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Title: Flames

Author: Robert Smythe Hichens

Release Date: December 4, 2004 [EBook #14253]

Language: English

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                                FLAMES

                           BY ROBERT HICHENS

                  AUTHOR OF THE GARDEN OF ALLAH, ETC.




COPYRIGHT, 1897, BY HERBERT S. STONE & CO.

This edition published July, 1906, by Duffield & Company




BOOK I--VALENTINE




CHAPTER I

THE SAINT OF VICTORIA STREET


Refinement had more power over the soul of Valentine Cresswell than
religion. It governed him with a curious ease of supremacy, and held
him back without effort from most of the young man's sins. Each age
has its special sins. Each age passes them, like troops in review, before
it decides what regiment it will join. Valentine had never decided to
join any regiment. The trumpets of vice rang in his ears in vain, mingled
with the more classical music of his life as the retreat from the
barracks of Seville mingled with the click of Carmen's castanets. But he
heeded them not. If he listened to them sometimes, it was only to wonder
at the harsh and blatant nature of their voices, only to pity the poor
creatures who hastened to the prison, which youth thinks freedom and old
age protection, at their shrieking summons. He preferred to be master of
his soul, and had no desire to set it drilling at the command of painted
women, or to drown it in wine, or to suffocate it in the smoke at
which the voluptuary tries to warm his hands, mistaking it for fire.
Intellectuality is to some men what religion is to many women, a trellis
of roses that bars out the larger world. Valentine loved to watch the
roses bud and bloom as he sat in his flower-walled cell, a deliberate and
rejoicing prisoner. For a long time he loved to watch them. And he
thought that it must always be so, for he was not greatly given to moods,
and therefore scarcely appreciated the thrilling meaning of the word
change, that is the key-word of so many a life cipher. He loved the
pleasures of the intellect so much that he made the mistake of opposing
them, as enemies, to the pleasures of the body. The reverse mistake is
made by the generality of men; and those who deem it wise to mingle the
sharply contrasted ingredients that form a good recipe for happiness
are often dubbed incomprehensible, or worse. But there were moments at
a period of Valentine's life when he felt discontented at his strange
inability to long for sin; when he wondered, rather wearily, why he was
rapt from the follies that other men enjoyed; why he could refuse,
without effort, the things that they clamoured after year by year with
an unceasing gluttony of appetite. The saint quarrelled mutely with his
holiness of intellectuality, and argued, almost fiercely, with his cold
and delicate purity.

"Why am I like some ivory statue?" he thought sometimes, "instead of like
a human being, with drumming pulses, and dancing longings, and voices
calling forever in my ears, like voices of sirens, 'Come, come, rest in
our arms, sleep on our bosoms, for we are they who have given joy to all
men from the beginning of time. We are they who have drawn good men from
their sad goodness, and they have blessed us. We are they who have been
the allegory of the sage and the story of the world. In our soft arms the
world has learned the glory of embracing. On our melodious hearts the
hearts of men have learned the sweet religion of singing.' Why cannot
I be as other men are, instead of the Saint--the saint of Victoria
Street--that I am?"

For, absurdly enough, that was the name his world gave to Valentine.
This is not an age of romance, and he did not dwell, like the saints of
old centuries, in the clear solitudes of the great desert, but in what
the advertisement writer calls a "commodious flat" in Victoria Street.
No little jackals thronged about him in sinful circle by night. No school
of picturesque disciples surrounded him by day. If he peeped above his
blinds he could see the radiant procession of omnibuses on their halting
way towards Westminster. The melodies of wandering organs sang in his
ascetic ears, not once, nor twice, but many times a week. The milk-boy
came, it must be presumed, to pay his visit in the morning; and the
sparrows made the air alive, poising above the chimneys, instead of the
wild eagles, whose home is near the sun. Valentine was a modern young
man of twenty-four, dealt at the Army and Navy Stores, was extremely
well off, and knew everybody. He belonged to the best clubs and went
occasionally to the best parties. His tailor had a habitation in
Sackville Street, and his gloves came from the Burlington Arcade. He
often lunched at the Berkeley and frequently dined at Willis's. Also
he had laughed at the antics of Arthur Roberts, and gazed through a pair
of gold-mounted opera-glasses at Empire ballets and at the discreet
juggleries of Paul Cinquevalli. The romance of cloistered saintliness
was not his. If it had been he might never have rebelled. For how often
it is romance which makes a home for religion in the heart of man,
romance which feathers the nest of purity in which the hermit soul
delights to dwell! Is it not that bizarre silence of the Algerian waste
which leads many a Trappist to his fate, rather than the strange thought
of God calling his soul to heavenly dreams and ecstatic renunciations? Is
it not the wild poetry of the sleeping snows by night that gives to the
St. Bernard monk his holiest meditations? When the organ murmurs, and he
kneels in that remote chapel of the clouds to pray, is it not the
religion of his wonderful earthly situation and prospect that speaks to
him loudly, rather than the religion of the far-off Power whose hands he
believes to hold the threads of his destinies? Even the tonsure is a
psalm to some, and the robe and cowl a litany. The knotted cord is a mass
and the sandal a prayer.

But Valentine had been a saint by temperament, it seemed, and would be a
saint by temperament to the end. He had not been scourged to a prayerful
attitude by sorrow or by pain. Tears had not made a sea to float him to
repentance or to purity. Apparently he had been given what men call
goodness as others are given moustaches or a cheerful temper. When his
contemporaries wondered at him, he often found himself wondering still
more at them. Why did they love coarse sins? he thought. Why did they
fling themselves down, like dogs, to roll in offal? He could not
understand, and for a long time he did not wish to understand. But one
night the wish came to him, and he expressed it to his bosom friend,
Julian Addison.




CHAPTER II

A QUESTION OF EXCHANGE


Most of us need an opposite to sit by the hearth with us sometimes, and
to stir us to wonder or to war. Julian was Valentine's singularly
complete and perfect opposite, in nature if not in deeds. But, after all,
it is the thoughts that are of account rather than the acts, to a mind
like Valentine's. He knew that Julian's nature was totally unlike his
own, so singularly unlike that Julian struck just the right note to
give the strength of a discord to the chord--that often seemed a common
chord--of his own harmony. Long ago, for this reason, or for no special
reason, he had grown to love Julian. Theirs was a fine, clean specimen
of friendship. How fine, Valentine never rightly knew until this evening.

They were sitting together in Valentine's flat in that hour when he
became serious and expansive. He had rather a habit of becoming serious
toward midnight, especially if he was with only one person; and no desire
to please interfered with his natural play of mind and of feeling when he
was with Julian. To affect any feeling with Julian would have seemed like
being on conventional terms with an element, or endeavouring to deceive
one's valet about one's personal habits. Long ago Julian and he had, in
mind, taken up their residence together, fallen into the pleasant custom
of breakfasting, lunching, and dining on all topics in common. Valentine
knew of no barriers between them. And so, now, as they sat smoking, he
expressed his mood without fear or hesitation.

The room in which they were was small. It was named the tentroom, being
hung with dull-green draperies, which hid the ceiling and fell loosely to
the floor on every side. A heavy curtain shrouded the one door. On the
hearth flickered a fire, before which lay Valentine's fox-terrier, Rip.
Julian was half lying down on a divan in an unbuttoned attitude.
Valentine leaned forward in an arm-chair. They were smoking cigarettes.

"Julian," Valentine said, meditatively, "I sometimes wonder why you and
I are such great friends."

"How abominable of you! To seek a reason for friendship is as inhuman as
to probe for the causes of love. Don't, for goodness' sake, let your
intellect triumph over your humanity, Valentine. Of all modern vices,
that seems to me the most loathsome. But you could never fall into
anything loathsome. You are sheeted against that danger with plate
armour."

"Nonsense!"

"But you are. It sometimes seems to me that you and I are like Elijah and
Elisha, in a way. But I am covetous of your mantle."

"Then you want me to be caught from you into heaven?"

"No. I should like you to give me your mantle, your powers, your nature,
that is, and to stay here as well."

"And send the chariot of fire to the coach-house, and the horses of fire
to the nearest stables?"

"Exactly!"

"Well, but give me a reason for this rascally craving."

"A reason! Oh, I hate my nature and I love yours. What a curse it is to
go through life eternally haunted by one's self; worse than being married
to an ugly and boring wife."

"Now you are being morbid."

"Well, I'm telling you just how I feel."

"That is being morbid. Recording to some people who claim to direct
Society."

"The world's County Council, who would like to abolish all the public
bars."

"And force us to do our drinking in the privacy of our bedrooms."

"You would never do any drinking, Valentine. How could you, the Saint of
Victoria Street?"

"I begin to hate that nickname."

And he frowned slowly. Tall, fair, curiously innocent-looking, his
face was the face of a blonde ascetic. His blue eyes were certainly not
cold, but nobody could imagine that they would ever gleam with passion or
with desire as they looked upon sin. His mouth seemed made for prayer,
not for kisses; and so women often longed to kiss it. Over him, indeed,
intellectuality hung like a light veil, setting him apart from the uproar
which the world raises while it breaks the ten commandments. Julian, on
the other hand, was brown, with bright, eager eyes, and the expression of
one who was above all things intensely human. Valentine had ever been,
and still remained, to him a perpetual wonder, a sort of beautiful
mystery. He actually reverenced this youth who stood apart from all the
muddy ways of sin, too refined, as it seemed, rather than too religious,
to be attracted by any wile of the devil's, too completely artistic to
feel any impulse towards the subtle violence which lurks in all the
vagaries of the body. Valentine was to Julian a god, but in their mutual
relations this fact never became apparent. On the contrary, Valentine
was apt to look up to Julian with admiration, and the curious respect
often felt by those who are good by temperament for those who are
completely human. And Julian loved Valentine for looking up to him,
finding in this absurd modesty of his friend a crowning beauty of
character. He had never told Valentine the fact that Valentine kept
him pure, held his bounding nature in leash, was the wall of fire that
hedged him from sin, the armour that protected him against the assaults
of self. He had never told Valentine this secret, which he cherished
with the exceeding and watchful care men so often display in hiding
that which does them credit. For who is not a pocket Byron nowadays?
But to-night was fated by the Immortals to be a night of self-revelation.
And Valentine led the way by taking a step that surprised Julian not a
little. For as Valentine frowned he said:

"Yes, I begin to hate my nickname, and I begin to hate myself."

Julian could not help smiling at the absurdity of this bemoaning.

"What is it in yourself that you hate so much?" he asked, with a decided
curiosity.

Valentine sat considering.

"Well," he replied at length, "I think it is my inhumanity, which robs me
of many things. I don't desire the pleasures that most men desire, as you
know. But lately I have often wished to desire them."

"Rather an elaborate state of mind."

"Yet a state easy to understand, surely. Julian, emotions pass me by. Why
is that? Deep love, deep hate, despair, desire, won't stop to speak to
me. Men tell me I am a marvel because I never do as they do. But I am not
driven as they are evidently driven. The fact of the matter is that
desire is not in me. My nature shrinks from sin; but it is not virtue
that shrinks: it is rather reserve. I have no more temptation to be
sensual, for instance, than I have to be vulgar."

"Hang it, Val, you don't want to have the temptation, do you?"

Valentine looked at Julian curiously.

"You have the temptation, Julian?" he said.

"You know I have--horribly."

"But you fight it and conquer it?"

"I fight it, and now I am beginning to conquer it, to get it under."

"Now? Since when?"

Julian replied by asking another question.

"Look here, how long have we known each other?"

"Let me see. I'm twenty-four, you twenty-three. Just five years."

"Ah! For just five years I've fought, Val, been able to fight."

"And before then?"

"I didn't fight; I revelled in the enemy's camp."

"You have never told me this before. Did you suddenly get conversion, as
Salvationists say?"

"Something like it. But my conversion had nothing to do with trumpets and
tambourines."

"What then? This is interesting."

A certain confusion had come into Julian's expression, even a certain
echoing awkwardness into his attitude. He looked away into the fire and
lighted another cigarette before he answered. Then he said rather
unevenly:

"I dare say you'll be surprised when I tell you. But I never meant to
tell you at all."

"Don't, if you would rather not."

"Yes, I think I will. I must stop you from disliking yourself at any
cost, dear old boy. Well, you converted me, so far as I am converted;
and that's not very far, I'm afraid."

"I?" said Valentine, with genuine surprise. "Why, I never tried to."

"Exactly. If you had, no doubt you'd have failed."

"But explain."

"I've never told you all you do for me, Val. You are my armour against
all these damned things. When I'm with you, I hate the notion of being a
sinner. I never hated it before I met you. In fact, I loved it. I wanted
sin more than I wanted anything in heaven or earth. And then--just at the
critical moment when I was passing from boyhood into manhood, I met you."

He stopped. His brown cheeks were glowing, and he avoided Valentine's
gaze.

"Go on, Julian," Valentine said. "I want to hear this."

"All right, I'll finish now, but I don't know why I ever began. Perhaps
you'll think me a fool, or a sentimentalist."

"Nonsense!"

"Well, I don't know how it is, but when I saw you I first understood
that there is a good deal in what the parsons say, that sin is beastly
in itself, don't you know, even apart from one's religious convictions,
or the injury one may do to others. When I saw you, I understood that
sin degrades one's self, Valentine. For you had never sinned as I had,
and you were so different from me. You are the only sinless man I know,
and you have made me know what beasts we men are. Why can't we be what
we might be?"

