Chapter 7

"You can get on without me quite well, of course," continued the rector.

"Are you going to be away long?" said Chichester.

"No; I think only for a week or so. The doctor says I absolutely need a breath of fresh air."

Malling got up to go.

"I hope you'll enjoy your little holiday," he said. "Are you going far?"

"Oh, dear, no. My doctor recommends Tankerton on the Kentish coast. It seems the air there is extraordinary. When the tide is down it comes off the mud flats. A kind parishioner of mine--" he turned slightly toward his wife: "Mrs. Amherst, Sophy--has a cottage there and has often offered me the use of it. I hope to accept her offer now."

Lady Sophia expressed no surprise at the project, and did not inquire whether her husband wished her to accompany him.

But when she shook hands with Malling, her dark eyes seemed to say to him, "I was wrong."

And he thought she looked humbled.

VIII

_"Could you come down stay with me Saturday till Monday all alone air delicious feel rather solitary glad of your company Marcus Harding Minors Tankerton Kent."_

Such was the telegram which Evelyn Malling was considering on the following Friday afternoon. The sender had paid an answer. The telegraph-boy was waiting in the hall. Malling only kept him five minutes. He went away with this reply:

_"Accept with pleasure will take four twenty train at Victoria Saturday Malling."_

Malling could not have said with truth that he had expected a summons from Mr. Harding, yet he found that he was not surprised to get it. The man was in a bad way. He needed sympathy, he needed help. That was certain. But whether he could help him was more than doubtful, Malling thought. Perhaps, really, a doctor and the wonderful air from the mud flats of Tankerton! But here Malling found that a strong incredulity checked him. He did not believe that the rector would be restored by a doctor's advice and a visit to the sea.

That afternoon he went to Westminster, and asked for Professor Stepton.

"He is away, sir," said the fair Scotch parlormaid.

"For long?"

"We don't know, sir. He has gone into Kent, on research business, I believe."

Agnes had been for a long time in the professor's service, and was greatly trusted. The professor had come upon her originally when making investigations into "second sight," a faculty which she claimed to possess. By the way she was also an efficient parlor-maid.

"Kent!" said Malling. "Do you know where he is staying?"

"The address he left is the Tankerton Hotel, Tankerton, near Whitstable-on-Sea, sir."

"Thank you, Agnes," said Malling.

"It is a haunted house somewhere Birchington way the professor is after, I believe, sir."

"Luck favors me!" said Malling to himself, unscientifically, as he walked away from the house.

On the following day it was in a singularly expectant and almost joyously alert frame of mind that he bought a first-class ticket for Whitstable-on-Sea, which is the station for Tankerton.

He would involve Stepton in this affair. There was a mystery in it. Malling was now convinced of that. And his original supposition did not satisfy him. But perhaps Mr. Harding meant to help him. Perhaps Mr. Harding intended to be explicit. The difficulty there was that he also was walking in darkness, as Malling believed. His telegram had come like a cry out of this darkness.

"Faversham! Faversham!" the fair Kentish porters were calling. Only about twenty minutes now! Would the rector be at the station?

He was. As the train ran in alongside the wooden platform, Mailing caught sight of the towering authoritative figure. Was it his fancy which made him think that it looked slightly bowed, even perhaps a little shrunken?

"Good of you to come!" said the rector in a would-be hearty voice, but also with a genuine accent of pleasure. "All the afternoon I have been afraid of a telegram."

"Why?" asked Malling, as they shook hands.

"Oh, when one is anxious for a thing, one does not always get it. Ha, ha!"

He broke into a covering laugh.

"Here is a porter. You've only got this bag. Capital! I have a fly waiting. We go down these steps."

As they descended, Malling remarked:

"By the way, we have a friend staying here. Have you come across him?"

"No, I have seen nobody--that is, no acquaintance. Who is it?"

"Stepton."

"The professor down here!" exclaimed Mr. Harding, as if startled.

