Manly Wade Wellman - John Thunstone 01 (15 page)

 
          
Thunstone
waited for a shabby light truck to pass,
then
hurried
across busy
Trail Street
. Hob Sayle shoved his lawn mower along, not glancing up. Thunstone came
to where Ensley and Porrask stood waiting.

 
          
Ensley
wore the same jacket as yesterday, or perhaps another of the same cloth and
cut. His necktie looked like those worn by the Brigade of Guards, and Thunstone
wondered if he was entitled to wear it. Ensley smiled hospitably. Porrask, in
stained denims, hunched his burly shoulders and lowered his eyes shyly.

 
          
"Mr.
Thunstone, you've become a familiar sight on our street,” Ensley greeted him.
"I hope you like it in Claines.”

 
          
“I'm
beginning to feel acquainted here,” said Thunstone. "I said I'm beginning
to feel it. It would take a long while to claim the whole feeling.”

 
          
He
glanced at Porrask, who grunted noncommittally.

 
          
"I
venture to trust you've forgiven Porrask here,” said Ensley. "I'm aware
that he's sometimes gruff to strangers, but he says he knows you now.”

 
          
"And
that's the truth, sir; there it is,” said Porrask, not happily. "No hard
feelings, I 'ope, sir.”

 
          
"None
on my part,” Thunstone assured him at once. "Meanwhile, Mr. Thunstone,
have you been comfortable here?” inquired Ensley. "Did you rest well last
night?”

           
"Oh, fairly well,” replied
Thunstone.
"After I got to sleep.”
"Then you
must have lain awake, I hazard.”

           
"I was awake, but I didn't lie
there long,” said Thunstone. "I was up. I studied over some of the things
you and I have talked about.

           
About Claines, for instance, and how
it might date back, if we could arrive at dates, to the Stone Age."

 
          
He
lounged on his cane to say that. Ensley eyed the cane and then eyed Thunstone.

 
          
‘The
Old Stone Age," Ensley said, as though to correct him. “The Rough Stone
Age, the Paleolithic.
The age of man’s greatest advance.
I’ve told you that I’ve been selfish enough to discourage any digs and
explorations here by universities and government groups. Selfish, I say —I want
to do my own assessments. I believe in clinging to ancient customs, ancient
traditions. Without the past, what would the present be? That’s why I promote
the annual refinishing of Old Thunder on the slope over there; that’s why I
approve of the annual turning of the Dream Rock."

 
          
“The
Dream Rock," said Thunstone after him. “Do you suppose the Dream Rock can
give dreams in Claines?"

 
          
“What
sort of dreams might you mean?" asked Ensley, almost sharply.

 
          
“Possibly
dreams of those prehistoric times you’re talking about," said Thunstone.

 
          
Ensley
looked at him searchingly. So did Porrask.

 
          
“Dreams,
or perhaps visions," elaborated Thunstone. “Glimpses of what this place
once was like, long ago."

 
          
Ensley
still stared. “Have you had such dreams?" he almost prodded at Thunstone.

 
          
“I
suppose I have, in a way. I find my imagination roused here. Perhaps talking
with you has helped it along."

 
          
“Dreams,"
said Porrask, from where he stood apart. “I don’t dream any great lot, myself.
Work ’ard in the day, sleep sound in the night.
That’s been
my way of it."

 
          
“I’ve
heard a great psychologist say that we all dream," said Ensley, “and that
those who say they don’t dream, only dream and forget that they’ve
dreamed."

 
          
That
sounded like one of his snubs for Porrask. Thunstone thought for a moment
before speaking.

 
          
“Dreams
are unsubstantial things," he said then. “But what if somebody dreamed of
wandering among flowers, for instance, and dreamed that he picked a flower, and
then woke up with the flower in his hand?”

 
          
Ensley
started visibly. “Don't tell me you've woken up here with a flower in your
hand.”

 
          
“No,”
said Thunstone gently. “No flower.”

 
          
He
gazed up the long pitch of Sweepside. “Ever since you brought up the subject,”
he said, “I’ve thought a great deal about the people who lived here back then,
all those thousands of years back into the Paleolithic.”

 
          
“Ten
thousand years ago,” nodded Ensley, and he seemed
more calm
.
“It was ten thousand years ago, say the archaeologists, that
Jericho
was built.
The first
city, as far as research can establish.”
“The Book of Genesis tells us
that Cain built the first city, and named it Enoch after his son,” said
Thunstone.

           
“Come, surely you're not a
fundamentalist, are you? Well, maybe Enoch was another name for
Jericho
. Twenty-five hundred people lived in the
beginning at
Jericho
, they estimate. But ten thousand years ago, there was a community
living here, and maybe seventy-five people living in it.” Ensley gazed over the
housetops of Claines. “They lived here and built houses. Wooden walls plastered
with clay, and pitched roofs with thatches. Houses like that probably would
look pretty much like home, even to the eyes of modems.”

