He went, indeed, straight to the room where Barbara lay, chatted for a moment or two with the nurse, who was about to dress the wound, and then went over to the bed, where he paused to look down on her.
“Poor dear,” he said thoughtfully, “and on her holiday, and in such glorious weather!”
“It seems to make it worse somehow, doesn’t it, sir?” the nurse said, Mr. Persimmons of Cully being obviously an important personage. Gregory shook his head and sighed. “Yes,” he said, “it’s very sad, very. And we have fine country here, too. You know it—no? Oh, you must. In your breaks you’ll use my car as much as you want, won’t you? Now, over there,” he went on, drowning the nurse’s hesitating thanks, “they say you can almost see the top of the spire of Norwich Cathedral.”
“Norwich!” the nurse said, surprised and turning to look out of the window.
“They say!” Gregory said, half-laughing, and running his finger down the long, unhealed wound twice and again. “But I admit I’ve never seen it. However, I mustn’t delay you now. Perhaps you’ll let me take you for a run one afternoon.”
He smiled, nodded, left the room, and strolled back along the corridor to the top of the stairs.
“… moral decency demands it,” the Duke was saying. “I am not concerned with all that,” Manasseh answered, more truthfully than any but Gregory knew. “I have told you that from what Mr. Persimmons has told me I am sure I can heal Mrs. Rackstraw. But I must have my price. Unless I have it I will not act.”
“There are English doctors,” the Duke said coldly.
“Yes,” Manasseh said, “you have tried one. Well, as you like …”
Gregory frowned. It was the Duke again, he supposed. But he himself dared not interfere; that would probably make matters worse, for he was suspect to all save Lionel. Well, he would have Adrian, anyhow; the other must be tried for again. But another five minutes might make a difference; he hoped Manasseh wouldn’t rush things. Lionel and Kenneth were speaking together; the Archdeacon was imperceptibly drawn in, and the other two awaited their decision.
“I cannot buy it,” Lionel broke out; “I have no possible excuse for asking for it. I ought not to have told you even. But I have told you, and there is an end to it.”
“No, but, Lionel——” Kenneth began.
“Mr. Rackstraw,” the Archdeacon interrupted, “the end to it is very simple. For myself, I would not have delayed so long. I would give up any relic, however wonderful, to save anyone an hour’s neuralgia—man depends too much on these things. But, having friends, I felt only——”
He stopped. For from above the shrieks that had shaken Cully the previous night had suddenly begun again. The nurse came flying to the stairs, crying, “She’s up, and I can’t hold her. Help! help!” But almost at the same instant Barbara was there too, her face wild with an appalling fear, her arms wide and clutching, her voice shrieking incomprehènsible things, of which the group in the hall caught only the wild words: “The edge! the edge!” and then again, “I can’t stop! The edge, the edge!” Gregory sprang as if to check her; she was past him and rushing down the stairs. Lionel and Kenneth met her as she came, and were flung aside by the irresistible energy that held her. The Duke, horrified, took an unintentional step back and crashed into the Archdeacon, so that Manasseh ran forward alone towards the foot of the stairs. The voice now was beyond description terrible, and still she cried, “The edge, the edge!” and still was hurled blindly forward. And then, at the very height of the agonizing moment, when it seemed that some immediate destruction must rend her whole being, of a sudden the voice faltered and stopped. As Manasseh closed upon her she paused, stumbled, and in one long gentle movement seemed to collapse towards the floor. He had her before she reached it, but, as his eyes momentarily met Gregory’s, there appeared in them a great perplexity. In a second or two they were all around her; Lionel and Kenneth moved with her to one of the long seats scattered about the hall and laid her gently down, and Manasseh bent over her. She seemed, as she lay there, almost as if asleep; asleep in that half-repose, half-collapse, which follows prolonged strain. A few tears crept from her closed eyes; her body shook a little, but as if from the mere after-effects of agony, not in the stiff spasms of agony itself. Manasseh straightened himself, and looked round at the others. “I think it is over,” he said. “It will need time and patience, but the will is caught and brought back. Her mind will now be safe—now or presently, I cannot tell to a few days. There may be another slighter outbreak, but I do not think so.” He drew a small bottle from his pocket. “Give her two drops of this—not more—in a wineglass of water when she wakes, and once every twelve hours afterwards. I will come down again the day after to-morrow.”