Valentine did not reply. He seemed lost in thought, and Julian continued,
throwing off his original shamefacedness:

"Ever since then you've kept me straight. If I feel inclined to throw
myself down in the gutter, one look at you makes me loathe the notion.
Preaching often drives one wrong out of sheer 'cussedness,' I suppose.
But you don't preach and don't care. You just live beautifully, because
you're made differently from all of us. So you do for me what no
preachers could ever do. There--now you know."

He lay back, puffing violently at his cigarette.

"It is strange," Valentine said, seeing he had finished. "You know, to
live as I do is no effort to me, and so it is absurd to praise me."

"I won't praise you, but it's outrageous of you to want to feel as I and
other men feel."

"Is it? I don't think so. I think it is very natural. My life is a dead
calm, and a dead calm is monotonous."

"It's better than an everlasting storm."

"I wonder!" Valentine said. "How curious that I should protect you.
I am glad it is so. And yet, Julian, in spite of what you say, I would
give a great deal to change souls with you, if only for a day or two.
You will laugh at me, but I do long to feel a real, keen temptation.
Those agonizing struggles of holy men that one reads of, what can they
be like? I can hardly imagine. There have been ascetics who have wept,
and dashed themselves down on the ground, and injured, wounded their
bodies to distract their thoughts from vice. To me they seem as madmen.
You know the story of the monk who rescued a great courtesan from her
life of shame. He placed her in a convent and went into the desert. But
her image haunted him, maddened him. He slunk back to the convent, and
found her dying in the arms of God. And he tried to drag her away, that
she might sin only once again with him, with him, her saviour. But she
died, giving herself to God, and he went out cursing and blaspheming.
This is only a dramatic fable to me. And yet I suppose it is a
possibility."

"Of course. Val, I could imagine myself doing as that monk did, but for
you. Only that I could never have been a monk at all."

"I am glad if I help you to any happiness, Julian. But--but--oh! to feel
temptation!"

"Oh, not to feel it! By Jove, I long to have done with the infernal thing
that's always ready to bother me. Fighting it is no fun, Val, I can tell
you. If you would like to have my soul for a day or two, I should love to
have yours in exchange."

Valentine smoked in silence for two or three minutes. His pure, pale,
beautiful face was rather wistful as he gazed at the fire.

"Why can't these affairs be managed?" he sighed out at length.

"Why can't we do just the one thing more? We can kill a man's body. We
can kill a woman's purity. And here you and I sit, the closest friends,
and neither of us can have the same experiences, as the other, even for
a moment. Why isn't it possible?"

"Perhaps it is."

"Why? How do you mean?"

"Well, of course I'm rather a sceptic, and entirely an ignoramus. But
I met a man the other day who would have laughed at us for doubting.
He was an awfully strange fellow. His name is Marr. I met him at Lady
Crichton's."

"Who is he?"

"Haven't an idea. I never saw or heard of him before. We talked a good
deal at dessert. He came over from the other side of the table to sit by
me, and somehow, in five minutes, we'd got into spiritualism and all that
sort of thing. He is evidently a believer in it, calls himself an
occultist."

"But do you mean to tell me he said souls could be exchanged at will?
Come, Julian?"

"I won't say that. But he set no limit at all to what can be done. He
declares that if people seriously set themselves to develop the latent
powers that lie hidden within them, they can do almost anything. Only
they must be en rapport. Each must respond closely, definitely, to the
other. Now, you and I are as much in sympathy with one another as any
two men in London, I suppose."

"Surely!"

"Then half the battle's won--according to Marr."

"You are joking."

"He wasn't. He would declare that, with time and perseverance, we could
accomplish an exchange of souls."

Valentine laughed.

"Well, but how?"

Julian laughed too.

"Oh, it seems absurd--but he'd tell us to sit together."

"Well, we are sitting together now."

"No; at a table, I mean."

"Table-turning!" Valentine cried, with a sort of contempt. "That is for
children, and for all of us at Christmas, when we want to make fools of
ourselves."

"Just what I am inclined to think. But Marr--and he's really a very
smart, clever chap, Val--denies it. He swears it is possible for two
people who sit together often to get up a marvellous sympathy, which
lasts on even when they are no longer sitting. He says you can even
see your companion's thoughts take form in the darkness before your
eyes, and pass in procession like living things."

"He must be mad."

"Perhaps. I don't know. If he is, he can put his madness to you very
lucidly, very ingeniously."

Valentine stroked the white back of Rip meditatively with his foot.

"You have never sat, have you?" he asked.

"Never."

"Nor I. I have always thought it an idiotic and very dull way of wasting
one's time. Now, what on earth can a table have to do with one's soul?"

"I don't know. What is one's soul?"

"One's essence, I suppose; the inner light that spreads its rays outward
in actions, and that is extinguished, or expelled, at the hour of death."

"Expelled, I think."

"I think so too. That which is so full of strange power cannot surely die
so soon. Even my soul, so frigid, so passionless, has, you say, held you
back from sins like a leash of steel, And I did not even try to forge the
steel. If we could exchange souls, would yours hold me back in the same
way?"

"No doubt."

"I wonder," Valentine said thoughtfully. After a moment he added, "shall
we make this absurd experiment of sitting, just for a phantasy?"

"Why not? It would be rather fun."

"It might be. We will just do it once to see whether you can get some of
my feelings, and I some of yours."

"That's it. But you could never get mine. I know you too well, Val.
You're my rock of defence. You've kept me straight because you're so
straight yourself; and, with that face, you'll never alter. If anything
should happen, it will be that you'll drag me up to where you are. I
shan't drag you down to my level, you old saint!"

And he laid his hand affectionately on his friend's shoulder.

Valentine smiled.

"Your level is not low," he said.

"No, perhaps; but, by Jove, it could be, though. If you hadn't been
chucked into the world, I often think the devil must have had me
altogether. You keep him off. How he must hate you, Val. Hulloh!
What's that?"

"What?"

"Who's that laughing outside? Has Wade got a friend in to-night?"

"Not that I know of. I didn't hear anything."

Valentine touched the electric bell, and his man appeared.

"Any one in with you to-night, Wade?" he asked.

The man looked surprised.

"No, sir; certainly not, sir."

"Oh! Don't sit up; we may be late to-night. And we don't want anything
more, except--yes, bring another couple of sodas."

"Yes, sir."

He brought them and vanished. A moment later they heard the front door
of the flat close. The butler was married and slept out of the house.
Valentine had no servant sleeping in the flat. He preferred to be alone
at night.




CHAPTER III

EPISODE OF THE FIRST SITTING


"Now, then," said Valentine, "let us be absurd and try this sitting.
Shall we clear this little table?"

"Yes. It's just the right size. It might do for three people, but
certainly not for more."

"There! Now, then."

And, as the clock struck twelve, Valentine turned off the electric
light, and they sat down with their hands upon the table. The room was
only very dimly illuminated by the fire on the hearth, where Rip slept
on, indifferent to their proceedings.

"I suppose nothing could go wrong," Julian said, after a moment of
silence.

"Wrong!"

"Yes. I don't know exactly what Marr meant, but he said that if
unsuitable people sit together any amount of harm can result from it."

"What sort of harm?"

"I don't know."

"H'm! I expect that is all nonsense, like the rest of his remarks.
Anyhow, Julian, no two people could ever hit it off better than you
and I do. Wait a second."

He jumped up and drew the curtain over the door. Wade had pulled it back
when he came in.

"I must have that curtain altered," Valentine said. "It is so badly
hung that whenever the door is opened, it falls half way back, and
looks hideous. That is better."

He sat down again.

"We won't talk," he said.

"No. We'll give the--whatever it is every chance."

They were silent.

Presently--it might have been a quarter of an hour--Julian said suddenly:

"Do you feel anything?"

"'M--no," Valentine answered, rather doubtfully.

"Sure?"

"I think so."

"You can't merely think you are sure, old chap."

"Well, then--yes, I'll say I am sure."

"Right," rejoined Julian.

Again there was a silence, broken this time by Valentine.

"Why did you ask me?" he said.

"Oh! no special reason. I just wanted to know."

"Then you didn't?"

"Didn't what?"

"Feel anything?"

"No; nothing particular."

"Well, what do you mean by that?"

"What I say. I can't be sure it was anything."

"That's vague."

"So was my--I can't even call it exactly sensation. It was so very
slight. In fact, I'm as good as sure I felt nothing at all. It was a mere
fancy. Nothing more."

And then again they were silent. The fire gradually died down until the
room grew quite dark. Presently Valentine said:

"Hulloh! here is Rip up against my foot. He is cold without the fire,
poor little beggar."

"Shall we stop?" asked Julian.

"Yes; I vote we do--for to-night."

Valentine struck a match, felt for the knob of the electric light, and
turned it on. Julian and he looked at each other, blinking.

"Think there's anything in it?" asked Julian.

"I don't know," said Valentine. "I suppose not. Rip! Rip! He is cold. Did
you ever see a dog shiver like that?"

He picked the little creature up in his arms. It nestled against his
shoulder with a deep sigh.

"Well, we have made a beginning," he said, turning to pour out a drink.
"It is rather interesting."

Julian was lighting a cigarette.

"Yes; it is--very." he answered.

Valentine gave him a brandy and soda; then, as if struck by a sudden
thought, asked:

"You really didn't feel anything?"

"No."

"Nor I. But then, Julian, why do we find it interesting?"

Julian looked puzzled.

"Hang it! I don't know," he answered, after an instant of reflection.
"Why do we? I wonder."

"That is what I am wondering."

He flicked the ash from his cigarette.

"But I don't come to any conclusion," he presently added, meditatively.
"We sit in the dark for an hour and a quarter, with our hands solemnly
spread out upon a table; we don't talk; the table doesn't move; we hear
no sound; we see nothing; we feel nothing that we have not felt before.
And yet we find the function interesting. This problem of sensation is
simply insoluble. I cannot work it out."

"It is awfully puzzling," said Julian. "I suppose our nerves must have
been subtly excited because the thing was an absolute novelty."

"Possibly. But, if so, we are a couple of children, mere schoolboys."

"That's rather refreshing, however undignified. If we sit long enough,
we may even recover our long-lost babyhood."

And so they laughed the matter easily away. Soon afterwards, however,
Julian got up to go home to his chambers. Valentine went towards the
door, intending to open it and get his friend's coat. Suddenly he
stopped.

"Strange!" he exclaimed.

"What's the row?"

"Look at the door, Julian."

"Well?"

"Don't you see?"

"What?"

"The curtain is half drawn back again."

Julian gave vent to a long, low whistle.

"So it is!"

"It always does that when the door is opened."

"And only then, of course?"

"Of course."

"But the door hasn't been opened."

"I know."

They regarded each other almost uneasily. Then Valentine added, with a
short laugh:

"I can't have drawn it thoroughly over the door when Wade went away."

"I suppose not. Well, good-night, Val."

"Good-night. Shall we sit again tomorrow?"

"Yes; I vote we do."

Valentine let his friend out. As he shut the front door, he said to
himself:

"I am positive I did draw the curtain thoroughly."

He went back into the tentroom and glanced again at the curtain.

"Yes; I am positive."

After an instant of puzzled wonder, he seemed to put the matter
deliberately from him.

"Come along, Rip," he said. "Why, you are cold and miserable to-night!
Must I carry you then?"

He picked the dog up, turned out the light, and walked slowly into his
bedroom.




CHAPTER IV

THE SECOND SITTING


On the following night Valentine sat waiting for Julian's arrival in
his drawing-room, which looked out upon Victoria Street, whereas the
only window of the tentroom opened upon some waste ground where once
a panorama of Jerusalem, or some notorious city, stood, and where
building operations were now being generally carried on. Valentine
very seldom used his drawing-room. Sometimes pretty women came to tea
with him, and he did them honour there. Sometimes musicians came. Then
there was always a silent group gathered round the Steinway grand piano.
For Valentine was inordinately fond of music, and played so admirably
that even professionals never hurled at him a jeering "amateur!" But
when Valentine was alone, or when he expected one or two men to smoke,
he invariably sat in the tentroom, where the long lounges and the
shaded electric light were suggestive of desultory conversation, and
seemed tacitly to forbid all things that savour of a hind-leg attitude.
To-night, however, some whim, no doubt, had prompted him to forsake his
usual haunt. Perhaps he had been seized with a dislike for complete
silence, such as comes upon men in recurring hours of depression, when
the mind is submerged by a thin tide of unreasoning melancholy, and sound
of one kind or another is as ardently sought as at other times it is
avoided. In this room Valentine could hear the vague traffic of the dim
street outside, the dull tumult of an omnibus, the furtive, flashing
clamour of a hansom, the cry of an occasional newsboy, explanatory of
the crimes and tragedies of the passing hour. Or perhaps the eyes of
Valentine were, for the moment, weary of the monotonous green walls of
his sanctum, leaning tent-wise towards the peaked apex of the ceiling,
and longed to rest on the many beautiful pictures that hung in one line
around his drawing-room. It seemed so, for now, as he sat in a chair
before the fire, holding Rip upon his knee, his blue eyes were fixed
meditatively upon a picture called "The Merciful Knight," which faced
him over the mantelpiece. This was the only picture containing a figure
of the Christ which Valentine possessed. He had no holy children, no
Madonnas. But he loved this Christ, this exquisitely imagined dead,
drooping figure, which, roused into life by an act of noble renunciation,
bent down and kissed the armed hero who had been great enough to forgive
his enemy. He loved those weary, tender lips, those faded limbs, the
sacred tenuity of the ascetic figure, the wonderful posture of benign
familiarity that was more majestic than any reserve. Yes, Valentine loved
this Christ, and Julian knew it well. Often, late at night, Julian had
leaned back lazily listening while Valentine played, improvising in a
light so dim as to be near to darkness. And Julian had noticed that the
player's eyes perpetually sought this picture, and rested on it, while
his soul, through the touch of the fingers, called to the soul of music
that slept in the piano, stirred it from sleep, carried it through
strange and flashing scenes, taught it to strive and to agonize, then
hushed it again to sleep and peace. And as Julian looked from the picture
to the player, who seemed drawing inspiration from it, he often mutely
compared the imagined beauty of the soul of the Christ with the known
beauty of the soul of his friend. And the two lovelinesses seemed to
meet, and to mingle as easily as two streams one with the other. Yet the
beauty of the Christ soul sprang from a strange parentage, was a sublime
inheritance, had been tried in the fiercest fires of pity and of pain.
The beauty of Valentine's soul seemed curiously innate, and mingled with
a dazzling snow of almost inhuman purity. His was not a great soul that
had striven successfully, and must always strive. His was a soul that
easily triumphed, that was almost coldly perfect without effort, that
had surely never longed even for a moment to fall, had never desired
and refused the shadowy pleasures of passion. The wonderful purity of
his friend's face continually struck Julian anew. It suggested to him
the ivory peak of an Alp, the luminous pallor of a pearl. What other
young man in London looked like that? Valentine was indeed an unique
figure in the modern London world. Had he strayed into it from the
fragrant pages of a missal, or condescended to it from the beatific
vistas of some far-off Paradise? Julian had often wondered, as he looked
into the clear, calm eyes of the friend who had been for so long the
vigilant, yet unconscious guardian of his soul.

