If the Order Above be but the reflection of the Order Below (as that
Ancient affirms, who had some knowledge of the Order) it is not outside
the Order of Things that there should have been confusion also in the
Department of Death. The world’s steadily falling death-rate, the
rising proportion of scientifically prolonged fatal illnesses, which
allowed months of warning to all concerned, had weakened initiative
throughout the Necrological Departments. When the War came, these were
as unprepared as civilised mankind; and, like mankind, they improvised
and recriminated in the face of Heaven.
As Death himself observed to St. Peter who had just come off The Gate
for a rest: “One does the best one can with the means at one’s disposal
but----”
“_I_ know,” said the good Saint sympathetically. “Even with what help I
can muster, I’m on The Gate twenty-two hours out of the twenty-four.”
“Do you find your volunteer staff any real use?” Death went on. “Isn’t
it easier to do the work oneself than----”
“One must guard against that point of view,” St. Peter returned, “but I
know what you mean. Office officialises the best of us.... What is it
_now_?” He turned to a prim-lipped Seraph who had followed him with an
expulsion-form for signature. St. Peter glanced it over. “Private R.
M. Buckland,” he read, “on the charge of saying that there is no God.
’That all?”
“He says he is prepared to prove it, sir, and--according to the
Rules----”
“If you will make yourself acquainted with the Rules, you’ll find they
lay down that ‘the fool says in his heart, there is no God.’ That
decides it; probably shell-shock. Have you tested his reflexes?”
“No, sir. He kept _on_ saying that there----”
“Pass him in at once! Tell off some one to argue with him and give him
the best of the argument till St. Luke’s free. Anything else?”
“A hospital-nurse’s record, sir. She has been nursing for two years.”
“A long while,” St. Peter spoke severely. “She may very well have grown
careless.”
“It’s her civilian record, sir. I judged best to refer it to you.” The
Seraph handed him a vivid scarlet docket.
“The next time,” said St. Peter folding it down and writing on one
corner, “that you get one of these--er--tinted forms, mark it Q.M.A.
and pass bearer at once. Don’t worry over trifles.” The Seraph flashed
off and returned to the clamorous Gate.
“Which Department is Q.M.A.?” said Death. St. Peter chuckled.
“It’s not a department. It’s a Ruling. ‘_Quia multum amavit._’ A most
useful Ruling. I’ve stretched it to.... Now, I wonder what that child
actually did die of.”
“I’ll ask,” said Death, and moved to a public telephone near by.
“Give me War Check and Audit: English side: non-combatant,” he began.
“Latest returns.... Surely you’ve got them posted up to date by now!...
Yes! Hospital Nurse in France.... No! _Not_ ‘nature and aliases.’ I
said--what--was--nature--of--illness?... Thanks.” He turned to St.
Peter. “Quite normal,” he said. “Heart-failure after neglected pleurisy
following overwork.”
“Good!” St. Peter rubbed his hands. “That brings her under the higher
allowance--G.L.H. scale--‘Greater love hath no man--’ But _my_ people
ought to have known that from the first.”
“Who is that clerk of yours?” asked Death. “He seems rather a stickler
for the proprieties.”
“The usual type nowadays,” St. Peter returned. “A young Power in charge
of some half-baked Universe. Never having dealt with life yet, he’s
somewhat nebulous.”
Death sighed. “It’s the same with my old Departmental Heads. Nothing on
earth will make my fossils on the Normal Civil Side realise that we are
dying in a new age. Come and look at them. They might interest you.”
“Thanks, I will, but----Excuse me a minute! Here’s my zealous young
assistant on the wing once more.”
The Seraph had returned to report the arrival of overwhelmingly heavy
convoys at The Gate, and to ask what the Saint advised.
“I’m just off on an inter-departmental inspection which will take
me some time,” said St. Peter. “You _must_ learn to act on your own
initiative. So I shall leave you to yourself for the next hour or two,
merely suggesting (I don’t wish in any way to sway your judgment)
that you invite St. Paul, St. Ignatius (Loyola, I mean) and--er--St.
