Latest / A Drop in Infinity / Chapter XIV

Transcript

Chapter XIV · A Drop in Infinity

• 0:00
  Section fourteen of A Drop in Infinity. This is a LibriVox recording. All
• 0:07
  LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer,
• 0:13
  please visit LibriVox dot org. A Drop in Infinity by Gerald Grogan, Chapter
• 0:22
  fourteen. I was irritated at the unaccountable conduct of Quelch, so I let
• 0:29
  him slouch along behind me, without attempting further to enlighten him as to my
• 0:34
  plans. As a matter of fact, I had merely desired to bring it
• 0:38
  home to him that he now held the proud position of patriarch to this world
• 0:42
  of ours, and that should anything happen to me as I rather expected it
• 0:47
  would, he must consider it his duty to keep the work of civilization going,
• 0:52
  raise himself as large a family as might be, and do his utmost
• 0:56
  to get in touch with those other emigrants of whose possible presence the hubble Bubble
• 1:00
  had spoken. However, the ass seemed to have interpreted my opening remarks into
• 1:07
  some subtle threat. Why I could not say, though I supposed vaguely it
• 1:11
  was the break of my customary taciturnity. He had hardly heard the sound of
• 1:17
  my voice that day, since we broke camp at dawn. For the present,
• 1:21
  I let the matter drop. I helped him to lower the new calves
• 1:25
  down to the pan in limestone hollow, where we proposed to confine them for
• 1:29
  a month or two until they appeared settled down and had grown used to handling.
• 1:34
  Then, having nothing more to do at the moment, for it was
• 1:37
  too late to continue work on the fencing, I strolled off along the base
• 1:41
  of the cliff. In the gloaming. I was fighting hard against the return
• 1:45
  of one of the gloomy suicidal fits which harassed me daily, and against which
• 1:49
  I could only oppose a blind and unreasoning faith that my wife was not really
• 1:55
  lost to me. I should here like to mention the debt I owe to
• 1:59
  Adela for encouraging me in this illogical attitude towards the hard facts of life,
• 2:05
  and to warn readers lest they should adopt the tactics of Michael Quelch in similar
• 2:08
  cases. Queltch conceded his duty to open my eyes whereat I kicked him,
• 2:15
  for which I am sorry. I sat down on the slope which fringed the
• 2:19
  bottom of the cliff, and gazed across the darkling meadow to the lake she's
• 2:24
  not dead. She's not dead, She's not dead. I found myself repeating,
• 2:29
  as if constant reiteration could alter the evidence of my senses. My old
• 2:35
  friend, the devil, strove hard within me and whispered of the dreary marsh
• 2:38
  and the gashed muzzle of the hideous lizard. Brute dead, dead, dead,
• 2:44
  he cried, mocking, echoing my last words to the rhythm of the
• 2:47
  breaking waves which had lapped the abandoned raft in my agony. The sweat broke
• 2:53
  out on my forehead, and mechanically I passed my hand over my eyes to
• 2:58
  brush it away, as if the action had swept my past experiences with it.
• 3:04
  The lake in the forest vanished. I found myself all amazed, in
• 3:07
  utter darkness. I could not think what had happened. At first, It
• 3:12
  was so unexpected and so sudden, without a warning pang, total blindness had
• 3:16
  fallen like a curtain, And there I sat, wondering greatly but unafraid.
