The Necromancers - Robert Hugh Benson (best summer books txt) 📗

along to lunch."

"But I'm not the only one," cried Laurie hotly.

"No, indeed you're not.... Look here, Baxter, that sort of thing plays the devil with nerves. Just drop it once and for all. I knew a chap once who went in for all that. Well, the end was what everybody knew would happen...."

"Yes?" said Laurie.

"Went off his chump," said the other briefly. "Nasty mess all over the floor. Now come to lunch."

"Wait a second. You can't argue from particulars to universals. Was he the only one you ever knew?"

The other paused a moment.

"No," he said. "As it happens, he wasn't. I knew another chap—he's a solicitor.... Oh! by the way, he's one of your people—a Catholic, I mean."

"Well, what about him?" "Oh! he's all right," admitted Mr. Morton, with a grudging air. "But he gave it up and took to religion instead."

"Yes? What's his name?"

"Cathcart."

He glanced up at the clock.

"Good Lord," he said, "ten to one."

Then he was gone.

Laurie was far too exalted to be much depressed by this counsel's opinion; and had, indeed, several minutes of delightful meditation on the crass complacency of a clever man when taken off his ground. It was deplorable, he said to himself, that men should be so content with their limitations. But it was always the way, he reflected. To be a specialist in one point involved the pruning of all growth on every other. Here was Morton, almost in the front rank of his particular subject, and, besides, very far from being a bookworm; yet, when taken an inch out of his rut, he could do nothing but flounder. He wondered what Morton would make of these things if he saw them himself.

In the course of the afternoon Morton himself turned up again. The case had ended unexpectedly soon. Laurie waited till the closing of the shutters offered an opportunity for a break in the work, and once more returned to the charge.

"Morton," he said, "I wish you'd come with me one day."

The other looked up.

"Eh?"

"To see for yourself what I told you."

Mr. Morton snorted abruptly.

"Lord!" he said, "I thought we'd done with that. No, thank you: Egyptian Hall's all I need."

Laurie sighed elaborately.

"Oh! of course, if you won't face facts, one can't expect...."

"Look here, Baxter," said the other almost kindly, "I advise you to give this up. It plays the very devil with nerves, as I told you. Why, you're as jumpy as a cat yourself. And it isn't worth it. If there was anything in it, why it would be another thing; but...."

"I ... I wouldn't give it up for all the world," stammered Laurie in his zeal. "You simply don't know what you're talking about. Why ... why, I'm not a fool ... I know that. And do you think I'm ass enough to be taken in by a trick? And as if a trick could be played like that in a drawing-room! I tell you I examined every inch...."

"Look here," said Morton, looking curiously at the boy—for there was something rather impressive about Laurie's manner—"look here; you'd better see old Cathcart. Know him...? Well, I'll introduce you any time. He'll tell you another tale. Of course, I don't believe all the rot he talks; but, at any rate, he's sensible enough to have given it all up. Says he wouldn't touch it with a pole. And he was rather a big bug at it in his time, I believe."

Laurie sneered audibly.

"Got frightened, I suppose," he said. "Of course, I know well enough that it's rather startling—"

"My dear man, he was in the thick of it for ten years. I'll acknowledge his stories are hair-raising, if one believed them; but then, you see—"

"What's his address?"

Morton jerked his head towards the directories in the bookshelf.

"Find him there," he said. "I'll give you an introduction if you want it. Though, mind you, I think he talks as much rot as anyone—"

"What does he say?"

"Lord!—I don't know. Some theory or other. But, at any rate, he's given it up."

Laurie pursed his lips.

"I daresay I'll ask you some time," he said. "Meanwhile—"

"Meanwhile, for the Lord's sake, get on with that business you've got there."

Mr. Morton was indeed, as Laurie had reflected, extraordinarily uninterested in things outside his beat; and his beat was not a very extended one. He was a quite admirable barrister, competent, alert, merciless and kindly at the proper times, and, while at his business, thought of hardly anything else at all. And when he was not at his business, he threw himself with equal zest into two or three other occupations—golf, dining out, and the collection of a particular kind of chairs. Beyond these things there was for him really nothing of value.

But, owing to circumstances, his beat had been further extended to include Laurie Baxter, whom he was beginning to like extremely. There was an air of romance about Laurie, a pleasant enthusiasm, excellent manners, and a rather delightful faculty of hero-worship. Mr. Morton himself, too, while possessing nothing even resembling a religion, was, like many other people, not altogether unattracted towards those who had, though he thought religiousness to be a sign of a slightly incompetent character; and he rather liked Laurie's Catholicism, such as it was. It must be rather pleasant, he considered (when he considered it at all), to believe "all that," as he would have said.

So this new phase of Laurie's interested him far more than he would have allowed, so soon as he became aware that it was not merely superficial; and, indeed, Laurie's constant return to the subject, as well as his air of enthusiastic conviction, soon convinced him that this was so.

Further, after a week or two, he became aware that the young man's work was suffering; and he heard from his lips the expression of certain views that seemed to the elder man extremely unhealthy.

For example, on a Friday evening, not much afterwards, as Laurie was putting his books together, Mr. Morton asked him where he was going to spend the week-end.

"Stopping in town," said the boy briefly.

"Oh! I'm going to my brother's cottage. Care to come? Afraid there's no Catholic church near."

