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

to

go gently. We can’t have the poor old thing pushed back into bed

because we take it away brutally. Leave it to me and I’ll get it back

for you to-night. Where do you live?”

 

Angus told him. Oliver grimaced. “A bit of a way,” he said, “but I

suppose it was my fault. Well, I’ll try and collect it gently to-night

or tomorrow morning.”

 

“Excuse me, sir,” a voice beside him said, “but can you

tell me whether it’s true that an old lady has been cured of cancer

by a piece of magnetic iron? Does it belong to you or to this other

gentleman? And is it true that she-”

 

Oliver and Sheldrake stared at each other. Suddenly Oliver looked

round. Out of the window of the house Mrs. Pentridge was leaning.

 

“O Mr. Doncaster,” she called, “do please come. Auntie’, asthma’s gone.

It went in the middle of a cough. O do come.” The noise broke out

deafeningly. Mr. Sheldrake flung himself down in the car, and the small

reporter fought his way beside Oliver to the door.

 

The next morning they all read it. Chloe at Highgate in a paper

purchased when she saw the placards, Lord Arglay at Lancaster Gate in

the Observer, Sir Giles at Ealing in his housekeeper’s Sunday

Pictorial, Professor Palliser at Birmingham in the Sunday Times,

Reginald at Brighton (though this was purely by accident, in a paper he

picked up in the smoking-room of his hotel). It was even stated long

afterwards, in a volume of memoirs, that at Sandringham the Majesty of

England, augustly chatting with Lord Birlesmere (the Minister in

attendance), the Persian Ambassador, and the author of the memoirs, had

graciously deigned to remark that it was a very extraordinary affair.

In the papers, Lourdes, the King’s Evil, the Early Christians, Mrs.

Eddy, Mesmer, and other famous healers were introduced and, almost,

invoked. For the scenes in Rich all night had been such “as to baffle

description.” Once it had been understood that this impossible thing

was happening, that health was being restored, and that so simply, so

immediately, the house was almost rushed before the police could guard

it. The two old ladies-Mrs. Ferguson and her sister—with Mrs. Pentridge

were rushed up the stairs by Oliver, who, with one policeman by him,

stationed himself near the top, exhorting, arguing, fighting. The crowd

in the street was, with usual and immediate sympathy, continually

dividing to let cripples through or the blind and the deaf. Many came

rushing to borrow the Stone for the sick who could not come.

Sheldrake’s car, opposite the front-door, was turned into a kind of

Grand Stand. By midnight the whole place was in a tumult. The loss of

the Stone itself became an imminent danger. Sheldrake was continually

telling the police that it belonged to him; the police were concerned

with more difficult matters. But the reporters had it. “The Stone,”

they all declared, “was said to belong to Mr. Angus M. Sheldrake, the

well-known… ” and so on. It was known all over England on that

Sunday morning that Mr. Angus M. Sheldrake owned—whether at the moment

he actually possessed was a little doubtful—a miraculous Stone which

healed all illnesses at a mere wish.

 

“Well, really,” Lord Arglay said to himself, “Reginald seems to have

done it this time.”

 

Reginald was much of the same opinion. But neither he nor anyone else

of those concerned had any idea what to do next. The Persian Ambassador

took advantage of the afternoon quiet at Sandringham to point out to

Lord Birlesmere that if this were true, and if it were due to the relic

of which he had spoken, and if the news were telegraphed abroad the

most serious consequences might ensue. Lord Birlesmere took note of his

Excellency’s communication, and, later on, got through to Rivington

Court on the telephone. He had met Sheldrake two or three

times and Angus came to speak. But when he understood that the Foreign

Secretary was hinting at a personal interview he gave a little laugh.

 

“My dear Lord Birlesmere,” he said, “I couldn’t if I would. Not without

a couple of thousand soldiers and machine guns. They’re all round the

place, camping in the grounds, knocking

at the doors. Every town in the district has discharged its halt and

maimed here, and they all want me to heal them.”

 

“And do you?” Lord Birlesmere asked, fascinated by the idea.

 

“What?” said Mr. Sheldrake.

 

“But aren’t,” Lord Birlesmere went on, changing the subject, “aren’t

the County Authorities doing anything?”

 

“They’ve drafted all the police that they have to spare,” Sheldrake

told him, “and they’re communicating with London. But it doesn’t look

as if that would help me till tomorrow.”

 

“I’ll talk to the Home Office people,” Birlesmere said. “You won’t mind

promising not to leave England or get rid of the Stone till I’ve seen

you?”

 

Sheldrake hesitated. His chief wish was to get out of England with the

Stone; on the other hand his chances of doing so in the face of an

antagonistic Foreign Office were small, and he was conscious that there

were certain crises in which the Foreign Office would offer no strings

for him to pull—the ends would all discreetly disappear. He did not

completely understand why the Foreign Office was interfering at all;

the Stone hardly seemed to be their pigeon. He had gathered from

Cecilia when she returned the night before, or rather when he had

himself returned that morning, that the Government was mixed up with

it; and of course the Stone was said to have come from abroad. Still

 

“Well,” he said, “if you’ll get me out of this at once I don’t mind

promising to see you before I leave.”

