First published in 1909.
Wildside Press
Doylestown, Pennsylvania
I must express my gratitude to the Rev. Father Augustine Howard,
O.P., who has kindly read this book in manuscript and favored me with
his criticisms.
--Robert Hugh Benson.
_Chapter I_
I
"I am very much distressed about it all," murmured Mrs. Baxter.
She was a small, delicate-looking old lady, very true to type indeed,
with the silvery hair of the devout widow crowned with an exquisite
lace cap, in a filmy black dress, with a complexion of precious china,
kind shortsighted blue eyes, and white blue-veined hands busy now upon
needlework. She bore about with her always an atmosphere of piety,
humble, tender, and sincere, but as persistent as the gentle
sandalwood aroma which breathed from her dress. Her theory of the
universe, as the girl who watched her now was beginning to find out,
was impregnable and unapproachable. Events which conflicted with it
were either not events, or they were so exceptional as to be
negligible. If she were hard pressed she emitted a pathetic
peevishness that rendered further argument impossible.
The room in which she sat reflected perfectly her personality. In
spite of the early Victorian date of the furniture, there was in its
arrangement and selection a taste so exquisite as to deprive it of
even a suspicion of Philistinism. Somehow the rosewood table on which
the September morning sun fell with serene beauty did not conflict as
it ought to have done with the Tudor paneling of the room. A tapestry
screen veiled the door into the hall, and soft curtains of velvety
gold hung on either side of the tall, modern windows leading to the
garden. For the rest, the furniture was charming and suitable--low
chairs, a tapestry couch, a multitude of little leather-covered books
on every table, and two low carved bookshelves on either side of the
door filled with poetry and devotion.
The girl who sat upright with her hands on her lap was of another type
altogether--of that type of which it is impossible to predicate
anything except that it makes itself felt in every company. Any
respectable astrologer would have had no difficulty in assigning her
birth to the sign of the Scorpion. In outward appearance she was not
remarkable, though extremely pleasing, and it was a pleasingness that
grew upon acquaintance. Her beauty, such as it was, was based upon a
good foundation: upon regular features, a slightly cleft rounded chin,
a quantity of dark coiled hair, and large, steady, serene brown
eyes. Her hands were not small, but beautifully shaped; her figure
slender, well made, and always at its ease in any attitude. In fact,
she had an air of repose, strength, and all-round competence; and,
contrasted with the other, she resembled a well-bred sheep-dog eyeing
an Angora cat.
They were talking now about Laurie Baxter.
"Dear Laurie is so impetuous and sensitive," murmured his mother,
drawing her needle softly through the silk, and then patting her
material, "and it is all terribly sad."
This was undeniable, and Maggie said nothing, though her lips opened
as if for speech. Then she closed them again, and sat watching the
twinkling fire of logs upon the hearth. Then once more Mrs. Baxter
took up the tale.
"When I first heard of the poor girl's death," she said, "it seemed to
me so providential. It would have been too dreadful if he had married
her. He was away from home, you know, on Thursday, when it happened;
but he was back here on Friday, and has been like--like a madman ever
since. I have done what I could, but--"
"Was she quite impossible?" asked the girl in her slow voice. "I never
saw her, you know."
Mrs. Baxter laid down her embroidery.
"My dear, she was. Well, I have not a word against her character, of
course. She was all that was good, I believe. But, you know, her home,
her father--well, what can you expect from a grocer--and a Baptist,"
she added, with a touch of vindictiveness.
"What was she like?" asked the girl, still with that meditative air.
"My dear, she was like--like a picture on a chocolate-box. I can say
no more than that. She was little and fair-haired, with a very pretty
complexion, and a ribbon in her hair always. Laurie brought her up
here to see me, you know--in the garden; I felt I could not bear to
have her in the house just yet, though, of course, it would have had
to have come. She spoke very carefully, but there was an unmistakable
accent. Once she left out an aitch, and then she said the word over
again quite right."
Maggie nodded gently, with a certain air of pity, and Mrs. Baxter went
on encouraged.
"She had a little stammer that--that Laurie thought very pretty, and
she had a restless little way of playing with her fingers as if on a
piano. Oh, my dear, it would have been too dreadful; and now, my poor
boy--"
The old lady's eyes filled with compassionate tears, and she laid her
sewing down to fetch out a little lace-fringed pocket-handkerchief.
Maggie leaned back with one easy movement in her low chair, clasping
her hands behind her head; but she still said nothing. Mrs. Baxter
finished the little ceremony of wiping her eyes, and, still winking a
little, bending over her needlework, continued the commentary.
