War in Heaven (Chap. 17: The Marriage of the Living and the Dead)

While Inspector Colquhoun had been discussing the Pattison murder with
his chief that morning, the Archdeacon of Castra Parvulorum had been
working at parish business in his study. He hoped, though he did not
much expect, that Mornington would call on him in the course of the day,
and he certainly proposed to himself to walk over to the Rackstraws'
cottage and hear how the patient was progressing. The suspicions which
Mornington and the Duke had felt on the previous day had not occurred to
him, partly because he had accepted the episode as finished for him
until some new demand should bring him again into action, but more still
because he had been prevented by the Duke's collision with him from
seeing what had happened. He supposed that the new doctor had been able
to soothe Barbara either by will-power or drugs, and, though the
doctor's mania for possession of the Graal appeared to him as
bad-mannered as Gregory's, that was not, after all, his affair. The
conversation of the previous night he kept and pondered in his heart,
but here, again, it was not his business to display activity, but to
wait on the Mover of all things. He went on making notes about the
Sunday school register; the Sunday school was a burden to him, but the
mothers of the village expected it, and the Archdeacon felt bound to
supply the need. He occasionally quoted to himself "_Feed my lambs_," but
a profound doubt of the proper application of the text haunted him; and
he was far from certain that the food which was supplied to them even in
the Sunday school at Fardles was that which Christ had intended.
However, this also, he thought to himself, the Divine Redeemer would
purify and make good.

Mrs. Lucksparrow appeared at the door. "Mr. Persimmons has called, sir,"
she said, "and would like to see you for a few minutes, if you can spare
the time. About the Harvest Festival, I think it is," she added in a
lower tone.

"Really?" the Archdeacon asked in surprise, and then again, in a
slightly different voice, "Really!" Mr. Persimmons's manners, he
thought, were becoming almost intolerable. He got up and went to
interview his visitor in the hall.

"So sorry to trouble you, Mr. Archdeacon," Gregory said, smiling, "but I
was asked to deliver this note to you personally. To make sure you got
it and to see if there is any answer."

The Archdeacon, glinting rather like a small, frosty pool, took it and
opened it. He read it once; he read it twice; he looked up to find
Gregory staring out through the front door. He looked down, read it a
third time, and stood pondering.

"'Sihon, King of the Amorites,'" he hummed abstractedly, "'and Og, the
King of Basan: for His mercy endureth for ever.' You know what is in
this note, Mr. Persimmons?"

"I'm afraid I do," Gregory answered charmingly. "The circumstances..."

"Yes," the Archdeacon said meditatively, "yes. Naturally."

"Naturally?" Gregory asked, rather as if making conversation.

"Well, I don't mean to be rude," the Archdeacon said, "but, in the first
place, if it's true, you would probably know; in the second, you
probably wrote it; and, in the third, you probably and naturally would
read other people's letters anyhow. Yes, well, thank you so much."

"You don't want to put any questions?" Gregory asked.

"No." the Archdeacon answered, "I don't think so. I've no means of
checking you, have I? And I should never dream of relying on people who
made a practice of defying God? in any real sense. They'd be almost
bound to lose all sense of proportion."

"Well," Gregory said, "you must do as you will. But I can tell you that
what is written there is true. We have them in our power and we can slay
them in a moment."

"That will save them a good deal of trouble, won't it?" the Archdeacon
said. "Are you sure they want me to interfere? 'To die now. 'Twere now
to be most happy.'"

"Ah, you talk," Gregory said, unreasonably enraged. "But do you think
either of those young men wants to die? Or to see the vessel for which
they die made into an instrument of power and destruction?"

"I would tell you what I am going to do if I knew," the Archdeacon
answered, "but I do not know. You are forgetting, however, to tell me
where I shall come if I come."

Gregory recovered himself, gave the address, reached the door, remarked
on the beauty of the garden, and disappeared. The Archdeacon went back
to his study, shut the door, and gave himself up to interior silence and
direction.

