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

or thirty years ago as he has to-day. But the war made a great difference. Men nowadays don’t seem so willing to be taught.”

“Ah, there you have me, sir,” the inspector answered. “I don’t have much to do with teaching them, only with those who won’t be taught. And I’ve seen some of them look pretty white,” he added viciously.

“Ah, a guilty conscience,” Mr. Batesby said. “Yes—guilt makes the heavy head to bend, the saddened heart to sob, and happy they who ere their end can feel remorseful throb. Love castest out perfect fear. Nothing is sadder, I think, than to see a man or woman afraid.”

“It doesn’t do to trust to it.” The inspector shook his head. “It may drive them almost silly any moment, and make them dangerous. I’ve known a little whipper-snapper fairly gouge a policeman’s eyes out.”

“Really?” Mr. Batesby said. “Dear me, how sad! I don’t think I know what fear is—temperamentally. Of course, an accident… “

“You have never been afraid of anyone?” the stranger said, his voice floating through the air as if issuing from it.

“Yes,” the inspector said, “and pretty often.”

“Not, I think, afraid of anyone,” Mr. Batesby said, mysteriously accentuating the preposition. “Of course, every priest has unpleasant experiences. Once, I remember, I was making a call on a farmer and a pig got into the room, and we couldn’t get it to go away. And there are callers.”

“Callers are the devil—I mean, the devil of a nuisance,” the inspector remarked.

“You see, you can get rid of them,” the clergyman said. “But we have to be patient. ‘Offend not one of these little ones, lest a millstone is hanged about his neck.’ Patience, sympathy, help. A word in season bringeth forth his fruit gladly.”

The air stirred about him to the question. “And do these cause you fear?”

“Oh, not fear! by no means fear!” Mr. Batesby said. “Though, of course, sometimes one has to be firm. To pull them together. To try and give them a backbone. I have known some poor specimens. I remember meeting one not far from here. He looked almost sick and yellow, and I did what I could to hearten him up.”

“Why was he looking so bad?” the inspector asked.

“Well, it was a funny story,” Mr. Batesby said, looking meditatively through the stranger, who was leaning against the inn wall, “and I didn’t quite understand it all. Of course, I saw what was wrong with him at once. Hysteria. I was very firm with him. I said, ‘Get a hold on yourself.’ He’d been talking to a Wesleyan.”

Mr. Batesby paused long enough for the inspector to say, with a slight frown, “I’m almost a Wesleyan myself,” gave him a pleasant smile as if he had been waiting for this, and went on: “Quite, quite, and very fine preachers many of them are. But a little unbalanced sometimes— emotional, you know. Too much emotion doesn’t do, does it? Like poetry and all that, not stern enough. Thought, intelligence, brain—that’s what helps. Well, this man had been saved—he called it saved, and there he was as nervous as could be.”

“What was he nervous about if he’d been saved?” the inspector asked idly.

Mr. Batesby smiled again. “It seems funny to say it in cold blood,” he said, “but, do you know, he was quite sure he was going to be killed? He didn’t know how, he didn’t know who, he didn’t know when. He’d just been saved at a Wesleyan mission hall and he was going to be killed by the devil. So I heartened him up.”

The inspector had come together with a jerk; the young stranger was less energetic and less observable than the flowers in the inn garden behind him.

“Who was this man?” the inspector said. “Did you hear any more of him?”

“Nothing much,” Mr. Batesby said. “I rather gathered that he’d been employed somewhere near here and was going to Canada, but he wasn’t very clear. It was over in my own church that I actually met him, not at Fardles. So I lent him a little book—two, as a matter of fact. One was called Present Helps and one was The Sand and the Rock. I must have given away hundreds of them. He sent them back to me a week or two after from London.”

“Did he write a letter with them?” the inspector asked.

“Well, he did, in fact,” Mr. Batesby said. “A touching little note— very touching. It shows how ideas get hold of people. I believe I’ve got it somewhere.” He felt in his pocket, and from a number of papers extracted a folded letter. “Here we are,” he said.

REVEREND SIR,—I return you your books, which you very kindly lent me. I’ve no doubt they’re quite right, but they don’t seem to mean the precious Blood. They don’t help me when the devil comes. He’ll kill me one day, but my blessed Saviour will have me then, I know, but I daren’t think of it. I hope he won’t hurt me much. It’s quite right, I’m not grumbling. I’ve asked for it all. And Jesus will save me at last.

Thank you for the books, which I return herewith. I’ve not read them both all as I’m rather worried. I am,

Reverend Sir,

Yours faithfully,

JAMES MONTGOMERY PATTISON.

“A nice letter,” Mr. Batesby said. “But of course, the devil—!”

“Excuse me, sir,” the inspector said, “but is there any address on that letter?”

“Yes,” said Mr. Batesby, slightly surprised; “227 Thobblehurst Road, Victoria, S.W.”

“Thank you, sir; and the date?”

“May 27th,” Mr. Batesby said, staring.

“Humph,” the inspector said. “And to think it’s within two doors of my own house! A small man, you said, sir?”

“Rather small,” Mr. Batesby said. “Oh, decidedly rather small. Rather unintelligent-looking, you know. But did you know him, then?”

