_"Could you come down stay with me Saturday till Monday all alone air
delicious feel rather solitary glad of your company Marcus Harding Minors
Tankerton Kent."_
Such was the telegram which Evelyn Malling was considering on the
following Friday afternoon. The sender had paid an answer. The
telegraph-boy was waiting in the hall. Malling only kept him five
minutes. He went away with this reply:
_"Accept with pleasure will take four twenty train at Victoria Saturday
Malling."_
Malling could not have said with truth that he had expected a summons
from Mr. Harding, yet he found that he was not surprised to get it. The
man was in a bad way. He needed sympathy, he needed help. That was
certain. But whether he could help him was more than doubtful, Malling
thought. Perhaps, really, a doctor and the wonderful air from the mud
flats of Tankerton! But here Malling found that a strong incredulity
checked him. He did not believe that the rector would be restored by a
doctor's advice and a visit to the sea.
That afternoon he went to Westminster, and asked for Professor Stepton.
"He is away, sir," said the fair Scotch parlormaid.
"For long?"
"We don't know, sir. He has gone into Kent, on research business, I
believe."
Agnes had been for a long time in the professor's service, and was
greatly trusted. The professor had come upon her originally when making
investigations into "second sight," a faculty which she claimed to
possess. By the way she was also an efficient parlor-maid.
"Kent!" said Malling. "Do you know where he is staying?"
"The address he left is the Tankerton Hotel, Tankerton, near
Whitstable-on-Sea, sir."
"Thank you, Agnes," said Malling.
"It is a haunted house somewhere Birchington way the professor is after,
I believe, sir."
"Luck favors me!" said Malling to himself, unscientifically, as he walked
away from the house.
On the following day it was in a singularly expectant and almost
joyously alert frame of mind that he bought a first-class ticket
for Whitstable-on-Sea, which is the station for Tankerton.
He would involve Stepton in this affair. There was a mystery in it.
Malling was now convinced of that. And his original supposition did not
satisfy him. But perhaps Mr. Harding meant to help him. Perhaps Mr.
Harding intended to be explicit. The difficulty there was that he also
was walking in darkness, as Malling believed. His telegram had come like
a cry out of this darkness.
"Faversham! Faversham!" the fair Kentish porters were calling. Only about
twenty minutes now! Would the rector be at the station?
He was. As the train ran in alongside the wooden platform, Mailing caught
sight of the towering authoritative figure. Was it his fancy which made
him think that it looked slightly bowed, even perhaps a little shrunken?
"Good of you to come!" said the rector in a would-be hearty voice, but
also with a genuine accent of pleasure. "All the afternoon I have been
afraid of a telegram."
"Why?" asked Malling, as they shook hands.
"Oh, when one is anxious for a thing, one does not always get it. Ha,
ha!"
He broke into a covering laugh.
"Here is a porter. You've only got this bag. Capital! I have a fly
waiting. We go down these steps."
As they descended, Malling remarked:
"By the way, we have a friend staying here. Have you come across him?"
"No, I have seen nobody--that is, no acquaintance. Who is it?"
"Stepton."
"The professor down here!" exclaimed Mr. Harding, as if startled.
"At the hotel, I believe. He's come down to make some investigation."
"I haven't seen him."
They stepped into the fly, and drove through the long street of
Whitstable toward the outlying houses of Tankerton, scattered over
grassy downs above a quiet, brown sea.
"The air is splendid, certainly," observed Malling, drinking it in almost
like a gourmet savoring a wonderful wine.
"It must do me good. Don't you think so?"
The question sounded anxious to Malling's ears.
"It ought to do every one good, I should think."
"Here is Minors."
The fly stopped before a delightfully gay little red doll's house--so
Malling thought of it--standing in a garden surrounded by a wooden
fence, with the downs undulating about it. Not far off, but behind it,
was the sea. And the rector, pointing to a red building in the distance,
on the left and much nearer to the beach, said:
"That is the hotel where the professor must be staying, if he is here."
"I'll go over presently and ask about him."
"Oh," said Mr. Harding. "Bring in the bag, please, Jennings. The room on
the right, at the top of the stairs."