To-night, as Valentine sat looking at the Christ, a curious wonder at
himself came into his mind. He was musing on the confession of Julian, so
long withheld, so shyly made at last. This confession caused him, for the
first time, to look self-consciously upon himself, to stand away from his
nature, as the artist stands away from the picture he is painting, and to
examine it with a sideways head, with a peering, contracted gaze. This
thing that protected a soul from sin--what was it like? What was it? He
could not easily surmise. He had a clear vision of the Christ soul, of
the exquisite essence of a divine individuality that prompted life to
spring out of death for one perfect moment that it might miraculously
reward a great human act of humanity. Yes, that soul floated before him
almost visibly. He could call it up before his mind as a man can call up
the vision of a supremely beautiful rose he has admired. And there was a
scent from the Christ soul as ineffably delicious as the scent of the
rose. But when Valentine tried to see his own soul, he could not see it.
He could not comprehend how its aspect affected others, even quite how it
affected Julian. Only he could comprehend, as he looked at the Christ,
its imperfection, and a longing, not felt before, came to him to be
better than he was. This new aspiration was given to him by Julian's
confession. He knew that well. He protected his friend now without
effort. Could he not protect him more certainly with effort? Can a soul
be beautiful that never strives consciously after beauty? A child's
nature is beautiful in its innocence because it has never striven to be
innocent. But is not an innocent woman more wonderful, more beautiful,
than an innocent child? Valentine felt within him that night a distinct
aspiration, and he vaguely connected it with the drooping Christ, who
touched with wan, rewarding lips the ardent face of the merciful knight.
And he no longer had the desire to know desire of sin. He no longer
sought to understand the power of temptation or the joy of yielding to
that power. A subtle change swept over him. Whether it was permanent, or
only passing, he could not tell.

A tingling cry from the electric bell in the passage told of Julian's
arrival, and in a moment he entered. He looked gay, almost rowdy, and
clapped Valentine on the shoulder rather boisterously.

"Why on earth are you in here?" he exclaimed. "Have you been playing?"

"No."

"Are you in an exalted state of mind, that demands the best parlour for
its environment?"

"Hardly."

"But why then have you let out the fire in the den and enthroned yourself
here?"

"A whim, Julian. I felt a strong inclination to sit in this room
to-night. It seems to me a less nervous room than the other, and I
want to be as cold-blooded as possible."

"O, I see! But, my dear fellow, what is there nervous about the tent?
Do you imagine ghosts lurking in the hangings, or phantoms of dead Arabs
clinging, like bats, round that rosette in the roof? You got it up the
Nile, didn't you?"

"Yes. Where have you been?"

"Dining out. And, oddly enough, I met Marr again, the man I told you
about. It seems he is in universal request just now."

"On account of his mystery-mongering, I suppose."

"Probably."

"Did you tell him anything about our sitting?"

"Only that we had sat, and that nothing had happened."

"What did he say?"

"He said, 'Pooh, pooh! these processes are, and always must be, gradual.
Another time there may be some manifestation.'"

"Manifestation! Did you ask him of what nature the manifestation was
likely to be? These people are so vague in the terms they employ."

"Yes, I asked him; but I couldn't get much out of him. I must tell you,
Val, that he seemed curiously doubtful about my statement that nothing
had happened. I can't think why. He said, 'Are you quite sure?'"

"Of course you answered Yes?"

"Of course."

Valentine looked at him for a moment and then said:

"You didn't mention the--the curtain by any chance?"

"No. You thought you had left it only partially drawn, didn't you?"

Valentine made no reply. His face was rather grave. Julian did not
repeat the question. He felt instinctively that Valentine did not
wish to be obliged to answer it. Oddly enough, during the short silence
which followed, he was conscious of a slight constraint such as he had
certainly never felt with Valentine before. His gaiety seemed dropping
from him in this quiet room to which he was so often a visitor. The
rowdy expression faded out of his face and he found himself glancing
half furtively at his friend.

"Valentine," he presently said, "shall we really sit to-night?"

"Yes, surely. You meant to when you came here, didn't you?"

"I don't believe there is anything in it."

"We will find out. Remember that I want to get hold of your soul."

Julian laughed.

"If you ever do it will prove an old man of the sea to you," he said.

"I will risk that," Valentine answered.

And then he added:

"But, come, don't let us waste time. I will go and send away Wade.
Clear that little table by the piano."

Julian began removing the photographs and books which stood on it,
while Valentine went out of the room and told his man to go.

As soon as they heard the front door close upon him they sat down
opposite to each other as on the previous night.

They kept silence and sat for what seemed a very long time. At last
Julian said:

"Val!"

"Well?"

"Let us go back into the tentroom."

"Why?"

"Nothing will ever happen here."

"Why should anything happen there?"

"I don't know. Let us go. The fire is burning too brightly here. We ought
to have complete darkness."

"Very well, though I can't believe it will make the slightest
difference."

They got up and went into the tentroom, which looked rather cheerless
with its fireless grate.

"I know this will be better," Julian said. "We'll have the same table as
last night."

Valentine carefully drew the green curtain quite over the door and
called Julian's attention to the fact that he had done so. Then they
sat down again. Rip lay on the divan in his basket with a rug over him,
so that he might not disturb them by any movement in search of warmth
and of companionship.

The arrangements seemed careful and complete. They were absolutely
isolated from the rest of the world. They were in darkness and the
silence might almost be felt. As Julian said, they were safe from
trickery, and, as Valentine rejoined in his calm _voix d'or_, they
were therefore probably also safe from what Marr had mysteriously
called "manifestations."

Dead, dumb silence. Their four hands, not touching, lay loosely on
the oval table. Rip slept unutterably, shrouded head and body in his
cosy rug. So--till the last gleam of the fire faded. So--till another
twenty minutes had passed. The friends had not exchanged a word, had
scarcely made the slightest movement. Could a stranger have been
suddenly introduced into the black room, and have remained listening
attentively, he might easily have been deceived into the belief that,
but for himself, it was deserted. To both Valentine and Julian the
silence seemed progressive. With each gliding moment they could have
declared that it grew deeper, more dense, more prominent, even more
grotesque and living. There seemed to be a sort of pressure in it which
handled them more and more definitely. The sensation was interesting
and acute. Each gave himself to it, and each had a, perhaps deceptive,
consciousness of yielding up something, something impalpable, evanescent,
fluent. Valentine, more especially, felt as if he were pouring away from
himself, by this act of sitting, a vital liquid, and he thought with a
mental smile:

"Am I letting my soul out of its cage, here and now?"

"No doubt," his common sense replied; "no doubt this sensation is the
merest fancy."

He played with it in the darkness, and had no feeling of weariness.

Nearly an hour had passed in this morose way, when, with, it seemed,
appalling abruptness, Rip barked.

Although the bark was half stifled in rug, both Valentine and Julian
started perceptibly.

"'Sh!" Valentine hissed to the little dog. "'Sh! Rip! Quiet!"

The response of Rip was, with a violent scramble, to disentangle himself
from his covering, emerging from which he again barked with shrill and
piercing vehemence, at the same time leaping to the floor. By the sound,
which he could locate, Valentine felt certain that the dog had gone over
to the door.

"What on earth is he barking at?" Julian said in the darkness.

"I can't imagine. Hush, Rip! S-sh!"

"Val, turn on the light, quick! You're nearest to it."

Valentine stretched out his hand hastily, and in a flash the room sprang
into view. He was right. Rip was crouched--his front legs extended along
the floor, his hind legs standing almost straight--close to the door,
and facing it full. His head was down, and moving, darting this way and
that, as if he were worrying the feet of some person who was trying to
advance from the door into the centre of the room. All his teeth showed,
and his yellow eyes were glaring fiercely.

Julian, who had thrown a hasty and searching glance round the room when
the light was turned on, sprang forward and bent down to him.

"Rip! Rip!" he said. "Silly! What's the matter? Silly dog!" and he began
to stroke him.

Either this action of his, or something else not known by the young men,
had an effect on the terrier, for he suddenly ceased barking, and began
to snuffle eagerly, excitedly, at the bottom of the door.

"It's as if he were mad," said Julian, turning round. "Hulloh, Val! What
the devil's come to you?"

For he found Valentine standing up by the table with an expression of
deep astonishment on his face.

He pointed in silence to the door.

"By Jove! that curtain again!" said Julian, with an accent of amazement.
"I'm damned!"

The curtain was, in fact, drawn back from the door. Valentine struck a
match and put it to a candle. Then he opened the door. Rip immediately
darted out of the room and pattered excitedly down the passage, as if
searching for something, his sharp nose investigating the ground with a
vehement attention. The young men followed him. He ran to the front door,
then back into Valentine's bedroom; then, by turns, into the four other
apartments--bedroom, drawing-room, bathroom and kitchen--that formed the
suite. The doors of the two latter were opened by Valentine. Having
completed this useless progress, Rip once more resorted to the passage
and the front door, by which he paused, whimpering, in an uncertain,
almost a wistful attitude.

"Open it!" said Julian.

Valentine did so.

They looked out upon the broad and dreary stone steps, and waited,
listening. There was no sound. Rip still whimpered, rather feebly. His
excitement was evidently dying away. At last Valentine shut the door,
and they went back again to the tentroom, accompanied closely by the
dog, who gradually regained his calmness, and who presently jumped of
his own accord into his basket, and, after turning quickly round some
half-dozen times, composed himself once more to sleep.

"I wish, after all, we had stayed in the other room by the fire," Julian
said. "Give me some brandy."

Valentine poured some into a glass and Julian swallowed it at a gulp.

"We mustn't have Rip in the room another time," he added. "He spoilt the
whole thing."

"What whole thing?" Valentine asked, sinking down in a chair.

"Well, the sitting. Perhaps--perhaps one of Marr's mysterious
manifestations might have come off to-night."

Valentine did not reply at first. When he did, he startled Julian by
saying:

"Perhaps one of them did come off."

"Did?"

"Yes."

"How?"

"What was Rip barking at?"

"There's no accounting for what dogs will do. They often bark at
shadows."

"At shadows--yes, exactly. But what cast a shadow to-night?"

Julian laughed with some apparent uneasiness.

"Perhaps a coming event," he exclaimed.

Valentine looked at him rather gravely.

"That is exactly what I felt," he said.

"Explain. For I was only joking."

"I felt, perhaps it was only a fancy, that this second sitting of ours
brought some event a stage nearer, a stage nearer on its journey."

"To what?"

"I felt--to us."

"Fancy."

"Probably. You didn't feel it?"

"I? Oh, I scarcely know what I felt. I must say, though, that squatting
in the dark, and saying nothing for such an age, and--and all the rest of
it, doesn't exactly toughen one's nerves. That little demon of a Rip
quite gave me the horrors when he started barking. What fools we are! I
should think nothing of mounting a dangerous horse, or sailing a boat in
rough weather, or risking my life as we all do half our time in one way
or another. Yet a dog and a dark room give me the shudders. Funny, Val,
isn't it?"

Valentine answered, "If it is a dog and a dark room."

"What else can it possibly be?" Julian said with an accent of rather
unreasonable annoyance.

"I don't know. But I did draw the curtain completely over the door
to-night. Julian, I am getting interested in this. Perhaps--who
knows?--in the end I shall have your soul, you mine."

He laughed as he spoke; then added:

"No, no; I don't believe in such an exchange; and, Julian, I scarcely
desire it. But let us go on. This gives a slight new excitement to life."

"Yes. But it is selfish of you to wish to keep your soul to yourself.
I want it. Well, _au revoir_, Val; to-morrow night."

"_Au revoir_."

After Julian had gone Valentine went back into the drawing-room and stood
for a long while before the "Merciful Knight." He had a strange fancy
that the picture of the bending Christ protected the room from the
intrusion of--what?

He could not tell yet. Perhaps he could never tell.




CHAPTER V

THE THIRD SITTING


"Isn't it an extraordinary thing," Julian said, on the following evening,
"that if you meet a man once in London you keep knocking up against him
day after day? While, if--"

"You don't meet him, you don't."

