He nodded his head. 'Yes, it is Dick's fist. I'll swear to that.'
But to Lute had come a visioning. While the rest argued pro and con and the air was filled with phrases, —'psychic phenomena,' 'self-hypnotism,' 'residuum of unexplained truth,' and 'spiritism,'—she was reviving mentally the girlhood pictures she had conjured of this soldier-father she had never seen. She possessed his sword, there were several old-fashioned daguerreotypes, there was much that had been said of him, stories told of him—and all this had constituted the material out of which she had builded him in her childhood fancy.
'There is the possibility of one mind unconsciously suggesting to another mind,' Mrs. Grantly was saying; but through Lute's mind was trooping her father on his great roan war-horse. Now he was leading his men. She saw him on lonely scouts, or in the midst of the yelling, Indians at Salt Meadows, when of his command he returned with one man in ten. And in the picture she had of him, in the physical semblance she had made of him, was reflected his spiritual nature, reflected by her worshipful artistry in form and feature and expression—his bravery, his quick temper, his impulsive championship, his madness of wrath in a righteous cause, his warm generosity and swift forgiveness, and his chivalry that epitomized codes and ideals primitive as the days of knighthood. And first, last, and always, dominating all, she saw in the face of him the hot passion and quickness of deed that had earned for him the name 'Fighting Dick Curtis.'
'Let me put it to the test,' she heard Mrs. Grantly saying. 'Let Miss Story try Planchette. There may be a further message.'
'No, no, I beg of you,' Aunt Mildred interposed. 'It is too uncanny. It surely is wrong to tamper with the dead. Besides, I am nervous. Or, better, let me go to bed, leaving you to go on with your experiments. That will be the best way, and you can tell me in the morning.' Mingled with the 'Good-nights,' were half-hearted protests from Mrs. Grantly, as Aunt Mildred withdrew.
'Robert can return,' she called back, 'as soon as he has seen me to my tent.'
'It would be a shame to give it up now,' Mrs. Grantly said. 'There is no telling what we are on the verge of. Won't you try it, Miss Story?'
Lute obeyed, but when she placed her hand on the board she was conscious of a vague and nameless fear at this toying with the supernatural. She was twentieth-century, and the thing in essence, as her uncle had said, was mediaeval. Yet she could not shake off the instinctive fear that arose in her—man's inheritance from the wild and howling ages when his hairy, apelike prototype was afraid of the dark and personified the elements into things of fear.
But as the mysterious influence seized her hand and sent it meriting across the paper, all the unusual passed out of the situation and she was unaware of more than a feeble curiosity. For she was intent on another visioning— this time of her mother, who was also unremembered in the flesh. Not sharp and vivid like that of her father, but dim and nebulous was the picture she shaped of her mother—a saint's head in an aureole of sweetness and goodness and meekness, and withal, shot through with a hint of reposeful determination, of will, stubborn and unobtrusive, that in life had expressed itself mainly in resignation.
Lute's hand had ceased moving, and Mrs. Grantly was already reading the message that had been written.
'It is a different handwriting,' she said. 'A woman's hand. 'Martha,' it is signed. Who is Martha?'
Lute was not surprised. 'It is my mother,' she said simply. 'What does she say?'
She had not been made sleepy, as Chris had; but the keen edge of her vitality had been blunted, and she was experiencing a sweet and pleasing lassitude. And while the message was being read, in her eyes persisted the vision of her mother.
'Dear child,' Mrs. Grantly read, 'do not mind him. He was ever quick of speech and rash. Be no niggard with your love. Love cannot hurt you. To deny love is to sin. Obey your heart and you can do no wrong. Obey worldly considerations, obey pride, obey those that prompt you against your heart's prompting, and you do sin. Do not mind your father. He is angry now, as was his way in the earth-life; but he will come to see the wisdom of my counsel, for this, too, was his way in the earth-life. Love, my child, and love well.—Martha.'
'Let me see it,' Lute cried, seizing the paper and devouring the handwriting with her eyes. She was thrilling with unexpressed love for the mother she had never seen, and this written speech from the grave seemed to give more tangibility to her having ever existed, than did the vision of her.
'This IS remarkable,' Mrs. Grantly was reiterating. 'There was never anything like it. Think of it, my dear, both your father and mother here with us tonight.'
Lute shivered. The lassitude was gone, and she was her natural self again, vibrant with the instinctive fear of things unseen. And it was offensive to her mind that, real or illusion, the presence or the memorized existences of her father and mother should be touched by these two persons who were practically strangers—Mrs. Grantly, unhealthy and morbid, and Mr. Barton, stolid and stupid with a grossness both of the flesh and the spirit. And it further seemed a trespass that these strangers should thus enter into the intimacy between her and Chris.
She could hear the steps of her uncle approaching, and the situation flashed upon her, luminous and clear. She hurriedly folded the sheet of paper and thrust it into her bosom.
'Don't say anything to him about this second message, Mrs. Grantly, please, and Mr. Barton. Nor to Aunt Mildred. It would only cause them irritation and needless anxiety.'
In her mind there was also the desire to protect her lover, for she knew that the strain of his present standing with her aunt and uncle would be added to, unconsciously in their minds, by the weird message of Planchette.
'And please don't let us have any more Planchette,' Lute continued hastily. 'Let us forget all the nonsense that has occurred.'
''Nonsense,' my dear child?' Mrs. Grantly was indignantly protesting when Uncle Robert strode into the circle.
'Hello!' he demanded. 'What's being done?'
'Too late,' Lute answered lightly. 'No more stock quotations for you. Planchette is adjourned, and we're just winding up the discussion of the theory of it. Do you know how late it is?'
'Well, what did you do last night after we left?'
'Oh, took a stroll,' Chris answered.
Lute's eyes were quizzical as she asked with a tentativeness that was palpably assumed, 'With—a—with Mr. Barton?'
'Why, yes.'
'And a smoke?'
'Yes; and now what's it all about?'
Lute broke into merry laughter. 'Just as I told you that you would do. Am I not a prophet? But I knew before I saw you that my forecast had come true. I have just left Mr. Barton, and I knew he had walked with you last night, for he is vowing by all his fetishes and idols that you are a perfectly splendid young man. I could see it with my eyes shut. The Chris Dunbar glamour has fallen upon him. But I have not finished the catechism by any means. Where have you been all morning?'
'Where I am going to take you this afternoon.'
'You plan well without knowing my wishes.'
'I knew well what your wishes are. It is to see a horse I have found.'
Her voice betrayed her delight, as she cried, 'Oh, good!'
'He is a beauty,' Chris said.
But her face had suddenly gone grave, and apprehension brooded in her eyes.
'He's called Comanche,' Chris went on. 'A beauty, a regular beauty, the perfect type of the Californian cow- pony. And his lines—why, what's the matter?'
'Don't let us ride any more,' Lute said, 'at least for a while. Really, I think I am a tiny bit tired of it, too.'
He was looking at her in astonishment, and she was bravely meeting his eyes.
'I see hearses and flowers for you,' he began, 'and a funeral oration; I see the end of the world, and the stars falling out of the sky, and the heavens rolling up as a scroll; I see the living and the dead gathered together for the final judgement, the sheep and the goats, the lambs and the rams and all the rest of it, the white-robed saints, the sound of golden harps, and the lost souls howling as they fall into the Pit—all this I see on the day that you, Lute Story, no longer care to ride a horse. A horse, Lute! a horse!'
