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

at her in a hurt surprise. “I shouldn’t think I was asking

very much,” he said, “not if you really want me to pass. You might know

that I wouldn’t ask you to do anything unfair. It doesn’t put me in a

better position; it only prevents me being in a worse. They’d all do as

much if they could.”

 

“I don’t care if they would or not. I don’t care whether it’s right or

fair or whatever you call it or not,” Chloe answered. “Frank, do try

and see it. It’s just that we can’t use the Stone like that.”

 

“But why not?” Frank asked in mere bewilderment. “If it can do all

those things? Your Lord Arglay’s been using it, hasn’t he?”

 

“Not for himself,” Chloe answered.

 

“But I’m not asking you to use it for yourself. It’s really an

unselfish thing you’d be doing in lending it to me, or giving me one,”

Frank urged. “I did think you’d like me to passbut I suppose you don’t

care about that either.”

 

“Don’t be, beastly, Frank,” Chloe said.

 

“It doesn’t look much like it, anyhow,” the misguided Frank went on.

“You don’t seem to mind other people being helped—and I don’t

understand why you won’t. You’ve always been out to make the best of

your chances, and you won’t do the same for me. You’d use it quick

enough to save yourself being sacked, I expect.”

 

“I wouldn’t,” Chloe said sharply. “I wouldn’t use it to buy myself food

if I was starving.”

 

“O don’t talk rubbish,” Frank said and fell into sullenness. They

walked on silently. He had dropped her arm or she had dropped his;

anyhow, they were disjoined. Her hands were empty but for the handbag,

and in that ridiculous bag the absurd Cause. It seemed from its

seclusion to taunt her. “Throw me away,” it seemed to be saying, “throw

me into the gutter. Am I worth all this trouble?” It wouldn’t, she

thought, with a touch of sanity, please Frank any better if she did—not

Frank. He wouldn’t appreciate the gesture. Besides, it wasn’t her

business to throw it away. “I am yours,” the Stone gibed at her, “your

own—throw me away. You’re in danger of throwing him away.” From

somewhere her memory brought up a text-“My lovers and friends hast thou

set afar from me; and hid my acquaintance out of my sight.” She didn’t

want him to go like this.

 

“Darling,” she breathed tentatively, “don’t be cross. I’d do anything I

could.”

 

“That,” said Frank coldly, “isn’t true, Chloe. It’s a quite simple

thing and you won’t do it. Very well; it’s your Stone. But it’s no good

saying you’d do it if you could. You can and you won’t.”

 

“Do it,” something said to her, “do it. Why ever not? Are you setting

up to know what’s right? Do it, and be a real friend to him.”

Friendship—after all, ought she to do for her friend what she wouldn’t

do for herself? Ought she to break her heart and do it? Was it only her

own wish she was safeguarding?

 

From her own point of view it was by the mercy of the Stone that Frank

said again at this moment, with a touch of superior and angry

rationalism-“Yes, you can and you won’t.”

 

“Very well then,” Chloe said, stopping dead. “I can and I won’t. And

now go away. Go away or I shall hate you. Go.”

 

“I prefer to see you right home,” Frank said formally.

 

“I don’t want you to,” Chloe said. “I can’t bear it. O Frank do go-”

 

“I don’t want to be nasty,” he said irresolutely, “but I can’t see why

you won’t. I’ve explained to you that it wouldn’t be unfair.”

 

“I know, I know,” Chloe said. “Good-night. I’ll write tomorrow.”

 

“O well, good-night,” Frank answered, and found himself looking after

her in a temper of which he had never imagined she could be the cause.

“So ridiculous,” he thought; “women never can reason clearly, but I did

think she was more intelligent. It isn’t very much to ask her to do for

anyone she professes to like. But it’s always the same; everybody wants

to have their own way.”

 

Still meditating on the insufficiency of human virtue he turned back

towards the terminus at the bottom of Highgate Hill. Anxious, however,

as he might be, to see Chloe’s point of view, it eluded him with

persistent ingenuity. As a friend, as something-well, different from a

friend-she ought to havc wanted to help him. Not that he found it easy

to accept the Stone, but his incredulity was a good deal intimidated by

the sudden arrival of Mrs. Sheldrake on the Saturday, the columns of

the Sunday papers, the rather mysterious position of Lord Arglay, and

Chloe’s own great concern with it. He thought rather vaguely of radium,

vita-glass, magnetism, and psychoanalysis, the possibility of some

quickening power exercised on the brain, or some revitalization of the

nervous functions. The last phrase appeared plausible enough to cover

all instances of recovery to health and what—so far as he could see—

was a sort of mind-reading. As for movement in space—perhaps it

was hardly so satisfactory there. Nervous functions would have to be

thoroughly vitalized in order….

 

A fresh voice interrupted him. He looked up to see another friend—but

this time a young man.

 

“Hullo, Carnegie,” he said gloomily.

 

Albert Carnegie looked at him with an irritating cheerfulness.

 

“What’s the gloom about?” he asked. “Why the misery?”

 

“I’m not miserable,” Lindsay said perversely. “Why should I be

miserable?”

 

“Sorry,” Carnegie answered. “I thought you were looking a bit under the

weather.”

