The Dweller on the Threshold Part 33

"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 I of my own will leave St. Joseph's, get away from this dreadful contemplation which obsessed me, from this continual anxiety--almost amounting to terror at moments--which gnawed me? Why should not I break this mysterious link, impalpable yet strong? If I did, should I not again find peace? But my sittings with Marcus Harding would be at an end. Could I give them up?

I asked myself that, and I felt as if I could not. Through them, by means of them, I felt as if I might attain to something wonderful--terrible perhaps, but wonderful. I felt as if I were approaching the threshold of absolute truth. A voice within me whispered, 'Go no further.' Was it the voice of conscience? I did not heed it. Something irresistible urged me forward. I thrust away from me with a sort of crude mental violence the haunting thought. And when the darkness came I greeted it.

"For he came with the darkness."

On the wall opposite to the professor the thin Madonna faded away.

"As I heard his heavy step on the stairs that night I said to myself, 'At all hazards I will see, I will know, more. I will see, I will know--all.'

When he entered at that door"--a thin darkness moved in the darkness as Chichester pointed--"he was dreadfully white and looked sad, almost terrified. He suggested that we should break through our plan and not sit. I refused. He then said he wished to sit in light. I refused. He was become my creature. He dared not disobey my desires! We placed our hands on this table, not touching. I could no longer endure the touch of his hand. We remained motionless. A long time pa.s.sed. There were no rappings.

A strange deadness seemed to prevail in the room. Presently it faded away, and I had the sensation that I was sitting quite alone.

"At first it seemed to me that my companion must have crept out of the room silently, leaving me by myself in the darkness. I shuddered at the thought that I was alone. But then I said to myself that Marcus Harding must be there in the blackness opposite to me, and I moved my hands furtively on the table, thinking to prove his presence to myself by touch. I did not prove it. Suddenly I had no need to touch him in order to know that he was there."

"Why not?" said the professor, and started at the sound of his own voice in the little room.

"Something made me realize that he was still within the room.

Nevertheless, I felt that I was alone. How could that be? I asked myself that 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 affected 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 Chichester. I was alone with my soul double. Motionless, silent, I gazed upon it. Now I understood why I had been tortured with anxiety lest the world should learn to comprehend Marcus Harding as I comprehended him. Now I understood 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 protect 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 presenting a lie. Yes, I had sweated with fear; but even then how little I had known! A voice cried out suddenly, 'Turn on the light!' It was the voice of my double. It seemed to awake, or to recall perhaps,--how can I say?--Henry Chichester. I was aware of a shock; it seemed strongly physical. I got up at once and turned the light on. Marcus Harding was before me, trembling, ashen. 'What is it? What has happened?' he said in a broken voice. I made no reply. He left me. I heard his step in the street--out there!"

Chichester was silent. The professor said nothing for a moment, but pa.s.sed his tongue twice over his lips and swallowed, sighing immediately afterward.

"Transferred personality!" he muttered--"transferred personality. Is that what you'd have me believe?"

"I'll tell you the rest. When Marcus Harding's steps died away down the street I remained here. Since that shock I have spoken of, I felt that I was again Henry Chichester, changed, as I had long been changed--charged with new force, new knowledge, new discrimination, new power over others, gifted with a penetrating vision into the very soul of the man I had worshiped, yet 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. G.o.d 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 excitement--"

"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, opening 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 personality 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 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 exactly 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 tremendous 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 a.s.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. 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 pa.s.sed a policeman. He knew me and saluted me with respect. I made no gesture in response. He stared at me in surprise. 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 before 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 sinner, 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.

"Professor,"--it seemed to Stepton at this moment as if Chichester's voice loomed upon him out of the darkness by which they were now enshrouded,--"it has been said that nothing shocks a man so terribly as the sight of his body-double; that to see what appears to be himself, even if only standing at a window or sitting before a fire, causes in a man a physical horror which seems to strike to the very roots of his physical being. I looked now upon my soul-double, piercing the fleshly envelop and it was my very soul that sweated and turned cold. For I perceived the dreadful action which, if known, would certainly ruin me, being committed by the spirit. The slavish body had not yet bowed down and done its part; but it was about to obey the impulse of the spirit.

Slowly the body turned away from its home. The spirit was driving it. The demon with the whip was at work in the night. I looked till the dawn came. And only when at last my double crept, like a thief, into its house, did sleep take me for a little while--sleep that was alive with nightmare."

