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

we knew what it was.”

 

“It’s the First Matter,” Sir Giles said. “I told you that was what I

thought it was, and I’m more sure than ever now. It’s that which

becomes everything else.”

 

“But how does it work?” Palliser asked. “How does all this movement

happen? How does it carry anyone about in space?”

 

“It doesn’t,” Sir Giles answered immediately. “Can’t you see that it

doesn’t move people about like an aeroplane display. Once you are in

contact and you choose and desire and will, you go into it and come out

again where you have desired because everything is in it, anyhow. Do

try and see further than a wax doll on a Christmas tree can.”

 

“So that if you were set in contact you might, even if you only partly

knew… ?” Palliser began slowly and stopped.

 

“I expect so,” Sir Giles said sweetly, “if your hearse of a

mind could only get to the cemetery a bit quicker. What might you?”

 

“I was thinking of Pondon,” Palliser went on. “That might explain how

it was that he’s… returned?”

 

“He’s what?” Sir Giles said sharply. “What d’you mean, Palliser? He

hadn’t a Stone, had he?”

 

“Your brother-in-law must have done it,” Palliser answered, feeling

some pleasure at the connexion. “You know you thought you saw him when

we were trying to get at Pondon the other night and failed. There seems

to have been a paragraph in the paper, but I missed that. But when I

got to Birmingham yesterday morning, he was there. He’d been found in

the laboratory when my demonstrator went in at about ten o’clock. He

was a bit bewildered then, I gathered, so I went round to see him. And

who do you think I found there?”

 

“Arglay!” Sir Giles exclaimed. “By God, I’ll tear Arglay into bits.”

 

“Not Arglay,” Palliser went on, “but that girl who was with him—his

secretary. She’d told him some tale and got on his right side, for

there he was talking away to her, and telling her how he couldn’t make

out what had happened. I was rather sorry I’d turned up at first,

though he was quite all right with me—asked me if the vibrations were

all right. You remember we told him some tale about testing etheric

vibrations—on the lines of my Discontinuous Integer?”

 

“He was damn near being a discontinuous integer himself,”

Sir Giles said snappily. “And what had Arglay’s woman to say about it?”

 

“I don’t like it,” Palliser answered. “O she didn’t say much, just

cooed at him now and then. But from what he said, while he was doing

his job as usual, he found his hand holding this Stone—and he knew he’d

been holding it, so (as far as I could understand) he took a tighter

grip and said to himself, “This is where I ought to be.” And then he

remembers pitching right over, and there the demonstrator found him.

But that girl and Arglay have had something to do with it, and if

they’re going to interfere continually-”

 

Sir Giles put up a hand as if for silence, and sat meditating for

several minutes. Then he drew a deep breath and got up. “I’m going to

try something,” he said. “I’ve had enough of this young Hecate mixing

herself up with my affairs because that bestial leprechaun who employs

her tells her to. I’ll give Miss Chloe Burnett something else to do

with her mind, and perhaps with mine. If she can use the Stone so can

other people. Where is it? Go away now, Palliser, and let me try.”

 

It was perhaps the greatest mistake which Giles Tumulty had ever made

to allow what had been in general a cold, if rather horrible, sincerity

of investigation into remote states of mind to become violently shaken

by a personal hatred of his brother-in-law. He and Arglay had always

mutually despised each other, but until now they had neverbeen in

conflict. The chances of the last few’days however had turned them from

contemptuous acquaintances into definite enemies. Indeed at that

moment, though no one of those connected with the progress of the Stone

and its Types had realized it, the Chief Justice. and his secretary

were becoming the only single-minded adherents it possessed. Lord

Arglay certainly could not be thought to feel any passionate devotion

to it; but he strongly disliked all that he saw and felt of the greed

by which it was surrounded. The Persian Government, the English

GovernMent, the American millionaire and his wife—these he knew; and

there were others he did not know-Merridew and Frank Lindsay; even, in

some sense, though a holier, the Mayor of Rich and the Hajji Ibrahim.

All for good or evil desired to recover the Stone, and use it, and most

of them desired greatly to possess all its Types as well. Doncaster and

Mrs. Pentridge hardly knew enough or were hardly in sufficient contact

with the movements it had caused to make any demand. But Lord Arglay,

at once in contact and detached, at once faithless and believing,

beheld all these things in the light of that fastidious and ironical

goodwill which, outside mystical experience, is the finest and noblest

capacity man has developed in and against the universe. And now this

itself was touched by a warmer consciousness, for as far as might be

within his protection and certainly within his willing friendship,

there was growing the intense secret of Chloe’s devotion to the

Mystery. As if a Joseph with more agnostic irony than tradition usually

allows him sheltered and sustained a Mary of a more tempestuous past

than the Virgin-Mother is believed to have either endured or enjoyed,

so Lord Arglay considered, as far as it was clear to him, his friend’s

progress towards the End of Desire. To that shelter and sustenance she

had eagerly returned from her absence on the Birmingham errand, and she

and her companion were now telling him and the Hajji, who had been

summoned, of the occurrences of that errand.

