“I don’t believe he knows anything, but one can’t be sure,” Persimmons answered. “And, of course, if he does it needn’t—” He became unhappily silent.
Mornington uncoiled himself and got up. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like to go away now for a week or two, sir?” he said. “It’s rather knocked you over, I expect.”
“No,” Stephen said, drifting to the door. “No, I can’t go away now. I simply can’t. We’ll leave it at that then.” He disappeared.
“We seem to be leaving it at a very undefined that,” Mornington thought to himself, as he went back to his letters. “Stephen never was what the deceased would probably have called ‘brainy’. But he seems rather cloudy even for him.”
Later in the day he replied to the camp of the children.
MY DEAR MR. ARCHDEACON,—The fact is that the paragraph you refer to was cut out by Sir Giles Tumulty at the last moment. This puts us in a mild fix, because I suppose technically proofs in a publisher’s office are private, till the book is published. And after, for that matter. I am given to understand by the people here who have met him that he is the nearest to a compound of a malevolent hyena and an especially venomous cobra that ever appeared in London, and I shrink therefore from officially confirming your remembrance of that paragraph. But you were here, and you saw the proofs, and, if you could conceal the unimportant fact that we showed them to you, write to Sir Giles by all means.
This sounds as if I were proposing an immorality. But it only means that, while I can’t officially say ‘Write,’ I am reluctant to say ‘Don’t write.’ Your tact will no doubt discover the wise road. Personally, I hope you’ll find out.
Thank you for your invitation. I may conceivably turn up one day before the month ends.
Did you have a pleasant time in Scotland?
Yours very sincerely,
K. H. MORNINGTON.
At the moment when this letter was being dictated Sir Giles had, in fact, a visitor from Fardles sitting with him; not the Archdeacon, but Mr. Gregory Persimmons. They were speaking in subdued tones, both of them rather greedily, as if they each wanted something from the other, and the subject of their conversation might have eluded Mornington, had he heard it, for a considerable time. When Gregory had been shown in, Sir Giles got up quickly from his table.
“Well?” he said.
Gregory came across to him, saying: “Oh, I’ve got it—a little more trouble than I thought, but I’ve got it. But I don’t quite like doing anything with it.… In fact, I’m not quite sure what it’s best to do.”
Sir Giles pushed a chair towards him. “You don’t think,” he said. “What do you want to do?” He sat down again as he spoke, his little eager eyes fixed on the other, with a controlled but excited interest. Persimmons met them with a sly anxiety in his own.
“I want something else first,” he said. “I want that address.”
“Pooh,” Sir Giles said, “that won’t help you. Tell me more about this other thing first. Do you notice anything about it? How does it affect you?”
Gregory considered. “Not at all, I think,” he said. “It’s just an ordinary piece of work—with a curious smell about it sometimes.”
“Smell?” Sir Giles said. “Smell? What sort of smell?”
“Well,” Persimmons answered, “it’s more like ammonia than anything else; a sort of pungency. But I only notice it sometimes.”
“I knew a cannibal chief in Nigeria who said the same thing,” Sir Giles said musingly. “Not about that, of course, and not ammonia. It was a traditional taboo of the tribe—the dried head of a witch-doctor that was supposed to be a good omen to his people. He said it smelt like the fire that burned the uneaten offal of their enemies. Curious—the same notion of cleansing.”
Gregory sniggered. “It’ll take Him a good deal of ammonia to clean things out,” he said. “But it’d be like Him to use ammonia and the Bible and that kind of thing.”
Sir Giles switched back to the subject. “And what are you going to do with it?” he asked alertly.
Gregory eyed him. “Never mind,” he said. “Or, rather, why do you want to know?”
“Because I like knowing these things,” Sir Giles answered. “After all, I saved it for you when you asked me, on condition that you told me about your adventures, or let me see them for myself. You’re going mad, you know, Persimmons, and I like watching you.”
