The bed-clothes had been turned back, and a suit of pyjamas was laid out on top of them. On the bedside table was a small clock, a carafe of water, and an electric torch.
Marcus put the candle on the bedside table and undressed quickly. The pyjamas were summer ones made of some light, dark-blue material. Marcus got into bed without even washing his teeth. He found two hot-water bottles and threw them onto the floor. He wondered who had put them in: they were still slightly warm. Even without them, he found the bed too hot: so he pushed off the down quilt. The bed was comfortable. He blew out the candle and within a few minutes was sound asleep.
CHAPTER XIV
WHEN Marcus awoke it was exactly eight by the clock on his bedside table—and he could hear the sea. He remembered at once where he was and what had happened the previous day. At first he had a feeling of strangeness, almost of nakedness, as if he had wakened up in a crowded picture-house with only his pyjamas on. But when he looked round at the comfortably furnished bedroom, and remembered that the door was locked, his self-confidence returned. He was rested and refreshed, and he began to have a pleasant sense of excitement. He had no longer the slightest wish to go home.
He had always liked staying at the seaside, chiefly because he was fond of bathing, fonder of it, almost, than of anything else in life. It occurred to him that if he hurried there might just be time for a bathe before breakfast. So he hopped out of bed, and ran to the window to see what sort of morning it was. He found that the sun was shining brightly—rather too brightly, he thought: it would probably rain later.
The window faced south-west and the sea was quite close. When he opened the window wide and leaned out the sound of the breaking waves became clearer—a soft, inviting sound. Just below his window was the rabbit warren. The rabbits were still there, still feeding. They must have stayed up all night—or perhaps they were different rabbits, and last night’s rabbits were in bed now. That would be called working in shifts. This idea tickled Marcus and he laughed.
His eyes wandered out over the sea, the Atlantic. The word Atlantic had always made a special appeal to him, emotional and half-mystical. He liked to think that he was gazing at the huge free ocean, thousands of miles wide, miles deep—not just some narrow sea. On the left across the inlet he could see the mountains with a bright fringe of foam at the foot of the cliffs, where the waves were breaking. The sky was a lightish blue with a good many large white clouds drifting in over the mountains. The colouring of the sea was patchy—purple and blue and green. Marcus stared at it unthinkingly, with a sort of dreamy delight.
Presently he shivered. Standing barefoot on the stone floor had made him cold. He no longer wanted to bathe. He turned and looked at the clock. It was twenty past eight. There would hardly be time now, and in any case he would have to seek out Mr. Burnaby and explain where he was going. He noticed a pair of bedroom slippers under the bed, and a dressing-gown on a hook behind the door. He put them on and taking a sponge, a tooth-brush, and a tube of tooth-paste from the wash-stand, unlocked the door and stepped out on to the landing.
There he stopped to listen. Not a sound—the house might have been empty: it was in fact just that sort of silence. The landing itself was completely bare, with no pictures on the white-washed walls and no mats on the grey, stone floor. The floor was uneven, worn away in the centre and to a lesser extent before the various doors. At either end of the landing were the stairs up which Marcus had come the night before. They gave Marcus a curious impression—as if the landing were perched midway in space, and they ascended and descended, winding on and on, up to illimitable heights, and down to infinite depths. He crossed the landing and opened the bathroom door.
It was the biggest bathroom Marcus had ever seen: it was far too big. Obviously it had only quite recently been made into a bathroom. Everything about it was modern—the black and white tiled floor, the chromium fittings, the pedestal basin, the shower in the corner, the telephone-like hand-spray on its rests between the taps. Next door was the W.C.—another fairly large room, with the lavatory pan looking lonely and ridiculous at the far end from the door.
