A week later, Mailing paid a visit to Professor Stepton. He had heard
nothing of the Hardings and Chichester since the day of the luncheon in
Onslow Gardens, but they had seldom been absent from his thoughts, and
more than once he had looked at the words, "Dine with H.C." in his book
of engagements, and had found himself wishing that "Hornton Street,
Wednesday" was not so far distant.
The professor lived in Westminster, in a house with Adam ceilings, not
far from the Houses of Parliament. He was unmarried, and Malling found
him alone after dinner, writing busily in his crowded library. He had but
recently returned from Paris, whither he had traveled to take part in a
series of "sittings" with the famous medium, Mrs. Groeber.
In person the professor was odd, without being specially striking. He
was of medium height, thin and sallow, with gray whiskers, thick gray
hair, bushy eyebrows, and small, pointed and inquiring features which
gave him rather the aspect of a prying bird. His eyes were little and
sparkling. His mouth, strangely enough, was ecclesiastical. He nearly
always wore very light-colored clothes. Even in winter he was often
to be seen clad in yellow-gray tweeds, a yellow silk necktie, and a
fawn-colored Homburg hat. And no human being had ever encountered him
in a pair of boots unprotected by spats. One peculiarity of his was that
he did not possess a walking-stick, another that he had never--so at
least he declared--owned a pocket-handkerchief, having had no occasion
to use one at any moment of his long and varied life. When it rained he
sometimes carried an umbrella, generally shut. At other times he moved
briskly along with his arms swinging at his sides.
As Malling came in he looked up and nodded.
"Putting down all about Mrs. Groeber," he observed.
"Anything new or interesting?" asked Malling.
"Just the usual manifestations, done in full light, though."
He laid aside his pen, while Malling sat down.
"A letter from Flammarion this morning," he said. "But all about Halley's
comet, of course. What is it?"
Now the professor's "What is it?" was not general, but particular, and
was at once understood to be so by Malling. It did not mean "Why have you
come?" but "Why are you obsessed at this moment, and by what?"
"Let's have the mystery," he added, leaning his elbows on his just dried
manuscript, and resting his sharp little chin on his doubled fists.
Yet Malling had hinted at no mystery, and had come without saying he was
coming.
"You know a clergyman called Marcus Harding?" said Malling.
"Of St. Joseph's. To be sure, I do."
"Do you know also his senior curate, Henry Chichester?"
"No."
"Have you heard of him?"
"Oh dear, yes. And I fancy I've seen him at a distance."
"You heard of him from Harding, I suppose."
"Exactly, and Harding's wife."
"Oh, from Lady Sophia!"
"Who hates him."
"Since when?" said Malling, emphatically.
"I couldn't say. But I was only aware of the fact about a month ago."
"Have you any reason to suppose that Harding has been making any
experiments?"
"In church music, biblical criticism, or what?"
"Say in psychical research?"
"No."
"Or that Chichester has?"
"No."
"Hasn't Harding ever talked to you on the subject?"
"He has tried to," said the professor, rather grimly.
"And you didn't encourage him?"
"When do I encourage clergymen to talk about psychical research?"
Malling could not help smiling.
"I have some reason--at least I believe so--to suppose that Harding and
his curate Chichester have been making some experiments in directions
not entirely unknown to us," he observed. "And what is more"--he
paused--"what is more," he continued, "I am inclined to think that
those experiments may have been crowned with a success they little
understand."
Down went the professor's fists, his head was poked forward in Malling's
direction, and his small eyes glittered almost like those of a glutton
who sees a feast spread before him.
"The experiments of two clergymen in psychical research crowned with
success!" he barked out.
"If so, I shall see what I can do in the pulpit--the Abbey pulpit!"
He got up, and walking slightly sidewise, with his hands hanging, and his
fingers opening and shutting, went over to a chair close to Malling's.
"Get on!" he said.
"I'm going to. I want your advice."
When Malling had finished what he had to say, the professor, who had
interrupted him two or three times to ask pertinent questions, put his
hands on his knees and thrust his head forward.
"You said you wanted advice," he said. "What about?"
"I wish you to advise me how I had better proceed."
"You really think the matter important?" asked the professor.
Malling looked slightly disconcerted.
"You don't?" he said.
"You are deducing a great deal from not very much. That's certain,"
observed the professor.
"You never knew Chichester," retorted Malling. "I did--two years ago."
"Suppose you are right, suppose these two reverend gentlemen have done
something such as you suppose--and that there has been a result, a
curious result, what have we to do with it? Tell me that."
"You mean that I have no right to endeavor to make a secret investigation
into the matter. But I'm positive both the men want help from me. I don't
say either of them will ask it. But I'm certain both of them want it."
"Two clergymen!" said the professor. "Two clergymen! That's the best of
it--if there is an it, which there may not be."
"Harding spoke very warmly of you."
"Good-believing man! Now, I do wonder what he's been up to. I do
wonder. Perhaps he'd have told me but for my confounded habit of
sarcasm, my way of repelling the amateur--repelling!" His arms flew out.
