“Yes.”
“I told you to do what you liked.”
“Well, here I am.”
There was a pause. “Don’t tell me any more lies,” Mr. Burnaby warned him. “If we’re going to carry on you’d better try to tell the truth in future.”
Marcus sighed. “Shall I bring up your breakfast?” he inquired.
“I don’t want any breakfast. If you want your own, go and get it.”
“It won’t be ready yet,” Marcus said. “I’ll go down when it’s time.” He walked to the window and looked out at the clear, sunny morning. It was strange that with all this beauty around them they should both be unhappy. He wondered if Hazel was looking out dejectedly at the clear sky and bright, shining sea. He turned back towards the room and found that Mr. Burnaby, with the bedclothes half over his head, was watching him almost furtively. Mr. Burnaby, when he saw that he himself was being watched, averted his eyes. Marcus was embarrassed, but he realized that for the first time since they had known each other he was feeling superior to Mr. Burnaby.
This surprised him a little. It was not that he was sure that he was morally in the right. Very likely he was in the wrong: he couldn’t tell any longer. But he hadn’t lost his self-control. He was harder than Mr. Burnaby and at the moment less unhappy. As time went on he might be the more miserable of the two: but he would be miserable in secret. There was a part of him which, in spite of all Mr. Burnaby could do, he would keep to himself. Mr. Burnaby at the moment was abject and he was in Marcus’s power. Marcus intended to make things as pleasant for him as he could, within certain limits. He knew what those limits were, and that he could make Mr. Burnaby recognise them. Now he wanted to get away from him: Mr. Burnaby was not pleasant company. Marcus felt that he had enough to do in bearing his own misery, without sharing Mr. Burnaby’s more than was absolutely necessary. He had done sufficient in the meantime towards getting things started again.
“I think I’ll go down and see how they’re getting on,” he said. Not more than five minutes had gone since he had announced that it was not worthwhile going down yet. It was obvious that he was just making an excuse to go away. Yet Mr. Burnaby did not protest. Marcus left him alone.
CHAPTER XXX
MR. Burnaby stayed in bed for a week. He was undoubtedly ill, though it would have been difficult to say precisely what was the matter with him. At times he had severe headaches, and when he got out of bed he had great difficulty in walking without support of some kind. This weakness annoyed him very much. He knew that he had suddenly fallen into old age, that he would never recover fully his former strength and energy. In the past he had thought a great deal about growing old, but he had never anticipated physical senility. He had imagined that he would grow old without discomfort, that death itself would be like the closing of a book.
He grumbled continually about the state in which he found himself. Sometimes this grumbling was good-humoured enough: he would make little jokes about his condition, and describe to Marcus what he would be like as an old man. At other times he would be depressed and bitter.
Yet he was able to get a certain amount of pleasure out of his weakness. He was fond of making tours round his bedroom leaning heavily on Marcus’s arm. He would stand for ten minutes at a time, clinging to Marcus and staring out of the window. Marcus would have preferred him to stay in bed. He had always felt a slight physical aversion to Mr. Burnaby. Since Mr. Burnaby’s return this aversion had increased: he disliked having to touch him, or being touched by him. And he knew Mr. Burnaby enjoyed touching him. Once or twice, when Mr. Burnaby unexpectedly put his hand on Marcus’s wrist or sleeve, Marcus started back involuntarily. Then there would be a row.
“Can I not even touch you?” Mr. Burnaby would demand.
“It’s not that,” Marcus would answer sheepishly. “It was just you took me by surprise.”
They both lied on such occasions. Mr. Burnaby would deny that the touch had been intentional. Marcus would declare that he didn’t mind being touched. In the end Mr. Burnaby always accepted Marcus’s explanation. He couldn’t bear to disbelieve it.
Marcus would have liked to call in a doctor, but Mr. Burnaby declared that if a doctor were brought he would refuse to allow him into the room. “I’m not ill that way,” he insisted and Marcus gave in, largely because he didn’t really expect that a doctor would be able to do a great deal of good.