Kenneth giggled hysterically. Manasseh’s speech had an insane likeness to any doctor concluding a visit. Of course, doctors were all the same, but the Archdeacon’s black case, the anguish they had seen in Barbara’s face, seemed to demand a more exalted conclusion. His giggle passed unnoticed, however, for the Archdeacon was holding the case out to Manasseh. “This is what you wanted, I think,” he said, paused a moment, and added as he turned to the door, “But no bargain yet brought anyone near to the Graal or to the heart of its Lord.” He bowed slightly to Manasseh and slightly to Persimmons and walked out.
On the steps he waited for his friends. They followed him at once, the Duke taking no notice of anyone, Kenneth with a murmur to Lionel; and the three looked at each other. “Well,” the Archdeacon said, “I shall go back to the Rectory. Will you come with me or what?”
“No,” the Duke said. “Our trust has been ended. I go back to the Castle. Will you come with me for a night or two, Mornington, as you meant to?”
Kenneth considered. He would have to see about getting a job, but a day or two first could do no harm. And if by any wild chance the Duke should really want a secretary … But he tried to suppress the idea. “I think I will,” he said. “I should like to hang round till I knew Barbara was well again.”
“I don’t see that we can do anything if she isn’t,” the Duke said. “We’ve lost all our assets.”
“Assets?” the Archdeacon asked. “‘The sacred and glorious Graal’? Oh, really, my dear Duke!”
The Duke looked a little embarrassed; his remark had been really irritable, not judicial. But he said stubbornly: “We could have pretended to bargain, at least.”
They had begun walking down the drive, and the Archdeacon made no answer for a minute or two. Then he said, “I will not bargain any more for anything, if I can help it. How can one bargain for anything that is worth while? And what else is worth bargaining for?”
“If one bargained for nothing, would everything be worth while?” Kenneth said, but more as a dream than a question.
They came to the gates and paused; then the Archdeacon said cheerfully to Kenneth, “Well, if you run over to see Mrs. Rackstraw in the next day or two, you’ll look in on me? I must relieve Batesby—and the parish,” he added as an afterthought.
“Certainly I will,” Kenneth said, shaking hands. The Duke followed suit, saying a little sadly, “I suppose this is the end.”
“I wouldn’t be too sure of that,” the Archdeacon answered. “If I were Manasseh, I shouldn’t trust the Graal too far. But he probably thinks it important.”
By the way he was clutching the case, he probably did. Gregory and Lionel, not wanting to disturb Barbara’s profound sleep, inserted pillows and cushions under and round her, and then, while Lionel sat down close at hand, Gregory walked over to Manasseh.
“You did that very well,” he said softly. “Or—didn’t you do it?”
Manasseh hesitated; then, his face a little troubled, he answered, “No; and that’s what makes me wonder. I thought I could do it one way or another, but she stopped first. I could have drowned her knowledge, and instead she seemed to know something else. It was as if she found everything all right, even on the very edge of the pit.”
“‘He shall give His ange
ls charge over her,’” Gregory said. “Perhaps He managed it in time. They’ve usually been rather late. My wife, and Stephen, and even poor dear Pattison. But it doesn’t matter.”
“No,” Manasseh said, and then suddenly, “But I don’t like her getting away. She was on the very edge of destruction; she might have been torn to bits there—and she wasn’t. Is she really safe? Can we try the ointment again?”
“No, we can’t,” Gregory said. “Don’t be a fool. You’ve got the Cup, take it with you, and, unless something hinders me, I’ll be with you to-night. To-morrow certainly, but I think to-night. You won’t do anything till I come?”
“No,” Manasseh answered. “You shall bring the child and we will talk with Dmitri. We win.”
“Praise to our lord,” Gregory said. But Manasseh smiled and shook his head. “He is the last mystery,” he murmured, “and all destruction is his own destroying of himself.”