"There's so much silliness beyond all bearing, credulity beyond all the
patience of science. Table-turning women, feminine men! 'The spirits
guide me, Professor, in every smallest action of my life!'--Wuff!--the
charlatan battens and breeds. And the bile rises in one till Carlyle on
his worst day might have hailed one as a brother bilious, and so
denunciatory--Jeremiah nervously dyspeptic! And when you opened your
envelop and drew out a couple of clergymen, really, really! But perhaps
I was in a hurry! Clergymen in a serious fix, too, because of unexpected
and not understood success! And I talk of repelling the _amateur_!"
Suddenly he paused and, with his bushy eyebrows twitching, looked
steadily at Malling.
"I leave it to you," he said. "Take your own line. But don't forget that,
if there's anything in it, development will take place in the link. The
link will be a center of combat. The link will be an interesting field
for study."
"The link?" said Malling, interrogatively.
"Goodness gracious me! Her ladyship! Her ladyship!" cried out the
professor. "What are you about, Malling?"
And he refused to say another word on the matter till Malling, after much
more conversation on other topics, got up to go. Then, accompanying him
to the front door, the professor said:
"You know _I_ think it's probably all great nonsense."
"What?"
"Your two black-coated friends. You bustle along at such a pace.
Remember, I have made more experiments than you have, and I have never
come upon an exactly similar case. I don't know whether such a thing
can be. No more do you--you've guessed. Now, guessing is not at all
scientific. At the same time you've proved you can be patient. If there
is anything in this it's profoundly interesting, of course."
"Then you advise me--?"
"If in doubt, study Lady Sophia. Good night."
As Malling went away into the darkness he heard the professor snapping
out to himself, as he stood before his house bareheaded:
"Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings! _Très bien!_ But--reverend
gentlemen of St. Joseph's! I shall have to look for telergic power in my
acquaintance Randall Cantuar, when I want it! By Jove!"
"If in doubt, study Lady Sophia." As Malling thought over these
parting words, he realized their wisdom and wondered at his own
short-sightedness.
He had sent his cards to Onslow Gardens after the luncheon with the
Hardings. He wished now he had called and asked for Lady Sophia. But
doubtless he would have an opportunity of being with her again. If she
did not offer him one, he would make one for himself.
He longed to see her with Henry Chichester.
During the days that elapsed before "Hornton Street, Wednesday" he
considered a certain matter with sedulous care. His interview with
Stepton had not been fruitless. Stepton always made an effect on his
mind. Casual and jerky though his manner was, obstinate as were his
silences at certain moments, fragmentary as was his speech, he had a
way of darting at the essential that set him apart from most men. Malling
remembered a horrible thing he had once seen in the Sahara, a running
gazelle killed by a falcon. The falcon, rising high in the blue air,
had followed the gazelle, had circled, poised, then shot down and, with
miraculous skill, struck into the gazelle's eye. Unerringly from above
it had chosen out of the vast desert the home for its cruel beak.
Somewhat in similar fashion, so Malling thought, Stepton rose above
things, circled, poised, sank, and struck into the heart of the truth
unerringly.
Perhaps he was able to do this because he was able to mount, falconwise!
Malling would have given a good deal to have Stepton with him in this
affair, despite the professor's repellent attitude toward the amateur.
Well, if there really was anything in it, if strangeness rose out of the
orthodox bosom of St. Joseph's, if he--Malling--found himself walking in
thick darkness, he meant to bring Stepton into the matter, whether at
Stepton's desire or against it. Meanwhile he would see if there was
enlightenment in Hornton Street.
On the Wednesday the spell of fine weather which had made London look
strangely vivacious broke up, and in the evening rain fell with a gentle
persistence. Blank grayness took the town. A breath as of deep autumn was
in the air. And the strange sadness of cities, which is like no other
sadness, held the spirit of Evelyn Malling as he walked under an umbrella
in the direction of Kensington High Street. He walked, to shake off
depression. But in his effort he did not succeed. All that he saw
deepened his melancholy; the soldiers starting out vaguely from barracks,
not knowing what to do, but free for a time, and hoping, a little
heavily, for some adventure to break the military monotony of their
lives; the shopgirls, also in hope of something to "take them out of
themselves"--pathetic desire of escape from the little prison, where the
soul sits, picking its oakum sometimes, in its cell of flesh!--young
men making for the parks, workmen for the public houses, an old woman,
in a cap, peering out of an upper window in Prince's Gate; Italians with
an organ, and a monkey that looked as if it were dying of nostalgia;
women hurrying--whither?--with anxious faces, and bodies whose very
shapes, and whose every movement, suggested, rather proclaimed, worry.
Malling knew it was the rain, the possessive grayness, which troubled his
body to-night, and through his body troubled his spirit. His nostrils
inhaled the damp, and it seemed to go straight into his essence, into the
mystery that was he. His eyes saw no more blue, and it was as if they
drew a black shutter over all the blue in his heart, blotting it out.
People became doomed phantoms, because the weather had changed and
because London knows how to play Cassandra to the spirit of many a man.
To Malling, as he presently turned to the right, Hornton Street looked
like an alley leading straight to the pit of despair, and when he tapped
on the blistered green door of the small house where the curate lived, it
was as if he tapped seeking admittance to all the sorrowful things that
had been brought into being to beset his life with blackness.
A neat servant-girl opened the door. There was a smell of roast mutton in
the passage. So far well. Malling took off his hat and coat, hung them up
on a hook indicated by the plump red hand of the maid, and then followed
her upstairs. The curate was in possession of the first floor.
