II
By the time that Laurie's answer came, poor Maggie had arranged her emotions fairly satisfactorily. She came to the conclusion, arrived at after much heart-searching, that after all she was not yet actually in love with Laurie, but was in danger of being so, and that therefore now that she knew the danger, and could guard against it, she need not actually withdraw from her home, and bury herself in a convent or the foreign mission-field.
She arrived at this astonishing conclusion by the following process of thought. It may be presented in the form of a syllogism.
All girls who are in love regard the beloved as a spotless, reproachless hero.
Maggie Deronnais did not regard Laurie Baxter as a spotless, reproachless hero.
Ergo. Maggie Deronnais was not in love with Laurie Baxter.
Strange as it may appear to non-Catholic readers, Maggie did not confide her complications to the ear of Father Mahon. She mentioned, no doubt, on the following Saturday, that she had given way to thoughts of pride and jealousy, that she had deceived herself with regard to a certain action, done really for selfish motives, into thinking she had done it for altruistic motives, and there she left it. And, no doubt, Father Mahon left it there too, and gave her 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 séance 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 had then dropped off to sleep before his fire. He awakened suddenly to see the big man standing almost over him, and sat up confusedly.
"I beg your pardon, Mr. Baxter; the porter's boy told me to come straight up. I found your outer door open."
Laurie hastened to welcome him, to set him down in a deep chair, to offer whisky and to supply tobacco. There was something about this man that commanded deference.
"You know why I have come, I expect," said the medium, smiling.
Laurie smiled back, a little nervously.
"I have come to see whether you will not reconsider your decision."
The boy shook his head.
"I think not," he said.
"You found no ill effects, I hope, from what happened at Lady Laura's?"
"Not at all, after the first shock."
"Doesn't that reassure you at all, Mr. Baxter?"
Laurie hesitated.
"It's like this," he said; "I'm not really convinced. I don't see anything final in what happened."
"Will you explain, please?"
Laurie set the results of his meditations forth at length. There was nothing, he said, that could not be accounted for by a very abnormal state of subjectivity. The fact that this ... this young person's name was in his mind ... and so forth....
"... And I find it rather distracting to my work," he ended. "Please don't think me rude or ungrateful, Mr. Vincent."
He thought he was being very strong and sensible.
The medium was silent for a moment.
"Doesn't it strike you as odd that I myself was able to get no results that night?" he said presently.
"How? I don't understand."
"Why, as a rule, I find no difficulty at all in getting some sort of response by automatic handwriting. Are you aware that I could do nothing at all that night?"
Laurie considered it.
"Well," he said at last, "this may sound very foolish to you; but granting that I have got unusual gifts that way—they are your own words, Mr. Vincent—if that is so, I don't see why my own concentration of thought, or hypnotic sleep or trance or whatever it was—might not have been so intense as to—"
"I quite see," interrupted the other. "That is, of course, conceivable from your point of view. It had occurred to me that you might think that.... Then I take it that your theory is that the subconscious self is sufficient to account for it all—that in this hypnotic sleep, if you care to call it so, you simply uttered what was in your heart, and identified yourself with ... with your memory of that young girl."
"I suppose so," said Laurie shortly.
"And the rapping, loud, continuous, unmistakable?"
"That doesn't seem to me important. I did not actually hear it, you know."
"Then what you need is some unmistakable sign?"
"Yes ... but I see perfectly that this is impossible. Whatever I said in my sleep, either I can't identify it as true, in which case it is worthless as evidence, or I can identify it, because I already know it, and in that case it is worthless again."
The medium smiled, half closing his eyes.
"You must think us very childish, Mr. Baxter," he said.
He sat up a little in his chair; then, putting his hand into his breast pocket, drew out a note-book, holding it still closed on his knee.
"May I ask you a rather painful question?" he said gently.
Laurie nodded. He felt so secure.
"Would you kindly tell me—first, whether you have seen the grave of this young girl since you left the country; secondly, whether anyone happens to have mentioned it to you?"
Laurie swallowed in his throat.
"Certainly no one has mentioned it to me. And I have not seen it since I left the country."
"How long ago was that?"
"That was ... about September the twenty-seventh."
"Thank you...!" He opened the note-book and turned the pages a moment or two. "And will you listen to this, Mr. Baxter?—'Tell Laurie that the ground has sunk a little above my grave; and that cracks are showing at the sides.'"
"What is that book?" said the boy hoarsely.
The medium closed it and returned it to his pocket.
"That book, Mr. Baxter, contains a few extracts from some of the things you said during your trance. The sentence I have read is one of them, an answer given to a demand made by me that the control should give some unmistakable proof of her identity. She ... you hesitated some time before giving that answer."
"Who took the notes?"
"Mrs. Stapleton. You can see the originals if you wish. I thought it might distress you to know that such notes had been taken; but I have had to risk that. We must not lose you, Mr. Baxter."
Laurie sat, dumb and bewildered.
"Now all you have to do," continued the medium serenely, "is to find out whether what has been said is correct or not. If it is not correct, there will be an end of the matter, if you choose. But if it is correct—"
"Stop; let me think!" cried Laurie.
He was back again in the confusion from which he thought he had escaped. Here was a definite test, offered at least in good faith—just such a test as had been lacking before; and he had no doubt whatever that it would be borne out by facts. And if it were—was there any conceivable hypothesis that would explain it except the one offered so confidently by this grave, dignified man who sat and looked at him with something of interested compassion in his heavy eyes? Coincidence? It was absurd. Certainly graves did sink, sometimes—but ... Thought-transference from someone who noticed the grave...? But why that particular thought, so vivid, concise, and pointed...?
If it were true...?
He looked hopelessly at the man, who sat smoking quietly and waiting.
And then again another thought, previously ignored, pierced him like a sword. If it were true; if Amy herself, poor pretty Amy, had indeed been there, were indeed near him now, hammering and crying out like a child shut out at night, against his own skeptical heart ... if it were indeed true that during those two hours she had had her heart's desire, and had been one with his very soul, in a manner to which no earthly union could aspire ... how had he treated her? Even at this thought a shudder of repulsion ran through him.... It was unnatural, detestable ... yet how sweet...! What did the Church say of such things...? But what if religion were wrong, and this indeed were the satiety of the higher nature of which marriage was but the material expression...?
The thoughts flew swifter than clouds as he sat there, bewildering, torturing, beckoning. He made a violent effort. He must be sane, and face things.
"Mr. Vincent," he cried.
The kindly face turned to him again.
"Mr. Vincent...."
"Hush, I quite understand," said the fatherly voice. "It is a shock, I know; but Truth is a little shocking sometimes. Wait. I perfectly understand that you must have time. You must think it all over, and verify this. You must not commit yourself. But I think you had better have my address. The ladies are a little too emotional, are they not? I expect you would sooner come to see me without them."
He laid his card on the little tea-table and stood up.
"Good-night, Mr. Baxter."
Laurie took his hand, and looked for a moment into the kind eyes. Then the man was gone.