Algernon Blackwood (47 page)

'You are looking so wonderfully well, Mr. Rogers,' Minks observed at
Charing Cross Station, 'the passage across the Channel, I trust, was
calm.'

'And yourself and Mrs. Minks?' asked Rogers, looking into the equally
sunburned face of his secretary, remembering suddenly that he had been
to the sea with his family; 'Frank, too, and the other children? All
well, I hope?'

'All in excellent health, Mr. Rogers, thanks to your generous thought.
My wife—'

'These are the small bags,' the other interrupted, 'and here are the
keys for my portmanteaux. There's nothing dutiable. You might bring
them on to the flat while I run over to the Club for a bit of supper,
Minks.'

'Certainly, with pleasure, Mr. Rogers,' was the beaming reply. 'And
Mrs. Minks begged me to tell you—'

Only Rogers was already in his taxi-cab and out of ear-shot.

'How well he looks!' reflected Minks, dangling the keys, accustomed to
these abrupt interruptions, and knowing that his message had been
understood and therefore duly delivered. These cut-off sentences were
like a secret code between them. 'And ten years younger! Almost like a
boy again. I wonder if—' He did not permit himself to finish the
thought. He tried to remember if he himself had looked like that
perhaps in the days of long ago when he courted Albinia Lucy—an air
of joy and secrecy and an absent-minded manner that might any moment
flame into vehement, concentrated action. For this was the impression
his employer had made upon him. Only he could not quite remember those
far-off, happy days. There was ecstasy in them; that he knew. And
there was ecstasy in Henry Rogers now; that he divined.

'He oughtn't to,' he reflected, as he hurried in another taxi with the
luggage. 'All his yearnings would be satisfied if he did, his life
flow into a single channel instead of into many.'

He did not think about his own position and his salary.

'He won't,' he decided as the cab stopped at the door; 'he's not that
kind of man.' Minks had insight; he knew men. 'No artist ever ought
to. We are so few, and the world has need of us.' His own case was an
exception that had justified itself, for he was but a man of talent,
and talent did not need an exclusive asceticism; whereas his employer
was a man of genius, and no one woman had the right to monopolise what
was intended to sweeten the entire universe.

By the time the luggage had been taken up, he had missed the last tram
home, and his sleep that night must in any case be short. Yet he took
no note of that. One must live largely. A small sacrifice for such a
master was nothing at all. He lingered, glancing now and again at the
heap of correspondence that would occupy them next morning, and
sorting once more the little pile that would need immediate personal
attention. He was picking a bit of disfiguring fluff from his coat
sleeve when the door opened and Henry Rogers came upon him.

'Ah! I waited a moment, Mr. Rogers. I thought you might have something
to say before I went, perhaps.'

'I hoped you would, Minks. I have a great deal to say. It can wait
till to-morrow, really—only I wanted—but, there now, I forgot; you
have to get down to Sydenham, haven't you? And it's late already—'

'That's nothing, Mr. Rogers. I can easily sleep in town. I came
prepared, indeed, to do so—' as though he, too, had his Club and
would take a bedroom in it.

'Clever and thoughtful of you, Minks!'

'Only you must be tired after your journey,' suggested the secretary.

'Tired!' exclaimed the other vigorously, 'not a bit! I'm as fresh as a
st—a daisy, I mean. Come, draw your chair up; we'll have a smoke and
a little chat. I'm delighted to see you again. How are you? And how's
everything?'

Goodness! How bright his eyes were, how alert his manner! He looked so
young, almost springy, thought Minks, as he obeyed decorously, feeling
flattered and pleased, yet at the same time uneasy a little. Such
spirits could only proceed, he feared, from one cause. He was a close
observer, as all poets had need to be. He would discover some clue
before he went to bed, something that should betray the true state of
affairs. In any case sleep would be impossible unless he did.

'You stayed away somewhat longer than you originally intended,' he
ventured at length, having briefly satisfied his employer's question.
'You found genuine recreation. You needed it, I'm sure.' He glanced
with one eye at the letters.