"No. I mean that if you don't happen to be introduced to him, you
probably never set eyes on him at all."

"I know. But whom have you met to-day?"

"Marr again."

"That's odd. He is beginning to haunt you."

"I met him at my club. He has just been elected a member."

"Did he make any more inquiries into our sittings?"

"Rather. He talked of nothing else. He's an extraordinary fellow,
extraordinary."

"Why? What is he like?"

"In appearance? Oh, the sort of chap little pink women call Satanic;
white complexion showing blue where he shaves, big dark eyes rather
sunken, black hair, tall, very thin and quiet. Very well dressed. He
is that uncanny kind of a man who has a silent manner and a noisy
expression. You know what I mean?"

"Yes, perfectly."

"I think he's very morbid. He never reads the evening papers."

"That proves it absolutely. Does he smoke?"

"Always. I found him in the smoking-room. He showed the most persistent
interest in our proceedings, Val. I couldn't get him to talk of anything
else, so at last I told him exactly what had happened."

"Did you tell him that we began to sit last night in a different room?"

"Yes. That was curious. Directly I said it he began making minute
inquiries as to what the room was like, how the furniture was placed,
even what pictures hung on the walls."

"The pictures!"

"Yes. I described them."

"All of them?"

"No, one or two; that favorite of yours, 'The Merciful Knight,' the
Turner, those girls of Solomon's with the man playing to them, and--yes,
I think those were all."

"Oh!"

"He said, 'You made a great mistake in changing your venue to that room,
a great mistake.' Then I explained how we moved back to the tentroom in
the middle of the sitting, and all about Rip."

"Did he make any remark?"

"One that struck me as very quaint, 'You are _en route_.'"

"Enigmatic again. He was playing the wizard."

"He spoke very gravely."

"Of course. Great gravity is part of the business."

"Afterwards he said, 'Turn that dog out next time.'"

"And that was all?"

"I think so."

Valentine sat musing. Presently he said:

"I should rather like to meet this Marr."

"Oh, I don't think--I fancy--"

"Well?"

"I'd as soon you didn't."

"Why?"

"I don't think you'd get on. You wouldn't like him."

"For what reason?"

"I don't know. I've a notion he's something exceptional in the way of a
blackguard. Perhaps I am wrong. I haven't an idea what sort of a
reputation he has. But he is black, Valentine, not at all your colour.
Oh! and, by the way, he doesn't want to meet you."

"How charming of him!"

"I had half suggested it, I don't know why, and he said, 'Thanks! Thanks!
Chance will bring us together later on if we ought to meet.' And now I
am glad he wasn't keen. Shall we begin? Put Rip into your bedroom, as he
advised. Besides, I can't stand his barking."

Valentine carried the little dog away. When he came back he shut the
tentroom door and was about to draw the curtain over it. But Julian
stopped him.

"No, don't," Julian said.

"Why not?"

"I would rather you didn't. I hate that curtain. If I were you I would
have it taken down altogether."

Valentine looked at him in surprise. He had uttered the words with an
energy almost violent. But even as Valentine looked Julian switched off
the electric light and the leaping darkness hid his face.

"Come now. Business! Business!" he cried.

And again they sat with their hands loosely on the table, not touching
each other.

Valentine felt that Julian was being less frank with him than usual.
Perhaps for this reason he was immediately conscious that they were
not so much in sympathy as on the two former occasions of their sittings.
Or there might have been some other reason which he could not identify.
It is certain that he gradually became acutely aware of a stifling sense
of constraint, which he believed to be greatly intensified by the
surrounding darkness and silence. He wondered if Julian was conscious
of it also, and at moments longed to ask. But something held him back,
that curious something which we all feel at times like a strong hand
laid upon us. He made up his mind that this discomfort of his soul,
unreasonably considerable though it was, must be due solely to Julian's
abrupt demeanour and obvious desire to check his curiosity about
the drawing of the curtain. But, as the moments ran by, his sense of
uneasiness assumed such fantastic proportions that he began to cast
about for some more definite, more concrete, cause. At one instant he
found it in the condition of his health. The day had been damp and
dreary, and he had suffered from neuralgia. Doubtless the pain had
acted upon his nervous system, and was accountable for his present and
perpetually increasing anxiety. A little later he was fain to dismiss
this supposition as untenable. His sense of constraint was changing into
a positive dread, and not at all of Julian, around whom he had believed
that his thoughts were in flight. Something, he knew not at all what,
interposed between him and Julian, and so definitely that Valentine felt
as if he could have fixed the exact moment in which the interposition
had taken place, as one can fix the exact moment in which a person enters
a room where one is sitting. And the interposition was one of great
horror,--entirely malignant, Valentine believed.

He had an impulse to spring up from the table, to turn on the light,
and to say, "Let us make an end of this jugglery!" Yet he sat still,
wondering why he did so. A curiosity walked in his mind, pacing about
till he could almost fancy he heard its footsteps. He sat, then, as one
awaiting an arrival, that has been heralded in some way, by a telegram,
a message, a carrier-pigeon flown in at an open window. But the herald,
too, was horrible. What then would follow it? What was coming? Valentine
felt that he began to understand Marr's queer remark, "You are _en
route_." At the first sitting he had felt a very vague suggestion of
immoderate possibilities, made possibilities by the apparently futile
position assumed at a table by himself and Julian. To-night the vague
seemed on march towards the definite. Fancy was surely moving towards
fact.

With his eyes wide open Valentine gazed in the direction of Julian,
sitting invisible opposite to him. He wondered how Julian was feeling,
what he was thinking. And then he remembered that strange saying of
Marr's, that thoughts could take form, materialize. What would he give
to witness that monstrous procession of embodied brain-actions trooping
from the mind of his friend! He imagined them small, spare, phantom-like
things, fringed with fire, as weapon against the darkness, silent-footed
as spirits, moving with a level impetus, as pale ghosts treading a sea,
onward to the vast world of clashing minds, to which we carelessly
cast out our thoughts as a man who shoots rubbish into a cart. The
vagrant fancies danced along with attenuated steps and tiny, whimsical
gestures of fairies, fluttering their flame-veined wings. The sad
thoughts moved slowly with drooped heads and monotonous hands, and
tears fell forever about their feet. The thoughts that were evil--and
Julian had acknowledged them many, though combatted--were endowed with
a strangely sinister gait, like the gait of those modern sinners who
express, ignorantly, in their motions the hidden deeds their tongues
decline to speak. The wayward thoughts had faces like women, who kiss
and frown within the limits of an hour. On the cheeks of the libertine
thoughts a rosy cloud of rouge shone softly, and their haggard eyes
were brightened by a cunning pigment. And the noble thoughts, grand
in gesture, godlike in bearing, did not pass them by, but spoke to them
serene words, and sought to bring them out from their degradation. And
there was no music in this imagined procession which Valentine longed
to see. All was silent as from the gulf of Julian's mind the inhabitants
stole furtively to do their mission. Yes, Valentine knew to-night that
he should feel no wonder if thought took form, if a disembodied voice
spoke, or a detached hand moved into ripples of the air. Only he was
irritated and alarmed by the abiding sense of some surrounding danger,
which stayed with him, which he fought against in vain. His common sense
had not deserted him. On the contrary, it was argumentative, cogent in
explanation and in rebuke. It strove to sneer his distress down with
stinging epithets, and shot arrows of laughter against his aimless
fears. But the combat was, nevertheless, tamely unequal. Common sense
was routed by this enigmatic enemy, and at length Valentine's spirits
became so violently perturbed that he could keep silence no longer.

"Julian," he said, with a pressure of chained alarm in his voice,
"Julian!"

"Yes," Julian replied, tensely.

"Anything wrong with you?"

"No, no. Or with you?"

"Nothing definite."

"What then?"

"I will confess to you that to-night I feel--I feel, well, horribly
afraid."

"Of what?"

"I have no idea. The feeling is totally unreasonable. That gives it an
inexplicable horror."

"Ah! then that is why you joined your left hand with my right five
minutes ago. I wondered why you did it."

"I! Joined hands!"

"Yes."

"I haven't moved my hand."

"My dear Val! How is it holding mine then?"

"Don't be absurd, Julian; my hand is not near yours. Both my hands are
just where they were when we sat down, on my side of the table."

"Just where they were! Your little finger has been tightly linked in mine
for the last five minutes. You know that as well as I do."

"Nonsense!"

"But it is linked now while I am speaking."

"I tell you it isn't."

"I'll soon let you know it too. There! Ah! no wonder you have snatched it
away. You forget that my muscles are like steel, and that I can pinch as
a gin pinches a rabbit's leg. I say, I didn't really hurt you, did I? It
was only a joke to stop your little game."

"I tell you," Valentine said, almost angrily, "your hand has never once
touched mine, nor mine yours."

His accent of irritable sincerity appeared suddenly to carry conviction
to the mind of Julian, for he sprang violently up from the table, and
cried, in the darkness:

"Then who the devil's in the room with us?"

Valentine also, convinced that Julian had not been joking, was
appalled. He switched on the light, and saw Julian standing opposite
to him, looking very white. They both threw a rapid glance upon the
room, whose dull green draperies returned their inquiry with the
complete indifference of artistic inanimation.

"Who the devil's got in here?" Julian repeated, with the savage accent of
extreme uneasiness.

"Nobody," Valentine replied. "You know the thing's impossible."

"Impossible or not, somebody has found means to get in."

Valentine shook his head.

"Then you were lying?"

"Julian, what are you saying? Don't go too far."

"Either you were, or else a man has been sitting at that table between
us, and I have held his hand, the hand of some stranger. Ouf!"

He shook his broad shoulders in an irrepressible shudder.

"I was not lying, Julian. I tell you so, and I mean it."

Valentine's eyes met Julian's, and Julian believed him.

"Put your hands on the table again," Julian said.

Valentine obeyed, and Julian laid his beside them, linking one of his
little fingers tightly in one of Valentine's, and at the same time
shutting his eyes. After a long pause he grew visibly whiter, and hastily
unlinked his finger.

"No, damn it, Val, I hadn't hold of your hand. The hand I touched was
much harder, and the finger was bigger, thicker. I say, this is ghastly."

Again he shook himself, and cast a searching glance upon the little room.

"Somebody has been in here with us, sitting between us in the dark," he
repeated. "Good God, who is it?"

Valentine looked doubtful, but uneasy too.

"Let us go through the rooms," he said.

They took a candle, and, as on the previous night, searched, but in
vain. They found no trace of any alien presence in the flat. No book,
no ornament, had been moved. No door stood open. There was no sound of
any footsteps except their own. When they came to Valentine's bedroom,
Rip leaped to greet them, and seemed in excellent spirits. He showed
no excitement until he had followed them back into the tentroom. But,
arrived there, he suddenly stood still, raised one white paw from the
ground, and emitted a long and dreary howl. The young men stared at him,
and then at each other.

"Rip knows somebody has been here," Julian said.

Valentine was much more uncomfortably impressed by the demeanour of
the dog than by Julian's declaration and subsequent agitation. He had
been inclined to attribute the whole affair to a trick of his friend's
nerves. But the nervous system of a fox-terrier was surely, under such
circumstances as these, more truth-telling than that of a man.

"But the thing is absolutely impossible," he repeated, with some
disturbance of manner.

"Is anything that we can't investigate straight away absolutely
impossible?"

Valentine did not reply directly.

"Here is a cigarette," he said. "Let us sit down, soothe our nerves,
and talk things over calmly and openly. We have not been quite frank
with each other about these sittings yet."

Julian accepted Valentine's offer with his usual readiness. The fire was
relit with some difficulty. Rip was coaxed into silence.

Presently, as the smoke curled upward with its lazy demeanour, the
horror that had hung like a thin vapour in the atmosphere seemed to
be dissipated.

"Now I think we are ourselves again, and can be reasonable," Valentine
began. "Don't let us be hysterical. Spiritualists always suffer from
hysteria."

"The sceptics say, Val."

"And probably they are generally right. Now--yes, do drink some more of
that brandy and soda. Now, Julian, do you still believe that a hand held
yours just now?"

Julian answered quietly, showing no irritation at the question:

"I simply know it as surely as I know that I am sitting with you
at this moment. And,--look here, you may laugh at me as much as you.
like,--although I supposed the hand to be yours, until you denied it
I had previously felt the most curious sensation."

"Of what?"

"Well, that something was coming, even had actually come, into the room."

Valentine answered nothing to this, so Julian went on.

"I thought it was a trick of the nerves, and determined to drive it
away, and I succeeded. And then, just as I was internally laughing at
myself, this hand, as if groping about in the dark, was first laid on
mine, full on it, Val, and then slid off onto the table and linked its
little finger tightly in mine. I, of course, supposed the hand was yours,
and this finger was crooked round mine for fully five minutes, I should
say. After you spoke, thinking that you were trying to deceive me for a
joke, I caught the hand in mine, and pinched it with all my strength
until it was forcibly dragged away."

"Strange," Valentine murmured.

"Deucedly strange! and, what's more, diabolically unpleasant."

"I wonder what that fellow, Marr, would say to this."

"Marr! By Jove, is this one of the manifestations which he spoke about so
vaguely?"

"It seems like it."

"But describe your sensations. You say you felt horribly afraid. Why was
that?"

"I can't tell. That, I think, made part of the horror. There was a sort
of definite vagueness, if you can imagine such a seeming contradiction,
in my state of mind. But the feeling is really indescribable. That it
was more strange and more terrible than anything I have known is certain.
I should like to ask Dr. Levillier about all this."

