Many Dimensions, Charles Williams [black authors fiction TXT] 📗

had

mostly come to him from his father, as Rivington Court had

come to him from his mother, and Sheldrake’s own addition, had

consisted of several large motor factories and the establishment of an

Atlantic Airways Company to the first, and an entirely unnecessary

though quite beautiful wing to the second. Neither it nor the Atlantic

Airways would probably have come into existence but for Cecilia

Sheldrake, who, having been forestalled in her desire to be the first

woman to fly the Atlantic, had determined that at least most of the

others who did so should do it by her permission. Her husband had

founded the company, as he had built the wing, in order that she might

have everything she wanted to play with, and when he had bought the

Stone from Reginald Montague he had done it with a similar intention in

his mind.

 

In actual fact it had taken a longer time to persuade Sheldrake to buy

than Reginald had admitted to his uncle. But the surprising chances of

that Friday—the coming of Sir Giles with the Stone, the meeting with

Sheldrake at an unexpected conference on the same morning, the

discovery that the richest man of Idaho, of the States, of the world

(report varied) was a young fellow not quite so old as he himself was—all these had convinced Reginald that what, at a pinch, he would have

been driven to call Providence was on his side, and had given him an

increased audacity. He had caught Sheldrake by mentioning, almost in

one breath, transport, the Lord Chief Justice, and a rare stone, thus

attacking at once through the American’s sense of business, security,

and romance. Certainly there had been a few minutes’ danger when the

Stone was discovered to be no jewel, as jewels are ordinarily known,;

indeed, Reginald had been driven to a rather hasty demonstration,

which, in its turn, startled Sheldrake so greatly as seriously to

endanger the negotiations. Two ideas, however, occurred to the

financier, though he spoke of neither to Reginald; one was motor-cars

and airways, the other was his wife. To protect the one and delight the

other made it the aim of his morning to procure the Stone, and the

eventual seventy-three thousand guineas at which it changed hands was a

lesser matter. Neither of them were ever quite clear how that

particular sum was reached; though Reginald flattered himself that the

guineas made it a far more reputable transaction than if it had been

merely pounds. He had pressed on Sheldrake the advisability of secrecy,

but he had been compelled to admit that a few other Stones of the kind

were in existence—not more than half a dozen. The American had

displayed some curiosity as to their owners, but here the mere facts

enabled Montague to be firm. He admitted that Sir Giles Tumulty had

one; he thought the Chiefjustice had; and he himself—well, of course,

he had kept one, that was reasonable. But he said nothing of his

intention to spend the afternoon creating a few more Stones nor of the

names of buyers which were already floating in his mind. On his side

Sheldrake said nothing of his intention to communicate the mystery at

least to his wife, nor of his anxiety to procure, if he anyhow could,

the other existing examples of it. Equally satisfied, equally

unsatisfied, they parted, and while Reginald went first to his office

and then to Brighton, Sheldrake went straight by car to Rivington

Court.

 

He waited however till the next day, and till he had, rather nervously,

at a very early hour the next morning, tried a few more minor

experiments, before he spoke of the new treasure. The experiments were

tried cautiously, in a small wood near the house, and were limited to

the crossing of a brook, the passage of a field, and so on, concluding

with the grand finale

of a return to his own room, where he contentedly locked the Stone away

and went to breakfast. It was some time later, not very long before

lunch, while Lord Arglay raged in London, that he took his wife across

the terraces and lawns to a hidden summer-house and revealed the secret

to her.

 

Cecilia took it with surprising calm—took, indeed, both the secret and

the Stone with a similar calm. She was delighted, she was thrilled, but

with an obscure and egoistical acceptance of things she was not wildly

surprised. If such treasures existed, they did so, both she and her

husband felt, chiefly for Cecilia Sheldrake. Her life had refused her

only one thing—to be the first woman to fly the Atlantic, and Cecilia,

like everyone else, felt that life owed her every sort of gratification

in return for that disappointment. Not that anything could really make

up for it, but other tributes might help her to forget. Even miracles

were reasonable since they happened for her, and Angus, in the depths

of his nature, though his brain moved more slowly, felt that a world

whose chief miracles were the existence of Cecilia and her existence as

his wife might easily throw in a few more to make things pleasant for

her. She did indeed open her eyes a little at the price, but that also

seemed reasonable since it was for her, and she was more ready to risk

extended experiments than her husband had been. Indeed it was she who

made what must up to then have been the longest journey yet taken by

those high means—at least for some centuries—in going direct to her

bedroom in London and returning with a dress she had left behind and

had changed her mind about on the way down the day before. When she had

safely returned—

 

“Darling, how sweet of you!” she cried to Angus. “I never had anything

like it before..”

 

“I don’t suppose many people have, or will have,” Angus said, with

justice. “Not many will have the chance.”

 

“But will anybody?” Cecilia said, a little shocked. “Are there more of

them?”

 

“Oh, about half a dozen, I gathered,” Angus told her. *‘And I don’t

know who’s going to buy them.”

 

Cecilia looked depressed. “Where did they come from?” she asked in a

moment.

 

“Sir Giles Tumulty brought them from the East, Montague said,” Angus

answered. “He’s a traveller and explorer.”

