Part 48 (1/2)
As she neared him, Clarke cried out, with lamentable, despairing wail: ”Viola, you are leaving me!”
She gave him one awed, pitying backward glance and pa.s.sed on, hurrying as if to escape his outspread hand, swift to outrun the inevitable tragic shadow of his faith.
For an instant he reeled back against the wall, then sprang to follow, but the young scientist intervened and thrust him back.
”Keep to your own trail,” he sternly said, and as he opened the door for the girl, she seemed to pa.s.s at once into the sunlit spring-time world of common life.
XIX
SERVISS a.s.sUMES CONTROL
At the carriage-door Mrs. Lambert halted, her heart sorely smitten by the vision of Clarke's agonized face. ”Wait a moment!” she cried out.
”We were too cruel. Let me say good-bye.”
”No,” Lambert replied, firmly. ”You are done with him.” And with these words he gently a.s.sisted her into the coach. ”Get in, professor,” he added, with a touch of the same command. ”We must be moving.”
With a succinct phrase of direction to the driver, Serviss complied, taking the front seat, opposite Viola. He was horrified to find her shaking violently as if with cold, her face white, her eyes big and wild. Her physical rescue was accomplished, but it was immediately made plain to him that the invisible bonds which linked her to Clarke were being drawn upon with merciless power, for with the first motion of the vehicle she fixed a look of terror and entreaty upon her mother, exclaiming, huskily: ”They are calling me! They will not let me go.”
Lambert stared in helpless dismay as he realized the force of this inner struggle; but the young scientist, filled with fierce rage at this a.s.sertion of the dark forces, met them promptly in pride of his own resources, his own desire.
”Give me your hands!” he commanded, sharply. She obeyed like a child in a stupor of pain, her breath coming through her pallid lips with a hissing sound as if she were sinking each moment deeper into an icy flood.
With both her inert hands in his, with love and mastering will in his eyes, he bent a deep, piercing gaze upon her with intent to rouse her and sustain her. ”You must not give way. You are too strong, too brave, to yield to this delusion. You are clear of it all now--entering upon a free and happy life.... Think of the new conditions into which you are going.... Kate is waiting you. No one can control you if you set your will sharply against it.... Remember the Marshall Basin and the splendid suns.h.i.+ne.... You are leaving all hateful, evil influences behind.” In this way he labored to fill her mind with new conceptions, building up in her a will to resist, and as he felt the tremor die out of her hands and saw the color coming back into her face he smiled with a sense of victory. ”You see!” he resumed, in triumph. ”You are better. Your hands are warmer. You are breathing naturally again. Your enemies are being left behind.”
It was true. The hunted, piteous look had left her eyes. She seemed drowsy, but it was the languor of relief. The vital force, the sanity, the imperious appeal of the man before her had rolled back the cloud of fear which had all but closed over her head. He released her hands, saying: ”We must have no more backward glances. Remember Lot's wife.”
Lambert, filled with satisfaction, laid a silencing hand upon his wife's arm. His faith in science, in the force of exact learning, was being met, and he was resolved to leave the hypnotist free to act, to control.
Roused and confident, the young scientist continued his appeal, leaving her no time to dwell upon the past. ”You are young,” he said in effect, ”and it is spring. You are false to yourself if you permit yourself to lose through any such morbid imagining a single hour of joy. All depends on your own will, your own desire to be free.
Henceforth you are never to be sad or afraid. I will you to be happy and you must obey.”
She rose from the deep of her depression as a lily rises from the sod after the trampling storm-wind has pa.s.sed. Her response to his call filled him with hope as well as with astonishment. It was as if he had torn from her throat the hands of some hideous beast, half-man, half-devil, and they entered Kate's home in such normal, cheerful relations.h.i.+p that no one could possibly have a.s.sociated any hidden grief with either of them, not even with Mrs. Lambert, and Viola met her hostess with the gay spirits of an unexpected but confident guest.
Kate was both amazed and delighted by their sudden irruption, and being eager to know all the details of their escape from the Pratt stronghold hurried Viola and her mother away to their rooms, leaving Lambert in Morton's care.
”Well, professor,” said the miner, when they were alone, ”we made the break and won out. I reckon they're side-tracked now.”
”Yes, and I hope we are done with both Pratt and Clarke; but they'll both bear watching. Pratt I especially fear.”
”He's had his notice,” Lambert grimly replied. ”As for Clarke, it looks as though even Julia had got enough of him. He looked like a man on the road to the mad-house, and I reckon she's convinced of it now.”
”I pitied him, but I do not feel that you are in any sense indebted to him. On the contrary, a large part of your daughter's slavery to the trance is due to his pernicious influence.”
”You must be something of an influence yourself, professor. It was wonderful the way you brought her out of that trance. I never saw that done before. I reckon you must have some kind of mesmerism about you.”
”Not a particle more than you have. However, I should like to believe in my power to help her. In fact, I do believe that. It is really a question of her own will. The old idea of some subtle physical force or fluid pa.s.sing from the operator to the subject is no longer held.
It is not even necessary to make pa.s.ses nor to put the subject in a trance. All we need to do is suggest to her that no one, not even her ghostly grandfather, can control her against her will. We must keep her mind full of bright and cheerful thoughts, and convince her that by leaving the Pratt house she has attained freedom.”
”I will do what I can,” said Lambert; ”but I've seen her taken down so many times, I'm a little doubtful. She's in a bad way, I admit. It has its bad side as well as its pretty side, this religion. It unhinges a lot of people, and I reckon Clarke's a little off or he wouldn't have got my folks into that mess.”
”Don't let Viola feel your doubt; present a confident face to her.