"Levillier--yes. But he would--"

"Be reasonable about it, as he is about everything. Dear, sensible, odd,
saintly, emotional, strong-headed, soft-hearted little doctor. He is
unique."

They talked on for some time, arriving at no conclusion, until it
seemed they had talked the whole matter thoroughly out. Yet Valentine,
who was curiously instinctive, had, all the time, a secret knowledge
that Julian was keeping something from him, was not being perfectly
frank. The conviction pained him. At last Julian got up to go. He
stood putting on his overcoat.

"Good-night," he said.

"Good-night, Julian."

"Now--is this to be our last sitting?"

Valentine hesitated.

"What do you wish?" he asked at length.

"What do you?"

"Well, I--yes, I think I would rather it was the last."

Julian caught his hand impulsively.

"So would I. Good-night."

"Good-night."

Julian went out into the hall, got as far as the front door, opened it,
then suddenly called out:

"Valentine!"

"Yes."

"Come here for a moment."

Valentine went, and found him standing with his hand on the door, looking
flushed and rather excited.

"There is one thing I haven't told you," he began.

"I knew that."

"I guessed you did. The most horrible sensation I have had. During our
sitting to-night--don't be vexed--an extraordinary apprehension of--well,
of you, came over me. There! Now I have told you."

Valentine was greatly astonished.

"Of me?" he said.

"Yes. There was a moment when the idea that I was alone with you made my
blood run cold."

"Good heavens!"

"Do you wish I hadn't told you?"

"No, of course not. But it is so extraordinary, so unnatural."

"It is utterly gone now, thank God. I say, we have resolved that we won't
sit again, haven't we?"

"Yes; and what you have just told me makes me hate the whole thing. The
game seems a game no longer."

When the door had closed upon Julian, Valentine sat down and wrote a
note.

He addressed it to--

"Doctor Hermann Levillier,
"Harley Street, W.,"

and laid it on his writing-table, so that it might be posted early the
next morning.




CHAPTER VI

A CONVERSATION AT THE CLUB


Doctor Levillier was not a materialist, although he concerned himself
much with the functions of the body, and with that strange spider's
web of tingling threads which we call the nervous system. The man who
sweeps out the temple, who polishes the marble steps and dusts the
painted windows, may yet find time to bend in prayer before the altars
he helps to keep beautiful, may yet find a heart to wonder at the spirit
which the temple holds as an envelope holds a letter. Reversing the
process of mind which seems to lead so many medical students to atheism,
Dr. Levillier had found that the more he understood the weaknesses, the
nastinesses, the dreary failures, the unimaginable impulses of the flesh,
the more he grew to believe in the existence, within it, of the soul. One
day a worn-out dyspeptic, famous for his intellectual acquirements over
two continents, sat with the little great doctor in his consulting-room.
The author, with dry, white lips, had been recounting a series of sordid
symptoms, and, as the recital grew, their sordidness seemed suddenly to
strike him with a mighty disgust.

"Ah, doctor," he said. "And do you know there are people thousands of
miles away from Harley Street who actually admire me, who are stirred
and moved by what I write, who make a cult and a hero of me. They say I
have soul, forsooth. But I am all body; you know that. You doctors know
that it is only body that we put on paper, body that lifts us high, or
drags us low. Why, my best romances come straight from my liver. My
pathos springs from its condition of disorder, and my imaginative force
is only due to an unnatural state of body which I can deliberately
produce by drinking tea that has stood a long while and become full of
tannin. When my prose glows with fiery beauty, the tea is getting well
hold of my digestive organs, and by the time it has begun to prove its
power by giving me a violent pain in the stomach, I have wrung from it
a fine scene which will help to consolidate my fame. When a man wins
the Victoria Cross, his healthy body has done the deed, unprompted by
anything higher. Good air, or a muscular life, has strung his nerves
strongly so that he can't, even if he would, appreciate danger. On the
other hand, when a man shows funk, turns tail and bolts, and is dubbed a
coward, it's his beastly body again. Some obscure physical misfortune is
the cause of his disgrace, and if he'd only been to you he would have won
the Cross too. Isn't it so? How you doctors must laugh at mystics, and at
those who are ascetics, save for sake of their health. Why, I suppose
even the saint owes his so-called goodness to some analyzable proceeding
that has gone on in his inside, and that you could diagnose. Eh?"

Doctor Levillier was writing a prescription in which bismuth was an item.
He glanced up quietly.

"The more I know of the body, the more I think of and believe in the
power of the soul," he said. "Have that made up. Take it three times a
day and come to me again in a fortnight. Good-morning."

Indeed, this little man was writing prescriptions for the body and
thinking prescriptions for the soul all day long. Within him there
dwelt a double mind, the mind of a great doctor and the mind of a great
priest, and these two minds linked hands and lived as friends. The one
never strove against the other. There was never a moment of estrangement.
And if there were frequent arguments and discussions between the two,
they were the arguments and discussions that make friendship firmer,
not enmity more bitter. And, as Dr. Levillier very well knew, it was
often the mind of the priest within him that gave to him his healing
power over the body. It was the mind of the priest that had won him
testimonial clocks and silver salvers from grateful patients. Often as
he sat with some dingy-faced complainant, listening to a recital of
sickness or uttering directions about avoidance of green meat, sauces,
pastry, and liquids, till the atmosphere seemed that of a hospital, a
pastry-cook's shop and a bar combined, he was silently examining the
patient's soul, facing its probable vagaries, mapping out the tours it
had taken, scheming for its welfare. And, perhaps, after the dietary was
arranged and the prescription was written, he would say carelessly:

"Do you read much? What do you read? Ah! such and such books. Yes, very
interesting. Do you know this book which has struck me greatly? No? Allow
me to lend it to you. Good-bye."

And the patient departed, ignorant that he had received a pill for his
soul from the priest as well as a pill for his body from the doctor.

In appearance Dr. Levillier was small, slight, and delicate looking.
His complexion was clear and white. His eyes were blue. What hair he
possessed was rather soft, fluffy and reddish, with a dash of light
brown in it. He wore neither beard nor moustache, was always very neatly
and simply dressed, and was remarkable for his polished boots, said to be
the most perfectly varnished in London. Although he must have been nearly
fifty-five, he had never married, and some people declared that he had
the intention of starting a new "order" of medical celibates, who would
be father-confessors as well as physicians, and who would pray for the
souls of their patients after tending their bodily needs.

For some years Valentine had been very intimate with the doctor, whom he
admired for his intellect and loved for his nature. So now he resolved to
lay the case of the sittings with Julian before him and hear his opinion
of the matter. In all their conversations Valentine could not remember
that they had ever discussed spiritualism or occultism. As a rule, they
talked about books, painting, or music, of which Dr. Levillier was a
devoted lover. Valentine's note asked the doctor to dine with him that
night at his club. The messenger brought back an acceptance.

They dined at a corner table and the room was rather empty. A few men
chatted desultorily of burlesques, horses, the legs of actresses, the
chances of politics. The waiters moved quietly about with pathetic masks
of satisfied servitude. Valentine and the doctor conversed earnestly.

At first they spoke of a new symphony composed by a daring young
Frenchman, who had striven to reproduce vices in notes and to summon
up visions of things damnable by harmonic progressions which frequently
defied the laws of harmony. Levillier gently condemned him for putting
a great art to a small and degraded use.

"His very success makes me regret the waste of his time more deeply,
Cresswell," he said. "He is a marvellous painter in sound. He has
improved upon Berlioz, if it is improvement to cry sin with a clearer,
more determinate voice. Think what a heaven that man could reproduce
in music."

"Because he has reproduced a hell. But do you think that follows? Can
the man who wallows with force and originality soar with force and
originality too?"

"I believe he could learn to. The main thing is to possess genius in
any form, the genius to imagine, to construct, to present things that
seize upon the minds of men. But to possess genius is only a beginning.
We have to train it, to lead it, to coax it even, until it learns to be
obedient."

"Genius and obedience. Don't the two terms quarrel?"

"They should not. Obedience is a very magnificent thing, Cresswell, just
as to have to struggle, to be obliged to fight, is a very magnificent
thing."

"Yes," Valentine answered, thoughtfully. "I believe you are right. But,
if you are right, I have missed a great deal."

"How do you deduce that?"

"In this way. I have never had to be obedient. I have never had to
struggle."

"Surely the latter," the little doctor said, fixing his clear, kind
eyes on Valentine's face. "I don't think, in all my experience, that
I have ever met a man who lived a fine, pure life without fixing the
bayonet and using the sword at moments. There must be an occasional
_m�l�e_."

"Indeed not; that is to say," Valentine rather hastily added, "as regards
the pure life. For I cannot lay claim to anything fine. But I assure you
that my life has been pure without a struggle."

"Without one? Think!"

"Without one. Perhaps that is what wearies me at moments, doctor, the
completeness of my coldness. Perhaps it is this lack of necessity to
struggle that has at last begun to render me dissatisfied."

"I thought you were free from that evil humour of dissatisfaction,
that evil humour which crowds my consulting-rooms and wastes away the
very tissues of the body."

"I have been, until quite lately. I have been neither pessimist nor
optimist--just myself, and I believe happy."

"And what is this change? and what has it led to?"

"It was to tell you that I asked you here to-night."

They had finished dinner, and rose from the table. Passing through the
hall of the club, they went into a huge high room, papered with books.
Valentine led the way to a secluded corner, and gave the doctor a cigar.
When he had lit it and settled himself comfortably, his rather small
feet, in their marvellously polished boots, lightly crossed, his head
reposing serenely on the back of his chair, Valentine continued,
answering his attentive silence.

"It has led to what I suppose you would call an absurdity. But first,
the change itself. A sort of dissatisfaction has been creeping over me,
perhaps for a long while, I being unconscious of it. At length I became
conscious. I found that I was weary of being so free from the impulse
to sin--to sin, I mean, in definite, active ways, as young men sin. It
seemed to me that I was missing a great deal, missing the delight sin is
said to give to natures, or at least missing the invigorating necessity
you have just mentioned, the necessity to fight, to wage war against
impulses."

"I understand."

"And one night I expressed this feeling to Julian."

"To Addison?" the doctor said, an expression of keen interest sliding
into his face. "I should much like to know how he received it."

"He said, of course, that such a dissatisfaction was rather monstrous."

"Was that all?"

"No. He told me he considered temptation rather a curse than otherwise,
and then he surprised me very much."

"He told you a secret?"

"Why, yes."

"The secret of your great influence over his life?"

"You knew of this secret, then?"

"He didn't tell it to me. Long ago I divined it. Addison is a very
interesting fellow to a doctor, and the fact of his strong friendship
with you has made him more interesting even than he would otherwise
have been. His physique is tremendous. He has a quite unusual vitality,
and stronger passions by far than most Englishmen. I confess that my
knowledge of human nature led me to foresee a very troubled and too
vehement future for him. My anticipation being utterly falsified led
me naturally to look round for the reason of its falsification. I very
soon found that reason in you."

"I had never suspected it."

"Your lack of suspicion was not the least reason of the influence you
exercised."

"Possibly. He told me of the strength of his evil impulses, of how he
hated their assaults, and of how being with me enabled him to conquer
them. Apparently the contemplation of my unnatural nature is an armour
to him."

"It is."

"Well, I continued to bewail my condition, which he envied, and it ended
in our sitting down, in jest, to make an experiment to try to exchange
our souls."

"What means did you take?"

And then Valentine told Dr. Levillier the exact circumstances of the
three sittings, without embellishment, without omission of any kind.
He listened with keen attention, and without attempting interruption
or intruding comment. When Valentine had finished he made no remark.

"What do you think of it, doctor?"

"Of what part of it?"

"Of any part. Do you attach any importance to it?"

"I do, certainly."

"I thought you would laugh at the whole thing."

"Why should I? Why should I laugh at any circumstances which strongly
affect men whom I know, or, indeed, any men?"

"But then, tell me, do you believe in some strange, unseen agency? Do you
believe that Julian absolutely held the hand of some being dwelling in
another sphere, some being attracted to us, or, say, enabled to come to
us by such an action as our sitting at a table in the dark?"

"No. I don't believe that."

"You attribute the whole thing to bodily causes?"

"I am inclined to attribute it to the action and reaction of mind and
body, undoubtedly. If you had sat in the light, for instance, I don't
think Addison would have felt that hand. The hand is indeed the least of
the circumstances you have related, in my opinion. The incidents of the
dog and of the curtain are far more mysterious. You are positive the door
was securely shut?"

"Quite positive."

"Could you, after having drawn the curtain, have allowed your hand to
slip slightly back, pulling the curtain with it?"

"I don't think so. I feel sure not."

"You know we all constantly make involuntary motions--motions that our
minds are quite unaware of."

"I do feel sure, nevertheless. And the dog? What do you say to that?"

"I don't know what to say. But dogs are extraordinarily sensitive. I do
not think it beyond the bounds of possibility that the tumult of your
nerves--for there was tumult; you confess it--communicated itself to
him."

"And was the cause of his conduct?"

"Yes. In the course of my career I have been consulted by a great many
patients whose nervous systems have been disastrously upset by the
practices you describe, by so-called spiritualism, table-turning, and
so forth. One man I knew, trying to cultivate himself onto what he
called 'a higher plane,' cultivated himself into a lunatic asylum,
where he still remains."

"Then you consider spiritualism--?"

