Mr. Wicker's Window Part 5

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 bra.s.sheaded 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 amus.e.m.e.nt. 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."

[Ill.u.s.tration]

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.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

"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 s.p.a.ce 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 gla.s.s 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

"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."