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

sexton-“will you move those candlesticks and get as much of the grease off as you can? Mrs. Major, will you put the frontal straight? Miss Willoughby, will you do what you can to set the other ornaments right? Thank you, thank you. Fortunately the other chalice is at the rectory; I will g go and get it.” Then he paused a moment. “And perhaps,” he said gravely, “as these two boxes have been robbed, we may take the advantage to restore something.” He moved from one box to the other, dropping in coins, and a little reluctantly the two ladies imitated him. Jessamine was already at the altar.

As the Archdeacon walked up to the house he allowed himself to consider the possibilities. The breaking open of the west door pointed to a more serious attack than that of a casual tramp; tramps didn’t carry such instruments as this success must have necessitated. But, if a tramp were not the burglar, then the money in the boxes had not been the aim. The gold chalice, then? Possible, possible: or the other chalice, the one of whose reputed history, except for that quarter of an hour in Mornington’s room, he would have known nothing—could that be the aim? After all, the man who wrote the book—what was his name?—might have mentioned it, mentioned it to anyone, to a collector, to a millionaire, to a frenzied materialist. But one wouldn’t expect them to try burglary at once. He saw in the distance the garden-seat where he had sat in talk the previous afternoon. And had they? Or had they tried purchase? Persimmons—Stephen Persimmons, publisher—Christianity and the League of Nations—a mission church in need? sacrilege—phallic scrawls.

He came into the inner room where he had looked at the chalice before he went out that morning, and as he came in it seemed to meet him in sound. A note of gay and happy music seemed to ring for a moment in his ears as he paused in the entrance. It was gone, if it had been there, and gravely he genuflected in front of the vessel and lifted it from its place. Carrying it as he had so often lifted its types and companions, he became again as in all those liturgies a part of that he sustained; he radiated from that centre and was but the last means of its progress in mortality. Of this sense of instrumentality he recognized, none the less, the component parts—the ritual movement, the priestly office, the mere pleasure in ordered, traditional, and almost universal movement. “Neither is this Thou,” he said aloud, and, coming to the garden door, looked round him. In the hall the clock struck seven; he heard his housekeeper moving upstairs; as he came out into the garden he saw on the road a few men on their way to work. Then suddenly he saw another man leaning over the gate as Persimmons had leant the previous afternoon; only this was not Persimmons, though a man not unlike him in general height and build. The man opened the gate and came into the garden, though not directly in the path to the churchyard gate, and on the sudden the Archdeacon stopped.

“Excuse me, mister,” a voice said, “but is this the way to Fardles?” He pointed down the road.

“That is the way, yes,” the Archdeacon answered. “Keep to the right all the way.”

“Ah, thankee,” the stranger said. “I’ve been walking almost all night— nowhere to go and no money to go with.” He was standing a few yards off. “Excuse me coming in like this, but seeing a gentleman—”

“Do you want something to eat?” the Archdeacon asked.

“Ah, that’s it,” said the other, eyeing him and the chalice curiously. “Reckon you’ve never been twenty-four hours without a bite or sup.” He took another step forward.

“If you go round to the kitchen you shall be given some food,” the Archdeacon said firmly. “I am on my way to the church and cannot stop. If you want to see me I will talk to you when I come back.” He lifted the chalice and went on down the path and through the churchyard.

The Mysteries celebrated, he returned, still carefully carrying the chalice, and set it out of sight in a cupboard in the breakfast-room. When his housekeeper came in with coffee he asked after the stranger.

“Oh yes, sir, he came round,” she said, “and I gave him some food. But he didn’t eat much, to my thinking, and he was off again in ten minutes. Those folk don’t want breakfast, money’s what they’re after. He wouldn’t stop to see you, not after I told him you might get him a job. Money, that’s what he wanted, not a job, nor breakfast, either.”

But the Archdeacon absurdly continued to doubt this. He had felt, all through the short conversation in the garden, that it was not himself, but the vessel that the stranger had been studying—and that not with any present recognition, but as if he were impressing it on his memory. His train went at half-past nine; it was now half-past eight. But the train was out of the question; he had to explain the state of the church to the locum tenens; he had to go over to Rushforth, not now for Persimmons, but for his own needs. And, above all, he had to decide what to do with that old, slightly dented chalice that was hidden in the cupboard of the breakfast-room of an English rectory.

