War in Heaven (19 page)

“Something is going on,” he said, almost harshly. “I do not know what. It may be that God is dissolving it but I think there is devilry. Make yourselves paths for the Will of God.”

“But what is it?” the Duke said amazedly. “What harm can come to it here? What can they do to its hurt?”

“Pray,” the Archdeacon cried out, “pray, in the name of God. They are praying against Him to-night.”

It crossed Kenneth's mind, as he sank to his knees, that if God could not be insulted, neither could He be defied, nor in that case the procession and retrogression of the universe disturbed by the subject motion of its atoms. But he saw, running out like avenues, a thousand metaphysical questions, and they disappeared in the excitement of his spirit.

“Against what shall we pray?” the Duke cried.

“Against nothing,” the Archdeacon said. “Pray that He who made the universe may sustain the universe, that in all things there may be delight in the justice of His will.”

A profound silence followed, out of the heart of which there arose presently a common consciousness of effort. The interior energy of the priest laid hold on the less trained powers of his companions and directed them to its own intense concentration. Fumbling in the dark for something to oppose, they were, each in secrecy, subdued from that realm of opposition and translated to a place where their business was only to repose. They existed knit together, as it were, in a living tower built up round the sacred vessel, and through all the stones of that tower its common life flowed. Yet to all their apprehensions, and especially to the priest's, which was the most vivid and east distracted, this life received and resisted an impact from without. The tower was indeed a tower of defence, though it offered no aggression, and resisted whatever there was to be resisted merely by its own immovable calm. Once or twice it seemed to the Duke as if he heard a soft footprint behind him just within the room, but he was held too firmly still even to turn his head. Once or twice on Kenneth there intruded a sudden vision of something other than this passivity; a taunt, unspoken but mocking, moved just beyond his consciousness, a taunt which was not his, but arose somehow out of him. Sudden phrases he had used in the past attacked him—“the world can't judge”; “man chooses between mania and folly”; “what a fool Stephen is.” In the midst of these the memory of the saying about every idle word obtruded itself; he began to justify them to himself, and to argue in his own mind. Little by little he became more and more conscious of his past casual contempt, and more disposed to direct a certain regretful attention to it. The priest felt the defence weaken; he did not know the cause, but the result was there; the Graal shook in his hands. He plunged deeper into the abysmal darkness of divinity, and as he did so heard, far above, his own voice crying “Pray!” Kenneth heard, and knew his weakness; he abolished his memories, and, so far as was possible, surrendered himself to be only what he was meant to be. Yet the attack went on: to one a footstep, a whisper, a slight faint touch; to another a gentle laugh, a mockery, a reminder; to the third a spiritual pressure which not he but that which was he resisted. The Graal vibrated still to that pressure, more strongly when it was accentuated, less and less as the stillness within and amidst the three was perfected. Dimly he knew at what end the attack aimed; some disintegrating force was being loosed at the vessel—not conquest, but destruction, was the purpose, and chaos the eventual hope. Dimly he saw that, though the spirit of Gregory formed the apex of that attack, the attack itself came from regions behind Gregory. He saw, uncertainly but sufficiently defined, the radiations that encompassed the Graal and the fine arrows of energy that were expended against it. Unimportant as the vessel in itself might be, it was yet an accidental storehouse of power that could be used, and to dissipate this material centre was the purpose of the war. But through the three concentrated souls flowed reserves of the power which the vessel itself retained; and gradually to the priest it seemed, as in so many celebrations, as if the Graal itself was the centre—yet no longer the Graal, but a greater than the Graal. Silence and knowledge were communicated to him as if from an invisible celebrant; he held the Cup no longer as a priest, but as if he set his hands on that which was itself at once the Mystery and the Master of the Mystery. But this consciousness faded almost before it was realized; his supernatural mind returned into his natural, leaving only the certainty that for the time at least the attack was ended. Rigid and hard in his hands, the Graal reflected only the lights of the Duke's study; he sighed and relaxed his hold, glancing at his two companions. The Duke stood up suddenly and glanced round him. Kenneth rose more slowly, his face covered with a certain brooding melancholy. The Archdeacon set the Graal down on the table.

