War in Heaven (23 page)

“I don't care a curse,” Sir Giles answered. “You're not interesting enough to run any risks for, Persimmons; you're merely an overgrown hobbledehoy stealing beer—the drainings in other people's pots. And I'm not going to have to poison myself for you. And now who's this reptile in grey you're bleating about?”

Gregory had grown used to neglecting half of Sir Giles's conversation, but for a moment he remembered Lionel's remark earlier in the evening, and looked nastily across at the other. However, he pulled himself in, and said carelessly, “Oh, a mad fellow we met in the drive. Talked like a clergyman and said he knew seventy kings.”

“Only seventy?” Sir Giles asked. “No other introduction?”

“I didn't like him,” Gregory admitted, “and he made Ludding foam at the mouth. But he wasn't doing anything except wander about the drive. He mentioned he was a priest and king himself.” He dropped his voice and came a little nearer. “I wondered at first whether he was anything to do with—the shop. You know what I mean. But somehow he didn't fit in.”

Sir Giles sat erect. “Priest and king,” he said, half sceptically. “You're sure you're not mad, Persimmons?” He stood up sharply. “And his name was John?” he asked intently.

“He said so,” Gregory answered. “But John what?”

Sir Giles walked to the window and looked out, then he came back and looked with increasing doubt at Gregory. “Look here,” he said, “you take my advice and leave that damned bit of silver gilt trumpery alone. Ludding told me about your all going off after it. You may be up against something funnier than you think, Master Gregory.”

“But who
is
he?” Gregory asked impatiently yet anxiously. “What's he got to do with the—the Graal?”

“I'm not going to tell you,” Sir Giles said flatly. “I never knew any good come of trying to pretend things mightn't be when they might. I've heard tales—lies, very likely—but tales. Out about Samarcand I heard them and down in Delhi too—and it wasn't the Dalai Lama either that made the richest man in Bengal give all he had to the temples and become a fakir. I don't believe in God yet, but I wonder sometimes whether men haven't got the idea of God from that fellow—if it's the same one.”

“What have I to do with God?” Gregory said.

“I don't know whether the Graal belongs to him or he belongs to the Graal,” Sir Giles went on, unheeding. “But you can trace it up to a certain point and you can trace it back from a certain point, and someone had it in between. And if it was he, you'd better go and ask the Archdeacon to pray for you—if he will.”

“Will you tell me who he is?” Gregory asked.

“No, I won't,” Sir Giles said. “I've seen too much to chatter about him. You drop it, while there's time.”

“I suppose it's Jesus Christ come to look for His own property?” Gregory sneered.

“Jesus Christ is dead or in heaven or owned by the clergy,” Sir Giles answered. “But they say this man is what he told you—he is king and priest and his name is John. They say so. I don't know, and I tell you I funk it.” He looked at the open window again.

“Well, run then,” Gregory said. “But I and my great lord will know him and meet him.”

“So you may, for me,” Sir Giles answered, and with no more words disappeared to his own room.

The child Adrian slept long and peacefully, and only his angel, in another state of the created universe, knew what his dreams were. But, except for him and the servants, the night was, for those in Gully, empty of sleep. Lionel lay on the couch that had been hastily made up, watching and listening for any movement from his wife. How far she slept none could tell. She lay motionless, but Lionel doubted, when he was near her, whether it were more than a superimposed and compulsory immobility. Her eyes were shut, but her breath trembled as if some interior haste shook it, and every now and then there issued from her lips a faint and barely perceptible moan, faint but profound. Lionel brooded over this companion of his way, torn apart into the depths of some jungle whose terror he could not begin to conceive. He himself would have been, to however small an extent, prepared; but that Barbara, with her innocent concentration on window-curtains and the novels of Mr. Wodehouse and Adrian's meals, should be plunged into it, was a fatality against which even his pessimism felt the temptation to rebel.