Malling had believed in London that Mr. Harding's telegram to him was a
cry out of darkness. That first evening in the cheerful doll's house he
knew his belief was well founded. When they sat at dinner, like two
monsters, Malling thought, who had somehow managed to insert themselves
into a doll's dining-room, it was obvious that the rector was ill at
ease. Again and again he seemed to be on the verge of some remark,
perhaps of some outburst of speech, and to check himself only when the
words were almost visibly trembling on his lips. In his eyes Malling
saw plainly his longing for utterance, his hesitation; reserve and a
desire to liberate his soul, the one fighting against the other. And at
moments the whole man seemed to be wrapped in weakness like a garment,
the soul and the body of him. Then, as a light may dwindle till it seems
certain to go out, all that was Marcus Harding seemed to Malling to
dwindle. The large body, the powerful head and face, meant little, almost
nothing, because the spirit was surely fading. But these moments passed.
Then it was as if the light flared suddenly up again.
When dinner was over, Mr. Harding asked Malling if he would like to take
a stroll.
"The sea air will help us to sleep," he said.
"I should like nothing better," said Malling. "Haven't you been sleeping
well lately?"
"Very badly. We had better take our coats."
They put the coats on, and went out, making their way to the broad,
grassy walk raised above the shingle of the beach. The tide was far
down, and the oozing flats were uncovered. So still, so waveless was
the brown water that at this hour it was impossible to perceive where
it met the brown land. In the distance, on the right, shone the lights
of Herne Bay, with its pier stretching far out into the shallows. Away
to the left was the lonely island of Sheppey, a dull shadow beyond the
harbor, where the oyster-boats lay at rest. There were very few people
about: some fisher-lads solemnly or jocosely escorting their girls, who
giggled faintly as they passed Mr. Harding and Malling; two or three
shopkeepers from Whitstable taking the air; a boatman or two vaguely
hovering, with blue eyes turned from habit to the offing.
The two men paced slowly up and down. And again Malling was aware of
words trembling upon the rector's lips--words which he could not yet
resolve frankly to utter. Whether it was the influence of the faintly
sighing sea, of the almost sharply pure air, of the distant lights
gleaming patiently, or whether an influence came out from the man beside
him and moved him, Malling did not know; but he resolved to do a thing
quite contrary to his usual practice. He resolved to try to force a
thing on, instead of waiting till it came to him naturally. He became
impatient, he who was generally a patient seeker.
"You remember our former conversations with regard to Henry Chichester?"
he said abruptly, changing the subject of their discourse.
"Chichester? Yes--yes. What of him?"
"I wish to tell you that I think you are right, that I think there is an
extraordinary, even an amazing, change in Chichester."
"There is, indeed," said Mr. Harding. "And--and it will increase."
He spoke with a sort of despairing conviction.
"What makes you think so?"
"It must. It cannot be otherwise--unless--"
He paused.
"Yes," said Malling; "unless--"
"A thing almost impossible were to happen."
"May I, without indiscretion, ask what that is?"
"Unless he were to leave St. Joseph's, to go quite away."
"Surely that would not be impossible!"
"I often think it is. Chichester will not wish to go."
"Are you certain of that?" asked Malling, remembering the curate's remark
in Horton Street, that perhaps he would not remain at St. Joseph's much
longer.
The rector turned his head and fixed his eyes upon Malling.
"Has he said anything to you about leaving?" he asked, suddenly raising
his voice, as if under the influence of excitement. "But of course he
has not."
"Surely it is probable that such a man may be offered a living."
"He would not take it."
They walked on a few steps in silence, turned, and strolled back. It was
now growing dark. Their faces were set toward the distant gleam of the
Herne Bay lights.
"I am not so sure," at length dropped out Malling.
"Why are you not so sure?"
"Why do you think Chichester's departure from St. Joseph's impossible?"
Malling spoke strongly to determine, if possible, the rector to speak, to
say out all that was in his heart.
"Can I tell you?" Mr. Harding almost murmured. "Can I tell you?"
"I think you asked me here that you might tell me something."
"It is true. I did."
