The Dweller on the Threshold

ention of a man who was genuinely fond of the music of Richard Strauss, with its almost miraculous intricacies, and who was willingly captive to Debussy. He looke

de his way upstairs, and asked the attendant to tap at a door on which was printed, "The Earl of Mansford." The man did so, and opened the door, showing

down beside her, and, saying he would have a

nd chirped when noticed, and she was generally noticed because of her beauty. Now she chirped of Ceylon, where Malling had been, and then, mor

h's last Sunday week

and had just noticed that Lady Sindon, a bird-like rival of hers, had cha

to hear your broth

" murmured Lady Mansfo

nes

sai

you talking about? Do tell m

I went to church

hy

ther-in-law preac

xclaimed La

rsed h

oseph's. Poor Sophy!

Lady Sophia af

? Isn't

nderstand?" said Mall

say it's drink. Such nonsense! But th

ing so very

o say you didn

till within the

rse every day. Last Sunday I hear his sermon was too awful, a mere muddle of adjectives, such as one hears in Hyde Park, I believe. I never liked Marcus particularly. I always thought him too autocratic, too determined to dominate. He had that poor litt

eturned Malling, vaguely.

way to him in everything. In her eyes all that he does is right. She never says a word, I believe, but she must be suffering the t

the Harding menage. But Malling felt

not exaggerated very much. Among those who knew the Hardings a change in the rector of St. Joseph's had evidently been generally noticed. Mallin

"But she isn't. I suppose she felt she couldn't face it. So many of

doors last Sunday week when h

last Sunday's, I was told, was worse still. No continuity at all, and the church not full. People say the curate, Mr. Chichester, who

u have a

e two. My doctor says if

Mr. Chichester pre

e on marvelously, to

other man

s I think there will have to be a change. I don't think things ca

n-the co

them. Not that Mr. Harding ever dreamed of doing such a thing to Sophia, of course. But his will had to be law in everything. You know the type of man! It's scarcely my idea of what a clergyman should be. I think a man who professes

Hardings began to utter itself concerning them, and Malling was forti

o, man, as it were, by another, the mind beyond, the anima mundi. When Malling drew mentally, or spiritually, very near to any man, however rude, however humble, he always had the feeling that he was approaching holy ground. Hidden beneath his generally imperturbable exterior, sunk beneath the surface incredulity of his mind, there was the deep s

rms, even when he could not connect these with trickery which he knew how to expose. Perhaps, however, his incredulity in regard to these latter phenomena was incurable, though he did not know

the rector two years ago, he had gathered sufficient testimony to the fact that he had been a man of powerful, even perhaps of tyrannical, temperament, formed rather to rule than to be ruled. He knew that Chichester, on the contrary, had been gentle, kindly, yielding, and of somewhat weak, though of very amiable, nature. The physique of the two men accorded with these former temperaments. Harding's commanding height, large frame, big, powerful face and head, rather hard gray eyes, even his large white teeth, his bony, determined hands, his firmly treading feet,

t was Harding who had persuaded Chichester to take part in them.

do he shrinks from with horror. Once good-natured, he is now of an evil temper, once gentle, he is fiercely obstinate, once gay, he cowers and weeps. So Malling had known a man, while retaining his sanity, to be transformed by the apparently trivial fact of sitting at a table with a friend, and placing his hands upon it with the hands of another man. He himself had sat with an Oxford friend,-who in later sittings became entranced,-and at the very first experime

ton, that the weaker man had infused some of his weakness, his self-doubtings, his readiness to be affected by the opinion of others, into his dominating companion. Malling believed it possible that the wills of the two clergymen, in some mysterious and

, if fact it were, that the difference in e

inary cause for the change in Mr. Harding. Some vice, such as love of drink, or morphia, something that disintegrates a man, might have laid its claw upon him. That was possible. What seemed to Malling much more unaccountable was the extraordinary change in the dire

the woman must certainly be strangely affected. He remembered the expression in her eyes when h

esire in her had arisen from her wounded pride in her husband. She wished Malling to know what the rector could really do. When she thought that t

ould that

t it. Nevertheless he did not want to do anything likely to surprise Lady Sophia, to lead

in his mind what course t

ot turn sufficiently for him to see her face, and her almost feverish movements, though they attracted and fixed his attention, did not strike him as familiar. His thought of her, as he slowly followed in the directio

he year, which happened to be a very bad one, and Malling

reeted him pleasantly, and entered into a discu

ures alone, perhaps?" s

d. We drove up together. But at the last moment he thought he remem

y and bitternes

and meet me in the tea-r

e and wait for hi

id I'm taking

is afternoon. I shall enj

ry good

few respectable persons were slowly eating bath-buns with an air o

rtones. A sort of subterranean depression, peculiar to this fastne

" said Lady Sophia. "Here is tea! What a merc

nd was obviously on t

," she added. "But of cour

e care for

shrugged he

I don't know th

as a tremendous

a man wishes to come to the front he mus

self plainly as the adoring wife, anxious for her husband's success, nervously hostile to any one who interfered with it, who stood betwee

last thing Mr. Hardin

t him out of her di

ou?" s

as to be not her natural self, so tormented by some feeling, perhaps long repressed, that her temperament

said Malling, with ser

ng. She drank a little, pulled at her long gloves restlessly, and looked at Malling. He k

that. But in this modern world of ours one must not walk, or even run

that you

our profession, or business, o

ambitious

swered quickly. "I have

lly? That seems to me the truest, the most legitimate

table between them. Now she leaned forward across it. By nature she was very sen

, of relying on ourselves, and of having a personal ambition, we seek always another in whom we may trust; we are unhappy till we rely on

is t

omen are f

ing uns

have power when

re that was sure

woman-has power for an

on. "That is all a legen

ord against darkness an

t too a

nged her tone, trying to ma

hat's the trouble!" she said. "And m

they don't

!" she exclaimed. "Th

resolved on a v

as if that obvious fact

do with it?" she sai

do not un

delight to sink themselves, but in power, not in impotence. And now she was confronted by the shipwreck not merely of her hopes, but also of her belief. She saw a hulk drifting at the mercy of the waves that, perhaps, would soon en

t be some hope?" ask

church at St. Joseph's, and then to evening

ening

s,

go

are g

. Forgi

d out h

ut

come with m

's to-morrow, afterwar

ink it's w

she pulled down her veil