Chapter 12

"Professor,"--it seemed to Stepton at this moment as if Chichester's voice loomed upon him out of the darkness by which they were now enshrouded,--"it has been said that nothing shocks a man so terribly as the sight of his body-double; that to see what appears to be himself, even if only standing at a window or sitting before a fire, causes in a man a physical horror which seems to strike to the very roots of his physical being. I looked now upon my soul-double, piercing the fleshly envelop and it was my very soul that sweated and turned cold. For I perceived the dreadful action which, if known, would certainly ruin me, being committed by the spirit. The slavish body had not yet bowed down and done its part; but it was about to obey the impulse of the spirit. Slowly the body turned away from its home. The spirit was driving it. The demon with the whip was at work in the night. I looked till the dawn came. And only when at last my double crept, like a thief, into its house, did sleep take me for a little while--sleep that was alive with nightmare."

Chichester was silent. The professor heard him breathing quickly, saw him, almost as a shadow just shown by the faint light that entered from the street through the two small windows, clasp and unclasp his hands, touch his forehead, his eyelids, move in his chair, like a man profoundly stirred and unable to be at ease.

"When I woke," he continued, after a long pause, which the professor did not break by a word or a movement, "I woke to combat. As I told you, I had resolved at once to resign my curacy, and never to see that man again. In the light of the morning I sat down to write my letter of resignation; but I could not do it. A fearful compulsion to remain was upon me. I wrote a few words. I stopped, tore the note up, began again. But writing was impossible. Then I resolved to visit Marcus Harding and to tell him that I must go. I went to his house. He was at home. When I saw him I told him that I wished him to sit again that night. He strove to refuse. He did not understand the truth, but he was terrified. I ordered him to come to my rooms that night, and left him. As I was going away I met Lady Sophia. To my amazement, she stopped me, spoke to me kindly, even more than kindly, looked at me with an expression in her eyes that almost frightened me. I said to myself, 'But those are a slave's eyes!' as I left her. Never before had any woman looked at me like that. In that moment, I think, she began to turn from him toward me, to forsake weakness for strength. Yes, I say strength. I was rent by the tumult within me, but I had strength. I have it now. For, despite his hypocrisy, his unbelief, his active sinning, Marcus Harding had been a strong man. And even Henry Chichester, with all his humbleness, his readiness to yield to others, to think nothing of himself, had had the strength that belongs to purity of soul. And then there is the strength the soul draws from looking upon truth. There was strength, there is now, for the woman to follow. And instinct has surely guided her. She does not, she cannot know. And yet instinct sends her in search of the strength."

"What do you mean by that? What do you claim?"

"You read that sermon?"

"I did."

"Don't you understand? I am that man at the window. He did not flee away. He could not. He was, he is, compelled to remain. He watches that dreadful life. And the other within the room is fading. The strength, the authority, the power, are coming to me. Every sitting broadens that bridge across which the deserters are passing. When I preached that sermon my congregation sat as if numbed by terror. And he in the choir listened, never moving. I saw his spirit, dazed, stretching out to grasp the truth, slipping back powerless to do it. It was like a thing moving through the gloom of deep waters--of deep, deep waters."

Again Chichester's voice died away. In the silence that followed the professor heard the faint ticking of a clock. He had not noticed it before. He could not tell now whether it came from within the room or from the room behind the folding-doors. It seemed to him as if this ticking destroyed his power to think clearly, as if it threw his brain into an unwonted confusion which made him feel strangely powerless. He was aware of a great uneasiness approaching, if not actually amounting to fear. This uneasiness made him long for light. Yet he knew that he dreaded light; for he was aware of an almost unconquerable reluctance to look upon the face of his companion. Beset by conflicting desires, therefore, and the prey of unwonted emotion, he sat like one paralyzed, listening always to the faint ticking of the clock, and striving to reduce what was almost like chaos to order in his brain.