Marcus had been brought up, both at school and at home, to take a cold bath every morning. He had always boasted that he liked cold baths, and of how fit they made him feel. This morning, however, he decided to have a hot bath for a change. It was partly because the water was hot—as Mr. Burnaby had said it would be—partly because a hot bath in the morning always gave him a sensation of luxury. While the bath was filling he brushed his teeth: then he hung his towel on the heated towel rail, slipped off his pyjamas, and stepped in.
He washed his hands and arms, and as much of his legs and body as could be conveniently soaped without standing up. After that he lay still, with the sponge as a cushion at the back of his head, and thought over the events of the previous day. How long he lay steeping he had no idea, but presently he was jolted into guilty consciousness by a knock at the door. A voice said, “I’m going down. Breakfast’s in the hall you came through last night.”
Marcus was so startled that he didn’t reply at once. It was Mr. Burnaby, of course, but his voice sounded a great deal more vigorous. Marcus felt that he had been caught dawdling. “Thank you,” he called back awkwardly. “I’ll be down in a few minutes.” He lay tensely motionless until he heard Mr. Burnaby’s footsteps cross the landing and start down the stairs. After that he hurried. Not much more than ten minutes later he came down himself, and pushing through the velvet curtain entered the hall.
He was wearing rubber-soled shoes, and Mr. Burnaby, who was looking out through one of the windows at the far end of the room did not at first hear him. Marcus cleared his throat. Immediately Mr. Burnaby turned round. “Oh! You’ve arrived, have you?” he said rather coldly.
In the daylight he appeared much younger. He still looked old, of course, but there was nothing doddering about him. His face was firm and healthy and sunburned. Last night it had seemed yellow: this morning it was an even, red-brick colour. He was cross: it showed in his expression, in the way he rang the bell and returned instantly to gazing out of the window. Marcus wondered what was the matter. Was it his own unpunctuality? Or was there something else wrong? He stood a little behind Mr. Burnaby and looked out over his shoulder into a small, walled-in garden. There was a lawn surrounded by a broad flower border: against the walls were pear trees and apple trees: the apple trees were in blossom. The black cat was sitting on the wall washing herself.
Marcus had imagined that the bell would bring a manservant, dark, suave, and a little mysterious—for if there were any ordinary servants, where had they been last night? A genie would hardly have surprised him. But the breakfast was brought in by a maid. She had a round West-of-Ireland face, with wide-apart blue eyes, high cheek-bones, and protruding teeth. She smiled cheerfully and wished them good morning.
Mr. Burnaby introduced Marcus. “Kate, this is Mr. Brownlow who has come on a visit.”
Kate smiled again. “Ye’re welcome.”
“Thank you very much,” Marcus said.
She began to unload her tray, and as she did so she gave Marcus instructions about his breakfast. “There’s a plate of porridge for you to begin with,” she told him, “and there’s bacon an’ eggs in the silver dish here. It’s one of them patent dishes as keeps them warm: so you needn’t be hurrying too much over your porridge. The Master, he only takes porridge and toast: so the rest’s all for yourself.”
She departed, and with her all cheerfulness disappeared from the room. Mr. Burnaby looked at the table, gloomily. “Well! I suppose we’d better eat it,” he remarked, and pulled back his chair. So began a very silent meal. Mr. Burnaby offered Marcus tea and marmalade. Marcus passed the toast. But they didn’t look at each other: they didn’t even discuss the weather.
Marcus didn’t try to talk: he was afraid to. He didn’t know what was wrong.
Perhaps Mr. Burnaby just was like that in the mornings and would gradually become more pleasant. He was taken completely by surprise when Mr. Burnaby put down his teacup with a bang and said roughly, “I suppose you want to go home. I won’t hinder you. You can be home tonight if you want to.”
At first Marcus was too startled to answer. For a moment he thought that Mr. Burnaby really wished to get rid of him. Then he saw that this downright rudeness probably meant exactly the opposite. “I’d rather stay if I can,” he responded hesitantly.