 

His wife looked at him meditatively. “You don’t think he’d sell them

all?” she asked, “O Angus, if somebody else got hold of them.”

 

“Well, Sir Giles has,” Sheldrake pointed out.

 

“O him!” Cecilia said. “I mean somebody else like us.“She sat up

suddenly. “Angus! What about Airways?”

 

“I know,” Angus said, “I thought the same thing. It might be awkward.

Of course, it’s not so bad because you’d want to be pretty sure of

anyone before you lent them the Stone.”

 

Cecilia shook her head. “We mayn’t know everything,” she said. “They

may have cheated you. This Mr. Montague didn’t say it was the only

one?”

 

“Sweetheart, he said it wasn’t,” Angus pointed out.

 

“Then he has cheated you,” Cecilia said impatiently. “O Angus, we must

put it right. After all, the Airways ought to have control, oughtn’t

they?”

 

“It may be a little awkward,” Angus answered. “I think one of them is

with the Lord Chief Justice.”

 

Cecilia opened her eyes. “But I thought judges weren’t supposed to have

financial interests,” she exclaimed. “Isn’t it corruption?… Angus,

they can’t make them, can they?”

 

“What!” said her husband, startled. “Make them? O no—at least I suppose

not. They came from the East.”

 

“Yes, but do they make them in the East, or dig them up, or magnetize

them, or something?” Cecilia persisted. “Angus dear, you must see what

I mean. If there was a mine now, how dreadful it would be.”

 

“Darling, I think you’re getting unnecessarily alarmed,” Sheldrake

protested. “There can’t be a mine—not possibly—not of stones that do

this.”

 

“Why not?” Cecilia asked.

 

“Well, could there? It isn’t reasonable,” her husband urged. “Stones

like this must be rare.” But he looked uneasily at it as he spoke.

 

“Anyhow—it’s near lunchtime—anyhow I think you ought to do something.

Get it forbidden by law or something.”

 

“But then what about us?” Sheldrake asked.

 

Cecilia took his arm. “Darling,” she said, “you’re awfully slow. There

could always be a special licence to the Airways.”

 

“It’d be very difficult to explain to the Home Secretary without

telling him everything, and I don’t know that I want to tell him

everything,” Angus murmured. “Besides, if one licence is granted others

could be, and suppose you got a Labour Government in again?”

 

Cecilia almost stamped. “I suppose you could buy a monopoly or a

charter or something of that sort for twenty-one years or so?” she

asked plaintively. “Darling Angus, we do want to stop it going further,

don’t we?”

 

“O rather, yes,” Angus agreed. “It’s the explaining that will be

difficult.”

 

“It won’t be any more difficult for you than for me to explain to Elsie

how this frock came down here,” his wife said. “Dearest, it’s a lovely

present and I do thank you enormously. But if you could just prevent

anyone else having one, it would be too perfectly sweet! You will try,

won’t you?”

 

“O I’ll try,” Angus answered, kissing her. “But it’ll take some doing.

There’d have to be an Act, I’m afraid—and if the Lord Chief Justistice

was nasty-”

 

“He wouldn’t have anything to do with politics though, would he?”

Cecilia asked. “And as a matter of fact he might, if you put it to him

nicely, be willing to sell.”

 

They returned to the house to lunch.

 

About the same time a less elaborate lunch was being served in the inn

of the village close by to Chloe Burnett and Frank Lindsay. Chloe had

been half-unwilling to leave London, for fear the Chief Justice should

want her, but a sense of duty, a necessity to recompense Frank for the

unsatisfactory result of the Friday evening, had compelled her to

accept his suggestion; though, for some undefined reason, she had

caused him to take Lancaster Gate on the way. Lord Arglay’s house had

offered no more information than she expected, but the sight of it

enabled her more freely to devote all her energies to making

the day’s amusement a success. She had received with interest and

encouragement Frank’s serious efforts towards culture, although a part

of her mind remotely insisted on comparing his careful answers with

Lord Arglay’s casual completeness. Sir Giles’s epigram on

encyclopedias-“the slums of the mind” -recurred to her, and she went so

far to meet it as to admit that Frank’s information was rather like a

block of model dwellings compared with the tumultuous carelessness of a

country house. The contrast had been suddenly provoked by Frank’s short

lecture in answer to her question-“O by the way, what is a Sufi?”

 

“It is a Muhammedan sect,” he had answered. “Muhammed, you know, who

was a fanatical monotheist, wrote the Koran, or rather claimed that the

Koran had been delivered to him by Gabriel.” He had gone on, with what

seemed a good many references to Muhammed. Chloe’s intelligence

reminded her that by the phrase “Muhammed was a fanatical monotheist”—he meant what Lord Arglay—or was it the Hajji?- had meant by saying

“Our lord the Prophet arose to proclaim the Unity,” but she found the

one phrase unusually trying after the other. As penance and

compensation she allowed her hand, which lay lightly in Frank’s, to

give it a small squeeze of thanks, and diverted his attention by

saying, “O what a jolly house! “

 

The lecture had taken place soon after lunch while they were wandering

in the lanes round the village. There was in fact very