"Why have you selected me to be the hearer of this--this very extraordinary statement?" he forced himself at length to say prosaically. The sound of his own dry voice somewhat reassured him, and he added: "Though there is nothing very extraordinary in the facts you have related. Telepathic communication between one mind and another is a commonplace of to-day, an old story. Every one of course accepts it as possible. What novelty do you claim to present to startle science?"

"I say that telepathy does not explain the link between Marcus Harding and myself."

The professor struck his hand on the table. It seemed to him that if only he could get into an argument this strange confusion and fear might leave him. He would be on familiar ground.

"What you call vision might be merely mind-reading, what you call perceiving the action of the spirit, mind-reading. Your terror lest others should find out bad truths about Marcus Harding would spring naturally enough from your lingering regard for him. Your acute anxiety when he is preaching arises of course from the fact that, owing to bodily causes, no doubt, his mental powers are failing him, and he is no longer able to do himself justice."

"You don't understand. What I desired in our sittings was to draw into myself strength, power, will from--him. What have I done? I have drawn into myself the very man. That night when the shutter slipped back he looked out from the body of Henry Chichester. His mind worked, his soul was alive, within the cage of another man. And meanwhile Henry Chichester lay as if submerged, but presently stirred, and, however feebly, lived again. He lives now. But not from him comes my frightful comprehension of Marcus Harding. Not him does Marcus Harding fear. Not to him does she, the woman, look with the eyes of a slave. It is not he who dominates the crowds in St. Joseph's. It is not he who conceived that sermon of the man and his double. It is not he who has sometimes been terribly afraid."

"Afraid! Afraid!"

"There have been moments when I have been moved to snatch my double out of the sight of men. That day when we met Evelyn Malling I feared as I left them alone together; and when I found Malling intimately there in that house, I felt like one coming upon an ambush which might be destructive of his safety. My instinct was to detach Malling from my double, to attach him to myself. My conduct startled him. I saw that plainly. Yet I tried to win him over, as it were, to my side. He came to me. I strove to tell him, but something secret prevented me. And how could he assist me?"

Chichester got up from the table. The professor saw a darkness moving as he went to stand by the empty fireplace.

"I must look on truth," he continued; "I have to. The fascination of staring upon the truth of oneself is deadly, but it surpasses all other fascination. He sins more often now. I watch him sin. Sometimes under my contemplation I see him writhing like a thing in a trap--the semblance of myself. How the woman despises him now! Sometimes I feel deeply sad at my own ruthlessness. It is frightful to contemplate the physical wreck of a being whom, in some strange and hideous way, one always feels to be oneself. When I look at him it is as if his fallen face, his hanging nerveless hands, his down-drooping figure and eyes lit with despair were mine. His poses, his gestures, his physical tricks, they are all mine. I watch them with a cold, enveloping disgust, frozen in criticism of everything he does, anticipating every movement, every look, hating it when it comes, because it is bred out of the remnant of a spirit I despise as no man surely has ever despised before. Henry Chichester would pity, but he is overborne. He is in me as a drop may be in the ocean. I am most aware of him when my double sins. Only last night we sat"--Chichester came back to the table, and stood there, very faintly relieved against the darkness by the dim light which penetrated through the windows--"we sat in the darkness, and more deeply than ever before I went down into the darkness. I felt as if I were penetrating into the last recesses of a ruined temple. And there, in the ultimate chamber crouched all that was left of the inmate, terrified, helpless, and ignorant. As I looked upon him I understood why man is never permitted really to know himself unless, in an access of mad folly and overweening pride, he succeeds in crossing the boundary which to pass is sheer wickedness. And I tried to turn away, but I could not--I could not. I made a supreme effort. It was in vain.

"I saw him go home. At last he was sick of his sin. There rose within him that strange longing for goodness, for purity and rest, that terrible, aching desire to be what those who once loved him for long had thought him to be, which perhaps never dies in the soul of a human being. Is it the instinct of the Creator burning like an undying spark in the created? And, as he drew near to his house, there came to him the resolve to speak, to acknowledge, to say, 'This is what I am. Know me as I am! Care for me still, in spite of what I am!' He went in, and sought her--the woman. She was alone. Sleep had not come to her. Perhaps some instinct had told her she must wake and be ready for something. Then he gathered together the little that was left to him of courage, and he strove to tell her, to make her understand some of the truth, to obtain from her the greatest of human gifts--the love of one from whom a man has no secrets that he can tell.

