There he stopped. As he talked he had been filling his pipes with tobacco, putting each as it was filled into a rack by his side. Now he knocked out the pipe he had been smoking and put it on the mantelpiece. He took one of the filled pipes from the rack and lit it. It was clear that he had come to the most difficult part of his explanation.
Marcus was listening with something of the enthusiasm of a convert at a revival meeting. His mouth was half open; his eyes shone. What Mr. Burnaby wanted him to do, he didn’t know. It was something great, something demanding self-sacrifice, something that only he could accomplish. Marcus was ready to do anything, to endure anything, to sacrifice everything. Whatever Mr. Burnaby asked he would say “Yes”, however great the dangers and difficulties.
But Mr. Burnaby didn’t ask anything. “The third stage is to find out what happens to the human soul after death.”
As soon as Marcus heard this he knew that it was what he had been expecting. “But how?” he demanded. “How are you going to find out?”
“I don’t know,” Mr. Burnaby answered, with a disappointing effect of flatness, “but I think that we both have a power, or powers, which if we learn to use them properly might bring us near to the solution. At present we are both able to project ourselves in two different ways—in space and in time. With you both these forms of projection are entirely uncontrolled by your waking mind. I have learned to control almost completely my power of projecting myself in space. So far as time is concerned I can project myself when I like; but only into the future, and a very small part of the future—that part where there is knowledge of the financial news. It is almost ludicrous. What I hope is to train you, first to project yourself as I do in space, with the idea that you may then learn to project yourself in time or perhaps into space in, in,” he hesitated, “in, shall I say, a non-dimensional direction. Souls, when the body dies, seem to go somewhere. I want you to be able to go with them and return, or to go into the future of your own soul and discover its experiences after the death of your body. I am almost convinced that one or other of these things may be possible. After all the spirits of the dead do sometimes come back; why should the spirits of the living not go forward?
“In my lifetime I have made a good deal of progress, but it seems to me I have got as far as I will ever get alone. Through lack of guidance when I was young I did not use all my powers in the best way: now some of those powers have weakened, or left me. You have similar powers, and you are still young. With my guidance you should be able to make better use of them than I did. You can begin almost where I leave off: you can avoid my mistakes.
“And then, when you have been trained, there is one particular experiment that we should eventually be able to make together. It is an experiment which might be decisive. It will need both of us, but my part, from the nature of it, can only be performed by the same individual once. For that reason, before attempting it, I would like to know something of its chances of success. It is really a sort of desperate last throw. With your help we may attain the knowledge we require by other methods.
“One thing more, whatever we do, whether we succeed or fail, it is most important to keep notes—to put down everything we do every day. If anything should happen to me my notes are in the cupboard there ready for you to use. There is also a duplicate typed set, going up to the end of last year, in my bank in Dublin. I hope the time will come when your notes may be useful to someone else, or rather to a great many other people.
“I am asking you to make this work your career: therefore I owe you certain assurances. You have very likely heard that I am rich. I have been told that I have become a sort of legend on the stock-exchange. Well, I am even richer than people think. I have so arranged things that little short of world-wide revolution could interfere with my work. I have a hundred and fifty thousand pounds, or the equivalent in local currencies, invested in Japan; New Zealand and Australia; Canada; the U.S.A.; Argentina; South Africa; Egypt; Italy; Switzerland; Portugal; Norway and Sweden; Great Britain, and the Free State here. That is to say I have treated Australia and New Zealand as one, Great Britain and the Irish Free State as one, Norway and Sweden as one. That is twelve different blocks of one hundred and fifty thousand—a total of very nearly two million.
“If you accept my offer my total estate will pass to you. Death duties I suppose will account for about half of it. Even so you will have far more than enough to live on with all the comfort and seclusion you can need if any one of those countries preserves the capitalist system of society.
“My affairs are now in the hands of very able solicitors and accountants. Whatever happens don’t concern yourself with them in the slightest. If you see your money lost in country after country, don’t think about it. At the first sign of trouble here, or wherever you may have settled, go away. Go to wherever conditions appear most stable. Find a secluded place to live and carry on your work with complete disregard for the outside world.
“I hope you are neither avaricious nor a spendthrift. A fortune is only valuable in so far as it enables you to give up thinking about money. I believe more human thought is wasted through concern about money than from any other cause.
“Now go out and think it over. I don’t expect your permanent decision. What I want you to tell me as soon as possible is whether you’re prepared to work with me for a trial period of one month—at the end of that month you can tell me if you’re prepared to go on for a further six months. After that I shall expect a definite decision. Of course you’ll always be able to give up at any time. I can’t bind you—but if you did give up later I’d feel that you’d let me down. Try not to let the fact that you have the chance of inheriting a fortune influence you in any way.”
