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

at the girl.”

 

“I know Arglay’s a legal hurdy-gurdy,” Sir Giles said, “but even he

wouldn’t play that tune. But why can’t I get any result? “

 

“You don’t think,” Palliser asked rather nervously, “that it’s because

you’d already decided what he was thinking?”

 

“Don’t be a damned fool,” said Sir Giles. “I hadn’t decided. I know his

feeling about the girl, of course. She’s a presentable bitch and

there’s only one thing an unmarried senility like Arglay could be

thinking. You don’t mean to tell me he’s merely altruistic? But he

can’t be thinking of lechery the whole time. He must be talking to her

about something—even God.”

 

The Professor continued persistent. “You don’t think you’re imposing

your view on him?” he said. “After all, these others -your housekeeper

and the rest—we didn t know or care what they were thinking about. But

Arglay and this girl—you do or you say you do.”

 

“Well, you don’t seem to be much nearer,” Sir Giles snapped. “What’s

this blithering imbecility about protecting God?”

 

“I may not have got it quite right,” Palliser admitted. “But

I certainly had the idea of protection, and of God. It may have been

the girl he wanted to protect.”

 

“A damn good word, protection,” Tumulty sneered, and for a minute or

two seethed up and down the room. Then he broke out: “Do you mean to

tell me Arglay can read my mind and I can’t read his?”

 

“You know best,” Palliser answered. “You know how far he knew what you

were doing, and how far you know what he

was.’

 

“He knew something about that Boy Scout of yours,” Sir Giles said, “so

he must have seen something. By the way, I suppose he—what was his

filthy name? Pondon?—is going on his merry-go-round just the same? I’d

like to have a look at him. I suppose we can?”

 

“Only take care you don’t get caught up in the past too,” palliser

said. “But I should think you could see him if you wanted to. As I

understand it, all the past still exists and it’s merely a matter of

choosing your point of view.”

 

“I don’t see,” Sir Giles said thoughtfully, “I really don’t see how

he’s ever going to get back. Birlesmere’s quite right—what we want is

to control the damned thing. If I could do that I’d—I’d make Arglay an

infant in arms and his girl an… an embryo again. Friday—Saturday—Sunday—Monday. It’ll very soon be four days to the minute since your

fellow willed. I suppose he just goes on willing when he reaches the

top point?”

 

“The Stone being there too?” Palliser asked.

 

“I suppose so,” Sir Giles meditatively answered. “If the past is

continually scaled off the present, the Stone is scaled off too. And he

goes on willing and dropping it. Let’s have a look at him, Palliser!”

Palliser hesitated a little. “We want to be careful only to look,” he

said. “Don’t forget that half-hour.”

 

Sir Giles looked black. “I don’t,” he said harshly. “But we can’t do

anything about that now. And we only want to see the past from the

present. Come along, Palliser, let’s try it. I desire—I will—to see—

what was his name? Hezekiah? O, Elijah—I will without passing into the

past to see Elijah Pondon—something like that, eh? What was the exact

time—a quarter to seven, wasn’t it? It’s almost that now.”

 

“Suppose,” Lord Arglay said to Chloe, “two persons, each holding the

Stone or its Type, wished opposite things at once, what would happen

then?”

 

“Nothing probably,” Chloe said.

 

“I wonder.” Lord Arglay looked at the Type before them. “Nothing—or

would the stronger will… ? The point is thisYou know the wretched

fellow Giles trapped? Well, he willed Of course; they must have

persuaded him so far. But he must have willed merely in obedience, in

anxiety to please, in a kind

of good-feeling—you see-? And at the moment he held a Type.” He paused.

 

“Yes?” Chloe asked.

 

“It’s all very difficult,” Lord Arglay sighed. “But if the Stone is what the Hajji says—indivisible and that sort of thing, mustn’t all the

Types be, so to speak, one? It sounds raving lunacy—but otherwise I

don’t see… And if they are, and if a fellow had one of the Types for

a moment, could we enlarge that moment by some other Type so that he

sawand did or didn’t do what he did before? Do you see?”

 

“Not very well,” Chloe said frankly. “Wouldn’t you be altering the

past?”

 

“Not really,” Lord Arglay went on arguing. “If the Types are one then

at his moment of holding his this fellow in Birmingham held this one,

and there his present touches our present.”

 

“But then—you mean that Time is in the Stone, not the Stone in Time?”

Chloe asked.

 

“Eh?” said Lord Arglay, “do I? I believe I do. Lucid mind! But keep

your lucidity on the practical aspect. Eschew the

metaphysics for a moment, and tell me—don’t you think we might offer

him other ways at that moment?”

 

“Why are we to be so anxious to help this poor man?” Chloe asked. “You

do dislike Sir Giles almost as much as I do, don’t you, Lord Arglay?”

 

“I dislike tyranny, treachery, and cruelty,” the Chief Justice said.

“And I think that this fellow has been betrayed and tyrannized over.

Whether it’s cruelty depends on what his past was like. Besides, it’s

got to be a kind of symbol for me—an omen. I can’t believe the Stone

likes it.”

 

“I don’t suppose it does,” Chloe said seriously.