Malling knew that it would be a case of folding-doors and perhaps of
curtains of imitation lace. It was a case of folding-doors. But there
was a dull green hue on the walls that surely bespoke Henry Chichester's
personal taste. There were bookcases, there were mezzotints, there were
engravings of well-known pictures, and there were armchairs not covered
with horsehair. There was also a cottage piano, severely nude. In the
center of the room stood a small square table covered with a cloth and
laid for two persons.
"I'll tell Mr. Chichester, sir."
The maid went out. From behind the folding-doors came to Malling's ears
the sound of splashing water, then a voice saying, certainly to the maid,
"Thank you, Ellen, I will come." And in three minutes Chichester was in
the room, apologizing.
"I was kept late in the parish. There's a good deal to do."
"You're not overworked?" asked Malling.
"Do I look so?" said Chichester, quickly.
He turned round and gazed at himself in an oval Venetian mirror which
was fixed to the wall just behind him. His manner for a moment was oddly
absorbed as he examined his face.
"London life tells on one, I suppose," he said, again turning. "We
change, of course, in appearance as we go on."
His blue eyes seemed to be seeking something in Malling's impenetrable
face.
"Do you think," he said, "I am much altered since we used to meet two
years ago? It would of course be natural enough if I were."
Malling looked at him for a minute steadily.
"In appearance, you mean?"
"Of course."
"To-night it seems to me that you have altered a good deal."
"To-night?" said the curate, as if with anxiety.
"If there is any change,--and I think there is,--it seems to me more
apparent to-night than it was when I saw you the other day."
Ellen, the maid, entered the room bearing a tray on which was a
soup-tureen.
"Oh, dinner!" said Chichester. "Let us sit down. You won't mind simple
fare, I hope. We are having soup, mutton,--I am not sure what else."
"Stewed fruit, sir," interpolated Ellen.
"To be sure! Stewed fruit and custard. Open the claret, Ellen, please."
"Have you been in these rooms long?" asked Malling, as they unfolded
their napkins.
"Two years. All the time I have been at St. Joseph's. The rector told me
of them. The curate who preceded me had occupied them."
"What became of him?"
"He has a living in Northampton now. But when he left he had nothing in
view."
"He was tired of work at St. Joseph's?"
"I don't think he got on with the rector."
The drip of the rain became audible outside, and a faint sound of
footsteps on the pavement.
"Possibly I shall not stay much longer," he added.
"No doubt you'll take a living."
"I don't know. I don't know. But, in any case, I may not stay much
longer--perhaps. That will do, Ellen; you may go and fetch the mutton.
Put the claret on the table, please."
When the maid was gone, he added:
"One doesn't want a servant in the room listening to all one says. As
she was standing behind me I had forgotten she was here. How it rains
to-night! I hate the sound of rain."
"It is dismal," said Malling, thinking of his depression while he had
walked to Hornton Street.
"Do you mind," said the curate, slightly lowering his voice, "if I speak
rather--rather confidentially to you?"
"Not at all, if you wish to--"
"Well, now, you are a man of the world, you've seen many people. I wish
you would tell me something."
"What is it?"
Ellen appeared with the mutton. As soon as she had put it on the table
and departed, Chichester continued:
"How does Mr. Harding strike you? What impression does he make upon you?"
Eagerness, even more, something that was surely anxiety, shone in his
eyes as he asked the question.
"He's a very agreeable man."
"Of course, of course! Would you say he was a man to have much power over
others, his fellow-men?"
"Speaking quite confidentially--"
"Nothing you say shall ever go beyond us two."
"Then--I don't know that I should."
"He doesn't strike you as a man of power?"
"In the pulpit?"
"And out of it--especially out of it?"
"He may have been. But--perhaps he has lost in power. Dispersion, you
know, does not make for strength."
Suddenly the curate became very pale.
"Dispersion--you say!" he almost stammered.
As if to cover some emotion, he looked at Malling's plate, and added:
"Have some more? You won't? Then--"
He got up and rang the bell. Ellen reappeared, cleared away, and put the
stewed fruit and custard on the table.
"Bring the coffee in ten minutes, Ellen. I won't ring."
"Very well, sir."
"Dispersion," said Chichester to Malling in a firmer voice, as Ellen
disappeared.
"Concentration makes for strength. Mr. Harding seems to me mentally--what
shall I say?--rather torn in pieces, as if preyed upon by some anxiety.
Now, if you'll allow me to be personal, I should say that you have
greatly gained in strength and power since I knew you two years ago."
"You--you observe a difference?" asked Chichester, apparently in great
perturbation.
"A striking difference."
"And--and would you say I looked a happier, as well as a--a stronger
man?"
"I couldn't with truth say that."
"Very few of us are happy," said Chichester, with trembling lips. "Poor
miserable sinners as we are! And we clergymen, who set up to direct
others--" he broke off.
He seemed greatly, strangely, moved.
"You must forgive me. I have had a very hard day's work!" he murmured.
"The coffee will do me good. Let us sit in the armchairs, and Ellen can
clear away. I wish I had two sitting-rooms."
He rang to make Ellen hurry. Till she came Malling talked about Italian
pictures and looked at the curate's books. When she had cleared away,
left the coffee, and finally departed, he sat down with an air of
satisfaction. Chichester did not smoke, but begged Malling to light
up, and gave him a cigar.