"At the hotel, I believe. He's come down to make some investigation."

"I haven't seen him."

They stepped into the fly, and drove through the long street of Whitstable toward the outlying houses of Tankerton, scattered over grassy downs above a quiet, brown sea.

"The air is splendid, certainly," observed Malling, drinking it in almost like a gourmet savoring a wonderful wine.

"It must do me good. Don't you think so?"

The question sounded anxious to Malling's ears.

"It ought to do every one good, I should think."

"Here is Minors."

The fly stopped before a delightfully gay little red doll's house--so Malling thought of it--standing in a garden surrounded by a wooden fence, with the downs undulating about it. Not far off, but behind it, was the sea. And the rector, pointing to a red building in the distance, on the left and much nearer to the beach, said:

"That is the hotel where the professor must be staying, if he is here."

"I'll go over presently and ask about him."

"Oh," said Mr. Harding. "Bring in the bag, please, Jennings. The room on the right, at the top of the stairs."

Malling had believed in London that Mr. Harding's telegram to him was a cry out of darkness. That first evening in the cheerful doll's house he knew his belief was well founded. When they sat at dinner, like two monsters, Malling thought, who had somehow managed to insert themselves into a doll's dining-room, it was obvious that the rector was ill at ease. Again and again he seemed to be on the verge of some remark, perhaps of some outburst of speech, and to check himself only when the words were almost visibly trembling on his lips. In his eyes Malling saw plainly his longing for utterance, his hesitation; reserve and a desire to liberate his soul, the one fighting against the other. And at moments the whole man seemed to be wrapped in weakness like a garment, the soul and the body of him. Then, as a light may dwindle till it seems certain to go out, all that was Marcus Harding seemed to Malling to dwindle. The large body, the powerful head and face, meant little, almost nothing, because the spirit was surely fading. But these moments passed. Then it was as if the light flared suddenly up again.

When dinner was over, Mr. Harding asked Malling if he would like to take a stroll.

"The sea air will help us to sleep," he said.

"I should like nothing better," said Malling. "Haven't you been sleeping well lately?"

"Very badly. We had better take our coats."

They put the coats on, and went out, making their way to the broad, grassy walk raised above the shingle of the beach. The tide was far down, and the oozing flats were uncovered. So still, so waveless was the brown water that at this hour it was impossible to perceive where it met the brown land. In the distance, on the right, shone the lights of Herne Bay, with its pier stretching far out into the shallows. Away to the left was the lonely island of Sheppey, a dull shadow beyond the harbor, where the oyster-boats lay at rest. There were very few people about: some fisher-lads solemnly or jocosely escorting their girls, who giggled faintly as they passed Mr. Harding and Malling; two or three shopkeepers from Whitstable taking the air; a boatman or two vaguely hovering, with blue eyes turned from habit to the offing.

The two men paced slowly up and down. And again Malling was aware of words trembling upon the rector's lips--words which he could not yet resolve frankly to utter. Whether it was the influence of the faintly sighing sea, of the almost sharply pure air, of the distant lights gleaming patiently, or whether an influence came out from the man beside him and moved him, Malling did not know; but he resolved to do a thing quite contrary to his usual practice. He resolved to try to force a thing on, instead of waiting till it came to him naturally. He became impatient, he who was generally a patient seeker.

"You remember our former conversations with regard to Henry Chichester?" he said abruptly, changing the subject of their discourse.

"Chichester? Yes--yes. What of him?"

"I wish to tell you that I think you are right, that I think there is an extraordinary, even an amazing, change in Chichester."

"There is, indeed," said Mr. Harding. "And--and it will increase."

He spoke with a sort of despairing conviction.

"What makes you think so?"

"It must. It cannot be otherwise--unless--"

He paused.

"Yes," said Malling; "unless--"

"A thing almost impossible were to happen."

"May I, without indiscretion, ask what that is?"

