Chris stood for a moment before the closed door of Mr. Wicker's study.
His head was full of the story of Becky Boozer's hat or he might have
glimpsed the room beside him--for the passage stopped at this point.
Beyond the passage lay the dimly glimmering shop with its bow window
at the far end, and the door to the street beside it. He might have
been able, had he not been so intent on Becky's story, to slip past
the dusty bales and cases and out into--what? But Chris's head was
ringing with Ned Cilley's tale, and with all the things, so different
and so absorbing, that surrounded him. He put out his hand, knocked,
and on hearing a low reply, stepped inside.
The room Chris entered, his eyes round in order to take in every new
sight, was a small study. It stretched across the back of the house.
The kitchen fireplace had its echo in a fireplace on this side of the
wall, and facing Chris three windows looked out onto the pleached pear
and apple trees; the ordered rows of the vegetable and herb garden. A
final window at the end of the room, at Chris's left, looked out on a
little hill behind the house. Chris, without thinking, stepped forward
a pace or two in order to look for the familiar ugly red and gray
church at the end of Church Lane. It was not to be seen. There was
only a pasture hemmed by woods and fine trees with, in the distance
where M Street should be, a roof or two.
A thin voice, that came from nowhere and was everywhere, broke in to
Chris.
"No, my boy. The church is not yet built. That will come in seventy
years. In eighteen-sixty, to be exact. Confusing, is it not?"
Chris whipped about at the sound of the antiquarian's voice but for a
moment longer he could not see him, and looked toward the other end of
the room with interest.
Mr. Wicker's study was cosy and bright, well warmed by a cheerfully
burning fire. The heavy curtains, drawn back now from the windows to
let in the morning sun, were of a fine ruby damask. The furniture
consisted, as far as Chris was concerned, of antiques. Two wing chairs
covered in red leather, tacked at the edges with brassheaded nails,
looked invitingly comfortable. One had its back to Chris and the door,
and the other was empty. Both were drawn close to the snapping logs. A
grandfather clock stood in the corner between the fireplace and the
first window, and gave out a steady deep tock. The carpet was a soft
Indian rug of fine texture and many colors, red, blue, and gold
predominating. Most surprisingly, a steep spiral staircase of polished
wood came down into the room in the right-hand corner near where Chris
stood, and Chris wondered for a moment, if Mr. Wicker's voice had come
from the top of the stair.
Turning back, he saw that a desk, opposite him, stood between the two
windows that faced the garden. It seemed very old-fashioned, to
Chris--no neat folded writing paper, but large bold sheets covered in
Mr. Wicker's delicate handwriting lay on the open top, with several
goose-quill pens standing at the back in a penholder. Chris noticed
prints of sailing ships on the walls, and candlesticks holding candles
and candle snuffers on the desk, table, and mantelpiece. A closed
cupboard with carved doors stood at the far end of the room.
Once again Chris turned back to look for Mr. Wicker, and to his
astonishment, now saw him in the chair that he had thought empty a
moment before. Mr. Wicker, his elbows on the arms of the chair and his
fingertips touched lightly together, was watching Chris with interest
and amusement. When the boy caught sight of him, Mr. Wicker nodded,
smiling, and motioned Chris toward the other leather chair across from
him.
"Good morning, my boy," said the old man. "I trust you slept well?"
Chris slowly let himself down into the offered chair. "Oh yes, thank
you sir," he replied. "I don't even know how I got to bed."
Mr. Wicker made a sound that seemed to indicate that that did not
matter.
"And breakfast?" Mr. Wicker asked. "Becky fed you?"
"Yes sir. _And_ Mr. Cilley--he fed me too."
"Indeed?" Mr. Wicker's eyebrows went up in an inverted V above his
bright dark eyes. "Ned Cilley so early? Well, he is a loyal soul, is
Cilley. You shall know more of him."
[Illustration]
He fell silent, observing the boy sitting on the edge of the big
chair. Mr. Wicker looked, as if casually, at the clothes Chris now
wore and which fitted him as though made to his measure. What he saw
seemed to please the old man for he nodded his bald head and his
wrinkles multiplied themselves across his face in a way Chris took to
be his smile. At last he spoke again, and his voice was strangely
gentle and kind. So kind that the forlornness Chris had momentarily
forgotten at the mystery of his position, the puzzlement and lost
feeling that reclaimed him instantly should he allow himself to wonder
at how he could get back again into his own life and time, was
reawakened by the something he heard in Mr. Wicker's voice. The tears
gathered in his throat and he had to swallow and cough several times
before he could reply with any degree of clearness.
[Illustration]
"Feel? Well--all right, I guess, in a way. But there's a sort of
spinning in my head and my stomach if I try to figure any of this out.
I just don't get it." He shook his head dubiously. "I feel alive all
right, and the food tasted good just now, but how in the world can all
the changes come about, or be? And there's something I should see to,
at home--" All at once he needed desperately to know how his mother
was, that morning. He stood up abruptly.
