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

Gregory answered softly, “I think you may be right, Manasseh. Bear with me, for I am young in these things. I know the current of desire in which all things move, and I have guided it a little as I will. But I see there are deeper things below.” He looked at the Greek. “And what do you say,” he asked, “who are older than we?”

The Greek answered, his eyes fixed on the Graal: “All things are indivisible and one. You cannot wholly destroy and you cannot wholly live, but you can change mightily and for ever as any of our reckoning goes. Even I cannot see down infinity. Make it agreeable to your lusts while the power is yours, for there are secret ways down which it may pass even now and you shall not hold it.”

Gregory smiled, and filliped the Graal with a finger. “Do you know,” he said, “I should like to annoy the Archdeacon a little.” He stood still suddenly and cried out: “And there is a way by which it may be done. I have tried it, and I know. This is the circle of all souls, and I will gather them and marry them as I please. I will bring them from this world and from another and I will bind the lost with the living till the living itself be lost.”

Manasseh moved nearer to him. “Tell me,” he said; “you have a great thought.”

“I have a thought that is pleasant to my mind,” Gregory said, “and this is what we will do. There went out from among us lately by my act a weak, wretched, unhappy soul that sought to find its god and in its last days returned to me and was utterly mine. It was willing to die when I slew it, and in the shadows it waits still upon my command. We will draw this back, and we will marry it to this priest, body and soul, so that he shall live with it by day and by night, and come indeed in the end to know not which is he. And let us see then if he will war against us for the Graal.”

“This you can do if you will,” Manasseh said, “for I have seen spirits recalled, though not by means of the Graal. But can you bind it so closely to the priest?”

“Assuredly you can,” the Greek said, “if you have the conditions. But they are exact. You must have that body here into which you will bring that soul in contact—I do not know if it could be done at a distance, but I do not think it has been done, and I am sure you have no time to try. And you must have that soul at your command, and I think you have. And you must have a means of passage, and you have it in this Cup. And you must have a very strong desire, and this you have, both of you, for this is at once possession and destruction. And you are the better for knowing the worst, and this I do, and I will set my power with yours if you choose.”

“We must have the body here,” Gregory said. “But—will he come?”

“I do not see why he should not come if he is asked,” the Greek said. “Cannot Manasseh bring him with some tale of the woman?”

“To-morrow night is the last night we can be sure of having in England,” Manasseh answered, “if we wish to escape with both the Graal and the child. But he might come for that.”

They were silent, standing or sitting around the Cup, where it seemed to await their decision in a helpless bondage. They were still silent some minutes later when a sudden knock sounded on the door of the shop. Gregory started, and both he and Manasseh glanced inquiringly at the Greek, who said casually: “It may be someone for medicine or it may be they have followed Gregory. Go you, Manasseh. If they ask for me, tell them I am away from home tonight; and if for Gregory, tell them he is not here.”

Manasseh obeyed, pulling the door to behind him. Gregory smiled at the Greek. “Do you really give them medicine?” he asked.

The Greek shrugged his shoulders. “Why not?” he said. “I don’t poison ants; they may as well live as die. But there are not many who will come.”

They heard Manasseh cross the shop and open the door, then several exclamations at once in different voices. Then a gay voice, at the sound of which Gregory started and looked round, said: “Why, if it isn’t the doctor himself! Now this is fortunate. My dear doctor, we’ve been talking about you all day. Let’s see, were you properly introduced to the Duke? No, oh, no, don’t shut the door. No, I beg you. We’ve come all the way from Fardles—Castra Parvulorum, you know; the camp of the children—to ask you a question—two questions. Is Gregory here by any chance? That’s not one of them. No, really—sorry to push, but… Thank you ever so much; you can shut it now.”

Under this rush of talk had sounded Manasseh’s exclamatory protests and the scuffle of feet. Gregory put out a hand to the Graal, but the Greek made a motion with his hand and checked him. “How many are there?” he asked softly. Gregory tiptoed to the narrow opening and peeped through. “Two, I think,” he whispered, returning. “Mornington and the Duke. I can’t see or hear anyone else. Hadn’t we better move that?”

The Greek turned a face of sudden malignity on him. “Fool,” he said, “will you always run from your enemies?” He stood up as he spoke and began to move the few chairs noiselessly back against the wall.

