Part 7 (1/2)

Still, he resented these crowding, pus.h.i.+ng folk. 'I'm sorry, Mr.

Rogers,' he said, as though he had chosen a poor train for his honoured chief; 'there must be an excursion somewhere. There's a big fete of Vegetarians, I know, at Surbiton to-day, but I can hardly think these people---'

'Don't wait, Minks,' said the other, who had taken his seat. 'I'll let you hear from me, you know, about the Scheme and--other things. Don't wait.' He seemed curiously un.o.bservant of these strange folk, almost absent-minded.

The guard was whistling. Minks shut the door and gave the travelling- rug a last tuck-in about his feet. He felt as though he were packing off a child. The mother in him became active. Mr. Rogers needed looking after. Another minute and he would have patted him and told him what to eat and wear. But instead he raised his hat and smiled.

The train moved slowly out, making a deep purring sound like flowing water. The platform had magically thinned. Officials stood lonely among the scattered wavers of hats and handkerchiefs. As he stepped backwards to keep the carriage window in sight until the last possible moment, Minks was nearly knocked over by a man who hurried along the platform as if he still had hopes of catching the train.

'Really, sir!' gasped the secretary, stooping to pick up his newspaper and lavender glove--he wore one glove and carried the other--the collision had sent flying. But the man was already far beyond the reach of his voice. 'He must be an escaped lamplighter, or something,'

he laughed good-naturedly, as he saw the long legs vanish down the platform. He leaped on to the line. Evidently he was a railway employe. He seemed to be vainly trying to catch the departing buffers.

An absurd and reckless fellow, thought Minks.

But what caught the secretary's attention last, and made him wonder a little if anything unusual was happening to the world, was the curious fact that, as the last carriage glided smoothly past, he recognised four figures seated comfortably inside. Their feet were on the cus.h.i.+ons--disgracefully. They were talking together, heads forward, laughing, even--singing. And he could have sworn that they were the two men who had watched himself and Mr. Rogers at the ticket window, and the strangers who had tried to force their way into Mr. Rogers's carriage when he came up just in time to interfere.

'They got in somehow after all, then,' he said to himself. 'Of course, I had forgotten. The Company runs third-cla.s.s carriages on the continental trains now. Odd!' He mentally rubbed his eyes.

The train swept round the corner out of sight, leaving a streaming cloud of smoke and sparks behind it. It went out with a kind of rush of delight, glad to be off, and conscious of its pa.s.sengers' pleasure.

'Odd.' This was the word that filled his mind as he walked home.

'Perhaps--our minds are in such intimate sympathy together--perhaps he was thinking of--of that kind of thing--er--and some of his thoughts got into my own imagination. Odd, though, very, _very_ odd.'

He had once read somewhere in one of his new-fangled books that 'thoughts are things.' It had made a great impression on him. He had read about Marconi too. Later he made a more thorough study of this 'thinking business.'

And soon afterwards, having put his chief's papers in order at the flat, he went home to Mrs. Minks and the children with this other thought--that he had possibly been overworking himself, and that it was a good thing he was going to have a holiday by the sea.

He liked to picture himself as an original thinker, not afraid of new ideas, but in reality he preferred his world sober, ordinary, logical.

It was merely big-sounding names he liked. And this little incident was somewhere out of joint. It was--odd.

Success that poisons many a baser mind May lift---

But the sonnet had never known completion. In the s.p.a.ce it had occupied in his mind another one abruptly sprouted. The first subject after all was ba.n.a.l. A better one had come to him--

Strong thoughts that rise in a creative mind May flash about the world, and carry joy---

Then it stuck. He changed 'may' to 'shall,' but a moment later decided that 'do' was better, truer than either. After that inspiration failed him. He retired gracefully upon prose again.

'Odd,' he thought, 'very odd!'

And he relieved his mind by writing a letter to a newspaper. He did not send it in the end, for his better judgment prevented, but he had to do something by way of protest, and the only alternative was to tell his wife about it, when she would look half puzzled, half pained, and probably reply with some remark about the general cost of living.

So he wrote the letter instead.

For Herbert Minks regarded himself as a man with the larger view of citizens.h.i.+p, a critic of public affairs, and, in a measure, therefore, an item of that public opinion which moulded governments. Hence he had a finger, though but a little finger, in the destiny of nations and in the polity--a grand word that!--of national councils. He wrote frequent letters, thus, to the lesser weekly journals; these letters were sometimes printed; occasionally--oh, joy!--they were answered by others like himself, who referred to him as 'your esteemed correspondent.' As yet, however, his following letter had never got into print, nor had he experienced the importance of that editorial decision, appended between square brackets: 'This correspondence must now cease'--so vital, that is, that the editor and the entire office staff might change their opinions unless it _did_ cease.

Having drafted his letter, therefore, and carried it about with him for several hours in his breast pocket, he finally decided not to send it after all, for the explanation of his 'odd' experience, he well knew, was hardly one that a newspaper office could supply, or that public correspondence could illuminate. His better judgment always won the day in the end. Thinking _was_ creative, after all.

CHAPTER VII

... The sun, Closing his benediction, Sinks, and the darkening air Thrills with a sense of the triumphing night- Night with her train of stars And her great gift of sleep.