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VALLEY
BEYOND TIME


By the same author
AND SO - VICTORIA
SEVEN TEMPEST
BEING MET TOGETHER
ONCE UPON A TIME: AN ADVENTURE
THE CITY OF FROZEN FIRE
CROWN WITHOUT SCEPTRE
A KING RELUCTANT
FANFARE FOR A WITCH
History
ENDLESS PRELUDE: AN HISTORICAL
ANTHOLOGY
SIDELIGHTS ON INDUSTRIAL
EVOLUTION
For the Younger
AFTER BATH: OR, THE REMARKABLE
CASE OF THE FLYING HAT
Edited
HERMSPRONG, by Robert Bage


VALLEY
BEYOND TIME
DV
VAUGHAN WILKINS
ST MARTIN'S PRESS
NEW YORK · 1955


Copyright, 1955, in all countries
signatory to the Berne Convention
829
W6855ra
1955
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN


9Millurgo
.21 155
94699
CONTENTS
PART ONE
I THE HOUSE THAT WAS NOT THERE
CHART OF DREAMS
THE VISION OF OLWEN
PECULIAR AFFAIR OF FATHER BOSWORTH
V WOOD BEYOND THE WORLD
VI THE THIRD ADVENTURER
PART TWO
IOI
III
PROBLEM WITHOUT SHADOWS
MIDGE AT THE HOUSE OF OPAL
PROBLEM WITH SHADOWS
IV THE SEVEN THOUSANDTH CANDLE
V THE TIMELESS
VI BENAIAH FINDS A CONTEMPORARY
VII BACK TO THE NIGHT
115
129
140
158
176
192
PART THREE
203
220
234
I A KISS FOR A CROSSWORD MAKER
II 'MIRROR, MIRROR ON THE WALL
LAND OF CLOCKS
IV 'THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IN THE
WORLD' - 1
V 'THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IN THE
WORLD' – II
VI THE OTHER WOOD
VII FULL MOON AT SAUL
VIII THE RIDE OF THE NAKED HORSEMEN
260
271
282
295


The personages in this story are wholly fourth-
dimensional, living only in the imagination of
the author. Any coincidence of name is purely
fortuitous.


For
G. WREN HOWARD
Publisher and Friend for
many years





PART ONE





CHAPTER I
THE HOUSE THAT WAS NOT THERE
66
As naked as a pebble!"' repeated Senator Purvis thought-
fully. 'It would seem to imply a considerable degree
T of familiarity to visit at a house completely in the
nude, Sir Henry!'
'Exactly so,' agreed the judge in precise speech which not
merely gave its full value to each syllable of each word, but
also meticulously punctuated and paragraphed whatever he
said. 'Exactly so. It was that singularity, coupled with the
rather unusual simile, which first aroused my full attention.
‘Until then, I will confess to you, I had been listening to
the evidence almost mechanically. Until then it had
appeared to be a very ordinary lawsuit. It was undefended;
and, furthermore, I have always disliked hearing matri-
monial cases. So, whilst I could probably have repeated the
witness's statement verbatim, up to that moment the impli-
cations had not penetrated to my inner consciousness. Then
quite suddenly I realized that he was talking about a house
and a wood on Caldy Island, which I myself knew could not
exist.'
'Ah-h! sighed the senator with such immense satisfaction
that Sir Henry Standish brought back his regard from the
bay window and the glassy, sunshine-powdered sea to study
his new American acquaintance's huge bronzed face, which
was dominated by a great beak of a nose and crowned by a
shock of white hair.
‘More than that! continued Sir Henry, still watching from
under his lashes the big figure lounging in an elbow-chair,
legs outstretched and crossed at the ankles, a glass of whisky
and soda encircled in an enormous hand. 'More than that!
I knew there was no moon that night in spite of what the


VALLEY BEYOND TIME
witness declared. I checked the fact by the calendar on my
desk although I really had no need to. It is one of my-er-
my foibles to be acquainted with the phases of the moon. I
prefer not to see a new moon through glass or trees, etcetera,
etcetera. Superstition if you like – omnium pestium pesti-
lentissima!'
The senator nodded gravely, as though in approval of the
Latin tag. He manoeuvred an unlit cigar from one side of
his mouth to the other. Without removing it he said:
'So your witness saw a house and a wood that didn't exist,
by the light of a moon that wasn't there! And you, yourself,
know this as a matter of absolute, incontrovertible fact?'
'I know every inch of the island. In fact, although of
course I heard nothing about the business until three years
later, I was actually staying there at the time.'
‘Ah-h! sighed Purvis again. He took the cigar from the
corner of his lips. He sat straight up in his chair, a vast and
vigorous elderly man in a double-breasted blue serge coat
with a cream nylon shirt and a rather lurid bow-tie of yellow
spotted with red. "That's what I have been waiting to hear
from your own lips, Sir Henry. That's what I have travelled
nearly five thousand miles from Goliad County, Texas, to
Pembrokeshire, Wales, to hear. Tell me more, sir! Pray tell
me everything! And what next!
There was silence for a little whilst Sir Henry appeared to
be marshalling his recollections of the case of Lambard o.
Lambard, which he had heard as a judge of the High Court
during the Hilary term sittings four years before. In fact,
however, his mind had strayed to phrases in the letter of
introduction from his nephew by marriage, that lay upon
the book-crowded table of black oak behind him.
You will find, my dear Uncle [the Earl of Morfa had
written in his own peculiar calligraphy, peppering the
sheet with stray capital letters in seventeenth-century
fashion), that Benaiah A. Purvis is rather larger than
14


THE HOUSE THAT WAS NOT THERE
Life in more than body. He's got a terrific brain and a
Memory as long as your own. His wealth is simply
fabulous, and his hospitality Princely-even for a Texan.
I know all about it, because I've experienced it.
Although he loves all the Good things of life, and has
a well-known partiality for platinum Blondes - Silver,
of course, comes into a different category – he's quite a
religious sort of fellow. When I say Religious, I mean it.
He isn't of the sort that ease up their trousers, lean
forward, and prop their elbows on their knees in Church.
Hassock, or not, he goes right down.
Do what you can for him. I don't understand his
Theories, but you can take it from me that he's
thoroughly Sound. I would not mind Betting that
you'll get to like him very much, although he's the
absolute opposite of yourself.
No greater contrast, indeed, could be imagined than that
provided by the two silent men sitting in the big bay window
of the book-lined study, which was filled with the golden
light of a September afternoon and the salt tang of the sea.
From without came the sound of the slow wash of the turning
tide, the distant cries of children sporting upon the narrow
strip of sand at the cliff-foot far below, and the melancholy
clamour of sea-gulls.
If Senator Benaiah Purvis, looking with hooded eyes at
the glittering water and the smoke-blue arms of the great
bay, was a perfect exemplar of the lightly stepping elderly
giant who is almost exclusively an American product, then
Sir Henry, sitting near him in his revolving chair at the end
of the table, typified most exactly the common conception
of an English judge. He was a smallish man in a cream
linen coat with a severe and clean-cut face tanned to a light
gold. He had almost startlingly black eyes under level iron-
grey eye-brows, and his white hair, as soft as thistledown,
was as smooth as though it had been permanently flattened
15


VALLEY BEYOND TIME
by the wearing of a judicial wig for nearly a quarter of a
century.
'What occurred then?' persisted the senator in his slow
south-western drawl. 'What occurred when you discovered
that the witness appeared to be lying?”
'The situation,' answered Sir Henry, 'was tricky in the
extreme. It was quite unthinkable that he should be com-
mitting deliberate perjury. He was — and is - not only a
scientist of world-wide repute, but also well known to be a
man of very high principles. His debate with the Bishop of
Bangor -
'Pardon me! Pardon me a moment!' interrupted the sena-
tor, disposing of his tormented cigar in Sir Henry's brimming
waste-paper basket. 'Perhaps I had better recapitulate, sir,
what you've told me so far of this man's evidence. To make
sure I've gotten the yarn straight and missed nothing!
Standish's neat white head gave a neat small bow of
assent.
“This witness -'
'Professor Ivell.'
'Ivell — trailed Lambard at his sister's request. She and
her husband occupied separate rooms at the hotel, and she
found that he had been slipping out secretly every night
for nearly a week, and not returning till daybreak. Ivell
succeeded in following his brother-in-law unnoticed to the
island. He arrived there just in time to see him disappear up
a path leading directly inland from the beach. Hey?'
Neat small nod of concurrence.
'It was a pitch-black night, and Ivell was able to keep
unobserved almost at his heels through a small hamlet and
up a narrow lane. Half a mile from the shore the fellow
turned right-handed through a farmyard –'
'Westwards, past the old priory. It is a fourteenth-century
Benedictine building with a crooked spire.'
'Is that so? ... Well, the two of them walked across the
fields for a matter of a quarter of a mile. It was pretty misty,


THE HOUSE THAT WAS NOT THERE
and at one place the path ran along a cliff-top. The sea
sounded directly below them ... But, say, how did he know
he was following Lambard and not some other man?'
“By his nose, I understand. It was windless, and the heavy
reek of Lambard's pipe was unmistakable. Apparently he
used to smoke some very scented tobacco.
'Is that so? I did hear that he was a bit of a "fancy-pants”.
Well, a little further on Ivell stumbled on the slippery turf
and fell, breaking one of the earpieces of his glasses at the
joint. Without them he was as blind as a bat. Hey?'
Neat nod.
'He picked himself up, balanced the wreckage of the
spectacles on his nose, and hurried after his brother-in-law.
He pulled up a minute later just in time to avoid bumping
right into him as he stood tearing his clothes off. Ivell took
cover behind a bush and waited. The other was knocking
out his pipe when the glasses fell off once more. It took him
some time to find them again. When at last he got them and
looked up, he saw that the mist had cleared, or the moon had
come out, and that Lambard was walking stark, staring
naked towards a low white house standing a little way off in
the lee of some tallish trees.'
'He told me later,' supplemented Sir Henry, slowly filling
a briar pipe in an almost ritual manner, 'that the house had a
long colonnade or portico of slender columns before it.'
Senator Purvis paused for a split second whilst he obviously
docketed this new fact in his mind. Then he went on with
his recapitulation of the professor's evidence:
‘As he watched, a woman came out of the house. The
moonlight was very bright and she was barely twenty yards
away. He gathered the impression that she was of extra-
ordinary beauty, tall, and wearing some sort of silvery
night attire. At any rate she greeted Lambard very, very
affectionately; threw a bath robe over his shoulders, and
disappeared with him into the house. Hey?'
'That was his story,' agreed Sir Henry, adjusting the
17.


VALLEY BEYOND TIME
tobacco in the bowl of his pipe with the little finger of his
right hand.
'At that point Ivell thought he'd seen enough. So he
turned tail and made his way back to his boat and the main-
land. Now, sir, after hearing that evidence, you suddenly
adjourned the case and called Mrs. Lambard's counsel to
your private room.'
'You knew that then?'
'I did. I met the counsel, Mr. Pitchley, who was visiting
in Texas, at a dinner of the City Attorneys' Association in
Austin five weeks ago. He told me about the case. I mis-
remember what brought it up. The upshot was, of course,
that I've had my spies and lines out everywhere ever since
trying to contact Ivell. But there I came up against a stone
wall. He's way in the back-blocks of Australia fixing some
atomic experiment. No one knows where, or when, or how,
or what. Or, if they do, they won't say.'
Sir Henry expressed his sympathy in a grave nod.
“So then I set out to look for you.
‘And find me within a mile or two of the scene of the
drama! May I now ask, Senator Purvis, why you are so
interested in this case?
'You shall hear everything in a little, Sir Henry, even if
you rate me as crazed as a March hare.' He suddenly
lowered his voice to a thunderous growl for a parenthetical —
‘But I'm not!' — and then went on in his normal tone:
“But first of all, sir, will you wind up for me this case of
Lambard v. Lambard? No word of what you have told me,
or will tell me, shall ever pass my lips. I give you my
solemn oath — my very solemn oath.'
'There is not much more to tell you, my dear senator,' said
the judge with a secret side-glance of assessment and the
faintest flicker of an almost secret smile. 'I called Mr.
Pitchley to my private room - as you are already aware –
and I expounded the situation to him.
'It was as I thought. He had never been within fifty miles
18


THE HOUSE THAT WAS NOT THERE
of Caldy in his life. He had been briefed by a London firm
of solicitors who had probably never even heard of the island.
It had not occurred to them to question Ivell's topography.
There was no reason why it should. Furthermore, it turned
out that the professor's one and only visit to Caldy was on
this particular occasion. On his return to Tenby he told his
sister exactly what he thought he had seen, and the pair of
them left by car for London that very night. So far as I
know neither ever came back here again. If it had not been
that I personally knew the place so well, the professor's
delusions might have been accepted as pretty conclusive
evidence.'
‘Delusions! quoted Senator Purvis with a curious, almost
ironical intonation that perplexed his host.
'Well,' said he in his driest tones. ‘Among the peculiar
things that Ivell said when I saw him with Pitchley in private
was this: That the house stood high on the shelf of a hill at
the head of a long, steep, and wooded valley, at the distant
end of which he could just see the glitter of the sea. Now not
only is there no house, and no wood at the western end of the
island, but there is certainly no "long, steep" valley — or a
valley of any sort. Caldy in all is only a mile and three-
quarters long and three-quarters of a mile wide. The spot
where Ivell stood — and I know it perfectly from his descrip-
tion - is not twenty yards from the edge of the cliffs over-
hanging Sand Top Bay and the sea.
The senator appeared to listen to this fresh revelation of
Professor Ivell's delusions with deep satisfaction. He leaned
over the side of his chair and heaved up an expensive pigskin
brief-case which he set on his knees. All that he said, how-
ever, was:
‘After the incident on the island did they hear from, or see
Lambard again?'
'Not to my knowledge. At any rate that is what his wife
stated in court. At the end of a month the hotel sent her his
bill — which she paid — and inquired her pleasure about his
19


VALLEY BEYOND TIME
baggage — to the fate of which she was indifferent. I gained
the impression that she was a rather icy young woman.
Perhaps she had cause to be. It would seem not unlikely that
her husband was what Jorrocks described as a “lusus naturae,
or loose ’un by nature". At any rate by slightly shifting his
ground Pitchley was able to get her a divorce, which was all
she cared about. The so-called evidence from Caldy was
pure embroidery on a straightforward case. Ivell's hallucina-
tions could not alter the fact that Lambard had deserted his
wife and remained absent for three years — which entitled
her to a decree.'
He struck a match and lighted his pipe, and looked
expectantly at Purvis. But the other merely echoed the
word 'hallucinations with the same ironical intonation as
before.
Sir Henry knitted his brows: he said in a manner that was
slightly nettled:
'Well, sir, what else can you call them? What else can
anybody call them? What is more, despite everything I could
say, Ivell stoutly and indignantly stuck to his statement. He
even remarked to me, during our private conference, that he
had sworn by Almighty God to give true evidence; that if I
thought his evidence was false, then I knew quite well what
remedy I had. I felt that examination by a mental specialist
rather than a charge of perjury was indicated. A man who
sees phantom women and phantom houses in phantom val-
leys definitely, my dear senator, needs attention. Because of
that I let the matter drop.
'With all due respect to you, judge,' said the American
impressively, opening his brief-case as he spoke, 'there may
have been a woman and a house and a valley at that particu-
lar spot, and at that particular time seven years ago.'
Sir Henry's dark eyes remained fixed upon him. The
expression of his clear-cut face did not alter from one of
polite attention. The merest suggestion of a question was
propounded in the upward quiver of his level brows, in the
20


THE HOUSE THAT WAS NOT THERE
sudden gentle tapping of his finger-tips upon his knees. He
made no comment.
'I don't believe in phantoms, sir! rumbled Purvis. He
extracted a document from his case which he let drop to the
floor, and suddenly surged to his feet. He towered over the
judge, transforming the low-ceilinged, book-lined room from
the quiet library of a scholar into a council chamber for
gigantic conspiracy or enormous adventure. 'I am, sir, a
plain, honest-to-God Presbyterian - not a spiritualist, or a
ghost-hunter, or a faker of that sort, I assure you.'
His voice had risen as he made this profession of his faith,
and its resonance filled the room.
Sir Henry felt that one of the old Teutonic gods might have
been incarnated in him. It would be rather a relief when his
housekeeper arrived with the tea and hot buttered buns
wherewith he invariably regaled himself of an afternoon,
winter and summer alike. He said in his quiet, precise
manner:
'Well, I can positively guarantee, my dear senator, that
house, wood, and valley do not exist in this material world.
When I retired from the Bench last year and came here to
settle down, one of the first things I did was to go over to
Caldy and reassure myself that it was Ivell who had been
dreaming and not I. I knew perfectly well that I was right,
of course, but still — ! Just one of those tiny nagging phobias
that send people back to see if they really did lock the front
door a second before, or really did turn the gas fire off and
not on, or that the letter actually did fall in the post-box and
not outside.'
Purvis, looking down on him from his great height, shook
his big head, as though mourning over a wilful blindness.
'If only you —' he began; broke off; concluded, 'Well,
see here!
As the judge swung his revolving chair round to the table
behind him, the other proceeded to unfold the paper in his
hand and to spread it wide open on top of an untidy litter of
21


VALLEY BEYOND TIME
books, letters, ash-trays, ink-pots, and exquisitely neat manu-
script.
'See here! repeated the senator, and his manner was that
of a man proffering the complete answer to everything.
Sir Henry realized that he was being instructed to examine
a map showing Ireland and the western coasts of Britain. A
line was dotted on it in red ink, curving from some point in
County Donegal right round to the shores of Wales and the
mouth of the Bristol Channel. Here and there place-names
were underlined and what appeared to be reference num-
bers written against them with a mapping-pen.
Poring over it, he took note of the fact that the red line
ended on the speck off the Pembrokeshire coast which re-
presented Gresholm Island, westernmost point of Wales.
Thence faint pencillings led to Caldy – that island known in
ancient days as Ynys-y-Pyr, with its bee-haunted hedges of
fuchsia and its ancient priory, and its six saints, and its
legends of buried treasure and pirates.
Whilst he studied the chart, the senator had prowled,
light-footed as any cat for all his size and weight, between
book-crowded shelves and book-crowded table to the empty
fireplace at the further end of the room. There he stood
apparently lost in contemplation of a model in a glass case of
a schooner-rigged paddle-steamer labelled “The Falmouth
packet Royal Tar, 308 tons. 1834.' This served as a base for
a tall wig-stand presided over in grave dignity by the full-
bottomed wig of an English judge. It was flanked on either
side by pewter tankards bristling - porcupine-like — with
quill pens.
'I see,' said the owner of ship, wig, and pens, at length
looking up and surveying the broad back, 'that a question
mark has been pencilled against the word Caldy on your
map?'
The senator swung round, came back, re-seated himself in
one easy, continuous flow of movement such as that of a
young and vigorous animal of prey. He was quite six foot
22


THE HOUSE THAT WAS NOT THERE
two or three inches tall; he had a fifty-inch chest, and his
weight must have been a matter of two hundred and eighty
pounds: but for all that he did not bump into his chair but,
rather, settled as lightly on the padded seat as a toy balloon
might have done. Sir Henry had an odd feeling that he
ought to have bounced a little once or twice after he had sat
down.
'We-ell,' said Purvis in apparent digression, 'I guess you
never saw Lambard, sir?'
'I did not.'
'Did you ever hear a description of him?'
'No.'
'It will be news to you, then, that he was a tall, slim man
with kinky red hair. An unmistakable sort of fellow.'
‘Was he?
'Pitchley, who had met him once or twice, told me so.'
The judge accepted this trifle of information with a nod.
It seemed to him to be immaterial.
'I am rubbing out that question mark on the map, Sir
Henry! I am rubbing it out?' His voice rose. 'For why?
Because, sir, a tall, slim man with kinky red hair reappeared
on Caldy last week — "as naked as a pebble!" !
'How do you know that?' asked Standish sharply.
'By investigation. You were not at home when I called on
you this morning. So I went across to Caldy to pick up what
information I could. I inquired about a poor friend of mine
who was liable to fits of loss of memory. A red-headed friend!
I struck lucky almost at once. Dollars are useful, even on
Caldy! My poor, red-headed friend had been seen. By two
men. He had pounced on them in a field out of a dense sea
fog, shortly after dawn last Friday. Four days ago! He was
stark naked, ramping and roaring, and frightened 'em into
fits. He accused them of pinching his clothes, and pinching
his money – clothes and money which he said had been
left there the night before! A night before which was seven
years ago!'
23


VALLEY BEYOND TIME
‘By Jupiter Ammon!' exclaimed the judge, and swung
round in his swivel-chair so that he might more easily keep
watch on the narrator's face. His fingers were pressed tip to
tip before him as though he were about to embark on prayer.
'What then?
"The two fellows, when they saw they'd not got to deal with
a spook or a lunatic, swore they'd not seen any clothes or
money lying around. I don't see any reason to doubt 'em. I
guess whoever found the goods seven years ago kept mighty
quiet about it. They'd pacified him a bit - one of them said
he could find him a pair of pants and a few shillings, and the
other promised the loan of a shirt and some boots — when a
noise like a fog-horn came out of the mist from which Lam-
bard had emerged. And then a dog came bounding and
baying towards them - big as a donkey, they said it was. A
sort they'd never seen before. A white dog with red ears.
Curious isn't it? A - white — dog — with — red — ears!'
The senator drawled the repetition of the description of the
dog at his slowest. He had been reciting his story with his
eyes fixed upon the sky and seascape framed by the open
window. Now, however, he swung his gaze round directly
upon the listener, watching intently to see if the implications
were lost upon him. They were not.
'Good God! exclaimed Sir Henry, thoroughly startled.
'Red ears? Like the hounds of Annwn?
‘As you say. Like the hounds of Annwn in Celtic legend.
I've never heard tell of any other red-eared dogs. Well,
these fellows — they'd been going after driftwood in one of
the bays — swore that it was the biggest and whitest dog
they'd ever seen, and that its ears were as bright red as
freshly spilled blood.
'Dyed doubtless. Just as the manes and the tails of the
horses were dyed purple.'
'I guess so, for when they rowed him across to the mainland
a little later, Lambard occupied himself in washing the stain
off the brute.'
24


THE HOUSE THAT WAS NOT THERE
'It accompanied him, then?'
'Sure. It made a mighty fuss of him - and he seemed glad
to see it, too.'
'What was his story, senator?
'Pretty thin. He'd gone for a midnight dip, and then
fallen asleep beside the dog in a warm hollow in the sands.
Just that. In the end they went off to fetch him some clothes,
and left him under a bush with a newspaper to keep him
amused. I reckon that he spotted the date, and realized then
for the first time what had happened. Anyway he was noth-
ing like so rumbustious after they came back – didn't curse,
didn't even seem surprised when his boat couldn't be found.
One of them said he looked like a man in a daze. As I said,
they rowed him ashore — to the beach south of the town.
The last they saw of him, he was striding inland as fast as he
could go, followed by the dog.'
'It was Lambard,' said the judge, not so much doubtfully
in question as endeavouring to accustom himself to the idea
that the missing man had reappeared, in ignorance of the
passage of time, at the very spot from which he had vanished
seven years before.
'Lambard,' asserted the senator. 'It was Lambard, sure
enough!
He returned his gaze to the sea. He fumbled in a bulging
side-pocket, and produced the largest gold snuff-box that
Standish had ever seen. He helped himself to the largest
prise of coal-black snuff that the Englishman had ever seen.
He took it from the back of the left hand, and absorbed it all
in two mighty sniffs, flicking away the loose grains with a
purple silk handkerchief, and remaining completely un-
moved by a dose that would have been atomic to an ordinary
man.
'It was Lambard, sure enough, Sir Henry,' he repeated.
“There is also another bit of supporting evidence I forgot to
mention. Pitchley described him as having a deep cleft in
the chin - awkward for shaving, I should opine! — and both
25


VALLEY BEYOND TIME
those folks on Caldy particularly noticed it. Oh, and
incidentally, yesterday morning, the elder received ten one-
pound notes in a registered letter, to be shared with his
companion. The signature was just a scrawl, and he threw
away the envelope without noticing the post-mark. But I'll
find Lambard. I'll find him, even if it costs me a fortune.'
'Dare I ask again,' suggested Sir Henry after a consider-
able silence, 'what is the nature of your interest in the
peculiar adventure of Mr. Lambard?
There was no hesitancy about the reply.
‘Lambard knows the secret that I've been seeking for a
large part of my life — just as my father did. Lambard is
the answer to a prayer!' Here Purvis paused; trumpeted
into the purple handkerchief, and then proceeded: 'He is the
living proof of our belief in the falsity of the so-called axiom
which states — "Two bodies cannot occupy the same lodge-
ment in space." I know they can.'
Sir Henry could turn a Latin lyric into impeccable English
verse, or discuss the Hogarthian aspects of Juvenal, or revel
in the intricacies of the law, but this sort of problem was well
out of his range.
Only after considerable thought did he comment:
‘Length. Breadth. Depth. The three dimensions of this
material world. So you believe in a fourth dimension, do
you? I begin to understand. I think I do, at least.'
He rose from his chair without waiting for an answer;
walked to the nearest bookcase, and extracted a large volume
which he spread open on the table. He sought among the
pages; found what he wanted; and, still standing, read aloud,
running his right fore-finger down the column:
'Chambers's Encyclopædia says, “.... Hence space is tri-
dimensional. The possibility of space of higher dimensions
has been much discussed. Since points, lines, and surfaces in
general generate by their motion lines, surfaces, and solids
respectively, so it is held that some analogous generation of a
fourth dimensional figure by one of three dimensions is
26


THE HOUSE THAT WAS NOT THERE
conceivable”. So you believe in the existence of a fourth-
dimensional universe, do you?'
The senator nodded.
'I do indeed, sir. I know for a fact that there are other
planes of existence — more, or less, plastic than our own —
crowding about us here and now, infinitely nearer yet in-
finitely more remote than the planets which rocketeers talk
of colonizing within a generation or so.
'I'm no would-be traveller through space, Sir Henry. I'm
a would-be traveller into the Fourth Dimension. For forty
years and more I have hunted it up and down the face of this
globe. Like a sleuth, like a scientist, like an explorer, like a
lover! I've studied every branch of knowledge that can have
any bearing on the business, from physics to mythology. I
know that a fourth-dimensional world exists. I have seen it.
Others have visited it. Lambard has. I am going to.'
He did not raise his voice as he spoke, but made the state-
ment in a most matter-of-fact manner, just as he might have
remarked that he had booked his passage to New York in
the liner Queen Elizabeth.


CHAPTER II
CHART OF DREAMS
T he senator had turned in his chair beside the table to
see what effect this declaration would have upon the
I judge, when a neat, small tap on the door announced
that someone on the three-dimensional plane requested
admission to the study.
Sir Henry's housekeeper, the personable embodiment of
discretion, opened the door just sufficiently to admit herself,
and retained her grasp on the handle, as though to oppose
her substantial and shapely body to any undesired visitor.
'There is a young lady, sir,' said she, 'that is wishful to see
Senator Purvis.'
Standish flashed a wordless question at the big man.
'It will be Silver, my aide,' the other explained. 'I told
her to let loose the sleuths on Lambard's trail. She will have
come to report progress. If you'll permit a moment's inter-
ruption? ... Sir Henry, meet Miss Honeyhill! Silver, this is
Sir Henry Standish, who is being very helpful, indeed.'
If by the word 'aide' Purvis meant a personal secretary,
then, except on his highly infrequent visits to the cinema,
Standish had never seen such a one as Miss Honeyhill proved
to be. He had never even imagined that such a secretary
could have existence away from the screen.
Silver's platinum hair, her thin slanting eyebrows and
enormous lashes, her huge grey eyes, complexion of peaches
and cream, pouting scarlet mouth and pearly teeth, elegant
small nose, slender neck encircled by a collar of pearls, and
the slim and seductive lines of a figure ornamented by a
frock of some spotted powder-blue material — all were of the
glossiest perfection that beauty parlour, coiffeur, dressmaker
and jeweller could devise. It was an almost inhuman per-
28


CHART OF DREAMS
fection that made the Englishman think of Coppelius's
mechanical doll, Olympia, in Offenbach's opera, The Tales
of Hoffman.
The girl acknowledged the introduction by the very slightest
of bows, and briefly refused the offer of a seat.
'What luck, Silver?' asked the senator, eyeing her a little
doubtfully.
'Luck! repeated Miss Honeyhill in an accent of disdain,
raising her improbable eyebrows.
She paused for a second or two, and then, without further
preamble, made her report to her employer, standing stiffly
by the table, and speaking in a staccato and rather hostile
manner.
'In the end,' said she, 'I ran a firm in Cardiff to earth.
They are sending two men down here immediately by fast
car.
'In the end I succeeded in contacting Mr. Pitchley. He
says that Lambard's younger brother has a place somewhere
in Sussex. He recommended a firm called Secrex for
investigation in that quarter.
'In the bitter end I got hold of them. They are taking up
the line at once. Is there anything else?'
'Good, honey! Mighty good!' said the senator, nodding
approval with what Standish thought to be a rather uneasy
smile. 'You've been very active, I note.'
His smile was not returned.
‘Active!' commented Miss Honeyhill bitterly. ‘Active!
Do you realize, Bennie, that I have spent the best part of
three hours in an hotel call-box which would be a disgrace as
a dog-kennel — and talking to morons at that? Three hours!
'Bennie!' reflected the judge, somewhat surprised by both
familiarity and tone. He recalled the curious phrase in
Morfa's letter — 'Silver, of course, comes into a different
category – which had only been made comprehensible by
Miss Honeyhill's arrival. He permitted himself to speculate
for a split instant on the senator's partiality for platinum
29


VALLEY BEYOND TIME
blondes, and whether his nephew had been correct in his
assumption.
The girl picked up her hand-bag, cast an indifferent
glance at the map spread upon the table, gave a curt little
nod to the two men, and departed with the air of an indig-
nant martyr.
Purvis may have divined what was in his host's mind, for,
as he sank back in his chair, he said in a slightly embarrassed
manner:
'Silver's prone to be a bit abrupt, Sir Henry, when she's
given chores of that sort, but I didn't bring the usual string
of hangers-on when I crossed this time, and the jobs have
got to be done. You'd never imagine, I guess, that that girl
has a degree in science and is a brilliant mathematician.
I couldn't do without her. She's a genius! If she set her
mind to it, I reckon she could prove Euler's biquadrate
theorem. I've seen her factorize at sight — at sight - a num-
ber running into six figures! She's absolutely essential to me.'
The judge heard this revelation with an expression of
astonishment which he was quite unable to hide. He would
never have dreamed that mathematicians could not merely
be female and young, but also of a super-glossy, film-star
lusciousness. He listened wide-eyed, with his finger-tips
pressed together.
‘She is also a relative of my late wife,' added the senator,
thus satisfactorily rounding off his explanation of Miss
Honeyhill from the social as well as the professional angle.
He shifted his regard from his host to the sea: he helped him-
self to a second pinch of snuff even larger than the first, and
went on: 'When Silver came I was just about to tell you what
first set me off on my life's work. It was like this:
'It all started when I was little more than a boy, rising
nineteen. My father took me to winter with him in the
Canary Islands after my mother died. We didn't stay in Las
Palmas, but at Valverde in Hierro, the westernmost island.
I used to spend most of the time fishing with an old fellow
30


CHART OF DREAMS
named Négrel – José Négrel — and his sons. There was
nothing else to do anyway. I talked Spanish, of course, be-
cause we had a bunch of Mexican cowhands down on the
Broken Spur Ranch in Kenedy County.
'Well, I went to the quay one morning to fix a trip. The
boat was there, but they weren't. There seemed to be a lot
of excitement among the fisher-folk, but I couldn't make
anything out of it. So off I went to José's shack. .
'I found them there right enough, José and his old woman
and the three boys, all down on their hunkers, praying to a
small plaster image of the Virgin in the kitchen. They had
half a dozen candles burning before it, and a bunch of
flowers in a vase, and paper garlands hung on it - pink ones.
They were all hallelujahing and such-like.
'It was a mighty long while before I could get any sense
out of them, but, when I did, it came to this.
'They'd been out all night, to the westward, caught in a
dense sea fog. Then, just after sun-up, the mist suddenly
cleared and they found themselves bows on to an island less
than half a mile away. It was a big island with great moun-
tains, and there was a white city with many towers lying on
the shore about a harbour. It was all bathed in sunshine.
They could see people in bright clothes walking on the quay-
side, and gay banners fluttering in a light breeze from the
south.
But how that breeze managed to blow they couldn't guess,
because, although they were due south of the place, there
wasn't a breath of wind to ruffle the surface of the sea where
they were. So they started to row towards the harbour.
'Hard though they rowed, the island never got any nearer,
and by and by it began to sink slowly into the sea. Very
slowly. Until at last the mountain peaks vanished beneath
the Atlantic without a bubble.
'It wasn't just one man, but four who saw the place. They
told me it was known as the Island of the Seven Cities, and
had been sighted time and time again westwards of the
31


CHART OF DREAMS
legends of the Other-World - of St. Brendan's Island, of Hy
Brasail, of Tir-nan-Og, the Land of the Ever-Young, of
Avilion, the island-valley
Where falls not hail, nor rain, or any snow,
Nor ever wind blows loudly, but it lies
Deep-meadow'd, happy, fair with orchard-lawns
And bowery hollows crown'd with summer sea.
Then I know, too' — He paused for an appreciable moment
– ‘of the Green Meadows of Enchantment!'
Once more he looked to the map. The long, narrow hand
with the cornelian signet-ring crept up the sheet and came
to a pause where the dotted red line ended its curve from the
western coast of Ireland to the Welsh shore.
Senator Benaiah Purvis had turned his head. He followed
with his eyes the movement of the narrow fingers. He said
nothing. He waited.
'Gresholm Island, I believe?' said Standish.
‘Gresholm Island,' agreed Purvis.
The judge rose again from his chair; again he went to his
crowded book-shelves with the air of one who knows exactly
where every work of reference dwells; again extracted a
volume, and opened it forthwith without search-it appeared
to the senator - at the required place. When he had sat
down again, he read in his meticulously punctuative manner:
(“The Green Meadows of Enchantment are still an article
of faith among Pembrokeshire and Carmarthenshire sailors,
and evidently not without some reason. In 1896 a corre-
spondent of the Pembroke County Guardian sent in a report
made to him by a certain Captain John Evans to the effect
that, one summer morning, while trending up the Channel,
and passing Gresholm Island, in what he had always known
as deep water, he was surprised to see to windward of him a
large tract of land covered with a beautiful green meadow.
It was not, however, above water, but two or three feet
below it, so that the grass waved or swam about as the ripple


VALLEY BEYOND TIME
floated over it, in a way that made one who watched it feel
drowsy."
‘Squire's Mythology of the British Isles,' said Purvis, instantly
recognizing the source of the quotation.
'It is. Does the passage explain the red line to Gresholm
on your chart?
'You've said it, sir. There were a good many people
besides Cap'n Evans who saw the Green Meadows early that
summer morning long ago. There were some who saw the
island well above water, and some who saw it anchored, as
it were, off St. David's Head. I've got a note of a dozen
names and more. All reputable witnesses.'
‘And so??
‘Half the United States”, said Purvis in a tone of vast con-
tempt, 'is mad about the navigation of space-ships to Mars
or Venus. The other half is madder about “flying saucers"
propelling themselves over our inviolable territory! They see
a big disc in the sky a million miles away, or a little disc
careering overhead, and get all worked up about them.
They turn all their science and imagination loose on the
business, and ignore phenomena that have been patent and
within arm's reach for a hundred generations.
'For every one that's seen a "flying saucer”, there have
been a dozen who have glimpsed another world, in another
space than our own, tracing its orbit in that other dimension
– making regular and visible contact with this earth along
a regular and definite track.'
"That is surely rather a large order, senator, isn't it?' sug-
gested the judge deprecatorily.
Purvis bounced to his feet as if the immense frame covered
by double-breasted blue coat with brass buttons — by nylon
shirt with its lurid tie — by cream-coloured trousering -
was compact of springs cushioned in rubber. So swift and
violent was the movement that for a second Sir Henry
thought that physical assault was on the way.
The senator, however, had no aggressive intentions. His
34


CHART OF DREAMS
purpose was purely educational as he bowed over the spread
map, and proceeded to trace the dotted red line with a
finger as big as a candle.
‘Donegal,' he rumbled, jabbing the chart towards the
upper western corner. 'See Glencolumbkille marked? See
that headland two miles north of it? Glen Head. Seven
hundred feet sheer drop into the water. I've seen with my
own eyes great mountains out to sea, where there aren't any
mountains in this three-dimensional world. With my own
eyes! And half a dozen others saw them, too, at the same
time. I've their affidavits. I couldn't get anyone to take me
there. Twenty years before a local fisherman had rowed out.
He never came back, although his boat was found in good
order drifting on a sea like a mill-pond the next day.
'See Erris Head, further south? See Slyne Head? See the
Aran Islands at the mouth of Galway Bay? Every one of
those places, chapter and verse. Great cities — fields — har-
bours with shipping. From Dun Aengus on Inishmore I've
seen the city myself. We've checked the thing there. Once
in seven years it turns up.
He cascaded upon Standish a stream of authorities,
ancient and modern, from O'Flaherty to Dr. J. P. W. Joyce,
as though he were counsel pleading a cause before a tribunal.
He quoted from recent newspaper reports and from the pro-
ceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. He cited the evidence
of engineers, clergymen, mathematicians, fishermen, mytho-
logists, and strangely deserted wives.
‘Kilkee!' said Purvis. 'Westropp, the antiquarian, saw it
from there with several other persons more than once. He
14... From the Diamond Rocks, Kilkee, I saw more than once, between
1896 and 1872, the phantom island to which, from the influence of the medi-
aeval maps from 1325 downwards, the name of Brazil, or Hy-Breasail, was
attached. It appeared immediately after sunset, like a dark island far out to
sea, but not on the horizon. On the last occasion I made a rough, coloured
sketch next day which shows the appearance as having two mountains, one
wooded, in the low central tract; between rose buildings, towers and curls of
smoke, rising against the golden sky westward.' -- T.J. Westropp, Member of
the Royal Irish Academy, quoted by Dr. George Little in Brendan the Navigator.
35


VALLEY BEYOND TIME
even made a picture of it, showing two mountains with a city
lying between
He moved the vast finger to the middle of Tralee Bay.
‘Here again. Seen at high noon. Watched for an hour.
City. Fields. Witness immediately reported to his parson, a
scholar and historian, who recognized the particulars as
identical with those which had been previously chronicled
as seen two hundred miles and more away. Now -
And here the senator proceeded to stun the dazed judge
with incomprehensible formulae relating to units of time,
velocity, density, mass and magnetic pull. He hammered at
him with quite preposterous calculations, which appeared to
include all the letters of the alphabet squared, bracketed,
and divided or multiplied by all the cardinal numbers in
turn.
He drew diagrams on the backs of envelopes and scraps of
paper with a fountain pen that seemed to Standish as thick
as a walking stick.
However much time the Englishman might devote to the
subject, he well knew that he had as little chance of grasping
what it was all about as he had of translating a Hittite
inscription. Nevertheless he nodded his white head in a
gratified manner, and uttered the one non-committal word:
'Quite.'
Then in a suddenly quiet voice, and with a complete
change of manner, Purvis said:
‘And so you see modern science is beginning to admit the
probability of the existence of other-dimensional universes
than our own in space and time. Yet our remote ancestors
accepted that existence as a matter of fact. They knew that
some other world, more magical than our own, lurked near
at hand, in the hollow hills, hidden by fog, or floating just
beneath the surface of the sea. Not always invisible, not
always unattainable!
'Greek legend tells of the Garden of the Hesperides in the
West. The Welsh have their Avilion, where Arthur went to
36


CHART OF DREAMS
be healed of his wounds. The Irish have a hundred tales to
tell of Magh Mell, the sinless Land of Pleasure with its wells
of wine and trees of crimson crystal.'
‘Crimson crystal!' echoed Standish, fascinated by the
picture evoked. 'I did not know that particular.'
'I maintain,' said the senator, raising his voice again, that
those so-called myths are actually based on historical fact —
that they are records from the long-distant past of contacts
with a fourth-dimensional universe that are continuing to
this very day. A universe with a kind of time and space and
matter differing from ours.'
‘Lambard's seven years?
"The years which he had thought to be merely a few
hours!'
'Seven years that pass in a night; trees of crimson crystal!
Ogier the Dane and Graelent! The “Ettrick Shepherd's"
Kilmeny in the "Land of Thought”! Is such your conception
of a fourth-dimensional world, senator?'
'It may be,' said Purvis very gravely. 'Have you ever read
any of Professor Barrett's books?'
'Barrett?' queried Standish.
‘Sir W. F. Barrett. He was professor of experimental
physics in the Royal College of Science for Ireland. There's
a sentence in a little thing he wrote, called Creative Thought,
which has always stuck in my memory. It's this:
""If the laws of Nature, if the wonderful diversity and
mystery of life, if infinite electrons and molecules, suns and
stars and the great galaxy of heaven, be the channels cut in
our present material world by the Creative Thought of God,
what limitless wonders, what new forms of life and intelli-
gence, may we not expect to find, when we can apprehend
the operation of the Divine impulse on the more plastic
material of an unseen universe?".
Listening to him and watching him as he spoke, the judge
arrived at the complete conviction that, despite his large
flamboyance and platinum blonde ‘aide', the American was
37


VALLEY BEYOND TIME
in every way utterly genuine, and that his quest was no mere
'stunt' but a serious and scientific undertaking.
'What relation has time to the problem of the other dimen-
sions?' Standish began just as a single untidy thump on the
study door announced the arrival of another visitor.
A small bare-legged boy, dressed in a stained white pull-
over and patched and faded blue shorts, materialized in the
doorway. He was tanned, snub-nosed, grey-eyed and hat-
less, with a shock of golden-brown hair that looked as if he
had been out in a high wind.
'Hya, Uncle Minos!' said the small boy, using the family
pet name for the judge. 'How's tricks?'
‘Hya, Midge!' said Sir Henry. 'I thought you were back
at school.'
'They've got G.P. or T.V. or something in the place, so I
can't go, Dad says,' explained Midge with obvious pleasure.
'Not for weeks! Do you know your front door was open? I
just walked in.'
He turned, as he spoke, to close the study door behind
him, and suddenly became aware of an alien presence, for
the senator had ceased his pacing and was standing monu-
mentally beside the fireplace with its ornaments of ship, wig
and quills.
Midge's eyes opened very wide at the imposing spectacle.
He grinned disarmingly at the large figure.
'Senator,' said Sir Henry, 'let me introduce to you my
late niece's son, Godfrey. In full, Godfrey Charles Hurrell,
Viscount Tyron, but generally known as Midge. So-called
because at one time in his life he gave every promise of being
not only small but a serious pest! – 'Uncle!' protested the
boy. — “Midge, this is Senator Benaiah Purvis, from Texas!'
'Are you really a senator — like the Romans, sir?' inquired
Midge with much interest.
'Sure,' said the senator with a vast smile. “So you'll be
Lord Morfa's twelve-year-old, will you?
'I say, sir,' exclaimed Midge, greatly impressed by the
38


CHART OF DREAMS
general overwhelmingness of this new acquaintance, 'you'd
look stupendous, ab-so-lutely terrific in a Roman toga! Do
you wear a toga nowadays in the senate?'
'I guess not,' said the senator, much gratified by this un-
solicited tribute. 'I guess not. Bath robes are no longer de
rigueur at the Capitol!
He extended an enormous hand, and the pair of them
shook hands with astonishing energy.
‘And why are you in Tenby today?' demanded Sir Henry.
'I thought the family were at Morfa. Does your father want
me to give you some grounding in Latin while you are on
holiday, or what?
'Ugh! I hate Latin!' shuddered Midge. 'No, Dad thought
it would be better for us to come back to Saul and knock
about on the river and the lake. I've come to Tenby to see
about a boat. Oh, and I've got a letter for you somewhere –
from Dad!
After a good deal of searching, the missive was retrieved,
in a rather crumpled condition, from a hip-pocket that also
held a lethal-seeming jack-knife, a yard or so of twine, some
pecan toffee, and a torch battery.
With an apology to Senator Purvis, Sir Henry opened the
envelope and cast a quick eye over his nephew's note; re-
flected with a puzzled expression for a moment; and then
re-read it slowly and intently.
"This, I think, concerns you, senator,' he remarked at
length, extending the sheet towards the other.
‘Pardon me!' said Purvis, stalking down the room and
taking the letter. He stood in the bay window and read:
House of Saul
Tuesday morning
My dear Uncle Minos,
Something extremely Odd seems to have been hap-
pening in the district. Mysterious Naked foot-prints
and mysterious naked Visitors! I have a notion that if
39


VALLEY BEYOND TIME
Benaiah Purvis has already contacted you — and he left
Morfa hot-foot on your trail — he might - repeat,
might — find the business up his street. I only say 'might
because I really got rather Gravelled when he started
expounding his theories to me. Algebra, Euclid, and
arithmetic are as much a closed Book to me now as they
were twenty years ago, and as they will doubtless be to
Midge, if he takes after his father.
I know you abominate stepping out of your routine,
but I fancy you might be interested in a queer little
story I heard from Mary Bosworth's daughter last night
- perhaps very interested. I'd like you to cross-examine
the witness.
Dare I suggest that you get in touch with Purvis - I
don't know where he's staying — and that the pair of
you pack your Bedsocks and nightcaps and come over
to Saul this evening? I can find you a couple of prime
lobsters straight out of the sea and two brace of wild duck
for dinner. Tell Benaiah he shall have an orange salad
made as he likes it - with brandy. Tell him that in
return I insist on him bringing Silver with him.
The car will be in Tenby, so there's no Problem of
transport. Call me up and say you're coming.
Your affectionate nephew,
TONY
P.S. Dear, dear Uncle Minos, why the hell don't you
have the 'phone laid on? The fact that Horace, Virgil
and Ovid went without, is no reason why you should
imitate them.
Senator Purvis handed the letter back to his host with
shining eyes.
'Glory be!' said he reverently. 'It looks as if the scent is
still fresh! ... I hope you won't pass up this chance, Sir
Henry! He rightly construed Standish's faintly quizzical
expression into an acceptance of adventure – or of dinner
40


CHART OF DREAMS
of wild duck with orange salad. 'That's magnificent! I
always keep a grip packed for emergencies. So while you're
folding the pajamas, I'll go call Morfa from Silver's "dog-
kennel”, and tell him that we're on for the party
'You realize, I suppose,' Sir Henry reminded the enthusiast,
'that Saul is in Carmarthenshire, many miles east of Caldy,
and, I should judge, quite thirty from the sea?'
'Even if it were three hundred, I'd still go,' affirmed
Purvis, and gathered up his chart ready for flight.
'Attaboy!' commented Midge with the most respectful air,
in what he took to be the American dialect.


