Book: The Necromancers

R >> Robert Hugh Benson >> The Necromancers




"My dearest child," came the peevish old voice, "you might have
allowed my own son--"

"No, no, Auntie, you really mustn't. I know how bad your head
is ... yes, yes; he's very well. You'll see him in the morning."

And all the while she was conscious of the figure that must be faced
again presently, waiting on the landing.

"Shall I go and see that everything's all right in his room?" she
said. "Perhaps they've forgotten--"

"Yes, my dearest, go and see. And send Charlotte to me."

The old voice was growing drowsy again.

Maggie went out swiftly without a word. There again stood the figure
waiting. The landing lamp had been forgotten. She led the way to his
room.

"Come, Laurie," she said. "I'll just see that everything's all right."

She found the matches again, lighted the candles, and set them on his
table, still without a look at that face that turned always as she
went.

"We shall have to dine alone," she said, striving to make her voice
natural, as she reached the door.

Then once more she raised her eyes to his, and looked him bravely in
the face as he stood by the fire.

"Do just as you like about dressing," she said. "I expect you're
tired."

She could bear it no more. She went out without another word, passed
steadily across the length of the landing to her own room, locked the
door, and threw herself on her knees.


III

She was roused by a tap on the door--how much later she did not
know. But the agony was passed for the present--the repulsion and the
horror of what she had seen. Perhaps it was that she did not yet
understand the whole truth. But at least her will was dominant; she
was as a man who has fought with fear alone, and walks, white and
trembling, yet perfectly himself, to the operating table.

She opened the door; and Susan stood there with a candle in one hand
and a scrap of white in the other.

"For you, miss," said the maid.

Maggie took it without a word, and read the name and the penciled
message twice.

"Just light the lamp out here," she said. "Oh ... and, by the way,
send Charlotte to Mrs. Baxter at once."

"Yes, miss..."

The maid still paused, eyeing her, as if with an unspoken
question. There was terror too in her eyes.

"Mr. Laurie is not very well," said Maggie steadily. "Please take no
notice of anything. And ... and, Susan, I think I shall dine alone
this evening, just a tray up here will do. If Mr. Laurie says
anything, just explain that I am looking after Mrs. Baxter. And....
Susan--"

"Yes, miss."

"Please see that Mrs. Baxter is not told that I am not dining
downstairs."

"Yes, miss."

Maggie still stood an instant, hesitating. Then a thought recurred
again.

"One moment," she said.

She stepped across the room to her writing-table, beckoning the maid
to come inside and shut the door; then she wrote rapidly for a minute
or so, enclosed her note, directed it, and gave it to the girl.

"Just send up someone at once, will you, with this to Father Mahon--on
a bicycle."

When the maid was gone, she waited still for an instant looking across
the dark landing, expectant of some sound or movement. But all was
still. A line of light showed only under the door where the boy who
was called Laurie Baxter stood or sat. At least he was not moving
about. There in the darkness Maggie tested her power of resisting
panic. Panic was the one fatal thing: so much she understood. Even if
that silent door had opened, she knew she could stand there still.

She went back, took a wrap from the chair where she had tossed it down
on coming in from the garden that afternoon, threw it over her head
and shoulders, passed down the stairs and out through the garden once
more in the darkness of the spring evening.

All was quiet in the tiny hamlet as she went along the road. A blaze
of light shone from the tap-room window where the fathers of families
were talking together, and within Mr. Nugent's shuttered shop she
could see through the doorway the grocer himself in his shirt-sleeves,
shifting something on the counter. So great was the tension to which
she had strung herself that she did not even envy the ordinariness of
these people: they appeared to be in some other world, not attainable
by herself. These were busied with domestic affairs, with beer or
cheese or gossip. Her task was of another kind: so much she knew; and
as to what that task was, she was about to learn.

As she turned the corner, the figure she expected was waiting there;
and she could see in the deep twilight that he lifted his hat to
her. She went straight up to him.

"Yes," she said, "I have seen for myself. You are right so far. Now
tell me what to do."

It was no time for conventionality. She did not ask why the solicitor
was there. It was enough that he had come.

"Walk this way then with me," he said. "Now tell me what you have
seen."

"I have seen a change I cannot describe at all. It's just someone
else--not Laurie at all. I don't understand it in the least. But I
just want to know what to do. I have written to Father Mahon to come."

