War in Heaven (6 page)

Mornington opened the door for him and followed him out into the corridor. As they went along it they saw a group, consisting of Gregory and the Rackstraws outside Stephen Persimmons's room at the top of the stairs, and heard Gregory say to Barbara, “Yes, Mrs. Rackstraw, I'm sure that's the best way. You can't teach them what to want and go for because you don't know their minds. But you can teach them what
not
to do—just a few simple rules about what's wrong. Be afraid to do wrong—that's what I used to tell Stephen.”

“
Le malheureux
!” Mornington murmured as he bowed to the group, and let his smile change from one of respect to Gregory to one of friendliness for Barbara. The Archdeacon's foot was poised doubtfully for a moment over the first stair. But, if he had been inclined to go back, he changed his mind and went on towards the front door, with the other in attendance.

“Yes,” Barbara said, distracted by Mornington's passing, “yes, I expect you're right.”

“I suppose,” Gregory remarked, changing the conversation, “that you've settled your holiday plans by now. Where are you going?”

“Well, sir,” Lionel said, “we weren't going away this year at all. But Adrian had a slight attack of measles a month or so ago, so we decided we ought to, just to put him thoroughly right. Only every place is booked up and we don't seem able to get anything.”

“I don't want to seem intrusive,” Gregory said hesitatingly, “but, if you really want a place, there's a cottage—not a very grand one—down near where I live. It's on my grounds actually, and it's quite empty just now … if it's any good to you.”

“But, Mr. Persimmons, how charming of you!” Barbara cried. “That would be delightful and just the thing. Where do you live, by the way?”

“I've just taken a place in the country,” Gregory answered, “in Hertfordshire, near a little village called Fardles. Indeed, I've only just moved in. It belonged to a Lady Sykes-Martindale, but she's been advised to go to Egypt for her health, and I took the house. So it's quite new to me. Adrian and I could explore it together.”

“How splendid!” Barbara said. “But are you quite sure, Mr. Persimmons? I did want to get away, but we were giving up hope. Are you quite sure we shan't be intruding?”

“Not if you will let me see something of you there,” Gregory assured her. “And, if Adrian liked me enough,” he smiled at the boy, “you and your husband——” A motion of his hand threw England open to their excursions.

“It's very good of you, sir,” Lionel began.

“Nonsense, nonsense,” the other answered. “There's the cottage and here are you. I'll write about it. When do you go, Rackstraw? July? I'll write in a week or two, then. And now I must go and look at more figures. Good night, Mrs. Rackstraw. I shall see you again in five weeks or so. Good night, Adrian.” He bowed down to shake the small hand. “Good night, Rackstraw. I'm delighted you'll come.” He waved his hand generally and departed.

“What a divine creature!” Barbara said, going down the stairs. “Adrian darling, we're really going away. Would you like to go into the country?”

“Where is the country?” Adrian said.

“Oh—out there,” Barbara said. “Away from the streets. With fields and cows.”

“I don't like cows,” Adrian said coldly.

“I daresay you won't see any,” Lionel put in. “It does seem rather fortunate, Barbara.”

“I think it's perfectly splendid,” Barbara said joyously.

“Can I take my new train?” Adrian asked. And, in a whirl of assurances that he should take anything he liked or needed or had the slightest inclination to take, they came out into the hot June evening.

Chapter Four

THE FIRST ATTEMPT ON THE GRAAL

The Archdeacon of Castra Parvulorum returned to Fardles and his rectory on the next morning, for a few days' clearing up before he went on his holiday. After he had spent an hour or two in his study, he got up suddenly, and, going out of the house, took the private path that led through his garden and the churchyard to the small Norman Church. The memory of the article he had read in Mornington's office had grown more dominating as he returned to the place where, if Sir Giles Tumulty were right, the Graal, neglected and overlooked, stood in his sacristy. No-one had ever seen the Archdeacon excited, not even when, in the days of his youth, he had assisted his friends to break up a recruiting meeting in the days of the Boer War; and even now he yielded to himself as he might have yielded to a friend's importunities, and went along the path rather with an air of humouring a pleasant but persistent visitor than with any eagerness of his own.