"Coffee always does one good," he said. "It acts directly on the heart,
and seems to strengthen the whole body. I have had a trying day."
"You look tired," said Malling.
The fact was that Chichester had never recovered the color he had so
suddenly lost when they were discussing Mr. Harding.
"It's no wonder if I do," rejoined Chichester, in a voice that sounded
hopeless.
He drank some coffee, seemed to make a strong effort to recover himself,
and, with more energy, said:
"I asked you here because I wanted to renew a pleasant acquaintanceship,
but also--you won't think me discourteous, I know--because--well, I had
a purpose in begging you to come."
"Won't you tell me what it is?"
The curate shifted in his armchair, clasped and unclasped his hands.
A mental struggle was evidently going on within him. Indeed, during
the whole evening Malling had received from him a strong impression of
combat, of confusion.
"I wanted to continue the discussion we began at Mr. Harding's the other
day. You remember, I asked you not to tell him you were coming?"
"Yes."
"I think it's best to keep certain matters private. People so easily
misunderstand one. And the rector has rather a jealous nature."
Malling looked at his companion without speaking. At this moment he
was so strongly interested that he simply forgot to speak. Never, even
at a successful sitting when, the possibility of trickery having been
eliminated, a hitherto hidden truth seemed about to lift a torch in the
darkness and to illumine an unknown world, had he been more absorbed by
the matter in hand. Chichester did not seem to be struck by his silence,
and continued:
"And then not every one is fitted to comprehend properly certain matters,
to see things in their true light. Now the other day you said a thing
that greatly impressed me, that I have never been able to get out of my
mind since. You said, 'Harm can never come from truth.' I have been
thinking about those words of yours, night and day, night and day. Tell
me--did you mean them?"
The question came from Chichester's lips with such force that Malling was
almost startled.
"Certainly I meant them," he answered.
"And if truth slays?"
"And is death the worst thing that can happen to a man, or to an
idea--some wretched fallacy, perhaps, that has governed the minds of
men, some gross superstition, some lie that darkens counsel?"
"You think if a man lives by a lie he is better dead?"
"Don't you think so?"
"But don't we all need a crutch to help us along on the path of life?"
"What! You, a clergyman, think that it is good to bolster up truth with
lies?" said Malling, with genuine scorn.
"I didn't say that."
"You implied it, I think."
"Perhaps if you had worked among men and women as much as I have you
would know how much they need. If you went abroad, say to Italy, and saw
how the poor, ignorant people live happily oftentimes by their blind
belief in the efficacy of the saints, would you wish to tear it from
them?"
"I think we should live by the truth, and I would gladly strike away a
lie from any human being who was using it as a crutch."
"_I_ thought that once," said Chichester.
The words were ordinary enough, but there was something either in the
way they were said, or in Chichester's face as he said them, that made
Malling turn cold.
To cover his unusual emotion, which he was ashamed of, and which he
greatly desired to hide from his companion, he blew out a puff of cigar
smoke, lifted his cup, and drank the rest of his coffee.
"May I have another cup?" he said. "It's excellent."
The coffee-pot was on the table. Chichester poured out some more.
"I will have another cup, too," he said. "How it wakes up the mind."
He glanced at Mailing and added:
"Almost terribly sometimes."
"Yes. But--going back to our subject--don't you still think that men
should live by the truth?"
"I think," began Chichester--"I think--"
It seemed as if something physical prevented him from continuing. He
swallowed, as if forcing something down his throat.
"I think," he got out at last, "that few men know how terrible the face
of truth can be."
His own countenance was contorted as he spoke, as if he were regarding
something frightful.
"I think"--he turned right round in his chair to confront Malling
squarely--"that _you_ do not know."
For the first time he completely dominated Malling, Chichester the
gentle, cherubic clergyman, whom Malling had thought of as good, but
weak, and certainly as a negligible quantity. He dominated, because at
that moment he made Malling feel as if he had some great possession of
knowledge which Malling lacked.
"And you?" said Malling. "Do you know?"
The curate's lips worked, but he made no answer.
Malling was aware of a great struggle in his mind, as of a combat in
which two forces were engaged. He got up, walked to the window, and
stood as if listening to the rain.
"If only Stepton were here!" thought Malling.
There was a truth hidden from him, perhaps partly divined, obscurely half
seen, but not thoroughly understood, as a whole invisible. Stepton would
be the man to elucidate it, Malling thought. It lured him on, and baffled
him.
"How it rains!" said the curate at last, without turning.
He bent down and opened the small window. The uneasy, almost sinister
noise of rain in darkness entered the room, with the soft smell of
moisture.
"Do you mind if we have a little air?" he added.
"I should like it," said Malling.
Chichester came back and sat down again opposite Malling. His
expression had now quite changed. He looked calmer, gentler, weaker,
and much more uninteresting. Crossing his legs, and folding his thin
hands on his knees, he began to talk in his light tenor voice. And
he kept the conversation going on church music, sacred art in Italy,
and other eminently safe and respectable topics till it was time for
Malling to go.
Only when he was letting his guest out into the night did he seem
troubled once more. He clasped Malling's hand in his, as if almost
unaware that he was doing so, and said with some hesitation:
"Are you--are you going to see the rector again?"
