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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Ball and The Cross, by G.K. Chesterton
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: The Ball and The Cross
+
+Author: G.K. Chesterton
+
+Release Date: June 19, 2002 [eBook #5265]
+[Most recently updated: June 11, 2021]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+Produced by: Ben Crowder and David Widger
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BALL AND THE CROSS ***
+
+
+
+
+THE BALL AND THE CROSS
+
+G.K. Chesterton
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+    I. A Discussion Somewhat in the Air
+   II. The Religion of the Stipendiary Magistrate
+  III. Some Old Curiosities
+   IV. A Discussion at Dawn
+    V. The Peacemaker
+   VI. The Other Philosopher
+  VII. The Village of Grassley-in-the-Hole
+ VIII. An Interlude of Argument
+   IX. The Strange Lady
+    X. The Swords Rejoined
+   XI. A Scandal in the Village
+  XII. The Desert Island
+ XIII. The Garden of Peace
+  XIV. A Museum of Souls
+   XV. The Dream of MacIan
+  XVI. The Dream of Turnbull
+ XVII. The Idiot
+XVIII. A Riddle of Faces
+  XIX. The Last Parley
+   XX. Dies Irae
+
+
+
+
+I. A DISCUSSION SOMEWHAT IN THE AIR
+
+The flying ship of Professor Lucifer sang through the skies like a
+silver arrow; the bleak white steel of it, gleaming in the bleak
+blue emptiness of the evening. That it was far above the earth was no
+expression for it; to the two men in it, it seemed to be far above the
+stars. The professor had himself invented the flying machine, and had
+also invented nearly everything in it. Every sort of tool or apparatus
+had, in consequence, to the full, that fantastic and distorted look
+which belongs to the miracles of science. For the world of science and
+evolution is far more nameless and elusive and like a dream than the
+world of poetry and religion; since in the latter images and ideas
+remain themselves eternally, while it is the whole idea of evolution
+that identities melt into each other as they do in a nightmare.
+
+All the tools of Professor Lucifer were the ancient human tools gone
+mad, grown into unrecognizable shapes, forgetful of their origin,
+forgetful of their names. That thing which looked like an enormous key
+with three wheels was really a patent and very deadly revolver. That
+object which seemed to be created by the entanglement of two corkscrews
+was really the key. The thing which might have been mistaken for a
+tricycle turned upside-down was the inexpressibly important instrument
+to which the corkscrew was the key. All these things, as I say, the
+professor had invented; he had invented everything in the flying ship,
+with the exception, perhaps, of himself. This he had been born too
+late actually to inaugurate, but he believed at least, that he had
+considerably improved it.
+
+There was, however, another man on board, so to speak, at the time. Him,
+also, by a curious coincidence, the professor had not invented, and him
+he had not even very greatly improved, though he had fished him up with
+a lasso out of his own back garden, in Western Bulgaria, with the pure
+object of improving him. He was an exceedingly holy man, almost entirely
+covered with white hair. You could see nothing but his eyes, and he
+seemed to talk with them. A monk of immense learning and acute intellect
+he had made himself happy in a little stone hut and a little stony
+garden in the Balkans, chiefly by writing the most crushing refutations
+of exposures of certain heresies, the last professors of which had been
+burnt (generally by each other) precisely 1,119 years previously. They
+were really very plausible and thoughtful heresies, and it was really
+a creditable or even glorious circumstance, that the old monk had been
+intellectual enough to detect their fallacy; the only misfortune
+was that nobody in the modern world was intellectual enough even to
+understand their argument. The old monk, one of whose names was Michael,
+and the other a name quite impossible to remember or repeat in our
+Western civilization, had, however, as I have said, made himself quite
+happy while he was in a mountain hermitage in the society of wild
+animals. And now that his luck had lifted him above all the mountains in
+the society of a wild physicist, he made himself happy still.
+
+“I have no intention, my good Michael,” said Professor Lucifer,
+“of endeavouring to convert you by argument. The imbecility of your
+traditions can be quite finally exhibited to anybody with mere ordinary
+knowledge of the world, the same kind of knowledge which teaches us
+not to sit in draughts or not to encourage friendliness in impecunious
+people. It is folly to talk of this or that demonstrating the
+rationalist philosophy. Everything demonstrates it. Rubbing shoulders
+with men of all kinds----”
+
+“You will forgive me,” said the monk, meekly from under loads of white
+beard, “but I fear I do not understand; was it in order that I might rub
+my shoulder against men of all kinds that you put me inside this thing?”
+
+“An entertaining retort, in the narrow and deductive manner of the
+Middle Ages,” replied the Professor, calmly, “but even upon your own
+basis I will illustrate my point. We are up in the sky. In your religion
+and all the religions, as far as I know (and I know everything), the sky
+is made the symbol of everything that is sacred and merciful. Well, now
+you are in the sky, you know better. Phrase it how you like, twist it
+how you like, you know that you know better. You know what are a man's
+real feelings about the heavens, when he finds himself alone in the
+heavens, surrounded by the heavens. You know the truth, and the truth
+is this. The heavens are evil, the sky is evil, the stars are evil. This
+mere space, this mere quantity, terrifies a man more than tigers or the
+terrible plague. You know that since our science has spoken, the bottom
+has fallen out of the Universe. Now, heaven is the hopeless thing,
+more hopeless than any hell. Now, if there be any comfort for all your
+miserable progeny of morbid apes, it must be in the earth, underneath
+you, under the roots of the grass, in the place where hell was of old.
+The fiery crypts, the lurid cellars of the underworld, to which you once
+condemned the wicked, are hideous enough, but at least they are more
+homely than the heaven in which we ride. And the time will come when you
+will all hide in them, to escape the horror of the stars.”
+
+“I hope you will excuse my interrupting you,” said Michael, with a
+slight cough, “but I have always noticed----”
+
+“Go on, pray go on,” said Professor Lucifer, radiantly, “I really like
+to draw out your simple ideas.”
+
+“Well, the fact is,” said the other, “that much as I admire your
+rhetoric and the rhetoric of your school, from a purely verbal point
+of view, such little study of you and your school in human history as I
+have been enabled to make has led me to--er--rather singular conclusion,
+which I find great difficulty in expressing, especially in a foreign
+language.”
+
+“Come, come,” said the Professor, encouragingly, “I'll help you out. How
+did my view strike you?”
+
+“Well, the truth is, I know I don't express it properly, but somehow
+it seemed to me that you always convey ideas of that kind with most
+eloquence, when--er--when----”
+
+“Oh! get on,” cried Lucifer, boisterously.
+
+“Well, in point of fact when your flying ship is just going to run
+into something. I thought you wouldn't mind my mentioning it, but it's
+running into something now.”
+
+Lucifer exploded with an oath and leapt erect, leaning hard upon the
+handle that acted as a helm to the vessel. For the last ten minutes they
+had been shooting downwards into great cracks and caverns of cloud. Now,
+through a sort of purple haze, could be seen comparatively near to them
+what seemed to be the upper part of a huge, dark orb or sphere, islanded
+in a sea of cloud. The Professor's eyes were blazing like a maniac's.
+
+“It is a new world,” he cried, with a dreadful mirth. “It is a new
+planet and it shall bear my name. This star and not that other vulgar
+one shall be 'Lucifer, sun of the morning.' Here we will have no
+chartered lunacies, here we will have no gods. Here man shall be
+as innocent as the daisies, as innocent and as cruel--here the
+intellect----”
+
+“There seems,” said Michael, timidly, “to be something sticking up in
+the middle of it.”
+
+“So there is,” said the Professor, leaning over the side of the ship,
+his spectacles shining with intellectual excitement. “What can it be? It
+might of course be merely a----”
+
+Then a shriek indescribable broke out of him of a sudden, and he flung
+up his arms like a lost spirit. The monk took the helm in a tired way;
+he did not seem much astonished for he came from an ignorant part of the
+world in which it is not uncommon for lost spirits to shriek when they
+see the curious shape which the Professor had just seen on the top of
+the mysterious ball, but he took the helm only just in time, and by
+driving it hard to the left he prevented the flying ship from smashing
+into St. Paul's Cathedral.
+
+A plain of sad-coloured cloud lay along the level of the top of the
+Cathedral dome, so that the ball and the cross looked like a buoy riding
+on a leaden sea. As the flying ship swept towards it, this plain of
+cloud looked as dry and definite and rocky as any grey desert. Hence it
+gave to the mind and body a sharp and unearthly sensation when the ship
+cut and sank into the cloud as into any common mist, a thing without
+resistance. There was, as it were, a deadly shock in the fact that there
+was no shock. It was as if they had cloven into ancient cliffs like so
+much butter. But sensations awaited them which were much stranger than
+those of sinking through the solid earth. For a moment their eyes and
+nostrils were stopped with darkness and opaque cloud; then the darkness
+warmed into a kind of brown fog. And far, far below them the brown fog
+fell until it warmed into fire. Through the dense London atmosphere they
+could see below them the flaming London lights; lights which lay beneath
+them in squares and oblongs of fire. The fog and fire were mixed in a
+passionate vapour; you might say that the fog was drowning the flames;
+or you might say that the flames had set the fog on fire. Beside the
+ship and beneath it (for it swung just under the ball), the immeasurable
+dome itself shot out and down into the dark like a combination of
+voiceless cataracts. Or it was like some cyclopean sea-beast sitting
+above London and letting down its tentacles bewilderingly on every side,
+a monstrosity in that starless heaven. For the clouds that belonged to
+London had closed over the heads of the voyagers sealing up the entrance
+of the upper air. They had broken through a roof and come into a temple
+of twilight.
+
+They were so near to the ball that Lucifer leaned his hand against it,
+holding the vessel away, as men push a boat off from a bank. Above it
+the cross already draped in the dark mists of the borderland was shadowy
+and more awful in shape and size.
+
+Professor Lucifer slapped his hand twice upon the surface of the great
+orb as if he were caressing some enormous animal. “This is the fellow,”
+ he said, “this is the one for my money.”
+
+“May I with all respect inquire,” asked the old monk, “what on earth you
+are talking about?”
+
+“Why this,” cried Lucifer, smiting the ball again, “here is the only
+symbol, my boy. So fat. So satisfied. Not like that scraggy individual,
+stretching his arms in stark weariness.” And he pointed up to the cross,
+his face dark with a grin. “I was telling you just now, Michael, that I
+can prove the best part of the rationalist case and the Christian humbug
+from any symbol you liked to give me, from any instance I came across.
+Here is an instance with a vengeance. What could possibly express your
+philosophy and my philosophy better than the shape of that cross and
+the shape of this ball? This globe is reasonable; that cross is
+unreasonable. It is a four-legged animal, with one leg longer than the
+others. The globe is inevitable. The cross is arbitrary. Above all the
+globe is at unity with itself; the cross is primarily and above all
+things at enmity with itself. The cross is the conflict of two hostile
+lines, of irreconcilable direction. That silent thing up there is
+essentially a collision, a crash, a struggle in stone. Pah! that
+sacred symbol of yours has actually given its name to a description of
+desperation and muddle. When we speak of men at once ignorant of each
+other and frustrated by each other, we say they are at cross-purposes.
+Away with the thing! The very shape of it is a contradiction in terms.”
+
+“What you say is perfectly true,” said Michael, with serenity. “But we
+like contradictions in terms. Man is a contradiction in terms; he is a
+beast whose superiority to other beasts consists in having fallen. That
+cross is, as you say, an eternal collision; so am I. That is a struggle
+in stone. Every form of life is a struggle in flesh. The shape of
+the cross is irrational, just as the shape of the human animal is
+irrational. You say the cross is a quadruped with one limb longer than
+the rest. I say man is a quadruped who only uses two of his legs.”
+
+The Professor frowned thoughtfully for an instant, and said: “Of
+course everything is relative, and I would not deny that the element
+of struggle and self-contradiction, represented by that cross, has a
+necessary place at a certain evolutionary stage. But surely the cross
+is the lower development and the sphere the higher. After all it is
+easy enough to see what is really wrong with Wren's architectural
+arrangement.”
+
+“And what is that, pray?” inquired Michael, meekly.
+
+“The cross is on top of the ball,” said Professor Lucifer, simply. “That
+is surely wrong. The ball should be on top of the cross. The cross is a
+mere barbaric prop; the ball is perfection. The cross at its best is but
+the bitter tree of man's history; the ball is the rounded, the ripe and
+final fruit. And the fruit should be at the top of the tree, not at the
+bottom of it.”
+
+“Oh!” said the monk, a wrinkle coming into his forehead, “so you think
+that in a rationalistic scheme of symbolism the ball should be on top of
+the cross?”
+
+“It sums up my whole allegory,” said the professor.
+
+“Well, that is really very interesting,” resumed Michael slowly,
+“because I think in that case you would see a most singular effect, an
+effect that has generally been achieved by all those able and powerful
+systems which rationalism, or the religion of the ball, has produced to
+lead or teach mankind. You would see, I think, that thing happen which
+is always the ultimate embodiment and logical outcome of your logical
+scheme.”
+
+“What are you talking about?” asked Lucifer. “What would happen?”
+
+“I mean it would fall down,” said the monk, looking wistfully into the
+void.
+
+Lucifer made an angry movement and opened his mouth to speak, but
+Michael, with all his air of deliberation, was proceeding before he
+could bring out a word.
+
+“I once knew a man like you, Lucifer,” he said, with a maddening
+monotony and slowness of articulation. “He took this----”
+
+“There is no man like me,” cried Lucifer, with a violence that shook the
+ship.
+
+“As I was observing,” continued Michael, “this man also took the
+view that the symbol of Christianity was a symbol of savagery and all
+unreason. His history is rather amusing. It is also a perfect allegory
+of what happens to rationalists like yourself. He began, of course, by
+refusing to allow a crucifix in his house, or round his wife's neck,
+or even in a picture. He said, as you say, that it was an arbitrary
+and fantastic shape, that it was a monstrosity, loved because it was
+paradoxical. Then he began to grow fiercer and more eccentric; he would
+batter the crosses by the roadside; for he lived in a Roman Catholic
+country. Finally in a height of frenzy he climbed the steeple of
+the Parish Church and tore down the cross, waving it in the air, and
+uttering wild soliloquies up there under the stars. Then one still
+summer evening as he was wending his way homewards, along a lane, the
+devil of his madness came upon him with a violence and transfiguration
+which changes the world. He was standing smoking, for a moment, in the
+front of an interminable line of palings, when his eyes were opened. Not
+a light shifted, not a leaf stirred, but he saw as if by a sudden change
+in the eyesight that this paling was an army of innumerable crosses
+linked together over hill and dale. And he whirled up his heavy stick
+and went at it as if at an army. Mile after mile along his homeward path
+he broke it down and tore it up. For he hated the cross and every paling
+is a wall of crosses. When he returned to his house he was a literal
+madman. He sat upon a chair and then started up from it for the
+cross-bars of the carpentry repeated the intolerable image. He flung
+himself upon a bed only to remember that this, too, like all workmanlike
+things, was constructed on the accursed plan. He broke his furniture
+because it was made of crosses. He burnt his house because it was made
+of crosses. He was found in the river.”
+
+Lucifer was looking at him with a bitten lip.
+
+“Is that story really true?” he asked.
+
+“Oh, no,” said Michael, airily. “It is a parable. It is a parable of you
+and all your rationalists. You begin by breaking up the Cross; but you
+end by breaking up the habitable world. We leave you saying that nobody
+ought to join the Church against his will. When we meet you again you
+are saying that no one has any will to join it with. We leave you saying
+that there is no such place as Eden. We find you saying that there is no
+such place as Ireland. You start by hating the irrational and you come
+to hate everything, for everything is irrational and so----”
+
+Lucifer leapt upon him with a cry like a wild beast's. “Ah,” he
+screamed, “to every man his madness. You are mad on the cross. Let it
+save you.”
+
+And with a herculean energy he forced the monk backwards out of the
+reeling car on to the upper part of the stone ball. Michael, with
+as abrupt an agility, caught one of the beams of the cross and saved
+himself from falling. At the same instant Lucifer drove down a lever and
+the ship shot up with him in it alone.
+
+“Ha! ha!” he yelled, “what sort of a support do you find it, old
+fellow?”
+
+“For practical purposes of support,” replied Michael grimly, “it is at
+any rate a great deal better than the ball. May I ask if you are going
+to leave me here?”
+
+“Yes, yes. I mount! I mount!” cried the professor in ungovernable
+excitement. “_Altiora peto_. My path is upward.”
+
+“How often have you told me, Professor, that there is really no up or
+down in space?” said the monk. “I shall mount up as much as you will.”
+
+“Indeed,” said Lucifer, leering over the side of the flying ship. “May I
+ask what you are going to do?”
+
+The monk pointed downward at Ludgate Hill. “I am going,” he said, “to
+climb up into a star.”
+
+Those who look at the matter most superficially regard paradox as
+something which belongs to jesting and light journalism. Paradox of this
+kind is to be found in the saying of the dandy, in the decadent comedy,
+“Life is much too important to be taken seriously.” Those who look at
+the matter a little more deeply or delicately see that paradox is a
+thing which especially belongs to all religions. Paradox of this kind is
+to be found in such a saying as “The meek shall inherit the earth.”
+ But those who see and feel the fundamental fact of the matter know that
+paradox is a thing which belongs not to religion only, but to all vivid
+and violent practical crises of human living. This kind of paradox may
+be clearly perceived by anybody who happens to be hanging in mid-space,
+clinging to one arm of the Cross of St. Paul's.
+
+Father Michael in spite of his years, and in spite of his asceticism
+(or because of it, for all I know), was a very healthy and happy old
+gentleman. And as he swung on a bar above the sickening emptiness of
+air, he realized, with that sort of dead detachment which belongs to the
+brains of those in peril, the deathless and hopeless contradiction which
+is involved in the mere idea of courage. He was a happy and healthy old
+gentleman and therefore he was quite careless about it. And he felt as
+every man feels in the taut moment of such terror that his chief danger
+was terror itself; his only possible strength would be a coolness
+amounting to carelessness, a carelessness amounting almost to a suicidal
+swagger. His one wild chance of coming out safely would be in not too
+desperately desiring to be safe. There might be footholds down that
+awful facade, if only he could not care whether they were footholds or
+no. If he were foolhardy he might escape; if he were wise he would
+stop where he was till he dropped from the cross like a stone. And this
+antinomy kept on repeating itself in his mind, a contradiction as large
+and staring as the immense contradiction of the Cross; he remembered
+having often heard the words, “Whosoever shall lose his life the same
+shall save it.” He remembered with a sort of strange pity that this had
+always been made to mean that whoever lost his physical life should save
+his spiritual life. Now he knew the truth that is known to all fighters,
+and hunters, and climbers of cliffs. He knew that even his animal life
+could only be saved by a considerable readiness to lose it.
+
+Some will think it improbable that a human soul swinging desperately
+in mid-air should think about philosophical inconsistencies. But such
+extreme states are dangerous things to dogmatize about. Frequently they
+produce a certain useless and joyless activity of the mere intellect,
+thought not only divorced from hope but even from desire. And if it is
+impossible to dogmatize about such states, it is still more impossible
+to describe them. To this spasm of sanity and clarity in Michael's mind
+succeeded a spasm of the elemental terror; the terror of the animal
+in us which regards the whole universe as its enemy; which, when it is
+victorious, has no pity, and so, when it is defeated has no imaginable
+hope. Of that ten minutes of terror it is not possible to speak in human
+words. But then again in that damnable darkness there began to grow
+a strange dawn as of grey and pale silver. And of this ultimate
+resignation or certainty it is even less possible to write; it is
+something stranger than hell itself; it is perhaps the last of the
+secrets of God. At the highest crisis of some incurable anguish there
+will suddenly fall upon the man the stillness of an insane contentment.
+It is not hope, for hope is broken and romantic and concerned with the
+future; this is complete and of the present. It is not faith, for
+faith by its very nature is fierce, and as it were at once doubtful and
+defiant; but this is simply a satisfaction. It is not knowledge, for
+the intellect seems to have no particular part in it. Nor is it (as the
+modern idiots would certainly say it is) a mere numbness or negative
+paralysis of the powers of grief. It is not negative in the least; it
+is as positive as good news. In some sense, indeed, it is good news. It
+seems almost as if there were some equality among things, some balance
+in all possible contingencies which we are not permitted to know lest we
+should learn indifference to good and evil, but which is sometimes shown
+to us for an instant as a last aid in our last agony.
+
+Michael certainly could not have given any sort of rational account of
+this vast unmeaning satisfaction which soaked through him and filled him
+to the brim. He felt with a sort of half-witted lucidity that the cross
+was there, and the ball was there, and the dome was there, that he was
+going to climb down from them, and that he did not mind in the least
+whether he was killed or not. This mysterious mood lasted long enough to
+start him on his dreadful descent and to force him to continue it. But
+six times before he reached the highest of the outer galleries terror
+had returned on him like a flying storm of darkness and thunder. By
+the time he had reached that place of safety he almost felt (as in some
+impossible fit of drunkenness) that he had two heads; one was calm,
+careless, and efficient; the other saw the danger like a deadly map,
+was wise, careful, and useless. He had fancied that he would have to let
+himself vertically down the face of the whole building. When he dropped
+into the upper gallery he still felt as far from the terrestrial globe
+as if he had only dropped from the sun to the moon. He paused a little,
+panting in the gallery under the ball, and idly kicked his heels, moving
+a few yards along it. And as he did so a thunderbolt struck his soul.
+A man, a heavy, ordinary man, with a composed indifferent face, and a
+prosaic sort of uniform, with a row of buttons, blocked his way. Michael
+had no mind to wonder whether this solid astonished man, with the brown
+moustache and the nickel buttons, had also come on a flying ship. He
+merely let his mind float in an endless felicity about the man. He
+thought how nice it would be if he had to live up in that gallery with
+that one man for ever. He thought how he would luxuriate in the nameless
+shades of this man's soul and then hear with an endless excitement about
+the nameless shades of the souls of all his aunts and uncles. A moment
+before he had been dying alone. Now he was living in the same world with
+a man; an inexhaustible ecstasy. In the gallery below the ball Father
+Michael had found that man who is the noblest and most divine and most
+lovable of all men, better than all the saints, greater than all the
+heroes--man Friday.
+
+In the confused colour and music of his new paradise, Michael heard only
+in a faint and distant fashion some remarks that this beautiful solid
+man seemed to be making to him; remarks about something or other being
+after hours and against orders. He also seemed to be asking how Michael
+“got up” there. This beautiful man evidently felt as Michael did that
+the earth was a star and was set in heaven.
+
+At length Michael sated himself with the mere sensual music of the voice
+of the man in buttons. He began to listen to what he said, and even to
+make some attempt at answering a question which appeared to have been
+put several times and was now put with some excess of emphasis. Michael
+realized that the image of God in nickel buttons was asking him how
+he had come there. He said that he had come in Lucifer's ship. On
+his giving this answer the demeanour of the image of God underwent a
+remarkable change. From addressing Michael gruffly, as if he were a
+malefactor, he began suddenly to speak to him with a sort of eager
+and feverish amiability as if he were a child. He seemed particularly
+anxious to coax him away from the balustrade. He led him by the arm
+towards a door leading into the building itself, soothing him all the
+time. He gave what even Michael (slight as was his knowledge of the
+world) felt to be an improbable account of the sumptuous pleasures
+and varied advantages awaiting him downstairs. Michael followed him,
+however, if only out of politeness, down an apparently interminable
+spiral of staircase. At one point a door opened. Michael stepped through
+it, and the unaccountable man in buttons leapt after him and pinioned
+him where he stood. But he only wished to stand; to stand and stare.
+He had stepped as it were into another infinity, out under the dome of
+another heaven. But this was a dome of heaven made by man. The gold and
+green and crimson of its sunset were not in the shapeless clouds but in
+shapes of cherubim and seraphim, awful human shapes with a passionate
+plumage. Its stars were not above but far below, like fallen stars still
+in unbroken constellations; the dome itself was full of darkness.
+And far below, lower even than the lights, could be seen creeping or
+motionless, great black masses of men. The tongue of a terrible organ
+seemed to shake the very air in the whole void; and through it there
+came up to Michael the sound of a tongue more terrible; the dreadful
+everlasting voice of man, calling to his gods from the beginning to the
+end of the world. Michael felt almost as if he were a god, and all the
+voices were hurled at him.
+
+“No, the pretty things aren't here,” said the demi-god in buttons,
+caressingly. “The pretty things are downstairs. You come along with me.
+There's something that will surprise you downstairs; something you want
+very much to see.”
+
+Evidently the man in buttons did not feel like a god, so Michael made no
+attempt to explain his feelings to him, but followed him meekly enough
+down the trail of the serpentine staircase. He had no notion where or at
+what level he was. He was still full of the cold splendour of space,
+and of what a French writer has brilliantly named the “vertigo of the
+infinite,” when another door opened, and with a shock indescribable he
+found himself on the familiar level, in a street full of faces, with the
+houses and even the lamp-posts above his head. He felt suddenly happy
+and suddenly indescribably small. He fancied he had been changed into a
+child again; his eyes sought the pavement seriously as children's do, as
+if it were a thing with which something satisfactory could be done.
+He felt the full warmth of that pleasure from which the proud shut
+themselves out; the pleasure which not only goes with humiliation, but
+which almost is humiliation. Men who have escaped death by a hair have
+it, and men whose love is returned by a woman unexpectedly, and men
+whose sins are forgiven them. Everything his eye fell on it feasted on,
+not aesthetically, but with a plain, jolly appetite as of a boy eating
+buns. He relished the squareness of the houses; he liked their clean
+angles as if he had just cut them with a knife. The lit squares of the
+shop windows excited him as the young are excited by the lit stage of
+some promising pantomime. He happened to see in one shop which projected
+with a bulging bravery on to the pavement some square tins of potted
+meat, and it seemed like a hint of a hundred hilarious high teas in a
+hundred streets of the world. He was, perhaps, the happiest of all the
+children of men. For in that unendurable instant when he hung, half
+slipping, to the ball of St. Paul's, the whole universe had been
+destroyed and re-created.
+
+Suddenly through all the din of the dark streets came a crash of glass.
+With that mysterious suddenness of the Cockney mob, a rush was made
+in the right direction, a dingy office, next to the shop of the potted
+meat. The pane of glass was lying in splinters about the pavement. And
+the police already had their hands on a very tall young man, with dark,
+lank hair and dark, dazed eyes, with a grey plaid over his shoulder, who
+had just smashed the shop window with a single blow of his stick.
+
+“I'd do it again,” said the young man, with a furious white face.
+“Anybody would have done it. Did you see what it said? I swear I'd do it
+again.” Then his eyes encountered the monkish habit of Michael, and he
+pulled off his grey tam-o'-shanter with the gesture of a Catholic.
+
+“Father, did you see what they said?” he cried, trembling. “Did you see
+what they dared to say? I didn't understand it at first. I read it half
+through before I broke the window.”
+
+Michael felt he knew not how. The whole peace of the world was pent up
+painfully in his heart. The new and childlike world which he had seen
+so suddenly, men had not seen at all. Here they were still at their old
+bewildering, pardonable, useless quarrels, with so much to be said on
+both sides, and so little that need be said at all. A fierce inspiration
+fell on him suddenly; he would strike them where they stood with the
+love of God. They should not move till they saw their own sweet and
+startling existence. They should not go from that place till they went
+home embracing like brothers and shouting like men delivered. From the
+Cross from which he had fallen fell the shadow of its fantastic mercy;
+and the first three words he spoke in a voice like a silver trumpet,
+held men as still as stones. Perhaps if he had spoken there for an hour
+in his illumination he might have founded a religion on Ludgate Hill.
+But the heavy hand of his guide fell suddenly on his shoulder.
+
+“This poor fellow is dotty,” he said good-humouredly to the crowd. “I
+found him wandering in the Cathedral. Says he came in a flying ship. Is
+there a constable to spare to take care of him?”
+
+There was a constable to spare. Two other constables attended to the
+tall young man in grey; a fourth concerned himself with the owner of the
+shop, who showed some tendency to be turbulent. They took the tall young
+man away to a magistrate, whither we shall follow him in an ensuing
+chapter. And they took the happiest man in the world away to an asylum.
+
+
+
+
+II. THE RELIGION OF THE STIPENDIARY MAGISTRATE
+
+The editorial office of _The Atheist_ had for some years past become
+less and less prominently interesting as a feature of Ludgate Hill. The
+paper was unsuited to the atmosphere. It showed an interest in the Bible
+unknown in the district, and a knowledge of that volume to which nobody
+else on Ludgate Hill could make any conspicuous claim. It was in vain
+that the editor of _The Atheist_ filled his front window with fierce
+and final demands as to what Noah in the Ark did with the neck of the
+giraffe. It was in vain that he asked violently, as for the last time,
+how the statement “God is Spirit” could be reconciled with the statement
+“The earth is His footstool.” It was in vain that he cried with an
+accusing energy that the Bishop of London was paid L12,000 a year for
+pretending to believe that the whale swallowed Jonah. It was in vain
+that he hung in conspicuous places the most thrilling scientific
+calculations about the width of the throat of a whale. Was it nothing
+to them all they that passed by? Did his sudden and splendid and truly
+sincere indignation never stir any of the people pouring down Ludgate
+Hill? Never. The little man who edited _The Atheist_ would rush from his
+shop on starlit evenings and shake his fist at St. Paul's in the passion
+of his holy war upon the holy place. He might have spared his emotion.
+The cross at the top of St. Paul's and _The Atheist_ shop at the foot of
+it were alike remote from the world. The shop and the Cross were equally
+uplifted and alone in the empty heavens.
+
+To the little man who edited _The Atheist_, a fiery little Scotchman,
+with fiery, red hair and beard, going by the name of Turnbull, all this
+decline in public importance seemed not so much sad or even mad, but
+merely bewildering and unaccountable. He had said the worst thing that
+could be said; and it seemed accepted and ignored like the ordinary
+second best of the politicians. Every day his blasphemies looked more
+glaring, and every day the dust lay thicker upon them. It made him feel
+as if he were moving in a world of idiots. He seemed among a race of men
+who smiled when told of their own death, or looked vacantly at the Day
+of Judgement. Year after year went by, and year after year the death of
+God in a shop in Ludgate became a less and less important occurrence.
+All the forward men of his age discouraged Turnbull. The socialists
+said he was cursing priests when he should be cursing capitalists.
+The artists said that the soul was most spiritual, not when freed from
+religion, but when freed from morality. Year after year went by, and at
+least a man came by who treated Mr. Turnbull's secularist shop with a
+real respect and seriousness. He was a young man in a grey plaid, and he
+smashed the window.
+
+He was a young man, born in the Bay of Arisaig, opposite Rum and the
+Isle of Skye. His high, hawklike features and snaky black hair bore the
+mark of that unknown historic thing which is crudely called Celtic, but
+which is probably far older than the Celts, whoever they were. He was in
+name and stock a Highlander of the Macdonalds; but his family took, as
+was common in such cases, the name of a subordinate sept as a surname,
+and for all the purposes which could be answered in London, he called
+himself Evan MacIan. He had been brought up in some loneliness and
+seclusion as a strict Roman Catholic, in the midst of that little wedge
+of Roman Catholics which is driven into the Western Highlands. And he
+had found his way as far as Fleet Street, seeking some half-promised
+employment, without having properly realized that there were in the
+world any people who were not Roman Catholics. He had uncovered himself
+for a few moments before the statue of Queen Anne, in front of St.
+Paul's Cathedral, under the firm impression that it was a figure of the
+Virgin Mary. He was somewhat surprised at the lack of deference shown to
+the figure by the people bustling by. He did not understand that their
+one essential historical principle, the one law truly graven on their
+hearts, was the great and comforting statement that Queen Anne is dead.
+This faith was as fundamental as his faith, that Our Lady was alive. Any
+persons he had talked to since he had touched the fringe of our fashion
+or civilization had been by a coincidence, sympathetic or hypocritical.
+Or if they had spoken some established blasphemies, he had been unable
+to understand them merely owing to the preoccupied satisfaction of his
+mind.
+
+On that fantastic fringe of the Gaelic land where he walked as a boy,
+the cliffs were as fantastic as the clouds. Heaven seemed to humble
+itself and come closer to the earth. The common paths of his little
+village began to climb quite suddenly and seemed resolved to go to
+heaven. The sky seemed to fall down towards the hills; the hills took
+hold upon the sky. In the sumptuous sunset of gold and purple and
+peacock green cloudlets and islets were the same. Evan lived like a man
+walking on a borderland, the borderland between this world and another.
+Like so many men and nations who grow up with nature and the common
+things, he understood the supernatural before he understood the natural.
+He had looked at dim angels standing knee-deep in the grass before he
+had looked at the grass. He knew that Our Lady's robes were blue before
+he knew the wild roses round her feet were red. The deeper his memory
+plunged into the dark house of childhood the nearer and nearer he came
+to the things that cannot be named. All through his life he thought of
+the daylight world as a sort of divine debris, the broken remainder
+of his first vision. The skies and mountains were the splendid
+off-scourings of another place. The stars were lost jewels of the Queen.
+Our Lady had gone and left the stars by accident.
+
+His private tradition was equally wild and unworldly. His
+great-grandfather had been cut down at Culloden, certain in his last
+instant that God would restore the King. His grandfather, then a boy of
+ten, had taken the terrible claymore from the hand of the dead and hung
+it up in his house, burnishing it and sharpening it for sixty years, to
+be ready for the next rebellion. His father, the youngest son and the
+last left alive, had refused to attend on Queen Victoria in Scotland.
+And Evan himself had been of one piece with his progenitors; and was not
+dead with them, but alive in the twentieth century. He was not in the
+least the pathetic Jacobite of whom we read, left behind by a final
+advance of all things. He was, in his own fancy, a conspirator, fierce
+and up to date. In the long, dark afternoons of the Highland winter, he
+plotted and fumed in the dark. He drew plans of the capture of London on
+the desolate sand of Arisaig.
+
+When he came up to capture London, it was not with an army of white
+cockades, but with a stick and a satchel. London overawed him a little,
+not because he thought it grand or even terrible, but because it
+bewildered him; it was not the Golden City or even hell; it was Limbo.
+He had one shock of sentiment, when he turned that wonderful corner of
+Fleet Street and saw St. Paul's sitting in the sky.
+
+“Ah,” he said, after a long pause, “that sort of thing was built under
+the Stuarts!” Then with a sour grin he asked himself what was
+the corresponding monument of the Brunswicks and the Protestant
+Constitution. After some warning, he selected a sky-sign of some pill.
+
+Half an hour afterwards his emotions left him with an emptied mind on
+the same spot. And it was in a mood of mere idle investigation that he
+happened to come to a standstill opposite the office of _The Atheist_.
+He did not see the word “atheist”, or if he did, it is quite possible
+that he did not know the meaning of the word. Even as it was, the
+document would not have shocked even the innocent Highlander, but for
+the troublesome and quite unforeseen fact that the innocent Highlander
+read it stolidly to the end; a thing unknown among the most enthusiastic
+subscribers to the paper, and calculated in any case to create a new
+situation.
+
+With a smart journalistic instinct characteristic of all his school, the
+editor of _The Atheist_ had put first in his paper and most prominently
+in his window an article called “The Mesopotamian Mythology and its
+Effects on Syriac Folk Lore.” Mr. Evan MacIan began to read this quite
+idly, as he would have read a public statement beginning with a young
+girl dying in Brighton and ending with Bile Beans. He received the very
+considerable amount of information accumulated by the author with
+that tired clearness of the mind which children have on heavy summer
+afternoons--that tired clearness which leads them to go on asking
+questions long after they have lost interest in the subject and are
+as bored as their nurse. The streets were full of people and empty of
+adventures. He might as well know about the gods of Mesopotamia as not;
+so he flattened his long, lean face against the dim bleak pane of the
+window and read all there was to read about Mesopotamian gods. He read
+how the Mesopotamians had a god named Sho (sometimes pronounced Ji), and
+that he was described as being very powerful, a striking similarity to
+some expressions about Jahveh, who is also described as having power.
+Evan had never heard of Jahveh in his life, and imagining him to be some
+other Mesopotamian idol, read on with a dull curiosity. He learnt that
+the name Sho, under its third form of Psa, occurs in an early legend
+which describes how the deity, after the manner of Jupiter on so many
+occasions, seduced a Virgin and begat a hero. This hero, whose name is
+not essential to our existence, was, it was said, the chief hero and
+Saviour of the Mesopotamian ethical scheme. Then followed a paragraph
+giving other examples of such heroes and Saviours being born of
+some profligate intercourse between God and mortal. Then followed a
+paragraph--but Evan did not understand it. He read it again and then
+again. Then he did understand it. The glass fell in ringing fragments
+on to the pavement, and Evan sprang over the barrier into the shop,
+brandishing his stick.
+
+“What is this?” cried little Mr. Turnbull, starting up with hair aflame.
+“How dare you break my window?”
+
+“Because it was the quickest cut to you,” cried Evan, stamping. “Stand
+up and fight, you crapulous coward. You dirty lunatic, stand up, will
+you? Have you any weapons here?”
+
+“Are you mad?” asked Turnbull, glaring.
+
+“Are you?” cried Evan. “Can you be anything else when you plaster your
+own house with that God-defying filth? Stand up and fight, I say.”
+
+A great light like dawn came into Mr. Turnbull's face. Behind his red
+hair and beard he turned deadly pale with pleasure. Here, after twenty
+lone years of useless toil, he had his reward. Someone was angry with
+the paper. He bounded to his feet like a boy; he saw a new youth opening
+before him. And as not unfrequently happens to middle-aged gentlemen
+when they see a new youth opening before them, he found himself in the
+presence of the police.
+
+The policemen, after some ponderous questionings, collared both the two
+enthusiasts. They were more respectful, however, to the young man who
+had smashed the window, than to the miscreant who had had his window
+smashed. There was an air of refined mystery about Evan MacIan, which
+did not exist in the irate little shopkeeper, an air of refined mystery
+which appealed to the policemen, for policemen, like most other
+English types, are at once snobs and poets. MacIan might possibly be a
+gentleman, they felt; the editor manifestly was not. And the editor's
+fine rational republican appeals to his respect for law, and his ardour
+to be tried by his fellow citizens, seemed to the police quite as much
+gibberish as Evan's mysticism could have done. The police were not used
+to hearing principles, even the principles of their own existence.
+
+The police magistrate, before whom they were hurried and tried, was
+a Mr. Cumberland Vane, a cheerful, middle-aged gentleman, honourably
+celebrated for the lightness of his sentences and the lightness of his
+conversation. He occasionally worked himself up into a sort of theoretic
+rage about certain particular offenders, such as the men who took
+pokers to their wives, talked in a loose, sentimental way about the
+desirability of flogging them, and was hopelessly bewildered by the fact
+that the wives seemed even more angry with him than with their
+husbands. He was a tall, spruce man, with a twist of black moustache
+and incomparable morning dress. He looked like a gentleman, and yet,
+somehow, like a stage gentleman.
+
+He had often treated serious crimes against mere order or property
+with a humane flippancy. Hence, about the mere breaking of an editor's
+window, he was almost uproarious.
+
+“Come, Mr. MacIan, come,” he said, leaning back in his chair, “do you
+generally enter you friends' houses by walking through the glass?”
+ (Laughter.)
+
+“He is not my friend,” said Evan, with the stolidity of a dull child.
+
+“Not your friend, eh?” said the magistrate, sparkling. “Is he your
+brother-in-law?” (Loud and prolonged laughter.)
+
+“He is my enemy,” said Evan, simply; “he is the enemy of God.”
+
+Mr. Vane shifted sharply in his seat, dropping the eye-glass out of his
+eye in a momentary and not unmanly embarrassment.
+
+“You mustn't talk like that here,” he said, roughly, and in a kind of
+hurry, “that has nothing to do with us.”
+
+Evan opened his great, blue eyes; “God,” he began.
+
+“Be quiet,” said the magistrate, angrily, “it is most undesirable that
+things of that sort should be spoken about--a--in public, and in an
+ordinary Court of Justice. Religion is--a--too personal a matter to be
+mentioned in such a place.”
+
+“Is it?” answered the Highlander, “then what did those policemen swear
+by just now?”
+
+“That is no parallel,” answered Vane, rather irritably; “of course there
+is a form of oath--to be taken reverently--reverently, and there's an
+end of it. But to talk in a public place about one's most sacred and
+private sentiments--well, I call it bad taste. (Slight applause.) I
+call it irreverent. I call it irreverent, and I'm not specially orthodox
+either.”
+
+“I see you are not,” said Evan, “but I am.”
+
+“We are wondering from the point,” said the police magistrate, pulling
+himself together.
+
+“May I ask why you smashed this worthy citizen's window?”
+
+Evan turned a little pale at the mere memory, but he answered with the
+same cold and deadly literalism that he showed throughout.
+
+“Because he blasphemed Our Lady.”
+
+“I tell you once and for all,” cried Mr. Cumberland Vane, rapping his
+knuckles angrily on the table, “I tell you, once and for all, my man,
+that I will not have you turning on any religious rant or cant here.
+Don't imagine that it will impress me. The most religious people are
+not those who talk about it. (Applause.) You answer the questions and do
+nothing else.”
+
+“I did nothing else,” said Evan, with a slight smile.
+
+“Eh,” cried Vane, glaring through his eye-glass.
+
+“You asked me why I broke his window,” said MacIan, with a face of wood.
+“I answered, 'Because he blasphemed Our Lady.' I had no other reason. So
+I have no other answer.” Vane continued to gaze at him with a sternness
+not habitual to him.
+
+“You are not going the right way to work, Sir,” he said, with severity.
+“You are not going the right way to work to--a--have your case treated
+with special consideration. If you had simply expressed regret for what
+you had done, I should have been strongly inclined to dismiss the matter
+as an outbreak of temper. Even now, if you say that you are sorry I
+shall only----”
+
+“But I am not in the least sorry,” said Evan, “I am very pleased.”
+
+“I really believe you are insane,” said the stipendiary, indignantly,
+for he had really been doing his best as a good-natured man, to compose
+the dispute. “What conceivable right have you to break other people's
+windows because their opinions do not agree with yours? This man only
+gave expression to his sincere belief.”
+
+“So did I,” said the Highlander.
+
+“And who are you?” exploded Vane. “Are your views necessarily the right
+ones? Are you necessarily in possession of the truth?”
+
+“Yes,” said MacIan.
+
+The magistrate broke into a contemptuous laugh.
+
+“Oh, you want a nurse to look after you,” he said. “You must pay L10.”
+
+Evan MacIan plunged his hands into his loose grey garment and drew out a
+queer looking leather purse. It contained exactly twelve sovereigns.
+He paid down the ten, coin by coin, in silence, and equally silently
+returned the remaining two to the receptacle. Then he said, “May I say a
+word, your worship?”
+
+Cumberland Vane seemed half hypnotized with the silence and automatic
+movements of the stranger; he made a movement with his head which might
+have been either “yes” or “no”. “I only wished to say, your worship,”
+ said MacIan, putting back the purse in his trouser pocket, “that
+smashing that shop window was, I confess, a useless and rather irregular
+business. It may be excused, however, as a mere preliminary to further
+proceedings, a sort of preface. Wherever and whenever I meet that man,”
+ and he pointed to the editor of _The Atheist_, “whether it be outside
+this door in ten minutes from now, or twenty years hence in some distant
+country, wherever and whenever I meet that man, I will fight him. Do not
+be afraid. I will not rush at him like a bully, or bear him down with
+any brute superiority. I will fight him like a gentleman; I will fight
+him as our fathers fought. He shall choose how, sword or pistol, horse
+or foot. But if he refuses, I will write his cowardice on every wall
+in the world. If he had said of my mother what he said of the Mother of
+God, there is not a club of clean men in Europe that would deny my
+right to call him out. If he had said it of my wife, you English would
+yourselves have pardoned me for beating him like a dog in the market
+place. Your worship, I have no mother; I have no wife. I have only that
+which the poor have equally with the rich; which the lonely have equally
+with the man of many friends. To me this whole strange world is homely,
+because in the heart of it there is a home; to me this cruel world is
+kindly, because higher than the heavens there is something more human
+than humanity. If a man must not fight for this, may he fight for
+anything? I would fight for my friend, but if I lost my friend, I should
+still be there. I would fight for my country, but if I lost my country,
+I should still exist. But if what that devil dreams were true, I should
+not be--I should burst like a bubble and be gone. I could not live in
+that imbecile universe. Shall I not fight for my own existence?”
+
+The magistrate recovered his voice and his presence of mind. The first
+part of the speech, the bombastic and brutally practical challenge,
+stunned him with surprise; but the rest of Evan's remarks, branching off
+as they did into theoretic phrases, gave his vague and very English
+mind (full of memories of the hedging and compromise in English public
+speaking) an indistinct sensation of relief, as if the man, though mad,
+were not so dangerous as he had thought. He went into a sort of weary
+laughter.
+
+“For Heaven's sake, man,” he said, “don't talk so much. Let other people
+have a chance (laughter). I trust all that you said about asking Mr.
+Turnbull to fight, may be regarded as rubbish. In case of accidents,
+however, I must bind you over to keep the peace.”
+
+“To keep the peace,” repeated Evan, “with whom?”
+
+“With Mr. Turnbull,” said Vane.
+
+“Certainly not,” answered MacIan. “What has he to do with peace?”
+
+“Do you mean to say,” began the magistrate, “that you refuse to...” The
+voice of Turnbull himself clove in for the first time.
+
+“Might I suggest,” he said, “That I, your worship, can settle to some
+extent this absurd matter myself. This rather wild gentleman promises
+that he will not attack me with any ordinary assault--and if he does,
+you may be sure the police shall hear of it. But he says he will not. He
+says he will challenge me to a duel; and I cannot say anything stronger
+about his mental state than to say that I think that it is highly
+probable that he will. (Laughter.) But it takes two to make a duel, your
+worship (renewed laughter). I do not in the least mind being described
+on every wall in the world as the coward who would not fight a man
+in Fleet Street, about whether the Virgin Mary had a parallel in
+Mesopotamian mythology. No, your worship. You need not trouble to bind
+him over to keep the peace. I bind myself over to keep the peace, and
+you may rest quite satisfied that there will be no duel with me in it.”
+
+Mr. Cumberland Vane rolled about, laughing in a sort of relief.
+
+“You're like a breath of April, sir,” he cried. “You're ozone after
+that fellow. You're perfectly right. Perhaps I have taken the thing too
+seriously. I should love to see him sending you challenges and to see
+you smiling. Well, well.”
+
+Evan went out of the Court of Justice free, but strangely shaken, like
+a sick man. Any punishment of suppression he would have felt as natural;
+but the sudden juncture between the laughter of his judge and the
+laughter of the man he had wronged, made him feel suddenly small, or at
+least, defeated. It was really true that the whole modern world regarded
+his world as a bubble. No cruelty could have shown it, but their
+kindness showed it with a ghastly clearness. As he was brooding, he
+suddenly became conscious of a small, stern figure, fronting him
+in silence. Its eyes were grey and awful, and its beard red. It was
+Turnbull.
+
+“Well, sir,” said the editor of _The Atheist_, “where is the fight to
+be? Name the field, sir.”
+
+Evan stood thunderstruck. He stammered out something, he knew not what;
+he only guessed it by the answer of the other.
+
+“Do I want to fight? Do I want to fight?” cried the furious
+Free-thinker. “Why, you moonstruck scarecrow of superstition, do you
+think your dirty saints are the only people who can die? Haven't you
+hung atheists, and burned them, and boiled them, and did they ever deny
+their faith? Do you think we don't want to fight? Night and day I have
+prayed--I have longed--for an atheist revolution--I have longed to see
+your blood and ours on the streets. Let it be yours or mine?”
+
+“But you said...” began MacIan.
+
+“I know,” said Turnbull scornfully. “And what did you say? You damned
+fool, you said things that might have got us locked up for a year, and
+shadowed by the coppers for half a decade. If you wanted to fight, why
+did you tell that ass you wanted to? I got you out, to fight if you want
+to. Now, fight if you dare.”
+
+“I swear to you, then,” said MacIan, after a pause. “I swear to you that
+nothing shall come between us. I swear to you that nothing shall be in
+my heart or in my head till our swords clash together. I swear it by the
+God you have denied, by the Blessed Lady you have blasphemed; I swear it
+by the seven swords in her heart. I swear it by the Holy Island where my
+fathers are, by the honour of my mother, by the secret of my people, and
+by the chalice of the Blood of God.”
+
+The atheist drew up his head. “And I,” he said, “give my word.”
+
+
+
+
+III. SOME OLD CURIOSITIES
+
+The evening sky, a dome of solid gold, unflaked even by a single sunset
+cloud, steeped the meanest sights of London in a strange and mellow
+light. It made a little greasy street of St. Martin's Lane look as if it
+were paved with gold. It made the pawnbroker's half-way down it shine as
+if it were really that Mountain of Piety that the French poetic instinct
+has named it; it made the mean pseudo-French bookshop, next but one to
+it, a shop packed with dreary indecency, show for a moment a kind of
+Parisian colour. And the shop that stood between the pawnshop and the
+shop of dreary indecency, showed with quite a blaze of old world beauty,
+for it was, by accident, a shop not unbeautiful in itself. The front
+window had a glimmer of bronze and blue steel, lit, as by a few stars,
+by the sparks of what were alleged to be jewels; for it was in brief,
+a shop of bric-a-brac and old curiosities. A row of half-burnished
+seventeenth-century swords ran like an ornate railing along the front of
+the window; behind was a darker glimmer of old oak and old armour;
+and higher up hung the most extraordinary looking South Sea tools or
+utensils, whether designed for killing enemies or merely for cooking
+them, no mere white man could possibly conjecture. But the romance of
+the eye, which really on this rich evening, clung about the shop, had
+its main source in the accident of two doors standing open, the front
+door that opened on the street and a back door that opened on an odd
+green square of garden, that the sun turned to a square of gold. There
+is nothing more beautiful than thus to look as it were through the
+archway of a house; as if the open sky were an interior chamber, and the
+sun a secret lamp of the place.
+
+I have suggested that the sunset light made everything lovely. To say
+that it made the keeper of the curiosity shop lovely would be a tribute
+to it perhaps too extreme. It would easily have made him beautiful if he
+had been merely squalid; if he had been a Jew of the Fagin type. But
+he was a Jew of another and much less admirable type; a Jew with a very
+well-sounding name. For though there are no hard tests for separating
+the tares and the wheat of any people, one rude but efficient guide is
+that the nice Jew is called Moses Solomon, and the nasty Jew is called
+Thornton Percy. The keeper of the curiosity shop was of the Thornton
+Percy branch of the chosen people; he belonged to those Lost Ten Tribes
+whose industrious object is to lose themselves. He was a man still
+young, but already corpulent, with sleek dark hair, heavy handsome
+clothes, and a full, fat, permanent smile, which looked at the first
+glance kindly, and at the second cowardly. The name over his shop was
+Henry Gordon, but two Scotchmen who were in his shop that evening could
+come upon no trace of a Scotch accent.
+
+These two Scotchmen in this shop were careful purchasers, but
+free-handed payers. One of them who seemed to be the principal and the
+authority (whom, indeed, Mr. Henry Gordon fancied he had seen somewhere
+before), was a small, sturdy fellow, with fine grey eyes, a square red
+tie and a square red beard, that he carried aggressively forward as if
+he defied anyone to pull it. The other kept so much in the background in
+comparison that he looked almost ghostly in his grey cloak or plaid, a
+tall, sallow, silent young man.
+
+The two Scotchmen were interested in seventeenth-century swords. They
+were fastidious about them. They had a whole armoury of these weapons
+brought out and rolled clattering about the counter, until they found
+two of precisely the same length. Presumably they desired the exact
+symmetry for some decorative trophy. Even then they felt the points,
+poised the swords for balance and bent them in a circle to see that they
+sprang straight again; which, for decorative purposes, seems carrying
+realism rather far.
+
+“These will do,” said the strange person with the red beard. “And
+perhaps I had better pay for them at once. And as you are the
+challenger, Mr. MacIan, perhaps you had better explain the situation.”
+
+The tall Scotchman in grey took a step forward and spoke in a voice
+quite clear and bold, and yet somehow lifeless, like a man going through
+an ancient formality.
+
+“The fact is, Mr. Gordon, we have to place our honour in your hands.
+Words have passed between Mr. Turnbull and myself on a grave
+and invaluable matter, which can only be atoned for by fighting.
+Unfortunately, as the police are in some sense pursuing us, we are
+hurried, and must fight now and without seconds. But if you will be so
+kind as to take us into your little garden and see far play, we shall
+feel how----”
+
+The shopman recovered himself from a stunning surprise and burst out:
+
+“Gentlemen, are you drunk? A duel! A duel in my garden. Go home,
+gentlemen, go home. Why, what did you quarrel about?”
+
+“We quarrelled,” said Evan, in the same dead voice, “about religion.”
+ The fat shopkeeper rolled about in his chair with enjoyment.
+
+“Well, this is a funny game,” he said. “So you want to commit murder
+on behalf of religion. Well, well my religion is a little respect for
+humanity, and----”
+
+“Excuse me,” cut in Turnbull, suddenly and fiercely, pointing towards
+the pawnbroker's next door. “Don't you own that shop?”
+
+“Why--er--yes,” said Gordon.
+
+“And don't you own that shop?” repeated the secularist, pointing
+backward to the pornographic bookseller.
+
+“What if I do?”
+
+“Why, then,” cried Turnbull, with grating contempt. “I will leave
+the religion of humanity confidently in your hands; but I am sorry
+I troubled you about such a thing as honour. Look here, my man. I do
+believe in humanity. I do believe in liberty. My father died for it
+under the swords of the Yeomanry. I am going to die for it, if need be,
+under that sword on your counter. But if there is one sight that makes
+me doubt it it is your foul fat face. It is hard to believe you were not
+meant to be ruled like a dog or killed like a cockroach. Don't try your
+slave's philosophy on me. We are going to fight, and we are going to
+fight in your garden, with your swords. Be still! Raise your voice above
+a whisper, and I run you through the body.”
+
+Turnbull put the bright point of the sword against the gay waistcoat of
+the dealer, who stood choking with rage and fear, and an astonishment so
+crushing as to be greater than either.
+
+“MacIan,” said Turnbull, falling almost into the familiar tone of a
+business partner, “MacIan, tie up this fellow and put a gag in his
+mouth. Be still, I say, or I kill you where you stand.”
+
+The man was too frightened to scream, but he struggled wildly, while
+Evan MacIan, whose long, lean hands were unusually powerful, tightened
+some old curtain cords round him, strapped a rope gag in his mouth and
+rolled him on his back on the floor.
+
+“There's nothing very strong here,” said Evan, looking about him. “I'm
+afraid he'll work through that gag in half an hour or so.”
+
+“Yes,” said Turnbull, “but one of us will be killed by that time.”
+
+“Well, let's hope so,” said the Highlander, glancing doubtfully at the
+squirming thing on the floor.
+
+“And now,” said Turnbull, twirling his fiery moustache and fingering his
+sword, “let us go into the garden. What an exquisite summer evening!”
+
+MacIan said nothing, but lifting his sword from the counter went out
+into the sun.
+
+The brilliant light ran along the blades, filling the channels of them
+with white fire; the combatants stuck their swords in the turf and took
+off their hats, coats, waistcoats, and boots. Evan said a short Latin
+prayer to himself, during which Turnbull made something of a parade of
+lighting a cigarette which he flung away the instant after, when he saw
+MacIan apparently standing ready. Yet MacIan was not exactly ready. He
+stood staring like a man stricken with a trance.
+
+“What are you staring at?” asked Turnbull. “Do you see the bobbies?”
+
+“I see Jerusalem,” said Evan, “all covered with the shields and
+standards of the Saracens.”
+
+“Jerusalem!” said Turnbull, laughing. “Well, we've taken the only
+inhabitant into captivity.”
+
+And he picked up his sword and made it whistle like a boy's wand.
+
+“I beg your pardon,” said MacIan, dryly. “Let us begin.”
+
+MacIan made a military salute with his weapon, which Turnbull copied or
+parodied with an impatient contempt; and in the stillness of the garden
+the swords came together with a clear sound like a bell. The instant
+the blades touched, each felt them tingle to their very points with a
+personal vitality, as if they were two naked nerves of steel. Evan had
+worn throughout an air of apathy, which might have been the stale apathy
+of one who wants nothing. But it was indeed the more dreadful apathy
+of one who wants something and will care for nothing else. And this was
+seen suddenly; for the instant Evan engaged he disengaged and lunged
+with an infernal violence. His opponent with a desperate promptitude
+parried and riposted; the parry only just succeeded, the riposte failed.
+Something big and unbearable seemed to have broken finally out of
+Evan in that first murderous lunge, leaving him lighter and cooler and
+quicker upon his feet. He fell to again, fiercely still, but now with a
+fierce caution. The next moment Turnbull lunged; MacIan seemed to catch
+the point and throw it away from him, and was thrusting back like a
+thunderbolt, when a sound paralysed him; another sound beside their
+ringing weapons. Turnbull, perhaps from an equal astonishment, perhaps
+from chivalry, stopped also and forebore to send his sword through his
+exposed enemy.
+
+“What's that?” asked Evan, hoarsely.
+
+A heavy scraping sound, as of a trunk being dragged along a littered
+floor, came from the dark shop behind them.
+
+“The old Jew has broken one of his strings, and he's crawling about,”
+ said Turnbull. “Be quick! We must finish before he gets his gag out.”
+
+“Yes, yes, quick! On guard!” cried the Highlander. The blades crossed
+again with the same sound like song, and the men went to work again with
+the same white and watchful faces. Evan, in his impatience, went back a
+little to his wildness. He made windmills, as the French duellists say,
+and though he was probably a shade the better fencer of the two, he
+found the other's point pass his face twice so close as almost to graze
+his cheek. The second time he realized the actual possibility of defeat
+and pulled himself together under a shock of the sanity of anger. He
+narrowed, and, so to speak, tightened his operations: he fenced (as the
+swordsman's boast goes), in a wedding ring; he turned Turnbull's thrusts
+with a maddening and almost mechanical click, like that of a machine.
+Whenever Turnbull's sword sought to go over that other mere white streak
+it seemed to be caught in a complex network of steel. He turned one
+thrust, turned another, turned another. Then suddenly he went forward at
+the lunge with his whole living weight. Turnbull leaped back, but
+Evan lunged and lunged and lunged again like a devilish piston rod or
+battering ram. And high above all the sound of the struggle there broke
+into the silent evening a bellowing human voice, nasal, raucous, at the
+highest pitch of pain. “Help! Help! Police! Murder! Murder!” The gag was
+broken; and the tongue of terror was loose.
+
+“Keep on!” gasped Turnbull. “One may be killed before they come.”
+
+The voice of the screaming shopkeeper was loud enough to drown not only
+the noise of the swords but all other noises around it, but even through
+its rending din there seemed to be some other stir or scurry. And Evan,
+in the very act of thrusting at Turnbull, saw something in his eyes that
+made him drop his sword. The atheist, with his grey eyes at their
+widest and wildest, was staring straight over his shoulder at the little
+archway of shop that opened on the street beyond. And he saw the archway
+blocked and blackened with strange figures.
+
+“We must bolt, MacIan,” he said abruptly. “And there isn't a damned
+second to lose either. Do as I do.”
+
+With a bound he was beside the little cluster of his clothes and boots
+that lay on the lawn; he snatched them up, without waiting to put any of
+them on; and tucking his sword under his other arm, went wildly at
+the wall at the bottom of the garden and swung himself over it. Three
+seconds after he had alighted in his socks on the other side, MacIan
+alighted beside him, also in his socks and also carrying clothes and
+sword in a desperate bundle.
+
+They were in a by-street, very lean and lonely itself, but so close to
+a crowded thoroughfare that they could see the vague masses of vehicles
+going by, and could even see an individual hansom cab passing the
+corner at the instant. Turnbull put his fingers to his mouth like a
+gutter-snipe and whistled twice. Even as he did so he could hear the
+loud voices of the neighbours and the police coming down the garden.
+
+The hansom swung sharply and came tearing down the little lane at his
+call. When the cabman saw his fares, however, two wild-haired men
+in their shirts and socks with naked swords under their arms, he
+not unnaturally brought his readiness to a rigid stop and stared
+suspiciously.
+
+“You talk to him a minute,” whispered Turnbull, and stepped back into
+the shadow of the wall.
+
+“We want you,” said MacIan to the cabman, with a superb Scotch drawl of
+indifference and assurance, “to drive us to St. Pancras Station--verra
+quick.”
+
+“Very sorry, sir,” said the cabman, “but I'd like to know it was all
+right. Might I arst where you come from, sir?”
+
+A second after he spoke MacIan heard a heavy voice on the other side of
+the wall, saying: “I suppose I'd better get over and look for them. Give
+me a back.”
+
+“Cabby,” said MacIan, again assuming the most deliberate and lingering
+lowland Scotch intonation, “if ye're really verra anxious to ken whar a'
+come fra', I'll tell ye as a verra great secret. A' come from Scotland.
+And a'm gaein' to St. Pancras Station. Open the doors, cabby.”
+
+The cabman stared, but laughed. The heavy voice behind the wall said:
+“Now then, a better back this time, Mr. Price.” And from the shadow
+of the wall Turnbull crept out. He had struggled wildly into his coat
+(leaving his waistcoat on the pavement), and he was with a fierce pale
+face climbing up the cab behind the cabman. MacIan had no glimmering
+notion of what he was up to, but an instinct of discipline, inherited
+from a hundred men of war, made him stick to his own part and trust the
+other man's.
+
+“Open the doors, cabby,” he repeated, with something of the obstinate
+solemnity of a drunkard, “open the doors. Did ye no hear me say St.
+Pancras Station?”
+
+The top of a policeman's helmet appeared above the garden wall. The
+cabman did not see it, but he was still suspicious and began:
+
+“Very sorry, sir, but...” and with that the catlike Turnbull tore him
+out of his seat and hurled him into the street below, where he lay
+suddenly stunned.
+
+“Give me his hat,” said Turnbull in a silver voice, that the other
+obeyed like a bugle. “And get inside with the swords.”
+
+And just as the red and raging face of a policeman appeared above the
+wall, Turnbull struck the horse with a terrible cut of the whip and the
+two went whirling away like a boomerang.
+
+They had spun through seven streets and three or four squares before
+anything further happened. Then, in the neighbourhood of Maida Vale,
+the driver opened the trap and talked through it in a manner not wholly
+common in conversations through that aperture.
+
+“Mr. MacIan,” he said shortly and civilly.
+
+“Mr. Turnbull,” replied his motionless fare.
+
+“Under circumstances such as those in which we were both recently placed
+there was no time for anything but very abrupt action. I trust therefore
+that you have no cause to complain of me if I have deferred until this
+moment a consultation with you on our present position or future action.
+Our present position, Mr. MacIan, I imagine that I am under no special
+necessity of describing. We have broken the law and we are fleeing
+from its officers. Our future action is a thing about which I myself
+entertain sufficiently strong views; but I have no right to assume or to
+anticipate yours, though I may have formed a decided conception of your
+character and a decided notion of what they will probably be. Still, by
+every principle of intellectual justice, I am bound to ask you now and
+seriously whether you wish to continue our interrupted relations.”
+
+MacIan leant his white and rather weary face back upon the cushions in
+order to speak up through the open door.
+
+“Mr. Turnbull,” he said, “I have nothing to add to what I have said
+before. It is strongly borne in upon me that you and I, the sole
+occupants of this runaway cab, are at this moment the two most important
+people in London, possibly in Europe. I have been looking at all the
+streets as we went past, I have been looking at all the shops as we went
+past, I have been looking at all the churches as we went past. At
+first, I felt a little dazed with the vastness of it all. I could not
+understand what it all meant. But now I know exactly what it all means.
+It means us. This whole civilization is only a dream. You and I are the
+realities.”
+
+“Religious symbolism,” said Mr. Turnbull, through the trap, “does not,
+as you are probably aware, appeal ordinarily to thinkers of the school
+to which I belong. But in symbolism as you use it in this instance, I
+must, I think, concede a certain truth. We _must_ fight this thing
+out somewhere; because, as you truly say, we have found each other's
+reality. We _must_ kill each other--or convert each other. I used to
+think all Christians were hypocrites, and I felt quite mildly towards
+them really. But I know you are sincere--and my soul is mad against you.
+In the same way you used, I suppose, to think that all atheists thought
+atheism would leave them free for immorality--and yet in your heart you
+tolerated them entirely. Now you _know_ that I am an honest man, and you
+are mad against me, as I am against you. Yes, that's it. You can't be
+angry with bad men. But a good man in the wrong--why one thirsts for his
+blood. Yes, you open for me a vista of thought.”
+
+“Don't run into anything,” said Evan, immovably.
+
+“There's something in that view of yours, too,” said Turnbull, and shut
+down the trap.
+
+They sped on through shining streets that shot by them like arrows. Mr.
+Turnbull had evidently a great deal of unused practical talent which was
+unrolling itself in this ridiculous adventure. They had got away with
+such stunning promptitude that the police chase had in all probability
+not even properly begun. But in case it had, the amateur cabman chose
+his dizzy course through London with a strange dexterity. He did not
+do what would have first occurred to any ordinary outsider desiring to
+destroy his tracks. He did not cut into by-ways or twist his way through
+mean streets. His amateur common sense told him that it was precisely
+the poor street, the side street, that would be likely to remember
+and report the passing of a hansom cab, like the passing of a royal
+procession. He kept chiefly to the great roads, so full of hansoms that
+a wilder pair than they might easily have passed in the press. In one of
+the quieter streets Evan put on his boots.
+
+Towards the top of Albany Street the singular cabman again opened the
+trap.
+
+“Mr. MacIan,” he said, “I understand that we have now definitely settled
+that in the conventional language honour is not satisfied. Our action
+must at least go further than it has gone under recent interrupted
+conditions. That, I believe, is understood.”
+
+“Perfectly,” replied the other with his bootlace in his teeth.
+
+“Under those conditions,” continued Turnbull, his voice coming through
+the hole with a slight note of trepidation very unusual with him, “I
+have a suggestion to make, if that can be called a suggestion, which
+has probably occurred to you as readily as to me. Until the actual event
+comes off we are practically in the position if not of comrades, at
+least of business partners. Until the event comes off, therefore
+I should suggest that quarrelling would be inconvenient and rather
+inartistic; while the ordinary exchange of politeness between man and
+man would be not only elegant but uncommonly practical.”
+
+“You are perfectly right,” answered MacIan, with his melancholy voice,
+“in saying that all this has occurred to me. All duellists should behave
+like gentlemen to each other. But we, by the queerness of our position,
+are something much more than either duellists or gentlemen. We are, in
+the oddest and most exact sense of the term, brothers--in arms.”
+
+“Mr. MacIan,” replied Turnbull, calmly, “no more need be said.” And he
+closed the trap once more.
+
+They had reached Finchley Road before he opened it again.
+
+Then he said, “Mr. MacIan, may I offer you a cigar. It will be a touch
+of realism.”
+
+“Thank you,” answered Evan. “You are very kind.” And he began to smoke
+in the cab.
+
+
+
+
+IV. A DISCUSSION AT DAWN
+
+The duellists had from their own point of view escaped or conquered the
+chief powers of the modern world. They had satisfied the magistrate,
+they had tied the tradesman neck and heels, and they had left the
+police behind. As far as their own feelings went they had melted into a
+monstrous sea; they were but the fare and driver of one of the million
+hansoms that fill London streets. But they had forgotten something; they
+had forgotten journalism. They had forgotten that there exists in the
+modern world, perhaps for the first time in history, a class of people
+whose interest is not that things should happen well or happen badly,
+should happen successfully or happen unsuccessfully, should happen to
+the advantage of this party or the advantage of that part, but whose
+interest simply is that things should happen.
+
+It is the one great weakness of journalism as a picture of our modern
+existence, that it must be a picture made up entirely of exceptions. We
+announce on flaring posters that a man has fallen off a scaffolding.
+We do not announce on flaring posters that a man has not fallen off a
+scaffolding. Yet this latter fact is fundamentally more exciting, as
+indicating that that moving tower of terror and mystery, a man, is still
+abroad upon the earth. That the man has not fallen off a scaffolding is
+really more sensational; and it is also some thousand times more common.
+But journalism cannot reasonably be expected thus to insist upon the
+permanent miracles. Busy editors cannot be expected to put on their
+posters, “Mr. Wilkinson Still Safe,” or “Mr. Jones, of Worthing, Not
+Dead Yet.” They cannot announce the happiness of mankind at all. They
+cannot describe all the forks that are not stolen, or all the marriages
+that are not judiciously dissolved. Hence the complete picture they
+give of life is of necessity fallacious; they can only represent what
+is unusual. However democratic they may be, they are only concerned with
+the minority.
+
+The incident of the religious fanatic who broke a window on Ludgate Hill
+was alone enough to set them up in good copy for the night. But when the
+same man was brought before a magistrate and defied his enemy to
+mortal combat in the open court, then the columns would hardly hold the
+excruciating information, and the headlines were so large that there was
+hardly room for any of the text. The _Daily Telegraph_ headed a column,
+“A Duel on Divinity,” and there was a correspondence afterwards which
+lasted for months, about whether police magistrates ought to mention
+religion. The _Daily Mail_ in its dull, sensible way, headed the events,
+“Wanted to fight for the Virgin.” Mr. James Douglas, in _The Star_,
+presuming on his knowledge of philosophical and theological terms,
+described the Christian's outbreak under the title of “Dualist and
+Duellist.” The _Daily News_ inserted a colourless account of the matter,
+but was pursued and eaten up for some weeks, with letters from outlying
+ministers, headed “Murder and Mariolatry.” But the journalistic
+temperature was steadily and consistently heated by all these
+influences; the journalists had tasted blood, prospectively, and were
+in the mood for more; everything in the matter prepared them for further
+outbursts of moral indignation. And when a gasping reporter rushed in in
+the last hours of the evening with the announcement that the two heroes
+of the Police Court had literally been found fighting in a London back
+garden, with a shopkeeper bound and gagged in the front of the house,
+the editors and sub-editors were stricken still as men are by great
+beatitudes.
+
+The next morning, five or six of the great London dailies burst out
+simultaneously into great blossoms of eloquent leader-writing. Towards
+the end all the leaders tended to be the same, but they all began
+differently. The _Daily Telegraph_, for instance began, “There will
+be little difference among our readers or among all truly English and
+law-abiding men touching the, etc. etc.” The _Daily Mail_ said, “People
+must learn, in the modern world, to keep their theological differences
+to themselves. The fracas, etc. etc.” The _Daily News_ started, “Nothing
+could be more inimical to the cause of true religion than, etc. etc.”
+ The _Times_ began with something about Celtic disturbances of the
+equilibrium of Empire, and the _Daily Express_ distinguished itself
+splendidly by omitting altogether so controversial a matter and
+substituting a leader about goloshes.
+
+And the morning after that, the editors and the newspapers were in such
+a state, that, as the phrase is, there was no holding them. Whatever
+secret and elvish thing it is that broods over editors and suddenly
+turns their brains, that thing had seized on the story of the broken
+glass and the duel in the garden. It became monstrous and omnipresent,
+as do in our time the unimportant doings of the sect of the
+Agapemonites, or as did at an earlier time the dreary dishonesties
+of the Rhodesian financiers. Questions were asked about it, and even
+answered, in the House of Commons. The Government was solemnly denounced
+in the papers for not having done something, nobody knew what, to
+prevent the window being broken. An enormous subscription was started
+to reimburse Mr. Gordon, the man who had been gagged in the shop. Mr.
+MacIan, one of the combatants, became for some mysterious reason, singly
+and hugely popular as a comic figure in the comic papers and on the
+stage of the music hall. He was always represented (in defiance of
+fact), with red whiskers, and a very red nose, and in full Highland
+costume. And a song, consisting of an unimaginable number of verses,
+in which his name was rhymed with flat iron, the British Lion, sly 'un,
+dandelion, Spion (With Kop in the next line), was sung to crowded houses
+every night. The papers developed a devouring thirst for the capture of
+the fugitives; and when they had not been caught for forty-eight hours,
+they suddenly turned the whole matter into a detective mystery. Letters
+under the heading, “Where are They,” poured in to every paper, with
+every conceivable kind of explanation, running them to earth in the
+Monument, the Twopenny Tube, Epping Forest, Westminster Abbey, rolled up
+in carpets at Shoolbreds, locked up in safes in Chancery Lane. Yes, the
+papers were very interesting, and Mr. Turnbull unrolled a whole bundle
+of them for the amusement of Mr. MacIan as they sat on a high common to
+the north of London, in the coming of the white dawn.
+
+The darkness in the east had been broken with a bar of grey; the bar
+of grey was split with a sword of silver and morning lifted itself
+laboriously over London. From the spot where Turnbull and MacIan were
+sitting on one of the barren steeps behind Hampstead, they could see
+the whole of London shaping itself vaguely and largely in the grey and
+growing light, until the white sun stood over it and it lay at their
+feet, the splendid monstrosity that it is. Its bewildering squares and
+parallelograms were compact and perfect as a Chinese puzzle; an enormous
+hieroglyphic which man must decipher or die. There fell upon both of
+them, but upon Turnbull more than the other, because he know more what
+the scene signified, that quite indescribable sense as of a sublime and
+passionate and heart-moving futility, which is never evoked by deserts
+or dead men or men neglected and barbarous, which can only be invoked by
+the sight of the enormous genius of man applied to anything other than
+the best. Turnbull, the old idealistic democrat, had so often reviled
+the democracy and reviled them justly for their supineness, their
+snobbishness, their evil reverence for idle things. He was right enough;
+for our democracy has only one great fault; it is not democratic. And
+after denouncing so justly average modern men for so many years as
+sophists and as slaves, he looked down from an empty slope in Hampstead
+and saw what gods they are. Their achievement seemed all the more heroic
+and divine, because it seemed doubtful whether it was worth doing at
+all. There seemed to be something greater than mere accuracy in making
+such a mistake as London. And what was to be the end of it all? what was
+to be the ultimate transformation of this common and incredible London
+man, this workman on a tram in Battersea, his clerk on an omnibus in
+Cheapside? Turnbull, as he stared drearily, murmured to himself
+the words of the old atheistic and revolutionary Swinburne who had
+intoxicated his youth:
+
+        “And still we ask if God or man
+        Can loosen thee Lazarus;
+        Bid thee rise up republican,
+        And save thyself and all of us.
+        But no disciple's tongue can say
+        If thou can'st take our sins away.”
+
+Turnbull shivered slightly as if behind the earthly morning he felt the
+evening of the world, the sunset of so many hopes. Those words were from
+“Songs before Sunrise”. But Turnbull's songs at their best were songs
+after sunrise, and sunrise had been no such great thing after all.
+Turnbull shivered again in the sharp morning air. MacIan was also gazing
+with his face towards the city, but there was that about his blind and
+mystical stare that told one, so to speak, that his eyes were turned
+inwards. When Turnbull said something to him about London, they seemed
+to move as at a summons and come out like two householders coming out
+into their doorways.
+
+“Yes,” he said, with a sort of stupidity. “It's a very big place.”
+
+There was a somewhat unmeaning silence, and then MacIan said again:
+
+“It's a very big place. When I first came into it I was frightened of
+it. Frightened exactly as one would be frightened at the sight of a
+man forty feet high. I am used to big things where I come from, big
+mountains that seem to fill God's infinity, and the big sea that goes
+to the end of the world. But then these things are all shapeless and
+confused things, not made in any familiar form. But to see the plain,
+square, human things as large as that, houses so large and streets
+so large, and the town itself so large, was like having screwed some
+devil's magnifying glass into one's eye. It was like seeing a porridge
+bowl as big as a house, or a mouse-trap made to catch elephants.”
+
+“Like the land of the Brobdingnagians,” said Turnbull, smiling.
+
+“Oh! Where is that?” said MacIan.
+
+Turnbull said bitterly, “In a book,” and the silence fell suddenly
+between them again.
+
+They were sitting in a sort of litter on the hillside; all the things
+they had hurriedly collected, in various places, for their flight, were
+strewn indiscriminately round them. The two swords with which they had
+lately sought each other's lives were flung down on the grass at random,
+like two idle walking-sticks. Some provisions they had bought last
+night, at a low public house, in case of undefined contingencies, were
+tossed about like the materials of an ordinary picnic, here a basket
+of chocolate, and there a bottle of wine. And to add to the disorder
+finally, there were strewn on top of everything, the most disorderly
+of modern things, newspapers, and more newspapers, and yet again
+newspapers, the ministers of the modern anarchy. Turnbull picked up one
+of them drearily, and took out a pipe.
+
+“There's a lot about us,” he said. “Do you mind if I light up?”
+
+“Why should I mind?” asked MacIan.
+
+Turnbull eyed with a certain studious interest, the man who did not
+understand any of the verbal courtesies; he lit his pipe and blew great
+clouds out of it.
+
+“Yes,” he resumed. “The matter on which you and I are engaged is at this
+moment really the best copy in England. I am a journalist, and I know.
+For the first time, perhaps, for many generations, the English are
+really more angry about a wrong thing done in England than they are
+about a wrong thing done in France.”
+
+“It is not a wrong thing,” said MacIan.
+
+Turnbull laughed. “You seem unable to understand the ordinary use of the
+human language. If I did not suspect that you were a genius, I should
+certainly know you were a blockhead. I fancy we had better be getting
+along and collecting our baggage.”
+
+And he jumped up and began shoving the luggage into his pockets, or
+strapping it on to his back. As he thrust a tin of canned meat, anyhow,
+into his bursting side pocket, he said casually:
+
+“I only meant that you and I are the most prominent people in the
+English papers.”
+
+“Well, what did you expect?” asked MacIan, opening his great grave blue
+eyes.
+
+“The papers are full of us,” said Turnbull, stooping to pick up one of
+the swords.
+
+MacIan stooped and picked up the other.
+
+“Yes,” he said, in his simple way. “I have read what they have to say.
+But they don't seem to understand the point.”
+
+“The point of what?” asked Turnbull.
+
+“The point of the sword,” said MacIan, violently, and planted the steel
+point in the soil like a man planting a tree.
+
+“That is a point,” said Turnbull, grimly, “that we will discuss later.
+Come along.”
+
+Turnbull tied the last tin of biscuits desperately to himself with
+string; and then spoke, like a diver girt for plunging, short and sharp.
+
+“Now, Mr. MacIan, you must listen to me. You must listen to me, not
+merely because I know the country, which you might learn by looking at
+a map, but because I know the people of the country, whom you could
+not know by living here thirty years. That infernal city down there is
+awake; and it is awake against us. All those endless rows of windows and
+windows are all eyes staring at us. All those forests of chimneys are
+fingers pointing at us, as we stand here on the hillside. This thing has
+caught on. For the next six mortal months they will think of nothing
+but us, as for six mortal months they thought of nothing but the Dreyfus
+case. Oh, I know it's funny. They let starving children, who don't
+want to die, drop by the score without looking round. But because two
+gentlemen, from private feelings of delicacy, do want to die, they will
+mobilize the army and navy to prevent them. For half a year or more, you
+and I, Mr. MacIan, will be an obstacle to every reform in the British
+Empire. We shall prevent the Chinese being sent out of the Transvaal and
+the blocks being stopped in the Strand. We shall be the conversational
+substitute when anyone recommends Home Rule, or complains of sky signs.
+Therefore, do not imagine, in your innocence, that we have only to melt
+away among those English hills as a Highland cateran might into your
+god-forsaken Highland mountains. We must be eternally on our guard; we
+must live the hunted life of two distinguished criminals. We must expect
+to be recognized as much as if we were Napoleon escaping from Elba. We
+must be prepared for our descriptions being sent to every tiny village,
+and for our faces being recognized by every ambitious policeman. We
+must often sleep under the stars as if we were in Africa. Last and most
+important we must not dream of effecting our--our final settlement,
+which will be a thing as famous as the Phoenix Park murders, unless we
+have made real and precise arrangements for our isolation--I will not
+say our safety. We must not, in short, fight until we have thrown them
+off our scent, if only for a moment. For, take my word for it, Mr.
+MacIan, if the British Public once catches us up, the British Public
+will prevent the duel, if it is only by locking us both up in asylums
+for the rest of our days.”
+
+MacIan was looking at the horizon with a rather misty look.
+
+“I am not at all surprised,” he said, “at the world being against us. It
+makes me feel I was right to----”
+
+“Yes?” said Turnbull.
+
+“To smash your window,” said MacIan. “I have woken up the world.”
+
+“Very well, then,” said Turnbull, stolidly. “Let us look at a few
+final facts. Beyond that hill there is comparatively clear country.
+Fortunately, I know the part well, and if you will follow me exactly,
+and, when necessary, on your stomach, we may be able to get ten miles
+out of London, literally without meeting anyone at all, which will be
+the best possible beginning, at any rate. We have provisions for at
+least two days and two nights, three days if we do it carefully. We may
+be able to get fifty or sixty miles away without even walking into an
+inn door. I have the biscuits and the tinned meat, and the milk. You
+have the chocolate, I think? And the brandy?”
+
+“Yes,” said MacIan, like a soldier taking orders.
+
+“Very well, then, come on. March. We turn under that third bush and so
+down into the valley.” And he set off ahead at a swinging walk.
+
+Then he stopped suddenly; for he realized that the other was not
+following. Evan MacIan was leaning on his sword with a lowering face,
+like a man suddenly smitten still with doubt.
+
+“What on earth is the matter?” asked Turnbull, staring in some anger.
+
+Evan made no reply.
+
+“What the deuce is the matter with you?” demanded the leader, again, his
+face slowly growing as red as his beard; then he said, suddenly, and in
+a more human voice, “Are you in pain, MacIan?”
+
+“Yes,” replied the Highlander, without lifting his face.
+
+“Take some brandy,” cried Turnbull, walking forward hurriedly towards
+him. “You've got it.”
+
+“It's not in the body,” said MacIan, in his dull, strange way. “The
+pain has come into my mind. A very dreadful thing has just come into my
+thoughts.”
+
+“What the devil are you talking about?” asked Turnbull.
+
+MacIan broke out with a queer and living voice.
+
+“We must fight now, Turnbull. We must fight now. A frightful thing has
+come upon me, and I know it must be now and here. I must kill you here,”
+ he cried, with a sort of tearful rage impossible to describe. “Here,
+here, upon this blessed grass.”
+
+“Why, you idiot,” began Turnbull.
+
+“The hour has come--the black hour God meant for it. Quick, it will soon
+be gone. Quick!”
+
+And he flung the scabbard from him furiously, and stood with the
+sunlight sparkling along his sword.
+
+“You confounded fool,” repeated Turnbull. “Put that thing up again,
+you ass; people will come out of that house at the first clash of the
+steel.”
+
+“One of us will be dead before they come,” said the other, hoarsely,
+“for this is the hour God meant.”
+
+“Well, I never thought much of God,” said the editor of _The Atheist_,
+losing all patience. “And I think less now. Never mind what God meant.
+Kindly enlighten my pagan darkness as to what the devil _you_ mean.”
+
+“The hour will soon be gone. In a moment it will be gone,” said the
+madman. “It is now, now, now that I must nail your blaspheming body to
+the earth--now, now that I must avenge Our Lady on her vile slanderer.
+Now or never. For the dreadful thought is in my mind.”
+
+“And what thought,” asked Turnbull, with frantic composure, “occupies
+what you call your mind?”
+
+“I must kill you now,” said the fanatic, “because----”
+
+“Well, because,” said Turnbull, patiently.
+
+“Because I have begun to like you.”
+
+Turnbull's face had a sudden spasm in the sunlight, a change so
+instantaneous that it left no trace behind it; and his features seemed
+still carved into a cold stare. But when he spoke again he seemed like
+a man who was placidly pretending to misunderstand something that he
+understood perfectly well.
+
+“Your affection expresses itself in an abrupt form,” he began, but
+MacIan broke the brittle and frivolous speech to pieces with a violent
+voice. “Do not trouble to talk like that,” he said. “You know what I
+mean as well as I know it. Come on and fight, I say. Perhaps you are
+feeling just as I do.”
+
+Turnbull's face flinched again in the fierce sunlight, but his attitude
+kept its contemptuous ease.
+
+“Your Celtic mind really goes too fast for me,” he said; “let me be
+permitted in my heavy Lowland way to understand this new development. My
+dear Mr. MacIan, what do you really mean?”
+
+MacIan still kept the shining sword-point towards the other's breast.
+
+“You know what I mean. You mean the same yourself. We must fight now or
+else----”
+
+“Or else?” repeated Turnbull, staring at him with an almost blinding
+gravity.
+
+“Or else we may not want to fight at all,” answered Evan, and the end of
+his speech was like a despairing cry.
+
+Turnbull took out his own sword suddenly as if to engage; then planting
+it point downwards for a moment, he said, “Before we begin, may I ask
+you a question?”
+
+MacIan bowed patiently, but with burning eyes.
+
+“You said, just now,” continued Turnbull, presently, “that if we did not
+fight now, we might not want to fight at all. How would you feel about
+the matter if we came not to want to fight at all?”
+
+“I should feel,” answered the other, “just as I should feel if you had
+drawn your sword, and I had run away from it. I should feel that because
+I had been weak, justice had not been done.”
+
+“Justice,” answered Turnbull, with a thoughtful smile, “but we are
+talking about your feelings. And what do you mean by justice, apart from
+your feelings?”
+
+MacIan made a gesture of weary recognition! “Oh, Nominalism,” he said,
+with a sort of sigh, “we had all that out in the twelfth century.”
+
+“I wish we could have it out now,” replied the other, firmly. “Do you
+really mean that if you came to think me right, you would be certainly
+wrong?”
+
+“If I had a blow on the back of my head, I might come to think you a
+green elephant,” answered MacIan, “but have I not the right to say now,
+that if I thought that I should think wrong?”
+
+“Then you are quite certain that it would be wrong to like me?” asked
+Turnbull, with a slight smile.
+
+“No,” said Evan, thoughtfully, “I do not say that. It may not be the
+devil, it may be some part of God I am not meant to know. But I had a
+work to do, and it is making the work difficult.”
+
+“And I suppose,” said the atheist, quite gently, “that you and I know
+all about which part of God we ought to know.”
+
+MacIan burst out like a man driven back and explaining everything.
+
+“The Church is not a thing like the Athenaeum Club,” he cried. “If the
+Athenaeum Club lost all its members, the Athenaeum Club would dissolve
+and cease to exist. But when we belong to the Church we belong to
+something which is outside all of us; which is outside everything you
+talk about, outside the Cardinals and the Pope. They belong to it, but
+it does not belong to them. If we all fell dead suddenly, the Church
+would still somehow exist in God. Confound it all, don't you see that I
+am more sure of its existence than I am of my own existence? And yet you
+ask me to trust my temperament, my own temperament, which can be turned
+upside down by two bottles of claret or an attack of the jaundice. You
+ask me to trust that when it softens towards you and not to trust the
+thing which I believe to be outside myself and more real than the blood
+in my body.”
+
+“Stop a moment,” said Turnbull, in the same easy tone, “Even in the very
+act of saying that you believe this or that, you imply that there is a
+part of yourself that you trust even if there are many parts which you
+mistrust. If it is only you that like me, surely, also, it is only you
+that believe in the Catholic Church.”
+
+Evan remained in an unmoved and grave attitude. “There is a part of me
+which is divine,” he answered, “a part that can be trusted, but there
+are also affections which are entirely animal and idle.”
+
+“And you are quite certain, I suppose,” continued Turnbull, “that if
+even you esteem me the esteem would be wholly animal and idle?” For the
+first time MacIan started as if he had not expected the thing that was
+said to him. At last he said:
+
+“Whatever in earth or heaven it is that has joined us two together, it
+seems to be something which makes it impossible to lie. No, I do not
+think that the movement in me towards you was...was that surface sort of
+thing. It may have been something deeper...something strange. I cannot
+understand the thing at all. But understand this and understand it
+thoroughly, if I loved you my love might be divine. No, it is not some
+trifle that we are fighting about. It is not some superstition or some
+symbol. When you wrote those words about Our Lady, you were in that act
+a wicked man doing a wicked thing. If I hate you it is because you have
+hated goodness. And if I like you...it is because you are good.”
+
+Turnbull's face wore an indecipherable expression.
+
+“Well, shall we fight now?” he said.
+
+“Yes,” said MacIan, with a sudden contraction of his black brows, “yes,
+it must be now.”
+
+The bright swords crossed, and the first touch of them, travelling
+down blade and arm, told each combatant that the heart of the other was
+awakened. It was not in that way that the swords rang together when they
+had rushed on each other in the little garden behind the dealer's shop.
+
+There was a pause, and then MacIan made a movement as if to thrust,
+and almost at the same moment Turnbull suddenly and calmly dropped his
+sword. Evan stared round in an unusual bewilderment, and then realized
+that a large man in pale clothes and a Panama hat was strolling serenely
+towards them.
+
+
+
+
+V. THE PEACEMAKER
+
+When the combatants, with crossed swords, became suddenly conscious of
+a third party, they each made the same movement. It was as quick as
+the snap of a pistol, and they altered it instantaneously and recovered
+their original pose, but they had both made it, they had both seen it,
+and they both knew what it was. It was not a movement of anger at being
+interrupted. Say or think what they would, it was a movement of relief.
+A force within them, and yet quite beyond them, seemed slowly and
+pitilessly washing away the adamant of their oath. As mistaken lovers
+might watch the inevitable sunset of first love, these men watched the
+sunset of their first hatred.
+
+Their hearts were growing weaker and weaker against each other. When
+their weapons rang and riposted in the little London garden, they
+could have been very certain that if a third party had interrupted them
+something at least would have happened. They would have killed each
+other or they would have killed him. But now nothing could undo or
+deny that flash of fact, that for a second they had been glad to be
+interrupted. Some new and strange thing was rising higher and higher in
+their hearts like a high sea at night. It was something that seemed all
+the more merciless, because it might turn out an enormous mercy. Was
+there, perhaps, some such fatalism in friendship as all lovers talk
+about in love? Did God make men love each other against their will?
+
+“I'm sure you'll excuse my speaking to you,” said the stranger, in a
+voice at once eager and deprecating.
+
+The voice was too polite for good manners. It was incongruous with the
+eccentric spectacle of the duellists which ought to have startled a sane
+and free man. It was also incongruous with the full and healthy, though
+rather loose physique of the man who spoke. At the first glance he
+looked a fine animal, with curling gold beard and hair, and blue eyes,
+unusually bright. It was only at the second glance that the mind felt
+a sudden and perhaps unmeaning irritation at the way in which the gold
+beard retreated backwards into the waistcoat, and the way in which the
+finely shaped nose went forward as if smelling its way. And it was
+only, perhaps, at the hundredth glance that the bright blue eyes,
+which normally before and after the instant seemed brilliant with
+intelligence, seemed as it were to be brilliant with idiocy. He was a
+heavy, healthy-looking man, who looked all the larger because of the
+loose, light coloured clothes that he wore, and that had in their
+extreme lightness and looseness, almost a touch of the tropics. But
+a closer examination of his attire would have shown that even in the
+tropics it would have been unique; but it was all woven according to
+some hygienic texture which no human being had ever heard of before, and
+which was absolutely necessary even for a day's health. He wore a huge
+broad-brimmed hat, equally hygienic, very much at the back of his head,
+and his voice coming out of so heavy and hearty a type of man was, as I
+have said, startlingly shrill and deferential.
+
+“I'm sure you'll excuse my speaking to you,” he said. “Now, I wonder if
+you are in some little difficulty which, after all, we could settle very
+comfortably together? Now, you don't mind my saying this, do you?”
+
+The face of both combatants remained somewhat solid under this appeal.
+But the stranger, probably taking their silence for a gathering shame,
+continued with a kind of gaiety:
+
+“So you are the young men I have read about in the papers. Well, of
+course, when one is young, one is rather romantic. Do you know what I
+always say to young people?”
+
+A blank silence followed this gay inquiry. Then Turnbull said in a
+colourless voice:
+
+“As I was forty-seven last birthday, I probably came into the world too
+soon for the experience.”
+
+“Very good, very good,” said the friendly person. “Dry Scotch humour.
+Dry Scotch humour. Well now. I understand that you two people want to
+fight a duel. I suppose you aren't much up in the modern world. We've
+quite outgrown duelling, you know. In fact, Tolstoy tells us that we
+shall soon outgrow war, which he says is simply a duel between nations.
+A duel between nations. But there is no doubt about our having outgrown
+duelling.”
+
+Waiting for some effect upon his wooden auditors, the stranger stood
+beaming for a moment and then resumed:
+
+“Now, they tell me in the newspapers that you are really wanting to
+fight about something connected with Roman Catholicism. Now, do you know
+what I always say to Roman Catholics?”
+
+“No,” said Turnbull, heavily. “Do _they_?” It seemed to be a
+characteristic of the hearty, hygienic gentleman that he always forgot
+the speech he had made the moment before. Without enlarging further on
+the fixed form of his appeal to the Church of Rome, he laughed cordially
+at Turnbull's answer; then his wandering blue eyes caught the sunlight
+on the swords, and he assumed a good-humoured gravity.
+
+“But you know this is a serious matter,” he said, eyeing Turnbull and
+MacIan, as if they had just been keeping the table in a roar with their
+frivolities. “I am sure that if I appealed to your higher natures...your
+higher natures. Every man has a higher nature and a lower nature. Now,
+let us put the matter very plainly, and without any romantic nonsense
+about honour or anything of that sort. Is not bloodshed a great sin?”
+
+“No,” said MacIan, speaking for the first time.
+
+“Well, really, really!” said the peacemaker.
+
+“Murder is a sin,” said the immovable Highlander. “There is no sin of
+bloodshed.”
+
+“Well, we won't quarrel about a word,” said the other, pleasantly.
+
+“Why on earth not?” said MacIan, with a sudden asperity. “Why shouldn't
+we quarrel about a word? What is the good of words if they aren't
+important enough to quarrel over? Why do we choose one word more than
+another if there isn't any difference between them? If you called a
+woman a chimpanzee instead of an angel, wouldn't there be a quarrel
+about a word? If you're not going to argue about words, what are you
+going to argue about? Are you going to convey your meaning to me by
+moving your ears? The Church and the heresies always used to fight about
+words, because they are the only things worth fighting about. I say
+that murder is a sin, and bloodshed is not, and that there is as much
+difference between those words as there is between the word 'yes' and
+the word 'no'; or rather more difference, for 'yes' and 'no', at least,
+belong to the same category. Murder is a spiritual incident. Bloodshed
+is a physical incident. A surgeon commits bloodshed.
+
+“Ah, you're a casuist!” said the large man, wagging his head. “Now, do
+you know what I always say to casuists...?”
+
+MacIan made a violent gesture; and Turnbull broke into open laughter.
+The peacemaker did not seem to be in the least annoyed, but continued in
+unabated enjoyment.
+
+“Well, well,” he said, “let us get back to the point. Now Tolstoy has
+shown that force is no remedy; so you see the position in which I am
+placed. I am doing my best to stop what I'm sure you won't mind my
+calling this really useless violence, this really quite wrong violence
+of yours. But it's against my principles to call in the police against
+you, because the police are still on a lower moral plane, so to speak,
+because, in short, the police undoubtedly sometimes employ force.
+Tolstoy has shown that violence merely breeds violence in the person
+towards whom it is used, whereas Love, on the other hand, breeds Love.
+So you see how I am placed. I am reduced to use Love in order to stop
+you. I am obliged to use Love.”
+
+He gave to the word an indescribable sound of something hard and heavy,
+as if he were saying “boots”. Turnbull suddenly gripped his sword and
+said, shortly, “I see how you are placed quite well, sir. You will not
+call the police. Mr. MacIan, shall we engage?” MacIan plucked his sword
+out of the grass.
+
+“I must and will stop this shocking crime,” cried the Tolstoian,
+crimson in the face. “It is against all modern ideas. It is against the
+principle of love. How you, sir, who pretend to be a Christian...”
+
+MacIan turned upon him with a white face and bitter lip. “Sir,” he said,
+“talk about the principle of love as much as you like. You seem to me
+colder than a lump of stone; but I am willing to believe that you may at
+some time have loved a cat, or a dog, or a child. When you were a baby,
+I suppose you loved your mother. Talk about love, then, till the world
+is sick of the word. But don't you talk about Christianity. Don't you
+dare to say one word, white or black, about it. Christianity is, as far
+as you are concerned, a horrible mystery. Keep clear of it, keep silent
+upon it, as you would upon an abomination. It is a thing that has made
+men slay and torture each other; and you will never know why. It is a
+thing that has made men do evil that good might come; and you will never
+understand the evil, let alone the good. Christianity is a thing that
+could only make you vomit, till you are other than you are. I would not
+justify it to you even if I could. Hate it, in God's name, as Turnbull
+does, who is a man. It is a monstrous thing, for which men die. And if
+you will stand here and talk about love for another ten minutes it is
+very probable that you will see a man die for it.”
+
+And he fell on guard. Turnbull was busy settling something loose in his
+elaborate hilt, and the pause was broken by the stranger.
+
+“Suppose I call the police?” he said, with a heated face.
+
+“And deny your most sacred dogma,” said MacIan.
+
+“Dogma!” cried the man, in a sort of dismay. “Oh, we have no _dogmas_,
+you know!”
+
+There was another silence, and he said again, airily:
+
+“You know, I think, there's something in what Shaw teaches about no
+moral principles being quite fixed. Have you ever read _The Quintessence
+of Ibsenism_? Of course he went very wrong over the war.”
+
+Turnbull, with a bent, flushed face, was tying up the loose piece of the
+pommel with string. With the string in his teeth, he said, “Oh, make up
+your damned mind and clear out!”
+
+“It's a serious thing,” said the philosopher, shaking his head. “I must
+be alone and consider which is the higher point of view. I rather feel
+that in a case so extreme as this...” and he went slowly away. As he
+disappeared among the trees, they heard him murmuring in a sing-song
+voice, “New occasions teach new duties,” out of a poem by James Russell
+Lowell.
+
+“Ah,” said MacIan, drawing a deep breath. “Don't you believe in prayer
+now? I prayed for an angel.”
+
+“An hour ago,” said the Highlander, in his heavy meditative voice, “I
+felt the devil weakening my heart and my oath against you, and I prayed
+that God would send an angel to my aid.”
+
+“Well?” inquired the other, finishing his mending and wrapping the rest
+of the string round his hand to get a firmer grip.
+
+“Well?”
+
+“Well, that man was an angel,” said MacIan.
+
+“I didn't know they were as bad as that,” answered Turnbull.
+
+“We know that devils sometimes quote Scripture and counterfeit good,”
+ replied the mystic. “Why should not angels sometimes come to show us the
+black abyss of evil on whose brink we stand. If that man had not tried
+to stop us...I might...I might have stopped.”
+
+“I know what you mean,” said Turnbull, grimly.
+
+“But then he came,” broke out MacIan, “and my soul said to me: 'Give up
+fighting, and you will become like That. Give up vows and dogmas, and
+fixed things, and you may grow like That. You may learn, also, that
+fog of false philosophy. You may grow fond of that mire of crawling,
+cowardly morals, and you may come to think a blow bad, because it hurts,
+and not because it humiliates. You may come to think murder wrong,
+because it is violent, and not because it is unjust. Oh, you blasphemer
+of the good, an hour ago I almost loved you! But do not fear for me now.
+I have heard the word Love pronounced in _his_ intonation; and I know
+exactly what it means. On guard!'”
+
+The swords caught on each other with a dreadful clang and jar, full of
+the old energy and hate; and at once plunged and replunged. Once more
+each man's heart had become the magnet of a mad sword. Suddenly, furious
+as they were, they were frozen for a moment motionless.
+
+“What noise is that?” asked the Highlander, hoarsely.
+
+“I think I know,” replied Turnbull.
+
+“What?... What?” cried the other.
+
+“The student of Shaw and Tolstoy has made up his remarkable mind,” said
+Turnbull, quietly. “The police are coming up the hill.”
+
+
+
+
+VI. THE OTHER PHILOSOPHER
+
+Between high hedges in Hertfordshire, hedges so high as to create a
+kind of grove, two men were running. They did not run in a scampering
+or feverish manner, but in the steady swing of the pendulum. Across the
+great plains and uplands to the right and left of the lane, a long tide
+of sunset light rolled like a sea of ruby, lighting up the long terraces
+of the hills and picking out the few windows of the scattered hamlets
+in startling blood-red sparks. But the lane was cut deep in the hill
+and remained in an abrupt shadow. The two men running in it had an
+impression not uncommonly experienced between those wild green English
+walls; a sense of being led between the walls of a maze.
+
+Though their pace was steady it was vigorous; their faces were heated
+and their eyes fixed and bright. There was, indeed, something a little
+mad in the contrast between the evening's stillness over the empty
+country-side, and these two figures fleeing wildly from nothing. They
+had the look of two lunatics, possibly they were.
+
+“Are you all right?” said Turnbull, with civility. “Can you keep this
+up?”
+
+“Quite easily, thank you,” replied MacIan. “I run very well.”
+
+“Is that a qualification in a family of warriors?” asked Turnbull.
+
+“Undoubtedly. Rapid movement is essential,” answered MacIan, who never
+saw a joke in his life.
+
+Turnbull broke out into a short laugh, and silence fell between them,
+the panting silence of runners.
+
+Then MacIan said: “We run better than any of those policemen. They are
+too fat. Why do you make your policemen so fat?”
+
+“I didn't do much towards making them fat myself,” replied Turnbull,
+genially, “but I flatter myself that I am now doing something towards
+making them thin. You'll see they will be as lean as rakes by the time
+they catch us. They will look like your friend, Cardinal Manning.”
+
+“But they won't catch us,” said MacIan, in his literal way.
+
+“No, we beat them in the great military art of running away,” returned
+the other. “They won't catch us unless----”
+
+MacIan turned his long equine face inquiringly. “Unless what?” he
+said, for Turnbull had gone silent suddenly, and seemed to be listening
+intently as he ran as a horse does with his ears turned back.
+
+“Unless what?” repeated the Highlander.
+
+“Unless they do--what they have done. Listen.” MacIan slackened his
+trot, and turned his head to the trail they had left behind them. Across
+two or three billows of the up and down lane came along the ground the
+unmistakable throbbing of horses' hoofs.
+
+“They have put the mounted police on us,” said Turnbull, shortly. “Good
+Lord, one would think we were a Revolution.”
+
+“So we are,” said MacIan calmly. “What shall we do? Shall we turn on
+them with our points?”
+
+“It may come to that,” answered Turnbull, “though if it does, I reckon
+that will be the last act. We must put it off if we can.” And he stared
+and peered about him between the bushes. “If we could hide somewhere
+the beasts might go by us,” he said. “The police have their faults, but
+thank God they're inefficient. Why, here's the very thing. Be quick and
+quiet. Follow me.”
+
+He suddenly swung himself up the high bank on one side of the lane. It
+was almost as high and smooth as a wall, and on the top of it the black
+hedge stood out over them as an angle, almost like a thatched roof of
+the lane. And the burning evening sky looked down at them through the
+tangle with red eyes as of an army of goblins.
+
+Turnbull hoisted himself up and broke the hedge with his body. As his
+head and shoulders rose above it they turned to flame in the full glow
+as if lit up by an immense firelight. His red hair and beard looked
+almost scarlet, and his pale face as bright as a boy's. Something
+violent, something that was at once love and hatred, surged in the
+strange heart of the Gael below him. He had an unutterable sense of epic
+importance, as if he were somehow lifting all humanity into a prouder
+and more passionate region of the air. As he swung himself up also into
+the evening light he felt as if he were rising on enormous wings.
+
+Legends of the morning of the world which he had heard in childhood or
+read in youth came back upon him in a cloudy splendour, purple tales
+of wrath and friendship, like Roland and Oliver, or Balin and Balan,
+reminding him of emotional entanglements. Men who had loved each other
+and then fought each other; men who had fought each other and then loved
+each other, together made a mixed but monstrous sense of momentousness.
+The crimson seas of the sunset seemed to him like a bursting out of some
+sacred blood, as if the heart of the world had broken.
+
+Turnbull was wholly unaffected by any written or spoken poetry; his was
+a powerful and prosaic mind. But even upon him there came for the moment
+something out of the earth and the passionate ends of the sky. The only
+evidence was in his voice, which was still practical but a shade more
+quiet.
+
+“Do you see that summer-house-looking thing over there?” he asked
+shortly. “That will do for us very well.”
+
+Keeping himself free from the tangle of the hedge he strolled across
+a triangle of obscure kitchen garden, and approached a dismal shed or
+lodge a yard or two beyond it. It was a weather-stained hut of grey
+wood, which with all its desolation retained a tag or two of trivial
+ornament, which suggested that the thing had once been a sort of
+summer-house, and the place probably a sort of garden.
+
+“That is quite invisible from the road,” said Turnbull, as he entered
+it, “and it will cover us up for the night.”
+
+MacIan looked at him gravely for a few moments. “Sir,” he said, “I ought
+to say something to you. I ought to say----”
+
+“Hush,” said Turnbull, suddenly lifting his hand; “be still, man.”
+
+In the sudden silence, the drumming of the distant horses grew louder
+and louder with inconceivable rapidity, and the cavalcade of police
+rushed by below them in the lane, almost with the roar and rattle of an
+express train.
+
+“I ought to tell you,” continued MacIan, still staring stolidly at the
+other, “that you are a great chief, and it is good to go to war behind
+you.”
+
+Turnbull said nothing, but turned and looked out of the foolish lattice
+of the little windows, then he said, “We must have food and sleep
+first.”
+
+When the last echo of their eluded pursuers had died in the distant
+uplands, Turnbull began to unpack the provisions with the easy air of
+a man at a picnic. He had just laid out the last items, put a bottle
+of wine on the floor, and a tin of salmon on the window-ledge, when the
+bottomless silence of that forgotten place was broken. And it was broken
+by three heavy blows of a stick delivered upon the door.
+
+Turnbull looked up in the act of opening a tin and stared silently at
+his companion. MacIan's long, lean mouth had shut hard.
+
+“Who the devil can that be?” said Turnbull.
+
+“God knows,” said the other. “It might be God.”
+
+Again the sound of the wooden stick reverberated on the wooden door. It
+was a curious sound and on consideration did not resemble the ordinary
+effects of knocking on a door for admittance. It was rather as if the
+point of a stick were plunged again and again at the panels in an absurd
+attempt to make a hole in them.
+
+A wild look sprang into MacIan's eyes and he got up half stupidly, with
+a kind of stagger, put his hand out and caught one of the swords. “Let
+us fight at once,” he cried, “it is the end of the world.”
+
+“You're overdone, MacIan,” said Turnbull, putting him on one side. “It's
+only someone playing the goat. Let me open the door.”
+
+But he also picked up a sword as he stepped to open it.
+
+He paused one moment with his hand on the handle and then flung the door
+open. Almost as he did so the ferrule of an ordinary bamboo cane came at
+his eyes, so that he had actually to parry it with the naked weapon in
+his hands. As the two touched, the point of the stick was dropped very
+abruptly, and the man with the stick stepped hurriedly back.
+
+Against the heraldic background of sprawling crimson and gold offered
+him by the expiring sunset, the figure of the man with the stick showed
+at first merely black and fantastic. He was a small man with two wisps
+of long hair that curled up on each side, and seen in silhouette, looked
+like horns. He had a bow tie so big that the two ends showed on each
+side of his neck like unnatural stunted wings. He had his long black
+cane still tilted in his hand like a fencing foil and half presented
+at the open door. His large straw hat had fallen behind him as he leapt
+backwards.
+
+“With reference to your suggestion, MacIan,” said Turnbull, placidly, “I
+think it looks more like the Devil.”
+
+“Who on earth are you?” cried the stranger in a high shrill voice,
+brandishing his cane defensively.
+
+“Let me see,” said Turnbull, looking round to MacIan with the same
+blandness. “Who are we?”
+
+“Come out,” screamed the little man with the stick.
+
+“Certainly,” said Turnbull, and went outside with the sword, MacIan
+following.
+
+Seen more fully, with the evening light on his face, the strange man
+looked a little less like a goblin. He wore a square pale-grey jacket
+suit, on which the grey butterfly tie was the only indisputable touch
+of affectation. Against the great sunset his figure had looked merely
+small: seen in a more equal light it looked tolerably compact and
+shapely. His reddish-brown hair, combed into two great curls, looked
+like the long, slow curling hair of the women in some pre-Raphaelite
+pictures. But within this feminine frame of hair his face was
+unexpectedly impudent, like a monkey's.
+
+“What are you doing here?” he said, in a sharp small voice.
+
+“Well,” said MacIan, in his grave childish way, “what are _you_ doing
+here?”
+
+“I,” said the man, indignantly, “I'm in my own garden.”
+
+“Oh,” said MacIan, simply, “I apologize.”
+
+Turnbull was coolly curling his red moustache, and the stranger stared
+from one to the other, temporarily stunned by their innocent assurance.
+
+“But, may I ask,” he said at last, “what the devil you are doing in my
+summer-house?”
+
+“Certainly,” said MacIan. “We were just going to fight.”
+
+“To fight!” repeated the man.
+
+“We had better tell this gentleman the whole business,” broke in
+Turnbull. Then turning to the stranger he said firmly, “I am sorry, sir,
+but we have something to do that must be done. And I may as well tell
+you at the beginning and to avoid waste of time or language, that we
+cannot admit any interference.”
+
+“We were just going to take some slight refreshment when you interrupted
+us...”
+
+The little man had a dawning expression of understanding and stooped and
+picked up the unused bottle of wine, eyeing it curiously.
+
+Turnbull continued:
+
+“But that refreshment was preparatory to something which I fear you will
+find less comprehensible, but on which our minds are entirely fixed,
+sir. We are forced to fight a duel. We are forced by honour and an
+internal intellectual need. Do not, for your own sake, attempt to stop
+us. I know all the excellent and ethical things that you will want to
+say to us. I know all about the essential requirements of civil order:
+I have written leading articles about them all my life. I know all about
+the sacredness of human life; I have bored all my friends with it. Try
+and understand our position. This man and I are alone in the modern
+world in that we think that God is essentially important. I think He
+does not exist; that is where the importance comes in for me. But this
+man thinks that He does exist, and thinking that very properly thinks
+Him more important than anything else. Now we wish to make a great
+demonstration and assertion--something that will set the world on fire
+like the first Christian persecutions. If you like, we are attempting
+a mutual martyrdom. The papers have posted up every town against us.
+Scotland Yard has fortified every police station with our enemies; we
+are driven therefore to the edge of a lonely lane, and indirectly to
+taking liberties with your summer-house in order to arrange our...”
+
+“Stop!” roared the little man in the butterfly necktie. “Put me out of
+my intellectual misery. Are you really the two tomfools I have read of
+in all the papers? Are you the two people who wanted to spit each other
+in the Police Court? Are you? Are you?”
+
+“Yes,” said MacIan, “it began in a Police Court.”
+
+The little man slung the bottle of wine twenty yards away like a stone.
+
+“Come up to my place,” he said. “I've got better stuff than that. I've
+got the best Beaune within fifty miles of here. Come up. You're the very
+men I wanted to see.”
+
+Even Turnbull, with his typical invulnerability, was a little taken
+aback by this boisterous and almost brutal hospitality.
+
+“Why...sir...” he began.
+
+“Come up! Come in!” howled the little man, dancing with delight. “I'll
+give you a dinner. I'll give you a bed! I'll give you a green smooth
+lawn and your choice of swords and pistols. Why, you fools, I adore
+fighting! It's the only good thing in God's world! I've walked about
+these damned fields and longed to see somebody cut up and killed and the
+blood running. Ha! Ha!”
+
+And he made sudden lunges with his stick at the trunk of a neighbouring
+tree so that the ferrule made fierce prints and punctures in the bark.
+
+“Excuse me,” said MacIan suddenly with the wide-eyed curiosity of a
+child, “excuse me, but...”
+
+“Well?” said the small fighter, brandishing his wooden weapon.
+
+“Excuse me,” repeated MacIan, “but was that what you were doing at the
+door?”
+
+The little man stared an instant and then said: “Yes,” and Turnbull
+broke into a guffaw.
+
+“Come on!” cried the little man, tucking his stick under his arm and
+taking quite suddenly to his heels. “Come on! Confound me, I'll see both
+of you eat and then I'll see one of you die. Lord bless me, the gods
+must exist after all--they have sent me one of my day-dreams! Lord! A
+duel!”
+
+He had gone flying along a winding path between the borders of the
+kitchen garden, and in the increasing twilight he was as hard to follow
+as a flying hare. But at length the path after many twists betrayed its
+purpose and led abruptly up two or three steps to the door of a tiny but
+very clean cottage. There was nothing about the outside to distinguish
+it from other cottages, except indeed its ominous cleanliness and one
+thing that was out of all the custom and tradition of all cottages
+under the sun. In the middle of the little garden among the stocks and
+marigolds there surged up in shapeless stone a South Sea Island idol.
+There was something gross and even evil in that eyeless and alien god
+among the most innocent of the English flowers.
+
+“Come in!” cried the creature again. “Come in! it's better inside!”
+
+Whether or no it was better inside it was at least a surprise. The
+moment the two duellists had pushed open the door of that inoffensive,
+whitewashed cottage they found that its interior was lined with fiery
+gold. It was like stepping into a chamber in the Arabian Nights. The
+door that closed behind them shut out England and all the energies of
+the West. The ornaments that shone and shimmered on every side of them
+were subtly mixed from many periods and lands, but were all oriental.
+Cruel Assyrian bas-reliefs ran along the sides of the passage; cruel
+Turkish swords and daggers glinted above and below them; the two
+were separated by ages and fallen civilizations. Yet they seemed to
+sympathize since they were both harmonious and both merciless. The house
+seemed to consist of chamber within chamber and created that impression
+as of a dream which belongs also to the Arabian Nights themselves. The
+innermost room of all was like the inside of a jewel. The little man who
+owned it all threw himself on a heap of scarlet and golden cushions and
+struck his hands together. A negro in a white robe and turban appeared
+suddenly and silently behind them.
+
+“Selim,” said the host, “these two gentlemen are staying with me
+tonight. Send up the very best wine and dinner at once. And Selim,
+one of these gentlemen will probably die tomorrow. Make arrangements,
+please.”
+
+The negro bowed and withdrew.
+
+Evan MacIan came out the next morning into the little garden to a fresh
+silver day, his long face looking more austere than ever in that
+cold light, his eyelids a little heavy. He carried one of the swords.
+Turnbull was in the little house behind him, demolishing the end of
+an early breakfast and humming a tune to himself, which could be heard
+through the open window. A moment or two later he leapt to his feet and
+came out into the sunlight, still munching toast, his own sword stuck
+under his arm like a walking-stick.
+
+Their eccentric host had vanished from sight, with a polite gesture,
+some twenty minutes before. They imagined him to be occupied on
+some concerns in the interior of the house, and they waited for his
+emergence, stamping the garden in silence--the garden of tall, fresh
+country flowers, in the midst of which the monstrous South Sea idol
+lifted itself as abruptly as the prow of a ship riding on a sea of red
+and white and gold.
+
+It was with a start, therefore, that they came upon the man himself
+already in the garden. They were all the more startled because of the
+still posture in which they found him. He was on his knees in front
+of the stone idol, rigid and motionless, like a saint in a trance or
+ecstasy. Yet when Turnbull's tread broke a twig, he was on his feet in a
+flash.
+
+“Excuse me,” he said with an irradiation of smiles, but yet with a kind
+of bewilderment. “So sorry...family prayers...old fashioned...mother's
+knee. Let us go on to the lawn behind.”
+
+And he ducked rapidly round the statue to an open space of grass on the
+other side of it.
+
+“This will do us best, Mr. MacIan,” said he. Then he made a gesture
+towards the heavy stone figure on the pedestal which had now its blank
+and shapeless back turned towards them. “Don't you be afraid,” he added,
+“he can still see us.”
+
+MacIan turned his blue, blinking eyes, which seemed still misty with
+sleep (or sleeplessness) towards the idol, but his brows drew together.
+
+The little man with the long hair also had his eyes on the back view
+of the god. His eyes were at once liquid and burning, and he rubbed his
+hands slowly against each other.
+
+“Do you know,” he said, “I think he can see us better this way. I often
+think that this blank thing is his real face, watching, though it cannot
+be watched. He! he! Yes, I think he looks nice from behind. He looks
+more cruel from behind, don't you think?”
+
+“What the devil is the thing?” asked Turnbull gruffly.
+
+“It is the only Thing there is,” answered the other. “It is Force.”
+
+“Oh!” said Turnbull shortly.
+
+“Yes, my friends,” said the little man, with an animated countenance,
+fluttering his fingers in the air, “it was no chance that led you to
+this garden; surely it was the caprice of some old god, some happy,
+pitiless god. Perhaps it was his will, for he loves blood; and on that
+stone in front of him men have been butchered by hundreds in the fierce,
+feasting islands of the South. In this cursed, craven place I have
+not been permitted to kill men on his altar. Only rabbits and cats,
+sometimes.”
+
+In the stillness MacIan made a sudden movement, unmeaning apparently,
+and then remained rigid.
+
+“But today, today,” continued the small man in a shrill voice. “Today
+his hour is come. Today his will is done on earth as it is in heaven.
+Men, men, men will bleed before him today.” And he bit his forefinger in
+a kind of fever.
+
+Still, the two duellists stood with their swords as heavily as statues,
+and the silence seemed to cool the eccentric and call him back to more
+rational speech.
+
+“Perhaps I express myself a little too lyrically,” he said with an
+amicable abruptness. “My philosophy has its higher ecstasies, but
+perhaps you are hardly worked up to them yet. Let us confine ourselves
+to the unquestioned. You have found your way, gentlemen, by a beautiful
+accident, to the house of the only man in England (probably) who will
+favour and encourage your most reasonable project. From Cornwall to Cape
+Wrath this county is one horrible, solid block of humanitarianism. You
+will find men who will defend this or that war in a distant continent.
+They will defend it on the contemptible ground of commerce or the more
+contemptible ground of social good. But do not fancy that you will find
+one other person who will comprehend a strong man taking the sword in
+his hand and wiping out his enemy. My name is Wimpey, Morrice Wimpey. I
+had a Fellowship at Magdalen. But I assure you I had to drop it, owing
+to my having said something in a public lecture infringing the popular
+prejudice against those great gentlemen, the assassins of the Italian
+Renaissance. They let me say it at dinner and so on, and seemed to like
+it. But in a public lecture...so inconsistent. Well, as I say, here is
+your only refuge and temple of honour. Here you can fall back on that
+naked and awful arbitration which is the only thing that balances the
+stars--a still, continuous violence. _Vae Victis!_ Down, down, down
+with the defeated! Victory is the only ultimate fact. Carthage _was_
+destroyed, the Red Indians are being exterminated: that is the single
+certainty. In an hour from now that sun will still be shining and that
+grass growing, and one of you will be conquered; one of you will be the
+conqueror. When it has been done, nothing will alter it. Heroes, I give
+you the hospitality fit for heroes. And I salute the survivor. Fall on!”
+
+The two men took their swords. Then MacIan said steadily: “Mr. Turnbull,
+lend me your sword a moment.”
+
+Turnbull, with a questioning glance, handed him the weapon. MacIan took
+the second sword in his left hand and, with a violent gesture, hurled it
+at the feet of little Mr. Wimpey.
+
+“Fight!” he said in a loud, harsh voice. “Fight me now!”
+
+Wimpey took a step backward, and bewildered words bubbled on his lips.
+
+“Pick up that sword and fight me,” repeated MacIan, with brows as black
+as thunder.
+
+The little man turned to Turnbull with a gesture, demanding judgement or
+protection.
+
+“Really, sir,” he began, “this gentleman confuses...”
+
+“You stinking little coward,” roared Turnbull, suddenly releasing his
+wrath. “Fight, if you're so fond of fighting! Fight, if you're so fond
+of all that filthy philosophy! If winning is everything, go in and win!
+If the weak must go to the wall, go to the wall! Fight, you rat! Fight,
+or if you won't fight--run!”
+
+And he ran at Wimpey, with blazing eyes.
+
+Wimpey staggered back a few paces like a man struggling with his own
+limbs. Then he felt the furious Scotchman coming at him like an express
+train, doubling his size every second, with eyes as big as windows and
+a sword as bright as the sun. Something broke inside him, and he found
+himself running away, tumbling over his own feet in terror, and crying
+out as he ran.
+
+“Chase him!” shouted Turnbull as MacIan snatched up the sword and joined
+in the scamper. “Chase him over a county! Chase him into the sea! Shoo!
+Shoo! Shoo!”
+
+The little man plunged like a rabbit among the tall flowers, the two
+duellists after him. Turnbull kept at his tail with savage ecstasy,
+still shooing him like a cat. But MacIan, as he ran past the South Sea
+idol, paused an instant to spring upon its pedestal. For five seconds
+he strained against the inert mass. Then it stirred; and he sent it over
+with a great crash among the flowers, that engulfed it altogether. Then
+he went bounding after the runaway.
+
+In the energy of his alarm the ex-Fellow of Magdalen managed to leap
+the paling of his garden. The two pursuers went over it after him like
+flying birds. He fled frantically down a long lane with his two terrors
+on his trail till he came to a gap in the hedge and went across a steep
+meadow like the wind. The two Scotchmen, as they ran, kept up a cheery
+bellowing and waved their swords. Up three slanting meadows, down four
+slanting meadows on the other side, across another road, across a heath
+of snapping bracken, through a wood, across another road, and to the
+brink of a big pool, they pursued the flying philosopher. But when he
+came to the pool his pace was so precipitate that he could not stop
+it, and with a kind of lurching stagger, he fell splash into the greasy
+water. Getting dripping to his feet, with the water up to his knees, the
+worshipper of force and victory waded disconsolately to the other side
+and drew himself on to the bank. And Turnbull sat down on the grass and
+went off into reverberations of laughter. A second afterwards the most
+extraordinary grimaces were seen to distort the stiff face of MacIan,
+and unholy sounds came from within. He had never practised laughing, and
+it hurt him very much.
+
+
+
+
+VII. THE VILLAGE OF GRASSLEY-IN-THE-HOLE
+
+At about half past one, under a strong blue sky, Turnbull got up out
+of the grass and fern in which he had been lying, and his still
+intermittent laughter ended in a kind of yawn.
+
+“I'm hungry,” he said shortly. “Are you?”
+
+“I have not noticed,” answered MacIan. “What are you going to do?”
+
+“There's a village down the road, past the pool,” answered Turnbull. “I
+can see it from here. I can see the whitewashed walls of some cottages
+and a kind of corner of the church. How jolly it all looks. It looks
+so--I don't know what the word is--so sensible. Don't fancy I'm under
+any illusions about Arcadian virtue and the innocent villagers. Men make
+beasts of themselves there with drink, but they don't deliberately make
+devils of themselves with mere talking. They kill wild animals in
+the wild woods, but they don't kill cats to the God of Victory. They
+don't----” He broke off and suddenly spat on the ground.
+
+“Excuse me,” he said; “it was ceremonial. One has to get the taste out
+of one's mouth.”
+
+“The taste of what?” asked MacIan.
+
+“I don't know the exact name for it,” replied Turnbull. “Perhaps it is
+the South Sea Islands, or it may be Magdalen College.”
+
+There was a long pause, and MacIan also lifted his large limbs off the
+ground--his eyes particularly dreamy.
+
+“I know what you mean, Turnbull,” he said, “but... I always thought you
+people agreed with all that.”
+
+“With all that about doing as one likes, and the individual, and Nature
+loving the strongest, and all the things which that cockroach talked
+about.”
+
+Turnbull's big blue-grey eyes stood open with a grave astonishment.
+
+“Do you really mean to say, MacIan,” he said, “that you fancied that we,
+the Free-thinkers, that Bradlaugh, or Holyoake, or Ingersoll, believe
+all that dirty, immoral mysticism about Nature? Damn Nature!”
+
+“I supposed you did,” said MacIan calmly. “It seems to me your most
+conclusive position.”
+
+“And you mean to tell me,” rejoined the other, “that you broke my
+window, and challenged me to mortal combat, and tied a tradesman up with
+ropes, and chased an Oxford Fellow across five meadows--all under the
+impression that I am such an illiterate idiot as to believe in Nature!”
+
+“I supposed you did,” repeated MacIan with his usual mildness; “but I
+admit that I know little of the details of your belief--or disbelief.”
+
+Turnbull swung round quite suddenly, and set off towards the village.
+
+“Come along,” he cried. “Come down to the village. Come down to the
+nearest decent inhabitable pub. This is a case for beer.”
+
+“I do not quite follow you,” said the Highlander.
+
+“Yes, you do,” answered Turnbull. “You follow me slap into the
+inn-parlour. I repeat, this is a case for beer. We must have the whole
+of this matter out thoroughly before we go a step farther. Do you know
+that an idea has just struck me of great simplicity and of some
+cogency. Do not by any means let us drop our intentions of settling our
+differences with two steel swords. But do you not think that with two
+pewter pots we might do what we really have never thought of doing
+yet--discover what our difference is?”
+
+“It never occurred to me before,” answered MacIan with tranquillity. “It
+is a good suggestion.”
+
+And they set out at an easy swing down the steep road to the village of
+Grassley-in-the-Hole.
+
+Grassley-in-the-Hole was a rude parallelogram of buildings, with two
+thoroughfares which might have been called two high streets if it had
+been possible to call them streets. One of these ways was higher on the
+slope than the other, the whole parallelogram lying aslant, so to speak,
+on the side of the hill. The upper of these two roads was decorated with
+a big public house, a butcher's shop, a small public house, a sweetstuff
+shop, a very small public house, and an illegible signpost. The lower of
+the two roads boasted a horse-pond, a post office, a gentleman's garden
+with very high hedges, a microscopically small public house, and two
+cottages. Where all the people lived who supported all the public houses
+was in this, as in many other English villages, a silent and smiling
+mystery. The church lay a little above and beyond the village, with a
+square grey tower dominating it decisively.
+
+But even the church was scarcely so central and solemn an institution
+as the large public house, the Valencourt Arms. It was named after some
+splendid family that had long gone bankrupt, and whose seat was occupied
+by a man who had invented a hygienic bootjack; but the unfathomable
+sentimentalism of the English people insisted in regarding the Inn,
+the seat and the sitter in it, as alike parts of a pure and marmoreal
+antiquity. And in the Valencourt Arms festivity itself had some
+solemnity and decorum; and beer was drunk with reverence, as it ought to
+be. Into the principal parlour of this place entered two strangers, who
+found themselves, as is always the case in such hostels, the object,
+not of fluttered curiosity or pert inquiry, but of steady, ceaseless,
+devouring ocular study. They had long coats down to their heels, and
+carried under each coat something that looked like a stick. One was
+tall and dark, the other short and red-haired. They ordered a pot of ale
+each.
+
+“MacIan,” said Turnbull, lifting his tankard, “the fool who wanted us to
+be friends made us want to go on fighting. It is only natural that
+the fool who wanted us to fight should make us friendly. MacIan, your
+health!”
+
+Dusk was already dropping, the rustics in the tavern were already
+lurching and lumbering out of it by twos and threes, crying clamorous
+good nights to a solitary old toper that remained, before MacIan and
+Turnbull had reached the really important part of their discussion.
+
+MacIan wore an expression of sad bewilderment not uncommon with him. “I
+am to understand, then,” he said, “that you don't believe in nature.”
+
+“You may say so in a very special and emphatic sense,” said Turnbull.
+“I do not believe in nature, just as I do not believe in Odin. She is a
+myth. It is not merely that I do not believe that nature can guide us.
+It is that I do not believe that nature exists.”
+
+“Exists?” said MacIan in his monotonous way, settling his pewter pot on
+the table.
+
+“Yes, in a real sense nature does not exist. I mean that nobody can
+discover what the original nature of things would have been if things
+had not interfered with it. The first blade of grass began to tear up
+the earth and eat it; it was interfering with nature, if there is any
+nature. The first wild ox began to tear up the grass and eat it; he
+was interfering with nature, if there is any nature. In the same way,”
+ continued Turnbull, “the human when it asserts its dominance over nature
+is just as natural as the thing which it destroys.”
+
+“And in the same way,” said MacIan almost dreamily, “the superhuman, the
+supernatural is just as natural as the nature which it destroys.”
+
+Turnbull took his head out of his pewter pot in some anger.
+
+“The supernatural, of course,” he said, “is quite another thing; the
+case of the supernatural is simple. The supernatural does not exist.”
+
+“Quite so,” said MacIan in a rather dull voice; “you said the same about
+the natural. If the natural does not exist the supernatural obviously
+can't.” And he yawned a little over his ale.
+
+Turnbull turned for some reason a little red and remarked quickly, “That
+may be jolly clever, for all I know. But everyone does know that there
+is a division between the things that as a matter of fact do commonly
+happen and the things that don't. Things that break the evident laws of
+nature----”
+
+“Which does not exist,” put in MacIan sleepily. Turnbull struck the
+table with a sudden hand.
+
+“Good Lord in heaven!” he cried----
+
+“Who does not exist,” murmured MacIan.
+
+“Good Lord in heaven!” thundered Turnbull, without regarding the
+interruption. “Do you really mean to sit there and say that you, like
+anybody else, would not recognize the difference between a natural
+occurrence and a supernatural one--if there could be such a thing? If I
+flew up to the ceiling----”
+
+“You would bump your head badly,” cried MacIan, suddenly starting up.
+“One can't talk of this kind of thing under a ceiling at all. Come
+outside! Come outside and ascend into heaven!”
+
+He burst the door open on a blue abyss of evening and they stepped out
+into it: it was suddenly and strangely cool.
+
+“Turnbull,” said MacIan, “you have said some things so true and some
+so false that I want to talk; and I will try to talk so that you
+understand. For at present you do not understand at all. We don't seem
+to mean the same things by the same words.”
+
+He stood silent for a second or two and then resumed.
+
+“A minute or two ago I caught you out in a real contradiction. At that
+moment logically I was right. And at that moment I knew I was
+wrong. Yes, there is a real difference between the natural and the
+supernatural: if you flew up into that blue sky this instant, I should
+think that you were moved by God--or the devil. But if you want to know
+what I really think...I must explain.”
+
+He stopped again, abstractedly boring the point of his sword into the
+earth, and went on:
+
+“I was born and bred and taught in a complete universe. The supernatural
+was not natural, but it was perfectly reasonable. Nay, the supernatural
+to me is more reasonable than the natural; for the supernatural is a
+direct message from God, who is reason. I was taught that some things
+are natural and some things divine. I mean that some things are
+mechanical and some things divine. But there is the great difficulty,
+Turnbull. The great difficulty is that, according to my teaching, you
+are divine.”
+
+“Me! Divine?” said Turnbull truculently. “What do you mean?”
+
+“That is just the difficulty,” continued MacIan thoughtfully. “I was
+told that there was a difference between the grass and a man's will;
+and the difference was that a man's will was special and divine. A man's
+free will, I heard, was supernatural.”
+
+“Rubbish!” said Turnbull.
+
+“Oh,” said MacIan patiently, “then if a man's free will isn't
+supernatural, why do your materialists deny that it exists?”
+
+Turnbull was silent for a moment. Then he began to speak, but MacIan
+continued with the same steady voice and sad eyes:
+
+“So what I feel is this: Here is the great divine creation I was
+taught to believe in. I can understand your disbelieving in it, but
+why disbelieve in a part of it? It was all one thing to me. God had
+authority because he was God. Man had authority because he was man. You
+cannot prove that God is better than a man; nor can you prove that a man
+is better than a horse. Why permit any ordinary thing? Why do you let a
+horse be saddled?”
+
+“Some modern thinkers disapprove of it,” said Turnbull a little
+doubtfully.
+
+“I know,” said MacIan grimly; “that man who talked about love, for
+instance.”
+
+Turnbull made a humorous grimace; then he said: “We seem to be talking
+in a kind of shorthand; but I won't pretend not to understand you. What
+you mean is this: that you learnt about all your saints and angels at
+the same time as you learnt about common morality, from the same people,
+in the same way. And you mean to say that if one may be disputed, so
+may the other. Well, let that pass for the moment. But let me ask you
+a question in turn. Did not this system of yours, which you swallowed
+whole, contain all sorts of things that were merely local, the respect
+for the chief of your clan, or such things; the village ghost, the
+family feud, or what not? Did you not take in those things, too, along
+with your theology?”
+
+MacIan stared along the dim village road, down which the last straggler
+from the inn was trailing his way.
+
+“What you say is not unreasonable,” he said. “But it is not quite true.
+The distinction between the chief and us did exist; but it was never
+anything like the distinction between the human and the divine, or
+the human and the animal. It was more like the distinction between one
+animal and another. But----”
+
+“Well?” said Turnbull.
+
+MacIan was silent.
+
+“Go on,” repeated Turnbull; “what's the matter with you? What are you
+staring at?”
+
+“I am staring,” said MacIan at last, “at that which shall judge us
+both.”
+
+“Oh, yes,” said Turnbull in a tired way, “I suppose you mean God.”
+
+“No, I don't,” said MacIan, shaking his head. “I mean him.”
+
+And he pointed to the half-tipsy yokel who was ploughing down the road.
+
+“What do you mean?” asked the atheist.
+
+“I mean him,” repeated MacIan with emphasis. “He goes out in the early
+dawn; he digs or he ploughs a field. Then he comes back and drinks ale,
+and then he sings a song. All your philosophies and political systems
+are young compared to him. All your hoary cathedrals, yes, even the
+Eternal Church on earth is new compared to him. The most mouldering gods
+in the British Museum are new facts beside him. It is he who in the end
+shall judge us all.”
+
+And MacIan rose to his feet with a vague excitement.
+
+“What are you going to do?”
+
+“I am going to ask him,” cried MacIan, “which of us is right.”
+
+Turnbull broke into a kind of laugh. “Ask that intoxicated
+turnip-eater----” he began.
+
+“Yes--which of us is right,” cried MacIan violently. “Oh, you have long
+words and I have long words; and I talk of every man being the image of
+God; and you talk of every man being a citizen and enlightened enough to
+govern. But if every man typifies God, there is God. If every man is an
+enlightened citizen, there is your enlightened citizen. The first man
+one meets is always man. Let us catch him up.”
+
+And in gigantic strides the long, lean Highlander whirled away into the
+grey twilight, Turnbull following with a good-humoured oath.
+
+The track of the rustic was easy to follow, even in the faltering
+dark; for he was enlivening his wavering walk with song. It was an
+interminable poem, beginning with some unspecified King William, who (it
+appeared) lived in London town and who after the second rise vanished
+rather abruptly from the train of thought. The rest was almost entirely
+about beer and was thick with local topography of a quite unrecognizable
+kind. The singer's step was neither very rapid, nor, indeed,
+exceptionally secure; so the song grew louder and louder and the two
+soon overtook him.
+
+He was a man elderly or rather of any age, with lean grey hair and a
+lean red face, but with that remarkable rustic physiognomy in which it
+seems that all the features stand out independently from the face; the
+rugged red nose going out like a limb; the bleared blue eyes standing
+out like signals.
+
+He gave them greeting with the elaborate urbanity of the slightly
+intoxicated. MacIan, who was vibrating with one of his silent,
+violent decisions, opened the question without delay. He explained the
+philosophic position in words as short and simple as possible. But
+the singular old man with the lank red face seemed to think uncommonly
+little of the short words. He fixed with a fierce affection upon one or
+two of the long ones.
+
+“Atheists!” he repeated with luxurious scorn. “Atheists! I know their
+sort, master. Atheists! Don't talk to me about 'un. Atheists!”
+
+The grounds of his disdain seemed a little dark and confused; but they
+were evidently sufficient. MacIan resumed in some encouragement:
+
+“You think as I do, I hope; you think that a man should be connected
+with the Church; with the common Christian----”
+
+The old man extended a quivering stick in the direction of a distant
+hill.
+
+“There's the church,” he said thickly. “Grassley old church that is.
+Pulled down it was, in the old squire's time, and----”
+
+“I mean,” explained MacIan elaborately, “that you think that there
+should be someone typifying religion, a priest----”
+
+“Priests!” said the old man with sudden passion. “Priests! I know
+'un. What they want in England? That's what I say. What they want in
+England?”
+
+“They want you,” said MacIan.
+
+“Quite so,” said Turnbull, “and me; but they won't get us. MacIan, your
+attempt on the primitive innocence does not seem very successful. Let
+me try. What you want, my friend, is your rights. You don't want any
+priests or churches. A vote, a right to speak is what you----”
+
+“Who says I a'n't got a right to speak?” said the old man, facing round
+in an irrational frenzy. “I got a right to speak. I'm a man, I am. I
+don't want no votin' nor priests. I say a man's a man; that's what I
+say. If a man a'n't a man, what is he? That's what I say, if a man a'n't
+a man, what is he? When I sees a man, I sez 'e's a man.”
+
+“Quite so,” said Turnbull, “a citizen.”
+
+“I say he's a man,” said the rustic furiously, stopping and striking his
+stick on the ground. “Not a city or owt else. He's a man.”
+
+“You're perfectly right,” said the sudden voice of MacIan, falling like
+a sword. “And you have kept close to something the whole world of today
+tries to forget.”
+
+“Good night.”
+
+And the old man went on wildly singing into the night.
+
+“A jolly old creature,” said Turnbull; “he didn't seem able to get much
+beyond that fact that a man is a man.”
+
+“Has anybody got beyond it?” asked MacIan.
+
+Turnbull looked at him curiously. “Are you turning an agnostic?” he
+asked.
+
+“Oh, you do not understand!” cried out MacIan. “We Catholics are all
+agnostics. We Catholics have only in that sense got as far as realizing
+that man is a man. But your Ibsens and your Zolas and your Shaws and
+your Tolstoys have not even got so far.”
+
+
+
+
+VIII. AN INTERLUDE OF ARGUMENT
+
+Morning broke in bitter silver along the grey and level plain; and
+almost as it did so Turnbull and MacIan came out of a low, scrubby wood
+on to the empty and desolate flats. They had walked all night.
+
+They had walked all night and talked all night also, and if the subject
+had been capable of being exhausted they would have exhausted it.
+Their long and changing argument had taken them through districts and
+landscapes equally changing. They had discussed Haeckel upon hills so
+high and steep that in spite of the coldness of the night it seemed as
+if the stars might burn them. They had explained and re-explained
+the Massacre of St. Bartholomew in little white lanes walled in with
+standing corn as with walls of gold. They had talked about Mr. Kensit
+in dim and twinkling pine woods, amid the bewildering monotony of
+the pines. And it was with the end of a long speech from MacIan,
+passionately defending the practical achievements and the solid
+prosperity of the Catholic tradition, that they came out upon the open
+land.
+
+MacIan had learnt much and thought more since he came out of the
+cloudy hills of Arisaig. He had met many typical modern figures under
+circumstances which were sharply symbolic; and, moreover, he had
+absorbed the main modern atmosphere from the mere presence and chance
+phrases of Turnbull, as such atmospheres can always be absorbed from the
+presence and the phrases of any man of great mental vitality. He had at
+last begun thoroughly to understand what are the grounds upon which the
+mass of the modern world solidly disapprove of her creed; and he threw
+himself into replying to them with a hot intellectual enjoyment.
+
+“I begin to understand one or two of your dogmas, Mr. Turnbull,” he had
+said emphatically as they ploughed heavily up a wooded hill. “And every
+one that I understand I deny. Take any one of them you like. You hold
+that your heretics and sceptics have helped the world forward and handed
+on a lamp of progress. I deny it. Nothing is plainer from real history
+than that each of your heretics invented a complete cosmos of his own
+which the next heretic smashed entirely to pieces. Who knows now exactly
+what Nestorius taught? Who cares? There are only two things that we know
+for certain about it. The first is that Nestorius, as a heretic, taught
+something quite opposite to the teaching of Arius, the heretic who came
+before him, and something quite useless to James Turnbull, the heretic
+who comes after. I defy you to go back to the Free-thinkers of the past
+and find any habitation for yourself at all. I defy you to read
+Godwin or Shelley or the deists of the eighteenth century of the
+nature-worshipping humanists of the Renaissance, without discovering
+that you differ from them twice as much as you differ from the Pope. You
+are a nineteenth-century sceptic, and you are always telling me that
+I ignore the cruelty of nature. If you had been an eighteenth-century
+sceptic you would have told me that I ignore the kindness and
+benevolence of nature. You are an atheist, and you praise the deists of
+the eighteenth century. Read them instead of praising them, and you will
+find that their whole universe stands or falls with the deity. You are a
+materialist, and you think Bruno a scientific hero. See what he said and
+you will think him an insane mystic. No, the great Free-thinker,
+with his genuine ability and honesty, does not in practice destroy
+Christianity. What he does destroy is the Free-thinker who went before.
+Free-thought may be suggestive, it may be inspiriting, it may have as
+much as you please of the merits that come from vivacity and
+variety. But there is one thing Free-thought can never be by any
+possibility--Free-thought can never be progressive. It can never be
+progressive because it will accept nothing from the past; it begins
+every time again from the beginning; and it goes every time in a
+different direction. All the rational philosophers have gone along
+different roads, so it is impossible to say which has gone farthest. Who
+can discuss whether Emerson was a better optimist than Schopenhauer was
+pessimist? It is like asking if this corn is as yellow as that hill is
+steep. No; there are only two things that really progress; and they both
+accept accumulations of authority. They may be progressing uphill and
+down; they may be growing steadily better or steadily worse; but they
+have steadily increased in certain definable matters; they have steadily
+advanced in a certain definable direction; they are the only two things,
+it seems, that ever _can_ progress. The first is strictly physical
+science. The second is the Catholic Church.”
+
+“Physical science and the Catholic Church!” said Turnbull sarcastically;
+“and no doubt the first owes a great deal to the second.”
+
+“If you pressed that point I might reply that it was very probable,”
+ answered MacIan calmly. “I often fancy that your historical
+generalizations rest frequently on random instances; I should not be
+surprised if your vague notions of the Church as the persecutor of
+science was a generalization from Galileo. I should not be at all
+surprised if, when you counted the scientific investigations and
+discoveries since the fall of Rome, you found that a great mass of them
+had been made by monks. But the matter is irrelevant to my meaning. I
+say that if you want an example of anything which has progressed in
+the moral world by the same method as science in the material world, by
+continually adding to without unsettling what was there before, then I
+say that there _is_ only one example of it. And that is Us.”
+
+“With this enormous difference,” said Turnbull, “that however elaborate
+be the calculations of physical science, their net result can be tested.
+Granted that it took millions of books I never read and millions of men
+I never heard of to discover the electric light. Still I can see the
+electric light. But I cannot see the supreme virtue which is the result
+of all your theologies and sacraments.”
+
+“Catholic virtue is often invisible because it is the normal,” answered
+MacIan. “Christianity is always out of fashion because it is always
+sane; and all fashions are mild insanities. When Italy is mad on art
+the Church seems too Puritanical; when England is mad on Puritanism the
+Church seems too artistic. When you quarrel with us now you class us
+with kingship and despotism; but when you quarrelled with us first it
+was because we would not accept the divine despotism of Henry VIII. The
+Church always seems to be behind the times, when it is really beyond the
+times; it is waiting till the last fad shall have seen its last summer.
+It keeps the key of a permanent virtue.”
+
+“Oh, I have heard all that!” said Turnbull with genial contempt. “I have
+heard that Christianity keeps the key of virtue, and that if you read
+Tom Paine you will cut your throat at Monte Carlo. It is such rubbish
+that I am not even angry at it. You say that Christianity is the prop
+of morals; but what more do you do? When a doctor attends you and could
+poison you with a pinch of salt, do you ask whether he is a Christian?
+You ask whether he is a gentleman, whether he is an M.D.--anything but
+that. When a soldier enlists to die for his country or disgrace it, do
+you ask whether he is a Christian? You are more likely to ask whether
+he is Oxford or Cambridge at the boat race. If you think your creed
+essential to morals why do you not make it a test for these things?”
+
+“We once did make it a test for these things,” said MacIan smiling, “and
+then you told us that we were imposing by force a faith unsupported
+by argument. It seems rather hard that having first been told that our
+creed must be false because we did use tests, we should now be told that
+it must be false because we don't. But I notice that most anti-Christian
+arguments are in the same inconsistent style.”
+
+“That is all very well as a debating-club answer,” replied Turnbull
+good-humouredly, “but the question still remains: Why don't you confine
+yourself more to Christians if Christians are the only really good men?”
+
+“Who talked of such folly?” asked MacIan disdainfully. “Do you suppose
+that the Catholic Church ever held that Christians were the only good
+men? Why, the Catholics of the Catholic Middle Ages talked about the
+virtues of all the virtuous Pagans until humanity was sick of the
+subject. No, if you really want to know what we mean when we say that
+Christianity has a special power of virtue, I will tell you. The Church
+is the only thing on earth that can perpetuate a type of virtue and make
+it something more than a fashion. The thing is so plain and historical
+that I hardly think you will ever deny it. You cannot deny that it is
+perfectly possible that tomorrow morning, in Ireland or in Italy, there
+might appear a man not only as good but good in exactly the same way
+as St. Francis of Assisi. Very well, now take the other types of human
+virtue; many of them splendid. The English gentleman of Elizabeth was
+chivalrous and idealistic. But can you stand still here in this meadow
+and _be_ an English gentleman of Elizabeth? The austere republican of
+the eighteenth century, with his stern patriotism and his simple life,
+was a fine fellow. But have you ever seen him? have you ever seen an
+austere republican? Only a hundred years have passed and that volcano of
+revolutionary truth and valour is as cold as the mountains of the moon.
+And so it is and so it will be with the ethics which are buzzing down
+Fleet Street at this instant as I speak. What phrase would inspire
+the London clerk or workman just now? Perhaps that he is a son of the
+British Empire on which the sun never sets; perhaps that he is a prop of
+his Trades Union, or a class-conscious proletarian something or other;
+perhaps merely that he is a gentleman when he obviously is not. Those
+names and notions are all honourable; but how long will they last?
+Empires break; industrial conditions change; the suburbs will not last
+for ever. What will remain? I will tell you. The Catholic Saint will
+remain.”
+
+“And suppose I don't like him?” said Turnbull.
+
+“On my theory the question is rather whether he will like you: or
+more probably whether he will ever have heard of you. But I grant the
+reasonableness of your query. You have a right, if you speak as the
+ordinary man, to ask if you will like the saint. But as the ordinary man
+you do like him. You revel in him. If you dislike him it is not because
+you are a nice ordinary man, but because you are (if you will excuse me)
+a sophisticated prig of a Fleet Street editor. That is just the funny
+part of it. The human race has always admired the Catholic virtues,
+however little it can practise them; and oddly enough it has admired
+most those of them that the modern world most sharply disputes. You
+complain of Catholicism for setting up an ideal of virginity; it did
+nothing of the kind. The whole human race set up an ideal of virginity;
+the Greeks in Athene, the Romans in the Vestal fire, set up an ideal of
+virginity. What then is your real quarrel with Catholicism? Your
+quarrel can only be, your quarrel really only is, that Catholicism has
+_achieved_ an ideal of virginity; that it is no longer a mere piece
+of floating poetry. But if you, and a few feverish men, in top hats,
+running about in a street in London, choose to differ as to the ideal
+itself, not only from the Church, but from the Parthenon whose name
+means virginity, from the Roman Empire which went outwards from the
+virgin flame, from the whole legend and tradition of Europe, from the
+lion who will not touch virgins, from the unicorn who respects them, and
+who make up together the bearers of your own national shield, from the
+most living and lawless of your own poets, from Massinger, who wrote the
+_Virgin Martyr_, from Shakespeare, who wrote _Measure for Measure_--if
+you in Fleet Street differ from all this human experience, does it never
+strike you that it may be Fleet Street that is wrong?”
+
+“No,” answered Turnbull; “I trust that I am sufficiently fair-minded to
+canvass and consider the idea; but having considered it, I think Fleet
+Street is right, yes--even if the Parthenon is wrong. I think that as
+the world goes on new psychological atmospheres are generated, and in
+these atmospheres it is possible to find delicacies and combinations
+which in other times would have to be represented by some ruder symbol.
+Every man feels the need of some element of purity in sex; perhaps
+they can only typify purity as the absence of sex. You will laugh if I
+suggest that we may have made in Fleet Street an atmosphere in which
+a man can be so passionate as Sir Lancelot and as pure as Sir
+Galahad. But, after all, we have in the modern world erected many such
+atmospheres. We have, for instance, a new and imaginative appreciation
+of children.”
+
+“Quite so,” replied MacIan with a singular smile. “It has been very well
+put by one of the brightest of your young authors, who said: 'Unless
+you become as little children ye shall in no wise enter the kingdom of
+heaven.' But you are quite right; there is a modern worship of children.
+And what, I ask you, is this modern worship of children? What, in the
+name of all the angels and devils, is it except a worship of virginity?
+Why should anyone worship a thing merely because it is small or
+immature? No; you have tried to escape from this thing, and the very
+thing you point to as the goal of your escape is only the thing again.
+Am I wrong in saying that these things seem to be eternal?”
+
+And it was with these words that they came in sight of the great
+plains. They went a little way in silence, and then James Turnbull said
+suddenly, “But I _cannot_ believe in the thing.” MacIan answered nothing
+to the speech; perhaps it is unanswerable. And indeed they scarcely
+spoke another word to each other all that day.
+
+
+
+
+IX. THE STRANGE LADY
+
+Moonrise with a great and growing moon opened over all those flats,
+making them seem flatter and larger than they were, turning them to a
+lake of blue light. The two companions trudged across the moonlit plain
+for half an hour in full silence. Then MacIan stopped suddenly and
+planted his sword-point in the ground like one who plants his tent-pole
+for the night. Leaving it standing there, he clutched his black-haired
+skull with his great claws of hands, as was his custom when forcing the
+pace of his brain. Then his hands dropped again and he spoke.
+
+“I'm sure you're thinking the same as I am,” he said; “how long are we
+to be on this damned seesaw?”
+
+The other did not answer, but his silence seemed somehow solid as
+assent; and MacIan went on conversationally. Neither noticed that both
+had instinctively stood still before the sign of the fixed and standing
+sword.
+
+“It is hard to guess what God means in this business. But he means
+something--or the other thing, or both. Whenever we have tried to
+fight each other something has stopped us. Whenever we have tried to be
+reconciled to each other, something has stopped us again. By the run
+of our luck we have never had time to be either friends or enemies.
+Something always jumped out of the bushes.”
+
+Turnbull nodded gravely and glanced round at the huge and hedgeless
+meadow which fell away towards the horizon into a glimmering high road.
+
+“Nothing will jump out of bushes here anyhow,” he said.
+
+“That is what I meant,” said MacIan, and stared steadily at the heavy
+hilt of his standing sword, which in the slight wind swayed on its
+tempered steel like some huge thistle on its stalk.
+
+“That is what I meant; we are quite alone here. I have not heard a
+horse-hoof or a footstep or the hoot of a train for miles. So I think we
+might stop here and ask for a miracle.”
+
+“Oh! might we?” said the atheistic editor with a sort of gusto of
+disgust.
+
+“I beg your pardon,” said MacIan, meekly. “I forgot your prejudices.”
+ He eyed the wind-swung sword-hilt in sad meditation and resumed: “What
+I mean is, we might find out in this quiet place whether there really is
+any fate or any commandment against our enterprise. I will engage on my
+side, like Elijah, to accept a test from heaven. Turnbull, let us draw
+swords here in this moonlight and this monstrous solitude. And if here
+in this moonlight and solitude there happens anything to interrupt
+us--if it be lightning striking our sword-blades or a rabbit running
+under our legs--I will take it as a sign from God and we will shake
+hands for ever.”
+
+Turnbull's mouth twitched in angry humour under his red moustache. He
+said: “I will wait for signs from God until I have any signs of His
+existence; but God--or Fate--forbid that a man of scientific culture
+should refuse any kind of experiment.”
+
+“Very well, then,” said MacIan, shortly. “We are more quiet here than
+anywhere else; let us engage.” And he plucked his sword-point out of the
+turf.
+
+Turnbull regarded him for a second and a half with a baffling visage
+almost black against the moonrise; then his hand made a sharp movement
+to his hip and his sword shone in the moon.
+
+As old chess-players open every game with established gambits, they
+opened with a thrust and parry, orthodox and even frankly ineffectual.
+But in MacIan's soul more formless storms were gathering, and he made
+a lunge or two so savage as first to surprise and then to enrage his
+opponent. Turnbull ground his teeth, kept his temper, and waiting for
+the third lunge, and the worst, had almost spitted the lunger when a
+shrill, small cry came from behind him, a cry such as is not made by any
+of the beasts that perish.
+
+Turnbull must have been more superstitious than he knew, for he stopped
+in the act of going forward. MacIan was brazenly superstitious, and he
+dropped his sword. After all, he had challenged the universe to send
+an interruption; and this was an interruption, whatever else it was. An
+instant afterwards the sharp, weak cry was repeated. This time it was
+certain that it was human and that it was female.
+
+MacIan stood rolling those great blue Gaelic eyes that contrasted with
+his dark hair. “It is the voice of God,” he said again and again.
+
+“God hasn't got much of a voice,” said Turnbull, who snatched at every
+chance of cheap profanity. “As a matter of fact, MacIan, it isn't the
+voice of God, but it's something a jolly sight more important--it is the
+voice of man--or rather of woman. So I think we'd better scoot in its
+direction.”
+
+MacIan snatched up his fallen weapon without a word, and the two raced
+away towards that part of the distant road from which the cry was now
+constantly renewed.
+
+They had to run over a curve of country that looked smooth but was very
+rough; a neglected field which they soon found to be full of the tallest
+grasses and the deepest rabbit-holes. Moreover, that great curve of the
+countryside which looked so slow and gentle when you glanced over it,
+proved to be highly precipitous when you scampered over it; and Turnbull
+was twice nearly flung on his face. MacIan, though much heavier, avoided
+such an overthrow only by having the quick and incalculable feet of the
+mountaineer; but both of them may be said to have leapt off a low cliff
+when they leapt into the road.
+
+The moonlight lay on the white road with a more naked and electric glare
+than on the grey-green upland, and though the scene which it revealed
+was complicated, it was not difficult to get its first features at a
+glance.
+
+A small but very neat black-and-yellow motor-car was standing stolidly,
+slightly to the left of the road. A somewhat larger light-green
+motor-car was tipped half-way into a ditch on the same side, and four
+flushed and staggering men in evening dress were tipped out of it. Three
+of them were standing about the road, giving their opinions to the
+moon with vague but echoing violence. The fourth, however, had
+already advanced on the chauffeur of the black-and-yellow car, and was
+threatening him with a stick. The chauffeur had risen to defend himself.
+By his side sat a young lady.
+
+She was sitting bolt upright, a slender and rigid figure gripping the
+sides of her seat, and her first few cries had ceased. She was clad in
+close-fitting dark costume, a mass of warm brown hair went out in two
+wings or waves on each side of her forehead; and even at that distance
+it could be seen that her profile was of the aquiline and eager sort,
+like a young falcon hardly free of the nest.
+
+Turnbull had concealed in him somewhere a fund of common sense and
+knowledge of the world of which he himself and his best friends were
+hardly aware. He was one of those who take in much of the shows of
+things absent-mindedly, and in an irrelevant reverie. As he stood at
+the door of his editorial shop on Ludgate Hill and meditated on the
+non-existence of God, he silently absorbed a good deal of varied
+knowledge about the existence of men. He had come to know types by
+instinct and dilemmas with a glance; he saw the crux of the situation in
+the road, and what he saw made him redouble his pace.
+
+He knew that the men were rich; he knew that they were drunk; and he
+knew, what was worst of all, that they were fundamentally frightened.
+And he knew this also, that no common ruffian (such as attacks ladies
+in novels) is ever so savage and ruthless as a coarse kind of gentleman
+when he is really alarmed. The reason is not recondite; it is simply
+because the police-court is not such a menacing novelty to the poor
+ruffian as it is to the rich. When they came within hail and heard the
+voices, they confirmed all Turnbull's anticipations. The man in the
+middle of the road was shouting in a hoarse and groggy voice that the
+chauffeur had smashed their car on purpose; that they must get to the
+Cri that evening, and that he would jolly well have to take them there.
+The chauffeur had mildly objected that he was driving a lady. “Oh! we'll
+take care of the lady,” said the red-faced young man, and went off into
+gurgling and almost senile laughter.
+
+By the time the two champions came up, things had grown more serious.
+The intoxication of the man talking to the chauffeur had taken one of
+its perverse and catlike jumps into mere screaming spite and rage. He
+lifted his stick and struck at the chauffeur, who caught hold of it, and
+the drunkard fell backwards, dragging him out of his seat on the car.
+Another of the rowdies rushed forward booing in idiot excitement, fell
+over the chauffeur, and, either by accident or design, kicked him as he
+lay. The drunkard got to his feet again; but the chauffeur did not.
+
+The man who had kicked kept a kind of half-witted conscience or
+cowardice, for he stood staring at the senseless body and murmuring
+words of inconsequent self-justification, making gestures with his hands
+as if he were arguing with somebody. But the other three, with a mere
+whoop and howl of victory, were boarding the car on three sides at once.
+It was exactly at this moment that Turnbull fell among them like one
+fallen from the sky. He tore one of the climbers backward by the collar,
+and with a hearty push sent him staggering over into the ditch upon his
+nose. One of the remaining two, who was too far gone to notice anything,
+continued to clamber ineffectually over the high back of the car,
+kicking and pouring forth a rivulet of soliloquy. But the other dropped
+at the interruption, turned upon Turnbull and began a battering bout
+of fisticuffs. At the same moment the man crawled out of the ditch in a
+masquerade of mud and rushed at his old enemy from behind. The whole
+had not taken a second; and an instant after MacIan was in the midst of
+them.
+
+Turnbull had tossed away his sheathed sword, greatly preferring his
+hands, except in the avowed etiquette of the duel; for he had learnt to
+use his hands in the old street-battles of Bradlaugh. But to MacIan the
+sword even sheathed was a more natural weapon, and he laid about him
+on all sides with it as with a stick. The man who had the walking-stick
+found his blows parried with promptitude; and a second after, to his
+great astonishment, found his own stick fly up in the air as by a
+conjuring trick, with a turn of the swordsman's wrist. Another of the
+revellers picked the stick out of the ditch and ran in upon MacIan,
+calling to his companion to assist him.
+
+“I haven't got a stick,” grumbled the disarmed man, and looked vaguely
+about the ditch.
+
+“Perhaps,” said MacIan, politely, “you would like this one.” With the
+word the drunkard found his hand that had grasped the stick suddenly
+twisted and empty; and the stick lay at the feet of his companion on the
+other side of the road. MacIan felt a faint stir behind him; the girl
+had risen to her feet and was leaning forward to stare at the fighters.
+Turnbull was still engaged in countering and pommelling with the third
+young man. The fourth young man was still engaged with himself, kicking
+his legs in helpless rotation on the back of the car and talking with
+melodious rationality.
+
+At length Turnbull's opponent began to back before the battery of his
+heavy hands, still fighting, for he was the soberest and boldest of the
+four. If these are annals of military glory, it is due to him to say
+that he need not have abandoned the conflict; only that as he backed
+to the edge of the ditch his foot caught in a loop of grass and he
+went over in a flat and comfortable position from which it took him a
+considerable time to rise. By the time he had risen, Turnbull had come
+to the rescue of MacIan, who was at bay but belabouring his two enemies
+handsomely. The sight of the liberated reserve was to them like that
+of Blucher at Waterloo; the two set off at a sullen trot down the road,
+leaving even the walking-stick lying behind them in the moonlight.
+MacIan plucked the struggling and aspiring idiot off the back of the car
+like a stray cat, and left him swaying unsteadily in the moon. Then he
+approached the front part of the car in a somewhat embarrassed manner
+and pulled off his cap.
+
+For some solid seconds the lady and he merely looked at each other, and
+MacIan had an irrational feeling of being in a picture hung on a
+wall. That is, he was motionless, even lifeless, and yet staringly
+significant, like a picture. The white moonlight on the road, when he
+was not looking at it, gave him a vision of the road being white with
+snow. The motor-car, when he was not looking at it, gave him a rude
+impression of a captured coach in the old days of highwaymen. And
+he whose whole soul was with the swords and stately manners of the
+eighteenth century, he who was a Jacobite risen from the dead, had an
+overwhelming sense of being once more in the picture, when he had so
+long been out of the picture.
+
+In that short and strong silence he absorbed the lady from head to foot.
+He had never really looked at a human being before in his life. He saw
+her face and hair first, then that she had long suede gloves; then that
+there was a fur cap at the back of her brown hair. He might, perhaps,
+be excused for this hungry attention. He had prayed that some sign might
+come from heaven; and after an almost savage scrutiny he came to the
+conclusion that his one did. The lady's instantaneous arrest of speech
+might need more explaining; but she may well have been stunned with
+the squalid attack and the abrupt rescue. Yet it was she who remembered
+herself first and suddenly called out with self-accusing horror:
+
+“Oh, that poor, poor man!”
+
+They both swung round abruptly and saw that Turnbull, with his recovered
+sword under his arm-pit, was already lifting the fallen chauffeur into
+the car. He was only stunned and was slowly awakening, feebly waving his
+left arm.
+
+The lady in long gloves and the fur cap leapt out and ran rapidly
+towards them, only to be reassured by Turnbull, who (unlike many of his
+school) really knew a little science when he invoked it to redeem the
+world. “He's all right,” said he; “he's quite safe. But I'm afraid he
+won't be able to drive the car for half an hour or so.”
+
+“I can drive the car,” said the young woman in the fur cap with stony
+practicability.
+
+“Oh, in that case,” began MacIan, uneasily; and that paralysing shyness
+which is a part of romance induced him to make a backward movement as
+if leaving her to herself. But Turnbull was more rational than he, being
+more indifferent.
+
+“I don't think you ought to drive home alone, ma'am,” he said, gruffly.
+“There seem to be a lot of rowdy parties along this road, and the man
+will be no use for an hour. If you will tell us where you are going, we
+will see you safely there and say good night.”
+
+The young lady exhibited all the abrupt disturbance of a person who is
+not commonly disturbed. She said almost sharply and yet with evident
+sincerity: “Of course I am awfully grateful to you for all you've
+done--and there's plenty of room if you'll come in.”
+
+Turnbull, with the complete innocence of an absolutely sound motive,
+immediately jumped into the car; but the girl cast an eye at MacIan, who
+stood in the road for an instant as if rooted like a tree. Then he also
+tumbled his long legs into the tonneau, having that sense of degradedly
+diving into heaven which so many have known in so many human houses when
+they consented to stop to tea or were allowed to stop to supper. The
+slowly reviving chauffeur was set in the back seat; Turnbull and MacIan
+had fallen into the middle one; the lady with a steely coolness had
+taken the driver's seat and all the handles of that headlong machine. A
+moment afterwards the engine started, with a throb and leap unfamiliar
+to Turnbull, who had only once been in a motor during a general
+election, and utterly unknown to MacIan, who in his present mood thought
+it was the end of the world. Almost at the same instant that the car
+plucked itself out of the mud and whipped away up the road, the man who
+had been flung into the ditch rose waveringly to his feet. When he saw
+the car escaping he ran after it and shouted something which, owing
+to the increasing distance, could not be heard. It is awful to reflect
+that, if his remark was valuable, it is quite lost to the world.
+
+The car shot on up and down the shining moonlit lanes, and there was no
+sound in it except the occasional click or catch of its machinery; for
+through some cause or other no soul inside it could think of a word to
+say. The lady symbolized her feelings, whatever they were, by urging the
+machine faster and faster until scattered woodlands went by them in
+one black blotch and heavy hills and valleys seemed to ripple under the
+wheels like mere waves. A little while afterwards this mood seemed to
+slacken and she fell into a more ordinary pace; but still she did not
+speak. Turnbull, who kept a more common and sensible view of the case
+than anyone else, made some remark about the moonlight; but something
+indescribable made him also relapse into silence.
+
+All this time MacIan had been in a sort of monstrous delirium, like some
+fabulous hero snatched up into the moon. The difference between this
+experience and common experiences was analogous to that between waking
+life and a dream. Yet he did not feel in the least as if he were
+dreaming; rather the other way; as waking was more actual than dreaming,
+so this seemed by another degree more actual than waking itself. But it
+was another life altogether, like a cosmos with a new dimension.
+
+He felt he had been hurled into some new incarnation: into the midst
+of new relations, wrongs and rights, with towering responsibilities and
+almost tragic joys which he had as yet had no time to examine. Heaven
+had not merely sent him a message; Heaven itself had opened around him
+and given him an hour of its own ancient and star-shattering energy.
+He had never felt so much alive before; and yet he was like a man in a
+trance. And if you had asked him on what his throbbing happiness hung,
+he could only have told you that it hung on four or five visible facts,
+as a curtain hangs on four of five fixed nails. The fact that the lady
+had a little fur at her throat; the fact that the curve of her cheek
+was a low and lean curve and that the moonlight caught the height of
+her cheek-bone; the fact that her hands were small but heavily gloved as
+they gripped the steering-wheel; the fact that a white witch light was
+on the road; the fact that the brisk breeze of their passage stirred and
+fluttered a little not only the brown hair of her head but the black
+fur on her cap. All these facts were to him certain and incredible, like
+sacraments.
+
+When they had driven half a mile farther, a big shadow was flung across
+the path, followed by its bulky owner, who eyed the car critically but
+let it pass. The silver moonlight picked out a piece or two of pewter
+ornament on his blue uniform; and as they went by they knew it was a
+sergeant of police. Three hundred yards farther on another policeman
+stepped out into the road as if to stop them, then seemed to doubt his
+own authority and stepped back again. The girl was a daughter of the
+rich; and this police suspicion (under which all the poor live day and
+night) stung her for the first time into speech.
+
+“What can they mean?” she cried out in a kind of temper; “this car's
+going like a snail.”
+
+There was a short silence, and then Turnbull said: “It is certainly very
+odd, you are driving quietly enough.”
+
+“You are driving nobly,” said MacIan, and his words (which had no
+meaning whatever) sounded hoarse and ungainly even in his own ears.
+
+They passed the next mile and a half swiftly and smoothly; yet among the
+many things which they passed in the course of it was a clump of eager
+policemen standing at a cross-road. As they passed, one of the policemen
+shouted something to the others; but nothing else happened. Eight
+hundred yards farther on, Turnbull stood up suddenly in the swaying car.
+
+“My God, MacIan!” he called out, showing his first emotion of that
+night. “I don't believe it's the pace; it couldn't be the pace. I
+believe it's us.”
+
+MacIan sat motionless for a few moments and then turned up at his
+companion a face that was as white as the moon above it.
+
+“You may be right,” he said at last; “if you are, I must tell her.”
+
+“I will tell the lady if you like,” said Turnbull, with his unconquered
+good temper.
+
+“You!” said MacIan, with a sort of sincere and instinctive astonishment.
+“Why should you--no, I must tell her, of course----”
+
+And he leant forward and spoke to the lady in the fur cap.
+
+“I am afraid, madam, that we may have got you into some trouble,” he
+said, and even as he said it it sounded wrong, like everything he said
+to this particular person in the long gloves. “The fact is,” he resumed,
+desperately, “the fact is, we are being chased by the police.” Then
+the last flattening hammer fell upon poor Evan's embarrassment; for the
+fluffy brown head with the furry black cap did not turn by a section of
+the compass.
+
+“We are chased by the police,” repeated MacIan, vigorously; then he
+added, as if beginning an explanation, “You see, I am a Catholic.”
+
+The wind whipped back a curl of the brown hair so as to necessitate a
+new theory of aesthetics touching the line of the cheek-bone; but the
+head did not turn.
+
+“You see,” began MacIan, again blunderingly, “this gentleman wrote in
+his newspaper that Our Lady was a common woman, a bad woman, and so we
+agreed to fight; and we were fighting quite a little time ago--but that
+was before we saw you.”
+
+The young lady driving her car had half turned her face to listen; and
+it was not a reverent or a patient face that she showed him. Her Norman
+nose was tilted a trifle too high upon the slim stalk of her neck and
+body.
+
+When MacIan saw that arrogant and uplifted profile pencilled plainly
+against the moonshine, he accepted an ultimate defeat. He had expected
+the angels to despise him if he were wrong, but not to despise him so
+much as this.
+
+“You see,” said the stumbling spokesman, “I was angry with him when he
+insulted the Mother of God, and I asked him to fight a duel with me; but
+the police are all trying to stop it.”
+
+Nothing seemed to waver or flicker in the fair young falcon profile; and
+it only opened its lips to say, after a silence: “I thought people in
+our time were supposed to respect each other's religion.”
+
+Under the shadow of that arrogant face MacIan could only fall back on
+the obvious answer: “But what about a man's irreligion?” The face only
+answered: “Well, you ought to be more broadminded.”
+
+If anyone else in the world had said the words, MacIan would have
+snorted with his equine neigh of scorn. But in this case he seemed
+knocked down by a superior simplicity, as if his eccentric attitude were
+rebuked by the innocence of a child. He could not dissociate anything
+that this woman said or did or wore from an idea of spiritual rarity and
+virtue. Like most others under the same elemental passion, his soul was
+at present soaked in ethics. He could have applied moral terms to the
+material objects of her environment. If someone had spoken of
+“her generous ribbon” or “her chivalrous gloves” or “her merciful
+shoe-buckle,” it would not have seemed to him nonsense.
+
+He was silent, and the girl went on in a lower key as if she were
+momentarily softened and a little saddened also. “It won't do, you
+know,” she said; “you can't find out the truth in that way. There are
+such heaps of churches and people thinking different things nowadays,
+and they all think they are right. My uncle was a Swedenborgian.”
+
+MacIan sat with bowed head, listening hungrily to her voice but hardly
+to her words, and seeing his great world drama grow smaller and smaller
+before his eyes till it was no bigger than a child's toy theatre.
+
+“The time's gone by for all that,” she went on; “you can't find out the
+real thing like that--if there is really anything to find----” and
+she sighed rather drearily; for, like many of the women of our wealthy
+class, she was old and broken in thought, though young and clean enough
+in her emotions.
+
+“Our object,” said Turnbull, shortly, “is to make an effective
+demonstration”; and after that word, MacIan looked at his vision again
+and found it smaller than ever.
+
+“It would be in the newspapers, of course,” said the girl. “People read
+the newspapers, but they don't believe them, or anything else, I think.”
+ And she sighed again.
+
+She drove in silence a third of a mile before she added, as if
+completing the sentence: “Anyhow, the whole thing's quite absurd.”
+
+“I don't think,” began Turnbull, “that you quite realize----Hullo!
+hullo--hullo--what's this?”
+
+The amateur chauffeur had been forced to bring the car to a staggering
+stoppage, for a file of fat, blue policemen made a wall across the way.
+A sergeant came to the side and touched his peaked cap to the lady.
+
+“Beg your pardon, miss,” he said with some embarrassment, for he knew
+her for a daughter of a dominant house, “but we have reason to believe
+that the gentlemen in your car are----” and he hesitated for a polite
+phrase.
+
+“I am Evan MacIan,” said that gentleman, and stood up in a sort of
+gloomy pomp, not wholly without a touch of the sulks of a schoolboy.
+
+“Yes, we will get out, sergeant,” said Turnbull, more easily; “my name
+is James Turnbull. We must not incommode the lady.”
+
+“What are you taking them up for?” asked the young woman, looking
+straight in front of her along the road.
+
+“It's under the new act,” said the sergeant, almost apologetically.
+“Incurable disturbers of the peace.”
+
+“What will happen to them?” she asked, with the same frigid clearness.
+
+“Westgate Adult Reformatory,” he replied, briefly.
+
+“Until when?”
+
+“Until they are cured,” said the official.
+
+“Very well, sergeant,” said the young lady, with a sort of tired common
+sense. “I am sure I don't want to protect criminals or go against
+the law; but I must tell you that these gentlemen have done me a
+considerable service; you won't mind drawing your men a little farther
+off while I say good night to them. Men like that always misunderstand.”
+
+The sergeant was profoundly disquieted from the beginning at the mere
+idea of arresting anyone in the company of a great lady; to refuse one
+of her minor requests was quite beyond his courage. The police fell back
+to a few yards behind the car. Turnbull took up the two swords that were
+their only luggage; the swords that, after so many half duels, they were
+now to surrender at last. MacIan, the blood thundering in his brain
+at the thought of that instant of farewell, bent over, fumbled at the
+handle and flung open the door to get out.
+
+But he did not get out. He did not get out, because it is dangerous to
+jump out of a car when it is going at full speed. And the car was going
+at full speed, because the young lady, without turning her head or
+so much as saying a syllable, had driven down a handle that made the
+machine plunge forward like a buffalo and then fly over the landscape
+like a greyhound. The police made one rush to follow, and then dropped
+so grotesque and hopeless a chase. Away in the vanishing distance they
+could see the sergeant furiously making notes.
+
+The open door, still left loose on its hinges, swung and banged quite
+crazily as they went whizzing up one road and down another. Nor did
+MacIan sit down; he stood up stunned and yet staring, as he would have
+stood up at the trumpet of the Last Day. A black dot in the distance
+sprang up a tall black forest, swallowed them and spat them out again
+at the other end. A railway bridge grew larger and larger till it leapt
+upon their backs bellowing, and was in its turn left behind. Avenues of
+poplars on both sides of the road chased each other like the figures
+in a zoetrope. Now and then with a shock and rattle they went through
+sleeping moonlit villages, which must have stirred an instant in their
+sleep as at the passing of a fugitive earthquake. Sometimes in an
+outlying house a light in one erratic, unexpected window would give them
+a nameless hint of the hundred human secrets which they left behind them
+with their dust. Sometimes even a slouching rustic would be afoot on
+the road and would look after them, as after a flying phantom. But still
+MacIan stood up staring at earth and heaven; and still the door he had
+flung open flapped loose like a flag. Turnbull, after a few minutes of
+dumb amazement, had yielded to the healthiest element in his nature and
+gone off into uncontrollable fits of laughter. The girl had not stirred
+an inch.
+
+After another half mile that seemed a mere flash, Turnbull leant over
+and locked the door. Evan staggered at last into his seat and hid his
+throbbing head in his hands; and still the car flew on and its driver
+sat inflexible and silent. The moon had already gone down, and the whole
+darkness was faintly troubled with twilight and the first movement of
+beasts and fowls. It was that mysterious moment when light is coming as
+if it were something unknown whose nature one could not guess--a mere
+alteration in everything. They looked at the sky and it seemed as dark
+as ever; then they saw the black shape of a tower or tree against it and
+knew that it was already grey. Save that they were driving southward and
+had certainly passed the longitude of London, they knew nothing of their
+direction; but Turnbull, who had spent a year on the Hampshire coast in
+his youth, began to recognize the unmistakable but quite indescribable
+villages of the English south. Then a white witch fire began to burn
+between the black stems of the fir-trees; and, like so many things in
+nature, though not in books on evolution, the daybreak, when it did
+come, came much quicker than one would think. The gloomy heavens were
+ripped up and rolled away like a scroll, revealing splendours, as the
+car went roaring up the curve of a great hill; and above them and black
+against the broadening light, there stood one of those crouching and
+fantastic trees that are first signals of the sea.
+
+
+
+
+X. THE SWORDS REJOINED
+
+As they came over the hill and down on the other side of it, it is not
+too much to say that the whole universe of God opened over them and
+under them, like a thing unfolding to five times its size. Almost under
+their feet opened the enormous sea, at the bottom of a steep valley
+which fell down into a bay; and the sea under their feet blazed at them
+almost as lustrous and almost as empty as the sky. The sunrise opened
+above them like some cosmic explosion, shining and shattering and yet
+silent; as if the world were blown to pieces without a sound. Round
+the rays of the victorious sun swept a sort of rainbow of confused and
+conquered colours--brown and blue and green and flaming rose-colour;
+as though gold were driving before it all the colours of the world. The
+lines of the landscape down which they sped, were the simple, strict,
+yet swerving, lines of a rushing river; so that it was almost as if they
+were being sucked down in a huge still whirlpool. Turnbull had some such
+feeling, for he spoke for the first time for many hours.
+
+“If we go down at this rate we shall be over the sea cliff,” he said.
+
+“How glorious!” said MacIan.
+
+When, however, they had come into the wide hollow at the bottom of that
+landslide, the car took a calm and graceful curve along the side of
+the sea, melted into the fringe of a few trees, and quietly, yet
+astonishingly, stopped. A belated light was burning in the broad morning
+in the window of a sort of lodge- or gate-keepers' cottage; and the girl
+stood up in the car and turned her splendid face to the sun.
+
+Evan seemed startled by the stillness, like one who had been born amid
+sound and speed. He wavered on his long legs as he stood up; he pulled
+himself together, and the only consequence was that he trembled from
+head to foot. Turnbull had already opened the door on his side and
+jumped out.
+
+The moment he had done so the strange young woman had one more mad
+movement, and deliberately drove the car a few yards farther. Then she
+got out with an almost cruel coolness and began pulling off her long
+gloves and almost whistling.
+
+“You can leave me here,” she said, quite casually, as if they had met
+five minutes before. “That is the lodge of my father's place. Please
+come in, if you like--but I understood that you had some business.”
+
+Evan looked at that lifted face and found it merely lovely; he was far
+too much of a fool to see that it was working with a final fatigue
+and that its austerity was agony. He was even fool enough to ask it a
+question. “Why did you save us?” he said, quite humbly.
+
+The girl tore off one of her gloves, as if she were tearing off her
+hand. “Oh, I don't know,” she said, bitterly. “Now I come to think of
+it, I can't imagine.”
+
+Evan's thoughts, that had been piled up to the morning star, abruptly
+let him down with a crash into the very cellars of the emotional
+universe. He remained in a stunned silence for a long time; and that, if
+he had only known, was the wisest thing that he could possibly do at the
+moment.
+
+Indeed, the silence and the sunrise had their healing effect, for when
+the extraordinary lady spoke again, her tone was more friendly and
+apologetic. “I'm not really ungrateful,” she said; “it was very good of
+you to save me from those men.”
+
+“But why?” repeated the obstinate and dazed MacIan, “why did you save us
+from the other men? I mean the policemen?”
+
+The girl's great brown eyes were lit up with a flash that was at once
+final desperation and the loosening of some private and passionate
+reserve.
+
+“Oh, God knows!” she cried. “God knows that if there is a God He has
+turned His big back on everything. God knows I have had no pleasure in
+my life, though I am pretty and young and father has plenty of money.
+And then people come and tell me that I ought to do things and I do
+them and it's all drivel. They want you to do work among the poor; which
+means reading Ruskin and feeling self-righteous in the best room in
+a poor tenement. Or to help some cause or other, which always means
+bundling people out of crooked houses, in which they've always lived,
+into straight houses, in which they often die. And all the time you have
+inside only the horrid irony of your own empty head and empty heart. I
+am to give to the unfortunate, when my whole misfortune is that I have
+nothing to give. I am to teach, when I believe nothing at all that I was
+taught. I am to save the children from death, and I am not even certain
+that I should not be better dead. I suppose if I actually saw a child
+drowning I should save it. But that would be from the same motive from
+which I have saved you, or destroyed you, whichever it is that I have
+done.”
+
+“What was the motive?” asked Evan, in a low voice.
+
+“My motive is too big for my mind,” answered the girl.
+
+Then, after a pause, as she stared with a rising colour at the
+glittering sea, she said: “It can't be described, and yet I am trying to
+describe it. It seems to me not only that I am unhappy, but that there
+is no way of being happy. Father is not happy, though he is a Member of
+Parliament----” She paused a moment and added with a ghost of a smile:
+“Nor Aunt Mabel, though a man from India has told her the secret of all
+creeds. But I may be wrong; there may be a way out. And for one stark,
+insane second, I felt that, after all, you had got the way out and that
+was why the world hated you. You see, if there were a way out, it would
+be sure to be something that looked very queer.”
+
+Evan put his hand to his forehead and began stumblingly: “Yes, I suppose
+we do seem----”
+
+“Oh, yes, you look queer enough,” she said, with ringing sincerity.
+“You'll be all the better for a wash and brush up.”
+
+“You forget our business, madam,” said Evan, in a shaking voice; “we
+have no concern but to kill each other.”
+
+“Well, I shouldn't be killed looking like that if I were you,” she
+replied, with inhuman honesty.
+
+Evan stood and rolled his eyes in masculine bewilderment. Then came
+the final change in this Proteus, and she put out both her hands for an
+instant and said in a low tone on which he lived for days and nights:
+
+“Don't you understand that I did not dare to stop you? What you are
+doing is so mad that it may be quite true. Somehow one can never really
+manage to be an atheist.”
+
+Turnbull stood staring at the sea; but his shoulders showed that he
+heard, and after one minute he turned his head. But the girl had only
+brushed Evan's hand with hers and had fled up the dark alley by the
+lodge gate.
+
+Evan stood rooted upon the road, literally like some heavy statue hewn
+there in the age of the Druids. It seemed impossible that he should
+ever move. Turnbull grew restless with this rigidity, and at last,
+after calling his companion twice or thrice, went up and clapped him
+impatiently on one of his big shoulders. Evan winced and leapt away from
+him with a repulsion which was not the hate of an unclean thing nor the
+dread of a dangerous one, but was a spasm of awe and separation from
+something from which he was now sundered as by the sword of God. He did
+not hate the atheist; it is possible that he loved him. But Turnbull
+was now something more dreadful than an enemy: he was a thing sealed
+and devoted--a thing now hopelessly doomed to be either a corpse or an
+executioner.
+
+“What is the matter with you?” asked Turnbull, with his hearty hand
+still in the air; and yet he knew more about it than his innocent action
+would allow.
+
+“James,” said Evan, speaking like one under strong bodily pain, “I asked
+for God's answer and I have got it--got it in my vitals. He knows how
+weak I am, and that I might forget the peril of the faith, forget the
+face of Our Lady--yes, even with your blow upon her cheek. But the
+honour of this earth has just this about it, that it can make a man's
+heart like iron. I am from the Lords of the Isles and I dare not be a
+mere deserter. Therefore, God has tied me by the chain of my worldly
+place and word, and there is nothing but fighting now.”
+
+“I think I understand you,” said Turnbull, “but you say everything tail
+foremost.”
+
+“She wants us to do it,” said Evan, in a voice crushed with passion.
+“She has hurt herself so that we might do it. She has left her good
+name and her good sleep and all her habits and dignity flung away on the
+other side of England in the hope that she may hear of us and that we
+have broken some hole into heaven.”
+
+“I thought I knew what you mean,” said Turnbull, biting his beard; “it
+does seem as if we ought to do something after all she has done this
+night.”
+
+“I never liked you so much before,” said MacIan, in bitter sorrow.
+
+As he spoke, three solemn footmen came out of the lodge gate and
+assembled to assist the chauffeur to his room. The mere sight of them
+made the two wanderers flee as from a too frightful incongruity, and
+before they knew where they were, they were well upon the grassy ledge
+of England that overlooks the Channel. Evan said suddenly: “Will they
+let me see her in heaven once in a thousand ages?” and addressed the
+remark to the editor of _The Atheist_, as on which he would be likely or
+qualified to answer. But no answer came; a silence sank between the two.
+
+Turnbull strode sturdily to the edge of the cliff and looked out, his
+companion following, somewhat more shaken by his recent agitation.
+
+“If that's the view you take,” said Turnbull, “and I don't say you are
+wrong, I think I know where we shall be best off for the business. As it
+happens, I know this part of the south coast pretty well. And unless I
+am mistaken there's a way down the cliff just here which will land us on
+a stretch of firm sand where no one is likely to follow us.”
+
+The Highlander made a gesture of assent and came also almost to the edge
+of the precipice. The sunrise, which was broadening over sea and shore,
+was one of those rare and splendid ones in which there seems to be no
+mist or doubt, and nothing but a universal clarification more and more
+complete. All the colours were transparent. It seemed like a triumphant
+prophecy of some perfect world where everything being innocent will be
+intelligible; a world where even our bodies, so to speak, may be as of
+burning glass. Such a world is faintly though fiercely figured in the
+coloured windows of Christian architecture. The sea that lay before
+them was like a pavement of emerald, bright and almost brittle; the
+sky against which its strict horizon hung was almost absolutely white,
+except that close to the sky line, like scarlet braids on the hem of a
+garment, lay strings of flaky cloud of so gleaming and gorgeous a red
+that they seemed cut out of some strange blood-red celestial metal, of
+which the mere gold of this earth is but a drab yellow imitation.
+
+“The hand of Heaven is still pointing,” muttered the man of superstition
+to himself. “And now it is a blood-red hand.”
+
+The cool voice of his companion cut in upon his monologue, calling to
+him from a little farther along the cliff, to tell him that he had found
+the ladder of descent. It began as a steep and somewhat greasy path,
+which then tumbled down twenty or thirty feet in the form of a fall of
+rough stone steps. After that, there was a rather awkward drop on to
+a ledge of stone and then the journey was undertaken easily and even
+elegantly by the remains of an ornamental staircase, such as might have
+belonged to some long-disused watering-place. All the time that the
+two travellers sank from stage to stage of this downward journey, there
+closed over their heads living bridges and caverns of the most varied
+foliage, all of which grew greener, redder, or more golden, in the
+growing sunlight of the morning. Life, too, of the more moving sort rose
+at the sun on every side of them. Birds whirred and fluttered in the
+undergrowth, as if imprisoned in green cages. Other birds were shaken
+up in great clouds from the tree-tops, as if they were blossoms detached
+and scattered up to heaven. Animals which Turnbull was too much of a
+Londoner and MacIan too much of a Northerner to know, slipped by among
+the tangle or ran pattering up the tree-trunks. Both the men, according
+to their several creeds, felt the full thunder of the psalm of life as
+they had never heard it before; MacIan felt God the Father, benignant
+in all His energies, and Turnbull that ultimate anonymous energy, that
+_Natura Naturans_, which is the whole theme of Lucretius. It was down
+this clamorous ladder of life that they went down to die.
+
+They broke out upon a brown semicircle of sand, so free from human
+imprint as to justify Turnbull's profession. They strode out upon
+it, stuck their swords in the sand, and had a pause too important
+for speech. Turnbull eyed the coast curiously for a moment, like one
+awakening memories of childhood; then he said abruptly, like a man
+remembering somebody's name: “But, of course, we shall be better off
+still round the corner of Cragness Point; nobody ever comes there at
+all.” And picking up his sword again, he began striding towards a big
+bluff of the rocks which stood out upon their left. MacIan followed him
+round the corner and found himself in what was certainly an even finer
+fencing court, of flat, firm sand, enclosed on three sides by white
+walls of rock, and on the fourth by the green wall of the advancing sea.
+
+“We are quite safe here,” said Turnbull, and, to the other's surprise,
+flung himself down, sitting on the brown beach.
+
+“You see, I was brought up near here,” he explained. “I was sent from
+Scotland to stop with my aunt. It is highly probable that I may die
+here. Do you mind if I light a pipe?”
+
+“Of course, do whatever you like,” said MacIan, with a choking voice,
+and he went and walked alone by himself along the wet, glistening sands.
+
+Ten minutes afterwards he came back again, white with his own whirlwind
+of emotions; Turnbull was quite cheerful and was knocking out the end of
+his pipe.
+
+“You see, we have to do it,” said MacIan. “She tied us to it.”
+
+“Of course, my dear fellow,” said the other, and leapt up as lightly as
+a monkey.
+
+They took their places gravely in the very centre of the great square of
+sand, as if they had thousands of spectators. Before saluting, MacIan,
+who, being a mystic, was one inch nearer to Nature, cast his eye round
+the huge framework of their heroic folly. The three walls of rock all
+leant a little outward, though at various angles; but this impression
+was exaggerated in the direction of the incredible by the heavy load of
+living trees and thickets which each wall wore on its top like a
+huge shock of hair. On all that luxurious crest of life the risen and
+victorious sun was beating, burnishing it all like gold, and every bird
+that rose with that sunrise caught a light like a star upon it like the
+dove of the Holy Spirit. Imaginative life had never so much crowded upon
+MacIan. He felt that he could write whole books about the feelings of a
+single bird. He felt that for two centuries he would not tire of being
+a rabbit. He was in the Palace of Life, of which the very tapestries
+and curtains were alive. Then he recovered himself, and remembered his
+affairs. Both men saluted, and iron rang upon iron. It was exactly
+at the same moment that he realized that his enemy's left ankle was
+encircled with a ring of salt water that had crept up to his feet.
+
+“What is the matter?” said Turnbull, stopping an instant, for he had
+grown used to every movement of his extraordinary fellow-traveller's
+face.
+
+MacIan glanced again at that silver anklet of sea-water and then looked
+beyond at the next promontory round which a deep sea was boiling and
+leaping. Then he turned and looked back and saw heavy foam being shaken
+up to heaven about the base of Cragness Point.
+
+“The sea has cut us off,” he said, curtly.
+
+“I have noticed it,” said Turnbull with equal sobriety. “What view do
+you take of the development?”
+
+Evan threw away his weapon, and, as his custom was, imprisoned his big
+head in his hands. Then he let them fall and said: “Yes, I know what it
+means; and I think it is the fairest thing. It is the finger of God--red
+as blood--still pointing. But now it points to two graves.”
+
+There was a space filled with the sound of the sea, and then MacIan
+spoke again in a voice pathetically reasonable: “You see, we both saved
+her--and she told us both to fight--and it would not be just that either
+should fail and fall alone, while the other----”
+
+“You mean,” said Turnbull, in a voice surprisingly soft and gentle,
+“that there is something fine about fighting in a place where even the
+conqueror must die?”
+
+“Oh, you have got it right, you have got it right!” cried out Evan, in
+an extraordinary childish ecstasy. “Oh, I'm sure that you really believe
+in God!”
+
+Turnbull answered not a word, but only took up his fallen sword.
+
+For the third time Evan MacIan looked at those three sides of English
+cliff hung with their noisy load of life. He had been at a loss to
+understand the almost ironical magnificence of all those teeming
+creatures and tropical colours and smells that smoked happily to heaven.
+But now he knew that he was in the closed court of death and that all
+the gates were sealed.
+
+He drank in the last green and the last red and the last gold, those
+unique and indescribable things of God, as a man drains good wine at the
+bottom of his glass. Then he turned and saluted his enemy once more, and
+the two stood up and fought till the foam flowed over their knees.
+
+Then MacIan stepped backward suddenly with a splash and held up his
+hand. “Turnbull!” he cried; “I can't help it--fair fighting is more even
+than promises. And this is not fair fighting.”
+
+“What the deuce do you mean?” asked the other, staring.
+
+“I've only just thought of it,” cried Evan, brokenly. “We're very well
+matched--it may go on a good time--the tide is coming up fast--and I'm
+a foot and a half taller. You'll be washed away like seaweed before it's
+above my breeches. I'll not fight foul for all the girls and angels in
+the universe.”
+
+“Will you oblige me,” said Turnbull, with staring grey eyes and a voice
+of distinct and violent politeness; “will you oblige me by jolly well
+minding your own business? Just you stand up and fight, and we'll see
+who will be washed away like seaweed. You wanted to finish this fight
+and you shall finish it, or I'll denounce you as a coward to the whole
+of that assembled company.”
+
+Evan looked very doubtful and offered a somewhat wavering weapon; but
+he was quickly brought back to his senses by his opponent's sword-point,
+which shot past him, shaving his shoulder by a hair. By this time the
+waves were well up Turnbull's thigh, and what was worse, they were
+beginning to roll and break heavily around them.
+
+MacIan parried this first lunge perfectly, the next less perfectly; the
+third in all human probability he would not have parried at all; the
+Christian champion would have been pinned like a butterfly, and the
+atheistic champion left to drown like a rat, with such consolation as
+his view of the cosmos afforded him. But just as Turnbull launched his
+heaviest stroke, the sea, in which he stood up to his hips, launched
+a yet heavier one. A wave breaking beyond the others smote him heavily
+like a hammer of water. One leg gave way, he was swung round and sucked
+into the retreating sea, still gripping his sword.
+
+MacIan put his sword between his teeth and plunged after his
+disappearing enemy. He had the sense of having the whole universe on top
+of him as crest after crest struck him down. It seemed to him quite a
+cosmic collapse, as if all the seven heavens were falling on him one
+after the other. But he got hold of the atheist's left leg and he did
+not let it go.
+
+After some ten minutes of foam and frenzy, in which all the senses at
+once seemed blasted by the sea, Evan found himself laboriously swimming
+on a low, green swell, with the sword still in his teeth and the editor
+of _The Atheist_ still under his arm. What he was going to do he had
+not even the most glimmering idea; so he merely kept his grip and swam
+somehow with one hand.
+
+He ducked instinctively as there bulked above him a big, black wave,
+much higher than any that he had seen. Then he saw that it was hardly
+the shape of any possible wave. Then he saw that it was a fisherman's
+boat, and, leaping upward, caught hold of the bow. The boat pitched
+forward with its stern in the air for just as much time as was needed
+to see that there was nobody in it. After a moment or two of desperate
+clambering, however, there were two people in it, Mr. Evan MacIan,
+panting and sweating, and Mr. James Turnbull, uncommonly close to being
+drowned. After ten minutes' aimless tossing in the empty fishing-boat he
+recovered, however, stirred, stretched himself, and looked round on
+the rolling waters. Then, while taking no notice of the streams of salt
+water that were pouring from his hair, beard, coat, boots, and trousers,
+he carefully wiped the wet off his sword-blade to preserve it from the
+possibilities of rust.
+
+MacIan found two oars in the bottom of the deserted boat and began
+somewhat drearily to row.
+
+           *                    *                   *
+
+A rainy twilight was clearing to cold silver over the moaning sea,
+when the battered boat that had rolled and drifted almost aimlessly all
+night, came within sight of land, though of land which looked almost
+as lost and savage as the waves. All night there had been but little
+lifting in the leaden sea, only now and then the boat had been heaved
+up, as on a huge shoulder which slipped from under it; such occasional
+sea-quakes came probably from the swell of some steamer that had passed
+it in the dark; otherwise the waves were harmless though restless. But
+it was piercingly cold, and there was, from time to time, a splutter of
+rain like the splutter of the spray, which seemed almost to freeze as
+it fell. MacIan, more at home than his companion in this quite barbarous
+and elemental sort of adventure, had rowed toilsomely with the heavy
+oars whenever he saw anything that looked like land; but for the most
+part had trusted with grim transcendentalism to wind and tide. Among the
+implements of their first outfit the brandy alone had remained to him,
+and he gave it to his freezing companion in quantities which greatly
+alarmed that temperate Londoner; but MacIan came from the cold seas and
+mists where a man can drink a tumbler of raw whisky in a boat without it
+making him wink.
+
+When the Highlander began to pull really hard upon the oars, Turnbull
+craned his dripping red head out of the boat to see the goal of his
+exertions. It was a sufficiently uninviting one; nothing so far as could
+be seen but a steep and shelving bank of shingle, made of loose little
+pebbles such as children like, but slanting up higher than a house. On
+the top of the mound, against the sky line, stood up the brown skeleton
+of some broken fence or breakwater. With the grey and watery dawn
+crawling up behind it, the fence really seemed to say to our philosophic
+adventurers that they had come at last to the other end of nowhere.
+
+Bent by necessity to his labour, MacIan managed the heavy boat with real
+power and skill, and when at length he ran it up on a smoother part of
+the slope it caught and held so that they could clamber out, not sinking
+farther than their knees into the water and the shingle. A foot or
+two farther up their feet found the beach firmer, and a few moments
+afterwards they were leaning on the ragged breakwater and looking back
+at the sea they had escaped.
+
+They had a dreary walk across wastes of grey shingle in the grey dawn
+before they began to come within hail of human fields or roads; nor had
+they any notion of what fields or roads they would be. Their boots were
+beginning to break up and the confusion of stones tried them severely,
+so that they were glad to lean on their swords, as if they were the
+staves of pilgrims. MacIan thought vaguely of a weird ballad of his own
+country which describes the soul in Purgatory as walking on a plain full
+of sharp stones, and only saved by its own charities upon earth.
+
+        If ever thou gavest hosen and shoon
+            Every night and all,
+        Sit thee down and put them on,
+            And Christ receive thy soul.
+
+Turnbull had no such lyrical meditations, but he was in an even worse
+temper.
+
+At length they came to a pale ribbon of road, edged by a shelf of rough
+and almost colourless turf; and a few feet up the slope there stood
+grey and weather-stained, one of those big wayside crucifixes which are
+seldom seen except in Catholic countries.
+
+MacIan put his hand to his head and found that his bonnet was not there.
+Turnbull gave one glance at the crucifix--a glance at once sympathetic
+and bitter, in which was concentrated the whole of Swinburne's poem on
+the same occasion.
+
+        O hidden face of man, whereover
+            The years have woven a viewless veil,
+        If thou wert verily man's lover
+            What did thy love or blood avail?
+        Thy blood the priests mix poison of,
+        And in gold shekels coin thy love.
+
+Then, leaving MacIan in his attitude of prayer, Turnbull began to look
+right and left very sharply, like one looking for something. Suddenly,
+with a little cry, he saw it and ran forward. A few yards from them
+along the road a lean and starved sort of hedge came pitifully to an
+end. Caught upon its prickly angle, however, there was a very small and
+very dirty scrap of paper that might have hung there for months, since
+it escaped from someone tearing up a letter or making a spill out of
+a newspaper. Turnbull snatched at it and found it was the corner of a
+printed page, very coarsely printed, like a cheap novelette, and just
+large enough to contain the words: “_et c'est elle qui_----”
+
+“Hurrah!” cried Turnbull, waving his fragment; “we are safe at last.
+We are free at last. We are somewhere better than England or Eden or
+Paradise. MacIan, we are in the Land of the Duel!”
+
+“Where do you say?” said the other, looking at him heavily and with
+knitted brows, like one almost dazed with the grey doubts of desolate
+twilight and drifting sea.
+
+“We are in France!” cried Turnbull, with a voice like a trumpet, “in the
+land where things really happen--_Tout arrive en France_. We arrive
+in France. Look at this little message,” and he held out the scrap of
+paper. “There's an omen for you superstitious hill folk. _C'est elle
+qui--Mais oui, mais oui, c'est elle qui sauvera encore le monde_.”
+
+“France!” repeated MacIan, and his eyes awoke again in his head like
+large lamps lighted.
+
+“Yes, France!” said Turnbull, and all the rhetorical part of him came to
+the top, his face growing as red as his hair. “France, that has always
+been in rebellion for liberty and reason. France, that has always
+assailed superstition with the club of Rabelais or the rapier of
+Voltaire. France, at whose first council table sits the sublime figure
+of Julian the Apostate. France, where a man said only the other day
+those splendid unanswerable words”--with a superb gesture--“'we have
+extinguished in heaven those lights that men shall never light again.'”
+
+“No,” said MacIan, in a voice that shook with a controlled passion. “But
+France, which was taught by St. Bernard and led to war by Joan of
+Arc. France that made the crusades. France that saved the Church and
+scattered the heresies by the mouths of Bossuet and Massillon. France,
+which shows today the conquering march of Catholicism, as brain after
+brain surrenders to it, Brunetière, Coppée, Hauptmann, Barrès, Bourget,
+Lemaître.”
+
+“France!” asserted Turnbull with a sort of rollicking self-exaggeration,
+very unusual with him, “France, which is one torrent of splendid
+scepticism from Abelard to Anatole France.”
+
+“France,” said MacIan, “which is one cataract of clear faith from St.
+Louis to Our Lady of Lourdes.”
+
+“France at least,” cried Turnbull, throwing up his sword in schoolboy
+triumph, “in which these things are thought about and fought about.
+France, where reason and religion clash in one continual tournament.
+France, above all, where men understand the pride and passion which have
+plucked our blades from their scabbards. Here, at least, we shall not be
+chased and spied on by sickly parsons and greasy policemen, because we
+wish to put our lives on the game. Courage, my friend, we have come to
+the country of honour.”
+
+MacIan did not even notice the incongruous phrase “my friend”, but
+nodding again and again, drew his sword and flung the scabbard far
+behind him in the road.
+
+“Yes,” he cried, in a voice of thunder, “we will fight here and _He_
+shall look on at it.”
+
+Turnbull glanced at the crucifix with a sort of scowling good-humour and
+then said: “He may look and see His cross defeated.”
+
+“The cross cannot be defeated,” said MacIan, “for it is Defeat.”
+
+A second afterwards the two bright, blood-thirsty weapons made the sign
+of the cross in horrible parody upon each other.
+
+They had not touched each other twice, however, when upon the hill,
+above the crucifix, there appeared another horrible parody of its shape;
+the figure of a man who appeared for an instant waving his outspread
+arms. He had vanished in an instant; but MacIan, whose fighting face was
+set that way, had seen the shape momentarily but quite photographically.
+And while it was like a comic repetition of the cross, it was also,
+in that place and hour, something more incredible. It had been only
+instantaneously on the retina of his eye; but unless his eye and mind
+were going mad together, the figure was that of an ordinary London
+policeman.
+
+He tried to concentrate his senses on the sword-play; but one half of
+his brain was wrestling with the puzzle; the apocalyptic and almost
+seraphic apparition of a stout constable out of Clapham on top of a
+dreary and deserted hill in France. He did not, however, have to puzzle
+long. Before the duellists had exchanged half a dozen passes, the big,
+blue policeman appeared once more on the top of the hill, a palpable
+monstrosity in the eye of heaven. He was waving only one arm now and
+seemed to be shouting directions. At the same moment a mass of blue
+blocked the corner of the road behind the small, smart figure of
+Turnbull, and a small company of policemen in the English uniform came
+up at a kind of half-military double.
+
+Turnbull saw the stare of consternation in his enemy's face and swung
+round to share its cause. When he saw it, cool as he was, he staggered
+back.
+
+“What the devil are you doing here?” he called out in a high, shrill
+voice of authority, like one who finds a tramp in his own larder.
+
+“Well, sir,” said the sergeant in command, with that sort of heavy
+civility shown only to the evidently guilty, “seems to me we might ask
+what are you doing here?”
+
+“We are having an affair of honour,” said Turnbull, as if it were
+the most rational thing in the world. “If the French police like to
+interfere, let them interfere. But why the blue blazes should you
+interfere, you great blue blundering sausages?”
+
+“I'm afraid, sir,” said the sergeant with restraint, “I'm afraid I don't
+quite follow you.”
+
+“I mean, why don't the French police take this up if it's got to be
+taken up? I always heard that they were spry enough in their own way.”
+
+“Well, sir,” said the sergeant reflectively, “you see, sir, the French
+police don't take this up--well, because you see, sir, this ain't
+France. This is His Majesty's dominions, same as 'Ampstead 'eath.”
+
+“Not France?” repeated Turnbull, with a sort of dull incredulity.
+
+“No, sir,” said the sergeant; “though most of the people talk French.
+This is the island called St. Loup, sir, an island in the Channel.
+We've been sent down specially from London, as you were such specially
+distinguished criminals, if you'll allow me to say so. Which reminds
+me to warn you that anything you say may be used against you at your
+trial.”
+
+“Quite so,” said Turnbull, and lurched suddenly against the sergeant,
+so as to tip him over the edge of the road with a crash into the shingle
+below. Then leaving MacIan and the policemen equally and instantaneously
+nailed to the road, he ran a little way along it, leapt off on to a part
+of the beach, which he had found in his journey to be firmer, and
+went across it with a clatter of pebbles. His sudden calculation was
+successful; the police, unacquainted with the various levels of
+the loose beach, tried to overtake him by the shorter cut and found
+themselves, being heavy men, almost up to their knees in shoals of
+slippery shingle. Two who had been slower with their bodies were quicker
+with their minds, and seeing Turnbull's trick, ran along the edge of the
+road after him. Then MacIan finally awoke, and leaving half his
+sleeve in the grip of the only man who tried to hold him, took the two
+policemen in the small of their backs with the impetus of a cannon-ball
+and, sending them also flat among the stones, went tearing after his
+twin defier of the law.
+
+As they were both good runners, the start they had gained was decisive.
+They dropped over a high breakwater farther on upon the beach, turned
+sharply, and scrambled up a line of ribbed rocks, crowned with a
+thicket, crawled through it, scratching their hands and faces, and
+dropped into another road; and there found that they could slacken their
+speed into a steady trot. In all this desperate dart and scramble,
+they still kept hold of their drawn swords, which now, indeed, in the
+vigorous phrase of Bunyan, seemed almost to grow out of their hands.
+
+They had run another half mile or so when it became apparent that
+they were entering a sort of scattered village. One or two whitewashed
+cottages and even a shop had appeared along the side of the road. Then,
+for the first time, Turnbull twisted round his red bear to get a glimpse
+of his companion, who was a foot or two behind, and remarked abruptly:
+“Mr. MacIan, we've been going the wrong way to work all along. We're
+traced everywhere, because everybody knows about us. It's as if one went
+about with Kruger's beard on Mafeking Night.”
+
+“What do you mean?” said MacIan, innocently.
+
+“I mean,” said Turnbull, with steady conviction, “that what we want is a
+little diplomacy, and I am going to buy some in a shop.”
+
+
+
+
+XI. A SCANDAL IN THE VILLAGE
+
+In the little hamlet of Haroc, in the Isle of St. Loup, there lived a
+man who--though living under the English flag--was absolutely untypical
+of the French tradition. He was quite unnoticeable, but that was exactly
+where he was quite himself. He was not even extraordinarily French; but
+then it is against the French tradition to be extraordinarily French.
+Ordinary Englishmen would only have thought him a little old-fashioned;
+imperialistic Englishmen would really have mistaken him for the old John
+Bull of the caricatures. He was stout; he was quite undistinguished; and
+he had side-whiskers, worn just a little longer than John Bull's. He
+was by name Pierre Durand; he was by trade a wine merchant; he was by
+politics a conservative republican; he had been brought up a Catholic,
+had always thought and acted as an agnostic, and was very mildly
+returning to the Church in his later years. He had a genius (if one can
+even use so wild a word in connexion with so tame a person) a genius for
+saying the conventional thing on every conceivable subject; or rather
+what we in England would call the conventional thing. For it was not
+convention with him, but solid and manly conviction. Convention implies
+cant or affectation, and he had not the faintest smell of either. He was
+simply an ordinary citizen with ordinary views; and if you had told him
+so he would have taken it as an ordinary compliment. If you had asked
+him about women, he would have said that one must preserve their
+domesticity and decorum; he would have used the stalest words, but he
+would have in reserve the strongest arguments. If you had asked him
+about government, he would have said that all citizens were free and
+equal, but he would have meant what he said. If you had asked him about
+education, he would have said that the young must be trained up in
+habits of industry and of respect for their parents. Still he would
+have set them the example of industry, and he would have been one of the
+parents whom they could respect. A state of mind so hopelessly central
+is depressing to the English instinct. But then in England a man
+announcing these platitudes is generally a fool and a frightened fool,
+announcing them out of mere social servility. But Durand was anything
+but a fool; he had read all the eighteenth century, and could have
+defended his platitudes round every angle of eighteenth-century
+argument. And certainly he was anything but a coward: swollen and
+sedentary as he was, he could have hit any man back who touched him with
+the instant violence of an automatic machine; and dying in a uniform
+would have seemed to him only the sort of thing that sometimes
+happens. I am afraid it is impossible to explain this monster amid the
+exaggerative sects and the eccentric clubs of my country. He was merely
+a man.
+
+He lived in a little villa which was furnished well with comfortable
+chairs and tables and highly uncomfortable classical pictures and
+medallions. The art in his home contained nothing between the two
+extremes of hard, meagre designs of Greek heads and Roman togas, and on
+the other side a few very vulgar Catholic images in the crudest colours;
+these were mostly in his daughter's room. He had recently lost his wife,
+whom he had loved heartily and rather heavily in complete silence,
+and upon whose grave he was constantly in the habit of placing hideous
+little wreaths, made out of a sort of black-and-white beads. To his only
+daughter he was equally devoted, though he restricted her a good deal
+under a sort of theoretic alarm about her innocence; an alarm which was
+peculiarly unnecessary, first, because she was an exceptionally reticent
+and religious girl, and secondly, because there was hardly anybody else
+in the place.
+
+Madeleine Durand was physically a sleepy young woman, and might easily
+have been supposed to be morally a lazy one. It is, however, certain
+that the work of her house was done somehow, and it is even more rapidly
+ascertainable that nobody else did it. The logician is, therefore,
+driven back upon the assumption that she did it; and that lends a sort
+of mysterious interest to her personality at the beginning. She had very
+broad, low, and level brows, which seemed even lower because her warm
+yellow hair clustered down to her eyebrows; and she had a face just
+plump enough not to look as powerful as it was. Anything that was heavy
+in all this was abruptly lightened by two large, light china-blue eyes,
+lightened all of a sudden as if it had been lifted into the air by two
+big blue butterflies. The rest of her was less than middle-sized, and
+was of a casual and comfortable sort; and she had this difference from
+such girls as the girl in the motor-car, that one did not incline to
+take in her figure at all, but only her broad and leonine and innocent
+head.
+
+Both the father and the daughter were of the sort that would normally
+have avoided all observation; that is, all observation in that
+extraordinary modern world which calls out everything except strength.
+Both of them had strength below the surface; they were like quiet
+peasants owning enormous and unquarried mines. The father with his
+square face and grey side whiskers, the daughter with her square face
+and golden fringe of hair, were both stronger than they know; stronger
+than anyone knew. The father believed in civilization, in the storied
+tower we have erected to affront nature; that is, the father believed in
+Man. The daughter believed in God; and was even stronger. They neither
+of them believed in themselves; for that is a decadent weakness.
+
+The daughter was called a devotee. She left upon ordinary people the
+impression--the somewhat irritating impression--produced by such a
+person; it can only be described as the sense of strong water being
+perpetually poured into some abyss. She did her housework easily; she
+achieved her social relations sweetly; she was never neglectful and
+never unkind. This accounted for all that was soft in her, but not for
+all that was hard. She trod firmly as if going somewhere; she flung her
+face back as if defying something; she hardly spoke a cross word, yet
+there was often battle in her eyes. The modern man asked doubtfully
+where all this silent energy went to. He would have stared still more
+doubtfully if he had been told that it all went into her prayers.
+
+The conventions of the Isle of St. Loup were necessarily a compromise
+or confusion between those of France and England; and it was vaguely
+possible for a respectable young lady to have half-attached lovers, in a
+way that would be impossible to the _bourgeoisie_ of France. One man in
+particular had made himself an unmistakable figure in the track of this
+girl as she went to church. He was a short, prosperous-looking man,
+whose long, bushy black beard and clumsy black umbrella made him seem
+both shorter and older than he really was; but whose big, bold eyes, and
+step that spurned the ground, gave him an instant character of youth.
+
+His name was Camille Bert, and he was a commercial traveller who had
+only been in the island an idle week before he began to hover in the
+tracks of Madeleine Durand. Since everyone knows everyone in so small
+a place, Madeleine certainly knew him to speak to; but it is not very
+evident that she ever spoke. He haunted her, however; especially at
+church, which was, indeed, one of the few certain places for finding
+her. In her home she had a habit of being invisible, sometimes through
+insatiable domesticity, sometimes through an equally insatiable
+solitude. M. Bert did not give the impression of a pious man, though he
+did give, especially with his eyes, the impression of an honest one. But
+he went to Mass with a simple exactitude that could not be mistaken for
+a pose, or even for a vulgar fascination. It was perhaps this religious
+regularity which eventually drew Madeleine into recognition of him. At
+least it is certain that she twice spoke to him with her square and open
+smile in the porch of the church; and there was human nature enough in
+the hamlet to turn even that into gossip.
+
+But the real interest arose suddenly as a squall arises with the
+extraordinary affair that occurred about five days after. There was
+about a third of a mile beyond the village of Haroc a large but lonely
+hotel upon the London or Paris model, but commonly almost entirely
+empty. Among the accidental group of guests who had come to it at this
+season was a man whose nationality no one could fix and who bore the
+non-committal name of Count Gregory. He treated everybody with complete
+civility and almost in complete silence. On the few occasions when he
+spoke, he spoke either French, English, or once (to the priest) Latin;
+and the general opinion was that he spoke them all wrong. He was a
+large, lean man, with the stoop of an aged eagle, and even the eagle's
+nose to complete it; he had old-fashioned military whiskers and
+moustache dyed with a garish and highly incredible yellow. He had the
+dress of a showy gentleman and the manners of a decayed gentleman; he
+seemed (as with a sort of simplicity) to be trying to be a dandy when he
+was too old even to know that he was old. Ye he was decidedly a handsome
+figure with his curled yellow hair and lean fastidious face; and he wore
+a peculiar frock-coat of bright turquoise blue, with an unknown order
+pinned to it, and he carried a huge and heavy cane. Despite his silence
+and his dandified dress and whiskers, the island might never have heard
+of him but for the extraordinary event of which I have spoken, which
+fell about in the following way:
+
+In such casual atmospheres only the enthusiastic go to Benediction; and
+as the warm blue twilight closed over the little candle-lit church and
+village, the line of worshippers who went home from the former to the
+latter thinned out until it broke. On one such evening at least no one
+was in church except the quiet, unconquerable Madeleine, four old women,
+one fisherman, and, of course, the irrepressible M. Camille Bert. The
+others seemed to melt away afterwards into the peacock colours of the
+dim green grass and the dark blue sky. Even Durand was invisible instead
+of being merely reverentially remote; and Madeleine set forth through
+the patch of black forest alone. She was not in the least afraid of
+loneliness, because she was not afraid of devils. I think they were
+afraid of her.
+
+In a clearing of the wood, however, which was lit up with a last patch
+of the perishing sunlight, there advanced upon her suddenly one who was
+more startling than a devil. The incomprehensible Count Gregory, with
+his yellow hair like flame and his face like the white ashes of the
+flame, was advancing bareheaded towards her, flinging out his arms and
+his long fingers with a frantic gesture.
+
+“We are alone here,” he cried, “and you would be at my mercy, only that
+I am at yours.”
+
+Then his frantic hands fell by his sides and he looked up under his
+brows with an expression that went well with his hard breathing.
+Madeleine Durand had come to a halt at first in childish wonder, and
+now, with more than masculine self-control, “I fancy I know your face,
+sir,” she said, as if to gain time.
+
+“I know I shall not forget yours,” said the other, and extended once
+more his ungainly arms in an unnatural gesture. Then of a sudden there
+came out of him a spout of wild and yet pompous phrases. “It is as well
+that you should know the worst and the best. I am a man who knows no
+limit; I am the most callous of criminals, the most unrepentant of
+sinners. There is no man in my dominions so vile as I. But my dominions
+stretch from the olives of Italy to the fir-woods of Denmark, and there
+is no nook of all of them in which I have not done a sin. But when I
+bear you away I shall be doing my first sacrilege, and also my first act
+of virtue.” He seized her suddenly by the elbow; and she did not scream
+but only pulled and tugged. Yet though she had not screamed, someone
+astray in the woods seemed to have heard the struggle. A short but
+nimble figure came along the woodland path like a humming bullet and
+had caught Count Gregory a crack across the face before his own could
+be recognized. When it was recognized it was that of Camille, with the
+black elderly beard and the young ardent eyes.
+
+Up to the moment when Camille had hit the Count, Madeleine had
+entertained no doubt that the Count was merely a madman. Now she was
+startled with a new sanity; for the tall man in the yellow whiskers and
+yellow moustache first returned the blow of Bert, as if it were a sort
+of duty, and then stepped back with a slight bow and an easy smile.
+
+“This need go no further here, M. Bert,” he said. “I need not remind you
+how far it should go elsewhere.”
+
+“Certainly, you need remind me of nothing,” answered Camille, stolidly.
+“I am glad that you are just not too much of a scoundrel for a gentleman
+to fight.”
+
+“We are detaining the lady,” said Count Gregory, with politeness; and,
+making a gesture suggesting that he would have taken off his hat if
+he had had one, he strode away up the avenue of trees and eventually
+disappeared. He was so complete an aristocrat that he could offer his
+back to them all the way up that avenue; and his back never once looked
+uncomfortable.
+
+“You must allow me to see you home,” said Bert to the girl, in a gruff
+and almost stifled voice; “I think we have only a little way to go.”
+
+“Only a little way,” she said, and smiled once more that night, in
+spite of fatigue and fear and the world and the flesh and the devil. The
+glowing and transparent blue of twilight had long been covered by the
+opaque and slatelike blue of night, when he handed her into the lamp-lit
+interior of her home. He went out himself into the darkness, walking
+sturdily, but tearing at his black beard.
+
+All the French or semi-French gentry of the district considered this a
+case in which a duel was natural and inevitable, and neither party had
+any difficulty in finding seconds, strangers as they were in the place.
