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THE
DWELLER
ON THE
THRESHOLD
ROBERT HICHENS


१५४6 , 40.104

Harvard College Library
FROM
Gardiner M. Lane
..........................................................


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THE DWELLER ON THE
THRESHOLD





The Dweller on the
Threshold
BY
ROBERT HICHENS
Author of “The Garden of Allah," "Bella Donna,” “Egypt and its
Monuments,” “The Holy Land," etc.

WE
NEW YORK
THE CENTURY CO.
1911


21486,40,104
Copyright 1910, 1911, by
THE CENTURY Co.
Published March, 1911
HARVARD
UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY
JUL 22 1959


THE DWELLER ON THE THRESHOLD





THE DWELLER ON THE
THRESHOLD
ause
VVHEN Evelyn Malling, notorious because
V of his sustained interest in Psychical Re-
search and his work for Professor Stepton, first
met the Rev. Marcus Harding, that well-known
clergyman was still in the full flow of his many
activities. He had been translated from his
labors in Liverpool to a West End church in Lon-
don. There he had proved hitherto an aston-
ishing success. On Hospital Sundays the total
sums collected from his flock were by far the larg-
est that came from the pockets of any congrega-
tion in London. The music in St. Joseph's was
allowed by connoisseurs, who knew their Elgar
as well as their Goss, their Perosi as well as their
Bach, and their Wesley, to be remarkable. Criti-
cal persons, mostly men, who sat on the fence be-
tween Orthodoxy and Atheism, thought highly


THE DWELLER
of Mr. Harding's sermons, and even sometimes
came down on his side. And, of all signs surely
the most promising for a West End clergyman's
success, smart people flocked to him to be married,
and Arum lilies were perpetually being carried
in and out of his chancel, which was adorned with
Morris windows. He was married to a woman
who managed to be admirable without being dull,
Lady Sophia, daughter of the late Earl of Mans-
ford, and sister of the present peer. He was com-
fortably off. His health as a rule was good,
though occasionally he suffered from some obscure
form of dyspepsia. And he was still compara-
tively young, just forty-eight.
Nevertheless, as Evelyn Malling immediately
perceived, Mr. Harding was not a happy man.
In appearance he was remarkable. Of com-
manding height, with a big frame, a striking head
and countenance, and a pair of keen gray eyes, he
looked like a man who was intended by nature
to dominate. White threads appeared in his
thick brown hair, which he wore parted in the
middle. But his face, which was clean-shaven,
had not many telltale lines. And he did not look
more than his age.
The sadness noted by Malling was at first
evasive and fleeting, not indellibly fixed in the


ON THE THRESHOLD
puckers of a forehead, or in the down-drawn cor-
ners of a mouth. It was as a thin, almost im-
palpable mist, that can scarcely be seen, yet that
alters all the features in a landscape ever so
faintly. Like a shadow it traveled across the
eyes, obscured the forehead, lay about the lips.
And as a shadow lifts it lifted. But it soon re-
turned, like a thing uneasy that is becoming de-
termined to discover an abiding-place.
Malling's first meeting with the clergyman took
place upon Westminster Bridge on an afternoon
in early May, when London seemed, almost like
a spirited child, to be flinging itself with abandon
into the first gaieties of the season. Malling was
alone, coming on foot from Waterloo. Mr.
Harding was also on foot, with his senior curate,
the Rev. Henry Chichester, who was an acquaint-
ance of Malling, but whom Malling had not seen
for a considerable period of time, having been out
on his estate in Ceylon. At the moment when
Malling arrived upon the bridge the two clergy-
men were standing by the parapet on the Parlia-
ment side, looking out over the river. As he
drew near to them the curate glanced suddenly
round, saw him, and uttered an involuntary
exclamation which attracted Mr. Harding's at-
ason.
tention.


THE DWELLER
“Telepathy!” said Chichester, shaking Mal-
ling by the hand. “I believe I looked round be-
cause I knew I should see you. Yet I supposed
you to be still in Ceylon." He glanced at the rec-
tor rather doubtfully, seemed to take a resolution,
and with an air almost of doggedness added,
“May I?” and introduced the two men to one
another.
Mr. Harding observed the new-comer with an
interest that was unmistakable.
“You are the Mr. Malling of whom Professor
Stepton has spoken to me,” he said, “who has
done so much experimental work for him?"
“ Yes."
“The professor comes to my church now and
then."
“I have heard him say so."
“You saw we were looking at the river ? Be-
fore I came to London I was at Liverpool, and
learned there to love great rivers. There is some-
thing in a great river that reminds us —”
He caught his curate's eye and was silent.
“Are you walking my way? " asked Malling.
“I am going by the Abbey and Victoria Street to
Cadogan Square.”
“ Then we will accompany you as far as Vic-
toria Station," said the rector.
6


ON THE THRESHOLD
“You don't think it would be wiser to take a
hansom?” began Chichester. “You remem-
ber "
“No, no, certainly not. Walking always does
me good," rejoined Mr. Harding, almost in a
tone of rebuke.
The curate said nothing more, and the three
men set out toward Parliament Square, Malling
walking between the two clergymen.
He felt embarrassed, and this surprised him,
for he was an extremely self-reliant man and en-
tirely free from shyness. At first he thought that
possibly his odd discomfort arose from the fact
that he was in company with two men who, per-
haps, had quite recently had a difference which
they were endeavoring out of courtesy to conceal
from him. Perhaps there had been a slight quar-
rel over some parish matter. Certainly when he
first spoke with them there had been something un-
easy, a suspicion of strain, in the manner of both.
But then he remembered how, before Chichester
had turned round, they had been leaning amicably
above the river.
No, it could not be that. He sought mentally
for some other reason. But while he did so he
talked, and endeavored to rid himself promptly
of the unwelcome feeling that beset him.


ON THE THRESHOLD
sery
critical of members of their own family. And
Mr. Harding was certainly aware of this critical
attitude, and at moments seemed to be defiant of
it, at other moments to be almost terrorized by
it.
All that passed, be it noted, passed as between
gentlemen, rather glided in the form of nuance
than trampled heavily in more blatant guise.
But Evelyn Malling was a highly trained ob-
server and a man in whom investigation had be-
come a habit. Now that he was no longer ill
at ease he became deeply interested in the relations
between the two men with whom he was walking.
He was unable to understand them, and this fact
of course increased his interest. Moreover he
was surprised by the change he observed in Chi-
chester.
· Although he had never been intimate with
Henry Chichester, he had known him fairly well,
and had summed him up as a very good man and
a decidedly attractive man, but marred, as Mal-
ling thought, by a definite weakness of character.
He had been too amiable, too ready to take others
on their own valuation of themselves, too kind-
hearted, and too easily deceived. The gentle-
ness of a saint had been his, but scarcely the firm-
se
wa


ON THE THRESHOLD
ter. Not so saintly, perhaps, he was more likely
to influence others. Firmness showed in his forci-
ble chin, energy in the large lines of his mouth,
decision in his clear-cut features. Yet there was
something contradictory in his face. And the
flitting melancholy, already remarked, surely
hinted at some secret instability, perhaps known
only to Harding himself, perhaps known to Chi-
chester also.
When the three men came to the turning at
the corner of the Grosvenor Hotel, Chichester
stopped short.
“Here is our way,” he said, speaking across
Mr. Harding to Malling.
The rector looked at Malling.
“Have you far to go?” he asked, with rather
a tentative air.
“I live in Cadogan Square."
“Of course. I remember. You told us you
were going there."
“Good-by,” said Chichester. “We are taking
the underground to South Kensington."
“I think I shall walk," said the rector.
“But you know we are due —”.
“There is plenty of time. Tell them I shall
be there at four.”
“But really —”
WI.
II


THE DWELLER
“Punctually at four. I will walk on with
Mr. Malling.'
“I really think you had better not,” began Chi-
chester. “Over-exertion —”
“Am I an invalid ? ” exclaimed Mr. Harding,
almost sharply.
“No, no, of course not. But you remember
that yesterday you were not quite well.”
“That is the very reason why I wish to walk.
Exercise always does my dyspepsia good.”
“Let us all walk," said the curate, abruptly.
But this was obviously not Mr. Harding's in-
tention.
“I want you to go through the minutes and the
accounts before the meeting,” he said, in a quieter
but decisive voice. “We will meet at the
School at four. You will have plenty of time if
you take the train. And meanwhile Mr. Mal-
ling and I will go on foot together as far as Cado-
gan Square."
Chichester stood for a moment staring into
Mr. Harding's face, then he said, almost sulkily:
“Very well. Good-by."
He turned on his heel, and was lost in the
throng near the station.
It seemed to Malling that an expression of relief
overspread his companion's face.
12


ON THE THRESHOLD
mor
“You don't mind my company for a little
longer, I hope ? ” said the rector.
“I shall be glad to have it.”
They set out on their walk to Cadogan Square.
After two or three minutes of silence the rector
remarked:
“You know Chichester well? ”
“I can hardly say that. I used to meet him
sometimes with some friends of mine, the Cres-
pignys. But I have n't seen him for more than
two years."
“He's a very good fellow."
“An excellent fellow.”
“ Perhaps a little bit limited in his outlook.
He has been with me at St. Joseph's exactly two
years."
The rector seemed about to say more, then shut
his large mouth almost with a snap. Malling
made no remark. He was quite certain that snap
was merely the preliminary to some further re-
mark about Chichester. And so it proved. As
they came to St. Peter's Eaton Square, the rector
resumed:
“I often think that it is a man's limitations
which make him critical of others. The more
one knows, the wider one's outlook, the readier
one is to shut one's eyes to the foibles, even to the
13


THE DWELLER
faults, of one's neighbors. I have tried to impress
that upon our friend Chichester."
“Does n't he agree with you?"
“ Well — it's difficult to say, difficult to say.
Shall we go by Wilton Place, or — ?"
“ Certainly."
“Professor Stepton has talked to me about you
from time to time, Mr. Malling."
“He's a remarkable man,” said Malling al-
most with enthusiasm.
“Yes. He's finding his way to the truth
rather by the pathway of science than by the path-
way of faith. But he's a man I respect. And I
believe he 'll get out into the light. You've done
a great deal of work for him, I understand, in —
in occult directions."
“I have made a good many careful investiga-
tions at his suggestion.”
"Exactly. Now”- Mr. Harding paused,
seemed to make an effort, and continued — “we
know very little even now, with all that has been
done, as to — to the possibilities — I scarcely
know how to put it — the possibilities of the soul.”
“Very little indeed,” rejoined Malling.
He was considerably surprised by his compan-
ion's manner, but was quite resolved not to help
him out.
14


ON THE THRESHOLD
COL
“The possibilities of one soul, let us say, in
connection with another," continued the rector, al-
most in a faltering voice. “I often feel as if the
soul were a sort of mysterious fluid, and that when
we what is called influence another person, we,
as it were, submerge his soul fluid in our own, as
a drop of water might be submerged in an ocean.”
“Ah!” said Malling, laconically.
Mr. Harding shot a rather sharp glance at him.
“You don't object to my getting on this subject,
I hope ?” he observed.
“ Certainly not.”.
“Perhaps you think it rather a strange one for
a clergyman to select ? ”.
"Oh, no. I have known many clergymen deeply
interested in Stepton's investigations."
Mr. Harding's face, which had been cloudy,
cleared.
" It seems to me,” he said, “ that we clergymen
have a special reason for desiring Stepton, and all
Stepton's assistants, to make progress. It is true,
of course, that we live by faith. And nothing
can be more beautiful than a childlike faith in the
Great Being who is above all worlds, in the anima
mundi. But it would be unnatural in us if we did
not earnestly desire that our faith be proved, scien-
tifically proved, to be well-founded. I speak now
wn m
15


THE DWELLER
of the faith we Christians hold in a life beyond
the grave. I know many people who think it very
wrong in a clergyman to mix himself up in any
occult experiments. But I don't agree with
them.”
It was now Malling's turn to look sharply at his
companion.
“Have you made many experiments yourself,
may I ask?” he said very bluntly.
The clergyman started, and was obviously em-
barrassed by the question.
“I! Oh, I was speaking generally. I am a
very busy man, you see. What with my church
and my parish, and one thing and another, I get
very little time for outside things. Still I am
greatly interested, I confess, in all that Stepton
is doing.”
“Does Mr. Chichester share your interest?”
said Malling.
“In a minor degree, in a minor degree," an-
swered the rector, rather evasively.
They were now in Sloane Street and Malling
vere now 1
said:
“I must turn off here."
“I'll go with you as far as your door if you've
no objection," said the rector, who seemed very
16


ON THE THRESHOLD
loath to leave his companion. “It's odd how
men change, is n't it?"
“ As they grow older? But surely develop-
ment is natural and to be expected?”.
“ Certainly. But when a man changes dras-
tically, sheds his character and takes on another?”
“You are talking perhaps of what is called con-
version ? "
“Well, that would be an instance of what I
mean, no doubt. But there are changes of an-
other type. We clergymen, you know, mix inti-
mately with so many men that we are almost bound
to become psychologists if we are to do any good.
It becomes a habit with many of us to study closely
our fellow-men. Now I, for instance; I cannot
live at close quarters with a man without, almost
unconsciously, subjecting him to a minute scrutiny,
and striving to sum him up. My curates, for
example —”
“ Yes? " said Malling.
“There are four of them, our friend Chiches-
ter being the senior one.”.
“ And you have placed' them all?".
“I thought I had, I thought so — but —”
Mr. Harding was silent. Then, with a strange
abruptness, and the air of a man forced into an
ma
17


THE DWELLER
action against which something within him pro-
tested, he said:
“Mr. Malling, you are the only person I know
who, having been acquainted with Henry Chiches-
ter, has at last met him again after a prolonged
interval of separation. Two years, you said.
People who see a man from day to day observe
very little or nothing. Changes occur and are not
noticed by them. A man and his wife live to-
gether and grow old. But does either ever notice
when the face of the other begins first to lose its
bloom, to take on that peculiar, unmistakable
stamp that the passage of the years sets on us all?
Few of us really see what is always before us. But
the man who comes back — he sees. Tell me the
honest truth, I beg of you. Do you or do you
not, see a great change in Henry Chichester?”
The rector's voice had risen while he spoke, till
it almost clamored for reply. His eyes were more
clamorous still, insistent in their demand upon
Malling. Nevertheless voice and eyes pushed
Malling toward caution. Something within him
said, “Be careful what you do!” and, acting
surprise, he answered:
“ Chichester changed! In what way?"
The rector's countenance fell.
18


ON THE THRESHOLD
“You have n't observed it?"
“Remember I've only seen him to-day and
walking in the midst of crowds."
“Quite true! Quite true!”
Mr. Harding meditated for a minute, and then
said:
“Mr. Malling, I daresay my conduct to-day
may surprise you. You may think it odd of me
to be so frank, seeing that you and I have not met
before. But Stepton has told me so much about
you that I cannot feel we are quite strangers. I
should like you to have an opportunity of observ-
ing Henry Chichester without prejudice. I will
say nothing more. But if I invite you to meet
him, in my house or elsewhere, will you promise
me to come?"
“Certainly, if I possibly can.”
“And your address ? ”.
Malling stopped and, smiling, pointed to the
number outside a house.
“You live here?”
Mr. Harding took a small book and a pencil
from his pocket and noted down the address.
“Good-by," he said. “I live in Onslow Gar-
dens — Number 89."
“ Thank you. Good-by.”
19


Il
NVELYN MALLING was well accustomed
U to meeting with strange people and making
investigations into strange occurrences. He was
not easily surprised, nor was he easily puzzled.
By nature more skeptical than credulous, he had a
cool brain, and he was seldom, if ever, the victim
of his imagination. But on the evening of the
day in question he found himself continually dwell-
ing, and with a curiously heated mind, upon the
encounter of that afternoon. Mr. Harding's
manner in the latter part of their walk together
had — he scarcely knew why — profoundly im-
pressed him. He longed to see the clergyman
again. He longed, almost more ardently, to pay
a visit to Henry Chichester. Although the in-
stinct of caution, which had perhaps been developed
in him by his work among mediums, cranks of vari-
ous kinds, and charlatans, had prevented him from
letting the rector know that he had been struck
by the change in the senior curate, that change
had greatly astonished him. Yet was it really so
very marked? He had noticed it before his at-
21


THE DWELLER
tention had been drawn to it. That he knew.
But was he not now, perhaps, exaggerating its
character, “suggestioned” as it were by the obvi-
ous turmoil of Mr. Harding? He wondered, and
was disturbed by his wonderment. Two or three
times he got up, with the intention of jumping
into a cab, and going to Westminster to find out
if Professor Stepton was in town. But he only
got as far as the hall. Then something seemed
to check him. He told himself that he was in no
fit condition to meet the sharp eyes of the man
of science, who delighted in his somewhat frigid
attitude of mind toward all supposed supernormal
manifestations, and he returned to his study and
tried to occupy himself with a book.
On the occasion of his last return, just as he was
about to sit down, his eyes chanced to fall on an
almanac framed in silver which stood on his writ-
ing-table. He took it up and stared at it. May
8, Friday — May 9, Saturday — May 10, Sun-
day. It was May 9. He put the almanac back on
the table with a sudden sense of relief. For he
had come to a decision.
Tomorrow he would attend morning service
at St. Joseph's.
Malling was not a regular church-goer. He be-
longed to the Stepton breed. But he was an earn-
LIS
22


ON THE THRESHOLD
est man and no scoffer, and some of his best friends
were priests and clergymen. Nevertheless it was
in a rather unusual go-to-meeting frame of mind
that he got into a tail-coat and top hat, and set
forth in a hansom to St. Joseph's the next morning.
He had never been there before. As he drew
near he found people flowing toward the great
church on foot, in cabs and carriages. Evidently
Mr. Harding had attractive powers, and Malling
began to wonder whether he would have any diffi-
culty in obtaining the seat he wanted, in some cor-
ner from which he could get a good view both of
the chancel and the pulpit. Were vergers “briba-
ble"? What an ignoramus he was about church
matters!
He smiled to himself as he paid the cabman
and joined the stream of church-goers which was
passing in through the open door.
Just as he was entering the building some one in
the crowd by accident jostled him, and he was
pushed rather roughly against a tall lady imme-
diately before him. She turned round with a
startled face, and Malling hastily begged her par-
don.
“I was pushed,” he said. “Forgive me."
The lady smiled, her lips moved, doubtless in
some words of conventional acceptance, then she
some V
23


THE DWELLER
disappeared in the throng, taking her way toward
the left of the church. She was a slim woman,
with a white streak in her dark hair just above
the forehead. Her face, which was refined and
handsome, had given to Malling a strong impres-
sion of anxiety. Even when it had smiled it had
looked almost tragically anxious, he thought.
The church was seated with chairs, and a man,
evidently an attendant, told him that all the chairs
in the right and left aisles were free. He made
his way to the right, and was fortunate enough to
get one not far from the pulpit. Unluckily, from
it he could only see the left-hand side of the choir.
But the preacher would be full in his view. The
organ sounded; the procession appeared. Over
the heads of worshipers — he was a tall man —
Malling perceived both Mr. Harding and Chiches-
ter. The latter took his place at the end of the
left-hand row of light-colored oaken stalls next
to the congregation. Malling could see him well.
But the rector was hidden from him. He fixed
his eyes upon Chichester.
The service went on its way. The music was
excellent. A fair young man, who looked as if
he might be a first-rate cricketer, one of the curates
no doubt, read the lessons. Chichester intoned
with an agreeable light tenor voice. During the
24


ON THE THRESHOLD
no
third hymn, “ Fight the Good Fight,” Mr. Hard-
ing mounted into the pulpit. He let down the
brass reading-desk. He had no notes in his hands.
Evidently he was going to preach extempore.
After the “ In the name of the Father, and of the
Son, and of the Holy Ghost” had been pro-
nounced, Malling settled himself to listen. He
felt tensely interested. Both Mr. Harding and
Chichester were now before him, the one as per-
former — he used the word mentally, with no
thought of irreverence — the other as audience.
He could study both as he wished to study them at
that moment.
Chichester was a small, cherubic man, with blue
eyes, fair hair, and neat features, the sort of man
who looks as if when a boy he must have been the
leading choir-boy in a cathedral. There was noth-
ing powerful in his face, but much that was ami-
able and winning. His chin and his forehead were
rather weak. His eyes and his mouth looked
good. Or — did they ?
Malling found himself wondering as Mr. Har-
ding preached.
And was Mr. Harding the powerful preacher he
was reputed to be?
At first he held his congregation. That was
evident. Rows of rapt faces gazed up at him, as
vas
25


