a tray for you if you don't feel like going down among those 'Indians.' I'll have to be honest with you. They're all up in the air down there and howling something fierce. I reckon I'd better hustle a turkey-leg for you." "I wish you would, Gil. I can't bear to see any one but you. If I can, I want to sneak out and get to the train without catching anybody's eye. All I need now is to kill that reporter. He has smashed my world, sure thing, and I may find my poor little mother crushed under it, too." He tore the paper into little bits, snarling through his set teeth. "The fellows may believe what they please. I've done with them all. They're all against me but you, I can see that." Frenson got out his pipe and filled it while his partner raged up and down the room. At last he said: "Now, Vickie, when you get calmed down you just remember that you've a lot of mighty good friends up here. There'll be dozens of them that this thing won't change a little bit. They'll talk, but they'll be sympathetic." Victor's wrath burned itself out at last, and he consented to Frenson's bringing the tray of food. But he declined to go down-stairs till the time came to start for the train. As they were crossing the hall they met little Macey, who, with a startled look in his eyes, intercepted Victor's passage. "I'm awfully sorry, Vic," he began. "I wish I could do something for you." There was something so sincere and moving in his tone that Victor's stern mood melted. His voice grew husky as he tried to jocularly reply. "Never mind, Sissy, I'm down, but I'm not out. Good-by till next time." "That's the spirit," cheered Frenson from the doorway. Out on the walk a couple of the older fraternity men stood talking in low voices (of Victor, of course), and as they fell apart one of them had the grace to say: "Don't stay away too long, Vic. We'll need you Saturday." Victor waved a hand. "I hope you'll be here when I return," he retorted; but as he entered the hack (which Frenson had provided, as though he were taking an invalid or a lady to the train) his composure utterly gave way. "I could have stood it if the boys hadn't welched," he sobbed. "But they did; you can't fool me. They threw me down hard." "Some of them did," admitted Frenson. "But they were the hollow ones. The solid chaps are all right yet." "I can't blame them very much. If they believe all that stuff about my mother and think that I knew it, why of course they're right in feeling as they do." At the train the loyal Frenson said, "Well now, Vic, if you need help any time you let me know and I'll come galloping." "That's real bold in you, Gil, and if I get where I can't see my way out I'll shout." And so they parted--Victor with a feeling that their companionship was ended forever, Gilbert with a sense of having failed of his intent to comfort and sustain. II VICTOR INTERROGATES HIS MOTHER Once on the train, with the towers of the university building out of sight, Victor's mind went forward toward the great city whereto he was now hurrying in the spirit of one about to enter a tiger-haunted jungle. Hitherto he had been unafraid of its tumult, for there his mother lived. Her home, vague of outline as it was, offered refuge from the thunder and the shouting. But now its shelter was worse than useless, for its lintel was marked with a sign of shame and terror, and this the law and the lawless knew equally well. "How will she seem to me now," he asked himself. "What will she say to me when we meet?" On one point he was sternly resolved. "She must leave the city at once. We will go West somewhere. I will earn our living now." And at the moment earning a living seemed easy. The close of a beautiful spring day was spreading over the town as he made his way up the stairway into the unwonted silence of the thoroughfare. The wind was from the east, clean and cool and sweet. As he looked down at the river from the bridge and marked its water flowing swiftly from the lake toward the splendid sunset sky he exulted over the power of man, of science, to reverse the natural current of a stream. "So must I change the whole course of my mother's life," he thought with returning resolution. "It must be done. It can be done. It's all in the will." The hit-or-miss squalor of California Avenue filled him with renewed and augmented disgust as he descended from the car at the corner and began his search for his mother's apartment, which was the top story of a shabby wooden building standing between two shops. The stairway reeked with associations of poverty, a shifty poverty, and Victor's gorge rose at it. The second flight, though cleaner, was musty with decaying wood, and the doorway--on which a dim card was tacked--sadly needed paint. He began to realize sharply the sacrifices which had enabled him to live in the care-free comfort of his chapter-house, and his heart softened. After knocking twice without obtaining a response he tried the knob. It yielded and he went in. All was silent and dim. For an instant he hesitated. "Perhaps I'm in the wrong pew after all," he thought; but as he looked about him he recognized the ghost-room furniture of his boyhood. On the wall was a familiar picture--the crayon portrait of a black-whiskered man. The same old battered walnut table which he remembered so well occupied one corner, and behind it three long tin cones stood upright on their larger ends. He shivered with disgust at them and turned to the lounge, over which, scattered as if by a gale of