Mr. Burnaby looked at him very searchingly and rather grimly. “You’d rather I was Caldwell, wouldn’t you—the little schoolboy, I mean, not whatever the real Caldwell’s grown into now?”
“No,” Marcus answered firmly.
Mr. Burnaby threw him a half-hostile, half-troubled look. “It would be very strange if that were the truth,” he said suspiciously.
“It is the truth,” Marcus declared, but he didn’t really know whether it was or not.
In any case Mr. Burnaby didn’t believe him, and his disbelief showed in his expression. He stared at Marcus, and Marcus felt extremely uncomfortable. He would certainly rather have had Caldwell than this.
“I can always tell whether a person’s speaking the truth or not,” Mr. Burnaby observed: and Marcus was convinced of his own falseness and its futility. He took a very small bite of toast and tried to eat it without making a crunching sound.
Mr. Burnaby pondered.
“Whether it’s the truth or not doesn’t matter very much,” he pronounced at last. “If you’re willing to do the work—and can do it—nothing else is of great importance. You’d better come to my study again and I’ll tell you more about it.”
He got up and started across the room, and Marcus, after a moment’s indecision, began rather reluctantly to push back his chair. Mr. Burnaby turned, and immediately noticed Marcus’s half-finished piece of toast and marmalade, his untouched cup of tea. He apologized, and coming back sat down again at the table. “Living alone makes one very bad-mannered,” he explained. “Have some more toast.”
But Marcus, though he had a healthy appetite and if left alone could have managed another two or three pieces of toast, found great difficulty in finishing the piece on his plate. He ate it hurriedly, swallowing each bite almost as soon as it was in his mouth. “That’s the way to give yourself indigestion,” Mr. Burnaby pointed out. “When I was young I was taught to chew my food properly.” He produced a pipe and blew through it once or twice. Marcus heard a whistling sound, and a faint bubbling. “ ’nation!” Mr. Burnaby exclaimed. He took the pipe apart and shook it. One or two drops of nicotine sparked on to the floor. A small strand of dark wet tobacco hung from the vulcanite end of the shank. Mr. Burnaby brushed it off and wiped his fingers and the mouthpiece on his socks. He filled the pipe and lit it.
After this he looked more amiable. He pressed Marcus again to have more toast, another cup of tea: but Marcus assured him that he had had all he wanted.
So they got up and went back through the velvet curtain into the tower, and up the stairs to the room where Marcus had first seen Mr. Burnaby the previous evening. In the daylight the room looked very pleasant and clean. It had been dusted and the empty whiskey glass and the black kettle had gone. The windows were open and there was a fresh coal fire on the hearth. They sat down in wooden armchairs on either side of it.
“Now,” Mr. Burnaby began in a very business-like voice. “I may as well tell you the worst to begin with. You needn’t make any decision yet. You needn’t give me one for a month, if you don’t like—and even then it needn’t be final. You’ll always be free to give everything up if you want to. Of course I’ll be disappointed if you do—especially if it’s after some time.”
He paused and Marcus felt that a remark was expected of him. “I understand,” he said.
“It would be strange if you didn’t,” Mr. Burnaby replied. “There’s been nothing very difficult so far.”
“Except you,” Marcus thought, determining not to utter another word unless he was asked to. Mr. Burnaby did not appear to realize that he had been rude, and presently he went on as if Marcus had never spoken. “As you have no doubt gathered by this time, I have the power of projecting myself out of my body and going not wherever I please exactly, but wherever I please within certain limits. What those limits are you will hear later. Of course I am invisible on these expeditions, but on a mind like yours it was relatively easy for me to produce a false impression of the boy Caldwell. This Caldwell, by the way, I took from your own mind in the first place. As I told you last night, I have been watching you off and on for a long time, and recently I have been on the look-out for just such an opportunity as this dream of yours gave me. You began the dream. I stepped in at the end and made the appointment. I couldn’t be sure of course that you would keep it, but once you did the most difficult part was over. The Caldwell you expected to see was already present in your mind: all I had to do was to fit myself into that ready-made image and bring it to life. I impersonated not Caldwell precisely, but a rather mischievous small boy of my own imagining. It was like a difficult and risky game, and the more risky it became the more I enjoyed it. It was largely a matter of sustained concentration and it was that that nearly defeated me in the end. By the time we left Portmallagh last night my own old body was telegraphing wildly for me, and if you hadn’t been so sleepy there were one or two occasions when you would almost certainly have found me out.
