CHAPTER XIV.
THE SPIRITS.
I asked my brother-in-law all I could about Spiritualism. He took an interest in psychical research, but my condition did not seem to suggest anything of that kind to him. They had quite decided, all of them, that I heard voices because I was suffering from nervous breakdown and that I must do all I could to forget them. They always took care to change the subject in a cheerful voice when I referred to it.
I wandered wearily into the cool drawing-room at my sister's and took up a book of my brother's-in-law, on Spiritualism.
"They can't tell me. No one can tell me," I whispered to Patrick who was still there.
"Give me a sign," I said to him.
I opened the book as people do sometimes when they take the Bible for a text-book. I closed my eyes and put my finger on a line.
I looked down.
"We know," the book said. It was a chapter on psychical phenomena.
I asked for another sign and this time took up a magazine.
I opened it and found the word "Carpenter," his favorite author, in evidence.
I tried again and found my finger on "..ton I.."
"Tony!" I cried. "But are you Tony?"
No, the voice would never say right out.
So again I called it "Patrick."
But there was something like magic abzout it.
One day I could not find my bag. I looked all round everywhere for it.
I heard a voice say:
"Look there, my child, on the chair by the piano"—I had my back to the piano.
And there it was.
But Patrick and I were alone with our knowledge. No one else seemed to know.
In despair of being understood I sat and sat sometimes in the twilight when I was again back in my rooms, and wondered.
And then one day as I stood up I found my back gradually bending, my face taking on it a gentle smile, and I knew mother was there with me.