Not far from his room Sir Giles also lay wakeful, considering episodes and adventures of his past. Brutal with himself no less than with others, he did not attempt to hide from himself that the new arrivals in the village caused him some anxiety. He had known, in his exploration of that zone of madness which encloses humanity, certain events which had been referred by those who had spoken of them to a mysterious power whose habitation was unknown and whose interference was deadly. Once indeed, in a midnight assembly in Beyrout, he had, he thought, dimly seen him; there had been panic and death, and in the midst of the shrinking and alarmed magicians a half-visible presence, clouded and angry and destructive. At the time he had thought that he also had been affected by a general hallucination, but he knew that hallucination was a word which, in these things, meant no more than that certain things seemed to be. Whether they were or not … He promised himself again to leave England as soon as possible, and to leave Cully certainly to-morrow.

Gregory, after some consideration, had dismissed Sir Giles's warnings as, on the whole, silly. Things were going very well; by the next night he hoped that both the Graal and Adrian would be, for a while, in his hands or those of his friends. Of all those who lay awake under those midnight stars he was the only one who had a naturally religious spirit; to him only the unknown beyond man's life presented itself as alive with hierarchical presences arrayed in rising orders to the central throne. To him alone sacraments were living realities; the ointment and the Black Mass, the ritual and order of worship. He beyond any of them demanded a response from the darkness; a rush of ardent faith believed that it came; and in full dependence on that faith acted and influenced his circumstances. Prayer was natural to him as it was not to Sir Giles or Lionel, or, indeed, to Barbara, and to the mind of the devotee the god graciously assented. Conversion was natural to him, and propaganda, and the sacrifice both of himself and others, if that god demanded it. He adored as he lay in vigil, and from that adoration issued the calm strength of a supernatural union. As the morning broke he smiled happily on the serene world around him.

Sir Giles took himself off after breakfast, leaving his small amount of luggage to be sent on. Gregory and Lionel left Ludding to call them if Barbara moved—a nurse was to arrive later—and went to the telephone in the hall. There, after some trouble, Gregory got through to his desired number and, Lionel gathered, to the unknown Manasseh. He explained the circumstances briefly, urging the other to take the next train to Fardles.

“What?” he asked in a moment. “Yes, Cully—near Fardles.… Well, anything in reason, anything, indeed.… What? I don't understand.… Yes, I know you did, but … No, but the point is, that I haven't … Yes, though I don't know how you knew.… But I can't.… Oh, nonsense!… No, but look here, Manasseh, this is serious; the patient's had some sort of fit or something.… But you can't mean it.… Oh, well, I suppose so.… But, Manasseh.… But you wouldn't … No, stop …”

He put the receiver back slowly and turned very gravely to Lionel. “This is terrible,” he said. “You know that chalice I had? Well, I knew Manasseh wanted it. He thinks he can cure Mrs. Rackstraw, and he offers to try,
if
I'll give him the chalice.”

“Oh, well,” Lionel said insincerely, “if he wants that—I suppose it's very valuable? Too valuable for me to buy, I mean?”

“My dear fellow,” Gregory said, “you should have it without a second thought. Do you suppose I should set a miserable chalice against your wife's health? I like and admire her far too much. But I haven't got it. Don't you remember I told you yesterday—but we've been through a good deal since then—the Archdeacon's bolted with it. He insists that it is his, though Colonel Conyers is quite satisfied that it isn't, and I really think the police might be allowed to judge. He and Kenneth Mornington and a neighbour of mine bolted with it—out of my own house, if you please! And now, when I'd give anything for it, I can't get hold of it.” He stamped his foot in the apparent anger of frustrated desire.

The little violence seemed to break Lionel's calm. He caught Gregory's arm. “But must your friend have that?” he cried. “Won't anything else in heaven or hell please him? Will he let Babs die in agony because he wants a damned wine-cup? Try him again, try him again!”

Gregory shook his head. “He'll ring us up in an hour,” he said, “in case we can promise it to him. That'll give him time to catch the best morning train to Fardles. But what can I do? I know the Archdeacon and Mornington have taken it to the Duke's house. But they're all very angry with me, and how can I ask them for it?” He looked up suddenly. “But what about you?” he said, almost with excitement. “You know Mornington well enough—I daren't even speak to him; there was a row about that book yesterday at the office, and he misunderstood something I said. He's rather—well, quick to take offence, you know. But he knows your wife, and he might be able to influence that Archdeacon; they're very thick. Get on the 'phone to him and try. Try, try anything to save her now.”