"Not that I know of," said Malling, speaking the strict truth, and
virtually telling a lie at the same time.
For he was determined, if possible, to see Mr. Harding, and that before
very long.
"If I may say so," Chichester said, shifting from one foot to another and
looking down at the rain-sodden pavement, "I wouldn't see him."
"May I ask you why?"
"You may get a wrong impression. Two years ago he was another man.
Strangers, of course, may not know it, not realize it. But we who have
lived with him do know it. Mr. Harding is going down the hill."
There was a note of deep sadness in his voice. Had he been speaking of
himself, of his own decadence, his tone could scarcely have been more
melancholy.
And for long Malling remembered the look in his eyes as he drew back to
shut his door.
In the rain Malling walked home as he had come. But now it was deep in
the night and his depression had deepened. He was a self-reliant man, and
not easily felt himself small, though he was not conceited. To-night he
felt diminished. The worm-sensation overcame him. That such a man as
Chichester should have been able to convey to him such a sensation was
strange, yet it was from Chichester that this mental chastisement had
come. For a moment Chichester had towered, and at that moment Malling
surely had dwindled, shrunk together, like a sheet of paper exposed to
the heat of a flame.
But that Chichester should have had such an effect on him--Malling!
If Mr. Harding was going down the hill, Chichester surely was not. He had
changed drastically since Malling had known him two years ago. In power,
in force, he had gained. He now conveyed the impression of a man capable,
if he chose, of imposing himself on others. Formerly he had been the wax
that receives the impress. But whereas formerly he had been a contented
man, obviously at peace with himself and with the world, now he was
haunted by some great anxiety, by some strange grief, or perhaps even by
some fear.
"Few men know how terrible the face of the truth can be."
Chichester had said that.
Was he one of the few men?
And was that why now, as Malling walked home in the darkness and rain, he
felt himself humbled, diminished?
For Malling loved knowledge and thought men should live by it. Had truth
a Medusa face, still would he have desired to look into it once, would
have been ready to endure a subsequent turning to stone.
That Chichester should perhaps have seen what he had not seen--that
troubled him, even humbled him.
Some words of Professor Stepton came back to his mind: "If there's
anything in it, development will take place in the link." And those last
words: "If in doubt, study Lady Sophia."
Mailing was in doubt. Why not follow Stepton's advice? Why not study Lady
Sophia?
He resolved to do it. And with the resolve came to him a sense of greater
well-being. The worm-sensation departed from him. He lifted his head and
walked more briskly.
V
On the night following the dinner in Hornton Street, Malling went to the
Covent Garden Opera House to hear "La Traviata." The well-worn work did
not grasp the attention of a man who was genuinely fond of the music of
Richard Strauss, with its almost miraculous intricacies, and who was
willingly captive to Debussy. He looked about the house from his stall,
and very soon caught sight of Lady Mansford, Lady Sophia's sister-in-law,
in a box on the Grand Tier. Malling knew Lady Mansford. He resolved to
pay her a visit, and as soon as the curtain was down, and Tetrazzini had
tripped before it, smiling not unlike a good-natured child, he made his
way upstairs, and asked the attendant to tap at a door on which was
printed, "The Earl of Mansford." The man did so, and opened the door,
showing a domestic scene highly creditable to the much maligned British
aristocracy--Lord Mansford seated alone with his wife, in evidently
amicable conversation.
After a few polite words he made Malling sit down beside her, and, saying
he would have a cigarette in the foyer, he left them together.
Lady Mansford was a pretty, dark woman, of the slightly irresponsible
and little-bird type. She willingly turned her charmingly dressed head
and chirped when noticed, and she was generally noticed because of her
beauty. Now she chirped of Ceylon, where Malling had been, and then, more
vivaciously, of Parisian milliners, where she had been. From these allied
subjects Malling led her on to a slightly different topic--religion.
"I went to St. Joseph's last Sunday week," he presently said.
"St. who--what?" said Lady Mansford, who was busy with her
opera-glasses, and had just noticed that Lady Sindon, a bird-like
rival of hers, had changed the color of her hair, fortunately to
her--Lady Sindon's--disadvantage.
"To St. Joseph's, to hear your brother-in-law preach."
"It doesn't do at all," murmured Lady Mansford. "It makes her look
Chinese."
"You said--?"
"Mollie Sindon. But what were you talking about? Do tell me." She laid
down her glasses.
"I was saying that I went to church last Sunday week."
"Why?"
"To hear your brother-in-law preach at St. Joseph's."
"Marcus!" exclaimed Lady Mansford.
She pursed her lips.
"I don't go to St. Joseph's. Poor Sophy! I'm sorry for her."
"I lunched with Lady Sophia after the service."
"Did you? Isn't it sad?"
"Sad! I don't quite understand?" said Malling, interrogatively.
"The change in him. Of course people say it's drink. Such nonsense! But
they must say something, mustn't they?"
"Is Mr. Harding so very much changed?"
"Do you mean to say you didn't notice it?"
"I never met him till within the last fortnight."