Christopher to assist as Supervising Assessors on the Board of
Admission. Ignatius is one of the subtlest intellects we have, and
an officer and a gentleman to boot. I assure you,” the Saint turned
towards Death, “he revels in dialectics. If he’s allowed to prove his
case, he’s quite capable of letting off the offender. St. Christopher,
of course, will pass anything that looks wet and muddy.”
“They are nearly all that now, sir,” said the Seraph.
“So much the better; and--as I was going to say--St. Paul is an
embarrass--a distinctly strong colleague. Still--we all have our
weaknesses. Perhaps a well-timed reference to his seamanship in the
Mediterranean--by the way, look up the name of his ship, will you?
Alexandria register, I think--might be useful in some of those sudden
maritime cases that crop up. I needn’t tell _you_ to be firm, of
course. That’s your besetting--er--I mean--reprimand ’em severely and
publicly, but--” the Saint’s voice broke--“oh, my child, _you_ don’t
know what it is to need forgiveness. Be gentle with ’em--be very gentle
with ’em!”
Swiftly as a falling shaft of light the Seraph kissed the sandalled
feet and was away.
“Aha!” said St. Peter. “He can’t go far wrong with that Board of
Admission as I’ve--er--arranged it.”
They walked towards the great central office of Normal Civil Death,
which, buried to the knees in a flood of temporary structures,
resembled a closed cribbage-board among spilt dominoes.
They entered an area of avenues and cross-avenues, flanked by long, low
buildings, each packed with seraphs working wing to folded wing.
“Our temporary buildings,” Death explained. “’Always being added to.
This is the War-side. You’ll find nothing changed on the Normal Civil
Side. They are more human than mankind.”
“It doesn’t lie in _my_ mouth to blame them,” said St. Peter.
“No, I’ve yet to meet the soul you wouldn’t find excuse for,” said
Death tenderly; “but then _I_ don’t--er--arrange my Boards of
Admission.”
“If one doesn’t help one’s Staff, one’s Staff will never help itself,”
St. Peter laughed, as the shadow of the main porch of the Normal Civil
Death Offices darkened above them.
“This façade rather recalls the Vatican, doesn’t it?” said the Saint.
“They’re quite as conservative. ’Notice how they still keep the old
Holbein uniforms? ’Morning, Sergeant Fell. How goes it?” said Death as
he swung the dusty doors and nodded at a Commissionaire, clad in the
grim livery of Death, even as Hans Holbein has designed it.
“Sadly. Very sadly indeed, sir,” the Commissionaire replied. “So many
pore ladies and gentlemen, sir, ’oo might well ’ave lived another few
years, goin’ off as you might say, in every direction with no time for
the proper obsequities.”
“Too bad,” said Death sympathetically. “Well, we’re none of us as young
as we were, Sergeant.”
They climbed a carved staircase, behung with the whole millinery of
undertaking at large. Death halted on a dark Aberdeen granite landing
and beckoned a messenger.
“We’re rather busy to-day, sir,” the messenger whispered, “but I think
His Majesty will see _you_.”
“Who _is_ the Head of this Department if it isn’t you?” St. Peter
whispered in turn.
“You may well ask,” his companion replied. “I’m only--” he checked
himself and went on. “The fact is, our Normal Civil Death side is
controlled by a Being who considers himself all that I am and more.
He’s Death as men have made him--in their own image.” He pointed to
a brazen plate, by the side of a black-curtained door, which read:
“Normal Civil Death, K.G., K.T., K.P., P.C., etc.” “He’s as human as
mankind.”
“I guessed as much from those letters. What do they mean?”
“Titles conferred on him from time to time. King of Ghosts; King of
Terrors; King of Phantoms; Pallid Conqueror, and so forth. There’s no
denying he’s earned every one of them. A first-class mind, but just a
leetle bit of a sn----”
“His Majesty is at liberty,” said the messenger.
Civil Death did not belie his name. No monarch on earth could have
welcomed them more graciously; or, in St. Peter’s case, with more of
that particularity of remembrance which is the gift of good kings. But
when Death asked him how his office was working, he became at once the
Departmental Head with a grievance.