He wheeled round to the telephone and explained what he wanted to the local Exchange; then the two of them waited together. “Manasseh's a hard man,” Gregory went on. “I've known him cure people in a marvellous way for nothing at all, but if he's asked for anything he never makes any compromise. And he doesn't always succeed, of course, but he does almost always. He works through the mind largely—though he knows about certain healing drugs he brought from the East. No English doctor would look at them or him, naturally, but I've never known an English doctor succeed where he failed. Understand, Rackstraw, if you can get the Archdeacon to see that he's wrong, or to give up the chalice
without
seeing that he's wrong, it's yours absolutely. But don't waste time arguing. I know it's no good my arguing with Manasseh, and I don't think it's much good your arguing with the Archdeacon. Tell Mornington the whole thing, and get him to see it's life or death—or worse than life or death. Beg him to bring it down here at once and we'll have it for Manasseh when he comes. There you are; thank God they've been quick.”

In a torrent of passionate appeal Lionel poured out his agony through the absurd little instrument. At the other end Kenneth stood listening and horrified in the Duke's study; the Duke himself and the Archdeacon waited a little distance “But what's the matter with Babs?” Kenneth asked. “I don't understand.”

“Nobody understands,” Lionel answered desperately. “She seems to have gone mad—shrieking, dancing—I can't tell you. Can you do it? Kenneth, for the sake of your Christ! After all, it's only a chalice—your friend can't want it all that much!”

“
Your
friend seems to want it all that much,” Kenneth said, and bit his lips with annoyance. “No, sorry, Lionel, sorry. Look here, hold on—no, of course, you can't hold on. But I must find the Archdeacon and tell him.” He held up a hand to stop the priest's movement. “Tell me, what's Babs doing now?”

“Lying down with morphia in her to keep her quiet,” Lionel answered. “But she's
not
quiet, I know she's not quiet, she's in hell. Oh, hurry, Kenneth, hurry.”

Considerably shaken, Mornington turned from the telephone to the others. “It's Barbara Rackstraw,” he said, paused a moment to explain to the Duke, and went on. “Gregory's been doing something to her, I expect; Lionel doesn't know what's the matter, but she seems to have gone mad. And that—creature has got a doctor up his sleeve who can put her right, he thinks, but he wants
that
——” He nodded at the Graal, which stood exposed in their midst, and went over the situation again at more length to make the problem clear.

Even the Archdeacon looked serious. The Duke was horrified, yet perplexed. “But what can we do?” he asked, quite innocently.

“Well,” Kenneth said restrainedly, “Lionel's notion seemed to be that we might give him the Graal.”

“Good God!” the Duke said. “Give him the Graal! Give him
that
—when we know that's what he's after!”

Kenneth did not answer at once, then he said slowly: “Barbara's a nice thing; I don't like to think of Barbara being hurt.”

“But what's a woman's life—what are any of our lives—compared to
this
?” the Duke cried.

“No,” Kenneth said, unsatisfied, “no.… But Barbara.… Besides, it isn't her life, it's her reason.”

“I am the more sorry,” the Duke answered. “But this thing is more than the whole world.”

Kenneth looked at the Archdeacon. “Well, it's yours to decide,” he said.

During the previous day it had become evident in Grosvenor Square that a common spiritual concern does not mean a common intellectual agreement. The Duke had risen, the morning after the attack on the Graal, with quite a number of ideas in his mind. The immediate and chief of these had been the removal of the Graal itself to Rome, and its safe custody there. He urged these on his allies at breakfast, and by sheer force of simple confidence in his proposal had very nearly succeeded. The Archdeacon was perfectly ready to admit that Rome, both as a City and a Church, had advantages. It had the habit of relics, the higher way of mind and the lower business organization to deal with them. Rome was as convenient as Westminster, and the Apostolic See more traditional than Canterbury. But he felt that even this relic was not perhaps so important as Rome would inevitably tend to make it. And he felt his own manners concerned. “It would rather feel like stealing my grandmother's lustres from my mother to give to my aunt,” he explained diffidently, noted the Duke's sudden stiffening, and went on hastily: “Besides, I am a man under authority. It isn't for me to settle. The Bishop or the Archbishop, I suppose.”