THE DWELLER
he leaned over the edge of the pulpit, or stood
upright with his hands pressed palm downward
upon it. But it seemed to Malling that he held
them rather because of his reputation, because of
what they confidently expected of him, because of
what he had done in the past, than because of what
he was actually doing. And presently they slipped
out of his grasp. He lost them.
The first thing that is necessary in an orator, if
he is to be successful with an audience, is confi-
dence in himself, a conviction that he has some-
thing to say which is worth saying, which has to be
said. Malling perceived that on this Sunday
morning Mr. Harding possessed neither self-con-
fidence nor conviction; though he made a deter-
mined, almost a violent, effort to pretend that he
had both. He took as the theme of his discourse
self-knowledge, and as his motto — so he called
it — the words, “Know thyself." This was
surely a promising subject. He began to treat it
with vigor. But very soon it became evident that
he was ill at ease, as an actor becomes who cannot
get into touch with his audience. He stumbled
now and then in his sentences, harked back, cor-
rected a phrase, modified a thought, attenuated a
statement. Then, evidently bracing himself up,
almost aggressively he delivered a few passages
26


ON THE THRESHOLD
that were eloquent enough. But the indecision re-
turned, became more painful. He even contra-
dicted himself. A“ No, that is not so. I should
say —” communicated grave doubts as to his pow-
ers of clear thinking to the now confused congre-
gation. People began to cough and to shift about
in their chairs. A lady just beneath the pulpit
unfolded a large fan and waved it slowly to and
fro. Mr. Harding paused, gazed at the fan,
looked away from it, wiped his forehead with a
handkerchief, grasped the pulpit ledge, and went
on speaking, but now with almost a faltering voice.
The congregation were doubtless ignorant of
the cause of their pastor's perturbation, but Mal-
ling felt sure that he knew what it was.
The cause was Henry Chichester.
On the cherubic face of the senior curate, as he
leaned back in his stall while Mr. Harding gave
out the opening words of the sermon, there had
been an expression that was surely one of anxiety,
such as a master's face wears when his pupil is
about to give some public exhibition. That simile
came at once into Malling's mind. It was the
master listening to the pupil, fearing for, criti-
cizing, striving mentally to convey help to the pu-
pil. And as the sermon went on it was obvious
to Malling that the curate was not satisfied with
ear
27


THE DWELLER
it, and that his dissatisfaction was, as it were,
breaking the rector down. At certain statements
of Mr. Harding looks of contempt flashed over
Chichester's face, transforming it. The anxiety
of the master, product of vanity but also of sym-
pathy, was overlaid by the powerful contempt of
a man who longs to traverse misstatements but is
forced by circumstances to keep silence. And so
certain was Malling that the cause of Mr. Har-
ding's perturbation lay in Chichester's mental atti-
tude, that he longed to spring up, to take the
curate by the shoulders and to thrust him out of
the church. Then all would be well. He knew
it. The rector's self-confidence would return and,
with it, his natural powers.
But now the situation was becoming painful,
almost unbearable.
With every sentence the rector became more in-
volved, more hesitating, more impotent. The
sweat ran down his face. Even his fine voice was
affected. It grew husky. It seemed to be failing.
Yet he would not cease. To Malling he gave the
impression of a man governed by a secret obstinacy,
fighting on though he knew it was no use, that he
had lost the combat. Malling longed to cry out
to him, “ Give it up!”.
The congregation coughed more persistently,
28


ON THE THRESHOLD
and the lady with the fan began to ply her instru-
ment of torture almost hysterically.
Suddenly Malling felt obliged to look toward
the left of the crowded church. Sitting up very
straight, and almost craning his neck, he stared
over the heads of the fidgeting people and met the
eyes of a woman, the lady with the streak of
white hair against whom he had pushed when
coming in.
There was a look almost of anguish on her face.
She turned her eyes toward Mr. Harding. At
the same instant the rector saw Malling in the con-
gregation. He stopped short, muttered an un-
even sentence, then,' forcing his voice, uttered in
unnaturally loud tones the “Now to God the
Father," et cetera.
Henry Chichester rose in his stall with an
expression of intense thankfulness, which yet
seemed somehow combined with a sneer.
The collection was made.
Before the celebration some of the choir and
two of the clergy, of whom Mr. Harding was one,
left the church. Henry Chichester and the fair,
athletic-looking curate remained. Malling took
his hat and made his way slowly to the door. As
he emerged a young man stopped him and said:
“ If you please, sir, the rector would like to
29


THE DWELLER
speak to you if you could wait just a moment.
You are Mr. Malling, I believe."
“Yes. How could you know?”
“Mr. Harding told me what you were like, sir,
and that you were wearing a tie with a large green
stone in it. Begging your pardon, sir.”
“I will wait," said Malling, marveling at the
rector's rapid and accurate powers of observation.
Those of the congregation who had not re-
mained for the celebration were quickly dispers-
ing, but Malling now noticed that the lady with
the white lock was, like himself, waiting for some
one. She stood not far from him. She was hold-
ing a parasol, and looking down; she moved its
point to and fro on the ground. Several people
greeted her. Almost as if startled she glanced
up quickly, smiled, replied. Then, as they went
on, she again looked down. There was a pucker
in her brow. Her lips twitched now and then.
Suddenly she lifted her head, turned and forced
her quivering mouth to smile. Mr. Harding had
come into sight round the corner of the church.
“Ah, Mr. Malling," he said, “so you have
stayed. Very good of you. Sophia, let me in-
troduce Mr. Malling to you — my wife, Lady
Sophia."
The lady with the white lock held out her hand.
23
30


ON THE THRESHOLD
“You have heard Professor Stepton speak of
Mr. Malling, have n't you?” added the rector to
his wife.
“ Indeed I have," she answered.
She smiled again kindly, and as if resolved to
throw off her depression began to talk with some
animation as they all walked together toward the
street. Directly they reached it the rector said:
“Are you engaged to lunch to-day, Mr. Mal-
ling?"
"No," answered Malling.
Lady Sophia turned to him and said:
“ Then I shall be informal and beg you to lunch
with us, if you don't mind our being alone. We
lunch early, at one, as my husband is tired after
his morning's work and eats virtually nothing at
breakfast.”
“I shall be delighted,” said Malling. “It's
very kind of you.”
“We always walk home," said the rector.
He sighed. It was obvious that he was in low
spirits after the failure of the morning, but he
tried to conceal the fact, and his wife tactfully
helped him. Malling praised the music warmly,
and remarked on the huge congregation.
"I scarcely thought I should find a seat," he
added.
31


THE DWELLER
“ It is always full to the doors in the morning,"
said Lady Sophia, with a cheerfulness that was
slightly forced.
She glanced at her husband, and suddenly
added, not without a decided touch of feminine
spite:
“Unless Mr. Chichester, the senior curate,
is preaching."
“My dear Sophy!” exclaimed Mr. Harding.
“Well, it is so!” she said, with a sort of petu-
lance.
"Perhaps Mr. Chichester is not gifted as a
preacher,” said Malling.
“Oh, I would n't say that,” said the rector.
“My husband never criticizes his — swans,"
said Lady Sophia, with delicate malice, and a
glance full of meaning at Malling. “But I'm a
woman, and my principles are not so high as his.”
“You do yourself an injustice," said the rector
“Here we are."
He drew out his latch-key.
Before lunch Malling was left alone for a few
minutes in the drawing-room with Lady Sophia.
The rector had to see a parishioner who had called
Sa
her husband had left the room Lady Sophia turned
to Malling and said:


ON THE THRESHOLD
wa:
ervous
“Had you ever heard my husband preach till
this morning ?”
“No, never," Malling answered. “I'm afraid
I'm not a very regular church-goer. I must con-
gratulate you again on the music at St. Joseph's.
It is exceptional. Even at St. Anne's Soho —".
Almost brusquely she interrupted him. She
was obviously in a highly nervous condition; and
scarcely able to control herself.
“Yes, yes, our music is always good, of course.
So glad you liked it. But what I want to say is
that you have n't heard my husband preach this
morning.”
Malling looked at her with curiosity, but with-
out astonishment. He might have acted a part
with her as he had the previous day with her hus-
band. But, as he looked, he came to a rapid de-
cision, to be more frank with the woman than he
had been with the man.
“You mean, of course, that your husband was
not in his best vein," he said. “I won't pretend
that I did n't realize that.”
“You did n't hear him at all. He was n't him
self — simply."
She sat down on a sofa and clasped her hands
together.
“I cannot tell you what I was feeling," she
33


THE DWELLER
added. “And he used to be so full of self-con-
fidence. It was his great gift. His self-confi-
dence carried him through everything. Nothing
could have kept him back if —”.
Suddenly she checked herself and looked, with
a sort of covert inquiry, at Malling.
“You must think me quite mad to talk like
this,” she said, with a return to her manner when
he first met her.
“Shall I tell you what I really think?” he
asked, leaning forward in the chair he had taken.
“Yes, do, do!”
“I think you are very ambitious for your hus-
band and that your ambition for him has received
a perhaps mysterious — check.”
Before she could reply the door opened and
Mr. Harding reappeared.
At lunch he carefully avoided any reference to
church matters, and they talked on general sub-
jects. Lady Sophia showed herself a nervously
intelligent and ardent woman. It seemed to Mal-
ling obvious that she was devoted to her husband,
“ wrapped up in ” him — to use an expressive
phrase. Any failure on his part upset her even
more than it did him. Secretly she must still be
quivering from the public distresses of the morn-
ing. But she now strove to aid the rector's ad-
34


ON THE THRESHOLD
mirable effort to be serene, and proved herself a
clever talker, and well informed on the events of
the day. Of her Malling got a fairly clear im-
pression.
But his impression of her husband was confused
and almost nebulous.
“Do you smoke?” asked Mr. Harding, when
lunch was over.
Malling said that he did.
“Then come and have a cigar in my study."
“Yes, do go,” said Lady Sophia. “A quiet
talk with you will rest my husband.”
And she went away, leaving the two men to-
gether.
Mr. Harding's study looked out at the back of
the house upon a tiny strip of garden. It was
very comfortably, though not luxuriously, fur-
nished, and the walls were lined with bookcases.
While his host went to a drawer to get the cigar-
box, Malling idly cast his eyes over the books in
the shelves nearest to him. He always liked to
see what a man had to read. The first book his
eyes rested upon was Myers's “Human Person-
ality.” Then came a series of works by Hudson,
including “Psychic Phenomena," then Oliver
Lodge's “Survival of Man," “ Man and the Uni-
verse," and “Life and Matter." Farther along
35


THE DWELLER
were works by Lowes Dickinson and Professor
William James, Bowden's “The Imitation of
Buddha" and Inge's “ Christian Mysticism.” At
the end of the shelf, bound in white vellum, was
Don Lorenzo Scupoli's “ The Spiritual Combat."
A drawer shut, and Malling turned about to
take the cigar which Mr. Harding offered him.
“The light is rather strong, don't you think?”
Mr. Harding said, when the two men had lit up.
“I'll lower the blind."
He did so, and they sat down in a sort of agree-
able twilight, aware of the blaze of an almost un-
English sun without.
Malling settled down to his cigar with a very
definite intention to clear up his impressions of
the rector. The essence of the man baffled him.
He had known more about Lady Sophia in five
minutes than he knew about Mr. Harding now,
although he had talked with him, walked with him,
heard him preach, and watched him intently while
he was doing so. His confusion and distress of
the morning were comprehended by Malling.
They were undoubtedly caused by the preacher's
painful consciousness of the presence and criticism
of one whom, apparently, he feared, or of whose
adverse opinion at any rate he was in peculiar
dread. But what was the character of the man
36


ON THE THRESHOLD
himself? Was he saint or sinner, or just ordi-
nary, normal man, with a usual allowance of faults
and virtues ? Was he a man of real force, or was
he painted lath? The Chichester episodes seemed
to point to the latter conclusion. But Malling was
too intelligent to take everything at its surface
value. He knew much of the trickery of man,
but that knowledge did not blind him to the
mystery of man. He had exposed charlatans.
Yet he had often said to himself, “ Who can ever
really expose another? Who can ever really ex-
pose himself?” Essentially he was the Seeker.
And he was seldom or never dogmatic. A friend
of his, who professed to believe in transmigration,
had once said of him, “I'm quite certain Malling
must have been a sleuth-hound once.” Now he
wished to get on a trail.
But Mr. Harding, who on the previous day had
been almost strangely frank about Henry Chi-
chester, to-day had apparently no intention to be
frank about himself. Though he had desired
Malling's company, now that they were together
alone he showed a reserve through which, Malling
believed, he secretly wanted to break. But some-
thing held him back. He talked of politics, gov-
ernment and church, the spread of science, the
follies of the day. And Malling got little nearer
37


THE DWELLER
L
to him. But presently Malling happened to men-
tion the modern craze for discussing intimately, or,
as a Frenchwoman whom he knew expressed it,
•" avec un luxe de détail,” matters of health.
“Yes, yes," responded Mr. Harding." It is
becoming almost objectionable, almost indecent.
At the same time the health of the body is a very
interesting subject because of its effect upon the
mind, even, so it seems sometimes, upon the very
nature of a man. Now I—" he struck the ash
off the end of his cigar — “was, I might almost
say, the victim of my stomach in the pulpit this
morning.”
“You were feeling ill ? "
“Not exactly ill. I have a strong constitution.
But I suffer at times from what the doctors call
nervous dyspepsia. It is a very tiresome com-
plaint, because it takes away for the time a man's
confidence in himself, reduces him to the worm-
level almost; and it gives him absurd ideas. Now
this morning in the pulpit I had an attack of pain
and uneasiness, and my nerve quite gave out.
You must have noticed it.”
“I saw that you were troubled by something."
“Something! It was that. My poor wife was
thoroughly upset by it. You know how sensitive
women are. To hold a crowd of people a man
38


ON THE THRESHOLD
must be strong and well, in full possession of his
powers. And I had a good subject.”
“Splendid.”
“I'll treat it again — treat it again.”
The rector shifted in his chair.
“Do you think,” he said after a pause, “that
it is possible for another, an outsider, to know a
man better than he knows himself ? ”
“ In some cases, yes," answered Malling.
“But — as a rule?”
“There is the saying that outsiders see most of
the game.”
“Then why should we mind when all are sub-
ject to criticism !” exclaimed Mr. Harding, forci.
bly.
Evidently he was startled by his own outburst;
for instantly he set about to attenuate it.
“What I mean is that men ought not to care
so much as most of them undoubtedly do what
others think about them.”
"It certainly is a sign of great weakness to
care too much," said Malling. “But some people
have a quite peculiar power of impressing their
critical thoughts on others. These spread uneasi-
ness around them like an atmosphere."
“I know, I know," said the rector, with an al-
most hungry eagerness. “Now surely one ought
39


THE DWELLER
to keep out of such an atmosphere, to get out of
it, and to keep out of it.”
“Why not?”
“But — but — how extraordinary it is, the diffi-
culty men have in getting away from things!
Have n't you noticed that?”
“Want of moral strength," said Malling, lacon-
ically.
“You think so ?”
“Don't you?"
At this moment there was a knock at the door.
Mr. Harding started.
“How impossible it is to get a quiet moment,"
he said with acute irritation. “Come in!” he
called out.
The footman appeared.
“Mr. Chichester has called to see you, sir."
The rector's manner changed. He beckoned
to the man to come into the room and to shut
the door. The footman, looking surprised,
obeyed.
“Where is he, Thomas ? " asked Mr. Harding,
in a lowered voice. “In the hall?”.
“No, sir. As you were engaged I showed him
up into the drawing-room.”
“Oh, very well. Thank you. You can go."
The footman went out, still looking surprised.
40


ON THE THRESHOLD
Just as he was about to close the door his master
said:
“Wait a moment!”
“Sir?”
“ Was her ladyship in the drawing-room?"
“No, sir. Her ladyship is lying down in the
boudoir."
“Ah. That will do."
The footman shut the door.
Directly he was gone the rector got up with an
air of decision.
“Mr. Malling," he said, “perhaps I ought to
apologize to you for treating you with the abrupt-
ness allowable in a friend, but surprising in an ac-
quaintance, indeed in one who is almost a stranger.
I do apologize. My only excuse is that I know
you to be a man of exceptional trend of mind and
unusual ability. I know this from Professor Step-
ton. But there's another thing. As I told you
yesterday, you are the only person of my acquaint-
ance who, having been fairly intimate with Henry
Chichester, has not seen anything of him during
the two years he has been with me as my coad-
jutor. Now what I want you to do is this:
will you go upstairs and spend a few minutes alone
with Chichester? Tell him I am detained, but am
coming in a moment. I'll see to it that you are
mo
re
41


THE DWELLER
nov
not interrupted. I'll explain to my wife. And,
of course, I rely on you to make the matter appear
natural to Chichester, not to rouse his — but I am
sure you understand. Will you do this for me?”
“ Certainly,” said Malling, with his most pro-
saic manner. “Why not?”
“Why not? Exactly. There's nothing ob-
jectionable in the matter. But —” Mr. Har-
ding's manner became very earnest, almost tragic.
“I'll ask you one thing — afterward you will tell
me the truth, exactly how Chichester impresses you
now in comparison with the impression you got of
him two years ago. You — you have no objec-
tion to promising to tell me?”
Malling hesitated.
“But is it quite fair to Chichester ?” he said.
“Suppose I obtained, for instance, a less favora-
ble, or even an unfavorable impression of him
now? You are his rector. I hardly think —”.
The rector interrupted him.
“I'll leave it to you,” he said. “Do just as
you please. But, believe me, I have a very strong
reason for wishing to know your opinion. I need
it. I need it.”
There was a lamentable sound in his voice.
“If I feel it is right I will give it to you," said
Malling
ora-
42


ON THE THRESHOLD
The rector opened the door of the study.
“You know your way? ”
“ Yes."
Malling went upstairs. Mr. Harding stood
watching him from below till he disappeared.


