Many Dimensions, Charles Williams [black authors fiction TXT] 📗
- Author: Charles Williams
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snobbish. I don’t say-”
“Will you give me that stone?” Sheldrake shouted.
“If you had asked me politely,” the young man went on gravely, “I
probably should—more out of surprise than conviction. Holy awe and so
on. But as it is—no. However, if it’s yours, you shall have it. My name
is Oliver Doncaster, and I am staying for a few weeks at Mrs.
Pentridge’s in the village over there. I am now going there to tea.
After tea”-he looked at his watch-“a quarter to five say, about six, if
you will call and convince me you shall have your stone. What is your
name—besides Hi, which is, I suppose, generic?”
Angus tried to pull himself together; he felt such a fool wrangling
through a hedge. Besides he was not finally certain that this fellow
had the stone. “I beg your pardon if I was rude,” he said, “but it was
all so sudden…
“So sudden?” Doncaster asked.
“… and I was so anxious to stop you, that I just called out… If
you would let me see what it was you took out of the hedge….”
“It was,” the other allowed, “a stone. Itjust happened to catch my eye.
After six I shall be delighted to let it catch yours. Never mind about
your name if you’d rather keep it dark. In about an hour or so then? So
pleased to have—well, this is hardly a meeting, is it?—heard from you.
Goodbye, goodbye.” He waved his hand gracefully and went off along the
footpath which here turned to the left and took him to a gate halfway
along the field. By the time Angus had got to the bottom of the bank he
had come into the road, passed across it, and disappeared down a side
lane.
At tea he examined his find. It seemed dull enough indoors, though the
colour was pure and the markings curious, but it lacked something of
the golden light with which it had seemed to shine in the afternoon
sun. A little disappointed he went up to his bedroom and paused on the
way at another door.
“Hallo,” he said, “may I come in?”
In the bed in this room lay Mrs. Pentridge’s mother, Mrs. Ferguson, who
had been paralyzed from the waist downward for the last year. Opinion
in the house was silently divided whether it would have been better for
her to be taken altogether or not. Mr. Pentridge thought it would be a
merciful release for her. Mrs. Pentridge thought it was a merciful
blessing that she had been so far spared. Mrs. Ferguson disguised her
own opinion, if she had one, and concentrated her energies on making
the most of what visitors and what talk she could still have. Doncaster
had fallen into what he felt to be a ridiculous habit of showing her
his day’s work after tea, and was even, half-seriously, trying to teach
her his own prejudices about art; not that he allowed himself to call
them that. Mrs. Pentridge, who was also in the room, examining pillow-cases, welcomed him as warmly as her mother.
“Did you get a nice view, Mr. Doncaster?” she asked.
He sat down smiling. “A very pretty bit of work,” he said. “No, Mrs.
Ferguson, I don’t mean mine—I mean the thing I was trying to do. But I
had to alter one branch. I couldn’t somehow find out exactly what spot
nature meant me to stand at. Now look there-” He held out the sketch
and Mrs. Ferguson stared at it while he expatiated. Mrs. Pentridge went
on with her pillow-cases. When at last he rose-“O by the
Way,”
he said, “I’m expecting a man in a few minutes, to talk about something
I found. Look, did you ever see a stone like that?” He passed it over
to Mrs. Ferguson. “Look at the colour, isn’t it exquisite?”
“What is it?” the old lady asked.
“Lord knows,” said Oliver. “I should like it to be chrysoprase, but I
don’t suppose it is. The Urim and Thummim perhaps. “
“That was what the high priest had on his breastplate,” Mrs. Ferguson
said, looking at the Bible that lay by her bedside. “I remember that
well enough.”
“I’m sure you do,” Oliver said smiling.
“I was little enough when I heard about them,” Mrs. Ferguson went on.
“At the Sunday school it was. I remember it because I learned them the
Sunday before I went to the treat for the first time. Urim. and
Thummim, that was it. I remember Susie Bright pretending to look for
them all the way home in the ditch. O I do wish I could run now as well
as I could then.”
Mr. Sheldrake’s knock at the door below passed unnoticed. For Mrs.
Pentridge had dropped her pillow-cases, and with staring eyes was
watching her mother struggling up in bed. She sat up, she gasped and
gazed, her hands drooped and waved in front of her. She began to shift
round; oblivious of Oliver’s presence she felt for -the side of the bed
and began to slip her feet over it. “Mother,” shrieked Mrs. Pentridge
and flew to one side as Oliver leapt to the other. Mrs. Ferguson,
panting with surprise and exertion, came slowly to her feet, and
holding on to her two supporters, took a step or two forward.
“I’m all right,” she gasped, released Oliver, took another step, “quite
all right,” and let go of her daughter. “I think,” she added, “I must
be feeling a bit better to-day.”
There was a stupendous silence. Mr. Sheldrake knocked again at the
front door.
THE PROBLEM OF TIME
Sir Giles lay back in a chair and grinned at Professor Palliser.
