The Necromancers | Page 5

orchard and yew walk by a
broad double hedge down the center of which ran a sheltered path.
Round the south of the house and in the narrow strip westwards lay
broad lawns surrounded by high trees completely shading it from all
view of the houses that formed the tiny hamlet fifty yards away.
Within, the house had been modernized almost to a commonplace level.
A little hall gave entrance to the drawing-room on the right where these
two women now sat, a large, stately room, paneled from floor to ceiling,
and to the dining-room on the left; and, again, through to the back,
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, oak-floored, and dormer-windowed, where one or two of
the servants slept in splendid isolation. A little flight of irregular steps
leading out of the big room on to the first floor, where the housekeeper
lived in state, gave access to the further rooms near the kitchen and
sculleries.
Maggie had fallen in love with the place from the instant that she had
entered it. She had been warned in her French convent of the giddy
gaieties of the world and its temptations; and yet it seemed to her after

a week in her new home that the world was very much maligned. There
was here 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 failures compared with the leisurely, tender life of
this place, where it was so easy to read and pray and possess her soul in
peace. This affair of Laurie's was almost the first reminder of what she
had known by hearsay, that Love and Death and Pain were the bones
on which life was modeled.
With a sudden movement she leaned forward, took up the bellows, and
began to blow the smoldering logs into flame.
* * * * *
Meanwhile, upstairs on a long couch beside the fire in his big
bed-sitting-room lay a young man on his face motionless.
A week ago he had been one of those men who in almost any company
appear easy and satisfactory, and, above all, are satisfactory to
themselves. His life was a very pleasant one indeed.
He had come down from Oxford just a year ago, and had determined to
take things as they came, to foster acquaintanceships, to travel a little
with a congenial friend, to stay about in other people's houses, and, in
fact, to enjoy himself entirely before settling down to read law. He had
done this most successfully, and had crowned all, as has been related,
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 wherever
he went, and he had just secured the most charming rooms close to the
Temple. He had plenty of brains, an exceedingly warm heart, and had
lately embraced a religion that satisfied every instinct of his nature. It
was the best of all possible worlds, and fitted him like his own well-cut
clothes. It consisted of privileges without responsibilities.

And now the crash had come, and all was over.
As the gong sounded for luncheon he turned over and lay on his back,
staring at the ceiling.
It should have been a very attractive face under other circumstances.
Beneath his brown curls, just touched with gold, there looked out a pair
of grey eyes, 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-turned corners, in a line of angry self-control
piteous to see; and his clear skin seemed stained and dull. He had never
dreamt of such misery in all his days.
As he lay now, with lax hands at his side, tightening at times in an
agony of remembrance, he was seeing vision after vision, turning now
and again to the contemplation of a dark future without life or love or
hope. Again he saw Amy, as he had first seen her under the luminous
July evening, jeweled