War in Heaven - Charles Williams (reading the story of the .TXT) 📗

Giles Tumulty!” Stephen said. “I don’t dismiss my people to please Giles Tumulty.”

“He’s a source of revenue,” Kenneth pointed out. “And Mr. Gregory Persimmons will probably be rather annoyed himself.”

“My dear Mornington,” Stephen said, looking at the papers on his table, “my father wouldn’t dream of interfering… either with me or with the staff—especially any of his old staff.” He heard his own voice so unconvincingly that he walked over to the window and looked out. He felt his possession—his business and occupation and security—beginning to quiver around him as he considered the foreboded threat. He knew that he was incapable of standing up against his father’s determination, but he knew also that the determination would not have to be called into play; the easier method of threatening his financial stability would be used. His father, Stephen had long felt, never put forward more power than was sufficient to achieve his object; it was the vaster force in reserve which helped to create that sense of laziness emanating from the elder Persimmons, as a man who pushes a book across with a finger seems more indolent than one who picks it up and lays it down in a new place. But an attack on Mornington roused alarm in Stephen on every side. His subordinate was as far indispensable to the business as anyone ever is; he was personally sympathetic, and Stephen was very unwilling to undergo the contempt which he felt the other would show for him if he yielded. Of the more obvious disadvantages of dismissal to Kenneth, Stephen in this bird’s-eye view of the situation took little heed; “I can always get him another job,” he thought, and returned to his own troubles.

Kenneth in these few minutes’ silence realized that he would have to fight for his own hand, with the Graal (figuratively) in it.

“Well,” he said, “I’ve told you about it, sir, so that if anything is said you may know our point of view.”

“Our,” said Gregory’s voice behind him, “meaning the Archdeacon and your other friend, I suppose?”

Stephen jumped round. Kenneth looked over his shoulder. “Hallo,” the publisher said, “I… I didn’t expect you.”

Gregory looked disappointed. “Tut, tut!” he said. “Now I hoped you always did. I hoped you were always listening for my step. And I think you are. I think you expect me every moment of the day. A pleasant thought, that. However, I only came down now to put a private telephone call through.” He laid his hat and gloves on the table. Kenneth was unable to resist the impulse.

“A new hat, I’m afraid, Mr. Persimmons,” he said. “And new gloves. The Chief Constable, of course, had them.” Gregory, sitting down, looked sideways at him. “Yes,” he said, “we shall have to economize somehow. Expenses are dreadfully heavy. I want to go through the salary list with you in a few minutes, Stephen.”

“I’ll send for it,” Stephen said, with a nervous smile.

“Oh, I don’t think you need,” Gregory answered. “Only a few items; perhaps only one to-day. In fact, we could settle it now—I mean Mr. Kenneth Mornington’s item. Don’t you thing we pay him too much?”

“Ha, ha!” Stephen said, with a twisted grin. “What do you say, Mornington?”

Kenneth said nothing, and Gregory in a moment or two went on, “That is immaterial; in fact, the salary itself is immaterial. He is to be dismissed as a dishonest employee.”

“Really—” Stephen said. “Father, you can’t talk like that, especially when he’s here.”

“On the contrary,” Kenneth said, “he can quite easily talk like that. It’s a little like Sir Giles certainly, but your father, if I may say so, sir, never had much originality. Charming, no doubt, as a man, but as a publisher—third rate. And as for dishonesty… “

Gregory allowed himself to smile. “That,” he said, “is vulgar abuse. Stephen, pay him if you’d rather and get rid of him.”

“There is such a thing as wrongful dismissal,” Kenneth remarked.

“My dear fellow,” Gregory said, “we’re reducing our staff in consequence of my returning to an active business life… did you speak, Stephen? … and you suffer. And your present employer and I between us can make it precious difficult for you to get another job. However, you can always sponge on the Duke or your clerical friend. Stephen… “

“I won’t,” Stephen said; “the thing’s ridiculous. Just because you two have quarrelled… “

“Mr. Stephen Persimmons featuring the bluff employer,” his father murmured. He got up, went over to the publisher, and began whispering in his ear, following him as he took a few steps and halted again. Kenneth had an impulse to say that he resigned, and another to knock Gregory down and trample on him. He stared at him, and felt a new anger rising above the personal indignation he had felt before. He wanted to smash; he wanted to strangle Gregory and push him also underneath Lionel’s desk; for the sake of destroying he desired to destroy. The contempt he had always felt leapt fierce and raging in him; till now it had always dwelt in a secret house of his own; if anything, calming his momentary irritations. But now it and anger were one. He took a blind step forward, heard Stephen exclaim, and Gregory loose a high cackle of delight. “God, he likes it!” he thought to himself, and pulled madly at his emotions. “Sweet Jesus,” he began, and found that he was speaking aloud.

Gregory was in front of him. “Sweet Jesus,” his voice said jeeringly. “Sweet filth, sweet nothing!” Kenneth struck out, missed, felt himself struck in turn, heard a high voice laughing at him, was caught and freed himself, then was caught by half a dozen hands, and recovered at last to find himself held by two or three clerks, Stephen shuddering against the wall, and Gregory opposite him, sitting in his son’s chair.

