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

of clumsiness or roughness or anger or haste or folly

that needed still to be cleared and enlightened, she stood and faced

him. So indisposed, for all of industry and care and thought and study,

he stood and looked away.

 

“Give what back?” he mumbled.

 

She sighed a little, and a faint shadow came upon her. She dropped her

hand and said gravely, “Will you give me back the Stone that you have

taken?”

 

Between denial and excuse he hesitated; then, abandoning both, he

began, “Chloe, I don’t think you quite understand-”

 

“Need I understand more?” she asked.

 

“It’s like this-” he began again, and again she checked him…

 

“There is no need,” she said, and then more swiftly, “Frank, dear

Frank, will you do this?”

 

He made another effort, letting go the pretence of ignorance. “Are you

asking me to?” he said. “I mean, do you want it?”

 

“No,” she said, and ceased.

 

“But if you don’t want it, then why… I mean, mightn’t it as well be

here—or even-” He was a little disappointed by her negative, and yet

uncertain of the wisdom of introducing Merridew.

 

“It does not matter much where it is, I think,” she said, and again

affection broke into her voice as she said, “I’m not asking for it. I’m

asking you.”

 

“You’re asking—me for it,” he said intelligently.

 

“No,” she answered again. “I am asking you to restore it, if you will,

before-”

 

“Before?” he asked, really startled. Surely Arglay, surely she,

couldn’t be thinking of the police! Curiously enough, he had never

thought of the police until now. But she wouldn’t, she couldn’t, not

with him! And Arglay couldn’t be such a cad.

 

“Before”-for the first time she faltered-“I don’t know; perhaps before

it is restored. But that doesn’t matter; only I can’t wait. Lord Arglay

is expecting me; he let me come because he knew I wanted to, but I

can’t wait. Frank, if you have liked what we have had, you and I, will

you give me back the Stone?”

 

“It isn’t that I wouldn’t—soon,” Frank answered.

 

“Will you now?” she asked.

 

“I think we ought to talk it over a little,” he said defensively. “I

think you ought to try and get my point of view. I think-”

 

She moved away and walked, a little sadly, to the door.

 

There she paused and looked back. “Thank you for everything you have

done for me,” she said. “They were good times. Goodbye, darling.”

 

He began to stammer some further explanation, but she was gone, and he

stood alone with an emptiness and an uncertain fear invading his heart.

In his haste, when she had entered, he had flung his morning paper over

the Stone, which had been lying on the table, and now he moved that

away, and again looked at the thing which he had denied her. He thought

uncertainly of the examination, and unpleasantly of Mr. Merridew; of

course, if she really wanted—It was a long while before, still

disturbed, but still following the way he had begun to tread, he rang

up Carnegie at the Union offices. Nor even then had he ventured to

divide the Stone; he would talk to them first.

 

Carnegie, a cheque in his pocket, and the General Secretary s urgent

instructions in his mind, arrived as quickly as possible, and as

quickly as possible cut short Frank’s talk, and procured the exhibition

of the Stone. He agreed to every condition Frank made about having it

returned—or a part of itfor the examination, passed over the cheque,

picked up a spare envelope, slipped the Stone into it, put it down for

a moment on the table again, and slapped Frank on the shoulder.

 

“Good man!” he said. “Merridew will be frightfully bucked, and you may

find he can be useful to you yet. He will if he can after this. Well, I

must get back at once. On the twenty-third you want it then?”

 

He grinned cheerfully at Frank, moved to pick up the packet, and looked

vaguely at the table. “Where-” he began, picked up an empty envelope,

the only one in sight, and said with some sharpness, “Where the devil

is it?”

 

They both looked, they separated and sorted papers, they searched table

and floor, they looked inside the envelope a dozen times, and still the

Stone was undiscoverable.

 

“What’s the idea?” Carnegie asked. “Is this a joke?”

 

“Don’t talk rubbish,” Frank answered sharply. “Did you put it in your

pocket?”

 

It seemed not, though the cheque had remained in Frank’s. Carnegie

searched, threatened, expostulated; Frank, maddened by an implied

accusation of a theft of money, snapped, and later raged. They searched

and quarrelled; they hunted and denounced. And for all their effort and

anger and perplexity, the Stone of the King was not to be found.

