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."
"I don't know either in what condition they are now, or in what condition they were once."
"Ah! Now I must draw up a report about last night. I'll come for that cup of tea to Minors—might almost as well have been Majors, even granting the military flavor—about five."
Malling took his departure.
At a quarter to five he heard the click of the garden gate, and looking out at the latticed window of the hall, he saw the professor walking sidewise up the path, with a shawl round his shoulders. He went to let him in, and took him into the tiny drawing-room.
"An odd shell for Harding!" observed the professor. "More suitable to a bantam than to a Cochin-China!"
"It doesn't belong to him."
"Nor he to it. Very wise and right of him to go back to Onslow Gardens."
A maid brought in the tea, and the professor, spread strangely forth in a small, chintz-covered arm-chair, enjoyed it while he talked about oysters and oyster-beds. He was deeply interested in the oysters of Whitstable, and held forth almost romantically on their birth and upbringing, the fattening, the packing, the selling, and the eating of them—"with lemon, not vinegar, mind! To eat vinegar with a Whitstable native is as vicious as to offer a libation of catchup at the altar of a meadow mushroom just picked up out of the dew."
Malling did not attempt to turn his mind from edibles. The professor had to be let alone. When tea was finished and cleared away, he observed:
"And now, Malling, what is your view? Do you look upon it as a case of transferred personality? I rather gathered from your general tone that you were mentally drifting in that direction."
"But are there such cases? Of double transfer, I mean?"
"Personally I have never verified one. When you spoke of the reverend gentlemen for the first time, I said, 'Study the link!' There will be development in the link if—all the rest of it."
"There has been development, as I told you. The link is on his side now."
"That's remarkable, undoubtedly. Has it ever struck you that Harding was almost too successful a clergyman to be a genuinely holy man?"
"What do you mean?"
"There's a modesty in holiness that is hardly adapted to catch smart women."
"You used to go to hear Harding preach."
"And d'you know why I liked his sermons?"
"Why?"
"Because he understood doubt so well. That amused me. But the man who has such a comprehensive understanding of skepticism, is very seldom a true believer. One thing, though, Harding certainly does believe in, judging by a sermon I once heard him preach."
"And that is?"
"Manicheism. Chichester, you say, was a saint?"
"He was, if a man can be a saint who has a certain amiable weakness of character."
"And now? You think he would be a difficult customer to tackle now?"
"Harding finds him so."
"And Harding was an overwhelming chap, cocksure of himself. Chichester must be difficult. Shall I tackle him?"
"I wish you would. But how? Do you wish me to introduce him to you?"
"Let me see."
The professor dropped his head and remained silent for a minute or two.
"Tell me something," he at length remarked, lifting his head and assuming his most terrier-like aspect. "Do you think Harding a whited sepulcher?"
"Possibly."
"And do you think his saintly curate has found it out?"
"Do you think that would supply a natural explanation of the mystery?"
"Should you prefer to search for it in that malefic region which is the abiding-place of nervous dyspepsia?"
"How could—"
"Acute nervous dyspepsia, complicated by a series of sittings under the rose, might eat away the most brazen self-confidence. That's as certain as that I wear whiskers and you don't. Shall we do an addition sum? Shall we add Chichester's discovery of secret lapses in his worshiped rector's life, to the nervous dyspepsia and the sittings? Shall we do that?"
"And Lady Sophia?"
"There's a sunflower type of woman. The rising sun can't escape her inevitable worship."
"The change in Harding may be a natural one. But there is something portentous in the change in Chichester," said Malling. "You know I'm a rather cool hand, and certainly not inclined to easy credulity. But there's something about Chichester which—well, Professor, I'll make a confession to you that isn't a pleasant one for any man to make. There's something about Chichester which shakes my nerves."
"And you haven't got nervous dyspepsia?"
"Should I be even a meliorist—as I am—if I had?"
"I must know Chichester. It's a pity I didn't know him formerly."
"I don't believe that matters," said Malling, with intense conviction. "There is that in him which must strike you and affect you, whether you knew him as he was or not."
"So long as I don't turn tail and run from him, all's well. I will tackle Chichester. In the interests of science I will face this curate. But how shall I approach him? As in golf, the approach is much, if not everything."
He sat thinking for some minutes, with his eyebrows twitching. Then he said:
"The question is, Should the approach be casual or direct? Shall I describe a curve, or come to him as the crow comes when making for a given point—or is said to come, for I've never investigated that matter? What do you say?"
