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

God?

 

Half-unconsciously her hand felt for it where it lay under her pillow

in its silken veil, and as she touched it sleep or some other healing

power flowed through her. Asleep or awake, at once or after a long

time—it seemed both in the dream that possessed her—she seemed to see

before her a great depth of space that changed itself while she looked

into it and became a hall with carved pillars and a vast crowd surging

through it. Far off she heard a roaring that grew louder and by its own

noise divided and ordered the crowd so that the many small scurrying

figures were heaped in masses on either side. She felt herself

somewhere among them, but not in any one place; she was carried through

them, seeing all round her brown faces and long dark beards and bright

turbans and cloaks, the roaring still in her ears. And then the crowd

opened before her and she saw suddenly the great centre of the whole,

but first in masses and only afterwards its own central height. For to

right and left as she gazed there expanded huge gatherings of seated

men: on the one side men in the same cloaks and head-dresses she had

already seen, with little rolls or boxes fastened to their foreheads

and wrists, and some of them held antique parchment in their hands.

Their faces were Jewish, and mostly very old and lined with much

thought, only here and there she saw one and another young and ardent

and again one and another still older than most but astonishingly full

and clear and happy. Over against them, but with a broad aisle between

them were another company, in many different garbs and all unknown to

her; or almost all, for among the turbans and helmets and diadems she

saw suddenly a Chinese mandarin sitting gravely watchful, and another

whose bearded

face came to her as if she had looked on it in a gallery of high

statuary among divine heads of Aphrodite and Apollo, of Theseus and

Heracles and Aesclepius. But most of the rest were strange and

terrible, only not so terrible as those on whom her eyes next rested.

For beyond these, and again in two opposing companies, she saw figures

that seemed larger or lesser than mortal man, and other figures who

were of other natures and kept in them only a faint image of humanity.

There a seeming fountain twisted its ascending and descending waters

into such a simulacrum, and there again was one having many heads, and

one again whose writhing arms encircled him round and round and

sometimes leapt forth and were again retrieved till it seemed as if the

ancient Kraken itself had become human. Over and among them flew many

birds and by their flights her glance was drawn upward till she saw

that the whole roof of that place was formed of birds, vibrating and

rising and falling with persistent but unequal motion, with colours

gleaming and iridescent or dull and heavy. In front there hung

immovable one huge monster of a bird like the father and lord of all

that are of the eagle and vulture tribe, with his eyes filmed and his

head and dreadful beak a little on one side as though he listened to

all he could not see. And as she shuddered and looked down she saw

below him a number of huge lions’ heads, and the red jaws opened in a

terrific roar as the beasts seemed, some to crouch before the spring,

some to be high-ramping in a wild fury. In this last astonishment all

former wonder was swallowed up—and that she felt surprise and awe she

knew even then, and knew also that she did not truly dream, but even

while the beasts raged and roared there passed between them a note of

music and a voice sang “Praise to the Eternal One; glory and honour and

adoration be to the Lord God of Israel; blessed be He!” and immediately

the noise of the beasts sounded in one answering roar and was still,

and they also. Then Chloe saw them stand fixed, on the steps of a

throne, six on the one side, six on the

other; and the throne itself was above and behind them, carved as it

were out of sapphire, very deep and clear; and on the throne a king

sat, with a crown on his head. In the crown was the Stone, and it shone

with a soft whiteness, and in it, amid the gold, in a deep blackness

the letters of the Name were moving and glowing. Below the throne Chloe

saw the companies assembled, the companies of the doctors of the Law

and of the ambassadors from many lands, and the awful Djinn and Angels,

diabolic or divine, who waited on the word of Suleiman ben Daood, king

in Jerusalem. Then she looked again at the king, and saw that his right

hand lay closed upon his vestmented knees, but while she looked he

lifted it slowly up, the whole assemblage bowing themselves to the

ground, and opened it. But what was in or on it Chloe did not see, for

there leapt upon her from it a blinding light, and at once her whole

being felt a sudden devastating pain and then a sense of satisfaction

entire and exquisite, as if desires beyond her knowledge had been

evoked and contented at once, a perfect apprehension, a longing and a

fulfilment. So intense was the stress that she shrieked aloud;

immediately it was gone, and she found herself standing upright by the

side of the bed, trembling, open-mouthed, holding agonizedly to its

framework.

 

She sank onto it and remained exhausted. Only it seemed in a little

that the noise of the lions was still in her ears and a voice with it.

Gradually she found the voice was saying: “Miss Burnett! Miss Burnett!

Are you all right, Miss Burnett?” and knew it for the landlady’s.

 

“Yes, Mrs. Webb, yes, all right, thank you,” Chloe stammered. “It was

just—it was—it was something in my sleep. I’m so sor—I mean, I was—please, it’s quite, quite all right.”

 

“Are you sure?” Mrs. Webb said, still doubtfully. “I thought You were

being killed.”