"Then--"
"Let us sit down in this shelter. There is no one in it. People are going
home."
Malling followed him into a shelter, with a bench facing the sea.
"I thought perhaps here I might be able to tell you," said Mr. Harding.
"I am in great trouble, Mr. Malling, in great trouble. But I don't know
whether you, or whether any one, can assist me."
"If I may advise you, I should say--tell me plainly what your trouble
is."
"It began--" Mr. Harding spoke with a faltering voice--"it began a good
while ago, some months after Mr. Chichester came as a curate to St.
Joseph's. I was then a very different man from the man you see now.
Often I feel really as if I were not the same man, as if I were radically
changed. It may be health. I sometimes try to think so. And then I--" He
broke off.
The strange weakness that Malling had already noticed seemed again to be
stealing over him, like a mist, concealing, attenuating.
"Possibly it is a question of health," said Malling, rather sharply.
"Tell me how it began."
"When Chichester first joined me, I was a man of power and ambition. I
was a man who could dominate others, and I loved to dominate."
His strength seemed returning while he spoke, as if frankness were to him
a restorative of the spirit.
"It was indeed my passion. I loved authority. I loved to be in command.
I was full of ecclesiastical ambition. Feeling that I had intellectual
strength, I intended to rise to the top of the church, to become a bishop
eventually, perhaps even something greater. When I was presented to St.
Joseph's,--my wife's social influence had something to do with that,--I
saw all the gates opening before me. I made a great effect in London.
I may say with truth that no clergyman was more successful than I was--at
one time. My wife spurred me on. She was immensely ambitious for me. I
must tell you that in marrying me she had gone against all her family.
They thought me quite unworthy of her notice. But from the first time I
met her I meant to marry her. And as I dominated others, I completely
dominated her. But she, once married to me, was desperately anxious that
I should rise in the world, in order that her choice of me might be
justified in the eyes of her people. You can understand the position, I
dare say?"
"Perfectly," said Malling.
"I may say that she irritated my ambition, that she stung it into almost
a furious activity. Women have great influence with us. I thought she was
my slave almost, but I see now that she also influenced me. She worshiped
me for my immediate success at St. Joseph's. You may think it very
ridiculous, considering that I am merely the rector of a fashionable
London church, but there was a time when I felt almost intoxicated by
my wife's worship of me, and by my domination over the crowds who came to
hear me preach. Domination! That was my fetish! That was what led me
to--oh, sometimes I think it must end in my ruin!"
"Perhaps not," said Malling, quietly. "Let us see."
His words, perhaps even more his manner, seemed greatly to help Mr.
Harding.
"I will tell you everything," he exclaimed. "From the first I have
felt as if you were the man to assist me, if any man could. I had
always, since I was an undergraduate at Oxford,--I was a Magdalen
man,--been interested in psychical matters, and followed carefully
all the proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research. I had also
at that time,--in Oxford,--made some experiments with my college
friends, chiefly in connection with will power. My influence seemed to
be specially strong. But I need not go into all that. After leaving
Oxford and taking orders, for a long time I gave such matters up. I
feared, if I showed my strong interest in psychical research, especially
if I was known to attend séances or anything of that kind, it might be
considered unsuitable in a clergyman, and might injure my prospects. It
was not until Henry Chichester came to St. Joseph's that I was tempted
again into paths which I had chosen to consider forbidden to me.
Chichester tempted me! Chichester tempted me!"
He spoke the last words with a sort of lamentable energy.
"Such a gentle, yielding man as he was!"
"It was just that. He came under my influence at once, and showed it in
almost all he said and did. He looked up to me, he strove to model
himself upon me, he almost worshiped me. One evening,--it was in the
pulpit!--the idea shot through my brain, 'I could do what I like with
that man, make of him just what I choose, use him just as I please.' And
I turned my eyes toward the choir where Chichester sat in the last stall,
hanging on my words. At that instant I can only suppose that what people
sometimes call the _maladie de grandeur_--the mania for power--took
hold upon me, and combined with my furtive longing after research in
those mysterious regions where perhaps all we desire is hidden. Anyhow,
at that instant I resolved to try to push my influence over Chichester to
its utmost limit, and by illegitimate means."