“Caldwell appeared to sit down and get up, to walk, to stand, to run. You thought you heard him talk, but no sound actually passed his lips.” He looked up almost as if he expected Marcus to dispute this, but Marcus, having accepted the fact that Caldwell was an illusion had no intention of arguing about what kind of an illusion he might be. Nor did he want to risk so soon another display of Mr. Burnaby’s irritability.
“Of course all that is fairly plain sailing,” Mr. Burnaby continued. “I’ll be able to teach you to do just as much yourself. It will take a long time, and a great deal of patience at the beginning—and a great deal of concentration.”
“All my school reports used to say ‘Lacks concentration’,” Marcus put in, forgetting for an instant his determination to be silent. He didn’t quite know why he had to say this—it came out with a sort of defiance. He was willing to go either way, to give up life or to embrace it again—just as the novice in the monastery must hesitate, fascinated on the one side by the beauties of a holy life and drawn on the other to the toils, and troubles, and rewards of the world without.
“No doubt you do lack concentration,” Mr. Burnaby agreed, and, though his voice had still a touch of its previous sharpness, he spoke more kindly than before. “But at any rate you’ll be able to do this if you try. It’s like learning to swim, or like the children learning to fly in Peter Pan. First you’ll have to learn to move about the room without your body. You’ll have to begin by sitting in your chair, say here, and getting up to that corner of the ceiling on the right of the fireplace. When you’re able to do that completely you’ll have advanced a long way. It may take you weeks or months—I hope it won’t take you longer than a year. You’ll have to spend hours at it every day, as many hours as you can stand. At the start you’ll have no success at all: then you’ll feel a faint link growing up between you and the place you’re aiming at—like the sucker of an octopus, touching and letting go and finally fixing. At first only very little of you will be in the corner: but gradually there will be more and more. At first you will be mostly in your body: in the end there will be only the faintest thread connecting your body with the real you—wherever you may have gone. Yet that is only the beginning.”
“What’s the end?” Marcus couldn’t help asking, forgetting again his decision not to speak.
Mr. Burnaby, however, seemed no longer to mind interruptions. “Ah! that’s what
we don’t know,” he responded. “I can tell you about the second stage, and something of the third stage: after that I don’t know: I can hardly even guess.” He stopped there and seemed to reflect. Suddenly he added, “It’s for after that I want you. Together we may find out what has baffled me alone—or perhaps you may succeed where I have failed.”
There was another pause: then Mr. Burnaby explained what he meant by the second stage. “After you have learned to get completely out of your body, it’s not very difficult to learn to move about the room—and from that you gradually learn to extend your range. Presently you are able to travel as far away from your body as you wish—as far as your time and strength will permit. It’s not just a case of wishing and finding yourself wherever you choose. You do definitely travel through the intervening space—and once more it’s like flying, for taking off and landing again are the most difficult parts. Perhaps now you are visualizing something like a magic carpet on which you rest at ease on these journeys. That too is wrong: every step of your journeys will cost you intense effort, intense concentration.
“The fact that all this can be done is of interest: scientifically, I suppose, it is more important than the discovery of wireless. But after all it is not completely satisfactory. It is only another means of communication between man and man—a means which could be much improved, but which, nevertheless, has been going on, though perhaps only in a very rudimentary way, since the beginning of things. Yet there is very little you will learn by such a means that you won’t by that time know already.”
The Burnaby Experiments Page 10