Part 53 (2/2)
”I hope you are not neglecting your work for--for us,” she said, losing a little of her brightness.
”Nothing will suffer. I do not profess to be the main prop of our laboratory, and, besides, I don't care. I'm off for a holiday, whether or no.” At the word ”holiday” Clarke's grisly shadow rose between them and would not down. To the suicide his holiday was due.
Viola again seemed to dimly divine his thought, for she hesitatingly said: ”I am troubled about Mr. Clarke. I must write him a letter and tell him that I don't hate him now. I really begin to feel sorry for him, and I wish I hadn't been so hard.”
”You have nothing to reproach yourself for, and you would better let him pa.s.s entirely out of your life, and be glad the wrench is over,”
he decisively replied.
She sighed and s.h.i.+vered a little. ”He knew we were deserting him. His look haunts me. I wish I had stopped to say good-bye. He will be very lonely without us.”
”He is too fanatic to win my sympathy, and he has forfeited yours.”
”But he was sincere, professor. He really wanted to make the world happier.”
He was resolute to keep her mind clear of all thought of Clarke, and imperiously said: ”Don't call me professor, and let's talk of other and pleasanter things than Clarke. We are well out of his shadow-world, and you are never to re-enter it. I want you to forget that you ever sat in a 'circle' or heard a 'voice.'”
”Oh, I can't expect to pa.s.s entirely out of that,” she exclaimed, as though the possibility came near her for the first time. ”On mother's account I must continue to sit now and then. She couldn't live without her communion with papa and Waltie.”
This brought him face to face with his opportunity, and he seized it manfully. ”Your saying that, gives me opportunity for saying something which has been taking shape in my mind since last night. I do not pretend to fully understand the basis of your mother's faith, and I do not blame her, but I am filled with indignation that you should be called upon to suffer bondage to the dead. I rebel against it.” His voice was tense with feeling. ”And I will not have it so. I lunched to-day with Dr. Tolman, of whom you've heard me speak, and after describing your case to him--without using your name, of course--I asked his opinion. In reply he gave me every encouragement. The fact that you are young and in good physical health, he said, makes it possible for you to become as normal as any other girl.”
”Do you believe that, Dr. Serviss?”
”I am perfectly certain of it, if you will meet my conditions. I am confident of my power to free you from your trances and all their phenomena, but you must, at once and for all time, break every tie that binds you to your 'controls.'”
”I'm afraid they will not consent.”
”You must not say such a thing, much less think it,” he sharply interrupted. ”Your soul, your mind, should be sovereign. You should look rather to science for guidance”--here he smiled meaningly--”and to me, of course, as a representative of science. If you acknowledge the authority of the dead, or even that of your mother, my power is to that extent curtailed. It is to be in effect a war of light and darkness, science and superst.i.tion. We are willing to join issue with your shadow foes, provided your best self is with us in the struggle.
I engage myself to free you if you will permit me to act.”
She leaned towards him with pale face and limpid, heavenly eyes. ”You have been good to me, but I cannot ask you to fight my battles. You have so much else to do in the world.”
”I have nothing better to do,” he responded, with a lover's glance.
”Nothing can interest me so profoundly; nothing will give me greater pleasure.”
She went on, fervently: ”I can't tell you how you comfort me. When you are near me I have no fear of anything; but you oughtn't to give up your work to treat me. We can never pay you for what you've already done for us.”
”Don't try, and pray don't exaggerate my sacrifices. You must remember I am an investigator, and you--are a most absorbing problem.” She drew away from him slightly, and he returned to a more serious tone. ”The influence of mind over mind is the present, or at least the coming, problem, and you have opened a new world to me. The question of your future, your cure, absorbs me, and while I am by no means a rich man, as money runs these days, I am quite able to follow out any line of investigation which may interest me.”
Her face clouded, ”I wish I didn't have to be investigated.”
”So do I, and that brings up something which I must say, even at the risk of seeming hard and cruel. If you wish to live your full, free life, you must cut yourself off from _all_ of your old a.s.sociations.
Clarke and Pratt have pa.s.sed out of your life, but your mother--” He paused abruptly. When he resumed his tone was almost pleading: ”You have said that you trusted me, that you wished for my help. Did you mean it?”
”I did, indeed I did!”
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