"Illegitimate?"
"I call them so. Yes, yes, they are not legitimate. I know that now. And
he--but I dare not think what he knows!"
The rector was greatly moved. He half rose from the bench on which they
were sitting, then, making a strong effort, controlled himself, sank
back, and continued:
"At that time, in the early days of his association with me, Chichester
thought that everything I did, everything I suggested, even everything
that came into my mind, must be good and right. He never dreamed of
criticizing me. In his view, I was altogether above criticism. And if I
approached him with any sort of intimacy he was in the greatest joy. You
know, perhaps, Mr. Malling, how the worshiper receives any confidence
from the one he worships. He looks upon it as the greatest compliment
that can be paid him. I resolved to pay that compliment to Henry
Chichester.
"You must know that although I had entirely given up the occult
practices--that may not be the exact term, but you will understand
what I mean--I had indulged in at Oxford, I had never relaxed my deep,
perhaps my almost morbid interest in the efforts that were being made
by scientists and others to break through the barrier dividing us on
earth from the spirit world. Although I had chosen the career of a
clergyman,--alas! I looked upon the church, I suppose, as little more
than a career!--I was not a very faithful man. I had many doubts which,
as clergymen must, I concealed. By nature I suppose I had rather an
incredulous mind. Not that I was a skeptic, but I was sometimes a
doubter. Rather than faith, I should have much preferred to have
knowledge, exact knowledge. Often I even felt ironical when confronted
with the simple faith we clergymen should surely encourage, sustain, and
humbly glory in, whereas with skepticism, even when openly expressed, I
always felt some part of myself to be in secret sympathy. I continued to
study works, both English and foreign, on psychical research. I followed
the experiments of Lodge, William James, and others. Myers's great work
on human personality was forever at my elbow. And the longer I was
debarred--self-debarred because of my keen ambition and my determination
to do nothing that could ever make me in any way suspect in the eyes of
those to whom I looked confidently for preferment--from continuing the
practices which had such a fascination for me, the more intensely I
was secretly drawn toward them. The tug at my soul was at last almost
unbearable. It was then I looked toward Chichester, and resolved to take
him into my confidence--to a certain extent.
"I approached the matter craftily. I dwelt first upon the great spread
of infidelity in our days, and the necessity of combating it by every
legitimate means. I spoke of the efforts being made by earnest men of
science--such men as Professor Stepton, for instance--to get at the truth
Christians are expected to take on trust, as it were. I said I respected
such men. Chichester agreed,--when did he not agree with me at that
time?--but remarked that he could not help pitying them for ignoring
revelation and striving to obtain by difficult means what all Christians
already possessed by a glorious and final deed of gift.
"I saw that though Chichester was such a devoted worshiper of mine, if I
wanted to persuade him to my secret purpose,--no other than the effort,
to be made with him, to communicate with the spirit world,--I must be
deceptive, I must mask my purpose with another.
"I did so. I turned his attention to the subject of the human will. Now,
at that time Chichester knew that his will was weak. He considered that
fact one of his serious faults. I hinted that I agreed with him. I
proposed to join with him in striving to strengthen it. He envied my
strength of will. He looked up to me, worshiped me almost, because of it.
I drew his mind to the close consideration of influence. I gave him two
or three curious works that I possessed on this subject. In one of them,
a pamphlet written by a Hindu who had been partly educated at Oxford,
and whom I had personally known when I was an undergraduate, there was a
course of will-exercises, much as in certain books on body-building there
are courses of physical exercises. I related to Chichester some of the
extraordinary and deeply interesting conversations I had had with this
Hindu on the subject of the education of the will, and finally I told a
lie. I told Chichester that I had gained my powerful will while at Oxford
by drawing it from my Hindu friend in a series of sittings that we two
had secretly undertaken together. This was false, because I had been born
with a strong, even a tyrannical, will, and I had never sat with the
Hindu.