"I have too much respect for the soul, too much belief in its great
destiny, Cresswell, to juggle with it, or to play tricks with it. When
one meets a genius one does not want to have a game at puss-in-the-corner
with him. One is rather anxious to hear him talk seriously and display
his mind. When I come into contact with a soul, I don't want to try to
detach it from the home in which a divine power has placed it for a time.
I glory in many limitations against which it is the prevailing fashion
to fight uselessly. The soul can do all its work where it is--in the
body. The influence you exercise over your friend Addison convinces me
of the existence of spirits, things which will eventually be freed from
the body, more certainly than any amount of material manifestations,
sights, sounds, apparent physical sensations. Why should we not be
satisfied with remaining, for a time, as we are? I consider that you and
Addison were ill-advised in making this--no doubt absurd--experiment.
Supposing it to be absurd, the _raison d'�tre_ of the sittings is gone at
once. Supposing it not to be--"

"Yes. What, then?"

"Then the danger is great. Imagine yourself with Addison's soul or
nature, him with yours. To what might not you be led? How do you know
that your nature in him would exert any control over his nature in you?"

"Why should it not?"

"There comes in the power of the body, which is very great. I believe,
as you know, absolutely in the existence of the soul, and in its immortal
destiny; but that does not blind me to the extraordinary influence, the
extraordinary kingship, which a mere body, a mere husk and shell, as some
good people call it--I don't feel with them--can obtain not only over
another body, but, strangely, over the soul which is in that body. Your
influence over Addison has been, and is, immense. Do you imagine that it
is simply your nature which governs him?"

"I suppose so."

"Your mere appearance may have an immense deal to do with the matter.
You have the look, the expression, of one who has not sinned. It is
partly that which keeps Addison from giving the reins to his impulses.
I consider that if it were possible for your nature to change secretly
and for your face to remain unchanged, if you sinned perpetually and
retained your exact appearance, and if Addison did not know you sinned,
you could still be his guardian, while, really, yourself far worse in
every way than him."

"But surely that fights against your theory that the existence of a soul
is proved by such an influence as I possess over Addison?"

"Not at all. I said if it were possible for the body not to express the
soul, if--but that's just the difficulty, it is not possible. The body
manifests the soul. Supposing it were not so, the power of evil, the
devil, if you choose to name it and imply a personal existence for it,
might have hold of the world even more tightly than now. Just conceive,
under such conditions, how you might lure Addison to destruction if you
desired to do so. Looking at you, and seeing the same face in which he
has learned to see what he thinks entire goodness, he would be unable to
believe that any action you could suggest and take part in could be evil.
You could wreck his future with a perfect ease. But, as things are, did
your nature change and become malignant, your face would change too, and
you might quickly cease to exercise a strong influence over Addison. He
might even, having now been unconsciously trained into a curious
integrity, learn to hate and to despise you. You remember our
conversation to-night about that symphony?"

"Yes."

"I said that the soul which could reproduce hell should be able to
reproduce heaven."

"I know."

"Well, my boy--for you are a boy to me--the reverse of that might happen
also."

"Perhaps. But I don't quite see."

"The application--to you?"

"To me?"

"Yes, to you, Cresswell. You have been given a strangely perfect nature.
As you say, you seem to have nothing to do with the matter. You have even
been inclined to rebel against your gift. But, take my advice. Cherish
it. Don't play with it, as you have been playing. Remember, if you lose
heaven, the space once filled by heaven will not be left empty."

"Ah! now I see. You think that I--"

"Might swing from a great height to an equally great depth. That has
been my experience--that the man who is once extreme is always extreme,
but not always in the same way. The greatest libertines have made the
greatest ascetics. But, within my own experience, I have known the
reverse process to obtain. And you, if you changed, might carry Addison
with you."

"But then, doctor, you do believe in these manifestations?"

"Not necessarily. But I believe that the minds of men are often very
carefully, very deftly, poised, and that a little push can send them one
way or the other. Have you ever balanced one billiard-ball on the top of
another?"

"Yes."

"Then you know that a breath will upset it and send it rolling.
Be careful. Your mind, your very nature, may be poised like that
billiard-ball. Addison's may be the same. Indeed, I feel sure
Addison's is. That curious dread of you which overcame him at your
last sitting is a sign of it. The whole thing is wrong--bad for body
and for mind."

"Perhaps. Well, we have definitely agreed to give it up."

"That's well. Eleven o'clock! I must be going. Are you doing anything
to-morrow night?"

"No."

"I have got a box for this new play at the Duke's Theatre. Will you
come?"

"With pleasure."

"I will ask Addison also."

They put on their overcoats, and walked a little way along Pall Mall
before they parted. Near the Atheneaum they passed a tall, thin man,
who was coming in the opposite direction. He turned round as they went
by, and stood directly regarding them till they were out of sight.




CHAPTER VII

THE REGENT STREET EPISODE


The things we do apparently by chance often have a curious applicability
to the things we have thought. John the Baptist was sent to prepare the
way of the Lord. These thoughts are the John the Baptists of the mind,
and prepare the way for facts that often startlingly illustrate them.
It is as if our thoughts were gradually materialized by the action of the
mind; as if, by the act of thinking, we projected them.

When Doctor Levillier got a box for the first night of the new play at
the Duke's Theatre, and when he invited Valentine and Julian to make up
his party, he had no idea what the subject of the piece was, no notion
that it would have anything to do with the conversation which took place
between him and Valentine at the club. But the plot applied with almost
amazing fidelity to much that he had said upon that occasion. The play
was a modern allegory of the struggle between good and evil, which has
been illustrated in so many different ways since the birth of the Faust
legend. But the piece had a certain curious originality which sprang
from the daring of the author. Instead of showing one result of the
struggle, a good man drawn gradually down, or a bad man drawn gradually
up, he set forth, with a great deal of detail, a great deal of vividness,
a modern wobbler, a human pendulum, and simply noted down, as it were,
his slow swinging backwards and forwards. His hero, an evil liver, a
modern man of wrath in the first act, dominated by a particular vice,
was drawn, by an outside personal influence, from the mire in which
he was wallowing, to purity, to real elevation. But his author, having
led him up to the pinnacle, had no intention of leaving him there,
blessed by the proclaimed admiration of the gods in the gallery. In the
succeeding acts he introduced a second personal influence, exerted this
time on the side of evil, and permitted it to act upon his central figure
successfully. The man fell again into the mire, and was left there at the
conclusion of the piece, but hugging a different sin, not the sin he had
been embracing when the curtain rose upon the first act. This dramatic
scheme took away the breath of the house for a moment, but only for a
moment. Then the lungs once more did their accustomed duty, and enabled
a large number of excited persons to hiss with a wonderful penetration.
Their well-meant efforts did not have the effect of terrorizing the
author. On the contrary, he quickly responded to the hostile uproar,
and, coming forward in a very neat Jaeger suit, a flannel shirt, and a
pair of admirably fitting doeskin gloves, bowed with great gravity and
perfect self-possession. The hisses thereupon suddenly faded into
piercing entreaties for a speech, in which a gallery lady with a powerful
soprano voice became notorious as the leader. But the Jaeger author was
not to be prevailed upon. He waved the doeskin gloves in token of adieu,
and retreated once more into the excited obscurity of the wings, where
his manager was trembling like an aspen, in the midst of a perspiring
company. The lights were turned down. The orchestra burst into a tuneful
jig, and the lingering audience at length began to disperse.

Dr. Levillier, Julian, and Valentine left their box in silence. It
seemed that this odd play, which dared to be natural, had impressed
them. They walked into the vestibule without a word, and, avoiding many
voluble friends who were letting off the steam as they gathered their
coats and hats from a weary lady in a white cap, they threaded their way
through the crowd and emerged into the street. Just as they reached the
portico, Julian suddenly started and laid his hand on Valentine's arm.

"What is it?" asked Valentine, looking round.

"Ah! you're just too late. He's gone!"

"He--who?"

"Marr."

"Oh," Valentine said, showing considerable interest; "I wish I had seen
him. Where was he sitting?"

"I haven't an idea. Didn't know he was in the theatre."

Doctor Levillier made an exception to his rule of being in bed by twelve
o'clock that night, and accepted Valentine's invitation to sup in
Victoria Street. He had always been greatly drawn to Valentine, attracted
by the latter's exceptional clarity of character, and he was scarcely
less interested in Julian. Nor did the considerable difference between
his age and the ages of the two youths in any way interfere with their
pleasant intercourse. For Levillier had a heart that was ageless. The
corroding years did not act as acid upon it. All his sympathies were as
keen, all his power of enjoyment was as great, as when he had been a
delightfully gay and delightfully pleasant boy at school. Youth always
loved him, and age always respected him. He possessed the great secret
of a beautiful life. He was absolutely genuine, and he meant nothing
but good to all with whom he was brought into contact.

The three friends spoke but little as they went back to the flat, but
when they had sat down to supper, and Dr. Levillier had expressed his
complete satisfaction with the champagne that Valentine's butler had
politely insinuated into his glass, the silence took to itself wings
and lightly departed. They talked of the play, and it appeared that
they were all impressed by it, but in slightly different ways, and for
different reasons. Valentine, who was intensely, but sometimes almost
coldly, artistic, appreciated it, he said, because it did not obviously
endeavour to work out a problem or to teach a lesson. It simply, with
a great deal of literary finish and dramatic force, stated a curiously
human character, showed the nature of a man at work, and left him,
after some scenes of his life, still at work upon his own salvation or
destruction, not telling the audience what his end would be, scarcely
even trying to imply his innate tendency one way or the other. This
satisfied Valentine. This had made him feel as if he had seen a block
cut out of life.

"I do not want to learn what becomes of that man," he said. "I have
known him, good and bad. That is enough. That satisfies me more than
the sight of a thousand bombastic heroes, a thousand equally bombastic
villains. Life is neither ebony nor ivory. That man is something to my
mind forever, as Ibsen's 'Master Builder' is something. I can never
forget the one or the other."

"Your life is ivory, Val," Julian said.

He had liked the play because the violent struggle between good and evil
woke up many responsive memories in his mind. The hero of the play had
been shown feeling precisely as Julian had often felt. That was enough.
He did not very much care for the brilliant artifice, which Valentine had
remarked with so much pleasure. He did not specially note the peculiar
effect of nature produced by the simplicity and thoughtful directness
of the dialogue. He only knew that he had seen somebody whose nature
was akin to his own nature, although placed in different, perhaps more
dramatic, circumstances.

Dr. Levillier combined, to some appreciable extent, the different joys
of his two companions, and obtained another that was quite his own. He
had seen two horses running in double harness that night, the body and
mind of the hero, and had taken delight in observing what had practically
escaped the definite notice of his companions, the ingenuity and subtlety
with which the author, without being obtrusive or insistent, had
displayed their _liaison_; the effect of each upon the other, their
answering excursions and alarums, their attempts at separate _amours_,
_amours_ that always had an inevitable effect upon the one which the
other had, for the moment, endeavoured to exclude from its life. The
doctor in him and the priest in him had both enjoyed a glorious evening
of bracing activity. As they discussed the piece, and each advanced his
reason of pleasure, the doctor expanded into a sort of saintly geniality,
which was peculiarly attractive even to sinners. And when supper was
over, and they strolled into the drawing-room to smoke and to make music,
he sank into a chair, stretched out his polished boots with a sigh, and
said:

"And people say there is so little joy in life!"

Julian laughed at the satisfied whimsicality of his exclamation and of
the expression which shadowed it.

"Light up, doctor," he cried. "You are a boon to this modern world. For
you see all the sorrows of life, I suppose, and yet you always manage to
convey the impression that the joys win the battle after all."

Valentine had gone over to the piano and was dreamily opening it. He did
not seem to hear what they were saying. The doctor obeyed the injunction
to light up. He was one of the hardest and most assiduous toilers in
all London, and he appreciated a good cigar and a comfortable arm-chair
more than some men could appreciate Paradise, or some women appreciate
love.

"And I believe that joy will win the battle in the end," he said, with a
puff that proved successful.

"Why?"

"I see evidences of it, or think I do. The colour will fade out of bad
acts, Addison, but the colour of a good act is eternal. A noble deed will
never emulate a Sir Joshua Reynolds--never. Play to us, Cresswell."

"Yes, but I wish you to talk. I want to improvise to-night. The murmur of
your conversation will help me."

Julian sat down by the doctor. He, too, looked very happy. It was a
pleasant hour. Sympathy was in that pretty room, complete human sympathy,
and a sympathy that sprang from their vitality, avoiding the dusky
dumbness of the phlegmatic. Valentine sat down at the piano and began
gently to play. The smoke from the cigars curled away towards the
watching pictures; the room was full of soft music.

"Yes, Addison," Doctor Levillier continued, in a low voice, "I am
perpetually sitting with sorrow, communing with disease. That
consulting-room of mine is as a pool of Bethesda, only not all who come
to it, alas! can be healed. I sit day by day in my confessional--I like
to call it that; perhaps I was meant to be a priest--and I read the
stories of the lives of men and of women, most of them necessarily, from
the circumstances which bring them to me, sad. And yet I have a belief
in joy and its triumph which nothing can ever shake, a belief in the
final glory of good which nothing can ever conquer."

"That's fine, doctor. But do you know why you have it?"

"I daresay that question is difficult to answer. I often seek for my
reasons, Addison, and I find many, though I can hardly say which is
the best, or whether any quite explains the faith that is always in me.
_Apropos_ of this evening, by the bye, I long ago found one of my reasons
in the theatre, the theatre which some really good men hate and condemn."

"What was that?"