+Two small landowners, who were careful, practising Catholics, willingly
+undertook to represent that strict church-goer Camille Burt; while the
+profligate but apparently powerful Count Gregory found friends in
+an energetic local doctor who was ready for social promotion and
+an accidental Californian tourist who was ready for anything. As no
+particular purpose could be served by delay, it was arranged that the
+affair should fall out three days afterwards. And when this was settled
+the whole community, as it were, turned over again in bed and thought
+no more about the matter. At least there was only one member of it who
+seemed to be restless, and that was she who was commonly most restful.
+On the next night Madeleine Durand went to church as usual; and as usual
+the stricken Camille was there also. What was not so usual was that when
+they were a bow-shot from the church Madeleine turned round and walked
+back to him. “Sir,” she began, “it is not wrong of me to speak to you,”
+ and the very words gave him a jar of unexpected truth; for in all the
+novels he had ever read she would have begun: “It is wrong of me to
+speak to you.” She went on with wide and serious eyes like an animal's:
+“It is not wrong of me to speak to you, because your soul, or anybody's
+soul, matters so much more than what the world says about anybody. I
+want to talk to you about what you are going to do.”
+
+Bert saw in front of him the inevitable heroine of the novels trying to
+prevent bloodshed; and his pale firm face became implacable.
+
+“I would do anything but that for you,” he said; “but no man can be
+called less than a man.”
+
+She looked at him for a moment with a face openly puzzled, and then
+broke into an odd and beautiful half-smile.
+
+“Oh, I don't mean that,” she said; “I don't talk about what I don't
+understand. No one has ever hit me; and if they had I should not feel
+as a man may. I am sure it is not the best thing to fight. It would be
+better to forgive--if one could really forgive. But when people dine
+with my father and say that fighting a duel is mere murder--of course
+I can see that is not just. It's all so different--having a reason--and
+letting the other man know--and using the same guns and things--and
+doing it in front of your friends. I'm awfully stupid, but I know that
+men like you aren't murderers. But it wasn't that that I meant.”
+
+“What did you mean?” asked the other, looking broodingly at the earth.
+
+“Don't you know,” she said, “there is only one more celebration? I
+thought that as you always go to church--I thought you would communicate
+this morning.”
+
+Bert stepped backward with a sort of action she had never seen in him
+before. It seemed to alter his whole body.
+
+“You may be right or wrong to risk dying,” said the girl, simply; “the
+poor women in our village risk it whenever they have a baby. You men are
+the other half of the world. I know nothing about when you ought to die.
+But surely if you are daring to try and find God beyond the grave and
+appeal to Him--you ought to let Him find you when He comes and stands
+there every morning in our little church.”
+
+And placid as she was, she made a little gesture of argument, of which
+the pathos wrung the heart.
+
+M. Camille Bert was by no means placid. Before that incomplete gesture
+and frankly pleading face he retreated as if from the jaws of a dragon.
+His dark black hair and beard looked utterly unnatural against the
+startling pallor of his face. When at last he said something it was:
+“O God! I can't stand this!” He did not say it in French. Nor did he,
+strictly speaking, say it in English. The truth (interesting only to
+anthropologists) is that he said it in Scotch.
+
+“There will be another mass in a matter of eight hours,” said Madeleine,
+with a sort of business eagerness and energy, “and you can do it then
+before the fighting. You must forgive me, but I was so frightened that
+you would not do it at all.”
+
+Bert seemed to crush his teeth together until they broke, and managed to
+say between them: “And why should you suppose that I shouldn't do as you
+say--I mean not to do it at all?”
+
+“You always go to Mass,” answered the girl, opening her wide blue eyes,
+“and the Mass is very long and tiresome unless one loves God.”
+
+Then it was that Bert exploded with a brutality which might have come
+from Count Gregory, his criminal opponent. He advanced upon Madeleine
+with flaming eyes, and almost took her by the two shoulders. “I do not
+love God,” he cried, speaking French with the broadest Scotch accent; “I
+do not want to find Him; I do not think He is there to be found. I must
+burst up the show; I must and will say everything. You are the happiest
+and honestest thing I ever saw in this godless universe. And I am the
+dirtiest and most dishonest.”
+
+Madeleine looked at him doubtfully for an instant, and then said with a
+sudden simplicity and cheerfulness: “Oh, but if you are really sorry it
+is all right. If you are horribly sorry it is all the better. You have
+only to go and tell the priest so and he will give you God out of his
+own hands.”
+
+“I hate your priest and I deny your God!” cried the man, “and I tell you
+God is a lie and a fable and a mask. And for the first time in my life I
+do not feel superior to God.”
+
+“What can it all mean?” said Madeleine, in massive wonder.
+
+“Because I am a fable also and a mask,” said the man. He had been
+plucking fiercely at his black beard and hair all the time; now he
+suddenly plucked them off and flung them like moulted feathers in the
+mire. This extraordinary spoliation left in the sunlight the same face,
+but a much younger head--a head with close chestnut curls and a short
+chestnut beard.
+
+“Now you know the truth,” he answered, with hard eyes. “I am a cad who
+has played a crooked trick on a quiet village and a decent woman for a
+private reason of his own. I might have played it successfully on any
+other woman; I have hit the one woman on whom it cannot be played. It's
+just like my damned luck. The plain truth is,” and here when he came to
+the plain truth he boggled and blundered as Evan had done in telling it
+to the girl in the motor-car.
+
+“The plain truth is,” he said at last, “that I am James Turnbull the
+atheist. The police are after me; not for atheism but for being ready to
+fight for it.”
+
+“I saw something about you in a newspaper,” said the girl, with a
+simplicity which even surprise could never throw off its balance.
+
+“Evan MacIan said there was a God,” went on the other, stubbornly, “and
+I say there isn't. And I have come to fight for the fact that there
+is no God; it is for that that I have seen this cursed island and your
+blessed face.”
+
+“You want me really to believe,” said Madeleine, with parted lips, “that
+you think----”
+
+“I want you to hate me!” cried Turnbull, in agony. “I want you to be
+sick when you think of my name. I am sure there is no God.”
+
+“But there is,” said Madeleine, quite quietly, and rather with the air
+of one telling children about an elephant. “Why, I touched His body only
+this morning.”
+
+“You touched a bit of bread,” said Turnbull, biting his knuckles. “Oh, I
+will say anything that can madden you!”
+
+“You think it is only a bit of bread,” said the girl, and her lips
+tightened ever so little.
+
+“I know it is only a bit of bread,” said Turnbull, with violence.
+
+She flung back her open face and smiled. “Then why did you refuse to eat
+it?” she said.
+
+James Turnbull made a little step backward, and for the first time in
+his life there seemed to break out and blaze in his head thoughts that
+were not his own.
+
+“Why, how silly of them,” cried out Madeleine, with quite a schoolgirl
+gaiety, “why, how silly of them to call _you_ a blasphemer! Why,
+you have wrecked your whole business because you would not commit
+blasphemy.”
+
+The man stood, a somewhat comic figure in his tragic bewilderment,
+with the honest red head of James Turnbull sticking out of the rich and
+fictitious garments of Camille Bert. But the startled pain of his face
+was strong enough to obliterate the oddity.
+
+“You come down here,” continued the lady, with that female emphasis
+which is so pulverizing in conversation and so feeble at a public
+meeting, “you and your MacIan come down here and put on false beards
+or noses in order to fight. You pretend to be a Catholic commercial
+traveller from France. Poor Mr. MacIan has to pretend to be a dissolute
+nobleman from nowhere. Your scheme succeeds; you pick a quite convincing
+quarrel; you arrange a quite respectable duel; the duel you have planned
+so long will come off tomorrow with absolute certainty and safety. And
+then you throw off your wig and throw up your scheme and throw over
+your colleague, because I ask you to go into a building and eat a bit of
+bread. And _then_ you dare to tell me that you are sure there is nothing
+watching us. Then you say you know there is nothing on the very altar
+you run away from. You know----”
+
+“I only know,” said Turnbull, “that I must run away from you. This has
+got beyond any talking.” And he plunged along into the village, leaving
+his black wig and beard lying behind him on the road.
+
+As the market-place opened before him he saw Count Gregory, that
+distinguished foreigner, standing and smoking in elegant meditation
+at the corner of the local café. He immediately made his way rapidly
+towards him, considering that a consultation was urgent. But he had
+hardly crossed half of that stony quadrangle when a window burst open
+above him and a head was thrust out, shouting. The man was in his
+woollen undershirt, but Turnbull knew the energetic, apologetic head of
+the sergeant of police. He pointed furiously at Turnbull and shouted
+his name. A policeman ran excitedly from under an archway and tried to
+collar him. Two men selling vegetables dropped their baskets and joined
+in the chase. Turnbull dodged the constable, upset one of the men into
+his own basket, and bounding towards the distinguished foreign Count,
+called to him clamorously: “Come on, MacIan, the hunt is up again.”
+
+The prompt reply of Count Gregory was to pull off his large yellow
+whiskers and scatter them on the breeze with an air of considerable
+relief. Then he joined the flight of Turnbull, and even as he did so,
+with one wrench of his powerful hands rent and split the strange, thick
+stick that he carried. Inside it was a naked old-fashioned rapier. The
+two got a good start up the road before the whole town was awakened
+behind them; and half-way up it a similar transformation was seen to
+take place in Mr. Turnbull's singular umbrella.
+
+The two had a long race for the harbour; but the English police were
+heavy and the French inhabitants were indifferent. In any case, they got
+used to the notion of the road being clear; and just as they had come
+to the cliffs MacIan banged into another gentleman with unmistakable
+surprise. How he knew he was another gentleman merely by banging into
+him, must remain a mystery. MacIan was a very poor and very sober
+Scotch gentleman. The other was a very drunk and very wealthy English
+gentleman. But there was something in the staggered and openly
+embarrassed apologies that made them understand each other as readily
+and as quickly and as much as two men talking French in the middle of
+China. The nearest expression of the type is that it either hits or
+apologizes; and in this case both apologized.
+
+“You seem to be in a hurry,” said the unknown Englishman, falling back
+a step or two in order to laugh with an unnatural heartiness. “What's
+it all about, eh?” Then before MacIan could get past his sprawling and
+staggering figure he ran forward again and said with a sort of shouting
+and ear-shattering whisper: “I say, my name is Wilkinson. _You_
+know--Wilkinson's Entire was my grandfather. Can't drink beer myself.
+Liver.” And he shook his head with extraordinary sagacity.
+
+“We really are in a hurry, as you say,” said MacIan, summoning a
+sufficiently pleasant smile, “so if you will let us pass----”
+
+“I'll tell you what, you fellows,” said the sprawling gentleman,
+confidentially, while Evan's agonized ears heard behind him the first
+paces of the pursuit, “if you really are, as you say, in a hurry, I know
+what it is to be in a hurry--Lord, what a hurry I was in when we all
+came out of Cartwright's rooms--if you really are in a hurry”--and he
+seemed to steady his voice into a sort of solemnity--“if you are in a
+hurry, there's nothing like a good yacht for a man in a hurry.”
+
+“No doubt you're right,” said MacIan, and dashed past him in despair.
+The head of the pursuing host was just showing over the top of the
+hill behind him. Turnbull had already ducked under the intoxicated
+gentleman's elbow and fled far in front.
+
+“No, but look here,” said Mr. Wilkinson, enthusiastically running after
+MacIan and catching him by the sleeve of his coat. “If you want to hurry
+you should take a yacht, and if”--he said, with a burst of rationality,
+like one leaping to a further point in logic--“if you want a yacht--you
+can have mine.”
+
+Evan pulled up abruptly and looked back at him. “We are really in the
+devil of a hurry,” he said, “and if you really have a yacht, the truth
+is that we would give our ears for it.”
+
+“You'll find it in harbour,” said Wilkinson, struggling with his speech.
+“Left side of harbour--called _Gibson Girl_--can't think why, old
+fellow, I never lent it you before.”
+
+With these words the benevolent Mr. Wilkinson fell flat on his face in
+the road, but continued to laugh softly, and turned towards his flying
+companion a face of peculiar peace and benignity. Evan's mind went
+through a crisis of instantaneous casuistry, in which it may be that he
+decided wrongly; but about how he decided his biographer can profess
+no doubt. Two minutes afterwards he had overtaken Turnbull and told the
+tale; ten minutes afterwards he and Turnbull had somehow tumbled into
+the yacht called the _Gibson Girl_ and had somehow pushed off from the
+Isle of St. Loup.
+
+
+
+
+XII. THE DESERT ISLAND
+
+Those who happen to hold the view (and Mr. Evan MacIan, now alive and
+comfortable, is among the number) that something supernatural, some
+eccentric kindness from god or fairy had guided our adventurers through
+all their absurd perils, might have found his strongest argument perhaps
+in their management or mismanagement of Mr. Wilkinson's yacht. Neither
+of them had the smallest qualification for managing such a vessel; but
+MacIan had a practical knowledge of the sea in much smaller and quite
+different boats, while Turnbull had an abstract knowledge of science and
+some of its applications to navigation, which was worse. The presence
+of the god or fairy can only be deduced from the fact that they never
+definitely ran into anything, either a boat, a rock, a quicksand, or a
+man-of-war. Apart from this negative description, their voyage would be
+difficult to describe. It took at least a fortnight, and MacIan, who
+was certainly the shrewder sailor of the two, realized that they were
+sailing west into the Atlantic and were probably by this time past the
+Scilly Isles. How much farther they stood out into the western sea it
+was impossible to conjecture. But they felt certain, at least, that they
+were far enough into that awful gulf between us and America to make
+it unlikely that they would soon see land again. It was therefore with
+legitimate excitement that one rainy morning after daybreak they
+saw that distinct shape of a solitary island standing up against the
+encircling strip of silver which ran round the skyline and separated
+the grey and green of the billows from the grey and mauve of the morning
+clouds.
+
+“What can it be?” cried MacIan, in a dry-throated excitement. “I didn't
+know there were any Atlantic islands so far beyond the Scillies--Good
+Lord, it can't be Madeira, yet?”
+
+“I thought you were fond of legends and lies and fables,” said Turnbull,
+grimly. “Perhaps it's Atlantis.”
+
+“Of course, it might be,” answered the other, quite innocently and
+gravely; “but I never thought the story about Atlantis was very solidly
+established.”
+
+“Whatever it is, we are running on to it,” said Turnbull, equably, “and
+we shall be shipwrecked twice, at any rate.”
+
+The naked-looking nose of land projecting from the unknown island was,
+indeed, growing larger and larger, like the trunk of some terrible and
+advancing elephant. There seemed to be nothing in particular, at least
+on this side of the island, except shoals of shellfish lying so thick as
+almost to make it look like one of those toy grottos that the children
+make. In one place, however, the coast offered a soft, smooth bay of
+sand, and even the rudimentary ingenuity of the two amateur mariners
+managed to run up the little ship with her prow well on shore and her
+bowsprit pointing upward, as in a sort of idiotic triumph.
+
+They tumbled on shore and began to unload the vessel, setting the
+stores out in rows upon the sand with something of the solemnity of
+boys playing at pirates. There were Mr. Wilkinson's cigar-boxes and Mr.
+Wilkinson's dozen of champagne and Mr. Wilkinson's tinned salmon and Mr.
+Wilkinson's tinned tongue and Mr. Wilkinson's tinned sardines, and every
+sort of preserved thing that could be seen at the Army and Navy stores.
+Then MacIan stopped with a jar of pickles in his hand and said abruptly:
+
+“I don't know why we're doing all this; I suppose we ought really to
+fall to and get it over.”
+
+Then he added more thoughtfully: “Of course this island seems rather
+bare and the survivor----”
+
+“The question is,” said Turnbull, with cheerful speculation, “whether
+the survivor will be in a proper frame of mind for potted prawns.”
+
+MacIan looked down at the rows of tins and bottles, and the cloud of
+doubt still lowered upon his face.
+
+“You will permit me two liberties, my dear sir,” said Turnbull at last:
+“The first is to break open this box and light one of Mr. Wilkinson's
+excellent cigars, which will, I am sure, assist my meditations; the
+second is to offer a penny for your thoughts; or rather to convulse the
+already complex finances of this island by betting a penny that I know
+them.”
+
+“What on earth are you talking about?” asked MacIan, listlessly, in the
+manner of an inattentive child.
+
+“I know what you are really thinking, MacIan,” repeated Turnbull,
+laughing. “I know what I am thinking, anyhow. And I rather fancy it's
+the same.”
+
+“What are you thinking?” asked Evan.
+
+“I am thinking and you are thinking,” said Turnbull, “that it is damned
+silly to waste all that champagne.”
+
+Something like the spectre of a smile appeared on the unsmiling visage
+of the Gael; and he made at least no movement of dissent.
+
+“We could drink all the wine and smoke all the cigars easily in a week,”
+ said Turnbull; “and that would be to die feasting like heroes.”
+
+“Yes, and there is something else,” said MacIan, with slight hesitation.
+“You see, we are on an almost unknown rock, lost in the Atlantic. The
+police will never catch us; but then neither may the public ever hear of
+us; and that was one of the things we wanted.” Then, after a pause, he
+said, drawing in the sand with his sword-point: “She may never hear of
+it at all.”
+
+“Well?” inquired the other, puffing at his cigar.
+
+“Well,” said MacIan, “we might occupy a day or two in drawing up a
+thorough and complete statement of what we did and why we did it, and
+all about both our points of view. Then we could leave one copy on the
+island whatever happens to us and put another in an empty bottle and
+send it out to sea, as they do in the books.”
+
+“A good idea,” said Turnbull, “and now let us finish unpacking.”
+
+As MacIan, a tall, almost ghostly figure, paced along the edge of sand
+that ran round the islet, the purple but cloudy poetry which was his
+native element was piled up at its thickest upon his soul. The unique
+island and the endless sea emphasized the thing solely as an epic. There
+were no ladies or policemen here to give him a hint either of its farce
+or its tragedy.
+
+“Perhaps when the morning stars were made,” he said to himself, “God
+built this island up from the bottom of the world to be a tower and a
+theatre for the fight between yea and nay.”
+
+Then he wandered up to the highest level of the rock, where there was a
+roof or plateau of level stone. Half an hour afterwards, Turnbull found
+him clearing away the loose sand from this table-land and making it
+smooth and even.
+
+“We will fight up here, Turnbull,” said MacIan, “when the time comes.
+And till the time comes this place shall be sacred.”
+
+“I thought of having lunch up here,” said Turnbull, who had a bottle of
+champagne in his hand.
+
+“No, no--not up here,” said MacIan, and came down from the height quite
+hastily. Before he descended, however, he fixed the two swords upright,
+one at each end of the platform, as if they were human sentinels to
+guard it under the stars.
+
+Then they came down and lunched plentifully in a nest of loose rocks. In
+the same place that night they supped more plentifully still. The smoke
+of Mr. Wilkinson's cigars went up ceaseless and strong smelling, like a
+pagan sacrifice; the golden glories of Mr. Wilkinson's champagne rose
+to their heads and poured out of them in fancies and philosophies. And
+occasionally they would look up at the starlight and the rock and see
+the space guarded by the two cross-hilted swords, which looked like two
+black crosses at either end of a grave.
+
+In this primitive and Homeric truce the week passed by; it consisted
+almost entirely of eating, drinking, smoking, talking, and occasionally
+singing. They wrote their records and cast loose their bottle. They
+never ascended to the ominous plateau; they had never stood there save
+for that single embarrassed minute when they had had no time to take
+stock of the seascape or the shape of the land. They did not even
+explore the island; for MacIan was partly concerned in prayer and
+Turnbull entirely concerned with tobacco; and both these forms of
+inspiration can be enjoyed by the secluded and even the sedentary. It
+was on a golden afternoon, the sun sinking over the sea, rayed like the
+very head of Apollo, when Turnbull tossed off the last half-pint from
+the emptied Wilkinsonian bottle, hurled the bottle into the sea with
+objectless energy, and went up to where his sword stood waiting for him
+on the hill. MacIan was already standing heavily by his with bent head
+and eyes reading the ground. He had not even troubled to throw a glance
+round the island or the horizon. But Turnbull being of a more active
+and birdlike type of mind did throw a glance round the scene. The
+consequence of which was that he nearly fell off the rock.
+
+On three sides of this shelly and sandy islet the sea stretched blue and
+infinite without a speck of land or sail; the same as Turnbull had first
+seen it, except that the tide being out it showed a few yards more of
+slanting sand under the roots of the rocks. But on the fourth side the
+island exhibited a more extraordinary feature. In fact, it exhibited
+the extraordinary feature of not being an island at all. A long, curving
+neck of sand, as smooth and wet as the neck of the sea serpent, ran
+out into the sea and joined their rock to a line of low, billowing, and
+glistening sand-hills, which the sinking sea had just bared to the sun.
+Whether they were firm sand or quicksand it was difficult to guess; but
+there was at least no doubt that they lay on the edge of some larger
+land; for colourless hills appeared faintly behind them and no sea could
+be seen beyond.
+
+“Sakes alive!” cried Turnbull, with rolling eyes; “this ain't an island
+in the Atlantic. We've butted the bally continent of America.”
+
+MacIan turned his head, and his face, already pale, grew a shade paler.
+He was by this time walking in a world of omens and hieroglyphics, and
+he could not read anything but what was baffling or menacing in this
+brown gigantic arm of the earth stretched out into the sea to seize him.
+
+“MacIan,” said Turnbull, in his temperate way, “whatever our eternal
+interrupted tete-a-tetes have taught us or not taught us, at least we
+need not fear the charge of fear. If it is essential to your emotions,
+I will cheerfully finish the fight here and now; but I must confess that
+if you kill me here I shall die with my curiosity highly excited and
+unsatisfied upon a minor point of geography.”
+
+“I do not want to stop now,” said the other, in his elephantine
+simplicity, “but we must stop for a moment, because it is a
+sign--perhaps it is a miracle. We must see what is at the end of the
+road of sand; it may be a bridge built across the gulf by God.”
+
+“So long as you gratify my query,” said Turnbull, laughing and letting
+back his blade into the sheath, “I do not care for what reason you
+choose to stop.”
+
+They clambered down the rocky peninsula and trudged along the sandy
+isthmus with the plodding resolution of men who seemed almost to have
+made up their minds to be wanderers on the face of the earth. Despite
+Turnbull's air of scientific eagerness, he was really the less impatient
+of the two; and the Highlander went on well ahead of him with passionate
+strides. By the time they had walked for about half an hour in the
+ups and downs of those dreary sands, the distance between the two had
+lengthened and MacIan was only a tall figure silhouetted for an instant
+upon the crest of some sand-dune and then disappearing behind it. This
+rather increased the Robinson Crusoe feeling in Mr. Turnbull, and he
+looked about almost disconsolately for some sign of life. What sort of
+life he expected it to be if it appeared, he did not very clearly know.
+He has since confessed that he thinks that in his subconsciousness he
+expected an alligator.
+
+The first sign of life that he did see, however, was something more
+extraordinary than the largest alligator. It was nothing less than the
+notorious Mr. Evan MacIan coming bounding back across the sand-heaps
+breathless, without his cap and keeping the sword in his hand only by a
+habit now quite hardened.
+
+“Take care, Turnbull,” he cried out from a good distance as he ran,
+“I've seen a native.”
+
+“A native?” repeated his companion, whose scenery had of late been
+chiefly of shellfish, “what the deuce! Do you mean an oyster?”
+
+“No,” said MacIan, stopping and breathing hard, “I mean a savage. A
+black man.”
+
+“Why, where did you see him?” asked the staring editor.
+
+“Over there--behind that hill,” said the gasping MacIan. “He put up his
+black head and grinned at me.”
+
+Turnbull thrust his hands through his red hair like one who gives up the
+world as a bad riddle. “Lord love a duck,” said he, “can it be Jamaica?”
+
+Then glancing at his companion with a small frown, as of one slightly
+suspicious, he said: “I say, don't think me rude--but you're a visionary
+kind of fellow--and then we drank a great deal. Do you mind waiting here
+while I go and see for myself?”
+
+“Shout if you get into trouble,” said the Celt, with composure; “you
+will find it as I say.”
+
+Turnbull ran off ahead with a rapidity now far greater than his rival's,
+and soon vanished over the disputed sand-hill. Then five minutes passed,
+and then seven minutes; and MacIan bit his lip and swung his sword, and
+the other did not reappear. Finally, with a Gaelic oath, Evan started
+forward to the rescue, and almost at the same moment the small figure of
+the missing man appeared on the ridge against the sky.
+
+Even at that distance, however, there was something odd about his
+attitude; so odd that MacIan continued to make his way in that
+direction. It looked as if he were wounded; or, still more, as if he
+were ill. He wavered as he came down the slope and seemed flinging
+himself into peculiar postures. But it was only when he came within
+three feet of MacIan's face, that that observer of mankind fully
+realized that Mr. James Turnbull was roaring with laughter.
+
+“You are quit right,” sobbed that wholly demoralized journalist. “He's
+black, oh, there's no doubt the black's all right--as far as it goes.”
+ And he went off again into convulsions of his humorous ailment.
+
+“What ever is the matter with you?” asked MacIan, with stern impatience.
+“Did you see the nigger----”
+
+“I saw the nigger,” gasped Turnbull. “I saw the splendid barbarian
+Chief. I saw the Emperor of Ethiopia--oh, I saw him all right. The
+nigger's hands and face are a lovely colour--and the nigger----” And he
+was overtaken once more.
+
+“Well, well, well,” said Evan, stamping each monosyllable on the sand,
+“what about the nigger?”
+
+“Well, the truth is,” said Turnbull, suddenly and startlingly, becoming
+quite grave and precise, “the truth is, the nigger is a Margate nigger,
+and we are now on the edge of the Isle of Thanet, a few miles from
+Margate.”
+
+Then he had a momentary return of his hysteria and said: “I say,
+old boy, I should like to see a chart of our fortnight's cruise in
+Wilkinson's yacht.”
+
+MacIan had no smile in answer, but his eager lips opened as if parched
+for the truth. “You mean to say,” he began----
+
+“Yes, I mean to say,” said Turnbull, “and I mean to say something
+funnier still. I have learnt everything I wanted to know from the
+partially black musician over there, who has taken a run in his
+war-paint to meet a friend in a quiet pub along the coast--the noble
+savage has told me all about it. The bottle containing our declaration,
+doctrines, and dying sentiments was washed up on Margate beach yesterday
+in the presence of one alderman, two bathing-machine men, three
+policemen, seven doctors, and a hundred and thirteen London clerks on a
+holiday, to all of whom, whether directly or indirectly, our composition
+gave enormous literary pleasure. Buck up, old man, this story of ours is
+a switchback. I have begun to understand the pulse and the time of it;
+now we are up in a cathedral and then we are down in a theatre, where
+they only play farces. Come, I am quite reconciled--let us enjoy the
+farce.”
+
+But MacIan said nothing, and an instant afterwards Turnbull himself
+called out in an entirely changed voice: “Oh, this is damnable! This is
+not to be borne!”
+
+MacIan followed his eye along the sand-hills. He saw what looked like
+the momentary and waving figure of the nigger minstrel, and then he saw
+a heavy running policeman take the turn of the sand-hill with the smooth
+solemnity of a railway train.
+
+
+
+
+XIII. THE GARDEN OF PEACE
+
+Up to this instant Evan MacIan had really understood nothing; but when
+he saw the policeman he saw everything. He saw his enemies, all the
+powers and princes of the earth. He suddenly altered from a staring
+statue to a leaping man of the mountains.
+
+“We must break away from him here,” he cried, briefly, and went like
+a whirlwind over the sand ridge in a straight line and at a particular
+angle. When the policeman had finished his admirable railway curve, he
+found a wall of failing sand between him and the pursued. By the time
+he had scaled it thrice, slid down twice, and crested it in the third
+effort, the two flying figures were far in front. They found the sand
+harder farther on; it began to be crusted with scraps of turf and in
+a few moments they were flying easily over an open common of rank
+sea-grass. They had no easy business, however; for the bottle which they
+had so innocently sent into the chief gate of Thanet had called to life
+the police of half a county on their trail. From every side across the
+grey-green common figures could be seen running and closing in; and it
+was only when MacIan with his big body broke down the tangled barrier of
+a little wood, as men break down a door with the shoulder; it was only
+when they vanished crashing into the underworld of the black wood, that
+their hunters were even instantaneously thrown off the scent.
+
+At the risk of struggling a little longer like flies in that black web
+of twigs and trunks, Evan (who had an instinct of the hunter or the
+hunted) took an incalculable course through the forest, which let them
+out at last by a forest opening--quite forgotten by the leaders of the
+chase. They ran a mile or two farther along the edge of the wood until
+they reached another and somewhat similar opening. Then MacIan stood
+utterly still and listened, as animals listen, for every sound in the
+universe. Then he said: “We are quit of them.” And Turnbull said: “Where
+shall we go now?”
+
+MacIan looked at the silver sunset that was closing in, barred by plumy
+lines of purple cloud; he looked at the high tree-tops that caught the
+last light and at the birds going heavily homeward, just as if all these
+things were bits of written advice that he could read.
+
+Then he said: “The best place we can go to is to bed. If we can get some
+sleep in this wood, now everyone has cleared out of it, it will be worth
+a handicap of two hundred yards tomorrow.”
+
+Turnbull, who was exceptionally lively and laughing in his demeanour,
+kicked his legs about like a schoolboy and said he did not want to go
+to sleep. He walked incessantly and talked very brilliantly. And when
+at last he lay down on the hard earth, sleep struck him senseless like a
+hammer.
+
+Indeed, he needed the strongest sleep he could get; for the earth
+was still full of darkness and a kind of morning fog when his
+fellow-fugitive shook him awake.
+
+“No more sleep, I'm afraid,” said Evan, in a heavy, almost submissive,
+voice of apology. “They've gone on past us right enough for a good
+thirty miles; but now they've found out their mistake, and they're
+coming back.”
+
+“Are you sure?” said Turnbull, sitting up and rubbing his red eyebrows
+with his hand.
+
+The next moment, however, he had jumped up alive and leaping like a
+man struck with a shock of cold water, and he was plunging after MacIan
+along the woodland path. The shape of their old friend the constable had
+appeared against the pearl and pink of the sunrise. Somehow, it always
+looked a very funny shape when seen against the sunrise.
+
+           *                    *                   *
+
+A wash of weary daylight was breaking over the country-side, and the
+fields and roads were full of white mist--the kind of white mist that
+clings in corners like cotton wool. The empty road, along which the
+chase had taken its turn, was overshadowed on one side by a very
+high discoloured wall, stained, and streaked green, as with
+seaweed--evidently the high-shouldered sentinel of some great
+gentleman's estate. A yard or two from the wall ran parallel to it a
+linked and tangled line of lime-trees, forming a kind of cloister along
+the side of the road. It was under this branching colonnade that the two
+fugitives fled, almost concealed from their pursuers by the twilight,
+the mist and the leaping zoetrope of shadows. Their feet, though beating
+the ground furiously, made but a faint noise; for they had kicked away
+their boots in the wood; their long, antiquated weapons made no jingle
+or clatter, for they had strapped them across their backs like guitars.
+They had all the advantages that invisibility and silence can add to
+speed.
+
+A hundred and fifty yards behind them down the centre of the empty
+road the first of their pursuers came pounding and panting--a fat but
+powerful policeman who had distanced all the rest. He came on at a
+splendid pace for so portly a figure; but, like all heavy bodies in
+motion, he gave the impression that it would be easier for him to
+increase his pace than to slacken it suddenly. Nothing short of a
+brick wall could have abruptly brought him up. Turnbull turned his head
+slightly and found breath to say something to MacIan. MacIan nodded.
+
+Pursuer and pursued were fixed in their distance as they fled, for some
+quarter of a mile, when they came to a place where two or three of the
+trees grew twistedly together, making a special obscurity. Past
+this place the pursuing policeman went thundering without thought or
+hesitation. But he was pursuing his shadow or the wind; for Turnbull had
+put one foot in a crack of the tree and gone up it as quickly and softly
+as a cat. Somewhat more laboriously but in equal silence the long legs
+of the Highlander had followed; and crouching in crucial silence in the
+cloud of leaves, they saw the whole posse of their pursuers go by and
+die into the dust and mists of the distance.
+
+The white vapour lay, as it often does, in lean and palpable layers;
+and even the head of the tree was above it in the half-daylight, like
+a green ship swinging on a sea of foam. But higher yet behind them, and
+readier to catch the first coming of the sun, ran the rampart of the
+top of the wall, which in their excitement of escape looked at once
+indispensable and unattainable, like the wall of heaven. Here,
+however, it was MacIan's turn to have the advantage; for, though less
+light-limbed and feline, he was longer and stronger in the arms. In two
+seconds he had tugged up his chin over the wall like a horizontal
+bar; the next he sat astride of it, like a horse of stone. With his
+assistance Turnbull vaulted to the same perch, and the two began
+cautiously to shift along the wall in the direction by which they had
+come, doubling on their tracks to throw off the last pursuit. MacIan
+could not rid himself of the fancy of bestriding a steed; the long, grey
+coping of the wall shot out in front of him, like the long, grey neck of
+some nightmare Rosinante. He had the quaint thought that he and Turnbull
+were two knights on one steed on the old shield of the Templars.
+
+The nightmare of the stone horse was increased by the white fog, which
+seemed thicker inside the wall than outside. They could make nothing of
+the enclosure upon which they were partial trespassers, except that the
+green and crooked branches of a big apple-tree came crawling at them out
+of the mist, like the tentacles of some green cuttlefish. Anything would
+serve, however, that was likely to confuse their trail, so they both
+decided without need of words to use this tree also as a ladder--a
+ladder of descent. When they dropped from the lowest branch to the
+ground their stockinged feet felt hard gravel beneath them.
+
+They had alighted in the middle of a very broad garden path, and the
+clearing mist permitted them to see the edge of a well-clipped lawn.
+Though the white vapour was still a veil, it was like the gauzy veil
+of a transformation scene in a pantomime; for through it there glowed
+shapeless masses of colour, masses which might be clouds of sunrise
+or mosaics of gold and crimson, or ladies robed in ruby and emerald
+draperies. As it thinned yet farther they saw that it was only flowers;
+but flowers in such insolent mass and magnificence as can seldom be seen
+out of the tropics. Purple and crimson rhododendrons rose arrogantly,
+like rampant heraldic animals against their burning background of
+laburnum gold. The roses were red hot; the clematis was, so to speak,
+blue hot. And yet the mere whiteness of the syringa seemed the most
+violent colour of all. As the golden sunlight gradually conquered the
+mists, it had really something of the sensational sweetness of the slow
+opening of the gates of Eden. MacIan, whose mind was always haunted
+with such seraphic or titanic parallels, made some such remark to his
+companion. But Turnbull only cursed and said that it was the back garden
+of some damnable rich man.
+
+When the last haze had faded from the ordered paths, the open lawns,
+and the flaming flower-beds, the two realized, not without an abrupt
+re-examination of their position, that they were not alone in the
+garden.
+
+Down the centre of the central garden path, preceded by a blue cloud
+from a cigarette, was walking a gentleman who evidently understood all
+the relish of a garden in the very early morning. He was a slim yet
+satisfied figure, clad in a suit of pale-grey tweed, so subdued that
+the pattern was imperceptible--a costume that was casual but not by
+any means careless. His face, which was reflective and somewhat
+over-refined, was the face of a quite elderly man, though his stringy
+hair and moustache were still quite yellow. A double eye-glass, with a
+broad, black ribbon, drooped from his aquiline nose, and he smiled, as
+he communed with himself, with a self-content which was rare and almost
+irritating. The straw panama on his head was many shades shabbier than
+his clothes, as if he had caught it up by accident.
+
+It needed the full shock of the huge shadow of MacIan, falling across
+his sunlit path, to rouse him from his smiling reverie. When this had
+fallen on him he lifted his head a little and blinked at the intruders
+with short-sighted benevolence, but with far less surprise than might
+have been expected. He was a gentleman; that is, he had social presence
+of mind, whether for kindness or for insolence.
+
+“Can I do anything for you?” he said, at last.
+
+MacIan bowed. “You can extend to us your pardon,” he said, for he also
+came of a whole race of gentlemen--of gentlemen without shirts to their
+backs. “I am afraid we are trespassing. We have just come over the
+wall.”
+
+“Over the wall?” repeated the smiling old gentleman, still without
+letting his surprise come uppermost.
+
+“I suppose I am not wrong, sir,” continued MacIan, “in supposing that
+these grounds inside the wall belong to you?”
+
+The man in the panama looked at the ground and smoked thoughtfully for a
+few moments, after which he said, with a sort of matured conviction:
+
+“Yes, certainly; the grounds inside the wall really belong to me, and
+the grounds outside the wall, too.”
+
+“A large proprietor, I imagine,” said Turnbull, with a truculent eye.
+
+“Yes,” answered the old gentleman, looking at him with a steady smile.
+“A large proprietor.”
+
+Turnbull's eye grew even more offensive, and he began biting his red
+beard; but MacIan seemed to recognize a type with which he could deal
+and continued quite easily:
+
+“I am sure that a man like you will not need to be told that one sees
+and does a good many things that do not get into the newspapers. Things
+which, on the whole, had better not get into the newspapers.”
+
+The smile of the large proprietor broadened for a moment under
+his loose, light moustache, and the other continued with increased
+confidence:
+
+“One sometimes wants to have it out with another man. The police won't
+allow it in the streets--and then there's the County Council--and in the
+fields even nothing's allowed but posters of pills. But in a gentleman's
+garden, now----”
+
+The strange gentleman smiled again and said, easily enough: “Do you want
+to fight? What do you want to fight about?”
+
+MacIan had understood his man pretty well up to that point; an instinct
+common to all men with the aristocratic tradition of Europe had guided
+him. He knew that the kind of man who in his own back garden wears good
+clothes and spoils them with a bad hat is not the kind of man who has
+an abstract horror of illegal actions of violence or the evasion of
+the police. But a man may understand ragging and yet be very far from
+understanding religious ragging. This seeming host of theirs might
+comprehend a quarrel of husband and lover or a difficulty at cards
+or even escape from a pursuing tailor; but it still remained doubtful
+whether he would feel the earth fail under him in that earthquake
+instant when the Virgin is compared to a goddess of Mesopotamia. Even
+MacIan, therefore (whose tact was far from being his strong point), felt
+the necessity for some compromise in the mode of approach. At last he
+said, and even then with hesitation:
+
+“We are fighting about God; there can be nothing so important as that.”
+
+The tilted eye-glasses of the old gentleman fell abruptly from his nose,
+and he thrust his aristocratic chin so far forward that his lean neck
+seemed to shoot out longer like a telescope.
+
+“About God?” he queried, in a key completely new.
+
+“Look here!” cried Turnbull, taking his turn roughly, “I'll tell you
+what it's all about. I think that there's no God. I take it that it's
+nobody's business but mine--or God's, if there is one. This young
+gentleman from the Highlands happens to think that it's his business. In
+consequence, he first takes a walking-stick and smashes my shop; then he
+takes the same walking-stick and tries to smash me. To this I naturally
+object. I suggest that if it comes to that we should both have sticks.
+He improves on the suggestion and proposes that we should both have
+steel-pointed sticks. The police (with characteristic unreasonableness)
+will not accept either of our proposals; the result is that we run
+about dodging the police and have jumped over our garden wall into your
+magnificent garden to throw ourselves on your magnificent hospitality.”
+
+The face of the old gentleman had grown redder and redder during this
+address, but it was still smiling; and when he broke out it was with a
+kind of guffaw.
+
+“So you really want to fight with drawn swords in my garden,” he asked,
+“about whether there is really a God?”
+
+“Why not?” said MacIan, with his simple monstrosity of speech; “all
+man's worship began when the Garden of Eden was founded.”
+
+“Yes, by----!” said Turnbull, with an oath, “and ended when the
+Zoological Gardens were founded.”
+
+“In this garden! In my presence!” cried the stranger, stamping up and
+down the gravel and choking with laughter, “whether there is a God!”
+ And he went stamping up and down the garden, making it echo with his
+unintelligible laughter. Then he came back to them more composed and
+wiping his eyes.
+
+“Why, how small the world is!” he cried at last. “I can settle the whole
+matter. Why, I am God!”
+
+And he suddenly began to kick and wave his well-clad legs about the
+lawn.
+
+“You are what?” repeated Turnbull, in a tone which is beyond
+description.
+
+“Why, God, of course!” answered the other, thoroughly amused. “How
+funny it is to think that you have tumbled over a garden wall and fallen
+exactly on the right person! You might have gone floundering about in
+all sorts of churches and chapels and colleges and schools of philosophy
+looking for some evidence of the existence of God. Why, there is no
+evidence, except seeing him. And now you've seen him. You've seen him
+dance!”
+
+And the obliging old gentleman instantly stood on one leg without
+relaxing at all the grave and cultured benignity of his expression.
+
+“I understood that this garden----” began the bewildered MacIan.
+
+“Quite so! Quite so!” said the man on one leg, nodding gravely. “I said
+this garden belonged to me and the land outside it. So they do. So does
+the country beyond that and the sea beyond that and all the rest of the
+earth. So does the moon. So do the sun and stars.” And he added, with a
+smile of apology: “You see, I'm God.”
+
+Turnbull and MacIan looked at him for one moment with a sort of notion
+that perhaps he was not too old to be merely playing the fool. But
+after staring steadily for an instant Turnbull saw the hard and horrible
+earnestness in the man's eyes behind all his empty animation. Then
+Turnbull looked very gravely at the strict gravel walls and the gay
+flower-beds and the long rectangular red-brick building, which the mist
+had left evident beyond them. Then he looked at MacIan.
+
+Almost at the same moment another man came walking quickly round the
+regal clump of rhododendrons. He had the look of a prosperous banker,
+wore a good tall silk hat, was almost stout enough to burst the buttons
+of a fine frock-coat; but he was talking to himself, and one of his
+elbows had a singular outward jerk as he went by.
+
+
+
+
+XIV. A MUSEUM OF SOULS
+
+The man with the good hat and the jumping elbow went by very quickly;
+yet the man with the bad hat, who thought he was God, overtook him. He
+ran after him and jumped over a bed of geraniums to catch him.
+
+“I beg your Majesty's pardon,” he said, with mock humility, “but here is
+a quarrel which you ought really to judge.”
+
+Then as he led the heavy, silk-hatted man back towards the group, he
+caught MacIan's ear in order to whisper: “This poor gentleman is mad;
+he thinks he is Edward VII.” At this the self-appointed Creator slightly
+winked. “Of course you won't trust him much; come to me for everything.
+But in my position one has to meet so many people. One has to be
+broadminded.”
+
+The big banker in the black frock-coat and hat was standing quite grave
+and dignified on the lawn, save for his slight twitch of one limb,
+and he did not seem by any means unworthy of the part which the other
+promptly forced upon him.
+
+“My dear fellow,” said the man in the straw hat, “these two gentlemen
+are going to fight a duel of the utmost importance. Your own royal
+position and my much humbler one surely indicate us as the proper
+seconds. Seconds--yes, seconds----” and here the speaker was once more
+shaken with his old malady of laughter.
+
+“Yes, you and I are both seconds--and these two gentlemen can obviously
+fight in front of us. You, he-he, are the king. I am God; really, they
+could hardly have better supporters. They have come to the right place.”
+
+Then Turnbull, who had been staring with a frown at the fresh turf,
+burst out with a rather bitter laugh and cried, throwing his red head in
+the air:
+
+“Yes, by God, MacIan, I think we have come to the right place!” And
+MacIan answered, with an adamantine stupidity:
+
+“Any place is the right place where they will let us do it.”
+
+There was a long stillness, and their eyes involuntarily took in the
+landscape, as they had taken in all the landscapes of their everlasting
+combat; the bright, square garden behind the shop; the whole lift
+and leaning of the side of Hampstead Heath; the little garden of the
+decadent choked with flowers; the square of sand beside the sea
+at sunrise. They both felt at the same moment all the breadth and
+blossoming beauty of that paradise, the coloured trees, the natural and
+restful nooks and also the great wall of stone--more awful than the wall
+of China--from which no flesh could flee.
+
+Turnbull was moodily balancing his sword in his hand as the other spoke;
+then he started, for a mouth whispered quite close to his ear. With a
+softness incredible in any cat, the huge, heavy man in the black hat and
+frock-coat had crept across the lawn from his own side and was saying
+in his ear: “Don't trust that second of yours. He's mad and not so mad,
+either; for he frightfully cunning and sharp. Don't believe the story he
+tells you about why I hate him. I know the story he'll tell; I overheard
+it when the housekeeper was talking to the postman. It's too long to
+talk about now, and I expect we're watched, but----”
+
+Something in Turnbull made him want suddenly to be sick on the grass;
+the mere healthy and heathen horror of the unclean; the mere inhumane
+hatred of the inhuman state of madness. He seemed to hear all round him
+the hateful whispers of that place, innumerable as leaves whispering
+in the wind, and each of them telling eagerly some evil that had not
+happened or some terrific secret which was not true. All the rationalist
+and plain man revolted within him against bowing down for a moment in
+that forest of deception and egotistical darkness. He wanted to blow up
+that palace of delusions with dynamite; and in some wild way, which I
+will not defend, he tried to do it.
+
+He looked across at MacIan and said: “Oh, I can't stand this!”
+
+“Can't stand what?” asked his opponent, eyeing him doubtfully.
+
+“Shall we say the atmosphere?” replied Turnbull; “one can't use uncivil
+expressions even to a--deity. The fact is, I don't like having God for
+my second.”
+
+“Sir!” said that being in a state of great offence, “in my position I am
+not used to having my favours refused. Do you know who I am?”
+
+The editor of _The Atheist_ turned upon him like one who has lost
+all patience, and exploded: “Yes, you are God, aren't you?” he said,
+abruptly, “why do we have two sets of teeth?”
+
+“Teeth?” spluttered the genteel lunatic; “teeth?”
+
+“Yes,” cried Turnbull, advancing on him swiftly and with animated
+gestures, “why does teething hurt? Why do growing pains hurt? Why are
+measles catching? Why does a rose have thorns? Why do rhinoceroses have
+horns? Why is the horn on the top of the nose? Why haven't I a horn on
+the top of my nose, eh?” And he struck the bridge of his nose smartly
+with his forefinger to indicate the place of the omission and then
+wagged the finger menacingly at the Creator.
+
+“I've often wanted to meet you,” he resumed, sternly, after a pause, “to
+hold you accountable for all the idiocy and cruelty of this muddled and
+meaningless world of yours. You make a hundred seeds and only one bears
+fruit. You make a million worlds and only one seems inhabited. What do
+you mean by it, eh? What do you mean by it?”
+
+The unhappy lunatic had fallen back before this quite novel form of
+attack, and lifted his burnt-out cigarette almost like one warding off a
+blow. Turnbull went on like a torrent.
+
+“A man died yesterday in Ealing. You murdered him. A girl had the
+toothache in Croydon. You gave it her. Fifty sailors were drowned off
+Selsey Bill. You scuttled their ship. What have you got to say for
+yourself, eh?”
+
+The representative of omnipotence looked as if he had left most of these
+things to his subordinates; he passed a hand over his wrinkling brow and
+said in a voice much saner than any he had yet used:
+
+“Well, if you dislike my assistance, of course--perhaps the other
+gentleman----”
+
+“The other gentleman,” cried Turnbull, scornfully, “is a submissive
+and loyal and obedient gentleman. He likes the people who wear crowns,
+whether of diamonds or of stars. He believes in the divine right of
+kings, and it is appropriate enough that he should have the king for his
+second. But it is not appropriate to me that I should have God for my
+second. God is not good enough. I dislike and I deny the divine right of
+kings. But I dislike more and I deny more the divine right of divinity.”
+
+Then after a pause in which he swallowed his passion, he said to MacIan:
+“You have got the right second, anyhow.”
+
+The Highlander did not answer, but stood as if thunderstruck with one
+long and heavy thought. Then at last he turned abruptly to his second in
+the silk hat and said: “Who are you?”
+
+The man in the silk hat blinked and bridled in affected surprise, like
+one who was in truth accustomed to be doubted.
+
+“I am King Edward VII,” he said, with shaky arrogance. “Do you doubt my
+word?”
+
+“I do not doubt it in the least,” answered MacIan.
+
+“Then, why,” said the large man in the silk hat, trembling from head to
+foot, “why do you wear your hat before the king?”
+
+“Why should I take it off,” retorted MacIan, with equal heat, “before a
+usurper?”
+
+Turnbull swung round on his heel. “Well, really,” he said, “I thought at
+least you were a loyal subject.”
+
+“I am the only loyal subject,” answered the Gael. “For nearly thirty
+years I have walked these islands and have not found another.”
+
+“You are always hard to follow,” remarked Turnbull, genially, “and
+sometimes so much so as to be hardly worth following.”
+
+“I alone am loyal,” insisted MacIan; “for I alone am in rebellion. I am
+ready at any instant to restore the Stuarts. I am ready at any instant
+to defy the Hanoverian brood--and I defy it now even when face to face
+with the actual ruler of the enormous British Empire!”
+
+And folding his arms and throwing back his lean, hawklike face,
+he haughtily confronted the man with the formal frock-coat and the
+eccentric elbow.
+
+“What right had you stunted German squires,” he cried, “to interfere in
+a quarrel between Scotch and English and Irish gentlemen? Who made you,
+whose fathers could not splutter English while they walked in Whitehall,
+who made you the judge between the republic of Sidney and the monarchy
+of Montrose? What had your sires to do with England that they should
+have the foul offering of the blood of Derwentwater and the heart of
+Jimmy Dawson? Where are the corpses of Culloden? Where is the blood
+of Lochiel?” MacIan advanced upon his opponent with a bony and pointed
+finger, as if indicating the exact pocket in which the blood of that
+Cameron was probably kept; and Edward VII fell back a few paces in
+considerable confusion.
+
+“What good have you ever done to us?” he continued in harsher and
+harsher accents, forcing the other back towards the flower-beds. “What
+good have you ever done, you race of German sausages? Yards of barbarian
+etiquette, to throttle the freedom of aristocracy! Gas of northern
+metaphysics to blow up Broad Church bishops like balloons. Bad pictures
+and bad manners and pantheism and the Albert Memorial. Go back to
+Hanover, you humbug? Go to----”
+
+Before the end of this tirade the arrogance of the monarch had entirely
+given way; he had fairly turned tail and was trundling away down the
+path. MacIan strode after him still preaching and flourishing his large,
+lean hands. The other two remained in the centre of the lawn--Turnbull
+in convulsions of laughter, the lunatic in convulsions of disgust.
+Almost at the same moment a third figure came stepping swiftly across
+the lawn.
+
+The advancing figure walked with a stoop, and yet somehow flung his
+forked and narrow beard forward. That carefully cut and pointed yellow
+beard was, indeed, the most emphatic thing about him. When he clasped
+his hands behind him, under the tails of his coat, he would wag his
+beard at a man like a big forefinger. It performed almost all his
+gestures; it was more important than the glittering eye-glasses through
+which he looked or the beautiful bleating voice in which he spoke. His
+face and neck were of a lusty red, but lean and stringy; he always wore
+his expensive gold-rim eye-glasses slightly askew upon his aquiline
+nose; and he always showed two gleaming foreteeth under his moustache,
+in a smile so perpetual as to earn the reputation of a sneer. But for
+the crooked glasses his dress was always exquisite; and but for the
+smile he was perfectly and perennially depressed.
+
+“Don't you think,” said the new-comer, with a sort of supercilious
+entreaty, “that we had better all come into breakfast? It is such a
+mistake to wait for breakfast. It spoils one's temper so much.”
+
+“Quite so,” replied Turnbull, seriously.
+
+“There seems almost to have been a little quarrelling here,” said the
+man with the goatish beard.
+
+“It is rather a long story,” said Turnbull, smiling. “Originally, it
+might be called a phase in the quarrel between science and religion.”
+
+The new-comer started slightly, and Turnbull replied to the question on
+his face.
+
+“Oh, yes,” he said, “I am science!”
+
+“I congratulate you heartily,” answered the other, “I am Doctor Quayle.”
+
+Turnbull's eyes did not move, but he realized that the man in the panama
+hat had lost all his ease of a landed proprietor and had withdrawn to
+a distance of thirty yards, where he stood glaring with all the
+contraction of fear and hatred that can stiffen a cat.
+
+           *                    *                   *
+
+MacIan was sitting somewhat disconsolately on a stump of tree, his large
+black head half buried in his large brown hands, when Turnbull strode
+up to him chewing a cigarette. He did not look up, but his comrade and
+enemy addressed him like one who must free himself of his feelings.
+
+“Well, I hope, at any rate,” he said, “that you like your precious
+religion now. I hope you like the society of this poor devil whom your
+damned tracts and hymns and priests have driven out of his wits. Five
+men in this place, they tell me, five men in this place who might have
+been fathers of families, and every one of them thinks he is God the
+Father. Oh! you may talk about the ugliness of science, but there is no
+one here who thinks he is Protoplasm.”
+
+“They naturally prefer a bright part,” said MacIan, wearily. “Protoplasm
+is not worth going mad about.”
+
+“At least,” said Turnbull, savagely, “it was your Jesus Christ who
+started all this bosh about being God.”
+
+For one instant MacIan opened the eyes of battle; then his tightened
+lips took a crooked smile and he said, quite calmly:
+
+“No, the idea is older; it was Satan who first said that he was God.”
+
+“Then, what,” asked Turnbull, very slowly, as he softly picked a flower,
+“what is the difference between Christ and Satan?”
+
+“It is quite simple,” replied the Highlander. “Christ descended into
+hell; Satan fell into it.”
+
+“Does it make much odds?” asked the free-thinker.
+
+“It makes all the odds,” said the other. “One of them wanted to go up
+and went down; the other wanted to go down and went up. A god can be
+humble, a devil can only be humbled.”
+
+“Why are you always wanting to humble a man?” asked Turnbull, knitting
+his brows. “It affects me as ungenerous.”
+
+“Why were you wanting to humble a god when you found him in this
+garden?” asked MacIan.
+
+“That was an extreme case of impudence,” said Turnbull.
+
+“Granting the man his almighty pretensions, I think he was very modest,”
+ said MacIan. “It is we who are arrogant, who know we are only men. The
+ordinary man in the street is more of a monster than that poor fellow;
+for the man in the street treats himself as God Almighty when he knows
+he isn't. He expects the universe to turn round him, though he knows he
+isn't the centre.”
+
+“Well,” said Turnbull, sitting down on the grass, “this is a digression,
+anyhow. What I want to point out is, that your faith does end in asylums
+and my science doesn't.”
+
+“Doesn't it, by George!” cried MacIan, scornfully. “There are a few men
+here who are mad on God and a few who are mad on the Bible. But I bet
+there are many more who are simply mad on madness.”
+
+“Do you really believe it?” asked the other.
+
+“Scores of them, I should say,” answered MacIan. “Fellows who have
+read medical books or fellows whose fathers and uncles had something
+hereditary in their heads--the whole air they breathe is mad.”
+
+“All the same,” said Turnbull, shrewdly, “I bet you haven't found a
+madman of that sort.”
+
+“I bet I have!” cried Evan, with unusual animation. “I've been walking
+about the garden talking to a poor chap all the morning. He's simply
+been broken down and driven raving by your damned science. Talk about
+believing one is God--why, it's quite an old, comfortable, fireside
+fancy compared with the sort of things this fellow believes. He believes
+that there is a God, but that he is better than God. He says God will be
+afraid to face him. He says one is always progressing beyond the best.
+He put his arm in mine and whispered in my ear, as if it were the
+apocalypse: 'Never trust a God that you can't improve on.'”
+
+“What can he have meant?” said the atheist, with all his logic awake.
+“Obviously one should not trust any God that one can improve on.”
+
+“It is the way he talks,” said MacIan, almost indifferently; “but he
+says rummier things than that. He says that a man's doctor ought to
+decide what woman he marries; and he says that children ought not to
+be brought up by their parents, because a physical partiality will then
+distort the judgement of the educator.”
+
+“Oh, dear!” said Turnbull, laughing, “you have certainly come across a
+pretty bad case, and incidentally proved your own. I suppose some men do
+lose their wits through science as through love and other good things.”
+
+“And he says,” went on MacIan, monotonously, “that he cannot see why
+anyone should suppose that a triangle is a three-sided figure. He says
+that on some higher plane----”
+
+Turnbull leapt to his feet as by an electric shock. “I never could have
+believed,” he cried, “that you had humour enough to tell a lie. You've
+gone a bit too far, old man, with your little joke. Even in a lunatic
+asylum there can't be anybody who, having thought about the matter,
+thinks that a triangle has not got three sides. If he exists he must be
+a new era in human psychology. But he doesn't exist.”
+
+“I will go and fetch him,” said MacIan, calmly; “I left the poor fellow
+wandering about by the nasturtium bed.”
+
+MacIan vanished, and in a few moments returned, trailing with him his
+own discovery among lunatics, who was a slender man with a fixed smile
+and an unfixed and rolling head. He had a goatlike beard just long
+enough to be shaken in a strong wind. Turnbull sprang to his feet
+and was like one who is speechless through choking a sudden shout of
+laughter.
+
+“Why, you great donkey,” he shouted, in an ear-shattering whisper,
+“that's not one of the patients at all. That's one of the doctors.”
+
+Evan looked back at the leering head with the long-pointed beard and
+repeated the word inquiringly: “One of the doctors?”
+
+“Oh, you know what I mean,” said Turnbull, impatiently. “The medical
+authorities of the place.”
+
+Evan was still staring back curiously at the beaming and bearded
+creature behind him.
+
+“The mad doctors,” said Turnbull, shortly.
+
+“Quite so,” said MacIan.
+
+After a rather restless silence Turnbull plucked MacIan by the elbow and
+pulled him aside.
+
+“For goodness sake,” he said, “don't offend this fellow; he may be as
+mad as ten hatters, if you like, but he has us between his finger
+and thumb. This is the very time he appointed to talk with us about
+our--well, our exeat.”
+
+“But what can it matter?” asked the wondering MacIan. “He can't keep us
+in the asylum. We're not mad.”
+
+“Jackass!” said Turnbull, heartily, “of course we're not mad. Of course,
+if we are medically examined and the thing is thrashed out, they will
+find we are not mad. But don't you see that if the thing is thrashed out
+it will mean letters to this reference and telegrams to that; and at the
+first word of who we are, we shall be taken out of a madhouse, where
+we may smoke, to a jail, where we mayn't. No, if we manage this very
+quietly, he may merely let us out at the front door as stray revellers.
+If there's half an hour of inquiry, we are cooked.”
+
+MacIan looked at the grass frowningly for a few seconds, and then said
+in a new, small and childish voice: “I am awfully stupid, Mr. Turnbull;
+you must be patient with me.”
+
+Turnbull caught Evan's elbow again with quite another gesture. “Come,”
+ he cried, with the harsh voice of one who hides emotion, “come and let
+us be tactful in chorus.”
+
+The doctor with the pointed beard was already slanting it forward at a
+more than usually acute angle, with the smile that expressed expectancy.
+
+“I hope I do not hurry you, gentlemen,” he said, with the faintest
+suggestion of a sneer at their hurried consultation, “but I believe you
+wanted to see me at half past eleven.”
+
+“I am most awfully sorry, Doctor,” said Turnbull, with ready amiability;
+“I never meant to keep you waiting; but the silly accident that has
+landed us in your garden may have some rather serious consequences to
+our friends elsewhere, and my friend here was just drawing my attention
+to some of them.”
+
+“Quite so! Quite so!” said the doctor, hurriedly. “If you really want
+to put anything before me, I can give you a few moments in my
+consulting-room.”
+
+He led them rapidly into a small but imposing apartment, which seemed
+to be built and furnished entirely in red-varnished wood. There was one
+desk occupied with carefully docketed papers; and there were several
+chairs of the red-varnished wood--though of different shape. All along
+the wall ran something that might have been a bookcase, only that it was
+not filled with books, but with flat, oblong slabs or cases of the same
+polished dark-red consistency. What those flat wooden cases were they
+could form no conception.
+
+The doctor sat down with a polite impatience on his professional perch;
+MacIan remained standing, but Turnbull threw himself almost with luxury
+into a hard wooden arm-chair.
+
+“This is a most absurd business, Doctor,” he said, “and I am ashamed to
+take up the time of busy professional men with such pranks from outside.
+The plain fact is, that he and I and a pack of silly men and girls have
+organized a game across this part of the country--a sort of combination
+of hare and hounds and hide and seek--I dare say you've heard of it. We
+are the hares, and, seeing your high wall look so inviting, we tumbled
+over it, and naturally were a little startled with what we found on the
+other side.”
+
+“Quite so!” said the doctor, mildly. “I can understand that you were
+startled.”
+
+Turnbull had expected him to ask what place was the headquarters of the
+new exhilarating game, and who were the male and female enthusiasts who
+had brought it to such perfection; in fact, Turnbull was busy making up
+these personal and topographical particulars. As the doctor did not ask
+the question, he grew slightly uneasy, and risked the question: “I hope
+you will accept my assurance that the thing was an accident and that no
+intrusion was meant.”
+
+“Oh, yes, sir,” replied the doctor, smiling, “I accept everything that
+you say.”
+
+“In that case,” said Turnbull, rising genially, “we must not further
+interrupt your important duties. I suppose there will be someone to let
+us out?”
+
+“No,” said the doctor, still smiling steadily and pleasantly, “there
+will be no one to let you out.”
+
+“Can we let ourselves out, then?” asked Turnbull, in some surprise.
+
+“Why, of course not,” said the beaming scientist; “think how dangerous
+that would be in a place like this.”
+
+“Then, how the devil are we to get out?” cried Turnbull, losing his
+manners for the first time.
+
+“It is a question of time, of receptivity, and treatment,” said the
+doctor, arching his eyebrows indifferently. “I do not regard either of
+your cases as incurable.”
+
+And with that the man of the world was struck dumb, and, as in all
+intolerable moments, the word was with the unworldly.
+
+MacIan took one stride to the table, leant across it, and said: “We
+can't stop here, we're not mad people!”
+
+“We don't use the crude phrase,” said the doctor, smiling at his
+patent-leather boots.
+
+“But you _can't_ think us mad,” thundered MacIan. “You never saw us
+before. You know nothing about us. You haven't even examined us.”
+
+The doctor threw back his head and beard. “Oh, yes,” he said, “very
+thoroughly.”
+
+“But you can't shut a man up on your mere impressions without documents
+or certificates or anything?”
+
+The doctor got languidly to his feet. “Quite so,” he said. “You
+certainly ought to see the documents.”
+
+He went across to the curious mock book-shelves and took down one of
+the flat mahogany cases. This he opened with a curious key at his
+watch-chain, and laying back a flap revealed a quire of foolscap covered
+with close but quite clear writing. The first three words were in such
+large copy-book hand that they caught the eye even at a distance. They
+were: “MacIan, Evan Stuart.”
+
+Evan bent his angry eagle face over it; yet something blurred it and
+he could never swear he saw it distinctly. He saw something that began:
+“Prenatal influences predisposing to mania. Grandfather believed in
+return of the Stuarts. Mother carried bone of St. Eulalia with which she
+touched children in sickness. Marked religious mania at early age----”
+
+Evan fell back and fought for his speech. “Oh!” he burst out at last.
+“Oh! if all this world I have walked in had been as sane as my mother
+was.”
+
+Then he compressed his temples with his hands, as if to crush them. And
+then lifted suddenly a face that looked fresh and young, as if he had
+dipped and washed it in some holy well.
+
+“Very well,” he cried; “I will take the sour with the sweet. I will pay
+the penalty of having enjoyed God in this monstrous modern earth that
+cannot enjoy man or beast. I will die happy in your madhouse, only
+because I know what I know. Let it be granted, then--MacIan is a mystic;
+MacIan is a maniac. But this honest shopkeeper and editor whom I have
+dragged on my inhuman escapades, you cannot keep him. He will go free,
+thank God, he is not down in any damned document. His ancestor, I am
+certain, did not die at Culloden. His mother, I swear, had no relics.
+Let my friend out of your front door, and as for me----”
+
+The doctor had already gone across to the laden shelves, and after a few
+minutes' short-sighted peering, had pulled down another parallelogram of
+dark-red wood.
+
+This also he unlocked on the table, and with the same unerring
+egotistic eye on of the company saw the words, written in large letters:
+“Turnbull, James.”
+
+Hitherto Turnbull himself had somewhat scornfully surrendered his part
+in the whole business; but he was too honest and unaffected not to
+start at his own name. After the name, the inscription appeared to run:
+“Unique case of Eleutheromania. Parentage, as so often in such cases,
+prosaic and healthy. Eleutheromaniac signs occurred early, however,
+leading him to attach himself to the individualist Bradlaugh. Recent
+outbreak of pure anarchy----”
+
+Turnbull slammed the case to, almost smashing it, and said with a burst
+of savage laughter: “Oh! come along, MacIan; I don't care so much, even
+about getting out of the madhouse, if only we get out of this room. You
+were right enough, MacIan, when you spoke about--about mad doctors.”
+
+Somehow they found themselves outside in the cool, green garden, and
+then, after a stunned silence, Turnbull said: “There is one thing that
+was puzzling me all the time, and I understand it now.”
+
+“What do you mean?” asked Evan.
+
+“No man by will or wit,” answered Turnbull, “can get out of this garden;
+and yet we got into it merely by jumping over a garden wall. The whole
+thing explains itself easily enough. That undefended wall was an open
+trap. It was a trap laid for two celebrated lunatics. They saw us get in
+right enough. And they will see that we do not get out.”
+
+Evan gazed at the garden wall, gravely for more than a minute, and then
+he nodded without a word.
+
+
+
+
+XV. THE DREAM OF MACIAN
+
+The system of espionage in the asylum was so effective and complete that
+in practice the patients could often enjoy a sense of almost complete
+solitude. They could stray up so near to the wall in an apparently
+unwatched garden as to find it easy to jump over it. They would only
+have found the error of their calculations if they had tried to jump.
+
+Under this insulting liberty, in this artificial loneliness, Evan MacIan
+was in the habit of creeping out into the garden after dark--especially
+upon moonlight nights. The moon, indeed, was for him always a positive
+magnet in a manner somewhat hard to explain to those of a robuster
+attitude. Evidently, Apollo is to the full as poetical as Diana; but it
+is not a question of poetry in the matured and intellectual sense of the
+word. It is a question of a certain solid and childish fancy. The sun is
+in the strict and literal sense invisible; that is to say, that by our
+bodily eyes it cannot properly be seen. But the moon is a much simpler
+thing; a naked and nursery sort of thing. It hangs in the sky quite
+solid and quite silver and quite useless; it is one huge celestial
+snowball. It was at least some such infantile facts and fancies which
+led Evan again and again during his dehumanized imprisonment to go out
+as if to shoot the moon.
+
+He was out in the garden on one such luminous and ghostly night, when
+the steady moonshine toned down all the colours of the garden until
+almost the strongest tints to be seen were the strong soft blue of the
+sky and the large lemon moon. He was walking with his face turned up to
+it in that rather half-witted fashion which might have excused the error
+of his keepers; and as he gazed he became aware of something little and
+lustrous flying close to the lustrous orb, like a bright chip knocked
+off the moon. At first he thought it was a mere sparkle or refraction
+in his own eyesight; he blinked and cleared his eyes. Then he thought
+it was a falling star; only it did not fall. It jerked awkwardly up and
+down in a way unknown among meteors and strangely reminiscent of the
+works of man. The next moment the thing drove right across the moon,
+and from being silver upon blue, suddenly became black upon silver;
+then although it passed the field of light in a flash its outline was
+unmistakable though eccentric. It was a flying ship.
+
+The vessel took one long and sweeping curve across the sky and came
+nearer and nearer to MacIan, like a steam-engine coming round a bend. It
+was of pure white steel, and in the moon it gleamed like the armour of
+Sir Galahad. The simile of such virginity is not inappropriate; for, as
+it grew larger and larger and lower and lower, Evan saw that the only
+figure in it was robed in white from head to foot and crowned with
+snow-white hair, on which the moonshine lay like a benediction. The
+figure stood so still that he could easily have supposed it to be a
+statue. Indeed, he thought it was until it spoke.
+
+“Evan,” said the voice, and it spoke with the simple authority of some
+forgotten father revisiting his children, “you have remained here long
+enough, and your sword is wanted elsewhere.”
+
+“Wanted for what?” asked the young man, accepting the monstrous event
+with a queer and clumsy naturalness; “what is my sword wanted for?”
+
+“For all that you hold dear,” said the man standing in the moonlight;
+“for the thrones of authority and for all ancient loyalty to law.”
+
+Evan looked up at the lunar orb again as if in irrational appeal--a moon
+calf bleating to his mother the moon. But the face of Luna seemed as
+witless as his own; there is no help in nature against the supernatural;
+and he looked again at the tall marble figure that might have been made
+out of solid moonlight.
+
+Then he said in a loud voice: “Who are you?” and the next moment was
+seized by a sort of choking terror lest his question should be answered.
+But the unknown preserved an impenetrable silence for a long space and
+then only answered: “I must not say who I am until the end of the world;
+but I may say what I am. I am the law.”
+
+And he lifted his head so that the moon smote full upon his beautiful
+and ancient face.
+
+The face was the face of a Greek god grown old, but not grown either
+weak or ugly; there was nothing to break its regularity except a rather
+long chin with a cleft in it, and this rather added distinction than
+lessened beauty. His strong, well-opened eyes were very brilliant but
+quite colourless like steel.
+
+MacIan was one of those to whom a reverence and self-submission in
+ritual come quite easy, and are ordinary things. It was not artificial
+in him to bend slightly to this solemn apparition or to lower his voice
+when he said: “Do you bring me some message?”
+
+“I do bring you a message,” answered the man of moon and marble. “The
+king has returned.”
+
+Evan did not ask for or require any explanation. “I suppose you can take
+me to the war,” he said, and the silent silver figure only bowed its
+head again. MacIan clambered into the silver boat, and it rose upward to
+the stars.
+
+To say that it rose to the stars is no mere metaphor, for the sky had
+cleared to that occasional and astonishing transparency in which one can
+see plainly both stars and moon.
+
+As the white-robed figure went upward in his white chariot, he said
+quite quietly to Evan: “There is an answer to all the folly talked about
+equality. Some stars are big and some small; some stand still and some
+circle around them as they stand. They can be orderly, but they cannot
+be equal.”
+
+“They are all very beautiful,” said Evan, as if in doubt.
+
+“They are all beautiful,” answered the other, “because each is in his
+place and owns his superior. And now England will be beautiful after the
+same fashion. The earth will be as beautiful as the heavens, because our
+kings have come back to us.”
+
+“The Stuart----” began Evan, earnestly.
+
+“Yes,” answered the old man, “that which has returned is Stuart and yet
+older than Stuart. It is Capet and Plantagenet and Pendragon. It is all
+that good old time of which proverbs tell, that golden reign of Saturn
+against which gods and men were rebels. It is all that was ever lost
+by insolence and overwhelmed in rebellion. It is your own forefather,
+MacIan with the broken sword, bleeding without hope at Culloden. It is
+Charles refusing to answer the questions of the rebel court. It is Mary
+of the magic face confronting the gloomy and grasping peers and the
+boorish moralities of Knox. It is Richard, the last Plantagenet,
+giving his crown to Bolingbroke as to a common brigand. It is Arthur,
+overwhelmed in Lyonesse by heathen armies and dying in the mist,
+doubtful if ever he shall return.”
+
+“But now----” said Evan, in a low voice.
+
+“But now!” said the old man; “he has returned.”
+
+“Is the war still raging?” asked MacIan.
+
+“It rages like the pit itself beyond the sea whither I am taking you,”
+ answered the other. “But in England the king enjoys his own again.
+The people are once more taught and ruled as is best; they are happy
+knights, happy squires, happy servants, happy serfs, if you will; but
+free at last of that load of vexation and lonely vanity which was called
+being a citizen.”
+
+“Is England, indeed, so secure?” asked Evan.
+
+“Look out and see,” said the guide. “I fancy you have seen this place
+before.”
+
+They were driving through the air towards one region of the sky where
+the hollow of night seemed darkest and which was quite without stars.
+But against this black background there sprang up, picked out in
+glittering silver, a dome and a cross. It seemed that it was really
+newly covered with silver, which in the strong moonlight was like
+white flame. But, however, covered or painted, Evan had no difficult
+in knowing the place again. He saw the great thoroughfare that sloped
+upward to the base of its huge pedestal of steps. And he wondered
+whether the little shop was still by the side of it and whether its
+window had been mended.
+
+As the flying ship swept round the dome he observed other alterations.
+The dome had been redecorated so as to give it a more solemn and
+somewhat more ecclesiastical note; the ball was draped or destroyed,
+and round the gallery, under the cross, ran what looked like a ring of
+silver statues, like the little leaden images that stood round the hat
+of Louis XI. Round the second gallery, at the base of the dome, ran a
+second rank of such images, and Evan thought there was another round
+the steps below. When they came closer he saw that they were figures
+in complete armour of steel or silver, each with a naked sword, point
+upward; and then he saw one of the swords move. These were not statues
+but an armed order of chivalry thrown in three circles round the cross.
+MacIan drew in his breath, as children do at anything they think utterly
+beautiful. For he could imagine nothing that so echoed his own visions
+of pontifical or chivalric art as this white dome sitting like a vast
+silver tiara over London, ringed with a triple crown of swords.
+
+As they went sailing down Ludgate Hill, Evan saw that the state of the
+streets fully answered his companion's claim about the reintroduction
+of order. All the old blackcoated bustle with its cockney vivacity
+and vulgarity had disappeared. Groups of labourers, quietly but
+picturesquely clad, were passing up and down in sufficiently large
+numbers; but it required but a few mounted men to keep the streets in
+order. The mounted men were not common policemen, but knights with spurs
+and plume whose smooth and splendid armour glittered like diamond rather
+than steel. Only in one place--at the corner of Bouverie Street--did
+there appear to be a moment's confusion, and that was due to hurry
+rather than resistance. But one old grumbling man did not get out of
+the way quick enough, and the man on horseback struck him, not severely,
+across the shoulders with the flat of his sword.
+
+“The soldier had no business to do that,” said MacIan, sharply. “The old
+man was moving as quickly as he could.”
+
+“We attach great importance to discipline in the streets,” said the man
+in white, with a slight smile.
+
+“Discipline is not so important as justice,” said MacIan.
+
+The other did not answer.
+
+Then after a swift silence that took them out across St. James's Park,
+he said: “The people must be taught to obey; they must learn their own
+ignorance. And I am not sure,” he continued, turning his back on Evan
+and looking out of the prow of the ship into the darkness, “I am not
+sure that I agree with your little maxim about justice. Discipline
+for the whole society is surely more important than justice to an
+individual.”
+
+Evan, who was also leaning over the edge, swung round with startling
+suddenness and stared at the other's back.
+
+“Discipline for society----” he repeated, very staccato, “more
+important--justice to individual?”
+
+Then after a long silence he called out: “Who and what are you?”
+
+“I am an angel,” said the white-robed figure, without turning round.
+
+“You are not a Catholic,” said MacIan.
+
+The other seemed to take no notice, but reverted to the main topic.
+
+“In our armies up in heaven we learn to put a wholesome fear into
+subordinates.”
+
+MacIan sat craning his neck forward with an extraordinary and
+unaccountable eagerness.
+
+“Go on!” he cried, twisting and untwisting his long, bony fingers, “go
+on!”
+
+“Besides,” continued he, in the prow, “you must allow for a certain high
+spirit and haughtiness in the superior type.”
+
+“Go on!” said Evan, with burning eyes.
+
+“Just as the sight of sin offends God,” said the unknown, “so does the
+sight of ugliness offend Apollo. The beautiful and princely must, of
+necessity, be impatient with the squalid and----”
+
+“Why, you great fool!” cried MacIan, rising to the top of his tremendous
+stature, “did you think I would have doubted only for that rap with a
+sword? I know that noble orders have bad knights, that good knights have
+bad tempers, that the Church has rough priests and coarse cardinals;
+I have known it ever since I was born. You fool! you had only to say,
+'Yes, it is rather a shame,' and I should have forgotten the affair. But
+I saw on your mouth the twitch of your infernal sophistry; I knew that
+something was wrong with you and your cathedrals. Something is wrong;
+everything is wrong. You are not an angel. That is not a church. It is
+not the rightful king who has come home.”
+
+“That is unfortunate,” said the other, in a quiet but hard voice,
+“because you are going to see his Majesty.”
+
+“No,” said MacIan, “I am going to jump over the side.”
+
+“Do you desire death?”
+
+“No,” said Evan, quite composedly, “I desire a miracle.”
+
+“From whom do you ask it? To whom do you appeal?” said his companion,
+sternly. “You have betrayed the king, renounced his cross on the
+cathedral, and insulted an archangel.”
+
+“I appeal to God,” said Evan, and sprang up and stood upon the edge of
+the swaying ship.
+
+The being in the prow turned slowly round; he looked at Evan with eyes
+which were like two suns, and put his hand to his mouth just too late to
+hide an awful smile.
+
+“And how do you know,” he said, “how do you know that I am not God?”
+
+MacIan screamed. “Ah!” he cried. “Now I know who you really are. You are
+not God. You are not one of God's angels. But you were once.”
+
+The being's hand dropped from his mouth and Evan dropped out of the car.
+
+
+
+
+XVI. THE DREAM OF TURNBULL
+
+Turnbull was walking rather rampantly up and down the garden on a gusty
+evening chewing his cigar and in that mood when every man suppresses
+an instinct to spit. He was not, as a rule, a man much acquainted with
+moods; and the storms and sunbursts of MacIan's soul passed before him
+as an impressive but unmeaning panorama, like the anarchy of Highland
+scenery. Turnbull was one of those men in whom a continuous appetite and
+industry of the intellect leave the emotions very simple and steady.
+His heart was in the right place; but he was quite content to leave it
+there. It was his head that was his hobby. His mornings and evenings
+were marked not by impulses or thirsty desires, not by hope or by
+heart-break; they were filled with the fallacies he had detected, the
+problems he had made plain, the adverse theories he had wrestled with
+and thrown, the grand generalizations he had justified. But even the
+cheerful inner life of a logician may be upset by a lunatic asylum, to
+say nothing of whiffs of memory from a lady in Jersey, and the little
+red-bearded man on this windy evening was in a dangerous frame of mind.
+
+Plain and positive as he was, the influence of earth and sky may have
+been greater on him than he imagined; and the weather that walked the
+world at that moment was as red and angry as Turnbull. Long strips and
+swirls of tattered and tawny cloud were dragged downward to the west
+exactly as torn red raiment would be dragged. And so strong and pitiless
+was the wind that it whipped away fragments of red-flowering bushes or
+of copper beech, and drove them also across the garden, a drift of red
+leaves, like the leaves of autumn, as in parody of the red and driven
+rags of cloud.
+
+There was a sense in earth and heaven as of everything breaking up, and
+all the revolutionist in Turnbull rejoiced that it was breaking up.
+The trees were breaking up under the wind, even in the tall strength
+of their bloom: the clouds were breaking up and losing even their large
+heraldic shapes. Shards and shreds of copper cloud split off continually
+and floated by themselves, and for some reason the truculent eye of
+Turnbull was attracted to one of these careering cloudlets, which seemed
+to him to career in an exaggerated manner. Also it kept its shape, which
+is unusual with clouds shaken off; also its shape was of an odd sort.
+
+Turnbull continued to stare at it, and in a little time occurred that
+crucial instant when a thing, however incredible, is accepted as a fact.
+The copper cloud was tumbling down towards the earth, like some gigantic
+leaf from the copper beeches. And as it came nearer it was evident,
+first, that it was not a cloud, and, second, that it was not itself
+of the colour of copper; only, being burnished like a mirror, it had
+reflected the red-brown colours of the burning clouds. As the thing
+whirled like a windswept leaf down towards the wall of the garden it was
+clear that it was some sort of air-ship made of metal, and slapping
+the air with big broad fins of steel. When it came about a hundred feet
+above the garden, a shaggy, lean figure leapt up in it, almost black
+against the bronze and scarlet of the west, and, flinging out a kind of
+hook or anchor, caught on to the green apple-tree just under the wall;
+and from that fixed holding ground the ship swung in the red tempest
+like a captive balloon.
+
+While our friend stood frozen for an instant by his astonishment, the
+queer figure in the airy car tipped the vehicle almost upside down by
+leaping over the side of it, seemed to slide or drop down the rope like
+a monkey, and alighted (with impossible precision and placidity) seated
+on the edge of the wall, over which he kicked and dangled his legs as he
+grinned at Turnbull. The wind roared in the trees yet more ruinous and
+desolate, the red tails of the sunset were dragged downward like red
+dragons sucked down to death, and still on the top of the asylum wall
+sat the sinister figure with the grimace, swinging his feet in tune with
+the tempest; while above him, at the end of its tossing or tightened
+cord, the enormous iron air-ship floated as light and as little noticed
+as a baby's balloon upon its string.
+
+Turnbull's first movement after sixty motionless seconds was to turn
+round and look at the large, luxuriant parallelogram of the garden and
+the long, low rectangular building beyond. There was not a soul or a
+stir of life within sight. And he had a quite meaningless sensation, as
+if there never really had been any one else there except he since the
+foundation of the world.
+
+Stiffening in himself the masculine but mirthless courage of the
+atheist, he drew a little nearer to the wall and, catching the man at
+a slightly different angle of the evening light, could see his face and
+figure quite plain. Two facts about him stood out in the picked colours
+of some piratical schoolboy's story. The first was that his lean brown
+body was bare to the belt of his loose white trousers; the other that
+through hygiene, affectation, or whatever other cause, he had a scarlet
+handkerchief tied tightly but somewhat aslant across his brow. After
+these two facts had become emphatic, others appeared sufficiently
+important. One was that under the scarlet rag the hair was plentiful,
+but white as with the last snows of mortality. Another was that under
+the mop of white and senile hair the face was strong, handsome, and
+smiling, with a well-cut profile and a long cloven chin. The length of
+this lower part of the face and the strange cleft in it (which gave the
+man, in quite another sense from the common one, a double chin) faintly
+spoilt the claim of the face to absolute regularity, but it greatly
+assisted it in wearing the expression of half-smiling and half-sneering
+arrogance with which it was staring at all the stones, all the flowers,
+but especially at the solitary man.
+
+“What do you want?” shouted Turnbull.
+
+“I want you, Jimmy,” said the eccentric man on the wall, and with the
+very word he had let himself down with a leap on to the centre of the
+lawn, where he bounded once literally like an India-rubber ball and then
+stood grinning with his legs astride. The only three facts that Turnbull
+could now add to his inventory were that the man had an ugly-looking
+knife swinging at his trousers belt, that his brown feet were as bare
+as his bronzed trunk and arms, and that his eyes had a singular bleak
+brilliancy which was of no particular colour.
+
+“Excuse my not being in evening dress,” said the newcomer with an
+urbane smile. “We scientific men, you know--I have to work my own
+engines--electrical engineer--very hot work.”
+
+“Look here,” said Turnbull, sturdily clenching his fists in his trousers
+pockets, “I am bound to expect lunatics inside these four walls; but I
+do bar their coming from outside, bang out of the sunset clouds.”
+
+“And yet you came from the outside, too, Jim,” said the stranger in a
+voice almost affectionate.
+
+“What do you want?” asked Turnbull, with an explosion of temper as
+sudden as a pistol shot.
+
+“I have already told you,” said the man, lowering his voice and speaking
+with evident sincerity; “I want you.”
+
+“What do you want with me?”
+
+“I want exactly what you want,” said the new-comer with a new gravity.
+“I want the Revolution.”
+
+Turnbull looked at the fire-swept sky and the wind-stricken woodlands,
+and kept on repeating the word voicelessly to himself--the word that did
+indeed so thoroughly express his mood of rage as it had been among those
+red clouds and rocking tree-tops. “Revolution!” he said to himself. “The
+Revolution--yes, that is what I want right enough--anything, so long as
+it is a Revolution.”
+
+To some cause he could never explain he found himself completing the
+sentence on the top of the wall, having automatically followed the
+stranger so far. But when the stranger silently indicated the rope that
+led to the machine, he found himself pausing and saying: “I can't leave
+MacIan behind in this den.”
+
+“We are going to destroy the Pope and all the kings,” said the
+new-comer. “Would it be wiser to take him with us?”
+
+Somehow the muttering Turnbull found himself in the flying ship also,
+and it swung up into the sunset.
+
+“All the great rebels have been very little rebels,” said the man with
+the red scarf. “They have been like fourth-form boys who sometimes
+venture to hit a fifth-form boy. That was all the worth of their
+French Revolution and regicide. The boys never really dared to defy the
+schoolmaster.”
+
+“Whom do you mean by the schoolmaster?” asked Turnbull.
+
+“You know whom I mean,” answered the strange man, as he lay back on
+cushions and looked up into the angry sky.
+
+They seemed rising into stronger and stronger sunlight, as if it were
+sunrise rather than sunset. But when they looked down at the earth
+they saw it growing darker and darker. The lunatic asylum in its large
+rectangular grounds spread below them in a foreshortened and infantile
+plan, and looked for the first time the grotesque thing that it was.
+But the clear colours of the plan were growing darker every moment. The
+masses of rose or rhododendron deepened from crimson to violet. The maze
+of gravel pathways faded from gold to brown. By the time they had
+risen a few hundred feet higher nothing could be seen of that darkening
+landscape except the lines of lighted windows, each one of which, at
+least, was the light of one lost intelligence. But on them as they swept
+upward better and braver winds seemed to blow, and on them the ruby
+light of evening seemed struck, and splashed like red spurts from the
+grapes of Dionysus. Below them the fallen lights were literally the
+fallen stars of servitude. And above them all the red and raging clouds
+were like the leaping flags of liberty.
+
+The man with the cloven chin seemed to have a singular power of
+understanding thoughts; for, as Turnbull felt the whole universe tilt
+and turn over his head, the stranger said exactly the right thing.
+
+“Doesn't it seem as if everything were being upset?” said he; “and if
+once everything is upset, He will be upset on top of it.”
+
+Then, as Turnbull made no answer, his host continued:
+
+“That is the really fine thing about space. It is topsy-turvy. You have
+only to climb far enough towards the morning star to feel that you are
+coming down to it. You have only to dive deep enough into the abyss to
+feel that you are rising. That is the only glory of this universe--it is
+a giddy universe.”
+
+Then, as Turnbull was still silent, he added:
+
+“The heavens are full of revolution--of the real sort of revolution. All
+the high things are sinking low and all the big things looking small.
+All the people who think they are aspiring find they are falling head
+foremost. And all the people who think they are condescending find they
+are climbing up a precipice. That is the intoxication of space. That is
+the only joy of eternity--doubt. There is only one pleasure the angels
+can possibly have in flying, and that is, that they do not know whether
+they are on their head or their heels.”
+
+Then, finding his companion still mute, he fell himself into a smiling
+and motionless meditation, at the end of which he said suddenly:
+
+“So MacIan converted you?”
+
+Turnbull sprang up as if spurning the steel car from under his feet.
+“Converted me!” he cried. “What the devil do you mean? I have known him
+for a month, and I have not retracted a single----”
+
+“This Catholicism is a curious thing,” said the man of the cloven chin
+in uninterrupted reflectiveness, leaning his elegant elbows over the
+edge of the vessel; “it soaks and weakens men without their knowing it,
+just as I fear it has soaked and weakened you.”
+
+Turnbull stood in an attitude which might well have meant pitching the
+other man out of the flying ship.
+
+“I am an atheist,” he said, in a stifled voice. “I have always been an
+atheist. I am still an atheist.” Then, addressing the other's indolent
+and indifferent back, he cried: “In God's name what do you mean?”
+
+And the other answered without turning round:
+
+“I mean nothing in God's name.”
+
+Turnbull spat over the edge of the car and fell back furiously into his
+seat.
+
+The other continued still unruffled, and staring over the edge idly as
+an angler stares down at a stream.
+
+“The truth is that we never thought that you could have been caught,”
+ he said; “we counted on you as the one red-hot revolutionary left in
+the world. But, of course, these men like MacIan are awfully clever,
+especially when they pretend to be stupid.”
+
+Turnbull leapt up again in a living fury and cried: “What have I got to
+do with MacIan? I believe all I ever believed, and disbelieve all I
+ever disbelieved. What does all this mean, and what do you want with me
+here?”
+
+Then for the first time the other lifted himself from the edge of the
+car and faced him.
+
+“I have brought you here,” he answered, “to take part in the last war of
+the world.”
+
+“The last war!” repeated Turnbull, even in his dazed state a little
+touchy about such a dogma; “how do you know it will be the last?”
+
+The man laid himself back in his reposeful attitude, and said:
+
+“It is the last war, because if it does not cure the world for ever, it
+will destroy it.”
+
+“What do you mean?”
+
+“I only mean what you mean,” answered the unknown in a temperate voice.
+“What was it that you always meant on those million and one nights when
+you walked outside your Ludgate Hill shop and shook your hand in the
+air?”
+
+“Still I do not see,” said Turnbull, stubbornly.
+
+“You will soon,” said the other, and abruptly bent downward one iron
+handle of his huge machine. The engine stopped, stooped, and dived
+almost as deliberately as a man bathing; in their downward rush they
+swept within fifty yards of a big bulk of stone that Turnbull knew only
+too well. The last red anger of the sunset was ended; the dome of heaven
+was dark; the lanes of flaring light in the streets below hardly lit up
+the base of the building. But he saw that it was St. Paul's Cathedral,
+and he saw that on the top of it the ball was still standing erect, but
+the cross was stricken and had fallen sideways. Then only he cared to
+look down into the streets, and saw that they were inflamed with uproar
+and tossing passions.
+
+“We arrive at a happy moment,” said the man steering the ship. “The
+insurgents are bombarding the city, and a cannon-ball has just hit the
+cross. Many of the insurgents are simple people, and they naturally
+regard it as a happy omen.”
+
+“Quite so,” said Turnbull, in a rather colourless voice.
+
+“Yes,” replied the other. “I thought you would be glad to see your
+prayer answered. Of course I apologize for the word prayer.”
+
+“Don't mention it,” said Turnbull.
+
+The flying ship had come down upon a sort of curve, and was now rising
+again. The higher and higher it rose the broader and broader became the
+scenes of flame and desolation underneath.
+
+Ludgate Hill indeed had been an uncaptured and comparatively quiet
+height, altered only by the startling coincidence of the cross fallen
+awry. All the other thoroughfares on all sides of that hill were full
+of the pulsation and the pain of battle, full of shaking torches and
+shouting faces. When at length they had risen high enough to have a
+bird's-eye view of the whole campaign, Turnbull was already intoxicated.
+He had smelt gunpowder, which was the incense of his own revolutionary
+religion.
+
+“Have the people really risen?” he asked, breathlessly. “What are they
+fighting about?”
+
+“The programme is rather elaborate,” said his entertainer with some
+indifference. “I think Dr. Hertz drew it up.”
+
+Turnbull wrinkled his forehead. “Are all the poor people with the
+Revolution?” he asked.
+
+The other shrugged his shoulders. “All the instructed and
+class-conscious part of them without exception,” he replied. “There
+were certainly a few districts; in fact, we are passing over them just
+now----”
+
+Turnbull looked down and saw that the polished car was literally lit
+up from underneath by the far-flung fires from below. Underneath whole
+squares and solid districts were in flames, like prairies or forests on
+fire.
+
+“Dr. Hertz has convinced everybody,” said Turnbull's cicerone in a
+smooth voice, “that nothing can really be done with the real slums. His
+celebrated maxim has been quite adopted. I mean the three celebrated
+sentences: 'No man should be unemployed. Employ the employables. Destroy
+the unemployables.'”
+
+There was a silence, and then Turnbull said in a rather strained voice:
+“And do I understand that this good work is going on under here?”
+
+“Going on splendidly,” replied his companion in the heartiest voice.
+“You see, these people were much too tired and weak even to join the
+social war. They were a definite hindrance to it.”
+
+“And so you are simply burning them out?”
+
+“It _does_ seem absurdly simple,” said the man, with a beaming smile,
+“when one thinks of all the worry and talk about helping a hopeless
+slave population, when the future obviously was only crying to be rid of
+them. There are happy babes unborn ready to burst the doors when these
+drivellers are swept away.”
+
+“Will you permit me to say,” said Turnbull, after reflection, “that I
+don't like all this?”
+
+“And will you permit me to say,” said the other, with a snap, “that I
+don't like Mr. Evan MacIan?”
+
+Somewhat to the speaker's surprise this did not inflame the sensitive
+sceptic; he had the air of thinking thoroughly, and then he said: “No, I
+don't think it's my friend MacIan that taught me that. I think I should
+always have said that I don't like this. These people have rights.”
+
+“Rights!” repeated the unknown in a tone quite indescribable. Then he
+added with a more open sneer: “Perhaps they also have souls.”
+
+“They have lives!” said Turnbull, sternly; “that is quite enough for me.
+I understood you to say that you thought life sacred.”
+
+“Yes, indeed!” cried his mentor with a sort of idealistic animation.
+“Yes, indeed! Life is sacred--but lives are not sacred. We are improving
+Life by removing lives. Can you, as a free-thinker, find any fault in
+that?”
+
+“Yes,” said Turnbull with brevity.
+
+“Yet you applaud tyrannicide,” said the stranger with rationalistic
+gaiety. “How inconsistent! It really comes to this: You approve of
+taking away life from those to whom it is a triumph and a pleasure.
+But you will not take away life from those to whom it is a burden and a
+toil.”
+
+Turnbull rose to his feet in the car with considerable deliberation, but
+his face seemed oddly pale. The other went on with enthusiasm.
+
+“Life, yes, Life is indeed sacred!” he cried; “but new lives for old!
+Good lives for bad! On that very place where now there sprawls one
+drunken wastrel of a pavement artist more or less wishing he were
+dead--on that very spot there shall in the future be living pictures;
+there shall be golden girls and boys leaping in the sun.”
+
+Turnbull, still standing up, opened his lips. “Will you put me down,
+please?” he said, quite calmly, like on stopping an omnibus.
+
+“Put you down--what do you mean?” cried his leader. “I am taking you to
+the front of the revolutionary war, where you will be one of the first
+of the revolutionary leaders.”
+
+“Thank you,” replied Turnbull with the same painful constraint. “I have
+heard about your revolutionary war, and I think on the whole that I
+would rather be anywhere else.”
+
+“Do you want to be taken to a monastery,” snarled the other, “with
+MacIan and his winking Madonnas.”
+
+“I want to be taken to a madhouse,” said Turnbull distinctly, giving the
+direction with a sort of precision. “I want to go back to exactly the
+same lunatic asylum from which I came.”
+
+“Why?” asked the unknown.
+
+“Because I want a little sane and wholesome society,” answered Turnbull.
+
+There was a long and peculiar silence, and then the man driving the
+flying machine said quite coolly: “I won't take you back.”
+
+And then Turnbull said equally coolly: “Then I'll jump out of the car.”
+
+The unknown rose to his full height, and the expression in his eyes
+seemed to be made of ironies behind ironies, as two mirrors infinitely
+reflect each other. At last he said, very gravely: “Do you think I am
+the devil?”
+
+“Yes,” said Turnbull, violently. “For I think the devil is a dream,
+and so are you. I don't believe in you or your flying ship or your last
+fight of the world. It is all a nightmare. I say as a fact of dogma and
+faith that it is all a nightmare. And I will be a martyr for my faith as
+much as St. Catherine, for I will jump out of this ship and risk waking
+up safe in bed.”
+
+After swaying twice with the swaying vessel he dived over the side as
+one dives into the sea. For some incredible moments stars and space and
+planets seemed to shoot up past him as the sparks fly upward; and yet in
+that sickening descent he was full of some unnatural happiness. He could
+connect it with no idea except one that half escaped him--what Evan had
+said of the difference between Christ and Satan; that it was by Christ's
+own choice that He descended into hell.
+
+When he again realized anything, he was lying on his elbow on the
+lawn of the lunatic asylum, and the last red of the sunset had not yet
+disappeared.
+
+
+
+
+XVII. THE IDIOT
+
+Evan MacIan was standing a few yards off looking at him in absolute
+silence.
+
+He had not the moral courage to ask MacIan if there had been anything
+astounding in the manner of his coming there, nor did MacIan seem to
+have any question to ask, or perhaps any need to ask it. The two men
+came slowly towards each other, and found the same expression on each
+other's faces. Then, for the first time in all their acquaintance, they
+shook hands.
+
+Almost as if this were a kind of unconscious signal, it brought Dr.
+Quayle bounding out of a door and running across the lawn.
+
+“Oh, there you are!” he exclaimed with a relieved giggle. “Will you come
+inside, please? I want to speak to you both.”
+
+They followed him into his shiny wooden office where their damning
+record was kept. Dr. Quayle sat down on a swivel chair and swung round
+to face them. His carved smile had suddenly disappeared.
+
+“I will be plain with you gentlemen,” he said, abruptly; “you know
+quite well we do our best for everybody here. Your cases have been under
+special consideration, and the Master himself has decided that you ought
+to be treated specially and--er--under somewhat simpler conditions.”
+
+“You mean treated worse, I suppose,” said Turnbull, gruffly.
+
+The doctor did not reply, and MacIan said: “I expected this.” His eyes
+had begun to glow.
+
+The doctor answered, looking at his desk and playing with a key: “Well,
+in certain cases that give anxiety--it is often better----”
+
+“Give anxiety,” said Turnbull, fiercely. “Confound your impudence! What
+do you mean? You imprison two perfectly sane men in a madhouse because
+you have made up a long word. They take it in good temper, walk and talk
+in your garden like monks who have found a vocation, are civil even to
+you, you damned druggists' hack! Behave not only more sanely than any of
+your patients, but more sanely than half the sane men outside, and you
+have the soul-stifling cheek to say that they give anxiety.”
+
+“The head of the asylum has settled it all,” said Dr. Quayle, still
+looking down.
+
+MacIan took one of his immense strides forward and stood over the doctor
+with flaming eyes.
+
+“If the head has settled it let the head announce it,” he said. “I won't
+take it from you. I believe you to be a low, gibbering degenerate. Let
+us see the head of the asylum.”
+
+“See the head of the asylum,” repeated Dr. Quayle. “Certainly not.”
+
+The tall Highlander, bending over him, put one hand on his shoulder with
+fatherly interest.
+
+“You don't seem to appreciate the peculiar advantages of my position as
+a lunatic,” he said. “I could kill you with my left hand before such a
+rat as you could so much as squeak. And I wouldn't be hanged for it.”
+
+“I certainly agree with Mr. MacIan,” said Turnbull with sobriety and
+perfect respectfulness, “that you had better let us see the head of the
+institution.”
+
+Dr. Quayle got to his feet in a mixture of sudden hysteria and clumsy
+presence of mind.
+
+“Oh, certainly,” he said with a weak laugh. “You can see the head of the
+asylum if you particularly want to.” He almost ran out of the room,
+and the two followed swiftly on his flying coat tails. He knocked at an
+ordinary varnished door in the corridor. When a voice said, “Come in,”
+ MacIan's breath went hissing back through his teeth into his chest.
+Turnbull was more impetuous, and opened the door.
+
+It was a neat and well-appointed room entirely lined with a medical
+library. At the other end of it was a ponderous and polished desk with
+an incandescent lamp on it, the light of which was just sufficient
+to show a slender, well-bred figure in an ordinary medical black
+frock-coat, whose head, quite silvered with age, was bent over neat
+piles of notes. This gentleman looked up for an instant as they
+entered, and the lamplight fell on his glittering spectacles and
+long, clean-shaven face--a face which would have been simply like an
+aristocrat's but that a certain lion poise of the head and long cleft in
+the chin made it look more like a very handsome actor's. It was only for
+a flash that his face was thus lifted. Then he bent his silver head over
+his notes once more, and said, without looking up again:
+
+“I told you, Dr. Quayle, that these men were to go to cells B and C.”
+
+Turnbull and MacIan looked at each other, and said more than they could
+ever say with tongues or swords. Among other things they said that
+to that particular Head of the institution it was a waste of time to
+appeal, and they followed Dr. Quayle out of the room.
+
+The instant they stepped out into the corridor four sturdy figures
+stepped from four sides, pinioned them, and ran them along the
+galleries. They might very likely have thrown their captors right and
+left had they been inclined to resist, but for some nameless reason
+they were more inclined to laugh. A mixture of mad irony with childish
+curiosity made them feel quite inclined to see what next twist would
+be taken by their imbecile luck. They were dragged down countless cold
+avenues lined with glazed tiles, different only in being of different
+lengths and set at different angles. They were so many and so monotonous
+that to escape back by them would have been far harder than fleeing from
+the Hampton Court maze. Only the fact that windows grew fewer, coming
+at longer intervals, and the fact that when the windows did come they
+seemed shadowed and let in less light, showed that they were winding
+into the core or belly of some enormous building. After a little time
+the glazed corridors began to be lit by electricity.
+
+At last, when they had walked nearly a mile in those white and polished
+tunnels, they came with quite a shock to the futile finality of a
+cul-de-sac. All that white and weary journey ended suddenly in an oblong
+space and a blank white wall. But in the white wall there were two iron
+doors painted white on which were written, respectively, in neat black
+capitals B and C.
+
+“You go in here, sir,” said the leader of the officials, quite
+respectfully, “and you in here.”
+
+But before the doors had clanged upon their dazed victims, MacIan had
+been able to say to Turnbull with a strange drawl of significance: “I
+wonder who A is.”
+
+Turnbull made an automatic struggle before he allowed himself to be
+thrown into the cell. Hence it happened that he was the last to enter,
+and was still full of the exhilaration of the adventures for at least
+five minutes after the echo of the clanging door had died away.
+
+Then, when silence had sunk deep and nothing happened for two and a half
+hours, it suddenly occurred to him that this was the end of his life. He
+was hidden and sealed up in this little crack of stone until the flesh
+should fall off his bones. He was dead, and the world had won.
+
+His cell was of an oblong shape, but very long in comparison with its
+width. It was just wide enough to permit the arms to be fully extended
+with the dumb-bells, which were hung up on the left wall, very dusty. It
+was, however, long enough for a man to walk one thirty-fifth part of a
+mile if he traversed it entirely. On the same principle a row of fixed
+holes, quite close together, let in to the cells by pipes what was
+alleged to be the freshest air. For these great scientific organizers
+insisted that a man should be healthy even if he was miserable. They
+provided a walk long enough to give him exercise and holes large enough
+to give him oxygen. There their interest in human nature suddenly
+ceased. It seemed never to have occurred to them that the benefit
+of exercise belongs partly to the benefit of liberty. They had not
+entertained the suggestion that the open air is only one of the
+advantages of the open sky. They administered air in secret, but in
+sufficient doses, as if it were a medicine. They suggested walking,
+as if no man had ever felt inclined to walk. Above all, the asylum
+authorities insisted on their own extraordinary cleanliness. Every
+morning, while Turnbull was still half asleep on his iron bedstead
+which was lifted half-way up the wall and clamped to it with iron, four
+sluices or metal mouths opened above him at the four corners of the
+chamber and washed it white of any defilement. Turnbull's solitary soul
+surged up against this sickening daily solemnity.
+
+“I am buried alive!” he cried, bitterly; “they have hidden me under
+mountains. I shall be here till I rot. Why the blazes should it matter
+to them whether I am dirty or clean.”
+
+Every morning and evening an iron hatchway opened in his oblong cell,
+and a brown hairy hand or two thrust in a plate of perfectly cooked
+lentils and a big bowl of cocoa. He was not underfed any more than he
+was underexercised or asphyxiated. He had ample walking space, ample
+air, ample and even filling food. The only objection was that he had
+nothing to walk towards, nothing to feast about, and no reason whatever
+for drawing the breath of life.
+
+Even the shape of his cell especially irritated him. It was a long,
+narrow parallelogram, which had a flat wall at one end and ought to
+have had a flat wall at the other; but that end was broken by a wedge or
+angle of space, like the prow of a ship. After three days of silence and
+cocoa, this angle at the end began to infuriate Turnbull. It maddened
+him to think that two lines came together and pointed at nothing. After
+the fifth day he was reckless, and poked his head into the corner. After
+twenty-five days he almost broke his head against it. Then he became
+quite cool and stupid again, and began to examine it like a sort of
+Robinson Crusoe.
+
+Almost unconsciously it was his instinct to examine outlets, and he
+found himself paying particular attention to the row of holes which let
+in the air into his last house of life. He soon discovered that these
+air-holes were all the ends and mouths of long leaden tubes which
+doubtless carried air from some remote watering-place near Margate.
+One evening while he was engaged in the fifth investigation he noticed
+something like twilight in one of these dumb mouths, as compared with
+the darkness of the others. Thrusting his finger in as far as it would
+go, he found a hole and flapping edge in the tube. This he rent open and
+instantly saw a light behind; it was at least certain that he had struck
+some other cell.
+
+It is a characteristic of all things now called “efficient”, which means
+mechanical and calculated, that if they go wrong at all they go entirely
+wrong. There is no power of retrieving a defeat, as in simpler and more
+living organisms. A strong gun can conquer a strong elephant, but a
+wounded elephant can easily conquer a broken gun. Thus the Prussian
+monarchy in the eighteenth century, or now, can make a strong army
+merely by making the men afraid. But it does it with the permanent
+possibility that the men may some day be more afraid of their enemies
+than of their officers. Thus the drainage in our cities so long as it
+is quite solid means a general safety, but if there is one leak it means
+concentrated poison--an explosion of deathly germs like dynamite, a
+spirit of stink. Thus, indeed, all that excellent machinery which is the
+swiftest thing on earth in saving human labour is also the slowest
+thing on earth in resisting human interference. It may be easier to
+get chocolate for nothing out of a shopkeeper than out of an automatic
+machine. But if you did manage to steal the chocolate, the automatic
+machine would be much less likely to run after you.
+
+Turnbull was not long in discovering this truth in connexion with the
+cold and colossal machinery of this great asylum. He had been shaken
+by many spiritual states since the instant when he was pitched head
+foremost into that private cell which was to be his private room till
+death. He had felt a high fit of pride and poetry, which had ebbed
+away and left him deadly cold. He had known a period of mere scientific
+curiosity, in the course of which he examined all the tiles of his cell,
+with the gratifying conclusion that they were all the same shape and
+size; but was greatly puzzled about the angle in the wall at the end,
+and also about an iron peg or spike that stood out from the wall, the
+object of which he does not know to this day. Then he had a period of
+mere madness not to be written of by decent men, but only by those few
+dirty novelists hallooed on by the infernal huntsman to hunt down and
+humiliate human nature. This also passed, but left behind it a feverish
+distaste for many of the mere objects around him. Long after he had
+returned to sanity and such hopeless cheerfulness as a man might have on
+a desert island, he disliked the regular squares of the pattern of wall
+and floor and the triangle that terminated his corridor. Above all, he
+had a hatred, deep as the hell he did not believe in, for the objectless
+iron peg in the wall.
+
+But in all his moods, sane or insane, intolerant or stoical, he
+never really doubted this: that the machine held him as light and as
+hopelessly as he had from his birth been held by the hopeless cosmos of
+his own creed. He knew well the ruthless and inexhaustible resources of
+our scientific civilization. He no more expected rescue from a medical
+certificate than rescue from the solar system. In many of his Robinson
+Crusoe moods he thought kindly of MacIan as of some quarrelsome
+school-fellow who had long been dead. He thought of leaving in the cell
+when he died a rigid record of his opinions, and when he began to
+write them down on scraps of envelope in his pocket, he was startled
+to discover how much they had changed. Then he remembered the Beauchamp
+Tower, and tried to write his blazing scepticism on the wall, and
+discovered that it was all shiny tiles on which nothing could be either
+drawn or carved. Then for an instant there hung and broke above him like
+a high wave the whole horror of scientific imprisonment, which manages
+to deny a man not only liberty, but every accidental comfort of bondage.
+In the old filthy dungeons men could carve their prayers or protests in
+the rock. Here the white and slippery walls escaped even from bearing
+witness. The old prisoners could make a pet of a mouse or a beetle
+strayed out of a hole. Here the unpierceable walls were washed every
+morning by an automatic sluice. There was no natural corruption and
+no merciful decay by which a living thing could enter in. Then James
+Turnbull looked up and saw the high invincible hatefulness of the
+society in which he lived, and saw the hatefulness of something else
+also, which he told himself again and again was not the cosmos in which
+he believed. But all the time he had never once doubted that the five
+sides of his cell were for him the wall of the world henceforward, and
+it gave him a shock of surprise even to discover the faint light through
+the aperture in the ventilation tube. But he had forgotten how close
+efficiency has to pack everything together and how easily, therefore, a
+pipe here or there may leak.
+
+Turnbull thrust his first finger down the aperture, and at last managed
+to make a slight further fissure in the piping. The light that came up
+from beyond was very faint, and apparently indirect; it seemed to fall
+from some hole or window higher up. As he was screwing his eye to peer
+at this grey and greasy twilight he was astonished to see another human
+finger very long and lean come down from above towards the broken pipe
+and hook it up to something higher. The lighted aperture was abruptly
+blackened and blocked, presumably by a face and mouth, for something
+human spoke down the tube, though the words were not clear.
+
+“Who is that?” asked Turnbull, trembling with excitement, yet wary and
+quite resolved not to spoil any chance.
+
+After a few indistinct sounds the voice came down with a strong
+Argyllshire accent:
+
+“I say, Turnbull, we couldn't fight through this tube, could we?”
+
+Sentiments beyond speech surged up in Turnbull and silenced him for a
+space just long enough to be painful. Then he said with his old gaiety:
+“I vote we talk a little first; I don't want to murder the first man I
+have met for ten million years.”
+
+“I know what you mean,” answered the other. “It has been awful. For a
+mortal month I have been alone with God.”
+
+Turnbull started, and it was on the tip of his tongue to answer: “Alone
+with God! Then you do not know what loneliness is.”
+
+But he answered, after all, in his old defiant style: “Alone with
+God, were you? And I suppose you found his Majesty's society rather
+monotonous?”
+
+“Oh, no,” said MacIan, and his voice shuddered; “it was a great deal too
+exciting.”
+
+After a very long silence the voice of MacIan said: “What do you really
+hate most in your place?”
+
+“You'd think I was really mad if I told you,” answered Turnbull,
+bitterly.
+
+“Then I expect it's the same as mine,” said the other voice.
+
+“I am sure it's not the same as anybody's,” said Turnbull, “for it has
+no rhyme or reason. Perhaps my brain really has gone, but I detest
+that iron spike in the left wall more than the damned desolation or the
+damned cocoa. Have you got one in your cell?”
+
+“Not now,” replied MacIan with serenity. “I've pulled it out.”
+
+His fellow-prisoner could only repeat the words.
+
+“I pulled it out the other day when I was off my head,” continued the
+tranquil Highland voice. “It looked so unnecessary.”
+
+“You must be ghastly strong,” said Turnbull.
+
+“One is, when one is mad,” was the careless reply, “and it had worn a
+little loose in the socket. Even now I've got it out I can't discover
+what it was for. But I've found out something a long sight funnier.”
+
+“What do you mean?” asked Turnbull.
+
+“I have found out where A is,” said the other.
+
+Three weeks afterwards MacIan had managed to open up communications
+which made his meaning plain. By that time the two captives had fully
+discovered and demonstrated that weakness in the very nature of modern
+machinery to which we have already referred. The very fact that they
+were isolated from all companions meant that they were free from all
+spies, and as there were no gaolers to be bribed, so there were none to
+be baffled. Machinery brought them their cocoa and cleaned their cells;
+that machinery was as helpless as it was pitiless. A little patient
+violence, conducted day after day amid constant mutual suggestion,
+opened an irregular hole in the wall, large enough to let in a small
+man, in the exact place where there had been before the tiny ventilation
+holes. Turnbull tumbled somehow into MacIan's apartment, and his first
+glance found out that the iron spike was indeed plucked from its socket,
+and left, moreover, another ragged hole into some hollow place behind.
+But for this MacIan's cell was the duplicate of Turnbull's--a long
+oblong ending in a wedge and lined with cold and lustrous tiles. The
+small hole from which the peg had been displaced was in that short
+oblique wall at the end nearest to Turnbull's. That individual looked at
+it with a puzzled face.
+
+“What is in there?” he asked.
+
+MacIan answered briefly: “Another cell.”
+
+“But where can the door of it be?” said his companion, even more
+puzzled; “the doors of our cells are at the other end.”
+
+“It has no door,” said Evan.
+
+In the pause of perplexity that followed, an eerie and sinister feeling
+crept over Turnbull's stubborn soul in spite of himself. The notion of
+the doorless room chilled him with that sense of half-witted curiosity
+which one has when something horrible is half understood.
+
+“James Turnbull,” said MacIan, in a low and shaken voice, “these people
+hate us more than Nero hated Christians, and fear us more than any man
+feared Nero. They have filled England with frenzy and galloping in order
+to capture us and wipe us out--in order to kill us. And they have killed
+us, for you and I have only made a hole in our coffins. But though this
+hatred that they felt for us is bigger than they felt for Bonaparte, and
+more plain and practical than they would feel for Jack the Ripper, yet
+it is not we whom the people of this place hate most.”
+
+A cold and quivering impatience continued to crawl up Turnbull's spine;
+he had never felt so near to superstition and supernaturalism, and it
+was not a pretty sort of superstition either.
+
+“There is another man more fearful and hateful,” went on MacIan, in his
+low monotone voice, “and they have buried him even deeper. God knows how
+they did it, for he was let in by neither door nor window, nor lowered
+through any opening above. I expect these iron handles that we both hate
+have been part of some damned machinery for walling him up. He is there.
+I have looked through the hole at him; but I cannot stand looking at him
+long, because his face is turned away from me and he does not move.”
+
+All Turnbull's unnatural and uncompleted feelings found their outlet in
+rushing to the aperture and looking into the unknown room.
+
+It was a third oblong cell exactly like the other two except that it was
+doorless, and except that on one of the walls was painted a large black
+A like the B and C outside their own doors. The letter in this case was
+not painted outside, because this prison had no outside.
+
+On the same kind of tiled floor, of which the monotonous squares had
+maddened Turnbull's eye and brain, was sitting a figure which was
+startlingly short even for a child, only that the enormous head
+was ringed with hair of a frosty grey. The figure was draped, both
+insecurely and insufficiently, in what looked like the remains of a
+brown flannel dressing-gown; an emptied cup of cocoa stood on the floor
+beside it, and the creature had his big grey head cocked at a particular
+angle of inquiry or attention which amid all that gathering gloom and
+mystery struck one as comic if not cocksure.
+
+After six still seconds Turnbull could stand it no longer, but called
+out to the dwarfish thing--in what words heaven knows. The thing got
+up with the promptitude of an animal, and turning round offered the
+spectacle of two owlish eyes and a huge grey-and-white beard not unlike
+the plumage of an owl. This extraordinary beard covered him literally to
+his feet (not that that was very far), and perhaps it was as well
+that it did, for portions of his remaining clothing seemed to fall off
+whenever he moved. One talks trivially of a face like parchment, but
+this old man's face was so wrinkled that it was like a parchment loaded
+with hieroglyphics. The lines of his face were so deep and complex that
+one could see five or ten different faces besides the real one, as one
+can see them in an elaborate wall-paper. And yet while his face seemed
+like a scripture older than the gods, his eyes were quite bright, blue,
+and startled like those of a baby. They looked as if they had only an
+instant before been fitted into his head.
+
+Everything depended so obviously upon whether this buried monster spoke
+that Turnbull did not know or care whether he himself had spoken. He
+said something or nothing. And then he waited for this dwarfish voice
+that had been hidden under the mountains of the world. At last it did
+speak, and spoke in English, with a foreign accent that was neither
+Latin nor Teutonic. He suddenly stretched out a long and very dirty
+forefinger, and cried in a voice of clear recognition, like a child's:
+“That's a hole.”
+
+He digested the discovery for some seconds, sucking his finger, and then
+he cried, with a crow of laughter: “And that's a head come through it.”
+
+The hilarious energy in this idiot attitude gave Turnbull another sick
+turn. He had grown to tolerate those dreary and mumbling madmen who
+trailed themselves about the beautiful asylum gardens. But there was
+something new and subversive of the universe in the combination of so
+much cheerful decision with a body without a brain.
+
+“Why did they put you in such a place?” he asked at last with
+embarrassment.
+
+“Good place. Yes,” said the old man, nodding a great many times and
+beaming like a flattered landlord. “Good shape. Long and narrow, with a
+point. Like this,” and he made lovingly with his hands a map of the room
+in the air.
+
+“But that's not the best,” he added, confidentially. “Squares very
+good; I have a nice long holiday, and can count them. But that's not the
+best.”
+
+“What is the best?” asked Turnbull in great distress.
+
+“Spike is the best,” said the old man, opening his blue eyes blazing;
+“it sticks out.”
+
+The words Turnbull spoke broke out of him in pure pity. “Can't we do
+anything for you?” he said.
+
+“I am very happy,” said the other, alphabetically. “You are a good man.
+Can I help you?”
+
+“No, I don't think you can, sir,” said Turnbull with rough pathos; “I am
+glad you are contented at least.”
+
+The weird old person opened his broad blue eyes and fixed Turnbull with
+a stare extraordinarily severe. “You are quite sure,” he said, “I cannot
+help you?”
+
+“Quite sure, thank you,” said Turnbull with broken brevity. “Good day.”
+
+Then he turned to MacIan who was standing close behind him, and whose
+face, now familiar in all its moods, told him easily that Evan had heard
+the whole of the strange dialogue.
+
+“Curse those cruel beasts!” cried Turnbull. “They've turned him to an
+imbecile just by burying him alive. His brain's like a pin-point now.”
+
+“You are sure he is a lunatic?” said Evan, slowly.
+
+“Not a lunatic,” said Turnbull, “an idiot. He just points to things and
+says that they stick out.”
+
+“He had a notion that he could help us,” said MacIan moodily, and began
+to pace towards the other end of his cell.
+
+“Yes, it was a bit pathetic,” assented Turnbull; “such a Thing offering
+help, and besides---- Hallo! Hallo! What's the matter?”
+
+“God Almighty guide us all!” said MacIan.
+
+He was standing heavy and still at the other end of the room and staring
+quietly at the door which for thirty days had sealed them up from the
+sun. Turnbull, following the other's eye, stared at the door likewise,
+and then he also uttered an exclamation. The iron door was standing
+about an inch and a half open.
+
+“He said----” began Evan, in a trembling voice--“he offered----”
+
+“Come along, you fool!” shouted Turnbull with a sudden and furious
+energy. “I see it all now, and it's the best stroke of luck in the
+world. You pulled out that iron handle that had screwed up his cell, and
+it somehow altered the machinery and opened all the doors.”
+
+Seizing MacIan by the elbow he bundled him bodily out into the open
+corridor and ran him on till they saw daylight through a half-darkened
+window.
+
+“All the same,” said Evan, like one answering in an ordinary
+conversation, “he did ask you whether he could help you.”
+
+All this wilderness of windowless passages was so built into the heart
+of that fortress of fear that it seemed more than an hour before the
+fugitives had any good glimpse of the outer world. They did not even
+know what hour of the day it was; and when, turning a corner, they saw
+the bare tunnel of the corridor end abruptly in a shining square of
+garden, the grass burning in that strong evening sunshine which makes
+it burnished gold rather than green, the abrupt opening on to the earth
+seemed like a hole knocked in the wall of heaven. Only once or twice
+in life is it permitted to a man thus to see the very universe from
+outside, and feel existence itself as an adorable adventure not yet
+begun. As they found this shining escape out of that hellish labyrinth
+they both had simultaneously the sensation of being babes unborn, of
+being asked by God if they would like to live upon the earth. They were
+looking in at one of the seven gates of Eden.
+
+Turnbull was the first to leap into the garden, with an earth-spurning
+leap like that of one who could really spread his wings and fly. MacIan,
+who came an instant after, was less full of mere animal gusto and fuller
+of a more fearful and quivering pleasure in the clear and innocent
+flower colours and the high and holy trees. With one bound they were in
+that cool and cleared landscape, and they found just outside the door
+the black-clad gentleman with the cloven chin smilingly regarding them;
+and his chin seemed to grow longer and longer as he smiled.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII. A RIDDLE OF FACES
+
+Just behind him stood two other doctors: one, the familiar Dr. Quayle,
+of the blinking eyes and bleating voice; the other, a more commonplace
+but much more forcible figure, a stout young doctor with short,
+well-brushed hair and a round but resolute face. At the sight of the
+escape these two subordinates uttered a cry and sprang forward, but
+their superior remained motionless and smiling, and somehow the lack
+of his support seemed to arrest and freeze them in the very gesture of
+pursuit.
+
+“Let them be,” he cried in a voice that cut like a blade of ice; and not
+only of ice, but of some awful primordial ice that had never been water.
+
+“I want no devoted champions,” said the cutting voice; “even the folly
+of one's friends bores one at last. You don't suppose I should have let
+these lunatics out of their cells without good reason. I have the best
+and fullest reason. They can be let out of their cell today, because
+today the whole world has become their cell. I will have no more
+medieval mummery of chains and doors. Let them wander about the earth as
+they wandered about this garden, and I shall still be their easy master.
+Let them take the wings of the morning and abide in the uttermost parts
+of the sea--I am there. Whither shall they go from my presence and
+whither shall they flee from my spirit? Courage, Dr. Quayle, and do
+not be downhearted; the real days of tyranny are only beginning on this
+earth.”
+
+And with that the Master laughed and swung away from them, almost as if
+his laugh was a bad thing for people to see.
+
+“Might I speak to you a moment?” said Turnbull, stepping forward with
+a respectful resolution. But the shoulders of the Master only seemed to
+take on a new and unexpected angle of mockery as he strode away.
+
+Turnbull swung round with great abruptness to the other two doctors, and
+said, harshly: “What in snakes does he mean--and who are you?”
+
+“My name is Hutton,” said the short, stout man, “and I am--well, one of
+those whose business it is to uphold this establishment.”
+
+“My name is Turnbull,” said the other; “I am one of those whose business
+it is to tear it to the ground.”
+
+The small doctor smiled, and Turnbull's anger seemed suddenly to steady
+him.
+
+“But I don't want to talk about that,” he said, calmly; “I only want to
+know what the Master of this asylum really means.”
+
+Dr. Hutton's smile broke into a laugh which, short as it was, had the
+suspicion of a shake in it. “I suppose you think that quite a simple
+question,” he said.
+
+“I think it a plain question,” said Turnbull, “and one that deserves
+a plain answer. Why did the Master lock us up in a couple of cupboards
+like jars of pickles for a mortal month, and why does he now let us walk
+free in the garden again?”
+
+“I understand,” said Hutton, with arched eyebrows, “that your complaint
+is that you are now free to walk in the garden.”
+
+“My complaint is,” said Turnbull, stubbornly, “that if I am fit to walk
+freely now, I have been as fit for the last month. No one has examined
+me, no one has come near me. Your chief says that I am only free because
+he has made other arrangements. What are those arrangements?”
+
+The young man with the round face looked down for a little while
+and smoked reflectively. The other and elder doctor had gone pacing
+nervously by himself upon the lawn. At length the round face was lifted
+again, and showed two round blue eyes with a certain frankness in them.
+
+“Well, I don't see that it can do any harm to tell you know,” he said.
+“You were shut up just then because it was just during that month that
+the Master was bringing off his big scheme. He was getting his bill
+through Parliament, and organizing the new medical police. But of course
+you haven't heard of all that; in fact, you weren't meant to.”
+
+“Heard of all what?” asked the impatient inquirer.
+
+“There's a new law now, and the asylum powers are greatly extended. Even
+if you did escape now, any policeman would take you up in the next town
+if you couldn't show a certificate of sanity from us.”
+
+“Well,” continued Dr. Hutton, “the Master described before both Houses
+of Parliament the real scientific objection to all existing legislation
+about lunacy. As he very truly said, the mistake was in supposing
+insanity to be merely an exception or an extreme. Insanity, like
+forgetfulness, is simply a quality which enters more or less into all
+human beings; and for practical purposes it is more necessary to know
+whose mind is really trustworthy than whose has some accidental taint.
+We have therefore reversed the existing method, and people now have to
+prove that they are sane. In the first village you entered, the village
+constable would notice that you were not wearing on the left lapel of
+your coat the small pewter S which is now necessary to any one who walks
+about beyond asylum bounds or outside asylum hours.”
+
+“You mean to say,” said Turnbull, “that this was what the Master of the
+asylum urged before the House of Commons?”
+
+Dr. Hutton nodded with gravity.
+
+“And you mean to say,” cried Turnbull, with a vibrant snort, “that that
+proposal was passed in an assembly that calls itself democratic?”
+
+The doctor showed his whole row of teeth in a smile. “Oh, the assembly
+calls itself Socialist now,” he said, “But we explained to them that
+this was a question for men of science.”
+
+Turnbull gave one stamp upon the gravel, then pulled himself together,
+and resumed: “But why should your infernal head medicine-man lock us up
+in separate cells while he was turning England into a madhouse? I'm not
+the Prime Minister; we're not the House of Lords.”
+
+“He wasn't afraid of the Prime Minister,” replied Dr. Hutton; “he isn't
+afraid of the House of Lords. But----”
+
+“Well?” inquired Turnbull, stamping again.
+
+“He is afraid of you,” said Hutton, simply. “Why, didn't you know?”
+
+MacIan, who had not spoken yet, made one stride forward and stood with
+shaking limbs and shining eyes.
+
+“He was afraid!” began Evan, thickly. “You mean to say that we----”
+
+“I mean to say the plain truth now that the danger is over,” said
+Hutton, calmly; “most certainly you two were the only people he ever
+was afraid of.” Then he added in a low but not inaudible voice: “Except
+one--whom he feared worse, and has buried deeper.”
+
+“Come away,” cried MacIan, “this has to be thought about.”
+
+Turnbull followed him in silence as he strode away, but just before he
+vanished, turned and spoke again to the doctors.
+
+“But what has got hold of people?” he asked, abruptly. “Why should all
+England have gone dotty on the mere subject of dottiness?”
+
+Dr. Hutton smiled his open smile once more and bowed slightly. “As to
+that also,” he replied, “I don't want to make you vain.”
+
+Turnbull swung round without a word, and he and his companion were lost
+in the lustrous leafage of the garden. They noticed nothing special
+about the scene, except that the garden seemed more exquisite than ever
+in the deepening sunset, and that there seemed to be many more people,
+whether patients or attendants, walking about in it.
+
+From behind the two black-coated doctors as they stood on the lawn
+another figure somewhat similarly dressed strode hurriedly past them,
+having also grizzled hair and an open flapping frock-coat. Both his
+decisive step and dapper black array marked him out as another medical
+man, or at least a man in authority, and as he passed Turnbull the
+latter was aroused by a strong impression of having seen the man
+somewhere before. It was no one that he knew well, yet he was certain
+that it was someone at whom he had at sometime or other looked steadily.
+It was neither the face of a friend nor of an enemy; it aroused neither
+irritation nor tenderness, yet it was a face which had for some reason
+been of great importance in his life. Turning and returning, and making
+detours about the garden, he managed to study the man's face again and
+again--a moustached, somewhat military face with a monocle, the sort of
+face that is aristocratic without being distinguished. Turnbull could
+not remember any particular doctors in his decidedly healthy existence.
+Was the man a long-lost uncle, or was he only somebody who had sat
+opposite him regularly in a railway train? At that moment the man
+knocked down his own eye-glass with a gesture of annoyance; Turnbull
+remembered the gesture, and the truth sprang up solid in front of him.
+The man with the moustaches was Cumberland Vane, the London police
+magistrate before whom he and MacIan had once stood on their trial. The
+magistrate must have been transferred to some other official duties--to
+something connected with the inspection of asylums.
+
+Turnbull's heart gave a leap of excitement which was half hope. As a
+magistrate Mr. Cumberland Vane had been somewhat careless and shallow,
+but certainly kindly, and not inaccessible to common sense so long as
+it was put to him in strictly conventional language. He was at least an
+authority of a more human and refreshing sort than the crank with the
+wagging beard or the fiend with the forked chin.
+
+He went straight up to the magistrate, and said: “Good evening, Mr.
+Vane; I doubt if you remember me.”
+
+Cumberland Vane screwed the eye-glass into his scowling face for an
+instant, and then said curtly but not uncivilly: “Yes, I remember you,
+sir; assault or battery, wasn't it?--a fellow broke your window. A tall
+fellow--McSomething--case made rather a noise afterwards.”
+
+“MacIan is the name, sir,” said Turnbull, respectfully; “I have him here
+with me.”
+
+“Eh!” said Vane very sharply. “Confound him! Has he got anything to do
+with this game?”
+
+“Mr. Vane,” said Turnbull, pacifically, “I will not pretend that either
+he or I acted quite decorously on that occasion. You were very lenient
+with us, and did not treat us as criminals when you very well might.
+So I am sure you will give us your testimony that, even if we were
+criminals, we are not lunatics in any legal or medical sense whatever. I
+am sure you will use your influence for us.”
+
+“My influence!” repeated the magistrate, with a slight start. “I don't
+quite understand you.”
+
+“I don't know in what capacity you are here,” continued Turnbull,
+gravely, “but a legal authority of your distinction must certainly be
+here in an important one. Whether you are visiting and inspecting the
+place, or attached to it as some kind of permanent legal adviser, your
+opinion must still----”
+
+Cumberland Vane exploded with a detonation of oaths; his face was
+transfigured with fury and contempt, and yet in some odd way he did not
+seem specially angry with Turnbull.
+
+“But Lord bless us and save us!” he gasped, at length; “I'm not here
+as an official at all. I'm here as a patient. The cursed pack of
+rat-catching chemists all say that I've lost my wits.”
+
+“You!” cried Turnbull with terrible emphasis. “You! Lost your wits!”
+
+In the rush of his real astonishment at this towering unreality Turnbull
+almost added: “Why, you haven't got any to lose.” But he fortunately
+remembered the remains of his desperate diplomacy.
+
+“This can't go on,” he said, positively. “Men like MacIan and I may
+suffer unjustly all our lives, but a man like you must have influence.”
+
+“There is only one man who has any influence in England now,” said Vane,
+and his high voice fell to a sudden and convincing quietude.
+
+“Whom do you mean?” asked Turnbull.
+
+“I mean that cursed fellow with the long split chin,” said the other.
+
+“Is it really true,” asked Turnbull, “that he has been allowed to buy up
+and control such a lot? What put the country into such a state?”
+
+Mr. Cumberland Vane laughed outright. “What put the country into such a
+state?” he asked. “Why, you did. When you were fool enough to agree to
+fight MacIan, after all, everybody was ready to believe that the Bank of
+England might paint itself pink with white spots.”
+
+“I don't understand,” answered Turnbull. “Why should you be surprised at
+my fighting? I hope I have always fought.”
+
+“Well,” said Cumberland Vane, airily, “you didn't believe in religion,
+you see--so we thought you were safe at any rate. You went further in
+your language than most of us wanted to go; no good in just hurting
+one's mother's feelings, I think. But of course we all knew you were
+right, and, really, we relied on you.”
+
+“Did you?” said the editor of _The Atheist_ with a bursting heart. “I am
+sorry you did not tell me so at the time.”
+
+He walked away very rapidly and flung himself on a garden seat, and for
+some six minutes his own wrongs hid from him the huge and hilarious fact
+that Cumberland Vane had been locked up as a lunatic.
+
+The garden of the madhouse was so perfectly planned, and answered so
+exquisitely to every hour of daylight, that one could almost fancy that
+the sunlight was caught there tangled in its tinted trees, as the wise
+men of Gotham tried to chain the spring to a bush. Or it seemed as if
+this ironic paradise still kept its unique dawn or its special sunset
+while the rest of the earthly globe rolled through its ordinary hours.
+There was one evening, or late afternoon, in particular, which Evan
+MacIan will remember in the last moments of death. It was what artists
+call a daffodil sky, but it is coarsened even by reference to a
+daffodil. It was of that innocent lonely yellow which has never heard of
+orange, though it might turn quite unconsciously into green. Against it
+the tops, one might say the turrets, of the clipt and ordered trees
+were outlined in that shade of veiled violet which tints the tops of
+lavender. A white early moon was hardly traceable upon that delicate
+yellow. MacIan, I say, will remember this tender and transparent
+evening, partly because of its virgin gold and silver, and partly
+because he passed beneath it through the most horrible instant of his
+life.
+
+Turnbull was sitting on his seat on the lawn, and the golden evening
+impressed even his positive nature, as indeed it might have impressed
+the oxen in a field. He was shocked out of his idle mood of awe by
+seeing MacIan break from behind the bushes and run across the lawn with
+an action he had never seen in the man before, with all his experience
+of the eccentric humours of this Celt. MacIan fell on the bench,
+shaking it so that it rattled, and gripped it with his knees like one in
+dreadful pain of body. That particular run and tumble is typical only of
+a man who has been hit by some sudden and incurable evil, who is bitten
+by a viper or condemned to be hanged. Turnbull looked up in the white
+face of his friend and enemy, and almost turned cold at what he saw
+there. He had seen the blue but gloomy eyes of the western Highlander
+troubled by as many tempests as his own west Highland seas, but there
+had always been a fixed star of faith behind the storms. Now the star
+had gone out, and there was only misery.
+
+Yet MacIan had the strength to answer the question where Turnbull, taken
+by surprise, had not the strength to ask it.
+
+“They are right, they are right!” he cried. “O my God! they are right,
+Turnbull. I ought to be here!”
+
+He went on with shapeless fluency as if he no longer had the heart to
+choose or check his speech. “I suppose I ought to have guessed long
+ago--all my big dreams and schemes--and everyone being against us--but I
+was stuck up, you know.”
+
+“Do tell me about it, really,” cried the atheist, and, faced with the
+furnace of the other's pain, he did not notice that he spoke with the
+affection of a father.
+
+“I am mad, Turnbull,” said Evan, with a dead clearness of speech, and
+leant back against the garden seat.
+
+“Nonsense,” said the other, clutching at the obvious cue of benevolent
+brutality, “this is one of your silly moods.”
+
+MacIan shook his head. “I know enough about myself,” he said, “to allow
+for any mood, though it opened heaven or hell. But to see things--to see
+them walking solid in the sun--things that can't be there--real mystics
+never do that, Turnbull.”
+
+“What things?” asked the other, incredulously.
+
+MacIan lowered his voice. “I saw _her_,” he said, “three minutes
+ago--walking here in this hell yard.”
+
+Between trying to look scornful and really looking startled, Turnbull's
+face was confused enough to emit no speech, and Evan went on in
+monotonous sincerity:
+
+“I saw her walk behind those blessed trees against that holy sky of gold
+as plain as I can see her whenever I shut my eyes. I did shut them,
+and opened them again, and she was still there--that is, of course, she
+wasn't---- She still had a little fur round her neck, but her dress was
+a shade brighter than when I really saw her.”
+
+“My dear fellow,” cried Turnbull, rallying a hearty laugh, “the fancies
+have really got hold of you. You mistook some other poor girl here for
+her.”
+
+“Mistook some other----” said MacIan, and words failed him altogether.
+
+They sat for some moments in the mellow silence of the evening garden,
+a silence that was stifling for the sceptic, but utterly empty and final
+for the man of faith. At last he broke out again with the words: “Well,
+anyhow, if I'm mad, I'm glad I'm mad on that.”
+
+Turnbull murmured some clumsy deprecation, and sat stolidly smoking to
+collect his thoughts; the next instant he had all his nerves engaged in
+the mere effort to sit still.
+
+Across the clear space of cold silver and a pale lemon sky which was
+left by the gap in the ilex-trees there passed a slim, dark figure, a
+profile and the poise of a dark head like a bird's, which really pinned
+him to his seat with the point of coincidence. With an effort he got
+to his feet, and said with a voice of affected insouciance: “By George!
+MacIan, she is uncommonly like----”
+
+“What!” cried MacIan, with a leap of eagerness that was heart-breaking,
+“do you see her, too?” And the blaze came back into the centre of his
+eyes.
+
+Turnbull's tawny eyebrows were pulled together with a peculiar frown of
+curiosity, and all at once he walked quickly across the lawn. MacIan sat
+rigid, but peered after him with open and parched lips. He saw the sight
+which either proved him sane or proved the whole universe half-witted;
+he saw the man of flesh approach that beautiful phantom, saw their
+gestures of recognition, and saw them against the sunset joining hands.
+
+He could stand it no longer, but ran across to the path, turned the
+corner and saw standing quite palpable in the evening sunlight, talking
+with a casual grace to Turnbull, the face and figure which had filled
+his midnights with frightfully vivid or desperately half-forgotten
+features. She advanced quite pleasantly and coolly, and put out her
+hand. The moment that he touched it he knew that he was sane even if the
+solar system was crazy.
+
+She was entirely elegant and unembarrassed. That is the awful thing
+about women--they refuse to be emotional at emotional moments, upon some
+such ludicrous pretext as there being someone else there. But MacIan was
+in a condition of criticism much less than the average masculine one,
+being in fact merely overturned by the rushing riddle of the events.
+
+Evan does not know to this day what particular question he asked, but
+he vividly remembers that she answered, and every line or fluctuation of
+her face as she said it.
+
+“Oh, don't you know?” she said, smiling, and suddenly lifting her level
+brown eyebrows. “Haven't you heard the news? I'm a lunatic.”
+
+Then she added after a short pause, and with a sort of pride: “I've got
+a certificate.”
+
+Her manner, by the matchless social stoicism of her sex, was entirely
+suited to a drawing-room, but Evan's reply fell somewhat far short of
+such a standard, as he only said: “What the devil in hell does all this
+nonsense mean?”
+
+“Really,” said the young lady, and laughed.
+
+“I beg your pardon,” said the unhappy young man, rather wildly, “but
+what I mean is, why are you here in an asylum?”
+
+The young woman broke again into one of the maddening and mysterious
+laughs of femininity. Then she composed her features, and replied with
+equal dignity: “Well, if it comes to that, why are you?”
+
+The fact that Turnbull had strolled away and was investigating
+rhododendrons may have been due to Evan's successful prayers to the
+other world, or possibly to his own pretty successful experience of this
+one. But though they two were as isolated as a new Adam and Eve in a
+pretty ornamental Eden, the lady did not relax by an inch the rigour of
+her badinage.
+
+“I am locked up in the madhouse,” said Evan, with a sort of stiff pride,
+“because I tried to keep my promise to you.”
+
+“Quite so,” answered the inexplicable lady, nodding with a perfectly
+blazing smile, “and I am locked up because it was to me you promised.”
+
+“It is outrageous!” cried Evan; “it is impossible!”
+
+“Oh, you can see my certificate if you like,” she replied with some
+hauteur.
+
+MacIan stared at her and then at his boots, and then at the sky and then
+at her again. He was quite sure now that he himself was not mad, and the
+fact rather added to his perplexity.
+
+Then he drew nearer to her, and said in a dry and dreadful voice: “Oh,
+don't condescend to play the fool with such a fool as me. Are you really
+locked up here as a patient--because you helped us to escape?”
+
+“Yes,” she said, still smiling, but her steady voice had a shake in it.
+
+Evan flung his big elbow across his forehead and burst into tears.
+
+The pure lemon of the sky faded into purer white as the great sunset
+silently collapsed. The birds settled back into the trees; the moon
+began to glow with its own light. Mr. James Turnbull continued his
+botanical researches into the structure of the rhododendron. But the
+lady did not move an inch until Evan had flung up his face again; and
+when he did he saw by the last gleam of sunlight that it was not only
+his face that was wet.
+
+Mr. James Turnbull had all his life professed a profound interest in
+physical science, and the phenomena of a good garden were really a
+pleasure to him; but after three-quarters of an hour or so even the
+apostle of science began to find rhododendrus a bore, and was somewhat
+relieved when an unexpected development of events obliged him
+to transfer his researches to the equally interesting subject of
+hollyhocks, which grew some fifty feet farther along the path. The
+ostensible cause of his removal was the unexpected reappearance of his
+two other acquaintances walking and talking laboriously along the
+way, with the black head bent close to the brown one. Even hollyhocks
+detained Turnbull but a short time. Having rapidly absorbed all the
+important principles affecting the growth of those vegetables, he jumped
+over a flower-bed and walked back into the building. The other two came
+up along the slow course of the path talking and talking. No one but
+God knows what they said (for they certainly have forgotten), and if I
+remembered it I would not repeat it. When they parted at the head of the
+walk she put out her hand again in the same well-bred way, although it
+trembled; he seemed to restrain a gesture as he let it fall.
+
+“If it is really always to be like this,” he said, thickly, “it would
+not matter if we were here for ever.”
+
+“You tried to kill yourself four times for me,” she said, unsteadily,
+“and I have been chained up as a madwoman for you. I really think that
+after that----”
+
+“Yes, I know,” said Evan in a low voice, looking down. “After that we
+belong to each other. We are sort of sold to each other--until the stars
+fall.” Then he looked up suddenly, and said: “By the way, what is your
+name?”
+
+“My name is Beatrice Drake,” she replied with complete gravity. “You can
+see it on my certificate of lunacy.”
+
+
+
+
+XIX. THE LAST PARLEY
+
+Turnbull walked away, wildly trying to explain to himself the presence
+of two personal acquaintances so different as Vane and the girl. As he
+skirted a low hedge of laurel, an enormously tall young man leapt over
+it, stood in front of him, and almost fell on his neck as if seeking to
+embrace him.
+
+“Don't you know me?” almost sobbed the young man, who was in the highest
+spirits. “Ain't I written on your heart, old boy? I say, what did you do
+with my yacht?”
+
+“Take your arms off my neck,” said Turnbull, irritably. “Are you mad?”
+
+The young man sat down on the gravel path and went into ecstasies of
+laughter. “No, that's just the fun of it--I'm not mad,” he replied.
+“They've shut me up in this place, and I'm not mad.” And he went off
+again into mirth as innocent as wedding-bells.
+
+Turnbull, whose powers of surprise were exhausted, rolled his round grey
+eyes and said, “Mr. Wilkinson, I think,” because he could not think of
+anything else to say.
+
+The tall man sitting on the gravel bowed with urbanity, and said: “Quite
+at your service. Not to be confused with the Wilkinsons of Cumberland;
+and as I say, old boy, what have you done with my yacht? You see,
+they've locked me up here--in this garden--and a yacht would be a sort
+of occupation for an unmarried man.”
+
+“I am really horribly sorry,” began Turnbull, in the last stage of bated
+bewilderment and exasperation, “but really----”
+
+“Oh, I can see you can't have it on you at the moment,” said Mr.
+Wilkinson with much intellectual magnanimity.
+
+“Well, the fact is----” began Turnbull again, and then the phrase was
+frozen on his mouth, for round the corner came the goatlike face and
+gleaming eye-glasses of Dr. Quayle.
+
+“Ah, my dear Mr. Wilkinson,” said the doctor, as if delighted at
+a coincidence; “and Mr. Turnbull, too. Why, I want to speak to Mr.
+Turnbull.”
+
+Mr. Turnbull made some movement rather of surrender than assent, and
+the doctor caught it up exquisitely, showing even more of his two front
+teeth. “I am sure Mr. Wilkinson will excuse us a moment.” And with
+flying frock-coat he led Turnbull rapidly round the corner of a path.
+
+“My dear sir,” he said, in a quite affectionate manner, “I do not mind
+telling you--you are such a very hopeful case--you understand so well
+the scientific point of view; and I don't like to see you bothered by
+the really hopeless cases. They are monotonous and maddening. The man
+you have just been talking to, poor fellow, is one of the strongest
+cases of pure _idee fixe_ that we have. It's very sad, and I'm afraid
+utterly incurable. He keeps on telling everybody”--and the doctor
+lowered his voice confidentially--“he tells everybody that two people
+have taken is yacht. His account of how he lost it is quite incoherent.”
+
+Turnbull stamped his foot on the gravel path, and called out: “Oh, I
+can't stand this. Really----”
+
+“I know, I know,” said the psychologist, mournfully; “it is a most
+melancholy case, and also fortunately a very rare one. It is so rare, in
+fact, that in one classification of these maladies it is entered under
+a heading by itself--Perdinavititis, mental inflammation creating the
+impression that one has lost a ship. Really,” he added, with a kind of
+half-embarrassed guilt, “it's rather a feather in my cap. I discovered
+the only existing case of perdinavititis.”
+
+“But this won't do, doctor,” said Turnbull, almost tearing his hair,
+“this really won't do. The man really did lose a ship. Indeed, not to
+put too fine a point on it, I took his ship.”
+
+Dr. Quayle swung round for an instant so that his silk-lined overcoat
+rustled, and stared singularly at Turnbull. Then he said with hurried
+amiability: “Why, of course you did. Quite so, quite so,” and with
+courteous gestures went striding up the garden path. Under the first
+laburnum-tree he stopped, however, and pulling out his pencil
+and notebook wrote down feverishly: “Singular development in the
+Elenthero-maniac, Turnbull. Sudden manifestation of Rapinavititis--the
+delusion that one has stolen a ship. First case ever recorded.”
+
+Turnbull stood for an instant staggered into stillness. Then he ran
+raging round the garden to find MacIan, just as a husband, even a bad
+husband, will run raging to find his wife if he is full of a furious
+query. He found MacIan stalking moodily about the half-lit garden, after
+his extraordinary meeting with Beatrice. No one who saw his slouching
+stride and sunken head could have known that his soul was in the seventh
+heaven of ecstasy. He did not think; he did not even very definitely
+desire. He merely wallowed in memories, chiefly in material memories;
+words said with a certain cadence or trivial turns of the neck or wrist.
+Into the middle of his stationary and senseless enjoyment were thrust
+abruptly the projecting elbow and the projecting red beard of Turnbull.
+MacIan stepped back a little, and the soul in his eyes came very slowly
+to its windows. When James Turnbull had the glittering sword-point
+planted upon his breast he was in far less danger. For three pulsating
+seconds after the interruption MacIan was in a mood to have murdered his
+father.
+
+And yet his whole emotional anger fell from him when he saw Turnbull's
+face, in which the eyes seemed to be bursting from the head like
+bullets. All the fire and fragrance even of young and honourable love
+faded for a moment before that stiff agony of interrogation.
+
+“Are you hurt, Turnbull?” he asked, anxiously.
+
+“I am dying,” answered the other quite calmly. “I am in the quite
+literal sense of the words dying to know something. I want to know what
+all this can possibly mean.”
+
+MacIan did not answer, and he continued with asperity: “You are still
+thinking about that girl, but I tell you the whole thing is incredible.
+She's not the only person here. I've met the fellow Wilkinson, whose
+yacht we lost. I've met the very magistrate you were hauled up to when
+you broke my window. What can it mean--meeting all these old people
+again? One never meets such old friends again except in a dream.”
+
+Then after a silence he cried with a rending sincerity: “Are you really
+there, Evan? Have you ever been really there? Am I simply dreaming?”
+
+MacIan had been listening with a living silence to every word, and now
+his face flamed with one of his rare revelations of life.
+
+“No, you good atheist,” he cried; “no, you clean, courteous, reverent,
+pious old blasphemer. No, you are not dreaming--you are waking up.”
+
+“What do you mean?”
+
+“There are two states where one meets so many old friends,” said MacIan;
+“one is a dream, the other is the end of the world.”
+
+“And you say----”
+
+“I say this is not a dream,” said Evan in a ringing voice.
+
+“You really mean to suggest----” began Turnbull.
+
+“Be silent! or I shall say it all wrong,” said MacIan, breathing hard.
+“It's hard to explain, anyhow. An apocalypse is the opposite of a dream.
+A dream is falser than the outer life. But the end of the world is more
+actual than the world it ends. I don't say this is really the end of the
+world, but it's something like that--it's the end of something. All the
+people are crowding into one corner. Everything is coming to a point.”
+
+“What is the point?” asked Turnbull.
+
+“I can't see it,” said Evan; “it is too large and plain.”
+
+Then after a silence he said: “I can't see it--and yet I will try to
+describe it. Turnbull, three days ago I saw quite suddenly that our duel
+was not right after all.”
+
+“Three days ago!” repeated Turnbull. “When and why did this illumination
+occur?”
+
+“I knew I was not quite right,” answered Evan, “the moment I saw the
+round eyes of that old man in the cell.”
+
+“Old man in the cell!” repeated his wondering companion. “Do you mean
+the poor old idiot who likes spikes to stick out?”
+
+“Yes,” said MacIan, after a slight pause, “I mean the poor old idiot
+who likes spikes to stick out. When I saw his eyes and heard his old
+croaking accent, I knew that it would not really have been right to kill
+you. It would have been a venial sin.”
+
+“I am much obliged,” said Turnbull, gruffly.
+
+“You must give me time,” said MacIan, quite patiently, “for I am trying
+to tell the whole truth. I am trying to tell more of it than I know.”
+
+“So you see I confess”--he went on with laborious distinctness--“I
+confess that all the people who called our duel mad were right in a way.
+I would confess it to old Cumberland Vane and his eye-glass. I would
+confess it even to that old ass in brown flannel who talked to us about
+Love. Yes, they are right in a way. I am a little mad.”
+
+He stopped and wiped his brow as if he were literally doing heavy
+labour. Then he went on:
+
+“I am a little mad; but, after all, it is only a little madness. When
+hundreds of high-minded men had fought duels about a jostle with the
+elbow or the ace of spades, the whole world need not have gone wild over
+my one little wildness. Plenty of other people have killed themselves
+between then and now. But all England has gone into captivity in order
+to take us captive. All England has turned into a lunatic asylum in
+order to prove us lunatics. Compared with the general public, I might
+positively be called sane.”
+
+He stopped again, and went on with the same air of travailing with the
+truth:
+
+“When I saw that, I saw everything; I saw the Church and the world. The
+Church in its earthly action has really touched morbid things--tortures
+and bleeding visions and blasts of extermination. The Church has had her
+madnesses, and I am one of them. I am the massacre of St. Bartholomew.
+I am the Inquisition of Spain. I do not say that we have never gone mad,
+but I say that we are fit to act as keepers to our enemies. Massacre is
+wicked even with a provocation, as in the Bartholomew. But your modern
+Nietzsche will tell you that massacre would be glorious without a
+provocation. Torture should be violently stopped, though the Church is
+doing it. But your modern Tolstoy will tell you that it ought not to be
+violently stopped whoever is doing it. In the long run, which is most
+mad--the Church or the world? Which is madder, the Spanish priest who
+permitted tyranny, or the Prussian sophist who admired it? Which is
+madder, the Russian priest who discourages righteous rebellion, or the
+Russian novelist who forbids it? That is the final and blasting test.
+The world left to itself grows wilder than any creed. A few days ago you
+and I were the maddest people in England. Now, by God! I believe we are
+the sanest. That is the only real question--whether the Church is really
+madder than the world. Let the rationalists run their own race, and let
+us see where _they_ end. If the world has some healthy balance other
+than God, let the world find it. Does the world find it? Cut the world
+loose,” he cried with a savage gesture. “Does the world stand on its own
+end? Does it stand, or does it stagger?”
+
+Turnbull remained silent, and MacIan said to him, looking once more at
+the earth: “It staggers, Turnbull. It cannot stand by itself; you know
+it cannot. It has been the sorrow of your life. Turnbull, this garden
+is not a dream, but an apocalyptic fulfilment. This garden is the world
+gone mad.”
+
+Turnbull did not move his head, and he had been listening all the time;
+yet, somehow, the other knew that for the first time he was listening
+seriously.
+
+“The world has gone mad,” said MacIan, “and it has gone mad about Us.
+The world takes the trouble to make a big mistake about every little
+mistake made by the Church. That is why they have turned ten counties
+to a madhouse; that is why crowds of kindly people are poured into this
+filthy melting-pot. Now is the judgement of this world. The Prince of
+this World is judged, and he is judged exactly because he is judging.
+There is at last one simple solution to the quarrel between the ball and
+the cross----”
+
+Turnbull for the first time started.
+
+“The ball and----” he repeated.
+
+“What is the matter with you?” asked MacIan.
+
+“I had a dream,” said Turnbull, thickly and obscurely, “in which I saw
+the cross struck crooked and the ball secure----”
+
+“I had a dream,” said MacIan, “in which I saw the cross erect and the
+ball invisible. They were both dreams from hell. There must be
+some round earth to plant the cross upon. But here is the awful
+difference--that the round world will not consent even to continue
+round. The astronomers are always telling us that it is shaped like
+an orange, or like an egg, or like a German sausage. They beat the
+old world about like a bladder and thump it into a thousand shapeless
+shapes. Turnbull, we cannot trust the ball to be always a ball; we
+cannot trust reason to be reasonable. In the end the great terrestrial
+globe will go quite lop-sided, and only the cross will stand upright.”
+
+There was a long silence, and then Turnbull said, hesitatingly: “Has
+it occurred to you that since--since those two dreams, or whatever they
+were----”
+
+“Well?” murmured MacIan.
+
+“Since then,” went on Turnbull, in the same low voice, “since then we
+have never even looked for our swords.”
+
+“You are right,” answered Evan almost inaudibly. “We have found
+something which we both hate more than we ever hated each other, and I
+think I know its name.”
+
+Turnbull seemed to frown and flinch for a moment. “It does not much
+matter what you call it,” he said, “so long as you keep out of its way.”
+
+The bushes broke and snapped abruptly behind them, and a very tall
+figure towered above Turnbull with an arrogant stoop and a projecting
+chin, a chin of which the shape showed queerly even in its shadow upon
+the path.
+
+“You see that is not so easy,” said MacIan between his teeth.
+
+They looked up into the eyes of the Master, but looked only for a
+moment. The eyes were full of a frozen and icy wrath, a kind of utterly
+heartless hatred. His voice was for the first time devoid of irony.
+There was no more sarcasm in it than there is in an iron club.
+
+“You will be inside the building in three minutes,” he said, with
+pulverizing precision, “or you will be fired on by the artillery at
+all the windows. There is too much talking in this garden; we intend to
+close it. You will be accommodated indoors.”
+
+“Ah!” said MacIan, with a long and satisfied sigh, “then I was right.”
+
+And he turned his back and walked obediently towards the building.
+Turnbull seemed to canvass for a few minutes the notion of knocking the
+Master down, and then fell under the same almost fairy fatalism as his
+companion. In some strange way it did seem that the more smoothly they
+yielded, the more swiftly would events sweep on to some great collision.
+
+
+
+
+XX. DIES IRAE
+
+As they advanced towards the asylum they looked up at its rows on rows
+of windows, and understood the Master's material threat. By means of
+that complex but concealed machinery which ran like a network of nerves
+over the whole fabric, there had been shot out under every window-ledge
+rows and rows of polished-steel cylinders, the cold miracles of modern
+gunnery. They commanded the whole garden and the whole country-side, and
+could have blown to pieces an army corps.
+
+This silent declaration of war had evidently had its complete effect. As
+MacIan and Turnbull walked steadily but slowly towards the entrance hall
+of the institution, they could see that most, or at least many, of the
+patients had already gathered there as well as the staff of doctors and
+the whole regiment of keepers and assistants. But when they entered the
+lamp-lit hall, and the high iron door was clashed to and locked behind
+them, yet a new amazement leapt into their eyes, and the stalwart
+Turnbull almost fell. For he saw a sight which was indeed, as MacIan had
+said--either the Day of Judgement or a dream.
+
+Within a few feet of him at one corner of the square of standing people
+stood the girl he had known in Jersey, Madeleine Durand. She looked
+straight at him with a steady smile which lit up the scene of darkness
+and unreason like the light of some honest fireside. Her square face
+and throat were thrown back, as her habit was, and there was something
+almost sleepy in the geniality of her eyes. He saw her first, and for
+a few seconds saw her only; then the outer edge of his eyesight took in
+all the other staring faces, and he saw all the faces he had ever seen
+for weeks and months past. There was the Tolstoyan in Jaeger flannel,
+with the yellow beard that went backward and the foolish nose and eyes
+that went forward, with the curiosity of a crank. He was talking eagerly
+to Mr. Gordon, the corpulent Jew shopkeeper whom they had once gagged
+in his own shop. There was the tipsy old Hertfordshire rustic; he
+was talking energetically to himself. There was not only Mr. Vane the
+magistrate, but the clerk of Mr. Vane, the magistrate. There was not
+only Miss Drake of the motor-car, but also Miss Drake's chauffeur.
+Nothing wild or unfamiliar could have produced upon Turnbull such a
+nightmare impression as that ring of familiar faces. Yet he had one
+intellectual shock which was greater than all the others. He stepped
+impulsively forward towards Madeleine, and then wavered with a kind
+of wild humility. As he did so he caught sight of another square face
+behind Madeleine's, a face with long grey whiskers and an austere stare.
+It was old Durand, the girls' father; and when Turnbull saw him he saw
+the last and worst marvel of that monstrous night. He remembered Durand;
+he remembered his monotonous, everlasting lucidity, his stupefyingly
+sensible views of everything, his colossal contentment with truisms
+merely because they were true. “Confound it all!” cried Turnbull to
+himself, “if _he_ is in the asylum, there can't be anyone outside.”
+ He drew nearer to Madeleine, but still doubtfully and all the more
+so because she still smiled at him. MacIan had already gone across to
+Beatrice with an air of fright.
+
+Then all these bewildered but partly amicable recognitions were cloven
+by a cruel voice which always made all human blood turn bitter. The
+Master was standing in the middle of the room surveying the scene like a
+great artist looking at a completed picture. Handsome as he looked, they
+had never seen so clearly what was really hateful in his face; and even
+then they could only express it by saying that the arched brows and the
+long emphatic chin gave it always a look of being lit from below, like
+the face of some infernal actor.
+
+“This is indeed a cosy party,” he said, with glittering eyes.
+
+The Master evidently meant to say more, but before he could say anything
+M. Durand had stepped right up to him and was speaking.
+
+He was speaking exactly as a French bourgeois speaks to the manager of a
+restaurant. That is, he spoke with rattling and breathless rapidity,
+but with no incoherence, and therefore with no emotion. It was a steady,
+monotonous vivacity, which came not seemingly from passion, but
+merely from the reason having been sent off at a gallop. He was saying
+something like this:
+
+“You refuse me my half-bottle of Medoc, the drink the most wholesome
+and the most customary. You refuse me the company and obedience of my
+daughter, which Nature herself indicates. You refuse me the beef and
+mutton, without pretence that it is a fast of the Church. You now forbid
+me the promenade, a thing necessary to a person of my age. It is useless
+to tell me that you do all this by law. Law rests upon the social
+contract. If the citizen finds himself despoiled of such pleasures
+and powers as he would have had even in the savage state, the social
+contract is annulled.”
+
+“It's no good chattering away, Monsieur,” said Hutton, for the Master
+was silent. “The place is covered with machine-guns. We've got to obey
+our orders, and so have you.”
+
+“The machinery is of the most perfect,” assented Durand, somewhat
+irrelevantly; “worked by petroleum, I believe. I only ask you to admit
+that if such things fall below the comfort of barbarism, the social
+contract is annulled. It is a pretty little point of theory.”
+
+“Oh! I dare say,” said Hutton.
+
+Durand bowed quite civilly and withdrew.
+
+“A cosy party,” resumed the Master, scornfully, “and yet I believe some
+of you are in doubt about how we all came together. I will explain
+it, ladies and gentlemen; I will explain everything. To whom shall I
+specially address myself? To Mr. James Turnbull. He has a scientific
+mind.”
+
+Turnbull seemed to choke with sudden protest. The Master seemed only
+to cough out of pure politeness and proceeded: “Mr. Turnbull will agree
+with me,” he said, “when I say that we long felt in scientific circles
+that great harm was done by such a legend as that of the Crucifixion.”
+
+Turnbull growled something which was presumably assent.
+
+The Master went on smoothly: “It was in vain for us to urge that the
+incident was irrelevant; that there were many such fanatics, many such
+executions. We were forced to take the thing thoroughly in hand,
+to investigate it in the spirit of scientific history, and with the
+assistance of Mr. Turnbull and others we were happy in being able to
+announce that this alleged Crucifixion never occurred at all.”
+
+MacIan lifted his head and looked at the Master steadily, but Turnbull
+did not look up.
+
+“This, we found, was the only way with all superstitions,” continued the
+speaker; “it was necessary to deny them historically, and we have done
+it with great success in the case of miracles and such things. Now
+within our own time there arose an unfortunate fuss which threatened (as
+Mr. Turnbull would say) to galvanize the corpse of Christianity into a
+fictitious life--the alleged case of a Highland eccentric who wanted to
+fight for the Virgin.”
+
+MacIan, quite white, made a step forward, but the speaker did not alter
+his easy attitude or his flow of words. “Again we urged that this duel
+was not to be admired, that it was a mere brawl, but the people were
+ignorant and romantic. There were signs of treating this alleged
+Highlander and his alleged opponent as heroes. We tried all other means
+of arresting this reactionary hero worship. Working men who betted on
+the duel were imprisoned for gambling. Working men who drank the
+health of a duellist were imprisoned for drunkenness. But the popular
+excitement about the alleged duel continued, and we had to fall back on
+our old historical method. We investigated, on scientific principles,
+the story of MacIan's challenge, and we are happy to be able to inform
+you that the whole story of the attempted duel is a fable. There
+never was any challenge. There never was any man named MacIan. It is a
+melodramatic myth, like Calvary.”
+
+Not a soul moved save Turnbull, who lifted his head; yet there was the
+sense of a silent explosion.
+
+“The whole story of the MacIan challenge,” went on the Master, beaming
+at them all with a sinister benignity, “has been found to originate in
+the obsessions of a few pathological types, who are now all fortunately
+in our care. There is, for instance, a person here of the name of
+Gordon, formerly the keeper of a curiosity shop. He is a victim of the
+disease called Vinculomania--the impression that one has been bound or
+tied up. We have also a case of Fugacity (Mr. Whimpey), who imagines
+that he was chased by two men.”
+
+The indignant faces of the Jew shopkeeper and the Magdalen Don started
+out of the crowd in their indignation, but the speaker continued:
+
+“One poor woman we have with us,” he said, in a compassionate voice,
+“believes she was in a motor-car with two such men; this is the
+well-known illusion of speed on which I need not dwell. Another wretched
+woman has the simple egotistic mania that she has caused the duel.
+Madeleine Durand actually professes to have been the subject of the
+fight between MacIan and his enemy, a fight which, if it occurred at
+all, certainly began long before. But it never occurred at all. We have
+taken in hand every person who professed to have seen such a thing, and
+proved them all to be unbalanced. That is why they are here.”
+
+The Master looked round the room, just showing his perfect teeth with
+the perfection of artistic cruelty, exalted for a moment in the enormous
+simplicity of his success, and then walked across the hall and vanished
+through an inner door. His two lieutenants, Quayle and Hutton, were left
+standing at the head of the great army of servants and keepers.
+
+“I hope we shall have no more trouble,” said Dr. Quayle pleasantly
+enough, and addressing Turnbull, who was leaning heavily upon the back
+of a chair.
+
+Still looking down, Turnbull lifted the chair an inch or two from the
+ground. Then he suddenly swung it above his head and sent it at the
+inquiring doctor with an awful crash which sent one of its wooden legs
+loose along the floor and crammed the doctor gasping into a corner.
+MacIan gave a great shout, snatched up the loose chair-leg, and, rushing
+on the other doctor, felled him with a blow. Twenty attendants rushed
+to capture the rebels; MacIan flung back three of them and Turnbull
+went over on top of one, when from behind them all came a shriek as of
+something quite fresh and frightful.
+
+Two of the three passages leading out of the hall were choked with blue
+smoke. Another instant and the hall was full of the fog of it, and red
+sparks began to swarm like scarlet bees.
+
+“The place is on fire!” cried Quayle with a scream of indecent terror.
+“Oh, who can have done it? How can it have happened?”
+
+A light had come into Turnbull's eyes. “How did the French Revolution
+happen?” he asked.
+
+“Oh, how should I know!” wailed the other.
+
+“Then I will tell you,” said Turnbull; “it happened because some people
+fancied that a French grocer was as respectable as he looked.”
+
+Even as he spoke, as if by confirmation, old Mr. Durand re-entered the
+smoky room quite placidly, wiping the petroleum from his hands with a
+handkerchief. He had set fire to the building in accordance with the
+strict principles of the social contract.
+
+But MacIan had taken a stride forward and stood there shaken and
+terrible. “Now,” he cried, panting, “now is the judgement of the world.
+The doctors will leave this place; the keepers will leave this place.
+They will leave us in charge of the machinery and the machine-guns at
+the windows. But we, the lunatics, will wait to be burned alive if only
+we may see them go.”
+
+“How do you know we shall go?” asked Hutton, fiercely.
+
+“You believe nothing,” said MacIan, simply, “and you are insupportably
+afraid of death.”
+
+“So this is suicide,” sneered the doctor; “a somewhat doubtful sign of
+sanity.”
+
+“Not at all--this is vengeance,” answered Turnbull, quite calmly; “a
+thing which is completely healthy.”
+
+“You think the doctors will go,” said Hutton, savagely.
+
+“The keepers have gone already,” said Turnbull.
+
+Even as they spoke the main doors were burst open in mere brutal panic,
+and all the officers and subordinates of the asylum rushed away across
+the garden pursued by the smoke. But among the ticketed maniacs not a
+man or woman moved.
+
+“We hate dying,” said Turnbull, with composure, “but we hate you even
+more. This is a successful revolution.”
+
+In the roof above their heads a panel shot back, showing a strip of
+star-lit sky and a huge thing made of white metal, with the shape and
+fins of a fish, swinging as if at anchor. At the same moment a steel
+ladder slid down from the opening and struck the floor, and the cleft
+chin of the mysterious Master was thrust into the opening. “Quayle,
+Hutton,” he said, “you will escape with me.” And they went up the ladder
+like automata of lead.
+
+Long after they had clambered into the car, the creature with the cloven
+face continued to leer down upon the smoke-stung crowd below. Then at
+last he said in a silken voice and with a smile of final satisfaction:
+
+“By the way, I fear I am very absent minded. There is one man specially
+whom, somehow, I always forget. I always leave him lying about. Once
+I mislaid him on the Cross of St. Paul's. So silly of me; and now I've
+forgotten him in one of those little cells where your fire is burning.
+Very unfortunate--especially for him.” And nodding genially, he climbed
+into his flying ship.
+
+MacIan stood motionless for two minutes, and then rushed down one of the
+suffocating corridors till he found the flames. Turnbull looked once at
+Madeleine, and followed.
+
+           *                    *                   *
+
+MacIan, with singed hair, smoking garments, and smarting hands and face,
+had already broken far enough through the first barriers of burning
+timber to come within cry of the cells he had once known. It was
+impossible, however, to see the spot where the old man lay dead or
+alive; not now through darkness, but through scorching and aching light.
+The site of the old half-wit's cell was now the heart of a standing
+forest of fire--the flames as thick and yellow as a cornfield. Their
+incessant shrieking and crackling was like a mob shouting against an
+orator. Yet through all that deafening density MacIan thought he heard
+a small and separate sound. When he heard it he rushed forward as if to
+plunge into that furnace, but Turnbull arrested him by an elbow.
+
+“Let me go!” cried Evan, in agony; “it's the poor old beggar's
+voice--he's still alive, and shouting for help.”
+
+“Listen!” said Turnbull, and lifted one finger from his clenched hand.
+
+“Or else he is shrieking with pain,” protested MacIan. “I will not
+endure it.”
+
+“Listen!” repeated Turnbull, grimly. “Did you ever hear anyone shout for
+help or shriek with pain in that voice?”
+
+The small shrill sounds which came through the crash of the
+conflagration were indeed of an odd sort, and MacIan turned a face of
+puzzled inquiry to his companion.
+
+“He is singing,” said Turnbull, simply.
+
+A remaining rampart fell, crushing the fire, and through the diminished
+din of it the voice of the little old lunatic came clearer. In the heart
+of that white-hot hell he was singing like a bird. What he was singing
+it was not very easy to follow, but it seemed to be something about
+playing in the golden hay.
+
+“Good Lord!” cried Turnbull, bitterly, “there seem to be some advantages
+in really being an idiot.” Then advancing to the fringe of the fire he
+called out on chance to the invisible singer: “Can you come out? Are you
+cut off?”
+
+“God help us all!” said MacIan, with a shudder; “he's laughing now.”
+
+At whatever stage of being burned alive the invisible now found himself,
+he was now shaking out peals of silvery and hilarious laughter. As he
+listened, MacIan's two eyes began to glow, as if a strange thought had
+come into his head.
+
+“Fool, come out and save yourself!” shouted Turnbull.
+
+“No, by Heaven! that is not the way,” cried Evan, suddenly. “Father,” he
+shouted, “come out and save us all!”
+
+The fire, though it had dropped in one or two places, was, upon the
+whole, higher and more unconquerable than ever. Separate tall flames
+shot up and spread out above them like the fiery cloisters of some
+infernal cathedral, or like a grove of red tropical trees in the garden
+of the devil. Higher yet in the purple hollow of the night the topmost
+flames leapt again and again fruitlessly at the stars, like golden
+dragons chained but struggling. The towers and domes of the oppressive
+smoke seemed high and far enough to drown distant planets in a London
+fog. But if we exhausted all frantic similes for that frantic scene,
+the main impression about the fire would still be its ranked upstanding
+rigidity and a sort of roaring stillness. It was literally a wall of
+fire.
+
+“Father,” cried MacIan, once more, “come out of it and save us all!”
+ Turnbull was staring at him as he cried.
+
+The tall and steady forest of fire must have been already a portent
+visible to the whole circle of land and sea. The red flush of it lit up
+the long sides of white ships far out in the German Ocean, and picked
+out like piercing rubies the windows in the villages on the distant
+heights. If any villagers or sailors were looking towards it they must
+have seen a strange sight as MacIan cried out for the third time.
+
+That forest of fire wavered, and was cloven in the centre; and then the
+whole of one half of it leaned one way as a cornfield leans all one way
+under the load of the wind. Indeed, it looked as if a great wind had
+sprung up and driven the great fire aslant. Its smoke was no longer sent
+up to choke the stars, but was trailed and dragged across county after
+county like one dreadful banner of defeat.
+
+But it was not the wind; or, if it was the wind, it was two winds
+blowing in opposite directions. For while one half of the huge fire
+sloped one way towards the inland heights, the other half, at exactly
+the same angle, sloped out eastward towards the sea. So that earth and
+ocean could behold, where there had been a mere fiery mass, a thing
+divided like a V--a cloven tongue of flame. But if it were a prodigy for
+those distant, it was something beyond speech for those quite near. As
+the echoes of Evan's last appeal rang and died in the universal uproar,
+the fiery vault over his head opened down the middle, and, reeling back
+in two great golden billows, hung on each side as huge and harmless as
+two sloping hills lie on each side of a valley. Down the centre of this
+trough, or chasm, a little path ran, cleared of all but ashes, and down
+this little path was walking a little old man singing as if he were
+alone in a wood in spring.
+
+When James Turnbull saw this he suddenly put out a hand and seemed to
+support himself on the strong shoulder of Madeleine Durand. Then after a
+moment's hesitation he put his other hand on the shoulder of MacIan.
+His blue eyes looked extraordinarily brilliant and beautiful. In many
+sceptical papers and magazines afterwards he was sadly or sternly
+rebuked for having abandoned the certainties of materialism. All
+his life up to that moment he had been most honestly certain that
+materialism was a fact. But he was unlike the writers in the magazines
+precisely in this--that he preferred a fact even to materialism.
+
+As the little singing figure came nearer and nearer, Evan fell on his
+knees, and after an instant Beatrice followed; then Madeleine fell on
+her knees, and after a longer instant Turnbull followed. Then the little
+old man went past them singing down that corridor of flames. They had
+not looked at his face.
+
+When he had passed they looked up. While the first light of the fire
+had shot east and west, painting the sides of ships with fire-light or
+striking red sparks out of windowed houses, it had not hitherto struck
+upward, for there was above it the ponderous and rococo cavern of its
+own monstrous coloured smoke. But now the fire was turned to left and
+right like a woman's hair parted in the middle, and now the shafts of
+its light could shoot up into empty heavens and strike anything, either
+bird or cloud. But it struck something that was neither cloud nor bird.
+Far, far away up in those huge hollows of space something was flying
+swiftly and shining brightly, something that shone too bright and flew
+too fast to be any of the fowls of the air, though the red light lit it
+from underneath like the breast of a bird. Everyone knew it was a flying
+ship, and everyone knew whose.
+
+As they stared upward the little speck of light seemed slightly tilted,
+and two black dots dropped from the edge of it. All the eager, upturned
+faces watched the two dots as they grew bigger and bigger in their
+downward rush. Then someone screamed, and no one looked up any more. For
+the two bodies, larger every second flying, spread out and sprawling in
+the fire-light, were the dead bodies of the two doctors whom Professor
+Lucifer had carried with him--the weak and sneering Quayle, the cold and
+clumsy Hutton. They went with a crash into the thick of the fire.
+
+“They are gone!” screamed Beatrice, hiding her head. “O God! The are
+lost!”
+
+Evan put his arm about her, and remembered his own vision.
+
+“No, they are not lost,” he said. “They are saved. He has taken away no
+souls with him, after all.”
+
+He looked vaguely about at the fire that was already fading, and there
+among the ashes lay two shining things that had survived the fire, his
+sword and Turnbull's, fallen haphazard in the pattern of a cross.
+
+
+
+
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+<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
+<head>
+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" />
+<meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" />
+<title>The Project Gutenberg Book of The Ball and the Cross, By G.K. Chesterton</title>
+
+<style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+
+    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify}
+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
+    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }
+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
+    blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}
+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+    div.fig    { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+    div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; }
+    .figleft   {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;}
+    .figright  {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;}
+    .pagenum   {display:inline; font-size: 70%; font-style:normal;
+               margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%;
+               text-align: right;}
+    pre        { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
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+  <body>
+
+<div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Ball and The Cross, by G.K. Chesterton</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
+at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you
+are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the
+country where you are located before using this eBook.
+</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: The Ball and The Cross</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: G.K. Chesterton</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: June 19, 2002 [eBook #5265]<br />
+[Most recently updated: June 11, 2021]</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: Ben Crowder and David Widger</div>
+<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BALL AND THE CROSS ***</div>
+
+    <h1>
+      THE BALL AND THE CROSS
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      By G.K. Chesterton
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <big><b>CONTENTS</b></big>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br /> <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> I. </a>&nbsp;&nbsp;A DISCUSSION SOMEWHAT
+        IN THE AIR <br /><br /> <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> II. </a>&nbsp;&nbsp;THE
+        RELIGION OF THE STIPENDIARY MAGISTRATE <br /><br /> <a
+        href="#link2H_4_0003"> III. </a>&nbsp;&nbsp;SOME OLD CURIOSITIES <br /><br />
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0004"> IV. </a>&nbsp;&nbsp;A DISCUSSION AT DAWN <br /><br />
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0005"> V. </a>&nbsp;&nbsp;THE PEACEMAKER <br /><br />
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0006"> VI. </a>&nbsp;&nbsp;THE OTHER PHILOSOPHER
+        <br /><br /> <a href="#link2H_4_0007"> VII. </a>&nbsp;&nbsp;THE VILLAGE OF
+        GRASSLEY-IN-THE-HOLE <br /><br /> <a href="#link2H_4_0008"> VIII. </a>&nbsp;&nbsp;AN
+        INTERLUDE OF ARGUMENT <br /><br /> <a href="#link2H_4_0009"> IX. </a>&nbsp;&nbsp;THE
+        STRANGE LADY <br /><br /> <a href="#link2H_4_0010"> X. </a>&nbsp;&nbsp;THE
+        SWORDS REJOINED <br /><br /> <a href="#link2H_4_0011"> XI. </a>&nbsp;&nbsp;A
+        SCANDAL IN THE VILLAGE <br /><br /> <a href="#link2H_4_0012"> XII. </a>&nbsp;&nbsp;THE
+        DESERT ISLAND <br /><br /> <a href="#link2H_4_0013"> XIII. </a>&nbsp;&nbsp;THE
+        GARDEN OF PEACE <br /><br /> <a href="#link2H_4_0014"> XIV. </a>&nbsp;&nbsp;A
+        MUSEUM OF SOULS <br /><br /> <a href="#link2H_4_0015"> XV. </a>&nbsp;&nbsp;THE
+        DREAM OF MACIAN <br /><br /> <a href="#link2H_4_0016"> XVI. </a>&nbsp;&nbsp;THE
+        DREAM OF TURNBULL <br /><br /> <a href="#link2H_4_0017"> XVII. </a>&nbsp;&nbsp;THE
+        IDIOT <br /><br /> <a href="#link2H_4_0018"> XVIII. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;A
+        RIDDLE OF FACES <br /><br /> <a href="#link2H_4_0019"> XIX. </a>&nbsp;&nbsp;THE
+        LAST PARLEY <br /><br /> <a href="#link2H_4_0020"> XX. </a>&nbsp;&nbsp;DIES
+        IRAE <br /><br />
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /> <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      I. A DISCUSSION SOMEWHAT IN THE AIR
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The flying ship of Professor Lucifer sang through the skies like a silver
+      arrow; the bleak white steel of it, gleaming in the bleak blue emptiness
+      of the evening. That it was far above the earth was no expression for it;
+      to the two men in it, it seemed to be far above the stars. The professor
+      had himself invented the flying machine, and had also invented nearly
+      everything in it. Every sort of tool or apparatus had, in consequence, to
+      the full, that fantastic and distorted look which belongs to the miracles
+      of science. For the world of science and evolution is far more nameless
+      and elusive and like a dream than the world of poetry and religion; since
+      in the latter images and ideas remain themselves eternally, while it is
+      the whole idea of evolution that identities melt into each other as they
+      do in a nightmare.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All the tools of Professor Lucifer were the ancient human tools gone mad,
+      grown into unrecognizable shapes, forgetful of their origin, forgetful of
+      their names. That thing which looked like an enormous key with three
+      wheels was really a patent and very deadly revolver. That object which
+      seemed to be created by the entanglement of two corkscrews was really the
+      key. The thing which might have been mistaken for a tricycle turned
+      upside-down was the inexpressibly important instrument to which the
+      corkscrew was the key. All these things, as I say, the professor had
+      invented; he had invented everything in the flying ship, with the
+      exception, perhaps, of himself. This he had been born too late actually to
+      inaugurate, but he believed at least, that he had considerably improved
+      it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was, however, another man on board, so to speak, at the time. Him,
+      also, by a curious coincidence, the professor had not invented, and him he
+      had not even very greatly improved, though he had fished him up with a
+      lasso out of his own back garden, in Western Bulgaria, with the pure
+      object of improving him. He was an exceedingly holy man, almost entirely
+      covered with white hair. You could see nothing but his eyes, and he seemed
+      to talk with them. A monk of immense learning and acute intellect he had
+      made himself happy in a little stone hut and a little stony garden in the
+      Balkans, chiefly by writing the most crushing refutations of exposures of
+      certain heresies, the last professors of which had been burnt (generally
+      by each other) precisely 1,119 years previously. They were really very
+      plausible and thoughtful heresies, and it was really a creditable or even
+      glorious circumstance, that the old monk had been intellectual enough to
+      detect their fallacy; the only misfortune was that nobody in the modern
+      world was intellectual enough even to understand their argument. The old
+      monk, one of whose names was Michael, and the other a name quite
+      impossible to remember or repeat in our Western civilization, had,
+      however, as I have said, made himself quite happy while he was in a
+      mountain hermitage in the society of wild animals. And now that his luck
+      had lifted him above all the mountains in the society of a wild physicist,
+      he made himself happy still.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have no intention, my good Michael,&rdquo; said Professor Lucifer, &ldquo;of
+      endeavouring to convert you by argument. The imbecility of your traditions
+      can be quite finally exhibited to anybody with mere ordinary knowledge of
+      the world, the same kind of knowledge which teaches us not to sit in
+      draughts or not to encourage friendliness in impecunious people. It is
+      folly to talk of this or that demonstrating the rationalist philosophy.
+      Everything demonstrates it. Rubbing shoulders with men of all kinds&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will forgive me,&rdquo; said the monk, meekly from under loads of white
+      beard, &ldquo;but I fear I do not understand; was it in order that I might rub
+      my shoulder against men of all kinds that you put me inside this thing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An entertaining retort, in the narrow and deductive manner of the Middle
+      Ages,&rdquo; replied the Professor, calmly, &ldquo;but even upon your own basis I will
+      illustrate my point. We are up in the sky. In your religion and all the
+      religions, as far as I know (and I know everything), the sky is made the
+      symbol of everything that is sacred and merciful. Well, now you are in the
+      sky, you know better. Phrase it how you like, twist it how you like, you
+      know that you know better. You know what are a man's real feelings about
+      the heavens, when he finds himself alone in the heavens, surrounded by the
+      heavens. You know the truth, and the truth is this. The heavens are evil,
+      the sky is evil, the stars are evil. This mere space, this mere quantity,
+      terrifies a man more than tigers or the terrible plague. You know that
+      since our science has spoken, the bottom has fallen out of the Universe.
+      Now, heaven is the hopeless thing, more hopeless than any hell. Now, if
+      there be any comfort for all your miserable progeny of morbid apes, it
+      must be in the earth, underneath you, under the roots of the grass, in the
+      place where hell was of old. The fiery crypts, the lurid cellars of the
+      underworld, to which you once condemned the wicked, are hideous enough,
+      but at least they are more homely than the heaven in which we ride. And
+      the time will come when you will all hide in them, to escape the horror of
+      the stars.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope you will excuse my interrupting you,&rdquo; said Michael, with a slight
+      cough, &ldquo;but I have always noticed&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go on, pray go on,&rdquo; said Professor Lucifer, radiantly, &ldquo;I really like to
+      draw out your simple ideas.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, the fact is,&rdquo; said the other, &ldquo;that much as I admire your rhetoric
+      and the rhetoric of your school, from a purely verbal point of view, such
+      little study of you and your school in human history as I have been
+      enabled to make has led me to&mdash;er&mdash;rather singular conclusion,
+      which I find great difficulty in expressing, especially in a foreign
+      language.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come, come,&rdquo; said the Professor, encouragingly, &ldquo;I'll help you out. How
+      did my view strike you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, the truth is, I know I don't express it properly, but somehow it
+      seemed to me that you always convey ideas of that kind with most
+      eloquence, when&mdash;er&mdash;when&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! get on,&rdquo; cried Lucifer, boisterously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, in point of fact when your flying ship is just going to run into
+      something. I thought you wouldn't mind my mentioning it, but it's running
+      into something now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lucifer exploded with an oath and leapt erect, leaning hard upon the
+      handle that acted as a helm to the vessel. For the last ten minutes they
+      had been shooting downwards into great cracks and caverns of cloud. Now,
+      through a sort of purple haze, could be seen comparatively near to them
+      what seemed to be the upper part of a huge, dark orb or sphere, islanded
+      in a sea of cloud. The Professor's eyes were blazing like a maniac's.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is a new world,&rdquo; he cried, with a dreadful mirth. &ldquo;It is a new planet
+      and it shall bear my name. This star and not that other vulgar one shall
+      be 'Lucifer, sun of the morning.' Here we will have no chartered lunacies,
+      here we will have no gods. Here man shall be as innocent as the daisies,
+      as innocent and as cruel&mdash;here the intellect&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There seems,&rdquo; said Michael, timidly, &ldquo;to be something sticking up in the
+      middle of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So there is,&rdquo; said the Professor, leaning over the side of the ship, his
+      spectacles shining with intellectual excitement. &ldquo;What can it be? It might
+      of course be merely a&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then a shriek indescribable broke out of him of a sudden, and he flung up
+      his arms like a lost spirit. The monk took the helm in a tired way; he did
+      not seem much astonished for he came from an ignorant part of the world in
+      which it is not uncommon for lost spirits to shriek when they see the
+      curious shape which the Professor had just seen on the top of the
+      mysterious ball, but he took the helm only just in time, and by driving it
+      hard to the left he prevented the flying ship from smashing into St.
+      Paul's Cathedral.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A plain of sad-coloured cloud lay along the level of the top of the
+      Cathedral dome, so that the ball and the cross looked like a buoy riding
+      on a leaden sea. As the flying ship swept towards it, this plain of cloud
+      looked as dry and definite and rocky as any grey desert. Hence it gave to
+      the mind and body a sharp and unearthly sensation when the ship cut and
+      sank into the cloud as into any common mist, a thing without resistance.
+      There was, as it were, a deadly shock in the fact that there was no shock.
+      It was as if they had cloven into ancient cliffs like so much butter. But
+      sensations awaited them which were much stranger than those of sinking
+      through the solid earth. For a moment their eyes and nostrils were stopped
+      with darkness and opaque cloud; then the darkness warmed into a kind of
+      brown fog. And far, far below them the brown fog fell until it warmed into
+      fire. Through the dense London atmosphere they could see below them the
+      flaming London lights; lights which lay beneath them in squares and
+      oblongs of fire. The fog and fire were mixed in a passionate vapour; you
+      might say that the fog was drowning the flames; or you might say that the
+      flames had set the fog on fire. Beside the ship and beneath it (for it
+      swung just under the ball), the immeasurable dome itself shot out and down
+      into the dark like a combination of voiceless cataracts. Or it was like
+      some cyclopean sea-beast sitting above London and letting down its
+      tentacles bewilderingly on every side, a monstrosity in that starless
+      heaven. For the clouds that belonged to London had closed over the heads
+      of the voyagers sealing up the entrance of the upper air. They had broken
+      through a roof and come into a temple of twilight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were so near to the ball that Lucifer leaned his hand against it,
+      holding the vessel away, as men push a boat off from a bank. Above it the
+      cross already draped in the dark mists of the borderland was shadowy and
+      more awful in shape and size.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Professor Lucifer slapped his hand twice upon the surface of the great orb
+      as if he were caressing some enormous animal. &ldquo;This is the fellow,&rdquo; he
+      said, &ldquo;this is the one for my money.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;May I with all respect inquire,&rdquo; asked the old monk, &ldquo;what on earth you
+      are talking about?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why this,&rdquo; cried Lucifer, smiting the ball again, &ldquo;here is the only
+      symbol, my boy. So fat. So satisfied. Not like that scraggy individual,
+      stretching his arms in stark weariness.&rdquo; And he pointed up to the cross,
+      his face dark with a grin. &ldquo;I was telling you just now, Michael, that I
+      can prove the best part of the rationalist case and the Christian humbug
+      from any symbol you liked to give me, from any instance I came across.
+      Here is an instance with a vengeance. What could possibly express your
+      philosophy and my philosophy better than the shape of that cross and the
+      shape of this ball? This globe is reasonable; that cross is unreasonable.
+      It is a four-legged animal, with one leg longer than the others. The globe
+      is inevitable. The cross is arbitrary. Above all the globe is at unity
+      with itself; the cross is primarily and above all things at enmity with
+      itself. The cross is the conflict of two hostile lines, of irreconcilable
+      direction. That silent thing up there is essentially a collision, a crash,
+      a struggle in stone. Pah! that sacred symbol of yours has actually given
+      its name to a description of desperation and muddle. When we speak of men
+      at once ignorant of each other and frustrated by each other, we say they
+      are at cross-purposes. Away with the thing! The very shape of it is a
+      contradiction in terms.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What you say is perfectly true,&rdquo; said Michael, with serenity. &ldquo;But we
+      like contradictions in terms. Man is a contradiction in terms; he is a
+      beast whose superiority to other beasts consists in having fallen. That
+      cross is, as you say, an eternal collision; so am I. That is a struggle in
+      stone. Every form of life is a struggle in flesh. The shape of the cross
+      is irrational, just as the shape of the human animal is irrational. You
+      say the cross is a quadruped with one limb longer than the rest. I say man
+      is a quadruped who only uses two of his legs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Professor frowned thoughtfully for an instant, and said: &ldquo;Of course
+      everything is relative, and I would not deny that the element of struggle
+      and self-contradiction, represented by that cross, has a necessary place
+      at a certain evolutionary stage. But surely the cross is the lower
+      development and the sphere the higher. After all it is easy enough to see
+      what is really wrong with Wren's architectural arrangement.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what is that, pray?&rdquo; inquired Michael, meekly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The cross is on top of the ball,&rdquo; said Professor Lucifer, simply. &ldquo;That
+      is surely wrong. The ball should be on top of the cross. The cross is a
+      mere barbaric prop; the ball is perfection. The cross at its best is but
+      the bitter tree of man's history; the ball is the rounded, the ripe and
+      final fruit. And the fruit should be at the top of the tree, not at the
+      bottom of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; said the monk, a wrinkle coming into his forehead, &ldquo;so you think
+      that in a rationalistic scheme of symbolism the ball should be on top of
+      the cross?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It sums up my whole allegory,&rdquo; said the professor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, that is really very interesting,&rdquo; resumed Michael slowly, &ldquo;because
+      I think in that case you would see a most singular effect, an effect that
+      has generally been achieved by all those able and powerful systems which
+      rationalism, or the religion of the ball, has produced to lead or teach
+      mankind. You would see, I think, that thing happen which is always the
+      ultimate embodiment and logical outcome of your logical scheme.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are you talking about?&rdquo; asked Lucifer. &ldquo;What would happen?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean it would fall down,&rdquo; said the monk, looking wistfully into the
+      void.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lucifer made an angry movement and opened his mouth to speak, but Michael,
+      with all his air of deliberation, was proceeding before he could bring out
+      a word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I once knew a man like you, Lucifer,&rdquo; he said, with a maddening monotony
+      and slowness of articulation. &ldquo;He took this&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is no man like me,&rdquo; cried Lucifer, with a violence that shook the
+      ship.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As I was observing,&rdquo; continued Michael, &ldquo;this man also took the view that
+      the symbol of Christianity was a symbol of savagery and all unreason. His
+      history is rather amusing. It is also a perfect allegory of what happens
+      to rationalists like yourself. He began, of course, by refusing to allow a
+      crucifix in his house, or round his wife's neck, or even in a picture. He
+      said, as you say, that it was an arbitrary and fantastic shape, that it
+      was a monstrosity, loved because it was paradoxical. Then he began to grow
+      fiercer and more eccentric; he would batter the crosses by the roadside;
+      for he lived in a Roman Catholic country. Finally in a height of frenzy he
+      climbed the steeple of the Parish Church and tore down the cross, waving
+      it in the air, and uttering wild soliloquies up there under the stars.
+      Then one still summer evening as he was wending his way homewards, along a
+      lane, the devil of his madness came upon him with a violence and
+      transfiguration which changes the world. He was standing smoking, for a
+      moment, in the front of an interminable line of palings, when his eyes
+      were opened. Not a light shifted, not a leaf stirred, but he saw as if by
+      a sudden change in the eyesight that this paling was an army of
+      innumerable crosses linked together over hill and dale. And he whirled up
+      his heavy stick and went at it as if at an army. Mile after mile along his
+      homeward path he broke it down and tore it up. For he hated the cross and
+      every paling is a wall of crosses. When he returned to his house he was a
+      literal madman. He sat upon a chair and then started up from it for the
+      cross-bars of the carpentry repeated the intolerable image. He flung
+      himself upon a bed only to remember that this, too, like all workmanlike
+      things, was constructed on the accursed plan. He broke his furniture
+      because it was made of crosses. He burnt his house because it was made of
+      crosses. He was found in the river.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lucifer was looking at him with a bitten lip.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is that story really true?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no,&rdquo; said Michael, airily. &ldquo;It is a parable. It is a parable of you
+      and all your rationalists. You begin by breaking up the Cross; but you end
+      by breaking up the habitable world. We leave you saying that nobody ought
+      to join the Church against his will. When we meet you again you are saying
+      that no one has any will to join it with. We leave you saying that there
+      is no such place as Eden. We find you saying that there is no such place
+      as Ireland. You start by hating the irrational and you come to hate
+      everything, for everything is irrational and so&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lucifer leapt upon him with a cry like a wild beast's. &ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; he screamed,
+      &ldquo;to every man his madness. You are mad on the cross. Let it save you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And with a herculean energy he forced the monk backwards out of the
+      reeling car on to the upper part of the stone ball. Michael, with as
+      abrupt an agility, caught one of the beams of the cross and saved himself
+      from falling. At the same instant Lucifer drove down a lever and the ship
+      shot up with him in it alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ha! ha!&rdquo; he yelled, &ldquo;what sort of a support do you find it, old fellow?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For practical purposes of support,&rdquo; replied Michael grimly, &ldquo;it is at any
+      rate a great deal better than the ball. May I ask if you are going to
+      leave me here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, yes. I mount! I mount!&rdquo; cried the professor in ungovernable
+      excitement. &ldquo;<i>Altiora peto</i>. My path is upward.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How often have you told me, Professor, that there is really no up or down
+      in space?&rdquo; said the monk. &ldquo;I shall mount up as much as you will.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indeed,&rdquo; said Lucifer, leering over the side of the flying ship. &ldquo;May I
+      ask what you are going to do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The monk pointed downward at Ludgate Hill. &ldquo;I am going,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;to
+      climb up into a star.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Those who look at the matter most superficially regard paradox as
+      something which belongs to jesting and light journalism. Paradox of this
+      kind is to be found in the saying of the dandy, in the decadent comedy,
+      &ldquo;Life is much too important to be taken seriously.&rdquo; Those who look at the
+      matter a little more deeply or delicately see that paradox is a thing
+      which especially belongs to all religions. Paradox of this kind is to be
+      found in such a saying as &ldquo;The meek shall inherit the earth.&rdquo; But those
+      who see and feel the fundamental fact of the matter know that paradox is a
+      thing which belongs not to religion only, but to all vivid and violent
+      practical crises of human living. This kind of paradox may be clearly
+      perceived by anybody who happens to be hanging in mid-space, clinging to
+      one arm of the Cross of St. Paul's.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Father Michael in spite of his years, and in spite of his asceticism (or
+      because of it, for all I know), was a very healthy and happy old
+      gentleman. And as he swung on a bar above the sickening emptiness of air,
+      he realized, with that sort of dead detachment which belongs to the brains
+      of those in peril, the deathless and hopeless contradiction which is
+      involved in the mere idea of courage. He was a happy and healthy old
+      gentleman and therefore he was quite careless about it. And he felt as
+      every man feels in the taut moment of such terror that his chief danger
+      was terror itself; his only possible strength would be a coolness
+      amounting to carelessness, a carelessness amounting almost to a suicidal
+      swagger. His one wild chance of coming out safely would be in not too
+      desperately desiring to be safe. There might be footholds down that awful
+      facade, if only he could not care whether they were footholds or no. If he
+      were foolhardy he might escape; if he were wise he would stop where he was
+      till he dropped from the cross like a stone. And this antinomy kept on
+      repeating itself in his mind, a contradiction as large and staring as the
+      immense contradiction of the Cross; he remembered having often heard the
+      words, &ldquo;Whosoever shall lose his life the same shall save it.&rdquo; He
+      remembered with a sort of strange pity that this had always been made to
+      mean that whoever lost his physical life should save his spiritual life.
+      Now he knew the truth that is known to all fighters, and hunters, and
+      climbers of cliffs. He knew that even his animal life could only be saved
+      by a considerable readiness to lose it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some will think it improbable that a human soul swinging desperately in
+      mid-air should think about philosophical inconsistencies. But such extreme
+      states are dangerous things to dogmatize about. Frequently they produce a
+      certain useless and joyless activity of the mere intellect, thought not
+      only divorced from hope but even from desire. And if it is impossible to
+      dogmatize about such states, it is still more impossible to describe them.
+      To this spasm of sanity and clarity in Michael's mind succeeded a spasm of
+      the elemental terror; the terror of the animal in us which regards the
+      whole universe as its enemy; which, when it is victorious, has no pity,
+      and so, when it is defeated has no imaginable hope. Of that ten minutes of
+      terror it is not possible to speak in human words. But then again in that
+      damnable darkness there began to grow a strange dawn as of grey and pale
+      silver. And of this ultimate resignation or certainty it is even less
+      possible to write; it is something stranger than hell itself; it is
+      perhaps the last of the secrets of God. At the highest crisis of some
+      incurable anguish there will suddenly fall upon the man the stillness of
+      an insane contentment. It is not hope, for hope is broken and romantic and
+      concerned with the future; this is complete and of the present. It is not
+      faith, for faith by its very nature is fierce, and as it were at once
+      doubtful and defiant; but this is simply a satisfaction. It is not
+      knowledge, for the intellect seems to have no particular part in it. Nor
+      is it (as the modern idiots would certainly say it is) a mere numbness or
+      negative paralysis of the powers of grief. It is not negative in the
+      least; it is as positive as good news. In some sense, indeed, it is good
+      news. It seems almost as if there were some equality among things, some
+      balance in all possible contingencies which we are not permitted to know
+      lest we should learn indifference to good and evil, but which is sometimes
+      shown to us for an instant as a last aid in our last agony.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Michael certainly could not have given any sort of rational account of
+      this vast unmeaning satisfaction which soaked through him and filled him
+      to the brim. He felt with a sort of half-witted lucidity that the cross
+      was there, and the ball was there, and the dome was there, that he was
+      going to climb down from them, and that he did not mind in the least
+      whether he was killed or not. This mysterious mood lasted long enough to
+      start him on his dreadful descent and to force him to continue it. But six
+      times before he reached the highest of the outer galleries terror had
+      returned on him like a flying storm of darkness and thunder. By the time
+      he had reached that place of safety he almost felt (as in some impossible
+      fit of drunkenness) that he had two heads; one was calm, careless, and
+      efficient; the other saw the danger like a deadly map, was wise, careful,
+      and useless. He had fancied that he would have to let himself vertically
+      down the face of the whole building. When he dropped into the upper
+      gallery he still felt as far from the terrestrial globe as if he had only
+      dropped from the sun to the moon. He paused a little, panting in the
+      gallery under the ball, and idly kicked his heels, moving a few yards
+      along it. And as he did so a thunderbolt struck his soul. A man, a heavy,
+      ordinary man, with a composed indifferent face, and a prosaic sort of
+      uniform, with a row of buttons, blocked his way. Michael had no mind to
+      wonder whether this solid astonished man, with the brown moustache and the
+      nickel buttons, had also come on a flying ship. He merely let his mind
+      float in an endless felicity about the man. He thought how nice it would
+      be if he had to live up in that gallery with that one man for ever. He
+      thought how he would luxuriate in the nameless shades of this man's soul
+      and then hear with an endless excitement about the nameless shades of the
+      souls of all his aunts and uncles. A moment before he had been dying
+      alone. Now he was living in the same world with a man; an inexhaustible
+      ecstasy. In the gallery below the ball Father Michael had found that man
+      who is the noblest and most divine and most lovable of all men, better
+      than all the saints, greater than all the heroes&mdash;man Friday.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the confused colour and music of his new paradise, Michael heard only
+      in a faint and distant fashion some remarks that this beautiful solid man
+      seemed to be making to him; remarks about something or other being after
+      hours and against orders. He also seemed to be asking how Michael &ldquo;got up&rdquo;
+       there. This beautiful man evidently felt as Michael did that the earth was
+      a star and was set in heaven.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At length Michael sated himself with the mere sensual music of the voice
+      of the man in buttons. He began to listen to what he said, and even to
+      make some attempt at answering a question which appeared to have been put
+      several times and was now put with some excess of emphasis. Michael
+      realized that the image of God in nickel buttons was asking him how he had
+      come there. He said that he had come in Lucifer's ship. On his giving this
+      answer the demeanour of the image of God underwent a remarkable change.
+      From addressing Michael gruffly, as if he were a malefactor, he began
+      suddenly to speak to him with a sort of eager and feverish amiability as
+      if he were a child. He seemed particularly anxious to coax him away from
+      the balustrade. He led him by the arm towards a door leading into the
+      building itself, soothing him all the time. He gave what even Michael
+      (slight as was his knowledge of the world) felt to be an improbable
+      account of the sumptuous pleasures and varied advantages awaiting him
+      downstairs. Michael followed him, however, if only out of politeness, down
+      an apparently interminable spiral of staircase. At one point a door
+      opened. Michael stepped through it, and the unaccountable man in buttons
+      leapt after him and pinioned him where he stood. But he only wished to
+      stand; to stand and stare. He had stepped as it were into another
+      infinity, out under the dome of another heaven. But this was a dome of
+      heaven made by man. The gold and green and crimson of its sunset were not
+      in the shapeless clouds but in shapes of cherubim and seraphim, awful
+      human shapes with a passionate plumage. Its stars were not above but far
+      below, like fallen stars still in unbroken constellations; the dome itself
+      was full of darkness. And far below, lower even than the lights, could be
+      seen creeping or motionless, great black masses of men. The tongue of a
+      terrible organ seemed to shake the very air in the whole void; and through
+      it there came up to Michael the sound of a tongue more terrible; the
+      dreadful everlasting voice of man, calling to his gods from the beginning
+      to the end of the world. Michael felt almost as if he were a god, and all
+      the voices were hurled at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, the pretty things aren't here,&rdquo; said the demi-god in buttons,
+      caressingly. &ldquo;The pretty things are downstairs. You come along with me.
+      There's something that will surprise you downstairs; something you want
+      very much to see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Evidently the man in buttons did not feel like a god, so Michael made no
+      attempt to explain his feelings to him, but followed him meekly enough
+      down the trail of the serpentine staircase. He had no notion where or at
+      what level he was. He was still full of the cold splendour of space, and
+      of what a French writer has brilliantly named the &ldquo;vertigo of the
+      infinite,&rdquo; when another door opened, and with a shock indescribable he
+      found himself on the familiar level, in a street full of faces, with the
+      houses and even the lamp-posts above his head. He felt suddenly happy and
+      suddenly indescribably small. He fancied he had been changed into a child
+      again; his eyes sought the pavement seriously as children's do, as if it
+      were a thing with which something satisfactory could be done. He felt the
+      full warmth of that pleasure from which the proud shut themselves out; the
+      pleasure which not only goes with humiliation, but which almost is
+      humiliation. Men who have escaped death by a hair have it, and men whose
+      love is returned by a woman unexpectedly, and men whose sins are forgiven
+      them. Everything his eye fell on it feasted on, not aesthetically, but
+      with a plain, jolly appetite as of a boy eating buns. He relished the
+      squareness of the houses; he liked their clean angles as if he had just
+      cut them with a knife. The lit squares of the shop windows excited him as
+      the young are excited by the lit stage of some promising pantomime. He
+      happened to see in one shop which projected with a bulging bravery on to
+      the pavement some square tins of potted meat, and it seemed like a hint of
+      a hundred hilarious high teas in a hundred streets of the world. He was,
+      perhaps, the happiest of all the children of men. For in that unendurable
+      instant when he hung, half slipping, to the ball of St. Paul's, the whole
+      universe had been destroyed and re-created.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly through all the din of the dark streets came a crash of glass.
+      With that mysterious suddenness of the Cockney mob, a rush was made in the
+      right direction, a dingy office, next to the shop of the potted meat. The
+      pane of glass was lying in splinters about the pavement. And the police
+      already had their hands on a very tall young man, with dark, lank hair and
+      dark, dazed eyes, with a grey plaid over his shoulder, who had just
+      smashed the shop window with a single blow of his stick.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'd do it again,&rdquo; said the young man, with a furious white face. &ldquo;Anybody
+      would have done it. Did you see what it said? I swear I'd do it again.&rdquo;
+       Then his eyes encountered the monkish habit of Michael, and he pulled off
+      his grey tam-o'-shanter with the gesture of a Catholic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Father, did you see what they said?&rdquo; he cried, trembling. &ldquo;Did you see
+      what they dared to say? I didn't understand it at first. I read it half
+      through before I broke the window.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Michael felt he knew not how. The whole peace of the world was pent up
+      painfully in his heart. The new and childlike world which he had seen so
+      suddenly, men had not seen at all. Here they were still at their old
+      bewildering, pardonable, useless quarrels, with so much to be said on both
+      sides, and so little that need be said at all. A fierce inspiration fell
+      on him suddenly; he would strike them where they stood with the love of
+      God. They should not move till they saw their own sweet and startling
+      existence. They should not go from that place till they went home
+      embracing like brothers and shouting like men delivered. From the Cross
+      from which he had fallen fell the shadow of its fantastic mercy; and the
+      first three words he spoke in a voice like a silver trumpet, held men as
+      still as stones. Perhaps if he had spoken there for an hour in his
+      illumination he might have founded a religion on Ludgate Hill. But the
+      heavy hand of his guide fell suddenly on his shoulder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This poor fellow is dotty,&rdquo; he said good-humouredly to the crowd. &ldquo;I
+      found him wandering in the Cathedral. Says he came in a flying ship. Is
+      there a constable to spare to take care of him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a constable to spare. Two other constables attended to the tall
+      young man in grey; a fourth concerned himself with the owner of the shop,
+      who showed some tendency to be turbulent. They took the tall young man
+      away to a magistrate, whither we shall follow him in an ensuing chapter.
+      And they took the happiest man in the world away to an asylum.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      II. THE RELIGION OF THE STIPENDIARY MAGISTRATE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The editorial office of <i>The Atheist</i> had for some years past become
+      less and less prominently interesting as a feature of Ludgate Hill. The
+      paper was unsuited to the atmosphere. It showed an interest in the Bible
+      unknown in the district, and a knowledge of that volume to which nobody
+      else on Ludgate Hill could make any conspicuous claim. It was in vain that
+      the editor of <i>The Atheist</i> filled his front window with fierce and
+      final demands as to what Noah in the Ark did with the neck of the giraffe.
+      It was in vain that he asked violently, as for the last time, how the
+      statement &ldquo;God is Spirit&rdquo; could be reconciled with the statement &ldquo;The
+      earth is His footstool.&rdquo; It was in vain that he cried with an accusing
+      energy that the Bishop of London was paid L12,000 a year for pretending to
+      believe that the whale swallowed Jonah. It was in vain that he hung in
+      conspicuous places the most thrilling scientific calculations about the
+      width of the throat of a whale. Was it nothing to them all they that
+      passed by? Did his sudden and splendid and truly sincere indignation never
+      stir any of the people pouring down Ludgate Hill? Never. The little man
+      who edited <i>The Atheist</i> would rush from his shop on starlit evenings
+      and shake his fist at St. Paul's in the passion of his holy war upon the
+      holy place. He might have spared his emotion. The cross at the top of St.
+      Paul's and <i>The Atheist</i> shop at the foot of it were alike remote
+      from the world. The shop and the Cross were equally uplifted and alone in
+      the empty heavens.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To the little man who edited <i>The Atheist</i>, a fiery little Scotchman,
+      with fiery, red hair and beard, going by the name of Turnbull, all this
+      decline in public importance seemed not so much sad or even mad, but
+      merely bewildering and unaccountable. He had said the worst thing that
+      could be said; and it seemed accepted and ignored like the ordinary second
+      best of the politicians. Every day his blasphemies looked more glaring,
+      and every day the dust lay thicker upon them. It made him feel as if he
+      were moving in a world of idiots. He seemed among a race of men who smiled
+      when told of their own death, or looked vacantly at the Day of Judgement.
+      Year after year went by, and year after year the death of God in a shop in
+      Ludgate became a less and less important occurrence. All the forward men
+      of his age discouraged Turnbull. The socialists said he was cursing
+      priests when he should be cursing capitalists. The artists said that the
+      soul was most spiritual, not when freed from religion, but when freed from
+      morality. Year after year went by, and at least a man came by who treated
+      Mr. Turnbull's secularist shop with a real respect and seriousness. He was
+      a young man in a grey plaid, and he smashed the window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was a young man, born in the Bay of Arisaig, opposite Rum and the Isle
+      of Skye. His high, hawklike features and snaky black hair bore the mark of
+      that unknown historic thing which is crudely called Celtic, but which is
+      probably far older than the Celts, whoever they were. He was in name and
+      stock a Highlander of the Macdonalds; but his family took, as was common
+      in such cases, the name of a subordinate sept as a surname, and for all
+      the purposes which could be answered in London, he called himself Evan
+      MacIan. He had been brought up in some loneliness and seclusion as a
+      strict Roman Catholic, in the midst of that little wedge of Roman
+      Catholics which is driven into the Western Highlands. And he had found his
+      way as far as Fleet Street, seeking some half-promised employment, without
+      having properly realized that there were in the world any people who were
+      not Roman Catholics. He had uncovered himself for a few moments before the
+      statue of Queen Anne, in front of St. Paul's Cathedral, under the firm
+      impression that it was a figure of the Virgin Mary. He was somewhat
+      surprised at the lack of deference shown to the figure by the people
+      bustling by. He did not understand that their one essential historical
+      principle, the one law truly graven on their hearts, was the great and
+      comforting statement that Queen Anne is dead. This faith was as
+      fundamental as his faith, that Our Lady was alive. Any persons he had
+      talked to since he had touched the fringe of our fashion or civilization
+      had been by a coincidence, sympathetic or hypocritical. Or if they had
+      spoken some established blasphemies, he had been unable to understand them
+      merely owing to the preoccupied satisfaction of his mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On that fantastic fringe of the Gaelic land where he walked as a boy, the
+      cliffs were as fantastic as the clouds. Heaven seemed to humble itself and
+      come closer to the earth. The common paths of his little village began to
+      climb quite suddenly and seemed resolved to go to heaven. The sky seemed
+      to fall down towards the hills; the hills took hold upon the sky. In the
+      sumptuous sunset of gold and purple and peacock green cloudlets and islets
+      were the same. Evan lived like a man walking on a borderland, the
+      borderland between this world and another. Like so many men and nations
+      who grow up with nature and the common things, he understood the
+      supernatural before he understood the natural. He had looked at dim angels
+      standing knee-deep in the grass before he had looked at the grass. He knew
+      that Our Lady's robes were blue before he knew the wild roses round her
+      feet were red. The deeper his memory plunged into the dark house of
+      childhood the nearer and nearer he came to the things that cannot be
+      named. All through his life he thought of the daylight world as a sort of
+      divine debris, the broken remainder of his first vision. The skies and
+      mountains were the splendid off-scourings of another place. The stars were
+      lost jewels of the Queen. Our Lady had gone and left the stars by
+      accident.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His private tradition was equally wild and unworldly. His
+      great-grandfather had been cut down at Culloden, certain in his last
+      instant that God would restore the King. His grandfather, then a boy of
+      ten, had taken the terrible claymore from the hand of the dead and hung it
+      up in his house, burnishing it and sharpening it for sixty years, to be
+      ready for the next rebellion. His father, the youngest son and the last
+      left alive, had refused to attend on Queen Victoria in Scotland. And Evan
+      himself had been of one piece with his progenitors; and was not dead with
+      them, but alive in the twentieth century. He was not in the least the
+      pathetic Jacobite of whom we read, left behind by a final advance of all
+      things. He was, in his own fancy, a conspirator, fierce and up to date. In
+      the long, dark afternoons of the Highland winter, he plotted and fumed in
+      the dark. He drew plans of the capture of London on the desolate sand of
+      Arisaig.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he came up to capture London, it was not with an army of white
+      cockades, but with a stick and a satchel. London overawed him a little,
+      not because he thought it grand or even terrible, but because it
+      bewildered him; it was not the Golden City or even hell; it was Limbo. He
+      had one shock of sentiment, when he turned that wonderful corner of Fleet
+      Street and saw St. Paul's sitting in the sky.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; he said, after a long pause, &ldquo;that sort of thing was built under the
+      Stuarts!&rdquo; Then with a sour grin he asked himself what was the
+      corresponding monument of the Brunswicks and the Protestant Constitution.
+      After some warning, he selected a sky-sign of some pill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Half an hour afterwards his emotions left him with an emptied mind on the
+      same spot. And it was in a mood of mere idle investigation that he
+      happened to come to a standstill opposite the office of <i>The Atheist</i>.
+      He did not see the word &ldquo;atheist&rdquo;, or if he did, it is quite possible that
+      he did not know the meaning of the word. Even as it was, the document
+      would not have shocked even the innocent Highlander, but for the
+      troublesome and quite unforeseen fact that the innocent Highlander read it
+      stolidly to the end; a thing unknown among the most enthusiastic
+      subscribers to the paper, and calculated in any case to create a new
+      situation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a smart journalistic instinct characteristic of all his school, the
+      editor of <i>The Atheist</i> had put first in his paper and most
+      prominently in his window an article called &ldquo;The Mesopotamian Mythology
+      and its Effects on Syriac Folk Lore.&rdquo; Mr. Evan MacIan began to read this
+      quite idly, as he would have read a public statement beginning with a
+      young girl dying in Brighton and ending with Bile Beans. He received the
+      very considerable amount of information accumulated by the author with
+      that tired clearness of the mind which children have on heavy summer
+      afternoons&mdash;that tired clearness which leads them to go on asking
+      questions long after they have lost interest in the subject and are as
+      bored as their nurse. The streets were full of people and empty of
+      adventures. He might as well know about the gods of Mesopotamia as not; so
+      he flattened his long, lean face against the dim bleak pane of the window
+      and read all there was to read about Mesopotamian gods. He read how the
+      Mesopotamians had a god named Sho (sometimes pronounced Ji), and that he
+      was described as being very powerful, a striking similarity to some
+      expressions about Jahveh, who is also described as having power. Evan had
+      never heard of Jahveh in his life, and imagining him to be some other
+      Mesopotamian idol, read on with a dull curiosity. He learnt that the name
+      Sho, under its third form of Psa, occurs in an early legend which
+      describes how the deity, after the manner of Jupiter on so many occasions,
+      seduced a Virgin and begat a hero. This hero, whose name is not essential
+      to our existence, was, it was said, the chief hero and Saviour of the
+      Mesopotamian ethical scheme. Then followed a paragraph giving other
+      examples of such heroes and Saviours being born of some profligate
+      intercourse between God and mortal. Then followed a paragraph&mdash;but
+      Evan did not understand it. He read it again and then again. Then he did
+      understand it. The glass fell in ringing fragments on to the pavement, and
+      Evan sprang over the barrier into the shop, brandishing his stick.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is this?&rdquo; cried little Mr. Turnbull, starting up with hair aflame.
+      &ldquo;How dare you break my window?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because it was the quickest cut to you,&rdquo; cried Evan, stamping. &ldquo;Stand up
+      and fight, you crapulous coward. You dirty lunatic, stand up, will you?
+      Have you any weapons here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you mad?&rdquo; asked Turnbull, glaring.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you?&rdquo; cried Evan. &ldquo;Can you be anything else when you plaster your own
+      house with that God-defying filth? Stand up and fight, I say.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A great light like dawn came into Mr. Turnbull's face. Behind his red hair
+      and beard he turned deadly pale with pleasure. Here, after twenty lone
+      years of useless toil, he had his reward. Someone was angry with the
+      paper. He bounded to his feet like a boy; he saw a new youth opening
+      before him. And as not unfrequently happens to middle-aged gentlemen when
+      they see a new youth opening before them, he found himself in the presence
+      of the police.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The policemen, after some ponderous questionings, collared both the two
+      enthusiasts. They were more respectful, however, to the young man who had
+      smashed the window, than to the miscreant who had had his window smashed.
+      There was an air of refined mystery about Evan MacIan, which did not exist
+      in the irate little shopkeeper, an air of refined mystery which appealed
+      to the policemen, for policemen, like most other English types, are at
+      once snobs and poets. MacIan might possibly be a gentleman, they felt; the
+      editor manifestly was not. And the editor's fine rational republican
+      appeals to his respect for law, and his ardour to be tried by his fellow
+      citizens, seemed to the police quite as much gibberish as Evan's mysticism
+      could have done. The police were not used to hearing principles, even the
+      principles of their own existence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The police magistrate, before whom they were hurried and tried, was a Mr.
+      Cumberland Vane, a cheerful, middle-aged gentleman, honourably celebrated
+      for the lightness of his sentences and the lightness of his conversation.