"Do try to help him, my dear. That was why I asked you to come back
yesterday. I wanted you to be in the house for the funeral. You see,
Laurie's becoming a Catholic at Oxford has brought you two together.
It's no good my talking to him about the religious side of it all; he
thinks I know nothing at all about the next world, though I'm sure--"
"Tell me," said the girl suddenly, still in the same attitude, "has he
been practicing his religion? You see, I haven't seen much of him this
year, and--"
"I'm afraid not very well," said the old lady tolerantly. "He thought
he was going to be a priest at first, you remember, and I'm sure I
should have made no objection; and then in the spring he seemed to be
getting rather tired of it all. I don't think he gets on with Father
Mahon very well. I don't think Father Mahon understands him quite. It
was he, you know, who told him not to be a priest, and I think that
discouraged poor Laurie."
"I see," said the girl shortly. And Mrs. Baxter applied herself again
to her sewing.
* * * * *
It was indeed a rather trying time for the old lady. She was a
tranquil and serene soul; and it seemed as if she were doomed to live
over a perpetual volcano. It was as pathetic as an amiable cat trying
to go to sleep on a rifle range; she was developing the jumps. The
first serious explosion had taken place two years before, when her
son, then in his third year at Oxford, had come back with the
announcement that Rome was the only home worthy to shelter his
aspiring soul, and that he must be received into the Church in six
weeks' time. She had produced little books for his edification, as in
duty bound, she had summoned Anglican divines to the rescue; but all
had been useless, and Laurie had gone back to Oxford as an avowed
proselyte.
She had soon become accustomed to the idea, and indeed, when the first
shock was over had not greatly disliked it, since her own adopted
daughter, of half French parentage, Margaret Marie Deronnais, had been
educated in the same faith, and was an eminently satisfactory person.
The next shock was Laurie's announcement of his intention to enter the
priesthood, and perhaps the Religious Life as well; but this too had
been tempered by the reflection that in that case Maggie would inherit
this house and carry on its traditions in a suitable manner. Maggie
had come to her, upon leaving her convent school three years before,
with a pleasant little income of her own--had come to her by an
arrangement made previously to her mother's death--and her manner of
life, her reasonableness, her adaptability, her presentableness had
reassured the old lady considerably as to the tolerableness of the
Roman Catholic religion. Indeed, once she had hoped that Laurie and
Maggie might come to an understanding that would prevent all possible
difficulty as to the future of his house and estate; but the fourth
volcanic storm had once more sent the world flying in pieces about
Mrs. Baxter's delicate ears; and, during the last three months she had
had to face the prospect of Laurie's bringing home as a bride the
rather underbred, pretty, stammering, pink and white daughter of a
Baptist grocer of the village.
This had been a terrible affair altogether; Laurie, as is the custom
of a certain kind of young male, had met, spoken to, and ultimately
kissed this Amy Nugent, on a certain summer evening as the stars came
out; but, with a chivalry not so common in such cases, had also
sincerely and simply fallen in love with her, with a romance usually
reserved for better-matched affections. It seemed, from Laurie's
conversation, that Amy was possessed of every grace of body, mind, and
soul required in one who was to be mistress of the great house; it was
not, so Laurie explained, at all a milkmaid kind of affair; he was not
the man, he said, to make a fool of himself over a pretty face. No,
Amy was a rare soul, a flower growing on stony soil--sandy perhaps
would be the better word--and it was his deliberate intention to make
her his wife.
Then had followed every argument known to mothers, for it was not
likely that even Mrs. Baxter would accept without a struggle a
daughter-in-law who, five years before, had bobbed to her, wearing a
pinafore, and carrying in a pair of rather large hands a basket of
eggs to her back door. Then she had consented to see the girl, and the
interview in the garden had left her more distressed than ever. (It
was there that the aitch incident had taken place.) And so the
struggle had gone on; Laurie had protested, stormed, sulked, taken
refuge in rhetoric and dignity alternately; and his mother had with
gentle persistence objected, held her peace, argued, and resisted,
conflicting step by step against the inevitable, seeking to reconcile
her son by pathos and her God by petition; and then in an instant,
only four days ago, it seemed that the latter had prevailed; and today
Laurie, in a black suit, rent by sorrow, at this very hour at which
the two ladies sat and talked in the drawing-room, was standing by an
open grave in the village churchyard, seeing the last of his love,
under a pile of blossoms as pink and white as her own complexion,
within four elm-boards with a brass plate upon the cover.
Now, therefore, there was a new situation to face, and Mrs. Baxter was
regarding it with apprehension.