CHAPTER III
THE VISION OF OLWEN
It was really the death of Balaninus Larva which began
the clouding of Father Bosworth's placid afternoon in the
Idim little parlour behind his sister-in-law's dim little shop
in the remote valley of the River Saul.
The young priest sat in a battered armchair with his
slippered feet on the fender, garbed in the shabby cassock
that he invariably wore as a sort of négligé in private life,
reading one of Miss Agatha Christie's admirable detective
novels. His bishop, in peremptorily ordering him to take an
immediate holiday, had for the good of his soul banned all
literature except the works of that author and the 'Father
Brown' stories of G. K. Chesterton.
On the edge of the red plush table-cloth, at his elbow,
stood a white kitchen plate piled up with filberts freshly
gathered from the tree in the garden. At least it had been
originally piled up, but was so no longer. For Father Bos-
worth, although he knew very well that they by no means
agreed with his digestion, had continued to eat nuts at the
rate of three to the page of his book throughout the after-
noon; cracking them with his strong yellow teeth, throwing
the broken shell into the fire, and finally dipping the kernel
into the saucer of salt on his lap. Filberts at one shilling and
ninepence the pound were a luxury he could not afford to
buy at home in his bleak, small presbytery in the back-streets
of a midland colliery town.
Occasionally he would look up from nuts and novel, and
cast an almost apprehensive glance at the window of the
door opening on the deserted shop; for he felt strongly that the
dignity of the Roman Church demanded that the slippered
ease of a priest, even when on holiday, should not be made
manifest to the lay world.
42


THE VISION OF OLWEN
But the bell on the outer door of the shop remained silent,
and his sister-in-law continued invisibly busy in the wash-
house, her activities accompanied by a loud humming of
Methodist hymns as though in defiance of any Papist who
might assail her personal faith.
So it came about that only heaven witnessed the encounter
between Father Bosworth and Balaninus Larva.
He had just cracked the shell of an exceptionally large
filbert when some instinct warned him that all was not well
with it. Surely enough, when he regarded the fragments of
woody pericarp in the palm of his large, blunt-fingered hand,
the ivory of the split kernel was blemished by a fat, whitish,
juicy, wriggling abomination — the grub of a nut weevil.
'Faugh! he exclaimed out loud with an expression of dis-
gust, and hurled the débris of the nut and its tenant into the
fire.
A moment later his conscience misgave him, and he pro-
jected himself out of the armchair to the rescue. The saucer
clattered to the floor from his knees, strewing salt over the
rag rug in front of the grate.
With his bare hand he endeavoured to retrieve the
wreckage with his victim from where it rested momentarily
in a narrow black rift between two coals above the red heart
of the fire. He was too late. Even as he stooped, the gap
widened and the sacrifice dropped on to the glowing bed.
In an instant it was gone.
Father Bosworth was an ungainly young man with a raw-
beef coloured face and strongly marked features, and dark
eyes that were too bright, and black hair as stiff and wiry as
the black hair with which Japanese geisha dolls were wont
to be crowned. He gave an impression of sadly needing to
be planed, and filed, and sand-papered, and generally toned
down; even his voice required oiling. His bishop, while
deprecating his awkwardly fitting body, was however far
more concerned about his estimable but equally ill-fitting
soul.
• 43


VALLEY BEYOND TIME
That worldly wise old prelate had repeated to himself, at
the conclusion of the latest interview, an unkindly little
jingle about the celebrated Irish seminary where Father
Bosworth had been trained:
They are always uncouth
When they come from Maynooth.
He had added 'Poor lambs! and had meditated for a full
minute, with a worried expression, on his subordinate's
irritable conscience which was as sensitive as an inflamed
boil.
And now, as he lumped himself back in the chair, Father
Bosworth's knobbly soul proceeded to give him a very bad
time indeed over the passing of Balaninus Larva.
Peccavi! Peccavi! He had sinned. He had deliberately
given one of God's creatures to an agonizing death in a
moment of shameful disgust. With hideous cruelty he had
burned it alive for the mere crime of fulfilling its destiny. If
really necessary it could have been given a swift and merciful
end – but not pitched to such a doom as awaited sinners in
the furnaces of hell. The barren fruit trees of the Scriptures
might be hewn down and cast into the fire, but not a living
sentient thing. The creature was as much entitled to the nut
as he was; nay, more so, for that was its only form of susten-
ance while for him it was but an unnecessary dainty - a
gluttony.
For a moment or so his unhappy mind made play with the
fate of that tiny fragment of insect life, swelling and roasting
in a second's intolerable pain over the red-hot coals.
If he could do that, what might he not do next?
What might he not do next?
There had been years ago — he now recalled — the little
bitch, Grizzle, whom he had once beaten for being dirty
about the house. And she had had a litter and miscarried
all of them, and developed a tumour, and so had died. Be-
cause of him!


VALLEY BEYOND TIME
of pawnbrokers, just as 'Aunt reminded one of lavatories.
Perhaps she recollected his protest, because this third time
she summoned his wits with:
‘Uncle Gregory!
'Well, Olwen? What is all the flurry about?' he managed
to say at last, in the uneasy semi-avuncular, semi-clerical
manner that he always assumed as a shield against her pre-
cocity.
'Uncle Greg! Olwen began again; and then paused as if
either she did not know how to go on, or else desired to make
certain that she had aroused his fullest attention to what she
was about to say.
'Well? You've said that three or four times before!
'I know. But – Suddenly to his embarrassment she fell
on her knees beside his chair, her hands clutching at the folds
of his threadbare cassock. Her voice sank to little more
than a whisper. 'But you see, Uncle Greg, I – have — seen -
a - Vision!
'A what!' he exclaimed, jerking himself upright and into
rigidity. 'What on earth are you talking about?'
“The Vision I've just seen. The —
“What do you be meaning by the word “Vision”? A vision
of what, now? Where? When?'
'It was a Vision, Uncle Greg. I saw them with my own
eyes. I, by myself. Saints they were, or holy angels! So
bright! So beautiful! I did. I did. I swear I did. You must
believe me! They came suddenly on me out of nowhere.'
She paused as though rapt away by the mere recollection
of the splendour.
In that briefest instant Father Bosworth's hot brown eyes
left his niece's entranced face, and surveyed all the small,
crowded, shabby room - the aspidistra on the table, the
shiny linoleum, the leatherette and yellow-varnished chairs,
the huge Victorian sideboard (surmounted by a fly-blown
mirror) which his sister-in-law used as a sort of office and
So was prickly with an array of documents impaled on
46


THE VISION OF OLWEN
spikes; the hundred-year-old engraving of whiskery troops
embarking for the Crimean war over the mantelpiece; the
portraits of Queen Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh and
President Eisenhower from some coloured magazine supple-
ment, tacked up over stains on the faded wallpaper. It was
the sort of room that he had known all his life. His eyes went
back to his niece. He did not believe for a second that Holy
Visions were vouchsafed to such a girl — with lips stained to
the red of the English pillar-box — to be recounted in such a
room.
'Olwen,' he said harshly, 'let you be very careful that you
utter no blasphemy!
She rose quickly and lightly to her feet, and confronted
him from the worn rug before the fire.
'It is not I who shall be blaspheming, Uncle Greg!' she
said, and he had to admit to himself that there was both
earnestness and indignation in her tones. 'I tell you that I
saw them by the Standing Stones on Carn Meurig as I came
along the track from Capel Issells. The man was leaning on
a long, long spear. I was absolutely thunderstruck. Then he
smiled at me, and I wasn't ... He — he looked like — like
Laurence Olivier!
The simile meant nothing to Father Bosworth, and he
made no comment on it, but asked with knitted brows:
'You said, “They came suddenly out of nowhere.” What
do you mean by that? And who else was there beside the
man? Tell me everything!
His niece kept her violet eyes fixed on him in level regard.
She told her story with her slim hands clasping one another
loosely before her, in a low, almost devout voice, such as he
had never heard her use before.
'It all happened three-quarters of an hour ago. It can't be
more, because it's only a quarter to five now. I'd been to the
farm to get some butter and bacon for Mum. It was rather
misty and I wasn't noticing anything particular – I mean I
wasn't looking about me – till I got near the top of the hill
47


VALLEY BEYOND TIME
where the Stones are. And there was a wood by them! A long
dark wood!
He did not make any comment, although he knew quite
well that the cromlech - already old when Stonehenge was
young - stood, solitary and exposed to every wind, on those
barren slopes in the uplands lying in disorder above the
valley.
'I was terribly frightened. I thought that I was “seeing
things", you know. The wood was very close. It wasn't
there when I went by before. I could have thrown a stone
into it. I was still staring at it, and saying my prayers, when
he was suddenly there, leaning on his spear and smiling at
me. Just at the edge of the wood. Then I wasn't frightened
any more. Not a bit! So when he called to me, I went
towards him at once. Of course I put my basket down
first.'
“What words did he use?
'I don't know, Uncle Greg. I only know that he called me
and I understood him. He didn't say my name. He didn't
know it, because afterwards the other one asked what it was.'
"And what sort of speech was he talking.'
'I don't know.'
‘But you must know whether it was English or Welsh that
he spoke.'
'I don't. I didn't seem to hear with my ears, but in my
mind. Well, when I went towards him, he came to meet me.
And when he got level with the Stones something seemed to
flash about him for a second, and there was a tinkle like the
noise of breaking glass. It was just as if he had walked
through a big shop window. And there he was, no further
from me than that door is!
Almost automatically Father Bosworth's eyes travelled to
the door with its small square-paned window keeping watch
over the jumbled treasures of Mrs. Bosworth's shop. Olwen's
regard followed his. She went on:
'Then he said to me - and he was still smiling, as though
48


THE VISION OF OLWEN
telling me all the time not to be afraid: “This is a desolate
place, child! By what name do you call it?” So I told him
that it was Carn Meurig. And then he asked me in which
direction Caldy lay. But I didn't know.'
'The Holy Saints do not be just appearing to ask for the
name of a hill and such,' announced Father Bosworth
austerely.
'Do the saints and the angels know everything — like God?'
He would not commit himself on the point, and nodded to
her to go on.
'Perhaps they don't care to bother God about little things
like that. Don't you think it is possible? ... Well, after I'd
thought a bit, I said that it would be best to look at a map,
and that Lord Morfa would be able to show him because
he's got all the atlases and directories and guide-books in the
world up at House of Saul. It took a little while for him to
understand what I meant. But when he did, I showed him
where the house is. It's a long way off, of course, but from
the top of Carn Meurig you can just see the statue on the roof
among the trees where the valley bends.
'So the saint nodded, and then suddenly disappeared. He
re-appeared just as quickly again. Only this time he wasn't
alone. There was a lady saint with him — '
'A lady saint!' echoed her uncle, utterly revolted by the
expression.
'Well, anyone could see she wasn't a man, and she had the
most wonderful red hair and green eyes.'
Had anyone ever heard of a saint with wonderful red hair
and green eyes? — inquired Father Bosworth of himself in a
mental fret. Could even angels have red hair and green eyes?
Were there lady angels in any case?
‘She had narrow, pointed feet,' continued Olwen, 'the
most beautiful feet I've ever seen in all my life. And her
hands! Long and white, too. Oh, so long and white, with
tapering fingers!
“Yes, yes! But what happened then?'
49


VALLEY BEYOND TIME
scrubbed I had to y unabash
'He said something to her in a language which I couldn't
understand, and raised his arm and pointed out to her where
House of Saul was in the distance. Then she asked me my
name, and, when I told her, said: “A pretty name for a pretty
girl!” After that she kissed me. So did he.'
'He did?' said Father Bosworth dumbfounded.
'Well, you kiss me, Uncle Greg. If you do, why shouldn't
a saint? Well, after that they both looked at one another
and burst into roars of laughter.'
“Why now?
‘Because,' said Olwen, entirely unabashed, 'my lipstick
came off on their faces. I had to lend them my handkerchief.
When she had scrubbed her lips, she looked at the stain and
said to me with a smile: “We only put that sort of paint on the
ears of our hounds”.
‘On the ears of their dogs!' echoed Father Bosworth in
utter confusion of mind. 'For what should holy saints and
angels want with dogs, at all? And dogs with red ears at
that? You have been dreaming, woman! Or you have been
having hallucinations! Would a holy saint be kissing the likes
of you, and having his holy face messed up with that muck
you cover yourself with? And then be laughing about it?
Would a holy saint go a-hunting with red-eared dogs? Would
a holy saint come asking a postal direction of an ignorant
girl, instead of the priest? Is this one of your pranks you
would be playing on me? Would — '
The tears welled up in Olwen's eyes. She protested
fiercely:
'I am telling you the truth, and nothing but the truth.
Everything was exactly as I've said. And if you go up to the
Stones, you can see for yourself the footprints on the damp
earth where they stood. The marks are quite different to
what you and me would make. They hadn't any shoes on, of
course — or anything else.'
'What do you be telling me?' exploded Father Bosworth.
He leaped to his feet, and seized his niece by the elbows,
50


THE VISION OF OLWEN
towering over her like some black bird of prey about to stoop
to his victim. 'What is this you dare to say?'
Olwen tore herself from his clutch and moved a pace
back.
'Neither of them wore any clothes at all, though they both
had a sort of greenish silver cloak hanging over their arms.
He was a sort of pale gold all over, and she had a skin like
white satin.
No male saint (he knew) would ever appear before a
young virgin without, at least, a loin-cloth. No female saint
would ever be seen in mixed company in the nude. No saint
that he could recollect had ever been portrayed completely
unclad, even though a bosom might sometimes be bare.
Here were no saints, no seraphs of the hosts of heaven!
He sought within the folds of his cassock, and suddenly
produced to her view an ebony cross bearing a silver image
of The Crucified.
“Will you swear upon the Cross that all that you have told
me is true?
'I swear upon the Cross that it is truth.'
‘Then it is a vision out of hell that you have had! It is a
vision of the Tempter and his demon succuba! It is a mortal
peril to your soul! Down on your knees, girl, and pray that
you may be delivered from the wrath of God! Down on your
knees and confess your sins and the vanity of your imaginings
of the lusts of the flesh!
'No, I will not!' she said in a determined voice. "They
were good, and I know it. It is only your own mind that
imagines horrible things and beastliness. Until you said it,
I never thought for an instant about them being naked.
Until I saw them I never knew how beautiful and holy people
could look. I will thank God that I saw them!
Once again he took her by the elbows.
'Wretched girl!' he said, shaking her in his urgency. 'Will
you commit blasphemy? Will you thank God for a vision out
of hell? Do you not realize that this is only an hallucination
51


THE VISION OF OLWEN
now and again, why shouldn't she? You can be young but
once!
She listened with a judicial air to the welter of cross-pur-
pose explanations that followed, without any expression of
astonishment. Then she said in a most matter-of-fact tone:
'Nonsense! It's them nudists!
'What nudists?' asked Father Bosworth.
During the summer I did hear that there was a camp of
them up on the moors, lying about and going on something
disgraceful. But the idea of them walking about without a
stitch on, and showing themselves off like that in front of a
stitch on irl! Dirty sclwen loudly
Huvu_S
"No! exclaimed Olwen loudly. “No!
‘And I say “Yes”,' said her mother firmly.
And the wood, then, Mum? The wood that isn't there,
what about that?
A bit of scenery they've put up to hide their dirty goings-
on, of course. Them prancing about in their birthday suits
in public! That's a matter for the police. I've a mind -
'I tell you –
‘But – began her brother-in-law.
'I'm telling you, my lass! ... I'm talking, Gregory! ...
You're going to bed, Olwen, right away! And I'll bring you
up a nice cup of tea in a bit, and three aspirins. You've had
a shock, my lady, and bed's the best place for you. And
hark-ee, ducks, not a squeak out of you to anyone! I'm not
going to have it said that a daughter of mine was out on the
moors, kissing naked men and naked women! They are
easy enough about inventing lies round about Saul — and
do you want everybody whispering together about you, and
sniggering and pointing at you when you go by? Shame
upon you to be letting a naked man kiss you!
‘And you, Gregory, you will remain mum, too, or I'll
know the reason why. I don't want to seem unfriendly-like,
but I'm not going to have the child's reputation blown on.
Nor am I going to have it said that she moons about seeing
53


VALLEY BEYOND TIME
people and things that aren't there as if she were touched on
top. No, inteed, inteed!...'
After a rebellious Olwen had been bustled to bed, and her
mother had returned to wash-house or kitchen, Father Bos-
worth remained in tormented thought standing over the
small fire that had been the funeral pyre of Balaninus Larva
so short a time before. He was completely unconvinced by
his sister-in-law's theory of nudism. He saw Satanic influ-
ences being brought to bear upon an hysterical young
woman. There was no fellow priest of his own faith with
whom he could consult within thirty miles, and he had no
means of transport; but the longer he meditated the more
convinced he became of what was his duty.
It was already growing dusk when he went heavily up-
stairs to his small bedroom. The finger-post at the cross-
roads in front of the shop was almost invisible against the
shadowy grey of the highway, and, to the right, the huge
yew trees at the entrance to the graveyard of the parish
church of St. Illtyd were inky smudges against the darkening
sky. It was a remote, un-neighboured spot, with no other
dwelling house in sight.
He prayed beside his narrow bed for a little, and then
stripped off his cassock and put on a jacket and a well-worn
raincoat. Afterwards he scrawled a note on the back of an
old envelope, which he placed on the parlour table before
he let himself out and set off through the twilight, with a
torch in his pocket, for the Standing Stones.
He had been gone barely five minutes when his sister-in-
law went into the sitting-room with an oil lamp in her hand.
by its light she read the three or four lines that he had written:
'Dear Mary – I may be a little late, but I shan't want
anything to eat. — G. B.
She divined his intention at once — with a certain amount
of contempt. As if he could do any good! He'd be reading
mumbo-jumbo prayers, when what was wanted was the police!
54


THE VISION OF OLWEN
The police?
No. She could do better than that. Lord Morfa had
suddenly arrived at House of Saul that morning, she knew,
because the station-wagon had called to collect supplies.
He was the man to consult! He was the man to make the fat
superintendent, the cadaverous inspector, and lazy police-
constable Jones come running, if he thought fit. Lord Morfa
would do a good deal for her – although nobody but he and
she knew why.
She shut herself in the little shop, locking inner and outer
doors, and took up the telephone receiver with a small — and
very un-Methodistical — smile. A few seconds later she
heard a well-remembered voice saying: 'Well, Mary-me-
dear?'
After she had told all she had heard and all she speculated,
there was a short reflective silence, and then the voice said:
'Not a word about it to anyone, Mary, and make certain
that Olwen keeps mum! You don't want this sort of tale to
get public. I'll try and bring some friends of mine over from
Tenby tomorrow, who'll see what they can sort out. I had
better have a talk with you first, though. I'll come now.
Tumble Olwen out of bed because I'll have to have a word
with her. It doesn't matter if her hair is out of curl. Oh,
and keep that appalling brother-in-law of yours out of the
way!
'He's out, my lord, and won't be back till late.'
'Good. In half an hour's time, then.'
And at the end of that half an hour, as Lord Morfa's big
Daimler drew up outside the lonely shop on the cross-roads
in the valley, Father Bosworth, by the light of his torch,
was surveying with a puzzled expression the prints of naked
feet on the damp earth by the cromlech — the prints of
very narrow and strangely pointed feet. He had seen feet
that could have made such an impress only once in his life;
on the statue of an Egyptian queen, many thousands of years
old, at the British Museum.
55


CHAPTER IV
PECULIAR AFFAIR OF
FATHER BOSWORTH
T hey left Tenby rather later than had been arranged.
Lord Morfa's roomy car loaded up the baggage -
I including a small barrel of oysters, a Virginia peach-
fed ham, and two gallon jars of the best draught bitter beer,
thus assuring to the senator his never-varying breakfast
menu — and then waited, for what seemed to Sir Henry
and his impatient young companion an incredible time,
before the Texan appeared with his glamorous companion,
and followed by two porters staggering under the burden of
further impedimenta of travel.
The senator, crowned by a grey Stetson hat with a magni-
ficently wide brim, conducted a considerable argument with
Silver to the very door of the automobile. He was holding
open in his hand a large-scale map of Carmarthenshire,
which persisted in flapping against his legs as though it
were an apron of which he had just divested himself.
'There's no good being stubborn about it,' said Silver
getting into the blue-and-ivory nest. 'I tell you that you've
made a mistake. I tell you that there's an error in your cal-
culation of the s* and v4 arcs. But there's no sense in talking
about it now. I'll do it when we get to Saul. I guess I know
where and how you've slipped up!
Purvis apologized to the judge for the delay, inserted his
vast form into the car in the manner of a man wriggling into
an over-tight vest, and sat down beside him in the back in a
rather subdued manner.
'I reckon she may be right, but I'm not going to admit it
yet awhile!' he confided in a rumbling whisper.
The big car oozed off through the narrow streets of the
56


AFFAIR OF FATHER BOSWORTH
town to the open country, ate up the miles of road with a
silent, effortless rush on its journey into the back of beyond.
An hour or so later, they slid into the valley of the River
Saul. They entered it at the cross-roads where Mrs. Bos-
worth's shop and the yew-sentinelled church formed a focal
point for the life of the scattered farms and isolated cottages
of the remoteness. They surged with increasing speed along
the valley between the dimpling, wooded hills - a valley that
appeared to lie under some enchantment, without inhabi-
tants to use the road, or the shop, or the quiet church, or
the hump-backed bridge across the unhurrying river.
Once again Standish felt, as he had done in the past, quite
certain that the nearer hills — those which rose steeply on
their left from the highway — were a battlemented rampart
shielding the fairy loveliness of the valley from the sinister
threat of the desolate uplands that stretched from the further
slopes for haunted miles in a tumble of hummocks and dark
coombs.
House of Saul had been so transformed in the time of
George the Fourth - of First-Gentlemanly memory — that
nothing of the ancient stronghold was visible from the road,
but only an edifice which might have been either a museum
or a masonic temple deported for its architectural failings to
the isolation of remote Wales.
A colossal statue of the Roman goddess Minerva, panoplied
with helmet, shield, and spear, was stationed atop the Corin-
thian portico. Two small cupolas had erupted at either end
of a long stucco frontage, in which were punched scores of
geometrical windows that stared with bland indifference
across the winding valley from the shelf in the hills where
the house was set.
'I call her Minnie,' confided Midge, pointing out the
goddess to Silver with whom he sat on the front seat. 'I hate
her!'
‘And why?' asked the senator's blonde 'aide', who, to
57


VALLEY BEYOND TIME
Standish's secret astonishment, now proved not merely to be
a mathematician of the first order, but capable of arousing
the most obvious and intense admiration in the breast of his
hard-boiled great-nephew.
'She's Latin,' said Midge grimly, ‘and I hate Latin. I'm a
bit of an egg-head at it, of course, but it's muck all the same -
worse than Maths! I'd like to pull her down. Cripes,
wouldn't she make a smash on the terrace! Co-o-oh! Do
you know, Dad doesn't like her either! Once when he was
a boy, a bit older than me, years and years ago, he climbed
up after a party, and put — put something rude on the top
of her helmet! Granddad gave him beans!
'Something rude?' questioned Silver with less than her
usual caution.
He lowered his voice so that he should be only audible to
her:
'Well, you know, it was — er — something you – er — keep
under the bed, you know!'
He surveyed her rather anxiously lest her modesty should
have been shaken by the mention of such a utensil. Instead,
however, she went into peals of laughter.
'When Silver laughs like that, there's sure to be something
dirty in the wind! commented the senator tolerantly to Sir
Henry, interrupting an intense debate on the subject of
euhemerism.
'For crying out loud!' said Silver. 'I do not keep anything
under the bed, Midge. Still I guess I know what you mean
... Now, tell me, I thought it was an old, old house, but this
establishment looks as if it had just come out of a jelly mould.'
'The old part, ma-a-a-am,' said Midge with his best
Southern drawl, 'is all at the back, facing the garden. That
part's tops. There's a banqueting hall with a music gallery,
and beams, and things, where King Henry the Seventh had
supper. You know — the father of Henry, the tough guy
who had all those wives. There's a secret room, too. Then
there's an old keep. Frightfully old! It's got a dungeon, and
58


VALLEY BEYOND TIME
'Welcome to the "picknickery”?!' said he.
It was a gay, low-ceilinged, panelled room, with bright
brocade curtains, a bright fire, and bright lights twinkling
in the silver and crystal of the round table laid for dinner, and
in the decanters and so forth set out on a smaller table by the
hearth.
'Sherry?' he inquired hospitably. 'Gin? Whiskey with the
"e" or without? Or vegetarian whiskies like corn or rye?
Brandy, perhaps? Traipsing through this damned house is
like perambulating a crevasse in a glacier!... Midge, make
yourself scarce whilst your betters drink deep! You'll have
to sup with Anne tonight. You can come down for the half
glass of port when Pogram's put her to bed. And not before,
mark you!
Midge accordingly vanished, after casting desperate
sheep's eyes at Silver.
'And now, Tony,' said the senator, watching corn whisky,
ice cubes, and ginger ale being assembled for his refreshment
in a goblet proportionable to his size, ‘and now, Tony, let's
hear what it's all about!'
Whilst he dealt with decanters and glasses, Morfa pro-
ceeded to retail the strange story that he had heard from
Olwen Bosworth on the previous evening.
'I went up to the Standing Stones this morning,' he con-
cluded, 'for the girl isn't by any means the hysterical type, and
I've never heard a word said against her. But there wasn't a
thing to be seen. And the mud patch, where she said the
queer footprints were, was all trampled over. It looked to
me as though it had been done deliberately to obliterate
them. I think Mary Bosworth's brother-in-law did it. She
swears he's cracked.'
'Why should he do that?' asked Standish.
'He seems to have got the idea that whatever it was Olwen
saw, or thought she saw, was sent there straight from hell.
Anyhow he spent the best part of last night up in the hills,
Mary says. And as I came back from the Stones today, I
60


AFFAIR OF FATHER BOSWORTH
saw him where the track starts, going in that direction again.
He was stalking along muttering to himself. He paid no
attention to the car at all. It was rather uncanny. I told
Mary when I got to the shop. He's an R.C. parson and
brother to Mary's dead husband, and supposed to be staying
on holiday with her. Mary said she couldn't stand him any
longer, and was going to give him his marching orders when
he returned. He'll unsettle the girl and may make talk.
'We're not going to say a word about the affair to a soul.
It wouldn't do the girl any good if it got about that she had
delusions, or had been knocking about with gentlemen in the
buff. Of course Mary's notion that there was a nudist camp
or something won't hold water for a minute. I had a good
ferret round.'
'What time of day was it when you investigated?' asked the
senator, accepting the unspoken offer of a replenishment of
his glass.
'I was up there before ten in the morning, and round and
about till getting on for half-past eleven.'
‘And when did the girl have her adventure?'
'I imagine it must have been somewhere in the region of
four o'clock in the afternoon.'
‘She said that the pair vanished after they'd kissed her.
Did the wood vanish as well?
'I don't think I ever raised the point.'
'It's important,' said Purvis. 'It's vital ... The se factor,
Silver! The sa factor begins to arrange ... Do you think,
Tony, that you could take me to see the girl, Olwen, tonight
after dinner? There's a whole lot of information I'd like to
extract from her. Why, I'd marry her if there was no other
way of getting it! I would, indeed! ...!
Senator Purvis fidgeted all through the superfine dinner
like a small boy on hot bricks to get off to the circus. He
fidgeted through the bortsch — through the dish of hot
lobsters — the wild duck with orange salad — the zabaione -


VALLEY BEYOND TIME
and the pineapple. He dropped a specially imported Egyp-
tian cigarette into the goblet from which he was sampling a
rare and precious whisky from the Isle of Islay that is known
only to the connoisseur. He repeatedly looked at his watch
or at the buhl clock upon the mantelpiece.
'Say, let's — ' he was beginning, and checked himself as a
discreet, pale servant in dark blue livery made his appear-
ance, swam silently and apologetically up the room, and
bent over his master's shoulder.
'What is it, Houston?'
'It is Inspector Lewis, my lord. He wishes to know if he
may have a word with you, my lord.
'I don't suppose it is anything very private,' reflected
Morfa. 'Bring him in!... I dare say he won't say “no” to
a whisky and soda. The old ruffian probably wants a sub-
scription to the police football club, or suspects one of my
tenants of sheep-stealing.'
Inspector Lewis was accordingly ushered into the 'pick-
nickery' – a tall man in blue uniform with greying hair, a
large Roman nose, and the general appearance of a well-
meaning vulture.
He bowed individually to Peerage, Beauty, Bench and
Senate, before taking the chair offered him at the table,
putting his cap and woollen gloves on the floor beside him,
and accepting a glass most gratifyingly full of amber fluid.
“And what can I do for you, Lewis?' asked Morfa. 'Found
an illicit still?
'No, my lord. It's only a little matter of times. I'm really
ashamed, inteed I am, to trouble you, my lord, over the
supper table with your friends. Sir Henry may remember
that it's fussy I am about accuracy. I gave evidence before
you, Sir Henry — it's a good few years now — in a small
bigamy case when you took the winter assizes at Carmarthen.
Perhaps your lordship recalls the occasion?
Sir Henry did not recall the occasion, but permitted him-
self to suggest that he did so by smile and nod.
62


VALLEY BEYOND TIME
'No, m'lud — Sir Henry, I mean. In confidence, of course.'
“Of course,' agreed Standish, mutely collecting up the
concurrence of his companions.
The inspector raised his glass respectfully and gratefully to
Morfa.
'A wonderful whisky, if I may venture a comment, my
lord! ... Well, Dai found the deceased at approximately
four thirty p.m., because his call came through to the station
at five fifteen p.m. exactly. It would have taken him forty
minutes or so at least to get from the Standing Stones to the
shop on foot.'
Morfa nodded agreement.
'He just made certain that the Reverend Bosworth was
dead, but did not move or disturb the body in any way.
He's an oldish man with a very steady character. I proceeded
at once to Carn Meurig with Dr. Roberts and a police-ser-
geant and a constable. It was dark, of course, when I arrived,
but we'd got good torches, and we found the deceased lying
exactly as Dai had described. On his back, in his cassock — '
*. 'Cassock! exclaimed Morfa. 'I'll swear I saw his trouser-
legs as he passed us this morning.
"There was an old rain-coat folded by the Stones. He
might have hitched the cassock up underneath, my lord.
But this is one of the odd things: he had only one shoe on!
What is more, most of the sock was gone, too. There was
just the top of it remaining above the ankle. Grey wool it
was. On the left leg. The sole of his foot was quite clean,
so he couldn't have been walking about in that condition,
my lord. His cassock — very threadbare it was, very thread-
bare! - had a sort of wedge-shaped piece right out of it on
the same side.'
'Burned?' asked the senator, who had been listening with
the closest attention, whilst an out-size in cigars had travelled
from corner to corner of his mouth.
'No, your honour,' replied Lewis, satisfied that such was the
correct form of address for a member of the upper house of
64


AFFAIR OF FATHER BOSWORTH
Congress. “There was no trace of charring that we could see.
The sock and the cassock both looked as if they had been
cut with a very sharp pair of scissors. There wasn't a frayed
edge anywhere. Dr. Roberts said on first examination, how-
ever, that there wasn't a sign of a wound on him, or any sort
of mark. But here's a still queerer thing -
He refreshed himself with a little whisky, and then brought
from a side-pocket of his immaculate tunic a small package
wrapped in a piece of newspaper, and spilled the contents
upon one of the fine lace table mats. The senator put on a
pair of tortoiseshell-rimmed glasses almost as big as motor-
car side-lights; the judge donned spectacles of more modest
dimensions; Silver and Morfa leaned forward.
A black something resembling a miniature T-square lay
upon the intricate pattern of silk thread. With a sense of
shock Standish realized that it was the remains of an ebony
crucifix of which the top part was entirely missing together
with the head of the ivory figure suspended upon it.
'Permit me!' he said, and drew the mat and its burden
delicately towards him, and bent over it in close examination.
'I found that lying on the grass a little way from the
deceased,' said the inspector. 'Near his feet.'
The judge pushed the exhibit along the table for Purvis's
inspection.
From some cranny of his coat the senator produced a
pocket magnifying glass and intently studied the mutilated
crucifix through it. Then he grunted.
'Whatever cut that must have been mighty sharp,” he
commented at length. 'It went through ebony and ivory
like a knife going through butter. There's no burr, or
splinter, or nick. The cut is as smooth as glass. You noted,
Mr. Inspector, I opine, that the cutting agent was at a
slightly oblique angle? The top of the cross has been removed
at a fractional slant.'
'I had not remarked that, your honour,' said the inspector.
'It isn't how, but why it was done is interesting me. I'd also
65


VALLEY BEYOND TIME
like to find his shoe. We looked for it as best we could. He
could never have got where he did without it - unless he
hopped.
Morfa said in the most casual voice he could command:
‘Did Mary Bosworth give any reason why he should have
gone for a second time in twenty-four hours to the Standing
Stones?
‘Mrs. Bosworth thought he was going mad. She told me
so. He said devils were loose on Carn Meurig. He was
going to say prayers over them!
‘And the devils got him, instead!'
Lewis rubbed his beaky nose; ruffled his thin grey hair;
finished his whisky; said in a discontented fashion:
'There's a lot of old wives' tales about the Stones and Carn
Meurig. You won't get the locals going that way after dark
... If Mr. Bosworth was mad, he might have got rid of his
shoe, and cut his cassock, and spoiled his crucifix. But that
don't explain why he died, unless he took poison. And Mrs.
Bosworth says there isn't a thing in the shop to kill anything
except moths. I can't see a man killing himself with moth
balls, can you, my lord?”
‘God forbid!
He was getting up to go when the telephone on a small
side-table by the fire started to ring.
With an apology to his guests, Morfa rose and took up the
receiver.
'Hullo! Yes? Good evening, Roberts! Lewis is here, right
enough. Want to speak to him? I hear you've been spending
a happy evening. What do you say? Oh, heart was it, after
all? We'd been imagining all sorts of horrors. Here's Lewis!
G’night.'
They sat in silence whilst the inspector took copious note
of the police surgeon's report. When he put the receiver
down eventually, his countenance was a battlefield of
emotions — satisfaction, puzzlement, and disappointment all
contending with one another.
66


AFFAIR OF FATHER BOSWORTH
He came back to the table, re-wrapped the desecrated
crucifix, picked up his hat and gloves.
'Well, my lord, that's that! As you just said — heart! Dr.
Roberts says there isn't a shadow of doubt about it being
natural death. Long-standing disease of the heart, says he.
Acute something-or-other endocarditis. I've got it down.
Anyhow, I'm not sorry. The police have enough on their
plate as it is, my lord, without getting tied up in what the
Sunday papers would call “Death Mystery of a Priest”. I
suppose he cut off his sock and so on himself. Though I don't
see how he could have done. Perhaps going mad is one of
the symptoms of endocard — and whatever it was.'
'Guess it's quite probable,' averred the senator.
‘Wilson and I both remarked that he looked a bit odd this
morning,' added Morfa. 'He was muttering to himself. The
car was stationary, so we could hear him.'
“So you'll call off your bloodhounds, then, Mr. Inspector?'
suggested the senator.
'Well, your honour, it would be only gratifying an idle
curiosity to continue the search. Dr. Roberts is a very sound
man. I've got to think of my expenses sheets. ...'
'Thank goodness for that!' said Senator Purvis, breathing a
huge sigh of relief when the door had finally closed upon the
inspector. He took a pinch of snuff with the air of presenting
his nose with a burnt offering in thanksgiving.
Silver regarded him with a lifted eyebrow.
'Why all this gratitude, Bennie?' she asked.
'I didn't want policemen getting in my hair if I had to
conduct investigations on the spot. I didn't want Mrs. Who's-
it's store over-run with detectives sorting out a whodunit
when I was trying to talk to the girl. Do you think, Tony,
that place is going to be too much of a house of mourning
for us to pay a call tonight?'
‘Mary won't be weeping,' said Morfa. 'The only reason
she stood for the man at all was the small spot of social
67


VALLEY BEYOND TIME
prestige from having a dog-collar in the family. I know that
because she told me so. I'll call her up.
'I guess, Bennie,' said Silver thoughtfully, 'that you won't
want me butting in on this party. I might spoil your
approach to the girl. She turned her eyes to the door where
Midge had suddenly appeared, and smiled. 'I reckon that
I'll stay at home while you investigate, and play poker
patience with Midge, or teach him the American language,
till it's his bed-time. After that I'll turn my attention to the
problem of st and so forth.'
'I'd like to see the cromlech tonight, too,' remarked Pur-
vis, lighting a cigar, and paying no attention to Silver.
'It's hellishly difficult country, Benaiah,' said Morfa.
‘You'd better wait till daylight and take a preliminary dekko,
before indulging in any night expeditions. Honestly! It
would be the easiest thing in the world to get lost with what-
ever sort of torch you've got. And there are some ugly
places, I can tell you! I wouldn't go off the track at night
for a very considerable packet. Tell you what, we'll get
Wilson to take you out just before sunrise for a first look
round, if you really must. He's a bachelor, and won't mind.
You can be back for a latish breakfast, and then, if you like,
I'll join you. But nothing will get me out of bed at six in
the morning.
'Nor me,' agreed Standish, who normally retired at nine-
thirty at night and rose exactly twelve hours afterwards.
‘Can I come with you, sir?' asked Midge, who had
approached during the discussion and placed himself beside
the fascinating Miss Honeyhill's chair. 'I'm always awake
at sunrise.'
His father made no comment on this preposterous state-
ment, except by a profound wrinkling of his brow.
'I reckon, son,' said the senator decisively, 'that that early
trip just won't be worth your while. I'll have to do some
dullish calculations on the spot. That's all. If your dad
doesn't mind, you could come with us when we all go later.'
68


AFFAIR OF FATHER BOSWORTH
Morfa nodded consent as he rose from the table.
'You'll have to give your word, Midge,' he said, 'that
you'll stay put wherever you're told to ... I'll phone Mary
Bosworth now and see if Olwen's ready to receive us. I'll
get them to turn out the second chauffeur tonight, to save
Wilson for his early call.'
Standish realized that Silver had been watching Purvis
very intently since he broached his plan for a preliminary
visit. Now she intervened:
'If you really mean to go and have a look-see at that foul
hour of the morning, Bennie, I think you and I had better
have a quick check at our figures right away. Come and
do it now, like a good boy!... I won't be long, Midge.
A quick glance under his neat grey eyebrows at her as she
spoke conveyed to Standish the curious impression that she
attached an importance that was neither mathematical nor
sentimental to this private conference.