• 3:22
  This is a strange thing about, repeated in great calamities and disappointments. The
• 3:28
  horrors which seemed to surround the pathway at the Going Inn fade one by one
• 3:34
  as one advances mysteriously, one is lifted up above purely personal suffering, and
• 3:39
  even death itself. Remember I have died, if you like to put it
• 3:44
  that way, loses its sting. I believed myself struck blind, and the
• 3:49
  only emotion I could discover in the realization was a mild, wonder strange human
• 3:54
  mind. I rose to my feet and was instantly struck down again by by
• 4:00
  a violent blow on the head. At once I became afraid, lashed out
• 4:04
  in retaliation, for I thought myself attacked, and by a perfectly automatic process,
• 4:11
  I became an animal creature fighting for its life. I smote in the
• 4:15
  direction of the blow, had the machette knocked out of my hand, slipped,
• 4:18
  and once more fell sprawling. Then, because I remained alive, it
• 4:24
  filtered into my mind that I had made some mistake. The blow on my
• 4:28
  head was merely dealt by an overhanging rock against which I had stumbled. I
• 4:32
  sat up cautiously and felt around me shocked. The second the grass had given
• 4:38
  place to some smooth, hard surface. And then, when and where before
• 4:44
  had I heard that pent whispering of underground waters rising and falling in the rocky
• 4:48
  dark with an hysterical laugh. I fumbled from my flint and whisk a shower
• 4:54
  of sparks from the steel. My eyesight was as sound as ever it had
• 4:58
  been the fact of the case, where that I was crouched on the cold
• 5:01
  metal plates which lined the heading of the whistling at it. I could hardly
• 5:06
  believe it, but some reversal of the hubble Bubble's mysterious process had whipped me
• 5:12
  back whence I originally came a year before. I squatted in silence for a
• 5:17
  minute. If this, I finally decided, is not a miracle. What
• 5:21
  is? I again remembered my confused fever dream, and stepped forth to search
• 5:28
  for Marjorie. Thirty seconds later, I stepped into the salt fresh breezes which
• 5:32
  fanned the tunnel's mouth below me, heaved the wide Atlantic and far out to
• 5:39
  sea, A vessel's port light already gleamed red across the gathering dark. I
• 5:44
  resolved the situation, and it looked perplexing. I could hardly walk into Poltiac,
• 5:48
  as I was in deer skins and wearing my machete, and coolly announced
• 5:54
  my return from some vague place along the fourth dimension. Nobody would believe me,
• 6:00
  and more than likely I would be arrested for complicity in the murder of
• 6:02
  Crawley and the disappearance of Marjorie. I was sorely puzzled for a time as
• 6:08
  to what I ought to do. Finally, I mustered up courage with the
• 6:12
  advance of night to sneak to the top of the cliff. I examined the
• 6:15
  contents of my scrip and found that, besides the little cup I usually carried
• 6:20
  and my tinder box, both of solid gold, I had the good fortune
• 6:25
  to possess the sum of one sovereign a coin I had carried for luck and
• 6:29
  in remembrance of the bounty of Aunt Wilhelmina. My hair was reasonably short,
• 6:33
  and my beard trimmed, facts for which I blessed Marjorie's fastidiousness. If I
• 6:40
  could only procure a suit of clothes, I had the wherewithal to make my
• 6:44
  way to London, a city where I hoped to ferret out some information as
• 6:47
  to the whereabouts of the hubble Bubble. Having decided that this untoward occurrence had
• 6:54
  something to do with the search, which I instinctively felt I was somehow prosecuting.
• 6:59
  I cannot explain this matter, but from the day of the fight with
• 7:01
  the lizard, I seemed to be searching, searching, searching, notwithstanding the
• 7:06
  apparent death of my wife. Having decided, I say that in this direction
• 7:12
  lay forward, it seemed to me that our original transportation agent might know something
• 7:16
  that would assist me in my hunt. Beyond this, I had no desire
• 7:20
  or emotion. I was fed up with wonders, and beyond a feeling of
• 7:25
  strangeness and unreality, as if I was again dreaming. I never thought twice
• 7:30
  over the amazing aspect of this latest adventure. I had more serious problems to
• 7:34
  trouble my mind. And the more I attempted to solve my great outstanding riddle
• 7:40
  how to clothe myself without arousing suspicion, the more insoluble it seemed to grow.
• 7:46
  I thought over various schemes. Stripping and swimming out to sea was one.
• 7:51
  I might be picked up by a boat and posed as a bather carried
• 7:55
  away by the tide, or as the remains of a yachting party which had
• 7:59
  come to an an untimely end. I abandoned the idea. However, I
• 8:03
  did not see my way to accomplish this scheme. Retain my gold, and
• 8:07
  at the same time pieced together a sufficiently plausible tale. In great agitation,
• 8:13
  I paced the little gully where once I had encountered Marjorie and my great adventure,
• 8:18
  and presently I evolved a second plan to go inland and rob a scarecrow.
