Hamlin Garland - Victor Ollnee's Discipline

"Home!" he sneered, looking about. "Do you expect me to call this place home? Do you expect me to hang about this scrubby hole to be disciplined by your Voices?"

The sound of a knock at the door gave her a moment's respite. "The postman," she explained as she rose to go to the door.

She was gone for several minutes and Victor heard her in friendly conversation with a pleasant male voice. Some way this added to his anger and disgust.

She came back with a letter in her hand which she began at once to open. "It is from Louise, I mean Mrs. Joyce."

She read it through with smiling face, then said, "Victor, you must be nice to Louise, she has done everything for us."

This brought him to his feet. "I understand all that now. It is her money I've been living on – I won't touch another cent that comes from her. Understand that! I won't eat another dinner that she pays for."

"Why, Victor, you should not feel that way! What has she done to make you bitter?"

"Nothing. I refuse to live on her charity, that's all, and I want you to find out just how much I owe her – how much you owe her – for I intend to pay her back every dollar with interest."

"But she considers I've already paid her. She feels that I have always given her bounteous return for all her aid."

"I don't figure it that way," he said. "She's just amusing herself – "

She interrupted. "Listen to what she says." She read: "'I want to tell you how much I like your son. He is so vivid and so powerful. I'm sorry he is to miss his degree. Can't you persuade him to go back? I'll be glad to advance what is necessary – '"

"There it is, you see! There's the rich lady helping a poor relation."

"Wait, son!" she pleaded, and read on. "'I feel that I owe you ten times what you've permitted me to do for you.'"

"That's all very nice of her, mother, but I won't have any more of it." He pounded out the sentence with his fist.

She looked up at him with mingled fear and pride. "You are exactly like your father as you say that," she declared. "Oh, Victor, my son! If you leave me in anger I shall be desolate indeed. I can't live without you. Please believe in me – and love me – for you're all I have on this earth."

His anger died away. He saw her again as she really was, a pale, devoted little saint, with troubled brow and quivering lips, one who had shed her very life-blood for him – to doubt her became a monstrous cruelty.

He put his arms about her and hugged her close. "I didn't mean to hurt you, mother – but your world is so strange to me. I'll stay, I'll do the best I can here; only don't work this slate trick any more. Don't sit for any one but me. Will you promise that?"

"May I not sit for Louise?"

"Not without me."

"I dare not promise, Victor. Father may insist. If he does not insist I will do as you wish. I will give it up."

He kissed her. "Dear little mother, you sha'n't live alone any more, and you shall soon have a home that is worthy of you."

She was weeping, and a big lump in his own throat made speech difficult. To cover his emotion he slangily said: "Well, now, it's me to the marts of trade. Perhaps I'll fool The Voices yet."

"How do people get jobs," he asked himself as he set forth. "'Want ads,' I suppose." He went deeper. "What am I fitted for? I can keep books – in a fashion – or I can clerk. My training has not fitted me for any special thing, unless to sell sporting-goods." This was a "lead," and his face brightened. "My work on the team ought to help me in that direction. Good idea! I'll hie me to the sporting-goods houses."

The first two managers with whom he talked, while much impressed by him, were completely manned, but the third was disposed to consider him till he told him his name. "No relation to Mrs. Ollnee, the medium?" he asked, with a grin, while poising his pencil to write.

For an instant Victor hesitated, then took the leap. "Well, yes, I am, but then you don't want to believe that report; it's more than half a lie."

The manager's smile vanished. He left the address half finished. "So you are the son they spoke of?" he said, with a cold, keen glance.

"Yes, I am," Victor boldly answered.

He closed his book. "I don't believe we can trade," he announced. "Of course I don't consider all mediums frauds and liars, but this house is very particular about its help – "

Victor turned and walked away, bitterly rebellious of soul and disheartened. For a time his anger burned so hotly within him that he meditated taking the train and leaving the city and all it held behind him. Again and again his thought returned to the picture his gentle little mother had made as she had said good-by to him at the head of the stairs. To accuse her of conscious deception was like accusing a sweet girl of infanticide. How could she build up a system of fraudulent fortune-telling, so intricate, so subtle, that it baffled the eye of the reporter, who confessed that he had not been able to detect the trickery. "It is only by induction, by inference, that one gets at the modus operandi ," he admitted.

In his perturbation he walked away to the east and soon came out upon the lake-front. A bunch of men and boys of all types and sizes were playing ball on the barren ground, and with the athlete's undying love of the sport he rose and edged into the game. He could not resist showing his prowess by means of a few curves, and the crowd with instant perception began to take a vivid interest in him.

A half-hour of this restored his good-nature and he returned to the cañons to the west, determined to find an opening somewhere. He was never dismissed rudely – he was too big and well-dressed for that – but the fact that he had no experience shut him out in most cases, and for the rest the departments were filled with salesmen. Twice when he seemed about to be taken on, his name and his mothers reputation shut the door of opportunity in his face.

At four o'clock he started slowly homeward, discouraged, not so much by his failure as by the fact that everybody seemed to have a knowledge of the article in the Star . It was evident that even when a manager did not at the moment make the connection between his name and Mrs. Ollnee's it would certainly come out later and he would be called upon to defend himself and his mother from the sneers and jeers of his fellow-salesmen. "I'm a marked man, that's sure," he said, in dismay.

All day his mind had dwelt in flashes on the glorious life at Winona, but now his memory of it was poisoned by the thought that he had been a pensioner on the bounty of Mrs. Joyce. "The easy thing would be to change my name and skip out for the plains," he said again, "but I won't. I'll stay and fight it out right here some way."

He was passing the public library at the moment and was moved to go in and look up the "want ads" in the papers. Ten minutes' reading of these filled him with despair. There were so many wanting work! His feet were tired with walking and his brain weary with the movement of the street, therefore he moved on to the reference room where he found an atmosphere of study that was very grateful.

Accustomed to work of this kind, he asked the attendant to bring him catalogues, and was soon surrounded with books and magazines which dealt with the modern study of psychic phenomena. He fell upon one or two of these which gave exhaustive generalizations, and he was astounded to find that European men of science of the loftiest type were engaged in the study of precisely the same phenomena which his mother claimed to produce.

Careless of all else, he remained until six o'clock absorbed and confused by what he read. Words and phrases like "telekinesis," "teleplastic," "parasitic personalities," "externalized motricity," "bio-psychic energy" danced about in his brain like fantastic insects. He fairly staggered with the weight of the conceptions laid upon him, and when at last he went out into the streets he had forgotten his race for place behind the counter.