Highway of Eternity Read Free

gone.”
    They all were a little gone. He and Timothy and perhaps, in a different way, Horace and Emma. But not his little sister, Enid. She, of all of them, was the free spirit and the thinker. She thought longer thoughts, he was sure, than any of the rest of them.
    So, remembering the mutton that could not wait and must be eaten warm, he headed for home with the dog, done now with fun and laughter, trailing sedately behind him.
    Topping a knoll, he saw the house from a distance, set in a green rectangle of lawn among the tawny fields. Heavy growths of trees, many of them resplendent in their autumn foliage, ran all around the perimeter of the park, in the center of which stood the house. A dusty road which was now no more than a double cart track ran in front of the park, a road that ran from nowhere to nowhere. From the road, the access entrance ran up to the house, flanked by rows of towering poplars that through the years had become the worse for wear and which, in a little time, would die away and fall.
    Trailed by the faithful dog, David went down the knoll and across the brownness of the autumn fields, finally coming up to the entrance road. Ahead of him lay the house, a sprawling two-storey fieldstone structure, with its mullioned windows turned to subdued fire by the setting sun.
    He climbed the broad stone stairs and struggled momentarily with the heavy and reluctant latch on the massive double door before one of the doors swung smoothly open on well-greased hinges. Beyond the foyer lay the extensive drawing room, lit only by a brace of candles set upon a table at its farther end and beyond it the many-candled brightness of the dining room. From that second room came the subdued murmur of voices, and he knew the family already was foregathering for the evening meal.
    He walked into the drawing room and turned to the right to come into the gun room, filled with shadows made alive by the flickering of a single candle set upon a bar. Going to the gun rack, he broke the shotgun and fished out of a pocket in his hunting coat the two shells he carried, clicking them into place and closing the breech with a single motion. That done, he put the gun in its place and turned around. Standing well inside the gun room was his sister, Enid.
    â€œDid you have a good day, David?”
    â€œI didn’t hear you come in,” he said. “You walk like thistledown. Is there something that I need to know before I walk into the lion’s den?”
    She shook her head. “No lion tonight. Horace is almost human, as close to human as he ever gets. We had word today: Gahan is coming in from Athens.”
    â€œGahan I have no liking for,” said David. “He is so intensely scholarly. He lords it over me; makes me feel useless.”
    â€œAnd me as well,” said Enid. “Maybe the two of us are useless. I don’t know. If you and I are useless, I enjoy being useless.”
    â€œSo do I,” said David.
    â€œHorace likes Gahan, though, and if his coming makes Horace livable, we’ll gain from the visit. Timothy is ecstatic. Gahan told Horace he would be bringing Timothy a book—probably a scroll—written by Hecateus.”
    â€œHec—well, whatever the name may be. I’ve never heard of him. If it is a him.”
    â€œA him and a Greek,” said Enid. “Hecateus of Miletus. Fifth or sixth century. Scholars are of the opinion that Hecateus was the first man to write serious historical prose, using a critical method to separate out the myth content of history. Gahan thinks the scroll he has is an unknown book, one that had been lost.”
    â€œIf it is,” said David, “that’s the last we’ll see of Timothy for some time. He’ll lock himself in the library, have his meals brought in. It’ll take him a year to mull his way through it. He’ll be out from underfoot.”
    â€œI think,” she said, “that he is being led astray, that he