"Unless he were to leave St. Joseph's, to go quite away."

"Surely that would not be impossible!"

"I often think it is. Chichester will not wish to go."

"Are you certain of that?" asked Malling, remembering the curate's remark in Horton Street, that perhaps he would not remain at St. Joseph's much longer.

The rector turned his head and fixed his eyes upon Malling.

"Has he said anything to you about leaving?" he asked, suddenly raising his voice, as if under the influence of excitement. "But of course he has not."

"Surely it is probable that such a man may be offered a living."

"He would not take it."

They walked on a few steps in silence, turned, and strolled back. It was now growing dark. Their faces were set toward the distant gleam of the Herne Bay lights.

"I am not so sure," at length dropped out Malling.

"Why are you not so sure?"

"Why do you think Chichester's departure from St. Joseph's impossible?"

Malling spoke strongly to determine, if possible, the rector to speak, to say out all that was in his heart.

"Can I tell you?" Mr. Harding almost murmured. "Can I tell you?"

"I think you asked me here that you might tell me something."

"It is true. I did."

"Then--"

"Let us sit down in this shelter. There is no one in it. People are going home."

Malling followed him into a shelter, with a bench facing the sea.

"I thought perhaps here I might be able to tell you," said Mr. Harding. "I am in great trouble, Mr. Malling, in great trouble. But I don't know whether you, or whether any one, can assist me."

"If I may advise you, I should say--tell me plainly what your trouble is."

"It began--" Mr. Harding spoke with a faltering voice--"it began a good while ago, some months after Mr. Chichester came as a curate to St. Joseph's. I was then a very different man from the man you see now. Often I feel really as if I were not the same man, as if I were radically changed. It may be health. I sometimes try to think so. And then I--" He broke off.

The strange weakness that Malling had already noticed seemed again to be stealing over him, like a mist, concealing, attenuating.

"Possibly it is a question of health," said Malling, rather sharply. "Tell me how it began."

"When Chichester first joined me, I was a man of power and ambition. I was a man who could dominate others, and I loved to dominate."

His strength seemed returning while he spoke, as if frankness were to him a restorative of the spirit.

"It was indeed my passion. I loved authority. I loved to be in command. I was full of ecclesiastical ambition. Feeling that I had intellectual strength, I intended to rise to the top of the church, to become a bishop eventually, perhaps even something greater. When I was presented to St. Joseph's,--my wife's social influence had something to do with that,--I saw all the gates opening before me. I made a great effect in London. I may say with truth that no clergyman was more successful than I was--at one time. My wife spurred me on. She was immensely ambitious for me. I must tell you that in marrying me she had gone against all her family. They thought me quite unworthy of her notice. But from the first time I met her I meant to marry her. And as I dominated others, I completely dominated her. But she, once married to me, was desperately anxious that I should rise in the world, in order that her choice of me might be justified in the eyes of her people. You can understand the position, I dare say?"

"Perfectly," said Malling.

"I may say that she irritated my ambition, that she stung it into almost a furious activity. Women have great influence with us. I thought she was my slave almost, but I see now that she also influenced me. She worshiped me for my immediate success at St. Joseph's. You may think it very ridiculous, considering that I am merely the rector of a fashionable London church, but there was a time when I felt almost intoxicated by my wife's worship of me, and by my domination over the crowds who came to hear me preach. Domination! That was my fetish! That was what led me to--oh, sometimes I think it must end in my ruin!"

"Perhaps not," said Malling, quietly. "Let us see."

His words, perhaps even more his manner, seemed greatly to help Mr. Harding.

