His theory culminated in the amazing dogma that everything that existed had such feelings, not even excluding rocks and stones and earth-mould. And he further held that this invisible Dimension was much more crowded and much more active at certain geographical points round the surface of land and water than at others. Even where there are no human beings, this spiritual atmosphere would, he maintained, be there just the same. For not only must there be, universally emanating from the whole body of our planet, feelings that we must think of as the feelings of our Mother the Earth herself, but there must also be the feelings — or semi-conscious vibrations corresponding to feelings — of all the separate material elements whereof the substance of the planet is composed.
In fact Sir Mort insisted that all the feelings of all the things in the world are to be found in this invisible Dimension, and the fact that the earth as the earth has universal feelings does not mean that the separate parts and diverse substances of which she is composed are lacking in individual feelings. In fact he insisted that this invisible Dimension, or atmospheric sounding-board, of the planet upon which we live, while predominant in it are the feelings of all living men, women, and children, includes also the feelings of all beasts, birds, fishes, reptiles, insects and worms as well as of trees, plants, mosses, funguses, grasses and all vegetation.
And when we thus speak of the projected thoughts and feelings and emotions of all things, it must be remembered that we are not suggesting the existence of any actual souls that can survive the death of their bodily presence. When we are dead, Sir Mort maintained, we are absolutely dead. But while we live we are all, including the myriads of sub-human lives in air, on land, and in water, from whales to earth-worms and the tiniest gnats, in constant contact with an invisible overshadowing atmospheric mist, crowded with feelings and dreams and emotions and what might be called sense-emanations and thought-eidola issuing from all that exists, whether superhuman, human, or sub-human, whether organic or inorganic. This atmospheric dimension does not, Sir Mort argued, contain the sort of entities we are in the habit of thinking of as souls; for these perish when we perish, but it contains the thoughts and feelings and intimations and sensations which, though they grow fainter with time, do not cease to exist when the body and soul which projected them have both come to an end.
While we are still struggling, enduring, enjoying, as we move or rest in the earth, air, or water, of our terraqueous globe, there will always be this atmospheric aura about us where the psychic reactions engendered by the attractions and repulsions, the devourings and escapings, that go on in life mount up and remain, drifting and floating here and there in a curious chaotic mixture of the pleasant and the unpleasant.
And it is because of this atmospheric arena always about us, whether indoors or out-of-doors, whether on the surface of plains or mountains, whether in earth-mines or undersea-caverns, whether in any level of the air, or above any fiery crater or tumultuous sea, that those among us — and Sir Mort obviously included himself in this select category — who are alive to these rarefied visitations, are frequently exhilarated or saddened without any apparent inward or outward cause.
These sudden variations of mood without apparent cause are — Sir Mort would explain, though he assumed that his wife knew nothing of such subtle emotions — extremely puzzling phenomena. But they can, he would point out, be made less mysterious if we think of this atmospheric dimension of psychic reactions as composed not only of the sensations of all living things from the cleverest human beings and the most intelligent animals, birds, fishes and reptiles, to the most simple-minded tadpoles, jelly-fish, star-fish, earth-worms, and insects, together with the vast mass of all the vegetable growth in the world, but of such sensations as they occur in the strain and stress of cosmogonic chance.
It was all in a second curiously enough, as this tidal memory of her husband’s ten-thousand times repeated harangue swept over her, that she actually found herself wondering whether there might not really be a grain of truth in all this craziness. Dimension or no dimension, there must be a reason for this ebbing and flowing of our feelings, and for our being sometimes so mysteriously happy, and sometimes so unutterably sad.
“Well,” she thought, “I can’t stand here staring at little Popinjay all night! I must get rid of the boy somehow.” And as she raised her hands to feel whether her hair was in proper order, she became half conscious of that alder-leaf on the floor between herself, the self-questioning Lady Val, and her visitor, the quiescent and self-approving Sir William.
“She,” Sir William was thinking, “must be suffering a lot. Poor, poor woman! She must know, after all I’ve said, that she has given her daughter to the wrong man! So I really must be kind to her in her unhappiness.”
But what the unhappy lady was thinking was this: “I’ll tell Ulanda what we all feel about Baron Boncor’s beard, for I think that will trouble her arrogant mind more than anything else.”
And what, we might wonder, was that alder-leaf’s parent-tree thinking in its nakedness as it bowed before the wind? Was it thinking, “If only I could stretch a quarter of an inch nearer the water I would tell this blind, stupid, silly, deaf, dumb, idiotic stream in what direction it ought to flow if it wants to reach the sea.”
And if no thought of that leaf on the floor crossed the furthest fringe of its parent-tree’s cogitations, you may be sure that neither Sir William nor Lady Val gave the slightest attention to its fate; and there it would have lain for the rest of that evening and the whole of that night had not old Mother Guggery been sent from the kitchen to ask some important semi-culinary, semi-social question of the Lady of the Manor.
Mother Guggery always used a massive ebony stick when she walked, though physically she had not the least need of such support, and she showed now by the way she came stumping up between the young knight and Lady Val that the moment her curiosity was satisfied as to what they were talking about, or being silent about, she would turn her back upon the young man and concentrate on her mission to the lady.
But in a household as turbulent with new starts and old upshots, with new conspiracies and old frustrations, as was this Fortress of Roque, it was impossible, especially at the close of a sunny day at this time of the year, and upon such a central and crucial debating-ground as this particular spot, for any discussion to be long confined to its originators.
Thus before Mother Guggery had got down to the business of her message, who must come drifting in but Lady Val’s younger son, the intellectual young John, who was often called “John of London” at the Priory, because of his frequent visits to the King’s court on behalf of Friar Bacon. He now came loitering and drifting towards his mother with the air of one who had been using his wits all day long to such exhaustive effect among the high problems of metaphysic and theology that he has earned the right, now that the day is over and darkness is falling, to forget these high matters — yes! to forget this difficult super-world with its niceties of the human conscience, its nuances of Trinitarian Personalities, and its dissolving facets of unfathomable Absolutes, and to give himself up to any frivolity that drifted across his path in that domestic portico between kitchen and dining-hall.
Nor does life often fail us under such conditions; for there is Something in life that is at once different from Chance and yet not quite identical with all that we mean by the word Fate; and it is this Something that almost always provides us with some spontaneous motive when we are, so to speak, angling for an urge to pursue any available flibbertigibbet.