Chichester was silent. The professor heard him breathing quickly, saw him, almost as a shadow just shown by the faint light that entered from the street through the two small windows, clasp and unclasp his hands, touch his forehead, his eyelids, move in his chair, like a man profoundly stirred and unable to be at ease.

"When I woke," he continued, after a long pause, which the professor did not break by a word or a movement, "I woke to combat. As I told you, I had resolved at once to resign my curacy, and never to see that man again. In the light of the morning I sat down to write my letter of resignation; but I could not do it. A fearful compulsion to remain was upon me. I wrote a few words. I stopped, tore the note up, began again.

But writing was impossible. Then I resolved to visit Marcus Harding and to tell him that I must go. I went to his house. He was at home. When I saw him I told him that I wished him to sit again that night. He strove to refuse. He did not understand the truth, but he was terrified. I ordered him to come to my rooms that night, and left him. As I was going away I met Lady Sophia. To my amazement, she stopped me, spoke to me kindly, even more than kindly, looked at me with an expression in her eyes that almost frightened me. I said to myself, 'But those are a slave's eyes!' as I left her. Never before had any woman looked at me like that. In that moment, I think, she began to turn from him toward me, to forsake weakness for strength. Yes, I say strength. I was rent by the tumult within me, but I had strength. I have it now. For, despite his hypocrisy, his unbelief, his active sinning, Marcus Harding had been a strong man. And even Henry Chichester, with all his humbleness, his readiness to yield to others, to think nothing of himself, had had the strength that belongs to purity of soul. And then there is the strength the soul draws from looking upon truth. There was strength, there is now, for the woman to follow. And instinct has surely guided her. She does not, she cannot know. And yet instinct sends her in search of the strength."

"What do you mean by that? What do you claim?"

"You read that sermon?"

"I did."

"Don't you understand? I am that man at the window. He did not flee away. He could not. He was, he is, compelled to remain. He watches that dreadful life. And the other within the room is fading. The strength, the authority, the power, are coming to me. Every sitting broadens that bridge across which the deserters are pa.s.sing. When I preached that sermon my congregation sat as if numbed by terror. And he in the choir listened, never moving. I saw his 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 destroyed 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 unconquerable reluctance to look upon the face of his companion. 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 rea.s.sured him, and he added: "Though there is nothing very extraordinary in the facts you have related. Telepathic communication between one mind and another is a commonplace of to-day, an old story. Every one of course accepts it as possible. What novelty do you claim to present to startle science?"

"I say that telepathy does not explain the link between Marcus Harding and myself."

The professor struck his hand on the table. It seemed to him that if only he could get into an argument this strange confusion and fear might leave him. He would be on familiar ground.

"What you call vision might be merely mind-reading, what you call perceiving the action of the spirit, mind-reading. Your terror lest others should find out bad truths about Marcus Harding would spring naturally enough from your lingering regard for him. Your acute anxiety when he is preaching arises of course from the fact that, owing to bodily causes, no doubt, his mental powers are failing him, and he is no longer able to do himself justice."

"You don't understand. What I desired in our sittings was to draw into myself strength, power, will from--him. What have I done? I have drawn into myself the very man. That night when the shutter slipped back he looked out from the body of Henry Chichester. His mind worked, his soul was alive, within the cage of another man. And meanwhile Henry Chichester lay as if submerged, but presently stirred, and, however feebly, lived again. He lives now. But not from him comes my frightful comprehension of Marcus Harding. Not him does Marcus Harding fear. Not to him does she, the woman, look with the eyes of a slave. It is not he who dominates the crowds in St. Joseph's. It is not he who conceived that sermon of the man and his double. It is not he who has sometimes been terribly afraid."

"Afraid! Afraid!"

"There have been moments when I have been moved to s.n.a.t.c.h my double out of the sight of men. That day when we met Evelyn Malling I feared as I left them alone together; and when I found Malling intimately there in that house, I felt like one coming upon an ambush which might be destructive of his safety. My instinct was to detach Malling from my double, to attach him to myself. My conduct startled him. I saw that plainly. Yet I tried to win him over, as it were, to my side. He came to me. I strove to tell him, but something secret prevented me. And how could he a.s.sist me?"

Chichester got up from the table. The professor 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 surpa.s.ses all other fascination. 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 ruthlessness. It is frightful to contemplate the physical wreck of a being whom, in some strange and hideous way, one always feels to be oneself. When I look at him it is as if his fallen face, his hanging 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, antic.i.p.ating 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 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 penetrating 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 himself unless, in an access of mad folly and overweening pride, he succeeds in crossing the boundary which to pa.s.s 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 longing 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 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--"

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.