III
ncia-
VIHEN Malling opened the door of the
drawing-room Chichester was standing by
one of the windows, looking out into Onslow
Gardens. He turned round, saw Malling, and
uttered an exclamation.
“You are here!”
His light tenor voice sounded almost denuncia-
tory, as if he had a right to demand an explana-
tion of Malling's presence in Mr. Harding's
house, and as he came away quickly from the win-
dow, he repeated, with still more emphasis :
“You are here!"
“ Lunching — yes,” replied Malling, imper-
turbably.
He looked at Chichester and smiled.
“You have no objection, I hope ? ”.
His words and manner evidently brought the
curate to a sense of his own unconventionality.
He held out his hand.
“I beg your pardon. Your coming in sur-
prised me. I had no idea "— his blue eyes went
ed.
44


THE DWELLER
searchingly over Malling's calm face —" that you
could be here. I thought you and the rector were
complete strangers till I introduced you yester-
day.”
“So we were.”
Malling sat down comfortably on a sofa. His
action evidently recalled Chichester's mind to the
fact that he was to see the rector.
“Is n't the rector coming to see me?” he asked.
“ Almost directly. He's busy for a few min-
utes. We were smoking together in his study."
“You seem to — you seem to have made great
friends ! ” said Chichester, with a sort of forced
jocularity.
“Great friends! They 're hardly made in a
moment. I happened to be at church this morn-
ing
”
“At church — where?” exclaimed the curate.
“At St. Joseph's. And Mr. Harding kindly
asked me to lunch.”
“You were at church at St. Joseph's this morn-
ing?” said Chichester.
He sat down by Malling and stared into his
face.
“Did you — did you stay for the sermon ? "
“ Certainly. I came for the sermon. I had
never heard Mr. Harding preach."
45


THE DWELLER
“No? No? ell, what did you think of it?
What did you think of it?".
The curate spoke nervously, and seemed to Mal-
ling to be regarding him with furtive anxiety.
" It was obvious that Mr. Harding was n't in
good form this morning," Malling said. “He
explained the matter after lunch."
“He explained the matter!” said Chichester,
with a rising voice, in which there was an almost
shrill note of suspicion.
“Yes. He told me he was often the victim
of nervous dyspepsia, and that he had an attack
of it while in the pulpit this morning."
“He told you it was nervous dyspepsia !”
“I have just said so.”
The curate looked down.
“I advised him not to walk all the way home
yesterday,” he said gloomily. “You heard me."
"You think it was that?”
“He never will take advice from any one.
That's his — one of his great faults. Whatever
he thinks, whatever he says, must be right. You,
as a layman, probably have no idea how a certain
type of clergyman loves authority.”
This remark struck Malling as in such singu-
larly bad taste — considering where they were,
and that one of them was Mr. Harding's guest,
46


ON THE THRESHOLD
om
the other his curate — that only his secret desire
to make obscure things clear prevented him from
resenting it.
" It is one of the curses of the Church,” con-
tinued Chichester, “this passion for authority, for
ruling, for having all men under one's feet as it
were. If men would only listen, take advice, see
themselves as they really are, how much finer, how
much greater, they might become!”
“See themselves as others see them! Eh?”
said Malling. “But do you mean that a rector
should depend on his curate's advice rather than
on his own judgment?”
“And why not ? ” said Chichester. “Rector
— curate — archbishop — what does it matter ?
The point is not what rank in the hierarchy a man
has, but what, and how, does he see? A street
boy may perceive a truth that a king is blind to.
At that moment the street boy is greater than the
king. Do you deny it?".
“No," said Malling, amazed at the curate's
excitement, but showing no astonishment.
"But it's a terrible thing to see too clearly!”
continued Chichester, almost as if talking to him-
self, absorbed. “A terrible thing!”
He looked up at Malling, and almost solemnly
he said:
47


THE DWELLER
“Are you still going on with all those inves-
tigations ? "
“When I have any spare time, I often spend
some of it in that sort of work," answered Mal-
ling, lightly.
It was his way to make light of his research
work, and indeed he seldom mentioned it unless
he was forced to do so.
“Do you think it is right?” said Chichester,
earnestly.
“Right?"
“To strive to push one's way into hidden re-
gions.”
“If I did n't think it right I should n't do it,"
retorted Malling, but without heat.
“ And — for clergymen?” questioned Chiches-
ter, leaning forward, and dropping his small, thin
hands down between his knees.
“What do you mean?"
“Do you think it right for clergymen to in-
dulge themselves — for it is indulgence — in in-
vestigations, in attempts to find out more than God
has chosen to reveal to us?”
The man of science in Malling felt impatient
with the man of faith in Chichester.
“Does it never occur to you that the anima
mundi may have hidden certain things from the
WU
48


ON THE THRESHOLD
minds of mortals just in order to provide them
with a field to till?” he said, with a hint of sar-
casm. “Was n't the fact that the earth revolves
round the sun, instead of the sun round the earth,
hidden from every living creature till Galileo dis-
covered it? Do you think Galileo deserved our
censure?”
“Saul was punished for consulting the witch of
Endor," returned Chichester. “And the Roman
Catholic Church forbids her children to deal in
occult things.”
“You can't expect a man like me, a disciple of
Stepton, to take the Roman Catholic view of such
a matter."
“You are not a clergyman,” said Chichester.
Malling could not help smiling.
“You think the profession carries with it cer-
tain obligations,” he said. “No doubt it does.
But I shall never believe that one of them is to
shut your eyes to any fact in the whole scheme of
Creation. Harm can never come from truth.”
“If I could believe that!” Chichester cried out.
“Do you mean to tell me you don't believe
it?"
Chichester looked at Malling for quite a min-
ute without replying. Then he got up, and said,
with a changed voice and manner:
49


THE DWELLER
“If the rector does n't come to see me I shall
have to go. Sunday is not a holiday, you know,
for us clergymen."
He drew out his watch and looked at it.
"I shall have to go. I'm taking the Chil-
dren's Service.”
Malling got up too.
“Is it getting late ?” he said. “Perhaps —”
At this moment the door was gently opened
and Mr. Harding appeared.
“Oh, Chichester,” he said. “I'm sorry to
have kept you waiting. What is it? Would
you like to come to my study ? "
nust be off," said Malling. “May I say
good-by to Lady Sophia ? Or perhaps she is
resting and would rather not be disturbed.”
“I'm sure she would wish to say good-by to
you,” said the rector. “I'll just ask her.”
. He shot a quick glance from one man to the
other and went out of the room, leaving the door
open behind him.
Directly he was gone the curate said: “It has
been such a pleasure to me to renew my acquaint-
ance with you, Mr. Malling. Are you going to
be long in London ?”
“ All the season, I think."
50


ON THE THRESHOLD
“ Then I hope we may meet again soon, very
soon.”
He hesitated, put one hand in his pocket, and
brought out a card-case.
“I should like to give you my address.”
“And let me give you mine."
They exchanged cards.
“I expect you 'll be very busy," said the curate,
rather doubtfully.
Then he added, like a man urged on by some
strong, almost overpowering desire to do a thing
not quite natural to him:
“But I wish you could spare an evening to come
to dine with me. I live very modestly, of course.
I’m in rooms, in Hornton Street — do you know
it? — near Campden Hill? — Number 4a —
as you 'll see on my card. I wonder —”
“I shall be delighted to come.”
“When?"
“Whenever you are kind enough to ask me."
“ Could you come on Wednesday week? It's
so unfortunate, I have such a quantity of parish
engagements — that is my first evening free.”
“ Wednesday week, with pleasure.”
“At half after seven?”
“That will suit me perfectly."
51


THE DWELLER
“ And”— he looked toward the door —“I
shall be greatly obliged to you if you won't men-
tion to the rector the fact that you are coming.
He —"
“My wife's in the boudoir," said Mr. Har-
ding, coming into the room at this moment.
He stood by the door.
Malling shook hands with Chichester, and went
to say good-by to his hostess.
Mr. Harding shut the drawing-room door.
“ This is the way," he said. “Well, Mr. Mal-
ling? Well?”
“You mean you want to know — ?”
“Your impression of Chichester.”
The rector stopped on the landing.
“Do you find him much changed? ”
Malling shrugged his shoulders.
“Possibly — a little. He may have become
rather firmer in manner, a trifle more decisive."
“Firmer! More decisive, you say ! ”
“But surely that is only natural, working — as
he has done, I understand, under a man such as
yourself for two years."
“Such as myself! Then you think he's caught
something of my manner and way of looking at
things? You think —”.
“Really, it 's difficult to say,” interrupted Mal-
a man
52


ON THE THRESHOLD
sun-
ling. “He's developed, no doubt. But very few
people don't. I suppose you've trained him.”
“I!” said the rector. “I train a man like Chi-
chester!”
In his voice there was a bitter irony.
“Is that you, Mr. Malling?" said the voice of
Lady Sophia. “I was lying down with a book.
This is my little room.”
She looked pale, almost haggard, as the sun-
shine fell upon her through the open window.
Malling took his leave at once and she did not
attempt to detain him.
"I hope you 'll come again,” she said, as they
shook hands. “Perhaps on another Sunday morn-
ing, to church and lunch. I'll let you know.”
She said the last words with a significance which
made Malling understand that she did not wish
him to come to church at St. Joseph's again till she
gave him the word.
The rector let him out of the house. Not an-
other word was spoken about Henry Chichester.
As his guest walked away the rector stood, bare-
headed, looking after him, then, as Malling turned
the corner of the gardens, with a heavy sigh, and
the unconscious gesture of a man greatly troubled
in mind, he stepped back into his hall and shut the
door behind him.
53


IV
Isn
WEEK later, Malling paid a visit to Pro-
A fessor Stepton. He had heard nothing of
the Hardings and Chichester since the day of the
luncheon in Onslow Gardens, but they had seldom
been absent from his thoughts, and more than
once he had looked at the words, “Dine with
H. C.” in his book of engagements, and had
found himself wishing that “Hornton Street,
Wednesday” was not so far distant.
The professor lived in Westminster, in a house
with Adam ceilings, not far from the Houses of
Parliament. He was unmarried, and Malling
found him alone after dinner, writing busily in his
crowded library. He had but recently returned
from Paris, whither he had traveled to take part
in a series of "sittings " with the famous medium,
Mrs. Groeber.
In person the professor was odd, without being
specially striking. He was of medium height,
thin and sallow, with gray whiskers, thick gray
hair, bushy eyebrows, and small, pointed and in-
quiring features which gave him rather the as
or W
54


THE DWELLER
pect of a prying bird. His eyes were little and
sparkling. His mouth, strangely enough, was
ecclesiastical. He nearly always wore very light-
colored clothes. Even in winter he was often to
be seen clad in yellow-gray tweeds, a yellow silk
necktie, and a fawn-colored Homburg hat. And
no human being had ever encountered him in a
pair of boots unprotected by spats. One peculiar-
ity of his was that he did not possess a walking-
stick, another that he had never — so at least he
declared — owned a pocket-handkerchief, having
had no occasion to use one at any moment of his
long and varied life. When it rained he some-
times carried an umbrella, generally shut. At
other times he moved briskly along with his arms
swinging at his sides.
As Malling came in he looked up and nodded.
“ Putting down all about Mrs. Groeber,” he
observed.
“Anything new or interesting ?” asked Mal-
ling.
“ Just the usual manifestations, done in full
light, though.”
He laid aside his pen, while Malling sat down.
“A letter from Flammarion this morning," he
said. “But all about Halley's comet, of course.
What is it?"
55


THE DWELLER
Now the professor's “ What is it?" was not
general, but particular, and was at once under-
stood to be so by Malling. It did not mean
“Why have you come?” but “ Why are you ob-
sessed at this moment, and by what?”
“Let's have the mystery," he added, leaning
his elbows on his just dried manuscript, and rest-
ing his sharp little chin on his doubled fists.
Yet Malling had hinted at no mystery, and had
come without saying he was coming.
“You know a clergyman called Marcus Har-
ding?" said Malling.
“Of St. Joseph's. To be sure, I do."
“Do you know also his senior curate, Henry
Chichester?”
“No.”
“Have you heard of him?"
“Oh dear, yes. And I fancy I've seen him at
a distance."
“You heard of him from Harding, I sup-
CSO
pose."
“Exactly, and Harding's wife."
“Oh, from Lady Sophia!"
“ Who hates him."
“ Since when ? " said Malling, emphatically.
“I could n't say. But I was only aware of the
fact about a month ago.”
56


ON THE THRESHOLD
“Have you any reason to suppose that Har.
ding has been making any experiments ?”
“In church music, biblical criticism, or what? ”
“Say in psychical research?”
“No."
“ Or that Chichester has?”.
"No."
“ Has n't Harding ever talked to you on the
subject ? "
“He has tried to,” said the professor, rather
grimly.
“And you did n't encourage him?"
“When do I encourage clergymen to talk about
psychical research?”
Malling could not help smiling.
“I have some reason — at least I believe so
– to suppose that Harding and his curate Chi-
chester have been making some experiments in di-
rections not entirely unknown to us," he observed.
“And what is more "- he paused — "what is
more,” he continued, " I am inclined to think that
those experiments may have been crowned with
a success they little understand.”
Down went the professor's fists, his head was
poked forward in Malling's direction, and his
small eyes glittered almost like those of a glutton
who sees a feast spread before him.
57


THE DWELLER
“ The experiments of two clergymen in psychi-
cal research crowned with success!” he barked out.
“If so, I shall see what I can do in the pulpit —
the Abbey pulpit!”
He got up, and walking slightly sidewise, with
his hands hanging, and his fingers opening and
shutting, went over to a chair close to Malling's.
“Get on!” he said.
“I'm going to. I want your advice."
When Malling had finished what he had to say,
the professor, who had interrupted him two or
three times to ask pertinent questions, put his
hands on his knees and thrust his head forward.
“You said you wanted advice," he said.
“What about ? "
“I wish you to advise me how I had better pro-
ceed.”
“You really think the matter important ? ”
asked the professor.
Malling looked slightly disconcerted.
“ You don't?" he said.
“ You are deducing a great deal from not very
much. That's certain," observed the professor.
"You never knew Chichester," retorted Mal-
ling. “I did — two years ago."
“Suppose you are right, suppose these two rev-
erend gentlemen have done something such as you
58


ON THE THRESHOLD
suppose — and that there has been a result, a curi-
ous result, what have we to do with it? Tell me
that."
“You mean that I have no right to endeavor to
make a secret investigation into the matter. But
I'm positive both the men want help from me.
I don't say either of them will ask it. But I'm
certain both of them want it.”
“Two clergymen!” said the professor. “Two
clergymen! That's the best of it — if there is
an it, which there may not be."
“Harding spoke very warmly of you."
“Good-believing man! Now, I do wonder
what he's been up to. I do wonder. Perhaps
he'd have told me but for my confounded habit
of sarcasm, my way of repelling the amateur-
repelling!” His arms flew out. “There's so
much silliness beyond all bearing, credulity beyond
all the patience of science. Table-turning women,
feminine men! 'The spirits guide me, Professor,
in every smallest action of my life!'- Wuff! —
the charlatan battens and breeds. And the bile
rises in one till Carlyle on his worst day might
have hailed one as a brother bilious, and so de-
nunciatory — Jeremiah nervously dyspeptic! And
when you opened your envelop and drew out a
couple of clergymen, really, really! But perhaps
59


THE DWELLER
I was in a hurry! Clergymen in a serious fix, too,
because of unexpected and not understood success!
And I talk of repelling the amateur!”.
Suddenly he paused and, with his bushy eye-
brows twitching, looked steadily at Malling.
“I leave it to you,” he said. “Take your own
line. But don't forget that, if there's anything
in it, development will take place in the link. The
link will be a center of combat. The link will be
an interesting field for study."
“ The link?” said Malling, interrogatively.
“Goodness gracious me! Her ladyship! Her
ladyship!” cried out the professor. “What are
you about, Malling?”
And he refused to say another word on the mat-
ter till Malling, after much more conversation on
other topics, got up to go. Then, accompanying
him to the front door, the professor said:
“You know I think it's probably all great non-
sense.”
“ What?”
“Your two black-coated friends. You bustle
along at such a pace. Remember, I have made
more experiments than you have, and I have never
come upon an exactly similar case. I don't know
whether such a thing can be. No more do you —
you've guessed. Now, guessing is not at all scien-
60


ON THE THRESHOLD
tific. At the same time you've proved you can
be patient. If there is anything in this it 's pro-
foundly interesting, of course.”
“Then you advise me — ?"
"If in doubt, study Lady Sophia. Good
night."
As Malling went away into the darkness he
heard the professor snapping out to himself, as
he stood before his house bareheaded:
“Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings!
Très bien! But — reverend gentlemen of St.
Joseph's! I shall have to look for telergic power
in my acquaintance Randall Cantuar, when I want
it! By Jove!”
“If in doubt, study Lady Sophia.” As Mal-
ling thought over these parting words, he realized
their wisdom and wondered at his own short-sight-
edness.
• He had sent his cards to Onslow Gardens after
the luncheon with the Hardings. He wished now
he had called and asked for Lady Sophia. But
doubtless he would have an opportunity of being
with her again. If she did not offer him one, he
would make one for himself.
He longed to see her with Henry Chichester."
During the days that elapsed before “Horn-
ton Street, Wednesday" he considered a certain
61


THE DWELLER
matter with sedulous care. His interview with
Stepton had not been fruitless. Stepton always
made an effect on his mind. Casual and jerky
though his manner was, obstinate as were his
silences at certain moments, fragmentary as was
his speech, he had a way of darting at the essential
that set him apart from most men. Malling re-
membered a horrible thing he had once seen in the
Sahara, a running gazelle killed by a falcon. The
falcon, rising high in the blue air, had followed
the gazelle, had circled, poised, then shot down
and, with miraculous skill, struck into the gazelle's
eye. Unerringly from above it had chosen out of
the vast desert the home for its cruel beak. Some-
what in similar fashion, so Malling thought, Step-
ton rose above things, circled, poised, sank, and
struck into the heart of the truth unerringly.
Perhaps he was able to do this because he was
able to mount, falconwise!
Malling would have given a good deal to have
Stepton with him in this affair, despite the profes-
sor's repellent attitude toward the amateur. Well,
if there really was anything in it, if strangeness
rose out of the orthodox bosom of St. Joseph's, if
he — Malling — found himself walking in thick
darkness, he meant to bring Stepton into the mat-
ter, whether at Stepton's desire or against it.
- 62


ON THE THRESHOLD
Meanwhile he would see if there was enlighten-
ment in Hornton Street.
On the Wednesday the spell of fine weather
which had made London look strangely vivacious
broke up, and in the evening rain fell with a gentle
persistence. Blank grayness took the town. A
breath as of deep autumn was in the air. And
the strange sadness of cities, which is like no other
sadness, held the spirit of Evelyn Malling as he
walked under an umbrella in the direction of Ken-
sington High Street. He walked, to shake off
depression. But in his effort he did not succeed.
All that he saw deepened his melancholy; the sol-
diers starting out vaguely from barracks, not
knowing what to do, but free for a time, and
hoping, a little heavily, for some adventure to break
the military monotony of their lives; the shop-
girls, also in hope of something to take them out
of themselves ” — pathetic desire of escape from
the little prison, where the soul sits, picking its
oakum sometimes, in its cell of flesh! — young
men making for the parks, workmen for the pub-
lic houses, an old woman, in a cap, peering out of
an upper window in Prince's Gate; Italians with
an organ, and a monkey that looked as if it were
dying of nostalgia; women hurrying — whither?
— with anxious faces, and bodies whose very
63


THE DWELLER
shapes, and whose every movement, suggested,
rather proclaimed, worry.
Malling knew it was the rain, the possessive
grayness, which troubled his body to-night, and
through his body troubled his spirit. His nostrils
inhaled the damp, and it seemed to go straight into
his essence, into the mystery that was he. His
eyes saw no more blue, and it was as if they drew
a black shutter over all the blue in his heart, blot-
ting it out. People became doomed phantoms, be-
cause the weather had changed and because Lon-
don knows how to play Cassandra to the spirit
of many a man. To Malling, as he presently
turned to the right, Hornton Street looked like
an alley leading straight to the pit of despair, and
when he tapped on the blistered green door of the
small house where the curate lived, it was as if he
tapped seeking admittance to all the sorrowful
things that had been brought into being to beset
his life with blackness.
A neat servant-girl opened the door. There
was a smell of roast mutton in the passage. So
far well. Malling took off his hat and coat, hung
them up on a hook indicated by the plump red
hand of the maid, and then followed her upstairs.
The curate was in possession of the first floor.
64


ON THE THRESHOLD
Malling knew that it would be a case of fold-
ing-doors and perhaps of curtains of imitation
lace. It was a case of folding-doors. But there
was a dull green hue on the walls that surely be-
spoke Henry Chichester's personal taste. There
were bookcases, there were mezzotints, there were
engravings of well-known pictures, and there were
armchairs not covered with horsehair. There
was also a cottage piano, severely nude. In the
center of the room stood a small square table cov-
ered with a cloth and laid for two persons.
“I'll tell Mr. Chichester, sir."
The maid went out. From behind the fold-
ing-doors came to Malling's ears the sound of
splashing water, then a voice saying, certainly to
the maid, “Thank you, Ellen, I will come.”
And in three minutes Chichester was in the room,
apologizing.
“I was kept late in the parish. There's a
good deal to do.”
“You 're not overworked ? ” asked Malling.
“Do I look so ? ” said Chichester, quickly.
He turned round and gazed at himself in an
oval Venetian mirror which was fixed to the wall
just behind him. His manner for a moment was
oddly absorbed as he examined his face.
65


THE DWELLER
“ London life tells on one, I suppose,” he said,
again turning. “We change, of course, in ap-
pearance as we go on.”
His blue eyes seemed to be seeking something
in Malling's impenetrable face
“Do you think,” he said, “I am much altered
since we used to meet two years ago? It would
of course be natural enough if I were."
Malling looked at him for a minute steadily.
“In appearance, you mean?"
“Of course."
“To-night it seems to me that you have altered
a good deal.”
“To-night?” said the curate, as if with anx-
iety.
“ If there is any change,— and I think there is,
- it seems to me more apparent to-night than it
was when I saw you the other day.”
Ellen, the maid, entered the room bearing a tray
on which was a soup-tureen.
“Oh, dinner !” said Chichester. “Let us sit
down. You won't mind simple fare, I hope.
We are having soup, mutton,- I am not sure what
else."
“ Stewed fruit, sir," interpolated Ellen.
"To be sure! Stewed fruit and custard.
Open the claret, Ellen, please."
66


ON THE THRESHOLD
“Have you been in these rooms long?" asked
Malling, as they unfolded their napkins.
“Two years. All the time I have been at St.
Joseph's. The rector told me of them. The
curate who preceded me had occupied them.”
“ What became of him?”.
“He has a living in Northampton now. But
when he left he had nothing in view."
“He was tired of work at St. Joseph's?”.
“I don't think he got on with the rector.”
The drip of the rain became audible outside,
and a faint sound of footsteps on the pavement.
“ Possibly I shall not stay much longer," he
added.
“No doubt you 'll take a living."
“I don't know. I don't know. But, in any
case, I may not stay much longer — perhaps.
That will do, Ellen; you may go and fetch the
mutton. Put the claret on the table, please.”
When the maid was gone, he added:
“One does n't want a servant in the room lis-
tening to all one says. As she was standing be-
hind me I had forgotten she was here. How it
rains to-night! I hate the sound of rain.”
“It is dismal,” said Malling, thinking of his
depression while he had walked to Hornton
Street.
67


