The Necromancers - Robert Hugh Benson (100 best novels of all time txt) 📗

absolution without hesitation.

Then Laurie's answer arrived, and had to be dealt with, that is, it had to be treated interiorly with a proper restraint of emotions.

"My dear Maggie," he wrote;

Why all this fury? What have I done? I said to mother that
I didn't know for certain whether I could come or not, as
I had a lot to do. I don't think she can have given you
the letter to read, or you wouldn't have written all that
about my being away from home at the one season of the
year, etc. Of course I'll come, if you or anybody feels
like that. Does mother feel upset too? Please tell me if
she ever feels that, or is in the least unwell, or
anything. I'll come instantly. As it is, shall we say the
20th of December, and I'll stay at least a week. Will that
do?

Yours,
L.B.

This was a little overwhelming, and Maggie wrote off a penitent letter, refraining carefully, however, from any expressions that might have anything of the least warmth, but saying that she was very glad he was coming, and that the shooting should be seen to.

She directed the letter; and then sat for an instant looking at Laurie's--at the neat Oxford-looking hand, the artistic appearance of the paragraphs, and all the rest of it.

She would have liked to keep it--to put it with half a dozen others she had from him; but it seemed better not.

Then as she tore it up into careful strips, her conscience smote her again, shrewdly; and she drew out the top left-hand drawer of the table at which she sat.

There they were, a little pile of them, neat and orderly. She looked at them an instant; then she took them out, turned them quickly to see if all were there, and then, gathering up the strips of the one she had received that morning, went over to the wood fire and dropped them in.

It was better so, she said to herself.

* * * * *


The days went pleasantly enough after that. She would not for an instant allow to herself that any of their smoothness arose from the fact that this boy would be here again in a few weeks. On the contrary, it was because she had detected a weakness in his regard, she told herself, and had resolutely stamped on it, that she was in so serene a peace. She arranged about the shooting--that is to say, she informed the acting keeper that Master Laurie would be home for Christmas as usual--all in an unemotional manner, and went about her various affairs without effort.

She found Mrs. Baxter just a little trying now and then. That lady had come to the conclusion that Laurie was unhappy in his religion--certainly references to it had dropped out of his letters--and that Mr. Rymer must set it right.

"The Vicar must dine here at least twice while Laurie is here," she observed at breakfast one morning. "He has a great influence with young men."

Maggie reflected upon a remark or two, extremely unjust, made by Laurie with regard to the clergyman.

"Do you think--do you think he understands Laurie," she said.

"He has known him for fifteen years," remarked Mrs. Baxter.

"Perhaps it's Laurie that doesn't understand him then," said Maggie tranquilly.

"I daresay."

"And--and what do you think Mr. Rymer will be able to do?" asked the girl.

"Just settle the boy.... I don't think Laurie's very happy. Not that I would willingly disturb his mind again; I don't mean that, my dear. I quite understand that your religion is just the one for certain temperaments, and Laurie's is one of them; but a few helpful words sometimes--" Mrs. Baxter left it at an aposiopesis, a form of speech she was fond of.

There was a grain of truth, Maggie thought, in the old lady's hints, and she helped herself in silence to marmalade. Laurie's letters, which she usually read, did not refer much to religion, or to the Brompton Oratory, as his custom had been at first. She tried to make up her mind that this was a healthy sign; that it showed that Laurie was settling down from that slight feverishness of zeal that seemed the inevitable atmosphere of most converts. Maggie found converts a little trying now and then; they would talk so much about facts, certainly undisputed, and for that very reason not to be talked about. Laurie had been a marked case, she remembered; he wouldn't let the thing alone, and his contempt of Anglican clergy, whom Maggie herself regarded with respect, was hard to understand. In fact she had remonstrated on the subject of the Vicar....

Maggie perceived that she was letting her thoughts run again on disputable lines; and she made a remark about the Balkan crisis so abruptly that Mrs. Baxter looked at her in bewilderment.

"You do jump about so, my dear. We were speaking of Laurie, were we not?"

"Yes," said Maggie.

"It's the twentieth he's coming on, is it not?"

"Yes," said Maggie.

"I wonder what train he'll come by?"

"I don't know," said Maggie.