 
          
“Do
you suppose they farmed?” asked Thunstone. “Did they harvest grain? The people
at
Jericho
seem to have done that.”

 
          
Ensley
tossed his head, as though impatient at the question. “That was down in
Asia Minor
where it was warm. The Neolithic Age had
begun there, with all its advances and alterations in culture. Up here, the Ice
Age was receding, but it was still much colder than it is today. But even so,
the people here were wise according to their lights.” “You sound as though you
knew them,” said Thunstone.

 
          
“I've
tried my best to know them. They were building toward what we mistakenly call
civilization.”

 
          
“Amen
to that,” said Thunstone. “I read a book some years ago,
a
collaboration
as I remember, that referred all our modem knowledge to
visitors from outer space. In one place, their book said outright that both the
Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon races were brutes.”

 
          
“Brutes?”
snapped Ensley. “Just who were those authors?”

 
          
“I
have to admit, I’ve forgotten.”

 
          
“Then
you’ve well forgotten them,” pronounced Ensley. “We think we tower so high. We
only stand on the shoulders of those wise ancient people, who began all our
knowledge for us.”

 
          
“Amen,”
agreed Thunstone again. “I go along with my friend Jean Stuart, who visited
those Stone Age caves in
France
and
Spain
, where the cave paintings are.”

 
          
“Yes,”
said Ensley, “you’ve mentioned her name, I remember.”

 
          
“She
wrote frankly that she felt those cave dwellers had as great minds as we have
today; that they must have been philosophers, rationalists, as well as fine
artists. I’ve always wondered why we don’t find cave paintings like those, here
in
England
.”

 
          
“Maybe
such things haven’t been discovered as yet,” said Ensley, rather darkly. “At
least, they’ve not been brought to public attention. The only recorded example
I know of is in
Wales
, in a cave picturesquely called Bacon’s
Hole
,
where there’s a sort of grid pattern of ten bars of bright red paint of some
sort. Ten bars, one above the other. What would you make of that, Mr.
Thunstone?”

 
          
“I’d
be only guessing, but I’d say that whoever painted that pattern of bars
understood the decimal system in mathematics. He’d seem to be recording in
tens.”

 
          
“As
in ten thousand years,” said Ensley, dreamily this time.

 
          
“You
appear to like the number ten thousand,” ventured Thunstone.

 
          
“Maybe
I do like it; it’s a good, solid, round number. I must say, I’m glad of your
conversation whenever I have a chance at it. I’d judge that you have a
considerable gift of perception.
So few have that.”

 
          
“I
think that Constance Bailey has something of perception,” Thunstone said.

 
          
“That
little fraud doesn’t enter this discussion,” snapped Ensley. “Before I’m done,
I hope to see her driven out of Claines, and her witch pretenses with her.”

 
          
Porrask
heaved his shoulders again. Maybe he sighed.

 
          
“And
you, Mr. Ensley,” Thunstone changed the subject. “Do you ever have the sort of
dream or vision of the past we’ve been talking about?”

 
          
“See
here, aren’t you tired of standing about in the yard?” asked Ensley suddenly.
“Why don’t we go inside, you and I, and get on with our discussion? There’s a
great deal we’d like to hear from each other.”

 
          
“Thanks,
I’d like to, but I’m going to catch the bus to
London
,” said Thunstone, deciding even as he
spoke.

 
          
“
London
?” repeated Ensley. “Surely you aren’t
leaving Claines just now?”

 
          
“No,
I expect to return sometime this evening.”

 
          
“Good,
good,” said Ensley. He put a hand on Thunstone’s arm. “I’d be greatly
disappointed if you left us and didn’t come back. Let me invite you to dinner
tomorrow
noon
, here
at Chimney Pots.” “I’ve promised to attend church at St. Jude’s tomorrow.”
“That’s all right, but dinner after church. Shall we say one-thirty? There’s
someone I want you to meet, and I think there’ll be things to interest you.”

           
“Why,” said Thunstone, “I’ll accept,
and thank you very much.” He walked away. He knew that Ensley watched him as he
went, and that Porrask watched, too.

           
At Mrs. Fothergill’s, he went
upstairs to his room. Constance Bailey was there, tidying.

 
          
“I’m
glad to see you,” he said quickly. “I’m going to be gone for a while—for some
hours, at least—and I want to hide this.”

 
          
He
went to the corner where he had leaned the stone-headed spear. “Could you keep
it in your room?” he asked.

 
          
“Oh,
I wouldn’t dare!” she cried, shaking her head so that her hair tossed. “That’s
an evil thing, Mr. Thunstone; it’s a bad thing—” “Well then, we’ll hide it
here, in the bed.”

           
The bed was already made. He swept
back the coverlet and the top sheet and laid the spear flat on the bottom sheet,
with its head tucked under the pillow. He drew the bedclothes over it, and
Constance Bailey helped with hands that shook. When they had smoothed the
coverlet down, nobody could have told that the spear was there. “Do you truly
think you should?” she asked.