CHAPTER I

THE SAINT OF VICTORIA STREET

Refinement had more power over the soul of Valentine Cresswell than

religion. It governed him with a curious ease of supremacy, and held

him back without effort from most of the young man's sins. Each age

has its special sins. Each age passes them, like troops in review, before

it decides what regiment it will join. Valentine had never decided to

join any regiment. The trumpets of vice rang in his ears in vain, mingled

with the more classical music of his life as the retreat from the

barracks of Seville mingled with the click of Carmen's castanets. But he

heeded them not. If he listened to them sometimes, it was only to wonder

at the harsh and blatant nature of their voices, only to pity the poor

creatures who hastened to the prison, which youth thinks freedom and old

age protection, at their shrieking summons. He preferred to be master of

his soul, and had no desire to set it drilling at the command of painted

women, or to drown it in wine, or to suffocate it in the smoke at

which the voluptuary tries to warm his hands, mistaking it for fire.

Intellectuality is to some men what religion is to many women, a trellis

of roses that bars out the larger world. Valentine loved to watch the

roses bud and bloom as he sat in his flower-walled cell, a deliberate and

rejoicing prisoner. For a long time he loved to watch them. And he

thought that it must always be so, for he was not greatly given to moods,

and therefore scarcely appreciated the thrilling meaning of the word

change, that is the key-word of so many a life cipher. He loved the

pleasures of the intellect so much that he made the mistake of opposing

them, as enemies, to the pleasures of the body. The reverse mistake is

made by the generality of men; and those who deem it wise to mingle the

sharply contrasted ingredients that form a good recipe for happiness

are often dubbed incomprehensible, or worse. But there were moments at

a period of Valentine's life when he felt discontented at his strange

inability to long for sin; when he wondered, rather wearily, why he was

rapt from the follies that other men enjoyed; why he could refuse,

without effort, the things that they clamoured after year by year with

an unceasing gluttony of appetite. The saint quarrelled mutely with his

holiness of intellectuality, and argued, almost fiercely, with his cold

and delicate purity.

"Why am I like some ivory statue?" he thought sometimes, "instead of like

a human being, with drumming pulses, and dancing longings, and voices

calling forever in my ears, like voices of sirens, 'Come, come, rest in

our arms, sleep on our bosoms, for we are they who have given joy to all

men from the beginning of time. We are they who have drawn good men from

their sad goodness, and they have blessed us. We are they who have been

the allegory of the sage and the story of the world. In our soft arms the

world has learned the glory of embracing. On our melodious hearts the

hearts of men have learned the sweet religion of singing.' Why cannot

I be as other men are, instead of the Saint--the saint of Victoria

Street--that I am?"

For, absurdly enough, that was the name his world gave to Valentine.

This is not an age of romance, and he did not dwell, like the saints of

old centuries, in the clear solitudes of the great desert, but in what

the advertisement writer calls a "commodious flat" in Victoria Street.

No little jackals thronged about him in sinful circle by night. No school

of picturesque disciples surrounded him by day. If he peeped above his

blinds he could see the radiant procession of omnibuses on their halting

way towards Westminster. The melodies of wandering organs sang in his

ascetic ears, not once, nor twice, but many times a week. The milk-boy

came, it must be presumed, to pay his visit in the morning; and the

sparrows made the air alive, poising above the chimneys, instead of the

wild eagles, whose home is near the sun. Valentine was a modern young

man of twenty-four, dealt at the Army and Navy Stores, was extremely

well off, and knew everybody. He belonged to the best clubs and went

occasionally to the best parties. His tailor had a habitation in

Sackville Street, and his gloves came from the Burlington Arcade. He

often lunched at the Berkeley and frequently dined at Willis's. Also

he had laughed at the antics of Arthur Roberts, and gazed through a pair

of gold-mounted opera-glasses at Empire ballets and at the discreet

juggleries of Paul Cinquevalli. The romance of cloistered saintliness

was not his. If it had been he might never have rebelled. For how often

it is romance which makes a home for religion in the heart of man,

romance which feathers the nest of purity in which the hermit soul

delights to dwell! Is it not that bizarre silence of the Algerian waste

which leads many a Trappist to his fate, rather than the strange thought

of God calling his soul to heavenly dreams and ecstatic renunciations? Is

it not the wild poetry of the sleeping snows by night that gives to the

St. Bernard monk his holiest meditations? When the organ murmurs, and he

kneels in that remote chapel of the clouds to pray, is it not the

religion of his wonderful earthly situation and prospect that speaks to

him loudly, rather than the religion of the far-off Power whose hands he

believes to hold the threads of his destinies? Even the tonsure is a

psalm to some, and the robe and cowl a litany. The knotted cord is a mass

and the sandal a prayer.

But Valentine had been a saint by temperament, it seemed, and would be a

saint by temperament to the end. He had not been scourged to a prayerful

attitude by sorrow or by pain. Tears had not made a sea to float him to

repentance or to purity. Apparently he had been given what men call

goodness as others are given moustaches or a cheerful temper. When his

contemporaries wondered at him, he often found himself wondering still

more at them. Why did they love coarse sins? he thought. Why did they

fling themselves down, like dogs, to roll in offal? He could not

understand, and for a long time he did not wish to understand. But one

night the wish came to him, and he expressed it to his bosom friend,

Julian Addison.

CHAPTER II

A QUESTION OF EXCHANGE

Most of us need an opposite to sit by the hearth with us sometimes, and

to stir us to wonder or to war. Julian was Valentine's singularly

complete and perfect opposite, in nature if not in deeds. But, after all,

it is the thoughts that are of account rather than the acts, to a mind

like Valentine's. He knew that Julian's nature was totally unlike his

own, so singularly unlike that Julian struck just the right note to

give the strength of a discord to the chord--that often seemed a common

chord--of his own harmony. Long ago, for this reason, or for no special

reason, he had grown to love Julian. Theirs was a fine, clean specimen

of friendship. How fine, Valentine never rightly knew until this evening.

They were sitting together in Valentine's flat in that hour when he

became serious and expansive. He had rather a habit of becoming serious

toward midnight, especially if he was with only one person; and no desire

to please interfered with his natural play of mind and of feeling when he

was with Julian. To affect any feeling with Julian would have seemed like

being on conventional terms with an element, or endeavouring to deceive

one's valet about one's personal habits. Long ago Julian and he had, in

mind, taken up their residence together, fallen into the pleasant custom

of breakfasting, lunching, and dining on all topics in common. Valentine

knew of no barriers between them. And so, now, as they sat smoking, he

expressed his mood without fear or hesitation.

The room in which they were was small. It was named the tentroom, being

hung with dull-green draperies, which hid the ceiling and fell loosely to

the floor on every side. A heavy curtain shrouded the one door. On the

hearth flickered a fire, before which lay Valentine's fox-terrier, Rip.

Julian was half lying down on a divan in an unbuttoned attitude.

Valentine leaned forward in an arm-chair. They were smoking cigarettes.

"Julian," Valentine said, meditatively, "I sometimes wonder why you and

I are such great friends."

"How abominable of you! To seek a reason for friendship is as inhuman as

to probe for the causes of love. Don't, for goodness' sake, let your

intellect triumph over your humanity, Valentine. Of all modern vices,

that seems to me the most loathsome. But you could never fall into

anything loathsome. You are sheeted against that danger with plate

armour."

"Nonsense!"

"But you are. It sometimes seems to me that you and I are like Elijah and

Elisha, in a way. But I am covetous of your mantle."

"Then you want me to be caught from you into heaven?"

"No. I should like you to give me your mantle, your powers, your nature,

that is, and to stay here as well."

"And send the chariot of fire to the coach-house, and the horses of fire

to the nearest stables?"

"Exactly!"

"Well, but give me a reason for this rascally craving."

"A reason! Oh, I hate my nature and I love yours. What a curse it is to

go through life eternally haunted by one's self; worse than being married

to an ugly and boring wife."

"Now you are being morbid."

"Well, I'm telling you just how I feel."

"That is being morbid. Recording to some people who claim to direct

Society."

"The world's County Council, who would like to abolish all the public

bars."

"And force us to do our drinking in the privacy of our bedrooms."

"You would never do any drinking, Valentine. How could you, the Saint of

Victoria Street?"

"I begin to hate that nickname."

And he frowned slowly. Tall, fair, curiously innocent-looking, his

face was the face of a blonde ascetic. His blue eyes were certainly not

cold, but nobody could imagine that they would ever gleam with passion or

with desire as they looked upon sin. His mouth seemed made for prayer,

not for kisses; and so women often longed to kiss it. Over him, indeed,

intellectuality hung like a light veil, setting him apart from the uproar

which the world raises while it breaks the ten commandments. Julian, on

the other hand, was brown, with bright, eager eyes, and the expression of

one who was above all things intensely human. Valentine had ever been,

and still remained, to him a perpetual wonder, a sort of beautiful

mystery. He actually reverenced this youth who stood apart from all the

muddy ways of sin, too refined, as it seemed, rather than too religious,

to be attracted by any wile of the devil's, too completely artistic to

feel any impulse towards the subtle violence which lurks in all the

vagaries of the body. Valentine was to Julian a god, but in their mutual

relations this fact never became apparent. On the contrary, Valentine

was apt to look up to Julian with admiration, and the curious respect

often felt by those who are good by temperament for those who are

completely human. And Julian loved Valentine for looking up to him,

finding in this absurd modesty of his friend a crowning beauty of

character. He had never told Valentine the fact that Valentine kept

him pure, held his bounding nature in leash, was the wall of fire that

hedged him from sin, the armour that protected him against the assaults

of self. He had never told Valentine this secret, which he cherished

with the exceeding and watchful care men so often display in hiding

that which does them credit. For who is not a pocket Byron nowadays?

But to-night was fated by the Immortals to be a night of self-revelation.

And Valentine led the way by taking a step that surprised Julian not a

little. For as Valentine frowned he said:

"Yes, I begin to hate my nickname, and I begin to hate myself."

Julian could not help smiling at the absurdity of this bemoaning.

"What is it in yourself that you hate so much?" he asked, with a decided

curiosity.

Valentine sat considering.

"Well," he replied at length, "I think it is my inhumanity, which robs me

of many things. I don't desire the pleasures that most men desire, as you

know. But lately I have often wished to desire them."

"Rather an elaborate state of mind."

"Yet a state easy to understand, surely. Julian, emotions pass me by. Why

is that? Deep love, deep hate, despair, desire, won't stop to speak to

me. Men tell me I am a marvel because I never do as they do. But I am not

driven as they are evidently driven. The fact of the matter is that

desire is not in me. My nature shrinks from sin; but it is not virtue

that shrinks: it is rather reserve. I have no more temptation to be

sensual, for instance, than I have to be vulgar."

"Hang it, Val, you don't want to have the temptation, do you?"

Valentine looked at Julian curiously.

"You have the temptation, Julian?" he said.

"You know I have--horribly."

"But you fight it and conquer it?"

"I fight it, and now I am beginning to conquer it, to get it under."

"Now? Since when?"

Julian replied by asking another question.

"Look here, how long have we known each other?"

"Let me see. I'm twenty-four, you twenty-three. Just five years."

"Ah! For just five years I've fought, Val, been able to fight."

"And before then?"

"I didn't fight; I revelled in the enemy's camp."

"You have never told me this before. Did you suddenly get conversion, as

Salvationists say?"

"Something like it. But my conversion had nothing to do with trumpets and

tambourines."

"What then? This is interesting."

A certain confusion had come into Julian's expression, even a certain

echoing awkwardness into his attitude. He looked away into the fire and

lighted another cigarette before he answered. Then he said rather

unevenly:

"I dare say you'll be surprised when I tell you. But I never meant to

tell you at all."

"Don't, if you would rather not."

"Yes, I think I will. I must stop you from disliking yourself at any

cost, dear old boy. Well, you converted me, so far as I am converted;

and that's not very far, I'm afraid."

"I?" said Valentine, with genuine surprise. "Why, I never tried to."

"Exactly. If you had, no doubt you'd have failed."

"But explain."

"I've never told you all you do for me, Val. You are my armour against

all these damned things. When I'm with you, I hate the notion of being a

sinner. I never hated it before I met you. In fact, I loved it. I wanted

sin more than I wanted anything in heaven or earth. And then--just at the

critical moment when I was passing from boyhood into manhood, I met you."

He stopped. His brown cheeks were glowing, and he avoided Valentine's

gaze.

"Go on, Julian," Valentine said. "I want to hear this."

"All right, I'll finish now, but I don't know why I ever began. Perhaps

you'll think me a fool, or a sentimentalist."

"Nonsense!"

"Well, I don't know how it is, but when I saw you I first understood

that there is a good deal in what the parsons say, that sin is beastly

in itself, don't you know, even apart from one's religious convictions,

or the injury one may do to others. When I saw you, I understood that

sin degrades one's self, Valentine. For you had never sinned as I had,

and you were so different from me. You are the only sinless man I know,

and you have made me know what beasts we men are. Why can't we be what

we might be?"

Valentine did not reply. He seemed lost in thought, and Julian continued,

throwing off his original shamefacedness:

"Ever since then you've kept me straight. If I feel inclined to throw

myself down in the gutter, one look at you makes me loathe the notion.

Preaching often drives one wrong out of sheer 'cussedness,' I suppose.

But you don't preach and don't care. You just live beautifully, because

you're made differently from all of us. So you do for me what no

preachers could ever do. There--now you know."

He lay back, puffing violently at his cigarette.

"It is strange," Valentine said, seeing he had finished. "You know, to

live as I do is no effort to me, and so it is absurd to praise me."

"I won't praise you, but it's outrageous of you to want to feel as I and

other men feel."

"Is it? I don't think so. I think it is very natural. My life is a dead

calm, and a dead calm is monotonous."

"It's better than an everlasting storm."

"I wonder!" Valentine said. "How curious that I should protect you.

I am glad it is so. And yet, Julian, in spite of what you say, I would

give a great deal to change souls with you, if only for a day or two.

You will laugh at me, but I do long to feel a real, keen temptation.

Those agonizing struggles of holy men that one reads of, what can they

be like? I can hardly imagine. There have been ascetics who have wept,

and dashed themselves down on the ground, and injured, wounded their

bodies to distract their thoughts from vice. To me they seem as madmen.

You know the story of the monk who rescued a great courtesan from her

life of shame. He placed her in a convent and went into the desert. But

her image haunted him, maddened him. He slunk back to the convent, and

found her dying in the arms of God. And he tried to drag her away, that

she might sin only once again with him, with him, her saviour. But she

died, giving herself to God, and he went out cursing and blaspheming.

This is only a dramatic fable to me. And yet I suppose it is a

possibility."

"Of course. Val, I could imagine myself doing as that monk did, but for

you. Only that I could never have been a monk at all."

"I am glad if I help you to any happiness, Julian. But--but--oh! to feel

temptation!"

"Oh, not to feel it! By Jove, I long to have done with the infernal thing

that's always ready to bother me. Fighting it is no fun, Val, I can tell

you. If you would like to have my soul for a day or two, I should love to

have yours in exchange."

Valentine smoked in silence for two or three minutes. His pure, pale,

beautiful face was rather wistful as he gazed at the fire.

"Why can't these affairs be managed?" he sighed out at length.

"Why can't we do just the one thing more? We can kill a man's body. We

can kill a woman's purity. And here you and I sit, the closest friends,

and neither of us can have the same experiences, as the other, even for

a moment. Why isn't it possible?"

"Perhaps it is."

"Why? How do you mean?"

"Well, of course I'm rather a sceptic, and entirely an ignoramus. But

I met a man the other day who would have laughed at us for doubting.

He was an awfully strange fellow. His name is Marr. I met him at Lady

Crichton's."

"Who is he?"

"Haven't an idea. I never saw or heard of him before. We talked a good

deal at dessert. He came over from the other side of the table to sit by

me, and somehow, in five minutes, we'd got into spiritualism and all that

sort of thing. He is evidently a believer in it, calls himself an

occultist."

"But do you mean to tell me he said souls could be exchanged at will?

Come, Julian?"

"I won't say that. But he set no limit at all to what can be done. He

declares that if people seriously set themselves to develop the latent

powers that lie hidden within them, they can do almost anything. Only

they must be en rapport. Each must respond closely, definitely, to the

other. Now, you and I are as much in sympathy with one another as any

two men in London, I suppose."

"Surely!"

"Then half the battle's won--according to Marr."

"You are joking."

"He wasn't. He would declare that, with time and perseverance, we could

accomplish an exchange of souls."

Valentine laughed.

"Well, but how?"

Julian laughed too.

"Oh, it seems absurd--but he'd tell us to sit together."

"Well, we are sitting together now."

"No; at a table, I mean."

"Table-turning!" Valentine cried, with a sort of contempt. "That is for

children, and for all of us at Christmas, when we want to make fools of

ourselves."

"Just what I am inclined to think. But Marr--and he's really a very

smart, clever chap, Val--denies it. He swears it is possible for two

people who sit together often to get up a marvellous sympathy, which

lasts on even when they are no longer sitting. He says you can even

see your companion's thoughts take form in the darkness before your

eyes, and pass in procession like living things."

"He must be mad."

"Perhaps. I don't know. If he is, he can put his madness to you very

lucidly, very ingeniously."

Valentine stroked the white back of Rip meditatively with his foot.

"You have never sat, have you?" he asked.

"Never."

"Nor I. I have always thought it an idiotic and very dull way of wasting

one's time. Now, what on earth can a table have to do with one's soul?"

"I don't know. What is one's soul?"

"One's essence, I suppose; the inner light that spreads its rays outward

in actions, and that is extinguished, or expelled, at the hour of death."

"Expelled, I think."

