"People very often imagine they are developing into something wonderful at seances. Nothing new in that."

"Please try to realize the facts of my case without a.s.suming that it resembles a thousand others. I believe, I feel sure, that it resembles no other case that has come under your observation. To grasp it you must grasp the characters of two men, Marcus Harding as he was--and myself, as I was."

"Put them before me, then."

"That Marcus Harding you knew. He was the type of the man who, sublimely self-confident, imposes his view of himself upon other men and especially upon women. He had strength--strength of body and strength of mind. And he had the strength which a devouring ambition sheds through a man. A fine type of the worldly clergyman he was, of the ardent climber up the ladder of preferment. To him the church was a career, and he meant to succeed in it. If he had to begin as a curate he meant to end as a bishop, perhaps as an archbishop. And he had will to help him, and vitality to help him, and the sort of talent that brings quick notice on a man. And he had also a woman to help him, his wife, Lady Sophia.

He chose well when he chose her for his helpmate, though he may not think so now. He should have been content with what he had. But he wanted more, and he thought he might perhaps get what he wanted through me. Marcus Harding was a full-blooded type of the clerical autocrat. I once was an equally complete type of the clerical slave--slave to conscience, slave to humble-mindedness, slave to my rector as soon as I knew him.

"St. Francis of a.s.sisi was the character I worshiped. I strove after simple goodness. I desired no glories of this world, no praises of men.

I did not wish to be clever or to shine, but only to do my duty to my fellow-men, and so toward G.o.d. When I was first to make the acquaintance of Marcus Harding, with a view to becoming his senior curate if he thought fit, I felt some alarm. I had heard so much of his great energy and his remarkable talents. The day came. I paid my visit to Onslow Gardens. For the first time I saw--" Chichester paused. His face became distorted. He turned toward the window as if anxious to hide his face from the professor's small, keen eyes. "I saw--that man," he continued, in a withdrawn and husky voice, and still looking away.

Stepton sat motionless and silent, sidewise, with his arms hanging.

Chichester, after another long pause, again faced him.

"My very first impression was unfavorable. I attributed this to his great size, which had startled me. I now know I was wrong in thinking I took that impression from the outer man. It was the inner man who in that moment announced himself to me. But almost instantly he had surely withdrawn himself very far away, and I, then, had no means of following him. So he escaped from me, and I fell under the influence that Marcus Harding was able to exert at will.

"I was dominated. Buoyancy, life, energy, self-confidence, radiated from that man. He steeped me in his vigor. He seemed kind, cordial. He won my heart. My intellect, of course, was dazzled. But--he won my heart. And I felt not only, 'Here is a man far greater than myself to whom I can look up,' but also, 'Here is a man to whom I must look up, because he is far better than myself.' At that interview it was settled that I should become senior curate at St. Joseph's.

"As you know, I became, and still am, senior curate. As I grew to know Marcus Harding better I admired him more. In fact, my feeling for him was something greater than admiration. I almost worshiped him. His will was law to me in everything. His slightest wish I regarded as a behest.

His talents amazed me. But I thought him not only the cleverest, but the best of men. It seemed to me right that such a man should be autocratic.

A beneficent autocracy became my ideal of government. That my rector's will should be law to his wife, his servants, his curates, his organist, his choir, to those attached to his schools, to those who benefited by the charities he organized, seemed to me more than right and proper. I could have wished to see it law to all the world. If any one ventured to question any decision of his, or to speak a word against him, I felt almost hot with anger. In a word, I was at his feet, as the small and humble-minded man often is at the feet of the man who has talents and who is gifted with ambition and supreme self-confidence.

"For a long time this condition of things continued, and I was happy in it. Probably it might have continued till now, if--if that accursed idea had not come to Marcus Harding."

Again Chichester paused. In speaking he had evidently become gradually less aware of his companion's presence and personality. His subject had gripped him. Memory had grown warm within him. He lived in the days that were past.

"That accursed idea," he repeated slowly, "to use me as his tool in an endeavor to break down the barrier which divides men from the other world.

"As I told you, we began to sit secretly. Marcus Harding wished me to fall into the entranced condition. I did not know this at first, so at first I did not consciously resist his desire. He had told me a lie. He had told me that he desired only one thing in our sittings, to give to me something of the will power that made him a force in the world. He had declared that this was possible. I believed him unquestioningly. I thought he was trying to send some of his power into me. Soon I felt that he was succeeding in this supposed endeavor. Soon I felt that a strange new power was filtering into me."

Chichester fixed his eyes on Stepton as he said the last words, and seemed to emerge from his former condition of self-absorption.

"You have sat often. Have you ever felt such a sensation? It is like growth," he said.