* * * * *
It is true that mothers know sometimes more of their sons than their
sons know of themselves, but there are certain elements of character
that sometimes neither mothers nor sons appreciate. It was one or two
of those elements that Maggie Deronnais, with her hands behind her
head, was now considering. It seemed to her very odd that neither the
boy himself nor Mrs. Baxter in the least seemed to realize the
astonishing selfishness of this very boy's actions.
She had known him now for three years, though owing to her own absence
in France a part of the time, and his absence in London for the rest,
she had seen nothing of this last affair. At first she had liked him
exceedingly; he had seemed to her ardent, natural, and generous. She
had liked his affection for his mother and his demonstrativeness in
showing it; she had liked his well-bred swagger, his manner with
servants, his impulsive courtesy to herself. It was a real pleasure to
her to see him, morning by morning, in his knickerbockers and Norfolk
jacket, or his tweed suit; and evening by evening in his swallow-tail
coat and white shirt, and the knee breeches and buckled shoes that he
wore by reason of the touch of picturesque and defiant romanticism
that was so obvious a part of his nature. Then she had begun, little
by little, to perceive the egotism that was even more apparent; his
self-will, his moodiness, and his persistence.
Though, naturally, she had approved of his conversion to Catholicism,
yet she was not sure that his motives were pure. She had hoped indeed
that the Church, with its astonishing peremptoriness, might do
something towards a moral conversion, as well as an artistic and
intellectual change of view. But this, it seemed, had not happened;
and this final mad episode of Amy Nugent had fanned her criticism to
indignation. She did not disapprove of romance--in fact she largely
lived by it--but there were things even more important, and she was as
angry as she could be, with decency, at this last manifestation of
selfishness.
For the worst of it was that, as she knew perfectly well, Laurie was
rather an exceptional person. He was not at all the Young Fool of
Fiction. There was a remarkable virility about him, he was
tender-hearted to a degree, he had more than his share of brains. It
was intolerable that such a person should be so silly.
She wondered what sorrow would do for him. She had come down from
Scotland the night before, and down here to Herefordshire this
morning; she had not then yet seen him; and he was now at the
funeral....
Well, sorrow would be his test. How would he take it?
Mrs. Baxter broke in on her meditations.
"Maggy, darling ... do you think you can do anything? You know I once
hoped...."
The girl looked up suddenly, with so vivid an air that it was an
interruption. The old lady broke off.
"Well, well," she said. "But is it quite impossible that--"
"Please, don't. I--I can't talk about that. It's impossible--utterly
impossible."
The old lady sighed; then she said suddenly, looking at the clock
above the oak mantelshelf, "It is half-past. I expect--"
She broke off as the front door was heard to open and close beyond the
hall, and waited, paling a little, as steps sounded on the flags; but
the steps went up the stairs outside, and there was silence again.
"He has come back," she said. "Oh! my dear."
"How shall you treat him?" asked the girl curiously.
The old lady bent again over her embroidery.
"I think I shall just say nothing. I hope he will ride this afternoon.
Will you go with him?"
"I think not. He won't want anyone. I know Laurie."
The other looked up at her sideways in a questioning way, and Maggie
went on with a kind of slow decisiveness.
"He will be queer at lunch. Then he will probably ride alone and be
late for tea. Then tomorrow--"
"Oh! my dear, Mrs. Stapleton is coming to lunch tomorrow. Do you think
he'll mind?"
"Who is Mrs. Stapleton?"
The old lady hesitated.
"She's--she's the wife of Colonel Stapleton. She goes in for what I
think is called New Thought; at least, so somebody told me last month.
I'm afraid she's not a very steady person. She was a vegetarian last
year; now I believe she's given that up again."
Maggie smiled slowly, showing a row of very white, strong teeth.
"I know, auntie," she said. "No; I shouldn't think Laurie'll mind
much. Perhaps he'll go back to town in the morning, too."
"No, my dear, he's staying till Thursday."
* * * * *
There fell again one of those pleasant silences that are possible in
the country. Outside the garden, with the meadows beyond the village
road, lay in that sweet September hush of sunlight and mellow color
that seemed to embalm the house in peace. From the farm beyond the
stable-yard came the crowing of a cock, followed by the liquid chuckle
of a pigeon perched somewhere overhead among the twisted chimneys.
And within this room all was equally at peace. The sunshine lay on
table and polished floor, barred by the mullions of the windows, and
stained here and there by the little Flemish emblems and coats that
hung across the glass; while those two figures, so perfectly in place
in their serenity and leisure, sat before the open fire-place and
contemplated the very unpeaceful element that had just walked upstairs
incarnate in a pale, drawn-eyed young man in black.
