Part 24 (1/2)
”Good heavens!” exclaimed Malling.
The apparent vagaries of his companion very seldom surprised him, but this time he was completely taken aback.
”Are they what they were? a.s.suming, on your part, a knowledge of what they were.”
”I don't know either in what condition they are now, or in what condition they were once.”
”Ah! Now I must draw up a report about last night. I'll come for that cup of tea to Minors--might almost as well have been Majors, even granting the military flavor--about five.”
Malling took his departure.
At a quarter to five he heard the click of the garden gate, and looking out at the latticed window of the hall, he saw the professor walking sidewise up the path, with a shawl round his shoulders. He went to let him in, and took him into the tiny drawing-room.
”An odd sh.e.l.l for Harding!” observed the professor. ”More suitable to a bantam than to a Cochin-China!”
”It doesn't belong to him.”
”Nor he to it. Very wise and right of him to go back to Onslow Gardens.”
A maid brought in the tea, and the professor, spread strangely forth in a small, chintz-covered arm-chair, enjoyed it while he talked about oysters and oyster-beds. He was deeply interested in the oysters of Whitstable, and held forth almost romantically on their birth and upbringing, the fattening, the packing, the selling, and the eating of them--”with lemon, not vinegar, mind! To eat vinegar with a Whitstable native is as vicious as to offer a libation of catchup at the altar of a meadow mushroom just picked up out of the dew.”
Malling did not attempt to turn his mind from edibles. The professor had to be let alone. When tea was finished and cleared away, he observed:
”And now, Malling, what is your view? Do you look upon it as a case of transferred personality? I rather gathered from your general tone that you were mentally drifting in that direction.”
”But are there such cases? Of double transfer, I mean?”
”Personally I have never verified one. When you spoke of the reverend gentlemen for the first time, I said, 'Study the link!' There will be development in the link if--all the rest of it.”
”There has been development, as I told you. The link is on his side now.”
”That's remarkable, undoubtedly. Has it ever struck you that Harding was almost too successful a clergyman to be a genuinely holy man?”
”What do you mean?”
”There's a modesty in holiness that is hardly adapted to catch smart women.”
”You used to go to hear Harding preach.”
”And d'you know why I liked his sermons?”
”Why?”
”Because he understood doubt so well. That amused me. But the man who has such a comprehensive understanding of skepticism, is very seldom a true believer. One thing, though, Harding certainly does believe in, judging by a sermon I once heard him preach.”
”And that is?”
”Manicheism. Chichester, you say, was a saint?”
”He was, if a man can be a saint who has a certain amiable weakness of character.”