Mr. Burnaby would not even allow Mrs. Mullan, or Kate, or Teresa to come to his room. So Marcus was kept busy carrying trays up and down the stairs, making Mr. Burnaby’s bed, tidying and dusting. . . . Mr. Burnaby liked these attentions, and gradually, as he came to realize that Marcus didn’t intend to leave him, he became more cheerful. He drank a good deal of whiskey—four bottles in the week, to be exact; and when he was half-drunk he was extremely good company. Yet Marcus was never entirely at ease. Even when he was roaring with laughter at some story of Mr. Burnaby’s youth, he was watchful. Mr. Burnaby’s bursts of hilarity were apt to give way, without warning, to moods of the greatest depression.
When he was in these moods Mr. Burnaby’s attitude varied between two extremes. Marcus never knew which side he was going to take. Sometimes he would profess to see Marcus’s point of view, and become embarrassingly sympathetic. He would admit that, after all, their experiments might be useless, that so far they had discovered nothing of value, that there might be no such thing as a human soul, or a divine soul with which human beings could get in contact. In that case it would be wise to get the best of this life: all pleasure seekers would be justified.
Yet just as often, instead of being sad and resigned, Mr. Burnaby would attack Marcus for his faithlessness. To such attacks Marcus would listen in silence. He thought they were deserved. He believed in the importance of their work, and recognized his own weakness in wanting to give it up for the sake of Hazel. But he hadn’t given it up, he told himself. It was Hazel he had given up. Surely he deserved credit for that, even though he refused to tell Mr. Burnaby what he had done. Nevertheless he would have been furious if Mr. Burnaby had taken it for granted that he had given up Hazel, and whenever Mr. Burnaby tried to find out what his intentions actually were he continued to answer that he hadn’t any plans, and to be annoyed when he was pressed to give a more definite answer.
Marcus spent the greater part of every day with Mr. Burnaby, but he couldn’t stand the strain of his company for much more than three hours at a stretch. At intervals he would leave him to go and sit in the library, or, if it was a fine day, on a deck-chair in the garden. He did not go to the shore for fear of encountering Hazel. It was not that he no longer wanted to see her, but he had determined to avoid temptation rather than to throw himself in the way of it.
Presently the day came on which he knew the Morley family were due to return to Belfast, and on the following day he learned from Mrs. Mullan that they had indeed gone. From the way in which she gave him the information it was clear that she was anxious to find out what had happened between him and Hazel. Marcus tried to treat the news as if it were only of casual interest, and almost immediately he changed the subject.
He felt, however, as if the last door had now been closed, and he was thrown once more into the deepest gloom. With Mr. Burnaby he was morose and almost completely silent; and the fact that Mr. Burnaby, to begin with at any rate, seemed more cheerful than usual, made him almost savage. He couldn’t bear to stay with him longer than was absolutely necessary for attending to his wants, and tidying his room. Mr. Burnaby attempted to keep him, and in spite of seeing how pathetic these efforts were, and almost sympathizing with them, Marcus had to go. He wondered that Mr. Burnaby should not prefer solitude to such an uneasy and mutually irritating companionship. Marcus found relief in being alone: alone he could think his own thoughts and plunge as it were in a bath of self-pity and melancholy.
One afternoon
, a few days after the Morleys’ departure, Marcus was going out, when Mr. Burnaby asked him to send Mrs. Mullan up to talk to him. Marcus gave the message, and went for a walk by himself on the shore. Almost automatically he took what was Mr. Burnaby’s own favourite route—along the edge of the rocks towards the point. It was a grey day, but Marcus would not have had it otherwise. Coming home he lingered at the bathing-place, contrasting the present dullness with the brightness of the morning when he had first met Hazel there. Before returning, though by now it was quite chilly, he decided to bathe. He ran up and down once or twice to get some warmth into his body, and undressing quickly, dived in. After the first moment or two, in which he was almost agonizingly cold, he began to enjoy himself. It was not that he got warm, but that he reached a state of numbness in which he was no longer able to feel the cold. He had a curious, wild feeling of association with the sea and the wind, as if he himself had become a companion element. He didn’t care what happened. He gave himself up to the sea, neither swimming nor consciously floating, but moving with the choppy waves instead of battling against them. Why he got out at last he hardly knew; but when he did, he felt as if in bathing he had performed some spiritual act: he was different from when he had gone in.