+      He occasionally worked himself up into a sort of theoretic rage about
+      certain particular offenders, such as the men who took pokers to their
+      wives, talked in a loose, sentimental way about the desirability of
+      flogging them, and was hopelessly bewildered by the fact that the wives
+      seemed even more angry with him than with their husbands. He was a tall,
+      spruce man, with a twist of black moustache and incomparable morning
+      dress. He looked like a gentleman, and yet, somehow, like a stage
+      gentleman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had often treated serious crimes against mere order or property with a
+      humane flippancy. Hence, about the mere breaking of an editor's window, he
+      was almost uproarious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come, Mr. MacIan, come,&rdquo; he said, leaning back in his chair, &ldquo;do you
+      generally enter you friends' houses by walking through the glass?&rdquo;
+       (Laughter.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is not my friend,&rdquo; said Evan, with the stolidity of a dull child.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not your friend, eh?&rdquo; said the magistrate, sparkling. &ldquo;Is he your
+      brother-in-law?&rdquo; (Loud and prolonged laughter.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is my enemy,&rdquo; said Evan, simply; &ldquo;he is the enemy of God.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Vane shifted sharply in his seat, dropping the eye-glass out of his
+      eye in a momentary and not unmanly embarrassment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mustn't talk like that here,&rdquo; he said, roughly, and in a kind of
+      hurry, &ldquo;that has nothing to do with us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Evan opened his great, blue eyes; &ldquo;God,&rdquo; he began.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Be quiet,&rdquo; said the magistrate, angrily, &ldquo;it is most undesirable that
+      things of that sort should be spoken about&mdash;a&mdash;in public, and in
+      an ordinary Court of Justice. Religion is&mdash;a&mdash;too personal a
+      matter to be mentioned in such a place.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it?&rdquo; answered the Highlander, &ldquo;then what did those policemen swear by
+      just now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is no parallel,&rdquo; answered Vane, rather irritably; &ldquo;of course there
+      is a form of oath&mdash;to be taken reverently&mdash;reverently, and
+      there's an end of it. But to talk in a public place about one's most
+      sacred and private sentiments&mdash;well, I call it bad taste. (Slight
+      applause.) I call it irreverent. I call it irreverent, and I'm not
+      specially orthodox either.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see you are not,&rdquo; said Evan, &ldquo;but I am.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are wondering from the point,&rdquo; said the police magistrate, pulling
+      himself together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;May I ask why you smashed this worthy citizen's window?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Evan turned a little pale at the mere memory, but he answered with the
+      same cold and deadly literalism that he showed throughout.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because he blasphemed Our Lady.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I tell you once and for all,&rdquo; cried Mr. Cumberland Vane, rapping his
+      knuckles angrily on the table, &ldquo;I tell you, once and for all, my man, that
+      I will not have you turning on any religious rant or cant here. Don't
+      imagine that it will impress me. The most religious people are not those
+      who talk about it. (Applause.) You answer the questions and do nothing
+      else.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did nothing else,&rdquo; said Evan, with a slight smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eh,&rdquo; cried Vane, glaring through his eye-glass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You asked me why I broke his window,&rdquo; said MacIan, with a face of wood.
+      &ldquo;I answered, 'Because he blasphemed Our Lady.' I had no other reason. So I
+      have no other answer.&rdquo; Vane continued to gaze at him with a sternness not
+      habitual to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are not going the right way to work, Sir,&rdquo; he said, with severity.
+      &ldquo;You are not going the right way to work to&mdash;a&mdash;have your case
+      treated with special consideration. If you had simply expressed regret for
+      what you had done, I should have been strongly inclined to dismiss the
+      matter as an outbreak of temper. Even now, if you say that you are sorry I
+      shall only&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I am not in the least sorry,&rdquo; said Evan, &ldquo;I am very pleased.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I really believe you are insane,&rdquo; said the stipendiary, indignantly, for
+      he had really been doing his best as a good-natured man, to compose the
+      dispute. &ldquo;What conceivable right have you to break other people's windows
+      because their opinions do not agree with yours? This man only gave
+      expression to his sincere belief.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So did I,&rdquo; said the Highlander.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And who are you?&rdquo; exploded Vane. &ldquo;Are your views necessarily the right
+      ones? Are you necessarily in possession of the truth?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said MacIan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The magistrate broke into a contemptuous laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, you want a nurse to look after you,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You must pay L10.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Evan MacIan plunged his hands into his loose grey garment and drew out a
+      queer looking leather purse. It contained exactly twelve sovereigns. He
+      paid down the ten, coin by coin, in silence, and equally silently returned
+      the remaining two to the receptacle. Then he said, &ldquo;May I say a word, your
+      worship?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cumberland Vane seemed half hypnotized with the silence and automatic
+      movements of the stranger; he made a movement with his head which might
+      have been either &ldquo;yes&rdquo; or &ldquo;no&rdquo;. &ldquo;I only wished to say, your worship,&rdquo; said
+      MacIan, putting back the purse in his trouser pocket, &ldquo;that smashing that
+      shop window was, I confess, a useless and rather irregular business. It
+      may be excused, however, as a mere preliminary to further proceedings, a
+      sort of preface. Wherever and whenever I meet that man,&rdquo; and he pointed to
+      the editor of <i>The Atheist</i>, &ldquo;whether it be outside this door in ten
+      minutes from now, or twenty years hence in some distant country, wherever
+      and whenever I meet that man, I will fight him. Do not be afraid. I will
+      not rush at him like a bully, or bear him down with any brute superiority.
+      I will fight him like a gentleman; I will fight him as our fathers fought.
+      He shall choose how, sword or pistol, horse or foot. But if he refuses, I
+      will write his cowardice on every wall in the world. If he had said of my
+      mother what he said of the Mother of God, there is not a club of clean men
+      in Europe that would deny my right to call him out. If he had said it of
+      my wife, you English would yourselves have pardoned me for beating him
+      like a dog in the market place. Your worship, I have no mother; I have no
+      wife. I have only that which the poor have equally with the rich; which
+      the lonely have equally with the man of many friends. To me this whole
+      strange world is homely, because in the heart of it there is a home; to me
+      this cruel world is kindly, because higher than the heavens there is
+      something more human than humanity. If a man must not fight for this, may
+      he fight for anything? I would fight for my friend, but if I lost my
+      friend, I should still be there. I would fight for my country, but if I
+      lost my country, I should still exist. But if what that devil dreams were
+      true, I should not be&mdash;I should burst like a bubble and be gone. I
+      could not live in that imbecile universe. Shall I not fight for my own
+      existence?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The magistrate recovered his voice and his presence of mind. The first
+      part of the speech, the bombastic and brutally practical challenge,
+      stunned him with surprise; but the rest of Evan's remarks, branching off
+      as they did into theoretic phrases, gave his vague and very English mind
+      (full of memories of the hedging and compromise in English public
+      speaking) an indistinct sensation of relief, as if the man, though mad,
+      were not so dangerous as he had thought. He went into a sort of weary
+      laughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For Heaven's sake, man,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;don't talk so much. Let other people
+      have a chance (laughter). I trust all that you said about asking Mr.
+      Turnbull to fight, may be regarded as rubbish. In case of accidents,
+      however, I must bind you over to keep the peace.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To keep the peace,&rdquo; repeated Evan, &ldquo;with whom?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;With Mr. Turnbull,&rdquo; said Vane.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly not,&rdquo; answered MacIan. &ldquo;What has he to do with peace?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean to say,&rdquo; began the magistrate, &ldquo;that you refuse to...&rdquo; The
+      voice of Turnbull himself clove in for the first time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Might I suggest,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;That I, your worship, can settle to some
+      extent this absurd matter myself. This rather wild gentleman promises that
+      he will not attack me with any ordinary assault&mdash;and if he does, you
+      may be sure the police shall hear of it. But he says he will not. He says
+      he will challenge me to a duel; and I cannot say anything stronger about
+      his mental state than to say that I think that it is highly probable that
+      he will. (Laughter.) But it takes two to make a duel, your worship
+      (renewed laughter). I do not in the least mind being described on every
+      wall in the world as the coward who would not fight a man in Fleet Street,
+      about whether the Virgin Mary had a parallel in Mesopotamian mythology.
+      No, your worship. You need not trouble to bind him over to keep the peace.
+      I bind myself over to keep the peace, and you may rest quite satisfied
+      that there will be no duel with me in it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Cumberland Vane rolled about, laughing in a sort of relief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're like a breath of April, sir,&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;You're ozone after that
+      fellow. You're perfectly right. Perhaps I have taken the thing too
+      seriously. I should love to see him sending you challenges and to see you
+      smiling. Well, well.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Evan went out of the Court of Justice free, but strangely shaken, like a
+      sick man. Any punishment of suppression he would have felt as natural; but
+      the sudden juncture between the laughter of his judge and the laughter of
+      the man he had wronged, made him feel suddenly small, or at least,
+      defeated. It was really true that the whole modern world regarded his
+      world as a bubble. No cruelty could have shown it, but their kindness
+      showed it with a ghastly clearness. As he was brooding, he suddenly became
+      conscious of a small, stern figure, fronting him in silence. Its eyes were
+      grey and awful, and its beard red. It was Turnbull.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, sir,&rdquo; said the editor of <i>The Atheist</i>, &ldquo;where is the fight to
+      be? Name the field, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Evan stood thunderstruck. He stammered out something, he knew not what; he
+      only guessed it by the answer of the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do I want to fight? Do I want to fight?&rdquo; cried the furious Free-thinker.
+      &ldquo;Why, you moonstruck scarecrow of superstition, do you think your dirty
+      saints are the only people who can die? Haven't you hung atheists, and
+      burned them, and boiled them, and did they ever deny their faith? Do you
+      think we don't want to fight? Night and day I have prayed&mdash;I have
+      longed&mdash;for an atheist revolution&mdash;I have longed to see your
+      blood and ours on the streets. Let it be yours or mine?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you said...&rdquo; began MacIan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know,&rdquo; said Turnbull scornfully. &ldquo;And what did you say? You damned
+      fool, you said things that might have got us locked up for a year, and
+      shadowed by the coppers for half a decade. If you wanted to fight, why did
+      you tell that ass you wanted to? I got you out, to fight if you want to.
+      Now, fight if you dare.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I swear to you, then,&rdquo; said MacIan, after a pause. &ldquo;I swear to you that
+      nothing shall come between us. I swear to you that nothing shall be in my
+      heart or in my head till our swords clash together. I swear it by the God
+      you have denied, by the Blessed Lady you have blasphemed; I swear it by
+      the seven swords in her heart. I swear it by the Holy Island where my
+      fathers are, by the honour of my mother, by the secret of my people, and
+      by the chalice of the Blood of God.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The atheist drew up his head. &ldquo;And I,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;give my word.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      III. SOME OLD CURIOSITIES
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The evening sky, a dome of solid gold, unflaked even by a single sunset
+      cloud, steeped the meanest sights of London in a strange and mellow light.
+      It made a little greasy street of St. Martin's Lane look as if it were
+      paved with gold. It made the pawnbroker's half-way down it shine as if it
+      were really that Mountain of Piety that the French poetic instinct has
+      named it; it made the mean pseudo-French bookshop, next but one to it, a
+      shop packed with dreary indecency, show for a moment a kind of Parisian
+      colour. And the shop that stood between the pawnshop and the shop of
+      dreary indecency, showed with quite a blaze of old world beauty, for it
+      was, by accident, a shop not unbeautiful in itself. The front window had a
+      glimmer of bronze and blue steel, lit, as by a few stars, by the sparks of
+      what were alleged to be jewels; for it was in brief, a shop of bric-a-brac
+      and old curiosities. A row of half-burnished seventeenth-century swords
+      ran like an ornate railing along the front of the window; behind was a
+      darker glimmer of old oak and old armour; and higher up hung the most
+      extraordinary looking South Sea tools or utensils, whether designed for
+      killing enemies or merely for cooking them, no mere white man could
+      possibly conjecture. But the romance of the eye, which really on this rich
+      evening, clung about the shop, had its main source in the accident of two
+      doors standing open, the front door that opened on the street and a back
+      door that opened on an odd green square of garden, that the sun turned to
+      a square of gold. There is nothing more beautiful than thus to look as it
+      were through the archway of a house; as if the open sky were an interior
+      chamber, and the sun a secret lamp of the place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have suggested that the sunset light made everything lovely. To say that
+      it made the keeper of the curiosity shop lovely would be a tribute to it
+      perhaps too extreme. It would easily have made him beautiful if he had
+      been merely squalid; if he had been a Jew of the Fagin type. But he was a
+      Jew of another and much less admirable type; a Jew with a very
+      well-sounding name. For though there are no hard tests for separating the
+      tares and the wheat of any people, one rude but efficient guide is that
+      the nice Jew is called Moses Solomon, and the nasty Jew is called Thornton
+      Percy. The keeper of the curiosity shop was of the Thornton Percy branch
+      of the chosen people; he belonged to those Lost Ten Tribes whose
+      industrious object is to lose themselves. He was a man still young, but
+      already corpulent, with sleek dark hair, heavy handsome clothes, and a
+      full, fat, permanent smile, which looked at the first glance kindly, and
+      at the second cowardly. The name over his shop was Henry Gordon, but two
+      Scotchmen who were in his shop that evening could come upon no trace of a
+      Scotch accent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These two Scotchmen in this shop were careful purchasers, but free-handed
+      payers. One of them who seemed to be the principal and the authority
+      (whom, indeed, Mr. Henry Gordon fancied he had seen somewhere before), was
+      a small, sturdy fellow, with fine grey eyes, a square red tie and a square
+      red beard, that he carried aggressively forward as if he defied anyone to
+      pull it. The other kept so much in the background in comparison that he
+      looked almost ghostly in his grey cloak or plaid, a tall, sallow, silent
+      young man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two Scotchmen were interested in seventeenth-century swords. They were
+      fastidious about them. They had a whole armoury of these weapons brought
+      out and rolled clattering about the counter, until they found two of
+      precisely the same length. Presumably they desired the exact symmetry for
+      some decorative trophy. Even then they felt the points, poised the swords
+      for balance and bent them in a circle to see that they sprang straight
+      again; which, for decorative purposes, seems carrying realism rather far.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;These will do,&rdquo; said the strange person with the red beard. &ldquo;And perhaps
+      I had better pay for them at once. And as you are the challenger, Mr.
+      MacIan, perhaps you had better explain the situation.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The tall Scotchman in grey took a step forward and spoke in a voice quite
+      clear and bold, and yet somehow lifeless, like a man going through an
+      ancient formality.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The fact is, Mr. Gordon, we have to place our honour in your hands. Words
+      have passed between Mr. Turnbull and myself on a grave and invaluable
+      matter, which can only be atoned for by fighting. Unfortunately, as the
+      police are in some sense pursuing us, we are hurried, and must fight now
+      and without seconds. But if you will be so kind as to take us into your
+      little garden and see far play, we shall feel how&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The shopman recovered himself from a stunning surprise and burst out:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gentlemen, are you drunk? A duel! A duel in my garden. Go home,
+      gentlemen, go home. Why, what did you quarrel about?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We quarrelled,&rdquo; said Evan, in the same dead voice, &ldquo;about religion.&rdquo; The
+      fat shopkeeper rolled about in his chair with enjoyment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, this is a funny game,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;So you want to commit murder on
+      behalf of religion. Well, well my religion is a little respect for
+      humanity, and&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Excuse me,&rdquo; cut in Turnbull, suddenly and fiercely, pointing towards the
+      pawnbroker's next door. &ldquo;Don't you own that shop?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why&mdash;er&mdash;yes,&rdquo; said Gordon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And don't you own that shop?&rdquo; repeated the secularist, pointing backward
+      to the pornographic bookseller.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What if I do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, then,&rdquo; cried Turnbull, with grating contempt. &ldquo;I will leave the
+      religion of humanity confidently in your hands; but I am sorry I troubled
+      you about such a thing as honour. Look here, my man. I do believe in
+      humanity. I do believe in liberty. My father died for it under the swords
+      of the Yeomanry. I am going to die for it, if need be, under that sword on
+      your counter. But if there is one sight that makes me doubt it it is your
+      foul fat face. It is hard to believe you were not meant to be ruled like a
+      dog or killed like a cockroach. Don't try your slave's philosophy on me.
+      We are going to fight, and we are going to fight in your garden, with your
+      swords. Be still! Raise your voice above a whisper, and I run you through
+      the body.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull put the bright point of the sword against the gay waistcoat of
+      the dealer, who stood choking with rage and fear, and an astonishment so
+      crushing as to be greater than either.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;MacIan,&rdquo; said Turnbull, falling almost into the familiar tone of a
+      business partner, &ldquo;MacIan, tie up this fellow and put a gag in his mouth.
+      Be still, I say, or I kill you where you stand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The man was too frightened to scream, but he struggled wildly, while Evan
+      MacIan, whose long, lean hands were unusually powerful, tightened some old
+      curtain cords round him, strapped a rope gag in his mouth and rolled him
+      on his back on the floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's nothing very strong here,&rdquo; said Evan, looking about him. &ldquo;I'm
+      afraid he'll work through that gag in half an hour or so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Turnbull, &ldquo;but one of us will be killed by that time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, let's hope so,&rdquo; said the Highlander, glancing doubtfully at the
+      squirming thing on the floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And now,&rdquo; said Turnbull, twirling his fiery moustache and fingering his
+      sword, &ldquo;let us go into the garden. What an exquisite summer evening!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan said nothing, but lifting his sword from the counter went out into
+      the sun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The brilliant light ran along the blades, filling the channels of them
+      with white fire; the combatants stuck their swords in the turf and took
+      off their hats, coats, waistcoats, and boots. Evan said a short Latin
+      prayer to himself, during which Turnbull made something of a parade of
+      lighting a cigarette which he flung away the instant after, when he saw
+      MacIan apparently standing ready. Yet MacIan was not exactly ready. He
+      stood staring like a man stricken with a trance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are you staring at?&rdquo; asked Turnbull. &ldquo;Do you see the bobbies?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see Jerusalem,&rdquo; said Evan, &ldquo;all covered with the shields and standards
+      of the Saracens.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jerusalem!&rdquo; said Turnbull, laughing. &ldquo;Well, we've taken the only
+      inhabitant into captivity.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he picked up his sword and made it whistle like a boy's wand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I beg your pardon,&rdquo; said MacIan, dryly. &ldquo;Let us begin.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan made a military salute with his weapon, which Turnbull copied or
+      parodied with an impatient contempt; and in the stillness of the garden
+      the swords came together with a clear sound like a bell. The instant the
+      blades touched, each felt them tingle to their very points with a personal
+      vitality, as if they were two naked nerves of steel. Evan had worn
+      throughout an air of apathy, which might have been the stale apathy of one
+      who wants nothing. But it was indeed the more dreadful apathy of one who
+      wants something and will care for nothing else. And this was seen
+      suddenly; for the instant Evan engaged he disengaged and lunged with an
+      infernal violence. His opponent with a desperate promptitude parried and
+      riposted; the parry only just succeeded, the riposte failed. Something big
+      and unbearable seemed to have broken finally out of Evan in that first
+      murderous lunge, leaving him lighter and cooler and quicker upon his feet.
+      He fell to again, fiercely still, but now with a fierce caution. The next
+      moment Turnbull lunged; MacIan seemed to catch the point and throw it away
+      from him, and was thrusting back like a thunderbolt, when a sound
+      paralysed him; another sound beside their ringing weapons. Turnbull,
+      perhaps from an equal astonishment, perhaps from chivalry, stopped also
+      and forebore to send his sword through his exposed enemy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's that?&rdquo; asked Evan, hoarsely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A heavy scraping sound, as of a trunk being dragged along a littered
+      floor, came from the dark shop behind them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The old Jew has broken one of his strings, and he's crawling about,&rdquo; said
+      Turnbull. &ldquo;Be quick! We must finish before he gets his gag out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, yes, quick! On guard!&rdquo; cried the Highlander. The blades crossed
+      again with the same sound like song, and the men went to work again with
+      the same white and watchful faces. Evan, in his impatience, went back a
+      little to his wildness. He made windmills, as the French duellists say,
+      and though he was probably a shade the better fencer of the two, he found
+      the other's point pass his face twice so close as almost to graze his
+      cheek. The second time he realized the actual possibility of defeat and
+      pulled himself together under a shock of the sanity of anger. He narrowed,
+      and, so to speak, tightened his operations: he fenced (as the swordsman's
+      boast goes), in a wedding ring; he turned Turnbull's thrusts with a
+      maddening and almost mechanical click, like that of a machine. Whenever
+      Turnbull's sword sought to go over that other mere white streak it seemed
+      to be caught in a complex network of steel. He turned one thrust, turned
+      another, turned another. Then suddenly he went forward at the lunge with
+      his whole living weight. Turnbull leaped back, but Evan lunged and lunged
+      and lunged again like a devilish piston rod or battering ram. And high
+      above all the sound of the struggle there broke into the silent evening a
+      bellowing human voice, nasal, raucous, at the highest pitch of pain.
+      &ldquo;Help! Help! Police! Murder! Murder!&rdquo; The gag was broken; and the tongue
+      of terror was loose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Keep on!&rdquo; gasped Turnbull. &ldquo;One may be killed before they come.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The voice of the screaming shopkeeper was loud enough to drown not only
+      the noise of the swords but all other noises around it, but even through
+      its rending din there seemed to be some other stir or scurry. And Evan, in
+      the very act of thrusting at Turnbull, saw something in his eyes that made
+      him drop his sword. The atheist, with his grey eyes at their widest and
+      wildest, was staring straight over his shoulder at the little archway of
+      shop that opened on the street beyond. And he saw the archway blocked and
+      blackened with strange figures.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We must bolt, MacIan,&rdquo; he said abruptly. &ldquo;And there isn't a damned second
+      to lose either. Do as I do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With a bound he was beside the little cluster of his clothes and boots
+      that lay on the lawn; he snatched them up, without waiting to put any of
+      them on; and tucking his sword under his other arm, went wildly at the
+      wall at the bottom of the garden and swung himself over it. Three seconds
+      after he had alighted in his socks on the other side, MacIan alighted
+      beside him, also in his socks and also carrying clothes and sword in a
+      desperate bundle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were in a by-street, very lean and lonely itself, but so close to a
+      crowded thoroughfare that they could see the vague masses of vehicles
+      going by, and could even see an individual hansom cab passing the corner
+      at the instant. Turnbull put his fingers to his mouth like a gutter-snipe
+      and whistled twice. Even as he did so he could hear the loud voices of the
+      neighbours and the police coming down the garden.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The hansom swung sharply and came tearing down the little lane at his
+      call. When the cabman saw his fares, however, two wild-haired men in their
+      shirts and socks with naked swords under their arms, he not unnaturally
+      brought his readiness to a rigid stop and stared suspiciously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You talk to him a minute,&rdquo; whispered Turnbull, and stepped back into the
+      shadow of the wall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We want you,&rdquo; said MacIan to the cabman, with a superb Scotch drawl of
+      indifference and assurance, &ldquo;to drive us to St. Pancras Station&mdash;verra
+      quick.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very sorry, sir,&rdquo; said the cabman, &ldquo;but I'd like to know it was all
+      right. Might I arst where you come from, sir?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A second after he spoke MacIan heard a heavy voice on the other side of
+      the wall, saying: &ldquo;I suppose I'd better get over and look for them. Give
+      me a back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cabby,&rdquo; said MacIan, again assuming the most deliberate and lingering
+      lowland Scotch intonation, &ldquo;if ye're really verra anxious to ken whar a'
+      come fra', I'll tell ye as a verra great secret. A' come from Scotland.
+      And a'm gaein' to St. Pancras Station. Open the doors, cabby.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The cabman stared, but laughed. The heavy voice behind the wall said: &ldquo;Now
+      then, a better back this time, Mr. Price.&rdquo; And from the shadow of the wall
+      Turnbull crept out. He had struggled wildly into his coat (leaving his
+      waistcoat on the pavement), and he was with a fierce pale face climbing up
+      the cab behind the cabman. MacIan had no glimmering notion of what he was
+      up to, but an instinct of discipline, inherited from a hundred men of war,
+      made him stick to his own part and trust the other man's.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Open the doors, cabby,&rdquo; he repeated, with something of the obstinate
+      solemnity of a drunkard, &ldquo;open the doors. Did ye no hear me say St.
+      Pancras Station?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The top of a policeman's helmet appeared above the garden wall. The cabman
+      did not see it, but he was still suspicious and began:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very sorry, sir, but...&rdquo; and with that the catlike Turnbull tore him out
+      of his seat and hurled him into the street below, where he lay suddenly
+      stunned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Give me his hat,&rdquo; said Turnbull in a silver voice, that the other obeyed
+      like a bugle. &ldquo;And get inside with the swords.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And just as the red and raging face of a policeman appeared above the
+      wall, Turnbull struck the horse with a terrible cut of the whip and the
+      two went whirling away like a boomerang.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They had spun through seven streets and three or four squares before
+      anything further happened. Then, in the neighbourhood of Maida Vale, the
+      driver opened the trap and talked through it in a manner not wholly common
+      in conversations through that aperture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. MacIan,&rdquo; he said shortly and civilly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Turnbull,&rdquo; replied his motionless fare.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Under circumstances such as those in which we were both recently placed
+      there was no time for anything but very abrupt action. I trust therefore
+      that you have no cause to complain of me if I have deferred until this
+      moment a consultation with you on our present position or future action.
+      Our present position, Mr. MacIan, I imagine that I am under no special
+      necessity of describing. We have broken the law and we are fleeing from
+      its officers. Our future action is a thing about which I myself entertain
+      sufficiently strong views; but I have no right to assume or to anticipate
+      yours, though I may have formed a decided conception of your character and
+      a decided notion of what they will probably be. Still, by every principle
+      of intellectual justice, I am bound to ask you now and seriously whether
+      you wish to continue our interrupted relations.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan leant his white and rather weary face back upon the cushions in
+      order to speak up through the open door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Turnbull,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I have nothing to add to what I have said
+      before. It is strongly borne in upon me that you and I, the sole occupants
+      of this runaway cab, are at this moment the two most important people in
+      London, possibly in Europe. I have been looking at all the streets as we
+      went past, I have been looking at all the shops as we went past, I have
+      been looking at all the churches as we went past. At first, I felt a
+      little dazed with the vastness of it all. I could not understand what it
+      all meant. But now I know exactly what it all means. It means us. This
+      whole civilization is only a dream. You and I are the realities.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Religious symbolism,&rdquo; said Mr. Turnbull, through the trap, &ldquo;does not, as
+      you are probably aware, appeal ordinarily to thinkers of the school to
+      which I belong. But in symbolism as you use it in this instance, I must, I
+      think, concede a certain truth. We <i>must</i> fight this thing out
+      somewhere; because, as you truly say, we have found each other's reality.
+      We <i>must</i> kill each other&mdash;or convert each other. I used to
+      think all Christians were hypocrites, and I felt quite mildly towards them
+      really. But I know you are sincere&mdash;and my soul is mad against you.
+      In the same way you used, I suppose, to think that all atheists thought
+      atheism would leave them free for immorality&mdash;and yet in your heart
+      you tolerated them entirely. Now you <i>know</i> that I am an honest man,
+      and you are mad against me, as I am against you. Yes, that's it. You can't
+      be angry with bad men. But a good man in the wrong&mdash;why one thirsts
+      for his blood. Yes, you open for me a vista of thought.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't run into anything,&rdquo; said Evan, immovably.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's something in that view of yours, too,&rdquo; said Turnbull, and shut
+      down the trap.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They sped on through shining streets that shot by them like arrows. Mr.
+      Turnbull had evidently a great deal of unused practical talent which was
+      unrolling itself in this ridiculous adventure. They had got away with such
+      stunning promptitude that the police chase had in all probability not even
+      properly begun. But in case it had, the amateur cabman chose his dizzy
+      course through London with a strange dexterity. He did not do what would
+      have first occurred to any ordinary outsider desiring to destroy his
+      tracks. He did not cut into by-ways or twist his way through mean streets.
+      His amateur common sense told him that it was precisely the poor street,
+      the side street, that would be likely to remember and report the passing
+      of a hansom cab, like the passing of a royal procession. He kept chiefly
+      to the great roads, so full of hansoms that a wilder pair than they might
+      easily have passed in the press. In one of the quieter streets Evan put on
+      his boots.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Towards the top of Albany Street the singular cabman again opened the
+      trap.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. MacIan,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I understand that we have now definitely settled
+      that in the conventional language honour is not satisfied. Our action must
+      at least go further than it has gone under recent interrupted conditions.
+      That, I believe, is understood.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perfectly,&rdquo; replied the other with his bootlace in his teeth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Under those conditions,&rdquo; continued Turnbull, his voice coming through the
+      hole with a slight note of trepidation very unusual with him, &ldquo;I have a
+      suggestion to make, if that can be called a suggestion, which has probably
+      occurred to you as readily as to me. Until the actual event comes off we
+      are practically in the position if not of comrades, at least of business
+      partners. Until the event comes off, therefore I should suggest that
+      quarrelling would be inconvenient and rather inartistic; while the
+      ordinary exchange of politeness between man and man would be not only
+      elegant but uncommonly practical.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are perfectly right,&rdquo; answered MacIan, with his melancholy voice, &ldquo;in
+      saying that all this has occurred to me. All duellists should behave like
+      gentlemen to each other. But we, by the queerness of our position, are
+      something much more than either duellists or gentlemen. We are, in the
+      oddest and most exact sense of the term, brothers&mdash;in arms.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. MacIan,&rdquo; replied Turnbull, calmly, &ldquo;no more need be said.&rdquo; And he
+      closed the trap once more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They had reached Finchley Road before he opened it again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he said, &ldquo;Mr. MacIan, may I offer you a cigar. It will be a touch of
+      realism.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you,&rdquo; answered Evan. &ldquo;You are very kind.&rdquo; And he began to smoke in
+      the cab.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      IV. A DISCUSSION AT DAWN
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The duellists had from their own point of view escaped or conquered the
+      chief powers of the modern world. They had satisfied the magistrate, they
+      had tied the tradesman neck and heels, and they had left the police
+      behind. As far as their own feelings went they had melted into a monstrous
+      sea; they were but the fare and driver of one of the million hansoms that
+      fill London streets. But they had forgotten something; they had forgotten
+      journalism. They had forgotten that there exists in the modern world,
+      perhaps for the first time in history, a class of people whose interest is
+      not that things should happen well or happen badly, should happen
+      successfully or happen unsuccessfully, should happen to the advantage of
+      this party or the advantage of that part, but whose interest simply is
+      that things should happen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is the one great weakness of journalism as a picture of our modern
+      existence, that it must be a picture made up entirely of exceptions. We
+      announce on flaring posters that a man has fallen off a scaffolding. We do
+      not announce on flaring posters that a man has not fallen off a
+      scaffolding. Yet this latter fact is fundamentally more exciting, as
+      indicating that that moving tower of terror and mystery, a man, is still
+      abroad upon the earth. That the man has not fallen off a scaffolding is
+      really more sensational; and it is also some thousand times more common.
+      But journalism cannot reasonably be expected thus to insist upon the
+      permanent miracles. Busy editors cannot be expected to put on their
+      posters, &ldquo;Mr. Wilkinson Still Safe,&rdquo; or &ldquo;Mr. Jones, of Worthing, Not Dead
+      Yet.&rdquo; They cannot announce the happiness of mankind at all. They cannot
+      describe all the forks that are not stolen, or all the marriages that are
+      not judiciously dissolved. Hence the complete picture they give of life is
+      of necessity fallacious; they can only represent what is unusual. However
+      democratic they may be, they are only concerned with the minority.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The incident of the religious fanatic who broke a window on Ludgate Hill
+      was alone enough to set them up in good copy for the night. But when the
+      same man was brought before a magistrate and defied his enemy to mortal
+      combat in the open court, then the columns would hardly hold the
+      excruciating information, and the headlines were so large that there was
+      hardly room for any of the text. The <i>Daily Telegraph</i> headed a
+      column, &ldquo;A Duel on Divinity,&rdquo; and there was a correspondence afterwards
+      which lasted for months, about whether police magistrates ought to mention
+      religion. The <i>Daily Mail</i> in its dull, sensible way, headed the
+      events, &ldquo;Wanted to fight for the Virgin.&rdquo; Mr. James Douglas, in <i>The
+      Star</i>, presuming on his knowledge of philosophical and theological
+      terms, described the Christian's outbreak under the title of &ldquo;Dualist and
+      Duellist.&rdquo; The <i>Daily News</i> inserted a colourless account of the
+      matter, but was pursued and eaten up for some weeks, with letters from
+      outlying ministers, headed &ldquo;Murder and Mariolatry.&rdquo; But the journalistic
+      temperature was steadily and consistently heated by all these influences;
+      the journalists had tasted blood, prospectively, and were in the mood for
+      more; everything in the matter prepared them for further outbursts of
+      moral indignation. And when a gasping reporter rushed in in the last hours
+      of the evening with the announcement that the two heroes of the Police
+      Court had literally been found fighting in a London back garden, with a
+      shopkeeper bound and gagged in the front of the house, the editors and
+      sub-editors were stricken still as men are by great beatitudes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next morning, five or six of the great London dailies burst out
+      simultaneously into great blossoms of eloquent leader-writing. Towards the
+      end all the leaders tended to be the same, but they all began differently.
+      The <i>Daily Telegraph</i>, for instance began, &ldquo;There will be little
+      difference among our readers or among all truly English and law-abiding
+      men touching the, etc. etc.&rdquo; The <i>Daily Mail</i> said, &ldquo;People must
+      learn, in the modern world, to keep their theological differences to
+      themselves. The fracas, etc. etc.&rdquo; The <i>Daily News</i> started, &ldquo;Nothing
+      could be more inimical to the cause of true religion than, etc. etc.&rdquo; The
+      <i>Times</i> began with something about Celtic disturbances of the
+      equilibrium of Empire, and the <i>Daily Express</i> distinguished itself
+      splendidly by omitting altogether so controversial a matter and
+      substituting a leader about goloshes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the morning after that, the editors and the newspapers were in such a
+      state, that, as the phrase is, there was no holding them. Whatever secret
+      and elvish thing it is that broods over editors and suddenly turns their
+      brains, that thing had seized on the story of the broken glass and the
+      duel in the garden. It became monstrous and omnipresent, as do in our time
+      the unimportant doings of the sect of the Agapemonites, or as did at an
+      earlier time the dreary dishonesties of the Rhodesian financiers.
+      Questions were asked about it, and even answered, in the House of Commons.
+      The Government was solemnly denounced in the papers for not having done
+      something, nobody knew what, to prevent the window being broken. An
+      enormous subscription was started to reimburse Mr. Gordon, the man who had
+      been gagged in the shop. Mr. MacIan, one of the combatants, became for
+      some mysterious reason, singly and hugely popular as a comic figure in the
+      comic papers and on the stage of the music hall. He was always represented
+      (in defiance of fact), with red whiskers, and a very red nose, and in full
+      Highland costume. And a song, consisting of an unimaginable number of
+      verses, in which his name was rhymed with flat iron, the British Lion, sly
+      'un, dandelion, Spion (With Kop in the next line), was sung to crowded
+      houses every night. The papers developed a devouring thirst for the
+      capture of the fugitives; and when they had not been caught for
+      forty-eight hours, they suddenly turned the whole matter into a detective
+      mystery. Letters under the heading, &ldquo;Where are They,&rdquo; poured in to every
+      paper, with every conceivable kind of explanation, running them to earth
+      in the Monument, the Twopenny Tube, Epping Forest, Westminster Abbey,
+      rolled up in carpets at Shoolbreds, locked up in safes in Chancery Lane.
+      Yes, the papers were very interesting, and Mr. Turnbull unrolled a whole
+      bundle of them for the amusement of Mr. MacIan as they sat on a high
+      common to the north of London, in the coming of the white dawn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The darkness in the east had been broken with a bar of grey; the bar of
+      grey was split with a sword of silver and morning lifted itself
+      laboriously over London. From the spot where Turnbull and MacIan were
+      sitting on one of the barren steeps behind Hampstead, they could see the
+      whole of London shaping itself vaguely and largely in the grey and growing
+      light, until the white sun stood over it and it lay at their feet, the
+      splendid monstrosity that it is. Its bewildering squares and
+      parallelograms were compact and perfect as a Chinese puzzle; an enormous
+      hieroglyphic which man must decipher or die. There fell upon both of them,
+      but upon Turnbull more than the other, because he know more what the scene
+      signified, that quite indescribable sense as of a sublime and passionate
+      and heart-moving futility, which is never evoked by deserts or dead men or
+      men neglected and barbarous, which can only be invoked by the sight of the
+      enormous genius of man applied to anything other than the best. Turnbull,
+      the old idealistic democrat, had so often reviled the democracy and
+      reviled them justly for their supineness, their snobbishness, their evil
+      reverence for idle things. He was right enough; for our democracy has only
+      one great fault; it is not democratic. And after denouncing so justly
+      average modern men for so many years as sophists and as slaves, he looked
+      down from an empty slope in Hampstead and saw what gods they are. Their
+      achievement seemed all the more heroic and divine, because it seemed
+      doubtful whether it was worth doing at all. There seemed to be something
+      greater than mere accuracy in making such a mistake as London. And what
+      was to be the end of it all? what was to be the ultimate transformation of
+      this common and incredible London man, this workman on a tram in
+      Battersea, his clerk on an omnibus in Cheapside? Turnbull, as he stared
+      drearily, murmured to himself the words of the old atheistic and
+      revolutionary Swinburne who had intoxicated his youth:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+        &ldquo;And still we ask if God or man
+        Can loosen thee Lazarus;
+        Bid thee rise up republican,
+        And save thyself and all of us.
+        But no disciple's tongue can say
+        If thou can'st take our sins away.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull shivered slightly as if behind the earthly morning he felt the
+      evening of the world, the sunset of so many hopes. Those words were from
+      &ldquo;Songs before Sunrise&rdquo;. But Turnbull's songs at their best were songs
+      after sunrise, and sunrise had been no such great thing after all.
+      Turnbull shivered again in the sharp morning air. MacIan was also gazing
+      with his face towards the city, but there was that about his blind and
+      mystical stare that told one, so to speak, that his eyes were turned
+      inwards. When Turnbull said something to him about London, they seemed to
+      move as at a summons and come out like two householders coming out into
+      their doorways.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he said, with a sort of stupidity. &ldquo;It's a very big place.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a somewhat unmeaning silence, and then MacIan said again:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's a very big place. When I first came into it I was frightened of it.
+      Frightened exactly as one would be frightened at the sight of a man forty
+      feet high. I am used to big things where I come from, big mountains that
+      seem to fill God's infinity, and the big sea that goes to the end of the
+      world. But then these things are all shapeless and confused things, not
+      made in any familiar form. But to see the plain, square, human things as
+      large as that, houses so large and streets so large, and the town itself
+      so large, was like having screwed some devil's magnifying glass into one's
+      eye. It was like seeing a porridge bowl as big as a house, or a mouse-trap
+      made to catch elephants.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Like the land of the Brobdingnagians,&rdquo; said Turnbull, smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! Where is that?&rdquo; said MacIan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull said bitterly, &ldquo;In a book,&rdquo; and the silence fell suddenly between
+      them again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were sitting in a sort of litter on the hillside; all the things they
+      had hurriedly collected, in various places, for their flight, were strewn
+      indiscriminately round them. The two swords with which they had lately
+      sought each other's lives were flung down on the grass at random, like two
+      idle walking-sticks. Some provisions they had bought last night, at a low
+      public house, in case of undefined contingencies, were tossed about like
+      the materials of an ordinary picnic, here a basket of chocolate, and there
+      a bottle of wine. And to add to the disorder finally, there were strewn on
+      top of everything, the most disorderly of modern things, newspapers, and
+      more newspapers, and yet again newspapers, the ministers of the modern
+      anarchy. Turnbull picked up one of them drearily, and took out a pipe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's a lot about us,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Do you mind if I light up?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why should I mind?&rdquo; asked MacIan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull eyed with a certain studious interest, the man who did not
+      understand any of the verbal courtesies; he lit his pipe and blew great
+      clouds out of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he resumed. &ldquo;The matter on which you and I are engaged is at this
+      moment really the best copy in England. I am a journalist, and I know. For
+      the first time, perhaps, for many generations, the English are really more
+      angry about a wrong thing done in England than they are about a wrong
+      thing done in France.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is not a wrong thing,&rdquo; said MacIan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull laughed. &ldquo;You seem unable to understand the ordinary use of the
+      human language. If I did not suspect that you were a genius, I should
+      certainly know you were a blockhead. I fancy we had better be getting
+      along and collecting our baggage.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he jumped up and began shoving the luggage into his pockets, or
+      strapping it on to his back. As he thrust a tin of canned meat, anyhow,
+      into his bursting side pocket, he said casually:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I only meant that you and I are the most prominent people in the English
+      papers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, what did you expect?&rdquo; asked MacIan, opening his great grave blue
+      eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The papers are full of us,&rdquo; said Turnbull, stooping to pick up one of the
+      swords.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan stooped and picked up the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he said, in his simple way. &ldquo;I have read what they have to say. But
+      they don't seem to understand the point.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The point of what?&rdquo; asked Turnbull.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The point of the sword,&rdquo; said MacIan, violently, and planted the steel
+      point in the soil like a man planting a tree.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is a point,&rdquo; said Turnbull, grimly, &ldquo;that we will discuss later.
+      Come along.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull tied the last tin of biscuits desperately to himself with string;
+      and then spoke, like a diver girt for plunging, short and sharp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, Mr. MacIan, you must listen to me. You must listen to me, not merely
+      because I know the country, which you might learn by looking at a map, but
+      because I know the people of the country, whom you could not know by
+      living here thirty years. That infernal city down there is awake; and it
+      is awake against us. All those endless rows of windows and windows are all
+      eyes staring at us. All those forests of chimneys are fingers pointing at
+      us, as we stand here on the hillside. This thing has caught on. For the
+      next six mortal months they will think of nothing but us, as for six
+      mortal months they thought of nothing but the Dreyfus case. Oh, I know
+      it's funny. They let starving children, who don't want to die, drop by the
+      score without looking round. But because two gentlemen, from private
+      feelings of delicacy, do want to die, they will mobilize the army and navy
+      to prevent them. For half a year or more, you and I, Mr. MacIan, will be
+      an obstacle to every reform in the British Empire. We shall prevent the
+      Chinese being sent out of the Transvaal and the blocks being stopped in
+      the Strand. We shall be the conversational substitute when anyone
+      recommends Home Rule, or complains of sky signs. Therefore, do not
+      imagine, in your innocence, that we have only to melt away among those
+      English hills as a Highland cateran might into your god-forsaken Highland
+      mountains. We must be eternally on our guard; we must live the hunted life
+      of two distinguished criminals. We must expect to be recognized as much as
+      if we were Napoleon escaping from Elba. We must be prepared for our
+      descriptions being sent to every tiny village, and for our faces being
+      recognized by every ambitious policeman. We must often sleep under the
+      stars as if we were in Africa. Last and most important we must not dream
+      of effecting our&mdash;our final settlement, which will be a thing as
+      famous as the Phoenix Park murders, unless we have made real and precise
+      arrangements for our isolation&mdash;I will not say our safety. We must
+      not, in short, fight until we have thrown them off our scent, if only for
+      a moment. For, take my word for it, Mr. MacIan, if the British Public once
+      catches us up, the British Public will prevent the duel, if it is only by
+      locking us both up in asylums for the rest of our days.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan was looking at the horizon with a rather misty look.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am not at all surprised,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;at the world being against us. It
+      makes me feel I was right to&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes?&rdquo; said Turnbull.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To smash your window,&rdquo; said MacIan. &ldquo;I have woken up the world.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well, then,&rdquo; said Turnbull, stolidly. &ldquo;Let us look at a few final
+      facts. Beyond that hill there is comparatively clear country. Fortunately,
+      I know the part well, and if you will follow me exactly, and, when
+      necessary, on your stomach, we may be able to get ten miles out of London,
+      literally without meeting anyone at all, which will be the best possible
+      beginning, at any rate. We have provisions for at least two days and two
+      nights, three days if we do it carefully. We may be able to get fifty or
+      sixty miles away without even walking into an inn door. I have the
+      biscuits and the tinned meat, and the milk. You have the chocolate, I
+      think? And the brandy?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said MacIan, like a soldier taking orders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well, then, come on. March. We turn under that third bush and so
+      down into the valley.&rdquo; And he set off ahead at a swinging walk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he stopped suddenly; for he realized that the other was not
+      following. Evan MacIan was leaning on his sword with a lowering face, like
+      a man suddenly smitten still with doubt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What on earth is the matter?&rdquo; asked Turnbull, staring in some anger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Evan made no reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What the deuce is the matter with you?&rdquo; demanded the leader, again, his
+      face slowly growing as red as his beard; then he said, suddenly, and in a
+      more human voice, &ldquo;Are you in pain, MacIan?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; replied the Highlander, without lifting his face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take some brandy,&rdquo; cried Turnbull, walking forward hurriedly towards him.
+      &ldquo;You've got it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's not in the body,&rdquo; said MacIan, in his dull, strange way. &ldquo;The pain
+      has come into my mind. A very dreadful thing has just come into my
+      thoughts.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What the devil are you talking about?&rdquo; asked Turnbull.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan broke out with a queer and living voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We must fight now, Turnbull. We must fight now. A frightful thing has
+      come upon me, and I know it must be now and here. I must kill you here,&rdquo;
+       he cried, with a sort of tearful rage impossible to describe. &ldquo;Here, here,
+      upon this blessed grass.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, you idiot,&rdquo; began Turnbull.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The hour has come&mdash;the black hour God meant for it. Quick, it will
+      soon be gone. Quick!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he flung the scabbard from him furiously, and stood with the sunlight
+      sparkling along his sword.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You confounded fool,&rdquo; repeated Turnbull. &ldquo;Put that thing up again, you
+      ass; people will come out of that house at the first clash of the steel.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One of us will be dead before they come,&rdquo; said the other, hoarsely, &ldquo;for
+      this is the hour God meant.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I never thought much of God,&rdquo; said the editor of <i>The Atheist</i>,
+      losing all patience. &ldquo;And I think less now. Never mind what God meant.
+      Kindly enlighten my pagan darkness as to what the devil <i>you</i> mean.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The hour will soon be gone. In a moment it will be gone,&rdquo; said the
+      madman. &ldquo;It is now, now, now that I must nail your blaspheming body to the
+      earth&mdash;now, now that I must avenge Our Lady on her vile slanderer.
+      Now or never. For the dreadful thought is in my mind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what thought,&rdquo; asked Turnbull, with frantic composure, &ldquo;occupies what
+      you call your mind?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I must kill you now,&rdquo; said the fanatic, &ldquo;because&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, because,&rdquo; said Turnbull, patiently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because I have begun to like you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull's face had a sudden spasm in the sunlight, a change so
+      instantaneous that it left no trace behind it; and his features seemed
+      still carved into a cold stare. But when he spoke again he seemed like a
+      man who was placidly pretending to misunderstand something that he
+      understood perfectly well.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your affection expresses itself in an abrupt form,&rdquo; he began, but MacIan
+      broke the brittle and frivolous speech to pieces with a violent voice. &ldquo;Do
+      not trouble to talk like that,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You know what I mean as well as
+      I know it. Come on and fight, I say. Perhaps you are feeling just as I
+      do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull's face flinched again in the fierce sunlight, but his attitude
+      kept its contemptuous ease.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your Celtic mind really goes too fast for me,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;let me be
+      permitted in my heavy Lowland way to understand this new development. My
+      dear Mr. MacIan, what do you really mean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan still kept the shining sword-point towards the other's breast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know what I mean. You mean the same yourself. We must fight now or
+      else&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Or else?&rdquo; repeated Turnbull, staring at him with an almost blinding
+      gravity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Or else we may not want to fight at all,&rdquo; answered Evan, and the end of
+      his speech was like a despairing cry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull took out his own sword suddenly as if to engage; then planting it
+      point downwards for a moment, he said, &ldquo;Before we begin, may I ask you a
+      question?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan bowed patiently, but with burning eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You said, just now,&rdquo; continued Turnbull, presently, &ldquo;that if we did not
+      fight now, we might not want to fight at all. How would you feel about the
+      matter if we came not to want to fight at all?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should feel,&rdquo; answered the other, &ldquo;just as I should feel if you had
+      drawn your sword, and I had run away from it. I should feel that because I
+      had been weak, justice had not been done.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Justice,&rdquo; answered Turnbull, with a thoughtful smile, &ldquo;but we are talking
+      about your feelings. And what do you mean by justice, apart from your
+      feelings?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan made a gesture of weary recognition! &ldquo;Oh, Nominalism,&rdquo; he said,
+      with a sort of sigh, &ldquo;we had all that out in the twelfth century.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish we could have it out now,&rdquo; replied the other, firmly. &ldquo;Do you
+      really mean that if you came to think me right, you would be certainly
+      wrong?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I had a blow on the back of my head, I might come to think you a green
+      elephant,&rdquo; answered MacIan, &ldquo;but have I not the right to say now, that if
+      I thought that I should think wrong?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you are quite certain that it would be wrong to like me?&rdquo; asked
+      Turnbull, with a slight smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Evan, thoughtfully, &ldquo;I do not say that. It may not be the
+      devil, it may be some part of God I am not meant to know. But I had a work
+      to do, and it is making the work difficult.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I suppose,&rdquo; said the atheist, quite gently, &ldquo;that you and I know all
+      about which part of God we ought to know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan burst out like a man driven back and explaining everything.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Church is not a thing like the Athenaeum Club,&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;If the
+      Athenaeum Club lost all its members, the Athenaeum Club would dissolve and
+      cease to exist. But when we belong to the Church we belong to something
+      which is outside all of us; which is outside everything you talk about,
+      outside the Cardinals and the Pope. They belong to it, but it does not
+      belong to them. If we all fell dead suddenly, the Church would still
+      somehow exist in God. Confound it all, don't you see that I am more sure
+      of its existence than I am of my own existence? And yet you ask me to
+      trust my temperament, my own temperament, which can be turned upside down
+      by two bottles of claret or an attack of the jaundice. You ask me to trust
+      that when it softens towards you and not to trust the thing which I
+      believe to be outside myself and more real than the blood in my body.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stop a moment,&rdquo; said Turnbull, in the same easy tone, &ldquo;Even in the very
+      act of saying that you believe this or that, you imply that there is a
+      part of yourself that you trust even if there are many parts which you
+      mistrust. If it is only you that like me, surely, also, it is only you
+      that believe in the Catholic Church.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Evan remained in an unmoved and grave attitude. &ldquo;There is a part of me
+      which is divine,&rdquo; he answered, &ldquo;a part that can be trusted, but there are
+      also affections which are entirely animal and idle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you are quite certain, I suppose,&rdquo; continued Turnbull, &ldquo;that if even
+      you esteem me the esteem would be wholly animal and idle?&rdquo; For the first
+      time MacIan started as if he had not expected the thing that was said to
+      him. At last he said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whatever in earth or heaven it is that has joined us two together, it
+      seems to be something which makes it impossible to lie. No, I do not think
+      that the movement in me towards you was...was that surface sort of thing.
+      It may have been something deeper...something strange. I cannot understand
+      the thing at all. But understand this and understand it thoroughly, if I
+      loved you my love might be divine. No, it is not some trifle that we are
+      fighting about. It is not some superstition or some symbol. When you wrote
+      those words about Our Lady, you were in that act a wicked man doing a
+      wicked thing. If I hate you it is because you have hated goodness. And if
+      I like you...it is because you are good.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull's face wore an indecipherable expression.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, shall we fight now?&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said MacIan, with a sudden contraction of his black brows, &ldquo;yes, it
+      must be now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The bright swords crossed, and the first touch of them, travelling down
+      blade and arm, told each combatant that the heart of the other was
+      awakened. It was not in that way that the swords rang together when they
+      had rushed on each other in the little garden behind the dealer's shop.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a pause, and then MacIan made a movement as if to thrust, and
+      almost at the same moment Turnbull suddenly and calmly dropped his sword.
+      Evan stared round in an unusual bewilderment, and then realized that a
+      large man in pale clothes and a Panama hat was strolling serenely towards
+      them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      V. THE PEACEMAKER
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      When the combatants, with crossed swords, became suddenly conscious of a
+      third party, they each made the same movement. It was as quick as the snap
+      of a pistol, and they altered it instantaneously and recovered their
+      original pose, but they had both made it, they had both seen it, and they
+      both knew what it was. It was not a movement of anger at being
+      interrupted. Say or think what they would, it was a movement of relief. A
+      force within them, and yet quite beyond them, seemed slowly and pitilessly
+      washing away the adamant of their oath. As mistaken lovers might watch the
+      inevitable sunset of first love, these men watched the sunset of their
+      first hatred.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Their hearts were growing weaker and weaker against each other. When their
+      weapons rang and riposted in the little London garden, they could have
+      been very certain that if a third party had interrupted them something at
+      least would have happened. They would have killed each other or they would
+      have killed him. But now nothing could undo or deny that flash of fact,
+      that for a second they had been glad to be interrupted. Some new and
+      strange thing was rising higher and higher in their hearts like a high sea
+      at night. It was something that seemed all the more merciless, because it
+      might turn out an enormous mercy. Was there, perhaps, some such fatalism
+      in friendship as all lovers talk about in love? Did God make men love each
+      other against their will?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm sure you'll excuse my speaking to you,&rdquo; said the stranger, in a voice
+      at once eager and deprecating.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The voice was too polite for good manners. It was incongruous with the
+      eccentric spectacle of the duellists which ought to have startled a sane
+      and free man. It was also incongruous with the full and healthy, though
+      rather loose physique of the man who spoke. At the first glance he looked
+      a fine animal, with curling gold beard and hair, and blue eyes, unusually
+      bright. It was only at the second glance that the mind felt a sudden and
+      perhaps unmeaning irritation at the way in which the gold beard retreated
+      backwards into the waistcoat, and the way in which the finely shaped nose
+      went forward as if smelling its way. And it was only, perhaps, at the
+      hundredth glance that the bright blue eyes, which normally before and
+      after the instant seemed brilliant with intelligence, seemed as it were to
+      be brilliant with idiocy. He was a heavy, healthy-looking man, who looked
+      all the larger because of the loose, light coloured clothes that he wore,
+      and that had in their extreme lightness and looseness, almost a touch of
+      the tropics. But a closer examination of his attire would have shown that
+      even in the tropics it would have been unique; but it was all woven
+      according to some hygienic texture which no human being had ever heard of
+      before, and which was absolutely necessary even for a day's health. He
+      wore a huge broad-brimmed hat, equally hygienic, very much at the back of
+      his head, and his voice coming out of so heavy and hearty a type of man
+      was, as I have said, startlingly shrill and deferential.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm sure you'll excuse my speaking to you,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Now, I wonder if
+      you are in some little difficulty which, after all, we could settle very
+      comfortably together? Now, you don't mind my saying this, do you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The face of both combatants remained somewhat solid under this appeal. But
+      the stranger, probably taking their silence for a gathering shame,
+      continued with a kind of gaiety:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So you are the young men I have read about in the papers. Well, of
+      course, when one is young, one is rather romantic. Do you know what I
+      always say to young people?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A blank silence followed this gay inquiry. Then Turnbull said in a
+      colourless voice:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As I was forty-seven last birthday, I probably came into the world too
+      soon for the experience.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very good, very good,&rdquo; said the friendly person. &ldquo;Dry Scotch humour. Dry
+      Scotch humour. Well now. I understand that you two people want to fight a
+      duel. I suppose you aren't much up in the modern world. We've quite
+      outgrown duelling, you know. In fact, Tolstoy tells us that we shall soon
+      outgrow war, which he says is simply a duel between nations. A duel
+      between nations. But there is no doubt about our having outgrown
+      duelling.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Waiting for some effect upon his wooden auditors, the stranger stood
+      beaming for a moment and then resumed:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, they tell me in the newspapers that you are really wanting to fight
+      about something connected with Roman Catholicism. Now, do you know what I
+      always say to Roman Catholics?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Turnbull, heavily. &ldquo;Do <i>they</i>?&rdquo; It seemed to be a
+      characteristic of the hearty, hygienic gentleman that he always forgot the
+      speech he had made the moment before. Without enlarging further on the
+      fixed form of his appeal to the Church of Rome, he laughed cordially at
+      Turnbull's answer; then his wandering blue eyes caught the sunlight on the
+      swords, and he assumed a good-humoured gravity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you know this is a serious matter,&rdquo; he said, eyeing Turnbull and
+      MacIan, as if they had just been keeping the table in a roar with their
+      frivolities. &ldquo;I am sure that if I appealed to your higher natures...your
+      higher natures. Every man has a higher nature and a lower nature. Now, let
+      us put the matter very plainly, and without any romantic nonsense about
+      honour or anything of that sort. Is not bloodshed a great sin?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said MacIan, speaking for the first time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, really, really!&rdquo; said the peacemaker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Murder is a sin,&rdquo; said the immovable Highlander. &ldquo;There is no sin of
+      bloodshed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, we won't quarrel about a word,&rdquo; said the other, pleasantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why on earth not?&rdquo; said MacIan, with a sudden asperity. &ldquo;Why shouldn't we
+      quarrel about a word? What is the good of words if they aren't important
+      enough to quarrel over? Why do we choose one word more than another if
+      there isn't any difference between them? If you called a woman a
+      chimpanzee instead of an angel, wouldn't there be a quarrel about a word?
+      If you're not going to argue about words, what are you going to argue
+      about? Are you going to convey your meaning to me by moving your ears? The
+      Church and the heresies always used to fight about words, because they are
+      the only things worth fighting about. I say that murder is a sin, and
+      bloodshed is not, and that there is as much difference between those words
+      as there is between the word 'yes' and the word 'no'; or rather more
+      difference, for 'yes' and 'no', at least, belong to the same category.
+      Murder is a spiritual incident. Bloodshed is a physical incident. A
+      surgeon commits bloodshed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, you're a casuist!&rdquo; said the large man, wagging his head. &ldquo;Now, do you
+      know what I always say to casuists...?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan made a violent gesture; and Turnbull broke into open laughter. The
+      peacemaker did not seem to be in the least annoyed, but continued in
+      unabated enjoyment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, well,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;let us get back to the point. Now Tolstoy has
+      shown that force is no remedy; so you see the position in which I am
+      placed. I am doing my best to stop what I'm sure you won't mind my calling
+      this really useless violence, this really quite wrong violence of yours.
+      But it's against my principles to call in the police against you, because
+      the police are still on a lower moral plane, so to speak, because, in
+      short, the police undoubtedly sometimes employ force. Tolstoy has shown
+      that violence merely breeds violence in the person towards whom it is
+      used, whereas Love, on the other hand, breeds Love. So you see how I am
+      placed. I am reduced to use Love in order to stop you. I am obliged to use
+      Love.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He gave to the word an indescribable sound of something hard and heavy, as
+      if he were saying &ldquo;boots&rdquo;. Turnbull suddenly gripped his sword and said,
+      shortly, &ldquo;I see how you are placed quite well, sir. You will not call the
+      police. Mr. MacIan, shall we engage?&rdquo; MacIan plucked his sword out of the
+      grass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I must and will stop this shocking crime,&rdquo; cried the Tolstoian, crimson
+      in the face. &ldquo;It is against all modern ideas. It is against the principle
+      of love. How you, sir, who pretend to be a Christian...&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan turned upon him with a white face and bitter lip. &ldquo;Sir,&rdquo; he said,
+      &ldquo;talk about the principle of love as much as you like. You seem to me
+      colder than a lump of stone; but I am willing to believe that you may at
+      some time have loved a cat, or a dog, or a child. When you were a baby, I
+      suppose you loved your mother. Talk about love, then, till the world is
+      sick of the word. But don't you talk about Christianity. Don't you dare to
+      say one word, white or black, about it. Christianity is, as far as you are
+      concerned, a horrible mystery. Keep clear of it, keep silent upon it, as
+      you would upon an abomination. It is a thing that has made men slay and
+      torture each other; and you will never know why. It is a thing that has
+      made men do evil that good might come; and you will never understand the
+      evil, let alone the good. Christianity is a thing that could only make you
+      vomit, till you are other than you are. I would not justify it to you even
+      if I could. Hate it, in God's name, as Turnbull does, who is a man. It is
+      a monstrous thing, for which men die. And if you will stand here and talk
+      about love for another ten minutes it is very probable that you will see a
+      man die for it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he fell on guard. Turnbull was busy settling something loose in his
+      elaborate hilt, and the pause was broken by the stranger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Suppose I call the police?&rdquo; he said, with a heated face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And deny your most sacred dogma,&rdquo; said MacIan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dogma!&rdquo; cried the man, in a sort of dismay. &ldquo;Oh, we have no <i>dogmas</i>,
+      you know!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was another silence, and he said again, airily:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know, I think, there's something in what Shaw teaches about no moral
+      principles being quite fixed. Have you ever read <i>The Quintessence of
+      Ibsenism</i>? Of course he went very wrong over the war.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull, with a bent, flushed face, was tying up the loose piece of the
+      pommel with string. With the string in his teeth, he said, &ldquo;Oh, make up
+      your damned mind and clear out!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's a serious thing,&rdquo; said the philosopher, shaking his head. &ldquo;I must be
+      alone and consider which is the higher point of view. I rather feel that
+      in a case so extreme as this...&rdquo; and he went slowly away. As he
+      disappeared among the trees, they heard him murmuring in a sing-song
+      voice, &ldquo;New occasions teach new duties,&rdquo; out of a poem by James Russell
+      Lowell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; said MacIan, drawing a deep breath. &ldquo;Don't you believe in prayer
+      now? I prayed for an angel.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An hour ago,&rdquo; said the Highlander, in his heavy meditative voice, &ldquo;I felt
+      the devil weakening my heart and my oath against you, and I prayed that
+      God would send an angel to my aid.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well?&rdquo; inquired the other, finishing his mending and wrapping the rest of
+      the string round his hand to get a firmer grip.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, that man was an angel,&rdquo; said MacIan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn't know they were as bad as that,&rdquo; answered Turnbull.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We know that devils sometimes quote Scripture and counterfeit good,&rdquo;
+       replied the mystic. &ldquo;Why should not angels sometimes come to show us the
+      black abyss of evil on whose brink we stand. If that man had not tried to
+      stop us...I might...I might have stopped.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know what you mean,&rdquo; said Turnbull, grimly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But then he came,&rdquo; broke out MacIan, &ldquo;and my soul said to me: 'Give up
+      fighting, and you will become like That. Give up vows and dogmas, and
+      fixed things, and you may grow like That. You may learn, also, that fog of
+      false philosophy. You may grow fond of that mire of crawling, cowardly
+      morals, and you may come to think a blow bad, because it hurts, and not
+      because it humiliates. You may come to think murder wrong, because it is
+      violent, and not because it is unjust. Oh, you blasphemer of the good, an
+      hour ago I almost loved you! But do not fear for me now. I have heard the
+      word Love pronounced in <i>his</i> intonation; and I know exactly what it
+      means. On guard!'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The swords caught on each other with a dreadful clang and jar, full of the
+      old energy and hate; and at once plunged and replunged. Once more each
+      man's heart had become the magnet of a mad sword. Suddenly, furious as
+      they were, they were frozen for a moment motionless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What noise is that?&rdquo; asked the Highlander, hoarsely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think I know,&rdquo; replied Turnbull.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What?... What?&rdquo; cried the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The student of Shaw and Tolstoy has made up his remarkable mind,&rdquo; said
+      Turnbull, quietly. &ldquo;The police are coming up the hill.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0006" id="link2H_4_0006">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      VI. THE OTHER PHILOSOPHER
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Between high hedges in Hertfordshire, hedges so high as to create a kind
+      of grove, two men were running. They did not run in a scampering or
+      feverish manner, but in the steady swing of the pendulum. Across the great
+      plains and uplands to the right and left of the lane, a long tide of
+      sunset light rolled like a sea of ruby, lighting up the long terraces of
+      the hills and picking out the few windows of the scattered hamlets in
+      startling blood-red sparks. But the lane was cut deep in the hill and
+      remained in an abrupt shadow. The two men running in it had an impression
+      not uncommonly experienced between those wild green English walls; a sense
+      of being led between the walls of a maze.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Though their pace was steady it was vigorous; their faces were heated and
+      their eyes fixed and bright. There was, indeed, something a little mad in
+      the contrast between the evening's stillness over the empty country-side,
+      and these two figures fleeing wildly from nothing. They had the look of
+      two lunatics, possibly they were.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you all right?&rdquo; said Turnbull, with civility. &ldquo;Can you keep this up?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite easily, thank you,&rdquo; replied MacIan. &ldquo;I run very well.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is that a qualification in a family of warriors?&rdquo; asked Turnbull.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Undoubtedly. Rapid movement is essential,&rdquo; answered MacIan, who never saw
+      a joke in his life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull broke out into a short laugh, and silence fell between them, the
+      panting silence of runners.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then MacIan said: &ldquo;We run better than any of those policemen. They are too
+      fat. Why do you make your policemen so fat?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn't do much towards making them fat myself,&rdquo; replied Turnbull,
+      genially, &ldquo;but I flatter myself that I am now doing something towards
+      making them thin. You'll see they will be as lean as rakes by the time
+      they catch us. They will look like your friend, Cardinal Manning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But they won't catch us,&rdquo; said MacIan, in his literal way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, we beat them in the great military art of running away,&rdquo; returned the
+      other. &ldquo;They won't catch us unless&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan turned his long equine face inquiringly. &ldquo;Unless what?&rdquo; he said,
+      for Turnbull had gone silent suddenly, and seemed to be listening intently
+      as he ran as a horse does with his ears turned back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Unless what?&rdquo; repeated the Highlander.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Unless they do&mdash;what they have done. Listen.&rdquo; MacIan slackened his
+      trot, and turned his head to the trail they had left behind them. Across
+      two or three billows of the up and down lane came along the ground the
+      unmistakable throbbing of horses' hoofs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They have put the mounted police on us,&rdquo; said Turnbull, shortly. &ldquo;Good
+      Lord, one would think we were a Revolution.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So we are,&rdquo; said MacIan calmly. &ldquo;What shall we do? Shall we turn on them
+      with our points?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It may come to that,&rdquo; answered Turnbull, &ldquo;though if it does, I reckon
+      that will be the last act. We must put it off if we can.&rdquo; And he stared
+      and peered about him between the bushes. &ldquo;If we could hide somewhere the
+      beasts might go by us,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;The police have their faults, but thank
+      God they're inefficient. Why, here's the very thing. Be quick and quiet.
+      Follow me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He suddenly swung himself up the high bank on one side of the lane. It was
+      almost as high and smooth as a wall, and on the top of it the black hedge
+      stood out over them as an angle, almost like a thatched roof of the lane.
+      And the burning evening sky looked down at them through the tangle with
+      red eyes as of an army of goblins.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull hoisted himself up and broke the hedge with his body. As his head
+      and shoulders rose above it they turned to flame in the full glow as if
+      lit up by an immense firelight. His red hair and beard looked almost
+      scarlet, and his pale face as bright as a boy's. Something violent,
+      something that was at once love and hatred, surged in the strange heart of
+      the Gael below him. He had an unutterable sense of epic importance, as if
+      he were somehow lifting all humanity into a prouder and more passionate
+      region of the air. As he swung himself up also into the evening light he
+      felt as if he were rising on enormous wings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Legends of the morning of the world which he had heard in childhood or
+      read in youth came back upon him in a cloudy splendour, purple tales of
+      wrath and friendship, like Roland and Oliver, or Balin and Balan,
+      reminding him of emotional entanglements. Men who had loved each other and
+      then fought each other; men who had fought each other and then loved each
+      other, together made a mixed but monstrous sense of momentousness. The
+      crimson seas of the sunset seemed to him like a bursting out of some
+      sacred blood, as if the heart of the world had broken.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull was wholly unaffected by any written or spoken poetry; his was a
+      powerful and prosaic mind. But even upon him there came for the moment
+      something out of the earth and the passionate ends of the sky. The only
+      evidence was in his voice, which was still practical but a shade more
+      quiet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you see that summer-house-looking thing over there?&rdquo; he asked shortly.
+      &ldquo;That will do for us very well.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Keeping himself free from the tangle of the hedge he strolled across a
+      triangle of obscure kitchen garden, and approached a dismal shed or lodge
+      a yard or two beyond it. It was a weather-stained hut of grey wood, which
+      with all its desolation retained a tag or two of trivial ornament, which
+      suggested that the thing had once been a sort of summer-house, and the
+      place probably a sort of garden.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is quite invisible from the road,&rdquo; said Turnbull, as he entered it,
+      &ldquo;and it will cover us up for the night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan looked at him gravely for a few moments. &ldquo;Sir,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I ought
+      to say something to you. I ought to say&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hush,&rdquo; said Turnbull, suddenly lifting his hand; &ldquo;be still, man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In the sudden silence, the drumming of the distant horses grew louder and
+      louder with inconceivable rapidity, and the cavalcade of police rushed by
+      below them in the lane, almost with the roar and rattle of an express
+      train.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I ought to tell you,&rdquo; continued MacIan, still staring stolidly at the
+      other, &ldquo;that you are a great chief, and it is good to go to war behind
+      you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull said nothing, but turned and looked out of the foolish lattice of
+      the little windows, then he said, &ldquo;We must have food and sleep first.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When the last echo of their eluded pursuers had died in the distant
+      uplands, Turnbull began to unpack the provisions with the easy air of a
+      man at a picnic. He had just laid out the last items, put a bottle of wine
+      on the floor, and a tin of salmon on the window-ledge, when the bottomless
+      silence of that forgotten place was broken. And it was broken by three
+      heavy blows of a stick delivered upon the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull looked up in the act of opening a tin and stared silently at his
+      companion. MacIan's long, lean mouth had shut hard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who the devil can that be?&rdquo; said Turnbull.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God knows,&rdquo; said the other. &ldquo;It might be God.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Again the sound of the wooden stick reverberated on the wooden door. It
+      was a curious sound and on consideration did not resemble the ordinary
+      effects of knocking on a door for admittance. It was rather as if the
+      point of a stick were plunged again and again at the panels in an absurd
+      attempt to make a hole in them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A wild look sprang into MacIan's eyes and he got up half stupidly, with a
+      kind of stagger, put his hand out and caught one of the swords. &ldquo;Let us
+      fight at once,&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;it is the end of the world.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're overdone, MacIan,&rdquo; said Turnbull, putting him on one side. &ldquo;It's
+      only someone playing the goat. Let me open the door.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But he also picked up a sword as he stepped to open it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He paused one moment with his hand on the handle and then flung the door
+      open. Almost as he did so the ferrule of an ordinary bamboo cane came at
+      his eyes, so that he had actually to parry it with the naked weapon in his
+      hands. As the two touched, the point of the stick was dropped very
+      abruptly, and the man with the stick stepped hurriedly back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Against the heraldic background of sprawling crimson and gold offered him
+      by the expiring sunset, the figure of the man with the stick showed at
+      first merely black and fantastic. He was a small man with two wisps of
+      long hair that curled up on each side, and seen in silhouette, looked like
+      horns. He had a bow tie so big that the two ends showed on each side of
+      his neck like unnatural stunted wings. He had his long black cane still
+      tilted in his hand like a fencing foil and half presented at the open
+      door. His large straw hat had fallen behind him as he leapt backwards.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;With reference to your suggestion, MacIan,&rdquo; said Turnbull, placidly, &ldquo;I
+      think it looks more like the Devil.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who on earth are you?&rdquo; cried the stranger in a high shrill voice,
+      brandishing his cane defensively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let me see,&rdquo; said Turnbull, looking round to MacIan with the same
+      blandness. &ldquo;Who are we?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come out,&rdquo; screamed the little man with the stick.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly,&rdquo; said Turnbull, and went outside with the sword, MacIan
+      following.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Seen more fully, with the evening light on his face, the strange man
+      looked a little less like a goblin. He wore a square pale-grey jacket
+      suit, on which the grey butterfly tie was the only indisputable touch of
+      affectation. Against the great sunset his figure had looked merely small:
+      seen in a more equal light it looked tolerably compact and shapely. His
+      reddish-brown hair, combed into two great curls, looked like the long,
+      slow curling hair of the women in some pre-Raphaelite pictures. But within
+      this feminine frame of hair his face was unexpectedly impudent, like a
+      monkey's.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are you doing here?&rdquo; he said, in a sharp small voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said MacIan, in his grave childish way, &ldquo;what are <i>you</i> doing
+      here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I,&rdquo; said the man, indignantly, &ldquo;I'm in my own garden.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; said MacIan, simply, &ldquo;I apologize.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull was coolly curling his red moustache, and the stranger stared
+      from one to the other, temporarily stunned by their innocent assurance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, may I ask,&rdquo; he said at last, &ldquo;what the devil you are doing in my
+      summer-house?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly,&rdquo; said MacIan. &ldquo;We were just going to fight.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To fight!&rdquo; repeated the man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We had better tell this gentleman the whole business,&rdquo; broke in Turnbull.
+      Then turning to the stranger he said firmly, &ldquo;I am sorry, sir, but we have
+      something to do that must be done. And I may as well tell you at the
+      beginning and to avoid waste of time or language, that we cannot admit any
+      interference.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We were just going to take some slight refreshment when you interrupted
+      us...&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The little man had a dawning expression of understanding and stooped and
+      picked up the unused bottle of wine, eyeing it curiously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull continued:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But that refreshment was preparatory to something which I fear you will
+      find less comprehensible, but on which our minds are entirely fixed, sir.
+      We are forced to fight a duel. We are forced by honour and an internal
+      intellectual need. Do not, for your own sake, attempt to stop us. I know
+      all the excellent and ethical things that you will want to say to us. I
+      know all about the essential requirements of civil order: I have written
+      leading articles about them all my life. I know all about the sacredness
+      of human life; I have bored all my friends with it. Try and understand our
+      position. This man and I are alone in the modern world in that we think
+      that God is essentially important. I think He does not exist; that is
+      where the importance comes in for me. But this man thinks that He does
+      exist, and thinking that very properly thinks Him more important than
+      anything else. Now we wish to make a great demonstration and assertion&mdash;something
+      that will set the world on fire like the first Christian persecutions. If
+      you like, we are attempting a mutual martyrdom. The papers have posted up
+      every town against us. Scotland Yard has fortified every police station
+      with our enemies; we are driven therefore to the edge of a lonely lane,
+      and indirectly to taking liberties with your summer-house in order to
+      arrange our...&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stop!&rdquo; roared the little man in the butterfly necktie. &ldquo;Put me out of my
+      intellectual misery. Are you really the two tomfools I have read of in all
+      the papers? Are you the two people who wanted to spit each other in the
+      Police Court? Are you? Are you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said MacIan, &ldquo;it began in a Police Court.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The little man slung the bottle of wine twenty yards away like a stone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come up to my place,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I've got better stuff than that. I've got
+      the best Beaune within fifty miles of here. Come up. You're the very men I
+      wanted to see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Even Turnbull, with his typical invulnerability, was a little taken aback
+      by this boisterous and almost brutal hospitality.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why...sir...&rdquo; he began.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come up! Come in!&rdquo; howled the little man, dancing with delight. &ldquo;I'll
+      give you a dinner. I'll give you a bed! I'll give you a green smooth lawn
+      and your choice of swords and pistols. Why, you fools, I adore fighting!
+      It's the only good thing in God's world! I've walked about these damned
+      fields and longed to see somebody cut up and killed and the blood running.
+      Ha! Ha!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he made sudden lunges with his stick at the trunk of a neighbouring
+      tree so that the ferrule made fierce prints and punctures in the bark.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Excuse me,&rdquo; said MacIan suddenly with the wide-eyed curiosity of a child,
+      &ldquo;excuse me, but...&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well?&rdquo; said the small fighter, brandishing his wooden weapon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Excuse me,&rdquo; repeated MacIan, &ldquo;but was that what you were doing at the
+      door?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The little man stared an instant and then said: &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; and Turnbull broke
+      into a guffaw.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come on!&rdquo; cried the little man, tucking his stick under his arm and
+      taking quite suddenly to his heels. &ldquo;Come on! Confound me, I'll see both
+      of you eat and then I'll see one of you die. Lord bless me, the gods must
+      exist after all&mdash;they have sent me one of my day-dreams! Lord! A
+      duel!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had gone flying along a winding path between the borders of the kitchen
+      garden, and in the increasing twilight he was as hard to follow as a
+      flying hare. But at length the path after many twists betrayed its purpose
+      and led abruptly up two or three steps to the door of a tiny but very
+      clean cottage. There was nothing about the outside to distinguish it from
+      other cottages, except indeed its ominous cleanliness and one thing that
+      was out of all the custom and tradition of all cottages under the sun. In
+      the middle of the little garden among the stocks and marigolds there
+      surged up in shapeless stone a South Sea Island idol. There was something
+      gross and even evil in that eyeless and alien god among the most innocent
+      of the English flowers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come in!&rdquo; cried the creature again. &ldquo;Come in! it's better inside!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Whether or no it was better inside it was at least a surprise. The moment
+      the two duellists had pushed open the door of that inoffensive,
+      whitewashed cottage they found that its interior was lined with fiery
+      gold. It was like stepping into a chamber in the Arabian Nights. The door
+      that closed behind them shut out England and all the energies of the West.
+      The ornaments that shone and shimmered on every side of them were subtly
+      mixed from many periods and lands, but were all oriental. Cruel Assyrian
+      bas-reliefs ran along the sides of the passage; cruel Turkish swords and
+      daggers glinted above and below them; the two were separated by ages and
+      fallen civilizations. Yet they seemed to sympathize since they were both
+      harmonious and both merciless. The house seemed to consist of chamber
+      within chamber and created that impression as of a dream which belongs
+      also to the Arabian Nights themselves. The innermost room of all was like
+      the inside of a jewel. The little man who owned it all threw himself on a
+      heap of scarlet and golden cushions and struck his hands together. A negro
+      in a white robe and turban appeared suddenly and silently behind them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Selim,&rdquo; said the host, &ldquo;these two gentlemen are staying with me tonight.
+      Send up the very best wine and dinner at once. And Selim, one of these
+      gentlemen will probably die tomorrow. Make arrangements, please.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The negro bowed and withdrew.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Evan MacIan came out the next morning into the little garden to a fresh
+      silver day, his long face looking more austere than ever in that cold
+      light, his eyelids a little heavy. He carried one of the swords. Turnbull
+      was in the little house behind him, demolishing the end of an early
+      breakfast and humming a tune to himself, which could be heard through the
+      open window. A moment or two later he leapt to his feet and came out into
+      the sunlight, still munching toast, his own sword stuck under his arm like
+      a walking-stick.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Their eccentric host had vanished from sight, with a polite gesture, some
+      twenty minutes before. They imagined him to be occupied on some concerns
+      in the interior of the house, and they waited for his emergence, stamping
+      the garden in silence&mdash;the garden of tall, fresh country flowers, in
+      the midst of which the monstrous South Sea idol lifted itself as abruptly
+      as the prow of a ship riding on a sea of red and white and gold.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was with a start, therefore, that they came upon the man himself
+      already in the garden. They were all the more startled because of the
+      still posture in which they found him. He was on his knees in front of the
+      stone idol, rigid and motionless, like a saint in a trance or ecstasy. Yet
+      when Turnbull's tread broke a twig, he was on his feet in a flash.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Excuse me,&rdquo; he said with an irradiation of smiles, but yet with a kind of
+      bewilderment. &ldquo;So sorry...family prayers...old fashioned...mother's knee.
+      Let us go on to the lawn behind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he ducked rapidly round the statue to an open space of grass on the
+      other side of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This will do us best, Mr. MacIan,&rdquo; said he. Then he made a gesture
+      towards the heavy stone figure on the pedestal which had now its blank and
+      shapeless back turned towards them. &ldquo;Don't you be afraid,&rdquo; he added, &ldquo;he
+      can still see us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan turned his blue, blinking eyes, which seemed still misty with sleep
+      (or sleeplessness) towards the idol, but his brows drew together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The little man with the long hair also had his eyes on the back view of
+      the god. His eyes were at once liquid and burning, and he rubbed his hands
+      slowly against each other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you know,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I think he can see us better this way. I often
+      think that this blank thing is his real face, watching, though it cannot
+      be watched. He! he! Yes, I think he looks nice from behind. He looks more
+      cruel from behind, don't you think?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What the devil is the thing?&rdquo; asked Turnbull gruffly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is the only Thing there is,&rdquo; answered the other. &ldquo;It is Force.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; said Turnbull shortly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, my friends,&rdquo; said the little man, with an animated countenance,
+      fluttering his fingers in the air, &ldquo;it was no chance that led you to this
+      garden; surely it was the caprice of some old god, some happy, pitiless
+      god. Perhaps it was his will, for he loves blood; and on that stone in
+      front of him men have been butchered by hundreds in the fierce, feasting
+      islands of the South. In this cursed, craven place I have not been
+      permitted to kill men on his altar. Only rabbits and cats, sometimes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In the stillness MacIan made a sudden movement, unmeaning apparently, and
+      then remained rigid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But today, today,&rdquo; continued the small man in a shrill voice. &ldquo;Today his
+      hour is come. Today his will is done on earth as it is in heaven. Men,
+      men, men will bleed before him today.&rdquo; And he bit his forefinger in a kind
+      of fever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Still, the two duellists stood with their swords as heavily as statues,
+      and the silence seemed to cool the eccentric and call him back to more
+      rational speech.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps I express myself a little too lyrically,&rdquo; he said with an
+      amicable abruptness. &ldquo;My philosophy has its higher ecstasies, but perhaps
+      you are hardly worked up to them yet. Let us confine ourselves to the
+      unquestioned. You have found your way, gentlemen, by a beautiful accident,
+      to the house of the only man in England (probably) who will favour and
+      encourage your most reasonable project. From Cornwall to Cape Wrath this
+      county is one horrible, solid block of humanitarianism. You will find men
+      who will defend this or that war in a distant continent. They will defend
+      it on the contemptible ground of commerce or the more contemptible ground
+      of social good. But do not fancy that you will find one other person who
+      will comprehend a strong man taking the sword in his hand and wiping out
+      his enemy. My name is Wimpey, Morrice Wimpey. I had a Fellowship at
+      Magdalen. But I assure you I had to drop it, owing to my having said
+      something in a public lecture infringing the popular prejudice against
+      those great gentlemen, the assassins of the Italian Renaissance. They let
+      me say it at dinner and so on, and seemed to like it. But in a public
+      lecture...so inconsistent. Well, as I say, here is your only refuge and
+      temple of honour. Here you can fall back on that naked and awful
+      arbitration which is the only thing that balances the stars&mdash;a still,
+      continuous violence. <i>Vae Victis!</i> Down, down, down with the
+      defeated! Victory is the only ultimate fact. Carthage <i>was</i>
+      destroyed, the Red Indians are being exterminated: that is the single
+      certainty. In an hour from now that sun will still be shining and that
+      grass growing, and one of you will be conquered; one of you will be the
+      conqueror. When it has been done, nothing will alter it. Heroes, I give
+      you the hospitality fit for heroes. And I salute the survivor. Fall on!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The two men took their swords. Then MacIan said steadily: &ldquo;Mr. Turnbull,
+      lend me your sword a moment.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull, with a questioning glance, handed him the weapon. MacIan took
+      the second sword in his left hand and, with a violent gesture, hurled it
+      at the feet of little Mr. Wimpey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fight!&rdquo; he said in a loud, harsh voice. &ldquo;Fight me now!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Wimpey took a step backward, and bewildered words bubbled on his lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pick up that sword and fight me,&rdquo; repeated MacIan, with brows as black as
+      thunder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The little man turned to Turnbull with a gesture, demanding judgement or
+      protection.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Really, sir,&rdquo; he began, &ldquo;this gentleman confuses...&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You stinking little coward,&rdquo; roared Turnbull, suddenly releasing his
+      wrath. &ldquo;Fight, if you're so fond of fighting! Fight, if you're so fond of
+      all that filthy philosophy! If winning is everything, go in and win! If
+      the weak must go to the wall, go to the wall! Fight, you rat! Fight, or if
+      you won't fight&mdash;run!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he ran at Wimpey, with blazing eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wimpey staggered back a few paces like a man struggling with his own
+      limbs. Then he felt the furious Scotchman coming at him like an express
+      train, doubling his size every second, with eyes as big as windows and a
+      sword as bright as the sun. Something broke inside him, and he found
+      himself running away, tumbling over his own feet in terror, and crying out
+      as he ran.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Chase him!&rdquo; shouted Turnbull as MacIan snatched up the sword and joined
+      in the scamper. &ldquo;Chase him over a county! Chase him into the sea! Shoo!
+      Shoo! Shoo!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The little man plunged like a rabbit among the tall flowers, the two
+      duellists after him. Turnbull kept at his tail with savage ecstasy, still
+      shooing him like a cat. But MacIan, as he ran past the South Sea idol,
+      paused an instant to spring upon its pedestal. For five seconds he
+      strained against the inert mass. Then it stirred; and he sent it over with
+      a great crash among the flowers, that engulfed it altogether. Then he went
+      bounding after the runaway.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the energy of his alarm the ex-Fellow of Magdalen managed to leap the
+      paling of his garden. The two pursuers went over it after him like flying
+      birds. He fled frantically down a long lane with his two terrors on his
+      trail till he came to a gap in the hedge and went across a steep meadow
+      like the wind. The two Scotchmen, as they ran, kept up a cheery bellowing
+      and waved their swords. Up three slanting meadows, down four slanting
+      meadows on the other side, across another road, across a heath of snapping
+      bracken, through a wood, across another road, and to the brink of a big
+      pool, they pursued the flying philosopher. But when he came to the pool
+      his pace was so precipitate that he could not stop it, and with a kind of
+      lurching stagger, he fell splash into the greasy water. Getting dripping
+      to his feet, with the water up to his knees, the worshipper of force and
+      victory waded disconsolately to the other side and drew himself on to the
+      bank. And Turnbull sat down on the grass and went off into reverberations
+      of laughter. A second afterwards the most extraordinary grimaces were seen
+      to distort the stiff face of MacIan, and unholy sounds came from within.
+      He had never practised laughing, and it hurt him very much.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0007" id="link2H_4_0007">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      VII. THE VILLAGE OF GRASSLEY-IN-THE-HOLE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      At about half past one, under a strong blue sky, Turnbull got up out of
+      the grass and fern in which he had been lying, and his still intermittent
+      laughter ended in a kind of yawn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm hungry,&rdquo; he said shortly. &ldquo;Are you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have not noticed,&rdquo; answered MacIan. &ldquo;What are you going to do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's a village down the road, past the pool,&rdquo; answered Turnbull. &ldquo;I
+      can see it from here. I can see the whitewashed walls of some cottages and
+      a kind of corner of the church. How jolly it all looks. It looks so&mdash;I
+      don't know what the word is&mdash;so sensible. Don't fancy I'm under any
+      illusions about Arcadian virtue and the innocent villagers. Men make
+      beasts of themselves there with drink, but they don't deliberately make
+      devils of themselves with mere talking. They kill wild animals in the wild
+      woods, but they don't kill cats to the God of Victory. They don't&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+       He broke off and suddenly spat on the ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Excuse me,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;it was ceremonial. One has to get the taste out of
+      one's mouth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The taste of what?&rdquo; asked MacIan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know the exact name for it,&rdquo; replied Turnbull. &ldquo;Perhaps it is the
+      South Sea Islands, or it may be Magdalen College.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a long pause, and MacIan also lifted his large limbs off the
+      ground&mdash;his eyes particularly dreamy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know what you mean, Turnbull,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;but... I always thought you
+      people agreed with all that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;With all that about doing as one likes, and the individual, and Nature
+      loving the strongest, and all the things which that cockroach talked
+      about.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull's big blue-grey eyes stood open with a grave astonishment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you really mean to say, MacIan,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;that you fancied that we,
+      the Free-thinkers, that Bradlaugh, or Holyoake, or Ingersoll, believe all
+      that dirty, immoral mysticism about Nature? Damn Nature!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I supposed you did,&rdquo; said MacIan calmly. &ldquo;It seems to me your most
+      conclusive position.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you mean to tell me,&rdquo; rejoined the other, &ldquo;that you broke my window,
+      and challenged me to mortal combat, and tied a tradesman up with ropes,
+      and chased an Oxford Fellow across five meadows&mdash;all under the
+      impression that I am such an illiterate idiot as to believe in Nature!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I supposed you did,&rdquo; repeated MacIan with his usual mildness; &ldquo;but I
+      admit that I know little of the details of your belief&mdash;or
+      disbelief.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull swung round quite suddenly, and set off towards the village.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come along,&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;Come down to the village. Come down to the
+      nearest decent inhabitable pub. This is a case for beer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not quite follow you,&rdquo; said the Highlander.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, you do,&rdquo; answered Turnbull. &ldquo;You follow me slap into the
+      inn-parlour. I repeat, this is a case for beer. We must have the whole of
+      this matter out thoroughly before we go a step farther. Do you know that
+      an idea has just struck me of great simplicity and of some cogency. Do not
+      by any means let us drop our intentions of settling our differences with
+      two steel swords. But do you not think that with two pewter pots we might
+      do what we really have never thought of doing yet&mdash;discover what our
+      difference is?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It never occurred to me before,&rdquo; answered MacIan with tranquillity. &ldquo;It
+      is a good suggestion.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And they set out at an easy swing down the steep road to the village of
+      Grassley-in-the-Hole.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Grassley-in-the-Hole was a rude parallelogram of buildings, with two
+      thoroughfares which might have been called two high streets if it had been
+      possible to call them streets. One of these ways was higher on the slope
+      than the other, the whole parallelogram lying aslant, so to speak, on the
+      side of the hill. The upper of these two roads was decorated with a big
+      public house, a butcher's shop, a small public house, a sweetstuff shop, a
+      very small public house, and an illegible signpost. The lower of the two
+      roads boasted a horse-pond, a post office, a gentleman's garden with very
+      high hedges, a microscopically small public house, and two cottages. Where
+      all the people lived who supported all the public houses was in this, as
+      in many other English villages, a silent and smiling mystery. The church
+      lay a little above and beyond the village, with a square grey tower
+      dominating it decisively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But even the church was scarcely so central and solemn an institution as
+      the large public house, the Valencourt Arms. It was named after some
+      splendid family that had long gone bankrupt, and whose seat was occupied
+      by a man who had invented a hygienic bootjack; but the unfathomable
+      sentimentalism of the English people insisted in regarding the Inn, the
+      seat and the sitter in it, as alike parts of a pure and marmoreal
+      antiquity. And in the Valencourt Arms festivity itself had some solemnity
+      and decorum; and beer was drunk with reverence, as it ought to be. Into
+      the principal parlour of this place entered two strangers, who found
+      themselves, as is always the case in such hostels, the object, not of
+      fluttered curiosity or pert inquiry, but of steady, ceaseless, devouring
+      ocular study. They had long coats down to their heels, and carried under
+      each coat something that looked like a stick. One was tall and dark, the
+      other short and red-haired. They ordered a pot of ale each.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;MacIan,&rdquo; said Turnbull, lifting his tankard, &ldquo;the fool who wanted us to
+      be friends made us want to go on fighting. It is only natural that the
+      fool who wanted us to fight should make us friendly. MacIan, your health!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dusk was already dropping, the rustics in the tavern were already lurching
+      and lumbering out of it by twos and threes, crying clamorous good nights
+      to a solitary old toper that remained, before MacIan and Turnbull had
+      reached the really important part of their discussion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan wore an expression of sad bewilderment not uncommon with him. &ldquo;I am
+      to understand, then,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;that you don't believe in nature.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You may say so in a very special and emphatic sense,&rdquo; said Turnbull. &ldquo;I
+      do not believe in nature, just as I do not believe in Odin. She is a myth.
+      It is not merely that I do not believe that nature can guide us. It is
+      that I do not believe that nature exists.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Exists?&rdquo; said MacIan in his monotonous way, settling his pewter pot on
+      the table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, in a real sense nature does not exist. I mean that nobody can
+      discover what the original nature of things would have been if things had
+      not interfered with it. The first blade of grass began to tear up the
+      earth and eat it; it was interfering with nature, if there is any nature.
+      The first wild ox began to tear up the grass and eat it; he was
+      interfering with nature, if there is any nature. In the same way,&rdquo;
+       continued Turnbull, &ldquo;the human when it asserts its dominance over nature
+      is just as natural as the thing which it destroys.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And in the same way,&rdquo; said MacIan almost dreamily, &ldquo;the superhuman, the
+      supernatural is just as natural as the nature which it destroys.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull took his head out of his pewter pot in some anger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The supernatural, of course,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;is quite another thing; the case
+      of the supernatural is simple. The supernatural does not exist.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite so,&rdquo; said MacIan in a rather dull voice; &ldquo;you said the same about
+      the natural. If the natural does not exist the supernatural obviously
+      can't.&rdquo; And he yawned a little over his ale.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull turned for some reason a little red and remarked quickly, &ldquo;That
+      may be jolly clever, for all I know. But everyone does know that there is
+      a division between the things that as a matter of fact do commonly happen
+      and the things that don't. Things that break the evident laws of nature&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Which does not exist,&rdquo; put in MacIan sleepily. Turnbull struck the table
+      with a sudden hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good Lord in heaven!&rdquo; he cried&mdash;&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who does not exist,&rdquo; murmured MacIan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good Lord in heaven!&rdquo; thundered Turnbull, without regarding the
+      interruption. &ldquo;Do you really mean to sit there and say that you, like
+      anybody else, would not recognize the difference between a natural
+      occurrence and a supernatural one&mdash;if there could be such a thing? If
+      I flew up to the ceiling&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You would bump your head badly,&rdquo; cried MacIan, suddenly starting up. &ldquo;One
+      can't talk of this kind of thing under a ceiling at all. Come outside!
+      Come outside and ascend into heaven!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He burst the door open on a blue abyss of evening and they stepped out
+      into it: it was suddenly and strangely cool.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Turnbull,&rdquo; said MacIan, &ldquo;you have said some things so true and some so
+      false that I want to talk; and I will try to talk so that you understand.
+      For at present you do not understand at all. We don't seem to mean the
+      same things by the same words.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stood silent for a second or two and then resumed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A minute or two ago I caught you out in a real contradiction. At that
+      moment logically I was right. And at that moment I knew I was wrong. Yes,
+      there is a real difference between the natural and the supernatural: if
+      you flew up into that blue sky this instant, I should think that you were
+      moved by God&mdash;or the devil. But if you want to know what I really
+      think...I must explain.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stopped again, abstractedly boring the point of his sword into the
+      earth, and went on:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was born and bred and taught in a complete universe. The supernatural
+      was not natural, but it was perfectly reasonable. Nay, the supernatural to
+      me is more reasonable than the natural; for the supernatural is a direct
+      message from God, who is reason. I was taught that some things are natural
+      and some things divine. I mean that some things are mechanical and some
+      things divine. But there is the great difficulty, Turnbull. The great
+      difficulty is that, according to my teaching, you are divine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Me! Divine?&rdquo; said Turnbull truculently. &ldquo;What do you mean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is just the difficulty,&rdquo; continued MacIan thoughtfully. &ldquo;I was told
+      that there was a difference between the grass and a man's will; and the
+      difference was that a man's will was special and divine. A man's free
+      will, I heard, was supernatural.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rubbish!&rdquo; said Turnbull.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; said MacIan patiently, &ldquo;then if a man's free will isn't
+      supernatural, why do your materialists deny that it exists?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull was silent for a moment. Then he began to speak, but MacIan
+      continued with the same steady voice and sad eyes:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So what I feel is this: Here is the great divine creation I was taught to
+      believe in. I can understand your disbelieving in it, but why disbelieve
+      in a part of it? It was all one thing to me. God had authority because he
+      was God. Man had authority because he was man. You cannot prove that God
+      is better than a man; nor can you prove that a man is better than a horse.
+      Why permit any ordinary thing? Why do you let a horse be saddled?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some modern thinkers disapprove of it,&rdquo; said Turnbull a little
+      doubtfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know,&rdquo; said MacIan grimly; &ldquo;that man who talked about love, for
+      instance.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull made a humorous grimace; then he said: &ldquo;We seem to be talking in
+      a kind of shorthand; but I won't pretend not to understand you. What you
+      mean is this: that you learnt about all your saints and angels at the same
+      time as you learnt about common morality, from the same people, in the
+      same way. And you mean to say that if one may be disputed, so may the
+      other. Well, let that pass for the moment. But let me ask you a question
+      in turn. Did not this system of yours, which you swallowed whole, contain
+      all sorts of things that were merely local, the respect for the chief of
+      your clan, or such things; the village ghost, the family feud, or what
+      not? Did you not take in those things, too, along with your theology?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan stared along the dim village road, down which the last straggler
+      from the inn was trailing his way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What you say is not unreasonable,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;But it is not quite true.
+      The distinction between the chief and us did exist; but it was never anything
+      like the distinction between the human and the divine, or the human and
+      the animal. It was more like the distinction between one animal and
+      another. But&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well?&rdquo; said Turnbull.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan was silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go on,&rdquo; repeated Turnbull; &ldquo;what's the matter with you? What are you
+      staring at?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am staring,&rdquo; said MacIan at last, &ldquo;at that which shall judge us both.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes,&rdquo; said Turnbull in a tired way, &ldquo;I suppose you mean God.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I don't,&rdquo; said MacIan, shaking his head. &ldquo;I mean him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he pointed to the half-tipsy yokel who was ploughing down the road.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean?&rdquo; asked the atheist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean him,&rdquo; repeated MacIan with emphasis. &ldquo;He goes out in the early
+      dawn; he digs or he ploughs a field. Then he comes back and drinks ale,
+      and then he sings a song. All your philosophies and political systems are
+      young compared to him. All your hoary cathedrals, yes, even the Eternal
+      Church on earth is new compared to him. The most mouldering gods in the
+      British Museum are new facts beside him. It is he who in the end shall
+      judge us all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And MacIan rose to his feet with a vague excitement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are you going to do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am going to ask him,&rdquo; cried MacIan, &ldquo;which of us is right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull broke into a kind of laugh. &ldquo;Ask that intoxicated turnip-eater&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+       he began.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;which of us is right,&rdquo; cried MacIan violently. &ldquo;Oh, you have
+      long words and I have long words; and I talk of every man being the image
+      of God; and you talk of every man being a citizen and enlightened enough
+      to govern. But if every man typifies God, there is God. If every man is an
+      enlightened citizen, there is your enlightened citizen. The first man one
+      meets is always man. Let us catch him up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And in gigantic strides the long, lean Highlander whirled away into the
+      grey twilight, Turnbull following with a good-humoured oath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The track of the rustic was easy to follow, even in the faltering dark;
+      for he was enlivening his wavering walk with song. It was an interminable
+      poem, beginning with some unspecified King William, who (it appeared)
+      lived in London town and who after the second rise vanished rather
+      abruptly from the train of thought. The rest was almost entirely about
+      beer and was thick with local topography of a quite unrecognizable kind.
+      The singer's step was neither very rapid, nor, indeed, exceptionally
+      secure; so the song grew louder and louder and the two soon overtook him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was a man elderly or rather of any age, with lean grey hair and a lean
+      red face, but with that remarkable rustic physiognomy in which it seems
+      that all the features stand out independently from the face; the rugged
+      red nose going out like a limb; the bleared blue eyes standing out like
+      signals.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He gave them greeting with the elaborate urbanity of the slightly
+      intoxicated. MacIan, who was vibrating with one of his silent, violent
+      decisions, opened the question without delay. He explained the philosophic
+      position in words as short and simple as possible. But the singular old
+      man with the lank red face seemed to think uncommonly little of the short
+      words. He fixed with a fierce affection upon one or two of the long ones.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Atheists!&rdquo; he repeated with luxurious scorn. &ldquo;Atheists! I know their
+      sort, master. Atheists! Don't talk to me about 'un. Atheists!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The grounds of his disdain seemed a little dark and confused; but they
+      were evidently sufficient. MacIan resumed in some encouragement:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You think as I do, I hope; you think that a man should be connected with
+      the Church; with the common Christian&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The old man extended a quivering stick in the direction of a distant hill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's the church,&rdquo; he said thickly. &ldquo;Grassley old church that is.
+      Pulled down it was, in the old squire's time, and&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean,&rdquo; explained MacIan elaborately, &ldquo;that you think that there should
+      be someone typifying religion, a priest&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Priests!&rdquo; said the old man with sudden passion. &ldquo;Priests! I know 'un.
+      What they want in England? That's what I say. What they want in England?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They want you,&rdquo; said MacIan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite so,&rdquo; said Turnbull, &ldquo;and me; but they won't get us. MacIan, your
+      attempt on the primitive innocence does not seem very successful. Let me
+      try. What you want, my friend, is your rights. You don't want any priests
+      or churches. A vote, a right to speak is what you&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who says I a'n't got a right to speak?&rdquo; said the old man, facing round in
+      an irrational frenzy. &ldquo;I got a right to speak. I'm a man, I am. I don't
+      want no votin' nor priests. I say a man's a man; that's what I say. If a
+      man a'n't a man, what is he? That's what I say, if a man a'n't a man, what
+      is he? When I sees a man, I sez 'e's a man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite so,&rdquo; said Turnbull, &ldquo;a citizen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say he's a man,&rdquo; said the rustic furiously, stopping and striking his
+      stick on the ground. &ldquo;Not a city or owt else. He's a man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're perfectly right,&rdquo; said the sudden voice of MacIan, falling like a
+      sword. &ldquo;And you have kept close to something the whole world of today
+      tries to forget.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And the old man went on wildly singing into the night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A jolly old creature,&rdquo; said Turnbull; &ldquo;he didn't seem able to get much
+      beyond that fact that a man is a man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Has anybody got beyond it?&rdquo; asked MacIan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull looked at him curiously. &ldquo;Are you turning an agnostic?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, you do not understand!&rdquo; cried out MacIan. &ldquo;We Catholics are all
+      agnostics. We Catholics have only in that sense got as far as realizing
+      that man is a man. But your Ibsens and your Zolas and your Shaws and your
+      Tolstoys have not even got so far.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0008" id="link2H_4_0008">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      VIII. AN INTERLUDE OF ARGUMENT
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Morning broke in bitter silver along the grey and level plain; and almost
+      as it did so Turnbull and MacIan came out of a low, scrubby wood on to the
+      empty and desolate flats. They had walked all night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They had walked all night and talked all night also, and if the subject
+      had been capable of being exhausted they would have exhausted it. Their
+      long and changing argument had taken them through districts and landscapes
+      equally changing. They had discussed Haeckel upon hills so high and steep
+      that in spite of the coldness of the night it seemed as if the stars might
+      burn them. They had explained and re-explained the Massacre of St.
+      Bartholomew in little white lanes walled in with standing corn as with
+      walls of gold. They had talked about Mr. Kensit in dim and twinkling pine
+      woods, amid the bewildering monotony of the pines. And it was with the end
+      of a long speech from MacIan, passionately defending the practical
+      achievements and the solid prosperity of the Catholic tradition, that they
+      came out upon the open land.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan had learnt much and thought more since he came out of the cloudy
+      hills of Arisaig. He had met many typical modern figures under
+      circumstances which were sharply symbolic; and, moreover, he had absorbed
+      the main modern atmosphere from the mere presence and chance phrases of
+      Turnbull, as such atmospheres can always be absorbed from the presence and
+      the phrases of any man of great mental vitality. He had at last begun
+      thoroughly to understand what are the grounds upon which the mass of the
+      modern world solidly disapprove of her creed; and he threw himself into
+      replying to them with a hot intellectual enjoyment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I begin to understand one or two of your dogmas, Mr. Turnbull,&rdquo; he had
+      said emphatically as they ploughed heavily up a wooded hill. &ldquo;And every
+      one that I understand I deny. Take any one of them you like. You hold that
+      your heretics and sceptics have helped the world forward and handed on a
+      lamp of progress. I deny it. Nothing is plainer from real history than
+      that each of your heretics invented a complete cosmos of his own which the
+      next heretic smashed entirely to pieces. Who knows now exactly what
+      Nestorius taught? Who cares? There are only two things that we know for
+      certain about it. The first is that Nestorius, as a heretic, taught
+      something quite opposite to the teaching of Arius, the heretic who came
+      before him, and something quite useless to James Turnbull, the heretic who
+      comes after. I defy you to go back to the Free-thinkers of the past and
+      find any habitation for yourself at all. I defy you to read Godwin or
+      Shelley or the deists of the eighteenth century of the nature-worshipping
+      humanists of the Renaissance, without discovering that you differ from
+      them twice as much as you differ from the Pope. You are a
+      nineteenth-century sceptic, and you are always telling me that I ignore
+      the cruelty of nature. If you had been an eighteenth-century sceptic you
+      would have told me that I ignore the kindness and benevolence of nature.
+      You are an atheist, and you praise the deists of the eighteenth century.
+      Read them instead of praising them, and you will find that their whole
+      universe stands or falls with the deity. You are a materialist, and you
+      think Bruno a scientific hero. See what he said and you will think him an
+      insane mystic. No, the great Free-thinker, with his genuine ability and
+      honesty, does not in practice destroy Christianity. What he does destroy
+      is the Free-thinker who went before. Free-thought may be suggestive, it
+      may be inspiriting, it may have as much as you please of the merits that
+      come from vivacity and variety. But there is one thing Free-thought can
+      never be by any possibility&mdash;Free-thought can never be progressive.
+      It can never be progressive because it will accept nothing from the past;
+      it begins every time again from the beginning; and it goes every time in a
+      different direction. All the rational philosophers have gone along
+      different roads, so it is impossible to say which has gone farthest. Who
+      can discuss whether Emerson was a better optimist than Schopenhauer was
+      pessimist? It is like asking if this corn is as yellow as that hill is
+      steep. No; there are only two things that really progress; and they both
+      accept accumulations of authority. They may be progressing uphill and
+      down; they may be growing steadily better or steadily worse; but they have
+      steadily increased in certain definable matters; they have steadily
+      advanced in a certain definable direction; they are the only two things,
+      it seems, that ever <i>can</i> progress. The first is strictly physical
+      science. The second is the Catholic Church.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Physical science and the Catholic Church!&rdquo; said Turnbull sarcastically;
+      &ldquo;and no doubt the first owes a great deal to the second.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you pressed that point I might reply that it was very probable,&rdquo;
+       answered MacIan calmly. &ldquo;I often fancy that your historical
+      generalizations rest frequently on random instances; I should not be
+      surprised if your vague notions of the Church as the persecutor of science
+      was a generalization from Galileo. I should not be at all surprised if,
+      when you counted the scientific investigations and discoveries since the
+      fall of Rome, you found that a great mass of them had been made by monks.
+      But the matter is irrelevant to my meaning. I say that if you want an
+      example of anything which has progressed in the moral world by the same
+      method as science in the material world, by continually adding to without
+      unsettling what was there before, then I say that there <i>is</i> only one
+      example of it. And that is Us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;With this enormous difference,&rdquo; said Turnbull, &ldquo;that however elaborate be
+      the calculations of physical science, their net result can be tested.
+      Granted that it took millions of books I never read and millions of men I
+      never heard of to discover the electric light. Still I can see the
+      electric light. But I cannot see the supreme virtue which is the result of
+      all your theologies and sacraments.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Catholic virtue is often invisible because it is the normal,&rdquo; answered
+      MacIan. &ldquo;Christianity is always out of fashion because it is always sane;
+      and all fashions are mild insanities. When Italy is mad on art the Church
+      seems too Puritanical; when England is mad on Puritanism the Church seems
+      too artistic. When you quarrel with us now you class us with kingship and
+      despotism; but when you quarrelled with us first it was because we would
+      not accept the divine despotism of Henry VIII. The Church always seems to
+      be behind the times, when it is really beyond the times; it is waiting
+      till the last fad shall have seen its last summer. It keeps the key of a
+      permanent virtue.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I have heard all that!&rdquo; said Turnbull with genial contempt. &ldquo;I have
+      heard that Christianity keeps the key of virtue, and that if you read Tom
+      Paine you will cut your throat at Monte Carlo. It is such rubbish that I
+      am not even angry at it. You say that Christianity is the prop of morals;
+      but what more do you do? When a doctor attends you and could poison you
+      with a pinch of salt, do you ask whether he is a Christian? You ask
+      whether he is a gentleman, whether he is an M.D.&mdash;anything but that.
+      When a soldier enlists to die for his country or disgrace it, do you ask
+      whether he is a Christian? You are more likely to ask whether he is Oxford
+      or Cambridge at the boat race. If you think your creed essential to morals
+      why do you not make it a test for these things?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We once did make it a test for these things,&rdquo; said MacIan smiling, &ldquo;and
+      then you told us that we were imposing by force a faith unsupported by
+      argument. It seems rather hard that having first been told that our creed
+      must be false because we did use tests, we should now be told that it must
+      be false because we don't. But I notice that most anti-Christian arguments
+      are in the same inconsistent style.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is all very well as a debating-club answer,&rdquo; replied Turnbull
+      good-humouredly, &ldquo;but the question still remains: Why don't you confine
+      yourself more to Christians if Christians are the only really good men?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who talked of such folly?&rdquo; asked MacIan disdainfully. &ldquo;Do you suppose
+      that the Catholic Church ever held that Christians were the only good men?
+      Why, the Catholics of the Catholic Middle Ages talked about the virtues of
+      all the virtuous Pagans until humanity was sick of the subject. No, if you
+      really want to know what we mean when we say that Christianity has a
+      special power of virtue, I will tell you. The Church is the only thing on
+      earth that can perpetuate a type of virtue and make it something more than
+      a fashion. The thing is so plain and historical that I hardly think you
+      will ever deny it. You cannot deny that it is perfectly possible that
+      tomorrow morning, in Ireland or in Italy, there might appear a man not
+      only as good but good in exactly the same way as St. Francis of Assisi.
+      Very well, now take the other types of human virtue; many of them
+      splendid. The English gentleman of Elizabeth was chivalrous and
+      idealistic. But can you stand still here in this meadow and <i>be</i> an
+      English gentleman of Elizabeth? The austere republican of the eighteenth
+      century, with his stern patriotism and his simple life, was a fine fellow.
+      But have you ever seen him? have you ever seen an austere republican? Only
+      a hundred years have passed and that volcano of revolutionary truth and
+      valour is as cold as the mountains of the moon. And so it is and so it
+      will be with the ethics which are buzzing down Fleet Street at this
+      instant as I speak. What phrase would inspire the London clerk or workman
+      just now? Perhaps that he is a son of the British Empire on which the sun
+      never sets; perhaps that he is a prop of his Trades Union, or a
+      class-conscious proletarian something or other; perhaps merely that he is
+      a gentleman when he obviously is not. Those names and notions are all
+      honourable; but how long will they last? Empires break; industrial
+      conditions change; the suburbs will not last for ever. What will remain? I
+      will tell you. The Catholic Saint will remain.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And suppose I don't like him?&rdquo; said Turnbull.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On my theory the question is rather whether he will like you: or more
+      probably whether he will ever have heard of you. But I grant the
+      reasonableness of your query. You have a right, if you speak as the
+      ordinary man, to ask if you will like the saint. But as the ordinary man
+      you do like him. You revel in him. If you dislike him it is not because
+      you are a nice ordinary man, but because you are (if you will excuse me) a
+      sophisticated prig of a Fleet Street editor. That is just the funny part
+      of it. The human race has always admired the Catholic virtues, however
+      little it can practise them; and oddly enough it has admired most those of
+      them that the modern world most sharply disputes. You complain of
+      Catholicism for setting up an ideal of virginity; it did nothing of the
+      kind. The whole human race set up an ideal of virginity; the Greeks in
+      Athene, the Romans in the Vestal fire, set up an ideal of virginity. What
+      then is your real quarrel with Catholicism? Your quarrel can only be, your
+      quarrel really only is, that Catholicism has <i>achieved</i> an ideal of
+      virginity; that it is no longer a mere piece of floating poetry. But if
+      you, and a few feverish men, in top hats, running about in a street in
+      London, choose to differ as to the ideal itself, not only from the Church,
+      but from the Parthenon whose name means virginity, from the Roman Empire
+      which went outwards from the virgin flame, from the whole legend and
+      tradition of Europe, from the lion who will not touch virgins, from the
+      unicorn who respects them, and who make up together the bearers of your
+      own national shield, from the most living and lawless of your own poets,
+      from Massinger, who wrote the <i>Virgin Martyr</i>, from Shakespeare, who
+      wrote <i>Measure for Measure</i>&mdash;if you in Fleet Street differ from
+      all this human experience, does it never strike you that it may be Fleet
+      Street that is wrong?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; answered Turnbull; &ldquo;I trust that I am sufficiently fair-minded to
+      canvass and consider the idea; but having considered it, I think Fleet
+      Street is right, yes&mdash;even if the Parthenon is wrong. I think that as
+      the world goes on new psychological atmospheres are generated, and in
+      these atmospheres it is possible to find delicacies and combinations which
+      in other times would have to be represented by some ruder symbol. Every
+      man feels the need of some element of purity in sex; perhaps they can only
+      typify purity as the absence of sex. You will laugh if I suggest that we
+      may have made in Fleet Street an atmosphere in which a man can be so
+      passionate as Sir Lancelot and as pure as Sir Galahad. But, after all, we
+      have in the modern world erected many such atmospheres. We have, for
+      instance, a new and imaginative appreciation of children.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite so,&rdquo; replied MacIan with a singular smile. &ldquo;It has been very well
+      put by one of the brightest of your young authors, who said: 'Unless you
+      become as little children ye shall in no wise enter the kingdom of
+      heaven.' But you are quite right; there is a modern worship of children.
+      And what, I ask you, is this modern worship of children? What, in the name
+      of all the angels and devils, is it except a worship of virginity? Why
+      should anyone worship a thing merely because it is small or immature? No;
+      you have tried to escape from this thing, and the very thing you point to
+      as the goal of your escape is only the thing again. Am I wrong in saying
+      that these things seem to be eternal?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And it was with these words that they came in sight of the great plains.
+      They went a little way in silence, and then James Turnbull said suddenly,
+      &ldquo;But I <i>cannot</i> believe in the thing.&rdquo; MacIan answered nothing to the
+      speech; perhaps it is unanswerable. And indeed they scarcely spoke another
+      word to each other all that day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0009" id="link2H_4_0009">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      IX. THE STRANGE LADY
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Moonrise with a great and growing moon opened over all those flats, making
+      them seem flatter and larger than they were, turning them to a lake of
+      blue light. The two companions trudged across the moonlit plain for half
+      an hour in full silence. Then MacIan stopped suddenly and planted his
+      sword-point in the ground like one who plants his tent-pole for the night.
+      Leaving it standing there, he clutched his black-haired skull with his
+      great claws of hands, as was his custom when forcing the pace of his
+      brain. Then his hands dropped again and he spoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm sure you're thinking the same as I am,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;how long are we to
+      be on this damned seesaw?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The other did not answer, but his silence seemed somehow solid as assent;
+      and MacIan went on conversationally. Neither noticed that both had
+      instinctively stood still before the sign of the fixed and standing sword.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is hard to guess what God means in this business. But he means
+      something&mdash;or the other thing, or both. Whenever we have tried to
+      fight each other something has stopped us. Whenever we have tried to be
+      reconciled to each other, something has stopped us again. By the run of
+      our luck we have never had time to be either friends or enemies. Something
+      always jumped out of the bushes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull nodded gravely and glanced round at the huge and hedgeless meadow
+      which fell away towards the horizon into a glimmering high road.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing will jump out of bushes here anyhow,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is what I meant,&rdquo; said MacIan, and stared steadily at the heavy hilt
+      of his standing sword, which in the slight wind swayed on its tempered
+      steel like some huge thistle on its stalk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is what I meant; we are quite alone here. I have not heard a
+      horse-hoof or a footstep or the hoot of a train for miles. So I think we
+      might stop here and ask for a miracle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! might we?&rdquo; said the atheistic editor with a sort of gusto of disgust.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I beg your pardon,&rdquo; said MacIan, meekly. &ldquo;I forgot your prejudices.&rdquo; He
+      eyed the wind-swung sword-hilt in sad meditation and resumed: &ldquo;What I mean
+      is, we might find out in this quiet place whether there really is any fate
+      or any commandment against our enterprise. I will engage on my side, like
+      Elijah, to accept a test from heaven. Turnbull, let us draw swords here in
+      this moonlight and this monstrous solitude. And if here in this moonlight
+      and solitude there happens anything to interrupt us&mdash;if it be
+      lightning striking our sword-blades or a rabbit running under our legs&mdash;I
+      will take it as a sign from God and we will shake hands for ever.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull's mouth twitched in angry humour under his red moustache. He
+      said: &ldquo;I will wait for signs from God until I have any signs of His
+      existence; but God&mdash;or Fate&mdash;forbid that a man of scientific
+      culture should refuse any kind of experiment.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well, then,&rdquo; said MacIan, shortly. &ldquo;We are more quiet here than
+      anywhere else; let us engage.&rdquo; And he plucked his sword-point out of the
+      turf.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull regarded him for a second and a half with a baffling visage
+      almost black against the moonrise; then his hand made a sharp movement to
+      his hip and his sword shone in the moon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As old chess-players open every game with established gambits, they opened
+      with a thrust and parry, orthodox and even frankly ineffectual. But in
+      MacIan's soul more formless storms were gathering, and he made a lunge or
+      two so savage as first to surprise and then to enrage his opponent.
+      Turnbull ground his teeth, kept his temper, and waiting for the third
+      lunge, and the worst, had almost spitted the lunger when a shrill, small
+      cry came from behind him, a cry such as is not made by any of the beasts
+      that perish.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull must have been more superstitious than he knew, for he stopped in
+      the act of going forward. MacIan was brazenly superstitious, and he
+      dropped his sword. After all, he had challenged the universe to send an
+      interruption; and this was an interruption, whatever else it was. An
+      instant afterwards the sharp, weak cry was repeated. This time it was
+      certain that it was human and that it was female.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan stood rolling those great blue Gaelic eyes that contrasted with his
+      dark hair. &ldquo;It is the voice of God,&rdquo; he said again and again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God hasn't got much of a voice,&rdquo; said Turnbull, who snatched at every
+      chance of cheap profanity. &ldquo;As a matter of fact, MacIan, it isn't the
+      voice of God, but it's something a jolly sight more important&mdash;it is
+      the voice of man&mdash;or rather of woman. So I think we'd better scoot in
+      its direction.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan snatched up his fallen weapon without a word, and the two raced
+      away towards that part of the distant road from which the cry was now
+      constantly renewed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They had to run over a curve of country that looked smooth but was very
+      rough; a neglected field which they soon found to be full of the tallest
+      grasses and the deepest rabbit-holes. Moreover, that great curve of the
+      countryside which looked so slow and gentle when you glanced over it,
+      proved to be highly precipitous when you scampered over it; and Turnbull
+      was twice nearly flung on his face. MacIan, though much heavier, avoided
+      such an overthrow only by having the quick and incalculable feet of the
+      mountaineer; but both of them may be said to have leapt off a low cliff
+      when they leapt into the road.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The moonlight lay on the white road with a more naked and electric glare
+      than on the grey-green upland, and though the scene which it revealed was
+      complicated, it was not difficult to get its first features at a glance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A small but very neat black-and-yellow motor-car was standing stolidly,
+      slightly to the left of the road. A somewhat larger light-green motor-car
+      was tipped half-way into a ditch on the same side, and four flushed and
+      staggering men in evening dress were tipped out of it. Three of them were
+      standing about the road, giving their opinions to the moon with vague but
+      echoing violence. The fourth, however, had already advanced on the
+      chauffeur of the black-and-yellow car, and was threatening him with a
+      stick. The chauffeur had risen to defend himself. By his side sat a young
+      lady.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was sitting bolt upright, a slender and rigid figure gripping the
+      sides of her seat, and her first few cries had ceased. She was clad in
+      close-fitting dark costume, a mass of warm brown hair went out in two
+      wings or waves on each side of her forehead; and even at that distance it
+      could be seen that her profile was of the aquiline and eager sort, like a
+      young falcon hardly free of the nest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull had concealed in him somewhere a fund of common sense and
+      knowledge of the world of which he himself and his best friends were
+      hardly aware. He was one of those who take in much of the shows of things
+      absent-mindedly, and in an irrelevant reverie. As he stood at the door of
+      his editorial shop on Ludgate Hill and meditated on the non-existence of
+      God, he silently absorbed a good deal of varied knowledge about the
+      existence of men. He had come to know types by instinct and dilemmas with
+      a glance; he saw the crux of the situation in the road, and what he saw
+      made him redouble his pace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He knew that the men were rich; he knew that they were drunk; and he knew,
+      what was worst of all, that they were fundamentally frightened. And he
+      knew this also, that no common ruffian (such as attacks ladies in novels)
+      is ever so savage and ruthless as a coarse kind of gentleman when he is
+      really alarmed. The reason is not recondite; it is simply because the
+      police-court is not such a menacing novelty to the poor ruffian as it is
+      to the rich. When they came within hail and heard the voices, they
+      confirmed all Turnbull's anticipations. The man in the middle of the road
+      was shouting in a hoarse and groggy voice that the chauffeur had smashed
+      their car on purpose; that they must get to the Cri that evening, and that
+      he would jolly well have to take them there. The chauffeur had mildly
+      objected that he was driving a lady. &ldquo;Oh! we'll take care of the lady,&rdquo;
+       said the red-faced young man, and went off into gurgling and almost senile
+      laughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By the time the two champions came up, things had grown more serious. The
+      intoxication of the man talking to the chauffeur had taken one of its
+      perverse and catlike jumps into mere screaming spite and rage. He lifted
+      his stick and struck at the chauffeur, who caught hold of it, and the
+      drunkard fell backwards, dragging him out of his seat on the car. Another
+      of the rowdies rushed forward booing in idiot excitement, fell over the
+      chauffeur, and, either by accident or design, kicked him as he lay. The
+      drunkard got to his feet again; but the chauffeur did not.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man who had kicked kept a kind of half-witted conscience or cowardice,
+      for he stood staring at the senseless body and murmuring words of
+      inconsequent self-justification, making gestures with his hands as if he
+      were arguing with somebody. But the other three, with a mere whoop and
+      howl of victory, were boarding the car on three sides at once. It was
+      exactly at this moment that Turnbull fell among them like one fallen from
+      the sky. He tore one of the climbers backward by the collar, and with a
+      hearty push sent him staggering over into the ditch upon his nose. One of
+      the remaining two, who was too far gone to notice anything, continued to
+      clamber ineffectually over the high back of the car, kicking and pouring
+      forth a rivulet of soliloquy. But the other dropped at the interruption,
+      turned upon Turnbull and began a battering bout of fisticuffs. At the same
+      moment the man crawled out of the ditch in a masquerade of mud and rushed
+      at his old enemy from behind. The whole had not taken a second; and an
+      instant after MacIan was in the midst of them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull had tossed away his sheathed sword, greatly preferring his hands,
+      except in the avowed etiquette of the duel; for he had learnt to use his
+      hands in the old street-battles of Bradlaugh. But to MacIan the sword even
+      sheathed was a more natural weapon, and he laid about him on all sides
+      with it as with a stick. The man who had the walking-stick found his blows
+      parried with promptitude; and a second after, to his great astonishment,
+      found his own stick fly up in the air as by a conjuring trick, with a turn
+      of the swordsman's wrist. Another of the revellers picked the stick out of
+      the ditch and ran in upon MacIan, calling to his companion to assist him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I haven't got a stick,&rdquo; grumbled the disarmed man, and looked vaguely
+      about the ditch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps,&rdquo; said MacIan, politely, &ldquo;you would like this one.&rdquo; With the word
+      the drunkard found his hand that had grasped the stick suddenly twisted
+      and empty; and the stick lay at the feet of his companion on the other
+      side of the road. MacIan felt a faint stir behind him; the girl had risen
+      to her feet and was leaning forward to stare at the fighters. Turnbull was
+      still engaged in countering and pommelling with the third young man. The
+      fourth young man was still engaged with himself, kicking his legs in
+      helpless rotation on the back of the car and talking with melodious
+      rationality.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At length Turnbull's opponent began to back before the battery of his
+      heavy hands, still fighting, for he was the soberest and boldest of the
+      four. If these are annals of military glory, it is due to him to say that
+      he need not have abandoned the conflict; only that as he backed to the
+      edge of the ditch his foot caught in a loop of grass and he went over in a
+      flat and comfortable position from which it took him a considerable time
+      to rise. By the time he had risen, Turnbull had come to the rescue of
+      MacIan, who was at bay but belabouring his two enemies handsomely. The
+      sight of the liberated reserve was to them like that of Blucher at
+      Waterloo; the two set off at a sullen trot down the road, leaving even the
+      walking-stick lying behind them in the moonlight. MacIan plucked the
+      struggling and aspiring idiot off the back of the car like a stray cat,
+      and left him swaying unsteadily in the moon. Then he approached the front
+      part of the car in a somewhat embarrassed manner and pulled off his cap.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For some solid seconds the lady and he merely looked at each other, and
+      MacIan had an irrational feeling of being in a picture hung on a wall.
+      That is, he was motionless, even lifeless, and yet staringly significant,
+      like a picture. The white moonlight on the road, when he was not looking
+      at it, gave him a vision of the road being white with snow. The motor-car,
+      when he was not looking at it, gave him a rude impression of a captured
+      coach in the old days of highwaymen. And he whose whole soul was with the
+      swords and stately manners of the eighteenth century, he who was a
+      Jacobite risen from the dead, had an overwhelming sense of being once more
+      in the picture, when he had so long been out of the picture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In that short and strong silence he absorbed the lady from head to foot.
+      He had never really looked at a human being before in his life. He saw her
+      face and hair first, then that she had long suede gloves; then that there
+      was a fur cap at the back of her brown hair. He might, perhaps, be excused
+      for this hungry attention. He had prayed that some sign might come from
+      heaven; and after an almost savage scrutiny he came to the conclusion that
+      his one did. The lady's instantaneous arrest of speech might need more
+      explaining; but she may well have been stunned with the squalid attack and
+      the abrupt rescue. Yet it was she who remembered herself first and
+      suddenly called out with self-accusing horror:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, that poor, poor man!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They both swung round abruptly and saw that Turnbull, with his recovered
+      sword under his arm-pit, was already lifting the fallen chauffeur into the
+      car. He was only stunned and was slowly awakening, feebly waving his left
+      arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The lady in long gloves and the fur cap leapt out and ran rapidly towards
+      them, only to be reassured by Turnbull, who (unlike many of his school)
+      really knew a little science when he invoked it to redeem the world. &ldquo;He's
+      all right,&rdquo; said he; &ldquo;he's quite safe. But I'm afraid he won't be able to
+      drive the car for half an hour or so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can drive the car,&rdquo; said the young woman in the fur cap with stony
+      practicability.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, in that case,&rdquo; began MacIan, uneasily; and that paralysing shyness
+      which is a part of romance induced him to make a backward movement as if
+      leaving her to herself. But Turnbull was more rational than he, being more
+      indifferent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't think you ought to drive home alone, ma'am,&rdquo; he said, gruffly.
+      &ldquo;There seem to be a lot of rowdy parties along this road, and the man will
+      be no use for an hour. If you will tell us where you are going, we will
+      see you safely there and say good night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The young lady exhibited all the abrupt disturbance of a person who is not
+      commonly disturbed. She said almost sharply and yet with evident
+      sincerity: &ldquo;Of course I am awfully grateful to you for all you've done&mdash;and
+      there's plenty of room if you'll come in.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull, with the complete innocence of an absolutely sound motive,
+      immediately jumped into the car; but the girl cast an eye at MacIan, who
+      stood in the road for an instant as if rooted like a tree. Then he also
+      tumbled his long legs into the tonneau, having that sense of degradedly
+      diving into heaven which so many have known in so many human houses when
+      they consented to stop to tea or were allowed to stop to supper. The
+      slowly reviving chauffeur was set in the back seat; Turnbull and MacIan
+      had fallen into the middle one; the lady with a steely coolness had taken
+      the driver's seat and all the handles of that headlong machine. A moment
+      afterwards the engine started, with a throb and leap unfamiliar to
+      Turnbull, who had only once been in a motor during a general election, and
+      utterly unknown to MacIan, who in his present mood thought it was the end
+      of the world. Almost at the same instant that the car plucked itself out
+      of the mud and whipped away up the road, the man who had been flung into
+      the ditch rose waveringly to his feet. When he saw the car escaping he ran
+      after it and shouted something which, owing to the increasing distance,
+      could not be heard. It is awful to reflect that, if his remark was
+      valuable, it is quite lost to the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The car shot on up and down the shining moonlit lanes, and there was no
+      sound in it except the occasional click or catch of its machinery; for
+      through some cause or other no soul inside it could think of a word to
+      say. The lady symbolized her feelings, whatever they were, by urging the
+      machine faster and faster until scattered woodlands went by them in one
+      black blotch and heavy hills and valleys seemed to ripple under the wheels
+      like mere waves. A little while afterwards this mood seemed to slacken and
+      she fell into a more ordinary pace; but still she did not speak. Turnbull,
+      who kept a more common and sensible view of the case than anyone else,
+      made some remark about the moonlight; but something indescribable made him
+      also relapse into silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All this time MacIan had been in a sort of monstrous delirium, like some
+      fabulous hero snatched up into the moon. The difference between this
+      experience and common experiences was analogous to that between waking
+      life and a dream. Yet he did not feel in the least as if he were dreaming;
+      rather the other way; as waking was more actual than dreaming, so this
+      seemed by another degree more actual than waking itself. But it was
+      another life altogether, like a cosmos with a new dimension.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He felt he had been hurled into some new incarnation: into the midst of
+      new relations, wrongs and rights, with towering responsibilities and
+      almost tragic joys which he had as yet had no time to examine. Heaven had
+      not merely sent him a message; Heaven itself had opened around him and
+      given him an hour of its own ancient and star-shattering energy. He had
+      never felt so much alive before; and yet he was like a man in a trance.
+      And if you had asked him on what his throbbing happiness hung, he could
+      only have told you that it hung on four or five visible facts, as a
+      curtain hangs on four of five fixed nails. The fact that the lady had a
+      little fur at her throat; the fact that the curve of her cheek was a low
+      and lean curve and that the moonlight caught the height of her cheek-bone;
+      the fact that her hands were small but heavily gloved as they gripped the
+      steering-wheel; the fact that a white witch light was on the road; the
+      fact that the brisk breeze of their passage stirred and fluttered a little
+      not only the brown hair of her head but the black fur on her cap. All
+      these facts were to him certain and incredible, like sacraments.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When they had driven half a mile farther, a big shadow was flung across
+      the path, followed by its bulky owner, who eyed the car critically but let
+      it pass. The silver moonlight picked out a piece or two of pewter ornament
+      on his blue uniform; and as they went by they knew it was a sergeant of
+      police. Three hundred yards farther on another policeman stepped out into
+      the road as if to stop them, then seemed to doubt his own authority and
+      stepped back again. The girl was a daughter of the rich; and this police
+      suspicion (under which all the poor live day and night) stung her for the
+      first time into speech.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What can they mean?&rdquo; she cried out in a kind of temper; &ldquo;this car's going
+      like a snail.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a short silence, and then Turnbull said: &ldquo;It is certainly very
+      odd, you are driving quietly enough.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are driving nobly,&rdquo; said MacIan, and his words (which had no meaning
+      whatever) sounded hoarse and ungainly even in his own ears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They passed the next mile and a half swiftly and smoothly; yet among the
+      many things which they passed in the course of it was a clump of eager
+      policemen standing at a cross-road. As they passed, one of the policemen
+      shouted something to the others; but nothing else happened. Eight hundred
+      yards farther on, Turnbull stood up suddenly in the swaying car.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My God, MacIan!&rdquo; he called out, showing his first emotion of that night.
+      &ldquo;I don't believe it's the pace; it couldn't be the pace. I believe it's
+      us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan sat motionless for a few moments and then turned up at his
+      companion a face that was as white as the moon above it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You may be right,&rdquo; he said at last; &ldquo;if you are, I must tell her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will tell the lady if you like,&rdquo; said Turnbull, with his unconquered
+      good temper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You!&rdquo; said MacIan, with a sort of sincere and instinctive astonishment.
+      &ldquo;Why should you&mdash;no, I must tell her, of course&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he leant forward and spoke to the lady in the fur cap.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am afraid, madam, that we may have got you into some trouble,&rdquo; he said,
+      and even as he said it it sounded wrong, like everything he said to this
+      particular person in the long gloves. &ldquo;The fact is,&rdquo; he resumed,
+      desperately, &ldquo;the fact is, we are being chased by the police.&rdquo; Then the
+      last flattening hammer fell upon poor Evan's embarrassment; for the fluffy
+      brown head with the furry black cap did not turn by a section of the
+      compass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are chased by the police,&rdquo; repeated MacIan, vigorously; then he added,
+      as if beginning an explanation, &ldquo;You see, I am a Catholic.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The wind whipped back a curl of the brown hair so as to necessitate a new
+      theory of aesthetics touching the line of the cheek-bone; but the head did
+      not turn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see,&rdquo; began MacIan, again blunderingly, &ldquo;this gentleman wrote in his
+      newspaper that Our Lady was a common woman, a bad woman, and so we agreed
+      to fight; and we were fighting quite a little time ago&mdash;but that was
+      before we saw you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The young lady driving her car had half turned her face to listen; and it
+      was not a reverent or a patient face that she showed him. Her Norman nose
+      was tilted a trifle too high upon the slim stalk of her neck and body.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When MacIan saw that arrogant and uplifted profile pencilled plainly
+      against the moonshine, he accepted an ultimate defeat. He had expected the
+      angels to despise him if he were wrong, but not to despise him so much as
+      this.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see,&rdquo; said the stumbling spokesman, &ldquo;I was angry with him when he
+      insulted the Mother of God, and I asked him to fight a duel with me; but
+      the police are all trying to stop it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nothing seemed to waver or flicker in the fair young falcon profile; and
+      it only opened its lips to say, after a silence: &ldquo;I thought people in our
+      time were supposed to respect each other's religion.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Under the shadow of that arrogant face MacIan could only fall back on the
+      obvious answer: &ldquo;But what about a man's irreligion?&rdquo; The face only
+      answered: &ldquo;Well, you ought to be more broadminded.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      If anyone else in the world had said the words, MacIan would have snorted
+      with his equine neigh of scorn. But in this case he seemed knocked down by
+      a superior simplicity, as if his eccentric attitude were rebuked by the
+      innocence of a child. He could not dissociate anything that this woman
+      said or did or wore from an idea of spiritual rarity and virtue. Like most
+      others under the same elemental passion, his soul was at present soaked in
+      ethics. He could have applied moral terms to the material objects of her
+      environment. If someone had spoken of &ldquo;her generous ribbon&rdquo; or &ldquo;her
+      chivalrous gloves&rdquo; or &ldquo;her merciful shoe-buckle,&rdquo; it would not have seemed
+      to him nonsense.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was silent, and the girl went on in a lower key as if she were
+      momentarily softened and a little saddened also. &ldquo;It won't do, you know,&rdquo;
+       she said; &ldquo;you can't find out the truth in that way. There are such heaps
+      of churches and people thinking different things nowadays, and they all
+      think they are right. My uncle was a Swedenborgian.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan sat with bowed head, listening hungrily to her voice but hardly to
+      her words, and seeing his great world drama grow smaller and smaller
+      before his eyes till it was no bigger than a child's toy theatre.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The time's gone by for all that,&rdquo; she went on; &ldquo;you can't find out the
+      real thing like that&mdash;if there is really anything to find&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+       and she sighed rather drearily; for, like many of the women of our wealthy
+      class, she was old and broken in thought, though young and clean enough in
+      her emotions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Our object,&rdquo; said Turnbull, shortly, &ldquo;is to make an effective
+      demonstration&rdquo;; and after that word, MacIan looked at his vision again and
+      found it smaller than ever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would be in the newspapers, of course,&rdquo; said the girl. &ldquo;People read
+      the newspapers, but they don't believe them, or anything else, I think.&rdquo;
+       And she sighed again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She drove in silence a third of a mile before she added, as if completing
+      the sentence: &ldquo;Anyhow, the whole thing's quite absurd.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't think,&rdquo; began Turnbull, &ldquo;that you quite realize&mdash;&mdash;Hullo!
+      hullo&mdash;hullo&mdash;what's this?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The amateur chauffeur had been forced to bring the car to a staggering
+      stoppage, for a file of fat, blue policemen made a wall across the way. A
+      sergeant came to the side and touched his peaked cap to the lady.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Beg your pardon, miss,&rdquo; he said with some embarrassment, for he knew her
+      for a daughter of a dominant house, &ldquo;but we have reason to believe that
+      the gentlemen in your car are&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; and he hesitated for a polite
+      phrase.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am Evan MacIan,&rdquo; said that gentleman, and stood up in a sort of gloomy
+      pomp, not wholly without a touch of the sulks of a schoolboy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, we will get out, sergeant,&rdquo; said Turnbull, more easily; &ldquo;my name is
+      James Turnbull. We must not incommode the lady.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are you taking them up for?&rdquo; asked the young woman, looking straight
+      in front of her along the road.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's under the new act,&rdquo; said the sergeant, almost apologetically.
+      &ldquo;Incurable disturbers of the peace.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What will happen to them?&rdquo; she asked, with the same frigid clearness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Westgate Adult Reformatory,&rdquo; he replied, briefly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Until when?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Until they are cured,&rdquo; said the official.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well, sergeant,&rdquo; said the young lady, with a sort of tired common
+      sense. &ldquo;I am sure I don't want to protect criminals or go against the law;
+      but I must tell you that these gentlemen have done me a considerable
+      service; you won't mind drawing your men a little farther off while I say
+      good night to them. Men like that always misunderstand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The sergeant was profoundly disquieted from the beginning at the mere idea
+      of arresting anyone in the company of a great lady; to refuse one of her
+      minor requests was quite beyond his courage. The police fell back to a few
+      yards behind the car. Turnbull took up the two swords that were their only
+      luggage; the swords that, after so many half duels, they were now to
+      surrender at last. MacIan, the blood thundering in his brain at the
+      thought of that instant of farewell, bent over, fumbled at the handle and
+      flung open the door to get out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he did not get out. He did not get out, because it is dangerous to
+      jump out of a car when it is going at full speed. And the car was going at
+      full speed, because the young lady, without turning her head or so much as
+      saying a syllable, had driven down a handle that made the machine plunge
+      forward like a buffalo and then fly over the landscape like a greyhound.
+      The police made one rush to follow, and then dropped so grotesque and
+      hopeless a chase. Away in the vanishing distance they could see the
+      sergeant furiously making notes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The open door, still left loose on its hinges, swung and banged quite
+      crazily as they went whizzing up one road and down another. Nor did MacIan
+      sit down; he stood up stunned and yet staring, as he would have stood up
+      at the trumpet of the Last Day. A black dot in the distance sprang up a
+      tall black forest, swallowed them and spat them out again at the other
+      end. A railway bridge grew larger and larger till it leapt upon their
+      backs bellowing, and was in its turn left behind. Avenues of poplars on
+      both sides of the road chased each other like the figures in a zoetrope.
+      Now and then with a shock and rattle they went through sleeping moonlit
+      villages, which must have stirred an instant in their sleep as at the
+      passing of a fugitive earthquake. Sometimes in an outlying house a light
+      in one erratic, unexpected window would give them a nameless hint of the
+      hundred human secrets which they left behind them with their dust.
+      Sometimes even a slouching rustic would be afoot on the road and would
+      look after them, as after a flying phantom. But still MacIan stood up
+      staring at earth and heaven; and still the door he had flung open flapped
+      loose like a flag. Turnbull, after a few minutes of dumb amazement, had
+      yielded to the healthiest element in his nature and gone off into
+      uncontrollable fits of laughter. The girl had not stirred an inch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After another half mile that seemed a mere flash, Turnbull leant over and
+      locked the door. Evan staggered at last into his seat and hid his
+      throbbing head in his hands; and still the car flew on and its driver sat
+      inflexible and silent. The moon had already gone down, and the whole
+      darkness was faintly troubled with twilight and the first movement of
+      beasts and fowls. It was that mysterious moment when light is coming as if
+      it were something unknown whose nature one could not guess&mdash;a mere
+      alteration in everything. They looked at the sky and it seemed as dark as
+      ever; then they saw the black shape of a tower or tree against it and knew
+      that it was already grey. Save that they were driving southward and had
+      certainly passed the longitude of London, they knew nothing of their
+      direction; but Turnbull, who had spent a year on the Hampshire coast in
+      his youth, began to recognize the unmistakable but quite indescribable
+      villages of the English south. Then a white witch fire began to burn
+      between the black stems of the fir-trees; and, like so many things in
+      nature, though not in books on evolution, the daybreak, when it did come,
+      came much quicker than one would think. The gloomy heavens were ripped up
+      and rolled away like a scroll, revealing splendours, as the car went
+      roaring up the curve of a great hill; and above them and black against the
+      broadening light, there stood one of those crouching and fantastic trees
+      that are first signals of the sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0010" id="link2H_4_0010">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      X. THE SWORDS REJOINED
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      As they came over the hill and down on the other side of it, it is not too
+      much to say that the whole universe of God opened over them and under
+      them, like a thing unfolding to five times its size. Almost under their
+      feet opened the enormous sea, at the bottom of a steep valley which fell
+      down into a bay; and the sea under their feet blazed at them almost as
+      lustrous and almost as empty as the sky. The sunrise opened above them
+      like some cosmic explosion, shining and shattering and yet silent; as if
+      the world were blown to pieces without a sound. Round the rays of the
+      victorious sun swept a sort of rainbow of confused and conquered colours&mdash;brown
+      and blue and green and flaming rose-colour; as though gold were driving
+      before it all the colours of the world. The lines of the landscape down
+      which they sped, were the simple, strict, yet swerving, lines of a rushing
+      river; so that it was almost as if they were being sucked down in a huge
+      still whirlpool. Turnbull had some such feeling, for he spoke for the
+      first time for many hours.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If we go down at this rate we shall be over the sea cliff,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How glorious!&rdquo; said MacIan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When, however, they had come into the wide hollow at the bottom of that
+      landslide, the car took a calm and graceful curve along the side of the
+      sea, melted into the fringe of a few trees, and quietly, yet
+      astonishingly, stopped. A belated light was burning in the broad morning
+      in the window of a sort of lodge- or gate-keepers' cottage; and the girl
+      stood up in the car and turned her splendid face to the sun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Evan seemed startled by the stillness, like one who had been born amid
+      sound and speed. He wavered on his long legs as he stood up; he pulled
+      himself together, and the only consequence was that he trembled from head
+      to foot. Turnbull had already opened the door on his side and jumped out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The moment he had done so the strange young woman had one more mad
+      movement, and deliberately drove the car a few yards farther. Then she got
+      out with an almost cruel coolness and began pulling off her long gloves
+      and almost whistling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can leave me here,&rdquo; she said, quite casually, as if they had met five
+      minutes before. &ldquo;That is the lodge of my father's place. Please come in,
+      if you like&mdash;but I understood that you had some business.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Evan looked at that lifted face and found it merely lovely; he was far too
+      much of a fool to see that it was working with a final fatigue and that
+      its austerity was agony. He was even fool enough to ask it a question.
+      &ldquo;Why did you save us?&rdquo; he said, quite humbly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl tore off one of her gloves, as if she were tearing off her hand.
+      &ldquo;Oh, I don't know,&rdquo; she said, bitterly. &ldquo;Now I come to think of it, I
+      can't imagine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Evan's thoughts, that had been piled up to the morning star, abruptly let
+      him down with a crash into the very cellars of the emotional universe. He
+      remained in a stunned silence for a long time; and that, if he had only
+      known, was the wisest thing that he could possibly do at the moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Indeed, the silence and the sunrise had their healing effect, for when the
+      extraordinary lady spoke again, her tone was more friendly and apologetic.
+      &ldquo;I'm not really ungrateful,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;it was very good of you to save me
+      from those men.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But why?&rdquo; repeated the obstinate and dazed MacIan, &ldquo;why did you save us
+      from the other men? I mean the policemen?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl's great brown eyes were lit up with a flash that was at once
+      final desperation and the loosening of some private and passionate
+      reserve.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, God knows!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;God knows that if there is a God He has
+      turned His big back on everything. God knows I have had no pleasure in my
+      life, though I am pretty and young and father has plenty of money. And
+      then people come and tell me that I ought to do things and I do them and
+      it's all drivel. They want you to do work among the poor; which means
+      reading Ruskin and feeling self-righteous in the best room in a poor
+      tenement. Or to help some cause or other, which always means bundling
+      people out of crooked houses, in which they've always lived, into straight
+      houses, in which they often die. And all the time you have inside only the
+      horrid irony of your own empty head and empty heart. I am to give to the
+      unfortunate, when my whole misfortune is that I have nothing to give. I am
+      to teach, when I believe nothing at all that I was taught. I am to save
+      the children from death, and I am not even certain that I should not be
+      better dead. I suppose if I actually saw a child drowning I should save
+      it. But that would be from the same motive from which I have saved you, or
+      destroyed you, whichever it is that I have done.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What was the motive?&rdquo; asked Evan, in a low voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My motive is too big for my mind,&rdquo; answered the girl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, after a pause, as she stared with a rising colour at the glittering
+      sea, she said: &ldquo;It can't be described, and yet I am trying to describe it.
+      It seems to me not only that I am unhappy, but that there is no way of
+      being happy. Father is not happy, though he is a Member of Parliament&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+       She paused a moment and added with a ghost of a smile: &ldquo;Nor Aunt Mabel,
+      though a man from India has told her the secret of all creeds. But I may
+      be wrong; there may be a way out. And for one stark, insane second, I felt
+      that, after all, you had got the way out and that was why the world hated
+      you. You see, if there were a way out, it would be sure to be something
+      that looked very queer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Evan put his hand to his forehead and began stumblingly: &ldquo;Yes, I suppose
+      we do seem&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes, you look queer enough,&rdquo; she said, with ringing sincerity.
+      &ldquo;You'll be all the better for a wash and brush up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You forget our business, madam,&rdquo; said Evan, in a shaking voice; &ldquo;we have
+      no concern but to kill each other.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I shouldn't be killed looking like that if I were you,&rdquo; she
+      replied, with inhuman honesty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Evan stood and rolled his eyes in masculine bewilderment. Then came the
+      final change in this Proteus, and she put out both her hands for an
+      instant and said in a low tone on which he lived for days and nights:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't you understand that I did not dare to stop you? What you are doing
+      is so mad that it may be quite true. Somehow one can never really manage
+      to be an atheist.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull stood staring at the sea; but his shoulders showed that he heard,
+      and after one minute he turned his head. But the girl had only brushed
+      Evan's hand with hers and had fled up the dark alley by the lodge gate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Evan stood rooted upon the road, literally like some heavy statue hewn
+      there in the age of the Druids. It seemed impossible that he should ever
+      move. Turnbull grew restless with this rigidity, and at last, after
+      calling his companion twice or thrice, went up and clapped him impatiently
+      on one of his big shoulders. Evan winced and leapt away from him with a
+      repulsion which was not the hate of an unclean thing nor the dread of a
+      dangerous one, but was a spasm of awe and separation from something from
+      which he was now sundered as by the sword of God. He did not hate the
+      atheist; it is possible that he loved him. But Turnbull was now something
+      more dreadful than an enemy: he was a thing sealed and devoted&mdash;a
+      thing now hopelessly doomed to be either a corpse or an executioner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is the matter with you?&rdquo; asked Turnbull, with his hearty hand still
+      in the air; and yet he knew more about it than his innocent action would
+      allow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;James,&rdquo; said Evan, speaking like one under strong bodily pain, &ldquo;I asked
+      for God's answer and I have got it&mdash;got it in my vitals. He knows how
+      weak I am, and that I might forget the peril of the faith, forget the face
+      of Our Lady&mdash;yes, even with your blow upon her cheek. But the honour
+      of this earth has just this about it, that it can make a man's heart like
+      iron. I am from the Lords of the Isles and I dare not be a mere deserter.
+      Therefore, God has tied me by the chain of my worldly place and word, and
+      there is nothing but fighting now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think I understand you,&rdquo; said Turnbull, &ldquo;but you say everything tail
+      foremost.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She wants us to do it,&rdquo; said Evan, in a voice crushed with passion. &ldquo;She
+      has hurt herself so that we might do it. She has left her good name and
+      her good sleep and all her habits and dignity flung away on the other side
+      of England in the hope that she may hear of us and that we have broken
+      some hole into heaven.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought I knew what you mean,&rdquo; said Turnbull, biting his beard; &ldquo;it
+      does seem as if we ought to do something after all she has done this
+      night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I never liked you so much before,&rdquo; said MacIan, in bitter sorrow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he spoke, three solemn footmen came out of the lodge gate and assembled
+      to assist the chauffeur to his room. The mere sight of them made the two
+      wanderers flee as from a too frightful incongruity, and before they knew
+      where they were, they were well upon the grassy ledge of England that
+      overlooks the Channel. Evan said suddenly: &ldquo;Will they let me see her in
+      heaven once in a thousand ages?&rdquo; and addressed the remark to the editor of
+      <i>The Atheist</i>, as on which he would be likely or qualified to answer.
+      But no answer came; a silence sank between the two.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull strode sturdily to the edge of the cliff and looked out, his
+      companion following, somewhat more shaken by his recent agitation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If that's the view you take,&rdquo; said Turnbull, &ldquo;and I don't say you are
+      wrong, I think I know where we shall be best off for the business. As it
+      happens, I know this part of the south coast pretty well. And unless I am
+      mistaken there's a way down the cliff just here which will land us on a
+      stretch of firm sand where no one is likely to follow us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Highlander made a gesture of assent and came also almost to the edge
+      of the precipice. The sunrise, which was broadening over sea and shore,
+      was one of those rare and splendid ones in which there seems to be no mist
+      or doubt, and nothing but a universal clarification more and more
+      complete. All the colours were transparent. It seemed like a triumphant
+      prophecy of some perfect world where everything being innocent will be
+      intelligible; a world where even our bodies, so to speak, may be as of
+      burning glass. Such a world is faintly though fiercely figured in the
+      coloured windows of Christian architecture. The sea that lay before them
+      was like a pavement of emerald, bright and almost brittle; the sky against
+      which its strict horizon hung was almost absolutely white, except that
+      close to the sky line, like scarlet braids on the hem of a garment, lay
+      strings of flaky cloud of so gleaming and gorgeous a red that they seemed
+      cut out of some strange blood-red celestial metal, of which the mere gold
+      of this earth is but a drab yellow imitation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The hand of Heaven is still pointing,&rdquo; muttered the man of superstition
+      to himself. &ldquo;And now it is a blood-red hand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The cool voice of his companion cut in upon his monologue, calling to him
+      from a little farther along the cliff, to tell him that he had found the
+      ladder of descent. It began as a steep and somewhat greasy path, which
+      then tumbled down twenty or thirty feet in the form of a fall of rough
+      stone steps. After that, there was a rather awkward drop on to a ledge of
+      stone and then the journey was undertaken easily and even elegantly by the
+      remains of an ornamental staircase, such as might have belonged to some
+      long-disused watering-place. All the time that the two travellers sank
+      from stage to stage of this downward journey, there closed over their
+      heads living bridges and caverns of the most varied foliage, all of which
+      grew greener, redder, or more golden, in the growing sunlight of the
+      morning. Life, too, of the more moving sort rose at the sun on every side
+      of them. Birds whirred and fluttered in the undergrowth, as if imprisoned
+      in green cages. Other birds were shaken up in great clouds from the
+      tree-tops, as if they were blossoms detached and scattered up to heaven.
+      Animals which Turnbull was too much of a Londoner and MacIan too much of a
+      Northerner to know, slipped by among the tangle or ran pattering up the
+      tree-trunks. Both the men, according to their several creeds, felt the
+      full thunder of the psalm of life as they had never heard it before;
+      MacIan felt God the Father, benignant in all His energies, and Turnbull
+      that ultimate anonymous energy, that <i>Natura Naturans</i>, which is the
+      whole theme of Lucretius. It was down this clamorous ladder of life that
+      they went down to die.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They broke out upon a brown semicircle of sand, so free from human imprint
+      as to justify Turnbull's profession. They strode out upon it, stuck their
+      swords in the sand, and had a pause too important for speech. Turnbull
+      eyed the coast curiously for a moment, like one awakening memories of
+      childhood; then he said abruptly, like a man remembering somebody's name:
+      &ldquo;But, of course, we shall be better off still round the corner of Cragness
+      Point; nobody ever comes there at all.&rdquo; And picking up his sword again, he
+      began striding towards a big bluff of the rocks which stood out upon their
+      left. MacIan followed him round the corner and found himself in what was
+      certainly an even finer fencing court, of flat, firm sand, enclosed on
+      three sides by white walls of rock, and on the fourth by the green wall of
+      the advancing sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are quite safe here,&rdquo; said Turnbull, and, to the other's surprise,
+      flung himself down, sitting on the brown beach.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see, I was brought up near here,&rdquo; he explained. &ldquo;I was sent from
+      Scotland to stop with my aunt. It is highly probable that I may die here.
+      Do you mind if I light a pipe?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course, do whatever you like,&rdquo; said MacIan, with a choking voice, and
+      he went and walked alone by himself along the wet, glistening sands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ten minutes afterwards he came back again, white with his own whirlwind of
+      emotions; Turnbull was quite cheerful and was knocking out the end of his
+      pipe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see, we have to do it,&rdquo; said MacIan. &ldquo;She tied us to it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course, my dear fellow,&rdquo; said the other, and leapt up as lightly as a
+      monkey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They took their places gravely in the very centre of the great square of
+      sand, as if they had thousands of spectators. Before saluting, MacIan,
+      who, being a mystic, was one inch nearer to Nature, cast his eye round the
+      huge framework of their heroic folly. The three walls of rock all leant a
+      little outward, though at various angles; but this impression was
+      exaggerated in the direction of the incredible by the heavy load of living
+      trees and thickets which each wall wore on its top like a huge shock of
+      hair. On all that luxurious crest of life the risen and victorious sun was
+      beating, burnishing it all like gold, and every bird that rose with that
+      sunrise caught a light like a star upon it like the dove of the Holy
+      Spirit. Imaginative life had never so much crowded upon MacIan. He felt
+      that he could write whole books about the feelings of a single bird. He
+      felt that for two centuries he would not tire of being a rabbit. He was in
+      the Palace of Life, of which the very tapestries and curtains were alive.
+      Then he recovered himself, and remembered his affairs. Both men saluted,
+      and iron rang upon iron. It was exactly at the same moment that he
+      realized that his enemy's left ankle was encircled with a ring of salt
+      water that had crept up to his feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is the matter?&rdquo; said Turnbull, stopping an instant, for he had grown
+      used to every movement of his extraordinary fellow-traveller's face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan glanced again at that silver anklet of sea-water and then looked
+      beyond at the next promontory round which a deep sea was boiling and
+      leaping. Then he turned and looked back and saw heavy foam being shaken up
+      to heaven about the base of Cragness Point.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The sea has cut us off,&rdquo; he said, curtly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have noticed it,&rdquo; said Turnbull with equal sobriety. &ldquo;What view do you
+      take of the development?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Evan threw away his weapon, and, as his custom was, imprisoned his big
+      head in his hands. Then he let them fall and said: &ldquo;Yes, I know what it
+      means; and I think it is the fairest thing. It is the finger of God&mdash;red
+      as blood&mdash;still pointing. But now it points to two graves.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a space filled with the sound of the sea, and then MacIan spoke
+      again in a voice pathetically reasonable: &ldquo;You see, we both saved her&mdash;and
+      she told us both to fight&mdash;and it would not be just that either
+      should fail and fall alone, while the other&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean,&rdquo; said Turnbull, in a voice surprisingly soft and gentle, &ldquo;that
+      there is something fine about fighting in a place where even the conqueror
+      must die?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, you have got it right, you have got it right!&rdquo; cried out Evan, in an
+      extraordinary childish ecstasy. &ldquo;Oh, I'm sure that you really believe in
+      God!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull answered not a word, but only took up his fallen sword.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For the third time Evan MacIan looked at those three sides of English
+      cliff hung with their noisy load of life. He had been at a loss to
+      understand the almost ironical magnificence of all those teeming creatures
+      and tropical colours and smells that smoked happily to heaven. But now he
+      knew that he was in the closed court of death and that all the gates were
+      sealed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He drank in the last green and the last red and the last gold, those
+      unique and indescribable things of God, as a man drains good wine at the
+      bottom of his glass. Then he turned and saluted his enemy once more, and
+      the two stood up and fought till the foam flowed over their knees.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then MacIan stepped backward suddenly with a splash and held up his hand.
+      &ldquo;Turnbull!&rdquo; he cried; &ldquo;I can't help it&mdash;fair fighting is more even
+      than promises. And this is not fair fighting.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What the deuce do you mean?&rdquo; asked the other, staring.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've only just thought of it,&rdquo; cried Evan, brokenly. &ldquo;We're very well
+      matched&mdash;it may go on a good time&mdash;the tide is coming up fast&mdash;and
+      I'm a foot and a half taller. You'll be washed away like seaweed before
+      it's above my breeches. I'll not fight foul for all the girls and angels
+      in the universe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you oblige me,&rdquo; said Turnbull, with staring grey eyes and a voice of
+      distinct and violent politeness; &ldquo;will you oblige me by jolly well minding
+      your own business? Just you stand up and fight, and we'll see who will be
+      washed away like seaweed. You wanted to finish this fight and you shall
+      finish it, or I'll denounce you as a coward to the whole of that assembled
+      company.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Evan looked very doubtful and offered a somewhat wavering weapon; but he
+      was quickly brought back to his senses by his opponent's sword-point,
+      which shot past him, shaving his shoulder by a hair. By this time the
+      waves were well up Turnbull's thigh, and what was worse, they were
+      beginning to roll and break heavily around them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan parried this first lunge perfectly, the next less perfectly; the
+      third in all human probability he would not have parried at all; the
+      Christian champion would have been pinned like a butterfly, and the
+      atheistic champion left to drown like a rat, with such consolation as his
+      view of the cosmos afforded him. But just as Turnbull launched his
+      heaviest stroke, the sea, in which he stood up to his hips, launched a yet
+      heavier one. A wave breaking beyond the others smote him heavily like a
+      hammer of water. One leg gave way, he was swung round and sucked into the
+      retreating sea, still gripping his sword.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan put his sword between his teeth and plunged after his disappearing
+      enemy. He had the sense of having the whole universe on top of him as
+      crest after crest struck him down. It seemed to him quite a cosmic
+      collapse, as if all the seven heavens were falling on him one after the
+      other. But he got hold of the atheist's left leg and he did not let it go.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After some ten minutes of foam and frenzy, in which all the senses at once
+      seemed blasted by the sea, Evan found himself laboriously swimming on a
+      low, green swell, with the sword still in his teeth and the editor of <i>The
+      Atheist</i> still under his arm. What he was going to do he had not even
+      the most glimmering idea; so he merely kept his grip and swam somehow with
+      one hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He ducked instinctively as there bulked above him a big, black wave, much
+      higher than any that he had seen. Then he saw that it was hardly the shape
+      of any possible wave. Then he saw that it was a fisherman's boat, and,
+      leaping upward, caught hold of the bow. The boat pitched forward with its
+      stern in the air for just as much time as was needed to see that there was
+      nobody in it. After a moment or two of desperate clambering, however,
+      there were two people in it, Mr. Evan MacIan, panting and sweating, and
+      Mr. James Turnbull, uncommonly close to being drowned. After ten minutes'
+      aimless tossing in the empty fishing-boat he recovered, however, stirred,
+      stretched himself, and looked round on the rolling waters. Then, while
+      taking no notice of the streams of salt water that were pouring from his
+      hair, beard, coat, boots, and trousers, he carefully wiped the wet off his
+      sword-blade to preserve it from the possibilities of rust.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan found two oars in the bottom of the deserted boat and began
+      somewhat drearily to row.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+           *                    *                   *
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      A rainy twilight was clearing to cold silver over the moaning sea, when
+      the battered boat that had rolled and drifted almost aimlessly all night,
+      came within sight of land, though of land which looked almost as lost and
+      savage as the waves. All night there had been but little lifting in the
+      leaden sea, only now and then the boat had been heaved up, as on a huge
+      shoulder which slipped from under it; such occasional sea-quakes came
+      probably from the swell of some steamer that had passed it in the dark;
+      otherwise the waves were harmless though restless. But it was piercingly
+      cold, and there was, from time to time, a splutter of rain like the
+      splutter of the spray, which seemed almost to freeze as it fell. MacIan,
+      more at home than his companion in this quite barbarous and elemental sort
+      of adventure, had rowed toilsomely with the heavy oars whenever he saw
+      anything that looked like land; but for the most part had trusted with
+      grim transcendentalism to wind and tide. Among the implements of their
+      first outfit the brandy alone had remained to him, and he gave it to his
+      freezing companion in quantities which greatly alarmed that temperate
+      Londoner; but MacIan came from the cold seas and mists where a man can
+      drink a tumbler of raw whisky in a boat without it making him wink.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the Highlander began to pull really hard upon the oars, Turnbull
+      craned his dripping red head out of the boat to see the goal of his
+      exertions. It was a sufficiently uninviting one; nothing so far as could
+      be seen but a steep and shelving bank of shingle, made of loose little
+      pebbles such as children like, but slanting up higher than a house. On the
+      top of the mound, against the sky line, stood up the brown skeleton of
+      some broken fence or breakwater. With the grey and watery dawn crawling up
+      behind it, the fence really seemed to say to our philosophic adventurers
+      that they had come at last to the other end of nowhere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bent by necessity to his labour, MacIan managed the heavy boat with real
+      power and skill, and when at length he ran it up on a smoother part of the
+      slope it caught and held so that they could clamber out, not sinking
+      farther than their knees into the water and the shingle. A foot or two
+      farther up their feet found the beach firmer, and a few moments afterwards
+      they were leaning on the ragged breakwater and looking back at the sea
+      they had escaped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They had a dreary walk across wastes of grey shingle in the grey dawn
+      before they began to come within hail of human fields or roads; nor had
+      they any notion of what fields or roads they would be. Their boots were
+      beginning to break up and the confusion of stones tried them severely, so
+      that they were glad to lean on their swords, as if they were the staves of
+      pilgrims. MacIan thought vaguely of a weird ballad of his own country
+      which describes the soul in Purgatory as walking on a plain full of sharp
+      stones, and only saved by its own charities upon earth.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+        If ever thou gavest hosen and shoon
+            Every night and all,
+        Sit thee down and put them on,
+            And Christ receive thy soul.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull had no such lyrical meditations, but he was in an even worse
+      temper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At length they came to a pale ribbon of road, edged by a shelf of rough
+      and almost colourless turf; and a few feet up the slope there stood grey
+      and weather-stained, one of those big wayside crucifixes which are seldom
+      seen except in Catholic countries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan put his hand to his head and found that his bonnet was not there.
+      Turnbull gave one glance at the crucifix&mdash;a glance at once
+      sympathetic and bitter, in which was concentrated the whole of Swinburne's
+      poem on the same occasion.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+        O hidden face of man, whereover
+            The years have woven a viewless veil,
+        If thou wert verily man's lover
+            What did thy love or blood avail?
+        Thy blood the priests mix poison of,
+        And in gold shekels coin thy love.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Then, leaving MacIan in his attitude of prayer, Turnbull began to look
+      right and left very sharply, like one looking for something. Suddenly,
+      with a little cry, he saw it and ran forward. A few yards from them along
+      the road a lean and starved sort of hedge came pitifully to an end. Caught
+      upon its prickly angle, however, there was a very small and very dirty
+      scrap of paper that might have hung there for months, since it escaped
+      from someone tearing up a letter or making a spill out of a newspaper.
+      Turnbull snatched at it and found it was the corner of a printed page,
+      very coarsely printed, like a cheap novelette, and just large enough to
+      contain the words: &ldquo;<i>et c'est elle qui</i>&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hurrah!&rdquo; cried Turnbull, waving his fragment; &ldquo;we are safe at last. We
+      are free at last. We are somewhere better than England or Eden or
+      Paradise. MacIan, we are in the Land of the Duel!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where do you say?&rdquo; said the other, looking at him heavily and with
+      knitted brows, like one almost dazed with the grey doubts of desolate
+      twilight and drifting sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are in France!&rdquo; cried Turnbull, with a voice like a trumpet, &ldquo;in the
+      land where things really happen&mdash;<i>Tout arrive en France</i>. We
+      arrive in France. Look at this little message,&rdquo; and he held out the scrap
+      of paper. &ldquo;There's an omen for you superstitious hill folk. <i>C'est elle
+      qui&mdash;Mais oui, mais oui, c'est elle qui sauvera encore le monde</i>.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;France!&rdquo; repeated MacIan, and his eyes awoke again in his head like large
+      lamps lighted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, France!&rdquo; said Turnbull, and all the rhetorical part of him came to
+      the top, his face growing as red as his hair. &ldquo;France, that has always
+      been in rebellion for liberty and reason. France, that has always assailed
+      superstition with the club of Rabelais or the rapier of Voltaire. France,
+      at whose first council table sits the sublime figure of Julian the
+      Apostate. France, where a man said only the other day those splendid
+      unanswerable words&rdquo;&mdash;with a superb gesture&mdash;&ldquo;'we have
+      extinguished in heaven those lights that men shall never light again.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said MacIan, in a voice that shook with a controlled passion. &ldquo;But
+      France, which was taught by St. Bernard and led to war by Joan of Arc.
+      France that made the crusades. France that saved the Church and scattered
+      the heresies by the mouths of Bossuet and Massillon. France, which shows
+      today the conquering march of Catholicism, as brain after brain surrenders
+      to it, Brunetière, Coppée, Hauptmann, Barrès, Bourget, Lemaître.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;France!&rdquo; asserted Turnbull with a sort of rollicking self-exaggeration,
+      very unusual with him, &ldquo;France, which is one torrent of splendid
+      scepticism from Abelard to Anatole France.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;France,&rdquo; said MacIan, &ldquo;which is one cataract of clear faith from St.
+      Louis to Our Lady of Lourdes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;France at least,&rdquo; cried Turnbull, throwing up his sword in schoolboy
+      triumph, &ldquo;in which these things are thought about and fought about.
+      France, where reason and religion clash in one continual tournament.
+      France, above all, where men understand the pride and passion which have
+      plucked our blades from their scabbards. Here, at least, we shall not be
+      chased and spied on by sickly parsons and greasy policemen, because we
+      wish to put our lives on the game. Courage, my friend, we have come to the
+      country of honour.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan did not even notice the incongruous phrase &ldquo;my friend&rdquo;, but nodding
+      again and again, drew his sword and flung the scabbard far behind him in
+      the road.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he cried, in a voice of thunder, &ldquo;we will fight here and <i>He</i>
+      shall look on at it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull glanced at the crucifix with a sort of scowling good-humour and
+      then said: &ldquo;He may look and see His cross defeated.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The cross cannot be defeated,&rdquo; said MacIan, &ldquo;for it is Defeat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A second afterwards the two bright, blood-thirsty weapons made the sign of
+      the cross in horrible parody upon each other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They had not touched each other twice, however, when upon the hill, above
+      the crucifix, there appeared another horrible parody of its shape; the
+      figure of a man who appeared for an instant waving his outspread arms. He
+      had vanished in an instant; but MacIan, whose fighting face was set that
+      way, had seen the shape momentarily but quite photographically. And while
+      it was like a comic repetition of the cross, it was also, in that place
+      and hour, something more incredible. It had been only instantaneously on
+      the retina of his eye; but unless his eye and mind were going mad
+      together, the figure was that of an ordinary London policeman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He tried to concentrate his senses on the sword-play; but one half of his
+      brain was wrestling with the puzzle; the apocalyptic and almost seraphic
+      apparition of a stout constable out of Clapham on top of a dreary and
+      deserted hill in France. He did not, however, have to puzzle long. Before
+      the duellists had exchanged half a dozen passes, the big, blue policeman
+      appeared once more on the top of the hill, a palpable monstrosity in the
+      eye of heaven. He was waving only one arm now and seemed to be shouting
+      directions. At the same moment a mass of blue blocked the corner of the
+      road behind the small, smart figure of Turnbull, and a small company of
+      policemen in the English uniform came up at a kind of half-military
+      double.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull saw the stare of consternation in his enemy's face and swung
+      round to share its cause. When he saw it, cool as he was, he staggered
+      back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What the devil are you doing here?&rdquo; he called out in a high, shrill voice
+      of authority, like one who finds a tramp in his own larder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, sir,&rdquo; said the sergeant in command, with that sort of heavy
+      civility shown only to the evidently guilty, &ldquo;seems to me we might ask
+      what are you doing here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are having an affair of honour,&rdquo; said Turnbull, as if it were the most
+      rational thing in the world. &ldquo;If the French police like to interfere, let
+      them interfere. But why the blue blazes should you interfere, you great
+      blue blundering sausages?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm afraid, sir,&rdquo; said the sergeant with restraint, &ldquo;I'm afraid I don't
+      quite follow you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean, why don't the French police take this up if it's got to be taken
+      up? I always heard that they were spry enough in their own way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, sir,&rdquo; said the sergeant reflectively, &ldquo;you see, sir, the French
+      police don't take this up&mdash;well, because you see, sir, this ain't
+      France. This is His Majesty's dominions, same as 'Ampstead 'eath.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not France?&rdquo; repeated Turnbull, with a sort of dull incredulity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, sir,&rdquo; said the sergeant; &ldquo;though most of the people talk French. This
+      is the island called St. Loup, sir, an island in the Channel. We've been
+      sent down specially from London, as you were such specially distinguished
+      criminals, if you'll allow me to say so. Which reminds me to warn you that
+      anything you say may be used against you at your trial.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite so,&rdquo; said Turnbull, and lurched suddenly against the sergeant, so
+      as to tip him over the edge of the road with a crash into the shingle
+      below. Then leaving MacIan and the policemen equally and instantaneously
+      nailed to the road, he ran a little way along it, leapt off on to a part
+      of the beach, which he had found in his journey to be firmer, and went
+      across it with a clatter of pebbles. His sudden calculation was
+      successful; the police, unacquainted with the various levels of the loose
+      beach, tried to overtake him by the shorter cut and found themselves,
+      being heavy men, almost up to their knees in shoals of slippery shingle.
+      Two who had been slower with their bodies were quicker with their minds,
+      and seeing Turnbull's trick, ran along the edge of the road after him.
+      Then MacIan finally awoke, and leaving half his sleeve in the grip of the
+      only man who tried to hold him, took the two policemen in the small of
+      their backs with the impetus of a cannon-ball and, sending them also flat
+      among the stones, went tearing after his twin defier of the law.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As they were both good runners, the start they had gained was decisive.
+      They dropped over a high breakwater farther on upon the beach, turned
+      sharply, and scrambled up a line of ribbed rocks, crowned with a thicket,
+      crawled through it, scratching their hands and faces, and dropped into
+      another road; and there found that they could slacken their speed into a
+      steady trot. In all this desperate dart and scramble, they still kept hold
+      of their drawn swords, which now, indeed, in the vigorous phrase of
+      Bunyan, seemed almost to grow out of their hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They had run another half mile or so when it became apparent that they
+      were entering a sort of scattered village. One or two whitewashed cottages
+      and even a shop had appeared along the side of the road. Then, for the
+      first time, Turnbull twisted round his red bear to get a glimpse of his
+      companion, who was a foot or two behind, and remarked abruptly: &ldquo;Mr.
+      MacIan, we've been going the wrong way to work all along. We're traced
+      everywhere, because everybody knows about us. It's as if one went about
+      with Kruger's beard on Mafeking Night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean?&rdquo; said MacIan, innocently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean,&rdquo; said Turnbull, with steady conviction, &ldquo;that what we want is a
+      little diplomacy, and I am going to buy some in a shop.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0011" id="link2H_4_0011">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XI. A SCANDAL IN THE VILLAGE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      In the little hamlet of Haroc, in the Isle of St. Loup, there lived a man
+      who&mdash;though living under the English flag&mdash;was absolutely
+      untypical of the French tradition. He was quite unnoticeable, but that was
+      exactly where he was quite himself. He was not even extraordinarily
+      French; but then it is against the French tradition to be extraordinarily
+      French. Ordinary Englishmen would only have thought him a little
+      old-fashioned; imperialistic Englishmen would really have mistaken him for
+      the old John Bull of the caricatures. He was stout; he was quite
+      undistinguished; and he had side-whiskers, worn just a little longer than
+      John Bull's. He was by name Pierre Durand; he was by trade a wine
+      merchant; he was by politics a conservative republican; he had been
+      brought up a Catholic, had always thought and acted as an agnostic, and
+      was very mildly returning to the Church in his later years. He had a
+      genius (if one can even use so wild a word in connexion with so tame a
+      person) a genius for saying the conventional thing on every conceivable
+      subject; or rather what we in England would call the conventional thing.
+      For it was not convention with him, but solid and manly conviction.
+      Convention implies cant or affectation, and he had not the faintest smell
+      of either. He was simply an ordinary citizen with ordinary views; and if
+      you had told him so he would have taken it as an ordinary compliment. If
+      you had asked him about women, he would have said that one must preserve
+      their domesticity and decorum; he would have used the stalest words, but
+      he would have in reserve the strongest arguments. If you had asked him
+      about government, he would have said that all citizens were free and
+      equal, but he would have meant what he said. If you had asked him about
+      education, he would have said that the young must be trained up in habits
+      of industry and of respect for their parents. Still he would have set them
+      the example of industry, and he would have been one of the parents whom
+      they could respect. A state of mind so hopelessly central is depressing to
+      the English instinct. But then in England a man announcing these
+      platitudes is generally a fool and a frightened fool, announcing them out
+      of mere social servility. But Durand was anything but a fool; he had read
+      all the eighteenth century, and could have defended his platitudes round
+      every angle of eighteenth-century argument. And certainly he was anything
+      but a coward: swollen and sedentary as he was, he could have hit any man
+      back who touched him with the instant violence of an automatic machine;
+      and dying in a uniform would have seemed to him only the sort of thing
+      that sometimes happens. I am afraid it is impossible to explain this
+      monster amid the exaggerative sects and the eccentric clubs of my country.
+      He was merely a man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He lived in a little villa which was furnished well with comfortable
+      chairs and tables and highly uncomfortable classical pictures and
+      medallions. The art in his home contained nothing between the two extremes
+      of hard, meagre designs of Greek heads and Roman togas, and on the other
+      side a few very vulgar Catholic images in the crudest colours; these were
+      mostly in his daughter's room. He had recently lost his wife, whom he had
+      loved heartily and rather heavily in complete silence, and upon whose
+      grave he was constantly in the habit of placing hideous little wreaths,
+      made out of a sort of black-and-white beads. To his only daughter he was
+      equally devoted, though he restricted her a good deal under a sort of
+      theoretic alarm about her innocence; an alarm which was peculiarly
+      unnecessary, first, because she was an exceptionally reticent and
+      religious girl, and secondly, because there was hardly anybody else in the
+      place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Madeleine Durand was physically a sleepy young woman, and might easily
+      have been supposed to be morally a lazy one. It is, however, certain that
+      the work of her house was done somehow, and it is even more rapidly
+      ascertainable that nobody else did it. The logician is, therefore, driven
+      back upon the assumption that she did it; and that lends a sort of
+      mysterious interest to her personality at the beginning. She had very
+      broad, low, and level brows, which seemed even lower because her warm
+      yellow hair clustered down to her eyebrows; and she had a face just plump
+      enough not to look as powerful as it was. Anything that was heavy in all
+      this was abruptly lightened by two large, light china-blue eyes, lightened
+      all of a sudden as if it had been lifted into the air by two big blue
+      butterflies. The rest of her was less than middle-sized, and was of a
+      casual and comfortable sort; and she had this difference from such girls
+      as the girl in the motor-car, that one did not incline to take in her
+      figure at all, but only her broad and leonine and innocent head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Both the father and the daughter were of the sort that would normally have
+      avoided all observation; that is, all observation in that extraordinary
+      modern world which calls out everything except strength. Both of them had
+      strength below the surface; they were like quiet peasants owning enormous
+      and unquarried mines. The father with his square face and grey side
+      whiskers, the daughter with her square face and golden fringe of hair,
+      were both stronger than they know; stronger than anyone knew. The father
+      believed in civilization, in the storied tower we have erected to affront
+      nature; that is, the father believed in Man. The daughter believed in God;
+      and was even stronger. They neither of them believed in themselves; for
+      that is a decadent weakness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The daughter was called a devotee. She left upon ordinary people the
+      impression&mdash;the somewhat irritating impression&mdash;produced by such
+      a person; it can only be described as the sense of strong water being
+      perpetually poured into some abyss. She did her housework easily; she
+      achieved her social relations sweetly; she was never neglectful and never
+      unkind. This accounted for all that was soft in her, but not for all that
+      was hard. She trod firmly as if going somewhere; she flung her face back
+      as if defying something; she hardly spoke a cross word, yet there was
+      often battle in her eyes. The modern man asked doubtfully where all this
+      silent energy went to. He would have stared still more doubtfully if he
+      had been told that it all went into her prayers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The conventions of the Isle of St. Loup were necessarily a compromise or
+      confusion between those of France and England; and it was vaguely possible
+      for a respectable young lady to have half-attached lovers, in a way that
+      would be impossible to the <i>bourgeoisie</i> of France. One man in
+      particular had made himself an unmistakable figure in the track of this
+      girl as she went to church. He was a short, prosperous-looking man, whose
+      long, bushy black beard and clumsy black umbrella made him seem both
+      shorter and older than he really was; but whose big, bold eyes, and step
+      that spurned the ground, gave him an instant character of youth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His name was Camille Bert, and he was a commercial traveller who had only
+      been in the island an idle week before he began to hover in the tracks of
+      Madeleine Durand. Since everyone knows everyone in so small a place,
+      Madeleine certainly knew him to speak to; but it is not very evident that
+      she ever spoke. He haunted her, however; especially at church, which was,
+      indeed, one of the few certain places for finding her. In her home she had
+      a habit of being invisible, sometimes through insatiable domesticity,
+      sometimes through an equally insatiable solitude. M. Bert did not give the
+      impression of a pious man, though he did give, especially with his eyes,
+      the impression of an honest one. But he went to Mass with a simple
+      exactitude that could not be mistaken for a pose, or even for a vulgar
+      fascination. It was perhaps this religious regularity which eventually
+      drew Madeleine into recognition of him. At least it is certain that she
+      twice spoke to him with her square and open smile in the porch of the
+      church; and there was human nature enough in the hamlet to turn even that
+      into gossip.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the real interest arose suddenly as a squall arises with the
+      extraordinary affair that occurred about five days after. There was about
+      a third of a mile beyond the village of Haroc a large but lonely hotel
+      upon the London or Paris model, but commonly almost entirely empty. Among
+      the accidental group of guests who had come to it at this season was a man
+      whose nationality no one could fix and who bore the non-committal name of
+      Count Gregory. He treated everybody with complete civility and almost in
+      complete silence. On the few occasions when he spoke, he spoke either
+      French, English, or once (to the priest) Latin; and the general opinion
+      was that he spoke them all wrong. He was a large, lean man, with the stoop
+      of an aged eagle, and even the eagle's nose to complete it; he had
+      old-fashioned military whiskers and moustache dyed with a garish and
+      highly incredible yellow. He had the dress of a showy gentleman and the
+      manners of a decayed gentleman; he seemed (as with a sort of simplicity)
+      to be trying to be a dandy when he was too old even to know that he was
+      old. Ye he was decidedly a handsome figure with his curled yellow hair and
+      lean fastidious face; and he wore a peculiar frock-coat of bright
+      turquoise blue, with an unknown order pinned to it, and he carried a huge
+      and heavy cane. Despite his silence and his dandified dress and whiskers,
+      the island might never have heard of him but for the extraordinary event
+      of which I have spoken, which fell about in the following way:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In such casual atmospheres only the enthusiastic go to Benediction; and as
+      the warm blue twilight closed over the little candle-lit church and
+      village, the line of worshippers who went home from the former to the
+      latter thinned out until it broke. On one such evening at least no one was
+      in church except the quiet, unconquerable Madeleine, four old women, one
+      fisherman, and, of course, the irrepressible M. Camille Bert. The others
+      seemed to melt away afterwards into the peacock colours of the dim green
+      grass and the dark blue sky. Even Durand was invisible instead of being
+      merely reverentially remote; and Madeleine set forth through the patch of
+      black forest alone. She was not in the least afraid of loneliness, because
+      she was not afraid of devils. I think they were afraid of her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a clearing of the wood, however, which was lit up with a last patch of
+      the perishing sunlight, there advanced upon her suddenly one who was more
+      startling than a devil. The incomprehensible Count Gregory, with his
+      yellow hair like flame and his face like the white ashes of the flame, was
+      advancing bareheaded towards her, flinging out his arms and his long
+      fingers with a frantic gesture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are alone here,&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;and you would be at my mercy, only that I
+      am at yours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then his frantic hands fell by his sides and he looked up under his brows
+      with an expression that went well with his hard breathing. Madeleine
+      Durand had come to a halt at first in childish wonder, and now, with more
+      than masculine self-control, &ldquo;I fancy I know your face, sir,&rdquo; she said, as
+      if to gain time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know I shall not forget yours,&rdquo; said the other, and extended once more
+      his ungainly arms in an unnatural gesture. Then of a sudden there came out
+      of him a spout of wild and yet pompous phrases. &ldquo;It is as well that you
+      should know the worst and the best. I am a man who knows no limit; I am
+      the most callous of criminals, the most unrepentant of sinners. There is
+      no man in my dominions so vile as I. But my dominions stretch from the
+      olives of Italy to the fir-woods of Denmark, and there is no nook of all
+      of them in which I have not done a sin. But when I bear you away I shall
+      be doing my first sacrilege, and also my first act of virtue.&rdquo; He seized
+      her suddenly by the elbow; and she did not scream but only pulled and
+      tugged. Yet though she had not screamed, someone astray in the woods
+      seemed to have heard the struggle. A short but nimble figure came along
+      the woodland path like a humming bullet and had caught Count Gregory a
+      crack across the face before his own could be recognized. When it was
+      recognized it was that of Camille, with the black elderly beard and the
+      young ardent eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Up to the moment when Camille had hit the Count, Madeleine had entertained
+      no doubt that the Count was merely a madman. Now she was startled with a
+      new sanity; for the tall man in the yellow whiskers and yellow moustache
+      first returned the blow of Bert, as if it were a sort of duty, and then
+      stepped back with a slight bow and an easy smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This need go no further here, M. Bert,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I need not remind you
+      how far it should go elsewhere.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly, you need remind me of nothing,&rdquo; answered Camille, stolidly. &ldquo;I
+      am glad that you are just not too much of a scoundrel for a gentleman to
+      fight.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are detaining the lady,&rdquo; said Count Gregory, with politeness; and,
+      making a gesture suggesting that he would have taken off his hat if he had
+      had one, he strode away up the avenue of trees and eventually disappeared.
+      He was so complete an aristocrat that he could offer his back to them all
+      the way up that avenue; and his back never once looked uncomfortable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must allow me to see you home,&rdquo; said Bert to the girl, in a gruff and
+      almost stifled voice; &ldquo;I think we have only a little way to go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only a little way,&rdquo; she said, and smiled once more that night, in spite
+      of fatigue and fear and the world and the flesh and the devil. The glowing
+      and transparent blue of twilight had long been covered by the opaque and
+      slatelike blue of night, when he handed her into the lamp-lit interior of
+      her home. He went out himself into the darkness, walking sturdily, but
+      tearing at his black beard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All the French or semi-French gentry of the district considered this a
+      case in which a duel was natural and inevitable, and neither party had any
+      difficulty in finding seconds, strangers as they were in the place. Two
+      small landowners, who were careful, practising Catholics, willingly
+      undertook to represent that strict church-goer Camille Burt; while the
+      profligate but apparently powerful Count Gregory found friends in an
+      energetic local doctor who was ready for social promotion and an
+      accidental Californian tourist who was ready for anything. As no
+      particular purpose could be served by delay, it was arranged that the
+      affair should fall out three days afterwards. And when this was settled
+      the whole community, as it were, turned over again in bed and thought no
+      more about the matter. At least there was only one member of it who seemed
+      to be restless, and that was she who was commonly most restful. On the
+      next night Madeleine Durand went to church as usual; and as usual the
+      stricken Camille was there also. What was not so usual was that when they
+      were a bow-shot from the church Madeleine turned round and walked back to
+      him. &ldquo;Sir,&rdquo; she began, &ldquo;it is not wrong of me to speak to you,&rdquo; and the
+      very words gave him a jar of unexpected truth; for in all the novels he
+      had ever read she would have begun: &ldquo;It is wrong of me to speak to you.&rdquo;
+       She went on with wide and serious eyes like an animal's: &ldquo;It is not wrong
+      of me to speak to you, because your soul, or anybody's soul, matters so
+      much more than what the world says about anybody. I want to talk to you
+      about what you are going to do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bert saw in front of him the inevitable heroine of the novels trying to
+      prevent bloodshed; and his pale firm face became implacable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I would do anything but that for you,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;but no man can be called
+      less than a man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked at him for a moment with a face openly puzzled, and then broke
+      into an odd and beautiful half-smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I don't mean that,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;I don't talk about what I don't
+      understand. No one has ever hit me; and if they had I should not feel as a
+      man may. I am sure it is not the best thing to fight. It would be better
+      to forgive&mdash;if one could really forgive. But when people dine with my
+      father and say that fighting a duel is mere murder&mdash;of course I can
+      see that is not just. It's all so different&mdash;having a reason&mdash;and
+      letting the other man know&mdash;and using the same guns and things&mdash;and
+      doing it in front of your friends. I'm awfully stupid, but I know that men
+      like you aren't murderers. But it wasn't that that I meant.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What did you mean?&rdquo; asked the other, looking broodingly at the earth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't you know,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;there is only one more celebration? I thought
+      that as you always go to church&mdash;I thought you would communicate this
+      morning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bert stepped backward with a sort of action she had never seen in him
+      before. It seemed to alter his whole body.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You may be right or wrong to risk dying,&rdquo; said the girl, simply; &ldquo;the
+      poor women in our village risk it whenever they have a baby. You men are
+      the other half of the world. I know nothing about when you ought to die.
+      But surely if you are daring to try and find God beyond the grave and
+      appeal to Him&mdash;you ought to let Him find you when He comes and stands
+      there every morning in our little church.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And placid as she was, she made a little gesture of argument, of which the
+      pathos wrung the heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      M. Camille Bert was by no means placid. Before that incomplete gesture and
+      frankly pleading face he retreated as if from the jaws of a dragon. His
+      dark black hair and beard looked utterly unnatural against the startling
+      pallor of his face. When at last he said something it was: &ldquo;O God! I can't
+      stand this!&rdquo; He did not say it in French. Nor did he, strictly speaking,
+      say it in English. The truth (interesting only to anthropologists) is that
+      he said it in Scotch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There will be another mass in a matter of eight hours,&rdquo; said Madeleine,
+      with a sort of business eagerness and energy, &ldquo;and you can do it then
+      before the fighting. You must forgive me, but I was so frightened that you
+      would not do it at all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bert seemed to crush his teeth together until they broke, and managed to
+      say between them: &ldquo;And why should you suppose that I shouldn't do as you
+      say&mdash;I mean not to do it at all?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You always go to Mass,&rdquo; answered the girl, opening her wide blue eyes,
+      &ldquo;and the Mass is very long and tiresome unless one loves God.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then it was that Bert exploded with a brutality which might have come from
+      Count Gregory, his criminal opponent. He advanced upon Madeleine with
+      flaming eyes, and almost took her by the two shoulders. &ldquo;I do not love
+      God,&rdquo; he cried, speaking French with the broadest Scotch accent; &ldquo;I do not
+      want to find Him; I do not think He is there to be found. I must burst up
+      the show; I must and will say everything. You are the happiest and
+      honestest thing I ever saw in this godless universe. And I am the dirtiest
+      and most dishonest.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Madeleine looked at him doubtfully for an instant, and then said with a
+      sudden simplicity and cheerfulness: &ldquo;Oh, but if you are really sorry it is
+      all right. If you are horribly sorry it is all the better. You have only
+      to go and tell the priest so and he will give you God out of his own
+      hands.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hate your priest and I deny your God!&rdquo; cried the man, &ldquo;and I tell you
+      God is a lie and a fable and a mask. And for the first time in my life I
+      do not feel superior to God.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What can it all mean?&rdquo; said Madeleine, in massive wonder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because I am a fable also and a mask,&rdquo; said the man. He had been plucking
+      fiercely at his black beard and hair all the time; now he suddenly plucked
+      them off and flung them like moulted feathers in the mire. This
+      extraordinary spoliation left in the sunlight the same face, but a much
+      younger head&mdash;a head with close chestnut curls and a short chestnut
+      beard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now you know the truth,&rdquo; he answered, with hard eyes. &ldquo;I am a cad who has
+      played a crooked trick on a quiet village and a decent woman for a private
+      reason of his own. I might have played it successfully on any other woman;
+      I have hit the one woman on whom it cannot be played. It's just like my
+      damned luck. The plain truth is,&rdquo; and here when he came to the plain truth
+      he boggled and blundered as Evan had done in telling it to the girl in the
+      motor-car.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The plain truth is,&rdquo; he said at last, &ldquo;that I am James Turnbull the
+      atheist. The police are after me; not for atheism but for being ready to
+      fight for it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I saw something about you in a newspaper,&rdquo; said the girl, with a
+      simplicity which even surprise could never throw off its balance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Evan MacIan said there was a God,&rdquo; went on the other, stubbornly, &ldquo;and I
+      say there isn't. And I have come to fight for the fact that there is no
+      God; it is for that that I have seen this cursed island and your blessed
+      face.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You want me really to believe,&rdquo; said Madeleine, with parted lips, &ldquo;that
+      you think&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want you to hate me!&rdquo; cried Turnbull, in agony. &ldquo;I want you to be sick
+      when you think of my name. I am sure there is no God.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But there is,&rdquo; said Madeleine, quite quietly, and rather with the air of
+      one telling children about an elephant. &ldquo;Why, I touched His body only this
+      morning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You touched a bit of bread,&rdquo; said Turnbull, biting his knuckles. &ldquo;Oh, I
+      will say anything that can madden you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You think it is only a bit of bread,&rdquo; said the girl, and her lips
+      tightened ever so little.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know it is only a bit of bread,&rdquo; said Turnbull, with violence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She flung back her open face and smiled. &ldquo;Then why did you refuse to eat
+      it?&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      James Turnbull made a little step backward, and for the first time in his
+      life there seemed to break out and blaze in his head thoughts that were
+      not his own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, how silly of them,&rdquo; cried out Madeleine, with quite a schoolgirl
+      gaiety, &ldquo;why, how silly of them to call <i>you</i> a blasphemer! Why, you
+      have wrecked your whole business because you would not commit blasphemy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The man stood, a somewhat comic figure in his tragic bewilderment, with
+      the honest red head of James Turnbull sticking out of the rich and
+      fictitious garments of Camille Bert. But the startled pain of his face was
+      strong enough to obliterate the oddity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You come down here,&rdquo; continued the lady, with that female emphasis which
+      is so pulverizing in conversation and so feeble at a public meeting, &ldquo;you
+      and your MacIan come down here and put on false beards or noses in order
+      to fight. You pretend to be a Catholic commercial traveller from France.
+      Poor Mr. MacIan has to pretend to be a dissolute nobleman from nowhere.
+      Your scheme succeeds; you pick a quite convincing quarrel; you arrange a
+      quite respectable duel; the duel you have planned so long will come off
+      tomorrow with absolute certainty and safety. And then you throw off your
+      wig and throw up your scheme and throw over your colleague, because I ask
+      you to go into a building and eat a bit of bread. And <i>then</i> you dare
+      to tell me that you are sure there is nothing watching us. Then you say
+      you know there is nothing on the very altar you run away from. You know&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I only know,&rdquo; said Turnbull, &ldquo;that I must run away from you. This has got
+      beyond any talking.&rdquo; And he plunged along into the village, leaving his
+      black wig and beard lying behind him on the road.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the market-place opened before him he saw Count Gregory, that
+      distinguished foreigner, standing and smoking in elegant meditation at the
+      corner of the local café. He immediately made his way rapidly towards him,
+      considering that a consultation was urgent. But he had hardly crossed half
+      of that stony quadrangle when a window burst open above him and a head was
+      thrust out, shouting. The man was in his woollen undershirt, but Turnbull
+      knew the energetic, apologetic head of the sergeant of police. He pointed
+      furiously at Turnbull and shouted his name. A policeman ran excitedly from
+      under an archway and tried to collar him. Two men selling vegetables
+      dropped their baskets and joined in the chase. Turnbull dodged the
+      constable, upset one of the men into his own basket, and bounding towards
+      the distinguished foreign Count, called to him clamorously: &ldquo;Come on,
+      MacIan, the hunt is up again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The prompt reply of Count Gregory was to pull off his large yellow
+      whiskers and scatter them on the breeze with an air of considerable
+      relief. Then he joined the flight of Turnbull, and even as he did so, with
+      one wrench of his powerful hands rent and split the strange, thick stick
+      that he carried. Inside it was a naked old-fashioned rapier. The two got a
+      good start up the road before the whole town was awakened behind them; and
+      half-way up it a similar transformation was seen to take place in Mr.
+      Turnbull's singular umbrella.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two had a long race for the harbour; but the English police were heavy
+      and the French inhabitants were indifferent. In any case, they got used to
+      the notion of the road being clear; and just as they had come to the
+      cliffs MacIan banged into another gentleman with unmistakable surprise.
+      How he knew he was another gentleman merely by banging into him, must
+      remain a mystery. MacIan was a very poor and very sober Scotch gentleman.
+      The other was a very drunk and very wealthy English gentleman. But there
+      was something in the staggered and openly embarrassed apologies that made
+      them understand each other as readily and as quickly and as much as two
+      men talking French in the middle of China. The nearest expression of the
+      type is that it either hits or apologizes; and in this case both
+      apologized.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You seem to be in a hurry,&rdquo; said the unknown Englishman, falling back a
+      step or two in order to laugh with an unnatural heartiness. &ldquo;What's it all
+      about, eh?&rdquo; Then before MacIan could get past his sprawling and staggering
+      figure he ran forward again and said with a sort of shouting and
+      ear-shattering whisper: &ldquo;I say, my name is Wilkinson. <i>You</i> know&mdash;Wilkinson's
+      Entire was my grandfather. Can't drink beer myself. Liver.&rdquo; And he shook
+      his head with extraordinary sagacity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We really are in a hurry, as you say,&rdquo; said MacIan, summoning a
+      sufficiently pleasant smile, &ldquo;so if you will let us pass&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll tell you what, you fellows,&rdquo; said the sprawling gentleman,
+      confidentially, while Evan's agonized ears heard behind him the first
+      paces of the pursuit, &ldquo;if you really are, as you say, in a hurry, I know
+      what it is to be in a hurry&mdash;Lord, what a hurry I was in when we all
+      came out of Cartwright's rooms&mdash;if you really are in a hurry&rdquo;&mdash;and
+      he seemed to steady his voice into a sort of solemnity&mdash;&ldquo;if you are
+      in a hurry, there's nothing like a good yacht for a man in a hurry.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No doubt you're right,&rdquo; said MacIan, and dashed past him in despair. The
+      head of the pursuing host was just showing over the top of the hill behind
+      him. Turnbull had already ducked under the intoxicated gentleman's elbow
+      and fled far in front.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, but look here,&rdquo; said Mr. Wilkinson, enthusiastically running after
+      MacIan and catching him by the sleeve of his coat. &ldquo;If you want to hurry
+      you should take a yacht, and if&rdquo;&mdash;he said, with a burst of
+      rationality, like one leaping to a further point in logic&mdash;&ldquo;if you
+      want a yacht&mdash;you can have mine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Evan pulled up abruptly and looked back at him. &ldquo;We are really in the
+      devil of a hurry,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and if you really have a yacht, the truth is
+      that we would give our ears for it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'll find it in harbour,&rdquo; said Wilkinson, struggling with his speech.
+      &ldquo;Left side of harbour&mdash;called <i>Gibson Girl</i>&mdash;can't think
+      why, old fellow, I never lent it you before.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With these words the benevolent Mr. Wilkinson fell flat on his face in the
+      road, but continued to laugh softly, and turned towards his flying
+      companion a face of peculiar peace and benignity. Evan's mind went through
+      a crisis of instantaneous casuistry, in which it may be that he decided
+      wrongly; but about how he decided his biographer can profess no doubt. Two
+      minutes afterwards he had overtaken Turnbull and told the tale; ten
+      minutes afterwards he and Turnbull had somehow tumbled into the yacht
+      called the <i>Gibson Girl</i> and had somehow pushed off from the Isle of
+      St. Loup.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0012" id="link2H_4_0012">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XII. THE DESERT ISLAND
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Those who happen to hold the view (and Mr. Evan MacIan, now alive and
+      comfortable, is among the number) that something supernatural, some
+      eccentric kindness from god or fairy had guided our adventurers through
+      all their absurd perils, might have found his strongest argument perhaps
+      in their management or mismanagement of Mr. Wilkinson's yacht. Neither of
+      them had the smallest qualification for managing such a vessel; but MacIan
+      had a practical knowledge of the sea in much smaller and quite different
+      boats, while Turnbull had an abstract knowledge of science and some of its
+      applications to navigation, which was worse. The presence of the god or
+      fairy can only be deduced from the fact that they never definitely ran
+      into anything, either a boat, a rock, a quicksand, or a man-of-war. Apart
+      from this negative description, their voyage would be difficult to
+      describe. It took at least a fortnight, and MacIan, who was certainly the
+      shrewder sailor of the two, realized that they were sailing west into the
+      Atlantic and were probably by this time past the Scilly Isles. How much
+      farther they stood out into the western sea it was impossible to
+      conjecture. But they felt certain, at least, that they were far enough
+      into that awful gulf between us and America to make it unlikely that they
+      would soon see land again. It was therefore with legitimate excitement
+      that one rainy morning after daybreak they saw that distinct shape of a
+      solitary island standing up against the encircling strip of silver which
+      ran round the skyline and separated the grey and green of the billows from
+      the grey and mauve of the morning clouds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What can it be?&rdquo; cried MacIan, in a dry-throated excitement. &ldquo;I didn't
+      know there were any Atlantic islands so far beyond the Scillies&mdash;Good
+      Lord, it can't be Madeira, yet?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought you were fond of legends and lies and fables,&rdquo; said Turnbull,
+      grimly. &ldquo;Perhaps it's Atlantis.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course, it might be,&rdquo; answered the other, quite innocently and
+      gravely; &ldquo;but I never thought the story about Atlantis was very solidly
+      established.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whatever it is, we are running on to it,&rdquo; said Turnbull, equably, &ldquo;and we
+      shall be shipwrecked twice, at any rate.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The naked-looking nose of land projecting from the unknown island was,
+      indeed, growing larger and larger, like the trunk of some terrible and
+      advancing elephant. There seemed to be nothing in particular, at least on
+      this side of the island, except shoals of shellfish lying so thick as
+      almost to make it look like one of those toy grottos that the children
+      make. In one place, however, the coast offered a soft, smooth bay of sand,
+      and even the rudimentary ingenuity of the two amateur mariners managed to
+      run up the little ship with her prow well on shore and her bowsprit
+      pointing upward, as in a sort of idiotic triumph.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They tumbled on shore and began to unload the vessel, setting the stores
+      out in rows upon the sand with something of the solemnity of boys playing
+      at pirates. There were Mr. Wilkinson's cigar-boxes and Mr. Wilkinson's
+      dozen of champagne and Mr. Wilkinson's tinned salmon and Mr. Wilkinson's
+      tinned tongue and Mr. Wilkinson's tinned sardines, and every sort of
+      preserved thing that could be seen at the Army and Navy stores. Then
+      MacIan stopped with a jar of pickles in his hand and said abruptly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know why we're doing all this; I suppose we ought really to fall
+      to and get it over.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he added more thoughtfully: &ldquo;Of course this island seems rather bare
+      and the survivor&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The question is,&rdquo; said Turnbull, with cheerful speculation, &ldquo;whether the
+      survivor will be in a proper frame of mind for potted prawns.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan looked down at the rows of tins and bottles, and the cloud of doubt
+      still lowered upon his face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will permit me two liberties, my dear sir,&rdquo; said Turnbull at last:
+      &ldquo;The first is to break open this box and light one of Mr. Wilkinson's
+      excellent cigars, which will, I am sure, assist my meditations; the second
+      is to offer a penny for your thoughts; or rather to convulse the already
+      complex finances of this island by betting a penny that I know them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What on earth are you talking about?&rdquo; asked MacIan, listlessly, in the
+      manner of an inattentive child.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know what you are really thinking, MacIan,&rdquo; repeated Turnbull,
+      laughing. &ldquo;I know what I am thinking, anyhow. And I rather fancy it's the
+      same.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are you thinking?&rdquo; asked Evan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am thinking and you are thinking,&rdquo; said Turnbull, &ldquo;that it is damned
+      silly to waste all that champagne.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Something like the spectre of a smile appeared on the unsmiling visage of
+      the Gael; and he made at least no movement of dissent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We could drink all the wine and smoke all the cigars easily in a week,&rdquo;
+       said Turnbull; &ldquo;and that would be to die feasting like heroes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, and there is something else,&rdquo; said MacIan, with slight hesitation.
+      &ldquo;You see, we are on an almost unknown rock, lost in the Atlantic. The
+      police will never catch us; but then neither may the public ever hear of
+      us; and that was one of the things we wanted.&rdquo; Then, after a pause, he
+      said, drawing in the sand with his sword-point: &ldquo;She may never hear of it
+      at all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well?&rdquo; inquired the other, puffing at his cigar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said MacIan, &ldquo;we might occupy a day or two in drawing up a
+      thorough and complete statement of what we did and why we did it, and all
+      about both our points of view. Then we could leave one copy on the island
+      whatever happens to us and put another in an empty bottle and send it out
+      to sea, as they do in the books.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A good idea,&rdquo; said Turnbull, &ldquo;and now let us finish unpacking.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As MacIan, a tall, almost ghostly figure, paced along the edge of sand
+      that ran round the islet, the purple but cloudy poetry which was his
+      native element was piled up at its thickest upon his soul. The unique
+      island and the endless sea emphasized the thing solely as an epic. There
+      were no ladies or policemen here to give him a hint either of its farce or
+      its tragedy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps when the morning stars were made,&rdquo; he said to himself, &ldquo;God built
+      this island up from the bottom of the world to be a tower and a theatre
+      for the fight between yea and nay.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he wandered up to the highest level of the rock, where there was a
+      roof or plateau of level stone. Half an hour afterwards, Turnbull found
+      him clearing away the loose sand from this table-land and making it smooth
+      and even.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We will fight up here, Turnbull,&rdquo; said MacIan, &ldquo;when the time comes. And
+      till the time comes this place shall be sacred.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought of having lunch up here,&rdquo; said Turnbull, who had a bottle of
+      champagne in his hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no&mdash;not up here,&rdquo; said MacIan, and came down from the height
+      quite hastily. Before he descended, however, he fixed the two swords
+      upright, one at each end of the platform, as if they were human sentinels
+      to guard it under the stars.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then they came down and lunched plentifully in a nest of loose rocks. In
+      the same place that night they supped more plentifully still. The smoke of
+      Mr. Wilkinson's cigars went up ceaseless and strong smelling, like a pagan
+      sacrifice; the golden glories of Mr. Wilkinson's champagne rose to their
+      heads and poured out of them in fancies and philosophies. And occasionally
+      they would look up at the starlight and the rock and see the space guarded
+      by the two cross-hilted swords, which looked like two black crosses at
+      either end of a grave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In this primitive and Homeric truce the week passed by; it consisted
+      almost entirely of eating, drinking, smoking, talking, and occasionally
+      singing. They wrote their records and cast loose their bottle. They never
+      ascended to the ominous plateau; they had never stood there save for that
+      single embarrassed minute when they had had no time to take stock of the
+      seascape or the shape of the land. They did not even explore the island;
+      for MacIan was partly concerned in prayer and Turnbull entirely concerned
+      with tobacco; and both these forms of inspiration can be enjoyed by the
+      secluded and even the sedentary. It was on a golden afternoon, the sun
+      sinking over the sea, rayed like the very head of Apollo, when Turnbull
+      tossed off the last half-pint from the emptied Wilkinsonian bottle, hurled
+      the bottle into the sea with objectless energy, and went up to where his
+      sword stood waiting for him on the hill. MacIan was already standing
+      heavily by his with bent head and eyes reading the ground. He had not even
+      troubled to throw a glance round the island or the horizon. But Turnbull
+      being of a more active and birdlike type of mind did throw a glance round
+      the scene. The consequence of which was that he nearly fell off the rock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On three sides of this shelly and sandy islet the sea stretched blue and
+      infinite without a speck of land or sail; the same as Turnbull had first
+      seen it, except that the tide being out it showed a few yards more of
+      slanting sand under the roots of the rocks. But on the fourth side the
+      island exhibited a more extraordinary feature. In fact, it exhibited the
+      extraordinary feature of not being an island at all. A long, curving neck
+      of sand, as smooth and wet as the neck of the sea serpent, ran out into
+      the sea and joined their rock to a line of low, billowing, and glistening
+      sand-hills, which the sinking sea had just bared to the sun. Whether they
+      were firm sand or quicksand it was difficult to guess; but there was at
+      least no doubt that they lay on the edge of some larger land; for
+      colourless hills appeared faintly behind them and no sea could be seen
+      beyond.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sakes alive!&rdquo; cried Turnbull, with rolling eyes; &ldquo;this ain't an island in
+      the Atlantic. We've butted the bally continent of America.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan turned his head, and his face, already pale, grew a shade paler. He
+      was by this time walking in a world of omens and hieroglyphics, and he
+      could not read anything but what was baffling or menacing in this brown
+      gigantic arm of the earth stretched out into the sea to seize him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;MacIan,&rdquo; said Turnbull, in his temperate way, &ldquo;whatever our eternal
+      interrupted tete-a-tetes have taught us or not taught us, at least we need
+      not fear the charge of fear. If it is essential to your emotions, I will
+      cheerfully finish the fight here and now; but I must confess that if you
+      kill me here I shall die with my curiosity highly excited and unsatisfied
+      upon a minor point of geography.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not want to stop now,&rdquo; said the other, in his elephantine
+      simplicity, &ldquo;but we must stop for a moment, because it is a sign&mdash;perhaps
+      it is a miracle. We must see what is at the end of the road of sand; it
+      may be a bridge built across the gulf by God.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So long as you gratify my query,&rdquo; said Turnbull, laughing and letting
+      back his blade into the sheath, &ldquo;I do not care for what reason you choose
+      to stop.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They clambered down the rocky peninsula and trudged along the sandy
+      isthmus with the plodding resolution of men who seemed almost to have made
+      up their minds to be wanderers on the face of the earth. Despite
+      Turnbull's air of scientific eagerness, he was really the less impatient
+      of the two; and the Highlander went on well ahead of him with passionate
+      strides. By the time they had walked for about half an hour in the ups and
+      downs of those dreary sands, the distance between the two had lengthened
+      and MacIan was only a tall figure silhouetted for an instant upon the
+      crest of some sand-dune and then disappearing behind it. This rather
+      increased the Robinson Crusoe feeling in Mr. Turnbull, and he looked about
+      almost disconsolately for some sign of life. What sort of life he expected
+      it to be if it appeared, he did not very clearly know. He has since
+      confessed that he thinks that in his subconsciousness he expected an
+      alligator.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first sign of life that he did see, however, was something more
+      extraordinary than the largest alligator. It was nothing less than the
+      notorious Mr. Evan MacIan coming bounding back across the sand-heaps
+      breathless, without his cap and keeping the sword in his hand only by a
+      habit now quite hardened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take care, Turnbull,&rdquo; he cried out from a good distance as he ran, &ldquo;I've
+      seen a native.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A native?&rdquo; repeated his companion, whose scenery had of late been chiefly
+      of shellfish, &ldquo;what the deuce! Do you mean an oyster?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said MacIan, stopping and breathing hard, &ldquo;I mean a savage. A black
+      man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, where did you see him?&rdquo; asked the staring editor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Over there&mdash;behind that hill,&rdquo; said the gasping MacIan. &ldquo;He put up
+      his black head and grinned at me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull thrust his hands through his red hair like one who gives up the
+      world as a bad riddle. &ldquo;Lord love a duck,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;can it be Jamaica?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then glancing at his companion with a small frown, as of one slightly
+      suspicious, he said: &ldquo;I say, don't think me rude&mdash;but you're a
+      visionary kind of fellow&mdash;and then we drank a great deal. Do you mind
+      waiting here while I go and see for myself?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shout if you get into trouble,&rdquo; said the Celt, with composure; &ldquo;you will
+      find it as I say.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull ran off ahead with a rapidity now far greater than his rival's,
+      and soon vanished over the disputed sand-hill. Then five minutes passed,
+      and then seven minutes; and MacIan bit his lip and swung his sword, and
+      the other did not reappear. Finally, with a Gaelic oath, Evan started
+      forward to the rescue, and almost at the same moment the small figure of
+      the missing man appeared on the ridge against the sky.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even at that distance, however, there was something odd about his
+      attitude; so odd that MacIan continued to make his way in that direction.
+      It looked as if he were wounded; or, still more, as if he were ill. He
+      wavered as he came down the slope and seemed flinging himself into
+      peculiar postures. But it was only when he came within three feet of
+      MacIan's face, that that observer of mankind fully realized that Mr. James
+      Turnbull was roaring with laughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are quit right,&rdquo; sobbed that wholly demoralized journalist. &ldquo;He's
+      black, oh, there's no doubt the black's all right&mdash;as far as it
+      goes.&rdquo; And he went off again into convulsions of his humorous ailment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What ever is the matter with you?&rdquo; asked MacIan, with stern impatience.
+      &ldquo;Did you see the nigger&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I saw the nigger,&rdquo; gasped Turnbull. &ldquo;I saw the splendid barbarian Chief.
+      I saw the Emperor of Ethiopia&mdash;oh, I saw him all right. The nigger's
+      hands and face are a lovely colour&mdash;and the nigger&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; And
+      he was overtaken once more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, well, well,&rdquo; said Evan, stamping each monosyllable on the sand,
+      &ldquo;what about the nigger?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, the truth is,&rdquo; said Turnbull, suddenly and startlingly, becoming
+      quite grave and precise, &ldquo;the truth is, the nigger is a Margate nigger,
+      and we are now on the edge of the Isle of Thanet, a few miles from
+      Margate.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he had a momentary return of his hysteria and said: &ldquo;I say, old boy,
+      I should like to see a chart of our fortnight's cruise in Wilkinson's
+      yacht.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan had no smile in answer, but his eager lips opened as if parched for
+      the truth. &ldquo;You mean to say,&rdquo; he began&mdash;&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I mean to say,&rdquo; said Turnbull, &ldquo;and I mean to say something funnier
+      still. I have learnt everything I wanted to know from the partially black
+      musician over there, who has taken a run in his war-paint to meet a friend
+      in a quiet pub along the coast&mdash;the noble savage has told me all
+      about it. The bottle containing our declaration, doctrines, and dying
+      sentiments was washed up on Margate beach yesterday in the presence of one
+      alderman, two bathing-machine men, three policemen, seven doctors, and a
+      hundred and thirteen London clerks on a holiday, to all of whom, whether
+      directly or indirectly, our composition gave enormous literary pleasure.
+      Buck up, old man, this story of ours is a switchback. I have begun to
+      understand the pulse and the time of it; now we are up in a cathedral and
+      then we are down in a theatre, where they only play farces. Come, I am
+      quite reconciled&mdash;let us enjoy the farce.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But MacIan said nothing, and an instant afterwards Turnbull himself called
+      out in an entirely changed voice: &ldquo;Oh, this is damnable! This is not to be
+      borne!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan followed his eye along the sand-hills. He saw what looked like the
+      momentary and waving figure of the nigger minstrel, and then he saw a
+      heavy running policeman take the turn of the sand-hill with the smooth
+      solemnity of a railway train.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0013" id="link2H_4_0013">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XIII. THE GARDEN OF PEACE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Up to this instant Evan MacIan had really understood nothing; but when he
+      saw the policeman he saw everything. He saw his enemies, all the powers
+      and princes of the earth. He suddenly altered from a staring statue to a
+      leaping man of the mountains.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We must break away from him here,&rdquo; he cried, briefly, and went like a
+      whirlwind over the sand ridge in a straight line and at a particular
+      angle. When the policeman had finished his admirable railway curve, he
+      found a wall of failing sand between him and the pursued. By the time he
+      had scaled it thrice, slid down twice, and crested it in the third effort,
+      the two flying figures were far in front. They found the sand harder
+      farther on; it began to be crusted with scraps of turf and in a few
+      moments they were flying easily over an open common of rank sea-grass.
+      They had no easy business, however; for the bottle which they had so
+      innocently sent into the chief gate of Thanet had called to life the
+      police of half a county on their trail. From every side across the
+      grey-green common figures could be seen running and closing in; and it was
+      only when MacIan with his big body broke down the tangled barrier of a
+      little wood, as men break down a door with the shoulder; it was only when
+      they vanished crashing into the underworld of the black wood, that their
+      hunters were even instantaneously thrown off the scent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the risk of struggling a little longer like flies in that black web of
+      twigs and trunks, Evan (who had an instinct of the hunter or the hunted)
+      took an incalculable course through the forest, which let them out at last
+      by a forest opening&mdash;quite forgotten by the leaders of the chase.
+      They ran a mile or two farther along the edge of the wood until they
+      reached another and somewhat similar opening. Then MacIan stood utterly
+      still and listened, as animals listen, for every sound in the universe.
+      Then he said: &ldquo;We are quit of them.&rdquo; And Turnbull said: &ldquo;Where shall we go
+      now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan looked at the silver sunset that was closing in, barred by plumy
+      lines of purple cloud; he looked at the high tree-tops that caught the
+      last light and at the birds going heavily homeward, just as if all these
+      things were bits of written advice that he could read.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he said: &ldquo;The best place we can go to is to bed. If we can get some
+      sleep in this wood, now everyone has cleared out of it, it will be worth a
+      handicap of two hundred yards tomorrow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull, who was exceptionally lively and laughing in his demeanour,
+      kicked his legs about like a schoolboy and said he did not want to go to
+      sleep. He walked incessantly and talked very brilliantly. And when at last
+      he lay down on the hard earth, sleep struck him senseless like a hammer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Indeed, he needed the strongest sleep he could get; for the earth was
+      still full of darkness and a kind of morning fog when his fellow-fugitive
+      shook him awake.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No more sleep, I'm afraid,&rdquo; said Evan, in a heavy, almost submissive,
+      voice of apology. &ldquo;They've gone on past us right enough for a good thirty
+      miles; but now they've found out their mistake, and they're coming back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you sure?&rdquo; said Turnbull, sitting up and rubbing his red eyebrows
+      with his hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next moment, however, he had jumped up alive and leaping like a man
+      struck with a shock of cold water, and he was plunging after MacIan along
+      the woodland path. The shape of their old friend the constable had
+      appeared against the pearl and pink of the sunrise. Somehow, it always
+      looked a very funny shape when seen against the sunrise.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+           *                    *                   *
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      A wash of weary daylight was breaking over the country-side, and the
+      fields and roads were full of white mist&mdash;the kind of white mist that
+      clings in corners like cotton wool. The empty road, along which the chase
+      had taken its turn, was overshadowed on one side by a very high
+      discoloured wall, stained, and streaked green, as with seaweed&mdash;evidently
+      the high-shouldered sentinel of some great gentleman's estate. A yard or
+      two from the wall ran parallel to it a linked and tangled line of
+      lime-trees, forming a kind of cloister along the side of the road. It was
+      under this branching colonnade that the two fugitives fled, almost
+      concealed from their pursuers by the twilight, the mist and the leaping
+      zoetrope of shadows. Their feet, though beating the ground furiously, made
+      but a faint noise; for they had kicked away their boots in the wood; their
+      long, antiquated weapons made no jingle or clatter, for they had strapped
+      them across their backs like guitars. They had all the advantages that
+      invisibility and silence can add to speed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A hundred and fifty yards behind them down the centre of the empty road
+      the first of their pursuers came pounding and panting&mdash;a fat but
+      powerful policeman who had distanced all the rest. He came on at a
+      splendid pace for so portly a figure; but, like all heavy bodies in
+      motion, he gave the impression that it would be easier for him to increase
+      his pace than to slacken it suddenly. Nothing short of a brick wall could
+      have abruptly brought him up. Turnbull turned his head slightly and found
+      breath to say something to MacIan. MacIan nodded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pursuer and pursued were fixed in their distance as they fled, for some
+      quarter of a mile, when they came to a place where two or three of the
+      trees grew twistedly together, making a special obscurity. Past this place
+      the pursuing policeman went thundering without thought or hesitation. But
+      he was pursuing his shadow or the wind; for Turnbull had put one foot in a
+      crack of the tree and gone up it as quickly and softly as a cat. Somewhat
+      more laboriously but in equal silence the long legs of the Highlander had
+      followed; and crouching in crucial silence in the cloud of leaves, they
+      saw the whole posse of their pursuers go by and die into the dust and
+      mists of the distance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The white vapour lay, as it often does, in lean and palpable layers; and
+      even the head of the tree was above it in the half-daylight, like a green
+      ship swinging on a sea of foam. But higher yet behind them, and readier to
+      catch the first coming of the sun, ran the rampart of the top of the wall,
+      which in their excitement of escape looked at once indispensable and
+      unattainable, like the wall of heaven. Here, however, it was MacIan's turn
+      to have the advantage; for, though less light-limbed and feline, he was
+      longer and stronger in the arms. In two seconds he had tugged up his chin
+      over the wall like a horizontal bar; the next he sat astride of it, like a
+      horse of stone. With his assistance Turnbull vaulted to the same perch,
+      and the two began cautiously to shift along the wall in the direction by
+      which they had come, doubling on their tracks to throw off the last
+      pursuit. MacIan could not rid himself of the fancy of bestriding a steed;
+      the long, grey coping of the wall shot out in front of him, like the long,
+      grey neck of some nightmare Rosinante. He had the quaint thought that he
+      and Turnbull were two knights on one steed on the old shield of the
+      Templars.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The nightmare of the stone horse was increased by the white fog, which
+      seemed thicker inside the wall than outside. They could make nothing of
+      the enclosure upon which they were partial trespassers, except that the
+      green and crooked branches of a big apple-tree came crawling at them out
+      of the mist, like the tentacles of some green cuttlefish. Anything would
+      serve, however, that was likely to confuse their trail, so they both
+      decided without need of words to use this tree also as a ladder&mdash;a
+      ladder of descent. When they dropped from the lowest branch to the ground
+      their stockinged feet felt hard gravel beneath them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They had alighted in the middle of a very broad garden path, and the
+      clearing mist permitted them to see the edge of a well-clipped lawn.