"Oh, a very simple one. I believe that men in the mass express eternal
truths more readily, more certainly, than men as individuals. Put a lot
of bad men, or--we won't call them bad, why should we?--loose, careless,
thoughtless men, together in the pit of a theatre. Many of them, perhaps,
drink, and are rendered cruel by drink. Many of them care nothing for
morality, and have wounded, in the worst way, the souls of women. Many
of them show incessant hardness in most of the relations of life. What,
then, is it, that makes all these individuals respond so directly, so
certainly, to every touch of goodness, and gentleness, and unselfishness,
and purity, and faith, that is put before them upon the stage? I think it
must be that eternal truth--the rocks of good that lie forever beneath
the wild seas of evil. Those men don't know themselves; don't know that
it is all useless for them to try to hide the nobility which has been put
into them, to thrust it down, and, metaphorically, to dance on it. They
can't get rid of it, do what they will. I like to think of goodness as
the shadow of evil through life, the shadow that, at death, or perhaps
long after death, becomes the substance."

"You think we cannot kill the good that is in us?"

"Not quite. But I think we can go near to killing it, so near that it
will take longer to recover and to be itself again, longer far than the
most relapsing typhoid patient."

"And have you other reasons for your belief?"

"Perhaps. But some of them are difficult to define, and would carry no
conviction to any one but myself. There is one in this very room with
us."

Julian glanced up, surprised.

"What is that, doctor?" he said.

"You ought to know better than I," Levillier answered.

He was looking at Valentine, who, apparently quite unconscious of their
presence, was still playing rather softly. Julian followed his eyes.

The light in the room was dim, a carefully manufactured twilight. It is
strange how many things, and how slight, stir, control, influence in one
direction or another, the emotions. Light and the absence of light can
divert a heart as easily as the pressing of a button can give a warship
to the sea. Twilight and music can change a beast into a man, a man into
an angel, for the moment. Long after that evening was dead, both Julian
and Doctor Levillier anxiously, and in their different ways analytically,
considered it. They submitted it to a secret process of probing, such as
many men enforce upon what they imagine to be great causes in their
lives. That hour became an hour of wonder, an hour of amazement, viewed
in the illumination of subsequent events. They found in it a curious
climax of misunderstanding, a culmination of all deceptive things.

And yet, in that hour they only watched a young man of London, a modern
intellectual youth, playing in a Victoria Street drawing-room upon a
Steinway grand piano.

They were sitting sideways to Valentine, and a little behind him.
Therefore he could not easily see them unless he slightly turned his
head. But they could observe him, and, obeying Doctor Levillier's mute
injunction, Julian now did so.

Valentine was gazing straight before him over the top, of the piano, and
his eyes seemed to be fixed upon the dim figure of Christ in the picture
of "The Merciful Knight." Was he not playing to the picture, playing to
that figure in it? And did not his musical imagination seek to reproduce
in sound the vision of the life of that mailed knight who never lived and
died? The purity of his expression, always consummate, was to-night more
peculiar, more unearthly, than before in any place, at any moment. And,
as mere line can convey to the senses of man a conception of a great
virtue or of a great vice, the actual shape of his features, thus seen in
profile, was the embodiment of an exquisitely ascetic purity, as much an
embodiment as is a drop of water pierced by a sunbeam. This struck both
Doctor Levillier and Julian, and the doctor was amazed anew at the silent
decree that the invisible shall be made visible in forms comprehensible
to the commonest minds. Sin would surely flee from a temple sculptured
in such a shape as the body of Valentine, as a vampire would flee from
the bloodless courts of the heaven of the Revelation. Lust cannot lie
at ease on a crystal couch, or rest its dark head upon a pillow of pale
ivory. And the message of this strange, unearthly youth now given in
music, and to the air and the dust--for Valentine had lost knowledge
of his friends--was crystalline too. In his improvisation he journeyed
through many themes of varying characters. He hymned the knight's
temptation no less than his triumph. But purity was in the hymn even
at the hour of temptation, and sang like a bird in every scene of the
life,--a purity classical, detached, so refined as to be almost
physically cold.

"I understand you," Julian whispered to the little doctor. "Yes, you
are right. He is a great reason why what you think may be true. And
yet"--here Julian lowered his voice to a breath, lest he might disturb
the player--"he is not religious, as--as--well, as you are. Forgive the
allusion--."

"Are the angels religious?" said Doctor Levillier. "Why should you
refrain, my dear boy? But you are right. There is a curious
unconsciousness about Cresswell--about Valentine--which seems to
exclude even definite religious belief as something in a way
self-conscious, and so impossible to him. There is an extraordinary
strain of the child in Cresswell, such as I conceive to be in unearthly
beings, who have never had the power to sin. And the best-behaved,
sweetest child in the world might catch flies or go to sleep during
the Litany or a sermon. This very absence of controversial or dogmatic
religion gives Valentine much of his power, seems positively to lift him
higher than religionists of any creed."

"You think--you think that perhaps it is something in him of which he is
unconscious which does so much for me?"

"Perhaps it is."

Valentine now glided into an accompaniment, and began to sing. And
the doctor and Julian ceased to talk. Valentine certainly did not sing
with such peculiar skill as he showed in playing, but he had a charming
voice which he used with great ease, and he never sang a single note,
or phrased a passage, without complete intelligence and understanding
of his composer. Only he lacked power. This scarcely interfered with the
pleasure he could give in a drawing-room, and to-night both Levillier and
Julian were rather in a mood for supreme delicacy than for great passion.
They listened with silent pleasure for a time. Then Levillier said:

"Do you remark how wonderfully the timbre of Cresswell's voice expresses
the timbre of his mind? The parallel is exact."

Julian nodded.

"That is his soul written in sound," the doctor added.

It was at this point that Valentine ceased and got up from the piano.

"I must smoke too," he said. "No, not a cigar, I'll have a cigarette
to-night."

"You are fond of that picture, Cresswell?" said Doctor Levillier as
Valentine sat down.

"'The Merciful Knight'? Yes, I love it. Have you told Julian your opinion
of our sittings, doctor?"

"No. He didn't ask me for it."

"I should be glad to have it, all the same," Julian said.

"Well, my opinion is entirely adverse to your proceedings," Levillier
said, with his usual frankness.

"You are, in fact, at the opposite pole from Marr," Julian answered.

"Marr! Who is Marr? I never heard of him."

"Nor I, until the other evening," Julian said. "But now I see him every
day. He was at the theatre to-night. I saw him as we came out."

"What is he, a spiritualist? A professional?"

"Oh dear, no! He calls himself an occultist. He goes out in society a
great deal, apparently. I met him at dinner first. Since then he has
taken the keenest interest in my sittings with Valentine."

"Indeed! You know him, Cresswell?"

Valentine shook his head, and Julian laughed.

"The fun of it is that Marr doesn't wish to know Valentine," he said.

"Why?" the doctor asked.

Julian told him the words Marr had used in reference to Valentine, and
gave a fairly minute description of Marr's attitude towards their
proceedings. Levillier listened with great attention.

"Then this man urges you to go on with your sittings?" he said when
Julian had finished.

"Scarcely that. But he certainly seems anxious that we should."

"You have both resolved to give them up, haven't you?"

"Certainly, doctor," Valentine replied.

"Does Marr know that?" Levillier asked of Julian.

"No. I haven't seen him to speak to since our final sitting."

The little doctor sat in apparent meditation for two or three minutes.
Then he remarked, with abruptness:

"Addison, will you think me an impertinent elderly person if I give you a
piece of advice?"

"You--doctor! Of course not. What is it?"

"Well, you young fellows know me, know that I am not a mere
sentimentalist or believer in every humbug that is the fashion of
the moment. But one thing I do firmly believe, that certain people
are born with a power to command, or direct others, which amounts to
force. The world doesn't completely recognize this. The law doesn't
recognize, perhaps ought not to recognize it. Some call it hypnotism.
I call it suggestion."

He paused, as if he had finished.

"But your advice, doctor?" Julian said, wondering.

"Oh, h'm! I don't mean to give it to you, after all."

"Why?"

Doctor Levillier became enigmatic.

"Because I have just remembered that to warn is often to supply a cause
of stumbling," he said.

Dr. Levillier and Julian drove together as far as the latter's
chambers that evening, and, after bidding Julian good-night, the doctor
dismissed the cab and set out to walk to Harley Street. He proceeded
at a leisurely pace along Piccadilly, threading his way abstractedly
among the wandering wisps of painted humanity that dye the London night
with rouge. Occasionally a passing man in evening dress would bid him
good-night, for he was universally known in the town. But he did not
reply. With his firm round chin pressed down upon his fur coat, and his
eyelids lowered, he moved thoughtfully. The problem of the relations
existing between youth and life eternally fascinated him. He pondered
over them now. What a strange, complicated _liaison_ it was, sometimes
so happy, sometimes so disastrous, always, to him, pathetic. Youth sets
up house with life as a lover sets up house with his mistress, takes an
attic near the stars, or builds a mansion that amazes the street-urchins.
And they dwell together. And youth strives in every way to know his
mistress. He tests her, tries her, kisses and cuffs her, gives her
presents, weeps at her knees. And at first she is magical, and a wonder,
and a dream, and eternity. And then, perhaps, she is a faded creature,
and terrible as a lost girl whom one has known in innocence. She is grim
and arid. She fills youth with a great horror and with a great fear. He
dare not kiss her any more. And then, perhaps, at last he prays, "Deliver
me from this bondage!" And he thinks that he knows his mistress. But,
happy or sad, does he ever quite know her? Is she not always a mystery,
this life, a sphinx who jealously guards a great secret?

His evening with the two boys, for so the doctor called them in his
thoughts, had set him musing thus definitely. Was there not a wonder
and a secret in their dual life of friendship? For is not the potent
influence of one soul over another one of the marvels of time? The
doctor loved Valentine as a human saint loves another saint. But he
loved Julian as a saint loves a sinner. Not that he named Julian sinner,
but it was impossible to be with him, observantly, sensitively, and not
to feel the thrill of his warm, passionate humanity, which cried aloud
for governance, for protection. Julian could be great, with the greatness
only attained by purged humanity, superior surely to the peaceful purity
of angels. But he could be a castaway, oh! as much a castaway as the
fainting shipwrecked man whom the hoarse surf rolls to the sad island of
a desert sea.

Without Valentine what might he not have been? And the little doctor
let his imagination run loose until his light eyes were dim with absurd
tears. He winked them away as he turned into Regent Street. The hour
was nearly two, and the great curved thoroughfare was rather deserted.
Those few persons who were about had a curious aspect of wolves. Their
eyes were watchful; their gait denoted a ghastly readiness for pause,
for colloquy. Poor creatures! What was their _liaison_ with life? A
thing like a cry for help in the dark. The doctor longed to be a
miracle-worker, to lift up his hands, just there where he was by the
New Gallery, and to say, "Be ye healed!" He had a true love for every
human thing. And that love sometimes seared his heart, despite his
fervent faith and hope.

But now, as he pursued his way, a physical sensation intruded itself upon
his mind, and gradually excluded all his reflections. A sense of bodily
uneasiness came upon him, of a curious irritation and contempt, mingled
with fear. He at first ascribed it to the coffee he had imprudently
drunk at Valentine's flat, and to the strength of the two cigars he had
smoked, or to some ordinary, trifling cause of diet. But by the time he
crossed Oxford Street, and was in the desert of Vere Street, he felt
that there was a reason for his distress, outside of him.

"I am being followed," he said to himself. "I am being followed, and by
some utterly abominable person."

He went by the Chapel, and struck across to the right, not looking behind
him, but analyzing his feelings. Being strongly intuitive, he had no need
to turn his head. He knew now for certain the cause of his uneasiness.
Some dreadful human being was very near to him, full of hateful thoughts,
sinister recollections, possibly evil intentions. Something, the very
vibrations of the night air, it might be, carried, as a telegraph wire
conveys a message, the soul-aroma of this human being to the doctor. As
he walked on, not hurrying, he mutely diagnosed the heart of this unseen
being. It seemed full of deadly disease. Never had he suspected man or
woman of such wickedness as he divined here; never had he felt from any
of his kind such a sick repulsion as from this unseen monster who was
journeying steadily in his steps. Doctor Levillier was puzzled at the
depth of the horror which beleaguered him. He remembered once driving a
staid, well-behaved horse in a country lane. The animal ambled forward
at a gentle pace, flicking its ears lazily to circumvent the flies,
apparently at ease with its driver and with the world. But suddenly it
raised its head, drew the air into its distended nostrils, stopped,
quivered in every limb, and then, with a strange cry, bolted like a
mad thing. Far away a travelling menagerie was encamping. It had scented
the wild animals.

Doctor Levillier felt like that horse. A longing to bolt for his life
came upon him. He had an impulse to cry out, to run forward, to escape
out of the atmosphere created by this evil nature, this deadly life. He
could have crept like a coward into the shadow of one of the areas of
Henrietta Street, and sheltered there till the thing went past. And, just
because he had this almost overmastering desire to flee, he stood still,
paused abruptly, and, without turning his head, listened. At a distance,
and he judged, round the corner of the street he heard the sound of a
quickening footstep advancing in his direction. He waited, under the
obligation of exerting all his powers of self-control; for his limbs
trembled to movement, his heart beat to the march, and every separate
vein, every separate hair of his body, seemed crying out piercingly to
begone. The footstep approached. Doctor Levillier heard it turning the
corner.

"Now," thought he, "this person will see me waiting here. Will he come
on? Will he pass me? And if he does, shall I be able to await, to endure
the incident?"