He dried himself with his handkerchief—for he had had neither towel nor bathing suit. Through being only half-dried, he had difficulty in putting on his clothes, and when he was dressed he still had the same elemental feeling as if his clothes no longer mattered. He ran back to the house, and hastened reluctantly upstairs to Mr. Burnaby’s room. Mrs. Mullan was still there, standing by the door, as if she were on the point of going. Marcus guessed that she had been standing like that, with her hand on the door-handle for a considerable time. Evidently she and Mr. Burnaby had been having a good gossip—or crack, as Mrs. Mullan would have called it. They were both smiling and for a moment Mr. Burnaby hardly noticed Marcus. “And had he really drunk every bottle?” Mr. Burnaby demanded like a small boy, who insists on hearing his favourite story repeated over and over again.
“Every single one,” Mrs. Mullan replied, “aye, to the very dregs. Faith that was a sermon. I never heard the like before or since.”
Mr. Burnaby was still in bed, but he looked more like himself. His eyes rested on Marcus, first almost as if he didn’t see him, but suddenly with keen attention. “Why you’re frozen, child!” he exclaimed. “You’re quite blue.”
“I’ve b-been b-b-bathing,” Marcus told him, through chattering teeth, and the more he tried to talk the more uncontrollably his teeth rattled.
He peered in the mirror to see what his face really looked like, but found that though there were purplish blue patches, the predominant colour was really yellow. Mr. Burnaby wanted him to take a hot bath and go to bed, but Marcus refused. Finally he agreed protestingly to drink a glass of hot whiskey, mixed with sugar and lemon. Mrs. Mullan departed to prepare this beverage, and Marcus stood by the window looking out. “You’d better go and warm yourself by the kitchen fire,” Mr. Burnaby told him. “I’m getting up in a minute or two. I’ll be down for dinner. Perhaps when you’re warmed you’ll come back and we’ll go down together.”
He was better, Marcus saw, though afraid that he might fall on the stairs. He too must have heard that Hazel had gone.
CHAPTER XXXI
THOUGH Mr. Burnaby’s health got steadily worse during the next two years he refused absolutely to see a doctor. He appeared to be suffering from some kind of progressive paralysis. There were curious twitchings in his muscles and he found it more and more difficult to walk.
After a time Marcus started to work again, but Mr. Burnaby took no part in the experiments. Marcus worked harder than before, and gradually he was able to lengthen the period of his excursions, sometimes by a minute or two a day, once or twice by as much as five minutes. This was not a steady progress. He had bad days when his body seemed all along more powerful than his spirit, and he could not leave it for more than half an hour at a time.
Presently he found that the nature of his work was altering. With great difficulty he had learned to detach himself from his body and move about, looking at one scene or another. Now he began to find such movement less necessary. It was as if he were gradually stepping further and further back, so that where before he had only seen fragments he was beginning to recognize a complete picture. As the picture grew, the more serene became his consciousness of it, the more acute his awareness of its details. Always there was something new slipping in, from above and below, from the sides, from behind and before. . . . With every extension of his vision came a cool joy—a secret pride, which he did not completely reveal to Mr. Burnaby.
In the meantime a new relationship slowly grew up between them: in some respects it was not very different from the old, but it was less happy and less open. Marcus had become more reserved, and there was always in the consciousness of both of them the knowledge that there was one subject which must never be discussed, hardly even alluded to.
