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

it, oughtn’t

we? Thank you.”

 

He began to help her to climb. Why Chloe, who had been so intent on

rushing to London—but of course if the stone was really worth seventy

thousand-seventy thousand, it would be rather fascinating even to see a

stone worth that.

 

But half an hour’s search, though they all tramped round, parted the

thick grass, bent and grovelled and peered, brought them no nearer

success. Cecilia, Angus felt, could hardly have chosen a worse place to

look at the Stone; nor could Angus,

his wife felt in turn, have chosen a worse place to swerve. For besides

the bank and hedge by the road, at this particular point two fields

were divided by another thorny hedge, at the base of which the grass on

each side grew long. There were nettles and thistles and much larger

stones on which the men seemed to be continually kneeling, and they all

had a feeling that any one of the others might be trampling it into the

ground at any moment. And Cecilia distrusted Chloe and Frank, and Chloe

distrusted Cecilia and Angus, and Frank was wondering what the whole

business meant, and Angus was wondering who the strangers were, and as

they searched this wonder, suspicion, and irritation grew every moment

more violent. But the End of Desire remained hidden.

 

At last, as they met in their circumambulations, Frank murmured to

Chloe, “Is this really our business? Is it your Stone or theirs?”

 

“It isn’t mine,” Chloe said, trying not to sound irritable but

conscious she was looking hot and dirty and anxious, “but it isn’t

really theirs. They bought it all right, but they oughtn’t to have it.”

 

“Are you tired out, Mr. Lindsay?” Cecilia called impatiently. “It must

be somewhere here.”

 

“Yes, Mrs. Sheldrake,” Frank rebelled suddenly, “but Miss Burnett

wanted to get to London, and really we seem to be going over the same

ground again and again.”

 

“Please don’t stop then,” Cecilia said. “I’m sorry to have kept you.”

 

“O nonsense,” Chloe broke in. “Of course we must stop. We must find it.

We can’t let a thing like that be about loose. If someone’s got it at

least we shall know where it is, if not whose.”

 

“There’s no question of that,” Cecilia threw at her, “since we paid for

it. As it is, I think your friend Mr. Montague has cheated us.”

 

“He is not—” Chloe began and then remembered she was looking for the

End of Desire. With a muddled prayer to the

Stone—since, being a modern normally emotional girl she was, quite

naturally, an idolater—she stopped and, to her own astonishment,

experienced a sudden flicker of amused peace, accompanied by a clearer

intellectual survey.

 

“But we are getting confused, I think,” she said.

 

At this moment Angus, having stung himself again, swore violently and

got up, kneeling on something sharp as he did so. Moved by this exactly

as by unexpected opposition at a board meeting he began to decide

things at once. “We can’t go on like this,” he said. “After all, so

long as things are left undisturbed here we’re damn well certain to

find it if I have every blade of grass pulled up separately. The point

is—do you want to go to London now, Cecilia, or back to the Court?”

 

His wife looked at Chloe, who knew the Chief Justice. Let her talk to

him while she sat ignorant? Never. If they couldn’t find this stone

they could anyhow get on the track of the others.

 

“London,” she said. “But you had better stop here, Angus, and perhaps

Mr. Lindsay will go back to the Court and send someone to you.”

 

Chloe felt clear that this would do what she wanted with Frank without

her interfering. She went on moving the grass with her foot and looking

at the ground, as did everyone else except Frank who glanced back

towards the road and said coldly, “I’m afraid that’s

impossible. Miss Burnett wants to go to London too.”

 

There was a short silence. Then Angus, still murmuring curses, said

abruptly to his wife, “Then you’d better take the car and get on to

London with Miss Burnett. And I’ll stop here, and then perhaps Mr.

Lindsay won’t mind going back to the Court.”

 

“I shall very much mind,” Lindsay answered. “I am going to take Miss

Burnett to London at once—myself. I daresay someone will pass pretty

soon who’ll take a message for you.”

 

Chloe’s hand on his arm distracted him. “Frank dear,” she said, “would

you go? I know it sounds beastly, but if you would…”

 

Frank stared at her. “Do you want me to?” he asked stupidly.

 

“I don’t—I don’t—want you to,” Chloe in’confusion murmured. “But I

think it would be-O sporting—of you. It’s not a bit nice, but I think

we ought.”

 

“I think it’s perfectly insane,” Frank answered in a low voice. “Do you

want them to have their own way altogether?”

 

“Not altogether,” Chloe protested, also speaking softly, “but it seems

as if we ought,” she ended again lamely.

 

Frank, in a very bad temper, gave way. “O anything you like, of

course,” he said coldly. “I go back to this Court then, and after that

I can come to London by myself, I suppose?”

 

“I know it’s beastly, Frank,” Chloe answered appealingly. “I’d go

myself or I’d come with you—I’d love to come with you—but I must get to

Lord Arglay as soon as Mrs. Sheldrake.” She was not quite clear why,

since she realized even then that two sentences of Cecilia’s

conversation would let the Chief justice know everything. But she could

not yet face that abolition of her own secret desires which the

abandonment of any attempt to witness their meeting would involve.

