Chapter 8

"What happened exactly at those sittings I do not rightly know. Perhaps I shall never rightly know. What did not happen I can tell you. In the first place, although I secretly used my will upon Chichester, desiring, mentally insisting, that he should become entranced, he never was entranced when we sat together. Something within him--was it something holy? I have wondered--resisted my desire, of which, so far as I know, he was never aware. Perhaps 'beneath the threshold' he was aware. Who can say? But though my great desire was frustrated in our sittings, the desire of Chichester, so different, perhaps so much more admirable than mine, and, at any rate, not masked by any deceit, began, so it seemed, to be strangely gratified. He declared almost from the first that, when sitting with me, he felt his will power strengthened. 'You are doing me good,' he said. Now, as my professed object in contriving the sittings had been to lift up Chichester toward my level,"--with indescribable bitterness Mr. Harding dwelt on these last words,--"I could only express rejoicing. And this I did with successful hypocrisy. Nevertheless, I was greatly irritated. For it seemed to me that, when we sat, Chichester triumphed over me. He obtained his desire while mine remained ungratified. This was an outrage directed against my supremacy over him, which I had designed to increase. I gathered together my will power to check it. But in this attempt I failed.

"Nothing is stranger, I think, Mr. Malling, than the fascination of a sitting. Even when nothing, or scarcely anything, happens, the mind, the whole nature seems to be mysteriously grasped and held. New senses in you seem to be released. Something is alert which is never alert--or, at all events, never alert in the same way--in other moments of life. One seems to become inexplicably different. Chichester was aware of all this. At the first sitting nothing happened, and I feared Chichester would wish to give the matter up. But, no! When we rose from our chairs late in the night he acknowledged that he had never known two hours to pass so quickly before. At following sittings there were slight manifestations such as, I suppose, are seldom absent from such affairs,--perfectly trivial to you, of course,--movements of the table, rappings, gusts of what seemed cold air, and so forth. All that is not worth talking about, and I don't mean to trouble you further with it. My difficulty is, when so little, apparently, took place, to make you understand the tremendous thing that did happen, that must have been happening gradually during our sittings.

"At the very first, as I told you, or nearly so,--I wish to be absolutely accurate,--Chichester began to be aware of a strengthening of his will. At this time I was almost angrily unaware of any change either in him or in myself. At subsequent sittings--I speak of the earlier ones--Chichester reiterated more strongly his assertion of beneficent alteration in himself. I did not believe him, though I did believe he was absolutely sincere in his supposition. It seemed to me that he was 'suggestioned,' partly perhaps by his implicit trust in me, partly by his own desire that something curious should happen. However, still playing a part in pursuance of my resolve not to let Chichester know my real object in this matter, I pretended that I, too, perceived an alteration in him, as if his personality were strengthening. And not once, but on several occasions, I spoke of the change in him as almost exactly corresponding with the change that had taken place in me when I sat with my Hindu friend.

"All this time, with a force encouraged by the secret anger within me, I violently, at last almost furiously, willed that Chichester should become entranced.

"But at length, though I willed furiously, I felt as if I were not willing with genuine strength, as if I could not will with genuine strength any longer. It is difficult, almost impossible, to explain to you exactly the sensation that gradually overspread me; but it used always to seem to me, when I self-consciously exerted my will, as if I held within me some weapon almost irresistible, as if I forced it forward, as if its advance, caused by me, could not be withstood. I now felt as if I still possessed this weapon, but could not induce it to move. It was there, like a heavy, useless thing, almost like a burden upon me.

"And Chichester continued to assert that he felt stronger, more resolute, less plastic.

"Things went on thus till something within me, what we call instinct, I suppose, became uneasy. I heard a warning voice which said to me, 'Stop while there is time!' And I resolved to obey it.

"One night, when very late Chichester and I took our hands from the table in his little room, I said that I thought we had had enough of the sittings, that very little happened, that perhaps he and I were not really _en rapport_, and that it seemed to me useless to continue them. I suppose I expected Chichester to acquiesce. I say I suppose so, because till that moment he had always acquiesced in any proposition of mine. Yet I remember that I did not feel genuine surprise at what actually happened."