He stood up, a rather small man with a big head. Marcus stood up too and they looked at each other a little shyly. Marcus noticed Mr. Burnaby’s grey eyes—very steady, yet very alive, kind eyes glowing with enthusiasm. He was holding an unlit pipe tightly in his right hand, and pressing it against his chest. His left hand hung by his side. Marcus felt embarrassed: he tried to think of something to say. He caught sight of the windows with sheets of rain streaming down them, and of the grey sky beyond. “It’s pouring,” he remarked. “I just thought it would rain when I got up. It was too bright to begin with.”
Mr. Burnaby smiled. “I never know what it’s going to do next,” he said. “It’s a detestable climate. I don’t know what induces me to live here—except that I like the scenic results. I wish all the same they could be obtained in some other way.”
“It’d be all right with a raincoat,” Marcus told him, though without a great deal of enthusiasm. Then he remembered. “Oh blow!” he exclaimed. “I left it at the station.”
“Of course you did,” Mr. Burnaby said. “You left everything at the station, but it doesn’t matter. I got another for you before you came, and in any case you can’t go out in that—at least you’d be very silly if you did. I didn’t mean, necessarily, that you should go out into the open air—or if I did I didn’t realize that it was raining. I’ll get them to light a fire for you in the library. You can amuse yourself there and think about it all till lunch-time. I have lunch at half-past one as a rule, if that suits you.”
Of course Marcus said that it would suit him, and they set off for the library.
CHAPTER XV
THE library was a long upper room in the same wing as the kitchen. There were bookshelves on three sides, from floor to ceiling; on the fourth side, looking out towards the sea, was a big, square bay-window, with a wide, deeply cushioned window-seat.
Marcus was impressed with the seriousness of the occasion. He paced two or three times slowly up and down the whole length of the room. “This is one of the most important decisions of my career,” he told himself. “My whole future depends on it. What am I going to do?”
But he knew quite well what he was
going to do. He didn’t want a month’s trial—or to wait six months before he gave Mr. Burnaby a definite answer. He was ready to commit himself irrevocably, now. He sat down on the window-seat and put his feet up. He supposed that he must have the gift of making quick decisions.
As he looked out at the rain he remembered again his own success as a weather prophet. He was good at the weather: at least he usually knew when it was going to rain—or was very often right anyhow.
A red sky in the morning
Is the sailor’s warning:
A red sky at night
Is the shepherd’s delight.
It was a jolly good thing that—jolly reliable. Some people made them both shepherds, and some people made them both sailors: but his way was right.
He liked sitting here looking out at the sea. You could look at the sea for ages, just doing nothing, specially when you hadn’t seen it for a while. It was funny how its colour always changed with the weather, and with the colour of the sky and the position of the sun. It was quite different in autumn and in summer. Supposing you didn’t know, it would almost be possible to tell by looking at the sea what season of the year it was. Now the sea was a sort of battleship grey, spattered with streaks of dirty white where the choppy waves were breaking. Sheets of rain swept across it like ghosts of ancient bishops. Bits of the mountains behind kept being hidden and revealed again. They too had turned grey: they were fuzzy looking and mixed up with the watery sky.
Marcus thought that it would be nice if Mr. Burnaby were to give him this room as his study. He liked Mr. Burnaby, though he was queer. He wasn’t like a millionaire—or at least not like any rich people Marcus had met, not so distant, not so grown-up in a way. Marcus was glad he was going to work for him, going to work with him.
He was glad too to have settled the problem of his career. During the last few months his future had become rather a worry. All his life he had meant to do something big and important, but it had seemed terribly difficult to begin. He had applied for jobs of various kinds, but no one had seemed to want him—and now he was getting this, which was far more important than any of the great things he had imagined—and something that practically no one else could do. They ought to be pleased at home when he told them.
He frowned a little. What was he going to tell them? It was queer, but if he told them the truth about what had happened last night they simply wouldn’t believe him: and if he told them the work he was going to do with Mr. Burnaby they wouldn’t like it. He’d have to say that Mr. Burnaby wanted him to be his secretary, and then, if the salary was all right, his father would probably be quite pleased.
What would the salary be, he wondered. He knew that in his father’s business people started with very small salaries. Apprentices were paid a hundred pounds for four years’ work. Of course public school men usually got better jobs than that. He’d heard of chaps from school who’d started with two hundred a year. Marcus knew that he wasn’t expected to do quite so brilliantly. His father would probably be satisfied if he began with fifty pounds a year, provided of course the job was suitable—a job with prospects.
All the same Marcus thought Mr. Burnaby would give him more than that—probably a hundred a year—and then he’d be living in this house: so he’d be able to save most of it. If he saved ten shillings a week, that would be twenty-six pounds a year. By this time next year he’d be able to buy a motor-bike. He’d always wanted a motor-bike, but perhaps Mr. Burnaby didn’t approve of motor-bikes.
Marcus spent the rest of the morning looking out of the window and dreaming pleasant dreams. He felt a little shy at first, when Mr. Burnaby came back, but he stood up and made his announcement immediately. “I’ve been thinking,” he said nervously. “I mean I think I’d like to give it a bit of a trial to see how I like it.”
It was much less than he meant. Natural caution, or diffidence, or a little of both, held him back, against his will almost, from expressing the full and enthusiastic assent that he felt.