"He's transformed--simply. He might have risen to anything, with his
energy, his ambition, and his connections. And now! But the worst of it
is no one can make out why it is. Even Sophia and Isinglass--my husband,
you know!--haven't an idea. And it gets worse every day. Last Sunday I
hear his sermon was too awful, a mere muddle of adjectives, such as one
hears in Hyde Park, I believe. I never liked Marcus particularly. I
always thought him too autocratic, too determined to dominate. He had
that poor little Mr. Chichester--his curate--completely under his thumb.
Mr. Chichester couldn't call his soul his own. He worshiped Marcus. But
now they say even he is beginning to think that his god is of clay. What
can it be? Do you think Marcus is losing his mind?"
"Oh, I should hope not," returned Malling, vaguely. "Has it been going on
long?"
"Oh, for quite a time. But it all seemed to come on gradually--as things
_do_, you know! Poor Sophy has always adored him, and given way to him in
everything. In her eyes all that he does is right. She never says a word,
I believe, but she must be suffering the tortures of--_you_ know! There's
Winnie Rufford coming in! How astonishingly young she looks. Were you at
the Huntingham's ball? Well--"
Lady Mansford twittered no more about the Harding menage. But Malling
felt that his visit had not been fruitless.
After the opera he went to a party in Grosvenor Street where again he
managed to produce talk of the Hardings. It seemed that Lady Mansford
had not exaggerated very much. Among those who knew the Hardings a change
in the rector of St. Joseph's had evidently been generally noticed.
Malling took in to supper a Mrs. Armitage, a great friend of Lady
Sophia's, and she made no secret of the fact that Lady Sophia was greatly
distressed.
"I thought she would have been here to-night," Mrs. Armitage said. "But
she isn't. I suppose she felt she couldn't face it. So many of his
congregation are here, or so many who were in his congregation."
"The church was crammed to the doors last Sunday week when he preached,"
observed Malling.
"Was it? Curiosity, I suppose. It certainly can't have been the
intellectual merit of the sermon. I heard it was quite deplorable. But
last Sunday's, I was told, was worse still. No continuity at all, and
the church not full. People say the curate, Mr. Chichester, who often
preaches in the evening, is making a great effect, completely cutting out
his rector. And he used to be almost unbearably dull."
"Will you have a quail?"
"Please. You might give me two. My doctor says if I sit up late--thank
you!"
"I've never heard Mr. Chichester preach," said Malling.
"He seems to have come on marvelously, to be quite another man."
"Quite another man, does he?"
"Yes. It's very trying for the Hardings naturally. If it continues I
think there will have to be a change. I don't think things can go on as
they are. My friend Sophia won't be able to stand it."
"You mean--the contrast?"
"Between her husband and Mr. Chichester. She's very highly strung and
quite worships her husband; though, between you and me, _I_ think rather
in the slave spirit. But some women are like that. They can't admire a
man unless he beats them. Not that Mr. Harding ever dreamed of doing such
a thing to Sophia, of course. But his will had to be law in everything.
You know the type of man! It's scarcely my idea of what a clergyman
should be. I think a man who professes to direct the souls of others
should be more gentle and unselfish, especially to his wife. Another
quail? Well, really, I think perhaps I will. They are so absurdly small
this season, aren't they? There's scarcely anything on them."
So that minute fraction of the world that knew of the existence of the
Hardings began to utter itself concerning them, and Malling was fortified
in his original belief which he had expressed to Professor Stepton.
Among his many experiments made in connection with psychical research
those which had interested him the most had been those in which the
mystery of the human will had seemed to be deeply involved. Malling was
essentially a psychologist. And man was to him the great mystery, because
man contained surely something that belonged to, that was lent to, man,
as it were, by another, the mind beyond, the _anima mundi_. When Malling
drew mentally, or spiritually, very near to any man, however rude,
however humble, he always had the feeling that he was approaching holy
ground. Hidden beneath his generally imperturbable exterior, sunk beneath
the surface incredulity of his mind, there was the deep sense of mighty
truths waiting the appointed day of proclamation. Surely, he often
thought, if there is God in anything, in the last rays of the sunset,
in the silence of night upon the sea, in the waking of spring among the
forests and the gardens, in the song of the nightingale which knows
not lovers are listening, there is God in the will of man.
And when he made investigations into the action of will upon will, or
of will--as it seemed--upon matter, he was held, as he was not held by
the appearance of so-called spirit faces and spirit forms, even when
he could not connect these with trickery which he knew how to expose.
Perhaps, however, his incredulity in regard to these latter phenomena was
incurable, though he did not know it. For he knew nearly all the devices
of the charlatans. And when the so-called spirits came, the medium was
always entranced, that is, apparently will-less, and so to Malling not
interesting.
