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

Archdeacon said. “There is no use in thinking of it and weighing one thing against another. When the time comes He shall dispose as He will, or rather He shall be as He will, as He is.”

“Does He will Gregory Persimmons?” Kenneth said wryly.

“Certainly He wills him,” the Archdeacon said, “since He wills that Persimmons shall be whatever he seems to choose. That is not technically correct perhaps, but it is that which I believe and feel and know.”

“He wills evil, then?” Kenneth said.

“‘Shall there be evil in the City and I the Lord have not done it?’” the Archdeacon quoted. “But I feel certain He wills us to get down to Fardles. And of the rest we will talk later.”

Neither Kenneth nor the Duke accused the priest of evading the issue, for both of them felt he was speaking from a world of experience into which they had hardly entered. They fell back on the simpler idea that agony and evil were displeasing to God, but that He permitted them, and indeed Kenneth, at any rate, found it necessary, while he telephoned to Lionel their decision to come to Cully, and even on the way there, to keep this firmly in his mind as a counterbalance to the anxiety that he felt. For never before had he been confronted with the fact that certain strong and effective minds were ready and willing to inflict pain with or without a cause. He was becoming frightened of Gregory, and he naturally and inevitably therefore decided that Gregory was displeasing to God. It was his only defence; in such a crisis “if God did not exist it would be necessary to invent Him.”

Yet this, even up to the moment when they all met in the hall at Cully, Lionel had refrained from doing. That the universe was displeasing to him did not prove that a god existed who could save him from the universe. But the universe seemed sometimes to relax a little, to permit a little grace to be wrung from it; and he thought it barely possible that such small grace might be granted now. It was undignified to be so greedy, but it was for Barbara—he excused himself to his own scornful mind.

Manasseh had arrived before the other three, and had spent the interval chatting with Gregory in the hall. Persimmons had begged Lionel so earnestly not to make any attempt to moderate his terms, and had seemed to have such a belief in and such a respect for his skill and obstinacy, that Lionel had easily fallen in with the suggestion. Cully had been placed so entirely at his disposal; the chalice itself had been—or was to be—his to yield to Manasseh; his anxiety about Adrian had been reduced; lastly, the possibility of a cure for Barbara had been so wholly Gregory’s idea that prudence as well as gratitude demanded so much. He remained therefore, rather to the annoyance of the nurse, who had come by the same train as Manasseh, in Barbara’s room, wondering whether the occasional flicker of movement he seemed to discern in her was real or only the suggestion of his own hope or fear.

Manasseh chatted with Gregory, and as the two paced the hall their sympathy with Lionel and Barbara seemed considerably lightened. “It only needs two things,” Gregory said. “You must be firm when the other people come, and you ought to be able to do something to make Rackstraw think his wife is getting over it.”

“Trust me to be firm,” Manasseh answered. “As for the other—I think I can do that too. I’ve got some stuff that will send her into the heaviest sleep she’s ever known; morphia’s nothing to it. And it’ll last for forty-eight hours or so. By then we can be away.”

“I wonder if we’ve done wisely, after all,” Gregory said. “But I don’t altogether trust the way things are shaping here. They carry heavy guns, with the Duke—and Tumulty tells me the police haven’t dropped that killing yet.”

“What—Pattison?” Manasseh asked in surprise. “But Dimitri told me that he thought you’d managed that very well. He was sent to you, wasn’t he?”

“He was sent from within,” Gregory said. “It was made clear to me that I must kill, and he happened to be getting difficult. He did a pretty little piece of forgery for me once and played up well. But a few months ago he came across a Wesleyan mission-preacher and began to get troublesome. I was going to send him to Canada—but the other chance seemed too good to lose. So it was that.”

Manasseh looked at him approvingly. “You will find soon,” he said, “that possession is nothing besides destruction. We will go together to the East, and take the child and the Cup with us. And we will leave this madness behind us—and perhaps something else. We will talk with Dimitri. I should like to leave a memory of us with that priest.”

There was a ring at the front door. Ludding, who had been told to be in attendance, came through to open it. At the other end of the hall Gregory and Manasseh turned to meet their guests, and Ludding, almost achieving irony, cried out in the voice of a herald: “The Duke of the North Ridings, the Archdeacon of Fardles, Mr. Mornington.”

They entered, the Archdeacon carrying a small case, from which Persimmons carefully kept his eyes averted. They entered, and he said to Ludding: “Ask Mr. Rackstraw to come down.” Then, as the man went away, he went on: “It is better that Mr. Rackstraw, and Dr. Manasseh here, and you should settle what is to be done. I have given over to Mr. Rackstraw all my interest in the chalice.”

The Archdeacon bowed formally and looked at Manasseh. Immediately afterwards Lionel came down the stairs to join them, nodded to Kenneth, and was introduced by Gregory to Manasseh. Then Persimmons went on: “I’ll leave you to discuss it for a few minutes. But one way or another the thing should be settled at once.” He turned away up the stairs and along the corridor from which Lionel had come.