Mr. Harding stopped, took a handkerchief from his pocket, lifted the brim of his hat, and passed the handkerchief over his forehead two or three times.

"What happened was this, that Chichester resisted my proposal, and that I found myself obliged to comply with his will instead of, as usual, imposing mine upon him.

"This was the beginning--" the rector turned a little toward Malling, and spoke in a voice that was almost terrible in its sadness--"this was the beginning of what you have been witness of, my unspeakable decline. This was the definite beginning of my horrible subjection to Henry Chichester."

He stopped abruptly. After waiting for a minute or two, expecting him to continue, Malling said:

"You said that you found yourself _obliged_ to comply with Chichester's will. Can you explain the nature of that obligation?"

"I cannot. I strove to resist. We argued the matter. He took his stand upon the moral ground that I was benefiting him enormously through our sittings. As I had suggested having them ostensibly for that very purpose, you will see my difficulty."

"Certainly."

"My yielding seemed perfectly natural, perhaps almost inevitable. The point is that, without drastic change in me, it was quite unnatural. My will was unaccustomed to brook any resistance, and troubled itself not at all with argument. Till then what I wished to do I did, and there was an end. I now for the first time found myself obliged to accept a moral bondage imposed upon me by my curate. The term may sound exaggerated; I can only say that was how the matter presented itself to me. From the moment I did so, I took second place to him.

"We continued to sit from time to time. And the strange, to me inexplicable, situation rapidly developed.

"To put it before you in few words and plainly: Chichester seemed to suck my will away from me gradually but surely, till my former strength was his. But that was not all. With the growth of his will there was another and more terrible growth: there rose in him a curiously observant faculty."

Again the rector took out his handkerchief and wiped his brow.

"A curiously critical faculty. How shall I say? Perhaps you may know, Mr. Malling, how the persistent attitude of one mind may influence another. For instance, if a man always expects ill of another--treachery, let us say, bad temper, hatred, fear, inducing trickery, perhaps, that other is turned toward just such evil manifestations in connection with that man. If some one with psychic force thinks all you do is wrong, soon you begin to do things wrongly. A fearful uneasiness is bred. The faculties begin to fail. The formerly sure-footed stumbles. The formerly self-confident takes on nervousness, presently fear.

"So it came about between Chichester and me. I felt that his mind was beginning to watch me critically, and I became anxious about this criticism. Like some subtle acid it seemed to act destructively upon the metal, once so hard and resistant, of my self-confidence, of my belief in myself. Often I felt as if an eye were upon me, seeing too much, far too much, coldly, inexorably, persistently. This critical observation became hateful to me. I suffered under it. I suffered terribly. Mr. Malling, if I am to tell you all,--and I feel that unless I do no help can come to me,--I must tell you that I have not been in my life all that a clergyman should be. There have been occasions, and even since my marriage, when I have yielded to impulses that have prompted me to act very wrongly.

"Now, Chichester was a saint. Hitherto I had neither been troubled by my own grave shortcomings nor by Chichester's excellence of character. I had always felt myself set far above him by my superior mental faculties and my greater will power over the crowd, though, alas! not always over my own demon. I began to writhe now under the thought of Chichester's crystal purity and of my own besmirched condition of soul. All self-confidence departed from me; but I endeavored, of course, to conceal this from the world, and especially from Chichester. With the world for a time no doubt I succeeded. But with Chichester--did I ever succeed? Could I ever succeed with such an one as he had become? It seemed to me, it seems to me far more terribly now, that nothing I did, or was, escaped him. He attended mentally, spiritually even, to everything that made up me. At first I felt this curiously, then anxiously, then often with bitter contempt and indignation, sometimes with a great melancholy, a sort of wide-spreading sadness in which I was involved as in an icy sea. I can never make you fully understand what I felt, how this mental and spiritual observation of Chichester affected me. It--it simply ate me away, Malling! It simply ate me away!"