Now, from what Harding and Chichester had said to him, and from what
he had observed for himself, Malling believed that the two clergymen
must have had sittings together, probably with the usual tremendous
object of the ignorant amateur, that merely of communicating with the
other world. Considering who the two men were, Malling believed that in
all probability they had sat alone and in secret. He also felt little
doubt that from Mr. Harding's brain had come the suggestion of these
practices, that his will had led Chichester on to them. Although he
had not known the rector two years ago, he had gathered sufficient
testimony to the fact that he had been a man of powerful, even perhaps
of tyrannical, temperament, formed rather to rule than to be ruled. He
knew that Chichester, on the contrary, had been gentle, kindly, yielding,
and of somewhat weak, though of very amiable, nature. The physique of the
two men accorded with these former temperaments. Harding's commanding
height, large frame, big, powerful face and head, rather hard gray eyes,
even his large white teeth, his bony, determined hands, his firmly
treading feet, suggested force, a dominating will, the capacity, and
the intention, to rule. Henry Chichester's fleshly envelop, on the other
hand, cherubic, fair, and delicate, his blue eyes, small bones, the shape
of forehead and chin, the line of the lips, hinted at--surely more than
that, surely stated mildly--the existence within it of a nature retiring,
meek, and ready to be ruled by others. No wonder if Chichester had been,
as Lady Mansford had said, completely under the rector's thumb, no wonder
if he had been unable to "call his soul his own" and had "worshiped
Marcus."
Yes, if there had been these secret sittings by these two men, it was
Harding who had persuaded Chichester to take part in them. And what had
these sittings led to, what had been their result?
The ignorant outsider, the hastily skeptical, of course would say that
there could have been no result. Malling, knowing more, knew better. He
had seen strange cases of temporary confusion of a man's will brought
about by sittings, of what had seemed temporary change even of a man's
nature. When a hitherto sane man goes mad he often becomes the opposite
of what he was. Those whom he formerly loved he specially singles out
for hatred. That which he delighted to do he shrinks from with horror.
Once good-natured, he is now of an evil temper, once gentle, he is
fiercely obstinate, once gay, he cowers and weeps. So Malling had known
a man, while retaining his sanity, to be transformed by the apparently
trivial fact of sitting at a table with a friend, and placing his hands
upon it with the hands of another man. He himself had sat with an Oxford
friend,--who in later sittings became entranced,--and at the very first
experiment this man had said to him, "It's so strange, now that I am
sitting with you like this I feel filled with hatred toward you." This
hatred, which had come upon this man at every successive sitting, had
always faded away when the sitting was over. But was it certain that the
feelings generated in sittings never persisted after they were broken
up? Was it certain that in every case the waters that had been
mysteriously troubled settled into their former stillness?
Harding and Chichester, for instance! Had the strong man troubled the
waters of the weaker man's soul, and were those waters still agitated?
That was perhaps possible. But Malling thought it was possible also, and
he had suggested this to Professor Stepton, that the weaker man had
infused some of his weakness, his self-doubtings, his readiness to be
affected by the opinion of others, into his dominating companion. Malling
believed it possible that the wills of the two clergymen, in some
mysterious and inexplicable way, had mingled during their sittings, and
that they had never become completely disentangled. If this were so, the
result was a different Harding from the former Harding, and a different
Henry Chichester from the former Henry Chichester.
What puzzled Malling, however, was the fact, if fact it were, that the
difference in each man was not diminishing, but increasing.
Could they be continuing the sittings, if there had ever been sittings?
All was surmise. As the professor had said, he, Malling, was perhaps
deducing a good deal from very little. And yet was he? His instinct told
him he was not. Yet there might no doubt be some ordinary cause for the
change in Mr. Harding. Some vice, such as love of drink, or morphia,
something that disintegrates a man, might have laid its claw upon him.
That was possible. What seemed to Malling much more unaccountable was the
extraordinary change in the direction of strength in Chichester. And the
relations between the two men, if indeed the curate had once worshiped
his rector, were mysteriously transformed. For now, was it not almost as
if something of Harding in Chichester watched, criticized, Chichester in
Harding?
But now--to study Lady Sophia! For if there was really anything in
Malling's curious supposition, the woman must certainly be strangely
affected. He remembered the expression in her eyes when her husband
was preaching, her manner when she spoke of the curate as one of her
husband's swans.
And he longed to see her again. She had said that she hoped he would come
again to St. Joseph's and to her house, but he knew well that any such
desire in her had arisen from her wounded pride in her husband. She
wished Malling to know what the rector could really do. When she thought
that the rector had recovered his former powers, his hold upon the minds
of men, then she would invite Malling to return to St. Joseph's, but not
before.
And when would that moment come?
It might not come for weeks, for months. It might never come. Malling did
not mean to await it. Nevertheless he did not want to do anything likely
to surprise Lady Sophia, to lead her to think that he had any special
object in view in furthering his acquaintance with her.
While he was casting about in his mind what course to take, chance
favored him.
Four days later, when he was strolling round the rooms in Burlington
House, he saw not far in front of him the tall and restless figure of
a woman. She was alone. For some time Malling did not recognize her.
She did not turn sufficiently for him to see her face, and her almost
feverish movements, though they attracted and fixed his attention, did
not strike him as familiar. His thought of her, as he slowly followed
in the direction she was taking, was, "What a difficult woman that would
be to live with!" For the hands were never still; the gait was uneasy;
nervousness, almost a sort of pitiful irritation, seemed expressed by her
every movement.
In the big room this woman paused before the picture of the year, which
happened to be a very bad one, and Malling, coming up, at last recognized
her as Lady Sophia Harding.
He took off his hat. She seemed startled, but greeted him pleasantly, and
entered into a discussion of the demerits which fascinate the crowd.
"You prefer seeing pictures alone, perhaps?" said Malling, presently.
"Indeed I don't," she answered. "I was coming to-day with my husband. We
drove up together. But at the last moment he thought he remembered
something,--some appointment with Mr. Chichester,--and left me."