“Thanks to this abominable War,” he began testily, “my N.C.D. has to
spend all its time fighting for mere existence. Your new War-side seems
to think that nothing matters _except_ the war. I’ve been asked to
give up two-thirds of my Archives Basement (E. 7--E. 64) to the Polish
Civilian Casualty Check and Audit. Preposterous! Where am I to move my
Archives? And they’ve just been cross-indexed, too!”
“As I understood it,” said Death, “our War-side merely applied for
desk-room in your basement. They were prepared to leave your Archives
_in situ_.”
“Impossible! We may need to refer to them at any moment. There’s a
case now which is interesting Us all--a Mrs. Ollerby. Worcestershire by
extraction--dying of an internal hereditary complaint. At any moment,
We may wish to refer to her dossier, and how _can_ We if Our basement
is given up to people over whom We exercise no departmental control?
This war has been made excuse for slackness in every direction.”
“Indeed!” said Death. “You surprise me. I thought nothing made any
difference to the N.C.D.”
“A few years ago I should have concurred,” Civil Death replied. “But
since this--this recent outbreak of unregulated mortality there
has been a distinct lack of respect towards certain aspects of Our
administration. The attitude is bound to reflect itself in the office.
The official is, in a large measure, what the public makes him. Of
course, it is only temporary reaction, but the merest outsider would
notice what I mean. Perhaps _you_ would like to see for yourself?”
Civil Death bowed towards St. Peter, who feared that he might be taking
up his time.
“Not in the least. If I am not the servant of the public, what am I?”
Civil Death said, and preceded them to the landing. “Now, this--”
he ushered them into an immense but badly lighted office--“is our
International Mortuary Department--the I.M.D. as we call it. It works
with the Check and Audit. I should be sorry to say offhand how many
billion sterling it represents, invested in the funeral ceremonies of
all the races of mankind.” He stopped behind a very bald-headed clerk
at a desk. “And yet We take cognizance of the minutest detail, do not
We?” he went on. “What have We here, for example?”
“Funeral expenses of the late Mr. John Shenks Tanner,” the clerk
stepped aside from the red-ruled book. “Cut down by the executors on
account of the War from £173:19:1 to £47:18:4. A sad falling off, if I
may say so, Your Majesty.”
“And what was the attitude of the survivors?” Civil Death asked.
“Very casual. It was a motor-hearse funeral.”
“A pernicious example, spreading, I fear, even in the lowest classes,”
his superior muttered. “Haste, lack of respect for the Dread Summons,
carelessness in the Subsequent Disposition of the Corpse and----”
“But as regards people’s real feelings?” St. Peter demanded of the
clerk.
“That isn’t within the terms of our reference, Sir,” was the answer.
“But we _do_ know that as often as not, they don’t even buy black-edged
announcement-cards nowadays.”
“Good Heavens!” said Civil Death swellingly. “No cards! I must look
into this myself. Forgive me, St. Peter, but we Servants of Humanity,
as you know, are not our own masters. No cards, indeed!” He waved them
off with an official hand, and immersed himself in the ledger.
“Oh, come along,” Death whispered to St. Peter. “This is a blessed
relief!”
They two walked on till they reached the far end of the vast dim
office. The clerks at the desks here scarcely pretended to work. A
messenger entered and slapped down a small autophonic reel.
“Here you are!” he cried. “Mister Wilbraham Lattimer’s last dying
speech and record. He made a shockin’ end of it.”
“Good for Lattimer!” a young voice called from a desk. “Chuck it over!”
“Yes,” the messenger went on. “Lattimer said to his brother: ‘Bert, I
haven’t time to worry about a little thing like dying these days, and
what’s more important, _you_ haven’t either. You go back to your Somme
doin’s, and I’ll put it through with Aunt Maria. It’ll amuse her and
it won’t hinder you.’ That’s nice stuff for your boss!” The messenger
whistled and departed. A clerk groaned as he snatched up the reel.
“How the deuce am I to knock this into official shape?” he began. “Pass
us the edifying Gantry Tubnell. I’ll have to crib from him again, I
suppose.”