* * * * *


A few days before Laurie's arrival she went to the greenhouse to see the chrysanthemums. There was an excellent show of them.

"Mrs. Baxter doesn't like them hairy ones," said the gardener.

"Oh! I had forgotten. Well, Ferris, on the nineteenth I shall want a big bunch of them. You'd better take those--those hairy ones. And some maidenhair. Is there plenty?"

"Yes, miss."

"Can you make a wreath, Ferris?"

"Yes, miss."

"Well, will you make a good wreath of them, please, for a grave? The morning of the twentieth will do. There'll be plenty left for the church and house?"

"Oh yes, miss."

"And for Father Mahon?"

"Oh yes, miss."

"Very well, then. Will you remember that? A good wreath, with fern, on the morning of the twentieth. If you'll just leave it here I'll call for it about twelve o'clock. You needn't send it up to the house."


Chapter VI

I


Laurie was sitting in his room after breakfast, filling his briar pipe thoughtfully, and contemplating his journey to Stantons.

It was more than six weeks now since his experience in Queen's Gate, and he had gone through a variety of emotions. Bewildered terror was the first, a nervous interest the next, a truculent skepticism the third; and lately, to his astonishment, the nervous interest had begun to revive.

At first he had been filled with unreasoning fear. He had walked back as far as the gate of the park, hardly knowing where he went, conscious only that he must be in the company of his fellows; upon finding himself on the south side of Hyde Park Corner, where travelers were few, he had crossed over in nervous haste to where he might jostle human beings. Then he had dined in a restaurant, knowing that a band would be playing there, and had drunk a bottle of champagne; he had gone to his rooms, cheered and excited, and had leapt instantly into bed for fear that his courage should evaporate. For he was perfectly aware that fear, and a sickening kind of repulsion, formed a very large element in his emotions. For nearly two hours, unless three persons had lied consummately, he--his essential being, that sleepless self that underlies all--had been in strange company, had become identified in some horrible manner with the soul of a dead person. It was as if he had been informed some morning that he had slept all night with a corpse under his bed. He woke half a dozen times that night in the pleasant curtained bedroom, and each time with the terror upon him. What if stories were true, and this Thing still haunted the air? It was remarkable, he considered afterwards, how the sign which he had demanded had not had the effect for which he had hoped. He was not at all reassured by it.

Then as the days went by, and he was left in peace, his horror began to pass. He turned the thing over in his mind a dozen times a day, and found it absorbing. But he began to reflect that, after all, he had nothing more than he had had before in the way of evidence. An hypnotic sleep might explain the whole thing. That little revelation he had made in his unconsciousness, of his sitting beneath the yews, might easily be accounted for by the fact that he himself knew it, that it had been a deeper element in his experience than he had known, and that he had told it aloud. It was no proof of anything more. There remained the rapping and what the medium had called his "appearance" during the sleep; but of all this he had read before in books. Why should he be convinced any more now than he had been previously? Besides, it was surely doubtful, was it not, whether the rapping, if it had really taken place, might not be the normal cracks and sounds of woodwork, intensified in the attention of the listeners? or if it was more than this, was there any proof that it might not be produced in some way by the intense will-power of some living person present? This was surely conceivable--more conceivable, that is, than any other hypothesis.... Besides, what had it all got to do with Amy?

Within a week of his original experience, skepticism was dominant. These lines of thought did their work by incessant repetition. The normal life he lived, the large, businesslike face of the lawyer whom he faced day by day, a theatre or two, a couple of dinners--even the noise of London streets and the appearance of workaday persons--all these gradually reassured him.

When therefore he received a nervous little note from Lady Laura, reminding him of the seance to be held in Baker Street, and begging his attendance, he wrote a most proper letter back again, thanking her for her kindness, but saying that he had come to the conclusion that this kind of thing was not good for him or his work, and begging her to make his excuses to Mr. Vincent.

A week or two passed, and nothing whatever happened. Then he heard again from Lady Laura, and again he answered by a polite refusal, adding a little more as to his own state of mind; and again silence fell.

Then at last Mr. Vincent called on him in person one evening after dinner.

* * * * *


Laurie's rooms were in Mitre Court, very convenient to the Temple--two rooms opening into one another, and communicating with the staircase.

He had played a little on his grand piano, that occupied a third of his sitting-room, and