Book: The Necromancers

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Laurie looked at him closely....

And now he began to be aware of a certain quite indefinable change in
the face at which he looked. The eyes were open--no, it was not in
them that the change lay, nor in the lines about the mouth, so far as
he could see them, nor in any detail, anywhere. Neither was it the
face of a dreamer or a sleepwalker, or of the dead, when the lines
disappear and life retires. It was a living, conscious face, yet it
was changed. The lips were slightly parted, and the breath came evenly
between them. It was more like the face of one lost in deep, absorbed,
introspective thought. Laurie decided that this was the explanation.

He looked at the hand on the paper--well shaped, brownish,
capable--perfectly motionless, the pencil held lightly between the
finger and thumb.

Then he glanced up at the two ladies.

They too were perfectly motionless, but there was no change in them.
The eyes of both were downcast, fixed steadily upon the paper. And as
he looked he saw Lady Laura begin to lift her lids slowly as if to
glance at him. He looked himself upon the paper and the motionless
fingers.

He was astonished at the speed with which the situation had developed.
Five minutes ago he had been listening to talk, and joining in it.
The clergyman had been here; he himself had been sitting a yard
further back. Now they sat here as if they had sat for an hour. It
seemed that the progress of events had stopped....

Then he began to listen for the sounds of the world outside, for
within here it seemed as if a silence of a very strange quality had
suddenly descended and enveloped them. It was as if a section--that
place in which he sat--had been cut out of time and space. It was
apart here, it was different altogether....

He began to be intensely and minutely conscious of the world
outside--so entirely conscious that he lost all perception of that at
which he stared; whether it was the paper, or the strong, motionless
hand, or the introspective face, he was afterwards unaware. But he
heard all the quiet roar of the London evening, and was able to
distinguish even the note of each instrument that helped to make up
that untiring, inconclusive orchestra. Far away to the northwards
sounded a great thoroughfare, the rolling of wheels, a myriad hoofs,
the pulse of motor vehicles, and the cries of street boys; upon all
these his attention dwelt as they came up through the outward windows
into that dead silent, lamp-lit room of which he had lost
consciousness. Again a hansom came up the street, with the rap of
hoofs, the swish of a whip, the wintry jingle of bells....

He began gently to consider these things, to perceive, rather than to
form, little inward pictures of what they signified; he saw the
lighted omnibus, the little swirl of faces round a news-board.

Then he began to consider what had brought him here; it seemed that he
saw himself, coming in his dark suit across the park, turning into the
thoroughfare and across it. He began to consider Amy; and it seemed to
him that in this intense and living silence he was conscious of her
for the first time without sorrow since ten days ago. He began to
consider.

* * * * *

Something brought him back in an instant to the room and his
perception of it, but he had not an idea what this was, whether a
movement or a sound. But on considering it afterwards he remembered
that it was as that sound is that wakes a man at the very instant of
his falling asleep, a sharp momentary tick, as of a clock. Yet he had
not been in the least sleepy.

On the contrary, he perceived now with an extreme and alert attention
the hand on the paper; he even turned his head slightly to see if the
pencil had moved. It was as motionless as at the beginning. He glanced
up, with a touch of surprise, at his hostess's face, and caught her in
the very act of turning her eyes from his. There was no impatience in
her movement: rather her face was of one absorbed, listening intently,
not like the bearded face opposite, introspective and intuitive, but
eagerly, though motionlessly, observant of the objective world. He
looked at Mrs. Stapleton. She too bore the same expression of intent
regarding thought on her usually rather tiresome face.

Then once again the silence began to come down, like a long, noiseless
hush.

This time, however, his progress was swifter and more sure. He passed
with the speed of thought through those processes that had been
measurable before, faintly conscious of the words spoken before the
sitting began--

"... If possible, the silence of thought."

He thought he understood now what this signified, and that he was
experiencing it. No longer did he dwell upon, or consider, with any
voluntary activity, the images that passed before him. Rather they
moved past him while he simply regarded them without understanding.
His perception ran swiftly outwards, as through concentric circles,
yet he was not sure whether it were outwards or inwards that he went.
The roar of London, with its flight of ocular visions, sank behind
him, and without any further sense of mental travel, he found himself
perceiving his own home, whether in memory, imagination, or fact he
did not know. But he perceived his mother, in the familiar lamp-lit
room, over her needlework, and Maggie--Maggie looking at him with a
strange, almost terrified expression in her great eyes. Then these too
were gone; and he was out in some warm silence, filled with a single
presence--that which he desired; and there he stopped.

