War in Heaven, Charles Williams [novels for teenagers .txt] 📗

sudden introduction of Mr. Persimmons of Cully, and it was the Duke who asked, “But if you have all these clues, what’s the uncertainty—in your own mind?” he added suddenly, as he also became aware of the improbability of a country householder knocking an Archdeacon on the head in order to steal his chalice.

“There is no uncertainty in my own mind,” the priest answered. “But the police would not be able to find a motive.”

“We of course can,” Kenneth said scornfully.

“We—if you say we—can,” the Archdeacon said, “for we know what it was, and we know that many kinds of religion are possible to men.”

“You are sure now that it was—it?” Kenneth answered.

“No,” the priest answered, “but I have decided in my own mind that I will believe that. No-one can possibly do more than decide what to believe.”

“Do I understand, Mr. Archdeacon,” the Chief Constable asked, “that you accuse Mr. Persimmons of stealing this chalice? And why should he want to steal a chalice? And if he did, would he be likely to keep it in his hall?”

“There is always the Purloined Letter,” the Duke murmured thoughtfully. “But even there the letter wasn’t pinned up openly on a notice-board. Couldn’t we go and see?”

“That is what I was going to suggest,” said the Chief Constable. He stood up cheerfully. “I quite understand about your anxiety over the loss of this chalice”—Kenneth cackled suddenly and walked to the window. “Anyone would be anxious about a chalice of, I understand, great antiquarian interest. But I feel so certain you’re mistaken in this… idea about Mr. Persimmons that I can’t help feeling that a meeting perhaps, and a little study of his chalice, and so on… And then you must give us a free hand.” He looked almost hopefully at the priest. “If you could spare us half an hour now, say?”

“I can’t possibly move from here,” the Archdeacon said, “without a clear understanding that I don’t accuse Mr. Persimmons in any legal or official sense at all. I will come with you if you like, because I can’t refuse a not-immoral call from the Chief Magistrate”—the Chief Constable looked gratified “and, as I have no reason to consider Mr. Persimmons’s feelings—I really haven’t,” he added aside to Kenneth, who had turned to face the room again—“I should like, as a matter of curiosity, to see if it’s another chalice or if it’s mine. But that’s all.”

“I quite understand,” the Chief Constable said sunnily. “Ridings, are you coming? Mr.—?” He hesitated uncertainly. The Duke looked at Kenneth, who said: “I think I ought to go; it won’t take long. Would you mind waiting a few minutes?”

“I’ll take you to the gate,” the Duke said, “and wait for you there— then we’ll go straight on.”

Between the Archdeacon and the Chief Constable in their car the only conversation was a brief one upon the weather; in that which preceded them, Mornington, in answer to the Duke’s inquiries, sketched the situation as he understood it.

“And what do you think yourself?” the Duke asked.

Mornington grimaced. “Certum quia impossibile,” he said. “If I must come down on one side or the other, I fall on the Archdeacon’s. Especially since yesterday,” he said resentfully. “But it’s all insane. Persimmons’s explanation is perfectly satisfactory—and yet it just isn’t. The paragraph and the Cup were both there—and now they both aren’t.”

“Well,” the Duke said, “if I can help annoy the Chief Constable, tell me. He once told me that poetry wasn’t practical.”

At the gates of Cully the cars stopped. “Will you come in, Ridings?” the Chief Constable asked.

“No,” the Duke said; “what have I to do with these things? Don’t be longer than you can help catechizing and analysing and the rest of it.” He watched them out of sight, took a writing-pad from his pocket, and settled down to work on a drama in the Greek style upon the Great War and the fall of the German Empire. The classic form appeared to him capable at once of squeezing the last drop of intensity out of the action and of presenting at once the broadest and most minute effects. The scene was an open space behind the German lines in France; the time was in March 1918; the chorus consisted of French women from the occupied territory; and the deus ex machina was represented by a highly formalized St. Denis, whom the Duke was engaged in making as much like Phoebus Apollo as he could. He turned to the god’s opening monologue.

Out of those habitable, fields which are Nor swept by fire nor venomous with war, But, being disposed by…

He brooded over whether to say Zeus or God.

Meanwhile, Gregory received his guests with cold politeness, to which a much warmer courtesy was opposed by the Archdeacon. “It isn’t my fault that we’re here,” the priest said, when he had introduced the Chief Constable. “Colonel Conyers insisted on coming. He’s looking for the chalice that was stolen.”

“It certainly isn’t my wish,” the irritated Colonel said, finding himself already in a false position. “The Archdeacon gave me to understand that he believed the chalice had somehow got into Cully, and I thought if that was cleared up we should all know better where we were.”

“I suppose,” Gregory said, “that it was Mr. Mornington who told you I had a chalice here.”

“You remember I saw it myself,” the Archdeacon said. “It was the position then that made me feel sure it was the… it was an important one. You people are so humorous.” He shook his head, and hummed under his breath: “Oh, give thanks to the God of all gods… “

Colonel Conyers looked from one to the other. “I don’t quite follow all this,” he said a trifle impatiently.