 

A little startled, Lord Arglay looked at her. “My dear child,” he said,

“do you really think-?” But as she looked up at him it was so clear

that she did think exactly that, and that it seemed quite natural to

her, that he abandoned his protest.

 

“We are,” he thought to himself, “becoming anthropomorphic a little

rapidly. We shall be asking the Stone what it would like for breakfast

next.” He played privately with the fancy of the

the Stone absorbing sausages and coffee, and then decided to

postpone any protest for the moment. “After all, I don’t know any more

than she does,” he meditated, “perhaps it would like sausages and

coffee. Shall I end with a tribal deity? Well then, God help us all, it

shall be at least our deity and not Giles’s and

Sheldrake’s and Birlesmere’s. Much nicer for everyone, I should think.

Now that we know we create gods, do not let us hesitate in the work.”

He blinked inwardly at the phrase and proceeded. “But I have promised

to believe in God, and here is a temptation to infidelity

already, since I know that any god in whom I can believe will be

consonant with my mind. So if I believe it must be in a god consonant

with me. This would seem to limit God very considerably.”

 

“Do I really think what?” Chloe asked.

 

For a moment he did not answer. He considered her as she sat before

him, leaning a little forward, gravity closed over fire, waiting for

his answer, and “Yet it is very certain,” Lord )Arglay thought, “that

things beyond my conscious invention exist and are to be believed. Also

that if I choose to attribute such an admirable creation to God I am

thereby enlarging my own ideas of Him, which by themselves would never

have

reached it. So that in some sense I do believe outside

myself.”

 

“Nothing, nothing,” he said to Chloe. “Return we to our sheep, our ewe

lamb. If his will worked merely in courtesy, might it not be swept by a

stronger will?” He began to walk up and down the room. “You know,

Chloe, I’ve a good mind to try it.”

 

“Do be careful,” Chloe said, with considerable restraint.

 

“I shall be extremely careful,” Lord Arglay told her. “But don’t forget

we are rather relying on the Stone to assist us. I admit that it’s

purely logical and won’t go against our wills, but perhaps it might

even elucidate the will. Anyhow,” he added suddenly, “I’m going to

try. But what the devil do I say to it?”

 

He took up a pencil and a sheet of paper and sat down, remaining for

some minutes engrossed. When he had at last, in deep concentration,

made several marks on the paper he threw it to Chloe. “There,” he said.

 

It looked almost like a magical diagram. There was a rectangle in the

centre, with two or three small sketches within it which might have

been meant for human figures. Above it was written “6:45 or

thereabouts”, and next to it “Pondon”. Underneath “I will that in the

unity of the Stone I may know that moment and showthis present moment

to him who is in the past, and that I may return therefrom.”

 

“The last phrase,” Lord Arglay said, “sounds singularly unlike a

courageous English gentleman. But I shall do no good at all by being

stuck in last Friday. Otherwise it’s almost as good as the Hajji.”

 

“I think the Hajji would have added one thing,” Chloe answered, and

blushing a little wrote at the end “Under the Protection”; then she

said hastily, “What is the drawing meant to be?”

 

“That is the room where Giles’s experiment took place,” Lord Arglay

explained. “The squizzle on the right is Pondon, the Greek decoration

on the left is Palliser, and the thousand-legged Hindu god underneath

is Giles himself. It’s to help the mind. With the greatest respect to

the informing spirit of the Stone I don’t want to leave more to it than

I can help.” He looked at his watch. “Six-thirty-three,” he said.

“Ought one to give the Stone a little rope?”

 

“You think the exact time necessary?” Chloe asked.

 

“Not logically, no,” Arglay said. “It’s merely to help my own mind

again. Strictly one could reach six-forty-five on Friday from any time

now. But the nearer we are the sharper the crisis seems to me to be.

Silly, but true.”

 

“And what do I do?” Chloe asked.

 

Arglay looked at her a little wryly. “I think you’d better just sit

still,” he said. “You might pray a little if you feel sufficiently

accustomed to believing in God.” He picked up the Stone and settled

himself in his armchair. But before he could begin to concentrate Chloe

had moved her own chair to face him, and leaning forward, laid her

right hand over his that held the Stone. With her left she picked up

the diagram.

 

“Let me try too,” she said. “I’d rather not be left here alone. “

 

“Be warned,” Lord Arglay answered. “You may find yourself merely taking

down the history of Organic Law. Or even continually knocking

Palliser’s chair away from him and getting your fingers cut infinitely

often.”

 

“Let me try,” she urged again. “Or do you think I might spoil it?”

 

“No,” Arglay said. “I think you may save it. For I am sure you are the

only one of all of us who is heartily devoted to the Stone. Well, come

along then. Are you-comfortable?”

 

Chloe nodded. “Under the Protection,” she said softly and suddenly, and

Lord Arglay, smiling a little but not at all in scorn, gravely

assented: “Under the Protection.” And silence fell on the room.

 

Chloe was later on very indistinct in her own mind on what had actually

happened or seemed to happen. She was even shy of explaining it to Lord

Arglay, though she did manage to give him a general idea, encouraged by

the fact that he seemed to accept it as a perfectly normal incident.

For after some few