Marcus didn’t go home that summer. He wrote that Mr. Burnaby had been ill and wasn’t able to spare him. Both his parents replied to this letter, and, though they told him to do whatever he thought best, it was clear that they were hurt and imagined that he was only using Mr. Burnaby’s illness as an excuse to please himself. This of course was wrong. Marcus would have liked very much to go home, if only for the sake of escaping for a little from the strained atmosphere of The Garrison. It was simply a sense of duty which kept him back and he looked forward eagerly to his next holiday at Christmas. At last it came and he set off with every intention of enjoying himself and of pleasing his parents. Yet somehow nothing went as he had intended. The whole holiday was a failure from start to finish. Marcus was less anxious than ever to talk about the life he was leading, and when his family talked about their own affairs he was bored. He found their friends dull, and once he was quite rude to an old acquaintance of his father’s, who, like Mr. Morley, wanted to talk to him about stocks and shares. This rudeness was not due to boredom, but to fear: Marcus was afraid that his ignorance might be exposed and his whole relationship with Mr. Burnaby called in question.
It was a relief for all of them when the holiday came to an end and Marcus set off once more for Donegal.
After his return to The Garrison Marcus started a new series of experiments. He attempted more and more to get in touch with the spirits of other living people: he also tried to get in touch with the spirits of people who were on the verge of death, and remain in contact with them after death.
So far as the spirits of the living were concerned his efforts met with some success, but only in cases where the other spirit was itself partially detached from the physical body. He made contact with people who were in very deep sleep, with one or two mediums, with several people who were on the verge of death.
Mr. Burnaby had at one time or another made similar experiments himself, but he had never known for certain whether or not he had succeeded in maintaining contact after death.
“The difficulty”, as he pointed out when discussing some of Marcus’s experiences, “is to know the exact moment when physical death occurs. At present no one does know for certain if people do die the moment breathing ceases and the heart stops beating. The brain may continue to live on for some time, perhaps for a very considerable time.”
After he had carried out a number of these experiments Marcus began to meet with a new phenomenon. He was still doing his ordinary work, what, for the sake of distinction, might be called his contemplative expeditions, when he sought only to detach himself from his body and observe the ordinary, physical world. This phenomenon was a kind of double sight. To begin with it only troubled him occasionally, but after a month or two it occurred in nearly every experiment he made, whether he were watching the dying or the healthy, an empty landscape or a populated scene. I cannot say if Mr. Burnaby understood the reason for this
from the beginning. If he did, he did not at once tell Marcus, though eventually he led him to the explanation.
As I think I have made clear in the earlier part of this book Marcus had not been particularly happy at school; but certain aspects of school life retained a nostalgic attraction for him, and one Sunday in spring he felt a sudden wish to be present again at the evening service in Chapel. He arrived just as the boys were filing in, and though he knew that he could not expect to recognize any one of them he gazed at each boy as he came up the aisle, hoping to find a likeness to some of his contemporaries. There were such likenesses, perhaps younger brothers or cousins of boys he had known, and he pretended to himself that they were the same boys. He looked only at them, and at those of the masters who were really the same, and who had been there in his own time.
The service began and the faces grew blurred: they were part of the scene: they had lost their individuality. Marcus was back, but not quite back. The service made the same queer appeal to him as it had always made, reminding him that Spring was the prelude to Autumn, and Youth to Death. As a boy there he had seen himself as an old man, ready like Simeon to leave the world behind him. The service swam by and through him. He saw nothing clearly; everything was misty, and warm, and sad.
The singing ceased: the music died away. The Headmaster stood up to preach. He was the same Head who had been there in Marcus’s time, and from the fact that it was he who was preaching Marcus realized that it must be the end of term; for the Head only preached twice a term—at the morning service on the first Sunday, and at the evening service on the last. Marcus found that the manner of his sermons had not changed. He chose as his text: “Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.” It was not a religious sermon: it was sound advice on how to avoid certain temptations, and a warning of the danger of yielding to them.
The Burnaby Experiments Page 27