The Necromancers

essed about it all,"

nds 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 begi

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 wi

n. 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, s

ing now about

s mother, drawing her needle softly through the silk, an

f for speech. Then she closed them again, and sat watching the twinkling

been too dreadful if he had married her. He was away from home, you know, on Thursday, when it happened;

ked the girl in her slow voice

laid down he

s all that was good, I believe. But, you know, her home, her father-well, what can

sked the girl, still w

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

certain air of pity, and Mr

e had a restless little way of playing with her fingers as if on a pia

tears, and she laid her sewing down to fetch

head; but she still said nothing. Mrs. Baxter finished the little ceremony of wiping her

the funeral. You see, Laurie's becoming a Catholic at Oxford has brought you two together. It's no good my talkin

e attitude, "has he been practicing his religion? Y

ve 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.

ly. And Mrs. Baxter applied

loping 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

e 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 sh

ly 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 L

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 insta

tuation to face, and Mrs. Baxter w

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 s

her 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

thing 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 indignati

not at all the Young Fool of Fiction. There was a remarkable virility about him, he was tender-hearted t

cotland the night before, and down here to Herefordshire this morni

d be his test. Ho

roke in on he

think you can do anything

so vivid an air that it was an int

aid. "But is it qui

talk about that. It's impo

nly, looking at the clock above the oak

e hall, and waited, paling a little, as steps sounded on the flags; b

ack," she said

eat him?" asked t

ent again over

ng. I hope he will ride this af

won't want anyone

in a questioning way, and Maggie wen

he will probably ride alone and

n is coming to lunch tomorr

Mrs. Sta

lady h

ew Thought; at least, so somebody told me last month. I'm afraid she's not a very st

showing a row of ver

n't think Laurie'll mind much. Perhaps he

he's staying t

he crowing of a cock, followed by the liquid chuckle of a pigeon perched somewhere overhead among the twisted chimneys. And within this room all was equally at peace. The sunshine lay on table and polished floor, barred by the mullions of the windows, and stained here and there by the littl

people in quite an extraordinary way. It took charge of the casual guest, entertained and soothed and sometimes silenced him;

and back premises of tile, oak, and modern rough-cast, with old brew-houses that almost enclosed a graveled court behind. Behind this again lay a great kitchen garden with box-lined paths dividing it all into a dozen rectangles, separated from the orchard and yew walk

where a smoking room, an inner hall, and the big kitchens and back premises concluded the ground floor. The two more stories above consisted, on the first floor, of a row of large rooms, airy, high, and dignified, and in the attics of a series of low-pitched chambers, whitewashed,

a sense of peace and sheltered security that she had hardly known even at school; and little by little she had settled down here, with the mother and the son, until it had begun to seem to her that days spent in London or in other friends' houses were no better than interruptions and fa

ward, took up the bellows, and began

ide the fire in his big bed-sitting-roo

pany appear easy and satisfactory, and, above all, are satisf

ated, by falling in love on a July evening with one who, he was quite certain, was the mate designed for him for Time and Eternity. His life, in fact, up to three days ago had developed along exactly those lines along which his temperament traveled with the greatest ease. He was the only son of a widow, he had an excellent income, he made friends wher

sh had come, an

on he turned over and lay on h

s, bright a week ago, now dimmed with tears, and patched beneath with lines of sorrow. His clean-cut, rather passionate lips were set now, with down-turne

under the luminous July evening, jeweled overhead with peeping stars, amber to the westwards, where the sun had gone down in glory. She was in her sun-bonnet and print dress, stepping towards him across the fresh-scented meadow grass lately shorn of its flo

me out from dinner with all the glamour of the Great House about him, in his evening dress, buckled shoes, and knee-breeches all complete. How marvelous she had been then-a sweet nymph of flesh and blood, glorified by the moon to an ethereal delicacy, with the living pallor of sun-kissed skin, her eyes looking at him like stars beneath her shawl. They had

ran past the house, again in her sun-bonnet and print dress, with the dew shining about her on grass and hedge, and the haze of a summer morning veiling the intensity of the blue sky above. He had called her then

he dream; and today th

ed possible on that horrible Friday morning last we

et-hung mantle. Even these people had been seen by him up to then through a haze of love; he had thought them simple honest folk, creatures of the soil, yet wholesome, natural, and sturdy. And now that the jewel was lost the setting was worse than empty. There in the elm box lay the remnants of the shattered gem.... He had seen her in her bed on the Sunday, her fallen face, her sunken eyes, all framed in the detestable whiteness of line

red to die, defiant and raging; at the next he sank down into himself as weak as a tortured child, while tears ran down his cheeks and little moans as of an animal murmured in his th

er again, hold her hand for one instant, look into her eyes mysterious with the secret of death. He had but three or four words to say to her, just to secure himself that she lived

er serenity, her quiet power, her cool, capable hands, and the look in her direct eyes; it resembled respect rather than passion, and need rather than desire; it was a hunger rather than a thirst. Then had risen up this other, bli

r, sick with pain an

airs. Perhaps it was his mother. He slipped off the couch and stood up, his face lined and creased wit

o the door a

ediately," he sa

f in spite of his meditations just now. She at least respected his sorrow, he told himself. She bore herself very naturally, though with long silences, and never once met his eyes with her own. He made his excuses as soon as he could and slipped across to the stabl

, grey-blue against the radiant sky, there was scarcely a hint in earth or heaven of any emotion except prevailing peace. Yet the very serenity tortured him the more by its mockery. The birds babbled in the deep woods, the cheerful noise of children reached him now and again fr

r all, he asked himself, what were all the teachings of theology but words gabbled to break the appalling silence? Heaven ... Purgatory ... Hell. Wh

that which he had known, characterized still by those graces which he thought he had recognized and certainly loved. Ah! he did not ask much. It would be so easy to God! Here out in this lonely lane where he rode beneath the branches, his reins loose on his horse's neck, his eyes, unseeing, roving over copse and meadow across to the eternal hills-a face, seen for an instant, smiling and gone again; a

se in the village, where stood the little tin church, not a hundred yards

beyond the fence, and told him yes. He dismounted,

his was in which he waited while the p

riar pipe, redolent and foul, lay between them. The rest of the room was in the same key: a bright Brussels carpet, pale and worn by the door, covered the floor; cheap lace curtains were pinned across

n, but had never realized its horror as he realized it now from the depths of

, crimson-faced man, who seemed to fill the room with a completely unethereal pre

priest, and he impelled him gently

e sti

ather; but I

, and fetched out a litt

ention, please?" And he laid

oins and slipped them in

he said. "I t

d away with

g," he said. "I

ther, "I hope you will a

tly, with a hiss as of pain

, then, what my

t is for her so

" said the boy