The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Necromancers, by Robert Hugh Benson
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Title: The Necromancers
Author: Robert Hugh Benson
Release Date: December 6, 2004 [EBook #14275]
Language: English
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THE NECROMANCERS
_Other books by Robert Hugh Benson_
_The Light Invisible_
_By What Authority?_
_The King's Achievement_
_The History of Richard Reynall, Solitary_
_The Queen's Tragedy_
_The Religion of the Plain Man_
_The Sanctity of the Church_
_The Sentimentalists_
_Lord of the World_
_A Mirror of Shalott, composed of tales told at a symposium_
_Papers of a Pariah_
_The Conventionalists_
_The Holy Blissful Martyr Saint Thomas of Canterbury_
_The Dissolution of the Religious Houses_
_The Necromancers_
_Non-Catholic Denominations_
_None Other Gods_
_A Winnowing_
_Christ in the Church: a volume of religious essays_
_The Dawn of All_
_Come Rack! Come Rope!_
_The Coward_
_The Friendship of Christ_
_An Average Man_
_Confessions of a Convert_
_Optimism_
_Paradoxes of Catholicism_
_Poems_
_Initiation_
_Oddsfish!_
_Spiritual Letters of Monsignor R. Hugh Benson to one of his converts_
_Loneliness_
_Sermon Notes_
Robert Hugh Benson
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. Staplet...
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