Gregory went on to Cully. The slight passage at arms with the priest had
given him real delight, but as he walked he was conscious of renewed
alarms stirring in his being: alarms not so much of fear as of doubt. He
found that by chance he was now in touch with two or three persons who
found no satisfaction in desire and possession and power. No power of
destruction seemed to satisfy Manasseh's hunger; no richness of treasure
to arouse the Archdeacon's. And as he moved in these unaccustomed
regions he felt that what was lacking was delight. It had delighted him
in the past to overbear and torment; but Manasseh's greed had never
found content. And delight was far too small a word for the peace in
which the Archdeacon moved; a sky of serenity overarched Gregory when he
thought of the priest against which his own arrows were shot in vain. He
saw it running from the east to the west; he saw below it, in the midst
of a flat circle of emptiness, the face of the Greek spewing out venom.
Absurdly enough, he felt himself angered by the mere uselessness of
this; it was something of the same irritation which he had expressed to
his son on the proportion of capital expended on the worst kind of
popular novel. Enjoyment was all very well, but enjoyment oughtn't to be
merely wasteful. It annoyed him as his father had annoyed him by wasting
emotions and strength in mere stupid, senile worry. Adrian must be
taught the uselessness of that--power was the purpose of spiritual
things, and Satan the lord of power. He turned in at the gates of Cully,
and saw before him the window where he had talked with Adrian's father.
"A clerk in a brothel," he thought suddenly; but even the clerk desired
power. And then, in a sudden desperation, he saw that unchanging
serenity of sky, and even the flames of the Sabbath leapt uselessly
miles below it. Here he had met the young stranger: "only slaves can
trespass, and they only among shadows." But he was not a slave--that
sky mocked him as the boast swelled. Slaves, slaves, it sounded, and his
foot in the hall echoed the word again in his ear.

He inquired for Jessie and the boy; they were in the grounds, and he
went out to find them, looking also for Lionel and Barbara. But these he
did not meet, although he eventually discovered the others. Adrian,
apparently resting, was telling himself a complicated and interminable
story; Jessie was looking into a small stream and pondering her own
thoughts--Gregory smiled to think what they probably were. He very
nearly addressed her as "Mrs. Persimmons," remembering that she probably
knew nothing of his wife in the asylum, but refrained.

Barbara, it seemed, was as well as ever; she had spent an hour with
Adrian before Mr. Rackstraw had made her go away. Then they--Jessie and
Adrian--had come out into the grounds, and there had met a strange
gentleman who had talked and played with Adrian for a little while.
Gregory raised his eyebrows at this, and Jessie explained that she had
not approved, but had not been able to prevent it, especially since
Adrian had welcomed him so warmly that she had supposed them to be old
friends.

"But what was he doing in the grounds?" Gregory asked.

"I don't know, sir," Jessie answered; "he seemed to know them, and he
told me he knew you."

Gregory suspected that this was the only cause of her frankness, but it
was hardly worth troubling to rebuke her. Within a week Jessie might
find herself only too anxious to make friends with strangers in Vienna
or Adrianople, or somewhere farther east.

"What was he like?" he said.

"Oh, quite young, sir, and rather foreign-looking, and dressed all in
grey. He and the boy seemed to be talking a foreign language half the
time."

Gregory stood still abruptly, and then began to walk on again. What had
Sir Giles said about this stranger? And who was it the stranger reminded
him of? The Archdeacon, of course; they both had something of that same
remote serenity, that provoking, overruling detachment. In the rush of
the previous day's excitement he had forgotten to consult Manasseh; that
would be remedied before night. But the talk of a foreign language
disturbed him a little, lest Adrian should have a closer and more
intimate friend than himself or than he had known. If there were
anything in Sir Giles's babblings...He gathered himself together and
turned sharply to Jessie.

"We shall go to London," he said, "I and Adrian and you to look after
Adrian, directly after lunch. To-morrow we may go abroad for a little.
It's sudden, but it can't be helped. And it's not to be chattered about.
See to it."

It chanced therefore that, by the time Inspector Colquhoun had finished
making inquiries of Mrs. Lucksparrow at the Rectory, Gregory, with
Adrian and Jessie, had reached Lord Mayor's Street. The shop was closed,
but Manasseh admitted them, and Jessie was shown, first the kitchen and
afterwards the small upstairs room where she and Adrian were to sleep.

She was not shown the cellar, where the Duke of the North Ridings lay
bound, and she and Adrian were rushed swiftly through the back room,
where the Archdeacon was looking pensively out of the window. He glanced
at them as they went through, but neither face conveyed anything to his
mind. Gregory had provided Adrian with two or three new toys, but it was
intimated to Jessie that the sooner he was put to bed the better, and
that she had better stay with him, as it was a strange room, lest he
woke and was afraid.