He was silent for a step or two.

"I cannot tell you what to do. I must leave that to yourself. I can
only tell you what not to do."

"Very well."

"Miss Deronnais, you are magnificent...! There, it is said. Now then.
You must not get excited or frightened whatever happens. I do not
believe that you are in any danger--not of the ordinary kind, I mean.
But if you want me, I shall be at the inn. I have taken rooms there
for a night or so. And you must not yield to him interiorly. I wonder
if you understand."

"I think I shall understand soon. At present I understand nothing. I
have said I cannot dine with him."

"But--"

"I cannot ... before the servants. One of them at least suspects
something. But I will sit with him afterwards, if that is right."

"Very good. You must be with him as much as you can. Remember, it is
not the worst yet. It is to prevent that worst happening that you must
use all the power you've got."

"Am I to speak to him straight out? And what shall I tell Father
Mahon?"

"You must use your judgment. Your object is to fight on his side,
remember, against this thing that is obsessing him. Miss Deronnais, I
must give you another warning."

She bowed. She did not wish to use more words than were necessary.
The strain was frightful.

"It is this: whatever you may see--little tricks of speech or
movement--you must not for one instant yield to the thought that the
creature that is obsessing him is what he thinks it is. Remember the
thing is wholly evil, wholly evil; but it may, perhaps, do its utmost
to hide that, and to keep up the illusion. It is intelligent, but not
brilliant; it has the intelligence only of some venomous brute in the
slime. Or it may try to frighten you. You must not be frightened."

She understood hints here and there of what the old man said--enough,
at any rate, to act.

"And you must keep up to the utmost pitch your sympathy with _him_
himself. You must remember that he is somewhere there, underneath, in
chains; and that, probably, he is struggling too, and needs you. It is
not Possession yet: he is still partly conscious.... Did he know you?"

"Yes; he just knew me. He was puzzled, I think."

"Has he seen anyone else he knows?"

"His mother ... yes. He just knew her too. He did not speak to her. I
would not let him."

"Miss Deronnais, you have acted admirably.... What is he doing now?"

"I don't know. I left him in his room. He was quite quiet."

"You must go back directly.... Shall we turn? I don't think there's
much more to say just now."

Then she noticed that he had said nothing about the priest.

"And what about Father Mahon?" she said.

The old man was silent a moment.

"Well?" she said again.

"Miss Deronnais, I wouldn't rely on Father Mahon. I've hardly ever met
a priest who takes these things seriously. In theory--yes, of course;
but not in concrete instances. However, Father Mahon may be an
exception. And the worst of it is that the priesthood has enormous
power, if they only knew it."

The tinkle of a bicycle bell sounded down the road behind them.
Maggie wheeled on the instant, and caught the profile she was
expecting.

"Is that you?" she said, as the rider passed.

The man jumped off, touched his hat, and handed her a note. She tore
it open, and glanced through it in the light of the bicycle lamp. Then
she crumpled it up and threw it into the ditch with a quick, impatient
movement.

"All right," she said. "Good night."

The gardener mounted his bicycle again and moved off.

"Well?" said the old man.

"Father Mahon's called away suddenly. It's from his housekeeper.
He'll only be back in time for the first mass tomorrow."

The other nodded, three or four times, as if in assent.

"Why do you do that?" asked the girl suddenly.

"It is what I should have expected to happen."

"What! Father Mahon?--Do you mean it ... it is arranged?"

"I know nothing. It may be coincidence. Speak no more of it. You have
the facts to think of."

About them as they walked back in silence lay the quiet spring night.
From the direction of the hamlet came the banging of a door, then
voices wishing good night, and the sound of footsteps. The steps
passed the end of the lane and died away again. Over the trees to the
right were visible the high twisted chimney of the old house where the
terror dwelt.

"Two points then to remember," said the voice in the
darkness--"Courage and Love. Can you remember?"

Maggie bowed her head again in answer.

"I will call and ask to see you as soon as the household is up. If you
can't see me, I shall understand that things are going well--or you
can send out a note to me. As for Mrs. Baxter--"

"I shall not say one word to her until it becomes absolutely
necessary. And if--"

"If it becomes necessary I will wire for a doctor from town. I will
undertake all the preliminary arrangements, if you will allow me."

Ten steps before the corner they stopped.