“Be careful!” a companion whispered, and shuffled a typewritten form
along the desk. “I’ve used Tubby twice this morning already.”
The late Mr. Gantry Tubnell must have demised on approved departmental
lines, for his record was much thumbed. Death and St. Peter watched the
editing with interest.
“I can’t bring in Aunt Maria _any_ way,” the clerk broke out at last.
“Listen here, every one! She has heart-disease. She dies just as she’s
lifted the dropsical Lattimer to change his sheets. She says: ‘Sorry,
Willy! I’d make a dam’ pore ’ospital nurse!’ Then she sits down and
croaks. Now _I_ call that good! I’ve a great mind to take it round to
the War-side as an indirect casualty and get a breath of fresh air.”
“Then you’ll be hauled over the coals,” a neighbour suggested.
“I’m used to that, too,” the clerk sniggered.
“Are you?” said Death, stepping forward suddenly from behind a high
map-stand. “Who are you?” The clerk cowered in his skeleton jacket.
“I’m not on the Regular Establishment, Sir,” he stammered. “I’m
a--Volunteer. I--I wanted to see how people behaved when they were in
trouble.”
“Did you? Well, take the late Mr. Wilbraham Lattimer’s and Miss Maria
Lattimer’s papers to the War-side General Reference Office. When they
have been passed upon, tell the Attendance Clerk that you are to serve
as probationer in--let’s see--in the Domestic Induced Casualty Side--7
G.S.”
The clerk collected himself a little and spoke through dry lips.
“But--but I’m--I slipped in from the Lower Establishment, Sir,” he
breathed.
There was no need to explain. He shook from head to foot as with the
palsy; and under all Heaven none tremble save those who come from that
class which “also believe and tremble.”
“Do you tell Me this officially, or as one created being to another?”
Death asked after a pause.
“Oh, non-officially, Sir. Strictly non-officially, so long as you know
all about it.”
His awe-stricken fellow-workers could not restrain a smile at Death
having to be told about anything. Even Death bit his lips.
“I don’t think you will find the War-side will raise any objection,”
said he. “By the way, they don’t wear that uniform over there.”
Almost before Death ceased speaking, it was ripped off and flung on
the floor, and that which had been a sober clerk of Normal Civil Death
stood up an unmistakable, curly-haired, bat-winged, faun-eared Imp of
the Pit. But where his wings joined his shoulders there was a patch of
delicate dove-coloured feathering that gave promise to spread all up
the pinion. St. Peter saw it and smiled, for it was a known sign of
grace.
“Thank Goodness!” the ex-clerk gasped as he snatched up the Lattimer
records and sheered sideways through the skylight.
“Amen!” said Death and St. Peter together, and walked through the door.
“Weren’t you hinting something to me a little while ago about _my_ lax
methods?” St. Peter demanded, innocently.
“Well, if one doesn’t help one’s Staff, one’s Staff will never help
itself,” Death retorted. “Now, I shall have to pitch in a stiff
demi-official asking how that young fiend came to be taken on in the
N.C.D. without examination. And I must do it before the N.C.D. complain
that I’ve been interfering with their departmental transfers. _Aren’t_
they human? If you want to go back to The Gate I think our shortest way
will be through here and across the War-Sheds.”
They came out of a side-door into Heaven’s full light. A phalanx of
Shining Ones swung across a great square singing:
“To Him Who made the Heavens abide, yet cease not from their motion,
To Him Who drives the cleansing tide twice a day round ocean--
Let His Name be magnified in all poor folk’s devotion!”
Death halted their leader, and asked a question.
“We’re Volunteer Aid Serving Powers,” the Seraph explained, “reporting
for duty in the Domestic Induced Casualty Department--told off to help
relatives, where we can.”
The shift trooped on--such an array of Powers, Honours, Glories, Toils,
Patiences, Services, Faiths and Loves as no man may conceive even by
favour of dreams. Death and St. Peter followed them into a D.I.C.D.
Shed on the English side, where, for the moment, work had slackened.
Suddenly a name flashed on the telephone-indicator. “Mrs. Arthur
Bedott, 317, Portsmouth Avenue, Brondesbury. Husband badly wounded. One
child.” Her special weakness was appended.