“I think I met him once or twice,” the inspector said. “If I should want to ask you any more questions, shall you be here?”

“I shall be at my own parish, over there: Ridings, at the Vicarage. The Duke’s house is in it you know, in the parish—Ridings Castle. I’m sorry he’s a Papist, though in a sense he was born blind.”

“Humph,” the inspector said again. “Well, I must get off. Goodbye, Sir.” He fled into the inn.

Against the grey wall Mr. Batesby saw the young stranger’s grey figure. “How silent you are,” he said. “Thinking, yes, thinking no doubt.”

“I was thinking that even a sparrow has its ghost,” the other said, “and that all things work together.”

“For good,” Mr. Batesby concluded.

“For God,” the other substituted, and moved away.

In Ridings Castle that afternoon the Duke and Kenneth endeavoured to talk poetry. But both of them were distracted—the Duke by the memory of the Graal and Kenneth by the thought of Barbara; and conversation after conversation either dropped or led them wanderingly back to these subjects. Never, Kenneth thought, had he supposed that so much of English literature was occupied either with the Graal or with madness. Before them at every turn moved the Arthurian chivalry or Tom o’ Bedlam. And at last, about tea-time, they both seemed to give up the attempt and fell into a silence, which lasted until Kenneth said rather hesitatingly, “I should like to know how Barbara’s getting along.”

The Duke shrugged. “Naturally,” he said, “but I don’t see how you can. You can hardly call at Cully and ask Persimmons.”

“What I should like to do would be to run across Rackstraw privately,” Kenneth answered. “I’ve half a mind just to go and hang round a little while on the chance. He might come out for a walk, mightn’t he?”

“He might,” the Duke said. “I shouldn’t, myself, leave my wife, if I had one, alone with Mr. Gregory. But your friend seems to like him.”

“I think you’re a little unfair,” Mornington said. “After all, Lionel hasn’t known what we have. He doesn’t even know that I’ve been kicked out of the office.”

The Duke, with an effort, said, “I expect I am. But when I think of his getting his foul paws on the Cup, I—I could murder your Archdeacon.”

There was another silence, then he went on: “And even now I’m not satisfied. After all, what exactly did this doctor do? From what I could see, he hadn’t reached her when she fainted.”

Kenneth looked up swiftly. “That’s what I’ve been wondering about,” he said. “Only it’s easy to be deceived. But I was on the stairs above her, and he seemed to be a couple of yards off when she—she didn’t exactly faint, at least it was more like sinking down quite quietly first. I suppose she fainted afterwards.”

“Well, then,” the Duke cried, “will you tell me why we let the Archdeacon give them the Graal?”

“I suppose we’d promised it to him if he would take on the case,” Kenneth said doubtfully, “and he’d agreed to.”

“But that is exactly what we hadn’t,” the Duke cried again, knocking a pile of Elizabethan dramatists off the table as he turned, “exactly. I remember perfectly well. The Archdeacon was just going to when we heard her screaming. But he wasn’t speaking to the doctor, he was talking to your friend. And even so, he hadn’t said more than that he wouldn’t have delayed so long if—something or other.”

“By God, that’s right,” Kenneth said staring. “But, if it hadn’t been promised him and if he didn’t help Barbara, what—?”

“Precisely,” the Duke said. “What’s he doing with it?”

There was another short pause.

“In another sense,” Kenneth said, “what’s he doing with it? Is he with Persimmons? Is it all a put-up job? Or will Persimmons and he fight for it? No, that’s not likely. Then it must have been all arranged.”

“Well, what about getting it back?” the Duke asked.

“Yes,” Kenneth said doubtfully. “More easily said than done, don’t you think? We don’t even know where this doctor comes from or went to. Unless—” He hesitated.

“Unless?” the Duke asked.

“Unless—when the Chief Constable was talking to Persimmons on Monday— the day before yesterday, by heaven!—I couldn’t help hearing something of what they said, and Gregory gave him an address. I remembered it because it was so absurd—3 Lord Mayor’s Street, in London somewhere. But I don’t quite know what we can do about it. We can’t go there and just ask for it.”

“Can’t we?” the Duke said. “Can’t we, indeed? We can go and see what sort of place it is, and whether this Doctor Manasseh hangs out there. And, if he does, we can tell him It belongs to us, and if he makes any objection we can take It. We—at least the Archdeacon—did it before.”

“He’ll bring the police in,” Kenneth demurred. “He must—this time.”

“And if he does?” the Duke asked. “Let me get the Graal in my hands for time enough to get it over to Thwaites or someone, and It shall be in Rome before the police can guess what’s happening. And there are no extradition treaties yet with the Vatican.”

“I suppose there aren’t,” Kenneth said, arrested by this idea. “What a frightful joke! But what about us?”

“We should be sent to prison for burglary perhaps—‘first offenders’ and all that sort of thing. And the Bishops ought to rally—and yours too. I should leave a statement for the Cardinal—Archbishop of Westminster. My father is supposed to have had something to do? indirectly—with getting him the Hat.”

“But it probably won’t be there!” Kenneth objected again.

“Then we’re no worse off; they won’t distrust us more, and they certainly won’t call in the police,” the Duke answered. “Of course, if it’s still at Cully… Perhaps your friend might know. Look here, Mornington,