"Chichester, though at first startled, was fascinated by this untruth,
and, to cut the matter short, I persuaded him to begin with me a series
of secret sittings, in which I proposed to try to impart to him, to
infuse into him, as it were, some of my undoubted power--the power which
he daily saw me exercising in the pulpit and over the minds of men in my
intercourse with them.
"What I really wished to do, what I meant to do, if possible, was to use
Chichester as a medium, and to try through him to communicate with the
spirit world. I had taken it into my head--no doubt you will say quite
unreasonably--that he must be entirely subject to my will in a sitting,
and that if I willed him to be entranced, it was certain that he would
become so. But my own entirely selfish desires I concealed under the
cloak of an unselfish wish to give power to him. I even pretended, as you
see, to have a highly moral purpose, though it is true I suggested trying
to effect it in an unconventional and very unecclesiastical manner.
"Chichester, though, as I have said, at first startled, of course
eventually fell in with my view. We sat together in his room at Hornton
Street.
"Now, Mr. Malling, some of what I have told you may appear to be almost
contradictory. I have spoken of my _maladie de grandeur_ as if it were
a reason why I wished to sit with Henry Chichester, and then of my desire
to communicate, if possible, with the spirit world as my reason."
"I noticed that," observed Malling, "and purposed later to point it out
to you."
"How can I explain exactly? It is so difficult to unravel the web of
motives in a mind. It was my _maladie de grandeur_, I think, that made
me long to use my worshiper Chichester as a mere tool for the opening of
that door which shuts off from us the region the dead have entered. My
mind at that time was filled with a mingled conceit, amounting at moments
almost to an intoxication, and a desire for knowledge. I reveled in my
power when preaching, but was haunted by genuine doubts as to truth. My
egoism longed to make an utter slave of Chichester (I nearly always
lusted to push my influence to its limit). But my desire to know made me
conceive the pushing of it in a direction, in this instance, which would
perhaps gratify a less unworthy desire than that merely of subjugating
another. The two birds and the one stone! I thought of them. I loved the
idea of making a tool. I loved also the idea of using the tool when made.
And I pretended I had only Chichester's moral interest at heart. I have
been punished, terribly punished.
"We sat, as I say, in Hornton Street, secretly, and of course at night.
My wife knew nothing of it. I made excuses to get away--parish matters,
meetings, work in the East End. I had no difficulty with her. She thought
my many activities would bring me ever more and more into the public
eye, and she encouraged them. The people in the house where Chichester
lodged were simple folk, and were ready to go early to bed, leaving
rector and curate discussing their work for the salvation of bodies and
souls.
"At first Chichester was reluctant, I know. I read his thoughts. He was
not sure that it was right to approach such mysteries; but, as usual, I
dominated him silently. And soon he fell completely under the fascination
peculiar to sittings."
Again Mr. Harding paused. For a moment his head sank, his powerful body
drooped, he was immersed in reverie. Malling did not interrupt him. At
last, with a deep sigh, and now speaking more slowly, more unevenly, he
continued:
"What happened exactly at those sittings I do not rightly know. Perhaps
I shall never rightly know. What did not happen I can tell you. In the
first place, although I secretly used my will upon Chichester, desiring,
mentally insisting, that he should become entranced, he never was
entranced when we sat together. Something within him--was it something
holy? I have wondered--resisted my desire, of which, so far as I know,
he was never aware. Perhaps 'beneath the threshold' he was aware. Who
can say? But though my great desire was frustrated in our sittings, the
desire of Chichester, so different, perhaps so much more admirable than
mine, and, at any rate, not masked by any deceit, began, so it seemed,
to be strangely gratified. He declared almost from the first that, when
sitting with me, he felt his will power strengthened. 'You are doing me
good,' he said. Now, as my professed object in contriving the sittings
had been to lift up Chichester toward my level,"--with indescribable
bitterness Mr. Harding dwelt on these last words,--"I could only express
rejoicing. And this I did with successful hypocrisy. Nevertheless,
I was greatly irritated. For it seemed to me that, when we sat,
Chichester triumphed over me. He obtained his desire while mine remained
ungratified. This was an outrage directed against my supremacy over him,
which I had designed to increase. I gathered together my will power to
check it. But in this attempt I failed.