CHAPTER V
WOOD BEYOND THE WORLD
THAT Midge is uncommon late,' commented Mrs.
Pogram, looking up from her darning to the clock on
the schoolroom mantelshelf.
“James says he's playing cards with the American lady in the
“picknickery",' said the head housemaid, who was sitting
on the other side of the fireplace repairing a suspender-belt.
'He says they were carrying on like a pair of comics, as good
as a play, when he looked in.'
'The boy'll be just such another as his dad when he's a
bit older,' prophesied Mrs. Pogram almost approvingly.
'The lord was always a lad among the girls — and I'm not
saying that they didn't ask for it, either. Take Mary Bos-
worth, who we were just speaking about, when she was own
maid to his mother! ... But I'm asking myself what Lady
Kat will make of that American girl! She looks to me what
poor Pogram would have called “a bit of all right”!!
She dropped a small mended vest on the pile beside her,
and took up a sock that had seen better days. She surveyed
it automatically whilst she speculated on the possible reac-
tions of the Lady Katharine Hurrell, Morfa's aunt, a
vigorous spinster — now on holiday — who had presided
over his establishment ever since the death of his wife in
child-bed seven years before.
'James says she's got everything these film actresses have
got - and then some,' said the head housemaid, who was
plain though young, with a small sigh. 'I wish we were back
at Morfa, that I do. Fifteen miles to the nearest flick. I ask
you! And no T.V.! One might just as well be in one's coffin!
'You girls! commented Mrs. Pogram – but tolerantly, as
though she, too, had known what it was to be young.
70


WOOD BEYOND THE WORLD
Nobody, however, could remember Mrs. Pogram being
young. She had looked the same in Morfa's schoolroom days;
stout and motherly, dressed in black with a small check apron
and a black straw hat ornamented by a bunch of red cherries
– which for some occult reason she wore indoors and out at
all times and all seasons — firmly settled upon her abundant
grey hair. She frequently quoted remarks made on some un-
specified occasion by 'poor Pogram', but direct questions
about the gentleman were always neatly evaded. Accordingly
no one knew whether he were alive or dead, and there was
even a school of thought that classed him as imaginary as
Mrs. Gamp's 'Mrs. Harris'.
‘James says she's got —'.
" "She's" the cat,' intervened Mrs. Pogram in old-
fashioned reproof.
'- Miss Honeyhill's got a necklace on that's just nobody's
business. And he says he knows a necklace when he sees one.
One of his guy'nors was in the business.
‘James still acts sometimes as if he was in service with
stockbrokers, and jewellers, and suchlike,' said Mrs. Pogram
severely.
The head housemaid, who was getting a little light relief
out of James, ventured no reply.
Noises off now warned the gossips of the approach of
Godfrey Charles Hurrell, by courtesy Viscount Tyron. He
was saying, with a hand rattling the door latch:
'Golly, that'll be swell! You do mean it, don't you? Oh,
Silver, you're sure quite a dish! I'll say you are!... Oh,
Poggie, I've come up to bed –
‘And time, too, my lord!
'Don't be a hoggie, Poggie! And here's Silver come up to
have a look at the drawings in my room! There's nothing
to see here. Come on, Silver!'
He cast a depreciatory glance round the bare and rather
battered room with the minimum of furniture and the maxi-
mum of cupboards.
71


VALLEY BEYOND TIME
Silver smiled brightly at the two ladies of the household.
'It's my fault if Midge is late, Mrs. Pogram,' she apolo-
gized. “But the gentlemen have gone off on some expedition,
and so he has been keeping me company. I am very, very
sorry if we've made you wait ... Let's see these pictures
quickly, Midge!
They disappeared through one of the few doors in the
room which did not open into a closet for clothes, or toys,
or boots, or sports equipment. Mrs. Pogram and the head
housemaid resumed their seats. Through a chink in the door
they could hear Midge saying:
'It'll be absolutely wizard, Silver! Abso-bally-lutely!'
'Well, I guess I've got to keep an eye on my baby.' – The
ladies by the fire exchanged glances with lifted eyebrows —
'He's a big boy, but he can be a very bad one. Mother's got
to see what he's up to — without him knowing beforehand.
I'll be glad of your company. And you know all the answers
to the geography, too. Which is important.'
‘And, of course, dad did say —'.
'Ssh!
An outbreak of whispering ensued, which ended in Silver
saying:
‘Now I'll go and call up R. R.'
'Who's R. R.?
'Rosemary Rachel Rose. She's my maid-chauffeuse. She
was an officer in your Wrens. She's been a policewoman, too.
She's some girl! She's dynamite! She'll have to bring my
own little auto over. She can do my hair, and fly a 'plane,
and drive a car, and type faster than I can, and knock back
a Scotch and soda! You'll like her! ... Good night, Midge!
Oh, Midge, do you by any chance — ?'
By some chance Midge did. The sound of his hearty
embrace left the matter beyond doubt.
‘Bless his heart!' said Mrs. Pogram in a low voice, with
as much pleasure as if she had herself been the recipient of
the noisy kiss that he had bestowed.
72


WOOD BEYOND THE WORLD
mearl She's a crails, She's dynamo't be Woolwoche'd
For a few moments after she had left the boy to his bed-
going, Silver stood by the high nursery fireguard before the
hearth exchanging affable nothings with the two women, and
then went off to summon Rosemary Rachel Rose to her
presence.
You mark my words, Foley!' said Mrs. Pogram after the
door had closed behind her. “That young lady means to be
as sweet as pie to everybody. She's got her hooks out for my
lord. When she was at Morfa a week or two back with that
uncle of hers — or whatever he is – I said to myself, “she
means to nobble him by foul or fair”. You'll see if I'm not
right! She's a crafty one, she is!
* "She's some girl! She's dynamite!” ' quoted the head
housemaid. “That rope of pearls might be Woolworth's for
all I know, but did you see, Mrs. Pogram, the bracelet she'd
got on? That didn't cost eighteen pence, not half it didn't!'
They were still discussing her chances of success, personal
appearance, attire, jewellery, and manners, when Silver at
length succeeded in tracing an elusive satellite.
'Where'd they find you, R. R.?' she asked. 'In the bar, did
they? Why in blazes didn't they look there first? We've been
in the place thirty-six hours, and I guess they ought to know
your habits by now! Listen! You've got to get that car of
mine here, to House of Saul, an hour before sun up. Catch
on? One hour before sunrise. This is what you'll have to do-'
ſe, to How! Listes, and I
Midge's diamond-latticed window was wide open to the
mist of the early morning.
From it he surveyed abstractedly the ancient stone walls,
the oriels, the battlements, the arched doorways, and the
buttresses of the three-sided courtyard of the ancient house
which lay behind all the preposterous stucco classicism of the
frontage on the valley, like the cake behind the icing. The
stones of the wide flagged court were shining with wet, and
mist hanging motionless, embayed between the two wings of
the building, blurred all the outlines. The terrace and the
73


VALLEY BEYOND TIME
gardens beyond were invisible behind the dense grey curtain,
as invisible as the steep wooded hills which walled them in.
Midge had gone to bed practically fully dressed – just in
case the summons should be peremptory. All he had had to
do, when he got up, was put on his gum-boots, and shrug
himself into a rain-proof lumber-jacket. On second thoughts,
however, he sponged his face and cleaned his teeth as well,
in the hope that Silver might think a 'do-you-by-any-chance'
was indicated as correct prelude to high adventure.
From five o'clock onwards he had sat at the small table in
the window writing a poem - or attempting to write a poem,
for he could find no possible rhyme to the name “Silver' –
in an exercise book which was kept under lock and key, being
sacred to his inmost thoughts. The first lines ran:
Silver Honeyhill
Looks like a daffodil,
Speaks like a mountain rill
I don't think she's ever ill.
But after that it was the very devil!
‘Bilver -- Cilver – Dilver ... Milver – Nilver - Pilver -!
Rilver?
He stopped the recitation to look in his well-thumbed
pocket dictionary. Surely there was such a word as “Rilver?!
But there was not.
'Tilver,' said Midge, losing hope. He took a large mouth-
ful of currant loaf spread with bloater paste as mental stimu-
lant, and continued on his quest — 'Vilver — '
'What's a “vilver”?' said a low voice.
The lady whose name rhymed with that word stood sur-
veying him with twinkling eyes from the door which he had
put ajar so that he might have early warning of her arrival.
She was dressed in green corduroy slacks and a wide-collared
black pullover; and the glory of her shining hair was almost
hidden, but not quite, by a piratical stocking-cap with a
pale gold tassel.
74


WOOD BEYOND THE WORLD
He did not answer her question: he was too full of naive
admiration for her to be able to say anything except -
'I say, Silver, you do look top-hole! You look like Peter
Pan, you know!
'You don't think I'll ever grow up any more, Midge?'
'I do wish you hadn't grown up so much already,' said
Midge regretfully, and in rather a flurry crammed the exer-
cise book away in a drawer of the little table lest it might
arouse awkward interest.
They slid cautiously out of the school-room, as seven-year-
old Anne was already awake and conducting war-like
operations - 'Bang-bang! Bang-bang!...Z-z-z-z-z-z-z-z-z-
bang!' — in the loudest possible fashion.
Silver's ‘own little auto' was waiting for them by the
entrance to the stableyard. It proved to be a squat monster
of the most modern design, with a silver-greenish complexion.
It looked horrifically like something between a dragon and a
toad, an impression heightened by its radiator and front
bumper, which suggested that the creature had opened wide
jaws full of unnaturally shining teeth in an anticipatory grin.
R. R. considerably impressed Midge. She was a good-
looking, lean, tanned young woman, with a high-nosed ad-
venturous face that was a little bitter, and a brusque manner.
Although she was hatless, she wore a dark navy-blue coat
and skirt, as severely cut as a uniform, and he could quite
well visualize her pacing the quarter-deck and ordering
sailor-girls aloft, or gripping the ship's wheel with her strong
brown hands.
R. R. said:
'It's damned raw, madam. I've brought a couple of
thermoses with hot coffee from the hotel and a bottle of
rum in case of accidents.
'Rum?' questioned Silver.
'The only thing to drink with coffee early in the morning,
madam. I do not recommend brandy first thing.'
'Have it your own way, R. R.'
75


VALLEY BEYOND TIME
""Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum”,' said Midge, making
the only quotation that he could ever remember. 'I've never
tasted it. Me for rum by and by — if I may, Silver!'
"This is Lord Tyron, R. R., mostly known to his friends as
Midge!
R. R. gave a perfunctory nod, which Midge thought might
have been more friendly.
'R. R. is a bit of a communist, explained Silver getting
into the car. 'She doesn't approve of lords, millionaires, or
the idle rich, though she's got a duke somewhere or other in
the family. Still we won't talk about it, because it hurts her
feelings.'
‘The only duke I ever saw was rather a scruffy one,' said
Midge plumping himself beside her on the back seat. 'He
had to skedaddle to Mexico or somewhere. Dad says he's a
crook, and diddled thousands of people.'
“That's my relation, curse the brute!' said R. R. in an
unimpassioned voice over her shoulder.
'Wilson, the head chauffeur, used to be with him till he
came to us,' Midge informed her.
'Wilson!' said R. R. thoughtfully, and let the clutch in.
The car squelched down the beech avenue through the
mist, and swung into the road. It gathered speed and hurled
itself forward between the hedges, as though R. R. had eyes
that were capable of penetrating the white woolly cloud in
which the valley was submerged, or as if she followed un-
erringly a radar direction beam. Midge found a spine-
chilling pleasure in what seemed to him to be a blindfold
race through an extinguished and silent world. He cast a
sidelong, cautious glance at his companion; but she appeared
to take the adventure as a matter of course, and was sitting
back in her corner, idly smoking a cigarette in a long jade
holder.
There was the hump-backed bridge; then the right-angle
turn to the left, the dip by the chapel, miles of corkscrew
road, a wobbly bicyclist, and the long badly banked curve
76


WOOD BEYOND THE WORLD
ted in a metimes id, but the faint
before the cross-roads — but R. R. appeared to have fore-
knowledge of all these things, and to have planned long in
advance for them.
'I say,' he confided to Silver in a whisper, 'she is a wizard
driver! Absolutely wizzo!'
Silver nodded; looked for a second at the back of the dark,
immaculate head of the girl at the wheel with a half-smile;
expatiated in a low voice:
‘Of course sometimes she acts as if she were flying a 'plane
through an empty cloud, but this is one of her good days.'
In a long swoop they passed the faint blur of light that be-
tokened Mrs. Bosworth's shop, the blackness that represented
the great yews about the church; swung right and changed
gear without jar or sound, and started to climb the steep
ascent into the lost uplands that fringed the valley.
After a while R. R. said, without turning her head:
“There's a dip half a mile on, which is as far as the car can
go, madam. Beyond that you will have to walk.'
'Do your telescope eyes already tell you that?' inquired
Silver.
'I have been here before, madam.'
'Okay. You'll wait with the car, then, till we come back
... You know the way on, Midge? Absolutely certain?'
Midge was about to say that he could have found his way
blindfold, when it struck him that the journey would in any
case be practically blindfold, for the mist was even denser
here, indeed, than down in the valley. It would be like
boring one's way through a bed of cotton-wool. He patted
the pockets of his startlingly blue lumber-jacket.
'Honour bright! I practised for my scout tests up here
several nights when there was no moon. I've got my com-
pass, a map, my big torch, a candle and a box of matches,
some chocolate, a pocketful of oatmeal biscuits and my
water-bottle. Oh, and I've got my ground-sheet, too.'
Although he could not see her doing so, R. R. smiled a
small, secret smile. She looked surprisingly human for a second.


VALLEY BEYOND TIME
A moment later she had swung the car neatly over to the
right, and was braking gently on a smooth, level, invisible
surface in some invisible haven, in which a faint phosphor-
escence glowed ahead.
R. R. leaped from the driving-seat, and was raising a hand
to the rear door, when from out of the fog a man's muffled
voice exclaimed, 'Hullo!' A dim square figure materialized
almost immediately near the off side of the car.
Then the voice said in a tone of respectful astonishment:
‘Oh! Good 'eavens! Oh, excuse me indeed, my lady!'
‘Shut up, Wilson!' said R. R. in a low s’sshing tone, moving
away from the car as though to get out of ear-shot of the
occupants.
‘But I'd no idea you were here, my lady!
'Wilson!'
'I thought your ladyship was — ?
'I'm not anywhere!' said R. R. 'I'm not here, anyhow.
Shut up and remain quiet, you old fathead! I'll tell you all
about it later.'
Silver and Midge, still ensconced in their warm up-
holstered nest, exchanged glances.
'We didn't hear a thing, did we?' said Silver.
'Not a thing,' agreed Midge. “But who's R. R. really?'
‘You can search me!' said Silver.
She got out of the car, and addressed the square, stocky
figure in livery, who saluted with a hand to his peaked cap.
‘How long has the senator been gone?' she asked.
Wilson looked at his wrist-watch.
'An hour to the tick, madam,' he answered. 'I wanted to
go up to the Stones with him so he shouldn't lose his way.
I've never known the fog so thick here. But he said — and
very firm indeed he was, madam! — that he wasn't an old
woman, nor yet a h’infant in arms, and he didn't want a
nurse!
'I'll bet a dollar he put it much more strongly than that!
Didn't he?


WOOD BEYOND THE WORLD
The man grinned, and ventured no denial.
'Did he give you any instructions?
'He just said to wait, madam, and that you'd tell me
what to do.'
That was rather odd, thought Midge, as the senator wasn't
supposed to know that they were coming!
Silver did not make any comment, however, or show any
surprise. She merely said:
'Well, R. R., you'd better just keep Wilson company till we
come back.'
They were all standing so close together that Midge was
able to remark that Wilson began to turn his head with an
almost horrified expression towards R. R., but checked the
movement.
'I should prefer to stay, madam,' said that composed young
woman. 'I have brought breakfast in a vacuum container as
well as extra coffee in case it should be required.'
‘Midge and I will set off now on a preliminary scout. We'll
take one of the flasks with a couple of tots of rum in it ... I
guess Wilson won't mind helping you with an odd spot or two
out of the bottle; but leave us a little!'
The prospect of company and the golden warmth of rum
presumably spurred Wilson to further revelation.
‘The gentleman,' said he, 'has took a bivouac tent up and a
flea - a sleeping-bag with him. He's got a whole stack of
other stuff - instruments and things. He said as he was going
to do astroscopical – I think it was — observations. It ’ull
have to be a great deal clearer there nor than it is 'ere! He
was very loaded, madam! But he wouldn't let me bear a
hand with the things. He said, “Just you sit down and do
your football pools!" But I don't do the pools. I always keep
a Dickens in the car. I know some of his books pretty well by
’eart. Don't I - ?
He came to an abrupt halt. ...
They reached the upper slopes of the hill at last, by a
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VALLEY BEYOND TIME
steep, fawn-coloured track, sunk a little between low banks
covered with coarse grass that was cobwebbed and grey with
the mist, and deeply rutted in the middle where the rains
gushed down towards the valley in the winter storms.
'Here we are!' announced Midge in a low, triumphant
whisper. 'The Stones are over there!
He pointed, and Silver could just make out, dimly at first
through the grey veils of the mist, a blotch of darker greyness
looming up not thirty feet away, rather like the rear view of
an immense stray elephant. Then, as they got nearer, she
saw that it was an apparently purposeless doorway made of
three cyclopean boulders, and that the mist was drifting to
and fro about the opening in it as though smoke from a
railway tunnel.
‘Can you hear anything at all?' she asked.
The pair of them listened intently, but not a sound
penetrated the cloud blanket about them. The world
was not merely invisible, but inaudible. So great seemed
their isolation that it was as though they had reached the
end of space and time and stood together — young woman
and small boy – on the very verge of nothingness, or, per-
haps, eternity.
And then the frightening enchantment was suddenly
broken. Only a short distance away a great voice rose in
triumphant recital of the lines from the poem, Kilmeny:
... and a land of light
Withouten sun, or moon, or night;
Where the river swa'd a living stream,
And the light a pure celestial beam;
The land –
Silver's expression changed. It was much more tense even
than it had been during the climb. Midge thought that from
the moment they left the car she had become quite different
from the girl of yesterday. Now, however, she looked almost
as though she were frightened - or, disappointed?
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WOOD BEYOND THE WORLD
Silver,' he said, much concerned. 'What's the matter?
Why do you look like that? It is him — the senator, isn't
it? He sounds frightfully bucked with life.'
'He is,' she answered shortly.
Purvis's memory failed him, and he broke off abruptly. In
the sudden silence he became aware of their approach, and,
moving as silently as a cat, pounced on them without warn-
ing from the mystery and secret of the fog. In the dim twi-
light he seemed even bigger than ordinarily - perhaps
because of the shapelessness given to his figure by the
equipment that he bore in the knapsack upon his back, or
suspended from his webbing belt, or bulging the multi-
tudinous pockets of a suit that might have been designed for
an Everest expedition. A pistol holster snuggled against him
under the left arm.
'You're late!' was his greeting ... So once again it appeared
that, far from being a secret expedition, they had actually
been expected! Midge found it very singular . . . ‘The zero
hour I fixed is in six minutes time, and I meant to stick to
it whether you were here or not.'
Silver's upward slanting eyebrows rose at the tips. She
made no comment.
'It is there — the wood the girl spoke about! His voice
rose in triumph. ‘Larger than life! Larger than life! I
startled a rabbit, and it ran in. It played about – didn't
seem to cotton to the vegetables — ran out again. Unhurt!
Does that mean anything to you?
She said with an air of I-told-you-so:
'It means that you, too, can pass in and out safely – as
I said. It means that that parson's death was nothing to do
with the fourth dimension – as I said. It means that I was
right and you were wrong. I really believe that last night
you thought I was trying to persuade you to risk your life
unnecessarily!
‘Listen, honey – But what's the boy doing here? Hello,
Midge!
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VALLEY BEYOND TIME
'H'ya, sir!
‘Two witnesses are better than one, Bennie. You didn't
want any sherpas on your Everest, but at any rate this on-
looker I can keep under control. As we agreed last night,
heaven alone knows what anybody else might do — specially
Tony!
'Save your breath, honey!... Listen! You'll see about
that base camp being fixed at once — just in case! I've no
fancy for being evicted on a bare mountain-side, miles from
anywhere without a stitch to my back, like Lambard.
Everything else, I guess, we sorted out to the nth last night,
from your power of attorney in Sam Dawson's safe to the
dictaphone in the base camp. So it's up to you! Now, swear
that you'll remain put where I tell you!'
‘Oh, God!' said Silver, 'I'm not going to butt in on your
show. I've got no love for woods, and you well know it!
There's probably a million miles of them there!... But Sam
Dawson now -
“There's no good going into all that again. Come on, but
stop when I tell you!
He was already moving away as he threw the words at her,
and, after lighting a cigarette, she followed with Midge close
at his heels in silence across the tussocky grass.
The mist was getting lighter, much lighter, and full of a
pale radiance.
They emerged on the hill-top.
It was isolated like an islet in a sea of unstirring, billowy
cloud, and bright in the silver light that streamed to it from
out of a wood of tall dark trees exactly opposite them. The
stems of the trees were spaced well apart and as lofty as the
pillars of a cathedral. The sky that showed through the high
arches of the cloister was of a luminous pale jade green.
‘Oh, God!' said Silver, and stopped dead.
Midge said nothing. He took her hand, and stared at the
wood, quivering, not with alarm, but with the passionate joy
of one who has seen all his dreams come true.
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WOOD BEYOND THE WORLD
Purvis, who was a few paces ahead, halted. He faced
about.
'It has finished its eastward swing and is now retreating to
the west,' he said. “There's also a very slight movement
south — an almost imperceptible one. The wood was twenty
paces from where you are standing when I went back to get
my kit. I should say that now it must be more like fifty yards
distant. All the same don't come any nearer!
He stood motionless for a couple of heart-beats, a huge,
imposing, arrogant figure, his great head thrown back, a small
smile twinkling in his eyes and on his lips.
'I'm going now to check the distance again,' he said after
that moment's silence. 'I'll call it out to you before I finally
depart. Note the exact time!... Goodbye!'
'So long, Bennie!
That was all the leave-taking. He might have been merely
setting out to visit a friend in the next county.
Then he turned his face to the unknown, and proceeded to
walk towards the silent and unstirring wood, reckoning the
paces out loud.
‘Goodbye and good luck, sir! cried Midge.
Purvis did not check his slow march forward, but raised an
arm in acknowledgment of the farewell.
A frigid voice spoke to Silver -
'I thought, madam – fell silent; exclaimed, 'God Al-
mighty! — said, after another pause, almost frantically,
‘But there isn't a wood there! I know there isn't! There
never has been. It can't have grown since last May. Where's
the senator – ?'
But Silver was no more aware of the unexpected presence
of the tall, tanned girl with the rather bitter face, than was
Midge. Their whole attention was concentrated on the big
figure that was advancing towards the wood in the other
world.
Purvis came to a sudden halt - in the middle of his stride,
it seemed.
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VALLEY BEYOND TIME
'Fifty-four! Check your time!' he cried loudly over his
shoulder; then turned and confronted the unguessable with a
bowed head.
He remained without stirring for an appreciable while, and
it was manifest to the observers that he was praying for God's
blessing upon his journey.
Silver made a small impatient sound.
At that moment, with a slight wave of the hand in final
farewell, he pulled at the pack he was carrying, and stepped
forward across the invisible frontier.
For an instant the scene before them quivered and rippled
just as the surface of a still pool is ruffled by a sudden wind or
by a cast pebble. The outlines of the giant trees with their
blue-black foliage were blurred, and then fine lines of silver
lightning flashed in forked tongues across the picture as
though glass protecting it had been shattered ... Yet the
next instant the wood once again dreamed untroubled before
their eyes.
For a moment or so Purvis remained invisible. Then some-
thing pink picked itself up from the silver green herbage —
it looked like moss — at the foot of a tree; stood erect, and
contemplated itself with an expression in which dismay and
a rather wry amusement were visible even at that distance.
Senator Purvis was as bare as the palm of his hand. His
tent, his camera, his field-glasses, his pistol had equally
vanished into space with every stitch of clothing that he had
had on.
'What is he doing? Where is he? And where is he going?'
said R. R.
Even though her long, strong fingers gripped hard upon
Midge's shoulder, the boy made no reply, but continued to
watch, as one mesmerized, the huge naked figure, which,
after only a few seconds' hesitation, set its face resolutely
away from the world that it knew, and set off into the heart
of the other-world forest. The ground obviously sloped down-
wards, and in less than a minute Purvis was lost to sight.
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WOOD BEYOND THE WORLD
R. R. loosed her grip on Midge. She interposed herself
directly between Silver and the wood. With eyes blazing
with excitement, she seized Silver's hands, and shook them
violently:
"Tell me — you must tell me: What is that wood? Where is
it? What has the senator done with his clothes? Where has
he gone?
'Don't stand in front of me — I want to see! Let go my
hands! Let them go! I don't know where that wood is. It's
in an other-dimensional world. The senator has gone to
explore it.'
‘An other-dimensional world! An other-dimensional
world! He's gone to explore it! Then, by God, I'm going to
explore it, too!
‘You may never come back!
'What the hell's that matter?'
'You saw what happened to him?'
'I won't care a curse! If I can find a pencil there, I can
take shorthand notes for him of his discoveries, if there is any
paper. I can mend his clothes for him, if he can get any to
mend, or make 'em out of leaves. I can be useful I dare say.
But I'm going whether I can or not! ... After all you can
drive your own car back! Give my love to Wilson! Good-
bye! I'll have to be quick to catch him up.'
She threw off her coat, and ran like a hare across the grass
towards the stately cathedral of the great wood, as though
she were running to catch a railway train.
Such was her urgency that she appeared to dive through
whatever invisible barrier there was lying between the two
worlds. When the consequent commotion had subsided, the
watchers saw her standing upright, triumphant, under the
archway of the giant trees, her naked boyish body shining
as though it were of silver in the light that poured upward
from the other-world.
She flung up an arm in salute, and, turning, plunged
downwards into the unknown.
85


CHAPTER VI
THE THIRD ADVENTURER
TAVE you any theory, Miss Honeyhill, about this
peculiar denudative phenomenon?'
The lawyer looked up at her over the top of his
immense horn-rimmed glasses as he put the question, his
fountain-pen held poised to set down the reply. He was a
strange-looking little man with a triangular face that was
pinkish and very wrinkled, a long, crooked nose, and a bald
patch on the top of his head surrounded by a fringe of thistle-
down hair.
His name was Furrow. Silver felt as if she had been sitting
opposite him in the 'picknickery' for an eternity answering
questions.
It had been daylight when they started, but now there
were lights in the branched silver candlestick set between
them, and many more on the mantelpiece where Morfa
leaned, listening to the progress of her affidavit with a drawn
face.
‘My own opinion is that only living cells can pass from the
magnetic field of one world to that of another. Everything
else disintegrates into less than dust. The coincidence of the
death of Mr. Bosberry -'
‘Bosworth.'
' – got me worried though, and I tried to persuade the
senator not to make the attempt without cautious experiment.'
‘And this second disappearance occurred — when?'
'It was a minute or so after seven, I should say, when R. R.
went into the forest.'
The fountain-pen pounced to its work.
'What did you do then?'
‘After watching for a long time to see if she returned, I
86


VALLEY BEYOND TIME
round where R. R. stood! It's looking that way! It's looking
this way!" I hadn't the heart to ask for the glasses back. I
could just see something small and greyish moving about on
the ground, but couldn't make out what it was.'
'A moment if you please!' begged Mr. Furrow. "To enable
me to overtake you ... Yes?'
“The next minute he yelled at the top of his voice, "It's
coming out! It's just smoking along!"
‘And something did come out. It came across the tussocks
towards us faster than anything I've ever seen. It was just
a flash; and then there it was, rubbing up against Midge's
legs with its tail in the air and squeaking.'
666 — Squeaking.” Yes?
'It was the ugliest creature I have ever seen in my life.
It was more like a toad than anything else, but its legs were
all the same size, and it ran on all fours like a cat. Its body
and its long, long tail were a shining mackerel silver grey.
Its mouth was full of little white triangular teeth, and it
didn't seem to have any ears. It was about the size of a
three-months kitten.
'It got up on its hind legs and clawed at Midge with little
scaly paws, and squeaked at him. Then it coiled its tail
about his ankle, and squeaked at him again. Midge wasn't a
mite afraid. He said, “Silver, I guess it wants me to take it
up! And when he put down his hand, it ran up his arm, and
sat on his shoulder. It actually smiled, like a dog does some-
times, and rubbed its head against Midge's cheek.
'He was fascinated by it. He scratched its throat, and the
creature seized his finger in its paws in a sort of ecstasy, and
licked it. Its tongue was purple and forked and very long.
‘Presently Midge put his hand in one of his pockets and
brought out some candy - pecan candy it was — and offered
it to the thing. It looked at it with its queer silver eyes — I
couldn't see any irises or pupils — and appeared to smell it.
Then it looked round at him in the most extraordinarily
human way, and seemed to be asking him a question.
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THE THIRD ADVENTURER
‘Midge put the toffee in his mouth and sucked it for a
moment. Then he offered it to the thing, which had been
watching him all the time. Immediately it licked the sweet
cautiously with its purple tongue, with the air — it did have
that air! – of doing the polite. The taste seemed to surprise
it a great deal, because it gave a sort of start, and then it
looked at Midge as though it wanted to be reassured. After
that I touched it, myself. Its skin wasn't damp or cold, but
warm. It felt like the smooth side of a kid glove.
She stopped. She turned her very lovely head towards
Morfa. The little lawyer did not look up from paper and
hurrying pen. Standish regarded her with dark, expression-
less eyes.
'Tony,' said Silver, 'there must be very nice folk there.
Folk just like ourselves! That thing wasn't one bit afraid of
us. It was glad to see us. It was used to being made much of.
It was somebody's pet. It looked as if it had been lost and got
found - got lost - got lost -
Her eyes filled with tears. There was a quiver in her voice.
'It found friends very quickly,' said Morfa, 'even in
another world. Don't go on tonight, Silver, dear! Finish
tomorrow!
'No. I will — I must get it over . . . Well, Midge was say-
ing that he would make it his one and only pet. Would he
be able to take it to school? It had just got to have a name
right-away. He was wondering what it ate, and I was still
looking at the thing - once you had looked at it, you had to
go on doing so! — when I sensed that something was happen-
ing ... How far have you got, Mr. Furrow? Do you want
me to stop for a minute?'
Sir Henry reached out a tweed-coated arm to the decanter
at his side. He filled a glass brimming with wine, and
pushed it towards her. She shook her head with a faint smile
of thanks.
'I'm not asking you to take it,' said Sir Henry. 'I'm
instructing you to. It is an order of the court! You need it.'
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VALLEY BEYOND TIME
Obviously confident that his command to her would be
obeyed, he then replenished Furrow's glass.
She sipped the wine without further protest; cast a quick
glance at the silent man by the fireplace, who returned it
with the shadow of a smile.
‘Yes?' said Furrow.
'Well, I looked up. And I saw that the wood was – well!
– was tilting! I mean that the trees weren't straight upright
any longer. They were leaning at an angle, and a sort of
film was coming over the scene. It was like a picture that
hadn't been hung straight. It was all going grey, too, and
quivery.
'The creature on Midge's shoulder stopped squeaking. It
sat up on its hind legs — its stomach was of an apricot yellow
- and watched for a moment. It shot out its purple tongue
and flicked a sort of kiss at him. It made a strange little
bell-like noise, and then it suddenly streaked down him and
made for the wood.
‘Before I could stop him, before I could say anything or do
anything at all, Midge was after it, shouting as he went.
Immediately I called to him and ran, too.
And then suddenly the wood was gone, and I was standing
alone by myself on the bare hill-top with the mist lying
round about it like a lake.
“There was nothing — nothing - nothing, Tony, that I
could do! There wasn't anything that I could have done!
There wasn't! It all happened in a few seconds. It ... I
guess you blame me!
She rose swiftly from the table as she spoke, stood for a
second, endeavouring to recover a fast vanishing self-control;
turned with a despairing gesture, and made for the door.
Morfa started from his station by the fire, with a look of
concern. He was across the room in a few long strides, and
took her by the arm.
'Silver," he said, 'how could you think that I should be
such a damned fool, my dear?'
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THE THIRD ADVENTURER
She turned at his words quickly, and buried her face
against his shoulder, and wept as though her heart would
break.
'How could anyone possibly blame you, Silver dearest? It
would be an imbecility,' he said gently. 'Midge 'ull be all
right. He will fall on his feet. He's a tough 'un and will
stand up to emergencies. And then those other two are
there – he'll have plenty of company ... Something tells me
that he's coming through. What a story he'll have to tell!...
Silver! Silver! Don't cry! Look, I'll take you upstairs for
Poggie to look after! She's the most consoling creature in the
world, darling! Come along!'...
The judge and the solicitor were left to themselves.
'You can tidy it all up tomorrow,' said Sir Henry. 'Miss
Honeyhill is overwrought — and I'm not surprised. Anyhow
you've got the dossier practically complete now except for
statements from those witnesses in Caldy about the return of
Lambard.'
“There will be no difficulty about getting them, I think.
I'm sending my managing clerk over tomorrow,' said
Furrow, flexing the fingers of his right hand as a precaution
against writer's cramp.
‘With regard to my own affidavit, so far as it concerns
the Lambard case, I am still a little uncertain whether,
ethically, I should have made such a statement about a case
which I had been called upon to try,' reflected the judge,
turning to and fro the great cornelian ring on his little
finger. "Judex non potest esse testis in propria causa. You will
recall Coke's maxim, doubtless! Its meaning has been much
debated. I am, however, disposed to run the risk. I hope
and pray that these affidavits may never be required for any
legal purpose, but only as prefatory matter etcetera, etcetera
to the account that the senator will give us on his return.'
("On his return”!' echoed Mr. Furrow, surveying the
wine in his glass with a very wrinkled brow.
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THE THIRD ADVENTURER
found themselves naked' – He recollected Professor Ivell's
rather peculiar simile; re-employed it – ‘As naked as a
pebble, though both had been fully clad the instant before.
Lambard, who obviously had had previous experience,
learned his lesson and took off his clothes before entering the
valley from Caldy.
'It is a strange coincidence, to say the least of it, that Bos-
worth goes up to Carn Meurig to investigate and is found –
that he was dead is neither here nor there — minus a shoe
and a sock and a large piece of his cassock. The top of his
crucifix has also vanished. He presumably went too close to
the invisible barrier, probably holding the emblem out
before him in the act of exorcism. I think we ought to have
that on record.'
'Quite. Dr. Roberts, of Tyron, is a good man and tight-
mouthed. There is, however, another matter upon which
I should like your opinion.
'The position, it appears to me, is this: At seven o'clock
this morning three people disappeared into space off the
top of Carn Meurig. Lord Morfa, as father and guardian of
his son, professes to be satisfied that Lord Tyron has
merely gone adventuring into another plane of existence
and will return. Miss Honeyhill, the donee of a power of
attorney from Senator Purvis (I understand) and principal
legatee of his thirty million dollar estate in the event of his
death, is equally satisfied that her — shall we say? – uncle
will return.
‘But what about the parents or relations of the girl — he
fluttered his papers - 'the girl, Miss Rosemary Rachel Rose?
If they start asking questions? Do you think it possible that
if they were told what you and Lord Morfa believe, they
would credit it, too? At the present stage revelations of what
you do believe would be most untimely, most embarrassing,
and even open to misinterpretation. I see the most alarming
possibilities. Forgive me for speaking so plainly, Sir Henry!
Henry Standish rose from his chair. He ambled quietly to
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VALLEY BEYOND TIME
the fireplace, and reflectively polished the bowl of an ancient
and well-loved briar pipe upon his nose.
He surveyed the snug comfort, the ancient dignity of the
candle-lit room – the linenfold panelling, the Persian car-
pets, the brocade curtains of old rose, the winged grandfather
chair — his by prescriptive right on the occasion of his visits.
It would have been easier – he thought — to believe in the
existence of a fourth dimension in one of those loathsome
modern rooms, all plastic, and tubular steel, and plate glass,
and distorted ornaments, and queer angles, full of radio-
grams and television sets and cocktail cabinets.
He said at length:
'You need not to worry, Mr. Furrow. Miss Rose does not
exist!
'What!' exclaimed Furrow, with dropped jaw, although he
had thought that his capacity for astonishment had been
taxed to its fullest extent.
'She does not exist as Miss Rose, I mean,' the judge
reassured him. “Make no mistake about it! Lord Morfa, I -
none of us — have any desire to be held up before the world
as hoaxers, as lunatics, or as a kidnapping or murder syndi-
cate. So far as the senator and Midge are concerned, I think
we have already settled upon a suitable story. As for the
girl, no one will make any inquiries. Until Wilson told us,
we ourselves didn't know who she was. He has been sworn to
secrecy.'
It was difficult to resist the inquiring cock of the triangular
head with its fringe of white down, and the arching eyebrows
of Mr. Furrow.
'You know almost enough to send us to the lunatic asylum,
Mr. Furrow,' said Sir Henry, ‘so you may as well know that
Miss Honeyhill's chauffeuse is in reality Lady Diana Bel-
combe, eldest daughter of the Duke of Cumber. She is the
only child of his first marriage.
'Good God!' exclaimed Mr. Furrow, obviously more shaken
by this revelation than by any fourth-dimensional adventures.
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THE THIRD ADVENTURER
Standish showed no sign of his inward appreciation of this
attitude. He continued rather drily:
'My ducal acquaintanceship is not extensive. Morfa tells
me, however, that Cumber is a drunken, immoral, and
bankrupt scoundrel who is always in trouble and has had to
fly the country. His present wife is slowly drinking herself to
death, and the children of the second marriage are practically
all morons.
'Four years ago, it seems, the young lady in question rose
from the dinner-table one evening and struck her father
across the face for making some foul jest about her dead
mother. Before their guests! Before the servants! She then
walked out of the house just as she was, swearing that she
would never enter it again, or have dealings with any of the
family. Wilson, the chauffeur here, was employed by the
duke at the time. He states that he knows for a fact that she
kept her word, and that her family have never heard of her,
or from her, to this day. A girl of grit, Mr. Furrow!'
‘A girl of grit, Sir Henry! agreed Mr. Furrow.
Both the elderly gentlemen used the word 'griť almost
apologetically, as though it savoured slightly of slang, but
was preferable to 'guts'.
'Without knowing anything of her antecedents, Miss
Honeyhill wanted to treat her as an equal, but Miss — er —
Rose firmly refused any special privileges, and insisted on
having her meals with the rest of the domestic staff, etcetera,
etcetera.
'A young lady of great strength of mind,' commented Mr.
Furrow, feeling that perhaps it had been in slightly bad taste
to refer to a young woman of ducal antecedents in such
terms as the judge and he had done before.
Sir Henry inclined his head. From the slight twitch of his
lips an acute observer might have concluded that he had read
Mr. Furrow's mind.
'Having heard of her various activities,' he remarked, 'I
think that the senator is to be congratulated on his surprise
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VALLEY BEYOND TIME
companion. She may be of great assistance to him, although
a woman.'
'I think,' said Furrow, gathering his papers together, that
if I were to find myself completely unclad in a wood, I
should prefer not to be companioned by a young woman in a
similar condition, whether she were a duke's daughter or one
of the household staff.'
Personally Standish was in entire agreement with him, but
Purvis, he reflected, had a different outlook on life.
As the door closed behind the little lawyer and his 'good
nights', the buhl clock on the mantelpiece struck the hour
of ten. He realized that at precisely this time on the previous
night the big Texan had been sitting in the back parlour of
the Saul shop listening with frantic interest to the story told
by Olwen Bosworth; had been expounding and expounding
again his theories of the course followed by that other world
across and through our own; had been deeply engaged in
plans that were to end not only in his own and R. R.'s dis-
appearance but also that of Midge.
He gave himself over then to meditation - and with
anxiety – on the subject of Silver, that young woman who
combined the brain of a mathematician with the glossy
physical perfections displayed on the covers of luxury maga-
zines and in cinematograph ‘stills'.
Had she been mathematical when she laid herself out to
attract Midge? Was she being mathematical in the distress
she evinced during her narrative of the events on Carn
Meurig? If so, upon what calculation was she engaged?
That last question had suddenly propounded itself to his
mind at the very instant when he raised the decanter to pour
her out wine. An answer had come to him in the self-same
moment, even before the dark red fluid had time to flow into
the glass. It was an answer for which he found undesired
confirmation in Morfa's attitude to her.
What had been her relations to that large and likeable ex-
plorer of the dimensions — that remote connection by
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THE THIRD ADVENTURER
marriage whom, on occasion, she treated so cavalierly? He
thought of his own much-loved niece, and did not care to
believe that her successor might be someone with the shiny
hard loveliness of Hollywood manufacture and the shiny
hard mind of an accounting machine, even though she were
principal legatee in a ten million pound will.
He knocked out the ashes in his pipe so fiercely against the
grate that the stem snapped, and he was left regarding the
vulcanite mouthpiece.
He was still staring at it when Morfa reappeared. The
younger man looked very worn as he helped himself to an
unusually large whisky and soda, and told him:
"Silver's all in.
'I am not surprised,' he commented in a deliberately un-
inflected tone.
I've sent to Roberts for some sleeping tablets for her.
When the car comes back, I'll go to Carn Meurig and relieve
Wilson. He's a good fellow, that man!
'I'll do the night turn tomorrow.'
‘Silver wants to do the day watch. I refused point-blank.'
'You're quite wrong, Tony. I think she should, for the sake
of her own morale. Take my word for it!
'If nothing happens tonight – Morfa broke off for an
instant; resumed: 'According to Purvis's calculation, nothing
will. Here is the absolute end of the beat, and the pendulum
swings away — God knows where, and God knows when it
will return.'
'We ought to have two more days on watch at least,'
suggested Standish, 'in case there is an error in his figures.'
'Two days — and then what?'
The judge said nothing. He tossed the broken pipe stem
into the fire, and watched it flare amid the blazing logs.
Morfa took up a small ancient pocket-pistol which always lay
in the same place on the mantelpiece. He unscrewed the
barrel — screwed it on again – cocked the little weapon –
let the hammer drop. It had fascinated Midge ever since he
97


VALLEY BEYOND TIME
was tall enough to reach it, and strong enough to cock and
fire it – ‘Bang-bang!
Morfa said, turning the deadly little thing over and over in
his hands:
'If Midge were lost in the ordinary way - ! But he's lost
in another world!