The house, in fact, was one of those that have a personality as marked
and as mysterious as of a human character. It affected people in quite
an extraordinary way. It took charge of the casual guest, entertained
and soothed and sometimes silenced him; and it cast upon all who lived
in it an enchantment at once inexplicable and delightful. Externally
it was nothing remarkable.
It was a large, square-built house, close indeed to the road, but
separated from it by a high wrought-iron gate in an oak paling, and a
short, straight garden-path; originally even ante-Tudor, but matured
through centuries, with a Queen Anne front of mellow red brick, and
back premises of tile, oak, and modern rough-cast, with old
brew-houses that almost enclosed a graveled court behind. Behind this
again lay a great kitchen garden with box-lined paths dividing it all
into a dozen rectangles, separated from the orchard and yew walk by a
broad double hedge down the center of which ran a sheltered path.
Round the south of the house and in the narrow strip westwards lay
broad lawns surrounded by high trees completely shading it from all
view of the houses that formed the tiny hamlet fifty yards away.
Within, the house had been modernized almost to a commonplace level. A
little hall gave entrance to the drawing-room on the right where these
two women now sat, a large, stately room, paneled from floor to
ceiling, and to the dining-room on the left; and, again, through to
the back, where a smoking room, an inner hall, and the big kitchens
and back premises concluded the ground floor. The two more stories
above consisted, on the first floor, of a row of large rooms, airy,
high, and dignified, and in the attics of a series of low-pitched
chambers, whitewashed, oak-floored, and dormer-windowed, where one or
two of the servants slept in splendid isolation. A little flight of
irregular steps leading out of the big room on to the first floor,
where the housekeeper lived in state, gave access to the further rooms
near the kitchen and sculleries.
Maggie had fallen in love with the place from the instant that she had
entered it. She had been warned in her French convent of the giddy
gaieties of the world and its temptations; and yet it seemed to her
after a week in her new home that the world was very much maligned.
There was here a sense of peace and sheltered security that she had
hardly known even at school; and little by little she had settled down
here, with the mother and the son, until it had begun to seem to her
that days spent in London or in other friends' houses were no better
than interruptions and failures compared with the leisurely, tender
life of this place, where it was so easy to read and pray and possess
her soul in peace. This affair of Laurie's was almost the first
reminder of what she had known by hearsay, that Love and Death and
Pain were the bones on which life was modeled.
With a sudden movement she leaned forward, took up the bellows, and
began to blow the smoldering logs into flame.
* * * * *
Meanwhile, upstairs on a long couch beside the fire in his big
bed-sitting-room lay a young man on his face motionless.
A week ago he had been one of those men who in almost any company
appear easy and satisfactory, and, above all, are satisfactory to
themselves. His life was a very pleasant one indeed.
He had come down from Oxford just a year ago, and had determined to
take things as they came, to foster acquaintanceships, to travel a
little with a congenial friend, to stay about in other people's
houses, and, in fact, to enjoy himself entirely before settling down
to read law. He had done this most successfully, and had crowned all,
as has been related, by falling in love on a July evening with one
who, he was quite certain, was the mate designed for him for Time and
Eternity. His life, in fact, up to three days ago had developed along
exactly those lines along which his temperament traveled with the
greatest ease. He was the only son of a widow, he had an excellent
income, he made friends wherever he went, and he had just secured the
most charming rooms close to the Temple. He had plenty of brains, an
exceedingly warm heart, and had lately embraced a religion that
satisfied every instinct of his nature. It was the best of all
possible worlds, and fitted him like his own well-cut clothes. It
consisted of privileges without responsibilities.
And now the crash had come, and all was over.
As the gong sounded for luncheon he turned over and lay on his back,
staring at the ceiling.
It should have been a very attractive face under other circumstances.
Beneath his brown curls, just touched with gold, there looked out a
pair of grey eyes, bright a week ago, now dimmed with tears, and
patched beneath with lines of sorrow. His clean-cut, rather passionate
lips were set now, with down-turned corners, in a line of angry
self-control piteous to see; and his clear skin seemed stained and
dull. He had never dreamt of such misery in all his days.
As he lay now, with lax hands at his side, tightening at times in an
agony of remembrance, he was seeing vision after vision, turning now
and again to the contemplation of a dark future without life or love
or hope. Again he saw Amy, as he had first seen her under the luminous
July evening, jeweled overhead with peeping stars, amber to the
westwards, where the sun had gone down in glory. She was in her
sun-bonnet and print dress, stepping towards him across the
fresh-scented meadow grass lately shorn of its flowers and growth,
looking at him with that curious awed admiration that delighted him
with its flattery. Her face was to the west, the reflected glory lay
on it as delicate as the light on a flower, and her blue eyes regarded
him beneath a halo of golden hair.