In the shop, Mornington was plying Manasseh with conversation. “We felt so curious about the Graal,” he said, “and, to tell you the truth, so curious about what you’d done to Barbara Rackstraw, that we simply had to come and ask you about it. The Duke’s done nothing but rave about it ever since. Unrecognized genius, you know—Mrs. Eddy, Sir Herbert Barker. You took the Graal, so you must have done something. Manasseh is an honourable man.” He stopped suddenly and sniffed. “I’m sure you’ve got Gregory here,” he said. “It smells like a dung-heap. You don’t mind me going in?”

Manasseh apparently had jumped in his way. There was a slight scuffle, then Kenneth said pleasantly: “Hold him, Ridings. Bring him along too and let’s look round.”

The Greek stooped down, took hold of the carpet, wrenched it from the occasional nail that held it down, and flung it to one side of the room. The floor beneath was marked with what looked like chalk in two broad parallel lines running from about two-thirds of the depth of the room to the two posts of the communicating door. At the end of the room these two lines were joined by a complicated diagram, which Gregory seemed to recognize, for he caught his breath and said: “Will it hold him?”

The Greek threw a cushion on the floor between the diagram and the table on which the Graal stood, and sank down on it. “This is our protection,” he said. “Call to Manasseh that he does not enter, for this is the way of death. I have charged these barriers with power, and they shall wither whoever comes between them. Open the door, stand aside, and be still.”

Gregory went to the door and drew it open by reaching to the top till the handle came within reach; he seized it and pulled it back till the whole entrance lay open between the equal lines. The Greek peered forward into the little dark shop, and saw dimly Kenneth’s figure opposite him at the same time that Kenneth saw the Graal.

“My dear Ridings, he’s been admiring it,” Mornington said. “The workmanship, probably. It was Ephesus, I fancy, that the dear delightful Gregory told us it came from. There’s a gentleman here sitting on the floor who may be the carrier. Hobson, you know, and John what-you-may-call-him in that very disastrous Christmas thing of Dickens’s. Or perhaps they’ve been having their favourite food. The Graal, I remember, in a charming way always provided you with that. What is yours, doctor? Something Eastern, no doubt. Rice? What a horrible thing to waste the Graal on!”

He had come to the doorway as he spoke, and drew a revolver from his pocket. “The Duke’s really,” he went on. “One of those little domestic utensils you can pick up for almost nothing at a sale. Have you got him, Ridings? There seems to be a pavement—artist somewhere in this establishment; the most original little sketches adorn the floor.”

“Take care,” the Duke’s voice cried. “There is hell near us now.”

“I think it very likely,” Kenneth said, “but you can’t expect me to think much of hell if Gregory is one of its kings.” He took two or three swift steps into the room, flung a quick glance behind him lest he should be attacked from the wall he passed, and, even as he did so, staggered and put his hand to his heart. The Duke heard him gasp, and, still clutching Manasseh, pushed forward, to see what was happening. Kenneth had reeled to one of the white lines and was stumbling blindly, now forward, now backward, drawing deep choking breaths. The Greek had thrust his face out, and as the Duke saw it in the full light he gave a little gasp of dismay. For the face that he saw looked at him from a great distance and yet was itself that distance. It was white and staring and sick with a horrible sickness; he shut his eyes before this evil. All the gorgeous colours and pomps of sin of which he had been so often warned had disappeared; the war between good and evil existed no longer, for the thing beneath the Graal was not fighting but vomiting. Once he realized that his eyes were closed he forced himself to open them, saw Kenneth almost fall across the space between the lines, and called to him. Then he flung Manasseh from him to the floor, cried out on God and the Mother of God, and sprang forward; but as he reached the doorway he felt his strength oozing from him. Hollows opened within him; he clutched at the doorpost, and, as he touched it, seemed to feel this also drag him sideways and downward. He crashed to the floor while Kenneth, gathering all his life’s energy together, forced himself two steps nearer his aim, moaned as even that energy failed, dropped to his knees, and at last, choking and twisting, fell dead on the diagram before the Greek.

Manasseh had got to his feet, but he remained leaning against the door of the shop as Gregory against the wall of the inner room. The Duke, unable to move, lay prostrate across the threshold. So, as they watched, they saw the body of the dead man shiver and lift itself a little, as if moved by a strong wind. Gradually there appeared, rising from it, a kind of dark cloud, which floated upwards and outwards on all sides, and was at last so thick that the form itself could no longer be discerned. Manasseh watched with eyes of triumph. But Gregory was curiously shaken, for he, less instructed in the high ways of magic, recoiled, not from the destruction of his enemy, but from the elements which accompanied it. He shrank from the face of the sorcerer; like the Duke, he found himself in a state for which he had not been prepared and at which he trembled in horror. A sickness crept within