Besides, Frank would be bound to want to know—still, it was hard on him

and it was quite natural he should turn away and say to Sheldrake very

politely, “Miss Burnett thinks your suggestion a very good one, and so

do I. Will Mrs. Sheldrake take her on to London then?”

 

Cecilia with a cold grudge assented. But Chloe said suddenly to Angus-

“O but, Mr. Sheldrake, if you do find it, you’ll tell us, won’t you?

That would be only fair.” Angus agreitd. “If I find it I’ll let you

know at once,” he said. “At Lord Arglay’s?”

 

“Please,” Chloe said gratefully, and tried to catch Frank’s eye. She

failed, and went sadly to the bank. She was always doing the selfish

thing, she felt. But after all Lord Arglay might

—might very easily—want several things done at once when he knew the

situation. She wished she wanted to be with Frank a little more

strongly. Duty with a strong inclination looked so dreadfully selfish

beside duty with a mild inclination. She sat down gloomily in the

Sheldrakes’ car and it moved off.

 

The two men looked at each other. “I don’t understand what all this is

about,” Frank said, “or whose this precious stone is. But I have your

word that if you find it while I’m gone, or at all for that matter,

you’ll let us know.”

 

“I don’t mind telling you what I know,” Angus answered. “I bought, from

a fellow named Montague, who seems to be a nephew of this Lord Arglay

your friend’s so keen on, a rather valuable stone for my wife. She

understood that it was—well, practically, unique—and now there seems to

be some question on our side of misrepresentation, and on yours—theirs,

I mean, —of other rights in the property. I daresay it can all be

settled by a few minutes chat between me and Lord Arglay or whoever

knows, but till then, since I’ve parted with my money, I consider I’ve

a right to hold the stone. But I’m anxious to be quite fair and I’ll

certainly let you or Miss Burnett know if it’s found. I shall have a

very careful search made, and if it’s necessary I shall buy both these

fields.”

 

“I see,” Frank said, a little impressed by this method of dealing with

difficulties. “And you want me to go and let your people know where you

are.”

 

“If you will,” Angus assented. “It’s very good of you, but you’ll agree

that Miss Burnett seemed almost as keen as my wife. “

 

“O yes,” Frank answered gloomily. “What’s the best way to your place

from here?”

 

Sheldrake told him and he departed, car and all. Angus, allowing about

an hour before he was relieved, lit a cigarette and sat down under the

hedge to wait. He was too tired to do any more searching; indeed, when

the cigarette was finished,

he found himself disinclined to move in order to reach another,

but, stretching himself out, lay half-asleep and half. brooding.

 

He was only partly conscious of feet that sounded on the other side of

the hedge, though a certain subconscious knowledge told him that

someone was coming along a footpath that ran alongside the hedge, a

couple of feet away. As they came nearer however he moved so as to be

just in time to see a tall figure take a short stride up to the hedge,

reach up and pick somethin-from the top of the intertwining twigs. A

sudden fear assailed him. The stranger was back on the footpath before

Angus could scramble to his feet, and was beginning to move away by the

time he reached the hedge.

 

“Hi!” Angus cried out, seriously alarmed. “Hi, you!” The stranger

paused and looked back. He was a tall, rather dark young man, of about

thirty, carrying sketching materials, and he looked at Angus with a

certain hard surprise.

 

“Hi!” said Angus again. “Is that mine?”

 

The young man looked at him, took a step or two farther on, and said

over his shoulder, “Is what yours?”

 

Angus ran a few feet along his side of the hedge and said, “What you’ve

just picked up. If it’s a funny looking stone, it’s mine.”

 

“Is it really?” the stranger said. “And why did you put it there?”

 

“Never mind about all that,” Sheldrake said impatiently. “Just hand it

over, will you?”

 

The young man began to walk slowly on, and Angus, tripping over roots

and stones every other second, kept pace with him, cursing aloud.

 

“I ask you,” the stranger said to the sky, “what wouldyou think? I pick

a—something—from a hedge and am vociferously told that it belongs to

him”-he threw a disagreeable glance at Sheldrake. “And you, I suppose,”

he said bitterly, “were looking for it?”

 

“I had been,” Angus said, almost falling once more. “I had only just

sat down.”

 

“Well, if you will take a rest in the middle of pitch and toss-” the

young man flung over. “If it’s yours how did it get to the top of the

hedge?”

 

“My wife threw it there from a car,” Sheldrake answered incoherently as

they reached the bank of the high road. “And then went away, car and

all,” the stranger said looking at the empty road. “Family happiness.

Is marriage a success?”

 

“Don’t be a damned idiot,” Angus snapped. “Give me that stone at once.”

 

The stranger pondered. “I half-believe you,” he said, “but only half.

And anyhow I may tell you I dislike nothing so much as to be called Hi.

I don’t mind calling myself I, though of course—yes, I know what you’re

going to say—there’s no proof of it. It’s a convenience elevated into a

philosophy—yes, I agree. But even so I don’t like strangers using what

is, so to speak, my own pet name for myself And still more do I dislike

their aspirating it. An aspirate so generously