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 weekend.
“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.”
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 Marché 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 Marché 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