And he listened, as a scout might listen in the night for sounds of the
hidden enemy. Upon turning the corner, the footsteps advanced a pace or
two, faltered, slackened, stopped. For an instant there was silence.
The doctor knew that the man had been struck by his attentive figure, and
was pausing to regard it, to consider it. What would be the result of the
inspection? In a moment the doctor knew. The footsteps sounded again,
this time in retreat.

On this the impulse of the doctor to flee changed, giving way to a
strict desire and determination. He was resolved to interview this
night-wanderer, to see his face. A greedy anxiety for view, for
question, of this person came upon him. He, too, wheeled round, and
followed hastily in pursuit. The man had already escaped from his sight
into Vere Street, and the doctor broke into a soft run until he reached
the corner, skirting which, the man was immediately in his view, but
at a considerable distance from him. As the doctor sprang upon the
pavement the man turned round, and, evidently observing that he was
pursued, quickened his steps impulsively. The doctor was now absolutely
determined to address him, and began openly to run. And he was not far
from coming up with the fellow when he suddenly whistled a passing
hansom, bounded in, and thrust up the trapdoor in the roof. The direction
given was sufficiently obvious, for the cabby glanced round at the
doctor, lifted his whip, brought it down with a sweep over the horse's
loins, and the cab disappeared down Oxford Street at a rocking gallop.

The doctor paused. He was breathing hard, and the perspiration stood upon
his face. His disappointment was absurdly keen, and for an instant he had
even some idea of hailing another cab, and of following in pursuit. But,
upon reflection, he deemed it more reasonable to return upon his steps,
and to seek his bed in Harley Street. This accordingly he did, wondering
what had moved him so strangely, and wondering, also, not a little, at
the abrupt flight of the unknown person. In the brief and distant view
of him, which was all that the doctor had obtained, he judged him to be
tall, spare, and pale of countenance, with the figure of a gentleman.
The aspect of his face had not been revealed before the shelter of the
cab concealed him.




CHAPTER VIII

PAUSE


It chanced that for three or four days after the night of the theatre
expedition Valentine and Julian did not meet. They were rarely apart
for so long a period, and each was moved to wonder at this unwonted
abstinence of their friendship. What was the cause of it? Each found it
in a curious hesitation that enveloped him, and impelled him to avoidance
of the other. Valentine went about as usual. He looked in at White's,
dined out, rode in the park, visited two theatres, lived the habitual
London life which contents so many and disgusts not a few. But he did
not ask Julian to share any of these well-worn doings, and at first he
did not acknowledge to himself why he did not do so. He sought, more
definitely than ever before, to gain amusement from amusements, and
this definite intention, of course, frustrated his purpose. His power
of pleasure was, in fact, clogged by an abiding sense of dissatisfaction
and depression. And it was really his eventual knowledge of this
depression's cause that led him to bar Julian out from these few days
of his life. All that he did bored him, and the more decidedly because
he came to know that there was something which did not bore, which even
excited him, something which he had resolved to give up. He was, in
fact, strangely pursued by an unreasonable desire to fly in the face of
Doctor Levillier's advice, and of his own secondary antagonistic desire,
and to sit again with Julian. Everything in which he sought to find
distraction, lacked savour. As he sat watching a ballet that glittered
with electricity, and was one twinkle of coloured movement, he found
himself longing for the silence, the gloom, the live expectation of
the tentroom, night, and Julian. At White's the conversation of the men
struck him as even more scrappy, more desultorily scandalous, than usual.
His morning ride was an active _ennui_, an _ennui_ revolving, like a
horse in a circus, round and round the weariness of the park.

Yet he had made up his mind quite fully that it would be better not
to sit any more. It was not merely Doctor Levillier's urgency that
had impressed him thus. A personal conviction had gradually forced
itself upon him that if anything resulted from such apparently imbecile
proceedings it would certainly not be of an agreeable nature. But, too,
this very sense that a secret danger might be lurking against him and
Julian, if only they would consent together to give it power by the
united action of sitting, spurred him on to restless desire. It is
not only the soldier who has a bizarre love of peril. Many of those
who sit at home in apparent calmness of safety seek perils with a
maniacal persistence, perils to the intricate scheme of bodily health,
perils to the mind. More human mules than the men of the banner and the
sword delight in journeying at the extreme edge of the precipice. And
Valentine now had to the full this secret hankering after danger. As he
knew it, he despised himself for it, for this attitude of the schoolboy
in which he held himself. Until now he had believed that he was free
from such a preposterous and morbid bondage, free on account of his
constitutional indifference towards vice, his innate love of the brooding
calms of refinement and of the upper snowfields of the intellect. The
discovery of his mistake irritated him, but the irritation could not
conquer its cause, and each day the longing to sit once more grew upon
him until it became almost painful. It was this longing which occasioned
Valentine's avoidance of Julian. He knew that if they were together he
would yield to this foolish, witless temptation, and at any rate try to
persuade Julian into an act which might be attended with misfortune, if
not with disaster. And then Valentine's profound respect for Doctor
Levillier, a respect which the doctor inspired without effort in every
one who knew him, was a chain almost of steel to hold the young man back
from gratification of his longing. Valentine never sought any one's
advice except the little doctor's, and he had a strong feeling of the
obligation laid upon him by such sought advice. To ask it and to reject
it was a short course to insult.

He resolved to avoid Julian until this gripping desire was shaken from
the shoulders of his mind.

Once or twice he tacitly wondered whether Julian was also the prey of
this desire, but then he felt certain that his friend could not be so
afflicted. Had he been, Julian would surely have found a swift occasion
to call. But he did not call. His feet did not turn their accustomed
way to Victoria Street. And it did not occur to Valentine that Julian
might be immersed in the same sort of struggle as himself. He thought he
knew Julian well enough to be sure that he would not have joined issue
with such an enemy without instant consultation. A council of war would
certainly have been convened.

So Valentine believed himself lonely in his feeling. One night he
returned from the theatre and a succeeding supper party at half-past
twelve, let himself into the flat with a latchkey, threw off his coat
and stood before the fire. His usually smooth, white forehead was
puckered in a frown. He contemplated the inevitable hours of bed
with dissatisfaction. When a man has allowed a vice to obtain dominion
over him there are moments when an enforced abstinence from it, even
of only a few hours, seems intolerably irksome. So Valentine felt now.
It seemed to him that he must sit again; that he could not go to bed,
could not rest and sleep, until he gratified his desire. Yet what was he
to do? He thought at first of starting out, late as the hour was, to
Julian's rooms. But that would be ridiculous, more especially after
their mutual resolution. Julian might refuse, would probably, in any
event, wish to refuse, the request which he came to make. Valentine
strove sincerely to dismiss the desire from his mind, but his effort
was entirely vain. Presently he went into his bedroom with the intention
of forcing himself to go, as usual, to bed. He began to undress slowly,
and had taken off his coat and waistcoat when he felt that he must
resume them; that he must remain, unnecessarily, up. He allowed the
mental prompting to govern him, and hardly had he once more fully attired
himself when the electric bell in the passage rang twice. Valentine went
to the door, opened it, and descended the flight of stone steps to the
main door of the house, which was locked at night. Julian was standing
outside on the pavement.

"You are still up, then," he exclaimed. "That's good. May I come in?"

"Yes, of course. Where have you been to-night?"

They were going up, their footsteps echoing hoarsely in the dim light.

"Nowhere."

"Then what made you turn out so late?"

"Oh," Julian said, with an elaborate carelessness; "I don't know. I
thought we were becoming strangers, I suppose. And suddenly I resolved
to look you up."

"I see," Valentine said, wondering why Julian was lying.

By this time they were in the flat and had shut the door behind them.

"Why haven't you been near me?" Julian said.

"Why haven't you been near me?"

"Oh--well--do you want to know really?"

"Yes; if you have got a definite reason."

"To tell the truth, I have; but it is such an absurd one."

Julian looked at Valentine and then added, with a decidedly forced laugh:

"You'll be awfully surprised when I tell you what it is, Val. I want
to sit again."

"Now I know why I stopped undressing just now," said Valentine. "I must
have had a sense that you were coming. Were you thinking very hard of me
to-night and of our sittings?"

"Rather! It is the oddest thing, but even since we had that talk with
the doctor and agreed to give the whole thing up, I've been perfectly
miserable. I haven't enjoyed a single thing I've done since that night."

"Nor I," said Valentine.

"What! you have been as bad? And without having Marr continually at your
elbow!"

"Marr again!"

"Again! Yes, I should think so. That chap has taken a fancy to me,
I suppose. Anyhow, directly I walk into the club, morning, noon, or
night, up he comes. He must live there. And the first thing he says is,
'Have you gone on with your sittings? You should, you should.' To-day
he changed his formula and said, 'You must,' and when I was going away,
he looked at me in a damned odd way and remarked in his low, toneless
voice, 'You will.' I declare I almost think he must have a sort of
influence over me, for I couldn't go to bed for the life of me, and
here I am. By the way, Marr seems to have a sort of power of divination.
Last night, when I happened to see him, he began talking about doctors,
and, by Jove, didn't he abuse them! He says they stand more in the way
of the development of the spiritual forces in man than any other body
of people. He denounced them all as low materialists, immersed in the
tinkering of the flesh. 'What does the flesh matter?' he said. 'It is
nothing. It is only an envelope. And the more tightly it is fastened
together, the more it stifles the spirit. I would like to catch hold
of some men's bodies and tear them in pieces to get at their souls.'
Val, as he made that cheerful remark, he looked more like a homicidal
maniac than anything I ever saw."

"I suppose you didn't stand up for the doctors?"

"But I did--for our little man. D'you think I wasn't going to say a word
for him?"

"What! you mentioned his name to this chap?"

"Certainly. Why not?"

"I don't know," Valentine said, hesitatingly.

"What objection could there possibly be?"

"None, of course--none. I simply had a quite unreasonable feeling that I
wished you hadn't. That is all."

And then Valentine relapsed into silence, the silence some men keep when
they are needlessly, uselessly irritated. The mention of Marr's name had
effected him oddly. He now felt a perverse desire not to sit, not comply
with the rather impertinent prediction of this dark-featured prophet
whom he had never seen. To carry out this prediction would seem like
an obedience to a stranger, governing, unseen, and at a distance. Why
did this man concern himself in the affairs of those over whom he had
no sovereignty, with whom he had no friendship?

"Julian," Valentine said at last, abruptly, "I wish you would promise me
something."

"What is it?"

"To drop this fellow, Marr. He has nothing to do with us, and it is a
decided impertinence, this curiosity he shows in our doings. Don't
answer any more of his questions. Tell him to keep his advice to himself.
And if you really believe he is obtaining an influence over you, avoid
him."

"You talk as if you disliked him."

"I feel as if I hated him."

"A man you have never even seen?"

"Yes."

"Well, I don't take to him, and I have seen him. I will drop him as much
as I can. I promise you that."

"Thank you, old boy."

Julian fidgetted about rather uneasily, touching the ornaments on the
mantelpiece, opening and shutting his silver cigarette-case with a click.
It was obvious that he felt restless and dissatisfied. Then he said:

"Well, are we going to--"

"Surely you don't mean to say that you came here to-night to persuade
me into doing again what we both decided not to do any more?" asked
Valentine.

"I came to try," Julian replied with decision.

He looked at Valentine and then added:

"And do you know I have been thinking, especially to-day, that you were
of the same mind as I."

"How?"

"That you wanted to sit again as much as I did."

"But I don't know Marr," Valentine said, with unusual sarcasm.

Julian flushed red, like a man who has been stung.

"Perhaps he influences you through me, though," he said with a laugh.

"What nonsense, Julian! If I thought he had anything to do with the
matter, I would never sit again. But he can have nothing to do with it."

"Of course not. So will you sit? You want to give in. I know that."

"I do"

"I was sure of it."

"At the same time, remember the doctor's advice."

"Oh, doctors are always against that sort of thing."

"Julian, I have a strong feeling that, should we ever get any
manifestation at all, it will be inimical, even deadly, to one or both
of us. Each time we have sat a sensation of distress has taken hold of
me, and each time with greater force."

"Nerves!"

"Well, then, the hand which you say you held was nerves?"

"Perhaps. But that is just it. I must know, or at least try to know. It
is inevitable. We can't stop now, Val, whether we are standing on the
threshold of good, or evil, or--nothing at all. We have got to go on.
Besides, you and I have not effected an exchange."

"Of souls? No. Perhaps it is an imbecile proceeding to try."

"No matter."

"Or a dangerous proceeding."

"You are temporizing, and the night is running away as hard as it can.
Come, now, will you do what I want--yes or no?"

After a long hesitation, Valentine slowly answered:

"Yes."

And absurdly, as he said it, he felt like a man who tosses the dice for
life or death.




CHAPTER IX

THE FOURTH SITTING


They turned the light off and sat down in silence. Then Julian said:

"Keep your hands well away from mine, Val."

"I will."

They had not been sitting for five minutes before Valentine felt that the
atmosphere was becoming impregnated with a certain heaviness of mystery,
with a certain steady and unyielding dreariness hanging round them like a
cloud. They were once again confronted by a strange reality. Surely they
were. Valentine felt it, silently knew it.

In this blackness he seemed at length to step forward and to stand upon
the very threshold of an abyss, beyond which, in vague vapours, lay
things unknown, creatures unsuspected hitherto. From this darkness
anything might come to them, angel or devil, nymph or satyr. So, at
least, he dreamed for a while, giving his imagination the rein. Then,
in a revulsion of feeling, he jeered at his folly, mutely scolded his
nerves for spurring him to such flagrant imbecilities.

"This is all nonsense," he told himself, "all fancy, all a world created,
peopled, endowed with life by my desirous mind, which longs for a