"God bless you, Miss Deronnais. Remember, I am at the inn if you need
me."


IV

Mrs. Baxter dined placidly in bed at about half-past seven; but she
was more sleepy than ever when she had done. She was rash enough to
drink a little claret and water.

"It always goes straight to my head, Charlotte," she explained. "Well,
set the book--no, not that one--the one bound in white parchment....
Yes, just so, down here; and turn the reading lamp so that I can read
if I want to.... Oh! ask Miss Maggie to tap at my door very softly
when she comes out from dinner. Has she gone down yet?"

"I think I heard her step just now, ma'am."

"Very well; then you can just tell Susan to let her know. How was
Mr. Laurie looking, Charlotte?"

"I haven't seen him, ma'am."

"Very well. Then that is all, Charlotte. You can just look in here
after Miss Maggie and settle me for the night."

Then the door closed, and Mrs. Baxter instantly began to doze off.

She was one of those persons whose moments between sleeping and
waking, especially during a little attack of feverishness, are
occupied in contemplating a number of little vivid pictures of all
kinds that present themselves to the mental vision; and she saw as
usual a quantity of these, made up of tiny details of the day that was
gone, and of other details markedly unconnected with it. She saw for
example little scenes in which Maggie and Charlotte and medicine
bottles and Chinese faces and printed pages of a book all moved
together in a sort of convincing incoherence; and she was just
beginning to lose herself in the depths of sleep, and to forget her
firm resolution of reading another page or so of the book by her side,
when a little sound came, and she opened, as she thought, her eyes.

Her reading lamp cast a funnel of light across her bed, and the rest
of the room was lit only by the fire dancing in the chimney. Yet this
was bright enough, she thought at the time, to show her perfectly
distinctly, though with shadows fleeting across it, her son's face
peering in at the door. She thought she said something; but she was
not sure afterwards. At any rate, the face did not move; and it seemed
to her that it bore an expression of such extraordinary malignity that
she would hardly have known it for her son's. In a sudden panic she
raised herself in bed, staring; and as the shadows came and went, as
she stared, the face was gone again. Mrs. Baxter drew a quick breath
or two as she looked; but there was nothing. Yet again she could have
sworn that she heard the faint jar of the closing door.

She reached out and put her hand on the bell-string that hung down
over her bed. Then she hesitated. It was too ridiculous, she told
herself. Besides, Charlotte would have gone to her room.

But the fear did not go immediately; though she told herself again and
again that it was just one of those little waking visions that she
knew so well.

She lay back on the pillow, thinking.... Why, they would have reached
the fish by now. No; she would tell Maggie when she came up. How
Laurie would laugh tomorrow! Then, little by little, she dozed off
once more.

* * * * *

The next thing of which she was aware was Maggie bending over her.

"Asleep, Auntie dear?" said the girl softly.

The old lady murmured something. Then she sat up, suddenly.

"No, my dear. Have you finished dinner?"

"Yes, Auntie."

"Where's Laurie? I should like to see him for a minute."

"Not tonight, Auntie; you're too tired. Besides, I think he's gone to
the smoking-room."

She acquiesced placidly.

"Very well, dearest.... Oh! Maggie, such a queer thing happened just
now--when you were at dinner."

"Yes?"

"I thought I saw Laurie look in, just for an instant. But he looked
awful, somehow. It was just one of my little waking visions I've told
you of, I suppose."

The girl was silent; but the old lady saw her suddenly straighten
herself.

"Just ask him whether he did look in, after all. It may just have been
the shadow on his face."

"What time was it?"

"About ten past eight, I suppose, dearest. You'll ask him, won't you?"

"Yes, Auntie.... I think I'd better lock your door when I go out. You
won't fancy such things then, will you?"

"Very well, dearest. As you think best."

The old voice was becoming sleepy again: and Maggie stood watching a
moment or two longer.

"Send Charlotte to me, dearest.... Good night, my pet.... I'm too
sleepy again. My love to Laurie."

"Yes, Auntie."

The old lady felt the girl's warm lips on her forehead. They seemed to
linger a little. Then Mrs. Baxter lost herself once more.


IV

The public bar of the Wheatsheaf Inn was the scene this evening of a
lively discussion. Some thought the old gentleman, arrived that day
from London, to be a new kind of commercial traveler, with designs
upon the gardens of the gentry; others that he was a sort of
scientific collector; others, again, that he was a private detective;
and since there was no evidence at all, good or bad, in support of any
one of these suggestions, a very pretty debate became possible.

