War in Heaven (7 page)

Mr. Persimmons was a little taken back. There had not appeared to him to be any conceivable reason why the Archdeacon should refuse to part with the old chalice, and if by any chance there had been any difficulty he had still expected to be able to obtain sight of it, to see what it looked like and where it was kept. He found himself at the moment almost, it seemed, on the other side of the county from Fardles, and he did not immediately see any way of getting back. He thought for a moment of making his imaginary clerical friend a native of Fardles, in order to give him a special delight in things that came from there, but that was too risky.

“Oh, well,” he said, “if you don't mind, I think I won't give you his name. He might be rather ashamed of not being able to buy the necessary things. That was why, I thought, if you and I could just quietly settle it together, without bringing other people in, it would be so much better. A clergyman doesn't like to admit that he's poor, does he? And that was why——”

Damnation! he thought, he was repeating himself. But the Archdeacon's fantastic round face and gold glasses were watching him with a grave attention, and where but now had been a steady flow of words there was an awful silence. “Well,” he said, with an effort at a leap across the void, “I'm sorry you can't let me have it.”

“But I'm offering it to you,” the Archdeacon said. “You didn't want the Fardles chalice
particularly
, did you?”

“Only as coming from the place where I was going to live,” Persimmons said, and added suddenly: “It just seemed to me as if, as I was leaving my friend myself, I was sending him something better instead, something greater and stronger and more friendly.”

“But you were talking about a chalice,” the Archdeacon objected perplexedly. “How do you mean, Mr. Persimmons—finer and stronger and so on?”

“I meant the chalice,” Gregory answered. “Surely that——”

The Archdeacon laughed good-naturedly and shook his head. “Oh, no,” he said, “no. Not the chalice alone. Why, if it were the Holy Graal itself,” he added thoughtfully, replacing the cap on his fountain-pen and putting it away, “you could hardly say that about it.” He stood up, a little disappointed at not having noticed any self-consciousness about the other when he had mentioned the Graal. “Well,” he said, “I must apologise, but you will understand I have some work to do; I'm going to-morrow, as you say. Will you forgive me? And shall I speak to Rushforth?”

“If you will be so good,” Persimmons answered. “Or, no, don't let me take up your time. I will go and see him, if I may mention you name? Yes, I assure you I would rather. Good afternoon, Mr. Archdeacon.”

“Good afternoon,” the Archdeacon said. “I shall see you often when I return, I hope.”

He accompanied his visitor to the gate, chatting amicably. But when Persimmons had gone he walked slowly back towards the house, considering the discussion thoughtfully. Was there a needy mission church? and was his visitor to be its benefactor? And the chalice? It seemed possible, and even likely, in this fantastic dream of a ridiculous antiquary, that the Graal of so many romances and so long a quest, of Lancelot and Galahad and dim maidens moving in antique pageants of heraldry and symbolism and religion, the desire of Camelot, the messenger of Sarras, the relic of Jerusalem, should be resting neglected in an English village. “Fardles,” he thought, “Castra Parvulorum, the camp of the children: where else should the Child Himself rest?” He re-entered the Rectory, singing again to himself: “Who alone doeth marvellous things; for his mercy endureth for ever.”

It was the custom of the parish that there should be a daily celebration at seven, at which occasionally in summer a small congregation assembled. Before this, at about a quarter to seven, the Archdeacon was in the habit of saying Morning Prayer publicly, as he was required to do by the rubrics. Once a week, on Thursday mornings, he was assisted by the sexton; on the other mornings he assisted himself. As, however, the sexton with growing frequency overslept himself, the Archdeacon preferred to keep the key of the church himself, and it was with this in his hand that he came to the west door about half-past six the next morning. At the door, however, he stopped, astonished. For it hung open and wrenched from the lock, wrenched and broken and pushed back against the other wall. The Archdeacon stared at it, went closer and surveyed it, and then hastened into the church. A few minutes gave him the extent of the damage. The two boxes, for the Poor and for the Church, that were fixed not far from the font, had also been opened, and their contents, if they had any, looted; the candlesticks on the altar had been thrown over, the candles in them broken and smashed, and the frontal pulled away and torn. In the sacristy the lock of the cabinet had been forced and the gold chalice which commemorated the late Sir John had disappeared, together with the gold paten. On the white-washed wall had been scrawled a few markings—“Phallic,” the Archdeacon murmured, with a faint smile. He came back to the front door in time to see the sexton at the gate of the churchyard, and, judiciously lingering on the footpath beyond, two spasmodically devout ladies of the parish. He waved to them all to hurry, and when they arrived informed them equably of the situation.

“But, Mr. Archdeacon——” Mrs. Major cried.

“But, Mr. Davenant——” Miss Willoughby, who, as being older, both in years and length of Fardles citizenship, than most of the ladies of the neighbourhood, permitted herself to use the personal name. And “Who can have done it?” they both concluded.

“Ah!” the Archdeacon said benignantly. “A curious business, isn't it?”

“Isn't it sacrilege?” said Mrs. Major.

“Was it a tramp?” asked Miss Willoughby.

“What we want is Towlow,” the sexton said firmly. “Towlow isn't at all bad at finding things out, though, being a Wesleyan Methodist, as he calls himself, he can't be expected to want to find out these bloody murderers. I'll go and get him, shall I, sir?”

“How fortunate my brother's staying with me,” Mrs. Major cried out. “He's in the Navy, you know, and quite used to crime. He even sat on a court-martial once.”

Miss Willoughby, out of a wider experience, knew better than to commit herself at once. She watched the Archdeacon's eyes, and, as she saw them glaze at these two suggestions, ventured a remote and disapproving “H'm, h'm!” Even the nicest clergymen, she knew, were apt to have unexpected fads about religion.

“No,” the Archdeacon said, “I don't think we'll ask Towlow. And though, of course, I can't object to your brother looking at these damaged doors, Mrs. Major, I shouldn't like him to want to make an arrest. Sacrilege is hardly a thing a priest can prosecute for—not, anyhow, in a present-day court.”

“But——” Mrs. Major and the sexton began.

“The immediate thing,” the Archdeacon flowed on, “is the celebration, don't you think? Jessamine”—this to the 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 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.