"It's very difficult to say. On the day I dined in Hornton Street,
Chichester certainly wanted to tell me something. He asked me to dine,
I am almost sure, in order that he might tell it to me."
"About the sittings with Harding, no doubt."
"That, perhaps, and something more."
"But he told you nothing."
"Directly."
"Do you think he would be more or less likely to unbosom himself now than he was then?"
"Less likely."
"You might give me his address."
Malling did so. The professor wrote the address down on a slip of paper, pinned the slip carefully to the yellow lining of his jacket, and then got up to go.
But Malling detained him.
"Professor," he said, speaking with an unusual hesitation, "you know why
I told you all this."
"In the interests of science?"
"No, in the interest of that miserable man, Marcus Harding. I want you to break the link that binds him to Henry Chichester—if there is one. I want you to effect his release."
"I'm afraid you've come to the wrong man," returned Stepton, dryly. "My object in entering into this matter is merely to increase my knowledge, not to destroy my chance of increasing it."
"But surely—"
"We shall never get forward if we move in the midst of a fog of pity and sentiment."
Malling said no more; but as he watched the professor shambling to the garden gate, he felt as if he had betrayed Marcus Harding.
X
Soon after Malling had returned to London, he received the following note from Mr. Harding:
Onslow Gardens, June —th.
Dear Mr. Malling:
I seem to have some remembrance of your saying to me at Tankerton that you wished to speak to Professor Stepton with regard to a certain matter. I may be wrong in my recollection. If, however, I am right, I now beg you not to speak to the professor. I have, of course, the very highest regard for his discretion; nevertheless, one must not be selfish. One must not think only of one's self. I have obligations to others, and I fear, when we were together at Tankerton, I forgot them. A word of assurance from you that Professor Stepton knows nothing of our conversation will set at rest the mind of
Yours sincerely,
Marcus Harding.
As soon as he had read this communication, Malling realized that he had been right in his supposition that a new reserve was growing up in Henry Chichester. He was aware of Chichester's reserve in the letter of the rector. He was aware, too, of the latter's situation as he had never been aware of it before. Often a trifle illuminates a life, as a search-light brings some distant place from the darkness into a fierce radiance that makes it seem near. So it was now.
"Poor Harding!" thought Malling, with an unusual softness. "But this letter comes too late."
What answer should he return to the rector? He hated insincerity, but on this occasion he stooped to it. He had not only the fear of Stepton upon him; he had also the desire not to add to the deep misery of Marcus Harding. This was his answer:
Cadogan Square, June —.
Dear Mr. Harding:
In reply to your letter, I will not now repeat our conversation of the other evening to Professor Stepton. He is, as you say, a man of the highest discretion, and should you feel inclined yourself to take him into your confidence at any time, I think you will not regret it.
Yours sincerely,
Evelyn Malling.
As he put this note into an envelope, Malling said to himself:
"Some day I'll let him know I deceived him; I'll let him know I had already told the professor."
Two or three days later Malling heard of the professor having been at a party in Piccadilly at which Lady Sophia was a guest.
"And do you know, really,"—Malling's informant, a lively married woman, concluded,—"those old scientific men are quite as bad as any of the boys who only want to have a good time. The professor sat in Lady Sophia's pocket the whole evening! Literally in her pocket!"
"I didn't know modern women had pockets," returned Malling.
"They don't, of course; but you know what I mean."
Malling understood that the professor was beginning his "approach."
A week went by, and at a man's dinner, Malling chanced to sit next to Blandford Sikes, one of the most noted physicians of the day. In the course of conversation the doctor remarked:
"Is your friend Stepton going to set up in Harley Street?"
"Not that I know of," said Malling. "What makes you ask?"
"He came to consult me the other day, and when I told him he was as sound as Big Ben he sat with me for over half an hour pumping me unmercifully on the subject of nervous dyspepsia. The patient who followed, and who happened to be a clergyman, looked fairly sick when he was let in at last."
Who happened to be a clergyman! Malling had longed to ask Blandford Sikes a question—who that clergyman was. But he refrained. To do so, would doubtless have seemed oddly inquisitive. It was surely enough for him to know that the professor was busily at work in his peculiar way. And Malling thought again of that "approach." Evidently the professor must be describing the curve he had spoken of. When would he arrive at Henry Chichester? There were moments when Malling felt irritated by Stepton's silence. That it was emulated by Marcus Harding, Lady Sophia, and Henry Chichester did not make matters easier for him. However, he had deliberately chosen to put this strange affair into Stepton's hands. Stepton had shown no special alacrity with regard to the matter. Malling felt that he could do nothing now but wait.
He waited.
Now and then rumors reached him of Marcus Harding's fading powers, now and then he heard people discussing one of Henry Chichester's "remarkable sermons," now and then in society some feminine gossip murmuring that "Sophia Harding seems to be perfectly sick of that husband of hers. She probably wishes now that she had taken all her people's advice and refused him. Of course if he had been made a bishop!"
The season ended. Goodwood was over, and Malling went off to Munich and
Bayreuth for music. Then he made a walking-tour with friends in the
Oberammergau district, and returned to England only when the ruddy
banners of autumn were streaming over the land.
Still there was no communication from the professor. Malling might of course have written to him or sought him. He preferred to possess his soul in patience. Stepton was an arbitrary personage, and the last man in the world to consent to a process of pumping.
Meanwhile Stepton had forgotten all about Malling. He was full of work of various kinds, but the work that most interested him was connected with the reverend gentlemen of St. Joseph's. As Malling surmised, he had lost little time in beginning his "approach," and that approach had been rather circuitous. He had taken his own advice and studied the link. This done, the intricate and fascinating subject of nervous dyspepsia had claimed his undivided attention. When he had finished his prolonged interview with Blandford Sikes, sidling back to the waiting-room to gather up various impedimenta, he had encountered the unfortunate clergyman whom he had kept waiting. Marcus Harding was the man. They exchanged only a couple of words, but the sight of the flaccid bulk, the hanging cheeks and hands, the eyes in which dwelt a sort of faded despair, whipped up into keen alertness every faculty of the professor's mind. As he walked into Cavendish Square he muttered to himself:
"I never saw a clergyman look more promising for investigation, by Jove! Never! There's something in it. Malling was not entirely wrong. There's certainly something in it."
But what? Now for Henry Chichester!
Stepton was by nature unemotional, but he was an implicit believer in the hysteria of others, and he thought clergymen, as a class, more liable to that malady than other classes of men. Curates, being as a rule young clergymen, were, in his view, specially subject to the inroads of the cloudy complaint, which causes the mind to see mountains where only mole-hills exist, and to appreciate anything more readily and accurately than the naked truth. Henry Chichester was young and he was a curate. He was therefore likely to be emotional and to be attracted by the mysterious, more especially since he had recently been knocking on its door, according to Malling's statement.
After a good deal of thought, the professor resolved to cast aside convention, and to make Chichester's acquaintance without any introduction; indeed, with the maximum of informality.
He learned something about Chichester's habits, and managed to meet him several times when he was walking from the daily service at St. Joseph's to his rooms in Hornton Street. In this walk Chichester passed the South Kensington Museum. What more natural than that the professor should chance to be coming out of it?
The first time they met, Stepton looked at the curate casually, the second time more sharply, the third time with scrutiny. He knew how to make a crescendo. The curate noticed it, as of course the professor intended. He did not know who Stepton was, but he began to wonder about this birdlike, sharp-looking man, who evidently took an interest in him. And presently his wonder changed into suspicion. This again accorded with the professor's intention.
One day, after the even-song at St. Joseph's, Stepton saw flit across the face of the curate, whom he was meeting, a flicker of something like fear. The two men passed each other, and immediately, like one irresistibly compelled, the professor looked back. As he did so, Chichester also turned round to spy upon this unknown. Encountering the gaze of the professor, he started, flushed scarlet, and pursued his way, walking with a quickened step.
The professor went homeward, chuckling.
"To-day's Tuesday," he thought. "By Saturday, at latest, he'll have spoken to me. He'll have to speak to me to relieve the tension of his nerve-ganglions."
Chichester did not wait till Saturday. On Friday afternoon, coming suddenly upon Stepton at a corner, he stopped abruptly, and said:
"May I ask if you want anything of me?"
"Sir!" barked Stepton. "Mr. Chichester!"
"You know my name?" said the curate.
"And probably you know mine—Professor Stepton."
A relief that was evidently intense dawned in the curate's face.
"You are Professor Stepton! You are Mr. Malling's friend!"
"Exactly. Good day."
And the professor marched on.
Chichester did not follow, but the next day, on the pavement not far from the museum, he stopped once more in front of the professor with a "Good afternoon."
"Good day," said Stepton.
"Since you know who I am," began the curate, "and I have heard so much of you, I hope you will forgive me for asking you something."
"Certainly."
"What is it in me which has attracted your attention?"
"I wish I knew," returned the professor.
"You wish you knew! Do you mean that you don't know?"
"I don't know at all."
"But—but—you—I was not wrong in feeling sure that you were—that something in me had aroused your attention?"
"Not wrong at all; but 'something' is not the word."
"What is the word?"
"Everything. Everything in you rouses my attention, Mr. Chichester. But
I can't think why."
"Did you know I was Mr. Harding's curate the first time you met me?"
"Yes; I had seen you at St. Joseph's once or twice when I came to hear your rector preach. You didn't interest me at all then, I'm bound to say."
Chichester stood in silence for a minute. Then he said:
"I might walk a little way back with you, if you have no objection."
Stepton jerked his head in assent. And so the acquaintance of these two men was begun. Their first conversation was a delight to the professor. After a short silence the curate said:
"I could not help seeing each time we have met how your attention was fastened upon me."
"Just so," rejoined Stepton, making no apology.
"And I really think," continued Chichester, with a sort of pressure—"I really think I am entitled to ask for some explanation of the matter."
"Certainly you are."
"Well?" He paused, then said again, "Well, Professor Stepton?"
"I'm afraid I've nothing to tell you, I like to stick to facts."
"I only ask you for facts."
"The facts amount to very little. Coming from the museum I ran across a man. You were the man. My attention was riveted at once. I said to myself, 'I must see that man again.' Next day I took my chance. I had luck. You were there at pretty much the same hour."
"I always come from St. Joseph's—"
"Exactly. And so it's happened on several days. And that's all I have to tell you."
"But surely you can indicate why—"
"No, I can't. All I can say is that for some reason, quite inexplicable by me, if I had come upon you in a crowd of a thousand, I should have had to attend to you."
"That's very strange," said Chichester, in a low voice; "very strange indeed."
"There's a reason for it, of course. There's a reason for everything, but very often it isn't found." At this point the professor thrust his head toward Chichester, and added, "you can't tell me the reason, I suppose?"
Chichester looked much startled and taken aback.
"I—oh, no!"
"Then we must get along in the dark and make the best of it."
Having said this, the professor abruptly dismissed the subject and began to talk of other things. When he chose he could be almost charming. He chose on this occasion. And when at last he hailed a bus, declaring that he was due at home, Chichester expressed a hope that some day he would find himself in Hornton Street, and visit number 4a.
The professor assented, and was carried westward.
Several days passed, but he did not find himself near Horton Street, and he had ceased to visit the South Kensington Museum. Then the curate wrote and invited him to tea. Despite a pretence at indifference in the phraseology of the note, the professor discovered a deep anxiety in the writing. Among other things he had studied, and minutely, graphology.
He sat down and very politely refused the invitation.
Then Chichester came to call on him, and caught him at home.
It was six o'clock in the evening, and the heavens were opened. Agnes, the Scotch parlor-maid who claimed to have second sight, opened the door to Chichester, who, speaking from beneath a dripping umbrella, inquired for the professor.
"He's in, sir, but he's busy."
"Could you take him my card?"
Agnes took it, much to her own surprise, and carried it to the professor's study.
"A gentleman, sir."
"I told you, Agnes—"
"I couldn't say no to him, sir."
"Why not? Here!" he took the card.
"Why not?" he repeated, when he had read the name.
"It wasn't in me to, sir."
"Well, then I shall have to see him. Show him up. But never again will
I call you by the proud name of Cerberus."
So, putting the onus upon Agnes, the professor yielded, murmuring to himself:
"It wasn't in her to! Very expressive! And Cerberus, by the way, was always ready to let 'em in. It was when they wanted to get out that—Good evening. I hope you don't mind climbing."
"Thank you, no," said Chichester.
"Sit down."
"I am afraid I disturb you."
"I'm bound to say you do. But what does it matter?"
"As you didn't find your way to Hornton Street, I thought I would venture."
"Very good of you. This is a soft chair."
Chichester sat down. It had been evident to Stepton from the moment when his visitor came in that he was in great agony of mind. There was in his face a sort of still and abject misery which Stepton thought exceedingly promising. As he turned round, leaning his sharp elbow on his writing-table, Stepton was considering how to exploit this misery for the furthering of his purpose.
"I want you to tell me something," Chichester began. "I want to know why your attention was first attracted to me. I feel sure that you must be able to give a reason. What is it?"
"Well, now, I wish I could," returned Stepton.
To himself he gave the swift admonition, "Play for hysteria, and see what comes of it."
"I wish I could; but it's a mystery to me. But now—let's see."
He knitted his heavy brows.
"A long while ago I picked a man out, met him in a crowd, at the Crystal Palace, followed him about, couldn't get away from him. That same evening he was killed on the underground. I read of it in the paper, went to see the body, and there was my man."
"Do you claim to have some special faculty?" asked Chichester.
"Oh, dear, no. Besides, you haven't been killed on the underground—yet."
A curious expression that seemed mingled of disappointment and of contempt passed across Chichester's face. Stepton saw it and told himself, "No hysteria."
"Possibly the reason may be a more intellectual one," observed the
professor. "I hear you have been preaching some very remarkable sermons.
I haven't heard them. Still, others who have may have 'suggestioned' me.
Three quarters of any man's fame, you know, are due to mere suggestion."
"You're not the man to be the prey of that, I fancy—not the easy prey, at any rate."
"Then we're left again with no explanation at all, unless, as I believe
I hinted once before, you can give us one."
Chichester looked down; without raising his eyes he presently said in a constrained voice:
"If I were to give you one you might not accept it."
"Probably not," said Stepton, briskly. "In my life I've been offered a great many explanations, and I'm bound to say I've accepted remarkably few."
Chichester looked up quickly, and with the air of a man nettled.
"You'll forgive me, I hope, for saying that you scientific men very often seem to have a great contempt for those who are more mystically minded," he observed.
"I've hit the line!" thought Stepton, with a touch of exultation, as he dropped out a negligent, "Forgive you—of course."
"I dare say it seems to you extraordinary that any man should be able to be a clergyman, genuinely believing what he professes and what he preaches."
"Very few things seem to me extraordinary."
"Perhaps because you are skeptical of so much in which others believe."
"That may be it. Quite likely."
"And yet isn't there a saying of Newton's, 'A little science sends man far away from God, a great deal of science brings man back to God?' You'll forgive the apparent rudeness. All I mean is—"
"That the sooner I try to get more science the better for me," snapped out Stepton, brusquely interrupting his visitor, but without heat. "Let me tell you that I pass the greater part of my time in that very effort—to acquire more exact knowledge than I possess. Well—now then! Now then!"
Turning round still more toward the curate he looked almost as if he were about to "square up" to him. A dry aggressiveness informed him, and his voice had a rasping timbre as he continued:
"But I decline to take leaps in the dark like—" Here he mentioned a well-known man of science—"and I decline to reject evidence like—" Here he named a professor even more famous.
The mention of the last name evidently excited Chichester's curiosity.
"What evidence has he rejected?" he exclaimed.
"Last week he held a sitting to examine the pretensions of Mrs. Groeber, the German medium. Westcott was also present, a man on whose word the very devil—if there is such a person, which I don't yet know—would rely. Some apparently remarkable phenomena occurred.—" Here he mentioned the professor—"was convinced that they could only have been brought about by supernormal means. Unfortunately, or fortunately, Westcott had seen the trickery which produced them. When the séance was over he explained what it was to ——. What did this so-called man of science do? Refused to accept Westcott's evidence, clung to his own ridiculous belief,—savage's fetish belief, nothing more,—and will include the Groeber manifestations as evidence of supernormal powers in his next volume. And I say, I say"—he raised his forefinger—"that clergymen are doing much the same thing pretty nearly every day of their lives. Seek for truth quietly, inexorably, and you may get it; but don't prod men into falsehood, or try to, as you've been trying to in this very room."
"I!" cried out Chichester.
"You. I told you I had no reason to give you as to why you attracted my attention in the street. Were you satisfied with that? Not at all. You must needs come here,—very glad to see you!—and say, 'I feel sure you must be able to give me a reason. What is it?' You clamor for a lie. And that's what men are perpetually doing—clamoring for lies. And they get 'em, from clergymen, from mediums, from so-called scientific men, and from the dear delightful politicians. There now!"
And the professor dropped his forefinger and flung himself back in his chair.
"And"—Chichester in his turn leaned forward, but he spoke with some hesitation—"and suppose I were to tell you a truth, a strange, an amazing truth?"
He paused.
"Go on!" said the professor.
"Wouldn't you do just the opposite? You say men accept lies. I say you would probably reject truth."
"Cela dépend. What you believed to be truth might not be truth at all. It might be hysteria, it might be nervous dyspepsia, it might be overwork, it might be a dozen things."
"Just what I say," exclaimed Chichester. "Men of science delight in nothing so much as in finding excuses for rejecting the greatest truths."
"Do you mean the greatest truths in the possession of Anglican clergymen?"
"I dare say you think it impossible that a clergyman should know more than a scientific man?"
"Oh, no. But he's out for faith, and I happen to be out for facts. I like hard facts that can be set down with a fountain-pen in my note-book, and that, taken together, are convincing to all men of reasonable intellect. Very dull, no doubt; but there you have it. Clergymen, as a rule, move in what are called lofty regions—the realms of heart, conscience, and what not. Now, I'm very fond of the region of gray matter—gray matter."
"And yet you are one of the chief of the investigators in the field of psychical research."
"Do you think there's no room for pencil and note-book there? What about Podmore,—there's a loss!—and a dozen others? Psychic matters have got to be lifted out of the hands of credulous fetish-worshiping fools, and the sooner the better."
"It's easy to call people credulous," said Chichester, with decided heat. "By being so readily contemptuous, Professor Stepton, you may often keep back evidence that might be of inestimable value to your cause. A man in possession of a great truth may keep it to himself for fear of being laughed at or called a liar."
"Then all I can say is that he's a coward—an arrant abject coward."
Chichester sat in silence. Again he was looking down. Now that his eyes were hidden by their drooping lids, and that he was no longer speaking, the sadness of his aspect seemed more profound. It dignified his rather insignificant features. It even seemed, in some mysterious way, to infuse power into his slight and unimportant figure. After sitting thus for perhaps three minutes he raised his head and got up from his chair.
"I must not take up your time any longer," he said. "It was very good of you to see me at all." He held out his hand, which Stepton took, and added, "I'll just say one thing."
"Do!"
"It isn't always cowardice which causes a man to keep a secret—a secret which might be of value to the world."
"I never said it was."
"No; but still—you spoke just now of my sermons. I preached one not very long ago which I have typed myself. If I send it to you do you think you could find time to read it?"
"Certainly."
"I will send it, then. Good night."
"I'll come down with you."
The professor let Chichester out. The rain was still falling in torrents. Shrouded in his mackintosh, protected by his umbrella, the curate walked away. Looking after him, Stepton thought:
"Very odd! It isn't only in the face. Even the figure, all covered up and umbrella-roofed, seems to have something—he'll send me the sermon of the man and his double to-morrow."
And on the morrow that sermon came by the first post. Having read it, the professor promptly returned it to Chichester with the following note:
_The White House, Westminster.
Dear Mr. Chichester:_
Very glad to have had the opportunity of reading your interesting discourse. If I had not known it was yours, and a sermon, I should have said "a posthumous work of Robert Louis Stevenson." It does credit to your imagination. If you care to publish, I should suggest "The Cornhill." I know nothing about their terms.
Yours faithfully,
G.R.E. Stepton.
By return of post, there came an urgent invitation to the professor to visit Chichester's rooms in Hornton Street, "to continue a discussion which has a special interest for me at this moment."
"Discussion!" thought Stepton, sitting down to accept, "What my man wants is for me to goad him into revelation; and I'll do it."
The professor knew enough of psychology to be aware that in the very depths of the human heart there is a desire which may perhaps be called socialistic—the desire to share truth with one's fellow-men. Chichester was scourged by this desire. But whether what he wished to share was truth, or only what he believed to be truth, was the question. Anyhow, Stepton was determined to make him speak. And he set off to Hornton Street little doubting that he would find means to carry his determination into effect.
He arrived about half-past five. He did not turn the corner into Kensington High Street on his homeward way until darkness had fallen, having passed through some of the most extraordinary moments that had ever been his.
When he was shown into the curate's sitting-room, his first remark was:
"Sent that very interesting story to 'The Cornhill' yet?"
"I don't think you quite understand, Professor," replied Chichester.
"I did not type it with a view to sending it in anywhere for publication.
You'll have tea with me, I hope? Here it is, all ready."
"Thank you."
"Oh, Ellen!"
Chichester went to the door, and Stepton heard the words, "Nobody, you understand," following on a subdued murmuring.
"And Mr. Harding, sir?" said the maid's voice outside.
"Mr. Harding won't come to-day. That will do, Ellen."
The professor heard steps descending. His host shut the door and returned.
"You typed it for your own use?" said Stepton.
"That sermon? Yes. I wished to keep it by me as a record."
He sat down, and poured out the tea.
"A record of an imagined experience. Exactly. Then why not publish?"
"It is not fiction."
"Well, it isn't fact."
The professor drank his tea, looking at his host narrowly over the cup.
"Do you say such an experience as that described in my sermon is impossible?"
"Do you say it is possible?"
"If I were to say so would you believe me?"
"Certainly not, unless I could make an investigation and personally satisfy myself that what you said was true. You wouldn't expect anything else, I'm sure."
"You can believe nothing on the mere word of another?"
"Very little. I am an investigator. I look for proof."
"With your pencil in one hand, your note-book in the other."
In Chichester's last remark there was a note of sarcasm which thoroughly roused Stepton, for it sounded like the sarcasm of knowledge addressed to ignorance. Stepton had a temper. This touch of superiority, not vulgar, but very definite, fell on it like a lash.
"Now I'll go for the reverend gentleman of St. Joseph's!" he thought.
And for a moment he forgot his aim in remembering himself. Afterward, in thinking matters over, he offered a pinch of incense at the altar of his egoism.
"So, the modern clergyman still believes in slip-slop, does he?" he exclaimed in his most aggressive manner. "Even now hasn't he learnt the value of the matter-of-fact? The clergyman is the doctor of the soul, isn't he? And the doctor, isn't he the clergyman of the body? I wonder, I do wonder, how long the average doctor would keep together his practice if he worked with no more precision than the average clergyman. The contempt of the pencil and note-book! The contempt of proper care in getting together and coordinating facts! The contempt of proof—the appeal to reason! And so we get to the contempt of reason. And let me tell you—" he struck the tea-table with his lean hand till the curate's cups jumped—"that scarcely ever have I heard a sermon in which was not to be found somewhere the preacher's contempt for reason, the bread of the intellect of man."
"The soul is not the intellect."
"Don't you think it higher?"
"I do."
"And so you put it on slops!"
The professor got up from his chair, and began to sidle up and down the small room.
"You put it on slops, as if it were a thing with a disordered stomach. That's your way of showing it respect. You approach the shrine with an offering of water gruel. Now look ye here!"—The professor paused beside the tea-table—"The soul wants its bread, depends upon it, as much as the body, and the church that is free with the loaves is the church to get a real hold on real men. Flummery is no good to anybody. Rhetoric's no good to anybody. Claptrap and slipslop only make heads swim and stomachs turn. The pencil and note-book, observation and the taking down of it, these bring knowledge to the doors of men. And when you sneer at them, you sneer at bread, on the eating of which—or its equivalent, basis-nourishment—life depends."
"I wonder whether you, and such as you, really know on what the true life of the soul depends," said Chichester, with an almost dreadful quietness.
The professor sat down again.
"Such as I?" he said. "You are good enough to do me the honor of putting me in a class?"
"As you have so far honored me," returned Chichester.
"Ha!" ejaculated Stepton.
He had quite got the better of his egoism, but he by no means regretted his outburst.
"Do you claim to stand outside the ranks of the clergy?" he asked.
"Do you claim to stand outside the ranks of the scientists?"
"Oh, dear, no. And now—you?"
Chichester said nothing for a moment. Then, lifting up his head, and gazing at the professor with a sort of sternness of determination, he said:
"Remember this! You yourself told me that in a crowd of a thousand you must have fixed your attention on me."
For a moment the professor had it in his mind to say that this statement of his had been a lie invented to make an impression on Chichester. But he resisted the temptation to score—and lose. He preferred not to score, and to win, if possible.
"I did," he said.
"Could this be so if I were like other men, other clergymen?"
"Well, then, what is the mighty difference between you and your reverend brethren—between you, let us say, and your rector, Mr. Harding?"
Very casually and jerkily the professor threw out this question.
Not casually did Chichester receive it. He moved almost like a man who had been unexpectedly struck, then seemed to recover himself, and to nerve himself for some ordeal. Leaning forward, and holding the edge of the table with one hand, he said:
"How well do you know Mr. Harding?"
"Pretty well. Not intimately."
"You have seen him since he—altered?"
"I saw him only the other day when I was at a specialist's in Harley
Street."
"A specialist's?"
"For nervous dyspepsia."
Again the look of contempt flickered over Chichester's face.
"Do you think the alteration in Mr. Harding may be due to nervous dyspepsia?"
"Probably. There are few maladies that so sap the self-confidence of a man."
Chichester laughed.
For the first time since he had entered the little room the professor felt a cold sensation of creeping uneasiness.
"Apparently you don't agree with me," he said.
"I am not a doctor, and I know very little about that matter."
"Then I'm bound to say I don't know what you find to laugh at."
"For a man who has spent so much time in psychical research you seem to have a rather material outlook upon—"
"Mr. Harding?"
"And all that he represents."
"Suppose we stick to Mr. Harding," said the professor, grittily. "He is typical enough, even if you are not."
"In what respect do you consider Mr. Harding typical?"
"I am speaking of the Harding before the fall into the abysses of nervous dyspepsia."
"Very well. In what respects was Mr. Harding typical?"
"In the sublime self-confidence with which he proclaimed as facts, things that have never been proved to be facts."
"Do men want facts?" said Chichester, almost as one speaking alone to himself.
"I do. I want nothing else. Possibly Mr. Harding had none to give me. I don't blame him."
"Perhaps it is a greater thing to give men faith than to give them facts."
"Give them the first by giving them the second, if you can! And that, by the way, is the last thing the average clergyman is able to do."
Chichester sat silent for nearly a minute looking at the professor with a strange expression, almost fiery, yet meditative, as if he were trying to appraise him, were weighing him in a balance.
"Professor," he said at last, "I suppose your passion for facts has led men to put a great deal of faith in you. Hasn't it?"
"I dare say my word carries some weight. I really don't know," responded
Stepton, with an odd hint of something like modesty.
"I had thought of Malling first," almost murmured Chichester.
"What's that about Malling?"
"I think he would have accepted what I have to give more readily than you would. There seems to me something in him which stretches out arms toward those things in which mystics believe. In you there seems to me something which would almost rather repel such things."
"I beg your pardon. I am quiescent. I neither seek to summon nor to repel."
"I couldn't tell Malling," said Chichester. "His readiness stopped me. It struck me like a blow."
"Malling prides himself on being severely neutral in mind."
"And you on being skeptical?"
"I await facts."
"Shall I give you some strange facts, the strangest perhaps you have ever met with?"
Stepton smiled dryly.
"You'll forgive me, but some such remark has been the prelude to so many figments."
"Figments?"
"Of the imagination."
An expression of anger—almost like a noble anger it seemed—transformed Chichester's face. It was as a fine wrath which looked down from a height, and in an instant it melted into pity.
"How much you must have missed because of your skepticism!" he said. "But I shall not let it affect me. You are a man of note-book and pencil. Will you promise me one thing? Will you give me your word not to share what I shall tell you with any one, unless, later on, I am willing that you should?"
"Oh, dear, yes!" said the professor.
And again he smiled. For even now he believed the curate to be wavering, swayed by conflicting emotions, and felt sure that a flick of the whip to his egoism would be likely to hasten the coming of what he, the professor, wanted.
A loud call rose up from the street. A wandering vender of something was crying his ware. In his voice was a sound of fierce melancholy. Chichester went to the window and shut it down.
"I wish it was night," he said as he turned.
The professor jerked out his watch.
"It must be getting late," he observed. "Past six! by Jove!"
He made an abrupt movement.
"What?" said Chichester. "You are going!"
He came up to the table.
"Sometimes I think," he said, "that men hate and dread nothing as they hate and dread facts which may upset the theories they cherish."
"You're perfectly right. Well, very glad to have seen you in your own room." The professor got up. "By their rooms shall ye know them." He glanced round.
"Ah, I see you have Rossetti's delightfully anemic Madonna, and Holman Hunt's 'Light of the World.' A day or two ago I was talking to a lady who pronounced that—" he extended his finger toward the Hunt—"the greatest work of art produced in the last hundred years. Her reason? Its comforting quality. I am sure you agree with her. Good-by."
He made a sidling movement toward the door. Perhaps it was that movement which finally decided the curate to speak.
"Professor," he said, "I don't want you to go yet."
"Why not?" jerked out Stepton, with one hand on the door-knob.
"You collect 'cases.' I have a case for you. You are a skeptic: you say men should be brought to faith by facts. Sit down. I will give you some facts."
The professor came slowly back, looking dry and cold, and sat down by the table, facing the Rossetti Madonna.
"Always ready for facts," he said.