wind, lay the leaves of the hated Sunday edition of the _Star_. All else was neat and tidy, though threadbare with use. It was, indeed, very far from being "the gilded den of vice" which the reporter had depicted. Oppressed by the silence, Victor called out, "Mother, are you here?" He thought he heard a voice, a husky whisper, say, "_Go to her_"; and, a little surprised by this, he stepped to the door of the bedroom and peered in. There, sitting in an arm-chair, half hid in the gloaming, sat his mother with closed eyes and a gray-white face. "Mother, are you sick?" he cried out, starting toward her. Again the whisper in the air close to his ear commanded him: "_Stay where you are. Do not touch her._" "Mother, don't you know me? It is Victor." The whisper answered: "_Your mother is resting. We are treating her. Be patient; she will awaken soon._" For a moment Victor's heart failed him, so impressive was this whisper, issuing apparently from the empty air. Then a flood of rage swept over him. This Voice was one of the tricks charged against her by the paper. "Mother, stop that! I won't have it. Do you hear me? Stop it, I say!" The sleeper stirred and her eyes opened, but no sign of recognition was in them. Slowly her stiffened hands withdrew from the arms of her chair and clasped themselves in her lap. Her cheeks, puffed and pallid, were rigid and her eyes, turned upward and inward, gleamed coldly. The lids were half-closed. She had a horribly unfamiliar, tortured look, and he started toward her, calling upon her in a voice of anxiety. "Mother, what is the matter? Don't you hear me?" At last she opened her eyes and a thrill of relief ran through him as he caught a gleam of recognition there. She lifted her hands feebly, whispering, "My boy, my precious boy!" Kneeling by her side, he waited for her consciousness to come back. Her hands, so cold and nerveless, grew warmer, her lips smiled wearily, yet with divine maternal tenderness, and at last she spoke. "My big, splendid boy! I knew you would not desert me. I knew it; I knew it. I prayed for you." "I came by the very first train," he answered, "and I am here to defend you." A loud knocking at the door startled her and she clasped his hand tightly as she whispered: "That is another of my enemies. All day they have been coming. Send them away." He put her hands down and rose tensely. "I'll smash their faces," he hotly declared. "Don't be rash, Victor, please." He strode to the door and opened it. A dark, handsome young woman and a grinning youth stood without. They were both a little dashed by Victor's appearance as he queried, with scowling brow, "What do you want?" The man replied, "We came to have a sitting." Victor exploded. "Get out," he shouted. "If you come back here again I'll throw you down the stairs." Thereupon he slammed the door in their faces and returned to his mother. "We've got to get away from here," he said as he came to her. "We can't stay here another day." "That must be as my guide, your grandfather, says," she replied. "There's no use talking like that to me, mother. You've got to stop this business. I won't have any more of it. It's shameful, and I won't have it." She answered, gently: "I'm under orders, Victor. I can do nothing in opposition to The Voices." He bent over her with knitted brow. "See here, mother, I want you to understand that this medium business has got to be cut out. Look what it has let you in for! I don't believe in your Voices, and you must--" She stopped him. "My son, if you do not believe in The Voices you cannot believe in me. They are real. If they were not, I should go mad. They are in my ears all day long. My comfort is that they are not imaginary. Others hear them, and that proves to me that they are not an illusion. If you listen they will speak to you." "I don't want them to speak to me. I want you to pack up--" "Hark!" she commanded. "They are speaking now." As he listened, the same measured whisper which he had heard upon entering the house made itself distinctly heard, apparently in the air, a little higher than his mother's head. "_Boy, trust in us!_" Victor glanced at his mother's lips. He could not help it; base as it seemed, he suspected her of ventriloquism. "Who are you?" he asked. "_Your grandsire, Nelson Blodgett._" This reply, apparently without his mother's agency, was uttered in so plain a tone that Victor's hair rose. He opened and peered into a little closet which stood behind his mother's chair. It was empty, and as he came slowly back and stood looking down into her face a low, breathy chuckle sounded in his ear. "_A smart lad. Needs discipline._" A flush of rage passed over him, leaving him cold. He studied his mother in silence, convinced that she was cunningly playing upon his fears. As he pondered she said, quietly: "I'm glad you came, Victor. You fill my heart with joy; but you must not stay. I do not need you. You must go back to your studies." "That I cannot do." "Oh, Victor, you must! I want you to graduate. Father insists on it." "I tell you it is impossible. Do you suppose I'm going back there where all the fellows are laughing at me? Why, they're talking of throwing me out of the club! More than that, I can't take another cent of your money. If I had known how you were earning your living I would never have entered the university at all." "Oh, my boy, do you doubt me? Do you believe what they say against me?" This brought him face to face with the whole problem. "Of course I don't