"Nothing is stranger, I think, Mr. Malling, than the fascination of a
sitting. Even when nothing, or scarcely anything, happens, the mind, the
whole nature seems to be mysteriously grasped and held. New senses in you
seem to be released. Something is alert which is never alert--or, at
all events, never alert in the same way--in other moments of life. One
seems to become inexplicably different. Chichester was aware of all this.
At the first sitting nothing happened, and I feared Chichester would wish
to give the matter up. But, no! When we rose from our chairs late in the
night he acknowledged that he had never known two hours to pass so
quickly before. At following sittings there were slight manifestations
such as, I suppose, are seldom absent from such affairs,--perfectly
trivial to you, of course,--movements of the table, rappings, gusts of
what seemed cold air, and so forth. All that is not worth talking about,
and I don't mean to trouble you further with it. My difficulty is, when
so little, apparently, took place, to make you understand the tremendous
thing that did happen, that must have been happening gradually during
our sittings.
"At the very first, as I told you, or nearly so,--I wish to be
absolutely accurate,--Chichester began to be aware of a strengthening
of his will. At this time I was almost angrily unaware of any change
either in him or in myself. At subsequent sittings--I speak of the
earlier ones--Chichester reiterated more strongly his assertion of
beneficent alteration in himself. I did not believe him, though I did
believe he was absolutely sincere in his supposition. It seemed to me
that he was 'suggestioned,' partly perhaps by his implicit trust in me,
partly by his own desire that something curious should happen. However,
still playing a part in pursuance of my resolve not to let Chichester
know my real object in this matter, I pretended that I, too, perceived an
alteration in him, as if his personality were strengthening. And not
once, but on several occasions, I spoke of the change in him as almost
exactly corresponding with the change that had taken place in me when
I sat with my Hindu friend.
"All this time, with a force encouraged by the secret anger within me,
I violently, at last almost furiously, willed that Chichester should
become entranced.
"But at length, though I willed furiously, I felt as if I were not
willing with genuine strength, as if I could not will with genuine
strength any longer. It is difficult, almost impossible, to explain
to you exactly the sensation that gradually overspread me; but it used
always to seem to me, when I self-consciously exerted my will, as if
I held within me some weapon almost irresistible, as if I forced it
forward, as if its advance, caused by me, could not be withstood. I
now felt as if I still possessed this weapon, but could not induce it
to move. It was there, like a heavy, useless thing, almost like a burden
upon me.
"And Chichester continued to assert that he felt stronger, more resolute,
less plastic.
"Things went on thus till something within me, what we call instinct, I
suppose, became uneasy. I heard a warning voice which said to me, 'Stop
while there is time!' And I resolved to obey it.
"One night, when very late Chichester and I took our hands from the
table in his little room, I said that I thought we had had enough of
the sittings, that very little happened, that perhaps he and I were not
really _en rapport_, and that it seemed to me useless to continue them.
I suppose I expected Chichester to acquiesce. I say I suppose so, because
till that moment he had always acquiesced in any proposition of mine. Yet
I remember that I did not feel genuine surprise at what actually
happened."
Mr. Harding stopped, took a handkerchief from his pocket, lifted the brim
of his hat, and passed the handkerchief over his forehead two or three
times.
"What happened was this, that Chichester resisted my proposal, and that
I found myself obliged to comply with his will instead of, as usual,
imposing mine upon him.
"This was the beginning--" the rector turned a little toward Malling,
and spoke in a voice that was almost terrible in its sadness--"this was
the beginning of what you have been witness of, my unspeakable decline.
This was the definite beginning of my horrible subjection to Henry
Chichester."
He stopped abruptly. After waiting for a minute or two, expecting him to
continue, Malling said:
"You said that you found yourself _obliged_ to comply with Chichester's
will. Can you explain the nature of that obligation?"
"I cannot. I strove to resist. We argued the matter. He took his stand
upon the moral ground that I was benefiting him enormously through our
sittings. As I had suggested having them ostensibly for that very
purpose, you will see my difficulty."
"Certainly."