“It is done,” he said. “Whatever it was has exhausted itself for the time. Let us go and rest.”

“I thought I heard someone here,” the Duke said, still looking round him. “Is it safe to leave it?”

“I think it is quite safe,” the Archdeacon said.

“But what has happened?” the Duke asked again.

“Let us talk to-morrow,” the priest said very wearily. “The Graal will guard itself to-night.”

Chapter Eleven

THE OINTMENT

The afternoon which had preceded the supernatural effort to destroy the Graal had been made use of by Mr. Gregory Persimmons to pay two visits. The first had been with the Chief Constable of Hertfordshire to the shop in Lord Mayor Street. But after the visit was made and the information acquired Colonel Conyers and he had parted in the Finchley Road, the Colonel to go to Scotland Yard in a chance taxi, he ostensibly for the Tube at Golder's Green. Once the Colonel had disappeared, however, Gregory returned as swiftly as possible to the shop.

The Greek had resumed his everlasting immobility, but, though he said nothing, his eyes lightened a little as he saw the other again come in.

“Do you know what has happened?” Gregory asked in that subdued tone to which the place seemed to compel its visitors.

“It seems they have recovered it,” the Greek said and looked askew at a much older man who had just come into the shop from a small back room. The new-comer was smaller than the Greek, and much smaller than Gregory; his movements were swift and his repose alert. His bearded face was that of a Jew.

“You heard?” the Greek said.

“I heard,” the stranger answered. He looked angrily at Gregory. “How long have you known this?” he asked, with a note of fierceness.

“Known—known what?” Gregory said, involuntarily falling back a step. “Known that they had it? Why, he only took it this morning.”

“Known that it was—that,” the other said. “What time we have wasted!” He stepped up to the Greek and seized him by the arm. “But it isn't too late,” he said. “We can do it to-night.”

The Greek turned his head a little. “We can do it if you like,” he acquiesced. “If it is worth while.”

“Worth while!” the Jew snapped at him. “Of course it is worth while. It is a stronghold of power, and we can tear it to less than dust. I do not understand you, Dmitri.”

“It doesn't matter,” Dmitri answered. “You will understand one day. There will be nothing else to understand.”

The other began to speak, but Gregory, whom his last words had brought suddenly back to the dirty discoloured counter, said suddenly, but still with that subdued voice, “What do you mean? Tear it to dust? Do you mean
that
? What are you going to do?”

The others looked over at him, the Jew scornfully, the other with a faint amusement. The Greek said, “Manasseh and I are going to destroy the Cup.”

“Destroy it!” Gregory mouthed at them. “
Destroy
it! But there are a hundred things to do with it. It can be used and used again. I have made the child see visions in it; it has power.”

“Because it has power,” the Jew answered, leaning over the counter and whispering fiercely, “it must be destroyed. Don't you understand that yet? They build and we destroy. That's what levels us; that's what stops them. One day we shall destroy the world. What can you do with it that is so good as that? Are we babies to look to see what will happen to-morrow or where a lost treasure is or whether a man has a gluttonous heart? To destroy this is to ruin another of their houses, and another step towards the hour when we shall breathe against the heavens and they shall fall. The only use in anything for us is that it may be destroyed.”

Before the passion in his tones Gregory again fell back. But he made another effort.

“But can't we use it to destroy
them
?” he asked. “See, I have called up a child's soul by it and it answered me. Let me keep it a little while to do a work with it.”

“That's the treachery,” the Jew answered. “Keep it for this, keep it for that. Destroy it, I tell you; while you keep anything for a reason you are not wholly ours. It shall tremble and fade and vanish into nothingness to-night.”