A silence fell when his step was heard to pass down the stairs and out
into the street, and another half an hour later when he returned. Then
once more the discussion began.

At ten o'clock the majority of the men moved out into the moonlight to
disperse homewards, as the landlord began to put away the glasses and
glance at the clock. Overhead the lighted blind showed where the
mysterious stranger still kept vigil; and over the way, beyond the
still leafless trees, towered up the twisted chimneys of Mrs. Baxter's
house. No word had been spoken connecting the two, yet one or two of
the men glanced across the way in vague surmise.

Nearly a couple of hours later the landlord himself came to the door
to give the great Mr. Nugent himself, with whom he had been sitting in
the inner parlor, a last good-night, and he too noticed that the
bedroom window was still lighted up. He jerked his finger in the
direction of it.

"A late old party," he said in an undertone.

Mr. Nugent nodded. He was still a little flushed with whisky and with
his previous recountings of what would have happened if his poor
daughter had lived to marry the young squire, of his (Mr. Nugent's)
swift social advancement and its outward evidences, and of the
hobnobbing with the gentry that would have taken place. He looked
reflectively across at the silhouette of the big house, all grey and
silver in the full moon. The landlord followed the direction of his
eyes; and for some reason unknown to them both, the two stood there
silent for a full half-minute. Yet there was nothing exceptional to be
seen.

Immediately before them, across the road, rose the high oak paling
that enclosed the lawn on this side, and the immense limes that
towered, untrimmed and undipped, in delicate soaring filigree against
the peacock sky of night. Behind them showed the chimneys, above the
dusky front of red-brick and the parapet. The moon was not yet full
upon the house, and the windows glimmered only here and there, in
lines and sudden patches where they caught the reflected light.

Yet the two looked at it in silence. They had seen such a sight fifty
times before, for the landlord and the other at least twice a week
spent such an evening together, and usually parted at the door. But
they stood here on this evening and looked.

All was as still as a spring night can be. Unseen and unheard the life
of the earth streamed upwards in twig and blade and leaf, pushing on
to the miracle of the prophet Jonas, to be revealed in wealth of color
and scent and sound a fortnight later. The wind had fallen; the last
doors were shut, and the two figures standing here were as still as
all else. To neither of them occurred even the thinnest shadow of a
suspicion as to the cause that held them here--two plain men--in
silence, staring at an old house--not a thought of any hidden life
beyond that of matter, that life by which most men reckon existence.
For them this was but one more night such as they had known for half a
century. There was a moon. It was fine. That was Mrs. Baxter's house.
This was the village street:--that was the sum of the situation....

Mr. Nugent moved off presently with a brisk air, bidding his friend
good night, and the landlord, after another look, went in. There came
the sound of bolts and bars, the light in the window of the parlor
beside the bar suddenly went out, footsteps creaked upstairs; a door
shut, and all was silence.

Half an hour later a shadow moved across the blind upstairs: an arm
appeared to elongate itself; then, up went the blind, the window
followed it, and a bearded face looked out into the moonlight. Behind
was the table littered with papers, for Mr. Cathcart, laborious even
in the midst of anxiety, had brought down with him for the Sunday a
quantity of business that could not easily wait; and had sat there
patiently docketing, correcting, and writing ever since his interview
in the lane nearly five hours before.

Even now his face seemed serene enough; it jerked softly this way and
that, up the street and down again; then once more settled down to
stare across the road at the grey and silver pile beyond the trees.
Yet even he saw nothing there beyond what the landlord had seen. It
stood there, uncrossed by lights or footsteps or sounds, keeping its
secret well, even from him who knew what it contained.

Yet to the watcher the place was as sinister as a prison. Behind the
solemn walls and the superficial flash of the windows, beneath the
silence and the serenity, lay a life more terrible than death, engaged
now in some drama of which he could not guess the issue. A conflict
was proceeding there, more silent than the silence itself. Two souls
fought for one against a foe of unknown strength and unguessed
possibilities. The servants slept apart, and the old mistress apart,
yet in one of those rooms (and he did not know which) a battle was
locked of which the issue was more stupendous than that of any
struggle with disease. Yet he could do nothing to help, except what he
already did, with his fingers twisting and gripping a string of beads
beneath the window-sill. Such a battle as this must be fought by
picked champions; and since the priesthood in this instance could not
help, a girl's courage and love must take its place.

