The Necromancers, Robert Hugh Benson [miss read books .TXT] 📗

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 Marche 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 Marche 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 have written to me--Mr. Morton, I mean--if Laurie had been really unwell. You see he only says he doesn't attend to his work as he ought."

Maggie took up the letter, put it carefully back into the envelope, and went on with breakfast. There was nothing more to be said just then.

But she was uneasy, and after breakfast went out into the garden, spud in hand, to think it all over, with the letter in her pocket.

Certainly the letter was not alarming per se, but per accidens--that is to say, taking into account who it was that had written, she was not so sure. She had met Mr. Morton but once, and had formed of him the kind of impression that a girl would form of such a man in the hours of a week-end--a brusque, ordinary kind of barrister without much imagination and a good deal of shrewd force. It was surely rather an extreme step for a man like this to write to a girl in such a condition of things, asking her to use her influence to dissuade Laurie from his present course of life. Plainly the man meant what he said; he had not written to Mrs. Baxter, as he explained in the letter, for fear of alarming her unduly, and, as he expressly said, there was nothing to be alarmed about. Yet he had written.

Maggie stopped at the lower end of the orchard path, took out the letter,