Chapter Thirteen
CONVERSATIONS OF THE YOUNG MAN IN GREY
When Sir Giles reached the station that morning he met a young man in grey just issuing from the booking-office. He stopped on the pavement and surveyed him. The stranger returned his gaze with a look of considerable interest.
“Are you running away, Sir Giles?” he said rather loudly.
“No,” Sir Giles said at once. “Are you Persimmons’s bugbear?”
“No,” the stranger answered; “yours, much more truly. I like to watch you running.”
“I am not running,” Sir Giles almost shouted. “I was going to-day anyhow, and I have told Persimmons a thousand times I won’t be dragged into his Boxing Day glee parties. And, anyhow, he’s getting a bore.… Haven’t I met you before?”
“Once or twice,” the stranger said. “We shall meet again, no doubt. I like to watch your mind working. So long as you don’t make yourself too much of a nuisance.”
Sir Giles’s overpowering curiosity, freed from other desires, thrust him forward. “And who are you?”
“I will tell you, if you like,” the stranger said, smiling, “for at least you are really curious. I am Prester John, I am the Graal and the Keeper of the Graal. All enchantment has been stolen from me, and to me the Vessel itself shall return.”
Sir Giles stepped back. “Nonsense!” he said. “Prester John, indeed! However, it’s not my affair. You don’t seem to have kept the Graal very well.” He stepped towards the station, but paused as he heard the stranger’s voice behind him.
“This is the second time we have met, Giles Tumulty,” it said. “I warn you that one day when you meet me you shall find me too like yourself to please you. It is a joyous thing to study the movements of men as you study insects under a stone, but you shall run a weary race when I and the heavens watch you and laugh at you and tease you to go a way that you would not. Then you shall scrabble in the universe as an ant against the smoothness of the inner side of the Graal, and none shall pick you out or deliver you for ever. There is a place in the pit where I shall be found, but there is no place for you who do not enter the pit, though you thrust others in.”
During the high tones that had been used at the beginning of their conversation Sir Giles had glanced once or twice at a porter who was lounging near. But the porter had not seemed to take any notice, and even now, while this warning sounded through the bright morning air, he still leant idly against the station wall. Sir Giles, while the stranger was still speaking, went up to him. “What platform for the London train?” he said sharply, and the porter answered at once, “Over the bridge, sir.” Sir Giles looked at him hard, but there was no suggestion of anything unusual on the man’s face, though the stern voice still rang on. Tumulty shivered a little, and thought to himself, “I must be imagining it; Persimmons is wrecking my nerve.” An ant scrabbling in an empty chalice—a foul idea! He looked back as he entered the booking-office; the stranger was strolling away down the station entrance.
Prester John, if it was he indeed, passed on down the country roads till he came near the Rectory, having timed himself so well that he met Mr. Batesby emerging. The clergyman recognized at once his companion of the day before, and greeted him amiably. “Still staying here?” he said. “Well, you couldn’t do better. ‘Through pleasures and palaces though we may roam, there’s no place like home.’ Though, strictly speaking, I expect Fardles isn’t your home. But a church is our home everywhere—in England, of course I mean. I suppose you don’t find the churches abroad really homely.”
“It depends,” the young man said, “on one’s idea of a home. Not like an English home perhaps.”
“No,” Mr. Batesby said, “they haven’t, I gather, a proper sense of the family. Didn’t one of the poets say that Heaven lies about us in our family? And where else, indeed?”
“What then,” the stranger asked, “do you mean by the Kingdom of Heaven?”
“Well, we have to understand,” Mr. Batesby said. As Ludding had increased in brutality, and Gregory in hatred, so, in conversation with the stranger, Mr. Batesby’s superior protectiveness seemed to increase; he became more than ever a guide and guard to his fellows, and the Teaching Church seemed to walk, a little nervously and dragging its feet, in the dust behind him. “We have to understand. Of course, some take it to mean the Church—but that’s very narrow. I tell my young people in confirmation classes the Kingdom of Heaven is all good men—and women, of course … and women. Just that. Simple perhaps, but helpful.”