PART TWO





CHAPTER I
PROBLEM WITHOUT SHADOWS
ENAIAH PURVIS went striding down the hillside over
the almond-green moss under the iridescence of the
midnight-blue vaulting of the great trees. The air was
delicately warm and scented although he could not put a
name to the perfume. Between the shafts of the trees on the
opposite side of the dingle, a pale, milky sky shone with the
gleams of mother-of-pearl.
It did not matter to him that he was naked in an unknown
world; it did not matter to him that all his elaborate equip-
ment – his camera, his mathematical instruments, his note-
books, his bivouac tent, his whisky flask, his pistol — had as
utterly vanished as his clothing. He was a thousand years
young. His quest had succeeded. He had mated science and
legend. He had penetrated the unknowable. He was the
more-than-Columbus, the more-than-Cortez, the conquista-
dor of a new world of another dimension.
The question of shelter, food, clothing did not enter his
mind. The one thing to do was to press on down into the dell,
and follow its course — whither? Anywhere!
The silence of the wood was enormous. The foliage high
overhead was unstirring; nothing fluttered amid the boughs;
nothing rustled, or chirped, or buzzed about the velvet car-
pet of the moss. It did not oppress him. He was filled with
wonder and reverence for this other Creation of Almighty
God, and knew well that the silence was only as the
silence of a cathedral awaiting the clangour of its bells, the
thunder of an organ, or the murmurous prayer of a con-
gregation.
Suddenly he lifted up his tremendous voice in the Bene-
dicite:
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VALLEY BEYOND TIME
The cool mockery of her reply, the fantastic over-assess-
ment of his age, ravaged Purvis. He simmered with indigna-
tion, but said nothing.
After waiting on him for a moment, she continued:
'Well, am I to adventure on my own, or are we to join
forces? For I'm not going back — and that's flat! I can be
quite useful. I can cook — after a fashion - if we find any-
thing to cook. I could even plait petticoats for us — if there
were any rushes or grasses, and you think you would feel
more comfortable or respectable!
'Have we travelled into another world in another universe,'
questioned Purvis coldly, 'to bother about the conventions,
or talk dress-making? The fact is that I just did not calculate
on bringing an Eve with me to this particular Garden of Eden.'
'If you fancy,' retorted R. R. with equal iciness, 'that I was
proposing to play Eve to your Adam, then you had better
think again!
The senator exploded:
'You unconscionable little devil, can't you understand
that, so far as I am concerned, this is a serious expedition,
an effort to increase the sum of human knowledge — to dis-
cover and reveal some at least of the secrets of another
universe than our own? You pollute the atmosphere of this
new and lovely world — this other Creation of God — with
Kinsey report talk, like a tourist scattering old newspaper
about a park. This is not a necking party!
His indignation was obviously so genuine that R. R. burst
into peals of laughter. Confronting him thus, with her hands
on her hips, tall and slim, needing but a wreath of leaves in
the dark tangle of her hair to be the very embodiment of a
woodland spirit, Purvis suddenly realized her intrinsic
honesty and toughness. Her laughter was infectious. His
anger left him. He grinned back at her, although he could
not forbear a jibe on her own level:
'Anyhow, as you yourself said, it is well known that I take
no interest in brunettes. So you are safe.'
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PROBLEM WITHOUT SHADOWS
“That's settled, then,' she said, ignoring the thrust. 'I'm
accepted. From being Silver's maid-of-all-work or something
like, I have become her rich relative's general factotum. His
Woman Friday! I think you might call me that.' With
sudden seriousness she added: 'I should like to shed all my
old self — including my real names and my aliases — with
my clothes!
She extended her hand, and they exchanged a claspin silence.
‘And now — Forward!' said Benaiah.
'Why this way? Why downhill?'
'Shelter and water,' he explained. 'I thought of going up
the other side of the dell for a look-see, but I don't know
when darkness may fall and these trees are absolutely un-
climbable. In the lower ground we may find bushes, and
undergrowth, water, and perhaps fruit of some sort.
Side by side they went down into the bottom of the glen,
which sloped gently away before them, widening as it went.
Their naked feet made no sound upon the carpet of the moss,
and the silence was intense — not the expectant hush of the
wood at the edge of the world, awaiting worship; nor yet the
hush of an earthly wood that attends the lisp of a breeze in
the trees, or the scurry of something in the undergrowth. It
was an utter silence that seemed to be very part of the nature
of the place. A clear silver light pervaded all the wood,
although the blue-black canopy overhead held in its depths
quick surges of translucent green, of pale gold, or orange.
The girl suddenly halted. Purvis stopped, too, with
inquiry in his eyes.
She stopped and plucked a handful of the moss, and held
it up to his view. The stuff grew in tiny stems of about an
inch and a half long, winding spirally like a coiled spring,
green but having a silver sheen, and attached to the tapering
roots of pale blue was a damp, sweet-scented soil like powdered
silver.
'It's been like walking on an interior-spring mattress,' she
commented. 'Now one knows why!
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VALLEY BEYOND TIME
Again she bent down, and this time brought up a handful
of the shining silver earth, from which a little moisture
trickled between her fingers.
'It's the earth that smells, or else the water in it. It's the
scent of orange-blossom, though even sweeter.'
She held it to his nose.
‘Oh, God! he said, 'do you know what is our greatest loss,
girl? It's not clothes or camera. It's paper and pencils. How
the devil am I going to keep any record of what we've seen
and done?
'If we are by ourselves in an empty land,' she answered,
pressing back the little divot where it had come from, 'we'll
have to make clay bricks and inscribe your notes on them,
and bake them in the sun. Or make ink from the juice of
berries, and tattoo one another with information.'
They went on.
Purvis said presently:
'How long do you suppose it is since we started walking?
Together, I mean?'
‘An hour?'
'Perhaps. Are you tired?'
'I am not tired. It would take a great deal more to tire
me. Neither am I hungry or thirsty. I could go on inde-
finitely.'
He nodded.
'I feel that way myself.'
They continued the journey in silence until she said
suddenly:
'Sssh! and came to a standstill, listening intently with her
head a little bent.
'What is it?'
'I can hear water.'
He listened, too. It was true enough: from somewhere
ahead of them came the silvery chuckle of water, of bubbling,
hurrying water. As the valley had widened, its walls had
become much steeper and higher, but there was no diminu-
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PROBLEM WITHOUT SHADOWS
tion in the silver radiance that filled the wood of shadowless
trees: and, as they advanced, they could see at a considerable
distance off the rainbow spray of a small waterfall pouring
over a ledge of the hill-side.
They found that it fell into a small round pool in which it
bubbled and effervesced with a thousand bright sparkles
over a bottom strewn with pebbles of every bright hue,
before it hastened on down the valley in a shallow stream.
She cupped her long brown hands, and held them into the
torrent. The liquid was of the palest straw colour, and tiny
bubbles broke on the surface as though it were aerated.
'It tingles,' she said, as she bent her lips to the water.
A moment later she had lifted her head, and, with an
expression in which surprise and gratification were mingled,
extended the cup of her hands to Purvis. She made no com-
ment, and after an endeavour to fathom the flicker on her
features, he rather reluctantly raised her hands in his own,
and sipped cautiously.
The liquid was ice cold. It was sweetish. It was exhilarat-
ing. It definitely was not water.
'I shouldn't care to have to quench my thirst — if I had
one — at that spring!' he declared. 'I reckon it might be
quite risky to one's sobriety. Let's hope the real stuff is to
be found when we need it. On the occasions when I require
it, I like water to be water ... Let's press on!
As they moved on down the narrow valley, they became
aware of a rapid change in the quality of the light. The sky,
that had showed as a milky opal through the occasional gaps
overhead in the foliage of the great trees, had become blue —
the faint sparkling blue of a northern sky shortly after dawn.
There were, however, still no shadows in the wood, which
seemed to be lighted from some invisible source within
itself.
And then, quite suddenly, they came out of the valley and
the wood, on to a crescent-shaped lawn that slanted down to
a sea of molten silver. On either hand the cove was closed by
107


VALLEY BEYOND TIME
high, pinnacled rocks of an almost translucent jade. Before
them the sea stretched, empty, waveless, utterly motionless,
to a far horizon.
Neither of them spoke a word until they had reached the
lip of the shore. Then R. R. said, surveying the prospect:
'So now we've reached the end of our new world! ...
What next?
Almost absent-mindedly she dipped her toes into the water;
brought them out coated and dripping as though with quick-
silver; regarded the result with suspicion.
‘Look!' she exclaimed.
But Purvis was paying no heed to that phenomenon. His
frowning regard went from the ground at their feet to the
great rocks, to the stately cloister of the forest, to the sky,
and then back again to themselves. He said slowly in a rather
shocked voice:
'Where's my shadow? ... Where's yours?
For in all that morning brightness there were no shadows —
no shadows at all. The wood cast no shadows. The cliffs cast
no shadows. He cast no shadow. He felt as though he had
lost something that was more than an heirloom, was very
personal, was actually part of himself. If there were no
shadows! — The implications were enormous; for was not
even the human assessment of time based on the movement
of a shadow?
R. R. took cognizance of the situation without undue
emotion.
'Perhaps,' she suggested after a moment's thought, “it's
high noon - wherever we are, and we are standing on the
equator - of wherever we are. But, no — the sun is not
visible yet over the hill!
She did not seem (Purvis thought) to be in the least per-
turbed, or even more than a little intrigued, by the dis-
appearance of that companion who had been born when she
had been born; had followed the movements of her tiny
limbs in the cot; had played with her in sunlight and in
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PROBLEM WITHOUT SHADOWS
lamplight; had walked with her, before – behind – beside;
had veiled her face; and should have, in the end, only
vanished with her in the greater shadow of the grave. He
made no answer.
R. R. must have divined what was in his mind, for she
suddenly remarked:
'When you've lost all your clothes, it doesn't seem to
matter very much if you lose your shadow as well. Ought I
to be shocked?'
She surveyed, as she spoke, the luminous enchantment of
their surroundings. Suddenly her eyes narrowed. He had
just begun to speak:
'Shadows! Time!' he said. 'Don't you realize –
'Look! she interrupted sharply. 'Look at that rock on the
right! I'll swear there's a carving of some sort on it.'
His mind returned at once from an abysm of speculation,
and he gazed in the direction of her pointing finger. His
sight was good enough in the general way, but he could see
nothing. He would not admit this, however, and agreed:
'It may be.'
Together they walked towards it.
There was in fact a figure, carved life-size in bas-relief on
the smooth base of the rock, which glowed throughout its
length and breadth with something of the inner fire of a giant
emerald.
Even when they stood directly before the carving, however,
it was impossible to declare whether the battered image was
intended to be that of a man or a woman. It wore a sort of
nondescript garment which descended almost to the ankles,
and upon its head was set a peculiar pointed helmet, or per-
haps a crown, surmounted by a crescent. In one hand it
held across its chest something that might either have been
a short sceptre or a horse goad, and on the face of the flat
pilasters carved on either side were what seemed to be in-
scriptions incised in oblique and upright lines of various
length.
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VALLEY BEYOND TIME
‘Do you know, R. R.,' said Purvis in some excitement,
after a long scrutiny, 'that that's an ogham inscription! I'll
swear it is. I'll lay a thousand dollars to a peanut that it is!
I've seen carvings of this type on Gaulish altars in France
and in Switzerland.'
‘And what does that prove?"
He did not answer. He could not answer; for at the very
moment when she turned in question to him, something
struck him on the temple, and, with a grunt, he toppled to
the ground at full length.
R. R. heard the crack of the blow. She did not scream, but
swung about to face whatever danger might be on the way.
Two men stood, watching, at the edge of the wood not
fifty yards off, and a third came leaping towards her, the
sling with which he had struck Purvis down still in his hand.
He had a shock of black hair and a pale, eager face. He wore
a knee-length green tunic, and carried a short sword hung
from a broad silver belt.
She awaited his coming without a tremor, even with a
small smile. She had no doubt but that she could deal with
him. In any case Purvis was already stirring, was already
propped upon an elbow. She glimpsed on his big, bronzed
face an expression of immense astonishment tautening into
an expression of immense anger. In another moment -
With a shout of triumph the man in green was on her: his
arms were about her: his fierce white face with hot black
eyes was thrust into hers: his lips were about to ravage hers:
his silver-studded sandals tramped on her feet: he felt her
body relax within his grip.
And then with a scream of pain he hurled face forwards
to the ground, his right arm bent at an unnatural and
horrible angle. The naked girl stood over him, aloof and
disdainful, dusting her hands together as though to flick off
the contamination of his abominable touch.
Purvis staggered uncertainly to his feet. He shook his head
as though to clear his brain.
IIO


PROBLEM WITHOUT SHADOWS
'What the hell — ?! he began: realized the wreckage was
floundering at her feet; changed the subject of his inquiry -
‘And what the hell hit him?
'I did,' said R. R. modestly. 'We girls have to learn to
protect ourselves.'
‘And you surely know how!'
'That's what his friends are thinking,' said R. R. 'Pre-
sumably jiu-jitsu is quite new to them.'
Purvis swung his regard from the unruffled girl standing
above the writhing man to those other two, waiting at the
edge of the wood, dressed like him in pale green and silver.
Even at that distance their expressions of consternation and
awe were unmistakable.
'Dear God!' said Purvis violently, “I'll teach these devils
to attack a woman and an unarmed man! I'll —'
He tore the injured man's sword out of its scabbard, and,
brandishing it, ran roaring threats towards the wood.
They did not await his coming, but fled with the speed of
hares into the vast cathedral of the trees.
She called after him: 'Bennie! Bennie! — without avail.
· He was already about to plunge after the fugitives into the
recesses of the wood, when she screamed.
He halted as though he had been shot, and looked back.
She beckoned to him fiercely to return.
'What now?' he asked when he had reached her side.
‘You,' she answered tersely. “Why do you want to go
chasing after those brutes? You'd only get ambushed in the
wood. Don't you realize that now we have not only got
clothes but weapons? You've got a sword, and I'll bet I can
use a sling. I used to when I was a small girl ... Let's strip
this devil, and see what clothes he's got on! If he has a shirt,
I'll have it, and you can have his tunic! If he's only got the
one, I reckon I shall have to have it. I should prefer not to
excite such violent interest if it is humanly possible. Do you
concur?'
'Quite!' said Purvis, thoroughly approving. 'I reckon
III


VALLEY BEYOND TIME
swords, with bows, wearing strange conical helmets and
garbed in pleated tunics of blue and saffron and scarlet and
gold. They were a well-built people but not tall, with pale
skins.
They formed up in two glittering ranks before the grey-
green-silver cloister of the trees; high above, the violet-black
foliage with all its secret lights rose in a frozen billow against
the vault of the pale sky. They waited in silence – but a
silence that was expectant and not menacing — whilst an old
man with a long silver beard, clad in a white mantle, came
from their midst, and walked slowly towards the motionless
group by the rock of jade.
He bore a small harp against his breast, and was followed
by a youth leading a white horse with trappings of scarlet
and its mane and tail dyed purple.
Some ten feet from them he halted, and swept his fingers
across the strings of his harp so that it sang for a moment in
a strange heart-pulling cry that had the resonance of many
bells.
Then he spoke four or five words in a loud and musical
voice.
The lad kneeling before the girl raised his hand, and once
again pressed her narrow foot against his head, and, so
clasping it, answered loudly by a single word.
The old man said nothing, but turned and faced towards
the waiting host. Once more he swept the strings of the harp,
but in a yet louder cry than before.
It was answered by a silver fanfare of trumpets, which was
echoed and re-doubled in the high vaulting of the wood.
114


CHAPTER II
MIDGE AT THE HOUSE OF OPAL
IDGE was not conscious of breaking through any
barrier when he passed from the hill-top of Carn
TV IMeurig into the wood a world away. There had been
but the sensation of a damp fluttering kiss, such as that of a
bursting bubble. That was all.
For a moment — one breathless moment - he stood
searching with his eyes the endless arcades of the wood for
the strange small creature that had so taken his fancy. Then,
without warning, the forest began to recede before him as
though a picture on a cinematograph screen; the ground
moved from under his feet, and he was wrapped in an
opalescent mist that was impenetrable to the sight. He was
carried, unstruggling, through space on some warm swift
current. Or did a world travel past him, whilst he hung
motionless in space and conscious only of some vast move-
ment below? He did not question the pattern of the pheno-
menon; was aware of no fear or hurt, but only of intense
surprise. ...
Suddenly he found himself on his back on a soft sward,
staring up into the deep sapphire blue of a starless heaven.
He gathered himself together. He rose. He shook himself.
'That was some hoo-ha!' said the philologian out loud, and
fell to examining the landscape; for though the firmament
was so darkly blue, yet it was no night sky and was brightly
luminous; and though there was no moon apparent, yet
from some invisible source a silver radiance filled the valley
that widened before him and far below him to what, from
its glitter, he judged to be the sea.
The wooded hills sloped gently to the wide bed of the valley
115


VALLEY BEYOND TIME
through which a river curved amongst pastures. Here and
there were white buildings set about with tall trees, amidst
whose intensely green foliage there was a constant movement
of subdued colour.
Nearest of all to him, as he stood on the smooth hill-side,
was a long white colonnaded house upon a wide green shelf
overhanging the valley. Behind it was a small wood. It was
sentinelled by trees like poplars and by lawns. Its pale roof
shone with multitudinous fires as though it were of opal, and
the pillars held the sheen of silver.
No thought that he was lost in a world of a new dimension
so much as entered his mind. The pet-that-might-have-been
passed from his memory. He was filled with the onward
urge of the explorer.
'I guess I'll go smoking along,' he announced to himself,
and set off towards the house, naked and barefoot, accom-
panied by a small, warm, scented breeze.
He halted but once upon his downward journey, at the
edge of a copse. The slim trunks of the trees were as bright
as those of birches, but amid the quivering, almost trans-
parent leaves swayed enormous flowers of a quenched yellow,
and a round fruit that had the luminosity of pink jade. They
gave out a scent that was the ghost of a perfume which might
have been sweet and heady.
He stopped for several moments by the trees, meditating
whether or no to pick one of the fruit; remembered the ever-
reiterated warning against sampling the unknown, and one
occasion when the devouring of some luscious scarlet berries
had ended in the hideous indignity of the stomach-pump.
He would not eat them; he would just feel them! He raised
himself on tip-toe and reached up to one of the enticing
things which hung just above his head.
It was icy cold to the touch. He thought of all the delicious
confections that come out of the refrigerator, and grasped
it - grasped nothing. Beneath his urgent fingers the fruit
burst as might a soap-bubble, and completely vanished,
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MIDGE AT THE HOUSE OF OPAL
leaving a little moisture in the palm of his small hand.
'What a swizz!' said Midge.
He looked narrowly at the spoonful of palely golden juice
which was all that remained of something that had been the
size of a Tangerine orange. It smelled most exquisitely of a
flower-garden, of honey, of tonka beans. Without a second's
hesitation he raised his hand to his mouth and drank the
nectar.
It tasted even more delicious than it had smelled. Midge
was a ginger-beer man; he did not approve of pineapple juice
or grape-fruit squash or coca-cola and the like, which he
called 'sissy' drinks; but this was something completely
beyond the range of his experience - a revelation, chill,
sweet, exhilarating.
He went round the tree systematically pillaging it wher-
ever he could reach the fruit. After he had consumed at least
a dozen, he succeeded in picking one whole with its pale
green stalk and three long, narrow and translucent leaves.
Holding it carefully by the stem, he continued his journey
downwards.
All his faculties seemed to have become more alert. He
saw further: he heard more clearly the tiny stirrings in the
trees: he smelled the ghosts of a dozen new scents: his pace
was faster, and he thought that he could feel beneath his feet
each tiny individual plant of the moss-like carpet on which
he trod. He hummed loudly to himself some small trium-
phant song.
Even so the house was a great deal further away than he
had imagined, and he found himself not weary but incredibly
sleepy when, through an archway in a tall hedge, he reached
the broad green lawn before it.
The pillars of the colonnade, he saw now, were of crystal
with silver capitals and bases. In the milk-coloured wall
beyond – which glowed with a subdued light — were tall
arched windows and a doorway without a door. He listened
for some time but heard no sound at all. Perhaps the inhabi-
elled therd more to have
117


VALLEY BEYOND TIME
tants were asleep! He felt that, in such case, the time was
hardly opportune for a naked visitor to present himself.
The mists of slumber were clouding his brain. It was of no
avail to remind himself that it could not be more than three
or four hours since he and Silver had started their journey
from House of Saul through the fog. He would drop asleep
where he stood, unless he could find somewhere to curl up.
It was as warm as a morning in early summer: there could
be no hardship in staying out-of-doors. He looked around.
The hedge that walled the garden glimmered with some
golden fruit and was recessed into alcoves, each set with a
wide semi-circular bench that looked to be of white marble.
The very thing!
He walked to the nearest bench, and saw that some gar-
ment had been left lying over the elaborately carved back.
He picked it up and eyed it drowsily. It was made of a
creamy, soft material that glinted with golden threads, and
looked uncommonly like a rather long shirt with very short
sleeves for somebody of about his own size. He felt convinced
that, in the circumstances, its owner would not object to him
borrowing it just for the time being.
Without more ado he put it on - over his head as there
were no buttons to it - and found that it fell to his knees;
which was highly satisfactory.
He was not hungry; he was not thirsty; he was not tired;
he was not frightened. He merely wanted to go to sleep. So
he climbed on to the bench, put the fruit that he had plucked
beside him, and forthwith his desire was fulfilled. ...
He thought that somebody spoke to him.
He slowly opened his eyes. He was lying on his back,
looking up into a pale sky of cloudless blue. The morning -
if it were morning – shone with the gold light as of a newly
risen sun, and was full of the song of birds. One as brilliantly
coloured as a tanager flew just above his head out of the high
sea-green hedge behind the bench. He wondered whether
118


MIDGE AT THE HOUSE OF OPAL
the golden fruit that shimmered within the depths could
compare with that which he had eaten before he went to
sleep.
Somebody spoke to him again.
He slowly turned his head. A girl of his own age, with
black hair as lustrous as ebony and dark blue eyes, stood a
couple of feet away, looking down on him with a small,
grave, friendly smile. The long braids of her hair fell to the
very hem of her sleeveless tunic of shot green, something
below her knees. Midge was rather taken by her appearance;
he was inclined to approve of her.
Then she said, presumably for the third time:
'How many did you eat?'
It was only after he had answered, 'How many what?' that
he realized that she had spoken to him in English, and very
clearly, without moving her lips.
This time she did not say anything, but pointed to the pink
jade fruit lying on the marble seat near his head.
Midge sat up and swung his feet to the ground. He said:
‘Oh, about a dozen, I think. There's very little in them,
you know. Nobody minds me picking them, do they?'
'A dozen!' said the girl with the black hair. 'A dozen!'
Her smile widened, and she burst into a silvery peal of
laughter. The great braids of her hair danced to her mirth.
'What are you laughing about?' asked Midge very seri-
ously, standing up.
'No wonder I couldn't wake you,' she answered. 'I have
tried several times. Nobody ever eats more than two of
them. You were as greedy as the people of Cernunnos!'
This appeared to be the equivalent of calling him a pig.
Midge was a little discomposed at making so unfavourable
an impression on such a girl. He changed a distasteful sub-
ject without further ado.
‘How long have I been asleep here, then?' he asked.
She regarded him with considerable surprise:
'Why, practically ever since you came, of course.'
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VALLEY BEYOND TIME
“Yes, but I don't know when I came, or what the time is
now. You see, I've lost my watch somehow with all my other
things.
Her expression of intrigue deepened.
‘What is a watch?'
‘Don't you have them?' demanded Midge, much taken
aback.
'I don't understand what they are for.'
Just to tell the time — the hours and the minutes and the
seconds.'
‘Hours and minutes and seconds? Hours and minutes and
seconds to tell the time! What are they? How do they do it?
The words don't mean anything to me at all. Why should
you need them?
The question utterly confounded him.
‘But you can't have time without hours and things,' he
said perplexedly; and then evaded the issue – ‘Anyhow, even
if you don't know what hours are, you speak English awfully
well. Where did you learn it?
'I am not speaking to you with my tongue,' she said. 'I
can't speak English. I am thinking to you. You are hearing
me with your mind and not with your ears. My mind is
listening to yours, too. The words you speak with your mouth
are just gibberish to my ears.'
This explanation of telepathic communication rather
gravelled Midge. He sought further information:
‘But don't you use your voices to speak with?'
'Of course we do. We sing songs, and recite poetry, and
tell great tales. But we of Cibola do not scream and shout
at one another like those wild ones of Cernunnos.'
Obviously the people of Cernunnos were not rated very
highly by the girl with the black hair; Midge accordingly
hastened to disclaim any connection:
'I've got nothing to do with them,' he said with a show of
indignation. 'Honest, cross my heart, I haven't! I never
even heard of them before.'
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MIDGE AT THE HOUSE OF OPAL
'I know that,' she answered. “The Gate has been open for
a little while, and you have come down from the Wood of
the Threshold. Sometimes people stray here from your
world, but not very often. I've never seen anyone from it
before. So you'll have to tell me all about it!
'Good-Oh!' said Midge. 'I'd love to. And you'll tell me
all about here, too? A strange, eerie notion struck him. 'I
say, we aren't dead or anything, are we?
'Dead! exclaimed the girl with black hair indignantly.
‘Of course I am not.' Without warning she extended her
hand and seized the flesh of his forearm, and tweaked it un-
mercifully. 'And neither are you!
'O-oh! he exclaimed; and then: 'Of course I can't be!'
'We aren't ghosts, you know, although the Cernunnos
seem to think we must be — we who live in Cibola, the Island
of the Valley of the Ever-Young, as they call it. They are
very afraid of us. They don't understand why we don't die
or grow old like they do. But then, for one thing, they are
always killing one another, or having what they call “dis-
eases” from eating and drinking too much, or losing their
hair and their teeth and their sight, until one day they don't
breathe any more.'
'You don't die!' echoed Midge, open-mouthed.
'Not in the way they do, affirmed the girl. “And we don't
grow old in their way. We grow up, I shall grow up. I don't
want to.'
Her face clouded at the prospect. Midge would have liked
to ask the reason. He said after a moment's reflection:
'Do you — do you think your people would mind me stay-
ing here a little before I go back?'
‘Of course they will let you. You see, you are not a
grown-up. If grown-ups come they have to go to one of
the four kingdoms in Cernunnos ... Would you like to stay
with us?"
'Wouldn't I just! You bet your sweet life! I'd love to.'
This enthusiasm was apparently very acceptable, for the
121


VALLEY BEYOND TIME
girl with black hair gave him a most encouraging smile and
nod.
"That's settled,' she said. 'Do you know that you are
wearing one of my tunics? Would you like to see my
animals?
‘Of course I should. I say, what's your name?'
'Ethne,' said the girl. "What's yours?'
‘Midge,' he told her.
With a smile she advanced her lips to his and kissed him
in a ritual manner. Then she swung round towards the
house and whistled shrilly and very sweetly in a fashion that
aroused Midge's envy, for one of the fine arts in which he
frankly admitted failure was that of the siffleur.
As though that call had been long and eagerly awaited, a
huge white hound promptly appeared in the arched doorway
of the house, and stood there at gaze with wrinkled brow
and head cocked a little to one side. Something small and
silvery also arrived, and sat up on its hind legs in survey,
revealing the apricot-coloured belly of Midge's earlier
acquaintance.
‘Oh, there's the wunk! he cried, remembering such a
creature being mentioned in A. A.'s story of 'The Prince's
Birthday Present.'
'It's the togmall!' Ethne corrected him. "That whistle said,
“Where is everybody?” This one will say, “Come as fast as
you can!”,
She whistled a tiny chirrup of a call.
If the hound came towards her like a cavalry charge, the
togmall travelled with the speed of a flash of silver lightning.
It was sitting on her shoulder, licking her cheek with its
forked purple tongue, before the dog had hurled itself at her
feet.
'Caibell!' said Ethne, pointing to the hound in introduc-
tion. 'And this is Togga!
Caibell — who was larger than any Great Dane, and had
flapping ears stained bright red — turned the courteous
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VALLEY BEYOND TIME
'Of course. I built it.'
‘You did?' he said, flabbergasted; and in that second of
amazement recollected his own poor efforts at hut-building
– the shaky walls of stakes and rough basket-work of twigs,
the thatch of leafy boughs that never withstood the wind or
the rain. 'But —
'Come and see! Come on!
She took him by the sleeve to urge him, and then still
carrying the load of fruit in her dress, ran like the wind to-
wards her temple, the hound loping on one side of her and
the togmall on the other.
Midge had won both the junior school hundred yards and
two hundred and twenty yards races at the sports that
summer. He had even set up a record for the hundred, but
he could not catch Ethne. She was already there and had
turned towards him, unflurried and unflushed, when he
arrived panting. But she proclaimed no victory. She
said:
'If you hadn't eaten the slumber-fruit, Midge, I am sure
you would have passed me!'
He knew quite well that he would not have done so, but
that she had found an excuse for him, of which he would
never have thought. It made him even more certain than
before that he was going to like Ethne very much indeed.
'I don't think so,' he told her out of his intrinsic honesty,
but she merely took his hand and led him up the three steps
into this belvedere which she herself had raised.
It was open in front like the summer-house at Morfa, and
the wall at the back, which rose to the silver roof, was as
lustrous as mother-of-pearl and divided into long panels, one
of which was already carved in bas-relief, whilst another had
the design plotted out upon the surface.
There was a bench of the same strange material beneath
them, covered with cushions of every hue, and, he noticed, a
small collection of tools in one corner.
He drew a great breath.
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MIDGE AT THE HOUSE OF OPAL
heads right. Besides I've only once seen my father wearing
his coronet. He was having his portrait painted by an artist.
He didn't like the picture when it was finished — not one bit.
He said that it was a waste of time and a waste of good money
and that he had been made to look like a tailor's dummy and
a she-man!
It was doubtful whether Ethne understood all this state-
ment; but she nodded as if she did, and said:
'We'll do it together, Midge. You'll describe everything
to me, and I'll draw it, and then you can correct it. That
will be the best way. Let's go and fetch the stone!
They went out of the belvedere. Togga was sitting on one
of the steps, a grey-green shimmer of light, cracking a nut
which he held in his front paws like a squirrel. The hound
Caibell was lying on the moss carpet, gnawing at something
that resembled an extraordinarily large coconut in shape and
colour. He looked up from his meal for a second with a
desultory wag of a flail-like tail.
'He's dug up a - 'Midge failed to understand the word
'- root. It's very good for his teeth.'
She gave incomprehensible approval to the gratified
Caibell.
Against the back of Ethne's house half a dozen panels
were propped, awaiting her attention — slightly curved, six
foot long and an inch thick, and holding the rainbow light
and colours of mother-of-pearl.
"You take one, and I'll take one,' she said.
Midge advanced a little uncertainly. He doubted very
much indeed if he could budge a thing twice as big as a
tombstone, but he put his arms round the slab all the same
and heaved.
But no effort at all was required. For all its size it was
lighter by far than if it had been made of aluminium — as
light as a folded newspaper. It might have been compact of
a frozen mist, though its surface was as hard as marble.
'It's easiest to carry it on your head,' advised Ethne.
127


CHAPTER III
PROBLEM WITH SHADOWS
N or a moment it seemed that Ethne had actually not
Kremarked what had occurred, although Midge saw the
1 slender, bright shaft of the implement rising out of the
flesh of her foot a little behind the great toe. She appeared,
indeed, to be thus impaled upon the greensward. He felt as
though the exquisite agony that she must be experiencing
were also his.
Then she stooped down without any display at all of pain,
or even of emotion, and casually pulled the thing out of her
foot.
The blade emerged stainless, and the white skin was un-
marked by the blemish of any wound. There was, in fact, no
single drop of blood to tell of what had happened.
He set the panel he was carrying down upon the moss. He
looked at her very strangely. He said:
'Ethne, didn't - didn't that hurt you at all?'
‘Of course it couldn't. Why should it?'
‘But you didn't bleed!
'What – like the Cernunnos? Why ever should I? Would
you?'
'I am not like one of the Cernunnos,' he insisted, 'but I
know I'd bleed like a stuck pig!' He was very gravely con-
cerned, and felt that the matter was of intense personal
importance — although at the moment he did not quite
know why – and persisted: ‘But, Ethne, haven't you got any
blood?
Then suddenly, even as he spoke, he realized why it was so
important. For much as he already liked her, there would be
something basically wrong in keeping company with a
creature without blood - a phantom. He recollected once
129


VALLEY BEYOND TIME
listening, unobserved, to some grown-up talk which had
started about a man who had seen pink elephants and spotted
snakes that were not real. It had gone on to discussion of
another man who had made friends with an enormous rabbit
which nobody could see except himself. Then the talk had
diverged into discussion of vampires and other most horrible
creatures that only retained their hold upon existence by
borrowing other people's blood. He had gathered the
impression that the whole matter indeed hinged upon that
question of the possession of blood.
It seemed to him, then, that Ethne must have read every
thought in his mind; for in answer to him she seized both his
hands.
'You don't believe I'm one of those imagined things that
frighten the Cernunnos so?' she demanded. 'I am not a
ghost!
She flung both her arms about his neck; held herself to
him, and kissed him on the mouth. Her body was warm; her
lips fluttered against him; her breath was very sweet.
‘Am I a ghost, Midge?' she asked. 'Look!'
She loosed a hand and turned it so that the blue lines of
the veins showed at the wrists on their journey up the slim
forearm. With the other she seized his fingers and pressed
them against the beating of her heart.
‘Am I a ghost, now, Midge?' she asked yet again.
'No, Ethne! No!' he declared, and was conscious that tears
of relief were standing in his eyes.
With that she kissed him once again.
'You see, Midge, we must be made a little differently from
you. That's all! We don't get hurt in our bodies. We don't
go about losing our blood. But we can get hurt right within
us, you know. In our minds and our souls, just like you!
She drew his arm within hers.
'Oh, Ethne,' he said, 'I am so glad that you are real! For
just a horrible moment I thought you were going to be - to
be – like a – sort of dream, and I wanted you to be real!
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PROBLEM WITH SHADOWS
'Well, now you know! I'm as real as you. No, Midge, I
am more real, because I know what things aren't really real,
and you do not ... Let's go and eat our fruit, and talk in my
house! ... It was the first thing Manannan taught me. The
only things that are all real are things that live and think.
Everything else is only partly real. Some things of course are
more real than others. I mean, for instance, that the tree
over there is much more real than my pavilion. The tree is
living, so I couldn't-'.
She stopped very abruptly; looked at him with a roguish
twinkle; said very earnestly:
'You believe I'm real now, don't you? On your word of
honour!
‘On my word of honour!'
'Well, then I'll show you some of the things I can do. But
you must promise not to tell anyone, because they would
only laugh at me for being babyish. And I don't like being
laughed at. And it isn't being babyish. It's for your educa-
tion, Midge!
‘Of course,' he loyally agreed.
They had halted at the cliff edge of the secret dell by a low
white balustrade, which gave the place something of a
resemblance to a box high up in a theatre, with the wide
plain below for auditorium, and the purple and black and
violet mountains in the far distance for a stage setting.
‘Stay where you are! commanded Ethne. 'I want a little
room to do this.
She walked a dozen or so paces away, and then turned
and came rather quickly towards him, the folds of her filmy
tunic pressing against her body as though she breasted some
small wind.
The tunic was no longer pressing against her — was
vanishing — and her body was actually coming towards him
through the green mesh of it — her knees – her shoulders —
her hips — all the slender whiteness of her!
She passed through the garment as though through water.
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VALLEY BEYOND TIME
It fluttered out behind her, free; billowed out a little, and
then fell in a silken tangle upon the moss!
Ethne stood before him, naked and unconcerned.
At the mingled expression of amazement and consterna-
tion in his face, she went into peals of laughter, and, arms
akimbo, actually swayed with her mirth.
'However did you do that?' he stammered, a little embar-
rassed at her nudity.
‘Oh, I just walked through my tunic. You see it is only
partly real and I am all real: so it can't stop me passing
through. It isn't torn anywhere as if it had caught upon a
bough or anything. You can look in a minute! Now I'll
show you something else! Come on!
As they went towards the pavilion, he picked up her tunic.
It was not unlike that which he was wearing; a girdle of silver
fabric was still buckled about it, and there was no sign of
injury to it whatever. He held the garment out to Ethne.
She shook her head.
'I don't want it now. In fact I hate wearing clothes. I
don't see any use in them. Do you? Why don't you take off
yours?
He ignored the suggestion. Already he felt sufficiently
inferior to her in every way. Complete nakedness would
merely add to that sensation.
‘But when it's cold, Ethne?'
'It isn't ever cold.'
‘But at night?
‘Night? Manannan told me once that quite often your
world is completely dark. How horrible! Ours isn't, ever.'
As he slung the rejected apparel over his shoulder he
remarked upon his forefinger the inkstain that a leaky
fountain-pen had made when he had written the poem about
Silver. He saw the stain, but it meant nothing to him now:
life had begun when he had been awakened - how long ago?
– to a new world under a pale blue, shining sky, and the
flight of a scarlet bird, and Ethne looking at him....
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PROBLEM WITH SHADOWS
They were under the silver cupola again, on the amber and
ivory floor, facing the tall panels that had the lustre of
moonstone and mother-of-pearl.
'Now watch very carefully, and then perhaps you will be
able to do what I am going to,' said Ethne.
She was just about to mount the semi-circular bench
against the wall, when a musical and beautiful voice spoke.
'I fancy,' it said, 'that Ethne is showing off for your benefit!'
Midge swung round.
A tall man with black hair and brightly blue eyes stood
behind him. He was young, with a noble face and the bear-
ing of the very great, and he was smiling. A close tunic of
pale green, belted and fringed with silver, fell to his knees,
and his feet were shod with sandals of silver. His hair was a
little long and set about with a silver circlet in which was a
great pale, cloudy stone.
‘Midge!' said Ethne, looking somewhat abashed, “this is
my father, Manannan, the king.'
Midge was a little uncertain of the procedure to be followed
at presentation to a king. He bowed very respectfully.
Manannan seated himself upon the bench beneath the blank
panel, drew the boy down beside him and said:
“Run and meet your mother, Ethne, whilst I talk for a
little to your new friend!
When she had gone Midge protested rather anxiously –
'She wasn't really showing off, sir. She's just doing things
to help me get used to - to your country.'
'I am glad that you defend your friend,' said the king,
regarding him kindly.
"To be honest,' continued Midge, ‘I'm sure that she walked
through her clothes, not to show off at all, but because she
saw that I was -
He hesitated, and the king supplied the word:
‘Concerned?'
But the truth had always been of vast importance to
Midge; at times he could be devastatingly frank.
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VALLEY BEYOND TIME
‘No, sir,' he confessed. 'I was frightened – very frightened.
A knife or something fell on her foot, and went through it.
And it didn't hurt her, and there was no blood. I thought she
must be a ghost. I didn't want her to be a ghost.'
‘Ah!' said the man in the shining tunic. “So you were
frightened because you couldn't see any blood. Now do you
know that I, too, was very frightened once, like you, but
because I saw blood and I had never seen it before. It was
very long ago when I was young, too, and the people of
Cernunnos first came to this world ... Has Ethne told you
about the Cernunnos?
'Yes, sir. A bit.'
'Well, they first came here after they had been beaten in a
great battle in the country in your world that you now call
Ireland. The entrance to our world lay open, and they fled
here from their enemies. Many of them were wounded by
swords, and spears, and arrows, and maces, and axes, and
sling-stones. There was hardly a man among them who had
no hurt — and the women, too! Some of them died as soon
as they got here. I had never seen dead people either. My
father took me to see these refugees, and I daresay that I was
even more horrified than you have been.'
'I saw a dead man once, sir,' said Midge. 'It was after a
road accident. It made me very sick. But I didn't feel sick
about Ethne. I was frightened, I think, because I knew that
I should go on liking her even if she were a ghost!
'You would, would you?' said the man with the shimmer-
ing tunic. 'Except that she can pass through things that look
solid and so on, you think now she's like the girls you know
in your own world?
'Well, of course, she can run faster than anybody I know.
I'm supposed to be quite good. I did the hundred yards in
thirteen and a fifth seconds before I was twelve, but she'd
beat me every time. But I do like her better than anyone I've
ever met, honour bright!
'Good!' said the king, looking down into the candid grey
134


PROBLEM WITH SHADOWS
eyes. “Very good! And I'll wager Ethne said that you would
be able to stay here with her in our valley. Didn't she?'
'Yes, sir. Do you think I can? I hope you'll let me.'
'I am sure that you can — for a while. I think that you
should be able in a way to help her prepare for the destiny
before her.
Midge wondered whether it would be in order to inquire
into the destiny that would confront Ethne, but Manannan
went on:
'So you found the tunic where we put it for you?
“You knew I was coming, then?' said Midge in astonish-
ment.
'The watchers saw you enter this world from Carn Meurig.
Unseen, they brought you to this valley before you got lost
in the great forest in the land of the Dergans, where your
friends have gone.'
Already the senator and R. R. had faded from his mind.
There was about the memory of them something of the un-
reality of a dream. His father, Silver, Uncle Minos — even
they were less real than Manannan smiling down at him with
bright eyes.
'They didn't come here then, sir?'
'No,' said Manannan. 'Only the young or the very inno-
cent can stay with us. The others go into the lands we
allotted to the Cernunnos, where they feast and fight among
themselves, and make love all day long. Among the people
of whom I told you.'
Said Midge with a wrinkled brow:
'It must have been a very long time ago, sir, that those
people came here. For I've never read in history of the
defeated army that ran away to another world. Of course
I've only done English and a little American history.'
'You will find it all the same,' said Manannan, 'in the
books of Irish history, how the people of Danu were beaten
by the Milesians and disappeared from the face of the earth
... I am not a ghost any more than Ethne, am I, Midge?' –
135


PROBLEM WITH SHADOWS
She hurled their king to the ground, breaking his arm, with-
out an effort, although he was a young man and very strong!
'Is she young? Is she beautiful? May I go and see her one
day?'
Ethne had reappeared. She stood silhouetted between the
pillars of the entrance against the background of violet-hued
mountains and glittering golden-blue sky. At her side was a
very lovely woman with a pale skin and dark red hair. She
was more beautiful than Helen of Troy, of more enchantment
than sea-born Aphrodite.
‘Come and kiss me, Midge!' said Branwen the queen, and
opened her arms to him.
In the too brief instant in which he was enfolded in the
embrace of Ethne's mother, any last lingering fears he might
have had left were kissed away; the memory of his home, his
country, his world receded still further into the past; the
consciousness of the beauty and the love, and the scents and
sounds and colours of this other world in other time and other
space poured into his mind and all his senses.
'So you have come for a while to keep Ethne company,'
said Branwen when she had released him. “That will be
very good for both of you. It is long, long since anyone came
from your universe to the Island of the Valley.'
‘And still longer since any came to one of the kingdoms of
the Cernunnos of the quality of these other two,' added
Manannan, watching the swift flight of a golden bird along
the valley. 'It has been a fisherman sometimes, or else a
shepherd, or perhaps a drunken man who has lost himself
in the hills. I wonder —. But now we will go and celebrate
Midge's arrival by a feast.'
‘And afterwards,' urged Ethne, clutching her father's tunic,
'we will all go a-hunting?'
'We will go hunting,' he assured her.
She clapped her hands.
'I will give Midge my horse Arianrhod!' she said.
The great hound Caibell rose to his feet as though he had
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VALLEY BEYOND TIME
understood. He whimpered and thrust a wet nose into
Ethne's hand.
'What do you hunt, sir?' asked the boy, who had been out
with hounds at home on several occasions.
'We do not hunt for the sake of killing,' said the king. 'I
don't think you could possibly guess what it is we chase. In
your world you sometimes tell the time by them; but here
we don't think of time in the same way, and they would be
useless anyhow. We hunt - shadows!
‘Shadows!'
He was open-mouthed in his astonishment.
In the next instant he thought of important and dignified
shadows that he had known: the long ones cast in the quad-
rangle at school by the early morning sun, and the creeping
sharp-edged shadow thrown by the gnomon onto the brass
face of the sun-dial in the courtyard at Saul, where the words
were engraved, 'The Houres Pass by and are Putt to Our
Accompt.' He thought, too, of those rather fearsome dark-
nesses that lurked in the passage by the secret room at night.
Here, instead of being venerated as time-tellers, or feared for
their menace, they were contemptuously hunted!
'Here,' explained Manannan, 'nobody and nothing have
shadows of their own. Even you haven't brought yours with
you!
Midge looked quickly behind him to verify the statement.
It was quite true! But he was not, however, unduly con-
cerned, and Ethne commented:
'I don't think I should like to have one dogging me all the
time. I would never feel private ... Oh, look, Midge! Quickly!
There's a shadow! On the mountains across the Green
Meadows!
He followed her pointing finger.
Upon the purple hills on the other side of the valley a
darker purple shadow drifted, as though cast by a lazing
summer cloud. But there was no cloud in a sky that was now
the gold of a daffodil; nor was there any sun.
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PROBLEM WITH SHADOWS
Soon he was to get used to the fact — which, on this first
discovery, he found rather odd — that shadows were not
attached to anything visible. Soon he was to get used to
shadows — of what? — seeping up from within the ground
and lying like a stain upon the surface, resting motionless
perhaps as though asleep about a tree or house, fluttering (it
seemed) like butterflies, or darting purposefully across the
uplands faster than sound. Now he watched, mesmerized,
as the purple shadow on the further hills suddenly ceased its
idling, and flowed down into the valley like an avalanche,
and disappeared within a wood.
'I hope we find one like that!' declared Ethne. ...
Presently Midge found himself astride a great white horse,
part of a cavalcade that streamed in furious flight across a
billowy plain, past orchards and woods of every conceivable
hue, past pillared houses that might have been built out of
rainbows, past gardens glowing with strange flowers. Spur-
less and stirrupless, the hunters rode on steeds with purple
manes and tails over a flower-gemmed turf ... In so very
little they were on the mountain ridges, above the world, a
white city with towers shimmering far away against a silver
sea laced with slow-running sapphire billows. Ethne was at
his right hand and singing as she rode.
He had never imagined such speed or such exquisite
pleasure.
139


CHAPTER IV
THE SEVEN THOUSANDTH CANDLE
ORRIGAN, the queen, who so short a while before
had been R. R., and 'Woman Friday' to Senator
Benaiah Purvis, sat in the high place of the hall of
the kings of Derga. She was robed in shimmering green and
cloaked in a mantle of dark blue, and on her head shone a
diadem studded with dragon-stones. She sat in a carved
chair before a small table set with silver dishes, upon a dais
whence she surveyed two or three hundred of her chief sub-
jects banqueting with the abandon of savages, in a riot of
colour and noise.
Immediately behind her was a lighted candle, ice-white,
as thick as a man and thrice as tall, burning with a lemon-
coloured flame as long and narrow as a sword. On her left
a tall old man held stiffly in his hand a long white rod capped
by a silver hammer-head. On her right, at a table lower than
her own, sat Purvis with a tightly withdrawn expression on his
face, but splendid in a mantle of purple and a tunic of scarlet.
A low rail hung with a crimson and silver cloth made an
enclosure about them, made the slim woman sitting beneath
the gigantic white column of the candle a goddess presiding
at her own shrine.
She was conscious of a certain amount of sympathy with
Purvis in his manifest discontent at comparative relegation
to the background, although she did not show it. She guessed
how much it must rankle with him that she had stolen all the
limelight ever since the time — was it but a few hours ago? -
when the King of Derga had lain prostrate at her feet in
abject surrender and obeisance. The fanfares had been for
her! All the mad, swift sequence of events that had followed
had been for her!
140


THE SEVEN THOUSANDTH CANDLE
The pageant of the procession across the high uplands,
under the bright blue vaulting of a sky that had shown no
sun, had been for her!
In this shield-hung, torch-lit hall of a huge hill-top strong-
hold she had been acclaimed by a tumultuous throng, had
been robed, had been lifted into the chair upon which she
now was seated, had been crowned with the diadem which
she now wore.
At some time during the incomprehensible confusion and
the uproar a small man, with wispy grey hair and a battered
elfish face the colour of a blighted raspberry, had materialized
at her side.
"Be easy, lady!' he had said — and in his voice was the lilt
of Irish speech. 'It's Queen of Derga that they're making
you.'
'If they think I'm going to marry that dirty piece of
work -
'Och, him! King Tuathal! He's cut his throat, ma'am -
or someone's done it for him! He's offended their gods. For
they're thinking that you're one of their lady gods – Morri-
gan, Queen of Battle! They say you struck the king down by
her image in the Sacred Valley with one touch of your hand
upon his oxter. Taran, the harper, saw it from the wood.
He heard the king's arm-bone snap like a faggot.'
So now she sat at this feast in her honour in the great hall
of the royal rath, which, with its lofty pillars — carved and
painted and gilded — soaring up into the murk of the high
roof, was (she thought) like the nave of a desecrated cathe-
dral. Facing her, at the far end, was an immense doorway
through which white-clad servitors poured to and fro with
gargantuan dishes. Its pointed arch was filled with the
luminosity of a sky that was no longer blue, but a glittering
pale green.
Meanwhile Purvis regarded the scene with intense curi-
osity and interest, but also with chagrin and disappointment.
Whatever he had anticipated for himself in the Fourth
141


