Highway of Eternity Read Free Page B

went with him,” said Emma.
    â€œShe shouldn’t have gone. The post should be manned at all times.”
    â€œI would think,” said David, “that it might be poor policy for us to keep too persistently trying to get in touch with him. As a measure of security, we should keep our communications to a minimum.”
    â€œWe are the only ones in this time segment,” said Horace, “who have time capability. There is no one monitoring.”
    â€œI wouldn’t bet on that,” David told him.
    â€œWhat difference does it make?” asked Emma, forever the timid keeper of the peace. “There is no reason for us to be sitting here arguing about it.”
    â€œThis Martin almost never talks with us,” Horace complained. “He never tells us anything.”
    Timothy laid his knife and fork down on his plate, making more of a clatter than was necessary. “Despite the fact,” he said, “that we know nothing of this man and do not entirely trust him, he still may know what he is doing. You are making something out of nothing, Horace.”
    â€œI met the man and Stella,” said David, “when I went to twentieth-century New York several years ago to run down some books that Timothy wanted. That was the time,” he said to Timothy, “when I brought back the shotgun and rifle for your collection.”
    â€œSplendid pieces, both of them,” said Timothy.
    â€œWhat I can’t understand,” Emma told him sharply, “is why you must keep them loaded. Not only those two, but all the rest of them. A loaded gun is dangerous.”
    â€œCompleteness,” said Timothy. “Certainly even you can appreciate completeness. The ammunition is an integral part of a gun. Without it, a gun is incomplete.”
    â€œThat reasoning escapes me,” said Horace. “It always has.”
    â€œI wasn’t talking about the guns,” said David. “I am sorry now that I mentioned them. I was only trying to tell you that I met Martin and Stella. I stayed at their place for several nights.”
    â€œWhat were they like?” asked Enid.
    â€œMartin was a cold fish. A very cold fish. Talked very little and when he did, said nothing. I saw him only a few times, briefly each time. I had the feeling he resented my being there.”
    â€œAnd Stella?”
    â€œA cold fish, too. But in a different way. Bitchy cold. Watching you all the time but pretending that she wasn’t.”
    â€œEither of them seem dangerous? Dangerous to us, I mean.”
    â€œNo, not dangerous. Just uncomfortable.”
    â€œWe may be too complacent,” said Emma in her timid voice. “Events have gone too well for us for a number of years and we may have fallen into the notion they will keep on going well forever. Horace is the only one of us who stays alert. He keeps busy all the time. It seems to me that the rest of us, instead of criticizing him, should be doing something, too.”
    â€œTimothy keeps as busy as Horace,” said Enid. “He spends all his time sifting through the books and scrolls that have been gathered for him. And who has gathered them for him? It has been David, going out to London and Paris and New York, taking the risk of leaving Hopkins Acre to collect them for him.”
    â€œThat may all be true, my dear,” said Emma, “but, tell me, what might you be doing?”
    â€œDear people,” protested Timothy, “we should not be quibbling with one another. And Enid, in her own way, does as much as all the rest of us, or more.”
    David glanced down the table at Timothy, his soft-spoken, easy-going brother, and wondered how he put up with Emma and her lout of a husband. Even under the utmost provocation, he never raised his voice. With his saintlike face rimmed by his white and wispy beard, he was the quiet voice of reason before the tempests that at times rocked the family circle.
    â€œRather than