The Necromancers | Page 3

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