"My yielding seemed perfectly natural, perhaps almost inevitable. The
point is that, without drastic change in me, it was quite unnatural. My
will was unaccustomed to brook any resistance, and troubled itself not
at all with argument. Till then what I wished to do I did, and there was
an end. I now for the first time found myself obliged to accept a moral
bondage imposed upon me by my curate. The term may sound exaggerated;
I can only say that was how the matter presented itself to me. From the
moment I did so, I took second place to him.
"We continued to sit from time to time. And the strange, to me
inexplicable, situation rapidly developed.
"To put it before you in few words and plainly: Chichester seemed to suck
my will away from me gradually but surely, till my former strength was
his. But that was not all. With the growth of his will there was another
and more terrible growth: there rose in him a curiously observant
faculty."
Again the rector took out his handkerchief and wiped his brow.
"A curiously critical faculty. How shall I say? Perhaps you may know,
Mr. Malling, how the persistent attitude of one mind may influence
another. For instance, if a man always expects ill of another--treachery,
let us say, bad temper, hatred, fear, inducing trickery, perhaps, that
other is turned toward just such evil manifestations in connection with
that man. If some one with psychic force thinks all you do is wrong,
soon you begin to do things wrongly. A fearful uneasiness is bred. The
faculties begin to fail. The formerly sure-footed stumbles. The formerly
self-confident takes on nervousness, presently fear.
"So it came about between Chichester and me. I felt that his mind was
beginning to watch me critically, and I became anxious about this
criticism. Like some subtle acid it seemed to act destructively upon
the metal, once so hard and resistant, of my self-confidence, of my
belief in myself. Often I felt as if an eye were upon me, seeing too
much, far too much, coldly, inexorably, persistently. This critical
observation became hateful to me. I suffered under it. I suffered
terribly. Mr. Malling, if I am to tell you all,--and I feel that unless
I do no help can come to me,--I must tell you that I have not been in my
life all that a clergyman should be. There have been occasions, and even
since my marriage, when I have yielded to impulses that have prompted me
to act very wrongly.
"Now, Chichester was a saint. Hitherto I had neither been troubled by
my own grave shortcomings nor by Chichester's excellence of character.
I had always felt myself set far above him by my superior mental
faculties and my greater will power over the crowd, though, alas! not
always over my own demon. I began to writhe now under the thought of
Chichester's crystal purity and of my own besmirched condition of soul.
All self-confidence departed from me; but I endeavored, of course, to
conceal this from the world, and especially from Chichester. With the
world for a time no doubt I succeeded. But with Chichester--did I ever
succeed? Could I ever succeed with such an one as he had become? It
seemed to me, it seems to me far more terribly now, that nothing I did,
or was, escaped him. He attended mentally, spiritually even, to
everything that made up me. At first I felt this curiously, then
anxiously, then often with bitter contempt and indignation, sometimes
with a great melancholy, a sort of wide-spreading sadness in which I
was involved as in an icy sea. I can never make you fully understand
what I felt, how this mental and spiritual observation of Chichester
affected me. It--it simply ate me away, Malling! It simply ate me away!"
The last words came from Mr. Harding's lips almost in a cry.
"And how long did you continue the sittings?"
Very quietly Malling spoke, and he just touched the rector's arm.
"For a long while."
"Had you ceased from them when I first met you?"
"On Westminster Bridge? No."
"Have you ceased from them now?"
The rector shifted as if in physical distress.
"Chichester constrains me to them even now," he replied, like a man
bitterly ashamed. "He constrains me to them. And is that goodness,
righteousness? I said he was a saint; but now! Is it saintliness to
torture a fellow-creature?"
Malling remembered how he had once, and not long ago, asked himself
whether Chichester's mouth and eyes looked good.
"Have you ever told Chichester what grave distress he is causing you?"
said Malling.
"No, never, never! I can't!"
"Why not?"
"A great reserve has grown up between us. I could never try to break
through it."
"You say a great reserve. But does he never criticize you in words? Does
he never express an adverse opinion upon what you say or do?"
"Scarcely ever--after it is said or done. But sometimes--"
"Yes?"