* * * * *

He was not in the least aware of how long this lasted. But he found
himself at a certain moment in time, looking steadily at the white
paper on the table, from which the hand had gone, again conscious of
the sudden passing of some clear sound that left no echo--as sharp as
the crack of a whip. Oh! the paper--that was the important point! He
bent a little closer, and was aware of a sharp disappointment as he
saw it was stainless of writing. Then he was astonished that the hand
and pencil had gone from it, and looked up quickly.

Mr. Vincent was looking at him with a strange expression.

At first he thought he might have interrupted, and wondered with
dismay whether this were so. But there was no sign of anger in those
eyes--nothing but a curious and kindly interest.

"Nothing happened?" he exclaimed hastily. "You have written nothing?"

He looked at the ladies.

Lady Laura too was looking at him with the same strange interest as
the medium. Mrs. Stapleton, he noticed, was just folding up, in an
unobtrusive manner, several sheets of paper that he had not noticed
before.

He felt a little stiff, and moved as if to stand up but, to his
astonishment, the big man was up in an instant, laying his hands on
his shoulders.

"Just sit still quietly for a few minutes," said the kindly
voice. "Just sit still."

"Why--why--" began Laurie, bewildered.

"Yes, just sit still quietly," went on the voice; "you feel a little
tired."

"Just a little," said Laurie. "But--"

"Yes, yes; just sit still. No; don't speak."

Then a silence fell again.

Laurie began to wonder what this was all about. Certainly he felt
tired, yet strangely elated. But he felt no inclination to move; and
sat back, passive, looking at his own hands on his knees. But he was
disappointed that nothing had happened.

Then the thought of time came into his mind. He supposed that it would
be about ten minutes past six. The sitting had begun a little before
six. He glanced up at the clock on the mantelpiece; but it was one of
those bulgy-faced Empire gilt affairs that display everything except
the hour. He still waited a moment, feeling all this to be very
unusual and unconventional. Why should he sit here like an invalid,
and why should these three sit here and watch him so closely?

He shifted a little in his chair, feeling that an effort was due from
him. The question of the time of day struck him as a suitably
conventional remark with which to break the embarrassing silence.

"What is the time?" he said. "I am afraid I ought to be--"

"There is plenty of time," said the grave voice across the table.

With a sudden movement Laurie was on his feet, peering at the clock,
knowing that something was wrong somewhere. Then he turned to the
company bewildered and suspicious.

"Why, it is nearly eight," he cried.

Mr. Vincent smiled reassuringly.

"It is about that," he said. "Please sit down again, Mr. Baxter."

"But--but--" began Laurie.

"Please sit down again, Mr. Baxter," repeated the voice, with a touch
of imperiousness that there was no resisting.

Laurie sat down again; but he was alert, suspicious, and intensely
puzzled.

"Will you kindly tell me what has happened?" he asked sharply.

"You feel tired?"

"No; I am all right. Kindly tell me what has happened."

He saw Lady Laura whisper something in an undertone he could not
hear. Mr. Vincent stood up with a nod and leaned himself against the
mantelpiece, looking down at the rather indignant young man.

"Certainly," he said. "You are sure you are not exhausted, Mr.
Baxter?"

"Not in the least," said Laurie.

"Well, then, you passed into trance about five minutes--"

"_What?_"

"You passed into trance about five minutes past six; you came out of
it five minutes ago."

"Trance?" gasped Laurie.

"Certainly. A very deep and satisfactory trance. There is nothing to
be frightened of, Mr. Baxter. It is an unusual gift, that is all. I
have seldom seen a more satisfactory instance. May I ask you a
question or two, sir?"

Laurie nodded vaguely. He was still trying hopelessly to take in what
had been said.

"You nearly passed into trance a little earlier. May I ask whether you
heard or saw anything that recalled you?"

Laurie shut his eyes tight in an effort to think. He felt dimly rather
proud of himself.

"It was quite short. Then you came back and looked at Lady Laura. Try
to remember."

"I remember thinking I had heard a sound."

The medium nodded.

"Just so," he said.

"That would be the third," said Lady Laura, nodding sagely.

"Third what?" said Laurie rather rudely.

No one paid any attention to him.

"Now can you give any account of the last hour and a half?" continued
the medium tranquilly.

