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objects to interference, you know, Mr. Fotheringay. And--as a matter of
fact--it's well past eleven and she's probably in bed and asleep. Do you
think, on the whole--"
Mr. Fotheringay considered these objections. "I don't see that it shouldn't
be done in her sleep."
For a time Mr. Maydig opposed the idea, and then he yielded. Mr. Fotheringay
issued his orders, and a little less at their ease, perhaps, the two gentlemen
proceeded with their repast. Mr. Maydig was enlarging on the changes he might
expect in his housekeeper next day, with an optimism that seemed even to Mr.
Fotheringay's supper senses a little forced and hectic, when a series of
confused noises from upstairs began. Their eyes exchanged interrogations, and
Mr. Maydig left the room hastily. Mr. Fotheringay heard him calling up to his
housekeeper and then his footsteps going softly up to her.
In a minute or so the minister returned, his step light, his face radiant.
"Wonderful!" he said, "and touching! Most touching!"
He began pacing the hearthrug. "A repentance--a most touching
repentance--through the crack of the door. Poor woman! A most wonderful
change! She had got up. She must have got up at once. She had got up out of
her sleep to smash a private bottle of brandy in her box. And to confess it
tool . . . But this gives us--it opens--a most amazing vista of possibilities.
If we can work this miraculous change in her. . . ."
"The thing's unlimited seemingly," said Mr. Fotheringay. "And about Mr.
Winch--"
"Altogether unlimited." And from the hearthrug Mr. Maydig, waving the Winch
difficulty aside, unfolded a series of wonderful proposals--proposals he
invented as he went along.
Now what those proposals were does not concern the essentials of this story.
Suffice it that they were designed in a spirit of infinite benevolence, the
sort of benevolence that used to be called post- prandial. Suffice it, too,
that the problem of Winch remained unsolved. Nor is it necessary to describe
how far that series got to its fulfilment. There were astonishing changes. The
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small hours found Mr. Maydig and Mr. Fotheringay careering across the chilly
market- square under the still moon, in a sort of ecstasy of thaumaturgy, Mr.
Maydig all flap and gesture, Mr. Fotheringay short and bristling, and no
longer abashed at his greatness. They had reformed every drunkard in the
Parliamentary division, changed all the beer and alcohol to water (Mr. Maydig
had overruled Mr. Fotheringay on this point); they had, further, greatly
improved the railway communication of the place, drained Flinder's swamp,
improved the soil of One Tree Hill, and cured the Vicar's wart. And they were
going to see what could be done with the injured pier at South Bridge. "The
place," gasped Mr. Maydig, "won't be the same place to-morrow. How surprised
and thankful everyone will be!" And just at that moment the church clock
struck three.
"I say," said Mr. Fotheringay, "that's three o'clock! I must be getting back.
I've got to be at business by eight. And besides, Mrs. Wimms--"
"We're only beginning," said Mr. Maydig, full of the sweetness of unlimited
power. "We're only beginning. Think of all the good we're doing. When people
wake--"
"But--," said Mr. Fotheringay.
Mr. Maydig gripped his arm suddenly. His eyes were bright and wild. "My dear
chap," he said, "there's no hurry. "Look"--he pointed to the moon at the
zenith--"Joshua!"
"Joshua?" said Mr. Fotheringay.
"Joshua," said Mr. Maydig. "Why not? Stop it."
Mr. Fotheringay looked at the moon.
"That's a bit tall," he said after a pause.
"Why not?" said Mr. Maydig. "Of course it doesn't stop. You stop the rotation
of the earth, you know. Time stops. It isn't as if we were doing harm."
"H'm!" said Mr. Fotheringay. "Well." He sighed. "I'll try. Here--"
He buttoned up his jacket and addressed himself to the habitable globe, with
as good an assumption of confidence as lay in his power. "Jest stop rotating,
will you," said Mr. Fotheringay.
Incontinently he was flying head over heels through the air at the rate of
dozens of miles a minute. In spite of the innumerable circles he was
describing per second, he thought; for thought is wonderful--sometimes as
sluggish as flowing pitch, sometimes as instantaneous as light. He thought in
a second, and willed. "Let me come down safe and sound. Whatever else happens,
let me down safe and sound."
He willed it only just in time, for his clothes, heated by his rapid flight
through the air, were already beginning to singe. He came down with a
forcible, but by no means injurious bump in what appeared to be a mound of
fresh-turned earth. A large mass of metal and masonry, extraordinarily like
the clock-tower in the middle of the market-square, hit the earth near him,
ricochetted over him, and flew into stonework, bricks, and masonry, like a
bursting bomb. A hurtling cow hit one of the larger blocks and smashed like an
egg. There was a crash that made all the most violent crashes of his past life
seem like the sound of falling dust, and this was followed by a descending
series of lesser crashes. A vast wind roared throughout earth and heaven' so
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that he could scarcely lift his head to look. For a while he was too
breathless and astonished even to see where he was or what had happened. And
his first movement was to feel his head and reassure himself that his
streaming hair was still his own.
"Lord!" gasped Mr. Fotheringay, scarce able to speak for the gale, "I've had
a squeak! What's gone wrong? Storms and thunder. And only a minute ago a fine
night. It's Maydig set me on to this sort of thing. What a wind! If I go on
fooling in this way I'm bound to have a thundering accident! . . .
"Where's Maydig?
"What a confounded mess everything's in!"
He looked about him so far as his flapping jacket would permit. The
appearance of things was really extremely strange. "The sky's all right
anyhow," said Mr. Fotheringay. "And that's about all that is all right. And
even there it looks like a terrific gale coming up. But there's the moon
overhead. just as it was just now. Bright as midday. But as for the
rest--Where's the village? Where's--where's anything? And what on earth set
this wind ablowing? I didn't order no wind."
Mr. Fotheringay struggled to get to his feet in vain, and after one failure,
remained on all fours, holding on. He surveyed the moonlit world to leeward,
with the tails of his jacket streaming over his head. "There's something
seriously wrong," said Mr. Fotheringay. "And what it is--goodness knows."
Far and wide nothing was visible in the white glare through the haze of dust [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]