"Sometimes--often I think--he tries to prevent me from saying or doing
something. Often he checks me with a look when I am in the midst of
some speech. It is intolerable. Why do I bear it? But I have to bear it.
Sometimes I exert myself against him. Why, that first day I met you--you
must have noticed it--he tried to prevent me from walking home with you."
"I did notice it."
"Then I resisted him, and he had to yield. But even when he yields in
some slight matter it makes no difference in our relations. He is always
there, at the window, watching me."
"What do you say?"
Malling's exclamation was sharp.
"That sermon of his!" said the rector. "That fearful sermon! Ever since
I heard it I have felt as if I were the double within that house, as
if Chichester were the man regarding my life in hiding. Why you--you
yourself put my feeling into words! You suggested to Chichester and
my wife that if the man had stayed, had spied upon him who was within
the room, the hypocrite--"
He broke off. He got up from his seat.
"Let us walk," he said. "I cannot sit here. The air--the lights--let
us--"
Almost as if blindly he went forth from the shelter, followed by Malling.
"It's better here," he said. "Better here! Mr. Malling, forgive me,
but just then a hideous knowledge seemed really to catch me by the
throat. Chichester is turning my wife against me. There is a terrible
change in her. She is beginning to observe me through Chichester's eyes.
Till quite recently she worshiped me. She noticed the alteration in me,
of course,--every one did,--but she hated Chichester for his attitude
toward me. Till quite lately she hated him. Now she no longer hates him;
for she begins to think he is right. At first I think she believed the
excuse I put forward for my strange transformation."
"Do you mean your nervous affection?"
"Yes."
"Just tell me, have you any trouble of that kind, or did you merely
invent it as an excuse for any failure you made from time to time?"
"I used it insincerely as an excuse. But I really do suffer from time
to time physically. But physical suffering is nothing. Why should we
waste a thought on such nonsense?"
"In such a strange case as this I believe everything should be taken
carefully into consideration," observed Malling in his most prosaic
voice.
The rector's attention seemed to be suddenly fixed and powerfully
concentrated. The feverish excitement he had been displaying gave place
to a calmer, more natural mood.
"Tell me," he said, "do you think your knowledge can help me? I am aware
that you have made many strange investigations. Is there anything to be
done for me, anything that will restore me to my former powers? Will you
credit me when I declare to you that it was only by making a terrible
effort that I was able to get away from Chichester's companionship and
to come down here? If I had not said that I meant to do so while you were
in the room, I doubt if I should ever have had the courage. There is
something inexplicable that seems to bind me to Chichester. Sometimes
there have been moments when I have thought that he longed to be far
away from me. And it has seemed to me that he, too, would find escape
difficult, if not impossible."
"You wish very much that Chichester should resign his curacy and go
entirely out of your life?" asked Malling.
"Wish!" cried Mr. Harding, almost fiercely. "Oh, the unutterable relief
to me if he were to go! Even down here, away from him for a day or two,
I sometimes feel released. And yet--" he paused in his walk--"I shall
have to go back--I know it--sooner than I meant to, very soon."
He spoke with profound conviction.
"Chichester will mean me to go back, and I shall not be able to stay."
"And yet you say it has occurred to you that possibly Chichester may be
as anxious as yourself to break away from the strange condition of things
you have described to me."
"Have you," exclaimed Mr. Harding--"have you some reason to believe
Chichester has ever contemplated departure?"
Malling moved slowly on, and the rector was forced to accompany him.
"It has occurred to me," he said, evading the point, "that possibly Henry
Chichester might be induced to go out of your life."
"Never by me! I should never have the strength to attempt compulsion with
Chichester."
"Some one else might tackle him."
"Who?" cried out Mr. Harding.
"Some man with authority."
"Do you mean ecclesiastical authority?"
"Oh, dear, no! I was thinking of a man like, say, Professor Stepton."
As Malling spoke, a curious figure seemed almost to dawn upon them,
sidewise, becoming visible gently in the darkness; a short man, with
hanging arms, a head poked forward, as if in sharp inquiry, and rather
shambling legs, round which hung loosely a pair of very baggy, light
trousers.
"And here is the professor!" said Malling, stopping short.