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

seemed to sit there opposite him merely a projection of his own memories of a thousand evenings when she had sat so? What mightn’t be true, in this terrifying and obscene universe?

Barbara’s voice—or the voice of the apparent Barbara—broke in. “But, dearest,” she said, “how dreadful for you! Why didn’t you tell me? You must have had a horrible time.” She dropped the paper again and hurled herself on to her knees beside him.

He caught her hand in his own, and felt as if his body at least was sane, whatever his mind might be. After all, the universe had produced Barbara. And Adrian, who, though a nuisance, was at least delimited and real in his own fashion. The fantastic child of his dream, evil and cruel and vigilant, couldn’t at the same time have Adrian’s temper and Adrian’s indefatigable interest in things. Even devils couldn’t be normal children at the same time. He brought his wife’s wrist to his cheek, and the touch subdued the rising hysteria within him. “It was rather a loathsome business,” he said, and put out his other hand for the cigarettes.

II

Mornington had on various occasions argued with Lionel whether pessimism was always the result of a too romantic, even a too sentimental, view of the world; and a slightly scornful mind pointed out to him, while he ate a solitary meal in his rooms that evening, that the shock which he undoubtedly had felt was the result of not expecting people to murder other people. “Whereas they naturally do,” he said to himself. “The normal thing with an unpleasant intrusion is to try and exclude it— human or not. So silly not to be prepared for these things. Some people, as De Quincey said, have a natural aptitude for being murdered. To kill or to be killed is a perfectly reasonable thing. And I will not let it stop me taking those lists round to the Vicar’s.”

He got up, collected the papers which he had been analysing for reports on parochial finance, and went off to the Vicarage of St. Cyprian’s, which was only a quarter of an hour from his home. He disliked himself for doing work that he disliked, but he had never been able to refuse help to any of his friends; and the Vicar might be numbered among them. Mornington suspected his Christianity of being the inevitable result of having moved for some time as a youth of eighteen in circles which were, in a rather detached and superior way, opposed to it; but it was a religion which enabled him to despise himself and everyone else without despising the universe, thus allowing him at once in argument or conversation the advantages of the pessimist and the optimist. It was because the Vicar, a hard-worked practical priest, had been driven by stress of experience to some similar standpoint that the two occasionally found one another congenial.

That evening, however, he found a visitor at the Vicarage, a round, dapper little cleric in gaiters, who was smoking a cigar and turning over the pages of a manuscript. The Vicar pulled Mornington into the study where they were sitting.

“My dear fellow,” he said, “come in, come in. We’ve been talking about you. Let me introduce the Archdeacon of Castra Parvulorum—Mr. Mornington. What a dreadful business this is at your office! Did you have anything to do with it?”

Mornington saluted the Archdeacon, who took off his eyeglasses and bowed back. “Dreadful,” he said, tentatively Mornington thought; rather as if he wasn’t quite sure what the other wanted him to say, and was anxious to accommodate himself to what was expected. “Yes, dreadful!”

“Well,” Mornington answered, rebelling against this double sympathy, “of course, it was a vast nuisance. It disturbed the whole place. And I forgot to send the copy for our advertisement in the Bookman—so we shan’t get in this month. That’s the really annoying part. I hate being defeated by a murder. And it wasn’t even in my own room.”

“Ah, that’s the trade way of looking at it,” the Vicar said. “You’ll have some coffee? But this poor fellow… is it known at all who he was?”

“Nary a know,” Mornington answered brightly. “The police have the body as the clue, and that’s all. Rather large, and inconvenient to lug about, and of course only available for a few days. Nature, you know. But it’s the Bookman that annoys me—you wouldn’t believe how much.”

“Oh, come, not really!” the Vicar protested. “You wouldn’t compare the importance of an advertisement with a murder.”

“I think Mr. Mornington’s quite right,” the Archdeacon said. “After all, one shouldn’t be put out of one’s stride by anything phenomenal and accidental. The just man wouldn’t be.”

“But, still, a murder—” the Vicar protested.

The Archdeacon shrugged. “Murders or mice, the principle’s the same,” he answered. “To-morrow is too late, I suppose?”

“Quite,” Mornington answered. “But I needn’t worry you with my phenomenal and specialist troubles.”

“As a matter of fact,” the Archdeacon went on placidly, “we were talking about your firm at first rather differently.” He pointed with his glasses to the manuscript on the table, and looked coyly at Mornington. “I dare say you can guess,” he added.

Mornington tried to look pleased, and said in a voice that almost cracked with doubt: “Books?”

“A book,” the Vicar said. “The Archdeacon’s been giving a series of addresses on Christianity and the League of Nations, and he’s made them into a little volume which ought to have a good sale. So, of course, I thought of you.”

“Thank you so much,” Mornington answered. “And you’ll excuse me asking— but is the Archdeacon prepared to back his fancy? Will he pay if necessary?”

The Archdeacon shook his head. “I couldn’t do that, Mr. Mornington,” he said. “It doesn’t seem to me quite moral, so to speak. You know how they say a book is like a child. One has a ridiculous liking for one’s own child—quite ridiculous. And that’s all right. But seriously to think it’s better than other children, to push it, to ‘back’ its being better, as you said—that seems to me so silly as to be almost wicked.” He shook his head sadly at the manuscript.

