"Well?" he asked at last, still refraining from looking at her.
"I think it"s horrible," she said.
Laurie delicately adjusted a little tobacco protruding from his cigarette.
"Isn"t that a little unreasonable?" he asked. "You"ve hardly looked at it yet."
Maggie knew this mood of his only too well. He reserved it for occasions when he was determined to fight. Argument was a useless weapon against it.
"My dear boy," she said with an effort, "I"m sorry. I daresay it is unreasonable. But that kind of thing does seem to me so disgusting.
That"s all.... I didn"t come to talk about that.... Tell me--"
"Didn"t you?" said Laurie.
Maggie was silent.
"Didn"t you?"
"Well--yes I did. But I don"t want to any more."
Laurie smiled so that it might be seen.
"Well, what else did you want to say?" He glanced purposely at the book. Maggie ignored his glance.
"I just came to see how you were getting on."
"How do you mean? With the book?"
"No; in every way."
He looked up at her swiftly and suddenly, and she saw that his agony of sorrow was acute beneath all his attempts at superiority, his courteous fractiousness, and his set face. She was filled suddenly with an enormous pity.
"Oh! Laurie, I"m so sorry," she cried out. "Can"t I do anything?"
"Nothing, thanks; nothing at all," he said quietly.
Again pity and misery surged up within her, and she cast all prudence to the winds. She had not realized how fond she was of this boy till she saw once more that look in his eyes.
"Oh! Laurie, you know I didn"t like it; but--but I don"t know what to do, I"m so sorry. But don"t spoil it all," she said wildly, hardly knowing what she feared.
"I beg your pardon?"
"You know what I mean. Don"t spoil it, by--by fancying things."
"Maggie," said the boy quietly, "you must let me alone. You can"t help."
"Can"t I?"
"You can"t help," he repeated. "I must go my own way. Please don"t say any more. I can"t stand it."
There followed a dead silence. Then Maggie recovered and stood up. He rose with her.
"Forgive me, Laurie, won"t you? I must say this. You"ll remember I"ll always do anything I can, won"t you?"
Then she was gone.
IV
The ladies went to bed early at Stantons. At ten o"clock precisely a clinking of bedroom candlesticks was heard in the hall, followed by the sound of locking doors. This was the signal. Mrs. Baxter laid aside her embroidery with the punctuality of a religious at the sound of a bell, and said two words--
"My dears."
There were occasionally exclamatory expostulations from the two at the piquet-table, but in nine cases out of ten the game had been designed with an eye upon the clock, and hardly any delay followed. Mrs. Baxter kissed her son, and pa.s.sed her arm through Maggie"s. Laurie followed; gave them candles, and generally took one himself.
But this evening there was no piquet. Laurie had stayed later than usual in the dining-room, and had wandered rather restlessly about when he had joined the others. He looked at a London evening paper for a little, paced about, vanished again, and only returned as the ladies were making ready to depart. Then he gave them their candlesticks, and himself came back to the drawing room.
He was, in fact, in a far more perturbed and excited mood than even Maggie had had any idea of. She had interrupted him half-way through the book, but he had read again steadily until five minutes before dinner, and had, indeed, gone back again to finish it afterwards. He had now finished it; and he wanted to think.
It had had a surprising effect on him, coming as it did upon a state of mind intensely stirred to its depths by his sorrow. Crossness, as I have said, had been the natural psychological result of his emotions; but his emotions were none the less real. The froth of whipped cream is real cream, after all.
Now Laurie had seen perfectly well the extreme unconvincingness of Mrs. Stapleton, and had been genuine enough in his little shrug of disapproval in answer to Maggie"s, after lunch; yet that lady"s remarks had been sufficient just to ignite the train of thought. This train had smoldered in the afternoon, had been fanned ever so slightly by two breezes--the sense of Maggie"s superiority and the faint rebellious reaction which had come upon him with regard to his personal religion. Certainly he had had Ma.s.s said for Amy this morning; but it had been by almost a superst.i.tious rather than a religious instinct. He was, in fact, in that state of religious unreality which occasionally comes upon converts within a year or two of the change of their faith. The impetus of old a.s.sociation is absent, and the force of novelty has died.
Underneath all this then, it must be remembered that the one thing that was intensely real to him was his sense of loss of the one soul in whom his own had been wrapped up. Even this afternoon as yesterday, even this morning as he lay awake, he had been conscious of an irresistible impulse to demand some sign, to catch some glimpse of that which was now denied to him.
It was in this mood that he had read the book; and it is not to be wondered at that he had been excited by it.
For it opened up to him, beneath all its sham mysticism, its intolerable affectations, its grotesque parody of spirituality--of all of which he was largely aware--a glimmering avenue of a faintly possible hope of which he had never dreamed--a hope, at least, of that half self-deception which is so tempting to certain characters.
Here, in this book, written by a living man, whose name and address were given, were stories so startling, and theories so apparently consonant with themselves and with other partly known facts--stories and theories, too, which met so precisely his own overmastering desire, that it is little wonder that he was affected by them.
Naturally, even during his reading, a thousand answers and adverse comments had sprung to his mind--suggestions of fraud, of lying, of hallucination--but yet, here the possibility remained. Here were living men and women who, with the usual complement of senses and reason, declared categorically and in detail, that on this and that date, in this place and the other, after having taken all possible precautions against fraud, they had received messages from the dead--messages of which the purport was understood by none but themselves--that they had seen with their eyes, in sufficient light, the actual features of the dead whom they loved, that they had even clasped their hands, and held for an instant the bodies of those whom they had seen die with their own eyes, and buried.
When the ladies" footsteps had ceased to sound overhead, Laurie went to the French window, opened it, and pa.s.sed on to the lawn.
He was astonished at the warmth of the September night. The little wind that had been chilly this afternoon had dropped with the coming of the dark, and high overhead he could see the great ma.s.ses of the leaves motionless against the sky. He pa.s.sed round the house, and beneath the yews, and sat down on the garden bench.
It was darker here than outside on the lawn. Beneath his feet were the soft needles from the trees, and above him, as he looked out, still sunk in his thought, he could see the glimmer of a star or two between the branches.
It was a fragrant, kindly night. From the hamlet of half a dozen houses beyond the garden came no sound; and the house, too, was still behind him. An illuminated window somewhere on the first floor went out as he looked at it, like a soul leaving a body; once a sleepy bird somewhere in the shrubbery chirped to its mate and was silent again.
Then as he still labored in argument, putting this against that, and weighing that against the other, his emotion rose up in an irresistible torrent, and all consideration ceased. One thing remained: he must have Amy, or he must die.
It was five or six minutes before he moved again from that att.i.tude of clenched hands and tensely strung muscles into which his sudden pa.s.sion had cast him.