"Now, Mr. Malling, some of what I have told you may appear to be almost contradictory. I have spoken of my maladie de grandeur as if it were a reason why I wished to sit with Henry Chichester, and then of my desire to communicate, if possible, with the spirit world as my reason."
"I noticed that," observed Malling, "and purposed later to point it out to you."
"How can I explain exactly? It is so difficult to unravel the web of motives in a mind. It was my maladie de grandeur, I think, that made me long to use my worshiper Chichester as a mere tool for the opening of that door which shuts off from us the region the dead have entered. My mind at that time was filled with a mingled conceit, amounting at moments almost to an intoxication, and a desire for knowledge. I reveled in my power when preaching, but was haunted by genuine doubts as to truth. My egoism longed to make an utter slave of Chichester (I nearly always lusted to push my influence to its limit). But my desire to know made me conceive the pushing of it in a direction, in this instance, which would perhaps gratify a less unworthy desire than that merely of subjugating another. The two birds and the one stone! I thought of them. I loved the idea of making a tool. I loved also the idea of using the tool when made. And I pretended I had only Chichester's moral interest at heart. I have been punished, terribly punished.
"We sat, as I say, in Hornton Street, secretly, and of course at night. My wife knew nothing of it. I made excuses to get away—parish matters, meetings, work in the East End. I had no difficulty with her. She thought my many activities would bring me ever more and more into the public eye, and she encouraged them. The people in the house where Chichester lodged were simple folk, and were ready to go early to bed, leaving rector and curate discussing their work for the salvation of bodies and souls.
"At first Chichester was reluctant, I know. I read his thoughts. He was not sure that it was right to approach such mysteries; but, as usual, I dominated him silently. And soon he fell completely under the fascination peculiar to sittings."
Again Mr. Harding paused. For a moment his head sank, his powerful body drooped, he was immersed in reverie. Malling did not interrupt him. At last, with a deep sigh, and now speaking more slowly, more unevenly, he continued:
"What happened exactly at those sittings I do not rightly know. Perhaps I shall never rightly know. What did not happen I can tell you. In the first place, although I secretly used my will upon Chichester, desiring, mentally insisting, that he should become entranced, he never was entranced when we sat together. Something within him—was it something holy? I have wondered—resisted my desire, of which, so far as I know, he was never aware. Perhaps 'beneath the threshold' he was aware. Who can say? But though my great desire was frustrated in our sittings, the desire of Chichester, so different, perhaps so much more admirable than mine, and, at any rate, not masked by any deceit, began, so it seemed, to be strangely gratified. He declared almost from the first that, when sitting with me, he felt his will power strengthened. 'You are doing me good,' he said. Now, as my professed object in contriving the sittings had been to lift up Chichester toward my level,"—with indescribable bitterness Mr. Harding dwelt on these last words,—"I could only express rejoicing. And this I did with successful hypocrisy. Nevertheless, I was greatly irritated. For it seemed to me that, when we sat, Chichester triumphed over me. He obtained his desire while mine remained ungratified. This was an outrage directed against my supremacy over him, which I had designed to increase. I gathered together my will power to check it. But in this attempt I failed.
"Nothing is stranger, I think, Mr. Malling, than the fascination of a sitting. Even when nothing, or scarcely anything, happens, the mind, the whole nature seems to be mysteriously grasped and held. New senses in you seem to be released. Something is alert which is never alert—or, at all events, never alert in the same way—in other moments of life. One seems to become inexplicably different. Chichester was aware of all this. At the first sitting nothing happened, and I feared Chichester would wish to give the matter up. But, no! When we rose from our chairs late in the night he acknowledged that he had never known two hours to pass so quickly before. At following sittings there were slight manifestations such as, I suppose, are seldom absent from such affairs,—perfectly trivial to you, of course,—movements of the table, rappings, gusts of what seemed cold air, and so forth. All that is not worth talking about, and I don't mean to trouble you further with it. My difficulty is, when so little, apparently, took place, to make you understand the tremendous thing that did happen, that must have been happening gradually during our sittings.
"At the very first, as I told you, or nearly so,—I wish to be absolutely accurate,—Chichester began to be aware of a strengthening of his will. At this time I was almost angrily unaware of any change either in him or in myself. At subsequent sittings—I speak of the earlier ones—Chichester reiterated more strongly his assertion of beneficent alteration in himself. I did not believe him, though I did believe he was absolutely sincere in his supposition. It seemed to me that he was 'suggestioned,' partly perhaps by his implicit trust in me, partly by his own desire that something curious should happen. However, still playing a part in pursuance of my resolve not to let Chichester know my real object in this matter, I pretended that I, too, perceived an alteration in him, as if his personality were strengthening. And not once, but on several occasions, I spoke of the change in him as almost exactly corresponding with the change that had taken place in me when I sat with my Hindu friend.
"All this time, with a force encouraged by the secret anger within me, I violently, at last almost furiously, willed that Chichester should become entranced.