"I think so too. That which is so full of strange power cannot surely die

so soon. Even my soul, so frigid, so passionless, has, you say, held you

back from sins like a leash of steel, And I did not even try to forge the

steel. If we could exchange souls, would yours hold me back in the same

way?"

"No doubt."

"I wonder," Valentine said thoughtfully. After a moment he added, "shall

we make this absurd experiment of sitting, just for a phantasy?"

"Why not? It would be rather fun."

"It might be. We will just do it once to see whether you can get some of

my feelings, and I some of yours."

"That's it. But you could never get mine. I know you too well, Val.

You're my rock of defence. You've kept me straight because you're so

straight yourself; and, with that face, you'll never alter. If anything

should happen, it will be that you'll drag me up to where you are. I

shan't drag you down to my level, you old saint!"

And he laid his hand affectionately on his friend's shoulder.

Valentine smiled.

"Your level is not low," he said.

"No, perhaps; but, by Jove, it could be, though. If you hadn't been

chucked into the world, I often think the devil must have had me

altogether. You keep him off. How he must hate you, Val. Hulloh!

What's that?"

"What?"

"Who's that laughing outside? Has Wade got a friend in to-night?"

"Not that I know of. I didn't hear anything."

Valentine touched the electric bell, and his man appeared.

"Any one in with you to-night, Wade?" he asked.

The man looked surprised.

"No, sir; certainly not, sir."

"Oh! Don't sit up; we may be late to-night. And we don't want anything

more, except--yes, bring another couple of sodas."

"Yes, sir."

He brought them and vanished. A moment later they heard the front door

of the flat close. The butler was married and slept out of the house.

Valentine had no servant sleeping in the flat. He preferred to be alone

at night.

CHAPTER III

EPISODE OF THE FIRST SITTING

"Now, then," said Valentine, "let us be absurd and try this sitting.

Shall we clear this little table?"

"Yes. It's just the right size. It might do for three people, but

certainly not for more."

"There! Now, then."

And, as the clock struck twelve, Valentine turned off the electric

light, and they sat down with their hands upon the table. The room was

only very dimly illuminated by the fire on the hearth, where Rip slept

on, indifferent to their proceedings.

"I suppose nothing could go wrong," Julian said, after a moment of

silence.

"Wrong!"

"Yes. I don't know exactly what Marr meant, but he said that if

unsuitable people sit together any amount of harm can result from it."

"What sort of harm?"

"I don't know."

"H'm! I expect that is all nonsense, like the rest of his remarks.

Anyhow, Julian, no two people could ever hit it off better than you

and I do. Wait a second."

He jumped up and drew the curtain over the door. Wade had pulled it back

when he came in.

"I must have that curtain altered," Valentine said. "It is so badly

hung that whenever the door is opened, it falls half way back, and

looks hideous. That is better."

He sat down again.

"We won't talk," he said.

"No. We'll give the--whatever it is every chance."

They were silent.

Presently--it might have been a quarter of an hour--Julian said suddenly:

"Do you feel anything?"

"'M--no," Valentine answered, rather doubtfully.

"Sure?"

"I think so."

"You can't merely think you are sure, old chap."

"Well, then--yes, I'll say I am sure."

"Right," rejoined Julian.

Again there was a silence, broken this time by Valentine.

"Why did you ask me?" he said.

"Oh! no special reason. I just wanted to know."

"Then you didn't?"

"Didn't what?"

"Feel anything?"

"No; nothing particular."

"Well, what do you mean by that?"

"What I say. I can't be sure it was anything."

"That's vague."

"So was my--I can't even call it exactly sensation. It was so very

slight. In fact, I'm as good as sure I felt nothing at all. It was a mere

fancy. Nothing more."

And then again they were silent. The fire gradually died down until the

room grew quite dark. Presently Valentine said:

"Hulloh! here is Rip up against my foot. He is cold without the fire,

poor little beggar."

"Shall we stop?" asked Julian.

"Yes; I vote we do--for to-night."

Valentine struck a match, felt for the knob of the electric light, and

turned it on. Julian and he looked at each other, blinking.

"Think there's anything in it?" asked Julian.

"I don't know," said Valentine. "I suppose not. Rip! Rip! He is cold. Did

you ever see a dog shiver like that?"

He picked the little creature up in his arms. It nestled against his

shoulder with a deep sigh.

"Well, we have made a beginning," he said, turning to pour out a drink.

"It is rather interesting."

Julian was lighting a cigarette.

"Yes; it is--very." he answered.

Valentine gave him a brandy and soda; then, as if struck by a sudden

thought, asked:

"You really didn't feel anything?"

"No."

"Nor I. But then, Julian, why do we find it interesting?"

Julian looked puzzled.

"Hang it! I don't know," he answered, after an instant of reflection.

"Why do we? I wonder."

"That is what I am wondering."

He flicked the ash from his cigarette.

"But I don't come to any conclusion," he presently added, meditatively.

"We sit in the dark for an hour and a quarter, with our hands solemnly

spread out upon a table; we don't talk; the table doesn't move; we hear

no sound; we see nothing; we feel nothing that we have not felt before.

And yet we find the function interesting. This problem of sensation is

simply insoluble. I cannot work it out."

"It is awfully puzzling," said Julian. "I suppose our nerves must have

been subtly excited because the thing was an absolute novelty."

"Possibly. But, if so, we are a couple of children, mere schoolboys."

"That's rather refreshing, however undignified. If we sit long enough,

we may even recover our long-lost babyhood."

And so they laughed the matter easily away. Soon afterwards, however,

Julian got up to go home to his chambers. Valentine went towards the

door, intending to open it and get his friend's coat. Suddenly he

stopped.

"Strange!" he exclaimed.

"What's the row?"

"Look at the door, Julian."

"Well?"

"Don't you see?"

"What?"

"The curtain is half drawn back again."

Julian gave vent to a long, low whistle.

"So it is!"

"It always does that when the door is opened."

"And only then, of course?"

"Of course."

"But the door hasn't been opened."

"I know."

They regarded each other almost uneasily. Then Valentine added, with a

short laugh:

"I can't have drawn it thoroughly over the door when Wade went away."

"I suppose not. Well, good-night, Val."

"Good-night. Shall we sit again tomorrow?"

"Yes; I vote we do."

Valentine let his friend out. As he shut the front door, he said to

himself:

"I am positive I did draw the curtain thoroughly."

He went back into the tentroom and glanced again at the curtain.

"Yes; I am positive."

After an instant of puzzled wonder, he seemed to put the matter

deliberately from him.

"Come along, Rip," he said. "Why, you are cold and miserable to-night!

Must I carry you then?"

He picked the dog up, turned out the light, and walked slowly into his

bedroom.

CHAPTER IV

THE SECOND SITTING

On the following night Valentine sat waiting for Julian's arrival in

his drawing-room, which looked out upon Victoria Street, whereas the

only window of the tentroom opened upon some waste ground where once

a panorama of Jerusalem, or some notorious city, stood, and where

building operations were now being generally carried on. Valentine

very seldom used his drawing-room. Sometimes pretty women came to tea

with him, and he did them honour there. Sometimes musicians came. Then

there was always a silent group gathered round the Steinway grand piano.

For Valentine was inordinately fond of music, and played so admirably

that even professionals never hurled at him a jeering "amateur!" But

when Valentine was alone, or when he expected one or two men to smoke,

he invariably sat in the tentroom, where the long lounges and the

shaded electric light were suggestive of desultory conversation, and

seemed tacitly to forbid all things that savour of a hind-leg attitude.

To-night, however, some whim, no doubt, had prompted him to forsake his

usual haunt. Perhaps he had been seized with a dislike for complete

silence, such as comes upon men in recurring hours of depression, when

the mind is submerged by a thin tide of unreasoning melancholy, and sound

of one kind or another is as ardently sought as at other times it is

avoided. In this room Valentine could hear the vague traffic of the dim

street outside, the dull tumult of an omnibus, the furtive, flashing

clamour of a hansom, the cry of an occasional newsboy, explanatory of

the crimes and tragedies of the passing hour. Or perhaps the eyes of

Valentine were, for the moment, weary of the monotonous green walls of

his sanctum, leaning tent-wise towards the peaked apex of the ceiling,

and longed to rest on the many beautiful pictures that hung in one line

around his drawing-room. It seemed so, for now, as he sat in a chair

before the fire, holding Rip upon his knee, his blue eyes were fixed

meditatively upon a picture called "The Merciful Knight," which faced

him over the mantelpiece. This was the only picture containing a figure

of the Christ which Valentine possessed. He had no holy children, no

Madonnas. But he loved this Christ, this exquisitely imagined dead,

drooping figure, which, roused into life by an act of noble renunciation,

bent down and kissed the armed hero who had been great enough to forgive

his enemy. He loved those weary, tender lips, those faded limbs, the

sacred tenuity of the ascetic figure, the wonderful posture of benign

familiarity that was more majestic than any reserve. Yes, Valentine loved

this Christ, and Julian knew it well. Often, late at night, Julian had

leaned back lazily listening while Valentine played, improvising in a

light so dim as to be near to darkness. And Julian had noticed that the

player's eyes perpetually sought this picture, and rested on it, while

his soul, through the touch of the fingers, called to the soul of music

that slept in the piano, stirred it from sleep, carried it through

strange and flashing scenes, taught it to strive and to agonize, then

hushed it again to sleep and peace. And as Julian looked from the picture

to the player, who seemed drawing inspiration from it, he often mutely

compared the imagined beauty of the soul of the Christ with the known

beauty of the soul of his friend. And the two lovelinesses seemed to

meet, and to mingle as easily as two streams one with the other. Yet the

beauty of the Christ soul sprang from a strange parentage, was a sublime

inheritance, had been tried in the fiercest fires of pity and of pain.

The beauty of Valentine's soul seemed curiously innate, and mingled with

a dazzling snow of almost inhuman purity. His was not a great soul that

had striven successfully, and must always strive. His was a soul that

easily triumphed, that was almost coldly perfect without effort, that

had surely never longed even for a moment to fall, had never desired

and refused the shadowy pleasures of passion. The wonderful purity of

his friend's face continually struck Julian anew. It suggested to him

the ivory peak of an Alp, the luminous pallor of a pearl. What other

young man in London looked like that? Valentine was indeed an unique

figure in the modern London world. Had he strayed into it from the

fragrant pages of a missal, or condescended to it from the beatific

vistas of some far-off Paradise? Julian had often wondered, as he looked

into the clear, calm eyes of the friend who had been for so long the

vigilant, yet unconscious guardian of his soul.

To-night, as Valentine sat looking at the Christ, a curious wonder at

himself came into his mind. He was musing on the confession of Julian, so

long withheld, so shyly made at last. This confession caused him, for the

first time, to look self-consciously upon himself, to stand away from his

nature, as the artist stands away from the picture he is painting, and to

examine it with a sideways head, with a peering, contracted gaze. This

thing that protected a soul from sin--what was it like? What was it? He

could not easily surmise. He had a clear vision of the Christ soul, of

the exquisite essence of a divine individuality that prompted life to

spring out of death for one perfect moment that it might miraculously

reward a great human act of humanity. Yes, that soul floated before him

almost visibly. He could call it up before his mind as a man can call up

the vision of a supremely beautiful rose he has admired. And there was a

scent from the Christ soul as ineffably delicious as the scent of the

rose. But when Valentine tried to see his own soul, he could not see it.

He could not comprehend how its aspect affected others, even quite how it

affected Julian. Only he could comprehend, as he looked at the Christ,

its imperfection, and a longing, not felt before, came to him to be

better than he was. This new aspiration was given to him by Julian's

confession. He knew that well. He protected his friend now without

effort. Could he not protect him more certainly with effort? Can a soul

be beautiful that never strives consciously after beauty? A child's

nature is beautiful in its innocence because it has never striven to be

innocent. But is not an innocent woman more wonderful, more beautiful,

than an innocent child? Valentine felt within him that night a distinct

aspiration, and he vaguely connected it with the drooping Christ, who

touched with wan, rewarding lips the ardent face of the merciful knight.

And he no longer had the desire to know desire of sin. He no longer

sought to understand the power of temptation or the joy of yielding to

that power. A subtle change swept over him. Whether it was permanent, or

only passing, he could not tell.

A tingling cry from the electric bell in the passage told of Julian's

arrival, and in a moment he entered. He looked gay, almost rowdy, and

clapped Valentine on the shoulder rather boisterously.

"Why on earth are you in here?" he exclaimed. "Have you been playing?"

"No."

"Are you in an exalted state of mind, that demands the best parlour for

its environment?"

"Hardly."

"But why then have you let out the fire in the den and enthroned yourself

here?"

"A whim, Julian. I felt a strong inclination to sit in this room

to-night. It seems to me a less nervous room than the other, and I

want to be as cold-blooded as possible."

"O, I see! But, my dear fellow, what is there nervous about the tent?

Do you imagine ghosts lurking in the hangings, or phantoms of dead Arabs

clinging, like bats, round that rosette in the roof? You got it up the

Nile, didn't you?"

"Yes. Where have you been?"

"Dining out. And, oddly enough, I met Marr again, the man I told you

about. It seems he is in universal request just now."

"On account of his mystery-mongering, I suppose."

"Probably."

"Did you tell him anything about our sitting?"

"Only that we had sat, and that nothing had happened."

"What did he say?"

"He said, 'Pooh, pooh! these processes are, and always must be, gradual.

Another time there may be some manifestation.'"

"Manifestation! Did you ask him of what nature the manifestation was

likely to be? These people are so vague in the terms they employ."

"Yes, I asked him; but I couldn't get much out of him. I must tell you,

Val, that he seemed curiously doubtful about my statement that nothing

had happened. I can't think why. He said, 'Are you quite sure?'"

"Of course you answered Yes?"

"Of course."

Valentine looked at him for a moment and then said:

"You didn't mention the--the curtain by any chance?"

"No. You thought you had left it only partially drawn, didn't you?"

Valentine made no reply. His face was rather grave. Julian did not

repeat the question. He felt instinctively that Valentine did not

wish to be obliged to answer it. Oddly enough, during the short silence

which followed, he was conscious of a slight constraint such as he had

certainly never felt with Valentine before. His gaiety seemed dropping

from him in this quiet room to which he was so often a visitor. The

rowdy expression faded out of his face and he found himself glancing

half furtively at his friend.

"Valentine," he presently said, "shall we really sit to-night?"

"Yes, surely. You meant to when you came here, didn't you?"

"I don't believe there is anything in it."

"We will find out. Remember that I want to get hold of your soul."

Julian laughed.

"If you ever do it will prove an old man of the sea to you," he said.

"I will risk that," Valentine answered.

And then he added:

"But, come, don't let us waste time. I will go and send away Wade.

Clear that little table by the piano."

Julian began removing the photographs and books which stood on it,

while Valentine went out of the room and told his man to go.

As soon as they heard the front door close upon him they sat down

opposite to each other as on the previous night.

They kept silence and sat for what seemed a very long time. At last

Julian said:

"Val!"

"Well?"

"Let us go back into the tentroom."

"Why?"

"Nothing will ever happen here."

"Why should anything happen there?"

"I don't know. Let us go. The fire is burning too brightly here. We ought

to have complete darkness."

"Very well, though I can't believe it will make the slightest

difference."

They got up and went into the tentroom, which looked rather cheerless

with its fireless grate.

"I know this will be better," Julian said. "We'll have the same table as

last night."

Valentine carefully drew the green curtain quite over the door and

called Julian's attention to the fact that he had done so. Then they

sat down again. Rip lay on the divan in his basket with a rug over him,

so that he might not disturb them by any movement in search of warmth

and of companionship.

The arrangements seemed careful and complete. They were absolutely

isolated from the rest of the world. They were in darkness and the

silence might almost be felt. As Julian said, they were safe from

trickery, and, as Valentine rejoined in his calm _voix d'or_, they

were therefore probably also safe from what Marr had mysteriously

called "manifestations."

Dead, dumb silence. Their four hands, not touching, lay loosely on

the oval table. Rip slept unutterably, shrouded head and body in his

cosy rug. So--till the last gleam of the fire faded. So--till another

twenty minutes had passed. The friends had not exchanged a word, had

scarcely made the slightest movement. Could a stranger have been

suddenly introduced into the black room, and have remained listening

attentively, he might easily have been deceived into the belief that,

but for himself, it was deserted. To both Valentine and Julian the

silence seemed progressive. With each gliding moment they could have

declared that it grew deeper, more dense, more prominent, even more

grotesque and living. There seemed to be a sort of pressure in it which

handled them more and more definitely. The sensation was interesting

and acute. Each gave himself to it, and each had a, perhaps deceptive,

consciousness of yielding up something, something impalpable, evanescent,

fluent. Valentine, more especially, felt as if he were pouring away from

himself, by this act of sitting, a vital liquid, and he thought with a

mental smile:

"Am I letting my soul out of its cage, here and now?"

"No doubt," his common sense replied; "no doubt this sensation is the

merest fancy."

He played with it in the darkness, and had no feeling of weariness.

Nearly an hour had passed in this morose way, when, with, it seemed,

appalling abruptness, Rip barked.

Although the bark was half stifled in rug, both Valentine and Julian

started perceptibly.

"'Sh!" Valentine hissed to the little dog. "'Sh! Rip! Quiet!"

The response of Rip was, with a violent scramble, to disentangle himself

from his covering, emerging from which he again barked with shrill and

piercing vehemence, at the same time leaping to the floor. By the sound,

which he could locate, Valentine felt certain that the dog had gone over

to the door.

"What on earth is he barking at?" Julian said in the darkness.

"I can't imagine. Hush, Rip! S-sh!"

"Val, turn on the light, quick! You're nearest to it."