The captives thus disposed of, Gregory went back to his friends, who
were in the shop. The Archdeacon had left off looking out of the window
and was reading the _Revelations_ of Lady Julian close by it.

"He has come, then," Gregory said.

"He has come," Manasseh answered; "didn't you expect him?"

"I didn't know," Gregory said. "He didn't seem at all sure this morning.
And I don't know why he has come."

"He has come," the Greek said, "for the same reason that we are here--
because in the whole world of Being everything makes haste to its doom.
Are you determined and prepared for what you will do?"

Gregory looked back through the half-open door. "I have considered it
for many hours," he said. "I am determined and prepared."

"Why, then, should we delay?" the Greek said. "I have hidden this house
in a cloud and drawn it in to our hearts so that it shall not be entered
from without till the work is done."

Gregory involuntarily looked towards the window, and saw a thick
darkness rising above it, a darkness not merely foglike, as it seemed to
those without, but shot with all kinds of colour and movement as if some
living nature were throbbing about them. The Greek turned and went into
the inner room, and the other followed him. There the darkness was
already gathering, so that the Archdeacon had ceased to read and was
waiting for whatever was to follow. All that day, since he had talked
with Gregory in the morning, he had been conscious that the power to
which he had slowly taught himself to live in obedience was gradually
withdrawing and abandoning him. Steadily and continuously that process
went on, till now, as he faced his enemies, he felt the interior loss
which had attacked him at other stages of his pilgrimage grow into a
final overwhelming desolation. He said to himself again, as he so often
said, "This also is Thou," for desolation as well as abundance was but
a means of knowing That which was All. But he felt extraordinarily
lonely in the darkness of the small room, with Persimmons and Manasseh
and the unknown third gazing at him from the door.

The Greek moved slowly forward, considered for a moment, and then said:
"Do you know why you have come here?"

"I have come because God willed it," the Archdeacon said. "Why did you
send for me?"

"For a thing that is to be done," the Greek said, "and you shall help in
the doing." As he spoke, Manasseh caught the priest's arm with a little
crow of greedy satisfaction, and Gregory laid hold of his other
shoulder:

"You shall help in the doing of it," the Greek said, smiling for the
first time since Gregory had known him, with a sudden and swift
convulsion. "Take him and bind him and lay him down."

It was quickly done; the Archdeacon was unable to resist, not so much
because of the greater strength of his opponents as because that
interior withdrawal of energy had now touched his body and he was
weakening every moment. He was stretched on the ground, and Manasseh
tore at his clothes till his breast was bare. Then the Greek lifted the
Graal from the table by the window and set it on the priest, and still
the darkness increased and moved and swirled around them. The Archdeacon
heard voices above him, heard Gregory say: "Are there no markings and
ceremonies?" and the Greek answer: "We are retired beyond such things;
there is only one instrument, and that is the blood with which I have
filled the cup; there is only one safeguard, in the purpose of our
wills. For your part, remember the man you slew; keep his image in your
mind and let it be imposed on this man's being. For through this
Manasseh and I will work."

The darkness closed entirely over, and as the Archdeacon lay he knew for
a while nothing but the waste of an obscure night. Then there became
known to him within it three separate points of existence and energy
about him, from each of which issued a shaft of directed power. He was
aware that these shafts were not yet aimed directly at him; he was aware
also of a difference in their nature. For that which was nearest him was
also the least certain; it shook and faltered; it was more like anger as
he had known it among men, red and variable and mortal. This anger was
the effluence of a similar centre, a centre which was known on that
earth they had left as Gregory Persimmons, and trembled still with
desires natural to man. So far as in him lay, the Archdeacon presented
himself to that spirit and profession as a means whereby the
satisfaction of all desire might meet it; not by such passions was hell
finally peopled and the last rejection found.

But this procession was not alone; it was controlled and directed by
mightier powers. From another centre there issued a different force, and
this, the victim realized, it would need all his present strength to
meet. There impinged upon him the knowledge of all hateful and
separating and deathly things: madness and tormenting disease and the
vengeance of gods. This was the hunger with which creation preys upon
itself, a supernatural famine that has no relish except for the poisons
that waste it. This was the second death that cannot die, and it ran
actively through that world of immortalities on a hungry mission of
death. What that mission was he did not yet know; the beam played
somewhere above him and disappeared where a central darkness hid the
Graal. But he knew that the mission would be presently revealed, and he
asserted by a spiritual act the perfection of all manner of birth.