THE DWELLER
“Do you mind,” said the curate, slightly low-
ering his voice, “if I speak rather — rather con-
fidentially to you?”
“Not at all, if you wish to "
“Well, now, you are a man of the world,
you 've seen many people. I wish you would tell
me something."
" What is it?”
Ellen appeared with the mutton. As soon as
she had put it on the table and departed, Chiches-
ter continued:
"How does Mr. Harding strike you? What
impression does he make upon you ?”.
Eagerness, even more, something that was
surely anxiety, shone in his eyes as he asked the
question.
“He's a very agreeable man."
“Of course, of course! Would you say he was
a man to have much power over others, his fellow-
men ? "
“Speaking quite confidentially —”
“Nothing you say shall ever go beyond us
two."
“ Then - I don't know that I should.”
“He does n't strike you as a man of power?”
“In the pulpit?”
“ And out of it — especially out of it?"
68


ON THE THRESHOLD
“He may have been. But — perhaps he has
lost in power. Dispersion, you know, does not
make for strength.”
Suddenly the curate became very pale.
“Dispersion — you say!” he almost stam-
mered.
As if to cover some emotion, he looked at Mal-
ling's plate, and added :
“Have some more ? You won't? Then —”
He got up and rang the bell. Ellen re-
appeared, cleared away, and put the stewed fruit
and custard on the table.
“ Bring the coffee in ten minutes, Ellen. I
won't ring."
“Very well, sir.”
“Dispersion,” said Chichester to Malling in
a firmer voice, as Ellen disappeared.
“ Concentration makes for strength. Mr.
Harding seems to me mentally — what shall I
say ?— rather torn in pieces, as if preyed upon by
some anxiety. Now, if you 'll allow me to be
personal, I should say that you have greatly gained
in strength and power since I knew you two years
ago."
“You — you observe a difference?" asked
Chichester, apparently in great perturbation.
“ A striking difference."
69


THE DWELLER
“And — and would you say I looked a hap-
pier, as well as a — a stronger man?"
“I could n't with truth say that."
“Very few of us are happy," said Chichester,
with trembling lips. “Poor miserable sinners as
we are! And we clergymen, who set up to direct
others —” he broke off.
He seemed greatly, strangely, moved.
“You must forgive me. I have had a very hard
day's work!” he murmured. “The coffee will
do me good. Let us sit in the armchairs, and
Ellen can clear away. I wish I had two sitting-
rooms."
He rang to make Ellen hurry. Till she came
Malling talked about Italian pictures and looked
at the curate's books. When she had cleared
away, left the coffee, and finally departed, he sat
down with an air of satisfaction. Chichester did
not smoke, but begged Malling to light up, and
gave him a cigar.
“Coffee always does one good,” he said. “It
acts directly on the heart, and seems to strengthen
the whole body. I have had a trying day.”
"You look tired," said Malling.
The fact was that Chichester had never recov-
ered the color he had so suddenly lost when they
were discussing Mr. Harding.
70


ON THE THRESHOLD
“It's no wonder if I do," rejoined Chichester,
in a voice that sounded hopeless.
He drank some coffee, seemed to make a strong
effort to recover himself, and, with more energy,
said:
“I asked you here because I wanted to renew
a pleasant acquaintanceship, but also — you won't
think me discourteous, I know — because — well,
I had a purpose in begging you to come.”
“Won't you tell me what it is ?”
The curate shifted in his armchair, clasped and
unclasped his hands. A mental struggle was evi-
dently going on within him. Indeed, during the
whole evening Malling had received from him a
strong impression of combat, of confusion.
“I wanted to continue the discussion we began
at Mr. Harding's the other day. You remember,
I asked you not to tell him you were coming ? "
“Yes."
“I think it's best to keep certain matters
private. People so easily misunderstand one.
And the rector has rather a jealous nature.”
Malling looked at his companion without speak-
ing. At this moment he was so strongly inter-
ested that he simply forgot to speak. Never, even
at a successful sitting when, the possibility of
trickery having been eliminated, a hitherto hidden
71


ON THE THRESHOLD
“But don't we all need a crutch to help us along
on the path of life?”
" What! You, a clergyman, think that it is
good to bolster up truth with lies ? " said Malling,
with genuine scorn.
“I did n't say that.”
“ You implied it, I think.”
"Perhaps if you had worked among men and
women as much as I have you would know how
much they need. If you went abroad, say to Italy,
and saw how the poor, ignorant people live happily
oftentimes by their blind belief in the efficacy of the
saints, would you wish to tear it from them?”
“I think we should live by the truth, and I
would gladly strike away a lie from any human
being who was using it as a crutch.”
“I thought that once,” said Chichester.
The words were ordinary enough, but there was
something either in the way they were said, or in
Chichester's face as he said them, that made Mal-
ling turn cold.
To cover his unusual emotion, which he was
ashamed of, and which he greatly desired to hide
from his companion, he blew out a puff of cigar
smoke, lifted his cup, and drank the rest of his
coffee.
73


THE DWELLER -
“May I have another cup ?” he said. “It's
excellent.”
The coffee-pot was on the table. Chichester
poured out some more.
“I will have another cup, too,” he said.
“How it wakes up the mind.”
He glanced at Malling and added:
“ Almost terribly sometimes.”
“Yes. But — going back to our subject —
don't you still think that men should live by the
truth?"
“I think," began Chichester -“I think —”.
It seemed as if something physical prevented
him from continuing. He swallowed, as if forc-
ing something down his throat.
“I think,” he got out at last, " that few men
know how terrible the face of truth can be."
His own countenance was contorted as he spoke,
as if he were regarding something frightful.
"I think ”- he turned right round in his chair
to confront Malling squarely -“ that you do not
know."
For the first time he completely dominated Mal-
ling, Chichester the gentle, cherubic clergyman,
whom Malling had thought of as good, but weak,
and certainly as a negligible quantity. He domi-
nated, because at that moment he made Malling
74


ON THE THRESHOLD
feel as if he had some great possession of knowl-
edge which Malling lacked.
“And you?” said Malling. “Do you
know?”
The curate's lips worked, but he made no an-
swer.
Malling was aware of a great struggle in his
mind, as of a combat in which two forces were
engaged. He got up, walked to the window, and
stood as if listening to the rain.
“If only Stepton were here!” thought Malling.
There was a truth hidden from him, perhaps
partly divined, obscurely half seen, but not thor-
oughly understood, as a whole invisible. Stepton
would be the man to elucidate it, Malling thought.
It lured him on, and baffled him.
“How it rains !” said the curate at last, with-
out turning.
He bent down and opened the small window.
The uneasy, almost sinister noise of rain in dark-
ness entered the room, with the soft smell of
moisture.
“Do you mind if we have a little air ?” he
added.
“I should like it," said Malling.
Chichester came back and sat down again
opposite Malling. His expression had now quite
Sure.
75


THE DWELLER
changed. He looked calmer, gentler, weaker, and
much more uninteresting. Crossing his legs, and
folding his thin hands on his knees, he began to
talk in his light tenor voice. And he kept the
conversation going on church music, sacred art in
Italy, and other eminently safe and respectable
topics till it was time for Malling to go.
Only when he was letting his guest out into
the night did he seem troubled once more. He
clasped Malling's hand in his, as if almost un-
aware that he was doing so, and said with some
hesitation:
“Are you — are you going to see the rector
again?”
“Not that I know of,” said Malling, speaking
the strict truth, and virtually telling a lie at the
same time.
For he was determined, if possible, to see Mr.
Harding, and that before very long.
“If I may say so," Chichester said, shifting
from one foot to another and looking down at
the rain-sodden pavement, “I would n't see
him.”
“May I ask you why?”.
“You may get a wrong impression. Two years
ago he was another man. Strangers, of course,
may not know it, not realize it. But we who
76


THE DWELLER
now conveyed the impression of a man ca-
pable, if he chose, of imposing himself on others.
Formerly he had been the wax that receives the
impress. But whereas formerly he had been a con-
tented man, obviously at peace with himself and
with the world, now he was haunted by some great
anxiety, by some strange grief, or perhaps even by
some fear.
“Few men know how terrible the face of the
truth can be.”
Chichester had said that.
Was he one of the few men?
And was that why now, as Malling walked
home in the darkness and rain, he felt himself
humbled, diminished ?
For Malling loved knowledge and thought men
should live by it. Had truth a Medusa face, still
would he have desired to look into it once, would
have been ready to endure a subsequent turning to
stone.
That Chichester should perhaps have seen what
he had not seen – that troubled him, even hum-
bled him.
Some words of Professor Stepton came back to
his mind: “If there's anything in it, develop-
ment will take place in the link.” And those last
words: “If in doubt, study Lady Sophia."
lui
See
78


ON THE THRESHOLD
Malling was in doubt. Why not follow Step-
ton's advice? Why not study Lady Sophia ?
He resolved to do it. And with the resolve
came to him a sense of greater well-being. The
worm-sensation departed from him. He lifted his
head and walked more briskly.


O n the night following the dinner in Hornton
Street, Malling went to the Covent Garden
Opera House to hear “La Traviata.” The well-
worn work did not grasp the attention of a man
who was genuinely fond of the music of Richard
Strauss, with its almost miraculous intricacies, and
who was willingly captive to Debussy. He looked
about the house from his stall, and very soon
caught sight of Lady Mansford, Lady Sophia's
sister-in-law, in a box on the Grand Tier. Mal-
ling knew Lady Mansford. He resolved to pay
her a visit, and as soon as the curtain was down,
and Tetrazzini had tripped before it, smiling not
unlike a good-natured child, he made his way up-
stairs, and asked the attendant to tap at a door on
which was printed, “The Earl of Mansford.”
The man did so, and opened the door, showing
a domestic scene highly creditable to the much
maligned British aristocracy — Lord Mansford
seated alone with his wife, in evidently amicable
conversation.
After a few polite words he made Malling sit
80


THE DWELLER
down beside her, and, saying he would have a
cigarette in the foyer, he left them together.
Lady Mansford was a pretty, dark woman, of
the slightly irresponsible and little bird type. She
willingly turned her charmingly dressed head and
chirped when noticed, and she was generally no
ticed because of her beauty. Now she chirped of
Ceylon, where Malling had been, and then, more
vivaciously, of Parisian milliners, where she had
been. From these allied subjects Malling led her
on to a slightly different topic — religion.
“I went to St. Joseph's last Sunday week,” he
presently said.
"St. who — what?” said Lady Mansford, who
was busy with her opera-glasses, and had just no-
ticed that Lady Sindon, a bird-like rival of hers,
had changed the color of her hair, fortunately to
her — Lady Sindon's — disadvantage.
“To St. Joseph's, to hear your brother-in-law
preach."
“ It does n't do at all,” murmured Lady Mans-
ford. “ It makes her look Chinese."
“You said — ?"
“Mollie Sindon. But what were you talking
about? Do tell me.” She laid down her glasses.
“I was saying that I went to church last Sunday
week."
81


THE DWELLER
“Why?”
"To hear your brother-in-law preach at St.
Joseph's.”
“ Marcus !” exclaimed Lady Mansford.
She pursed her lips.
"I don't go to St. Joseph's. Poor Sophy!
I'm sorry for her.”
“I lunched with Lady Sophia after the service.”
“Did you? Is n't it sad?”
“ Sad! I don't quite understand ? " said Mal-
ling, interrogatively
“The change in him. Of course people say
it's drink. Such nonsense! But they must say
something, must n't they ?”
“Is Mr. Harding so very much changed?"
“Do you mean to say you did n't notice it?"
“I never met him till within the last fortnight.”
“He is transformed — simply. He might have
risen to anything, with his energy, his ambition,
and his connections. And now! But the worst
of it is no one can make out why it is. Even
Sophia and Isinglass — my husband, you know !
— have n't an idea. And it gets worse every day.
Last Sunday I hear his sermon was too awful, a
mere muddle of adjectives, such as one hears in
Hyde Park, I believe. I never liked Marcus par-
ticularly. I always thought him too autocratic,
82


THE DWELLER
noticed. Malling took in to supper a Mrs.
Armitage, a great friend of Lady Sophia's, and
she made no secret of the fact that Lady Sophia
was greatly distressed.
“ I thought she would have been here to-night,"
Mrs. Armitage said. “But she is n't. I suppose
she felt she could n't face it. So many of his
congregation are here, or so many who were in his
congregation.”
“The church was crammed to the doors last
Sunday week when he preached," observed Mal-
a
* som
W CIC
ling.
“Was it? Curiosity, I suppose. It certainly
can't have been the intellectual merit of the
sermon. I heard it was quite deplorable. But
last Sunday's, I was told, was worse still. No
continuity at all, and the church not full. People
say the curate, Mr. Chichester, who often preaches
in the evening, is making a great effect, completely
cutting out his rector. And he used to be almost
unbearably dull.”
“Will you have a quail ? "
“Please. You might give me two. My doc-
tor says if I sit up late — thank you ! ”
“I've never heard Mr. Chichester preach,"
said Malling.
84


ON THE THRESHOLD
“He seems to have come on marvelously, to be
quite another man.”
" Quite another man, does he ? "
“Yes. It's very trying for the Hardings nat-
urally. If it continues I think there will have to
be a change. I don't think things can go on as they
are. My friend Sophia won't be able to stand it.”
“You mean — the contrast ? ”.
“ Between her husband and Mr. Chichester.
She's very highly strung and quite worships her
husband; though, between you and me, I think
rather in the slave spirit. But some women are
like that. They can't admire a man unless he
beats them. Not that Mr. Harding ever dreamed
of doing such a thing to Sophia, of course. But
his will had to be law in everything. You know
the type of man! It's scarcely my idea of what a
clergyman should be. I think a man who pro-
fesses to direct the souls of others should be more
gentle and unselfish, especially to his wife. An-
other quail ? Well, really, I think perhaps I will.
They are so absurdly small this season, are n't
they? There's scarcely anything on them.”
So that minute fraction of the world that knew
of the existence of the Hardings began to utter
itself concerning them, and Malling was fortified
85


THE DWELLER
in his original belief which he had expressed to
Professor Stepton.
Among his many experiments made in connec-
tion with psychical research those which had
interested him the most had been those in which
the mystery of the human will had seemed to be
deeply involved. Malling was essentially a psy-
chologist. And man was to him the great mys-
tery, because man contained surely something
that belonged to, that was lent to, man, as it were,
by another, the mind beyond, the anima mundi.
When Malling drew mentally, or spiritually, very
near to any man, however rude, however humble,
he always had the feeling that he was approach-
ing holy ground. Hidden beneath his generally
imperturbable exterior, sunk beneath the surface
incredulity of his mind, there was the deep sense
of mighty truths waiting the appointed day of
proclamation. Surely, he often thought, if there
is God in anything, in the last rays of the sunset,
in the silence of night upon the sea, in the
waking of spring among the forests and the gar-
dens, in the song of the nightingale which knows
not lovers are listening, there is God in the will
of man.
And when he made investigations into the ac-
tion of will upon will, or of will — as it seemed -
WS
86


ON THE THRESHOLD
upon matter, he was held, as he was not held by
the appearance of so-called spirit faces and spirit
forms, even when he could not connect these
with trickery which he knew how to expose. Per-
haps, however, his incredulity in regard to these
latter phenomena was incurable, though he did not
know it. For he knew nearly all the devices of
the charlatans. And when the so-called spirits
came, the medium was always entranced, that is,
apparently will-less, and so to Malling not inter-
esting.
Now, from what Harding and Chichester had
said to him, and from what he had observed for
himself, Malling believed that the two clergymen
must have had sittings together, probably with the
usual tremendous object of the ignorant amateur,
that merely of communicating with the other
world. Considering who the two men were, Mal-
ling believed that in all probability they had sat
alone and in secret. He also felt little doubt that
from Mr. Harding's brain had come the suggestion
of these practices, that his will had led Chichester
on to them. Although he had not known the
rector two years ago, he had gathered sufficient
testimony to the fact that he had been a man of
powerful, even perhaps of tyrannical, tempera-
ment, formed rather to rule than to be ruled.
87


THE DWELLER
He knew that Chichester, on the contrary, had
been gentle, kindly, yielding, and of somewhat
weak, though of very amiable, nature. The
physique of the two men accorded with these
former temperaments. Harding's commanding
height, large frame, big, powerful face and head,
rather hard gray eyes, even his large white teeth,
his bony, determined hands, his firmly treading
feet, suggested force, a dominating will, the ca-
pacity, and the intention, to rule. Henry Chi-
chester's fleshly envelop, on the other hand, cheru-
bic, fair, and delicate, his blue eyes, small bones,
the shape of forehead and chin, the line of the
lips, hinted at — surely more than that, surely
stated mildly — the existence within it of a nature
retiring, meek, and ready to be ruled by others.
No wonder if Chichester had been, as Lady Mans-
ford had said, completely under the rector's thumb,
no wonder if he had been unable to “ call his soul
his own" and had “worshiped Marcus."
Yes, if there had been these secret sittings by
these two men, it was Harding who had persuaded
Chichester to take part in them. And what had
these sittings led to, what had been their result?
The ignorant outsider, the hastily skeptical, of
course would say that there could have been no
result. Malling, knowing more, knew better.
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ON THE THRESHOLD
He had seen strange cases of temporary confusion
of a man's will brought about by sittings, of what
had seemed temporary change even of a man's
nature. When a hitherto sane man goes mad he
often becomes the opposite of what he was.
Those whom he formerly loved he specially
singles out for hatred. That which he delighted
to do he shrinks from with horror. Once good-
natured, he is now of an evil temper, once gentle,
he is fiercely obstinate, once gay, he cowers and
weeps. So Malling had known a man, while re-
taining his sanity, to be transformed by the ap-
parently trivial fact of sitting at a table with a
friend, and placing his hands upon it with the
hands of another man. He himself had sat with
an Oxford friend, — who in later sittings became
entranced, and at the very first experiment this
man had said to him, “ It 's so strange, now that
I am sitting with you like this I feel filled with
hatred toward you.” This hatred, which had
come upon this man at every successive sitting, had
always faded away when the sitting was over.
But was it certain that the feelings generated in
sittings never persisted after they were broken
up? Was it certain that in every case the waters
that had been mysteriously troubled settled into
their former stillness ?