believe that you cheat--purposely--but I do think you are abnormal. You can't expect me to believe that a voice can come out of the air like that. It's impossible! It's against all reason, and yet--" At this moment another knock, a gentler signal, sounded at the door, and the youth, relieved by the interruption, flared out at the unknown intruder. "Go away," he shouted. "No, no; these are friends," his mother asserted, and rose to let them in. Victor caught her by the arm. "What are you going to do?" "Open the door. It is one of my dearest friends." "You must not give a sitting. I won't have it." The knock was repeated and she hurried away, leaving the boy confused, angry, and helpless. She returned, accompanied by two women. The first of them was a diminutive, gray-haired lady, with a frank and smiling face, whose dress proclaimed a prosperous and happy station in life. Her companion was a tall young girl, whose spring suit, quiet in color and exquisitely tailored, became her notably. The youth thought, "What a stylish girl!" And the sight of her calmed him instantly. "Victor," said his mother, and her tone was one of relief, "these are my dearest friends, Mrs. Joyce and Leonora Wood, her niece." Victor bowed without speaking, for the heart of battle was still in him. Mrs. Joyce cried out: "What a fine, big fellow! I didn't expect such a stalwart son." "Please be seated," said Mrs. Ollnee. "My son has just arrived. He saw that dreadful article in the paper and came to defend me." "That was fine of you," exclaimed Mrs. Joyce to Victor. "That same article brought us. I would have been here before only we don't take the _Star_, and I did not see the article until about an hour ago." Mrs. Ollnee took up her explanation. "But, Louise, Victor says he will not go back to college." Mrs. Joyce was quick to apprehend the situation. "I suppose that outrageous article made it appear necessary for you to defend both your mother and yourself," she said, searchingly. Victor was not disposed to gloze matters in the least. "It made a fool of me," he responded, bitterly. "It made it impossible for me to look my friends in the face. How could I convince them that I was not sharing in the profits of my mother's business? I told them I didn't know where my allowance came from, but of course no one believed me. I know now, and I despise the whole business. I've come down here to take my mother out of it." The three women looked at one another sympathetically. Mrs. Joyce, who knew Mrs. Ollnee's history intimately, only smiled as she answered: "I don't see that you need to feel ashamed of your mother's profession. A medium is one of the most precious instruments in this world. She brings solace to many a sorrowing heart. Why is her work less honorable than singing, for example? Furthermore, no one is obliged to come to her. We sit of our own choice, and if we are not pleased we can refuse to pay, and we need not return. So you see it is a free contract, after all." Her reasoning staggered Victor. He was confused also by her frank and charming manner. He perceived that his problem was not so simple as he had imagined. Hitherto, his life had been single-hearted, with nothing more difficult to decide than a question of moral philosophy; but here, now, he stood confronted by an entirely baffling entanglement of human wills. This woman, so evidently of the higher world of wealth and culture, accepted his mother's claims, and this profoundly impressed him. Mrs. Joyce continued. "Don't take this newspaper attack too seriously, Mr. Ollnee. It was meant to be nasty, and it _is_ nasty; but it is not fatal. It is a cloud that will soon blow over and leave you and your mother unharmed." "It will never blow over for me," he replied, passionately, "and you must not include me in this thing. I've lived a long way from it thus far, and I don't intend to mix up with this kind of hokus-pokus." "Victor," called his mother, warningly. He corrected himself. "Of course I don't accuse you of wilfully deceiving anybody. I'm willing to grant that you _think_ these Voices are real; but my teacher, Doctor Boyden, says that mediumship is only a kind of hysteria--" Mrs. Joyce laughed. "Yes, I've read Doctor Boyden's books. What does he know about it? Did he ever study a wonderful psychic like your mother? Has he candidly examined these phenomena? Never in his life! I know all about that kind of investigator. He is basing his conclusions on somebody's else's conjectures or prejudices." Victor defended his master. "He has tried to experiment. He's offered prizes for mediums to meet him, but they have refused. Not one would sit with him." "Why should they? Would you have your mother seek him out to convince him? Why doesn't he come to her. There he sits in his chair, pretending to say that these phenomena are impossible, whereas I know, from many personal tests, that these voices are not merely real, but that they come from my dear ones on the other side and that they sustain and comfort me." Victor was silenced, and his discomfiture was made the more complete by the smiling gaze of the young girl, who was evidently enjoying his perplexity. Nevertheless, though he did not continue the argument, he held to his opinion that they were all victims of his mother's unconscious necromancy. Mrs. Joyce continued. "You say you know nothing about it. Why not find out something about it? Here is your mother. Study her." "Why don't we have a sitting now?" exclaimed Miss