 

“Thank you so very much,” Chloe said again, and then in a sudden rush

of heroic virtue got to her feet, struggled across the room, unlocked

the door, and spoke comfortingly to the

anxious Mrs. Webb till the old lady at last went away. Chloe shut the

door, with a desolating sense that she had forgotten everything, went

back to bed, and as she stretched herself down into it went off

immediately into a profound sleep.

 

So profound and effective was it that she was rather more than half an

hour late the next morning in arriving at Lancaster Gate, where she

found Lord Arglay in a high state of excitement. “Don’t apologize,” he

said, “but I thought you were never coming. Nothing wrong? No, all

right, that’s merely my rubbing it in. Look at this and all will be

forgiven.” He held out to her the morning paper, directing her eyes to

a remote paragraph. “Strange Incident at Birmingham,” she read.

“Missing Man Burgles Laboratory.”

 

“The laboratory assistant Elijah Pondon who was supposed to have lost

his memory at Birmingham was discovered this morning in curious

circumstances. When the senior demonstrator visited the laboratory late

last night during Professor Palliser’s absence in London, whose

assistant the missing man was, he found Pondon already there. His

entrance is at present inexplicable as he had no key, and the

laboratory had not been in use during yesterday. Efforts to obtain a

statement have not so far succeeded, as he appears to be in a dazed

condition. It is supposed he must have some means of entry known only

to himself.”

 

” ‘Means of entry known only to himself,”’ Lord Arglay said. ” ‘Dazed

condition’! I should think he probably was in dazed condition. But

we’ve done it, child. We’ve given him means of entry known… and so

forth.”

 

“We?” Chloe said.

 

“We,” Lord Arglay said firmly. “By virtue of the Stone, if you like,

but after all it was we who determined and tried—determined, dared, and

done. Heavens, how pleased I am!” His mood changed and he began to walk

up and down the room. “I wonder what Pondon makes of it,” he said.

“Does he know anything? does he guess anything? What did he see, feel,

or do? or didn’t he do, feel, or see anything? Has he just linked up

with Friday night? or does his memory…” His

voice died as he meditated.

 

Chloe fingered the paper. “Do you think we ought to know?” she asked.

 

“I don’t know about ‘ought,’ ” Lord Arglay answered, “but I should very

much like to know. Why?”

 

“I was wondering,” Chloe said. “I could go to Birmingham if you liked

and talk to him a little.”

 

“Things are getting so frightfully complicated,” the Chief Justice

sighed. “There’s the Government and Sheldrake and Giles and the

Persians and the Mayor—all busy about it.”

 

Chloe mentally added Frank Lindsay to the list, and might (had she

known in what confidences Mr. Lindsay’s irritation had resulted) have

added also the Secretary of the National Transport Union. But she said

nothing.

 

“I don’t really like letting you out of my sight,” Arglay went on. “Yet

it might be useful to know what this Pondon knows—if anything,” he

added dubiously. “Is there anyone who could go with you? What about

your friend Mr. Lindsay?”

 

“No, O no,” Chloe said, stopped, and went on. “But what do you think

could possibly happen, Lord Arglay? They haven’t any reason to do

anything to me.”

 

“I told you last night,” the Chief Justice answered, “that they’re

bound to want to get all the Types into their possession—Sheldrake and

the Government anyhow, and I suppose the Persians, only they don’t

stand a chance. And now there’ll be the Mayor too; I don’t believe he

realizes yet that I have one.”

 

“You didn’t tell him?” Chloe asked.

 

“No,” Arglay answered. “I’m becoming very shy of telling

anyone anything about the Stone. But he’s bound to hear, and then he’ll

be at me to go down to Rich on a mission of healing. Well, I won’t.”

 

This possibility was a new idea to Chloe and for a few moments she

gazed at Lord Arglay in silence.

 

“You won’t?” she asked at last, consideringly.

 

“I withdraw ‘won’t,’ ” he answered, “because I don’t really know from

moment to moment what I shall be doing. I may. I may find myself

sitting in the market place or the Old Moot Hall or whatever they have

there, handing the Stone to one after another, and watching the sick

take up their beds and walk. Or at least get off them. O don’t, don’t

let’s go into that now. Would you like to go to Birmingham?”

 

“I think I should rather,” Chloe said. “I should like to see the man

you saved. And whether he feels anything about it.,, Lord Arglay went

to the telephone. With his hand on the

receiver he paused. “Do you remember Mr. Doncaster?” he asked.

 

“Yes, of course,” Chloe said. “Why?”

 

“Did you like Mr. Doncaster?” Lord Arglay went on.

 

“He seemed quite nice and intelligent, I thought,” Chloe answered. “I

didn’t trouble about him much.”

 

“Would you mind him coming to Birmingham with you?” Arglay said.

 

“It seems quite unnecessary,” Chloe objected. “But no—not if you would

like him to. It’s nice of you to worry-” she added suddenly.

 

The Chief Justice, engaged in ringing up the hotel where the Mayor and

Oliver had found a night’s shelter, waved a hand,