“Mad?” Gregory said, with another snigger. “You don’t go mad this way. People like my wife go mad, and Stephen. But I’ve got something that doesn’t go mad. I’m getting everything so.” He stretched out both arms and pressed them downwards with an immense gesture of weight, as if pushing the universe before and below him. “But I want the ointment.”
“Better leave it alone,” Sir Giles said tantalizingly. “It’s tricky stuff, Persimmons. A Jew in Beyrout tried it and didn’t get back. Filthy beast he looked, all naked and screaming that he couldn’t find his way. That was four years ago, and he’s screaming the same thing still, unless he’s dead. And there was another fellow in Valparaiso who got too far to be heard screaming; he died pretty soon, because he’d forgotten even how to eat and drink. They tried forcible feeding, I fancy, but it wasn’t a success: he was just continually sick. Better leave it alone, Persimmons.”
“I tell you I’m perfectly safe,” Gregory said. “You promised, Tumulty, you promised.”
“My lord God,” Sir Giles said, “what does that matter? I don’t care whether I promised or not; I don’t care whether you want it or not; I only wonder whether I shall get more satisfaction from——” He broke off. “All right,” he said, “I’ll give you the address—94, Lord Mayor Street, Finchley Road. Somewhere near Tally Ho Corner, I think. Quite respectable and all that. The man in Valparaiso was a solicitor. It’s in the middle classes one finds these things easiest. The lower classes haven’t got the money or the time or the intelligence, and the upper classes haven’t got the power or intelligence.”
Gregory was writing the address down, nodding to himself as he did so; then he looked at a clock, which stood on the writing-table, pleasantly clutched in a dried black hand set in gold. “I shall have time to-day,” he said. “I’ll go at once. I suppose he’ll sell it me? Yes, of course he will, I can see to that.”
“It’ll save you some time and energy,” Sir Giles said, “if you mention me. He’s a Greek of sorts—I’ve forgotten his name. But he doesn’t keep tons of it, you know. Now, look here, Persimmons. This is two things you have got out of me, and I’ve had nothing in return. You’d better ask me down to wherever you hatch gargoyles. I can’t come till after Monday because I’m speaking at University College then. I’ll come next Wednesday. What’s the station? Fardles? Send me a card to tell me the best afternoon train and have it met.”
Gregory promised in general terms to do this, and as quickly as he could got away. An hour after he had hunted out Lord Mayor Street.
It was not actually quite so respectable as Sir Giles had given him to understand. It had been once, no doubt, and was now half-way to another kind of respectability, being in the disreputable valley between two heights of decency. There were a sufficient number of sufficiently dirty children playing in the road to destroy privacy without achieving publicity: squalor was leering from the windows and not yet contending frankly and vainly with grossness. It was one of those sudden terraces of slime which hang over the pit of hell, and for which beastliness is too dignified a name. But the slime was still only oozing over it, and a thin cloud of musty pretence expanded over the depths below.
At one end of the road three shops huddled together in the thickest slime; a grocer’s at the corner, flying the last standard of respectability in an appeal towards the Finchley Road some couple of yards away—like Roland’s horn crying to Charlemagne. At the far end of the street a public house signalized the gathering of another code of decency and morals which might in time transform the intervening decay. Next to the grocer’s was a sweet-shop, on w
hich the dingy white letters ADBU OC A appeared like a charm, and whose window displayed bars of chocolate even more degradingly sensual than the ordinary kind. Next to this was the last shop, a chemist’s. Its window had apparently been broken some time since and very badly mended with glass which must have been dirty when it was made, suggesting a kind of hypostatic union between clearness and dinginess. Nor, since the breakage, had the occupant, it seemed, troubled to re-dress the window; a few packets of soap and tooth-paste masked their own purpose by their appearance. Persimmons pushed open the door and, first looking to see that the shop was empty, went quietly in.
A young man was lounging behind the counter, but he did no more than look indolently at his customer. Persimmons tried to close the door and failed, until the other said “Push it at the bottom with your foot,” when he succeeded, for the door shut with an unexpected crash. Gregory came to the counter and looked at the shopman. He might be Greek, as Sir Giles had said, he might be anything, and the name over the door had been indecipherable. The two looked at one another silently.