Valentine stretched out his hand hastily, and in a flash the room sprang

into view. He was right. Rip was crouched--his front legs extended along

the floor, his hind legs standing almost straight--close to the door,

and facing it full. His head was down, and moving, darting this way and

that, as if he were worrying the feet of some person who was trying to

advance from the door into the centre of the room. All his teeth showed,

and his yellow eyes were glaring fiercely.

Julian, who had thrown a hasty and searching glance round the room when

the light was turned on, sprang forward and bent down to him.

"Rip! Rip!" he said. "Silly! What's the matter? Silly dog!" and he began

to stroke him.

Either this action of his, or something else not known by the young men,

had an effect on the terrier, for he suddenly ceased barking, and began

to snuffle eagerly, excitedly, at the bottom of the door.

"It's as if he were mad," said Julian, turning round. "Hulloh, Val! What

the devil's come to you?"

For he found Valentine standing up by the table with an expression of

deep astonishment on his face.

He pointed in silence to the door.

"By Jove! that curtain again!" said Julian, with an accent of amazement.

"I'm damned!"

The curtain was, in fact, drawn back from the door. Valentine struck a

match and put it to a candle. Then he opened the door. Rip immediately

darted out of the room and pattered excitedly down the passage, as if

searching for something, his sharp nose investigating the ground with a

vehement attention. The young men followed him. He ran to the front door,

then back into Valentine's bedroom; then, by turns, into the four other

apartments--bedroom, drawing-room, bathroom and kitchen--that formed the

suite. The doors of the two latter were opened by Valentine. Having

completed this useless progress, Rip once more resorted to the passage

and the front door, by which he paused, whimpering, in an uncertain,

almost a wistful attitude.

"Open it!" said Julian.

Valentine did so.

They looked out upon the broad and dreary stone steps, and waited,

listening. There was no sound. Rip still whimpered, rather feebly. His

excitement was evidently dying away. At last Valentine shut the door,

and they went back again to the tentroom, accompanied closely by the

dog, who gradually regained his calmness, and who presently jumped of

his own accord into his basket, and, after turning quickly round some

half-dozen times, composed himself once more to sleep.

"I wish, after all, we had stayed in the other room by the fire," Julian

said. "Give me some brandy."

Valentine poured some into a glass and Julian swallowed it at a gulp.

"We mustn't have Rip in the room another time," he added. "He spoilt the

whole thing."

"What whole thing?" Valentine asked, sinking down in a chair.

"Well, the sitting. Perhaps--perhaps one of Marr's mysterious

manifestations might have come off to-night."

Valentine did not reply at first. When he did, he startled Julian by

saying:

"Perhaps one of them did come off."

"Did?"

"Yes."

"How?"

"What was Rip barking at?"

"There's no accounting for what dogs will do. They often bark at

shadows."

"At shadows--yes, exactly. But what cast a shadow to-night?"

Julian laughed with some apparent uneasiness.

"Perhaps a coming event," he exclaimed.

Valentine looked at him rather gravely.

"That is exactly what I felt," he said.

"Explain. For I was only joking."

"I felt, perhaps it was only a fancy, that this second sitting of ours

brought some event a stage nearer, a stage nearer on its journey."

"To what?"

"I felt--to us."

"Fancy."

"Probably. You didn't feel it?"

"I? Oh, I scarcely know what I felt. I must say, though, that squatting

in the dark, and saying nothing for such an age, and--and all the rest of

it, doesn't exactly toughen one's nerves. That little demon of a Rip

quite gave me the horrors when he started barking. What fools we are! I

should think nothing of mounting a dangerous horse, or sailing a boat in

rough weather, or risking my life as we all do half our time in one way

or another. Yet a dog and a dark room give me the shudders. Funny, Val,

isn't it?"

Valentine answered, "If it is a dog and a dark room."

"What else can it possibly be?" Julian said with an accent of rather

unreasonable annoyance.

"I don't know. But I did draw the curtain completely over the door

to-night. Julian, I am getting interested in this. Perhaps--who

knows?--in the end I shall have your soul, you mine."

He laughed as he spoke; then added:

"No, no; I don't believe in such an exchange; and, Julian, I scarcely

desire it. But let us go on. This gives a slight new excitement to life."

"Yes. But it is selfish of you to wish to keep your soul to yourself.

I want it. Well, _au revoir_, Val; to-morrow night."

"_Au revoir_."

After Julian had gone Valentine went back into the drawing-room and stood

for a long while before the "Merciful Knight." He had a strange fancy

that the picture of the bending Christ protected the room from the

intrusion of--what?

He could not tell yet. Perhaps he could never tell.

CHAPTER V

THE THIRD SITTING

"Isn't it an extraordinary thing," Julian said, on the following evening,

"that if you meet a man once in London you keep knocking up against him

day after day? While, if--"

"You don't meet him, you don't."

"No. I mean that if you don't happen to be introduced to him, you

probably never set eyes on him at all."

"I know. But whom have you met to-day?"

"Marr again."

"That's odd. He is beginning to haunt you."

"I met him at my club. He has just been elected a member."

"Did he make any more inquiries into our sittings?"

"Rather. He talked of nothing else. He's an extraordinary fellow,

extraordinary."

"Why? What is he like?"

"In appearance? Oh, the sort of chap little pink women call Satanic;

white complexion showing blue where he shaves, big dark eyes rather

sunken, black hair, tall, very thin and quiet. Very well dressed. He

is that uncanny kind of a man who has a silent manner and a noisy

expression. You know what I mean?"

"Yes, perfectly."

"I think he's very morbid. He never reads the evening papers."

"That proves it absolutely. Does he smoke?"

"Always. I found him in the smoking-room. He showed the most persistent

interest in our proceedings, Val. I couldn't get him to talk of anything

else, so at last I told him exactly what had happened."

"Did you tell him that we began to sit last night in a different room?"

"Yes. That was curious. Directly I said it he began making minute

inquiries as to what the room was like, how the furniture was placed,

even what pictures hung on the walls."

"The pictures!"

"Yes. I described them."

"All of them?"

"No, one or two; that favorite of yours, 'The Merciful Knight,' the

Turner, those girls of Solomon's with the man playing to them, and--yes,

I think those were all."

"Oh!"

"He said, 'You made a great mistake in changing your venue to that room,

a great mistake.' Then I explained how we moved back to the tentroom in

the middle of the sitting, and all about Rip."

"Did he make any remark?"

"One that struck me as very quaint, 'You are _en route_.'"

"Enigmatic again. He was playing the wizard."

"He spoke very gravely."

"Of course. Great gravity is part of the business."

"Afterwards he said, 'Turn that dog out next time.'"

"And that was all?"

"I think so."

Valentine sat musing. Presently he said:

"I should rather like to meet this Marr."

"Oh, I don't think--I fancy--"

"Well?"

"I'd as soon you didn't."

"Why?"

"I don't think you'd get on. You wouldn't like him."

"For what reason?"

"I don't know. I've a notion he's something exceptional in the way of a

blackguard. Perhaps I am wrong. I haven't an idea what sort of a

reputation he has. But he is black, Valentine, not at all your colour.

Oh! and, by the way, he doesn't want to meet you."

"How charming of him!"

"I had half suggested it, I don't know why, and he said, 'Thanks! Thanks!

Chance will bring us together later on if we ought to meet.' And now I

am glad he wasn't keen. Shall we begin? Put Rip into your bedroom, as he

advised. Besides, I can't stand his barking."

Valentine carried the little dog away. When he came back he shut the

tentroom door and was about to draw the curtain over it. But Julian

stopped him.

"No, don't," Julian said.

"Why not?"

"I would rather you didn't. I hate that curtain. If I were you I would

have it taken down altogether."

Valentine looked at him in surprise. He had uttered the words with an

energy almost violent. But even as Valentine looked Julian switched off

the electric light and the leaping darkness hid his face.

"Come now. Business! Business!" he cried.

And again they sat with their hands loosely on the table, not touching

each other.

Valentine felt that Julian was being less frank with him than usual.

Perhaps for this reason he was immediately conscious that they were

not so much in sympathy as on the two former occasions of their sittings.

Or there might have been some other reason which he could not identify.

It is certain that he gradually became acutely aware of a stifling sense

of constraint, which he believed to be greatly intensified by the

surrounding darkness and silence. He wondered if Julian was conscious

of it also, and at moments longed to ask. But something held him back,

that curious something which we all feel at times like a strong hand

laid upon us. He made up his mind that this discomfort of his soul,

unreasonably considerable though it was, must be due solely to Julian's

abrupt demeanour and obvious desire to check his curiosity about

the drawing of the curtain. But, as the moments ran by, his sense of

uneasiness assumed such fantastic proportions that he began to cast

about for some more definite, more concrete, cause. At one instant he

found it in the condition of his health. The day had been damp and

dreary, and he had suffered from neuralgia. Doubtless the pain had

acted upon his nervous system, and was accountable for his present and

perpetually increasing anxiety. A little later he was fain to dismiss

this supposition as untenable. His sense of constraint was changing into

a positive dread, and not at all of Julian, around whom he had believed

that his thoughts were in flight. Something, he knew not at all what,

interposed between him and Julian, and so definitely that Valentine felt

as if he could have fixed the exact moment in which the interposition

had taken place, as one can fix the exact moment in which a person enters

a room where one is sitting. And the interposition was one of great

horror,--entirely malignant, Valentine believed.

He had an impulse to spring up from the table, to turn on the light,

and to say, "Let us make an end of this jugglery!" Yet he sat still,

wondering why he did so. A curiosity walked in his mind, pacing about

till he could almost fancy he heard its footsteps. He sat, then, as one

awaiting an arrival, that has been heralded in some way, by a telegram,

a message, a carrier-pigeon flown in at an open window. But the herald,

too, was horrible. What then would follow it? What was coming? Valentine

felt that he began to understand Marr's queer remark, "You are _en

route_." At the first sitting he had felt a very vague suggestion of

immoderate possibilities, made possibilities by the apparently futile

position assumed at a table by himself and Julian. To-night the vague

seemed on march towards the definite. Fancy was surely moving towards

fact.

With his eyes wide open Valentine gazed in the direction of Julian,

sitting invisible opposite to him. He wondered how Julian was feeling,

what he was thinking. And then he remembered that strange saying of

Marr's, that thoughts could take form, materialize. What would he give

to witness that monstrous procession of embodied brain-actions trooping

from the mind of his friend! He imagined them small, spare, phantom-like

things, fringed with fire, as weapon against the darkness, silent-footed

as spirits, moving with a level impetus, as pale ghosts treading a sea,

onward to the vast world of clashing minds, to which we carelessly

cast out our thoughts as a man who shoots rubbish into a cart. The

vagrant fancies danced along with attenuated steps and tiny, whimsical

gestures of fairies, fluttering their flame-veined wings. The sad

thoughts moved slowly with drooped heads and monotonous hands, and

tears fell forever about their feet. The thoughts that were evil--and

Julian had acknowledged them many, though combatted--were endowed with

a strangely sinister gait, like the gait of those modern sinners who

express, ignorantly, in their motions the hidden deeds their tongues

decline to speak. The wayward thoughts had faces like women, who kiss

and frown within the limits of an hour. On the cheeks of the libertine

thoughts a rosy cloud of rouge shone softly, and their haggard eyes

were brightened by a cunning pigment. And the noble thoughts, grand

in gesture, godlike in bearing, did not pass them by, but spoke to them

serene words, and sought to bring them out from their degradation. And

there was no music in this imagined procession which Valentine longed

to see. All was silent as from the gulf of Julian's mind the inhabitants

stole furtively to do their mission. Yes, Valentine knew to-night that

he should feel no wonder if thought took form, if a disembodied voice

spoke, or a detached hand moved into ripples of the air. Only he was

irritated and alarmed by the abiding sense of some surrounding danger,

which stayed with him, which he fought against in vain. His common sense

had not deserted him. On the contrary, it was argumentative, cogent in

explanation and in rebuke. It strove to sneer his distress down with

stinging epithets, and shot arrows of laughter against his aimless

fears. But the combat was, nevertheless, tamely unequal. Common sense

was routed by this enigmatic enemy, and at length Valentine's spirits

became so violently perturbed that he could keep silence no longer.

"Julian," he said, with a pressure of chained alarm in his voice,

"Julian!"

"Yes," Julian replied, tensely.

"Anything wrong with you?"

"No, no. Or with you?"

"Nothing definite."

"What then?"

"I will confess to you that to-night I feel--I feel, well, horribly

afraid."

"Of what?"

"I have no idea. The feeling is totally unreasonable. That gives it an

inexplicable horror."

"Ah! then that is why you joined your left hand with my right five

minutes ago. I wondered why you did it."

"I! Joined hands!"

"Yes."

"I haven't moved my hand."

"My dear Val! How is it holding mine then?"

"Don't be absurd, Julian; my hand is not near yours. Both my hands are

just where they were when we sat down, on my side of the table."

"Just where they were! Your little finger has been tightly linked in mine

for the last five minutes. You know that as well as I do."

"Nonsense!"

"But it is linked now while I am speaking."

"I tell you it isn't."

"I'll soon let you know it too. There! Ah! no wonder you have snatched it

away. You forget that my muscles are like steel, and that I can pinch as

a gin pinches a rabbit's leg. I say, I didn't really hurt you, did I? It

was only a joke to stop your little game."

"I tell you," Valentine said, almost angrily, "your hand has never once

touched mine, nor mine yours."

His accent of irritable sincerity appeared suddenly to carry conviction

to the mind of Julian, for he sprang violently up from the table, and

cried, in the darkness:

"Then who the devil's in the room with us?"

Valentine also, convinced that Julian had not been joking, was

appalled. He switched on the light, and saw Julian standing opposite

to him, looking very white. They both threw a rapid glance upon the

room, whose dull green draperies returned their inquiry with the

complete indifference of artistic inanimation.

"Who the devil's got in here?" Julian repeated, with the savage accent of

extreme uneasiness.

"Nobody," Valentine replied. "You know the thing's impossible."

"Impossible or not, somebody has found means to get in."

Valentine shook his head.

"Then you were lying?"

"Julian, what are you saying? Don't go too far."

"Either you were, or else a man has been sitting at that table between

us, and I have held his hand, the hand of some stranger. Ouf!"

He shook his broad shoulders in an irrepressible shudder.

"I was not lying, Julian. I tell you so, and I mean it."

Valentine's eyes met Julian's, and Julian believed him.

"Put your hands on the table again," Julian said.

Valentine obeyed, and Julian laid his beside them, linking one of his

little fingers tightly in one of Valentine's, and at the same time

shutting his eyes. After a long pause he grew visibly whiter, and hastily

unlinked his finger.

"No, damn it, Val, I hadn't hold of your hand. The hand I touched was

much harder, and the finger was bigger, thicker. I say, this is ghastly."

Again he shook himself, and cast a searching glance upon the little room.

"Somebody has been in here with us, sitting between us in the dark," he

repeated. "Good God, who is it?"

Valentine looked doubtful, but uneasy too.

"Let us go through the rooms," he said.

They took a candle, and, as on the previous night, searched, but in

vain. They found no trace of any alien presence in the flat. No book,

no ornament, had been moved. No door stood open. There was no sound of

any footsteps except their own. When they came to Valentine's bedroom,

Rip leaped to greet them, and seemed in excellent spirits. He showed

no excitement until he had followed them back into the tentroom. But,

arrived there, he suddenly stood still, raised one white paw from the

ground, and emitted a long and dreary howl. The young men stared at him,

and then at each other.

"Rip knows somebody has been here," Julian said.

Valentine was much more uncomfortably impressed by the demeanour of

the dog than by Julian's declaration and subsequent agitation. He had

been inclined to attribute the whole affair to a trick of his friend's

nerves. But the nervous system of a fox-terrier was surely, under such

circumstances as these, more truth-telling than that of a man.

"But the thing is absolutely impossible," he repeated, with some

disturbance of manner.

"Is anything that we can't investigate straight away absolutely

impossible?"

Valentine did not reply directly.

"Here is a cigarette," he said. "Let us sit down, soothe our nerves,

and talk things over calmly and openly. We have not been quite frank

with each other about these sittings yet."

Julian accepted Valentine's offer with his usual readiness. The fire was

relit with some difficulty. Rip was coaxed into silence.

Presently, as the smoke curled upward with its lazy demeanour, the

horror that had hung like a thin vapour in the atmosphere seemed to

be dissipated.

"Now I think we are ourselves again, and can be reasonable," Valentine

began. "Don't let us be hysterical. Spiritualists always suffer from

hysteria."

"The sceptics say, Val."

"And probably they are generally right. Now--yes, do drink some more of

that brandy and soda. Now, Julian, do you still believe that a hand held

yours just now?"

Julian answered quietly, showing no irritation at the question:

"I simply know it as surely as I know that I am sitting with you

at this moment. And,--look here, you may laugh at me as much as you.

like,--although I supposed the hand to be yours, until you denied it

I had previously felt the most curious sensation."

"Of what?"

"Well, that something was coming, even had actually come, into the room."

Valentine answered nothing to this, so Julian went on.

"I thought it was a trick of the nerves, and determined to drive it

away, and I succeeded. And then, just as I was internally laughing at

myself, this hand, as if groping about in the dark, was first laid on

mine, full on it, Val, and then slid off onto the table and linked its

little finger tightly in mine. I, of course, supposed the hand was yours,

and this finger was crooked round mine for fully five minutes, I should

say. After you spoke, thinking that you were trying to deceive me for a

joke, I caught the hand in mine, and pinched it with all my strength

until it was forcibly dragged away."

"Strange," Valentine murmured.

"Deucedly strange! and, what's more, diabolically unpleasant."

"I wonder what that fellow, Marr, would say to this."

"Marr! By Jove, is this one of the manifestations which he spoke about so

vaguely?"

"It seems like it."

"But describe your sensations. You say you felt horribly afraid. Why was

that?"