A Seraph on the raised dais that overlooked the Volunteer Aids waiting
at the entrance, nodded and crooked a finger. One of the new shift--a
temporary Acting Glory--hurled himself from his place and vanished
earthward.
“You may take it,” Death whispered to St. Peter, “there will be a
sustaining epic built up round Private Bedott’s wound for his wife and
Baby Bedott to cling to. And here--” they heard wings that flapped
wearily--“here, I suspect, comes one of our failures.”
A Seraph entered and dropped, panting, on a form. His plumage was
ragged, his sword splintered to the hilt; and his face still worked
with the passions of the world he had left, as his soiled vesture
reeked of alcohol.
“Defeat,” he reported hoarsely, when he had given in a woman’s name.
“Utter defeat! Look!” He held up the stump of his sword. “I broke this
on her gin-bottle.”
“So? We try again,” said the impassive Chief Seraph. Again he beckoned,
and there stepped forward that very Imp whom Death had transferred from
the N.C.D.
“Go _you_!” said the Seraph. “We must deal with a fool according to her
folly. Have you pride enough?”
There was no need to ask. The messenger’s face glowed and his nostrils
quivered with it. Scarcely pausing to salute, he poised and dived, and
the papers on the desks spun beneath the draught of his furious vans.
St. Peter nodded high approval. “_I_ see!” he said. “He’ll work on her
pride to steady her. By all means--‘if by all means,’ as my good Paul
used to say. Only it ought to read ‘by any manner of possible means.’
Excellent!”
“It’s difficult, though,” a soft-eyed Patience whispered. “I fail again
and again. I’m only fit for an old-maid’s tea-party.”
Once more the record flashed--a multiple-urgent appeal on behalf of a
few thousand men, worn-out body and soul. The Patience was detailed.
“Oh, me!” she sighed, with a comic little shrug of despair, and took
the void softly as a summer breeze at dawning.
“But how does this come under the head of Domestic Casualties? Those
men were in the trenches. I heard the mud squelch,” said St. Peter.
“Something wrong with the installation--as usual. Waves are always
jamming here,” the Seraph replied.
“So it seems,” said St. Peter as a wireless cut in with the muffled
note of some one singing (sorely out of tune), to an accompaniment of
desultory poppings:
“Unless you can love as the Angels love With the breadth of Heaven
be----”
“_Twickt!_” It broke off. The record showed a name. The waiting Seraphs
stiffened to attention with a click of tense quills.
“As you were!” said the Chief Seraph. “He’s met her.”
“Who is she?” said St. Peter.
“His mother. You never get over your weakness for romance,” Death
answered, and a covert smile spread through the Office.
“Thank Heaven, I don’t. But I really ought to be going----”
“Wait one minute. Here’s trouble coming through, I think,” Death
interposed.
A recorder had sparked furiously in a broken run of S.O.S.’s that
allowed no time for inquiry.
“Name! Name!” an impatient young Faith panted at last. “It _can’t_ be
blotted out.” No name came up. Only the reiterated appeal.
“False alarm!” said a hard-featured Toil, well used to mankind. “Some
fool has found out that he owns a soul. ’Wants work. _I_’d cure him!...”
“Hush!” said a Love in Armour, stamping his mailed foot. The office
listened.
“’Bad case?” Death demanded at last.
“Rank bad, Sir. They are holding back the name,” said the Chief Seraph.
The S.O.S. signals grew more desperate, and then ceased with an
emphatic thump. The Love in Armour winced.
“Firing-party,” he whispered to St. Peter. “’Can’t mistake that noise!”
“What is it?” St. Peter cried nervously.
“Deserter; spy; murderer,” was the Chief Seraph’s weighed answer. “It’s
out of my department--now. No--hold the line! The name’s up at last.”
It showed for an instant, broken and faint as sparks on charred
wadding, but in that instant a dozen pens had it written. St. Peter
with never a word gathered his robes about him and bundled through the
door, headlong for The Gate.
“No hurry,” said Death at his elbow. “With the present rush your man
won’t come up for ever so long.”