THE DWELLER
Harding and Chichester, for instance! Had
the strong man troubled the waters of the weaker
man's soul, and were those waters still agitated?
That was perhaps possible. But Malling thought
it was possible also, and he had suggested this to
Professor Stepton, that the weaker man had in-
fused some of his weakness, his self-doubtings, his
readiness to be affected by the opinion of others,
into his dominating companion. Malling believed
it possible that the wills of the two clergymen, in
some mysterious and inexplicable way, had
mingled during their sittings, and that they had
never become completely disentangled. If this
were so, the result was a different Harding from
the former Harding, and a different Henry Chi-
chester from the former Henry Chichester.
What puzzled Malling, however, was the fact,
if fact it were, that the difference in each man was
not diminishing, but increasing.
Could they be continuing the sittings, if there had
ever been sittings ? All was surmise. As the pro-
fessor had said, he, Malling, was perhaps de-
ducing a good deal from very little. And yet was
he? His instinct told him he was not. Yet there
might no doubt be some ordinary cause for the
change in Mr. Harding. Some vice, such as love
of drink, or morphia, something that disintegrates
90


ON THE THRESHOLD
was
a man, might have laid its claw upon him.
That was possible. What seemed to Malling
much more unaccountable was the extraordinary
change in the direction of strength in Chichester.
And the relations between the two men, if indeed
the curate had once worshiped his rector, were
mysteriously transformed. For now, was it not
almost as if something of Harding in Chichester
watched, criticized, Chichester in Harding ?
But now — to study Lady Sophia! For if there
was really anything in Malling's curious supposi-
tion, the woman must certainly be strangely af-
fected. He remembered the expression in her
eyes when her husband was preaching, her manner
when she spoke of the curate as one of her hus-
band's swans.
And he longed to see her again. She had said
that she hoped he would come again to St. Joseph's
and to her house, but he knew well that any such
desire in her had arisen from her wounded pride in
her husband. She wished Malling to know what
the rector could really do. When she thought
that the rector had recovered his former powers,
his hold upon the minds of men, then she would
invite Malling to return to St. Joseph's, but not
before.
And when would that moment come ?
91


THE DWELLER
It might not come for weeks, for months. It
might never come. Malling did not mean to
await it. Nevertheless he did not want to do any-
thing likely to surprise Lady Sophia, to lead her
to think that he had any special object in view in
furthering his acquaintance with her.
While he was casting about in his mind what
course to take, chance favored him.
Four days later, when he was strolling round
the rooms in Burlington House, he saw not far
in front of him the tall and restless figure of a
woman. She was alone. For some time Malling
did not recognize her. She did not turn suffi-
ciently for him to see her face, and her almost
feverish movements, though they attracted and
fixed his attention, did not strike him as familiar.
His thought of her, as he slowly followed in the
direction she was taking, was, “What a difficult
woman that would be to live with !” For the
hands were never still; the gait was uneasy;
nervousness, almost a sort of pitiful irritation,
seemed expressed by her every movement.
In the big room this woman paused before the
picture of the year, which happened to be a very
bad one, and Malling, coming up, at last recog-
nized her as Lady Sophia Harding.
He took off his hat. She seemed startled, but
seen
92


ON THE THRESHOLD
greeted him pleasantly, and entered into a discus-
sion of the demerits which fascinate the crowd.
“You prefer seeing pictures alone, perhaps ? "
said Malling, presently.
“ Indeed I don't,” she answered. “I was
coming to-day with my husband. We drove up
together. But at the last moment he thought he
remembered something,— some appointment with
Mr. Chichester,— and left me."
There were irony and bitterness in her voice.
“ He said he'd come back and meet me in the
tea-room presently," she added.
“ Shall we go there and wait for him ? " asked
Malling.
“But I'm afraid I'm taking up your time.”
“I have no engagements this afternoon. I
shall enjoy a quiet talk with you."
“ It 's very good of you.”
They descended, and sat down in a quiet corner.
In the distance a few respectable persons were
slowly eating bath-buns with an air of fashion,
their duly marked catalogues laid beside them on
marble.
Far-off waiters, standing with their knees bent,
conversed in undertones. A sort of subterranean
depression, peculiar to this fastness of Burlington
House, brooded over the china and the provisions.
93


THE DWELLER
“It reminds me of the British Museum tea-
room,” said Lady Sophia. “Here is tea! What
a mercy! Modern pictures sap one's little
strength."
She looked haggard, and was obviously on the
edge of her nerves.
“ Marcus might have come in,” she added.
“But of course he would n't — or could n't."
“Does n't he care for pictures ? "
She slightly shrugged her shoulders.
“He used to. But I don't know that he does
now."
IS
“I suppose he has a tremendous amount to do.”
“He used to do much more at Liverpool. If
a man wishes to come to the front he must n't sit
in an armchair with folded hands."
There was a sharp sound of criticism in her
voice which astonished Malling. At the luncheon,
only about a fortnight ago, she had shown herself
plainly as the adoring wife, anxious for her hus-
band's success, nervously hostile to any one who
interfered with it, who stood between him and the
homage of his world. Now Malling noted, or
thought he noted, a change in her mental attitude.
He was instantly on the alert.
“I'm sure that's the last thing Mr. Harding
would do," he said.
94


ON THE THRESHOLD
She shot a glance at him out of her discontented
dark eyes.
“Are you?" she said.
And sarcasm crept in the words. She gave to
Malling at this moment the impression of a woman
so strung up as to be not her natural self, so
tormented by some feeling, perhaps long repressed,
that her temperament was almost furiously seeking
an outlet, knowing instinctively, perhaps, that only
there lay its salvation.
“His record proves it," said Malling, with se-
renely smiling assurance.
Lady Sophia twisted her lips. The Academy
tea was very strong. Perhaps it had been stand-
ing. She drank a little, pulled at her long gloves
restlessly, and looked at Malling. He knew she
was longing to confide in somebody. If only he
could induce her to confide in him!
“Oh, my husband's been a very active man,”
she said. “Everybody knows that. But in this
modern world of ours one must not walk, or even
run along, one must keep on rushing along if
one intends to reach the goal.”
“ And by that you mean — ?”
“Mean! The topmost height of your profes-
sion, or business, of whatever career you are in.”
“ You are ambitious," he said.
95


THE DWELLER
VE
“Not for myself,” she answered quickly. “I
have no ambition for myself.”
“But perhaps the ambition to spur on another
successfully? That seems to me the truest, the
most legitimate ambition of the woman all men
worship in their hearts.”
Suddenly tears started into her eyes. She was
sitting opposite Malling, the tea-table between
them. Now she leaned forward across it. By na-
ture she was very sensitive, but she was not a self-
conscious, woman. She was not self-conscious now.
“ It is much better to be selfish,” she said earn-
estly. “That is where we women make such a
fatal mistake. Instead of trusting to ourselves,
of relying on ourselves, and of having a personal
ambition, we seek always another in whom we may
trust; we are unhappy till we rely on another; it
is for another we cherish, we hug, ambition. And
then, when all founders, we realize too late what
I dare say every man knows."
“What is that?".
“That we women are fools — fools!”
“For being unselfish?”
“For thinking we have power when we are im-
potent."
She made a gesture that was surely one of
despair.
96


THE DWELLER
shipwreck not merely of her hopes, but also of
her belief. She saw a hulk drifting at the mercy
of the waves that, perhaps, would soon engulf it.
But she was not only despairing, she was raging
too. For she was a woman with nervous force
in her, and it is force that rages in the moments
of despair, seeking, perhaps unconsciously, some
means of action and finding none.
“Why should there not be some hope?" asked
Malling, quietly.
“ Tomorrow is Sunday. If you go to morning
church at St. Joseph's, and then to evening church,
you will see if there is any hope.'
“To evening church?”
“Yes, yes."
She got up.
“You are going?”
“I must. Forgive me!”
She held out her hand.
“ But —"
“No, don't come with me, please.”
“If I go to St. Joseph's to-morrow, afterward
may I see you again ? "
“ If you think it's worth while."
Her face twisted. Hastily she pulled down her
veil, turned away and left him.
98


VI
e
u
M ALLING went the next day to morning and
I evening service at St. Joseph's. He was
not invited to lunch in Onslow Gardens, and he
did not see Lady Sophia. On the whole, he was
glad of this. He had enough to keep in his
mind that day. The matter in which he was in-
terested seemed growing before his eyes, like a
thing coming out of the earth, but now beginning
to thrust itself up into regions where perhaps it
would eventually be hidden in darkness, with the
great company of mysteries whose unraveling is
beyond the capacity of man.
He had now, he felt sure, a clear comprehension
of Lady Sophia. Their short interview at Burling-
ton House had been illuminating. She was a typi-
cal example of the Adam's-rib woman; that is, of
the woman who, intensely, almost exaggeratedly
feminine, can live in any fullness only through
another, and that other a man. Through Mr.
Harding Lady Sophia had hitherto lived, and had
doubtless, in her view, triumphed. Obviously a
woman not free from a neryous vanity, and a
99


THE DWELLER
woman of hungry ambition, her vanity and ambi-
tion had been fed by his growing notoriety, his
increasing success and influence. The rib had
thrilled with the body to which it belonged.
But that time of happy emotion, of admiration,
of keen looking forward, was the property of the
past. Lawn sleeves, purple, perhaps,- for who
is more hopeful than this type of woman in the
golden moments of life? — perhaps even an archi-
episcopal throne faded from before the eyes they
had gladdened — the eyes of faith in a man.
And a different woman was beginning to appear
- a woman who might be as critical as she had
formerly been admiring, a woman capable of be-
coming embittered.
On the Sunday of Malling's visit to Onslow
Gardens, Mr. Harding's failure in the pulpit had
waked up in his wife eager sympathy and eager
spite, the one directed toward the man who had
failed, the other toward the man who, as Malling
felt sure, had caused the failure.
In Burlington House that woman, whom men
with every reason adore, had given place to an-
other less favorable toward him who had been her
hero.
It seemed to Malling as if in the future a strange
thing might happen, almost as if it must happen: it
Woman
100


ON THE THRESHOLD
seemed to him as if Chichester might convey his
view of his rector to his rector's wife.
“Study the link," Stepton had said. “There
will be development in the link.”
Already the words had proved true. There
had been a development in Lady Sophia such as
Malling had certainly not anticipated. Where
would it end? Again and again, as he listened
to the morning and evening sermons, Malling had
asked himself that question; again and again he
had recalled his conversation at Burlington House
with Lady Sophia.
In the morning at St. Joseph's Mr. Harding
had preached to a church that was half filled; in
the evening Henry Chichester had preached to a
church that was full to the doors. And each of
the clergymen in turn had listened to the other, but
how differently!
Mr. Harding had ascended to the pulpit with
failure staring him in the face, and whereas on
the Sunday when Malling first heard him he had
obviously fought against the malign influence
which eventually had prevailed over him, this time
he had not had the vigor to make a struggle. Cer-
tainly he had not broken down. It might be said
of him, as it was once said of a nation, that he had
“muddled through.” He had preached a very
1οΙ


THE DWELLER
sermon, Aung it away on the scrap-heap, and
passed on. This was not done viciously, but it
was done relentlessly. Indeed, that was the note
of the whole sermon. It was relentless, as truth
is relentless, as death is relentless. And besides
being terribly true, it was imaginative. But the
preacher almost succeeded in conveying the im-
pression to his congregation that what is generally
called imagination is really vision, that the true
imagination is seeing what is, but is often hidden,
knowing what is, but is often unknown. The
latter part of the sermon struck Malling as very
unusual, even as very daring.
The preacher had spoken of the many varieties
of hypocrisy. Finally he drew a picture of a fin-
ished hypocrite. And the man lived as a man
lives in the pages of a great writer. One could
walk round him, one knew him. And then Chi-
chester treated him as the writer treats his crea-
tion; he proceeded to show his hypocrite in action.
The man, happy, almost triumphant, — for he
now often looked upon himself with the eyes of
others who knew him not,— was walking to his
home on a winter's evening along a country road,
passing now and then rustics who respectfully
saluted him, neighbors who grasped his hand, chil-
dren who innocently smiled at him, women who
104


ON THE THRESHOLD
AS
whispered that he was a fine fellow, the clergy-
man of his parish, who gave him God-speed upon
his way as to one who deserved that God should
speed him because his way was right. Snow was
upon the ground. Such light as there was began
to fade. It was evident that the night, which was
very still, was going to be very dark. And the
man stepped out briskly. Presently, at a lonely
part of the road, happening to look down, he saw
footprints in the freshly fallen snow. They were
of feet that had recently passed on the way he was
following. They had attracted, they continued to
attract, his attention, he knew not why. And as
he went on, his eyes were often upon them,
Presently he began to wonder about the feet
which had made the prints he saw. Did they be-
long to a man or a woman The prints were too
large to have been made by the feet of a child.
He gazed at them searchingly, and made up his
mind that it was a man who had recently trodden
this road. And what sort of man was it that thus
preceded him not very far away? He became ·
deeply engrossed with this question. His mind
revolved about this unknown traveler, floating for-
ward in surmises, till, by chance, he happened to
set his right foot in one of the prints left in the
snow. His foot exactly filled it. This fact, he
man
an
105


THE DWELLER
knew not why, startled him. He stopped, bent
down, examined the snow closely, measured very
carefully his feet with the prints before him, now
rather faintly discerned in the gathering darkness.
The prints might have been made by his own feet.
Having ascertained this, and reflected for a mo-
ment, he went forward, now assailed by a growing
curiosity as to the personality and character of the
stranger. But perhaps he was not a stranger.
He might surely well be a neighbor, an acquaint-
ance, perhaps even a friend. The man meant,
if possible, to come up with him, whoever he was,
and he now hurried along with the intention of
joining the unknown whose footprints were the
same as his own.
At this point in his sermon Chichester paused
for a moment. And Malling, who seldom felt
any thrill at a séance, and who had often remained
calmly watchful and alert during manifestations
which amazed or terrified others, was aware of a
feeling of cold, which seemed to pass like a breath
through his spirit. The congregation about him,
perhaps struck by the unusual form of the sermon,
remained silent and motionless, waiting. In his
stall sat the rector with downcast eyes. Malling
could not at that moment discern his expression.
His large figure and important powerful head and
sermon
106


ON THE THRESHOLD
face showed almost like those of a carven effigy
in the lowered light of the chancel. The choir-
boys did not stir, and the small, fair man in the
pulpit, raising his thin hands, and resting them
on the marble ledge, continued quietly, taking up
his sermon with a repetition of the last words
uttered, “whose footprints were the same as his
own.”
Again the cold breath went through Malling's
spirit. He leaned slightly forward and gazed at
Chichester.
For some time the man thus went onward, fol-
lowing the footprints in the snow, but not overtak-
ing any one, and becoming momentarily more
eager to satisfy his curiosity. Then, on a sudden,
he started, stopped, and listened. It had now
become very dark, and in this darkness, and the
great stillness of night, he heard the faint sound
of a footfall before him, brushing through the
crisp snow, which lay lightly, and not very deep,
on the hard highroad leading to the village on the
farther outskirts of which his house was situated.
He could not yet see any one, but he felt sure
that the person who made this faint sound was
no other than he in whose steps he had been tread-
ing. It would now be a matter of only a minute
or two to come up with him. And the man went
107


THE DWELLER
on, but more slowly, whether because he was now
certain of attaining his object or for some other
reason.
The sound of the footfall persisted, and was
certainly not far off. The prints in the snow were
so fresh that they seemed not quite motionless,
as if the snow were only now settling after the
pressure it had just suffered. The man slackened
his pace. He did not like the sound which he
heard. He began to feel as if he by whom it was
made would not prove a companion to his taste.
Yet his curiosity continued. There began within
him a struggle between his curiosity and another
sensation, which was of repugnance, almost of
fear. And so equal were the combatants that the
lights of the village were in sight, and he had not
decreased the distance between himself and the
other. Seeing the lights, however, his curiosity
got the upper hand. He slightly quickened his
pace, and almost immediately beheld the shape of
a man relieved against the night, and treading
onward through the snow. And as the sound of
the footsteps had been disagreeable to his nerves,
so the contours of the moving blackness repelled
him. He did not like the look of this man whose
footprints were the same as his own, and he de-
cided not to join him. But, moving rather cau.
108


ON THE THRESHOLD
tiously, he gained a little upon him, in order to
make sure, if possible, whether or not he was a
neighbor or an acquaintance.
The figure seemed somehow familiar to our man,
indeed, oddly familiar. Nevertheless, he was una-
ble to identify it. As he followed it, more and
more certain did he become that he had seen it, that
he knew it. And yet — did he know it? Had he
seen it? It was almost as if one part of him
denied while the other affirmed. He longed, yet
feared, to see the face. But the face never looked
back. And so, one at a little distance behind the
other, they came into the village.
Here a strange thing occurred.
There were very few people about, but there
were a few, and two or three of them, meeting
the person our man was following, greeted him
respectfully. But these same people, when imme-
diately afterward they encountered the other, who
had known them for years, and whom they of
course knew, showed the greatest perturbation;
one, a woman, even signs of terror. They gave
him no greeting, shrank from him as he passed,
and stared after him, as if bemused, when he was
gone by. Their behavior was almost incredible.
But he was so set on what was before him that he
stopped to ask no questions.
109


THE DWELLER
The village was a long one. Always one be-
hind the other, walking at an even pace, the two
men traversed it, approaching at last the out-
skirts, where, separated from the other habita-
tions, and surrounded by a garden in which the
trees were laden with snow, stood the house of the
man who now watched and followed, with a grow-
ing wonder and curiosity, combined with an ever-
growing repugnance, him who made the foot-
prints, who had been saluted by the villagers,
whose figure and general aspect seemed in some-
wise familiar to him, and yet whom he could not
recognize. Where could this person be going?
The man asked himself, and came to a resolve not
to follow on into the darkness of the open country,
not to proceed beyond his own home, of which
now he saw the lights, but to make an effort to see
the face of the other before the garden gate was
reached.
In this attempt, however, he was destined to be
frustrated. For as he determinedly quickened his
steps, so did the other, who gained the gate of the
garden, unlatched it, turned in, and walked on
among the trees going toward the principal door.
A visitor, then! The man paused by his gar-
den gate, whence he could see his house front,
with the light from the window of his own sit-
Own
ΙΙο


ON THE THRESHOLD
ting-room streaming over the porch. The
stranger stood before it, made a movement as if
searching in his pocket, drew out his hand, lifted
it. The door opened at once. He disappeared
within, and the door closed after him.
He had opened the door with a key.
The man at the gate felt overcome by a sen-
sation almost of horror, which he could not ex-
plain to himself. It was not that he was horrified
by the certainly extraordinary fact of some one
possessing a key to his house, and using it in this
familiar fashion. It was not even that he was
horrified at seeing a man, perhaps a stranger,
disappearing thus into his home by night, unin-
vited, unexpected. What horrified him was that
this particular man, whose footprints he had fol-
lowed and measured with his foot, whose footfalls
he had heard, whose form he had seen outlined
against the night, should be within his house,
where his wife and his children were, and where
his venerable mother was sitting beside the fire.
That this man should be there! He knew now
that from the first moment when he had been
aware of his existence he had hated him, that his
subconscious mind had hated him.
But who was he? The natural thing would
have been to follow quickly into the house, to see
III


THE DWELLER
me n
who had entered, to demand an explanation.
But he could not do this. Why? He himself
did not know why. But he knew that he dared
not do this. And he waited, expecting he knew
not what; a cry, a summons, perhaps, some mani-
festation that would force him to approach.
None came. Steadily the lights shone from the
house. There was no sound but the soft fall of
a block of snow from an overladen fir branch in
the garden. The man began to marvel. Who
could this be whose familiar entry into his — his
home thus at night caused no disturbance? There
were dogs within: they had not barked. There
were servants: apparently they had not stirred.
It was almost as if this stranger's permanence was
accepted by the household. A long, long time
had slipped by.
The man at length, making an almost fierce
effort, partly dominated the unreasoning sense of
horror which possessed him. He opened the
gate, stepped into the garden, and made his way
slowly and softly toward the house door. But
suddenly he stopped. Through the unshuttered
window of his sitting-room, the room in which for
years he had spent much of his time, in which he
had concocted many schemes to throw dust in the
eyes of his neighbors, and even of his own rela-
II2


ON THE THRESHOLD
use.
tives, in which he had learned very perfectly to
seem what he was not, and to hide what he really
was, he perceived the figure of a man. It crossed
the lighted space slowly, and disappeared with a
downward movement. He knew it was the man
he had been following and whom he had seen enter
his house.
For a long while he remained where he was on
the path of the garden. The night deepened
about him. A long way off, at the other end of
the village, a clock chimed the hours. In the cot-
tages the lights were extinguished. The few
loungers disappeared from the one long street van-
ishing over the snow. And the man never moved.
A numb terror possessed him. Yet, despite his
many faults and his life of evil, he had never
been physically a coward. Always the light shone
steadily from the window of his study, making a
patch of yellow upon the snow. Always the occu-
pant of the room must be seated tranquilly there,
like an owner. For no figure had risen, had re-
passed across the unshuttered space.
The man told himself again and again that he
must go forward till he gained the window, that
he must at least look into the room; if he dared
not enter the house to confront the intruder, to
demand an explanation. But again and again
113


THE DWELLER
something within him, which seemed to be a voice
from the innermost chamber of his soul, whis-
pered to him not to go, whispered to him to
leave the intruder alone, to let the intruder do what
he would, but not to approach him, above all, not
to look upon his face. And the man obeyed the
voice till a thing happened which roused in him
a powerful beast, called by many the natural
man.
He saw his wife, whom he loved in his way,
though he had tricked and deceived her again and
again, cross the window space, smiling, and dis-
appear with a downward movement, as the other
had disappeared. Then she rose into his range of
vision, and stood for a moment so that he could
see her clearly, smiling, talking, making little ges-
tures that he knew, carrying her hand to her face,
stretching it out, dropping it. Finally she lifted it
to her lips, half-closing her eyes at the same time,
took it away quickly, with a sort of butterfly mo-
tion, and vanished, going toward the left, where
the room door was.
So had she many and many a time bidden him,
her husband, good night. Instantly, with an im-
pulse which seemed combined of rage and terror,
both now full of a driving force which was irre-
sistible, the man sprang forward to the window,
114


ON THE THRESHOLD
seized the stone coping with his hands and stared
into his room. .
Seated in a round chair at his writing-table,
by a lamp with a green shade, was the man who
had entered his house. He was writing busily in
a book with a silver clasp that could be locked
with a key, and he leaned a little over the table
with his head turned away. The shape of his
head, his posture, even the manner in which he
used his pen as he traced line after line in the
book, made an abominable impression upon the
man staring in at the window. But the face —
the face! He must see that! And he leaned for-
ward, trembling, but fiercely, and, pressing his own
face against the pane, he looked at the occupant
of his room as men look sometimes with their
souls.
The man at the table lifted his head. He laid
down the pen, blotted the book in which he had
been writing, shut it up, clasped it, locked it with
a tiny key, and put it carefully into a drawer of
the table, which also he locked. He got up, stood
for an instant by the table with one hand upon it,
then turned slowly toward the window, smiling,
as men smile to themselves when they are thinking
of their own ingenuities.
The man outside the window fell back into the
115