There were irony and bitterness in her voice.
"He said he'd come back and meet me in the tea-room presently," she
added.
"Shall we go there and wait for him?" asked Malling.
"But I'm afraid I'm taking up your time."
"I have no engagements this afternoon. I shall enjoy a quiet talk with
you."
"It's very good of you."
They descended, and sat down in a quiet corner. In the distance a few
respectable persons were slowly eating bath-buns with an air of fashion,
their duly marked catalogues laid beside them on marble.
Far-off waiters, standing with their knees bent, conversed in
undertones. A sort of subterranean depression, peculiar to this
fastness of Burlington House, brooded over the china and the provisions.
"It reminds me of the British Museum tearoom," said Lady Sophia. "Here is
tea! What a mercy! Modern pictures sap one's little strength."
She looked haggard, and was obviously on the edge of her nerves.
"Marcus might have come in," she added. "But of course he wouldn't--or
couldn't."
"Doesn't he care for pictures?"
She slightly shrugged her shoulders.
"He used to. But I don't know that he does now."
"I suppose he has a tremendous amount to do."
"He used to do much more at Liverpool. If a man wishes to come to the
front he mustn't sit in an armchair with folded hands."
There was a sharp sound of criticism in her voice which astonished
Malling. At the luncheon, only about a fortnight ago, she had shown
herself plainly as the adoring wife, anxious for her husband's success,
nervously hostile to any one who interfered with it, who stood between
him and the homage of his world. Now Malling noted, or thought he noted,
a change in her mental attitude. He was instantly on the alert.
"I'm sure that's the last thing Mr. Harding would do," he said.
She shot a glance at him out of her discontented dark eyes.
"Are you?" she said.
And sarcasm crept in the words. She gave to Malling at this moment the
impression of a woman so strung up as to be not her natural self, so
tormented by some feeling, perhaps long repressed, that her temperament
was almost furiously seeking an outlet, knowing instinctively, perhaps,
that only there lay its salvation.
"His record proves it," said Malling, with serenely smiling assurance.
Lady Sophia twisted her lips. The Academy tea was very strong. Perhaps
it had been standing. She drank a little, pulled at her long gloves
restlessly, and looked at Malling. He knew she was longing to confide
in somebody. If only he could induce her to confide in him!
"Oh, my husband's been a very active man," she said. "Everybody knows
that. But in this modern world of ours one must not walk, or even
run along, one must keep on rushing along if one intends to reach the
goal."
"And by that you mean--?"
"Mean! The topmost height of your profession, or business, of whatever
career you are in."
"You are ambitious," he said.
"Not for myself," she answered quickly. "I have no ambition for myself."
"But perhaps the ambition to spur on another successfully? That seems to
me the truest, the most legitimate ambition of the woman all men worship
in their hearts."
Suddenly tears started into her eyes. She was sitting opposite Malling,
the tea-table between them. Now she leaned forward across it. By nature
she was very sensitive, but she was not a self-conscious, woman. She was
not self-conscious now.
"It is much better to be selfish," she said earnestly. "That is where we
women make such a fatal mistake. Instead of trusting to ourselves, of
relying on ourselves, and of having a personal ambition, we seek always
another in whom we may trust; we are unhappy till we rely on another; it
is for another we cherish, we hug, ambition. And then, when all founders,
we realize too late what I dare say every man knows."
"What is that?"
"That we women are fools--fools!"
"For being unselfish?"
"For thinking we have power when we are impotent."
She made a gesture that was surely one of despair.
"No one--at any rate, no woman--has power for another," she added, with
almost terrible conviction. "That is all a legend, made up to please us,
I suppose. We draw a sword against darkness and think we are fighting.
Isn't it too absurd?"
With the last words she changed her tone, trying to make it light, and
she smiled.
"We take everything too seriously. That's the trouble!" she said. "And
men pretend we take nothing seriously."
"Very often they don't understand."
"Oh, please say never!" she exclaimed. "They never understand."
Suddenly Malling resolved on a very bold stroke.
"But I'm a man," he said, as if that obvious fact shattered her
contention.
"What has that got to do with it?" she said, in obvious surprise.
"Because I do not understand."
For a moment she was silent. He thought he read what was passing through
her mind, as he knew he had read her character. She was one of those
women who must be proud of their men, who love to be ruled, but only
by a conqueror, who delight to sink themselves, but in power, not in
impotence. And now she was confronted by the shipwreck not merely of
her hopes, but also of her belief. She saw a hulk drifting at the mercy
of the waves that, perhaps, would soon engulf it. But she was not only
despairing, she was raging too. For she was a woman with nervous force
in her, and it is force that rages in the moments of despair, seeking,
perhaps unconsciously, some means of action and finding none.
"Why should there not be some hope?" asked Malling, quietly.
"To-morrow is Sunday. If you go to morning church at St. Joseph's, and
then to evening church, you will see if there is any hope."
"To evening church?"
"Yes, yes."
She got up.
"You are going?"
"I must. Forgive me!"
She held out her hand.
"But--"
"No, don't come with me, please."
"If I go to St. Joseph's to-morrow, afterward may I see you again?"
"If you think it's worth while."
Her face twisted. Hastily she pulled down her veil, turned away and left
him.