"She listened for a moment, then she thrust out her hands as if to push the truth of him out of her life. And last night she left him--going in fear of him."

The professor shook his narrow shoulders, and sprang abruptly to his feet. The ticking of the clock now sounded almost like a hammer beating in his ears.

"It's time we had some light," he said in rather a loud voice.

The darkness that was Chichester moved. A gleam of light shone in the little room, revealing the thin Madonna, "The Light of the World," the piano, the neatly bound books of the curate of St. Joseph's; revealing Chichester, who now stood facing the professor, white, drawn, lined, but with eyes full of almost hideous resolution and power.

"I advise," said the professor--"I advise you from this time forward--"

He stared into the eyes of the man opposite to him, and his voice died away in his throat.

When, immediately afterward, he found himself walking hurriedly toward Kensington High Street the sweat was pouring down his face.

XII

One night of that autumn, driven by an overmastering impulse, Evelyn Malling set out toward Kensington. He felt that he must know something more of the matter between Marcus Harding and Henry Chichester. Stepton still kept silence. Malling had not approached him. But why should he not call upon Chichester, an acquaintance, almost a friend? It was true that he had resolved, having put the affair into Stepton's hands, to wait. It had come to this, then, to-night that he could be patient no longer? As he stood at the corner of Hornton Street, he asked himself that question. He drew out his watch. It was already past eleven, an unholy hour for an unannounced visit. But slowly he turned into Hornton Street, slowly went down that quiet thoroughfare till he was opposite to the windows of the curate's sitting-room. A light shone in one of them. The rest of the house was dark. Even the fanlight above the small front door displayed no yellow gleam. No doubt the household had retired to rest and Henry Chichester was sitting up alone. A rap would probably bring him down to open to his nocturnal visitor. But now Malling bethought himself seriously of the lateness of the hour, and paced slowly up and down, considering whether to seek speech of the curate or to abandon that idea and return to Cadogan Square. As in his mental debate he paused once more opposite to the solitary gleam in the first-floor window, an incident occurred which startled him, and gave a new bent to his thoughts. It was this: The light in the window was obscured for a moment as if by some solid body passing before it. Then the window was violently thrown up, the large figure of a man, only vaguely perceived by Malling, appeared at it, and a choking sound dropped out into the night. The man seemed to be leaning out as if in an effort to fill his lungs with air, or to obtain the relief of the cool night wind for his distracted nerves. His attitude struck Malling as peculiar and desperate. Suddenly he moved. The light showed, and Malling saw for an instant a second figure, small, slight, commanding. The big man seemed to be sucked back toward the center of the room. Down came the window; the tranquil gleam of the light shone as before; then abruptly all was dark.

Malling realized at once what was happening in the curate's lodgings. As he paused, gazing at the dark house, he knew that the miserable Marcus Harding was within, constrained to endure the observation which, to use his own hideous but poignant phrase, was "eating him away." It was he who had appeared at the window, like a tortured being endeavoring to escape into the freedom of the night. It was Henry Chichester who had followed him, who had drawn him back, who had plunged him into darkness.

The street was deserted. No policeman passed, regarding him with suspicion, and Mailing went on sentinel duty. The dark house fascinated him. More than once a desire came to him to make an effort for the release of Marcus Harding, to cross the street and to hammer brutally at the green door. He recalled Henry Chichester's strange sermon, and he felt as if he assisted at the torture of the double, which he himself had imaginatively suggested to the two clergymen in Lady Sophia's drawing-room. Ought he not to interrupt such a torture?

