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

Chapter Seventeen

THE JUDGEMENT OF LORD ARGLAY

 

Twenty-four hours after his theft, Frank Lindsay had begun to realize

that the emotions which accompany possession are sometimes as hard to

deal with as the difficulties which precede possession. Before he had

had the Stone in his pocket he had seen quite clearly what he would do;

he would divide it, keep one part, and pass the other on to Mr.

Merridew in return for a fee. That two identical Stones would result

from the division he had not understood, only that each part of a

divided Stone possessed the virtues of the whole. But he found that

such a proceeding was by no means easy. His irritation with Chloe had

prepared the way for his desire of success in his examination, winged

by the promised fee, to pass into action; but when action was for the

moment over, he found the second step more difficult than the first. He

had been squeezed by circumstances and a narrow chance into the first

act, but time opened before him for the second, and he could not move.

He continually found himself staring at the Stone; he continually

fingered his pocket-knife, and even took it out and opened it. But he

could not put the edge to its work.

 

For one thing the Stone itself surprised him. He had not understood

from Chloe—and for a good reason, since at that time she had not made

herself a path for the Will of the Stone, and the Light within it had

not expanded in proportion—that it was so strange, so active, and even

so terrible an object. He was—he had to admit—frightened of touching

it; he felt as if it would bleed at a cut and pour out its life before

him. He

hesitated even to touch it; it looked sometimes as if it would

burn him if he lifted it. On the other hand, he could not bring himself

to part entirely in his mind from Chloe by passing it on to Mr.

Merridew in its completeness. He thought of ringing Carnegie up and

refrained; vaguely it seemed to him that Chloe might, she might, be

willing to lend him one of them if he didn’t. After all, she might take

another view of his needs even now, even if she found out; but he

realized that if she found out that it had passed to Merridew, his own

days would be short in her land. And at that he began to realize that

he was very near finding Chloe indispensable to him, or (as he called

it) loving her. He didn’t want her to leave him, and while he had the

Stone (he thought hopefully, in the manner of lovers of the sort) he

could bribe, or lure, or bully her into nearness. The idea had occurred

to him in the night, and he took it with him to the offices where he

worked, and his own small room.

 

The only difficulty in the way of re-establishing relations with Chloe

while retaining the Stone was the explanation of how he had got it. He

hardly saw himself saying to her, “I have stolen this from you, and I

want to use it. But if you are very nice to me I will not give it to

anyone else, though i might make a hundred or two by doing so. I will,

that is, buy you with a hundred pounds and the preservation in my own

hands of your property.” The nearest he got to saying that even to

himself was to recollect that she had occasionally, in times of

financial stress, jested, half-mockingly, half-grimly, on the amount

for which she would sell herself. But he realized that anyone who

offered five pounds, or indeed five pence, would stand a better chance

than he himself coming with such a bargain. Besides, of course, he

didn’t want her to sell herself, he wanted her to love him—in exchange

for his loss of a hundred pounds and his promise only to use the Stone

for his own purposes.

 

It was at that moment she arrived, following up an officeboy, who just

had time to say, “Miss Burnett to see you,” before he was dazzled out

of the way by her smile as she passed.

 

The smile vanished as she shut the door behind her; she turned on the

wretched, goggling, and gasping Frank a face which he had never seen

before. Chloe laughing, Chloe irritable, Chloe impatient, Chloe

affectionate, Chloe attentive, Chloe provocative, these and many

another he had known—but this, this was hardly Chloe. It was not that

she looked angry or harsh; there was rather in her face a largeness of

comprehension, a softness of generosity and lovely haste to meet any

approach, which bewildered him.

 

“Dear Frank,” she said, tenderly, “how silly of you!” Frank went on

goggling. She added simply, “I couldn’t come yesterday because Lord

Arglay was a:way till very late, and I didn’t like to leave it while he

had told me to stop. Not that it mattered. So I had to come here.” She

smiled at him. “Darling,” she added, “you were rather rash, weren’t

you? and a little rude?”

 

Frank’s mind tried vainly to understand. He was being accused—it must

in the circumstances surely be an accusation? what could she do except

ask, or appeal, or accuse? Only this didn’t sound like any of the

three; it was more like sympathy. But if he were being accused, it was

of a breach of manners and not of morals, which put him at a

disadvantage, since the second can be defended on the grounds of some

better, or at least different, morality, but the first is a matter of

taste and defence is only communicable by emotion. Of her emotions at

the moment he was altogether ignorant.

 

“Rude?” he said, “rude? What do you mean—rude?”

 

“Well…” Chloe sketched a gesture. “You might have asked me again

first if you needed it so much.”

 

Whether this subtlety was from the Stone or from her own feminine mind

was hidden at the place where the Stone and her mind were finding their

union. The only answer of which Frank was capable was criticism in

turn.

 

“I did ask you,” he said, “and you wouldn’t… But anyhow, I

don’t know-”

 

He could not finish. Her swift and luminous eyes prevented him, passing

in front of him with what shone in them, as they turned his excuses and

denials aside, like a new and overwhelming mastery and knowledge. She

came lightly to him and paused.

 

“Will you give it back to me?” she said simply and stretched out her

hand.

 

In the stress of the moment he almost did. They had, they had been

friends, great friends. They had had good times together; she had

mocked and teased and helped and liked him; their hands and their

mouths, their voices and their glances, were familiar. All but the

sovereign union had been theirs, and if, for Chloe, that sovereign

union had by now been made with other worlds, and if its image and

instrument in this world lay between her and her other friend and

master, yet of these things Frank was ignorant. And since assuredly

that full and sovereign union permits no exclusion of any beauty, since

the august virtue of its nature is to receive into itself all which

partakes of its own divine benignity, since there—and there alone—is

neither one nor many, neither lesser nor greater, but all is perfect

and free, since even in its reflections upon earth the marvellous

liberty of the children of God is to be experienced by all who devoutly

and passionately desire, then even at that single moment Frank Lindsay

might have entered into its sweetness and strength could he have met

her as she came, and answered her in such a voice as that in which she

asked. But such a voice can carry no selfish complaint, no wrangling

excuse; it is a sound which, native to heaven, can on earth be vocal

and audible only between spirits already disposed to heaven. So

disposed, for all