Even as he did so the act itself quivered and almost died. For the third
stream of energy passed over him, and its very passage shook the centre
of his being from its roots. This was no longer mission or desire,
search or propaganda or hunger; this was rejection absolute. No mortal
mind could conceive a desire which was not based on a natural and right
desire; even the hunger for death was but a perversion of the death
which precedes all holy birth. But of every conceivable and
inconceivable desire this was the negation. This was desire itself sick,
but not unto death; rejection which tore all things asunder and swept
them with it in its fall through the abyss. He felt himself sinking even
in the indirect rush of its passage; here, if anywhere, the foundation
of the universe must hold them firm, for otherwise he and the universe
were ruining together for ever. But that foundation, if it existed, had
separated itself from him; he cried desperately to God and God did not
hear him. The three intermingling currents passed on their way, and,
fainting and helpless, he awaited the further end.

There came for a little a relief. He was dimly aware again for some
moments of external things--a breath above him, the slight feeling of
the Cup upon his breast, the pressure of the cords that held his arms to
his sides. Then slowly and very gently these departed again and he felt
himself being directed towards--he did not know what. But he was, as it
were, moving. He was passing to a preordained tryst; he was meeting
something, and he grew dreadfully afraid. Marriage awaited him, and the
darkness above him took shape and he knew that another existence was
present, an existence that hated and strove against this tryst as much
as he hated and strove against it, but which was driven as he was
remorselessly driven. Nearer and nearer, through ages of time, they were
brought; desire and death and utter rejection gathered their victims
from the various worlds and drew them into union. His body became aware
again of the Graal, and from the Graal itself the visitation came. He
felt that no longer the Graal but a human being was there; he saw a
weak, anxious, and harassed face look on him despairingly. He saw it
float about him, and his very consciousness, which had taken in all
these things up to then, began to feel them differently. Some entry was
being forced into that which was he; in that Vessel which had held the
Blood which is the potentiality of all he and this other were to be
wrecked in each other for ever. Then this knowledge itself was withdrawn
and no function of his being recorded any more.

It was at this moment, when he had been driven beyond consciousness,
that the masters of the work above him concentrated their utmost
resources for the purpose they had in hand. The Graal vibrated before
them in the intensity of their power.

In obedience to the Greek's direction, Gregory had concentrated his
consciousness upon that being whom he had, not so very long ago, slain;
partly for safety, partly for mere amusement, partly as an offering to
his god. He set before himself the thought of the wretched man's whole
life, from the moment when the discovery of small thefts had put him in
his power, through his years of service and torment, through the last
effort towards freedom, through the last deliberate return. Pattison had
returned to his death and had died, obeying minutely all the orders that
had been given him; clean and unmarked linen, no papers, his few
belongings left in a bag at some Tube station, and the ticket destroyed
--he had seen that all was done under the fascination of his master's
law. And now that law was to do something more with him; it searched for
him in the place of shadows where his uncertain spirit wandered; it
explored the night beyond death to recover him thence. Gregory held the
knowledge of the man's soul fast in his mind, and from his own solitary
wanderings in the abyss that soul began to return to its lord. Upward
now, his image began to rise, as some few days since the wraith of the
child Adrian had floated, but even more swiftly by virtue of the triple
call. A fantastic bubble of tinged cloud seemed to appear, moving upward
from the Graal, and the bubble thickened and became mist and shaped
itself into a form and face. The Graal was dimly visible in a faint
green light, through which and over which the recalled spirit took on a
mortal covering. Gregory involuntarily smiled at the appeal on the face
that was momentarily visible, and renewed his effort to offer up both
the captives in sacrifice to the tremendous power he adored. Slowly the
strength of the three prevailed. Little by little that shadow sank and
spread itself over the motionless form on the floor, little by little it
flowed round it and into it. Gregory, almost exhausted with the effort,
would have ceased, contented, as the last faint coils of mist faded from
the light that shone, like a light of decay, from the Graal. But the
knowledge and energy of his companions insisted, in the continuous force
they expended, that nothing but a mental haunting, a perpetual
obsession, had yet been achieved. Something further yet was needed for
the final and perfect marriage of these two victims; and in an instant
something further came.

