The Necromancers | Page 2

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