'Re-creation, yes; the very word. It was difficult to leave. The place
was so delightful,' said Rogers simply, filling his pipe and lighting
it. 'A wonderful mountain village, Minks,' he added, between puffs of
smoke, while the secretary, who had been waiting for the sign, then
lit his own Virginian and smoked it diffidently, and with just the
degree of respect he felt was becoming. He never presumed upon his
master's genial way of treating him. He made little puffs and was very
careful with the ashes.

'Ah, yes,' he said; 'I am sure it must have been—both delightful and
—er—difficult to leave.' He recalled the Margate sands, bathing with
Albinia and digging trenches with the children. He had written many
lyrics during those happy weeks of holiday.

'Gave one, in fact, quite a new view of life—and work. There was such
space and beauty everywhere. And my cousin's children simply would not
let me go.'

There was a hint of apology and excuse in the tone and words—the
merest hint, but Minks noticed it and liked the enthusiasm. 'He's been
up to some mischief; he feels a little ashamed; his work—his Scheme—
has been so long neglected; conscience pricks him. Ha, ha!' The
secretary felt his first suspicion confirmed. 'Cousin's children,'
perhaps! But who else?

'He made a tactful reference—oh, very slight and tentative—to the
data he had collected for the Scheme, but the other either did not
hear it, or did not wish to hear it. He brushed it aside, speaking
through clouds of tobacco smoke. Minks enjoyed a bigger, braver puff
at his own. Excitement grew in him.

'Just the kind of place you would have loved, Minks,' Rogers went on
with zeal. 'I think you really must go there some day; cart your
family over, teach the children French, you know, and cultivate a bit
of vineyard. Such fine big forests, too, full of wild flowers and
things—O such lovely hand-made things—why, you could almost see the
hand that made 'em.' The phrase had slipped suddenly into his mind.

'Really, really, Mr. Rogers, but how very jo—delightful it sounds.'
He thought of the stubble fields and treeless sea-coast where he had
been. The language, however, astonished him. Enthusiasm like this
could only spring from a big emotion. His heart sank a little.

'And the people all so friendly and hospitable and simple that you
could go climbing with your bootmaker or ask your baker in to dine and
sleep. No snobbery! Sympathy everywhere and a big free life flowing in
your veins.' This settled it. Only a lover finds the whole world
lovable.

'One must know the language, though,' said Minks, 'in order to enjoy
the people and understand them, I suppose?'

'Not a bit, not a bit! One
feels
it all, you see; somehow one feels
it and understands. A few words useful here and there, but one gets
along without even these. I never knew such a place. Every one seemed
to be in sympathy together. They think it, as it were. It was regular
fairyland, I tell you.'

'Which means that
you
felt and thought it,' said Minks to himself.
Aloud he merely remarked, though with conviction, for he was getting
interested, 'Thinking is important, I know.'

Rogers laid his pipe aside and suddenly turned upon him—so abruptly
that Minks started. Was this the confession coming? Would he hear now
that his chief was going to be married? His wandering eyes almost drew
level in the excitement that he felt. He knocked a tiny ash from his
cigarette and waited. But the expected bomb did not explode. He heard
instead this curious question:—

'And that's something—it reminds me now—something I particularly
wanted to ask you about, my dear fellow. You are familiar, I know,
with such things and theories—er—speculations, as it were. You read
that sort of stuff. You are in touch with the latest ideas, I mean,
and up-to-date. You can tell me, if any one can.'

He paused, hesitating a moment, as Minks, listening in some
bewilderment, gazed into his eager face. He said nothing. He only
committed himself to a deprecating gesture with his hands, letting his
cigarette slip from his fingers on to the carpet.

'About
thought
,' continued Rogers, keeping his eyes fixed upon him
while he rose with flushed face from the search to find the stump.
'What do you know about thought? Tell me what you hear about
that
—
what theories are held—what people believe about it. I mean thought-
transference, telepathy, or whatever it is called. Is it proved? Is it
a fact?'

His voice had lowered. There was mystery in his manner. He sat back in
his chair, picked up his pipe, replaced it in his mouth unlighted, and
waited.