"When one first begins to sit at seances, one is apt to imagine all sorts of things in the darkness," returned Stepton. "I dare say I did, like other folk."

"I understand," said Chichester, with a sort of strange condescension.

"You think I was merely the victim of absurdity. The sense of this coming of power grew slowly, but steadily, within me. And presently it was complicated by another development, which involved--or began to involve, let me say at this point--my companion, Marcus Harding. I think I ought to tell you that in beginning the sittings I had had certain doubts, which were swept away by my admiration of, and faith in, my rector.

Hitherto I had always thought that our human knowledge was deliberately limited by G.o.d, and that it was very wrong to strive to know too much.

The man of science no doubt believes that it is impossible to know too much; but I have thought that many great truths are kept from us because we are not yet in a condition properly to understand them. I had, therefore, begun these practices with a certain tremor, and possibly a certain feeling of resistance, in the depths of my soul. As I felt the power coming to me I had put away my fears. They did not return. Yet surely the new development within me, of which I now became aware, was connected with those fears, however subtly. It was a sensation almost of hostility directed against Marcus Harding."

"Ah, now!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the professor, as if in despite of himself. "And where's the connection you speak of?"

"Marcus Harding had constrained me to do a thing that in my soul I had believed to be wrong and that had roused my fear. As power dawned in me, directing itself upon everything about me, it was instinctively hostile to him who had dominated me before I had any power, and who, by dominating me, had for a moment made me afraid."

"Retrospective enmity! Very well!" muttered the professor. "I understand you. Keep on!"

"This hostility--if I may call a feeling at first not very definite by so definite a name--induced in me a critical att.i.tude of mind. I found myself, to my surprise, secretly criticizing the man whom till now I had regarded as altogether beyond the reach of criticism. I felt that Marcus Harding was giving me power. I was grateful to him for doing so; yet I began to see him in a new, and at moments an unpleasant light. Presently, after trying in vain to combat this novel sensation, which seemed to me almost treacherous, almost disloyal, I sought about for a reason, to give myself at least some justification for it. I sought, and one night it seemed to me that I found.

"On that night I was more than ever aware that strength of some kind was pouring into me. I had an almost heady sensation, such as one who drinks a generous wine may experience. When we rose from the table I told my rector so. He stared at me very strangely. Then he said: 'Good! Good!

Didn't I tell you I would give you some of my power?' He paused. Then he added: 'It will come! It must come!' As he spoke the last words he frowned, and all his face seemed to harden, as if he were making a violent mental effort to which the body was obliged to respond. And at that instant I was aware that the reason Marcus Harding had given to me to persuade me to these sittings was not the true one, that his purpose was quite other than that which I had hitherto supposed it to be. I was suddenly aware of this, and I thought: 'I must already have been aware of it subconsciously, and that accounts for my sensation of hostility toward the rector.' A lie had been told to me. My new self-confidence resented this; and I said to myself, 'If Marcus Harding can tell a lie to me, who almost worshiped him, he must be an arrant hypocrite.'

"We sat again, and again I knew that there was something in the mind of my companion which he concealed from me, something to which I should strongly object if I knew what it was, something which troubled the atmosphere, the mental atmosphere, of the sitting. Instead of being in accord, we were engaged in a silent, but violent, struggle. I was determined not to be overcome. A sort of fierce desire for tyranny sprang up in me. I longed to see Marcus Harding at my feet.

"Again and again we sat. My hostile feeling grew. My critical feeling grew. My longing to tyrannize increased, till I was almost afraid of it, so cruel did I feel it to be. 'Down! Down under my feet!' That was what my soul was secretly saying now to the man whose will had been as law to me. And one night, as if he heard that ugly voice of my soul, he abruptly got up from the table and said: 'It seems to me that you and I are not _en rapport_. It seems to me that no more good can come of these sittings. We had better not sit again."

"We must sit again," I replied.

"Marcus Harding turned scarlet with anger. He looked at me. He opened his lips to speak. I let him speak. I even argued the question with him. I pointed out to him that his only design--the only design acknowledged by him, at any rate, in beginning these practices--had been to give me strength such as, he had declared to me, he himself had drawn while at Oxford from a Hindu comrade. In carrying out this design, I now told him, he was being successful. I felt that I was growing in power of will, in self-confidence. How, then, could he refuse to continue when success was already in sight? 'Unless,' I concluded, 'you had some other design in persuading me to sit, which I did in the first instance against my secret desire, and you feel that there is now no probability of carrying that design into effect.'

"He gave in. I had him beaten. Hastily he muttered a good-night and left me. I let him out into the night. As soon as the street door had shut on him I ran upstairs. I went to that window,--" Chichester flung out his hand--"pushed it up, leaned out, and watched him down the street. I saw him pa.s.s under a gas-lamp and I said to myself: 'You have submitted to my will, and you shall submit again. I am the master now.'