Laurie considered again. He was still a little confused.

"I remember thinking about the streets," he said, "and then of my own
home, and then..." He stopped.

"Yes; and then?"

"Then of a certain private matter."

"Ah! We must not pry then. But can you answer one question more? Was
it connected with any person who has crossed over?"

"It was," said Laurie shortly.

"Just so," said the medium.

Laurie felt suspicious.

"Why do you ask that?" he said.

Mr. Vincent looked at him steadily.

"I think I had better tell you, Mr. Baxter; it is more straightforward,
though you will not like it. You will be surprised to hear that you
talked very considerably during this hour and a half; and from all that
you said I should suppose you were controlled by a spirit recently
crossed over--a young girl who on being questioned gave the name of Amy
Nugent--"

Laurie sprang to his feet, furious.

"You have been spying, sir. How dare you--"

"Sit down, Mr. Baxter, or you shall not hear a word more," rang out
the imperious, unruffled voice. "Sit down this instant."

Laurie shot a look at the two ladies. Then he remembered himself. He
sat down.

"I am not at all angry, Mr. Baxter," came the voice, suave and kindly
again. "Your thought was very natural. But I think I can prove to you
that you are mistaken."

Mr. Vincent glanced at Mrs. Stapleton with an almost imperceptible
frown, then back at Laurie.

"Let me see, Mr. Baxter.... Is there anyone on earth besides yourself
who knew that you had sat out, about ten days ago or so, under some
yew trees in your garden at home, and thought of this young girl--that
you--"

Laurie looked at him in dumb dismay; some little sound broke from his
mouth.

"Well, is that enough, Mr. Baxter?"

Lady Laura slid in a sentence here.

"Dear Mr. Baxter, you need not be in the least alarmed. All that has
passed here is, of course, as sacred as in the confessional. We should
not dream, without your leave--"

"One moment," gasped the boy.

He drove his face into his hands and sat overwhelmed.

Presently he looked up.

"But I knew it," he said. "I knew it. It was just my own self which
spoke."

The medium smiled.

"Yes," he said, "of course that is the first answer." He placed one
hand on the table, leaning forward, and began to play his fingers as
if on a piano. Laurie watched the movement, which seemed vaguely
familiar.

"Can you account for that, Mr. Baxter? You did that several times. It
seemed uncharacteristic of you, somehow."

Laurie looked at him, mute. He remembered now. He half raised a hand
in protest.

"And ... and do you ever stammer?" went on the man.

Still Laurie was silent. It was beyond belief or imagination.

"Now if those things were characteristic--"

"Stop, sir," cried the boy; and then, "But those too might be unconscious
imitation."

"They might," said the other. "But then we had the advantage of
watching you. And there were other things."

"I beg your pardon?"

"There was the loud continuous rapping, at the beginning and the
end. You were awakened twice by these."

Laurie remained perfectly motionless without a word. He was still
striving to marshal this flood of mad ideas. It was incredible,
amazing.

Then he stood up.

"I must go away," he said. "I--I don't know what to think."

"You had better stay a little longer and rest," said the medium
kindly.

The boy shook his head.

"I must go at once," he said. "I cannot trust myself."

He went out without a word, followed by the medium. The two ladies sat
eyeing one another.

"It has been astonishing ... astonishing," sighed Mrs. Stapleton.
"What a find!"

There was no more said. Lady Laura sat as one in trance herself.

Then Mr. Vincent returned.

"You must not lose sight of that young man," he said abruptly. "It is
an extraordinary case."

"I have all the notes here," remarked Mrs. Stapleton.

"Yes; you had better keep them. He must not see them at present."




_Chapter V_


I

As the weeks went by Maggie's faint uneasiness disappeared. She was
one of those fortunate persons who, possessing what are known as
nerves, are aware of the possession, and discount their effects
accordingly.

That uneasiness had culminated a few days after Laurie's departure one
evening as she sat with the old lady after tea--in a sudden touch of
terror at she knew not what.

"What is the matter, my dear?" the old lady had said without warning.

Maggie was reading, but it appeared that Mrs. Baxter had noticed her
lower her book suddenly, with an odd expression.

Maggie had blinked a moment.

"Nothing," she said. "I was just thinking of Laurie; I don't know
why."