"I can't tell. That, I think, made part of the horror. There was a sort

of definite vagueness, if you can imagine such a seeming contradiction,

in my state of mind. But the feeling is really indescribable. That it

was more strange and more terrible than anything I have known is certain.

I should like to ask Dr. Levillier about all this."

"Levillier--yes. But he would--"

"Be reasonable about it, as he is about everything. Dear, sensible, odd,

saintly, emotional, strong-headed, soft-hearted little doctor. He is

unique."

They talked on for some time, arriving at no conclusion, until it

seemed they had talked the whole matter thoroughly out. Yet Valentine,

who was curiously instinctive, had, all the time, a secret knowledge

that Julian was keeping something from him, was not being perfectly

frank. The conviction pained him. At last Julian got up to go. He

stood putting on his overcoat.

"Good-night," he said.

"Good-night, Julian."

"Now--is this to be our last sitting?"

Valentine hesitated.

"What do you wish?" he asked at length.

"What do you?"

"Well, I--yes, I think I would rather it was the last."

Julian caught his hand impulsively.

"So would I. Good-night."

"Good-night."

Julian went out into the hall, got as far as the front door, opened it,

then suddenly called out:

"Valentine!"

"Yes."

"Come here for a moment."

Valentine went, and found him standing with his hand on the door, looking

flushed and rather excited.

"There is one thing I haven't told you," he began.

"I knew that."

"I guessed you did. The most horrible sensation I have had. During our

sitting to-night--don't be vexed--an extraordinary apprehension of--well,

of you, came over me. There! Now I have told you."

Valentine was greatly astonished.

"Of me?" he said.

"Yes. There was a moment when the idea that I was alone with you made my

blood run cold."

"Good heavens!"

"Do you wish I hadn't told you?"

"No, of course not. But it is so extraordinary, so unnatural."

"It is utterly gone now, thank God. I say, we have resolved that we won't

sit again, haven't we?"

"Yes; and what you have just told me makes me hate the whole thing. The

game seems a game no longer."

When the door had closed upon Julian, Valentine sat down and wrote a

note.

He addressed it to--

"Doctor Hermann Levillier,

"Harley Street, W.,"

and laid it on his writing-table, so that it might be posted early the

next morning.

CHAPTER VI

A CONVERSATION AT THE CLUB

Doctor Levillier was not a materialist, although he concerned himself

much with the functions of the body, and with that strange spider's

web of tingling threads which we call the nervous system. The man who

sweeps out the temple, who polishes the marble steps and dusts the

painted windows, may yet find time to bend in prayer before the altars

he helps to keep beautiful, may yet find a heart to wonder at the spirit

which the temple holds as an envelope holds a letter. Reversing the

process of mind which seems to lead so many medical students to atheism,

Dr. Levillier had found that the more he understood the weaknesses, the

nastinesses, the dreary failures, the unimaginable impulses of the flesh,

the more he grew to believe in the existence, within it, of the soul. One

day a worn-out dyspeptic, famous for his intellectual acquirements over

two continents, sat with the little great doctor in his consulting-room.

The author, with dry, white lips, had been recounting a series of sordid

symptoms, and, as the recital grew, their sordidness seemed suddenly to

strike him with a mighty disgust.

"Ah, doctor," he said. "And do you know there are people thousands of

miles away from Harley Street who actually admire me, who are stirred

and moved by what I write, who make a cult and a hero of me. They say I

have soul, forsooth. But I am all body; you know that. You doctors know

that it is only body that we put on paper, body that lifts us high, or

drags us low. Why, my best romances come straight from my liver. My

pathos springs from its condition of disorder, and my imaginative force

is only due to an unnatural state of body which I can deliberately

produce by drinking tea that has stood a long while and become full of

tannin. When my prose glows with fiery beauty, the tea is getting well

hold of my digestive organs, and by the time it has begun to prove its

power by giving me a violent pain in the stomach, I have wrung from it

a fine scene which will help to consolidate my fame. When a man wins

the Victoria Cross, his healthy body has done the deed, unprompted by

anything higher. Good air, or a muscular life, has strung his nerves

strongly so that he can't, even if he would, appreciate danger. On the

other hand, when a man shows funk, turns tail and bolts, and is dubbed a

coward, it's his beastly body again. Some obscure physical misfortune is

the cause of his disgrace, and if he'd only been to you he would have won

the Cross too. Isn't it so? How you doctors must laugh at mystics, and at

those who are ascetics, save for sake of their health. Why, I suppose

even the saint owes his so-called goodness to some analyzable proceeding

that has gone on in his inside, and that you could diagnose. Eh?"

Doctor Levillier was writing a prescription in which bismuth was an item.

He glanced up quietly.

"The more I know of the body, the more I think of and believe in the

power of the soul," he said. "Have that made up. Take it three times a

day and come to me again in a fortnight. Good-morning."

Indeed, this little man was writing prescriptions for the body and

thinking prescriptions for the soul all day long. Within him there

dwelt a double mind, the mind of a great doctor and the mind of a great

priest, and these two minds linked hands and lived as friends. The one

never strove against the other. There was never a moment of estrangement.

And if there were frequent arguments and discussions between the two,

they were the arguments and discussions that make friendship firmer,

not enmity more bitter. And, as Dr. Levillier very well knew, it was

often the mind of the priest within him that gave to him his healing

power over the body. It was the mind of the priest that had won him

testimonial clocks and silver salvers from grateful patients. Often as

he sat with some dingy-faced complainant, listening to a recital of

sickness or uttering directions about avoidance of green meat, sauces,

pastry, and liquids, till the atmosphere seemed that of a hospital, a

pastry-cook's shop and a bar combined, he was silently examining the

patient's soul, facing its probable vagaries, mapping out the tours it

had taken, scheming for its welfare. And, perhaps, after the dietary was

arranged and the prescription was written, he would say carelessly:

"Do you read much? What do you read? Ah! such and such books. Yes, very

interesting. Do you know this book which has struck me greatly? No? Allow

me to lend it to you. Good-bye."

And the patient departed, ignorant that he had received a pill for his

soul from the priest as well as a pill for his body from the doctor.

In appearance Dr. Levillier was small, slight, and delicate looking.

His complexion was clear and white. His eyes were blue. What hair he

possessed was rather soft, fluffy and reddish, with a dash of light

brown in it. He wore neither beard nor moustache, was always very neatly

and simply dressed, and was remarkable for his polished boots, said to be

the most perfectly varnished in London. Although he must have been nearly

fifty-five, he had never married, and some people declared that he had

the intention of starting a new "order" of medical celibates, who would

be father-confessors as well as physicians, and who would pray for the

souls of their patients after tending their bodily needs.

For some years Valentine had been very intimate with the doctor, whom he

admired for his intellect and loved for his nature. So now he resolved to

lay the case of the sittings with Julian before him and hear his opinion

of the matter. In all their conversations Valentine could not remember

that they had ever discussed spiritualism or occultism. As a rule, they

talked about books, painting, or music, of which Dr. Levillier was a

devoted lover. Valentine's note asked the doctor to dine with him that

night at his club. The messenger brought back an acceptance.

They dined at a corner table and the room was rather empty. A few men

chatted desultorily of burlesques, horses, the legs of actresses, the

chances of politics. The waiters moved quietly about with pathetic masks

of satisfied servitude. Valentine and the doctor conversed earnestly.

At first they spoke of a new symphony composed by a daring young

Frenchman, who had striven to reproduce vices in notes and to summon

up visions of things damnable by harmonic progressions which frequently

defied the laws of harmony. Levillier gently condemned him for putting

a great art to a small and degraded use.

"His very success makes me regret the waste of his time more deeply,

Cresswell," he said. "He is a marvellous painter in sound. He has

improved upon Berlioz, if it is improvement to cry sin with a clearer,

more determinate voice. Think what a heaven that man could reproduce

in music."

"Because he has reproduced a hell. But do you think that follows? Can

the man who wallows with force and originality soar with force and

originality too?"

"I believe he could learn to. The main thing is to possess genius in

any form, the genius to imagine, to construct, to present things that

seize upon the minds of men. But to possess genius is only a beginning.

We have to train it, to lead it, to coax it even, until it learns to be

obedient."

"Genius and obedience. Don't the two terms quarrel?"

"They should not. Obedience is a very magnificent thing, Cresswell, just

as to have to struggle, to be obliged to fight, is a very magnificent

thing."

"Yes," Valentine answered, thoughtfully. "I believe you are right. But,

if you are right, I have missed a great deal."

"How do you deduce that?"

"In this way. I have never had to be obedient. I have never had to

struggle."

"Surely the latter," the little doctor said, fixing his clear, kind

eyes on Valentine's face. "I don't think, in all my experience, that

I have ever met a man who lived a fine, pure life without fixing the

bayonet and using the sword at moments. There must be an occasional

_mêlée_."

"Indeed not; that is to say," Valentine rather hastily added, "as regards

the pure life. For I cannot lay claim to anything fine. But I assure you

that my life has been pure without a struggle."

"Without one? Think!"

"Without one. Perhaps that is what wearies me at moments, doctor, the

completeness of my coldness. Perhaps it is this lack of necessity to

struggle that has at last begun to render me dissatisfied."

"I thought you were free from that evil humour of dissatisfaction,

that evil humour which crowds my consulting-rooms and wastes away the

very tissues of the body."

"I have been, until quite lately. I have been neither pessimist nor

optimist--just myself, and I believe happy."

"And what is this change? and what has it led to?"

"It was to tell you that I asked you here to-night."

They had finished dinner, and rose from the table. Passing through the

hall of the club, they went into a huge high room, papered with books.

Valentine led the way to a secluded corner, and gave the doctor a cigar.

When he had lit it and settled himself comfortably, his rather small

feet, in their marvellously polished boots, lightly crossed, his head

reposing serenely on the back of his chair, Valentine continued,

answering his attentive silence.

"It has led to what I suppose you would call an absurdity. But first,

the change itself. A sort of dissatisfaction has been creeping over me,

perhaps for a long while, I being unconscious of it. At length I became

conscious. I found that I was weary of being so free from the impulse

to sin--to sin, I mean, in definite, active ways, as young men sin. It

seemed to me that I was missing a great deal, missing the delight sin is

said to give to natures, or at least missing the invigorating necessity

you have just mentioned, the necessity to fight, to wage war against

impulses."

"I understand."

"And one night I expressed this feeling to Julian."

"To Addison?" the doctor said, an expression of keen interest sliding

into his face. "I should much like to know how he received it."

"He said, of course, that such a dissatisfaction was rather monstrous."

"Was that all?"

"No. He told me he considered temptation rather a curse than otherwise,

and then he surprised me very much."

"He told you a secret?"

"Why, yes."

"The secret of your great influence over his life?"

"You knew of this secret, then?"

"He didn't tell it to me. Long ago I divined it. Addison is a very

interesting fellow to a doctor, and the fact of his strong friendship

with you has made him more interesting even than he would otherwise

have been. His physique is tremendous. He has a quite unusual vitality,

and stronger passions by far than most Englishmen. I confess that my

knowledge of human nature led me to foresee a very troubled and too

vehement future for him. My anticipation being utterly falsified led

me naturally to look round for the reason of its falsification. I very

soon found that reason in you."

"I had never suspected it."

"Your lack of suspicion was not the least reason of the influence you

exercised."

"Possibly. He told me of the strength of his evil impulses, of how he

hated their assaults, and of how being with me enabled him to conquer

them. Apparently the contemplation of my unnatural nature is an armour

to him."

"It is."

"Well, I continued to bewail my condition, which he envied, and it ended

in our sitting down, in jest, to make an experiment to try to exchange

our souls."

"What means did you take?"

And then Valentine told Dr. Levillier the exact circumstances of the

three sittings, without embellishment, without omission of any kind.

He listened with keen attention, and without attempting interruption

or intruding comment. When Valentine had finished he made no remark.

"What do you think of it, doctor?"

"Of what part of it?"

"Of any part. Do you attach any importance to it?"

"I do, certainly."

"I thought you would laugh at the whole thing."

"Why should I? Why should I laugh at any circumstances which strongly

affect men whom I know, or, indeed, any men?"

"But then, tell me, do you believe in some strange, unseen agency? Do you

believe that Julian absolutely held the hand of some being dwelling in

another sphere, some being attracted to us, or, say, enabled to come to

us by such an action as our sitting at a table in the dark?"

"No. I don't believe that."

"You attribute the whole thing to bodily causes?"

"I am inclined to attribute it to the action and reaction of mind and

body, undoubtedly. If you had sat in the light, for instance, I don't

think Addison would have felt that hand. The hand is indeed the least of

the circumstances you have related, in my opinion. The incidents of the

dog and of the curtain are far more mysterious. You are positive the door

was securely shut?"

"Quite positive."

"Could you, after having drawn the curtain, have allowed your hand to

slip slightly back, pulling the curtain with it?"

"I don't think so. I feel sure not."

"You know we all constantly make involuntary motions--motions that our

minds are quite unaware of."

"I do feel sure, nevertheless. And the dog? What do you say to that?"

"I don't know what to say. But dogs are extraordinarily sensitive. I do

not think it beyond the bounds of possibility that the tumult of your

nerves--for there was tumult; you confess it--communicated itself to

him."

"And was the cause of his conduct?"

"Yes. In the course of my career I have been consulted by a great many

patients whose nervous systems have been disastrously upset by the

practices you describe, by so-called spiritualism, table-turning, and

so forth. One man I knew, trying to cultivate himself onto what he

called 'a higher plane,' cultivated himself into a lunatic asylum,

where he still remains."

"Then you consider spiritualism--?"

"I have too much respect for the soul, too much belief in its great

destiny, Cresswell, to juggle with it, or to play tricks with it. When

one meets a genius one does not want to have a game at puss-in-the-corner

with him. One is rather anxious to hear him talk seriously and display

his mind. When I come into contact with a soul, I don't want to try to

detach it from the home in which a divine power has placed it for a time.

I glory in many limitations against which it is the prevailing fashion

to fight uselessly. The soul can do all its work where it is--in the

body. The influence you exercise over your friend Addison convinces me

of the existence of spirits, things which will eventually be freed from

the body, more certainly than any amount of material manifestations,

sights, sounds, apparent physical sensations. Why should we not be

satisfied with remaining, for a time, as we are? I consider that you and

Addison were ill-advised in making this--no doubt absurd--experiment.

Supposing it to be absurd, the _raison d'être_ of the sittings is gone at

once. Supposing it not to be--"

"Yes. What, then?"

"Then the danger is great. Imagine yourself with Addison's soul or

nature, him with yours. To what might not you be led? How do you know

that your nature in him would exert any control over his nature in you?"

"Why should it not?"

"There comes in the power of the body, which is very great. I believe,

as you know, absolutely in the existence of the soul, and in its immortal

destiny; but that does not blind me to the extraordinary influence, the

extraordinary kingship, which a mere body, a mere husk and shell, as some

good people call it--I don't feel with them--can obtain not only over

another body, but, strangely, over the soul which is in that body. Your

influence over Addison has been, and is, immense. Do you imagine that it

is simply your nature which governs him?"

"I suppose so."

"Your mere appearance may have an immense deal to do with the matter.

You have the look, the expression, of one who has not sinned. It is

partly that which keeps Addison from giving the reins to his impulses.

I consider that if it were possible for your nature to change secretly

and for your face to remain unchanged, if you sinned perpetually and

retained your exact appearance, and if Addison did not know you sinned,

you could still be his guardian, while, really, yourself far worse in

every way than him."

"But surely that fights against your theory that the existence of a soul

is proved by such an influence as I possess over Addison?"

"Not at all. I said if it were possible for the body not to express the

soul, if--but that's just the difficulty, it is not possible. The body

manifests the soul. Supposing it were not so, the power of evil, the

devil, if you choose to name it and imply a personal existence for it,

might have hold of the world even more tightly than now. Just conceive,

under such conditions, how you might lure Addison to destruction if you

desired to do so. Looking at you, and seeing the same face in which he

has learned to see what he thinks entire goodness, he would be unable to

believe that any action you could suggest and take part in could be evil.

You could wreck his future with a perfect ease. But, as things are, did

your nature change and become malignant, your face would change too, and

you might quickly cease to exercise a strong influence over Addison. He

might even, having now been unconsciously trained into a curious

integrity, learn to hate and to despise you. You remember our

conversation to-night about that symphony?"

"Yes."

"I said that the soul which could reproduce hell should be able to

reproduce heaven."

"I know."

"Well, my boy--for you are a boy to me--the reverse of that might happen

also."

"Perhaps. But I don't quite see."

"The application--to you?"

"To me?"

"Yes, to you, Cresswell. You have been given a strangely perfect nature.

As you say, you seem to have nothing to do with the matter. You have even

been inclined to rebel against your gift. But, take my advice. Cherish

it. Don't play with it, as you have been playing. Remember, if you lose

heaven, the space once filled by heaven will not be left empty."

"Ah! now I see. You think that I--"

"Might swing from a great height to an equally great depth. That has

been my experience--that the man who is once extreme is always extreme,

but not always in the same way. The greatest libertines have made the

greatest ascetics. But, within my own experience, I have known the

reverse process to obtain. And you, if you changed, might carry Addison

with you."

"But then, doctor, you do believe in these manifestations?"

"Not necessarily. But I believe that the minds of men are often very

carefully, very deftly, poised, and that a little push can send them one

way or the other. Have you ever balanced one billiard-ball on the top of

another?"

"Yes."

"Then you know that a breath will upset it and send it rolling.

Be careful. Your mind, your very nature, may be poised like that

billiard-ball. Addison's may be the same. Indeed, I feel sure

Addison's is. That curious dread of you which overcame him at your

last sitting is a sign of it. The whole thing is wrong--bad for body

and for mind."