+      Though the white vapour was still a veil, it was like the gauzy veil of a
+      transformation scene in a pantomime; for through it there glowed shapeless
+      masses of colour, masses which might be clouds of sunrise or mosaics of
+      gold and crimson, or ladies robed in ruby and emerald draperies. As it
+      thinned yet farther they saw that it was only flowers; but flowers in such
+      insolent mass and magnificence as can seldom be seen out of the tropics.
+      Purple and crimson rhododendrons rose arrogantly, like rampant heraldic
+      animals against their burning background of laburnum gold. The roses were
+      red hot; the clematis was, so to speak, blue hot. And yet the mere
+      whiteness of the syringa seemed the most violent colour of all. As the
+      golden sunlight gradually conquered the mists, it had really something of
+      the sensational sweetness of the slow opening of the gates of Eden.
+      MacIan, whose mind was always haunted with such seraphic or titanic
+      parallels, made some such remark to his companion. But Turnbull only
+      cursed and said that it was the back garden of some damnable rich man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the last haze had faded from the ordered paths, the open lawns, and
+      the flaming flower-beds, the two realized, not without an abrupt
+      re-examination of their position, that they were not alone in the garden.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Down the centre of the central garden path, preceded by a blue cloud from
+      a cigarette, was walking a gentleman who evidently understood all the
+      relish of a garden in the very early morning. He was a slim yet satisfied
+      figure, clad in a suit of pale-grey tweed, so subdued that the pattern was
+      imperceptible&mdash;a costume that was casual but not by any means
+      careless. His face, which was reflective and somewhat over-refined, was
+      the face of a quite elderly man, though his stringy hair and moustache
+      were still quite yellow. A double eye-glass, with a broad, black ribbon,
+      drooped from his aquiline nose, and he smiled, as he communed with
+      himself, with a self-content which was rare and almost irritating. The
+      straw panama on his head was many shades shabbier than his clothes, as if
+      he had caught it up by accident.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It needed the full shock of the huge shadow of MacIan, falling across his
+      sunlit path, to rouse him from his smiling reverie. When this had fallen
+      on him he lifted his head a little and blinked at the intruders with
+      short-sighted benevolence, but with far less surprise than might have been
+      expected. He was a gentleman; that is, he had social presence of mind,
+      whether for kindness or for insolence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can I do anything for you?&rdquo; he said, at last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan bowed. &ldquo;You can extend to us your pardon,&rdquo; he said, for he also
+      came of a whole race of gentlemen&mdash;of gentlemen without shirts to
+      their backs. &ldquo;I am afraid we are trespassing. We have just come over the
+      wall.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Over the wall?&rdquo; repeated the smiling old gentleman, still without letting
+      his surprise come uppermost.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose I am not wrong, sir,&rdquo; continued MacIan, &ldquo;in supposing that
+      these grounds inside the wall belong to you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The man in the panama looked at the ground and smoked thoughtfully for a
+      few moments, after which he said, with a sort of matured conviction:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, certainly; the grounds inside the wall really belong to me, and the
+      grounds outside the wall, too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A large proprietor, I imagine,&rdquo; said Turnbull, with a truculent eye.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; answered the old gentleman, looking at him with a steady smile. &ldquo;A
+      large proprietor.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull's eye grew even more offensive, and he began biting his red
+      beard; but MacIan seemed to recognize a type with which he could deal and
+      continued quite easily:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am sure that a man like you will not need to be told that one sees and
+      does a good many things that do not get into the newspapers. Things which,
+      on the whole, had better not get into the newspapers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The smile of the large proprietor broadened for a moment under his loose,
+      light moustache, and the other continued with increased confidence:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One sometimes wants to have it out with another man. The police won't
+      allow it in the streets&mdash;and then there's the County Council&mdash;and
+      in the fields even nothing's allowed but posters of pills. But in a
+      gentleman's garden, now&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The strange gentleman smiled again and said, easily enough: &ldquo;Do you want
+      to fight? What do you want to fight about?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan had understood his man pretty well up to that point; an instinct
+      common to all men with the aristocratic tradition of Europe had guided
+      him. He knew that the kind of man who in his own back garden wears good
+      clothes and spoils them with a bad hat is not the kind of man who has an
+      abstract horror of illegal actions of violence or the evasion of the
+      police. But a man may understand ragging and yet be very far from
+      understanding religious ragging. This seeming host of theirs might
+      comprehend a quarrel of husband and lover or a difficulty at cards or even
+      escape from a pursuing tailor; but it still remained doubtful whether he
+      would feel the earth fail under him in that earthquake instant when the
+      Virgin is compared to a goddess of Mesopotamia. Even MacIan, therefore
+      (whose tact was far from being his strong point), felt the necessity for
+      some compromise in the mode of approach. At last he said, and even then
+      with hesitation:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are fighting about God; there can be nothing so important as that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The tilted eye-glasses of the old gentleman fell abruptly from his nose,
+      and he thrust his aristocratic chin so far forward that his lean neck
+      seemed to shoot out longer like a telescope.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;About God?&rdquo; he queried, in a key completely new.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look here!&rdquo; cried Turnbull, taking his turn roughly, &ldquo;I'll tell you what
+      it's all about. I think that there's no God. I take it that it's nobody's
+      business but mine&mdash;or God's, if there is one. This young gentleman
+      from the Highlands happens to think that it's his business. In
+      consequence, he first takes a walking-stick and smashes my shop; then he
+      takes the same walking-stick and tries to smash me. To this I naturally
+      object. I suggest that if it comes to that we should both have sticks. He
+      improves on the suggestion and proposes that we should both have
+      steel-pointed sticks. The police (with characteristic unreasonableness)
+      will not accept either of our proposals; the result is that we run about
+      dodging the police and have jumped over our garden wall into your
+      magnificent garden to throw ourselves on your magnificent hospitality.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The face of the old gentleman had grown redder and redder during this
+      address, but it was still smiling; and when he broke out it was with a
+      kind of guffaw.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So you really want to fight with drawn swords in my garden,&rdquo; he asked,
+      &ldquo;about whether there is really a God?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not?&rdquo; said MacIan, with his simple monstrosity of speech; &ldquo;all man's
+      worship began when the Garden of Eden was founded.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, by&mdash;&mdash;!&rdquo; said Turnbull, with an oath, &ldquo;and ended when the
+      Zoological Gardens were founded.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In this garden! In my presence!&rdquo; cried the stranger, stamping up and down
+      the gravel and choking with laughter, &ldquo;whether there is a God!&rdquo; And he
+      went stamping up and down the garden, making it echo with his
+      unintelligible laughter. Then he came back to them more composed and
+      wiping his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, how small the world is!&rdquo; he cried at last. &ldquo;I can settle the whole
+      matter. Why, I am God!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he suddenly began to kick and wave his well-clad legs about the lawn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are what?&rdquo; repeated Turnbull, in a tone which is beyond description.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, God, of course!&rdquo; answered the other, thoroughly amused. &ldquo;How funny
+      it is to think that you have tumbled over a garden wall and fallen exactly
+      on the right person! You might have gone floundering about in all sorts of
+      churches and chapels and colleges and schools of philosophy looking for
+      some evidence of the existence of God. Why, there is no evidence, except
+      seeing him. And now you've seen him. You've seen him dance!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And the obliging old gentleman instantly stood on one leg without relaxing
+      at all the grave and cultured benignity of his expression.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I understood that this garden&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; began the bewildered MacIan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite so! Quite so!&rdquo; said the man on one leg, nodding gravely. &ldquo;I said
+      this garden belonged to me and the land outside it. So they do. So does
+      the country beyond that and the sea beyond that and all the rest of the
+      earth. So does the moon. So do the sun and stars.&rdquo; And he added, with a
+      smile of apology: &ldquo;You see, I'm God.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull and MacIan looked at him for one moment with a sort of notion
+      that perhaps he was not too old to be merely playing the fool. But after
+      staring steadily for an instant Turnbull saw the hard and horrible
+      earnestness in the man's eyes behind all his empty animation. Then
+      Turnbull looked very gravely at the strict gravel walls and the gay
+      flower-beds and the long rectangular red-brick building, which the mist
+      had left evident beyond them. Then he looked at MacIan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Almost at the same moment another man came walking quickly round the regal
+      clump of rhododendrons. He had the look of a prosperous banker, wore a
+      good tall silk hat, was almost stout enough to burst the buttons of a fine
+      frock-coat; but he was talking to himself, and one of his elbows had a
+      singular outward jerk as he went by.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0014" id="link2H_4_0014">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XIV. A MUSEUM OF SOULS
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The man with the good hat and the jumping elbow went by very quickly; yet
+      the man with the bad hat, who thought he was God, overtook him. He ran
+      after him and jumped over a bed of geraniums to catch him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I beg your Majesty's pardon,&rdquo; he said, with mock humility, &ldquo;but here is a
+      quarrel which you ought really to judge.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then as he led the heavy, silk-hatted man back towards the group, he
+      caught MacIan's ear in order to whisper: &ldquo;This poor gentleman is mad; he
+      thinks he is Edward VII.&rdquo; At this the self-appointed Creator slightly
+      winked. &ldquo;Of course you won't trust him much; come to me for everything.
+      But in my position one has to meet so many people. One has to be
+      broadminded.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The big banker in the black frock-coat and hat was standing quite grave
+      and dignified on the lawn, save for his slight twitch of one limb, and he
+      did not seem by any means unworthy of the part which the other promptly
+      forced upon him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear fellow,&rdquo; said the man in the straw hat, &ldquo;these two gentlemen are
+      going to fight a duel of the utmost importance. Your own royal position
+      and my much humbler one surely indicate us as the proper seconds. Seconds&mdash;yes,
+      seconds&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; and here the speaker was once more shaken with his
+      old malady of laughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, you and I are both seconds&mdash;and these two gentlemen can
+      obviously fight in front of us. You, he-he, are the king. I am God;
+      really, they could hardly have better supporters. They have come to the
+      right place.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Turnbull, who had been staring with a frown at the fresh turf, burst
+      out with a rather bitter laugh and cried, throwing his red head in the
+      air:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, by God, MacIan, I think we have come to the right place!&rdquo; And MacIan
+      answered, with an adamantine stupidity:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Any place is the right place where they will let us do it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a long stillness, and their eyes involuntarily took in the
+      landscape, as they had taken in all the landscapes of their everlasting
+      combat; the bright, square garden behind the shop; the whole lift and
+      leaning of the side of Hampstead Heath; the little garden of the decadent
+      choked with flowers; the square of sand beside the sea at sunrise. They
+      both felt at the same moment all the breadth and blossoming beauty of that
+      paradise, the coloured trees, the natural and restful nooks and also the
+      great wall of stone&mdash;more awful than the wall of China&mdash;from
+      which no flesh could flee.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull was moodily balancing his sword in his hand as the other spoke;
+      then he started, for a mouth whispered quite close to his ear. With a
+      softness incredible in any cat, the huge, heavy man in the black hat and
+      frock-coat had crept across the lawn from his own side and was saying in
+      his ear: &ldquo;Don't trust that second of yours. He's mad and not so mad,
+      either; for he frightfully cunning and sharp. Don't believe the story he
+      tells you about why I hate him. I know the story he'll tell; I overheard
+      it when the housekeeper was talking to the postman. It's too long to talk
+      about now, and I expect we're watched, but&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Something in Turnbull made him want suddenly to be sick on the grass; the
+      mere healthy and heathen horror of the unclean; the mere inhumane hatred
+      of the inhuman state of madness. He seemed to hear all round him the
+      hateful whispers of that place, innumerable as leaves whispering in the
+      wind, and each of them telling eagerly some evil that had not happened or
+      some terrific secret which was not true. All the rationalist and plain man
+      revolted within him against bowing down for a moment in that forest of
+      deception and egotistical darkness. He wanted to blow up that palace of
+      delusions with dynamite; and in some wild way, which I will not defend, he
+      tried to do it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked across at MacIan and said: &ldquo;Oh, I can't stand this!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can't stand what?&rdquo; asked his opponent, eyeing him doubtfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shall we say the atmosphere?&rdquo; replied Turnbull; &ldquo;one can't use uncivil
+      expressions even to a&mdash;deity. The fact is, I don't like having God
+      for my second.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sir!&rdquo; said that being in a state of great offence, &ldquo;in my position I am
+      not used to having my favours refused. Do you know who I am?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The editor of <i>The Atheist</i> turned upon him like one who has lost all
+      patience, and exploded: &ldquo;Yes, you are God, aren't you?&rdquo; he said, abruptly,
+      &ldquo;why do we have two sets of teeth?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Teeth?&rdquo; spluttered the genteel lunatic; &ldquo;teeth?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; cried Turnbull, advancing on him swiftly and with animated
+      gestures, &ldquo;why does teething hurt? Why do growing pains hurt? Why are
+      measles catching? Why does a rose have thorns? Why do rhinoceroses have
+      horns? Why is the horn on the top of the nose? Why haven't I a horn on the
+      top of my nose, eh?&rdquo; And he struck the bridge of his nose smartly with his
+      forefinger to indicate the place of the omission and then wagged the
+      finger menacingly at the Creator.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've often wanted to meet you,&rdquo; he resumed, sternly, after a pause, &ldquo;to
+      hold you accountable for all the idiocy and cruelty of this muddled and
+      meaningless world of yours. You make a hundred seeds and only one bears
+      fruit. You make a million worlds and only one seems inhabited. What do you
+      mean by it, eh? What do you mean by it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The unhappy lunatic had fallen back before this quite novel form of
+      attack, and lifted his burnt-out cigarette almost like one warding off a
+      blow. Turnbull went on like a torrent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A man died yesterday in Ealing. You murdered him. A girl had the
+      toothache in Croydon. You gave it her. Fifty sailors were drowned off
+      Selsey Bill. You scuttled their ship. What have you got to say for
+      yourself, eh?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The representative of omnipotence looked as if he had left most of these
+      things to his subordinates; he passed a hand over his wrinkling brow and
+      said in a voice much saner than any he had yet used:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, if you dislike my assistance, of course&mdash;perhaps the other
+      gentleman&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The other gentleman,&rdquo; cried Turnbull, scornfully, &ldquo;is a submissive and
+      loyal and obedient gentleman. He likes the people who wear crowns, whether
+      of diamonds or of stars. He believes in the divine right of kings, and it
+      is appropriate enough that he should have the king for his second. But it
+      is not appropriate to me that I should have God for my second. God is not
+      good enough. I dislike and I deny the divine right of kings. But I dislike
+      more and I deny more the divine right of divinity.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then after a pause in which he swallowed his passion, he said to MacIan:
+      &ldquo;You have got the right second, anyhow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Highlander did not answer, but stood as if thunderstruck with one long
+      and heavy thought. Then at last he turned abruptly to his second in the
+      silk hat and said: &ldquo;Who are you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The man in the silk hat blinked and bridled in affected surprise, like one
+      who was in truth accustomed to be doubted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am King Edward VII,&rdquo; he said, with shaky arrogance. &ldquo;Do you doubt my
+      word?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not doubt it in the least,&rdquo; answered MacIan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then, why,&rdquo; said the large man in the silk hat, trembling from head to
+      foot, &ldquo;why do you wear your hat before the king?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why should I take it off,&rdquo; retorted MacIan, with equal heat, &ldquo;before a
+      usurper?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull swung round on his heel. &ldquo;Well, really,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I thought at
+      least you were a loyal subject.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am the only loyal subject,&rdquo; answered the Gael. &ldquo;For nearly thirty years
+      I have walked these islands and have not found another.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are always hard to follow,&rdquo; remarked Turnbull, genially, &ldquo;and
+      sometimes so much so as to be hardly worth following.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I alone am loyal,&rdquo; insisted MacIan; &ldquo;for I alone am in rebellion. I am
+      ready at any instant to restore the Stuarts. I am ready at any instant to
+      defy the Hanoverian brood&mdash;and I defy it now even when face to face
+      with the actual ruler of the enormous British Empire!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And folding his arms and throwing back his lean, hawklike face, he
+      haughtily confronted the man with the formal frock-coat and the eccentric
+      elbow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What right had you stunted German squires,&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;to interfere in a
+      quarrel between Scotch and English and Irish gentlemen? Who made you,
+      whose fathers could not splutter English while they walked in Whitehall,
+      who made you the judge between the republic of Sidney and the monarchy of
+      Montrose? What had your sires to do with England that they should have the
+      foul offering of the blood of Derwentwater and the heart of Jimmy Dawson?
+      Where are the corpses of Culloden? Where is the blood of Lochiel?&rdquo; MacIan
+      advanced upon his opponent with a bony and pointed finger, as if
+      indicating the exact pocket in which the blood of that Cameron was
+      probably kept; and Edward VII fell back a few paces in considerable
+      confusion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What good have you ever done to us?&rdquo; he continued in harsher and harsher
+      accents, forcing the other back towards the flower-beds. &ldquo;What good have
+      you ever done, you race of German sausages? Yards of barbarian etiquette,
+      to throttle the freedom of aristocracy! Gas of northern metaphysics to
+      blow up Broad Church bishops like balloons. Bad pictures and bad manners
+      and pantheism and the Albert Memorial. Go back to Hanover, you humbug? Go
+      to&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Before the end of this tirade the arrogance of the monarch had entirely
+      given way; he had fairly turned tail and was trundling away down the path.
+      MacIan strode after him still preaching and flourishing his large, lean
+      hands. The other two remained in the centre of the lawn&mdash;Turnbull in
+      convulsions of laughter, the lunatic in convulsions of disgust. Almost at
+      the same moment a third figure came stepping swiftly across the lawn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The advancing figure walked with a stoop, and yet somehow flung his forked
+      and narrow beard forward. That carefully cut and pointed yellow beard was,
+      indeed, the most emphatic thing about him. When he clasped his hands
+      behind him, under the tails of his coat, he would wag his beard at a man
+      like a big forefinger. It performed almost all his gestures; it was more
+      important than the glittering eye-glasses through which he looked or the
+      beautiful bleating voice in which he spoke. His face and neck were of a
+      lusty red, but lean and stringy; he always wore his expensive gold-rim
+      eye-glasses slightly askew upon his aquiline nose; and he always showed
+      two gleaming foreteeth under his moustache, in a smile so perpetual as to
+      earn the reputation of a sneer. But for the crooked glasses his dress was
+      always exquisite; and but for the smile he was perfectly and perennially
+      depressed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't you think,&rdquo; said the new-comer, with a sort of supercilious
+      entreaty, &ldquo;that we had better all come into breakfast? It is such a
+      mistake to wait for breakfast. It spoils one's temper so much.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite so,&rdquo; replied Turnbull, seriously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There seems almost to have been a little quarrelling here,&rdquo; said the man
+      with the goatish beard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is rather a long story,&rdquo; said Turnbull, smiling. &ldquo;Originally, it might
+      be called a phase in the quarrel between science and religion.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The new-comer started slightly, and Turnbull replied to the question on
+      his face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I am science!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I congratulate you heartily,&rdquo; answered the other, &ldquo;I am Doctor Quayle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull's eyes did not move, but he realized that the man in the panama
+      hat had lost all his ease of a landed proprietor and had withdrawn to a
+      distance of thirty yards, where he stood glaring with all the contraction
+      of fear and hatred that can stiffen a cat.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+           *                    *                   *
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      MacIan was sitting somewhat disconsolately on a stump of tree, his large
+      black head half buried in his large brown hands, when Turnbull strode up
+      to him chewing a cigarette. He did not look up, but his comrade and enemy
+      addressed him like one who must free himself of his feelings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I hope, at any rate,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;that you like your precious
+      religion now. I hope you like the society of this poor devil whom your
+      damned tracts and hymns and priests have driven out of his wits. Five men
+      in this place, they tell me, five men in this place who might have been
+      fathers of families, and every one of them thinks he is God the Father.
+      Oh! you may talk about the ugliness of science, but there is no one here
+      who thinks he is Protoplasm.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They naturally prefer a bright part,&rdquo; said MacIan, wearily. &ldquo;Protoplasm
+      is not worth going mad about.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At least,&rdquo; said Turnbull, savagely, &ldquo;it was your Jesus Christ who started
+      all this bosh about being God.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For one instant MacIan opened the eyes of battle; then his tightened lips
+      took a crooked smile and he said, quite calmly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, the idea is older; it was Satan who first said that he was God.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then, what,&rdquo; asked Turnbull, very slowly, as he softly picked a flower,
+      &ldquo;what is the difference between Christ and Satan?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is quite simple,&rdquo; replied the Highlander. &ldquo;Christ descended into hell;
+      Satan fell into it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Does it make much odds?&rdquo; asked the free-thinker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It makes all the odds,&rdquo; said the other. &ldquo;One of them wanted to go up and
+      went down; the other wanted to go down and went up. A god can be humble, a
+      devil can only be humbled.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why are you always wanting to humble a man?&rdquo; asked Turnbull, knitting his
+      brows. &ldquo;It affects me as ungenerous.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why were you wanting to humble a god when you found him in this garden?&rdquo;
+       asked MacIan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That was an extreme case of impudence,&rdquo; said Turnbull.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Granting the man his almighty pretensions, I think he was very modest,&rdquo;
+       said MacIan. &ldquo;It is we who are arrogant, who know we are only men. The
+      ordinary man in the street is more of a monster than that poor fellow; for
+      the man in the street treats himself as God Almighty when he knows he
+      isn't. He expects the universe to turn round him, though he knows he isn't
+      the centre.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Turnbull, sitting down on the grass, &ldquo;this is a digression,
+      anyhow. What I want to point out is, that your faith does end in asylums
+      and my science doesn't.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Doesn't it, by George!&rdquo; cried MacIan, scornfully. &ldquo;There are a few men
+      here who are mad on God and a few who are mad on the Bible. But I bet
+      there are many more who are simply mad on madness.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you really believe it?&rdquo; asked the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Scores of them, I should say,&rdquo; answered MacIan. &ldquo;Fellows who have read
+      medical books or fellows whose fathers and uncles had something hereditary
+      in their heads&mdash;the whole air they breathe is mad.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All the same,&rdquo; said Turnbull, shrewdly, &ldquo;I bet you haven't found a madman
+      of that sort.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I bet I have!&rdquo; cried Evan, with unusual animation. &ldquo;I've been walking
+      about the garden talking to a poor chap all the morning. He's simply been
+      broken down and driven raving by your damned science. Talk about believing
+      one is God&mdash;why, it's quite an old, comfortable, fireside fancy
+      compared with the sort of things this fellow believes. He believes that
+      there is a God, but that he is better than God. He says God will be afraid
+      to face him. He says one is always progressing beyond the best. He put his
+      arm in mine and whispered in my ear, as if it were the apocalypse: 'Never
+      trust a God that you can't improve on.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What can he have meant?&rdquo; said the atheist, with all his logic awake.
+      &ldquo;Obviously one should not trust any God that one can improve on.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is the way he talks,&rdquo; said MacIan, almost indifferently; &ldquo;but he says
+      rummier things than that. He says that a man's doctor ought to decide what
+      woman he marries; and he says that children ought not to be brought up by
+      their parents, because a physical partiality will then distort the
+      judgement of the educator.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, dear!&rdquo; said Turnbull, laughing, &ldquo;you have certainly come across a
+      pretty bad case, and incidentally proved your own. I suppose some men do
+      lose their wits through science as through love and other good things.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And he says,&rdquo; went on MacIan, monotonously, &ldquo;that he cannot see why
+      anyone should suppose that a triangle is a three-sided figure. He says
+      that on some higher plane&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull leapt to his feet as by an electric shock. &ldquo;I never could have
+      believed,&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;that you had humour enough to tell a lie. You've
+      gone a bit too far, old man, with your little joke. Even in a lunatic
+      asylum there can't be anybody who, having thought about the matter, thinks
+      that a triangle has not got three sides. If he exists he must be a new era
+      in human psychology. But he doesn't exist.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will go and fetch him,&rdquo; said MacIan, calmly; &ldquo;I left the poor fellow
+      wandering about by the nasturtium bed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan vanished, and in a few moments returned, trailing with him his own
+      discovery among lunatics, who was a slender man with a fixed smile and an
+      unfixed and rolling head. He had a goatlike beard just long enough to be
+      shaken in a strong wind. Turnbull sprang to his feet and was like one who
+      is speechless through choking a sudden shout of laughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, you great donkey,&rdquo; he shouted, in an ear-shattering whisper, &ldquo;that's
+      not one of the patients at all. That's one of the doctors.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Evan looked back at the leering head with the long-pointed beard and
+      repeated the word inquiringly: &ldquo;One of the doctors?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, you know what I mean,&rdquo; said Turnbull, impatiently. &ldquo;The medical
+      authorities of the place.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Evan was still staring back curiously at the beaming and bearded creature
+      behind him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The mad doctors,&rdquo; said Turnbull, shortly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite so,&rdquo; said MacIan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After a rather restless silence Turnbull plucked MacIan by the elbow and
+      pulled him aside.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For goodness sake,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;don't offend this fellow; he may be as mad
+      as ten hatters, if you like, but he has us between his finger and thumb.
+      This is the very time he appointed to talk with us about our&mdash;well,
+      our exeat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what can it matter?&rdquo; asked the wondering MacIan. &ldquo;He can't keep us in
+      the asylum. We're not mad.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jackass!&rdquo; said Turnbull, heartily, &ldquo;of course we're not mad. Of course,
+      if we are medically examined and the thing is thrashed out, they will find
+      we are not mad. But don't you see that if the thing is thrashed out it
+      will mean letters to this reference and telegrams to that; and at the
+      first word of who we are, we shall be taken out of a madhouse, where we
+      may smoke, to a jail, where we mayn't. No, if we manage this very quietly,
+      he may merely let us out at the front door as stray revellers. If there's
+      half an hour of inquiry, we are cooked.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan looked at the grass frowningly for a few seconds, and then said in
+      a new, small and childish voice: &ldquo;I am awfully stupid, Mr. Turnbull; you
+      must be patient with me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull caught Evan's elbow again with quite another gesture. &ldquo;Come,&rdquo; he
+      cried, with the harsh voice of one who hides emotion, &ldquo;come and let us be
+      tactful in chorus.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor with the pointed beard was already slanting it forward at a
+      more than usually acute angle, with the smile that expressed expectancy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope I do not hurry you, gentlemen,&rdquo; he said, with the faintest
+      suggestion of a sneer at their hurried consultation, &ldquo;but I believe you
+      wanted to see me at half past eleven.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am most awfully sorry, Doctor,&rdquo; said Turnbull, with ready amiability;
+      &ldquo;I never meant to keep you waiting; but the silly accident that has landed
+      us in your garden may have some rather serious consequences to our friends
+      elsewhere, and my friend here was just drawing my attention to some of
+      them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite so! Quite so!&rdquo; said the doctor, hurriedly. &ldquo;If you really want to
+      put anything before me, I can give you a few moments in my
+      consulting-room.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He led them rapidly into a small but imposing apartment, which seemed to
+      be built and furnished entirely in red-varnished wood. There was one desk
+      occupied with carefully docketed papers; and there were several chairs of
+      the red-varnished wood&mdash;though of different shape. All along the wall
+      ran something that might have been a bookcase, only that it was not filled
+      with books, but with flat, oblong slabs or cases of the same polished
+      dark-red consistency. What those flat wooden cases were they could form no
+      conception.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor sat down with a polite impatience on his professional perch;
+      MacIan remained standing, but Turnbull threw himself almost with luxury
+      into a hard wooden arm-chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is a most absurd business, Doctor,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and I am ashamed to
+      take up the time of busy professional men with such pranks from outside.
+      The plain fact is, that he and I and a pack of silly men and girls have
+      organized a game across this part of the country&mdash;a sort of
+      combination of hare and hounds and hide and seek&mdash;I dare say you've
+      heard of it. We are the hares, and, seeing your high wall look so
+      inviting, we tumbled over it, and naturally were a little startled with
+      what we found on the other side.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite so!&rdquo; said the doctor, mildly. &ldquo;I can understand that you were
+      startled.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull had expected him to ask what place was the headquarters of the
+      new exhilarating game, and who were the male and female enthusiasts who
+      had brought it to such perfection; in fact, Turnbull was busy making up
+      these personal and topographical particulars. As the doctor did not ask
+      the question, he grew slightly uneasy, and risked the question: &ldquo;I hope
+      you will accept my assurance that the thing was an accident and that no
+      intrusion was meant.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes, sir,&rdquo; replied the doctor, smiling, &ldquo;I accept everything that you
+      say.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In that case,&rdquo; said Turnbull, rising genially, &ldquo;we must not further
+      interrupt your important duties. I suppose there will be someone to let us
+      out?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said the doctor, still smiling steadily and pleasantly, &ldquo;there will
+      be no one to let you out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can we let ourselves out, then?&rdquo; asked Turnbull, in some surprise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, of course not,&rdquo; said the beaming scientist; &ldquo;think how dangerous
+      that would be in a place like this.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then, how the devil are we to get out?&rdquo; cried Turnbull, losing his
+      manners for the first time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is a question of time, of receptivity, and treatment,&rdquo; said the
+      doctor, arching his eyebrows indifferently. &ldquo;I do not regard either of
+      your cases as incurable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And with that the man of the world was struck dumb, and, as in all
+      intolerable moments, the word was with the unworldly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan took one stride to the table, leant across it, and said: &ldquo;We can't
+      stop here, we're not mad people!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We don't use the crude phrase,&rdquo; said the doctor, smiling at his
+      patent-leather boots.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you <i>can't</i> think us mad,&rdquo; thundered MacIan. &ldquo;You never saw us
+      before. You know nothing about us. You haven't even examined us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor threw back his head and beard. &ldquo;Oh, yes,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;very
+      thoroughly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you can't shut a man up on your mere impressions without documents or
+      certificates or anything?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor got languidly to his feet. &ldquo;Quite so,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You certainly
+      ought to see the documents.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He went across to the curious mock book-shelves and took down one of the
+      flat mahogany cases. This he opened with a curious key at his watch-chain,
+      and laying back a flap revealed a quire of foolscap covered with close but
+      quite clear writing. The first three words were in such large copy-book
+      hand that they caught the eye even at a distance. They were: &ldquo;MacIan, Evan
+      Stuart.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Evan bent his angry eagle face over it; yet something blurred it and he
+      could never swear he saw it distinctly. He saw something that began:
+      &ldquo;Prenatal influences predisposing to mania. Grandfather believed in return
+      of the Stuarts. Mother carried bone of St. Eulalia with which she touched
+      children in sickness. Marked religious mania at early age&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Evan fell back and fought for his speech. &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; he burst out at last. &ldquo;Oh!
+      if all this world I have walked in had been as sane as my mother was.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he compressed his temples with his hands, as if to crush them. And
+      then lifted suddenly a face that looked fresh and young, as if he had
+      dipped and washed it in some holy well.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well,&rdquo; he cried; &ldquo;I will take the sour with the sweet. I will pay
+      the penalty of having enjoyed God in this monstrous modern earth that
+      cannot enjoy man or beast. I will die happy in your madhouse, only because
+      I know what I know. Let it be granted, then&mdash;MacIan is a mystic;
+      MacIan is a maniac. But this honest shopkeeper and editor whom I have
+      dragged on my inhuman escapades, you cannot keep him. He will go free,
+      thank God, he is not down in any damned document. His ancestor, I am
+      certain, did not die at Culloden. His mother, I swear, had no relics. Let
+      my friend out of your front door, and as for me&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor had already gone across to the laden shelves, and after a few
+      minutes' short-sighted peering, had pulled down another parallelogram of
+      dark-red wood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This also he unlocked on the table, and with the same unerring egotistic
+      eye on of the company saw the words, written in large letters: &ldquo;Turnbull,
+      James.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hitherto Turnbull himself had somewhat scornfully surrendered his part in
+      the whole business; but he was too honest and unaffected not to start at
+      his own name. After the name, the inscription appeared to run: &ldquo;Unique
+      case of Eleutheromania. Parentage, as so often in such cases, prosaic and
+      healthy. Eleutheromaniac signs occurred early, however, leading him to
+      attach himself to the individualist Bradlaugh. Recent outbreak of pure
+      anarchy&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull slammed the case to, almost smashing it, and said with a burst of
+      savage laughter: &ldquo;Oh! come along, MacIan; I don't care so much, even about
+      getting out of the madhouse, if only we get out of this room. You were
+      right enough, MacIan, when you spoke about&mdash;about mad doctors.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Somehow they found themselves outside in the cool, green garden, and then,
+      after a stunned silence, Turnbull said: &ldquo;There is one thing that was
+      puzzling me all the time, and I understand it now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean?&rdquo; asked Evan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No man by will or wit,&rdquo; answered Turnbull, &ldquo;can get out of this garden;
+      and yet we got into it merely by jumping over a garden wall. The whole
+      thing explains itself easily enough. That undefended wall was an open
+      trap. It was a trap laid for two celebrated lunatics. They saw us get in
+      right enough. And they will see that we do not get out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Evan gazed at the garden wall, gravely for more than a minute, and then he
+      nodded without a word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0015" id="link2H_4_0015">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XV. THE DREAM OF MACIAN
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The system of espionage in the asylum was so effective and complete that
+      in practice the patients could often enjoy a sense of almost complete
+      solitude. They could stray up so near to the wall in an apparently
+      unwatched garden as to find it easy to jump over it. They would only have
+      found the error of their calculations if they had tried to jump.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Under this insulting liberty, in this artificial loneliness, Evan MacIan
+      was in the habit of creeping out into the garden after dark&mdash;especially
+      upon moonlight nights. The moon, indeed, was for him always a positive
+      magnet in a manner somewhat hard to explain to those of a robuster
+      attitude. Evidently, Apollo is to the full as poetical as Diana; but it is
+      not a question of poetry in the matured and intellectual sense of the
+      word. It is a question of a certain solid and childish fancy. The sun is
+      in the strict and literal sense invisible; that is to say, that by our
+      bodily eyes it cannot properly be seen. But the moon is a much simpler
+      thing; a naked and nursery sort of thing. It hangs in the sky quite solid
+      and quite silver and quite useless; it is one huge celestial snowball. It
+      was at least some such infantile facts and fancies which led Evan again
+      and again during his dehumanized imprisonment to go out as if to shoot the
+      moon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was out in the garden on one such luminous and ghostly night, when the
+      steady moonshine toned down all the colours of the garden until almost the
+      strongest tints to be seen were the strong soft blue of the sky and the
+      large lemon moon. He was walking with his face turned up to it in that
+      rather half-witted fashion which might have excused the error of his
+      keepers; and as he gazed he became aware of something little and lustrous
+      flying close to the lustrous orb, like a bright chip knocked off the moon.
+      At first he thought it was a mere sparkle or refraction in his own
+      eyesight; he blinked and cleared his eyes. Then he thought it was a
+      falling star; only it did not fall. It jerked awkwardly up and down in a
+      way unknown among meteors and strangely reminiscent of the works of man.
+      The next moment the thing drove right across the moon, and from being
+      silver upon blue, suddenly became black upon silver; then although it
+      passed the field of light in a flash its outline was unmistakable though
+      eccentric. It was a flying ship.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The vessel took one long and sweeping curve across the sky and came nearer
+      and nearer to MacIan, like a steam-engine coming round a bend. It was of
+      pure white steel, and in the moon it gleamed like the armour of Sir
+      Galahad. The simile of such virginity is not inappropriate; for, as it
+      grew larger and larger and lower and lower, Evan saw that the only figure
+      in it was robed in white from head to foot and crowned with snow-white
+      hair, on which the moonshine lay like a benediction. The figure stood so
+      still that he could easily have supposed it to be a statue. Indeed, he
+      thought it was until it spoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Evan,&rdquo; said the voice, and it spoke with the simple authority of some
+      forgotten father revisiting his children, &ldquo;you have remained here long
+      enough, and your sword is wanted elsewhere.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wanted for what?&rdquo; asked the young man, accepting the monstrous event with
+      a queer and clumsy naturalness; &ldquo;what is my sword wanted for?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For all that you hold dear,&rdquo; said the man standing in the moonlight; &ldquo;for
+      the thrones of authority and for all ancient loyalty to law.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Evan looked up at the lunar orb again as if in irrational appeal&mdash;a
+      moon calf bleating to his mother the moon. But the face of Luna seemed as
+      witless as his own; there is no help in nature against the supernatural;
+      and he looked again at the tall marble figure that might have been made
+      out of solid moonlight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he said in a loud voice: &ldquo;Who are you?&rdquo; and the next moment was
+      seized by a sort of choking terror lest his question should be answered.
+      But the unknown preserved an impenetrable silence for a long space and
+      then only answered: &ldquo;I must not say who I am until the end of the world;
+      but I may say what I am. I am the law.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he lifted his head so that the moon smote full upon his beautiful and
+      ancient face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The face was the face of a Greek god grown old, but not grown either weak
+      or ugly; there was nothing to break its regularity except a rather long
+      chin with a cleft in it, and this rather added distinction than lessened
+      beauty. His strong, well-opened eyes were very brilliant but quite
+      colourless like steel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan was one of those to whom a reverence and self-submission in ritual
+      come quite easy, and are ordinary things. It was not artificial in him to
+      bend slightly to this solemn apparition or to lower his voice when he
+      said: &ldquo;Do you bring me some message?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do bring you a message,&rdquo; answered the man of moon and marble. &ldquo;The king
+      has returned.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Evan did not ask for or require any explanation. &ldquo;I suppose you can take
+      me to the war,&rdquo; he said, and the silent silver figure only bowed its head
+      again. MacIan clambered into the silver boat, and it rose upward to the
+      stars.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To say that it rose to the stars is no mere metaphor, for the sky had
+      cleared to that occasional and astonishing transparency in which one can
+      see plainly both stars and moon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the white-robed figure went upward in his white chariot, he said quite
+      quietly to Evan: &ldquo;There is an answer to all the folly talked about
+      equality. Some stars are big and some small; some stand still and some
+      circle around them as they stand. They can be orderly, but they cannot be
+      equal.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are all very beautiful,&rdquo; said Evan, as if in doubt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are all beautiful,&rdquo; answered the other, &ldquo;because each is in his
+      place and owns his superior. And now England will be beautiful after the
+      same fashion. The earth will be as beautiful as the heavens, because our
+      kings have come back to us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Stuart&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; began Evan, earnestly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; answered the old man, &ldquo;that which has returned is Stuart and yet
+      older than Stuart. It is Capet and Plantagenet and Pendragon. It is all
+      that good old time of which proverbs tell, that golden reign of Saturn
+      against which gods and men were rebels. It is all that was ever lost by
+      insolence and overwhelmed in rebellion. It is your own forefather, MacIan
+      with the broken sword, bleeding without hope at Culloden. It is Charles
+      refusing to answer the questions of the rebel court. It is Mary of the
+      magic face confronting the gloomy and grasping peers and the boorish
+      moralities of Knox. It is Richard, the last Plantagenet, giving his crown
+      to Bolingbroke as to a common brigand. It is Arthur, overwhelmed in
+      Lyonesse by heathen armies and dying in the mist, doubtful if ever he
+      shall return.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But now&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; said Evan, in a low voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But now!&rdquo; said the old man; &ldquo;he has returned.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is the war still raging?&rdquo; asked MacIan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It rages like the pit itself beyond the sea whither I am taking you,&rdquo;
+       answered the other. &ldquo;But in England the king enjoys his own again. The
+      people are once more taught and ruled as is best; they are happy knights,
+      happy squires, happy servants, happy serfs, if you will; but free at last
+      of that load of vexation and lonely vanity which was called being a
+      citizen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is England, indeed, so secure?&rdquo; asked Evan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look out and see,&rdquo; said the guide. &ldquo;I fancy you have seen this place
+      before.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They were driving through the air towards one region of the sky where the
+      hollow of night seemed darkest and which was quite without stars. But
+      against this black background there sprang up, picked out in glittering
+      silver, a dome and a cross. It seemed that it was really newly covered
+      with silver, which in the strong moonlight was like white flame. But,
+      however, covered or painted, Evan had no difficult in knowing the place
+      again. He saw the great thoroughfare that sloped upward to the base of its
+      huge pedestal of steps. And he wondered whether the little shop was still
+      by the side of it and whether its window had been mended.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the flying ship swept round the dome he observed other alterations. The
+      dome had been redecorated so as to give it a more solemn and somewhat more
+      ecclesiastical note; the ball was draped or destroyed, and round the
+      gallery, under the cross, ran what looked like a ring of silver statues,
+      like the little leaden images that stood round the hat of Louis XI. Round
+      the second gallery, at the base of the dome, ran a second rank of such
+      images, and Evan thought there was another round the steps below. When
+      they came closer he saw that they were figures in complete armour of steel
+      or silver, each with a naked sword, point upward; and then he saw one of
+      the swords move. These were not statues but an armed order of chivalry
+      thrown in three circles round the cross. MacIan drew in his breath, as
+      children do at anything they think utterly beautiful. For he could imagine
+      nothing that so echoed his own visions of pontifical or chivalric art as
+      this white dome sitting like a vast silver tiara over London, ringed with
+      a triple crown of swords.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As they went sailing down Ludgate Hill, Evan saw that the state of the
+      streets fully answered his companion's claim about the reintroduction of
+      order. All the old blackcoated bustle with its cockney vivacity and
+      vulgarity had disappeared. Groups of labourers, quietly but picturesquely
+      clad, were passing up and down in sufficiently large numbers; but it
+      required but a few mounted men to keep the streets in order. The mounted
+      men were not common policemen, but knights with spurs and plume whose
+      smooth and splendid armour glittered like diamond rather than steel. Only
+      in one place&mdash;at the corner of Bouverie Street&mdash;did there appear
+      to be a moment's confusion, and that was due to hurry rather than
+      resistance. But one old grumbling man did not get out of the way quick
+      enough, and the man on horseback struck him, not severely, across the
+      shoulders with the flat of his sword.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The soldier had no business to do that,&rdquo; said MacIan, sharply. &ldquo;The old
+      man was moving as quickly as he could.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We attach great importance to discipline in the streets,&rdquo; said the man in
+      white, with a slight smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Discipline is not so important as justice,&rdquo; said MacIan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The other did not answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then after a swift silence that took them out across St. James's Park, he
+      said: &ldquo;The people must be taught to obey; they must learn their own
+      ignorance. And I am not sure,&rdquo; he continued, turning his back on Evan and
+      looking out of the prow of the ship into the darkness, &ldquo;I am not sure that
+      I agree with your little maxim about justice. Discipline for the whole
+      society is surely more important than justice to an individual.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Evan, who was also leaning over the edge, swung round with startling
+      suddenness and stared at the other's back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Discipline for society&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; he repeated, very staccato, &ldquo;more
+      important&mdash;justice to individual?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then after a long silence he called out: &ldquo;Who and what are you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am an angel,&rdquo; said the white-robed figure, without turning round.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are not a Catholic,&rdquo; said MacIan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The other seemed to take no notice, but reverted to the main topic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In our armies up in heaven we learn to put a wholesome fear into
+      subordinates.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan sat craning his neck forward with an extraordinary and
+      unaccountable eagerness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go on!&rdquo; he cried, twisting and untwisting his long, bony fingers, &ldquo;go
+      on!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Besides,&rdquo; continued he, in the prow, &ldquo;you must allow for a certain high
+      spirit and haughtiness in the superior type.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go on!&rdquo; said Evan, with burning eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just as the sight of sin offends God,&rdquo; said the unknown, &ldquo;so does the
+      sight of ugliness offend Apollo. The beautiful and princely must, of
+      necessity, be impatient with the squalid and&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, you great fool!&rdquo; cried MacIan, rising to the top of his tremendous
+      stature, &ldquo;did you think I would have doubted only for that rap with a
+      sword? I know that noble orders have bad knights, that good knights have
+      bad tempers, that the Church has rough priests and coarse cardinals; I
+      have known it ever since I was born. You fool! you had only to say, 'Yes,
+      it is rather a shame,' and I should have forgotten the affair. But I saw
+      on your mouth the twitch of your infernal sophistry; I knew that something
+      was wrong with you and your cathedrals. Something is wrong; everything is
+      wrong. You are not an angel. That is not a church. It is not the rightful
+      king who has come home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is unfortunate,&rdquo; said the other, in a quiet but hard voice, &ldquo;because
+      you are going to see his Majesty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said MacIan, &ldquo;I am going to jump over the side.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you desire death?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Evan, quite composedly, &ldquo;I desire a miracle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;From whom do you ask it? To whom do you appeal?&rdquo; said his companion,
+      sternly. &ldquo;You have betrayed the king, renounced his cross on the
+      cathedral, and insulted an archangel.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I appeal to God,&rdquo; said Evan, and sprang up and stood upon the edge of the
+      swaying ship.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The being in the prow turned slowly round; he looked at Evan with eyes
+      which were like two suns, and put his hand to his mouth just too late to
+      hide an awful smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And how do you know,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;how do you know that I am not God?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan screamed. &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;Now I know who you really are. You are
+      not God. You are not one of God's angels. But you were once.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The being's hand dropped from his mouth and Evan dropped out of the car.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0016" id="link2H_4_0016">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XVI. THE DREAM OF TURNBULL
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull was walking rather rampantly up and down the garden on a gusty
+      evening chewing his cigar and in that mood when every man suppresses an
+      instinct to spit. He was not, as a rule, a man much acquainted with moods;
+      and the storms and sunbursts of MacIan's soul passed before him as an
+      impressive but unmeaning panorama, like the anarchy of Highland scenery.
+      Turnbull was one of those men in whom a continuous appetite and industry
+      of the intellect leave the emotions very simple and steady. His heart was
+      in the right place; but he was quite content to leave it there. It was his
+      head that was his hobby. His mornings and evenings were marked not by
+      impulses or thirsty desires, not by hope or by heart-break; they were
+      filled with the fallacies he had detected, the problems he had made plain,
+      the adverse theories he had wrestled with and thrown, the grand
+      generalizations he had justified. But even the cheerful inner life of a
+      logician may be upset by a lunatic asylum, to say nothing of whiffs of
+      memory from a lady in Jersey, and the little red-bearded man on this windy
+      evening was in a dangerous frame of mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Plain and positive as he was, the influence of earth and sky may have been
+      greater on him than he imagined; and the weather that walked the world at
+      that moment was as red and angry as Turnbull. Long strips and swirls of
+      tattered and tawny cloud were dragged downward to the west exactly as torn
+      red raiment would be dragged. And so strong and pitiless was the wind that
+      it whipped away fragments of red-flowering bushes or of copper beech, and
+      drove them also across the garden, a drift of red leaves, like the leaves
+      of autumn, as in parody of the red and driven rags of cloud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a sense in earth and heaven as of everything breaking up, and
+      all the revolutionist in Turnbull rejoiced that it was breaking up. The
+      trees were breaking up under the wind, even in the tall strength of their
+      bloom: the clouds were breaking up and losing even their large heraldic
+      shapes. Shards and shreds of copper cloud split off continually and
+      floated by themselves, and for some reason the truculent eye of Turnbull
+      was attracted to one of these careering cloudlets, which seemed to him to
+      career in an exaggerated manner. Also it kept its shape, which is unusual
+      with clouds shaken off; also its shape was of an odd sort.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull continued to stare at it, and in a little time occurred that
+      crucial instant when a thing, however incredible, is accepted as a fact.
+      The copper cloud was tumbling down towards the earth, like some gigantic
+      leaf from the copper beeches. And as it came nearer it was evident, first,
+      that it was not a cloud, and, second, that it was not itself of the colour
+      of copper; only, being burnished like a mirror, it had reflected the
+      red-brown colours of the burning clouds. As the thing whirled like a
+      windswept leaf down towards the wall of the garden it was clear that it
+      was some sort of air-ship made of metal, and slapping the air with big
+      broad fins of steel. When it came about a hundred feet above the garden, a
+      shaggy, lean figure leapt up in it, almost black against the bronze and
+      scarlet of the west, and, flinging out a kind of hook or anchor, caught on
+      to the green apple-tree just under the wall; and from that fixed holding
+      ground the ship swung in the red tempest like a captive balloon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While our friend stood frozen for an instant by his astonishment, the
+      queer figure in the airy car tipped the vehicle almost upside down by
+      leaping over the side of it, seemed to slide or drop down the rope like a
+      monkey, and alighted (with impossible precision and placidity) seated on
+      the edge of the wall, over which he kicked and dangled his legs as he
+      grinned at Turnbull. The wind roared in the trees yet more ruinous and
+      desolate, the red tails of the sunset were dragged downward like red
+      dragons sucked down to death, and still on the top of the asylum wall sat
+      the sinister figure with the grimace, swinging his feet in tune with the
+      tempest; while above him, at the end of its tossing or tightened cord, the
+      enormous iron air-ship floated as light and as little noticed as a baby's
+      balloon upon its string.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull's first movement after sixty motionless seconds was to turn round
+      and look at the large, luxuriant parallelogram of the garden and the long,
+      low rectangular building beyond. There was not a soul or a stir of life
+      within sight. And he had a quite meaningless sensation, as if there never
+      really had been any one else there except he since the foundation of the
+      world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Stiffening in himself the masculine but mirthless courage of the atheist,
+      he drew a little nearer to the wall and, catching the man at a slightly
+      different angle of the evening light, could see his face and figure quite
+      plain. Two facts about him stood out in the picked colours of some
+      piratical schoolboy's story. The first was that his lean brown body was
+      bare to the belt of his loose white trousers; the other that through
+      hygiene, affectation, or whatever other cause, he had a scarlet
+      handkerchief tied tightly but somewhat aslant across his brow. After these
+      two facts had become emphatic, others appeared sufficiently important. One
+      was that under the scarlet rag the hair was plentiful, but white as with
+      the last snows of mortality. Another was that under the mop of white and
+      senile hair the face was strong, handsome, and smiling, with a well-cut
+      profile and a long cloven chin. The length of this lower part of the face
+      and the strange cleft in it (which gave the man, in quite another sense
+      from the common one, a double chin) faintly spoilt the claim of the face
+      to absolute regularity, but it greatly assisted it in wearing the
+      expression of half-smiling and half-sneering arrogance with which it was
+      staring at all the stones, all the flowers, but especially at the solitary
+      man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you want?&rdquo; shouted Turnbull.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want you, Jimmy,&rdquo; said the eccentric man on the wall, and with the very
+      word he had let himself down with a leap on to the centre of the lawn,
+      where he bounded once literally like an India-rubber ball and then stood
+      grinning with his legs astride. The only three facts that Turnbull could
+      now add to his inventory were that the man had an ugly-looking knife
+      swinging at his trousers belt, that his brown feet were as bare as his
+      bronzed trunk and arms, and that his eyes had a singular bleak brilliancy
+      which was of no particular colour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Excuse my not being in evening dress,&rdquo; said the newcomer with an urbane
+      smile. &ldquo;We scientific men, you know&mdash;I have to work my own engines&mdash;electrical
+      engineer&mdash;very hot work.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look here,&rdquo; said Turnbull, sturdily clenching his fists in his trousers
+      pockets, &ldquo;I am bound to expect lunatics inside these four walls; but I do
+      bar their coming from outside, bang out of the sunset clouds.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And yet you came from the outside, too, Jim,&rdquo; said the stranger in a
+      voice almost affectionate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you want?&rdquo; asked Turnbull, with an explosion of temper as sudden
+      as a pistol shot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have already told you,&rdquo; said the man, lowering his voice and speaking
+      with evident sincerity; &ldquo;I want you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you want with me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want exactly what you want,&rdquo; said the new-comer with a new gravity. &ldquo;I
+      want the Revolution.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull looked at the fire-swept sky and the wind-stricken woodlands, and
+      kept on repeating the word voicelessly to himself&mdash;the word that did
+      indeed so thoroughly express his mood of rage as it had been among those
+      red clouds and rocking tree-tops. &ldquo;Revolution!&rdquo; he said to himself. &ldquo;The
+      Revolution&mdash;yes, that is what I want right enough&mdash;anything, so
+      long as it is a Revolution.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      To some cause he could never explain he found himself completing the
+      sentence on the top of the wall, having automatically followed the
+      stranger so far. But when the stranger silently indicated the rope that
+      led to the machine, he found himself pausing and saying: &ldquo;I can't leave
+      MacIan behind in this den.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are going to destroy the Pope and all the kings,&rdquo; said the new-comer.
+      &ldquo;Would it be wiser to take him with us?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Somehow the muttering Turnbull found himself in the flying ship also, and
+      it swung up into the sunset.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All the great rebels have been very little rebels,&rdquo; said the man with the
+      red scarf. &ldquo;They have been like fourth-form boys who sometimes venture to
+      hit a fifth-form boy. That was all the worth of their French Revolution
+      and regicide. The boys never really dared to defy the schoolmaster.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whom do you mean by the schoolmaster?&rdquo; asked Turnbull.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know whom I mean,&rdquo; answered the strange man, as he lay back on
+      cushions and looked up into the angry sky.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They seemed rising into stronger and stronger sunlight, as if it were
+      sunrise rather than sunset. But when they looked down at the earth they
+      saw it growing darker and darker. The lunatic asylum in its large
+      rectangular grounds spread below them in a foreshortened and infantile
+      plan, and looked for the first time the grotesque thing that it was. But
+      the clear colours of the plan were growing darker every moment. The masses
+      of rose or rhododendron deepened from crimson to violet. The maze of
+      gravel pathways faded from gold to brown. By the time they had risen a few
+      hundred feet higher nothing could be seen of that darkening landscape
+      except the lines of lighted windows, each one of which, at least, was the
+      light of one lost intelligence. But on them as they swept upward better
+      and braver winds seemed to blow, and on them the ruby light of evening
+      seemed struck, and splashed like red spurts from the grapes of Dionysus.
+      Below them the fallen lights were literally the fallen stars of servitude.
+      And above them all the red and raging clouds were like the leaping flags
+      of liberty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man with the cloven chin seemed to have a singular power of
+      understanding thoughts; for, as Turnbull felt the whole universe tilt and
+      turn over his head, the stranger said exactly the right thing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Doesn't it seem as if everything were being upset?&rdquo; said he; &ldquo;and if once
+      everything is upset, He will be upset on top of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, as Turnbull made no answer, his host continued:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is the really fine thing about space. It is topsy-turvy. You have
+      only to climb far enough towards the morning star to feel that you are
+      coming down to it. You have only to dive deep enough into the abyss to
+      feel that you are rising. That is the only glory of this universe&mdash;it
+      is a giddy universe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, as Turnbull was still silent, he added:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The heavens are full of revolution&mdash;of the real sort of revolution.
+      All the high things are sinking low and all the big things looking small.
+      All the people who think they are aspiring find they are falling head
+      foremost. And all the people who think they are condescending find they
+      are climbing up a precipice. That is the intoxication of space. That is
+      the only joy of eternity&mdash;doubt. There is only one pleasure the
+      angels can possibly have in flying, and that is, that they do not know
+      whether they are on their head or their heels.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, finding his companion still mute, he fell himself into a smiling and
+      motionless meditation, at the end of which he said suddenly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So MacIan converted you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull sprang up as if spurning the steel car from under his feet.
+      &ldquo;Converted me!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;What the devil do you mean? I have known him
+      for a month, and I have not retracted a single&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This Catholicism is a curious thing,&rdquo; said the man of the cloven chin in
+      uninterrupted reflectiveness, leaning his elegant elbows over the edge of
+      the vessel; &ldquo;it soaks and weakens men without their knowing it, just as I
+      fear it has soaked and weakened you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull stood in an attitude which might well have meant pitching the
+      other man out of the flying ship.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am an atheist,&rdquo; he said, in a stifled voice. &ldquo;I have always been an
+      atheist. I am still an atheist.&rdquo; Then, addressing the other's indolent and
+      indifferent back, he cried: &ldquo;In God's name what do you mean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And the other answered without turning round:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean nothing in God's name.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull spat over the edge of the car and fell back furiously into his
+      seat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The other continued still unruffled, and staring over the edge idly as an
+      angler stares down at a stream.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The truth is that we never thought that you could have been caught,&rdquo; he
+      said; &ldquo;we counted on you as the one red-hot revolutionary left in the
+      world. But, of course, these men like MacIan are awfully clever,
+      especially when they pretend to be stupid.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull leapt up again in a living fury and cried: &ldquo;What have I got to do
+      with MacIan? I believe all I ever believed, and disbelieve all I ever
+      disbelieved. What does all this mean, and what do you want with me here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then for the first time the other lifted himself from the edge of the car
+      and faced him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have brought you here,&rdquo; he answered, &ldquo;to take part in the last war of
+      the world.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The last war!&rdquo; repeated Turnbull, even in his dazed state a little touchy
+      about such a dogma; &ldquo;how do you know it will be the last?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The man laid himself back in his reposeful attitude, and said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is the last war, because if it does not cure the world for ever, it
+      will destroy it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I only mean what you mean,&rdquo; answered the unknown in a temperate voice.
+      &ldquo;What was it that you always meant on those million and one nights when
+      you walked outside your Ludgate Hill shop and shook your hand in the air?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Still I do not see,&rdquo; said Turnbull, stubbornly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will soon,&rdquo; said the other, and abruptly bent downward one iron
+      handle of his huge machine. The engine stopped, stooped, and dived almost
+      as deliberately as a man bathing; in their downward rush they swept within
+      fifty yards of a big bulk of stone that Turnbull knew only too well. The
+      last red anger of the sunset was ended; the dome of heaven was dark; the
+      lanes of flaring light in the streets below hardly lit up the base of the
+      building. But he saw that it was St. Paul's Cathedral, and he saw that on
+      the top of it the ball was still standing erect, but the cross was
+      stricken and had fallen sideways. Then only he cared to look down into the
+      streets, and saw that they were inflamed with uproar and tossing passions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We arrive at a happy moment,&rdquo; said the man steering the ship. &ldquo;The
+      insurgents are bombarding the city, and a cannon-ball has just hit the
+      cross. Many of the insurgents are simple people, and they naturally regard
+      it as a happy omen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite so,&rdquo; said Turnbull, in a rather colourless voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; replied the other. &ldquo;I thought you would be glad to see your prayer
+      answered. Of course I apologize for the word prayer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't mention it,&rdquo; said Turnbull.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The flying ship had come down upon a sort of curve, and was now rising
+      again. The higher and higher it rose the broader and broader became the
+      scenes of flame and desolation underneath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ludgate Hill indeed had been an uncaptured and comparatively quiet height,
+      altered only by the startling coincidence of the cross fallen awry. All
+      the other thoroughfares on all sides of that hill were full of the
+      pulsation and the pain of battle, full of shaking torches and shouting
+      faces. When at length they had risen high enough to have a bird's-eye view
+      of the whole campaign, Turnbull was already intoxicated. He had smelt
+      gunpowder, which was the incense of his own revolutionary religion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have the people really risen?&rdquo; he asked, breathlessly. &ldquo;What are they
+      fighting about?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The programme is rather elaborate,&rdquo; said his entertainer with some
+      indifference. &ldquo;I think Dr. Hertz drew it up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull wrinkled his forehead. &ldquo;Are all the poor people with the
+      Revolution?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The other shrugged his shoulders. &ldquo;All the instructed and class-conscious
+      part of them without exception,&rdquo; he replied. &ldquo;There were certainly a few
+      districts; in fact, we are passing over them just now&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull looked down and saw that the polished car was literally lit up
+      from underneath by the far-flung fires from below. Underneath whole
+      squares and solid districts were in flames, like prairies or forests on
+      fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dr. Hertz has convinced everybody,&rdquo; said Turnbull's cicerone in a smooth
+      voice, &ldquo;that nothing can really be done with the real slums. His
+      celebrated maxim has been quite adopted. I mean the three celebrated
+      sentences: 'No man should be unemployed. Employ the employables. Destroy
+      the unemployables.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a silence, and then Turnbull said in a rather strained voice:
+      &ldquo;And do I understand that this good work is going on under here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Going on splendidly,&rdquo; replied his companion in the heartiest voice. &ldquo;You
+      see, these people were much too tired and weak even to join the social
+      war. They were a definite hindrance to it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And so you are simply burning them out?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It <i>does</i> seem absurdly simple,&rdquo; said the man, with a beaming smile,
+      &ldquo;when one thinks of all the worry and talk about helping a hopeless slave
+      population, when the future obviously was only crying to be rid of them.
+      There are happy babes unborn ready to burst the doors when these
+      drivellers are swept away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you permit me to say,&rdquo; said Turnbull, after reflection, &ldquo;that I
+      don't like all this?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And will you permit me to say,&rdquo; said the other, with a snap, &ldquo;that I
+      don't like Mr. Evan MacIan?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Somewhat to the speaker's surprise this did not inflame the sensitive
+      sceptic; he had the air of thinking thoroughly, and then he said: &ldquo;No, I
+      don't think it's my friend MacIan that taught me that. I think I should
+      always have said that I don't like this. These people have rights.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rights!&rdquo; repeated the unknown in a tone quite indescribable. Then he
+      added with a more open sneer: &ldquo;Perhaps they also have souls.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They have lives!&rdquo; said Turnbull, sternly; &ldquo;that is quite enough for me. I
+      understood you to say that you thought life sacred.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, indeed!&rdquo; cried his mentor with a sort of idealistic animation. &ldquo;Yes,
+      indeed! Life is sacred&mdash;but lives are not sacred. We are improving
+      Life by removing lives. Can you, as a free-thinker, find any fault in
+      that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Turnbull with brevity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yet you applaud tyrannicide,&rdquo; said the stranger with rationalistic
+      gaiety. &ldquo;How inconsistent! It really comes to this: You approve of taking
+      away life from those to whom it is a triumph and a pleasure. But you will
+      not take away life from those to whom it is a burden and a toil.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull rose to his feet in the car with considerable deliberation, but
+      his face seemed oddly pale. The other went on with enthusiasm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Life, yes, Life is indeed sacred!&rdquo; he cried; &ldquo;but new lives for old! Good
+      lives for bad! On that very place where now there sprawls one drunken
+      wastrel of a pavement artist more or less wishing he were dead&mdash;on
+      that very spot there shall in the future be living pictures; there shall
+      be golden girls and boys leaping in the sun.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull, still standing up, opened his lips. &ldquo;Will you put me down,
+      please?&rdquo; he said, quite calmly, like on stopping an omnibus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Put you down&mdash;what do you mean?&rdquo; cried his leader. &ldquo;I am taking you
+      to the front of the revolutionary war, where you will be one of the first
+      of the revolutionary leaders.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you,&rdquo; replied Turnbull with the same painful constraint. &ldquo;I have
+      heard about your revolutionary war, and I think on the whole that I would
+      rather be anywhere else.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you want to be taken to a monastery,&rdquo; snarled the other, &ldquo;with MacIan
+      and his winking Madonnas.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want to be taken to a madhouse,&rdquo; said Turnbull distinctly, giving the
+      direction with a sort of precision. &ldquo;I want to go back to exactly the same
+      lunatic asylum from which I came.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why?&rdquo; asked the unknown.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because I want a little sane and wholesome society,&rdquo; answered Turnbull.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a long and peculiar silence, and then the man driving the flying
+      machine said quite coolly: &ldquo;I won't take you back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And then Turnbull said equally coolly: &ldquo;Then I'll jump out of the car.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The unknown rose to his full height, and the expression in his eyes seemed
+      to be made of ironies behind ironies, as two mirrors infinitely reflect
+      each other. At last he said, very gravely: &ldquo;Do you think I am the devil?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Turnbull, violently. &ldquo;For I think the devil is a dream, and so
+      are you. I don't believe in you or your flying ship or your last fight of
+      the world. It is all a nightmare. I say as a fact of dogma and faith that
+      it is all a nightmare. And I will be a martyr for my faith as much as St.
+      Catherine, for I will jump out of this ship and risk waking up safe in
+      bed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      After swaying twice with the swaying vessel he dived over the side as one
+      dives into the sea. For some incredible moments stars and space and
+      planets seemed to shoot up past him as the sparks fly upward; and yet in
+      that sickening descent he was full of some unnatural happiness. He could
+      connect it with no idea except one that half escaped him&mdash;what Evan
+      had said of the difference between Christ and Satan; that it was by
+      Christ's own choice that He descended into hell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he again realized anything, he was lying on his elbow on the lawn of
+      the lunatic asylum, and the last red of the sunset had not yet
+      disappeared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0017" id="link2H_4_0017">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XVII. THE IDIOT
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Evan MacIan was standing a few yards off looking at him in absolute
+      silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had not the moral courage to ask MacIan if there had been anything
+      astounding in the manner of his coming there, nor did MacIan seem to have
+      any question to ask, or perhaps any need to ask it. The two men came
+      slowly towards each other, and found the same expression on each other's
+      faces. Then, for the first time in all their acquaintance, they shook
+      hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Almost as if this were a kind of unconscious signal, it brought Dr. Quayle
+      bounding out of a door and running across the lawn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, there you are!&rdquo; he exclaimed with a relieved giggle. &ldquo;Will you come
+      inside, please? I want to speak to you both.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They followed him into his shiny wooden office where their damning record
+      was kept. Dr. Quayle sat down on a swivel chair and swung round to face
+      them. His carved smile had suddenly disappeared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will be plain with you gentlemen,&rdquo; he said, abruptly; &ldquo;you know quite
+      well we do our best for everybody here. Your cases have been under special
+      consideration, and the Master himself has decided that you ought to be
+      treated specially and&mdash;er&mdash;under somewhat simpler conditions.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean treated worse, I suppose,&rdquo; said Turnbull, gruffly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor did not reply, and MacIan said: &ldquo;I expected this.&rdquo; His eyes had
+      begun to glow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor answered, looking at his desk and playing with a key: &ldquo;Well, in
+      certain cases that give anxiety&mdash;it is often better&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Give anxiety,&rdquo; said Turnbull, fiercely. &ldquo;Confound your impudence! What do
+      you mean? You imprison two perfectly sane men in a madhouse because you
+      have made up a long word. They take it in good temper, walk and talk in
+      your garden like monks who have found a vocation, are civil even to you,
+      you damned druggists' hack! Behave not only more sanely than any of your
+      patients, but more sanely than half the sane men outside, and you have the
+      soul-stifling cheek to say that they give anxiety.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The head of the asylum has settled it all,&rdquo; said Dr. Quayle, still
+      looking down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan took one of his immense strides forward and stood over the doctor
+      with flaming eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If the head has settled it let the head announce it,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I won't
+      take it from you. I believe you to be a low, gibbering degenerate. Let us
+      see the head of the asylum.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;See the head of the asylum,&rdquo; repeated Dr. Quayle. &ldquo;Certainly not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The tall Highlander, bending over him, put one hand on his shoulder with
+      fatherly interest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don't seem to appreciate the peculiar advantages of my position as a
+      lunatic,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I could kill you with my left hand before such a rat
+      as you could so much as squeak. And I wouldn't be hanged for it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I certainly agree with Mr. MacIan,&rdquo; said Turnbull with sobriety and
+      perfect respectfulness, &ldquo;that you had better let us see the head of the
+      institution.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dr. Quayle got to his feet in a mixture of sudden hysteria and clumsy
+      presence of mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, certainly,&rdquo; he said with a weak laugh. &ldquo;You can see the head of the
+      asylum if you particularly want to.&rdquo; He almost ran out of the room, and
+      the two followed swiftly on his flying coat tails. He knocked at an
+      ordinary varnished door in the corridor. When a voice said, &ldquo;Come in,&rdquo;
+       MacIan's breath went hissing back through his teeth into his chest.
+      Turnbull was more impetuous, and opened the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a neat and well-appointed room entirely lined with a medical
+      library. At the other end of it was a ponderous and polished desk with an
+      incandescent lamp on it, the light of which was just sufficient to show a
+      slender, well-bred figure in an ordinary medical black frock-coat, whose
+      head, quite silvered with age, was bent over neat piles of notes. This
+      gentleman looked up for an instant as they entered, and the lamplight fell
+      on his glittering spectacles and long, clean-shaven face&mdash;a face
+      which would have been simply like an aristocrat's but that a certain lion
+      poise of the head and long cleft in the chin made it look more like a very
+      handsome actor's. It was only for a flash that his face was thus lifted.
+      Then he bent his silver head over his notes once more, and said, without
+      looking up again:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I told you, Dr. Quayle, that these men were to go to cells B and C.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull and MacIan looked at each other, and said more than they could
+      ever say with tongues or swords. Among other things they said that to that
+      particular Head of the institution it was a waste of time to appeal, and
+      they followed Dr. Quayle out of the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The instant they stepped out into the corridor four sturdy figures stepped
+      from four sides, pinioned them, and ran them along the galleries. They
+      might very likely have thrown their captors right and left had they been
+      inclined to resist, but for some nameless reason they were more inclined
+      to laugh. A mixture of mad irony with childish curiosity made them feel
+      quite inclined to see what next twist would be taken by their imbecile
+      luck. They were dragged down countless cold avenues lined with glazed
+      tiles, different only in being of different lengths and set at different
+      angles. They were so many and so monotonous that to escape back by them
+      would have been far harder than fleeing from the Hampton Court maze. Only
+      the fact that windows grew fewer, coming at longer intervals, and the fact
+      that when the windows did come they seemed shadowed and let in less light,
+      showed that they were winding into the core or belly of some enormous
+      building. After a little time the glazed corridors began to be lit by
+      electricity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last, when they had walked nearly a mile in those white and polished
+      tunnels, they came with quite a shock to the futile finality of a
+      cul-de-sac. All that white and weary journey ended suddenly in an oblong
+      space and a blank white wall. But in the white wall there were two iron
+      doors painted white on which were written, respectively, in neat black
+      capitals B and C.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You go in here, sir,&rdquo; said the leader of the officials, quite
+      respectfully, &ldquo;and you in here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But before the doors had clanged upon their dazed victims, MacIan had been
+      able to say to Turnbull with a strange drawl of significance: &ldquo;I wonder
+      who A is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull made an automatic struggle before he allowed himself to be thrown
+      into the cell. Hence it happened that he was the last to enter, and was
+      still full of the exhilaration of the adventures for at least five minutes
+      after the echo of the clanging door had died away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, when silence had sunk deep and nothing happened for two and a half
+      hours, it suddenly occurred to him that this was the end of his life. He
+      was hidden and sealed up in this little crack of stone until the flesh
+      should fall off his bones. He was dead, and the world had won.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His cell was of an oblong shape, but very long in comparison with its
+      width. It was just wide enough to permit the arms to be fully extended
+      with the dumb-bells, which were hung up on the left wall, very dusty. It
+      was, however, long enough for a man to walk one thirty-fifth part of a
+      mile if he traversed it entirely. On the same principle a row of fixed
+      holes, quite close together, let in to the cells by pipes what was alleged
+      to be the freshest air. For these great scientific organizers insisted
+      that a man should be healthy even if he was miserable. They provided a
+      walk long enough to give him exercise and holes large enough to give him
+      oxygen. There their interest in human nature suddenly ceased. It seemed
+      never to have occurred to them that the benefit of exercise belongs partly
+      to the benefit of liberty. They had not entertained the suggestion that
+      the open air is only one of the advantages of the open sky. They
+      administered air in secret, but in sufficient doses, as if it were a
+      medicine. They suggested walking, as if no man had ever felt inclined to
+      walk. Above all, the asylum authorities insisted on their own
+      extraordinary cleanliness. Every morning, while Turnbull was still half
+      asleep on his iron bedstead which was lifted half-way up the wall and
+      clamped to it with iron, four sluices or metal mouths opened above him at
+      the four corners of the chamber and washed it white of any defilement.
+      Turnbull's solitary soul surged up against this sickening daily solemnity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am buried alive!&rdquo; he cried, bitterly; &ldquo;they have hidden me under
+      mountains. I shall be here till I rot. Why the blazes should it matter to
+      them whether I am dirty or clean.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Every morning and evening an iron hatchway opened in his oblong cell, and
+      a brown hairy hand or two thrust in a plate of perfectly cooked lentils
+      and a big bowl of cocoa. He was not underfed any more than he was
+      underexercised or asphyxiated. He had ample walking space, ample air,
+      ample and even filling food. The only objection was that he had nothing to
+      walk towards, nothing to feast about, and no reason whatever for drawing
+      the breath of life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even the shape of his cell especially irritated him. It was a long, narrow
+      parallelogram, which had a flat wall at one end and ought to have had a
+      flat wall at the other; but that end was broken by a wedge or angle of
+      space, like the prow of a ship. After three days of silence and cocoa,
+      this angle at the end began to infuriate Turnbull. It maddened him to
+      think that two lines came together and pointed at nothing. After the fifth
+      day he was reckless, and poked his head into the corner. After twenty-five
+      days he almost broke his head against it. Then he became quite cool and
+      stupid again, and began to examine it like a sort of Robinson Crusoe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Almost unconsciously it was his instinct to examine outlets, and he found
+      himself paying particular attention to the row of holes which let in the
+      air into his last house of life. He soon discovered that these air-holes
+      were all the ends and mouths of long leaden tubes which doubtless carried
+      air from some remote watering-place near Margate. One evening while he was
+      engaged in the fifth investigation he noticed something like twilight in
+      one of these dumb mouths, as compared with the darkness of the others.
+      Thrusting his finger in as far as it would go, he found a hole and
+      flapping edge in the tube. This he rent open and instantly saw a light
+      behind; it was at least certain that he had struck some other cell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is a characteristic of all things now called &ldquo;efficient&rdquo;, which means
+      mechanical and calculated, that if they go wrong at all they go entirely
+      wrong. There is no power of retrieving a defeat, as in simpler and more
+      living organisms. A strong gun can conquer a strong elephant, but a
+      wounded elephant can easily conquer a broken gun. Thus the Prussian
+      monarchy in the eighteenth century, or now, can make a strong army merely
+      by making the men afraid. But it does it with the permanent possibility
+      that the men may some day be more afraid of their enemies than of their
+      officers. Thus the drainage in our cities so long as it is quite solid
+      means a general safety, but if there is one leak it means concentrated
+      poison&mdash;an explosion of deathly germs like dynamite, a spirit of
+      stink. Thus, indeed, all that excellent machinery which is the swiftest
+      thing on earth in saving human labour is also the slowest thing on earth
+      in resisting human interference. It may be easier to get chocolate for
+      nothing out of a shopkeeper than out of an automatic machine. But if you
+      did manage to steal the chocolate, the automatic machine would be much
+      less likely to run after you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull was not long in discovering this truth in connexion with the cold
+      and colossal machinery of this great asylum. He had been shaken by many
+      spiritual states since the instant when he was pitched head foremost into
+      that private cell which was to be his private room till death. He had felt
+      a high fit of pride and poetry, which had ebbed away and left him deadly
+      cold. He had known a period of mere scientific curiosity, in the course of
+      which he examined all the tiles of his cell, with the gratifying
+      conclusion that they were all the same shape and size; but was greatly
+      puzzled about the angle in the wall at the end, and also about an iron peg
+      or spike that stood out from the wall, the object of which he does not
+      know to this day. Then he had a period of mere madness not to be written
+      of by decent men, but only by those few dirty novelists hallooed on by the
+      infernal huntsman to hunt down and humiliate human nature. This also
+      passed, but left behind it a feverish distaste for many of the mere
+      objects around him. Long after he had returned to sanity and such hopeless
+      cheerfulness as a man might have on a desert island, he disliked the
+      regular squares of the pattern of wall and floor and the triangle that
+      terminated his corridor. Above all, he had a hatred, deep as the hell he
+      did not believe in, for the objectless iron peg in the wall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But in all his moods, sane or insane, intolerant or stoical, he never
+      really doubted this: that the machine held him as light and as hopelessly
+      as he had from his birth been held by the hopeless cosmos of his own
+      creed. He knew well the ruthless and inexhaustible resources of our
+      scientific civilization. He no more expected rescue from a medical
+      certificate than rescue from the solar system. In many of his Robinson
+      Crusoe moods he thought kindly of MacIan as of some quarrelsome
+      school-fellow who had long been dead. He thought of leaving in the cell
+      when he died a rigid record of his opinions, and when he began to write
+      them down on scraps of envelope in his pocket, he was startled to discover
+      how much they had changed. Then he remembered the Beauchamp Tower, and
+      tried to write his blazing scepticism on the wall, and discovered that it
+      was all shiny tiles on which nothing could be either drawn or carved. Then
+      for an instant there hung and broke above him like a high wave the whole
+      horror of scientific imprisonment, which manages to deny a man not only
+      liberty, but every accidental comfort of bondage. In the old filthy
+      dungeons men could carve their prayers or protests in the rock. Here the
+      white and slippery walls escaped even from bearing witness. The old
+      prisoners could make a pet of a mouse or a beetle strayed out of a hole.
+      Here the unpierceable walls were washed every morning by an automatic
+      sluice. There was no natural corruption and no merciful decay by which a
+      living thing could enter in. Then James Turnbull looked up and saw the
+      high invincible hatefulness of the society in which he lived, and saw the
+      hatefulness of something else also, which he told himself again and again
+      was not the cosmos in which he believed. But all the time he had never
+      once doubted that the five sides of his cell were for him the wall of the
+      world henceforward, and it gave him a shock of surprise even to discover
+      the faint light through the aperture in the ventilation tube. But he had
+      forgotten how close efficiency has to pack everything together and how
+      easily, therefore, a pipe here or there may leak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull thrust his first finger down the aperture, and at last managed to
+      make a slight further fissure in the piping. The light that came up from
+      beyond was very faint, and apparently indirect; it seemed to fall from
+      some hole or window higher up. As he was screwing his eye to peer at this
+      grey and greasy twilight he was astonished to see another human finger
+      very long and lean come down from above towards the broken pipe and hook
+      it up to something higher. The lighted aperture was abruptly blackened and
+      blocked, presumably by a face and mouth, for something human spoke down
+      the tube, though the words were not clear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who is that?&rdquo; asked Turnbull, trembling with excitement, yet wary and
+      quite resolved not to spoil any chance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After a few indistinct sounds the voice came down with a strong
+      Argyllshire accent:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say, Turnbull, we couldn't fight through this tube, could we?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sentiments beyond speech surged up in Turnbull and silenced him for a
+      space just long enough to be painful. Then he said with his old gaiety: &ldquo;I
+      vote we talk a little first; I don't want to murder the first man I have
+      met for ten million years.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know what you mean,&rdquo; answered the other. &ldquo;It has been awful. For a
+      mortal month I have been alone with God.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull started, and it was on the tip of his tongue to answer: &ldquo;Alone
+      with God! Then you do not know what loneliness is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But he answered, after all, in his old defiant style: &ldquo;Alone with God,
+      were you? And I suppose you found his Majesty's society rather
+      monotonous?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no,&rdquo; said MacIan, and his voice shuddered; &ldquo;it was a great deal too
+      exciting.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      After a very long silence the voice of MacIan said: &ldquo;What do you really
+      hate most in your place?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'd think I was really mad if I told you,&rdquo; answered Turnbull, bitterly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I expect it's the same as mine,&rdquo; said the other voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am sure it's not the same as anybody's,&rdquo; said Turnbull, &ldquo;for it has no
+      rhyme or reason. Perhaps my brain really has gone, but I detest that iron
+      spike in the left wall more than the damned desolation or the damned
+      cocoa. Have you got one in your cell?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not now,&rdquo; replied MacIan with serenity. &ldquo;I've pulled it out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His fellow-prisoner could only repeat the words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I pulled it out the other day when I was off my head,&rdquo; continued the
+      tranquil Highland voice. &ldquo;It looked so unnecessary.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must be ghastly strong,&rdquo; said Turnbull.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One is, when one is mad,&rdquo; was the careless reply, &ldquo;and it had worn a
+      little loose in the socket. Even now I've got it out I can't discover what
+      it was for. But I've found out something a long sight funnier.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean?&rdquo; asked Turnbull.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have found out where A is,&rdquo; said the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Three weeks afterwards MacIan had managed to open up communications which
+      made his meaning plain. By that time the two captives had fully discovered
+      and demonstrated that weakness in the very nature of modern machinery to
+      which we have already referred. The very fact that they were isolated from
+      all companions meant that they were free from all spies, and as there were
+      no gaolers to be bribed, so there were none to be baffled. Machinery
+      brought them their cocoa and cleaned their cells; that machinery was as
+      helpless as it was pitiless. A little patient violence, conducted day
+      after day amid constant mutual suggestion, opened an irregular hole in the
+      wall, large enough to let in a small man, in the exact place where there
+      had been before the tiny ventilation holes. Turnbull tumbled somehow into
+      MacIan's apartment, and his first glance found out that the iron spike was
+      indeed plucked from its socket, and left, moreover, another ragged hole
+      into some hollow place behind. But for this MacIan's cell was the
+      duplicate of Turnbull's&mdash;a long oblong ending in a wedge and lined
+      with cold and lustrous tiles. The small hole from which the peg had been
+      displaced was in that short oblique wall at the end nearest to Turnbull's.
+      That individual looked at it with a puzzled face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is in there?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan answered briefly: &ldquo;Another cell.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But where can the door of it be?&rdquo; said his companion, even more puzzled;
+      &ldquo;the doors of our cells are at the other end.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It has no door,&rdquo; said Evan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the pause of perplexity that followed, an eerie and sinister feeling
+      crept over Turnbull's stubborn soul in spite of himself. The notion of the
+      doorless room chilled him with that sense of half-witted curiosity which
+      one has when something horrible is half understood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;James Turnbull,&rdquo; said MacIan, in a low and shaken voice, &ldquo;these people
+      hate us more than Nero hated Christians, and fear us more than any man
+      feared Nero. They have filled England with frenzy and galloping in order
+      to capture us and wipe us out&mdash;in order to kill us. And they have
+      killed us, for you and I have only made a hole in our coffins. But though
+      this hatred that they felt for us is bigger than they felt for Bonaparte,
+      and more plain and practical than they would feel for Jack the Ripper, yet
+      it is not we whom the people of this place hate most.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A cold and quivering impatience continued to crawl up Turnbull's spine; he
+      had never felt so near to superstition and supernaturalism, and it was not
+      a pretty sort of superstition either.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is another man more fearful and hateful,&rdquo; went on MacIan, in his
+      low monotone voice, &ldquo;and they have buried him even deeper. God knows how
+      they did it, for he was let in by neither door nor window, nor lowered
+      through any opening above. I expect these iron handles that we both hate
+      have been part of some damned machinery for walling him up. He is there. I
+      have looked through the hole at him; but I cannot stand looking at him
+      long, because his face is turned away from me and he does not move.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      All Turnbull's unnatural and uncompleted feelings found their outlet in
+      rushing to the aperture and looking into the unknown room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a third oblong cell exactly like the other two except that it was
+      doorless, and except that on one of the walls was painted a large black A
+      like the B and C outside their own doors. The letter in this case was not
+      painted outside, because this prison had no outside.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the same kind of tiled floor, of which the monotonous squares had
+      maddened Turnbull's eye and brain, was sitting a figure which was
+      startlingly short even for a child, only that the enormous head was ringed
+      with hair of a frosty grey. The figure was draped, both insecurely and
+      insufficiently, in what looked like the remains of a brown flannel
+      dressing-gown; an emptied cup of cocoa stood on the floor beside it, and
+      the creature had his big grey head cocked at a particular angle of inquiry
+      or attention which amid all that gathering gloom and mystery struck one as
+      comic if not cocksure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After six still seconds Turnbull could stand it no longer, but called out
+      to the dwarfish thing&mdash;in what words heaven knows. The thing got up
+      with the promptitude of an animal, and turning round offered the spectacle
+      of two owlish eyes and a huge grey-and-white beard not unlike the plumage
+      of an owl. This extraordinary beard covered him literally to his feet (not
+      that that was very far), and perhaps it was as well that it did, for
+      portions of his remaining clothing seemed to fall off whenever he moved.
+      One talks trivially of a face like parchment, but this old man's face was
+      so wrinkled that it was like a parchment loaded with hieroglyphics. The
+      lines of his face were so deep and complex that one could see five or ten
+      different faces besides the real one, as one can see them in an elaborate
+      wall-paper. And yet while his face seemed like a scripture older than the
+      gods, his eyes were quite bright, blue, and startled like those of a baby.
+      They looked as if they had only an instant before been fitted into his
+      head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Everything depended so obviously upon whether this buried monster spoke
+      that Turnbull did not know or care whether he himself had spoken. He said
+      something or nothing. And then he waited for this dwarfish voice that had
+      been hidden under the mountains of the world. At last it did speak, and
+      spoke in English, with a foreign accent that was neither Latin nor
+      Teutonic. He suddenly stretched out a long and very dirty forefinger, and
+      cried in a voice of clear recognition, like a child's: &ldquo;That's a hole.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He digested the discovery for some seconds, sucking his finger, and then
+      he cried, with a crow of laughter: &ldquo;And that's a head come through it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The hilarious energy in this idiot attitude gave Turnbull another sick
+      turn. He had grown to tolerate those dreary and mumbling madmen who
+      trailed themselves about the beautiful asylum gardens. But there was
+      something new and subversive of the universe in the combination of so much
+      cheerful decision with a body without a brain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why did they put you in such a place?&rdquo; he asked at last with
+      embarrassment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good place. Yes,&rdquo; said the old man, nodding a great many times and
+      beaming like a flattered landlord. &ldquo;Good shape. Long and narrow, with a
+      point. Like this,&rdquo; and he made lovingly with his hands a map of the room
+      in the air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But that's not the best,&rdquo; he added, confidentially. &ldquo;Squares very good; I
+      have a nice long holiday, and can count them. But that's not the best.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is the best?&rdquo; asked Turnbull in great distress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Spike is the best,&rdquo; said the old man, opening his blue eyes blazing; &ldquo;it
+      sticks out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The words Turnbull spoke broke out of him in pure pity. &ldquo;Can't we do
+      anything for you?&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am very happy,&rdquo; said the other, alphabetically. &ldquo;You are a good man.
+      Can I help you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I don't think you can, sir,&rdquo; said Turnbull with rough pathos; &ldquo;I am
+      glad you are contented at least.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The weird old person opened his broad blue eyes and fixed Turnbull with a
+      stare extraordinarily severe. &ldquo;You are quite sure,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I cannot
+      help you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite sure, thank you,&rdquo; said Turnbull with broken brevity. &ldquo;Good day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he turned to MacIan who was standing close behind him, and whose
+      face, now familiar in all its moods, told him easily that Evan had heard
+      the whole of the strange dialogue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Curse those cruel beasts!&rdquo; cried Turnbull. &ldquo;They've turned him to an
+      imbecile just by burying him alive. His brain's like a pin-point now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are sure he is a lunatic?&rdquo; said Evan, slowly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not a lunatic,&rdquo; said Turnbull, &ldquo;an idiot. He just points to things and
+      says that they stick out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He had a notion that he could help us,&rdquo; said MacIan moodily, and began to
+      pace towards the other end of his cell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, it was a bit pathetic,&rdquo; assented Turnbull; &ldquo;such a Thing offering
+      help, and besides&mdash;&mdash; Hallo! Hallo! What's the matter?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God Almighty guide us all!&rdquo; said MacIan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was standing heavy and still at the other end of the room and staring
+      quietly at the door which for thirty days had sealed them up from the sun.
+      Turnbull, following the other's eye, stared at the door likewise, and then
+      he also uttered an exclamation. The iron door was standing about an inch
+      and a half open.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He said&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; began Evan, in a trembling voice&mdash;&ldquo;he offered&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come along, you fool!&rdquo; shouted Turnbull with a sudden and furious energy.
+      &ldquo;I see it all now, and it's the best stroke of luck in the world. You
+      pulled out that iron handle that had screwed up his cell, and it somehow
+      altered the machinery and opened all the doors.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Seizing MacIan by the elbow he bundled him bodily out into the open
+      corridor and ran him on till they saw daylight through a half-darkened
+      window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All the same,&rdquo; said Evan, like one answering in an ordinary conversation,
+      &ldquo;he did ask you whether he could help you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      All this wilderness of windowless passages was so built into the heart of
+      that fortress of fear that it seemed more than an hour before the
+      fugitives had any good glimpse of the outer world. They did not even know
+      what hour of the day it was; and when, turning a corner, they saw the bare
+      tunnel of the corridor end abruptly in a shining square of garden, the
+      grass burning in that strong evening sunshine which makes it burnished
+      gold rather than green, the abrupt opening on to the earth seemed like a
+      hole knocked in the wall of heaven. Only once or twice in life is it
+      permitted to a man thus to see the very universe from outside, and feel
+      existence itself as an adorable adventure not yet begun. As they found
+      this shining escape out of that hellish labyrinth they both had
+      simultaneously the sensation of being babes unborn, of being asked by God
+      if they would like to live upon the earth. They were looking in at one of
+      the seven gates of Eden.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull was the first to leap into the garden, with an earth-spurning
+      leap like that of one who could really spread his wings and fly. MacIan,
+      who came an instant after, was less full of mere animal gusto and fuller
+      of a more fearful and quivering pleasure in the clear and innocent flower
+      colours and the high and holy trees. With one bound they were in that cool
+      and cleared landscape, and they found just outside the door the black-clad
+      gentleman with the cloven chin smilingly regarding them; and his chin
+      seemed to grow longer and longer as he smiled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0018" id="link2H_4_0018">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XVIII. A RIDDLE OF FACES
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Just behind him stood two other doctors: one, the familiar Dr. Quayle, of
+      the blinking eyes and bleating voice; the other, a more commonplace but
+      much more forcible figure, a stout young doctor with short, well-brushed
+      hair and a round but resolute face. At the sight of the escape these two
+      subordinates uttered a cry and sprang forward, but their superior remained
+      motionless and smiling, and somehow the lack of his support seemed to
+      arrest and freeze them in the very gesture of pursuit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let them be,&rdquo; he cried in a voice that cut like a blade of ice; and not
+      only of ice, but of some awful primordial ice that had never been water.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want no devoted champions,&rdquo; said the cutting voice; &ldquo;even the folly of
+      one's friends bores one at last. You don't suppose I should have let these
+      lunatics out of their cells without good reason. I have the best and
+      fullest reason. They can be let out of their cell today, because today the
+      whole world has become their cell. I will have no more medieval mummery of
+      chains and doors. Let them wander about the earth as they wandered about
+      this garden, and I shall still be their easy master. Let them take the
+      wings of the morning and abide in the uttermost parts of the sea&mdash;I
+      am there. Whither shall they go from my presence and whither shall they
+      flee from my spirit? Courage, Dr. Quayle, and do not be downhearted; the
+      real days of tyranny are only beginning on this earth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And with that the Master laughed and swung away from them, almost as if
+      his laugh was a bad thing for people to see.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Might I speak to you a moment?&rdquo; said Turnbull, stepping forward with a
+      respectful resolution. But the shoulders of the Master only seemed to take
+      on a new and unexpected angle of mockery as he strode away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull swung round with great abruptness to the other two doctors, and
+      said, harshly: &ldquo;What in snakes does he mean&mdash;and who are you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My name is Hutton,&rdquo; said the short, stout man, &ldquo;and I am&mdash;well, one
+      of those whose business it is to uphold this establishment.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My name is Turnbull,&rdquo; said the other; &ldquo;I am one of those whose business
+      it is to tear it to the ground.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The small doctor smiled, and Turnbull's anger seemed suddenly to steady
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I don't want to talk about that,&rdquo; he said, calmly; &ldquo;I only want to
+      know what the Master of this asylum really means.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dr. Hutton's smile broke into a laugh which, short as it was, had the
+      suspicion of a shake in it. &ldquo;I suppose you think that quite a simple
+      question,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think it a plain question,&rdquo; said Turnbull, &ldquo;and one that deserves a
+      plain answer. Why did the Master lock us up in a couple of cupboards like
+      jars of pickles for a mortal month, and why does he now let us walk free
+      in the garden again?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I understand,&rdquo; said Hutton, with arched eyebrows, &ldquo;that your complaint is
+      that you are now free to walk in the garden.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My complaint is,&rdquo; said Turnbull, stubbornly, &ldquo;that if I am fit to walk
+      freely now, I have been as fit for the last month. No one has examined me,
+      no one has come near me. Your chief says that I am only free because he
+      has made other arrangements. What are those arrangements?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The young man with the round face looked down for a little while and
+      smoked reflectively. The other and elder doctor had gone pacing nervously
+      by himself upon the lawn. At length the round face was lifted again, and
+      showed two round blue eyes with a certain frankness in them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I don't see that it can do any harm to tell you know,&rdquo; he said.
+      &ldquo;You were shut up just then because it was just during that month that the
+      Master was bringing off his big scheme. He was getting his bill through
+      Parliament, and organizing the new medical police. But of course you
+      haven't heard of all that; in fact, you weren't meant to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Heard of all what?&rdquo; asked the impatient inquirer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's a new law now, and the asylum powers are greatly extended. Even
+      if you did escape now, any policeman would take you up in the next town if
+      you couldn't show a certificate of sanity from us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; continued Dr. Hutton, &ldquo;the Master described before both Houses of
+      Parliament the real scientific objection to all existing legislation about
+      lunacy. As he very truly said, the mistake was in supposing insanity to be
+      merely an exception or an extreme. Insanity, like forgetfulness, is simply
+      a quality which enters more or less into all human beings; and for
+      practical purposes it is more necessary to know whose mind is really
+      trustworthy than whose has some accidental taint. We have therefore
+      reversed the existing method, and people now have to prove that they are
+      sane. In the first village you entered, the village constable would notice
+      that you were not wearing on the left lapel of your coat the small pewter
+      S which is now necessary to any one who walks about beyond asylum bounds
+      or outside asylum hours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean to say,&rdquo; said Turnbull, &ldquo;that this was what the Master of the
+      asylum urged before the House of Commons?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dr. Hutton nodded with gravity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you mean to say,&rdquo; cried Turnbull, with a vibrant snort, &ldquo;that that
+      proposal was passed in an assembly that calls itself democratic?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor showed his whole row of teeth in a smile. &ldquo;Oh, the assembly
+      calls itself Socialist now,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;But we explained to them that this
+      was a question for men of science.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull gave one stamp upon the gravel, then pulled himself together, and
+      resumed: &ldquo;But why should your infernal head medicine-man lock us up in
+      separate cells while he was turning England into a madhouse? I'm not the
+      Prime Minister; we're not the House of Lords.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He wasn't afraid of the Prime Minister,&rdquo; replied Dr. Hutton; &ldquo;he isn't
+      afraid of the House of Lords. But&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well?&rdquo; inquired Turnbull, stamping again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is afraid of you,&rdquo; said Hutton, simply. &ldquo;Why, didn't you know?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan, who had not spoken yet, made one stride forward and stood with
+      shaking limbs and shining eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He was afraid!&rdquo; began Evan, thickly. &ldquo;You mean to say that we&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean to say the plain truth now that the danger is over,&rdquo; said Hutton,
+      calmly; &ldquo;most certainly you two were the only people he ever was afraid
+      of.&rdquo; Then he added in a low but not inaudible voice: &ldquo;Except one&mdash;whom
+      he feared worse, and has buried deeper.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come away,&rdquo; cried MacIan, &ldquo;this has to be thought about.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull followed him in silence as he strode away, but just before he
+      vanished, turned and spoke again to the doctors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what has got hold of people?&rdquo; he asked, abruptly. &ldquo;Why should all
+      England have gone dotty on the mere subject of dottiness?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dr. Hutton smiled his open smile once more and bowed slightly. &ldquo;As to that
+      also,&rdquo; he replied, &ldquo;I don't want to make you vain.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull swung round without a word, and he and his companion were lost in
+      the lustrous leafage of the garden. They noticed nothing special about the
+      scene, except that the garden seemed more exquisite than ever in the
+      deepening sunset, and that there seemed to be many more people, whether
+      patients or attendants, walking about in it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From behind the two black-coated doctors as they stood on the lawn another
+      figure somewhat similarly dressed strode hurriedly past them, having also
+      grizzled hair and an open flapping frock-coat. Both his decisive step and
+      dapper black array marked him out as another medical man, or at least a
+      man in authority, and as he passed Turnbull the latter was aroused by a
+      strong impression of having seen the man somewhere before. It was no one
+      that he knew well, yet he was certain that it was someone at whom he had
+      at sometime or other looked steadily. It was neither the face of a friend
+      nor of an enemy; it aroused neither irritation nor tenderness, yet it was
+      a face which had for some reason been of great importance in his life.
+      Turning and returning, and making detours about the garden, he managed to
+      study the man's face again and again&mdash;a moustached, somewhat military
+      face with a monocle, the sort of face that is aristocratic without being
+      distinguished. Turnbull could not remember any particular doctors in his
+      decidedly healthy existence. Was the man a long-lost uncle, or was he only
+      somebody who had sat opposite him regularly in a railway train? At that
+      moment the man knocked down his own eye-glass with a gesture of annoyance;
+      Turnbull remembered the gesture, and the truth sprang up solid in front of
+      him. The man with the moustaches was Cumberland Vane, the London police
+      magistrate before whom he and MacIan had once stood on their trial. The
+      magistrate must have been transferred to some other official duties&mdash;to
+      something connected with the inspection of asylums.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull's heart gave a leap of excitement which was half hope. As a
+      magistrate Mr. Cumberland Vane had been somewhat careless and shallow, but
+      certainly kindly, and not inaccessible to common sense so long as it was
+      put to him in strictly conventional language. He was at least an authority
+      of a more human and refreshing sort than the crank with the wagging beard
+      or the fiend with the forked chin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He went straight up to the magistrate, and said: &ldquo;Good evening, Mr. Vane;
+      I doubt if you remember me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cumberland Vane screwed the eye-glass into his scowling face for an
+      instant, and then said curtly but not uncivilly: &ldquo;Yes, I remember you,
+      sir; assault or battery, wasn't it?&mdash;a fellow broke your window. A
+      tall fellow&mdash;McSomething&mdash;case made rather a noise afterwards.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;MacIan is the name, sir,&rdquo; said Turnbull, respectfully; &ldquo;I have him here
+      with me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eh!&rdquo; said Vane very sharply. &ldquo;Confound him! Has he got anything to do
+      with this game?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Vane,&rdquo; said Turnbull, pacifically, &ldquo;I will not pretend that either he
+      or I acted quite decorously on that occasion. You were very lenient with
+      us, and did not treat us as criminals when you very well might. So I am
+      sure you will give us your testimony that, even if we were criminals, we
+      are not lunatics in any legal or medical sense whatever. I am sure you
+      will use your influence for us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My influence!&rdquo; repeated the magistrate, with a slight start. &ldquo;I don't
+      quite understand you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know in what capacity you are here,&rdquo; continued Turnbull, gravely,
+      &ldquo;but a legal authority of your distinction must certainly be here in an
+      important one. Whether you are visiting and inspecting the place, or
+      attached to it as some kind of permanent legal adviser, your opinion must
+      still&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cumberland Vane exploded with a detonation of oaths; his face was
+      transfigured with fury and contempt, and yet in some odd way he did not
+      seem specially angry with Turnbull.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But Lord bless us and save us!&rdquo; he gasped, at length; &ldquo;I'm not here as an
+      official at all. I'm here as a patient. The cursed pack of rat-catching
+      chemists all say that I've lost my wits.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You!&rdquo; cried Turnbull with terrible emphasis. &ldquo;You! Lost your wits!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In the rush of his real astonishment at this towering unreality Turnbull
+      almost added: &ldquo;Why, you haven't got any to lose.&rdquo; But he fortunately
+      remembered the remains of his desperate diplomacy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This can't go on,&rdquo; he said, positively. &ldquo;Men like MacIan and I may suffer
+      unjustly all our lives, but a man like you must have influence.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is only one man who has any influence in England now,&rdquo; said Vane,
+      and his high voice fell to a sudden and convincing quietude.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whom do you mean?&rdquo; asked Turnbull.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean that cursed fellow with the long split chin,&rdquo; said the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it really true,&rdquo; asked Turnbull, &ldquo;that he has been allowed to buy up
+      and control such a lot? What put the country into such a state?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Cumberland Vane laughed outright. &ldquo;What put the country into such a
+      state?&rdquo; he asked. &ldquo;Why, you did. When you were fool enough to agree to
+      fight MacIan, after all, everybody was ready to believe that the Bank of
+      England might paint itself pink with white spots.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't understand,&rdquo; answered Turnbull. &ldquo;Why should you be surprised at
+      my fighting? I hope I have always fought.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Cumberland Vane, airily, &ldquo;you didn't believe in religion, you
+      see&mdash;so we thought you were safe at any rate. You went further in
+      your language than most of us wanted to go; no good in just hurting one's
+      mother's feelings, I think. But of course we all knew you were right, and,
+      really, we relied on you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you?&rdquo; said the editor of <i>The Atheist</i> with a bursting heart. &ldquo;I
+      am sorry you did not tell me so at the time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He walked away very rapidly and flung himself on a garden seat, and for
+      some six minutes his own wrongs hid from him the huge and hilarious fact
+      that Cumberland Vane had been locked up as a lunatic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The garden of the madhouse was so perfectly planned, and answered so
+      exquisitely to every hour of daylight, that one could almost fancy that
+      the sunlight was caught there tangled in its tinted trees, as the wise men
+      of Gotham tried to chain the spring to a bush. Or it seemed as if this
+      ironic paradise still kept its unique dawn or its special sunset while the
+      rest of the earthly globe rolled through its ordinary hours. There was one
+      evening, or late afternoon, in particular, which Evan MacIan will remember
+      in the last moments of death. It was what artists call a daffodil sky, but
+      it is coarsened even by reference to a daffodil. It was of that innocent
+      lonely yellow which has never heard of orange, though it might turn quite
+      unconsciously into green. Against it the tops, one might say the turrets,
+      of the clipt and ordered trees were outlined in that shade of veiled
+      violet which tints the tops of lavender. A white early moon was hardly
+      traceable upon that delicate yellow. MacIan, I say, will remember this
+      tender and transparent evening, partly because of its virgin gold and
+      silver, and partly because he passed beneath it through the most horrible
+      instant of his life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull was sitting on his seat on the lawn, and the golden evening
+      impressed even his positive nature, as indeed it might have impressed the
+      oxen in a field. He was shocked out of his idle mood of awe by seeing
+      MacIan break from behind the bushes and run across the lawn with an action
+      he had never seen in the man before, with all his experience of the
+      eccentric humours of this Celt. MacIan fell on the bench, shaking it so
+      that it rattled, and gripped it with his knees like one in dreadful pain
+      of body. That particular run and tumble is typical only of a man who has
+      been hit by some sudden and incurable evil, who is bitten by a viper or
+      condemned to be hanged. Turnbull looked up in the white face of his friend
+      and enemy, and almost turned cold at what he saw there. He had seen the
+      blue but gloomy eyes of the western Highlander troubled by as many
+      tempests as his own west Highland seas, but there had always been a fixed
+      star of faith behind the storms. Now the star had gone out, and there was
+      only misery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet MacIan had the strength to answer the question where Turnbull, taken
+      by surprise, had not the strength to ask it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are right, they are right!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;O my God! they are right,
+      Turnbull. I ought to be here!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He went on with shapeless fluency as if he no longer had the heart to
+      choose or check his speech. &ldquo;I suppose I ought to have guessed long ago&mdash;all
+      my big dreams and schemes&mdash;and everyone being against us&mdash;but I
+      was stuck up, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do tell me about it, really,&rdquo; cried the atheist, and, faced with the
+      furnace of the other's pain, he did not notice that he spoke with the
+      affection of a father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am mad, Turnbull,&rdquo; said Evan, with a dead clearness of speech, and
+      leant back against the garden seat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nonsense,&rdquo; said the other, clutching at the obvious cue of benevolent
+      brutality, &ldquo;this is one of your silly moods.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan shook his head. &ldquo;I know enough about myself,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;to allow
+      for any mood, though it opened heaven or hell. But to see things&mdash;to
+      see them walking solid in the sun&mdash;things that can't be there&mdash;real
+      mystics never do that, Turnbull.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What things?&rdquo; asked the other, incredulously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan lowered his voice. &ldquo;I saw <i>her</i>,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;three minutes ago&mdash;walking
+      here in this hell yard.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Between trying to look scornful and really looking startled, Turnbull's
+      face was confused enough to emit no speech, and Evan went on in monotonous
+      sincerity:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I saw her walk behind those blessed trees against that holy sky of gold
+      as plain as I can see her whenever I shut my eyes. I did shut them, and
+      opened them again, and she was still there&mdash;that is, of course, she
+      wasn't&mdash;&mdash; She still had a little fur round her neck, but her
+      dress was a shade brighter than when I really saw her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear fellow,&rdquo; cried Turnbull, rallying a hearty laugh, &ldquo;the fancies
+      have really got hold of you. You mistook some other poor girl here for
+      her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mistook some other&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; said MacIan, and words failed him
+      altogether.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They sat for some moments in the mellow silence of the evening garden, a
+      silence that was stifling for the sceptic, but utterly empty and final for
+      the man of faith. At last he broke out again with the words: &ldquo;Well,
+      anyhow, if I'm mad, I'm glad I'm mad on that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull murmured some clumsy deprecation, and sat stolidly smoking to
+      collect his thoughts; the next instant he had all his nerves engaged in
+      the mere effort to sit still.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Across the clear space of cold silver and a pale lemon sky which was left
+      by the gap in the ilex-trees there passed a slim, dark figure, a profile
+      and the poise of a dark head like a bird's, which really pinned him to his
+      seat with the point of coincidence. With an effort he got to his feet, and
+      said with a voice of affected insouciance: &ldquo;By George! MacIan, she is
+      uncommonly like&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What!&rdquo; cried MacIan, with a leap of eagerness that was heart-breaking,
+      &ldquo;do you see her, too?&rdquo; And the blaze came back into the centre of his
+      eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull's tawny eyebrows were pulled together with a peculiar frown of
+      curiosity, and all at once he walked quickly across the lawn. MacIan sat
+      rigid, but peered after him with open and parched lips. He saw the sight
+      which either proved him sane or proved the whole universe half-witted; he
+      saw the man of flesh approach that beautiful phantom, saw their gestures
+      of recognition, and saw them against the sunset joining hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He could stand it no longer, but ran across to the path, turned the corner
+      and saw standing quite palpable in the evening sunlight, talking with a
+      casual grace to Turnbull, the face and figure which had filled his
+      midnights with frightfully vivid or desperately half-forgotten features.
+      She advanced quite pleasantly and coolly, and put out her hand. The moment
+      that he touched it he knew that he was sane even if the solar system was
+      crazy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was entirely elegant and unembarrassed. That is the awful thing about
+      women&mdash;they refuse to be emotional at emotional moments, upon some
+      such ludicrous pretext as there being someone else there. But MacIan was
+      in a condition of criticism much less than the average masculine one,
+      being in fact merely overturned by the rushing riddle of the events.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Evan does not know to this day what particular question he asked, but he
+      vividly remembers that she answered, and every line or fluctuation of her
+      face as she said it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, don't you know?&rdquo; she said, smiling, and suddenly lifting her level
+      brown eyebrows. &ldquo;Haven't you heard the news? I'm a lunatic.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she added after a short pause, and with a sort of pride: &ldquo;I've got a
+      certificate.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her manner, by the matchless social stoicism of her sex, was entirely
+      suited to a drawing-room, but Evan's reply fell somewhat far short of such
+      a standard, as he only said: &ldquo;What the devil in hell does all this
+      nonsense mean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Really,&rdquo; said the young lady, and laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I beg your pardon,&rdquo; said the unhappy young man, rather wildly, &ldquo;but what
+      I mean is, why are you here in an asylum?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The young woman broke again into one of the maddening and mysterious
+      laughs of femininity. Then she composed her features, and replied with
+      equal dignity: &ldquo;Well, if it comes to that, why are you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The fact that Turnbull had strolled away and was investigating
+      rhododendrons may have been due to Evan's successful prayers to the other
+      world, or possibly to his own pretty successful experience of this one.
+      But though they two were as isolated as a new Adam and Eve in a pretty
+      ornamental Eden, the lady did not relax by an inch the rigour of her
+      badinage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am locked up in the madhouse,&rdquo; said Evan, with a sort of stiff pride,
+      &ldquo;because I tried to keep my promise to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite so,&rdquo; answered the inexplicable lady, nodding with a perfectly
+      blazing smile, &ldquo;and I am locked up because it was to me you promised.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is outrageous!&rdquo; cried Evan; &ldquo;it is impossible!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, you can see my certificate if you like,&rdquo; she replied with some
+      hauteur.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan stared at her and then at his boots, and then at the sky and then
+      at her again. He was quite sure now that he himself was not mad, and the
+      fact rather added to his perplexity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he drew nearer to her, and said in a dry and dreadful voice: &ldquo;Oh,
+      don't condescend to play the fool with such a fool as me. Are you really
+      locked up here as a patient&mdash;because you helped us to escape?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she said, still smiling, but her steady voice had a shake in it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Evan flung his big elbow across his forehead and burst into tears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The pure lemon of the sky faded into purer white as the great sunset
+      silently collapsed. The birds settled back into the trees; the moon began
+      to glow with its own light. Mr. James Turnbull continued his botanical
+      researches into the structure of the rhododendron. But the lady did not
+      move an inch until Evan had flung up his face again; and when he did he
+      saw by the last gleam of sunlight that it was not only his face that was
+      wet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. James Turnbull had all his life professed a profound interest in
+      physical science, and the phenomena of a good garden were really a
+      pleasure to him; but after three-quarters of an hour or so even the
+      apostle of science began to find rhododendrus a bore, and was somewhat
+      relieved when an unexpected development of events obliged him to transfer
+      his researches to the equally interesting subject of hollyhocks, which
+      grew some fifty feet farther along the path. The ostensible cause of his
+      removal was the unexpected reappearance of his two other acquaintances
+      walking and talking laboriously along the way, with the black head bent
+      close to the brown one. Even hollyhocks detained Turnbull but a short
+      time. Having rapidly absorbed all the important principles affecting the
+      growth of those vegetables, he jumped over a flower-bed and walked back
+      into the building. The other two came up along the slow course of the path
+      talking and talking. No one but God knows what they said (for they
+      certainly have forgotten), and if I remembered it I would not repeat it.
+      When they parted at the head of the walk she put out her hand again in the
+      same well-bred way, although it trembled; he seemed to restrain a gesture
+      as he let it fall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If it is really always to be like this,&rdquo; he said, thickly, &ldquo;it would not
+      matter if we were here for ever.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You tried to kill yourself four times for me,&rdquo; she said, unsteadily, &ldquo;and
+      I have been chained up as a madwoman for you. I really think that after
+      that&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I know,&rdquo; said Evan in a low voice, looking down. &ldquo;After that we
+      belong to each other. We are sort of sold to each other&mdash;until the
+      stars fall.&rdquo; Then he looked up suddenly, and said: &ldquo;By the way, what is
+      your name?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My name is Beatrice Drake,&rdquo; she replied with complete gravity. &ldquo;You can
+      see it on my certificate of lunacy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0019" id="link2H_4_0019">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XIX. THE LAST PARLEY
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull walked away, wildly trying to explain to himself the presence of
+      two personal acquaintances so different as Vane and the girl. As he
+      skirted a low hedge of laurel, an enormously tall young man leapt over it,
+      stood in front of him, and almost fell on his neck as if seeking to
+      embrace him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't you know me?&rdquo; almost sobbed the young man, who was in the highest
+      spirits. &ldquo;Ain't I written on your heart, old boy? I say, what did you do
+      with my yacht?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take your arms off my neck,&rdquo; said Turnbull, irritably. &ldquo;Are you mad?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The young man sat down on the gravel path and went into ecstasies of
+      laughter. &ldquo;No, that's just the fun of it&mdash;I'm not mad,&rdquo; he replied.
+      &ldquo;They've shut me up in this place, and I'm not mad.&rdquo; And he went off again
+      into mirth as innocent as wedding-bells.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull, whose powers of surprise were exhausted, rolled his round grey
+      eyes and said, &ldquo;Mr. Wilkinson, I think,&rdquo; because he could not think of
+      anything else to say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The tall man sitting on the gravel bowed with urbanity, and said: &ldquo;Quite
+      at your service. Not to be confused with the Wilkinsons of Cumberland; and
+      as I say, old boy, what have you done with my yacht? You see, they've
+      locked me up here&mdash;in this garden&mdash;and a yacht would be a sort
+      of occupation for an unmarried man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am really horribly sorry,&rdquo; began Turnbull, in the last stage of bated
+      bewilderment and exasperation, &ldquo;but really&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I can see you can't have it on you at the moment,&rdquo; said Mr. Wilkinson
+      with much intellectual magnanimity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, the fact is&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; began Turnbull again, and then the
+      phrase was frozen on his mouth, for round the corner came the goatlike
+      face and gleaming eye-glasses of Dr. Quayle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, my dear Mr. Wilkinson,&rdquo; said the doctor, as if delighted at a
+      coincidence; &ldquo;and Mr. Turnbull, too. Why, I want to speak to Mr.
+      Turnbull.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Turnbull made some movement rather of surrender than assent, and the
+      doctor caught it up exquisitely, showing even more of his two front teeth.
+      &ldquo;I am sure Mr. Wilkinson will excuse us a moment.&rdquo; And with flying
+      frock-coat he led Turnbull rapidly round the corner of a path.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear sir,&rdquo; he said, in a quite affectionate manner, &ldquo;I do not mind
+      telling you&mdash;you are such a very hopeful case&mdash;you understand so
+      well the scientific point of view; and I don't like to see you bothered by
+      the really hopeless cases. They are monotonous and maddening. The man you
+      have just been talking to, poor fellow, is one of the strongest cases of
+      pure <i>idee fixe</i> that we have. It's very sad, and I'm afraid utterly
+      incurable. He keeps on telling everybody&rdquo;&mdash;and the doctor lowered his
+      voice confidentially&mdash;&ldquo;he tells everybody that two people have taken
+      is yacht. His account of how he lost it is quite incoherent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull stamped his foot on the gravel path, and called out: &ldquo;Oh, I can't
+      stand this. Really&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know, I know,&rdquo; said the psychologist, mournfully; &ldquo;it is a most
+      melancholy case, and also fortunately a very rare one. It is so rare, in
+      fact, that in one classification of these maladies it is entered under a
+      heading by itself&mdash;Perdinavititis, mental inflammation creating the
+      impression that one has lost a ship. Really,&rdquo; he added, with a kind of
+      half-embarrassed guilt, &ldquo;it's rather a feather in my cap. I discovered the
+      only existing case of perdinavititis.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But this won't do, doctor,&rdquo; said Turnbull, almost tearing his hair, &ldquo;this
+      really won't do. The man really did lose a ship. Indeed, not to put too
+      fine a point on it, I took his ship.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dr. Quayle swung round for an instant so that his silk-lined overcoat
+      rustled, and stared singularly at Turnbull. Then he said with hurried
+      amiability: &ldquo;Why, of course you did. Quite so, quite so,&rdquo; and with
+      courteous gestures went striding up the garden path. Under the first
+      laburnum-tree he stopped, however, and pulling out his pencil and notebook
+      wrote down feverishly: &ldquo;Singular development in the Elenthero-maniac,
+      Turnbull. Sudden manifestation of Rapinavititis&mdash;the delusion that
+      one has stolen a ship. First case ever recorded.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull stood for an instant staggered into stillness. Then he ran raging
+      round the garden to find MacIan, just as a husband, even a bad husband,
+      will run raging to find his wife if he is full of a furious query. He
+      found MacIan stalking moodily about the half-lit garden, after his
+      extraordinary meeting with Beatrice. No one who saw his slouching stride
+      and sunken head could have known that his soul was in the seventh heaven
+      of ecstasy. He did not think; he did not even very definitely desire. He
+      merely wallowed in memories, chiefly in material memories; words said with
+      a certain cadence or trivial turns of the neck or wrist. Into the middle
+      of his stationary and senseless enjoyment were thrust abruptly the
+      projecting elbow and the projecting red beard of Turnbull. MacIan stepped
+      back a little, and the soul in his eyes came very slowly to its windows.
+      When James Turnbull had the glittering sword-point planted upon his breast
+      he was in far less danger. For three pulsating seconds after the
+      interruption MacIan was in a mood to have murdered his father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And yet his whole emotional anger fell from him when he saw Turnbull's
+      face, in which the eyes seemed to be bursting from the head like bullets.
+      All the fire and fragrance even of young and honourable love faded for a
+      moment before that stiff agony of interrogation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you hurt, Turnbull?&rdquo; he asked, anxiously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am dying,&rdquo; answered the other quite calmly. &ldquo;I am in the quite literal
+      sense of the words dying to know something. I want to know what all this
+      can possibly mean.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan did not answer, and he continued with asperity: &ldquo;You are still
+      thinking about that girl, but I tell you the whole thing is incredible.
+      She's not the only person here. I've met the fellow Wilkinson, whose yacht
+      we lost. I've met the very magistrate you were hauled up to when you broke
+      my window. What can it mean&mdash;meeting all these old people again? One
+      never meets such old friends again except in a dream.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then after a silence he cried with a rending sincerity: &ldquo;Are you really
+      there, Evan? Have you ever been really there? Am I simply dreaming?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan had been listening with a living silence to every word, and now his
+      face flamed with one of his rare revelations of life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, you good atheist,&rdquo; he cried; &ldquo;no, you clean, courteous, reverent,
+      pious old blasphemer. No, you are not dreaming&mdash;you are waking up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There are two states where one meets so many old friends,&rdquo; said MacIan;
+      &ldquo;one is a dream, the other is the end of the world.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you say&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say this is not a dream,&rdquo; said Evan in a ringing voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You really mean to suggest&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; began Turnbull.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Be silent! or I shall say it all wrong,&rdquo; said MacIan, breathing hard.
+      &ldquo;It's hard to explain, anyhow. An apocalypse is the opposite of a dream. A
+      dream is falser than the outer life. But the end of the world is more
+      actual than the world it ends. I don't say this is really the end of the
+      world, but it's something like that&mdash;it's the end of something. All
+      the people are crowding into one corner. Everything is coming to a point.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is the point?&rdquo; asked Turnbull.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can't see it,&rdquo; said Evan; &ldquo;it is too large and plain.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then after a silence he said: &ldquo;I can't see it&mdash;and yet I will try to
+      describe it. Turnbull, three days ago I saw quite suddenly that our duel
+      was not right after all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Three days ago!&rdquo; repeated Turnbull. &ldquo;When and why did this illumination
+      occur?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I knew I was not quite right,&rdquo; answered Evan, &ldquo;the moment I saw the round
+      eyes of that old man in the cell.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Old man in the cell!&rdquo; repeated his wondering companion. &ldquo;Do you mean the
+      poor old idiot who likes spikes to stick out?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said MacIan, after a slight pause, &ldquo;I mean the poor old idiot who
+      likes spikes to stick out. When I saw his eyes and heard his old croaking
+      accent, I knew that it would not really have been right to kill you. It
+      would have been a venial sin.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am much obliged,&rdquo; said Turnbull, gruffly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must give me time,&rdquo; said MacIan, quite patiently, &ldquo;for I am trying to
+      tell the whole truth. I am trying to tell more of it than I know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So you see I confess&rdquo;&mdash;he went on with laborious distinctness&mdash;&ldquo;I
+      confess that all the people who called our duel mad were right in a way. I
+      would confess it to old Cumberland Vane and his eye-glass. I would confess
+      it even to that old ass in brown flannel who talked to us about Love. Yes,
+      they are right in a way. I am a little mad.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stopped and wiped his brow as if he were literally doing heavy labour.
+      Then he went on:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am a little mad; but, after all, it is only a little madness. When
+      hundreds of high-minded men had fought duels about a jostle with the elbow
+      or the ace of spades, the whole world need not have gone wild over my one
+      little wildness. Plenty of other people have killed themselves between
+      then and now. But all England has gone into captivity in order to take us
+      captive. All England has turned into a lunatic asylum in order to prove us
+      lunatics. Compared with the general public, I might positively be called
+      sane.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stopped again, and went on with the same air of travailing with the
+      truth:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When I saw that, I saw everything; I saw the Church and the world. The
+      Church in its earthly action has really touched morbid things&mdash;tortures
+      and bleeding visions and blasts of extermination. The Church has had her
+      madnesses, and I am one of them. I am the massacre of St. Bartholomew. I
+      am the Inquisition of Spain. I do not say that we have never gone mad, but
+      I say that we are fit to act as keepers to our enemies. Massacre is wicked
+      even with a provocation, as in the Bartholomew. But your modern Nietzsche
+      will tell you that massacre would be glorious without a provocation.
+      Torture should be violently stopped, though the Church is doing it. But
+      your modern Tolstoy will tell you that it ought not to be violently
+      stopped whoever is doing it. In the long run, which is most mad&mdash;the
+      Church or the world? Which is madder, the Spanish priest who permitted
+      tyranny, or the Prussian sophist who admired it? Which is madder, the
+      Russian priest who discourages righteous rebellion, or the Russian
+      novelist who forbids it? That is the final and blasting test. The world
+      left to itself grows wilder than any creed. A few days ago you and I were
+      the maddest people in England. Now, by God! I believe we are the sanest.
+      That is the only real question&mdash;whether the Church is really madder
+      than the world. Let the rationalists run their own race, and let us see
+      where <i>they</i> end. If the world has some healthy balance other than
+      God, let the world find it. Does the world find it? Cut the world loose,&rdquo;
+       he cried with a savage gesture. &ldquo;Does the world stand on its own end? Does
+      it stand, or does it stagger?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull remained silent, and MacIan said to him, looking once more at the
+      earth: &ldquo;It staggers, Turnbull. It cannot stand by itself; you know it
+      cannot. It has been the sorrow of your life. Turnbull, this garden is not
+      a dream, but an apocalyptic fulfilment. This garden is the world gone
+      mad.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull did not move his head, and he had been listening all the time;
+      yet, somehow, the other knew that for the first time he was listening
+      seriously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The world has gone mad,&rdquo; said MacIan, &ldquo;and it has gone mad about Us. The
+      world takes the trouble to make a big mistake about every little mistake
+      made by the Church. That is why they have turned ten counties to a
+      madhouse; that is why crowds of kindly people are poured into this filthy
+      melting-pot. Now is the judgement of this world. The Prince of this World
+      is judged, and he is judged exactly because he is judging. There is at
+      last one simple solution to the quarrel between the ball and the cross&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull for the first time started.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The ball and&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; he repeated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is the matter with you?&rdquo; asked MacIan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I had a dream,&rdquo; said Turnbull, thickly and obscurely, &ldquo;in which I saw the
+      cross struck crooked and the ball secure&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I had a dream,&rdquo; said MacIan, &ldquo;in which I saw the cross erect and the ball
+      invisible. They were both dreams from hell. There must be some round earth
+      to plant the cross upon. But here is the awful difference&mdash;that the
+      round world will not consent even to continue round. The astronomers are
+      always telling us that it is shaped like an orange, or like an egg, or
+      like a German sausage. They beat the old world about like a bladder and
+      thump it into a thousand shapeless shapes. Turnbull, we cannot trust the
+      ball to be always a ball; we cannot trust reason to be reasonable. In the
+      end the great terrestrial globe will go quite lop-sided, and only the
+      cross will stand upright.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a long silence, and then Turnbull said, hesitatingly: &ldquo;Has it
+      occurred to you that since&mdash;since those two dreams, or whatever they
+      were&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well?&rdquo; murmured MacIan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Since then,&rdquo; went on Turnbull, in the same low voice, &ldquo;since then we have
+      never even looked for our swords.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are right,&rdquo; answered Evan almost inaudibly. &ldquo;We have found something
+      which we both hate more than we ever hated each other, and I think I know
+      its name.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull seemed to frown and flinch for a moment. &ldquo;It does not much matter
+      what you call it,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;so long as you keep out of its way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The bushes broke and snapped abruptly behind them, and a very tall figure
+      towered above Turnbull with an arrogant stoop and a projecting chin, a
+      chin of which the shape showed queerly even in its shadow upon the path.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see that is not so easy,&rdquo; said MacIan between his teeth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They looked up into the eyes of the Master, but looked only for a moment.
+      The eyes were full of a frozen and icy wrath, a kind of utterly heartless
+      hatred. His voice was for the first time devoid of irony. There was no
+      more sarcasm in it than there is in an iron club.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will be inside the building in three minutes,&rdquo; he said, with
+      pulverizing precision, &ldquo;or you will be fired on by the artillery at all
+      the windows. There is too much talking in this garden; we intend to close
+      it. You will be accommodated indoors.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; said MacIan, with a long and satisfied sigh, &ldquo;then I was right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he turned his back and walked obediently towards the building.
+      Turnbull seemed to canvass for a few minutes the notion of knocking the
+      Master down, and then fell under the same almost fairy fatalism as his
+      companion. In some strange way it did seem that the more smoothly they
+      yielded, the more swiftly would events sweep on to some great collision.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0020" id="link2H_4_0020">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XX. DIES IRAE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      As they advanced towards the asylum they looked up at its rows on rows of
+      windows, and understood the Master's material threat. By means of that
+      complex but concealed machinery which ran like a network of nerves over
+      the whole fabric, there had been shot out under every window-ledge rows
+      and rows of polished-steel cylinders, the cold miracles of modern gunnery.
+      They commanded the whole garden and the whole country-side, and could have
+      blown to pieces an army corps.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This silent declaration of war had evidently had its complete effect. As
+      MacIan and Turnbull walked steadily but slowly towards the entrance hall
+      of the institution, they could see that most, or at least many, of the
+      patients had already gathered there as well as the staff of doctors and
+      the whole regiment of keepers and assistants. But when they entered the
+      lamp-lit hall, and the high iron door was clashed to and locked behind
+      them, yet a new amazement leapt into their eyes, and the stalwart Turnbull
+      almost fell. For he saw a sight which was indeed, as MacIan had said&mdash;either
+      the Day of Judgement or a dream.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Within a few feet of him at one corner of the square of standing people
+      stood the girl he had known in Jersey, Madeleine Durand. She looked
+      straight at him with a steady smile which lit up the scene of darkness and
+      unreason like the light of some honest fireside. Her square face and
+      throat were thrown back, as her habit was, and there was something almost
+      sleepy in the geniality of her eyes. He saw her first, and for a few
+      seconds saw her only; then the outer edge of his eyesight took in all the
+      other staring faces, and he saw all the faces he had ever seen for weeks
+      and months past. There was the Tolstoyan in Jaeger flannel, with the
+      yellow beard that went backward and the foolish nose and eyes that went
+      forward, with the curiosity of a crank. He was talking eagerly to Mr.
+      Gordon, the corpulent Jew shopkeeper whom they had once gagged in his own
+      shop. There was the tipsy old Hertfordshire rustic; he was talking
+      energetically to himself. There was not only Mr. Vane the magistrate, but
+      the clerk of Mr. Vane, the magistrate. There was not only Miss Drake of
+      the motor-car, but also Miss Drake's chauffeur. Nothing wild or unfamiliar
+      could have produced upon Turnbull such a nightmare impression as that ring
+      of familiar faces. Yet he had one intellectual shock which was greater
+      than all the others. He stepped impulsively forward towards Madeleine, and
+      then wavered with a kind of wild humility. As he did so he caught sight of
+      another square face behind Madeleine's, a face with long grey whiskers and
+      an austere stare. It was old Durand, the girls' father; and when Turnbull
+      saw him he saw the last and worst marvel of that monstrous night. He
+      remembered Durand; he remembered his monotonous, everlasting lucidity, his
+      stupefyingly sensible views of everything, his colossal contentment with
+      truisms merely because they were true. &ldquo;Confound it all!&rdquo; cried Turnbull
+      to himself, &ldquo;if <i>he</i> is in the asylum, there can't be anyone
+      outside.&rdquo; He drew nearer to Madeleine, but still doubtfully and all the
+      more so because she still smiled at him. MacIan had already gone across to
+      Beatrice with an air of fright.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then all these bewildered but partly amicable recognitions were cloven by
+      a cruel voice which always made all human blood turn bitter. The Master
+      was standing in the middle of the room surveying the scene like a great
+      artist looking at a completed picture. Handsome as he looked, they had
+      never seen so clearly what was really hateful in his face; and even then
+      they could only express it by saying that the arched brows and the long
+      emphatic chin gave it always a look of being lit from below, like the face
+      of some infernal actor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is indeed a cosy party,&rdquo; he said, with glittering eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Master evidently meant to say more, but before he could say anything
+      M. Durand had stepped right up to him and was speaking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was speaking exactly as a French bourgeois speaks to the manager of a
+      restaurant. That is, he spoke with rattling and breathless rapidity, but
+      with no incoherence, and therefore with no emotion. It was a steady,
+      monotonous vivacity, which came not seemingly from passion, but merely
+      from the reason having been sent off at a gallop. He was saying something
+      like this:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You refuse me my half-bottle of Medoc, the drink the most wholesome and
+      the most customary. You refuse me the company and obedience of my
+      daughter, which Nature herself indicates. You refuse me the beef and
+      mutton, without pretence that it is a fast of the Church. You now forbid
+      me the promenade, a thing necessary to a person of my age. It is useless
+      to tell me that you do all this by law. Law rests upon the social
+      contract. If the citizen finds himself despoiled of such pleasures and
+      powers as he would have had even in the savage state, the social contract
+      is annulled.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's no good chattering away, Monsieur,&rdquo; said Hutton, for the Master was
+      silent. &ldquo;The place is covered with machine-guns. We've got to obey our
+      orders, and so have you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The machinery is of the most perfect,&rdquo; assented Durand, somewhat
+      irrelevantly; &ldquo;worked by petroleum, I believe. I only ask you to admit
+      that if such things fall below the comfort of barbarism, the social
+      contract is annulled. It is a pretty little point of theory.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! I dare say,&rdquo; said Hutton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Durand bowed quite civilly and withdrew.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A cosy party,&rdquo; resumed the Master, scornfully, &ldquo;and yet I believe some of
+      you are in doubt about how we all came together. I will explain it, ladies
+      and gentlemen; I will explain everything. To whom shall I specially
+      address myself? To Mr. James Turnbull. He has a scientific mind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull seemed to choke with sudden protest. The Master seemed only to
+      cough out of pure politeness and proceeded: &ldquo;Mr. Turnbull will agree with
+      me,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;when I say that we long felt in scientific circles that
+      great harm was done by such a legend as that of the Crucifixion.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull growled something which was presumably assent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Master went on smoothly: &ldquo;It was in vain for us to urge that the
+      incident was irrelevant; that there were many such fanatics, many such
+      executions. We were forced to take the thing thoroughly in hand, to
+      investigate it in the spirit of scientific history, and with the
+      assistance of Mr. Turnbull and others we were happy in being able to
+      announce that this alleged Crucifixion never occurred at all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan lifted his head and looked at the Master steadily, but Turnbull did
+      not look up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This, we found, was the only way with all superstitions,&rdquo; continued the
+      speaker; &ldquo;it was necessary to deny them historically, and we have done it
+      with great success in the case of miracles and such things. Now within our
+      own time there arose an unfortunate fuss which threatened (as Mr. Turnbull
+      would say) to galvanize the corpse of Christianity into a fictitious life&mdash;the
+      alleged case of a Highland eccentric who wanted to fight for the Virgin.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan, quite white, made a step forward, but the speaker did not alter
+      his easy attitude or his flow of words. &ldquo;Again we urged that this duel was
+      not to be admired, that it was a mere brawl, but the people were ignorant
+      and romantic. There were signs of treating this alleged Highlander and his
+      alleged opponent as heroes. We tried all other means of arresting this
+      reactionary hero worship. Working men who betted on the duel were
+      imprisoned for gambling. Working men who drank the health of a duellist
+      were imprisoned for drunkenness. But the popular excitement about the
+      alleged duel continued, and we had to fall back on our old historical
+      method. We investigated, on scientific principles, the story of MacIan's
+      challenge, and we are happy to be able to inform you that the whole story
+      of the attempted duel is a fable. There never was any challenge. There
+      never was any man named MacIan. It is a melodramatic myth, like Calvary.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Not a soul moved save Turnbull, who lifted his head; yet there was the
+      sense of a silent explosion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The whole story of the MacIan challenge,&rdquo; went on the Master, beaming at
+      them all with a sinister benignity, &ldquo;has been found to originate in the
+      obsessions of a few pathological types, who are now all fortunately in our
+      care. There is, for instance, a person here of the name of Gordon,
+      formerly the keeper of a curiosity shop. He is a victim of the disease
+      called Vinculomania&mdash;the impression that one has been bound or tied
+      up. We have also a case of Fugacity (Mr. Whimpey), who imagines that he
+      was chased by two men.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The indignant faces of the Jew shopkeeper and the Magdalen Don started out
+      of the crowd in their indignation, but the speaker continued:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One poor woman we have with us,&rdquo; he said, in a compassionate voice,
+      &ldquo;believes she was in a motor-car with two such men; this is the well-known
+      illusion of speed on which I need not dwell. Another wretched woman has
+      the simple egotistic mania that she has caused the duel. Madeleine Durand
+      actually professes to have been the subject of the fight between MacIan
+      and his enemy, a fight which, if it occurred at all, certainly began long
+      before. But it never occurred at all. We have taken in hand every person
+      who professed to have seen such a thing, and proved them all to be
+      unbalanced. That is why they are here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Master looked round the room, just showing his perfect teeth with the
+      perfection of artistic cruelty, exalted for a moment in the enormous
+      simplicity of his success, and then walked across the hall and vanished
+      through an inner door. His two lieutenants, Quayle and Hutton, were left
+      standing at the head of the great army of servants and keepers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope we shall have no more trouble,&rdquo; said Dr. Quayle pleasantly enough,
+      and addressing Turnbull, who was leaning heavily upon the back of a chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Still looking down, Turnbull lifted the chair an inch or two from the
+      ground. Then he suddenly swung it above his head and sent it at the
+      inquiring doctor with an awful crash which sent one of its wooden legs
+      loose along the floor and crammed the doctor gasping into a corner. MacIan
+      gave a great shout, snatched up the loose chair-leg, and, rushing on the
+      other doctor, felled him with a blow. Twenty attendants rushed to capture
+      the rebels; MacIan flung back three of them and Turnbull went over on top
+      of one, when from behind them all came a shriek as of something quite
+      fresh and frightful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two of the three passages leading out of the hall were choked with blue
+      smoke. Another instant and the hall was full of the fog of it, and red
+      sparks began to swarm like scarlet bees.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The place is on fire!&rdquo; cried Quayle with a scream of indecent terror.
+      &ldquo;Oh, who can have done it? How can it have happened?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A light had come into Turnbull's eyes. &ldquo;How did the French Revolution
+      happen?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, how should I know!&rdquo; wailed the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I will tell you,&rdquo; said Turnbull; &ldquo;it happened because some people
+      fancied that a French grocer was as respectable as he looked.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Even as he spoke, as if by confirmation, old Mr. Durand re-entered the
+      smoky room quite placidly, wiping the petroleum from his hands with a
+      handkerchief. He had set fire to the building in accordance with the
+      strict principles of the social contract.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But MacIan had taken a stride forward and stood there shaken and terrible.
+      &ldquo;Now,&rdquo; he cried, panting, &ldquo;now is the judgement of the world. The doctors
+      will leave this place; the keepers will leave this place. They will leave
+      us in charge of the machinery and the machine-guns at the windows. But we,
+      the lunatics, will wait to be burned alive if only we may see them go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do you know we shall go?&rdquo; asked Hutton, fiercely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You believe nothing,&rdquo; said MacIan, simply, &ldquo;and you are insupportably
+      afraid of death.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So this is suicide,&rdquo; sneered the doctor; &ldquo;a somewhat doubtful sign of
+      sanity.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not at all&mdash;this is vengeance,&rdquo; answered Turnbull, quite calmly; &ldquo;a
+      thing which is completely healthy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You think the doctors will go,&rdquo; said Hutton, savagely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The keepers have gone already,&rdquo; said Turnbull.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even as they spoke the main doors were burst open in mere brutal panic,
+      and all the officers and subordinates of the asylum rushed away across the
+      garden pursued by the smoke. But among the ticketed maniacs not a man or
+      woman moved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We hate dying,&rdquo; said Turnbull, with composure, &ldquo;but we hate you even
+      more. This is a successful revolution.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In the roof above their heads a panel shot back, showing a strip of
+      star-lit sky and a huge thing made of white metal, with the shape and fins
+      of a fish, swinging as if at anchor. At the same moment a steel ladder
+      slid down from the opening and struck the floor, and the cleft chin of the
+      mysterious Master was thrust into the opening. &ldquo;Quayle, Hutton,&rdquo; he said,
+      &ldquo;you will escape with me.&rdquo; And they went up the ladder like automata of
+      lead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Long after they had clambered into the car, the creature with the cloven
+      face continued to leer down upon the smoke-stung crowd below. Then at last
+      he said in a silken voice and with a smile of final satisfaction:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By the way, I fear I am very absent minded. There is one man specially
+      whom, somehow, I always forget. I always leave him lying about. Once I
+      mislaid him on the Cross of St. Paul's. So silly of me; and now I've
+      forgotten him in one of those little cells where your fire is burning.
+      Very unfortunate&mdash;especially for him.&rdquo; And nodding genially, he
+      climbed into his flying ship.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan stood motionless for two minutes, and then rushed down one of the
+      suffocating corridors till he found the flames. Turnbull looked once at
+      Madeleine, and followed.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+           *                    *                   *
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      MacIan, with singed hair, smoking garments, and smarting hands and face,
+      had already broken far enough through the first barriers of burning timber
+      to come within cry of the cells he had once known. It was impossible,
+      however, to see the spot where the old man lay dead or alive; not now
+      through darkness, but through scorching and aching light. The site of the
+      old half-wit's cell was now the heart of a standing forest of fire&mdash;the
+      flames as thick and yellow as a cornfield. Their incessant shrieking and
+      crackling was like a mob shouting against an orator. Yet through all that
+      deafening density MacIan thought he heard a small and separate sound. When
+      he heard it he rushed forward as if to plunge into that furnace, but
+      Turnbull arrested him by an elbow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let me go!&rdquo; cried Evan, in agony; &ldquo;it's the poor old beggar's voice&mdash;he's
+      still alive, and shouting for help.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Listen!&rdquo; said Turnbull, and lifted one finger from his clenched hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Or else he is shrieking with pain,&rdquo; protested MacIan. &ldquo;I will not endure
+      it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Listen!&rdquo; repeated Turnbull, grimly. &ldquo;Did you ever hear anyone shout for
+      help or shriek with pain in that voice?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The small shrill sounds which came through the crash of the conflagration
+      were indeed of an odd sort, and MacIan turned a face of puzzled inquiry to
+      his companion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is singing,&rdquo; said Turnbull, simply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A remaining rampart fell, crushing the fire, and through the diminished
+      din of it the voice of the little old lunatic came clearer. In the heart
+      of that white-hot hell he was singing like a bird. What he was singing it
+      was not very easy to follow, but it seemed to be something about playing
+      in the golden hay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good Lord!&rdquo; cried Turnbull, bitterly, &ldquo;there seem to be some advantages
+      in really being an idiot.&rdquo; Then advancing to the fringe of the fire he
+      called out on chance to the invisible singer: &ldquo;Can you come out? Are you
+      cut off?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God help us all!&rdquo; said MacIan, with a shudder; &ldquo;he's laughing now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At whatever stage of being burned alive the invisible now found himself,
+      he was now shaking out peals of silvery and hilarious laughter. As he
+      listened, MacIan's two eyes began to glow, as if a strange thought had
+      come into his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fool, come out and save yourself!&rdquo; shouted Turnbull.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, by Heaven! that is not the way,&rdquo; cried Evan, suddenly. &ldquo;Father,&rdquo; he
+      shouted, &ldquo;come out and save us all!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The fire, though it had dropped in one or two places, was, upon the whole,
+      higher and more unconquerable than ever. Separate tall flames shot up and
+      spread out above them like the fiery cloisters of some infernal cathedral,
+      or like a grove of red tropical trees in the garden of the devil. Higher
+      yet in the purple hollow of the night the topmost flames leapt again and
+      again fruitlessly at the stars, like golden dragons chained but
+      struggling. The towers and domes of the oppressive smoke seemed high and
+      far enough to drown distant planets in a London fog. But if we exhausted
+      all frantic similes for that frantic scene, the main impression about the
+      fire would still be its ranked upstanding rigidity and a sort of roaring
+      stillness. It was literally a wall of fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Father,&rdquo; cried MacIan, once more, &ldquo;come out of it and save us all!&rdquo;
+       Turnbull was staring at him as he cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The tall and steady forest of fire must have been already a portent
+      visible to the whole circle of land and sea. The red flush of it lit up
+      the long sides of white ships far out in the German Ocean, and picked out
+      like piercing rubies the windows in the villages on the distant heights.
+      If any villagers or sailors were looking towards it they must have seen a
+      strange sight as MacIan cried out for the third time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That forest of fire wavered, and was cloven in the centre; and then the
+      whole of one half of it leaned one way as a cornfield leans all one way
+      under the load of the wind. Indeed, it looked as if a great wind had
+      sprung up and driven the great fire aslant. Its smoke was no longer sent
+      up to choke the stars, but was trailed and dragged across county after
+      county like one dreadful banner of defeat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But it was not the wind; or, if it was the wind, it was two winds blowing
+      in opposite directions. For while one half of the huge fire sloped one way
+      towards the inland heights, the other half, at exactly the same angle,
+      sloped out eastward towards the sea. So that earth and ocean could behold,
+      where there had been a mere fiery mass, a thing divided like a V&mdash;a
+      cloven tongue of flame. But if it were a prodigy for those distant, it was
+      something beyond speech for those quite near. As the echoes of Evan's last
+      appeal rang and died in the universal uproar, the fiery vault over his
+      head opened down the middle, and, reeling back in two great golden
+      billows, hung on each side as huge and harmless as two sloping hills lie
+      on each side of a valley. Down the centre of this trough, or chasm, a
+      little path ran, cleared of all but ashes, and down this little path was
+      walking a little old man singing as if he were alone in a wood in spring.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When James Turnbull saw this he suddenly put out a hand and seemed to
+      support himself on the strong shoulder of Madeleine Durand. Then after a
+      moment's hesitation he put his other hand on the shoulder of MacIan. His
+      blue eyes looked extraordinarily brilliant and beautiful. In many
+      sceptical papers and magazines afterwards he was sadly or sternly rebuked
+      for having abandoned the certainties of materialism. All his life up to
+      that moment he had been most honestly certain that materialism was a fact.
+      But he was unlike the writers in the magazines precisely in this&mdash;that
+      he preferred a fact even to materialism.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the little singing figure came nearer and nearer, Evan fell on his
+      knees, and after an instant Beatrice followed; then Madeleine fell on her
+      knees, and after a longer instant Turnbull followed. Then the little old
+      man went past them singing down that corridor of flames. They had not
+      looked at his face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he had passed they looked up. While the first light of the fire had
+      shot east and west, painting the sides of ships with fire-light or
+      striking red sparks out of windowed houses, it had not hitherto struck
+      upward, for there was above it the ponderous and rococo cavern of its own
+      monstrous coloured smoke. But now the fire was turned to left and right
+      like a woman's hair parted in the middle, and now the shafts of its light
+      could shoot up into empty heavens and strike anything, either bird or
+      cloud. But it struck something that was neither cloud nor bird. Far, far
+      away up in those huge hollows of space something was flying swiftly and
+      shining brightly, something that shone too bright and flew too fast to be
+      any of the fowls of the air, though the red light lit it from underneath
+      like the breast of a bird. Everyone knew it was a flying ship, and
+      everyone knew whose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As they stared upward the little speck of light seemed slightly tilted,
+      and two black dots dropped from the edge of it. All the eager, upturned
+      faces watched the two dots as they grew bigger and bigger in their
+      downward rush. Then someone screamed, and no one looked up any more. For
+      the two bodies, larger every second flying, spread out and sprawling in
+      the fire-light, were the dead bodies of the two doctors whom Professor
+      Lucifer had carried with him&mdash;the weak and sneering Quayle, the cold
+      and clumsy Hutton. They went with a crash into the thick of the fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are gone!&rdquo; screamed Beatrice, hiding her head. &ldquo;O God! The are
+      lost!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Evan put his arm about her, and remembered his own vision.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, they are not lost,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;They are saved. He has taken away no
+      souls with him, after all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked vaguely about at the fire that was already fading, and there
+      among the ashes lay two shining things that had survived the fire, his
+      sword and Turnbull's, fallen haphazard in the pattern of a cross.
+    </p>
+
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+Title: The Ball and The Cross
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+Author: G.K. Chesterton
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+
+
+THE BALL AND THE CROSS
+
+G.K. Chesterton
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+    I. A Discussion Somewhat in the Air
+   II. The Religion of the Stipendiary Magistrate
+  III. Some Old Curiosities
+   IV. A Discussion at Dawn
+    V. The Peacemaker
+   VI. The Other Philosopher
+  VII. The Village of Grassley-in-the-Hole
+ VIII. An Interlude of Argument
+   IX. The Strange Lady
+    X. The Swords Rejoined
+   XI. A Scandal in the Village
+  XII. The Desert Island
+ XIII. The Garden of Peace
+  XIV. A Museum of Souls
+   XV. The Dream of MacIan
+  XVI. The Dream of Turnbull
+ XVII. The Idiot
+XVIII. A Riddle of Faces
+  XIX. The Last Parley
+   XX. Dies Irae
+
+
+
+
+I. A DISCUSSION SOMEWHAT IN THE AIR
+
+The flying ship of Professor Lucifer sang through the skies like a
+silver arrow; the bleak white steel of it, gleaming in the bleak
+blue emptiness of the evening. That it was far above the earth was no
+expression for it; to the two men in it, it seemed to be far above the
+stars. The professor had himself invented the flying machine, and had
+also invented nearly everything in it. Every sort of tool or apparatus
+had, in consequence, to the full, that fantastic and distorted look
+which belongs to the miracles of science. For the world of science and
+evolution is far more nameless and elusive and like a dream than the
+world of poetry and religion; since in the latter images and ideas
+remain themselves eternally, while it is the whole idea of evolution
+that identities melt into each other as they do in a nightmare.
+
+All the tools of Professor Lucifer were the ancient human tools gone
+mad, grown into unrecognizable shapes, forgetful of their origin,
+forgetful of their names. That thing which looked like an enormous key
+with three wheels was really a patent and very deadly revolver. That
+object which seemed to be created by the entanglement of two corkscrews
+was really the key. The thing which might have been mistaken for a
+tricycle turned upside-down was the inexpressibly important instrument
+to which the corkscrew was the key. All these things, as I say, the
+professor had invented; he had invented everything in the flying ship,
+with the exception, perhaps, of himself. This he had been born too
+late actually to inaugurate, but he believed at least, that he had
+considerably improved it.
+
+There was, however, another man on board, so to speak, at the time. Him,
+also, by a curious coincidence, the professor had not invented, and him
+he had not even very greatly improved, though he had fished him up with
+a lasso out of his own back garden, in Western Bulgaria, with the pure
+object of improving him. He was an exceedingly holy man, almost entirely
+covered with white hair. You could see nothing but his eyes, and he
+seemed to talk with them. A monk of immense learning and acute intellect
+he had made himself happy in a little stone hut and a little stony
+garden in the Balkans, chiefly by writing the most crushing refutations
+of exposures of certain heresies, the last professors of which had been
+burnt (generally by each other) precisely 1,119 years previously. They
+were really very plausible and thoughtful heresies, and it was really
+a creditable or even glorious circumstance, that the old monk had been
+intellectual enough to detect their fallacy; the only misfortune
+was that nobody in the modern world was intellectual enough even to
+understand their argument. The old monk, one of whose names was Michael,
+and the other a name quite impossible to remember or repeat in our
+Western civilization, had, however, as I have said, made himself quite
+happy while he was in a mountain hermitage in the society of wild
+animals. And now that his luck had lifted him above all the mountains in
+the society of a wild physicist, he made himself happy still.
+
+"I have no intention, my good Michael," said Professor Lucifer,
+"of endeavouring to convert you by argument. The imbecility of your
+traditions can be quite finally exhibited to anybody with mere ordinary
+knowledge of the world, the same kind of knowledge which teaches us
+not to sit in draughts or not to encourage friendliness in impecunious
+people. It is folly to talk of this or that demonstrating the
+rationalist philosophy. Everything demonstrates it. Rubbing shoulders
+with men of all kinds----"
+
+"You will forgive me," said the monk, meekly from under loads of white
+beard, "but I fear I do not understand; was it in order that I might rub
+my shoulder against men of all kinds that you put me inside this thing?"
+
+"An entertaining retort, in the narrow and deductive manner of the
+Middle Ages," replied the Professor, calmly, "but even upon your own
+basis I will illustrate my point. We are up in the sky. In your religion
+and all the religions, as far as I know (and I know everything), the sky
+is made the symbol of everything that is sacred and merciful. Well, now
+you are in the sky, you know better. Phrase it how you like, twist it
+how you like, you know that you know better. You know what are a man's
+real feelings about the heavens, when he finds himself alone in the
+heavens, surrounded by the heavens. You know the truth, and the truth
+is this. The heavens are evil, the sky is evil, the stars are evil. This
+mere space, this mere quantity, terrifies a man more than tigers or the
+terrible plague. You know that since our science has spoken, the bottom
+has fallen out of the Universe. Now, heaven is the hopeless thing,
+more hopeless than any hell. Now, if there be any comfort for all your
+miserable progeny of morbid apes, it must be in the earth, underneath
+you, under the roots of the grass, in the place where hell was of old.
+The fiery crypts, the lurid cellars of the underworld, to which you once
+condemned the wicked, are hideous enough, but at least they are more
+homely than the heaven in which we ride. And the time will come when you
+will all hide in them, to escape the horror of the stars."
+
+"I hope you will excuse my interrupting you," said Michael, with a
+slight cough, "but I have always noticed----"
+
+"Go on, pray go on," said Professor Lucifer, radiantly, "I really like
+to draw out your simple ideas."
+
+"Well, the fact is," said the other, "that much as I admire your
+rhetoric and the rhetoric of your school, from a purely verbal point
+of view, such little study of you and your school in human history as I
+have been enabled to make has led me to--er--rather singular conclusion,
+which I find great difficulty in expressing, especially in a foreign
+language."
+
+"Come, come," said the Professor, encouragingly, "I'll help you out. How
+did my view strike you?"
+
+"Well, the truth is, I know I don't express it properly, but somehow
+it seemed to me that you always convey ideas of that kind with most
+eloquence, when--er--when----"
+
+"Oh! get on," cried Lucifer, boisterously.
+
+"Well, in point of fact when your flying ship is just going to run
+into something. I thought you wouldn't mind my mentioning it, but it's
+running into something now."
+
+Lucifer exploded with an oath and leapt erect, leaning hard upon the
+handle that acted as a helm to the vessel. For the last ten minutes they
+had been shooting downwards into great cracks and caverns of cloud. Now,
+through a sort of purple haze, could be seen comparatively near to them
+what seemed to be the upper part of a huge, dark orb or sphere, islanded
+in a sea of cloud. The Professor's eyes were blazing like a maniac's.
+
+"It is a new world," he cried, with a dreadful mirth. "It is a new
+planet and it shall bear my name. This star and not that other vulgar
+one shall be 'Lucifer, sun of the morning.' Here we will have no
+chartered lunacies, here we will have no gods. Here man shall be
+as innocent as the daisies, as innocent and as cruel--here the
+intellect----"
+
+"There seems," said Michael, timidly, "to be something sticking up in
+the middle of it."
+
+"So there is," said the Professor, leaning over the side of the ship,
+his spectacles shining with intellectual excitement. "What can it be? It
+might of course be merely a----"
+
+Then a shriek indescribable broke out of him of a sudden, and he flung
+up his arms like a lost spirit. The monk took the helm in a tired way;
+he did not seem much astonished for he came from an ignorant part of the
+world in which it is not uncommon for lost spirits to shriek when they
+see the curious shape which the Professor had just seen on the top of
+the mysterious ball, but he took the helm only just in time, and by
+driving it hard to the left he prevented the flying ship from smashing
+into St. Paul's Cathedral.
+
+A plain of sad-coloured cloud lay along the level of the top of the
+Cathedral dome, so that the ball and the cross looked like a buoy riding
+on a leaden sea. As the flying ship swept towards it, this plain of
+cloud looked as dry and definite and rocky as any grey desert. Hence it
+gave to the mind and body a sharp and unearthly sensation when the ship
+cut and sank into the cloud as into any common mist, a thing without
+resistance. There was, as it were, a deadly shock in the fact that there
+was no shock. It was as if they had cloven into ancient cliffs like so
+much butter. But sensations awaited them which were much stranger than
+those of sinking through the solid earth. For a moment their eyes and
+nostrils were stopped with darkness and opaque cloud; then the darkness
+warmed into a kind of brown fog. And far, far below them the brown fog
+fell until it warmed into fire. Through the dense London atmosphere they
+could see below them the flaming London lights; lights which lay beneath
+them in squares and oblongs of fire. The fog and fire were mixed in a
+passionate vapour; you might say that the fog was drowning the flames;
+or you might say that the flames had set the fog on fire. Beside the
+ship and beneath it (for it swung just under the ball), the immeasurable
+dome itself shot out and down into the dark like a combination of
+voiceless cataracts. Or it was like some cyclopean sea-beast sitting
+above London and letting down its tentacles bewilderingly on every side,
+a monstrosity in that starless heaven. For the clouds that belonged to
+London had closed over the heads of the voyagers sealing up the entrance
+of the upper air. They had broken through a roof and come into a temple
+of twilight.
+
+They were so near to the ball that Lucifer leaned his hand against it,
+holding the vessel away, as men push a boat off from a bank. Above it
+the cross already draped in the dark mists of the borderland was shadowy
+and more awful in shape and size.
+
+Professor Lucifer slapped his hand twice upon the surface of the great
+orb as if he were caressing some enormous animal. "This is the fellow,"
+he said, "this is the one for my money."
+
+"May I with all respect inquire," asked the old monk, "what on earth you
+are talking about?"
+
+"Why this," cried Lucifer, smiting the ball again, "here is the only
+symbol, my boy. So fat. So satisfied. Not like that scraggy individual,
+stretching his arms in stark weariness." And he pointed up to the cross,
+his face dark with a grin. "I was telling you just now, Michael, that I
+can prove the best part of the rationalist case and the Christian humbug
+from any symbol you liked to give me, from any instance I came across.
+Here is an instance with a vengeance. What could possibly express your
+philosophy and my philosophy better than the shape of that cross and
+the shape of this ball? This globe is reasonable; that cross is
+unreasonable. It is a four-legged animal, with one leg longer than the
+others. The globe is inevitable. The cross is arbitrary. Above all the
+globe is at unity with itself; the cross is primarily and above all
+things at enmity with itself. The cross is the conflict of two hostile
+lines, of irreconcilable direction. That silent thing up there is
+essentially a collision, a crash, a struggle in stone. Pah! that
+sacred symbol of yours has actually given its name to a description of
+desperation and muddle. When we speak of men at once ignorant of each
+other and frustrated by each other, we say they are at cross-purposes.
+Away with the thing! The very shape of it is a contradiction in terms."
+
+"What you say is perfectly true," said Michael, with serenity. "But we
+like contradictions in terms. Man is a contradiction in terms; he is a
+beast whose superiority to other beasts consists in having fallen. That
+cross is, as you say, an eternal collision; so am I. That is a struggle
+in stone. Every form of life is a struggle in flesh. The shape of
+the cross is irrational, just as the shape of the human animal is
+irrational. You say the cross is a quadruped with one limb longer than
+the rest. I say man is a quadruped who only uses two of his legs."
+
+The Professor frowned thoughtfully for an instant, and said: "Of
+course everything is relative, and I would not deny that the element
+of struggle and self-contradiction, represented by that cross, has a
+necessary place at a certain evolutionary stage. But surely the cross
+is the lower development and the sphere the higher. After all it is
+easy enough to see what is really wrong with Wren's architectural
+arrangement."
+
+"And what is that, pray?" inquired Michael, meekly.
+
+"The cross is on top of the ball," said Professor Lucifer, simply. "That
+is surely wrong. The ball should be on top of the cross. The cross is a
+mere barbaric prop; the ball is perfection. The cross at its best is but
+the bitter tree of man's history; the ball is the rounded, the ripe and
+final fruit. And the fruit should be at the top of the tree, not at the
+bottom of it."
+
+"Oh!" said the monk, a wrinkle coming into his forehead, "so you think
+that in a rationalistic scheme of symbolism the ball should be on top of
+the cross?"
+
+"It sums up my whole allegory," said the professor.
+
+"Well, that is really very interesting," resumed Michael slowly,
+"because I think in that case you would see a most singular effect, an
+effect that has generally been achieved by all those able and powerful
+systems which rationalism, or the religion of the ball, has produced to
+lead or teach mankind. You would see, I think, that thing happen which
+is always the ultimate embodiment and logical outcome of your logical
+scheme."
+
+"What are you talking about?" asked Lucifer. "What would happen?"
+
+"I mean it would fall down," said the monk, looking wistfully into the
+void.
+
+Lucifer made an angry movement and opened his mouth to speak, but
+Michael, with all his air of deliberation, was proceeding before he
+could bring out a word.
+
+"I once knew a man like you, Lucifer," he said, with a maddening
+monotony and slowness of articulation. "He took this----"
+
+"There is no man like me," cried Lucifer, with a violence that shook the
+ship.
+
+"As I was observing," continued Michael, "this man also took the
+view that the symbol of Christianity was a symbol of savagery and all
+unreason. His history is rather amusing. It is also a perfect allegory
+of what happens to rationalists like yourself. He began, of course, by
+refusing to allow a crucifix in his house, or round his wife's neck,
+or even in a picture. He said, as you say, that it was an arbitrary
+and fantastic shape, that it was a monstrosity, loved because it was
+paradoxical. Then he began to grow fiercer and more eccentric; he would
+batter the crosses by the roadside; for he lived in a Roman Catholic
+country. Finally in a height of frenzy he climbed the steeple of
+the Parish Church and tore down the cross, waving it in the air, and
+uttering wild soliloquies up there under the stars. Then one still
+summer evening as he was wending his way homewards, along a lane, the
+devil of his madness came upon him with a violence and transfiguration
+which changes the world. He was standing smoking, for a moment, in the
+front of an interminable line of palings, when his eyes were opened. Not
+a light shifted, not a leaf stirred, but he saw as if by a sudden change
+in the eyesight that this paling was an army of innumerable crosses
+linked together over hill and dale. And he whirled up his heavy stick
+and went at it as if at an army. Mile after mile along his homeward path
+he broke it down and tore it up. For he hated the cross and every paling
+is a wall of crosses. When he returned to his house he was a literal
+madman. He sat upon a chair and then started up from it for the
+cross-bars of the carpentry repeated the intolerable image. He flung
+himself upon a bed only to remember that this, too, like all workmanlike
+things, was constructed on the accursed plan. He broke his furniture
+because it was made of crosses. He burnt his house because it was made
+of crosses. He was found in the river."
+
+Lucifer was looking at him with a bitten lip.
+
+"Is that story really true?" he asked.
+
+"Oh, no," said Michael, airily. "It is a parable. It is a parable of you
+and all your rationalists. You begin by breaking up the Cross; but you
+end by breaking up the habitable world. We leave you saying that nobody
+ought to join the Church against his will. When we meet you again you
+are saying that no one has any will to join it with. We leave you saying
+that there is no such place as Eden. We find you saying that there is no
+such place as Ireland. You start by hating the irrational and you come
+to hate everything, for everything is irrational and so----"
+
+Lucifer leapt upon him with a cry like a wild beast's. "Ah," he
+screamed, "to every man his madness. You are mad on the cross. Let it
+save you."
+
+And with a herculean energy he forced the monk backwards out of the
+reeling car on to the upper part of the stone ball. Michael, with
+as abrupt an agility, caught one of the beams of the cross and saved
+himself from falling. At the same instant Lucifer drove down a lever and
+the ship shot up with him in it alone.
+
+"Ha! ha!" he yelled, "what sort of a support do you find it, old
+fellow?"
+
+"For practical purposes of support," replied Michael grimly, "it is at
+any rate a great deal better than the ball. May I ask if you are going
+to leave me here?"
+
+"Yes, yes. I mount! I mount!" cried the professor in ungovernable
+excitement. "_Altiora peto_. My path is upward."
+
+"How often have you told me, Professor, that there is really no up or
+down in space?" said the monk. "I shall mount up as much as you will."
+
+"Indeed," said Lucifer, leering over the side of the flying ship. "May I
+ask what you are going to do?"
+
+The monk pointed downward at Ludgate Hill. "I am going," he said, "to
+climb up into a star."
+
+Those who look at the matter most superficially regard paradox as
+something which belongs to jesting and light journalism. Paradox of this
+kind is to be found in the saying of the dandy, in the decadent comedy,
+"Life is much too important to be taken seriously." Those who look at
+the matter a little more deeply or delicately see that paradox is a
+thing which especially belongs to all religions. Paradox of this kind is
+to be found in such a saying as "The meek shall inherit the earth."
+But those who see and feel the fundamental fact of the matter know that
+paradox is a thing which belongs not to religion only, but to all vivid
+and violent practical crises of human living. This kind of paradox may
+be clearly perceived by anybody who happens to be hanging in mid-space,
+clinging to one arm of the Cross of St. Paul's.
+
+Father Michael in spite of his years, and in spite of his asceticism
+(or because of it, for all I know), was a very healthy and happy old
+gentleman. And as he swung on a bar above the sickening emptiness of
+air, he realized, with that sort of dead detachment which belongs to the
+brains of those in peril, the deathless and hopeless contradiction which
+is involved in the mere idea of courage. He was a happy and healthy old
+gentleman and therefore he was quite careless about it. And he felt as
+every man feels in the taut moment of such terror that his chief danger
+was terror itself; his only possible strength would be a coolness
+amounting to carelessness, a carelessness amounting almost to a suicidal
+swagger. His one wild chance of coming out safely would be in not too
+desperately desiring to be safe. There might be footholds down that
+awful facade, if only he could not care whether they were footholds or
+no. If he were foolhardy he might escape; if he were wise he would
+stop where he was till he dropped from the cross like a stone. And this
+antinomy kept on repeating itself in his mind, a contradiction as large
+and staring as the immense contradiction of the Cross; he remembered
+having often heard the words, "Whosoever shall lose his life the same
+shall save it." He remembered with a sort of strange pity that this had
+always been made to mean that whoever lost his physical life should save
+his spiritual life. Now he knew the truth that is known to all fighters,
+and hunters, and climbers of cliffs. He knew that even his animal life
+could only be saved by a considerable readiness to lose it.
+
+Some will think it improbable that a human soul swinging desperately
+in mid-air should think about philosophical inconsistencies. But such
+extreme states are dangerous things to dogmatize about. Frequently they
+produce a certain useless and joyless activity of the mere intellect,
+thought not only divorced from hope but even from desire. And if it is
+impossible to dogmatize about such states, it is still more impossible
+to describe them. To this spasm of sanity and clarity in Michael's mind
+succeeded a spasm of the elemental terror; the terror of the animal
+in us which regards the whole universe as its enemy; which, when it is
+victorious, has no pity, and so, when it is defeated has no imaginable
+hope. Of that ten minutes of terror it is not possible to speak in human
+words. But then again in that damnable darkness there began to grow
+a strange dawn as of grey and pale silver. And of this ultimate
+resignation or certainty it is even less possible to write; it is
+something stranger than hell itself; it is perhaps the last of the
+secrets of God. At the highest crisis of some incurable anguish there
+will suddenly fall upon the man the stillness of an insane contentment.
+It is not hope, for hope is broken and romantic and concerned with the
+future; this is complete and of the present. It is not faith, for
+faith by its very nature is fierce, and as it were at once doubtful and
+defiant; but this is simply a satisfaction. It is not knowledge, for
+the intellect seems to have no particular part in it. Nor is it (as the
+modern idiots would certainly say it is) a mere numbness or negative
+paralysis of the powers of grief. It is not negative in the least; it
+is as positive as good news. In some sense, indeed, it is good news. It
+seems almost as if there were some equality among things, some balance
+in all possible contingencies which we are not permitted to know lest we
+should learn indifference to good and evil, but which is sometimes shown
+to us for an instant as a last aid in our last agony.
+
+Michael certainly could not have given any sort of rational account of
+this vast unmeaning satisfaction which soaked through him and filled him
+to the brim. He felt with a sort of half-witted lucidity that the cross
+was there, and the ball was there, and the dome was there, that he was
+going to climb down from them, and that he did not mind in the least
+whether he was killed or not. This mysterious mood lasted long enough to
+start him on his dreadful descent and to force him to continue it. But
+six times before he reached the highest of the outer galleries terror
+had returned on him like a flying storm of darkness and thunder. By
+the time he had reached that place of safety he almost felt (as in some
+impossible fit of drunkenness) that he had two heads; one was calm,
+careless, and efficient; the other saw the danger like a deadly map,
+was wise, careful, and useless. He had fancied that he would have to let
+himself vertically down the face of the whole building. When he dropped
+into the upper gallery he still felt as far from the terrestrial globe
+as if he had only dropped from the sun to the moon. He paused a little,
+panting in the gallery under the ball, and idly kicked his heels, moving
+a few yards along it. And as he did so a thunderbolt struck his soul.
+A man, a heavy, ordinary man, with a composed indifferent face, and a
+prosaic sort of uniform, with a row of buttons, blocked his way. Michael
+had no mind to wonder whether this solid astonished man, with the brown
+moustache and the nickel buttons, had also come on a flying ship. He
+merely let his mind float in an endless felicity about the man. He
+thought how nice it would be if he had to live up in that gallery with
+that one man for ever. He thought how he would luxuriate in the nameless
+shades of this man's soul and then hear with an endless excitement about
+the nameless shades of the souls of all his aunts and uncles. A moment
+before he had been dying alone. Now he was living in the same world with
+a man; an inexhaustible ecstasy. In the gallery below the ball Father
+Michael had found that man who is the noblest and most divine and most
+lovable of all men, better than all the saints, greater than all the
+heroes--man Friday.
+
+In the confused colour and music of his new paradise, Michael heard only
+in a faint and distant fashion some remarks that this beautiful solid
+man seemed to be making to him; remarks about something or other being
+after hours and against orders. He also seemed to be asking how Michael
+"got up" there. This beautiful man evidently felt as Michael did that
+the earth was a star and was set in heaven.
+
+At length Michael sated himself with the mere sensual music of the voice
+of the man in buttons. He began to listen to what he said, and even to
+make some attempt at answering a question which appeared to have been
+put several times and was now put with some excess of emphasis. Michael
+realized that the image of God in nickel buttons was asking him how
+he had come there. He said that he had come in Lucifer's ship. On
+his giving this answer the demeanour of the image of God underwent a
+remarkable change. From addressing Michael gruffly, as if he were a
+malefactor, he began suddenly to speak to him with a sort of eager
+and feverish amiability as if he were a child. He seemed particularly
+anxious to coax him away from the balustrade. He led him by the arm
+towards a door leading into the building itself, soothing him all the
+time. He gave what even Michael (slight as was his knowledge of the
+world) felt to be an improbable account of the sumptuous pleasures
+and varied advantages awaiting him downstairs. Michael followed him,
+however, if only out of politeness, down an apparently interminable
+spiral of staircase. At one point a door opened. Michael stepped through
+it, and the unaccountable man in buttons leapt after him and pinioned
+him where he stood. But he only wished to stand; to stand and stare.
+He had stepped as it were into another infinity, out under the dome of
+another heaven. But this was a dome of heaven made by man. The gold and
+green and crimson of its sunset were not in the shapeless clouds but in
+shapes of cherubim and seraphim, awful human shapes with a passionate
+plumage. Its stars were not above but far below, like fallen stars still
+in unbroken constellations; the dome itself was full of darkness.
+And far below, lower even than the lights, could be seen creeping or
+motionless, great black masses of men. The tongue of a terrible organ
+seemed to shake the very air in the whole void; and through it there
+came up to Michael the sound of a tongue more terrible; the dreadful
+everlasting voice of man, calling to his gods from the beginning to the
+end of the world. Michael felt almost as if he were a god, and all the
+voices were hurled at him.
+
+"No, the pretty things aren't here," said the demi-god in buttons,
+caressingly. "The pretty things are downstairs. You come along with me.
+There's something that will surprise you downstairs; something you want
+very much to see."
+
+Evidently the man in buttons did not feel like a god, so Michael made no
+attempt to explain his feelings to him, but followed him meekly enough
+down the trail of the serpentine staircase. He had no notion where or at
+what level he was. He was still full of the cold splendour of space,
+and of what a French writer has brilliantly named the "vertigo of the
+infinite," when another door opened, and with a shock indescribable he
+found himself on the familiar level, in a street full of faces, with the
+houses and even the lamp-posts above his head. He felt suddenly happy
+and suddenly indescribably small. He fancied he had been changed into a
+child again; his eyes sought the pavement seriously as children's do, as
+if it were a thing with which something satisfactory could be done.
+He felt the full warmth of that pleasure from which the proud shut
+themselves out; the pleasure which not only goes with humiliation, but
+which almost is humiliation. Men who have escaped death by a hair have
+it, and men whose love is returned by a woman unexpectedly, and men
+whose sins are forgiven them. Everything his eye fell on it feasted on,
+not aesthetically, but with a plain, jolly appetite as of a boy eating
+buns. He relished the squareness of the houses; he liked their clean
+angles as if he had just cut them with a knife. The lit squares of the
+shop windows excited him as the young are excited by the lit stage of
+some promising pantomime. He happened to see in one shop which projected
+with a bulging bravery on to the pavement some square tins of potted
+meat, and it seemed like a hint of a hundred hilarious high teas in a
+hundred streets of the world. He was, perhaps, the happiest of all the
+children of men. For in that unendurable instant when he hung, half
+slipping, to the ball of St. Paul's, the whole universe had been
+destroyed and re-created.
+
+Suddenly through all the din of the dark streets came a crash of glass.
+With that mysterious suddenness of the Cockney mob, a rush was made
+in the right direction, a dingy office, next to the shop of the potted
+meat. The pane of glass was lying in splinters about the pavement. And
+the police already had their hands on a very tall young man, with dark,
+lank hair and dark, dazed eyes, with a grey plaid over his shoulder, who
+had just smashed the shop window with a single blow of his stick.
+
+"I'd do it again," said the young man, with a furious white face.
+"Anybody would have done it. Did you see what it said? I swear I'd do it
+again." Then his eyes encountered the monkish habit of Michael, and he
+pulled off his grey tam-o'-shanter with the gesture of a Catholic.
+
+"Father, did you see what they said?" he cried, trembling. "Did you see
+what they dared to say? I didn't understand it at first. I read it half
+through before I broke the window."
+
+Michael felt he knew not how. The whole peace of the world was pent up
+painfully in his heart. The new and childlike world which he had seen
+so suddenly, men had not seen at all. Here they were still at their old
+bewildering, pardonable, useless quarrels, with so much to be said on
+both sides, and so little that need be said at all. A fierce inspiration
+fell on him suddenly; he would strike them where they stood with the
+love of God. They should not move till they saw their own sweet and
+startling existence. They should not go from that place till they went
+home embracing like brothers and shouting like men delivered. From the
+Cross from which he had fallen fell the shadow of its fantastic mercy;
+and the first three words he spoke in a voice like a silver trumpet,
+held men as still as stones. Perhaps if he had spoken there for an hour
+in his illumination he might have founded a religion on Ludgate Hill.
+But the heavy hand of his guide fell suddenly on his shoulder.
+
+"This poor fellow is dotty," he said good-humouredly to the crowd. "I
+found him wandering in the Cathedral. Says he came in a flying ship. Is
+there a constable to spare to take care of him?"
+
+There was a constable to spare. Two other constables attended to the
+tall young man in grey; a fourth concerned himself with the owner of the
+shop, who showed some tendency to be turbulent. They took the tall young
+man away to a magistrate, whither we shall follow him in an ensuing
+chapter. And they took the happiest man in the world away to an asylum.
+
+
+
+
+II. THE RELIGION OF THE STIPENDIARY MAGISTRATE
+
+The editorial office of _The Atheist_ had for some years past become
+less and less prominently interesting as a feature of Ludgate Hill. The
+paper was unsuited to the atmosphere. It showed an interest in the Bible
+unknown in the district, and a knowledge of that volume to which nobody
+else on Ludgate Hill could make any conspicuous claim. It was in vain
+that the editor of _The Atheist_ filled his front window with fierce
+and final demands as to what Noah in the Ark did with the neck of the
+giraffe. It was in vain that he asked violently, as for the last time,
+how the statement "God is Spirit" could be reconciled with the statement
+"The earth is His footstool." It was in vain that he cried with an
+accusing energy that the Bishop of London was paid L12,000 a year for
+pretending to believe that the whale swallowed Jonah. It was in vain
+that he hung in conspicuous places the most thrilling scientific
+calculations about the width of the throat of a whale. Was it nothing
+to them all they that passed by? Did his sudden and splendid and truly
+sincere indignation never stir any of the people pouring down Ludgate
+Hill? Never. The little man who edited _The Atheist_ would rush from his
+shop on starlit evenings and shake his fist at St. Paul's in the passion
+of his holy war upon the holy place. He might have spared his emotion.
+The cross at the top of St. Paul's and _The Atheist_ shop at the foot of
+it were alike remote from the world. The shop and the Cross were equally
+uplifted and alone in the empty heavens.
+
+To the little man who edited _The Atheist_, a fiery little Scotchman,
+with fiery, red hair and beard, going by the name of Turnbull, all this
+decline in public importance seemed not so much sad or even mad, but
+merely bewildering and unaccountable. He had said the worst thing that
+could be said; and it seemed accepted and ignored like the ordinary
+second best of the politicians. Every day his blasphemies looked more
+glaring, and every day the dust lay thicker upon them. It made him feel
+as if he were moving in a world of idiots. He seemed among a race of men
+who smiled when told of their own death, or looked vacantly at the Day
+of Judgement. Year after year went by, and year after year the death of
+God in a shop in Ludgate became a less and less important occurrence.
+All the forward men of his age discouraged Turnbull. The socialists
+said he was cursing priests when he should be cursing capitalists.
+The artists said that the soul was most spiritual, not when freed from
+religion, but when freed from morality. Year after year went by, and at
+least a man came by who treated Mr. Turnbull's secularist shop with a
+real respect and seriousness. He was a young man in a grey plaid, and he
+smashed the window.
+
+He was a young man, born in the Bay of Arisaig, opposite Rum and the
+Isle of Skye. His high, hawklike features and snaky black hair bore the
+mark of that unknown historic thing which is crudely called Celtic, but
+which is probably far older than the Celts, whoever they were. He was in
+name and stock a Highlander of the Macdonalds; but his family took, as
+was common in such cases, the name of a subordinate sept as a surname,
+and for all the purposes which could be answered in London, he called
+himself Evan MacIan. He had been brought up in some loneliness and
+seclusion as a strict Roman Catholic, in the midst of that little wedge
+of Roman Catholics which is driven into the Western Highlands. And he
+had found his way as far as Fleet Street, seeking some half-promised
+employment, without having properly realized that there were in the
+world any people who were not Roman Catholics. He had uncovered himself
+for a few moments before the statue of Queen Anne, in front of St.
+Paul's Cathedral, under the firm impression that it was a figure of the
+Virgin Mary. He was somewhat surprised at the lack of deference shown to
+the figure by the people bustling by. He did not understand that their
+one essential historical principle, the one law truly graven on their
+hearts, was the great and comforting statement that Queen Anne is dead.
+This faith was as fundamental as his faith, that Our Lady was alive. Any
+persons he had talked to since he had touched the fringe of our fashion
+or civilization had been by a coincidence, sympathetic or hypocritical.
+Or if they had spoken some established blasphemies, he had been unable
+to understand them merely owing to the preoccupied satisfaction of his
+mind.
+
+On that fantastic fringe of the Gaelic land where he walked as a boy,
+the cliffs were as fantastic as the clouds. Heaven seemed to humble
+itself and come closer to the earth. The common paths of his little
+village began to climb quite suddenly and seemed resolved to go to
+heaven. The sky seemed to fall down towards the hills; the hills took
+hold upon the sky. In the sumptuous sunset of gold and purple and
+peacock green cloudlets and islets were the same. Evan lived like a man
+walking on a borderland, the borderland between this world and another.
+Like so many men and nations who grow up with nature and the common
+things, he understood the supernatural before he understood the natural.
+He had looked at dim angels standing knee-deep in the grass before he
+had looked at the grass. He knew that Our Lady's robes were blue before
+he knew the wild roses round her feet were red. The deeper his memory
+plunged into the dark house of childhood the nearer and nearer he came
+to the things that cannot be named. All through his life he thought of
+the daylight world as a sort of divine debris, the broken remainder
+of his first vision. The skies and mountains were the splendid
+off-scourings of another place. The stars were lost jewels of the Queen.
+Our Lady had gone and left the stars by accident.
+
+His private tradition was equally wild and unworldly. His
+great-grandfather had been cut down at Culloden, certain in his last
+instant that God would restore the King. His grandfather, then a boy of
+ten, had taken the terrible claymore from the hand of the dead and hung
+it up in his house, burnishing it and sharpening it for sixty years, to
+be ready for the next rebellion. His father, the youngest son and the
+last left alive, had refused to attend on Queen Victoria in Scotland.
+And Evan himself had been of one piece with his progenitors; and was not
+dead with them, but alive in the twentieth century. He was not in the
+least the pathetic Jacobite of whom we read, left behind by a final
+advance of all things. He was, in his own fancy, a conspirator, fierce
+and up to date. In the long, dark afternoons of the Highland winter, he
+plotted and fumed in the dark. He drew plans of the capture of London on
+the desolate sand of Arisaig.
+
+When he came up to capture London, it was not with an army of white
+cockades, but with a stick and a satchel. London overawed him a little,
+not because he thought it grand or even terrible, but because it
+bewildered him; it was not the Golden City or even hell; it was Limbo.
+He had one shock of sentiment, when he turned that wonderful corner of
+Fleet Street and saw St. Paul's sitting in the sky.
+
+"Ah," he said, after a long pause, "that sort of thing was built under
+the Stuarts!" Then with a sour grin he asked himself what was
+the corresponding monument of the Brunswicks and the Protestant
+Constitution. After some warning, he selected a sky-sign of some pill.
+
+Half an hour afterwards his emotions left him with an emptied mind on
+the same spot. And it was in a mood of mere idle investigation that he
+happened to come to a standstill opposite the office of _The Atheist_.
+He did not see the word "atheist", or if he did, it is quite possible
+that he did not know the meaning of the word. Even as it was, the
+document would not have shocked even the innocent Highlander, but for
+the troublesome and quite unforeseen fact that the innocent Highlander
+read it stolidly to the end; a thing unknown among the most enthusiastic
+subscribers to the paper, and calculated in any case to create a new
+situation.
+
+With a smart journalistic instinct characteristic of all his school, the
+editor of _The Atheist_ had put first in his paper and most prominently
+in his window an article called "The Mesopotamian Mythology and its
+Effects on Syriac Folk Lore." Mr. Evan MacIan began to read this quite
+idly, as he would have read a public statement beginning with a young
+girl dying in Brighton and ending with Bile Beans. He received the very
+considerable amount of information accumulated by the author with
+that tired clearness of the mind which children have on heavy summer
+afternoons--that tired clearness which leads them to go on asking
+questions long after they have lost interest in the subject and are
+as bored as their nurse. The streets were full of people and empty of
+adventures. He might as well know about the gods of Mesopotamia as not;
+so he flattened his long, lean face against the dim bleak pane of the
+window and read all there was to read about Mesopotamian gods. He read
+how the Mesopotamians had a god named Sho (sometimes pronounced Ji), and
+that he was described as being very powerful, a striking similarity to
+some expressions about Jahveh, who is also described as having power.
+Evan had never heard of Jahveh in his life, and imagining him to be some
+other Mesopotamian idol, read on with a dull curiosity. He learnt that
+the name Sho, under its third form of Psa, occurs in an early legend
+which describes how the deity, after the manner of Jupiter on so many
+occasions, seduced a Virgin and begat a hero. This hero, whose name is
+not essential to our existence, was, it was said, the chief hero and
+Saviour of the Mesopotamian ethical scheme. Then followed a paragraph
+giving other examples of such heroes and Saviours being born of
+some profligate intercourse between God and mortal. Then followed a
+paragraph--but Evan did not understand it. He read it again and then
+again. Then he did understand it. The glass fell in ringing fragments
+on to the pavement, and Evan sprang over the barrier into the shop,
+brandishing his stick.
+
+"What is this?" cried little Mr. Turnbull, starting up with hair aflame.
+"How dare you break my window?"
+
+"Because it was the quickest cut to you," cried Evan, stamping. "Stand
+up and fight, you crapulous coward. You dirty lunatic, stand up, will
+you? Have you any weapons here?"
+
+"Are you mad?" asked Turnbull, glaring.
+
+"Are you?" cried Evan. "Can you be anything else when you plaster your
+own house with that God-defying filth? Stand up and fight, I say."
+
+A great light like dawn came into Mr. Turnbull's face. Behind his red
+hair and beard he turned deadly pale with pleasure. Here, after twenty
+lone years of useless toil, he had his reward. Someone was angry with
+the paper. He bounded to his feet like a boy; he saw a new youth opening
+before him. And as not unfrequently happens to middle-aged gentlemen
+when they see a new youth opening before them, he found himself in the
+presence of the police.
+
+The policemen, after some ponderous questionings, collared both the two
+enthusiasts. They were more respectful, however, to the young man who
+had smashed the window, than to the miscreant who had had his window
+smashed. There was an air of refined mystery about Evan MacIan, which
+did not exist in the irate little shopkeeper, an air of refined mystery
+which appealed to the policemen, for policemen, like most other
+English types, are at once snobs and poets. MacIan might possibly be a
+gentleman, they felt; the editor manifestly was not. And the editor's
+fine rational republican appeals to his respect for law, and his ardour
+to be tried by his fellow citizens, seemed to the police quite as much
+gibberish as Evan's mysticism could have done. The police were not used
+to hearing principles, even the principles of their own existence.
+
+The police magistrate, before whom they were hurried and tried, was
+a Mr. Cumberland Vane, a cheerful, middle-aged gentleman, honourably
+celebrated for the lightness of his sentences and the lightness of his
+conversation. He occasionally worked himself up into a sort of theoretic
+rage about certain particular offenders, such as the men who took
+pokers to their wives, talked in a loose, sentimental way about the
+desirability of flogging them, and was hopelessly bewildered by the fact
+that the wives seemed even more angry with him than with their
+husbands. He was a tall, spruce man, with a twist of black moustache
+and incomparable morning dress. He looked like a gentleman, and yet,
+somehow, like a stage gentleman.
+
+He had often treated serious crimes against mere order or property
+with a humane flippancy. Hence, about the mere breaking of an editor's
+window, he was almost uproarious.
+
+"Come, Mr. MacIan, come," he said, leaning back in his chair, "do you
+generally enter you friends' houses by walking through the glass?"
+(Laughter.)
+
+"He is not my friend," said Evan, with the stolidity of a dull child.
+
+"Not your friend, eh?" said the magistrate, sparkling. "Is he your
+brother-in-law?" (Loud and prolonged laughter.)
+
+"He is my enemy," said Evan, simply; "he is the enemy of God."
+
+Mr. Vane shifted sharply in his seat, dropping the eye-glass out of his
+eye in a momentary and not unmanly embarrassment.
+
+"You mustn't talk like that here," he said, roughly, and in a kind of
+hurry, "that has nothing to do with us."
+
+Evan opened his great, blue eyes; "God," he began.
+
+"Be quiet," said the magistrate, angrily, "it is most undesirable that
+things of that sort should be spoken about--a--in public, and in an
+ordinary Court of Justice. Religion is--a--too personal a matter to be
+mentioned in such a place."
+
+"Is it?" answered the Highlander, "then what did those policemen swear
+by just now?"
+
+"That is no parallel," answered Vane, rather irritably; "of course there
+is a form of oath--to be taken reverently--reverently, and there's an
+end of it. But to talk in a public place about one's most sacred and
+private sentiments--well, I call it bad taste. (Slight applause.) I
+call it irreverent. I call it irreverent, and I'm not specially orthodox
+either."
+
+"I see you are not," said Evan, "but I am."
+
+"We are wondering from the point," said the police magistrate, pulling
+himself together.
+
+"May I ask why you smashed this worthy citizen's window?"
+
+Evan turned a little pale at the mere memory, but he answered with the
+same cold and deadly literalism that he showed throughout.
+
+"Because he blasphemed Our Lady."
+
+"I tell you once and for all," cried Mr. Cumberland Vane, rapping his
+knuckles angrily on the table, "I tell you, once and for all, my man,
+that I will not have you turning on any religious rant or cant here.
+Don't imagine that it will impress me. The most religious people are
+not those who talk about it. (Applause.) You answer the questions and do
+nothing else."
+
+"I did nothing else," said Evan, with a slight smile.
+
+"Eh," cried Vane, glaring through his eye-glass.
+
+"You asked me why I broke his window," said MacIan, with a face of wood.
+"I answered, 'Because he blasphemed Our Lady.' I had no other reason. So
+I have no other answer." Vane continued to gaze at him with a sternness
+not habitual to him.
+
+"You are not going the right way to work, Sir," he said, with severity.
+"You are not going the right way to work to--a--have your case treated
+with special consideration. If you had simply expressed regret for what
+you had done, I should have been strongly inclined to dismiss the matter
+as an outbreak of temper. Even now, if you say that you are sorry I
+shall only----"
+
+"But I am not in the least sorry," said Evan, "I am very pleased."
+
+"I really believe you are insane," said the stipendiary, indignantly,
+for he had really been doing his best as a good-natured man, to compose
+the dispute. "What conceivable right have you to break other people's
+windows because their opinions do not agree with yours? This man only
+gave expression to his sincere belief."
+
+"So did I," said the Highlander.
+
+"And who are you?" exploded Vane. "Are your views necessarily the right
+ones? Are you necessarily in possession of the truth?"
+
+"Yes," said MacIan.
+
+The magistrate broke into a contemptuous laugh.
+
+"Oh, you want a nurse to look after you," he said. "You must pay L10."
+
+Evan MacIan plunged his hands into his loose grey garment and drew out a
+queer looking leather purse. It contained exactly twelve sovereigns.
+He paid down the ten, coin by coin, in silence, and equally silently
+returned the remaining two to the receptacle. Then he said, "May I say a
+word, your worship?"
+
+Cumberland Vane seemed half hypnotized with the silence and automatic
+movements of the stranger; he made a movement with his head which might
+have been either "yes" or "no". "I only wished to say, your worship,"
+said MacIan, putting back the purse in his trouser pocket, "that
+smashing that shop window was, I confess, a useless and rather irregular
+business. It may be excused, however, as a mere preliminary to further
+proceedings, a sort of preface. Wherever and whenever I meet that man,"
+and he pointed to the editor of _The Atheist_, "whether it be outside
+this door in ten minutes from now, or twenty years hence in some distant
+country, wherever and whenever I meet that man, I will fight him. Do not
+be afraid. I will not rush at him like a bully, or bear him down with
+any brute superiority. I will fight him like a gentleman; I will fight
+him as our fathers fought. He shall choose how, sword or pistol, horse
+or foot. But if he refuses, I will write his cowardice on every wall
+in the world. If he had said of my mother what he said of the Mother of
+God, there is not a club of clean men in Europe that would deny my
+right to call him out. If he had said it of my wife, you English would
+yourselves have pardoned me for beating him like a dog in the market
+place. Your worship, I have no mother; I have no wife. I have only that
+which the poor have equally with the rich; which the lonely have equally
+with the man of many friends. To me this whole strange world is homely,
+because in the heart of it there is a home; to me this cruel world is
+kindly, because higher than the heavens there is something more human
+than humanity. If a man must not fight for this, may he fight for
+anything? I would fight for my friend, but if I lost my friend, I should
+still be there. I would fight for my country, but if I lost my country,
+I should still exist. But if what that devil dreams were true, I should
+not be--I should burst like a bubble and be gone. I could not live in
+that imbecile universe. Shall I not fight for my own existence?"
+
+The magistrate recovered his voice and his presence of mind. The first
+part of the speech, the bombastic and brutally practical challenge,
+stunned him with surprise; but the rest of Evan's remarks, branching off
+as they did into theoretic phrases, gave his vague and very English
+mind (full of memories of the hedging and compromise in English public
+speaking) an indistinct sensation of relief, as if the man, though mad,
+were not so dangerous as he had thought. He went into a sort of weary
+laughter.
+
+"For Heaven's sake, man," he said, "don't talk so much. Let other people
+have a chance (laughter). I trust all that you said about asking Mr.
+Turnbull to fight, may be regarded as rubbish. In case of accidents,
+however, I must bind you over to keep the peace."
+
+"To keep the peace," repeated Evan, "with whom?"
+
+"With Mr. Turnbull," said Vane.
+
+"Certainly not," answered MacIan. "What has he to do with peace?"
+
+"Do you mean to say," began the magistrate, "that you refuse to..." The
+voice of Turnbull himself clove in for the first time.
+
+"Might I suggest," he said, "That I, your worship, can settle to some
+extent this absurd matter myself. This rather wild gentleman promises
+that he will not attack me with any ordinary assault--and if he does,
+you may be sure the police shall hear of it. But he says he will not. He
+says he will challenge me to a duel; and I cannot say anything stronger
+about his mental state than to say that I think that it is highly
+probable that he will. (Laughter.) But it takes two to make a duel, your
+worship (renewed laughter). I do not in the least mind being described
+on every wall in the world as the coward who would not fight a man
+in Fleet Street, about whether the Virgin Mary had a parallel in
+Mesopotamian mythology. No, your worship. You need not trouble to bind
+him over to keep the peace. I bind myself over to keep the peace, and
+you may rest quite satisfied that there will be no duel with me in it."
+
+Mr. Cumberland Vane rolled about, laughing in a sort of relief.
+
+"You're like a breath of April, sir," he cried. "You're ozone after
+that fellow. You're perfectly right. Perhaps I have taken the thing too
+seriously. I should love to see him sending you challenges and to see
+you smiling. Well, well."
+
+Evan went out of the Court of Justice free, but strangely shaken, like
+a sick man. Any punishment of suppression he would have felt as natural;
+but the sudden juncture between the laughter of his judge and the
+laughter of the man he had wronged, made him feel suddenly small, or at
+least, defeated. It was really true that the whole modern world regarded
+his world as a bubble. No cruelty could have shown it, but their
+kindness showed it with a ghastly clearness. As he was brooding, he
+suddenly became conscious of a small, stern figure, fronting him
+in silence. Its eyes were grey and awful, and its beard red. It was
+Turnbull.
+
+"Well, sir," said the editor of _The Atheist_, "where is the fight to
+be? Name the field, sir."
+
+Evan stood thunderstruck. He stammered out something, he knew not what;
+he only guessed it by the answer of the other.
+
+"Do I want to fight? Do I want to fight?" cried the furious
+Free-thinker. "Why, you moonstruck scarecrow of superstition, do you
+think your dirty saints are the only people who can die? Haven't you
+hung atheists, and burned them, and boiled them, and did they ever deny
+their faith? Do you think we don't want to fight? Night and day I have
+prayed--I have longed--for an atheist revolution--I have longed to see
+your blood and ours on the streets. Let it be yours or mine?"
+
+"But you said..." began MacIan.
+
+"I know," said Turnbull scornfully. "And what did you say? You damned
+fool, you said things that might have got us locked up for a year, and
+shadowed by the coppers for half a decade. If you wanted to fight, why
+did you tell that ass you wanted to? I got you out, to fight if you want
+to. Now, fight if you dare."
+
+"I swear to you, then," said MacIan, after a pause. "I swear to you that
+nothing shall come between us. I swear to you that nothing shall be in
+my heart or in my head till our swords clash together. I swear it by the
+God you have denied, by the Blessed Lady you have blasphemed; I swear it
+by the seven swords in her heart. I swear it by the Holy Island where my
+fathers are, by the honour of my mother, by the secret of my people, and
+by the chalice of the Blood of God."
+
+The atheist drew up his head. "And I," he said, "give my word."
+
+
+
+
+III. SOME OLD CURIOSITIES
+
+The evening sky, a dome of solid gold, unflaked even by a single sunset
+cloud, steeped the meanest sights of London in a strange and mellow
+light. It made a little greasy street of St. Martin's Lane look as if it
+were paved with gold. It made the pawnbroker's half-way down it shine as
+if it were really that Mountain of Piety that the French poetic instinct
+has named it; it made the mean pseudo-French bookshop, next but one to
+it, a shop packed with dreary indecency, show for a moment a kind of
+Parisian colour. And the shop that stood between the pawnshop and the
+shop of dreary indecency, showed with quite a blaze of old world beauty,
+for it was, by accident, a shop not unbeautiful in itself. The front
+window had a glimmer of bronze and blue steel, lit, as by a few stars,
+by the sparks of what were alleged to be jewels; for it was in brief,
+a shop of bric-a-brac and old curiosities. A row of half-burnished
+seventeenth-century swords ran like an ornate railing along the front of
+the window; behind was a darker glimmer of old oak and old armour;
+and higher up hung the most extraordinary looking South Sea tools or
+utensils, whether designed for killing enemies or merely for cooking
+them, no mere white man could possibly conjecture. But the romance of
+the eye, which really on this rich evening, clung about the shop, had
+its main source in the accident of two doors standing open, the front
+door that opened on the street and a back door that opened on an odd
+green square of garden, that the sun turned to a square of gold. There
+is nothing more beautiful than thus to look as it were through the
+archway of a house; as if the open sky were an interior chamber, and the
+sun a secret lamp of the place.
+
+I have suggested that the sunset light made everything lovely. To say
+that it made the keeper of the curiosity shop lovely would be a tribute
+to it perhaps too extreme. It would easily have made him beautiful if he
+had been merely squalid; if he had been a Jew of the Fagin type. But
+he was a Jew of another and much less admirable type; a Jew with a very
+well-sounding name. For though there are no hard tests for separating
+the tares and the wheat of any people, one rude but efficient guide is
+that the nice Jew is called Moses Solomon, and the nasty Jew is called
+Thornton Percy. The keeper of the curiosity shop was of the Thornton
+Percy branch of the chosen people; he belonged to those Lost Ten Tribes
+whose industrious object is to lose themselves. He was a man still
+young, but already corpulent, with sleek dark hair, heavy handsome
+clothes, and a full, fat, permanent smile, which looked at the first
+glance kindly, and at the second cowardly. The name over his shop was
+Henry Gordon, but two Scotchmen who were in his shop that evening could
+come upon no trace of a Scotch accent.
+
+These two Scotchmen in this shop were careful purchasers, but
+free-handed payers. One of them who seemed to be the principal and the
+authority (whom, indeed, Mr. Henry Gordon fancied he had seen somewhere
+before), was a small, sturdy fellow, with fine grey eyes, a square red
+tie and a square red beard, that he carried aggressively forward as if
+he defied anyone to pull it. The other kept so much in the background in
+comparison that he looked almost ghostly in his grey cloak or plaid, a
+tall, sallow, silent young man.
+
+The two Scotchmen were interested in seventeenth-century swords. They
+were fastidious about them. They had a whole armoury of these weapons
+brought out and rolled clattering about the counter, until they found
+two of precisely the same length. Presumably they desired the exact
+symmetry for some decorative trophy. Even then they felt the points,
+poised the swords for balance and bent them in a circle to see that they
+sprang straight again; which, for decorative purposes, seems carrying
+realism rather far.
+
+"These will do," said the strange person with the red beard. "And
+perhaps I had better pay for them at once. And as you are the
+challenger, Mr. MacIan, perhaps you had better explain the situation."
+
+The tall Scotchman in grey took a step forward and spoke in a voice
+quite clear and bold, and yet somehow lifeless, like a man going through
+an ancient formality.
+
+"The fact is, Mr. Gordon, we have to place our honour in your hands.
+Words have passed between Mr. Turnbull and myself on a grave
+and invaluable matter, which can only be atoned for by fighting.
+Unfortunately, as the police are in some sense pursuing us, we are
+hurried, and must fight now and without seconds. But if you will be so
+kind as to take us into your little garden and see far play, we shall
+feel how----"
+
+The shopman recovered himself from a stunning surprise and burst out:
+
+"Gentlemen, are you drunk? A duel! A duel in my garden. Go home,
+gentlemen, go home. Why, what did you quarrel about?"
+
+"We quarrelled," said Evan, in the same dead voice, "about religion."
+The fat shopkeeper rolled about in his chair with enjoyment.
+
+"Well, this is a funny game," he said. "So you want to commit murder
+on behalf of religion. Well, well my religion is a little respect for
+humanity, and----"
+
+"Excuse me," cut in Turnbull, suddenly and fiercely, pointing towards
+the pawnbroker's next door. "Don't you own that shop?"
+
+"Why--er--yes," said Gordon.
+
+"And don't you own that shop?" repeated the secularist, pointing
+backward to the pornographic bookseller.
+
+"What if I do?"
+
+"Why, then," cried Turnbull, with grating contempt. "I will leave
+the religion of humanity confidently in your hands; but I am sorry
+I troubled you about such a thing as honour. Look here, my man. I do
+believe in humanity. I do believe in liberty. My father died for it
+under the swords of the Yeomanry. I am going to die for it, if need be,
+under that sword on your counter. But if there is one sight that makes
+me doubt it it is your foul fat face. It is hard to believe you were not
+meant to be ruled like a dog or killed like a cockroach. Don't try your
+slave's philosophy on me. We are going to fight, and we are going to
+fight in your garden, with your swords. Be still! Raise your voice above
+a whisper, and I run you through the body."
+
+Turnbull put the bright point of the sword against the gay waistcoat of
+the dealer, who stood choking with rage and fear, and an astonishment so
+crushing as to be greater than either.
+
+"MacIan," said Turnbull, falling almost into the familiar tone of a
+business partner, "MacIan, tie up this fellow and put a gag in his
+mouth. Be still, I say, or I kill you where you stand."
+
+The man was too frightened to scream, but he struggled wildly, while
+Evan MacIan, whose long, lean hands were unusually powerful, tightened
+some old curtain cords round him, strapped a rope gag in his mouth and
+rolled him on his back on the floor.
+
+"There's nothing very strong here," said Evan, looking about him. "I'm
+afraid he'll work through that gag in half an hour or so."
+
+"Yes," said Turnbull, "but one of us will be killed by that time."
+
+"Well, let's hope so," said the Highlander, glancing doubtfully at the
+squirming thing on the floor.
+
+"And now," said Turnbull, twirling his fiery moustache and fingering his
+sword, "let us go into the garden. What an exquisite summer evening!"
+
+MacIan said nothing, but lifting his sword from the counter went out
+into the sun.
+
+The brilliant light ran along the blades, filling the channels of them
+with white fire; the combatants stuck their swords in the turf and took
+off their hats, coats, waistcoats, and boots. Evan said a short Latin
+prayer to himself, during which Turnbull made something of a parade of
+lighting a cigarette which he flung away the instant after, when he saw
+MacIan apparently standing ready. Yet MacIan was not exactly ready. He
+stood staring like a man stricken with a trance.
+
+"What are you staring at?" asked Turnbull. "Do you see the bobbies?"
+
+"I see Jerusalem," said Evan, "all covered with the shields and
+standards of the Saracens."
+
+"Jerusalem!" said Turnbull, laughing. "Well, we've taken the only
+inhabitant into captivity."
+
+And he picked up his sword and made it whistle like a boy's wand.
+
+"I beg your pardon," said MacIan, dryly. "Let us begin."
+
+MacIan made a military salute with his weapon, which Turnbull copied or
+parodied with an impatient contempt; and in the stillness of the garden
+the swords came together with a clear sound like a bell. The instant
+the blades touched, each felt them tingle to their very points with a
+personal vitality, as if they were two naked nerves of steel. Evan had
+worn throughout an air of apathy, which might have been the stale apathy
+of one who wants nothing. But it was indeed the more dreadful apathy
+of one who wants something and will care for nothing else. And this was
+seen suddenly; for the instant Evan engaged he disengaged and lunged
+with an infernal violence. His opponent with a desperate promptitude
+parried and riposted; the parry only just succeeded, the riposte failed.
+Something big and unbearable seemed to have broken finally out of
+Evan in that first murderous lunge, leaving him lighter and cooler and
+quicker upon his feet. He fell to again, fiercely still, but now with a
+fierce caution. The next moment Turnbull lunged; MacIan seemed to catch
+the point and throw it away from him, and was thrusting back like a
+thunderbolt, when a sound paralysed him; another sound beside their
+ringing weapons. Turnbull, perhaps from an equal astonishment, perhaps
+from chivalry, stopped also and forebore to send his sword through his
+exposed enemy.
+
+"What's that?" asked Evan, hoarsely.
+
+A heavy scraping sound, as of a trunk being dragged along a littered
+floor, came from the dark shop behind them.
+
+"The old Jew has broken one of his strings, and he's crawling about,"
+said Turnbull. "Be quick! We must finish before he gets his gag out."
+
+"Yes, yes, quick! On guard!" cried the Highlander. The blades crossed
+again with the same sound like song, and the men went to work again with
+the same white and watchful faces. Evan, in his impatience, went back a
+little to his wildness. He made windmills, as the French duellists say,
+and though he was probably a shade the better fencer of the two, he
+found the other's point pass his face twice so close as almost to graze
+his cheek. The second time he realized the actual possibility of defeat
+and pulled himself together under a shock of the sanity of anger. He
+narrowed, and, so to speak, tightened his operations: he fenced (as the
+swordsman's boast goes), in a wedding ring; he turned Turnbull's thrusts
+with a maddening and almost mechanical click, like that of a machine.
+Whenever Turnbull's sword sought to go over that other mere white streak
+it seemed to be caught in a complex network of steel. He turned one
+thrust, turned another, turned another. Then suddenly he went forward at
+the lunge with his whole living weight. Turnbull leaped back, but
+Evan lunged and lunged and lunged again like a devilish piston rod or
+battering ram. And high above all the sound of the struggle there broke
+into the silent evening a bellowing human voice, nasal, raucous, at the
+highest pitch of pain. "Help! Help! Police! Murder! Murder!" The gag was
+broken; and the tongue of terror was loose.
+
+"Keep on!" gasped Turnbull. "One may be killed before they come."
+
+The voice of the screaming shopkeeper was loud enough to drown not only
+the noise of the swords but all other noises around it, but even through
+its rending din there seemed to be some other stir or scurry. And Evan,
+in the very act of thrusting at Turnbull, saw something in his eyes that
+made him drop his sword. The atheist, with his grey eyes at their
+widest and wildest, was staring straight over his shoulder at the little
+archway of shop that opened on the street beyond. And he saw the archway
+blocked and blackened with strange figures.
+
+"We must bolt, MacIan," he said abruptly. "And there isn't a damned
+second to lose either. Do as I do."
+
+With a bound he was beside the little cluster of his clothes and boots
+that lay on the lawn; he snatched them up, without waiting to put any of
+them on; and tucking his sword under his other arm, went wildly at
+the wall at the bottom of the garden and swung himself over it. Three
+seconds after he had alighted in his socks on the other side, MacIan
+alighted beside him, also in his socks and also carrying clothes and
+sword in a desperate bundle.
+
+They were in a by-street, very lean and lonely itself, but so close to
+a crowded thoroughfare that they could see the vague masses of vehicles
+going by, and could even see an individual hansom cab passing the
+corner at the instant. Turnbull put his fingers to his mouth like a
+gutter-snipe and whistled twice. Even as he did so he could hear the
+loud voices of the neighbours and the police coming down the garden.
+
+The hansom swung sharply and came tearing down the little lane at his
+call. When the cabman saw his fares, however, two wild-haired men
+in their shirts and socks with naked swords under their arms, he
+not unnaturally brought his readiness to a rigid stop and stared
+suspiciously.
+
+"You talk to him a minute," whispered Turnbull, and stepped back into
+the shadow of the wall.
+
+"We want you," said MacIan to the cabman, with a superb Scotch drawl of
+indifference and assurance, "to drive us to St. Pancras Station--verra
+quick."
+
+"Very sorry, sir," said the cabman, "but I'd like to know it was all
+right. Might I arst where you come from, sir?"
+
+A second after he spoke MacIan heard a heavy voice on the other side of
+the wall, saying: "I suppose I'd better get over and look for them. Give
+me a back."
+
+"Cabby," said MacIan, again assuming the most deliberate and lingering
+lowland Scotch intonation, "if ye're really verra anxious to ken whar a'
+come fra', I'll tell ye as a verra great secret. A' come from Scotland.
+And a'm gaein' to St. Pancras Station. Open the doors, cabby."
+
+The cabman stared, but laughed. The heavy voice behind the wall said:
+"Now then, a better back this time, Mr. Price." And from the shadow
+of the wall Turnbull crept out. He had struggled wildly into his coat
+(leaving his waistcoat on the pavement), and he was with a fierce pale
+face climbing up the cab behind the cabman. MacIan had no glimmering
+notion of what he was up to, but an instinct of discipline, inherited
+from a hundred men of war, made him stick to his own part and trust the
+other man's.
+
+"Open the doors, cabby," he repeated, with something of the obstinate
+solemnity of a drunkard, "open the doors. Did ye no hear me say St.
+Pancras Station?"
+
+The top of a policeman's helmet appeared above the garden wall. The
+cabman did not see it, but he was still suspicious and began:
+
+"Very sorry, sir, but..." and with that the catlike Turnbull tore him
+out of his seat and hurled him into the street below, where he lay
+suddenly stunned.
+
+"Give me his hat," said Turnbull in a silver voice, that the other
+obeyed like a bugle. "And get inside with the swords."
+
+And just as the red and raging face of a policeman appeared above the
+wall, Turnbull struck the horse with a terrible cut of the whip and the
+two went whirling away like a boomerang.
+
+They had spun through seven streets and three or four squares before
+anything further happened. Then, in the neighbourhood of Maida Vale,
+the driver opened the trap and talked through it in a manner not wholly
+common in conversations through that aperture.
+
+"Mr. MacIan," he said shortly and civilly.
+
+"Mr. Turnbull," replied his motionless fare.
+
+"Under circumstances such as those in which we were both recently placed
+there was no time for anything but very abrupt action. I trust therefore
+that you have no cause to complain of me if I have deferred until this
+moment a consultation with you on our present position or future action.
+Our present position, Mr. MacIan, I imagine that I am under no special
+necessity of describing. We have broken the law and we are fleeing
+from its officers. Our future action is a thing about which I myself
+entertain sufficiently strong views; but I have no right to assume or to
+anticipate yours, though I may have formed a decided conception of your
+character and a decided notion of what they will probably be. Still, by
+every principle of intellectual justice, I am bound to ask you now and
+seriously whether you wish to continue our interrupted relations."
+
+MacIan leant his white and rather weary face back upon the cushions in
+order to speak up through the open door.
+
+"Mr. Turnbull," he said, "I have nothing to add to what I have said
+before. It is strongly borne in upon me that you and I, the sole
+occupants of this runaway cab, are at this moment the two most important
+people in London, possibly in Europe. I have been looking at all the
+streets as we went past, I have been looking at all the shops as we went
+past, I have been looking at all the churches as we went past. At
+first, I felt a little dazed with the vastness of it all. I could not
+understand what it all meant. But now I know exactly what it all means.
+It means us. This whole civilization is only a dream. You and I are the
+realities."
+
+"Religious symbolism," said Mr. Turnbull, through the trap, "does not,
+as you are probably aware, appeal ordinarily to thinkers of the school
+to which I belong. But in symbolism as you use it in this instance, I
+must, I think, concede a certain truth. We _must_ fight this thing
+out somewhere; because, as you truly say, we have found each other's
+reality. We _must_ kill each other--or convert each other. I used to
+think all Christians were hypocrites, and I felt quite mildly towards
+them really. But I know you are sincere--and my soul is mad against you.
+In the same way you used, I suppose, to think that all atheists thought
+atheism would leave them free for immorality--and yet in your heart you
+tolerated them entirely. Now you _know_ that I am an honest man, and you
+are mad against me, as I am against you. Yes, that's it. You can't be
+angry with bad men. But a good man in the wrong--why one thirsts for his
+blood. Yes, you open for me a vista of thought."
+
+"Don't run into anything," said Evan, immovably.
+
+"There's something in that view of yours, too," said Turnbull, and shut
+down the trap.
+
+They sped on through shining streets that shot by them like arrows. Mr.
+Turnbull had evidently a great deal of unused practical talent which was
+unrolling itself in this ridiculous adventure. They had got away with
+such stunning promptitude that the police chase had in all probability
+not even properly begun. But in case it had, the amateur cabman chose
+his dizzy course through London with a strange dexterity. He did not
+do what would have first occurred to any ordinary outsider desiring to
+destroy his tracks. He did not cut into by-ways or twist his way through
+mean streets. His amateur common sense told him that it was precisely
+the poor street, the side street, that would be likely to remember
+and report the passing of a hansom cab, like the passing of a royal
+procession. He kept chiefly to the great roads, so full of hansoms that
+a wilder pair than they might easily have passed in the press. In one of
+the quieter streets Evan put on his boots.
+
+Towards the top of Albany Street the singular cabman again opened the
+trap.
+
+"Mr. MacIan," he said, "I understand that we have now definitely settled
+that in the conventional language honour is not satisfied. Our action
+must at least go further than it has gone under recent interrupted
+conditions. That, I believe, is understood."
+
+"Perfectly," replied the other with his bootlace in his teeth.
+
+"Under those conditions," continued Turnbull, his voice coming through
+the hole with a slight note of trepidation very unusual with him, "I
+have a suggestion to make, if that can be called a suggestion, which
+has probably occurred to you as readily as to me. Until the actual event
+comes off we are practically in the position if not of comrades, at
+least of business partners. Until the event comes off, therefore
+I should suggest that quarrelling would be inconvenient and rather
+inartistic; while the ordinary exchange of politeness between man and
+man would be not only elegant but uncommonly practical."
+
+"You are perfectly right," answered MacIan, with his melancholy voice,
+"in saying that all this has occurred to me. All duellists should behave
+like gentlemen to each other. But we, by the queerness of our position,
+are something much more than either duellists or gentlemen. We are, in
+the oddest and most exact sense of the term, brothers--in arms."
+
+"Mr. MacIan," replied Turnbull, calmly, "no more need be said." And he
+closed the trap once more.
+
+They had reached Finchley Road before he opened it again.
+
+Then he said, "Mr. MacIan, may I offer you a cigar. It will be a touch
+of realism."
+
+"Thank you," answered Evan. "You are very kind." And he began to smoke
+in the cab.
+
+
+
+
+IV. A DISCUSSION AT DAWN
+
+The duellists had from their own point of view escaped or conquered the
+chief powers of the modern world. They had satisfied the magistrate,
+they had tied the tradesman neck and heels, and they had left the
+police behind. As far as their own feelings went they had melted into a
+monstrous sea; they were but the fare and driver of one of the million
+hansoms that fill London streets. But they had forgotten something; they
+had forgotten journalism. They had forgotten that there exists in the
+modern world, perhaps for the first time in history, a class of people
+whose interest is not that things should happen well or happen badly,
+should happen successfully or happen unsuccessfully, should happen to
+the advantage of this party or the advantage of that part, but whose
+interest simply is that things should happen.
+
+It is the one great weakness of journalism as a picture of our modern
+existence, that it must be a picture made up entirely of exceptions. We
+announce on flaring posters that a man has fallen off a scaffolding.
+We do not announce on flaring posters that a man has not fallen off a
+scaffolding. Yet this latter fact is fundamentally more exciting, as
+indicating that that moving tower of terror and mystery, a man, is still
+abroad upon the earth. That the man has not fallen off a scaffolding is
+really more sensational; and it is also some thousand times more common.
+But journalism cannot reasonably be expected thus to insist upon the
+permanent miracles. Busy editors cannot be expected to put on their
+posters, "Mr. Wilkinson Still Safe," or "Mr. Jones, of Worthing, Not
+Dead Yet." They cannot announce the happiness of mankind at all. They
+cannot describe all the forks that are not stolen, or all the marriages
+that are not judiciously dissolved. Hence the complete picture they
+give of life is of necessity fallacious; they can only represent what
+is unusual. However democratic they may be, they are only concerned with
+the minority.
+
+The incident of the religious fanatic who broke a window on Ludgate Hill
+was alone enough to set them up in good copy for the night. But when the
+same man was brought before a magistrate and defied his enemy to
+mortal combat in the open court, then the columns would hardly hold the
+excruciating information, and the headlines were so large that there was
+hardly room for any of the text. The _Daily Telegraph_ headed a column,
+"A Duel on Divinity," and there was a correspondence afterwards which
+lasted for months, about whether police magistrates ought to mention
+religion. The _Daily Mail_ in its dull, sensible way, headed the events,
+"Wanted to fight for the Virgin." Mr. James Douglas, in _The Star_,
+presuming on his knowledge of philosophical and theological terms,
+described the Christian's outbreak under the title of "Dualist and
+Duellist." The _Daily News_ inserted a colourless account of the matter,
+but was pursued and eaten up for some weeks, with letters from outlying
+ministers, headed "Murder and Mariolatry." But the journalistic
+temperature was steadily and consistently heated by all these
+influences; the journalists had tasted blood, prospectively, and were
+in the mood for more; everything in the matter prepared them for further
+outbursts of moral indignation. And when a gasping reporter rushed in in
+the last hours of the evening with the announcement that the two heroes
+of the Police Court had literally been found fighting in a London back
+garden, with a shopkeeper bound and gagged in the front of the house,
+the editors and sub-editors were stricken still as men are by great
+beatitudes.
+
+The next morning, five or six of the great London dailies burst out
+simultaneously into great blossoms of eloquent leader-writing. Towards
+the end all the leaders tended to be the same, but they all began
+differently. The _Daily Telegraph_, for instance began, "There will
+be little difference among our readers or among all truly English and
+law-abiding men touching the, etc. etc." The _Daily Mail_ said, "People
+must learn, in the modern world, to keep their theological differences
+to themselves. The fracas, etc. etc." The _Daily News_ started, "Nothing
+could be more inimical to the cause of true religion than, etc. etc."
+The _Times_ began with something about Celtic disturbances of the
+equilibrium of Empire, and the _Daily Express_ distinguished itself
+splendidly by omitting altogether so controversial a matter and
+substituting a leader about goloshes.
+
+And the morning after that, the editors and the newspapers were in such
+a state, that, as the phrase is, there was no holding them. Whatever
+secret and elvish thing it is that broods over editors and suddenly
+turns their brains, that thing had seized on the story of the broken
+glass and the duel in the garden. It became monstrous and omnipresent,
+as do in our time the unimportant doings of the sect of the
+Agapemonites, or as did at an earlier time the dreary dishonesties
+of the Rhodesian financiers. Questions were asked about it, and even
+answered, in the House of Commons. The Government was solemnly denounced
+in the papers for not having done something, nobody knew what, to
+prevent the window being broken. An enormous subscription was started
+to reimburse Mr. Gordon, the man who had been gagged in the shop. Mr.
