Part 16 (1/2)

”Because it was only a jocular remark. I didn't intend you should know it. I don't know how I came to let it slip from my mouth. He has never returned, strange to say. I feel mother, but never Hayward.”

They had reached a very tender and solemn pause--so self-revealing had been the woman's admission--and Britt was looking at his plate as his hostess began again with a.s.sumed brightness. ”Well, now, about this girl. Can you take me to see her? She interests me beyond anything.”

”Certainly. I should be delighted. But your brother knows her--she would be pleased to see you both, I've no doubt.”

”My brother thinks she is a fraud, and does not wish to see her--”

”I derive my knowledge from you, Dr. Britt.”

Britt was undisturbed. ”I think she is a fraud, too, but a very charming one.”

”That ought to make her all the more convincing,” said Kate.

”And all the more dangerous,” replied Britt. ”She baffles me--when face to face with her.”

”What are they going to do with her--exhibit her to the public?”

”Not for the present. Clarke has been making notes industriously all the year and is about ready to publish. He now wants a few of the big fellows, like Uncle Simeon Pratt, to help boom his book. The Lamberts are not in this for money--please give them credit for that--and as for the mother, she is entirely honest--she believes implicitly in her spirits.”

”That puts the girl in a horrible position--if she _is_ deceiving,”

Morton interposed. ”Imagine her state of mind if she realizes that her own mother has come to rest upon her system of deceit. The thought is horrible.”

”It is quite as bad at that,” returned Britt. ”You see, the mother has been for years in close daily communion--as she supposes--with her husband, her little son, and others of her dead. Half of her daily life is in these joys, the other half in her daughter. There stood the wall that stopped me. I couldn't express my doubt to the mother. I couldn't apply the clamps. I simply withdrew. I do not intend to pursue the matter to a finish so long as the mother is alive.”

Morton's face was clouded with pain. ”Let us drop the Lamberts as a subject; they are too distressing, especially as I see no way of helping them. When do you return?”

Kate acquiesced in her brother's diversion of the stream of talk, but an hour later, as Britt was about to go, she seized the opportunity to say: ”You must not fail to take me to see this girl. I have never been so excited about any one in my life. Can't you take me to-morrow?”

”I am entirely at your service. Suppose I call at four--will that do?”

”Perfectly. I'm very grateful to you.”

”I hope you won't come to curse me for it. I warn you, the girl is d.a.m.nably convincing. She may enamour you.”

”No fear of that,” she cried, in defiant brightness. ”I'm not so easily fooled.”

She re-entered the library with the flush of an excited conviction in her face. ”Morton, I feel as if I had taken part in the dissection of a human soul.”

He threw up his hand with a gesture of pain and despair. ”Don't! I can only hope that girl is utterly bad. Otherwise she is the sport of devils. Help me forget the whole uncanny business.”

”You're wrong,” she said, firmly. ”It is just such men as you and Dr.

Weissmann who should s.n.a.t.c.h the pearl of truth from this bucket of mental mire.”

”That's a very good phrase, Kate--if only I was sure of the pearl.”

There really was no way out for him. His mind utterly discredited the phenomena Viola claimed to produce, and that left but one other interpretation. She was a trickster and auto-hypnotist--uncanny as the fabled women who were fair on one side but utterly foul and corrupt on the other. In his musing her splendid, glowing, physical self drew near, and when he looked into her sweet, clear eyes his brain reeled with doubt of his doubt. If there were any honest eyes in the world, she was innocent, and a tortured victim, as Kate had so quickly decided; and his plain duty was to beat back the forces seeking to devour her.

”The mind is an obscure kingdom subject to inexplicable revolts and sudden confusions,” he thought. ”Delusions are easy to foment, and at the last are indistinguishable from the fact, so far as the mind which gave them being is concerned. The body of this girl is young, but her brain may be cankered by the sins and lies of a long line of decadent ancestry.” The thought was horrible, but it was less revolting than the alternative--in no other way could her life be explained and excused. In any case it was highly courageous in her to put marriage away as decisively as if it were a crime. And this she must have done, for even Clarke, according to Britt, had thus far sued in vain. There was a heroic strain in the girl somewhere. Was it too late to rescue her from the mental gangrene eating its way to the very centre of her soul? This was the question which only a renewed acquaintance, a careful study could resolve.