 

“But can’t you really get away?” Lord Birlesmere asked. It seemed to

him inconceivable that any crowd could really prison a man in his own

country house, but that was because he had never seen it happen. The

concourse round Mr. Sheldrake’s front-door, between that and the

garage, trying to look in, and even to get in, at the windows,

continually flowing in through the gates, occupying the lawns, the

terraces, and the gardens, consisted of more people than Lord

Birlesinere had seen in all his life. They were quiet while they were

not interfered with, in an uncertain quiet. They doubted whether it was

much good their coming. They might, before evening, disperse from sheer

discouragement and hunger; but the one or two attempts made by an

insufficient band of police to shift them had merely produced

irritation and, once or twice, something like serious trouble.

 

Lord Birlesmere, discovering all this by gentle questioning, at last,

with some sort of qualified promise, put the receiver back and stared

at it. Soldiers were all very well, but the Government was shaky

enough, and what would the Opposition papers say if he used the Army to

hold back a crowd of suffering English men and women from their chance

of healing, and to ensure the escape of an American millionaire with

the source of healing in his possession? The Opposition would know, as

well as Mr. Sheldrake, as well as Lord Birlesmere himself, that the

idea of the Stone doing anything was rubbish. He wished the Prime

Minister was in London, but he wasn’t; he was in Aberdeen. The best

thing was obviously to get Sheldrake quietly to London—perhaps later

the crowd would disperse a bit—and then there was this Sir Giles

Tumulty the Persian Ambassador had mentioned—an interview there. What

on earth had Bruce Cumberland been doing, if anything? The thought of

the Ambassador suggested to Lord Birlesmere that it might be just as

well if he did not learn too much from the Persian; he didn’t want to

be put too clearly in possession of the views of a friendly Government.

Sheldrake had certainly better be removed quietly. He took such

measures as suggested themselves.

 

On the same Sunday evening the Hajji came round to Lord Arglay’s house.

The Chief Justice threw down the latest edition of a special evening

paper and greeted him with a certain pretended cynicism. “This, I

suppose,” he said, “is the evil you prophesied for the world—all this

healing, I mean?”

 

“There is not a great deal of healing so far; there is a great deal of

desire for healing,” Ibrahim answered. “That may be an evil. “

 

“If Sheldrake gets off to America with it, there’ll be an evil all

right,” Lord Arglay said. “I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if they passed

a special act to prevent him.”

 

“Can your Parliament do such things?” the Hajji asked.

 

“O rather,” Lord Arglay said. “Prevention of Removal of

Art Treasures, I should think. It’ll take Sheldrake as long as we like

to prove the Stone isn’t an Art Treasure. Or they may claim that the

sale is invalid because it never was Reginald’s; only then you’d want a

real claimant. And who could that be? Not me, obviously; not Giles—he

wouldn’t; not the Ambassador—they’d have to give it back to him.”

 

“You think they would not?” said the Hajji.

 

“I am absolutely and perfectly sure they would not,” Lord Arglay said.

“And really, Hajji, I don’t know that I blame them. After all, it’s not

the kind of thing that any one man or family or country even ought to

keep. I’m not at all sure it ought to be in existence at all, but after

what I’ve seen I can’t think how to destroy it. If you dropped it into

the Atlantic I should be afraid of it floating to the Esquimaux or some

such people. And it can’t be left loose. Look at what happens when it

is.”

 

“What then,” the Hajjji said, “do you think should be done with it?”

 

“I can’t think,” Lord Arglay said. “Unless the League of Nations? With

a special international guard? No? I was afraid you wouldn’t agree.”

 

“You are mocking at it and me,” the Hajji said.

 

“No, I’m not,” the Chief justice assured him. “I’m a little de-normally-mented about it. But I take it very seriously. When the

English take anything very seriously they always become a trifle

delirious. People tell you that we aren’t logical, but it isn’t true.

Only our logic is a logic of poetry. We are the Tom o’ Bedlam of the

nations, the sceptics of the world, and we have no hope at all, or none

to speak of—that is why we are always so good at adopting new ideas.

Look at the way Reginald adopted the Stone.”

 

The Hajji went on looking at him gravely. “And what are you going to do

now?” he said.

 

“I’m in several minds,” Lord Arglay said. “And one is to take the Stone

and will myself wherever what you call its

Types are and collect them all one by one, whether their present

possessors agree or not, and then will myself inside ,Vesuvius with

them all. And one is to go and look for this Pondon fellow. And another

is to go and knock Giles on the head. That’s three—and the fourth? The

fourth is to take the Stone and will it to do what it will with me.”

 

“And that is the most dangerous of all,” the Hajji said.

 

“After all,” Arglay argued, “if Miss Burnett seems to think she can get

wisdom -from it, why shouldn’t I?”

 

“Does she?” the Hajji asked.

 

“No, of course she doesn’t,” Lord Arglay said irritably. “It was I who

asked her that. Hajji, I’m just rambling. But what in God’s name can we

do?”

 

The Hajji brooded. “I think that it only knows,” he said. “But I dare

not use it at all, because