He saw her again as she had been one moonlight evening as the two
stood together by the sluice of the stream, among the stillness of the
woods below the village, with all fairyland about them and in their
hearts. She had thrown a wrap about her head and stolen down there by
devious ways, according to the appointment, meeting him, as was
arranged, as he came out from dinner with all the glamour of the Great
House about him, in his evening dress, buckled shoes, and
knee-breeches all complete. How marvelous she had been then--a sweet
nymph of flesh and blood, glorified by the moon to an ethereal
delicacy, with the living pallor of sun-kissed skin, her eyes looking
at him like stars beneath her shawl. They had said very little; they
had stood there at the sluice gate, with his arm about her, and
herself willingly nestling against him, trembling now and again;
looking out at the sheeny surface of the slow flowing stream from
which, in the imperceptible night breeze, stole away wraith after
wraith of water mist to float and lose themselves in the sleeping
woods.
Or, once more, clearer than all else he remembered how he had watched
her, himself unseen, delaying the delight of revealing himself, one
August morning, scarcely three weeks ago, as she had come down the
road that ran past the house, again in her sun-bonnet and print dress,
with the dew shining about her on grass and hedge, and the haze of a
summer morning veiling the intensity of the blue sky above. He had
called her then gently by name, and she had turned her face to him,
alight with love and fear and sudden wonder.... He remembered even now
with a reflection of memory that was nearly an illusion the smell of
yew and garden flowers.
This, then, had been the dream; and today the awakening and the end.
That end was even more terrible than he had conceived possible on that
horrible Friday morning last week, when he had opened the telegram
from her father.
He had never before understood the sordidness of her surroundings, as
when, an hour ago, he had stood at the grave-side, his eyes wandering
from that long elm box with the silver plate and the wreath of
flowers, to the mourners on the other side--her father in his
broadcloth, his heavy, smooth face pulled in lines of grotesque
sorrow; her mother, with her crimson, tear-stained cheeks, her
elaborate black, her intolerable crape, and her jet-hung mantle. Even
these people had been seen by him up to then through a haze of love;
he had thought them simple honest folk, creatures of the soil, yet
wholesome, natural, and sturdy. And now that the jewel was lost the
setting was worse than empty. There in the elm box lay the remnants of
the shattered gem.... He had seen her in her bed on the Sunday, her
fallen face, her sunken eyes, all framed in the detestable whiteness
of linen and waxen flowers, yet as pathetic and as appealing as ever,
and as necessary to his life. It was then that the supreme fact had
first penetrated to his consciousness, that he had lost her--the fact
which, driven home by the funeral scene this morning, the rustling
crowd come to see the young Squire, the elm box, the heap of
flowers--had now flung him down on this couch, crushed, broken, and
hopeless, like young ivy after a thunderstorm.
His moods alternated with the rapidity of flying clouds. At one
instant he was furious with pain, at the next broken and lax from the
same cause. At one moment he cursed God and desired to die, defiant
and raging; at the next he sank down into himself as weak as a
tortured child, while tears ran down his cheeks and little moans as of
an animal murmured in his throat. God was a hated adversary, a
merciless Judge ... a Blind Fate ... there was no God ... He was a
Fiend.... there was nothing anywhere in the whole universe but Pain
and Vanity....
Yet, through it all, like a throbbing pedal note, ran his need of this
girl. He would do anything, suffer anything, make any sacrifice,
momentary or lifelong, if he could but see her again, hold her hand
for one instant, look into her eyes mysterious with the secret of
death. He had but three or four words to say to her, just to secure
himself that she lived and was still his, and then ... then he would
say good-bye to her, content and happy to wait till death should
reunite them. Ah! he asked so little, and God would not give it him.
All, then, was a mockery. It was only this past summer that he had
begun to fancy himself in love with Maggie Deronnais. It had been an
emotion of very quiet growth, developing gently, week by week, feeding
on her wholesomeness, her serenity, her quiet power, her cool, capable
hands, and the look in her direct eyes; it resembled respect rather
than passion, and need rather than desire; it was a hunger rather than
a thirst. Then had risen up this other, blinding and bewildering; and,
he told himself, he now knew the difference. His lips curled into
bitter and resentful lines as he contemplated the contrast. And all
was gone, shattered and vanished; and even Maggie was now impossible.
Again he writhed over, sick with pain and longing; and so lay.
* * * * *
It was ten minutes before he moved again, and then he only roused
himself as he heard a foot on the stairs. Perhaps it was his mother.
