He mused for a moment or two.
The ladies had never seen him so interested in an amateur. Usually his manner was remarkable for its detachment and severe a.s.surance; but it seemed that this case excited even him. Lady Laura was filled again with sudden compunction.
"Mr. Vincent," she said, "do you really think there is no danger for this boy?"
He glanced up at her.
"There is always danger," he said. "We know that well enough. We can but take precautions. But pioneers always have to risk something."
She was not rea.s.sured.
"But I mean special danger. He is extraordinarily sensitive, you know.
There was that girl from Surbiton...."
"Oh! she was exceptionally hysterical. Mr. Baxter"s not like that. I do not see that he runs any greater risk than we run ourselves."
"You are sure of that?"
He smiled deprecatingly.
"I am sure of nothing," he said. "But if you feel you would sooner not--"
Mrs. Stapleton rustled excitedly, and Lady Laura grabbed at her retreating opportunity.
"No, no," she cried. "I didn"t mean that for one moment. Please, please come here. I only wondered whether there was any particular precaution--"
"I will think about it," said the medium. "But I am sure we must be careful not to shock him. Of course, we don"t all take the same view about religion; but we can leave that for the present. The point is that Mr. Baxter should, if possible, see something unmistakable. The rest can take care of itself.... Then, if you consent, Lady Laura, we might have a little sitting here next Sunday night. Would nine o"clock suit you?"
He glanced at the two ladies.
"That will do very well," said the mistress of the house. "And, about preparations--"
"I will look in on Sat.u.r.day afternoon. Is there anyone particular you think of asking?"
"Mr. Jamieson came to see me again a few days ago," suggested Lady Laura tentatively.
"That will do very well. Then we three and those two. That will be quite enough for the present."
He stood up--a big, dominating figure--a rea.s.suring man to look at, with his kindly face, his bushy, square beard, and his appearance of physical strength. Lady Laura sat vaguely comforted.
"And about my notes," asked Maud Stapleton.
"I think they will not be necessary.... Good-day.... Sat.u.r.day afternoon."
The two sat on silently for a minute or two after he was gone.
"What is the matter, dearest?"
Lady Laura"s little anxious face did not move. She was staring thoughtfully at the fire. Mrs. Stapleton laid a sympathetic hand on the other"s knee.
"Dearest--" she began.
"No; it is nothing, darling," said Lady Laura.
Meanwhile the medium was picking his way through the foggy streets.
Figures loomed up, sudden and enormous, and vanished again. Smoky flares of flame shone like spots of painted fire, bright and unpenetrating, from windows overhead; and sounds came to him through the woolly atmosphere, dulled and sonorous. It would, so to speak, have been a suitably dramatic setting for his thoughts if he had been thinking in character, vaguely suggestive of presences and hints and peeps into the unknown.
But he was a very practical man. His spiritualistic faith was a reality to him, as unexciting as Christianity to the normal Christian; he entertained no manner of doubt as to its truth.
Beyond all the fraud, the self-deception, the amazing feats of the subconscious self, there remained certain facts beyond doubting--facts which required, he believed, an objective explanation, which none but the spiritualistic thesis offered. He had far more evidence, he considered sincerely enough, for his spiritualism than most Christians for their Christianity.
He had no very definite theory as to the spiritual world beyond thinking that it was rather like this world. For him it was peopled with individualities of various characters and temperaments, of various grades and achievements; and of these a certain number had the power of communicating under great difficulties with persons on this side who were capable of receiving such communications. That there were dangers connected with this process, he was well aware; he had seen often enough the moral sense vanish and the mental powers decay.
But these were to him no more than the honorable wounds to which all who struggle are liable. The point for him was that here lay the one certain means of getting into touch with reality. Certainly that reality was sometimes of a disconcerting nature, and seldom of an illuminating one; he hated, as much as anyone, the tambourine business, except so far as it was essential; and he deplored the fact that, as he believed, it was often the most degraded and the least satisfactory of the inhabitants of the other world that most easily got into touch with the inhabitants of this. Yet, for him, the main tenets of spiritualism were as the bones of the universe; it was the only religion which seemed to him in the least worthy of serious attention.
He had not practiced as a medium for longer than ten or a dozen years.
He had discovered, by chance as he thought, that he possessed mediumistic powers in an unusual degree, and had begun then to take up the life as a profession. He had suffered, so far as he was aware, no ill effects from this life, though he had seen others suffer; and, as his fame grew, his income grew with it.
It is necessary, then, to understand that he was not a conscious charlatan; he loathed mechanical tricks such as he occasionally came across; he was perfectly and serenely convinced that the powers which he possessed were genuine, and that the personages he seemed to come across in his mediumistic efforts were what they professed to be; that they were not hallucinatory, that they were not the products of fraud, that they were not necessarily evil. He regarded this religion as he regarded science; both were progressive, both liable to error, both capable of abuse. Yet as a scientist did not shrink from experiment for fear of risk, neither must the spiritualist.
As he picked his way to his lodgings on the north of the park, he was thinking about Laurie Baxter. That this boy possessed in an unusual degree what he would have called "occult powers" was very evident to him. That these powers involved a certain risk was evident too. He proposed, therefore, to take all reasonable precautions. All the catastrophes he had witnessed in the past were due, he thought, to a too rapid development of those powers, or to inexperience. He determined, therefore, to go slowly.
First, the boy must be convinced; next, he must be attached to the cause; thirdly, his religion must be knocked out of him; fourthly, he must be trained and developed. But for the present he must not be allowed to go into trance if it could be prevented. It was plain, he thought, that Laurie had a very strong "affinity," as he would have said, with the disembodied spirit of a certain "Amy Nugent." His communication with her had been of a very startling nature in its rapidity and perfection. Real progress might be made, then, through this channel.
Yes; I am aware that this sounds grotesque nonsense.
II
Laurie came back to town in a condition of interior quietness that rather astonished him. He had said to Maggie that he was not convinced; and that was true so far as he knew. Intellectually, the spiritualistic theory was at present only the hypothesis that seemed the most reasonable; yet morally he was as convinced of its truth as of anything in the world. And this showed itself by the quietness in which he found his soul plunged.
Moral conviction--that conviction on which a man acts--does not always coincide with the intellectual process. Occasionally it outruns it; occasionally lags behind; and the first sign of its arrival is the cessation of strain. The intellect may still be busy, arranging, sorting, and cla.s.sifying; but the thing itself is done, and the soul leans back.
A certain amount of excitement made itself felt when he found Mr.
Vincent"s letter waiting for his arrival to congratulate him on his decision, and to beg him to be at Queen"s Gate not later than half-past eight o"clock on the following Sunday; but it was not more than momentary. He knew the thing to be inevitably true now; the time and place at which it manifested itself was not supremely important.
Yes, he wrote in answer; he would certainly keep the appointment suggested.
He dined out at a restaurant, returned to his rooms, and sat down to arrange his ideas.
These, to be frank, were not very many, nor very profound.
He had already, in the days that had pa.s.sed since his shock, no lighter because expected, when he had learned from Maggie that the test was fulfilled, and that a fact known to no one present, not even himself, in Queen"s Gate, had been communicated through his lips--since that time the idea had become familiar that the veil between this world and the next was a very thin one. After all, a large number of persons in the world believe that, as it is; and they are not, in consequence, in a continuous state of exaltation. Laurie had learned this, he thought, experimentally. Very well, then, that was so; there was no more to be said.