"Perhaps. Well, we have definitely agreed to give it up."

"That's well. Eleven o'clock! I must be going. Are you doing anything

to-morrow night?"

"No."

"I have got a box for this new play at the Duke's Theatre. Will you

come?"

"With pleasure."

"I will ask Addison also."

They put on their overcoats, and walked a little way along Pall Mall

before they parted. Near the Atheneaum they passed a tall, thin man,

who was coming in the opposite direction. He turned round as they went

by, and stood directly regarding them till they were out of sight.

CHAPTER VII

THE REGENT STREET EPISODE

The things we do apparently by chance often have a curious applicability

to the things we have thought. John the Baptist was sent to prepare the

way of the Lord. These thoughts are the John the Baptists of the mind,

and prepare the way for facts that often startlingly illustrate them.

It is as if our thoughts were gradually materialized by the action of the

mind; as if, by the act of thinking, we projected them.

When Doctor Levillier got a box for the first night of the new play at

the Duke's Theatre, and when he invited Valentine and Julian to make up

his party, he had no idea what the subject of the piece was, no notion

that it would have anything to do with the conversation which took place

between him and Valentine at the club. But the plot applied with almost

amazing fidelity to much that he had said upon that occasion. The play

was a modern allegory of the struggle between good and evil, which has

been illustrated in so many different ways since the birth of the Faust

legend. But the piece had a certain curious originality which sprang

from the daring of the author. Instead of showing one result of the

struggle, a good man drawn gradually down, or a bad man drawn gradually

up, he set forth, with a great deal of detail, a great deal of vividness,

a modern wobbler, a human pendulum, and simply noted down, as it were,

his slow swinging backwards and forwards. His hero, an evil liver, a

modern man of wrath in the first act, dominated by a particular vice,

was drawn, by an outside personal influence, from the mire in which

he was wallowing, to purity, to real elevation. But his author, having

led him up to the pinnacle, had no intention of leaving him there,

blessed by the proclaimed admiration of the gods in the gallery. In the

succeeding acts he introduced a second personal influence, exerted this

time on the side of evil, and permitted it to act upon his central figure

successfully. The man fell again into the mire, and was left there at the

conclusion of the piece, but hugging a different sin, not the sin he had

been embracing when the curtain rose upon the first act. This dramatic

scheme took away the breath of the house for a moment, but only for a

moment. Then the lungs once more did their accustomed duty, and enabled

a large number of excited persons to hiss with a wonderful penetration.

Their well-meant efforts did not have the effect of terrorizing the

author. On the contrary, he quickly responded to the hostile uproar,

and, coming forward in a very neat Jaeger suit, a flannel shirt, and a

pair of admirably fitting doeskin gloves, bowed with great gravity and

perfect self-possession. The hisses thereupon suddenly faded into

piercing entreaties for a speech, in which a gallery lady with a powerful

soprano voice became notorious as the leader. But the Jaeger author was

not to be prevailed upon. He waved the doeskin gloves in token of adieu,

and retreated once more into the excited obscurity of the wings, where

his manager was trembling like an aspen, in the midst of a perspiring

company. The lights were turned down. The orchestra burst into a tuneful

jig, and the lingering audience at length began to disperse.

Dr. Levillier, Julian, and Valentine left their box in silence. It

seemed that this odd play, which dared to be natural, had impressed

them. They walked into the vestibule without a word, and, avoiding many

voluble friends who were letting off the steam as they gathered their

coats and hats from a weary lady in a white cap, they threaded their way

through the crowd and emerged into the street. Just as they reached the

portico, Julian suddenly started and laid his hand on Valentine's arm.

"What is it?" asked Valentine, looking round.

"Ah! you're just too late. He's gone!"

"He--who?"

"Marr."

"Oh," Valentine said, showing considerable interest; "I wish I had seen

him. Where was he sitting?"

"I haven't an idea. Didn't know he was in the theatre."

Doctor Levillier made an exception to his rule of being in bed by twelve

o'clock that night, and accepted Valentine's invitation to sup in

Victoria Street. He had always been greatly drawn to Valentine, attracted

by the latter's exceptional clarity of character, and he was scarcely

less interested in Julian. Nor did the considerable difference between

his age and the ages of the two youths in any way interfere with their

pleasant intercourse. For Levillier had a heart that was ageless. The

corroding years did not act as acid upon it. All his sympathies were as

keen, all his power of enjoyment was as great, as when he had been a

delightfully gay and delightfully pleasant boy at school. Youth always

loved him, and age always respected him. He possessed the great secret

of a beautiful life. He was absolutely genuine, and he meant nothing

but good to all with whom he was brought into contact.

The three friends spoke but little as they went back to the flat, but

when they had sat down to supper, and Dr. Levillier had expressed his

complete satisfaction with the champagne that Valentine's butler had

politely insinuated into his glass, the silence took to itself wings

and lightly departed. They talked of the play, and it appeared that

they were all impressed by it, but in slightly different ways, and for

different reasons. Valentine, who was intensely, but sometimes almost

coldly, artistic, appreciated it, he said, because it did not obviously

endeavour to work out a problem or to teach a lesson. It simply, with

a great deal of literary finish and dramatic force, stated a curiously

human character, showed the nature of a man at work, and left him,

after some scenes of his life, still at work upon his own salvation or

destruction, not telling the audience what his end would be, scarcely

even trying to imply his innate tendency one way or the other. This

satisfied Valentine. This had made him feel as if he had seen a block

cut out of life.

"I do not want to learn what becomes of that man," he said. "I have

known him, good and bad. That is enough. That satisfies me more than

the sight of a thousand bombastic heroes, a thousand equally bombastic

villains. Life is neither ebony nor ivory. That man is something to my

mind forever, as Ibsen's 'Master Builder' is something. I can never

forget the one or the other."

"Your life is ivory, Val," Julian said.

He had liked the play because the violent struggle between good and evil

woke up many responsive memories in his mind. The hero of the play had

been shown feeling precisely as Julian had often felt. That was enough.

He did not very much care for the brilliant artifice, which Valentine had

remarked with so much pleasure. He did not specially note the peculiar

effect of nature produced by the simplicity and thoughtful directness

of the dialogue. He only knew that he had seen somebody whose nature

was akin to his own nature, although placed in different, perhaps more

dramatic, circumstances.

Dr. Levillier combined, to some appreciable extent, the different joys

of his two companions, and obtained another that was quite his own. He

had seen two horses running in double harness that night, the body and

mind of the hero, and had taken delight in observing what had practically

escaped the definite notice of his companions, the ingenuity and subtlety

with which the author, without being obtrusive or insistent, had

displayed their _liaison_; the effect of each upon the other, their

answering excursions and alarums, their attempts at separate _amours_,

_amours_ that always had an inevitable effect upon the one which the

other had, for the moment, endeavoured to exclude from its life. The

doctor in him and the priest in him had both enjoyed a glorious evening

of bracing activity. As they discussed the piece, and each advanced his

reason of pleasure, the doctor expanded into a sort of saintly geniality,

which was peculiarly attractive even to sinners. And when supper was

over, and they strolled into the drawing-room to smoke and to make music,

he sank into a chair, stretched out his polished boots with a sigh, and

said:

"And people say there is so little joy in life!"

Julian laughed at the satisfied whimsicality of his exclamation and of

the expression which shadowed it.

"Light up, doctor," he cried. "You are a boon to this modern world. For

you see all the sorrows of life, I suppose, and yet you always manage to

convey the impression that the joys win the battle after all."

Valentine had gone over to the piano and was dreamily opening it. He did

not seem to hear what they were saying. The doctor obeyed the injunction

to light up. He was one of the hardest and most assiduous toilers in

all London, and he appreciated a good cigar and a comfortable arm-chair

more than some men could appreciate Paradise, or some women appreciate

love.

"And I believe that joy will win the battle in the end," he said, with a

puff that proved successful.

"Why?"

"I see evidences of it, or think I do. The colour will fade out of bad

acts, Addison, but the colour of a good act is eternal. A noble deed will

never emulate a Sir Joshua Reynolds--never. Play to us, Cresswell."

"Yes, but I wish you to talk. I want to improvise to-night. The murmur of

your conversation will help me."

Julian sat down by the doctor. He, too, looked very happy. It was a

pleasant hour. Sympathy was in that pretty room, complete human sympathy,

and a sympathy that sprang from their vitality, avoiding the dusky

dumbness of the phlegmatic. Valentine sat down at the piano and began

gently to play. The smoke from the cigars curled away towards the

watching pictures; the room was full of soft music.

"Yes, Addison," Doctor Levillier continued, in a low voice, "I am

perpetually sitting with sorrow, communing with disease. That

consulting-room of mine is as a pool of Bethesda, only not all who come

to it, alas! can be healed. I sit day by day in my confessional--I like

to call it that; perhaps I was meant to be a priest--and I read the

stories of the lives of men and of women, most of them necessarily, from

the circumstances which bring them to me, sad. And yet I have a belief

in joy and its triumph which nothing can ever shake, a belief in the

final glory of good which nothing can ever conquer."

"That's fine, doctor. But do you know why you have it?"

"I daresay that question is difficult to answer. I often seek for my

reasons, Addison, and I find many, though I can hardly say which is

the best, or whether any quite explains the faith that is always in me.

_Apropos_ of this evening, by the bye, I long ago found one of my reasons

in the theatre, the theatre which some really good men hate and condemn."

"What was that?"

"Oh, a very simple one. I believe that men in the mass express eternal

truths more readily, more certainly, than men as individuals. Put a lot

of bad men, or--we won't call them bad, why should we?--loose, careless,

thoughtless men, together in the pit of a theatre. Many of them, perhaps,

drink, and are rendered cruel by drink. Many of them care nothing for

morality, and have wounded, in the worst way, the souls of women. Many

of them show incessant hardness in most of the relations of life. What,

then, is it, that makes all these individuals respond so directly, so

certainly, to every touch of goodness, and gentleness, and unselfishness,

and purity, and faith, that is put before them upon the stage? I think it

must be that eternal truth--the rocks of good that lie forever beneath

the wild seas of evil. Those men don't know themselves; don't know that

it is all useless for them to try to hide the nobility which has been put

into them, to thrust it down, and, metaphorically, to dance on it. They

can't get rid of it, do what they will. I like to think of goodness as

the shadow of evil through life, the shadow that, at death, or perhaps

long after death, becomes the substance."

"You think we cannot kill the good that is in us?"

"Not quite. But I think we can go near to killing it, so near that it

will take longer to recover and to be itself again, longer far than the

most relapsing typhoid patient."

"And have you other reasons for your belief?"

"Perhaps. But some of them are difficult to define, and would carry no

conviction to any one but myself. There is one in this very room with

us."

Julian glanced up, surprised.

"What is that, doctor?" he said.

"You ought to know better than I," Levillier answered.

He was looking at Valentine, who, apparently quite unconscious of their

presence, was still playing rather softly. Julian followed his eyes.

The light in the room was dim, a carefully manufactured twilight. It is

strange how many things, and how slight, stir, control, influence in one

direction or another, the emotions. Light and the absence of light can

divert a heart as easily as the pressing of a button can give a warship

to the sea. Twilight and music can change a beast into a man, a man into

an angel, for the moment. Long after that evening was dead, both Julian

and Doctor Levillier anxiously, and in their different ways analytically,

considered it. They submitted it to a secret process of probing, such as

many men enforce upon what they imagine to be great causes in their

lives. That hour became an hour of wonder, an hour of amazement, viewed

in the illumination of subsequent events. They found in it a curious

climax of misunderstanding, a culmination of all deceptive things.

And yet, in that hour they only watched a young man of London, a modern

intellectual youth, playing in a Victoria Street drawing-room upon a

Steinway grand piano.

They were sitting sideways to Valentine, and a little behind him.

Therefore he could not easily see them unless he slightly turned his

head. But they could observe him, and, obeying Doctor Levillier's mute

injunction, Julian now did so.

Valentine was gazing straight before him over the top, of the piano, and

his eyes seemed to be fixed upon the dim figure of Christ in the picture

of "The Merciful Knight." Was he not playing to the picture, playing to

that figure in it? And did not his musical imagination seek to reproduce

in sound the vision of the life of that mailed knight who never lived and

died? The purity of his expression, always consummate, was to-night more

peculiar, more unearthly, than before in any place, at any moment. And,

as mere line can convey to the senses of man a conception of a great

virtue or of a great vice, the actual shape of his features, thus seen in

profile, was the embodiment of an exquisitely ascetic purity, as much an

embodiment as is a drop of water pierced by a sunbeam. This struck both

Doctor Levillier and Julian, and the doctor was amazed anew at the silent

decree that the invisible shall be made visible in forms comprehensible

to the commonest minds. Sin would surely flee from a temple sculptured

in such a shape as the body of Valentine, as a vampire would flee from

the bloodless courts of the heaven of the Revelation. Lust cannot lie

at ease on a crystal couch, or rest its dark head upon a pillow of pale

ivory. And the message of this strange, unearthly youth now given in

music, and to the air and the dust--for Valentine had lost knowledge

of his friends--was crystalline too. In his improvisation he journeyed

through many themes of varying characters. He hymned the knight's

temptation no less than his triumph. But purity was in the hymn even

at the hour of temptation, and sang like a bird in every scene of the

life,--a purity classical, detached, so refined as to be almost

physically cold.

"I understand you," Julian whispered to the little doctor. "Yes, you

are right. He is a great reason why what you think may be true. And

yet"--here Julian lowered his voice to a breath, lest he might disturb

the player--"he is not religious, as--as--well, as you are. Forgive the

allusion--."

"Are the angels religious?" said Doctor Levillier. "Why should you

refrain, my dear boy? But you are right. There is a curious

unconsciousness about Cresswell--about Valentine--which seems to

exclude even definite religious belief as something in a way

self-conscious, and so impossible to him. There is an extraordinary

strain of the child in Cresswell, such as I conceive to be in unearthly

beings, who have never had the power to sin. And the best-behaved,

sweetest child in the world might catch flies or go to sleep during

the Litany or a sermon. This very absence of controversial or dogmatic

religion gives Valentine much of his power, seems positively to lift him

higher than religionists of any creed."

"You think--you think that perhaps it is something in him of which he is

unconscious which does so much for me?"

"Perhaps it is."

Valentine now glided into an accompaniment, and began to sing. And

the doctor and Julian ceased to talk. Valentine certainly did not sing

with such peculiar skill as he showed in playing, but he had a charming

voice which he used with great ease, and he never sang a single note,

or phrased a passage, without complete intelligence and understanding

of his composer. Only he lacked power. This scarcely interfered with the

pleasure he could give in a drawing-room, and to-night both Levillier and

Julian were rather in a mood for supreme delicacy than for great passion.

They listened with silent pleasure for a time. Then Levillier said:

"Do you remark how wonderfully the timbre of Cresswell's voice expresses

the timbre of his mind? The parallel is exact."

Julian nodded.

"That is his soul written in sound," the doctor added.

It was at this point that Valentine ceased and got up from the piano.

"I must smoke too," he said. "No, not a cigar, I'll have a cigarette

to-night."

"You are fond of that picture, Cresswell?" said Doctor Levillier as

Valentine sat down.

"'The Merciful Knight'? Yes, I love it. Have you told Julian your opinion

of our sittings, doctor?"

"No. He didn't ask me for it."

"I should be glad to have it, all the same," Julian said.

"Well, my opinion is entirely adverse to your proceedings," Levillier

said, with his usual frankness.

"You are, in fact, at the opposite pole from Marr," Julian answered.

"Marr! Who is Marr? I never heard of him."

"Nor I, until the other evening," Julian said. "But now I see him every

day. He was at the theatre to-night. I saw him as we came out."

"What is he, a spiritualist? A professional?"

"Oh dear, no! He calls himself an occultist. He goes out in society a

great deal, apparently. I met him at dinner first. Since then he has

taken the keenest interest in my sittings with Valentine."

"Indeed! You know him, Cresswell?"

Valentine shook his head, and Julian laughed.

"The fun of it is that Marr doesn't wish to know Valentine," he said.

"Why?" the doctor asked.

Julian told him the words Marr had used in reference to Valentine, and

gave a fairly minute description of Marr's attitude towards their

proceedings. Levillier listened with great attention.

"Then this man urges you to go on with your sittings?" he said when

Julian had finished.

"Scarcely that. But he certainly seems anxious that we should."

"You have both resolved to give them up, haven't you?"

"Certainly, doctor," Valentine replied.

"Does Marr know that?" Levillier asked of Julian.

"No. I haven't seen him to speak to since our final sitting."

The little doctor sat in apparent meditation for two or three minutes.

Then he remarked, with abruptness:

"Addison, will you think me an impertinent elderly person if I give you a

piece of advice?"

"You--doctor! Of course not. What is it?"

"Well, you young fellows know me, know that I am not a mere

sentimentalist or believer in every humbug that is the fashion of

the moment. But one thing I do firmly believe, that certain people

are born with a power to command, or direct others, which amounts to

force. The world doesn't completely recognize this. The law doesn't

recognize, perhaps ought not to recognize it. Some call it hypnotism.

I call it suggestion."

He paused, as if he had finished.

"But your advice, doctor?" Julian said, wondering.

"Oh, h'm! I don't mean to give it to you, after all."

"Why?"

Doctor Levillier became enigmatic.

"Because I have just remembered that to warn is often to supply a cause

of stumbling," he said.

