The Dweller on the Threshold Part 21

"I saw that though Chichester was such a devoted worshiper of mine, if I wanted to persuade him to my secret purpose,--no other than the effort, 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 subject of the human will. Now, at that time Chichester knew that his will was weak. He considered that fact one of his serious faults. I hinted that I agreed with him. I proposed to join with 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 Chichester some of the extraordinary and deeply interesting 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 drawing 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 fascinated 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 saw me exercising in the pulpit and over the minds of men in my intercourse with them.

"What I really wished to do, what I meant to do, if possible, was to use Chichester as a medium, and to try through him to communicate with the spirit world. I had taken it into my head--no doubt you will say quite unreasonably--that he must be entirely subject to my will in a sitting, and that if I willed him to be entranced, it was certain that he would become so. But my own entirely selfish desires I concealed under the cloak of an unselfish wish to give power to him. I even pretended, as you see, to have a highly moral purpose, though it is true I suggested trying to effect it in an unconventional and very unecclesiastical manner.

"Chichester, though, as I have said, at first startled, of course eventually fell in with my view. We sat together in his room at Hornton Street.

"Now, Mr. Malling, some of what I have told you may appear to be almost contradictory. I have spoken of my _maladie de grandeur_ as if it were a reason why I wished to sit with Henry Chichester, and then of my desire to communicate, if possible, with the spirit world as my reason."

"I noticed that," observed Malling, "and purposed later to point it out to you."

"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 conceit, amounting at moments almost to an intoxication, 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 l.u.s.ted to push my influence to its limit). But my desire to know made me conceive the pushing 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 pretended 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 difficulty with her. She thought my many activities would bring me ever more and more into the public 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 salvation 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 completely 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 entranced 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 though my great desire was frustrated in our sittings, the desire of Chichester, so different, perhaps 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 indescribable bitterness Mr. Harding dwelt on these last words,--"I could only express rejoicing. And this I did with successful hypocrisy. Nevertheless, I was greatly irritated. For it seemed to me that, when we sat, Chichester triumphed over me. He obtained his desire while mine remained ungratified. 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 moments of life. One seems to become inexplicably 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 pa.s.s 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 understand 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 so,--I wish to be absolutely accurate,--Chichester began 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--Chichester reiterated more strongly his a.s.sertion of beneficent alteration in himself. I did not believe him, though I did believe he was absolutely sincere in his supposition. It seemed to me that he was 'suggestioned,' partly perhaps by his implicit trust in me, partly by his own desire that something curious should happen. However, still playing a part in pursuance of my resolve not to let Chichester know my real object in this matter, I pretended that I, too, perceived an alteration in him, as if his personality were strengthening. And not once, but on several occasions, I spoke of the change in him as almost exactly corresponding with the change that had taken place in me when I sat with my Hindu friend.

"All this time, with a force encouraged by the secret anger within me, I violently, at last almost furiously, willed that Chichester should become entranced.

"But at length, though I willed furiously, I felt as if I were not willing with genuine strength, as if I could not will with genuine strength any longer. It is difficult, almost impossible, to explain to you exactly the sensation that gradually overspread me; but it used always to seem to me, when I self-consciously exerted my will, as if I held within me some weapon almost irresistible, as if I forced it forward, as if its advance, caused by me, could not be withstood. I now felt as if I still possessed this weapon, but could not induce it to move. It was there, like a heavy, useless thing, almost like a burden upon me.

"And Chichester continued to a.s.sert 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 suppose so, because till that moment he had always acquiesced in any proposition of mine. Yet I remember 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 pa.s.sed the handkerchief over his forehead two or three times.

"What happened was this, that Chichester resisted my proposal, and that I found myself obliged to comply with his will instead of, as usual, imposing mine upon him.

"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 beginning of my horrible subjection to Henry Chichester."

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 ostensibly for that very purpose, you will see my difficulty."

"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 obliged to accept a moral bondage imposed upon me by my curate. The term may sound exaggerated; I can only say that was how the matter presented itself to me. From the moment I did so, I took second place to him.

"We continued to sit from time to time. And the strange, to me inexplicable, situation rapidly developed.

"To put it before you in few words and plainly: Chichester seemed to suck my will away from me gradually but surely, till my former strength was his. But that was not all. With the growth of his will there was another and more terrible growth: there rose in him a curiously observant faculty."

Again the rector took out his handkerchief and wiped his brow.

"A curiously critical faculty. How shall I say? Perhaps you may know, Mr. Malling, how the persistent att.i.tude of one mind may influence another. For instance, if a man always expects ill of another--treachery, let us say, bad temper, hatred, fear, inducing trickery, perhaps, that other is turned toward just such evil manifestations in connection with that man. If some one with psychic force thinks all you do is wrong, soon you begin to do things wrongly. A fearful uneasiness is bred. The faculties begin to fail. The formerly 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 criticism. Like some subtle acid it seemed to act destructively 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 terribly. 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 occasions, 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 shortcomings 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 under the thought of Chichester's crystal purity and of my own besmirched condition of soul.

All self-confidence departed from me; but I endeavored, of course, to conceal this from the world, and especially from Chichester. With the world for a time no doubt I succeeded. But with Chichester--did I ever succeed? Could I ever succeed 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 sittings?"

Very quietly Malling spoke, and he just touched the rector's arm.

"For a long while."

"Had you ceased from them when I first met you?"

"On Westminster Bridge? No."

"Have you ceased from them now?"

The rector shifted as if in physical distress.

"Chichester constrains me to them even now," he replied, like a man bitterly ashamed. "He constrains me to them. And is that goodness, righteousness? I said he was a saint; but now! Is it saintliness to torture a fellow-creature?"

Malling remembered how he had once, and not long ago, asked himself whether Chichester's mouth and eyes looked good.

"Have you ever told Chichester what grave distress he is causing you?"

said Malling.

"No, never, never! I can't!"

"Why not?"