Laurie smiled.

"That wouldn't deter me," he said. "I've made up my mind—"

"Yes?"

"Oh, it doesn't matter," said Laurie. "No—thanks awfully, but I've got to stop in town."

"Lady Laura's again?"

"Yes."

"Same old game?"

Laurie sat down.

"Look here," he said, "I know you don't mean anything; but I wish you'd understand."

"Well?"

The boy's face flushed with sudden nervous enthusiasm.

"Do you understand," he said, "that this is just everything to me? Do you know it's beginning to seem to me just the only thing that matters? I'm quite aware that you think it all the most utter bunkum; but, you see, I know it's true. And the whole thing is just like heaven opening.... Look here ... I didn't tell you half the other day. The fact is, that I was just as much in love with this girl as—as a man could be. She died; and now—"

"Look here, what were you up to last Sunday?"

Laurie quieted a little.

"You wouldn't understand," he said.

"Have you done any more of that business?"

"What business?"

"Well—thinking you saw her—All right, seeing her, if you like."

The boy shook his head.

"No. Vincent's away in Ireland. We've been going on other lines."

"Tell me; I swear I won't laugh."

"All right; I don't care if you do.... Well, automatic handwriting."

"What's that?"

Laurie hesitated.

"Well, I go into trance, you see, and—"

"Good Lord, what next?"

"And then this girl writes through my hand," said Laurie deliberately, "when I'm unconscious. See?"

"I see you're a damned young fool," said Morton seriously.

"But if it's all rot, as you think?"

"Of course it's all rot! Do you think I believe for one instant—" He broke off. "And so's a nervous breakdown all rot, isn't it, and D.T.? They aren't real snakes, you know."

Laurie smiled in a superior manner.

"And you're getting yourself absorbed in all this—"

Laurie looked at him with a sudden flash of fanaticism.

"I tell you," he said, "that it's all the world to me. And so would it be to you, if—"

"Oh, Lord! don't become Salvation Army.... Seen Cathcart yet?"

"No. I haven't the least wish to see Cathcart."

Morton rose, put his pens in the drawer, locked it; slid half a dozen papers into a black tin box, locked that too, and went towards his coat and hat, all in silence.

As he went out he turned on the threshold.

"When's that man coming back from Ireland?" he said.

"Who? Vincent? Oh! another month yet. We're going to have another try when he comes."

"Try? What at?"

"Materialization," said Laurie. "That's to say—"

"I don't want to know what the foul thing means."

He still paused, looking hard at the boy. Then he sniffed.

"A young fool," he said. "I repeat it.... Lock up when you come.... Good night."

Chapter X I

Mrs. Baxter possessed one of the two secrets of serenity. The other need not be specified; but hers arose from the most pleasant and most human form of narrow-mindedness. As has been said before, when things did not fit with her own scheme, either they were not things, but only fancies of somebody inconsiderable, or else she resolutely disregarded them. She had an opportunity of testing her serenity on one day early in February.

She rose as usual at a fixed hour—eight o'clock—and when she was ready knelt down at her prie-Dieu. This was quite an elaborate structure, far more elaborate than the devotions offered there. It was a very beautiful inlaid Florentine affair, and had a little shelf above it filled with a number of the little leather-bound books in which her soul delighted. She did not use these books very much; but she liked to see them there. It would not be decent to enter the sanctuary of Mrs. Baxter's prayers; it is enough to say that they were not very long. Then she rose from her knees, left her large comfortable bedroom, redolent with soap and hot water, and came downstairs, a beautiful slender little figure in black lace veil and rich dress, through the sunlight of the staircase, into the dining-room.

There she took up her letters and packets. They were not exciting. There was an unimportant note from a friend, a couple of bills, and a Bon Marché catalogue; and she scrutinized these through her spectacles, sitting by the fire. When she had done she noticed a letter lying by Maggie's place, directed in a masculine hand. An instant later Maggie came in herself, in her hat and furs, a charming picture, fresh from the winter sunlight and air, and kissed her.

While Mrs. Baxter poured out tea she addressed a remark or two to the girl, but only got back those vague inattentive murmurs that are the sign of a distracted mind; and, looking up presently with a sense of injury, noticed that Maggie was reading her letter with extraordinary diligence.

"My dear, I am speaking to you," said Mrs. Baxter, with an air of slightly humorous dignity.

"Er—I am sorry," murmured Maggie, and continued reading.

Mrs. Baxter put out her hand for the Bon Marché catalogue in order to drive home her sense of injury, and met Maggie's eyes, suddenly raised to meet her own, with a curious strained look in them.

"Darling, what is the matter?"

Maggie still stared at her a moment, as if questioning both herself and the other, and finally handed the letter across with an abrupt movement.

"Read it," she said.

It was rather a business to read it. It involved spectacles, a pushing aside of a plate, and a slight turning to catch the light. Mrs. Baxter read it, and handed it back, making three or four times the sound written as "Tut."

"The tiresome boy!" she said querulously, but without alarm.

"What are we to do? You see, Mr. Morton thinks we ought to do something. He mentions a Mr. Cathcart."

Mrs. Baxter reached out for the toast-rack.

"My dear, there's nothing to be done. You know what Laurie is. It'll only make him worse."

Maggie looked at her uneasily.

"I wish we could do something," she said.

"My dear, he'd