Wood. "It would be fun to see his face when the horns began to dance about." Mrs. Ollnee looked a little worried. "Not now, Leo, I'm too upset. It's been a terrible day for me. I haven't eaten a thing." Mrs. Joyce rose. "You poor dear! Let's go get something. Come this instant. You'll go, Mr. Ollnee." His first impulse was to refuse, but as he studied his mother's pale face and thought of the good effect of the outside air he relented. "Yes, I'll go," he replied, ungraciously. Miss Wood came over to him and tried to soften his mood. "I know how you feel about all this, and I know how brutal a scientific sharp can be. My professors were all against it. Just the same, it's a wonderful old world; a good deal more wonderful than some of our teachers admit." He did not reply to this, but stood watching his mother as she put on her hat and wrap. Her whole expression had changed. Her face had lighted up and her delicacy of feature and small, graceful hands denoted to him as never before the woman of natural refinement and intelligence. It was hard to consider her at the moment the victim of a brain disorder, and yet-- Mrs. Joyce led the way down the creaking stairs, and Victor, following in sullen silence, was surprised and a little daunted to find a luxurious automobile waiting for them. He rebelled at the curb. "You go on without me," he said, harshly. "I'll stay here till you come back." "Oh no," exclaimed Mrs. Joyce. "Please come with us. Your mother will not be happy without you." Miss Wood remarked, humorously, "Never refuse a dinner or a ride in a motor-car; that's my motto." His mother timidly lifted her face. "Victor, Mrs. Joyce is my most loyal friend. I owe her more than you know. I _wish_ you would come." He yielded with a sense of stepping down, but as he found himself seated beside Miss Wood and whirring swiftly up the street his inflexible attitude softened. "For this one night I will follow; after that I lead," he promised himself. The girl mocked him with subtle intonation. "I am glad of any mystery and romance which remains in this old world, and I never quarrel with fate. If any one is disposed to exchange an autocar ride for so intangible a thing as a voice, I trade." A little later she reverted to his problem. "What right have you to pass judgment on your mother without examining her? I was just as skeptical as you are when I met her first, but she _forced_ me to believe. I am perfectly certain that she would upset Doctor Boyden. If he would come down quietly and sit with her she'd convince even him. She is a very dear little woman, and we all love her." Mrs. Joyce leaned over and spoke in his ear. "It is only through devoted beings like your mother that the bereaved are assured of life everlasting. She doesn't _tell_ me that my son is living beyond the veil; _she brings him to me_. I hear his voice and touch his hand." To this sort of thing he was forced to listen during their course down the shining avenue, and it made the whole city as unreal as a dream. When they rolled up to the wide portals of a towering hotel a new anxiety presented itself. "Suppose mother should be recognized as we enter? Suppose they arrest her here." A realization of his own poverty and youth and general helplessness came over him with crushing effect as he trod the hall, which seemed very vast and splendid in his eyes. He was subdued, too, by the thought that he had not silver enough in his pocket to fee the girl who took their wraps. His resolution to fight, to earn not only his own living but to rescue his mother, became fainter each moment. "Can it be that yesterday I was behind the bat?" he asked himself. "Surely I must be dreaming." He perceived another side to his mother's character. She seemed quite at ease amid all this splendor, and accepted whatever Mrs. Joyce did for her as something quite definitely her due. There was no indication of the Sabbath in the gorgeous dining-room, and nothing to show that sorrow or poverty existed in the world; and seeing his mother's face flushed with pleasure, the perplexed youth relented a little further. "This one night she may have, but it must be the last of such entertainment on such terms." There was in him beneath all this antagonism a kind of dignity and manly strength which pleased Mrs. Joyce. She was glad to see him lighten up, and she exerted herself to that end. "There now," she said, looking about the room. "Let's forget all of our troubles. Let us suppose that all our friends 'on the other side' are at dinner also." Victor sat in silence what time his mother decided whether she would have asparagus soup or consommé. It was his first experience with that degree of wealth which takes no thought of price, and glancing at the figures on the bill of fare his hair rose. Never in his life had he eaten a meal which cost as much as this one order of soup, and the fact that his mother gaily ordered the best indicated to him how deeply indebted she already was to her patroness. "There must be some very definite need which she supplies," he conceded, "or Mrs. Joyce would not so gladly pay her bills." At the same time his respect and admiration for his mother returned. As the dinner went on her cheeks glowed with faint color. Her years of trouble seemed to slip away from her. She took on youthful grace and charm, glancing often at her handsome son with eyes of maternal pride and content. "It is so good to have you here," she silently expressed. He had never seen this care-free