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

>yet know. For of all of us here one has sworn an oath and will keep it,

and one claims the Stone for his purposes, and two are unlearned in its

way. And therefore there is but one Path for the Stone, and since she

has made herself that we will determine the matter so.”

 

He looked at Chloe, and his voice changed. “Are you to be the Path for

the Stone?” he said.

 

“That is as you will have me,” Chloe answered.

 

“Are you to be?” he asked, with a tender irony. “Will you sit on the

throne of Suleiman, and of all those who have possessed the Stone,

kings and lawgivers, Nimrod and Augustus and Muhammed and Charlemagne,

will you only restore it to its place?”

 

Chloe flushed, and looked at him in distress. “Am I being silly?” she

asked. “I do not compare, I was only asking what you wanted me to do.”

 

“Be at peace,” he answered, “for no man has yet measured his own work,

and it may be you shall do more than all these. They laboured in their

office, and you shall work in yours. But why will you have me tell you

what to do?”

 

“Because you said that the Stone was between us,” she answered, “and if

that is so how otherwise can I move in the Stone?”

 

“And if I tell you to do it?” he asked.

 

“Then I will do what I may,” Chloe said.

 

“And if I tell you not to do it?” he asked again.

 

“Then I will wait till you will have it done,” she said, “for without

you I cannot go even by myself.”

 

He looked at her in silence—for a while, and as they stood there came

through the open window the shouting of the newspaper boys. “More

Rioting at Rich,” they called, “Official Statement.” “The Stone a

Hoax.” “Rumours of War in the East.” “Rumours of War… rumours of

war.”

 

Lord Arglay listened and looked. Then, “Well,” he said, “whether I

believe I do not know and what I believe I most certainly do not know.

But it is either that or this. And since this is in your mind I also

will be with your mind and I will take upon me what you desire. So, if

there is indeed a path for the Stone, in the name of God let us offer

it that path, and let whatever Will moves justly in these things fulfil

itself through us if that is its desire.” He lifted up the Stone, kept

it for a moment raised upon his hand in the full view of all of them,

and held it a little out towards Chloe. “Go on, child,” he said.

 

With the words there came to her the memory of her other experience in

that room, when in dream or vision she had heard some such voice

command her and struggled desperately to obey. There was no struggle or

desperation in her movement or consciousness now as, so summoned, she

went forward and paused in front of him, holding out her joined hands

below his. He lowered his own gently till it lay in the cup of hers,

and said in a voice shaken beyond his wont, “Do you know what you must

do?”

 

She looked at him with a docile content. “I have nothing at all to do,”

she said, and the Hajji cried suddenly aloud, “Blessed for ever be the

Resignation of the elect.”

 

“Under the Protection,” Lord Arglay said, with the smile he had for

her, and, as she answered, in a voice that only he could hear, “Under

the Protection,” he leaned his hand very gently -so that, as if almost

of its own motion, the Stone rolled over into hers. She received it,

moving a step or two backward till she stood a little apart from them.

The Hajji broke into the Protestation of the Unity”There is no God but

God and Muhammed is the Prophet of God.”

 

The Mayor had turned half aside and had sat down, but he looked back

now at the figures before him. Oliver Doncaster gazed with the ardent

worship of young love at Chloe, but he also was in the rear. Upright,

attentive, providential, Lord Arglay maintained his place, and stood

nearest to her of all who watched.

 

She turned her eyes from his at last, downwards upon the Stone. It lay

there, -growing every moment more dark and more bright within itself;

it seemed larger than it had been, but they could not properly judge

because of the movement within it. Chloe looked at it, and suddenly

there came into her mind the memory of Frank Lindsay. “Poor darling,”

she felt with a renewed rush of pity and affection, “he didn’t, he

couldn’t, understand.” In her own understanding she offered his failure

and his mischief to That which she held, and with him also (moved by a

large impulse which she endured without initiating, but with which she

gladly united herself) all those who for any purpose of good or evil

had laid their hands or fixed their desires upon the Stone. Vague in

image, but intense in appeal, her heart gathered all—from herself to

Giles Tumultyin a sudden presentation of them to the Mystery with which

they had trafficked.

 

Opposite her the eyes of Christopher Arglay had been watching it also.

But as, in the passion of her intercession, she raised her hands and

bent her head as if to carry the Stone into her breast and brood above

it there, his gaze slid along those arms to her form, and took in not

only that but the open window and the sky beyond.