VALLEY BEYOND TIME
Dimension, it certainly had not been a relegation to playing
second fiddle to R. R. Furthermore, whatever civilization
he had expected to encounter in the other world in the other
universe, it had not been a barbaric civilization of un-
questionably Celtic origin.
So he was a little curt on occasion when Morrigan ad-
dressed him. Once or twice he even pretended not to hear
her owing to his preoccupation in every detail of the wild,
bright, uproarious spectacle before him. She thought that
he was being rather childish, and began to resent his
attitude.
Presently, after watching one of the feasters toy with a
marrow-bone, he broke out:
‘By God, these people need civilizing!
‘And Senator Purvis rather thinks he's the man to do it!
commented Morrigan acidly. 'Knives, forks, spoons, and
parlour manners as a start! After that, canned meat and
comics — automobiles and T.V.! Preach the gospel of the
glorious culture of the West!'
He was a trifle taken aback by her sarcasm, and protested:
'Well, who on earth would have expected to find the
fourth-dimensional world still in the Bronze Age?
'His honour is right, ma'am,' interrupted the wizened
little interpreter, leaning confidentially over her chair. 'It's
civilized, indeed, that these people need to be. They're
pagans, and murderers, and thieves. I was fair martyred
with the drink when I lay down to sleep it off on the hill-side
above Ballynagall. When I woke up the thieving spalpeens
had brought me to this place and plucked me as naked as an
old hen – clothes, pipe, boots, 'bacca and all!
Purvis's bright blue eyes surveyed the queer little creature
for an instant.
'What's your name?' he rumbled.
‘Malachi, your honour. Malachi-the-Tongue is what they
are calling me here.'
'Been here long?
jd still in the terrupted the air. 'It's
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VALLEY BEYOND TIME
Young. They are a strange people, proud and beautiful,
and they don't grow old at all, at all!'
Benaiah swung his whole body round upon his stool, the
more easily to observe the intent face of the girl enthroned
above him. The movement was made as quickly and as
lightly as if his great body had no weight.
"They don't grow old at all!' he repeated slowly, savouring
the sound and the full meaning of the phrase. "They don't
grow old at all! Do you realize, R. R., that if Lambard
merely came to such a place as this and yet returned to
Caldy quite unaware of the passage of seven years, how much
more strange the time-factor must be on the island Malachi
is talking about? ... They don't grow old! Now - I wonder!
... I guess that's the place for you and me!
'I don't have to consider the problem of old age with quite
such personal interest as you do, Mr. Purvis,' said R. R.
rather unpleasantly; for she had not forgiven him for his
sulkiness. 'In any case I propose to see this adventure
through first, before making any further plans.'
'I '
He was about to embark upon argument with her, despite
a sudden vast increase in the uproar in the hall, when his
attention was distracted, and he fell silent.
The white-robed old man with the long wand, who stood
on the further side of the dais, had swung about and was
facing inwards as though a priest before an altar. He raised
the staff topped with a silver hammer ... Out of the corner
of an eye Benaiah observed that one of the three lovely girls
in attendance upon Morrigan had covered her ears with her
hands ... The next instant the man struck lightly at what
appeared to be a festoon of apple-blossom which hung down,
out of the dimness of the high arch above, to within a foot
or so of his head.
Immediately the whole place was filled with the song of
bells — of small silver bells, whose piercing, mournful sweet-
ness grew to such an intensity that the mind was emptied of
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VALLEY BEYOND TIME
and flung off his purple mantle, and seized the long spear of
one of the motionless soldiers near him.
‘This kind of nonsense must be put a stop to,' said he in a
casual voice, and stepped from the dais and proceeded to
stalk down the great nave, enormous and menacing as a
Scandinavian god, carrying the spear point downwards in
the fashion of a staff. And as he stalked, so silence amongst
the feasters followed after him.
Morrigan watched him, an elbow resting upon the carved
arm of her chair, her pointed chin propped in a cupped
hand, an enigmatical smile shadowy on her lips.
Benaiah had at length taken the centre of the stage! She
was glad that he should do so. She permitted no sign of
anxiety or doubt to appear upon the inscrutable face that she
turned towards the great door.
Now that the rest of the hall was silent, the violence and
the anger of the snarling battle became apparent. At least
a dozen men were engaged in close conflict, and two or three
more lay motionless among the scented rushes with which the
floor was strewn.
She saw Purvis pause for a single moment on the outskirts
of the struggle, to make swift decision on his tactics. He
dropped the spear. Then without word or warning he
literally flung his great body into the mêlée, almost as though
he were diving. He uprose the next second, towering above
the throng, holding in his two hands the body of a struggling
man, which he raised above his head and hurled with great
violence from him as a large dog might fling away con-
temptuously some broken and worthless prey. With sprawl-
ing limbs it struck the floor and lay still.
In the dark, swirling chaos of the fight, she caught the
glint of knives. The changing pattern of the outline against
the backcloth of the strange green sky had a sort of mad
rhythm: the tempo of the movement became one of almost
inconceivable rapidity, the tall figure with the white mane
being the pivot about which everything revolved. Then
146


THE SEVEN THOUSANDTH CANDLE
'I wish we were out of this fug!' she said at length. 'I'd
like to walk now in the moonlight.'
'Moonlight, is it, Lady?' said Malachi. "There's no moon
to be walking by in these parts, though you could see to read
at any time. Likewise there's sunshine without you seeing any
sun. There's no night, and no rain, and no snow, and no
cold, and no storm, and the trees fruit and flower ever and
always. You could live here without doing a hand's turn all
the days of your life.
'And does anyone do a hand's turn?' asked Benaiah.
“They mostly spend their time fighting and love-making,
hunting and horse-racing, and singing and dancing and
feasting!
- Morrigan said, still harping upon her original complaint:
‘But why do we have to feast indoors here in the dark if
there's never any darkness or cold? Why do you need houses
at all?'
'Lady,' protested Malachi, 'isn't it snugger here under a
roof than under the naked sky with the Holy angels watching
out of it everything that you might be doing? Wouldn't you
choose, too, to sleep in the dark?'
'What happens here next?' asked Morrigan, endeavouring
to suppress a yawn.
‘The harpers will play and sing, and they'll all go on eating
and drinking till they fall asleep in their places.'
'I have had enough,' said R. R. 'Tell the priest that I'm
going to commune with the high gods! I shall walk in the
moonlight that isn't moonlight for a little and go to bed. I
do not feel like making a night of it. I was up earlier than
you this morning, Benaiah - or was it yesterday, or last
week, or the year before? When was it that I drove the car
with Silver and the boy from House of Saul to Carn Meurig?
When was it that I saw you walk into the wood like an
elderly Apollo?'
Purvis checked his resentment of the small insolence. He
divined that behind her almost arrogant composure her mind
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VALLEY BEYOND TIME
d slippede said Mink it's ne
was troubled, that the rudeness was part of her defences
against this unknown world, against the unknown quantity
that was himself. He answered her:
'I have no idea. At one and the same time it seems to me
a very, very long while ago, and also quite recently that we
crossed the dimensions. Real time, against mechanical time,
is extensible, you know. Even if it is always day — always
today! — they still must have some method here of marking
off time intervals by a motion of a periodic character. I
don't see how the ordinary activities of life could be carried
on without.'
He turned as he spoke to make inquiry of Malachi, but
the little man had slipped away.
'I am sorry I was rude,' said Morrigan, looking straight
before her. “To be honest, I think it's nerves. I'm not
physically frightened you know – but frightened in my soul.
It's always day! It's always day!... Bennie - do you suppose
that this is eternity?'
She shot a quick look at him as she spoke; but he did not
smile; he said very quietly:
“Think a minute, R. R.! Think a minute! In the last
quarter of an hour two or three men have died. Would that
happen in eternity? In our own world we are always a little
amused by the idea that it can be Monday night in the
States when it's already Tuesday morning in England — that
Christmas with us is mid-winter, and in Australia mid-
summer. I guess it's nothing to be surprised about, that the
concept of time is vastly different in a world of another
dimension.'
She nodded her head slowly in agreement, her eyes still
fixed upon the strange green sky showing in the great arch-
way at the far end of the smoky, flare-lit hall — a sky in
which no luminary was visible. Presently she turned again
to him:
'Don't laugh at what I'm going to say!'
‘Of course I shan't.'
150 .


THE SEVEN THOUSANDTH CANDLE
'It's this. I hope you'll be within call tonight. Do I mean
tonight? Or what should I say? Anyhow I find it a rather
terrifying thought, going to bed a whole universe away from
the old shake-down in – so to speak — the Purvis attic.'
'I'll be within hail,' Benaiah assured her, 'even if I have
to sleep across your doorway with a naked sword beside me.'
After that they sat in a companionable silence amidst the
incredible din of the feast, remote observers, as was befitting
visitants from another world.
When Malachi reappeared, Morrigan asked him:
'Who is the lad with dark red hair who wanted to go to
Mr. Purvis's help?
'Etar, commander of the Golden Battalion, ma'am. They
say his mother's mother was one of the Ever-Young. He's as
brave as a lion, Lady, and a proper gentleman!'
'Tell him, then, that his battalion shall provide my guard
from now on.'
The young man was standing on the bottom step of the
dais, and obviously heard the mention of his name, for he
flashed a quick inquiring glance at the queen, and then, as
quickly, looked away.
'That lad's too good-looking by far!' said Benaiah with a
leathery smile and a knowing shake of his big head.
'Never mind! she retorted. 'I haven't forgotten your pre-
dilections. My maids of honour are going to be blondes —
every one! Thank me nicely!
When, a little later, she retired to a bedchamber as big as
a church, and a tester-bed with peacock-embroidered hang-
ings, in the company of her ladies, Benaiah had a feather-bed
brought to the windowless ante-room, which was bare of
everything except a great chest of some dark green wood, a
cathedral-size candlestick, and a round mirror of polished
metal.
He started to make ready for bed.
He flung off his mantle, and then automatically – as he
151


THE SEVEN THOUSANDTH CANDLE
'Yes, yes! But what do you use here instead of them?
'Well, there are watches, your honour. And then there
are sleeps.
“How many watches to a sleep?'
‘Three.'
"And then?
‘And then there are candles, your honour.'
‘Candles!
“The great candle under which the queen sat in the Hall
of the Candle is the Candle of Time. When it burns down
to a certain mark, one of the priests strikes the bells, and time
is sent out to all the world — to Derga, and Falias, and Dara,
and Morien, and Danu. Across the mountains and the
forests and the plains.
Had not Alfred the Great of England measured time by
candles? — the senator reflected. He asked:
'Well then, how many sleeps go to a candle?'
Malachi grinned again. He appeared to find the question
ridiculous, although he answered politely enough:
'Sure, your honour, that ’ull depend on the candle! Some
burn quicker nor others. Some are shorter nor others. Some
are thinner nor others. The King of Morien – bad cess to
him! - always sends small candles, and the King of Danu
big ones. There's no saying. But what does it matter?'
'Good God!' said Purvis in a shocked voice. As if it did
not matter! After a long pause he recovered himself suffi-
ciently to ask:
'What's the date, then?”
The question involved much explanation on his part and
profound private meditation on Malachi's part, before the
little interpreter arrived at an answer.
Purvis resumed the purple mantle that he had doffed.
He struck a resounding blow upon the heavy door of Morri-
gan's chamber, calling out his name.
In a moment or so there was a sound of bolts being with-
drawn, and then Morrigan, herself, appeared in the arch-
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VALLEY BEYOND TIME
way. She was still robed in shimmering tissue. There was a
quizzical expression on her face, and her raised left eyebrow
questioned him.
Benaiah hastened to give the reason for his summons
before she could come out with some ribaldry:
'I have just learned something that I guessed you'd like to
know before you went to bed ... We left Wales, as you know,
at 0700 hours on September the twenty-second, in the year
of Our Lord, nineteen hundred and so on. We arrived here
in the second watch of the twenty-ninth sleep of the seven
thousandth candle.'
'Near enough!' interjected Malachi.
'It's as near as anyone can get by means of the local system
of time measurement ... Good night, R. R.'
Perhaps to measure time by candles was as good as any
other way – he told himself, as once again he started bed-
wards. After all, the reality of time did not consist in the ticks
of a clock or the silent burning of a small flame, but in how
one used one's own bit of eternity.
Nevertheless he had been bereft of his conception of time,
just as he had been bereft of his shadow. He had been
rendered physically naked when he entered this new uni-
verse. Now suddenly, and rather frighteningly, he felt him-
self spiritually naked.
At his age, he considered, it was only natural to wish to
know with some definiteness how fast or how slowly one was
travelling towards the grave.
He dismissed Malachi and sought consolation in prayer....
In the days – which were not days — that followed,
Benaiah became increasingly obsessed by the problem of
Time. For here it was no longer the frank enemy which, in
that other world, announced the progress of its attack in the
dial of every clock, and in the rapid circling of the second-
hand of a watch. Here it lurked hideously in ambush, so
154


THE SEVEN THOUSANDTH CANDLE
that only the bells of time in the hall at Derga gave occa-
sional warning of its conspiracy, at intervals that would have
been untranslatable into earthly measurements even if they
had been constant.
The song of the bells passed swiftly through the air over
all the land, like a flight of unseen birds. There was no
escaping from it. Even when hunting elk with Etar in a
river-threaded valley a hundred miles — so he reckoned –
from Derga, he heard the plaintive music approach rapidly
from the distance, hover high in the sky overhead, and then
sweep on, sighing and crying, above the furthest range of
mountains.
Etar said that the bitter-sweet sound was carried in that
manner to the remotest realms of the Cernunnos, although
he did not know what property there was in bells or atmo-
sphere which should make it possible.
Intelligent though he was, he gave, through Malachi-the-
Tongue, an account of the origin of bells and candle that was
plainly fabulous.
“There are no other bells such as these in the world, and
no one has ever been able to make any like them,' he added.
‘The secret has been lost ... The King of Morien is very
envious of our bells. They tell me he has sworn they shall
hang within his royal rath, so that he shall make the time for
the world. Soon he will come with his armies and try to take
them from us. Of that I am convinced.'
He turned a little in the saddle whilst Malachi translated,
and studied the purposeful bronzed face of the big man at
whose side he rode. He was satisfied that he had aroused
his serious attention, and so embarked upon an exposition of
the gravity of the international situation.
Benaiah, listening intently, realized of a sudden that there
were many words which the young man used in his native
speech that he already understood. How had he learned
them so quickly, in, perhaps, a dozen 'sleeps' – he who had
no gift for languages – even though Luan, the most exquisite
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VALLEY BEYOND TIME
of the queen's ladies, at Morrigan's behest had devoted her-
self almost too wholeheartedly to his instruction?
Later on when he lay down to rest, wrapped in his cloak,
beneath the canopy of purple and silver foliage spread high
aloft by tall forest trees, he meditated uneasily upon the
problem: What was the relationship between a fourth-
dimensional 'sleep' and an earthly day?
Sir Walter Raleigh's famous lines passed through his mind:
Even such is Time, that takes in trust
Our youth, our joys, our all we have,
And pays us but with earth and dust. ...
He had been but a lad when first he read the poem;
afterwards he had taken out his watch and marked the
seconds hand ticking off a minute, and then another one,
and then another. Three whole minutes of his life had been
expended thus! Supposing he lived to be eighty - he had
thought - how many minutes more remained to him? He
had taken pencil and paper and made the calculation on the
spot.
Now, older by more years than he cared to think about,
and distant by a whole universe, he recalled the total at
which he had arrived. He had got something over thirty
million minutes left — thirty million minutes then!
How many had he now?
It was frittering away the poor balance that remained to
him to go hunting the elk and the boar, to attend races and
hurley matches and other sports, or to linger in the company
of green-eyed Luan, of the slim hands and mysterious smile,
longer than was strictly needful for the acquirement of a
knowledge of Dergan. In fact he knew quite well that he
always sought the girl's company whenever R. R. appeared
to be devoting herself to the handsome Etar, which was not
infrequently.
How many minutes had he left?
156


CHAPTER V
THE TIMELESS
T Thad seemed a little odd to Midge at first, although only
of minor importance, that there should be no such thing
Tas time in the Valley.
When he came to think about the matter — which was but
rarely – he realized, however, that as there was never any
darkness one could not even divide day from night, if one
wanted to. It was true that the cloudless sky slowly changed
from the pale, glittering blue of an early morning in the
summer of the world that he once had known — and now
had near forgotten — to a milky opal shot with half-secret
fires of every hue; to the luminous green that may sometimes
streak an earthly sunset; to a pale rose; to the gold of a
ripening apricot. On the other hand no one could prophesy
the order in which the colours would rise — gradually, along
the whole horizon, as though a succession of veils were being
withdrawn from about this other world.
Although no luminary was visible, the light that irradiated
the land was constantly changing, and the mysterious
shadows, which seemed to well up through the ground,
travelled their erratic course at an unpredictable speed.
Nobody ever said, 'Lunch is at half past one', or, ‘Meet
you this afternoon! or, 'The big race is on Tuesday week',
or, ‘Last year we did this or thať. People journeyed through
time needing landmarks in it no more than do migratory
birds seeking their old quarters in night flight across a track-
less ocean.
He mentioned this to Ethne once as they lay stretched
upon the scented turf, wearied for the moment after some
strenuous game.
She sat up at his questioning, and took his out-flung hand
158


THE TIMELESS
in her own in such fashion that she could tap with her fore-
finger rhythmically upon his wrist.
'Why should we trouble to divide our life, Midge, into
little taps like these? Or into the longer taps that you once
told me were called minutes? Even Caibell and Togga know
when their dinner is ready, and are waiting for it, just like
the horses when they are due for a gallop, without being able
to count taps, or minutes, or anything else. When Manannan
promised that we should go to Cibola, he did not have to tell
us that it would be in so many taps! We shan't say to one
another, “It's ten thousand taps since Manannan told us, so
the time has come at last!” We shall know when it's come,
just as you know that it's dinner-time now as well as I do!'
It was true. He knew that dinner-time was now without
knowing how he knew -- as if some soundless dinner-gong in
the mind had summoned him. Somewhere in the hinterland
of his consciousness there was already developing an acute
awareness of appointment, such as, in a far less degree, an
earth-dweller can cultivate to arouse him for duty even from
the deepest sleep without the aid of timepiece or knocker-up.
‘But - 'he began, raising his head a little and looking up
at her.
Into his open mouth she dropped a handful of flower petals,
and was away at full speed, laughing and shedding her only
garment, before he could rise.
He was up and after her in an instant ... How long was
it since he had won the junior school two hundred and twenty
yards race? By what fraction of a second had he set up a
record? He no longer knew - or cared ... But he caught
her now, as he had not been able to do before, just as she
reached the colonnade of the house of moonstone and opal,
and they fell together, struggling and laughing, upon the
flagstones.
Reclining on crystal couches at a long low table in the
portico, they fed on fruit and honey and drank a thin sweet
juice in company with Branwen, the queen, and their friends.
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VALLEY BEYOND TIME
Every dish and every goblet was a work of supreme art.
Harpists played soft music whilst they ate and talked; the
air was full of the echoing song of birds; under the pale blue
sky the rustling trees were hung with fruits as bright as though
they were illuminated from within.
Afterwards, they went — as always — in laughing parties
to bathe, to hunt, to race, to play any of a dozen games, to
inspect whatever of the beautiful one or the other was
engaged in making.
They were never wet or cold, or thirsty or hungry, or
without occupation, or in bodily pain — these people. They
wedded with exquisite ceremonies, and passed with a gay
informality into another universe when their allotted span
had been reached.
'But where is she going?' Midge had once asked Branwen,
when a very lovely woman had come to bid cheerful
farewell.
“There are many other universes as well as ours and yours,'
explained the queen. 'Just as we make contact with your
world in our course, Midge, so also do we touch others. ...'
In due time they rode to Cibola, the chief of the seven
cities of the land, in Manannan's shining chariot, drawn by
four horses at the gallop, along the trackless mountains at
the head of a widespread host. They stood to one side of the
king as he drove, his silver mantle streaming in the wind of
their passage, and Eber, the charioteer, stood on the other,
singing some loud song in praise of horses and of speed.
They swooped into valleys and surged up the hill-sides
with — it seemed — no abatement of swiftness, like a flock of
birds navigating the hidden currents of the air. For a bare
moment there came to Midge a sub-conscious memory of his
father's great car gathering speed and hurling itself down the
long straight miles of the road to Morfa. But it was merely a
recalled sensation from the past that had no other associations
for him.
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VALLEY BEYOND TIME
‘But what were their ships made of before, Manannan?'
‘Of wicker covered with the hides of cattle. They were
small and could carry but little cargo and few men, perhaps
twenty at the most.'
Upon the misted screen of distant memory the boy seemed
to perceive fragmentary pictures of other ships moving even
as this one did without oars and without spread sails.
Manannan answered the question before ever it was formu-
lated in his mind.
'The currents of these tideless seas will carry a ship such
as this to and from every shore. They need but get out the
great sweeps to row themselves from one current to the other
... On!
They poured down the steep hill-side with the speed and
the joyous rush of a torrent.
They came to a halt under spreading trees covered with
great purple flowers before a triple-arched gateway in the
high milk-white walls of the town.
Long, long afterwards when Midge came to try to describe
the city of Cibola to Uncle Minos, he found that there was
so much to remember that he could recall but little — small
details only, such as the outline of a hanging turret against
the sky; the tiny courtyard that seemed to have been built
just as a setting for an urn of scarlet flowers; the twisted
pillars of green glass in some dim palace hall; the sudden
glimpse of an exquisite laughing face against the carved
frieze of a belvedere.
'It was like a city in a dream,' he said. "Even the widest
street would suddenly become narrow and full of corkscrew
twists so that you might see some new and lovely vista, or
some other aspect of a building that you had already seen.
At one spot in an alley, I recall, a post was placed in the
middle so that Ethne and I had to loose hands and pass, one
on either side. I'm certain that it was set up so that people
walking there, as she and I were, should see one another
differently for just a quick moment. It might be a moment
162


THE TIMELESS
that you would remember for ever and always. I shall.'
And so Midge and Ethne walked with Manannan, the
king, through the streets of Cibola, down to the harbour
where the ship from Derga was being warped to her berth
alongside the quay.
They looked down from the high wall into the swarming
midship. The noise was as ugly as that of a monkey-house
and a parrot-cage. The smell was such as not even the
scented breezes of the Valley could disguise. The scene was
one of tattered splendour and dirty magnificence.
Midge regarded the array of shaggy, swarthy men in
stained cloaks and tunics of every colour, armed with spears
and axes and swords, fierce-eyed under strange helmets like
inverted goblets: regarded them with a horror and disgust at
least equal to Ethne's.
He said to her:
'What do these horrible people want?'
It was Manannan who answered him:
“They have come here, Midge, on a peaceful errand. There
have been none dare to lift a hand against us since the days
of my father, when they learned a lesson that they never will
forget. This is an embassy to me from the Queen of Derga,
whom once you knew. It would be as well if you stayed and
spoke for just a little with her ambassador.'
It did not occur to Midge for an instant to protest.
Ethne squeezed his hand and dropped it. She turned to
the bright-eyed throng that attended a few paces behind.
‘Céthlionn,' she said to a girl in a daffodil robe, 'we will
go and bathe this smell from us!... Midge, come to us when
you have done!'
She went just as the trumpets in the ship sounded a harsh,
uneven fanfare - as a man with silver hair came, bare-
headed, from out the great cabin in the poop, and stalked
down the deck, splendid in a garment of scarlet fringed with
gold, a great sword buckled to him.
As he set foot on the water-stairs the bells of the city gave
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VALLEY BEYOND TIME
answer to the heralding of the trumpets, and welcome to the
envoy.
He came to the top of the steps, and paused there for an
instant, a man taller and broader than Manannan, with a
bronzed face and a great beak of a nose. Then he approached
the waiting group with a long easy stride and a confident
bearing.
Manannan stepped forward to welcome him.
'I am Benaiah Purvis, counsellor of the queen, and presi-
dent of her senate,' said the man with silver hair in the speech
of Derga. 'I bring you her greetings.' After they had ex-
changed a formal salutation, he added, as though to disso-
ciate himself from the shipboard herd, ‘Like her, I am not a
native of the country.'
The king permitted himself to smile.
'Or, indeed, of this universe at all!' he answered in English.
'You see, I too have stood upon the top of Carn Meurig, and
viewed the distant roof-tops of House of Saul! I have even
talked with a young girl by the Standing Stones!
'Olwen!' exclaimed Purvis, smiting himself upon the thigh
as he recalled every detail of his momentous interview with
Mrs. Bosworth's daughter in the small sitting-room behind
the shop at Saul. In the excitement of the discovery he
did not even remark that he had been addressed in his
mother tongue, or that he replied in the same language.
'So it was you, then, whom Olwen saw and left her imprint
on!
His heart warmed at once to this man who was acquainted,
however slightly, with a person and a place that he too
knew, a whole universe away. It was much as if he had met
an acquaintance from his Texan home town in the middle of
the Sahara.
Both of them laughed. Benaiah added as footnote:
'She told me that she was going to keep to her dying day
the handkerchief with which she wiped the lipstick from off
your face!
164


THE TIMELESS
'So it was she presumably who was responsible for your
travel across the dimensions?
'Ultimately, yes. But I have been trying to make the
crossing, sir, for more than forty years. He paused slightly
after he had pronounced the fateful word 'years'; for how
many years might it not be now? 'I have sought for the
passage ever since I first saw Cibola when I was little more
than a boy... My only regret is that I didn't find it sooner
- much, much sooner!
He surveyed in a momentary silence the whole marvellous
panorama of the city which he had first beheld out in the
Atlantic on that early morning so long ago. So very long ago!
With a light and friendly touch the king drew his attention
to the fair-haired boy in a pale blue tunic and silver sandals
standing beside him.
‘And here is Midge!' he said.
Benaiah surveyed the lad for an instant with a slightly
puzzled air.
“There was a boy of that name I knew, and not unlike in
some ways; but — he began. 'Your son, sir?'
'This is the boy you knew.'
'Hiya, Midge!' said Purvis according to the old formula
of greeting, and thrust out his hand. 'I declare that you've
grown out of all recognition!
He checked himself abruptly. The Midge that he had
known had surely been very much smaller, and there was no
hint of recognition in the face turned up to his. Yet Morrigan
and he had decided that it could be no more than three
months since they had plunged into the depths of the
shadowless wood.
Benaiah shelved the problem temporarily. He asked:
'How's Silver?'
Midge found the question a complex one. The words in-
quired about someone named Silver, but the tone asked if he
had forgotten who Silver was and, if he had, why.
Did he remember about Silver? There had been someone
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VALLEY BEYOND TIME
who had kissed him when he wasn't used to being kissed. It
had been very dark at the time. Was that Silver? This big
man with white hair -
His brows knitted in the effort of recollection.
'Too long ago to remember, isn't it, Midge?' said Manan-
nan. 'Never mind! Run away now and bathe with Ethne
and Céthlionn! Perhaps Senator Purvis will ask us to visit
Derga, and then we will go together, you and I..
'Senator Purvis!' said Midge slowly before he took flight.
'I do remember once saying that someone looked like a
Roman. Was that Senator Purvis? ... What was a Roman?
... Why did I say it? I think he had white hair, too. I
know I've seen white hair before. I am sorry, but I really
can't recollect. As Manannan says, it must have been a very
long while ago. Goodbye!
A faint flush tinged the deep tan of the big face that was
turned to follow the departing Midge. Then Purvis asked:
'How did that boy lose his memory? Why, he stood with
Silver watching when I crossed the frontier between the
universes. Did he follow me and get hurt?
'He followed, but did not get hurt. He has been here with
us ever since. As for the phrase "long ago”, it is a comparative
one. The “long ago” of a child is but as a little while to that
of a grown man of your old world; the “long ago” of that
man as but a short while in the land where now you live, as
almost less than a moment past to us of Cibola. Yet in real
time there is no difference. For after all a butterfly in your
world, for instance, is relatively as long-lived as a tortoise!
'The “long ago” that is "less than a moment” past!
repeated Benaiah. The words of a favourite hymn came to
his mind. He quoted almost to himself:
‘A thousand ages in Thy sight
Are like an evening gone.'
'Well,' said Manannan, watching a flock of birds, like
swans with plumage of peacock blue and green, rise in swift
166


THE TIMELESS
flight from a colonnaded garden and fly seaward. 'Well, that
is true of God, but we are not eternal even here, you know!
I do not think that years had been invented in those lands of
yours which we occasionally touch when my father was born.
But at a rough calculation I myself came on the scene
approximately four thousand earth-years ago.'
'Do you die, then?' asked Benaiah in a rather shocked
manner.
The other laughed:
'Not as they think about it in that other world - or, at
least, not as some people there appear to think about it. We
just aren't here any longer. That is all. It's really very
simple. It's only the body ... Let us go now, and we will eat
together, and talk gerontology, and about your problems in
Derga, and about God — if you like!'
'God!' exclaimed Purvis, and then exploded, 'I wish there
was some way of getting rid of that disgusting thing these
people of mine worship!
'Cernunnos, the Horned One, after whom we call all those
outer lands! It will be interesting to see whether your queen,
the reincarnation of the goddess Morrigan, can supplant
him.'
'R. R., having now become a goddess, is beginning to
find that there are strings attached to the position ... So
am I!
The king made no immediate comment upon this state-
ment, but proceeded to lead his guest into the city with the
informality of an old inhabitant showing a newcomer round
the sights. They went unaccompanied through streets of
fantastic buildings of every shape and colour, along terraced
walks looking down upon a kaleidoscopic pattern of roofs and
spires and towers and pinnacles, in avenues lined with trees
and soaring palaces and temples.
Benaiah was as one thunderstruck when first he met the
full impact of the city's beauty. Then he rhapsodized with
ever mounting enthusiasm upon the architecture of the
167


THE TIMELESS
They entered a small pavilion with a balcony overhanging
the city and the sea. There were seats in it of crystal, and a
table on which were set a flagon and goblets, and a dish of
purple fruit. Manannan indicated the repast with a slight
smile.
'I think you will find your hunger satisfied,' he said,
‘although if you prefer I can provide you with a banquet such
as your men are now enjoying. They will swear that they
have eaten all manner of dead creatures roast, and boiled,
and grilled, and have drunk scalteen of a potency unparal-
leled. In fact they will have had nothing of the sort. It will
all have been an illusion.'
'An illusion!' exclaimed Purvis, taken aback. 'It sounds to
me like black magic.
'It is only what you call, in your world, hypnotism –
suggestion. It is not so great an illusion as the Time that you
have created with your clocks and watches, and sun-dials
and hour-glasses and candles. For how can the same con-
ception of time apply to a man who crosses a continent by
aeroplane and a man who crosses it afoot? Do the artificial
subdivisions of mechanical time mean the same thing to a
man in physical agony and a man within the arms of his
mistress? With you only the very young and the very old
know the time that has reality. That is why they alone may
stay in this land of mine. Time is the greatest illusion of
all!
Benaiah seated himself, leaned back, stretched out his
long legs, and slowly surveyed the calm, strong face of the
king; then he turned his regard upon the great garland that
was the city of Cibola.
'Is that an illusion?' he asked at length, nodding towards
the prospect.
'It is as real as reality can be. It's as real as the fortress of
Derga, as real as the ship you have had constructed from
trees, as real in this world as anything in yours - as the
Standing Stones on the top of Carn Meurig!
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VALLEY BEYOND TIME
‘Forgive me, but you, then, and all these people are real,
too, and in the same way?'
'Quite real.'
'Even when you appeared in the hall of the King of Falias'
- he quoted words Malachi had once used in describing
the scene – 'with your "body clear like sea water, and veins
as green as seaweed”? When you paid a call on Mr. Lam-
bard!'
The king turned his long-lashed, grey eyes upon his guest;
he answered him slowly:
'I was then as I am here now sitting before you. It was an
illusion – like the roast pig your men are eating. I can
create illusions in the mind, but I can no more create a
reality of any sort, except by the labour of my body, than
you can. God alone can create by thought. He thought,
and your universe and mine came out of nothingness. He
thought, and you and I and our like were given life.
'The creative thought of God! I was talking about that to
a friend on the afternoon of the very day before I started on
this venture.' How well he remembered quoting from
Barrett's work on the subject to Sir Henry Standish, on
that golden September day, in the judge's book-lined study
filled with the sound of the grave, slow wash of the tide
upon Tenby beach. He explained this and quoted once
again:
" "What limitless wonders, what new forms of life and
intelligence, may we not expect to find, when we can appre-
hend the operation of the Divine impulse on the more plastic
material of an unseen universe." ..
‘And does the reality approximate to your imaginings?'
'Here — yes; but my own kind have made a slum in what
should be paradise - a hell in what might be heaven.'
‘And now that you have learned that, what next?'
Purvis paused for a considerable time. He sniffed the
bouquet of the amber liquor which Manannan had poured
into his goblet; he sipped a little and rolled it in his mouth
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VALLEY BEYOND TIME
Benaiand helpino I am
‘And so?' queried the king, seeking the end of the explana-
tion, after Benaiah had remained for some little while with-
drawn into deep meditation.
'Well, sir, how can I leave her by herself in such a country,
let alone in another world in another universe?'
Manannan nodded a sympathetic head.
'I have heard how much she relies upon you.'
'I'm her Secretary of State and her Commander-in-
Chief,' said Benaiah, extracting a small carved box from his
leather pouch, and helping himself to a pinch of what
appeared to be dark snuff. 'I am also in her eyes, it would
seem, an elderly Don Juan. I've got to admit that even in the
not so distant past — or perhaps it's very distant now! -
there've been incidents in my career that I should prefer to
forget. Discreditable and regrettable they appear to me
now, though at the time I fancied them romantic. But still I
cannot help resenting it that R. R. should think it incumbent
on her to collect a bevy of lovely blondes as an inducement
to me to remain in Derga!'
A slight and whimsical smile flitted over the king's intent
face.
'She appears to be a very intelligent young woman,
Benaiah,' he commented.
'Nevertheless,' said Purvis, closely scrutinizing the pattern
on the snuff-box, 'her scheme is based on an incorrect
assumption ... I am no longer interested in blonde ladies.
Sometimes, indeed, I am inclined to wonder if she guesses
that. Sometimes, when she is with Etar, and I am relegated
to the company of her yellow-haired ladies, I see her cast a
side-long glance at me from under her lashes - see her lips
twitch in the merest beginnings of a smile. It's then I feel
that she has guessed what a ludicrous fool I am making of .
myself. At my age!'
The king nodded again.
‘Shall I give you an illusion to wear, Benaiah?' he asked in
his soft, friendly voice. 'Because I will if you desire. An
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THE TIMELESS
illusion of youth which will last your life long and never
leave you. It is yours for the asking.'
Was it just in the mirror of his mind, or did he really
see a younger self coming through the doorway of the
pavilion, a younger self with a mane of yellow hair, an un-
lined face, and all the confidence and gaiety of untainted
youth?
‘No, Manannan, no!' he exclaimed in a loud voice that
was not merely addressed to the king, but summoned his
inmost soul to resist temptation. 'I do not want your gift. It
would be wrong for me to take it. Time is against me. I was
born too soon. Or she was born too late. There is no
remedy. I should never forgive myself for such a de-
ception.
'Youth is comparative, even as age is,' the king answered.
'With regard to the gift, you have chosen right, my friend.
All things lie in the thoughts of God, and in but a little we
shall see what is to be.'
He stretched a long, ringless hand across the table between
them and they clasped hands.
'I shall not go whatever happens,' said Benaiah. 'I guess I
am of use, and may be of more, for though she has great
courage — His mind switched suddenly to another track.
'Courage! Real courage = not just the desperate animal
reaction - is not that another very beautiful thing, such as
those you spoke of? Is not courage as beautiful as a song? Is
not courage a song itself?
"That is true — very true,' said the king. 'And since here
in this land, although almost immortal, we are not divine,
we cannot realize perfection except by contrast with the
imperfect, or realize courage unless we understand the viol-
ence and agony that will cause it to flower. It is for this
reason, among others, that our young are always sent away
from the Valley for a while. Sometimes, but not often, the
system is not a success.'
There he broke off rather abruptly, and something told
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VALLEY BEYOND TIME
Benaiah that he was thinking of the Queen of Falias who had
loved Lambard too well.
Then the king added:
‘Ethne, my daughter, will go in her turn, too, to the lands
of Cernunnos when she grows up. She will marry the son
of the King of Morien.'
'Great God!
Benaiah pulled himself upright in his seat and gazed almost
incredulously at Manannan's face, but the other merely gave
a small nod of confirmation. His eyes left the king and sought
the prospect of Cibola spread before him, bathed in a clear
silver light beneath a sky that was of the palest gold of prim-
roses, exquisite even as the city told of in Revelations, that
was 'pure gold, like unto clear glass'. How was it possible
that the daughter of such a ruler of such a city should con-
descend to a barbarism similar to that from which he had
but now emerged?
'It is the law,' said Manannan, answering his unspoken
commentary. 'She will not be away for long, since time for
us can be contractile as well as extensible. A pleasure can be
long and a pain short!
'I know nothing against the Tanist of Morien,' said Purvis,
'but his father, the king, is a deadly scoundrel. Even now, as
you probably know, he is getting ready to invade us. Among
other things he claims to be the rightful guardian of the bells
of time. But any excuse would serve, for he means to wipe us
out if he can. He's got twice our man-power at the least, and
at this crisis our frontier clans have started a civil war among
themselves!
'Hence your new ship, I suppose!'
‘Ships!' said Purvis, stressing the plural. 'I have five more
on the stocks. The moment Morien makes a move against
us, I'll put four or five battalions on shipboard and deliver a
counter-attack from the sea upon his capital. That should
discourage him, I guess. And if only I can get the experi-
ments completed in time, there will be a new and deadly
174


THE TIMELESS
weapon in my hands that will discourage him still more.'
‘Time! Time!' said Manannan. 'In almost one and the
same breath you desire to be taken back through time to
your youth, and swiftly forward through time to the com-
pletion of an experiment. Yet ever in your mind is the urgent
desire that time, for you, shall almost stand still.'
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VALLEY BEYOND TIME
whereat she sat, and seated himself in the chair she indicated
on her right hand with the effortless grace that was peculiarly
his own. She always felt - as Standish once had done — that
Benaiah in movement gave such an impression of weightless-
ness that one almost expected him to bounce like a balloon
when settling on a seat.
'Well, Bennie,' she said, with the shadow of a smile, 'you'll
have to drop the handkerchief pretty soon, at the rate you
are going on!
‘Eh?
“Those girls, I mean. They'll expect you to, you know!
Which is to be the lucky one?
'Good God!' exclaimed Purvis. “Why, they're children,
R. R. That's all!
'Well, in your world and mine at any rate we should
consider them fully grown. Luan and Maeve must be about
twenty, and Airmed perhaps a little younger
'I reckon,' averred Benaiah, 'that they look upon me as a
harmless old fossil, whom it's rather fun to have about the
house.
'Do they indeed? Then let me tell you this — that Luan's
mother is most anxious that she should make a favourable
impression on you.' She paused; asked herself why she was
telling him this; admitted the reason without shame, and
continued — What is more, you may be interested to know,
the good lady is by no means fussy about marriage!
‘Good God!' exclaimed Benaiah again.
From his tone of horror and the appalled expression on his
face, it was perfectly clear that the seduction of Luan had
never even entered his mind.
Satisfied on this score, Morrigan turned to other matters of
urgency that were less personal.
'What happened at your headquarters conference?' she asked.
‘They were dead against the use of power-seeds, he
answered in a voice of exasperation. 'All except Etar.'
'He'll back you, of course.'
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VALLEY BEYOND TIME
'Once you've found a way to handle it, then — ?
'Once we can find a way to handle it! If we can find a way
to handle it! It's like atomic energy, with unlimited poten-
tialities for peace or war. But time is against us. Time is on
the side of the enemy. The sands are running out.
'Everything else is cut and dried. The moment we hear
that Morien is on the march, Etar will lead the raid by sea
upon their city, and return immediately to attack the inva-
sion force from the rear. But-'
He pursed his lips doubtfully and took a large pinch of
snuff. Both of them remained silent for quite a considerable
while; then Morrigan said rather wearily:
'I must have a break now. I am tired of playing the
goddess-queen today. I am tired of planning great things for
a peaceful nation when war may throw everything into the
melting-pot. I wanted to do so much for these people, and I
am consumed by an agony of frustration. Let us go riding
together, Benaiah! Just you and I!... Do you know, some-
times I almost wish that we had stayed in that violet-black
wood, and never clapped eyes upon the wretched King
Tuathal, or the rock carving of my namesake, the goddess
Morrigan!
'I've thought the same thing time and time again,'
declared Benaiah, rising to his feet. 'I wonder what the up-
shot would have been! ... I'd like to come riding with you,
R. R. I am not due at the hurley match between the Eagle
battalion and the Lions until the third watch. We could go
and look at the ships, and then into the forest.'
In another quick glance of assessment at him, as he stood
upright at her side, she knew with absolute certainty that,
so far as she was concerned, the upshot would have been
inevitably the same. ....
They rode together in silence, unescorted, out of the
enclosure that was the heart of the stronghold of the kings of
Derga.
180


BENAIAH FINDS A CONTEMPORARY
The huddle of peak-roofed halls and palaces and store-
houses upon the hill-top was set about with a high wall of
undressed stone. Without the immense gates lay the chaos of
a town in which there seemed no purpose or design, except
for the broad, paved waggon road that sloped steeply from
the palace down to a silver river. Above the patternless
patchwork of clay-and-wattle huts, turf-roofed, rose an
occasional larger and more ornate house of carved timber,
sometimes of two storeys and covered by golden thatch or
bright-hued shingles. The smoke of cooking-fires drifted from
holes in the chimney-less roofs, or oozed from doorway and
window. The ground between the shacks was littered with
garbage and ordure of all sorts, and not a tree was to be seen.
The whole vast slum had the negligent appearance of a
mud-bank left by a receding tide. A sour, stale smell per-
vaded the place like an invisible fog.
The shouting crowds that streamed out of the tenements to
greet their queen were, for the most part, incredibly dirty
and ragged.
Benaiah thought of Cibola and what he had seen of the
Valley of the Ever-Young.
He said somewhat despondingly:
‘Even if we escape destruction, R. R., it will take a life-
time — more than a life-time! — of planning and hard work
to make these people and this place what they could be and
ought to be.
'A life-time!' she echoed, and reined her horse in as they
reached the river bank, and turned and gazed at the appall-
ing squalor of her capital city. 'Have you any idea how long
we have been here already — seriously, Benaiah?'
He reflected –
'When I first came I started making a notch on a stick for
every time I went to bed. Then I forgot once or twice. Then
I gave it up. I suppose five or six months. Perhaps a bit
longer. Why do you ask?'
'Have you realized that you and I can speak and under-
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VALLEY BEYOND TIME
stand Dergan perfectly — as if we had been born to it? I
don't know anything about you, but I have never been a
linguist. My forte was in an entirely different direction. I
was hopeless at languages. Now I can listen to a legal argu-
ment, full of technicalities, and grasp it. I can tell from a
speaker's accent even what province he comes from. We've
been here much, much longer than we imagine. Years!
'Years! he exclaimed. 'I can't believe it!
'Could even you, Bennie - superman though you are! -
go down to the armourers after just a few months and talk
technicalities to them, or give carpenters elaborate instruc-
tions about ship-building in their own language? You'd still
be talking pidgin English, and so should I.'
That aspect had not occurred to him.
‘Years!' he echoed again in an accent of consternation.
For years were very precious at his time of life ... But
what was that time of life at this moment, anyway? ...
Years were to be fully savoured, and employed, and clung to,
every second of them being let go most grudgingly!
They rode on, away from the town, along the river across
a wide plain spangled with small white flowers. Before them
loomed a forest as grey-blue as the bloom on damsons.
Above its dense foliage the fantastic towers and peaks and
spires of a mountain range rose abruptly into a pale green
sky - a sky that glowed as though it were a dome of stained
glass illumined by invisible light rays from the world it
roofed.
On the shelving banks of the river, a little before it
entered the woods, the ribs of a half-built shirt were being
clothed with planking. Another big hull was being caulked
on the stocks. The place swarmed with workmen. The air
was full of the noise of hammers, of loud cheerful voices, of
the scent of tar.
They halted for a little whilst he pointed out to her
improvements upon the original design.
'We shall be able to get five hundred men on board the
182