+MacIan, one of the combatants, became for some mysterious reason, singly
+and hugely popular as a comic figure in the comic papers and on the
+stage of the music hall. He was always represented (in defiance of
+fact), with red whiskers, and a very red nose, and in full Highland
+costume. And a song, consisting of an unimaginable number of verses,
+in which his name was rhymed with flat iron, the British Lion, sly 'un,
+dandelion, Spion (With Kop in the next line), was sung to crowded houses
+every night. The papers developed a devouring thirst for the capture of
+the fugitives; and when they had not been caught for forty-eight hours,
+they suddenly turned the whole matter into a detective mystery. Letters
+under the heading, "Where are They," poured in to every paper, with
+every conceivable kind of explanation, running them to earth in the
+Monument, the Twopenny Tube, Epping Forest, Westminster Abbey, rolled up
+in carpets at Shoolbreds, locked up in safes in Chancery Lane. Yes, the
+papers were very interesting, and Mr. Turnbull unrolled a whole bundle
+of them for the amusement of Mr. MacIan as they sat on a high common to
+the north of London, in the coming of the white dawn.
+
+The darkness in the east had been broken with a bar of grey; the bar
+of grey was split with a sword of silver and morning lifted itself
+laboriously over London. From the spot where Turnbull and MacIan were
+sitting on one of the barren steeps behind Hampstead, they could see
+the whole of London shaping itself vaguely and largely in the grey and
+growing light, until the white sun stood over it and it lay at their
+feet, the splendid monstrosity that it is. Its bewildering squares and
+parallelograms were compact and perfect as a Chinese puzzle; an enormous
+hieroglyphic which man must decipher or die. There fell upon both of
+them, but upon Turnbull more than the other, because he know more what
+the scene signified, that quite indescribable sense as of a sublime and
+passionate and heart-moving futility, which is never evoked by deserts
+or dead men or men neglected and barbarous, which can only be invoked by
+the sight of the enormous genius of man applied to anything other than
+the best. Turnbull, the old idealistic democrat, had so often reviled
+the democracy and reviled them justly for their supineness, their
+snobbishness, their evil reverence for idle things. He was right enough;
+for our democracy has only one great fault; it is not democratic. And
+after denouncing so justly average modern men for so many years as
+sophists and as slaves, he looked down from an empty slope in Hampstead
+and saw what gods they are. Their achievement seemed all the more heroic
+and divine, because it seemed doubtful whether it was worth doing at
+all. There seemed to be something greater than mere accuracy in making
+such a mistake as London. And what was to be the end of it all? what was
+to be the ultimate transformation of this common and incredible London
+man, this workman on a tram in Battersea, his clerk on an omnibus in
+Cheapside? Turnbull, as he stared drearily, murmured to himself
+the words of the old atheistic and revolutionary Swinburne who had
+intoxicated his youth:
+
+        "And still we ask if God or man
+        Can loosen thee Lazarus;
+        Bid thee rise up republican,
+        And save thyself and all of us.
+        But no disciple's tongue can say
+        If thou can'st take our sins away."
+
+Turnbull shivered slightly as if behind the earthly morning he felt the
+evening of the world, the sunset of so many hopes. Those words were from
+"Songs before Sunrise". But Turnbull's songs at their best were songs
+after sunrise, and sunrise had been no such great thing after all.
+Turnbull shivered again in the sharp morning air. MacIan was also gazing
+with his face towards the city, but there was that about his blind and
+mystical stare that told one, so to speak, that his eyes were turned
+inwards. When Turnbull said something to him about London, they seemed
+to move as at a summons and come out like two householders coming out
+into their doorways.
+
+"Yes," he said, with a sort of stupidity. "It's a very big place."
+
+There was a somewhat unmeaning silence, and then MacIan said again:
+
+"It's a very big place. When I first came into it I was frightened of
+it. Frightened exactly as one would be frightened at the sight of a
+man forty feet high. I am used to big things where I come from, big
+mountains that seem to fill God's infinity, and the big sea that goes
+to the end of the world. But then these things are all shapeless and
+confused things, not made in any familiar form. But to see the plain,
+square, human things as large as that, houses so large and streets
+so large, and the town itself so large, was like having screwed some
+devil's magnifying glass into one's eye. It was like seeing a porridge
+bowl as big as a house, or a mouse-trap made to catch elephants."
+
+"Like the land of the Brobdingnagians," said Turnbull, smiling.
+
+"Oh! Where is that?" said MacIan.
+
+Turnbull said bitterly, "In a book," and the silence fell suddenly
+between them again.
+
+They were sitting in a sort of litter on the hillside; all the things
+they had hurriedly collected, in various places, for their flight, were
+strewn indiscriminately round them. The two swords with which they had
+lately sought each other's lives were flung down on the grass at random,
+like two idle walking-sticks. Some provisions they had bought last
+night, at a low public house, in case of undefined contingencies, were
+tossed about like the materials of an ordinary picnic, here a basket
+of chocolate, and there a bottle of wine. And to add to the disorder
+finally, there were strewn on top of everything, the most disorderly
+of modern things, newspapers, and more newspapers, and yet again
+newspapers, the ministers of the modern anarchy. Turnbull picked up one
+of them drearily, and took out a pipe.
+
+"There's a lot about us," he said. "Do you mind if I light up?"
+
+"Why should I mind?" asked MacIan.
+
+Turnbull eyed with a certain studious interest, the man who did not
+understand any of the verbal courtesies; he lit his pipe and blew great
+clouds out of it.
+
+"Yes," he resumed. "The matter on which you and I are engaged is at this
+moment really the best copy in England. I am a journalist, and I know.
+For the first time, perhaps, for many generations, the English are
+really more angry about a wrong thing done in England than they are
+about a wrong thing done in France."
+
+"It is not a wrong thing," said MacIan.
+
+Turnbull laughed. "You seem unable to understand the ordinary use of the
+human language. If I did not suspect that you were a genius, I should
+certainly know you were a blockhead. I fancy we had better be getting
+along and collecting our baggage."
+
+And he jumped up and began shoving the luggage into his pockets, or
+strapping it on to his back. As he thrust a tin of canned meat, anyhow,
+into his bursting side pocket, he said casually:
+
+"I only meant that you and I are the most prominent people in the
+English papers."
+
+"Well, what did you expect?" asked MacIan, opening his great grave blue
+eyes.
+
+"The papers are full of us," said Turnbull, stooping to pick up one of
+the swords.
+
+MacIan stooped and picked up the other.
+
+"Yes," he said, in his simple way. "I have read what they have to say.
+But they don't seem to understand the point."
+
+"The point of what?" asked Turnbull.
+
+"The point of the sword," said MacIan, violently, and planted the steel
+point in the soil like a man planting a tree.
+
+"That is a point," said Turnbull, grimly, "that we will discuss later.
+Come along."
+
+Turnbull tied the last tin of biscuits desperately to himself with
+string; and then spoke, like a diver girt for plunging, short and sharp.
+
+"Now, Mr. MacIan, you must listen to me. You must listen to me, not
+merely because I know the country, which you might learn by looking at
+a map, but because I know the people of the country, whom you could
+not know by living here thirty years. That infernal city down there is
+awake; and it is awake against us. All those endless rows of windows and
+windows are all eyes staring at us. All those forests of chimneys are
+fingers pointing at us, as we stand here on the hillside. This thing has
+caught on. For the next six mortal months they will think of nothing
+but us, as for six mortal months they thought of nothing but the Dreyfus
+case. Oh, I know it's funny. They let starving children, who don't
+want to die, drop by the score without looking round. But because two
+gentlemen, from private feelings of delicacy, do want to die, they will
+mobilize the army and navy to prevent them. For half a year or more, you
+and I, Mr. MacIan, will be an obstacle to every reform in the British
+Empire. We shall prevent the Chinese being sent out of the Transvaal and
+the blocks being stopped in the Strand. We shall be the conversational
+substitute when anyone recommends Home Rule, or complains of sky signs.
+Therefore, do not imagine, in your innocence, that we have only to melt
+away among those English hills as a Highland cateran might into your
+god-forsaken Highland mountains. We must be eternally on our guard; we
+must live the hunted life of two distinguished criminals. We must expect
+to be recognized as much as if we were Napoleon escaping from Elba. We
+must be prepared for our descriptions being sent to every tiny village,
+and for our faces being recognized by every ambitious policeman. We
+must often sleep under the stars as if we were in Africa. Last and most
+important we must not dream of effecting our--our final settlement,
+which will be a thing as famous as the Phoenix Park murders, unless we
+have made real and precise arrangements for our isolation--I will not
+say our safety. We must not, in short, fight until we have thrown them
+off our scent, if only for a moment. For, take my word for it, Mr.
+MacIan, if the British Public once catches us up, the British Public
+will prevent the duel, if it is only by locking us both up in asylums
+for the rest of our days."
+
+MacIan was looking at the horizon with a rather misty look.
+
+"I am not at all surprised," he said, "at the world being against us. It
+makes me feel I was right to----"
+
+"Yes?" said Turnbull.
+
+"To smash your window," said MacIan. "I have woken up the world."
+
+"Very well, then," said Turnbull, stolidly. "Let us look at a few
+final facts. Beyond that hill there is comparatively clear country.
+Fortunately, I know the part well, and if you will follow me exactly,
+and, when necessary, on your stomach, we may be able to get ten miles
+out of London, literally without meeting anyone at all, which will be
+the best possible beginning, at any rate. We have provisions for at
+least two days and two nights, three days if we do it carefully. We may
+be able to get fifty or sixty miles away without even walking into an
+inn door. I have the biscuits and the tinned meat, and the milk. You
+have the chocolate, I think? And the brandy?"
+
+"Yes," said MacIan, like a soldier taking orders.
+
+"Very well, then, come on. March. We turn under that third bush and so
+down into the valley." And he set off ahead at a swinging walk.
+
+Then he stopped suddenly; for he realized that the other was not
+following. Evan MacIan was leaning on his sword with a lowering face,
+like a man suddenly smitten still with doubt.
+
+"What on earth is the matter?" asked Turnbull, staring in some anger.
+
+Evan made no reply.
+
+"What the deuce is the matter with you?" demanded the leader, again, his
+face slowly growing as red as his beard; then he said, suddenly, and in
+a more human voice, "Are you in pain, MacIan?"
+
+"Yes," replied the Highlander, without lifting his face.
+
+"Take some brandy," cried Turnbull, walking forward hurriedly towards
+him. "You've got it."
+
+"It's not in the body," said MacIan, in his dull, strange way. "The
+pain has come into my mind. A very dreadful thing has just come into my
+thoughts."
+
+"What the devil are you talking about?" asked Turnbull.
+
+MacIan broke out with a queer and living voice.
+
+"We must fight now, Turnbull. We must fight now. A frightful thing has
+come upon me, and I know it must be now and here. I must kill you here,"
+he cried, with a sort of tearful rage impossible to describe. "Here,
+here, upon this blessed grass."
+
+"Why, you idiot," began Turnbull.
+
+"The hour has come--the black hour God meant for it. Quick, it will soon
+be gone. Quick!"
+
+And he flung the scabbard from him furiously, and stood with the
+sunlight sparkling along his sword.
+
+"You confounded fool," repeated Turnbull. "Put that thing up again,
+you ass; people will come out of that house at the first clash of the
+steel."
+
+"One of us will be dead before they come," said the other, hoarsely,
+"for this is the hour God meant."
+
+"Well, I never thought much of God," said the editor of _The Atheist_,
+losing all patience. "And I think less now. Never mind what God meant.
+Kindly enlighten my pagan darkness as to what the devil _you_ mean."
+
+"The hour will soon be gone. In a moment it will be gone," said the
+madman. "It is now, now, now that I must nail your blaspheming body to
+the earth--now, now that I must avenge Our Lady on her vile slanderer.
+Now or never. For the dreadful thought is in my mind."
+
+"And what thought," asked Turnbull, with frantic composure, "occupies
+what you call your mind?"
+
+"I must kill you now," said the fanatic, "because----"
+
+"Well, because," said Turnbull, patiently.
+
+"Because I have begun to like you."
+
+Turnbull's face had a sudden spasm in the sunlight, a change so
+instantaneous that it left no trace behind it; and his features seemed
+still carved into a cold stare. But when he spoke again he seemed like
+a man who was placidly pretending to misunderstand something that he
+understood perfectly well.
+
+"Your affection expresses itself in an abrupt form," he began, but
+MacIan broke the brittle and frivolous speech to pieces with a violent
+voice. "Do not trouble to talk like that," he said. "You know what I
+mean as well as I know it. Come on and fight, I say. Perhaps you are
+feeling just as I do."
+
+Turnbull's face flinched again in the fierce sunlight, but his attitude
+kept its contemptuous ease.
+
+"Your Celtic mind really goes too fast for me," he said; "let me be
+permitted in my heavy Lowland way to understand this new development. My
+dear Mr. MacIan, what do you really mean?"
+
+MacIan still kept the shining sword-point towards the other's breast.
+
+"You know what I mean. You mean the same yourself. We must fight now or
+else----"
+
+"Or else?" repeated Turnbull, staring at him with an almost blinding
+gravity.
+
+"Or else we may not want to fight at all," answered Evan, and the end of
+his speech was like a despairing cry.
+
+Turnbull took out his own sword suddenly as if to engage; then planting
+it point downwards for a moment, he said, "Before we begin, may I ask
+you a question?"
+
+MacIan bowed patiently, but with burning eyes.
+
+"You said, just now," continued Turnbull, presently, "that if we did not
+fight now, we might not want to fight at all. How would you feel about
+the matter if we came not to want to fight at all?"
+
+"I should feel," answered the other, "just as I should feel if you had
+drawn your sword, and I had run away from it. I should feel that because
+I had been weak, justice had not been done."
+
+"Justice," answered Turnbull, with a thoughtful smile, "but we are
+talking about your feelings. And what do you mean by justice, apart from
+your feelings?"
+
+MacIan made a gesture of weary recognition! "Oh, Nominalism," he said,
+with a sort of sigh, "we had all that out in the twelfth century."
+
+"I wish we could have it out now," replied the other, firmly. "Do you
+really mean that if you came to think me right, you would be certainly
+wrong?"
+
+"If I had a blow on the back of my head, I might come to think you a
+green elephant," answered MacIan, "but have I not the right to say now,
+that if I thought that I should think wrong?"
+
+"Then you are quite certain that it would be wrong to like me?" asked
+Turnbull, with a slight smile.
+
+"No," said Evan, thoughtfully, "I do not say that. It may not be the
+devil, it may be some part of God I am not meant to know. But I had a
+work to do, and it is making the work difficult."
+
+"And I suppose," said the atheist, quite gently, "that you and I know
+all about which part of God we ought to know."
+
+MacIan burst out like a man driven back and explaining everything.
+
+"The Church is not a thing like the Athenaeum Club," he cried. "If the
+Athenaeum Club lost all its members, the Athenaeum Club would dissolve
+and cease to exist. But when we belong to the Church we belong to
+something which is outside all of us; which is outside everything you
+talk about, outside the Cardinals and the Pope. They belong to it, but
+it does not belong to them. If we all fell dead suddenly, the Church
+would still somehow exist in God. Confound it all, don't you see that I
+am more sure of its existence than I am of my own existence? And yet you
+ask me to trust my temperament, my own temperament, which can be turned
+upside down by two bottles of claret or an attack of the jaundice. You
+ask me to trust that when it softens towards you and not to trust the
+thing which I believe to be outside myself and more real than the blood
+in my body."
+
+"Stop a moment," said Turnbull, in the same easy tone, "Even in the very
+act of saying that you believe this or that, you imply that there is a
+part of yourself that you trust even if there are many parts which you
+mistrust. If it is only you that like me, surely, also, it is only you
+that believe in the Catholic Church."
+
+Evan remained in an unmoved and grave attitude. "There is a part of me
+which is divine," he answered, "a part that can be trusted, but there
+are also affections which are entirely animal and idle."
+
+"And you are quite certain, I suppose," continued Turnbull, "that if
+even you esteem me the esteem would be wholly animal and idle?" For the
+first time MacIan started as if he had not expected the thing that was
+said to him. At last he said:
+
+"Whatever in earth or heaven it is that has joined us two together, it
+seems to be something which makes it impossible to lie. No, I do not
+think that the movement in me towards you was...was that surface sort of
+thing. It may have been something deeper...something strange. I cannot
+understand the thing at all. But understand this and understand it
+thoroughly, if I loved you my love might be divine. No, it is not some
+trifle that we are fighting about. It is not some superstition or some
+symbol. When you wrote those words about Our Lady, you were in that act
+a wicked man doing a wicked thing. If I hate you it is because you have
+hated goodness. And if I like you...it is because you are good."
+
+Turnbull's face wore an indecipherable expression.
+
+"Well, shall we fight now?" he said.
+
+"Yes," said MacIan, with a sudden contraction of his black brows, "yes,
+it must be now."
+
+The bright swords crossed, and the first touch of them, travelling
+down blade and arm, told each combatant that the heart of the other was
+awakened. It was not in that way that the swords rang together when they
+had rushed on each other in the little garden behind the dealer's shop.
+
+There was a pause, and then MacIan made a movement as if to thrust,
+and almost at the same moment Turnbull suddenly and calmly dropped his
+sword. Evan stared round in an unusual bewilderment, and then realized
+that a large man in pale clothes and a Panama hat was strolling serenely
+towards them.
+
+
+
+
+V. THE PEACEMAKER
+
+When the combatants, with crossed swords, became suddenly conscious of
+a third party, they each made the same movement. It was as quick as
+the snap of a pistol, and they altered it instantaneously and recovered
+their original pose, but they had both made it, they had both seen it,
+and they both knew what it was. It was not a movement of anger at being
+interrupted. Say or think what they would, it was a movement of relief.
+A force within them, and yet quite beyond them, seemed slowly and
+pitilessly washing away the adamant of their oath. As mistaken lovers
+might watch the inevitable sunset of first love, these men watched the
+sunset of their first hatred.
+
+Their hearts were growing weaker and weaker against each other. When
+their weapons rang and riposted in the little London garden, they
+could have been very certain that if a third party had interrupted them
+something at least would have happened. They would have killed each
+other or they would have killed him. But now nothing could undo or
+deny that flash of fact, that for a second they had been glad to be
+interrupted. Some new and strange thing was rising higher and higher in
+their hearts like a high sea at night. It was something that seemed all
+the more merciless, because it might turn out an enormous mercy. Was
+there, perhaps, some such fatalism in friendship as all lovers talk
+about in love? Did God make men love each other against their will?
+
+"I'm sure you'll excuse my speaking to you," said the stranger, in a
+voice at once eager and deprecating.
+
+The voice was too polite for good manners. It was incongruous with the
+eccentric spectacle of the duellists which ought to have startled a sane
+and free man. It was also incongruous with the full and healthy, though
+rather loose physique of the man who spoke. At the first glance he
+looked a fine animal, with curling gold beard and hair, and blue eyes,
+unusually bright. It was only at the second glance that the mind felt
+a sudden and perhaps unmeaning irritation at the way in which the gold
+beard retreated backwards into the waistcoat, and the way in which the
+finely shaped nose went forward as if smelling its way. And it was
+only, perhaps, at the hundredth glance that the bright blue eyes,
+which normally before and after the instant seemed brilliant with
+intelligence, seemed as it were to be brilliant with idiocy. He was a
+heavy, healthy-looking man, who looked all the larger because of the
+loose, light coloured clothes that he wore, and that had in their
+extreme lightness and looseness, almost a touch of the tropics. But
+a closer examination of his attire would have shown that even in the
+tropics it would have been unique; but it was all woven according to
+some hygienic texture which no human being had ever heard of before, and
+which was absolutely necessary even for a day's health. He wore a huge
+broad-brimmed hat, equally hygienic, very much at the back of his head,
+and his voice coming out of so heavy and hearty a type of man was, as I
+have said, startlingly shrill and deferential.
+
+"I'm sure you'll excuse my speaking to you," he said. "Now, I wonder if
+you are in some little difficulty which, after all, we could settle very
+comfortably together? Now, you don't mind my saying this, do you?"
+
+The face of both combatants remained somewhat solid under this appeal.
+But the stranger, probably taking their silence for a gathering shame,
+continued with a kind of gaiety:
+
+"So you are the young men I have read about in the papers. Well, of
+course, when one is young, one is rather romantic. Do you know what I
+always say to young people?"
+
+A blank silence followed this gay inquiry. Then Turnbull said in a
+colourless voice:
+
+"As I was forty-seven last birthday, I probably came into the world too
+soon for the experience."
+
+"Very good, very good," said the friendly person. "Dry Scotch humour.
+Dry Scotch humour. Well now. I understand that you two people want to
+fight a duel. I suppose you aren't much up in the modern world. We've
+quite outgrown duelling, you know. In fact, Tolstoy tells us that we
+shall soon outgrow war, which he says is simply a duel between nations.
+A duel between nations. But there is no doubt about our having outgrown
+duelling."
+
+Waiting for some effect upon his wooden auditors, the stranger stood
+beaming for a moment and then resumed:
+
+"Now, they tell me in the newspapers that you are really wanting to
+fight about something connected with Roman Catholicism. Now, do you know
+what I always say to Roman Catholics?"
+
+"No," said Turnbull, heavily. "Do _they_?" It seemed to be a
+characteristic of the hearty, hygienic gentleman that he always forgot
+the speech he had made the moment before. Without enlarging further on
+the fixed form of his appeal to the Church of Rome, he laughed cordially
+at Turnbull's answer; then his wandering blue eyes caught the sunlight
+on the swords, and he assumed a good-humoured gravity.
+
+"But you know this is a serious matter," he said, eyeing Turnbull and
+MacIan, as if they had just been keeping the table in a roar with their
+frivolities. "I am sure that if I appealed to your higher natures...your
+higher natures. Every man has a higher nature and a lower nature. Now,
+let us put the matter very plainly, and without any romantic nonsense
+about honour or anything of that sort. Is not bloodshed a great sin?"
+
+"No," said MacIan, speaking for the first time.
+
+"Well, really, really!" said the peacemaker.
+
+"Murder is a sin," said the immovable Highlander. "There is no sin of
+bloodshed."
+
+"Well, we won't quarrel about a word," said the other, pleasantly.
+
+"Why on earth not?" said MacIan, with a sudden asperity. "Why shouldn't
+we quarrel about a word? What is the good of words if they aren't
+important enough to quarrel over? Why do we choose one word more than
+another if there isn't any difference between them? If you called a
+woman a chimpanzee instead of an angel, wouldn't there be a quarrel
+about a word? If you're not going to argue about words, what are you
+going to argue about? Are you going to convey your meaning to me by
+moving your ears? The Church and the heresies always used to fight about
+words, because they are the only things worth fighting about. I say
+that murder is a sin, and bloodshed is not, and that there is as much
+difference between those words as there is between the word 'yes' and
+the word 'no'; or rather more difference, for 'yes' and 'no', at least,
+belong to the same category. Murder is a spiritual incident. Bloodshed
+is a physical incident. A surgeon commits bloodshed.
+
+"Ah, you're a casuist!" said the large man, wagging his head. "Now, do
+you know what I always say to casuists...?"
+
+MacIan made a violent gesture; and Turnbull broke into open laughter.
+The peacemaker did not seem to be in the least annoyed, but continued in
+unabated enjoyment.
+
+"Well, well," he said, "let us get back to the point. Now Tolstoy has
+shown that force is no remedy; so you see the position in which I am
+placed. I am doing my best to stop what I'm sure you won't mind my
+calling this really useless violence, this really quite wrong violence
+of yours. But it's against my principles to call in the police against
+you, because the police are still on a lower moral plane, so to speak,
+because, in short, the police undoubtedly sometimes employ force.
+Tolstoy has shown that violence merely breeds violence in the person
+towards whom it is used, whereas Love, on the other hand, breeds Love.
+So you see how I am placed. I am reduced to use Love in order to stop
+you. I am obliged to use Love."
+
+He gave to the word an indescribable sound of something hard and heavy,
+as if he were saying "boots". Turnbull suddenly gripped his sword and
+said, shortly, "I see how you are placed quite well, sir. You will not
+call the police. Mr. MacIan, shall we engage?" MacIan plucked his sword
+out of the grass.
+
+"I must and will stop this shocking crime," cried the Tolstoian,
+crimson in the face. "It is against all modern ideas. It is against the
+principle of love. How you, sir, who pretend to be a Christian..."
+
+MacIan turned upon him with a white face and bitter lip. "Sir," he said,
+"talk about the principle of love as much as you like. You seem to me
+colder than a lump of stone; but I am willing to believe that you may at
+some time have loved a cat, or a dog, or a child. When you were a baby,
+I suppose you loved your mother. Talk about love, then, till the world
+is sick of the word. But don't you talk about Christianity. Don't you
+dare to say one word, white or black, about it. Christianity is, as far
+as you are concerned, a horrible mystery. Keep clear of it, keep silent
+upon it, as you would upon an abomination. It is a thing that has made
+men slay and torture each other; and you will never know why. It is a
+thing that has made men do evil that good might come; and you will never
+understand the evil, let alone the good. Christianity is a thing that
+could only make you vomit, till you are other than you are. I would not
+justify it to you even if I could. Hate it, in God's name, as Turnbull
+does, who is a man. It is a monstrous thing, for which men die. And if
+you will stand here and talk about love for another ten minutes it is
+very probable that you will see a man die for it."
+
+And he fell on guard. Turnbull was busy settling something loose in his
+elaborate hilt, and the pause was broken by the stranger.
+
+"Suppose I call the police?" he said, with a heated face.
+
+"And deny your most sacred dogma," said MacIan.
+
+"Dogma!" cried the man, in a sort of dismay. "Oh, we have no _dogmas_,
+you know!"
+
+There was another silence, and he said again, airily:
+
+"You know, I think, there's something in what Shaw teaches about no
+moral principles being quite fixed. Have you ever read _The Quintessence
+of Ibsenism_? Of course he went very wrong over the war."
+
+Turnbull, with a bent, flushed face, was tying up the loose piece of the
+pommel with string. With the string in his teeth, he said, "Oh, make up
+your damned mind and clear out!"
+
+"It's a serious thing," said the philosopher, shaking his head. "I must
+be alone and consider which is the higher point of view. I rather feel
+that in a case so extreme as this..." and he went slowly away. As he
+disappeared among the trees, they heard him murmuring in a sing-song
+voice, "New occasions teach new duties," out of a poem by James Russell
+Lowell.
+
+"Ah," said MacIan, drawing a deep breath. "Don't you believe in prayer
+now? I prayed for an angel."
+
+"An hour ago," said the Highlander, in his heavy meditative voice, "I
+felt the devil weakening my heart and my oath against you, and I prayed
+that God would send an angel to my aid."
+
+"Well?" inquired the other, finishing his mending and wrapping the rest
+of the string round his hand to get a firmer grip.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Well, that man was an angel," said MacIan.
+
+"I didn't know they were as bad as that," answered Turnbull.
+
+"We know that devils sometimes quote Scripture and counterfeit good,"
+replied the mystic. "Why should not angels sometimes come to show us the
+black abyss of evil on whose brink we stand. If that man had not tried
+to stop us...I might...I might have stopped."
+
+"I know what you mean," said Turnbull, grimly.
+
+"But then he came," broke out MacIan, "and my soul said to me: 'Give up
+fighting, and you will become like That. Give up vows and dogmas, and
+fixed things, and you may grow like That. You may learn, also, that
+fog of false philosophy. You may grow fond of that mire of crawling,
+cowardly morals, and you may come to think a blow bad, because it hurts,
+and not because it humiliates. You may come to think murder wrong,
+because it is violent, and not because it is unjust. Oh, you blasphemer
+of the good, an hour ago I almost loved you! But do not fear for me now.
+I have heard the word Love pronounced in _his_ intonation; and I know
+exactly what it means. On guard!'"
+
+The swords caught on each other with a dreadful clang and jar, full of
+the old energy and hate; and at once plunged and replunged. Once more
+each man's heart had become the magnet of a mad sword. Suddenly, furious
+as they were, they were frozen for a moment motionless.
+
+"What noise is that?" asked the Highlander, hoarsely.
+
+"I think I know," replied Turnbull.
+
+"What?... What?" cried the other.
+
+"The student of Shaw and Tolstoy has made up his remarkable mind," said
+Turnbull, quietly. "The police are coming up the hill."
+
+
+
+
+VI. THE OTHER PHILOSOPHER
+
+Between high hedges in Hertfordshire, hedges so high as to create a
+kind of grove, two men were running. They did not run in a scampering
+or feverish manner, but in the steady swing of the pendulum. Across the
+great plains and uplands to the right and left of the lane, a long tide
+of sunset light rolled like a sea of ruby, lighting up the long terraces
+of the hills and picking out the few windows of the scattered hamlets
+in startling blood-red sparks. But the lane was cut deep in the hill
+and remained in an abrupt shadow. The two men running in it had an
+impression not uncommonly experienced between those wild green English
+walls; a sense of being led between the walls of a maze.
+
+Though their pace was steady it was vigorous; their faces were heated
+and their eyes fixed and bright. There was, indeed, something a little
+mad in the contrast between the evening's stillness over the empty
+country-side, and these two figures fleeing wildly from nothing. They
+had the look of two lunatics, possibly they were.
+
+"Are you all right?" said Turnbull, with civility. "Can you keep this
+up?"
+
+"Quite easily, thank you," replied MacIan. "I run very well."
+
+"Is that a qualification in a family of warriors?" asked Turnbull.
+
+"Undoubtedly. Rapid movement is essential," answered MacIan, who never
+saw a joke in his life.
+
+Turnbull broke out into a short laugh, and silence fell between them,
+the panting silence of runners.
+
+Then MacIan said: "We run better than any of those policemen. They are
+too fat. Why do you make your policemen so fat?"
+
+"I didn't do much towards making them fat myself," replied Turnbull,
+genially, "but I flatter myself that I am now doing something towards
+making them thin. You'll see they will be as lean as rakes by the time
+they catch us. They will look like your friend, Cardinal Manning."
+
+"But they won't catch us," said MacIan, in his literal way.
+
+"No, we beat them in the great military art of running away," returned
+the other. "They won't catch us unless----"
+
+MacIan turned his long equine face inquiringly. "Unless what?" he
+said, for Turnbull had gone silent suddenly, and seemed to be listening
+intently as he ran as a horse does with his ears turned back.
+
+"Unless what?" repeated the Highlander.
+
+"Unless they do--what they have done. Listen." MacIan slackened his
+trot, and turned his head to the trail they had left behind them. Across
+two or three billows of the up and down lane came along the ground the
+unmistakable throbbing of horses' hoofs.
+
+"They have put the mounted police on us," said Turnbull, shortly. "Good
+Lord, one would think we were a Revolution."
+
+"So we are," said MacIan calmly. "What shall we do? Shall we turn on
+them with our points?"
+
+"It may come to that," answered Turnbull, "though if it does, I reckon
+that will be the last act. We must put it off if we can." And he stared
+and peered about him between the bushes. "If we could hide somewhere
+the beasts might go by us," he said. "The police have their faults, but
+thank God they're inefficient. Why, here's the very thing. Be quick and
+quiet. Follow me."
+
+He suddenly swung himself up the high bank on one side of the lane. It
+was almost as high and smooth as a wall, and on the top of it the black
+hedge stood out over them as an angle, almost like a thatched roof of
+the lane. And the burning evening sky looked down at them through the
+tangle with red eyes as of an army of goblins.
+
+Turnbull hoisted himself up and broke the hedge with his body. As his
+head and shoulders rose above it they turned to flame in the full glow
+as if lit up by an immense firelight. His red hair and beard looked
+almost scarlet, and his pale face as bright as a boy's. Something
+violent, something that was at once love and hatred, surged in the
+strange heart of the Gael below him. He had an unutterable sense of epic
+importance, as if he were somehow lifting all humanity into a prouder
+and more passionate region of the air. As he swung himself up also into
+the evening light he felt as if he were rising on enormous wings.
+
+Legends of the morning of the world which he had heard in childhood or
+read in youth came back upon him in a cloudy splendour, purple tales
+of wrath and friendship, like Roland and Oliver, or Balin and Balan,
+reminding him of emotional entanglements. Men who had loved each other
+and then fought each other; men who had fought each other and then loved
+each other, together made a mixed but monstrous sense of momentousness.
+The crimson seas of the sunset seemed to him like a bursting out of some
+sacred blood, as if the heart of the world had broken.
+
+Turnbull was wholly unaffected by any written or spoken poetry; his was
+a powerful and prosaic mind. But even upon him there came for the moment
+something out of the earth and the passionate ends of the sky. The only
+evidence was in his voice, which was still practical but a shade more
+quiet.
+
+"Do you see that summer-house-looking thing over there?" he asked
+shortly. "That will do for us very well."
+
+Keeping himself free from the tangle of the hedge he strolled across
+a triangle of obscure kitchen garden, and approached a dismal shed or
+lodge a yard or two beyond it. It was a weather-stained hut of grey
+wood, which with all its desolation retained a tag or two of trivial
+ornament, which suggested that the thing had once been a sort of
+summer-house, and the place probably a sort of garden.
+
+"That is quite invisible from the road," said Turnbull, as he entered
+it, "and it will cover us up for the night."
+
+MacIan looked at him gravely for a few moments. "Sir," he said, "I ought
+to say something to you. I ought to say----"
+
+"Hush," said Turnbull, suddenly lifting his hand; "be still, man."
+
+In the sudden silence, the drumming of the distant horses grew louder
+and louder with inconceivable rapidity, and the cavalcade of police
+rushed by below them in the lane, almost with the roar and rattle of an
+express train.
+
+"I ought to tell you," continued MacIan, still staring stolidly at the
+other, "that you are a great chief, and it is good to go to war behind
+you."
+
+Turnbull said nothing, but turned and looked out of the foolish lattice
+of the little windows, then he said, "We must have food and sleep
+first."
+
+When the last echo of their eluded pursuers had died in the distant
+uplands, Turnbull began to unpack the provisions with the easy air of
+a man at a picnic. He had just laid out the last items, put a bottle
+of wine on the floor, and a tin of salmon on the window-ledge, when the
+bottomless silence of that forgotten place was broken. And it was broken
+by three heavy blows of a stick delivered upon the door.
+
+Turnbull looked up in the act of opening a tin and stared silently at
+his companion. MacIan's long, lean mouth had shut hard.
+
+"Who the devil can that be?" said Turnbull.
+
+"God knows," said the other. "It might be God."
+
+Again the sound of the wooden stick reverberated on the wooden door. It
+was a curious sound and on consideration did not resemble the ordinary
+effects of knocking on a door for admittance. It was rather as if the
+point of a stick were plunged again and again at the panels in an absurd
+attempt to make a hole in them.
+
+A wild look sprang into MacIan's eyes and he got up half stupidly, with
+a kind of stagger, put his hand out and caught one of the swords. "Let
+us fight at once," he cried, "it is the end of the world."
+
+"You're overdone, MacIan," said Turnbull, putting him on one side. "It's
+only someone playing the goat. Let me open the door."
+
+But he also picked up a sword as he stepped to open it.
+
+He paused one moment with his hand on the handle and then flung the door
+open. Almost as he did so the ferrule of an ordinary bamboo cane came at
+his eyes, so that he had actually to parry it with the naked weapon in
+his hands. As the two touched, the point of the stick was dropped very
+abruptly, and the man with the stick stepped hurriedly back.
+
+Against the heraldic background of sprawling crimson and gold offered
+him by the expiring sunset, the figure of the man with the stick showed
+at first merely black and fantastic. He was a small man with two wisps
+of long hair that curled up on each side, and seen in silhouette, looked
+like horns. He had a bow tie so big that the two ends showed on each
+side of his neck like unnatural stunted wings. He had his long black
+cane still tilted in his hand like a fencing foil and half presented
+at the open door. His large straw hat had fallen behind him as he leapt
+backwards.
+
+"With reference to your suggestion, MacIan," said Turnbull, placidly, "I
+think it looks more like the Devil."
+
+"Who on earth are you?" cried the stranger in a high shrill voice,
+brandishing his cane defensively.
+
+"Let me see," said Turnbull, looking round to MacIan with the same
+blandness. "Who are we?"
+
+"Come out," screamed the little man with the stick.
+
+"Certainly," said Turnbull, and went outside with the sword, MacIan
+following.
+
+Seen more fully, with the evening light on his face, the strange man
+looked a little less like a goblin. He wore a square pale-grey jacket
+suit, on which the grey butterfly tie was the only indisputable touch
+of affectation. Against the great sunset his figure had looked merely
+small: seen in a more equal light it looked tolerably compact and
+shapely. His reddish-brown hair, combed into two great curls, looked
+like the long, slow curling hair of the women in some pre-Raphaelite
+pictures. But within this feminine frame of hair his face was
+unexpectedly impudent, like a monkey's.
+
+"What are you doing here?" he said, in a sharp small voice.
+
+"Well," said MacIan, in his grave childish way, "what are _you_ doing
+here?"
+
+"I," said the man, indignantly, "I'm in my own garden."
+
+"Oh," said MacIan, simply, "I apologize."
+
+Turnbull was coolly curling his red moustache, and the stranger stared
+from one to the other, temporarily stunned by their innocent assurance.
+
+"But, may I ask," he said at last, "what the devil you are doing in my
+summer-house?"
+
+"Certainly," said MacIan. "We were just going to fight."
+
+"To fight!" repeated the man.
+
+"We had better tell this gentleman the whole business," broke in
+Turnbull. Then turning to the stranger he said firmly, "I am sorry, sir,
+but we have something to do that must be done. And I may as well tell
+you at the beginning and to avoid waste of time or language, that we
+cannot admit any interference."
+
+"We were just going to take some slight refreshment when you interrupted
+us..."
+
+The little man had a dawning expression of understanding and stooped and
+picked up the unused bottle of wine, eyeing it curiously.
+
+Turnbull continued:
+
+"But that refreshment was preparatory to something which I fear you will
+find less comprehensible, but on which our minds are entirely fixed,
+sir. We are forced to fight a duel. We are forced by honour and an
+internal intellectual need. Do not, for your own sake, attempt to stop
+us. I know all the excellent and ethical things that you will want to
+say to us. I know all about the essential requirements of civil order:
+I have written leading articles about them all my life. I know all about
+the sacredness of human life; I have bored all my friends with it. Try
+and understand our position. This man and I are alone in the modern
+world in that we think that God is essentially important. I think He
+does not exist; that is where the importance comes in for me. But this
+man thinks that He does exist, and thinking that very properly thinks
+Him more important than anything else. Now we wish to make a great
+demonstration and assertion--something that will set the world on fire
+like the first Christian persecutions. If you like, we are attempting
+a mutual martyrdom. The papers have posted up every town against us.
+Scotland Yard has fortified every police station with our enemies; we
+are driven therefore to the edge of a lonely lane, and indirectly to
+taking liberties with your summer-house in order to arrange our..."
+
+"Stop!" roared the little man in the butterfly necktie. "Put me out of
+my intellectual misery. Are you really the two tomfools I have read of
+in all the papers? Are you the two people who wanted to spit each other
+in the Police Court? Are you? Are you?"
+
+"Yes," said MacIan, "it began in a Police Court."
+
+The little man slung the bottle of wine twenty yards away like a stone.
+
+"Come up to my place," he said. "I've got better stuff than that. I've
+got the best Beaune within fifty miles of here. Come up. You're the very
+men I wanted to see."
+
+Even Turnbull, with his typical invulnerability, was a little taken
+aback by this boisterous and almost brutal hospitality.
+
+"Why...sir..." he began.
+
+"Come up! Come in!" howled the little man, dancing with delight. "I'll
+give you a dinner. I'll give you a bed! I'll give you a green smooth
+lawn and your choice of swords and pistols. Why, you fools, I adore
+fighting! It's the only good thing in God's world! I've walked about
+these damned fields and longed to see somebody cut up and killed and the
+blood running. Ha! Ha!"
+
+And he made sudden lunges with his stick at the trunk of a neighbouring
+tree so that the ferrule made fierce prints and punctures in the bark.
+
+"Excuse me," said MacIan suddenly with the wide-eyed curiosity of a
+child, "excuse me, but..."
+
+"Well?" said the small fighter, brandishing his wooden weapon.
+
+"Excuse me," repeated MacIan, "but was that what you were doing at the
+door?"
+
+The little man stared an instant and then said: "Yes," and Turnbull
+broke into a guffaw.
+
+"Come on!" cried the little man, tucking his stick under his arm and
+taking quite suddenly to his heels. "Come on! Confound me, I'll see both
+of you eat and then I'll see one of you die. Lord bless me, the gods
+must exist after all--they have sent me one of my day-dreams! Lord! A
+duel!"
+
+He had gone flying along a winding path between the borders of the
+kitchen garden, and in the increasing twilight he was as hard to follow
+as a flying hare. But at length the path after many twists betrayed its
+purpose and led abruptly up two or three steps to the door of a tiny but
+very clean cottage. There was nothing about the outside to distinguish
+it from other cottages, except indeed its ominous cleanliness and one
+thing that was out of all the custom and tradition of all cottages
+under the sun. In the middle of the little garden among the stocks and
+marigolds there surged up in shapeless stone a South Sea Island idol.
+There was something gross and even evil in that eyeless and alien god
+among the most innocent of the English flowers.
+
+"Come in!" cried the creature again. "Come in! it's better inside!"
+
+Whether or no it was better inside it was at least a surprise. The
+moment the two duellists had pushed open the door of that inoffensive,
+whitewashed cottage they found that its interior was lined with fiery
+gold. It was like stepping into a chamber in the Arabian Nights. The
+door that closed behind them shut out England and all the energies of
+the West. The ornaments that shone and shimmered on every side of them
+were subtly mixed from many periods and lands, but were all oriental.
+Cruel Assyrian bas-reliefs ran along the sides of the passage; cruel
+Turkish swords and daggers glinted above and below them; the two
+were separated by ages and fallen civilizations. Yet they seemed to
+sympathize since they were both harmonious and both merciless. The house
+seemed to consist of chamber within chamber and created that impression
+as of a dream which belongs also to the Arabian Nights themselves. The
+innermost room of all was like the inside of a jewel. The little man who
+owned it all threw himself on a heap of scarlet and golden cushions and
+struck his hands together. A negro in a white robe and turban appeared
+suddenly and silently behind them.
+
+"Selim," said the host, "these two gentlemen are staying with me
+tonight. Send up the very best wine and dinner at once. And Selim,
+one of these gentlemen will probably die tomorrow. Make arrangements,
+please."
+
+The negro bowed and withdrew.
+
+Evan MacIan came out the next morning into the little garden to a fresh
+silver day, his long face looking more austere than ever in that
+cold light, his eyelids a little heavy. He carried one of the swords.
+Turnbull was in the little house behind him, demolishing the end of
+an early breakfast and humming a tune to himself, which could be heard
+through the open window. A moment or two later he leapt to his feet and
+came out into the sunlight, still munching toast, his own sword stuck
+under his arm like a walking-stick.
+
+Their eccentric host had vanished from sight, with a polite gesture,
+some twenty minutes before. They imagined him to be occupied on
+some concerns in the interior of the house, and they waited for his
+emergence, stamping the garden in silence--the garden of tall, fresh
+country flowers, in the midst of which the monstrous South Sea idol
+lifted itself as abruptly as the prow of a ship riding on a sea of red
+and white and gold.
+
+It was with a start, therefore, that they came upon the man himself
+already in the garden. They were all the more startled because of the
+still posture in which they found him. He was on his knees in front
+of the stone idol, rigid and motionless, like a saint in a trance or
+ecstasy. Yet when Turnbull's tread broke a twig, he was on his feet in a
+flash.
+
+"Excuse me," he said with an irradiation of smiles, but yet with a kind
+of bewilderment. "So sorry...family prayers...old fashioned...mother's
+knee. Let us go on to the lawn behind."
+
+And he ducked rapidly round the statue to an open space of grass on the
+other side of it.
+
+"This will do us best, Mr. MacIan," said he. Then he made a gesture
+towards the heavy stone figure on the pedestal which had now its blank
+and shapeless back turned towards them. "Don't you be afraid," he added,
+"he can still see us."
+
+MacIan turned his blue, blinking eyes, which seemed still misty with
+sleep (or sleeplessness) towards the idol, but his brows drew together.
+
+The little man with the long hair also had his eyes on the back view
+of the god. His eyes were at once liquid and burning, and he rubbed his
+hands slowly against each other.
+
+"Do you know," he said, "I think he can see us better this way. I often
+think that this blank thing is his real face, watching, though it cannot
+be watched. He! he! Yes, I think he looks nice from behind. He looks
+more cruel from behind, don't you think?"
+
+"What the devil is the thing?" asked Turnbull gruffly.
+
+"It is the only Thing there is," answered the other. "It is Force."
+
+"Oh!" said Turnbull shortly.
+
+"Yes, my friends," said the little man, with an animated countenance,
+fluttering his fingers in the air, "it was no chance that led you to
+this garden; surely it was the caprice of some old god, some happy,
+pitiless god. Perhaps it was his will, for he loves blood; and on that
+stone in front of him men have been butchered by hundreds in the fierce,
+feasting islands of the South. In this cursed, craven place I have
+not been permitted to kill men on his altar. Only rabbits and cats,
+sometimes."
+
+In the stillness MacIan made a sudden movement, unmeaning apparently,
+and then remained rigid.
+
+"But today, today," continued the small man in a shrill voice. "Today
+his hour is come. Today his will is done on earth as it is in heaven.
+Men, men, men will bleed before him today." And he bit his forefinger in
+a kind of fever.
+
+Still, the two duellists stood with their swords as heavily as statues,
+and the silence seemed to cool the eccentric and call him back to more
+rational speech.
+
+"Perhaps I express myself a little too lyrically," he said with an
+amicable abruptness. "My philosophy has its higher ecstasies, but
+perhaps you are hardly worked up to them yet. Let us confine ourselves
+to the unquestioned. You have found your way, gentlemen, by a beautiful
+accident, to the house of the only man in England (probably) who will
+favour and encourage your most reasonable project. From Cornwall to Cape
+Wrath this county is one horrible, solid block of humanitarianism. You
+will find men who will defend this or that war in a distant continent.
+They will defend it on the contemptible ground of commerce or the more
+contemptible ground of social good. But do not fancy that you will find
+one other person who will comprehend a strong man taking the sword in
+his hand and wiping out his enemy. My name is Wimpey, Morrice Wimpey. I
+had a Fellowship at Magdalen. But I assure you I had to drop it, owing
+to my having said something in a public lecture infringing the popular
+prejudice against those great gentlemen, the assassins of the Italian
+Renaissance. They let me say it at dinner and so on, and seemed to like
+it. But in a public lecture...so inconsistent. Well, as I say, here is
+your only refuge and temple of honour. Here you can fall back on that
+naked and awful arbitration which is the only thing that balances the
+stars--a still, continuous violence. _Vae Victis!_ Down, down, down
+with the defeated! Victory is the only ultimate fact. Carthage _was_
+destroyed, the Red Indians are being exterminated: that is the single
+certainty. In an hour from now that sun will still be shining and that
+grass growing, and one of you will be conquered; one of you will be the
+conqueror. When it has been done, nothing will alter it. Heroes, I give
+you the hospitality fit for heroes. And I salute the survivor. Fall on!"
+
+The two men took their swords. Then MacIan said steadily: "Mr. Turnbull,
+lend me your sword a moment."
+
+Turnbull, with a questioning glance, handed him the weapon. MacIan took
+the second sword in his left hand and, with a violent gesture, hurled it
+at the feet of little Mr. Wimpey.
+
+"Fight!" he said in a loud, harsh voice. "Fight me now!"
+
+Wimpey took a step backward, and bewildered words bubbled on his lips.
+
+"Pick up that sword and fight me," repeated MacIan, with brows as black
+as thunder.
+
+The little man turned to Turnbull with a gesture, demanding judgement or
+protection.
+
+"Really, sir," he began, "this gentleman confuses..."
+
+"You stinking little coward," roared Turnbull, suddenly releasing his
+wrath. "Fight, if you're so fond of fighting! Fight, if you're so fond
+of all that filthy philosophy! If winning is everything, go in and win!
+If the weak must go to the wall, go to the wall! Fight, you rat! Fight,
+or if you won't fight--run!"
+
+And he ran at Wimpey, with blazing eyes.
+
+Wimpey staggered back a few paces like a man struggling with his own
+limbs. Then he felt the furious Scotchman coming at him like an express
+train, doubling his size every second, with eyes as big as windows and
+a sword as bright as the sun. Something broke inside him, and he found
+himself running away, tumbling over his own feet in terror, and crying
+out as he ran.
+
+"Chase him!" shouted Turnbull as MacIan snatched up the sword and joined
+in the scamper. "Chase him over a county! Chase him into the sea! Shoo!
+Shoo! Shoo!"
+
+The little man plunged like a rabbit among the tall flowers, the two
+duellists after him. Turnbull kept at his tail with savage ecstasy,
+still shooing him like a cat. But MacIan, as he ran past the South Sea
+idol, paused an instant to spring upon its pedestal. For five seconds
+he strained against the inert mass. Then it stirred; and he sent it over
+with a great crash among the flowers, that engulfed it altogether. Then
+he went bounding after the runaway.
+
+In the energy of his alarm the ex-Fellow of Magdalen managed to leap
+the paling of his garden. The two pursuers went over it after him like
+flying birds. He fled frantically down a long lane with his two terrors
+on his trail till he came to a gap in the hedge and went across a steep
+meadow like the wind. The two Scotchmen, as they ran, kept up a cheery
+bellowing and waved their swords. Up three slanting meadows, down four
+slanting meadows on the other side, across another road, across a heath
+of snapping bracken, through a wood, across another road, and to the
+brink of a big pool, they pursued the flying philosopher. But when he
+came to the pool his pace was so precipitate that he could not stop
+it, and with a kind of lurching stagger, he fell splash into the greasy
+water. Getting dripping to his feet, with the water up to his knees, the
+worshipper of force and victory waded disconsolately to the other side
+and drew himself on to the bank. And Turnbull sat down on the grass and
+went off into reverberations of laughter. A second afterwards the most
+extraordinary grimaces were seen to distort the stiff face of MacIan,
+and unholy sounds came from within. He had never practised laughing, and
+it hurt him very much.
+
+
+
+
+VII. THE VILLAGE OF GRASSLEY-IN-THE-HOLE
+
+At about half past one, under a strong blue sky, Turnbull got up out
+of the grass and fern in which he had been lying, and his still
+intermittent laughter ended in a kind of yawn.
+
+"I'm hungry," he said shortly. "Are you?"
+
+"I have not noticed," answered MacIan. "What are you going to do?"
+
+"There's a village down the road, past the pool," answered Turnbull. "I
+can see it from here. I can see the whitewashed walls of some cottages
+and a kind of corner of the church. How jolly it all looks. It looks
+so--I don't know what the word is--so sensible. Don't fancy I'm under
+any illusions about Arcadian virtue and the innocent villagers. Men make
+beasts of themselves there with drink, but they don't deliberately make
+devils of themselves with mere talking. They kill wild animals in
+the wild woods, but they don't kill cats to the God of Victory. They
+don't----" He broke off and suddenly spat on the ground.
+
+"Excuse me," he said; "it was ceremonial. One has to get the taste out
+of one's mouth."
+
+"The taste of what?" asked MacIan.
+
+"I don't know the exact name for it," replied Turnbull. "Perhaps it is
+the South Sea Islands, or it may be Magdalen College."
+
+There was a long pause, and MacIan also lifted his large limbs off the
+ground--his eyes particularly dreamy.
+
+"I know what you mean, Turnbull," he said, "but... I always thought you
+people agreed with all that."
+
+"With all that about doing as one likes, and the individual, and Nature
+loving the strongest, and all the things which that cockroach talked
+about."
+
+Turnbull's big blue-grey eyes stood open with a grave astonishment.
+
+"Do you really mean to say, MacIan," he said, "that you fancied that we,
+the Free-thinkers, that Bradlaugh, or Holyoake, or Ingersoll, believe
+all that dirty, immoral mysticism about Nature? Damn Nature!"
+
+"I supposed you did," said MacIan calmly. "It seems to me your most
+conclusive position."
+
+"And you mean to tell me," rejoined the other, "that you broke my
+window, and challenged me to mortal combat, and tied a tradesman up with
+ropes, and chased an Oxford Fellow across five meadows--all under the
+impression that I am such an illiterate idiot as to believe in Nature!"
+
+"I supposed you did," repeated MacIan with his usual mildness; "but I
+admit that I know little of the details of your belief--or disbelief."
+
+Turnbull swung round quite suddenly, and set off towards the village.
+
+"Come along," he cried. "Come down to the village. Come down to the
+nearest decent inhabitable pub. This is a case for beer."
+
+"I do not quite follow you," said the Highlander.
+
+"Yes, you do," answered Turnbull. "You follow me slap into the
+inn-parlour. I repeat, this is a case for beer. We must have the whole
+of this matter out thoroughly before we go a step farther. Do you know
+that an idea has just struck me of great simplicity and of some
+cogency. Do not by any means let us drop our intentions of settling our
+differences with two steel swords. But do you not think that with two
+pewter pots we might do what we really have never thought of doing
+yet--discover what our difference is?"
+
+"It never occurred to me before," answered MacIan with tranquillity. "It
+is a good suggestion."
+
+And they set out at an easy swing down the steep road to the village of
+Grassley-in-the-Hole.
+
+Grassley-in-the-Hole was a rude parallelogram of buildings, with two
+thoroughfares which might have been called two high streets if it had
+been possible to call them streets. One of these ways was higher on the
+slope than the other, the whole parallelogram lying aslant, so to speak,
+on the side of the hill. The upper of these two roads was decorated with
+a big public house, a butcher's shop, a small public house, a sweetstuff
+shop, a very small public house, and an illegible signpost. The lower of
+the two roads boasted a horse-pond, a post office, a gentleman's garden
+with very high hedges, a microscopically small public house, and two
+cottages. Where all the people lived who supported all the public houses
+was in this, as in many other English villages, a silent and smiling
+mystery. The church lay a little above and beyond the village, with a
+square grey tower dominating it decisively.
+
+But even the church was scarcely so central and solemn an institution
+as the large public house, the Valencourt Arms. It was named after some
+splendid family that had long gone bankrupt, and whose seat was occupied
+by a man who had invented a hygienic bootjack; but the unfathomable
+sentimentalism of the English people insisted in regarding the Inn,
+the seat and the sitter in it, as alike parts of a pure and marmoreal
+antiquity. And in the Valencourt Arms festivity itself had some
+solemnity and decorum; and beer was drunk with reverence, as it ought to
+be. Into the principal parlour of this place entered two strangers, who
+found themselves, as is always the case in such hostels, the object,
+not of fluttered curiosity or pert inquiry, but of steady, ceaseless,
+devouring ocular study. They had long coats down to their heels, and
+carried under each coat something that looked like a stick. One was
+tall and dark, the other short and red-haired. They ordered a pot of ale
+each.
+
+"MacIan," said Turnbull, lifting his tankard, "the fool who wanted us to
+be friends made us want to go on fighting. It is only natural that
+the fool who wanted us to fight should make us friendly. MacIan, your
+health!"
+
+Dusk was already dropping, the rustics in the tavern were already
+lurching and lumbering out of it by twos and threes, crying clamorous
+good nights to a solitary old toper that remained, before MacIan and
+Turnbull had reached the really important part of their discussion.
+
+MacIan wore an expression of sad bewilderment not uncommon with him. "I
+am to understand, then," he said, "that you don't believe in nature."
+
+"You may say so in a very special and emphatic sense," said Turnbull.
+"I do not believe in nature, just as I do not believe in Odin. She is a
+myth. It is not merely that I do not believe that nature can guide us.
+It is that I do not believe that nature exists."
+
+"Exists?" said MacIan in his monotonous way, settling his pewter pot on
+the table.
+
+"Yes, in a real sense nature does not exist. I mean that nobody can
+discover what the original nature of things would have been if things
+had not interfered with it. The first blade of grass began to tear up
+the earth and eat it; it was interfering with nature, if there is any
+nature. The first wild ox began to tear up the grass and eat it; he
+was interfering with nature, if there is any nature. In the same way,"
+continued Turnbull, "the human when it asserts its dominance over nature
+is just as natural as the thing which it destroys."
+
+"And in the same way," said MacIan almost dreamily, "the superhuman, the
+supernatural is just as natural as the nature which it destroys."
+
+Turnbull took his head out of his pewter pot in some anger.
+
+"The supernatural, of course," he said, "is quite another thing; the
+case of the supernatural is simple. The supernatural does not exist."
+
+"Quite so," said MacIan in a rather dull voice; "you said the same about
+the natural. If the natural does not exist the supernatural obviously
+can't." And he yawned a little over his ale.
+
+Turnbull turned for some reason a little red and remarked quickly, "That
+may be jolly clever, for all I know. But everyone does know that there
+is a division between the things that as a matter of fact do commonly
+happen and the things that don't. Things that break the evident laws of
+nature----"
+
+"Which does not exist," put in MacIan sleepily. Turnbull struck the
+table with a sudden hand.
+
+"Good Lord in heaven!" he cried----
+
+"Who does not exist," murmured MacIan.
+
+"Good Lord in heaven!" thundered Turnbull, without regarding the
+interruption. "Do you really mean to sit there and say that you, like
+anybody else, would not recognize the difference between a natural
+occurrence and a supernatural one--if there could be such a thing? If I
+flew up to the ceiling----"
+
+"You would bump your head badly," cried MacIan, suddenly starting up.
+"One can't talk of this kind of thing under a ceiling at all. Come
+outside! Come outside and ascend into heaven!"
+
+He burst the door open on a blue abyss of evening and they stepped out
+into it: it was suddenly and strangely cool.
+
+"Turnbull," said MacIan, "you have said some things so true and some
+so false that I want to talk; and I will try to talk so that you
+understand. For at present you do not understand at all. We don't seem
+to mean the same things by the same words."
+
+He stood silent for a second or two and then resumed.
+
+"A minute or two ago I caught you out in a real contradiction. At that
+moment logically I was right. And at that moment I knew I was
+wrong. Yes, there is a real difference between the natural and the
+supernatural: if you flew up into that blue sky this instant, I should
+think that you were moved by God--or the devil. But if you want to know
+what I really think...I must explain."
+
+He stopped again, abstractedly boring the point of his sword into the
+earth, and went on:
+
+"I was born and bred and taught in a complete universe. The supernatural
+was not natural, but it was perfectly reasonable. Nay, the supernatural
+to me is more reasonable than the natural; for the supernatural is a
+direct message from God, who is reason. I was taught that some things
+are natural and some things divine. I mean that some things are
+mechanical and some things divine. But there is the great difficulty,
+Turnbull. The great difficulty is that, according to my teaching, you
+are divine."
+
+"Me! Divine?" said Turnbull truculently. "What do you mean?"
+
+"That is just the difficulty," continued MacIan thoughtfully. "I was
+told that there was a difference between the grass and a man's will;
+and the difference was that a man's will was special and divine. A man's
+free will, I heard, was supernatural."
+
+"Rubbish!" said Turnbull.
+
+"Oh," said MacIan patiently, "then if a man's free will isn't
+supernatural, why do your materialists deny that it exists?"
+
+Turnbull was silent for a moment. Then he began to speak, but MacIan
+continued with the same steady voice and sad eyes:
+
+"So what I feel is this: Here is the great divine creation I was
+taught to believe in. I can understand your disbelieving in it, but
+why disbelieve in a part of it? It was all one thing to me. God had
+authority because he was God. Man had authority because he was man. You
+cannot prove that God is better than a man; nor can you prove that a man
+is better than a horse. Why permit any ordinary thing? Why do you let a
+horse be saddled?"
+
+"Some modern thinkers disapprove of it," said Turnbull a little
+doubtfully.
+
+"I know," said MacIan grimly; "that man who talked about love, for
+instance."
+
+Turnbull made a humorous grimace; then he said: "We seem to be talking
+in a kind of shorthand; but I won't pretend not to understand you. What
+you mean is this: that you learnt about all your saints and angels at
+the same time as you learnt about common morality, from the same people,
+in the same way. And you mean to say that if one may be disputed, so
+may the other. Well, let that pass for the moment. But let me ask you
+a question in turn. Did not this system of yours, which you swallowed
+whole, contain all sorts of things that were merely local, the respect
+for the chief of your clan, or such things; the village ghost, the
+family feud, or what not? Did you not take in those things, too, along
+with your theology?"
+
+MacIan stared along the dim village road, down which the last straggler
+from the inn was trailing his way.
+
+"What you say is not unreasonable," he said. "But it is not quite true.
+The distinction between the chief and us did exist; but it was never
+anything like the distinction between the human and the divine, or
+the human and the animal. It was more like the distinction between one
+animal and another. But----"
+
+"Well?" said Turnbull.
+
+MacIan was silent.
+
+"Go on," repeated Turnbull; "what's the matter with you? What are you
+staring at?"
+
+"I am staring," said MacIan at last, "at that which shall judge us
+both."
+
+"Oh, yes," said Turnbull in a tired way, "I suppose you mean God."
+
+"No, I don't," said MacIan, shaking his head. "I mean him."
+
+And he pointed to the half-tipsy yokel who was ploughing down the road.
+
+"What do you mean?" asked the atheist.
+
+"I mean him," repeated MacIan with emphasis. "He goes out in the early
+dawn; he digs or he ploughs a field. Then he comes back and drinks ale,
+and then he sings a song. All your philosophies and political systems
+are young compared to him. All your hoary cathedrals, yes, even the
+Eternal Church on earth is new compared to him. The most mouldering gods
+in the British Museum are new facts beside him. It is he who in the end
+shall judge us all."
+
+And MacIan rose to his feet with a vague excitement.
+
+"What are you going to do?"
+
+"I am going to ask him," cried MacIan, "which of us is right."
+
+Turnbull broke into a kind of laugh. "Ask that intoxicated
+turnip-eater----" he began.
+
+"Yes--which of us is right," cried MacIan violently. "Oh, you have long
+words and I have long words; and I talk of every man being the image of
+God; and you talk of every man being a citizen and enlightened enough to
+govern. But if every man typifies God, there is God. If every man is an
+enlightened citizen, there is your enlightened citizen. The first man
+one meets is always man. Let us catch him up."
+
+And in gigantic strides the long, lean Highlander whirled away into the
+grey twilight, Turnbull following with a good-humoured oath.
+
+The track of the rustic was easy to follow, even in the faltering
+dark; for he was enlivening his wavering walk with song. It was an
+interminable poem, beginning with some unspecified King William, who (it
+appeared) lived in London town and who after the second rise vanished
+rather abruptly from the train of thought. The rest was almost entirely
+about beer and was thick with local topography of a quite unrecognizable
+kind. The singer's step was neither very rapid, nor, indeed,
+exceptionally secure; so the song grew louder and louder and the two
+soon overtook him.
+
+He was a man elderly or rather of any age, with lean grey hair and a
+lean red face, but with that remarkable rustic physiognomy in which it
+seems that all the features stand out independently from the face; the
+rugged red nose going out like a limb; the bleared blue eyes standing
+out like signals.
+
+He gave them greeting with the elaborate urbanity of the slightly
+intoxicated. MacIan, who was vibrating with one of his silent,
+violent decisions, opened the question without delay. He explained the
+philosophic position in words as short and simple as possible. But
+the singular old man with the lank red face seemed to think uncommonly
+little of the short words. He fixed with a fierce affection upon one or
+two of the long ones.
+
+"Atheists!" he repeated with luxurious scorn. "Atheists! I know their
+sort, master. Atheists! Don't talk to me about 'un. Atheists!"
+
+The grounds of his disdain seemed a little dark and confused; but they
+were evidently sufficient. MacIan resumed in some encouragement:
+
+"You think as I do, I hope; you think that a man should be connected
+with the Church; with the common Christian----"
+
+The old man extended a quivering stick in the direction of a distant
+hill.
+
+"There's the church," he said thickly. "Grassley old church that is.
+Pulled down it was, in the old squire's time, and----"
+
+"I mean," explained MacIan elaborately, "that you think that there
+should be someone typifying religion, a priest----"
+
+"Priests!" said the old man with sudden passion. "Priests! I know
+'un. What they want in England? That's what I say. What they want in
+England?"
+
+"They want you," said MacIan.
+
+"Quite so," said Turnbull, "and me; but they won't get us. MacIan, your
+attempt on the primitive innocence does not seem very successful. Let
+me try. What you want, my friend, is your rights. You don't want any
+priests or churches. A vote, a right to speak is what you----"
+
+"Who says I a'n't got a right to speak?" said the old man, facing round
+in an irrational frenzy. "I got a right to speak. I'm a man, I am. I
+don't want no votin' nor priests. I say a man's a man; that's what I
+say. If a man a'n't a man, what is he? That's what I say, if a man a'n't
+a man, what is he? When I sees a man, I sez 'e's a man."
+
+"Quite so," said Turnbull, "a citizen."
+
+"I say he's a man," said the rustic furiously, stopping and striking his
+stick on the ground. "Not a city or owt else. He's a man."
+
+"You're perfectly right," said the sudden voice of MacIan, falling like
+a sword. "And you have kept close to something the whole world of today
+tries to forget."
+
+"Good night."
+
+And the old man went on wildly singing into the night.
+
+"A jolly old creature," said Turnbull; "he didn't seem able to get much
+beyond that fact that a man is a man."
+
+"Has anybody got beyond it?" asked MacIan.
+
+Turnbull looked at him curiously. "Are you turning an agnostic?" he
+asked.
+
+"Oh, you do not understand!" cried out MacIan. "We Catholics are all
+agnostics. We Catholics have only in that sense got as far as realizing
+that man is a man. But your Ibsens and your Zolas and your Shaws and
+your Tolstoys have not even got so far."
+
+
+
+
+VIII. AN INTERLUDE OF ARGUMENT
+
+Morning broke in bitter silver along the grey and level plain; and
+almost as it did so Turnbull and MacIan came out of a low, scrubby wood
+on to the empty and desolate flats. They had walked all night.
+
+They had walked all night and talked all night also, and if the subject
+had been capable of being exhausted they would have exhausted it.
+Their long and changing argument had taken them through districts and
+landscapes equally changing. They had discussed Haeckel upon hills so
+high and steep that in spite of the coldness of the night it seemed as
+if the stars might burn them. They had explained and re-explained
+the Massacre of St. Bartholomew in little white lanes walled in with
+standing corn as with walls of gold. They had talked about Mr. Kensit
+in dim and twinkling pine woods, amid the bewildering monotony of
+the pines. And it was with the end of a long speech from MacIan,
+passionately defending the practical achievements and the solid
+prosperity of the Catholic tradition, that they came out upon the open
+land.
+
+MacIan had learnt much and thought more since he came out of the
+cloudy hills of Arisaig. He had met many typical modern figures under
+circumstances which were sharply symbolic; and, moreover, he had
+absorbed the main modern atmosphere from the mere presence and chance
+phrases of Turnbull, as such atmospheres can always be absorbed from the
+presence and the phrases of any man of great mental vitality. He had at
+last begun thoroughly to understand what are the grounds upon which the
+mass of the modern world solidly disapprove of her creed; and he threw
+himself into replying to them with a hot intellectual enjoyment.
+
+"I begin to understand one or two of your dogmas, Mr. Turnbull," he had
+said emphatically as they ploughed heavily up a wooded hill. "And every
+one that I understand I deny. Take any one of them you like. You hold
+that your heretics and sceptics have helped the world forward and handed
+on a lamp of progress. I deny it. Nothing is plainer from real history
+than that each of your heretics invented a complete cosmos of his own
+which the next heretic smashed entirely to pieces. Who knows now exactly
+what Nestorius taught? Who cares? There are only two things that we know
+for certain about it. The first is that Nestorius, as a heretic, taught
+something quite opposite to the teaching of Arius, the heretic who came
+before him, and something quite useless to James Turnbull, the heretic
+who comes after. I defy you to go back to the Free-thinkers of the past
+and find any habitation for yourself at all. I defy you to read
+Godwin or Shelley or the deists of the eighteenth century of the
+nature-worshipping humanists of the Renaissance, without discovering
+that you differ from them twice as much as you differ from the Pope. You
+are a nineteenth-century sceptic, and you are always telling me that
+I ignore the cruelty of nature. If you had been an eighteenth-century
+sceptic you would have told me that I ignore the kindness and
+benevolence of nature. You are an atheist, and you praise the deists of
+the eighteenth century. Read them instead of praising them, and you will
+find that their whole universe stands or falls with the deity. You are a
+materialist, and you think Bruno a scientific hero. See what he said and
+you will think him an insane mystic. No, the great Free-thinker,
+with his genuine ability and honesty, does not in practice destroy
+Christianity. What he does destroy is the Free-thinker who went before.
+Free-thought may be suggestive, it may be inspiriting, it may have as
+much as you please of the merits that come from vivacity and
+variety. But there is one thing Free-thought can never be by any
+possibility--Free-thought can never be progressive. It can never be
+progressive because it will accept nothing from the past; it begins
+every time again from the beginning; and it goes every time in a
+different direction. All the rational philosophers have gone along
+different roads, so it is impossible to say which has gone farthest. Who
+can discuss whether Emerson was a better optimist than Schopenhauer was
+pessimist? It is like asking if this corn is as yellow as that hill is
+steep. No; there are only two things that really progress; and they both
+accept accumulations of authority. They may be progressing uphill and
+down; they may be growing steadily better or steadily worse; but they
+have steadily increased in certain definable matters; they have steadily
+advanced in a certain definable direction; they are the only two things,
+it seems, that ever _can_ progress. The first is strictly physical
+science. The second is the Catholic Church."
+
+"Physical science and the Catholic Church!" said Turnbull sarcastically;
+"and no doubt the first owes a great deal to the second."
+
+"If you pressed that point I might reply that it was very probable,"
+answered MacIan calmly. "I often fancy that your historical
+generalizations rest frequently on random instances; I should not be
+surprised if your vague notions of the Church as the persecutor of
+science was a generalization from Galileo. I should not be at all
+surprised if, when you counted the scientific investigations and
+discoveries since the fall of Rome, you found that a great mass of them
+had been made by monks. But the matter is irrelevant to my meaning. I
+say that if you want an example of anything which has progressed in
+the moral world by the same method as science in the material world, by
+continually adding to without unsettling what was there before, then I
+say that there _is_ only one example of it. And that is Us."
+
+"With this enormous difference," said Turnbull, "that however elaborate
+be the calculations of physical science, their net result can be tested.
+Granted that it took millions of books I never read and millions of men
+I never heard of to discover the electric light. Still I can see the
+electric light. But I cannot see the supreme virtue which is the result
+of all your theologies and sacraments."
+
+"Catholic virtue is often invisible because it is the normal," answered
+MacIan. "Christianity is always out of fashion because it is always
+sane; and all fashions are mild insanities. When Italy is mad on art
+the Church seems too Puritanical; when England is mad on Puritanism the
+Church seems too artistic. When you quarrel with us now you class us
+with kingship and despotism; but when you quarrelled with us first it
+was because we would not accept the divine despotism of Henry VIII. The
+Church always seems to be behind the times, when it is really beyond the
+times; it is waiting till the last fad shall have seen its last summer.
+It keeps the key of a permanent virtue."
+
+"Oh, I have heard all that!" said Turnbull with genial contempt. "I have
+heard that Christianity keeps the key of virtue, and that if you read
+Tom Paine you will cut your throat at Monte Carlo. It is such rubbish
+that I am not even angry at it. You say that Christianity is the prop
+of morals; but what more do you do? When a doctor attends you and could
+poison you with a pinch of salt, do you ask whether he is a Christian?
+You ask whether he is a gentleman, whether he is an M.D.--anything but
+that. When a soldier enlists to die for his country or disgrace it, do
+you ask whether he is a Christian? You are more likely to ask whether
+he is Oxford or Cambridge at the boat race. If you think your creed
+essential to morals why do you not make it a test for these things?"
+
+"We once did make it a test for these things," said MacIan smiling, "and
+then you told us that we were imposing by force a faith unsupported
+by argument. It seems rather hard that having first been told that our
+creed must be false because we did use tests, we should now be told that
+it must be false because we don't. But I notice that most anti-Christian
+arguments are in the same inconsistent style."
+
+"That is all very well as a debating-club answer," replied Turnbull
+good-humouredly, "but the question still remains: Why don't you confine
+yourself more to Christians if Christians are the only really good men?"
+
+"Who talked of such folly?" asked MacIan disdainfully. "Do you suppose
+that the Catholic Church ever held that Christians were the only good
+men? Why, the Catholics of the Catholic Middle Ages talked about the
+virtues of all the virtuous Pagans until humanity was sick of the
+subject. No, if you really want to know what we mean when we say that
+Christianity has a special power of virtue, I will tell you. The Church
+is the only thing on earth that can perpetuate a type of virtue and make
+it something more than a fashion. The thing is so plain and historical
+that I hardly think you will ever deny it. You cannot deny that it is
+perfectly possible that tomorrow morning, in Ireland or in Italy, there
+might appear a man not only as good but good in exactly the same way
+as St. Francis of Assisi. Very well, now take the other types of human
+virtue; many of them splendid. The English gentleman of Elizabeth was
+chivalrous and idealistic. But can you stand still here in this meadow
+and _be_ an English gentleman of Elizabeth? The austere republican of
+the eighteenth century, with his stern patriotism and his simple life,
+was a fine fellow. But have you ever seen him? have you ever seen an
+austere republican? Only a hundred years have passed and that volcano of
+revolutionary truth and valour is as cold as the mountains of the moon.
+And so it is and so it will be with the ethics which are buzzing down
+Fleet Street at this instant as I speak. What phrase would inspire
+the London clerk or workman just now? Perhaps that he is a son of the
+British Empire on which the sun never sets; perhaps that he is a prop of
+his Trades Union, or a class-conscious proletarian something or other;
+perhaps merely that he is a gentleman when he obviously is not. Those
+names and notions are all honourable; but how long will they last?
+Empires break; industrial conditions change; the suburbs will not last
+for ever. What will remain? I will tell you. The Catholic Saint will
+remain."
+
+"And suppose I don't like him?" said Turnbull.
+
+"On my theory the question is rather whether he will like you: or
+more probably whether he will ever have heard of you. But I grant the
+reasonableness of your query. You have a right, if you speak as the
+ordinary man, to ask if you will like the saint. But as the ordinary man
+you do like him. You revel in him. If you dislike him it is not because
+you are a nice ordinary man, but because you are (if you will excuse me)
+a sophisticated prig of a Fleet Street editor. That is just the funny
+part of it. The human race has always admired the Catholic virtues,
+however little it can practise them; and oddly enough it has admired
+most those of them that the modern world most sharply disputes. You
+complain of Catholicism for setting up an ideal of virginity; it did
+nothing of the kind. The whole human race set up an ideal of virginity;
+the Greeks in Athene, the Romans in the Vestal fire, set up an ideal of
+virginity. What then is your real quarrel with Catholicism? Your
+quarrel can only be, your quarrel really only is, that Catholicism has
+_achieved_ an ideal of virginity; that it is no longer a mere piece
+of floating poetry. But if you, and a few feverish men, in top hats,
+running about in a street in London, choose to differ as to the ideal
+itself, not only from the Church, but from the Parthenon whose name
+means virginity, from the Roman Empire which went outwards from the
+virgin flame, from the whole legend and tradition of Europe, from the
+lion who will not touch virgins, from the unicorn who respects them, and
+who make up together the bearers of your own national shield, from the
+most living and lawless of your own poets, from Massinger, who wrote the
+_Virgin Martyr_, from Shakespeare, who wrote _Measure for Measure_--if
+you in Fleet Street differ from all this human experience, does it never
+strike you that it may be Fleet Street that is wrong?"
+
+"No," answered Turnbull; "I trust that I am sufficiently fair-minded to
+canvass and consider the idea; but having considered it, I think Fleet
+Street is right, yes--even if the Parthenon is wrong. I think that as
+the world goes on new psychological atmospheres are generated, and in
+these atmospheres it is possible to find delicacies and combinations
+which in other times would have to be represented by some ruder symbol.
+Every man feels the need of some element of purity in sex; perhaps
+they can only typify purity as the absence of sex. You will laugh if I
+suggest that we may have made in Fleet Street an atmosphere in which
+a man can be so passionate as Sir Lancelot and as pure as Sir
+Galahad. But, after all, we have in the modern world erected many such
+atmospheres. We have, for instance, a new and imaginative appreciation
+of children."
+
+"Quite so," replied MacIan with a singular smile. "It has been very well
+put by one of the brightest of your young authors, who said: 'Unless
+you become as little children ye shall in no wise enter the kingdom of
+heaven.' But you are quite right; there is a modern worship of children.
+And what, I ask you, is this modern worship of children? What, in the
+name of all the angels and devils, is it except a worship of virginity?
+Why should anyone worship a thing merely because it is small or
+immature? No; you have tried to escape from this thing, and the very
+thing you point to as the goal of your escape is only the thing again.
+Am I wrong in saying that these things seem to be eternal?"
+
+And it was with these words that they came in sight of the great
+plains. They went a little way in silence, and then James Turnbull said
+suddenly, "But I _cannot_ believe in the thing." MacIan answered nothing
+to the speech; perhaps it is unanswerable. And indeed they scarcely
+spoke another word to each other all that day.
+
+
+
+
+IX. THE STRANGE LADY
+
+Moonrise with a great and growing moon opened over all those flats,
+making them seem flatter and larger than they were, turning them to a
+lake of blue light. The two companions trudged across the moonlit plain
+for half an hour in full silence. Then MacIan stopped suddenly and
+planted his sword-point in the ground like one who plants his tent-pole
+for the night. Leaving it standing there, he clutched his black-haired
+skull with his great claws of hands, as was his custom when forcing the
+pace of his brain. Then his hands dropped again and he spoke.
+
+"I'm sure you're thinking the same as I am," he said; "how long are we
+to be on this damned seesaw?"
+
+The other did not answer, but his silence seemed somehow solid as
+assent; and MacIan went on conversationally. Neither noticed that both
+had instinctively stood still before the sign of the fixed and standing
+sword.
+
+"It is hard to guess what God means in this business. But he means
+something--or the other thing, or both. Whenever we have tried to
+fight each other something has stopped us. Whenever we have tried to be
+reconciled to each other, something has stopped us again. By the run
+of our luck we have never had time to be either friends or enemies.
+Something always jumped out of the bushes."
+
+Turnbull nodded gravely and glanced round at the huge and hedgeless
+meadow which fell away towards the horizon into a glimmering high road.
+
+"Nothing will jump out of bushes here anyhow," he said.
+
+"That is what I meant," said MacIan, and stared steadily at the heavy
+hilt of his standing sword, which in the slight wind swayed on its
+tempered steel like some huge thistle on its stalk.
+
+"That is what I meant; we are quite alone here. I have not heard a
+horse-hoof or a footstep or the hoot of a train for miles. So I think we
+might stop here and ask for a miracle."
+
+"Oh! might we?" said the atheistic editor with a sort of gusto of
+disgust.
+
+"I beg your pardon," said MacIan, meekly. "I forgot your prejudices."
+He eyed the wind-swung sword-hilt in sad meditation and resumed: "What
+I mean is, we might find out in this quiet place whether there really is
+any fate or any commandment against our enterprise. I will engage on my
+side, like Elijah, to accept a test from heaven. Turnbull, let us draw
+swords here in this moonlight and this monstrous solitude. And if here
+in this moonlight and solitude there happens anything to interrupt
+us--if it be lightning striking our sword-blades or a rabbit running
+under our legs--I will take it as a sign from God and we will shake
+hands for ever."
+
+Turnbull's mouth twitched in angry humour under his red moustache. He
+said: "I will wait for signs from God until I have any signs of His
+existence; but God--or Fate--forbid that a man of scientific culture
+should refuse any kind of experiment."
+
+"Very well, then," said MacIan, shortly. "We are more quiet here than
+anywhere else; let us engage." And he plucked his sword-point out of the
+turf.
+
+Turnbull regarded him for a second and a half with a baffling visage
+almost black against the moonrise; then his hand made a sharp movement
+to his hip and his sword shone in the moon.
+
+As old chess-players open every game with established gambits, they
+opened with a thrust and parry, orthodox and even frankly ineffectual.
+But in MacIan's soul more formless storms were gathering, and he made
+a lunge or two so savage as first to surprise and then to enrage his
+opponent. Turnbull ground his teeth, kept his temper, and waiting for
+the third lunge, and the worst, had almost spitted the lunger when a
+shrill, small cry came from behind him, a cry such as is not made by any
+of the beasts that perish.
+
+Turnbull must have been more superstitious than he knew, for he stopped
+in the act of going forward. MacIan was brazenly superstitious, and he
+dropped his sword. After all, he had challenged the universe to send
+an interruption; and this was an interruption, whatever else it was. An
+instant afterwards the sharp, weak cry was repeated. This time it was
+certain that it was human and that it was female.
+
+MacIan stood rolling those great blue Gaelic eyes that contrasted with
+his dark hair. "It is the voice of God," he said again and again.
+
+"God hasn't got much of a voice," said Turnbull, who snatched at every
+chance of cheap profanity. "As a matter of fact, MacIan, it isn't the
+voice of God, but it's something a jolly sight more important--it is the
+voice of man--or rather of woman. So I think we'd better scoot in its
+direction."
+
+MacIan snatched up his fallen weapon without a word, and the two raced
+away towards that part of the distant road from which the cry was now
+constantly renewed.
+
+They had to run over a curve of country that looked smooth but was very
+rough; a neglected field which they soon found to be full of the tallest
+grasses and the deepest rabbit-holes. Moreover, that great curve of the
+countryside which looked so slow and gentle when you glanced over it,
+proved to be highly precipitous when you scampered over it; and Turnbull
+was twice nearly flung on his face. MacIan, though much heavier, avoided
+such an overthrow only by having the quick and incalculable feet of the
+mountaineer; but both of them may be said to have leapt off a low cliff
+when they leapt into the road.
+
+The moonlight lay on the white road with a more naked and electric glare
+than on the grey-green upland, and though the scene which it revealed
+was complicated, it was not difficult to get its first features at a
+glance.
+
+A small but very neat black-and-yellow motor-car was standing stolidly,
+slightly to the left of the road. A somewhat larger light-green
+motor-car was tipped half-way into a ditch on the same side, and four
+flushed and staggering men in evening dress were tipped out of it. Three
+of them were standing about the road, giving their opinions to the
+moon with vague but echoing violence. The fourth, however, had
+already advanced on the chauffeur of the black-and-yellow car, and was
+threatening him with a stick. The chauffeur had risen to defend himself.
+By his side sat a young lady.
+
+She was sitting bolt upright, a slender and rigid figure gripping the
+sides of her seat, and her first few cries had ceased. She was clad in
+close-fitting dark costume, a mass of warm brown hair went out in two
+wings or waves on each side of her forehead; and even at that distance
+it could be seen that her profile was of the aquiline and eager sort,
+like a young falcon hardly free of the nest.
+
+Turnbull had concealed in him somewhere a fund of common sense and
+knowledge of the world of which he himself and his best friends were
+hardly aware. He was one of those who take in much of the shows of
+things absent-mindedly, and in an irrelevant reverie. As he stood at
+the door of his editorial shop on Ludgate Hill and meditated on the
+non-existence of God, he silently absorbed a good deal of varied
+knowledge about the existence of men. He had come to know types by
+instinct and dilemmas with a glance; he saw the crux of the situation in
+the road, and what he saw made him redouble his pace.
+
+He knew that the men were rich; he knew that they were drunk; and he
+knew, what was worst of all, that they were fundamentally frightened.
+And he knew this also, that no common ruffian (such as attacks ladies
+in novels) is ever so savage and ruthless as a coarse kind of gentleman
+when he is really alarmed. The reason is not recondite; it is simply
+because the police-court is not such a menacing novelty to the poor
+ruffian as it is to the rich. When they came within hail and heard the
+voices, they confirmed all Turnbull's anticipations. The man in the
+middle of the road was shouting in a hoarse and groggy voice that the
+chauffeur had smashed their car on purpose; that they must get to the
+Cri that evening, and that he would jolly well have to take them there.
+The chauffeur had mildly objected that he was driving a lady. "Oh! we'll
+take care of the lady," said the red-faced young man, and went off into
+gurgling and almost senile laughter.
+
+By the time the two champions came up, things had grown more serious.
+The intoxication of the man talking to the chauffeur had taken one of
+its perverse and catlike jumps into mere screaming spite and rage. He
+lifted his stick and struck at the chauffeur, who caught hold of it, and
+the drunkard fell backwards, dragging him out of his seat on the car.
+Another of the rowdies rushed forward booing in idiot excitement, fell
+over the chauffeur, and, either by accident or design, kicked him as he
+lay. The drunkard got to his feet again; but the chauffeur did not.
+
+The man who had kicked kept a kind of half-witted conscience or
+cowardice, for he stood staring at the senseless body and murmuring
+words of inconsequent self-justification, making gestures with his hands
+as if he were arguing with somebody. But the other three, with a mere
+whoop and howl of victory, were boarding the car on three sides at once.
+It was exactly at this moment that Turnbull fell among them like one
+fallen from the sky. He tore one of the climbers backward by the collar,
+and with a hearty push sent him staggering over into the ditch upon his
+nose. One of the remaining two, who was too far gone to notice anything,
+continued to clamber ineffectually over the high back of the car,
+kicking and pouring forth a rivulet of soliloquy. But the other dropped
+at the interruption, turned upon Turnbull and began a battering bout
+of fisticuffs. At the same moment the man crawled out of the ditch in a
+masquerade of mud and rushed at his old enemy from behind. The whole
+had not taken a second; and an instant after MacIan was in the midst of
+them.
+
+Turnbull had tossed away his sheathed sword, greatly preferring his
+hands, except in the avowed etiquette of the duel; for he had learnt to
+use his hands in the old street-battles of Bradlaugh. But to MacIan the
+sword even sheathed was a more natural weapon, and he laid about him
+on all sides with it as with a stick. The man who had the walking-stick
+found his blows parried with promptitude; and a second after, to his
+great astonishment, found his own stick fly up in the air as by a
+conjuring trick, with a turn of the swordsman's wrist. Another of the
+revellers picked the stick out of the ditch and ran in upon MacIan,
+calling to his companion to assist him.
+
+"I haven't got a stick," grumbled the disarmed man, and looked vaguely
+about the ditch.
+
+"Perhaps," said MacIan, politely, "you would like this one." With the
+word the drunkard found his hand that had grasped the stick suddenly
+twisted and empty; and the stick lay at the feet of his companion on the
+other side of the road. MacIan felt a faint stir behind him; the girl
+had risen to her feet and was leaning forward to stare at the fighters.
+Turnbull was still engaged in countering and pommelling with the third
+young man. The fourth young man was still engaged with himself, kicking
+his legs in helpless rotation on the back of the car and talking with
+melodious rationality.
+
+At length Turnbull's opponent began to back before the battery of his
+heavy hands, still fighting, for he was the soberest and boldest of the
+four. If these are annals of military glory, it is due to him to say
+that he need not have abandoned the conflict; only that as he backed
+to the edge of the ditch his foot caught in a loop of grass and he
+went over in a flat and comfortable position from which it took him a
+considerable time to rise. By the time he had risen, Turnbull had come
+to the rescue of MacIan, who was at bay but belabouring his two enemies
+handsomely. The sight of the liberated reserve was to them like that
+of Blucher at Waterloo; the two set off at a sullen trot down the road,
+leaving even the walking-stick lying behind them in the moonlight.
+MacIan plucked the struggling and aspiring idiot off the back of the car
+like a stray cat, and left him swaying unsteadily in the moon. Then he
+approached the front part of the car in a somewhat embarrassed manner
+and pulled off his cap.
+
+For some solid seconds the lady and he merely looked at each other, and
+MacIan had an irrational feeling of being in a picture hung on a
+wall. That is, he was motionless, even lifeless, and yet staringly
+significant, like a picture. The white moonlight on the road, when he
+was not looking at it, gave him a vision of the road being white with
+snow. The motor-car, when he was not looking at it, gave him a rude
+impression of a captured coach in the old days of highwaymen. And
+he whose whole soul was with the swords and stately manners of the
+eighteenth century, he who was a Jacobite risen from the dead, had an
+overwhelming sense of being once more in the picture, when he had so
+long been out of the picture.
+
+In that short and strong silence he absorbed the lady from head to foot.
+He had never really looked at a human being before in his life. He saw
+her face and hair first, then that she had long suede gloves; then that
+there was a fur cap at the back of her brown hair. He might, perhaps,
+be excused for this hungry attention. He had prayed that some sign might
+come from heaven; and after an almost savage scrutiny he came to the
+conclusion that his one did. The lady's instantaneous arrest of speech
+might need more explaining; but she may well have been stunned with
+the squalid attack and the abrupt rescue. Yet it was she who remembered
+herself first and suddenly called out with self-accusing horror:
+
+"Oh, that poor, poor man!"
+
+They both swung round abruptly and saw that Turnbull, with his recovered
+sword under his arm-pit, was already lifting the fallen chauffeur into
+the car. He was only stunned and was slowly awakening, feebly waving his
+left arm.
+
+The lady in long gloves and the fur cap leapt out and ran rapidly
+towards them, only to be reassured by Turnbull, who (unlike many of his
+school) really knew a little science when he invoked it to redeem the
+world. "He's all right," said he; "he's quite safe. But I'm afraid he
+won't be able to drive the car for half an hour or so."
+
+"I can drive the car," said the young woman in the fur cap with stony
+practicability.
+
+"Oh, in that case," began MacIan, uneasily; and that paralysing shyness
+which is a part of romance induced him to make a backward movement as
+if leaving her to herself. But Turnbull was more rational than he, being
+more indifferent.
+
+"I don't think you ought to drive home alone, ma'am," he said, gruffly.
+"There seem to be a lot of rowdy parties along this road, and the man
+will be no use for an hour. If you will tell us where you are going, we
+will see you safely there and say good night."
+
+The young lady exhibited all the abrupt disturbance of a person who is
+not commonly disturbed. She said almost sharply and yet with evident
+sincerity: "Of course I am awfully grateful to you for all you've
+done--and there's plenty of room if you'll come in."
+
+Turnbull, with the complete innocence of an absolutely sound motive,
+immediately jumped into the car; but the girl cast an eye at MacIan, who
+stood in the road for an instant as if rooted like a tree. Then he also
+tumbled his long legs into the tonneau, having that sense of degradedly
+diving into heaven which so many have known in so many human houses when
+they consented to stop to tea or were allowed to stop to supper. The
+slowly reviving chauffeur was set in the back seat; Turnbull and MacIan
+had fallen into the middle one; the lady with a steely coolness had
+taken the driver's seat and all the handles of that headlong machine. A
+moment afterwards the engine started, with a throb and leap unfamiliar
+to Turnbull, who had only once been in a motor during a general
+election, and utterly unknown to MacIan, who in his present mood thought
+it was the end of the world. Almost at the same instant that the car
+plucked itself out of the mud and whipped away up the road, the man who
+had been flung into the ditch rose waveringly to his feet. When he saw
+the car escaping he ran after it and shouted something which, owing
+to the increasing distance, could not be heard. It is awful to reflect
+that, if his remark was valuable, it is quite lost to the world.
+
+The car shot on up and down the shining moonlit lanes, and there was no
+sound in it except the occasional click or catch of its machinery; for
+through some cause or other no soul inside it could think of a word to
+say. The lady symbolized her feelings, whatever they were, by urging the
+machine faster and faster until scattered woodlands went by them in
+one black blotch and heavy hills and valleys seemed to ripple under the
+wheels like mere waves. A little while afterwards this mood seemed to
+slacken and she fell into a more ordinary pace; but still she did not
+speak. Turnbull, who kept a more common and sensible view of the case
+than anyone else, made some remark about the moonlight; but something
+indescribable made him also relapse into silence.
+
+All this time MacIan had been in a sort of monstrous delirium, like some
+fabulous hero snatched up into the moon. The difference between this
+experience and common experiences was analogous to that between waking
+life and a dream. Yet he did not feel in the least as if he were
+dreaming; rather the other way; as waking was more actual than dreaming,
+so this seemed by another degree more actual than waking itself. But it
+was another life altogether, like a cosmos with a new dimension.
+
+He felt he had been hurled into some new incarnation: into the midst
+of new relations, wrongs and rights, with towering responsibilities and
+almost tragic joys which he had as yet had no time to examine. Heaven
+had not merely sent him a message; Heaven itself had opened around him
+and given him an hour of its own ancient and star-shattering energy.
+He had never felt so much alive before; and yet he was like a man in a
+trance. And if you had asked him on what his throbbing happiness hung,
+he could only have told you that it hung on four or five visible facts,
+as a curtain hangs on four of five fixed nails. The fact that the lady
+had a little fur at her throat; the fact that the curve of her cheek
+was a low and lean curve and that the moonlight caught the height of
+her cheek-bone; the fact that her hands were small but heavily gloved as
+they gripped the steering-wheel; the fact that a white witch light was
+on the road; the fact that the brisk breeze of their passage stirred and
+fluttered a little not only the brown hair of her head but the black
+fur on her cap. All these facts were to him certain and incredible, like
+sacraments.
+
+When they had driven half a mile farther, a big shadow was flung across
+the path, followed by its bulky owner, who eyed the car critically but
+let it pass. The silver moonlight picked out a piece or two of pewter
+ornament on his blue uniform; and as they went by they knew it was a
+sergeant of police. Three hundred yards farther on another policeman
+stepped out into the road as if to stop them, then seemed to doubt his
+own authority and stepped back again. The girl was a daughter of the
+rich; and this police suspicion (under which all the poor live day and
+night) stung her for the first time into speech.
+
+"What can they mean?" she cried out in a kind of temper; "this car's
+going like a snail."
+
+There was a short silence, and then Turnbull said: "It is certainly very
+odd, you are driving quietly enough."
+
+"You are driving nobly," said MacIan, and his words (which had no
+meaning whatever) sounded hoarse and ungainly even in his own ears.
+
+They passed the next mile and a half swiftly and smoothly; yet among the
+many things which they passed in the course of it was a clump of eager
+policemen standing at a cross-road. As they passed, one of the policemen
+shouted something to the others; but nothing else happened. Eight
+hundred yards farther on, Turnbull stood up suddenly in the swaying car.
+
+"My God, MacIan!" he called out, showing his first emotion of that
+night. "I don't believe it's the pace; it couldn't be the pace. I
+believe it's us."
+
+MacIan sat motionless for a few moments and then turned up at his
+companion a face that was as white as the moon above it.
+
+"You may be right," he said at last; "if you are, I must tell her."
+
+"I will tell the lady if you like," said Turnbull, with his unconquered
+good temper.
+
+"You!" said MacIan, with a sort of sincere and instinctive astonishment.
+"Why should you--no, I must tell her, of course----"
+
+And he leant forward and spoke to the lady in the fur cap.
+
+"I am afraid, madam, that we may have got you into some trouble," he
+said, and even as he said it it sounded wrong, like everything he said
+to this particular person in the long gloves. "The fact is," he resumed,
+desperately, "the fact is, we are being chased by the police." Then
+the last flattening hammer fell upon poor Evan's embarrassment; for the
+fluffy brown head with the furry black cap did not turn by a section of
+the compass.
+
+"We are chased by the police," repeated MacIan, vigorously; then he
+added, as if beginning an explanation, "You see, I am a Catholic."
+
+The wind whipped back a curl of the brown hair so as to necessitate a
+new theory of aesthetics touching the line of the cheek-bone; but the
+head did not turn.
+
+"You see," began MacIan, again blunderingly, "this gentleman wrote in
+his newspaper that Our Lady was a common woman, a bad woman, and so we
+agreed to fight; and we were fighting quite a little time ago--but that
+was before we saw you."
+
+The young lady driving her car had half turned her face to listen; and
+it was not a reverent or a patient face that she showed him. Her Norman
+nose was tilted a trifle too high upon the slim stalk of her neck and
+body.
+
+When MacIan saw that arrogant and uplifted profile pencilled plainly
+against the moonshine, he accepted an ultimate defeat. He had expected
+the angels to despise him if he were wrong, but not to despise him so
+much as this.
+
+"You see," said the stumbling spokesman, "I was angry with him when he
+insulted the Mother of God, and I asked him to fight a duel with me; but
+the police are all trying to stop it."
+
+Nothing seemed to waver or flicker in the fair young falcon profile; and
+it only opened its lips to say, after a silence: "I thought people in
+our time were supposed to respect each other's religion."
+
+Under the shadow of that arrogant face MacIan could only fall back on
+the obvious answer: "But what about a man's irreligion?" The face only
+answered: "Well, you ought to be more broadminded."
+
+If anyone else in the world had said the words, MacIan would have
+snorted with his equine neigh of scorn. But in this case he seemed
+knocked down by a superior simplicity, as if his eccentric attitude were
+rebuked by the innocence of a child. He could not dissociate anything
+that this woman said or did or wore from an idea of spiritual rarity and
+virtue. Like most others under the same elemental passion, his soul was
+at present soaked in ethics. He could have applied moral terms to the
+material objects of her environment. If someone had spoken of
+"her generous ribbon" or "her chivalrous gloves" or "her merciful
+shoe-buckle," it would not have seemed to him nonsense.
+
+He was silent, and the girl went on in a lower key as if she were
+momentarily softened and a little saddened also. "It won't do, you
+know," she said; "you can't find out the truth in that way. There are
+such heaps of churches and people thinking different things nowadays,
+and they all think they are right. My uncle was a Swedenborgian."
+
+MacIan sat with bowed head, listening hungrily to her voice but hardly
+to her words, and seeing his great world drama grow smaller and smaller
+before his eyes till it was no bigger than a child's toy theatre.
+
+"The time's gone by for all that," she went on; "you can't find out the
+real thing like that--if there is really anything to find----" and
+she sighed rather drearily; for, like many of the women of our wealthy
+class, she was old and broken in thought, though young and clean enough
+in her emotions.
+
+"Our object," said Turnbull, shortly, "is to make an effective
+demonstration"; and after that word, MacIan looked at his vision again
+and found it smaller than ever.
+
+"It would be in the newspapers, of course," said the girl. "People read
+the newspapers, but they don't believe them, or anything else, I think."
+And she sighed again.
+
+She drove in silence a third of a mile before she added, as if
+completing the sentence: "Anyhow, the whole thing's quite absurd."
+
+"I don't think," began Turnbull, "that you quite realize----Hullo!
+hullo--hullo--what's this?"
+
+The amateur chauffeur had been forced to bring the car to a staggering
+stoppage, for a file of fat, blue policemen made a wall across the way.
+A sergeant came to the side and touched his peaked cap to the lady.
+
+"Beg your pardon, miss," he said with some embarrassment, for he knew
+her for a daughter of a dominant house, "but we have reason to believe
+that the gentlemen in your car are----" and he hesitated for a polite
+phrase.
+
+"I am Evan MacIan," said that gentleman, and stood up in a sort of
+gloomy pomp, not wholly without a touch of the sulks of a schoolboy.
+
+"Yes, we will get out, sergeant," said Turnbull, more easily; "my name
+is James Turnbull. We must not incommode the lady."
+
+"What are you taking them up for?" asked the young woman, looking
+straight in front of her along the road.
+
+"It's under the new act," said the sergeant, almost apologetically.
+"Incurable disturbers of the peace."
+
+"What will happen to them?" she asked, with the same frigid clearness.
+
+"Westgate Adult Reformatory," he replied, briefly.
+
+"Until when?"
+
+"Until they are cured," said the official.
+
+"Very well, sergeant," said the young lady, with a sort of tired common
+sense. "I am sure I don't want to protect criminals or go against
+the law; but I must tell you that these gentlemen have done me a
+considerable service; you won't mind drawing your men a little farther
+off while I say good night to them. Men like that always misunderstand."
+
+The sergeant was profoundly disquieted from the beginning at the mere
+idea of arresting anyone in the company of a great lady; to refuse one
+of her minor requests was quite beyond his courage. The police fell back
+to a few yards behind the car. Turnbull took up the two swords that were
+their only luggage; the swords that, after so many half duels, they were
+now to surrender at last. MacIan, the blood thundering in his brain
+at the thought of that instant of farewell, bent over, fumbled at the
+handle and flung open the door to get out.
+
+But he did not get out. He did not get out, because it is dangerous to
+jump out of a car when it is going at full speed. And the car was going
+at full speed, because the young lady, without turning her head or
+so much as saying a syllable, had driven down a handle that made the
+machine plunge forward like a buffalo and then fly over the landscape
+like a greyhound. The police made one rush to follow, and then dropped
+so grotesque and hopeless a chase. Away in the vanishing distance they
+could see the sergeant furiously making notes.
+
+The open door, still left loose on its hinges, swung and banged quite
+crazily as they went whizzing up one road and down another. Nor did
+MacIan sit down; he stood up stunned and yet staring, as he would have
+stood up at the trumpet of the Last Day. A black dot in the distance
+sprang up a tall black forest, swallowed them and spat them out again
+at the other end. A railway bridge grew larger and larger till it leapt
+upon their backs bellowing, and was in its turn left behind. Avenues of
+poplars on both sides of the road chased each other like the figures
+in a zoetrope. Now and then with a shock and rattle they went through
+sleeping moonlit villages, which must have stirred an instant in their
+sleep as at the passing of a fugitive earthquake. Sometimes in an
+outlying house a light in one erratic, unexpected window would give them
+a nameless hint of the hundred human secrets which they left behind them
+with their dust. Sometimes even a slouching rustic would be afoot on
+the road and would look after them, as after a flying phantom. But still
+MacIan stood up staring at earth and heaven; and still the door he had
+flung open flapped loose like a flag. Turnbull, after a few minutes of
+dumb amazement, had yielded to the healthiest element in his nature and
+gone off into uncontrollable fits of laughter. The girl had not stirred
+an inch.
+
+After another half mile that seemed a mere flash, Turnbull leant over
+and locked the door. Evan staggered at last into his seat and hid his
+throbbing head in his hands; and still the car flew on and its driver
+sat inflexible and silent. The moon had already gone down, and the whole
+darkness was faintly troubled with twilight and the first movement of
+beasts and fowls. It was that mysterious moment when light is coming as
+if it were something unknown whose nature one could not guess--a mere
+alteration in everything. They looked at the sky and it seemed as dark
+as ever; then they saw the black shape of a tower or tree against it and
+knew that it was already grey. Save that they were driving southward and
+had certainly passed the longitude of London, they knew nothing of their
+direction; but Turnbull, who had spent a year on the Hampshire coast in
+his youth, began to recognize the unmistakable but quite indescribable
+villages of the English south. Then a white witch fire began to burn
+between the black stems of the fir-trees; and, like so many things in
+nature, though not in books on evolution, the daybreak, when it did
+come, came much quicker than one would think. The gloomy heavens were
+ripped up and rolled away like a scroll, revealing splendours, as the
+car went roaring up the curve of a great hill; and above them and black
+against the broadening light, there stood one of those crouching and
+fantastic trees that are first signals of the sea.
+
+
+
+
+X. THE SWORDS REJOINED
+
+As they came over the hill and down on the other side of it, it is not
+too much to say that the whole universe of God opened over them and
+under them, like a thing unfolding to five times its size. Almost under
+their feet opened the enormous sea, at the bottom of a steep valley
+which fell down into a bay; and the sea under their feet blazed at them
+almost as lustrous and almost as empty as the sky. The sunrise opened
+above them like some cosmic explosion, shining and shattering and yet
+silent; as if the world were blown to pieces without a sound. Round
+the rays of the victorious sun swept a sort of rainbow of confused and
+conquered colours--brown and blue and green and flaming rose-colour;
+as though gold were driving before it all the colours of the world. The
+lines of the landscape down which they sped, were the simple, strict,
+yet swerving, lines of a rushing river; so that it was almost as if they
+were being sucked down in a huge still whirlpool. Turnbull had some such
+feeling, for he spoke for the first time for many hours.
+
+"If we go down at this rate we shall be over the sea cliff," he said.
+
+"How glorious!" said MacIan.
+
+When, however, they had come into the wide hollow at the bottom of that
+landslide, the car took a calm and graceful curve along the side of
+the sea, melted into the fringe of a few trees, and quietly, yet
+astonishingly, stopped. A belated light was burning in the broad morning
+in the window of a sort of lodge- or gate-keepers' cottage; and the girl
+stood up in the car and turned her splendid face to the sun.
+
+Evan seemed startled by the stillness, like one who had been born amid
+sound and speed. He wavered on his long legs as he stood up; he pulled
+himself together, and the only consequence was that he trembled from
+head to foot. Turnbull had already opened the door on his side and
+jumped out.
+
+The moment he had done so the strange young woman had one more mad
+movement, and deliberately drove the car a few yards farther. Then she
+got out with an almost cruel coolness and began pulling off her long
+gloves and almost whistling.
+
+"You can leave me here," she said, quite casually, as if they had met
+five minutes before. "That is the lodge of my father's place. Please
+come in, if you like--but I understood that you had some business."
+
+Evan looked at that lifted face and found it merely lovely; he was far
+too much of a fool to see that it was working with a final fatigue
+and that its austerity was agony. He was even fool enough to ask it a
+question. "Why did you save us?" he said, quite humbly.
+
+The girl tore off one of her gloves, as if she were tearing off her
+hand. "Oh, I don't know," she said, bitterly. "Now I come to think of
+it, I can't imagine."
+
+Evan's thoughts, that had been piled up to the morning star, abruptly
+let him down with a crash into the very cellars of the emotional
+universe. He remained in a stunned silence for a long time; and that, if
+he had only known, was the wisest thing that he could possibly do at the
+moment.
+
+Indeed, the silence and the sunrise had their healing effect, for when
+the extraordinary lady spoke again, her tone was more friendly and
+apologetic. "I'm not really ungrateful," she said; "it was very good of
+you to save me from those men."
+
+"But why?" repeated the obstinate and dazed MacIan, "why did you save us
+from the other men? I mean the policemen?"
+
+The girl's great brown eyes were lit up with a flash that was at once
+final desperation and the loosening of some private and passionate
+reserve.
+
+"Oh, God knows!" she cried. "God knows that if there is a God He has
+turned His big back on everything. God knows I have had no pleasure in
+my life, though I am pretty and young and father has plenty of money.
+And then people come and tell me that I ought to do things and I do
+them and it's all drivel. They want you to do work among the poor; which
+means reading Ruskin and feeling self-righteous in the best room in
+a poor tenement. Or to help some cause or other, which always means
+bundling people out of crooked houses, in which they've always lived,
+into straight houses, in which they often die. And all the time you have
+inside only the horrid irony of your own empty head and empty heart. I
+am to give to the unfortunate, when my whole misfortune is that I have
+nothing to give. I am to teach, when I believe nothing at all that I was
+taught. I am to save the children from death, and I am not even certain
+that I should not be better dead. I suppose if I actually saw a child
+drowning I should save it. But that would be from the same motive from
+which I have saved you, or destroyed you, whichever it is that I have
+done."
+
+"What was the motive?" asked Evan, in a low voice.
+
+"My motive is too big for my mind," answered the girl.
+
+Then, after a pause, as she stared with a rising colour at the
+glittering sea, she said: "It can't be described, and yet I am trying to
+describe it. It seems to me not only that I am unhappy, but that there
+is no way of being happy. Father is not happy, though he is a Member of
+Parliament----" She paused a moment and added with a ghost of a smile:
+"Nor Aunt Mabel, though a man from India has told her the secret of all
+creeds. But I may be wrong; there may be a way out. And for one stark,
+insane second, I felt that, after all, you had got the way out and that
+was why the world hated you. You see, if there were a way out, it would
+be sure to be something that looked very queer."
+
+Evan put his hand to his forehead and began stumblingly: "Yes, I suppose
+we do seem----"
+
+"Oh, yes, you look queer enough," she said, with ringing sincerity.
+"You'll be all the better for a wash and brush up."
+
+"You forget our business, madam," said Evan, in a shaking voice; "we
+have no concern but to kill each other."
+
+"Well, I shouldn't be killed looking like that if I were you," she
+replied, with inhuman honesty.
+
+Evan stood and rolled his eyes in masculine bewilderment. Then came
+the final change in this Proteus, and she put out both her hands for an
+instant and said in a low tone on which he lived for days and nights:
+
+"Don't you understand that I did not dare to stop you? What you are
+doing is so mad that it may be quite true. Somehow one can never really
+manage to be an atheist."
+
+Turnbull stood staring at the sea; but his shoulders showed that he
+heard, and after one minute he turned his head. But the girl had only
+brushed Evan's hand with hers and had fled up the dark alley by the
+lodge gate.
+
+Evan stood rooted upon the road, literally like some heavy statue hewn
+there in the age of the Druids. It seemed impossible that he should
+ever move. Turnbull grew restless with this rigidity, and at last,
+after calling his companion twice or thrice, went up and clapped him
+impatiently on one of his big shoulders. Evan winced and leapt away from
+him with a repulsion which was not the hate of an unclean thing nor the
+dread of a dangerous one, but was a spasm of awe and separation from
+something from which he was now sundered as by the sword of God. He did
+not hate the atheist; it is possible that he loved him. But Turnbull
+was now something more dreadful than an enemy: he was a thing sealed
+and devoted--a thing now hopelessly doomed to be either a corpse or an
+executioner.
+
+"What is the matter with you?" asked Turnbull, with his hearty hand
+still in the air; and yet he knew more about it than his innocent action
+would allow.
+
+"James," said Evan, speaking like one under strong bodily pain, "I asked
+for God's answer and I have got it--got it in my vitals. He knows how
+weak I am, and that I might forget the peril of the faith, forget the
+face of Our Lady--yes, even with your blow upon her cheek. But the
+honour of this earth has just this about it, that it can make a man's
+heart like iron. I am from the Lords of the Isles and I dare not be a
+mere deserter. Therefore, God has tied me by the chain of my worldly
+place and word, and there is nothing but fighting now."
+
+"I think I understand you," said Turnbull, "but you say everything tail
+foremost."
+
+"She wants us to do it," said Evan, in a voice crushed with passion.
+"She has hurt herself so that we might do it. She has left her good
+name and her good sleep and all her habits and dignity flung away on the
+other side of England in the hope that she may hear of us and that we
+have broken some hole into heaven."
+
+"I thought I knew what you mean," said Turnbull, biting his beard; "it
+does seem as if we ought to do something after all she has done this
+night."
+
+"I never liked you so much before," said MacIan, in bitter sorrow.
+
+As he spoke, three solemn footmen came out of the lodge gate and
+assembled to assist the chauffeur to his room. The mere sight of them
+made the two wanderers flee as from a too frightful incongruity, and
+before they knew where they were, they were well upon the grassy ledge
+of England that overlooks the Channel. Evan said suddenly: "Will they
+let me see her in heaven once in a thousand ages?" and addressed the
+remark to the editor of _The Atheist_, as on which he would be likely or
+qualified to answer. But no answer came; a silence sank between the two.
+
+Turnbull strode sturdily to the edge of the cliff and looked out, his
+companion following, somewhat more shaken by his recent agitation.
+
+"If that's the view you take," said Turnbull, "and I don't say you are
+wrong, I think I know where we shall be best off for the business. As it
+happens, I know this part of the south coast pretty well. And unless I
+am mistaken there's a way down the cliff just here which will land us on
+a stretch of firm sand where no one is likely to follow us."
+
+The Highlander made a gesture of assent and came also almost to the edge
+of the precipice. The sunrise, which was broadening over sea and shore,
+was one of those rare and splendid ones in which there seems to be no
+mist or doubt, and nothing but a universal clarification more and more
+complete. All the colours were transparent. It seemed like a triumphant
+prophecy of some perfect world where everything being innocent will be
+intelligible; a world where even our bodies, so to speak, may be as of
+burning glass. Such a world is faintly though fiercely figured in the
+coloured windows of Christian architecture. The sea that lay before
+them was like a pavement of emerald, bright and almost brittle; the
+sky against which its strict horizon hung was almost absolutely white,
+except that close to the sky line, like scarlet braids on the hem of a
+garment, lay strings of flaky cloud of so gleaming and gorgeous a red
+that they seemed cut out of some strange blood-red celestial metal, of
+which the mere gold of this earth is but a drab yellow imitation.
+
+"The hand of Heaven is still pointing," muttered the man of superstition
+to himself. "And now it is a blood-red hand."
+
+The cool voice of his companion cut in upon his monologue, calling to
+him from a little farther along the cliff, to tell him that he had found
+the ladder of descent. It began as a steep and somewhat greasy path,
+which then tumbled down twenty or thirty feet in the form of a fall of
+rough stone steps. After that, there was a rather awkward drop on to
+a ledge of stone and then the journey was undertaken easily and even
+elegantly by the remains of an ornamental staircase, such as might have
+belonged to some long-disused watering-place. All the time that the
+two travellers sank from stage to stage of this downward journey, there
+closed over their heads living bridges and caverns of the most varied
+foliage, all of which grew greener, redder, or more golden, in the
+growing sunlight of the morning. Life, too, of the more moving sort rose
+at the sun on every side of them. Birds whirred and fluttered in the
+undergrowth, as if imprisoned in green cages. Other birds were shaken
+up in great clouds from the tree-tops, as if they were blossoms detached
+and scattered up to heaven. Animals which Turnbull was too much of a
+Londoner and MacIan too much of a Northerner to know, slipped by among
+the tangle or ran pattering up the tree-trunks. Both the men, according
+to their several creeds, felt the full thunder of the psalm of life as
+they had never heard it before; MacIan felt God the Father, benignant
+in all His energies, and Turnbull that ultimate anonymous energy, that
+_Natura Naturans_, which is the whole theme of Lucretius. It was down
+this clamorous ladder of life that they went down to die.
+
+They broke out upon a brown semicircle of sand, so free from human
+imprint as to justify Turnbull's profession. They strode out upon
+it, stuck their swords in the sand, and had a pause too important
+for speech. Turnbull eyed the coast curiously for a moment, like one
+awakening memories of childhood; then he said abruptly, like a man
+remembering somebody's name: "But, of course, we shall be better off
+still round the corner of Cragness Point; nobody ever comes there at
+all." And picking up his sword again, he began striding towards a big
+bluff of the rocks which stood out upon their left. MacIan followed him
+round the corner and found himself in what was certainly an even finer
+fencing court, of flat, firm sand, enclosed on three sides by white
+walls of rock, and on the fourth by the green wall of the advancing sea.
+
+"We are quite safe here," said Turnbull, and, to the other's surprise,
+flung himself down, sitting on the brown beach.
+
+"You see, I was brought up near here," he explained. "I was sent from
+Scotland to stop with my aunt. It is highly probable that I may die
+here. Do you mind if I light a pipe?"
+
+"Of course, do whatever you like," said MacIan, with a choking voice,
+and he went and walked alone by himself along the wet, glistening sands.
+
+Ten minutes afterwards he came back again, white with his own whirlwind
+of emotions; Turnbull was quite cheerful and was knocking out the end of
+his pipe.
+
+"You see, we have to do it," said MacIan. "She tied us to it."
+
+"Of course, my dear fellow," said the other, and leapt up as lightly as
+a monkey.
+
+They took their places gravely in the very centre of the great square of
+sand, as if they had thousands of spectators. Before saluting, MacIan,
+who, being a mystic, was one inch nearer to Nature, cast his eye round
+the huge framework of their heroic folly. The three walls of rock all
+leant a little outward, though at various angles; but this impression
+was exaggerated in the direction of the incredible by the heavy load of
+living trees and thickets which each wall wore on its top like a
+huge shock of hair. On all that luxurious crest of life the risen and
+victorious sun was beating, burnishing it all like gold, and every bird
+that rose with that sunrise caught a light like a star upon it like the
+dove of the Holy Spirit. Imaginative life had never so much crowded upon
+MacIan. He felt that he could write whole books about the feelings of a
+single bird. He felt that for two centuries he would not tire of being
+a rabbit. He was in the Palace of Life, of which the very tapestries
+and curtains were alive. Then he recovered himself, and remembered his
+affairs. Both men saluted, and iron rang upon iron. It was exactly
+at the same moment that he realized that his enemy's left ankle was
+encircled with a ring of salt water that had crept up to his feet.
+
+"What is the matter?" said Turnbull, stopping an instant, for he had
+grown used to every movement of his extraordinary fellow-traveller's
+face.
+
+MacIan glanced again at that silver anklet of sea-water and then looked
+beyond at the next promontory round which a deep sea was boiling and
+leaping. Then he turned and looked back and saw heavy foam being shaken
+up to heaven about the base of Cragness Point.
+
+"The sea has cut us off," he said, curtly.
+
+"I have noticed it," said Turnbull with equal sobriety. "What view do
+you take of the development?"
+
+Evan threw away his weapon, and, as his custom was, imprisoned his big
+head in his hands. Then he let them fall and said: "Yes, I know what it
+means; and I think it is the fairest thing. It is the finger of God--red
+as blood--still pointing. But now it points to two graves."
+
+There was a space filled with the sound of the sea, and then MacIan
+spoke again in a voice pathetically reasonable: "You see, we both saved
+her--and she told us both to fight--and it would not be just that either
+should fail and fall alone, while the other----"
+
+"You mean," said Turnbull, in a voice surprisingly soft and gentle,
+"that there is something fine about fighting in a place where even the
+conqueror must die?"
+
+"Oh, you have got it right, you have got it right!" cried out Evan, in
+an extraordinary childish ecstasy. "Oh, I'm sure that you really believe
+in God!"
+
+Turnbull answered not a word, but only took up his fallen sword.
+
+For the third time Evan MacIan looked at those three sides of English
+cliff hung with their noisy load of life. He had been at a loss to
+understand the almost ironical magnificence of all those teeming
+creatures and tropical colours and smells that smoked happily to heaven.
+But now he knew that he was in the closed court of death and that all
+the gates were sealed.
+
+He drank in the last green and the last red and the last gold, those
+unique and indescribable things of God, as a man drains good wine at the
+bottom of his glass. Then he turned and saluted his enemy once more, and
+the two stood up and fought till the foam flowed over their knees.
+
+Then MacIan stepped backward suddenly with a splash and held up his
+hand. "Turnbull!" he cried; "I can't help it--fair fighting is more even
+than promises. And this is not fair fighting."
+
+"What the deuce do you mean?" asked the other, staring.
+
+"I've only just thought of it," cried Evan, brokenly. "We're very well
+matched--it may go on a good time--the tide is coming up fast--and I'm
+a foot and a half taller. You'll be washed away like seaweed before it's
+above my breeches. I'll not fight foul for all the girls and angels in
+the universe."
+
+"Will you oblige me," said Turnbull, with staring grey eyes and a voice
+of distinct and violent politeness; "will you oblige me by jolly well
+minding your own business? Just you stand up and fight, and we'll see
+who will be washed away like seaweed. You wanted to finish this fight
+and you shall finish it, or I'll denounce you as a coward to the whole
+of that assembled company."
+
+Evan looked very doubtful and offered a somewhat wavering weapon; but
+he was quickly brought back to his senses by his opponent's sword-point,
+which shot past him, shaving his shoulder by a hair. By this time the
+waves were well up Turnbull's thigh, and what was worse, they were
+beginning to roll and break heavily around them.
+
+MacIan parried this first lunge perfectly, the next less perfectly; the
+third in all human probability he would not have parried at all; the
+Christian champion would have been pinned like a butterfly, and the
+atheistic champion left to drown like a rat, with such consolation as
+his view of the cosmos afforded him. But just as Turnbull launched his
+heaviest stroke, the sea, in which he stood up to his hips, launched
+a yet heavier one. A wave breaking beyond the others smote him heavily
+like a hammer of water. One leg gave way, he was swung round and sucked
+into the retreating sea, still gripping his sword.
+
+MacIan put his sword between his teeth and plunged after his
+disappearing enemy. He had the sense of having the whole universe on top
+of him as crest after crest struck him down. It seemed to him quite a
+cosmic collapse, as if all the seven heavens were falling on him one
+after the other. But he got hold of the atheist's left leg and he did
+not let it go.
+
+After some ten minutes of foam and frenzy, in which all the senses at
+once seemed blasted by the sea, Evan found himself laboriously swimming
+on a low, green swell, with the sword still in his teeth and the editor
+of _The Atheist_ still under his arm. What he was going to do he had
+not even the most glimmering idea; so he merely kept his grip and swam
+somehow with one hand.
+
+He ducked instinctively as there bulked above him a big, black wave,
+much higher than any that he had seen. Then he saw that it was hardly
+the shape of any possible wave. Then he saw that it was a fisherman's
+boat, and, leaping upward, caught hold of the bow. The boat pitched
+forward with its stern in the air for just as much time as was needed
+to see that there was nobody in it. After a moment or two of desperate
+clambering, however, there were two people in it, Mr. Evan MacIan,
+panting and sweating, and Mr. James Turnbull, uncommonly close to being
+drowned. After ten minutes' aimless tossing in the empty fishing-boat he
+recovered, however, stirred, stretched himself, and looked round on
+the rolling waters. Then, while taking no notice of the streams of salt
+water that were pouring from his hair, beard, coat, boots, and trousers,
+he carefully wiped the wet off his sword-blade to preserve it from the
+possibilities of rust.
+
+MacIan found two oars in the bottom of the deserted boat and began
+somewhat drearily to row.
+
+           *                    *                   *
+
+A rainy twilight was clearing to cold silver over the moaning sea,
+when the battered boat that had rolled and drifted almost aimlessly all
+night, came within sight of land, though of land which looked almost
+as lost and savage as the waves. All night there had been but little
+lifting in the leaden sea, only now and then the boat had been heaved
+up, as on a huge shoulder which slipped from under it; such occasional
+sea-quakes came probably from the swell of some steamer that had passed
+it in the dark; otherwise the waves were harmless though restless. But
+it was piercingly cold, and there was, from time to time, a splutter of
+rain like the splutter of the spray, which seemed almost to freeze as
+it fell. MacIan, more at home than his companion in this quite barbarous
+and elemental sort of adventure, had rowed toilsomely with the heavy
+oars whenever he saw anything that looked like land; but for the most
+part had trusted with grim transcendentalism to wind and tide. Among the
+implements of their first outfit the brandy alone had remained to him,
+and he gave it to his freezing companion in quantities which greatly
+alarmed that temperate Londoner; but MacIan came from the cold seas and
+mists where a man can drink a tumbler of raw whisky in a boat without it
+making him wink.
+
+When the Highlander began to pull really hard upon the oars, Turnbull
+craned his dripping red head out of the boat to see the goal of his
+exertions. It was a sufficiently uninviting one; nothing so far as could
+be seen but a steep and shelving bank of shingle, made of loose little
+pebbles such as children like, but slanting up higher than a house. On
+the top of the mound, against the sky line, stood up the brown skeleton
+of some broken fence or breakwater. With the grey and watery dawn
+crawling up behind it, the fence really seemed to say to our philosophic
+adventurers that they had come at last to the other end of nowhere.
+
+Bent by necessity to his labour, MacIan managed the heavy boat with real
+power and skill, and when at length he ran it up on a smoother part of
+the slope it caught and held so that they could clamber out, not sinking
+farther than their knees into the water and the shingle. A foot or
+two farther up their feet found the beach firmer, and a few moments
+afterwards they were leaning on the ragged breakwater and looking back
+at the sea they had escaped.
+
+They had a dreary walk across wastes of grey shingle in the grey dawn
+before they began to come within hail of human fields or roads; nor had
+they any notion of what fields or roads they would be. Their boots were
+beginning to break up and the confusion of stones tried them severely,
+so that they were glad to lean on their swords, as if they were the
+staves of pilgrims. MacIan thought vaguely of a weird ballad of his own
+country which describes the soul in Purgatory as walking on a plain full
+of sharp stones, and only saved by its own charities upon earth.
+
+        If ever thou gavest hosen and shoon
+            Every night and all,
+        Sit thee down and put them on,
+            And Christ receive thy soul.
+
+Turnbull had no such lyrical meditations, but he was in an even worse
+temper.
+
+At length they came to a pale ribbon of road, edged by a shelf of rough
+and almost colourless turf; and a few feet up the slope there stood
+grey and weather-stained, one of those big wayside crucifixes which are
+seldom seen except in Catholic countries.
+
+MacIan put his hand to his head and found that his bonnet was not there.
+Turnbull gave one glance at the crucifix--a glance at once sympathetic
+and bitter, in which was concentrated the whole of Swinburne's poem on
+the same occasion.
+
+        O hidden face of man, whereover
+            The years have woven a viewless veil,
+        If thou wert verily man's lover
+            What did thy love or blood avail?
+        Thy blood the priests mix poison of,
+        And in gold shekels coin thy love.
+
+Then, leaving MacIan in his attitude of prayer, Turnbull began to look
+right and left very sharply, like one looking for something. Suddenly,
+with a little cry, he saw it and ran forward. A few yards from them
+along the road a lean and starved sort of hedge came pitifully to an
+end. Caught upon its prickly angle, however, there was a very small and
+very dirty scrap of paper that might have hung there for months, since
+it escaped from someone tearing up a letter or making a spill out of
+a newspaper. Turnbull snatched at it and found it was the corner of a
+printed page, very coarsely printed, like a cheap novelette, and just
+large enough to contain the words: "_et c'est elle qui_----"
+
+"Hurrah!" cried Turnbull, waving his fragment; "we are safe at last.
+We are free at last. We are somewhere better than England or Eden or
+Paradise. MacIan, we are in the Land of the Duel!"
+
+"Where do you say?" said the other, looking at him heavily and with
+knitted brows, like one almost dazed with the grey doubts of desolate
+twilight and drifting sea.
+
+"We are in France!" cried Turnbull, with a voice like a trumpet, "in the
+land where things really happen--_Tout arrive en France_. We arrive
+in France. Look at this little message," and he held out the scrap of
+paper. "There's an omen for you superstitious hill folk. _C'est elle
+qui--Mais oui, mais oui, c'est elle qui sauvera encore le monde_."
+
+"France!" repeated MacIan, and his eyes awoke again in his head like
+large lamps lighted.
+
+"Yes, France!" said Turnbull, and all the rhetorical part of him came to
+the top, his face growing as red as his hair. "France, that has always
+been in rebellion for liberty and reason. France, that has always
+assailed superstition with the club of Rabelais or the rapier of
+Voltaire. France, at whose first council table sits the sublime figure
+of Julian the Apostate. France, where a man said only the other day
+those splendid unanswerable words"--with a superb gesture--"'we have
+extinguished in heaven those lights that men shall never light again.'"
+
+"No," said MacIan, in a voice that shook with a controlled passion. "But
+France, which was taught by St. Bernard and led to war by Joan of
+Arc. France that made the crusades. France that saved the Church and
+scattered the heresies by the mouths of Bossuet and Massillon. France,
+which shows today the conquering march of Catholicism, as brain after
+brain surrenders to it, Bruneti�re, Copp�e, Hauptmann, Barr�s, Bourget,
+Lema�tre."
+
+"France!" asserted Turnbull with a sort of rollicking self-exaggeration,
+very unusual with him, "France, which is one torrent of splendid
+scepticism from Abelard to Anatole France."
+
+"France," said MacIan, "which is one cataract of clear faith from St.
+Louis to Our Lady of Lourdes."
+
+"France at least," cried Turnbull, throwing up his sword in schoolboy
+triumph, "in which these things are thought about and fought about.
+France, where reason and religion clash in one continual tournament.
+France, above all, where men understand the pride and passion which have
+plucked our blades from their scabbards. Here, at least, we shall not be
+chased and spied on by sickly parsons and greasy policemen, because we
+wish to put our lives on the game. Courage, my friend, we have come to
+the country of honour."
+
+MacIan did not even notice the incongruous phrase "my friend", but
+nodding again and again, drew his sword and flung the scabbard far
+behind him in the road.
+
+"Yes," he cried, in a voice of thunder, "we will fight here and _He_
+shall look on at it."
+
+Turnbull glanced at the crucifix with a sort of scowling good-humour and
+then said: "He may look and see His cross defeated."
+
+"The cross cannot be defeated," said MacIan, "for it is Defeat."
+
+A second afterwards the two bright, blood-thirsty weapons made the sign
+of the cross in horrible parody upon each other.
+
+They had not touched each other twice, however, when upon the hill,
+above the crucifix, there appeared another horrible parody of its shape;
+the figure of a man who appeared for an instant waving his outspread
+arms. He had vanished in an instant; but MacIan, whose fighting face was
+set that way, had seen the shape momentarily but quite photographically.
+And while it was like a comic repetition of the cross, it was also,
+in that place and hour, something more incredible. It had been only
+instantaneously on the retina of his eye; but unless his eye and mind
+were going mad together, the figure was that of an ordinary London
+policeman.
+
+He tried to concentrate his senses on the sword-play; but one half of
+his brain was wrestling with the puzzle; the apocalyptic and almost
+seraphic apparition of a stout constable out of Clapham on top of a
+dreary and deserted hill in France. He did not, however, have to puzzle
+long. Before the duellists had exchanged half a dozen passes, the big,
+blue policeman appeared once more on the top of the hill, a palpable
+monstrosity in the eye of heaven. He was waving only one arm now and
+seemed to be shouting directions. At the same moment a mass of blue
+blocked the corner of the road behind the small, smart figure of
+Turnbull, and a small company of policemen in the English uniform came
+up at a kind of half-military double.
+
+Turnbull saw the stare of consternation in his enemy's face and swung
+round to share its cause. When he saw it, cool as he was, he staggered
+back.
+
+"What the devil are you doing here?" he called out in a high, shrill
+voice of authority, like one who finds a tramp in his own larder.
+
+"Well, sir," said the sergeant in command, with that sort of heavy
+civility shown only to the evidently guilty, "seems to me we might ask
+what are you doing here?"
+
+"We are having an affair of honour," said Turnbull, as if it were
+the most rational thing in the world. "If the French police like to
+interfere, let them interfere. But why the blue blazes should you
+interfere, you great blue blundering sausages?"
+
+"I'm afraid, sir," said the sergeant with restraint, "I'm afraid I don't
+quite follow you."
+
+"I mean, why don't the French police take this up if it's got to be
+taken up? I always heard that they were spry enough in their own way."
+
+"Well, sir," said the sergeant reflectively, "you see, sir, the French
+police don't take this up--well, because you see, sir, this ain't
+France. This is His Majesty's dominions, same as 'Ampstead 'eath."
+
+"Not France?" repeated Turnbull, with a sort of dull incredulity.
+
+"No, sir," said the sergeant; "though most of the people talk French.
+This is the island called St. Loup, sir, an island in the Channel.
+We've been sent down specially from London, as you were such specially
+distinguished criminals, if you'll allow me to say so. Which reminds
+me to warn you that anything you say may be used against you at your
+trial."
+
+"Quite so," said Turnbull, and lurched suddenly against the sergeant,
+so as to tip him over the edge of the road with a crash into the shingle
+below. Then leaving MacIan and the policemen equally and instantaneously
+nailed to the road, he ran a little way along it, leapt off on to a part
+of the beach, which he had found in his journey to be firmer, and
+went across it with a clatter of pebbles. His sudden calculation was
+successful; the police, unacquainted with the various levels of
+the loose beach, tried to overtake him by the shorter cut and found
+themselves, being heavy men, almost up to their knees in shoals of
+slippery shingle. Two who had been slower with their bodies were quicker
+with their minds, and seeing Turnbull's trick, ran along the edge of the
+road after him. Then MacIan finally awoke, and leaving half his
+sleeve in the grip of the only man who tried to hold him, took the two
+policemen in the small of their backs with the impetus of a cannon-ball
+and, sending them also flat among the stones, went tearing after his
+twin defier of the law.
+
+As they were both good runners, the start they had gained was decisive.
+They dropped over a high breakwater farther on upon the beach, turned
+sharply, and scrambled up a line of ribbed rocks, crowned with a
+thicket, crawled through it, scratching their hands and faces, and
+dropped into another road; and there found that they could slacken their
+speed into a steady trot. In all this desperate dart and scramble,
+they still kept hold of their drawn swords, which now, indeed, in the
+vigorous phrase of Bunyan, seemed almost to grow out of their hands.
+
+They had run another half mile or so when it became apparent that
+they were entering a sort of scattered village. One or two whitewashed
+cottages and even a shop had appeared along the side of the road. Then,
+for the first time, Turnbull twisted round his red bear to get a glimpse
+of his companion, who was a foot or two behind, and remarked abruptly:
+"Mr. MacIan, we've been going the wrong way to work all along. We're
+traced everywhere, because everybody knows about us. It's as if one went
+about with Kruger's beard on Mafeking Night."
+
+"What do you mean?" said MacIan, innocently.
+
+"I mean," said Turnbull, with steady conviction, "that what we want is a
+little diplomacy, and I am going to buy some in a shop."
+
+
+
+
+XI. A SCANDAL IN THE VILLAGE
+
+In the little hamlet of Haroc, in the Isle of St. Loup, there lived a
+man who--though living under the English flag--was absolutely untypical
+of the French tradition. He was quite unnoticeable, but that was exactly
+where he was quite himself. He was not even extraordinarily French; but
+then it is against the French tradition to be extraordinarily French.
+Ordinary Englishmen would only have thought him a little old-fashioned;
+imperialistic Englishmen would really have mistaken him for the old John
+Bull of the caricatures. He was stout; he was quite undistinguished; and
+he had side-whiskers, worn just a little longer than John Bull's. He
+was by name Pierre Durand; he was by trade a wine merchant; he was by
+politics a conservative republican; he had been brought up a Catholic,
+had always thought and acted as an agnostic, and was very mildly
+returning to the Church in his later years. He had a genius (if one can
+even use so wild a word in connexion with so tame a person) a genius for
+saying the conventional thing on every conceivable subject; or rather
+what we in England would call the conventional thing. For it was not
+convention with him, but solid and manly conviction. Convention implies
+cant or affectation, and he had not the faintest smell of either. He was
+simply an ordinary citizen with ordinary views; and if you had told him
+so he would have taken it as an ordinary compliment. If you had asked
+him about women, he would have said that one must preserve their
+domesticity and decorum; he would have used the stalest words, but he
+would have in reserve the strongest arguments. If you had asked him
+about government, he would have said that all citizens were free and
+equal, but he would have meant what he said. If you had asked him about
+education, he would have said that the young must be trained up in
+habits of industry and of respect for their parents. Still he would
+have set them the example of industry, and he would have been one of the
+parents whom they could respect. A state of mind so hopelessly central
+is depressing to the English instinct. But then in England a man
+announcing these platitudes is generally a fool and a frightened fool,
+announcing them out of mere social servility. But Durand was anything
+but a fool; he had read all the eighteenth century, and could have
+defended his platitudes round every angle of eighteenth-century
+argument. And certainly he was anything but a coward: swollen and
+sedentary as he was, he could have hit any man back who touched him with
+the instant violence of an automatic machine; and dying in a uniform
+would have seemed to him only the sort of thing that sometimes
+happens. I am afraid it is impossible to explain this monster amid the
+exaggerative sects and the eccentric clubs of my country. He was merely
+a man.
+
+He lived in a little villa which was furnished well with comfortable
+chairs and tables and highly uncomfortable classical pictures and
+medallions. The art in his home contained nothing between the two
+extremes of hard, meagre designs of Greek heads and Roman togas, and on
+the other side a few very vulgar Catholic images in the crudest colours;
+these were mostly in his daughter's room. He had recently lost his wife,
+whom he had loved heartily and rather heavily in complete silence,
+and upon whose grave he was constantly in the habit of placing hideous
+little wreaths, made out of a sort of black-and-white beads. To his only
+daughter he was equally devoted, though he restricted her a good deal
+under a sort of theoretic alarm about her innocence; an alarm which was
+peculiarly unnecessary, first, because she was an exceptionally reticent
+and religious girl, and secondly, because there was hardly anybody else
+in the place.
+
+Madeleine Durand was physically a sleepy young woman, and might easily
+have been supposed to be morally a lazy one. It is, however, certain
+that the work of her house was done somehow, and it is even more rapidly
+ascertainable that nobody else did it. The logician is, therefore,
+driven back upon the assumption that she did it; and that lends a sort
+of mysterious interest to her personality at the beginning. She had very
+broad, low, and level brows, which seemed even lower because her warm
+yellow hair clustered down to her eyebrows; and she had a face just
+plump enough not to look as powerful as it was. Anything that was heavy
+in all this was abruptly lightened by two large, light china-blue eyes,
+lightened all of a sudden as if it had been lifted into the air by two
+big blue butterflies. The rest of her was less than middle-sized, and
+was of a casual and comfortable sort; and she had this difference from
+such girls as the girl in the motor-car, that one did not incline to
+take in her figure at all, but only her broad and leonine and innocent
+head.
+
+Both the father and the daughter were of the sort that would normally
+have avoided all observation; that is, all observation in that
+extraordinary modern world which calls out everything except strength.
+Both of them had strength below the surface; they were like quiet
+peasants owning enormous and unquarried mines. The father with his
+square face and grey side whiskers, the daughter with her square face
+and golden fringe of hair, were both stronger than they know; stronger
+than anyone knew. The father believed in civilization, in the storied
+tower we have erected to affront nature; that is, the father believed in
+Man. The daughter believed in God; and was even stronger. They neither
+of them believed in themselves; for that is a decadent weakness.
+
+The daughter was called a devotee. She left upon ordinary people the
+impression--the somewhat irritating impression--produced by such a
+person; it can only be described as the sense of strong water being
+perpetually poured into some abyss. She did her housework easily; she
+achieved her social relations sweetly; she was never neglectful and
+never unkind. This accounted for all that was soft in her, but not for
+all that was hard. She trod firmly as if going somewhere; she flung her
+face back as if defying something; she hardly spoke a cross word, yet
+there was often battle in her eyes. The modern man asked doubtfully
+where all this silent energy went to. He would have stared still more
+doubtfully if he had been told that it all went into her prayers.
+
+The conventions of the Isle of St. Loup were necessarily a compromise
+or confusion between those of France and England; and it was vaguely
+possible for a respectable young lady to have half-attached lovers, in a
+way that would be impossible to the _bourgeoisie_ of France. One man in
+particular had made himself an unmistakable figure in the track of this
+girl as she went to church. He was a short, prosperous-looking man,
+whose long, bushy black beard and clumsy black umbrella made him seem
+both shorter and older than he really was; but whose big, bold eyes, and
+step that spurned the ground, gave him an instant character of youth.
+
+His name was Camille Bert, and he was a commercial traveller who had
+only been in the island an idle week before he began to hover in the
+tracks of Madeleine Durand. Since everyone knows everyone in so small
+a place, Madeleine certainly knew him to speak to; but it is not very
+evident that she ever spoke. He haunted her, however; especially at
+church, which was, indeed, one of the few certain places for finding
+her. In her home she had a habit of being invisible, sometimes through
+insatiable domesticity, sometimes through an equally insatiable
+solitude. M. Bert did not give the impression of a pious man, though he
+did give, especially with his eyes, the impression of an honest one. But
+he went to Mass with a simple exactitude that could not be mistaken for
+a pose, or even for a vulgar fascination. It was perhaps this religious
+regularity which eventually drew Madeleine into recognition of him. At
+least it is certain that she twice spoke to him with her square and open
+smile in the porch of the church; and there was human nature enough in
+the hamlet to turn even that into gossip.
+
+But the real interest arose suddenly as a squall arises with the
+extraordinary affair that occurred about five days after. There was
+about a third of a mile beyond the village of Haroc a large but lonely
+hotel upon the London or Paris model, but commonly almost entirely
+empty. Among the accidental group of guests who had come to it at this
+season was a man whose nationality no one could fix and who bore the
+non-committal name of Count Gregory. He treated everybody with complete
+civility and almost in complete silence. On the few occasions when he
+spoke, he spoke either French, English, or once (to the priest) Latin;
+and the general opinion was that he spoke them all wrong. He was a
+large, lean man, with the stoop of an aged eagle, and even the eagle's
+nose to complete it; he had old-fashioned military whiskers and
+moustache dyed with a garish and highly incredible yellow. He had the
+dress of a showy gentleman and the manners of a decayed gentleman; he
+seemed (as with a sort of simplicity) to be trying to be a dandy when he
+was too old even to know that he was old. Ye he was decidedly a handsome
+figure with his curled yellow hair and lean fastidious face; and he wore
+a peculiar frock-coat of bright turquoise blue, with an unknown order
+pinned to it, and he carried a huge and heavy cane. Despite his silence
+and his dandified dress and whiskers, the island might never have heard
+of him but for the extraordinary event of which I have spoken, which
+fell about in the following way:
+
+In such casual atmospheres only the enthusiastic go to Benediction; and
+as the warm blue twilight closed over the little candle-lit church and
+village, the line of worshippers who went home from the former to the
+latter thinned out until it broke. On one such evening at least no one
+was in church except the quiet, unconquerable Madeleine, four old women,
+one fisherman, and, of course, the irrepressible M. Camille Bert. The
+others seemed to melt away afterwards into the peacock colours of the
+dim green grass and the dark blue sky. Even Durand was invisible instead
+of being merely reverentially remote; and Madeleine set forth through
+the patch of black forest alone. She was not in the least afraid of
+loneliness, because she was not afraid of devils. I think they were
+afraid of her.
+
+In a clearing of the wood, however, which was lit up with a last patch
+of the perishing sunlight, there advanced upon her suddenly one who was
+more startling than a devil. The incomprehensible Count Gregory, with
+his yellow hair like flame and his face like the white ashes of the
+flame, was advancing bareheaded towards her, flinging out his arms and
+his long fingers with a frantic gesture.
+
+"We are alone here," he cried, "and you would be at my mercy, only that
+I am at yours."
+
+Then his frantic hands fell by his sides and he looked up under his
+brows with an expression that went well with his hard breathing.
+Madeleine Durand had come to a halt at first in childish wonder, and
+now, with more than masculine self-control, "I fancy I know your face,
+sir," she said, as if to gain time.
+
+"I know I shall not forget yours," said the other, and extended once
+more his ungainly arms in an unnatural gesture. Then of a sudden there
+came out of him a spout of wild and yet pompous phrases. "It is as well
+that you should know the worst and the best. I am a man who knows no
+limit; I am the most callous of criminals, the most unrepentant of
+sinners. There is no man in my dominions so vile as I. But my dominions
+stretch from the olives of Italy to the fir-woods of Denmark, and there
+is no nook of all of them in which I have not done a sin. But when I
+bear you away I shall be doing my first sacrilege, and also my first act
+of virtue." He seized her suddenly by the elbow; and she did not scream
+but only pulled and tugged. Yet though she had not screamed, someone
+astray in the woods seemed to have heard the struggle. A short but
+nimble figure came along the woodland path like a humming bullet and
+had caught Count Gregory a crack across the face before his own could
+be recognized. When it was recognized it was that of Camille, with the
+black elderly beard and the young ardent eyes.
+
+Up to the moment when Camille had hit the Count, Madeleine had
+entertained no doubt that the Count was merely a madman. Now she was
+startled with a new sanity; for the tall man in the yellow whiskers and
+yellow moustache first returned the blow of Bert, as if it were a sort
+of duty, and then stepped back with a slight bow and an easy smile.
+
+"This need go no further here, M. Bert," he said. "I need not remind you
+how far it should go elsewhere."
+
+"Certainly, you need remind me of nothing," answered Camille, stolidly.
+"I am glad that you are just not too much of a scoundrel for a gentleman
+to fight."
+
+"We are detaining the lady," said Count Gregory, with politeness; and,
+making a gesture suggesting that he would have taken off his hat if
+he had had one, he strode away up the avenue of trees and eventually
+disappeared. He was so complete an aristocrat that he could offer his
+back to them all the way up that avenue; and his back never once looked
+uncomfortable.
+
+"You must allow me to see you home," said Bert to the girl, in a gruff
+and almost stifled voice; "I think we have only a little way to go."
+
+"Only a little way," she said, and smiled once more that night, in
+spite of fatigue and fear and the world and the flesh and the devil. The
+glowing and transparent blue of twilight had long been covered by the
+opaque and slatelike blue of night, when he handed her into the lamp-lit
+interior of her home. He went out himself into the darkness, walking
+sturdily, but tearing at his black beard.
+
+All the French or semi-French gentry of the district considered this a
+case in which a duel was natural and inevitable, and neither party had
+any difficulty in finding seconds, strangers as they were in the place.
+Two small landowners, who were careful, practising Catholics, willingly
+undertook to represent that strict church-goer Camille Burt; while the
+profligate but apparently powerful Count Gregory found friends in
+an energetic local doctor who was ready for social promotion and
+an accidental Californian tourist who was ready for anything. As no
+particular purpose could be served by delay, it was arranged that the
+affair should fall out three days afterwards. And when this was settled
+the whole community, as it were, turned over again in bed and thought
+no more about the matter. At least there was only one member of it who
+seemed to be restless, and that was she who was commonly most restful.
+On the next night Madeleine Durand went to church as usual; and as usual
+the stricken Camille was there also. What was not so usual was that when
+they were a bow-shot from the church Madeleine turned round and walked
+back to him. "Sir," she began, "it is not wrong of me to speak to you,"
+and the very words gave him a jar of unexpected truth; for in all the
+novels he had ever read she would have begun: "It is wrong of me to
+speak to you." She went on with wide and serious eyes like an animal's:
+"It is not wrong of me to speak to you, because your soul, or anybody's
+soul, matters so much more than what the world says about anybody. I
+want to talk to you about what you are going to do."
+
+Bert saw in front of him the inevitable heroine of the novels trying to
+prevent bloodshed; and his pale firm face became implacable.
+
+"I would do anything but that for you," he said; "but no man can be
+called less than a man."
+
+She looked at him for a moment with a face openly puzzled, and then
+broke into an odd and beautiful half-smile.
+
+"Oh, I don't mean that," she said; "I don't talk about what I don't
+understand. No one has ever hit me; and if they had I should not feel
+as a man may. I am sure it is not the best thing to fight. It would be
+better to forgive--if one could really forgive. But when people dine
+with my father and say that fighting a duel is mere murder--of course
+I can see that is not just. It's all so different--having a reason--and
+letting the other man know--and using the same guns and things--and
+doing it in front of your friends. I'm awfully stupid, but I know that
+men like you aren't murderers. But it wasn't that that I meant."
+
+"What did you mean?" asked the other, looking broodingly at the earth.
+
+"Don't you know," she said, "there is only one more celebration? I
+thought that as you always go to church--I thought you would communicate
+this morning."
+
+Bert stepped backward with a sort of action she had never seen in him
+before. It seemed to alter his whole body.
+
+"You may be right or wrong to risk dying," said the girl, simply; "the
+poor women in our village risk it whenever they have a baby. You men are
+the other half of the world. I know nothing about when you ought to die.
+But surely if you are daring to try and find God beyond the grave and
+appeal to Him--you ought to let Him find you when He comes and stands
+there every morning in our little church."
+
+And placid as she was, she made a little gesture of argument, of which
+the pathos wrung the heart.
+
+M. Camille Bert was by no means placid. Before that incomplete gesture
+and frankly pleading face he retreated as if from the jaws of a dragon.
+His dark black hair and beard looked utterly unnatural against the
+startling pallor of his face. When at last he said something it was:
+"O God! I can't stand this!" He did not say it in French. Nor did he,
+strictly speaking, say it in English. The truth (interesting only to
+anthropologists) is that he said it in Scotch.
+
+"There will be another mass in a matter of eight hours," said Madeleine,
+with a sort of business eagerness and energy, "and you can do it then
+before the fighting. You must forgive me, but I was so frightened that
+you would not do it at all."
+
+Bert seemed to crush his teeth together until they broke, and managed to
+say between them: "And why should you suppose that I shouldn't do as you
+say--I mean not to do it at all?"
+
+"You always go to Mass," answered the girl, opening her wide blue eyes,
+"and the Mass is very long and tiresome unless one loves God."
+
+Then it was that Bert exploded with a brutality which might have come
+from Count Gregory, his criminal opponent. He advanced upon Madeleine
+with flaming eyes, and almost took her by the two shoulders. "I do not
+love God," he cried, speaking French with the broadest Scotch accent; "I
+do not want to find Him; I do not think He is there to be found. I must
+burst up the show; I must and will say everything. You are the happiest
+and honestest thing I ever saw in this godless universe. And I am the
+dirtiest and most dishonest."
+
+Madeleine looked at him doubtfully for an instant, and then said with a
+sudden simplicity and cheerfulness: "Oh, but if you are really sorry it
+is all right. If you are horribly sorry it is all the better. You have
+only to go and tell the priest so and he will give you God out of his
+own hands."
+
+"I hate your priest and I deny your God!" cried the man, "and I tell you
+God is a lie and a fable and a mask. And for the first time in my life I
+do not feel superior to God."
+
+"What can it all mean?" said Madeleine, in massive wonder.
+
+"Because I am a fable also and a mask," said the man. He had been
+plucking fiercely at his black beard and hair all the time; now he
+suddenly plucked them off and flung them like moulted feathers in the
+mire. This extraordinary spoliation left in the sunlight the same face,
+but a much younger head--a head with close chestnut curls and a short
+chestnut beard.
+
+"Now you know the truth," he answered, with hard eyes. "I am a cad who
+has played a crooked trick on a quiet village and a decent woman for a
+private reason of his own. I might have played it successfully on any
+other woman; I have hit the one woman on whom it cannot be played. It's
+just like my damned luck. The plain truth is," and here when he came to
+the plain truth he boggled and blundered as Evan had done in telling it
+to the girl in the motor-car.
+
+"The plain truth is," he said at last, "that I am James Turnbull the
+atheist. The police are after me; not for atheism but for being ready to
+fight for it."
+
+"I saw something about you in a newspaper," said the girl, with a
+simplicity which even surprise could never throw off its balance.
+
+"Evan MacIan said there was a God," went on the other, stubbornly, "and
+I say there isn't. And I have come to fight for the fact that there
+is no God; it is for that that I have seen this cursed island and your
+blessed face."
+
+"You want me really to believe," said Madeleine, with parted lips, "that
+you think----"
+
+"I want you to hate me!" cried Turnbull, in agony. "I want you to be
+sick when you think of my name. I am sure there is no God."
+
+"But there is," said Madeleine, quite quietly, and rather with the air
+of one telling children about an elephant. "Why, I touched His body only
+this morning."
+
+"You touched a bit of bread," said Turnbull, biting his knuckles. "Oh, I
+will say anything that can madden you!"
+
+"You think it is only a bit of bread," said the girl, and her lips
+tightened ever so little.
+
+"I know it is only a bit of bread," said Turnbull, with violence.
+
+She flung back her open face and smiled. "Then why did you refuse to eat
+it?" she said.
+
+James Turnbull made a little step backward, and for the first time in
+his life there seemed to break out and blaze in his head thoughts that
+were not his own.
+
+"Why, how silly of them," cried out Madeleine, with quite a schoolgirl
+gaiety, "why, how silly of them to call _you_ a blasphemer! Why,
+you have wrecked your whole business because you would not commit
+blasphemy."
+
+The man stood, a somewhat comic figure in his tragic bewilderment,
+with the honest red head of James Turnbull sticking out of the rich and
+fictitious garments of Camille Bert. But the startled pain of his face
+was strong enough to obliterate the oddity.
+
+"You come down here," continued the lady, with that female emphasis
+which is so pulverizing in conversation and so feeble at a public
+meeting, "you and your MacIan come down here and put on false beards
+or noses in order to fight. You pretend to be a Catholic commercial
+traveller from France. Poor Mr. MacIan has to pretend to be a dissolute
+nobleman from nowhere. Your scheme succeeds; you pick a quite convincing
+quarrel; you arrange a quite respectable duel; the duel you have planned
+so long will come off tomorrow with absolute certainty and safety. And
+then you throw off your wig and throw up your scheme and throw over
+your colleague, because I ask you to go into a building and eat a bit of
+bread. And _then_ you dare to tell me that you are sure there is nothing
+watching us. Then you say you know there is nothing on the very altar
+you run away from. You know----"
+
+"I only know," said Turnbull, "that I must run away from you. This has
+got beyond any talking." And he plunged along into the village, leaving
+his black wig and beard lying behind him on the road.
+
+As the market-place opened before him he saw Count Gregory, that
+distinguished foreigner, standing and smoking in elegant meditation
+at the corner of the local caf�. He immediately made his way rapidly
+towards him, considering that a consultation was urgent. But he had
+hardly crossed half of that stony quadrangle when a window burst open
+above him and a head was thrust out, shouting. The man was in his
+woollen undershirt, but Turnbull knew the energetic, apologetic head of
+the sergeant of police. He pointed furiously at Turnbull and shouted
+his name. A policeman ran excitedly from under an archway and tried to
+collar him. Two men selling vegetables dropped their baskets and joined
+in the chase. Turnbull dodged the constable, upset one of the men into
+his own basket, and bounding towards the distinguished foreign Count,
+called to him clamorously: "Come on, MacIan, the hunt is up again."
+
+The prompt reply of Count Gregory was to pull off his large yellow
+whiskers and scatter them on the breeze with an air of considerable
+relief. Then he joined the flight of Turnbull, and even as he did so,
+with one wrench of his powerful hands rent and split the strange, thick
+stick that he carried. Inside it was a naked old-fashioned rapier. The
+two got a good start up the road before the whole town was awakened
+behind them; and half-way up it a similar transformation was seen to
+take place in Mr. Turnbull's singular umbrella.
+
+The two had a long race for the harbour; but the English police were
+heavy and the French inhabitants were indifferent. In any case, they got
+used to the notion of the road being clear; and just as they had come
+to the cliffs MacIan banged into another gentleman with unmistakable
+surprise. How he knew he was another gentleman merely by banging into
+him, must remain a mystery. MacIan was a very poor and very sober
+Scotch gentleman. The other was a very drunk and very wealthy English
+gentleman. But there was something in the staggered and openly
+embarrassed apologies that made them understand each other as readily
+and as quickly and as much as two men talking French in the middle of
+China. The nearest expression of the type is that it either hits or
+apologizes; and in this case both apologized.
+
+"You seem to be in a hurry," said the unknown Englishman, falling back
+a step or two in order to laugh with an unnatural heartiness. "What's
+it all about, eh?" Then before MacIan could get past his sprawling and
+staggering figure he ran forward again and said with a sort of shouting
+and ear-shattering whisper: "I say, my name is Wilkinson. _You_
+know--Wilkinson's Entire was my grandfather. Can't drink beer myself.
+Liver." And he shook his head with extraordinary sagacity.
+
+"We really are in a hurry, as you say," said MacIan, summoning a
+sufficiently pleasant smile, "so if you will let us pass----"
+
+"I'll tell you what, you fellows," said the sprawling gentleman,
+confidentially, while Evan's agonized ears heard behind him the first
+paces of the pursuit, "if you really are, as you say, in a hurry, I know
+what it is to be in a hurry--Lord, what a hurry I was in when we all
+came out of Cartwright's rooms--if you really are in a hurry"--and he
+seemed to steady his voice into a sort of solemnity--"if you are in a
+hurry, there's nothing like a good yacht for a man in a hurry."
+
+"No doubt you're right," said MacIan, and dashed past him in despair.
+The head of the pursuing host was just showing over the top of the
+hill behind him. Turnbull had already ducked under the intoxicated
+gentleman's elbow and fled far in front.
+
+"No, but look here," said Mr. Wilkinson, enthusiastically running after
+MacIan and catching him by the sleeve of his coat. "If you want to hurry
+you should take a yacht, and if"--he said, with a burst of rationality,
+like one leaping to a further point in logic--"if you want a yacht--you
+can have mine."
+
+Evan pulled up abruptly and looked back at him. "We are really in the
+devil of a hurry," he said, "and if you really have a yacht, the truth
+is that we would give our ears for it."
+
+"You'll find it in harbour," said Wilkinson, struggling with his speech.
+"Left side of harbour--called _Gibson Girl_--can't think why, old
+fellow, I never lent it you before."
+
+With these words the benevolent Mr. Wilkinson fell flat on his face in
+the road, but continued to laugh softly, and turned towards his flying
+companion a face of peculiar peace and benignity. Evan's mind went
+through a crisis of instantaneous casuistry, in which it may be that he
+decided wrongly; but about how he decided his biographer can profess
+no doubt. Two minutes afterwards he had overtaken Turnbull and told the
+tale; ten minutes afterwards he and Turnbull had somehow tumbled into
+the yacht called the _Gibson Girl_ and had somehow pushed off from the
+Isle of St. Loup.
+
+
+
+
+XII. THE DESERT ISLAND
+
+Those who happen to hold the view (and Mr. Evan MacIan, now alive and
+comfortable, is among the number) that something supernatural, some
+eccentric kindness from god or fairy had guided our adventurers through
+all their absurd perils, might have found his strongest argument perhaps
+in their management or mismanagement of Mr. Wilkinson's yacht. Neither
+of them had the smallest qualification for managing such a vessel; but
+MacIan had a practical knowledge of the sea in much smaller and quite
+different boats, while Turnbull had an abstract knowledge of science and
+some of its applications to navigation, which was worse. The presence
+of the god or fairy can only be deduced from the fact that they never
+definitely ran into anything, either a boat, a rock, a quicksand, or a
+man-of-war. Apart from this negative description, their voyage would be
+difficult to describe. It took at least a fortnight, and MacIan, who
+was certainly the shrewder sailor of the two, realized that they were
+sailing west into the Atlantic and were probably by this time past the
+Scilly Isles. How much farther they stood out into the western sea it
+was impossible to conjecture. But they felt certain, at least, that they
+were far enough into that awful gulf between us and America to make
+it unlikely that they would soon see land again. It was therefore with
+legitimate excitement that one rainy morning after daybreak they
+saw that distinct shape of a solitary island standing up against the
+encircling strip of silver which ran round the skyline and separated
+the grey and green of the billows from the grey and mauve of the morning
+clouds.
+
+"What can it be?" cried MacIan, in a dry-throated excitement. "I didn't
+know there were any Atlantic islands so far beyond the Scillies--Good
+Lord, it can't be Madeira, yet?"
+
+"I thought you were fond of legends and lies and fables," said Turnbull,
+grimly. "Perhaps it's Atlantis."
+
+"Of course, it might be," answered the other, quite innocently and
+gravely; "but I never thought the story about Atlantis was very solidly
+established."
+
+"Whatever it is, we are running on to it," said Turnbull, equably, "and
+we shall be shipwrecked twice, at any rate."
+
+The naked-looking nose of land projecting from the unknown island was,
+indeed, growing larger and larger, like the trunk of some terrible and
+advancing elephant. There seemed to be nothing in particular, at least
+on this side of the island, except shoals of shellfish lying so thick as
+almost to make it look like one of those toy grottos that the children
+make. In one place, however, the coast offered a soft, smooth bay of
+sand, and even the rudimentary ingenuity of the two amateur mariners
+managed to run up the little ship with her prow well on shore and her
+bowsprit pointing upward, as in a sort of idiotic triumph.
+
+They tumbled on shore and began to unload the vessel, setting the
+stores out in rows upon the sand with something of the solemnity of
+boys playing at pirates. There were Mr. Wilkinson's cigar-boxes and Mr.
+Wilkinson's dozen of champagne and Mr. Wilkinson's tinned salmon and Mr.
+Wilkinson's tinned tongue and Mr. Wilkinson's tinned sardines, and every
+sort of preserved thing that could be seen at the Army and Navy stores.
+Then MacIan stopped with a jar of pickles in his hand and said abruptly:
+
+"I don't know why we're doing all this; I suppose we ought really to
+fall to and get it over."
+
+Then he added more thoughtfully: "Of course this island seems rather
+bare and the survivor----"
+
+"The question is," said Turnbull, with cheerful speculation, "whether
+the survivor will be in a proper frame of mind for potted prawns."
+
+MacIan looked down at the rows of tins and bottles, and the cloud of
+doubt still lowered upon his face.
+
+"You will permit me two liberties, my dear sir," said Turnbull at last:
+"The first is to break open this box and light one of Mr. Wilkinson's
+excellent cigars, which will, I am sure, assist my meditations; the
+second is to offer a penny for your thoughts; or rather to convulse the
+already complex finances of this island by betting a penny that I know
+them."
+
+"What on earth are you talking about?" asked MacIan, listlessly, in the
+manner of an inattentive child.
+
+"I know what you are really thinking, MacIan," repeated Turnbull,
+laughing. "I know what I am thinking, anyhow. And I rather fancy it's
+the same."
+
+"What are you thinking?" asked Evan.
+
+"I am thinking and you are thinking," said Turnbull, "that it is damned
+silly to waste all that champagne."
+
+Something like the spectre of a smile appeared on the unsmiling visage
+of the Gael; and he made at least no movement of dissent.
+
+"We could drink all the wine and smoke all the cigars easily in a week,"
+said Turnbull; "and that would be to die feasting like heroes."
+
+"Yes, and there is something else," said MacIan, with slight hesitation.
+"You see, we are on an almost unknown rock, lost in the Atlantic. The
+police will never catch us; but then neither may the public ever hear of
+us; and that was one of the things we wanted." Then, after a pause, he
+said, drawing in the sand with his sword-point: "She may never hear of
+it at all."
+
+"Well?" inquired the other, puffing at his cigar.
+
+"Well," said MacIan, "we might occupy a day or two in drawing up a
+thorough and complete statement of what we did and why we did it, and
+all about both our points of view. Then we could leave one copy on the
+island whatever happens to us and put another in an empty bottle and
+send it out to sea, as they do in the books."
+
+"A good idea," said Turnbull, "and now let us finish unpacking."
+
+As MacIan, a tall, almost ghostly figure, paced along the edge of sand
+that ran round the islet, the purple but cloudy poetry which was his
+native element was piled up at its thickest upon his soul. The unique
+island and the endless sea emphasized the thing solely as an epic. There
+were no ladies or policemen here to give him a hint either of its farce
+or its tragedy.
+
+"Perhaps when the morning stars were made," he said to himself, "God
+built this island up from the bottom of the world to be a tower and a
+theatre for the fight between yea and nay."
+
+Then he wandered up to the highest level of the rock, where there was a
+roof or plateau of level stone. Half an hour afterwards, Turnbull found
+him clearing away the loose sand from this table-land and making it
+smooth and even.
+
+"We will fight up here, Turnbull," said MacIan, "when the time comes.
+And till the time comes this place shall be sacred."
+
+"I thought of having lunch up here," said Turnbull, who had a bottle of
+champagne in his hand.
+
+"No, no--not up here," said MacIan, and came down from the height quite
+hastily. Before he descended, however, he fixed the two swords upright,
+one at each end of the platform, as if they were human sentinels to
+guard it under the stars.
+
+Then they came down and lunched plentifully in a nest of loose rocks. In
+the same place that night they supped more plentifully still. The smoke
+of Mr. Wilkinson's cigars went up ceaseless and strong smelling, like a
+pagan sacrifice; the golden glories of Mr. Wilkinson's champagne rose
+to their heads and poured out of them in fancies and philosophies. And
+occasionally they would look up at the starlight and the rock and see
+the space guarded by the two cross-hilted swords, which looked like two
+black crosses at either end of a grave.
+
+In this primitive and Homeric truce the week passed by; it consisted
+almost entirely of eating, drinking, smoking, talking, and occasionally
+singing. They wrote their records and cast loose their bottle. They
+never ascended to the ominous plateau; they had never stood there save
+for that single embarrassed minute when they had had no time to take
+stock of the seascape or the shape of the land. They did not even
+explore the island; for MacIan was partly concerned in prayer and
+Turnbull entirely concerned with tobacco; and both these forms of
+inspiration can be enjoyed by the secluded and even the sedentary. It
+was on a golden afternoon, the sun sinking over the sea, rayed like the
+very head of Apollo, when Turnbull tossed off the last half-pint from
+the emptied Wilkinsonian bottle, hurled the bottle into the sea with
+objectless energy, and went up to where his sword stood waiting for him
+on the hill. MacIan was already standing heavily by his with bent head
+and eyes reading the ground. He had not even troubled to throw a glance
+round the island or the horizon. But Turnbull being of a more active
+and birdlike type of mind did throw a glance round the scene. The
+consequence of which was that he nearly fell off the rock.
+
+On three sides of this shelly and sandy islet the sea stretched blue and
+infinite without a speck of land or sail; the same as Turnbull had first
+seen it, except that the tide being out it showed a few yards more of
+slanting sand under the roots of the rocks. But on the fourth side the
+island exhibited a more extraordinary feature. In fact, it exhibited
+the extraordinary feature of not being an island at all. A long, curving
+neck of sand, as smooth and wet as the neck of the sea serpent, ran
+out into the sea and joined their rock to a line of low, billowing, and
+glistening sand-hills, which the sinking sea had just bared to the sun.
+Whether they were firm sand or quicksand it was difficult to guess; but
+there was at least no doubt that they lay on the edge of some larger
+land; for colourless hills appeared faintly behind them and no sea could
+be seen beyond.
+
+"Sakes alive!" cried Turnbull, with rolling eyes; "this ain't an island
+in the Atlantic. We've butted the bally continent of America."
+
+MacIan turned his head, and his face, already pale, grew a shade paler.
+He was by this time walking in a world of omens and hieroglyphics, and
+he could not read anything but what was baffling or menacing in this
+brown gigantic arm of the earth stretched out into the sea to seize him.
+
+"MacIan," said Turnbull, in his temperate way, "whatever our eternal
+interrupted tete-a-tetes have taught us or not taught us, at least we
+need not fear the charge of fear. If it is essential to your emotions,
+I will cheerfully finish the fight here and now; but I must confess that
+if you kill me here I shall die with my curiosity highly excited and
+unsatisfied upon a minor point of geography."
+
+"I do not want to stop now," said the other, in his elephantine
+simplicity, "but we must stop for a moment, because it is a
+sign--perhaps it is a miracle. We must see what is at the end of the
+road of sand; it may be a bridge built across the gulf by God."
+
+"So long as you gratify my query," said Turnbull, laughing and letting
+back his blade into the sheath, "I do not care for what reason you
+choose to stop."
+
+They clambered down the rocky peninsula and trudged along the sandy
+isthmus with the plodding resolution of men who seemed almost to have
+made up their minds to be wanderers on the face of the earth. Despite
+Turnbull's air of scientific eagerness, he was really the less impatient
+of the two; and the Highlander went on well ahead of him with passionate
+strides. By the time they had walked for about half an hour in the
+ups and downs of those dreary sands, the distance between the two had
+lengthened and MacIan was only a tall figure silhouetted for an instant
+upon the crest of some sand-dune and then disappearing behind it. This
+rather increased the Robinson Crusoe feeling in Mr. Turnbull, and he
+looked about almost disconsolately for some sign of life. What sort of
+life he expected it to be if it appeared, he did not very clearly know.
+He has since confessed that he thinks that in his subconsciousness he
+expected an alligator.
+
+The first sign of life that he did see, however, was something more
+extraordinary than the largest alligator. It was nothing less than the
+notorious Mr. Evan MacIan coming bounding back across the sand-heaps
+breathless, without his cap and keeping the sword in his hand only by a
+habit now quite hardened.
+
+"Take care, Turnbull," he cried out from a good distance as he ran,
+"I've seen a native."
+
+"A native?" repeated his companion, whose scenery had of late been
+chiefly of shellfish, "what the deuce! Do you mean an oyster?"
+
+"No," said MacIan, stopping and breathing hard, "I mean a savage. A
+black man."
+
+"Why, where did you see him?" asked the staring editor.
+
+"Over there--behind that hill," said the gasping MacIan. "He put up his
+black head and grinned at me."
+
+Turnbull thrust his hands through his red hair like one who gives up the
+world as a bad riddle. "Lord love a duck," said he, "can it be Jamaica?"
+
+Then glancing at his companion with a small frown, as of one slightly
+suspicious, he said: "I say, don't think me rude--but you're a visionary
+kind of fellow--and then we drank a great deal. Do you mind waiting here
+while I go and see for myself?"
+
+"Shout if you get into trouble," said the Celt, with composure; "you
+will find it as I say."
+
+Turnbull ran off ahead with a rapidity now far greater than his rival's,
+and soon vanished over the disputed sand-hill. Then five minutes passed,
+and then seven minutes; and MacIan bit his lip and swung his sword, and
+the other did not reappear. Finally, with a Gaelic oath, Evan started
+forward to the rescue, and almost at the same moment the small figure of
+the missing man appeared on the ridge against the sky.
+
+Even at that distance, however, there was something odd about his
+attitude; so odd that MacIan continued to make his way in that
+direction. It looked as if he were wounded; or, still more, as if he
+were ill. He wavered as he came down the slope and seemed flinging
+himself into peculiar postures. But it was only when he came within
+three feet of MacIan's face, that that observer of mankind fully
+realized that Mr. James Turnbull was roaring with laughter.
+
+"You are quit right," sobbed that wholly demoralized journalist. "He's
+black, oh, there's no doubt the black's all right--as far as it goes."
+And he went off again into convulsions of his humorous ailment.
+
+"What ever is the matter with you?" asked MacIan, with stern impatience.
+"Did you see the nigger----"
+
+"I saw the nigger," gasped Turnbull. "I saw the splendid barbarian
+Chief. I saw the Emperor of Ethiopia--oh, I saw him all right. The
+nigger's hands and face are a lovely colour--and the nigger----" And he
+was overtaken once more.
+
+"Well, well, well," said Evan, stamping each monosyllable on the sand,
+"what about the nigger?"
+
+"Well, the truth is," said Turnbull, suddenly and startlingly, becoming
+quite grave and precise, "the truth is, the nigger is a Margate nigger,
+and we are now on the edge of the Isle of Thanet, a few miles from
+Margate."
+
+Then he had a momentary return of his hysteria and said: "I say,
+old boy, I should like to see a chart of our fortnight's cruise in
+Wilkinson's yacht."
+
+MacIan had no smile in answer, but his eager lips opened as if parched
+for the truth. "You mean to say," he began----
+
+"Yes, I mean to say," said Turnbull, "and I mean to say something
+funnier still. I have learnt everything I wanted to know from the
+partially black musician over there, who has taken a run in his
+war-paint to meet a friend in a quiet pub along the coast--the noble
+savage has told me all about it. The bottle containing our declaration,
+doctrines, and dying sentiments was washed up on Margate beach yesterday
+in the presence of one alderman, two bathing-machine men, three
+policemen, seven doctors, and a hundred and thirteen London clerks on a
+holiday, to all of whom, whether directly or indirectly, our composition
+gave enormous literary pleasure. Buck up, old man, this story of ours is
+a switchback. I have begun to understand the pulse and the time of it;
+now we are up in a cathedral and then we are down in a theatre, where
+they only play farces. Come, I am quite reconciled--let us enjoy the
+farce."
+
+But MacIan said nothing, and an instant afterwards Turnbull himself
+called out in an entirely changed voice: "Oh, this is damnable! This is
+not to be borne!"
+
+MacIan followed his eye along the sand-hills. He saw what looked like
+the momentary and waving figure of the nigger minstrel, and then he saw
+a heavy running policeman take the turn of the sand-hill with the smooth
+solemnity of a railway train.
+
+
+
+
+XIII. THE GARDEN OF PEACE
+
+Up to this instant Evan MacIan had really understood nothing; but when
+he saw the policeman he saw everything. He saw his enemies, all the
+powers and princes of the earth. He suddenly altered from a staring
+statue to a leaping man of the mountains.
+
+"We must break away from him here," he cried, briefly, and went like
+a whirlwind over the sand ridge in a straight line and at a particular
+angle. When the policeman had finished his admirable railway curve, he
+found a wall of failing sand between him and the pursued. By the time
+he had scaled it thrice, slid down twice, and crested it in the third
+effort, the two flying figures were far in front. They found the sand
+harder farther on; it began to be crusted with scraps of turf and in
+a few moments they were flying easily over an open common of rank
+sea-grass. They had no easy business, however; for the bottle which they
+had so innocently sent into the chief gate of Thanet had called to life
+the police of half a county on their trail. From every side across the
+grey-green common figures could be seen running and closing in; and it
+was only when MacIan with his big body broke down the tangled barrier of
+a little wood, as men break down a door with the shoulder; it was only
+when they vanished crashing into the underworld of the black wood, that
+their hunters were even instantaneously thrown off the scent.
+
+At the risk of struggling a little longer like flies in that black web
+of twigs and trunks, Evan (who had an instinct of the hunter or the
+hunted) took an incalculable course through the forest, which let them
+out at last by a forest opening--quite forgotten by the leaders of the
+chase. They ran a mile or two farther along the edge of the wood until
+they reached another and somewhat similar opening. Then MacIan stood
+utterly still and listened, as animals listen, for every sound in the
+universe. Then he said: "We are quit of them." And Turnbull said: "Where
+shall we go now?"
+
+MacIan looked at the silver sunset that was closing in, barred by plumy
+lines of purple cloud; he looked at the high tree-tops that caught the
+last light and at the birds going heavily homeward, just as if all these
+things were bits of written advice that he could read.
+
+Then he said: "The best place we can go to is to bed. If we can get some
+sleep in this wood, now everyone has cleared out of it, it will be worth
+a handicap of two hundred yards tomorrow."
+
+Turnbull, who was exceptionally lively and laughing in his demeanour,
+kicked his legs about like a schoolboy and said he did not want to go
+to sleep. He walked incessantly and talked very brilliantly. And when
+at last he lay down on the hard earth, sleep struck him senseless like a
+hammer.
+
+Indeed, he needed the strongest sleep he could get; for the earth
+was still full of darkness and a kind of morning fog when his
+fellow-fugitive shook him awake.
+
+"No more sleep, I'm afraid," said Evan, in a heavy, almost submissive,
+voice of apology. "They've gone on past us right enough for a good
+thirty miles; but now they've found out their mistake, and they're
+coming back."
+
+"Are you sure?" said Turnbull, sitting up and rubbing his red eyebrows
+with his hand.
+
+The next moment, however, he had jumped up alive and leaping like a
+man struck with a shock of cold water, and he was plunging after MacIan
+along the woodland path. The shape of their old friend the constable had
+appeared against the pearl and pink of the sunrise. Somehow, it always
+looked a very funny shape when seen against the sunrise.
+
+           *                    *                   *
+
+A wash of weary daylight was breaking over the country-side, and the
+fields and roads were full of white mist--the kind of white mist that
+clings in corners like cotton wool. The empty road, along which the
+chase had taken its turn, was overshadowed on one side by a very
+high discoloured wall, stained, and streaked green, as with
+seaweed--evidently the high-shouldered sentinel of some great
+gentleman's estate. A yard or two from the wall ran parallel to it a
+linked and tangled line of lime-trees, forming a kind of cloister along
+the side of the road. It was under this branching colonnade that the two
+fugitives fled, almost concealed from their pursuers by the twilight,
+the mist and the leaping zoetrope of shadows. Their feet, though beating
+the ground furiously, made but a faint noise; for they had kicked away
+their boots in the wood; their long, antiquated weapons made no jingle
+or clatter, for they had strapped them across their backs like guitars.
+They had all the advantages that invisibility and silence can add to
+speed.
+
+A hundred and fifty yards behind them down the centre of the empty
+road the first of their pursuers came pounding and panting--a fat but
+powerful policeman who had distanced all the rest. He came on at a
+splendid pace for so portly a figure; but, like all heavy bodies in
+motion, he gave the impression that it would be easier for him to
+increase his pace than to slacken it suddenly. Nothing short of a
+brick wall could have abruptly brought him up. Turnbull turned his head
+slightly and found breath to say something to MacIan. MacIan nodded.
+
+Pursuer and pursued were fixed in their distance as they fled, for some
+quarter of a mile, when they came to a place where two or three of the
+trees grew twistedly together, making a special obscurity. Past
+this place the pursuing policeman went thundering without thought or
+hesitation. But he was pursuing his shadow or the wind; for Turnbull had
+put one foot in a crack of the tree and gone up it as quickly and softly
+as a cat. Somewhat more laboriously but in equal silence the long legs
+of the Highlander had followed; and crouching in crucial silence in the
+cloud of leaves, they saw the whole posse of their pursuers go by and
+die into the dust and mists of the distance.
+
+The white vapour lay, as it often does, in lean and palpable layers;
+and even the head of the tree was above it in the half-daylight, like
+a green ship swinging on a sea of foam. But higher yet behind them, and
+readier to catch the first coming of the sun, ran the rampart of the
+top of the wall, which in their excitement of escape looked at once
+indispensable and unattainable, like the wall of heaven. Here,
+however, it was MacIan's turn to have the advantage; for, though less
+light-limbed and feline, he was longer and stronger in the arms. In two
+seconds he had tugged up his chin over the wall like a horizontal
+bar; the next he sat astride of it, like a horse of stone. With his
+assistance Turnbull vaulted to the same perch, and the two began
+cautiously to shift along the wall in the direction by which they had
+come, doubling on their tracks to throw off the last pursuit. MacIan
+could not rid himself of the fancy of bestriding a steed; the long, grey
+coping of the wall shot out in front of him, like the long, grey neck of
+some nightmare Rosinante. He had the quaint thought that he and Turnbull
+were two knights on one steed on the old shield of the Templars.
+
+The nightmare of the stone horse was increased by the white fog, which
+seemed thicker inside the wall than outside. They could make nothing of
+the enclosure upon which they were partial trespassers, except that the
+green and crooked branches of a big apple-tree came crawling at them out
+of the mist, like the tentacles of some green cuttlefish. Anything would
+serve, however, that was likely to confuse their trail, so they both
+decided without need of words to use this tree also as a ladder--a
+ladder of descent. When they dropped from the lowest branch to the
+ground their stockinged feet felt hard gravel beneath them.
+
+They had alighted in the middle of a very broad garden path, and the
+clearing mist permitted them to see the edge of a well-clipped lawn.
+Though the white vapour was still a veil, it was like the gauzy veil
+of a transformation scene in a pantomime; for through it there glowed
+shapeless masses of colour, masses which might be clouds of sunrise
+or mosaics of gold and crimson, or ladies robed in ruby and emerald
+draperies. As it thinned yet farther they saw that it was only flowers;
+but flowers in such insolent mass and magnificence as can seldom be seen
+out of the tropics. Purple and crimson rhododendrons rose arrogantly,
+like rampant heraldic animals against their burning background of
+laburnum gold. The roses were red hot; the clematis was, so to speak,
+blue hot. And yet the mere whiteness of the syringa seemed the most
+violent colour of all. As the golden sunlight gradually conquered the
+mists, it had really something of the sensational sweetness of the slow
+opening of the gates of Eden. MacIan, whose mind was always haunted
+with such seraphic or titanic parallels, made some such remark to his
+companion. But Turnbull only cursed and said that it was the back garden
+of some damnable rich man.
+
+When the last haze had faded from the ordered paths, the open lawns,
+and the flaming flower-beds, the two realized, not without an abrupt
+re-examination of their position, that they were not alone in the
+garden.
+
+Down the centre of the central garden path, preceded by a blue cloud
+from a cigarette, was walking a gentleman who evidently understood all
+the relish of a garden in the very early morning. He was a slim yet
+satisfied figure, clad in a suit of pale-grey tweed, so subdued that
+the pattern was imperceptible--a costume that was casual but not by
+any means careless. His face, which was reflective and somewhat
+over-refined, was the face of a quite elderly man, though his stringy
+hair and moustache were still quite yellow. A double eye-glass, with a
+broad, black ribbon, drooped from his aquiline nose, and he smiled, as
+he communed with himself, with a self-content which was rare and almost
+irritating. The straw panama on his head was many shades shabbier than
+his clothes, as if he had caught it up by accident.
+
+It needed the full shock of the huge shadow of MacIan, falling across
+his sunlit path, to rouse him from his smiling reverie. When this had
+fallen on him he lifted his head a little and blinked at the intruders
+with short-sighted benevolence, but with far less surprise than might
+have been expected. He was a gentleman; that is, he had social presence
+of mind, whether for kindness or for insolence.
+
+"Can I do anything for you?" he said, at last.
+
+MacIan bowed. "You can extend to us your pardon," he said, for he also
+came of a whole race of gentlemen--of gentlemen without shirts to their
+backs. "I am afraid we are trespassing. We have just come over the
+wall."
+
+"Over the wall?" repeated the smiling old gentleman, still without
+letting his surprise come uppermost.
+
+"I suppose I am not wrong, sir," continued MacIan, "in supposing that
+these grounds inside the wall belong to you?"
+
+The man in the panama looked at the ground and smoked thoughtfully for a
+few moments, after which he said, with a sort of matured conviction:
+
+"Yes, certainly; the grounds inside the wall really belong to me, and
+the grounds outside the wall, too."
+
+"A large proprietor, I imagine," said Turnbull, with a truculent eye.
+
+"Yes," answered the old gentleman, looking at him with a steady smile.
+"A large proprietor."
+
+Turnbull's eye grew even more offensive, and he began biting his red
+beard; but MacIan seemed to recognize a type with which he could deal
+and continued quite easily:
+
+"I am sure that a man like you will not need to be told that one sees
+and does a good many things that do not get into the newspapers. Things
+which, on the whole, had better not get into the newspapers."
+
+The smile of the large proprietor broadened for a moment under
+his loose, light moustache, and the other continued with increased
+confidence:
+
+"One sometimes wants to have it out with another man. The police won't
+allow it in the streets--and then there's the County Council--and in the
+fields even nothing's allowed but posters of pills. But in a gentleman's
+garden, now----"
+
+The strange gentleman smiled again and said, easily enough: "Do you want
+to fight? What do you want to fight about?"
+
+MacIan had understood his man pretty well up to that point; an instinct
+common to all men with the aristocratic tradition of Europe had guided
+him. He knew that the kind of man who in his own back garden wears good
+clothes and spoils them with a bad hat is not the kind of man who has
+an abstract horror of illegal actions of violence or the evasion of
+the police. But a man may understand ragging and yet be very far from
+understanding religious ragging. This seeming host of theirs might
+comprehend a quarrel of husband and lover or a difficulty at cards
+or even escape from a pursuing tailor; but it still remained doubtful
+whether he would feel the earth fail under him in that earthquake
+instant when the Virgin is compared to a goddess of Mesopotamia. Even
+MacIan, therefore (whose tact was far from being his strong point), felt
+the necessity for some compromise in the mode of approach. At last he
+said, and even then with hesitation:
+
+"We are fighting about God; there can be nothing so important as that."
+
+The tilted eye-glasses of the old gentleman fell abruptly from his nose,
+and he thrust his aristocratic chin so far forward that his lean neck
+seemed to shoot out longer like a telescope.
+
+"About God?" he queried, in a key completely new.
+
+"Look here!" cried Turnbull, taking his turn roughly, "I'll tell you
+what it's all about. I think that there's no God. I take it that it's
+nobody's business but mine--or God's, if there is one. This young
+gentleman from the Highlands happens to think that it's his business. In
+consequence, he first takes a walking-stick and smashes my shop; then he
+takes the same walking-stick and tries to smash me. To this I naturally
+object. I suggest that if it comes to that we should both have sticks.
+He improves on the suggestion and proposes that we should both have
+steel-pointed sticks. The police (with characteristic unreasonableness)
+will not accept either of our proposals; the result is that we run
+about dodging the police and have jumped over our garden wall into your
+magnificent garden to throw ourselves on your magnificent hospitality."
+
+The face of the old gentleman had grown redder and redder during this
+address, but it was still smiling; and when he broke out it was with a
+kind of guffaw.
+
+"So you really want to fight with drawn swords in my garden," he asked,
+"about whether there is really a God?"
+
+"Why not?" said MacIan, with his simple monstrosity of speech; "all
+man's worship began when the Garden of Eden was founded."
+
+"Yes, by----!" said Turnbull, with an oath, "and ended when the
+Zoological Gardens were founded."
+
+"In this garden! In my presence!" cried the stranger, stamping up and
+down the gravel and choking with laughter, "whether there is a God!"
+And he went stamping up and down the garden, making it echo with his
+unintelligible laughter. Then he came back to them more composed and
+wiping his eyes.
+
+"Why, how small the world is!" he cried at last. "I can settle the whole
+matter. Why, I am God!"
+
+And he suddenly began to kick and wave his well-clad legs about the
+lawn.
+
+"You are what?" repeated Turnbull, in a tone which is beyond
+description.
+
+"Why, God, of course!" answered the other, thoroughly amused. "How
+funny it is to think that you have tumbled over a garden wall and fallen
+exactly on the right person! You might have gone floundering about in
+all sorts of churches and chapels and colleges and schools of philosophy
+looking for some evidence of the existence of God. Why, there is no
+evidence, except seeing him. And now you've seen him. You've seen him
+dance!"
+
+And the obliging old gentleman instantly stood on one leg without
+relaxing at all the grave and cultured benignity of his expression.
+
+"I understood that this garden----" began the bewildered MacIan.
+
+"Quite so! Quite so!" said the man on one leg, nodding gravely. "I said
+this garden belonged to me and the land outside it. So they do. So does
+the country beyond that and the sea beyond that and all the rest of the
+earth. So does the moon. So do the sun and stars." And he added, with a
+smile of apology: "You see, I'm God."
+
+Turnbull and MacIan looked at him for one moment with a sort of notion
+that perhaps he was not too old to be merely playing the fool. But
+after staring steadily for an instant Turnbull saw the hard and horrible
+earnestness in the man's eyes behind all his empty animation. Then
+Turnbull looked very gravely at the strict gravel walls and the gay
+flower-beds and the long rectangular red-brick building, which the mist
+had left evident beyond them. Then he looked at MacIan.
+
+Almost at the same moment another man came walking quickly round the
+regal clump of rhododendrons. He had the look of a prosperous banker,
+wore a good tall silk hat, was almost stout enough to burst the buttons
+of a fine frock-coat; but he was talking to himself, and one of his
+elbows had a singular outward jerk as he went by.
+
+
+
+
+XIV. A MUSEUM OF SOULS
+
+The man with the good hat and the jumping elbow went by very quickly;
+yet the man with the bad hat, who thought he was God, overtook him. He
+ran after him and jumped over a bed of geraniums to catch him.
+
+"I beg your Majesty's pardon," he said, with mock humility, "but here is
+a quarrel which you ought really to judge."
+
+Then as he led the heavy, silk-hatted man back towards the group, he
+caught MacIan's ear in order to whisper: "This poor gentleman is mad;
+he thinks he is Edward VII." At this the self-appointed Creator slightly
+winked. "Of course you won't trust him much; come to me for everything.
+But in my position one has to meet so many people. One has to be
+broadminded."
+
+The big banker in the black frock-coat and hat was standing quite grave
+and dignified on the lawn, save for his slight twitch of one limb,
+and he did not seem by any means unworthy of the part which the other
+promptly forced upon him.
+
+"My dear fellow," said the man in the straw hat, "these two gentlemen
+are going to fight a duel of the utmost importance. Your own royal
+position and my much humbler one surely indicate us as the proper
+seconds. Seconds--yes, seconds----" and here the speaker was once more
+shaken with his old malady of laughter.
+
+"Yes, you and I are both seconds--and these two gentlemen can obviously
+fight in front of us. You, he-he, are the king. I am God; really, they
+could hardly have better supporters. They have come to the right place."
+
+Then Turnbull, who had been staring with a frown at the fresh turf,
+burst out with a rather bitter laugh and cried, throwing his red head in
+the air:
+
+"Yes, by God, MacIan, I think we have come to the right place!" And
+MacIan answered, with an adamantine stupidity:
+
+"Any place is the right place where they will let us do it."
+
+There was a long stillness, and their eyes involuntarily took in the
+landscape, as they had taken in all the landscapes of their everlasting
+combat; the bright, square garden behind the shop; the whole lift
+and leaning of the side of Hampstead Heath; the little garden of the
+decadent choked with flowers; the square of sand beside the sea
+at sunrise. They both felt at the same moment all the breadth and
+blossoming beauty of that paradise, the coloured trees, the natural and
+restful nooks and also the great wall of stone--more awful than the wall
+of China--from which no flesh could flee.
+
+Turnbull was moodily balancing his sword in his hand as the other spoke;
+then he started, for a mouth whispered quite close to his ear. With a
+softness incredible in any cat, the huge, heavy man in the black hat and
+frock-coat had crept across the lawn from his own side and was saying
+in his ear: "Don't trust that second of yours. He's mad and not so mad,
+either; for he frightfully cunning and sharp. Don't believe the story he
+tells you about why I hate him. I know the story he'll tell; I overheard
+it when the housekeeper was talking to the postman. It's too long to
+talk about now, and I expect we're watched, but----"
+
+Something in Turnbull made him want suddenly to be sick on the grass;
+the mere healthy and heathen horror of the unclean; the mere inhumane
+hatred of the inhuman state of madness. He seemed to hear all round him
+the hateful whispers of that place, innumerable as leaves whispering
+in the wind, and each of them telling eagerly some evil that had not
+happened or some terrific secret which was not true. All the rationalist
+and plain man revolted within him against bowing down for a moment in
+that forest of deception and egotistical darkness. He wanted to blow up
+that palace of delusions with dynamite; and in some wild way, which I
+will not defend, he tried to do it.
+
+He looked across at MacIan and said: "Oh, I can't stand this!"
+
+"Can't stand what?" asked his opponent, eyeing him doubtfully.
+
+"Shall we say the atmosphere?" replied Turnbull; "one can't use uncivil
+expressions even to a--deity. The fact is, I don't like having God for
+my second."
+
+"Sir!" said that being in a state of great offence, "in my position I am
+not used to having my favours refused. Do you know who I am?"
+
+The editor of _The Atheist_ turned upon him like one who has lost
+all patience, and exploded: "Yes, you are God, aren't you?" he said,
+abruptly, "why do we have two sets of teeth?"
+
+"Teeth?" spluttered the genteel lunatic; "teeth?"
+
+"Yes," cried Turnbull, advancing on him swiftly and with animated
+gestures, "why does teething hurt? Why do growing pains hurt? Why are
+measles catching? Why does a rose have thorns? Why do rhinoceroses have
+horns? Why is the horn on the top of the nose? Why haven't I a horn on
+the top of my nose, eh?" And he struck the bridge of his nose smartly
+with his forefinger to indicate the place of the omission and then
+wagged the finger menacingly at the Creator.
+
+"I've often wanted to meet you," he resumed, sternly, after a pause, "to
+hold you accountable for all the idiocy and cruelty of this muddled and
+meaningless world of yours. You make a hundred seeds and only one bears
+fruit. You make a million worlds and only one seems inhabited. What do
+you mean by it, eh? What do you mean by it?"
+
+The unhappy lunatic had fallen back before this quite novel form of
+attack, and lifted his burnt-out cigarette almost like one warding off a
+blow. Turnbull went on like a torrent.
+
+"A man died yesterday in Ealing. You murdered him. A girl had the
+toothache in Croydon. You gave it her. Fifty sailors were drowned off
+Selsey Bill. You scuttled their ship. What have you got to say for
+yourself, eh?"
+
+The representative of omnipotence looked as if he had left most of these
+things to his subordinates; he passed a hand over his wrinkling brow and
+said in a voice much saner than any he had yet used:
+
+"Well, if you dislike my assistance, of course--perhaps the other
+gentleman----"
+
+"The other gentleman," cried Turnbull, scornfully, "is a submissive
+and loyal and obedient gentleman. He likes the people who wear crowns,
+whether of diamonds or of stars. He believes in the divine right of
+kings, and it is appropriate enough that he should have the king for his
+second. But it is not appropriate to me that I should have God for my
+second. God is not good enough. I dislike and I deny the divine right of
+kings. But I dislike more and I deny more the divine right of divinity."
+
+Then after a pause in which he swallowed his passion, he said to MacIan:
+"You have got the right second, anyhow."
+
+The Highlander did not answer, but stood as if thunderstruck with one
+long and heavy thought. Then at last he turned abruptly to his second in
+the silk hat and said: "Who are you?"
+
+The man in the silk hat blinked and bridled in affected surprise, like
+one who was in truth accustomed to be doubted.
+
+"I am King Edward VII," he said, with shaky arrogance. "Do you doubt my
+word?"
+
+"I do not doubt it in the least," answered MacIan.
+
+"Then, why," said the large man in the silk hat, trembling from head to
+foot, "why do you wear your hat before the king?"
+
+"Why should I take it off," retorted MacIan, with equal heat, "before a
+usurper?"
+
+Turnbull swung round on his heel. "Well, really," he said, "I thought at
+least you were a loyal subject."
+
+"I am the only loyal subject," answered the Gael. "For nearly thirty
+years I have walked these islands and have not found another."
+
+"You are always hard to follow," remarked Turnbull, genially, "and
+sometimes so much so as to be hardly worth following."
+
+"I alone am loyal," insisted MacIan; "for I alone am in rebellion. I am
+ready at any instant to restore the Stuarts. I am ready at any instant
+to defy the Hanoverian brood--and I defy it now even when face to face
+with the actual ruler of the enormous British Empire!"
+
+And folding his arms and throwing back his lean, hawklike face,
+he haughtily confronted the man with the formal frock-coat and the
+eccentric elbow.
+
+"What right had you stunted German squires," he cried, "to interfere in
+a quarrel between Scotch and English and Irish gentlemen? Who made you,
+whose fathers could not splutter English while they walked in Whitehall,
+who made you the judge between the republic of Sidney and the monarchy
+of Montrose? What had your sires to do with England that they should
+have the foul offering of the blood of Derwentwater and the heart of
+Jimmy Dawson? Where are the corpses of Culloden? Where is the blood
+of Lochiel?" MacIan advanced upon his opponent with a bony and pointed
+finger, as if indicating the exact pocket in which the blood of that
+Cameron was probably kept; and Edward VII fell back a few paces in
+considerable confusion.
+
+"What good have you ever done to us?" he continued in harsher and
+harsher accents, forcing the other back towards the flower-beds. "What
+good have you ever done, you race of German sausages? Yards of barbarian
+etiquette, to throttle the freedom of aristocracy! Gas of northern
+metaphysics to blow up Broad Church bishops like balloons. Bad pictures
+and bad manners and pantheism and the Albert Memorial. Go back to
+Hanover, you humbug? Go to----"
+
+Before the end of this tirade the arrogance of the monarch had entirely
+given way; he had fairly turned tail and was trundling away down the
+path. MacIan strode after him still preaching and flourishing his large,
+lean hands. The other two remained in the centre of the lawn--Turnbull
+in convulsions of laughter, the lunatic in convulsions of disgust.
+Almost at the same moment a third figure came stepping swiftly across
+the lawn.
+
+The advancing figure walked with a stoop, and yet somehow flung his
+forked and narrow beard forward. That carefully cut and pointed yellow
+beard was, indeed, the most emphatic thing about him. When he clasped
+his hands behind him, under the tails of his coat, he would wag his
+beard at a man like a big forefinger. It performed almost all his
+gestures; it was more important than the glittering eye-glasses through
+which he looked or the beautiful bleating voice in which he spoke. His
+face and neck were of a lusty red, but lean and stringy; he always wore
+his expensive gold-rim eye-glasses slightly askew upon his aquiline
+nose; and he always showed two gleaming foreteeth under his moustache,
+in a smile so perpetual as to earn the reputation of a sneer. But for
+the crooked glasses his dress was always exquisite; and but for the
+smile he was perfectly and perennially depressed.
+
+"Don't you think," said the new-comer, with a sort of supercilious
+entreaty, "that we had better all come into breakfast? It is such a
+mistake to wait for breakfast. It spoils one's temper so much."
+
+"Quite so," replied Turnbull, seriously.
+
+"There seems almost to have been a little quarrelling here," said the
+man with the goatish beard.
+
+"It is rather a long story," said Turnbull, smiling. "Originally, it
+might be called a phase in the quarrel between science and religion."
+
+The new-comer started slightly, and Turnbull replied to the question on
+his face.
+
+"Oh, yes," he said, "I am science!"
+
+"I congratulate you heartily," answered the other, "I am Doctor Quayle."
+
+Turnbull's eyes did not move, but he realized that the man in the panama
+hat had lost all his ease of a landed proprietor and had withdrawn to
+a distance of thirty yards, where he stood glaring with all the
+contraction of fear and hatred that can stiffen a cat.
+
+           *                    *                   *
+
+MacIan was sitting somewhat disconsolately on a stump of tree, his large
+black head half buried in his large brown hands, when Turnbull strode
+up to him chewing a cigarette. He did not look up, but his comrade and
+enemy addressed him like one who must free himself of his feelings.
+
+"Well, I hope, at any rate," he said, "that you like your precious
+religion now. I hope you like the society of this poor devil whom your
+damned tracts and hymns and priests have driven out of his wits. Five
+men in this place, they tell me, five men in this place who might have
+been fathers of families, and every one of them thinks he is God the
+Father. Oh! you may talk about the ugliness of science, but there is no
+one here who thinks he is Protoplasm."
+
+"They naturally prefer a bright part," said MacIan, wearily. "Protoplasm
+is not worth going mad about."
+
+"At least," said Turnbull, savagely, "it was your Jesus Christ who
+started all this bosh about being God."
+
+For one instant MacIan opened the eyes of battle; then his tightened
+lips took a crooked smile and he said, quite calmly:
+
+"No, the idea is older; it was Satan who first said that he was God."
+
+"Then, what," asked Turnbull, very slowly, as he softly picked a flower,
+"what is the difference between Christ and Satan?"
+
+"It is quite simple," replied the Highlander. "Christ descended into
+hell; Satan fell into it."
+
+"Does it make much odds?" asked the free-thinker.
+
+"It makes all the odds," said the other. "One of them wanted to go up
+and went down; the other wanted to go down and went up. A god can be
+humble, a devil can only be humbled."
+
+"Why are you always wanting to humble a man?" asked Turnbull, knitting
+his brows. "It affects me as ungenerous."
+
+"Why were you wanting to humble a god when you found him in this
+garden?" asked MacIan.
+
+"That was an extreme case of impudence," said Turnbull.
+
+"Granting the man his almighty pretensions, I think he was very modest,"
+said MacIan. "It is we who are arrogant, who know we are only men. The
+ordinary man in the street is more of a monster than that poor fellow;
+for the man in the street treats himself as God Almighty when he knows
+he isn't. He expects the universe to turn round him, though he knows he
+isn't the centre."
+
+"Well," said Turnbull, sitting down on the grass, "this is a digression,
+anyhow. What I want to point out is, that your faith does end in asylums
+and my science doesn't."
+
+"Doesn't it, by George!" cried MacIan, scornfully. "There are a few men
+here who are mad on God and a few who are mad on the Bible. But I bet
+there are many more who are simply mad on madness."
+
+"Do you really believe it?" asked the other.
+
+"Scores of them, I should say," answered MacIan. "Fellows who have
+read medical books or fellows whose fathers and uncles had something
+hereditary in their heads--the whole air they breathe is mad."
+
+"All the same," said Turnbull, shrewdly, "I bet you haven't found a
+madman of that sort."
+
+"I bet I have!" cried Evan, with unusual animation. "I've been walking
+about the garden talking to a poor chap all the morning. He's simply
+been broken down and driven raving by your damned science. Talk about
+believing one is God--why, it's quite an old, comfortable, fireside
+fancy compared with the sort of things this fellow believes. He believes
+that there is a God, but that he is better than God. He says God will be
+afraid to face him. He says one is always progressing beyond the best.
+He put his arm in mine and whispered in my ear, as if it were the
+apocalypse: 'Never trust a God that you can't improve on.'"
+
+"What can he have meant?" said the atheist, with all his logic awake.
+"Obviously one should not trust any God that one can improve on."
+
+"It is the way he talks," said MacIan, almost indifferently; "but he
+says rummier things than that. He says that a man's doctor ought to
+decide what woman he marries; and he says that children ought not to
+be brought up by their parents, because a physical partiality will then
+distort the judgement of the educator."
+
+"Oh, dear!" said Turnbull, laughing, "you have certainly come across a
+pretty bad case, and incidentally proved your own. I suppose some men do
+lose their wits through science as through love and other good things."
+
+"And he says," went on MacIan, monotonously, "that he cannot see why
+anyone should suppose that a triangle is a three-sided figure. He says
+that on some higher plane----"
+
+Turnbull leapt to his feet as by an electric shock. "I never could have
+believed," he cried, "that you had humour enough to tell a lie. You've
+gone a bit too far, old man, with your little joke. Even in a lunatic
+asylum there can't be anybody who, having thought about the matter,
+thinks that a triangle has not got three sides. If he exists he must be
+a new era in human psychology. But he doesn't exist."
+
+"I will go and fetch him," said MacIan, calmly; "I left the poor fellow
+wandering about by the nasturtium bed."
+
+MacIan vanished, and in a few moments returned, trailing with him his
+own discovery among lunatics, who was a slender man with a fixed smile
+and an unfixed and rolling head. He had a goatlike beard just long
+enough to be shaken in a strong wind. Turnbull sprang to his feet
+and was like one who is speechless through choking a sudden shout of
+laughter.
+
+"Why, you great donkey," he shouted, in an ear-shattering whisper,
+"that's not one of the patients at all. That's one of the doctors."
+
+Evan looked back at the leering head with the long-pointed beard and
+repeated the word inquiringly: "One of the doctors?"
+
+"Oh, you know what I mean," said Turnbull, impatiently. "The medical
+authorities of the place."
+
+Evan was still staring back curiously at the beaming and bearded
+creature behind him.
+
+"The mad doctors," said Turnbull, shortly.
+
+"Quite so," said MacIan.
+
+After a rather restless silence Turnbull plucked MacIan by the elbow and
+pulled him aside.
+
+"For goodness sake," he said, "don't offend this fellow; he may be as
+mad as ten hatters, if you like, but he has us between his finger
+and thumb. This is the very time he appointed to talk with us about
+our--well, our exeat."
+
+"But what can it matter?" asked the wondering MacIan. "He can't keep us
+in the asylum. We're not mad."
+
+"Jackass!" said Turnbull, heartily, "of course we're not mad. Of course,
+if we are medically examined and the thing is thrashed out, they will
+find we are not mad. But don't you see that if the thing is thrashed out
+it will mean letters to this reference and telegrams to that; and at the
+first word of who we are, we shall be taken out of a madhouse, where
+we may smoke, to a jail, where we mayn't. No, if we manage this very
+quietly, he may merely let us out at the front door as stray revellers.
+If there's half an hour of inquiry, we are cooked."
+
+MacIan looked at the grass frowningly for a few seconds, and then said
+in a new, small and childish voice: "I am awfully stupid, Mr. Turnbull;
+you must be patient with me."
+
+Turnbull caught Evan's elbow again with quite another gesture. "Come,"
+he cried, with the harsh voice of one who hides emotion, "come and let
+us be tactful in chorus."
+
+The doctor with the pointed beard was already slanting it forward at a
+more than usually acute angle, with the smile that expressed expectancy.
+
+"I hope I do not hurry you, gentlemen," he said, with the faintest
+suggestion of a sneer at their hurried consultation, "but I believe you
+wanted to see me at half past eleven."
+
+"I am most awfully sorry, Doctor," said Turnbull, with ready amiability;
+"I never meant to keep you waiting; but the silly accident that has
+landed us in your garden may have some rather serious consequences to
+our friends elsewhere, and my friend here was just drawing my attention
+to some of them."
+
+"Quite so! Quite so!" said the doctor, hurriedly. "If you really want
+to put anything before me, I can give you a few moments in my
+consulting-room."
+
+He led them rapidly into a small but imposing apartment, which seemed
+to be built and furnished entirely in red-varnished wood. There was one
+desk occupied with carefully docketed papers; and there were several
+chairs of the red-varnished wood--though of different shape. All along
+the wall ran something that might have been a bookcase, only that it was
+not filled with books, but with flat, oblong slabs or cases of the same
+polished dark-red consistency. What those flat wooden cases were they
+could form no conception.
+
+The doctor sat down with a polite impatience on his professional perch;
+MacIan remained standing, but Turnbull threw himself almost with luxury
+into a hard wooden arm-chair.
+
+"This is a most absurd business, Doctor," he said, "and I am ashamed to
+take up the time of busy professional men with such pranks from outside.
+The plain fact is, that he and I and a pack of silly men and girls have
+organized a game across this part of the country--a sort of combination
+of hare and hounds and hide and seek--I dare say you've heard of it. We
+are the hares, and, seeing your high wall look so inviting, we tumbled
+over it, and naturally were a little startled with what we found on the
+other side."
+
+"Quite so!" said the doctor, mildly. "I can understand that you were
+startled."
+
+Turnbull had expected him to ask what place was the headquarters of the
+new exhilarating game, and who were the male and female enthusiasts who
+had brought it to such perfection; in fact, Turnbull was busy making up
+these personal and topographical particulars. As the doctor did not ask
+the question, he grew slightly uneasy, and risked the question: "I hope
+you will accept my assurance that the thing was an accident and that no
+intrusion was meant."
+
+"Oh, yes, sir," replied the doctor, smiling, "I accept everything that
+you say."
+
+"In that case," said Turnbull, rising genially, "we must not further
+interrupt your important duties. I suppose there will be someone to let
+us out?"
+
+"No," said the doctor, still smiling steadily and pleasantly, "there
+will be no one to let you out."
+
+"Can we let ourselves out, then?" asked Turnbull, in some surprise.
+
+"Why, of course not," said the beaming scientist; "think how dangerous
+that would be in a place like this."
+
+"Then, how the devil are we to get out?" cried Turnbull, losing his
+manners for the first time.
+
+"It is a question of time, of receptivity, and treatment," said the
+doctor, arching his eyebrows indifferently. "I do not regard either of
+your cases as incurable."
+
+And with that the man of the world was struck dumb, and, as in all
+intolerable moments, the word was with the unworldly.
+
+MacIan took one stride to the table, leant across it, and said: "We
+can't stop here, we're not mad people!"
+
+"We don't use the crude phrase," said the doctor, smiling at his
+patent-leather boots.
+
+"But you _can't_ think us mad," thundered MacIan. "You never saw us
+before. You know nothing about us. You haven't even examined us."
+
+The doctor threw back his head and beard. "Oh, yes," he said, "very
+thoroughly."
+
+"But you can't shut a man up on your mere impressions without documents
+or certificates or anything?"
+
+The doctor got languidly to his feet. "Quite so," he said. "You
+certainly ought to see the documents."
+
+He went across to the curious mock book-shelves and took down one of
+the flat mahogany cases. This he opened with a curious key at his
+watch-chain, and laying back a flap revealed a quire of foolscap covered
+with close but quite clear writing. The first three words were in such
+large copy-book hand that they caught the eye even at a distance. They
+were: "MacIan, Evan Stuart."
+
+Evan bent his angry eagle face over it; yet something blurred it and
+he could never swear he saw it distinctly. He saw something that began:
+"Prenatal influences predisposing to mania. Grandfather believed in
+return of the Stuarts. Mother carried bone of St. Eulalia with which she
+touched children in sickness. Marked religious mania at early age----"
+
+Evan fell back and fought for his speech. "Oh!" he burst out at last.
+"Oh! if all this world I have walked in had been as sane as my mother
+was."
+
+Then he compressed his temples with his hands, as if to crush them. And
+then lifted suddenly a face that looked fresh and young, as if he had
+dipped and washed it in some holy well.
+
+"Very well," he cried; "I will take the sour with the sweet. I will pay
+the penalty of having enjoyed God in this monstrous modern earth that
+cannot enjoy man or beast. I will die happy in your madhouse, only
+because I know what I know. Let it be granted, then--MacIan is a mystic;
+MacIan is a maniac. But this honest shopkeeper and editor whom I have
+dragged on my inhuman escapades, you cannot keep him. He will go free,
+thank God, he is not down in any damned document. His ancestor, I am
+certain, did not die at Culloden. His mother, I swear, had no relics.
+Let my friend out of your front door, and as for me----"
+
+The doctor had already gone across to the laden shelves, and after a few
+minutes' short-sighted peering, had pulled down another parallelogram of
+dark-red wood.
+
+This also he unlocked on the table, and with the same unerring
+egotistic eye on of the company saw the words, written in large letters:
+"Turnbull, James."
+
+Hitherto Turnbull himself had somewhat scornfully surrendered his part
+in the whole business; but he was too honest and unaffected not to
+start at his own name. After the name, the inscription appeared to run:
+"Unique case of Eleutheromania. Parentage, as so often in such cases,
+prosaic and healthy. Eleutheromaniac signs occurred early, however,
+leading him to attach himself to the individualist Bradlaugh. Recent
+outbreak of pure anarchy----"
+
+Turnbull slammed the case to, almost smashing it, and said with a burst
+of savage laughter: "Oh! come along, MacIan; I don't care so much, even
+about getting out of the madhouse, if only we get out of this room. You
+were right enough, MacIan, when you spoke about--about mad doctors."
+
+Somehow they found themselves outside in the cool, green garden, and
+then, after a stunned silence, Turnbull said: "There is one thing that
+was puzzling me all the time, and I understand it now."
+
+"What do you mean?" asked Evan.
+
+"No man by will or wit," answered Turnbull, "can get out of this garden;
+and yet we got into it merely by jumping over a garden wall. The whole
+thing explains itself easily enough. That undefended wall was an open
+trap. It was a trap laid for two celebrated lunatics. They saw us get in
+right enough. And they will see that we do not get out."
+
+Evan gazed at the garden wall, gravely for more than a minute, and then
+he nodded without a word.
+
+
+
+
+XV. THE DREAM OF MACIAN
+
+The system of espionage in the asylum was so effective and complete that
+in practice the patients could often enjoy a sense of almost complete
+solitude. They could stray up so near to the wall in an apparently
+unwatched garden as to find it easy to jump over it. They would only
+have found the error of their calculations if they had tried to jump.
+
+Under this insulting liberty, in this artificial loneliness, Evan MacIan
+was in the habit of creeping out into the garden after dark--especially
+upon moonlight nights. The moon, indeed, was for him always a positive
+magnet in a manner somewhat hard to explain to those of a robuster
+attitude. Evidently, Apollo is to the full as poetical as Diana; but it
+is not a question of poetry in the matured and intellectual sense of the
+word. It is a question of a certain solid and childish fancy. The sun is
+in the strict and literal sense invisible; that is to say, that by our
+bodily eyes it cannot properly be seen. But the moon is a much simpler
+thing; a naked and nursery sort of thing. It hangs in the sky quite
+solid and quite silver and quite useless; it is one huge celestial
+snowball. It was at least some such infantile facts and fancies which
+led Evan again and again during his dehumanized imprisonment to go out
+as if to shoot the moon.
+
+He was out in the garden on one such luminous and ghostly night, when
+the steady moonshine toned down all the colours of the garden until
+almost the strongest tints to be seen were the strong soft blue of the
+sky and the large lemon moon. He was walking with his face turned up to
+it in that rather half-witted fashion which might have excused the error
+of his keepers; and as he gazed he became aware of something little and
+lustrous flying close to the lustrous orb, like a bright chip knocked
+off the moon. At first he thought it was a mere sparkle or refraction
+in his own eyesight; he blinked and cleared his eyes. Then he thought
+it was a falling star; only it did not fall. It jerked awkwardly up and
+down in a way unknown among meteors and strangely reminiscent of the
+works of man. The next moment the thing drove right across the moon,
+and from being silver upon blue, suddenly became black upon silver;
+then although it passed the field of light in a flash its outline was
+unmistakable though eccentric. It was a flying ship.
+
+The vessel took one long and sweeping curve across the sky and came
+nearer and nearer to MacIan, like a steam-engine coming round a bend. It
+was of pure white steel, and in the moon it gleamed like the armour of
+Sir Galahad. The simile of such virginity is not inappropriate; for, as
+it grew larger and larger and lower and lower, Evan saw that the only
+figure in it was robed in white from head to foot and crowned with
+snow-white hair, on which the moonshine lay like a benediction. The
+figure stood so still that he could easily have supposed it to be a
+statue. Indeed, he thought it was until it spoke.
+
+"Evan," said the voice, and it spoke with the simple authority of some
+forgotten father revisiting his children, "you have remained here long
+enough, and your sword is wanted elsewhere."
+
+"Wanted for what?" asked the young man, accepting the monstrous event
+with a queer and clumsy naturalness; "what is my sword wanted for?"
+
+"For all that you hold dear," said the man standing in the moonlight;
+"for the thrones of authority and for all ancient loyalty to law."
+
+Evan looked up at the lunar orb again as if in irrational appeal--a moon
+calf bleating to his mother the moon. But the face of Luna seemed as
+witless as his own; there is no help in nature against the supernatural;
+and he looked again at the tall marble figure that might have been made
+out of solid moonlight.
+
+Then he said in a loud voice: "Who are you?" and the next moment was
+seized by a sort of choking terror lest his question should be answered.
+But the unknown preserved an impenetrable silence for a long space and
+then only answered: "I must not say who I am until the end of the world;
+but I may say what I am. I am the law."
+
+And he lifted his head so that the moon smote full upon his beautiful
+and ancient face.
+
+The face was the face of a Greek god grown old, but not grown either
+weak or ugly; there was nothing to break its regularity except a rather
+long chin with a cleft in it, and this rather added distinction than
+lessened beauty. His strong, well-opened eyes were very brilliant but
+quite colourless like steel.
+
+MacIan was one of those to whom a reverence and self-submission in
+ritual come quite easy, and are ordinary things. It was not artificial
+in him to bend slightly to this solemn apparition or to lower his voice
+when he said: "Do you bring me some message?"
+
+"I do bring you a message," answered the man of moon and marble. "The
+king has returned."
+
+Evan did not ask for or require any explanation. "I suppose you can take
+me to the war," he said, and the silent silver figure only bowed its
+head again. MacIan clambered into the silver boat, and it rose upward to
+the stars.
+
+To say that it rose to the stars is no mere metaphor, for the sky had
+cleared to that occasional and astonishing transparency in which one can
+see plainly both stars and moon.
+
+As the white-robed figure went upward in his white chariot, he said
+quite quietly to Evan: "There is an answer to all the folly talked about
+equality. Some stars are big and some small; some stand still and some
+circle around them as they stand. They can be orderly, but they cannot
+be equal."
+
+"They are all very beautiful," said Evan, as if in doubt.
+
+"They are all beautiful," answered the other, "because each is in his
+place and owns his superior. And now England will be beautiful after the
+same fashion. The earth will be as beautiful as the heavens, because our
+kings have come back to us."
+
+"The Stuart----" began Evan, earnestly.
+
+"Yes," answered the old man, "that which has returned is Stuart and yet
+older than Stuart. It is Capet and Plantagenet and Pendragon. It is all
+that good old time of which proverbs tell, that golden reign of Saturn
+against which gods and men were rebels. It is all that was ever lost
+by insolence and overwhelmed in rebellion. It is your own forefather,
+MacIan with the broken sword, bleeding without hope at Culloden. It is
+Charles refusing to answer the questions of the rebel court. It is Mary
+of the magic face confronting the gloomy and grasping peers and the
+boorish moralities of Knox. It is Richard, the last Plantagenet,
+giving his crown to Bolingbroke as to a common brigand. It is Arthur,
+overwhelmed in Lyonesse by heathen armies and dying in the mist,
+doubtful if ever he shall return."
+
+"But now----" said Evan, in a low voice.
+
+"But now!" said the old man; "he has returned."
+
+"Is the war still raging?" asked MacIan.
+
+"It rages like the pit itself beyond the sea whither I am taking you,"
+answered the other. "But in England the king enjoys his own again.
+The people are once more taught and ruled as is best; they are happy
+knights, happy squires, happy servants, happy serfs, if you will; but
+free at last of that load of vexation and lonely vanity which was called
+being a citizen."
+
+"Is England, indeed, so secure?" asked Evan.
+
+"Look out and see," said the guide. "I fancy you have seen this place
+before."
+
+They were driving through the air towards one region of the sky where
+the hollow of night seemed darkest and which was quite without stars.
+But against this black background there sprang up, picked out in
+glittering silver, a dome and a cross. It seemed that it was really
+newly covered with silver, which in the strong moonlight was like
+white flame. But, however, covered or painted, Evan had no difficult
+in knowing the place again. He saw the great thoroughfare that sloped
+upward to the base of its huge pedestal of steps. And he wondered
+whether the little shop was still by the side of it and whether its
+window had been mended.
+
+As the flying ship swept round the dome he observed other alterations.
+The dome had been redecorated so as to give it a more solemn and
+somewhat more ecclesiastical note; the ball was draped or destroyed,
+and round the gallery, under the cross, ran what looked like a ring of
+silver statues, like the little leaden images that stood round the hat
+of Louis XI. Round the second gallery, at the base of the dome, ran a
+second rank of such images, and Evan thought there was another round
+the steps below. When they came closer he saw that they were figures
+in complete armour of steel or silver, each with a naked sword, point
+upward; and then he saw one of the swords move. These were not statues
+but an armed order of chivalry thrown in three circles round the cross.
+MacIan drew in his breath, as children do at anything they think utterly
+beautiful. For he could imagine nothing that so echoed his own visions
+of pontifical or chivalric art as this white dome sitting like a vast
+silver tiara over London, ringed with a triple crown of swords.