“Take him away and throw him down the steps,” Gregory said; and, though it was not done literally, it was effectively. Still clutching the proofs of Sacred Vessels, Kenneth came dazedly into the street and walked slowly back to Grosvenor Square.

When he reached it, he found the Duke and the Archdeacon were both out, and Thwaites on guard in the Duke’s private room. The Duke returned to dinner, at which he found Kenneth a poor companion. The Archdeacon returned considerably later, having been detained on ecclesiastical business first (“I had to come up anyhow,” he explained, “this afternoon, so Mr. Persimmons didn’t really disarrange me”), and secondly by a vain search for the Bishop.

The three went to the Duke’s room for coffee, which however, was neglected while Kenneth repeated the incidents of the afternoon. The removal of the proofs, which was a mild satisfaction, led to the employment question, on which both his hearers, more moved, began to babble of secretaries, and from that to an account of the riot. When Kenneth came to repeat, apologetically, Gregory’s cries, the Duke was startled into a horrified disgust; the Archdeacon smiled a little.

“I’m sorry you let yourself go so,” he said. “We must be careful not to get like him.”

“Sorry?” the Duke cried. “After that vile blasphemy? I wish I could have got near enough to have torn his throat out.

“Oh, really, really,” the Archdeacon protested. “Let us leave that kind of thing to Mr. Persimmons.”

“To insult God—” the Duke began.

“How can you insult God?” the Archdeacon asked. “About as much as you can pull His nose. For Kenneth to have knocked Mr. Persimmons down for calling him dishonest would have been natural—a venial sin, at most; for him to have done it in order to avenge God would have been silly; but for him to have got into a blurred state of furious madness is a great deal too like Mr. Persimmons’s passions to please me. And I am not at all clear that Mr. Persimmons doesn’t know it. We must keep calm. His mind’s calm enough.”

“At least,” Mornington said, “we’re pretty certain now.” And with the word they all turned and looked at the Graal which the Duke, when they entered, had withdrawn from the safe. In a minute the Duke, crossing himself, knelt down before it. Kenneth followed his example. The Archdeacon stood up.

Under the concentrated attention the vessel itself seemed to shine and expand. In each of them differently the spirit was moved and exalted— most perhaps in the Duke. He was aware of a sense of the adoration of kings—the great tradition of his house stirred within him. The memories of proscribed and martyred priests awoke; masses said swiftly and in the midst of the fearful breathing of a small group of the faithful; the ninth Duke who had served the Roman Pontiff at his private mass; the Roman Order he himself wore; the fidelity of his family to the Faith under the anger of Henry and the cold suspicion of Elizabeth; the duels fought in Richmond Park by the thirteenth Duke in defence of the honour of our Lady, when he met and killed three antagonists consecutively—all these things, not so formulated but certainly there, drew his mind into a vivid consciousness of all the royal and sacerdotal figures of the world adoring before this consecrated shrine. “Jhesu, Rex et Sacerdos,” he prayed…

Kenneth trembled in a more fantastic vision. This, then, was the thing from which the awful romances sprang, and the symbolism of a thousand tales. He saw the chivalry of England riding on its quest—but not a historical chivalry; and, though it was this they sought, it was some less material vision that they found. But this had rested in dreadful and holy hands; the Prince Immanuel had so held it, and the Apostolic chivalry had banded themselves about him. Half in dream, half in vision, he saw a grave young God communicating to a rapt companionship the mysterious symbol of unity. They took oaths beyond human consciousness; they accepted vows plighted for them at the beginning of time. Liturgical and romantic names melted into one cycle—Lancelot, Peter, Joseph, Percivale, Judas, Mordred, Arthur, John Bar-Zebedee, Galahad— and into these were caught up the names of their makers—Hawker and Tennyson, John, Malory and the medievals. They rose, they gleamed and flamed about the Divine hero, and their readers too-he also, least of all these. He was caught in the dream of Tennyson; together they rose on the throbbing verse.

And down the long beam stole the Holy Graal, Rose-red with beatings in it.

He heard Malory’s words-“the history of the Sangreal, the whiche is a story cronycled for one of the truest and the holyest that is in thys world”-“the deadly flesh began to behold the spiritual things”-“fair lord, commend me to Sir Lancelot my father.” The single tidings came to him across romantic hills; he answered with the devotion of a romantic and abandoned heart.

The Archdeacon found no such help in the remembrances of kings or poets. He looked at the rapt faces of the young men; he looked at the vessel before him. “Neither is this Thou,” he breathed; and answered, “Yet this also is Thou.” He considered, in this, the chalice offered at every altar, and was aware again of a general movement of all things towards a narrow channel. Of all material things still discoverable in the world the Graal had been nearest to the Divine and Universal Heart. Sky and sea and land were moving, “not towards that vessel, but towards all it symbolized and had held.” The consecration at the Mysteries was for him no miraculous change; he had never dreamed of the heavenly courts attending Christ upon the altar. But in accord with the desire of the Church expressed in the ritual of the Church the Sacred Elements seemed to him to open upon the Divine Nature, upon Bethlehem