BENAIAH FINDS A CONTEMPORARY
Royal Morrigan,' he said as they rode on into the arcade of the
forest. 'This is where the timber for her came from.'
'There isn't much sign of felling,' she commented, steady-
ing her horse as a small wild pig bolted squealing before
them.
'There isn't any at all,' said Benaiah, drawing an imagin-
ary bead upon the pig, using his horse-rod as a gun. “As soon
as a tree was cut, another started to thrust up through the
earth, looking just like an enormous head of asparagus. I sat
and watched one come up, and grow and grow till it was
fifty or sixty feet high, and then push out branches and leaves.
It '
He was a trifle taken aback by the flash of horror in her
eyes:
'You saw a tree grow to its full height?'
‘As sure as I'm sitting here.'
'How long did it take?
'What's the use of asking that?' he demanded.
She answered, almost as though to herself:
'Sixty seconds — sixty minutes ... Sixty – years! Sixty
years? ... Did the tree grow at its ordinary rate whilst you
aged fast, or did it grow fast whilst you lived at the ordinary
rate?
'Say, what is the "ordinary rate"?!
“This time business frightens me,' she admitted, dropping
the scarlet reins and staring at the trees that had grown more
quickly than the mushrooms she used to gather as a child.
'Time isn't fixed and stable here. There isn't anything to
measure it br: at all except a candle! A candle! No sun. No
moon. No star. No tides, and shadows that flit across the
earth unpredictably!'
'In Manannan's country,' interjected Benaiah, 'they even
hunt them!
'I've tried,' she continued, 'to find some basis for the cal-
culation of time in the colour changes of the sky. I made
some experiments when you were away in Cibola. I had
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VALLEY BEYOND TIME
a thing like an hour-glass made, with sand in it, as big as I
could, to measure the duration of the changes. But it didn't
work.'
'Why?' he asked, deeply interested.
‘Because one day – I will call it a day! - a green period,
for instance, would last twice as long as it did the day
before, and the next day perhaps only a third as long. It
varied all the while. So far as I can make out there is simply
no regular rhythm to the movement at all. It seems to me
that from some inward source in this world there is just a
steady pulsation of light, which is reflected in a sky whose
colours may change just as an earthly wind may veer to
every point in the compass. To measure time in such a way
would be as nonsensical as using a bit of elastic for a foot-
rule.'
'Let it be!' said Benaiah. ‘Of us two it is only I who have
to worry about the passage of time.'
'But it makes me feel lost, Bennie. Because one doesn't
know how fast one is travelling into the future, there doesn't
seem to be any present. It's like going into a shop and buying
recklessly without knowing at all how much money is in one's
purse. It's like being a blindfold passenger in a car travelling
at an unknown speed to an unknown destination. I should
like to have a milestone on my journey through eternity.
Are we lost in eternity?
'I thought of an hour-glass, too,' said Benaiah, surrepti-
tiously watching her thoughtful face. “Then one day I
counted steadily up to sixty and told myself, “There, at any
rate, you've got approximately a minute of earthly time!”
But when I came to think about it, I realized that it wouldn't
necessarily be a minute. If one lives faster or slower here
than one does on earth, then one must necessarily count
sixty faster or slower, too.
They rode on in silence over the floweret-studded moss be-
neath the vaulting of the forest. Somewhere near at hand a
bird sang most exquisitely. A pale golden radiance filled the
184


BENAIAH FINDS A CONTEMPORARY
sweet-scented labyrinth of the trees. The luminous green
foliage high overhead was patterned with great blossoms of
silver and dark blue.
'That's another reason for me to go back to the three-
dimensional,' he said at length.
For a long moment she was mute. Then she said in a
controlled voice:
'Go back! Why? I thought that you had decided to stay
here.'
'Oh, I don't mean for good,' he hastened to assure her.
‘But, for one thing I think it would be quite a plan for us to
have some check upon the passage of time. We might be
able to work out the ratio between candle-time and sun-
time. For our own satisfaction. The other thing is that a
recruiting expedition is definitely indicated. ..
‘What do you mean by a recruiting expedition?'
‘Collecting a group of experts of all sorts — chemists,
physicists, metallurgists, doctors, and so forth.
‘But they couldn't bring any equipment with them.'
"They'd bring their brains.
'No!' she exclaimed almost violently. 'And again, No!
This place has got to work out the pattern of its own salva-
tion. You'll never go "recruiting” with my consent.'
'I never guessed that you'd feel like that about it,' said
Benaiah, considerably taken aback by her vehemence. 'To
be honest, too, I thought one might be able to persuade -'
"No!' repeated R. R. with emphasis. Sudden suspicion
flooded her mind and chilled her heart. She added bitterly,
'If the truth were known, I suppose you really mean that
you've had enough of Derga and of me! You think it's time
to go back to your Silver and the flesh-pots! Only you didn't
like to put it so bluntly.'
'You're being unfair,' he retorted indignantly. 'It's not
true, and you know it isn't. Manannan told me that the two
universes would be meeting very soon, and I immediately
thought -
185


BENAIAH FINDS A CONTEMPORARY
'What's that mountain called?' asked R. R., pulling up.
Ask me another,' said Benaiah. “I've never been this way
before. I have no clue. Every place seems to have got four
or five different names. There isn't such a thing as a map in
Cernunnos. When you measure distances by spear casts, and
have no compass points, what can you expect? I had a
cartographer and surveyor marked down on my list of
requirements!
Forget it!' said R. R., her eyes upon the mountain;
suddenly changed her mind: 'No, Bennie, go, if you must!
I won't try and persuade you. But I'm so horribly afraid
that you will never come back!
A quiet voice said from close at hand:
'It might be better if both of you were to go back to your
own world and your own universe, Morrigan!
He came towards them out of the mystery of the wood, a
tall man in a green tunic and a silver mantle, wearing a
diadem. R. R. had no need to be told that this was Manan-
nan, King of Cibola. She knew it was impossible that there
should be another man in any world whose face could remain
unlined and young and yet tell of such vast knowledge,
power, and tolerance. Such as he might Prester John have
been, that Priest-King to whom two-and-seventy kings were
tributary.
Benaiah leaped from his horse, with a shout of greeting as
though to an old friend, and went forward with outstretched
hand.
They stood for a moment together, long enough for the
girl to have the picture imposed for ever on her memory -
the two big men clasping hands and smiling at each other
against the background of the grey-blue shafts of the tall
trees with their violet foliage.
Then the king came to her side. He took her narrow,
tanned hand in his own, and spoke to her holding it all the
while.
'You were not in the palace when we came, Morrigan,' he
187


VALLEY BEYOND TIME
said, “and so I followed you here. My companion, Midge –
you remember him?
She well remembered him. 'A nice child,' she added.
He smiled a little enigmatically as he nodded agreement,
and went on:
'He thought he had seen enough after riding through the
city and so I let him return to Cibola and Ethne. He had no
memory of Benaiah when he saw him, and he remembered
nothing about you. So there was no purpose in keeping him
against his wish.'
'I am not surprised that he wasn't impressed. Neither
Benaiah nor I are proud of the town, but we're doing the
best we can.
'I know you are. That is why I am here. I told Benaiah
that I would give him warning when the gates of your world
were opening. They are about to. I have come to give you
a warning, too.'
'Why me? Didn't Benaiah tell you — ?
'He did. But nevertheless I have come to advise you to go
as well. For though I cannot look into the mind of God, I
have watched the patterning of history for more than a
hundred of your generations. The forefathers of your
people prepared this tragedy for their descendants when they
attacked Morien, which was in the throes of civil war, and
despoiled them of the Bells of Time. Frankly, I cannot see
now how utter disaster for Derga can be averted. But
neither do I see why either of you should be involved. The
sensible course would be to go at once, and return later
God willing! — and build up an entirely new country on the
ruins of the old.'
She would not — she would not look to Benaiah standing at
her saddle-bow, combing the purple-dyed mane of her horse
with his big fingers. She must not appeal to him. She looked
down into the bright eyes of the king, and said quietly:
'It's my duty to remain.'
'I came to you with this warning,' said Manannan,
188


BENAIAH FINDS A CONTEMPORARY
'because few of the grown men and women who have crossed
the frontier within my memory have desired anything but
love-making, feasting, idleness, or slaughter. You two have
been different. If you save yourselves now, it will in the end
be to the advantage of the country, I assure you.'
Morrigan shook her head.
'I can't and won't be a deserter! I'd rather share my
people's fate, whatever it may be.'
For a moment a strange confusion filled her mind, so that
her wide-open eyes saw nothing. And then she saw Benaiah
looking up at her.
'He has gone,' she said. It was not a question, but a state-
ment of fact. She did not even glance to where the king had
stood at her left hand. 'He kissed me before he went, though
I did not see him do it. It was a kiss and a blessing.'
'He kissed me, too,' said Benaiah. ‘Neither did I see him.'
He mounted his horse. In wordless agreement they turned
their beasts and started back on the way by which they had
come.
They had ridden for a considerable distance without
speaking, when at length across the withdrawn mind of R. R.
there came an awareness of strange sounds from her com-
panion. Without moving her head at all she glanced sidelong
at him.
He rode with a loose rein, purple mantle tossed back from
silver tunic, his right hand resting on his hip. His head was
held high, his face smiling, and his mien that of a king about
to ‘ride in triumph through Persepolis'.
A tune rumbled from him as from the bourdon of an organ.
She recognized the air: she even recalled the words:
Down by the sea where the water melons grow
Back to my home I dare not go -
She was not a sentimental young woman, but now, to her
horror, she found her eyes suddenly wet with tears.
The humming grew louder; became a rumbling song.
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VALLEY BEYOND TIME
She turned her head towards him, and broke in on his
ditty:
'Bennie!
He stopped singing.
'Sorry, my dear.'
'You see, I did take the job on!
'Exactly. I took one on, too, for that matter ... I was
thinking it might be a good plan to send Malachi across the
border to do one or two errands for us — just in case! — and
perhaps pick up a budget of news. It appears he's already
made several such expeditions. Perhaps he was very young
when he came here. Anyhow he has not fallen into a heap of
dust! ... You weren't reckoning on me quitting, were you
by any chance? You'd have to think again.'
'You're staying because of me?'
'We-e-ell — !' he said non-committally.
She continued to regard him intently. When she spoke it
was with great deliberation:
‘After our exchange of heroics, Benaiah, I should like to
ask you three rather personal questions. In view of the
situation that confronts us, you know! May I?'
'Carry on, R. R.'
'Why Benaiah?
'Why what?'
‘Why — Benaiah? I've always wanted to know why you
were called by that name ... You see I'm starting with the
easiest!
He rumbled with laughter
'I'm only surprised that you have never asked before. A
lot of people have wanted to know. Did you never read in
the Old Testament about Benaiah, the son of Jehoiada, who
"went down and slew a lion in a pit in a snowy day"? He
was very much of a battling warrior altogether, but my
father always held him in particular respect over the lion
business.
“Some warrior!' said R. R. lightly, although in her heart
190


BENAIAH FINDS A CONTEMPORARY
she was recalling how the man at her side — that other
Benaiah — had flung himself, single-handed, into the battle
in the hall when first they came to Derga.
‘And the next?'
'It's a bit nearer the knuckle, Benaiah. But in view of
what's ahead of us together, I think I can ask it ... After
all the time that's gone by, what, on looking back, do you
think — of Silver?'
‘Ah! he reflected; cast a cautious glance at her; reflected
again. 'Well, R. R., I guess — to be quite straight with you -
she got a great deal more than she ever gave. I realize that
her mind was so mathematical and financial that you could
almost hear the dollars ticking in her brain. I'll get Malachi
to find out about her, naturally, but — well, she was just —
one of my mistakes!
'Oh!' said R. R., 'I thought it was perhaps because of her
that you did not succumb to the blandishments of Luan.'
'It was nothing of the sort ... As I grow old –'
""As I grow up — "
'As I grow up,' he amended, 'my tastes are changing.
That's all.'
‘Oh!' said R. R. again; and such a long silence on her part
then ensued that he was impelled to ask:
'What is the third question?'
'It's a favour rather than a question, Bennie.'
A suspicion that she was about to try and wheedle him
into departure entered his mind, and he looked a little doubt-
fully at her and without reply.
'It's just this — and I bring myself to say it because we
may have very little time left together ... Since you find
Luan and her companions too young and too childish to -
to – deserve your — serious attentions — do you consider
that someone – slightly more mature — practically your
contemporary – might — perhaps — be worthy of them?'
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VALLEY BEYOND TIME
'You were starting to carve one of those tiny opening buds
at the bottom.'
'Well, I've just finished it. I've been here ever since you
left, busy doing it.'
He looked at her with perplexity and dismay patent in his
face as he protested:
‘But Ethne — such a tiny flower, and you so quick! You
don't mean it really? Why I have been to Cibola, and across
the sea, and across a strange land with high mountains, and
through an immense forest, and seen the city of Derga and
many other towns and castles while I've been away! You're
joking! Say that you are joking!
'But I'm not, Midge. You and I hadn't got the same kind
of time just then. People don't always have the same kind
of time, especially when they are away from one another.
Perhaps your kind was fast and mine was slow if you were to
measure them by taps and bells. Don't you know how one
can dream an entire life story between the sound that rouses
one and the opening of one's eyelids? That's the sort of
thing.'
'Still I wasn't dreaming.'
'Of course you weren't.'
The journey to Derga now took on for Midge a still more
nightmarish aspect. Somewhere in the hinterland of his mind
the vague notion began to form that it might even have been
possible for him to have returned to Ethne before he had
actually left her. He was, however, distracted from this
insoluble problem by a sudden realization that she had not
merely been speaking to him with her voice, but that she had
done so in the English language.
'I say!' he exclaimed in intense admiration. 'How did you
manage that? You might always have been talking English.'
'It wasn't difficult,' said Ethne, ‘after listening to you.'
'Still you've kept very quiet about it,' he commented,
throwing a small red ball for Togga to chase. But what did
you want to learn it for?'
194


BACK TO THE NIGHT
Just for fun,' Ethne replied in a rather unsatisfactory
manner. 'But it's time for supper.'
More silently than was usual, they went together to the
pillared house in the gardens on the hill. ...
Thoughts of time, old age, and Derga were still haunting
his mind when he set off to bed. During the meal, and after-
wards, Ethne had done nothing to lift the clouds of his de-
pression. She had said very little, and then had suddenly
disappeared from his side in the middle of a song contest to
which harpists had come from every part of Cibola.
Where had she gone, and why?
He pondered the matter as he went down the glowing,
translucent corridor to the bedroom that he shared with her.
It was a huge bare room with a great bed with deep blue
hangings on either hand of the arched and doorless entrance.
One side was wide open to the colonnade that surrounded the
house, and to the silver light that was so much brighter than
any moonshine.
He went quietly to Ethne's bed, and listened for a moment
before he lifted the curtain.
She lay upon the coverings, naked and apparently fast
asleep. He looked down on her for just an instant, and
puzzled why she should have deserted him thus early and
sought her bed. She had never done so before. He was hurt
that she should not have wished him ‘Happy sleep!' She had
never failed before. They had always said their prayers
together, and, because he had forgotten what he used to say
on earth so very long ago, he had borrowed hers.
'It must be the same God!' Ethne had said.
He had put the matter to Manannan.
“There is only one true God,' had said the king, 'and
though he has many names he is always the same, whatever
you call him.'
And now Ethne had gone to bed and forsaken him!
He went to bed himself - disconsolately.
195


VALLEY BEYOND TIME
Much later he awoke. His sleep had been disturbed by
insistent visions of the blind, blank face of the woman of
Derga. Across the tangle of his dreams he had even thought
to hear the mournful music of the death-song of the bells of
time.
Suddenly he knew why he had awakened.
He slipped from his bed on to the blue and yellow chess-
board pattern of the floor, and crossed to Ethne's bed, and
held back the curtains and looked within.
'Ethne, why are you crying?' he demanded.
She turned over and buried her face in the pillow, her long
hair spread about her. She said nothing, but was shaken by
the violence of her sobs.
He took her hand in his.
'What's the matter, Ethne? Oh, what's the matter? Can
I do anything?'
She returned his clasp with a clutch as though she would
never let him go. She still said nothing.
'Ethne!
She quietened after a little, and then suddenly sat up,
though clinging to his hand. She tossed back her hair.
'I listened to the mind of Manannan while he was speaking
to Branwen,' she said. “I've never done such a thing before.
I would never have done it now, but I was so very afraid.'
He sat down beside her.
“Why?'
'He didn't know I was listening to his mind, so he didn't
close it. I was ashamed, but still I listened!'
'But what did you do it for, Ethne?'
'I've always been afraid about that visit to Derga, Midge,
and I was right!... They — they're going to send you back
to your own world!
His heart felt as though it turned over within him. For a
moment he could say nothing but repeat her words in horri-
fied astonishment:
'Send me back to my own world!'
196


BACK TO THE NIGHT
Then the full implications of the statement penetrated his
dazed mind.
'They can't!' he said. “Why should they? I haven't done
anything. You can't mean it, Ethne! It simply can't be
true!'
'It is true. Manannan took you to Derga to make you
realize that there is another way of living than ours. To see
something which is a little like what you're going back to —
something ruled by time.'
He was sitting at her side in the shadow of the curtains,
half turned from her, his eyes fixed on the blue and silver
magic that stooped over the smooth green lawns, the white
balustrades, the tall hedges set with fruit that shone like
fairy lights. His lips quivered, and now he, in his turn,
clung tightly to her hand.
'Why have I got to go?' he asked, struggling to keep con-
trol of himself, and blinking away the tears that began to
blur his vision.
'All I know,' said Ethne, 'is that while the young are
allowed to come here, yet they can't stay for ever.'
'When can I come back, then?'
'You can't. Not ever.'
'So I'll never see you again!'
‘Never see me again,' she echoed.
He was well aware that the tears now were running down
his face. He kept it turned away, although he knew she must
divine the panic that had seized his mind.
'I won't go,' he declared desperately. 'I'll hide until the
Gates are closed.'
'You can't hide from Manannan. Or I should.'
"I'll never see you again!' Then even in that moment of
supreme desolation the import of her last sentence came to
him. “Why should you hide?' he asked.
‘After you've gone, Midge, and I'm grown up, I'm to go
among the Cernunnos and marry the son of the King of
Morien.'
197


BACK TO THE NIGHT
a world as this. I can't remember much about it, but I know
it wasn't anything like Derga. Come with me!'
She drew him to her by the hands and kissed him on the
mouth. He was conscious that in some incomprehensible
way the kiss was not such as those that they had exchanged
before.
She said:
'I've always meant to come with you, Midge. But we
must go now whilst I am not afraid ... The Gate is open,
now!...
Naked as they were, they went out into the night that was
not night and the light that was not moonshine. They went
up into the mountains through the rustling groves of trees
that bore both flowers and fruit, pausing where Midge had
found himself so very long ago, to look back on the valley.
The long white house with its colonnades, dreamed amid
its lawns. The mountains rose into the sky like polished
ebony on either hand, and in the furthest distance the city
lay stretched between the two guardian peaks against the
silver shield of the sea. A small warm wind was their com-
panion.
Fearful lest she should have regrets, he urged her on.
But she turned at once and went with him up the steep
hillside without hesitation.
A thought occurred to him.
'I suppose we are going right?' he said. 'I thought-'.
Of course we are. You came into the wood, looking for
Togga - don't you remember? Sometimes the wood is very
far away, but now it is here.'
'But how do you know all this?'
'Because I was here with Manannan when you came.
Togga was exploring when he saw you through the Veil —
and you know how inquisitive he is!
'You saw me, too?'
‘Manannan and I followed you back to the house. I saw
199


VALLEY BEYOND TIME
you eat of the slumber-fruit, although I pretended to you
that I didn't know ... There's the wood!'
Shadowless, and glowing with a pale light that seemed to
originate within itself, the wood lay before them, the blue-
black foliage stirring slightly so that rainbow coruscations
shivered within its depths, the tall silver-grey shafts of the
trees offering vistas as of endless cloisters.
They entered one of the great aisles hand-in-hand and
walked up a gentle slope until:
‘Do you see?'
Immediately before them, a hundred paces away, the
tree-trunks were silhouetted against a jetty blackness un-
illumined by any radiance, and even reflecting nothing of
the light that pervaded the wood.
An icy panic seized him. The blackness seemed to him
to be that of an eternal nullity. Even as he paused, Ethne
tugged at his hand.
'Run! she commanded. 'Let us run quickly — let us run
together - into this other world before we are too afraid!
They felt nothing as they passed between the dimensions,
but a tingling of the body.
Then they were seized by a tremendous wind and pro-
pelled downwards over rough, uneven ground through the
blindness of an earthly night, lashed by a driving, furious
rain.
200


PART THREE


CHAPTER I
A KISS FOR A CROSSWORD MAKER
M
nent are
R. ADAM DENT-RALEIGH, probably the most emi-
nent architect of crosswords in the English-speaking
I world, was hard at work in what he called his
'studio' on the composition of a new masterpiece. It would
eventually appear over his signature of Daedalus in the
columns of a very serious newspaper, disturb the peace of a
good many intelligent minds, and cause as much hard lying
wherever addicts met as is prevalent when anglers foregather.
Dent-Raleigh was in appearance, however, a most harm-
less little creature as he sat with his back to the fire, heedless
of the furious storm without, contemplating the mad chess-
board design on a square of paper before him, his little grey
head to one side, and a large fountain-pen poised ready to
dart in his little bony hand.
He wore the sort of drooping grey moustache, hair parting,
thin blue serge suit, and palisade of a collar that are asso-
ciated with the early days of the century. He was even
smoking a calabash pipe. He might have been either a
junior classical master at a minor public school in Kipling's
day or the manager of a drapery store in a novel by H. G.
Wells. He was, however, in point of fact, a very senior
official of the British Treasury living in retirement on a hand-
some pension.
'Blanki-blanko-blanki-blanken,' said Mr. Dent-Raleigh,
reading aloud in emphatic rhythm the gaps and letters of
the word to be completed.
Then he closed his faded china blue eyes and sought
inspiration, pulling gently at his pipe.
The low walls of the room were shelved to the ceiling with
books, most of them shabby, and the table was strewn with
203


VALLEY BEYOND TIME
tattered volumes – bristling with bits of torn paper for
markers — amidst which a cup of cocoa grew chill.
There were a couple of threadbare Persian rugs and a
dingy sheepskin on the floor, and three or four padded
elbow-chairs, highly dilapidated, which might have been
originally bought for the writing-room of a mid-Victorian
club. On the other hand everything would have merely
represented time-worn comfort if it had not been that the
electric lights flickered occasionally in a rather alarming
manner and smoke belched inwards at intervals from the
grate.
In the darkness without the wind howled incessantly about
the house on Carn Meurig, and rattled the fastenings of every
shutter and door. The rain drove in fierce gusts against the
roof with the noise of spray upon a sea-wall.
'Eureka! exclaimed Mr. Dent-Raleigh, opening his eyes
in triumph.
His rosy face creased in a smile that transformed him at
once from a draper-pedagogue into a goblin-schoolboy who
has just placed a Chinese cracker in his form-master's key-
hole.
""Tironian" is the ticket! Aha!' said he to himself. 'By
George, that will get the enemy on the hop when I've dressed
it up for 'em!
Knowing well by long experience the work-shy habits of
his fountain-pen, he shook it into activity as usual with a
violent jerk that spattered ink on the old red table-cloth and
the wood block floor. The passage of the years had left an
indelible semicircle of ink stains about him.
'Tironian! Aha!' he repeated, and set down the word,
contemplated it, and then rubbed his little dry hands to-
gether with a small cackle of laughter. There were lots of
ways in which, for the confusion of 'the enemy', you could
shape the clues to a reference to the Roman inventor of
shorthand!
He was sipping the rather nauseous mauve liquid in his
204


A KISS FOR A CROSSWORD MAKER
cup and still gloating, when suddenly the front door in the
passage outside opened with a crash, and all the house was
full of the roaring night.
He glanced automatically at a cheap pocket watch which
was attached to his waistcoat by what appeared to be a boot-
lace. It was not like his unsteady henchman, Sam, to return
from his pay-day visit to the nearest ale-house before closing
time.
But it was not Sam who opened the study door without
fumbling at the handle, and, smiling, crossed the threshold.
It was a tall young man, mother naked, his body glistening
from the rain, with a tangle of wet yellow hair and shining
eyes, completely unembarrassed. He spoke at once rather
slowly as though he had grown a trifle unused to the English
language, or — was it — even to speech.
'Do you know,' he said, 'I had really forgotten about the
winds and the' – there quite obviously he had to remind
himself of the word — 'the rain!'
He laughed as though chiding himself, and yet amused by
such a foolish lapse of memory.
Mr. Dent-Raleigh had already risen from his chair: he
greeted the long-expected visitor with the air of an old-
fashioned house-master welcoming back a promising lad.
'Lord Tyron?" he suggested.
‘Am I?' asked the stranger. 'Is that my name? It seems
such a long time since anybody called me anything except
Midge.'
'You have been expected for a very, very long while. I
have always understood Lord Tyron used to be known as
Midge, so you must be he! Your father built this house,
where I live, so that watch might be kept for your return. It
is never left empty -'.
Dent-Raleigh became aware that the naked lad was not
attending to him, but listening - it seemed to him - to a
voice that he alone could hear.
'It is Ethne!' said his visitor as though that one word were
205


VALLEY BEYOND TIME
4
.
a sufficient explanation; and as he spoke she came to his side
from out the little front hall in which Dent-Raleigh's
dilapidated waterproofs and overcoats drooped from their
pegs like long dead bodies from a gallows — a hall covered
with cheap linoleum and furnished with a painted drain-pipe
for umbrella-stand.
The small man, their host, remained silent for only an
instant looking upon her. In that instant, however, he knew
that he regarded a naked loveliness which was not the earthy
beauty of a mere goddess, but the beauty of a dream – of a
legend — of the innocence of a fairy-tale.
'So that was . . . wind!' said Ethne, shaking her long
wet hair, and smiling at him as though she had known him
all her life. 'So that was . . . rain! Is that why I have an
odd feeling in my body? I have never had such a feeling
before!
She looked down upon her slim body as though to ascertain
that to outward appearances all was well: exclaimed with
almost proud excitement:
‘Oh, Midge! Look! There's red stuff coming out of me,
like it comes out of you! Look at my leg!'
'Dear me!' said Mr. Dent-Raleigh, much disturbed, you
have scratched yourself badly on some thorn-bush. Now sit
down by the fire and get warm, because you must be cold!
And then I'll find you something hot to drink and some stick-
ing-plaster and the clothes that have been waiting for you
for – Oh, so long!
He pushed chairs towards them by the fireside, and
bustled out into the hall.
'Is the strange feeling I've got all over my body what you
call “cold”?' asked Ethne, eyeing the ink-stained chair,
whose stuffing protruded through various cracks in the
leather, as though a little uncertain what it could be.
'It must be,' said Midge, 'but honestly I'd forgotten what
it was like. I can't say I care for it very much.'
'Neither do I.'.
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A KISS FOR A CROSSWORD MAKER
Dent-Raleigh reappeared with an armful of overcoats from
the pegs in the hall.
'I think you'd better put these on whilst I find the clothes,'
he instructed them, and dumped the bundle upon the table
regardless of books, papers and crossword chart.
There was a hideous woollen scarf of black and red in-
cluded in the pile. Midge seized on it, and proceeded to do
his best to dry Ethne's arms and body.
'Towels! Ah, towels!' said Mr. Dent-Raleigh in hurried
self-accusation. 'Bathroom! Ah, bathroom!'
But he was not very anxious to reveal the horrors of that
apartment to his visitors, for he realized that the unreliable
Sam was at his most unreliable when it came to keeping a
place of ablution even moderately clean.
He disappeared once more and popped back in a moment
with a still unopened package of bath towels that a much-
exercised niece, named Emily, had sent him as a Christmas
present; watched like a benevolent gnome the brisk massag-
ing that followed to an accompaniment of laughter; shot out
once more, and could be heard at a distance, opening and
shutting doors amidst other bustling noises.
Ethne tied a large apple-green towel about her waist, and
threw another over her shoulders like a shawl. She tossed
back her blue-black hair. She stretched out her feet towards
the fire which now burned bright and clear. The noise of
the storm without had died away into an utter silence.
'You know, Midge,' she said reflectively, 'the water falling
from the sky was funny, and it was funny having to walk
bent double against the wind; but I don't think the darkness
is funny at all, or the roughness of the ground. Why do I
bleed now, too? Does it mean that things can hurt my body?'
"They used to hurt mine, even in the Valley!' remarked
Midge, who was also draped in towels. 'Do you remember
how I showed you on purpose once what happened when I
cut myself with a sharp knife? That was after the thing fell
on your foot!
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VALLEY BEYOND TIME
Yes. She remembered.
So now I am like you! I am so glad. I always felt that it
was unfair that things could happen to you that couldn't
happen to me. I can be hurt just like you! I suppose that is
“hurting” what I feel in my foot. It is an odd feeling. Do
you find "hurting" an odd feeling?
'A horrid feeling,' he answered, and rose from his chair,
and went down on his knees beside her to examine the
wound.
The blood was dripping from a deep cut just above the
instep of the long, narrow foot in dark red globules on to
the ink-spotted sheepskin rug. He surveyed the damage with
but little concern.
'Do you remember, Ethne, how frightened I was once very
long ago, because you didn't bleed, and I thought you must
be dead or a ghost? You don't mind if I'm glad now that
you're bleeding, although I'm sorry that it hurts? You know
what I mean, don't you? It's rather difficult to explain.'
He proceeded to tear a strip off one of Niece Emily's brand
new towels and bind up the wound, whilst Ethne, quickly
losing interest in the operation, inspected the studio of the
architect of crosswords with an expression of puzzled inquiry.
The small glass globes hanging from the ceiling full of
harsh yellow light intrigued her. The crowded book-shelves
she dismissed, however, as some sort of wall-decoration. The
many papers and the open volumes on the writing-table,
covered with little black symbols, were merely dull — like the
incomprehensible typewriter on a smaller table that was
propped level by a coverless book. A cheap alarm clock
with a loud and vulgar tick, standing by the machine, how-
ever, excited her interest.
'What's that small noisy thing, Midge?' she asked, nodding
in its direction.
“That's a clock to show you the time,' he answered, looking
up from his task. 'Just as I told you.'
'How does it do that?'
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A KISS FOR A CROSSWORD MAKER
"By the black things on its front.'
'Well, what does it show now?'
But he had completely forgotten the art of time-telling;
and after contemplating it for a little with a frowning brow,
she dismissed it from her attention:
'I don't see why anyone should always want to know the
time like that!
She rose when he had completed the bandage, and thanked
him, and proceeded to explore the shabby room, touching
the things that she saw as though she would assure herself
of their reality. A dish of oranges had a familiar air; so, too,
the scent of a large bowlful of roses.
'It is a funny world,' she announced. 'It has very strange
smells!
She wrinkled her nose in attempted analysis of the mingled
odours of pipe tobacco and smoky fire imposed upon the
smell of dust and lack of ventilation.
'You'll get used to it, Ethne,' Midge assured her anxiously.
'I'm sure we aren't going to stay here. I'm beginning to
remember. I'm sure I — we — used to live near here. Do
you remember I said I was certain that I'd seen those three
big stones before? And we're expected, too! He said some-
thing about clothes for us -
'What sort of clothes?' asked Ethne. 'Not like those very
queer garments he wears round each leg? Or the stiff white
thing round his neck with the little bit of spotted ribbon? I
shouldn't care for them at all!
Midge was quite certain that she would not have to wear
anything of that sort.
*But I shouldn't like you to wear them, either!
'Well, I won't wear them then.'
At this juncture in sartorial discussion Mr. Dent-Raleigh
reappeared, carrying a handsome suitcase in each hand, with
the victorious expression of a shop-walker who has discovered
that he can actually provide his customers with what they
have demanded.
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A KISS FOR A CROSSWORD MAKER
one of the cases on his writing-table. 'Don't I speak good
English? Mayn't I have forgotten just like Midge?'
All the dreams of youth, all the raptures of the might-
have-been, all the glories that lie beyond the horizon's rim
passed through his mind as he looked up at her.
‘Oh, I can tell,' he answered simply. 'You see, yours is a
different kind of beauty. It's the beauty of some other
world.'
‘And I'm beautiful in this world, too?' asked Ethne in an
almost breathless excitement. 'I shan't look strange, or odd?'
'The only reason for you to look strange is that you will
be more beautiful than all those others you will meet.'
‘Oh, Midge, did you hear that? He says I'll be more
beautiful than anybody in your world.'
Even Midge's loyalty to her was not strong enough to
withstand the suspicion that it would not be well for her to
be given too high an opinion of herself thus early. He said,
whilst he struggled with the incomprehensible lock of the
case that had been handed to him:
‘He is just being polite.'
‘Are you?'
'I am being truthful,' said Dent-Raleigh, 'because I know
that the truth can't hurt such as you.'
To avoid the embarrassment of further truth-telling, he
opened the suitcase.
It contained a trousseau complete to the minutest particu-
lar - orange pullover, jade green slacks, stout shoes, stock-
ings, all sorts of underwear in apricot-coloured silk, an
almost transparent nightdress in chiffon of midnight-blue, a
windproof jacket in claret suède, a golden plastic waterproof
with a hood, and every conceivable necessity for an emer-
gency toilette.
Ethne dived into the case, strewing the contents every-
where upon the sacred table with the vital excitement of a
child opening its Christmas presents. At last she came to an
end.
2II


VALLEY BEYOND TIME
'Do your women,' she asked, turning from one to the other
of the two faces that regarded the spoil, ‘really wear all these
things? Why?'
She extracted a suspender belt, and held it up to their
particular view.
'Where do they wear that? And what are all those funny
little straps for?'
Midge had no conception. Dent-Raleigh suggested:
'I think it's meant to hold stockings up, but I don't know
how.
‘Oh, stockings!' said Midge. 'Look, these are stockings,
Ethne! I thought that's what they must be. You put them
on your legs, with your feet through the holes at the top. I
had some once upon a time.
You put them on before anything else,' said Dent-Raleigh:
then qualified the statement: ‘At least I do.'
Ethne shed her towels.
“Let's make a start!
None of them knew then, or afterwards, who was princi-
pally responsible for getting those stockings on. It was a
remarkable joint effort — and most disruptive to the stock-
ings.
A very brief garment, indeed, then greatly intrigued her;
still more so when she gathered that Dent-Raleigh wore
“something of the sort' — as he cautiously expressed it –
under his trousers.
"Why?'
“To keep warm.'
‘Well I'm not going to wear two of them,' she declared,
'but -'
She donned the garment, with the result that Midge burst
into roars of laughter, though he did not quite know why.
She tore it off immediately, and flung it at his head.
She flatly declined to wear the slacks, though she was
interested in the difference of construction between those
provided for her use and the grey flannels packed for Midge.
2 12


A KISS FOR A CROSSWORD MAKER
In the end her host succeeded in persuading her that the
midnight-blue nightdress by itself would be insufficient pro-
tection against the climate of a three-dimensional world, so
she put on beneath it some exiguous garment of whose name
her mentor was entirely ignorant.
She stood now with her back to the fire, combing and
braiding the long black tresses that fell past her knees, and
smiling the while upon the architect of crosswords, who
remained spellbound and forgetful of his hostly duties,
watching her with all the wonderment of a child, his inky
hands clenched before him — so tightly that the knuckles
yellowed – as though to assure himself that he was awake.
She was very young, he told himself. She was immortal —
for only an immortal could be so young. She was Deirdre,
'a woman putting out the glory of the moon's rising and the
sun's going down', in the days before she brought death to
the Sons of Usna and ruin to Conchobar, King of Ulster.
She was Etain, whom Midir stole from the High King of
Ireland . . . He was proud to be among the least of her
servants.
Ethne stopped braiding her hair.
'Those are very beautiful things you say of me,' she said.
Even in his confusion, he knew that he had spoken no
word out loud.
Midge had been prowling about the room, examining
everything with the avid curiosity of a child. At this moment
he set his hand upon the telephone.
'What's this?' he asked. “I'm sure I ought to know.'
‘A telephone — for speaking to people a long way off.
We must call up your father. I'd better do it now!'
Midge had already raised the receiver from the rest. Some
long latent memory told him to lift it to his ear.
'Nobody is speaking. There is no sound,' he said with an
expression of disappointment.
T'cht-t'cht! The thing is always going wrong, like the
lights, specially after a storm. Let me try!
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VALLEY BEYOND TIME
But no amount of juggling with the instrument would
bring it to life. It remained more mute than a tombstone.
'I shall have to get Abishag out and drive you down to
Saul,' said Dent-Raleigh. 'I'm afraid it won't be very com-
fortable, but we shall get there all right unless the floods are
out in the valley. Keep yourselves warm over the fire whilst
I go round to the garage. Would you like –
There he came to an abrupt halt. Gravely concerned as
he was on the question of hospitality, yet he felt that tea,
cocoa and bottled beer were no refreshment to offer the
princess of another dimension.
Once again Ethne spoke in reply to things that had not
been said:
'We are neither hungry nor thirsty, thank you. We will
wait here whilst you do what you must ... What is your
name?
It was impossible for him to answer that he was Mr. Adam
Montague Dent-Raleigh.
'I'm Adam,' he said as though he were a very new boy at
his very first preparatory school.
'I was the first person Midge saw when he came to our
world,' said Ethne, ‘and he liked me. You are the first
person, Adam, that I've seen when I come to yours, and I
like you.
She put her hands on his shoulders and stooped a little –
for she was very tall — and kissed him on both cheeks.
How very long ago, indeed, it was since he had been last
kissed? A little withered kiss from the little withered lips of
the little withered aunt who had brought him up, just one
at the beginning and the end of holidays — a kiss that had
a dry, Morocco-leather touch to it, and a dry and dusty scent
of Parma violet face-powder. He had been a boy then. He
was a boy now!...
‘Do you like it when I kiss you, Midge?' asked Ethne after
Adam had gone, watching him twiddle half-reminiscently
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A KISS FOR A CROSSWORD MAKER
and fro upon the floor with threshing limbs. A chair was
overset and broken, and a cascade of books was volleyed
from a tottering bookcase upon the combatants.
Midge realized at length that his only safety lay in near-
ness to his opponent rather than in endeavouring to keep
him at a distance. Accordingly he hugged him with such
desperation that the hideous red face was pressed, slavering,
against his own. A moment later with a twist and a wrench
he succeeded in reversing their respective positions, tore
himself from the other's grasp and began battering clumsy
and ill-directed blows upon the ugly face beneath him.
At this juncture fate took a hand in the proceedings.
‘Good old' Sam heaved his body like an earthquake to
escape - once — twice. At the second thrust the two men
collided violently with the flimsy table on which Adam Dent-
Raleigh's prehistoric typewriter sat looking something like an
ancient British war chariot. One of the slender table-legs
snapped in half, and the machine toppled to the floor. The
clock fell, too, and its alarm was set off in an outburst of
hideous clangour. Their stable-mate, a large pewter ink-
stand, plunged downwards straight on to the drunkard's
head, drenching it and his face with red ink.
For a second Midge stared in consternation at the dreadful
mask looking up at him.
In the second of truce the bewildered Sam perceived him-
self- as he thought - to be wallowing in the gore of some
mortal wound. He wrenched himself from his murderer;
leaped to his feet as though he had never looked upon the
contents of fourteen pint tankards; and with a despairing yell
made for the doorway and fled, pursued by Midge.
By some chance the fellow escaped the tangle of fallen
coats and other wreckage in the darkness of the hall. Not so
Midge, who went headlong over the drain-pipe umbrella-
stand. When he had picked himself up and reached the
outer door, he saw that 'good old' Sam was flying down the
rough road as though the devil were after him.
217


VALLEY BEYOND TIME
Even when the noise of feet had died away and no sound
disturbed the silence but an occasional broken-winded gasp
from Adam's refractory car in the garage behind the house,
Midge did not return immediately to the study. He remained
staring into the night, his mind disturbed by conflicting
emotions. There was still anger; there was a certain sense
of satisfaction because he had had in the end the better of the
argument; but, above all, there was a growing sense of
horror at the revelation that he could be guilty of rejoicing
as his fists beat hammer-like against the bloody pulp of that
abominable face.
Profoundly perturbed he went back to Ethne.
She had not stirred from before the fire. She stood there
regarding the chaos of the room with the air of one who has
been shaken to the roots of her being, in whom disillusion-
ment has already begun. But when she turned her grave
regard upon Midge, her expression showed only anxiety on
his behalf.
‘Did he hurt you?' she asked breathlessly. 'Why is your
eye like that — and blood on your cheek? Are you hurt,
Midge?
‘Only in my mind. I have been acting like a Dergan.'
'You have not. What else was there for you to do? Were
you going to let him kiss me? Were you going to lie down and
let him strike you?'
'You don't understand. Every time I hit him I was glad
and wanted to hit again and harder. I began to understand
why the people of Cernunnos love battle.'
'The fighting was horrible,' said Ethne, 'but it was not
due to you. That man was more horrible than any of the
men in the ship we saw come into harbour at Cibola. The
smell of him was like the smell of that ship. His mind was all
muddled. I could see into it, and it was full of filthy thoughts
that I don't quite understand. I feel unclean where he
touched me. I hope that you hurt him, Midge. I hope you
hurt him very much, for he was an abomination.'
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A KISS FOR A CROSSWORD MAKER
'I think he was mostly frightened.'
'I hope he was hurt as well ... Do you think that there are
many others like him in this world of yours?'
He protested at the responsibility for this world being
thrust upon him.
'It isn't mine, Ethne. It isn't mine. I hate it as much as
you do.'
'I unsay it, Midge.
She was looking at him as she spoke, mournfully – he
thought - as though with some mental reservation.
The room in which they stood had changed its character,
it seemed to him It was no longer a grotesque ante-chamber
to adventure; it had become a sordid shambles. Was this
whole world, which he had all but forgotten, to prove just
such another nightmare as the fetid slums that sprawled
about the stronghold and the hall of the kings of Derga?
Then he suddenly recalled something very important,
which in the past confusion he had seen without taking in.
“There's something I must show you, Ethne,' he said.
'Something outside the house.'
She went with him to the door. He raised his hand and
pointed upwards to the firmament pin-pricked with a myriad
stars and commanded by a round and silver moon. Together
in silence they marvelled at the miracle of the heavens.
After a long while he turned abruptly to her, and said in
a voice that held surprise tinged with consternation:
'Do you remember saying to me that you thought you were
growing up?'
‘Yes, Midge.'
'Do you know, Ethne, I am grown up!
In the bright moonlight they exchanged a long glance.
Then they were in one another's arms, together in the lone-
liness of the night and a strange universe.
219


'MIRROR, MIRROR ON THE WALL'
only a calculating machine, and the body only a work of art.
He sometimes wondered if she possessed such a normal piece
of human equipment as a heart.
The lad beside her was merely one of the herd of youthful
devotees who danced constant attendance upon her - an
officer from one of the army or air force camps in the district,
indistinguishable, in Standish's eyes, from his fellows. Silver
appeared, indeed, to be incapable of going anywhere, or
doing anything, or not doing anything, without a retinue of
young men!
Morfa was drinking far too much — had been doing so for
a good many years. He was putting on weight; his mind was
no longer alert; his face had coarsened, his eyes grown blear.
Standish was definitely worried about him. So was his
spinster aunt, Lady Katharine, now paying one of her very
infrequent visits to House of Saul. “That bitch of a wife of
his would drive stronger characters than poor Tony to drink,'
she had remarked to him that very morning in extenuation.
Mrs. Van Veen now lit a cigarette - Standish objected to
smoking until dessert was done — and leaned across to him
to renew the attack, with menace in her cold grey eyes.
She opened her mouth to speak . . . It remained open
without uttering a single word, and the focusing of her eyes
shifted from him to a more distant object.
Her expression altogether was so intrigued that he was
impelled to glance over his shoulder and see what was
exciting her whole attention.
A woman had just come through the archway in the
elaborately carved oak screen at the further end of the hall,
and was standing in the soft radiance under the musicians'
gallery.
She was young and tall, and dark-haired, and robed in a
gown of midnight-blue. Her feet were bare, and her
carriage was as superb as a princess's.
In the instant in which he turned to pick up his spectacles
from the table he remarked that Silver's cavalier was staring
221