Mr. Burnaby, however, was pleased. “Good,” he exclaimed. “I thought you would.” His face shone with smiles. He stood, with his pipe in his hand, beaming at Marcus.
Lunch was a very different meal from breakfast. Mr. Burnaby talked all the time. First he told Marcus that he intended to pay him £300 a year—“as my secretary you know. You won’t need that, but it should please your people, convince them that you’ve got a really good job—and it can be increased from time to time to show you are getting on.”
“It’s an awful lot,” Marcus said. “I mean no one would think of paying me that for anything else.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Mr. Burnaby answered. “The main thing is to make it enough to satisfy your people. I want them to feel you’ve got a really good job.”
But Marcus was doubtful. “I think they’ll think it queer,” he explained. “I mean anyone wanting to give me three hundred a year. My father’d think it queer. I don’t think he thinks I’m very good at things—and I didn’t do very well at school. If I’d been brilliant or something it would have been different. I don’t think he’ll be keen on it anyhow, and with such a big salary he’ll think there’s something funny about it.”
Mr. Burnaby brushed these difficulties aside without appearing to give them very serious consideration. “Your father’s a business man,” he pointed out, “and from what I’ve seen of Northern Ireland business men, I feel sure that if he’s satisfied about the money side of it nothing else will matter very much.”
This annoyed Marcus. He was fond of his father. He didn’t like hearing him classified in such an offhand manner as “a Northern Ireland business-man”. His father was a great deal more than that. He flushed ever so slightly. “You don’t know my father,” he said.
“I know the type,” Mr. Burnaby retorted, with a shrug that was more vocal than physical. “They’re all the same, and in any case, if I set my heart on anything I always get it in the end. I always have. You’ll find that whatever difficulties arise will be overcome.”
Marcus did not answer. He realized that without ever having seen him, without knowing anything about him, Mr. Burnaby was jealous of his father. He had determined that he himself was to be the main influence in Marcus’s future life. Marcus was prepared to let him be, but that did not mean that he would see his faults as virtues or ignore them. He was hurt, but he didn’t want to show it now. Some time Mr. Burnaby would meet his father. Then Marcus would demand a retraction of this opinion, and an apology. With that he put the matter aside, and listened while Mr. Burnaby described his way of life and the workings of his household.
None of the servants slept in the house. Mrs. Mullan, the cook, was the mother of the two maids, Kate and Teresa. There was also an odd-job man, named Black, who turned into a chauffeur whenever the car was needed. Black was a Northerner and a Protestant. He lived over the stables. The Mullans were natives of the place and Catholics. Mrs. Mullan had a cottage in the grounds.
“Whenever I’m going on one of my expeditions I give them a holiday,” Mr. Burnaby explained. “They were off all day yesterday, and that means they’re not allowed near the place. Mrs. Mullan doesn’t like holidays, but the two girls are always delighted. They went to Sligo yesterday and had no end of a time.”
“You wouldn’t know they were in the house,” Marcus said. “I haven’t seen them once, except Kate bringing in the meals, and I didn’t hear a sound this morning before breakfast.”
“They’re only allowed into the tower when I’m not there,” Mr. Burnaby told him. “They have to do the study and make my bed while I’m at breakfast. The three of them do that together. Black pumps the water and lights the boiler at half-past seven every morning. The boiler-room’s under the tower. It takes half an hour to get the water hot enough for a bath . . . .” He broke off. “What about this afternoon?” he asked. “What shall we
do? I got Black to mark the tennis court on Friday. The rain’s over and the ground dries up in no time. Would you like to play?”
CHAPTER XVI
GOING home in the train Marcus tried to decide how to announce his new job to his family. Should he burst out with the news as soon as he arrived, as if he felt quite certain that they would be pleased to hear it? or should he call first at the office and tell his father? If Mr. Brownlow once agreed to let him accept the position he would probably abide by his decision even if Mrs. Brownlow disapproved—and Marcus expected that she would disapprove. She was shrewder than his father. She expected more of him than his father did: at the same time she had a lower opinion of his present abilities. When she heard how much Mr. Burnaby was going to pay him she would be convinced that there was something wrong about the job. His father on the other hand might be persuaded that getting the job was an extraordinary piece of good luck—or even an opportunity cleverly seized. Once he was convinced of that it would be difficult to change his mind—for he was obstinate.
So Marcus decided to go first to his father, and when the train reached Belfast he hurried immediately to Mr. Brownlow’s office. Mr. Brownlow, however, was engaged. For nearly an hour Marcus hung about, hoping for an opportunity of speaking to him. At last he appeared, but before Marcus had time to utter more than a word or two of greeting Mr. Brownlow was called to the telephone. A long conversation followed, and when that was over there was someone waiting to see him.
Marcus’s courage ebbed. He was a little frightened of his father, almost too frightened to be able to tell his story without encouragement. He knew that his father was fond of him, and that he was kind; but—and particularly in the office—he had a brusque manner, which made him difficult to approach.
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