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

the time, for since then he

had become gradually aware of how strong, within his public feeling and

his desire for the good of the common folk, had been the hope to save

that son who lay cancer-stricken at home, and also of what a strong

case Merridew might present for the suppression of the Stone. He had

supposed good to be single, and it was divided; to be clear, and it was

very clouded; to be inevitable, and it was remotely receding. With dull

eyes, and a heart almost broken by public and private pain, he faced

the Home Secretary.

 

“I have come to know if you have any news for me,” he said.

 

Mr. Garterr Browne shook a sympathetic head. “I am afraid,” he

said, “that What I have is, in a sense, worse even than you might fear.

In fact, we have discovered that the matter has settled itself.” He

paused and the Mayor stared at him; then he resumed. “Yes, settled

itself You see,” he picked up the stone that lay on the table, “you see

apparently this thing changes; at least, I mean a change comes in it.

It doesn’t retain its powers. Lord Birlesmere here will bear me out

that we have been very much startled and shocked to find that after a

while the qualities of the Stone, the special qualities both of

transport and medicine, disappear. It becomes apparently just an

ordinary piece of… mineral. We are, as I told you, having it

investigated, but our advisers report to the worst effect, and I am

bound to say that what Lord Birlesmere and I myself have been able to

see has confirmed us in accepting that report. It may be that the air

has a… a modifying effect or that some inherent virtue becomes

exhaustedlike radium, I mean like radium doesn’t if you follow me. It

may be that some central ray-diffusing nucleus disperses itself

gradually. I couldn’t say. But as a result—well, there we are. Nothing

happens. I chanced,” Mr. Garterr Browne went on suddenly, apparently

resolving to do the whole business well, while he was about it-“I

happened to have neuralgia early this morning rather badly, and so of

course I thought… But there it is, my neuralgia didn’t stop. I’m

very sorry to have to tell you this, for I know what you must be

feeling, what indeed I’m feeling myself. But there it is. Truth will

out.”

 

With this sudden peroration Mr. Garterr Browne put the stone back on

his table and looked at the Mayor. The Mayor, without invitation, sat

down suddenly. He stared at the stone which, up to now, he had not

seen.

 

“This is it?” he asked.

 

“This is it,” Mr. Garterr Browne said regretfullly, while Lord

Birlesmere inhaled audibly and thought of that earlier moment when Lord

Arglay’s secretary had made a scene in a Government office on behalf of

the Stone of Suleiman. How much quieter things were, he considered,

round Browne’s stone! If only it could be kept up, and after all there

was no reason why it shouldn’t be. No one could tell, except by the

general growth of peace and quiet, which stone had really better exist.

Strong measures perhaps, but difficult times required strong measures.

 

The Mayor said slowly: “Do your scientific men, your doctors, assure

you that this is quite useless?”

 

“Alas, yes,” Mr. Garterr Browne said reluctantly.

 

“And what of the other Stones?” the Mayor asked. “Have they also become

useless?”

 

“Well, so far as we can test them,” the Home Secretary answered, with

an air of complete frankness. “There are one or two we haven’t got, of

course. There’s Sir Giles Tumulty’s; he’s working on it, so no doubt we

shall hear.”

 

There was a short silence. Then the Mayor said, “It is certain that

this Stone can do nothing?”

 

“It is perfectly certain,” Mr. Garterr Browne answered, tasting the

words as if he were enjoying the savour of the truth that they

contained, “that this stone can do nothing.”

 

The Mayor stretched out his hand, picked up the stone, looked at it,

turned it over in his hand, and then sat for a moment holding it. At

this last moment of his hopes, when he realized that, in consequence of

this new discovery of the mysterious nature of the stone, he was about

to return to Rich disappointed and crushed and compelled to crush and

disappoint—at this moment it was impossible for him not to make one

last personal effort. It was useless, of course, but if any virtue

remained, if, defeated in the State, he could still succeed in the

household by some last lingering potency, if he could help his son.-He

shaped the wish to himself and put all his agony and desire into it,

clutching tightly the useless bit of matter meanwhile,. and the two

Ministers watched him with rather obvious patience. At last he stirred,

put it down, and stood up.

 

“It seems I can do no more,” he said. “I will go back to Rich and tell

them that there is no hope.”

 

“A great pity,” Lord Birlesmere said, speaking for the first time; and

“A very great pity,” said Mr. Garterr Browne, adding, both to create a

good impression and with an eye to any extremely improbable future

eventualities, “Of course, if any fresh change should occur, if (for

example) it should be in any way cyclic, I pledge you my word to let

you know. But I haven’t much hope. A most remarkable phenomenon—that it

should have reasonably aroused such hope.”

 

“A very common phenomenon—that the dying should hope for life,” said

the Mayor, and with one abrupt farewell went out.