+
+As they went sailing down Ludgate Hill, Evan saw that the state of the
+streets fully answered his companion's claim about the reintroduction
+of order. All the old blackcoated bustle with its cockney vivacity
+and vulgarity had disappeared. Groups of labourers, quietly but
+picturesquely clad, were passing up and down in sufficiently large
+numbers; but it required but a few mounted men to keep the streets in
+order. The mounted men were not common policemen, but knights with spurs
+and plume whose smooth and splendid armour glittered like diamond rather
+than steel. Only in one place--at the corner of Bouverie Street--did
+there appear to be a moment's confusion, and that was due to hurry
+rather than resistance. But one old grumbling man did not get out of
+the way quick enough, and the man on horseback struck him, not severely,
+across the shoulders with the flat of his sword.
+
+"The soldier had no business to do that," said MacIan, sharply. "The old
+man was moving as quickly as he could."
+
+"We attach great importance to discipline in the streets," said the man
+in white, with a slight smile.
+
+"Discipline is not so important as justice," said MacIan.
+
+The other did not answer.
+
+Then after a swift silence that took them out across St. James's Park,
+he said: "The people must be taught to obey; they must learn their own
+ignorance. And I am not sure," he continued, turning his back on Evan
+and looking out of the prow of the ship into the darkness, "I am not
+sure that I agree with your little maxim about justice. Discipline
+for the whole society is surely more important than justice to an
+individual."
+
+Evan, who was also leaning over the edge, swung round with startling
+suddenness and stared at the other's back.
+
+"Discipline for society----" he repeated, very staccato, "more
+important--justice to individual?"
+
+Then after a long silence he called out: "Who and what are you?"
+
+"I am an angel," said the white-robed figure, without turning round.
+
+"You are not a Catholic," said MacIan.
+
+The other seemed to take no notice, but reverted to the main topic.
+
+"In our armies up in heaven we learn to put a wholesome fear into
+subordinates."
+
+MacIan sat craning his neck forward with an extraordinary and
+unaccountable eagerness.
+
+"Go on!" he cried, twisting and untwisting his long, bony fingers, "go
+on!"
+
+"Besides," continued he, in the prow, "you must allow for a certain high
+spirit and haughtiness in the superior type."
+
+"Go on!" said Evan, with burning eyes.
+
+"Just as the sight of sin offends God," said the unknown, "so does the
+sight of ugliness offend Apollo. The beautiful and princely must, of
+necessity, be impatient with the squalid and----"
+
+"Why, you great fool!" cried MacIan, rising to the top of his tremendous
+stature, "did you think I would have doubted only for that rap with a
+sword? I know that noble orders have bad knights, that good knights have
+bad tempers, that the Church has rough priests and coarse cardinals;
+I have known it ever since I was born. You fool! you had only to say,
+'Yes, it is rather a shame,' and I should have forgotten the affair. But
+I saw on your mouth the twitch of your infernal sophistry; I knew that
+something was wrong with you and your cathedrals. Something is wrong;
+everything is wrong. You are not an angel. That is not a church. It is
+not the rightful king who has come home."
+
+"That is unfortunate," said the other, in a quiet but hard voice,
+"because you are going to see his Majesty."
+
+"No," said MacIan, "I am going to jump over the side."
+
+"Do you desire death?"
+
+"No," said Evan, quite composedly, "I desire a miracle."
+
+"From whom do you ask it? To whom do you appeal?" said his companion,
+sternly. "You have betrayed the king, renounced his cross on the
+cathedral, and insulted an archangel."
+
+"I appeal to God," said Evan, and sprang up and stood upon the edge of
+the swaying ship.
+
+The being in the prow turned slowly round; he looked at Evan with eyes
+which were like two suns, and put his hand to his mouth just too late to
+hide an awful smile.
+
+"And how do you know," he said, "how do you know that I am not God?"
+
+MacIan screamed. "Ah!" he cried. "Now I know who you really are. You are
+not God. You are not one of God's angels. But you were once."
+
+The being's hand dropped from his mouth and Evan dropped out of the car.
+
+
+
+
+XVI. THE DREAM OF TURNBULL
+
+Turnbull was walking rather rampantly up and down the garden on a gusty
+evening chewing his cigar and in that mood when every man suppresses
+an instinct to spit. He was not, as a rule, a man much acquainted with
+moods; and the storms and sunbursts of MacIan's soul passed before him
+as an impressive but unmeaning panorama, like the anarchy of Highland
+scenery. Turnbull was one of those men in whom a continuous appetite and
+industry of the intellect leave the emotions very simple and steady.
+His heart was in the right place; but he was quite content to leave it
+there. It was his head that was his hobby. His mornings and evenings
+were marked not by impulses or thirsty desires, not by hope or by
+heart-break; they were filled with the fallacies he had detected, the
+problems he had made plain, the adverse theories he had wrestled with
+and thrown, the grand generalizations he had justified. But even the
+cheerful inner life of a logician may be upset by a lunatic asylum, to
+say nothing of whiffs of memory from a lady in Jersey, and the little
+red-bearded man on this windy evening was in a dangerous frame of mind.
+
+Plain and positive as he was, the influence of earth and sky may have
+been greater on him than he imagined; and the weather that walked the
+world at that moment was as red and angry as Turnbull. Long strips and
+swirls of tattered and tawny cloud were dragged downward to the west
+exactly as torn red raiment would be dragged. And so strong and pitiless
+was the wind that it whipped away fragments of red-flowering bushes or
+of copper beech, and drove them also across the garden, a drift of red
+leaves, like the leaves of autumn, as in parody of the red and driven
+rags of cloud.
+
+There was a sense in earth and heaven as of everything breaking up, and
+all the revolutionist in Turnbull rejoiced that it was breaking up.
+The trees were breaking up under the wind, even in the tall strength
+of their bloom: the clouds were breaking up and losing even their large
+heraldic shapes. Shards and shreds of copper cloud split off continually
+and floated by themselves, and for some reason the truculent eye of
+Turnbull was attracted to one of these careering cloudlets, which seemed
+to him to career in an exaggerated manner. Also it kept its shape, which
+is unusual with clouds shaken off; also its shape was of an odd sort.
+
+Turnbull continued to stare at it, and in a little time occurred that
+crucial instant when a thing, however incredible, is accepted as a fact.
+The copper cloud was tumbling down towards the earth, like some gigantic
+leaf from the copper beeches. And as it came nearer it was evident,
+first, that it was not a cloud, and, second, that it was not itself
+of the colour of copper; only, being burnished like a mirror, it had
+reflected the red-brown colours of the burning clouds. As the thing
+whirled like a windswept leaf down towards the wall of the garden it was
+clear that it was some sort of air-ship made of metal, and slapping
+the air with big broad fins of steel. When it came about a hundred feet
+above the garden, a shaggy, lean figure leapt up in it, almost black
+against the bronze and scarlet of the west, and, flinging out a kind of
+hook or anchor, caught on to the green apple-tree just under the wall;
+and from that fixed holding ground the ship swung in the red tempest
+like a captive balloon.
+
+While our friend stood frozen for an instant by his astonishment, the
+queer figure in the airy car tipped the vehicle almost upside down by
+leaping over the side of it, seemed to slide or drop down the rope like
+a monkey, and alighted (with impossible precision and placidity) seated
+on the edge of the wall, over which he kicked and dangled his legs as he
+grinned at Turnbull. The wind roared in the trees yet more ruinous and
+desolate, the red tails of the sunset were dragged downward like red
+dragons sucked down to death, and still on the top of the asylum wall
+sat the sinister figure with the grimace, swinging his feet in tune with
+the tempest; while above him, at the end of its tossing or tightened
+cord, the enormous iron air-ship floated as light and as little noticed
+as a baby's balloon upon its string.
+
+Turnbull's first movement after sixty motionless seconds was to turn
+round and look at the large, luxuriant parallelogram of the garden and
+the long, low rectangular building beyond. There was not a soul or a
+stir of life within sight. And he had a quite meaningless sensation, as
+if there never really had been any one else there except he since the
+foundation of the world.
+
+Stiffening in himself the masculine but mirthless courage of the
+atheist, he drew a little nearer to the wall and, catching the man at
+a slightly different angle of the evening light, could see his face and
+figure quite plain. Two facts about him stood out in the picked colours
+of some piratical schoolboy's story. The first was that his lean brown
+body was bare to the belt of his loose white trousers; the other that
+through hygiene, affectation, or whatever other cause, he had a scarlet
+handkerchief tied tightly but somewhat aslant across his brow. After
+these two facts had become emphatic, others appeared sufficiently
+important. One was that under the scarlet rag the hair was plentiful,
+but white as with the last snows of mortality. Another was that under
+the mop of white and senile hair the face was strong, handsome, and
+smiling, with a well-cut profile and a long cloven chin. The length of
+this lower part of the face and the strange cleft in it (which gave the
+man, in quite another sense from the common one, a double chin) faintly
+spoilt the claim of the face to absolute regularity, but it greatly
+assisted it in wearing the expression of half-smiling and half-sneering
+arrogance with which it was staring at all the stones, all the flowers,
+but especially at the solitary man.
+
+"What do you want?" shouted Turnbull.
+
+"I want you, Jimmy," said the eccentric man on the wall, and with the
+very word he had let himself down with a leap on to the centre of the
+lawn, where he bounded once literally like an India-rubber ball and then
+stood grinning with his legs astride. The only three facts that Turnbull
+could now add to his inventory were that the man had an ugly-looking
+knife swinging at his trousers belt, that his brown feet were as bare
+as his bronzed trunk and arms, and that his eyes had a singular bleak
+brilliancy which was of no particular colour.
+
+"Excuse my not being in evening dress," said the newcomer with an
+urbane smile. "We scientific men, you know--I have to work my own
+engines--electrical engineer--very hot work."
+
+"Look here," said Turnbull, sturdily clenching his fists in his trousers
+pockets, "I am bound to expect lunatics inside these four walls; but I
+do bar their coming from outside, bang out of the sunset clouds."
+
+"And yet you came from the outside, too, Jim," said the stranger in a
+voice almost affectionate.
+
+"What do you want?" asked Turnbull, with an explosion of temper as
+sudden as a pistol shot.
+
+"I have already told you," said the man, lowering his voice and speaking
+with evident sincerity; "I want you."
+
+"What do you want with me?"
+
+"I want exactly what you want," said the new-comer with a new gravity.
+"I want the Revolution."
+
+Turnbull looked at the fire-swept sky and the wind-stricken woodlands,
+and kept on repeating the word voicelessly to himself--the word that did
+indeed so thoroughly express his mood of rage as it had been among those
+red clouds and rocking tree-tops. "Revolution!" he said to himself. "The
+Revolution--yes, that is what I want right enough--anything, so long as
+it is a Revolution."
+
+To some cause he could never explain he found himself completing the
+sentence on the top of the wall, having automatically followed the
+stranger so far. But when the stranger silently indicated the rope that
+led to the machine, he found himself pausing and saying: "I can't leave
+MacIan behind in this den."
+
+"We are going to destroy the Pope and all the kings," said the
+new-comer. "Would it be wiser to take him with us?"
+
+Somehow the muttering Turnbull found himself in the flying ship also,
+and it swung up into the sunset.
+
+"All the great rebels have been very little rebels," said the man with
+the red scarf. "They have been like fourth-form boys who sometimes
+venture to hit a fifth-form boy. That was all the worth of their
+French Revolution and regicide. The boys never really dared to defy the
+schoolmaster."
+
+"Whom do you mean by the schoolmaster?" asked Turnbull.
+
+"You know whom I mean," answered the strange man, as he lay back on
+cushions and looked up into the angry sky.
+
+They seemed rising into stronger and stronger sunlight, as if it were
+sunrise rather than sunset. But when they looked down at the earth
+they saw it growing darker and darker. The lunatic asylum in its large
+rectangular grounds spread below them in a foreshortened and infantile
+plan, and looked for the first time the grotesque thing that it was.
+But the clear colours of the plan were growing darker every moment. The
+masses of rose or rhododendron deepened from crimson to violet. The maze
+of gravel pathways faded from gold to brown. By the time they had
+risen a few hundred feet higher nothing could be seen of that darkening
+landscape except the lines of lighted windows, each one of which, at
+least, was the light of one lost intelligence. But on them as they swept
+upward better and braver winds seemed to blow, and on them the ruby
+light of evening seemed struck, and splashed like red spurts from the
+grapes of Dionysus. Below them the fallen lights were literally the
+fallen stars of servitude. And above them all the red and raging clouds
+were like the leaping flags of liberty.
+
+The man with the cloven chin seemed to have a singular power of
+understanding thoughts; for, as Turnbull felt the whole universe tilt
+and turn over his head, the stranger said exactly the right thing.
+
+"Doesn't it seem as if everything were being upset?" said he; "and if
+once everything is upset, He will be upset on top of it."
+
+Then, as Turnbull made no answer, his host continued:
+
+"That is the really fine thing about space. It is topsy-turvy. You have
+only to climb far enough towards the morning star to feel that you are
+coming down to it. You have only to dive deep enough into the abyss to
+feel that you are rising. That is the only glory of this universe--it is
+a giddy universe."
+
+Then, as Turnbull was still silent, he added:
+
+"The heavens are full of revolution--of the real sort of revolution. All
+the high things are sinking low and all the big things looking small.
+All the people who think they are aspiring find they are falling head
+foremost. And all the people who think they are condescending find they
+are climbing up a precipice. That is the intoxication of space. That is
+the only joy of eternity--doubt. There is only one pleasure the angels
+can possibly have in flying, and that is, that they do not know whether
+they are on their head or their heels."
+
+Then, finding his companion still mute, he fell himself into a smiling
+and motionless meditation, at the end of which he said suddenly:
+
+"So MacIan converted you?"
+
+Turnbull sprang up as if spurning the steel car from under his feet.
+"Converted me!" he cried. "What the devil do you mean? I have known him
+for a month, and I have not retracted a single----"
+
+"This Catholicism is a curious thing," said the man of the cloven chin
+in uninterrupted reflectiveness, leaning his elegant elbows over the
+edge of the vessel; "it soaks and weakens men without their knowing it,
+just as I fear it has soaked and weakened you."
+
+Turnbull stood in an attitude which might well have meant pitching the
+other man out of the flying ship.
+
+"I am an atheist," he said, in a stifled voice. "I have always been an
+atheist. I am still an atheist." Then, addressing the other's indolent
+and indifferent back, he cried: "In God's name what do you mean?"
+
+And the other answered without turning round:
+
+"I mean nothing in God's name."
+
+Turnbull spat over the edge of the car and fell back furiously into his
+seat.
+
+The other continued still unruffled, and staring over the edge idly as
+an angler stares down at a stream.
+
+"The truth is that we never thought that you could have been caught,"
+he said; "we counted on you as the one red-hot revolutionary left in
+the world. But, of course, these men like MacIan are awfully clever,
+especially when they pretend to be stupid."
+
+Turnbull leapt up again in a living fury and cried: "What have I got to
+do with MacIan? I believe all I ever believed, and disbelieve all I
+ever disbelieved. What does all this mean, and what do you want with me
+here?"
+
+Then for the first time the other lifted himself from the edge of the
+car and faced him.
+
+"I have brought you here," he answered, "to take part in the last war of
+the world."
+
+"The last war!" repeated Turnbull, even in his dazed state a little
+touchy about such a dogma; "how do you know it will be the last?"
+
+The man laid himself back in his reposeful attitude, and said:
+
+"It is the last war, because if it does not cure the world for ever, it
+will destroy it."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"I only mean what you mean," answered the unknown in a temperate voice.
+"What was it that you always meant on those million and one nights when
+you walked outside your Ludgate Hill shop and shook your hand in the
+air?"
+
+"Still I do not see," said Turnbull, stubbornly.
+
+"You will soon," said the other, and abruptly bent downward one iron
+handle of his huge machine. The engine stopped, stooped, and dived
+almost as deliberately as a man bathing; in their downward rush they
+swept within fifty yards of a big bulk of stone that Turnbull knew only
+too well. The last red anger of the sunset was ended; the dome of heaven
+was dark; the lanes of flaring light in the streets below hardly lit up
+the base of the building. But he saw that it was St. Paul's Cathedral,
+and he saw that on the top of it the ball was still standing erect, but
+the cross was stricken and had fallen sideways. Then only he cared to
+look down into the streets, and saw that they were inflamed with uproar
+and tossing passions.
+
+"We arrive at a happy moment," said the man steering the ship. "The
+insurgents are bombarding the city, and a cannon-ball has just hit the
+cross. Many of the insurgents are simple people, and they naturally
+regard it as a happy omen."
+
+"Quite so," said Turnbull, in a rather colourless voice.
+
+"Yes," replied the other. "I thought you would be glad to see your
+prayer answered. Of course I apologize for the word prayer."
+
+"Don't mention it," said Turnbull.
+
+The flying ship had come down upon a sort of curve, and was now rising
+again. The higher and higher it rose the broader and broader became the
+scenes of flame and desolation underneath.
+
+Ludgate Hill indeed had been an uncaptured and comparatively quiet
+height, altered only by the startling coincidence of the cross fallen
+awry. All the other thoroughfares on all sides of that hill were full
+of the pulsation and the pain of battle, full of shaking torches and
+shouting faces. When at length they had risen high enough to have a
+bird's-eye view of the whole campaign, Turnbull was already intoxicated.
+He had smelt gunpowder, which was the incense of his own revolutionary
+religion.
+
+"Have the people really risen?" he asked, breathlessly. "What are they
+fighting about?"
+
+"The programme is rather elaborate," said his entertainer with some
+indifference. "I think Dr. Hertz drew it up."
+
+Turnbull wrinkled his forehead. "Are all the poor people with the
+Revolution?" he asked.
+
+The other shrugged his shoulders. "All the instructed and
+class-conscious part of them without exception," he replied. "There
+were certainly a few districts; in fact, we are passing over them just
+now----"
+
+Turnbull looked down and saw that the polished car was literally lit
+up from underneath by the far-flung fires from below. Underneath whole
+squares and solid districts were in flames, like prairies or forests on
+fire.
+
+"Dr. Hertz has convinced everybody," said Turnbull's cicerone in a
+smooth voice, "that nothing can really be done with the real slums. His
+celebrated maxim has been quite adopted. I mean the three celebrated
+sentences: 'No man should be unemployed. Employ the employables. Destroy
+the unemployables.'"
+
+There was a silence, and then Turnbull said in a rather strained voice:
+"And do I understand that this good work is going on under here?"
+
+"Going on splendidly," replied his companion in the heartiest voice.
+"You see, these people were much too tired and weak even to join the
+social war. They were a definite hindrance to it."
+
+"And so you are simply burning them out?"
+
+"It _does_ seem absurdly simple," said the man, with a beaming smile,
+"when one thinks of all the worry and talk about helping a hopeless
+slave population, when the future obviously was only crying to be rid of
+them. There are happy babes unborn ready to burst the doors when these
+drivellers are swept away."
+
+"Will you permit me to say," said Turnbull, after reflection, "that I
+don't like all this?"
+
+"And will you permit me to say," said the other, with a snap, "that I
+don't like Mr. Evan MacIan?"
+
+Somewhat to the speaker's surprise this did not inflame the sensitive
+sceptic; he had the air of thinking thoroughly, and then he said: "No, I
+don't think it's my friend MacIan that taught me that. I think I should
+always have said that I don't like this. These people have rights."
+
+"Rights!" repeated the unknown in a tone quite indescribable. Then he
+added with a more open sneer: "Perhaps they also have souls."
+
+"They have lives!" said Turnbull, sternly; "that is quite enough for me.
+I understood you to say that you thought life sacred."
+
+"Yes, indeed!" cried his mentor with a sort of idealistic animation.
+"Yes, indeed! Life is sacred--but lives are not sacred. We are improving
+Life by removing lives. Can you, as a free-thinker, find any fault in
+that?"
+
+"Yes," said Turnbull with brevity.
+
+"Yet you applaud tyrannicide," said the stranger with rationalistic
+gaiety. "How inconsistent! It really comes to this: You approve of
+taking away life from those to whom it is a triumph and a pleasure.
+But you will not take away life from those to whom it is a burden and a
+toil."
+
+Turnbull rose to his feet in the car with considerable deliberation, but
+his face seemed oddly pale. The other went on with enthusiasm.
+
+"Life, yes, Life is indeed sacred!" he cried; "but new lives for old!
+Good lives for bad! On that very place where now there sprawls one
+drunken wastrel of a pavement artist more or less wishing he were
+dead--on that very spot there shall in the future be living pictures;
+there shall be golden girls and boys leaping in the sun."
+
+Turnbull, still standing up, opened his lips. "Will you put me down,
+please?" he said, quite calmly, like on stopping an omnibus.
+
+"Put you down--what do you mean?" cried his leader. "I am taking you to
+the front of the revolutionary war, where you will be one of the first
+of the revolutionary leaders."
+
+"Thank you," replied Turnbull with the same painful constraint. "I have
+heard about your revolutionary war, and I think on the whole that I
+would rather be anywhere else."
+
+"Do you want to be taken to a monastery," snarled the other, "with
+MacIan and his winking Madonnas."
+
+"I want to be taken to a madhouse," said Turnbull distinctly, giving the
+direction with a sort of precision. "I want to go back to exactly the
+same lunatic asylum from which I came."
+
+"Why?" asked the unknown.
+
+"Because I want a little sane and wholesome society," answered Turnbull.
+
+There was a long and peculiar silence, and then the man driving the
+flying machine said quite coolly: "I won't take you back."
+
+And then Turnbull said equally coolly: "Then I'll jump out of the car."
+
+The unknown rose to his full height, and the expression in his eyes
+seemed to be made of ironies behind ironies, as two mirrors infinitely
+reflect each other. At last he said, very gravely: "Do you think I am
+the devil?"
+
+"Yes," said Turnbull, violently. "For I think the devil is a dream,
+and so are you. I don't believe in you or your flying ship or your last
+fight of the world. It is all a nightmare. I say as a fact of dogma and
+faith that it is all a nightmare. And I will be a martyr for my faith as
+much as St. Catherine, for I will jump out of this ship and risk waking
+up safe in bed."
+
+After swaying twice with the swaying vessel he dived over the side as
+one dives into the sea. For some incredible moments stars and space and
+planets seemed to shoot up past him as the sparks fly upward; and yet in
+that sickening descent he was full of some unnatural happiness. He could
+connect it with no idea except one that half escaped him--what Evan had
+said of the difference between Christ and Satan; that it was by Christ's
+own choice that He descended into hell.
+
+When he again realized anything, he was lying on his elbow on the
+lawn of the lunatic asylum, and the last red of the sunset had not yet
+disappeared.
+
+
+
+
+XVII. THE IDIOT
+
+Evan MacIan was standing a few yards off looking at him in absolute
+silence.
+
+He had not the moral courage to ask MacIan if there had been anything
+astounding in the manner of his coming there, nor did MacIan seem to
+have any question to ask, or perhaps any need to ask it. The two men
+came slowly towards each other, and found the same expression on each
+other's faces. Then, for the first time in all their acquaintance, they
+shook hands.
+
+Almost as if this were a kind of unconscious signal, it brought Dr.
+Quayle bounding out of a door and running across the lawn.
+
+"Oh, there you are!" he exclaimed with a relieved giggle. "Will you come
+inside, please? I want to speak to you both."
+
+They followed him into his shiny wooden office where their damning
+record was kept. Dr. Quayle sat down on a swivel chair and swung round
+to face them. His carved smile had suddenly disappeared.
+
+"I will be plain with you gentlemen," he said, abruptly; "you know
+quite well we do our best for everybody here. Your cases have been under
+special consideration, and the Master himself has decided that you ought
+to be treated specially and--er--under somewhat simpler conditions."
+
+"You mean treated worse, I suppose," said Turnbull, gruffly.
+
+The doctor did not reply, and MacIan said: "I expected this." His eyes
+had begun to glow.
+
+The doctor answered, looking at his desk and playing with a key: "Well,
+in certain cases that give anxiety--it is often better----"
+
+"Give anxiety," said Turnbull, fiercely. "Confound your impudence! What
+do you mean? You imprison two perfectly sane men in a madhouse because
+you have made up a long word. They take it in good temper, walk and talk
+in your garden like monks who have found a vocation, are civil even to
+you, you damned druggists' hack! Behave not only more sanely than any of
+your patients, but more sanely than half the sane men outside, and you
+have the soul-stifling cheek to say that they give anxiety."
+
+"The head of the asylum has settled it all," said Dr. Quayle, still
+looking down.
+
+MacIan took one of his immense strides forward and stood over the doctor
+with flaming eyes.
+
+"If the head has settled it let the head announce it," he said. "I won't
+take it from you. I believe you to be a low, gibbering degenerate. Let
+us see the head of the asylum."
+
+"See the head of the asylum," repeated Dr. Quayle. "Certainly not."
+
+The tall Highlander, bending over him, put one hand on his shoulder with
+fatherly interest.
+
+"You don't seem to appreciate the peculiar advantages of my position as
+a lunatic," he said. "I could kill you with my left hand before such a
+rat as you could so much as squeak. And I wouldn't be hanged for it."
+
+"I certainly agree with Mr. MacIan," said Turnbull with sobriety and
+perfect respectfulness, "that you had better let us see the head of the
+institution."
+
+Dr. Quayle got to his feet in a mixture of sudden hysteria and clumsy
+presence of mind.
+
+"Oh, certainly," he said with a weak laugh. "You can see the head of the
+asylum if you particularly want to." He almost ran out of the room,
+and the two followed swiftly on his flying coat tails. He knocked at an
+ordinary varnished door in the corridor. When a voice said, "Come in,"
+MacIan's breath went hissing back through his teeth into his chest.
+Turnbull was more impetuous, and opened the door.
+
+It was a neat and well-appointed room entirely lined with a medical
+library. At the other end of it was a ponderous and polished desk with
+an incandescent lamp on it, the light of which was just sufficient
+to show a slender, well-bred figure in an ordinary medical black
+frock-coat, whose head, quite silvered with age, was bent over neat
+piles of notes. This gentleman looked up for an instant as they
+entered, and the lamplight fell on his glittering spectacles and
+long, clean-shaven face--a face which would have been simply like an
+aristocrat's but that a certain lion poise of the head and long cleft in
+the chin made it look more like a very handsome actor's. It was only for
+a flash that his face was thus lifted. Then he bent his silver head over
+his notes once more, and said, without looking up again:
+
+"I told you, Dr. Quayle, that these men were to go to cells B and C."
+
+Turnbull and MacIan looked at each other, and said more than they could
+ever say with tongues or swords. Among other things they said that
+to that particular Head of the institution it was a waste of time to
+appeal, and they followed Dr. Quayle out of the room.
+
+The instant they stepped out into the corridor four sturdy figures
+stepped from four sides, pinioned them, and ran them along the
+galleries. They might very likely have thrown their captors right and
+left had they been inclined to resist, but for some nameless reason
+they were more inclined to laugh. A mixture of mad irony with childish
+curiosity made them feel quite inclined to see what next twist would
+be taken by their imbecile luck. They were dragged down countless cold
+avenues lined with glazed tiles, different only in being of different
+lengths and set at different angles. They were so many and so monotonous
+that to escape back by them would have been far harder than fleeing from
+the Hampton Court maze. Only the fact that windows grew fewer, coming
+at longer intervals, and the fact that when the windows did come they
+seemed shadowed and let in less light, showed that they were winding
+into the core or belly of some enormous building. After a little time
+the glazed corridors began to be lit by electricity.
+
+At last, when they had walked nearly a mile in those white and polished
+tunnels, they came with quite a shock to the futile finality of a
+cul-de-sac. All that white and weary journey ended suddenly in an oblong
+space and a blank white wall. But in the white wall there were two iron
+doors painted white on which were written, respectively, in neat black
+capitals B and C.
+
+"You go in here, sir," said the leader of the officials, quite
+respectfully, "and you in here."
+
+But before the doors had clanged upon their dazed victims, MacIan had
+been able to say to Turnbull with a strange drawl of significance: "I
+wonder who A is."
+
+Turnbull made an automatic struggle before he allowed himself to be
+thrown into the cell. Hence it happened that he was the last to enter,
+and was still full of the exhilaration of the adventures for at least
+five minutes after the echo of the clanging door had died away.
+
+Then, when silence had sunk deep and nothing happened for two and a half
+hours, it suddenly occurred to him that this was the end of his life. He
+was hidden and sealed up in this little crack of stone until the flesh
+should fall off his bones. He was dead, and the world had won.
+
+His cell was of an oblong shape, but very long in comparison with its
+width. It was just wide enough to permit the arms to be fully extended
+with the dumb-bells, which were hung up on the left wall, very dusty. It
+was, however, long enough for a man to walk one thirty-fifth part of a
+mile if he traversed it entirely. On the same principle a row of fixed
+holes, quite close together, let in to the cells by pipes what was
+alleged to be the freshest air. For these great scientific organizers
+insisted that a man should be healthy even if he was miserable. They
+provided a walk long enough to give him exercise and holes large enough
+to give him oxygen. There their interest in human nature suddenly
+ceased. It seemed never to have occurred to them that the benefit
+of exercise belongs partly to the benefit of liberty. They had not
+entertained the suggestion that the open air is only one of the
+advantages of the open sky. They administered air in secret, but in
+sufficient doses, as if it were a medicine. They suggested walking,
+as if no man had ever felt inclined to walk. Above all, the asylum
+authorities insisted on their own extraordinary cleanliness. Every
+morning, while Turnbull was still half asleep on his iron bedstead
+which was lifted half-way up the wall and clamped to it with iron, four
+sluices or metal mouths opened above him at the four corners of the
+chamber and washed it white of any defilement. Turnbull's solitary soul
+surged up against this sickening daily solemnity.
+
+"I am buried alive!" he cried, bitterly; "they have hidden me under
+mountains. I shall be here till I rot. Why the blazes should it matter
+to them whether I am dirty or clean."
+
+Every morning and evening an iron hatchway opened in his oblong cell,
+and a brown hairy hand or two thrust in a plate of perfectly cooked
+lentils and a big bowl of cocoa. He was not underfed any more than he
+was underexercised or asphyxiated. He had ample walking space, ample
+air, ample and even filling food. The only objection was that he had
+nothing to walk towards, nothing to feast about, and no reason whatever
+for drawing the breath of life.
+
+Even the shape of his cell especially irritated him. It was a long,
+narrow parallelogram, which had a flat wall at one end and ought to
+have had a flat wall at the other; but that end was broken by a wedge or
+angle of space, like the prow of a ship. After three days of silence and
+cocoa, this angle at the end began to infuriate Turnbull. It maddened
+him to think that two lines came together and pointed at nothing. After
+the fifth day he was reckless, and poked his head into the corner. After
+twenty-five days he almost broke his head against it. Then he became
+quite cool and stupid again, and began to examine it like a sort of
+Robinson Crusoe.
+
+Almost unconsciously it was his instinct to examine outlets, and he
+found himself paying particular attention to the row of holes which let
+in the air into his last house of life. He soon discovered that these
+air-holes were all the ends and mouths of long leaden tubes which
+doubtless carried air from some remote watering-place near Margate.
+One evening while he was engaged in the fifth investigation he noticed
+something like twilight in one of these dumb mouths, as compared with
+the darkness of the others. Thrusting his finger in as far as it would
+go, he found a hole and flapping edge in the tube. This he rent open and
+instantly saw a light behind; it was at least certain that he had struck
+some other cell.
+
+It is a characteristic of all things now called "efficient", which means
+mechanical and calculated, that if they go wrong at all they go entirely
+wrong. There is no power of retrieving a defeat, as in simpler and more
+living organisms. A strong gun can conquer a strong elephant, but a
+wounded elephant can easily conquer a broken gun. Thus the Prussian
+monarchy in the eighteenth century, or now, can make a strong army
+merely by making the men afraid. But it does it with the permanent
+possibility that the men may some day be more afraid of their enemies
+than of their officers. Thus the drainage in our cities so long as it
+is quite solid means a general safety, but if there is one leak it means
+concentrated poison--an explosion of deathly germs like dynamite, a
+spirit of stink. Thus, indeed, all that excellent machinery which is the
+swiftest thing on earth in saving human labour is also the slowest
+thing on earth in resisting human interference. It may be easier to
+get chocolate for nothing out of a shopkeeper than out of an automatic
+machine. But if you did manage to steal the chocolate, the automatic
+machine would be much less likely to run after you.
+
+Turnbull was not long in discovering this truth in connexion with the
+cold and colossal machinery of this great asylum. He had been shaken
+by many spiritual states since the instant when he was pitched head
+foremost into that private cell which was to be his private room till
+death. He had felt a high fit of pride and poetry, which had ebbed
+away and left him deadly cold. He had known a period of mere scientific
+curiosity, in the course of which he examined all the tiles of his cell,
+with the gratifying conclusion that they were all the same shape and
+size; but was greatly puzzled about the angle in the wall at the end,
+and also about an iron peg or spike that stood out from the wall, the
+object of which he does not know to this day. Then he had a period of
+mere madness not to be written of by decent men, but only by those few
+dirty novelists hallooed on by the infernal huntsman to hunt down and
+humiliate human nature. This also passed, but left behind it a feverish
+distaste for many of the mere objects around him. Long after he had
+returned to sanity and such hopeless cheerfulness as a man might have on
+a desert island, he disliked the regular squares of the pattern of wall
+and floor and the triangle that terminated his corridor. Above all, he
+had a hatred, deep as the hell he did not believe in, for the objectless
+iron peg in the wall.
+
+But in all his moods, sane or insane, intolerant or stoical, he
+never really doubted this: that the machine held him as light and as
+hopelessly as he had from his birth been held by the hopeless cosmos of
+his own creed. He knew well the ruthless and inexhaustible resources of
+our scientific civilization. He no more expected rescue from a medical
+certificate than rescue from the solar system. In many of his Robinson
+Crusoe moods he thought kindly of MacIan as of some quarrelsome
+school-fellow who had long been dead. He thought of leaving in the cell
+when he died a rigid record of his opinions, and when he began to
+write them down on scraps of envelope in his pocket, he was startled
+to discover how much they had changed. Then he remembered the Beauchamp
+Tower, and tried to write his blazing scepticism on the wall, and
+discovered that it was all shiny tiles on which nothing could be either
+drawn or carved. Then for an instant there hung and broke above him like
+a high wave the whole horror of scientific imprisonment, which manages
+to deny a man not only liberty, but every accidental comfort of bondage.
+In the old filthy dungeons men could carve their prayers or protests in
+the rock. Here the white and slippery walls escaped even from bearing
+witness. The old prisoners could make a pet of a mouse or a beetle
+strayed out of a hole. Here the unpierceable walls were washed every
+morning by an automatic sluice. There was no natural corruption and
+no merciful decay by which a living thing could enter in. Then James
+Turnbull looked up and saw the high invincible hatefulness of the
+society in which he lived, and saw the hatefulness of something else
+also, which he told himself again and again was not the cosmos in which
+he believed. But all the time he had never once doubted that the five
+sides of his cell were for him the wall of the world henceforward, and
+it gave him a shock of surprise even to discover the faint light through
+the aperture in the ventilation tube. But he had forgotten how close
+efficiency has to pack everything together and how easily, therefore, a
+pipe here or there may leak.
+
+Turnbull thrust his first finger down the aperture, and at last managed
+to make a slight further fissure in the piping. The light that came up
+from beyond was very faint, and apparently indirect; it seemed to fall
+from some hole or window higher up. As he was screwing his eye to peer
+at this grey and greasy twilight he was astonished to see another human
+finger very long and lean come down from above towards the broken pipe
+and hook it up to something higher. The lighted aperture was abruptly
+blackened and blocked, presumably by a face and mouth, for something
+human spoke down the tube, though the words were not clear.
+
+"Who is that?" asked Turnbull, trembling with excitement, yet wary and
+quite resolved not to spoil any chance.
+
+After a few indistinct sounds the voice came down with a strong
+Argyllshire accent:
+
+"I say, Turnbull, we couldn't fight through this tube, could we?"
+
+Sentiments beyond speech surged up in Turnbull and silenced him for a
+space just long enough to be painful. Then he said with his old gaiety:
+"I vote we talk a little first; I don't want to murder the first man I
+have met for ten million years."
+
+"I know what you mean," answered the other. "It has been awful. For a
+mortal month I have been alone with God."
+
+Turnbull started, and it was on the tip of his tongue to answer: "Alone
+with God! Then you do not know what loneliness is."
+
+But he answered, after all, in his old defiant style: "Alone with
+God, were you? And I suppose you found his Majesty's society rather
+monotonous?"
+
+"Oh, no," said MacIan, and his voice shuddered; "it was a great deal too
+exciting."
+
+After a very long silence the voice of MacIan said: "What do you really
+hate most in your place?"
+
+"You'd think I was really mad if I told you," answered Turnbull,
+bitterly.
+
+"Then I expect it's the same as mine," said the other voice.
+
+"I am sure it's not the same as anybody's," said Turnbull, "for it has
+no rhyme or reason. Perhaps my brain really has gone, but I detest
+that iron spike in the left wall more than the damned desolation or the
+damned cocoa. Have you got one in your cell?"
+
+"Not now," replied MacIan with serenity. "I've pulled it out."
+
+His fellow-prisoner could only repeat the words.
+
+"I pulled it out the other day when I was off my head," continued the
+tranquil Highland voice. "It looked so unnecessary."
+
+"You must be ghastly strong," said Turnbull.
+
+"One is, when one is mad," was the careless reply, "and it had worn a
+little loose in the socket. Even now I've got it out I can't discover
+what it was for. But I've found out something a long sight funnier."
+
+"What do you mean?" asked Turnbull.
+
+"I have found out where A is," said the other.
+
+Three weeks afterwards MacIan had managed to open up communications
+which made his meaning plain. By that time the two captives had fully
+discovered and demonstrated that weakness in the very nature of modern
+machinery to which we have already referred. The very fact that they
+were isolated from all companions meant that they were free from all
+spies, and as there were no gaolers to be bribed, so there were none to
+be baffled. Machinery brought them their cocoa and cleaned their cells;
+that machinery was as helpless as it was pitiless. A little patient
+violence, conducted day after day amid constant mutual suggestion,
+opened an irregular hole in the wall, large enough to let in a small
+man, in the exact place where there had been before the tiny ventilation
+holes. Turnbull tumbled somehow into MacIan's apartment, and his first
+glance found out that the iron spike was indeed plucked from its socket,
+and left, moreover, another ragged hole into some hollow place behind.
+But for this MacIan's cell was the duplicate of Turnbull's--a long
+oblong ending in a wedge and lined with cold and lustrous tiles. The
+small hole from which the peg had been displaced was in that short
+oblique wall at the end nearest to Turnbull's. That individual looked at
+it with a puzzled face.
+
+"What is in there?" he asked.
+
+MacIan answered briefly: "Another cell."
+
+"But where can the door of it be?" said his companion, even more
+puzzled; "the doors of our cells are at the other end."
+
+"It has no door," said Evan.
+
+In the pause of perplexity that followed, an eerie and sinister feeling
+crept over Turnbull's stubborn soul in spite of himself. The notion of
+the doorless room chilled him with that sense of half-witted curiosity
+which one has when something horrible is half understood.
+
+"James Turnbull," said MacIan, in a low and shaken voice, "these people
+hate us more than Nero hated Christians, and fear us more than any man
+feared Nero. They have filled England with frenzy and galloping in order
+to capture us and wipe us out--in order to kill us. And they have killed
+us, for you and I have only made a hole in our coffins. But though this
+hatred that they felt for us is bigger than they felt for Bonaparte, and
+more plain and practical than they would feel for Jack the Ripper, yet
+it is not we whom the people of this place hate most."
+
+A cold and quivering impatience continued to crawl up Turnbull's spine;
+he had never felt so near to superstition and supernaturalism, and it
+was not a pretty sort of superstition either.
+
+"There is another man more fearful and hateful," went on MacIan, in his
+low monotone voice, "and they have buried him even deeper. God knows how
+they did it, for he was let in by neither door nor window, nor lowered
+through any opening above. I expect these iron handles that we both hate
+have been part of some damned machinery for walling him up. He is there.
+I have looked through the hole at him; but I cannot stand looking at him
+long, because his face is turned away from me and he does not move."
+
+Al Turnbull's unnatural and uncompleted feelings found their outlet in
+rushing to the aperture and looking into the unknown room.
+
+It was a third oblong cell exactly like the other two except that it was
+doorless, and except that on one of the walls was painted a large black
+A like the B and C outside their own doors. The letter in this case was
+not painted outside, because this prison had no outside.
+
+On the same kind of tiled floor, of which the monotonous squares had
+maddened Turnbull's eye and brain, was sitting a figure which was
+startlingly short even for a child, only that the enormous head
+was ringed with hair of a frosty grey. The figure was draped, both
+insecurely and insufficiently, in what looked like the remains of a
+brown flannel dressing-gown; an emptied cup of cocoa stood on the floor
+beside it, and the creature had his big grey head cocked at a particular
+angle of inquiry or attention which amid all that gathering gloom and
+mystery struck one as comic if not cocksure.
+
+After six still seconds Turnbull could stand it no longer, but called
+out to the dwarfish thing--in what words heaven knows. The thing got
+up with the promptitude of an animal, and turning round offered the
+spectacle of two owlish eyes and a huge grey-and-white beard not unlike
+the plumage of an owl. This extraordinary beard covered him literally to
+his feet (not that that was very far), and perhaps it was as well
+that it did, for portions of his remaining clothing seemed to fall off
+whenever he moved. One talks trivially of a face like parchment, but
+this old man's face was so wrinkled that it was like a parchment loaded
+with hieroglyphics. The lines of his face were so deep and complex that
+one could see five or ten different faces besides the real one, as one
+can see them in an elaborate wall-paper. And yet while his face seemed
+like a scripture older than the gods, his eyes were quite bright, blue,
+and startled like those of a baby. They looked as if they had only an
+instant before been fitted into his head.
+
+Everything depended so obviously upon whether this buried monster spoke
+that Turnbull did not know or care whether he himself had spoken. He
+said something or nothing. And then he waited for this dwarfish voice
+that had been hidden under the mountains of the world. At last it did
+speak, and spoke in English, with a foreign accent that was neither
+Latin nor Teutonic. He suddenly stretched out a long and very dirty
+forefinger, and cried in a voice of clear recognition, like a child's:
+"That's a hole."
+
+He digested the discovery for some seconds, sucking his finger, and then
+he cried, with a crow of laughter: "And that's a head come through it."
+
+The hilarious energy in this idiot attitude gave Turnbull another sick
+turn. He had grown to tolerate those dreary and mumbling madmen who
+trailed themselves about the beautiful asylum gardens. But there was
+something new and subversive of the universe in the combination of so
+much cheerful decision with a body without a brain.
+
+"Why did they put you in such a place?" he asked at last with
+embarrassment.
+
+"Good place. Yes," said the old man, nodding a great many times and
+beaming like a flattered landlord. "Good shape. Long and narrow, with a
+point. Like this," and he made lovingly with his hands a map of the room
+in the air.
+
+"But that's not the best," he added, confidentially. "Squares very
+good; I have a nice long holiday, and can count them. But that's not the
+best."
+
+"What is the best?" asked Turnbull in great distress.
+
+"Spike is the best," said the old man, opening his blue eyes blazing;
+"it sticks out."
+
+The words Turnbull spoke broke out of him in pure pity. "Can't we do
+anything for you?" he said.
+
+"I am very happy," said the other, alphabetically. "You are a good man.
+Can I help you?"
+
+"No, I don't think you can, sir," said Turnbull with rough pathos; "I am
+glad you are contented at least."
+
+The weird old person opened his broad blue eyes and fixed Turnbull with
+a stare extraordinarily severe. "You are quite sure," he said, "I cannot
+help you?"
+
+"Quite sure, thank you," said Turnbull with broken brevity. "Good day."
+
+Then he turned to MacIan who was standing close behind him, and whose
+face, now familiar in all its moods, told him easily that Evan had heard
+the whole of the strange dialogue.
+
+"Curse those cruel beasts!" cried Turnbull. "They've turned him to an
+imbecile just by burying him alive. His brain's like a pin-point now."
+
+"You are sure he is a lunatic?" said Evan, slowly.
+
+"Not a lunatic," said Turnbull, "an idiot. He just points to things and
+says that they stick out."
+
+"He had a notion that he could help us," said MacIan moodily, and began
+to pace towards the other end of his cell.
+
+"Yes, it was a bit pathetic," assented Turnbull; "such a Thing offering
+help, and besides---- Hallo! Hallo! What's the matter?"
+
+"God Almighty guide us all!" said MacIan.
+
+He was standing heavy and still at the other end of the room and staring
+quietly at the door which for thirty days had sealed them up from the
+sun. Turnbull, following the other's eye, stared at the door likewise,
+and then he also uttered an exclamation. The iron door was standing
+about an inch and a half open.
+
+"He said----" began Evan, in a trembling voice--"he offered----"
+
+"Come along, you fool!" shouted Turnbull with a sudden and furious
+energy. "I see it all now, and it's the best stroke of luck in the
+world. You pulled out that iron handle that had screwed up his cell, and
+it somehow altered the machinery and opened all the doors."
+
+Seizing MacIan by the elbow he bundled him bodily out into the open
+corridor and ran him on till they saw daylight through a half-darkened
+window.
+
+"All the same," said Evan, like one answering in an ordinary
+conversation, "he did ask you whether he could help you."
+
+All this wilderness of windowless passages was so built into the heart
+of that fortress of fear that it seemed more than an hour before the
+fugitives had any good glimpse of the outer world. They did not even
+know what hour of the day it was; and when, turning a corner, they saw
+the bare tunnel of the corridor end abruptly in a shining square of
+garden, the grass burning in that strong evening sunshine which makes
+it burnished gold rather than green, the abrupt opening on to the earth
+seemed like a hole knocked in the wall of heaven. Only once or twice
+in life is it permitted to a man thus to see the very universe from
+outside, and feel existence itself as an adorable adventure not yet
+begun. As they found this shining escape out of that hellish labyrinth
+they both had simultaneously the sensation of being babes unborn, of
+being asked by God if they would like to live upon the earth. They were
+looking in at one of the seven gates of Eden.
+
+Turnbull was the first to leap into the garden, with an earth-spurning
+leap like that of one who could really spread his wings and fly. MacIan,
+who came an instant after, was less full of mere animal gusto and fuller
+of a more fearful and quivering pleasure in the clear and innocent
+flower colours and the high and holy trees. With one bound they were in
+that cool and cleared landscape, and they found just outside the door
+the black-clad gentleman with the cloven chin smilingly regarding them;
+and his chin seemed to grow longer and longer as he smiled.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII. A RIDDLE OF FACES
+
+Just behind him stood two other doctors: one, the familiar Dr. Quayle,
+of the blinking eyes and bleating voice; the other, a more commonplace
+but much more forcible figure, a stout young doctor with short,
+well-brushed hair and a round but resolute face. At the sight of the
+escape these two subordinates uttered a cry and sprang forward, but
+their superior remained motionless and smiling, and somehow the lack
+of his support seemed to arrest and freeze them in the very gesture of
+pursuit.
+
+"Let them be," he cried in a voice that cut like a blade of ice; and not
+only of ice, but of some awful primordial ice that had never been water.
+
+"I want no devoted champions," said the cutting voice; "even the folly
+of one's friends bores one at last. You don't suppose I should have let
+these lunatics out of their cells without good reason. I have the best
+and fullest reason. They can be let out of their cell today, because
+today the whole world has become their cell. I will have no more
+medieval mummery of chains and doors. Let them wander about the earth as
+they wandered about this garden, and I shall still be their easy master.
+Let them take the wings of the morning and abide in the uttermost parts
+of the sea--I am there. Whither shall they go from my presence and
+whither shall they flee from my spirit? Courage, Dr. Quayle, and do
+not be downhearted; the real days of tyranny are only beginning on this
+earth."
+
+And with that the Master laughed and swung away from them, almost as if
+his laugh was a bad thing for people to see.
+
+"Might I speak to you a moment?" said Turnbull, stepping forward with
+a respectful resolution. But the shoulders of the Master only seemed to
+take on a new and unexpected angle of mockery as he strode away.
+
+Turnbull swung round with great abruptness to the other two doctors, and
+said, harshly: "What in snakes does he mean--and who are you?"
+
+"My name is Hutton," said the short, stout man, "and I am--well, one of
+those whose business it is to uphold this establishment."
+
+"My name is Turnbull," said the other; "I am one of those whose business
+it is to tear it to the ground."
+
+The small doctor smiled, and Turnbull's anger seemed suddenly to steady
+him.
+
+"But I don't want to talk about that," he said, calmly; "I only want to
+know what the Master of this asylum really means."
+
+Dr. Hutton's smile broke into a laugh which, short as it was, had the
+suspicion of a shake in it. "I suppose you think that quite a simple
+question," he said.
+
+"I think it a plain question," said Turnbull, "and one that deserves
+a plain answer. Why did the Master lock us up in a couple of cupboards
+like jars of pickles for a mortal month, and why does he now let us walk
+free in the garden again?"
+
+"I understand," said Hutton, with arched eyebrows, "that your complaint
+is that you are now free to walk in the garden."
+
+"My complaint is," said Turnbull, stubbornly, "that if I am fit to walk
+freely now, I have been as fit for the last month. No one has examined
+me, no one has come near me. Your chief says that I am only free because
+he has made other arrangements. What are those arrangements?"
+
+The young man with the round face looked down for a little while
+and smoked reflectively. The other and elder doctor had gone pacing
+nervously by himself upon the lawn. At length the round face was lifted
+again, and showed two round blue eyes with a certain frankness in them.
+
+"Well, I don't see that it can do any harm to tell you know," he said.
+"You were shut up just then because it was just during that month that
+the Master was bringing off his big scheme. He was getting his bill
+through Parliament, and organizing the new medical police. But of course
+you haven't heard of all that; in fact, you weren't meant to."
+
+"Heard of all what?" asked the impatient inquirer.
+
+"There's a new law now, and the asylum powers are greatly extended. Even
+if you did escape now, any policeman would take you up in the next town
+if you couldn't show a certificate of sanity from us."
+
+"Well," continued Dr. Hutton, "the Master described before both Houses
+of Parliament the real scientific objection to all existing legislation
+about lunacy. As he very truly said, the mistake was in supposing
+insanity to be merely an exception or an extreme. Insanity, like
+forgetfulness, is simply a quality which enters more or less into all
+human beings; and for practical purposes it is more necessary to know
+whose mind is really trustworthy than whose has some accidental taint.
+We have therefore reversed the existing method, and people now have to
+prove that they are sane. In the first village you entered, the village
+constable would notice that you were not wearing on the left lapel of
+your coat the small pewter S which is now necessary to any one who walks
+about beyond asylum bounds or outside asylum hours."
+
+"You mean to say," said Turnbull, "that this was what the Master of the
+asylum urged before the House of Commons?"
+
+Dr. Hutton nodded with gravity.
+
+"And you mean to say," cried Turnbull, with a vibrant snort, "that that
+proposal was passed in an assembly that calls itself democratic?"
+
+The doctor showed his whole row of teeth in a smile. "Oh, the assembly
+calls itself Socialist now," he said, "But we explained to them that
+this was a question for men of science."
+
+Turnbull gave one stamp upon the gravel, then pulled himself together,
+and resumed: "But why should your infernal head medicine-man lock us up
+in separate cells while he was turning England into a madhouse? I'm not
+the Prime Minister; we're not the House of Lords."
+
+"He wasn't afraid of the Prime Minister," replied Dr. Hutton; "he isn't
+afraid of the House of Lords. But----"
+
+"Well?" inquired Turnbull, stamping again.
+
+"He is afraid of you," said Hutton, simply. "Why, didn't you know?"
+
+MacIan, who had not spoken yet, made one stride forward and stood with
+shaking limbs and shining eyes.
+
+"He was afraid!" began Evan, thickly. "You mean to say that we----"
+
+"I mean to say the plain truth now that the danger is over," said
+Hutton, calmly; "most certainly you two were the only people he ever
+was afraid of." Then he added in a low but not inaudible voice: "Except
+one--whom he feared worse, and has buried deeper."
+
+"Come away," cried MacIan, "this has to be thought about."
+
+Turnbull followed him in silence as he strode away, but just before he
+vanished, turned and spoke again to the doctors.
+
+"But what has got hold of people?" he asked, abruptly. "Why should all
+England have gone dotty on the mere subject of dottiness?"
+
+Dr. Hutton smiled his open smile once more and bowed slightly. "As to
+that also," he replied, "I don't want to make you vain."
+
+Turnbull swung round without a word, and he and his companion were lost
+in the lustrous leafage of the garden. They noticed nothing special
+about the scene, except that the garden seemed more exquisite than ever
+in the deepening sunset, and that there seemed to be many more people,
+whether patients or attendants, walking about in it.
+
+From behind the two black-coated doctors as they stood on the lawn
+another figure somewhat similarly dressed strode hurriedly past them,
+having also grizzled hair and an open flapping frock-coat. Both his
+decisive step and dapper black array marked him out as another medical
+man, or at least a man in authority, and as he passed Turnbull the
+latter was aroused by a strong impression of having seen the man
+somewhere before. It was no one that he knew well, yet he was certain
+that it was someone at whom he had at sometime or other looked steadily.
+It was neither the face of a friend nor of an enemy; it aroused neither
+irritation nor tenderness, yet it was a face which had for some reason
+been of great importance in his life. Turning and returning, and making
+detours about the garden, he managed to study the man's face again and
+again--a moustached, somewhat military face with a monocle, the sort of
+face that is aristocratic without being distinguished. Turnbull could
+not remember any particular doctors in his decidedly healthy existence.
+Was the man a long-lost uncle, or was he only somebody who had sat
+opposite him regularly in a railway train? At that moment the man
+knocked down his own eye-glass with a gesture of annoyance; Turnbull
+remembered the gesture, and the truth sprang up solid in front of him.
+The man with the moustaches was Cumberland Vane, the London police
+magistrate before whom he and MacIan had once stood on their trial. The
+magistrate must have been transferred to some other official duties--to
+something connected with the inspection of asylums.
+
+Turnbull's heart gave a leap of excitement which was half hope. As a
+magistrate Mr. Cumberland Vane had been somewhat careless and shallow,
+but certainly kindly, and not inaccessible to common sense so long as
+it was put to him in strictly conventional language. He was at least an
+authority of a more human and refreshing sort than the crank with the
+wagging beard or the fiend with the forked chin.
+
+He went straight up to the magistrate, and said: "Good evening, Mr.
+Vane; I doubt if you remember me."
+
+Cumberland Vane screwed the eye-glass into his scowling face for an
+instant, and then said curtly but not uncivilly: "Yes, I remember you,
+sir; assault or battery, wasn't it?--a fellow broke your window. A tall
+fellow--McSomething--case made rather a noise afterwards."
+
+"MacIan is the name, sir," said Turnbull, respectfully; "I have him here
+with me."
+
+"Eh!" said Vane very sharply. "Confound him! Has he got anything to do
+with this game?"
+
+"Mr. Vane," said Turnbull, pacifically, "I will not pretend that either
+he or I acted quite decorously on that occasion. You were very lenient
+with us, and did not treat us as criminals when you very well might.
+So I am sure you will give us your testimony that, even if we were
+criminals, we are not lunatics in any legal or medical sense whatever. I
+am sure you will use your influence for us."
+
+"My influence!" repeated the magistrate, with a slight start. "I don't
+quite understand you."
+
+"I don't know in what capacity you are here," continued Turnbull,
+gravely, "but a legal authority of your distinction must certainly be
+here in an important one. Whether you are visiting and inspecting the
+place, or attached to it as some kind of permanent legal adviser, your
+opinion must still----"
+
+Cumberland Vane exploded with a detonation of oaths; his face was
+transfigured with fury and contempt, and yet in some odd way he did not
+seem specially angry with Turnbull.
+
+"But Lord bless us and save us!" he gasped, at length; "I'm not here
+as an official at all. I'm here as a patient. The cursed pack of
+rat-catching chemists all say that I've lost my wits."
+
+"You!" cried Turnbull with terrible emphasis. "You! Lost your wits!"
+
+In the rush of his real astonishment at this towering unreality Turnbull
+almost added: "Why, you haven't got any to lose." But he fortunately
+remembered the remains of his desperate diplomacy.
+
+"This can't go on," he said, positively. "Men like MacIan and I may
+suffer unjustly all our lives, but a man like you must have influence."
+
+"There is only one man who has any influence in England now," said Vane,
+and his high voice fell to a sudden and convincing quietude.
+
+"Whom do you mean?" asked Turnbull.
+
+"I mean that cursed fellow with the long split chin," said the other.
+
+"Is it really true," asked Turnbull, "that he has been allowed to buy up
+and control such a lot? What put the country into such a state?"
+
+Mr. Cumberland Vane laughed outright. "What put the country into such a
+state?" he asked. "Why, you did. When you were fool enough to agree to
+fight MacIan, after all, everybody was ready to believe that the Bank of
+England might paint itself pink with white spots."
+
+"I don't understand," answered Turnbull. "Why should you be surprised at
+my fighting? I hope I have always fought."
+
+"Well," said Cumberland Vane, airily, "you didn't believe in religion,
+you see--so we thought you were safe at any rate. You went further in
+your language than most of us wanted to go; no good in just hurting
+one's mother's feelings, I think. But of course we all knew you were
+right, and, really, we relied on you."
+
+"Did you?" said the editor of _The Atheist_ with a bursting heart. "I am
+sorry you did not tell me so at the time."
+
+He walked away very rapidly and flung himself on a garden seat, and for
+some six minutes his own wrongs hid from him the huge and hilarious fact
+that Cumberland Vane had been locked up as a lunatic.
+
+The garden of the madhouse was so perfectly planned, and answered so
+exquisitely to every hour of daylight, that one could almost fancy that
+the sunlight was caught there tangled in its tinted trees, as the wise
+men of Gotham tried to chain the spring to a bush. Or it seemed as if
+this ironic paradise still kept its unique dawn or its special sunset
+while the rest of the earthly globe rolled through its ordinary hours.
+There was one evening, or late afternoon, in particular, which Evan
+MacIan will remember in the last moments of death. It was what artists
+call a daffodil sky, but it is coarsened even by reference to a
+daffodil. It was of that innocent lonely yellow which has never heard of
+orange, though it might turn quite unconsciously into green. Against it
+the tops, one might say the turrets, of the clipt and ordered trees
+were outlined in that shade of veiled violet which tints the tops of
+lavender. A white early moon was hardly traceable upon that delicate
+yellow. MacIan, I say, will remember this tender and transparent
+evening, partly because of its virgin gold and silver, and partly
+because he passed beneath it through the most horrible instant of his
+life.
+
+Turnbull was sitting on his seat on the lawn, and the golden evening
+impressed even his positive nature, as indeed it might have impressed
+the oxen in a field. He was shocked out of his idle mood of awe by
+seeing MacIan break from behind the bushes and run across the lawn with
+an action he had never seen in the man before, with all his experience
+of the eccentric humours of this Celt. MacIan fell on the bench,
+shaking it so that it rattled, and gripped it with his knees like one in
+dreadful pain of body. That particular run and tumble is typical only of
+a man who has been hit by some sudden and incurable evil, who is bitten
+by a viper or condemned to be hanged. Turnbull looked up in the white
+face of his friend and enemy, and almost turned cold at what he saw
+there. He had seen the blue but gloomy eyes of the western Highlander
+troubled by as many tempests as his own west Highland seas, but there
+had always been a fixed star of faith behind the storms. Now the star
+had gone out, and there was only misery.
+
+Yet MacIan had the strength to answer the question where Turnbull, taken
+by surprise, had not the strength to ask it.
+
+"They are right, they are right!" he cried. "O my God! they are right,
+Turnbull. I ought to be here!"
+
+He went on with shapeless fluency as if he no longer had the heart to
+choose or check his speech. "I suppose I ought to have guessed long
+ago--all my big dreams and schemes--and everyone being against us--but I
+was stuck up, you know."
+
+"Do tell me about it, really," cried the atheist, and, faced with the
+furnace of the other's pain, he did not notice that he spoke with the
+affection of a father.
+
+"I am mad, Turnbull," said Evan, with a dead clearness of speech, and
+leant back against the garden seat.
+
+"Nonsense," said the other, clutching at the obvious cue of benevolent
+brutality, "this is one of your silly moods."
+
+MacIan shook his head. "I know enough about myself," he said, "to allow
+for any mood, though it opened heaven or hell. But to see things--to see
+them walking solid in the sun--things that can't be there--real mystics
+never do that, Turnbull."
+
+"What things?" asked the other, incredulously.
+
+MacIan lowered his voice. "I saw _her_," he said, "three minutes
+ago--walking here in this hell yard."
+
+Between trying to look scornful and really looking startled, Turnbull's
+face was confused enough to emit no speech, and Evan went on in
+monotonous sincerity:
+
+"I saw her walk behind those blessed trees against that holy sky of gold
+as plain as I can see her whenever I shut my eyes. I did shut them,
+and opened them again, and she was still there--that is, of course, she
+wasn't---- She still had a little fur round her neck, but her dress was
+a shade brighter than when I really saw her."
+
+"My dear fellow," cried Turnbull, rallying a hearty laugh, "the fancies
+have really got hold of you. You mistook some other poor girl here for
+her."
+
+"Mistook some other----" said MacIan, and words failed him altogether.
+
+They sat for some moments in the mellow silence of the evening garden,
+a silence that was stifling for the sceptic, but utterly empty and final
+for the man of faith. At last he broke out again with the words: "Well,
+anyhow, if I'm mad, I'm glad I'm mad on that."
+
+Turnbull murmured some clumsy deprecation, and sat stolidly smoking to
+collect his thoughts; the next instant he had all his nerves engaged in
+the mere effort to sit still.
+
+Across the clear space of cold silver and a pale lemon sky which was
+left by the gap in the ilex-trees there passed a slim, dark figure, a
+profile and the poise of a dark head like a bird's, which really pinned
+him to his seat with the point of coincidence. With an effort he got
+to his feet, and said with a voice of affected insouciance: "By George!
+MacIan, she is uncommonly like----"
+
+"What!" cried MacIan, with a leap of eagerness that was heart-breaking,
+"do you see her, too?" And the blaze came back into the centre of his
+eyes.
+
+Turnbull's tawny eyebrows were pulled together with a peculiar frown of
+curiosity, and all at once he walked quickly across the lawn. MacIan sat
+rigid, but peered after him with open and parched lips. He saw the sight
+which either proved him sane or proved the whole universe half-witted;
+he saw the man of flesh approach that beautiful phantom, saw their
+gestures of recognition, and saw them against the sunset joining hands.
+
+He could stand it no longer, but ran across to the path, turned the
+corner and saw standing quite palpable in the evening sunlight, talking
+with a casual grace to Turnbull, the face and figure which had filled
+his midnights with frightfully vivid or desperately half-forgotten
+features. She advanced quite pleasantly and coolly, and put out her
+hand. The moment that he touched it he knew that he was sane even if the
+solar system was crazy.
+
+She was entirely elegant and unembarrassed. That is the awful thing
+about women--they refuse to be emotional at emotional moments, upon some
+such ludicrous pretext as there being someone else there. But MacIan was
+in a condition of criticism much less than the average masculine one,
+being in fact merely overturned by the rushing riddle of the events.
+
+Evan does not know to this day what particular question he asked, but
+he vividly remembers that she answered, and every line or fluctuation of
+her face as she said it.
+
+"Oh, don't you know?" she said, smiling, and suddenly lifting her level
+brown eyebrows. "Haven't you heard the news? I'm a lunatic."
+
+Then she added after a short pause, and with a sort of pride: "I've got
+a certificate."
+
+Her manner, by the matchless social stoicism of her sex, was entirely
+suited to a drawing-room, but Evan's reply fell somewhat far short of
+such a standard, as he only said: "What the devil in hell does all this
+nonsense mean?"
+
+"Really," said the young lady, and laughed.
+
+"I beg your pardon," said the unhappy young man, rather wildly, "but
+what I mean is, why are you here in an asylum?"
+
+The young woman broke again into one of the maddening and mysterious
+laughs of femininity. Then she composed her features, and replied with
+equal dignity: "Well, if it comes to that, why are you?"
+
+The fact that Turnbull had strolled away and was investigating
+rhododendrons may have been due to Evan's successful prayers to the
+other world, or possibly to his own pretty successful experience of this
+one. But though they two were as isolated as a new Adam and Eve in a
+pretty ornamental Eden, the lady did not relax by an inch the rigour of
+her badinage.
+
+"I am locked up in the madhouse," said Evan, with a sort of stiff pride,
+"because I tried to keep my promise to you."
+
+"Quite so," answered the inexplicable lady, nodding with a perfectly
+blazing smile, "and I am locked up because it was to me you promised."
+
+"It is outrageous!" cried Evan; "it is impossible!"
+
+"Oh, you can see my certificate if you like," she replied with some
+hauteur.
+
+MacIan stared at her and then at his boots, and then at the sky and then
+at her again. He was quite sure now that he himself was not mad, and the
+fact rather added to his perplexity.
+
+Then he drew nearer to her, and said in a dry and dreadful voice: "Oh,
+don't condescend to play the fool with such a fool as me. Are you really
+locked up here as a patient--because you helped us to escape?"
+
+"Yes," she said, still smiling, but her steady voice had a shake in it.
+
+Evan flung his big elbow across his forehead and burst into tears.
+
+The pure lemon of the sky faded into purer white as the great sunset
+silently collapsed. The birds settled back into the trees; the moon
+began to glow with its own light. Mr. James Turnbull continued his
+botanical researches into the structure of the rhododendron. But the
+lady did not move an inch until Evan had flung up his face again; and
+when he did he saw by the last gleam of sunlight that it was not only
+his face that was wet.
+
+Mr. James Turnbull had all his life professed a profound interest in
+physical science, and the phenomena of a good garden were really a
+pleasure to him; but after three-quarters of an hour or so even the
+apostle of science began to find rhododendrus a bore, and was somewhat
+relieved when an unexpected development of events obliged him
+to transfer his researches to the equally interesting subject of
+hollyhocks, which grew some fifty feet farther along the path. The
+ostensible cause of his removal was the unexpected reappearance of his
+two other acquaintances walking and talking laboriously along the
+way, with the black head bent close to the brown one. Even hollyhocks
+detained Turnbull but a short time. Having rapidly absorbed all the
+important principles affecting the growth of those vegetables, he jumped
+over a flower-bed and walked back into the building. The other two came
+up along the slow course of the path talking and talking. No one but
+God knows what they said (for they certainly have forgotten), and if I
+remembered it I would not repeat it. When they parted at the head of the
+walk she put out her hand again in the same well-bred way, although it
+trembled; he seemed to restrain a gesture as he let it fall.
+
+"If it is really always to be like this," he said, thickly, "it would
+not matter if we were here for ever."
+
+"You tried to kill yourself four times for me," she said, unsteadily,
+"and I have been chained up as a madwoman for you. I really think that
+after that----"
+
+"Yes, I know," said Evan in a low voice, looking down. "After that we
+belong to each other. We are sort of sold to each other--until the stars
+fall." Then he looked up suddenly, and said: "By the way, what is your
+name?"
+
+"My name is Beatrice Drake," she replied with complete gravity. "You can
+see it on my certificate of lunacy."
+
+
+
+
+XIX. THE LAST PARLEY
+
+Turnbull walked away, wildly trying to explain to himself the presence
+of two personal acquaintances so different as Vane and the girl. As he
+skirted a low hedge of laurel, an enormously tall young man leapt over
+it, stood in front of him, and almost fell on his neck as if seeking to
+embrace him.
+
+"Don't you know me?" almost sobbed the young man, who was in the highest
+spirits. "Ain't I written on your heart, old boy? I say, what did you do
+with my yacht?"
+
+"Take your arms off my neck," said Turnbull, irritably. "Are you mad?"
+
+The young man sat down on the gravel path and went into ecstasies of
+laughter. "No, that's just the fun of it--I'm not mad," he replied.
+"They've shut me up in this place, and I'm not mad." And he went off
+again into mirth as innocent as wedding-bells.
+
+Turnbull, whose powers of surprise were exhausted, rolled his round grey
+eyes and said, "Mr. Wilkinson, I think," because he could not think of
+anything else to say.
+
+The tall man sitting on the gravel bowed with urbanity, and said: "Quite
+at your service. Not to be confused with the Wilkinsons of Cumberland;
+and as I say, old boy, what have you done with my yacht? You see,
+they've locked me up here--in this garden--and a yacht would be a sort
+of occupation for an unmarried man."
+
+"I am really horribly sorry," began Turnbull, in the last stage of bated
+bewilderment and exasperation, "but really----"
+
+"Oh, I can see you can't have it on you at the moment," said Mr.
+Wilkinson with much intellectual magnanimity.
+
+"Well, the fact is----" began Turnbull again, and then the phrase was
+frozen on his mouth, for round the corner came the goatlike face and
+gleaming eye-glasses of Dr. Quayle.
+
+"Ah, my dear Mr. Wilkinson," said the doctor, as if delighted at
+a coincidence; "and Mr. Turnbull, too. Why, I want to speak to Mr.
+Turnbull."
+
+Mr. Turnbull made some movement rather of surrender than assent, and
+the doctor caught it up exquisitely, showing even more of his two front
+teeth. "I am sure Mr. Wilkinson will excuse us a moment." And with
+flying frock-coat he led Turnbull rapidly round the corner of a path.
+
+"My dear sir," he said, in a quite affectionate manner, "I do not mind
+telling you--you are such a very hopeful case--you understand so well
+the scientific point of view; and I don't like to see you bothered by
+the really hopeless cases. They are monotonous and maddening. The man
+you have just been talking to, poor fellow, is one of the strongest
+cases of pure _idee fixe_ that we have. It's very sad, and I'm afraid
+utterly incurable. He keeps on telling everybody"--and the doctor
+lowered his voice confidentially--"he tells everybody that two people
+have taken is yacht. His account of how he lost it is quite incoherent."
+
+Turnbull stamped his foot on the gravel path, and called out: "Oh, I
+can't stand this. Really----"
+
+"I know, I know," said the psychologist, mournfully; "it is a most
+melancholy case, and also fortunately a very rare one. It is so rare, in
+fact, that in one classification of these maladies it is entered under
+a heading by itself--Perdinavititis, mental inflammation creating the
+impression that one has lost a ship. Really," he added, with a kind of
+half-embarrassed guilt, "it's rather a feather in my cap. I discovered
+the only existing case of perdinavititis."
+
+"But this won't do, doctor," said Turnbull, almost tearing his hair,
+"this really won't do. The man really did lose a ship. Indeed, not to
+put too fine a point on it, I took his ship."
+
+Dr. Quayle swung round for an instant so that his silk-lined overcoat
+rustled, and stared singularly at Turnbull. Then he said with hurried
+amiability: "Why, of course you did. Quite so, quite so," and with
+courteous gestures went striding up the garden path. Under the first
+laburnum-tree he stopped, however, and pulling out his pencil
+and notebook wrote down feverishly: "Singular development in the
+Elenthero-maniac, Turnbull. Sudden manifestation of Rapinavititis--the
+delusion that one has stolen a ship. First case ever recorded."
+
+Turnbull stood for an instant staggered into stillness. Then he ran
+raging round the garden to find MacIan, just as a husband, even a bad
+husband, will run raging to find his wife if he is full of a furious
+query. He found MacIan stalking moodily about the half-lit garden, after
+his extraordinary meeting with Beatrice. No one who saw his slouching
+stride and sunken head could have known that his soul was in the seventh
+heaven of ecstasy. He did not think; he did not even very definitely
+desire. He merely wallowed in memories, chiefly in material memories;
+words said with a certain cadence or trivial turns of the neck or wrist.
+Into the middle of his stationary and senseless enjoyment were thrust
+abruptly the projecting elbow and the projecting red beard of Turnbull.
+MacIan stepped back a little, and the soul in his eyes came very slowly
+to its windows. When James Turnbull had the glittering sword-point
+planted upon his breast he was in far less danger. For three pulsating
+seconds after the interruption MacIan was in a mood to have murdered his
+father.
+
+And yet his whole emotional anger fell from him when he saw Turnbull's
+face, in which the eyes seemed to be bursting from the head like
+bullets. All the fire and fragrance even of young and honourable love
+faded for a moment before that stiff agony of interrogation.
+
+"Are you hurt, Turnbull?" he asked, anxiously.
+
+"I am dying," answered the other quite calmly. "I am in the quite
+literal sense of the words dying to know something. I want to know what
+all this can possibly mean."
+
+MacIan did not answer, and he continued with asperity: "You are still
+thinking about that girl, but I tell you the whole thing is incredible.
+She's not the only person here. I've met the fellow Wilkinson, whose
+yacht we lost. I've met the very magistrate you were hauled up to when
+you broke my window. What can it mean--meeting all these old people
+again? One never meets such old friends again except in a dream."
+
+Then after a silence he cried with a rending sincerity: "Are you really
+there, Evan? Have you ever been really there? Am I simply dreaming?"
+
+MacIan had been listening with a living silence to every word, and now
+his face flamed with one of his rare revelations of life.
+
+"No, you good atheist," he cried; "no, you clean, courteous, reverent,
+pious old blasphemer. No, you are not dreaming--you are waking up."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"There are two states where one meets so many old friends," said MacIan;
+"one is a dream, the other is the end of the world."
+
+"And you say----"
+
+"I say this is not a dream," said Evan in a ringing voice.
+
+"You really mean to suggest----" began Turnbull.
+
+"Be silent! or I shall say it all wrong," said MacIan, breathing hard.
+"It's hard to explain, anyhow. An apocalypse is the opposite of a dream.
+A dream is falser than the outer life. But the end of the world is more
+actual than the world it ends. I don't say this is really the end of the
+world, but it's something like that--it's the end of something. All the
+people are crowding into one corner. Everything is coming to a point."
+
+"What is the point?" asked Turnbull.
+
+"I can't see it," said Evan; "it is too large and plain."
+
+Then after a silence he said: "I can't see it--and yet I will try to
+describe it. Turnbull, three days ago I saw quite suddenly that our duel
+was not right after all."
+
+"Three days ago!" repeated Turnbull. "When and why did this illumination
+occur?"
+
+"I knew I was not quite right," answered Evan, "the moment I saw the
+round eyes of that old man in the cell."
+
+"Old man in the cell!" repeated his wondering companion. "Do you mean
+the poor old idiot who likes spikes to stick out?"
+
+"Yes," said MacIan, after a slight pause, "I mean the poor old idiot
+who likes spikes to stick out. When I saw his eyes and heard his old
+croaking accent, I knew that it would not really have been right to kill
+you. It would have been a venial sin."
+
+"I am much obliged," said Turnbull, gruffly.
+
+"You must give me time," said MacIan, quite patiently, "for I am trying
+to tell the whole truth. I am trying to tell more of it than I know."
+
+"So you see I confess"--he went on with laborious distinctness--"I
+confess that all the people who called our duel mad were right in a way.
+I would confess it to old Cumberland Vane and his eye-glass. I would
+confess it even to that old ass in brown flannel who talked to us about
+Love. Yes, they are right in a way. I am a little mad."
+
+He stopped and wiped his brow as if he were literally doing heavy
+labour. Then he went on:
+
+"I am a little mad; but, after all, it is only a little madness. When
+hundreds of high-minded men had fought duels about a jostle with the
+elbow or the ace of spades, the whole world need not have gone wild over
+my one little wildness. Plenty of other people have killed themselves
+between then and now. But all England has gone into captivity in order
+to take us captive. All England has turned into a lunatic asylum in
+order to prove us lunatics. Compared with the general public, I might
+positively be called sane."
+
+He stopped again, and went on with the same air of travailing with the
+truth:
+
+"When I saw that, I saw everything; I saw the Church and the world. The
+Church in its earthly action has really touched morbid things--tortures
+and bleeding visions and blasts of extermination. The Church has had her
+madnesses, and I am one of them. I am the massacre of St. Bartholomew.
+I am the Inquisition of Spain. I do not say that we have never gone mad,
+but I say that we are fit to act as keepers to our enemies. Massacre is
+wicked even with a provocation, as in the Bartholomew. But your modern
+Nietzsche will tell you that massacre would be glorious without a
+provocation. Torture should be violently stopped, though the Church is
+doing it. But your modern Tolstoy will tell you that it ought not to be
+violently stopped whoever is doing it. In the long run, which is most
+mad--the Church or the world? Which is madder, the Spanish priest who
+permitted tyranny, or the Prussian sophist who admired it? Which is
+madder, the Russian priest who discourages righteous rebellion, or the
+Russian novelist who forbids it? That is the final and blasting test.
+The world left to itself grows wilder than any creed. A few days ago you
+and I were the maddest people in England. Now, by God! I believe we are
+the sanest. That is the only real question--whether the Church is really
+madder than the world. Let the rationalists run their own race, and let
+us see where _they_ end. If the world has some healthy balance other
+than God, let the world find it. Does the world find it? Cut the world
+loose," he cried with a savage gesture. "Does the world stand on its own
+end? Does it stand, or does it stagger?"
+
+Turnbull remained silent, and MacIan said to him, looking once more at
+the earth: "It staggers, Turnbull. It cannot stand by itself; you know
+it cannot. It has been the sorrow of your life. Turnbull, this garden
+is not a dream, but an apocalyptic fulfilment. This garden is the world
+gone mad."
+
+Turnbull did not move his head, and he had been listening all the time;
+yet, somehow, the other knew that for the first time he was listening
+seriously.
+
+"The world has gone mad," said MacIan, "and it has gone mad about Us.
+The world takes the trouble to make a big mistake about every little
+mistake made by the Church. That is why they have turned ten counties
+to a madhouse; that is why crowds of kindly people are poured into this
+filthy melting-pot. Now is the judgement of this world. The Prince of
+this World is judged, and he is judged exactly because he is judging.
+There is at last one simple solution to the quarrel between the ball and
+the cross----"
+
+Turnbull for the first time started.
+
+"The ball and----" he repeated.
+
+"What is the matter with you?" asked MacIan.
+
+"I had a dream," said Turnbull, thickly and obscurely, "in which I saw
+the cross struck crooked and the ball secure----"
+
+"I had a dream," said MacIan, "in which I saw the cross erect and the
+ball invisible. They were both dreams from hell. There must be
+some round earth to plant the cross upon. But here is the awful
+difference--that the round world will not consent even to continue
+round. The astronomers are always telling us that it is shaped like
+an orange, or like an egg, or like a German sausage. They beat the
+old world about like a bladder and thump it into a thousand shapeless
+shapes. Turnbull, we cannot trust the ball to be always a ball; we
+cannot trust reason to be reasonable. In the end the great terrestrial
+globe will go quite lop-sided, and only the cross will stand upright."
+
+There was a long silence, and then Turnbull said, hesitatingly: "Has
+it occurred to you that since--since those two dreams, or whatever they
+were----"
+
+"Well?" murmured MacIan.
+
+"Since then," went on Turnbull, in the same low voice, "since then we
+have never even looked for our swords."
+
+"You are right," answered Evan almost inaudibly. "We have found
+something which we both hate more than we ever hated each other, and I
+think I know its name."
+
+Turnbull seemed to frown and flinch for a moment. "It does not much
+matter what you call it," he said, "so long as you keep out of its way."
+
+The bushes broke and snapped abruptly behind them, and a very tall
+figure towered above Turnbull with an arrogant stoop and a projecting
+chin, a chin of which the shape showed queerly even in its shadow upon
+the path.
+
+"You see that is not so easy," said MacIan between his teeth.
+
+They looked up into the eyes of the Master, but looked only for a
+moment. The eyes were full of a frozen and icy wrath, a kind of utterly
+heartless hatred. His voice was for the first time devoid of irony.
+There was no more sarcasm in it than there is in an iron club.
+
+"You will be inside the building in three minutes," he said, with
+pulverizing precision, "or you will be fired on by the artillery at
+all the windows. There is too much talking in this garden; we intend to
+close it. You will be accommodated indoors."
+
+"Ah!" said MacIan, with a long and satisfied sigh, "then I was right."
+
+And he turned his back and walked obediently towards the building.
+Turnbull seemed to canvass for a few minutes the notion of knocking the
+Master down, and then fell under the same almost fairy fatalism as his
+companion. In some strange way it did seem that the more smoothly they
+yielded, the more swiftly would events sweep on to some great collision.
+
+
+
+
+XX. DIES IRAE
+
+As they advanced towards the asylum they looked up at its rows on rows
+of windows, and understood the Master's material threat. By means of
+that complex but concealed machinery which ran like a network of nerves
+over the whole fabric, there had been shot out under every window-ledge
+rows and rows of polished-steel cylinders, the cold miracles of modern
+gunnery. They commanded the whole garden and the whole country-side, and
+could have blown to pieces an army corps.
+
+This silent declaration of war had evidently had its complete effect. As
+MacIan and Turnbull walked steadily but slowly towards the entrance hall
+of the institution, they could see that most, or at least many, of the
+patients had already gathered there as well as the staff of doctors and
+the whole regiment of keepers and assistants. But when they entered the
+lamp-lit hall, and the high iron door was clashed to and locked behind
+them, yet a new amazement leapt into their eyes, and the stalwart
+Turnbull almost fell. For he saw a sight which was indeed, as MacIan had
+said--either the Day of Judgement or a dream.
+
+Within a few feet of him at one corner of the square of standing people
+stood the girl he had known in Jersey, Madeleine Durand. She looked
+straight at him with a steady smile which lit up the scene of darkness
+and unreason like the light of some honest fireside. Her square face
+and throat were thrown back, as her habit was, and there was something
+almost sleepy in the geniality of her eyes. He saw her first, and for
+a few seconds saw her only; then the outer edge of his eyesight took in
+all the other staring faces, and he saw all the faces he had ever seen
+for weeks and months past. There was the Tolstoyan in Jaeger flannel,
+with the yellow beard that went backward and the foolish nose and eyes
+that went forward, with the curiosity of a crank. He was talking eagerly
+to Mr. Gordon, the corpulent Jew shopkeeper whom they had once gagged
+in his own shop. There was the tipsy old Hertfordshire rustic; he
+was talking energetically to himself. There was not only Mr. Vane the
+magistrate, but the clerk of Mr. Vane, the magistrate. There was not
+only Miss Drake of the motor-car, but also Miss Drake's chauffeur.
+Nothing wild or unfamiliar could have produced upon Turnbull such a
+nightmare impression as that ring of familiar faces. Yet he had one
+intellectual shock which was greater than all the others. He stepped
+impulsively forward towards Madeleine, and then wavered with a kind
+of wild humility. As he did so he caught sight of another square face
+behind Madeleine's, a face with long grey whiskers and an austere stare.
+It was old Durand, the girls' father; and when Turnbull saw him he saw
+the last and worst marvel of that monstrous night. He remembered Durand;
+he remembered his monotonous, everlasting lucidity, his stupefyingly
+sensible views of everything, his colossal contentment with truisms
+merely because they were true. "Confound it all!" cried Turnbull to
+himself, "if _he_ is in the asylum, there can't be anyone outside."
+He drew nearer to Madeleine, but still doubtfully and all the more
+so because she still smiled at him. MacIan had already gone across to
+Beatrice with an air of fright.
+
+Then all these bewildered but partly amicable recognitions were cloven
+by a cruel voice which always made all human blood turn bitter. The
+Master was standing in the middle of the room surveying the scene like a
+great artist looking at a completed picture. Handsome as he looked, they
+had never seen so clearly what was really hateful in his face; and even
+then they could only express it by saying that the arched brows and the
+long emphatic chin gave it always a look of being lit from below, like
+the face of some infernal actor.
+
+"This is indeed a cosy party," he said, with glittering eyes.
+
+The Master evidently meant to say more, but before he could say anything
+M. Durand had stepped right up to him and was speaking.
+
+He was speaking exactly as a French bourgeois speaks to the manager of a
+restaurant. That is, he spoke with rattling and breathless rapidity,
+but with no incoherence, and therefore with no emotion. It was a steady,
+monotonous vivacity, which came not seemingly from passion, but
+merely from the reason having been sent off at a gallop. He was saying
+something like this:
+
+"You refuse me my half-bottle of Medoc, the drink the most wholesome
+and the most customary. You refuse me the company and obedience of my
+daughter, which Nature herself indicates. You refuse me the beef and
+mutton, without pretence that it is a fast of the Church. You now forbid
+me the promenade, a thing necessary to a person of my age. It is useless
+to tell me that you do all this by law. Law rests upon the social
+contract. If the citizen finds himself despoiled of such pleasures
+and powers as he would have had even in the savage state, the social
+contract is annulled."
+
+"It's no good chattering away, Monsieur," said Hutton, for the Master
+was silent. "The place is covered with machine-guns. We've got to obey
+our orders, and so have you."
+
+"The machinery is of the most perfect," assented Durand, somewhat
+irrelevantly; "worked by petroleum, I believe. I only ask you to admit
+that if such things fall below the comfort of barbarism, the social
+contract is annulled. It is a pretty little point of theory."
+
+"Oh! I dare say," said Hutton.
+
+Durand bowed quite civilly and withdrew.
+
+"A cosy party," resumed the Master, scornfully, "and yet I believe some
+of you are in doubt about how we all came together. I will explain
+it, ladies and gentlemen; I will explain everything. To whom shall I
+specially address myself? To Mr. James Turnbull. He has a scientific
+mind."
+
+Turnbull seemed to choke with sudden protest. The Master seemed only
+to cough out of pure politeness and proceeded: "Mr. Turnbull will agree
+with me," he said, "when I say that we long felt in scientific circles
+that great harm was done by such a legend as that of the Crucifixion."
+
+Turnbull growled something which was presumably assent.
+
+The Master went on smoothly: "It was in vain for us to urge that the
+incident was irrelevant; that there were many such fanatics, many such
+executions. We were forced to take the thing thoroughly in hand,
+to investigate it in the spirit of scientific history, and with the
+assistance of Mr. Turnbull and others we were happy in being able to
+announce that this alleged Crucifixion never occurred at all."
+
+MacIan lifted his head and looked at the Master steadily, but Turnbull
+did not look up.
+
+"This, we found, was the only way with all superstitions," continued the
+speaker; "it was necessary to deny them historically, and we have done
+it with great success in the case of miracles and such things. Now
+within our own time there arose an unfortunate fuss which threatened (as
+Mr. Turnbull would say) to galvanize the corpse of Christianity into a
+fictitious life--the alleged case of a Highland eccentric who wanted to
+fight for the Virgin."
+
+MacIan, quite white, made a step forward, but the speaker did not alter
+his easy attitude or his flow of words. "Again we urged that this duel
+was not to be admired, that it was a mere brawl, but the people were
+ignorant and romantic. There were signs of treating this alleged
+Highlander and his alleged opponent as heroes. We tried all other means
+of arresting this reactionary hero worship. Working men who betted on
+the duel were imprisoned for gambling. Working men who drank the
+health of a duellist were imprisoned for drunkenness. But the popular
+excitement about the alleged duel continued, and we had to fall back on
+our old historical method. We investigated, on scientific principles,
+the story of MacIan's challenge, and we are happy to be able to inform
+you that the whole story of the attempted duel is a fable. There
+never was any challenge. There never was any man named MacIan. It is a
+melodramatic myth, like Calvary."
+
+Not a soul moved save Turnbull, who lifted his head; yet there was the
+sense of a silent explosion.
+
+"The whole story of the MacIan challenge," went on the Master, beaming
+at them all with a sinister benignity, "has been found to originate in
+the obsessions of a few pathological types, who are now all fortunately
+in our care. There is, for instance, a person here of the name of
+Gordon, formerly the keeper of a curiosity shop. He is a victim of the
+disease called Vinculomania--the impression that one has been bound or
+tied up. We have also a case of Fugacity (Mr. Whimpey), who imagines
+that he was chased by two men."
+
+The indignant faces of the Jew shopkeeper and the Magdalen Don started
+out of the crowd in their indignation, but the speaker continued:
+
+"One poor woman we have with us," he said, in a compassionate voice,
+"believes she was in a motor-car with two such men; this is the
+well-known illusion of speed on which I need not dwell. Another wretched
+woman has the simple egotistic mania that she has caused the duel.
+Madeleine Durand actually professes to have been the subject of the
+fight between MacIan and his enemy, a fight which, if it occurred at
+all, certainly began long before. But it never occurred at all. We have
+taken in hand every person who professed to have seen such a thing, and
+proved them all to be unbalanced. That is why they are here."
+
+The Master looked round the room, just showing his perfect teeth with
+the perfection of artistic cruelty, exalted for a moment in the enormous
+simplicity of his success, and then walked across the hall and vanished
+through an inner door. His two lieutenants, Quayle and Hutton, were left
+standing at the head of the great army of servants and keepers.
+
+"I hope we shall have no more trouble," said Dr. Quayle pleasantly
+enough, and addressing Turnbull, who was leaning heavily upon the back
+of a chair.
+
+Still looking down, Turnbull lifted the chair an inch or two from the
+ground. Then he suddenly swung it above his head and sent it at the
+inquiring doctor with an awful crash which sent one of its wooden legs
+loose along the floor and crammed the doctor gasping into a corner.
+MacIan gave a great shout, snatched up the loose chair-leg, and, rushing
+on the other doctor, felled him with a blow. Twenty attendants rushed
+to capture the rebels; MacIan flung back three of them and Turnbull
+went over on top of one, when from behind them all came a shriek as of
+something quite fresh and frightful.
+
+Two of the three passages leading out of the hall were choked with blue
+smoke. Another instant and the hall was full of the fog of it, and red
+sparks began to swarm like scarlet bees.
+
+"The place is on fire!" cried Quayle with a scream of indecent terror.
+"Oh, who can have done it? How can it have happened?"
+
+A light had come into Turnbull's eyes. "How did the French Revolution
+happen?" he asked.
+
+"Oh, how should I know!" wailed the other.
+
+"Then I will tell you," said Turnbull; "it happened because some people
+fancied that a French grocer was as respectable as he looked."
+
+Even as he spoke, as if by confirmation, old Mr. Durand re-entered the
+smoky room quite placidly, wiping the petroleum from his hands with a
+handkerchief. He had set fire to the building in accordance with the
+strict principles of the social contract.
+
+But MacIan had taken a stride forward and stood there shaken and
+terrible. "Now," he cried, panting, "now is the judgement of the world.
+The doctors will leave this place; the keepers will leave this place.
+They will leave us in charge of the machinery and the machine-guns at
+the windows. But we, the lunatics, will wait to be burned alive if only
+we may see them go."
+
+"How do you know we shall go?" asked Hutton, fiercely.
+
+"You believe nothing," said MacIan, simply, "and you are insupportably
+afraid of death."
+
+"So this is suicide," sneered the doctor; "a somewhat doubtful sign of
+sanity."
+
+"Not at all--this is vengeance," answered Turnbull, quite calmly; "a
+thing which is completely healthy."
+
+"You think the doctors will go," said Hutton, savagely.
+
+"The keepers have gone already," said Turnbull.
+
+Even as they spoke the main doors were burst open in mere brutal panic,
+and all the officers and subordinates of the asylum rushed away across
+the garden pursued by the smoke. But among the ticketed maniacs not a
+man or woman moved.
+
+"We hate dying," said Turnbull, with composure, "but we hate you even
+more. This is a successful revolution."
+
+In the roof above their heads a panel shot back, showing a strip of
+star-lit sky and a huge thing made of white metal, with the shape and
+fins of a fish, swinging as if at anchor. At the same moment a steel
+ladder slid down from the opening and struck the floor, and the cleft
+chin of the mysterious Master was thrust into the opening. "Quayle,
+Hutton," he said, "you will escape with me." And they went up the ladder
+like automata of lead.
+
+Long after they had clambered into the car, the creature with the cloven
+face continued to leer down upon the smoke-stung crowd below. Then at
+last he said in a silken voice and with a smile of final satisfaction:
+
+"By the way, I fear I am very absent minded. There is one man specially
+whom, somehow, I always forget. I always leave him lying about. Once
+I mislaid him on the Cross of St. Paul's. So silly of me; and now I've
+forgotten him in one of those little cells where your fire is burning.
+Very unfortunate--especially for him." And nodding genially, he climbed
+into his flying ship.
+
+MacIan stood motionless for two minutes, and then rushed down one of the
+suffocating corridors till he found the flames. Turnbull looked once at
+Madeleine, and followed.
+
+           *                    *                   *
+
+MacIan, with singed hair, smoking garments, and smarting hands and face,
+had already broken far enough through the first barriers of burning
+timber to come within cry of the cells he had once known. It was
+impossible, however, to see the spot where the old man lay dead or
+alive; not now through darkness, but through scorching and aching light.
+The site of the old half-wit's cell was now the heart of a standing
+forest of fire--the flames as thick and yellow as a cornfield. Their
+incessant shrieking and crackling was like a mob shouting against an
+orator. Yet through all that deafening density MacIan thought he heard
+a small and separate sound. When he heard it he rushed forward as if to
+plunge into that furnace, but Turnbull arrested him by an elbow.
+
+"Let me go!" cried Evan, in agony; "it's the poor old beggar's
+voice--he's still alive, and shouting for help."
+
+"Listen!" said Turnbull, and lifted one finger from his clenched hand.
+
+"Or else he is shrieking with pain," protested MacIan. "I will not
+endure it."
+
+"Listen!" repeated Turnbull, grimly. "Did you ever hear anyone shout for
+help or shriek with pain in that voice?"
+
+The small shrill sounds which came through the crash of the
+conflagration were indeed of an odd sort, and MacIan turned a face of
+puzzled inquiry to his companion.
+
+"He is singing," said Turnbull, simply.
+
+A remaining rampart fell, crushing the fire, and through the diminished
+din of it the voice of the little old lunatic came clearer. In the heart
+of that white-hot hell he was singing like a bird. What he was singing
+it was not very easy to follow, but it seemed to be something about
+playing in the golden hay.
+
+"Good Lord!" cried Turnbull, bitterly, "there seem to be some advantages
+in really being an idiot." Then advancing to the fringe of the fire he
+called out on chance to the invisible singer: "Can you come out? Are you
+cut off?"
+
+"God help us all!" said MacIan, with a shudder; "he's laughing now."
+
+At whatever stage of being burned alive the invisible now found himself,
+he was now shaking out peals of silvery and hilarious laughter. As he
+listened, MacIan's two eyes began to glow, as if a strange thought had
+come into his head.
+
+"Fool, come out and save yourself!" shouted Turnbull.
+
+"No, by Heaven! that is not the way," cried Evan, suddenly. "Father," he
+shouted, "come out and save us all!"
+
+The fire, though it had dropped in one or two places, was, upon the
+whole, higher and more unconquerable than ever. Separate tall flames
+shot up and spread out above them like the fiery cloisters of some
+infernal cathedral, or like a grove of red tropical trees in the garden
+of the devil. Higher yet in the purple hollow of the night the topmost
+flames leapt again and again fruitlessly at the stars, like golden
+dragons chained but struggling. The towers and domes of the oppressive
+smoke seemed high and far enough to drown distant planets in a London
+fog. But if we exhausted all frantic similes for that frantic scene,
+the main impression about the fire would still be its ranked upstanding
+rigidity and a sort of roaring stillness. It was literally a wall of
+fire.
+
+"Father," cried MacIan, once more, "come out of it and save us all!"
+Turnbull was staring at him as he cried.
+
+The tall and steady forest of fire must have been already a portent
+visible to the whole circle of land and sea. The red flush of it lit up
+the long sides of white ships far out in the German Ocean, and picked
+out like piercing rubies the windows in the villages on the distant
+heights. If any villagers or sailors were looking towards it they must
+have seen a strange sight as MacIan cried out for the third time.
+
+That forest of fire wavered, and was cloven in the centre; and then the
+whole of one half of it leaned one way as a cornfield leans all one way
+under the load of the wind. Indeed, it looked as if a great wind had
+sprung up and driven the great fire aslant. Its smoke was no longer sent
+up to choke the stars, but was trailed and dragged across county after
+county like one dreadful banner of defeat.
+
+But it was not the wind; or, if it was the wind, it was two winds
+blowing in opposite directions. For while one half of the huge fire
+sloped one way towards the inland heights, the other half, at exactly
+the same angle, sloped out eastward towards the sea. So that earth and
+ocean could behold, where there had been a mere fiery mass, a thing
+divided like a V--a cloven tongue of flame. But if it were a prodigy for
+those distant, it was something beyond speech for those quite near. As
+the echoes of Evan's last appeal rang and died in the universal uproar,
+the fiery vault over his head opened down the middle, and, reeling back
+in two great golden billows, hung on each side as huge and harmless as
+two sloping hills lie on each side of a valley. Down the centre of this
+trough, or chasm, a little path ran, cleared of all but ashes, and down
+this little path was walking a little old man singing as if he were
+alone in a wood in spring.
+
+When James Turnbull saw this he suddenly put out a hand and seemed to
+support himself on the strong shoulder of Madeleine Durand. Then after a
+moment's hesitation he put his other hand on the shoulder of MacIan.
+His blue eyes looked extraordinarily brilliant and beautiful. In many
+sceptical papers and magazines afterwards he was sadly or sternly
+rebuked for having abandoned the certainties of materialism. All
+his life up to that moment he had been most honestly certain that
+materialism was a fact. But he was unlike the writers in the magazines
+precisely in this--that he preferred a fact even to materialism.
+
+As the little singing figure came nearer and nearer, Evan fell on his
+knees, and after an instant Beatrice followed; then Madeleine fell on
+her knees, and after a longer instant Turnbull followed. Then the little
+old man went past them singing down that corridor of flames. They had
+not looked at his face.
+
+When he had passed they looked up. While the first light of the fire
+had shot east and west, painting the sides of ships with fire-light or
+striking red sparks out of windowed houses, it had not hitherto struck
+upward, for there was above it the ponderous and rococo cavern of its
+own monstrous coloured smoke. But now the fire was turned to left and
+right like a woman's hair parted in the middle, and now the shafts of
+its light could shoot up into empty heavens and strike anything, either
+bird or cloud. But it struck something that was neither cloud nor bird.
+Far, far away up in those huge hollows of space something was flying
+swiftly and shining brightly, something that shone too bright and flew
+too fast to be any of the fowls of the air, though the red light lit it
+from underneath like the breast of a bird. Everyone knew it was a flying
+ship, and everyone knew whose.
+
+As they stared upward the little speck of light seemed slightly tilted,
+and two black dots dropped from the edge of it. All the eager, upturned
+faces watched the two dots as they grew bigger and bigger in their
+downward rush. Then someone screamed, and no one looked up any more. For
+the two bodies, larger every second flying, spread out and sprawling in
+the fire-light, were the dead bodies of the two doctors whom Professor
+Lucifer had carried with him--the weak and sneering Quayle, the cold and
+clumsy Hutton. They went with a crash into the thick of the fire.
+
+"They are gone!" screamed Beatrice, hiding her head. "O God! The are
+lost!"
+
+Evan put his arm about her, and remembered his own vision.
+
+"No, they are not lost," he said. "They are saved. He has taken away no
+souls with him, after all."
+
+He looked vaguely about at the fire that was already fading, and there
+among the ashes lay two shining things that had survived the fire, his
+sword and Turnbull's, fallen haphazard in the pattern of a cross.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Ball and The Cross, by G.K. Chesterton
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+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
+  <head>
+    <title>
+      The Ball and the Cross, By G.K. Chesterton
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+
+    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify}
+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
+    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }
+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
+    blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}
+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+    div.fig    { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+    div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; }
+    .figleft   {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;}
+    .figright  {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;}
+    .pagenum   {display:inline; font-size: 70%; font-style:normal;
+               margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%;
+               text-align: right;}
+    pre        { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
+
+</style>
+  </head>
+  <body>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Ball and The Cross, by G.K. Chesterton
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Ball and The Cross
+
+Author: G.K. Chesterton
+
+Release Date: March 24, 2009 [EBook #5265]
+Last Updated: March 9, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BALL AND THE CROSS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Ben Crowder, and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      THE BALL AND THE CROSS
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      By G.K. Chesterton
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <big><b>CONTENTS</b></big>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br /> <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> I. </a>&nbsp;&nbsp;A DISCUSSION SOMEWHAT
+        IN THE AIR <br /><br /> <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> II. </a>&nbsp;&nbsp;THE
+        RELIGION OF THE STIPENDIARY MAGISTRATE <br /><br /> <a
+        href="#link2H_4_0003"> III. </a>&nbsp;&nbsp;SOME OLD CURIOSITIES <br /><br />
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0004"> IV. </a>&nbsp;&nbsp;A DISCUSSION AT DAWN <br /><br />
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0005"> V. </a>&nbsp;&nbsp;THE PEACEMAKER <br /><br />
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0006"> VI. </a>&nbsp;&nbsp;THE OTHER PHILOSOPHER
+        <br /><br /> <a href="#link2H_4_0007"> VII. </a>&nbsp;&nbsp;THE VILLAGE OF
+        GRASSLEY-IN-THE-HOLE <br /><br /> <a href="#link2H_4_0008"> VIII. </a>&nbsp;&nbsp;AN
+        INTERLUDE OF ARGUMENT <br /><br /> <a href="#link2H_4_0009"> IX. </a>&nbsp;&nbsp;THE
+        STRANGE LADY <br /><br /> <a href="#link2H_4_0010"> X. </a>&nbsp;&nbsp;THE
+        SWORDS REJOINED <br /><br /> <a href="#link2H_4_0011"> XI. </a>&nbsp;&nbsp;A
+        SCANDAL IN THE VILLAGE <br /><br /> <a href="#link2H_4_0012"> XII. </a>&nbsp;&nbsp;THE
+        DESERT ISLAND <br /><br /> <a href="#link2H_4_0013"> XIII. </a>&nbsp;&nbsp;THE
+        GARDEN OF PEACE <br /><br /> <a href="#link2H_4_0014"> XIV. </a>&nbsp;&nbsp;A
+        MUSEUM OF SOULS <br /><br /> <a href="#link2H_4_0015"> XV. </a>&nbsp;&nbsp;THE
+        DREAM OF MACIAN <br /><br /> <a href="#link2H_4_0016"> XVI. </a>&nbsp;&nbsp;THE
+        DREAM OF TURNBULL <br /><br /> <a href="#link2H_4_0017"> XVII. </a>&nbsp;&nbsp;THE
+        IDIOT <br /><br /> <a href="#link2H_4_0018"> XVIII. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;A
+        RIDDLE OF FACES <br /><br /> <a href="#link2H_4_0019"> XIX. </a>&nbsp;&nbsp;THE
+        LAST PARLEY <br /><br /> <a href="#link2H_4_0020"> XX. </a>&nbsp;&nbsp;DIES
+        IRAE <br /><br />
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /> <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      I. A DISCUSSION SOMEWHAT IN THE AIR
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The flying ship of Professor Lucifer sang through the skies like a silver
+      arrow; the bleak white steel of it, gleaming in the bleak blue emptiness
+      of the evening. That it was far above the earth was no expression for it;
+      to the two men in it, it seemed to be far above the stars. The professor
+      had himself invented the flying machine, and had also invented nearly
+      everything in it. Every sort of tool or apparatus had, in consequence, to
+      the full, that fantastic and distorted look which belongs to the miracles
+      of science. For the world of science and evolution is far more nameless
+      and elusive and like a dream than the world of poetry and religion; since
+      in the latter images and ideas remain themselves eternally, while it is
+      the whole idea of evolution that identities melt into each other as they
+      do in a nightmare.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All the tools of Professor Lucifer were the ancient human tools gone mad,
+      grown into unrecognizable shapes, forgetful of their origin, forgetful of
+      their names. That thing which looked like an enormous key with three
+      wheels was really a patent and very deadly revolver. That object which
+      seemed to be created by the entanglement of two corkscrews was really the
+      key. The thing which might have been mistaken for a tricycle turned
+      upside-down was the inexpressibly important instrument to which the
+      corkscrew was the key. All these things, as I say, the professor had
+      invented; he had invented everything in the flying ship, with the
+      exception, perhaps, of himself. This he had been born too late actually to
+      inaugurate, but he believed at least, that he had considerably improved
+      it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was, however, another man on board, so to speak, at the time. Him,
+      also, by a curious coincidence, the professor had not invented, and him he
+      had not even very greatly improved, though he had fished him up with a
+      lasso out of his own back garden, in Western Bulgaria, with the pure
+      object of improving him. He was an exceedingly holy man, almost entirely
+      covered with white hair. You could see nothing but his eyes, and he seemed
+      to talk with them. A monk of immense learning and acute intellect he had
+      made himself happy in a little stone hut and a little stony garden in the
+      Balkans, chiefly by writing the most crushing refutations of exposures of
+      certain heresies, the last professors of which had been burnt (generally
+      by each other) precisely 1,119 years previously. They were really very
+      plausible and thoughtful heresies, and it was really a creditable or even
+      glorious circumstance, that the old monk had been intellectual enough to
+      detect their fallacy; the only misfortune was that nobody in the modern
+      world was intellectual enough even to understand their argument. The old
+      monk, one of whose names was Michael, and the other a name quite
+      impossible to remember or repeat in our Western civilization, had,
+      however, as I have said, made himself quite happy while he was in a
+      mountain hermitage in the society of wild animals. And now that his luck
+      had lifted him above all the mountains in the society of a wild physicist,
+      he made himself happy still.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have no intention, my good Michael,&rdquo; said Professor Lucifer, &ldquo;of
+      endeavouring to convert you by argument. The imbecility of your traditions
+      can be quite finally exhibited to anybody with mere ordinary knowledge of
+      the world, the same kind of knowledge which teaches us not to sit in
+      draughts or not to encourage friendliness in impecunious people. It is
+      folly to talk of this or that demonstrating the rationalist philosophy.
+      Everything demonstrates it. Rubbing shoulders with men of all kinds&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will forgive me,&rdquo; said the monk, meekly from under loads of white
+      beard, &ldquo;but I fear I do not understand; was it in order that I might rub
+      my shoulder against men of all kinds that you put me inside this thing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An entertaining retort, in the narrow and deductive manner of the Middle
+      Ages,&rdquo; replied the Professor, calmly, &ldquo;but even upon your own basis I will
+      illustrate my point. We are up in the sky. In your religion and all the
+      religions, as far as I know (and I know everything), the sky is made the
+      symbol of everything that is sacred and merciful. Well, now you are in the
+      sky, you know better. Phrase it how you like, twist it how you like, you
+      know that you know better. You know what are a man's real feelings about
+      the heavens, when he finds himself alone in the heavens, surrounded by the
+      heavens. You know the truth, and the truth is this. The heavens are evil,
+      the sky is evil, the stars are evil. This mere space, this mere quantity,
+      terrifies a man more than tigers or the terrible plague. You know that
+      since our science has spoken, the bottom has fallen out of the Universe.
+      Now, heaven is the hopeless thing, more hopeless than any hell. Now, if
+      there be any comfort for all your miserable progeny of morbid apes, it
+      must be in the earth, underneath you, under the roots of the grass, in the
+      place where hell was of old. The fiery crypts, the lurid cellars of the
+      underworld, to which you once condemned the wicked, are hideous enough,
+      but at least they are more homely than the heaven in which we ride. And
+      the time will come when you will all hide in them, to escape the horror of
+      the stars.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope you will excuse my interrupting you,&rdquo; said Michael, with a slight
+      cough, &ldquo;but I have always noticed&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go on, pray go on,&rdquo; said Professor Lucifer, radiantly, &ldquo;I really like to
+      draw out your simple ideas.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, the fact is,&rdquo; said the other, &ldquo;that much as I admire your rhetoric
+      and the rhetoric of your school, from a purely verbal point of view, such
+      little study of you and your school in human history as I have been
+      enabled to make has led me to&mdash;er&mdash;rather singular conclusion,
+      which I find great difficulty in expressing, especially in a foreign
+      language.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come, come,&rdquo; said the Professor, encouragingly, &ldquo;I'll help you out. How
+      did my view strike you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, the truth is, I know I don't express it properly, but somehow it
+      seemed to me that you always convey ideas of that kind with most
+      eloquence, when&mdash;er&mdash;when&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! get on,&rdquo; cried Lucifer, boisterously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, in point of fact when your flying ship is just going to run into
+      something. I thought you wouldn't mind my mentioning it, but it's running
+      into something now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lucifer exploded with an oath and leapt erect, leaning hard upon the
+      handle that acted as a helm to the vessel. For the last ten minutes they
+      had been shooting downwards into great cracks and caverns of cloud. Now,
+      through a sort of purple haze, could be seen comparatively near to them
+      what seemed to be the upper part of a huge, dark orb or sphere, islanded
+      in a sea of cloud. The Professor's eyes were blazing like a maniac's.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is a new world,&rdquo; he cried, with a dreadful mirth. &ldquo;It is a new planet
+      and it shall bear my name. This star and not that other vulgar one shall
+      be 'Lucifer, sun of the morning.' Here we will have no chartered lunacies,
+      here we will have no gods. Here man shall be as innocent as the daisies,
+      as innocent and as cruel&mdash;here the intellect&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There seems,&rdquo; said Michael, timidly, &ldquo;to be something sticking up in the
+      middle of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So there is,&rdquo; said the Professor, leaning over the side of the ship, his
+      spectacles shining with intellectual excitement. &ldquo;What can it be? It might
+      of course be merely a&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then a shriek indescribable broke out of him of a sudden, and he flung up
+      his arms like a lost spirit. The monk took the helm in a tired way; he did
+      not seem much astonished for he came from an ignorant part of the world in
+      which it is not uncommon for lost spirits to shriek when they see the
+      curious shape which the Professor had just seen on the top of the
+      mysterious ball, but he took the helm only just in time, and by driving it
+      hard to the left he prevented the flying ship from smashing into St.
+      Paul's Cathedral.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A plain of sad-coloured cloud lay along the level of the top of the
+      Cathedral dome, so that the ball and the cross looked like a buoy riding
+      on a leaden sea. As the flying ship swept towards it, this plain of cloud
+      looked as dry and definite and rocky as any grey desert. Hence it gave to
+      the mind and body a sharp and unearthly sensation when the ship cut and
+      sank into the cloud as into any common mist, a thing without resistance.
+      There was, as it were, a deadly shock in the fact that there was no shock.
+      It was as if they had cloven into ancient cliffs like so much butter. But
+      sensations awaited them which were much stranger than those of sinking
+      through the solid earth. For a moment their eyes and nostrils were stopped
+      with darkness and opaque cloud; then the darkness warmed into a kind of
+      brown fog. And far, far below them the brown fog fell until it warmed into
+      fire. Through the dense London atmosphere they could see below them the
+      flaming London lights; lights which lay beneath them in squares and
+      oblongs of fire. The fog and fire were mixed in a passionate vapour; you
+      might say that the fog was drowning the flames; or you might say that the
+      flames had set the fog on fire. Beside the ship and beneath it (for it
+      swung just under the ball), the immeasurable dome itself shot out and down
+      into the dark like a combination of voiceless cataracts. Or it was like
+      some cyclopean sea-beast sitting above London and letting down its
+      tentacles bewilderingly on every side, a monstrosity in that starless
+      heaven. For the clouds that belonged to London had closed over the heads
+      of the voyagers sealing up the entrance of the upper air. They had broken
+      through a roof and come into a temple of twilight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were so near to the ball that Lucifer leaned his hand against it,
+      holding the vessel away, as men push a boat off from a bank. Above it the
+      cross already draped in the dark mists of the borderland was shadowy and
+      more awful in shape and size.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Professor Lucifer slapped his hand twice upon the surface of the great orb
+      as if he were caressing some enormous animal. &ldquo;This is the fellow,&rdquo; he
+      said, &ldquo;this is the one for my money.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;May I with all respect inquire,&rdquo; asked the old monk, &ldquo;what on earth you
+      are talking about?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why this,&rdquo; cried Lucifer, smiting the ball again, &ldquo;here is the only
+      symbol, my boy. So fat. So satisfied. Not like that scraggy individual,
+      stretching his arms in stark weariness.&rdquo; And he pointed up to the cross,
+      his face dark with a grin. &ldquo;I was telling you just now, Michael, that I
+      can prove the best part of the rationalist case and the Christian humbug
+      from any symbol you liked to give me, from any instance I came across.
+      Here is an instance with a vengeance. What could possibly express your
+      philosophy and my philosophy better than the shape of that cross and the
+      shape of this ball? This globe is reasonable; that cross is unreasonable.
+      It is a four-legged animal, with one leg longer than the others. The globe
+      is inevitable. The cross is arbitrary. Above all the globe is at unity
+      with itself; the cross is primarily and above all things at enmity with
+      itself. The cross is the conflict of two hostile lines, of irreconcilable
+      direction. That silent thing up there is essentially a collision, a crash,
+      a struggle in stone. Pah! that sacred symbol of yours has actually given
+      its name to a description of desperation and muddle. When we speak of men
+      at once ignorant of each other and frustrated by each other, we say they
+      are at cross-purposes. Away with the thing! The very shape of it is a
+      contradiction in terms.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What you say is perfectly true,&rdquo; said Michael, with serenity. &ldquo;But we
+      like contradictions in terms. Man is a contradiction in terms; he is a
+      beast whose superiority to other beasts consists in having fallen. That
+      cross is, as you say, an eternal collision; so am I. That is a struggle in
+      stone. Every form of life is a struggle in flesh. The shape of the cross
+      is irrational, just as the shape of the human animal is irrational. You
+      say the cross is a quadruped with one limb longer than the rest. I say man
+      is a quadruped who only uses two of his legs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Professor frowned thoughtfully for an instant, and said: &ldquo;Of course
+      everything is relative, and I would not deny that the element of struggle
+      and self-contradiction, represented by that cross, has a necessary place
+      at a certain evolutionary stage. But surely the cross is the lower
+      development and the sphere the higher. After all it is easy enough to see
+      what is really wrong with Wren's architectural arrangement.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what is that, pray?&rdquo; inquired Michael, meekly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The cross is on top of the ball,&rdquo; said Professor Lucifer, simply. &ldquo;That
+      is surely wrong. The ball should be on top of the cross. The cross is a
+      mere barbaric prop; the ball is perfection. The cross at its best is but
+      the bitter tree of man's history; the ball is the rounded, the ripe and
+      final fruit. And the fruit should be at the top of the tree, not at the
+      bottom of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; said the monk, a wrinkle coming into his forehead, &ldquo;so you think
+      that in a rationalistic scheme of symbolism the ball should be on top of
+      the cross?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It sums up my whole allegory,&rdquo; said the professor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, that is really very interesting,&rdquo; resumed Michael slowly, &ldquo;because
+      I think in that case you would see a most singular effect, an effect that
+      has generally been achieved by all those able and powerful systems which
+      rationalism, or the religion of the ball, has produced to lead or teach
+      mankind. You would see, I think, that thing happen which is always the
+      ultimate embodiment and logical outcome of your logical scheme.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are you talking about?&rdquo; asked Lucifer. &ldquo;What would happen?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean it would fall down,&rdquo; said the monk, looking wistfully into the
+      void.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lucifer made an angry movement and opened his mouth to speak, but Michael,
+      with all his air of deliberation, was proceeding before he could bring out
+      a word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I once knew a man like you, Lucifer,&rdquo; he said, with a maddening monotony
+      and slowness of articulation. &ldquo;He took this&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is no man like me,&rdquo; cried Lucifer, with a violence that shook the
+      ship.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As I was observing,&rdquo; continued Michael, &ldquo;this man also took the view that
+      the symbol of Christianity was a symbol of savagery and all unreason. His
+      history is rather amusing. It is also a perfect allegory of what happens
+      to rationalists like yourself. He began, of course, by refusing to allow a
+      crucifix in his house, or round his wife's neck, or even in a picture. He
+      said, as you say, that it was an arbitrary and fantastic shape, that it
+      was a monstrosity, loved because it was paradoxical. Then he began to grow
+      fiercer and more eccentric; he would batter the crosses by the roadside;
+      for he lived in a Roman Catholic country. Finally in a height of frenzy he
+      climbed the steeple of the Parish Church and tore down the cross, waving
+      it in the air, and uttering wild soliloquies up there under the stars.
+      Then one still summer evening as he was wending his way homewards, along a
+      lane, the devil of his madness came upon him with a violence and
+      transfiguration which changes the world. He was standing smoking, for a
+      moment, in the front of an interminable line of palings, when his eyes
+      were opened. Not a light shifted, not a leaf stirred, but he saw as if by
+      a sudden change in the eyesight that this paling was an army of
+      innumerable crosses linked together over hill and dale. And he whirled up
+      his heavy stick and went at it as if at an army. Mile after mile along his
+      homeward path he broke it down and tore it up. For he hated the cross and
+      every paling is a wall of crosses. When he returned to his house he was a
+      literal madman. He sat upon a chair and then started up from it for the
+      cross-bars of the carpentry repeated the intolerable image. He flung
+      himself upon a bed only to remember that this, too, like all workmanlike
+      things, was constructed on the accursed plan. He broke his furniture
+      because it was made of crosses. He burnt his house because it was made of
+      crosses. He was found in the river.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lucifer was looking at him with a bitten lip.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is that story really true?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no,&rdquo; said Michael, airily. &ldquo;It is a parable. It is a parable of you
+      and all your rationalists. You begin by breaking up the Cross; but you end
+      by breaking up the habitable world. We leave you saying that nobody ought
+      to join the Church against his will. When we meet you again you are saying
+      that no one has any will to join it with. We leave you saying that there
+      is no such place as Eden. We find you saying that there is no such place
+      as Ireland. You start by hating the irrational and you come to hate
+      everything, for everything is irrational and so&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lucifer leapt upon him with a cry like a wild beast's. &ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; he screamed,
+      &ldquo;to every man his madness. You are mad on the cross. Let it save you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And with a herculean energy he forced the monk backwards out of the
+      reeling car on to the upper part of the stone ball. Michael, with as
+      abrupt an agility, caught one of the beams of the cross and saved himself
+      from falling. At the same instant Lucifer drove down a lever and the ship
+      shot up with him in it alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ha! ha!&rdquo; he yelled, &ldquo;what sort of a support do you find it, old fellow?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For practical purposes of support,&rdquo; replied Michael grimly, &ldquo;it is at any
+      rate a great deal better than the ball. May I ask if you are going to
+      leave me here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, yes. I mount! I mount!&rdquo; cried the professor in ungovernable
+      excitement. &ldquo;<i>Altiora peto</i>. My path is upward.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How often have you told me, Professor, that there is really no up or down
+      in space?&rdquo; said the monk. &ldquo;I shall mount up as much as you will.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indeed,&rdquo; said Lucifer, leering over the side of the flying ship. &ldquo;May I
+      ask what you are going to do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The monk pointed downward at Ludgate Hill. &ldquo;I am going,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;to
+      climb up into a star.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Those who look at the matter most superficially regard paradox as
+      something which belongs to jesting and light journalism. Paradox of this
+      kind is to be found in the saying of the dandy, in the decadent comedy,
+      &ldquo;Life is much too important to be taken seriously.&rdquo; Those who look at the
+      matter a little more deeply or delicately see that paradox is a thing
+      which especially belongs to all religions. Paradox of this kind is to be
+      found in such a saying as &ldquo;The meek shall inherit the earth.&rdquo; But those
+      who see and feel the fundamental fact of the matter know that paradox is a
+      thing which belongs not to religion only, but to all vivid and violent
+      practical crises of human living. This kind of paradox may be clearly
+      perceived by anybody who happens to be hanging in mid-space, clinging to
+      one arm of the Cross of St. Paul's.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Father Michael in spite of his years, and in spite of his asceticism (or
+      because of it, for all I know), was a very healthy and happy old
+      gentleman. And as he swung on a bar above the sickening emptiness of air,
+      he realized, with that sort of dead detachment which belongs to the brains
+      of those in peril, the deathless and hopeless contradiction which is
+      involved in the mere idea of courage. He was a happy and healthy old
+      gentleman and therefore he was quite careless about it. And he felt as
+      every man feels in the taut moment of such terror that his chief danger
+      was terror itself; his only possible strength would be a coolness
+      amounting to carelessness, a carelessness amounting almost to a suicidal
+      swagger. His one wild chance of coming out safely would be in not too
+      desperately desiring to be safe. There might be footholds down that awful
+      facade, if only he could not care whether they were footholds or no. If he
+      were foolhardy he might escape; if he were wise he would stop where he was
+      till he dropped from the cross like a stone. And this antinomy kept on
+      repeating itself in his mind, a contradiction as large and staring as the
+      immense contradiction of the Cross; he remembered having often heard the
+      words, &ldquo;Whosoever shall lose his life the same shall save it.&rdquo; He
+      remembered with a sort of strange pity that this had always been made to
+      mean that whoever lost his physical life should save his spiritual life.
+      Now he knew the truth that is known to all fighters, and hunters, and
+      climbers of cliffs. He knew that even his animal life could only be saved
+      by a considerable readiness to lose it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some will think it improbable that a human soul swinging desperately in
+      mid-air should think about philosophical inconsistencies. But such extreme
+      states are dangerous things to dogmatize about. Frequently they produce a
+      certain useless and joyless activity of the mere intellect, thought not
+      only divorced from hope but even from desire. And if it is impossible to
+      dogmatize about such states, it is still more impossible to describe them.
+      To this spasm of sanity and clarity in Michael's mind succeeded a spasm of
+      the elemental terror; the terror of the animal in us which regards the
+      whole universe as its enemy; which, when it is victorious, has no pity,
+      and so, when it is defeated has no imaginable hope. Of that ten minutes of
+      terror it is not possible to speak in human words. But then again in that
+      damnable darkness there began to grow a strange dawn as of grey and pale
+      silver. And of this ultimate resignation or certainty it is even less
+      possible to write; it is something stranger than hell itself; it is
+      perhaps the last of the secrets of God. At the highest crisis of some
+      incurable anguish there will suddenly fall upon the man the stillness of
+      an insane contentment. It is not hope, for hope is broken and romantic and
+      concerned with the future; this is complete and of the present. It is not
+      faith, for faith by its very nature is fierce, and as it were at once
+      doubtful and defiant; but this is simply a satisfaction. It is not
+      knowledge, for the intellect seems to have no particular part in it. Nor
+      is it (as the modern idiots would certainly say it is) a mere numbness or
+      negative paralysis of the powers of grief. It is not negative in the
+      least; it is as positive as good news. In some sense, indeed, it is good
+      news. It seems almost as if there were some equality among things, some
+      balance in all possible contingencies which we are not permitted to know
+      lest we should learn indifference to good and evil, but which is sometimes
+      shown to us for an instant as a last aid in our last agony.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Michael certainly could not have given any sort of rational account of
+      this vast unmeaning satisfaction which soaked through him and filled him
+      to the brim. He felt with a sort of half-witted lucidity that the cross
+      was there, and the ball was there, and the dome was there, that he was
+      going to climb down from them, and that he did not mind in the least
+      whether he was killed or not. This mysterious mood lasted long enough to
+      start him on his dreadful descent and to force him to continue it. But six
+      times before he reached the highest of the outer galleries terror had
+      returned on him like a flying storm of darkness and thunder. By the time
+      he had reached that place of safety he almost felt (as in some impossible
+      fit of drunkenness) that he had two heads; one was calm, careless, and
+      efficient; the other saw the danger like a deadly map, was wise, careful,
+      and useless. He had fancied that he would have to let himself vertically
+      down the face of the whole building. When he dropped into the upper
+      gallery he still felt as far from the terrestrial globe as if he had only
+      dropped from the sun to the moon. He paused a little, panting in the
+      gallery under the ball, and idly kicked his heels, moving a few yards
+      along it. And as he did so a thunderbolt struck his soul. A man, a heavy,
+      ordinary man, with a composed indifferent face, and a prosaic sort of
+      uniform, with a row of buttons, blocked his way. Michael had no mind to
+      wonder whether this solid astonished man, with the brown moustache and the
+      nickel buttons, had also come on a flying ship. He merely let his mind
+      float in an endless felicity about the man. He thought how nice it would
+      be if he had to live up in that gallery with that one man for ever. He
+      thought how he would luxuriate in the nameless shades of this man's soul
+      and then hear with an endless excitement about the nameless shades of the
+      souls of all his aunts and uncles. A moment before he had been dying
+      alone. Now he was living in the same world with a man; an inexhaustible
+      ecstasy. In the gallery below the ball Father Michael had found that man
+      who is the noblest and most divine and most lovable of all men, better
+      than all the saints, greater than all the heroes&mdash;man Friday.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the confused colour and music of his new paradise, Michael heard only
+      in a faint and distant fashion some remarks that this beautiful solid man
+      seemed to be making to him; remarks about something or other being after
+      hours and against orders. He also seemed to be asking how Michael &ldquo;got up&rdquo;
+       there. This beautiful man evidently felt as Michael did that the earth was
+      a star and was set in heaven.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At length Michael sated himself with the mere sensual music of the voice
+      of the man in buttons. He began to listen to what he said, and even to
+      make some attempt at answering a question which appeared to have been put
+      several times and was now put with some excess of emphasis. Michael
+      realized that the image of God in nickel buttons was asking him how he had
+      come there. He said that he had come in Lucifer's ship. On his giving this
+      answer the demeanour of the image of God underwent a remarkable change.
+      From addressing Michael gruffly, as if he were a malefactor, he began
+      suddenly to speak to him with a sort of eager and feverish amiability as
+      if he were a child. He seemed particularly anxious to coax him away from
+      the balustrade. He led him by the arm towards a door leading into the
+      building itself, soothing him all the time. He gave what even Michael
+      (slight as was his knowledge of the world) felt to be an improbable
+      account of the sumptuous pleasures and varied advantages awaiting him
+      downstairs. Michael followed him, however, if only out of politeness, down
+      an apparently interminable spiral of staircase. At one point a door
+      opened. Michael stepped through it, and the unaccountable man in buttons
+      leapt after him and pinioned him where he stood. But he only wished to
+      stand; to stand and stare. He had stepped as it were into another
+      infinity, out under the dome of another heaven. But this was a dome of
+      heaven made by man. The gold and green and crimson of its sunset were not
+      in the shapeless clouds but in shapes of cherubim and seraphim, awful
+      human shapes with a passionate plumage. Its stars were not above but far
+      below, like fallen stars still in unbroken constellations; the dome itself
+      was full of darkness. And far below, lower even than the lights, could be
+      seen creeping or motionless, great black masses of men. The tongue of a
+      terrible organ seemed to shake the very air in the whole void; and through
+      it there came up to Michael the sound of a tongue more terrible; the
+      dreadful everlasting voice of man, calling to his gods from the beginning
+      to the end of the world. Michael felt almost as if he were a god, and all
+      the voices were hurled at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, the pretty things aren't here,&rdquo; said the demi-god in buttons,
+      caressingly. &ldquo;The pretty things are downstairs. You come along with me.
+      There's something that will surprise you downstairs; something you want
+      very much to see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Evidently the man in buttons did not feel like a god, so Michael made no
+      attempt to explain his feelings to him, but followed him meekly enough
+      down the trail of the serpentine staircase. He had no notion where or at
+      what level he was. He was still full of the cold splendour of space, and
+      of what a French writer has brilliantly named the &ldquo;vertigo of the
+      infinite,&rdquo; when another door opened, and with a shock indescribable he
+      found himself on the familiar level, in a street full of faces, with the
+      houses and even the lamp-posts above his head. He felt suddenly happy and
+      suddenly indescribably small. He fancied he had been changed into a child
+      again; his eyes sought the pavement seriously as children's do, as if it
+      were a thing with which something satisfactory could be done. He felt the
+      full warmth of that pleasure from which the proud shut themselves out; the
+      pleasure which not only goes with humiliation, but which almost is
+      humiliation. Men who have escaped death by a hair have it, and men whose
+      love is returned by a woman unexpectedly, and men whose sins are forgiven
+      them. Everything his eye fell on it feasted on, not aesthetically, but
+      with a plain, jolly appetite as of a boy eating buns. He relished the
+      squareness of the houses; he liked their clean angles as if he had just
+      cut them with a knife. The lit squares of the shop windows excited him as
+      the young are excited by the lit stage of some promising pantomime. He
+      happened to see in one shop which projected with a bulging bravery on to
+      the pavement some square tins of potted meat, and it seemed like a hint of
+      a hundred hilarious high teas in a hundred streets of the world. He was,
+      perhaps, the happiest of all the children of men. For in that unendurable
+      instant when he hung, half slipping, to the ball of St. Paul's, the whole
+      universe had been destroyed and re-created.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly through all the din of the dark streets came a crash of glass.
+      With that mysterious suddenness of the Cockney mob, a rush was made in the
+      right direction, a dingy office, next to the shop of the potted meat. The
+      pane of glass was lying in splinters about the pavement. And the police
+      already had their hands on a very tall young man, with dark, lank hair and
+      dark, dazed eyes, with a grey plaid over his shoulder, who had just
+      smashed the shop window with a single blow of his stick.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'd do it again,&rdquo; said the young man, with a furious white face. &ldquo;Anybody
+      would have done it. Did you see what it said? I swear I'd do it again.&rdquo;
+       Then his eyes encountered the monkish habit of Michael, and he pulled off
+      his grey tam-o'-shanter with the gesture of a Catholic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Father, did you see what they said?&rdquo; he cried, trembling. &ldquo;Did you see
+      what they dared to say? I didn't understand it at first. I read it half
+      through before I broke the window.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Michael felt he knew not how. The whole peace of the world was pent up
+      painfully in his heart. The new and childlike world which he had seen so
+      suddenly, men had not seen at all. Here they were still at their old
+      bewildering, pardonable, useless quarrels, with so much to be said on both
+      sides, and so little that need be said at all. A fierce inspiration fell
+      on him suddenly; he would strike them where they stood with the love of
+      God. They should not move till they saw their own sweet and startling
+      existence. They should not go from that place till they went home
+      embracing like brothers and shouting like men delivered. From the Cross
+      from which he had fallen fell the shadow of its fantastic mercy; and the
+      first three words he spoke in a voice like a silver trumpet, held men as
+      still as stones. Perhaps if he had spoken there for an hour in his
+      illumination he might have founded a religion on Ludgate Hill. But the
+      heavy hand of his guide fell suddenly on his shoulder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This poor fellow is dotty,&rdquo; he said good-humouredly to the crowd. &ldquo;I
+      found him wandering in the Cathedral. Says he came in a flying ship. Is
+      there a constable to spare to take care of him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a constable to spare. Two other constables attended to the tall
+      young man in grey; a fourth concerned himself with the owner of the shop,
+      who showed some tendency to be turbulent. They took the tall young man
+      away to a magistrate, whither we shall follow him in an ensuing chapter.
+      And they took the happiest man in the world away to an asylum.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      II. THE RELIGION OF THE STIPENDIARY MAGISTRATE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The editorial office of <i>The Atheist</i> had for some years past become
+      less and less prominently interesting as a feature of Ludgate Hill. The
+      paper was unsuited to the atmosphere. It showed an interest in the Bible
+      unknown in the district, and a knowledge of that volume to which nobody
+      else on Ludgate Hill could make any conspicuous claim. It was in vain that
+      the editor of <i>The Atheist</i> filled his front window with fierce and
+      final demands as to what Noah in the Ark did with the neck of the giraffe.
+      It was in vain that he asked violently, as for the last time, how the
+      statement &ldquo;God is Spirit&rdquo; could be reconciled with the statement &ldquo;The
+      earth is His footstool.&rdquo; It was in vain that he cried with an accusing
+      energy that the Bishop of London was paid L12,000 a year for pretending to
+      believe that the whale swallowed Jonah. It was in vain that he hung in
+      conspicuous places the most thrilling scientific calculations about the
+      width of the throat of a whale. Was it nothing to them all they that
+      passed by? Did his sudden and splendid and truly sincere indignation never
+      stir any of the people pouring down Ludgate Hill? Never. The little man
+      who edited <i>The Atheist</i> would rush from his shop on starlit evenings
+      and shake his fist at St. Paul's in the passion of his holy war upon the
+      holy place. He might have spared his emotion. The cross at the top of St.
+      Paul's and <i>The Atheist</i> shop at the foot of it were alike remote
+      from the world. The shop and the Cross were equally uplifted and alone in
+      the empty heavens.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To the little man who edited <i>The Atheist</i>, a fiery little Scotchman,
+      with fiery, red hair and beard, going by the name of Turnbull, all this
+      decline in public importance seemed not so much sad or even mad, but
+      merely bewildering and unaccountable. He had said the worst thing that
+      could be said; and it seemed accepted and ignored like the ordinary second
+      best of the politicians. Every day his blasphemies looked more glaring,
+      and every day the dust lay thicker upon them. It made him feel as if he
+      were moving in a world of idiots. He seemed among a race of men who smiled
+      when told of their own death, or looked vacantly at the Day of Judgement.
+      Year after year went by, and year after year the death of God in a shop in
+      Ludgate became a less and less important occurrence. All the forward men
+      of his age discouraged Turnbull. The socialists said he was cursing
+      priests when he should be cursing capitalists. The artists said that the
+      soul was most spiritual, not when freed from religion, but when freed from
+      morality. Year after year went by, and at least a man came by who treated
+      Mr. Turnbull's secularist shop with a real respect and seriousness. He was
+      a young man in a grey plaid, and he smashed the window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was a young man, born in the Bay of Arisaig, opposite Rum and the Isle
+      of Skye. His high, hawklike features and snaky black hair bore the mark of
+      that unknown historic thing which is crudely called Celtic, but which is
+      probably far older than the Celts, whoever they were. He was in name and
+      stock a Highlander of the Macdonalds; but his family took, as was common
+      in such cases, the name of a subordinate sept as a surname, and for all
+      the purposes which could be answered in London, he called himself Evan
+      MacIan. He had been brought up in some loneliness and seclusion as a
+      strict Roman Catholic, in the midst of that little wedge of Roman
+      Catholics which is driven into the Western Highlands. And he had found his
+      way as far as Fleet Street, seeking some half-promised employment, without
+      having properly realized that there were in the world any people who were
+      not Roman Catholics. He had uncovered himself for a few moments before the
+      statue of Queen Anne, in front of St. Paul's Cathedral, under the firm
+      impression that it was a figure of the Virgin Mary. He was somewhat
+      surprised at the lack of deference shown to the figure by the people
+      bustling by. He did not understand that their one essential historical
+      principle, the one law truly graven on their hearts, was the great and
+      comforting statement that Queen Anne is dead. This faith was as
+      fundamental as his faith, that Our Lady was alive. Any persons he had
+      talked to since he had touched the fringe of our fashion or civilization
+      had been by a coincidence, sympathetic or hypocritical. Or if they had
+      spoken some established blasphemies, he had been unable to understand them
+      merely owing to the preoccupied satisfaction of his mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On that fantastic fringe of the Gaelic land where he walked as a boy, the
+      cliffs were as fantastic as the clouds. Heaven seemed to humble itself and
+      come closer to the earth. The common paths of his little village began to
+      climb quite suddenly and seemed resolved to go to heaven. The sky seemed
+      to fall down towards the hills; the hills took hold upon the sky. In the
+      sumptuous sunset of gold and purple and peacock green cloudlets and islets
+      were the same. Evan lived like a man walking on a borderland, the
+      borderland between this world and another. Like so many men and nations
+      who grow up with nature and the common things, he understood the
+      supernatural before he understood the natural. He had looked at dim angels
+      standing knee-deep in the grass before he had looked at the grass. He knew
+      that Our Lady's robes were blue before he knew the wild roses round her
+      feet were red. The deeper his memory plunged into the dark house of
+      childhood the nearer and nearer he came to the things that cannot be
+      named. All through his life he thought of the daylight world as a sort of
+      divine debris, the broken remainder of his first vision. The skies and
+      mountains were the splendid off-scourings of another place. The stars were
+      lost jewels of the Queen. Our Lady had gone and left the stars by
+      accident.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His private tradition was equally wild and unworldly. His
+      great-grandfather had been cut down at Culloden, certain in his last
+      instant that God would restore the King. His grandfather, then a boy of
+      ten, had taken the terrible claymore from the hand of the dead and hung it
+      up in his house, burnishing it and sharpening it for sixty years, to be
+      ready for the next rebellion. His father, the youngest son and the last
+      left alive, had refused to attend on Queen Victoria in Scotland. And Evan
+      himself had been of one piece with his progenitors; and was not dead with
+      them, but alive in the twentieth century. He was not in the least the
+      pathetic Jacobite of whom we read, left behind by a final advance of all
+      things. He was, in his own fancy, a conspirator, fierce and up to date. In
+      the long, dark afternoons of the Highland winter, he plotted and fumed in
+      the dark. He drew plans of the capture of London on the desolate sand of
+      Arisaig.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he came up to capture London, it was not with an army of white
+      cockades, but with a stick and a satchel. London overawed him a little,
+      not because he thought it grand or even terrible, but because it
+      bewildered him; it was not the Golden City or even hell; it was Limbo. He
+      had one shock of sentiment, when he turned that wonderful corner of Fleet
+      Street and saw St. Paul's sitting in the sky.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; he said, after a long pause, &ldquo;that sort of thing was built under the
+      Stuarts!&rdquo; Then with a sour grin he asked himself what was the
+      corresponding monument of the Brunswicks and the Protestant Constitution.
+      After some warning, he selected a sky-sign of some pill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Half an hour afterwards his emotions left him with an emptied mind on the
+      same spot. And it was in a mood of mere idle investigation that he
+      happened to come to a standstill opposite the office of <i>The Atheist</i>.
+      He did not see the word &ldquo;atheist&rdquo;, or if he did, it is quite possible that
+      he did not know the meaning of the word. Even as it was, the document
+      would not have shocked even the innocent Highlander, but for the
+      troublesome and quite unforeseen fact that the innocent Highlander read it
+      stolidly to the end; a thing unknown among the most enthusiastic
+      subscribers to the paper, and calculated in any case to create a new
+      situation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a smart journalistic instinct characteristic of all his school, the
+      editor of <i>The Atheist</i> had put first in his paper and most
+      prominently in his window an article called &ldquo;The Mesopotamian Mythology
+      and its Effects on Syriac Folk Lore.&rdquo; Mr. Evan MacIan began to read this
+      quite idly, as he would have read a public statement beginning with a
+      young girl dying in Brighton and ending with Bile Beans. He received the
+      very considerable amount of information accumulated by the author with
+      that tired clearness of the mind which children have on heavy summer
+      afternoons&mdash;that tired clearness which leads them to go on asking
+      questions long after they have lost interest in the subject and are as
+      bored as their nurse. The streets were full of people and empty of
+      adventures. He might as well know about the gods of Mesopotamia as not; so
+      he flattened his long, lean face against the dim bleak pane of the window
+      and read all there was to read about Mesopotamian gods. He read how the
+      Mesopotamians had a god named Sho (sometimes pronounced Ji), and that he
+      was described as being very powerful, a striking similarity to some
+      expressions about Jahveh, who is also described as having power. Evan had
+      never heard of Jahveh in his life, and imagining him to be some other
+      Mesopotamian idol, read on with a dull curiosity. He learnt that the name
+      Sho, under its third form of Psa, occurs in an early legend which
+      describes how the deity, after the manner of Jupiter on so many occasions,
+      seduced a Virgin and begat a hero. This hero, whose name is not essential
+      to our existence, was, it was said, the chief hero and Saviour of the
+      Mesopotamian ethical scheme. Then followed a paragraph giving other
+      examples of such heroes and Saviours being born of some profligate
+      intercourse between God and mortal. Then followed a paragraph&mdash;but
+      Evan did not understand it. He read it again and then again. Then he did
+      understand it. The glass fell in ringing fragments on to the pavement, and
+      Evan sprang over the barrier into the shop, brandishing his stick.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is this?&rdquo; cried little Mr. Turnbull, starting up with hair aflame.
+      &ldquo;How dare you break my window?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because it was the quickest cut to you,&rdquo; cried Evan, stamping. &ldquo;Stand up
+      and fight, you crapulous coward. You dirty lunatic, stand up, will you?
+      Have you any weapons here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you mad?&rdquo; asked Turnbull, glaring.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you?&rdquo; cried Evan. &ldquo;Can you be anything else when you plaster your own
+      house with that God-defying filth? Stand up and fight, I say.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A great light like dawn came into Mr. Turnbull's face. Behind his red hair
+      and beard he turned deadly pale with pleasure. Here, after twenty lone
+      years of useless toil, he had his reward. Someone was angry with the
+      paper. He bounded to his feet like a boy; he saw a new youth opening
+      before him. And as not unfrequently happens to middle-aged gentlemen when
+      they see a new youth opening before them, he found himself in the presence
+      of the police.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The policemen, after some ponderous questionings, collared both the two
+      enthusiasts. They were more respectful, however, to the young man who had
+      smashed the window, than to the miscreant who had had his window smashed.
+      There was an air of refined mystery about Evan MacIan, which did not exist
+      in the irate little shopkeeper, an air of refined mystery which appealed
+      to the policemen, for policemen, like most other English types, are at
+      once snobs and poets. MacIan might possibly be a gentleman, they felt; the
+      editor manifestly was not. And the editor's fine rational republican
+      appeals to his respect for law, and his ardour to be tried by his fellow
+      citizens, seemed to the police quite as much gibberish as Evan's mysticism
+      could have done. The police were not used to hearing principles, even the
+      principles of their own existence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The police magistrate, before whom they were hurried and tried, was a Mr.
+      Cumberland Vane, a cheerful, middle-aged gentleman, honourably celebrated
+      for the lightness of his sentences and the lightness of his conversation.
+      He occasionally worked himself up into a sort of theoretic rage about
+      certain particular offenders, such as the men who took pokers to their
+      wives, talked in a loose, sentimental way about the desirability of
+      flogging them, and was hopelessly bewildered by the fact that the wives
+      seemed even more angry with him than with their husbands. He was a tall,
+      spruce man, with a twist of black moustache and incomparable morning
+      dress. He looked like a gentleman, and yet, somehow, like a stage
+      gentleman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had often treated serious crimes against mere order or property with a
+      humane flippancy. Hence, about the mere breaking of an editor's window, he
+      was almost uproarious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come, Mr. MacIan, come,&rdquo; he said, leaning back in his chair, &ldquo;do you
+      generally enter you friends' houses by walking through the glass?&rdquo;
+       (Laughter.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is not my friend,&rdquo; said Evan, with the stolidity of a dull child.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not your friend, eh?&rdquo; said the magistrate, sparkling. &ldquo;Is he your
+      brother-in-law?&rdquo; (Loud and prolonged laughter.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is my enemy,&rdquo; said Evan, simply; &ldquo;he is the enemy of God.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Vane shifted sharply in his seat, dropping the eye-glass out of his
+      eye in a momentary and not unmanly embarrassment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mustn't talk like that here,&rdquo; he said, roughly, and in a kind of
+      hurry, &ldquo;that has nothing to do with us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Evan opened his great, blue eyes; &ldquo;God,&rdquo; he began.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Be quiet,&rdquo; said the magistrate, angrily, &ldquo;it is most undesirable that
+      things of that sort should be spoken about&mdash;a&mdash;in public, and in
+      an ordinary Court of Justice. Religion is&mdash;a&mdash;too personal a
+      matter to be mentioned in such a place.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it?&rdquo; answered the Highlander, &ldquo;then what did those policemen swear by
+      just now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is no parallel,&rdquo; answered Vane, rather irritably; &ldquo;of course there
+      is a form of oath&mdash;to be taken reverently&mdash;reverently, and
+      there's an end of it. But to talk in a public place about one's most
+      sacred and private sentiments&mdash;well, I call it bad taste. (Slight
+      applause.) I call it irreverent. I call it irreverent, and I'm not
+      specially orthodox either.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see you are not,&rdquo; said Evan, &ldquo;but I am.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are wondering from the point,&rdquo; said the police magistrate, pulling
+      himself together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;May I ask why you smashed this worthy citizen's window?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Evan turned a little pale at the mere memory, but he answered with the
+      same cold and deadly literalism that he showed throughout.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because he blasphemed Our Lady.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I tell you once and for all,&rdquo; cried Mr. Cumberland Vane, rapping his
+      knuckles angrily on the table, &ldquo;I tell you, once and for all, my man, that
+      I will not have you turning on any religious rant or cant here. Don't
+      imagine that it will impress me. The most religious people are not those
+      who talk about it. (Applause.) You answer the questions and do nothing
+      else.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did nothing else,&rdquo; said Evan, with a slight smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eh,&rdquo; cried Vane, glaring through his eye-glass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You asked me why I broke his window,&rdquo; said MacIan, with a face of wood.
+      &ldquo;I answered, 'Because he blasphemed Our Lady.' I had no other reason. So I
+      have no other answer.&rdquo; Vane continued to gaze at him with a sternness not
+      habitual to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are not going the right way to work, Sir,&rdquo; he said, with severity.
+      &ldquo;You are not going the right way to work to&mdash;a&mdash;have your case
+      treated with special consideration. If you had simply expressed regret for
+      what you had done, I should have been strongly inclined to dismiss the
+      matter as an outbreak of temper. Even now, if you say that you are sorry I
+      shall only&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I am not in the least sorry,&rdquo; said Evan, &ldquo;I am very pleased.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I really believe you are insane,&rdquo; said the stipendiary, indignantly, for
+      he had really been doing his best as a good-natured man, to compose the
+      dispute. &ldquo;What conceivable right have you to break other people's windows
+      because their opinions do not agree with yours? This man only gave
+      expression to his sincere belief.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So did I,&rdquo; said the Highlander.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And who are you?&rdquo; exploded Vane. &ldquo;Are your views necessarily the right
+      ones? Are you necessarily in possession of the truth?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said MacIan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The magistrate broke into a contemptuous laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, you want a nurse to look after you,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You must pay L10.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Evan MacIan plunged his hands into his loose grey garment and drew out a
+      queer looking leather purse. It contained exactly twelve sovereigns. He
+      paid down the ten, coin by coin, in silence, and equally silently returned
+      the remaining two to the receptacle. Then he said, &ldquo;May I say a word, your
+      worship?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cumberland Vane seemed half hypnotized with the silence and automatic
+      movements of the stranger; he made a movement with his head which might
+      have been either &ldquo;yes&rdquo; or &ldquo;no&rdquo;. &ldquo;I only wished to say, your worship,&rdquo; said
+      MacIan, putting back the purse in his trouser pocket, &ldquo;that smashing that
+      shop window was, I confess, a useless and rather irregular business. It
+      may be excused, however, as a mere preliminary to further proceedings, a
+      sort of preface. Wherever and whenever I meet that man,&rdquo; and he pointed to
+      the editor of <i>The Atheist</i>, &ldquo;whether it be outside this door in ten
+      minutes from now, or twenty years hence in some distant country, wherever
+      and whenever I meet that man, I will fight him. Do not be afraid. I will
+      not rush at him like a bully, or bear him down with any brute superiority.
+      I will fight him like a gentleman; I will fight him as our fathers fought.
+      He shall choose how, sword or pistol, horse or foot. But if he refuses, I
+      will write his cowardice on every wall in the world. If he had said of my
+      mother what he said of the Mother of God, there is not a club of clean men
+      in Europe that would deny my right to call him out. If he had said it of
+      my wife, you English would yourselves have pardoned me for beating him
+      like a dog in the market place. Your worship, I have no mother; I have no
+      wife. I have only that which the poor have equally with the rich; which
+      the lonely have equally with the man of many friends. To me this whole
+      strange world is homely, because in the heart of it there is a home; to me
+      this cruel world is kindly, because higher than the heavens there is
+      something more human than humanity. If a man must not fight for this, may
+      he fight for anything? I would fight for my friend, but if I lost my
+      friend, I should still be there. I would fight for my country, but if I
+      lost my country, I should still exist. But if what that devil dreams were
+      true, I should not be&mdash;I should burst like a bubble and be gone. I
+      could not live in that imbecile universe. Shall I not fight for my own
+      existence?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The magistrate recovered his voice and his presence of mind. The first
+      part of the speech, the bombastic and brutally practical challenge,
+      stunned him with surprise; but the rest of Evan's remarks, branching off
+      as they did into theoretic phrases, gave his vague and very English mind
+      (full of memories of the hedging and compromise in English public
+      speaking) an indistinct sensation of relief, as if the man, though mad,
+      were not so dangerous as he had thought. He went into a sort of weary
+      laughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For Heaven's sake, man,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;don't talk so much. Let other people
+      have a chance (laughter). I trust all that you said about asking Mr.
+      Turnbull to fight, may be regarded as rubbish. In case of accidents,
+      however, I must bind you over to keep the peace.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To keep the peace,&rdquo; repeated Evan, &ldquo;with whom?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;With Mr. Turnbull,&rdquo; said Vane.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly not,&rdquo; answered MacIan. &ldquo;What has he to do with peace?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean to say,&rdquo; began the magistrate, &ldquo;that you refuse to...&rdquo; The
+      voice of Turnbull himself clove in for the first time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Might I suggest,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;That I, your worship, can settle to some
+      extent this absurd matter myself. This rather wild gentleman promises that
+      he will not attack me with any ordinary assault&mdash;and if he does, you
+      may be sure the police shall hear of it. But he says he will not. He says
+      he will challenge me to a duel; and I cannot say anything stronger about
+      his mental state than to say that I think that it is highly probable that
+      he will. (Laughter.) But it takes two to make a duel, your worship
+      (renewed laughter). I do not in the least mind being described on every
+      wall in the world as the coward who would not fight a man in Fleet Street,
+      about whether the Virgin Mary had a parallel in Mesopotamian mythology.
+      No, your worship. You need not trouble to bind him over to keep the peace.
+      I bind myself over to keep the peace, and you may rest quite satisfied
+      that there will be no duel with me in it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Cumberland Vane rolled about, laughing in a sort of relief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're like a breath of April, sir,&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;You're ozone after that
+      fellow. You're perfectly right. Perhaps I have taken the thing too
+      seriously. I should love to see him sending you challenges and to see you
+      smiling. Well, well.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Evan went out of the Court of Justice free, but strangely shaken, like a
+      sick man. Any punishment of suppression he would have felt as natural; but
+      the sudden juncture between the laughter of his judge and the laughter of
+      the man he had wronged, made him feel suddenly small, or at least,
+      defeated. It was really true that the whole modern world regarded his
+      world as a bubble. No cruelty could have shown it, but their kindness
+      showed it with a ghastly clearness. As he was brooding, he suddenly became
+      conscious of a small, stern figure, fronting him in silence. Its eyes were
+      grey and awful, and its beard red. It was Turnbull.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, sir,&rdquo; said the editor of <i>The Atheist</i>, &ldquo;where is the fight to
+      be? Name the field, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Evan stood thunderstruck. He stammered out something, he knew not what; he
+      only guessed it by the answer of the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do I want to fight? Do I want to fight?&rdquo; cried the furious Free-thinker.
+      &ldquo;Why, you moonstruck scarecrow of superstition, do you think your dirty
+      saints are the only people who can die? Haven't you hung atheists, and
+      burned them, and boiled them, and did they ever deny their faith? Do you
+      think we don't want to fight? Night and day I have prayed&mdash;I have
+      longed&mdash;for an atheist revolution&mdash;I have longed to see your
+      blood and ours on the streets. Let it be yours or mine?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you said...&rdquo; began MacIan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know,&rdquo; said Turnbull scornfully. &ldquo;And what did you say? You damned
+      fool, you said things that might have got us locked up for a year, and
+      shadowed by the coppers for half a decade. If you wanted to fight, why did
+      you tell that ass you wanted to? I got you out, to fight if you want to.
+      Now, fight if you dare.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I swear to you, then,&rdquo; said MacIan, after a pause. &ldquo;I swear to you that
+      nothing shall come between us. I swear to you that nothing shall be in my
+      heart or in my head till our swords clash together. I swear it by the God
+      you have denied, by the Blessed Lady you have blasphemed; I swear it by
+      the seven swords in her heart. I swear it by the Holy Island where my
+      fathers are, by the honour of my mother, by the secret of my people, and
+      by the chalice of the Blood of God.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The atheist drew up his head. &ldquo;And I,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;give my word.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      III. SOME OLD CURIOSITIES
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The evening sky, a dome of solid gold, unflaked even by a single sunset
+      cloud, steeped the meanest sights of London in a strange and mellow light.
+      It made a little greasy street of St. Martin's Lane look as if it were
+      paved with gold. It made the pawnbroker's half-way down it shine as if it
+      were really that Mountain of Piety that the French poetic instinct has
+      named it; it made the mean pseudo-French bookshop, next but one to it, a
+      shop packed with dreary indecency, show for a moment a kind of Parisian
+      colour. And the shop that stood between the pawnshop and the shop of
+      dreary indecency, showed with quite a blaze of old world beauty, for it
+      was, by accident, a shop not unbeautiful in itself. The front window had a
+      glimmer of bronze and blue steel, lit, as by a few stars, by the sparks of
+      what were alleged to be jewels; for it was in brief, a shop of bric-a-brac
+      and old curiosities. A row of half-burnished seventeenth-century swords
+      ran like an ornate railing along the front of the window; behind was a
+      darker glimmer of old oak and old armour; and higher up hung the most
+      extraordinary looking South Sea tools or utensils, whether designed for
+      killing enemies or merely for cooking them, no mere white man could
+      possibly conjecture. But the romance of the eye, which really on this rich
+      evening, clung about the shop, had its main source in the accident of two
+      doors standing open, the front door that opened on the street and a back
+      door that opened on an odd green square of garden, that the sun turned to
+      a square of gold. There is nothing more beautiful than thus to look as it
+      were through the archway of a house; as if the open sky were an interior
+      chamber, and the sun a secret lamp of the place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have suggested that the sunset light made everything lovely. To say that
+      it made the keeper of the curiosity shop lovely would be a tribute to it
+      perhaps too extreme. It would easily have made him beautiful if he had
+      been merely squalid; if he had been a Jew of the Fagin type. But he was a
+      Jew of another and much less admirable type; a Jew with a very
+      well-sounding name. For though there are no hard tests for separating the
+      tares and the wheat of any people, one rude but efficient guide is that
+      the nice Jew is called Moses Solomon, and the nasty Jew is called Thornton
+      Percy. The keeper of the curiosity shop was of the Thornton Percy branch
+      of the chosen people; he belonged to those Lost Ten Tribes whose
+      industrious object is to lose themselves. He was a man still young, but
+      already corpulent, with sleek dark hair, heavy handsome clothes, and a
+      full, fat, permanent smile, which looked at the first glance kindly, and
+      at the second cowardly. The name over his shop was Henry Gordon, but two
+      Scotchmen who were in his shop that evening could come upon no trace of a
+      Scotch accent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These two Scotchmen in this shop were careful purchasers, but free-handed
+      payers. One of them who seemed to be the principal and the authority
+      (whom, indeed, Mr. Henry Gordon fancied he had seen somewhere before), was
+      a small, sturdy fellow, with fine grey eyes, a square red tie and a square
+      red beard, that he carried aggressively forward as if he defied anyone to
+      pull it. The other kept so much in the background in comparison that he
+      looked almost ghostly in his grey cloak or plaid, a tall, sallow, silent
+      young man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two Scotchmen were interested in seventeenth-century swords. They were
+      fastidious about them. They had a whole armoury of these weapons brought
+      out and rolled clattering about the counter, until they found two of
+      precisely the same length. Presumably they desired the exact symmetry for
+      some decorative trophy. Even then they felt the points, poised the swords
+      for balance and bent them in a circle to see that they sprang straight
+      again; which, for decorative purposes, seems carrying realism rather far.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;These will do,&rdquo; said the strange person with the red beard. &ldquo;And perhaps
+      I had better pay for them at once. And as you are the challenger, Mr.
+      MacIan, perhaps you had better explain the situation.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The tall Scotchman in grey took a step forward and spoke in a voice quite
+      clear and bold, and yet somehow lifeless, like a man going through an
+      ancient formality.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The fact is, Mr. Gordon, we have to place our honour in your hands. Words
+      have passed between Mr. Turnbull and myself on a grave and invaluable
+      matter, which can only be atoned for by fighting. Unfortunately, as the
+      police are in some sense pursuing us, we are hurried, and must fight now
+      and without seconds. But if you will be so kind as to take us into your
+      little garden and see far play, we shall feel how&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The shopman recovered himself from a stunning surprise and burst out:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gentlemen, are you drunk? A duel! A duel in my garden. Go home,
+      gentlemen, go home. Why, what did you quarrel about?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We quarrelled,&rdquo; said Evan, in the same dead voice, &ldquo;about religion.&rdquo; The
+      fat shopkeeper rolled about in his chair with enjoyment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, this is a funny game,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;So you want to commit murder on
+      behalf of religion. Well, well my religion is a little respect for
+      humanity, and&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Excuse me,&rdquo; cut in Turnbull, suddenly and fiercely, pointing towards the
+      pawnbroker's next door. &ldquo;Don't you own that shop?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why&mdash;er&mdash;yes,&rdquo; said Gordon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And don't you own that shop?&rdquo; repeated the secularist, pointing backward
+      to the pornographic bookseller.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What if I do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, then,&rdquo; cried Turnbull, with grating contempt. &ldquo;I will leave the
+      religion of humanity confidently in your hands; but I am sorry I troubled
+      you about such a thing as honour. Look here, my man. I do believe in
+      humanity. I do believe in liberty. My father died for it under the swords
+      of the Yeomanry. I am going to die for it, if need be, under that sword on
+      your counter. But if there is one sight that makes me doubt it it is your
+      foul fat face. It is hard to believe you were not meant to be ruled like a
+      dog or killed like a cockroach. Don't try your slave's philosophy on me.
+      We are going to fight, and we are going to fight in your garden, with your
+      swords. Be still! Raise your voice above a whisper, and I run you through
+      the body.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull put the bright point of the sword against the gay waistcoat of
+      the dealer, who stood choking with rage and fear, and an astonishment so
+      crushing as to be greater than either.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;MacIan,&rdquo; said Turnbull, falling almost into the familiar tone of a
+      business partner, &ldquo;MacIan, tie up this fellow and put a gag in his mouth.
+      Be still, I say, or I kill you where you stand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The man was too frightened to scream, but he struggled wildly, while Evan
+      MacIan, whose long, lean hands were unusually powerful, tightened some old
+      curtain cords round him, strapped a rope gag in his mouth and rolled him
+      on his back on the floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's nothing very strong here,&rdquo; said Evan, looking about him. &ldquo;I'm
+      afraid he'll work through that gag in half an hour or so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Turnbull, &ldquo;but one of us will be killed by that time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, let's hope so,&rdquo; said the Highlander, glancing doubtfully at the
+      squirming thing on the floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And now,&rdquo; said Turnbull, twirling his fiery moustache and fingering his
+      sword, &ldquo;let us go into the garden. What an exquisite summer evening!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan said nothing, but lifting his sword from the counter went out into
+      the sun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The brilliant light ran along the blades, filling the channels of them
+      with white fire; the combatants stuck their swords in the turf and took
+      off their hats, coats, waistcoats, and boots. Evan said a short Latin
+      prayer to himself, during which Turnbull made something of a parade of
+      lighting a cigarette which he flung away the instant after, when he saw
+      MacIan apparently standing ready. Yet MacIan was not exactly ready. He
+      stood staring like a man stricken with a trance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are you staring at?&rdquo; asked Turnbull. &ldquo;Do you see the bobbies?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see Jerusalem,&rdquo; said Evan, &ldquo;all covered with the shields and standards
+      of the Saracens.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jerusalem!&rdquo; said Turnbull, laughing. &ldquo;Well, we've taken the only
+      inhabitant into captivity.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he picked up his sword and made it whistle like a boy's wand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I beg your pardon,&rdquo; said MacIan, dryly. &ldquo;Let us begin.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan made a military salute with his weapon, which Turnbull copied or
+      parodied with an impatient contempt; and in the stillness of the garden
+      the swords came together with a clear sound like a bell. The instant the
+      blades touched, each felt them tingle to their very points with a personal
+      vitality, as if they were two naked nerves of steel. Evan had worn
+      throughout an air of apathy, which might have been the stale apathy of one
+      who wants nothing. But it was indeed the more dreadful apathy of one who
+      wants something and will care for nothing else. And this was seen
+      suddenly; for the instant Evan engaged he disengaged and lunged with an
+      infernal violence. His opponent with a desperate promptitude parried and
+      riposted; the parry only just succeeded, the riposte failed. Something big
+      and unbearable seemed to have broken finally out of Evan in that first
+      murderous lunge, leaving him lighter and cooler and quicker upon his feet.
+      He fell to again, fiercely still, but now with a fierce caution. The next
+      moment Turnbull lunged; MacIan seemed to catch the point and throw it away
+      from him, and was thrusting back like a thunderbolt, when a sound
+      paralysed him; another sound beside their ringing weapons. Turnbull,
+      perhaps from an equal astonishment, perhaps from chivalry, stopped also
+      and forebore to send his sword through his exposed enemy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's that?&rdquo; asked Evan, hoarsely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A heavy scraping sound, as of a trunk being dragged along a littered
+      floor, came from the dark shop behind them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The old Jew has broken one of his strings, and he's crawling about,&rdquo; said
+      Turnbull. &ldquo;Be quick! We must finish before he gets his gag out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, yes, quick! On guard!&rdquo; cried the Highlander. The blades crossed
+      again with the same sound like song, and the men went to work again with
+      the same white and watchful faces. Evan, in his impatience, went back a
+      little to his wildness. He made windmills, as the French duellists say,
+      and though he was probably a shade the better fencer of the two, he found
+      the other's point pass his face twice so close as almost to graze his
+      cheek. The second time he realized the actual possibility of defeat and
+      pulled himself together under a shock of the sanity of anger. He narrowed,
+      and, so to speak, tightened his operations: he fenced (as the swordsman's
+      boast goes), in a wedding ring; he turned Turnbull's thrusts with a
+      maddening and almost mechanical click, like that of a machine. Whenever
+      Turnbull's sword sought to go over that other mere white streak it seemed
+      to be caught in a complex network of steel. He turned one thrust, turned
+      another, turned another. Then suddenly he went forward at the lunge with
+      his whole living weight. Turnbull leaped back, but Evan lunged and lunged
+      and lunged again like a devilish piston rod or battering ram. And high
+      above all the sound of the struggle there broke into the silent evening a
+      bellowing human voice, nasal, raucous, at the highest pitch of pain.
+      &ldquo;Help! Help! Police! Murder! Murder!&rdquo; The gag was broken; and the tongue
+      of terror was loose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Keep on!&rdquo; gasped Turnbull. &ldquo;One may be killed before they come.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The voice of the screaming shopkeeper was loud enough to drown not only
+      the noise of the swords but all other noises around it, but even through
+      its rending din there seemed to be some other stir or scurry. And Evan, in
+      the very act of thrusting at Turnbull, saw something in his eyes that made
+      him drop his sword. The atheist, with his grey eyes at their widest and
+      wildest, was staring straight over his shoulder at the little archway of
+      shop that opened on the street beyond. And he saw the archway blocked and
+      blackened with strange figures.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We must bolt, MacIan,&rdquo; he said abruptly. &ldquo;And there isn't a damned second
+      to lose either. Do as I do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With a bound he was beside the little cluster of his clothes and boots
+      that lay on the lawn; he snatched them up, without waiting to put any of
+      them on; and tucking his sword under his other arm, went wildly at the
+      wall at the bottom of the garden and swung himself over it. Three seconds
+      after he had alighted in his socks on the other side, MacIan alighted
+      beside him, also in his socks and also carrying clothes and sword in a
+      desperate bundle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were in a by-street, very lean and lonely itself, but so close to a
+      crowded thoroughfare that they could see the vague masses of vehicles
+      going by, and could even see an individual hansom cab passing the corner
+      at the instant. Turnbull put his fingers to his mouth like a gutter-snipe
+      and whistled twice. Even as he did so he could hear the loud voices of the
+      neighbours and the police coming down the garden.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The hansom swung sharply and came tearing down the little lane at his
+      call. When the cabman saw his fares, however, two wild-haired men in their
+      shirts and socks with naked swords under their arms, he not unnaturally
+      brought his readiness to a rigid stop and stared suspiciously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You talk to him a minute,&rdquo; whispered Turnbull, and stepped back into the
+      shadow of the wall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We want you,&rdquo; said MacIan to the cabman, with a superb Scotch drawl of
+      indifference and assurance, &ldquo;to drive us to St. Pancras Station&mdash;verra
+      quick.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very sorry, sir,&rdquo; said the cabman, &ldquo;but I'd like to know it was all
+      right. Might I arst where you come from, sir?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A second after he spoke MacIan heard a heavy voice on the other side of
+      the wall, saying: &ldquo;I suppose I'd better get over and look for them. Give
+      me a back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cabby,&rdquo; said MacIan, again assuming the most deliberate and lingering
+      lowland Scotch intonation, &ldquo;if ye're really verra anxious to ken whar a'
+      come fra', I'll tell ye as a verra great secret. A' come from Scotland.
+      And a'm gaein' to St. Pancras Station. Open the doors, cabby.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The cabman stared, but laughed. The heavy voice behind the wall said: &ldquo;Now
+      then, a better back this time, Mr. Price.&rdquo; And from the shadow of the wall
+      Turnbull crept out. He had struggled wildly into his coat (leaving his
+      waistcoat on the pavement), and he was with a fierce pale face climbing up
+      the cab behind the cabman. MacIan had no glimmering notion of what he was
+      up to, but an instinct of discipline, inherited from a hundred men of war,
+      made him stick to his own part and trust the other man's.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Open the doors, cabby,&rdquo; he repeated, with something of the obstinate
+      solemnity of a drunkard, &ldquo;open the doors. Did ye no hear me say St.
+      Pancras Station?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The top of a policeman's helmet appeared above the garden wall. The cabman
+      did not see it, but he was still suspicious and began:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very sorry, sir, but...&rdquo; and with that the catlike Turnbull tore him out
+      of his seat and hurled him into the street below, where he lay suddenly
+      stunned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Give me his hat,&rdquo; said Turnbull in a silver voice, that the other obeyed
+      like a bugle. &ldquo;And get inside with the swords.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And just as the red and raging face of a policeman appeared above the
+      wall, Turnbull struck the horse with a terrible cut of the whip and the
+      two went whirling away like a boomerang.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They had spun through seven streets and three or four squares before
+      anything further happened. Then, in the neighbourhood of Maida Vale, the
+      driver opened the trap and talked through it in a manner not wholly common
+      in conversations through that aperture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. MacIan,&rdquo; he said shortly and civilly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Turnbull,&rdquo; replied his motionless fare.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Under circumstances such as those in which we were both recently placed
+      there was no time for anything but very abrupt action. I trust therefore
+      that you have no cause to complain of me if I have deferred until this
+      moment a consultation with you on our present position or future action.
+      Our present position, Mr. MacIan, I imagine that I am under no special
+      necessity of describing. We have broken the law and we are fleeing from
+      its officers. Our future action is a thing about which I myself entertain
+      sufficiently strong views; but I have no right to assume or to anticipate
+      yours, though I may have formed a decided conception of your character and
+      a decided notion of what they will probably be. Still, by every principle
+      of intellectual justice, I am bound to ask you now and seriously whether
+      you wish to continue our interrupted relations.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan leant his white and rather weary face back upon the cushions in
+      order to speak up through the open door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Turnbull,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I have nothing to add to what I have said
+      before. It is strongly borne in upon me that you and I, the sole occupants
+      of this runaway cab, are at this moment the two most important people in
+      London, possibly in Europe. I have been looking at all the streets as we
+      went past, I have been looking at all the shops as we went past, I have
+      been looking at all the churches as we went past. At first, I felt a
+      little dazed with the vastness of it all. I could not understand what it
+      all meant. But now I know exactly what it all means. It means us. This
+      whole civilization is only a dream. You and I are the realities.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Religious symbolism,&rdquo; said Mr. Turnbull, through the trap, &ldquo;does not, as
+      you are probably aware, appeal ordinarily to thinkers of the school to
+      which I belong. But in symbolism as you use it in this instance, I must, I
+      think, concede a certain truth. We <i>must</i> fight this thing out
+      somewhere; because, as you truly say, we have found each other's reality.
+      We <i>must</i> kill each other&mdash;or convert each other. I used to
+      think all Christians were hypocrites, and I felt quite mildly towards them
+      really. But I know you are sincere&mdash;and my soul is mad against you.
+      In the same way you used, I suppose, to think that all atheists thought
+      atheism would leave them free for immorality&mdash;and yet in your heart
+      you tolerated them entirely. Now you <i>know</i> that I am an honest man,
+      and you are mad against me, as I am against you. Yes, that's it. You can't
+      be angry with bad men. But a good man in the wrong&mdash;why one thirsts
+      for his blood. Yes, you open for me a vista of thought.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't run into anything,&rdquo; said Evan, immovably.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's something in that view of yours, too,&rdquo; said Turnbull, and shut
+      down the trap.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They sped on through shining streets that shot by them like arrows. Mr.
+      Turnbull had evidently a great deal of unused practical talent which was
+      unrolling itself in this ridiculous adventure. They had got away with such
+      stunning promptitude that the police chase had in all probability not even
+      properly begun. But in case it had, the amateur cabman chose his dizzy
+      course through London with a strange dexterity. He did not do what would
+      have first occurred to any ordinary outsider desiring to destroy his
+      tracks. He did not cut into by-ways or twist his way through mean streets.
+      His amateur common sense told him that it was precisely the poor street,
+      the side street, that would be likely to remember and report the passing
+      of a hansom cab, like the passing of a royal procession. He kept chiefly
+      to the great roads, so full of hansoms that a wilder pair than they might
+      easily have passed in the press. In one of the quieter streets Evan put on
+      his boots.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Towards the top of Albany Street the singular cabman again opened the
+      trap.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. MacIan,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I understand that we have now definitely settled
+      that in the conventional language honour is not satisfied. Our action must
+      at least go further than it has gone under recent interrupted conditions.
+      That, I believe, is understood.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perfectly,&rdquo; replied the other with his bootlace in his teeth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Under those conditions,&rdquo; continued Turnbull, his voice coming through the
+      hole with a slight note of trepidation very unusual with him, &ldquo;I have a
+      suggestion to make, if that can be called a suggestion, which has probably
+      occurred to you as readily as to me. Until the actual event comes off we
+      are practically in the position if not of comrades, at least of business
+      partners. Until the event comes off, therefore I should suggest that
+      quarrelling would be inconvenient and rather inartistic; while the
+      ordinary exchange of politeness between man and man would be not only
+      elegant but uncommonly practical.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are perfectly right,&rdquo; answered MacIan, with his melancholy voice, &ldquo;in
+      saying that all this has occurred to me. All duellists should behave like
+      gentlemen to each other. But we, by the queerness of our position, are
+      something much more than either duellists or gentlemen. We are, in the
+      oddest and most exact sense of the term, brothers&mdash;in arms.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. MacIan,&rdquo; replied Turnbull, calmly, &ldquo;no more need be said.&rdquo; And he
+      closed the trap once more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They had reached Finchley Road before he opened it again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he said, &ldquo;Mr. MacIan, may I offer you a cigar. It will be a touch of
+      realism.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you,&rdquo; answered Evan. &ldquo;You are very kind.&rdquo; And he began to smoke in
+      the cab.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      IV. A DISCUSSION AT DAWN
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The duellists had from their own point of view escaped or conquered the
+      chief powers of the modern world. They had satisfied the magistrate, they
+      had tied the tradesman neck and heels, and they had left the police
+      behind. As far as their own feelings went they had melted into a monstrous
+      sea; they were but the fare and driver of one of the million hansoms that
+      fill London streets. But they had forgotten something; they had forgotten
+      journalism. They had forgotten that there exists in the modern world,
+      perhaps for the first time in history, a class of people whose interest is
+      not that things should happen well or happen badly, should happen
+      successfully or happen unsuccessfully, should happen to the advantage of
+      this party or the advantage of that part, but whose interest simply is
+      that things should happen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is the one great weakness of journalism as a picture of our modern
+      existence, that it must be a picture made up entirely of exceptions. We
+      announce on flaring posters that a man has fallen off a scaffolding. We do
+      not announce on flaring posters that a man has not fallen off a
+      scaffolding. Yet this latter fact is fundamentally more exciting, as
+      indicating that that moving tower of terror and mystery, a man, is still
+      abroad upon the earth. That the man has not fallen off a scaffolding is
+      really more sensational; and it is also some thousand times more common.
+      But journalism cannot reasonably be expected thus to insist upon the
+      permanent miracles. Busy editors cannot be expected to put on their
+      posters, &ldquo;Mr. Wilkinson Still Safe,&rdquo; or &ldquo;Mr. Jones, of Worthing, Not Dead
+      Yet.&rdquo; They cannot announce the happiness of mankind at all. They cannot
+      describe all the forks that are not stolen, or all the marriages that are
+      not judiciously dissolved. Hence the complete picture they give of life is
+      of necessity fallacious; they can only represent what is unusual. However
+      democratic they may be, they are only concerned with the minority.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The incident of the religious fanatic who broke a window on Ludgate Hill
+      was alone enough to set them up in good copy for the night. But when the
+      same man was brought before a magistrate and defied his enemy to mortal
+      combat in the open court, then the columns would hardly hold the
+      excruciating information, and the headlines were so large that there was
+      hardly room for any of the text. The <i>Daily Telegraph</i> headed a
+      column, &ldquo;A Duel on Divinity,&rdquo; and there was a correspondence afterwards
+      which lasted for months, about whether police magistrates ought to mention
+      religion. The <i>Daily Mail</i> in its dull, sensible way, headed the
+      events, &ldquo;Wanted to fight for the Virgin.&rdquo; Mr. James Douglas, in <i>The
+      Star</i>, presuming on his knowledge of philosophical and theological
+      terms, described the Christian's outbreak under the title of &ldquo;Dualist and
+      Duellist.&rdquo; The <i>Daily News</i> inserted a colourless account of the
+      matter, but was pursued and eaten up for some weeks, with letters from
+      outlying ministers, headed &ldquo;Murder and Mariolatry.&rdquo; But the journalistic
+      temperature was steadily and consistently heated by all these influences;
+      the journalists had tasted blood, prospectively, and were in the mood for
+      more; everything in the matter prepared them for further outbursts of
+      moral indignation. And when a gasping reporter rushed in in the last hours
+      of the evening with the announcement that the two heroes of the Police
+      Court had literally been found fighting in a London back garden, with a
+      shopkeeper bound and gagged in the front of the house, the editors and
+      sub-editors were stricken still as men are by great beatitudes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next morning, five or six of the great London dailies burst out
+      simultaneously into great blossoms of eloquent leader-writing. Towards the
+      end all the leaders tended to be the same, but they all began differently.
+      The <i>Daily Telegraph</i>, for instance began, &ldquo;There will be little
+      difference among our readers or among all truly English and law-abiding
+      men touching the, etc. etc.&rdquo; The <i>Daily Mail</i> said, &ldquo;People must
+      learn, in the modern world, to keep their theological differences to
+      themselves. The fracas, etc. etc.&rdquo; The <i>Daily News</i> started, &ldquo;Nothing
+      could be more inimical to the cause of true religion than, etc. etc.&rdquo; The
+      <i>Times</i> began with something about Celtic disturbances of the
+      equilibrium of Empire, and the <i>Daily Express</i> distinguished itself
+      splendidly by omitting altogether so controversial a matter and
+      substituting a leader about goloshes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the morning after that, the editors and the newspapers were in such a
+      state, that, as the phrase is, there was no holding them. Whatever secret
+      and elvish thing it is that broods over editors and suddenly turns their
+      brains, that thing had seized on the story of the broken glass and the
+      duel in the garden. It became monstrous and omnipresent, as do in our time
+      the unimportant doings of the sect of the Agapemonites, or as did at an
+      earlier time the dreary dishonesties of the Rhodesian financiers.
+      Questions were asked about it, and even answered, in the House of Commons.
+      The Government was solemnly denounced in the papers for not having done
+      something, nobody knew what, to prevent the window being broken. An
+      enormous subscription was started to reimburse Mr. Gordon, the man who had
+      been gagged in the shop. Mr. MacIan, one of the combatants, became for
+      some mysterious reason, singly and hugely popular as a comic figure in the
+      comic papers and on the stage of the music hall. He was always represented
+      (in defiance of fact), with red whiskers, and a very red nose, and in full
+      Highland costume. And a song, consisting of an unimaginable number of
+      verses, in which his name was rhymed with flat iron, the British Lion, sly
+      'un, dandelion, Spion (With Kop in the next line), was sung to crowded
+      houses every night. The papers developed a devouring thirst for the
+      capture of the fugitives; and when they had not been caught for
+      forty-eight hours, they suddenly turned the whole matter into a detective
+      mystery. Letters under the heading, &ldquo;Where are They,&rdquo; poured in to every
+      paper, with every conceivable kind of explanation, running them to earth
+      in the Monument, the Twopenny Tube, Epping Forest, Westminster Abbey,
+      rolled up in carpets at Shoolbreds, locked up in safes in Chancery Lane.
+      Yes, the papers were very interesting, and Mr. Turnbull unrolled a whole
+      bundle of them for the amusement of Mr. MacIan as they sat on a high
+      common to the north of London, in the coming of the white dawn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The darkness in the east had been broken with a bar of grey; the bar of
+      grey was split with a sword of silver and morning lifted itself
+      laboriously over London. From the spot where Turnbull and MacIan were
+      sitting on one of the barren steeps behind Hampstead, they could see the
+      whole of London shaping itself vaguely and largely in the grey and growing
+      light, until the white sun stood over it and it lay at their feet, the
+      splendid monstrosity that it is. Its bewildering squares and
+      parallelograms were compact and perfect as a Chinese puzzle; an enormous
+      hieroglyphic which man must decipher or die. There fell upon both of them,
+      but upon Turnbull more than the other, because he know more what the scene
+      signified, that quite indescribable sense as of a sublime and passionate
+      and heart-moving futility, which is never evoked by deserts or dead men or
+      men neglected and barbarous, which can only be invoked by the sight of the
+      enormous genius of man applied to anything other than the best. Turnbull,
+      the old idealistic democrat, had so often reviled the democracy and
+      reviled them justly for their supineness, their snobbishness, their evil
+      reverence for idle things. He was right enough; for our democracy has only
+      one great fault; it is not democratic. And after denouncing so justly
+      average modern men for so many years as sophists and as slaves, he looked
+      down from an empty slope in Hampstead and saw what gods they are. Their
+      achievement seemed all the more heroic and divine, because it seemed
+      doubtful whether it was worth doing at all. There seemed to be something
+      greater than mere accuracy in making such a mistake as London. And what
+      was to be the end of it all? what was to be the ultimate transformation of
+      this common and incredible London man, this workman on a tram in
+      Battersea, his clerk on an omnibus in Cheapside? Turnbull, as he stared
+      drearily, murmured to himself the words of the old atheistic and
+      revolutionary Swinburne who had intoxicated his youth:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+        &ldquo;And still we ask if God or man
+        Can loosen thee Lazarus;
+        Bid thee rise up republican,
+        And save thyself and all of us.
+        But no disciple's tongue can say
+        If thou can'st take our sins away.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull shivered slightly as if behind the earthly morning he felt the
+      evening of the world, the sunset of so many hopes. Those words were from
+      &ldquo;Songs before Sunrise&rdquo;. But Turnbull's songs at their best were songs
+      after sunrise, and sunrise had been no such great thing after all.
+      Turnbull shivered again in the sharp morning air. MacIan was also gazing
+      with his face towards the city, but there was that about his blind and
+      mystical stare that told one, so to speak, that his eyes were turned
+      inwards. When Turnbull said something to him about London, they seemed to
+      move as at a summons and come out like two householders coming out into
+      their doorways.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he said, with a sort of stupidity. &ldquo;It's a very big place.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a somewhat unmeaning silence, and then MacIan said again:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's a very big place. When I first came into it I was frightened of it.
+      Frightened exactly as one would be frightened at the sight of a man forty
+      feet high. I am used to big things where I come from, big mountains that
+      seem to fill God's infinity, and the big sea that goes to the end of the
+      world. But then these things are all shapeless and confused things, not
+      made in any familiar form. But to see the plain, square, human things as
+      large as that, houses so large and streets so large, and the town itself
+      so large, was like having screwed some devil's magnifying glass into one's
+      eye. It was like seeing a porridge bowl as big as a house, or a mouse-trap
+      made to catch elephants.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Like the land of the Brobdingnagians,&rdquo; said Turnbull, smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! Where is that?&rdquo; said MacIan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull said bitterly, &ldquo;In a book,&rdquo; and the silence fell suddenly between
+      them again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were sitting in a sort of litter on the hillside; all the things they
+      had hurriedly collected, in various places, for their flight, were strewn
+      indiscriminately round them. The two swords with which they had lately
+      sought each other's lives were flung down on the grass at random, like two
+      idle walking-sticks. Some provisions they had bought last night, at a low
+      public house, in case of undefined contingencies, were tossed about like
+      the materials of an ordinary picnic, here a basket of chocolate, and there
+      a bottle of wine. And to add to the disorder finally, there were strewn on
+      top of everything, the most disorderly of modern things, newspapers, and
+      more newspapers, and yet again newspapers, the ministers of the modern
+      anarchy. Turnbull picked up one of them drearily, and took out a pipe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's a lot about us,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Do you mind if I light up?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why should I mind?&rdquo; asked MacIan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull eyed with a certain studious interest, the man who did not
+      understand any of the verbal courtesies; he lit his pipe and blew great
+      clouds out of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he resumed. &ldquo;The matter on which you and I are engaged is at this
+      moment really the best copy in England. I am a journalist, and I know. For
+      the first time, perhaps, for many generations, the English are really more
+      angry about a wrong thing done in England than they are about a wrong
+      thing done in France.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is not a wrong thing,&rdquo; said MacIan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull laughed. &ldquo;You seem unable to understand the ordinary use of the
+      human language. If I did not suspect that you were a genius, I should
+      certainly know you were a blockhead. I fancy we had better be getting
+      along and collecting our baggage.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he jumped up and began shoving the luggage into his pockets, or
+      strapping it on to his back. As he thrust a tin of canned meat, anyhow,
+      into his bursting side pocket, he said casually:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I only meant that you and I are the most prominent people in the English
+      papers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, what did you expect?&rdquo; asked MacIan, opening his great grave blue
+      eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The papers are full of us,&rdquo; said Turnbull, stooping to pick up one of the
+      swords.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan stooped and picked up the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he said, in his simple way. &ldquo;I have read what they have to say. But
+      they don't seem to understand the point.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The point of what?&rdquo; asked Turnbull.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The point of the sword,&rdquo; said MacIan, violently, and planted the steel
+      point in the soil like a man planting a tree.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is a point,&rdquo; said Turnbull, grimly, &ldquo;that we will discuss later.
+      Come along.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull tied the last tin of biscuits desperately to himself with string;
+      and then spoke, like a diver girt for plunging, short and sharp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, Mr. MacIan, you must listen to me. You must listen to me, not merely
+      because I know the country, which you might learn by looking at a map, but
+      because I know the people of the country, whom you could not know by
+      living here thirty years. That infernal city down there is awake; and it
+      is awake against us. All those endless rows of windows and windows are all
+      eyes staring at us. All those forests of chimneys are fingers pointing at
+      us, as we stand here on the hillside. This thing has caught on. For the
+      next six mortal months they will think of nothing but us, as for six
+      mortal months they thought of nothing but the Dreyfus case. Oh, I know
+      it's funny. They let starving children, who don't want to die, drop by the
+      score without looking round. But because two gentlemen, from private
+      feelings of delicacy, do want to die, they will mobilize the army and navy
+      to prevent them. For half a year or more, you and I, Mr. MacIan, will be
+      an obstacle to every reform in the British Empire. We shall prevent the
+      Chinese being sent out of the Transvaal and the blocks being stopped in
+      the Strand. We shall be the conversational substitute when anyone
+      recommends Home Rule, or complains of sky signs. Therefore, do not
+      imagine, in your innocence, that we have only to melt away among those
+      English hills as a Highland cateran might into your god-forsaken Highland
+      mountains. We must be eternally on our guard; we must live the hunted life
+      of two distinguished criminals. We must expect to be recognized as much as
+      if we were Napoleon escaping from Elba. We must be prepared for our
+      descriptions being sent to every tiny village, and for our faces being
+      recognized by every ambitious policeman. We must often sleep under the
+      stars as if we were in Africa. Last and most important we must not dream
+      of effecting our&mdash;our final settlement, which will be a thing as
+      famous as the Phoenix Park murders, unless we have made real and precise
+      arrangements for our isolation&mdash;I will not say our safety. We must
+      not, in short, fight until we have thrown them off our scent, if only for
+      a moment. For, take my word for it, Mr. MacIan, if the British Public once
+      catches us up, the British Public will prevent the duel, if it is only by
+      locking us both up in asylums for the rest of our days.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan was looking at the horizon with a rather misty look.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am not at all surprised,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;at the world being against us. It
+      makes me feel I was right to&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes?&rdquo; said Turnbull.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To smash your window,&rdquo; said MacIan. &ldquo;I have woken up the world.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well, then,&rdquo; said Turnbull, stolidly. &ldquo;Let us look at a few final
+      facts. Beyond that hill there is comparatively clear country. Fortunately,
+      I know the part well, and if you will follow me exactly, and, when
+      necessary, on your stomach, we may be able to get ten miles out of London,
+      literally without meeting anyone at all, which will be the best possible
+      beginning, at any rate. We have provisions for at least two days and two
+      nights, three days if we do it carefully. We may be able to get fifty or
+      sixty miles away without even walking into an inn door. I have the
+      biscuits and the tinned meat, and the milk. You have the chocolate, I
+      think? And the brandy?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said MacIan, like a soldier taking orders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well, then, come on. March. We turn under that third bush and so
+      down into the valley.&rdquo; And he set off ahead at a swinging walk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he stopped suddenly; for he realized that the other was not
+      following. Evan MacIan was leaning on his sword with a lowering face, like
+      a man suddenly smitten still with doubt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What on earth is the matter?&rdquo; asked Turnbull, staring in some anger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Evan made no reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What the deuce is the matter with you?&rdquo; demanded the leader, again, his
+      face slowly growing as red as his beard; then he said, suddenly, and in a
+      more human voice, &ldquo;Are you in pain, MacIan?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; replied the Highlander, without lifting his face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take some brandy,&rdquo; cried Turnbull, walking forward hurriedly towards him.
+      &ldquo;You've got it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's not in the body,&rdquo; said MacIan, in his dull, strange way. &ldquo;The pain
+      has come into my mind. A very dreadful thing has just come into my
+      thoughts.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What the devil are you talking about?&rdquo; asked Turnbull.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan broke out with a queer and living voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We must fight now, Turnbull. We must fight now. A frightful thing has
+      come upon me, and I know it must be now and here. I must kill you here,&rdquo;
+       he cried, with a sort of tearful rage impossible to describe. &ldquo;Here, here,
+      upon this blessed grass.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, you idiot,&rdquo; began Turnbull.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The hour has come&mdash;the black hour God meant for it. Quick, it will
+      soon be gone. Quick!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he flung the scabbard from him furiously, and stood with the sunlight
+      sparkling along his sword.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You confounded fool,&rdquo; repeated Turnbull. &ldquo;Put that thing up again, you
+      ass; people will come out of that house at the first clash of the steel.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One of us will be dead before they come,&rdquo; said the other, hoarsely, &ldquo;for
+      this is the hour God meant.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I never thought much of God,&rdquo; said the editor of <i>The Atheist</i>,
+      losing all patience. &ldquo;And I think less now. Never mind what God meant.
+      Kindly enlighten my pagan darkness as to what the devil <i>you</i> mean.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The hour will soon be gone. In a moment it will be gone,&rdquo; said the
+      madman. &ldquo;It is now, now, now that I must nail your blaspheming body to the
+      earth&mdash;now, now that I must avenge Our Lady on her vile slanderer.
+      Now or never. For the dreadful thought is in my mind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what thought,&rdquo; asked Turnbull, with frantic composure, &ldquo;occupies what
+      you call your mind?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I must kill you now,&rdquo; said the fanatic, &ldquo;because&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, because,&rdquo; said Turnbull, patiently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because I have begun to like you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull's face had a sudden spasm in the sunlight, a change so
+      instantaneous that it left no trace behind it; and his features seemed
+      still carved into a cold stare. But when he spoke again he seemed like a
+      man who was placidly pretending to misunderstand something that he
+      understood perfectly well.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your affection expresses itself in an abrupt form,&rdquo; he began, but MacIan
+      broke the brittle and frivolous speech to pieces with a violent voice. &ldquo;Do
+      not trouble to talk like that,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You know what I mean as well as
+      I know it. Come on and fight, I say. Perhaps you are feeling just as I
+      do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull's face flinched again in the fierce sunlight, but his attitude
+      kept its contemptuous ease.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your Celtic mind really goes too fast for me,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;let me be
+      permitted in my heavy Lowland way to understand this new development. My
+      dear Mr. MacIan, what do you really mean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan still kept the shining sword-point towards the other's breast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know what I mean. You mean the same yourself. We must fight now or
+      else&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Or else?&rdquo; repeated Turnbull, staring at him with an almost blinding
+      gravity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Or else we may not want to fight at all,&rdquo; answered Evan, and the end of
+      his speech was like a despairing cry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull took out his own sword suddenly as if to engage; then planting it
+      point downwards for a moment, he said, &ldquo;Before we begin, may I ask you a
+      question?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan bowed patiently, but with burning eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You said, just now,&rdquo; continued Turnbull, presently, &ldquo;that if we did not
+      fight now, we might not want to fight at all. How would you feel about the
+      matter if we came not to want to fight at all?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should feel,&rdquo; answered the other, &ldquo;just as I should feel if you had
+      drawn your sword, and I had run away from it. I should feel that because I
+      had been weak, justice had not been done.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Justice,&rdquo; answered Turnbull, with a thoughtful smile, &ldquo;but we are talking
+      about your feelings. And what do you mean by justice, apart from your
+      feelings?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan made a gesture of weary recognition! &ldquo;Oh, Nominalism,&rdquo; he said,
+      with a sort of sigh, &ldquo;we had all that out in the twelfth century.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish we could have it out now,&rdquo; replied the other, firmly. &ldquo;Do you
+      really mean that if you came to think me right, you would be certainly
+      wrong?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I had a blow on the back of my head, I might come to think you a green
+      elephant,&rdquo; answered MacIan, &ldquo;but have I not the right to say now, that if
+      I thought that I should think wrong?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you are quite certain that it would be wrong to like me?&rdquo; asked
+      Turnbull, with a slight smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Evan, thoughtfully, &ldquo;I do not say that. It may not be the
+      devil, it may be some part of God I am not meant to know. But I had a work
+      to do, and it is making the work difficult.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I suppose,&rdquo; said the atheist, quite gently, &ldquo;that you and I know all
+      about which part of God we ought to know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan burst out like a man driven back and explaining everything.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Church is not a thing like the Athenaeum Club,&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;If the
+      Athenaeum Club lost all its members, the Athenaeum Club would dissolve and
+      cease to exist. But when we belong to the Church we belong to something
+      which is outside all of us; which is outside everything you talk about,
+      outside the Cardinals and the Pope. They belong to it, but it does not
+      belong to them. If we all fell dead suddenly, the Church would still
+      somehow exist in God. Confound it all, don't you see that I am more sure
+      of its existence than I am of my own existence? And yet you ask me to
+      trust my temperament, my own temperament, which can be turned upside down
+      by two bottles of claret or an attack of the jaundice. You ask me to trust
+      that when it softens towards you and not to trust the thing which I
+      believe to be outside myself and more real than the blood in my body.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stop a moment,&rdquo; said Turnbull, in the same easy tone, &ldquo;Even in the very
+      act of saying that you believe this or that, you imply that there is a
+      part of yourself that you trust even if there are many parts which you
+      mistrust. If it is only you that like me, surely, also, it is only you
+      that believe in the Catholic Church.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Evan remained in an unmoved and grave attitude. &ldquo;There is a part of me
+      which is divine,&rdquo; he answered, &ldquo;a part that can be trusted, but there are
+      also affections which are entirely animal and idle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you are quite certain, I suppose,&rdquo; continued Turnbull, &ldquo;that if even
+      you esteem me the esteem would be wholly animal and idle?&rdquo; For the first
+      time MacIan started as if he had not expected the thing that was said to
+      him. At last he said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whatever in earth or heaven it is that has joined us two together, it
+      seems to be something which makes it impossible to lie. No, I do not think
+      that the movement in me towards you was...was that surface sort of thing.
+      It may have been something deeper...something strange. I cannot understand
+      the thing at all. But understand this and understand it thoroughly, if I
+      loved you my love might be divine. No, it is not some trifle that we are
+      fighting about. It is not some superstition or some symbol. When you wrote
+      those words about Our Lady, you were in that act a wicked man doing a
+      wicked thing. If I hate you it is because you have hated goodness. And if
+      I like you...it is because you are good.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull's face wore an indecipherable expression.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, shall we fight now?&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said MacIan, with a sudden contraction of his black brows, &ldquo;yes, it
+      must be now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The bright swords crossed, and the first touch of them, travelling down
+      blade and arm, told each combatant that the heart of the other was
+      awakened. It was not in that way that the swords rang together when they
+      had rushed on each other in the little garden behind the dealer's shop.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a pause, and then MacIan made a movement as if to thrust, and
+      almost at the same moment Turnbull suddenly and calmly dropped his sword.
+      Evan stared round in an unusual bewilderment, and then realized that a
+      large man in pale clothes and a Panama hat was strolling serenely towards
+      them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      V. THE PEACEMAKER
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      When the combatants, with crossed swords, became suddenly conscious of a
+      third party, they each made the same movement. It was as quick as the snap
+      of a pistol, and they altered it instantaneously and recovered their
+      original pose, but they had both made it, they had both seen it, and they
+      both knew what it was. It was not a movement of anger at being
+      interrupted. Say or think what they would, it was a movement of relief. A
+      force within them, and yet quite beyond them, seemed slowly and pitilessly
+      washing away the adamant of their oath. As mistaken lovers might watch the
+      inevitable sunset of first love, these men watched the sunset of their
+      first hatred.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Their hearts were growing weaker and weaker against each other. When their
+      weapons rang and riposted in the little London garden, they could have
+      been very certain that if a third party had interrupted them something at
+      least would have happened. They would have killed each other or they would
+      have killed him. But now nothing could undo or deny that flash of fact,
+      that for a second they had been glad to be interrupted. Some new and
+      strange thing was rising higher and higher in their hearts like a high sea
+      at night. It was something that seemed all the more merciless, because it
+      might turn out an enormous mercy. Was there, perhaps, some such fatalism
+      in friendship as all lovers talk about in love? Did God make men love each
+      other against their will?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm sure you'll excuse my speaking to you,&rdquo; said the stranger, in a voice
+      at once eager and deprecating.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The voice was too polite for good manners. It was incongruous with the
+      eccentric spectacle of the duellists which ought to have startled a sane
+      and free man. It was also incongruous with the full and healthy, though
+      rather loose physique of the man who spoke. At the first glance he looked
+      a fine animal, with curling gold beard and hair, and blue eyes, unusually
+      bright. It was only at the second glance that the mind felt a sudden and
+      perhaps unmeaning irritation at the way in which the gold beard retreated
+      backwards into the waistcoat, and the way in which the finely shaped nose
+      went forward as if smelling its way. And it was only, perhaps, at the
+      hundredth glance that the bright blue eyes, which normally before and
+      after the instant seemed brilliant with intelligence, seemed as it were to
+      be brilliant with idiocy. He was a heavy, healthy-looking man, who looked
+      all the larger because of the loose, light coloured clothes that he wore,
+      and that had in their extreme lightness and looseness, almost a touch of
+      the tropics. But a closer examination of his attire would have shown that
+      even in the tropics it would have been unique; but it was all woven
+      according to some hygienic texture which no human being had ever heard of
+      before, and which was absolutely necessary even for a day's health. He
+      wore a huge broad-brimmed hat, equally hygienic, very much at the back of
+      his head, and his voice coming out of so heavy and hearty a type of man
+      was, as I have said, startlingly shrill and deferential.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm sure you'll excuse my speaking to you,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Now, I wonder if
+      you are in some little difficulty which, after all, we could settle very
+      comfortably together? Now, you don't mind my saying this, do you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The face of both combatants remained somewhat solid under this appeal. But
+      the stranger, probably taking their silence for a gathering shame,
+      continued with a kind of gaiety:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So you are the young men I have read about in the papers. Well, of
+      course, when one is young, one is rather romantic. Do you know what I
+      always say to young people?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A blank silence followed this gay inquiry. Then Turnbull said in a
+      colourless voice:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As I was forty-seven last birthday, I probably came into the world too
+      soon for the experience.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very good, very good,&rdquo; said the friendly person. &ldquo;Dry Scotch humour. Dry
+      Scotch humour. Well now. I understand that you two people want to fight a
+      duel. I suppose you aren't much up in the modern world. We've quite
+      outgrown duelling, you know. In fact, Tolstoy tells us that we shall soon
+      outgrow war, which he says is simply a duel between nations. A duel
+      between nations. But there is no doubt about our having outgrown
+      duelling.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Waiting for some effect upon his wooden auditors, the stranger stood
+      beaming for a moment and then resumed:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, they tell me in the newspapers that you are really wanting to fight
+      about something connected with Roman Catholicism. Now, do you know what I
+      always say to Roman Catholics?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Turnbull, heavily. &ldquo;Do <i>they</i>?&rdquo; It seemed to be a
+      characteristic of the hearty, hygienic gentleman that he always forgot the
+      speech he had made the moment before. Without enlarging further on the
+      fixed form of his appeal to the Church of Rome, he laughed cordially at
+      Turnbull's answer; then his wandering blue eyes caught the sunlight on the
+      swords, and he assumed a good-humoured gravity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you know this is a serious matter,&rdquo; he said, eyeing Turnbull and
+      MacIan, as if they had just been keeping the table in a roar with their
+      frivolities. &ldquo;I am sure that if I appealed to your higher natures...your
+      higher natures. Every man has a higher nature and a lower nature. Now, let
+      us put the matter very plainly, and without any romantic nonsense about
+      honour or anything of that sort. Is not bloodshed a great sin?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said MacIan, speaking for the first time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, really, really!&rdquo; said the peacemaker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Murder is a sin,&rdquo; said the immovable Highlander. &ldquo;There is no sin of
+      bloodshed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, we won't quarrel about a word,&rdquo; said the other, pleasantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why on earth not?&rdquo; said MacIan, with a sudden asperity. &ldquo;Why shouldn't we
+      quarrel about a word? What is the good of words if they aren't important
+      enough to quarrel over? Why do we choose one word more than another if
+      there isn't any difference between them? If you called a woman a
+      chimpanzee instead of an angel, wouldn't there be a quarrel about a word?
+      If you're not going to argue about words, what are you going to argue
+      about? Are you going to convey your meaning to me by moving your ears? The
+      Church and the heresies always used to fight about words, because they are
+      the only things worth fighting about. I say that murder is a sin, and
+      bloodshed is not, and that there is as much difference between those words
+      as there is between the word 'yes' and the word 'no'; or rather more
+      difference, for 'yes' and 'no', at least, belong to the same category.
+      Murder is a spiritual incident. Bloodshed is a physical incident. A
+      surgeon commits bloodshed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, you're a casuist!&rdquo; said the large man, wagging his head. &ldquo;Now, do you
+      know what I always say to casuists...?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan made a violent gesture; and Turnbull broke into open laughter. The
+      peacemaker did not seem to be in the least annoyed, but continued in
+      unabated enjoyment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, well,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;let us get back to the point. Now Tolstoy has
+      shown that force is no remedy; so you see the position in which I am
+      placed. I am doing my best to stop what I'm sure you won't mind my calling
+      this really useless violence, this really quite wrong violence of yours.
+      But it's against my principles to call in the police against you, because
+      the police are still on a lower moral plane, so to speak, because, in
+      short, the police undoubtedly sometimes employ force. Tolstoy has shown
+      that violence merely breeds violence in the person towards whom it is
+      used, whereas Love, on the other hand, breeds Love. So you see how I am
+      placed. I am reduced to use Love in order to stop you. I am obliged to use
+      Love.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He gave to the word an indescribable sound of something hard and heavy, as
+      if he were saying &ldquo;boots&rdquo;. Turnbull suddenly gripped his sword and said,
+      shortly, &ldquo;I see how you are placed quite well, sir. You will not call the
+      police. Mr. MacIan, shall we engage?&rdquo; MacIan plucked his sword out of the
+      grass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I must and will stop this shocking crime,&rdquo; cried the Tolstoian, crimson
+      in the face. &ldquo;It is against all modern ideas. It is against the principle
+      of love. How you, sir, who pretend to be a Christian...&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan turned upon him with a white face and bitter lip. &ldquo;Sir,&rdquo; he said,
+      &ldquo;talk about the principle of love as much as you like. You seem to me
+      colder than a lump of stone; but I am willing to believe that you may at
+      some time have loved a cat, or a dog, or a child. When you were a baby, I
+      suppose you loved your mother. Talk about love, then, till the world is
+      sick of the word. But don't you talk about Christianity. Don't you dare to
+      say one word, white or black, about it. Christianity is, as far as you are
+      concerned, a horrible mystery. Keep clear of it, keep silent upon it, as
+      you would upon an abomination. It is a thing that has made men slay and
+      torture each other; and you will never know why. It is a thing that has
+      made men do evil that good might come; and you will never understand the
+      evil, let alone the good. Christianity is a thing that could only make you
+      vomit, till you are other than you are. I would not justify it to you even
+      if I could. Hate it, in God's name, as Turnbull does, who is a man. It is
+      a monstrous thing, for which men die. And if you will stand here and talk
+      about love for another ten minutes it is very probable that you will see a
+      man die for it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he fell on guard. Turnbull was busy settling something loose in his
+      elaborate hilt, and the pause was broken by the stranger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Suppose I call the police?&rdquo; he said, with a heated face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And deny your most sacred dogma,&rdquo; said MacIan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dogma!&rdquo; cried the man, in a sort of dismay. &ldquo;Oh, we have no <i>dogmas</i>,
+      you know!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was another silence, and he said again, airily:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know, I think, there's something in what Shaw teaches about no moral
+      principles being quite fixed. Have you ever read <i>The Quintessence of
+      Ibsenism</i>? Of course he went very wrong over the war.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull, with a bent, flushed face, was tying up the loose piece of the
+      pommel with string. With the string in his teeth, he said, &ldquo;Oh, make up
+      your damned mind and clear out!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's a serious thing,&rdquo; said the philosopher, shaking his head. &ldquo;I must be
+      alone and consider which is the higher point of view. I rather feel that
+      in a case so extreme as this...&rdquo; and he went slowly away. As he
+      disappeared among the trees, they heard him murmuring in a sing-song
+      voice, &ldquo;New occasions teach new duties,&rdquo; out of a poem by James Russell
+      Lowell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; said MacIan, drawing a deep breath. &ldquo;Don't you believe in prayer
+      now? I prayed for an angel.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An hour ago,&rdquo; said the Highlander, in his heavy meditative voice, &ldquo;I felt
+      the devil weakening my heart and my oath against you, and I prayed that
+      God would send an angel to my aid.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well?&rdquo; inquired the other, finishing his mending and wrapping the rest of
+      the string round his hand to get a firmer grip.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, that man was an angel,&rdquo; said MacIan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn't know they were as bad as that,&rdquo; answered Turnbull.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We know that devils sometimes quote Scripture and counterfeit good,&rdquo;
+       replied the mystic. &ldquo;Why should not angels sometimes come to show us the
+      black abyss of evil on whose brink we stand. If that man had not tried to
+      stop us...I might...I might have stopped.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know what you mean,&rdquo; said Turnbull, grimly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But then he came,&rdquo; broke out MacIan, &ldquo;and my soul said to me: 'Give up
+      fighting, and you will become like That. Give up vows and dogmas, and
+      fixed things, and you may grow like That. You may learn, also, that fog of
+      false philosophy. You may grow fond of that mire of crawling, cowardly
+      morals, and you may come to think a blow bad, because it hurts, and not
+      because it humiliates. You may come to think murder wrong, because it is
+      violent, and not because it is unjust. Oh, you blasphemer of the good, an
+      hour ago I almost loved you! But do not fear for me now. I have heard the
+      word Love pronounced in <i>his</i> intonation; and I know exactly what it
+      means. On guard!'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The swords caught on each other with a dreadful clang and jar, full of the
+      old energy and hate; and at once plunged and replunged. Once more each
+      man's heart had become the magnet of a mad sword. Suddenly, furious as
+      they were, they were frozen for a moment motionless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What noise is that?&rdquo; asked the Highlander, hoarsely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think I know,&rdquo; replied Turnbull.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What?... What?&rdquo; cried the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The student of Shaw and Tolstoy has made up his remarkable mind,&rdquo; said
+      Turnbull, quietly. &ldquo;The police are coming up the hill.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0006" id="link2H_4_0006">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      VI. THE OTHER PHILOSOPHER
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Between high hedges in Hertfordshire, hedges so high as to create a kind
+      of grove, two men were running. They did not run in a scampering or
+      feverish manner, but in the steady swing of the pendulum. Across the great
+      plains and uplands to the right and left of the lane, a long tide of
+      sunset light rolled like a sea of ruby, lighting up the long terraces of
+      the hills and picking out the few windows of the scattered hamlets in
+      startling blood-red sparks. But the lane was cut deep in the hill and
+      remained in an abrupt shadow. The two men running in it had an impression
+      not uncommonly experienced between those wild green English walls; a sense
+      of being led between the walls of a maze.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Though their pace was steady it was vigorous; their faces were heated and
+      their eyes fixed and bright. There was, indeed, something a little mad in
+      the contrast between the evening's stillness over the empty country-side,
+      and these two figures fleeing wildly from nothing. They had the look of
+      two lunatics, possibly they were.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you all right?&rdquo; said Turnbull, with civility. &ldquo;Can you keep this up?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite easily, thank you,&rdquo; replied MacIan. &ldquo;I run very well.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is that a qualification in a family of warriors?&rdquo; asked Turnbull.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Undoubtedly. Rapid movement is essential,&rdquo; answered MacIan, who never saw
+      a joke in his life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull broke out into a short laugh, and silence fell between them, the
+      panting silence of runners.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then MacIan said: &ldquo;We run better than any of those policemen. They are too
+      fat. Why do you make your policemen so fat?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn't do much towards making them fat myself,&rdquo; replied Turnbull,
+      genially, &ldquo;but I flatter myself that I am now doing something towards
+      making them thin. You'll see they will be as lean as rakes by the time
+      they catch us. They will look like your friend, Cardinal Manning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But they won't catch us,&rdquo; said MacIan, in his literal way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, we beat them in the great military art of running away,&rdquo; returned the
+      other. &ldquo;They won't catch us unless&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan turned his long equine face inquiringly. &ldquo;Unless what?&rdquo; he said,
+      for Turnbull had gone silent suddenly, and seemed to be listening intently
+      as he ran as a horse does with his ears turned back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Unless what?&rdquo; repeated the Highlander.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Unless they do&mdash;what they have done. Listen.&rdquo; MacIan slackened his
+      trot, and turned his head to the trail they had left behind them. Across
+      two or three billows of the up and down lane came along the ground the
+      unmistakable throbbing of horses' hoofs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They have put the mounted police on us,&rdquo; said Turnbull, shortly. &ldquo;Good
+      Lord, one would think we were a Revolution.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So we are,&rdquo; said MacIan calmly. &ldquo;What shall we do? Shall we turn on them
+      with our points?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It may come to that,&rdquo; answered Turnbull, &ldquo;though if it does, I reckon
+      that will be the last act. We must put it off if we can.&rdquo; And he stared
+      and peered about him between the bushes. &ldquo;If we could hide somewhere the
+      beasts might go by us,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;The police have their faults, but thank
+      God they're inefficient. Why, here's the very thing. Be quick and quiet.
+      Follow me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He suddenly swung himself up the high bank on one side of the lane. It was
+      almost as high and smooth as a wall, and on the top of it the black hedge
+      stood out over them as an angle, almost like a thatched roof of the lane.
+      And the burning evening sky looked down at them through the tangle with
+      red eyes as of an army of goblins.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull hoisted himself up and broke the hedge with his body. As his head
+      and shoulders rose above it they turned to flame in the full glow as if
+      lit up by an immense firelight. His red hair and beard looked almost
+      scarlet, and his pale face as bright as a boy's. Something violent,
+      something that was at once love and hatred, surged in the strange heart of
+      the Gael below him. He had an unutterable sense of epic importance, as if
+      he were somehow lifting all humanity into a prouder and more passionate
+      region of the air. As he swung himself up also into the evening light he
+      felt as if he were rising on enormous wings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Legends of the morning of the world which he had heard in childhood or
+      read in youth came back upon him in a cloudy splendour, purple tales of
+      wrath and friendship, like Roland and Oliver, or Balin and Balan,
+      reminding him of emotional entanglements. Men who had loved each other and
+      then fought each other; men who had fought each other and then loved each
+      other, together made a mixed but monstrous sense of momentousness. The
+      crimson seas of the sunset seemed to him like a bursting out of some
+      sacred blood, as if the heart of the world had broken.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull was wholly unaffected by any written or spoken poetry; his was a
+      powerful and prosaic mind. But even upon him there came for the moment
+      something out of the earth and the passionate ends of the sky. The only
+      evidence was in his voice, which was still practical but a shade more
+      quiet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you see that summer-house-looking thing over there?&rdquo; he asked shortly.
+      &ldquo;That will do for us very well.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Keeping himself free from the tangle of the hedge he strolled across a
+      triangle of obscure kitchen garden, and approached a dismal shed or lodge
+      a yard or two beyond it. It was a weather-stained hut of grey wood, which
+      with all its desolation retained a tag or two of trivial ornament, which
+      suggested that the thing had once been a sort of summer-house, and the
+      place probably a sort of garden.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is quite invisible from the road,&rdquo; said Turnbull, as he entered it,
+      &ldquo;and it will cover us up for the night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan looked at him gravely for a few moments. &ldquo;Sir,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I ought
+      to say something to you. I ought to say&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hush,&rdquo; said Turnbull, suddenly lifting his hand; &ldquo;be still, man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In the sudden silence, the drumming of the distant horses grew louder and
+      louder with inconceivable rapidity, and the cavalcade of police rushed by
+      below them in the lane, almost with the roar and rattle of an express
+      train.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I ought to tell you,&rdquo; continued MacIan, still staring stolidly at the
+      other, &ldquo;that you are a great chief, and it is good to go to war behind
+      you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull said nothing, but turned and looked out of the foolish lattice of
+      the little windows, then he said, &ldquo;We must have food and sleep first.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When the last echo of their eluded pursuers had died in the distant
+      uplands, Turnbull began to unpack the provisions with the easy air of a
+      man at a picnic. He had just laid out the last items, put a bottle of wine
+      on the floor, and a tin of salmon on the window-ledge, when the bottomless
+      silence of that forgotten place was broken. And it was broken by three
+      heavy blows of a stick delivered upon the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull looked up in the act of opening a tin and stared silently at his
+      companion. MacIan's long, lean mouth had shut hard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who the devil can that be?&rdquo; said Turnbull.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God knows,&rdquo; said the other. &ldquo;It might be God.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Again the sound of the wooden stick reverberated on the wooden door. It
+      was a curious sound and on consideration did not resemble the ordinary
+      effects of knocking on a door for admittance. It was rather as if the
+      point of a stick were plunged again and again at the panels in an absurd
+      attempt to make a hole in them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A wild look sprang into MacIan's eyes and he got up half stupidly, with a
+      kind of stagger, put his hand out and caught one of the swords. &ldquo;Let us
+      fight at once,&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;it is the end of the world.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're overdone, MacIan,&rdquo; said Turnbull, putting him on one side. &ldquo;It's
+      only someone playing the goat. Let me open the door.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But he also picked up a sword as he stepped to open it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He paused one moment with his hand on the handle and then flung the door
+      open. Almost as he did so the ferrule of an ordinary bamboo cane came at
+      his eyes, so that he had actually to parry it with the naked weapon in his
+      hands. As the two touched, the point of the stick was dropped very
+      abruptly, and the man with the stick stepped hurriedly back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Against the heraldic background of sprawling crimson and gold offered him
+      by the expiring sunset, the figure of the man with the stick showed at
+      first merely black and fantastic. He was a small man with two wisps of
+      long hair that curled up on each side, and seen in silhouette, looked like
+      horns. He had a bow tie so big that the two ends showed on each side of
+      his neck like unnatural stunted wings. He had his long black cane still
+      tilted in his hand like a fencing foil and half presented at the open
+      door. His large straw hat had fallen behind him as he leapt backwards.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;With reference to your suggestion, MacIan,&rdquo; said Turnbull, placidly, &ldquo;I
+      think it looks more like the Devil.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who on earth are you?&rdquo; cried the stranger in a high shrill voice,
+      brandishing his cane defensively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let me see,&rdquo; said Turnbull, looking round to MacIan with the same
+      blandness. &ldquo;Who are we?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come out,&rdquo; screamed the little man with the stick.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly,&rdquo; said Turnbull, and went outside with the sword, MacIan
+      following.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Seen more fully, with the evening light on his face, the strange man
+      looked a little less like a goblin. He wore a square pale-grey jacket
+      suit, on which the grey butterfly tie was the only indisputable touch of
+      affectation. Against the great sunset his figure had looked merely small:
+      seen in a more equal light it looked tolerably compact and shapely. His
+      reddish-brown hair, combed into two great curls, looked like the long,
+      slow curling hair of the women in some pre-Raphaelite pictures. But within
+      this feminine frame of hair his face was unexpectedly impudent, like a
+      monkey's.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are you doing here?&rdquo; he said, in a sharp small voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said MacIan, in his grave childish way, &ldquo;what are <i>you</i> doing
+      here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I,&rdquo; said the man, indignantly, &ldquo;I'm in my own garden.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; said MacIan, simply, &ldquo;I apologize.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull was coolly curling his red moustache, and the stranger stared
+      from one to the other, temporarily stunned by their innocent assurance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, may I ask,&rdquo; he said at last, &ldquo;what the devil you are doing in my
+      summer-house?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly,&rdquo; said MacIan. &ldquo;We were just going to fight.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To fight!&rdquo; repeated the man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We had better tell this gentleman the whole business,&rdquo; broke in Turnbull.
+      Then turning to the stranger he said firmly, &ldquo;I am sorry, sir, but we have
+      something to do that must be done. And I may as well tell you at the
+      beginning and to avoid waste of time or language, that we cannot admit any
+      interference.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We were just going to take some slight refreshment when you interrupted
+      us...&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The little man had a dawning expression of understanding and stooped and
+      picked up the unused bottle of wine, eyeing it curiously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull continued:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But that refreshment was preparatory to something which I fear you will
+      find less comprehensible, but on which our minds are entirely fixed, sir.
+      We are forced to fight a duel. We are forced by honour and an internal
+      intellectual need. Do not, for your own sake, attempt to stop us. I know
+      all the excellent and ethical things that you will want to say to us. I
+      know all about the essential requirements of civil order: I have written
+      leading articles about them all my life. I know all about the sacredness
+      of human life; I have bored all my friends with it. Try and understand our
+      position. This man and I are alone in the modern world in that we think
+      that God is essentially important. I think He does not exist; that is
+      where the importance comes in for me. But this man thinks that He does
+      exist, and thinking that very properly thinks Him more important than
+      anything else. Now we wish to make a great demonstration and assertion&mdash;something
+      that will set the world on fire like the first Christian persecutions. If
+      you like, we are attempting a mutual martyrdom. The papers have posted up
+      every town against us. Scotland Yard has fortified every police station
+      with our enemies; we are driven therefore to the edge of a lonely lane,
+      and indirectly to taking liberties with your summer-house in order to
+      arrange our...&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stop!&rdquo; roared the little man in the butterfly necktie. &ldquo;Put me out of my
+      intellectual misery. Are you really the two tomfools I have read of in all
+      the papers? Are you the two people who wanted to spit each other in the
+      Police Court? Are you? Are you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said MacIan, &ldquo;it began in a Police Court.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The little man slung the bottle of wine twenty yards away like a stone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come up to my place,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I've got better stuff than that. I've got
+      the best Beaune within fifty miles of here. Come up. You're the very men I
+      wanted to see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Even Turnbull, with his typical invulnerability, was a little taken aback
+      by this boisterous and almost brutal hospitality.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why...sir...&rdquo; he began.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come up! Come in!&rdquo; howled the little man, dancing with delight. &ldquo;I'll
+      give you a dinner. I'll give you a bed! I'll give you a green smooth lawn
+      and your choice of swords and pistols. Why, you fools, I adore fighting!
+      It's the only good thing in God's world! I've walked about these damned
+      fields and longed to see somebody cut up and killed and the blood running.