• 8:24
  I had to let this drop. Also, I remembered that scarecrows were
• 8:28
  few and far between nowadays, and usually consisted of a defunct rook susper call
• 8:35
  on the scene of its depredations. I was almost desperate by the time my
• 8:39
  stupid head had ferreted out the only feasible, simple and proper method. Glancing
• 8:46
  hastily round to make sure that I was unobserved, I started at a brist
• 8:50
  trot in the direction of Poltiac. Once I encountered a man, but a
• 8:54
  year's hunting experience stood me in good stead. I saw him before he observed
• 9:00
  me. I dropped quietly into the heather and lay concealed until he was out
• 9:03
  of sight. Fortunately, the night was dark and cloudy, and an occasional
• 9:09
  skiff of rain made it unlikely that many people would be abroad. Four hours,
• 9:13
  I lay in the heather above the village until the lights had one by
• 9:18
  one gone out. I passed the time in fervent prayers that the same Boots
• 9:22
  might still uphold his job at the Travailian Arms. My reasons for this altruistic
• 9:28
  devotion were as follows. The Boots did not live in the hotel, but
• 9:33
  inhabited a cottage of his own a few doors up the street. His custom
• 9:37
  was to go out by the back door, leaving the key concealed in a
• 9:41
  crevice of the quarried wall that ran round the back of the inn. I
• 9:46
  presumed that until my advent on this occasion, robbery was unknown in Poltiac,
• 9:52
  for every soul in the village knew about that key. Half an hour after
• 9:56
  the last of the lights had been extinguished, I crept my stealth to the
• 10:01
  back door and felt in the niche the Boots had not lost his job nor
• 10:05
  changed his habits. In the interval. I rejoiced, What a shock for
• 10:11
  them if I get caught, I thought, as I groped my way past
• 10:13
  the silent bar to the foot of the stairs. The mental picture of fat
• 10:18
  brother host confronting a skin clad savage with a hay fork almost tricked me into
• 10:24
  open laughter. I gripped my quivering jaws. With one hand, pouched a
• 10:30
  handful of matches, and slid stealthily up the stair. A door in the
• 10:35
  upper corridor opened gently, and in at the crack went the tousled head of
• 10:39
  the prehistoric raider. I was listening breathlessly for sounds of human breathing, for
• 10:46
  it was my own room. I was bent on burgling. Never a sound.
• 10:50
  A mouse ran across the floor before me, but of the two of
• 10:54
  us, he made the greater noise. I had reached the cupboard and was
• 10:58
  fumbling to disgustedly round the bare hooks. At least someone might have left an
• 11:03
  odd garment. My luck seemed to have failed me, for the hooks were
• 11:09
  bare. But just as I was giving up my toe encountered yielding leather.
• 11:13
  I clutched upon the prey and found it was a gladstone bag. But whose
• 11:18
  I wondered, Not daring to answer the question. My heart was throbbing with
• 11:24
  wild hope, for the bag was full of garments, and of far too
• 11:26
  good a quality of pigskin to belong to any Poultiac fishermen. I dared not
• 11:31
  think I by Jupiter, I said, this is more than I can abide
• 11:37
  and live. I've got to strike a light. I did. I pulled
• 11:41
  down the blind first, and drew across the heavy curtains, lest the smallest
• 11:45
  ray should percolate to worn honest folks that felony walked abroad in the night.
• 11:50
  Then I lit my match with trembling, sweat damp fingers, and then my
• 11:54
  joy was complete. J. Thorpe in bold black letter. That was surely
• 12:01
  the second miracle that day, wrought by that star shifting God who set the
• 12:07
  face of lost Adela Watkins to Polaris. Far swifter than I had entered,
• 12:13
  I sped out again by the back door and bolted up the cliff path with
• 12:16
  my precious bag clasped to my bosom. If only Marjorie were with me,
• 12:20
  I thought, sorrowfully, what fun. The thought made me heavy hearted again,
• 12:26
  and I crept back to the attic less cheerfully than I had gone forth.
• 12:31
  End of section fourteen.