side of her, and the gayer she grew the more alien, in a sense, she became. She was instinctively the lady, of that he was assured, and though she could not follow Miss Wood in all of her flights of fancy and allusion, she plainly showed unusual powers of appreciation. The talk also brought out the extraordinary intimacy of the three women. It appeared that Mrs. Joyce and Mrs. Ollnee were inseparable, that she often took his mother to the opera and to the theater, and as they discussed various singers and actors, whose names alone he knew, his sense of being suburban deepened. "Why does this vivid and cultured woman seek my mother's society? For what reason does she lavish money upon her? Is it because of her personal charm? No," he decided, "that cannot be the reason." Beneath her cordial tone he thought he detected the reserve of one who is being kind to a dependent. "She's being nice to mother," he concluded, "because she thinks she's getting something special from her. Mother is a freak, not a friend. She considers her a kind of spiritual telephone." Although Miss Wood devoted herself to the task of amusing him, and his face lost some of its gravest lines, yet he could not be denoted a careless youth, even when the wine came on. He was thinking too deeply to be outwardly ready of retort. It was too sudden a change from the pastoral air and quiet streets of Winona to be instantly assimilated. He remained sullen. His mother eyed him apprehensively but admiringly. "He looks like his father," she whispered to Mrs. Joyce. He would have been inhuman had he not responded to certain charms in Miss Wood. She had a fine profile, he admitted, finer than that of any girl he knew. Her eyes, too, were a little disturbing by reason of the small wrinkles of laughter at the corners, but she irritated him. She was perfectly sure of herself. Nothing that he did or failed to do affected her in any other way apparently than to deepen her amusement. Her manner seemed to say, "Wait a few days and see what a fool you'll find yourself out to be. You're nothing but a great big country lad, trying to be a philosopher, trying to live up to a rigid code of morals. It's all a pose, a ludicrous attitude of boyish defiance." She said nothing of this of course; on the contrary, she talked of things in which he was interested, trying politely to meet him half way. She was actually a year or two younger than he, but she gave off the air of being five years older. She had explored immense tracts of human life, or at least of social life, of which he had no knowledge, and this came out in her casual references to New York and Paris. Her home was in Los Angeles, but she was now staying with her aunt. He lost his sullen reserve. The soup, the wine, the bird, and the maid softened his stern mood. By the time the coffee came on he was talking almost boyishly with his hostess and his face had lost its troubled lines. His perplexities came back as Mrs. Joyce passed two bills to the waiter in payment for their dinner, and he watched from the corner of his eye to see how much change came back. Two dollars! Eighteen dollars for four dinners! "Great Scot!" he inwardly groaned. "It would take me a week to earn our share of this meal!" And a returning sense of his mother's subconscious iniquity reclad him with gloom. The ride back to California Avenue was less festive, for Mrs. Joyce took occasion to say: "My advice is this. Return to college and obtain your degree. I will take care of your dear little mother." "I can't do that," he said. "I've quit. There is no use talking about that." "You shouldn't take this newspaper attack too seriously," remarked Miss Wood. "Reporters are always exposing mediums. It is quite habitual with them, and besides, your mother has been through it before." "Is that true?" he asked, with sharpened assault. "Yes," Mrs. Ollnee admitted. "I've been attacked in this way twice." "Since I have been grown up?" "Yes; once since you went to Winona." "I didn't know that. Why didn't you tell me?" Mrs. Joyce interposed. "What was the use? You could have done nothing. We who understand these matters make allowances for the reporter's trade. He must earn a living some way." As she said this Victor recalled the cynical close of the article. "Probably the true-blue believer will condemn the detective and not the culprit," the lines ran. "There are dupes so purblind, so infatuated that nothing, not even the boldest chicanery can shake their faith; nevertheless, a few will take this article for what it is, a full and clear exposé of a shrewd and conscienceless trickster." And yet, as he faced these intelligent women, Victor could not think of them as being deceived by open chicanery, much less could he admit for a moment that his mother was capable of resorting to it. It was a dramatic and moving experience for him to go from this cushioned, splendid chariot back to the shabby little apartment which was the only home in the wide world for either his mother or himself. He was filled with a kind of rage at her, at fate, and at himself, and no sooner were they inside the door than he turned upon her with a note of resentful resolution in his voice. "Mother, how could you let me in for all of this? Why did you send me to college, knowing that sooner or later exposure must come?" "I trusted the voices," she replied, "just as I must continue
{'title': "Victor Ollnee's Discipline by Hamlin Garland", 'source': 'Project Gutenberg', 'lang': 'en'}