 

“It’s this damned examination, I expect,” Lindsay said. “I’ve been

sticking to it close enough, these last days.”

 

Carnegie turned. “I’ll walk back with you,” he said. “How’s Miss

Burnett?”

 

“Well enough, I suppose,” Miss Burnett’s friend answered. “But she’s

got mixed up with all the business about this Stone in the papers, and

she’s a bit on edge about it.”

 

“What, the Stone that makes people well?” Carnegie asked.

 

“Makes anyone do anything,” Lindsay told him, “so far as I can

understand. Makes people fly or jump or see into each other’s minds, so

they say.”

 

“Fly!” the other exclaimed.

 

“Well, if you don’t call getting from one place to another in

practically no time flying, I don’t know what you do call it,” Lindsay

said. “And I saw something like it happen myself, so I can’t say it’s

all tripe.”

 

“Do you mean you saw someone move through the air by using this Stone?”

Carnegie asked.

 

“I saw a woman suddenly appear where she hadn’t beenand Chloe says

she’s seen it done, seen Lord Arglay disappear and reappear and have

been somewhere in between. It all sounds nonsensical enough, but what

with what I saw and Chloe and the papers together I don’t know what to

think.”

 

Carnegie walked on for some distance in silence, his mind occupied with

a side of the question which had so far onlY occurred to Mr. Sheldrake

and Reginald Montague and to them in a limited sense. But Carnegie’s

occupation happened to be in the headquarters of the National Transport

Union, and while Lindsay was talking there came to him the idea that

if—only if, because of course there couldn’t—but if there were

anything to it, then it was the sort of it that the General Secretary

of the Union would think was most distinctly his own business. Any

violent disturbance of transport would be, and this would be a very

violent disturbance. At least if there were more thanone, or perhaps a

few Stones. It was against nature that there should be more.

 

“I suppose there are only one or two Stones in existence, so far as we

know?” he said in a few minutes, as casually as possible.

 

“It doesn’t seem to matter,” Lindsay answered, still brooding over his

grievance. He broke into a short explanation of his desires and was

gratified by the concentration with which Carnegie listened. “So that,”

he ended, “I really don’t think it’s too much to suggest. It gives her

no trouble and no one could call it unfair.”

 

“And every single one of these things has the same power?” Carnegie

asked.

 

“I know it’s all ridiculous, but that’s their story,” Lindsay agreed.

“So one would think that Chloe…”

 

“And who have got them now?” Carnegie interrupted.

 

“Well, Chloe has, and this Sheldrake man, and Arglay I suppose… I

wish Chloe wasn’t with Arglay; I think he’s none too good an influence.

These lawyers are such hidebound pedants very often, and Chloe’s rather

open to suggestion. I don’t mean that she’s weak exactly, but she’s

rather overanxious to please, and doesn’t take her own line sometimes

as strongly as she ought to. Now she might have seen that in a thing

like this she ought to exercise her own judgement and not be dominated

by legal forms.”

 

. “Yes,” said Carnegie, whom Chloe only interested at the moment as one

of the holders of the Stone. “Anyhow there must be a good few knocking

about at the present moment,

and more to be made at any time?”

 

They had come out into the main road opposite a large Evening News

placard which announced “Interview with Mrs. Ferguson.” Another close

by stated “Where the Stone came from,” and a star placard “The Stone—Government Action. Official.” The Evening Standard’s “The Situation at

Rich” was comparatively out of date. Carnegie looked at them. It might

be, it certainly was, a hoax somehow or other, but even as a hoax he

thought the General Secretary would like to know. The only question

was—now or in the morning? At the Tube entrance he left Lindsay who

went on his way meditating over Chloe’s perversity.

 

If he had been able to press his request again at that moment he might

have gained it. For Chloe was lying in bed, miserable enough, and, with

her habitual disposition (as Mr. Lindsay had very nearly understood) to

wonder if she had behaved unkindly to others, was almost regretting her

firmness. It seemed now so small a thing that Frank had wanted, and she

might have been merely selfishly one—ideaed—and her own ideaed in

refusing him. After all, Lord Arglay had made use of the Stone. Yes,

but that had been for someone else’s good. And had not she been asked

only to help another’s good? It wasn’t her examination. And would not

Lord Arglay have had her use it for her own good? had not he bidden her

use it, if need were, if there were danger? Yes, danger, but Frank’s

desire to pass an examination could hardly be called danger. (Besides

even in danger—could she?) She couldn’t see Lord Arglay using it to

make himself Chief Justice, though he might to ensure a right judgement

and proper sentence. But had she any right to inflict on Frank her own

interpretation of what the Chief Justice’s will might be? Frank had no

particular use for the Chief Justice. It would be, she thought,

convenient if they could ask of Suleiman ben Daood himself what the

proper use of the Stone was, though even Suleiman, as far as she

remembered the legends she had studied a few days before, had fallen

sometimes from wisdom. Asmodeus had sat on his throne, and pharaoh’s

daughter had deceived him, and he had built altars to strange gods. She

remembered Lord Arglay’s bargain of that evening; was she really

supposed to be believing in God? And if so, who? or what? Suleiman’s?

Presumably. Or Octavius Caesar’s or Charlemagne’s or Haroun-al-Raschid’s—supposing they all had one? Or the Stone’s own