"If I can just go now, please?" Chris asked politely but firmly. "It's
been very interesting, but I--"
His throat tightened up again and he made a helpless gesture with his
hand, and looking toward the window, wondered if he could jump out
into the flower beds and be off. Mr. Wicker's voice, soft but with
such authority that one did not question it, came again, and it had a
healing in its sound.
"Sit down, Christopher my lad," he said, and his eyes were kind,
intent and eager. "We have much to talk of, you and I. But first, your
mind and heart shall be put at ease. Do you know who I am?"
Restive and anxious to be off, Chris nevertheless found it necessary
to reply.
"You sell old stuff. That's all I know," he answered, beginning to
feel a trifle surly.
Mr. Wicker nodded, tapping his fingertips together. "Yes," he agreed,
"I sell old things--in _your_ time. But now--in _this_ time, what do
you know of me?"
As he spoke there was a change of tone, as if a younger man was
speaking, and in spite of his impatience to get home, Chris looked up
sharply. Mr. Wicker was leaning forward, and Chris felt himself
immovable under the vigor of those dark eyes.
"Nothing, sir," he heard himself saying, not taking his eyes from
those of the man before him.
"I am a shipowner, Christopher, for one thing," Mr. Wicker drew a
slow breath. "A merchant trading in tobacco, cotton, corn, and flour.
But I am also--" he paused as if to give Chris time to hear each word,
"I am also quite a fine magician," said Mr. Wicker.
Chris leaned back, disappointed and scornful. "Rabbits out of hats?"
he inquired.
"No, young man," Mr. Wicker answered with no show of annoyance, "Not
rabbits out of hats. That--as you would say--is for toddlers. Suppose
I prove to you just how good?"
"Go ahead," said Chris, whose only thought was still to get home but
who admitted to himself a faint stir of curiosity.
"Watch closely then," commanded Mr. Wicker. "I have been in my
twentieth-century shape so that you would recognize me. Now I shall
regain my appearance of _this_ time--not a great change, I grant you,
but there will be a difference. Watch me closely."
Chris leaned forward in his chair. The room was well lit from three
sides; sunlight and firelight mingled to wash Mr. Wicker in their
joined apricot glow. Added to this, the two chairs--Chris's and Mr.
Wicker's--were not more than four feet apart. Chris hunched forward
yet a little more to lessen this space and watch for any movement,
however swift. He had seen magicians before, he told himself.
But what he saw was so amazing that Chris's lips parted in
astonishment and his eyes stared unblinkingly. For the tiny figure of
the old man before him, wizened with age and wrinkled past belief,
before his eyes shook off not ten or twenty years, but one hundred and
fifty! It left him, while not a young man, middle-aged; a vigorous man
of forty years. The face was smoothed out and firm; thick chestnut
hair was caught back with a black ribbon bow. Dark eyebrows were level
above the steady eyes.
"I don't believe it!" Chris breathed. "You looked almost like a mummy,
before. And now--"
Mr. Wicker rose from his chair, and now he stood six feet, no longer
wizened, no longer feeble.
"Fascinating, is it not?" he remarked, with a sardonic smile. "A good
trick, do you not agree?"
Chris sat looking at him, amazed but still incredulous. "Well yes," he
admitted, "but maybe with make-up, or something--"
"Ah," said Mr. Wicker, and his voice was deeper and more vigorous too.
"Ah. Then we shall try another. See if you can find me." And before
Chris's eyes Mr. Wicker vanished into thin air.
Chris looked about and got up. He looked under the chairs, under the
table, behind the curtains, up the chimney, up the spiral staircase,
out the windows--in short, everywhere and anywhere a man might hide,
and in a great many places where it was impossible for him to be.
Finally he stood in the middle of the room.
"You're not here," he said aloud.
"Oh, yes, I am," said Mr. Wicker's voice. "Look on the table."
Chris looked on the table. A bowl of flowers stood in the center. A
small silver tray with a finely blown glass and a round-bellied silver
pitcher of water stood at one side. A few leather-bound books were all
else to be seen, except--if one could count that--a bluebottle fly
that buzzed, lit on the flowers, and buzzed again.
[Illustration]
"It's not fair!" Chris challenged aloud. "You've got some trick hiding
place. You're just not here."
"Yes I am," came the voice. "I am within reach of your hand,
Christopher," Mr. Wicker told him. "And I will reappear in whatever
part of the room you wish. Choose."
Chris looked around him, and then pointed to the end window.
"There," he said, "by the window. There's nothing anywhere around it.
Come back there."
"Very well," sounded Mr. Wicker's deep new voice.
The bluebottle fly buzzed upward from the table, flew directly at
Chris's nose, hit it, flew around his head, and bumped into his ear.
"Darn that ol' fly!" Chris muttered, and made a grab at it. The
bluebottle buzzed towards the window, swirled about, hit Chris on the
nose again with remarkable stupidity, and blundered off once more
towards the window.
Chris ran after it, saw it on a pane of glass, swooped down, and felt
the angry wings and heard the enraged buzz in his cupped hand. But
before he could either squeeze the fly or open his hand to let it
free, Mr. Wicker stood before him, and Chris found himself holding on
to the tail of Mr. Wicker's coat.
"And what did you think of _that_ trick?" asked Mr. Wicker smiling.