 

But while Frank had, after her departure, still been standing, dimly

puzzled and unhappy, Chloe had been on her way back to Lancaster Gate,

back to the Hajji and Lord Arglay and the Unity in the Stone. All the

previous afternoon she had watched it, or—to, the best of her power—

prayed, or meditated, or talked or listened to that foreign doctor of

the mysteries. The realization of the theft of her Type had caused that

which remained to seem very precious to her; the thought of the attempt

in her room and of the death of Reginald Montague had brought the sense

of necessary action very close, but she did not yet see what that

action was to be. The Hajji had talked as if but one stage had been

reached; she had made an opportunity, he implied, for the Stone, and

the Indwelling of the Stone, to operate in the external world, but

there it could at best only heal and destroy and its place was not

there. He would not formulate for her what more remained, and she

reposed now on the hope, the more than hope, that Lord Arglay and the

Stone would direct her. Her unhappiness about Frank lay rather round

than in her; she saw it as a sadness rather than felt it as a sorrow,

for within she was withdrawn to an intention of obedience and a purpose

not yet unveiled.

 

She got out at the Tube station, smiled at the newspaper man, picked up

an agitated old lady’s umbrella, threw a glance over the Park and came

after a short walk to the house. When she opened the study door she was

at first unobserved, for Lord Arglay was standing with his back to the

door listening to the Mayor of Rich. At least, she supposed it must be

the Mayor from what he was saying, and from Oliver Doncaster’s presence

a few paces distant. The Hajji was sitting close by. The Stone

infinitely precious, glowed upon the table. On another side table were

her typewriter, her notebooks, one pile of ordered manuscript which was

the first few chapters of Organic Law, and another pile of papers which

were the notes and schemes and drafts and quotations and references for

the remainder. She closed the door softly behind her and for a minute

or so stood and gazed.

 

Her gaze took in, it seemed, the symbols and instruments of her life,

but they were real things and she felt with increasing happiness that

what was there had, however hidden, run through her life. The muddled,

distressed, amusing thing that her life had been resolved itself into

four things in that roomthe manuscript, and Oliver Doncaster, and Lord

Arglay, and the Stone. Whatever was coming, it was good, and she was

fortunate that her work had entered into the Chief Justice’s attempt to

formulate once more by the intellect the actions of men; she was

fortunate to have had even so small a part in the august labour.

Whatever was coming, it was good that all her transitory loves should

touch with so pleasant a glance as Oliver Doncaster’s her renewed

entrance. She remembered how she had thought of his hair, and with a

secret smile she assented—not in desire but in a happy amusement. “The

dear!” she thought, caught his eyes, saw the admiration in them,

preened herself on it for a moment’s joy, and looked on. Of the Hajji

and the Mayor she felt little; they knew and did things, but they

answered to no need or capacity within her except as teachers or

clients. And of Lord Arglay and of the Stone she could not think, only

she hoped that, whatever happened, neither of them would be lost to her

for ever.

 

He paused, but Chloe only waited for him to proceed as (he thought) she

had so often done while he dictated the sentences of Organic Law. He

went on.

 

“And here therefore we are,” he said, “wondering what path to follow.

For the Mayor and the Hajji disagree, and Mr. Doncaster and I have no

clear idea, and though doubtless the Stone knows very well it does not

give us much help. What do you think?”

 

She shook her head, and as she did so the Mayor broke once more into

his plea for those whom he sought to serve. But after a while he

stopped.

 

Lord Arglay said, “All this is true and dreadful enough. But even yet I

am not clear what should be done.”

 

“If you are afraid to act-” the Mayor cried out. “No,” Lord Arglay

said, “I do not think I am afraid.” “Then divide the Stone,” the Mayor

exclaimed, “and let me have a part, and do what you will with the

other.”

 

The Hajji made a movement, but Lord Arglay checked him with a hand, and

said, “No, that I will not do; for I am still the Chief Justice—though

I cannot think I shall be so for very long—and it is not in my

judgement to commit any violence upon the Stone.”

 

“Then for God’s sake say what you will do,” the Mayor cried out in

pain, “and put an end to it all.”

 

Lord Arglay stood for a minute in silence, then he began to speak,

slowly and as if he gave judgement from his seat in the Court.

 

“I think there are few among my predecessors,” he said, “who have had

such a matter to decide, and that not by the laws of England or Persia

or any mortal code. But God forbid that when even such a matter is set

before us we should not speak what we may. For if this is a matter of

claimants then even those very terrible opposites shall abide the

judgement of the Court to which chance, or it may be something more

than chance, has brought them, as it was said in one of the myths of

our race that a god was content to submit to the word of the Roman law.

But it is not in our habit to wash our hands of these things, whatever

god or people come before us. Also this is a question, it seems,

between God and the people. It is a very dreadful thing to refuse

health to, the sick—but it is more tragic still to loose upon earth

that which does not belong to the earth, or if it does only upon its

own conditions and after its own mode. Therefore I would not compel the

Stone to act or ask any grace from it that it did not naturally give.

And it is clear to us at least since last night that this thing belongs

only to itself So that—I say that it is necessary first that it may be

offered again to itself, but whether or how that may be done I do not