VALLEY BEYOND TIME
commanded Lady Kat. “The switch is under the table-edge
on your left.'
Standish sought and found the control, and Silver's sub-
stitute for an orchestra in the musicians' gallery went silent
with a click at the very moment when Mrs. Van Veen fired
another burst of questions like a human machine gun.
'Who is she? Tell me! It smells like a first-class story.'
She yapped her demands at Standish insistently, leaning
across the table and tugging at his cuff like a dog worrying
a bone. "Why has she got bare feet? See, there's blood on
them! Who's the boy in the dressing-gown? Why has he
been fighting?
Standish thought - If somebody doesn't hustle this pest
off quickly and diplomatically, there will be hell to pay! If
the damned woman gets an inkling of the truth, this house
will be besieged by reporters, photographers, spiritualists,
news-reel men, coach-loads of the inquisitive —
But whilst Silver was staging a highly finished performance
of the act of welcome, somebody went into action. It was
that tough sportswoman, Lady Katharine Hurrell. With the
tact of a battle-axe she drove her nephew's two guests from
the room, shepherding them with brazen lies and insincere
apologies to their coats and cars. ...
Midge had not even any remembrance of the 'picknickery',
that long, low room of linen-fold panelling and old rose
brocade, where they talked round the fire.
'We must kill the fatted calf tomorrow,' declared Morfa,
propped against the mantelpiece with a whisky and soda in
his hand.
'Why?' asked Ethne in surprise. 'As a sacrifice of thanks-
giving to your god?
'Good Lord! No, my dear! It's just a way of saying that
we'll have a festivity tomorrow in honour of your arrival.'
'A feast on a dead calf? I didn't know you ate dead things
here. You never told me that, Midge!
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‘MIRROR, MIRROR ON THE WALL'
'I didn't know we did. I'd forgotten ... You see, Father,
Ethne and I don't eat things that have died or been killed.
They do among the Cernunnos, but not with us.'
There was almost an inflection of disgust in his voice;
there was a slight widening of the girl's very lovely eyes.
Morfa remarked both; and thought for an instant with some
amusement of the consternation that a vegetarian diet might
occasion in his kitchens.
'Don't be afraid; we can manage it,' he said. "We'll throw
the sort of feast that you can enjoy!
'If you're a wise man, Tony,' said Lady Kat, setting down
her drink and bringing out a battered silver cigarette case,
'you'll cut out feasts and get out of here tomorrow. As soon
after dawn as you can.'
‘But — ' began Silver.
'There's no “but” about it, my good girl. We've got to
go to earth while we sort ourselves out. We've got to find a
lot of explanations to hand round. Otherwise life here will
be sheer hell. Do you think that the return of the heir — she
paused on the word, but so little that only Standish appre-
ciated the cut at the mother of a second son — 'after ten
years is going to pass without the briskest comment?'
'I definitely concur,' said the judge sitting back in his chair
and tapping his finger-tips against one another before him
in the manner that is the prerogative of the Church, the
Bench and the scholastic profession. 'You'll have all the
servant's hall gossip here gushing out on the countryside
tomorrow. Whether Adam Dent-Raleigh's man will be in a
condition to add anything to the tale is doubtful, but it's a
risk. In any case the little man tells me that Jones, the
policeman, stopped to help when the car broke down near
the bridge. He's a notorious tattle-monger.
'Of course it might have been worse. It is only by chance
that there was anyone in the house on the hill tonight. Sup-
pose they had turned up in the main road naked and half
perished with cold, or walked into the bog! You know, Silver,
225


VALLEY BEYOND TIME
there must have been some serious error in your calculations!
Adam tells me that this is not marked down as one of the
periods of watch on the schedule you gave him.'
His bright dark eyes under their rather heavy eyebrows
thoughtfully inspected the composed woman sitting in a
high-backed chair on the other side of the fire, idly toying
with the pearls of a long necklace.
'Benaiah prepared the calculations for the schedule,' she
asserted indifferently.
Ethne said abruptly to her:
'We saw Benaiah once — Midge and I. It was when he
came to Cibola as ambassador for the Queen of Derga. He
was a big man with white hair. He spoke about you.'
Was a sudden alarm shadowed in Silver's large grey eyes?
- Standish asked himself. She made no comment, however,
but said after a brief reflection:
'Bennie must be getting pretty old by now. He never
would say exactly what his age was, and always kept it out
of books of reference; but he must have been well over sixty
when he went away. He'll never see seventy again, anyhow.'
The judge thought that there was an almost ghoulish
satisfaction in the tone in which she said this.
'He did not seem old to me,' said Ethne. 'Nor does he
seem old to the Queen of Derga, who has fallen in love with
him — and is much younger than you are. He has fallen in
love with her, too!
'I'm quite certain,' remarked Silver caustically, 'that
Bennie is capable of being a most amorous septuagenarian.'
'I heard Manannan tell my mother that Benaiah was send-
ing a messenger to you soon!
This time Standish knew for a certainty that Silver was
badly shaken, even although she said lightly after a very
short pause:
'To announce his engagement, I suppose?'
As his regard left her face Standish's eyes encountered
those of Lady Kat, and in their depths saw an ironical com-
226


'MIRROR, MIRROR ON THE WALL'
prehension of some situation of which he knew less than
nothing.
The older woman now intervened briskly:
'That is very interesting indeed about Senator Purvis, but
I think we had better get back to ourselves, and what we
are going to do tomorrow, before packing these children off to
bed with an urgent prayer that they won't wake up with
feverish colds, or pneumonia, after wandering about on the
hills in the nude on a night like this.'
'I'm full up with engagements,' objected Silver.
'Aunt Kat's right, though,' said Morfa. 'You'll have to
give them a miss, darling.'
'I know I'm right,' continued his aunt, pulling at one of
the cheapest cigarettes on the market with manifest enjoy-
ment. 'You see that, before we face anyone, among other
things, we've got to sort out a girl with no known country,
and with no available parents, relatives, or guardian. By the
way, Ethne, how old are you?
'We do not measure time as you do,' said Ethne. 'I know
how old I am, and so does everybody amongst us, but there
is no way in which I could explain it to you. My father,
Manannan, once told me that he was four thousand earth-
years old! Do you think I could be a thousand?'
A thousand years old! God Almighty!' exclaimed Morfa,
surveying her loveliness with the most mixed sensations – in
which there was even a little horror. He restored himself
with whisky.
'Could I be a hundred, then?" she asked, realizing the
consternation that she had caused. 'How old is Midge?'
“Twenty-three.'
'I'm older than Midge, I think. Perhaps I am as old as
Silver. How old are you, Silver?' She read what was in
Midge's step-mother's mind before she spoke, and went on:
*Forty! Well, suppose I am forty!
'I am not forty,' affirmed Silver. 'I am not forty! What
makes you say that? I never said so.'
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VALLEY BEYOND TIME
‘But you -
Lady Katharine, who had much appreciated Silver's pre-
dicament, thought better to intervene again.
'How old am I, do you suppose, Ethne?'
'I have never seen anyone with white hair or grey hair
before, except Benaiah and Adam,' answered Ethne, after
studying her for a moment. 'Are you very old?'
'I don't think so. I am sixty-three earth-years, as you call
'em, old.'
Ethne studied her again for a moment with the slightest of
smiles. She divined the sterling honesty and kindness of her.
She said bluntly:
'I like you very much. Couldn't I be old enough to be
your daughter. If I'm supposed to have a mother — and I
don't see why – would you mind pretending?
Standish gave a small and rather secret smile. Morfa
roared with laughter, spilling his drink over his trousers.
Lady Kat smiled, too.
'That, my dear, is the nicest thing that has ever been said
to me ... Stop guffawing like a baboon, Tony! ... I dare
say we could arrange something on those lines, Ethne.
Although I'm a maiden lady, I'd willingly give my virtue
and reputation to have a daughter with your looks. I'd be
quite prepared to admit that I threw my cap over the wind-
mill in my middle-age ... Damn it, Morfa, do stop snigger-
ing! Now you see at any rate the sort of problems that we
are up against!
'We don't have to provide Midge with a father fortunately,'
meditated Standish. 'But on the other hand he left us a boy
still at his prep school, and he comes back a man of twenty-
three. It is a matter of considerable question whether a
Fourth-Dimensional education, etcetera, etcetera, will be of
much use to him in a three-dimensional world. The geo-
graphy of Cibola and the history of Derga will be no substi-
tute for those of England and America.'
Another, and even more alarming, thought occurred to
228


‘MIRROR, MIRROR ON THE WALL'
him. He retrieved from beside the chair in which he sat a
book that he had been reading earlier in the evening. He
opened it, and handed it to Midge - who was sitting on the
arm of the settee – pointing with his finger to the big type
of a chapter heading.
'Can you read that, Midge?' he demanded.
The lad regarded the file of inky symbols with a completely
blank expression. Then Ethne pulled at his sleeve, and
examined the page over his arm.
'It is an ugly pattern. Does it mean anything at all?' she
commented.
'I've forgotten,' he confessed. 'What does it say?"
Standish read whatever the headline said in his neat slow
voice: then peered at the two of them over the top of the
book. Neither appeared in the least impressed by the art of
reading.
'That must be a very slow way of having to hear a story,'
said Ethne. She took the book from Midge's hand and
examined its binding, its pages, and its printing with a criti-
cal air. “We have just a little ball, and all the story is thought
into it. We hold it in our hands for a while, and then we
know the story, or the music, or the pictures. We see or hear
them in our thoughts.'
Standish would have gladly inquired further into this
fascinating subject, but Lady Kat, always more interested
in people than books, brought the discussion back to the
immediate problem with a jerk:
‘So now you see, Silver, another very good reason why we
should shift before that damn news-hound of yours gets crack-
ing! I don't mind betting she's on the 'phone at this moment.
Tony, we've got to bolt! My God, I can see the headlines that
might be! No! A thousand times no! Car to Cardiff to-
morrow, Tony. Directly after breakfast. First express to
London. Leaving no address behind us. Agatha Wickell has
lent me her flat while she's in the States. We'll go to earth
there till we have cut and dried long-term plans.
229


VALLEY BEYOND TIME
'I oughtn't to leave young Anthony,' objected Silver.
‘Faddle! You've left the child often enough before.
Heavens above, you aren't still nursing him! He's eight.'
Midge thought:
'When I woke up in the Valley, Ethne welcomed me and
we went away and played, and her mother kissed me, and
her father took me out hunting. When Ethne comes to my
world in the rain and the dark and the wind, my father and
my uncle and my aunt and my father's wife talk, and talk,
and talk about us. They talk about hiding us as though they
were ashamed. When she comes, too, I fight like a Dergan-'
Ethne rose from the settee; with a hand resting upon his
shoulder, she faced his father. Beneath the thin folds of the
midnight-blue gown the whiteness of her body was as the
whiteness of a naked swimmer under water in a summer sea.
Standish, admiring her beauty with the dispassionate admira-
tion of an artist, was grateful that it would not fall to him to
explain to her the most peculiar conventions of Western
civilization regarding the display of the female form.
Again, in a sudden turning of her dark head towards him
and a fleeting examination by her sapphire eyes, he was told
that she knew what was in his thoughts and was puzzled,
though not embarrassed. Hers was another problem entirely;
for she asked:
'Is there always fighting here, Anthony? Will people
always attack me? Will Midge always have to defend me?'
'Heavens, no, my dear! The man was drunk. That's all
there was to it, though it was bad enough. Anyhow Midge
taught him a lesson.'
Do people often get drunk here?'
'We-e-ell —
‘And when they are drunk, then they fight?'
'Not always. Sometimes.'
It was perhaps the slightest increase of the pressure upon
his shoulder that made Midge look up.
Ethne was looking down at him. There was no concern for
230


VALLEY BEYOND TIME
'To shoot people with if you are attacked.'
'Like a bow and arrow?'
'It throws a lead ball.'
‘And that would kill people?'
‘Most certainly.'
‘And I used to play with it as a child?'
'I can remember you standing on tip-toe to reach it on the
mantelpiece. You always used to make for it when you were
a kid. The trigger was too stiff for you for a long time, but
you used to point it and say “Bang-bang!" It was a favourite
toy of yours!
‘A favourite toy!'
No word, no slightest movement in the tiny scene had
escaped Standish's ears and eyes. Now he saw the boy raise
his ruffled head from contemplation of the small deadly
thing in his hand, and cast a quick look of agonized appeal
to Ethne. A sense of brooding tragedy tugged suddenly at
the jurist's heart. He rose quickly to his small, neat feet.
'It's long past my bed-time,' he declared, 'and I'll swear
it's absolute murder to keep these youngsters up any longer,
Tony!...'
In the end, he was the last to leave the room.
Silver had followed the others, as a sort of afterthought.
She had paused on the way out, by the door, by a Floren-
tine mirror in a heavy silver frame hanging against the
panelling. Forgetful of his presence, she had stopped and
looked closely in assessment of herself in those chill depths.
She had turned away frowning.
He fancied that, like the queen in the story of 'Snow-white'
she had put to the mirror the fatal question:
Mirror, mirror on the wall
Who's the fairest of us all?
And the answer had come back:
232


‘MIRROR, MIRROR ON THE WALL'
Fair and lovely thou may'st be,
Ethne's fairer still, I see!
He suddenly became acutely anxious about Silver, the de-
throned beauty, the mother of a son who had been relegated
into the background by the return of the heir to the earldom
and the estates of Morfa.
233


VALLEY BEYOND TIME
Ethina for bad
attempt to answer Ethne's questions on the subject. It was
as puzzling to him as to her.
Aunt Kat said doubtfully:
‘Have you had enough to eat? Really enough?'
'Yes, thank you,' Ethne answered.
Even if his father had forgotten, somebody had remem-
bered their tastes. There had been a cereal and cream,
stewed fruit, and various other sorts of fruit whose names he
had forgotten as well as toast and honey. But it had all tasted
dry, and flavourless, and stale. He was humiliated by the
diet that had been set before Manannan's daughter, even
though she assured him in his dejection that all was well.
His father bustled off on some small urgent business.
Aunt Kat disappeared to instruct Uncle Minos in the latest
details of their plans. They were left by themselves in that
chilly, pale blue room, with the frozen masks on the black
pedestals staring, eyeless, at them, and the two long windows
framing a grey sky, grey mists, grey woodlands. In the
Valley now —
Ethne came to his side, as he stood looking out upon that
deplorable view. She put her hand upon his arm.
'S-sh! Listen!' she said.
In the silence there was but one sound — a small, but
almost inexorable sound.
'Tick ... Tock! Tick ... Tock! Tick ... Tock!
Listening to it, he thought that, whatever noise there might
be thereafter in this room, he would always hear, through
it, beneath it, or above it, the small, solemn reminder that
they had come to a universe where time was the most impor-
tant thing of all.
She made him turn round to face the grandfather clock
standing in an arched recess at the far end of the room - a
grave, sleek time-keeper in mahogany and brass and gilt,
with the sun and moon and stars painted upon its dial, and
the second-hand flitting on, and on, and on.
She set her fingers about his wrist.
236


LAND OF CLOCKS
‘Do you remember when we talked about the way you cut
up time in your world? How long ago was it when we
counted the taps? How long ago?'
It was very long ago, indeed, since he had lain beside her
on the flower-spangled lawn of the House of Opal over-
hanging the Valley; and she had tapped out heart-beats
upon his wrist. It was a universe ago and a universe away.
'I don't like that way of telling time,' said Ethne. 'I think
it is rather frightening.' She raised his hand in hers, and
pressed it against the curve of her left breast. 'Do you feel,
Midge, that my heart is beating more slowly than the clock?
I don't want your clock to race me and beat me. If it does,
will it matter? There was a clock in my bedroom. It chat-
tered very quickly of time all night long. Why do I have to
be told about your time even when I lie in bed?'
He had no answer and no consolation ready.
Could one stop the clock for her? — For himself?
Even in Derga the melancholy music of the bells only
reminded one at intervals of the fateful passage of time; but
here without intermission one was made aware of its light,
swift footfall.
Because he and she were so conscious now of this, did it
mean that they were on the way together to old age - to the
blind, deaf, toothless, skeleton old age of the woman in the
hut? Manannan had said that when you thought of old age,
old age thought of you. But if here you were never allowed
to forget the enemy, then how could that enemy ever fail to
remember you?
How very quickly one must get old!
He suddenly set his arms about Ethne, and they clung to
one another. Once again since they left the valley beyond
time, they kissed, not as children, but as lovers. ...
The great car rushed through the misty morning along the
drab, shining road between the vague and secret woodlands,
over the hump-backed bridge spanning a leaden and insigni-
237


VALLEY BEYOND TIME
ficant river. It seemed to Midge — the windscreen wipers
squeaking and squeezing on their monotonous journey across
the glass before him — that the speed was no greater than that
of the chariots of Manannan, and with none of the exhilara-
tion and the glory. The dashboard was spattered with instru-
ments that recorded minute divisions of time and speed and
other things which might or might not be more truly
measurable. Ethne had looked at that array of clock-like
things: she had said to his mind:
'Is life so short here, then, that everything has to be
weighed, and measured, and counted?'
Again he had known of no answer that he could make.
They stopped at Mrs. Bosworth's shop for his father, who
was driving, to buy cigarettes.
'You'd better stay where you are,' he said to Midge. We
should never get away if Mary saw you. But I think Ethne
might like to see her first shop. Would you, Ethne?'
So wrapped in the high-collared, blue tweed coat, she
accompanied him into that dark emporium through a glass-
paned door with a jangling bell.
In the distance, someone was singing loudly and shrilly a
melancholy dirge about securing salvation through the blood
of a Lamb. Why did they even have to sing in praise of
carnage? — she asked herself as the vocalist abruptly stopped.
The gloom was full of strange and ugly smells — paraffin,
soap, onions; full of strange and ugly colours – cloudy jars of
boiled sweets, stacks of canned goods with gaudy labels. A
buxom and still handsome woman appeared from a dim inner
room and beamed at my lord across a crumby counter on
which were displayed, amongst other commodities, a sallow
bunch of bananas like a many-fingered hand and a box of
hideously dead and odorous bloaters.
‘Mornin', Mary,' said my lord. 'Lousy sort of day, my
dear! Has Olwen heard from her husband yet? Fifty of the
usual, and a half-flask of the usual, too.'
238


LAND OF CLOCKS
Morfa did not attempt to explain his companion to Mrs.
Bosworth; but Ethne knew that for some obscure reason of
his own he had wanted to show her off before the mistress of
the shop; knew, too, that there had been some strange re-
lationship once upon a time between Midge's father and the
woman. She was suddenly ashamed for him, without know-
ing why.
With the comment, 'Getting old! Feel the chill!' Morfa
took a long pull at the flask before putting it in a side-pocket
of his big overcoat. He went out, whistling, with the
cigarettes in his hand. Ethne knew that in that short visit to
the shop there was not merely a clue to some past history but
perhaps even one to the future.
The mist only began to clear a long time after they had
set out. Even then it appeared still to lurk in the lowering
clouds, in the grey oiliness of the sea, in the scarred, shabby
hills rising above the string of small industrial towns through
which they passed. It lurked, too, in the side-turnings of the
interminable streets of small houses of dingy stone, of dingier
roughcast, of dirty red brick. Here was a grim Bethel, there
a sordid public-house: here a derelict factory, there a yard
stacked with rusting junk; and, high above the wet, slate
roofs, vast chimneys spired over the desecration they had
brought about.
Midge heard no word from Ethne and, looking over his
shoulder to the back of the car, he saw that she had closed
her eyes. Was she asleep? — he asked himself — Or was she
just refusing to see the drab pageant of the day?
As they were about to enter the market-square of one of the
towns - a market-square ornamented by a memorial clock-
tower set between two underground public lavatories –
Morfa braked the car fiercely to a standstill. Ethne opened
her eyes.
A funeral procession was dragging its sombre length across
the road before them. Above the shuffle of feet a single
melancholy bell tolled in a nearby place of worship. An
239


VALLEY BEYOND TIME
'It's
are they doing?, , black armband.mportant gar?
ancient motor-hearse creaked slowly with its cargo of newly
varnished coffin and moribund flowers to the resting-place
of death. A crocodile of mourners followed at an uneasy pace,
conscious of being a show and of their stiff, important gar-
ments, their bowler hats and black armbands.
'What are they doing?' said Ethne out loud.
'It's a funeral, my dear,' explained Aunt Kat.
'What is a funeral?
“They are going to bury somebody who's dead.'
'You mean they are going to put somebody in the earth,
who's going to another world.'
'Has gone.'
‘But if she's already gone - She decided to leave that
very peculiar problem and asked instead, 'Why do they look
so solemn? Aren't they glad she's gone? It must be more
beautiful where she is now.'
For Midge's sake she was glad that she stopped herself
from adding, 'It couldn't be uglier than it is here.'
Lady Kat was spared the difficulty of finding a reply by
her nephew putting in his clutch with a jerk, and in a breath-
taking manner swinging into a side-street along which he
hurled the car at an entirely illegal speed. When she had
restored herself to her corner and smoothed her rufflings,
Ethne had been distracted by the gruesome display of a
butcher's shop.
Everything sordid and hideous that he saw upon that
dreary journey had a treble impact upon Midge's mind. It
was terrible enough, as a start, to find so much that was sor-
did and hideous; it was more terrible to contemplate that
once it should have all seemed commonplace to him; it was
yet worse to think of the effect upon Ethne. Even in the dirt
and disenchantment of the kingdom of Derga, that other
world had yet retained the magic of its colour and its light.
Derga was to this, as the Valley was to that land among the
people of Cernunnos.
And then Ethne began talking to him silently — comforting
240


LAND OF CLOCKS
him for his inability to comfort her. He wished he could sit
beside her and watch her.
Soon they were running into Cardiff - a kaleidoscope of
people, cars, torn paper, shops, clocks, trolley-buses and
advertisement hoardings — as drab and bustling in the heavy
drizzle as an ant-hill.
He hated it all, and, most of all, the ugly station, whistling
with draughts, thunderous with trains, and clotted with
screeching travellers. He tried to keep his feelings from
Ethne, but without success, as they waited with Lady Kat on
a damp platform beside a crate of dead rabbits, and beneath
a white-faced clock with a jerking minute-hand.
Morfa had disappeared.
'I'll get some papers, and see where Silver has got to,' he
said as he disappeared.
'Not more than one large Scotch,' his aunt warned him,
though not very hopefully.
She realized at once, though as yet neither of the others
did, the immense interest that the appearance of her pro-
tégée aroused. She caught all the covert side-long glances
thrown by man and woman at the tall girl standing beside
her with the good-looking yellow-haired lad. She watched
with sardonic amusement the gradual thickening of the
throng in their neighbourhood, and found much pleasure in
catching a pseudo-innocent glance into space at the exact
moment it was re-focusing upon Ethne, and in returning it
with the iciest of contemptuous stares.
None of the gimcrack Hollywood stars would have a look
in with that girl! There were birth and breeding in her —
even if the breeding were one which did not include a know-
ledge of the alphabet as used by the Western civilization of a
three-dimensional world! One of these days they would have
to do what had been done for the lovely Maria Gunning in
the time of George the Second — give her an escort of the
Guards to save her from being mobbed!
Basking in this prospective reflection of coming glory, she
241


VALLEY BEYOND TIME
10.
even forgave Morfa for a probable excess in his whisky ration
when he reappeared just as the express came grinding its
cacaphony into the station.
He hung out of the window of their compartment, anxiously
speculating on possible reasons for his wife's non-appearance
until, amid a shrilling of whistles and hissing of steam, the
train began to grumble on its way again without her.
'Where the devil can Silver be?” he said, bringing his
head in.
‘She's old enough to look after herself,' answered his aunt
tartly, and started work on The Times crossword puzzle. She
despised people who required more to amuse them on a
journey of any length than a respectable paper, the scenery
and their thoughts.
Morfa settled down in the corner opposite her, by the
corridor door, to fidget irritably among a mass of expensive
magazines until such time as lunch should be served.
It did not appear to Ethne that there could be much
pleasure in travel caged in a rather large box upholstered in
dusty blue cloth, its carpet littered with match stalks, and
reeking of tobacco. A heavy rain beat dismally against
windows opaque with steam, and the wheels of the train
rumbled a discordant song of speed. She knew that Midge,
who sat opposite her, was saying soundlessly:
‘Don't you wish we were in Manannan's chariot driving
across the uplands to Cibola?
'This is an adventure, too,' she answered him.
"When I came back from Derga, Eber let me take the
reins. I drove from the hill above the city until we were
almost in sight of home. I wish —
She devoted herself to quelling his nostalgia until Morfa
went to the dining-car, and Lady Kat started to unfurl nap-
kins and grease-proof paper from the luncheon basket which
they had brought with them from Saul.
The crisp pale biscuits which they ate with butter and
cheese and salad greatly intrigued Ethne. She liked them. "
242


VALLEY BEYOND TIME
'For instance we really can't have them going to bed
together.'
'What!' he exclaimed loudly, letting the cigarette fall from
his lips.
'It is a fact. I went along to cast an eye on them a little
while ago, in a motherly sort of way. Ethne was in Midge's
bed. They were fast asleep, locked in one another's arms!'
'Good God! I would never have thought it of her. How
long do you suppose this has been going on?
'There isn't anything wrong to think of her. That I do
know with absolute certainty. Or of him, either. They both
awoke before I could make up my mind what to do, and lay
there, looking up at me and smiling in complete innocence
for a moment or so. Then Ethne suddenly said to me, “Why
are you so shocked? Why don't you like to see us here
together?”
So I said, “My dear child, I know it may seem odd to you,
but in this country it is absolutely forbidden for young women
and young men to sleep together in the same bed.” I really
could not go into the various qualifying clauses of this pro-
hibition at the time. As an expert you can explain them to
Midge some day. Anyhow he sat up in bed, and said in a
most indignant manner:
““But that is a frightfully silly law. Why?”
'Ethne lay looking at me in silence. I know she can read
one's mind. Not just guess from one's expression, but
actually see one's thoughts as words. And then she said,
but not with her voice, for her lips never moved, although
I could hear her quite clearly:
"“I think I understand. There was something in the mind
of that drunken man at Adam's house about that sort of
thing. Don't say anything to Midge! It is very ugly.'
'Midge obviously didn't hear what she said to me, for he
broke out:
""But Ethne and I always shared a room at home.” –
That “At home" rather saddened me, Tony! That "at
246


LAND OF CLOCKS
home" in another world! – "If we felt lonely during the
sleep we always got into one another's beds!”
'He ran on for a bit, and then he fell silent, and from the
way he looked at Ethne I knew she was talking to him, and
also that he was not accepting what she said without argu-
ment. Presently, however, she kissed him and then gave me
a tiny wisp of a smile. He turned with a rather sulky ex-
pression and buried his face in the pillows. He was very put
out!
'She got out of bed at once and came to me. My dear, she
hadn't got a stitch on!... She is the most exquisite creature
that I've ever seen or imagined ... She kissed me then and
said in her silent voice, “We've got to keep your laws, though
we think them silly, haven't we?” I felt a perfect brute, but,
my God! think what would have happened in the morning
if that ancient maid of Agatha's had brought the early tea
and found them stark naked in the one bed! You know what
Agatha's tongue can be like!
'I suppose the best thing to do would be to marry them
out of hand?' said Morfa thoughtfully.
Lady Katharine shook her head. She shuffled and re-
shuffled the patience cards and then spread them out in
little fan-shaped heaps.
'Eventually, yes. But they have got to be acclimatized
first. They'll have to be separated for a while - a short
while. You'll have to deal with Midge. I'll make myself
responsible for the girl. Tuition will take three times as long
if they are together. They'll learn quickly enough, I'll
guarantee. The civilization they come from is far greater
than ours, though utterly different. I hate to say so, but I'm
sure that's true. I shall take her abroad at once.'
'Abroad! What'll you do for a passport?
'I've still got Anne's from the time I took her to Paris.'
Morfa surveyed his lawless aunt with respect, for whilst his
seventeen-year-old daughter had black hair and blue eyes,
she had little else in common with Ethne.
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VALLEY BEYOND TIME
Dorley — old ‘Dollars', who had been his own house-master
at school, and was now Midge's resident instructor.
At this stage in his meditations, however, the gentleman
in question stamped in, unannounced and in a flaming
temper, a charred cigarette stump projecting beneath his
heavy white moustache like a stick of charcoal.
He was wearing baggy plus-fours — as he always did by
day — so that he looked as though he had set out to play golf
in the nineteen-twenties and had never changed since. As
an etymologist of world-wide repute, he was an exponent of
simple and direct speech.
He spoke now to his former pupil without mincing matters.
'If you think that because I'm a schoolmaster and can't
swear, I'm not going to call you a bloody fool, Morfa, you
are mistaken,' said he, regarding with distaste the figure sunk
in the chintz-covered armchair. 'Because I am! Why did
you give that boy of yours hell last night, you iniquitous ass?
It's lucky for you that I wasn't there.'
Morfa set down his teacup and started to bleat in protest –
‘But my dear Dollars — '
“The boy's got twice your brains,' said Dorley, surveying
the mirrors, wardrobes, shoe-racks and other fitments of the
room with an air of disparagement. 'He gets them from his
mother, of course. But if you think that any human mind,
however bright, can assimilate in one year — even under my
tuition – what it takes the normal intelligence ten years to
absorb, then you're an even bigger idiot than I suspected!'
'My dear Dollars —'
'I'm not your "dear Dollars”!... There's more to it than
I have said. Don't you realize that not merely have the lost
ten years to be made up for, but all the buried memories
of the previous thirteen have to be revived or replaced as
well?'
‘But -' began Morfa.
Dorley was brooking no interruption, however; he threw
his cigarette end into the hearth, and continued:
250


‘THE MOST IMPORTANT THING'-I
'What I came to say is this: If you don't like my educational
methods, say so! If you don't like paying my salary — you
know what you can do with it! If I hear again of you blasting
the boy in public for his ignorance, I'll throw the job in your
teeth and my books at your head! Incidentally, I should be
glad if you will ask your wife not to call unnecessary attention
to any slips he chances to make — as she did last night!
Midge has recently been developing an inferiority complex
like a malignant cancer!'
The violence of the simile startled Morfa.
'Why?' he asked. “And why recently?'
‘Dunno,' said Dorley. 'It's been going on now for three
or four months, perhaps a bit longer, and it's getting worse
all the time. When he started with me he was full of con-
fidence and took everything in his stride. He made astonish-
ing progress in the first six months or so. Really astonishing!
But now — well, he just seems to have lost heart. It isn't that
he doesn't work. If anything he is working harder and longer
- but the results simply aren't there to the same degree.'
'Think he's getting stale, Dollars?' suggested Morfa, full
of penitence. 'Does he need a break — a good break?'
'I doubt if one would get him to take it,' said Dorley,
rolling himself a cigarette with nicotine-stained fingers,
'He's pathetically anxious to get on. At one time I got the
idea that he was becoming a “clock-watcher”. He is for
ever looking at his wrist-watch – half a dozen times in the
course of an hour when we are working. After a while,
however, I realized that it wasn't because he was eager to be
through; that he was worried, not about the time passing too
slowly, but about it passing too fast for all that he had to do.'
‘Now you mention it,' said Morfa, venturing to pour some
more whisky into his tea out of the hot-water jug, and hoping
that Dorley would not observe the contents, 'I've myself
noticed that he's developed the trick of looking at his watch
without rhyme or reason at all sorts of times and places, as if
he were bothering about an appointment. It's odd, you
251


VALLEY BEYOND TIME
know, because when he first had it, it was quite a consider-
able while before he got into the way of wearing it.'
Morfa had, indeed, been rather nettled when Silver drew
his attention to the fact that Midge never by any chance wore
the extremely expensive gold watch which he had given him
as a birthday present. They had agreed that she should
mention the matter tactfully to the lad: ‘Your father's a little
hurt - looks like a lack of appreciation - of course I know
it isn't so — and so forth. The upshot was that Midge
never afterwards appeared without it.
Dorley reflected:
'I almost wish that he didn't wear the thing. I have a
feeling in my bones that somehow or other it is a clue — or a
clue to a clue - to his present mental outlook. He has lost
ten years. Time has overtaken him. I believe that he's
worrying all the while, consciously or subconsciously, lest
he should fall still further back in the race. In that case his
watch must be a perfect Old Man of the Sea to him!
Morfa ventured on no comment, and the ex-schoolmaster
added as a rider to his remarks:
'It may, or may not have any bearing on the subject, but
the other day I found him studying the expectation of life
tables in Whitaker's Almanack! Rather an odd subject for a
youngster to concern himself with, I thought!
'Good God!
Dorley looked at the gilt clock on the mantelpiece,
flanked by photographs of Silver.
'Time for Midge and me to be off for our walk,' he declared,
and let a hint of menace enter his voice. 'Now mind you, I
am having no nonsense from you! You are leaving that boy
of yours alone, if you can't play the loving papa! I suppose
the fact of the matter is that you drank more than was good
for you last night. That would also explain why you are
taking whisky in your morning tea! Good day to you!
With that he departed as abruptly as he came, leaving
Morfa with a schoolboy impression of swishing canes,
252


‘THE MOST IMPORTANT THING'- I
rustling gowns, and the convulsive tassels of mortar-boards.
'Oh, God!' said he and helped himself to more whisky.
Uncle Minos had been present during the contretemps at
dinner. It was a dead certainty that he would retail the
incident to Aunt Kat, who was due to arrive that morning
to spend Christmas.
‘Oh, hell!' said Morfa.
He would get some pheno-barbitone tablets out of his
medicine-chest and retire to bed for the day! ...
"To tell you the truth, Minos,' said Lady Katharine, after
she had heard his story, 'I am most unhappy about the whole
business.'
'So am I,' agreed Standish, and shook his head to the
offer of another of the tea-cakes keeping warm before the
fire in the 'picknickery', where, Morfa being abed and every-
body else out, they were having their first real talk since they
had parted the year before.
"That damned woman, Silver, makes things infinitely
worse,' said Lady Kat, inserting one of her appalling
cigarettes into a short amber holder. 'She might be the
wicked stepmother of a fairy-tale. She obviously loathes
Ethne because of her looks. She obviously loathes Midge
because she thinks he's supplanted her own boy. She knows
quite well that besotted ass, Tony, will never believe any-
thing against her! I swear she encourages him to drink, just
to keep him under her thumb. She's as clever as hell!
'I am firmly of the opinion,' commented Standish in his
rather prim utterance, 'that she is doing her best to drive
those young people back where they came from.'
Lady Kat expelled a small jet of smoke from her lips as
though she were blowing out a candle.
'Did Tony ever tell you what she suggested to him long
before Midge returned?' she asked.
'He's been very chary of discussing Silver with me.'
'Well, she suggested to him that, as soon as seven years had
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VALLEY BEYOND TIME
gone by, he should apply to the courts for leave to presume
death!
‘By Jupiter Ammon!
Lady Kat nodded her grey head.
“That was shortly after young Anthony was born. The
fact that he even brought himself to discuss the business
with her shows the hold she has over him. For once, how-
ever, he stood firm. Would it be possible to get leave, do you
imagine, without bringing in details that would make the
whole affair look like an opium-smoker's dream?
He reflected, rubbing his nose with the bowl of his un-
lighted pipe.
'I don't think it would be impossible,' he adjudged, 'with
a reasonably intelligent legal adviser.'
'I wonder,' she said thoughtfully after a moment or two
of silence. 'I wonder very much!'
'What?
'I wonder if – Minos, have you any notion what the
American law is on the subject?'
He gave a neat small shake of the head.
'I have no idea at all.'
'Well, I'll tell you this. I'm convinced that she was
planning to get leave to presume Benaiah's death — it would
make a big difference to her financially, you know — at the
very time when Midge and Ethne came back and mentioned
seeing him. I remember her baffled expression when that
item of news was thrown out. And the next morning she
went off to the Cardiff solicitors who've always handled the
English end of the Purvis estate business for her. I conclude
she became nervous and put a stop to proceedings. It was
the day we left for London a year ago.'
'That's all pure assumption, Katharine.'
'No. It's pure intuition. However, it's up to Benaiah to
defend his own interests. He can hardly be unaware what
sort of tiger-cat Silver is. I suppose she was his mistress. I
can't imagine him being particularly platonic with that sort
254


‘THE MOST IMPORTANT THING'- I
of late wife's previous husband's cousin - or whatever the
relationship was!
‘My dear Katharine!
'Anyhow, I don't care an iota what happens to her or
Benaiah. But I do care what happens to Midge. He hasn't
been able to accommodate himself to this world in the way
that Ethne has — or seems to have done.'
'Accommodate herself to the world!' exclaimed Sir Henry,
pressing tobacco into his pipe with his little finger. 'That is
a considerable under-statement. Why, she has virtually
annexed it, to judge from the press! Hardly a day goes by
but there's a picture or a paragraph or a reference of some
sort. She has the publicity of a film star - or a queen. I
could hardly credit it when you wrote to me from Rome that
people waited in the street just to see her go in and out of
the hotel. Now I know that I, myself, might quite easily
have made one of the crowd . . : Ethne hasn't been very
informative on the subject of her ten months with you.
Won't you fill in some of the gaps for me, please?
Lady Kat preened herself.
'It began, Minos, as I prophesied it would, on the very
first day – on our arrival in Rome. The taxi-driver who
took us to the hotel absolutely refused to accept a solitary
lira by way of fare or tip! Standish raised grey eyebrows in
mute astonishment. 'He got down from his seat and said,
with large gestures, that the honour of having carried the
most beautiful woman in the world left him eternally her
debtor. Nothing would induce him to change his mind. He
stood in the porte-cochère, exclaiming at the top of his voice:
"“Bellissima! Bellissima! Bellissima!”
‘The hotel porters talked, I suppose, about the incident.
Anyhow next morning press photographers were lurking
everywhere. Four or five snapped her coming out of the
hotel. At lunch-time a dozen must have been lying in wait,
and by the afternoon we were literally in a state of siege.
The racket had begun!
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VALLEY BEYOND TIME
And still continues!
'I had to get a secretary to deal with the correspondence.
By every post there was an avalanche of letters - from
editors, film companies, artists, dress-makers, broadcasting
people, beauty preparation firms, beggars. The invitations,
the love-letters that poured in!... A disgusting Hollywood
tycoon tried to abduct her, and an abdicated Balkan monarch
offered her his dilapidated crown in the foyer of the Opera on
their second meeting. It was Verdi's Falstaf, I remember.
But practically every man she comes across proposes to her
sooner or later.'
'Have you any idea of her inner reaction to these — er —
attentions?
'She's been completely unmoved, so far as I can tell. The
one and only occasion I've seen her really taken aback was
when she saw a set of false teeth for the first time in her life!
On our first night in Rome. I gave mine an airing as I went
to bed. I forgot to cover them. She wanted to know if every-
body else had “detachable” teeth!'
The pair of them meditated for a moment on the com-
plexity of a civilization that produced both dentures and the
need for them. Then Lady Kat went on:
'I don't think she's had a second thought for anyone except
Midge. The only people she's been at all interested in have
been artists and sculptors. For the rest she says and does the
right thing at the right moment in the right way. She has
the beauty and the bearing of a virgin goddess. She has, too,
Minos, I think, inwardly all the scorn that such a goddess
might have for the clods that mostly inhabit this world.
There are a thousand things in our way of life that horrify
and shock her.'
‘One can hardly be surprised.'
'Her ability to read the minds of people makes it worse.
She not merely sees dirty actions, hears dirty words, but
reads dirty thoughts.
‘Much as I admire Ethne,' considered Standish, 'I am not
256


'THE MOST IMPORTANT THING'- I
sur
sure that I care for the idea of her always seeing into my
mind.'
'She doesn't. With you and me, she deliberately does not.
She likes us too well, and believes in us. Otherwise it's her
defence. In her own world, she told me once, you don't pry
into others' minds without their knowledge. It would be
like listening at the keyhole or reading somebody's letter
with us. I fancy, however, that she keeps a pretty constant
watch over Silver. You can't think how I hated bringing
her back to that creature's mercies.'
'I can. Tony told me the other day that he couldn't
imagine why Silver was so against giving the usual Christmas
dance. I could have told him!'
‘Dislike of being outshone at her own “do” in her own
house.'
'Quite.'
'I wouldn't put murder past the bitch!' Lady Kat asserted
venomously.
'Wouldn't you?' said Ethne.
She had entered very silently, and stood by the door,
regarding them with an air that was almost mournful. She
was in a smoke-blue dress, and great opal ear-rings shone
against the whiteness of her neck and the darkness of her
hair. Her sapphire eyes were almost veiled by the long-
lashed lids. It seemed to Sir Henry Standish that her narrow
eyebrows were more oblique than he had ever realized. He
thought again, as he often did, that anyone looking at her
must realize that she was born of no mortal mother and
father; that she was of the quality of the fairy ladies — 'her
face bright as the day of union; her hair dark as the night of
separation; and her mouth magical as Solomon's seal.
She closed the door, pulled forward a chair and sat down,
facing them across the fire.
'I could hardly help hearing what you said. But it is quite
true about Silver,' she said quietly.
'You know that?' asked the judge, rubbing his chin with a
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VALLEY BEYOND TIME
well-kept hand, and turning a witness-assessing gaze upon
her.
'Quite well. You remember last night somebody started
talking about the priest who was found dead on Carn
Meurig?'
‘Bosworth, who's supposed to haunt the place. Yes.'
'That wakened all sorts of pictures in her mind. At the
time she had thought that the passage of the Threshold
might be dangerous there for some reason or other, and that
the man had died in trying to cross. So she went out of her
way to encourage Benaiah to make the attempt, hoping the
same thing would happen. Isn't that murder?'
'Not legally, but morally, my dear,' said Standish, still
watching her.
‘And then there was another thing she did ... I know! I
was watching her mind last night all the time . . . She had
always meant to marry Tony, and so she deliberately tried
to get rid of Midge. She was looking well ahead, you see!'
'Get rid of Midge!' exclaimed Lady Kat. 'Good God,
what do you mean, Ethne?
'It's very simple. She took him with her when she went
to see Benaiah set off on his expedition. When Togga
appeared she saw a grand opportunity. She told Midge to
run into the Wood of the Threshold and bring him back for
her. Midge said something like, “But I promised Daddy I
wouldn't — " She said: “Daddy won't say anything when
he knows I gave you leave. Off you go! You needn't be a
minute!” Of course he was aching to go, so off he went! She
thought - and prayed — that he would never come back.'
'By Jupiter,' said Standish, 'that's a very different tale
from the one which she told Tony and me and old Furrow,
the lawyer!
‘Midge told me long ago - at the time — what had actually
happened. But it didn't mean anything particular then to
either of us. Now I understand. He's forgotten it all, of
course, but Silver is always wondering if one day he mayn't
258


‘THE MOST IMPORTANT THING'-I
brooded for a litsaid Lady Kat where there to rub
suddenly recollect, and come out with something that will
show her up.'
'I wish to heaven he would, and that I were there to rub
it in — with red pepper!' said Lady Kat with vehemence.
Ethne brooded for a little while, holding her knees, and
looking into the fire.
'You know that she hates me,' she finally volunteered.
It was an assertion and not a question; and it would have
been absurd for either of them to have made any protest.
'She wants to get rid of me – to drive me away! It does
not matter where or how – whether I go back where I came
from, or anywhere else — so long as I'm removed. Her mind
is always full of plans to make me unhappy through Midge.
She puts ideas into his head about me. She has made him
wonder, for instance, if I am capable of earthly love! ...
Have you ever wondered?
She gravely turned her lovely head and gravely questioned
Sir Henry.
'I never once thought about it,' he asserted truthfully.
'Well, I went specially to the doctor the other day. Aunt
Kat knows. My body is the same as that of any other woman.
He said so.'
R
259


CHAPTER v
'THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IN
THE WORLD'- II
SERVANT came in to remove the tea things, and they
talked of indifferent matters until he had made up the
T fire with old apple tree logs and finally left the room.
Then Ethne leaned forward in her chair, her fingers inter-
locked upon a knee. In a tense voice she said:
'But it is Midge I am so afraid about. I am terribly afraid
for him. I don't know what he may do. I hate to think what
he may do! To start with, he is ashamed of being so back-
ward — as if that were his fault! — that even his father makes
mock of him in public.'
'I shall have something to say about it,' interposed Lady
Kat.
'He has begun,' continued Ethne, 'to look back on the
years that he spent with us not as to a memory of great
beauty and happiness that should remain an enduring
inspiration. No. He has begun to feel that those years have
been wasted in a dream, leaving him handicapped for ever.
Then, as though that weren't enough, now he's ashamed of
himself, too, for accepting as a matter of course the uglinesses
of this world which horrified him when he first returned!
He's ashamed of himself for smoking and drinking, and eat-
ing dead things and shooting live things, and for making
grubby love -'.
‘Love!' echoed her audience in unison.
‘Silver made certain I heard about it,' said Ethne. 'It is
a stupid story. He isn't used to wine, and he had had too
much.
“That's Morfa, I know!' exclaimed Lady Kat.
'He won't let me help him and comfort him. He thinks I
260