THE DWELLER
snow as if God's hand had touched him. He
had seen his own face! So he smiled sometimes
at the end of a day, when he had finished writing
down in his diary some of the hidden things of
his life.
He turned, and as the window through which
he had been looking suddenly darkened, he fled
away into the night.
When the lights, which at St. Joseph's were
always kept lowered during the sermon, once more
strongly illuminated the chancel, Mr. Harding
turned a ghastly face toward the pulpit. In the
morning Chichester had listened to him, as a man
of truth might listen to a man who is trying
to lie, but who cannot deceive him. In the even-
ing Mr. Harding had listened to Chichester -
how? What had been the emotions only shad-
owed faintly forth in that ghastly face?
When Malling got home, he asked himself why
Chichester had made such an impression upon his
mind. His story of the double, strange enough,
no doubt, in a sermon, could not surely have come
upon Malling with any of the force and the in-
terest of the new. For years he had been familiar
with tales of ghosts, of voices, of appearances at
the hour of death, of doubles. Of course in the
sermon there had been a special application of the
anc
116


ON THE THRESHOLD
story. It had been very short. Chichester had
suggested that if, as by a miracle, the average self-
contented man could look at himself with the eyes
of his soul full of subliminal self-knowledge and
with the bodily eyes, he would be stricken down by
a great horror.
And he had spoken as a man who knew. In-
deed, it seemed to Malling that he had spoken as
might have delivered himself the man who had
followed his double through the snow, who had
looked in upon him by night from the garden, if he
had faced, instead of flying from, the truth; if
he had stayed, if he had persistently watched his
double leading the life he had led, if he had
learned a great lesson that perhaps only his double
could teach him.
But if the man had stayed, what would have
been the effect on the double? Malling sat till
deep in the night pondering these things.
117


VII
LADY SOPHIA had said to Malling that if he
u went to the two services at St. Joseph's on
the Sunday she would invite him to see her again.
She was as good as her word. In the middle of
the week he received a note from her, saying
she would be at home at four on Thursday, if he
was able to come. He went, and found her alone.
But as soon as he entered the drawing-room and
had taken her hand, she said:
“I am expecting Mr. Chichester almost imme-
diately. He's coming to tea."
“I shall be glad to meet him," said Malling,
concealing his surprise, which was great.
Yet he did not know why it should be. For
what more natural than that Chichester should be
coming ?
“I heard of you at St. Joseph's," Lady Sophia
continued. “A friend of mine, Lily Armitage,
saw you there. I did n't. I was sitting at the
back. I have taken to sitting quite at the back of
the church. What did you think of it?"
118


THE DWELLER
“Do you wish me to be frank, and do you mean
the two sermons ? ”
She hesitated for an instant. Then she said:
“I do mean the sermons, and I do wish you to
be frank.”
“I thought Mr. Chichester's sermon very re-
markable indeed.”
“ And my husband's sermon?”.
Her lips twisted almost as if with contempt
when she said the words, “my husband's.”
“Why does n't Mr. Harding take a long rest?”
said Malling, speaking conventionally, a thing that
he seldom did.
“ You think he needs one ? "
“He has a tiresome malady, I understand.”
What malady?”
“Does n't he suffer very much from nervous
dyspepsia ?”
She looked at him with irony, which changed al-
most instantly into serious reflection. But the
irony returned.
“Now and then he has a touch of it,” she said,
“Very few of us don't have something. But we
have to go on, and we do go on, nevertheless."
“I think a wise doctor would probably order
your husband away,” said Malling, though Mr.
119


THE DWELLER
Harding's departure was the last thing he desired
just then.
“Even if he were ordered away, I don't know
that he would go."
“ Why not?"
"I don't think he would. I don't feel as if
he could get away,” she said, with what seemed to
Malling a sort of odd obstinacy. “In fact, I
know he's not going,” she abruptly added. “I
have an instinct.”
Malling felt sure that she had considered, per-
haps long before he had suggested it, this very
project of Mr. Harding's departure for a while
for rest, and that she had rejected it. Her words
recalled to his mind some other words of her
husband, spoken in Mr. Harding's study: “Surely
one ought to get out of such an atmosphere, to
get out of it, and to keep out of it. But how
extraordinary it is the difficulty men have in get-
ting away from things!”.
Perhaps Lady Sophia was right. Perhaps the
rector could not get away from the atmosphere
which seemed to be destroying him.
“I dare say he is afraid to trust everything to
his curates," observed Malling, prosaically.
“He need n't be — now," she replied.
In that “now," as she said it, there lay surely
120


ON THE THRESHOLD
a whole history. Malling understood that Lady
Sophia, suddenly perhaps, had given her husband
up. Since Malling had first encountered her she
had cried, “ Le roi est mort!” in her heart. The
way she had just uttered the word "now" made
Malling wonder whether she was not about to
utter the supplementary cry, “Vive le roi!”
As he looked at her, with this wonder in his
mind, Henry Chichester came into the room.
There was an expression of profound sadness
on his face, which seemed to dignify it, to make it
more powerful, more manly, than it had been.
The choir-boy look was gone. Malling of course
knew how very much expression can change a
human being; nevertheless, he was startled by the
alteration in the curate's outward man. It seemed,
to use the rector's phrase, that he had “shed his
character.” And now, perhaps, the new charac-
ter, mysteriously using matter as the vehicle of its
manifestation, was beginning to appear to the eyes
of men. He showed no surprise at the sight of
Malling, but rather a faint, though definite, pleas-
ure. The way in which Lady Sophia greeted him
was a revelation to Malling, and a curious exhibi-
tion of feminine psychology.
She looked up at him from the low chair in
which she was sitting, gave him her left hand, and
I2I


THE DWELLER
SO
said, “ Are you very tired?” That was all. Yet
it would have been impossible to express more
clearly a woman's mental, not affectional, subjuga-
tion by a man, her instinctive yielding to power,
her respect for authority, her recognition that the
master of her master had come into the room.
Her “Vive le roi!” was said.
Chichester accepted Lady Sophia's subtle
homage with an air of unconsciousness. His in-
terior melancholy seemed to lift him above the
small things that flatter small men. He acknowl-
edged that he was tired, and would be glad of tea.
He had been down in the East End. The rector
had asked him to talk over something with Mr.
Carlile of the Church Army.
“You mean that you suggested to the rector
that it would be wise to see Mr. Carlile,” said
Lady Sophia."
“Is the rector coming in to tea ?” asked Chi-
chester.
"Possibly he may,” she replied. “He knew
Mr. Malling was to be here. Did you tell him
you were coming ?”.
“No. I was not certain I should get away in
time.”
“I think he will probably turn up.".
A footman brought in tea at this moment, and
.
I 22


ON THE THRESHOLD
Malling told the curate he had heard him preach
in the evening of last Sunday.
“ It was a deeply interesting sermon," he said.
“ Thank you,” said Chichester, very imper-
sonally.
The footman went away, and Lady Sophia
began to make tea.
“When I went home,” Malling continued, “I
sat up till late thinking it over. Part of it sug-
gested to my mind one or two rather curious specu-
lations."
“Which part?" asked Lady Sophia, dipping
a spoon into a silver tea-caddy.
“The part about the man and his double."
She shivered, and some of the tea with which
she had just filled the spoon was shaken out of it.
“That was terrible,” she said.
“What were your speculations ? ” said Chiches-
ter, showing a sudden and definite waking up of
keen interest.
“One of them was this —"
Before he could continue, the door opened
again, and the tall and powerful form of the rector
appeared. And as the outer man of Chichester
seemed to Malling to have begun subtly to change,
in obedience surely to the change of his inner man,
so seemed Mr. Harding a little altered physically,
123


THE DWELLER
Ice
as he now slowly came forward to greet his wife's
two visitors. The power of his physique seemed
to be struck at by something within, and to be
slightly marred. One saw that largeness can be-
come but a wide surface for the tragic exhibition
of weakness. As the rector perceived the presence
of Chichester, an expression of startled pain fled
over his face and was gone in an instant. He
greeted the two men and sat down.
“Have you just begun tea ?” he asked, looking
now at his wife.
“We are just going to begin it,” she replied.
“ We are talking about the sermon of last Sun-
day.”
“Oh,” rejoined the rector.
He turned to Malling.
“Did you come to hear me preach again?”.
There was a note as of slight reassurance in his
voice.
“Mr. Chichester's sermon," said Lady Sophia.
“Oh, I see,” said the rector. He glanced
hastily from one to the other of the three people
in the room, like a man searching for sympathy
or help. “What were you saying about our
friend Chichester's sermon?” he asked, with a
forced air of interest.
Lady Sophia distributed cups for tea.
124


ON THE THRESHOLD
“I was speaking of that part of it which dealt
with the man who followed his double," said Mal-
ling.
“Ah? ” said the rector.
He was holding his tea-cup. His hand trem-
bled slightly at this moment, and the china rattled.
He set the cup down on the small table before
him.
“You said,” observed Chichester — toward
whom Lady Sophia immediately turned, with an
almost rapt air — " that it suggested some curious
speculations to your mind. I should very much
like to know what they were."
“ One was this. Suppose the man in the gar-
den, who looked in upon his double, had not fled
away. Suppose he had had the courage to re-
main, and, in hiding — for the sake of argument
we may assume the situation to be possible —"
“Ah, indeed! And why not?” interrupted
Chichester.
His voice, profoundly melancholy, fell like a
weight upon those who heard him. And again
Malling thought of him almost as some one set
apart from his fellows by some mysterious knowl.
edge, some heavy burthen of truth.
"— and in hiding had watched the life of his
double. I sat up speculating what effect such an
,
125


THE DWELLER
man, I speculated on his existence, spied upon by
his other self. And you never did that?”
He looked at Chichester.
“When I was making my sermon I was en-
grossed by the thought of the watching man.”
Malling's idea had evidently laid a grip upon
Chichester's mind.
“Tell me what the double's existence would be,
according to you,” he said. “Tell me."
“You imagined the lesson learnt by the man
so terrible that he fled away into the night.”
“ Yes."
“Had he been strong enough to stay —”.
“Strong enough!” interposed Chichester.
“Better say, had he been obliged to stay."
“ Very well. Given that compulsion, in my
imagination the double must have learnt a lesson,
too. If we can learn by contemplation, can we
not, must we not, learn by being contemplated ?
Life is permeated by reciprocity. I can imagine
another sermon growing out of yours of last Sun-
day."
“Yes, you are right — you are right,” said Chi-
chester.
“The double, then, in my imagination, would
gradually become uneasy under this secret obser-
vation. You described him as, his wife gone, sit-
128


ON THE THRESHOLD
ting down comfortably to write some account of
the hidden doings of his life, as, the writing fin-
ished, the diary committed to the drawer and safely
locked away, rising up to go to rest with a smile
of self-satisfaction. It seemed to me that, given
my circumstance of the persistent observation, a
few nights later matters would have been very dif-
ferent within that room. The hypocrite is happy,
if he is happy at all, when he is convinced that his
hypocrisy is successful. Take away that certainty,
and he would be invaded by anxiety. Set any one
to watch him closely, he would certainly suffer, if
he knew it."
"If he knew it! That is the point,” said Chi-
chester. “You put the man watching the double
in hiding."
“There are influences not yet fully understood
which can traverse space, which can touch not as
a hand touches, but as unmistakably. I imagined
the soul of the double touched in this way, the
waters troubled.”
“Troubled! Troubled!"
It was Mr. Harding who had spoken, almost
lamentably. His powerfully shaped head now
drooped forward on his breast.
“I imagined,” continued Malling, “a sort of
gradual disintegration beginning, and proceeding,
nce
1 29


THE DWELLER
in the double — a disintegration of the soul, if
such a thing can be conceived of."
His piercing eyes went from Chichester to
Harding.
“Or, no,” he corrected himself. “ Perhaps
that is an incorrect description of my — very im-
aginative — flight through speculation the other
night. Possibly I should say a gradual transfer-
ence, instead of disintegration of soul. For it
seemed to me as if the man who watched might
gradually, as it were, absorb into himself the soul of
the double, but purified. For the watcher has the
tremendous advantage of seeing the hypocrite liv-
ing the hypocrite's life, while the hypocrite is only
seen. Might not the former, therefore, conceiv-
ably draw in strength, while the other faded into
weakness? Ignorance is the terrible thing in life,
I think. Now the man who watched would re-
ceive knowledge, fearful knowledge, but the man
who was watched, while perhaps suffering first
uneasiness, then possibly even terror, would not,
in my conception, ever clearly understand. He
would not any longer dare at night to sit down
alone to fill up that dreadful diary. He would
not any longer perhaps — I only say perhaps —
dare to commit the deeds the record of which in
the past the diary held. But his lesson would be
130


ON THE THRESHOLD
one of fear, making for weakness, finally almost
for nothingness. And the other night I con-
ceived of him at last fading away in the gloom of
his room with the darkened window."
“That was your end!” said Mr. Harding, in
a low voice.
“Yes, that was my end."
“Then,” said Chichester, “you think the lesson
men learn from being contemplated tends only to
destroy them ? "
But Malling, now with a smiling change to
greater lightness and ease, hastened to traverse
this statement.
“No, no,” he replied. “For the contempla-
tion of a man by his fellow-men must always be
an utterly different thing from his own contempla-
tion by himself. For our fellow-men always re-
main in a very delightful ignorance of us. Don't
they, Lady Sophia ? And so they can never de-
stroy us, luckily for us.”
He had done what he wished to do, and he was
now ready for other activities. But he found it
was not easy to switch his companions off onto
another trail. Lady Sophia, now that he looked
at her closely, he saw to be under the influence of
fear, provoked doubtless by the subject they had
been discussing. Chichester, also, had a look as
131


THE DWELLER
of fear in his eyes. As to the rector, he sat gazing
at his curate, and there had come upon his counte-
nance an expression of almost unnatural resolu-
tion, such as a coward's might wear if terror
forced him into defiance.
In reply to Malling's half-laughing question,
Lady Sophia said:
“ You ’ve studied all these things, have n't
you ? "
“Do you mean what are sometimes called
occult questions? ”
“Yes.”
“I have.”
“ And do you believe in them?"
“I'm afraid I must ask you to be a little more
definite."
“Do you believe that there are such things as
doubles ?”
“I have no reason to believe that there are, un-
less you include wrongly in the term the merely
physical replica. It appears to be established that
now and then two human beings are born who,
throughout their respective lives remain physically
so much alike that it is difficult, if not impossible,
to distinguish between them.”
“I did n't mean only that,” she said quickly.
132


ON THE THRESHOLD
“You meant the double in mind and soul as
well as in body,” said Chichester.
“Yes.”
“How can one see if a soul is the double of an-
other soul? ” said Malling.
" Then you think such a story as Mr. Chiches-
ter related in his sermon all nonsense ? " said Lady
Sophia, almost hotly, and yet, it seemed to Mal-
ling, with a slight lifting of the countenance, as if
relief perhaps were stealing through her.
"I thought it a legitimate and powerful inven-
tion introduced to point a moral.”
“Nothing more than that? ” said Lady Sophia.
Malling did not reply; for suddenly a strange
question had risen up in him. Did he really think
it nothing more than that? He glanced at Chi-
chester, and the curate's eyes seemed asking him
to say.
The rector's heavy and powerful frame shifted
in his chair, and his voice was heard saying:
“My dear Sophy, I think you had better leave
such things alone. You do not know where they
might lead you.”
There was in his voice a sound of forced author-
ity, as if he had been obliged to “screw himself
up" to speak as he had just spoken. Lady Sophia
133


THE DWELLER
was about to make a quick rejoinder when, still
with a forced air of resolution, Mr. Harding ad-
dressed himself to Chichester.
"Since I saw you this morning," he said, “I
find that I shall not be here next Sunday.”
He looked about the circle at his wife and Mal-
ling.
“The doctor has ordered me away for a week,
and I've decided to go.”
His introduction of the subject had been abrupt.
As if almost in despite of themselves, Lady
Sophia and Malling exchanged glances. Chiches-
ter said nothing.
“ You can get on without me quite well, of
course," continued the rector.
“Are you going to be away long ? ” said Chi-
chester.
“No; I think only for a week or so. The
doctor says I absolutely need a breath of fresh air."
Malling got up to go.
“I hope you 'll enjoy your little holiday," he
said. “ Are you going far?”
“Oh, dear, no. My doctor recommends Tan-
kerton on the Kentish coast. It seems the air
there is extraordinary. When the tide is down it
comes off the mud flats. A kind parishioner of
mine -” he turned slightly toward his wife:
134


ON THE THRESHOLD
“Mrs. Amherst, Sophy — has a cottage there and
has often offered me the use of it. I hope to
accept her offer now."
Lady Sophia expressed no surprise at the project,
and did not inquire whether her husband wished
her to accompany him.
But when she shook hands with Malling, her
dark eyes seemed to say to him, “I was wrong."
And he thought she looked humbled.
135


VIII
NOULD you come down stay with me Satur-
A day till Monday all alone air delicious feel
rather solitary glad of your company Marcus
Harding Minors Tankerton Kent."
cus
Such was the telegram which Evelyn Malling
was considering on the following Friday afternoon.
The sender had paid an answer. The telegraph-
boy was waiting in the hall. Malling only kept
him five minutes. He went away with this reply:
“Accept with pleasure will take four twenty
train at Victoria Saturday Malling."
Malling could not have said with truth that he
had expected a summons from Mr. Harding, yet
he found that he was not surprised to get it. The
man was in a bad way. He needed sympathy, he
needed help. That was certain. But whether he
could help him was more than doubtful, Malling
thought. Perhaps, really, a doctor and the won-
derful air from the mud flats of Tankerton! But
here Malling found that a strong incredulity
136


THE DWELLER
checked him. He did not believe that the rector
would be restored by a doctor's advice and a visit
to the sea.
That afternoon he went to Westminster, and
asked for Professor Stepton.
“He is away, sir,” said the fair Scotch parlor-
maid.
“For long?”
“We don't know, sir. He has gone into Kent,
on research business, I believe."
Agnes had been for a long time in the profes-
sor's service, and was greatly trusted. The pro-
fessor had come upon her originally when making
investigations into " second sight," a faculty which
she claimed to possess. By the way she was also
an efficient parlor-maid.
"Kent!” said Malling. “Do you know where
he is staying?”
“The address he left is the Tankerton Hotel,
Tankerton, near Whitstable-on-Sea, sir."
“ Thank you, Agnes," said Malling.
“It is a haunted house somewhere Birchington
way the professor is after, I believe, sir."
“Luck favors me!" said Malling to himself,
unscientifically, as he walked away from the house.
On the following day it was in a singularly ex-
pectant and almost joyously alert frame of mind
137


ON THE THRESHOLD
Capital! I have a fly waiting. We go down
these steps."
As they descended, Malling remarked:
“By the way, we have a friend staying here.
Have you come across him?".
“No, I have seen nobody — that is, no ac-
quaintance. Who is it?"
“Stepton.”
“The professor down here!” exclaimed Mr.
Harding, as if startled.
“At the hotel, I believe. He's come down to
make some investigation.”
“I have n't seen him.”
They stepped into the fly, and drove through
the long street of Whitstable toward the outlying
houses of Tankerton, scattered over grassy downs
above a quiet, brown sea.
" The air is splendid, certainly," observed Mal-
ling, drinking it in almost like a gourmet savoring
a wonderful wine.
" It must do me good. Don't you think so ?”
The question sounded anxious to Malling's
ears.
“ It ought to do every one good, I should think.”
“Here is Minors.''
The fly stopped before a delightfully gay little
red doll's house — so Malling thought of it -
139


THE DWELLER
was
standing in a garden surrounded by a wooden
fence, with the downs undulating about it. Not
far off, but behind it, was the sea. And the rector,
pointing to a red building in the distance, on the
left and much nearer to the beach, said:
“That is the hotel where the professor must be
staying, if he is here."
“I'll go over presently and ask about him."
“Oh," said Mr. Harding. “Bring in the bag,
please, Jennings. The room on the right, at the
top of the stairs."
Malling had believed in London that Mr.
Harding's telegram to him was a cry out of dark-
ness. That first evening in the cheerful doll's
house he knew his belief was well founded.
When they sat at dinner, like two monsters, Mal-
ling thought, who had somehow managed to insert
themselves into a doll's dining-room, it was obvi-
ous that the rector was ill at ease. Again and
again he seemed to be on the verge of some re-
mark, perhaps of some outburst of speech, and to
check himself only when the words were almost
visibly trembling on his lips. In his eyes Malling
saw plainly his longing for utterance, his hesita-
tion; reserve and a desire to liberate his soul, the
one fighting against the other. And at moments
the whole man seemed to be wrapped in weakness
140