“’Never can be sure these days. Anyhow, the Lower Establishment will be
after him like sharks. He’s the very type they’d want for propaganda.
Deserter--traitor--murderer. Out of my way, please, babies!”
A group of children round a red-headed man who was telling them
stories, scattered laughing. The man turned to St. Peter.
“Deserter, traitor, murderer,” he repeated. “Can _I_ be of service?”
“You can!” St. Peter gasped. “Double on ahead to The Gate and tell them
to hold up all expulsions till I come. Then,” he shouted as the man
sped off at a long hound-like trot, “go and picket the outskirts of the
Convoys. Don’t let any one break away on any account. Quick!”
But Death was right. They need not have hurried. The crowd at The Gate
was far beyond the capacities of the Examining Board even though, as
St. Peter’s Deputy informed him, it had been enlarged twice in his
absence.
“We’re doing our best,” the Seraph explained, “but delay is inevitable,
Sir. The Lower Establishment are taking advantage of it, as usual,
at the tail of the Convoys. I’ve doubled all pickets there, and I’m
sending more. Here’s the extra list, Sir--Arc J., Bradlaugh C., Bunyan
J., Calvin J. Iscariot J. reported to me just now, as under your
orders, and took ’em with him. Also Shakespeare W. and----”
“Never mind the rest,” said St. Peter. “I’m going there myself.
Meantime, carry on with the passes--don’t fiddle over ’em--and give
me a blank or two.” He caught up a thick block of Free Passes,
nodded to a group in khaki at a passport table, initialled their
Commanding Officer’s personal pass as for “Officer and Party,”
and left the numbers to be filled in by a quite competent-looking
Quarter-master-Sergeant. Then, Death beside him, he breasted his way
out of The Gate against the incoming multitude of all races, tongues,
and creeds that stretched far across the plain.
An old lady, firmly clutching a mottle-nosed, middle-aged Major by the
belt, pushed across a procession of keen-faced _poilus_, and blocked
his path, her captive held in that terrible mother-grip no Power has
yet been able to unlock.
“I found him! I’ve got him! Pass him!” she ordered.
St. Peter’s jaw fell. Death politely looked elsewhere.
“There are a few formalities,” the Saint began.
“With Jerry in this state? Nonsense! How like a man! My boy never gave
me a moment’s anxiety in----”
“Don’t, dear--don’t!” The Major looked almost as uncomfortable as St.
Peter.
“Well, nothing compared with what he _would_ give me if he weren’t
passed.”
“Didn’t I hear you singing just now?” Death asked, seeing that his
companion needed a breathing-space.
“Of course you did,” the mother intervened. “He sings beautifully. And
that’s _another_ reason! You’re bass, aren’t you now, darling?”
St. Peter glanced at the agonised Major and hastily initialled him a
pass. Without a word of thanks the Mother hauled him away.
“Now, under what conceivable Ruling do you justify that?” said Death.
“I.W.--the Importunate Widow. It’s scandalous!” St. Peter groaned. Then
his face darkened as he looked across the great plain beyond The Gate.
“I don’t like this,” he said. “The Lower Establishment is out in full
force to-night. I hope our pickets are strong enough----”
The crowd here had thinned to a disorderly queue flanked on both
sides by a multitude of busy, discreet emissaries from the Lower
Establishment who continually edged in to do business with them, only
to be edged off again by a line of watchful pickets. Thanks to the
khaki everywhere, the scene was not unlike that which one might have
seen on earth any evening of the old days outside the refreshment-room
by the Arch at Victoria Station, when the Army trains started. St.
Peter’s appearance was greeted by the usual outburst of cock-crowing
from the Lower Establishment.
“Dirty work at the cross-roads,” said Death dryly.
“I deserve it!” St. Peter grunted, “but think what it must mean for
Judas.”
He shouldered into the thick of the confusion where the pickets coaxed,
threatened, implored, and in extreme cases bodily shoved the wearied
men and women past the voluble and insinuating spirits who strove to
draw them aside.