From the village above the hill came the stroke of a single bell; a
bird in the garden-walk beyond the paling chirped softly to his mate;
then once more silence came down upon the moonlit street, the striped
shadows, the tall house and trees, and the bearded face watching at
the window.




_Chapter XVII_


I

The little inner hall looked very quiet and familiar as Maggie
Deronnais stood on the landing, passing through her last struggle with
herself before the shock of battle. The stairs went straight down,
with the old carpet, up and down which she had gone a thousand times,
with every faint patch and line where it was a little worn at the
edges, visible in the lamplight from overhead; and she stared at
these, standing there silent in her white dress, bare-armed and
bare-necked, with her hair in great coils on her head, as upright as a
lance. Beneath lay the little hall, with the tiger-skin, the
red-papered walls, and a few miscellaneous things--an old cloak of
hers she used on rainy days in the garden, a straw hat of Laurie's,
and a cap or two, hanging on the pegs opposite. In front was the door
to the outer hall, to the left, that of the smoking-room. The house
was perfectly quiet. Dinner had been cleared away already through the
hatch into the kitchen passage, and the servants' quarters were on the
other side of the house. No sound of any kind came from the
smoking-room; not even the faint whiff of tobacco-smoke that had a way
of stealing out when Laurie was smoking really seriously within.

She did not know why, she had stopped there, half-way down the stairs.

She had dined from a tray in her own room, as she had said; and had
been there alone ever since, for the most part at her _prie-Dieu_, in
dead silence, conscious of nothing connected, listening to the
occasional tread of a maid in the hall beneath, passing to and from
the dining-room. There she had tried to face the ordeal that was
coming--the ordeal, at the nature of which even now she only half
guessed, and she had realized nothing, formed no plan, considered no
eventuality. Things were so wholly out of her experience that she had
no process whereby to deal with them. Just two words came over and
over again before her consciousness--Courage and Love.

She looked again at the door.

Laurie was there, she said. Then she questioned herself. Was it
Laurie...?

"He is there, underneath," she whispered to herself softly; "he is
waiting for me to help him." She remembered that she must make that
act of faith. Yet was it Laurie who had looked in at his mother's
door...? Well, the door was locked now. But that secretive visit
seemed to her terrible.

What, then, did she believe?

She had put that question to herself fifty times, and found no answer.
The old man's solution was clear enough now: he believed no less than
that out of that infinitely mysterious void that lies beyond the veils
of sense there had come a Personality, strong, malignant, degraded,
and seeking to degrade, seizing upon this lad's soul, in the disguise
of a dead girl, and desiring to possess it. How fantastic that
sounded! Did she believe it? She did not know. Then there was the
solution of a nervous strain, rising to a climax of insanity. This was
the answer of the average doctor. Did she believe that? Was that
enough to account for the look in the boy's eyes? She did not know.

She understood perfectly that the fact of herself living under
conditions of matter made the second solution the more natural; yet
that did not content her. For her religion informed her emphatically
that discarnate Personalities existed which desired the ruin of human
souls, and, indeed, forbade the practices of spiritualism for this
very reason. Yet there was hardly a Catholic she knew who regarded the
possibility in these days as more than a theoretical one. So she
hesitated, holding her judgment in suspense. One thing only she saw
clearly, and that was that she must act as if she believed the former
solution: she must treat the boy as one obsessed, whether indeed he
were so or not. There was no other manner in which she could
concentrate her force upon the heart of the struggle. If there were no
evil Personality in the affair, it was necessary to assume one.

And still she waited.

There came back to her an old childish memory.

Once, as a child of ten, she had had to undergo a small operation. One
of the nuns had taken her to the doctor's house. When she had
understood that she must come into the next room and have it done, she
had stopped dead. The nun had encouraged her.

"Leave me quite alone, please, Mother, just for one minute. Please
don't speak. I'll come in a minute."

After a minute's waiting, while they looked at her, she had gone
forward, sat down in the chair and behaved quite perfectly. Yes; she
understood that now. It was necessary first to collect forces, to
concentrate energies, to subdue the imagination: after that almost
anything could be borne.

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