The last words came from Mr. Harding's lips almost in a cry.

"And how long did you continue the sittings?"

Very quietly Malling spoke, and he just touched the rector's arm.

"For a long while."

"Had you ceased from them when I first met you?"

"On Westminster Bridge? No."

"Have you ceased from them now?"

The rector shifted as if in physical distress.

"Chichester constrains me to them even now," he replied, like a man bitterly ashamed. "He constrains me to them. And is that goodness, righteousness? I said he was a saint; but now! Is it saintliness to torture a fellow-creature?"

Malling remembered how he had once, and not long ago, asked himself whether Chichester's mouth and eyes looked good.

"Have you ever told Chichester what grave distress he is causing you?" said Malling.

"No, never, never! I can't!"

"Why not?"

"A great reserve has grown up between us. I could never try to break through it."

"You say a great reserve. But does he never criticize you in words? Does he never express an adverse opinion upon what you say or do?"

"Scarcely ever--after it is said or done. But sometimes--"

"Yes?"

"Sometimes--often I think--he tries to prevent me from saying or doing something. Often he checks me with a look when I am in the midst of some speech. It is intolerable. Why do I bear it? But I have to bear it. Sometimes I exert myself against him. Why, that first day I met you--you must have noticed it--he tried to prevent me from walking home with you."

"I did notice it."

"Then I resisted him, and he had to yield. But even when he yields in some slight matter it makes no difference in our relations. He is always there, at the window, watching me."

"What do you say?"

Malling's exclamation was sharp.

"That sermon of his!" said the rector. "That fearful sermon! Ever since I heard it I have felt as if I were the double within that house, as if Chichester were the man regarding my life in hiding. Why you--you yourself put my feeling into words! You suggested to Chichester and my wife that if the man had stayed, had spied upon him who was within the room, the hypocrite--"

He broke off. He got up from his seat.

"Let us walk," he said. "I cannot sit here. The air--the lights--let us--"

Almost as if blindly he went forth from the shelter, followed by Malling.

"It's better here," he said. "Better here! Mr. Malling, forgive me, but just then a hideous knowledge seemed really to catch me by the throat. Chichester is turning my wife against me. There is a terrible change in her. She is beginning to observe me through Chichester's eyes. Till quite recently she worshiped me. She noticed the alteration in me, of course,--every one did,--but she hated Chichester for his attitude toward me. Till quite lately she hated him. Now she no longer hates him; for she begins to think he is right. At first I think she believed the excuse I put forward for my strange transformation."

"Do you mean your nervous affection?"

"Yes."

"Just tell me, have you any trouble of that kind, or did you merely invent it as an excuse for any failure you made from time to time?"

"I used it insincerely as an excuse. But I really do suffer from time to time physically. But physical suffering is nothing. Why should we waste a thought on such nonsense?"

"In such a strange case as this I believe everything should be taken carefully into consideration," observed Malling in his most prosaic voice.

The rector's attention seemed to be suddenly fixed and powerfully concentrated. The feverish excitement he had been displaying gave place to a calmer, more natural mood.

"Tell me," he said, "do you think your knowledge can help me? I am aware that you have made many strange investigations. Is there anything to be done for me, anything that will restore me to my former powers? Will you credit me when I declare to you that it was only by making a terrible effort that I was able to get away from Chichester's companionship and to come down here? If I had not said that I meant to do so while you were in the room, I doubt if I should ever have had the courage. There is something inexplicable that seems to bind me to Chichester. Sometimes there have been moments when I have thought that he longed to be far away from me. And it has seemed to me that he, too, would find escape difficult, if not impossible."

"You wish very much that Chichester should resign his curacy and go entirely out of your life?" asked Malling.

"Wish!" cried Mr. Harding, almost fiercely. "Oh, the unutterable relief to me if he were to go! Even down here, away from him for a day or two, I sometimes feel released. And yet--" he paused in his walk--"I shall have to go back--I know it--sooner than I meant to, very soon."

