Laurie nodded slowly.
“That seems to me reasonable,” he said.
There was silence for a moment. Then she determined on a bold stroke.
“There is someone in particular—Mr. Baxter—forgive me for asking—someone who has passed over—?”
She sank her voice to what she had been informed was a sympathetic tone, and was scarcely prepared for the sudden tightening of that face.
“That is my affair, Mrs. Stapleton.”
Ah well, she had been premature. She would fetch Lady Laura, she said; she thought she might venture for such a purpose. No, she would not be away three minutes. Then she rustled out.
Laurie went to the fire to wait, and stood there, mechanically warming his hands and staring down at that sleeping core of red coal.
He had taken his courage in both hands in coming at all. In spite of his brave words to Maggie, he had been conscious of a curious repulsion with regard to the whole matter—a repulsion not only of contempt towards the elaborate affectations of the woman he had determined to consult. Yet he had come.
What he had said just now had been perfectly true. He was not yet in the least convinced, but he was anxious, intensely and passionately anxious, goaded too by desire.
Ah! surely it was absurd and fantastic—here in London, in this century. He turned and faced the lamplit room, letting his eyes wander round the picture-hung walls, the blue stamped paper, the Empire furniture, the general appearance of beautiful comfort and sane modern life. It was absurd and fantastic; he would be disappointed again, as he had been disappointed in everything else. These things did not happen—the dead did not return. Step by step those things that for centuries had been deemed evidence of the supernatural, one by one had been explained and discounted. Hypnotism, water divining, witchcraft, and the rest. All these had once been believed to be indisputable proofs of a life beyond the grave, of strange supernormal personalities, and these, one by one, had been either accounted for or discredited. It was mad of him to be alarmed or excited. No, he would go through with it, expecting nothing, hoping nothing. But he would just go through with it to satisfy himself. …
The door opened, and the two ladies came in.
“I am delighted that you called, Mr. Baxter; and on such an errand!”
Lady Laura put out a hand, tremulous with pleasure at welcoming a possible disciple.
“Mrs. Stapleton has explained—” began Laurie.
“I understand everything. You come as a skeptic—no, not as a skeptic, but as an inquirer, that is all that we wish. … Then tomorrow, at about half-past four.”
IV
I
It was a mellow October afternoon, glowing towards sunset, as Laurie came across the south end of the park to his appointment next day; and the effect of it upon his mind was singularly unsuggestive of supernatural mystery. Instead, rather, the warm sky, the lights beginning to peep here and there, though an hour before sunset, turned him rather in the direction of the natural and the domestic.
He wondered what his mother and Maggie would say if they knew his errand, for he had sufficient self-control not to have told them of his intentions. As regards his mother he did not care very much. Of course she would deprecate it and feebly dissuade; but he recognized that there was no particular principle behind, beyond a sense of discomfort at the unknown. But it was necessary for him to argue with himself about Maggie. The angry kind of contempt that he knew she would feel needed an answer; and he gave it by reminding himself that she had been brought up in a convent-school, that she knew nothing of the world, and that, lastly, he himself did not take the matter seriously. He was aware, too, that the instinctive repulsion that she felt so keenly found a certain echo in his own feelings; but he explained this by the novelty of the thing.
In fact, the attitude of mind in which he more or less succeeded in arraying himself was that of one who goes to see a serious conjurer. It would be rather fun, he thought, to see a table dancing. But there was not wholly wanting that inexplicable tendency of some natures deliberately to deceive themselves on what lies nearest to their hearts.
Mr. Vincent had not yet arrived when he was shown upstairs, even though Laurie himself was late. (This was partly deliberate. He thought it best to show a little nonchalance.) There was only a young clergyman in the room with the ladies; and the two were introduced.
“Mr. Baxter—Mr. Jamieson.”
He seemed a harmless young man, thought Laurie, and plainly a little nervous at the situation in which he found himself, as might a greyhound carry himself in a kennel of well-bred foxhounds. He was very correctly dressed, with Roman collar and stock, and obviously had not long left a theological college. He had an engaging kind of courtesy, ecclesiastically cut features, and curly black hair. He sat balancing a delicate cup adroitly on his knee.
“Mr. Jamieson is so anxious to know all that is going on,” explained Lady Laura, with a voluble frankness. “He thinks it so necessary to be abreast of the times, as he said to me the other day.”
Laurie assented, grimly pitying the young man for his indiscreet confidences. The clergyman looked priggish in his efforts not to do so.
“He has a class of young men on Sundays,” continued the hostess—“(Another biscuit, Maud darling?)—whom he tries to interest in all modern movements. He thinks it so important.”
Mr. Jamieson cleared his throat in a virile manner.
“Just so,” he said; “exactly so.”
“And so I told him he must really come and meet Mr. Vincent. … I can’t think why he is so late; but he has so many calls upon his time, that I am sure I wonder—”
“Mr. Vincent,” announced the footman.
A rather fine figure of a man came forward into the room, dressed in much better
