“Let no bell toll!–lest her sweet soul, amid its hallowed mirth, 

Should catch the note, as it doth float up from the damnéd Earth.”

The lines on the page blurred; Guy’s voice caught; he couldn’t finish. A gentle hand took him by the elbow, led him past the casket to his seat. Other hands patted him consolingly as he bent forward and gave in to quiet sobs.

The service continued toward its inevitable conclusion. Family members and friends came forward and spoke one after another, but Guy paid them scant attention. He just wanted it to be over, to place her remains in their final resting place so her soul could ascend. And then, for him, one last duty to perform.

His mind wandered. He longed to be free of the details, the many arrangements. It had perforce been a simple service, but he’d done his best to make it tasteful. She would have appreciated that. He hoped she would have. She would have approved of the dress, at least. It was the sight of her wearing it, beautiful even now as she lay in the casket, that had been his undoing at the pulpit.

There’d been a few raised eyebrows when he insisted she be buried in it, especially from the few who had been in on the secret of its procuring. It had been worn by a famous actress on the other side of the Atlantic in her most iconic role, and had cost him a small fortune, then a smaller but still significant sum to enlist the city’s dressmaker in deceiving his bride-to-be into thinking she’d discovered it herself in a forgotten corner of the shop. He’d planned to tell her on their wedding night. She would have appreciated the joke. He hoped she would have.

Something intruded on Guy’s thoughts. A stranger had stepped to the pulpit. He was small of stature, dark-haired. There was something odd about his clothes; the coat and vest appeared to be well-tailored, even expensive, but they were ridiculously out of fashion. The tie, for example, was outlandishly long and narrow.

An eccentric, thought Guy. Please let him not mar the proceedings. This day has been difficult enough already.

As if reading Guy’s thought, the stranger turned toward him. He spoke with a slight stammer. “I shan’t take long. I know this must be quite… painful for you. If I were you I am sure I should be extremely sad too. You were, after all, the love of her life.”

The stranger turned toward the other mourners. “All of you who had the good fortune to know the deceased in… life… must be filled with sorrow this day. Which of you, I wonder, would not wish to turn back the clock, rewind its hands to their former position, to bask again in her radiant presence, see her smile, hear again the ‘hallowed mirth’ that bubbled forth from her lips like a snow-fed freshet in the mountains?”

Definitely an eccentric. There was something compelling in his earnestness, though.

The stranger looked from face to face, searchingly. “But of course you can’t. None of us can. The flow of time is inexorable, like a stream plunging down a mountainside, hemmed in by its narrow banks, hurrying on its way. Our lives are borne on that stream, carried too swiftly toward eventual union with the great, fathomless sea in which we all shall finally come to rest.

“But what if—“, and at this the stranger turned suddenly back toward Guy, “—what if there were a way to reverse that stream, or rather to climb out of it onto the bank, and travel overland in opposition to its flow, until eventually one might re-enter the water at a point upstream. Which is to say, at an earlier time.”

A murmur arose, but the stranger seemed not to hear. He turned and began pacing back and forth in the space beyond the casket, his hands moving to punctuate the statements, his words coming more quickly now.

“And having done so, what if one could divert the stream, guide it into a new course, one leading past other shores, other events, other futures. For indeed, if time is but a dimension in space, the same as these three dimensions we are accustomed to navigate, perhaps there is room in that space for a multitude of possibilities, as many as one could imagine. Perhaps even one in which a young maiden doesn’t need to sicken and die on her wedding day. Perhaps—”

“Sir.” Guy stood. This had gone far enough.

The stranger stopped abruptly, seeming to recall where he was. He looked at the mourners, then stepped slowly around the casket and approached.

“My apologies,” he said. “I’m prone to… excitement.”

Guy spoke quietly, but in a tone that did not brook dissent. “I think it would be best if you leave.”

The man gulped and nodded. “Indeed,” he said. He turned as if to go, but then stopped and turned back.

“I do understand something of your loss, Mr. de Vere. For you see, I shall… that is to say, I… knew… your intended. She was a remarkable woman.” The stranger glanced around, then leaned in closer and continued in a low voice, almost a whisper. “I believe you may be intending to take an irreversible and… extreme… course of action, to throw away something of inestimable value that no longer holds meaning for you now she is gone.”

Guy narrowed his eyes. “This is an effrontery, sir.”

“Yes, yes,” the man stammered. “I do apologize, and yet I must speak, for you must understand.” The man’s stare was strangely unnerving. “She would not have wanted it.”

Guy said nothing. His thoughts were a discordant jumble. The nerve. This strangely dressed interloper deserved a thrashing. But then a new thought entered, and it was like a ray of light in a dark place, almost as if he could hear her voice speaking the words: Wait for me, Guy.

“You must wait for her,” said the stranger, and Guy started. “You must wait, as must all who are bound to this onward flow of time, abiding our place in the stream in the prayerful hope that eventually, by the grace of Providence, we may again see the face of the one we love.”

Guy looked at the man for a long moment. Then, slowly, he nodded.

“Good!” the stranger said, nodding in his turn. “Good. And now, with your permission, I shall leave.” A half-smile formed on his face. “I have an appointment I wish very much to keep.”

Guy watched with the rest of the mourners as the man strode down the aisle and out the doors, the light from beyond breaking briefly upon the somber assembly before winking out again.

What an odd fellow, Guy thought. Under other circumstances I might have enjoyed sitting down over a drink to hear more of his outlandish ideas. And then a new thought occurred to him, and for a moment he almost felt like smiling himself, the first time he’d felt that way in what seemed like a very long time.

She would have liked him.

Reposted from http://ift.tt/2dkBoxi.