At last Persimmons said: “You keep some rather out of the way drugs and things, don’t you?”
The other answered wearily: “Out of the way? I don’t know what you mean—out of the way? Nothing’s out of the way.”
“Out of the ordinary way,” Gregory said quickly and softly, “the way everyone goes.”
“They go nowhere,” the Greek said.
“But I go,” Persimmons answered, with the same swiftness as before. “You have something for me.”
“What I have is for buyers,” the other said, “all I have is for buyers. What do you want and what will you pay?”
“I think I have paid a price,” Gregory said, “but what more you ask you shall have.”
“Who sent you here?” the Greek asked.
“Sir Giles Tumulty,” said Gregory, “and others. But the others I cannot name. They say”—his voice began to tremble—“that you have an ointment.”
“I have many precious things.” The answer came out of an entire weariness which seemed to take from the adjective all its meaning. “But some of them are not for sale except to buyers.”
“I have bought everything.” Gregory leaned forward. “The time has come for me to receive.”
Still the other made no movement. “The ointment is rich and scarce and strange,” he said. “How do I know that you are worth a gift? And what will my master say if I mistake?”
“I cannot prove myself to you,” Gregory answered. “That I know of it—is not that enough?”
“It is not enough,” the other said. “But I have a friendship for all who are in the way. And priceless things are without any price. If you are not worth the gift, the gift is worth nothing to you. Have you ever used the ointment?”
“Never,” Gregory said; “but it is time, I am sure it is time.”
“You think so, do you?” the Greek said slowly. “There comes a time when there is nothing left but time—nothing. Take it if you like.”
Still with the minimum of movement, he put out his hand, opened a drawer in the counter, and pushed on to it a little cardboard box, rather greasy and dented here and there. “Take it,” he said. “It will only give you a headache if you are not in the way.”
Gregory caught up the box and hesitated. “Do you want money?” he asked.
“It is a gift, but not a gift,” the other answered. “Give me what you will for a sign.”
Gregory put some silver on the counter and backed toward the door. But the same difficulty that had met him in closing it now held it fast. He pulled and pushed and struggled with it, and the Greek watched him with a faint smile. Outside it had begun to rain.
Chapter Six
THE SABBATH
“I met Mr. Persimmons in the village to-day,” Mr. Batesby said to the Archdeacon. “He asked after you very pleasantly, although he’s sent every day to inquire. It was he that saw you lying in the road, you know, and brought you here in his car. It must be a great thing for you to have a sympathetic neighbour at the big house; there’s so often friction in these small parishes.”
“Yes,” the Archdeacon said.
“We had quite a long chat,” the other went on. “He isn’t exactly a Christian, unfortunately, but he has a great admiration for the Church. He thinks it’s doing a wonderful work—especially in education. He takes a great interest in education; he calls it the star of the future. He thinks morals are more important than dogma, and of course I agree with him.”
“Did you say ‘of course I agree’ or ‘of course I agreed’?” the Archdeacon asked. “Or both?”
“I mean I thought the same thing,” Mr. Batesby explained. He had noticed a certain denseness in the Archdeacon on other occasions. “Conduct is much the biggest thing in life, I feel. ‘He can’t be wrong whose life is for the best; we needs must love the higher when we see Him.’ And he gave me five pounds towards the Sunday School Fund.”
“There isn’t,” the Archdeacon said, slightly roused, “a Sunday School Fund at Fardles.”
“Oh, well!” Mr. Batesby considered. “I daresay he’d be willing for it to go to almost anything active. He was very keen, and I agr—thought just the same, on getting things done. He thinks that the Church ought to be a means of progress. He quoted something about not going to sleep till we found a pleasant Jerusalem in the green land of England. I was greatly struck. An idealist, that’s what I should call him. England needs idealists to-day.”