Dr. Levillier and Julian drove together as far as the latter's

chambers that evening, and, after bidding Julian good-night, the doctor

dismissed the cab and set out to walk to Harley Street. He proceeded

at a leisurely pace along Piccadilly, threading his way abstractedly

among the wandering wisps of painted humanity that dye the London night

with rouge. Occasionally a passing man in evening dress would bid him

good-night, for he was universally known in the town. But he did not

reply. With his firm round chin pressed down upon his fur coat, and his

eyelids lowered, he moved thoughtfully. The problem of the relations

existing between youth and life eternally fascinated him. He pondered

over them now. What a strange, complicated _liaison_ it was, sometimes

so happy, sometimes so disastrous, always, to him, pathetic. Youth sets

up house with life as a lover sets up house with his mistress, takes an

attic near the stars, or builds a mansion that amazes the street-urchins.

And they dwell together. And youth strives in every way to know his

mistress. He tests her, tries her, kisses and cuffs her, gives her

presents, weeps at her knees. And at first she is magical, and a wonder,

and a dream, and eternity. And then, perhaps, she is a faded creature,

and terrible as a lost girl whom one has known in innocence. She is grim

and arid. She fills youth with a great horror and with a great fear. He

dare not kiss her any more. And then, perhaps, at last he prays, "Deliver

me from this bondage!" And he thinks that he knows his mistress. But,

happy or sad, does he ever quite know her? Is she not always a mystery,

this life, a sphinx who jealously guards a great secret?

His evening with the two boys, for so the doctor called them in his

thoughts, had set him musing thus definitely. Was there not a wonder

and a secret in their dual life of friendship? For is not the potent

influence of one soul over another one of the marvels of time? The

doctor loved Valentine as a human saint loves another saint. But he

loved Julian as a saint loves a sinner. Not that he named Julian sinner,

but it was impossible to be with him, observantly, sensitively, and not

to feel the thrill of his warm, passionate humanity, which cried aloud

for governance, for protection. Julian could be great, with the greatness

only attained by purged humanity, superior surely to the peaceful purity

of angels. But he could be a castaway, oh! as much a castaway as the

fainting shipwrecked man whom the hoarse surf rolls to the sad island of

a desert sea.

Without Valentine what might he not have been? And the little doctor

let his imagination run loose until his light eyes were dim with absurd

tears. He winked them away as he turned into Regent Street. The hour

was nearly two, and the great curved thoroughfare was rather deserted.

Those few persons who were about had a curious aspect of wolves. Their

eyes were watchful; their gait denoted a ghastly readiness for pause,

for colloquy. Poor creatures! What was their _liaison_ with life? A

thing like a cry for help in the dark. The doctor longed to be a

miracle-worker, to lift up his hands, just there where he was by the

New Gallery, and to say, "Be ye healed!" He had a true love for every

human thing. And that love sometimes seared his heart, despite his

fervent faith and hope.

But now, as he pursued his way, a physical sensation intruded itself upon

his mind, and gradually excluded all his reflections. A sense of bodily

uneasiness came upon him, of a curious irritation and contempt, mingled

with fear. He at first ascribed it to the coffee he had imprudently

drunk at Valentine's flat, and to the strength of the two cigars he had

smoked, or to some ordinary, trifling cause of diet. But by the time he

crossed Oxford Street, and was in the desert of Vere Street, he felt

that there was a reason for his distress, outside of him.

"I am being followed," he said to himself. "I am being followed, and by

some utterly abominable person."

He went by the Chapel, and struck across to the right, not looking behind

him, but analyzing his feelings. Being strongly intuitive, he had no need

to turn his head. He knew now for certain the cause of his uneasiness.

Some dreadful human being was very near to him, full of hateful thoughts,

sinister recollections, possibly evil intentions. Something, the very

vibrations of the night air, it might be, carried, as a telegraph wire

conveys a message, the soul-aroma of this human being to the doctor. As

he walked on, not hurrying, he mutely diagnosed the heart of this unseen

being. It seemed full of deadly disease. Never had he suspected man or

woman of such wickedness as he divined here; never had he felt from any

of his kind such a sick repulsion as from this unseen monster who was

journeying steadily in his steps. Doctor Levillier was puzzled at the

depth of the horror which beleaguered him. He remembered once driving a

staid, well-behaved horse in a country lane. The animal ambled forward

at a gentle pace, flicking its ears lazily to circumvent the flies,

apparently at ease with its driver and with the world. But suddenly it

raised its head, drew the air into its distended nostrils, stopped,

quivered in every limb, and then, with a strange cry, bolted like a

mad thing. Far away a travelling menagerie was encamping. It had scented

the wild animals.

Doctor Levillier felt like that horse. A longing to bolt for his life

came upon him. He had an impulse to cry out, to run forward, to escape

out of the atmosphere created by this evil nature, this deadly life. He

could have crept like a coward into the shadow of one of the areas of

Henrietta Street, and sheltered there till the thing went past. And, just

because he had this almost overmastering desire to flee, he stood still,

paused abruptly, and, without turning his head, listened. At a distance,

and he judged, round the corner of the street he heard the sound of a

quickening footstep advancing in his direction. He waited, under the

obligation of exerting all his powers of self-control; for his limbs

trembled to movement, his heart beat to the march, and every separate

vein, every separate hair of his body, seemed crying out piercingly to

begone. The footstep approached. Doctor Levillier heard it turning the

corner.

"Now," thought he, "this person will see me waiting here. Will he come

on? Will he pass me? And if he does, shall I be able to await, to endure

the incident?"

And he listened, as a scout might listen in the night for sounds of the

hidden enemy. Upon turning the corner, the footsteps advanced a pace or

two, faltered, slackened, stopped. For an instant there was silence.

The doctor knew that the man had been struck by his attentive figure, and

was pausing to regard it, to consider it. What would be the result of the

inspection? In a moment the doctor knew. The footsteps sounded again,

this time in retreat.

On this the impulse of the doctor to flee changed, giving way to a

strict desire and determination. He was resolved to interview this

night-wanderer, to see his face. A greedy anxiety for view, for

question, of this person came upon him. He, too, wheeled round, and

followed hastily in pursuit. The man had already escaped from his sight

into Vere Street, and the doctor broke into a soft run until he reached

the corner, skirting which, the man was immediately in his view, but

at a considerable distance from him. As the doctor sprang upon the

pavement the man turned round, and, evidently observing that he was

pursued, quickened his steps impulsively. The doctor was now absolutely

determined to address him, and began openly to run. And he was not far

from coming up with the fellow when he suddenly whistled a passing

hansom, bounded in, and thrust up the trapdoor in the roof. The direction

given was sufficiently obvious, for the cabby glanced round at the

doctor, lifted his whip, brought it down with a sweep over the horse's

loins, and the cab disappeared down Oxford Street at a rocking gallop.

The doctor paused. He was breathing hard, and the perspiration stood upon

his face. His disappointment was absurdly keen, and for an instant he had

even some idea of hailing another cab, and of following in pursuit. But,

upon reflection, he deemed it more reasonable to return upon his steps,

and to seek his bed in Harley Street. This accordingly he did, wondering

what had moved him so strangely, and wondering, also, not a little, at

the abrupt flight of the unknown person. In the brief and distant view

of him, which was all that the doctor had obtained, he judged him to be

tall, spare, and pale of countenance, with the figure of a gentleman.

The aspect of his face had not been revealed before the shelter of the

cab concealed him.

CHAPTER VIII

PAUSE

It chanced that for three or four days after the night of the theatre

expedition Valentine and Julian did not meet. They were rarely apart

for so long a period, and each was moved to wonder at this unwonted

abstinence of their friendship. What was the cause of it? Each found it

in a curious hesitation that enveloped him, and impelled him to avoidance

of the other. Valentine went about as usual. He looked in at White's,

dined out, rode in the park, visited two theatres, lived the habitual

London life which contents so many and disgusts not a few. But he did

not ask Julian to share any of these well-worn doings, and at first he

did not acknowledge to himself why he did not do so. He sought, more

definitely than ever before, to gain amusement from amusements, and

this definite intention, of course, frustrated his purpose. His power

of pleasure was, in fact, clogged by an abiding sense of dissatisfaction

and depression. And it was really his eventual knowledge of this

depression's cause that led him to bar Julian out from these few days

of his life. All that he did bored him, and the more decidedly because

he came to know that there was something which did not bore, which even

excited him, something which he had resolved to give up. He was, in

fact, strangely pursued by an unreasonable desire to fly in the face of

Doctor Levillier's advice, and of his own secondary antagonistic desire,

and to sit again with Julian. Everything in which he sought to find

distraction, lacked savour. As he sat watching a ballet that glittered

with electricity, and was one twinkle of coloured movement, he found

himself longing for the silence, the gloom, the live expectation of

the tentroom, night, and Julian. At White's the conversation of the men

struck him as even more scrappy, more desultorily scandalous, than usual.

His morning ride was an active _ennui_, an _ennui_ revolving, like a

horse in a circus, round and round the weariness of the park.

Yet he had made up his mind quite fully that it would be better not

to sit any more. It was not merely Doctor Levillier's urgency that

had impressed him thus. A personal conviction had gradually forced

itself upon him that if anything resulted from such apparently imbecile

proceedings it would certainly not be of an agreeable nature. But, too,

this very sense that a secret danger might be lurking against him and

Julian, if only they would consent together to give it power by the

united action of sitting, spurred him on to restless desire. It is

not only the soldier who has a bizarre love of peril. Many of those

who sit at home in apparent calmness of safety seek perils with a

maniacal persistence, perils to the intricate scheme of bodily health,

perils to the mind. More human mules than the men of the banner and the

sword delight in journeying at the extreme edge of the precipice. And

Valentine now had to the full this secret hankering after danger. As he

knew it, he despised himself for it, for this attitude of the schoolboy

in which he held himself. Until now he had believed that he was free

from such a preposterous and morbid bondage, free on account of his

constitutional indifference towards vice, his innate love of the brooding

calms of refinement and of the upper snowfields of the intellect. The

discovery of his mistake irritated him, but the irritation could not

conquer its cause, and each day the longing to sit once more grew upon

him until it became almost painful. It was this longing which occasioned

Valentine's avoidance of Julian. He knew that if they were together he

would yield to this foolish, witless temptation, and at any rate try to

persuade Julian into an act which might be attended with misfortune, if

not with disaster. And then Valentine's profound respect for Doctor

Levillier, a respect which the doctor inspired without effort in every

one who knew him, was a chain almost of steel to hold the young man back

from gratification of his longing. Valentine never sought any one's

advice except the little doctor's, and he had a strong feeling of the

obligation laid upon him by such sought advice. To ask it and to reject

it was a short course to insult.

He resolved to avoid Julian until this gripping desire was shaken from

the shoulders of his mind.

Once or twice he tacitly wondered whether Julian was also the prey of

this desire, but then he felt certain that his friend could not be so

afflicted. Had he been, Julian would surely have found a swift occasion

to call. But he did not call. His feet did not turn their accustomed

way to Victoria Street. And it did not occur to Valentine that Julian

might be immersed in the same sort of struggle as himself. He thought he

knew Julian well enough to be sure that he would not have joined issue

with such an enemy without instant consultation. A council of war would

certainly have been convened.

So Valentine believed himself lonely in his feeling. One night he

returned from the theatre and a succeeding supper party at half-past

twelve, let himself into the flat with a latchkey, threw off his coat

and stood before the fire. His usually smooth, white forehead was

puckered in a frown. He contemplated the inevitable hours of bed

with dissatisfaction. When a man has allowed a vice to obtain dominion

over him there are moments when an enforced abstinence from it, even

of only a few hours, seems intolerably irksome. So Valentine felt now.

It seemed to him that he must sit again; that he could not go to bed,

could not rest and sleep, until he gratified his desire. Yet what was he

to do? He thought at first of starting out, late as the hour was, to

Julian's rooms. But that would be ridiculous, more especially after

their mutual resolution. Julian might refuse, would probably, in any

event, wish to refuse, the request which he came to make. Valentine

strove sincerely to dismiss the desire from his mind, but his effort

was entirely vain. Presently he went into his bedroom with the intention

of forcing himself to go, as usual, to bed. He began to undress slowly,

and had taken off his coat and waistcoat when he felt that he must

resume them; that he must remain, unnecessarily, up. He allowed the

mental prompting to govern him, and hardly had he once more fully attired

himself when the electric bell in the passage rang twice. Valentine went

to the door, opened it, and descended the flight of stone steps to the

main door of the house, which was locked at night. Julian was standing

outside on the pavement.

"You are still up, then," he exclaimed. "That's good. May I come in?"

"Yes, of course. Where have you been to-night?"

They were going up, their footsteps echoing hoarsely in the dim light.

"Nowhere."

"Then what made you turn out so late?"

"Oh," Julian said, with an elaborate carelessness; "I don't know. I

thought we were becoming strangers, I suppose. And suddenly I resolved

to look you up."

"I see," Valentine said, wondering why Julian was lying.

By this time they were in the flat and had shut the door behind them.

"Why haven't you been near me?" Julian said.

"Why haven't you been near me?"

"Oh--well--do you want to know really?"

"Yes; if you have got a definite reason."

"To tell the truth, I have; but it is such an absurd one."

Julian looked at Valentine and then added, with a decidedly forced laugh:

"You'll be awfully surprised when I tell you what it is, Val. I want

to sit again."

"Now I know why I stopped undressing just now," said Valentine. "I must

have had a sense that you were coming. Were you thinking very hard of me

to-night and of our sittings?"

"Rather! It is the oddest thing, but even since we had that talk with

the doctor and agreed to give the whole thing up, I've been perfectly

miserable. I haven't enjoyed a single thing I've done since that night."

"Nor I," said Valentine.

"What! you have been as bad? And without having Marr continually at your

elbow!"

"Marr again!"

"Again! Yes, I should think so. That chap has taken a fancy to me,

I suppose. Anyhow, directly I walk into the club, morning, noon, or

night, up he comes. He must live there. And the first thing he says is,

'Have you gone on with your sittings? You should, you should.' To-day

he changed his formula and said, 'You must,' and when I was going away,

he looked at me in a damned odd way and remarked in his low, toneless

voice, 'You will.' I declare I almost think he must have a sort of

influence over me, for I couldn't go to bed for the life of me, and

here I am. By the way, Marr seems to have a sort of power of divination.

Last night, when I happened to see him, he began talking about doctors,

and, by Jove, didn't he abuse them! He says they stand more in the way

of the development of the spiritual forces in man than any other body

of people. He denounced them all as low materialists, immersed in the

tinkering of the flesh. 'What does the flesh matter?' he said. 'It is

nothing. It is only an envelope. And the more tightly it is fastened

together, the more it stifles the spirit. I would like to catch hold

of some men's bodies and tear them in pieces to get at their souls.'

Val, as he made that cheerful remark, he looked more like a homicidal

maniac than anything I ever saw."

"I suppose you didn't stand up for the doctors?"

"But I did--for our little man. D'you think I wasn't going to say a word

for him?"

"What! you mentioned his name to this chap?"

"Certainly. Why not?"

"I don't know," Valentine said, hesitatingly.

"What objection could there possibly be?"

"None, of course--none. I simply had a quite unreasonable feeling that I

wished you hadn't. That is all."

And then Valentine relapsed into silence, the silence some men keep when

they are needlessly, uselessly irritated. The mention of Marr's name had

effected him oddly. He now felt a perverse desire not to sit, not comply

with the rather impertinent prediction of this dark-featured prophet

whom he had never seen. To carry out this prediction would seem like

an obedience to a stranger, governing, unseen, and at a distance. Why

did this man concern himself in the affairs of those over whom he had

no sovereignty, with whom he had no friendship?

"Julian," Valentine said at last, abruptly, "I wish you would promise me

something."

"What is it?"

"To drop this fellow, Marr. He has nothing to do with us, and it is a

decided impertinence, this curiosity he shows in our doings. Don't

answer any more of his questions. Tell him to keep his advice to himself.

And if you really believe he is obtaining an influence over you, avoid

him."

"You talk as if you disliked him."

"I feel as if I hated him."

"A man you have never even seen?"

"Yes."

"Well, I don't take to him, and I have seen him. I will drop him as much

as I can. I promise you that."

"Thank you, old boy."

Julian fidgetted about rather uneasily, touching the ornaments on the

mantelpiece, opening and shutting his silver cigarette-case with a click.

It was obvious that he felt restless and dissatisfied. Then he said:

"Well, are we going to--"

"Surely you don't mean to say that you came here to-night to persuade

me into doing again what we both decided not to do any more?" asked

Valentine.

"I came to try," Julian replied with decision.

He looked at Valentine and then added:

"And do you know I have been thinking, especially to-day, that you were

of the same mind as I."

"How?"

"That you wanted to sit again as much as I did."

"But I don't know Marr," Valentine said, with unusual sarcasm.

Julian flushed red, like a man who has been stung.

"Perhaps he influences you through me, though," he said with a laugh.

"What nonsense, Julian! If I thought he had anything to do with the

matter, I would never sit again. But he can have nothing to do with it."

"Of course not. So will you sit? You want to give in. I know that."

"I do"

"I was sure of it."

"At the same time, remember the doctor's advice."

"Oh, doctors are always against that sort of thing."

"Julian, I have a strong feeling that, should we ever get any

manifestation at all, it will be inimical, even deadly, to one or both

of us. Each time we have sat a sensation of distress has taken hold of

me, and each time with greater force."

"Nerves!"

"Well, then, the hand which you say you held was nerves?"

"Perhaps. But that is just it. I must know, or at least try to know. It

is inevitable. We can't stop now, Val, whether we are standing on the

threshold of good, or evil, or--nothing at all. We have got to go on.

Besides, you and I have not effected an exchange."

"Of souls? No. Perhaps it is an imbecile proceeding to try."

"No matter."

"Or a dangerous proceeding."

"You are temporizing, and the night is running away as hard as it can.

Come, now, will you do what I want--yes or no?"

After a long hesitation, Valentine slowly answered:

"Yes."

And absurdly, as he said it, he felt like a man who tosses the dice for

life or death.