He spoke with profound conviction.

"Chichester will mean me to go back, and I shall not be able to stay."

"And yet you say it has occurred to you that possibly Chichester may be as anxious as yourself to break away from the strange condition of things you have described to me."

"Have you," exclaimed Mr. Harding--"have you some reason to believe Chichester has ever contemplated departure?"

Malling moved slowly on, and the rector was forced to accompany him.

"It has occurred to me," he said, evading the point, "that possibly Henry Chichester might be induced to go out of your life."

"Never by me! I should never have the strength to attempt compulsion with Chichester."

"Some one else might tackle him."

"Who?" cried out Mr. Harding.

"Some man with authority."

"Do you mean ecclesiastical authority?"

"Oh, dear, no! I was thinking of a man like, say, Professor Stepton."

As Malling spoke, a curious figure seemed almost to dawn upon them, sidewise, becoming visible gently in the darkness; a short man, with hanging arms, a head poked forward, as if in sharp inquiry, and rather shambling legs, round which hung loosely a pair of very baggy, light trousers.

"And here is the professor!" said Malling, stopping short.

IX

That night when, very late, Mr. Harding and Malling returned to the red doll's house and let themselves into it with a latch-key, they found lying upon the table in the little hall a brown envelop.

"A telegram!" said the rector.

He took it into his hand and read the name on the envelop.

"It's for me. Malling, do you know whom this telegram is from?"

"How can I, or you, for that matter?"

"It is from Henry Chichester, and it is to recall me to London."

"It may be so."

"It is so. Open it for me."

Malling took the telegram from him and tore it open, while he sat heavily down by the table.

"_Please return if possible difficulties in the parish Benyon ill need your presence Chichester._"

Malling looked down at the rector.

"You see!" Mr. Harding said slowly.

"What do you mean to do?"

Mr. Harding got up from his chair with an effort like that of a weary man.

"I wonder where the railway-guide is?" he said. "Excuse me for a moment, Mr. Malling."

He went away into the drawing-room, and returned with the railway-guide open in his hand.

"Malling," he said, using the greater familiarity he had for a moment discarded, "I am about to do a rude thing, but I ask you, I beg of you, to acquit me of any rude intention toward yourself. I have been looking up the Sunday trains. I find I can catch a good one at Faversham to-morrow morning. There is a motor I can hire in the town to get there. It stands just by the post-office, where the road branches." He paused, looking into Malling's face as if in search of some sign of vexation or irony. "With a large parish on my hands," he went on, "I have a great responsibility. And if Benyon, my second curate, is ill, they will be short-handed."

"I see."

"What distresses me greatly--greatly--is leaving you, my guest, at such short notice. I cannot say how I regret it."

He stopped. Purposely, to test him, Malling said nothing, but waited with an expressionless face.

"I cannot say. But how can I do otherwise? My duty to the parish must come before all things."

"I see," said Malling again.

Looking greatly disturbed, Mr. Harding continued:

"I will ask you to do me a very great favor. Although I am obliged to go, I hope you will stay, I entreat you to stay till Monday. The professor is here. You will not be companionless. The servants will do everything to make you comfortable. As to food, wine--everything is provided for. Will you stay? I shall feel more at ease in going if I know my departure has not shortened your visit."

"It is very good of you," Malling replied. "I'll accept your kind offer. To tell the truth, I'm in no hurry to leave the Tankerton air."

"Thank you," said the rector, almost with fervor. "Thank you."

So, the next morning, Mr. Harding went away in the hired motor, and Malling found himself alone in the red doll's house.

He was not sorry. The rector's revelation on the previous night had well repaid him for his journey; then the air of Tankerton really rejoiced him; and he would have speech of the professor.

"I shall lay it before Stepton," he had said to Mr. Harding the previous night, after they had parted from the professor.