Minks pulled himself together. His admirable qualities as a private
secretary now came in. Putting excitement and private speculations of
his own aside, he concentrated his orderly mind upon replies that
should be models of succinct statement. He had practised thought-
control, and prided himself upon the fact. He could switch attention
instantly from one subject to another without confusion. The replies,
however, were, of course, drawn from his own reading. He neither
argued nor explained. He merely stated.

'Those who have taken the trouble to study the evidence believe,' he
began, 'that it is established, though its laws are as yet unknown.
Personally, if I may quote myself, I do believe it.'

'Quite so, quite so. Do quote yourself—that's what I want—facts. But
you refer to deliberate experiments, don't you?'

'In my own case, yes, Mr. Rogers, although the most successful
thought-transference is probably unconscious and not deliberate—'

'Such as, for instance—'

'Public opinion,' replied Minks, after a moment's search, 'which is
the result of waves of thought sent out by everybody—by a community;
or by the joint thinking of a nation, again, which modifies every mind
born into that nation, the result of' centuries of common thinking
along definite familiar channels. Thought-currents rush everywhere
about the world, affecting every one more or less, and—er—
particularly lodging in minds receptive to them.'

'Thought is dynamic, then, they hold?'

'An actual force, yes; as actual as electricity, and as little
understood,' returned the secretary, proud that he had read these
theories and remembered them. 'With every real thought a definite
force goes forth from you that modifies every single person, and
probably every single object as well, in the entire world. Thought is
creative according to its intensity. It links everybody in the world
with everybody else—'

'Objects too, you say?' Rogers questioned.

Minks glanced up to make sure there was no levity in the question, but
only desire for knowledge.

'Objects too,' he replied, apparently satisfied, 'for science tells us
that the movement of a body here affects the farthest star. A
continuous medium—ether—transmits the vibrations without friction—
and thought-force is doubtless similarly transmitted—er—'

'So that if I think of a flower or a star, my thought leaps into them
and affects them?' the other interrupted again.

'More, Mr. Rogers,' was the reply, 'for your thought, being creative,
enriches the world with images of beauty which may float into another
mind across the sea, distance no obstacle at all. You make a mental
image when you think. There's imagination in all real thinking—if I
make myself clear. "Our most elaborate thoughts," to quote for a
moment, "are often, as I think, not really ours, but have on a sudden
come up, as it were, out of hell or down out of heaven." So what one
thinks affects everybody in the world. The noble thinkers lift
humanity, though they may never tell their thoughts in speech or
writing.'

His employer stared at him in silence through the cloud of smoke. The
clock on the mantelpiece struck half-past twelve.

'That is where the inspiration of the artist comes in,' continued the
secretary after a moment's hesitation whether he should say it or not,
'for his sensitive soul collects them and gives them form. They lodge
in him and grow, and every passionate longing for spiritual growth
sets the whole world growing too. Your Scheme for Disabled—'

'Even if it never materialises—' Rogers brusquely interposed.

'Sweetens the world—yes—according to this theory,' continued Minks,
wondering what in the world had come over his chief, yet so pleased to
state his own views that he forgot to analyse. 'A man in a dungeon
earnestly praying would accomplish more than an active man outside who
merely lived thoughtlessly, even though beneficently—if I make myself
clear.'

'Yes, yes; you make yourself admirably clear, Minks, as I knew you
would.' Rogers lit his pipe again and puffed hard through a minute's
silence. The secretary held his peace, realising from the tone of the
last sentence that he had said enough. Mr. Rogers was leading up to
other questions. Hitherto he had been clearing the ground.

It came then, through the clouds of smoke, though Minks failed to
realise exactly why it was—so important:

'So that if I thought vividly of anything, I should. actually create a
mental picture which in turn might slip into another's mind, while
that other would naturally suppose it was his own?'

'Exactly, Mr. Rogers; exactly so.' Minks contrived to make the
impatience in his voice sound like appreciation of his master's
quickness. 'Distance no obstacle either,' he repeated, as though fond
of the phrase.