CHAPTER IX

THE FOURTH SITTING

They turned the light off and sat down in silence. Then Julian said:

"Keep your hands well away from mine, Val."

"I will."

They had not been sitting for five minutes before Valentine felt that the

atmosphere was becoming impregnated with a certain heaviness of mystery,

with a certain steady and unyielding dreariness hanging round them like a

cloud. They were once again confronted by a strange reality. Surely they

were. Valentine felt it, silently knew it.

In this blackness he seemed at length to step forward and to stand upon

the very threshold of an abyss, beyond which, in vague vapours, lay

things unknown, creatures unsuspected hitherto. From this darkness

anything might come to them, angel or devil, nymph or satyr. So, at

least, he dreamed for a while, giving his imagination the rein. Then,

in a revulsion of feeling, he jeered at his folly, mutely scolded his

nerves for spurring him to such flagrant imbecilities.

"This is all nonsense," he told himself, "all fancy, all a world created,

peopled, endowed with life by my desirous mind, which longs for a new

sensation. I will not encourage this absurdity. I will be calm, cold,

observant, discriminating. This is the same darkness in which every

night I sleep, with no sense of being surrounded by forms which I cannot

see, pressed upon by the denizens of some other sphere, not that in which

I breathe and live."

He deliberately detached himself from his mood of keen expectation, and

ardently resolved to anticipate nothing. And at this moment the table

began to shift along the carpet, to twist under their hands, to rap, to

tremble, and to pulsate, as if breath had entered into it. Like some live

animal it stirred beneath their pressing fingers.

"It is beginning," Julian whispered.

"Animal magnetism," Valentine murmured.

"Yes, of course," Julian replied. "Shall I ask--"

"Hush!" Valentine interrupted.

Julian was silent.

For some time the table continued its stereotyped performances. Then

it tremblingly ceased, and stood, mere dead furniture of every day, wood

on which lay the four hands made deliberately limp. A long period of

unpopulated silence ensued, and through that silence, very gradually,

came again to Valentine a growing sense of anxiety. At first he fought

against it as most men, perhaps out of self-respect, fight against the

entrance of fear into their souls. Then he yielded to it, and let it

crawl over him, as the sea crawls over flat sands. And the sea left no

inch of sand uncovered. Every cranny of Valentine's soul was flooded.

There was no part of it which did not shudder with apprehension. And

outwards flowed this invisible, unmurmuring tide, devouring his body,

till the sweat was upon his face and his strained hands and trembling

fingers were cold like ice, and his knees fluttered as the knees of

palsied age, and his teeth clicked, row against row, and his hairs

stirred, and his head, under its thatch, tingled and burned and throbbed.

Every faculty, too, seemed to stand straight up like a sentinel at its

post, staring into dust clouds through which rode an approaching enemy.

Eyes watched, ears listened, brain was hideously alert. The whole body

kept itself tense, stiff, wary. For Valentine had a secret conviction

at this moment that he was about to be attacked. By what? He was hardly

master of himself enough to wonder. His thoughts no longer ran free.

They crept like paralyzed things about his mind, and that despite the

unnatural vitality of his brain. It was as if he thought intensely,

violently, and yet could not think at all, as a man terrified may stare

with wide open eyes and yet perceive nothing, lacking for a moment the

faculty of perceiving. So Valentine waited, like some blind man with

glaring eyeballs. And then, passing into another stage of sensation, he

found himself vehemently and rapidly discussing possibilities of terror,

forming mental pictures of all the things, of all the powers, that we

cannot see. He embodied, materialized, the wind, the voice of the sea,

the angry, hot scent of certain flowers, of the white lily, the tuberose,

the hyacinth. He created figures for light, for darkness, for a wail, for

a laugh, and set them in array all around him in the blackness. But none

of these imagined figures could cause the horror which he felt. He drove

away the whole pack of them with a silent cry, a motionless dismissing

wave of his hands. But there might be other beings round us, condemned

to eternal invisibility lest the sight of them should drive men mad. We

cannot see them, he thought. As a rule, we have no sensation of these

gaunt neighbours, no suspicion of their approach, of their companionship.

We do not hear their footsteps. We are utterly unconscious of them. Yet

may there not be physical or mental paroxysms, during which we become

conscious of them, during which we know, beyond all power of doubt, that

they are near us, with us? And, in such paroxysms, is it not possible for

them to break through the intangible and yet all-powerful barriers that

divide them from us, and to touch us, caress us, attack us? Valentine

believed that he was immersed in such a paroxysm, and that the barriers

were in process of being broken down. He seemed actually to hear the

faint cry of an approaching being, the dim uproar of its violent efforts

to obtain its sinister will, and gain the power to make itself known to

him by some ghastly and malignant deed. He was unutterably afraid.

"The hand again!" Julian suddenly cried. "Valentine, is it yours? Why

don't you answer? I say, is it yours?"

"No," Valentine forced himself, with difficulty, to reply.

"For God's sake then--the light!"

Valentine felt for it, but his hand shook and did not find the button.

"Make haste, Val. What are you doing? Ah!"

The room sprang into view, and Julian's eyes, with a furious, sick

eagerness, sought his hands.

"Valentine," he exclaimed hoarsely, "I see nothing, but I've got hold of

the hand still. I've got it tight. Put your hand here--that's it--under

mine. Now d'you feel the thing?"

Julian's hand, contracted as if grasping another, was in the air, about

an inch, or an inch and a half, above the surface of the table. Valentine

obediently thrust his hand beneath it. He now shook his head.

"I feel nothing," he said. "There is nothing."

"Then am I mad?" said Julian. "I'm holding flesh and blood. I'll swear

that. Yes, I can feel the fingers twitching, the muscles, the bones. I

can even trace the veins. What does this mean?"

"I can't tell."

"You look very strange, Valentine. You are certain you see and feel

nothing?"

"Nothing whatever," Valentine forced himself to answer calmly.

"We'll see this through," said Julian with a sort of angry determination.

"I won't be frightened by a hand. We'll see it through. Out with the

light."

Valentine turned it off. The action was purely mechanical. He had to

perform it, whether he would or no.

"Don't speak," he whispered to Julian in the darkness. "Don't speak,

whatever happens, till I ask you to speak."

"Why?"

"Don't; don't!"

"All right."

They sat still.

And now the horror that had possessed Valentine so utterly began to

fade away, making its exit from his body and soul with infinitesimally

small steps. At length it had quite gone, and its place was taken by a

numb calm, level and still at first, then curiously definite, almost

too definite to be calm at all. Gradually this calm withdrew into

exhaustion, an exhaustion such as dwells incessantly with the anemic,

with those whose hearts beat feebly and whose vitality flickers low to

fading. That was like a delicious arrival of death, of death delicate

and serene, ivory white and pure, death desirable, grateful. Valentine

indeed believed that he was dying, there in the darkness beside his

friend, and, impersonally as it seemed, something of him, his brain

perhaps, seemed to be floating high up, as a bird floats over the sea,

and listening, and noting all that he did in this crisis. This attentive

spirit heard a strange movement of his soul in its bodily prison, heard

his soul stir, as if waking out of sleep, heard it shift, and rise up

slowly, noted its pause of hesitation. Then, as the vitality of the body

ebbed lower, there grew in the soul an excitement that aspired like a

leaping flame. It was as if a madman, prisoned in his narrow cell in a

vast asylum, secluded with his company of phantoms, heard the crackling

of the fire that devoured his habitation, and was stirred into an

ignorant and yet tumultuous passion. As the madman, with a childish,

increasing uneasiness, awed by the sinuous approach of the unseen fire,

might pace to and fro, round and round about his cell, so it seemed to

this poised, watching faculty of Valentine that his soul wandered in

its confined cell of the body, at first with the cushioned softness

of an animal, moving mechanically, driven by an endless and unmeaning

restlessness, then with an increasing energy, a fervour, a crescendo of

endeavour. What drove his soul? Surely it was struggling with an unseen

power. And the steady diminuendo of his bodily forces continued, until

he was a corpse in which a fury dwelt. That fury was the soul. He had a

strange fancy that he, unlike all the rest of humanity, would die, yet

still retain his spirit in its fleshy prison, and that the spirit

screamed and fought to be free on its wayward pilgrimage to heaven or

hell. All its brother and sister spirits had fled, since the beginnings

of time, from their bodies at the crisis of dissolution, had gone to

punishment or to reward. His soul alone was to meet a different fate,

was to be confined in a decaying body, to breathe physical corruption,

and to be at home in a crumbling dwelling to which no light, no air,

could ever penetrate. And the soul, which knows instinctively its eternal

_mêtier_, rebelled with a fantastic violence. And still, ever, the body

died. The pulses ceased from beating. The warm blood was mixed with snow

until it grew cold and gradually congealed in the veins. The little door

of the heart swung slower and slower upon its hinges, more feebly--more

feebly. And then there came a supreme moment. The soul of Valentine, with

a frantic vehemence, beat down at last its prison door, and, even as his

body died, escaped with a cry through the air.

* * * * *

"Valentine, did you hear that strange cry?"

* * * * *

"Valentine, what was it? I never heard any sound like that before, so

thin and small, and yet so horribly clear and piercing; neither like the

cry of a child nor of an animal, nor like the wail that could come from

any instrument. Valentine, now I see a little flame come from where you

are sitting. It's so tiny and faint. Don't you see it? It is floating

toward me. Now it is passing me. It's beyond. It's going. There, it has

vanished. Valentine! Valentine!"

BOOK II--JULIAN

CHAPTER I

THE TRANCE

Gaining no reply to his call, Julian grew alarmed. He sprang up from

the table and turned on the electric light. Valentine was leaning back

nervelessly in his chair. His face was quite pale and cold. His lips were

slightly parted. His eyes were wide open and stared before him without

expression. His head hung far back over the edge of his chair. He looked

exactly like a man who had just died, and died in a convulsion. For

though the lips were parted, the teeth set tightly together grinned

through them, and the hands were intensely contracted into fists. Julian

seized Valentine in his arms, lifted the drooping body from the chair

and laid it out at length on the divan. He put a pillow under the head,

which fell on it grotesquely and lay sideways, still smiling horribly at

nothing. Then he poured out a glass of brandy and strove to force some

of it between Valentine's teeth, dashed water in the glaring eyes, beat

the air with a fan which he tore from the mantelpiece. All was in vain.

There came no sign of returning life. Then Julian caught Valentine's

hands in his and sought to unclench the rigid, cold fingers. He laid

his hand on the heart of his friend. No pulsation beat beneath his

anxious touch. Then a great horror overtook him. Suddenly he felt a

conviction that Valentine had died beside him in the dark, had died

sitting up in his chair by the table. The cry he had heard, so thin, so

strange and piercing, the attenuated flame that he had seen, were the

voice and the vision of the flying soul which he had loved, seeking its

final freedom, _en route_ to the distant spheres believers dream of and

sceptics deny.

"Valentine! Valentine!" he cried again, with the desperate insistence of

the hopeless. But the cold, staring creature upon the green divan did not

reply. With a brusque and fearful movement Julian shut the eyelids. Would

they ever open again? He knelt upon the floor, leaning passionately over

his friend, or that which had been his friend. He bent his head down on

the silent breast, listening. Surely if Valentine were alive he would

show it by some sign, the least stir, breath, shiver, pulse. There was

none. Julian might have been clasping stone or iron. If he could only

know for certain whether Valentine were really dead. Yet he dared not

leave him alone and go to seek aid. Suddenly a thought struck him. In the

hall of the flat was a handle which, when turned in a certain direction,

communicated with one of those wooden and glass hutches in which sleepy

boy-messengers harbour at night. Julian sprang to this handle, set the

communicator in motion, then ran back into the tentroom. His intention

was to write a note to Dr. Levillier. The writing-table was so placed

that, sitting at it, his back would be turned to that silent figure on

the divan. A shiver ran over him at the bare thought of such a blind

posture. No, he must face that terror, once so dear. He caught up a

pen and a sheet of note paper, and, swerving round, was about to write,

holding the paper on his knee, when the electric bell rang. The boy had

been very quick in his run from the hutch. Julian laid down the paper and

went to let the boy in. His knees shook as he descended the dark, echoing

stairs and opened the door. There stood the messenger, a rosy-faced

urchin of about twelve, with rather sleepy brown eyes.

"Come up," Julian said, and he hurried back to the flat, the little boy

violently emulating his giant stride up the stairs and arriving flushed

and panting at the door. Julian, who was entirely abstracted in his

agitation, made for the tentroom without another word to the boy, seized

pen and paper and began to write, urgently requesting Dr. Levillier to

come at once to see Valentine. Abruptly a childish voice intruded itself

upon him.

"Lor', sir," it said. "Is the gentleman ill?"

Julian glanced up and found that the little boy had innocently followed

him into the tentroom, and was now standing near him, gazing with a

round-eyed concern upon the stretched figure on the divan.

"Yes," Julian replied; "ill, very ill. I want you to go for a doctor."

The boy approached the divan, moved apparently by the impelling curiosity

of tender years. Julian stopped writing and watched him. He leaned down

and looked at the face, at the inertia of hands and limbs. As he raised

himself up from a calm and close inspection he saw Julian staring at him.

He shook his round bullet head, on which the thick hair grew in an

unparted stubble.

"No, I don't think he's ill, sir," he remarked, with treble conviction.

"Then why does he lie like that?"

"I expect it's because he's dead, sir," the child replied, with grave

serenity.

This unbiased testimony in favour of his fears came to Julian's mind like

a storm.

"How do you know?" he exclaimed, with a harsh voice.

"Lor', sir," the boy said, not without a certain pride, "I knows a corpse

when I sees it. My father died come a fortnight ago. See that?"

And he indicated, with stumpy finger, the black band upon his left arm.

"Well, father looked just like the gentleman."

Julian was petrified by this urchin's intimacy with death. It struck

him as utterly vicious and terrible. A horror of the rosy-faced little

creature, with good-conduct medals gleaming on its breast, came over him.

"Hush!" he said.

"All right, sir; but you take my word for it, the gentleman's dead."

Julian finished the note, thrust it into an envelope, and addressed it to

the doctor.

"Run and get a cab and take that at once to Harley Street," he said.

The boy smiled.

"I like cab-riding," he said.

"And," Julian caught his arm, "that gentleman is not dead. He's alive,

I tell you; only in a faint, and alive."

The boy looked into Julian's face with the pitying grin of superior

knowledge of the world.

"Ah, sir, you didn't see father," he said.

Then he turned and bounded eagerly down the stairs, in a hurry for the

cab-ride.

Loneliness and desolation descended like a cloud over Julian when he had

gone, for the frank belief of the boy, who cared nothing, struck like an

arrow of truth to his heart, who cared everything. Was Valentine indeed

dead? He would not believe it, for such a belief would bring the world in

ruins about his feet. Such a belief would people his soul with phantoms

of despair and of wickedness. Could he not cry out against God in

blasphemy, if God took his friend from him? The tears rushed into his

eyes, as he sat waiting there in the night. As before a drowning man,

scenes of the last five years flashed before him, painted in vital

colours,--scenes of his life with Valentine,--then scenes of all that

might have been had he never met Valentine, never known his strange

mastering influence. Could that influence have been given only to be

withdrawn? Of all the inexplicable things of life the most inexplicable

are the abrupt intrusions and disappearances of those lovely

manifestations which give healing to tired hearts, to the wounded

soldiers of the campaign of the world. Why are they not permitted to

stay? Bitterly Julian asked that question. Of all the men whom he knew,

only Valentine did anything for him. Must Valentine, of all men, be the

one who might not stay with him? The rest he could spare. He could not

spare Valentine. He could not. The impotence of his patience tortured him

physically, like a disease. He sprang up from his chair. He must do

something at once to know the truth. What could he do? He had no

knowledge of medicine. He could not tabulate physical indications, and

he would not trust to his infernal instinct. For it was that which cried

to him again and again, "Valentine is dead." What--what could he do?

A thought darted into his mind. Dogs are miraculously instinctive. Rip

might know what he did not certainly know, might divine the truth. He ran

into Valentine's bedroom.

"Rip," he cried; "Rip!"

The little dog sprang from its lonely sleep and accompanied Julian

energetically to the tentroom. Observing Valentine's attitude, it sprang

upon the couch beside him, licked his white face eagerly, then, gaining

no response, showed hesitation, alarm. It began to investigate the body

eagerly with its sharp nose, snuffing at head, shoulders, legs, feet.

Still it seemed in doubt, and paused at length with one fore foot planted

on Valentine's breast, the other raised in air.

"Even Rip is at fault," Julian said to himself. But as the words ran

through his mind, the little dog grew suddenly calmer. It dropped the

hesitating paw, again licked the face, then nestled quietly into the

space between Valentine's left breast and arm, rested its chin on the

latter, and with blinking eyes prepared evidently for repose. A wild

hope came again to Julian.

"Valentine is not dead," he said to himself. "He is in some strange

hypnotic trance. Presently he will recover from it. He will be well.

Thank God! Thank God! I will watch!"

And so he kept an attentive and hopeful vigil, his eyes always upon

Valentine's face, his hand always touching Valentine's. Already life

seemed blossoming anew with an inexplicable radiance. Valentine would

speak once more, would come back from this underworld of the senses.

And Julian's hand closed on his cold hand with a warm, impulsive

strength, as if it might be possible to draw him back physically to

consciousness and to speech. But there was no answer. And again Julian

was assailed with doubts. Yet the dog slept on happily, a hostage to

peace.

Julian never knew how long that vigil lasted. It might have been five

minutes, or a lifetime. The vehemence of his mental debate slew his

power of observation of normal things. He forgot what he was waiting

for. He forgot to expect Dr. Levillier. Two visions alternated in glaring

contrast before the eyes of his brain--life with Valentine, and life

without him. It is so we watch the trance, or death,--we know not

which,--of those whom we love, with a greedy, beautiful selfishness.