 

“And now,” Garterr Browne said, leaning across his table towards

Birlesmere, “now for Tumulty.”

 

The Foreign Secretary in turn leant a little forward, so that to

observant eyes, perhaps to Lord Arglay’s, the two might have seemed as

they bowed towards each other across the office table and the mock

stone, like two figures of cherubim bowing over another Ark than that

which was in the Temple of Suleiman, and over the false treasures of an

illusory world. The light of the Shekinah was hidden, but there was

something of a light in Mr. Garterr Browne’s eyes as he said,

“Birlesmere, now we’ve got rid of him, now he’s been worked, is there

any reason why we shouldn’t have it”-he dropped his voice a little”and

stick to it? You and I and Sheldrake if we must, and Tumulty to

experiment? It may be able to do very great things. Life—for all we

know; and gold—for all we know; and control.”

 

Lord Birlesmere paled a little, but he also had felt during the last

few days a small and strange desire moving in his heart, and he did not

dispute with his colleague. He only said, “Can it be done?”

 

“Let us talk to Tumulty,” Mr. Garterr Browne answered and took up the

telephone.

 

It was, however, much later in the evening before Sir Giles could be

got hold of. He had that day been again to Wandsworth considering the

detestable bed where the living and broken victim-of his experiment

lay, sustained against all likelihood in a dreadful mortality by the

rigorous operation of the Stone. He had then proceeded to a hospital

where he proposed to institute a series of experiments to see how far

health could be restored or abolished, and to note the effect of the

Stone upon the bodies in a state of disease, and he had made

arrangements to visit a madhouse on the next day, where among the

merely imbecile he hoped to be able to measure the degree of personal

will necessary for any working. He was consequently both tired and

snappy when the Home Secretary began talking, and shut down on the

conversation in a few minutes.

 

“It’s always the same damnable chit-chat,” he muttered as he went up to

his bedroom and flung his Type on a table by the bed. “Always this

infernal control. I’d control them fast enough if I could. If I could

get past whatever sailor’s knot the thing tied itself into the other

day when I wanted to try it on that bitch of Arglay’s. Can’t that hog-headed paroquet of a Secretary have Arglay and her jailed for something

or other? I can’t get rid of a notion that she’s peering over the

blasted thing at me. Am I losing my nerve and beginning to see things?”

He had sat down, half-undressed, on the side of the bed, and in a

sudden outbreak of rage he picked up the Stone again. “Damn you,” it

was Chloe whom he half-unconsciously apostrophized, “are you tucked

away in it as if it was Arglay’s bed? I only wish I could get at you.”

 

As he spoke the Stone seemed to open in his hand. He found himself

looking into it, down coils of moving and alternated splendour and

darkness. Startled, he dropped it on the table, or would have done, but that, as he loosed it, instead of falling, it hung in the air,

dilating and deepening. It was no more a mere Stone, it moved before

him as a living thing, riven in all its parts by a subdued but

increasing light. He sprang up and took a step or two away, nor did it

pursue, but he somehow found himself no farther off. He backed,

cursing, to the extreme other side of the room, but there once more he

found himself close to what had by now become a nucleus of movement

which passed outward from it into the very walls and furniture. They,

so far as the mind which was now striving to steady itself, could

discern, were themselves shifting and Curving. He put out his hand to

the bed and found himself

holding the cord of one of the pictures; he stepped aside, and one foot

was on the pillows of the bed and one crashing through the glass of the

wardrobe. “The damn thing‘11 get me down if I’m not careful,” he

thought, and made a great effort to hold himself firm, and see in its

natural shape the room he knew so well. But whether within or without,

the awful change went on; it was as if the room itself, and he with it,

were being sucked into the convolutions of the Stone. Its darkness and

its light were no more merely before him but expanding upwards and

downwards till they rose to his head and descended to his feet; he felt

himself drawn against all his efforts into some unnaturally curved

posture—he knew of pain somewhere but could not keep his mind on it.

For before him in arch after arch, as if veil after veil were torn

swiftly aside, that which was the Stone was opening its heart to him.

His eyes could not properly see, nor his brain understand, what those

swift revelations held; he thought once or twice he saw himself, he was

sure he caught sight of Lord Arglay moving in some abstracted

meditation upon some serious concern. And then suddenly he saw her; he

saw her lying in bed asleep, far off but very clear, and felt himself

beginning to be entirely drawn down the long spiral passages through

which he gazed. He set, in one last gigantic effort, his whole will

against this movement and for a moment seemed to stay it. So clear was

the vision that he saw Chloe stir and turn a little in her sleep. In a

suddenly renewed rage he felt himself cry out at her, “O go to hell,”

and as the words, from within or without, reached his mind, Chloe

stirred again and woke. He saw her wake; his eyes met hers; he saw