"I will tell you everything," he exclaimed. "From the first I have felt as if you were the man to assist me, if any man could. I had always, since I was an undergraduate at Oxford,--I was a Magdalen man,--been interested in psychical matters, and followed carefully all the proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research. I had also at that time,--in Oxford,--made some experiments with my college friends, chiefly in connection with will power. My influence seemed to be specially strong. But I need not go into all that. After leaving Oxford and taking orders, for a long time I gave such matters up. I feared, if I showed my strong interest in psychical research, especially if I was known to attend séances or anything of that kind, it might be considered unsuitable in a clergyman, and might injure my prospects. It was not until Henry Chichester came to St. Joseph's that I was tempted again into paths which I had chosen to consider forbidden to me. Chichester tempted me! Chichester tempted me!"

He spoke the last words with a sort of lamentable energy.

"Such a gentle, yielding man as he was!"

"It was just that. He came under my influence at once, and showed it in almost all he said and did. He looked up to me, he strove to model himself upon me, he almost worshiped me. One evening,--it was in the pulpit!--the idea shot through my brain, 'I could do what I like with that man, make of him just what I choose, use him just as I please.' And I turned my eyes toward the choir where Chichester sat in the last stall, hanging on my words. At that instant I can only suppose that what people sometimes call the _maladie de grandeur_--the mania for power--took hold upon me, and combined with my furtive longing after research in those mysterious regions where perhaps all we desire is hidden. Anyhow, at that instant I resolved to try to push my influence over Chichester to its utmost limit, and by illegitimate means."

"Illegitimate?"

"I call them so. Yes, yes, they are not legitimate. I know that now. And he--but I dare not think what he knows!"

The rector was greatly moved. He half rose from the bench on which they were sitting, then, making a strong effort, controlled himself, sank back, and continued:

"At that time, in the early days of his association with me, Chichester thought that everything I did, everything I suggested, even everything that came into my mind, must be good and right. He never dreamed of criticizing me. In his view, I was altogether above criticism. And if I approached him with any sort of intimacy he was in the greatest joy. You know, perhaps, Mr. Malling, how the worshiper receives any confidence from the one he worships. He looks upon it as the greatest compliment that can be paid him. I resolved to pay that compliment to Henry Chichester.

"You must know that although I had entirely given up the occult practices--that may not be the exact term, but you will understand what I mean--I had indulged in at Oxford, I had never relaxed my deep, perhaps my almost morbid interest in the efforts that were being made by scientists and others to break through the barrier dividing us on earth from the spirit world. Although I had chosen the career of a clergyman,--alas! I looked upon the church, I suppose, as little more than a career!--I was not a very faithful man. I had many doubts which, as clergymen must, I concealed. By nature I suppose I had rather an incredulous mind. Not that I was a skeptic, but I was sometimes a doubter. Rather than faith, I should have much preferred to have knowledge, exact knowledge. Often I even felt ironical when confronted with the simple faith we clergymen should surely encourage, sustain, and humbly glory in, whereas with skepticism, even when openly expressed, I always felt some part of myself to be in secret sympathy. I continued to study works, both English and foreign, on psychical research. I followed the experiments of Lodge, William James, and others. Myers's great work on human personality was forever at my elbow. And the longer I was debarred--self-debarred because of my keen ambition and my determination to do nothing that could ever make me in any way suspect in the eyes of those to whom I looked confidently for preferment--from continuing the practices which had such a fascination for me, the more intensely I was secretly drawn toward them. The tug at my soul was at last almost unbearable. It was then I looked toward Chichester, and resolved to take him into my confidence--to a certain extent.

"I approached the matter craftily. I dwelt first upon the great spread of infidelity in our days, and the necessity of combating it by every legitimate means. I spoke of the efforts being made by earnest men of science--such men as Professor Stepton, for instance--to get at the truth Christians are expected to take on trust, as it were. I said I respected such men. Chichester agreed,--when did he not agree with me at that time?--but remarked that he could not help pitying them for ignoring revelation and striving to obtain by difficult means what all Christians already possessed by a glorious and final deed of gift.

"I saw that though Chichester was such a devoted worshiper of mine, if I wanted to persuade him to my secret purpose,--no other than the effort, to be made with him, to communicate with the spirit world,--I must be deceptive, I must mask my purpose with another.