+      Ha! Ha!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he made sudden lunges with his stick at the trunk of a neighbouring
+      tree so that the ferrule made fierce prints and punctures in the bark.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Excuse me,&rdquo; said MacIan suddenly with the wide-eyed curiosity of a child,
+      &ldquo;excuse me, but...&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well?&rdquo; said the small fighter, brandishing his wooden weapon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Excuse me,&rdquo; repeated MacIan, &ldquo;but was that what you were doing at the
+      door?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The little man stared an instant and then said: &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; and Turnbull broke
+      into a guffaw.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come on!&rdquo; cried the little man, tucking his stick under his arm and
+      taking quite suddenly to his heels. &ldquo;Come on! Confound me, I'll see both
+      of you eat and then I'll see one of you die. Lord bless me, the gods must
+      exist after all&mdash;they have sent me one of my day-dreams! Lord! A
+      duel!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had gone flying along a winding path between the borders of the kitchen
+      garden, and in the increasing twilight he was as hard to follow as a
+      flying hare. But at length the path after many twists betrayed its purpose
+      and led abruptly up two or three steps to the door of a tiny but very
+      clean cottage. There was nothing about the outside to distinguish it from
+      other cottages, except indeed its ominous cleanliness and one thing that
+      was out of all the custom and tradition of all cottages under the sun. In
+      the middle of the little garden among the stocks and marigolds there
+      surged up in shapeless stone a South Sea Island idol. There was something
+      gross and even evil in that eyeless and alien god among the most innocent
+      of the English flowers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come in!&rdquo; cried the creature again. &ldquo;Come in! it's better inside!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Whether or no it was better inside it was at least a surprise. The moment
+      the two duellists had pushed open the door of that inoffensive,
+      whitewashed cottage they found that its interior was lined with fiery
+      gold. It was like stepping into a chamber in the Arabian Nights. The door
+      that closed behind them shut out England and all the energies of the West.
+      The ornaments that shone and shimmered on every side of them were subtly
+      mixed from many periods and lands, but were all oriental. Cruel Assyrian
+      bas-reliefs ran along the sides of the passage; cruel Turkish swords and
+      daggers glinted above and below them; the two were separated by ages and
+      fallen civilizations. Yet they seemed to sympathize since they were both
+      harmonious and both merciless. The house seemed to consist of chamber
+      within chamber and created that impression as of a dream which belongs
+      also to the Arabian Nights themselves. The innermost room of all was like
+      the inside of a jewel. The little man who owned it all threw himself on a
+      heap of scarlet and golden cushions and struck his hands together. A negro
+      in a white robe and turban appeared suddenly and silently behind them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Selim,&rdquo; said the host, &ldquo;these two gentlemen are staying with me tonight.
+      Send up the very best wine and dinner at once. And Selim, one of these
+      gentlemen will probably die tomorrow. Make arrangements, please.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The negro bowed and withdrew.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Evan MacIan came out the next morning into the little garden to a fresh
+      silver day, his long face looking more austere than ever in that cold
+      light, his eyelids a little heavy. He carried one of the swords. Turnbull
+      was in the little house behind him, demolishing the end of an early
+      breakfast and humming a tune to himself, which could be heard through the
+      open window. A moment or two later he leapt to his feet and came out into
+      the sunlight, still munching toast, his own sword stuck under his arm like
+      a walking-stick.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Their eccentric host had vanished from sight, with a polite gesture, some
+      twenty minutes before. They imagined him to be occupied on some concerns
+      in the interior of the house, and they waited for his emergence, stamping
+      the garden in silence&mdash;the garden of tall, fresh country flowers, in
+      the midst of which the monstrous South Sea idol lifted itself as abruptly
+      as the prow of a ship riding on a sea of red and white and gold.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was with a start, therefore, that they came upon the man himself
+      already in the garden. They were all the more startled because of the
+      still posture in which they found him. He was on his knees in front of the
+      stone idol, rigid and motionless, like a saint in a trance or ecstasy. Yet
+      when Turnbull's tread broke a twig, he was on his feet in a flash.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Excuse me,&rdquo; he said with an irradiation of smiles, but yet with a kind of
+      bewilderment. &ldquo;So sorry...family prayers...old fashioned...mother's knee.
+      Let us go on to the lawn behind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he ducked rapidly round the statue to an open space of grass on the
+      other side of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This will do us best, Mr. MacIan,&rdquo; said he. Then he made a gesture
+      towards the heavy stone figure on the pedestal which had now its blank and
+      shapeless back turned towards them. &ldquo;Don't you be afraid,&rdquo; he added, &ldquo;he
+      can still see us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan turned his blue, blinking eyes, which seemed still misty with sleep
+      (or sleeplessness) towards the idol, but his brows drew together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The little man with the long hair also had his eyes on the back view of
+      the god. His eyes were at once liquid and burning, and he rubbed his hands
+      slowly against each other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you know,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I think he can see us better this way. I often
+      think that this blank thing is his real face, watching, though it cannot
+      be watched. He! he! Yes, I think he looks nice from behind. He looks more
+      cruel from behind, don't you think?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What the devil is the thing?&rdquo; asked Turnbull gruffly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is the only Thing there is,&rdquo; answered the other. &ldquo;It is Force.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; said Turnbull shortly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, my friends,&rdquo; said the little man, with an animated countenance,
+      fluttering his fingers in the air, &ldquo;it was no chance that led you to this
+      garden; surely it was the caprice of some old god, some happy, pitiless
+      god. Perhaps it was his will, for he loves blood; and on that stone in
+      front of him men have been butchered by hundreds in the fierce, feasting
+      islands of the South. In this cursed, craven place I have not been
+      permitted to kill men on his altar. Only rabbits and cats, sometimes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In the stillness MacIan made a sudden movement, unmeaning apparently, and
+      then remained rigid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But today, today,&rdquo; continued the small man in a shrill voice. &ldquo;Today his
+      hour is come. Today his will is done on earth as it is in heaven. Men,
+      men, men will bleed before him today.&rdquo; And he bit his forefinger in a kind
+      of fever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Still, the two duellists stood with their swords as heavily as statues,
+      and the silence seemed to cool the eccentric and call him back to more
+      rational speech.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps I express myself a little too lyrically,&rdquo; he said with an
+      amicable abruptness. &ldquo;My philosophy has its higher ecstasies, but perhaps
+      you are hardly worked up to them yet. Let us confine ourselves to the
+      unquestioned. You have found your way, gentlemen, by a beautiful accident,
+      to the house of the only man in England (probably) who will favour and
+      encourage your most reasonable project. From Cornwall to Cape Wrath this
+      county is one horrible, solid block of humanitarianism. You will find men
+      who will defend this or that war in a distant continent. They will defend
+      it on the contemptible ground of commerce or the more contemptible ground
+      of social good. But do not fancy that you will find one other person who
+      will comprehend a strong man taking the sword in his hand and wiping out
+      his enemy. My name is Wimpey, Morrice Wimpey. I had a Fellowship at
+      Magdalen. But I assure you I had to drop it, owing to my having said
+      something in a public lecture infringing the popular prejudice against
+      those great gentlemen, the assassins of the Italian Renaissance. They let
+      me say it at dinner and so on, and seemed to like it. But in a public
+      lecture...so inconsistent. Well, as I say, here is your only refuge and
+      temple of honour. Here you can fall back on that naked and awful
+      arbitration which is the only thing that balances the stars&mdash;a still,
+      continuous violence. <i>Vae Victis!</i> Down, down, down with the
+      defeated! Victory is the only ultimate fact. Carthage <i>was</i>
+      destroyed, the Red Indians are being exterminated: that is the single
+      certainty. In an hour from now that sun will still be shining and that
+      grass growing, and one of you will be conquered; one of you will be the
+      conqueror. When it has been done, nothing will alter it. Heroes, I give
+      you the hospitality fit for heroes. And I salute the survivor. Fall on!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The two men took their swords. Then MacIan said steadily: &ldquo;Mr. Turnbull,
+      lend me your sword a moment.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull, with a questioning glance, handed him the weapon. MacIan took
+      the second sword in his left hand and, with a violent gesture, hurled it
+      at the feet of little Mr. Wimpey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fight!&rdquo; he said in a loud, harsh voice. &ldquo;Fight me now!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Wimpey took a step backward, and bewildered words bubbled on his lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pick up that sword and fight me,&rdquo; repeated MacIan, with brows as black as
+      thunder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The little man turned to Turnbull with a gesture, demanding judgement or
+      protection.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Really, sir,&rdquo; he began, &ldquo;this gentleman confuses...&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You stinking little coward,&rdquo; roared Turnbull, suddenly releasing his
+      wrath. &ldquo;Fight, if you're so fond of fighting! Fight, if you're so fond of
+      all that filthy philosophy! If winning is everything, go in and win! If
+      the weak must go to the wall, go to the wall! Fight, you rat! Fight, or if
+      you won't fight&mdash;run!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he ran at Wimpey, with blazing eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wimpey staggered back a few paces like a man struggling with his own
+      limbs. Then he felt the furious Scotchman coming at him like an express
+      train, doubling his size every second, with eyes as big as windows and a
+      sword as bright as the sun. Something broke inside him, and he found
+      himself running away, tumbling over his own feet in terror, and crying out
+      as he ran.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Chase him!&rdquo; shouted Turnbull as MacIan snatched up the sword and joined
+      in the scamper. &ldquo;Chase him over a county! Chase him into the sea! Shoo!
+      Shoo! Shoo!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The little man plunged like a rabbit among the tall flowers, the two
+      duellists after him. Turnbull kept at his tail with savage ecstasy, still
+      shooing him like a cat. But MacIan, as he ran past the South Sea idol,
+      paused an instant to spring upon its pedestal. For five seconds he
+      strained against the inert mass. Then it stirred; and he sent it over with
+      a great crash among the flowers, that engulfed it altogether. Then he went
+      bounding after the runaway.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the energy of his alarm the ex-Fellow of Magdalen managed to leap the
+      paling of his garden. The two pursuers went over it after him like flying
+      birds. He fled frantically down a long lane with his two terrors on his
+      trail till he came to a gap in the hedge and went across a steep meadow
+      like the wind. The two Scotchmen, as they ran, kept up a cheery bellowing
+      and waved their swords. Up three slanting meadows, down four slanting
+      meadows on the other side, across another road, across a heath of snapping
+      bracken, through a wood, across another road, and to the brink of a big
+      pool, they pursued the flying philosopher. But when he came to the pool
+      his pace was so precipitate that he could not stop it, and with a kind of
+      lurching stagger, he fell splash into the greasy water. Getting dripping
+      to his feet, with the water up to his knees, the worshipper of force and
+      victory waded disconsolately to the other side and drew himself on to the
+      bank. And Turnbull sat down on the grass and went off into reverberations
+      of laughter. A second afterwards the most extraordinary grimaces were seen
+      to distort the stiff face of MacIan, and unholy sounds came from within.
+      He had never practised laughing, and it hurt him very much.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0007" id="link2H_4_0007">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      VII. THE VILLAGE OF GRASSLEY-IN-THE-HOLE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      At about half past one, under a strong blue sky, Turnbull got up out of
+      the grass and fern in which he had been lying, and his still intermittent
+      laughter ended in a kind of yawn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm hungry,&rdquo; he said shortly. &ldquo;Are you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have not noticed,&rdquo; answered MacIan. &ldquo;What are you going to do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's a village down the road, past the pool,&rdquo; answered Turnbull. &ldquo;I
+      can see it from here. I can see the whitewashed walls of some cottages and
+      a kind of corner of the church. How jolly it all looks. It looks so&mdash;I
+      don't know what the word is&mdash;so sensible. Don't fancy I'm under any
+      illusions about Arcadian virtue and the innocent villagers. Men make
+      beasts of themselves there with drink, but they don't deliberately make
+      devils of themselves with mere talking. They kill wild animals in the wild
+      woods, but they don't kill cats to the God of Victory. They don't&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+       He broke off and suddenly spat on the ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Excuse me,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;it was ceremonial. One has to get the taste out of
+      one's mouth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The taste of what?&rdquo; asked MacIan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know the exact name for it,&rdquo; replied Turnbull. &ldquo;Perhaps it is the
+      South Sea Islands, or it may be Magdalen College.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a long pause, and MacIan also lifted his large limbs off the
+      ground&mdash;his eyes particularly dreamy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know what you mean, Turnbull,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;but... I always thought you
+      people agreed with all that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;With all that about doing as one likes, and the individual, and Nature
+      loving the strongest, and all the things which that cockroach talked
+      about.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull's big blue-grey eyes stood open with a grave astonishment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you really mean to say, MacIan,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;that you fancied that we,
+      the Free-thinkers, that Bradlaugh, or Holyoake, or Ingersoll, believe all
+      that dirty, immoral mysticism about Nature? Damn Nature!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I supposed you did,&rdquo; said MacIan calmly. &ldquo;It seems to me your most
+      conclusive position.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you mean to tell me,&rdquo; rejoined the other, &ldquo;that you broke my window,
+      and challenged me to mortal combat, and tied a tradesman up with ropes,
+      and chased an Oxford Fellow across five meadows&mdash;all under the
+      impression that I am such an illiterate idiot as to believe in Nature!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I supposed you did,&rdquo; repeated MacIan with his usual mildness; &ldquo;but I
+      admit that I know little of the details of your belief&mdash;or
+      disbelief.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull swung round quite suddenly, and set off towards the village.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come along,&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;Come down to the village. Come down to the
+      nearest decent inhabitable pub. This is a case for beer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not quite follow you,&rdquo; said the Highlander.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, you do,&rdquo; answered Turnbull. &ldquo;You follow me slap into the
+      inn-parlour. I repeat, this is a case for beer. We must have the whole of
+      this matter out thoroughly before we go a step farther. Do you know that
+      an idea has just struck me of great simplicity and of some cogency. Do not
+      by any means let us drop our intentions of settling our differences with
+      two steel swords. But do you not think that with two pewter pots we might
+      do what we really have never thought of doing yet&mdash;discover what our
+      difference is?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It never occurred to me before,&rdquo; answered MacIan with tranquillity. &ldquo;It
+      is a good suggestion.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And they set out at an easy swing down the steep road to the village of
+      Grassley-in-the-Hole.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Grassley-in-the-Hole was a rude parallelogram of buildings, with two
+      thoroughfares which might have been called two high streets if it had been
+      possible to call them streets. One of these ways was higher on the slope
+      than the other, the whole parallelogram lying aslant, so to speak, on the
+      side of the hill. The upper of these two roads was decorated with a big
+      public house, a butcher's shop, a small public house, a sweetstuff shop, a
+      very small public house, and an illegible signpost. The lower of the two
+      roads boasted a horse-pond, a post office, a gentleman's garden with very
+      high hedges, a microscopically small public house, and two cottages. Where
+      all the people lived who supported all the public houses was in this, as
+      in many other English villages, a silent and smiling mystery. The church
+      lay a little above and beyond the village, with a square grey tower
+      dominating it decisively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But even the church was scarcely so central and solemn an institution as
+      the large public house, the Valencourt Arms. It was named after some
+      splendid family that had long gone bankrupt, and whose seat was occupied
+      by a man who had invented a hygienic bootjack; but the unfathomable
+      sentimentalism of the English people insisted in regarding the Inn, the
+      seat and the sitter in it, as alike parts of a pure and marmoreal
+      antiquity. And in the Valencourt Arms festivity itself had some solemnity
+      and decorum; and beer was drunk with reverence, as it ought to be. Into
+      the principal parlour of this place entered two strangers, who found
+      themselves, as is always the case in such hostels, the object, not of
+      fluttered curiosity or pert inquiry, but of steady, ceaseless, devouring
+      ocular study. They had long coats down to their heels, and carried under
+      each coat something that looked like a stick. One was tall and dark, the
+      other short and red-haired. They ordered a pot of ale each.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;MacIan,&rdquo; said Turnbull, lifting his tankard, &ldquo;the fool who wanted us to
+      be friends made us want to go on fighting. It is only natural that the
+      fool who wanted us to fight should make us friendly. MacIan, your health!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dusk was already dropping, the rustics in the tavern were already lurching
+      and lumbering out of it by twos and threes, crying clamorous good nights
+      to a solitary old toper that remained, before MacIan and Turnbull had
+      reached the really important part of their discussion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan wore an expression of sad bewilderment not uncommon with him. &ldquo;I am
+      to understand, then,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;that you don't believe in nature.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You may say so in a very special and emphatic sense,&rdquo; said Turnbull. &ldquo;I
+      do not believe in nature, just as I do not believe in Odin. She is a myth.
+      It is not merely that I do not believe that nature can guide us. It is
+      that I do not believe that nature exists.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Exists?&rdquo; said MacIan in his monotonous way, settling his pewter pot on
+      the table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, in a real sense nature does not exist. I mean that nobody can
+      discover what the original nature of things would have been if things had
+      not interfered with it. The first blade of grass began to tear up the
+      earth and eat it; it was interfering with nature, if there is any nature.
+      The first wild ox began to tear up the grass and eat it; he was
+      interfering with nature, if there is any nature. In the same way,&rdquo;
+       continued Turnbull, &ldquo;the human when it asserts its dominance over nature
+      is just as natural as the thing which it destroys.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And in the same way,&rdquo; said MacIan almost dreamily, &ldquo;the superhuman, the
+      supernatural is just as natural as the nature which it destroys.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull took his head out of his pewter pot in some anger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The supernatural, of course,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;is quite another thing; the case
+      of the supernatural is simple. The supernatural does not exist.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite so,&rdquo; said MacIan in a rather dull voice; &ldquo;you said the same about
+      the natural. If the natural does not exist the supernatural obviously
+      can't.&rdquo; And he yawned a little over his ale.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull turned for some reason a little red and remarked quickly, &ldquo;That
+      may be jolly clever, for all I know. But everyone does know that there is
+      a division between the things that as a matter of fact do commonly happen
+      and the things that don't. Things that break the evident laws of nature&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Which does not exist,&rdquo; put in MacIan sleepily. Turnbull struck the table
+      with a sudden hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good Lord in heaven!&rdquo; he cried&mdash;&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who does not exist,&rdquo; murmured MacIan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good Lord in heaven!&rdquo; thundered Turnbull, without regarding the
+      interruption. &ldquo;Do you really mean to sit there and say that you, like
+      anybody else, would not recognize the difference between a natural
+      occurrence and a supernatural one&mdash;if there could be such a thing? If
+      I flew up to the ceiling&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You would bump your head badly,&rdquo; cried MacIan, suddenly starting up. &ldquo;One
+      can't talk of this kind of thing under a ceiling at all. Come outside!
+      Come outside and ascend into heaven!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He burst the door open on a blue abyss of evening and they stepped out
+      into it: it was suddenly and strangely cool.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Turnbull,&rdquo; said MacIan, &ldquo;you have said some things so true and some so
+      false that I want to talk; and I will try to talk so that you understand.
+      For at present you do not understand at all. We don't seem to mean the
+      same things by the same words.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stood silent for a second or two and then resumed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A minute or two ago I caught you out in a real contradiction. At that
+      moment logically I was right. And at that moment I knew I was wrong. Yes,
+      there is a real difference between the natural and the supernatural: if
+      you flew up into that blue sky this instant, I should think that you were
+      moved by God&mdash;or the devil. But if you want to know what I really
+      think...I must explain.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stopped again, abstractedly boring the point of his sword into the
+      earth, and went on:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was born and bred and taught in a complete universe. The supernatural
+      was not natural, but it was perfectly reasonable. Nay, the supernatural to
+      me is more reasonable than the natural; for the supernatural is a direct
+      message from God, who is reason. I was taught that some things are natural
+      and some things divine. I mean that some things are mechanical and some
+      things divine. But there is the great difficulty, Turnbull. The great
+      difficulty is that, according to my teaching, you are divine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Me! Divine?&rdquo; said Turnbull truculently. &ldquo;What do you mean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is just the difficulty,&rdquo; continued MacIan thoughtfully. &ldquo;I was told
+      that there was a difference between the grass and a man's will; and the
+      difference was that a man's will was special and divine. A man's free
+      will, I heard, was supernatural.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rubbish!&rdquo; said Turnbull.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; said MacIan patiently, &ldquo;then if a man's free will isn't
+      supernatural, why do your materialists deny that it exists?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull was silent for a moment. Then he began to speak, but MacIan
+      continued with the same steady voice and sad eyes:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So what I feel is this: Here is the great divine creation I was taught to
+      believe in. I can understand your disbelieving in it, but why disbelieve
+      in a part of it? It was all one thing to me. God had authority because he
+      was God. Man had authority because he was man. You cannot prove that God
+      is better than a man; nor can you prove that a man is better than a horse.
+      Why permit any ordinary thing? Why do you let a horse be saddled?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some modern thinkers disapprove of it,&rdquo; said Turnbull a little
+      doubtfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know,&rdquo; said MacIan grimly; &ldquo;that man who talked about love, for
+      instance.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull made a humorous grimace; then he said: &ldquo;We seem to be talking in
+      a kind of shorthand; but I won't pretend not to understand you. What you
+      mean is this: that you learnt about all your saints and angels at the same
+      time as you learnt about common morality, from the same people, in the
+      same way. And you mean to say that if one may be disputed, so may the
+      other. Well, let that pass for the moment. But let me ask you a question
+      in turn. Did not this system of yours, which you swallowed whole, contain
+      all sorts of things that were merely local, the respect for the chief of
+      your clan, or such things; the village ghost, the family feud, or what
+      not? Did you not take in those things, too, along with your theology?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan stared along the dim village road, down which the last straggler
+      from the inn was trailing his way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What you say is not unreasonable,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;But it is not quite true.
+      The distinction between the chief and us did exist; but it was never anything
+      like the distinction between the human and the divine, or the human and
+      the animal. It was more like the distinction between one animal and
+      another. But&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well?&rdquo; said Turnbull.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan was silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go on,&rdquo; repeated Turnbull; &ldquo;what's the matter with you? What are you
+      staring at?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am staring,&rdquo; said MacIan at last, &ldquo;at that which shall judge us both.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes,&rdquo; said Turnbull in a tired way, &ldquo;I suppose you mean God.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I don't,&rdquo; said MacIan, shaking his head. &ldquo;I mean him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he pointed to the half-tipsy yokel who was ploughing down the road.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean?&rdquo; asked the atheist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean him,&rdquo; repeated MacIan with emphasis. &ldquo;He goes out in the early
+      dawn; he digs or he ploughs a field. Then he comes back and drinks ale,
+      and then he sings a song. All your philosophies and political systems are
+      young compared to him. All your hoary cathedrals, yes, even the Eternal
+      Church on earth is new compared to him. The most mouldering gods in the
+      British Museum are new facts beside him. It is he who in the end shall
+      judge us all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And MacIan rose to his feet with a vague excitement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are you going to do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am going to ask him,&rdquo; cried MacIan, &ldquo;which of us is right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull broke into a kind of laugh. &ldquo;Ask that intoxicated turnip-eater&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+       he began.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;which of us is right,&rdquo; cried MacIan violently. &ldquo;Oh, you have
+      long words and I have long words; and I talk of every man being the image
+      of God; and you talk of every man being a citizen and enlightened enough
+      to govern. But if every man typifies God, there is God. If every man is an
+      enlightened citizen, there is your enlightened citizen. The first man one
+      meets is always man. Let us catch him up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And in gigantic strides the long, lean Highlander whirled away into the
+      grey twilight, Turnbull following with a good-humoured oath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The track of the rustic was easy to follow, even in the faltering dark;
+      for he was enlivening his wavering walk with song. It was an interminable
+      poem, beginning with some unspecified King William, who (it appeared)
+      lived in London town and who after the second rise vanished rather
+      abruptly from the train of thought. The rest was almost entirely about
+      beer and was thick with local topography of a quite unrecognizable kind.
+      The singer's step was neither very rapid, nor, indeed, exceptionally
+      secure; so the song grew louder and louder and the two soon overtook him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was a man elderly or rather of any age, with lean grey hair and a lean
+      red face, but with that remarkable rustic physiognomy in which it seems
+      that all the features stand out independently from the face; the rugged
+      red nose going out like a limb; the bleared blue eyes standing out like
+      signals.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He gave them greeting with the elaborate urbanity of the slightly
+      intoxicated. MacIan, who was vibrating with one of his silent, violent
+      decisions, opened the question without delay. He explained the philosophic
+      position in words as short and simple as possible. But the singular old
+      man with the lank red face seemed to think uncommonly little of the short
+      words. He fixed with a fierce affection upon one or two of the long ones.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Atheists!&rdquo; he repeated with luxurious scorn. &ldquo;Atheists! I know their
+      sort, master. Atheists! Don't talk to me about 'un. Atheists!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The grounds of his disdain seemed a little dark and confused; but they
+      were evidently sufficient. MacIan resumed in some encouragement:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You think as I do, I hope; you think that a man should be connected with
+      the Church; with the common Christian&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The old man extended a quivering stick in the direction of a distant hill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's the church,&rdquo; he said thickly. &ldquo;Grassley old church that is.
+      Pulled down it was, in the old squire's time, and&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean,&rdquo; explained MacIan elaborately, &ldquo;that you think that there should
+      be someone typifying religion, a priest&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Priests!&rdquo; said the old man with sudden passion. &ldquo;Priests! I know 'un.
+      What they want in England? That's what I say. What they want in England?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They want you,&rdquo; said MacIan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite so,&rdquo; said Turnbull, &ldquo;and me; but they won't get us. MacIan, your
+      attempt on the primitive innocence does not seem very successful. Let me
+      try. What you want, my friend, is your rights. You don't want any priests
+      or churches. A vote, a right to speak is what you&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who says I a'n't got a right to speak?&rdquo; said the old man, facing round in
+      an irrational frenzy. &ldquo;I got a right to speak. I'm a man, I am. I don't
+      want no votin' nor priests. I say a man's a man; that's what I say. If a
+      man a'n't a man, what is he? That's what I say, if a man a'n't a man, what
+      is he? When I sees a man, I sez 'e's a man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite so,&rdquo; said Turnbull, &ldquo;a citizen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say he's a man,&rdquo; said the rustic furiously, stopping and striking his
+      stick on the ground. &ldquo;Not a city or owt else. He's a man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're perfectly right,&rdquo; said the sudden voice of MacIan, falling like a
+      sword. &ldquo;And you have kept close to something the whole world of today
+      tries to forget.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And the old man went on wildly singing into the night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A jolly old creature,&rdquo; said Turnbull; &ldquo;he didn't seem able to get much
+      beyond that fact that a man is a man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Has anybody got beyond it?&rdquo; asked MacIan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull looked at him curiously. &ldquo;Are you turning an agnostic?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, you do not understand!&rdquo; cried out MacIan. &ldquo;We Catholics are all
+      agnostics. We Catholics have only in that sense got as far as realizing
+      that man is a man. But your Ibsens and your Zolas and your Shaws and your
+      Tolstoys have not even got so far.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0008" id="link2H_4_0008">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      VIII. AN INTERLUDE OF ARGUMENT
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Morning broke in bitter silver along the grey and level plain; and almost
+      as it did so Turnbull and MacIan came out of a low, scrubby wood on to the
+      empty and desolate flats. They had walked all night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They had walked all night and talked all night also, and if the subject
+      had been capable of being exhausted they would have exhausted it. Their
+      long and changing argument had taken them through districts and landscapes
+      equally changing. They had discussed Haeckel upon hills so high and steep
+      that in spite of the coldness of the night it seemed as if the stars might
+      burn them. They had explained and re-explained the Massacre of St.
+      Bartholomew in little white lanes walled in with standing corn as with
+      walls of gold. They had talked about Mr. Kensit in dim and twinkling pine
+      woods, amid the bewildering monotony of the pines. And it was with the end
+      of a long speech from MacIan, passionately defending the practical
+      achievements and the solid prosperity of the Catholic tradition, that they
+      came out upon the open land.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan had learnt much and thought more since he came out of the cloudy
+      hills of Arisaig. He had met many typical modern figures under
+      circumstances which were sharply symbolic; and, moreover, he had absorbed
+      the main modern atmosphere from the mere presence and chance phrases of
+      Turnbull, as such atmospheres can always be absorbed from the presence and
+      the phrases of any man of great mental vitality. He had at last begun
+      thoroughly to understand what are the grounds upon which the mass of the
+      modern world solidly disapprove of her creed; and he threw himself into
+      replying to them with a hot intellectual enjoyment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I begin to understand one or two of your dogmas, Mr. Turnbull,&rdquo; he had
+      said emphatically as they ploughed heavily up a wooded hill. &ldquo;And every
+      one that I understand I deny. Take any one of them you like. You hold that
+      your heretics and sceptics have helped the world forward and handed on a
+      lamp of progress. I deny it. Nothing is plainer from real history than
+      that each of your heretics invented a complete cosmos of his own which the
+      next heretic smashed entirely to pieces. Who knows now exactly what
+      Nestorius taught? Who cares? There are only two things that we know for
+      certain about it. The first is that Nestorius, as a heretic, taught
+      something quite opposite to the teaching of Arius, the heretic who came
+      before him, and something quite useless to James Turnbull, the heretic who
+      comes after. I defy you to go back to the Free-thinkers of the past and
+      find any habitation for yourself at all. I defy you to read Godwin or
+      Shelley or the deists of the eighteenth century of the nature-worshipping
+      humanists of the Renaissance, without discovering that you differ from
+      them twice as much as you differ from the Pope. You are a
+      nineteenth-century sceptic, and you are always telling me that I ignore
+      the cruelty of nature. If you had been an eighteenth-century sceptic you
+      would have told me that I ignore the kindness and benevolence of nature.
+      You are an atheist, and you praise the deists of the eighteenth century.
+      Read them instead of praising them, and you will find that their whole
+      universe stands or falls with the deity. You are a materialist, and you
+      think Bruno a scientific hero. See what he said and you will think him an
+      insane mystic. No, the great Free-thinker, with his genuine ability and
+      honesty, does not in practice destroy Christianity. What he does destroy
+      is the Free-thinker who went before. Free-thought may be suggestive, it
+      may be inspiriting, it may have as much as you please of the merits that
+      come from vivacity and variety. But there is one thing Free-thought can
+      never be by any possibility&mdash;Free-thought can never be progressive.
+      It can never be progressive because it will accept nothing from the past;
+      it begins every time again from the beginning; and it goes every time in a
+      different direction. All the rational philosophers have gone along
+      different roads, so it is impossible to say which has gone farthest. Who
+      can discuss whether Emerson was a better optimist than Schopenhauer was
+      pessimist? It is like asking if this corn is as yellow as that hill is
+      steep. No; there are only two things that really progress; and they both
+      accept accumulations of authority. They may be progressing uphill and
+      down; they may be growing steadily better or steadily worse; but they have
+      steadily increased in certain definable matters; they have steadily
+      advanced in a certain definable direction; they are the only two things,
+      it seems, that ever <i>can</i> progress. The first is strictly physical
+      science. The second is the Catholic Church.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Physical science and the Catholic Church!&rdquo; said Turnbull sarcastically;
+      &ldquo;and no doubt the first owes a great deal to the second.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you pressed that point I might reply that it was very probable,&rdquo;
+       answered MacIan calmly. &ldquo;I often fancy that your historical
+      generalizations rest frequently on random instances; I should not be
+      surprised if your vague notions of the Church as the persecutor of science
+      was a generalization from Galileo. I should not be at all surprised if,
+      when you counted the scientific investigations and discoveries since the
+      fall of Rome, you found that a great mass of them had been made by monks.
+      But the matter is irrelevant to my meaning. I say that if you want an
+      example of anything which has progressed in the moral world by the same
+      method as science in the material world, by continually adding to without
+      unsettling what was there before, then I say that there <i>is</i> only one
+      example of it. And that is Us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;With this enormous difference,&rdquo; said Turnbull, &ldquo;that however elaborate be
+      the calculations of physical science, their net result can be tested.
+      Granted that it took millions of books I never read and millions of men I
+      never heard of to discover the electric light. Still I can see the
+      electric light. But I cannot see the supreme virtue which is the result of
+      all your theologies and sacraments.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Catholic virtue is often invisible because it is the normal,&rdquo; answered
+      MacIan. &ldquo;Christianity is always out of fashion because it is always sane;
+      and all fashions are mild insanities. When Italy is mad on art the Church
+      seems too Puritanical; when England is mad on Puritanism the Church seems
+      too artistic. When you quarrel with us now you class us with kingship and
+      despotism; but when you quarrelled with us first it was because we would
+      not accept the divine despotism of Henry VIII. The Church always seems to
+      be behind the times, when it is really beyond the times; it is waiting
+      till the last fad shall have seen its last summer. It keeps the key of a
+      permanent virtue.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I have heard all that!&rdquo; said Turnbull with genial contempt. &ldquo;I have
+      heard that Christianity keeps the key of virtue, and that if you read Tom
+      Paine you will cut your throat at Monte Carlo. It is such rubbish that I
+      am not even angry at it. You say that Christianity is the prop of morals;
+      but what more do you do? When a doctor attends you and could poison you
+      with a pinch of salt, do you ask whether he is a Christian? You ask
+      whether he is a gentleman, whether he is an M.D.&mdash;anything but that.
+      When a soldier enlists to die for his country or disgrace it, do you ask
+      whether he is a Christian? You are more likely to ask whether he is Oxford
+      or Cambridge at the boat race. If you think your creed essential to morals
+      why do you not make it a test for these things?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We once did make it a test for these things,&rdquo; said MacIan smiling, &ldquo;and
+      then you told us that we were imposing by force a faith unsupported by
+      argument. It seems rather hard that having first been told that our creed
+      must be false because we did use tests, we should now be told that it must
+      be false because we don't. But I notice that most anti-Christian arguments
+      are in the same inconsistent style.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is all very well as a debating-club answer,&rdquo; replied Turnbull
+      good-humouredly, &ldquo;but the question still remains: Why don't you confine
+      yourself more to Christians if Christians are the only really good men?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who talked of such folly?&rdquo; asked MacIan disdainfully. &ldquo;Do you suppose
+      that the Catholic Church ever held that Christians were the only good men?
+      Why, the Catholics of the Catholic Middle Ages talked about the virtues of
+      all the virtuous Pagans until humanity was sick of the subject. No, if you
+      really want to know what we mean when we say that Christianity has a
+      special power of virtue, I will tell you. The Church is the only thing on
+      earth that can perpetuate a type of virtue and make it something more than
+      a fashion. The thing is so plain and historical that I hardly think you
+      will ever deny it. You cannot deny that it is perfectly possible that
+      tomorrow morning, in Ireland or in Italy, there might appear a man not
+      only as good but good in exactly the same way as St. Francis of Assisi.
+      Very well, now take the other types of human virtue; many of them
+      splendid. The English gentleman of Elizabeth was chivalrous and
+      idealistic. But can you stand still here in this meadow and <i>be</i> an
+      English gentleman of Elizabeth? The austere republican of the eighteenth
+      century, with his stern patriotism and his simple life, was a fine fellow.
+      But have you ever seen him? have you ever seen an austere republican? Only
+      a hundred years have passed and that volcano of revolutionary truth and
+      valour is as cold as the mountains of the moon. And so it is and so it
+      will be with the ethics which are buzzing down Fleet Street at this
+      instant as I speak. What phrase would inspire the London clerk or workman
+      just now? Perhaps that he is a son of the British Empire on which the sun
+      never sets; perhaps that he is a prop of his Trades Union, or a
+      class-conscious proletarian something or other; perhaps merely that he is
+      a gentleman when he obviously is not. Those names and notions are all
+      honourable; but how long will they last? Empires break; industrial
+      conditions change; the suburbs will not last for ever. What will remain? I
+      will tell you. The Catholic Saint will remain.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And suppose I don't like him?&rdquo; said Turnbull.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On my theory the question is rather whether he will like you: or more
+      probably whether he will ever have heard of you. But I grant the
+      reasonableness of your query. You have a right, if you speak as the
+      ordinary man, to ask if you will like the saint. But as the ordinary man
+      you do like him. You revel in him. If you dislike him it is not because
+      you are a nice ordinary man, but because you are (if you will excuse me) a
+      sophisticated prig of a Fleet Street editor. That is just the funny part
+      of it. The human race has always admired the Catholic virtues, however
+      little it can practise them; and oddly enough it has admired most those of
+      them that the modern world most sharply disputes. You complain of
+      Catholicism for setting up an ideal of virginity; it did nothing of the
+      kind. The whole human race set up an ideal of virginity; the Greeks in
+      Athene, the Romans in the Vestal fire, set up an ideal of virginity. What
+      then is your real quarrel with Catholicism? Your quarrel can only be, your
+      quarrel really only is, that Catholicism has <i>achieved</i> an ideal of
+      virginity; that it is no longer a mere piece of floating poetry. But if
+      you, and a few feverish men, in top hats, running about in a street in
+      London, choose to differ as to the ideal itself, not only from the Church,
+      but from the Parthenon whose name means virginity, from the Roman Empire
+      which went outwards from the virgin flame, from the whole legend and
+      tradition of Europe, from the lion who will not touch virgins, from the
+      unicorn who respects them, and who make up together the bearers of your
+      own national shield, from the most living and lawless of your own poets,
+      from Massinger, who wrote the <i>Virgin Martyr</i>, from Shakespeare, who
+      wrote <i>Measure for Measure</i>&mdash;if you in Fleet Street differ from
+      all this human experience, does it never strike you that it may be Fleet
+      Street that is wrong?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; answered Turnbull; &ldquo;I trust that I am sufficiently fair-minded to
+      canvass and consider the idea; but having considered it, I think Fleet
+      Street is right, yes&mdash;even if the Parthenon is wrong. I think that as
+      the world goes on new psychological atmospheres are generated, and in
+      these atmospheres it is possible to find delicacies and combinations which
+      in other times would have to be represented by some ruder symbol. Every
+      man feels the need of some element of purity in sex; perhaps they can only
+      typify purity as the absence of sex. You will laugh if I suggest that we
+      may have made in Fleet Street an atmosphere in which a man can be so
+      passionate as Sir Lancelot and as pure as Sir Galahad. But, after all, we
+      have in the modern world erected many such atmospheres. We have, for
+      instance, a new and imaginative appreciation of children.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite so,&rdquo; replied MacIan with a singular smile. &ldquo;It has been very well
+      put by one of the brightest of your young authors, who said: 'Unless you
+      become as little children ye shall in no wise enter the kingdom of
+      heaven.' But you are quite right; there is a modern worship of children.
+      And what, I ask you, is this modern worship of children? What, in the name
+      of all the angels and devils, is it except a worship of virginity? Why
+      should anyone worship a thing merely because it is small or immature? No;
+      you have tried to escape from this thing, and the very thing you point to
+      as the goal of your escape is only the thing again. Am I wrong in saying
+      that these things seem to be eternal?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And it was with these words that they came in sight of the great plains.
+      They went a little way in silence, and then James Turnbull said suddenly,
+      &ldquo;But I <i>cannot</i> believe in the thing.&rdquo; MacIan answered nothing to the
+      speech; perhaps it is unanswerable. And indeed they scarcely spoke another
+      word to each other all that day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0009" id="link2H_4_0009">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      IX. THE STRANGE LADY
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Moonrise with a great and growing moon opened over all those flats, making
+      them seem flatter and larger than they were, turning them to a lake of
+      blue light. The two companions trudged across the moonlit plain for half
+      an hour in full silence. Then MacIan stopped suddenly and planted his
+      sword-point in the ground like one who plants his tent-pole for the night.
+      Leaving it standing there, he clutched his black-haired skull with his
+      great claws of hands, as was his custom when forcing the pace of his
+      brain. Then his hands dropped again and he spoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm sure you're thinking the same as I am,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;how long are we to
+      be on this damned seesaw?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The other did not answer, but his silence seemed somehow solid as assent;
+      and MacIan went on conversationally. Neither noticed that both had
+      instinctively stood still before the sign of the fixed and standing sword.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is hard to guess what God means in this business. But he means
+      something&mdash;or the other thing, or both. Whenever we have tried to
+      fight each other something has stopped us. Whenever we have tried to be
+      reconciled to each other, something has stopped us again. By the run of
+      our luck we have never had time to be either friends or enemies. Something
+      always jumped out of the bushes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull nodded gravely and glanced round at the huge and hedgeless meadow
+      which fell away towards the horizon into a glimmering high road.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing will jump out of bushes here anyhow,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is what I meant,&rdquo; said MacIan, and stared steadily at the heavy hilt
+      of his standing sword, which in the slight wind swayed on its tempered
+      steel like some huge thistle on its stalk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is what I meant; we are quite alone here. I have not heard a
+      horse-hoof or a footstep or the hoot of a train for miles. So I think we
+      might stop here and ask for a miracle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! might we?&rdquo; said the atheistic editor with a sort of gusto of disgust.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I beg your pardon,&rdquo; said MacIan, meekly. &ldquo;I forgot your prejudices.&rdquo; He
+      eyed the wind-swung sword-hilt in sad meditation and resumed: &ldquo;What I mean
+      is, we might find out in this quiet place whether there really is any fate
+      or any commandment against our enterprise. I will engage on my side, like
+      Elijah, to accept a test from heaven. Turnbull, let us draw swords here in
+      this moonlight and this monstrous solitude. And if here in this moonlight
+      and solitude there happens anything to interrupt us&mdash;if it be
+      lightning striking our sword-blades or a rabbit running under our legs&mdash;I
+      will take it as a sign from God and we will shake hands for ever.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull's mouth twitched in angry humour under his red moustache. He
+      said: &ldquo;I will wait for signs from God until I have any signs of His
+      existence; but God&mdash;or Fate&mdash;forbid that a man of scientific
+      culture should refuse any kind of experiment.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well, then,&rdquo; said MacIan, shortly. &ldquo;We are more quiet here than
+      anywhere else; let us engage.&rdquo; And he plucked his sword-point out of the
+      turf.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull regarded him for a second and a half with a baffling visage
+      almost black against the moonrise; then his hand made a sharp movement to
+      his hip and his sword shone in the moon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As old chess-players open every game with established gambits, they opened
+      with a thrust and parry, orthodox and even frankly ineffectual. But in
+      MacIan's soul more formless storms were gathering, and he made a lunge or
+      two so savage as first to surprise and then to enrage his opponent.
+      Turnbull ground his teeth, kept his temper, and waiting for the third
+      lunge, and the worst, had almost spitted the lunger when a shrill, small
+      cry came from behind him, a cry such as is not made by any of the beasts
+      that perish.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull must have been more superstitious than he knew, for he stopped in
+      the act of going forward. MacIan was brazenly superstitious, and he
+      dropped his sword. After all, he had challenged the universe to send an
+      interruption; and this was an interruption, whatever else it was. An
+      instant afterwards the sharp, weak cry was repeated. This time it was
+      certain that it was human and that it was female.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan stood rolling those great blue Gaelic eyes that contrasted with his
+      dark hair. &ldquo;It is the voice of God,&rdquo; he said again and again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God hasn't got much of a voice,&rdquo; said Turnbull, who snatched at every
+      chance of cheap profanity. &ldquo;As a matter of fact, MacIan, it isn't the
+      voice of God, but it's something a jolly sight more important&mdash;it is
+      the voice of man&mdash;or rather of woman. So I think we'd better scoot in
+      its direction.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan snatched up his fallen weapon without a word, and the two raced
+      away towards that part of the distant road from which the cry was now
+      constantly renewed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They had to run over a curve of country that looked smooth but was very
+      rough; a neglected field which they soon found to be full of the tallest
+      grasses and the deepest rabbit-holes. Moreover, that great curve of the
+      countryside which looked so slow and gentle when you glanced over it,
+      proved to be highly precipitous when you scampered over it; and Turnbull
+      was twice nearly flung on his face. MacIan, though much heavier, avoided
+      such an overthrow only by having the quick and incalculable feet of the
+      mountaineer; but both of them may be said to have leapt off a low cliff
+      when they leapt into the road.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The moonlight lay on the white road with a more naked and electric glare
+      than on the grey-green upland, and though the scene which it revealed was
+      complicated, it was not difficult to get its first features at a glance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A small but very neat black-and-yellow motor-car was standing stolidly,
+      slightly to the left of the road. A somewhat larger light-green motor-car
+      was tipped half-way into a ditch on the same side, and four flushed and
+      staggering men in evening dress were tipped out of it. Three of them were
+      standing about the road, giving their opinions to the moon with vague but
+      echoing violence. The fourth, however, had already advanced on the
+      chauffeur of the black-and-yellow car, and was threatening him with a
+      stick. The chauffeur had risen to defend himself. By his side sat a young
+      lady.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was sitting bolt upright, a slender and rigid figure gripping the
+      sides of her seat, and her first few cries had ceased. She was clad in
+      close-fitting dark costume, a mass of warm brown hair went out in two
+      wings or waves on each side of her forehead; and even at that distance it
+      could be seen that her profile was of the aquiline and eager sort, like a
+      young falcon hardly free of the nest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull had concealed in him somewhere a fund of common sense and
+      knowledge of the world of which he himself and his best friends were
+      hardly aware. He was one of those who take in much of the shows of things
+      absent-mindedly, and in an irrelevant reverie. As he stood at the door of
+      his editorial shop on Ludgate Hill and meditated on the non-existence of
+      God, he silently absorbed a good deal of varied knowledge about the
+      existence of men. He had come to know types by instinct and dilemmas with
+      a glance; he saw the crux of the situation in the road, and what he saw
+      made him redouble his pace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He knew that the men were rich; he knew that they were drunk; and he knew,
+      what was worst of all, that they were fundamentally frightened. And he
+      knew this also, that no common ruffian (such as attacks ladies in novels)
+      is ever so savage and ruthless as a coarse kind of gentleman when he is
+      really alarmed. The reason is not recondite; it is simply because the
+      police-court is not such a menacing novelty to the poor ruffian as it is
+      to the rich. When they came within hail and heard the voices, they
+      confirmed all Turnbull's anticipations. The man in the middle of the road
+      was shouting in a hoarse and groggy voice that the chauffeur had smashed
+      their car on purpose; that they must get to the Cri that evening, and that
+      he would jolly well have to take them there. The chauffeur had mildly
+      objected that he was driving a lady. &ldquo;Oh! we'll take care of the lady,&rdquo;
+       said the red-faced young man, and went off into gurgling and almost senile
+      laughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By the time the two champions came up, things had grown more serious. The
+      intoxication of the man talking to the chauffeur had taken one of its
+      perverse and catlike jumps into mere screaming spite and rage. He lifted
+      his stick and struck at the chauffeur, who caught hold of it, and the
+      drunkard fell backwards, dragging him out of his seat on the car. Another
+      of the rowdies rushed forward booing in idiot excitement, fell over the
+      chauffeur, and, either by accident or design, kicked him as he lay. The
+      drunkard got to his feet again; but the chauffeur did not.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man who had kicked kept a kind of half-witted conscience or cowardice,
+      for he stood staring at the senseless body and murmuring words of
+      inconsequent self-justification, making gestures with his hands as if he
+      were arguing with somebody. But the other three, with a mere whoop and
+      howl of victory, were boarding the car on three sides at once. It was
+      exactly at this moment that Turnbull fell among them like one fallen from
+      the sky. He tore one of the climbers backward by the collar, and with a
+      hearty push sent him staggering over into the ditch upon his nose. One of
+      the remaining two, who was too far gone to notice anything, continued to
+      clamber ineffectually over the high back of the car, kicking and pouring
+      forth a rivulet of soliloquy. But the other dropped at the interruption,
+      turned upon Turnbull and began a battering bout of fisticuffs. At the same
+      moment the man crawled out of the ditch in a masquerade of mud and rushed
+      at his old enemy from behind. The whole had not taken a second; and an
+      instant after MacIan was in the midst of them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull had tossed away his sheathed sword, greatly preferring his hands,
+      except in the avowed etiquette of the duel; for he had learnt to use his
+      hands in the old street-battles of Bradlaugh. But to MacIan the sword even
+      sheathed was a more natural weapon, and he laid about him on all sides
+      with it as with a stick. The man who had the walking-stick found his blows
+      parried with promptitude; and a second after, to his great astonishment,
+      found his own stick fly up in the air as by a conjuring trick, with a turn
+      of the swordsman's wrist. Another of the revellers picked the stick out of
+      the ditch and ran in upon MacIan, calling to his companion to assist him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I haven't got a stick,&rdquo; grumbled the disarmed man, and looked vaguely
+      about the ditch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps,&rdquo; said MacIan, politely, &ldquo;you would like this one.&rdquo; With the word
+      the drunkard found his hand that had grasped the stick suddenly twisted
+      and empty; and the stick lay at the feet of his companion on the other
+      side of the road. MacIan felt a faint stir behind him; the girl had risen
+      to her feet and was leaning forward to stare at the fighters. Turnbull was
+      still engaged in countering and pommelling with the third young man. The
+      fourth young man was still engaged with himself, kicking his legs in
+      helpless rotation on the back of the car and talking with melodious
+      rationality.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At length Turnbull's opponent began to back before the battery of his
+      heavy hands, still fighting, for he was the soberest and boldest of the
+      four. If these are annals of military glory, it is due to him to say that
+      he need not have abandoned the conflict; only that as he backed to the
+      edge of the ditch his foot caught in a loop of grass and he went over in a
+      flat and comfortable position from which it took him a considerable time
+      to rise. By the time he had risen, Turnbull had come to the rescue of
+      MacIan, who was at bay but belabouring his two enemies handsomely. The
+      sight of the liberated reserve was to them like that of Blucher at
+      Waterloo; the two set off at a sullen trot down the road, leaving even the
+      walking-stick lying behind them in the moonlight. MacIan plucked the
+      struggling and aspiring idiot off the back of the car like a stray cat,
+      and left him swaying unsteadily in the moon. Then he approached the front
+      part of the car in a somewhat embarrassed manner and pulled off his cap.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For some solid seconds the lady and he merely looked at each other, and
+      MacIan had an irrational feeling of being in a picture hung on a wall.
+      That is, he was motionless, even lifeless, and yet staringly significant,
+      like a picture. The white moonlight on the road, when he was not looking
+      at it, gave him a vision of the road being white with snow. The motor-car,
+      when he was not looking at it, gave him a rude impression of a captured
+      coach in the old days of highwaymen. And he whose whole soul was with the
+      swords and stately manners of the eighteenth century, he who was a
+      Jacobite risen from the dead, had an overwhelming sense of being once more
+      in the picture, when he had so long been out of the picture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In that short and strong silence he absorbed the lady from head to foot.
+      He had never really looked at a human being before in his life. He saw her
+      face and hair first, then that she had long suede gloves; then that there
+      was a fur cap at the back of her brown hair. He might, perhaps, be excused
+      for this hungry attention. He had prayed that some sign might come from
+      heaven; and after an almost savage scrutiny he came to the conclusion that
+      his one did. The lady's instantaneous arrest of speech might need more
+      explaining; but she may well have been stunned with the squalid attack and
+      the abrupt rescue. Yet it was she who remembered herself first and
+      suddenly called out with self-accusing horror:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, that poor, poor man!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They both swung round abruptly and saw that Turnbull, with his recovered
+      sword under his arm-pit, was already lifting the fallen chauffeur into the
+      car. He was only stunned and was slowly awakening, feebly waving his left
+      arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The lady in long gloves and the fur cap leapt out and ran rapidly towards
+      them, only to be reassured by Turnbull, who (unlike many of his school)
+      really knew a little science when he invoked it to redeem the world. &ldquo;He's
+      all right,&rdquo; said he; &ldquo;he's quite safe. But I'm afraid he won't be able to
+      drive the car for half an hour or so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can drive the car,&rdquo; said the young woman in the fur cap with stony
+      practicability.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, in that case,&rdquo; began MacIan, uneasily; and that paralysing shyness
+      which is a part of romance induced him to make a backward movement as if
+      leaving her to herself. But Turnbull was more rational than he, being more
+      indifferent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't think you ought to drive home alone, ma'am,&rdquo; he said, gruffly.
+      &ldquo;There seem to be a lot of rowdy parties along this road, and the man will
+      be no use for an hour. If you will tell us where you are going, we will
+      see you safely there and say good night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The young lady exhibited all the abrupt disturbance of a person who is not
+      commonly disturbed. She said almost sharply and yet with evident
+      sincerity: &ldquo;Of course I am awfully grateful to you for all you've done&mdash;and
+      there's plenty of room if you'll come in.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull, with the complete innocence of an absolutely sound motive,
+      immediately jumped into the car; but the girl cast an eye at MacIan, who
+      stood in the road for an instant as if rooted like a tree. Then he also
+      tumbled his long legs into the tonneau, having that sense of degradedly
+      diving into heaven which so many have known in so many human houses when
+      they consented to stop to tea or were allowed to stop to supper. The
+      slowly reviving chauffeur was set in the back seat; Turnbull and MacIan
+      had fallen into the middle one; the lady with a steely coolness had taken
+      the driver's seat and all the handles of that headlong machine. A moment
+      afterwards the engine started, with a throb and leap unfamiliar to
+      Turnbull, who had only once been in a motor during a general election, and
+      utterly unknown to MacIan, who in his present mood thought it was the end
+      of the world. Almost at the same instant that the car plucked itself out
+      of the mud and whipped away up the road, the man who had been flung into
+      the ditch rose waveringly to his feet. When he saw the car escaping he ran
+      after it and shouted something which, owing to the increasing distance,
+      could not be heard. It is awful to reflect that, if his remark was
+      valuable, it is quite lost to the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The car shot on up and down the shining moonlit lanes, and there was no
+      sound in it except the occasional click or catch of its machinery; for
+      through some cause or other no soul inside it could think of a word to
+      say. The lady symbolized her feelings, whatever they were, by urging the
+      machine faster and faster until scattered woodlands went by them in one
+      black blotch and heavy hills and valleys seemed to ripple under the wheels
+      like mere waves. A little while afterwards this mood seemed to slacken and
+      she fell into a more ordinary pace; but still she did not speak. Turnbull,
+      who kept a more common and sensible view of the case than anyone else,
+      made some remark about the moonlight; but something indescribable made him
+      also relapse into silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All this time MacIan had been in a sort of monstrous delirium, like some
+      fabulous hero snatched up into the moon. The difference between this
+      experience and common experiences was analogous to that between waking
+      life and a dream. Yet he did not feel in the least as if he were dreaming;
+      rather the other way; as waking was more actual than dreaming, so this
+      seemed by another degree more actual than waking itself. But it was
+      another life altogether, like a cosmos with a new dimension.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He felt he had been hurled into some new incarnation: into the midst of
+      new relations, wrongs and rights, with towering responsibilities and
+      almost tragic joys which he had as yet had no time to examine. Heaven had
+      not merely sent him a message; Heaven itself had opened around him and
+      given him an hour of its own ancient and star-shattering energy. He had
+      never felt so much alive before; and yet he was like a man in a trance.
+      And if you had asked him on what his throbbing happiness hung, he could
+      only have told you that it hung on four or five visible facts, as a
+      curtain hangs on four of five fixed nails. The fact that the lady had a
+      little fur at her throat; the fact that the curve of her cheek was a low
+      and lean curve and that the moonlight caught the height of her cheek-bone;
+      the fact that her hands were small but heavily gloved as they gripped the
+      steering-wheel; the fact that a white witch light was on the road; the
+      fact that the brisk breeze of their passage stirred and fluttered a little
+      not only the brown hair of her head but the black fur on her cap. All
+      these facts were to him certain and incredible, like sacraments.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When they had driven half a mile farther, a big shadow was flung across
+      the path, followed by its bulky owner, who eyed the car critically but let
+      it pass. The silver moonlight picked out a piece or two of pewter ornament
+      on his blue uniform; and as they went by they knew it was a sergeant of
+      police. Three hundred yards farther on another policeman stepped out into
+      the road as if to stop them, then seemed to doubt his own authority and
+      stepped back again. The girl was a daughter of the rich; and this police
+      suspicion (under which all the poor live day and night) stung her for the
+      first time into speech.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What can they mean?&rdquo; she cried out in a kind of temper; &ldquo;this car's going
+      like a snail.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a short silence, and then Turnbull said: &ldquo;It is certainly very
+      odd, you are driving quietly enough.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are driving nobly,&rdquo; said MacIan, and his words (which had no meaning
+      whatever) sounded hoarse and ungainly even in his own ears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They passed the next mile and a half swiftly and smoothly; yet among the
+      many things which they passed in the course of it was a clump of eager
+      policemen standing at a cross-road. As they passed, one of the policemen
+      shouted something to the others; but nothing else happened. Eight hundred
+      yards farther on, Turnbull stood up suddenly in the swaying car.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My God, MacIan!&rdquo; he called out, showing his first emotion of that night.
+      &ldquo;I don't believe it's the pace; it couldn't be the pace. I believe it's
+      us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan sat motionless for a few moments and then turned up at his
+      companion a face that was as white as the moon above it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You may be right,&rdquo; he said at last; &ldquo;if you are, I must tell her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will tell the lady if you like,&rdquo; said Turnbull, with his unconquered
+      good temper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You!&rdquo; said MacIan, with a sort of sincere and instinctive astonishment.
+      &ldquo;Why should you&mdash;no, I must tell her, of course&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he leant forward and spoke to the lady in the fur cap.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am afraid, madam, that we may have got you into some trouble,&rdquo; he said,
+      and even as he said it it sounded wrong, like everything he said to this
+      particular person in the long gloves. &ldquo;The fact is,&rdquo; he resumed,
+      desperately, &ldquo;the fact is, we are being chased by the police.&rdquo; Then the
+      last flattening hammer fell upon poor Evan's embarrassment; for the fluffy
+      brown head with the furry black cap did not turn by a section of the
+      compass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are chased by the police,&rdquo; repeated MacIan, vigorously; then he added,
+      as if beginning an explanation, &ldquo;You see, I am a Catholic.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The wind whipped back a curl of the brown hair so as to necessitate a new
+      theory of aesthetics touching the line of the cheek-bone; but the head did
+      not turn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see,&rdquo; began MacIan, again blunderingly, &ldquo;this gentleman wrote in his
+      newspaper that Our Lady was a common woman, a bad woman, and so we agreed
+      to fight; and we were fighting quite a little time ago&mdash;but that was
+      before we saw you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The young lady driving her car had half turned her face to listen; and it
+      was not a reverent or a patient face that she showed him. Her Norman nose
+      was tilted a trifle too high upon the slim stalk of her neck and body.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When MacIan saw that arrogant and uplifted profile pencilled plainly
+      against the moonshine, he accepted an ultimate defeat. He had expected the
+      angels to despise him if he were wrong, but not to despise him so much as
+      this.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see,&rdquo; said the stumbling spokesman, &ldquo;I was angry with him when he
+      insulted the Mother of God, and I asked him to fight a duel with me; but
+      the police are all trying to stop it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nothing seemed to waver or flicker in the fair young falcon profile; and
+      it only opened its lips to say, after a silence: &ldquo;I thought people in our
+      time were supposed to respect each other's religion.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Under the shadow of that arrogant face MacIan could only fall back on the
+      obvious answer: &ldquo;But what about a man's irreligion?&rdquo; The face only
+      answered: &ldquo;Well, you ought to be more broadminded.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      If anyone else in the world had said the words, MacIan would have snorted
+      with his equine neigh of scorn. But in this case he seemed knocked down by
+      a superior simplicity, as if his eccentric attitude were rebuked by the
+      innocence of a child. He could not dissociate anything that this woman
+      said or did or wore from an idea of spiritual rarity and virtue. Like most
+      others under the same elemental passion, his soul was at present soaked in
+      ethics. He could have applied moral terms to the material objects of her
+      environment. If someone had spoken of &ldquo;her generous ribbon&rdquo; or &ldquo;her
+      chivalrous gloves&rdquo; or &ldquo;her merciful shoe-buckle,&rdquo; it would not have seemed
+      to him nonsense.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was silent, and the girl went on in a lower key as if she were
+      momentarily softened and a little saddened also. &ldquo;It won't do, you know,&rdquo;
+       she said; &ldquo;you can't find out the truth in that way. There are such heaps
+      of churches and people thinking different things nowadays, and they all
+      think they are right. My uncle was a Swedenborgian.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan sat with bowed head, listening hungrily to her voice but hardly to
+      her words, and seeing his great world drama grow smaller and smaller
+      before his eyes till it was no bigger than a child's toy theatre.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The time's gone by for all that,&rdquo; she went on; &ldquo;you can't find out the
+      real thing like that&mdash;if there is really anything to find&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+       and she sighed rather drearily; for, like many of the women of our wealthy
+      class, she was old and broken in thought, though young and clean enough in
+      her emotions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Our object,&rdquo; said Turnbull, shortly, &ldquo;is to make an effective
+      demonstration&rdquo;; and after that word, MacIan looked at his vision again and
+      found it smaller than ever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would be in the newspapers, of course,&rdquo; said the girl. &ldquo;People read
+      the newspapers, but they don't believe them, or anything else, I think.&rdquo;
+       And she sighed again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She drove in silence a third of a mile before she added, as if completing
+      the sentence: &ldquo;Anyhow, the whole thing's quite absurd.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't think,&rdquo; began Turnbull, &ldquo;that you quite realize&mdash;&mdash;Hullo!
+      hullo&mdash;hullo&mdash;what's this?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The amateur chauffeur had been forced to bring the car to a staggering
+      stoppage, for a file of fat, blue policemen made a wall across the way. A
+      sergeant came to the side and touched his peaked cap to the lady.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Beg your pardon, miss,&rdquo; he said with some embarrassment, for he knew her
+      for a daughter of a dominant house, &ldquo;but we have reason to believe that
+      the gentlemen in your car are&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; and he hesitated for a polite
+      phrase.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am Evan MacIan,&rdquo; said that gentleman, and stood up in a sort of gloomy
+      pomp, not wholly without a touch of the sulks of a schoolboy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, we will get out, sergeant,&rdquo; said Turnbull, more easily; &ldquo;my name is
+      James Turnbull. We must not incommode the lady.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are you taking them up for?&rdquo; asked the young woman, looking straight
+      in front of her along the road.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's under the new act,&rdquo; said the sergeant, almost apologetically.
+      &ldquo;Incurable disturbers of the peace.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What will happen to them?&rdquo; she asked, with the same frigid clearness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Westgate Adult Reformatory,&rdquo; he replied, briefly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Until when?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Until they are cured,&rdquo; said the official.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well, sergeant,&rdquo; said the young lady, with a sort of tired common
+      sense. &ldquo;I am sure I don't want to protect criminals or go against the law;
+      but I must tell you that these gentlemen have done me a considerable
+      service; you won't mind drawing your men a little farther off while I say
+      good night to them. Men like that always misunderstand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The sergeant was profoundly disquieted from the beginning at the mere idea
+      of arresting anyone in the company of a great lady; to refuse one of her
+      minor requests was quite beyond his courage. The police fell back to a few
+      yards behind the car. Turnbull took up the two swords that were their only
+      luggage; the swords that, after so many half duels, they were now to
+      surrender at last. MacIan, the blood thundering in his brain at the
+      thought of that instant of farewell, bent over, fumbled at the handle and
+      flung open the door to get out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he did not get out. He did not get out, because it is dangerous to
+      jump out of a car when it is going at full speed. And the car was going at
+      full speed, because the young lady, without turning her head or so much as
+      saying a syllable, had driven down a handle that made the machine plunge
+      forward like a buffalo and then fly over the landscape like a greyhound.
+      The police made one rush to follow, and then dropped so grotesque and
+      hopeless a chase. Away in the vanishing distance they could see the
+      sergeant furiously making notes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The open door, still left loose on its hinges, swung and banged quite
+      crazily as they went whizzing up one road and down another. Nor did MacIan
+      sit down; he stood up stunned and yet staring, as he would have stood up
+      at the trumpet of the Last Day. A black dot in the distance sprang up a
+      tall black forest, swallowed them and spat them out again at the other
+      end. A railway bridge grew larger and larger till it leapt upon their
+      backs bellowing, and was in its turn left behind. Avenues of poplars on
+      both sides of the road chased each other like the figures in a zoetrope.
+      Now and then with a shock and rattle they went through sleeping moonlit
+      villages, which must have stirred an instant in their sleep as at the
+      passing of a fugitive earthquake. Sometimes in an outlying house a light
+      in one erratic, unexpected window would give them a nameless hint of the
+      hundred human secrets which they left behind them with their dust.
+      Sometimes even a slouching rustic would be afoot on the road and would
+      look after them, as after a flying phantom. But still MacIan stood up
+      staring at earth and heaven; and still the door he had flung open flapped
+      loose like a flag. Turnbull, after a few minutes of dumb amazement, had
+      yielded to the healthiest element in his nature and gone off into
+      uncontrollable fits of laughter. The girl had not stirred an inch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After another half mile that seemed a mere flash, Turnbull leant over and
+      locked the door. Evan staggered at last into his seat and hid his
+      throbbing head in his hands; and still the car flew on and its driver sat
+      inflexible and silent. The moon had already gone down, and the whole
+      darkness was faintly troubled with twilight and the first movement of
+      beasts and fowls. It was that mysterious moment when light is coming as if
+      it were something unknown whose nature one could not guess&mdash;a mere
+      alteration in everything. They looked at the sky and it seemed as dark as
+      ever; then they saw the black shape of a tower or tree against it and knew
+      that it was already grey. Save that they were driving southward and had
+      certainly passed the longitude of London, they knew nothing of their
+      direction; but Turnbull, who had spent a year on the Hampshire coast in
+      his youth, began to recognize the unmistakable but quite indescribable
+      villages of the English south. Then a white witch fire began to burn
+      between the black stems of the fir-trees; and, like so many things in
+      nature, though not in books on evolution, the daybreak, when it did come,
+      came much quicker than one would think. The gloomy heavens were ripped up
+      and rolled away like a scroll, revealing splendours, as the car went
+      roaring up the curve of a great hill; and above them and black against the
+      broadening light, there stood one of those crouching and fantastic trees
+      that are first signals of the sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0010" id="link2H_4_0010">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      X. THE SWORDS REJOINED
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      As they came over the hill and down on the other side of it, it is not too
+      much to say that the whole universe of God opened over them and under
+      them, like a thing unfolding to five times its size. Almost under their
+      feet opened the enormous sea, at the bottom of a steep valley which fell
+      down into a bay; and the sea under their feet blazed at them almost as
+      lustrous and almost as empty as the sky. The sunrise opened above them
+      like some cosmic explosion, shining and shattering and yet silent; as if
+      the world were blown to pieces without a sound. Round the rays of the
+      victorious sun swept a sort of rainbow of confused and conquered colours&mdash;brown
+      and blue and green and flaming rose-colour; as though gold were driving
+      before it all the colours of the world. The lines of the landscape down
+      which they sped, were the simple, strict, yet swerving, lines of a rushing
+      river; so that it was almost as if they were being sucked down in a huge
+      still whirlpool. Turnbull had some such feeling, for he spoke for the
+      first time for many hours.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If we go down at this rate we shall be over the sea cliff,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How glorious!&rdquo; said MacIan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When, however, they had come into the wide hollow at the bottom of that
+      landslide, the car took a calm and graceful curve along the side of the
+      sea, melted into the fringe of a few trees, and quietly, yet
+      astonishingly, stopped. A belated light was burning in the broad morning
+      in the window of a sort of lodge- or gate-keepers' cottage; and the girl
+      stood up in the car and turned her splendid face to the sun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Evan seemed startled by the stillness, like one who had been born amid
+      sound and speed. He wavered on his long legs as he stood up; he pulled
+      himself together, and the only consequence was that he trembled from head
+      to foot. Turnbull had already opened the door on his side and jumped out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The moment he had done so the strange young woman had one more mad
+      movement, and deliberately drove the car a few yards farther. Then she got
+      out with an almost cruel coolness and began pulling off her long gloves
+      and almost whistling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can leave me here,&rdquo; she said, quite casually, as if they had met five
+      minutes before. &ldquo;That is the lodge of my father's place. Please come in,
+      if you like&mdash;but I understood that you had some business.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Evan looked at that lifted face and found it merely lovely; he was far too
+      much of a fool to see that it was working with a final fatigue and that
+      its austerity was agony. He was even fool enough to ask it a question.
+      &ldquo;Why did you save us?&rdquo; he said, quite humbly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl tore off one of her gloves, as if she were tearing off her hand.
+      &ldquo;Oh, I don't know,&rdquo; she said, bitterly. &ldquo;Now I come to think of it, I
+      can't imagine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Evan's thoughts, that had been piled up to the morning star, abruptly let
+      him down with a crash into the very cellars of the emotional universe. He
+      remained in a stunned silence for a long time; and that, if he had only
+      known, was the wisest thing that he could possibly do at the moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Indeed, the silence and the sunrise had their healing effect, for when the
+      extraordinary lady spoke again, her tone was more friendly and apologetic.
+      &ldquo;I'm not really ungrateful,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;it was very good of you to save me
+      from those men.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But why?&rdquo; repeated the obstinate and dazed MacIan, &ldquo;why did you save us
+      from the other men? I mean the policemen?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl's great brown eyes were lit up with a flash that was at once
+      final desperation and the loosening of some private and passionate
+      reserve.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, God knows!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;God knows that if there is a God He has
+      turned His big back on everything. God knows I have had no pleasure in my
+      life, though I am pretty and young and father has plenty of money. And
+      then people come and tell me that I ought to do things and I do them and
+      it's all drivel. They want you to do work among the poor; which means
+      reading Ruskin and feeling self-righteous in the best room in a poor
+      tenement. Or to help some cause or other, which always means bundling
+      people out of crooked houses, in which they've always lived, into straight
+      houses, in which they often die. And all the time you have inside only the
+      horrid irony of your own empty head and empty heart. I am to give to the
+      unfortunate, when my whole misfortune is that I have nothing to give. I am
+      to teach, when I believe nothing at all that I was taught. I am to save
+      the children from death, and I am not even certain that I should not be
+      better dead. I suppose if I actually saw a child drowning I should save
+      it. But that would be from the same motive from which I have saved you, or
+      destroyed you, whichever it is that I have done.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What was the motive?&rdquo; asked Evan, in a low voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My motive is too big for my mind,&rdquo; answered the girl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, after a pause, as she stared with a rising colour at the glittering
+      sea, she said: &ldquo;It can't be described, and yet I am trying to describe it.
+      It seems to me not only that I am unhappy, but that there is no way of
+      being happy. Father is not happy, though he is a Member of Parliament&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+       She paused a moment and added with a ghost of a smile: &ldquo;Nor Aunt Mabel,
+      though a man from India has told her the secret of all creeds. But I may
+      be wrong; there may be a way out. And for one stark, insane second, I felt
+      that, after all, you had got the way out and that was why the world hated
+      you. You see, if there were a way out, it would be sure to be something
+      that looked very queer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Evan put his hand to his forehead and began stumblingly: &ldquo;Yes, I suppose
+      we do seem&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes, you look queer enough,&rdquo; she said, with ringing sincerity.
+      &ldquo;You'll be all the better for a wash and brush up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You forget our business, madam,&rdquo; said Evan, in a shaking voice; &ldquo;we have
+      no concern but to kill each other.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I shouldn't be killed looking like that if I were you,&rdquo; she
+      replied, with inhuman honesty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Evan stood and rolled his eyes in masculine bewilderment. Then came the
+      final change in this Proteus, and she put out both her hands for an
+      instant and said in a low tone on which he lived for days and nights:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't you understand that I did not dare to stop you? What you are doing
+      is so mad that it may be quite true. Somehow one can never really manage
+      to be an atheist.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull stood staring at the sea; but his shoulders showed that he heard,
+      and after one minute he turned his head. But the girl had only brushed
+      Evan's hand with hers and had fled up the dark alley by the lodge gate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Evan stood rooted upon the road, literally like some heavy statue hewn
+      there in the age of the Druids. It seemed impossible that he should ever
+      move. Turnbull grew restless with this rigidity, and at last, after
+      calling his companion twice or thrice, went up and clapped him impatiently
+      on one of his big shoulders. Evan winced and leapt away from him with a
+      repulsion which was not the hate of an unclean thing nor the dread of a
+      dangerous one, but was a spasm of awe and separation from something from
+      which he was now sundered as by the sword of God. He did not hate the
+      atheist; it is possible that he loved him. But Turnbull was now something
+      more dreadful than an enemy: he was a thing sealed and devoted&mdash;a
+      thing now hopelessly doomed to be either a corpse or an executioner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is the matter with you?&rdquo; asked Turnbull, with his hearty hand still
+      in the air; and yet he knew more about it than his innocent action would
+      allow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;James,&rdquo; said Evan, speaking like one under strong bodily pain, &ldquo;I asked
+      for God's answer and I have got it&mdash;got it in my vitals. He knows how
+      weak I am, and that I might forget the peril of the faith, forget the face
+      of Our Lady&mdash;yes, even with your blow upon her cheek. But the honour
+      of this earth has just this about it, that it can make a man's heart like
+      iron. I am from the Lords of the Isles and I dare not be a mere deserter.
+      Therefore, God has tied me by the chain of my worldly place and word, and
+      there is nothing but fighting now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think I understand you,&rdquo; said Turnbull, &ldquo;but you say everything tail
+      foremost.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She wants us to do it,&rdquo; said Evan, in a voice crushed with passion. &ldquo;She
+      has hurt herself so that we might do it. She has left her good name and
+      her good sleep and all her habits and dignity flung away on the other side
+      of England in the hope that she may hear of us and that we have broken
+      some hole into heaven.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought I knew what you mean,&rdquo; said Turnbull, biting his beard; &ldquo;it
+      does seem as if we ought to do something after all she has done this
+      night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I never liked you so much before,&rdquo; said MacIan, in bitter sorrow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he spoke, three solemn footmen came out of the lodge gate and assembled
+      to assist the chauffeur to his room. The mere sight of them made the two
+      wanderers flee as from a too frightful incongruity, and before they knew
+      where they were, they were well upon the grassy ledge of England that
+      overlooks the Channel. Evan said suddenly: &ldquo;Will they let me see her in
+      heaven once in a thousand ages?&rdquo; and addressed the remark to the editor of
+      <i>The Atheist</i>, as on which he would be likely or qualified to answer.
+      But no answer came; a silence sank between the two.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull strode sturdily to the edge of the cliff and looked out, his
+      companion following, somewhat more shaken by his recent agitation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If that's the view you take,&rdquo; said Turnbull, &ldquo;and I don't say you are
+      wrong, I think I know where we shall be best off for the business. As it
+      happens, I know this part of the south coast pretty well. And unless I am
+      mistaken there's a way down the cliff just here which will land us on a
+      stretch of firm sand where no one is likely to follow us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Highlander made a gesture of assent and came also almost to the edge
+      of the precipice. The sunrise, which was broadening over sea and shore,
+      was one of those rare and splendid ones in which there seems to be no mist
+      or doubt, and nothing but a universal clarification more and more
+      complete. All the colours were transparent. It seemed like a triumphant
+      prophecy of some perfect world where everything being innocent will be
+      intelligible; a world where even our bodies, so to speak, may be as of
+      burning glass. Such a world is faintly though fiercely figured in the
+      coloured windows of Christian architecture. The sea that lay before them
+      was like a pavement of emerald, bright and almost brittle; the sky against
+      which its strict horizon hung was almost absolutely white, except that
+      close to the sky line, like scarlet braids on the hem of a garment, lay
+      strings of flaky cloud of so gleaming and gorgeous a red that they seemed
+      cut out of some strange blood-red celestial metal, of which the mere gold
+      of this earth is but a drab yellow imitation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The hand of Heaven is still pointing,&rdquo; muttered the man of superstition
+      to himself. &ldquo;And now it is a blood-red hand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The cool voice of his companion cut in upon his monologue, calling to him
+      from a little farther along the cliff, to tell him that he had found the
+      ladder of descent. It began as a steep and somewhat greasy path, which
+      then tumbled down twenty or thirty feet in the form of a fall of rough
+      stone steps. After that, there was a rather awkward drop on to a ledge of
+      stone and then the journey was undertaken easily and even elegantly by the
+      remains of an ornamental staircase, such as might have belonged to some
+      long-disused watering-place. All the time that the two travellers sank
+      from stage to stage of this downward journey, there closed over their
+      heads living bridges and caverns of the most varied foliage, all of which
+      grew greener, redder, or more golden, in the growing sunlight of the
+      morning. Life, too, of the more moving sort rose at the sun on every side
+      of them. Birds whirred and fluttered in the undergrowth, as if imprisoned
+      in green cages. Other birds were shaken up in great clouds from the
+      tree-tops, as if they were blossoms detached and scattered up to heaven.
+      Animals which Turnbull was too much of a Londoner and MacIan too much of a
+      Northerner to know, slipped by among the tangle or ran pattering up the
+      tree-trunks. Both the men, according to their several creeds, felt the
+      full thunder of the psalm of life as they had never heard it before;
+      MacIan felt God the Father, benignant in all His energies, and Turnbull
+      that ultimate anonymous energy, that <i>Natura Naturans</i>, which is the
+      whole theme of Lucretius. It was down this clamorous ladder of life that
+      they went down to die.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They broke out upon a brown semicircle of sand, so free from human imprint
+      as to justify Turnbull's profession. They strode out upon it, stuck their
+      swords in the sand, and had a pause too important for speech. Turnbull
+      eyed the coast curiously for a moment, like one awakening memories of
+      childhood; then he said abruptly, like a man remembering somebody's name:
+      &ldquo;But, of course, we shall be better off still round the corner of Cragness
+      Point; nobody ever comes there at all.&rdquo; And picking up his sword again, he
+      began striding towards a big bluff of the rocks which stood out upon their
+      left. MacIan followed him round the corner and found himself in what was
+      certainly an even finer fencing court, of flat, firm sand, enclosed on
+      three sides by white walls of rock, and on the fourth by the green wall of
+      the advancing sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are quite safe here,&rdquo; said Turnbull, and, to the other's surprise,
+      flung himself down, sitting on the brown beach.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see, I was brought up near here,&rdquo; he explained. &ldquo;I was sent from
+      Scotland to stop with my aunt. It is highly probable that I may die here.
+      Do you mind if I light a pipe?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course, do whatever you like,&rdquo; said MacIan, with a choking voice, and
+      he went and walked alone by himself along the wet, glistening sands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ten minutes afterwards he came back again, white with his own whirlwind of
+      emotions; Turnbull was quite cheerful and was knocking out the end of his
+      pipe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see, we have to do it,&rdquo; said MacIan. &ldquo;She tied us to it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course, my dear fellow,&rdquo; said the other, and leapt up as lightly as a
+      monkey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They took their places gravely in the very centre of the great square of
+      sand, as if they had thousands of spectators. Before saluting, MacIan,
+      who, being a mystic, was one inch nearer to Nature, cast his eye round the
+      huge framework of their heroic folly. The three walls of rock all leant a
+      little outward, though at various angles; but this impression was
+      exaggerated in the direction of the incredible by the heavy load of living
+      trees and thickets which each wall wore on its top like a huge shock of
+      hair. On all that luxurious crest of life the risen and victorious sun was
+      beating, burnishing it all like gold, and every bird that rose with that
+      sunrise caught a light like a star upon it like the dove of the Holy
+      Spirit. Imaginative life had never so much crowded upon MacIan. He felt
+      that he could write whole books about the feelings of a single bird. He
+      felt that for two centuries he would not tire of being a rabbit. He was in
+      the Palace of Life, of which the very tapestries and curtains were alive.
+      Then he recovered himself, and remembered his affairs. Both men saluted,
+      and iron rang upon iron. It was exactly at the same moment that he
+      realized that his enemy's left ankle was encircled with a ring of salt
+      water that had crept up to his feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is the matter?&rdquo; said Turnbull, stopping an instant, for he had grown
+      used to every movement of his extraordinary fellow-traveller's face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan glanced again at that silver anklet of sea-water and then looked
+      beyond at the next promontory round which a deep sea was boiling and
+      leaping. Then he turned and looked back and saw heavy foam being shaken up
+      to heaven about the base of Cragness Point.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The sea has cut us off,&rdquo; he said, curtly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have noticed it,&rdquo; said Turnbull with equal sobriety. &ldquo;What view do you
+      take of the development?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Evan threw away his weapon, and, as his custom was, imprisoned his big
+      head in his hands. Then he let them fall and said: &ldquo;Yes, I know what it
+      means; and I think it is the fairest thing. It is the finger of God&mdash;red
+      as blood&mdash;still pointing. But now it points to two graves.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a space filled with the sound of the sea, and then MacIan spoke
+      again in a voice pathetically reasonable: &ldquo;You see, we both saved her&mdash;and
+      she told us both to fight&mdash;and it would not be just that either
+      should fail and fall alone, while the other&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean,&rdquo; said Turnbull, in a voice surprisingly soft and gentle, &ldquo;that
+      there is something fine about fighting in a place where even the conqueror
+      must die?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, you have got it right, you have got it right!&rdquo; cried out Evan, in an
+      extraordinary childish ecstasy. &ldquo;Oh, I'm sure that you really believe in
+      God!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull answered not a word, but only took up his fallen sword.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For the third time Evan MacIan looked at those three sides of English
+      cliff hung with their noisy load of life. He had been at a loss to
+      understand the almost ironical magnificence of all those teeming creatures
+      and tropical colours and smells that smoked happily to heaven. But now he
+      knew that he was in the closed court of death and that all the gates were
+      sealed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He drank in the last green and the last red and the last gold, those
+      unique and indescribable things of God, as a man drains good wine at the
+      bottom of his glass. Then he turned and saluted his enemy once more, and
+      the two stood up and fought till the foam flowed over their knees.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then MacIan stepped backward suddenly with a splash and held up his hand.
+      &ldquo;Turnbull!&rdquo; he cried; &ldquo;I can't help it&mdash;fair fighting is more even
+      than promises. And this is not fair fighting.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What the deuce do you mean?&rdquo; asked the other, staring.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've only just thought of it,&rdquo; cried Evan, brokenly. &ldquo;We're very well
+      matched&mdash;it may go on a good time&mdash;the tide is coming up fast&mdash;and
+      I'm a foot and a half taller. You'll be washed away like seaweed before
+      it's above my breeches. I'll not fight foul for all the girls and angels
+      in the universe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you oblige me,&rdquo; said Turnbull, with staring grey eyes and a voice of
+      distinct and violent politeness; &ldquo;will you oblige me by jolly well minding
+      your own business? Just you stand up and fight, and we'll see who will be
+      washed away like seaweed. You wanted to finish this fight and you shall
+      finish it, or I'll denounce you as a coward to the whole of that assembled
+      company.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Evan looked very doubtful and offered a somewhat wavering weapon; but he
+      was quickly brought back to his senses by his opponent's sword-point,
+      which shot past him, shaving his shoulder by a hair. By this time the
+      waves were well up Turnbull's thigh, and what was worse, they were
+      beginning to roll and break heavily around them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan parried this first lunge perfectly, the next less perfectly; the
+      third in all human probability he would not have parried at all; the
+      Christian champion would have been pinned like a butterfly, and the
+      atheistic champion left to drown like a rat, with such consolation as his
+      view of the cosmos afforded him. But just as Turnbull launched his
+      heaviest stroke, the sea, in which he stood up to his hips, launched a yet
+      heavier one. A wave breaking beyond the others smote him heavily like a
+      hammer of water. One leg gave way, he was swung round and sucked into the
+      retreating sea, still gripping his sword.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan put his sword between his teeth and plunged after his disappearing
+      enemy. He had the sense of having the whole universe on top of him as
+      crest after crest struck him down. It seemed to him quite a cosmic
+      collapse, as if all the seven heavens were falling on him one after the
+      other. But he got hold of the atheist's left leg and he did not let it go.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After some ten minutes of foam and frenzy, in which all the senses at once
+      seemed blasted by the sea, Evan found himself laboriously swimming on a
+      low, green swell, with the sword still in his teeth and the editor of <i>The
+      Atheist</i> still under his arm. What he was going to do he had not even
+      the most glimmering idea; so he merely kept his grip and swam somehow with
+      one hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He ducked instinctively as there bulked above him a big, black wave, much
+      higher than any that he had seen. Then he saw that it was hardly the shape
+      of any possible wave. Then he saw that it was a fisherman's boat, and,
+      leaping upward, caught hold of the bow. The boat pitched forward with its
+      stern in the air for just as much time as was needed to see that there was
+      nobody in it. After a moment or two of desperate clambering, however,
+      there were two people in it, Mr. Evan MacIan, panting and sweating, and
+      Mr. James Turnbull, uncommonly close to being drowned. After ten minutes'
+      aimless tossing in the empty fishing-boat he recovered, however, stirred,
+      stretched himself, and looked round on the rolling waters. Then, while
+      taking no notice of the streams of salt water that were pouring from his
+      hair, beard, coat, boots, and trousers, he carefully wiped the wet off his
+      sword-blade to preserve it from the possibilities of rust.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan found two oars in the bottom of the deserted boat and began
+      somewhat drearily to row.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+           *                    *                   *
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      A rainy twilight was clearing to cold silver over the moaning sea, when
+      the battered boat that had rolled and drifted almost aimlessly all night,
+      came within sight of land, though of land which looked almost as lost and
+      savage as the waves. All night there had been but little lifting in the
+      leaden sea, only now and then the boat had been heaved up, as on a huge
+      shoulder which slipped from under it; such occasional sea-quakes came
+      probably from the swell of some steamer that had passed it in the dark;
+      otherwise the waves were harmless though restless. But it was piercingly
+      cold, and there was, from time to time, a splutter of rain like the
+      splutter of the spray, which seemed almost to freeze as it fell. MacIan,
+      more at home than his companion in this quite barbarous and elemental sort
+      of adventure, had rowed toilsomely with the heavy oars whenever he saw
+      anything that looked like land; but for the most part had trusted with
+      grim transcendentalism to wind and tide. Among the implements of their
+      first outfit the brandy alone had remained to him, and he gave it to his
+      freezing companion in quantities which greatly alarmed that temperate
+      Londoner; but MacIan came from the cold seas and mists where a man can
+      drink a tumbler of raw whisky in a boat without it making him wink.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the Highlander began to pull really hard upon the oars, Turnbull
+      craned his dripping red head out of the boat to see the goal of his
+      exertions. It was a sufficiently uninviting one; nothing so far as could
+      be seen but a steep and shelving bank of shingle, made of loose little
+      pebbles such as children like, but slanting up higher than a house. On the
+      top of the mound, against the sky line, stood up the brown skeleton of
+      some broken fence or breakwater. With the grey and watery dawn crawling up
+      behind it, the fence really seemed to say to our philosophic adventurers
+      that they had come at last to the other end of nowhere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bent by necessity to his labour, MacIan managed the heavy boat with real
+      power and skill, and when at length he ran it up on a smoother part of the
+      slope it caught and held so that they could clamber out, not sinking
+      farther than their knees into the water and the shingle. A foot or two
+      farther up their feet found the beach firmer, and a few moments afterwards
+      they were leaning on the ragged breakwater and looking back at the sea
+      they had escaped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They had a dreary walk across wastes of grey shingle in the grey dawn
+      before they began to come within hail of human fields or roads; nor had
+      they any notion of what fields or roads they would be. Their boots were
+      beginning to break up and the confusion of stones tried them severely, so
+      that they were glad to lean on their swords, as if they were the staves of
+      pilgrims. MacIan thought vaguely of a weird ballad of his own country
+      which describes the soul in Purgatory as walking on a plain full of sharp
+      stones, and only saved by its own charities upon earth.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+        If ever thou gavest hosen and shoon
+            Every night and all,
+        Sit thee down and put them on,
+            And Christ receive thy soul.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull had no such lyrical meditations, but he was in an even worse
+      temper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At length they came to a pale ribbon of road, edged by a shelf of rough
+      and almost colourless turf; and a few feet up the slope there stood grey
+      and weather-stained, one of those big wayside crucifixes which are seldom
+      seen except in Catholic countries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan put his hand to his head and found that his bonnet was not there.
+      Turnbull gave one glance at the crucifix&mdash;a glance at once
+      sympathetic and bitter, in which was concentrated the whole of Swinburne's
+      poem on the same occasion.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+        O hidden face of man, whereover
+            The years have woven a viewless veil,
+        If thou wert verily man's lover
+            What did thy love or blood avail?
+        Thy blood the priests mix poison of,
+        And in gold shekels coin thy love.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Then, leaving MacIan in his attitude of prayer, Turnbull began to look
+      right and left very sharply, like one looking for something. Suddenly,
+      with a little cry, he saw it and ran forward. A few yards from them along
+      the road a lean and starved sort of hedge came pitifully to an end. Caught
+      upon its prickly angle, however, there was a very small and very dirty
+      scrap of paper that might have hung there for months, since it escaped
+      from someone tearing up a letter or making a spill out of a newspaper.
+      Turnbull snatched at it and found it was the corner of a printed page,
+      very coarsely printed, like a cheap novelette, and just large enough to
+      contain the words: &ldquo;<i>et c'est elle qui</i>&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hurrah!&rdquo; cried Turnbull, waving his fragment; &ldquo;we are safe at last. We
+      are free at last. We are somewhere better than England or Eden or
+      Paradise. MacIan, we are in the Land of the Duel!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where do you say?&rdquo; said the other, looking at him heavily and with
+      knitted brows, like one almost dazed with the grey doubts of desolate
+      twilight and drifting sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are in France!&rdquo; cried Turnbull, with a voice like a trumpet, &ldquo;in the
+      land where things really happen&mdash;<i>Tout arrive en France</i>. We
+      arrive in France. Look at this little message,&rdquo; and he held out the scrap
+      of paper. &ldquo;There's an omen for you superstitious hill folk. <i>C'est elle
+      qui&mdash;Mais oui, mais oui, c'est elle qui sauvera encore le monde</i>.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;France!&rdquo; repeated MacIan, and his eyes awoke again in his head like large
+      lamps lighted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, France!&rdquo; said Turnbull, and all the rhetorical part of him came to
+      the top, his face growing as red as his hair. &ldquo;France, that has always
+      been in rebellion for liberty and reason. France, that has always assailed
+      superstition with the club of Rabelais or the rapier of Voltaire. France,
+      at whose first council table sits the sublime figure of Julian the
+      Apostate. France, where a man said only the other day those splendid
+      unanswerable words&rdquo;&mdash;with a superb gesture&mdash;&ldquo;'we have
+      extinguished in heaven those lights that men shall never light again.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said MacIan, in a voice that shook with a controlled passion. &ldquo;But
+      France, which was taught by St. Bernard and led to war by Joan of Arc.
+      France that made the crusades. France that saved the Church and scattered
+      the heresies by the mouths of Bossuet and Massillon. France, which shows
+      today the conquering march of Catholicism, as brain after brain surrenders
+      to it, Brunetière, Coppée, Hauptmann, Barrès, Bourget, Lemaître.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;France!&rdquo; asserted Turnbull with a sort of rollicking self-exaggeration,
+      very unusual with him, &ldquo;France, which is one torrent of splendid
+      scepticism from Abelard to Anatole France.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;France,&rdquo; said MacIan, &ldquo;which is one cataract of clear faith from St.
+      Louis to Our Lady of Lourdes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;France at least,&rdquo; cried Turnbull, throwing up his sword in schoolboy
+      triumph, &ldquo;in which these things are thought about and fought about.
+      France, where reason and religion clash in one continual tournament.
+      France, above all, where men understand the pride and passion which have
+      plucked our blades from their scabbards. Here, at least, we shall not be
+      chased and spied on by sickly parsons and greasy policemen, because we
+      wish to put our lives on the game. Courage, my friend, we have come to the
+      country of honour.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan did not even notice the incongruous phrase &ldquo;my friend&rdquo;, but nodding
+      again and again, drew his sword and flung the scabbard far behind him in
+      the road.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he cried, in a voice of thunder, &ldquo;we will fight here and <i>He</i>
+      shall look on at it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull glanced at the crucifix with a sort of scowling good-humour and
+      then said: &ldquo;He may look and see His cross defeated.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The cross cannot be defeated,&rdquo; said MacIan, &ldquo;for it is Defeat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A second afterwards the two bright, blood-thirsty weapons made the sign of
+      the cross in horrible parody upon each other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They had not touched each other twice, however, when upon the hill, above
+      the crucifix, there appeared another horrible parody of its shape; the
+      figure of a man who appeared for an instant waving his outspread arms. He
+      had vanished in an instant; but MacIan, whose fighting face was set that
+      way, had seen the shape momentarily but quite photographically. And while
+      it was like a comic repetition of the cross, it was also, in that place
+      and hour, something more incredible. It had been only instantaneously on
+      the retina of his eye; but unless his eye and mind were going mad
+      together, the figure was that of an ordinary London policeman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He tried to concentrate his senses on the sword-play; but one half of his
+      brain was wrestling with the puzzle; the apocalyptic and almost seraphic
+      apparition of a stout constable out of Clapham on top of a dreary and
+      deserted hill in France. He did not, however, have to puzzle long. Before
+      the duellists had exchanged half a dozen passes, the big, blue policeman
+      appeared once more on the top of the hill, a palpable monstrosity in the
+      eye of heaven. He was waving only one arm now and seemed to be shouting
+      directions. At the same moment a mass of blue blocked the corner of the
+      road behind the small, smart figure of Turnbull, and a small company of
+      policemen in the English uniform came up at a kind of half-military
+      double.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull saw the stare of consternation in his enemy's face and swung
+      round to share its cause. When he saw it, cool as he was, he staggered
+      back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What the devil are you doing here?&rdquo; he called out in a high, shrill voice
+      of authority, like one who finds a tramp in his own larder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, sir,&rdquo; said the sergeant in command, with that sort of heavy
+      civility shown only to the evidently guilty, &ldquo;seems to me we might ask
+      what are you doing here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are having an affair of honour,&rdquo; said Turnbull, as if it were the most
+      rational thing in the world. &ldquo;If the French police like to interfere, let
+      them interfere. But why the blue blazes should you interfere, you great
+      blue blundering sausages?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm afraid, sir,&rdquo; said the sergeant with restraint, &ldquo;I'm afraid I don't
+      quite follow you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean, why don't the French police take this up if it's got to be taken
+      up? I always heard that they were spry enough in their own way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, sir,&rdquo; said the sergeant reflectively, &ldquo;you see, sir, the French
+      police don't take this up&mdash;well, because you see, sir, this ain't
+      France. This is His Majesty's dominions, same as 'Ampstead 'eath.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not France?&rdquo; repeated Turnbull, with a sort of dull incredulity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, sir,&rdquo; said the sergeant; &ldquo;though most of the people talk French. This
+      is the island called St. Loup, sir, an island in the Channel. We've been
+      sent down specially from London, as you were such specially distinguished
+      criminals, if you'll allow me to say so. Which reminds me to warn you that
+      anything you say may be used against you at your trial.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite so,&rdquo; said Turnbull, and lurched suddenly against the sergeant, so
+      as to tip him over the edge of the road with a crash into the shingle
+      below. Then leaving MacIan and the policemen equally and instantaneously
+      nailed to the road, he ran a little way along it, leapt off on to a part
+      of the beach, which he had found in his journey to be firmer, and went
+      across it with a clatter of pebbles. His sudden calculation was
+      successful; the police, unacquainted with the various levels of the loose
+      beach, tried to overtake him by the shorter cut and found themselves,
+      being heavy men, almost up to their knees in shoals of slippery shingle.
+      Two who had been slower with their bodies were quicker with their minds,
+      and seeing Turnbull's trick, ran along the edge of the road after him.
+      Then MacIan finally awoke, and leaving half his sleeve in the grip of the
+      only man who tried to hold him, took the two policemen in the small of
+      their backs with the impetus of a cannon-ball and, sending them also flat
+      among the stones, went tearing after his twin defier of the law.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As they were both good runners, the start they had gained was decisive.
+      They dropped over a high breakwater farther on upon the beach, turned
+      sharply, and scrambled up a line of ribbed rocks, crowned with a thicket,
+      crawled through it, scratching their hands and faces, and dropped into
+      another road; and there found that they could slacken their speed into a
+      steady trot. In all this desperate dart and scramble, they still kept hold
+      of their drawn swords, which now, indeed, in the vigorous phrase of
+      Bunyan, seemed almost to grow out of their hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They had run another half mile or so when it became apparent that they
+      were entering a sort of scattered village. One or two whitewashed cottages
+      and even a shop had appeared along the side of the road. Then, for the
+      first time, Turnbull twisted round his red bear to get a glimpse of his
+      companion, who was a foot or two behind, and remarked abruptly: &ldquo;Mr.
+      MacIan, we've been going the wrong way to work all along. We're traced
+      everywhere, because everybody knows about us. It's as if one went about
+      with Kruger's beard on Mafeking Night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean?&rdquo; said MacIan, innocently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean,&rdquo; said Turnbull, with steady conviction, &ldquo;that what we want is a
+      little diplomacy, and I am going to buy some in a shop.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0011" id="link2H_4_0011">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XI. A SCANDAL IN THE VILLAGE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      In the little hamlet of Haroc, in the Isle of St. Loup, there lived a man
+      who&mdash;though living under the English flag&mdash;was absolutely
+      untypical of the French tradition. He was quite unnoticeable, but that was
+      exactly where he was quite himself. He was not even extraordinarily
+      French; but then it is against the French tradition to be extraordinarily
+      French. Ordinary Englishmen would only have thought him a little
+      old-fashioned; imperialistic Englishmen would really have mistaken him for
+      the old John Bull of the caricatures. He was stout; he was quite
+      undistinguished; and he had side-whiskers, worn just a little longer than
+      John Bull's. He was by name Pierre Durand; he was by trade a wine
+      merchant; he was by politics a conservative republican; he had been
+      brought up a Catholic, had always thought and acted as an agnostic, and
+      was very mildly returning to the Church in his later years. He had a
+      genius (if one can even use so wild a word in connexion with so tame a
+      person) a genius for saying the conventional thing on every conceivable
+      subject; or rather what we in England would call the conventional thing.
+      For it was not convention with him, but solid and manly conviction.
+      Convention implies cant or affectation, and he had not the faintest smell
+      of either. He was simply an ordinary citizen with ordinary views; and if
+      you had told him so he would have taken it as an ordinary compliment. If
+      you had asked him about women, he would have said that one must preserve
+      their domesticity and decorum; he would have used the stalest words, but
+      he would have in reserve the strongest arguments. If you had asked him
+      about government, he would have said that all citizens were free and
+      equal, but he would have meant what he said. If you had asked him about
+      education, he would have said that the young must be trained up in habits
+      of industry and of respect for their parents. Still he would have set them
+      the example of industry, and he would have been one of the parents whom
+      they could respect. A state of mind so hopelessly central is depressing to
+      the English instinct. But then in England a man announcing these
+      platitudes is generally a fool and a frightened fool, announcing them out
+      of mere social servility. But Durand was anything but a fool; he had read
+      all the eighteenth century, and could have defended his platitudes round
+      every angle of eighteenth-century argument. And certainly he was anything
+      but a coward: swollen and sedentary as he was, he could have hit any man
+      back who touched him with the instant violence of an automatic machine;
+      and dying in a uniform would have seemed to him only the sort of thing
+      that sometimes happens. I am afraid it is impossible to explain this
+      monster amid the exaggerative sects and the eccentric clubs of my country.
+      He was merely a man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He lived in a little villa which was furnished well with comfortable
+      chairs and tables and highly uncomfortable classical pictures and
+      medallions. The art in his home contained nothing between the two extremes
+      of hard, meagre designs of Greek heads and Roman togas, and on the other
+      side a few very vulgar Catholic images in the crudest colours; these were
+      mostly in his daughter's room. He had recently lost his wife, whom he had
+      loved heartily and rather heavily in complete silence, and upon whose
+      grave he was constantly in the habit of placing hideous little wreaths,
+      made out of a sort of black-and-white beads. To his only daughter he was
+      equally devoted, though he restricted her a good deal under a sort of
+      theoretic alarm about her innocence; an alarm which was peculiarly
+      unnecessary, first, because she was an exceptionally reticent and
+      religious girl, and secondly, because there was hardly anybody else in the
+      place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Madeleine Durand was physically a sleepy young woman, and might easily
+      have been supposed to be morally a lazy one. It is, however, certain that
+      the work of her house was done somehow, and it is even more rapidly
+      ascertainable that nobody else did it. The logician is, therefore, driven
+      back upon the assumption that she did it; and that lends a sort of
+      mysterious interest to her personality at the beginning. She had very
+      broad, low, and level brows, which seemed even lower because her warm
+      yellow hair clustered down to her eyebrows; and she had a face just plump
+      enough not to look as powerful as it was. Anything that was heavy in all
+      this was abruptly lightened by two large, light china-blue eyes, lightened
+      all of a sudden as if it had been lifted into the air by two big blue
+      butterflies. The rest of her was less than middle-sized, and was of a
+      casual and comfortable sort; and she had this difference from such girls
+      as the girl in the motor-car, that one did not incline to take in her
+      figure at all, but only her broad and leonine and innocent head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Both the father and the daughter were of the sort that would normally have
+      avoided all observation; that is, all observation in that extraordinary
+      modern world which calls out everything except strength. Both of them had
+      strength below the surface; they were like quiet peasants owning enormous
+      and unquarried mines. The father with his square face and grey side
+      whiskers, the daughter with her square face and golden fringe of hair,
+      were both stronger than they know; stronger than anyone knew. The father
+      believed in civilization, in the storied tower we have erected to affront
+      nature; that is, the father believed in Man. The daughter believed in God;
+      and was even stronger. They neither of them believed in themselves; for
+      that is a decadent weakness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The daughter was called a devotee. She left upon ordinary people the
+      impression&mdash;the somewhat irritating impression&mdash;produced by such
+      a person; it can only be described as the sense of strong water being
+      perpetually poured into some abyss. She did her housework easily; she
+      achieved her social relations sweetly; she was never neglectful and never
+      unkind. This accounted for all that was soft in her, but not for all that
+      was hard. She trod firmly as if going somewhere; she flung her face back
+      as if defying something; she hardly spoke a cross word, yet there was
+      often battle in her eyes. The modern man asked doubtfully where all this
+      silent energy went to. He would have stared still more doubtfully if he
+      had been told that it all went into her prayers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The conventions of the Isle of St. Loup were necessarily a compromise or
+      confusion between those of France and England; and it was vaguely possible
+      for a respectable young lady to have half-attached lovers, in a way that
+      would be impossible to the <i>bourgeoisie</i> of France. One man in
+      particular had made himself an unmistakable figure in the track of this
+      girl as she went to church. He was a short, prosperous-looking man, whose
+      long, bushy black beard and clumsy black umbrella made him seem both
+      shorter and older than he really was; but whose big, bold eyes, and step
+      that spurned the ground, gave him an instant character of youth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His name was Camille Bert, and he was a commercial traveller who had only
+      been in the island an idle week before he began to hover in the tracks of
+      Madeleine Durand. Since everyone knows everyone in so small a place,
+      Madeleine certainly knew him to speak to; but it is not very evident that
+      she ever spoke. He haunted her, however; especially at church, which was,
+      indeed, one of the few certain places for finding her. In her home she had
+      a habit of being invisible, sometimes through insatiable domesticity,
+      sometimes through an equally insatiable solitude. M. Bert did not give the
+      impression of a pious man, though he did give, especially with his eyes,
+      the impression of an honest one. But he went to Mass with a simple
+      exactitude that could not be mistaken for a pose, or even for a vulgar
+      fascination. It was perhaps this religious regularity which eventually
+      drew Madeleine into recognition of him. At least it is certain that she
+      twice spoke to him with her square and open smile in the porch of the
+      church; and there was human nature enough in the hamlet to turn even that
+      into gossip.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the real interest arose suddenly as a squall arises with the
+      extraordinary affair that occurred about five days after. There was about
+      a third of a mile beyond the village of Haroc a large but lonely hotel
+      upon the London or Paris model, but commonly almost entirely empty. Among
+      the accidental group of guests who had come to it at this season was a man
+      whose nationality no one could fix and who bore the non-committal name of
+      Count Gregory. He treated everybody with complete civility and almost in
+      complete silence. On the few occasions when he spoke, he spoke either
+      French, English, or once (to the priest) Latin; and the general opinion
+      was that he spoke them all wrong. He was a large, lean man, with the stoop
+      of an aged eagle, and even the eagle's nose to complete it; he had
+      old-fashioned military whiskers and moustache dyed with a garish and
+      highly incredible yellow. He had the dress of a showy gentleman and the
+      manners of a decayed gentleman; he seemed (as with a sort of simplicity)
+      to be trying to be a dandy when he was too old even to know that he was
+      old. Ye he was decidedly a handsome figure with his curled yellow hair and
+      lean fastidious face; and he wore a peculiar frock-coat of bright
+      turquoise blue, with an unknown order pinned to it, and he carried a huge
+      and heavy cane. Despite his silence and his dandified dress and whiskers,
+      the island might never have heard of him but for the extraordinary event
+      of which I have spoken, which fell about in the following way:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In such casual atmospheres only the enthusiastic go to Benediction; and as
+      the warm blue twilight closed over the little candle-lit church and
+      village, the line of worshippers who went home from the former to the
+      latter thinned out until it broke. On one such evening at least no one was
+      in church except the quiet, unconquerable Madeleine, four old women, one
+      fisherman, and, of course, the irrepressible M. Camille Bert. The others
+      seemed to melt away afterwards into the peacock colours of the dim green
+      grass and the dark blue sky. Even Durand was invisible instead of being
+      merely reverentially remote; and Madeleine set forth through the patch of
+      black forest alone. She was not in the least afraid of loneliness, because
+      she was not afraid of devils. I think they were afraid of her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a clearing of the wood, however, which was lit up with a last patch of
+      the perishing sunlight, there advanced upon her suddenly one who was more
+      startling than a devil. The incomprehensible Count Gregory, with his
+      yellow hair like flame and his face like the white ashes of the flame, was
+      advancing bareheaded towards her, flinging out his arms and his long
+      fingers with a frantic gesture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are alone here,&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;and you would be at my mercy, only that I
+      am at yours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then his frantic hands fell by his sides and he looked up under his brows
+      with an expression that went well with his hard breathing. Madeleine
+      Durand had come to a halt at first in childish wonder, and now, with more
+      than masculine self-control, &ldquo;I fancy I know your face, sir,&rdquo; she said, as
+      if to gain time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know I shall not forget yours,&rdquo; said the other, and extended once more
+      his ungainly arms in an unnatural gesture. Then of a sudden there came out
+      of him a spout of wild and yet pompous phrases. &ldquo;It is as well that you
+      should know the worst and the best. I am a man who knows no limit; I am
+      the most callous of criminals, the most unrepentant of sinners. There is
+      no man in my dominions so vile as I. But my dominions stretch from the
+      olives of Italy to the fir-woods of Denmark, and there is no nook of all
+      of them in which I have not done a sin. But when I bear you away I shall
+      be doing my first sacrilege, and also my first act of virtue.&rdquo; He seized
+      her suddenly by the elbow; and she did not scream but only pulled and
+      tugged. Yet though she had not screamed, someone astray in the woods
+      seemed to have heard the struggle. A short but nimble figure came along
+      the woodland path like a humming bullet and had caught Count Gregory a
+      crack across the face before his own could be recognized. When it was
+      recognized it was that of Camille, with the black elderly beard and the
+      young ardent eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Up to the moment when Camille had hit the Count, Madeleine had entertained
+      no doubt that the Count was merely a madman. Now she was startled with a
+      new sanity; for the tall man in the yellow whiskers and yellow moustache
+      first returned the blow of Bert, as if it were a sort of duty, and then
+      stepped back with a slight bow and an easy smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This need go no further here, M. Bert,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I need not remind you
+      how far it should go elsewhere.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly, you need remind me of nothing,&rdquo; answered Camille, stolidly. &ldquo;I
+      am glad that you are just not too much of a scoundrel for a gentleman to
+      fight.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are detaining the lady,&rdquo; said Count Gregory, with politeness; and,
+      making a gesture suggesting that he would have taken off his hat if he had
+      had one, he strode away up the avenue of trees and eventually disappeared.
+      He was so complete an aristocrat that he could offer his back to them all
+      the way up that avenue; and his back never once looked uncomfortable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must allow me to see you home,&rdquo; said Bert to the girl, in a gruff and
+      almost stifled voice; &ldquo;I think we have only a little way to go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only a little way,&rdquo; she said, and smiled once more that night, in spite
+      of fatigue and fear and the world and the flesh and the devil. The glowing
+      and transparent blue of twilight had long been covered by the opaque and
+      slatelike blue of night, when he handed her into the lamp-lit interior of
+      her home. He went out himself into the darkness, walking sturdily, but
+      tearing at his black beard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All the French or semi-French gentry of the district considered this a
+      case in which a duel was natural and inevitable, and neither party had any
+      difficulty in finding seconds, strangers as they were in the place. Two
+      small landowners, who were careful, practising Catholics, willingly
+      undertook to represent that strict church-goer Camille Burt; while the
+      profligate but apparently powerful Count Gregory found friends in an
+      energetic local doctor who was ready for social promotion and an
+      accidental Californian tourist who was ready for anything. As no
+      particular purpose could be served by delay, it was arranged that the
+      affair should fall out three days afterwards. And when this was settled
+      the whole community, as it were, turned over again in bed and thought no
+      more about the matter. At least there was only one member of it who seemed
+      to be restless, and that was she who was commonly most restful. On the
+      next night Madeleine Durand went to church as usual; and as usual the
+      stricken Camille was there also. What was not so usual was that when they
+      were a bow-shot from the church Madeleine turned round and walked back to
+      him. &ldquo;Sir,&rdquo; she began, &ldquo;it is not wrong of me to speak to you,&rdquo; and the
+      very words gave him a jar of unexpected truth; for in all the novels he
+      had ever read she would have begun: &ldquo;It is wrong of me to speak to you.&rdquo;
+       She went on with wide and serious eyes like an animal's: &ldquo;It is not wrong
+      of me to speak to you, because your soul, or anybody's soul, matters so
+      much more than what the world says about anybody. I want to talk to you
+      about what you are going to do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bert saw in front of him the inevitable heroine of the novels trying to
+      prevent bloodshed; and his pale firm face became implacable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I would do anything but that for you,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;but no man can be called
+      less than a man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked at him for a moment with a face openly puzzled, and then broke
+      into an odd and beautiful half-smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I don't mean that,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;I don't talk about what I don't
+      understand. No one has ever hit me; and if they had I should not feel as a
+      man may. I am sure it is not the best thing to fight. It would be better
+      to forgive&mdash;if one could really forgive. But when people dine with my
+      father and say that fighting a duel is mere murder&mdash;of course I can
+      see that is not just. It's all so different&mdash;having a reason&mdash;and
+      letting the other man know&mdash;and using the same guns and things&mdash;and
+      doing it in front of your friends. I'm awfully stupid, but I know that men
+      like you aren't murderers. But it wasn't that that I meant.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What did you mean?&rdquo; asked the other, looking broodingly at the earth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't you know,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;there is only one more celebration? I thought
+      that as you always go to church&mdash;I thought you would communicate this
+      morning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bert stepped backward with a sort of action she had never seen in him
+      before. It seemed to alter his whole body.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You may be right or wrong to risk dying,&rdquo; said the girl, simply; &ldquo;the
+      poor women in our village risk it whenever they have a baby. You men are
+      the other half of the world. I know nothing about when you ought to die.
+      But surely if you are daring to try and find God beyond the grave and
+      appeal to Him&mdash;you ought to let Him find you when He comes and stands
+      there every morning in our little church.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And placid as she was, she made a little gesture of argument, of which the
+      pathos wrung the heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      M. Camille Bert was by no means placid. Before that incomplete gesture and
+      frankly pleading face he retreated as if from the jaws of a dragon. His
+      dark black hair and beard looked utterly unnatural against the startling
+      pallor of his face. When at last he said something it was: &ldquo;O God! I can't
+      stand this!&rdquo; He did not say it in French. Nor did he, strictly speaking,
+      say it in English. The truth (interesting only to anthropologists) is that
+      he said it in Scotch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There will be another mass in a matter of eight hours,&rdquo; said Madeleine,
+      with a sort of business eagerness and energy, &ldquo;and you can do it then
+      before the fighting. You must forgive me, but I was so frightened that you
+      would not do it at all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bert seemed to crush his teeth together until they broke, and managed to
+      say between them: &ldquo;And why should you suppose that I shouldn't do as you
+      say&mdash;I mean not to do it at all?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You always go to Mass,&rdquo; answered the girl, opening her wide blue eyes,
+      &ldquo;and the Mass is very long and tiresome unless one loves God.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then it was that Bert exploded with a brutality which might have come from
+      Count Gregory, his criminal opponent. He advanced upon Madeleine with
+      flaming eyes, and almost took her by the two shoulders. &ldquo;I do not love
+      God,&rdquo; he cried, speaking French with the broadest Scotch accent; &ldquo;I do not
+      want to find Him; I do not think He is there to be found. I must burst up
+      the show; I must and will say everything. You are the happiest and
+      honestest thing I ever saw in this godless universe. And I am the dirtiest
+      and most dishonest.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Madeleine looked at him doubtfully for an instant, and then said with a
+      sudden simplicity and cheerfulness: &ldquo;Oh, but if you are really sorry it is
+      all right. If you are horribly sorry it is all the better. You have only
+      to go and tell the priest so and he will give you God out of his own
+      hands.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hate your priest and I deny your God!&rdquo; cried the man, &ldquo;and I tell you
+      God is a lie and a fable and a mask. And for the first time in my life I
+      do not feel superior to God.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What can it all mean?&rdquo; said Madeleine, in massive wonder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because I am a fable also and a mask,&rdquo; said the man. He had been plucking
+      fiercely at his black beard and hair all the time; now he suddenly plucked
+      them off and flung them like moulted feathers in the mire. This
+      extraordinary spoliation left in the sunlight the same face, but a much
+      younger head&mdash;a head with close chestnut curls and a short chestnut
+      beard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now you know the truth,&rdquo; he answered, with hard eyes. &ldquo;I am a cad who has
+      played a crooked trick on a quiet village and a decent woman for a private
+      reason of his own. I might have played it successfully on any other woman;
+      I have hit the one woman on whom it cannot be played. It's just like my
+      damned luck. The plain truth is,&rdquo; and here when he came to the plain truth
+      he boggled and blundered as Evan had done in telling it to the girl in the
+      motor-car.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The plain truth is,&rdquo; he said at last, &ldquo;that I am James Turnbull the
+      atheist. The police are after me; not for atheism but for being ready to
+      fight for it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I saw something about you in a newspaper,&rdquo; said the girl, with a
+      simplicity which even surprise could never throw off its balance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Evan MacIan said there was a God,&rdquo; went on the other, stubbornly, &ldquo;and I
+      say there isn't. And I have come to fight for the fact that there is no
+      God; it is for that that I have seen this cursed island and your blessed
+      face.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You want me really to believe,&rdquo; said Madeleine, with parted lips, &ldquo;that
+      you think&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want you to hate me!&rdquo; cried Turnbull, in agony. &ldquo;I want you to be sick
+      when you think of my name. I am sure there is no God.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But there is,&rdquo; said Madeleine, quite quietly, and rather with the air of
+      one telling children about an elephant. &ldquo;Why, I touched His body only this
+      morning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You touched a bit of bread,&rdquo; said Turnbull, biting his knuckles. &ldquo;Oh, I
+      will say anything that can madden you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You think it is only a bit of bread,&rdquo; said the girl, and her lips
+      tightened ever so little.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know it is only a bit of bread,&rdquo; said Turnbull, with violence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She flung back her open face and smiled. &ldquo;Then why did you refuse to eat
+      it?&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      James Turnbull made a little step backward, and for the first time in his
+      life there seemed to break out and blaze in his head thoughts that were
+      not his own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, how silly of them,&rdquo; cried out Madeleine, with quite a schoolgirl
+      gaiety, &ldquo;why, how silly of them to call <i>you</i> a blasphemer! Why, you
+      have wrecked your whole business because you would not commit blasphemy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The man stood, a somewhat comic figure in his tragic bewilderment, with
+      the honest red head of James Turnbull sticking out of the rich and
+      fictitious garments of Camille Bert. But the startled pain of his face was
+      strong enough to obliterate the oddity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You come down here,&rdquo; continued the lady, with that female emphasis which
+      is so pulverizing in conversation and so feeble at a public meeting, &ldquo;you
+      and your MacIan come down here and put on false beards or noses in order
+      to fight. You pretend to be a Catholic commercial traveller from France.
+      Poor Mr. MacIan has to pretend to be a dissolute nobleman from nowhere.
+      Your scheme succeeds; you pick a quite convincing quarrel; you arrange a
+      quite respectable duel; the duel you have planned so long will come off
+      tomorrow with absolute certainty and safety. And then you throw off your
+      wig and throw up your scheme and throw over your colleague, because I ask
+      you to go into a building and eat a bit of bread. And <i>then</i> you dare
+      to tell me that you are sure there is nothing watching us. Then you say
+      you know there is nothing on the very altar you run away from. You know&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I only know,&rdquo; said Turnbull, &ldquo;that I must run away from you. This has got
+      beyond any talking.&rdquo; And he plunged along into the village, leaving his
+      black wig and beard lying behind him on the road.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the market-place opened before him he saw Count Gregory, that
+      distinguished foreigner, standing and smoking in elegant meditation at the
+      corner of the local café. He immediately made his way rapidly towards him,
+      considering that a consultation was urgent. But he had hardly crossed half
+      of that stony quadrangle when a window burst open above him and a head was
+      thrust out, shouting. The man was in his woollen undershirt, but Turnbull
+      knew the energetic, apologetic head of the sergeant of police. He pointed
+      furiously at Turnbull and shouted his name. A policeman ran excitedly from
+      under an archway and tried to collar him. Two men selling vegetables
+      dropped their baskets and joined in the chase. Turnbull dodged the
+      constable, upset one of the men into his own basket, and bounding towards
+      the distinguished foreign Count, called to him clamorously: &ldquo;Come on,
+      MacIan, the hunt is up again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The prompt reply of Count Gregory was to pull off his large yellow
+      whiskers and scatter them on the breeze with an air of considerable
+      relief. Then he joined the flight of Turnbull, and even as he did so, with
+      one wrench of his powerful hands rent and split the strange, thick stick
+      that he carried. Inside it was a naked old-fashioned rapier. The two got a
+      good start up the road before the whole town was awakened behind them; and
+      half-way up it a similar transformation was seen to take place in Mr.
+      Turnbull's singular umbrella.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two had a long race for the harbour; but the English police were heavy
+      and the French inhabitants were indifferent. In any case, they got used to
+      the notion of the road being clear; and just as they had come to the
+      cliffs MacIan banged into another gentleman with unmistakable surprise.
+      How he knew he was another gentleman merely by banging into him, must
+      remain a mystery. MacIan was a very poor and very sober Scotch gentleman.
+      The other was a very drunk and very wealthy English gentleman. But there
+      was something in the staggered and openly embarrassed apologies that made
+      them understand each other as readily and as quickly and as much as two
+      men talking French in the middle of China. The nearest expression of the
+      type is that it either hits or apologizes; and in this case both
+      apologized.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You seem to be in a hurry,&rdquo; said the unknown Englishman, falling back a
+      step or two in order to laugh with an unnatural heartiness. &ldquo;What's it all
+      about, eh?&rdquo; Then before MacIan could get past his sprawling and staggering
+      figure he ran forward again and said with a sort of shouting and
+      ear-shattering whisper: &ldquo;I say, my name is Wilkinson. <i>You</i> know&mdash;Wilkinson's
+      Entire was my grandfather. Can't drink beer myself. Liver.&rdquo; And he shook
+      his head with extraordinary sagacity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We really are in a hurry, as you say,&rdquo; said MacIan, summoning a
+      sufficiently pleasant smile, &ldquo;so if you will let us pass&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll tell you what, you fellows,&rdquo; said the sprawling gentleman,
+      confidentially, while Evan's agonized ears heard behind him the first
+      paces of the pursuit, &ldquo;if you really are, as you say, in a hurry, I know
+      what it is to be in a hurry&mdash;Lord, what a hurry I was in when we all
+      came out of Cartwright's rooms&mdash;if you really are in a hurry&rdquo;&mdash;and
+      he seemed to steady his voice into a sort of solemnity&mdash;&ldquo;if you are
+      in a hurry, there's nothing like a good yacht for a man in a hurry.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No doubt you're right,&rdquo; said MacIan, and dashed past him in despair. The
+      head of the pursuing host was just showing over the top of the hill behind
+      him. Turnbull had already ducked under the intoxicated gentleman's elbow
+      and fled far in front.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, but look here,&rdquo; said Mr. Wilkinson, enthusiastically running after
+      MacIan and catching him by the sleeve of his coat. &ldquo;If you want to hurry
+      you should take a yacht, and if&rdquo;&mdash;he said, with a burst of
+      rationality, like one leaping to a further point in logic&mdash;&ldquo;if you
+      want a yacht&mdash;you can have mine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Evan pulled up abruptly and looked back at him. &ldquo;We are really in the
+      devil of a hurry,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and if you really have a yacht, the truth is
+      that we would give our ears for it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'll find it in harbour,&rdquo; said Wilkinson, struggling with his speech.
+      &ldquo;Left side of harbour&mdash;called <i>Gibson Girl</i>&mdash;can't think
+      why, old fellow, I never lent it you before.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With these words the benevolent Mr. Wilkinson fell flat on his face in the
+      road, but continued to laugh softly, and turned towards his flying
+      companion a face of peculiar peace and benignity. Evan's mind went through
+      a crisis of instantaneous casuistry, in which it may be that he decided
+      wrongly; but about how he decided his biographer can profess no doubt. Two
+      minutes afterwards he had overtaken Turnbull and told the tale; ten
+      minutes afterwards he and Turnbull had somehow tumbled into the yacht
+      called the <i>Gibson Girl</i> and had somehow pushed off from the Isle of
+      St. Loup.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0012" id="link2H_4_0012">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XII. THE DESERT ISLAND
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Those who happen to hold the view (and Mr. Evan MacIan, now alive and
+      comfortable, is among the number) that something supernatural, some
+      eccentric kindness from god or fairy had guided our adventurers through
+      all their absurd perils, might have found his strongest argument perhaps
+      in their management or mismanagement of Mr. Wilkinson's yacht. Neither of
+      them had the smallest qualification for managing such a vessel; but MacIan
+      had a practical knowledge of the sea in much smaller and quite different
+      boats, while Turnbull had an abstract knowledge of science and some of its
+      applications to navigation, which was worse. The presence of the god or
+      fairy can only be deduced from the fact that they never definitely ran
+      into anything, either a boat, a rock, a quicksand, or a man-of-war. Apart
+      from this negative description, their voyage would be difficult to
+      describe. It took at least a fortnight, and MacIan, who was certainly the
+      shrewder sailor of the two, realized that they were sailing west into the
+      Atlantic and were probably by this time past the Scilly Isles. How much
+      farther they stood out into the western sea it was impossible to
+      conjecture. But they felt certain, at least, that they were far enough
+      into that awful gulf between us and America to make it unlikely that they
+      would soon see land again. It was therefore with legitimate excitement
+      that one rainy morning after daybreak they saw that distinct shape of a
+      solitary island standing up against the encircling strip of silver which
+      ran round the skyline and separated the grey and green of the billows from
+      the grey and mauve of the morning clouds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What can it be?&rdquo; cried MacIan, in a dry-throated excitement. &ldquo;I didn't
+      know there were any Atlantic islands so far beyond the Scillies&mdash;Good
+      Lord, it can't be Madeira, yet?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought you were fond of legends and lies and fables,&rdquo; said Turnbull,
+      grimly. &ldquo;Perhaps it's Atlantis.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course, it might be,&rdquo; answered the other, quite innocently and
+      gravely; &ldquo;but I never thought the story about Atlantis was very solidly
+      established.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whatever it is, we are running on to it,&rdquo; said Turnbull, equably, &ldquo;and we
+      shall be shipwrecked twice, at any rate.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The naked-looking nose of land projecting from the unknown island was,
+      indeed, growing larger and larger, like the trunk of some terrible and
+      advancing elephant. There seemed to be nothing in particular, at least on
+      this side of the island, except shoals of shellfish lying so thick as
+      almost to make it look like one of those toy grottos that the children
+      make. In one place, however, the coast offered a soft, smooth bay of sand,
+      and even the rudimentary ingenuity of the two amateur mariners managed to
+      run up the little ship with her prow well on shore and her bowsprit
+      pointing upward, as in a sort of idiotic triumph.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They tumbled on shore and began to unload the vessel, setting the stores
+      out in rows upon the sand with something of the solemnity of boys playing
+      at pirates. There were Mr. Wilkinson's cigar-boxes and Mr. Wilkinson's
+      dozen of champagne and Mr. Wilkinson's tinned salmon and Mr. Wilkinson's
+      tinned tongue and Mr. Wilkinson's tinned sardines, and every sort of
+      preserved thing that could be seen at the Army and Navy stores. Then
+      MacIan stopped with a jar of pickles in his hand and said abruptly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know why we're doing all this; I suppose we ought really to fall
+      to and get it over.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he added more thoughtfully: &ldquo;Of course this island seems rather bare
+      and the survivor&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The question is,&rdquo; said Turnbull, with cheerful speculation, &ldquo;whether the
+      survivor will be in a proper frame of mind for potted prawns.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan looked down at the rows of tins and bottles, and the cloud of doubt
+      still lowered upon his face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will permit me two liberties, my dear sir,&rdquo; said Turnbull at last:
+      &ldquo;The first is to break open this box and light one of Mr. Wilkinson's
+      excellent cigars, which will, I am sure, assist my meditations; the second
+      is to offer a penny for your thoughts; or rather to convulse the already
+      complex finances of this island by betting a penny that I know them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What on earth are you talking about?&rdquo; asked MacIan, listlessly, in the
+      manner of an inattentive child.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know what you are really thinking, MacIan,&rdquo; repeated Turnbull,
+      laughing. &ldquo;I know what I am thinking, anyhow. And I rather fancy it's the
+      same.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are you thinking?&rdquo; asked Evan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am thinking and you are thinking,&rdquo; said Turnbull, &ldquo;that it is damned
+      silly to waste all that champagne.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Something like the spectre of a smile appeared on the unsmiling visage of
+      the Gael; and he made at least no movement of dissent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We could drink all the wine and smoke all the cigars easily in a week,&rdquo;
+       said Turnbull; &ldquo;and that would be to die feasting like heroes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, and there is something else,&rdquo; said MacIan, with slight hesitation.
+      &ldquo;You see, we are on an almost unknown rock, lost in the Atlantic. The
+      police will never catch us; but then neither may the public ever hear of
+      us; and that was one of the things we wanted.&rdquo; Then, after a pause, he
+      said, drawing in the sand with his sword-point: &ldquo;She may never hear of it
+      at all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well?&rdquo; inquired the other, puffing at his cigar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said MacIan, &ldquo;we might occupy a day or two in drawing up a
+      thorough and complete statement of what we did and why we did it, and all
+      about both our points of view. Then we could leave one copy on the island
+      whatever happens to us and put another in an empty bottle and send it out
+      to sea, as they do in the books.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A good idea,&rdquo; said Turnbull, &ldquo;and now let us finish unpacking.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As MacIan, a tall, almost ghostly figure, paced along the edge of sand
+      that ran round the islet, the purple but cloudy poetry which was his
+      native element was piled up at its thickest upon his soul. The unique
+      island and the endless sea emphasized the thing solely as an epic. There
+      were no ladies or policemen here to give him a hint either of its farce or
+      its tragedy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps when the morning stars were made,&rdquo; he said to himself, &ldquo;God built
+      this island up from the bottom of the world to be a tower and a theatre
+      for the fight between yea and nay.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he wandered up to the highest level of the rock, where there was a
+      roof or plateau of level stone. Half an hour afterwards, Turnbull found
+      him clearing away the loose sand from this table-land and making it smooth
+      and even.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We will fight up here, Turnbull,&rdquo; said MacIan, &ldquo;when the time comes. And
+      till the time comes this place shall be sacred.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought of having lunch up here,&rdquo; said Turnbull, who had a bottle of
+      champagne in his hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no&mdash;not up here,&rdquo; said MacIan, and came down from the height
+      quite hastily. Before he descended, however, he fixed the two swords
+      upright, one at each end of the platform, as if they were human sentinels
+      to guard it under the stars.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then they came down and lunched plentifully in a nest of loose rocks. In
+      the same place that night they supped more plentifully still. The smoke of
+      Mr. Wilkinson's cigars went up ceaseless and strong smelling, like a pagan
+      sacrifice; the golden glories of Mr. Wilkinson's champagne rose to their
+      heads and poured out of them in fancies and philosophies. And occasionally
+      they would look up at the starlight and the rock and see the space guarded
+      by the two cross-hilted swords, which looked like two black crosses at
+      either end of a grave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In this primitive and Homeric truce the week passed by; it consisted
+      almost entirely of eating, drinking, smoking, talking, and occasionally
+      singing. They wrote their records and cast loose their bottle. They never
+      ascended to the ominous plateau; they had never stood there save for that
+      single embarrassed minute when they had had no time to take stock of the
+      seascape or the shape of the land. They did not even explore the island;
+      for MacIan was partly concerned in prayer and Turnbull entirely concerned
+      with tobacco; and both these forms of inspiration can be enjoyed by the
+      secluded and even the sedentary. It was on a golden afternoon, the sun
+      sinking over the sea, rayed like the very head of Apollo, when Turnbull
+      tossed off the last half-pint from the emptied Wilkinsonian bottle, hurled
+      the bottle into the sea with objectless energy, and went up to where his
+      sword stood waiting for him on the hill. MacIan was already standing
+      heavily by his with bent head and eyes reading the ground. He had not even
+      troubled to throw a glance round the island or the horizon. But Turnbull
+      being of a more active and birdlike type of mind did throw a glance round
+      the scene. The consequence of which was that he nearly fell off the rock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On three sides of this shelly and sandy islet the sea stretched blue and
+      infinite without a speck of land or sail; the same as Turnbull had first
+      seen it, except that the tide being out it showed a few yards more of
+      slanting sand under the roots of the rocks. But on the fourth side the
+      island exhibited a more extraordinary feature. In fact, it exhibited the
+      extraordinary feature of not being an island at all. A long, curving neck
+      of sand, as smooth and wet as the neck of the sea serpent, ran out into
+      the sea and joined their rock to a line of low, billowing, and glistening
+      sand-hills, which the sinking sea had just bared to the sun. Whether they
+      were firm sand or quicksand it was difficult to guess; but there was at
+      least no doubt that they lay on the edge of some larger land; for
+      colourless hills appeared faintly behind them and no sea could be seen
+      beyond.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sakes alive!&rdquo; cried Turnbull, with rolling eyes; &ldquo;this ain't an island in
+      the Atlantic. We've butted the bally continent of America.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan turned his head, and his face, already pale, grew a shade paler. He
+      was by this time walking in a world of omens and hieroglyphics, and he
+      could not read anything but what was baffling or menacing in this brown
+      gigantic arm of the earth stretched out into the sea to seize him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;MacIan,&rdquo; said Turnbull, in his temperate way, &ldquo;whatever our eternal
+      interrupted tete-a-tetes have taught us or not taught us, at least we need
+      not fear the charge of fear. If it is essential to your emotions, I will
+      cheerfully finish the fight here and now; but I must confess that if you
+      kill me here I shall die with my curiosity highly excited and unsatisfied
+      upon a minor point of geography.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not want to stop now,&rdquo; said the other, in his elephantine
+      simplicity, &ldquo;but we must stop for a moment, because it is a sign&mdash;perhaps
+      it is a miracle. We must see what is at the end of the road of sand; it
+      may be a bridge built across the gulf by God.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So long as you gratify my query,&rdquo; said Turnbull, laughing and letting
+      back his blade into the sheath, &ldquo;I do not care for what reason you choose
+      to stop.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They clambered down the rocky peninsula and trudged along the sandy
+      isthmus with the plodding resolution of men who seemed almost to have made
+      up their minds to be wanderers on the face of the earth. Despite
+      Turnbull's air of scientific eagerness, he was really the less impatient
+      of the two; and the Highlander went on well ahead of him with passionate
+      strides. By the time they had walked for about half an hour in the ups and
+      downs of those dreary sands, the distance between the two had lengthened
+      and MacIan was only a tall figure silhouetted for an instant upon the
+      crest of some sand-dune and then disappearing behind it. This rather
+      increased the Robinson Crusoe feeling in Mr. Turnbull, and he looked about
+      almost disconsolately for some sign of life. What sort of life he expected
+      it to be if it appeared, he did not very clearly know. He has since
+      confessed that he thinks that in his subconsciousness he expected an
+      alligator.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first sign of life that he did see, however, was something more
+      extraordinary than the largest alligator. It was nothing less than the
+      notorious Mr. Evan MacIan coming bounding back across the sand-heaps
+      breathless, without his cap and keeping the sword in his hand only by a
+      habit now quite hardened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take care, Turnbull,&rdquo; he cried out from a good distance as he ran, &ldquo;I've
+      seen a native.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A native?&rdquo; repeated his companion, whose scenery had of late been chiefly
+      of shellfish, &ldquo;what the deuce! Do you mean an oyster?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said MacIan, stopping and breathing hard, &ldquo;I mean a savage. A black
+      man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, where did you see him?&rdquo; asked the staring editor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Over there&mdash;behind that hill,&rdquo; said the gasping MacIan. &ldquo;He put up
+      his black head and grinned at me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull thrust his hands through his red hair like one who gives up the
+      world as a bad riddle. &ldquo;Lord love a duck,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;can it be Jamaica?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then glancing at his companion with a small frown, as of one slightly
+      suspicious, he said: &ldquo;I say, don't think me rude&mdash;but you're a
+      visionary kind of fellow&mdash;and then we drank a great deal. Do you mind
+      waiting here while I go and see for myself?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shout if you get into trouble,&rdquo; said the Celt, with composure; &ldquo;you will
+      find it as I say.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull ran off ahead with a rapidity now far greater than his rival's,
+      and soon vanished over the disputed sand-hill. Then five minutes passed,
+      and then seven minutes; and MacIan bit his lip and swung his sword, and
+      the other did not reappear. Finally, with a Gaelic oath, Evan started
+      forward to the rescue, and almost at the same moment the small figure of
+      the missing man appeared on the ridge against the sky.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even at that distance, however, there was something odd about his
+      attitude; so odd that MacIan continued to make his way in that direction.
+      It looked as if he were wounded; or, still more, as if he were ill. He
+      wavered as he came down the slope and seemed flinging himself into
+      peculiar postures. But it was only when he came within three feet of
+      MacIan's face, that that observer of mankind fully realized that Mr. James
+      Turnbull was roaring with laughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are quit right,&rdquo; sobbed that wholly demoralized journalist. &ldquo;He's
+      black, oh, there's no doubt the black's all right&mdash;as far as it
+      goes.&rdquo; And he went off again into convulsions of his humorous ailment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What ever is the matter with you?&rdquo; asked MacIan, with stern impatience.
+      &ldquo;Did you see the nigger&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I saw the nigger,&rdquo; gasped Turnbull. &ldquo;I saw the splendid barbarian Chief.
+      I saw the Emperor of Ethiopia&mdash;oh, I saw him all right. The nigger's
+      hands and face are a lovely colour&mdash;and the nigger&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; And
+      he was overtaken once more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, well, well,&rdquo; said Evan, stamping each monosyllable on the sand,
+      &ldquo;what about the nigger?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, the truth is,&rdquo; said Turnbull, suddenly and startlingly, becoming
+      quite grave and precise, &ldquo;the truth is, the nigger is a Margate nigger,
+      and we are now on the edge of the Isle of Thanet, a few miles from
+      Margate.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he had a momentary return of his hysteria and said: &ldquo;I say, old boy,
+      I should like to see a chart of our fortnight's cruise in Wilkinson's
+      yacht.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan had no smile in answer, but his eager lips opened as if parched for
+      the truth. &ldquo;You mean to say,&rdquo; he began&mdash;&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I mean to say,&rdquo; said Turnbull, &ldquo;and I mean to say something funnier
+      still. I have learnt everything I wanted to know from the partially black
+      musician over there, who has taken a run in his war-paint to meet a friend
+      in a quiet pub along the coast&mdash;the noble savage has told me all
+      about it. The bottle containing our declaration, doctrines, and dying
+      sentiments was washed up on Margate beach yesterday in the presence of one
+      alderman, two bathing-machine men, three policemen, seven doctors, and a
+      hundred and thirteen London clerks on a holiday, to all of whom, whether
+      directly or indirectly, our composition gave enormous literary pleasure.
+      Buck up, old man, this story of ours is a switchback. I have begun to
+      understand the pulse and the time of it; now we are up in a cathedral and
+      then we are down in a theatre, where they only play farces. Come, I am
+      quite reconciled&mdash;let us enjoy the farce.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But MacIan said nothing, and an instant afterwards Turnbull himself called
+      out in an entirely changed voice: &ldquo;Oh, this is damnable! This is not to be
+      borne!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan followed his eye along the sand-hills. He saw what looked like the
+      momentary and waving figure of the nigger minstrel, and then he saw a
+      heavy running policeman take the turn of the sand-hill with the smooth
+      solemnity of a railway train.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0013" id="link2H_4_0013">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XIII. THE GARDEN OF PEACE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Up to this instant Evan MacIan had really understood nothing; but when he
+      saw the policeman he saw everything. He saw his enemies, all the powers
+      and princes of the earth. He suddenly altered from a staring statue to a
+      leaping man of the mountains.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We must break away from him here,&rdquo; he cried, briefly, and went like a
+      whirlwind over the sand ridge in a straight line and at a particular
+      angle. When the policeman had finished his admirable railway curve, he
+      found a wall of failing sand between him and the pursued. By the time he
+      had scaled it thrice, slid down twice, and crested it in the third effort,
+      the two flying figures were far in front. They found the sand harder
+      farther on; it began to be crusted with scraps of turf and in a few
+      moments they were flying easily over an open common of rank sea-grass.
+      They had no easy business, however; for the bottle which they had so
+      innocently sent into the chief gate of Thanet had called to life the
+      police of half a county on their trail. From every side across the
+      grey-green common figures could be seen running and closing in; and it was
+      only when MacIan with his big body broke down the tangled barrier of a
+      little wood, as men break down a door with the shoulder; it was only when
+      they vanished crashing into the underworld of the black wood, that their
+      hunters were even instantaneously thrown off the scent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the risk of struggling a little longer like flies in that black web of
+      twigs and trunks, Evan (who had an instinct of the hunter or the hunted)
+      took an incalculable course through the forest, which let them out at last
+      by a forest opening&mdash;quite forgotten by the leaders of the chase.
+      They ran a mile or two farther along the edge of the wood until they
+      reached another and somewhat similar opening. Then MacIan stood utterly
+      still and listened, as animals listen, for every sound in the universe.
+      Then he said: &ldquo;We are quit of them.&rdquo; And Turnbull said: &ldquo;Where shall we go
+      now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan looked at the silver sunset that was closing in, barred by plumy
+      lines of purple cloud; he looked at the high tree-tops that caught the
+      last light and at the birds going heavily homeward, just as if all these
+      things were bits of written advice that he could read.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he said: &ldquo;The best place we can go to is to bed. If we can get some
+      sleep in this wood, now everyone has cleared out of it, it will be worth a
+      handicap of two hundred yards tomorrow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull, who was exceptionally lively and laughing in his demeanour,
+      kicked his legs about like a schoolboy and said he did not want to go to
+      sleep. He walked incessantly and talked very brilliantly. And when at last
+      he lay down on the hard earth, sleep struck him senseless like a hammer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Indeed, he needed the strongest sleep he could get; for the earth was
+      still full of darkness and a kind of morning fog when his fellow-fugitive
+      shook him awake.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No more sleep, I'm afraid,&rdquo; said Evan, in a heavy, almost submissive,
+      voice of apology. &ldquo;They've gone on past us right enough for a good thirty
+      miles; but now they've found out their mistake, and they're coming back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you sure?&rdquo; said Turnbull, sitting up and rubbing his red eyebrows
+      with his hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next moment, however, he had jumped up alive and leaping like a man
+      struck with a shock of cold water, and he was plunging after MacIan along
+      the woodland path. The shape of their old friend the constable had
+      appeared against the pearl and pink of the sunrise. Somehow, it always
+      looked a very funny shape when seen against the sunrise.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+           *                    *                   *
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      A wash of weary daylight was breaking over the country-side, and the
+      fields and roads were full of white mist&mdash;the kind of white mist that
+      clings in corners like cotton wool. The empty road, along which the chase
+      had taken its turn, was overshadowed on one side by a very high
+      discoloured wall, stained, and streaked green, as with seaweed&mdash;evidently
+      the high-shouldered sentinel of some great gentleman's estate. A yard or
+      two from the wall ran parallel to it a linked and tangled line of
+      lime-trees, forming a kind of cloister along the side of the road. It was
+      under this branching colonnade that the two fugitives fled, almost
+      concealed from their pursuers by the twilight, the mist and the leaping
+      zoetrope of shadows. Their feet, though beating the ground furiously, made
+      but a faint noise; for they had kicked away their boots in the wood; their
+      long, antiquated weapons made no jingle or clatter, for they had strapped
+      them across their backs like guitars. They had all the advantages that
+      invisibility and silence can add to speed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A hundred and fifty yards behind them down the centre of the empty road
+      the first of their pursuers came pounding and panting&mdash;a fat but
+      powerful policeman who had distanced all the rest. He came on at a
+      splendid pace for so portly a figure; but, like all heavy bodies in
+      motion, he gave the impression that it would be easier for him to increase
+      his pace than to slacken it suddenly. Nothing short of a brick wall could
+      have abruptly brought him up. Turnbull turned his head slightly and found
+      breath to say something to MacIan. MacIan nodded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pursuer and pursued were fixed in their distance as they fled, for some
+      quarter of a mile, when they came to a place where two or three of the
+      trees grew twistedly together, making a special obscurity. Past this place
+      the pursuing policeman went thundering without thought or hesitation. But
+      he was pursuing his shadow or the wind; for Turnbull had put one foot in a
+      crack of the tree and gone up it as quickly and softly as a cat. Somewhat
+      more laboriously but in equal silence the long legs of the Highlander had
+      followed; and crouching in crucial silence in the cloud of leaves, they
+      saw the whole posse of their pursuers go by and die into the dust and
+      mists of the distance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The white vapour lay, as it often does, in lean and palpable layers; and
+      even the head of the tree was above it in the half-daylight, like a green
+      ship swinging on a sea of foam. But higher yet behind them, and readier to
+      catch the first coming of the sun, ran the rampart of the top of the wall,
+      which in their excitement of escape looked at once indispensable and
+      unattainable, like the wall of heaven. Here, however, it was MacIan's turn
+      to have the advantage; for, though less light-limbed and feline, he was
+      longer and stronger in the arms. In two seconds he had tugged up his chin
+      over the wall like a horizontal bar; the next he sat astride of it, like a
+      horse of stone. With his assistance Turnbull vaulted to the same perch,
+      and the two began cautiously to shift along the wall in the direction by
+      which they had come, doubling on their tracks to throw off the last
+      pursuit. MacIan could not rid himself of the fancy of bestriding a steed;
+      the long, grey coping of the wall shot out in front of him, like the long,
+      grey neck of some nightmare Rosinante. He had the quaint thought that he
+      and Turnbull were two knights on one steed on the old shield of the
+      Templars.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The nightmare of the stone horse was increased by the white fog, which
+      seemed thicker inside the wall than outside. They could make nothing of
+      the enclosure upon which they were partial trespassers, except that the
+      green and crooked branches of a big apple-tree came crawling at them out
+      of the mist, like the tentacles of some green cuttlefish. Anything would
+      serve, however, that was likely to confuse their trail, so they both
+      decided without need of words to use this tree also as a ladder&mdash;a
+      ladder of descent. When they dropped from the lowest branch to the ground
+      their stockinged feet felt hard gravel beneath them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They had alighted in the middle of a very broad garden path, and the
+      clearing mist permitted them to see the edge of a well-clipped lawn.
+      Though the white vapour was still a veil, it was like the gauzy veil of a
+      transformation scene in a pantomime; for through it there glowed shapeless
+      masses of colour, masses which might be clouds of sunrise or mosaics of
+      gold and crimson, or ladies robed in ruby and emerald draperies. As it
+      thinned yet farther they saw that it was only flowers; but flowers in such
+      insolent mass and magnificence as can seldom be seen out of the tropics.
+      Purple and crimson rhododendrons rose arrogantly, like rampant heraldic
+      animals against their burning background of laburnum gold. The roses were
+      red hot; the clematis was, so to speak, blue hot. And yet the mere
+      whiteness of the syringa seemed the most violent colour of all. As the
+      golden sunlight gradually conquered the mists, it had really something of
+      the sensational sweetness of the slow opening of the gates of Eden.
+      MacIan, whose mind was always haunted with such seraphic or titanic
+      parallels, made some such remark to his companion. But Turnbull only
+      cursed and said that it was the back garden of some damnable rich man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the last haze had faded from the ordered paths, the open lawns, and
+      the flaming flower-beds, the two realized, not without an abrupt
+      re-examination of their position, that they were not alone in the garden.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Down the centre of the central garden path, preceded by a blue cloud from
+      a cigarette, was walking a gentleman who evidently understood all the
+      relish of a garden in the very early morning. He was a slim yet satisfied
+      figure, clad in a suit of pale-grey tweed, so subdued that the pattern was
+      imperceptible&mdash;a costume that was casual but not by any means
+      careless. His face, which was reflective and somewhat over-refined, was
+      the face of a quite elderly man, though his stringy hair and moustache
+      were still quite yellow. A double eye-glass, with a broad, black ribbon,
+      drooped from his aquiline nose, and he smiled, as he communed with
+      himself, with a self-content which was rare and almost irritating. The
+      straw panama on his head was many shades shabbier than his clothes, as if
+      he had caught it up by accident.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It needed the full shock of the huge shadow of MacIan, falling across his
+      sunlit path, to rouse him from his smiling reverie. When this had fallen
+      on him he lifted his head a little and blinked at the intruders with
+      short-sighted benevolence, but with far less surprise than might have been
+      expected. He was a gentleman; that is, he had social presence of mind,
+      whether for kindness or for insolence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can I do anything for you?&rdquo; he said, at last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan bowed. &ldquo;You can extend to us your pardon,&rdquo; he said, for he also
+      came of a whole race of gentlemen&mdash;of gentlemen without shirts to
+      their backs. &ldquo;I am afraid we are trespassing. We have just come over the
+      wall.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Over the wall?&rdquo; repeated the smiling old gentleman, still without letting
+      his surprise come uppermost.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose I am not wrong, sir,&rdquo; continued MacIan, &ldquo;in supposing that
+      these grounds inside the wall belong to you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The man in the panama looked at the ground and smoked thoughtfully for a
+      few moments, after which he said, with a sort of matured conviction:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, certainly; the grounds inside the wall really belong to me, and the
+      grounds outside the wall, too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A large proprietor, I imagine,&rdquo; said Turnbull, with a truculent eye.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; answered the old gentleman, looking at him with a steady smile. &ldquo;A
+      large proprietor.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull's eye grew even more offensive, and he began biting his red
+      beard; but MacIan seemed to recognize a type with which he could deal and
+      continued quite easily:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am sure that a man like you will not need to be told that one sees and
+      does a good many things that do not get into the newspapers. Things which,
+      on the whole, had better not get into the newspapers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The smile of the large proprietor broadened for a moment under his loose,
+      light moustache, and the other continued with increased confidence:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One sometimes wants to have it out with another man. The police won't
+      allow it in the streets&mdash;and then there's the County Council&mdash;and
+      in the fields even nothing's allowed but posters of pills. But in a
+      gentleman's garden, now&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The strange gentleman smiled again and said, easily enough: &ldquo;Do you want
+      to fight? What do you want to fight about?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan had understood his man pretty well up to that point; an instinct
+      common to all men with the aristocratic tradition of Europe had guided
+      him. He knew that the kind of man who in his own back garden wears good
+      clothes and spoils them with a bad hat is not the kind of man who has an
+      abstract horror of illegal actions of violence or the evasion of the
+      police. But a man may understand ragging and yet be very far from
+      understanding religious ragging. This seeming host of theirs might
+      comprehend a quarrel of husband and lover or a difficulty at cards or even
+      escape from a pursuing tailor; but it still remained doubtful whether he
+      would feel the earth fail under him in that earthquake instant when the
+      Virgin is compared to a goddess of Mesopotamia. Even MacIan, therefore
+      (whose tact was far from being his strong point), felt the necessity for
+      some compromise in the mode of approach. At last he said, and even then
+      with hesitation:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are fighting about God; there can be nothing so important as that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The tilted eye-glasses of the old gentleman fell abruptly from his nose,
+      and he thrust his aristocratic chin so far forward that his lean neck
+      seemed to shoot out longer like a telescope.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;About God?&rdquo; he queried, in a key completely new.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look here!&rdquo; cried Turnbull, taking his turn roughly, &ldquo;I'll tell you what
+      it's all about. I think that there's no God. I take it that it's nobody's
+      business but mine&mdash;or God's, if there is one. This young gentleman
+      from the Highlands happens to think that it's his business. In
+      consequence, he first takes a walking-stick and smashes my shop; then he
+      takes the same walking-stick and tries to smash me. To this I naturally
+      object. I suggest that if it comes to that we should both have sticks. He
+      improves on the suggestion and proposes that we should both have
+      steel-pointed sticks. The police (with characteristic unreasonableness)
+      will not accept either of our proposals; the result is that we run about
+      dodging the police and have jumped over our garden wall into your
+      magnificent garden to throw ourselves on your magnificent hospitality.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The face of the old gentleman had grown redder and redder during this
+      address, but it was still smiling; and when he broke out it was with a
+      kind of guffaw.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So you really want to fight with drawn swords in my garden,&rdquo; he asked,
+      &ldquo;about whether there is really a God?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not?&rdquo; said MacIan, with his simple monstrosity of speech; &ldquo;all man's
+      worship began when the Garden of Eden was founded.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, by&mdash;&mdash;!&rdquo; said Turnbull, with an oath, &ldquo;and ended when the
+      Zoological Gardens were founded.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In this garden! In my presence!&rdquo; cried the stranger, stamping up and down
+      the gravel and choking with laughter, &ldquo;whether there is a God!&rdquo; And he
+      went stamping up and down the garden, making it echo with his
+      unintelligible laughter. Then he came back to them more composed and
+      wiping his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, how small the world is!&rdquo; he cried at last. &ldquo;I can settle the whole
+      matter. Why, I am God!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he suddenly began to kick and wave his well-clad legs about the lawn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are what?&rdquo; repeated Turnbull, in a tone which is beyond description.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, God, of course!&rdquo; answered the other, thoroughly amused. &ldquo;How funny
+      it is to think that you have tumbled over a garden wall and fallen exactly
+      on the right person! You might have gone floundering about in all sorts of
+      churches and chapels and colleges and schools of philosophy looking for
+      some evidence of the existence of God. Why, there is no evidence, except
+      seeing him. And now you've seen him. You've seen him dance!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And the obliging old gentleman instantly stood on one leg without relaxing
+      at all the grave and cultured benignity of his expression.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I understood that this garden&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; began the bewildered MacIan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite so! Quite so!&rdquo; said the man on one leg, nodding gravely. &ldquo;I said
+      this garden belonged to me and the land outside it. So they do. So does
+      the country beyond that and the sea beyond that and all the rest of the
+      earth. So does the moon. So do the sun and stars.&rdquo; And he added, with a
+      smile of apology: &ldquo;You see, I'm God.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull and MacIan looked at him for one moment with a sort of notion
+      that perhaps he was not too old to be merely playing the fool. But after
+      staring steadily for an instant Turnbull saw the hard and horrible
+      earnestness in the man's eyes behind all his empty animation. Then
+      Turnbull looked very gravely at the strict gravel walls and the gay
+      flower-beds and the long rectangular red-brick building, which the mist
+      had left evident beyond them. Then he looked at MacIan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Almost at the same moment another man came walking quickly round the regal
+      clump of rhododendrons. He had the look of a prosperous banker, wore a
+      good tall silk hat, was almost stout enough to burst the buttons of a fine
+      frock-coat; but he was talking to himself, and one of his elbows had a
+      singular outward jerk as he went by.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0014" id="link2H_4_0014">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XIV. A MUSEUM OF SOULS
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The man with the good hat and the jumping elbow went by very quickly; yet
+      the man with the bad hat, who thought he was God, overtook him. He ran
+      after him and jumped over a bed of geraniums to catch him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I beg your Majesty's pardon,&rdquo; he said, with mock humility, &ldquo;but here is a
+      quarrel which you ought really to judge.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then as he led the heavy, silk-hatted man back towards the group, he
+      caught MacIan's ear in order to whisper: &ldquo;This poor gentleman is mad; he
+      thinks he is Edward VII.&rdquo; At this the self-appointed Creator slightly
+      winked. &ldquo;Of course you won't trust him much; come to me for everything.
+      But in my position one has to meet so many people. One has to be
+      broadminded.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The big banker in the black frock-coat and hat was standing quite grave
+      and dignified on the lawn, save for his slight twitch of one limb, and he
+      did not seem by any means unworthy of the part which the other promptly
+      forced upon him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear fellow,&rdquo; said the man in the straw hat, &ldquo;these two gentlemen are
+      going to fight a duel of the utmost importance. Your own royal position
+      and my much humbler one surely indicate us as the proper seconds. Seconds&mdash;yes,
+      seconds&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; and here the speaker was once more shaken with his
+      old malady of laughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, you and I are both seconds&mdash;and these two gentlemen can
+      obviously fight in front of us. You, he-he, are the king. I am God;
+      really, they could hardly have better supporters. They have come to the
+      right place.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Turnbull, who had been staring with a frown at the fresh turf, burst
+      out with a rather bitter laugh and cried, throwing his red head in the
+      air:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, by God, MacIan, I think we have come to the right place!&rdquo; And MacIan
+      answered, with an adamantine stupidity:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Any place is the right place where they will let us do it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a long stillness, and their eyes involuntarily took in the
+      landscape, as they had taken in all the landscapes of their everlasting
+      combat; the bright, square garden behind the shop; the whole lift and
+      leaning of the side of Hampstead Heath; the little garden of the decadent
+      choked with flowers; the square of sand beside the sea at sunrise. They
+      both felt at the same moment all the breadth and blossoming beauty of that
+      paradise, the coloured trees, the natural and restful nooks and also the
+      great wall of stone&mdash;more awful than the wall of China&mdash;from
+      which no flesh could flee.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull was moodily balancing his sword in his hand as the other spoke;
+      then he started, for a mouth whispered quite close to his ear. With a
+      softness incredible in any cat, the huge, heavy man in the black hat and
+      frock-coat had crept across the lawn from his own side and was saying in
+      his ear: &ldquo;Don't trust that second of yours. He's mad and not so mad,
+      either; for he frightfully cunning and sharp. Don't believe the story he
+      tells you about why I hate him. I know the story he'll tell; I overheard
+      it when the housekeeper was talking to the postman. It's too long to talk
+      about now, and I expect we're watched, but&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Something in Turnbull made him want suddenly to be sick on the grass; the
+      mere healthy and heathen horror of the unclean; the mere inhumane hatred
+      of the inhuman state of madness. He seemed to hear all round him the
+      hateful whispers of that place, innumerable as leaves whispering in the
+      wind, and each of them telling eagerly some evil that had not happened or
+      some terrific secret which was not true. All the rationalist and plain man
+      revolted within him against bowing down for a moment in that forest of
+      deception and egotistical darkness. He wanted to blow up that palace of
+      delusions with dynamite; and in some wild way, which I will not defend, he
+      tried to do it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked across at MacIan and said: &ldquo;Oh, I can't stand this!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can't stand what?&rdquo; asked his opponent, eyeing him doubtfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shall we say the atmosphere?&rdquo; replied Turnbull; &ldquo;one can't use uncivil
+      expressions even to a&mdash;deity. The fact is, I don't like having God
+      for my second.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sir!&rdquo; said that being in a state of great offence, &ldquo;in my position I am
+      not used to having my favours refused. Do you know who I am?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The editor of <i>The Atheist</i> turned upon him like one who has lost all
+      patience, and exploded: &ldquo;Yes, you are God, aren't you?&rdquo; he said, abruptly,
+      &ldquo;why do we have two sets of teeth?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Teeth?&rdquo; spluttered the genteel lunatic; &ldquo;teeth?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; cried Turnbull, advancing on him swiftly and with animated
+      gestures, &ldquo;why does teething hurt? Why do growing pains hurt? Why are
+      measles catching? Why does a rose have thorns? Why do rhinoceroses have
+      horns? Why is the horn on the top of the nose? Why haven't I a horn on the
+      top of my nose, eh?&rdquo; And he struck the bridge of his nose smartly with his
+      forefinger to indicate the place of the omission and then wagged the
+      finger menacingly at the Creator.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've often wanted to meet you,&rdquo; he resumed, sternly, after a pause, &ldquo;to
+      hold you accountable for all the idiocy and cruelty of this muddled and
+      meaningless world of yours. You make a hundred seeds and only one bears
+      fruit. You make a million worlds and only one seems inhabited. What do you
+      mean by it, eh? What do you mean by it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The unhappy lunatic had fallen back before this quite novel form of
+      attack, and lifted his burnt-out cigarette almost like one warding off a
+      blow. Turnbull went on like a torrent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A man died yesterday in Ealing. You murdered him. A girl had the
+      toothache in Croydon. You gave it her. Fifty sailors were drowned off
+      Selsey Bill. You scuttled their ship. What have you got to say for
+      yourself, eh?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The representative of omnipotence looked as if he had left most of these
+      things to his subordinates; he passed a hand over his wrinkling brow and
+      said in a voice much saner than any he had yet used:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, if you dislike my assistance, of course&mdash;perhaps the other
+      gentleman&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The other gentleman,&rdquo; cried Turnbull, scornfully, &ldquo;is a submissive and
+      loyal and obedient gentleman. He likes the people who wear crowns, whether
+      of diamonds or of stars. He believes in the divine right of kings, and it
+      is appropriate enough that he should have the king for his second. But it
+      is not appropriate to me that I should have God for my second. God is not
+      good enough. I dislike and I deny the divine right of kings. But I dislike
+      more and I deny more the divine right of divinity.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then after a pause in which he swallowed his passion, he said to MacIan:
+      &ldquo;You have got the right second, anyhow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Highlander did not answer, but stood as if thunderstruck with one long
+      and heavy thought. Then at last he turned abruptly to his second in the
+      silk hat and said: &ldquo;Who are you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The man in the silk hat blinked and bridled in affected surprise, like one
+      who was in truth accustomed to be doubted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am King Edward VII,&rdquo; he said, with shaky arrogance. &ldquo;Do you doubt my
+      word?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not doubt it in the least,&rdquo; answered MacIan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then, why,&rdquo; said the large man in the silk hat, trembling from head to
+      foot, &ldquo;why do you wear your hat before the king?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why should I take it off,&rdquo; retorted MacIan, with equal heat, &ldquo;before a
+      usurper?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull swung round on his heel. &ldquo;Well, really,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I thought at
+      least you were a loyal subject.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am the only loyal subject,&rdquo; answered the Gael. &ldquo;For nearly thirty years
+      I have walked these islands and have not found another.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are always hard to follow,&rdquo; remarked Turnbull, genially, &ldquo;and
+      sometimes so much so as to be hardly worth following.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I alone am loyal,&rdquo; insisted MacIan; &ldquo;for I alone am in rebellion. I am
+      ready at any instant to restore the Stuarts. I am ready at any instant to
+      defy the Hanoverian brood&mdash;and I defy it now even when face to face
+      with the actual ruler of the enormous British Empire!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And folding his arms and throwing back his lean, hawklike face, he
+      haughtily confronted the man with the formal frock-coat and the eccentric
+      elbow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What right had you stunted German squires,&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;to interfere in a
+      quarrel between Scotch and English and Irish gentlemen? Who made you,
+      whose fathers could not splutter English while they walked in Whitehall,
+      who made you the judge between the republic of Sidney and the monarchy of
+      Montrose? What had your sires to do with England that they should have the
+      foul offering of the blood of Derwentwater and the heart of Jimmy Dawson?
+      Where are the corpses of Culloden? Where is the blood of Lochiel?&rdquo; MacIan
+      advanced upon his opponent with a bony and pointed finger, as if
+      indicating the exact pocket in which the blood of that Cameron was
+      probably kept; and Edward VII fell back a few paces in considerable
+      confusion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What good have you ever done to us?&rdquo; he continued in harsher and harsher
+      accents, forcing the other back towards the flower-beds. &ldquo;What good have
+      you ever done, you race of German sausages? Yards of barbarian etiquette,
+      to throttle the freedom of aristocracy! Gas of northern metaphysics to
+      blow up Broad Church bishops like balloons. Bad pictures and bad manners
+      and pantheism and the Albert Memorial. Go back to Hanover, you humbug? Go
+      to&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Before the end of this tirade the arrogance of the monarch had entirely
+      given way; he had fairly turned tail and was trundling away down the path.
+      MacIan strode after him still preaching and flourishing his large, lean
+      hands. The other two remained in the centre of the lawn&mdash;Turnbull in
+      convulsions of laughter, the lunatic in convulsions of disgust. Almost at
+      the same moment a third figure came stepping swiftly across the lawn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The advancing figure walked with a stoop, and yet somehow flung his forked
+      and narrow beard forward. That carefully cut and pointed yellow beard was,
+      indeed, the most emphatic thing about him. When he clasped his hands
+      behind him, under the tails of his coat, he would wag his beard at a man
+      like a big forefinger. It performed almost all his gestures; it was more
+      important than the glittering eye-glasses through which he looked or the
+      beautiful bleating voice in which he spoke. His face and neck were of a
+      lusty red, but lean and stringy; he always wore his expensive gold-rim
+      eye-glasses slightly askew upon his aquiline nose; and he always showed
+      two gleaming foreteeth under his moustache, in a smile so perpetual as to
+      earn the reputation of a sneer. But for the crooked glasses his dress was
+      always exquisite; and but for the smile he was perfectly and perennially
+      depressed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't you think,&rdquo; said the new-comer, with a sort of supercilious
+      entreaty, &ldquo;that we had better all come into breakfast? It is such a
+      mistake to wait for breakfast. It spoils one's temper so much.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite so,&rdquo; replied Turnbull, seriously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There seems almost to have been a little quarrelling here,&rdquo; said the man
+      with the goatish beard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is rather a long story,&rdquo; said Turnbull, smiling. &ldquo;Originally, it might
+      be called a phase in the quarrel between science and religion.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The new-comer started slightly, and Turnbull replied to the question on
+      his face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I am science!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I congratulate you heartily,&rdquo; answered the other, &ldquo;I am Doctor Quayle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull's eyes did not move, but he realized that the man in the panama
+      hat had lost all his ease of a landed proprietor and had withdrawn to a
+      distance of thirty yards, where he stood glaring with all the contraction
+      of fear and hatred that can stiffen a cat.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+           *                    *                   *
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      MacIan was sitting somewhat disconsolately on a stump of tree, his large
+      black head half buried in his large brown hands, when Turnbull strode up
+      to him chewing a cigarette. He did not look up, but his comrade and enemy
+      addressed him like one who must free himself of his feelings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I hope, at any rate,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;that you like your precious
+      religion now. I hope you like the society of this poor devil whom your
+      damned tracts and hymns and priests have driven out of his wits. Five men
+      in this place, they tell me, five men in this place who might have been
+      fathers of families, and every one of them thinks he is God the Father.
+      Oh! you may talk about the ugliness of science, but there is no one here
+      who thinks he is Protoplasm.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They naturally prefer a bright part,&rdquo; said MacIan, wearily. &ldquo;Protoplasm
+      is not worth going mad about.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At least,&rdquo; said Turnbull, savagely, &ldquo;it was your Jesus Christ who started
+      all this bosh about being God.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For one instant MacIan opened the eyes of battle; then his tightened lips
+      took a crooked smile and he said, quite calmly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, the idea is older; it was Satan who first said that he was God.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then, what,&rdquo; asked Turnbull, very slowly, as he softly picked a flower,
+      &ldquo;what is the difference between Christ and Satan?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is quite simple,&rdquo; replied the Highlander. &ldquo;Christ descended into hell;
+      Satan fell into it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Does it make much odds?&rdquo; asked the free-thinker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It makes all the odds,&rdquo; said the other. &ldquo;One of them wanted to go up and
+      went down; the other wanted to go down and went up. A god can be humble, a
+      devil can only be humbled.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why are you always wanting to humble a man?&rdquo; asked Turnbull, knitting his
+      brows. &ldquo;It affects me as ungenerous.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why were you wanting to humble a god when you found him in this garden?&rdquo;
+       asked MacIan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That was an extreme case of impudence,&rdquo; said Turnbull.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Granting the man his almighty pretensions, I think he was very modest,&rdquo;
+       said MacIan. &ldquo;It is we who are arrogant, who know we are only men. The
+      ordinary man in the street is more of a monster than that poor fellow; for
+      the man in the street treats himself as God Almighty when he knows he
+      isn't. He expects the universe to turn round him, though he knows he isn't
+      the centre.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Turnbull, sitting down on the grass, &ldquo;this is a digression,
+      anyhow. What I want to point out is, that your faith does end in asylums
+      and my science doesn't.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Doesn't it, by George!&rdquo; cried MacIan, scornfully. &ldquo;There are a few men
+      here who are mad on God and a few who are mad on the Bible. But I bet
+      there are many more who are simply mad on madness.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you really believe it?&rdquo; asked the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Scores of them, I should say,&rdquo; answered MacIan. &ldquo;Fellows who have read
+      medical books or fellows whose fathers and uncles had something hereditary
+      in their heads&mdash;the whole air they breathe is mad.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All the same,&rdquo; said Turnbull, shrewdly, &ldquo;I bet you haven't found a madman
+      of that sort.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I bet I have!&rdquo; cried Evan, with unusual animation. &ldquo;I've been walking
+      about the garden talking to a poor chap all the morning. He's simply been
+      broken down and driven raving by your damned science. Talk about believing
+      one is God&mdash;why, it's quite an old, comfortable, fireside fancy
+      compared with the sort of things this fellow believes. He believes that
+      there is a God, but that he is better than God. He says God will be afraid
+      to face him. He says one is always progressing beyond the best. He put his
+      arm in mine and whispered in my ear, as if it were the apocalypse: 'Never
+      trust a God that you can't improve on.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What can he have meant?&rdquo; said the atheist, with all his logic awake.
+      &ldquo;Obviously one should not trust any God that one can improve on.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is the way he talks,&rdquo; said MacIan, almost indifferently; &ldquo;but he says
+      rummier things than that. He says that a man's doctor ought to decide what
+      woman he marries; and he says that children ought not to be brought up by
+      their parents, because a physical partiality will then distort the
+      judgement of the educator.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, dear!&rdquo; said Turnbull, laughing, &ldquo;you have certainly come across a
+      pretty bad case, and incidentally proved your own. I suppose some men do
+      lose their wits through science as through love and other good things.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And he says,&rdquo; went on MacIan, monotonously, &ldquo;that he cannot see why
+      anyone should suppose that a triangle is a three-sided figure. He says
+      that on some higher plane&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull leapt to his feet as by an electric shock. &ldquo;I never could have
+      believed,&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;that you had humour enough to tell a lie. You've
+      gone a bit too far, old man, with your little joke. Even in a lunatic
+      asylum there can't be anybody who, having thought about the matter, thinks
+      that a triangle has not got three sides. If he exists he must be a new era
+      in human psychology. But he doesn't exist.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will go and fetch him,&rdquo; said MacIan, calmly; &ldquo;I left the poor fellow
+      wandering about by the nasturtium bed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan vanished, and in a few moments returned, trailing with him his own
+      discovery among lunatics, who was a slender man with a fixed smile and an
+      unfixed and rolling head. He had a goatlike beard just long enough to be
+      shaken in a strong wind. Turnbull sprang to his feet and was like one who
+      is speechless through choking a sudden shout of laughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, you great donkey,&rdquo; he shouted, in an ear-shattering whisper, &ldquo;that's
+      not one of the patients at all. That's one of the doctors.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Evan looked back at the leering head with the long-pointed beard and
+      repeated the word inquiringly: &ldquo;One of the doctors?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, you know what I mean,&rdquo; said Turnbull, impatiently. &ldquo;The medical
+      authorities of the place.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Evan was still staring back curiously at the beaming and bearded creature
+      behind him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The mad doctors,&rdquo; said Turnbull, shortly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite so,&rdquo; said MacIan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After a rather restless silence Turnbull plucked MacIan by the elbow and
+      pulled him aside.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For goodness sake,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;don't offend this fellow; he may be as mad
+      as ten hatters, if you like, but he has us between his finger and thumb.
+      This is the very time he appointed to talk with us about our&mdash;well,
+      our exeat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what can it matter?&rdquo; asked the wondering MacIan. &ldquo;He can't keep us in
+      the asylum. We're not mad.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jackass!&rdquo; said Turnbull, heartily, &ldquo;of course we're not mad. Of course,
+      if we are medically examined and the thing is thrashed out, they will find
+      we are not mad. But don't you see that if the thing is thrashed out it
+      will mean letters to this reference and telegrams to that; and at the
+      first word of who we are, we shall be taken out of a madhouse, where we
+      may smoke, to a jail, where we mayn't. No, if we manage this very quietly,
+      he may merely let us out at the front door as stray revellers. If there's
+      half an hour of inquiry, we are cooked.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan looked at the grass frowningly for a few seconds, and then said in
+      a new, small and childish voice: &ldquo;I am awfully stupid, Mr. Turnbull; you
+      must be patient with me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull caught Evan's elbow again with quite another gesture. &ldquo;Come,&rdquo; he
+      cried, with the harsh voice of one who hides emotion, &ldquo;come and let us be
+      tactful in chorus.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor with the pointed beard was already slanting it forward at a
+      more than usually acute angle, with the smile that expressed expectancy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope I do not hurry you, gentlemen,&rdquo; he said, with the faintest
+      suggestion of a sneer at their hurried consultation, &ldquo;but I believe you
+      wanted to see me at half past eleven.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am most awfully sorry, Doctor,&rdquo; said Turnbull, with ready amiability;
+      &ldquo;I never meant to keep you waiting; but the silly accident that has landed
+      us in your garden may have some rather serious consequences to our friends
+      elsewhere, and my friend here was just drawing my attention to some of
+      them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite so! Quite so!&rdquo; said the doctor, hurriedly. &ldquo;If you really want to
+      put anything before me, I can give you a few moments in my
+      consulting-room.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He led them rapidly into a small but imposing apartment, which seemed to
+      be built and furnished entirely in red-varnished wood. There was one desk
+      occupied with carefully docketed papers; and there were several chairs of
+      the red-varnished wood&mdash;though of different shape. All along the wall
+      ran something that might have been a bookcase, only that it was not filled
+      with books, but with flat, oblong slabs or cases of the same polished
+      dark-red consistency. What those flat wooden cases were they could form no
+      conception.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor sat down with a polite impatience on his professional perch;
+      MacIan remained standing, but Turnbull threw himself almost with luxury
+      into a hard wooden arm-chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is a most absurd business, Doctor,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and I am ashamed to
+      take up the time of busy professional men with such pranks from outside.
+      The plain fact is, that he and I and a pack of silly men and girls have
+      organized a game across this part of the country&mdash;a sort of
+      combination of hare and hounds and hide and seek&mdash;I dare say you've
+      heard of it. We are the hares, and, seeing your high wall look so
+      inviting, we tumbled over it, and naturally were a little startled with
+      what we found on the other side.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite so!&rdquo; said the doctor, mildly. &ldquo;I can understand that you were
+      startled.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull had expected him to ask what place was the headquarters of the
+      new exhilarating game, and who were the male and female enthusiasts who
+      had brought it to such perfection; in fact, Turnbull was busy making up
+      these personal and topographical particulars. As the doctor did not ask
+      the question, he grew slightly uneasy, and risked the question: &ldquo;I hope
+      you will accept my assurance that the thing was an accident and that no
+      intrusion was meant.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes, sir,&rdquo; replied the doctor, smiling, &ldquo;I accept everything that you
+      say.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In that case,&rdquo; said Turnbull, rising genially, &ldquo;we must not further
+      interrupt your important duties. I suppose there will be someone to let us
+      out?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said the doctor, still smiling steadily and pleasantly, &ldquo;there will
+      be no one to let you out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can we let ourselves out, then?&rdquo; asked Turnbull, in some surprise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, of course not,&rdquo; said the beaming scientist; &ldquo;think how dangerous
+      that would be in a place like this.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then, how the devil are we to get out?&rdquo; cried Turnbull, losing his
+      manners for the first time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is a question of time, of receptivity, and treatment,&rdquo; said the
+      doctor, arching his eyebrows indifferently. &ldquo;I do not regard either of
+      your cases as incurable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And with that the man of the world was struck dumb, and, as in all
+      intolerable moments, the word was with the unworldly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan took one stride to the table, leant across it, and said: &ldquo;We can't
+      stop here, we're not mad people!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We don't use the crude phrase,&rdquo; said the doctor, smiling at his
+      patent-leather boots.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you <i>can't</i> think us mad,&rdquo; thundered MacIan. &ldquo;You never saw us
+      before. You know nothing about us. You haven't even examined us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor threw back his head and beard. &ldquo;Oh, yes,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;very
+      thoroughly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you can't shut a man up on your mere impressions without documents or
+      certificates or anything?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor got languidly to his feet. &ldquo;Quite so,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You certainly
+      ought to see the documents.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He went across to the curious mock book-shelves and took down one of the
+      flat mahogany cases. This he opened with a curious key at his watch-chain,
+      and laying back a flap revealed a quire of foolscap covered with close but
+      quite clear writing. The first three words were in such large copy-book
+      hand that they caught the eye even at a distance. They were: &ldquo;MacIan, Evan
+      Stuart.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Evan bent his angry eagle face over it; yet something blurred it and he
+      could never swear he saw it distinctly. He saw something that began:
+      &ldquo;Prenatal influences predisposing to mania. Grandfather believed in return
+      of the Stuarts. Mother carried bone of St. Eulalia with which she touched
+      children in sickness. Marked religious mania at early age&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Evan fell back and fought for his speech. &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; he burst out at last. &ldquo;Oh!
+      if all this world I have walked in had been as sane as my mother was.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he compressed his temples with his hands, as if to crush them. And
+      then lifted suddenly a face that looked fresh and young, as if he had
+      dipped and washed it in some holy well.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well,&rdquo; he cried; &ldquo;I will take the sour with the sweet. I will pay
+      the penalty of having enjoyed God in this monstrous modern earth that
+      cannot enjoy man or beast. I will die happy in your madhouse, only because
+      I know what I know. Let it be granted, then&mdash;MacIan is a mystic;
+      MacIan is a maniac. But this honest shopkeeper and editor whom I have
+      dragged on my inhuman escapades, you cannot keep him. He will go free,
+      thank God, he is not down in any damned document. His ancestor, I am
+      certain, did not die at Culloden. His mother, I swear, had no relics. Let
+      my friend out of your front door, and as for me&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor had already gone across to the laden shelves, and after a few
+      minutes' short-sighted peering, had pulled down another parallelogram of
+      dark-red wood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This also he unlocked on the table, and with the same unerring egotistic
+      eye on of the company saw the words, written in large letters: &ldquo;Turnbull,
+      James.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hitherto Turnbull himself had somewhat scornfully surrendered his part in
+      the whole business; but he was too honest and unaffected not to start at
+      his own name. After the name, the inscription appeared to run: &ldquo;Unique
+      case of Eleutheromania. Parentage, as so often in such cases, prosaic and
+      healthy. Eleutheromaniac signs occurred early, however, leading him to
+      attach himself to the individualist Bradlaugh. Recent outbreak of pure
+      anarchy&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull slammed the case to, almost smashing it, and said with a burst of
+      savage laughter: &ldquo;Oh! come along, MacIan; I don't care so much, even about
+      getting out of the madhouse, if only we get out of this room. You were
+      right enough, MacIan, when you spoke about&mdash;about mad doctors.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Somehow they found themselves outside in the cool, green garden, and then,
+      after a stunned silence, Turnbull said: &ldquo;There is one thing that was
+      puzzling me all the time, and I understand it now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean?&rdquo; asked Evan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No man by will or wit,&rdquo; answered Turnbull, &ldquo;can get out of this garden;
+      and yet we got into it merely by jumping over a garden wall. The whole
+      thing explains itself easily enough. That undefended wall was an open
+      trap. It was a trap laid for two celebrated lunatics. They saw us get in
+      right enough. And they will see that we do not get out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Evan gazed at the garden wall, gravely for more than a minute, and then he
+      nodded without a word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0015" id="link2H_4_0015">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XV. THE DREAM OF MACIAN
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The system of espionage in the asylum was so effective and complete that
+      in practice the patients could often enjoy a sense of almost complete
+      solitude. They could stray up so near to the wall in an apparently
+      unwatched garden as to find it easy to jump over it. They would only have
+      found the error of their calculations if they had tried to jump.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Under this insulting liberty, in this artificial loneliness, Evan MacIan
+      was in the habit of creeping out into the garden after dark&mdash;especially
+      upon moonlight nights. The moon, indeed, was for him always a positive
+      magnet in a manner somewhat hard to explain to those of a robuster
+      attitude. Evidently, Apollo is to the full as poetical as Diana; but it is
+      not a question of poetry in the matured and intellectual sense of the
+      word. It is a question of a certain solid and childish fancy. The sun is
+      in the strict and literal sense invisible; that is to say, that by our
+      bodily eyes it cannot properly be seen. But the moon is a much simpler
+      thing; a naked and nursery sort of thing. It hangs in the sky quite solid
+      and quite silver and quite useless; it is one huge celestial snowball. It
+      was at least some such infantile facts and fancies which led Evan again
+      and again during his dehumanized imprisonment to go out as if to shoot the
+      moon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was out in the garden on one such luminous and ghostly night, when the
+      steady moonshine toned down all the colours of the garden until almost the
+      strongest tints to be seen were the strong soft blue of the sky and the
+      large lemon moon. He was walking with his face turned up to it in that
+      rather half-witted fashion which might have excused the error of his
+      keepers; and as he gazed he became aware of something little and lustrous
+      flying close to the lustrous orb, like a bright chip knocked off the moon.
+      At first he thought it was a mere sparkle or refraction in his own
+      eyesight; he blinked and cleared his eyes. Then he thought it was a
+      falling star; only it did not fall. It jerked awkwardly up and down in a
+      way unknown among meteors and strangely reminiscent of the works of man.
+      The next moment the thing drove right across the moon, and from being
+      silver upon blue, suddenly became black upon silver; then although it
+      passed the field of light in a flash its outline was unmistakable though
+      eccentric. It was a flying ship.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The vessel took one long and sweeping curve across the sky and came nearer
+      and nearer to MacIan, like a steam-engine coming round a bend. It was of
+      pure white steel, and in the moon it gleamed like the armour of Sir
+      Galahad. The simile of such virginity is not inappropriate; for, as it
+      grew larger and larger and lower and lower, Evan saw that the only figure
+      in it was robed in white from head to foot and crowned with snow-white
+      hair, on which the moonshine lay like a benediction. The figure stood so
+      still that he could easily have supposed it to be a statue. Indeed, he
+      thought it was until it spoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Evan,&rdquo; said the voice, and it spoke with the simple authority of some
+      forgotten father revisiting his children, &ldquo;you have remained here long
+      enough, and your sword is wanted elsewhere.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wanted for what?&rdquo; asked the young man, accepting the monstrous event with
+      a queer and clumsy naturalness; &ldquo;what is my sword wanted for?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For all that you hold dear,&rdquo; said the man standing in the moonlight; &ldquo;for
+      the thrones of authority and for all ancient loyalty to law.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Evan looked up at the lunar orb again as if in irrational appeal&mdash;a
+      moon calf bleating to his mother the moon. But the face of Luna seemed as
+      witless as his own; there is no help in nature against the supernatural;
+      and he looked again at the tall marble figure that might have been made
+      out of solid moonlight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he said in a loud voice: &ldquo;Who are you?&rdquo; and the next moment was
+      seized by a sort of choking terror lest his question should be answered.
+      But the unknown preserved an impenetrable silence for a long space and
+      then only answered: &ldquo;I must not say who I am until the end of the world;
+      but I may say what I am. I am the law.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he lifted his head so that the moon smote full upon his beautiful and
+      ancient face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The face was the face of a Greek god grown old, but not grown either weak
+      or ugly; there was nothing to break its regularity except a rather long
+      chin with a cleft in it, and this rather added distinction than lessened
+      beauty. His strong, well-opened eyes were very brilliant but quite
+      colourless like steel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan was one of those to whom a reverence and self-submission in ritual
+      come quite easy, and are ordinary things. It was not artificial in him to
+      bend slightly to this solemn apparition or to lower his voice when he
+      said: &ldquo;Do you bring me some message?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do bring you a message,&rdquo; answered the man of moon and marble. &ldquo;The king
+      has returned.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Evan did not ask for or require any explanation. &ldquo;I suppose you can take
+      me to the war,&rdquo; he said, and the silent silver figure only bowed its head
+      again. MacIan clambered into the silver boat, and it rose upward to the
+      stars.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To say that it rose to the stars is no mere metaphor, for the sky had
+      cleared to that occasional and astonishing transparency in which one can
+      see plainly both stars and moon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the white-robed figure went upward in his white chariot, he said quite
+      quietly to Evan: &ldquo;There is an answer to all the folly talked about
+      equality. Some stars are big and some small; some stand still and some
+      circle around them as they stand. They can be orderly, but they cannot be
+      equal.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are all very beautiful,&rdquo; said Evan, as if in doubt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are all beautiful,&rdquo; answered the other, &ldquo;because each is in his
+      place and owns his superior. And now England will be beautiful after the
+      same fashion. The earth will be as beautiful as the heavens, because our
+      kings have come back to us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Stuart&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; began Evan, earnestly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; answered the old man, &ldquo;that which has returned is Stuart and yet
+      older than Stuart. It is Capet and Plantagenet and Pendragon. It is all
+      that good old time of which proverbs tell, that golden reign of Saturn
+      against which gods and men were rebels. It is all that was ever lost by
+      insolence and overwhelmed in rebellion. It is your own forefather, MacIan
+      with the broken sword, bleeding without hope at Culloden. It is Charles
+      refusing to answer the questions of the rebel court. It is Mary of the
+      magic face confronting the gloomy and grasping peers and the boorish
+      moralities of Knox. It is Richard, the last Plantagenet, giving his crown
+      to Bolingbroke as to a common brigand. It is Arthur, overwhelmed in
+      Lyonesse by heathen armies and dying in the mist, doubtful if ever he
+      shall return.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But now&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; said Evan, in a low voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But now!&rdquo; said the old man; &ldquo;he has returned.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is the war still raging?&rdquo; asked MacIan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It rages like the pit itself beyond the sea whither I am taking you,&rdquo;
+       answered the other. &ldquo;But in England the king enjoys his own again. The
+      people are once more taught and ruled as is best; they are happy knights,
+      happy squires, happy servants, happy serfs, if you will; but free at last
+      of that load of vexation and lonely vanity which was called being a
+      citizen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is England, indeed, so secure?&rdquo; asked Evan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look out and see,&rdquo; said the guide. &ldquo;I fancy you have seen this place
+      before.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They were driving through the air towards one region of the sky where the
+      hollow of night seemed darkest and which was quite without stars. But
+      against this black background there sprang up, picked out in glittering
+      silver, a dome and a cross. It seemed that it was really newly covered
+      with silver, which in the strong moonlight was like white flame. But,
+      however, covered or painted, Evan had no difficult in knowing the place
+      again. He saw the great thoroughfare that sloped upward to the base of its
+      huge pedestal of steps. And he wondered whether the little shop was still
+      by the side of it and whether its window had been mended.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the flying ship swept round the dome he observed other alterations. The
+      dome had been redecorated so as to give it a more solemn and somewhat more
+      ecclesiastical note; the ball was draped or destroyed, and round the
+      gallery, under the cross, ran what looked like a ring of silver statues,
+      like the little leaden images that stood round the hat of Louis XI. Round
+      the second gallery, at the base of the dome, ran a second rank of such
+      images, and Evan thought there was another round the steps below. When
+      they came closer he saw that they were figures in complete armour of steel
+      or silver, each with a naked sword, point upward; and then he saw one of
+      the swords move. These were not statues but an armed order of chivalry
+      thrown in three circles round the cross. MacIan drew in his breath, as
+      children do at anything they think utterly beautiful. For he could imagine
+      nothing that so echoed his own visions of pontifical or chivalric art as
+      this white dome sitting like a vast silver tiara over London, ringed with
+      a triple crown of swords.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As they went sailing down Ludgate Hill, Evan saw that the state of the
+      streets fully answered his companion's claim about the reintroduction of
+      order. All the old blackcoated bustle with its cockney vivacity and
+      vulgarity had disappeared. Groups of labourers, quietly but picturesquely
+      clad, were passing up and down in sufficiently large numbers; but it
+      required but a few mounted men to keep the streets in order. The mounted
+      men were not common policemen, but knights with spurs and plume whose
+      smooth and splendid armour glittered like diamond rather than steel. Only
+      in one place&mdash;at the corner of Bouverie Street&mdash;did there appear
+      to be a moment's confusion, and that was due to hurry rather than
+      resistance. But one old grumbling man did not get out of the way quick
+      enough, and the man on horseback struck him, not severely, across the
+      shoulders with the flat of his sword.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The soldier had no business to do that,&rdquo; said MacIan, sharply. &ldquo;The old
+      man was moving as quickly as he could.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We attach great importance to discipline in the streets,&rdquo; said the man in
+      white, with a slight smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Discipline is not so important as justice,&rdquo; said MacIan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The other did not answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then after a swift silence that took them out across St. James's Park, he
+      said: &ldquo;The people must be taught to obey; they must learn their own
+      ignorance. And I am not sure,&rdquo; he continued, turning his back on Evan and
+      looking out of the prow of the ship into the darkness, &ldquo;I am not sure that
+      I agree with your little maxim about justice. Discipline for the whole
+      society is surely more important than justice to an individual.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Evan, who was also leaning over the edge, swung round with startling
+      suddenness and stared at the other's back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Discipline for society&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; he repeated, very staccato, &ldquo;more
+      important&mdash;justice to individual?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then after a long silence he called out: &ldquo;Who and what are you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am an angel,&rdquo; said the white-robed figure, without turning round.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are not a Catholic,&rdquo; said MacIan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The other seemed to take no notice, but reverted to the main topic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In our armies up in heaven we learn to put a wholesome fear into
+      subordinates.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan sat craning his neck forward with an extraordinary and
+      unaccountable eagerness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go on!&rdquo; he cried, twisting and untwisting his long, bony fingers, &ldquo;go
+      on!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Besides,&rdquo; continued he, in the prow, &ldquo;you must allow for a certain high
+      spirit and haughtiness in the superior type.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go on!&rdquo; said Evan, with burning eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just as the sight of sin offends God,&rdquo; said the unknown, &ldquo;so does the
+      sight of ugliness offend Apollo. The beautiful and princely must, of
+      necessity, be impatient with the squalid and&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, you great fool!&rdquo; cried MacIan, rising to the top of his tremendous
+      stature, &ldquo;did you think I would have doubted only for that rap with a
+      sword? I know that noble orders have bad knights, that good knights have
+      bad tempers, that the Church has rough priests and coarse cardinals; I
+      have known it ever since I was born. You fool! you had only to say, 'Yes,
+      it is rather a shame,' and I should have forgotten the affair. But I saw
+      on your mouth the twitch of your infernal sophistry; I knew that something
+      was wrong with you and your cathedrals. Something is wrong; everything is
+      wrong. You are not an angel. That is not a church. It is not the rightful
+      king who has come home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is unfortunate,&rdquo; said the other, in a quiet but hard voice, &ldquo;because
+      you are going to see his Majesty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said MacIan, &ldquo;I am going to jump over the side.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you desire death?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Evan, quite composedly, &ldquo;I desire a miracle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;From whom do you ask it? To whom do you appeal?&rdquo; said his companion,
+      sternly. &ldquo;You have betrayed the king, renounced his cross on the
+      cathedral, and insulted an archangel.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I appeal to God,&rdquo; said Evan, and sprang up and stood upon the edge of the
+      swaying ship.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The being in the prow turned slowly round; he looked at Evan with eyes
+      which were like two suns, and put his hand to his mouth just too late to
+      hide an awful smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And how do you know,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;how do you know that I am not God?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan screamed. &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;Now I know who you really are. You are
+      not God. You are not one of God's angels. But you were once.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The being's hand dropped from his mouth and Evan dropped out of the car.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0016" id="link2H_4_0016">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XVI. THE DREAM OF TURNBULL
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull was walking rather rampantly up and down the garden on a gusty
+      evening chewing his cigar and in that mood when every man suppresses an
+      instinct to spit. He was not, as a rule, a man much acquainted with moods;
+      and the storms and sunbursts of MacIan's soul passed before him as an
+      impressive but unmeaning panorama, like the anarchy of Highland scenery.
+      Turnbull was one of those men in whom a continuous appetite and industry
+      of the intellect leave the emotions very simple and steady. His heart was
+      in the right place; but he was quite content to leave it there. It was his
+      head that was his hobby. His mornings and evenings were marked not by
+      impulses or thirsty desires, not by hope or by heart-break; they were
+      filled with the fallacies he had detected, the problems he had made plain,
+      the adverse theories he had wrestled with and thrown, the grand
+      generalizations he had justified. But even the cheerful inner life of a
+      logician may be upset by a lunatic asylum, to say nothing of whiffs of
+      memory from a lady in Jersey, and the little red-bearded man on this windy
+      evening was in a dangerous frame of mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Plain and positive as he was, the influence of earth and sky may have been
+      greater on him than he imagined; and the weather that walked the world at
+      that moment was as red and angry as Turnbull. Long strips and swirls of
+      tattered and tawny cloud were dragged downward to the west exactly as torn
+      red raiment would be dragged. And so strong and pitiless was the wind that
+      it whipped away fragments of red-flowering bushes or of copper beech, and
+      drove them also across the garden, a drift of red leaves, like the leaves
+      of autumn, as in parody of the red and driven rags of cloud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a sense in earth and heaven as of everything breaking up, and
+      all the revolutionist in Turnbull rejoiced that it was breaking up. The
+      trees were breaking up under the wind, even in the tall strength of their
+      bloom: the clouds were breaking up and losing even their large heraldic
+      shapes. Shards and shreds of copper cloud split off continually and
+      floated by themselves, and for some reason the truculent eye of Turnbull
+      was attracted to one of these careering cloudlets, which seemed to him to
+      career in an exaggerated manner. Also it kept its shape, which is unusual
+      with clouds shaken off; also its shape was of an odd sort.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull continued to stare at it, and in a little time occurred that
+      crucial instant when a thing, however incredible, is accepted as a fact.
+      The copper cloud was tumbling down towards the earth, like some gigantic
+      leaf from the copper beeches. And as it came nearer it was evident, first,
+      that it was not a cloud, and, second, that it was not itself of the colour
+      of copper; only, being burnished like a mirror, it had reflected the
+      red-brown colours of the burning clouds. As the thing whirled like a
+      windswept leaf down towards the wall of the garden it was clear that it
+      was some sort of air-ship made of metal, and slapping the air with big
+      broad fins of steel. When it came about a hundred feet above the garden, a
+      shaggy, lean figure leapt up in it, almost black against the bronze and
+      scarlet of the west, and, flinging out a kind of hook or anchor, caught on
+      to the green apple-tree just under the wall; and from that fixed holding
+      ground the ship swung in the red tempest like a captive balloon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While our friend stood frozen for an instant by his astonishment, the
+      queer figure in the airy car tipped the vehicle almost upside down by
+      leaping over the side of it, seemed to slide or drop down the rope like a
+      monkey, and alighted (with impossible precision and placidity) seated on
+      the edge of the wall, over which he kicked and dangled his legs as he
+      grinned at Turnbull. The wind roared in the trees yet more ruinous and
+      desolate, the red tails of the sunset were dragged downward like red
+      dragons sucked down to death, and still on the top of the asylum wall sat
+      the sinister figure with the grimace, swinging his feet in tune with the
+      tempest; while above him, at the end of its tossing or tightened cord, the
+      enormous iron air-ship floated as light and as little noticed as a baby's
+      balloon upon its string.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull's first movement after sixty motionless seconds was to turn round
+      and look at the large, luxuriant parallelogram of the garden and the long,
+      low rectangular building beyond. There was not a soul or a stir of life
+      within sight. And he had a quite meaningless sensation, as if there never
+      really had been any one else there except he since the foundation of the
+      world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Stiffening in himself the masculine but mirthless courage of the atheist,
+      he drew a little nearer to the wall and, catching the man at a slightly
+      different angle of the evening light, could see his face and figure quite
+      plain. Two facts about him stood out in the picked colours of some
+      piratical schoolboy's story. The first was that his lean brown body was
+      bare to the belt of his loose white trousers; the other that through
+      hygiene, affectation, or whatever other cause, he had a scarlet
+      handkerchief tied tightly but somewhat aslant across his brow. After these
+      two facts had become emphatic, others appeared sufficiently important. One
+      was that under the scarlet rag the hair was plentiful, but white as with
+      the last snows of mortality. Another was that under the mop of white and
+      senile hair the face was strong, handsome, and smiling, with a well-cut
+      profile and a long cloven chin. The length of this lower part of the face
+      and the strange cleft in it (which gave the man, in quite another sense
+      from the common one, a double chin) faintly spoilt the claim of the face
+      to absolute regularity, but it greatly assisted it in wearing the
+      expression of half-smiling and half-sneering arrogance with which it was
+      staring at all the stones, all the flowers, but especially at the solitary
+      man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you want?&rdquo; shouted Turnbull.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want you, Jimmy,&rdquo; said the eccentric man on the wall, and with the very
+      word he had let himself down with a leap on to the centre of the lawn,
+      where he bounded once literally like an India-rubber ball and then stood
+      grinning with his legs astride. The only three facts that Turnbull could
+      now add to his inventory were that the man had an ugly-looking knife
+      swinging at his trousers belt, that his brown feet were as bare as his
+      bronzed trunk and arms, and that his eyes had a singular bleak brilliancy
+      which was of no particular colour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Excuse my not being in evening dress,&rdquo; said the newcomer with an urbane
+      smile. &ldquo;We scientific men, you know&mdash;I have to work my own engines&mdash;electrical
+      engineer&mdash;very hot work.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look here,&rdquo; said Turnbull, sturdily clenching his fists in his trousers
+      pockets, &ldquo;I am bound to expect lunatics inside these four walls; but I do
+      bar their coming from outside, bang out of the sunset clouds.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And yet you came from the outside, too, Jim,&rdquo; said the stranger in a
+      voice almost affectionate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you want?&rdquo; asked Turnbull, with an explosion of temper as sudden
+      as a pistol shot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have already told you,&rdquo; said the man, lowering his voice and speaking
+      with evident sincerity; &ldquo;I want you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you want with me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want exactly what you want,&rdquo; said the new-comer with a new gravity. &ldquo;I
+      want the Revolution.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull looked at the fire-swept sky and the wind-stricken woodlands, and
+      kept on repeating the word voicelessly to himself&mdash;the word that did
+      indeed so thoroughly express his mood of rage as it had been among those
+      red clouds and rocking tree-tops. &ldquo;Revolution!&rdquo; he said to himself. &ldquo;The
+      Revolution&mdash;yes, that is what I want right enough&mdash;anything, so
+      long as it is a Revolution.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      To some cause he could never explain he found himself completing the
+      sentence on the top of the wall, having automatically followed the
+      stranger so far. But when the stranger silently indicated the rope that
+      led to the machine, he found himself pausing and saying: &ldquo;I can't leave
+      MacIan behind in this den.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are going to destroy the Pope and all the kings,&rdquo; said the new-comer.
+      &ldquo;Would it be wiser to take him with us?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Somehow the muttering Turnbull found himself in the flying ship also, and
+      it swung up into the sunset.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All the great rebels have been very little rebels,&rdquo; said the man with the
+      red scarf. &ldquo;They have been like fourth-form boys who sometimes venture to
+      hit a fifth-form boy. That was all the worth of their French Revolution
+      and regicide. The boys never really dared to defy the schoolmaster.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whom do you mean by the schoolmaster?&rdquo; asked Turnbull.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know whom I mean,&rdquo; answered the strange man, as he lay back on
+      cushions and looked up into the angry sky.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They seemed rising into stronger and stronger sunlight, as if it were
+      sunrise rather than sunset. But when they looked down at the earth they
+      saw it growing darker and darker. The lunatic asylum in its large
+      rectangular grounds spread below them in a foreshortened and infantile
+      plan, and looked for the first time the grotesque thing that it was. But
+      the clear colours of the plan were growing darker every moment. The masses
+      of rose or rhododendron deepened from crimson to violet. The maze of
+      gravel pathways faded from gold to brown. By the time they had risen a few
+      hundred feet higher nothing could be seen of that darkening landscape
+      except the lines of lighted windows, each one of which, at least, was the
+      light of one lost intelligence. But on them as they swept upward better
+      and braver winds seemed to blow, and on them the ruby light of evening
+      seemed struck, and splashed like red spurts from the grapes of Dionysus.
+      Below them the fallen lights were literally the fallen stars of servitude.
+      And above them all the red and raging clouds were like the leaping flags
+      of liberty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man with the cloven chin seemed to have a singular power of
+      understanding thoughts; for, as Turnbull felt the whole universe tilt and
+      turn over his head, the stranger said exactly the right thing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Doesn't it seem as if everything were being upset?&rdquo; said he; &ldquo;and if once
+      everything is upset, He will be upset on top of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, as Turnbull made no answer, his host continued:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is the really fine thing about space. It is topsy-turvy. You have
+      only to climb far enough towards the morning star to feel that you are
+      coming down to it. You have only to dive deep enough into the abyss to
+      feel that you are rising. That is the only glory of this universe&mdash;it
+      is a giddy universe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, as Turnbull was still silent, he added:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The heavens are full of revolution&mdash;of the real sort of revolution.
+      All the high things are sinking low and all the big things looking small.
+      All the people who think they are aspiring find they are falling head
+      foremost. And all the people who think they are condescending find they
+      are climbing up a precipice. That is the intoxication of space. That is
+      the only joy of eternity&mdash;doubt. There is only one pleasure the
+      angels can possibly have in flying, and that is, that they do not know
+      whether they are on their head or their heels.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, finding his companion still mute, he fell himself into a smiling and
+      motionless meditation, at the end of which he said suddenly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So MacIan converted you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull sprang up as if spurning the steel car from under his feet.
+      &ldquo;Converted me!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;What the devil do you mean? I have known him
+      for a month, and I have not retracted a single&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This Catholicism is a curious thing,&rdquo; said the man of the cloven chin in
+      uninterrupted reflectiveness, leaning his elegant elbows over the edge of
+      the vessel; &ldquo;it soaks and weakens men without their knowing it, just as I
+      fear it has soaked and weakened you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull stood in an attitude which might well have meant pitching the
+      other man out of the flying ship.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am an atheist,&rdquo; he said, in a stifled voice. &ldquo;I have always been an
+      atheist. I am still an atheist.&rdquo; Then, addressing the other's indolent and
+      indifferent back, he cried: &ldquo;In God's name what do you mean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And the other answered without turning round:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean nothing in God's name.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull spat over the edge of the car and fell back furiously into his
+      seat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The other continued still unruffled, and staring over the edge idly as an
+      angler stares down at a stream.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The truth is that we never thought that you could have been caught,&rdquo; he
+      said; &ldquo;we counted on you as the one red-hot revolutionary left in the
+      world. But, of course, these men like MacIan are awfully clever,
+      especially when they pretend to be stupid.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull leapt up again in a living fury and cried: &ldquo;What have I got to do
+      with MacIan? I believe all I ever believed, and disbelieve all I ever
+      disbelieved. What does all this mean, and what do you want with me here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then for the first time the other lifted himself from the edge of the car
+      and faced him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have brought you here,&rdquo; he answered, &ldquo;to take part in the last war of
+      the world.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The last war!&rdquo; repeated Turnbull, even in his dazed state a little touchy
+      about such a dogma; &ldquo;how do you know it will be the last?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The man laid himself back in his reposeful attitude, and said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is the last war, because if it does not cure the world for ever, it
+      will destroy it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I only mean what you mean,&rdquo; answered the unknown in a temperate voice.
+      &ldquo;What was it that you always meant on those million and one nights when
+      you walked outside your Ludgate Hill shop and shook your hand in the air?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Still I do not see,&rdquo; said Turnbull, stubbornly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will soon,&rdquo; said the other, and abruptly bent downward one iron
+      handle of his huge machine. The engine stopped, stooped, and dived almost
+      as deliberately as a man bathing; in their downward rush they swept within
+      fifty yards of a big bulk of stone that Turnbull knew only too well. The
+      last red anger of the sunset was ended; the dome of heaven was dark; the
+      lanes of flaring light in the streets below hardly lit up the base of the
+      building. But he saw that it was St. Paul's Cathedral, and he saw that on
+      the top of it the ball was still standing erect, but the cross was
+      stricken and had fallen sideways. Then only he cared to look down into the
+      streets, and saw that they were inflamed with uproar and tossing passions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We arrive at a happy moment,&rdquo; said the man steering the ship. &ldquo;The
+      insurgents are bombarding the city, and a cannon-ball has just hit the
+      cross. Many of the insurgents are simple people, and they naturally regard
+      it as a happy omen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite so,&rdquo; said Turnbull, in a rather colourless voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; replied the other. &ldquo;I thought you would be glad to see your prayer
+      answered. Of course I apologize for the word prayer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't mention it,&rdquo; said Turnbull.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The flying ship had come down upon a sort of curve, and was now rising
+      again. The higher and higher it rose the broader and broader became the
+      scenes of flame and desolation underneath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ludgate Hill indeed had been an uncaptured and comparatively quiet height,
+      altered only by the startling coincidence of the cross fallen awry. All
+      the other thoroughfares on all sides of that hill were full of the
+      pulsation and the pain of battle, full of shaking torches and shouting
+      faces. When at length they had risen high enough to have a bird's-eye view
+      of the whole campaign, Turnbull was already intoxicated. He had smelt
+      gunpowder, which was the incense of his own revolutionary religion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have the people really risen?&rdquo; he asked, breathlessly. &ldquo;What are they
+      fighting about?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The programme is rather elaborate,&rdquo; said his entertainer with some
+      indifference. &ldquo;I think Dr. Hertz drew it up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull wrinkled his forehead. &ldquo;Are all the poor people with the
+      Revolution?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The other shrugged his shoulders. &ldquo;All the instructed and class-conscious
+      part of them without exception,&rdquo; he replied. &ldquo;There were certainly a few
+      districts; in fact, we are passing over them just now&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull looked down and saw that the polished car was literally lit up
+      from underneath by the far-flung fires from below. Underneath whole
+      squares and solid districts were in flames, like prairies or forests on
+      fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dr. Hertz has convinced everybody,&rdquo; said Turnbull's cicerone in a smooth
+      voice, &ldquo;that nothing can really be done with the real slums. His
+      celebrated maxim has been quite adopted. I mean the three celebrated
+      sentences: 'No man should be unemployed. Employ the employables. Destroy
+      the unemployables.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a silence, and then Turnbull said in a rather strained voice:
+      &ldquo;And do I understand that this good work is going on under here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Going on splendidly,&rdquo; replied his companion in the heartiest voice. &ldquo;You
+      see, these people were much too tired and weak even to join the social
+      war. They were a definite hindrance to it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And so you are simply burning them out?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It <i>does</i> seem absurdly simple,&rdquo; said the man, with a beaming smile,
+      &ldquo;when one thinks of all the worry and talk about helping a hopeless slave
+      population, when the future obviously was only crying to be rid of them.
+      There are happy babes unborn ready to burst the doors when these
+      drivellers are swept away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you permit me to say,&rdquo; said Turnbull, after reflection, &ldquo;that I
+      don't like all this?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And will you permit me to say,&rdquo; said the other, with a snap, &ldquo;that I
+      don't like Mr. Evan MacIan?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Somewhat to the speaker's surprise this did not inflame the sensitive
+      sceptic; he had the air of thinking thoroughly, and then he said: &ldquo;No, I
+      don't think it's my friend MacIan that taught me that. I think I should
+      always have said that I don't like this. These people have rights.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rights!&rdquo; repeated the unknown in a tone quite indescribable. Then he
+      added with a more open sneer: &ldquo;Perhaps they also have souls.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They have lives!&rdquo; said Turnbull, sternly; &ldquo;that is quite enough for me. I
+      understood you to say that you thought life sacred.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, indeed!&rdquo; cried his mentor with a sort of idealistic animation. &ldquo;Yes,
+      indeed! Life is sacred&mdash;but lives are not sacred. We are improving
+      Life by removing lives. Can you, as a free-thinker, find any fault in
+      that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Turnbull with brevity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yet you applaud tyrannicide,&rdquo; said the stranger with rationalistic
+      gaiety. &ldquo;How inconsistent! It really comes to this: You approve of taking
+      away life from those to whom it is a triumph and a pleasure. But you will
+      not take away life from those to whom it is a burden and a toil.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull rose to his feet in the car with considerable deliberation, but
+      his face seemed oddly pale. The other went on with enthusiasm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Life, yes, Life is indeed sacred!&rdquo; he cried; &ldquo;but new lives for old! Good
+      lives for bad! On that very place where now there sprawls one drunken
+      wastrel of a pavement artist more or less wishing he were dead&mdash;on
+      that very spot there shall in the future be living pictures; there shall
+      be golden girls and boys leaping in the sun.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull, still standing up, opened his lips. &ldquo;Will you put me down,
+      please?&rdquo; he said, quite calmly, like on stopping an omnibus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Put you down&mdash;what do you mean?&rdquo; cried his leader. &ldquo;I am taking you
+      to the front of the revolutionary war, where you will be one of the first
+      of the revolutionary leaders.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you,&rdquo; replied Turnbull with the same painful constraint. &ldquo;I have
+      heard about your revolutionary war, and I think on the whole that I would
+      rather be anywhere else.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you want to be taken to a monastery,&rdquo; snarled the other, &ldquo;with MacIan
+      and his winking Madonnas.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want to be taken to a madhouse,&rdquo; said Turnbull distinctly, giving the
+      direction with a sort of precision. &ldquo;I want to go back to exactly the same
+      lunatic asylum from which I came.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why?&rdquo; asked the unknown.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because I want a little sane and wholesome society,&rdquo; answered Turnbull.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a long and peculiar silence, and then the man driving the flying
+      machine said quite coolly: &ldquo;I won't take you back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And then Turnbull said equally coolly: &ldquo;Then I'll jump out of the car.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The unknown rose to his full height, and the expression in his eyes seemed
+      to be made of ironies behind ironies, as two mirrors infinitely reflect
+      each other. At last he said, very gravely: &ldquo;Do you think I am the devil?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Turnbull, violently. &ldquo;For I think the devil is a dream, and so
+      are you. I don't believe in you or your flying ship or your last fight of
+      the world. It is all a nightmare. I say as a fact of dogma and faith that
+      it is all a nightmare. And I will be a martyr for my faith as much as St.
+      Catherine, for I will jump out of this ship and risk waking up safe in
+      bed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      After swaying twice with the swaying vessel he dived over the side as one
+      dives into the sea. For some incredible moments stars and space and
+      planets seemed to shoot up past him as the sparks fly upward; and yet in
+      that sickening descent he was full of some unnatural happiness. He could
+      connect it with no idea except one that half escaped him&mdash;what Evan
+      had said of the difference between Christ and Satan; that it was by
+      Christ's own choice that He descended into hell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he again realized anything, he was lying on his elbow on the lawn of
+      the lunatic asylum, and the last red of the sunset had not yet
+      disappeared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0017" id="link2H_4_0017">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XVII. THE IDIOT
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Evan MacIan was standing a few yards off looking at him in absolute
+      silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had not the moral courage to ask MacIan if there had been anything
+      astounding in the manner of his coming there, nor did MacIan seem to have
+      any question to ask, or perhaps any need to ask it. The two men came
+      slowly towards each other, and found the same expression on each other's
+      faces. Then, for the first time in all their acquaintance, they shook
+      hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Almost as if this were a kind of unconscious signal, it brought Dr. Quayle
+      bounding out of a door and running across the lawn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, there you are!&rdquo; he exclaimed with a relieved giggle. &ldquo;Will you come
+      inside, please? I want to speak to you both.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They followed him into his shiny wooden office where their damning record
+      was kept. Dr. Quayle sat down on a swivel chair and swung round to face
+      them. His carved smile had suddenly disappeared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will be plain with you gentlemen,&rdquo; he said, abruptly; &ldquo;you know quite
+      well we do our best for everybody here. Your cases have been under special
+      consideration, and the Master himself has decided that you ought to be
+      treated specially and&mdash;er&mdash;under somewhat simpler conditions.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean treated worse, I suppose,&rdquo; said Turnbull, gruffly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor did not reply, and MacIan said: &ldquo;I expected this.&rdquo; His eyes had
+      begun to glow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor answered, looking at his desk and playing with a key: &ldquo;Well, in
+      certain cases that give anxiety&mdash;it is often better&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Give anxiety,&rdquo; said Turnbull, fiercely. &ldquo;Confound your impudence! What do
+      you mean? You imprison two perfectly sane men in a madhouse because you
+      have made up a long word. They take it in good temper, walk and talk in
+      your garden like monks who have found a vocation, are civil even to you,
+      you damned druggists' hack! Behave not only more sanely than any of your
+      patients, but more sanely than half the sane men outside, and you have the
+      soul-stifling cheek to say that they give anxiety.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The head of the asylum has settled it all,&rdquo; said Dr. Quayle, still
+      looking down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan took one of his immense strides forward and stood over the doctor
+      with flaming eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If the head has settled it let the head announce it,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I won't
+      take it from you. I believe you to be a low, gibbering degenerate. Let us
+      see the head of the asylum.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;See the head of the asylum,&rdquo; repeated Dr. Quayle. &ldquo;Certainly not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The tall Highlander, bending over him, put one hand on his shoulder with
+      fatherly interest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don't seem to appreciate the peculiar advantages of my position as a
+      lunatic,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I could kill you with my left hand before such a rat
+      as you could so much as squeak. And I wouldn't be hanged for it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I certainly agree with Mr. MacIan,&rdquo; said Turnbull with sobriety and
+      perfect respectfulness, &ldquo;that you had better let us see the head of the
+      institution.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dr. Quayle got to his feet in a mixture of sudden hysteria and clumsy
+      presence of mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, certainly,&rdquo; he said with a weak laugh. &ldquo;You can see the head of the
+      asylum if you particularly want to.&rdquo; He almost ran out of the room, and
+      the two followed swiftly on his flying coat tails. He knocked at an
+      ordinary varnished door in the corridor. When a voice said, &ldquo;Come in,&rdquo;
+       MacIan's breath went hissing back through his teeth into his chest.
+      Turnbull was more impetuous, and opened the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a neat and well-appointed room entirely lined with a medical
+      library. At the other end of it was a ponderous and polished desk with an
+      incandescent lamp on it, the light of which was just sufficient to show a
+      slender, well-bred figure in an ordinary medical black frock-coat, whose
+      head, quite silvered with age, was bent over neat piles of notes. This
+      gentleman looked up for an instant as they entered, and the lamplight fell
+      on his glittering spectacles and long, clean-shaven face&mdash;a face
+      which would have been simply like an aristocrat's but that a certain lion
+      poise of the head and long cleft in the chin made it look more like a very
+      handsome actor's. It was only for a flash that his face was thus lifted.
+      Then he bent his silver head over his notes once more, and said, without
+      looking up again:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I told you, Dr. Quayle, that these men were to go to cells B and C.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull and MacIan looked at each other, and said more than they could
+      ever say with tongues or swords. Among other things they said that to that
+      particular Head of the institution it was a waste of time to appeal, and
+      they followed Dr. Quayle out of the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The instant they stepped out into the corridor four sturdy figures stepped
+      from four sides, pinioned them, and ran them along the galleries. They
+      might very likely have thrown their captors right and left had they been
+      inclined to resist, but for some nameless reason they were more inclined
+      to laugh. A mixture of mad irony with childish curiosity made them feel
+      quite inclined to see what next twist would be taken by their imbecile
+      luck. They were dragged down countless cold avenues lined with glazed
+      tiles, different only in being of different lengths and set at different
+      angles. They were so many and so monotonous that to escape back by them
+      would have been far harder than fleeing from the Hampton Court maze. Only
+      the fact that windows grew fewer, coming at longer intervals, and the fact
+      that when the windows did come they seemed shadowed and let in less light,
+      showed that they were winding into the core or belly of some enormous
+      building. After a little time the glazed corridors began to be lit by
+      electricity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last, when they had walked nearly a mile in those white and polished
+      tunnels, they came with quite a shock to the futile finality of a
+      cul-de-sac. All that white and weary journey ended suddenly in an oblong
+      space and a blank white wall. But in the white wall there were two iron
+      doors painted white on which were written, respectively, in neat black
+      capitals B and C.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You go in here, sir,&rdquo; said the leader of the officials, quite
+      respectfully, &ldquo;and you in here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But before the doors had clanged upon their dazed victims, MacIan had been
+      able to say to Turnbull with a strange drawl of significance: &ldquo;I wonder
+      who A is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull made an automatic struggle before he allowed himself to be thrown
+      into the cell. Hence it happened that he was the last to enter, and was
+      still full of the exhilaration of the adventures for at least five minutes
+      after the echo of the clanging door had died away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, when silence had sunk deep and nothing happened for two and a half
+      hours, it suddenly occurred to him that this was the end of his life. He
+      was hidden and sealed up in this little crack of stone until the flesh
+      should fall off his bones. He was dead, and the world had won.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His cell was of an oblong shape, but very long in comparison with its
+      width. It was just wide enough to permit the arms to be fully extended
+      with the dumb-bells, which were hung up on the left wall, very dusty. It
+      was, however, long enough for a man to walk one thirty-fifth part of a
+      mile if he traversed it entirely. On the same principle a row of fixed
+      holes, quite close together, let in to the cells by pipes what was alleged
+      to be the freshest air. For these great scientific organizers insisted
+      that a man should be healthy even if he was miserable. They provided a
+      walk long enough to give him exercise and holes large enough to give him
+      oxygen. There their interest in human nature suddenly ceased. It seemed
+      never to have occurred to them that the benefit of exercise belongs partly
+      to the benefit of liberty. They had not entertained the suggestion that
+      the open air is only one of the advantages of the open sky. They
+      administered air in secret, but in sufficient doses, as if it were a
+      medicine. They suggested walking, as if no man had ever felt inclined to
+      walk. Above all, the asylum authorities insisted on their own
+      extraordinary cleanliness. Every morning, while Turnbull was still half
+      asleep on his iron bedstead which was lifted half-way up the wall and
+      clamped to it with iron, four sluices or metal mouths opened above him at
+      the four corners of the chamber and washed it white of any defilement.
+      Turnbull's solitary soul surged up against this sickening daily solemnity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am buried alive!&rdquo; he cried, bitterly; &ldquo;they have hidden me under
+      mountains. I shall be here till I rot. Why the blazes should it matter to
+      them whether I am dirty or clean.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Every morning and evening an iron hatchway opened in his oblong cell, and
+      a brown hairy hand or two thrust in a plate of perfectly cooked lentils
+      and a big bowl of cocoa. He was not underfed any more than he was
+      underexercised or asphyxiated. He had ample walking space, ample air,
+      ample and even filling food. The only objection was that he had nothing to
+      walk towards, nothing to feast about, and no reason whatever for drawing
+      the breath of life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even the shape of his cell especially irritated him. It was a long, narrow
+      parallelogram, which had a flat wall at one end and ought to have had a
+      flat wall at the other; but that end was broken by a wedge or angle of
+      space, like the prow of a ship. After three days of silence and cocoa,
+      this angle at the end began to infuriate Turnbull. It maddened him to
+      think that two lines came together and pointed at nothing. After the fifth
+      day he was reckless, and poked his head into the corner. After twenty-five
+      days he almost broke his head against it. Then he became quite cool and
+      stupid again, and began to examine it like a sort of Robinson Crusoe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Almost unconsciously it was his instinct to examine outlets, and he found
+      himself paying particular attention to the row of holes which let in the
+      air into his last house of life. He soon discovered that these air-holes
+      were all the ends and mouths of long leaden tubes which doubtless carried
+      air from some remote watering-place near Margate. One evening while he was
+      engaged in the fifth investigation he noticed something like twilight in
+      one of these dumb mouths, as compared with the darkness of the others.