The first thing that occurred to him was the bank; the second was the Bishop. But the nearest bank was five miles off; and the Bishop was probably thirty-five, at the cathedral city. He might be anywhere, being a young and energetic and modern Bishop, who organized the diocese from railway stations, and platforms at public meetings before and after speaking, and public telephone-boxes, and so on. The Archdeacon foresaw some difficulty in explaining the matter. To walk straight in, and put down the chalice, and say: “This is the Holy Graal. I believe it to be so because of a paragraph in some proofs, a man who tried to buy it for a mission church and said that children ought to be taught not to do wrong, a burglary at my church, and another man who asked the way to Fardles”—would a young, energetic, modern Bishop believe it? The Archdeacon liked the Bishop very much, but he did not believe him to be patient or credulous.

The bank first then, and Rushforth next. And, in a day or two, the Bishop. Or rather first a telegram to Scotland. He sat down to write it, meaning to dispatch it from the station when he took the train to town. Then he spent some time in looking out a leather case which would hold the chalice, and had indeed been used for some such purpose before. He ensconced the Graal—if it were the Graal—therein, left a message with his housekeeper that he would be back some time in the afternoon, and by just after nine was fitting his hat on in the hall.

There came a knock at the door. The housekeeper came to open it. The Archdeacon, looking over his shoulder, saw the stranger who had invaded his garden that morning standing outside.

“Excuse me, ma’am,” the stranger said, “but is the reverend gentleman in? Ah, to be sure, there he is. You see, sir, I didn’t want to worry you over your breakfast, so I went for a bit of a walk. But I hope you haven’t forgotten what you said about helping me to find work. It’s work I want, sir, not idleness.”

“You didn’t seem that keen on it when you were talking to me about it,” the housekeeper interjected.

“I didn’t want to forestall his reverence,” the stranger said. “But anything that he could do I’d be truly grateful for.”

“What’s your name?” the Archdeacon asked.

“Kedgett,” the other answered, “Samuel Kedgett. I served in the war, sir, and here—”

“Quite,” the Archdeacon answered. “Well, Mr. Kedgett, I’m sorry I can’t stop now; I have to go to town most unexpectedly. Call”—he changed “this evening” into “to-morrow morning”—“and I’ll see what can be done.”

“Thank you, sir,” the other said, with a sudden alertness. “I’ll be there. Goodbye, sir.” He was out of the porch and down the garden path before his hearers were clear that he was going.

“What a jumpy creature!” the housekeeper said. “Dear me, sir, I hope you’re not going to give him work here. I couldn’t stand, a man like that.”

“No,” the Archdeacon said absently, “no, of course, you couldn’t. Well, goodbye, Mrs. Lucksparrow. Explain to Mr. Batesby when he comes, won’t you? I shall be back in the afternoon probably.”

Along the country lane on the other side of the churchyard there was little to be seen beyond the fields and pleasant slopes of the country twenty miles out of North London. The Archdeacon walked along, meditating, and occasionally turning his head to look over his shoulder. Not that he seriously expected to be attacked but he did feel that there was something going on of which he had no clear understanding. “How vainly men themselves amaze,” he quoted, and allowed himself to be distracted by trying to complete the couplet with some allusion to the high vessel. He produced at last, as he came to a space where four roads met and as he went on through what was called a wood, but was not much more than a copse—he produced as a result:

How vainly men themselves divert, Even with this chalice, to their hurt!

and heard a motor-car coming towards him in the distance. It was coming very quietly from the direction of the station, and in a few minutes it came round the curve of the road. He saw someone stand up in it and apparently beckon to him, quickened his steps, heard a faint voice calling: “Archdeacon! Archdeacon!” felt a sudden crash on the back of his head, and entered unconsciousness.

The car drew up by him. “Quick, Ludding, the case,” Mr. Persimmons said to the man who had slipped from the wood in the Archdeacon’s rear. He caught it to him, opened it, took out the chalice, and set it in another case which stood on the seat by him. Then he gave the empty one back to Ludding. “Keep that till I tell you to throw it away,” he said. “And now help me lift the poor fellow in. You have a fine judgement, Ludding. Just in the right place. You didn’t hit too hard, I suppose! We don’t want to attract attention. A little more this way, that’s it. We have some brandy, I think. I will get in with him.” He did so, moving the case which held the Graal. “Can you put that with the petrol-tin, Ludding? Good! Now drive on carefully till we come to the cross-roads.”

When, in a few moments, they were there, “Now throw the case into the ditch,” Persimmons went on, “over by that clump, I think. Excellent, Ludding, excellent. And now round up to the Rectory, and then you shall go on to the village or even the nearest town for a doctor. We must do all we can for the Archdeacon, Ludding. I suppose he was attacked by the same tramp that broke into the church. I think perhaps we ought to let the police know. All right; go on.”