“I think we had better return the money,” the Archdeacon said. “If he isn’t a Christian——”
“Oh, but he is,” Mr. Batesby protested. “In effect, that is. He thinks Christ was the second greatest man the earth has produced.”
“Who was the first?” the Archdeacon asked.
Mr. Batesby paused again for a moment. “Do you know, I forgot to ask?” he said. “But it shows a sympathetic spirit, doesn’t it? After all, the second greatest——! That goes a long way. Little children, love one another—if five pounds helps us to teach them that in the schools. I’m sure mine want a complete new set of Bible pictures.”
There was a pause. The two priests were sitting after dinner in the garden of the Rectory. The Archdeacon, with inner thoughts for meditation, was devoting a superficial mind to Mr. Batesby, who on his side was devoting his energies to providing his host with cheerful conversation. The Archdeacon knew this, and knew too that his guest and substitute would rather have been talking about his own views on the ornaments rubric than about the parishioners. He wished he would. He was feeling rather tired, and it was an effort to pay attention to anything which he did not know by heart. Mr. Batesby’s ecclesiastical views he did—and thought them incredibly silly—but he thought his own were probably that too. One had views for convenience’ sake, but how anyone could think they mattered. Except, of course, that even silly views …
A car went by on the road and a hand was waved from it. To Gregory Persimmons the sight of the two priests was infinitely pleasurable. He had met them both and summed them up. He could, he felt, knock the Archdeacon on the head whenever he chose, and the other hadn’t got a head to be knocked. It was all very pleasant and satisfactory. There had been a moment, a few days ago, in that little shop when he couldn’t get out, and there seemed suddenly no reason why he should get out, as if he had been utterly and finally betrayed into being there for ever—he had felt almost in a panic. He had known that feeling once or twice before, at odd times; but there was no need to recall it now. To-night, to-night, something else was to happen. To-night he would know what it all was of which he had read in his books, and heard—heard from people who had funnily come into his life and then disappeared. Long ago, as a boy, he remembered reading about the Sabbath, but he had been told that it wasn’t true. His father had been a Victorian Rationalist. The Archdeacon, he thought, was exceedingly Victorian too. His heart beating in an exalted anticipation, he drove on to Cully.
Mr. Batesby was a
sleep that night, and the Archdeacon was, in a Victorian way, engaged in his prayers, when Gregory Persimmons stood up alone in his room. It was a little after midnight, and, as he glanced out of the window, he saw a clear sky with a few stars and the full moon contemplating him. Slowly, very slowly, he undressed, looking forward to he knew not what, and then—being entirely naked—he took from a table the small greasy box of ointment and opened it. It was a pinkish ointment, very much the colour of the skin, and at first he thought it had no smell. But in a few minutes, as it lay exposed to the air, there arose from it a faint odour which grew stronger, and presently filled the whole room, not overpoweringly, but with a convenient and irresistible assurance. He paused for a moment, inhaling it, and finding in it the promise of some complete decay. It brought to him an assurance of his own temporal achievement of his power to enter into those lives which he touched and twist them out of their security into a sliding destruction. Five pounds here, a clever jeer there—it was all easy. Everyone had some security, and he had only to be patient to find and destroy it. His father, when he had grown old and had had a good deal of trouble, had been inclined to wonder whether there was anything in religion. And they had talked of it; he remembered those talks. He had—it had been his first real experiment—he had suggested very carefully and delicately, to that senile and uneasy mind, that there probably was a God, but a God of terrible jealousy; God had driven Judas, who betrayed Him, to hang himself; and driven the Jews who denied Him to exile in all lands. And Peter, his father had said, Peter was forgiven. He had stood thinking of that, and then had hesitated that, yes, no doubt Peter was forgiven, unless God had taken a terrible revenge and used Peter to set up all that mystery of evil which was Antichrist and Torquemada and Smithfield and the Roman See. Before the carefully sketched picture of an infinite, absorbing, and mocking vengeance, his father had shivered and grown silent. And had thereafter died, trying not to believe in God lest he should know himself damned.