“Well,” he said, “we’ve spent twenty-four hours on it and here’s the
result.” He read from a paper.
“1. It is of no known substance.
2. It answers to no re-agents.
3. It can be multiplied by division without diminution of the original.
4. It can move and cause movement from point to point, without leaving
any consciousness of passage through intervening space.
5. It can cause disappearance—possibly in time.”
“Certainly in time,” Palliser said, but Sir Giles shook his head.
“Only possibly,” he answered, “we don’t know that your bright young
pathological specimen has gone back in time; we only know he isn’t here
and the Stone is. I thought you told a very good story this morning to
that mother of his.”
“I don’t like it,” Palliser answered seriously. “It’s all very
disturbing. I suppose the police will be coming here soon. “
“I should think certainly,” Sir Giles agreed. “But I heard him say good
night. And there’s no reason why you should murder him—I suppose there
isn’t?-and no way for you to do it. So I can’t see that you’re likely
to be troubled seriously. And anyhow they haven’t got a body nor any
trace of one. Let’s get on with the inquiry.”
“I expect you’re right,” the Professor said. “What do you think we
ought to do next?”
Sir Giles leaned forward. “If this assistant of yours has moved in
time,” he said, “if he has gone back, wherever he’s gone to, I suppose
he might have gone forward instead?”
“I suppose so,” Palliser assented slowly.
“Then that seems to be the next thing,” Sir Giles said. “But that I
think we shall have to do ourselves. We can’t run any risk of giving
too much away. And, I don’t see any chance of being permanently lost
there because the future must be the present some time.”
“All the same, I shouldn’t go too far at first,” Palliser suggested. “A
quarter of an hour, say.”
Sir Giles took a Stone from the table, and was about to speak when
Palliser suddenly went on. “Look here, Tumulty, if it worked that way,
it wouldn’t be a certainty, would it? Supposing I project myself an
hour forward and find I’m sitting in this room—and then suppose I
return to the present and go to my bedroom and have myself locked in
for two hours, say, how can I be doing what I saw myself doing? And the
shorter the time the more chance of proving it wrong. In six days
anything might happen, but in six minutes….
Sir Giles brooded. “You probably wouldn’t remember,” he pointed out.
“But I like the idea of your defying the future, Palliser. Try it and
see.”
Palliser’s tall lean form quivered with excitement. “It would snap the
chain,” he said. “We should know we weren’t the mere mechanisms of
Fate. We should be free.”
“I sometimes think,” Sir Giles answered reflectively, “that I’m the
only real scientist in this whole crawling hotbed of vermin called
England. There isn’t one of all of you that doesn’t cuddle some
fantastic desire in his heart, and snivel over every chance of letting
it out for an hour’s toddle. Do be intelligent, Palliser. How can any
damned happening break the chain of happenings? Why do you want to be
free;’ What good could you do if you were free?”
“If a man can defeat the result of all the past,” the Professor said,
“if he can know what is to be and cause that it shall not be-”
“O you’re drunk,” said Sir Giles frankly. “You’re drunk with your own
romantic gin-and-bitters. If you’re going to be sitting here in an
hour’s time you’re going to be, even if this bit of prehistoric slime
has to bump you on your crazy noddle and shove you into achair all on
its own. But try it, try it and see.
“Well, you try it too,” Palliser said sullenly. “I’m going to keep you
under my eye, Tumulty. None of your kidnapping games for me.”.
“You romantics are always so suspicious,” Sir Giles said. “But for once
I don’t mind. Let’s try it together. Where’s the Crown?”
Palliser took it out of the old safe in which it had rested all night,
and sat down beside Tumulty. “‘How long do we make it?” he asked. “Half
an hour?”
“Good enough,” Sir Giles answered.“You locked the door? Right. Now—where’s the clock? Half-past eleven. Wait. Let me write it on a bit of
paper—so, and put that on the table. What’s the formula?”
“To be as we shall be at twelve o’clock, I suppose,” Palliser said, and
the two—Palliser wearing the Crown, Sir Giles clutching the Stone—framed the wish in their minds.
“… though I don’t suppose I can tell you anything new,” Palliser
ended, looking at the police inspector.
Sir Giles looked round over his shoulder—he was standing by the window—
but he was only half-attending. Had or had not the experiment
succeeded? He couldn’t remember a thing out of the ordinary. He had sat
with Palliser for what seemed a long time—but which the clock had shown
to be only ten minutes, and had been vaguely conscious of a rather sick
feeling somewhere. And then they had looked at one another and Palliser
had abruptly said, “Well?” He had stirred and stood up, looked at the
slip of paper with “11:30” written on it, looked at the clock which
marked twenty to twelve, looked back at Palliser, and said with some
irritation, “God blast the whole damned thing to hell, I don’t know.”
“What do you mean?” or something like it, Palliser had asked. The
picture was becoming fainter, but roughly he could still fill it in.
Every minute made all that had happened in that half hour more of a
memory; but had it happened at all or was it memory to begin with? and
was
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