 

Of one thing however Chloe did not speak. She might have gradually

revealed it to Lord Arglay, but she certainly was not going to mention

it before the Hajji, and as in a way Mr. Doncaster was it or the

occasion of it she could not before him. Chloe had usually found a

fairly long train journey–especially in the first class compartment

Lord Arglay had naturally assumed she would take—in the company of an

intelligent and personable young man who rather obviously admired her,

a very pleasant, and even exciting, method of spending the time. There

was so happy a mixture of the known and the unknown; there was all the

possibility of advance and yet all the suretY

of withdrawal—there was in short such admirable country for campaigning

that she could not very clearly understand why she had today looked at

it without any thought of a campaign. She had thrown out a squadron or

so to check Mr. Doncaster’s early moves, and had with small expenditure

of effort immobilized him. The journeys were ended and there was no

regret. She must, Chloe thought when she became conscious of this, be

terribly excited. But she was not excited. She only wanted to serve the

Stone—and Lord Arglay—as much as Lord Arglay—and the Stone—wanted.

There was a slight doubt in her mind which of them, if it came to a

crisis, was the more important, but it hadn’t come to a crisis and very

likely never would. Once or twice her experience in the operation which

she and the Chief justice had directed occurred to her; with the

suggestion of a possibility that there indeed a choice beyond her

knowledge had been made and a first separation from mortality dutifully

and sadly undergone. It would have seemed to her silly. and pretentious

to put it like that, but when she said to herself: “I don’t think

perhaps I shall care about it so much,” it might have meant much the

same thing, at least to any of the Types of the Stone or to the wisdom

of Suleiman ben Daood, king in Jerusalem.

 

“We went to the University first,” Doncaster was saying, “but he wasn’t

there, and they didn’t or wouldn’t know anything, so we went to his

house.”

 

“How did you find it?” the ChiefJustice put in.

 

“Telephone Directory,” Doncaster said. “That was my idea -I thought in

his position he’d almost have to be on, and he was. But it was Miss

Burnett got us into the house—the usual kind of house; just the thing

you’d expect of him. He lived with his mother, and I thought we could

swear we were journalists; but before I could say anything-” He paused

and looked at Chloe.

 

“And what did Miss Burnett swear you were?” Lord Arglay

asked.

 

“I said we were his friends,” Chloe answered, with a simplicity and a

certainty in her voice which-Arglay thoughtwould have opened any doors.

Some new completeness seemed to be growing in her. He permitted himself

to test it with another question.

 

“And did you also think it was the kind of house You would expect of

him?” he asked, throwing a side glance of humorous apology at

Doncaster.

 

Chloe frowned a little. “I don’t think I know,” she said, “I mean, I

didn’t expect anything. It was—it was a house, and he and his mother

lived in it. I don’t see what more one could say.”

 

“It didn’t,” Arglay asked again, “seem to you of any particular kind?”

 

“It was a very nice house,” Chloe said, “but—no, I didn’t notice

anything else.”

 

“It had an aspidistra in the window,” Doncaster put in.

 

“It certainly had,” Chloe agreed, “and a very good aspidistra too. I

admired it.”

 

Lord Arglay signed to Doncaster to go on—after a slightly perplexed

glance at Chloe, he obeyed.

 

“So Miss Burnett said, ‘We are his friends,’ and his mother let us in

and took us to the aspidistra, and presently he came in. So we—at least

Miss Burnett—told him she knew all about

it….-”

 

“Did you?” Arglay interrupted.

 

“Well, in a way,” Chloe answered. “It seemed as if he thought he had

seen me before; he looked at me so hesitatingly at first. And I said I

knew something of what had happened, and was anxious to know if we

could do anything more to help him. So we… we stammered a little at

one another, and then he broke out. He said he didn’t know what had

happened. He remembered Professor Palliser talking to him about etheric

vibrations, and asking him to test them by wishing—he said wishing—to

be at an earlier point of time, and then he wondered if he had been.”

 

“He was very muddled about it all,” Doncaster added. “And about what

happened afterwards: he was doing his job in his usual manner and

suddenly he felt as if he were holding on to a post and something was

saying to him, ‘This is the way.’ He couldn’t get nearer than that. And

he saw a kind of photograph in the air.”

 

“A what?” Lord Arglay exclaimed.

 

“He didn’t say a photograph,” Chloe cried out. “He said a picture. “

 

“He said, to be exact, ‘a picture just like a photograph’,” Doncaster

insisted, “of the same room. And it got bigger. But go on, Miss

Burnett.”

 

“I think he saw them in the Unity,” Chloe said. “He said he felt as if

he’were standing between them, and he didn’t know which he ought to be

in, but it was frightfully important for him to choose rightly. And he

wondered which the Professor and his friends wanted. But then he

thought he saw…” she hesitated…“me in one of them,