The faint glow round the Vessel faded and vanished; and all the moving
darkness of the room seemed to direct itself towards and to emerge from
that thickest core of night which beat in the Cup, as if its very heart
were beating there. One moment only they heard and felt that throbbing
heart, and then suddenly from it there broke a terrific and golden
light; blast upon blast of trumpets shook the air; the Graal blazed with
fiery tumult before them; and its essence, as at last that essence was
touched, awoke in its own triumphant and blinding power. None could tell
whether light and trumpets were indeed there; but something was there?
something which, as it caught and returned upon them the energies they
had put forth, seemed also to bestride the prostrate figure on the
floor. The Graal was lifted or was itself no more--they could not tell;
they were flung back before this lifting and visible form. He over whom
it stood returned also from the depths; he looked up and saw it flaming
through the scattering night, and heard a litany which changed as it
smote his ears from the chant of an unknown tongue into the familiar and
cherished maxims of his natural mind.

"Let them give thanks whom the Lord hath redeemed," a great voice sang,
and from all about it, striking into light and sound at once, the answer
came: "for His mercy endureth for ever."

"And delivered out of the snare of the enemy," it sang again; and again
an infinite chorus crashed: "for His mercy endureth for ever."

He moved his arms and the cords that held them snapped; he half arose as
the Graal, or he that was the Graal, moved forward and upward. All sense
of the horrible intrusion into his nature and essence had gone. He saw
somewhere for a moment near him the face he had seemed to see before,
but it was free and happy and adoring; he saw Kenneth somewhere and lost
him again, and again all round him the litany wheeled like fire:

"He hath destroyed great nations: for His mercy endureth for ever:

"And overthrown mighty kings: for His mercy endureth for ever."

He was on his feet, and before him the room, cleared of light and
darkness, showed its usual bare dirtiness. In front of him was the
figure of the priest-king, the Graal lifted in his hands. Beyond lay the
others--Gregory prostrate on his face, Manasseh shaking and writhing on
his back, the Greek crouched half back on his heels.

"I am John," a voice sounded, "and I am the prophecy of the things that
are to be and are. You who have sought the centre of the Graal, behold
through me that which you seek, receive from me that which you are. He
that is righteous, let him be righteous still; he that is filthy, let
him be filthy still. I am rejection to him that hath sought rejection; I
am destruction to him that hath wrought destruction; I am sacrifice to
him that hath offered sacrifice. Friend to my friends and lover to my
lovers, I will quit all things, for I am myself and I am He that sent
me. This war is ended and another follows quickly. Do that which you
must while the time is with you."

The Archdeacon saw Gregory drag himself slowly to his feet; Manasseh was
lying still; the Greek crouched lower still on the floor.

"Gregory Persimmons," the voice went on, "they wait for you close at
hand. Can a man sacrifice his brother or make agreement with any god for
him? Die, then, as this other has died, and there shall be agreement
with you also in the end, for you have sought me and no other."

Gregory turned dully to the door and moved towards it. The priest-king
turned to the Archdeacon and held the Graal out to him. "Brother and
friend," he said, "the rest is in your charge. One of your friends is
below, the other is with me. Take your friend and this Cup and return,
and I will come to you to-morrow."

The Archdeacon took the Graal with his usual sedateness. It was as
tarnished as it had been when he last saw it. He glanced at the figures
on the floor; he looked again at the high face of the priest-king,
glimmering in the natural dusk; then, gravely and a little daintily, he
went out towards the cellars.

In the room above, the maid Jessie was awakened by what seemed the light
of a shaded lamp. She saw the stranger with whom Adrian had played that
morning standing by her. "Come," he said, "your master is in the hands
of the police, and we return to Fardles to-night. Do not disturb
yourself about the child; he will not wake." He gathered the sleeping
Adrian in his arms, wrapped some dark covering round him, added: "Come;
I shall wait for you at the doors," and left the room.

How Jessie got back to Cully she was never very clear. She had a vague
impression of moving through country lanes, and supposed it must have
been in a motor, though, as she afterwards said, to her most intimate
friend. "I was so sleepy it might have been an angel, for all I knew.
And a mercy the police got Mr. Persimmons in time, for I don't know that
I'd have said 'No' if he'd asked me."

"You'd have had the house and a good bit of money, even so," her friend
elliptically said.

"What, and be the wife of a man that's been hung?" Jessie said
indignantly, "to say nothing of his being a murderer. Thank you for
nothing, Lizzie; that's not the kind of girl I am. Why, it'd be no
better than selling yourself for money."