He went, indeed, straight to the room where Barbara lay, chatted for a moment or two with the nurse, who was about to dress the wound, and then went over to the bed, where he paused to look down on her.

“Poor dear,” he said thoughtfully, “and on her holiday, and in such glorious weather!”

“It seems to make it worse somehow, doesn’t it, sir?” the nurse said, Mr. Persimmons of Cully being obviously an important personage. Gregory shook his head and sighed. “Yes,” he said, “it’s very sad, very. And we have fine country here, too. You know it—no? Oh, you must. In your breaks you’ll use my car as much as you want, won’t you? Now, over there,” he went on, drowning the nurse’s hesitating thanks, “they say you can almost see the top of the spire of Norwich Cathedral,”

“Norwich!” the nurse said, surprised and turning to look out of the window.

“They say!” Gregory said, half-laughing, and running his finger down the long, unhealed wound twice and again. “But I admit I’ve never seen it. However, I mustn’t delay you now. Perhaps you’ll let me take you for a run one afternoon.”

He smiled, nodded, left the room, and strolled back along the corridor to the top of the stairs.

“… moral decency demands it,” the Duke was saying. “I am not concerned with all that,” Manasseh answered, more truthfully than any but Gregory knew. “I have told you that from what Mr. Persimmons has told me I am sure I can heal Mrs. Rackstraw. But I must have my price. Unless I have it I will not act.”

“There are English doctors,” the Duke said coldly.

“Yes,” Manasseh said, “you have tried one. Well, as you like—”

Gregory frowned. It was the Duke again, he supposed. But he himself dared not interfere; that would probably make matters worse, for he was suspect to all save Lionel. Well, he would have Adrian, anyhow; the other must be tried for again. But another five minutes might make a difference; he hoped Manasseh wouldn’t rush things. Lionel and Kenneth were speaking together; the Archdeacon was imperceptibly drawn in, and the other two awaited their decision.

“I cannot buy it,” Lionel broke out; “I have no possible excuse for asking for it. I ought not to have told you even. But I have told you, and there is an end to it.”

“No, but, Lionel—” Kenneth began.

“Mr. Rackstraw,” the Archdeacon interrupted, “the end to it is very simple. For myself, I would not have delayed so long. I would give up any relic, however wonderful, to save anyone an hour’s neuralgia—man depends too much on these things. But, having friends, I felt only—”

He stopped. For from above the shrieks that had shaken Cully the previous night had suddenly begun again. The nurse came flying to the stairs, crying, “She’s up, and I can’t hold her. Help! help!” But almost at the same instant Barbara was there too, her face wild with an appalling fear, her arms wide and clutching, her voice shrieking incomprehensible things, of which the group in the hall caught only the wild words: “The edge! the edge!” and then again, “I can’t stop! The edge, the edge!” Gregory sprang as if to check her; she was past him and rushing down the stairs. Lionel and Kenneth met her as she came, and were flung aside by the irresistible energy that held her. The Duke, horrified, took an unintentional step back and crashed into the Archdeacon, so that Manasseh ran forward alone towards the foot of the stairs. The voice now was beyond description terrible, and still she cried, “The edge, the edge!” and still was hurled blindly forward. And then, at the very height of the agonizing moment, when it seemed that some immediate destruction must rend her whole being, of a sudden the voice faltered and stopped. As Manasseh closed upon her she paused, stumbled, and in one long gentle movement seemed to collapse towards the floor. He had her before she reached it, but, as his eyes momentarily met Gregory’s, there appeared in them a great perplexity. In a second or two they were all around her; Lionel and Kenneth moved with her to one of the long seats scattered about the hall and laid her gently down, and Manasseh bent over her. She seemed, as she lay there, almost as if asleep; asleep in that half-repose, half-collapse, which follows prolonged strain. A few tears crept from her closed eyes; her body shook a little, but as if from the mere after-effects of agony, not in the stiff spasms of agony itself. Manasseh straightened himself, and looked round at the others. “I think it is over,” he said. “It will need time and patience, but the will is caught and brought back. Her mind will now be safe—now or presently, I cannot tell to a few days. There may be another slighter outbreak, but I do not think so.” He drew a small bottle from his pocket.

“Give her two drops of this—not more—in a wineglass of water when she wakes, and once every twelve hours afterwards. I will come down again the day after to-morrow.”

Kenneth giggled hysterically. Manasseh’s speech had an insane likeness to any doctor concluding a visit. Of course, doctors were all the same, but the Archdeacon’s black case, the anguish they had seen in Barbara’s face, seemed to demand a more exalted conclusion. His giggle passed unnoticed, however, for the Archdeacon was holding the case out to Manasseh. “This is what you wanted, I think,” he said, paused a moment, and added as he turned to the door, “But no bargain yet brought anyone near