A Shropshire Yeoman had just accepted, together with a forged pass, the
assurance of a genial runner of the Lower Establishment that Heaven
lay round the corner, and was being stealthily steered thither, when
a large hand jerked him back, another took the runner in the chest,
and some one thundered: “Get out, you crimp!” The situation was then
vividly explained to the soldier in the language of the barrack-room.
“Don’t blame _me_, Guv’nor,” the man expostulated. “I ’aven’t seen a
woman, let alone angels, for umpteen months. I’m from Joppa. Where ’you
from?”
“Northampton,” was the answer. “Rein back and keep by me.”
“What? You ain’t ever Charley B. that my dad used to tell about? I
thought you always said----”
“I shall say a deal more soon. Your Sergeant’s talking to that woman in
red. Fetch him in--quick!”
Meantime, a sunken-eyed Scots officer, utterly lost to the riot
around, was being buttonholed by a person of reverend aspect who
explained to him, that, by the logic of his own ancestral creed, not
only was the Highlander irrevocably damned, but that his damnation had
been predetermined before Earth was made.
“It’s unanswerable--just unanswerable,” said the young man sorrowfully.
“I’ll be with ye.” He was moving off, when a smallish figure
interposed, not without dignity.
“Monsieur,” it said, “would it be of any comfort to you to know that
_I_ am--I was--John Calvin?” At this the reverend one cursed and swore
like the lost Soul he was, while the Highlander turned to discuss with
Calvin, pacing towards The Gate, some alterations in the fabric of a
work of fiction called the _Institutio_.
Others were not so easily held. A certain Woman, with loosened hair,
bare arms, flashing eyes and dancing feet, shepherded her knot of
waverers, hoarse and exhausted. When the taunt broke out against her
from the opposing line: “Tell ’em what you were! Tell ’em if you dare!”
she answered unflinchingly, as did Judas who, worming through the crowd
like an Armenian carpet-vendor, peddled his shame aloud that it might
give strength to others.
“Yes,” he would cry, “I am everything they say, but if _I_’m here it
must be a moral cert for _you_, gents. This way, please. Many mansions,
gentlemen! Go-ood billets! Don’t you notice these low people, Sar.
_Plees_ keep hope, gentlemen!”
When there were cases that cried to him from the ground--poor souls
who could not stick it but had found their way out with a rifle
and a boot-lace, he would tell them of his own end, till he made
them contemptuous enough to rise up and curse him. Here St. Luke’s
imperturbable bedside manner backed and strengthened the other’s
almost too oriental flux of words.
In this fashion and step by step, all the day’s Convoy were piloted
past that danger-point where the Lower Establishment are, for reasons
not given us, allowed to ply their trade. The pickets dropped to the
rear, relaxed, and compared notes.
“What always impresses me most,” said Death to St. Peter, “is the
sheeplike simplicity of the intellectual mind.” He had been watching
one of the pickets apparently overwhelmed by the arguments of an
advanced atheist who--so hot in his argument that he was deaf to the
offers of the Lower Establishment to make him a god--had stalked,
talking hard--while the picket always gave ground before him--straight
past the Broad Road.
“He was plaiting of long-tagged epigrams,” the sober-faced picket
smiled. “Give that sort only an ear and they’ll follow ye gobbling like
turkeys.”
“And John held his peace through it all,” a full fresh voice broke in.
“‘It may be so,’ says John. ‘Doubtless, in your belief, it _is_ so,’
says John. ‘Your words move me mightily,’ says John, and gorges his
own beliefs like a pike going backwards. And that young fool, so busy
spinning words--words--words--that he trips past Hell Mouth without
seeing it!... Who’s yonder, Joan?”
“One of your English. ’Always late. Look!” A young girl with
short-cropped hair pointed with her sword across the plain towards a
single faltering figure which made at first as though to overtake the
Convoy, but then turned left towards the Lower Establishment, who were
enthusiastically cheering him as a leader of enterprise.
“That’s my traitor,” said St. Peter. “He has no business to report to
the Lower Establishment before reporting to Convoy.”
The figure’s pace slackened as he neared the applauding line. He looked
over his shoulder once or twice, and then fairly turned tail and fled
again towards the still Convoy.