He slipped off the couch and stood up, his face lined and creased with
the pressure with which he had lain just now, and smoothed his tumbled
clothes. Yes, he must go down.
He stepped to the door and opened it.
"I am coming immediately," he said to the servant.
* * * * *
He bore himself at lunch with a respectable self-control, though he
said little or nothing. His mother's attitude he found hard to bear,
as he caught her eyes once or twice looking at him with sympathy; and
he allowed himself internally to turn to Maggie with relief in spite
of his meditations just now. She at least respected his sorrow, he
told himself. She bore herself very naturally, though with long
silences, and never once met his eyes with her own. He made his
excuses as soon as he could and slipped across to the stable yard. At
least he would be alone this afternoon. Only, as he rode away half an
hour later, he caught a sight of the slender little figure of his
mother waiting to have one word with him if she could, beyond the
hall-door. But he set his lips and would not see her.
It was one of those perfect September days that fall sometimes as a
gift from heaven after the bargain of summer has been more or less
concluded. As he rode all that afternoon through lanes and across
uplands, his view barred always to the north by the great downs above
Royston, grey-blue against the radiant sky, there was scarcely a hint
in earth or heaven of any emotion except prevailing peace. Yet the
very serenity tortured him the more by its mockery. The birds babbled
in the deep woods, the cheerful noise of children reached him now and
again from a cottage garden, the mellow light smiled unending
benediction, and yet his subconsciousness let go for never an instant
of the long elm box six feet below ground, and of its contents lying
there in the stifling dark, in the long-grassed churchyard on the hill
above his home.
He wondered now and again as to the fate of the spirit that had
informed the body and made it what it was; but his imagination refused
to work. After all, he asked himself, what were all the teachings
of theology but words gabbled to break the appalling silence?
Heaven ... Purgatory ... Hell. What was known of these things? The very
soul itself--what was that? What was the inconceivable environment,
after all, for so inconceivable a thing...?
He did not need these things, he said--certainly not now--nor those
labels and signposts to a doubtful, unimaginable land. He needed Amy
herself, or, at least, some hint or sound or glimpse to show him that
she indeed was as she had always been; whether in earth or heaven, he
did not care; that there was somewhere something that was herself,
some definite personal being of a continuous consciousness with that
which he had known, characterized still by those graces which he
thought he had recognized and certainly loved. Ah! he did not ask
much. It would be so easy to God! Here out in this lonely lane where
he rode beneath the branches, his reins loose on his horse's neck, his
eyes, unseeing, roving over copse and meadow across to the eternal
hills--a face, seen for an instant, smiling and gone again; a whisper
in his ear, with that dear stammer of shyness; a touch on his knee of
those rippling fingers that he had watched in the moonlight playing
gently on the sluice-gate above the moonlit stream.... He would tell
no one if God wished it to be a secret; he would keep it wholly to
himself. He did not ask now to possess her; only to be certain that
she lived, and that death was not what it seemed to be.
* * * * *
"Is Father Mahon at home?" he asked, as he halted a mile from his own
house in the village, where stood the little tin church, not a hundred
yards from its elder alienated sister, to which he and Maggie went on
Sundays.
The housekeeper turned from her vegetable-gathering beyond the
fence, and told him yes. He dismounted, hitched the reins round the
gatepost, and went in.
Ah! what an antipathetic little room this was in which he waited while
the priest was being fetched from upstairs!
Over the mantelpiece hung a large oleograph of Leo XIII, in cope and
tiara, blessing with upraised hand and that eternal, wide-lipped
smile; a couple of jars stood beneath filled with dyed grasses; a
briar pipe, redolent and foul, lay between them. The rest of the room
was in the same key: a bright Brussels carpet, pale and worn by the
door, covered the floor; cheap lace curtains were pinned across the
windows; and over the littered table a painted deal bookshelf held a
dozen volumes, devotional, moral, and dogmatic theology; and by the
side of that an illuminated address framed in gilt, and so on.
Laurie looked at it all in dumb dismay. He had seen it before, again
and again, but had never realized its horror as he realized it now
from the depths of his own misery. Was it really true that his
religion could emit such results?
There was a step on the stairs--a very heavy one--and Father Mahon
came in, a large, crimson-faced man, who seemed to fill the room with
a completely unethereal presence, and held out his hand with a certain
gravity. Laurie took it and dropped it.
"Sit down, my dear boy," said the priest, and he impelled him gently
to a horsehair-covered arm-chair.
Laurie stiffened.
"Thank you, father; but I mustn't stay."
He fumbled in his pocket, and fetched out a little paper-covered
packet.
"Will you say Mass for my intention, please?" And he laid the packet
on the mantelshelf.