"I did so. I turned his attention to the subject of the human will. Now, at that time Chichester knew that his will was weak. He considered that fact one of his serious faults. I hinted that I agreed with him. I proposed to join with him in striving to strengthen it. He envied my strength of will. He looked up to me, worshiped me almost, because of it. I drew his mind to the close consideration of influence. I gave him two or three curious works that I possessed on this subject. In one of them, a pamphlet written by a Hindu who had been partly educated at Oxford, and whom I had personally known when I was an undergraduate, there was a course of will-exercises, much as in certain books on body-building there are courses of physical exercises. I related to Chichester some of the extraordinary and deeply interesting conversations I had had with this Hindu on the subject of the education of the will, and finally I told a lie. I told Chichester that I had gained my powerful will while at Oxford by drawing it from my Hindu friend in a series of sittings that we two had secretly undertaken together. This was false, because I had been born with a strong, even a tyrannical, will, and I had never sat with the Hindu.

"Chichester, though at first startled, was fascinated by this untruth, and, to cut the matter short, I persuaded him to begin with me a series of secret sittings, in which I proposed to try to impart to him, to infuse into him, as it were, some of my undoubted power--the power which he daily saw me exercising in the pulpit and over the minds of men in my intercourse with them.

"What I really wished to do, what I meant to do, if possible, was to use Chichester as a medium, and to try through him to communicate with the spirit world. I had taken it into my head--no doubt you will say quite unreasonably--that he must be entirely subject to my will in a sitting, and that if I willed him to be entranced, it was certain that he would become so. But my own entirely selfish desires I concealed under the cloak of an unselfish wish to give power to him. I even pretended, as you see, to have a highly moral purpose, though it is true I suggested trying to effect it in an unconventional and very unecclesiastical manner.

"Chichester, though, as I have said, at first startled, of course eventually fell in with my view. We sat together in his room at Hornton Street.

"Now, Mr. Malling, some of what I have told you may appear to be almost contradictory. I have spoken of my _maladie de grandeur_ as if it were a reason why I wished to sit with Henry Chichester, and then of my desire to communicate, if possible, with the spirit world as my reason."

"I noticed that," observed Malling, "and purposed later to point it out to you."

"How can I explain exactly? It is so difficult to unravel the web of motives in a mind. It was my _maladie de grandeur_, I think, that made me long to use my worshiper Chichester as a mere tool for the opening of that door which shuts off from us the region the dead have entered. My mind at that time was filled with a mingled conceit, amounting at moments almost to an intoxication, and a desire for knowledge. I reveled in my power when preaching, but was haunted by genuine doubts as to truth. My egoism longed to make an utter slave of Chichester (I nearly always lusted to push my influence to its limit). But my desire to know made me conceive the pushing of it in a direction, in this instance, which would perhaps gratify a less unworthy desire than that merely of subjugating another. The two birds and the one stone! I thought of them. I loved the idea of making a tool. I loved also the idea of using the tool when made. And I pretended I had only Chichester's moral interest at heart. I have been punished, terribly punished.

"We sat, as I say, in Hornton Street, secretly, and of course at night. My wife knew nothing of it. I made excuses to get away--parish matters, meetings, work in the East End. I had no difficulty with her. She thought my many activities would bring me ever more and more into the public eye, and she encouraged them. The people in the house where Chichester lodged were simple folk, and were ready to go early to bed, leaving rector and curate discussing their work for the salvation of bodies and souls.

"At first Chichester was reluctant, I know. I read his thoughts. He was not sure that it was right to approach such mysteries; but, as usual, I dominated him silently. And soon he fell completely under the fascination peculiar to sittings."

Again Mr. Harding paused. For a moment his head sank, his powerful body drooped, he was immersed in reverie. Malling did not interrupt him. At last, with a deep sigh, and now speaking more slowly, more unevenly, he continued: