The Dweller on the Threshold Part 30

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 pa.s.sion 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 n.o.ble 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?"