The priest took up the coins and slipped them into his waistcoat
pocket.
"Certainly," he said. "I think I know--"
Laurie turned away with a little jerk.
"I must be going," he said. "I only looked in--"
"Mr. Baxter," said the other, "I hope you will allow me to say how
much--"
Laurie drew his breath swiftly, with a hiss as of pain, and glanced at
the priest.
"You understand, then, what my intention is?"
"Why, surely. It is for her soul, is it not?"
"I suppose so," said the boy, and went out.
_Chapter II_
I
"I have told him," said Mrs. Baxter, as the two women walked beneath
the yews that morning after breakfast. "He said he didn't mind."
Maggie did not speak. She had come out just as she was, hatless, but
had caught up a spud that stood in the hall, and at that instant had
stopped to destroy a youthful plantain that had established himself
with infinite pains on the slope of the path. She attacked for a few
seconds, extricated what was possible of the root with her strong
fingers, tossed the corpse among the ivy, and then moved on.
"I don't know whether to say anything to Mrs. Stapleton or not,"
pursued the old lady.
"I think I shouldn't, auntie," said the girl slowly.
They spoke of it for a minute or two as they passed up and down, but
Maggie only attended with one superficies of her mind.
She had gone up as usual to Mass that morning, and had been astonished
to find Laurie already in church; they had walked back together, and,
to her surprise, he had told her that the Mass had been for his own
intention.
She had answered as well as she could; but a sentence or two of his as
they came near home had vaguely troubled her.
It was not that he had said anything he ought not, as a Catholic, to
have said; yet her instinct told her that something was wrong. It was
his manner, his air, that troubled her. What strange people these
converts were! There was so much ardor at one time, so much chilliness
at another; there was so little of that steady workaday acceptance of
religious facts that marked the born Catholic.
"Mrs. Stapleton is a New Thought kind of person," she said presently.
"So I understand," said the old lady, with a touch of peevishness. "A
vegetarian last year. And I believe she was a sort of Buddhist five or
six years ago. And then she nearly became a Christian Scientist a
little while ago."
Maggie smiled.
"I wonder what she'll talk about," she said.
"I hope she won't be very advanced," went on the old lady. "And you
think I'd better not tell her about Laurie?"
"I'm sure it's best not," said the girl, "or she'll tell him about
Deep Breathing, or saying Om, or something. No; I should let Laurie
alone."
* * * * *
It was a little before one o'clock that the motor arrived, and that
there descended from it at the iron gate a tall, slender woman, hooded
and veiled, who walked up the little path, observed by Maggie from her
bedroom, with a kind of whisking step. The motor moved on, wheeled in
through the gates at the left, and sank into silence in the
stable-yard.
"It's too charming of you, dear Mrs. Baxter," Maggie heard as she came
into the drawing-room a minute or two later, "to let me come over like
this. I've heard so much about this house. Lady Laura was telling me
how very psychical it all was."
"My adopted daughter, Miss Deronnais," observed the old lady.
Maggie saw a rather pretty, passé face, triangular in shape, with
small red lips, looking at her, as she made her greetings.
"Ah! how perfect all this is," went on the guest presently, looking
about her, "how suggestive, how full of meaning!"
She threw back her cloak presently, and Maggie observed that she was
busy with various very beautiful little emblems--a scarab, a snake
swallowing its tail, and so forth--all exquisitely made, and hung upon
a slender chain of some green enamel-like material. Certainly she was
true to type. As the full light fell upon her it became plain that
this other-worldly soul did not disdain to use certain toilet
requisites upon her face; and a curious Eastern odor exhaled from her
dress.
Fortunately, Maggie had a very deep sense of humor, and she hardly
resented all this at all, nor even the tactful hints dropped from time
to time, after the conventional part of the conversation was over, to
the effect that Christianity was, of course, played out, and that a
Higher Light had dawned. Mrs. Stapleton did not quite say this
outright, but it amounted to as much. Even before Laurie came
downstairs it appeared that the lady did not go to church, yet that,
such was her broad-mindedness, she did not at all object to do so. It
was all one, it seemed, in the Deeper Unity. Nothing particular was
true; but all was very suggestive and significant and symbolical of
something else to which Mrs. Stapleton and a few friends had the key.
Mrs. Baxter made more than one attempt to get back to more mundane
subjects, but it was useless. When even the weather serves as a
symbol, the plain man is done for.
Then Laurie came in.
He looked very self-contained and rather pinched this morning, and
shook hands with the lady without a word. Then they moved across
presently to the green-hung dining-room across the hall, and the
exquisite symbol of Luncheon made its appearance.