ON THE THRESHOLD
like a garment, the soul and the body of him.
Then, as a light may dwindle till it seems certain
to go out, all that was Marcus Harding seemed
to Malling to dwindle. The large body, the pow-
erful head and face, meant little, almost nothing,
because the spirit was surely fading. But these
moments passed. Then it was as if the light
flared suddenly up again.
When dinner was over, Mr. Harding asked
Malling if he would like to take a stroll.
“The sea air will help us to sleep," he said.
“I should like nothing better," said Malling.
“Have n't you been sleeping well lately?”
“Very badly. We had better take our coats.”
They put the coats on, and went out, making
their way to the broad, grassy walk raised above
the shingle of the beach. The tide was far down,
and the oozing flats were uncovered. So still, so
waveless was the brown water that at this hour it
was impossible to perceive where it met the brown
land. In the distance, on the right, shone the
lights of Herne Bay, with its pier stretching far
out into the shallows. Away to the left was the
lonely island of Sheppey, a dull shadow beyond
the harbor, where the oyster-boats lay at rest.
There were very few people about: some fisher-
lads solemnly or jocosely escorting their girls, who
141


ON THE THRESHOLD
He spoke with a sort of despairing conviction.
“What makes you think so ?”
“ It must. It cannot be otherwise — unless —"
He paused.
“ Yes," said Malling; “ unless —"
“ A thing almost impossible were to happen.”
“May I, without indiscretion, ask what that
is ? "
"Unless he were to leave St. Joseph's, to go
quite away.”
“ Surely that would not be impossible !”.
“I often think it is. Chichester will not wish
to go."
“Are you certain of that?” asked Malling, re-
membering the curate's remark in Horton Street,
that perhaps he would not remain at St. Joseph's
much longer.
The rector turned his head and fixed his eyes
upon Malling.
“Has he said anything to you about leaving ?”
he asked, suddenly raising his voice, as if under
the influence of excitement. “But of course he
has not."
“Surely it is probable that such a man may be
offered a living."
“He would not take it."
They walked on a few steps in silence, turned,
143


ON THE THRESHOLD
"If I may advise you, I should say — tell me
plainly what your trouble is.”
“ It began —” Mr. Harding spoke with a fal-
tering voice —"it began a good while ago, some
months after Mr. Chichester came as a curate to
St. Joseph's. I was then a very different man
from the man you see now. Often I feel really
as if I were not the same man, as if I were radi-
cally changed. It may be health. I sometimes
try to think so. And then I—" He broke off.
The strange weakness that Malling had already
noticed seemed again to be stealing over him, like
a mist, concealing, attenuating.
“ Possibly it is a question of health,” said Mal-
ling, rather sharply. “Tell me how it began."
“When Chichester first joined me, I was a man
of power and ambition. I was a man who could
dominate others, and I loved to dominate."
His strength seemed returning while he spoke,
as if frankness were to him a restorative of the
spirit.
" It was indeed my passion. I loved authority.
I loved to be in command. I was full of ecclesi-
astical ambition. Feeling that I had intellectual
strength, I intended to rise to the top of the
church, to become a bishop eventually, perhaps
ome
145


THE DWELLER
even something greater. When I was presented
to St. Joseph's,— my wife's social influence had
something to do with that,~ I saw all the gates
opening before me. I made a great effect in Lon-
don. I may say with truth that no clergyman was
more successful than I was — at one time. My
wife spurred me on. She was immensely ambi-
tious for me. I must tell you that in marrying
me she had gone against all her family. They
thought me quite unworthy of her notice. But
from the first time I met her I meant to marry her.
And as I dominated others, I completely domi-
nated her. But she, once married to me, was des-
perately anxious that I should rise in the world,
in order that her choice of me might be justified
in the eyes of her people. You can understand the
position, I dare say?”.
"Perfectly,” said Malling.
"I may say that she irritated my ambition, that
she stung it into almost a furious activity.
Women have great influence with us. I thought
she was my slave almost, but I see now that she
also influenced me. She worshiped me for my
immediate success at St. Joseph's. You may think
it very ridiculous, considering that I am merely
the rector of a fashionable London church, but
there was a time when I felt almost intoxicated by
146


ON THE THRESHOLD
was
as
my wife's worship of me, and by my domination
over the crowds who came to hear me preach.
Domination! That was my fetish! That was
what led me to — oh, sometimes I think it must
end in my ruin!”
“Perhaps not,” said Malling, quietly. “ Let
us see.”
His words, perhaps even more his manner,
seemed greatly to help Mr. Harding.
“I will tell you everything," he exclaimed.
“ From the first I have felt as if you were the
man to assist me, if any man could. I had always,
since I was an undergraduate at Oxford, I was
a Magdalen man,- been interested in psychical
matters, and followed carefully all the proceed-
ings of the Society for Psychical Research. I had
also at that time,- in Oxford, made some ex-
periments with my college friends, chiefly in con-
nection with will power. My influence seemed to
be specially strong. But I need not go into all
that. After leaving Oxford and taking orders,
for a long time I gave such matters up. I feared,
if I showed my strong interest in psychical re-
search, especially if I was known to attend séances
or anything of that kind, it might be considered
unsuitable in a clergyman, and might injure my
prospects. It was not until Henry Chichester
147


ON THE THRESHOLD
looked toward Chichester, and resolved to take
him into my confidence — to a certain extent.
“I approached the matter craftily. I dwelt
first upon the great spread of infidelity in our days,
and the necessity of combating it by every legiti-
mate means. I spoke of the efforts being made
by earnest men of science — such men as Profes-
sor Stepton, for instance — to get at the truth
Christians are expected to take on trust, as it were.
I said I respected such men. Chichester agreed,
— when did he not agree with me at that
time? — but remarked that he could not help
pitying them for ignoring revelation and striving
to obtain by difficult means what all Christians
already possessed by a glorious and final deed
of gift.
“I saw that though Chichester was such a de-
voted worshiper of mine, if I wanted to persuade
him to my secret purpose, no other than the ef-
fort, to be made with him, to communicate with
the spirit world, — I must be deceptive, I must
mask my purpose with another.
“I did so. I turned his attention to the sub-
ject of the human will. Now, at that time Chi-
chester knew that his will was weak. He consid-
ered that fact one of his serious faults. I hinted
that I agreed with him. I proposed to join with
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THE DWELLER
are
irse
him in striving to strengthen it. He envied my
strength of will. He looked up to me, worshiped
me almost, because of it. I drew his mind to the
close consideration of influence. I gave him two
or three curious works that I possessed on this
subject. In one of them, a pamphlet written by
a Hindu who had been partly educated at Oxford,
and whom I had personally known when I was an
undergraduate, there was a course of will-exercises,
much as in certain books on body-building there
are courses of physical exercises. I related to Chi-
chester some of the extraordinary and deeply in-
teresting conversations I had had with this Hindu
on the subject of the education of the will, and
finally I told a lie. I told Chichester that I had
gained my powerful will while at Oxford by draw-
ing it from my Hindu friend in a series of sittings
that we two had secretly undertaken together.
This was false, because I had been born with a
strong, even a tyrannical, will, and I had never
sat with the Hindu.
“ Chichester, though at first startled, was fasci-
nated by this untruth, and, to cut the matter short,
I persuaded him to begin with me a series of secret
sittings, in which I proposed to try to impart to
him, to infuse into him, as it were, some of my
undoubted power — the power which he daily
152


THE DWELLER
Un
e
“How can I explain exactly? It is so difficult
to unravel the web of motives in a mind. It was
my maladie de grandeur, I think, that made me
long to use my worshiper Chichester as a mere
tool for the opening of that door which shuts off
from us the region the dead have entered. My
mind at that time was filled with a mingled con-
ceit, amounting at moments almost to an intoxica-
tion, and a desire for knowledge. I reveled in
my power when preaching, but was haunted by
genuine doubts as to truth. My egoism longed
to make an utter slave of Chichester (I nearly
always lusted to push my influence to its limit).
But my desire to know made me conceive the push-
ing of it in a direction, in this instance, which
would perhaps gratify a less unworthy desire than
that merely of subjugating another. The two
birds and the one stone! I thought of them. I
loved the idea of making a tool. I loved also the
idea of using the tool when made. And I pre-
tended I had only Chichester's moral interest at
heart. I have been punished, terribly punished.
“We sat, as I say, in Hornton Street, secretly,
and of course at night. My wife knew nothing of
it. I made excuses to get away – parish matters,
meetings, work in the East End. I had no diffi-
culty with her. She thought my many activities
154


ON THE THRESHOLD
would bring me ever more and more into the pub-
lic eye, and she encouraged them. The people in
the house where Chichester lodged were simple
folk, and were ready to go early to bed, leaving
rector and curate discussing their work for the sal-
vation of bodies and souls.
“At first Chichester was reluctant, I know. I
read his thoughts. · He was not sure that it was
right to approach such mysteries; but, as usual, I
dominated him silently. And soon he fell com-
pletely under the fascination peculiar to sittings."
Again Mr. Harding paused. For a moment
his head sank, his powerful body drooped, he was
immersed in reverie. Malling did not interrupt
him. At last, with a deep sigh, and now speaking
more slowly, more unevenly, he continued:
“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 en-
tranced 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
was a
vare.
са
155


THE DWELLER
though my great desire was frustrated in our sit-
tings, the desire of Chichester, so different, per-
haps 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 indescrib-
able bitterness Mr. Harding dwelt on these last
words,—“I could only express rejoicing. And
this I did with successful hypocrisy. Neverthe-
less, I was greatly irritated. For it seemed to me
that, when we sat, Chichester triumphed over me.
He obtained his desire while mine remained un-
gratified. 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
lever
156


ON THE THRESHOLD
moments of life. One seems to become inexplic-
ably 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 under-
stand 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 s0,-
I wish to be absolutely accurate, — Chichester be-
gan 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 — Chi-
chester reiterated more strongly his assertion of
beneficent alteration in himself. I did not believe
him, though I did believe he was absolutely sin-
157


ON THE THRESHOLD
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 sup-
pose so, because till that moment he had always
acquiesced in any proposition of mine. Yet I re-
member 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 re-
sisted my proposal, and that I found myself
obliged to comply with his will instead of, as usual,
imposing mine upon him.
159


THE DWELLER
“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 begin-
ning of my horrible subjection to Henry Chi-
chester."
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 ostensi-
bly for that very purpose, you will see my diffi-
culty."
“ 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
160


THE DWELLER
TES
is bred. The faculties begin to fail. The for-
merly 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 criti-
cism. Like some subtle acid it seemed to act de-
structively 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 ter-
ribly. 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 oc-
casions, 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 shortcom-
ings 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
162


ON THE THRESHOLD
under the thought of Chichester's crystal purity
and of my own besmirched condition of soul. All
self-confidence departed from me; but I endeav-
ored, of course, to conceal this from the world,
and especially from Chichester. With the world
for a time no doubt I succeeded. But with Chi-
chester — did I ever succeed? Could I ever suc-
ceed 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 sit-
tings ? "
Very quietly Malling spoke, and he just touched
the rector's arm.
“ For a long while."
163


ON THE THRESHOLD
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 al-
ways 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 feel.
ing 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 hypo-
crite —”
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.
non
165


THE DWELLER
“ 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 ob-
serve me through Chichester's eyes. Till quite
recently she worshiped me. She noticed the alter-
ation 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 every-
thing should be taken carefully into considera-
tion," observed Malling in his most prosaic voice.
The rector's attention seemed to be suddenly
fixed and powerfully concentrated. The feverish
166


THE DWELLER
nean 1
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 al-
most to dawn upon them, sidewise, becoming visi-
ble gently in the darkness; a short man, with
hanging arms, a head poked forward, as if in
168


ON THE THRESHOLD
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.
169


IX
THAT night when, very late, Mr. Harding
1 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 re-
call 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.
170


THE DWELLER
“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 con-
tinued:
“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 comfort-
able. 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 fer-
vor. “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.
172


ON THE THRESHOLD
ese
“ 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. Har-
ding'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 piti-
ful 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 loca-
tion. 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
ca
173


THE DWELLER
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 intro-
duction 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 re-
ply.
Whereupon the professor had vanished, mut-
tering 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
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ON THE THRESHOLD
re.
Malling arrived. He scarcely ever ate at ortho-
dox hours, and had frequently been caught lunch-
ing 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," re-
plied 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-mor-
row. 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 encoura-
ging!” he muttered. “Have the reverend gentle-
men of St. Joseph's been at it again — success-
fully ? "
“I want you to judge.”
And thereupon Malling laid the case faithfully
before the professor, describing not only the din-
ner in Hornton Street and his interview with Lady
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THE DWELLER
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 re-
markably 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 de-
pended 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 profes-
sor, when he had finished.
Malling mentioned the question as to the
176


ON THE THRESHOLD
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 com-
pletely 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 win-
dow of the hall, he saw the professor walking side-
wise up the path, with a shawl round his shoulders.
He went to let him in, and took him into the tiny
drawing-room.
I 2
177


THE DWELLER
“ An odd shell for Harding!” observed the
professor. “More suitable to a bantam than to
a Cochin-China!”
“ It does n'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 ro-
mantically on their birth and upbringing, the fat-
tening, 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 ob-
served:
“ And now, Malling, what is your view ? Do
you look upon it as a case of transferred person-
ality? 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?"
178


ON THE THRESHOLD
“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 de-
velopment 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 compre-
hensive 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."
179


'THE DWELLER
“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 nerv-
ous 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
180


ON THE THRESHOLD
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 knowl-
edge, 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,
183


CHAPTER X
COON after Malling had returned to London,
d 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 noth-
ing 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
184


THE DWELLER
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
ce
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:
inswer:
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;
185


THE DWELLER
was
markable sermons," now and then in society some
feminine gossip murmuring that “ Sophia Hard-
ing 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 pro-
fessor. Malling might of course have written to
him or sought him. He preferred to possess his
soul in patience. Stepton was an arbitrary per-
sonage, 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 con-
nected with the reverend gentlemen of St. Joseph's.
As Malling surmised, he had lost little time in be-
ginning his “ approach," and that approach had
been rather circuitous. He had taken his own ad-
vice and studied the link. This done, the intricate
and fascinating subject of nervous dyspepsia had
188


ON THE THRESHOLD
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, be-
ing as a rule young clergymen, were, in his view,
specially subject to the inroads of the cloudy com-
plaint, which causes the mind to see mountains
where only mole-hills exist, and to appreciate any-
thing more readily and accurately than the naked
truth. Henry Chichester was young and he was
2
DI
189


THE DWELLER
a curate. He was therefore likely to be emotional
and to be attracted by the mysterious, more es-
pecially since he had recently been knocking on
its door, according to Malling's statement.
After a good deal of thought, the professor re-
solved to cast aside convention, and to make Chi-
chester's acquaintance without any introduction; in-
deed, 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,
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THE DWELLER
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 is n'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 dis-
missed the subject and began to talk of other
things. When he chose he could be almost charm-
ing. 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
194


ON THE THRESHOLD
he would find himself in Hornton Street, and visit
number 4a.
The professor assented, and was carried west-
ward.
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 invita-
tion.
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 drip-
ping 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 —".
195


ON THE THRESHOLD
as
2
turned round, leaning his sharp elbow on his writ-
ing-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, could n'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 have n't been
killed on the underground — yet.”
A curious expression that seemed mingled of
disappointment and of contempt passed across Chi-
chester's face. Stepton saw it and told himself,
“No hysteria."
197


THE DWELLER
“Possibly the reason may be a more intellectual
one," observed the professor. “I hear you have
been preaching some very remarkable sermons. I
have n't heard them. Still, others who have may
have suggestioned' me. Three quarters of any
man's fame, you know, are due to mere sugges-
tion."
“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 ac-
cept it."
“ Probably not,” said Stepton, briskly. “In
my life I've been offered a great many explana-
tions, and I'm bound to say I've accepted re-
markably 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 con-
tempt for those who are more mystically minded,"
he observed.
“I've hit the line!” thought Stepton, with a
198


ON THE THRESHOLD
touch of exultation, as he dropped out a negli-
gent, “ 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 is n'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 in-
terrupting 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 —
: 199


THE DWELLER
" 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 ex-
claimed.
“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 super-
normal 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 evi-
dence, 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 do-
ing 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 false-
200


ON THE THRESHOLD
hood, 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.
“Would n't you do just the opposite ? You
say men accept lies. I say you would probably re-
ject truth.”
“Cela dépend. What you believed to be truth
might not be truth at all. It might be hysteria,
201


THE DWELLER
nervou
over-
it might be nervous dyspepsia, it might be over-
work, 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 posses-
sion of Anglican clergym
“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 hap-
pen 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 in-
vestigators 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."
202


ON THE THRESHOLD
“It's easy to call people credulous,” said Chi-
chester, 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 be-
ing 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 look-
ing 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 ad.
ded, “I'll just say one thing."
" Do!”
“It is n't always cowardice which causes a man
to keep a secret — a secret which might be of
value to the world."
203


THE DWELLER
When he was shown into the curate's sitting-
room, his first remark was:
“Sent that very interesting story to ‘The Corn-
hill' 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."
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THE DWELLER
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 aggres-
sive manner. “Even now has n't he learnt the
value of the matter-of-fact? The clergyman is
the doctor of the soul, is n't he? And the doctor,
is n'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 con-
tempt of proper care in getting together and co-
ordinating 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 ser-
mon in which was not to be found somewhere the
preacher's contempt for reason, the bread of the in-
tellect 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 be-
gan to sidle up and down the small room.
208


ON THE THRESHOLD
“You put it on slops, as if it were a thing with
a disordered stomach. That's your way of show-
ing it respect. You approach the shrine with an of-
fering 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 tak-
ing 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 equiva-
lent, 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 Chi-
chester.
“Ha!” ejaculated Stepton.
He had quite got the better of his egoism, but
he by no means regretted his outburst.
eer
209


THE DWELLER
“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 in-
vented 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 be-
tween 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 unex-
mov
IN
n unex-
210


ON THE THRESHOLD
pectedly 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 Hr. 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 Chi-
chester'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 lit-
tle room the professor felt a cold sensation of creep-
ing 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.”
2 II


THE DWELLER
“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. Hard-
ing typical?”
“I am speaking of the Harding before the fall
into the abysses of nervous dyspepsia.”
“Very well. In what respects was Mr. Hard-
ing 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."
212


ON THE THRESHOLD
Chichester sat silent for nearly a minute look-
ing at the professor with a strange expression, al-
most 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. Has n'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 mur-
mured 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 could n'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?”
213


THE DWELLER
e ever m
“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 be-
lieved the curate to be wavering, swayed by con-
flicting 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 wander-
ing vender of something was crying his ware. In
u
&
re
a
m
ware.
214


XI
“VOU have heard of doubles, of course, Pro-
fessor ?” 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 manifes-
tation'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.
217


THE DWELLER
“I don't understand you,” said Stepton, rather
disdainfully.
“I will try to make you." And Chichester be-
gan 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 actu-
ally 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 pos-
sibly interfere with — with something that I was
doing. And I recalled Marcus Harding to Lon-
don. From that moment I have avoided Mal-
ling. I could never tell him. But you, hard
searcher after truth as you are — you could never
drag away another from the
contemplation of truth. Could you ? Could
you?”
“ Probably not,” said Stepton. “I usually let
218


ON THE THRESHOLD
even
folks alone even when they ’re glaring at false-
hood. Ha!"
He settled himself in his chair, looking sidewise
toward Chichester.
“You, like every one else, have noticed the tre-
mendous 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 deliber-
ately 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 con-
strained 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 —
sne
219


THE DWELLER
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.”
“People very often imagine they are developing
into something wonderful at séances. Nothing
new in that.”
“Please try to realize the facts of my case
without assuming 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 clergy-
en
WOI
220


THE DWELLER
visit to Onslow Gardens. For the first time I
saw -" Chichester paused. His face became dis-
torted. 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 with-
drawn 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 Hard-
ing 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, cor-
dial. He won my heart. My intellect, of course,
was dazzled. But -- he won my heart. And I
222


ON THE THRESHOLD
felt not only, 'Here is a man far greater than my-
self 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 set-
tled 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
Crnn
223


THE DWELLER
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 con-
tinued, 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 com-
panion'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 en-
tranced 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
224


ON THE THRESHOLD
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 séances, one
is apt to imagine all sorts of things in the dark-
ness," 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 in-
volve, 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 deliber-
ately limited by God, 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
15
225