Midnight struck, and he had not knocked. One o'clock struck; he had paced the street, but had never gone out of sight of the curate's door. It was nearly two, and Mailing was not far from the High Street end of the thoroughfare when he heard a door bang. He turned sharply. A heavy uncertain footstep rang on the pavement. Out of the darkness emerged a tall figure with bowed head. As it moved slowly forward once or twice it swayed, and a wavering arm shot out as if seeking for some support. Malling stood where he was till he saw the broad ghastliness of Marcus Harding's white face show under the ray of a lamp. He discerned no eyes. The eyes of the unhappy man seemed sunken out of recognition in the dreadful whiteness of his countenance. The gait was that of one who believes himself dogged, and who tries to slink furtively, but who has partly lost control of his bodily powers, and who starts in terror at his own too heavy and sounding footfalls.

This figure went by Malling, and was lost in the lighted emptiness of the High Street. Malling did not follow it. Now he had a great desire, born out of his inmost humanity, to speak with Henry Chichester. He made up his mind to return to the curate's door: if he saw a light to knock and ask for admittance; if the window was dark to go on his way. He retraced his steps, looked up, and saw a light. Then it was to be. That man and he were to speak together. But as he looked, the light was extinguished. Nevertheless he struck upon the door.

No one answered. He struck again, then stepped back into the roadway, and looked up at Chichester's window. The curate must surely have heard. Yes, for even as Malling gazed the window moved. No light appeared. But after a pause a voice above said:

"Is that you, Mr. Harding?"

The dim figure of a man was apparent, standing a little back and half concealed by a darkness of drooping curtains.

"It is I--Evelyn Malling," said Malling.

The form at the window started.

"Mr. Malling!" the words came uncertainly. "What is it? Has--has anything happened to--why do you want me at such an hour?"

"I chanced to be in your street and saw your light. I thought I would give you a hail."

"Do you mean that you want to come in?"

After a short pause Malling answered, "Yes."

"I cannot let you in!" the voice above cried out lamentably.

Then the window was shut very softly.

* * * * *

Three days later Malling saw in the papers the news of the complete breakdown of Marcus Harding. "Nervous prostration," was the name given by the doctors to his malady, and it was announced that he had been ordered to take a sea voyage, and was preparing to start for Australia with a nurse.

Soon afterward Malling was walking in the afternoon down Pall Mall, wondering deeply what would happen, whether the rector would ever start on that voyage, when he came upon Professor Stepton sidling out of the Athenaeum.

"Heard about Harding?" jerked out the professor.

"Yes. Has he sailed for Australia?"

"Dead. Died at half-past three o'clock this morning."

Malling turned cold.

"Poor fellow!" he said. "Poor fellow!"

The professor was drawing his plaid shawl round his shoulders. When it was properly adjusted, he began to walk on. Malling kept almost mechanically beside him.

"Did you expect this?" Malling asked.

"Well, I knew he was failing."

"And Chichester? Have you seen Chichester since his death?"

"No. Would you like to see him for me?"

Malling was deep in thought and did not answer.

"Do you think?" said the professor, "that Henry Chichester will be greatly affected by this death?"

"Affected? Do you mean by grief?"

"Yes."

"I should suppose that to be highly improbable."

The professor shot a very sharp glance at Malling.

"I'm not sure that I agree with you," he observed dryly.

"Have you seen him lately?" asked Malling.

"Not quite recently. But if I had seen him, say, yesterday, I don't think that would greatly affect my present dubiety. I should, however, like to set that dubiety at rest. Are you busy to-day?"

"No."

"I am. Will you make a little investigation for me? Will you go and pay a visit of condolence to Chichester on the death of his rector, and then come round to the White House and report?"

"I will if you wish it."

"I shall be in after seven."

"Very well."

"I dare say you will be surprised," observed Stepton. "I see my bus."

Malling left him imperatively waving his arm, and, turning, walked toward Kensington.

What were his expectations? He did not know. Stepton had upset his mind. As he went on slowly he strove to regain his mental equilibrium. But he could not decide exactly what Stepton had meant. He felt inferior to the professor as he turned into Hornton Street.