‘THE MOST IMPORTANT THING'- II
despise him, and I don't! He avoids me whenever he can.
Do you know, I believe that my mere presence makes him
unhappy! That I can only make him unhappy! Perhaps it
would have been better for both of us if I had gone to the
Cernunnos!
The tears began to chase down her cheeks.
‘My darling!' said Lady Kat.
‘And I'm homesick, too, for my own country and people.
I'm not sure of anybody here now but you and Minos. If
only Midge –
She rose from the chair, and, kneeling, laid her dark head
on the older woman's knees. The diamonds on Lady
Katharine's be-ringed fingers sparkled and flashed against
the blue-black coils of the girl's hair as slowly and rhyth-
mically she smoothed it.
Standish was easing himself forward in his chair, prepara-
tory to discreet departure, when Ethne raised her head and
looked up into the kind old face bent over her, and cast him,
too, a glance of appeal for understanding.
'The most important thing in this world is — Listen!'
In the silence that ensued the two of them became very
aware of the sombre, remorseless ticking of the clock above
the hearth:
'Tick ... Tock – Tick ... Tock – Tick ... Tock!
'Everywhere and always those little machines are chuckling
away as if they'd conquered the world, and wanted to remind
it of death and darkness, bare trees and withered flowers, and
winter and old age! “Night's near!” they say. “Night's
near! Night's near! ... Night's here! Night's here!” With
you Time seems to be more than God!
She suddenly sprang to her feet, and stood looking down
upon them for a moment in silence. Then she said:
'When Midge first came to the country of the Ever-Young,
he was, for a little, very afraid of me indeed. It was when
he saw that I couldn't be hurt by things in the way which he
could, and that I could do things that he and his like
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VALLEY BEYOND TIME
couldn't. He felt that I was not of his own kind or nature -
that I was not real, that I was a phantom of some sort. After
a while he forgot all about that fear.
'When we first came here together, he was very afraid
again - for me. But now he is afraid — of me. Just as he
forgot you and this house when he came to us, so now is he
forgetting the me that played with him in the Valley, and
rode with him across the mountains, and bathed with him
in the sea at Cibola, and watched with him the sky changes
from the portico of the House of Opal, and saw the great ship
of Derga come to her moorings, and ran with him through
the Wood of the Threshold.
'He sees all these fools who trail after me; who – she
paused for a heart-beat – ‘are encouraged to come to this
house, and he thinks that there must be a magic about me,
something supernatural. Apart from all his humility he is
afraid to be in love with me, though I don't know what he
fears. It's many, many beats of that dreadful clock ago since
he said to me at my pavilion above the Green Meadows:
“For just a horrible moment I thought you were going to be
like a sort of dream, and I wanted you to be real.” Now he's
gone back to that horrible moment and belief that I'm some
sort of mirage, unsubstantial and unreal!
She spoke in a very low voice, and suddenly picked up the
ancient pocket pistol lying upon the carved mantelpiece next
to the buhl clock. She displayed it on the spread palm of her
hand in all its aspishness to those two silent people sitting
one on either side of the fire.
'That was his toy when he was little,' she said. "He played
with it while the clock went "tick-tock”. Everything with
him is limited by the consciousness of death and time. It is
becoming an increasing obsession. I know it for certain.
‘After he had been with us for a little while in Cibola,
because he was young he soon began to acquire something
of our sense of true time — a sense that can make a rapture
last an age, and an evil endure like a dream only for the
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'THE MOST IMPORTANT THING’– II
moment before awakening – a sense, too, that warns us for
the fulfilment of a duty or a pleasure without the aid of watch
or calendar.
‘Even in savage Derga they can find their way through
time without all the perpetual ticking and chiming that go
on here so that you shall keep your appointments with dinner
and death. How much happier your country must have been
when all the time you had was night and day, sunrise, noon
and sunset!
'Everywhere Midge looks — I know it – he sees in the
house, in the street, on the church-tower, and on his wrist
man-made minutes sliding away to build up calendar years!
His ten years have become eleven — are becoming twelve -
thirteen - ! He's lost our sense of time, and can't grasp
yours.
‘Once - it is the only occasion on which he has ever talked
to me about such things — he said: “You know it's rather
dreadful to think that there isn't such a time as the present!"
'I said, “What do you mean?”
'He answered: “Well, even as I start saying the word
'now', it isn't any longer ‘now' but has already become 'then'!
‘Now' doesn't exist. It is just the future becoming the past
faster than the speed of light!” Then he looked at his wrist-
watch as though to see how much time had gone by whilst he
said that!
'It gave me the impression that he felt he was standing still
whilst the future rushed on him and beyond him into the
past exactly as though he had no present at all — and that
the very words which he used were blown into the past as
he spoke them!
With that she was gone. A moment later the clock on the
mantelpiece sardonically struck the hour.
After a long silence the judge said:
'You know, Katharine, that in a way — the non-material
way, at any rate – Ethne is right. In that way the mechani-
cal conception of time is as useless a guide as the Mercator's
263


‘THE MOST IMPORTANT THING'- II
Europe, was particularly suitable for Ethne, since to simple-
minded English and Americans it conveyed the impression
of royalty. It had not been difficult to arrange the business
with the connivance of one or two officials and the purchase
of a tumbledown castle from a tumbledown grandissimo....
'Who wants her, Houston?
“The Duke of Limburg is on the telephone, my lady.
From Brussels.'
'Tell him that the princess is out — that everybody is out,
it seems,' she instructed him consciencelessly, 'last minute
shopping for Christmas.'
When the man had gone she said to Standish, helping
herself to another cigarette from her battered case:
'Do you remember what Ethne said? — "Fools who are
encouraged to come to this house". I'll bet Silver has been
roping them all in for Christmas and the dance. Ethne has
got to be got rid of — got to be removed, as far away as
possible, from putting Queen Silver in the shade.'
Said Standish, remembering the incident of a year ago,
and turning his head so that he might question the Florentine
mirror hanging by the door:
‘Mirror, mirror, on the wall
Who's the fairest of them all?'
‘And the mirror answers,' said Lady Kat:
Fair and lovely though all be,
Ethne's fairest still, I see!
‘Marrying her to Midge wouldn't suit Silver's book at all.
She would always be getting in her step-mamma-in-law's
light.'
The door of what always had been called 'the secret room'
was open — left ajar presumably by the cleaners. As a child
on his way to bed Midge had hurried past that masked
entrance in the dark panelling for fear of whatever ghost or
265


VALLEY BEYOND TIME
goblin might be lurking behind it in wait for him. He had not
been inside the room since those days: had not thought of it:
now he pushed the door open and walked in.
It was small, square, dim, furnished with a single straight-
backed chair, and lighted by a series of lancet windows which
were invisible from without. Opposite him they commanded
all the banqueting hall, and were illumined by the lights
suspended from the lofty vaulting of its roof. From below
came the happy babble of the house-party which had as-
sembled since Lady Katharine's arrival a few days earlier.
On his right the lancets peered out upon the musicians'
gallery; and there he saw Ethne sitting, intent on a book
propped on the ledge of the carved balustrade. Upon the
bench beside her were several other volumes. He stood
silently in the secret room watching her with something of
the devotion and awe of a humble worshipper regarding the
picture of a very lovely saint.
He realized at length that she could not be reading, for
she was turning the leaves over much too fast. The book
rested upon the wide top of the rail, and was held open by
the tips of her left thumb and forefinger, whilst her right
hand slid up and down across the spread face of the volume,
like a shuttle, turning the leaves. Down went a page. Up
went the hand. Down went another page.
It fascinated and puzzled him to guess what she could be
doing.
Presently she appeared to have finished with the book, for
she closed it, and, without looking up, put another in its
place. The same process began again. Its rhythm was of a
mechanical regularity.
He raised his left wrist, pushed back the cuff of his shirt,
and looked at the second-hand of his watch. He began to
time her. She turned over twenty-five leaves in sixty seconds.
She turned over thirty. She turned over twenty-four - no,
he'd got it wrong. He waited till the sixty-seconds mark was
reached and then started again.
266


"THE MOST IMPORTANT THING'- II
“What are you looking for, Ethne?' he asked a minute or
so later, when he had made his way to the gallery.
She looked up from her preoccupation with so palpable a
start that he felt impelled to apologize:
'I wasn't spying on you, you know. I was admiring
you –
onstra a. I inds?
‘Thank you, Midge!
' - and wondering at you!
‘Wondering at me?' she echoed in obvious surprise. "Why?'
'Well, what on earth are you doing?
Reading, of course!' she answered before she had time for
thought.
'You couldn't have been! he remonstrated. “Why, you
were turning the leaves as fast as you could. I counted as
many as thirty leaves in sixty seconds.' - 'Seconds! com-
mented Ethne in a low voice and in a tone that puzzled him
— 'That's sixty pages of reading. I thought that perhaps you
were looking for some name or quotation, and being very
spry about it, indeed!'
She knew that it was useless to shirk the issue.
'I've been reading Dickens's Martin Chuzzlewit,' she said
in the most matter-of-fact tone of voice. 'I don't like it so
much as Nicholas Nickleby, and I don't think either of them
are a patch on David Copperfield. I'm now starting Oliver
Twist. I fancy I'm not going to care for it at all.
'You seriously mean to tell me,' questioned Midge, twist-
ing the watch-bracelet on his left wrist to and fro, 'that you
have just read right through a whole Dickens book in about
ten minutes? Why, at that rate you must have finished Pick-
wick in a quarter of an hour, or very little longer!
'A quarter of an hour! commented Ethne beneath her
breath, and said no more.
In the ensuing silence Midge reflected on the length of that
masterpiece, which had been one of the twelve books laid
down as essential in the scheme of high-pressure education
he had not even yet completed. How long had it taken him
267


'THE MOST IMPORTANT THING'- II
His puzzled frown told her that he had failed to under-
stand. She repeated her statement in other words.
'For you time may be like that, perhaps, but not for me,'
he said. “You see, I know now.'
Although that portion of her mind to which no barriers
or frontiers existed was already aware of his thoughts, she
asked:
'What do you know?'
'When we were children in the Valley so very long ago,'
he began, frowning in the effort of arranging his ideas, ‘I
lost the feeling that you were strange and magical and lovely
and different just because everything was strange and magi-
cal and lovely and different - not equally so, of course,' he
emended. “The only thing that wasn't strange and magical
and lovely at all in fact was me!'
Someone had turned on the radio in the banqueting hall.
The chatter and the laughter from below was woven into a
pattern against the background of Dvorak's Humoresque.
Ethne studied for an instant the big young man in a dinner-
jacket standing so close to her — the big young man with a
shock of yellow hair, a tanned face with irregular features,
and long-lashed grey eyes bent upon the wrist-watch that he
was twisting to and fro. The shadow of a smile brushed her
lips.
'Go on!' she urged.
'I thought it would be all quite different when we came
here. I thought I would be able to do for you what you did
for me. But I haven't been able to. You have done every-
thing for yourself. You are even more strange and lovely and
different in this world than your own. You are the “Bellissi-
ma”, and I am even more ordinary now than I was then.
In fact I am less than ordinary, for I have lost ten years com-
pared with other men. I have a long, long way to go, and
I don't think I shall ever catch up! Ever!!
‘Years!' echoed Ethne, and again, ‘Years!'
She repeated the word with such an intensity of disdain
269


CHAPTER VI
THE OTHER WOOD
YLORY be to God!' said Malachi-the-Tongue, 'It was
the greatest battle in the world entirely. The bards
will be singing of it for a hundred generations to
come! There's no man that died fighting in it who did not
go to his grave shouting with joy!'
The ancient wisp of a man crouching over Adam Dent-
Raleigh's fire, draped in a shabby waterproof, raised the
glass of steaming whisky and hot water in his hand, and
drank to those happy warriors.
'His captains made a sofy of headless corpses for the King
of Morien in the royal rath of Derga, they did and all,' he
continued. 'And there he sat at his ease and in his glory. I
saw him with my own eyes — his long moustaches hanging
on his breast, drinking mead out of a horn, and using the
bloody head of a prince for his footstool. His shield-bearers
stood about him, and his fancy woman sat beside him with
red jewels round her neck, kicking the head from underneath
his feet for the fun of it!... And now where will the King of
Morien be?'
The question was purely rhetorical, but the crossword maker
did not recognize it as such, and repeated it almost mechani-
cally, as though hypnotized by that epic of bloodshed:
'Where?
'In the lowest depths of the bottomest hell! That's where
he'll be, frizzling like a sausage and squealing like a bag-full
of tom-cats in a briar bush!
He chuckled as he spoke. He guffawed. He roared with
laughter at the doom of the king. Then he swallowed the
remainder of his whisky and water, and tentatively held out
the glass towards his host.
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THE OTHER WOOD
line at once. I'm not even sure that it wouldn't be wiser to
withdraw to the inmost defences straight away!
‘And then?'
He shrugged his shoulders.
At that very moment the time-bells gave out their haunting
music for the second watch. High overhead the plaintive
melody sped through the air on its way to the uttermost ends
of the continent; it swept over the distant hills, and was gone
with its message.
“There's the answer!' said Benaiah. 'In one word – time!
If Etar gets back soon, then you and I'll possibly occupy our-
selves in rebuilding Derga. But it will have to be very, very
soon, and so far there has been no word or sign from him.
The chances are small. But he may still be in time for an
ultimate victory, even if he is too late for us!
'I'm not in the least afraid, Bennie,' said Morrigan, the
queen, thrusting her hand into his. 'I'll face what is to be
quite serenely. I've only got one grudge against fate.'
He cocked an eyebrow at her as she stood at his side,
silhouetted against the curtain of black smoke rising from
the devastated city. Her robe was of the blue of the bloom
on damsons, and the dragon-stone in her diadem glowed
upon her brow more brightly than any ruby. The expression
of her dark and aquiline face was that of a young and amused
witch, of a child anticipant of adventure, of a tolerant old
woman.
'What's the grudge, R. R.?' he rumbled.
'I wish that I had cut you out for myself under the very
nose of Silver, long ago! That's all!'
He looked down on her in silence for a moment or so.
Then he remarked in an almost off-hand way:
'We had to travel from one universe to another to get to
know one another. I guess nothing in any universe or time
is going to separate us now, whatever happens.'
'Nothing!' said R. R., and her grip tightened on his hand.
A small wind stirred from beyond the river so that the
275


THE OTHER WOOD
As the man spoke, he made the head of his formidable
weapon ring against the stones at his feet as though it were
a hound baying for blood.
When the bells sounded for a second time — Benaiah
reflected as he turned to Eochaid, the priest-judge - events
far stranger than the death of the King of Morien would
come to pass. Time itself would die; at least such conception
of time as these nations of Cernunnos possessed! Would they
come together to evolve some new standard, some new measure-
ment? Or would they in the end find the needlessness of me-
chanical time even as had the people of the Island of the Valley?
. . . It was an intriguing, but unprofitable speculation.
'You know what to do, Eochaid,' he asked, 'when the word
is given?
The fog of smoke, which had momentarily lifted, bent over
once again and enveloped all the citadel. Even so Benaiah
was able to remark the expression of almost furious joy that
lightened the other's parchment countenance.
'I have been into the vaults,' said Eochaid quietly. 'I
understand. You can rely on me, Lord.'
'All I pray is that afterwards Etar is not too late.'
And so eventually it came to the last desperate stand in
the Hall of the Candle, with the survivors of the garrison
opposing with shield, spear and axe the assault of the enemy
through the gaping timbers of the main door; defending the
high-set unglazed windows with spears and bows and arrows;
hurling down great stones and boiling water from the parapet
of the roof.
Without, the air was brown with the smoke of destruction
and the sky completely veiled from view. The clashing of
weapons was not audible above the other noises of the con-
flict — the shouting, the screeching, and the screaming. The
bodies of the dead and wounded lay thickly without the hall
like a shoal of seaweed cast up by a tide of death.
Within the great building wisps of smoke swirled to and fro
and mounted to a haze in the dark vaulting of the lofty roof.
277


THE OTHER WOOD
battle. The enemy withdrew a few paces, and Benaiah from
his position on the dais could see that not merely was some
sort of order being re-imposed, but that the king and the
captains of Morien were gathering in the forefront for the kill.
He looked quickly to the giant candle set in a candlestick
of carved jade as big as a font. The swordlike flame of gold
far above his head was unwavering. The rim of the pool of
molten wax wherefrom it rose, glowed in a honey-coloured
translucency, against which was visible the scarlet mark be-
tokening a new period of time.
So the battle in the stronghold had endured for all a watch;
and now the last moments of it had come!
He set his great hand over the hand of the queen as it lay
upon the arm of her chair, and covered it, almost crushing
it with a fierce pressure ... It seemed to her that there was a
greater ecstasy of love in that handclasp than if they were
held in one another's arms, face to face and lips to lips ...
He spoke over her head to Eochaid.
‘Strike!' he commanded.
The priest-judge raised his hammer-headed staff. He
struck the festoon of white blossom that hung from the
pointed arch high above his head.
Instantly the place was filled with the piercing, sweet,
ecstatic music of the silver bells. It was a music that quenched
all other sound; a music whose melancholy rapture filled the
body and the soul and the mind of those who heard it, whose
harmony even seemed to dissipate the very smoke haze of
destruction that oozed in, through the glass-less windows and
the shattered doorways, from blazing stronghold and
smouldering city.
Even when the song was no longer to be heard with the
ears, the air remained full of its vibrations and the mind
retained the echo although the lofty vaulting of the roof no
longer gave it back.
In the strange silence that followed, the sonorous voice of
Eochaid spoke:
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VALLEY BEYOND TIME
'You have heard the last watch sounded! ... The last
watch for you! The last watch for the world!
In the self-same instant that Eochaid fell silent, and turned
to go about his errand, Benaiah leaned down and kissed his
wife's upturned mouth. He straightened up. He raised his
voice in an enormous cry:
'I, Benaiah, come down into the pit to slay my lion!'
As he cried out, he bounded, helmetless, into the hall; his
ranks opened for him, and he flung himself upon the King
of Morien in the midst of all his men. The surge of battle
followed him.
Morrigan, sitting chin on hand in the great chair upon the
dais, could see little but the confusion of men: she could not
see the King of Morien go down with a cloven skull at the
moment of first onslaught — but she knew it; she could see an
axe rise in a suddenly cleared space, though not what was
struck — but she knew that Luga had slain the Tanist of
Morien as he had vowed; she could not see the knife thrust
deep into Benaiah's side, but she knew of it before ever Luga
extracted him from the press and bore him bleeding to the
throne.
He could not stand, but knelt before her, leaning against her
knees. The blood poured from his mouth upon the folds of her
pale green gown; he could not speak, but only smile at her.
She leaned forward and took that snow-crowned, bloody
head between her hands and pressed it against her breast in
a passionate embrace.
'In a moment, Bennie, there'll be new explorations in
another kind of time for you and me! Perhaps another blue-
black wood, Bennie!... Luga, take up your axe and give the
signal!'
The square man raised his axe. He struck the blossom-
decked festoon with the back of it a heavy blow so that the
music of the bells was piercing beyond belief, was of such
vibration and such pitch that the very reason of the hearers
was shaken.
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THE OTHER WOOD
'It is another wood! Bennie, it is!'
With the roar of a breaking sea, a solid column of white
fire rushed up throughout the entire length of the hall,
rushed up a mile into the copper-green heaven. Its light was
blinding, and there was no smoke with it; only its head was
crowned with fronds of dark green flame drooping like the
leaves of a palm tree.
There was a hissing as of escaping steam for a moment or
so, and then the whole pillar rose in the air with inconceiv-
able rapidity and travelled upwards like an enormous spear
and vanished in the depths of the sky. It vanished as utterly
as had the Hall of the Candle. Not one stone remained to
show where that had been; not one vestige of humanity to
show who had been within its walls; nothing. ...
From a hill-top in the forest some six miles away the vic-
torious Etar, resting his men for a short space, saw that
monstrous pillar of flame. In a frenzy he harnessed up and
hastened ahead of the main body with his chariots and his
cavalry. He stopped but once on the way to Derga — when
his scouts brought to him Malachi, á grey, dejected lepre-
chaun of a man.
'Here are the queen's orders,' said Malachi, producing a
packet from the folds of his tattered tunic. You must swear
by everything that is holy to fulfil them to the letter!'
“To the letter! To every loop in every letter! swore Etar.
'But where is she? Tell me where she is! Quickly!'
The old interpreter answered slowly:
'She and Benaiah have gone beyond time, in great glory!
They will have been in the Candle hall when Eochaid set
fire to the seeds. They have gone with the bells and the
candle! There is no longer any time in the world!
Cursing and weeping, Etar furiously continued his march,
to encounter fugitives babbling of the wrath of the gods, to
find the enemy a leaderless rabble at his mercy in the smoking
ruins of the city.
281


CHAPTER VII
FULL MOON AT SAUL
T
H ERE's been a fancy dress ball at House of Saul on
the night of the first full moon after Christmas for
I over a century. For much longer. I'm glad Tony dug
his toes in about it,' said Lady Kat, who had been surveying
the fantastic medley of costumes on the dance floor through
an almost prehistoric lorgnette.
'What's the superstition about the full moon?' asked Sir
Henry, pricking up his ears at once, and removing his
scrutiny from a counterfeit judge who went cavorting past
with a swirl of red robes, a joggle of wig, and a Parisian
soubrette of the eighteen-forties clasped to him.
'No superstition at all, but merely common sense — as even
you ought to know, Minos! replied Lady Kat, lighting one
of her abominable cigarettes. “When you and I were young,
people wouldn't risk valuable horses and expensive carriages
on bad roads on moonless nights. Not if they could help it.
That's all. Why, I well remember when I was seventeen that
there were more than a hundred carriages at the door. To
say nothing of a Panhard-Levassor car which afterwards
broke down in the avenue, and completely blocked it.'
The pair of them were silent for a little while, their
memories nostalgically reverting to statelier functions when
the century was young, when dance-programmes were still
de rigueur in the country, before Afro-American noises had
supplanted the waltzes of Waldteufel and Strauss, or Dr.
Kinsey had concerned himself with the behaviour of the sex
then still ceremoniously known as 'fair'.
They were seated in the comparative comfort of gilt rout-
seats, with other non-combatants, on the scarlet-carpeted
dais at the top end of the hall where once King Henry the
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FULL MOON AT SAUL
Seventh had feasted — Lady Kat distinguished in black moiré,
Standish in a dress suit that had been new a generation earlier.
The music, played by a London dance band resenting its
relegation to the gallery, wailed and bumped and crashed;
was interwoven with the shuffle of innumerable feet — with
the murmur of a hundred conversations — with the susurra-
tion of dresses of silk and satin and brocade. The usual Tudor
princess had been cut, shuffled, and finally paired with the
usual Roman centurion, the usual nun with the Regency
buck, crinolined lady with mediaeval lordling, and Directory
incroyable with ringleted Cavalier. The carved and gilded
angels on the hammer-beams supporting the lofty roof looked
complacently down upon a scene as gay as a harlequin
flower garden in a breeze.
“There's a queer fatality about our Christmas dances,'
said Lady Kat, continuing her reminiscences. 'You'd be
surprised at how frequently something happens.'
“The usual full moon lunacy?'
'No, I mean potential newspaper sensations. I often
wonder when one of the Sunday “dreadfuls” will realize it,
and come out with a screaming article.'
In answer to his lifted grey eyebrows, she expounded:
‘At the very first Christmas dance here after my coming-
out, Elizabeth Viquars, my cousin, bolted with a man in the
Guards. In her ball dress! In a snowstorm! Leaving a dis-
consolate husband, two babies, and a thousand pounds'
worth of dressmakers' bills behind her. She was never men-
tioned by the family afterwards.
'Then came the great “Snout” scandal a few years later,
just on the eve of the first World War. Do you remember? A
belligerent young Irishman hit one of the Kaiser's sons on
the nose in the library. “I didn't like his manners, so I poked
him on the snout!” is what the hero is reported to have said.
They made a music-hall song about it.'
'I recollect, commented Standish. 'It was a good song.
The chorus went – he hummed discreetly low:
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VALLEY BEYOND TIME
'I didn't like his manners
So I poked him on the snout,
And tapped the royal claret
Before they threw me out!
I've forgotten who sang it.'
'The German embassy tried to get it banned. Father -
poor Father! - was Foreign Under-Secretary at the time,
and there was a démarche by Berlin about the incident ...
Well, between the wars our first sensation was the disappear-
ance of Mrs. Venner's diamond necklace off her skinny old
neck while she was dancing. With a rather shady-looking
foreigner she had brought with her. Lady Saguenay says he
was a gigolo she'd picked up in Nice, but you know what a
gossip she is! However, the necklace was never recovered,
and ran the insurance people in for a cool three thousand
pounds.
'The next thing, of course, was the affair of the American
typewriter king's daughter. She was eighteen years old, and
eloped to Scotland in her father's car with her father's
Venezuelan chauffeur. She was the complete bitch - Oh,
and also, incidentally, the mother by a later husband of that
little blonde piece of goods, Electro — Pamela Honeyhill!'
'Do I gather from this lurid chronicle, Katharine,' in-
quired Standish, 'that you anticipate some equivalent sensa-
tion for tonight? Is there by any chance some notion in your
mind that your Electro is likely to -'.
He broke off as the music stopped with a final crash, and
the dancers began to weave their ways towards the seats and
to the more secluded sitting-out places. A gay Jane Austen
girl accompanied by a troubadour scurried, careless of
dignity, to an arched recess, partially shrouded by curtains,
just behind him.
'Good show, it's empty!' said the lad.
Silver, a very Hollywood version of Catherine the Great,
decked with every family heirloom, swept past, escorted by a
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VALLEY BEYOND TIME
the young duke dressed as one of his own eighteenth-century
ancestors.
'Damn the boy!' said Lady Kat, gathering her chattels
about her, preparatory to making an early foray upon the
supper-room. 'Do you know what, Minos? I'll swear that the
little Electro person hasn't been visible for — well about
the same time as Midge!
'Suggesting that she's succeeded in doing what her mother
did?
'Certainly not! Her people would give a million dollars
for a son-in-law who's heir to a really good-class peerage.
Tony wouldn't raise any fuss, either, although he likes Ethne.
It would be quite unnecessary to elope. She's probably got
him in a dark corner and putting the 'fluence on him!
It was at this precise juncture that both of them became
conscious of the conversation in the alcove at their back.
A clear young voice was declaring in staccato, overbred
accents:
'Of course, darling, everybody knows that Midge is what
they call "retarded”, but I didn't mean him to hear me say
so. I blushed right down to my suspender-belt when I found
he was practically next door to me!
'Listeners hear no good of themselves,' said a male voice
tritely.
'Well, darling, I wouldn't have hurt his feelings for the
world. He didn't say a thing. He just got up and walked away,
leaving his partner flat. His face was as white as a sheet.'
... Standish realized that his companion was listening as
intently as himself. ...
'You could have gone after him, Prissy, and explained that
you knew he was there, and were just pulling his leg!'
'Don't be a fool! Of course I couldn't,' said Prissy. “Besides
I had said that all that blah about lost memory, and so forth,
and so forth, was the purest bunk. It's just not natural what
he doesn't know! I asked Herbert iſ he'd ever seen Midge's
writing. Well I have! It's got to be seen to be believed!
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FULL MOON AT SAUL
'He's a first chop horseman, all the same. He's as strong as
a lion, and he's got the eye of a hawk. You should see him
shoot! And he's a really damned good fellow, too, even if he
is so quiet!
'That's what Herbert said — exactly. But the days of
cavalry charges are over. A girl likes a little brain now-
adays.'
'But she hasn't always got it herself!' intervened Lady Kat,
turning her head and speaking over her shoulder to the
alcove in a bitter and authoritative voice.
In the horror-stricken silence that ensued, she rose and
drew back the blue and silver brocade curtain that largely
shielded the occupants of the alcove from public view.
'Well, Prissy Whatever-your-name-is,' said Lady Kat in
the tone and manner of a frost-breathing dragon, 'it is per-
fectly obvious that your parents ought to send you to a
psychiatrist or, perhaps, an alienist! Nobody but a born
imbecile would discuss someone else at the top of her voice,
running on, like an escalator or a teetotum, with a libel in
every other word' – 'Slander,' corrected the jurist, but not
very loudly — ‘Libel is a very serious matter! Libel is
actionable!
'Slander,' again corrected Sir Henry, and again below his
breath.
‘Oh, I say! bleated Prissy's escort in protest.
'You may well do so,' said Lady Kat, and withdrew from
the stricken field escorted by Standish.
'You'll have to find out what's happened to the boy at
once,' she commanded when they had at last edged their
way to a door. 'Ask the servants! Ask everybody! Say
there's been an urgent message for him! She paused, and
added, 'I'd feel a good deal happier if I knew where the
Electro girl had got to.'
But Henry Standish found that blonde little lady, dressed
as a Dresden shepherdess with a good deal of bosom showing,
in the later stages of a fruitless search. She was ensconced in
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VALLEY BEYOND TIME
a discreet and snug petting corner with a large young Hussar,
and had not seen Midge for — Oh, for a helluva time!
'I guess he's got a grouch against the world tonight,' she
opined.
‘About what?' he queried, poised for departure to Midge's
private quarters.
'Search me!' declared Electro in a tone which showed that
she still bore resentment against the absentee. 'He was as
mute as a clam when I danced with him last.'
Yet once again he damned the incautious Prissy to himself
as he mounted the stairs.
Midge's bedroom and his sitting-room - once the nursery
where the late Mrs. Pogram had presided for so many years,
complete with check apron and black straw hat — revealed
nothing, however, except evidence of the haste in which he
had got ready for the ball. With a feeling of considerable
concern, Standish paused at the point of departure, his hand
on the latch, and took a last look back, as though fearing he
had missed some vital clue
At that instant the handle turned suddenly beneath the
light grasp of his fingers. The door opened, and Ethne stood
before him. Her eyes explored the room and then turned a
questioning regard upon him. She said not a word.
'He isn't here,' said Standish, stating the obvious.
'I wasn't looking for him,' she replied; paused; went on
in explanation:
'I came here because — well, because it was here that
everything started for him. He told me, when first he came
to us, how he had sat at that little table writing a poem about
Silver. It was while he waited for her to fetch him to see
Benaiah cross the threshold of the universes ... Even in this
world, Minos, the mind need not be subject to the limitations
of space and time. Take my hand now, and look back with
me!
He had turned out the lights as he was about to depart,
but the lattice window looking upon the ancient courtyard
288


FULL MOON AT SAUL
was full of moonshine, which lay in a stream of silver across
the black shadows of the small room.
As he stood holding Ethne's hand, it appeared to him that
the light grew paler, greyer, and more diffused — was the
light of very early morning.
Then, without astonishment, he realized that a small boy
in a blue lumber-jacket was sitting at the table in the window
laboriously writing in an exercise book, occasionally consult-
ing some work of reference, and frequently ruffling a tor-
mented head of yellow hair.
He heard the small boy speak – recite appreciatively to
himself in a low voice the verse that he had succeeded in
composing:
Silver Honeyhill
Looks like a daffodil,
Speaks like a mountain rill.
I don't think she's ever ill.
He knew it was Midge — the happy Midge! - of many
years ago.
'He's been lost in Time, your horrible, horrible Time!
said Ethne. 'I am to blame. I wanted a playmate, and so
he's lost ten of his years! So he's lost a whole seventh of his
earthly life! I can't — can't — help him! I have only made
things worse for him! I can only make them worse for him!
The hush that had prevailed whilst the violins were play-
ing endured for a moment or so after the rhapsody was
finished before being shattered by loud applause. At the
first notes all the lights had been extinguished, but the great
arched window above the dais was luminous with moonshine
whose radiance slanted across the hall to the carved oak
screen beneath the musicians' gallery at the far end.
Ethne stood with Limburg at the edge of the dais, awaiting
the recommencement of dancing after the supper interval.
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VALLEY BEYOND TIME
'What was that air, Bellissima?' said Sep. 'I have never
come across it before. It is one of the loveliest things I have
ever heard.'
'It is called the "Song of Recall”,' she answered him in a
voice which she controlled with difficulty.
'Who's it by?'
She mentioned a name, without averting her eyes from the
doorway in the screen under the gallery. It conveyed nothing
to him, and he said with a puzzled expression:
'I thought I knew the names of most of the composers. That
fellow must be in the very top flight. Yet he can't be one of
the moderns. When did he live?
Of what use was it to tell Sep that the Song was already
old when Manannan, her father, was born? Or that the magic
of its music had filled her with a passionate regret for her
own world of light and beauty, for her companions of the
enchanted valley and the flower-carpeted mountains, for the
House of Opal set amidst its magic groves and terraced gar-
dens, for her secret belvedere with its silver cupola and
rose-tinted columns above the valley, for Cibola, the un-
imaginably lovely city where once she had wandered hand-
in-hand with Midge? ... With Midge — !
Through the archway at the further end of the hall came
a tall man in a shimmering dress, as she had feared or — was
it? — had hoped that he would come. He stepped out into
the pathway of the moonlight.
He had taken but one pace, however, when the blaze of
lights sprang up, and he pursued his journey towards her
across the empty dance floor, the cynosure of all eyes.
His sandals were silver, and his long tunic was of saffron
embroidered with silver thread. A crimson cloak was thrown
back upon his shoulders, and a helmet of strange shape,
encircled by a crown set with red stones, was on his head.
A great jewelled sword hung from his baldric.
... A most striking man in a most striking costume,' said
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FULL MOON AT SAUL
Carn Meurig - might be crossing the threshold of the uni-
verses into the violet-black wood with foliage that glowed
like fire opal; might even now be walking in the Green
Meadows of Enchantment, or looking down upon Cibola
and the Valley of the Ever-Young where he could never
dwell again.
He stood before the secret window, lost and a stranger in
his own world, with the tears streaming down his cheeks ...
It was well — he thought — that they had parted without a
physical farewell.
He heard in his mind the echo of Prissy Johns's high-
pitched chatter: 'He is what they call retarded! — 'Lost
memory, darling? Much more likely a school for mental
deficients! — 'It's just incredible, but he'd never heard of — '
Prissy was right in a way; but he had been too heavily
handicapped by the lost years, and by his constant awareness
of an unresting enemy.
Ethne - everything was lost.
It seemed to him now that his mind and his body must be
divorced and subject to two different tides of time. The
present streaming into the future swept his body with it
towards the goal of old age and extinction. The future
streaming into the past bore his mind irresistibly backwards
with it to some more dreadful fate. He could no longer
struggle against those opposing currents.
He sat down and buried his face in his hands.
The illumination from the hall, filtering through the
narrow slits of the windows, filled the little cupboard of a
room with an eerie twilight. The swooning melody of the
old-time waltz might have been the ghost of dance music
played half a century before.
Presently he aroused himself, pulled more closely about
him the black cloak that hid his preposterous attire, and went
out into the corridor. So changed was he in appearance that
a maid who passed him did not recognize his face.
He visited his father's dressing-room unobserved, and
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VALLEY BEYOND TIME
thence retreated to the security of his own quarters and
locked himself in.
He poured himself out a glass of water, and seated himself
at the small table in the moonlight where he had sat to
compose a poem so very, very, very long ago. This time it
was no poem but a letter with which he began laboriously to
occupy himself:
My dear Uncle Minos and Aunt Kat,
I don't know whether you'll think me justafied —
There he stopped, and, after a moment of uncertainty,
endeavoured to alter the letter 'a' in the last word that he
had written to an 'i'.
He surveyed the result.
The sight of the correction in those few lines of unformed,
boyish round-hand seemed to bring final conviction to him
that what he was proposing to do was right and just and
needed no apology.
He crumpled up the paper with an ejaculation and threw
it on the floor. Without any further pause for thought he
emptied into the palm of his hand the full contents of the
box of pheno-barbitone tablets that were always kept in his
father's medicine-chest, and swallowed them, and washed
them down with a draught of water.
Then he sat back and looked out upon the darkly wooded
hills silhouetted against the moonlit sky, waiting to cross some
other Threshold than that which rested secret amid the mists
on Carn Meurig.
294


CHAPTER VIII
THE RIDE OF THE NAKED HORSEMEN
II Tith her husband away at sea and her mother
safely disposed of at House of Saul, Olwen felt
warranted in entertaining a very particular friend
until a late hour in the back parlour of the shop — that
same parlour wherein her uncle many years before had tor-
mented himself about the death of Balaninus Larva.
It was, actually, not until long past one o'clock in
the morning that she prepared to let the visitor out. In
the interests of discretion, however, she detained him in the
darkness of the shop for a moment or so before opening
the outer door, whilst a car travelling at high speed down the
valley whined past, the glare of its headlights flashing across
the windows. Its song of power altered a little as the gear
was changed just beyond the church for the steep climb that
could take it nowhere at all except to the wilderness about
Carn Meurig.
'Mr. Dent-Raleigh going home from Saul,' she commented.
'Most uncommon fast for the old gent!' suggested her guest,
preparing to slip regretfully out into the night.
"There's no one else it could be ... Don't act the fool, Dai!
No, not here! Supposing –
When Olwen climbed the steep stairs to her bedroom a few
minutes later she was already ashamed of her easy response
to his advances. For it she held heredity to blame – as she
had done in the case of other lapses ever since her mother,
in a moment of expansive confidence, had revealed the
secret of her fathering. Yet, even if Lord Morfa had been
easy-going and Mary Bosworth still more so, it did not
altogether satisfactorily excuse their daughter's conduct to
her own conscience.
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VALLEY BEYOND TIME
She drew back the curtains of her window, and stood, in
rather unhappy self-examination, looking out upon the
moonlit cross-roads before the shop, and the sign-post with
its sharp black shadow slanting across the grey, frosty surface.
If things were to continue with Dai as they were going on
now — !
Suddenly a man on horseback came out of the little copse
at the fork, and rode silently and quickly past the shop - a
naked man mounted upon a magnificent white stallion whose
coat shone like silver. Naked in the small hours of a bitter
January morning!
Her heart missed a beat.
Then with relief she recalled how fantastical could be the
pranks which were often performed during the Christmas
festivities at Saul. In the very same instant, however, she
realized that the horse was treading upon the frozen road
without a sound — without the hammer clink of iron-shod
hoofs. Even the beast's gait was strange, and she could see
no bridle.
Her heart missed another beat.
In terrified fascination she followed the rider with her eyes
as far as she could, until he disappeared among the shadows
cast by the enormous yew trees brooding over St. Illtyd's
lych-gate. Had he gone back into the churchyard amidst
that darkness to stable his horse within a tomb and betake
himself to his grave?
Was he a Horseman of the Apocalypse? Was he a final
warning to a sinner? Those others who had appeared to her
on Carn Meurig years ago, when she was a young girl, had
been friendly and beautiful, but this figure seemed to her to
be one of menace and of death.
In a paroxysm of fear she dropped on her knees before the
window. With tightly shut eyes she confessed her every sin
of deed and word and thought, and pleaded most passion-
ately for forgiveness and another chance.
Only a few minutes had passed, however, before she
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VALLEY BEYOND TIME
that phantom horses could ever leave such material tokens
of their passing. ...
Amidst a rattling spray of gravel against its mudguards
the car that had disturbed Olwen's farewells came to a
standstill before the whitewashed cottage on Carn Meurig.
Sir Henry, wrapped in a vast coat of a dressing-gown
aspect, cautiously emerged from the front seat beside Lady
Katharine who had been driving. He walked up the path
to the front door and knocked, once, twice; then called Dent-
Raleigh's name aloud; finally turned the handle and entered.
He was absent for several minutes, and returned to find his
companion awaiting him beside the car with evident
impatience.
'He is not there,' he told her. 'He had not even started to
dress to come to Saul, for his evening kit is laid out on his
bed. He has had a visitor, because there are two dirty
glasses in his study. There is a three-quarters finished “Dae-
dalus” on the table I suppose it would really be rather like
cribbing to have a peep!'
*For God's sake don't ramble into a crossword dotage,
Henry! What else?
'His car is gone from the garage. We did not pass him on
the road, or anyone, for that matter. So where in Jupiter's
name can he have gone, and why, after that urgent telephone
call to Saul asking us to come at once?
'Perhaps it wasn't he who 'phoned. Houston said the voice
was very faint. Perhaps -
There Lady Kat broke off, and said no more but turned
her regard from him and the small, silent house. He followed
the direction of her gaze.
Here, near the Standing Stones, was now no sign of mist,
but less than half a mile away the flat summit of Carn Meurig
was hidden by dense, billowy cloud, white as snow in the
moonshine. Both of them knew that behind its guardian
vapours the gateway of another universe lay open.
298


RIDE OF THE NAKED HORSEMEN
'When did you last see Ethne?' she suddenly asked.
'Just before we went to the card-room after supper. He
looked at his watch. 'Perhaps an hour or so ago — half an
hour before the telephone call came. Why?
'Hurry! she said. 'I know we've got to hurry!
Impressed by her urgency he set forth with her, un-
questioning, on the journey over the tussocky and boulder-
strewn heath towards the hill-top. Neither of them spoke,
although Standish's lips moved a little as he sought to recall
and shape the Homeric phrase describing Ulysses' journey
to 'the frontiers of the world'.
Just as they were about to plunge into the bank of mist, a
pack of scurrying clouds closed in upon the moon, so that
they entered a darkness which seemed almost solid.
'T'cht-t’cht!' said Standish in reproof of Nature; but they
emerged within a moment or so from complete obscurity
into an arena faintly lighted from another universe.
A bare thirty yards away towered the trees of the other-
world wood. The tall, straight stems were smooth and shining
grey in all their endless arcades. In the depths of the dense
blue-black foliage were continuous flashes of brilliant colour
as if a rainbow had been shattered and were falling in flakes
among the branches. A pearly silver light permeated all the
scene so that there were no shadows.
No sound came from beyond the invisible frontier. The
forest was as silent, Standish thought, as if it were the repre-
sentation of an enchanted wood, and not the wood itself.
He knew, however, that it was not merely a real wood, but
a wood so live that it was conscious of its own haunting
loveliness. It was silent only to the outward hearing, but he
knew that it sang, in his mind and in his heart, a syren song.
His companion had not stirred from the spot upon the
fringe of the mist where they had stopped to gaze, as at an
illumined stage from the darkened auditorium of a theatre.
He turned to her, and was about to speak, when a horseman
appeared at the point of the arena furthest from them.
299


RIDE OF THE NAKED HORSEMEN
had she not divined what he would do, and where; had she
not found Etar at the Threshold impatiently awaiting his
coming with Dent-Raleigh, and planned the swift abduction
raid upon House of Saul, then indeed would Midge have
been dead before then. All she said was:
'What a very stupid dream!
An appalling thought occurred to him.
'So I still have to leave the Valley! And you — ?
‘Actually, Midge, you and I have run away to our fate
and not from it!
'I will never let you go! Never! Never!'
'You don't have do, Midge dearest!' she answered.
At that he took her in his arms, and they clung together
for a while.
Presently she drew back a little, and put her hands upon
his shoulders, and spoke to him very earnestly.
'You see, Midge, I think I know why Manannan took you
among the Cernunnos. I think, too, that he may have even
known that you would have such a nightmare vision of your
own world.
'I still can hardly believe that I only dreamed it. In my
head I still seem to hear clocks and watches ticking all the
while, reminding me that I had lost – Oh, such a long time,
and that I could never make it up! Never!'
'I think,' said Ethne, 'that he wants us to fulfil a destiny
together – here!
‘But how? Why?'
'He thinks that you and I might succeed in founding a new
nation on the ruin of old ones. When Benaiah and Morrigan
realized that they might not survive the war with Morien,
even if Derga won in the end – as it has — they planned that
you and I should succeed them. Benaiah talked about it to
Manannan. Both of them died when the bells of time were
destroyed and all the leaders of their enemies perished with
them. So now Etar, their general, is here to do homage for
the two kingdoms in accordance with their orders . . . Even
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