“‘For his’—it doesn’t at all matter—‘mercy endureth for ever,’” the Archdeacon concluded, with a genial smile. He seemed to be rising moment by moment into a kind of delirious delight. His eyes moved from one to the other, changing from mere laughter as he looked at the Colonel into an impish and teasing mischief for Persimmons, and showing a feeling of real affection as they rested on Kenneth, between whom and himself there had appeared the beginnings of a definite attraction and friendship. Gregory looked at him with a certain perplexity. He understood Sir Giles’s insolent rudeness, though he despised it as Giles despised his own affectation of smoothness. But he saw no reason in the Archdeacon’s amusement, and began to wonder seriously whether Ludding’s blow had affected his mind. He glanced over at Mornington—there at least he had power, and understood his power. Then he looked at the Chief Constable and waited. So for a minute or two they all stood in silence, which the Colonel at last broke.

“I thought,” he began, rather pointedly addressing himself to Persimmons, “that if you would show us this chalice of yours it would convince the Archdeacon that it wasn’t his.”

“With pleasure,” Gregory answered, going towards the bracket and followed by the others. “Here it is. Do you want to know the full history? I had it—” he began, repeating what Kenneth had heard the previous day.

Colonel Conyers looked at the priest. “Well?” he said.

The Archdeacon looked, and grew serious. His spirit felt its own unreasonable gaiety opening into a wider joy; its dance became a more vital but therefore a vaster thing. Faintly again he heard the sound of music, but now not from without, or indeed from within, from some non-spatial, non-temporal, non-personal existence. It was music, but not yet music, or if music, then the music of movement itself—sound produced, not by things, but in the nature of things. He looked, and looked again, and felt himself part of a moving river flowing towards some narrow channel on a ripple of which the Graal was as a gleam of supernatural light. “Yes,” he said softly, “it is the Cup.”

Gregory shrugged, and looked at the Chief Constable. “I will give you the address of the man from whom I bought it,” he said, “and you can make what inquiries you like—if you think it necessary.”

The Colonel pursed his lips, and said in a lowered voice, “I will tell you if it’s necessary. But I’m not sure the identification is sufficiently valuable. I understand the Archdeacon had an accident to his head some time ago.”

“Unfortunately, it was I who found him lying in the road and brought him home, and I think that’s confused the idea of robbery with me,” Gregory continued, also in a subdued voice. “It’s very unfortunate, and rather embarrassing for me. I don’t want to appear un-neighbourly, and if it goes on I shall have to think about selling the house. He’s an old resident, and I’m a new one, and, of course, people would rather believe him. If I gave him this chalice—but I should be sorry to part with it. I like old things, but I don’t like them enough to half kill a clergyman to get them. I’m in your hands, Colonel. What do you advise?”

The Colonel considered. Kenneth had walked a little distance away, so as not to appear to overhear their talk; the Archdeacon was still gazing at the chalice as if in a trance. But now he was conscious of some slight movement on his own part towards which he was impelled; he knew the signs of that approaching direction, and awaited it serenely. By long practice he had accustomed himself in any circumstances—in company or alone, at work or at rest, in speech or in silence—to withdraw into that place where action is created. The cause of all action there disposed itself according to that Will which was its nature, and, so disposing itself, moved him easily as a part of its own accommodation to the changing wills of men, so that at any time and at all times its own perfection was maintained, now known in endurance, now in beauty, now in wisdom, now in joy. There was no smallest hesitation which it would not solve, nor greatest anxiety which it did not make lucid. In that light other things took on a new aspect, and the form of Gregory, where he stood a few steps away, seemed to swell into larger dimensions. But this enlargement was as unreal as it was huge; the sentences which he had altered a few days back on denying and defying Destiny boomed like unmeaning echoes across creation. Nothing but Destiny could defy Destiny; all else which sought to do so was pomposity so extreme as to become merely silly. It was a useless attempt at usurpation, useless and yet slightly displeasing, as pomposity always is. In the universe, as in Fardles, pomposity was bad manners; from its bracket the Graal shuddered forward in a movement of innocent distaste. The same motion that seemed to touch it touched the Archdeacon also; they came together and were familiarly one. And the Archdeacon, realizing with his whole mind what had happened, turned with unexpected fleetness and ran for the hall door.

Everyone else ran also. The Colonel, having made up his mind, had drawn Gregory a few steps away, and was telling him what he advised. Neither of them had seen, as Kenneth did, the unexpected yet gentle movement with which the Archdeacon seemed suddenly to reach up, take hold of the Cup, and begin to run. But they heard the first step, and rushed. Kenneth, who was nearer the door, was passed by the priest before he could move; then he also took to his heels. The Archdeacon, practised on his feet in many fencing bouts, flew out of the door and down the drive, and Gregory and the Colonel both lost breath—the first yelling for Ludding, the second shouting after