But since then she had been able to reassure herself. Her fancies were
but fancies, she told herself; and they had ceased to trouble her. The
boy's letters to his mother were ordinary and natural: he was reading
fairly hard; his coach was as pleasant a person as he had seemed; he
hoped to run down to Stantons for a few days at Christmas. There was
nothing whatever to alarm anyone; plainly his ridiculous attitude
about Spiritualism had been laid by; and, better still, he was
beginning to recover himself after his sorrow in September.

It was an extraordinarily peaceful and uneventful life that the two
led together--the kind of life that strengthens previous proclivities
and adds no new ones; that brings out the framework of character and
motive as dropping water clears the buried roots of a tree. This was
all very well for Mrs. Baxter, whose character was already fully
formed, it may be hoped; but not so utterly satisfactory for the girl,
though the process was pleasant enough.

After Mass and breakfast she spent the morning as she wished,
overseeing little extra details of the house--gardening plans, the
poultry, and so forth--and reading what she cared to. The afternoon
was devoted to the old lady's airing; the evening till dinner to
anything she wished; and after dinner again to gentle conversation.
Very little happened. The Vicar and his wife dined there occasionally,
and still more occasionally Father Mahon. Now and then there were
vague entertainments to be patronized in the village schoolroom, in an
atmosphere of ink and hair-oil, and a mild amount of rather dreary and
stately gaiety connected with the big houses round. Mrs. Baxter
occasionally put in appearances, a dignified and aristocratic old
figure with her gentle eyes and black lace veil; and Maggie went with
her.

The pleasure of this life grew steadily upon Maggie. She was one of
that fraction of the world that finds entertainment to lie, like the
kingdom of God, within. She did not in the least wish to be "amused"
or stimulated and distracted. She was perfectly and serenely content
with the fowls, the garden, her small selected tasks, her religion,
and herself.

The result was, as it always is in such cases, she began to revolve
about three or four main lines of thought, and to make a very fair
progress in the knowledge of herself. She knew her faults quite well;
and she was not unaware of her virtues. She knew perfectly that she
was apt to give way to internal irritation, of a strong though
invisible kind, when interruptions happened; that she now and then
gave way to an unduly fierce contempt of tiresome people, and said
little bitter things that she afterwards regretted. She also knew that
she was quite courageous, that she had magnificent physical health,
and that she could be perfectly content with a life that a good many
other people would find narrow and stifling.

Her own character then was one thing that she had studied--not in the
least in a morbid way--during her life at Stantons. And another thing
she was beginning to study, rather to her own surprise, was the
character of Laurie. She began to become a little astonished at the
frequency with which, during a silent drive, or some mild mechanical
labor in the gardens, the image of that young man would rise before
her.

Indeed, as has been said, she had new material to work on. She had not
realized till the _affaire_ Amy that boy's astonishing selfishness;
and it became for her a rather pleasant psychological exercise to
build up his characteristics into a consistent whole. It had not
struck her, till this specimen came before her notice, how generosity
and egotism, for example, so far from being mutually exclusive, can
very easily be complements, each of the other.

So then she passed her days--exteriorly a capable and occupied person,
interested in half a dozen simple things; interiorly rather
introspective, rather scrupulous, and intensely interested in the
watching of two characters--her own and her adopted brother's. Mrs.
Baxter's character needed no dissection; it was a consistent whole,
clear as crystal and as rigid.

It was still some five weeks before Christmas that Maggie became aware
of what, as a British maiden, she ought, of course, to have known long
before--namely, that she was thinking just a little too much about a
young man who, so far as was apparent, thought nothing at all about
her. It was true that once he had passed through a period of
sentimentality in her regard; but the extreme discouragement it had
met with had been enough.

Her discovery happened in this way.

Mrs. Baxter opened a letter one morning, smiling contentedly to
herself.

"From Laurie," she said. Maggie ceased eating toast for a second, to
listen.

Then the old lady uttered a small cry of dismay.

"He thinks he can't come, after all," she said.

Maggie had a moment of very acute annoyance.

"What does he say? Why not?" she asked.

There was a pause. She watched Mrs. Baxter's lips moving slowly, her
glasses in place; saw the page turned, and turned again. She took
another piece of toast. There are few things more irritating than to
have fragments of a letter doled out piecemeal.

"He doesn't say. He just says he's very busy indeed, and has a great
deal of way to make up." The old lady continued reading tranquilly,
and laid the letter down.

"Nothing more?" asked Maggie, consumed with annoyance.