The church stood open, as it always did, from the early celebration till dusk. The verger was at the moment engaged on the Archdeacon's roses, and, since Fardles lay off the main road, it was rarely that it was visited by strangers. Fardles itself indeed lay a little way distant from the church, the nearest houses being about a quarter of a mile off and the main street of the village beginning another quarter of a mile beyond them. The railway station formed the third corner of an equilateral triangle, with the village and the church at the angles of its base. On the other side of the base a similar triangle was formed by the grounds of the late Sir John Horatio Sykes-Martindale's house. The house itself—Cully, as it was called, to the Archdeacon's secret and serious delight, and without any distress to the naturally ignorant Sir John—lay in the middle of its grounds; an enormous overbuilt place, of no particular age and no particular period. And beyond it, towards the apex of this second triangle, lay the empty cottage of which Mr. Gregory Persimmons had spoken to Lionel.

The Archdeacon went into the church and passed on into the sacristy. He unlocked and opened the tall and antique chest in which the sacred vessels were kept, lifted one of them out, and, carrying it back into the church, set it upon the altar. Then he stood and looked at it carefully.

It was old enough, that appeared certain; it was plain enough too, almost severe. The drinking cup itself was some six inches in depth, with a stem in proportion, and a small pedestal which was carried by slowly narrowing work up some distance of the stem. The whole was about fifteen or sixteen inches high. There were, so far as the Archdeacon could see, no markings, no ornamentation, except for a single line, about half an inch below the rim. It was made of silver, so far as he could tell, slightly dented here and there, but still apparently good for a considerable amount of use. It stood there on the altar, as it had done so many mornings, until the grief of Lady Sykes-Martindale had enriched the late Vicar's sacristy with a new gold chalice. And the Archdeacon stood and considered it.

Of course, the thing was not impossible. He did not remember Sir Giles's article accurately enough to know the stages by which the archæologist had traced the Graal from Jerusalem to Fardles: here a general tradition, there a local rumour, a printed paragraph or an unpublished MS., even the remnants of an old tapestry or a carving in a remote Town Hall. He could see clearly that it might all be nothing but a fantasy of peculiar neatness, and he attached little importance to the vessel itself. But he was conscious that a great many people might attach a good deal of importance to it if there were any truth in the story. If it were the Graal, what would they want to do with it? He considered with pleasure that at least it was in the hands of the officials of the Church, and that there were some things that even officials of the Church could not do. They could not, for example, sell it to a millionaire. But why, the Archdeacon asked himself, should he object to it being sold to a millionaire?

He was about to restore the vessel to the sacristy when he asked himself this question, and stayed for a moment or two with it in his hands. Then he changed his mind, went and locked the door of the cabinet, and came back to the altar. “Ah, fair sweet Lord,” he said half-aloud, “let me keep this Thy vessel, if it be Thy vessel; for love's sake, fair Lord, if Thou hast held it in Thy hands, let me take it into mine. And, if not, let me be courteous still to it for Thy sake, courteous Lord; since this might well have been that, and that was touched by Thee.” He smiled a little, took up the chalice, and went back to the Rectory.

There he passed straight to his own pleasant bedroom and opened an inner door which led to a small room, once perhaps a dressing-room. It was furnished now with a pallet-bed, a hard chair or two, a table, and a kneeling-desk. On one otherwise empty wall a crucifix hung; a small shelf in one corner held a few books, and there were one or two more on the table. The window in one of the pair of shorter walls looked out over the graveyard towards the church. The Archdeacon went across to the mantelshelf, set down his burden, looked at it for a minute or two, murmured a prayer, and went down to lunch.

After lunch he walked for a little while in his garden. His
locum tenens
, a rather elderly clergyman whom the Archdeacon thoroughly disliked, but who needed the money that the temporary post would bring him, was not due till the next day. The Archdeacon felt a pang, slight but definite, at the idea that this tall, lean, harassed, talkative, and inefficient priest would sit in his chair and sleep in his bed; not so much that they were his chair and his bed as that it seemed a shame that such ready and pleasant things should be subjected to the invasion of human futility. He put out his hand and touched a flower, then withdrew it. “I am becoming sentimental,” he thought to himself. “How do I know that a chair is full of goodwill, or a bed anxious to please? They may be, but they mayn't. Their life is hidden with Christ in God. Oh, give thanks to the God of all gods,” he sang softly, “for His mercy endureth for ever.”

“Mr. Davenant?” said a voice at his back.

The Archdeacon, a little startled, turned. A large man whose face he dimly remembered was looking over the garden gate.

“Er—yes,” he said vaguely, “that is, yes. I am Mr. Davenant.”

“Mr. Archdeacon, I suppose I ought to say,” the other went on agreeably. “I knew I was wrong as soon as I'd spoken.”