"In that moment all the domination which I had so joyously endured, which I had even surely reveled in,--for there are those who can revel in their slavery,--abruptly became in my mind a reason for revenge. Marcus Harding disappeared in the night; but still I leaned out, staring down the way he had gone, and thinking, 'You shall pay me back for it. You shall pay me back.'

"From that night I made no effort to check the critical faculty, the exercise of which at first had seemed to me a sort of treachery. And as I let myself criticize, I saw more clearly. The scales fell from my eyes.

I realized that I had been nothing less than blind in regard to Marcus Harding. I saw him now as he was, a victim of egomania, a worldling, tyrannical, falsely sentimental, and unfaithful steward, a liar--perhaps even an unbeliever. His whole desire--I knew it now--was not to be good, but to be successful. His charity, his pity for the poor, his generosity, his care for his church, for his schools--all was pretence. I saw Marcus Harding as he was. And what followed?"

Chichester leaned forward to the professor.

"Fear followed," he said in a withdrawn voice.

"Fear!" said Stepton, clearing his throat with a loud, rasping noise.

"Whenever I was with Marcus Harding in any public place I was now companioned by fear. I dreaded unspeakably lest others should begin to see what I saw. When he preached, I could hardly sit to listen: I felt as if any shame falling upon him would overwhelm me also. I strove in vain to combat this strange, this, then, inexplicable sensation. With every sitting this terror grew upon me. It tortured me. It obsessed me.

It drove me into action. When I was with my rector, I tried perpetually to prevent him from exposing his true self to the world, by changing the conversation, by attenuating his remarks, by covering up his actions with my own, sometimes even by a brusque interruption. But in the pulpit he escaped from me. I was forced to sit silent and to listen while he preached doctrine in which he had no belief, and put forward theories of salvation, redemption by faith, and the like, which meant less than nothing to him. Finding this presently unendurable by me, I strove to govern him mentally when he was in the pulpit, to track him, as it were, with my mind, to head him off with my mind when he was beginning to take the wrong path."

"Did you succeed in that effort?" interrupted the professor.

"I made an impression, a terrible impression, upon him. I almost broke him down. I sapped his self-confidence. His power as a preacher deserted him, as his power outside the pulpit deserted him. With every day I felt that I saw more clearly into every recess, every cranny, of his mind and nature. Just at first this frightfully clear sight was mine only when we were sitting; but presently it was mine whenever I was with him. And he knew it, and went in fear of me. Gradually, very gradually, it came about that our former positions were reversed; for as he sank down in the human scale, I mounted. As he lost in power, I gained. And especially in the pulpit I felt that now I had force, that I could grip my hearers, could make a mighty impression upon those with whom I was brought into contact.

"But I must tell you that now I gained no satisfaction from my own improvement, if so it may be called. My whole life was vitiated by my secret terror lest Marcus Harding should be found out, should ever be known for what he was. His actions, and even his thoughts, affected me with an intimacy that was inexplicable."

"You were in telepathic communication with him!" interjected Stepton.

"Call it so if you like. Often I felt what he was thinking, almost as if each thought of his were a hand laid upon me--a hand from which I shrank with an almost trembling repugnance. Sometimes when he thought something contemptible or evil, I shrank as if from a blow.

"There was a link between us. Presently, soon, I knew it. We seemed in some dreadful way to belong to each other, so that whatever was thought, said, done by him, whatever happened to him, reacted upon me.

"At this time Lady Sophia Harding hated me with a deadly hatred. Formerly she had been indifferent to me. Concentrated upon her husband, adoring him, vain of him, greedily ambitious for his advancement, she had had no time to bestow on a clerical nonent.i.ty. But as I grew to understand what her husband really was she grew to hate me. She was almost rude to me. She spoke ill of me behind my back. She even tried to oust me from my position as senior curate of St. Joseph's. Why did not she succeed? Are you thinking that?"

"Well, what if I was?" snapped the professor, moving in his chair.

"Marcus Harding could not make a move to get rid of me. There was a link between us which he could not even try to break.

"One night--one night--I discovered what that link was."

It was growing dark in the room. The Rossetti Madonna, thin, anemic, with hanging hair, seemed fading away on the somber, green wall. The window-panes looked spectral and white. The faint murmur of the city sounded a little deeper and much sadder than in the light of day.

Stepton was aware of a furtive but strong desire for artificial light in the room, but he did not choose to mention it. And Chichester, whose voice--so it seemed to his hearer--began to have that peculiar almost alarming timbre which belongs to a voice speaking not for the ears of another, but for the satisfaction only of the soul which it expresses, continued his narrative, or confession, as if unaware of the dying of day.