Castra Parvulorum

The Duke of the North Ridings had spent the night at the Rectory, and both he and the Archdeacon had slept soundly, though it was rather late before they got to bed. They had caught the last train to the nearest junction, which was five miles off; and both in the train and on the walk the Archdeacon had been mildly bothered by the Graal. He had caught up a sheet of paper from the shop when they left it, with some notion of not being a cause of blasphemy to the ungodly by carrying an unveiled chalice, but he had never been able to arrange it successfully, and its ends kept waving about and disclosing the Cup. A cheerful and slightly drunk excursionist in the train had found this a theme for continual merriment at the general expense of the clergy and the Church, and something he had said had caused the Archdeacon to wonder whether perhaps he were being a stumbling-block to one of those little ones who had not yet attained detachment. However, he recovered his usual equilibrium during the walk, and negatived successfully the Duke’s feeling that they ought to keep a common vigil.

“I’m extremely sleepy,” he said apologetically, but firmly. “After all, it’s been rather a tiring day, and — as someone said — I will meet my God with an unclouded mind.”

“Doctor Johnson,” the Duke unthinkingly supplied the unnecessary information, and then smiled. “I expect you’re right,” he said. “He gave us sleep also.”

“For His mercy endureth for ever,” the Archdeacon quite sincerely answered; and they parted for the night.

Barbara awoke early that morning in her cottage; she had taken a dislike to sleeping at Cully, and, without disturbing the sleeping Lionel, wandered out of doors. The first person she saw was Adrian playing on the grass with the young man she had tried to recognize on an earlier day, and she ran over to them with exclamations. Adrian, fresh and energetic, hurled himself at her with tumultuous shrieks of greeting and information, and she looked laughingly to the stranger for an explanation.

“Gregory Persimmons has been arrested,” he said, “on his own confession, for murder; and, as I was there, I brought your son back at once. He’s slept very well, and we’ve been playing out here since he woke.”

Barbara, holding Adrian with one hand, pushed her hair back with the other, the long scar showing as she moved her wrist. “That’s very nice of you,” she said. “But Mr. Persimmons! What a dreadful thing!”

“Do you really think so, Mrs. Rackstraw?” the other asked, smiling.

Barbara blushed, and then looked grave. “No,” she said. “Well, at least, somehow I don’t feel surprised. Since I met you, I haven’t felt quite the same about Mr. Persimmons.”

“You may feel the same now,” Prester John answered, and was interrupted by Adrian.

“Hush, darling!” his mother said. “Go to church? Yes, if you like. I’m afraid”, she added, blushing rather more deeply as she looked at the stranger again, “that we don’t go as regularly as we should.”

“It is a means,” he answered, “one of the means. But perhaps the best for most, and for some almost the only one. I do not say that it matters greatly, but the means cannot both be and not be. If you do not use it, it is a pity to bother about it; if you do, it is a pity not to use it.”

“Yes,” Barbara said doubtfully. “Lionel was rather badgered into it as a boy, and he almost dislikes it now, and so . . . ”

“One’s foes are always in one’s own household,” the other answered, with a rather mournful smile. But, as Barbara glanced at him, suspecting a remoter meaning, he went on. “But this morning Adrian is to serve me in the church over there.”

“Serve!” Barbara said, aghast. “But he can’t do it. He’s only four, and he knows nothing about it, and —”

“He can do all I need, Mrs. Rackstraw,” her friend said, and was drowned again by Adrian’s “Mum-mie! and we’ve been playing cricket, and will you come and play after breakfast?”

“I thought we were to go to church, darling,” Barbara answered.

“Oh, after church too,” Adrian said. “And will you come?” he asked the stranger.

The answer was delayed by his seeing Lionel wander out of the cottage in pyjamas, to whom he rushed away still full of the importance and immediacy of life. The other two came after him to the door.

Lionel received with a certain shock the news of Gregory’s surrender, but it was a shock produced merely by its suddenness. His eyes dropped to Adrian with a certain questioning dread, as if he were wondering what similar fate in after-life already predestined that innocent and ignorant head. And as Barbara, murmuring of breakfast, or at least of some sort of coffee and biscuits before they went over to the church, disappeared into the cottage with her son, the stranger said to Lionel, “Yet he may escape.”

Lionel looked up. “Oh, yes,” he said vaguely, though he felt the fantasy, as he stood alone with the other, take sharp form within his mind. “Oh, yes — that, but something awaits him surely of ruin and of despair.”

“It may be,” the stranger said, “but perhaps a happy ruin and a fortunate despair. These things are not evil in themselves, and I think you fear them overmuch.”

“I fear all things,” Lionel answered, “and I do not understand how it is that men do not fear them more. In the town it is bad enough, but there one is deafened and blinded by people and things. But here everything is so still and meditative, and I am afraid of what those meditations are.”

“Is there, then, nothing pleasant in life?” Prester John said.

Lionel answered, almost savagely, “Can’t you see that when life is most pleasant one suspects it most? Unless one can drug oneself with the moment and forget.”

“I do not think you drug yourself much,” the stranger said, smiling. “Are you sure you do not love your fears?”

“No,” Lionel said; “I am not sure of anything. I do think I love to feel them though I loathe them, but I do not know why.”

“Because so chiefly you feel yourself alive,” the other said, “separated from them and hostile and tormented, but alive in heart and brain. You desire death! Your very desire witnesses how passionately you feel these things and how strongly you live.”

Lionel smiled a little. “Heautontimoroumenos?” he asked doubtfully.

“No, not that,” the stranger answered. “But you are afraid of losing yourself in the fantasies of daily life, and you think that these pains will save you. But I bring the desire of all men, and what will you ask of me?”

“Annihilation,” Lionel answered. “I have not asked for life, and I should be content now to know that soon I should not be. Do you think I desire the heaven they talk of?”

“Death you shall have at least,” the other said. “But God only gives, and He has only Himself to give, and He, even He, can give it only in those conditions which are Himself. Wait but a few years, and He shall give you the death you desire. But do not grudge too much if you find that death and heaven are one.” He pointed towards Cully. “This man desired greatly the God of all sacrifice and sacrifice itself, and he finds Him now. But you shall find another way, for the door that opens on annihilation opens only on the annihilation which is God.”

He walked away across the glade, and when Lionel saw him again it was in the church built above the spot where, tradition said, Caesar had restored the children to their mothers.

The Duke of the North Ridings, rather more than obedient to the strict etiquette of his Church, was leaning against the door-post; the Archdeacon was in his stall. As the other members of that small and curiously drawn congregation came in, Adrian broke from his mother’s hand and ran up the aisle on small, hasty feet to where, by the altar, Prester John turned to receive him. To Barbara and the Duke, accustomed to liturgical vest............