“Not at all,” the Archdeacon answered. “You wanted to see me? Come in, won't you?” He opened the gate for the stranger, who, as he entered, uttered a word of thanks and went on: “Well, I did, rather. My name is Persimmons, Gregory Persimmons. I've just bought Cully, you know, so we shall be neighbours. But I understand from the village talk that you're going away to-morrow, and I didn't come to-day merely for a neighbourly call.”

“Whatever the reason——” the Archdeacon murmured. “Shall we go inside or would you rather sit down over there?” He indicated a garden-seat among the flowers.

“Oh, here, by all means,” Persimmons said. “Thank you.” He accepted a cigarette. “Well the fact is, Mr. Archdeacon, I have come as a beggar and yet not a beggar. I have come to beg for another and pay for myself.”

The Archdeacon put a finger to his glasses. The word Persimmons had taken him back to the previous day's visit to Mornington; and he was asking himself whether this was the voice that had been offering advice on how to train children. There was something about this last sentence also that offended him.

“I know a priest,” Persimmons proceeded, “who is in bad need of some altar furniture, especially the sacred vessels, for a new mission church he's starting. Now, I was talking to one and another down here—the grocer's an ardent churchman, I find. And one of your choir-boys, and so on—as one does. And I gathered—you'll tell me if I'm wrong—that you had an extra chalice here which you didn't often use. So I wondered, as you have the set that Lady Sykes-Martindale gave, whether you'd consider letting me have it at a reasonable price, for my friend.”

“I see,” the Archdeacon said. “Yes, quite. I see what you mean. But, if you'll forgive me asking, Mr. Persimmons, surely a new chalice would be better than a—shall I say, second-hand one?” He threw a deprecating smile at Gregory and loosed an inner secret smile to Christ at the epithet.

“My friend,” Persimmons said, leaning comfortably back and lazily smoking, “my friend hates new furniture for an altar. He has some kind of theory about stored power and concentrated sanctity which I, not being a theologian, don't profess to understand. But the result of it is that he infinitely prefers things that have been used for many years in the past. Perhaps you know the feeling?”

“Yes, I know the feeling,” the Archdeacon said. “But in this instance I'm afraid it can't be rewarded. I'm afraid the chalice is not to be parted with.”

“It's natural you should say that,” the other answered, “for I expect I've put it clumsily, Mr. Archdeacon. But I hope you'll think it over. Of course, I know I'm a stranger, but I want to feel part of the life here, and I thought if I could send out a—a sort of magnetic thrill by buying that chalice for my friend … and I'd be glad to buy another for you if you wanted it replaced … I thought … I don't know … I thought …”

His voice died away, and he sat looking half-wistfully out over the garden, the portrait of a retired townsman trying to find a niche for himself in new surroundings, shy but good-hearted, earnest if a little clumsy, and trying not to touch too roughly upon subjects which he seemed to regard with a certain ignorant alarm. The Archdeacon shot a glance at him, and after a minute's silence shook his head. “No,” he said, “I'm sorry, Mr. Persimmons, but that chalice is not for sale. But perhaps I can do something for you. Over in your direction, some eight miles beyond you, there's a church which I think has exactly the kind of thing you want. I know that recently they had an altar set up in their Lady Chapel, replaced the vessels at the High Altar, and bought fresh ones for the other two. If the Vicar hasn't given his old ones away yet, he's the very man for you—and he hadn't a week ago, because I was over there. I'll give you a note of introduction to him if you like—he's a nice fellow; he's one of the old Rushforths, you know: they're a side branch of the Herberts. A good old Anglican family, one might say. His Christian name's Herbert—a very pleasant fellow. Devoted to the Church, too. Fasts in Lent and all that kind of thing, I believe; and they do say he hears confessions—but I don't want to take any notice of that unless I'm driven to. It wouldn't matter, of course, I couldn't do anything—that's the great charm of being an Archdeacon, one never can. But there's a certain prestige and so on, and I don't want to throw that, for what it's worth, against him. Herbert Rushforth, yes, I'll certainly give you a note. Or, even better—I have to go out that way—probably—possibly—this evening, and I'll call on him and ask him myself. And, if he has them still, he'll be delighted for you to have them; you needn't mind in the least—he's extremely well-to-do. He'll want to leave them at Cully to-morrow, and perhaps he will. Even if you don't want to take them over personally, as, of course, you may, he could have them sent to your friend. Where did you say his church was?” The Archdeacon, a fountain-pen in his hand, a slip of paper on his knee, looked pleasantly and inquiringly at Mr. Persimmons, and all round them the flowers gently stirred.