And he had spoken with authority. Mr. Harding's confidence, his self-abasement, and his almost despairing appeal, had surely given Malling certain rights. He intended to use them to the full. The rector's abrupt relapse into reserve, his pitiful return to subterfuge, after the receipt of that hypnotizing telegram, had not, in Malling's view, abrogated those rights.

When the motor disappeared, he strolled across the grass with a towel and had a dip in the brown sea, going in off the long shoal that the Whitstable and Tankerton folk call "the Street." Then he set out to find the professor.

His interview with Stepton on the previous night in the presence of Mr. Harding had been rather brief. Stepton had been preoccupied and monosyllabic. Agnes had been right as to his reason for honoring the coast of Kent with his company, but wrong as to the haunted house's location. It was not in Birchington, but lay inland, within easy reach of Tankerton. When he met Malling and Harding, the professor was going to his hotel, where a motor was waiting to convey him to the house, in which he intended to pass the night. His mind was fixed tenaciously upon the matter in hand. Malling had realized at once that it was not the moment to disturb him by the introduction of any other affair, however interesting. But his suggestion of a meeting the next morning was thus welcomed:

"Right! I shall be at home at churchtime--as you're not preaching."

The second half of the sentence was directed to Mr. Harding, who said nothing.

"And you might give me a cup of tea in the afternoon," the professor had added, looking at the rector rather narrowly before shambling off to his hotel to get the plaid shawl which he often wore at night.

"With the greatest pleasure. Minors is the name of the house," had been Mr. Harding's reply.

Whereupon the professor had vanished, muttering to himself:

"Minors! And why not Majors, if you come to that? Perhaps too suggestive of heart-breaking military men. Minors is safer in a respectable seaside place."

The professor had been up all night, but looked much as usual, and was eating a hearty breakfast of bacon and eggs in the cheerful coffee-room when Malling arrived. He scarcely ever ate at orthodox hours, and had frequently been caught lunching at restaurants in London between four and five in the afternoon.

"Where's the rector? At church?" was his greeting.

"The rector has gone back to London," replied Malling, sitting down by the table.

"What about my cup of tea, then?" snapped Stepton.

"I will be your host. I'm here till to-morrow. Any interesting manifestations?"

"A rat or two and a hysterical kitchen-maid seem to be the responsible agents in the building up of the reputation of the house I kept awake in last night."

"I believe I have a more interesting problem for you."

The professor stretched out a sinewy hand.

"Cambridge marmalade! Most encouraging!" he muttered. "Have the reverend gentlemen of St. Joseph's been at it again--successfully?"

"I want you to judge."

And thereupon Malling laid the case faithfully before the professor, describing not only the dinner in Hornton Street and his interview with Lady Sophia, but also the two sermons he had heard at St. Joseph's, and the rector's lamentable outburst of the previous night. This last, having a remarkably retentive memory, he reproduced in the main in Mr. Harding's own words, omitting only the rector's reference to his moral lapses. During the whole time he was speaking Stepton was closely engaged with the Cambridge marmalade, and showed no symptoms of attention to anything else. When he ceased, Stepton remarked:

"Really, clergymen are far more to be depended upon for valuable manifestations than a rat or two and a hysterical kitchen-maid. Come to my room, Malling."

The professor had a bedroom facing the sea. He led Malling to it, shut the door, gave Malling a cane chair, sat down himself, in a peculiar, crab-like posture, upon the bed, and said:

"Now give me as minute a psychological study of the former and actual Henry Chichester as you can."

Malling complied with this request as lucidly and tersely as he could, wasting no words.

"Any unusual change in his outward man since you knew him two years ago?" asked the professor, when he had finished.

Malling mentioned the question as to the curate's eyes and mouth which had risen in his mind, and added:

"But the character of the man is so changed that it may have suggestioned me into feeling as if there were physical change in him, too."

"More than would be inevitable in any man in a couple of years. And now as to his digestive organs."

"Good heavens!" exclaimed Malling.

The apparent vagaries of his companion very seldom surprised him, but this time he was completely taken aback.

"Are they what they were? Assuming, on your part, a knowledge of what they were."