Gregory looked at the Greek, who looked back impassively. The Jew went on muttering. At last Dmitri, putting out a slow hand, touched him, and the other with a little angry tremor fell silent. Then the Greek said, looking past them, “It is all one; in the end it is all one. You do not believe each other and neither of you will believe me. But in the end there is nothing at all but you and that which goes by. You will be sick at heart because there is nothing, nothing but a passing, and in the midst of the passing a weariness that is you. All things shall grow fainter, all desire cease in that sickness and the void that is about it. And this, even for me, is when I have only looked into the bottomless pit. For my spirit is still held in a place of material things. But when the body is drawn into the spirit, and at last they fall, then you shall know what the end of desire and destruction is. I will do what you will while you will, for the time comes when no man shall work.”

Manasseh sneered at him. “When I knew you first,” he said, “you did great things in the house of our God. Will you go and kneel before the Cup and weep for what you have done?”

“I have no tears and no desire,” the Greek said. “I am weary beyond all mortal weariness and my heart is sick and my eyes blind with the sight of the nothing through which we fall. Say what you will do and I will do it, for even now I have power that is not yours.”

“I will bring this thing into atoms and less than atoms,” Manasseh answered. “I will cause it to be as if it had never been. I will send power against it and it shall pass from all knowledge and be nothing but a memory.”

“So,” the Greek said. “And you?” he asked Gregory.

“I will help you, then,” Gregory answered, a little sullenly, “if it must be done.”

“No, you shall not help us,” Manasseh said sharply, “for in your heart you desire it still.”

“Let him that desires to possess seek to possess,” the Greek commanded, “and him that desires to destroy seek to destroy. Let each of you work in his own way, until an end comes; and I who will help the one to possess will help the other to destroy, for possession and destruction are both evil and are one. But alas for the day when none shall possess your souls and they only of all things that you have known cannot be destroyed for ever.”

He stood upright. “Go,” he said to Gregory, “and set your traps. Come,” to Manasseh, “and we will think of these things.”

But Manasseh delayed a moment. “Tell me,” he said to Gregory, “of what size and shape is the Cup?”

Gregory nodded towards the Greek. “I brought the book up last Saturday with the drawing in,” he said. “You can see it there. But why should I try to recover it if you are going to destroy it?”

The Greek answered him. “Because no one knows what the future may bring to your trap; because till you prepare yourself to possess you cannot possess. Because destruction is not yet accomplished.”

Gregory brooding doubtfully, turned, and went slowly out of the shop.

He went on to his son's office, and there, inflamed with a certain impotent rage at the destruction threatened to that which he had spent some pains to procure, eased it by doing all he could to destroy Kenneth's security. After which he banished Stephen from the room, and talked for some time on the telephone to Ludding at Cully.

It was in pursuance of the instructions then received that Ludding the next morning strolled down to the Rectory. In a neat chauffeur's uniform, clean-shaved and alert, he presented so different an appearance from that of the bearded tramp who had called on the Archdeacon a month earlier that Mrs. Lucksparrow, even had the time been shorter, would not have recognized him. He had come down, it appeared, on a message from Mr. Persimmons to the Archdeacon.

“The Archdeacon isn't at home,” Mrs. Lucksparrow said. “I'm sure I'm sorry you've had your trouble for nothing.”

“No trouble, ma'am,” Ludding answered; “indeed, as things have turned out, it's given me more pleasure than if he had been.” His bow pointed the remark.

“Well,” said Mrs.. Lucksparrow, “I won't deny but what it's a pleasure to see someone to speak to, we being rather out of the way here—except for clergymen and tramps; and naturally the clergy don't come and talk to me, not but what some of them are nice enough in their way. Why, we've had the Bishop here before now, and a straightforward, pleasant-speaking gentleman too, though a bit on the hurried side, always wanting to get on somewhere else and do the next thing. I don't hold with it myself, not so much of it. What's done too quick has to be done twice my mother used to say, and she had eleven children and two husbands, though most of them was before I was born, being the youngest. Many's the time she's said to me, ‘Lucy, my girl, you've never dusted that room yet, I'll be bound.'”