“On the general principle I don’t agree with you,” Mornington said. “If your ideas are better than others’ you ought to push them. I’ve no patience with our modern democratic modesty. How do you know the publisher you send it to is a better judge than you are? And, if he rejects it, what do you do?”

“If I send it to all the publishers,” the Archdeacon answered, “and they all reject it, I think I should believe them. Securus iudicat, you know.”

“But it doesn’t,” Mornington said. “Not by any manner of means. The orbis terrarum has to be taught its business by the more intelligent people. It has never yet received a new idea into its chaotic mind unless imposed by force, and generally by the sword.”

He picked up the MS. and turned over the pages. “‘The Protocol and the Pact,’” he read aloud, “‘as Stages in Man’s Consciousness.’ ‘Qualities and Nationalities.’ ‘Modes of Knowledge in Christ and Their Correspondences in Mankind.’ ‘Is the League of Nations Representative?’”

“I gather,” he said, looking up, “that this is at once specialist and popular. I don’t for a moment suppose we shall take it, but I should like to have a look at it. May I carry it off now?”

“I think I’d like to keep it over the week-end,” the Archdeacon answered. “There’s a point or two I want to think over and a little Greek I want to check. Perhaps I might bring it down to you on Monday or Tuesday?”

“Do,” Mornington said. “Of course, I shan’t decide. It’ll go to one of our political readers, who won’t, I should think from the chapter-headings, even begin to understand it. But bring it along by all means. Persimmons’ list is the most muddled-up thing in London. ‘Foxy Flossie’s Flirtations’ and ‘Notes on Black Magic Considered Philosophically’. But that, of course, is his father, so there’s some excuse.”

“I thought you told me the elder Mr. Persimmons had retired,” the Vicar said.

“He is the Evening Star,” Mornington answered. “He cuts the glory from the grey, as it were. But he pops in a good deal so as to do it. He hovers on the horizon perpetually, and about once a fortnight lightens from the east to the west, or at least to Persimmons’ private office. A nice enough creature—with a perverse inclination towards the occult.”

“I’m afraid,” the Vicar said gloomily, “this interest in what they call the occult is growing. It’s a result of the lack of true religion in these days and a wrong curiosity.”

“Oh, wrong, do you think?” Mornington asked. “Would you say any kind of curiosity was wrong? What about Job?”

“Job?” the Archdeacon asked.

“Well, sir, I always understood that where Job scored over the three friends was in feeling a natural curiosity why all those unfortunate things happened to him. They simply put up with it, but he, so to speak, asked God what He thought He was doing.”

The Vicar shook his head. “He was told he couldn’t understand.”

“He was taunted with not being able to understand—which isn’t quite the same thing,” Mornington answered. “As a mere argument there’s something lacking perhaps, in saying to a man who’s lost his money and his house and his family and is sitting on the dustbin, all over boils, ‘Look at the hippopotamus.’”

“Job seemed to be impressed,” the Archdeacon said mildly.

“Yes,” Mornington admitted. “He was certainly a perfect fool, in one meaning or other of the words.” He got up to go, and added: “Then I shall see you in the City before you go back to… Castra Parvulorum, was it? What a jolly name!”

“Unfortunately it isn’t generally called that,” the Archdeacon said. “It’s called in directories and so on, and by the inhabitants, Fardles. By Grimm’s Law.”

“Grimm’s Law?” Mornington asked, astonished. “Wasn’t he the man who wrote the fairy tales for the parvuli? But why did he make a law about it? And why did anyone take any notice?”

“I understand it was something to do with Indo-European sounds,” the Archdeacon answered. “The Castra was dropped, and in parvulorum the p became f and the v became d. And Grimm discovered what had happened. But I try and keep the old name as well as I can. It’s not far from London. They say Caesar gave it the name because his soldiers caught a lot of British children there, and he sent them back to their own people.”

“Then I don’t see why Grimm should have interfered,” Mornington said, shaking hands. “Fardles… it sounds like an essay by Maurice Hewlett. Castra Parvulorum… it sounds like… it sounds like Rome. Well, good night, sir. Good night, Vicar. No, don’t come to the door.”

III

Actually at the moment when Mornington was speaking of him the elder Mr. Persimmons was sitting in a comfortable chair in an Ealing flat, listening to his son’s account of the afternoon’s adventure. He was a large man, and he lay back watching Stephen with amused eyes, as the younger man grew more and more agitated over the incredible facts.

“I’m so afraid it’ll be bad for business,” he ended abruptly.

The other sighed a little and looked at the fire. “Business,” he said. “Oh, I shouldn’t worry about business. If they want your books, they’ll buy your books.” He paused a little, and added: “I called in to see you to-day, but you were out.”

“Did you?” his son said. “They didn’t tell me.”

“Just as well,” Mr. Persimmons answered, “because you needn’t know now. You won’t be called at the inquest. Only, if anybody ever