“Nobody ever gave me credit for anything I did,” he began, sobbing and
gesticulating. “They were all against me from the first. I only wanted
a little encouragement. It was a regular conspiracy, but _I_ showed ’em
what I could do! _I_ showed ’em! And--and--” he halted again. “Oh, God!
What are you going to do with _me_?”
No one offered any suggestion. He ranged sideways like a doubtful dog,
while across the plain the Lower Establishment murmured seductively.
All eyes turned to St. Peter.
“At this moment,” the Saint said half to himself, “I can’t recall any
precise ruling under which----”
“My own case?” the ever-ready Judas suggested.
“No-o! That’s making too much of it. And yet----”
“Oh, hurry up and get it over,” the man wailed, and told them all
that he had done, ending with the cry that none had ever recognised
his merits; neither his own narrow-minded people, his inefficient
employers, nor the snobbish jumped-up officers of his battalion.
“You see,” said St. Peter at the end. “It’s sheer vanity. It isn’t even
as if we had a woman to fall back upon.”
“Yet there was a woman or I’m mistaken,” said the picket with the
pleasing voice who had praised John.
“Eh--what? When?” St. Peter turned swiftly on the speaker. “Who was the
woman?”
“The wise woman of Tekoah,” came the smooth answer. “I remember,
because that verse was the private heart of my plays--some of ’em.”
But the Saint was not listening. “You have it!” he cried. “Samuel Two,
Double Fourteen. To think that _I_ should have forgotten! ‘For we
must needs die and are as water spilled on the ground which cannot be
gathered up again. Neither doth God respect any person, _yet_--’ Here
you! Listen to this!”
The man stepped forward and stood to attention. Some one took his cap
as Judas and the picket John closed up beside him.
“‘_Yet doth He devise means_ (d’you understand that?) _devise means
that His banished be not expelled from Him!_’ This covers your case. I
don’t know what the means will be. That’s for you to find out. They’ll
tell you yonder.” He nodded towards the now silent Lower Establishment
as he scribbled on a pass. “Take this paper over to them and report for
duty there. You’ll have a thin time of it; but they won’t keep you a
day longer than I’ve put down. Escort!”
“Does--does that mean there’s any hope?” the man stammered.
“Yes--I’ll show you the way,” Judas whispered. “I’ve lived there--a
very long time!”
“I’ll bear you company a piece,” said John, on his left flank.
“There’ll be Despair to deal with. Heart up, Mr. Littlesoul!”
The three wheeled off, and the Convoy watched them grow smaller and
smaller across the plain.
St. Peter smiled benignantly and rubbed his hands.
“And now we’re rested,” said he, “I think we might make a push for
billets this evening, gentlemen, eh?”
The pickets fell in, guardians no longer but friends and companions
all down the line. There was a little burst of cheering and the whole
Convoy strode away towards the not so distant Gate.
The Saint and Death stayed behind to rest awhile. It was a heavenly
evening. They could hear the whistle of the low-flighting Cherubim,
clear and sharp, under the diviner note of some released Seraph’s
wings, where, his errand accomplished, he plunged three or four stars
deep into the cool Baths of Hercules; the steady dynamo-like hum of the
nearer planets on their axes; and, as the hush deepened, the surprised
little sigh of some new-born sun a universe of universes away. But
their minds were with the Convoy that their eyes followed.
Said St. Peter proudly at last: “If those people of mine had seen that
fellow stripped of all hope in front of ’em, I doubt if they could have
marched another yard to-night. Watch ’em stepping out now, though!
Aren’t they human?”
“To whom do you say it?” Death answered with something of a tired
smile. “I’m more than human. _I_’ve got to die some time or other. But
all other created Beings--afterwards....”
“_I_ know,” said St. Peter softly. “And that is why I love you, O
Azrael!”
For now they were alone Death had, of course, returned to his true
majestic shape--that only One of all created beings who is doomed to
perish utterly, and knows it.
“Well, that’s _that_--for me!” Death concluded as he rose. “And yet--”
he glanced towards the empty plain where the Lower Establishment had
withdrawn with their prisoner. “‘Yet doth He devise means.’”