THE DWELLER
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!” ejaculated 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 domi-
nated me before I had any power, and who, by
dominating me, had for a moment made me
afraid.”
“Retrospective enmity! Very well!” mut-
tered 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 — in-
226


ON THE THRESHOLD
ne
duced in me a critical attitude of mind. I found
myself, to my surprise, secretly criticizing the man
whom till now I had regarded as altogether be-
yond 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. Pres-
ently, 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! Did n'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,
227


THE DWELLER
ca
ew
was s
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 ac-
counts 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 hypo-
crite.'
“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 be-
ing 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 Hard-
ing 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 un-
der my feet!! That was what my soul was
secretly saying now to the man whose will had
228


ON THE THRESHOLD
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 suc-
cess 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
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THE DWELLER
shut on him I ran upstairs. I went to that win-
dow,—"Chichester flung out his hand —"pushed
it up, leaned out, and watched him down the street.
I saw him pass 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 disap-
peared 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 Hard-
ing. I saw him now as he was, a victim of ego-
mania, 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
230


ON THE THRESHOLD
care for his church, for his schools — all was pre-
tence. 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 rec-
tor, I tried perpetually to prevent him from ex-
posing his true self to the world, by changing the
conversation, by attenuating his remarks, by cover-
ing 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 salva-
tion, redemption by faith, and the like, which
meant less than nothing to him. Finding this
231


THE DWELLER
seph'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 Ros-
setti 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 con-
fession, as if unaware of the dying of day.
“During the day which preceded it I had been
haunted by the thought of myself doing what
Marcus Harding could not do. Why should not
234


ON THE THRESHOLD
question. This answer came as it were sluggishly
into my mind, “You are alone not because Marcus
Harding is away, but because Henry Chichester is
away.' For a long while I sat there stagnantly
dwelling on this knowledge which had come to me
in the blackness. It was as if I knew without
understanding, as a man may know he is involved
in a catastrophe without realizing how it has af-
fected his own fate. And then slowly there came
to me, or grew in me, an understanding of how I
was alone. I was alone with Marcus Harding at
that moment because I was Marcus Harding. A
shutter seemed to slide back softly, and for the
first time I, Marcus Harding, stared upon myself
out of the body of another man, of Henry Chi-
chester. I was alone with my soul double. Mo-
tionless, silent, I gazed upon it. Now I under-
stood why I had been tortured with anxiety lest
the world should learn to comprehend Marcus
Harding as I comprehended him. Now I under-
stood why neither he nor I had been able to break
that mysterious link which our sittings had forged
between us. I had been trying ignorantly to pro-
tect myself, to conceal my own shortcomings, to
cover my own nakedness. I had sweated with
fear lest my own truth should be discovered by
all those to whom for so many years I had been
6
237


ON THE THRESHOLD
Henry Chichester. And as Henry Chichester I
suffered; I condemned myself. This I said to
myself that night, ‘I was determined to see. I
disregarded the voice within me which warned me
that I was treading a forbidden path. God has
punished me. He has allowed me to see. But
this shall be the end. I will never sit again. I
will give up my curacy. I will leave St. Joseph's
at once. Never more will I set eyes on Marcus
Harding. I was in a condition of fierce excite-
ment-"
“Ah, exactly,” muttered the professor, almost
as if consoled —" fierce excitement!”
“I could not think of sleep. For a long time
I remained in here, sitting, standing, pacing, open-
ing books; I scarcely know what I did or did not
do. At last a sensation of terrible exhaustion
crept over me. I undressed. I threw myself on
my bed. I tried to sleep. I turned, shifted, got
up, let in more air, again lay down, lay resolutely
still in the dark, tried not to think. But always
my mind dwelt on that matter. In those few
frightful moments what had become of myself, of
Henry Chichester? Had the powerful personal-
ity of that man whom once I had almost worshiped
thrust him away, submerged him, stricken him
down in a sort of deathlike trance? What I had
• 239


THE DWELLER
seen I remembered now as Henry Chichester.
What I had known in those moments I still knew
now as Henry Chichester. In vain I revolved this
matter in my feverish mind. It was too much for
me. I was in deep waters.
“I closed my eyes. The fatigue wrapped me
more closely. Sleep at last was surely drawing
near. But suddenly I knew — how I cannot ex-
actly say — that once more the shutter was to be
drawn back for me. This knowledge resembled
a horrible physical sensation. The entry of it
into my mind, or indeed into my very soul, was as
the dawning of a dreadful and unnatural pain in
the body. This pain increased till it became
agony. Although I still lay motionless, I felt like
one involved in a furious struggle in which the
whole sum of me took violent part. And there
came to me the simile of a man seized by tre-
mendous hands, and held before a window opening
into a room in which something frightful was
about to take place. And the shutter slipped back
from the window.
"Again I looked upon myself. That was my
exact sensation. The shutter drawn back, I as-
sisted at the spectacle of Marcus Harding's life.
And it was my life. I knew with such frightful
intimacy that my knowledge was as vision.
240


ON THE THRESHOLD
Therefore, I say, I saw. Not only my spirit
seemed to be gazing, but also my bodily eyes.
“I saw myself in the night slowly approaching
my house in Onslow Gardens, ashen pale, shaken,
terrified. At a corner I passed a policeman. He
knew me and saluted me with respect. I made
no gesture in response. He stared at me in sur-
prise. Then a smile came into his face — the
smile of a man who is suddenly able to think much
less of another than he thought before. I left
him smiling thus, reached my house, and stood be-
fore it.
"Now I must tell you, and I rely absolutely
on your regarding this as said in the strictest, most
inviolable confidence —".
“ Certainly. Word of honor, and so forth!”
said the professor, quickly and sharply.
"I must tell you that Marcus Harding is a sin-
ner, and not merely in the sense in which all men
are sinners. There have been recurring moments
in his life when he has committed actions which, if
publicly known, would ruin him in the eyes of the
world and put an end to his career. As I looked
at myself standing before my house, I saw that I
was hesitating whether to go in with my misery,
or whether to seek for it the hideous alleviation
of my beloved sin.
16
241


ON THE THRESHOLD
00
spirit, dazed, stretching out to grasp the truth,
slipping back powerless to do it. It was like a
thing moving through the gloom of deep waters —
of deep, deep waters."
Again Chichester's voice died away. In the
silence that followed the professor heard the faint
ticking of a clock. He had not noticed it before.
He could not tell now whether it came from within
the room or from the room behind the folding-
doors. It seemed to him as if this ticking de-
stroyed his power to think clearly, as if it threw
his brain into an unwonted confusion which made
him feel strangely powerless. He was aware of a
· great uneasiness approaching, if not actually
amounting to fear. This uneasiness made him
long for light. Yet he knew that he dreaded
light; for he was aware of an almost unconquer-
able reluctance to look upon the face of his com-
panion. Beset by conflicting desires, therefore,
and the prey of unwonted emotion, he sat like one
paralyzed, listening always to the faint ticking of
the clock, and striving to reduce what was almost
like chaos to order in his brain.
“Why have you selected me to be the hearer
of this -- this very extraordinary statement ?” he
forced himself at length to say prosaically. The
sound of his own dry voice somewhat reassured
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THE DWELLER
WL
fessor saw a darkness moving as he went to stand
by the empty fireplace.
“I must look on truth,” he continued; “I have
to. The fascination of staring upon the truth of
oneself is deadly, but it surpasses all other fascina-
tion. He sins more often now. I watch him sin.
Sometimes under my contemplation I see him
writhing like a thing in a trap — the semblance of
myself. How the woman despises him now!
Sometimes I feel deeply sad at my own ruthless-
ness. It is frightful to contemplate the physical
wreck of a being whom, in some strange and hide-
ous way, one always feels to be oneself. When
I look at him it is as if his fallen face, his hang-
ing nerveless hands, his down-drooping figure and
eyes lit with despair were mine. His poses, his
gestures, his physical tricks, they are all mine. I
watch them with a cold, enveloping disgust, frozen
in criticism of everything he does, anticipating
every movement, every look, hating it when it
comes, because it is bred out of the remnant of a
spirit I despise as no man surely has ever despised
before. Henry Chichester would pity, but he is
overborne. He is in me as a drop may be in the
ocean. I am most aware of him when my double
sins. Only last night we sat”- Chichester came
back to the table, and stood there, very faintly
248


ON THE THRESHOLD
relieved against the darkness by the dim light which
penetrated through the windows —"we sat in the
darkness, and more deeply than ever before I went
down into the darkness. I felt as if I were pene-
trating into the last recesses of a ruined temple.
And there, in the ultimate chamber crouched all
that was left of the inmate, terrified, helpless, and
ignorant. As I looked upon him I understood
why man is never permitted really to know him-
self unless, in an access of mad folly and over-
weening pride, he succeeds in crossing the boundary
which to pass is sheer wickedness. And I tried
to turn away, but I could not — I could not. I
made a supreme effort. It was in vain.
“I saw him go home. At last he was sick of
his sin. There rose within him that strange long-
ing for goodness, for purity and rest, that terrible,
aching desire to be what those who once loved him
for long had thought him to be, which perhaps
never dies in the soul of a human being. Is it the
instinct of the Creator burning like an undying
spark in the created? And, as he drew near to
his house, there came to him the resolve to speak,
to acknowledge, to say, 'This is what I am.
Know me as I am! Care for me still, in spite of
what I am!' He went in, and sought her — the
woman. She was alone. Sleep had not come to
249


THE DWELLER
her. Perhaps some instinct had told her she
must wake and be ready for something. Then he
gathered together the little that was left to him
of courage, and he strove to tell her, to make her
understand some of the truth, to obtain from her
the greatest of human gifts — the love of one from
whom a man has no secrets that he can tell.
“She listened for a moment, then she thrust
out her hands as if to push the truth of him out
of her life. And last night she left him — going
in fear of him."
The professor shook his narrow shoulders, and
sprang abruptly to his feet. The ticking of the
clock now sounded almost like a hammer beating
in his ears.
“It's time we had some light,” he said in rather
a loud voice.
The darkness that was Chichester moved. A
gleam of light shone in the little room, revealing
the thin Madonna, “ The Light of the World,” the
piano, the neatly bound books of the curate of St.
Joseph's; revealing Chichester, who now stood
facing the professor, white, drawn, lined, but
with eyes full of almost hideous resolution and
power.
"I advise," said the professor —"I advise you
from this time forward —".
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ON THE THRESHOLD
He stared into the eyes of the man opposite
to him, and his voice died away in his throat.
When, immediately afterward, he found himself
walking hurriedly toward Kensington High Street
the sweat was pouring down his face.
251


ON THE THRESHOLD
Eng ati
- Marts
dure the
2015 bir
It was
Oassed
Then
the High Street end of the thoroughfare when he
heard a door bang. He turned sharply. A
heavy uncertain footstep rang on the pavement.
Out of the darkness emerged a tall figure with
bowed head. As it moved slowly forward once
or twice it swayed, and a wavering arm shot out as
if seeking for some support. Malling stood
where he was till he saw the broad ghastliness of
Marcus Harding's white face show under the ray
of a lamp. He discerned no eyes. The eyes of
the unhappy man seemed sunken out of recogni-
tion in the dreadful whiteness of his countenance.
The gait was that of one who believes himself
dogged, and who tries to slink furtively, but who
has partly lost control of his bodily powers, and
who starts in terror at his own too heavy and
sounding footfalls.
This figure went by Malling, and was lost in
the lighted emptiness of the High Street. Mal-
ling did not follow it. Now he had a great desire,
born out of his inmost humanity, to speak with
Henry Chichester. He made up his mind to re-
turn to the curate's door: if he saw a light to
knock and ask for admittance; if the window was
dark to go on his way. He retraced his steps,
looked up, and saw a light. Then it was to be.
That man and he were to speak together. But as
Crag
green
med
255


THE DWELLER
W1
mo
he looked, the light was extinguished. Never-
theless he struck upon the door.
No one answered. He struck again, then
stepped back into the roadway, and looked up at
Chichester's window. The curate must surely
have heard. Yes, for even as Malling gazed the
window moved. No light appeared. But after
a pause a voice above said:
“ Is that you, Mr. Harding ?”
The dim figure of a man was apparent, stand-
ing a little back and half concealed by a dark-
ness of drooping curtains.
“ It is I — Evelyn Malling," said Malling.
The form at the window started.
“Mr. Malling!” the words came uncertainly.
“What is it? Has — has anything happened
to — why do you want me at such an hour ?"
“I chanced to be in your street and saw your
light. I thought I would give you a hail.”
“Do you mean that you want to come in ? "
After a short pause Malling answered, “ Yes."
“I cannot let you in!” the voice above cried
out lamentably.
Then the window was shut very softly.
Three days later Malling saw in the papers the
news of the complete breakdown of Marcus Har.
256


THE DWELLER
Malling was deep in thought and did not an-
swer.
“Do you think?" said the professor, “that
Henry Chichester will be greatly affected by this
death?”
“ Affected? Do you mean by grief?”
“Yes.”
“I should suppose that to be highly improb-
able."
The professor shot a very sharp glance at Mal-
ling.
- -
-
"I'm not sure that I agree with you,” he ob-
served dryly.
“Have you seen him lately?" asked Malling.
“Not quite recently. But if I had seen him,
say, yesterday, I don't think that would greatly af-
fect my present dubiety. I should, however, like
to set that dubiety at rest. Are you busy to-day?"
"No."
“I am. Will you make a little investigation
for me? Will you go and pay a visit of condo-
lence to Chichester on the death of his rector, and
then come round to the White House and re-
-
-
- -
- -
-
port?"
“I will if you wish it."
“I shall be in after seyen"
“ Very well.”
258


THE DWELLER
“Not to say ill, sir. But have n't you heard ?”
“What?”
“His poor rector 's gone, sir, what used to come
here to visit him so regular. I never see a gentle-
man in such a way. Why, he's so changed I
don't hardly know him.”
“Have you been here long?" said Malling,
abruptly.
“Only six months, sir.”
The maid began to look rather astonished.
“And so Mr. Chichester is quite altered by his
grief?”
“You never did, sir! He was so firm, was n't
he, above every one! Even his rector used to look
to him and be guided by him. And now he's
as gentle and weak almost as a new-born child,
as they say."
Malling thought of Stepton. Had he looked
forward to some such change?
“Perhaps I could console Mr. Chichester in
his grief,” he said. “Will you take him this card
and ask if I can see him ? I knew Mr. Harding,
too. I might be of use, possibly.”
“I'll ask him, sir. He's laying down on the
bed, I do believe.”
Ellen hurried up-stairs with the card. It
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ON THE THRESHOLD
seemed to Malling that she was away for a long
time. At last she returned.
“If you please, sir, Mr. Chichester wants to
know if it's anything important. He's feeling
very bad, poor gentleman. But of course if it 's
anything important, he would n't for all the world
say no."
“ It is important."
“ Then I was to ask you to walk in, sir, please."
Chichester's sitting-room was empty when Mal-
ling came into it, and the folding-doors between
it and the bedroom were shut. Ellen went away,
and Malling heard a faint murmur of voices, and
then Ellen's footstep retreating down the stairs.
Silence followed. He waited, at first standing.
Then he sat down near the piano. Not a sound
reached him from the bedroom. On the curate's
table lay a book. Malling took it up. The title
was “God's Will be Done." The author was
a well-known high-church divine, Father Rowton.
To him, then, Henry Chichester betook himself for
comfort. The piano stood open. On it was
music. Malling looked and saw, “Oh, for the
wings, for the wings of a dovel” by Mendelssohn.
The little room seemed full of pious orthodoxy.
Surely its atmosphere was utterly changed since
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THE DWELLER
ter than I knew myself. What shall I do with-
out him?"
The curate's grief was almost as genuine and
unself-conscious as a child's, and Malling felt as
if at that moment, like a child, he felt himself
adrift in a difficult world. His gentle, kindly,
but not strong face was distorted, but not hardened,
by his distress, which seemed begging for sympathy.
And Malling remembered the Henry Chichester
he had known some years ago, before the days
of St. Joseph's, the saintly but rather weak man,
beloved by every one, but ruling no one. That
man was surely before him, and that man knew
not how to play a hypocrite's part. Yet Malling
felt he must test him.
“His death is very sad,” he replied; “but
surely his powers had been on the decline for a
long while."
“His powers, but not his capacity for good-
ness. His patience was angelic. Even when the
cruelest blow of all fell upon him, even when his
wife — whom, God forgive me! I don't think some
of us can ever forgive — even when she deserted
him in his hour of need, he never complained.
He knew it was God's hand upon him, and he sub-
mitted. He has taught me what true patience is.
What I owe to him! What I owe to him!”
СТ
264


ON THE THRESHOLD
As if distressed beyond measure, the curate got
up, almost wringing his thin hands.
“It was he who sacrificed his time for me!"
he continued, moving restlessly about the room.
“But I seem to remember I told you. Did n't I
tell you — or was it someone else? — how he
gave up the hours which should have been hours
of repose in order that my will might be strength-
ened, that I might be developed into a man more
worthy to be his coadjutor? When I think, when
I remember —"
His light, tenor voice failed. Tears stood in
his gentle, blue eyes.
“If I am worth anything at all,” he sud-
denly cried out, “if I have gained any force of
character, any power for good at all, I owe it all
to my rector's self-sacrificing endeavors on my be-
half — of course, through God's blessing."
“Then,” said Malling, “you think that Mr.
Harding changed you by his influence?”
"He helped me to develop, he brought me on.
Jealousy was unknown to him. I was a very poor
preacher. He taught me how to hold people's
attention. When I knew he was near me I some-
times seemed almost inspired. I was inspired by
him. I preached almost as if out of his mouth.
And now!"
265


ON THE THRESHOLD
“ You, ma'am! Oh, of course he will see
you!"
“Of course."
“I did n't know who it was, ma'am.”
“ Is it this way?"
“Yes, ma'am. I 'll show you. We do feel
it, ma'am. The poor gentleman used to come
here so often of nights."
“ Did he? I did n't know that.”
Malling recognized the second voice as Lady
Sophia's. A moment, and she was ushered into
the room. She was dressed in black, but not in
widow's weeds, and wore a veil which she pushed
hastily up as she came in almost with a rush.
When she saw Malling, for a moment she looked
disconcerted.
“Oh, I thought —” she began. She stood
still. Chichester said nothing, and did not move.
Malling went toward her.
“I was very much grieved,” he said, " at the
news I heard to-day."
She gave him her hand. He knew his words
were conventional. How could they be anything
else? But Lady Sophia's manner in giving him her
hand was not conventional. She stretched it out
without even looking at him. She said nothing.
267


THE DWELLER
Her eyes were fixed upon Chichester, who stood
on the other side of the little room in a rigid at-
titude, with his eyes cast down, as if he could not
bear to see the woman who had just entered.
“I offer you my sympathy,” Malling added.
“Sympathy!” said Lady Sophia, with a sharp
note in her voice suggestive of intense, almost
febrile excitement. “Then did n't you know?”
She stared at him, turning her head swiftly.
“Know?”
“ That I had left him ? Yes, I left him, and
now he is dead. Do you expect me to be sorry?
Well, I am not sorry. Ah, I see you don't under-
stand!”
She made a movement toward Chichester. It
was obvious that she was so intensely excited that
she had lost the power of self-control.
“Nobody undertands me but you !” she cried
out to Chichester. “You knew what he was, you
knew what I endured, you know what I must feel
now. Oh, it's no use pretending. I'm sick of
pretence. You have taught me to care for abso-
lute truth and only that. My relations, my friends
- ah! to-day I have been almost suffocated with
hypocrisy! And now, when I come here —” she
flung out her hand toward Malling —“to get away
from it all - grieved,' 'my sympathy!' I can't
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THE DWELLER
“You left — him when he needed you most.
You left him to die alone.”
Lady Sophia suddenly turned round to Malling
and scrutinized his face, as if demanding from
him sympathy in her horrified amazement. He
regarded her calmly, and she turned again to the
curate.
“What do you mean?" she said, and her voice
had changed.
“That his friends can never be yours," said
Chichester, as if making a great effort, driven to it
by some intense feeling.
“You call yourself his friend!” said Lady
Sophia. Her voice vibrated with scorn.
“At any rate, he was mine, my best friend.
And now he has gone forever!"
Lady Sophia drew in her breath.
“ You hyprocrite !" she said. “You hypo-
crite!”
She spoke like one under the influence of an emo-
tion so intense that it could not be gainsaid.
“To pretend you admired him, loved him—
you!"
“I did admire and love him."
She seemed to be struck dumb by his quiet
manner, by the conviction in his voice. In a mo-
ment she turned round again toward Malling.
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ON THE THRESHOLD
science sends man far away from God. A great
deal of science brings man back to God. Which
is it now — you professor, you? Which is it
now?"
THE END
273