 

He looked out, and in the sky itself there was a change. There was

movement between him and the heavens; the chimneys and clouds and sky

took on the appearance of the Stone. He was looking into it, and the

world was there, continents and cities, seas and their ships. The Stone

was not these, yet these were the Stone–only there was movement

within and beyond them, and from a point infinitely far a continual

vibration mingled itself with the myriad actions of men. And then, in

the foreground of that vastidity, he saw rising the Types of the Stone,

here and again there appearing and through all those mingled colours

rushing swiftly together. Loosed from their cells and solitudes upon

earth, living suddenly in conjoining motion, closing within themselves

the separation which men had worked on them, those images grew into

each other and were again made one. For a moment he saw the Unity of

the Stone at a great distance within the Stone which was the world, and

then the farther Mystery was lost in the nearer. Colour and darkness

were a great background for her where she stood; they concentrated

themselves upon her; through her they poured into the Stone upon her

hands, and behind her again appeared but the sky and the houses of a

London street.

 

The Hajji’s voice called: “Blessed be the Merciful, the Compassionate!

blessed!” and he got to his knees, immediately afterwards prostrating

himself towards the window, the East, and Mecca. Moved by the action

and by some memory of churches and childhood, Oliver also knelt down;

so that of all those in the room only the figure of Lord Arglay

remained still upright and vigilant before her as the great change went

on.

 

The strength of the appeal within her faded; it had achieved itself and

she was hastened to what remained in her will. She became conscious of

the movement of her hands and her head, and stayed them, for they

seemed to suggest, however slightly, a removal and possession of the

Stone. Her hands went a little from her, the Stone exposed upon them;

they lifted a little also, and her head was raised and thrown back. But

still her eyes were upon it, and her will abolished itself before its

own. Where before she had prayed “Do or do not,” now she did not even

pray. Her thought and her feeling passed out of her knowledge; she was

the Path and there was process within her, and that was enough.

 

It was not given to her—or to most of the others—to see the operation

by which that Mystery returned to its place. For the Hajji’s eyes were

hidden, and the Mayor still brooded over the needs of men and was but

half-attentive, and Oliver Doncaster’s look was for Chloe rather than

the Stone. Only the justice of Lord Arglay, in the justice of the Stone

which lay between himself and the woman he watched, beheld the

manifestation of that exalted Return. He had seen the Types come

together and pass through her form, colouring but never confusing it,

till they had entered entirely into the Type upon her hands. But

scarcely had the last vestige of entwined light and dark grown into the

One which remained, scarcely had he seen her in herself standing again

obedient and passive, than he saw suddenly that the great process was

reversing itself. As all had flowed in, so now all began to flow out,

out from the Stone, out into the hands that held it, out along the arms

and into the body and shape of which they were part. Through the

clothes that veiled it he saw that body receiving the likeness of the

Stone. Translucency entered it, and through and in the limbs the

darkness which was the Tetragrammaton moved and hid and revealed. He

saw the Mystery upon her hands melting into them; it was flowing away,

gently but very surely; it lessened in size and intensity as he

watched. And as there it grew less, so more and more exquisitely and

finally it took its place Within her—what the Stone had been she now

was. Along that path, offered it by one soul alone, it passed on its

predestined way—one single soul and yet one not solitary. For even as

she was changed into its nature her eyes shone on her mortal master

with an unchanged love and in the Glory that revealed itself there was

nothing alien to their habitual and reciprocal joy. The Stone that had

been before them was one with the Stone in which they had been;

from either side its virtue proclaimed itself in her. At last the awful

change was done. She stood before him; her hands, still out-stretched,

were empty, but within her and about her light as of a lovely and

clearer day grew and expanded. No violent outbreak or dazzling

splendour was there; a perfection of existence flowed from her and

passed outward so that he seemed both to stand in it and to look on it

with his natural eyes. With such eyes he saw also, black upon her

forehead, as if the night corresponding to that new day dwelled there

for a while apart, the letters of the Tetragrammaton. She stood, so

withdrawn, as the Stone sank slowly through her whole presented nature

to its place in the order of the universe, and that mysterious

visibility of the First Matter of creation returned to the invisibility

from which it had been summoned to dwell in the crown of Suleiman the

King. As in the height of his glory the Vicegerent of the Merciful One

had sat, terrific and compulsive over spirits and men, and the Stone

had manifested above him, so now from the hands stretched to grasp it

and the minds plotting to use it, from enemies and conspiracies, greed

and rapine, it withdrew through a secluded heart. She stood, and the

light faded and the darkness vanished; she stood, one moment clothed in

the beauty of the End of Desire, and then swiftly abandoned. She was

before