“And good men,” the other said, “are——?”
“Oh, well, good men, one knows good men,” Mr. Batesby said. “By their fruits, you know. They do not kill. They do not commit adultery. They are just kind and honest and thrifty and hard-working, and so on. Good—after all, one feels goodness.”
“The Kingdom of Heaven is to be felt among the honest and industrious?” the stranger asked. “And yet it’s true. The Church is indeed marvellously protected from error.”
“Yes,” Mr. Batesby agreed. “The Faith once delivered. We can’t go wrong if we stick to the old paths. What was good enough for St. Paul is good enough for me.”
“When he fell to the ground beyond Damascus and was blinded?” the stranger asked. “Or when he persecuted the Christians in Jerusalem? Or when he taught them in Macedonia?”
“Ah, it was the same Paul all the time,” Mr. Batesby rather triumphantly answered. “Just as it’s the same me. I can grow older, but I don’t change.”
“So that when the Son of Man cometh He shall find faith upon the earth? It was beyond His expectation,” the stranger said.
“The five righteous in Sodom,” Mr. Batesby reminded him.
“There were not five righteous in Sodom,” the young man said. “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem!…”
“Well, not strictly perhaps,” Mr. Batesby allowed, a little hurt, but recovering himself. “But a parable has to be applied, hasn’t it? We mustn’t take it too literally, too much in the foot of the letter, as the French so wittily say. More witty than moral the French, I’m afraid.”
So conversing, they walked on till they came to the village, where, at the inn door, Inspector Colquhoun was regarding it pensively. He looked unrecognizingly at them as they approached. But the stranger stopped and smiled at him in greeting.
“Why, inspector,” he said, “what are you doing down here?”
The inspector looked at him critically. “I’ve no doubt it’s your business,” he said, “but I’m quite sure it’s mine. I don’t seem to remember your face.”
“Oh, many a time!” the stranger said lightly; “but I won’t ask you any questions. Mr. Batesby … do you know Inspector Colquhoun? Inspector, this is Mr. Batesby, who is looking after the parish for the time being.”
The two others murmured inaudibly, and the stranger went on, “You ought to have a kindness for one another, for on you two the universe reposes. Movement and stability, aspiration and order …”
“Yes,” Mr. Batesby broke in, “I’ve often thought something like that. In fact, I r
emember once in one of my sermons I said that the police were as necessary for the Ten Commandments as the Church was. More so nowadays, when there’s so little respect for the law.”
“There never was much that I could ever hear of,” the inspector said, willing to spend a quarter of an hour chatting to the local clergyman. “No, I don’t think things are much worse.”
“No, not in one way,” Mr. Batesby said. “Man had fallen just as far twenty or thirty years ago as he has to-day. But the war made a great difference. Men nowadays don’t seem so willing to be taught.”
“Ah, there you have me, sir,” the inspector answered. “I don’t have much to do with teaching them, only with those who won’t be taught. And I’ve seen some of them look pretty white,” he added viciously.
“Ah, a guilty conscience,” Mr. Batesby said. “Yes—guilt makes the heavy head to bend, the saddened heart to sob, and happy they who ere their end can feel remorseful throb. Love castest out perfect fear. Nothing is sadder, I think, than to see a man or woman afraid.”
“It doesn’t do to trust to it.” The inspector shook his head. “It may drive them almost silly any moment, and make them dangerous. I’ve known a little whipper-snapper fairly gouge a policeman’s eyes out.”
“Really?” Mr. Batesby said. “Dear me, how sad! I don’t think I know what fear is—temperamentally. Of course, an accident …”
“You have never been afraid of anyone?” the stranger said, his voice floating through the air as if issuing from it.
“Yes,” the inspector said, “and pretty often.”
“Not, I think, afraid of anyone,” Mr. Batesby said, mysteriously accentuating the preposition. “Of course, every priest has unpleasant experiences. Once, I remember, I was making a call on a farmer and a pig got into the room, and we couldn’t get it to go away. And there are callers.”
“Callers are the devil—I mean, the devil of a nuisance,” the inspector remarked.