He did not hesitate, but went at once to the curate's door and rapped. No one answered. He rapped again, and touched the bell, half hoping, even while he did so, that there was no one within to hear.

But an inquiring head appeared in the area, observed, and was sharply withdrawn. Steps sounded in the passage, and the maid Ellen presented herself, looking somewhat disordered.

"Yes, sir?" she said.

"Is Mr. Chichester at home?"

"He is in, sir, poor gentleman," replied the maid. "Did you want to see him?"

"Yes."

"I'm sure I don't know whether he will see you, sir."

"Is he ill?"

"Not to say ill, sir. But haven't you heard?"

"What?"

"His poor rector's gone, sir, what used to come here to visit him so regular. I never see a gentleman in such a way. Why, he's so changed I don't hardly know him."

"Have you been here long?" said Mailing, abruptly.

"Only six months, sir."

The maid began to look rather astonished.

"And so Mr. Chichester is quite altered by his grief?"

"You never did, sir! He was so firm, wasn't he, above every one! Even his rector used to look to him and be guided by him. And now he's as gentle and weak almost as a new-born child, as they say."

Malling thought of Stepton. Had he looked forward to some such change?

"Perhaps I could console Mr. Chichester in his grief," he said. "Will you take him this card and ask if I can see him? I knew Mr. Harding, too. I might be of use, possibly."

"I'll ask him, sir. He's laying down on the bed, I do believe."

Ellen hurried up-stairs with the card. It seemed to Malling that she was away for a long time. At last she returned.

"If you please, sir, Mr. Chichester wants to know if it's anything important. He's feeling very bad, poor gentleman. But of course if it's anything important, he wouldn't for all the world say no."

"It is important."

"Then I was to ask you to walk in, sir, please."

Chichester's sitting-room was empty when Malling came into it, and the folding-doors between it and the bedroom were shut. Ellen went away, and Malling heard a faint murmur of voices, and then Ellen's footstep retreating down the stairs. Silence followed. He waited, at first standing. Then he sat down near the piano. Not a sound reached him from the bedroom. On the curate's table lay a book. Malling took it up. The title was "God's Will be Done." The author was a well-known high-church divine, Father Rowton. To him, then, Henry Chichester betook himself for comfort. The piano stood open. On it was music. Malling looked and saw, "Oh, for the wings, for the wings of a dove!" by Mendelssohn. The little room seemed full of pious orthodoxy. Surely its atmosphere was utterly changed since Malling last was in it. The melody of "Oh, for the wings!" went through his brain. That the Henry Chichester he had recently known, that cruel searcher after and expounder of truth, that he should be helped by those words, by that melody, in an hour of sorrow!

There was a movement in the bedroom. The folding-doors opened inward, and the curate appeared. He was very pale, and looked really ill. His face had fallen in. His fair hair was slightly disordered, and his blue eyes were surrounded by red rims. His expression suggested that he had recently undergone an extremely violent shock, which had shaken badly both body and mind. He looked dazed. Coming forward feebly, he held out his hand.

"I believe it is something important," he said in a gentle, rather wavering voice; "otherwise--I am hardly fit, I fear, to be with my kind. I"--He sat down--"I have had a terrible shock, Mr. Malling. You have heard?"

"You mean Mr. Harding's death?"

"Yes."

"I have just heard of it."

"It occurred at half-past three o'clock last night, or, rather, this morning. He had been declining for a long while. At the last he just faded out, as it were. The strange thing is that I knew the exact moment when he entered into rest."

"You weren't with him?"

"Oh, no. I was here, asleep. But at three o'clock I awoke. I felt violently agitated. I can scarcely describe the sensation. It was as if I was torn, as if mind and body, or spirit and body, were torn, lacerated. I suffered the greatest conceivable agony. I tried to cry out, but I could not. Nor could I move. Then everything suddenly seemed to fail, all in a moment, and I was at peace. But it was like the peace of death, I think. And I was aware--I don't know how--that Mr. Harding was dead. I moved. I looked at my watch. It was a minute after half-past three. I noted down the time. And this morning--I heard."

"And then?"