The Dweller on the Threshold Part 31

"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 p.r.o.nounced 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-k.n.o.b.

"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.

XI

"You have heard of doubles, of course, Professor?" said Chichester, leaning his arms on the table and putting his hands one against the other, as if making a physical effort to be very calm.

"Of course. There was an account of one in that sermon of yours."

"Have you ever seen a double?"

"No; not to my knowledge."

"I suppose you disbelieve in them?"

"I have no reason to believe in them. I have not collected enough evidence to convince me that there are such manifestations."

"You know a double at this moment."

"Do I, indeed? And may I ask the manifestation's name?"

"Marcus Harding."

"Marcus Harding is a double, you say. Whose?"

"Mine," said Chichester in a low voice.

He clasped and unclasped his hands.

"I don't understand you," said Stepton, rather disdainfully.

"I will try to make you." And Chichester began to speak, at first in a low, level voice. "That sermon of mine," he said, "was a sort of shadow of a truth that I wanted to reveal,--that I dared not fully reveal.

Already I had tried to tell Evelyn Malling something of it. I had failed.

When the moment came, when Malling was actually before me, I could not speak out. His mind was trying to track the truth that was in me. He got, as it were, upon the trail. Once he even struck into the truth. Then he went away to Marcus Harding. I remained in London. When I knew that those two were together I felt a sort of jealous fear of Malling. For there was pity in him. Despite his intense curiosity he had a capacity for pity. I realized that it might possibly interfere with--with something that I was doing. And I recalled Marcus Harding to London.

From that moment I have avoided Malling. I could never tell him. But you, hard searcher after truth as you are--you could never find it in you to drag away another from the contemplation of truth. Could you? Could you?"

"Probably not," said Stepton. "I usually let folks alone even when they're glaring at falsehood. Ha!"

He settled himself in his chair, looking sidewise toward Chichester.

"You, like every one else, have noticed the tremendous change in Marcus Harding," Chichester went on. "That change, the whole of that change, is solely owing to me."

"Very glad to have your explanation of that."

"I am going to give it you. The beginning of that change came about through the action of Marcus Harding. He wished for facts that are, perhaps,--indeed, probably,--withheld deliberately from the cognizance of man. You have sneered at those who live by faith, you have sneered at priests. Well, you can let that Marcus Harding go free of your sarcasm.

Although a clergyman he was not a faithful man. And he wanted facts to convince him that there was a life beyond the grave. Henry Chichester--"

"You! You!" interjected Stepton, harshly.

"I, then, came into his life. He thought he would use me to further his purpose. He constrained me to sittings such as you have often taken part in, with a view to sending me into a trance and employing me, when in that condition, as a means of communication with the other world--if there was one. We sat secretly in this room, at this table."

"You need not give me ordinary details of your sittings," said the professor. "I am familiar with them, of course."

"Henry Chichester--"

"You! You! Don't complicate matters!"

"I never was entranced; but presently I felt myself changing subtly."