They are themselves only in relation to us. They live, they die, in that

wonderful relation. To live is to be with us; to die, to go away from us.

There are women who love so much that they angrily expostulate with the

dying, as if indeed the dying deliberately elected to depart out of their

arms. Do we not all feel at moments the "You could stay with me, if only

you had the will!" that is the last bitter cry of despairing affection?

Julian, sitting there, while Valentine lay silent and the dog slept by

his breast, saw ever and ever those two lives, flashing and fading like

lamps across a dark sea, life with, life without, him. The immensity of

the contrast, the millions of airy miles between those two life-worlds,

appalled him, for it revealed to him what mighty issues of joy and grief

hung upon the almost visionary thin thread of one little life. It is

ghastly to be so idiotically dependent. Yet who, at some time, is not?

And those who are independent lose, by their power, their possible

Paradise. But such a time of uncertainty as that which Julian must now

endure is a great penalty to pay for even the greatest joy, when the

joy is past. He had his trance of the mind. He was hypnotized by his

ignorance whether Valentine were alive or dead. And so he sat motionless,

making the tour of an eternity of suffering, of wonder, of doubt, and

hope, and yet, through it all, in some strange, indefinite way, numb,

phlegmatic, and actually stupid.

At last the bell rang. Dr. Levillier had arrived. He was struck at once

by Julian's heaviness of manner.

"What is it? What is the matter?" he asked.

"I don't know. You tell me."

"He is fainting--unconscious?"

"Unconscious, yes."

They were in the little hall now. Doctor Levillier narrowly scrutinized

Julian. For a moment he thought Julian had been drinking, and he took him

by the arm.

"No; it is fear," he murmured, releasing him, and walking into the

tentroom.

Julian followed with a loud footstep, treading firmly. Each step said to

Death, "You are not here. You are not here."

He stood at a little distance near the door, while Levillier approached

Valentine and bent over him. Rip woke up and curled his top lip in a

terrier smile of welcome. The doctor stroked his head, then lifted

Valentine's hand and held the wrist. He dropped it, and threw a glance

on Julian. There was a scream of interrogation in Julian's fixed eyes.

Doctor Levillier avoided it by dropping his own, and again turning his

attention to the figure on the divan. He undid Valentine's shirt, bared

the breast, and laid his hand on the heart, keeping it there for a long

time.

"Fetch me a hand-glass," he said to Julian.

Mechanically, Julian went into the bedroom, and groped in the dark upon

the dressing-table.

"Well, have you got it? Why don't you turn up the light?"

"I don't know," Julian answered, drily.

Doctor Levillier saw that anxiety was beginning to unnerve him. When the

glass was found the doctor led Julian back to the tentroom and pushed him

gently down in a chair.

"Keep quiet," he said. "And--keep hoping."

"There is--there is--hope?"

"Why not?"

Then the doctor held the little glass to Valentine's lips. The bright

surface was not dimmed. No breath of life tarnished it to dulness. Again

the doctor felt his heart, drew his eyelids apart, and carefully examined

the eyes, then turned slowly round.

"Doctor--doctor!" Julian whispered. "Why do you turn away? What are you

going to do?"

Doctor Levillier made a gesture of finale, and knelt on the floor by

Valentine. His head was bowed. His lips moved silently. Julian saw that

he was praying, and sprang up fiercely. All the frost of his senses

thawed in a moment. He seized Levillier by the shoulders.

"Don't pray!" he cried out; "don't pray. Curse! Curse as I do! If he's

dead you shall not pray. You shall not! You shall not!"

The little doctor drew him down to his knees.

"Julian, hush! My science tells me Valentine is dead."

Julian opened his white lips, but the doctor, with a motion, silenced

him, and added, pointing to Rip, who still lay happily by his master's

side:

"But that dog seems to tell me he is alive; that this is some strangely

complete and perfect simulation of death, some unnatural sleep of the

senses. Pray, pray with me that Valentine may wake."

And, kneeling by his friend, with bent head, Julian strove to pray. The

answer to that double prayer pierced the two men. It was so instant, and

so bizarre, fighting against probability, yet heralding light, and the

end of that night's pale circumstances.

Rip, relapsing quickly from his perfunctory smile on the doctor, had

again fallen asleep with an evident exceeding confidence and comfort,

snoring his way into an apparent peace that passed all understanding. But

scarcely had the doctor spoken, giving Julian hope, than the little dog

suddenly opened its eyes, shifted round in its nest of arm and bosom,

smelt furtively at Valentine's hand. Then it turned from the hand to the

side of its master, investigated it with a supreme anxiety, pursued its

search as far as the white, strict face and bared bosom. From the face

it recoiled, and with a piercing howl like the scream of a dog run over

by a cart, it sprang away, darted to the farthest corner of the room,

and huddled close against the wall in an agony of terror.

Julian turned cold. He believed implicitly that the trance at that very

moment had deepened into death, and that the sleepless instinct of the

dog had divined it partially while he slept, and now knew it and was

afraid. And the same error of belief shook Dr. Levillier. A spasm crossed

his thin, earnest face. No death had ever hurt him so sharply as this

death hurt him. He saw Julian recoil in horror from the divan, and he

could say nothing. For he, too, felt horror.

But in this moment of despair Valentine's hands slowly unclenched

themselves, and the fingers were gradually extended as by a man

stretching himself after a long sleep.

The doctor saw this, but believed himself a victim of a delusion, tricked

by the excitement of his mind into foolish visions. And Julian had turned

quite away, trembling. But now Valentine moved slightly, pressed his

elbows on the cushions that supported him, and half sat up, still with

closed eyes.

"Julian," Dr. Levillier said in a low, summoning voice,--"Julian, do you

see what I see? Is he indeed alive? Julian."

Then Julian, turning, saw, with the doctor, Valentine sit up erect, open

his eyes and gaze upon his two friends with a grave, staring scrutiny.

"Valentine, Valentine, how you frightened me! How you terrified me!"

Julian at last found a voice to exclaim. "Thank God, thank God! you are

alive. Oh, Valentine, you are alive; you are not dead."

Valentine's lips smiled slowly.

"Dead," he answered. "No; I am not dead."

And again he smiled quietly, as a man smiles at some secret thought

which tickles him or whips the sense of humour in him till, like an

obeying dog, it dances.

Dr. Levillier, having regained his feet, stood silently looking at

Valentine, all his professional instinct wide awake to note this

apparent resurrection from the dead.

"You here, doctor!" said Valentine. "Why, what does this all mean?"

"I want you to tell me that," Levillier said. "And you," he added, now

turning towards Julian.

But Julian was too much excited to answer. His eyes were blazing with joy

and with emotion. And Valentine seemed still to be informed with a

curious, serpentine lassitude. The life seemed to be only very gently

running again over his body, creeping from the centre, from the heart, to

the extremities, gradually growing in the eyes, stronger and stronger, a

dawn of life in a full-grown man. Dr. Levillier had never seen anything

quite like it before. There was something violently unnatural about it,

he thought, yet he could not say what. He could only stand by the broad

couch, fascinated by the spectacle under his gaze. Once he had read a

tale of the revivifying of a mummy in a museum. That might have been like

this; or the raising of Lazarus. The streams of strength almost visibly

trickled through Valentine's veins. And this new life was so vigorous,

so alert. It was as if during his strange sleep Valentine had been

carpentering his energies, polishing his powers, setting the temple

of his soul in order, gaining almost a ruthlessness from rest. He

stretched his limbs now as an athlete might stretch them to win the full

consciousness of their muscular force. When the doctor took hold of his

hand to feel his pulse the hand was hard and tense like iron, the fingers

gripped for a moment like thin bands of steel, and the life in the blue

eyes bounded, raced, swirled as water swirls in a mill-stream. Indeed,

Dr. Levillier felt as if there was too much life in them, as if the cup

had been filled with wine until the wine ran over. He put his fingers

on the pulse. It was strong and rapid and did not fluctuate, but beat

steadily. He felt the heart. That, too, throbbed strongly. And while he

made his examination Valentine smiled at him.

"I'm all right, you see," Valentine said.

"All right," the doctor echoed, still possessed by the feeling that there

lurked almost a danger in this apparently abounding health.

"What was it all?" Julian asked eagerly. "Was it a trance?"

"A trance?" Valentine said. "Yes, I suppose so."

He put his feet to the floor, stood up, and again stretched all his

limbs. His eyes fell upon Rip, who was still in the corner, huddled up,

his teeth showing, his eyes almost starting out of his head.

"Rip," he said, holding out his hand and slapping his knee, "come here!

Come along! Rip! Rip! What's the matter with him?"

"He thought you were dead," said Julian. "Poor little chap. Rip, it's all

right. Come!"

But the dog refused to be pacified, and still displayed every symptom of

angry fear. At last Valentine, weary of calling the dog, went towards it

and stooped to pick it up. At the downward movement of its master the dog

shrank back, gathered itself together, then suddenly sprang forward with

a harsh snarl and tried to fasten its teeth in his face. Valentine jumped

back just in time.

"He must have gone mad," he exclaimed. "Julian, see what you can do with

him."

Curiously enough, Rip welcomed Julian's advances with avidity, nestled

into his arms, but when he walked toward Valentine, struggled to escape

and trembled in every limb.

"How extraordinary!" Julian said. "Since your trance he seems to have

taken a violent dislike to you. What can it mean?"

"Oh, nothing probably. He will get over it. Put him into the other room."

Julian did so and returned.

Doctor Levillier was now sitting in an arm-chair. His light, kind

eyes were fixed on Valentine with a scrutiny so intense as to render

the expression of his usually gentle face almost stern. But Valentine

appeared quite unconscious of his gaze and mainly attentive to all that

Julian said and did. All this time the doctor had not said a word. Now

he spoke.

"You spoke of a trance?" he said, interrogatively.

Julian looked as guilty as a cribbing schoolboy discovered in his dingy

act.

"Doctor, Val and I have to crawl to you for forgiveness," he said.

"To me--why?"

"We have disobeyed you."

"But I should never give you an order."

"Your advice is a command to those who know you, doctor," said Valentine,

with a sudden laugh.

"And what advice of mine have you put in the corner with its face to the

wall?"

"We have been table-turning again."

"Ah!"

Doctor Levillier formed his lips into the shape assumed by one whistling.

"And this has been the result?"

"Yes," Julian cried. "Never, as long as I live, will I sit again. Val, if

you go down on your knees to me--"

"I shall not do that," Valentine quietly interposed. "I have no desire to

sit again now."

"You both seem set against such dangerous folly at last," said the

doctor. "Give me your solemn promise to stick to what you have said."

And the two young men gave it, Julian with a strong gravity, Valentine

with a light smile. Julian had by no means recovered his usual gaiety.

The events of the night had seriously affected him. He was excited and

emotional, and now he grasped Valentine by the arm as he exclaimed:

"Valentine, tell me, what made you give that strange cry just before

you went into your trance? Were you frightened? or did something--that

hand--touch you? Or what was it?"

"A cry?"

"Yes."

"It was not I."

"Didn't you hear it?"

"No."

Julian turned to the doctor.

"It was an unearthly sound," he said. "Like nothing I have ever heard or

imagined. And, doctor, just afterward I saw something, something that

made me believe Valentine was really dead."

"What was it?"

Julian hesitated. Then he avoided directly replying to the question.

"Doctor," he said, "of course I needn't ask you if you have often been at

deathbeds?"

"I have. Very often," Levillier replied.

"I have never seen any one die," Julian continued, still with excitement.

"But people have told me, people who have watched by the dying, that at

the moment of death sometimes a tiny flame, a sort of shadow almost,

comes from the lips of the corpse and evaporates into the air. And they

say that flame is the soul going out of the body."

"I have never seen that," Levillier said. "And I have watched many

deaths."

"I saw such a flame to-night," Julian said. "After I heard the cry, I

distinctly saw a flame come from where Valentine was sitting and float up

and disappear in the darkness. And--and afterwards, when Valentine lay so

still and cold, I grew to believe that flame was his soul and that I had

actually seen him die in the dark."

"Imagination," Valentine said, rather abruptly. "All imagination. Wasn't

it, doctor?"

"Probably," Levillier said. "Darkness certainly makes things visible that

do not exist. I have patients who are perfectly sane, yet whom I forbid

ever to be entirely in the dark. Remove all objects from their sight, and

they immediately see non-existent things."

"You think that flame came only from my inner consciousness?" Julian

asked.

"I suspect so. Shut your eyes now."

Julian did so. Doctor Levillier bent over and pressed his two forefingers

hard on Julian's eyes. After a moment,

"What do you see?" he asked.

"Nothing," Julian replied.

"Wait a little longer. Now what do you see?"

"Now I see a broad ring of yellow light edged with ragged purple."

"Exactly. You see flame-colour."

He removed his fingers and Julian opened his eyes.

"Yes," he said. "But that cry. I most distinctly heard it."

"Imitate it."

"That would be impossible. It was too strange. Are the ears affected by

darkness?"

"The sense of hearing is intimately affected by suspense. If you do not

listen attentively you may fail to hear a sound that is. If you listen

too attentively you may succeed in hearing a sound that is not. Now, shut

your eyes again."

Julian obeyed.

"I am going to clap my hands presently," said the doctor. "Tell me as

soon as you have heard me do so."

"Yes."

Doctor Levillier made no movement for some time. Then he softly leant

forward, extended his arms in the air, and made the motion of clapping

his hands close to Julian's face. In reality he did not touch one hand

with the other, yet Julian cried out:

"I heard you clap them then."

"I have not clapped them at all," Levillier said.

Julian expressed extreme surprise.

"You see how very easy it is for the senses to be deceived," the doctor

added. "Once stir the nervous system into an acute state of anticipation,

and it will conjure up for you a veritable panorama of sights, sounds,

bodily sensations. But throw it into that state once too often, and the

panorama, instead of passing and disappearing, may remain fixed for a

time, even forever, before your eyes, your ears, your touch. And that

means recurrent or permanent madness. Valentine, I desire you most

especially to remember that."

He uttered the words weightily, with very definite intention. Valentine,

who still seemed to be in an unusually lazy or careless mood, laughed

easily.

"I will remember," he said.

He yawned.

"My trance has made me sleepy," he added.

The doctor got up.

"Yes; bed is the best place for you," he said.

"And for us all, I suppose," added Julian. "Though I feel as if I could

never sleep again."

The doctor went out into the hall to get his coat, leaving the friends

alone for a moment.

"I am still so excited," Julian went on. "Dear old fellow! How good it is

to see you yourself again. I made up my mind that you were dead. This is

like a resurrection. Oh, Val, if you had been dead, really!"

"What would you have done?"

"Done! I don't know. Gone to the devil, probably."

"Do you know where to find him?"

"My dear boy, he is in every London street, to begin with."

"In Victoria Street, even. I was only laughing."

"But tell me, what did you feel?"

"Nothing. As if I slept."

"And you really heard, saw, nothing?"

"Nothing."

"And that hand?"

Valentine smiled again, and seemed to hesitate. But then he replied,

quietly:

"I told you I could not feel it."

"I did, until I heard that dreadful cry, and then it was suddenly drawn

away from me."

Doctor Levillier appeared in the doorway with his overcoat on, but Julian

did not notice him. Again his excitement was rising. He began to pace up

and down the room.

"My God!" he said, vehemently, "what would Marr say to all this? What

does it mean? What can it mean?"

"Don't let us bother too much about it."

"Excellent advice," said Levillier, from the doorway.

Julian stood still.

"Doctor, I can understand your attitude," he said. "But what an amazing

being you are, Val. You are as calm and collected as if you had sat and

held converse with spirits all through your life. And yet something has

governed you, has temporarily deprived you of life. For you were to all

intents and purposes dead while you were in that trance."

"Death is simply nothing, and nothingness does not excite or terrify one.

I never felt better than I do at this moment."

"That's well," said Levillier, cheerfully.

Julian regarded Valentine's pure, beautiful face with astonishment.

"And you never looked better."

"I shall sleep exquisitely to-night, or rather this morning," Valentine

said.

As he spoke he drew away the heavy green curtain that hung across the

window. A very pale shaft of light stole in and lit up his white face.

It was the dawn, and, standing there, he looked like the spirit of the

dawn, painted against the dying night in such pale colours, white, blue,

and shadowy gold, a wonder of death and of life.

In the silence Dr. Levillier and Julian gazed at him, and he seemed a

mystery to them both, a strange enigma of purity and of unearthliness.

"Good-bye, Cresswell," Levillier said at last.

"Good-bye, doctor."

"Good-bye, Valentine."

Julian held out his hand to grasp his friend's, but Valentine began

looping up the curtain and did not take it. In his gentlest voice he said

to Julian:

"Good-bye, dear Julian, good-bye. The dawn is on our friendship, Julian."

"Yes, Valentine."

Valentine added, after a moment of apparent reflection:

"Take Rip away with you just for to-night. I don't want to be bitten in

my sleep."

And when Julian went away, the little dog eagerly followed him, pressing

close to his heels, so close that several times Julian could not avoid

kicking him.

As soon as the flat door had closed on his two friends, Valentine walked

down the passage to the drawing-room, which was shrouded in darkness. He

entered it without turning on the light, and closed the door behind him.

He remained in the room for perhaps a quarter of an hour. At length the

door opened again. He emerged out of the blackness. There was a calm

smile on his face. Two of his fingers were stained with blood, and to one

a fragment of painted canvas adhered.

When Valentine's man-servant went into the room in the morning and drew

up the blinds, he found, to his horror, the picture of "The Merciful

Knight" lying upon the floor. The canvas hung from the gold frame in

shreds, as if rats had been gnawing it.