"He's been to the theatre once or twice.... Dear Laurie! I'm glad he's
recovering his spirits."

Maggie was very angry indeed. She thought it abominable of the boy to
treat his mother like that. And then there was the shooting--not much,
indeed, beyond the rabbits, which the man who acted as occasional
keeper told her wanted thinning, and a dozen or two of wild
pheasants--yet this shooting had always been done, she understood, at
Christmas, ever since Master Laurie had been old enough to hold a gun.

She determined to write him a letter.

When breakfast was over, with a resolved face she went to her room.
She would really tell this boy a home-truth or two. It was a--a
sister's place to do so. The mother, she knew well enough, would do no
more than send a little wail, and would end by telling the dear boy
that, of course, he knew best, and that she was very happy to think
that he was taking such pains about his studies. Someone must point
out to the boy his overwhelming selfishness, and it seemed that no one
was at hand but herself. Therefore she would do it.

She did it, therefore, politely enough but unmistakably; and as it was
a fine morning, she thought that she would like to step up to the
village and post it. She did not want to relent; and once the letter
was in the post-box, the thing would be done.

It was, indeed, a delicious morning. As she passed out through the
iron gate the trees overhead, still with a few brown belated leaves,
soared up in filigree of exquisite workmanship into a sky of clear
November blue, as fresh as a hedge-sparrow's egg. The genial sound of
cock-crowing rose, silver and exultant, from the farm beyond the road,
and the tiny street of the hamlet looked as clean as a Dutch picture.

She noticed on the right, just before she turned up to the village on
the left, the grocer's shop, with the name "Nugent" in capitals as
bright and flamboyant as on the depot of a merchant king. Mr. Nugent
could be faintly descried within, in white shirt-sleeves and an apron,
busied at a pile of cheeses. Overhead, three pairs of lace curtains,
each decked with a blue bow, denoted the bedrooms. One of them must
have been Amy's. She wondered which....

All up the road to the village, some half-mile in length, she pondered
Amy. She had never seen her, to her knowledge; but she had a tolerably
accurate mental picture of her from Mrs. Baxter's account.... Ah! how
could Laurie? How could he...? Laurie, of all people! It was just one
more example....

After dropping her letter into the box at the corner, she hesitated
for an instant. Then, with an odd look on her face, she turned sharply
aside to where the church tower pricked above the leafless trees.

It was a typical little country church, with that odor of the
respectable and rather stuffy sanctity peculiar to the class; she had
wrinkled her nose at it more than once in Laurie's company. But she
passed by the door of it now, and, stepping among the wet grasses,
came down the little slope among the headstones to where a very white
marble angel clasped an equally white marble cross. She passed to the
front of this, and looked, frowning a little over the intolerable
taste of the thing.

The cross, she perceived, was wreathed with a spray of white marble
ivory; the angel was a German female, with a very rounded leg emerging
behind a kind of button; and there, at the foot of the cross, was the
inscription, in startling black--


AMY NUGENT

THE DEAR AND ONLY DAUGHTER

OF

AMOS AND MARIA NUGENT

OF STANTONS

DIED SEPTEMBER 21st 1901

RESPECTED BY ALL

_"I SHALL SEE HER BUT NOT NOW."_


Below, as vivid as the inscription, there stood out the maker's name,
and of the town where he lived.

* * * * *

So she lay there, reflected Maggie. It had ended in that. A mound of
earth, cracking a little, and sunken. She lay there, her nervous
fingers motionless and her stammer silent. And could there be a more
eloquent monument of what she was...? Then she remembered herself, and
signed herself with the cross, while her lips moved an instant for the
repose of the poor girlish soul. Then she stepped up again on to the
path to go home.

It was as she came near the church gate that she understood herself,
that she perceived why she had come, and was conscious for the first
time of her real attitude of soul as she had stood there, reading the
inscription, and, in a flash, there followed the knowledge of the
inevitable meaning of it all.

In a word it was this.

She had come there, she told herself, to triumph, to gloat. Oh! she
spared herself nothing, as she stood there, crimson with shame, to
gloat over the grave of a rival. Amy was nothing less than that, and
she herself--she, Margaret Marie Deronnais--had given way to jealousy
of this grocer's daughter, because ... because ... she had begun to
care, really to care, for the man to whom she had written that letter
this morning, and this man had scarcely said one word to her, or given
her one glance, beyond such as a brother might give to a sister. There
was the naked truth.

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