Lady Laura, it appeared, was one of those who had felt the charm of
Stantons; only for her it was psychical rather than physical, and all
this was passed on by her friend. It seemed that the psychical
atmosphere of most modern houses was of a yellow tint, but that this
one emanated a brown-gold radiance which was very peculiar and
exceptional. Indeed, it was this singularity that had caused Mrs.
Stapleton to apply for an invitation to the house. More than once
during lunch, in a pause of the conversation, Maggie saw her throw
back her head slightly as if to appreciate some odor or color not
experienced by coarser-nerved persons. Once, indeed, she actually put
this into words.
"Dear Laura was quite right," cried the lady; "there is something very
unique about this place. How fortunate you are, dear Mrs. Baxter!"
"My dear husband's grandfather bought the place," observed the
mistress plaintively. "We have always found it very soothing and
pleasant."
"How right you are! And--and have you had any experiences here?"
Mrs. Baxter eyed her in alarm. Maggie had an irrepressible burst of
internal laughter, which, however, gave no hint of its presence in her
steady features. She glanced at Laurie, who was eating mutton with a
depressed air.
"I was talking to Mr. Vincent, the great spiritualist," went on the
other vivaciously, "only last week. You have heard of him, Mrs.
Baxter? I was suggesting to him that any place where great emotions
have been felt is colored and stained by them as objectively as old
walls are weather-beaten. I had such an interesting conversation, too,
with Cardinal Newman on the subject"--she smiled brilliantly at
Maggie, as if to reassure her of her own orthodoxy--"scarcely six
weeks ago."
There was a pregnant silence. Mrs. Baxter's fork sank to her plate.
"I don't understand," she said faintly. "Cardinal Newman--surely--"
"Why yes," said the other gently. "I know it sounds very startling to
orthodox ears; but to us of the Higher Thought all these things are
quite familiar. Of course, I need hardly say that Cardinal Newman is
no longer--but perhaps I had better not go on."
She glanced archly at Maggie.
"Oh, please go on," said Maggie genially. "You were saying that
Cardinal Newman--"
"Dear Miss Deronnais, are you sure you will not be offended?"
"I am always glad to receive new light," said Maggie solemnly.
The other looked at her doubtfully; but there was no hint of irony in
the girl's face.
"Well," she began, "of course on the Other Side they see things very
differently. I don't mean at all that any religion is exactly untrue.
Oh no; they tell us that if we cannot welcome the New Light, then the
old lights will do very well for the present. Indeed, when there are
Catholics present Cardinal Newman does not scruple to give them a
Latin blessing--"
"Is it true that he speaks with an American accent?" asked Maggie
gravely. The other laughed with a somewhat shrill geniality.
"That is too bad, Miss Deronnais. Well, of course, the personality of
the medium affects the vehicle through which the communications come.
That is no difficulty at all when once you understand the principle--"
Mrs. Baxter interrupted. She could bear it no longer.
"Mrs. Stapleton. Do you mean that Cardinal Newman really speaks to
you?"
"Why yes," said the other, with a patient indulgence. "That is a very
usual experience, but Mr. Vincent does much more than that. It is
quite a common experience not only to hear him, but to see him. I have
shaken hands with him more than once ... and I have seen a Catholic
kiss his ring."
Mrs. Baxter looked helplessly at the girl; and Maggie came to the
rescue once more. "This sounds rather advanced to us," she said.
"Won't you explain the principles first?"
Mrs. Stapleton laid her knife and fork down, leaned back, and began to
discourse. When a little later her plate was removed, she refused
sweets with a gesture, and continued.
Altogether she spoke for about ten minutes, uninterrupted, enjoying
herself enormously. The others ate food or refused it in attentive
silence. Then at last she ended.
"... I know all this must sound quite mad and fanatical to those who
have not experienced it; and yet to us who have been disciples it is
as natural to meet our friends who have crossed over as to meet those
who have not.... Dear Mrs. Baxter, think how all this enlarges life.
There is no longer any death to those who understand. All those
limitations are removed; it is no more than going into another
room. All are together in the Hands of the All-Father"--Maggie
recognized the jetsam of Christian Science. "'O death!' as Paul says,
'where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?'"
Mrs. Stapleton flashed a radiant look of helpfulness round the faces,
lingering for an instant on Laurie's, and leaned back.
There followed a silence.
"Shall we go into the drawing-room?" suggested Mrs. Baxter, feebly
rising. The guest rose too, again with a brilliant patient smile, and
swept out. Maggie crossed herself and looked at Laurie. The boy had an
expression, half of disgust, half of interest, and his eyelids sank a
little and rose again. Then Maggie went out after the others.