the rules. The people who make a muddle of their lives have deliberately, though unknowingly, chosen the harder way. They are lawbreakers, not necessarily in our legal sense, but they are transgressors of Universal Law. Had they simply worked in harmony with the Law, success would have come easily.”
“I have not always worked in harmony with the Law,” I thought. “None of us have. Do I, now in this cycle of time, possess the ability to change errors performed in previous eons, or am I a mere puppet, destined to a certain definite course of action throughout eternity? Was Henley right or wrong when he wrote, ‘I am the master of my fate, the captain of my soul?’”
I believed in the cycle theory of time, and yet in it I saw no hope for changing the errors of the past. My theory was a death blow to progress and evolution!
II.
I had just slipped my last pie into the oven and glanced casually out of the kitchen window when I spied my neighbor, Mrs. Maxwell, on her cinder path between her house and the garage. Suddenly I had the same sensation that I had experienced at breakfast, “This has happened before. I know it.”
Then, like a flash, before a seeming darkness obliterated my fleeting memory, came the warning to my consciousness that Mrs. Maxwell ought not to enter her garage. I took a step toward the door with the intention of calling to Mrs. Maxwell. There was plenty of time; the path was long and she was not a third of the way to the garage. I watched her, my heart thumping wildly. She had stopped to pick up a scrap of paper. I took another step toward the door, then paused.
“Oh, what’s the use,” I argued, “she’d think I was crazy to run out there and attempt to keep her from her errand to her garage. I wonder why I have had two sensations of this memory enigma today! Often they are weeks, even months, apart.”
Resolutely I turned and left the kitchen, intending to finish my remaining housework. I reached the first landing of the stairs when the sound of an explosion that rocked the house to its foundation caused me to start in wild-eyed terror. In a panic of fearful premonition I rushed to a south window. The Maxwell garage was a mass of roaring flames!
“It is fate, fate,” I groaned in my anguish. “There is no hope! We mortals cannot escape. The cycles of time like the wheels of the ancient Juggernaut ruthlessly grind us to our destruction and there is no hope!”
It seemed that for months after Mrs. Maxwell’s funeral I could not rise above a sense of despondency. A hopelessness was ever present in my consciousness, and nothing I did seemed worth the effort. Finally realizing that my present mental state must not continue, I plunged into domestic and social duties with a vim that was most unusual for me.
Not once during many months following the Maxwell tragedy had I experienced a single recurrence of my unaccountable memory flashes. Then one day the sensation returned.
III.
John was ready to make a business trip to the south and had purchased his railroad ticket early in the afternoon. The train was scheduled to leave town at 8:15 p.m. The supper dishes had just been cleared away and John had hurried upstairs to pack his grip, when the feeling that this had all happened before came upon me, more realistically than I had ever before experienced it, and this time it was accompanied by a premonition of the same nature as that which had warned me of Mrs. Maxwell’s fatal trip to her garage.
I lost no time in hurrying up to John’s room, where I found him sorting over the things to take with him on his trip.
“John, don’t go this evening,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady. “There is a morning train at 11:53. Can’t you take that instead of going tonight?”
My husband carefully tucked his hairbrush into his satchel, and for a moment deigned me no reply.
“I’m afraid to have you go tonight, John,” I continued. “I’ve had a—a—sort of warning. You know what I mean.”
John closed and locked his grip. “Are you afraid here alone?” he asked, after what seemed an interminable silence.
“No. It’s not for myself that I fear danger, but for you. Won’t you defer your trip?” I persisted.
“Now see here, Ellen,” John responded with a show of irritation, “I’ve already bought my ticket and laid my plans for meeting Hopkins in Atlanta on Friday and I can’t and won’t stop because of some fool notion of yours. I had supposed you had forgotten about this fourth dimension time-cycle business!” He picked up his satchel. “But whether you’ve forgotten it or not, the 8:15 sees me ensconced on my way to Georgia.”
“But, John dear,” I cried in desperation, “remember the Maxwell affair. If I had only obeyed my impulse to rush out and warn poor Mrs. Maxwell, she would be living now!”
John paused and looked at me as if considering, but it was only for a second; then he resumed his descent of the stairs.
“No,” he said, “I’ve got to be in Atlanta on Friday or stand a chance of losing one of the biggest orders we’ve had in months.”
Then it seemed as though something snapped in my brain and I heard my voice as though it were another’s coming from a distance, “The Juggernaut, Fate, grinds mortals beneath its wheels and there is no hope.”
I soon became conscious of the fact that I was sobbing hysterically and that John was holding me in his arms.
“Ellen, Ellen,” his dear voice was saying. “I’m going to fool Fate a trick and let Hopkins wait. I leave tomorrow at 11:53. Let’s see what’s on the radio for the rest of the evening.”
I gazed at him with incredulity. “Oh, John,” I cried ecstatically, “do you think we can prove that the cycles of time are not inexorable?”
“We can at least give the theory a fair trial,” he said smiling.
IV.
I poured John his third cup of coffee, but did not feel that it had happened before! A mild thump on the front porch informed me that the morning paper had arrived. I brought it in and laid it in front of John, then I fled to the kitchen, where the odor of burning toast apprised me of the fact that I was much needed. Returning with the scraped toast, I seated myself opposite John for the purpose of resuming my breakfast.
“What news?” I asked casually.
For answer John handed me the paper and pointed mutely to an enormous headline. His face was ashen and his hand trembled.
With a sinking sensation I read the large letters: “Head-on collision demolishes engines and cars, and kills seventy persons.”
“John,” I gasped, “is it—was it—the 8:15?”
His voice was husky with pent emotion.
“Ellen, it was the 8:15, and I have been on it in the other cycles of time. I know it now.”
I gazed at him incredulously for a moment, and then half in fun, half seriously, I said, “John, you are now living on borrowed time!”
He smiled a little wanly.
“Not exactly that, dear,” he said, “but my mind has been doing some rapid thinking since I saw those headlines, and I believe I have a solution to your ever-puzzling problem of the fourth dimension, time.”
“If you can prove my time-cycles are not incompatible with progress, evolution, and growth,” I cried eagerly, “you will make me the happiest woman on Earth!”
“Wouldn’t a new fur coat delight you more?” he asked teasingly.
“Well, that would help some,” I admitted, “but tell me what makes you believe that evolution and progress are fact, despite the eon-worn ruts of the cycles of time?”
“The fifth dimension,” he replied in a quiet voice.
“The fifth dimension?” I echoed, puzzled.
“Which is simply this, Ellen.