+      Thrusting his finger in as far as it would go, he found a hole and
+      flapping edge in the tube. This he rent open and instantly saw a light
+      behind; it was at least certain that he had struck some other cell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is a characteristic of all things now called &ldquo;efficient&rdquo;, which means
+      mechanical and calculated, that if they go wrong at all they go entirely
+      wrong. There is no power of retrieving a defeat, as in simpler and more
+      living organisms. A strong gun can conquer a strong elephant, but a
+      wounded elephant can easily conquer a broken gun. Thus the Prussian
+      monarchy in the eighteenth century, or now, can make a strong army merely
+      by making the men afraid. But it does it with the permanent possibility
+      that the men may some day be more afraid of their enemies than of their
+      officers. Thus the drainage in our cities so long as it is quite solid
+      means a general safety, but if there is one leak it means concentrated
+      poison&mdash;an explosion of deathly germs like dynamite, a spirit of
+      stink. Thus, indeed, all that excellent machinery which is the swiftest
+      thing on earth in saving human labour is also the slowest thing on earth
+      in resisting human interference. It may be easier to get chocolate for
+      nothing out of a shopkeeper than out of an automatic machine. But if you
+      did manage to steal the chocolate, the automatic machine would be much
+      less likely to run after you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull was not long in discovering this truth in connexion with the cold
+      and colossal machinery of this great asylum. He had been shaken by many
+      spiritual states since the instant when he was pitched head foremost into
+      that private cell which was to be his private room till death. He had felt
+      a high fit of pride and poetry, which had ebbed away and left him deadly
+      cold. He had known a period of mere scientific curiosity, in the course of
+      which he examined all the tiles of his cell, with the gratifying
+      conclusion that they were all the same shape and size; but was greatly
+      puzzled about the angle in the wall at the end, and also about an iron peg
+      or spike that stood out from the wall, the object of which he does not
+      know to this day. Then he had a period of mere madness not to be written
+      of by decent men, but only by those few dirty novelists hallooed on by the
+      infernal huntsman to hunt down and humiliate human nature. This also
+      passed, but left behind it a feverish distaste for many of the mere
+      objects around him. Long after he had returned to sanity and such hopeless
+      cheerfulness as a man might have on a desert island, he disliked the
+      regular squares of the pattern of wall and floor and the triangle that
+      terminated his corridor. Above all, he had a hatred, deep as the hell he
+      did not believe in, for the objectless iron peg in the wall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But in all his moods, sane or insane, intolerant or stoical, he never
+      really doubted this: that the machine held him as light and as hopelessly
+      as he had from his birth been held by the hopeless cosmos of his own
+      creed. He knew well the ruthless and inexhaustible resources of our
+      scientific civilization. He no more expected rescue from a medical
+      certificate than rescue from the solar system. In many of his Robinson
+      Crusoe moods he thought kindly of MacIan as of some quarrelsome
+      school-fellow who had long been dead. He thought of leaving in the cell
+      when he died a rigid record of his opinions, and when he began to write
+      them down on scraps of envelope in his pocket, he was startled to discover
+      how much they had changed. Then he remembered the Beauchamp Tower, and
+      tried to write his blazing scepticism on the wall, and discovered that it
+      was all shiny tiles on which nothing could be either drawn or carved. Then
+      for an instant there hung and broke above him like a high wave the whole
+      horror of scientific imprisonment, which manages to deny a man not only
+      liberty, but every accidental comfort of bondage. In the old filthy
+      dungeons men could carve their prayers or protests in the rock. Here the
+      white and slippery walls escaped even from bearing witness. The old
+      prisoners could make a pet of a mouse or a beetle strayed out of a hole.
+      Here the unpierceable walls were washed every morning by an automatic
+      sluice. There was no natural corruption and no merciful decay by which a
+      living thing could enter in. Then James Turnbull looked up and saw the
+      high invincible hatefulness of the society in which he lived, and saw the
+      hatefulness of something else also, which he told himself again and again
+      was not the cosmos in which he believed. But all the time he had never
+      once doubted that the five sides of his cell were for him the wall of the
+      world henceforward, and it gave him a shock of surprise even to discover
+      the faint light through the aperture in the ventilation tube. But he had
+      forgotten how close efficiency has to pack everything together and how
+      easily, therefore, a pipe here or there may leak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull thrust his first finger down the aperture, and at last managed to
+      make a slight further fissure in the piping. The light that came up from
+      beyond was very faint, and apparently indirect; it seemed to fall from
+      some hole or window higher up. As he was screwing his eye to peer at this
+      grey and greasy twilight he was astonished to see another human finger
+      very long and lean come down from above towards the broken pipe and hook
+      it up to something higher. The lighted aperture was abruptly blackened and
+      blocked, presumably by a face and mouth, for something human spoke down
+      the tube, though the words were not clear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who is that?&rdquo; asked Turnbull, trembling with excitement, yet wary and
+      quite resolved not to spoil any chance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After a few indistinct sounds the voice came down with a strong
+      Argyllshire accent:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say, Turnbull, we couldn't fight through this tube, could we?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sentiments beyond speech surged up in Turnbull and silenced him for a
+      space just long enough to be painful. Then he said with his old gaiety: &ldquo;I
+      vote we talk a little first; I don't want to murder the first man I have
+      met for ten million years.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know what you mean,&rdquo; answered the other. &ldquo;It has been awful. For a
+      mortal month I have been alone with God.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull started, and it was on the tip of his tongue to answer: &ldquo;Alone
+      with God! Then you do not know what loneliness is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But he answered, after all, in his old defiant style: &ldquo;Alone with God,
+      were you? And I suppose you found his Majesty's society rather
+      monotonous?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no,&rdquo; said MacIan, and his voice shuddered; &ldquo;it was a great deal too
+      exciting.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      After a very long silence the voice of MacIan said: &ldquo;What do you really
+      hate most in your place?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'd think I was really mad if I told you,&rdquo; answered Turnbull, bitterly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I expect it's the same as mine,&rdquo; said the other voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am sure it's not the same as anybody's,&rdquo; said Turnbull, &ldquo;for it has no
+      rhyme or reason. Perhaps my brain really has gone, but I detest that iron
+      spike in the left wall more than the damned desolation or the damned
+      cocoa. Have you got one in your cell?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not now,&rdquo; replied MacIan with serenity. &ldquo;I've pulled it out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His fellow-prisoner could only repeat the words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I pulled it out the other day when I was off my head,&rdquo; continued the
+      tranquil Highland voice. &ldquo;It looked so unnecessary.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must be ghastly strong,&rdquo; said Turnbull.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One is, when one is mad,&rdquo; was the careless reply, &ldquo;and it had worn a
+      little loose in the socket. Even now I've got it out I can't discover what
+      it was for. But I've found out something a long sight funnier.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean?&rdquo; asked Turnbull.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have found out where A is,&rdquo; said the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Three weeks afterwards MacIan had managed to open up communications which
+      made his meaning plain. By that time the two captives had fully discovered
+      and demonstrated that weakness in the very nature of modern machinery to
+      which we have already referred. The very fact that they were isolated from
+      all companions meant that they were free from all spies, and as there were
+      no gaolers to be bribed, so there were none to be baffled. Machinery
+      brought them their cocoa and cleaned their cells; that machinery was as
+      helpless as it was pitiless. A little patient violence, conducted day
+      after day amid constant mutual suggestion, opened an irregular hole in the
+      wall, large enough to let in a small man, in the exact place where there
+      had been before the tiny ventilation holes. Turnbull tumbled somehow into
+      MacIan's apartment, and his first glance found out that the iron spike was
+      indeed plucked from its socket, and left, moreover, another ragged hole
+      into some hollow place behind. But for this MacIan's cell was the
+      duplicate of Turnbull's&mdash;a long oblong ending in a wedge and lined
+      with cold and lustrous tiles. The small hole from which the peg had been
+      displaced was in that short oblique wall at the end nearest to Turnbull's.
+      That individual looked at it with a puzzled face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is in there?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan answered briefly: &ldquo;Another cell.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But where can the door of it be?&rdquo; said his companion, even more puzzled;
+      &ldquo;the doors of our cells are at the other end.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It has no door,&rdquo; said Evan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the pause of perplexity that followed, an eerie and sinister feeling
+      crept over Turnbull's stubborn soul in spite of himself. The notion of the
+      doorless room chilled him with that sense of half-witted curiosity which
+      one has when something horrible is half understood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;James Turnbull,&rdquo; said MacIan, in a low and shaken voice, &ldquo;these people
+      hate us more than Nero hated Christians, and fear us more than any man
+      feared Nero. They have filled England with frenzy and galloping in order
+      to capture us and wipe us out&mdash;in order to kill us. And they have
+      killed us, for you and I have only made a hole in our coffins. But though
+      this hatred that they felt for us is bigger than they felt for Bonaparte,
+      and more plain and practical than they would feel for Jack the Ripper, yet
+      it is not we whom the people of this place hate most.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A cold and quivering impatience continued to crawl up Turnbull's spine; he
+      had never felt so near to superstition and supernaturalism, and it was not
+      a pretty sort of superstition either.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is another man more fearful and hateful,&rdquo; went on MacIan, in his
+      low monotone voice, &ldquo;and they have buried him even deeper. God knows how
+      they did it, for he was let in by neither door nor window, nor lowered
+      through any opening above. I expect these iron handles that we both hate
+      have been part of some damned machinery for walling him up. He is there. I
+      have looked through the hole at him; but I cannot stand looking at him
+      long, because his face is turned away from me and he does not move.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Al Turnbull's unnatural and uncompleted feelings found their outlet in
+      rushing to the aperture and looking into the unknown room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a third oblong cell exactly like the other two except that it was
+      doorless, and except that on one of the walls was painted a large black A
+      like the B and C outside their own doors. The letter in this case was not
+      painted outside, because this prison had no outside.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the same kind of tiled floor, of which the monotonous squares had
+      maddened Turnbull's eye and brain, was sitting a figure which was
+      startlingly short even for a child, only that the enormous head was ringed
+      with hair of a frosty grey. The figure was draped, both insecurely and
+      insufficiently, in what looked like the remains of a brown flannel
+      dressing-gown; an emptied cup of cocoa stood on the floor beside it, and
+      the creature had his big grey head cocked at a particular angle of inquiry
+      or attention which amid all that gathering gloom and mystery struck one as
+      comic if not cocksure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After six still seconds Turnbull could stand it no longer, but called out
+      to the dwarfish thing&mdash;in what words heaven knows. The thing got up
+      with the promptitude of an animal, and turning round offered the spectacle
+      of two owlish eyes and a huge grey-and-white beard not unlike the plumage
+      of an owl. This extraordinary beard covered him literally to his feet (not
+      that that was very far), and perhaps it was as well that it did, for
+      portions of his remaining clothing seemed to fall off whenever he moved.
+      One talks trivially of a face like parchment, but this old man's face was
+      so wrinkled that it was like a parchment loaded with hieroglyphics. The
+      lines of his face were so deep and complex that one could see five or ten
+      different faces besides the real one, as one can see them in an elaborate
+      wall-paper. And yet while his face seemed like a scripture older than the
+      gods, his eyes were quite bright, blue, and startled like those of a baby.
+      They looked as if they had only an instant before been fitted into his
+      head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Everything depended so obviously upon whether this buried monster spoke
+      that Turnbull did not know or care whether he himself had spoken. He said
+      something or nothing. And then he waited for this dwarfish voice that had
+      been hidden under the mountains of the world. At last it did speak, and
+      spoke in English, with a foreign accent that was neither Latin nor
+      Teutonic. He suddenly stretched out a long and very dirty forefinger, and
+      cried in a voice of clear recognition, like a child's: &ldquo;That's a hole.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He digested the discovery for some seconds, sucking his finger, and then
+      he cried, with a crow of laughter: &ldquo;And that's a head come through it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The hilarious energy in this idiot attitude gave Turnbull another sick
+      turn. He had grown to tolerate those dreary and mumbling madmen who
+      trailed themselves about the beautiful asylum gardens. But there was
+      something new and subversive of the universe in the combination of so much
+      cheerful decision with a body without a brain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why did they put you in such a place?&rdquo; he asked at last with
+      embarrassment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good place. Yes,&rdquo; said the old man, nodding a great many times and
+      beaming like a flattered landlord. &ldquo;Good shape. Long and narrow, with a
+      point. Like this,&rdquo; and he made lovingly with his hands a map of the room
+      in the air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But that's not the best,&rdquo; he added, confidentially. &ldquo;Squares very good; I
+      have a nice long holiday, and can count them. But that's not the best.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is the best?&rdquo; asked Turnbull in great distress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Spike is the best,&rdquo; said the old man, opening his blue eyes blazing; &ldquo;it
+      sticks out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The words Turnbull spoke broke out of him in pure pity. &ldquo;Can't we do
+      anything for you?&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am very happy,&rdquo; said the other, alphabetically. &ldquo;You are a good man.
+      Can I help you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I don't think you can, sir,&rdquo; said Turnbull with rough pathos; &ldquo;I am
+      glad you are contented at least.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The weird old person opened his broad blue eyes and fixed Turnbull with a
+      stare extraordinarily severe. &ldquo;You are quite sure,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I cannot
+      help you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite sure, thank you,&rdquo; said Turnbull with broken brevity. &ldquo;Good day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he turned to MacIan who was standing close behind him, and whose
+      face, now familiar in all its moods, told him easily that Evan had heard
+      the whole of the strange dialogue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Curse those cruel beasts!&rdquo; cried Turnbull. &ldquo;They've turned him to an
+      imbecile just by burying him alive. His brain's like a pin-point now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are sure he is a lunatic?&rdquo; said Evan, slowly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not a lunatic,&rdquo; said Turnbull, &ldquo;an idiot. He just points to things and
+      says that they stick out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He had a notion that he could help us,&rdquo; said MacIan moodily, and began to
+      pace towards the other end of his cell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, it was a bit pathetic,&rdquo; assented Turnbull; &ldquo;such a Thing offering
+      help, and besides&mdash;&mdash; Hallo! Hallo! What's the matter?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God Almighty guide us all!&rdquo; said MacIan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was standing heavy and still at the other end of the room and staring
+      quietly at the door which for thirty days had sealed them up from the sun.
+      Turnbull, following the other's eye, stared at the door likewise, and then
+      he also uttered an exclamation. The iron door was standing about an inch
+      and a half open.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He said&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; began Evan, in a trembling voice&mdash;&ldquo;he offered&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come along, you fool!&rdquo; shouted Turnbull with a sudden and furious energy.
+      &ldquo;I see it all now, and it's the best stroke of luck in the world. You
+      pulled out that iron handle that had screwed up his cell, and it somehow
+      altered the machinery and opened all the doors.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Seizing MacIan by the elbow he bundled him bodily out into the open
+      corridor and ran him on till they saw daylight through a half-darkened
+      window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All the same,&rdquo; said Evan, like one answering in an ordinary conversation,
+      &ldquo;he did ask you whether he could help you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      All this wilderness of windowless passages was so built into the heart of
+      that fortress of fear that it seemed more than an hour before the
+      fugitives had any good glimpse of the outer world. They did not even know
+      what hour of the day it was; and when, turning a corner, they saw the bare
+      tunnel of the corridor end abruptly in a shining square of garden, the
+      grass burning in that strong evening sunshine which makes it burnished
+      gold rather than green, the abrupt opening on to the earth seemed like a
+      hole knocked in the wall of heaven. Only once or twice in life is it
+      permitted to a man thus to see the very universe from outside, and feel
+      existence itself as an adorable adventure not yet begun. As they found
+      this shining escape out of that hellish labyrinth they both had
+      simultaneously the sensation of being babes unborn, of being asked by God
+      if they would like to live upon the earth. They were looking in at one of
+      the seven gates of Eden.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull was the first to leap into the garden, with an earth-spurning
+      leap like that of one who could really spread his wings and fly. MacIan,
+      who came an instant after, was less full of mere animal gusto and fuller
+      of a more fearful and quivering pleasure in the clear and innocent flower
+      colours and the high and holy trees. With one bound they were in that cool
+      and cleared landscape, and they found just outside the door the black-clad
+      gentleman with the cloven chin smilingly regarding them; and his chin
+      seemed to grow longer and longer as he smiled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0018" id="link2H_4_0018">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XVIII. A RIDDLE OF FACES
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Just behind him stood two other doctors: one, the familiar Dr. Quayle, of
+      the blinking eyes and bleating voice; the other, a more commonplace but
+      much more forcible figure, a stout young doctor with short, well-brushed
+      hair and a round but resolute face. At the sight of the escape these two
+      subordinates uttered a cry and sprang forward, but their superior remained
+      motionless and smiling, and somehow the lack of his support seemed to
+      arrest and freeze them in the very gesture of pursuit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let them be,&rdquo; he cried in a voice that cut like a blade of ice; and not
+      only of ice, but of some awful primordial ice that had never been water.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want no devoted champions,&rdquo; said the cutting voice; &ldquo;even the folly of
+      one's friends bores one at last. You don't suppose I should have let these
+      lunatics out of their cells without good reason. I have the best and
+      fullest reason. They can be let out of their cell today, because today the
+      whole world has become their cell. I will have no more medieval mummery of
+      chains and doors. Let them wander about the earth as they wandered about
+      this garden, and I shall still be their easy master. Let them take the
+      wings of the morning and abide in the uttermost parts of the sea&mdash;I
+      am there. Whither shall they go from my presence and whither shall they
+      flee from my spirit? Courage, Dr. Quayle, and do not be downhearted; the
+      real days of tyranny are only beginning on this earth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And with that the Master laughed and swung away from them, almost as if
+      his laugh was a bad thing for people to see.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Might I speak to you a moment?&rdquo; said Turnbull, stepping forward with a
+      respectful resolution. But the shoulders of the Master only seemed to take
+      on a new and unexpected angle of mockery as he strode away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull swung round with great abruptness to the other two doctors, and
+      said, harshly: &ldquo;What in snakes does he mean&mdash;and who are you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My name is Hutton,&rdquo; said the short, stout man, &ldquo;and I am&mdash;well, one
+      of those whose business it is to uphold this establishment.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My name is Turnbull,&rdquo; said the other; &ldquo;I am one of those whose business
+      it is to tear it to the ground.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The small doctor smiled, and Turnbull's anger seemed suddenly to steady
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I don't want to talk about that,&rdquo; he said, calmly; &ldquo;I only want to
+      know what the Master of this asylum really means.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dr. Hutton's smile broke into a laugh which, short as it was, had the
+      suspicion of a shake in it. &ldquo;I suppose you think that quite a simple
+      question,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think it a plain question,&rdquo; said Turnbull, &ldquo;and one that deserves a
+      plain answer. Why did the Master lock us up in a couple of cupboards like
+      jars of pickles for a mortal month, and why does he now let us walk free
+      in the garden again?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I understand,&rdquo; said Hutton, with arched eyebrows, &ldquo;that your complaint is
+      that you are now free to walk in the garden.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My complaint is,&rdquo; said Turnbull, stubbornly, &ldquo;that if I am fit to walk
+      freely now, I have been as fit for the last month. No one has examined me,
+      no one has come near me. Your chief says that I am only free because he
+      has made other arrangements. What are those arrangements?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The young man with the round face looked down for a little while and
+      smoked reflectively. The other and elder doctor had gone pacing nervously
+      by himself upon the lawn. At length the round face was lifted again, and
+      showed two round blue eyes with a certain frankness in them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I don't see that it can do any harm to tell you know,&rdquo; he said.
+      &ldquo;You were shut up just then because it was just during that month that the
+      Master was bringing off his big scheme. He was getting his bill through
+      Parliament, and organizing the new medical police. But of course you
+      haven't heard of all that; in fact, you weren't meant to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Heard of all what?&rdquo; asked the impatient inquirer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's a new law now, and the asylum powers are greatly extended. Even
+      if you did escape now, any policeman would take you up in the next town if
+      you couldn't show a certificate of sanity from us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; continued Dr. Hutton, &ldquo;the Master described before both Houses of
+      Parliament the real scientific objection to all existing legislation about
+      lunacy. As he very truly said, the mistake was in supposing insanity to be
+      merely an exception or an extreme. Insanity, like forgetfulness, is simply
+      a quality which enters more or less into all human beings; and for
+      practical purposes it is more necessary to know whose mind is really
+      trustworthy than whose has some accidental taint. We have therefore
+      reversed the existing method, and people now have to prove that they are
+      sane. In the first village you entered, the village constable would notice
+      that you were not wearing on the left lapel of your coat the small pewter
+      S which is now necessary to any one who walks about beyond asylum bounds
+      or outside asylum hours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean to say,&rdquo; said Turnbull, &ldquo;that this was what the Master of the
+      asylum urged before the House of Commons?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dr. Hutton nodded with gravity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you mean to say,&rdquo; cried Turnbull, with a vibrant snort, &ldquo;that that
+      proposal was passed in an assembly that calls itself democratic?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor showed his whole row of teeth in a smile. &ldquo;Oh, the assembly
+      calls itself Socialist now,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;But we explained to them that this
+      was a question for men of science.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull gave one stamp upon the gravel, then pulled himself together, and
+      resumed: &ldquo;But why should your infernal head medicine-man lock us up in
+      separate cells while he was turning England into a madhouse? I'm not the
+      Prime Minister; we're not the House of Lords.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He wasn't afraid of the Prime Minister,&rdquo; replied Dr. Hutton; &ldquo;he isn't
+      afraid of the House of Lords. But&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well?&rdquo; inquired Turnbull, stamping again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is afraid of you,&rdquo; said Hutton, simply. &ldquo;Why, didn't you know?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan, who had not spoken yet, made one stride forward and stood with
+      shaking limbs and shining eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He was afraid!&rdquo; began Evan, thickly. &ldquo;You mean to say that we&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean to say the plain truth now that the danger is over,&rdquo; said Hutton,
+      calmly; &ldquo;most certainly you two were the only people he ever was afraid
+      of.&rdquo; Then he added in a low but not inaudible voice: &ldquo;Except one&mdash;whom
+      he feared worse, and has buried deeper.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come away,&rdquo; cried MacIan, &ldquo;this has to be thought about.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull followed him in silence as he strode away, but just before he
+      vanished, turned and spoke again to the doctors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what has got hold of people?&rdquo; he asked, abruptly. &ldquo;Why should all
+      England have gone dotty on the mere subject of dottiness?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dr. Hutton smiled his open smile once more and bowed slightly. &ldquo;As to that
+      also,&rdquo; he replied, &ldquo;I don't want to make you vain.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull swung round without a word, and he and his companion were lost in
+      the lustrous leafage of the garden. They noticed nothing special about the
+      scene, except that the garden seemed more exquisite than ever in the
+      deepening sunset, and that there seemed to be many more people, whether
+      patients or attendants, walking about in it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From behind the two black-coated doctors as they stood on the lawn another
+      figure somewhat similarly dressed strode hurriedly past them, having also
+      grizzled hair and an open flapping frock-coat. Both his decisive step and
+      dapper black array marked him out as another medical man, or at least a
+      man in authority, and as he passed Turnbull the latter was aroused by a
+      strong impression of having seen the man somewhere before. It was no one
+      that he knew well, yet he was certain that it was someone at whom he had
+      at sometime or other looked steadily. It was neither the face of a friend
+      nor of an enemy; it aroused neither irritation nor tenderness, yet it was
+      a face which had for some reason been of great importance in his life.
+      Turning and returning, and making detours about the garden, he managed to
+      study the man's face again and again&mdash;a moustached, somewhat military
+      face with a monocle, the sort of face that is aristocratic without being
+      distinguished. Turnbull could not remember any particular doctors in his
+      decidedly healthy existence. Was the man a long-lost uncle, or was he only
+      somebody who had sat opposite him regularly in a railway train? At that
+      moment the man knocked down his own eye-glass with a gesture of annoyance;
+      Turnbull remembered the gesture, and the truth sprang up solid in front of
+      him. The man with the moustaches was Cumberland Vane, the London police
+      magistrate before whom he and MacIan had once stood on their trial. The
+      magistrate must have been transferred to some other official duties&mdash;to
+      something connected with the inspection of asylums.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull's heart gave a leap of excitement which was half hope. As a
+      magistrate Mr. Cumberland Vane had been somewhat careless and shallow, but
+      certainly kindly, and not inaccessible to common sense so long as it was
+      put to him in strictly conventional language. He was at least an authority
+      of a more human and refreshing sort than the crank with the wagging beard
+      or the fiend with the forked chin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He went straight up to the magistrate, and said: &ldquo;Good evening, Mr. Vane;
+      I doubt if you remember me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cumberland Vane screwed the eye-glass into his scowling face for an
+      instant, and then said curtly but not uncivilly: &ldquo;Yes, I remember you,
+      sir; assault or battery, wasn't it?&mdash;a fellow broke your window. A
+      tall fellow&mdash;McSomething&mdash;case made rather a noise afterwards.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;MacIan is the name, sir,&rdquo; said Turnbull, respectfully; &ldquo;I have him here
+      with me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eh!&rdquo; said Vane very sharply. &ldquo;Confound him! Has he got anything to do
+      with this game?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Vane,&rdquo; said Turnbull, pacifically, &ldquo;I will not pretend that either he
+      or I acted quite decorously on that occasion. You were very lenient with
+      us, and did not treat us as criminals when you very well might. So I am
+      sure you will give us your testimony that, even if we were criminals, we
+      are not lunatics in any legal or medical sense whatever. I am sure you
+      will use your influence for us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My influence!&rdquo; repeated the magistrate, with a slight start. &ldquo;I don't
+      quite understand you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know in what capacity you are here,&rdquo; continued Turnbull, gravely,
+      &ldquo;but a legal authority of your distinction must certainly be here in an
+      important one. Whether you are visiting and inspecting the place, or
+      attached to it as some kind of permanent legal adviser, your opinion must
+      still&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cumberland Vane exploded with a detonation of oaths; his face was
+      transfigured with fury and contempt, and yet in some odd way he did not
+      seem specially angry with Turnbull.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But Lord bless us and save us!&rdquo; he gasped, at length; &ldquo;I'm not here as an
+      official at all. I'm here as a patient. The cursed pack of rat-catching
+      chemists all say that I've lost my wits.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You!&rdquo; cried Turnbull with terrible emphasis. &ldquo;You! Lost your wits!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In the rush of his real astonishment at this towering unreality Turnbull
+      almost added: &ldquo;Why, you haven't got any to lose.&rdquo; But he fortunately
+      remembered the remains of his desperate diplomacy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This can't go on,&rdquo; he said, positively. &ldquo;Men like MacIan and I may suffer
+      unjustly all our lives, but a man like you must have influence.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is only one man who has any influence in England now,&rdquo; said Vane,
+      and his high voice fell to a sudden and convincing quietude.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whom do you mean?&rdquo; asked Turnbull.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean that cursed fellow with the long split chin,&rdquo; said the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it really true,&rdquo; asked Turnbull, &ldquo;that he has been allowed to buy up
+      and control such a lot? What put the country into such a state?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Cumberland Vane laughed outright. &ldquo;What put the country into such a
+      state?&rdquo; he asked. &ldquo;Why, you did. When you were fool enough to agree to
+      fight MacIan, after all, everybody was ready to believe that the Bank of
+      England might paint itself pink with white spots.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't understand,&rdquo; answered Turnbull. &ldquo;Why should you be surprised at
+      my fighting? I hope I have always fought.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Cumberland Vane, airily, &ldquo;you didn't believe in religion, you
+      see&mdash;so we thought you were safe at any rate. You went further in
+      your language than most of us wanted to go; no good in just hurting one's
+      mother's feelings, I think. But of course we all knew you were right, and,
+      really, we relied on you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you?&rdquo; said the editor of <i>The Atheist</i> with a bursting heart. &ldquo;I
+      am sorry you did not tell me so at the time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He walked away very rapidly and flung himself on a garden seat, and for
+      some six minutes his own wrongs hid from him the huge and hilarious fact
+      that Cumberland Vane had been locked up as a lunatic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The garden of the madhouse was so perfectly planned, and answered so
+      exquisitely to every hour of daylight, that one could almost fancy that
+      the sunlight was caught there tangled in its tinted trees, as the wise men
+      of Gotham tried to chain the spring to a bush. Or it seemed as if this
+      ironic paradise still kept its unique dawn or its special sunset while the
+      rest of the earthly globe rolled through its ordinary hours. There was one
+      evening, or late afternoon, in particular, which Evan MacIan will remember
+      in the last moments of death. It was what artists call a daffodil sky, but
+      it is coarsened even by reference to a daffodil. It was of that innocent
+      lonely yellow which has never heard of orange, though it might turn quite
+      unconsciously into green. Against it the tops, one might say the turrets,
+      of the clipt and ordered trees were outlined in that shade of veiled
+      violet which tints the tops of lavender. A white early moon was hardly
+      traceable upon that delicate yellow. MacIan, I say, will remember this
+      tender and transparent evening, partly because of its virgin gold and
+      silver, and partly because he passed beneath it through the most horrible
+      instant of his life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull was sitting on his seat on the lawn, and the golden evening
+      impressed even his positive nature, as indeed it might have impressed the
+      oxen in a field. He was shocked out of his idle mood of awe by seeing
+      MacIan break from behind the bushes and run across the lawn with an action
+      he had never seen in the man before, with all his experience of the
+      eccentric humours of this Celt. MacIan fell on the bench, shaking it so
+      that it rattled, and gripped it with his knees like one in dreadful pain
+      of body. That particular run and tumble is typical only of a man who has
+      been hit by some sudden and incurable evil, who is bitten by a viper or
+      condemned to be hanged. Turnbull looked up in the white face of his friend
+      and enemy, and almost turned cold at what he saw there. He had seen the
+      blue but gloomy eyes of the western Highlander troubled by as many
+      tempests as his own west Highland seas, but there had always been a fixed
+      star of faith behind the storms. Now the star had gone out, and there was
+      only misery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet MacIan had the strength to answer the question where Turnbull, taken
+      by surprise, had not the strength to ask it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are right, they are right!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;O my God! they are right,
+      Turnbull. I ought to be here!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He went on with shapeless fluency as if he no longer had the heart to
+      choose or check his speech. &ldquo;I suppose I ought to have guessed long ago&mdash;all
+      my big dreams and schemes&mdash;and everyone being against us&mdash;but I
+      was stuck up, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do tell me about it, really,&rdquo; cried the atheist, and, faced with the
+      furnace of the other's pain, he did not notice that he spoke with the
+      affection of a father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am mad, Turnbull,&rdquo; said Evan, with a dead clearness of speech, and
+      leant back against the garden seat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nonsense,&rdquo; said the other, clutching at the obvious cue of benevolent
+      brutality, &ldquo;this is one of your silly moods.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan shook his head. &ldquo;I know enough about myself,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;to allow
+      for any mood, though it opened heaven or hell. But to see things&mdash;to
+      see them walking solid in the sun&mdash;things that can't be there&mdash;real
+      mystics never do that, Turnbull.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What things?&rdquo; asked the other, incredulously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan lowered his voice. &ldquo;I saw <i>her</i>,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;three minutes ago&mdash;walking
+      here in this hell yard.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Between trying to look scornful and really looking startled, Turnbull's
+      face was confused enough to emit no speech, and Evan went on in monotonous
+      sincerity:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I saw her walk behind those blessed trees against that holy sky of gold
+      as plain as I can see her whenever I shut my eyes. I did shut them, and
+      opened them again, and she was still there&mdash;that is, of course, she
+      wasn't&mdash;&mdash; She still had a little fur round her neck, but her
+      dress was a shade brighter than when I really saw her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear fellow,&rdquo; cried Turnbull, rallying a hearty laugh, &ldquo;the fancies
+      have really got hold of you. You mistook some other poor girl here for
+      her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mistook some other&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; said MacIan, and words failed him
+      altogether.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They sat for some moments in the mellow silence of the evening garden, a
+      silence that was stifling for the sceptic, but utterly empty and final for
+      the man of faith. At last he broke out again with the words: &ldquo;Well,
+      anyhow, if I'm mad, I'm glad I'm mad on that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull murmured some clumsy deprecation, and sat stolidly smoking to
+      collect his thoughts; the next instant he had all his nerves engaged in
+      the mere effort to sit still.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Across the clear space of cold silver and a pale lemon sky which was left
+      by the gap in the ilex-trees there passed a slim, dark figure, a profile
+      and the poise of a dark head like a bird's, which really pinned him to his
+      seat with the point of coincidence. With an effort he got to his feet, and
+      said with a voice of affected insouciance: &ldquo;By George! MacIan, she is
+      uncommonly like&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What!&rdquo; cried MacIan, with a leap of eagerness that was heart-breaking,
+      &ldquo;do you see her, too?&rdquo; And the blaze came back into the centre of his
+      eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull's tawny eyebrows were pulled together with a peculiar frown of
+      curiosity, and all at once he walked quickly across the lawn. MacIan sat
+      rigid, but peered after him with open and parched lips. He saw the sight
+      which either proved him sane or proved the whole universe half-witted; he
+      saw the man of flesh approach that beautiful phantom, saw their gestures
+      of recognition, and saw them against the sunset joining hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He could stand it no longer, but ran across to the path, turned the corner
+      and saw standing quite palpable in the evening sunlight, talking with a
+      casual grace to Turnbull, the face and figure which had filled his
+      midnights with frightfully vivid or desperately half-forgotten features.
+      She advanced quite pleasantly and coolly, and put out her hand. The moment
+      that he touched it he knew that he was sane even if the solar system was
+      crazy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was entirely elegant and unembarrassed. That is the awful thing about
+      women&mdash;they refuse to be emotional at emotional moments, upon some
+      such ludicrous pretext as there being someone else there. But MacIan was
+      in a condition of criticism much less than the average masculine one,
+      being in fact merely overturned by the rushing riddle of the events.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Evan does not know to this day what particular question he asked, but he
+      vividly remembers that she answered, and every line or fluctuation of her
+      face as she said it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, don't you know?&rdquo; she said, smiling, and suddenly lifting her level
+      brown eyebrows. &ldquo;Haven't you heard the news? I'm a lunatic.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she added after a short pause, and with a sort of pride: &ldquo;I've got a
+      certificate.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her manner, by the matchless social stoicism of her sex, was entirely
+      suited to a drawing-room, but Evan's reply fell somewhat far short of such
+      a standard, as he only said: &ldquo;What the devil in hell does all this
+      nonsense mean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Really,&rdquo; said the young lady, and laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I beg your pardon,&rdquo; said the unhappy young man, rather wildly, &ldquo;but what
+      I mean is, why are you here in an asylum?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The young woman broke again into one of the maddening and mysterious
+      laughs of femininity. Then she composed her features, and replied with
+      equal dignity: &ldquo;Well, if it comes to that, why are you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The fact that Turnbull had strolled away and was investigating
+      rhododendrons may have been due to Evan's successful prayers to the other
+      world, or possibly to his own pretty successful experience of this one.
+      But though they two were as isolated as a new Adam and Eve in a pretty
+      ornamental Eden, the lady did not relax by an inch the rigour of her
+      badinage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am locked up in the madhouse,&rdquo; said Evan, with a sort of stiff pride,
+      &ldquo;because I tried to keep my promise to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite so,&rdquo; answered the inexplicable lady, nodding with a perfectly
+      blazing smile, &ldquo;and I am locked up because it was to me you promised.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is outrageous!&rdquo; cried Evan; &ldquo;it is impossible!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, you can see my certificate if you like,&rdquo; she replied with some
+      hauteur.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan stared at her and then at his boots, and then at the sky and then
+      at her again. He was quite sure now that he himself was not mad, and the
+      fact rather added to his perplexity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he drew nearer to her, and said in a dry and dreadful voice: &ldquo;Oh,
+      don't condescend to play the fool with such a fool as me. Are you really
+      locked up here as a patient&mdash;because you helped us to escape?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she said, still smiling, but her steady voice had a shake in it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Evan flung his big elbow across his forehead and burst into tears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The pure lemon of the sky faded into purer white as the great sunset
+      silently collapsed. The birds settled back into the trees; the moon began
+      to glow with its own light. Mr. James Turnbull continued his botanical
+      researches into the structure of the rhododendron. But the lady did not
+      move an inch until Evan had flung up his face again; and when he did he
+      saw by the last gleam of sunlight that it was not only his face that was
+      wet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. James Turnbull had all his life professed a profound interest in
+      physical science, and the phenomena of a good garden were really a
+      pleasure to him; but after three-quarters of an hour or so even the
+      apostle of science began to find rhododendrus a bore, and was somewhat
+      relieved when an unexpected development of events obliged him to transfer
+      his researches to the equally interesting subject of hollyhocks, which
+      grew some fifty feet farther along the path. The ostensible cause of his
+      removal was the unexpected reappearance of his two other acquaintances
+      walking and talking laboriously along the way, with the black head bent
+      close to the brown one. Even hollyhocks detained Turnbull but a short
+      time. Having rapidly absorbed all the important principles affecting the
+      growth of those vegetables, he jumped over a flower-bed and walked back
+      into the building. The other two came up along the slow course of the path
+      talking and talking. No one but God knows what they said (for they
+      certainly have forgotten), and if I remembered it I would not repeat it.
+      When they parted at the head of the walk she put out her hand again in the
+      same well-bred way, although it trembled; he seemed to restrain a gesture
+      as he let it fall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If it is really always to be like this,&rdquo; he said, thickly, &ldquo;it would not
+      matter if we were here for ever.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You tried to kill yourself four times for me,&rdquo; she said, unsteadily, &ldquo;and
+      I have been chained up as a madwoman for you. I really think that after
+      that&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I know,&rdquo; said Evan in a low voice, looking down. &ldquo;After that we
+      belong to each other. We are sort of sold to each other&mdash;until the
+      stars fall.&rdquo; Then he looked up suddenly, and said: &ldquo;By the way, what is
+      your name?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My name is Beatrice Drake,&rdquo; she replied with complete gravity. &ldquo;You can
+      see it on my certificate of lunacy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0019" id="link2H_4_0019">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XIX. THE LAST PARLEY
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull walked away, wildly trying to explain to himself the presence of
+      two personal acquaintances so different as Vane and the girl. As he
+      skirted a low hedge of laurel, an enormously tall young man leapt over it,
+      stood in front of him, and almost fell on his neck as if seeking to
+      embrace him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't you know me?&rdquo; almost sobbed the young man, who was in the highest
+      spirits. &ldquo;Ain't I written on your heart, old boy? I say, what did you do
+      with my yacht?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take your arms off my neck,&rdquo; said Turnbull, irritably. &ldquo;Are you mad?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The young man sat down on the gravel path and went into ecstasies of
+      laughter. &ldquo;No, that's just the fun of it&mdash;I'm not mad,&rdquo; he replied.
+      &ldquo;They've shut me up in this place, and I'm not mad.&rdquo; And he went off again
+      into mirth as innocent as wedding-bells.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull, whose powers of surprise were exhausted, rolled his round grey
+      eyes and said, &ldquo;Mr. Wilkinson, I think,&rdquo; because he could not think of
+      anything else to say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The tall man sitting on the gravel bowed with urbanity, and said: &ldquo;Quite
+      at your service. Not to be confused with the Wilkinsons of Cumberland; and
+      as I say, old boy, what have you done with my yacht? You see, they've
+      locked me up here&mdash;in this garden&mdash;and a yacht would be a sort
+      of occupation for an unmarried man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am really horribly sorry,&rdquo; began Turnbull, in the last stage of bated
+      bewilderment and exasperation, &ldquo;but really&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I can see you can't have it on you at the moment,&rdquo; said Mr. Wilkinson
+      with much intellectual magnanimity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, the fact is&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; began Turnbull again, and then the
+      phrase was frozen on his mouth, for round the corner came the goatlike
+      face and gleaming eye-glasses of Dr. Quayle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, my dear Mr. Wilkinson,&rdquo; said the doctor, as if delighted at a
+      coincidence; &ldquo;and Mr. Turnbull, too. Why, I want to speak to Mr.
+      Turnbull.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Turnbull made some movement rather of surrender than assent, and the
+      doctor caught it up exquisitely, showing even more of his two front teeth.
+      &ldquo;I am sure Mr. Wilkinson will excuse us a moment.&rdquo; And with flying
+      frock-coat he led Turnbull rapidly round the corner of a path.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear sir,&rdquo; he said, in a quite affectionate manner, &ldquo;I do not mind
+      telling you&mdash;you are such a very hopeful case&mdash;you understand so
+      well the scientific point of view; and I don't like to see you bothered by
+      the really hopeless cases. They are monotonous and maddening. The man you
+      have just been talking to, poor fellow, is one of the strongest cases of
+      pure <i>idee fixe</i> that we have. It's very sad, and I'm afraid utterly
+      incurable. He keeps on telling everybody&rdquo;&mdash;and the doctor lowered his
+      voice confidentially&mdash;&ldquo;he tells everybody that two people have taken
+      is yacht. His account of how he lost it is quite incoherent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull stamped his foot on the gravel path, and called out: &ldquo;Oh, I can't
+      stand this. Really&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know, I know,&rdquo; said the psychologist, mournfully; &ldquo;it is a most
+      melancholy case, and also fortunately a very rare one. It is so rare, in
+      fact, that in one classification of these maladies it is entered under a
+      heading by itself&mdash;Perdinavititis, mental inflammation creating the
+      impression that one has lost a ship. Really,&rdquo; he added, with a kind of
+      half-embarrassed guilt, &ldquo;it's rather a feather in my cap. I discovered the
+      only existing case of perdinavititis.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But this won't do, doctor,&rdquo; said Turnbull, almost tearing his hair, &ldquo;this
+      really won't do. The man really did lose a ship. Indeed, not to put too
+      fine a point on it, I took his ship.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dr. Quayle swung round for an instant so that his silk-lined overcoat
+      rustled, and stared singularly at Turnbull. Then he said with hurried
+      amiability: &ldquo;Why, of course you did. Quite so, quite so,&rdquo; and with
+      courteous gestures went striding up the garden path. Under the first
+      laburnum-tree he stopped, however, and pulling out his pencil and notebook
+      wrote down feverishly: &ldquo;Singular development in the Elenthero-maniac,
+      Turnbull. Sudden manifestation of Rapinavititis&mdash;the delusion that
+      one has stolen a ship. First case ever recorded.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull stood for an instant staggered into stillness. Then he ran raging
+      round the garden to find MacIan, just as a husband, even a bad husband,
+      will run raging to find his wife if he is full of a furious query. He
+      found MacIan stalking moodily about the half-lit garden, after his
+      extraordinary meeting with Beatrice. No one who saw his slouching stride
+      and sunken head could have known that his soul was in the seventh heaven
+      of ecstasy. He did not think; he did not even very definitely desire. He
+      merely wallowed in memories, chiefly in material memories; words said with
+      a certain cadence or trivial turns of the neck or wrist. Into the middle
+      of his stationary and senseless enjoyment were thrust abruptly the
+      projecting elbow and the projecting red beard of Turnbull. MacIan stepped
+      back a little, and the soul in his eyes came very slowly to its windows.
+      When James Turnbull had the glittering sword-point planted upon his breast
+      he was in far less danger. For three pulsating seconds after the
+      interruption MacIan was in a mood to have murdered his father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And yet his whole emotional anger fell from him when he saw Turnbull's
+      face, in which the eyes seemed to be bursting from the head like bullets.
+      All the fire and fragrance even of young and honourable love faded for a
+      moment before that stiff agony of interrogation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you hurt, Turnbull?&rdquo; he asked, anxiously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am dying,&rdquo; answered the other quite calmly. &ldquo;I am in the quite literal
+      sense of the words dying to know something. I want to know what all this
+      can possibly mean.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan did not answer, and he continued with asperity: &ldquo;You are still
+      thinking about that girl, but I tell you the whole thing is incredible.
+      She's not the only person here. I've met the fellow Wilkinson, whose yacht
+      we lost. I've met the very magistrate you were hauled up to when you broke
+      my window. What can it mean&mdash;meeting all these old people again? One
+      never meets such old friends again except in a dream.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then after a silence he cried with a rending sincerity: &ldquo;Are you really
+      there, Evan? Have you ever been really there? Am I simply dreaming?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan had been listening with a living silence to every word, and now his
+      face flamed with one of his rare revelations of life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, you good atheist,&rdquo; he cried; &ldquo;no, you clean, courteous, reverent,
+      pious old blasphemer. No, you are not dreaming&mdash;you are waking up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There are two states where one meets so many old friends,&rdquo; said MacIan;
+      &ldquo;one is a dream, the other is the end of the world.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you say&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say this is not a dream,&rdquo; said Evan in a ringing voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You really mean to suggest&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; began Turnbull.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Be silent! or I shall say it all wrong,&rdquo; said MacIan, breathing hard.
+      &ldquo;It's hard to explain, anyhow. An apocalypse is the opposite of a dream. A
+      dream is falser than the outer life. But the end of the world is more
+      actual than the world it ends. I don't say this is really the end of the
+      world, but it's something like that&mdash;it's the end of something. All
+      the people are crowding into one corner. Everything is coming to a point.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is the point?&rdquo; asked Turnbull.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can't see it,&rdquo; said Evan; &ldquo;it is too large and plain.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then after a silence he said: &ldquo;I can't see it&mdash;and yet I will try to
+      describe it. Turnbull, three days ago I saw quite suddenly that our duel
+      was not right after all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Three days ago!&rdquo; repeated Turnbull. &ldquo;When and why did this illumination
+      occur?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I knew I was not quite right,&rdquo; answered Evan, &ldquo;the moment I saw the round
+      eyes of that old man in the cell.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Old man in the cell!&rdquo; repeated his wondering companion. &ldquo;Do you mean the
+      poor old idiot who likes spikes to stick out?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said MacIan, after a slight pause, &ldquo;I mean the poor old idiot who
+      likes spikes to stick out. When I saw his eyes and heard his old croaking
+      accent, I knew that it would not really have been right to kill you. It
+      would have been a venial sin.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am much obliged,&rdquo; said Turnbull, gruffly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must give me time,&rdquo; said MacIan, quite patiently, &ldquo;for I am trying to
+      tell the whole truth. I am trying to tell more of it than I know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So you see I confess&rdquo;&mdash;he went on with laborious distinctness&mdash;&ldquo;I
+      confess that all the people who called our duel mad were right in a way. I
+      would confess it to old Cumberland Vane and his eye-glass. I would confess
+      it even to that old ass in brown flannel who talked to us about Love. Yes,
+      they are right in a way. I am a little mad.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stopped and wiped his brow as if he were literally doing heavy labour.
+      Then he went on:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am a little mad; but, after all, it is only a little madness. When
+      hundreds of high-minded men had fought duels about a jostle with the elbow
+      or the ace of spades, the whole world need not have gone wild over my one
+      little wildness. Plenty of other people have killed themselves between
+      then and now. But all England has gone into captivity in order to take us
+      captive. All England has turned into a lunatic asylum in order to prove us
+      lunatics. Compared with the general public, I might positively be called
+      sane.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stopped again, and went on with the same air of travailing with the
+      truth:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When I saw that, I saw everything; I saw the Church and the world. The
+      Church in its earthly action has really touched morbid things&mdash;tortures
+      and bleeding visions and blasts of extermination. The Church has had her
+      madnesses, and I am one of them. I am the massacre of St. Bartholomew. I
+      am the Inquisition of Spain. I do not say that we have never gone mad, but
+      I say that we are fit to act as keepers to our enemies. Massacre is wicked
+      even with a provocation, as in the Bartholomew. But your modern Nietzsche
+      will tell you that massacre would be glorious without a provocation.
+      Torture should be violently stopped, though the Church is doing it. But
+      your modern Tolstoy will tell you that it ought not to be violently
+      stopped whoever is doing it. In the long run, which is most mad&mdash;the
+      Church or the world? Which is madder, the Spanish priest who permitted
+      tyranny, or the Prussian sophist who admired it? Which is madder, the
+      Russian priest who discourages righteous rebellion, or the Russian
+      novelist who forbids it? That is the final and blasting test. The world
+      left to itself grows wilder than any creed. A few days ago you and I were
+      the maddest people in England. Now, by God! I believe we are the sanest.
+      That is the only real question&mdash;whether the Church is really madder
+      than the world. Let the rationalists run their own race, and let us see
+      where <i>they</i> end. If the world has some healthy balance other than
+      God, let the world find it. Does the world find it? Cut the world loose,&rdquo;
+       he cried with a savage gesture. &ldquo;Does the world stand on its own end? Does
+      it stand, or does it stagger?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull remained silent, and MacIan said to him, looking once more at the
+      earth: &ldquo;It staggers, Turnbull. It cannot stand by itself; you know it
+      cannot. It has been the sorrow of your life. Turnbull, this garden is not
+      a dream, but an apocalyptic fulfilment. This garden is the world gone
+      mad.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull did not move his head, and he had been listening all the time;
+      yet, somehow, the other knew that for the first time he was listening
+      seriously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The world has gone mad,&rdquo; said MacIan, &ldquo;and it has gone mad about Us. The
+      world takes the trouble to make a big mistake about every little mistake
+      made by the Church. That is why they have turned ten counties to a
+      madhouse; that is why crowds of kindly people are poured into this filthy
+      melting-pot. Now is the judgement of this world. The Prince of this World
+      is judged, and he is judged exactly because he is judging. There is at
+      last one simple solution to the quarrel between the ball and the cross&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull for the first time started.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The ball and&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; he repeated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is the matter with you?&rdquo; asked MacIan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I had a dream,&rdquo; said Turnbull, thickly and obscurely, &ldquo;in which I saw the
+      cross struck crooked and the ball secure&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I had a dream,&rdquo; said MacIan, &ldquo;in which I saw the cross erect and the ball
+      invisible. They were both dreams from hell. There must be some round earth
+      to plant the cross upon. But here is the awful difference&mdash;that the
+      round world will not consent even to continue round. The astronomers are
+      always telling us that it is shaped like an orange, or like an egg, or
+      like a German sausage. They beat the old world about like a bladder and
+      thump it into a thousand shapeless shapes. Turnbull, we cannot trust the
+      ball to be always a ball; we cannot trust reason to be reasonable. In the
+      end the great terrestrial globe will go quite lop-sided, and only the
+      cross will stand upright.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a long silence, and then Turnbull said, hesitatingly: &ldquo;Has it
+      occurred to you that since&mdash;since those two dreams, or whatever they
+      were&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well?&rdquo; murmured MacIan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Since then,&rdquo; went on Turnbull, in the same low voice, &ldquo;since then we have
+      never even looked for our swords.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are right,&rdquo; answered Evan almost inaudibly. &ldquo;We have found something
+      which we both hate more than we ever hated each other, and I think I know
+      its name.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull seemed to frown and flinch for a moment. &ldquo;It does not much matter
+      what you call it,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;so long as you keep out of its way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The bushes broke and snapped abruptly behind them, and a very tall figure
+      towered above Turnbull with an arrogant stoop and a projecting chin, a
+      chin of which the shape showed queerly even in its shadow upon the path.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see that is not so easy,&rdquo; said MacIan between his teeth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They looked up into the eyes of the Master, but looked only for a moment.
+      The eyes were full of a frozen and icy wrath, a kind of utterly heartless
+      hatred. His voice was for the first time devoid of irony. There was no
+      more sarcasm in it than there is in an iron club.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will be inside the building in three minutes,&rdquo; he said, with
+      pulverizing precision, &ldquo;or you will be fired on by the artillery at all
+      the windows. There is too much talking in this garden; we intend to close
+      it. You will be accommodated indoors.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; said MacIan, with a long and satisfied sigh, &ldquo;then I was right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he turned his back and walked obediently towards the building.
+      Turnbull seemed to canvass for a few minutes the notion of knocking the
+      Master down, and then fell under the same almost fairy fatalism as his
+      companion. In some strange way it did seem that the more smoothly they
+      yielded, the more swiftly would events sweep on to some great collision.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0020" id="link2H_4_0020">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XX. DIES IRAE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      As they advanced towards the asylum they looked up at its rows on rows of
+      windows, and understood the Master's material threat. By means of that
+      complex but concealed machinery which ran like a network of nerves over
+      the whole fabric, there had been shot out under every window-ledge rows
+      and rows of polished-steel cylinders, the cold miracles of modern gunnery.
+      They commanded the whole garden and the whole country-side, and could have
+      blown to pieces an army corps.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This silent declaration of war had evidently had its complete effect. As
+      MacIan and Turnbull walked steadily but slowly towards the entrance hall
+      of the institution, they could see that most, or at least many, of the
+      patients had already gathered there as well as the staff of doctors and
+      the whole regiment of keepers and assistants. But when they entered the
+      lamp-lit hall, and the high iron door was clashed to and locked behind
+      them, yet a new amazement leapt into their eyes, and the stalwart Turnbull
+      almost fell. For he saw a sight which was indeed, as MacIan had said&mdash;either
+      the Day of Judgement or a dream.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Within a few feet of him at one corner of the square of standing people
+      stood the girl he had known in Jersey, Madeleine Durand. She looked
+      straight at him with a steady smile which lit up the scene of darkness and
+      unreason like the light of some honest fireside. Her square face and
+      throat were thrown back, as her habit was, and there was something almost
+      sleepy in the geniality of her eyes. He saw her first, and for a few
+      seconds saw her only; then the outer edge of his eyesight took in all the
+      other staring faces, and he saw all the faces he had ever seen for weeks
+      and months past. There was the Tolstoyan in Jaeger flannel, with the
+      yellow beard that went backward and the foolish nose and eyes that went
+      forward, with the curiosity of a crank. He was talking eagerly to Mr.
+      Gordon, the corpulent Jew shopkeeper whom they had once gagged in his own
+      shop. There was the tipsy old Hertfordshire rustic; he was talking
+      energetically to himself. There was not only Mr. Vane the magistrate, but
+      the clerk of Mr. Vane, the magistrate. There was not only Miss Drake of
+      the motor-car, but also Miss Drake's chauffeur. Nothing wild or unfamiliar
+      could have produced upon Turnbull such a nightmare impression as that ring
+      of familiar faces. Yet he had one intellectual shock which was greater
+      than all the others. He stepped impulsively forward towards Madeleine, and
+      then wavered with a kind of wild humility. As he did so he caught sight of
+      another square face behind Madeleine's, a face with long grey whiskers and
+      an austere stare. It was old Durand, the girls' father; and when Turnbull
+      saw him he saw the last and worst marvel of that monstrous night. He
+      remembered Durand; he remembered his monotonous, everlasting lucidity, his
+      stupefyingly sensible views of everything, his colossal contentment with
+      truisms merely because they were true. &ldquo;Confound it all!&rdquo; cried Turnbull
+      to himself, &ldquo;if <i>he</i> is in the asylum, there can't be anyone
+      outside.&rdquo; He drew nearer to Madeleine, but still doubtfully and all the
+      more so because she still smiled at him. MacIan had already gone across to
+      Beatrice with an air of fright.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then all these bewildered but partly amicable recognitions were cloven by
+      a cruel voice which always made all human blood turn bitter. The Master
+      was standing in the middle of the room surveying the scene like a great
+      artist looking at a completed picture. Handsome as he looked, they had
+      never seen so clearly what was really hateful in his face; and even then
+      they could only express it by saying that the arched brows and the long
+      emphatic chin gave it always a look of being lit from below, like the face
+      of some infernal actor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is indeed a cosy party,&rdquo; he said, with glittering eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Master evidently meant to say more, but before he could say anything
+      M. Durand had stepped right up to him and was speaking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was speaking exactly as a French bourgeois speaks to the manager of a
+      restaurant. That is, he spoke with rattling and breathless rapidity, but
+      with no incoherence, and therefore with no emotion. It was a steady,
+      monotonous vivacity, which came not seemingly from passion, but merely
+      from the reason having been sent off at a gallop. He was saying something
+      like this:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You refuse me my half-bottle of Medoc, the drink the most wholesome and
+      the most customary. You refuse me the company and obedience of my
+      daughter, which Nature herself indicates. You refuse me the beef and
+      mutton, without pretence that it is a fast of the Church. You now forbid
+      me the promenade, a thing necessary to a person of my age. It is useless
+      to tell me that you do all this by law. Law rests upon the social
+      contract. If the citizen finds himself despoiled of such pleasures and
+      powers as he would have had even in the savage state, the social contract
+      is annulled.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's no good chattering away, Monsieur,&rdquo; said Hutton, for the Master was
+      silent. &ldquo;The place is covered with machine-guns. We've got to obey our
+      orders, and so have you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The machinery is of the most perfect,&rdquo; assented Durand, somewhat
+      irrelevantly; &ldquo;worked by petroleum, I believe. I only ask you to admit
+      that if such things fall below the comfort of barbarism, the social
+      contract is annulled. It is a pretty little point of theory.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! I dare say,&rdquo; said Hutton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Durand bowed quite civilly and withdrew.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A cosy party,&rdquo; resumed the Master, scornfully, &ldquo;and yet I believe some of
+      you are in doubt about how we all came together. I will explain it, ladies
+      and gentlemen; I will explain everything. To whom shall I specially
+      address myself? To Mr. James Turnbull. He has a scientific mind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull seemed to choke with sudden protest. The Master seemed only to
+      cough out of pure politeness and proceeded: &ldquo;Mr. Turnbull will agree with
+      me,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;when I say that we long felt in scientific circles that
+      great harm was done by such a legend as that of the Crucifixion.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnbull growled something which was presumably assent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Master went on smoothly: &ldquo;It was in vain for us to urge that the
+      incident was irrelevant; that there were many such fanatics, many such
+      executions. We were forced to take the thing thoroughly in hand, to
+      investigate it in the spirit of scientific history, and with the
+      assistance of Mr. Turnbull and others we were happy in being able to
+      announce that this alleged Crucifixion never occurred at all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan lifted his head and looked at the Master steadily, but Turnbull did
+      not look up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This, we found, was the only way with all superstitions,&rdquo; continued the
+      speaker; &ldquo;it was necessary to deny them historically, and we have done it
+      with great success in the case of miracles and such things. Now within our
+      own time there arose an unfortunate fuss which threatened (as Mr. Turnbull
+      would say) to galvanize the corpse of Christianity into a fictitious life&mdash;the
+      alleged case of a Highland eccentric who wanted to fight for the Virgin.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan, quite white, made a step forward, but the speaker did not alter
+      his easy attitude or his flow of words. &ldquo;Again we urged that this duel was
+      not to be admired, that it was a mere brawl, but the people were ignorant
+      and romantic. There were signs of treating this alleged Highlander and his
+      alleged opponent as heroes. We tried all other means of arresting this
+      reactionary hero worship. Working men who betted on the duel were
+      imprisoned for gambling. Working men who drank the health of a duellist
+      were imprisoned for drunkenness. But the popular excitement about the
+      alleged duel continued, and we had to fall back on our old historical
+      method. We investigated, on scientific principles, the story of MacIan's
+      challenge, and we are happy to be able to inform you that the whole story
+      of the attempted duel is a fable. There never was any challenge. There
+      never was any man named MacIan. It is a melodramatic myth, like Calvary.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Not a soul moved save Turnbull, who lifted his head; yet there was the
+      sense of a silent explosion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The whole story of the MacIan challenge,&rdquo; went on the Master, beaming at
+      them all with a sinister benignity, &ldquo;has been found to originate in the
+      obsessions of a few pathological types, who are now all fortunately in our
+      care. There is, for instance, a person here of the name of Gordon,
+      formerly the keeper of a curiosity shop. He is a victim of the disease
+      called Vinculomania&mdash;the impression that one has been bound or tied
+      up. We have also a case of Fugacity (Mr. Whimpey), who imagines that he
+      was chased by two men.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The indignant faces of the Jew shopkeeper and the Magdalen Don started out
+      of the crowd in their indignation, but the speaker continued:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One poor woman we have with us,&rdquo; he said, in a compassionate voice,
+      &ldquo;believes she was in a motor-car with two such men; this is the well-known
+      illusion of speed on which I need not dwell. Another wretched woman has
+      the simple egotistic mania that she has caused the duel. Madeleine Durand
+      actually professes to have been the subject of the fight between MacIan
+      and his enemy, a fight which, if it occurred at all, certainly began long
+      before. But it never occurred at all. We have taken in hand every person
+      who professed to have seen such a thing, and proved them all to be
+      unbalanced. That is why they are here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Master looked round the room, just showing his perfect teeth with the
+      perfection of artistic cruelty, exalted for a moment in the enormous
+      simplicity of his success, and then walked across the hall and vanished
+      through an inner door. His two lieutenants, Quayle and Hutton, were left
+      standing at the head of the great army of servants and keepers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope we shall have no more trouble,&rdquo; said Dr. Quayle pleasantly enough,
+      and addressing Turnbull, who was leaning heavily upon the back of a chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Still looking down, Turnbull lifted the chair an inch or two from the
+      ground. Then he suddenly swung it above his head and sent it at the
+      inquiring doctor with an awful crash which sent one of its wooden legs
+      loose along the floor and crammed the doctor gasping into a corner. MacIan
+      gave a great shout, snatched up the loose chair-leg, and, rushing on the
+      other doctor, felled him with a blow. Twenty attendants rushed to capture
+      the rebels; MacIan flung back three of them and Turnbull went over on top
+      of one, when from behind them all came a shriek as of something quite
+      fresh and frightful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two of the three passages leading out of the hall were choked with blue
+      smoke. Another instant and the hall was full of the fog of it, and red
+      sparks began to swarm like scarlet bees.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The place is on fire!&rdquo; cried Quayle with a scream of indecent terror.
+      &ldquo;Oh, who can have done it? How can it have happened?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A light had come into Turnbull's eyes. &ldquo;How did the French Revolution
+      happen?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, how should I know!&rdquo; wailed the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I will tell you,&rdquo; said Turnbull; &ldquo;it happened because some people
+      fancied that a French grocer was as respectable as he looked.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Even as he spoke, as if by confirmation, old Mr. Durand re-entered the
+      smoky room quite placidly, wiping the petroleum from his hands with a
+      handkerchief. He had set fire to the building in accordance with the
+      strict principles of the social contract.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But MacIan had taken a stride forward and stood there shaken and terrible.
+      &ldquo;Now,&rdquo; he cried, panting, &ldquo;now is the judgement of the world. The doctors
+      will leave this place; the keepers will leave this place. They will leave
+      us in charge of the machinery and the machine-guns at the windows. But we,
+      the lunatics, will wait to be burned alive if only we may see them go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do you know we shall go?&rdquo; asked Hutton, fiercely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You believe nothing,&rdquo; said MacIan, simply, &ldquo;and you are insupportably
+      afraid of death.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So this is suicide,&rdquo; sneered the doctor; &ldquo;a somewhat doubtful sign of
+      sanity.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not at all&mdash;this is vengeance,&rdquo; answered Turnbull, quite calmly; &ldquo;a
+      thing which is completely healthy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You think the doctors will go,&rdquo; said Hutton, savagely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The keepers have gone already,&rdquo; said Turnbull.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even as they spoke the main doors were burst open in mere brutal panic,
+      and all the officers and subordinates of the asylum rushed away across the
+      garden pursued by the smoke. But among the ticketed maniacs not a man or
+      woman moved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We hate dying,&rdquo; said Turnbull, with composure, &ldquo;but we hate you even
+      more. This is a successful revolution.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In the roof above their heads a panel shot back, showing a strip of
+      star-lit sky and a huge thing made of white metal, with the shape and fins
+      of a fish, swinging as if at anchor. At the same moment a steel ladder
+      slid down from the opening and struck the floor, and the cleft chin of the
+      mysterious Master was thrust into the opening. &ldquo;Quayle, Hutton,&rdquo; he said,
+      &ldquo;you will escape with me.&rdquo; And they went up the ladder like automata of
+      lead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Long after they had clambered into the car, the creature with the cloven
+      face continued to leer down upon the smoke-stung crowd below. Then at last
+      he said in a silken voice and with a smile of final satisfaction:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By the way, I fear I am very absent minded. There is one man specially
+      whom, somehow, I always forget. I always leave him lying about. Once I
+      mislaid him on the Cross of St. Paul's. So silly of me; and now I've
+      forgotten him in one of those little cells where your fire is burning.
+      Very unfortunate&mdash;especially for him.&rdquo; And nodding genially, he
+      climbed into his flying ship.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MacIan stood motionless for two minutes, and then rushed down one of the
+      suffocating corridors till he found the flames. Turnbull looked once at
+      Madeleine, and followed.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+           *                    *                   *
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      MacIan, with singed hair, smoking garments, and smarting hands and face,
+      had already broken far enough through the first barriers of burning timber
+      to come within cry of the cells he had once known. It was impossible,
+      however, to see the spot where the old man lay dead or alive; not now
+      through darkness, but through scorching and aching light. The site of the
+      old half-wit's cell was now the heart of a standing forest of fire&mdash;the
+      flames as thick and yellow as a cornfield. Their incessant shrieking and
+      crackling was like a mob shouting against an orator. Yet through all that
+      deafening density MacIan thought he heard a small and separate sound. When
+      he heard it he rushed forward as if to plunge into that furnace, but
+      Turnbull arrested him by an elbow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let me go!&rdquo; cried Evan, in agony; &ldquo;it's the poor old beggar's voice&mdash;he's
+      still alive, and shouting for help.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Listen!&rdquo; said Turnbull, and lifted one finger from his clenched hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Or else he is shrieking with pain,&rdquo; protested MacIan. &ldquo;I will not endure
+      it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Listen!&rdquo; repeated Turnbull, grimly. &ldquo;Did you ever hear anyone shout for
+      help or shriek with pain in that voice?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The small shrill sounds which came through the crash of the conflagration
+      were indeed of an odd sort, and MacIan turned a face of puzzled inquiry to
+      his companion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is singing,&rdquo; said Turnbull, simply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A remaining rampart fell, crushing the fire, and through the diminished
+      din of it the voice of the little old lunatic came clearer. In the heart
+      of that white-hot hell he was singing like a bird. What he was singing it
+      was not very easy to follow, but it seemed to be something about playing
+      in the golden hay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good Lord!&rdquo; cried Turnbull, bitterly, &ldquo;there seem to be some advantages
+      in really being an idiot.&rdquo; Then advancing to the fringe of the fire he
+      called out on chance to the invisible singer: &ldquo;Can you come out? Are you
+      cut off?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God help us all!&rdquo; said MacIan, with a shudder; &ldquo;he's laughing now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At whatever stage of being burned alive the invisible now found himself,
+      he was now shaking out peals of silvery and hilarious laughter. As he
+      listened, MacIan's two eyes began to glow, as if a strange thought had
+      come into his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fool, come out and save yourself!&rdquo; shouted Turnbull.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, by Heaven! that is not the way,&rdquo; cried Evan, suddenly. &ldquo;Father,&rdquo; he
+      shouted, &ldquo;come out and save us all!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The fire, though it had dropped in one or two places, was, upon the whole,
+      higher and more unconquerable than ever. Separate tall flames shot up and
+      spread out above them like the fiery cloisters of some infernal cathedral,
+      or like a grove of red tropical trees in the garden of the devil. Higher
+      yet in the purple hollow of the night the topmost flames leapt again and
+      again fruitlessly at the stars, like golden dragons chained but
+      struggling. The towers and domes of the oppressive smoke seemed high and
+      far enough to drown distant planets in a London fog. But if we exhausted
+      all frantic similes for that frantic scene, the main impression about the
+      fire would still be its ranked upstanding rigidity and a sort of roaring
+      stillness. It was literally a wall of fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Father,&rdquo; cried MacIan, once more, &ldquo;come out of it and save us all!&rdquo;
+       Turnbull was staring at him as he cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The tall and steady forest of fire must have been already a portent
+      visible to the whole circle of land and sea. The red flush of it lit up
+      the long sides of white ships far out in the German Ocean, and picked out
+      like piercing rubies the windows in the villages on the distant heights.
+      If any villagers or sailors were looking towards it they must have seen a
+      strange sight as MacIan cried out for the third time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That forest of fire wavered, and was cloven in the centre; and then the
+      whole of one half of it leaned one way as a cornfield leans all one way
+      under the load of the wind. Indeed, it looked as if a great wind had
+      sprung up and driven the great fire aslant. Its smoke was no longer sent
+      up to choke the stars, but was trailed and dragged across county after
+      county like one dreadful banner of defeat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But it was not the wind; or, if it was the wind, it was two winds blowing
+      in opposite directions. For while one half of the huge fire sloped one way
+      towards the inland heights, the other half, at exactly the same angle,
+      sloped out eastward towards the sea. So that earth and ocean could behold,
+      where there had been a mere fiery mass, a thing divided like a V&mdash;a
+      cloven tongue of flame. But if it were a prodigy for those distant, it was
+      something beyond speech for those quite near. As the echoes of Evan's last
+      appeal rang and died in the universal uproar, the fiery vault over his
+      head opened down the middle, and, reeling back in two great golden
+      billows, hung on each side as huge and harmless as two sloping hills lie
+      on each side of a valley. Down the centre of this trough, or chasm, a
+      little path ran, cleared of all but ashes, and down this little path was
+      walking a little old man singing as if he were alone in a wood in spring.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When James Turnbull saw this he suddenly put out a hand and seemed to
+      support himself on the strong shoulder of Madeleine Durand. Then after a
+      moment's hesitation he put his other hand on the shoulder of MacIan. His
+      blue eyes looked extraordinarily brilliant and beautiful. In many
+      sceptical papers and magazines afterwards he was sadly or sternly rebuked
+      for having abandoned the certainties of materialism. All his life up to
+      that moment he had been most honestly certain that materialism was a fact.
+      But he was unlike the writers in the magazines precisely in this&mdash;that
+      he preferred a fact even to materialism.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the little singing figure came nearer and nearer, Evan fell on his
+      knees, and after an instant Beatrice followed; then Madeleine fell on her
+      knees, and after a longer instant Turnbull followed. Then the little old
+      man went past them singing down that corridor of flames. They had not
+      looked at his face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he had passed they looked up. While the first light of the fire had
+      shot east and west, painting the sides of ships with fire-light or
+      striking red sparks out of windowed houses, it had not hitherto struck
+      upward, for there was above it the ponderous and rococo cavern of its own
+      monstrous coloured smoke. But now the fire was turned to left and right
+      like a woman's hair parted in the middle, and now the shafts of its light
+      could shoot up into empty heavens and strike anything, either bird or
+      cloud. But it struck something that was neither cloud nor bird. Far, far
+      away up in those huge hollows of space something was flying swiftly and
+      shining brightly, something that shone too bright and flew too fast to be
+      any of the fowls of the air, though the red light lit it from underneath
+      like the breast of a bird. Everyone knew it was a flying ship, and
+      everyone knew whose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As they stared upward the little speck of light seemed slightly tilted,
+      and two black dots dropped from the edge of it. All the eager, upturned
+      faces watched the two dots as they grew bigger and bigger in their
+      downward rush. Then someone screamed, and no one looked up any more. For
+      the two bodies, larger every second flying, spread out and sprawling in
+      the fire-light, were the dead bodies of the two doctors whom Professor
+      Lucifer had carried with him&mdash;the weak and sneering Quayle, the cold
+      and clumsy Hutton. They went with a crash into the thick of the fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are gone!&rdquo; screamed Beatrice, hiding her head. &ldquo;O God! The are
+      lost!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Evan put his arm about her, and remembered his own vision.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, they are not lost,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;They are saved. He has taken away no
+      souls with him, after all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked vaguely about at the fire that was already fading, and there
+      among the ashes lay two shining things that had survived the fire, his
+      sword and Turnbull's, fallen haphazard in the pattern of a cross.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Ball and The Cross, by G.K. Chesterton
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+</pre>
+  </body>
+</html>
diff --git a/old/5265.txt b/old/5265.txt
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+++ b/old/5265.txt
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Ball and The Cross, by G.K. Chesterton
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Ball and The Cross
+
+Author: G.K. Chesterton
+
+Release Date: March, 2004 [EBook #5265]
+Posting Date: March 24, 2009
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BALL AND THE CROSS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Ben Crowder
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE BALL AND THE CROSS
+
+G.K. Chesterton
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+    I. A Discussion Somewhat in the Air
+   II. The Religion of the Stipendiary Magistrate
+  III. Some Old Curiosities
+   IV. A Discussion at Dawn
+    V. The Peacemaker
+   VI. The Other Philosopher
+  VII. The Village of Grassley-in-the-Hole
+ VIII. An Interlude of Argument
+   IX. The Strange Lady
+    X. The Swords Rejoined
+   XI. A Scandal in the Village
+  XII. The Desert Island
+ XIII. The Garden of Peace
+  XIV. A Museum of Souls
+   XV. The Dream of MacIan
+  XVI. The Dream of Turnbull
+ XVII. The Idiot
+XVIII. A Riddle of Faces
+  XIX. The Last Parley
+   XX. Dies Irae
+
+
+
+
+I. A DISCUSSION SOMEWHAT IN THE AIR
+
+The flying ship of Professor Lucifer sang through the skies like a
+silver arrow; the bleak white steel of it, gleaming in the bleak
+blue emptiness of the evening. That it was far above the earth was no
+expression for it; to the two men in it, it seemed to be far above the
+stars. The professor had himself invented the flying machine, and had
+also invented nearly everything in it. Every sort of tool or apparatus
+had, in consequence, to the full, that fantastic and distorted look
+which belongs to the miracles of science. For the world of science and
+evolution is far more nameless and elusive and like a dream than the
+world of poetry and religion; since in the latter images and ideas
+remain themselves eternally, while it is the whole idea of evolution
+that identities melt into each other as they do in a nightmare.
+
+All the tools of Professor Lucifer were the ancient human tools gone
+mad, grown into unrecognizable shapes, forgetful of their origin,
+forgetful of their names. That thing which looked like an enormous key
+with three wheels was really a patent and very deadly revolver. That
+object which seemed to be created by the entanglement of two corkscrews
+was really the key. The thing which might have been mistaken for a
+tricycle turned upside-down was the inexpressibly important instrument
+to which the corkscrew was the key. All these things, as I say, the
+professor had invented; he had invented everything in the flying ship,
+with the exception, perhaps, of himself. This he had been born too
+late actually to inaugurate, but he believed at least, that he had
+considerably improved it.
+
+There was, however, another man on board, so to speak, at the time. Him,
+also, by a curious coincidence, the professor had not invented, and him
+he had not even very greatly improved, though he had fished him up with
+a lasso out of his own back garden, in Western Bulgaria, with the pure
+object of improving him. He was an exceedingly holy man, almost entirely
+covered with white hair. You could see nothing but his eyes, and he
+seemed to talk with them. A monk of immense learning and acute intellect
+he had made himself happy in a little stone hut and a little stony
+garden in the Balkans, chiefly by writing the most crushing refutations
+of exposures of certain heresies, the last professors of which had been
+burnt (generally by each other) precisely 1,119 years previously. They
+were really very plausible and thoughtful heresies, and it was really
+a creditable or even glorious circumstance, that the old monk had been
+intellectual enough to detect their fallacy; the only misfortune
+was that nobody in the modern world was intellectual enough even to
+understand their argument. The old monk, one of whose names was Michael,
+and the other a name quite impossible to remember or repeat in our
+Western civilization, had, however, as I have said, made himself quite
+happy while he was in a mountain hermitage in the society of wild
+animals. And now that his luck had lifted him above all the mountains in
+the society of a wild physicist, he made himself happy still.
+
+"I have no intention, my good Michael," said Professor Lucifer,
+"of endeavouring to convert you by argument. The imbecility of your
+traditions can be quite finally exhibited to anybody with mere ordinary
+knowledge of the world, the same kind of knowledge which teaches us
+not to sit in draughts or not to encourage friendliness in impecunious
+people. It is folly to talk of this or that demonstrating the
+rationalist philosophy. Everything demonstrates it. Rubbing shoulders
+with men of all kinds----"
+
+"You will forgive me," said the monk, meekly from under loads of white
+beard, "but I fear I do not understand; was it in order that I might rub
+my shoulder against men of all kinds that you put me inside this thing?"
+
+"An entertaining retort, in the narrow and deductive manner of the
+Middle Ages," replied the Professor, calmly, "but even upon your own
+basis I will illustrate my point. We are up in the sky. In your religion
+and all the religions, as far as I know (and I know everything), the sky
+is made the symbol of everything that is sacred and merciful. Well, now
+you are in the sky, you know better. Phrase it how you like, twist it
+how you like, you know that you know better. You know what are a man's
+real feelings about the heavens, when he finds himself alone in the
+heavens, surrounded by the heavens. You know the truth, and the truth
+is this. The heavens are evil, the sky is evil, the stars are evil. This
+mere space, this mere quantity, terrifies a man more than tigers or the
+terrible plague. You know that since our science has spoken, the bottom
+has fallen out of the Universe. Now, heaven is the hopeless thing,
+more hopeless than any hell. Now, if there be any comfort for all your
+miserable progeny of morbid apes, it must be in the earth, underneath
+you, under the roots of the grass, in the place where hell was of old.
+The fiery crypts, the lurid cellars of the underworld, to which you once
+condemned the wicked, are hideous enough, but at least they are more
+homely than the heaven in which we ride. And the time will come when you
+will all hide in them, to escape the horror of the stars."
+
+"I hope you will excuse my interrupting you," said Michael, with a
+slight cough, "but I have always noticed----"
+
+"Go on, pray go on," said Professor Lucifer, radiantly, "I really like
+to draw out your simple ideas."
+
+"Well, the fact is," said the other, "that much as I admire your
+rhetoric and the rhetoric of your school, from a purely verbal point
+of view, such little study of you and your school in human history as I
+have been enabled to make has led me to--er--rather singular conclusion,
+which I find great difficulty in expressing, especially in a foreign
+language."
+
+"Come, come," said the Professor, encouragingly, "I'll help you out. How
+did my view strike you?"
+
+"Well, the truth is, I know I don't express it properly, but somehow
+it seemed to me that you always convey ideas of that kind with most
+eloquence, when--er--when----"
+
+"Oh! get on," cried Lucifer, boisterously.
+
+"Well, in point of fact when your flying ship is just going to run
+into something. I thought you wouldn't mind my mentioning it, but it's
+running into something now."
+
+Lucifer exploded with an oath and leapt erect, leaning hard upon the
+handle that acted as a helm to the vessel. For the last ten minutes they
+had been shooting downwards into great cracks and caverns of cloud. Now,
+through a sort of purple haze, could be seen comparatively near to them
+what seemed to be the upper part of a huge, dark orb or sphere, islanded
+in a sea of cloud. The Professor's eyes were blazing like a maniac's.
+
+"It is a new world," he cried, with a dreadful mirth. "It is a new
+planet and it shall bear my name. This star and not that other vulgar
+one shall be 'Lucifer, sun of the morning.' Here we will have no
+chartered lunacies, here we will have no gods. Here man shall be
+as innocent as the daisies, as innocent and as cruel--here the
+intellect----"
+
+"There seems," said Michael, timidly, "to be something sticking up in
+the middle of it."
+
+"So there is," said the Professor, leaning over the side of the ship,
+his spectacles shining with intellectual excitement. "What can it be? It
+might of course be merely a----"
+
+Then a shriek indescribable broke out of him of a sudden, and he flung
+up his arms like a lost spirit. The monk took the helm in a tired way;
+he did not seem much astonished for he came from an ignorant part of the
+world in which it is not uncommon for lost spirits to shriek when they
+see the curious shape which the Professor had just seen on the top of
+the mysterious ball, but he took the helm only just in time, and by
+driving it hard to the left he prevented the flying ship from smashing
+into St. Paul's Cathedral.
+
+A plain of sad-coloured cloud lay along the level of the top of the
+Cathedral dome, so that the ball and the cross looked like a buoy riding
+on a leaden sea. As the flying ship swept towards it, this plain of
+cloud looked as dry and definite and rocky as any grey desert. Hence it
+gave to the mind and body a sharp and unearthly sensation when the ship
+cut and sank into the cloud as into any common mist, a thing without
+resistance. There was, as it were, a deadly shock in the fact that there
+was no shock. It was as if they had cloven into ancient cliffs like so
+much butter. But sensations awaited them which were much stranger than
+those of sinking through the solid earth. For a moment their eyes and
+nostrils were stopped with darkness and opaque cloud; then the darkness
+warmed into a kind of brown fog. And far, far below them the brown fog
+fell until it warmed into fire. Through the dense London atmosphere they
+could see below them the flaming London lights; lights which lay beneath
+them in squares and oblongs of fire. The fog and fire were mixed in a
+passionate vapour; you might say that the fog was drowning the flames;
+or you might say that the flames had set the fog on fire. Beside the
+ship and beneath it (for it swung just under the ball), the immeasurable
+dome itself shot out and down into the dark like a combination of
+voiceless cataracts. Or it was like some cyclopean sea-beast sitting
+above London and letting down its tentacles bewilderingly on every side,
+a monstrosity in that starless heaven. For the clouds that belonged to
+London had closed over the heads of the voyagers sealing up the entrance
+of the upper air. They had broken through a roof and come into a temple
+of twilight.
+
+They were so near to the ball that Lucifer leaned his hand against it,
+holding the vessel away, as men push a boat off from a bank. Above it
+the cross already draped in the dark mists of the borderland was shadowy
+and more awful in shape and size.
+
+Professor Lucifer slapped his hand twice upon the surface of the great
+orb as if he were caressing some enormous animal. "This is the fellow,"
+he said, "this is the one for my money."
+
+"May I with all respect inquire," asked the old monk, "what on earth you
+are talking about?"
+
+"Why this," cried Lucifer, smiting the ball again, "here is the only
+symbol, my boy. So fat. So satisfied. Not like that scraggy individual,
+stretching his arms in stark weariness." And he pointed up to the cross,
+his face dark with a grin. "I was telling you just now, Michael, that I
+can prove the best part of the rationalist case and the Christian humbug
+from any symbol you liked to give me, from any instance I came across.
+Here is an instance with a vengeance. What could possibly express your
+philosophy and my philosophy better than the shape of that cross and
+the shape of this ball? This globe is reasonable; that cross is
+unreasonable. It is a four-legged animal, with one leg longer than the
+others. The globe is inevitable. The cross is arbitrary. Above all the
+globe is at unity with itself; the cross is primarily and above all
+things at enmity with itself. The cross is the conflict of two hostile
+lines, of irreconcilable direction. That silent thing up there is
+essentially a collision, a crash, a struggle in stone. Pah! that
+sacred symbol of yours has actually given its name to a description of
+desperation and muddle. When we speak of men at once ignorant of each
+other and frustrated by each other, we say they are at cross-purposes.
+Away with the thing! The very shape of it is a contradiction in terms."
+
+"What you say is perfectly true," said Michael, with serenity. "But we
+like contradictions in terms. Man is a contradiction in terms; he is a
+beast whose superiority to other beasts consists in having fallen. That
+cross is, as you say, an eternal collision; so am I. That is a struggle
+in stone. Every form of life is a struggle in flesh. The shape of
+the cross is irrational, just as the shape of the human animal is
+irrational. You say the cross is a quadruped with one limb longer than
+the rest. I say man is a quadruped who only uses two of his legs."
+
+The Professor frowned thoughtfully for an instant, and said: "Of
+course everything is relative, and I would not deny that the element
+of struggle and self-contradiction, represented by that cross, has a
+necessary place at a certain evolutionary stage. But surely the cross
+is the lower development and the sphere the higher. After all it is
+easy enough to see what is really wrong with Wren's architectural
+arrangement."
+
+"And what is that, pray?" inquired Michael, meekly.
+
+"The cross is on top of the ball," said Professor Lucifer, simply. "That
+is surely wrong. The ball should be on top of the cross. The cross is a
+mere barbaric prop; the ball is perfection. The cross at its best is but
+the bitter tree of man's history; the ball is the rounded, the ripe and
+final fruit. And the fruit should be at the top of the tree, not at the
+bottom of it."
+
+"Oh!" said the monk, a wrinkle coming into his forehead, "so you think
+that in a rationalistic scheme of symbolism the ball should be on top of
+the cross?"
+
+"It sums up my whole allegory," said the professor.
+
+"Well, that is really very interesting," resumed Michael slowly,
+"because I think in that case you would see a most singular effect, an
+effect that has generally been achieved by all those able and powerful
+systems which rationalism, or the religion of the ball, has produced to
+lead or teach mankind. You would see, I think, that thing happen which
+is always the ultimate embodiment and logical outcome of your logical
+scheme."
+
+"What are you talking about?" asked Lucifer. "What would happen?"
+
+"I mean it would fall down," said the monk, looking wistfully into the
+void.
+
+Lucifer made an angry movement and opened his mouth to speak, but
+Michael, with all his air of deliberation, was proceeding before he
+could bring out a word.
+
+"I once knew a man like you, Lucifer," he said, with a maddening
+monotony and slowness of articulation. "He took this----"
+
+"There is no man like me," cried Lucifer, with a violence that shook the
+ship.
+
+"As I was observing," continued Michael, "this man also took the
+view that the symbol of Christianity was a symbol of savagery and all
+unreason. His history is rather amusing. It is also a perfect allegory
+of what happens to rationalists like yourself. He began, of course, by
+refusing to allow a crucifix in his house, or round his wife's neck,
+or even in a picture. He said, as you say, that it was an arbitrary
+and fantastic shape, that it was a monstrosity, loved because it was
+paradoxical. Then he began to grow fiercer and more eccentric; he would
+batter the crosses by the roadside; for he lived in a Roman Catholic
+country. Finally in a height of frenzy he climbed the steeple of
+the Parish Church and tore down the cross, waving it in the air, and
+uttering wild soliloquies up there under the stars. Then one still
+summer evening as he was wending his way homewards, along a lane, the
+devil of his madness came upon him with a violence and transfiguration
+which changes the world. He was standing smoking, for a moment, in the
+front of an interminable line of palings, when his eyes were opened. Not
+a light shifted, not a leaf stirred, but he saw as if by a sudden change
+in the eyesight that this paling was an army of innumerable crosses
+linked together over hill and dale. And he whirled up his heavy stick
+and went at it as if at an army. Mile after mile along his homeward path
+he broke it down and tore it up. For he hated the cross and every paling
+is a wall of crosses. When he returned to his house he was a literal
+madman. He sat upon a chair and then started up from it for the
+cross-bars of the carpentry repeated the intolerable image. He flung
+himself upon a bed only to remember that this, too, like all workmanlike
+things, was constructed on the accursed plan. He broke his furniture
+because it was made of crosses. He burnt his house because it was made
+of crosses. He was found in the river."
+
+Lucifer was looking at him with a bitten lip.
+
+"Is that story really true?" he asked.
+
+"Oh, no," said Michael, airily. "It is a parable. It is a parable of you
+and all your rationalists. You begin by breaking up the Cross; but you
+end by breaking up the habitable world. We leave you saying that nobody
+ought to join the Church against his will. When we meet you again you
+are saying that no one has any will to join it with. We leave you saying
+that there is no such place as Eden. We find you saying that there is no
+such place as Ireland. You start by hating the irrational and you come
+to hate everything, for everything is irrational and so----"
+
+Lucifer leapt upon him with a cry like a wild beast's. "Ah," he
+screamed, "to every man his madness. You are mad on the cross. Let it
+save you."
+
+And with a herculean energy he forced the monk backwards out of the
+reeling car on to the upper part of the stone ball. Michael, with
+as abrupt an agility, caught one of the beams of the cross and saved
+himself from falling. At the same instant Lucifer drove down a lever and
+the ship shot up with him in it alone.
+
+"Ha! ha!" he yelled, "what sort of a support do you find it, old
+fellow?"
+
+"For practical purposes of support," replied Michael grimly, "it is at
+any rate a great deal better than the ball. May I ask if you are going
+to leave me here?"
+
+"Yes, yes. I mount! I mount!" cried the professor in ungovernable
+excitement. "_Altiora peto_. My path is upward."
+
+"How often have you told me, Professor, that there is really no up or
+down in space?" said the monk. "I shall mount up as much as you will."
+
+"Indeed," said Lucifer, leering over the side of the flying ship. "May I
+ask what you are going to do?"
+
+The monk pointed downward at Ludgate Hill. "I am going," he said, "to
+climb up into a star."
+
+Those who look at the matter most superficially regard paradox as
+something which belongs to jesting and light journalism. Paradox of this
+kind is to be found in the saying of the dandy, in the decadent comedy,
+"Life is much too important to be taken seriously." Those who look at
+the matter a little more deeply or delicately see that paradox is a
+thing which especially belongs to all religions. Paradox of this kind is
+to be found in such a saying as "The meek shall inherit the earth."
+But those who see and feel the fundamental fact of the matter know that
+paradox is a thing which belongs not to religion only, but to all vivid
+and violent practical crises of human living. This kind of paradox may
+be clearly perceived by anybody who happens to be hanging in mid-space,
+clinging to one arm of the Cross of St. Paul's.
+
+Father Michael in spite of his years, and in spite of his asceticism
+(or because of it, for all I know), was a very healthy and happy old
+gentleman. And as he swung on a bar above the sickening emptiness of
+air, he realized, with that sort of dead detachment which belongs to the
+brains of those in peril, the deathless and hopeless contradiction which
+is involved in the mere idea of courage. He was a happy and healthy old
+gentleman and therefore he was quite careless about it. And he felt as
+every man feels in the taut moment of such terror that his chief danger
+was terror itself; his only possible strength would be a coolness
+amounting to carelessness, a carelessness amounting almost to a suicidal
+swagger. His one wild chance of coming out safely would be in not too
+desperately desiring to be safe. There might be footholds down that
+awful facade, if only he could not care whether they were footholds or
+no. If he were foolhardy he might escape; if he were wise he would
+stop where he was till he dropped from the cross like a stone. And this
+antinomy kept on repeating itself in his mind, a contradiction as large
+and staring as the immense contradiction of the Cross; he remembered
+having often heard the words, "Whosoever shall lose his life the same
+shall save it." He remembered with a sort of strange pity that this had
+always been made to mean that whoever lost his physical life should save
+his spiritual life. Now he knew the truth that is known to all fighters,
+and hunters, and climbers of cliffs. He knew that even his animal life
+could only be saved by a considerable readiness to lose it.
+
+Some will think it improbable that a human soul swinging desperately
+in mid-air should think about philosophical inconsistencies. But such
+extreme states are dangerous things to dogmatize about. Frequently they
+produce a certain useless and joyless activity of the mere intellect,
+thought not only divorced from hope but even from desire. And if it is
+impossible to dogmatize about such states, it is still more impossible
+to describe them. To this spasm of sanity and clarity in Michael's mind
+succeeded a spasm of the elemental terror; the terror of the animal
+in us which regards the whole universe as its enemy; which, when it is
+victorious, has no pity, and so, when it is defeated has no imaginable
+hope. Of that ten minutes of terror it is not possible to speak in human
+words. But then again in that damnable darkness there began to grow
+a strange dawn as of grey and pale silver. And of this ultimate
+resignation or certainty it is even less possible to write; it is
+something stranger than hell itself; it is perhaps the last of the
+secrets of God. At the highest crisis of some incurable anguish there
+will suddenly fall upon the man the stillness of an insane contentment.
+It is not hope, for hope is broken and romantic and concerned with the
+future; this is complete and of the present. It is not faith, for
+faith by its very nature is fierce, and as it were at once doubtful and
+defiant; but this is simply a satisfaction. It is not knowledge, for
+the intellect seems to have no particular part in it. Nor is it (as the
+modern idiots would certainly say it is) a mere numbness or negative
+paralysis of the powers of grief. It is not negative in the least; it
+is as positive as good news. In some sense, indeed, it is good news. It
+seems almost as if there were some equality among things, some balance
+in all possible contingencies which we are not permitted to know lest we
+should learn indifference to good and evil, but which is sometimes shown
+to us for an instant as a last aid in our last agony.
+
+Michael certainly could not have given any sort of rational account of
+this vast unmeaning satisfaction which soaked through him and filled him
+to the brim. He felt with a sort of half-witted lucidity that the cross
+was there, and the ball was there, and the dome was there, that he was
+going to climb down from them, and that he did not mind in the least
+whether he was killed or not. This mysterious mood lasted long enough to
+start him on his dreadful descent and to force him to continue it. But
+six times before he reached the highest of the outer galleries terror
+had returned on him like a flying storm of darkness and thunder. By
+the time he had reached that place of safety he almost felt (as in some
+impossible fit of drunkenness) that he had two heads; one was calm,
+careless, and efficient; the other saw the danger like a deadly map,
+was wise, careful, and useless. He had fancied that he would have to let
+himself vertically down the face of the whole building. When he dropped
+into the upper gallery he still felt as far from the terrestrial globe
+as if he had only dropped from the sun to the moon. He paused a little,
+panting in the gallery under the ball, and idly kicked his heels, moving
+a few yards along it. And as he did so a thunderbolt struck his soul.
+A man, a heavy, ordinary man, with a composed indifferent face, and a
+prosaic sort of uniform, with a row of buttons, blocked his way. Michael
+had no mind to wonder whether this solid astonished man, with the brown
+moustache and the nickel buttons, had also come on a flying ship. He
+merely let his mind float in an endless felicity about the man. He
+thought how nice it would be if he had to live up in that gallery with
+that one man for ever. He thought how he would luxuriate in the nameless
+shades of this man's soul and then hear with an endless excitement about
+the nameless shades of the souls of all his aunts and uncles. A moment
+before he had been dying alone. Now he was living in the same world with
+a man; an inexhaustible ecstasy. In the gallery below the ball Father
+Michael had found that man who is the noblest and most divine and most
+lovable of all men, better than all the saints, greater than all the
+heroes--man Friday.
+
+In the confused colour and music of his new paradise, Michael heard only
+in a faint and distant fashion some remarks that this beautiful solid
+man seemed to be making to him; remarks about something or other being
+after hours and against orders. He also seemed to be asking how Michael
+"got up" there. This beautiful man evidently felt as Michael did that
+the earth was a star and was set in heaven.
+
+At length Michael sated himself with the mere sensual music of the voice
+of the man in buttons. He began to listen to what he said, and even to
+make some attempt at answering a question which appeared to have been
+put several times and was now put with some excess of emphasis. Michael
+realized that the image of God in nickel buttons was asking him how
+he had come there. He said that he had come in Lucifer's ship. On
+his giving this answer the demeanour of the image of God underwent a
+remarkable change. From addressing Michael gruffly, as if he were a
+malefactor, he began suddenly to speak to him with a sort of eager
+and feverish amiability as if he were a child. He seemed particularly
+anxious to coax him away from the balustrade. He led him by the arm
+towards a door leading into the building itself, soothing him all the
+time. He gave what even Michael (slight as was his knowledge of the
+world) felt to be an improbable account of the sumptuous pleasures
+and varied advantages awaiting him downstairs. Michael followed him,
+however, if only out of politeness, down an apparently interminable
+spiral of staircase. At one point a door opened. Michael stepped through
+it, and the unaccountable man in buttons leapt after him and pinioned
+him where he stood. But he only wished to stand; to stand and stare.
+He had stepped as it were into another infinity, out under the dome of
+another heaven. But this was a dome of heaven made by man. The gold and
+green and crimson of its sunset were not in the shapeless clouds but in
+shapes of cherubim and seraphim, awful human shapes with a passionate
+plumage. Its stars were not above but far below, like fallen stars still
+in unbroken constellations; the dome itself was full of darkness.
+And far below, lower even than the lights, could be seen creeping or
+motionless, great black masses of men. The tongue of a terrible organ
+seemed to shake the very air in the whole void; and through it there
+came up to Michael the sound of a tongue more terrible; the dreadful
+everlasting voice of man, calling to his gods from the beginning to the
+end of the world. Michael felt almost as if he were a god, and all the
+voices were hurled at him.
+
+"No, the pretty things aren't here," said the demi-god in buttons,
+caressingly. "The pretty things are downstairs. You come along with me.
+There's something that will surprise you downstairs; something you want
+very much to see."
+
+Evidently the man in buttons did not feel like a god, so Michael made no
+attempt to explain his feelings to him, but followed him meekly enough
+down the trail of the serpentine staircase. He had no notion where or at
+what level he was. He was still full of the cold splendour of space,
+and of what a French writer has brilliantly named the "vertigo of the
+infinite," when another door opened, and with a shock indescribable he
+found himself on the familiar level, in a street full of faces, with the
+houses and even the lamp-posts above his head. He felt suddenly happy
+and suddenly indescribably small. He fancied he had been changed into a
+child again; his eyes sought the pavement seriously as children's do, as
+if it were a thing with which something satisfactory could be done.
+He felt the full warmth of that pleasure from which the proud shut
+themselves out; the pleasure which not only goes with humiliation, but
+which almost is humiliation. Men who have escaped death by a hair have
+it, and men whose love is returned by a woman unexpectedly, and men
+whose sins are forgiven them. Everything his eye fell on it feasted on,
+not aesthetically, but with a plain, jolly appetite as of a boy eating
+buns. He relished the squareness of the houses; he liked their clean
+angles as if he had just cut them with a knife. The lit squares of the
+shop windows excited him as the young are excited by the lit stage of
+some promising pantomime. He happened to see in one shop which projected
+with a bulging bravery on to the pavement some square tins of potted
+meat, and it seemed like a hint of a hundred hilarious high teas in a
+hundred streets of the world. He was, perhaps, the happiest of all the
+children of men. For in that unendurable instant when he hung, half
+slipping, to the ball of St. Paul's, the whole universe had been
+destroyed and re-created.
+
+Suddenly through all the din of the dark streets came a crash of glass.
+With that mysterious suddenness of the Cockney mob, a rush was made
+in the right direction, a dingy office, next to the shop of the potted
+meat. The pane of glass was lying in splinters about the pavement. And
+the police already had their hands on a very tall young man, with dark,
+lank hair and dark, dazed eyes, with a grey plaid over his shoulder, who
+had just smashed the shop window with a single blow of his stick.
+
+"I'd do it again," said the young man, with a furious white face.
+"Anybody would have done it. Did you see what it said? I swear I'd do it
+again." Then his eyes encountered the monkish habit of Michael, and he
+pulled off his grey tam-o'-shanter with the gesture of a Catholic.
+
+"Father, did you see what they said?" he cried, trembling. "Did you see
+what they dared to say? I didn't understand it at first. I read it half
+through before I broke the window."
+
+Michael felt he knew not how. The whole peace of the world was pent up
+painfully in his heart. The new and childlike world which he had seen
+so suddenly, men had not seen at all. Here they were still at their old
+bewildering, pardonable, useless quarrels, with so much to be said on
+both sides, and so little that need be said at all. A fierce inspiration
+fell on him suddenly; he would strike them where they stood with the
+love of God. They should not move till they saw their own sweet and
+startling existence. They should not go from that place till they went
+home embracing like brothers and shouting like men delivered. From the
+Cross from which he had fallen fell the shadow of its fantastic mercy;
+and the first three words he spoke in a voice like a silver trumpet,
+held men as still as stones. Perhaps if he had spoken there for an hour
+in his illumination he might have founded a religion on Ludgate Hill.
+But the heavy hand of his guide fell suddenly on his shoulder.
+
+"This poor fellow is dotty," he said good-humouredly to the crowd. "I
+found him wandering in the Cathedral. Says he came in a flying ship. Is
+there a constable to spare to take care of him?"
+
+There was a constable to spare. Two other constables attended to the
+tall young man in grey; a fourth concerned himself with the owner of the
+shop, who showed some tendency to be turbulent. They took the tall young
+man away to a magistrate, whither we shall follow him in an ensuing
+chapter. And they took the happiest man in the world away to an asylum.
+
+
+
+
+II. THE RELIGION OF THE STIPENDIARY MAGISTRATE
+
+The editorial office of _The Atheist_ had for some years past become
+less and less prominently interesting as a feature of Ludgate Hill. The
+paper was unsuited to the atmosphere. It showed an interest in the Bible
+unknown in the district, and a knowledge of that volume to which nobody
+else on Ludgate Hill could make any conspicuous claim. It was in vain
+that the editor of _The Atheist_ filled his front window with fierce
+and final demands as to what Noah in the Ark did with the neck of the
+giraffe. It was in vain that he asked violently, as for the last time,
+how the statement "God is Spirit" could be reconciled with the statement
+"The earth is His footstool." It was in vain that he cried with an
+accusing energy that the Bishop of London was paid L12,000 a year for
+pretending to believe that the whale swallowed Jonah. It was in vain
+that he hung in conspicuous places the most thrilling scientific
+calculations about the width of the throat of a whale. Was it nothing
+to them all they that passed by? Did his sudden and splendid and truly
+sincere indignation never stir any of the people pouring down Ludgate
+Hill? Never. The little man who edited _The Atheist_ would rush from his
+shop on starlit evenings and shake his fist at St. Paul's in the passion
+of his holy war upon the holy place. He might have spared his emotion.
+The cross at the top of St. Paul's and _The Atheist_ shop at the foot of
+it were alike remote from the world. The shop and the Cross were equally
+uplifted and alone in the empty heavens.
+
+To the little man who edited _The Atheist_, a fiery little Scotchman,
+with fiery, red hair and beard, going by the name of Turnbull, all this
+decline in public importance seemed not so much sad or even mad, but
+merely bewildering and unaccountable. He had said the worst thing that
+could be said; and it seemed accepted and ignored like the ordinary
+second best of the politicians. Every day his blasphemies looked more
+glaring, and every day the dust lay thicker upon them. It made him feel
+as if he were moving in a world of idiots. He seemed among a race of men
+who smiled when told of their own death, or looked vacantly at the Day
+of Judgement. Year after year went by, and year after year the death of
+God in a shop in Ludgate became a less and less important occurrence.
+All the forward men of his age discouraged Turnbull. The socialists
+said he was cursing priests when he should be cursing capitalists.
+The artists said that the soul was most spiritual, not when freed from
+religion, but when freed from morality. Year after year went by, and at
+least a man came by who treated Mr. Turnbull's secularist shop with a
+real respect and seriousness. He was a young man in a grey plaid, and he
+smashed the window.
+
+He was a young man, born in the Bay of Arisaig, opposite Rum and the
+Isle of Skye. His high, hawklike features and snaky black hair bore the
+mark of that unknown historic thing which is crudely called Celtic, but
+which is probably far older than the Celts, whoever they were. He was in
+name and stock a Highlander of the Macdonalds; but his family took, as
+was common in such cases, the name of a subordinate sept as a surname,
+and for all the purposes which could be answered in London, he called
+himself Evan MacIan. He had been brought up in some loneliness and
+seclusion as a strict Roman Catholic, in the midst of that little wedge
+of Roman Catholics which is driven into the Western Highlands. And he
+had found his way as far as Fleet Street, seeking some half-promised
+employment, without having properly realized that there were in the
+world any people who were not Roman Catholics. He had uncovered himself
+for a few moments before the statue of Queen Anne, in front of St.
+Paul's Cathedral, under the firm impression that it was a figure of the
+Virgin Mary. He was somewhat surprised at the lack of deference shown to
+the figure by the people bustling by. He did not understand that their
+one essential historical principle, the one law truly graven on their
+hearts, was the great and comforting statement that Queen Anne is dead.
+This faith was as fundamental as his faith, that Our Lady was alive. Any
+persons he had talked to since he had touched the fringe of our fashion
+or civilization had been by a coincidence, sympathetic or hypocritical.
+Or if they had spoken some established blasphemies, he had been unable
+to understand them merely owing to the preoccupied satisfaction of his
+mind.
+
+On that fantastic fringe of the Gaelic land where he walked as a boy,
+the cliffs were as fantastic as the clouds. Heaven seemed to humble
+itself and come closer to the earth. The common paths of his little
+village began to climb quite suddenly and seemed resolved to go to
+heaven. The sky seemed to fall down towards the hills; the hills took
+hold upon the sky. In the sumptuous sunset of gold and purple and
+peacock green cloudlets and islets were the same. Evan lived like a man
+walking on a borderland, the borderland between this world and another.
+Like so many men and nations who grow up with nature and the common
+things, he understood the supernatural before he understood the natural.
+He had looked at dim angels standing knee-deep in the grass before he
+had looked at the grass. He knew that Our Lady's robes were blue before
+he knew the wild roses round her feet were red. The deeper his memory
+plunged into the dark house of childhood the nearer and nearer he came
+to the things that cannot be named. All through his life he thought of
+the daylight world as a sort of divine debris, the broken remainder
+of his first vision. The skies and mountains were the splendid
+off-scourings of another place. The stars were lost jewels of the Queen.
+Our Lady had gone and left the stars by accident.
+
+His private tradition was equally wild and unworldly. His
+great-grandfather had been cut down at Culloden, certain in his last
+instant that God would restore the King. His grandfather, then a boy of
+ten, had taken the terrible claymore from the hand of the dead and hung
+it up in his house, burnishing it and sharpening it for sixty years, to
+be ready for the next rebellion. His father, the youngest son and the
+last left alive, had refused to attend on Queen Victoria in Scotland.
+And Evan himself had been of one piece with his progenitors; and was not
+dead with them, but alive in the twentieth century. He was not in the
+least the pathetic Jacobite of whom we read, left behind by a final
+advance of all things. He was, in his own fancy, a conspirator, fierce
+and up to date. In the long, dark afternoons of the Highland winter, he
+plotted and fumed in the dark. He drew plans of the capture of London on
+the desolate sand of Arisaig.
+
+When he came up to capture London, it was not with an army of white
+cockades, but with a stick and a satchel. London overawed him a little,
+not because he thought it grand or even terrible, but because it
+bewildered him; it was not the Golden City or even hell; it was Limbo.
+He had one shock of sentiment, when he turned that wonderful corner of
+Fleet Street and saw St. Paul's sitting in the sky.
+
+"Ah," he said, after a long pause, "that sort of thing was built under
+the Stuarts!" Then with a sour grin he asked himself what was
+the corresponding monument of the Brunswicks and the Protestant
+Constitution. After some warning, he selected a sky-sign of some pill.
+
+Half an hour afterwards his emotions left him with an emptied mind on
+the same spot. And it was in a mood of mere idle investigation that he
+happened to come to a standstill opposite the office of _The Atheist_.
+He did not see the word "atheist", or if he did, it is quite possible
+that he did not know the meaning of the word. Even as it was, the
+document would not have shocked even the innocent Highlander, but for
+the troublesome and quite unforeseen fact that the innocent Highlander
+read it stolidly to the end; a thing unknown among the most enthusiastic
+subscribers to the paper, and calculated in any case to create a new
+situation.
+
+With a smart journalistic instinct characteristic of all his school, the
+editor of _The Atheist_ had put first in his paper and most prominently
+in his window an article called "The Mesopotamian Mythology and its
+Effects on Syriac Folk Lore." Mr. Evan MacIan began to read this quite
+idly, as he would have read a public statement beginning with a young
+girl dying in Brighton and ending with Bile Beans. He received the very
+considerable amount of information accumulated by the author with
+that tired clearness of the mind which children have on heavy summer
+afternoons--that tired clearness which leads them to go on asking
+questions long after they have lost interest in the subject and are
+as bored as their nurse. The streets were full of people and empty of
+adventures. He might as well know about the gods of Mesopotamia as not;
+so he flattened his long, lean face against the dim bleak pane of the
+window and read all there was to read about Mesopotamian gods. He read
+how the Mesopotamians had a god named Sho (sometimes pronounced Ji), and
+that he was described as being very powerful, a striking similarity to
+some expressions about Jahveh, who is also described as having power.
+Evan had never heard of Jahveh in his life, and imagining him to be some
+other Mesopotamian idol, read on with a dull curiosity. He learnt that
+the name Sho, under its third form of Psa, occurs in an early legend
+which describes how the deity, after the manner of Jupiter on so many
+occasions, seduced a Virgin and begat a hero. This hero, whose name is
+not essential to our existence, was, it was said, the chief hero and
+Saviour of the Mesopotamian ethical scheme. Then followed a paragraph
+giving other examples of such heroes and Saviours being born of
+some profligate intercourse between God and mortal. Then followed a
+paragraph--but Evan did not understand it. He read it again and then
+again. Then he did understand it. The glass fell in ringing fragments
+on to the pavement, and Evan sprang over the barrier into the shop,
+brandishing his stick.
+
+"What is this?" cried little Mr. Turnbull, starting up with hair aflame.
+"How dare you break my window?"
+
+"Because it was the quickest cut to you," cried Evan, stamping. "Stand
+up and fight, you crapulous coward. You dirty lunatic, stand up, will
+you? Have you any weapons here?"
+
+"Are you mad?" asked Turnbull, glaring.
+
+"Are you?" cried Evan. "Can you be anything else when you plaster your
+own house with that God-defying filth? Stand up and fight, I say."
+
+A great light like dawn came into Mr. Turnbull's face. Behind his red
+hair and beard he turned deadly pale with pleasure. Here, after twenty
+lone years of useless toil, he had his reward. Someone was angry with
+the paper. He bounded to his feet like a boy; he saw a new youth opening
+before him. And as not unfrequently happens to middle-aged gentlemen
+when they see a new youth opening before them, he found himself in the
+presence of the police.
+
+The policemen, after some ponderous questionings, collared both the two
+enthusiasts. They were more respectful, however, to the young man who
+had smashed the window, than to the miscreant who had had his window
+smashed. There was an air of refined mystery about Evan MacIan, which
+did not exist in the irate little shopkeeper, an air of refined mystery
+which appealed to the policemen, for policemen, like most other
+English types, are at once snobs and poets. MacIan might possibly be a
+gentleman, they felt; the editor manifestly was not. And the editor's
+fine rational republican appeals to his respect for law, and his ardour
+to be tried by his fellow citizens, seemed to the police quite as much
+gibberish as Evan's mysticism could have done. The police were not used
+to hearing principles, even the principles of their own existence.
+
+The police magistrate, before whom they were hurried and tried, was
+a Mr. Cumberland Vane, a cheerful, middle-aged gentleman, honourably
+celebrated for the lightness of his sentences and the lightness of his
+conversation. He occasionally worked himself up into a sort of theoretic
+rage about certain particular offenders, such as the men who took
+pokers to their wives, talked in a loose, sentimental way about the
+desirability of flogging them, and was hopelessly bewildered by the fact
+that the wives seemed even more angry with him than with their
+husbands. He was a tall, spruce man, with a twist of black moustache
+and incomparable morning dress. He looked like a gentleman, and yet,
+somehow, like a stage gentleman.
+
+He had often treated serious crimes against mere order or property
+with a humane flippancy. Hence, about the mere breaking of an editor's
+window, he was almost uproarious.
+
+"Come, Mr. MacIan, come," he said, leaning back in his chair, "do you
+generally enter you friends' houses by walking through the glass?"
+(Laughter.)
+
+"He is not my friend," said Evan, with the stolidity of a dull child.
+
+"Not your friend, eh?" said the magistrate, sparkling. "Is he your
+brother-in-law?" (Loud and prolonged laughter.)
+
+"He is my enemy," said Evan, simply; "he is the enemy of God."
+
+Mr. Vane shifted sharply in his seat, dropping the eye-glass out of his
+eye in a momentary and not unmanly embarrassment.
+
+"You mustn't talk like that here," he said, roughly, and in a kind of
+hurry, "that has nothing to do with us."
+
+Evan opened his great, blue eyes; "God," he began.
+
+"Be quiet," said the magistrate, angrily, "it is most undesirable that
+things of that sort should be spoken about--a--in public, and in an
+ordinary Court of Justice. Religion is--a--too personal a matter to be
+mentioned in such a place."
+
+"Is it?" answered the Highlander, "then what did those policemen swear
+by just now?"
+
+"That is no parallel," answered Vane, rather irritably; "of course there
+is a form of oath--to be taken reverently--reverently, and there's an
+end of it. But to talk in a public place about one's most sacred and
+private sentiments--well, I call it bad taste. (Slight applause.) I
+call it irreverent. I call it irreverent, and I'm not specially orthodox
+either."
+
+"I see you are not," said Evan, "but I am."
+
+"We are wondering from the point," said the police magistrate, pulling
+himself together.
+
+"May I ask why you smashed this worthy citizen's window?"
+
+Evan turned a little pale at the mere memory, but he answered with the
+same cold and deadly literalism that he showed throughout.
+
+"Because he blasphemed Our Lady."
+
+"I tell you once and for all," cried Mr. Cumberland Vane, rapping his
+knuckles angrily on the table, "I tell you, once and for all, my man,
+that I will not have you turning on any religious rant or cant here.
+Don't imagine that it will impress me. The most religious people are
+not those who talk about it. (Applause.) You answer the questions and do
+nothing else."
+
+"I did nothing else," said Evan, with a slight smile.
+
+"Eh," cried Vane, glaring through his eye-glass.
+
+"You asked me why I broke his window," said MacIan, with a face of wood.
+"I answered, 'Because he blasphemed Our Lady.' I had no other reason. So
+I have no other answer." Vane continued to gaze at him with a sternness
+not habitual to him.
+
+"You are not going the right way to work, Sir," he said, with severity.
+"You are not going the right way to work to--a--have your case treated
+with special consideration. If you had simply expressed regret for what
+you had done, I should have been strongly inclined to dismiss the matter
+as an outbreak of temper. Even now, if you say that you are sorry I
+shall only----"
+
+"But I am not in the least sorry," said Evan, "I am very pleased."
+
+"I really believe you are insane," said the stipendiary, indignantly,
+for he had really been doing his best as a good-natured man, to compose
+the dispute. "What conceivable right have you to break other people's
+windows because their opinions do not agree with yours? This man only
+gave expression to his sincere belief."
+
+"So did I," said the Highlander.
+
+"And who are you?" exploded Vane. "Are your views necessarily the right
+ones? Are you necessarily in possession of the truth?"
+
+"Yes," said MacIan.
+
+The magistrate broke into a contemptuous laugh.
+
+"Oh, you want a nurse to look after you," he said. "You must pay L10."
+
+Evan MacIan plunged his hands into his loose grey garment and drew out a
+queer looking leather purse. It contained exactly twelve sovereigns.
+He paid down the ten, coin by coin, in silence, and equally silently
+returned the remaining two to the receptacle. Then he said, "May I say a
+word, your worship?"
+
+Cumberland Vane seemed half hypnotized with the silence and automatic
+movements of the stranger; he made a movement with his head which might
+have been either "yes" or "no". "I only wished to say, your worship,"
+said MacIan, putting back the purse in his trouser pocket, "that
+smashing that shop window was, I confess, a useless and rather irregular
+business. It may be excused, however, as a mere preliminary to further
+proceedings, a sort of preface. Wherever and whenever I meet that man,"
+and he pointed to the editor of _The Atheist_, "whether it be outside
+this door in ten minutes from now, or twenty years hence in some distant
+country, wherever and whenever I meet that man, I will fight him. Do not
+be afraid. I will not rush at him like a bully, or bear him down with
+any brute superiority. I will fight him like a gentleman; I will fight
+him as our fathers fought. He shall choose how, sword or pistol, horse
+or foot. But if he refuses, I will write his cowardice on every wall
+in the world. If he had said of my mother what he said of the Mother of
+God, there is not a club of clean men in Europe that would deny my
+right to call him out. If he had said it of my wife, you English would
+yourselves have pardoned me for beating him like a dog in the market
+place. Your worship, I have no mother; I have no wife. I have only that
+which the poor have equally with the rich; which the lonely have equally
+with the man of many friends. To me this whole strange world is homely,
+because in the heart of it there is a home; to me this cruel world is
+kindly, because higher than the heavens there is something more human
+than humanity. If a man must not fight for this, may he fight for
+anything? I would fight for my friend, but if I lost my friend, I should
+still be there. I would fight for my country, but if I lost my country,
+I should still exist. But if what that devil dreams were true, I should
+not be--I should burst like a bubble and be gone. I could not live in
+that imbecile universe. Shall I not fight for my own existence?"
+
+The magistrate recovered his voice and his presence of mind. The first
+part of the speech, the bombastic and brutally practical challenge,
+stunned him with surprise; but the rest of Evan's remarks, branching off
+as they did into theoretic phrases, gave his vague and very English
+mind (full of memories of the hedging and compromise in English public
+speaking) an indistinct sensation of relief, as if the man, though mad,
+were not so dangerous as he had thought. He went into a sort of weary
+laughter.
+
+"For Heaven's sake, man," he said, "don't talk so much. Let other people
+have a chance (laughter). I trust all that you said about asking Mr.
+Turnbull to fight, may be regarded as rubbish. In case of accidents,
+however, I must bind you over to keep the peace."
+
+"To keep the peace," repeated Evan, "with whom?"
+
+"With Mr. Turnbull," said Vane.
+
+"Certainly not," answered MacIan. "What has he to do with peace?"
+
+"Do you mean to say," began the magistrate, "that you refuse to..." The
+voice of Turnbull himself clove in for the first time.
+
+"Might I suggest," he said, "That I, your worship, can settle to some
+extent this absurd matter myself. This rather wild gentleman promises
+that he will not attack me with any ordinary assault--and if he does,
+you may be sure the police shall hear of it. But he says he will not. He
+says he will challenge me to a duel; and I cannot say anything stronger
+about his mental state than to say that I think that it is highly
+probable that he will. (Laughter.) But it takes two to make a duel, your
+worship (renewed laughter). I do not in the least mind being described
+on every wall in the world as the coward who would not fight a man
+in Fleet Street, about whether the Virgin Mary had a parallel in
+Mesopotamian mythology. No, your worship. You need not trouble to bind
+him over to keep the peace. I bind myself over to keep the peace, and
+you may rest quite satisfied that there will be no duel with me in it."
+
+Mr. Cumberland Vane rolled about, laughing in a sort of relief.
+
+"You're like a breath of April, sir," he cried. "You're ozone after
+that fellow. You're perfectly right. Perhaps I have taken the thing too
+seriously. I should love to see him sending you challenges and to see
+you smiling. Well, well."
+
+Evan went out of the Court of Justice free, but strangely shaken, like
+a sick man. Any punishment of suppression he would have felt as natural;
+but the sudden juncture between the laughter of his judge and the
+laughter of the man he had wronged, made him feel suddenly small, or at
+least, defeated. It was really true that the whole modern world regarded
+his world as a bubble. No cruelty could have shown it, but their
+kindness showed it with a ghastly clearness. As he was brooding, he
+suddenly became conscious of a small, stern figure, fronting him
+in silence. Its eyes were grey and awful, and its beard red. It was
+Turnbull.
+
+"Well, sir," said the editor of _The Atheist_, "where is the fight to
+be? Name the field, sir."
+
+Evan stood thunderstruck. He stammered out something, he knew not what;
+he only guessed it by the answer of the other.
+
+"Do I want to fight? Do I want to fight?" cried the furious
+Free-thinker. "Why, you moonstruck scarecrow of superstition, do you
+think your dirty saints are the only people who can die? Haven't you
+hung atheists, and burned them, and boiled them, and did they ever deny
+their faith? Do you think we don't want to fight? Night and day I have
+prayed--I have longed--for an atheist revolution--I have longed to see
+your blood and ours on the streets. Let it be yours or mine?"
+
+"But you said..." began MacIan.
+
+"I know," said Turnbull scornfully. "And what did you say? You damned
+fool, you said things that might have got us locked up for a year, and
+shadowed by the coppers for half a decade. If you wanted to fight, why
+did you tell that ass you wanted to? I got you out, to fight if you want
+to. Now, fight if you dare."
+
+"I swear to you, then," said MacIan, after a pause. "I swear to you that
+nothing shall come between us. I swear to you that nothing shall be in
+my heart or in my head till our swords clash together. I swear it by the
+God you have denied, by the Blessed Lady you have blasphemed; I swear it
+by the seven swords in her heart. I swear it by the Holy Island where my
+fathers are, by the honour of my mother, by the secret of my people, and
+by the chalice of the Blood of God."
+
+The atheist drew up his head. "And I," he said, "give my word."
+
+
+
+
+III. SOME OLD CURIOSITIES
+
+The evening sky, a dome of solid gold, unflaked even by a single sunset
+cloud, steeped the meanest sights of London in a strange and mellow
+light. It made a little greasy street of St. Martin's Lane look as if it
+were paved with gold. It made the pawnbroker's half-way down it shine as
+if it were really that Mountain of Piety that the French poetic instinct
+has named it; it made the mean pseudo-French bookshop, next but one to
+it, a shop packed with dreary indecency, show for a moment a kind of
+Parisian colour. And the shop that stood between the pawnshop and the
+shop of dreary indecency, showed with quite a blaze of old world beauty,
+for it was, by accident, a shop not unbeautiful in itself. The front
+window had a glimmer of bronze and blue steel, lit, as by a few stars,
+by the sparks of what were alleged to be jewels; for it was in brief,
+a shop of bric-a-brac and old curiosities. A row of half-burnished
+seventeenth-century swords ran like an ornate railing along the front of
+the window; behind was a darker glimmer of old oak and old armour;
+and higher up hung the most extraordinary looking South Sea tools or
+utensils, whether designed for killing enemies or merely for cooking
+them, no mere white man could possibly conjecture. But the romance of
+the eye, which really on this rich evening, clung about the shop, had
+its main source in the accident of two doors standing open, the front
+door that opened on the street and a back door that opened on an odd
+green square of garden, that the sun turned to a square of gold. There
+is nothing more beautiful than thus to look as it were through the
+archway of a house; as if the open sky were an interior chamber, and the
+sun a secret lamp of the place.
+
+I have suggested that the sunset light made everything lovely. To say
+that it made the keeper of the curiosity shop lovely would be a tribute
+to it perhaps too extreme. It would easily have made him beautiful if he
+had been merely squalid; if he had been a Jew of the Fagin type. But
+he was a Jew of another and much less admirable type; a Jew with a very
+well-sounding name. For though there are no hard tests for separating
+the tares and the wheat of any people, one rude but efficient guide is
+that the nice Jew is called Moses Solomon, and the nasty Jew is called
+Thornton Percy. The keeper of the curiosity shop was of the Thornton
+Percy branch of the chosen people; he belonged to those Lost Ten Tribes
+whose industrious object is to lose themselves. He was a man still
+young, but already corpulent, with sleek dark hair, heavy handsome
+clothes, and a full, fat, permanent smile, which looked at the first
+glance kindly, and at the second cowardly. The name over his shop was
+Henry Gordon, but two Scotchmen who were in his shop that evening could
+come upon no trace of a Scotch accent.
+
+These two Scotchmen in this shop were careful purchasers, but
+free-handed payers. One of them who seemed to be the principal and the
+authority (whom, indeed, Mr. Henry Gordon fancied he had seen somewhere
+before), was a small, sturdy fellow, with fine grey eyes, a square red
+tie and a square red beard, that he carried aggressively forward as if
+he defied anyone to pull it. The other kept so much in the background in
+comparison that he looked almost ghostly in his grey cloak or plaid, a
+tall, sallow, silent young man.
+
+The two Scotchmen were interested in seventeenth-century swords. They
+were fastidious about them. They had a whole armoury of these weapons
+brought out and rolled clattering about the counter, until they found
+two of precisely the same length. Presumably they desired the exact
+symmetry for some decorative trophy. Even then they felt the points,
+poised the swords for balance and bent them in a circle to see that they
+sprang straight again; which, for decorative purposes, seems carrying
+realism rather far.
+
+"These will do," said the strange person with the red beard. "And
+perhaps I had better pay for them at once. And as you are the
+challenger, Mr. MacIan, perhaps you had better explain the situation."
+
+The tall Scotchman in grey took a step forward and spoke in a voice
+quite clear and bold, and yet somehow lifeless, like a man going through
+an ancient formality.
+
+"The fact is, Mr. Gordon, we have to place our honour in your hands.
+Words have passed between Mr. Turnbull and myself on a grave
+and invaluable matter, which can only be atoned for by fighting.
+Unfortunately, as the police are in some sense pursuing us, we are
+hurried, and must fight now and without seconds. But if you will be so
+kind as to take us into your little garden and see far play, we shall
+feel how----"
+
+The shopman recovered himself from a stunning surprise and burst out:
+
+"Gentlemen, are you drunk? A duel! A duel in my garden. Go home,
+gentlemen, go home. Why, what did you quarrel about?"
+
+"We quarrelled," said Evan, in the same dead voice, "about religion."
+The fat shopkeeper rolled about in his chair with enjoyment.
+
+"Well, this is a funny game," he said. "So you want to commit murder
+on behalf of religion. Well, well my religion is a little respect for
+humanity, and----"
+
+"Excuse me," cut in Turnbull, suddenly and fiercely, pointing towards
+the pawnbroker's next door. "Don't you own that shop?"
+
+"Why--er--yes," said Gordon.
+
+"And don't you own that shop?" repeated the secularist, pointing
+backward to the pornographic bookseller.
+
+"What if I do?"
+
+"Why, then," cried Turnbull, with grating contempt. "I will leave
+the religion of humanity confidently in your hands; but I am sorry
+I troubled you about such a thing as honour. Look here, my man. I do
+believe in humanity. I do believe in liberty. My father died for it
+under the swords of the Yeomanry. I am going to die for it, if need be,
+under that sword on your counter. But if there is one sight that makes
+me doubt it it is your foul fat face. It is hard to believe you were not
+meant to be ruled like a dog or killed like a cockroach. Don't try your
+slave's philosophy on me. We are going to fight, and we are going to
+fight in your garden, with your swords. Be still! Raise your voice above
+a whisper, and I run you through the body."
+
+Turnbull put the bright point of the sword against the gay waistcoat of
+the dealer, who stood choking with rage and fear, and an astonishment so
+crushing as to be greater than either.
+
+"MacIan," said Turnbull, falling almost into the familiar tone of a
+business partner, "MacIan, tie up this fellow and put a gag in his
+mouth. Be still, I say, or I kill you where you stand."
+
+The man was too frightened to scream, but he struggled wildly, while
+Evan MacIan, whose long, lean hands were unusually powerful, tightened
+some old curtain cords round him, strapped a rope gag in his mouth and
+rolled him on his back on the floor.
+
+"There's nothing very strong here," said Evan, looking about him. "I'm
+afraid he'll work through that gag in half an hour or so."
+
+"Yes," said Turnbull, "but one of us will be killed by that time."
+
+"Well, let's hope so," said the Highlander, glancing doubtfully at the
+squirming thing on the floor.
+
+"And now," said Turnbull, twirling his fiery moustache and fingering his
+sword, "let us go into the garden. What an exquisite summer evening!"
+
+MacIan said nothing, but lifting his sword from the counter went out
+into the sun.
+
+The brilliant light ran along the blades, filling the channels of them
+with white fire; the combatants stuck their swords in the turf and took
+off their hats, coats, waistcoats, and boots. Evan said a short Latin
+prayer to himself, during which Turnbull made something of a parade of
+lighting a cigarette which he flung away the instant after, when he saw
+MacIan apparently standing ready. Yet MacIan was not exactly ready. He
+stood staring like a man stricken with a trance.
+
+"What are you staring at?" asked Turnbull. "Do you see the bobbies?"
+
+"I see Jerusalem," said Evan, "all covered with the shields and
+standards of the Saracens."
+
+"Jerusalem!" said Turnbull, laughing. "Well, we've taken the only
+inhabitant into captivity."
+
+And he picked up his sword and made it whistle like a boy's wand.
+
+"I beg your pardon," said MacIan, dryly. "Let us begin."
+
+MacIan made a military salute with his weapon, which Turnbull copied or
+parodied with an impatient contempt; and in the stillness of the garden
+the swords came together with a clear sound like a bell. The instant
+the blades touched, each felt them tingle to their very points with a
+personal vitality, as if they were two naked nerves of steel. Evan had
+worn throughout an air of apathy, which might have been the stale apathy
+of one who wants nothing. But it was indeed the more dreadful apathy
+of one who wants something and will care for nothing else. And this was
+seen suddenly; for the instant Evan engaged he disengaged and lunged
+with an infernal violence. His opponent with a desperate promptitude
+parried and riposted; the parry only just succeeded, the riposte failed.
+Something big and unbearable seemed to have broken finally out of
+Evan in that first murderous lunge, leaving him lighter and cooler and
+quicker upon his feet. He fell to again, fiercely still, but now with a
+fierce caution. The next moment Turnbull lunged; MacIan seemed to catch
+the point and throw it away from him, and was thrusting back like a
+thunderbolt, when a sound paralysed him; another sound beside their
+ringing weapons. Turnbull, perhaps from an equal astonishment, perhaps
+from chivalry, stopped also and forebore to send his sword through his
+exposed enemy.
+
+"What's that?" asked Evan, hoarsely.
+
+A heavy scraping sound, as of a trunk being dragged along a littered
+floor, came from the dark shop behind them.
+
+"The old Jew has broken one of his strings, and he's crawling about,"
+said Turnbull. "Be quick! We must finish before he gets his gag out."
+
+"Yes, yes, quick! On guard!" cried the Highlander. The blades crossed
+again with the same sound like song, and the men went to work again with
+the same white and watchful faces. Evan, in his impatience, went back a
+little to his wildness. He made windmills, as the French duellists say,
+and though he was probably a shade the better fencer of the two, he
+found the other's point pass his face twice so close as almost to graze
+his cheek. The second time he realized the actual possibility of defeat
+and pulled himself together under a shock of the sanity of anger. He
+narrowed, and, so to speak, tightened his operations: he fenced (as the
+swordsman's boast goes), in a wedding ring; he turned Turnbull's thrusts
+with a maddening and almost mechanical click, like that of a machine.
+Whenever Turnbull's sword sought to go over that other mere white streak
+it seemed to be caught in a complex network of steel. He turned one
+thrust, turned another, turned another. Then suddenly he went forward at
+the lunge with his whole living weight. Turnbull leaped back, but
+Evan lunged and lunged and lunged again like a devilish piston rod or
+battering ram. And high above all the sound of the struggle there broke
+into the silent evening a bellowing human voice, nasal, raucous, at the
+highest pitch of pain. "Help! Help! Police! Murder! Murder!" The gag was
+broken; and the tongue of terror was loose.
+
+"Keep on!" gasped Turnbull. "One may be killed before they come."
+
+The voice of the screaming shopkeeper was loud enough to drown not only
+the noise of the swords but all other noises around it, but even through
+its rending din there seemed to be some other stir or scurry. And Evan,
+in the very act of thrusting at Turnbull, saw something in his eyes that
+made him drop his sword. The atheist, with his grey eyes at their
+widest and wildest, was staring straight over his shoulder at the little
+archway of shop that opened on the street beyond. And he saw the archway
+blocked and blackened with strange figures.
+
+"We must bolt, MacIan," he said abruptly. "And there isn't a damned
+second to lose either. Do as I do."
+
+With a bound he was beside the little cluster of his clothes and boots
+that lay on the lawn; he snatched them up, without waiting to put any of
+them on; and tucking his sword under his other arm, went wildly at
+the wall at the bottom of the garden and swung himself over it. Three
+seconds after he had alighted in his socks on the other side, MacIan
+alighted beside him, also in his socks and also carrying clothes and
+sword in a desperate bundle.
+
+They were in a by-street, very lean and lonely itself, but so close to
+a crowded thoroughfare that they could see the vague masses of vehicles
+going by, and could even see an individual hansom cab passing the
+corner at the instant. Turnbull put his fingers to his mouth like a
+gutter-snipe and whistled twice. Even as he did so he could hear the
+loud voices of the neighbours and the police coming down the garden.
+
+The hansom swung sharply and came tearing down the little lane at his
+call. When the cabman saw his fares, however, two wild-haired men
+in their shirts and socks with naked swords under their arms, he
+not unnaturally brought his readiness to a rigid stop and stared
+suspiciously.
+
+"You talk to him a minute," whispered Turnbull, and stepped back into
+the shadow of the wall.
+
+"We want you," said MacIan to the cabman, with a superb Scotch drawl of
+indifference and assurance, "to drive us to St. Pancras Station--verra
+quick."
+
+"Very sorry, sir," said the cabman, "but I'd like to know it was all
+right. Might I arst where you come from, sir?"
+
+A second after he spoke MacIan heard a heavy voice on the other side of
+the wall, saying: "I suppose I'd better get over and look for them. Give
+me a back."
+
+"Cabby," said MacIan, again assuming the most deliberate and lingering
+lowland Scotch intonation, "if ye're really verra anxious to ken whar a'
+come fra', I'll tell ye as a verra great secret. A' come from Scotland.
+And a'm gaein' to St. Pancras Station. Open the doors, cabby."
+
+The cabman stared, but laughed. The heavy voice behind the wall said:
+"Now then, a better back this time, Mr. Price." And from the shadow
+of the wall Turnbull crept out. He had struggled wildly into his coat
+(leaving his waistcoat on the pavement), and he was with a fierce pale
+face climbing up the cab behind the cabman. MacIan had no glimmering
+notion of what he was up to, but an instinct of discipline, inherited
+from a hundred men of war, made him stick to his own part and trust the
+other man's.
+
+"Open the doors, cabby," he repeated, with something of the obstinate
+solemnity of a drunkard, "open the doors. Did ye no hear me say St.
+Pancras Station?"
+
+The top of a policeman's helmet appeared above the garden wall. The
+cabman did not see it, but he was still suspicious and began:
+
+"Very sorry, sir, but..." and with that the catlike Turnbull tore him
+out of his seat and hurled him into the street below, where he lay
+suddenly stunned.
+
+"Give me his hat," said Turnbull in a silver voice, that the other
+obeyed like a bugle. "And get inside with the swords."
+
+And just as the red and raging face of a policeman appeared above the
+wall, Turnbull struck the horse with a terrible cut of the whip and the
+two went whirling away like a boomerang.
+
+They had spun through seven streets and three or four squares before
+anything further happened. Then, in the neighbourhood of Maida Vale,
+the driver opened the trap and talked through it in a manner not wholly
+common in conversations through that aperture.
+
+"Mr. MacIan," he said shortly and civilly.
+
+"Mr. Turnbull," replied his motionless fare.
+
+"Under circumstances such as those in which we were both recently placed
+there was no time for anything but very abrupt action. I trust therefore
+that you have no cause to complain of me if I have deferred until this
+moment a consultation with you on our present position or future action.
+Our present position, Mr. MacIan, I imagine that I am under no special
+necessity of describing. We have broken the law and we are fleeing
+from its officers. Our future action is a thing about which I myself
+entertain sufficiently strong views; but I have no right to assume or to
+anticipate yours, though I may have formed a decided conception of your
+character and a decided notion of what they will probably be. Still, by
+every principle of intellectual justice, I am bound to ask you now and
+seriously whether you wish to continue our interrupted relations."
+
+MacIan leant his white and rather weary face back upon the cushions in
+order to speak up through the open door.
+
+"Mr. Turnbull," he said, "I have nothing to add to what I have said
+before. It is strongly borne in upon me that you and I, the sole
+occupants of this runaway cab, are at this moment the two most important
+people in London, possibly in Europe. I have been looking at all the
+streets as we went past, I have been looking at all the shops as we went
+past, I have been looking at all the churches as we went past. At
+first, I felt a little dazed with the vastness of it all. I could not
+understand what it all meant. But now I know exactly what it all means.
+It means us. This whole civilization is only a dream. You and I are the
+realities."
+
+"Religious symbolism," said Mr. Turnbull, through the trap, "does not,
+as you are probably aware, appeal ordinarily to thinkers of the school
+to which I belong. But in symbolism as you use it in this instance, I
+must, I think, concede a certain truth. We _must_ fight this thing
+out somewhere; because, as you truly say, we have found each other's
+reality. We _must_ kill each other--or convert each other. I used to
+think all Christians were hypocrites, and I felt quite mildly towards
+them really. But I know you are sincere--and my soul is mad against you.
+In the same way you used, I suppose, to think that all atheists thought
+atheism would leave them free for immorality--and yet in your heart you
+tolerated them entirely. Now you _know_ that I am an honest man, and you
+are mad against me, as I am against you. Yes, that's it. You can't be
+angry with bad men. But a good man in the wrong--why one thirsts for his
+blood. Yes, you open for me a vista of thought."
+
+"Don't run into anything," said Evan, immovably.
+
+"There's something in that view of yours, too," said Turnbull, and shut
+down the trap.
+
+They sped on through shining streets that shot by them like arrows. Mr.
+Turnbull had evidently a great deal of unused practical talent which was
+unrolling itself in this ridiculous adventure. They had got away with
+such stunning promptitude that the police chase had in all probability
+not even properly begun. But in case it had, the amateur cabman chose
+his dizzy course through London with a strange dexterity. He did not
+do what would have first occurred to any ordinary outsider desiring to
+destroy his tracks. He did not cut into by-ways or twist his way through
+mean streets. His amateur common sense told him that it was precisely
+the poor street, the side street, that would be likely to remember
+and report the passing of a hansom cab, like the passing of a royal
+procession. He kept chiefly to the great roads, so full of hansoms that
+a wilder pair than they might easily have passed in the press. In one of
+the quieter streets Evan put on his boots.
+
+Towards the top of Albany Street the singular cabman again opened the
+trap.
+
+"Mr. MacIan," he said, "I understand that we have now definitely settled
+that in the conventional language honour is not satisfied. Our action
+must at least go further than it has gone under recent interrupted
+conditions. That, I believe, is understood."
+
+"Perfectly," replied the other with his bootlace in his teeth.
+
+"Under those conditions," continued Turnbull, his voice coming through
+the hole with a slight note of trepidation very unusual with him, "I
+have a suggestion to make, if that can be called a suggestion, which
+has probably occurred to you as readily as to me. Until the actual event
+comes off we are practically in the position if not of comrades, at
+least of business partners. Until the event comes off, therefore
+I should suggest that quarrelling would be inconvenient and rather
+inartistic; while the ordinary exchange of politeness between man and
+man would be not only elegant but uncommonly practical."
+
+"You are perfectly right," answered MacIan, with his melancholy voice,
+"in saying that all this has occurred to me. All duellists should behave
+like gentlemen to each other. But we, by the queerness of our position,
+are something much more than either duellists or gentlemen. We are, in
+the oddest and most exact sense of the term, brothers--in arms."
+
+"Mr. MacIan," replied Turnbull, calmly, "no more need be said." And he
+closed the trap once more.
+
+They had reached Finchley Road before he opened it again.
+
+Then he said, "Mr. MacIan, may I offer you a cigar. It will be a touch
+of realism."
+
+"Thank you," answered Evan. "You are very kind." And he began to smoke
+in the cab.
+
+
+
+
+IV. A DISCUSSION AT DAWN
+
+The duellists had from their own point of view escaped or conquered the
+chief powers of the modern world. They had satisfied the magistrate,
+they had tied the tradesman neck and heels, and they had left the
+police behind. As far as their own feelings went they had melted into a
+monstrous sea; they were but the fare and driver of one of the million
+hansoms that fill London streets. But they had forgotten something; they
+had forgotten journalism. They had forgotten that there exists in the
+modern world, perhaps for the first time in history, a class of people
+whose interest is not that things should happen well or happen badly,
+should happen successfully or happen unsuccessfully, should happen to
+the advantage of this party or the advantage of that part, but whose
+interest simply is that things should happen.
+
+It is the one great weakness of journalism as a picture of our modern
+existence, that it must be a picture made up entirely of exceptions. We
+announce on flaring posters that a man has fallen off a scaffolding.
+We do not announce on flaring posters that a man has not fallen off a
+scaffolding. Yet this latter fact is fundamentally more exciting, as
+indicating that that moving tower of terror and mystery, a man, is still
+abroad upon the earth. That the man has not fallen off a scaffolding is
+really more sensational; and it is also some thousand times more common.
+But journalism cannot reasonably be expected thus to insist upon the
+permanent miracles. Busy editors cannot be expected to put on their
+posters, "Mr. Wilkinson Still Safe," or "Mr. Jones, of Worthing, Not
+Dead Yet." They cannot announce the happiness of mankind at all. They
+cannot describe all the forks that are not stolen, or all the marriages
+that are not judiciously dissolved. Hence the complete picture they
+give of life is of necessity fallacious; they can only represent what
+is unusual. However democratic they may be, they are only concerned with
+the minority.
+
+The incident of the religious fanatic who broke a window on Ludgate Hill
+was alone enough to set them up in good copy for the night. But when the
+same man was brought before a magistrate and defied his enemy to
+mortal combat in the open court, then the columns would hardly hold the
+excruciating information, and the headlines were so large that there was
+hardly room for any of the text. The _Daily Telegraph_ headed a column,
+"A Duel on Divinity," and there was a correspondence afterwards which
+lasted for months, about whether police magistrates ought to mention
+religion. The _Daily Mail_ in its dull, sensible way, headed the events,
+"Wanted to fight for the Virgin." Mr. James Douglas, in _The Star_,
+presuming on his knowledge of philosophical and theological terms,
+described the Christian's outbreak under the title of "Dualist and
+Duellist." The _Daily News_ inserted a colourless account of the matter,
+but was pursued and eaten up for some weeks, with letters from outlying
+ministers, headed "Murder and Mariolatry." But the journalistic
+temperature was steadily and consistently heated by all these
+influences; the journalists had tasted blood, prospectively, and were
+in the mood for more; everything in the matter prepared them for further
+outbursts of moral indignation. And when a gasping reporter rushed in in
+the last hours of the evening with the announcement that the two heroes
+of the Police Court had literally been found fighting in a London back
+garden, with a shopkeeper bound and gagged in the front of the house,
+the editors and sub-editors were stricken still as men are by great
+beatitudes.
+
+The next morning, five or six of the great London dailies burst out
+simultaneously into great blossoms of eloquent leader-writing. Towards
+the end all the leaders tended to be the same, but they all began
+differently. The _Daily Telegraph_, for instance began, "There will
+be little difference among our readers or among all truly English and
+law-abiding men touching the, etc. etc." The _Daily Mail_ said, "People
+must learn, in the modern world, to keep their theological differences
+to themselves. The fracas, etc. etc." The _Daily News_ started, "Nothing
+could be more inimical to the cause of true religion than, etc. etc."
+The _Times_ began with something about Celtic disturbances of the
+equilibrium of Empire, and the _Daily Express_ distinguished itself
+splendidly by omitting altogether so controversial a matter and
+substituting a leader about goloshes.
+
+And the morning after that, the editors and the newspapers were in such
+a state, that, as the phrase is, there was no holding them. Whatever
+secret and elvish thing it is that broods over editors and suddenly
+turns their brains, that thing had seized on the story of the broken
+glass and the duel in the garden. It became monstrous and omnipresent,
+as do in our time the unimportant doings of the sect of the
+Agapemonites, or as did at an earlier time the dreary dishonesties
+of the Rhodesian financiers. Questions were asked about it, and even
+answered, in the House of Commons. The Government was solemnly denounced
+in the papers for not having done something, nobody knew what, to
+prevent the window being broken. An enormous subscription was started
+to reimburse Mr. Gordon, the man who had been gagged in the shop. Mr.
+MacIan, one of the combatants, became for some mysterious reason, singly
+and hugely popular as a comic figure in the comic papers and on the
+stage of the music hall. He was always represented (in defiance of
+fact), with red whiskers, and a very red nose, and in full Highland
+costume. And a song, consisting of an unimaginable number of verses,
+in which his name was rhymed with flat iron, the British Lion, sly 'un,
+dandelion, Spion (With Kop in the next line), was sung to crowded houses
+every night. The papers developed a devouring thirst for the capture of
+the fugitives; and when they had not been caught for forty-eight hours,
+they suddenly turned the whole matter into a detective mystery. Letters
+under the heading, "Where are They," poured in to every paper, with
+every conceivable kind of explanation, running them to earth in the
+Monument, the Twopenny Tube, Epping Forest, Westminster Abbey, rolled up
+in carpets at Shoolbreds, locked up in safes in Chancery Lane. Yes, the
+papers were very interesting, and Mr. Turnbull unrolled a whole bundle
+of them for the amusement of Mr. MacIan as they sat on a high common to
+the north of London, in the coming of the white dawn.
+
+The darkness in the east had been broken with a bar of grey; the bar
+of grey was split with a sword of silver and morning lifted itself
+laboriously over London. From the spot where Turnbull and MacIan were
+sitting on one of the barren steeps behind Hampstead, they could see
+the whole of London shaping itself vaguely and largely in the grey and
+growing light, until the white sun stood over it and it lay at their
+feet, the splendid monstrosity that it is. Its bewildering squares and
+parallelograms were compact and perfect as a Chinese puzzle; an enormous
+hieroglyphic which man must decipher or die. There fell upon both of
+them, but upon Turnbull more than the other, because he know more what
+the scene signified, that quite indescribable sense as of a sublime and
+passionate and heart-moving futility, which is never evoked by deserts
+or dead men or men neglected and barbarous, which can only be invoked by
+the sight of the enormous genius of man applied to anything other than
+the best. Turnbull, the old idealistic democrat, had so often reviled
+the democracy and reviled them justly for their supineness, their
+snobbishness, their evil reverence for idle things. He was right enough;
+for our democracy has only one great fault; it is not democratic. And
+after denouncing so justly average modern men for so many years as
+sophists and as slaves, he looked down from an empty slope in Hampstead
+and saw what gods they are. Their achievement seemed all the more heroic
+and divine, because it seemed doubtful whether it was worth doing at
+all. There seemed to be something greater than mere accuracy in making
+such a mistake as London. And what was to be the end of it all? what was
+to be the ultimate transformation of this common and incredible London
+man, this workman on a tram in Battersea, his clerk on an omnibus in
+Cheapside? Turnbull, as he stared drearily, murmured to himself
+the words of the old atheistic and revolutionary Swinburne who had
+intoxicated his youth:
+
+        "And still we ask if God or man
+        Can loosen thee Lazarus;
+        Bid thee rise up republican,
+        And save thyself and all of us.
+        But no disciple's tongue can say
+        If thou can'st take our sins away."
+
+Turnbull shivered slightly as if behind the earthly morning he felt the
+evening of the world, the sunset of so many hopes. Those words were from
+"Songs before Sunrise". But Turnbull's songs at their best were songs
+after sunrise, and sunrise had been no such great thing after all.
+Turnbull shivered again in the sharp morning air. MacIan was also gazing
+with his face towards the city, but there was that about his blind and
+mystical stare that told one, so to speak, that his eyes were turned
+inwards. When Turnbull said something to him about London, they seemed
+to move as at a summons and come out like two householders coming out
+into their doorways.
+
+"Yes," he said, with a sort of stupidity. "It's a very big place."
+
+There was a somewhat unmeaning silence, and then MacIan said again:
+
+"It's a very big place. When I first came into it I was frightened of
+it. Frightened exactly as one would be frightened at the sight of a
+man forty feet high. I am used to big things where I come from, big
+mountains that seem to fill God's infinity, and the big sea that goes
+to the end of the world. But then these things are all shapeless and
+confused things, not made in any familiar form. But to see the plain,
+square, human things as large as that, houses so large and streets
+so large, and the town itself so large, was like having screwed some
+devil's magnifying glass into one's eye. It was like seeing a porridge
+bowl as big as a house, or a mouse-trap made to catch elephants."
+
+"Like the land of the Brobdingnagians," said Turnbull, smiling.
+
+"Oh! Where is that?" said MacIan.
+
+Turnbull said bitterly, "In a book," and the silence fell suddenly
+between them again.
+
+They were sitting in a sort of litter on the hillside; all the things
+they had hurriedly collected, in various places, for their flight, were
+strewn indiscriminately round them. The two swords with which they had
+lately sought each other's lives were flung down on the grass at random,
+like two idle walking-sticks. Some provisions they had bought last
+night, at a low public house, in case of undefined contingencies, were
+tossed about like the materials of an ordinary picnic, here a basket
+of chocolate, and there a bottle of wine. And to add to the disorder
+finally, there were strewn on top of everything, the most disorderly
+of modern things, newspapers, and more newspapers, and yet again
+newspapers, the ministers of the modern anarchy. Turnbull picked up one
+of them drearily, and took out a pipe.
+
+"There's a lot about us," he said. "Do you mind if I light up?"
+
+"Why should I mind?" asked MacIan.
+
+Turnbull eyed with a certain studious interest, the man who did not
+understand any of the verbal courtesies; he lit his pipe and blew great
+clouds out of it.
+
+"Yes," he resumed. "The matter on which you and I are engaged is at this
+moment really the best copy in England. I am a journalist, and I know.
+For the first time, perhaps, for many generations, the English are
+really more angry about a wrong thing done in England than they are
+about a wrong thing done in France."
+
+"It is not a wrong thing," said MacIan.
+
+Turnbull laughed. "You seem unable to understand the ordinary use of the
+human language. If I did not suspect that you were a genius, I should
+certainly know you were a blockhead. I fancy we had better be getting
+along and collecting our baggage."
+
+And he jumped up and began shoving the luggage into his pockets, or
+strapping it on to his back. As he thrust a tin of canned meat, anyhow,
+into his bursting side pocket, he said casually:
+
+"I only meant that you and I are the most prominent people in the
+English papers."
+
+"Well, what did you expect?" asked MacIan, opening his great grave blue
+eyes.
+
+"The papers are full of us," said Turnbull, stooping to pick up one of
+the swords.
+
+MacIan stooped and picked up the other.
+
+"Yes," he said, in his simple way. "I have read what they have to say.
+But they don't seem to understand the point."
+
+"The point of what?" asked Turnbull.
+
+"The point of the sword," said MacIan, violently, and planted the steel
+point in the soil like a man planting a tree.
+
+"That is a point," said Turnbull, grimly, "that we will discuss later.
+Come along."
+
+Turnbull tied the last tin of biscuits desperately to himself with
+string; and then spoke, like a diver girt for plunging, short and sharp.
+
+"Now, Mr. MacIan, you must listen to me. You must listen to me, not
+merely because I know the country, which you might learn by looking at
+a map, but because I know the people of the country, whom you could
+not know by living here thirty years. That infernal city down there is
+awake; and it is awake against us. All those endless rows of windows and
+windows are all eyes staring at us. All those forests of chimneys are
+fingers pointing at us, as we stand here on the hillside. This thing has
+caught on. For the next six mortal months they will think of nothing
+but us, as for six mortal months they thought of nothing but the Dreyfus
+case. Oh, I know it's funny. They let starving children, who don't
+want to die, drop by the score without looking round. But because two
+gentlemen, from private feelings of delicacy, do want to die, they will
+mobilize the army and navy to prevent them. For half a year or more, you
+and I, Mr. MacIan, will be an obstacle to every reform in the British
+Empire. We shall prevent the Chinese being sent out of the Transvaal and
+the blocks being stopped in the Strand. We shall be the conversational
+substitute when anyone recommends Home Rule, or complains of sky signs.
+Therefore, do not imagine, in your innocence, that we have only to melt
+away among those English hills as a Highland cateran might into your
+god-forsaken Highland mountains. We must be eternally on our guard; we
+must live the hunted life of two distinguished criminals. We must expect
+to be recognized as much as if we were Napoleon escaping from Elba. We
+must be prepared for our descriptions being sent to every tiny village,
+and for our faces being recognized by every ambitious policeman. We
+must often sleep under the stars as if we were in Africa. Last and most
+important we must not dream of effecting our--our final settlement,
+which will be a thing as famous as the Phoenix Park murders, unless we
+have made real and precise arrangements for our isolation--I will not
+say our safety. We must not, in short, fight until we have thrown them
+off our scent, if only for a moment. For, take my word for it, Mr.
+MacIan, if the British Public once catches us up, the British Public
+will prevent the duel, if it is only by locking us both up in asylums
+for the rest of our days."
+
+MacIan was looking at the horizon with a rather misty look.
+
+"I am not at all surprised," he said, "at the world being against us. It
+makes me feel I was right to----"
+
+"Yes?" said Turnbull.
+
+"To smash your window," said MacIan. "I have woken up the world."
+
+"Very well, then," said Turnbull, stolidly. "Let us look at a few
+final facts. Beyond that hill there is comparatively clear country.
+Fortunately, I know the part well, and if you will follow me exactly,
+and, when necessary, on your stomach, we may be able to get ten miles
+out of London, literally without meeting anyone at all, which will be
+the best possible beginning, at any rate. We have provisions for at
+least two days and two nights, three days if we do it carefully. We may
+be able to get fifty or sixty miles away without even walking into an
+inn door. I have the biscuits and the tinned meat, and the milk. You
+have the chocolate, I think? And the brandy?"
+
+"Yes," said MacIan, like a soldier taking orders.
+
+"Very well, then, come on. March. We turn under that third bush and so
+down into the valley." And he set off ahead at a swinging walk.
+
+Then he stopped suddenly; for he realized that the other was not
+following. Evan MacIan was leaning on his sword with a lowering face,
+like a man suddenly smitten still with doubt.
+
+"What on earth is the matter?" asked Turnbull, staring in some anger.
+
+Evan made no reply.
+
+"What the deuce is the matter with you?" demanded the leader, again, his
+face slowly growing as red as his beard; then he said, suddenly, and in
+a more human voice, "Are you in pain, MacIan?"
+
+"Yes," replied the Highlander, without lifting his face.
+
+"Take some brandy," cried Turnbull, walking forward hurriedly towards
+him. "You've got it."
+
+"It's not in the body," said MacIan, in his dull, strange way. "The
+pain has come into my mind. A very dreadful thing has just come into my
+thoughts."
+
+"What the devil are you talking about?" asked Turnbull.
+
+MacIan broke out with a queer and living voice.
+
+"We must fight now, Turnbull. We must fight now. A frightful thing has
+come upon me, and I know it must be now and here. I must kill you here,"
+he cried, with a sort of tearful rage impossible to describe. "Here,
+here, upon this blessed grass."
+
+"Why, you idiot," began Turnbull.
+
+"The hour has come--the black hour God meant for it. Quick, it will soon
+be gone. Quick!"
+
+And he flung the scabbard from him furiously, and stood with the
+sunlight sparkling along his sword.
+
+"You confounded fool," repeated Turnbull. "Put that thing up again,
+you ass; people will come out of that house at the first clash of the
+steel."
+
+"One of us will be dead before they come," said the other, hoarsely,
+"for this is the hour God meant."
+
+"Well, I never thought much of God," said the editor of _The Atheist_,
+losing all patience. "And I think less now. Never mind what God meant.
+Kindly enlighten my pagan darkness as to what the devil _you_ mean."
+
+"The hour will soon be gone. In a moment it will be gone," said the
+madman. "It is now, now, now that I must nail your blaspheming body to
+the earth--now, now that I must avenge Our Lady on her vile slanderer.
+Now or never. For the dreadful thought is in my mind."
+
+"And what thought," asked Turnbull, with frantic composure, "occupies
+what you call your mind?"
+
+"I must kill you now," said the fanatic, "because----"
+
+"Well, because," said Turnbull, patiently.
+
+"Because I have begun to like you."
+
+Turnbull's face had a sudden spasm in the sunlight, a change so
+instantaneous that it left no trace behind it; and his features seemed
+still carved into a cold stare. But when he spoke again he seemed like
+a man who was placidly pretending to misunderstand something that he
+understood perfectly well.
+
+"Your affection expresses itself in an abrupt form," he began, but
+MacIan broke the brittle and frivolous speech to pieces with a violent
+voice. "Do not trouble to talk like that," he said. "You know what I
+mean as well as I know it. Come on and fight, I say. Perhaps you are
+feeling just as I do."
+
+Turnbull's face flinched again in the fierce sunlight, but his attitude
+kept its contemptuous ease.
+
+"Your Celtic mind really goes too fast for me," he said; "let me be
+permitted in my heavy Lowland way to understand this new development. My
+dear Mr. MacIan, what do you really mean?"
+
+MacIan still kept the shining sword-point towards the other's breast.
+
+"You know what I mean. You mean the same yourself. We must fight now or
+else----"
+
+"Or else?" repeated Turnbull, staring at him with an almost blinding
+gravity.
+
+"Or else we may not want to fight at all," answered Evan, and the end of
+his speech was like a despairing cry.
+
+Turnbull took out his own sword suddenly as if to engage; then planting
+it point downwards for a moment, he said, "Before we begin, may I ask
+you a question?"
+
+MacIan bowed patiently, but with burning eyes.
+
+"You said, just now," continued Turnbull, presently, "that if we did not
+fight now, we might not want to fight at all. How would you feel about
+the matter if we came not to want to fight at all?"
+
+"I should feel," answered the other, "just as I should feel if you had
+drawn your sword, and I had run away from it. I should feel that because
+I had been weak, justice had not been done."
+
+"Justice," answered Turnbull, with a thoughtful smile, "but we are
+talking about your feelings. And what do you mean by justice, apart from
+your feelings?"
+
+MacIan made a gesture of weary recognition! "Oh, Nominalism," he said,
+with a sort of sigh, "we had all that out in the twelfth century."
+
+"I wish we could have it out now," replied the other, firmly. "Do you
+really mean that if you came to think me right, you would be certainly
+wrong?"
+
+"If I had a blow on the back of my head, I might come to think you a
+green elephant," answered MacIan, "but have I not the right to say now,
+that if I thought that I should think wrong?"
+
+"Then you are quite certain that it would be wrong to like me?" asked
+Turnbull, with a slight smile.
+
+"No," said Evan, thoughtfully, "I do not say that. It may not be the
+devil, it may be some part of God I am not meant to know. But I had a
+work to do, and it is making the work difficult."
+
+"And I suppose," said the atheist, quite gently, "that you and I know
+all about which part of God we ought to know."
+
+MacIan burst out like a man driven back and explaining everything.
+
+"The Church is not a thing like the Athenaeum Club," he cried. "If the
+Athenaeum Club lost all its members, the Athenaeum Club would dissolve
+and cease to exist. But when we belong to the Church we belong to
+something which is outside all of us; which is outside everything you
+talk about, outside the Cardinals and the Pope. They belong to it, but
+it does not belong to them. If we all fell dead suddenly, the Church
+would still somehow exist in God. Confound it all, don't you see that I
+am more sure of its existence than I am of my own existence? And yet you
+ask me to trust my temperament, my own temperament, which can be turned
+upside down by two bottles of claret or an attack of the jaundice. You
+ask me to trust that when it softens towards you and not to trust the
+thing which I believe to be outside myself and more real than the blood
+in my body."
+
+"Stop a moment," said Turnbull, in the same easy tone, "Even in the very
+act of saying that you believe this or that, you imply that there is a
+part of yourself that you trust even if there are many parts which you
+mistrust. If it is only you that like me, surely, also, it is only you
+that believe in the Catholic Church."
+
+Evan remained in an unmoved and grave attitude. "There is a part of me
+which is divine," he answered, "a part that can be trusted, but there
+are also affections which are entirely animal and idle."
+
+"And you are quite certain, I suppose," continued Turnbull, "that if
+even you esteem me the esteem would be wholly animal and idle?" For the
+first time MacIan started as if he had not expected the thing that was
+said to him. At last he said:
+
+"Whatever in earth or heaven it is that has joined us two together, it
+seems to be something which makes it impossible to lie. No, I do not
+think that the movement in me towards you was...was that surface sort of
+thing. It may have been something deeper...something strange. I cannot
+understand the thing at all. But understand this and understand it
+thoroughly, if I loved you my love might be divine. No, it is not some
+trifle that we are fighting about. It is not some superstition or some
+symbol. When you wrote those words about Our Lady, you were in that act
+a wicked man doing a wicked thing. If I hate you it is because you have
+hated goodness. And if I like you...it is because you are good."
+
+Turnbull's face wore an indecipherable expression.
+
+"Well, shall we fight now?" he said.
+
+"Yes," said MacIan, with a sudden contraction of his black brows, "yes,
+it must be now."
+
+The bright swords crossed, and the first touch of them, travelling
+down blade and arm, told each combatant that the heart of the other was
+awakened. It was not in that way that the swords rang together when they
+had rushed on each other in the little garden behind the dealer's shop.
+
+There was a pause, and then MacIan made a movement as if to thrust,
+and almost at the same moment Turnbull suddenly and calmly dropped his
+sword. Evan stared round in an unusual bewilderment, and then realized
+that a large man in pale clothes and a Panama hat was strolling serenely
+towards them.
+
+
+
+
+V. THE PEACEMAKER
+
+When the combatants, with crossed swords, became suddenly conscious of
+a third party, they each made the same movement. It was as quick as
+the snap of a pistol, and they altered it instantaneously and recovered
+their original pose, but they had both made it, they had both seen it,
+and they both knew what it was. It was not a movement of anger at being
+interrupted. Say or think what they would, it was a movement of relief.
+A force within them, and yet quite beyond them, seemed slowly and
+pitilessly washing away the adamant of their oath. As mistaken lovers
+might watch the inevitable sunset of first love, these men watched the
+sunset of their first hatred.
+
+Their hearts were growing weaker and weaker against each other. When
+their weapons rang and riposted in the little London garden, they
+could have been very certain that if a third party had interrupted them
+something at least would have happened. They would have killed each
+other or they would have killed him. But now nothing could undo or
+deny that flash of fact, that for a second they had been glad to be
+interrupted. Some new and strange thing was rising higher and higher in
+their hearts like a high sea at night. It was something that seemed all
+the more merciless, because it might turn out an enormous mercy. Was
+there, perhaps, some such fatalism in friendship as all lovers talk
+about in love? Did God make men love each other against their will?
+
+"I'm sure you'll excuse my speaking to you," said the stranger, in a
+voice at once eager and deprecating.
+
+The voice was too polite for good manners. It was incongruous with the
+eccentric spectacle of the duellists which ought to have startled a sane
+and free man. It was also incongruous with the full and healthy, though
+rather loose physique of the man who spoke. At the first glance he
+looked a fine animal, with curling gold beard and hair, and blue eyes,
+unusually bright. It was only at the second glance that the mind felt
+a sudden and perhaps unmeaning irritation at the way in which the gold
+beard retreated backwards into the waistcoat, and the way in which the
+finely shaped nose went forward as if smelling its way. And it was
+only, perhaps, at the hundredth glance that the bright blue eyes,
+which normally before and after the instant seemed brilliant with
+intelligence, seemed as it were to be brilliant with idiocy. He was a
+heavy, healthy-looking man, who looked all the larger because of the
+loose, light coloured clothes that he wore, and that had in their
+extreme lightness and looseness, almost a touch of the tropics. But
+a closer examination of his attire would have shown that even in the
+tropics it would have been unique; but it was all woven according to
+some hygienic texture which no human being had ever heard of before, and
+which was absolutely necessary even for a day's health. He wore a huge
+broad-brimmed hat, equally hygienic, very much at the back of his head,
+and his voice coming out of so heavy and hearty a type of man was, as I
+have said, startlingly shrill and deferential.
+
+"I'm sure you'll excuse my speaking to you," he said. "Now, I wonder if
+you are in some little difficulty which, after all, we could settle very
+comfortably together? Now, you don't mind my saying this, do you?"
+
+The face of both combatants remained somewhat solid under this appeal.
+But the stranger, probably taking their silence for a gathering shame,
+continued with a kind of gaiety:
+
+"So you are the young men I have read about in the papers. Well, of
+course, when one is young, one is rather romantic. Do you know what I
+always say to young people?"
+
+A blank silence followed this gay inquiry. Then Turnbull said in a
+colourless voice:
+
+"As I was forty-seven last birthday, I probably came into the world too
+soon for the experience."
+
+"Very good, very good," said the friendly person. "Dry Scotch humour.
+Dry Scotch humour. Well now. I understand that you two people want to
+fight a duel. I suppose you aren't much up in the modern world. We've
+quite outgrown duelling, you know. In fact, Tolstoy tells us that we
+shall soon outgrow war, which he says is simply a duel between nations.
+A duel between nations. But there is no doubt about our having outgrown
+duelling."
+
+Waiting for some effect upon his wooden auditors, the stranger stood
+beaming for a moment and then resumed:
+
+"Now, they tell me in the newspapers that you are really wanting to
+fight about something connected with Roman Catholicism. Now, do you know
+what I always say to Roman Catholics?"
+
+"No," said Turnbull, heavily. "Do _they_?" It seemed to be a
+characteristic of the hearty, hygienic gentleman that he always forgot
+the speech he had made the moment before. Without enlarging further on
+the fixed form of his appeal to the Church of Rome, he laughed cordially
+at Turnbull's answer; then his wandering blue eyes caught the sunlight
+on the swords, and he assumed a good-humoured gravity.
+
+"But you know this is a serious matter," he said, eyeing Turnbull and
+MacIan, as if they had just been keeping the table in a roar with their
+frivolities. "I am sure that if I appealed to your higher natures...your
+higher natures. Every man has a higher nature and a lower nature. Now,
+let us put the matter very plainly, and without any romantic nonsense
+about honour or anything of that sort. Is not bloodshed a great sin?"
+
+"No," said MacIan, speaking for the first time.
+
+"Well, really, really!" said the peacemaker.
+
+"Murder is a sin," said the immovable Highlander. "There is no sin of
+bloodshed."
+
+"Well, we won't quarrel about a word," said the other, pleasantly.
+
+"Why on earth not?" said MacIan, with a sudden asperity. "Why shouldn't
+we quarrel about a word? What is the good of words if they aren't
+important enough to quarrel over? Why do we choose one word more than
+another if there isn't any difference between them? If you called a
+woman a chimpanzee instead of an angel, wouldn't there be a quarrel
+about a word? If you're not going to argue about words, what are you
+going to argue about? Are you going to convey your meaning to me by
+moving your ears? The Church and the heresies always used to fight about
+words, because they are the only things worth fighting about. I say
+that murder is a sin, and bloodshed is not, and that there is as much
+difference between those words as there is between the word 'yes' and
+the word 'no'; or rather more difference, for 'yes' and 'no', at least,
+belong to the same category. Murder is a spiritual incident. Bloodshed
+is a physical incident. A surgeon commits bloodshed.
+
+"Ah, you're a casuist!" said the large man, wagging his head. "Now, do
+you know what I always say to casuists...?"
+
+MacIan made a violent gesture; and Turnbull broke into open laughter.
+The peacemaker did not seem to be in the least annoyed, but continued in
+unabated enjoyment.
+
+"Well, well," he said, "let us get back to the point. Now Tolstoy has
+shown that force is no remedy; so you see the position in which I am
+placed. I am doing my best to stop what I'm sure you won't mind my
+calling this really useless violence, this really quite wrong violence
+of yours. But it's against my principles to call in the police against
+you, because the police are still on a lower moral plane, so to speak,
+because, in short, the police undoubtedly sometimes employ force.
+Tolstoy has shown that violence merely breeds violence in the person
+towards whom it is used, whereas Love, on the other hand, breeds Love.
+So you see how I am placed. I am reduced to use Love in order to stop
+you. I am obliged to use Love."
+
+He gave to the word an indescribable sound of something hard and heavy,
+as if he were saying "boots". Turnbull suddenly gripped his sword and
+said, shortly, "I see how you are placed quite well, sir. You will not
+call the police. Mr. MacIan, shall we engage?" MacIan plucked his sword
+out of the grass.
+
+"I must and will stop this shocking crime," cried the Tolstoian,
+crimson in the face. "It is against all modern ideas. It is against the
+principle of love. How you, sir, who pretend to be a Christian..."
+
+MacIan turned upon him with a white face and bitter lip. "Sir," he said,
+"talk about the principle of love as much as you like. You seem to me
+colder than a lump of stone; but I am willing to believe that you may at
+some time have loved a cat, or a dog, or a child. When you were a baby,
+I suppose you loved your mother. Talk about love, then, till the world
+is sick of the word. But don't you talk about Christianity. Don't you
+dare to say one word, white or black, about it. Christianity is, as far
+as you are concerned, a horrible mystery. Keep clear of it, keep silent
+upon it, as you would upon an abomination. It is a thing that has made
+men slay and torture each other; and you will never know why. It is a
+thing that has made men do evil that good might come; and you will never
+understand the evil, let alone the good. Christianity is a thing that
+could only make you vomit, till you are other than you are. I would not
+justify it to you even if I could. Hate it, in God's name, as Turnbull
+does, who is a man. It is a monstrous thing, for which men die. And if
+you will stand here and talk about love for another ten minutes it is
+very probable that you will see a man die for it."
+
+And he fell on guard. Turnbull was busy settling something loose in his
+elaborate hilt, and the pause was broken by the stranger.
+
+"Suppose I call the police?" he said, with a heated face.
+
+"And deny your most sacred dogma," said MacIan.
+
+"Dogma!" cried the man, in a sort of dismay. "Oh, we have no _dogmas_,
+you know!"
+
+There was another silence, and he said again, airily:
+
+"You know, I think, there's something in what Shaw teaches about no
+moral principles being quite fixed. Have you ever read _The Quintessence
+of Ibsenism_? Of course he went very wrong over the war."
+
+Turnbull, with a bent, flushed face, was tying up the loose piece of the
+pommel with string. With the string in his teeth, he said, "Oh, make up
+your damned mind and clear out!"
+
+"It's a serious thing," said the philosopher, shaking his head. "I must
+be alone and consider which is the higher point of view. I rather feel
+that in a case so extreme as this..." and he went slowly away. As he
+disappeared among the trees, they heard him murmuring in a sing-song
+voice, "New occasions teach new duties," out of a poem by James Russell
+Lowell.
+
+"Ah," said MacIan, drawing a deep breath. "Don't you believe in prayer
+now? I prayed for an angel."
+
+"An hour ago," said the Highlander, in his heavy meditative voice, "I
+felt the devil weakening my heart and my oath against you, and I prayed
+that God would send an angel to my aid."
+
+"Well?" inquired the other, finishing his mending and wrapping the rest
+of the string round his hand to get a firmer grip.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Well, that man was an angel," said MacIan.
+
+"I didn't know they were as bad as that," answered Turnbull.
+
+"We know that devils sometimes quote Scripture and counterfeit good,"
+replied the mystic. "Why should not angels sometimes come to show us the
+black abyss of evil on whose brink we stand. If that man had not tried
+to stop us...I might...I might have stopped."
+
+"I know what you mean," said Turnbull, grimly.
+
+"But then he came," broke out MacIan, "and my soul said to me: 'Give up
+fighting, and you will become like That. Give up vows and dogmas, and
+fixed things, and you may grow like That. You may learn, also, that
+fog of false philosophy. You may grow fond of that mire of crawling,
+cowardly morals, and you may come to think a blow bad, because it hurts,
+and not because it humiliates. You may come to think murder wrong,
+because it is violent, and not because it is unjust. Oh, you blasphemer
+of the good, an hour ago I almost loved you! But do not fear for me now.
+I have heard the word Love pronounced in _his_ intonation; and I know
+exactly what it means. On guard!'"
+
+The swords caught on each other with a dreadful clang and jar, full of
+the old energy and hate; and at once plunged and replunged. Once more
+each man's heart had become the magnet of a mad sword. Suddenly, furious
+as they were, they were frozen for a moment motionless.
+
+"What noise is that?" asked the Highlander, hoarsely.
+
+"I think I know," replied Turnbull.
+
+"What?... What?" cried the other.
+
+"The student of Shaw and Tolstoy has made up his remarkable mind," said
+Turnbull, quietly. "The police are coming up the hill."
+
+
+
+
+VI. THE OTHER PHILOSOPHER
+
+Between high hedges in Hertfordshire, hedges so high as to create a
+kind of grove, two men were running. They did not run in a scampering
+or feverish manner, but in the steady swing of the pendulum. Across the
+great plains and uplands to the right and left of the lane, a long tide
+of sunset light rolled like a sea of ruby, lighting up the long terraces
+of the hills and picking out the few windows of the scattered hamlets
+in startling blood-red sparks. But the lane was cut deep in the hill
+and remained in an abrupt shadow. The two men running in it had an
+impression not uncommonly experienced between those wild green English
+walls; a sense of being led between the walls of a maze.
+
+Though their pace was steady it was vigorous; their faces were heated
+and their eyes fixed and bright. There was, indeed, something a little
+mad in the contrast between the evening's stillness over the empty
+country-side, and these two figures fleeing wildly from nothing. They
+had the look of two lunatics, possibly they were.
+
+"Are you all right?" said Turnbull, with civility. "Can you keep this
+up?"
+
+"Quite easily, thank you," replied MacIan. "I run very well."
+
+"Is that a qualification in a family of warriors?" asked Turnbull.
+
+"Undoubtedly. Rapid movement is essential," answered MacIan, who never
+saw a joke in his life.
+
+Turnbull broke out into a short laugh, and silence fell between them,
+the panting silence of runners.
+
+Then MacIan said: "We run better than any of those policemen. They are
+too fat. Why do you make your policemen so fat?"
+
+"I didn't do much towards making them fat myself," replied Turnbull,
+genially, "but I flatter myself that I am now doing something towards
+making them thin. You'll see they will be as lean as rakes by the time
+they catch us. They will look like your friend, Cardinal Manning."
+
+"But they won't catch us," said MacIan, in his literal way.
+
+"No, we beat them in the great military art of running away," returned
+the other. "They won't catch us unless----"
+
+MacIan turned his long equine face inquiringly. "Unless what?" he
+said, for Turnbull had gone silent suddenly, and seemed to be listening
+intently as he ran as a horse does with his ears turned back.
+
+"Unless what?" repeated the Highlander.
+
+"Unless they do--what they have done. Listen." MacIan slackened his
+trot, and turned his head to the trail they had left behind them. Across
+two or three billows of the up and down lane came along the ground the
+unmistakable throbbing of horses' hoofs.
+
+"They have put the mounted police on us," said Turnbull, shortly. "Good
+Lord, one would think we were a Revolution."
+
+"So we are," said MacIan calmly. "What shall we do? Shall we turn on
+them with our points?"
+
+"It may come to that," answered Turnbull, "though if it does, I reckon
+that will be the last act. We must put it off if we can." And he stared
+and peered about him between the bushes. "If we could hide somewhere
+the beasts might go by us," he said. "The police have their faults, but
+thank God they're inefficient. Why, here's the very thing. Be quick and
+quiet. Follow me."
+
+He suddenly swung himself up the high bank on one side of the lane. It
+was almost as high and smooth as a wall, and on the top of it the black
+hedge stood out over them as an angle, almost like a thatched roof of
+the lane. And the burning evening sky looked down at them through the
+tangle with red eyes as of an army of goblins.
+
+Turnbull hoisted himself up and broke the hedge with his body. As his
+head and shoulders rose above it they turned to flame in the full glow
+as if lit up by an immense firelight. His red hair and beard looked
+almost scarlet, and his pale face as bright as a boy's. Something
+violent, something that was at once love and hatred, surged in the
+strange heart of the Gael below him. He had an unutterable sense of epic
+importance, as if he were somehow lifting all humanity into a prouder
+and more passionate region of the air. As he swung himself up also into
+the evening light he felt as if he were rising on enormous wings.
+
+Legends of the morning of the world which he had heard in childhood or
+read in youth came back upon him in a cloudy splendour, purple tales
+of wrath and friendship, like Roland and Oliver, or Balin and Balan,
+reminding him of emotional entanglements. Men who had loved each other
+and then fought each other; men who had fought each other and then loved
+each other, together made a mixed but monstrous sense of momentousness.
+The crimson seas of the sunset seemed to him like a bursting out of some
+sacred blood, as if the heart of the world had broken.
+
+Turnbull was wholly unaffected by any written or spoken poetry; his was
+a powerful and prosaic mind. But even upon him there came for the moment
+something out of the earth and the passionate ends of the sky. The only
+evidence was in his voice, which was still practical but a shade more
+quiet.
+
+"Do you see that summer-house-looking thing over there?" he asked
+shortly. "That will do for us very well."
+
+Keeping himself free from the tangle of the hedge he strolled across
+a triangle of obscure kitchen garden, and approached a dismal shed or
+lodge a yard or two beyond it. It was a weather-stained hut of grey
+wood, which with all its desolation retained a tag or two of trivial
+ornament, which suggested that the thing had once been a sort of
+summer-house, and the place probably a sort of garden.
+
+"That is quite invisible from the road," said Turnbull, as he entered
+it, "and it will cover us up for the night."
+
+MacIan looked at him gravely for a few moments. "Sir," he said, "I ought
+to say something to you. I ought to say----"
+
+"Hush," said Turnbull, suddenly lifting his hand; "be still, man."
+
+In the sudden silence, the drumming of the distant horses grew louder
+and louder with inconceivable rapidity, and the cavalcade of police
+rushed by below them in the lane, almost with the roar and rattle of an
+express train.
+
+"I ought to tell you," continued MacIan, still staring stolidly at the
+other, "that you are a great chief, and it is good to go to war behind
+you."
+
+Turnbull said nothing, but turned and looked out of the foolish lattice
+of the little windows, then he said, "We must have food and sleep
+first."
+
+When the last echo of their eluded pursuers had died in the distant
+uplands, Turnbull began to unpack the provisions with the easy air of
+a man at a picnic. He had just laid out the last items, put a bottle
+of wine on the floor, and a tin of salmon on the window-ledge, when the
+bottomless silence of that forgotten place was broken. And it was broken
+by three heavy blows of a stick delivered upon the door.
+
+Turnbull looked up in the act of opening a tin and stared silently at
+his companion. MacIan's long, lean mouth had shut hard.
+
+"Who the devil can that be?" said Turnbull.
+
+"God knows," said the other. "It might be God."
+
+Again the sound of the wooden stick reverberated on the wooden door. It
+was a curious sound and on consideration did not resemble the ordinary
+effects of knocking on a door for admittance. It was rather as if the
+point of a stick were plunged again and again at the panels in an absurd
+attempt to make a hole in them.
+
+A wild look sprang into MacIan's eyes and he got up half stupidly, with
+a kind of stagger, put his hand out and caught one of the swords. "Let
+us fight at once," he cried, "it is the end of the world."
+
+"You're overdone, MacIan," said Turnbull, putting him on one side. "It's
+only someone playing the goat. Let me open the door."
+
+But he also picked up a sword as he stepped to open it.
+
+He paused one moment with his hand on the handle and then flung the door
+open. Almost as he did so the ferrule of an ordinary bamboo cane came at
+his eyes, so that he had actually to parry it with the naked weapon in
+his hands. As the two touched, the point of the stick was dropped very
+abruptly, and the man with the stick stepped hurriedly back.
+
+Against the heraldic background of sprawling crimson and gold offered
+him by the expiring sunset, the figure of the man with the stick showed
+at first merely black and fantastic. He was a small man with two wisps
+of long hair that curled up on each side, and seen in silhouette, looked
+like horns. He had a bow tie so big that the two ends showed on each
+side of his neck like unnatural stunted wings. He had his long black
+cane still tilted in his hand like a fencing foil and half presented
+at the open door. His large straw hat had fallen behind him as he leapt
+backwards.
+
+"With reference to your suggestion, MacIan," said Turnbull, placidly, "I
+think it looks more like the Devil."
+
+"Who on earth are you?" cried the stranger in a high shrill voice,
+brandishing his cane defensively.
+
+"Let me see," said Turnbull, looking round to MacIan with the same
+blandness. "Who are we?"
+
+"Come out," screamed the little man with the stick.
+
+"Certainly," said Turnbull, and went outside with the sword, MacIan
+following.
+
+Seen more fully, with the evening light on his face, the strange man
+looked a little less like a goblin. He wore a square pale-grey jacket
+suit, on which the grey butterfly tie was the only indisputable touch
+of affectation. Against the great sunset his figure had looked merely
+small: seen in a more equal light it looked tolerably compact and
+shapely. His reddish-brown hair, combed into two great curls, looked
+like the long, slow curling hair of the women in some pre-Raphaelite
+pictures. But within this feminine frame of hair his face was
+unexpectedly impudent, like a monkey's.
+
+"What are you doing here?" he said, in a sharp small voice.
+
+"Well," said MacIan, in his grave childish way, "what are _you_ doing
+here?"
+
+"I," said the man, indignantly, "I'm in my own garden."
+
+"Oh," said MacIan, simply, "I apologize."
+
+Turnbull was coolly curling his red moustache, and the stranger stared
+from one to the other, temporarily stunned by their innocent assurance.
+
+"But, may I ask," he said at last, "what the devil you are doing in my
+summer-house?"
+
+"Certainly," said MacIan. "We were just going to fight."
+
+"To fight!" repeated the man.
+
+"We had better tell this gentleman the whole business," broke in
+Turnbull. Then turning to the stranger he said firmly, "I am sorry, sir,
+but we have something to do that must be done. And I may as well tell
+you at the beginning and to avoid waste of time or language, that we
+cannot admit any interference."
+
+"We were just going to take some slight refreshment when you interrupted
+us..."
+
+The little man had a dawning expression of understanding and stooped and
+picked up the unused bottle of wine, eyeing it curiously.
+
+Turnbull continued:
+
+"But that refreshment was preparatory to something which I fear you will
+find less comprehensible, but on which our minds are entirely fixed,
+sir. We are forced to fight a duel. We are forced by honour and an
+internal intellectual need. Do not, for your own sake, attempt to stop
+us. I know all the excellent and ethical things that you will want to
+say to us. I know all about the essential requirements of civil order:
+I have written leading articles about them all my life. I know all about
+the sacredness of human life; I have bored all my friends with it. Try
+and understand our position. This man and I are alone in the modern
+world in that we think that God is essentially important. I think He
+does not exist; that is where the importance comes in for me. But this
+man thinks that He does exist, and thinking that very properly thinks
+Him more important than anything else. Now we wish to make a great
+demonstration and assertion--something that will set the world on fire
+like the first Christian persecutions. If you like, we are attempting
+a mutual martyrdom. The papers have posted up every town against us.
+Scotland Yard has fortified every police station with our enemies; we
+are driven therefore to the edge of a lonely lane, and indirectly to
+taking liberties with your summer-house in order to arrange our..."
+
+"Stop!" roared the little man in the butterfly necktie. "Put me out of
+my intellectual misery. Are you really the two tomfools I have read of
+in all the papers? Are you the two people who wanted to spit each other
+in the Police Court? Are you? Are you?"
+
+"Yes," said MacIan, "it began in a Police Court."
+
+The little man slung the bottle of wine twenty yards away like a stone.
+
+"Come up to my place," he said. "I've got better stuff than that. I've
+got the best Beaune within fifty miles of here. Come up. You're the very
+men I wanted to see."
+
+Even Turnbull, with his typical invulnerability, was a little taken
+aback by this boisterous and almost brutal hospitality.
+
+"Why...sir..." he began.
+
+"Come up! Come in!" howled the little man, dancing with delight. "I'll
+give you a dinner. I'll give you a bed! I'll give you a green smooth
+lawn and your choice of swords and pistols. Why, you fools, I adore
+fighting! It's the only good thing in God's world! I've walked about
+these damned fields and longed to see somebody cut up and killed and the
+blood running. Ha! Ha!"
+
+And he made sudden lunges with his stick at the trunk of a neighbouring
+tree so that the ferrule made fierce prints and punctures in the bark.
+
+"Excuse me," said MacIan suddenly with the wide-eyed curiosity of a
+child, "excuse me, but..."
+
+"Well?" said the small fighter, brandishing his wooden weapon.
+
+"Excuse me," repeated MacIan, "but was that what you were doing at the
+door?"
+
+The little man stared an instant and then said: "Yes," and Turnbull
+broke into a guffaw.
+
+"Come on!" cried the little man, tucking his stick under his arm and
+taking quite suddenly to his heels. "Come on! Confound me, I'll see both
+of you eat and then I'll see one of you die. Lord bless me, the gods
+must exist after all--they have sent me one of my day-dreams! Lord! A
+duel!"
+
+He had gone flying along a winding path between the borders of the
+kitchen garden, and in the increasing twilight he was as hard to follow
+as a flying hare. But at length the path after many twists betrayed its
+purpose and led abruptly up two or three steps to the door of a tiny but
+very clean cottage. There was nothing about the outside to distinguish
+it from other cottages, except indeed its ominous cleanliness and one
+thing that was out of all the custom and tradition of all cottages
+under the sun. In the middle of the little garden among the stocks and
+marigolds there surged up in shapeless stone a South Sea Island idol.
+There was something gross and even evil in that eyeless and alien god
+among the most innocent of the English flowers.
+
+"Come in!" cried the creature again. "Come in! it's better inside!"
+
+Whether or no it was better inside it was at least a surprise. The
+moment the two duellists had pushed open the door of that inoffensive,
+whitewashed cottage they found that its interior was lined with fiery
+gold. It was like stepping into a chamber in the Arabian Nights. The
+door that closed behind them shut out England and all the energies of
+the West. The ornaments that shone and shimmered on every side of them
+were subtly mixed from many periods and lands, but were all oriental.
+Cruel Assyrian bas-reliefs ran along the sides of the passage; cruel
+Turkish swords and daggers glinted above and below them; the two
+were separated by ages and fallen civilizations. Yet they seemed to
+sympathize since they were both harmonious and both merciless. The house
+seemed to consist of chamber within chamber and created that impression
+as of a dream which belongs also to the Arabian Nights themselves. The
+innermost room of all was like the inside of a jewel. The little man who
+owned it all threw himself on a heap of scarlet and golden cushions and
+struck his hands together. A negro in a white robe and turban appeared
+suddenly and silently behind them.
+
+"Selim," said the host, "these two gentlemen are staying with me
+tonight. Send up the very best wine and dinner at once. And Selim,
+one of these gentlemen will probably die tomorrow. Make arrangements,
+please."
+
+The negro bowed and withdrew.
+
+Evan MacIan came out the next morning into the little garden to a fresh
+silver day, his long face looking more austere than ever in that
+cold light, his eyelids a little heavy. He carried one of the swords.
+Turnbull was in the little house behind him, demolishing the end of
+an early breakfast and humming a tune to himself, which could be heard
+through the open window. A moment or two later he leapt to his feet and
+came out into the sunlight, still munching toast, his own sword stuck
+under his arm like a walking-stick.
+
+Their eccentric host had vanished from sight, with a polite gesture,
+some twenty minutes before. They imagined him to be occupied on
+some concerns in the interior of the house, and they waited for his
+emergence, stamping the garden in silence--the garden of tall, fresh
+country flowers, in the midst of which the monstrous South Sea idol
+lifted itself as abruptly as the prow of a ship riding on a sea of red
+and white and gold.
+
+It was with a start, therefore, that they came upon the man himself
+already in the garden. They were all the more startled because of the
+still posture in which they found him. He was on his knees in front
+of the stone idol, rigid and motionless, like a saint in a trance or
+ecstasy. Yet when Turnbull's tread broke a twig, he was on his feet in a
+flash.
+
+"Excuse me," he said with an irradiation of smiles, but yet with a kind
+of bewilderment. "So sorry...family prayers...old fashioned...mother's
+knee. Let us go on to the lawn behind."
+
+And he ducked rapidly round the statue to an open space of grass on the
+other side of it.
+
+"This will do us best, Mr. MacIan," said he. Then he made a gesture
+towards the heavy stone figure on the pedestal which had now its blank
+and shapeless back turned towards them. "Don't you be afraid," he added,
+"he can still see us."
+
+MacIan turned his blue, blinking eyes, which seemed still misty with
+sleep (or sleeplessness) towards the idol, but his brows drew together.
+
+The little man with the long hair also had his eyes on the back view
+of the god. His eyes were at once liquid and burning, and he rubbed his
+hands slowly against each other.
+
+"Do you know," he said, "I think he can see us better this way. I often
+think that this blank thing is his real face, watching, though it cannot
+be watched. He! he! Yes, I think he looks nice from behind. He looks
+more cruel from behind, don't you think?"
+
+"What the devil is the thing?" asked Turnbull gruffly.
+
+"It is the only Thing there is," answered the other. "It is Force."
+
+"Oh!" said Turnbull shortly.
+
+"Yes, my friends," said the little man, with an animated countenance,
+fluttering his fingers in the air, "it was no chance that led you to
+this garden; surely it was the caprice of some old god, some happy,
+pitiless god. Perhaps it was his will, for he loves blood; and on that
+stone in front of him men have been butchered by hundreds in the fierce,
+feasting islands of the South. In this cursed, craven place I have
+not been permitted to kill men on his altar. Only rabbits and cats,
+sometimes."
+
+In the stillness MacIan made a sudden movement, unmeaning apparently,
+and then remained rigid.
+
+"But today, today," continued the small man in a shrill voice. "Today
+his hour is come. Today his will is done on earth as it is in heaven.
+Men, men, men will bleed before him today." And he bit his forefinger in
+a kind of fever.
+
+Still, the two duellists stood with their swords as heavily as statues,
+and the silence seemed to cool the eccentric and call him back to more
+rational speech.
+
+"Perhaps I express myself a little too lyrically," he said with an
+amicable abruptness. "My philosophy has its higher ecstasies, but
+perhaps you are hardly worked up to them yet. Let us confine ourselves
+to the unquestioned. You have found your way, gentlemen, by a beautiful
+accident, to the house of the only man in England (probably) who will
+favour and encourage your most reasonable project. From Cornwall to Cape
+Wrath this county is one horrible, solid block of humanitarianism. You
+will find men who will defend this or that war in a distant continent.
+They will defend it on the contemptible ground of commerce or the more
+contemptible ground of social good. But do not fancy that you will find
+one other person who will comprehend a strong man taking the sword in
+his hand and wiping out his enemy. My name is Wimpey, Morrice Wimpey. I
+had a Fellowship at Magdalen. But I assure you I had to drop it, owing
+to my having said something in a public lecture infringing the popular
+prejudice against those great gentlemen, the assassins of the Italian
+Renaissance. They let me say it at dinner and so on, and seemed to like
+it. But in a public lecture...so inconsistent. Well, as I say, here is
+your only refuge and temple of honour. Here you can fall back on that
+naked and awful arbitration which is the only thing that balances the
+stars--a still, continuous violence. _Vae Victis!_ Down, down, down
+with the defeated! Victory is the only ultimate fact. Carthage _was_
+destroyed, the Red Indians are being exterminated: that is the single
+certainty. In an hour from now that sun will still be shining and that
+grass growing, and one of you will be conquered; one of you will be the
+conqueror. When it has been done, nothing will alter it. Heroes, I give
+you the hospitality fit for heroes. And I salute the survivor. Fall on!"
+
+The two men took their swords. Then MacIan said steadily: "Mr. Turnbull,
+lend me your sword a moment."
+
+Turnbull, with a questioning glance, handed him the weapon. MacIan took
+the second sword in his left hand and, with a violent gesture, hurled it
+at the feet of little Mr. Wimpey.
+
+"Fight!" he said in a loud, harsh voice. "Fight me now!"
+
+Wimpey took a step backward, and bewildered words bubbled on his lips.
+
+"Pick up that sword and fight me," repeated MacIan, with brows as black
+as thunder.
+
+The little man turned to Turnbull with a gesture, demanding judgement or
+protection.
+
+"Really, sir," he began, "this gentleman confuses..."
+
+"You stinking little coward," roared Turnbull, suddenly releasing his
+wrath. "Fight, if you're so fond of fighting! Fight, if you're so fond
+of all that filthy philosophy! If winning is everything, go in and win!
+If the weak must go to the wall, go to the wall! Fight, you rat! Fight,
+or if you won't fight--run!"
+
+And he ran at Wimpey, with blazing eyes.
+
+Wimpey staggered back a few paces like a man struggling with his own
+limbs. Then he felt the furious Scotchman coming at him like an express
+train, doubling his size every second, with eyes as big as windows and
+a sword as bright as the sun. Something broke inside him, and he found
+himself running away, tumbling over his own feet in terror, and crying
+out as he ran.
+
+"Chase him!" shouted Turnbull as MacIan snatched up the sword and joined
+in the scamper. "Chase him over a county! Chase him into the sea! Shoo!
+Shoo! Shoo!"
+
+The little man plunged like a rabbit among the tall flowers, the two
+duellists after him. Turnbull kept at his tail with savage ecstasy,
+still shooing him like a cat. But MacIan, as he ran past the South Sea
+idol, paused an instant to spring upon its pedestal. For five seconds
+he strained against the inert mass. Then it stirred; and he sent it over
+with a great crash among the flowers, that engulfed it altogether. Then
+he went bounding after the runaway.
+
+In the energy of his alarm the ex-Fellow of Magdalen managed to leap
+the paling of his garden. The two pursuers went over it after him like
+flying birds. He fled frantically down a long lane with his two terrors
+on his trail till he came to a gap in the hedge and went across a steep
+meadow like the wind. The two Scotchmen, as they ran, kept up a cheery
+bellowing and waved their swords. Up three slanting meadows, down four
+slanting meadows on the other side, across another road, across a heath
+of snapping bracken, through a wood, across another road, and to the
+brink of a big pool, they pursued the flying philosopher. But when he
+came to the pool his pace was so precipitate that he could not stop
+it, and with a kind of lurching stagger, he fell splash into the greasy
+water. Getting dripping to his feet, with the water up to his knees, the
+worshipper of force and victory waded disconsolately to the other side
+and drew himself on to the bank. And Turnbull sat down on the grass and
+went off into reverberations of laughter. A second afterwards the most
+extraordinary grimaces were seen to distort the stiff face of MacIan,
+and unholy sounds came from within. He had never practised laughing, and
+it hurt him very much.
+
+
+
+
+VII. THE VILLAGE OF GRASSLEY-IN-THE-HOLE
+
+At about half past one, under a strong blue sky, Turnbull got up out
+of the grass and fern in which he had been lying, and his still
+intermittent laughter ended in a kind of yawn.
+
+"I'm hungry," he said shortly. "Are you?"
+
+"I have not noticed," answered MacIan. "What are you going to do?"
+
+"There's a village down the road, past the pool," answered Turnbull. "I
+can see it from here. I can see the whitewashed walls of some cottages
+and a kind of corner of the church. How jolly it all looks. It looks
+so--I don't know what the word is--so sensible. Don't fancy I'm under
+any illusions about Arcadian virtue and the innocent villagers. Men make
+beasts of themselves there with drink, but they don't deliberately make
+devils of themselves with mere talking. They kill wild animals in
+the wild woods, but they don't kill cats to the God of Victory. They
+don't----" He broke off and suddenly spat on the ground.
+
+"Excuse me," he said; "it was ceremonial. One has to get the taste out
+of one's mouth."
+
+"The taste of what?" asked MacIan.
+
+"I don't know the exact name for it," replied Turnbull. "Perhaps it is
+the South Sea Islands, or it may be Magdalen College."
+
+There was a long pause, and MacIan also lifted his large limbs off the
+ground--his eyes particularly dreamy.
+
+"I know what you mean, Turnbull," he said, "but... I always thought you
+people agreed with all that."
+
+"With all that about doing as one likes, and the individual, and Nature
+loving the strongest, and all the things which that cockroach talked
+about."
+
+Turnbull's big blue-grey eyes stood open with a grave astonishment.
+
+"Do you really mean to say, MacIan," he said, "that you fancied that we,
+the Free-thinkers, that Bradlaugh, or Holyoake, or Ingersoll, believe
+all that dirty, immoral mysticism about Nature? Damn Nature!"
+
+"I supposed you did," said MacIan calmly. "It seems to me your most
+conclusive position."
+
+"And you mean to tell me," rejoined the other, "that you broke my
+window, and challenged me to mortal combat, and tied a tradesman up with
+ropes, and chased an Oxford Fellow across five meadows--all under the
+impression that I am such an illiterate idiot as to believe in Nature!"
+
+"I supposed you did," repeated MacIan with his usual mildness; "but I
+admit that I know little of the details of your belief--or disbelief."
+
+Turnbull swung round quite suddenly, and set off towards the village.
+
+"Come along," he cried. "Come down to the village. Come down to the
+nearest decent inhabitable pub. This is a case for beer."
+
+"I do not quite follow you," said the Highlander.
+
+"Yes, you do," answered Turnbull. "You follow me slap into the
+inn-parlour. I repeat, this is a case for beer. We must have the whole
+of this matter out thoroughly before we go a step farther. Do you know
+that an idea has just struck me of great simplicity and of some
+cogency. Do not by any means let us drop our intentions of settling our
+differences with two steel swords. But do you not think that with two
+pewter pots we might do what we really have never thought of doing
+yet--discover what our difference is?"
+
+"It never occurred to me before," answered MacIan with tranquillity. "It
+is a good suggestion."
+
+And they set out at an easy swing down the steep road to the village of
+Grassley-in-the-Hole.
+
+Grassley-in-the-Hole was a rude parallelogram of buildings, with two
+thoroughfares which might have been called two high streets if it had
+been possible to call them streets. One of these ways was higher on the
+slope than the other, the whole parallelogram lying aslant, so to speak,
+on the side of the hill. The upper of these two roads was decorated with
+a big public house, a butcher's shop, a small public house, a sweetstuff
+shop, a very small public house, and an illegible signpost. The lower of
+the two roads boasted a horse-pond, a post office, a gentleman's garden
+with very high hedges, a microscopically small public house, and two
+cottages. Where all the people lived who supported all the public houses
+was in this, as in many other English villages, a silent and smiling
+mystery. The church lay a little above and beyond the village, with a
+square grey tower dominating it decisively.
+
+But even the church was scarcely so central and solemn an institution
+as the large public house, the Valencourt Arms. It was named after some
+splendid family that had long gone bankrupt, and whose seat was occupied
+by a man who had invented a hygienic bootjack; but the unfathomable
+sentimentalism of the English people insisted in regarding the Inn,
+the seat and the sitter in it, as alike parts of a pure and marmoreal
+antiquity. And in the Valencourt Arms festivity itself had some
+solemnity and decorum; and beer was drunk with reverence, as it ought to
+be. Into the principal parlour of this place entered two strangers, who
+found themselves, as is always the case in such hostels, the object,
+not of fluttered curiosity or pert inquiry, but of steady, ceaseless,
+devouring ocular study. They had long coats down to their heels, and
+carried under each coat something that looked like a stick. One was
+tall and dark, the other short and red-haired. They ordered a pot of ale
+each.
+
+"MacIan," said Turnbull, lifting his tankard, "the fool who wanted us to
+be friends made us want to go on fighting. It is only natural that
+the fool who wanted us to fight should make us friendly. MacIan, your
+health!"
+
+Dusk was already dropping, the rustics in the tavern were already
+lurching and lumbering out of it by twos and threes, crying clamorous
+good nights to a solitary old toper that remained, before MacIan and
+Turnbull had reached the really important part of their discussion.
+
+MacIan wore an expression of sad bewilderment not uncommon with him. "I
+am to understand, then," he said, "that you don't believe in nature."
+
+"You may say so in a very special and emphatic sense," said Turnbull.
+"I do not believe in nature, just as I do not believe in Odin. She is a
+myth. It is not merely that I do not believe that nature can guide us.
+It is that I do not believe that nature exists."
+
+"Exists?" said MacIan in his monotonous way, settling his pewter pot on
+the table.
+
+"Yes, in a real sense nature does not exist. I mean that nobody can
+discover what the original nature of things would have been if things
+had not interfered with it. The first blade of grass began to tear up
+the earth and eat it; it was interfering with nature, if there is any
+nature. The first wild ox began to tear up the grass and eat it; he
+was interfering with nature, if there is any nature. In the same way,"
+continued Turnbull, "the human when it asserts its dominance over nature
+is just as natural as the thing which it destroys."
+
+"And in the same way," said MacIan almost dreamily, "the superhuman, the
+supernatural is just as natural as the nature which it destroys."
+
+Turnbull took his head out of his pewter pot in some anger.
+
+"The supernatural, of course," he said, "is quite another thing; the
+case of the supernatural is simple. The supernatural does not exist."
+
+"Quite so," said MacIan in a rather dull voice; "you said the same about
+the natural. If the natural does not exist the supernatural obviously
+can't." And he yawned a little over his ale.
+
+Turnbull turned for some reason a little red and remarked quickly, "That
+may be jolly clever, for all I know. But everyone does know that there
+is a division between the things that as a matter of fact do commonly
+happen and the things that don't. Things that break the evident laws of
+nature----"
+
+"Which does not exist," put in MacIan sleepily. Turnbull struck the
+table with a sudden hand.
+
+"Good Lord in heaven!" he cried----
+
+"Who does not exist," murmured MacIan.
+
+"Good Lord in heaven!" thundered Turnbull, without regarding the
+interruption. "Do you really mean to sit there and say that you, like
+anybody else, would not recognize the difference between a natural
+occurrence and a supernatural one--if there could be such a thing? If I
+flew up to the ceiling----"
+
+"You would bump your head badly," cried MacIan, suddenly starting up.
+"One can't talk of this kind of thing under a ceiling at all. Come
+outside! Come outside and ascend into heaven!"
+
+He burst the door open on a blue abyss of evening and they stepped out
+into it: it was suddenly and strangely cool.
+
+"Turnbull," said MacIan, "you have said some things so true and some
+so false that I want to talk; and I will try to talk so that you
+understand. For at present you do not understand at all. We don't seem
+to mean the same things by the same words."
+
+He stood silent for a second or two and then resumed.
+
+"A minute or two ago I caught you out in a real contradiction. At that
+moment logically I was right. And at that moment I knew I was
+wrong. Yes, there is a real difference between the natural and the
+supernatural: if you flew up into that blue sky this instant, I should
+think that you were moved by God--or the devil. But if you want to know
+what I really think...I must explain."
+
+He stopped again, abstractedly boring the point of his sword into the
+earth, and went on:
+
+"I was born and bred and taught in a complete universe. The supernatural
+was not natural, but it was perfectly reasonable. Nay, the supernatural
+to me is more reasonable than the natural; for the supernatural is a
+direct message from God, who is reason. I was taught that some things
+are natural and some things divine. I mean that some things are
+mechanical and some things divine. But there is the great difficulty,
+Turnbull. The great difficulty is that, according to my teaching, you
+are divine."
+
+"Me! Divine?" said Turnbull truculently. "What do you mean?"
+
+"That is just the difficulty," continued MacIan thoughtfully. "I was
+told that there was a difference between the grass and a man's will;
+and the difference was that a man's will was special and divine. A man's
+free will, I heard, was supernatural."
+
+"Rubbish!" said Turnbull.
+
+"Oh," said MacIan patiently, "then if a man's free will isn't
+supernatural, why do your materialists deny that it exists?"
+
+Turnbull was silent for a moment. Then he began to speak, but MacIan
+continued with the same steady voice and sad eyes:
+
+"So what I feel is this: Here is the great divine creation I was
+taught to believe in. I can understand your disbelieving in it, but
+why disbelieve in a part of it? It was all one thing to me. God had
+authority because he was God. Man had authority because he was man. You
+cannot prove that God is better than a man; nor can you prove that a man
+is better than a horse. Why permit any ordinary thing? Why do you let a
+horse be saddled?"
+
+"Some modern thinkers disapprove of it," said Turnbull a little
+doubtfully.
+
+"I know," said MacIan grimly; "that man who talked about love, for
+instance."
+
+Turnbull made a humorous grimace; then he said: "We seem to be talking
+in a kind of shorthand; but I won't pretend not to understand you. What
+you mean is this: that you learnt about all your saints and angels at
+the same time as you learnt about common morality, from the same people,
+in the same way. And you mean to say that if one may be disputed, so
+may the other. Well, let that pass for the moment. But let me ask you
+a question in turn. Did not this system of yours, which you swallowed
+whole, contain all sorts of things that were merely local, the respect
+for the chief of your clan, or such things; the village ghost, the
+family feud, or what not? Did you not take in those things, too, along
+with your theology?"
+
+MacIan stared along the dim village road, down which the last straggler
+from the inn was trailing his way.
+
+"What you say is not unreasonable," he said. "But it is not quite true.
+The distinction between the chief and us did exist; but it was never
+anything like the distinction between the human and the divine, or
+the human and the animal. It was more like the distinction between one
+animal and another. But----"
+
+"Well?" said Turnbull.
+
+MacIan was silent.
+
+"Go on," repeated Turnbull; "what's the matter with you? What are you
+staring at?"
+
+"I am staring," said MacIan at last, "at that which shall judge us
+both."
+
+"Oh, yes," said Turnbull in a tired way, "I suppose you mean God."
+
+"No, I don't," said MacIan, shaking his head. "I mean him."
+
+And he pointed to the half-tipsy yokel who was ploughing down the road.
+
+"What do you mean?" asked the atheist.
+
+"I mean him," repeated MacIan with emphasis. "He goes out in the early
+dawn; he digs or he ploughs a field. Then he comes back and drinks ale,
+and then he sings a song. All your philosophies and political systems
+are young compared to him. All your hoary cathedrals, yes, even the
+Eternal Church on earth is new compared to him. The most mouldering gods
+in the British Museum are new facts beside him. It is he who in the end
+shall judge us all."
+
+And MacIan rose to his feet with a vague excitement.
+
+"What are you going to do?"
+
+"I am going to ask him," cried MacIan, "which of us is right."
+
+Turnbull broke into a kind of laugh. "Ask that intoxicated
+turnip-eater----" he began.
+
+"Yes--which of us is right," cried MacIan violently. "Oh, you have long
+words and I have long words; and I talk of every man being the image of
+God; and you talk of every man being a citizen and enlightened enough to
+govern. But if every man typifies God, there is God. If every man is an
+enlightened citizen, there is your enlightened citizen. The first man
+one meets is always man. Let us catch him up."
+
+And in gigantic strides the long, lean Highlander whirled away into the
+grey twilight, Turnbull following with a good-humoured oath.
+
+The track of the rustic was easy to follow, even in the faltering
+dark; for he was enlivening his wavering walk with song. It was an
+interminable poem, beginning with some unspecified King William, who (it
+appeared) lived in London town and who after the second rise vanished
+rather abruptly from the train of thought. The rest was almost entirely
+about beer and was thick with local topography of a quite unrecognizable
+kind. The singer's step was neither very rapid, nor, indeed,
+exceptionally secure; so the song grew louder and louder and the two
+soon overtook him.
+
+He was a man elderly or rather of any age, with lean grey hair and a
+lean red face, but with that remarkable rustic physiognomy in which it
+seems that all the features stand out independently from the face; the
+rugged red nose going out like a limb; the bleared blue eyes standing
+out like signals.
+
+He gave them greeting with the elaborate urbanity of the slightly
+intoxicated. MacIan, who was vibrating with one of his silent,
+violent decisions, opened the question without delay. He explained the
+philosophic position in words as short and simple as possible. But
+the singular old man with the lank red face seemed to think uncommonly
+little of the short words. He fixed with a fierce affection upon one or
+two of the long ones.
+
+"Atheists!" he repeated with luxurious scorn. "Atheists! I know their
+sort, master. Atheists! Don't talk to me about 'un. Atheists!"
+
+The grounds of his disdain seemed a little dark and confused; but they
+were evidently sufficient. MacIan resumed in some encouragement:
+
+"You think as I do, I hope; you think that a man should be connected
+with the Church; with the common Christian----"
+
+The old man extended a quivering stick in the direction of a distant
+hill.
+
+"There's the church," he said thickly. "Grassley old church that is.
+Pulled down it was, in the old squire's time, and----"
+
+"I mean," explained MacIan elaborately, "that you think that there
+should be someone typifying religion, a priest----"
+
+"Priests!" said the old man with sudden passion. "Priests! I know
+'un. What they want in England? That's what I say. What they want in
+England?"
+
+"They want you," said MacIan.
+
+"Quite so," said Turnbull, "and me; but they won't get us. MacIan, your
+attempt on the primitive innocence does not seem very successful. Let
+me try. What you want, my friend, is your rights. You don't want any
+priests or churches. A vote, a right to speak is what you----"
+
+"Who says I a'n't got a right to speak?" said the old man, facing round
+in an irrational frenzy. "I got a right to speak. I'm a man, I am. I
+don't want no votin' nor priests. I say a man's a man; that's what I
+say. If a man a'n't a man, what is he? That's what I say, if a man a'n't
+a man, what is he? When I sees a man, I sez 'e's a man."
+
+"Quite so," said Turnbull, "a citizen."
+
+"I say he's a man," said the rustic furiously, stopping and striking his
+stick on the ground. "Not a city or owt else. He's a man."
+
+"You're perfectly right," said the sudden voice of MacIan, falling like
+a sword. "And you have kept close to something the whole world of today
+tries to forget."
+
+"Good night."
+
+And the old man went on wildly singing into the night.
+
+"A jolly old creature," said Turnbull; "he didn't seem able to get much
+beyond that fact that a man is a man."
+
+"Has anybody got beyond it?" asked MacIan.
+
+Turnbull looked at him curiously. "Are you turning an agnostic?" he
+asked.
+
+"Oh, you do not understand!" cried out MacIan. "We Catholics are all
+agnostics. We Catholics have only in that sense got as far as realizing
+that man is a man. But your Ibsens and your Zolas and your Shaws and
+your Tolstoys have not even got so far."
+
+
+
+
+VIII. AN INTERLUDE OF ARGUMENT
+
+Morning broke in bitter silver along the grey and level plain; and
+almost as it did so Turnbull and MacIan came out of a low, scrubby wood
+on to the empty and desolate flats. They had walked all night.
+
+They had walked all night and talked all night also, and if the subject
+had been capable of being exhausted they would have exhausted it.
+Their long and changing argument had taken them through districts and
+landscapes equally changing. They had discussed Haeckel upon hills so
+high and steep that in spite of the coldness of the night it seemed as
+if the stars might burn them. They had explained and re-explained
+the Massacre of St. Bartholomew in little white lanes walled in with
+standing corn as with walls of gold. They had talked about Mr. Kensit
+in dim and twinkling pine woods, amid the bewildering monotony of
+the pines. And it was with the end of a long speech from MacIan,
+passionately defending the practical achievements and the solid
+prosperity of the Catholic tradition, that they came out upon the open
+land.
+
+MacIan had learnt much and thought more since he came out of the
+cloudy hills of Arisaig. He had met many typical modern figures under
+circumstances which were sharply symbolic; and, moreover, he had
+absorbed the main modern atmosphere from the mere presence and chance
+phrases of Turnbull, as such atmospheres can always be absorbed from the
+presence and the phrases of any man of great mental vitality. He had at
+last begun thoroughly to understand what are the grounds upon which the
+mass of the modern world solidly disapprove of her creed; and he threw
+himself into replying to them with a hot intellectual enjoyment.
+
+"I begin to understand one or two of your dogmas, Mr. Turnbull," he had
+said emphatically as they ploughed heavily up a wooded hill. "And every
+one that I understand I deny. Take any one of them you like. You hold
+that your heretics and sceptics have helped the world forward and handed
+on a lamp of progress. I deny it. Nothing is plainer from real history
+than that each of your heretics invented a complete cosmos of his own
+which the next heretic smashed entirely to pieces. Who knows now exactly
+what Nestorius taught? Who cares? There are only two things that we know
+for certain about it. The first is that Nestorius, as a heretic, taught
+something quite opposite to the teaching of Arius, the heretic who came
+before him, and something quite useless to James Turnbull, the heretic
+who comes after. I defy you to go back to the Free-thinkers of the past
+and find any habitation for yourself at all. I defy you to read
+Godwin or Shelley or the deists of the eighteenth century of the
+nature-worshipping humanists of the Renaissance, without discovering
+that you differ from them twice as much as you differ from the Pope. You
+are a nineteenth-century sceptic, and you are always telling me that
+I ignore the cruelty of nature. If you had been an eighteenth-century
+sceptic you would have told me that I ignore the kindness and
+benevolence of nature. You are an atheist, and you praise the deists of
+the eighteenth century. Read them instead of praising them, and you will
+find that their whole universe stands or falls with the deity. You are a
+materialist, and you think Bruno a scientific hero. See what he said and
+you will think him an insane mystic. No, the great Free-thinker,
+with his genuine ability and honesty, does not in practice destroy
+Christianity. What he does destroy is the Free-thinker who went before.
+Free-thought may be suggestive, it may be inspiriting, it may have as
+much as you please of the merits that come from vivacity and
+variety. But there is one thing Free-thought can never be by any
+possibility--Free-thought can never be progressive. It can never be
+progressive because it will accept nothing from the past; it begins
+every time again from the beginning; and it goes every time in a
+different direction. All the rational philosophers have gone along
+different roads, so it is impossible to say which has gone farthest. Who
+can discuss whether Emerson was a better optimist than Schopenhauer was
+pessimist? It is like asking if this corn is as yellow as that hill is
+steep. No; there are only two things that really progress; and they both
+accept accumulations of authority. They may be progressing uphill and
+down; they may be growing steadily better or steadily worse; but they
+have steadily increased in certain definable matters; they have steadily
+advanced in a certain definable direction; they are the only two things,
+it seems, that ever _can_ progress. The first is strictly physical
+science. The second is the Catholic Church."
+
+"Physical science and the Catholic Church!" said Turnbull sarcastically;
+"and no doubt the first owes a great deal to the second."
+
+"If you pressed that point I might reply that it was very probable,"
+answered MacIan calmly. "I often fancy that your historical
+generalizations rest frequently on random instances; I should not be
+surprised if your vague notions of the Church as the persecutor of
+science was a generalization from Galileo. I should not be at all
+surprised if, when you counted the scientific investigations and
+discoveries since the fall of Rome, you found that a great mass of them
+had been made by monks. But the matter is irrelevant to my meaning. I
+say that if you want an example of anything which has progressed in
+the moral world by the same method as science in the material world, by
+continually adding to without unsettling what was there before, then I
+say that there _is_ only one example of it. And that is Us."
+
+"With this enormous difference," said Turnbull, "that however elaborate
+be the calculations of physical science, their net result can be tested.
+Granted that it took millions of books I never read and millions of men
+I never heard of to discover the electric light. Still I can see the
+electric light. But I cannot see the supreme virtue which is the result
+of all your theologies and sacraments."
+
+"Catholic virtue is often invisible because it is the normal," answered
+MacIan. "Christianity is always out of fashion because it is always
+sane; and all fashions are mild insanities. When Italy is mad on art
+the Church seems too Puritanical; when England is mad on Puritanism the
+Church seems too artistic. When you quarrel with us now you class us
+with kingship and despotism; but when you quarrelled with us first it
+was because we would not accept the divine despotism of Henry VIII. The
+Church always seems to be behind the times, when it is really beyond the
+times; it is waiting till the last fad shall have seen its last summer.
+It keeps the key of a permanent virtue."
+
+"Oh, I have heard all that!" said Turnbull with genial contempt. "I have
+heard that Christianity keeps the key of virtue, and that if you read
+Tom Paine you will cut your throat at Monte Carlo. It is such rubbish
+that I am not even angry at it. You say that Christianity is the prop
+of morals; but what more do you do? When a doctor attends you and could
+poison you with a pinch of salt, do you ask whether he is a Christian?
+You ask whether he is a gentleman, whether he is an M.D.--anything but
+that. When a soldier enlists to die for his country or disgrace it, do
+you ask whether he is a Christian? You are more likely to ask whether
+he is Oxford or Cambridge at the boat race. If you think your creed
+essential to morals why do you not make it a test for these things?"
+
+"We once did make it a test for these things," said MacIan smiling, "and
+then you told us that we were imposing by force a faith unsupported
+by argument. It seems rather hard that having first been told that our
+creed must be false because we did use tests, we should now be told that
+it must be false because we don't. But I notice that most anti-Christian
+arguments are in the same inconsistent style."
+
+"That is all very well as a debating-club answer," replied Turnbull
+good-humouredly, "but the question still remains: Why don't you confine
+yourself more to Christians if Christians are the only really good men?"
+
+"Who talked of such folly?" asked MacIan disdainfully. "Do you suppose
+that the Catholic Church ever held that Christians were the only good
+men? Why, the Catholics of the Catholic Middle Ages talked about the
+virtues of all the virtuous Pagans until humanity was sick of the
+subject. No, if you really want to know what we mean when we say that
+Christianity has a special power of virtue, I will tell you. The Church
+is the only thing on earth that can perpetuate a type of virtue and make
+it something more than a fashion. The thing is so plain and historical
+that I hardly think you will ever deny it. You cannot deny that it is
+perfectly possible that tomorrow morning, in Ireland or in Italy, there
+might appear a man not only as good but good in exactly the same way
+as St. Francis of Assisi. Very well, now take the other types of human
+virtue; many of them splendid. The English gentleman of Elizabeth was
+chivalrous and idealistic. But can you stand still here in this meadow
+and _be_ an English gentleman of Elizabeth? The austere republican of
+the eighteenth century, with his stern patriotism and his simple life,
+was a fine fellow. But have you ever seen him? have you ever seen an
+austere republican? Only a hundred years have passed and that volcano of
+revolutionary truth and valour is as cold as the mountains of the moon.
+And so it is and so it will be with the ethics which are buzzing down
+Fleet Street at this instant as I speak. What phrase would inspire
+the London clerk or workman just now? Perhaps that he is a son of the
+British Empire on which the sun never sets; perhaps that he is a prop of
+his Trades Union, or a class-conscious proletarian something or other;
+perhaps merely that he is a gentleman when he obviously is not. Those
+names and notions are all honourable; but how long will they last?
+Empires break; industrial conditions change; the suburbs will not last
+for ever. What will remain? I will tell you. The Catholic Saint will
+remain."
+
+"And suppose I don't like him?" said Turnbull.
+
+"On my theory the question is rather whether he will like you: or
+more probably whether he will ever have heard of you. But I grant the
+reasonableness of your query. You have a right, if you speak as the
+ordinary man, to ask if you will like the saint. But as the ordinary man
+you do like him. You revel in him. If you dislike him it is not because
+you are a nice ordinary man, but because you are (if you will excuse me)
+a sophisticated prig of a Fleet Street editor. That is just the funny
+part of it. The human race has always admired the Catholic virtues,
+however little it can practise them; and oddly enough it has admired
+most those of them that the modern world most sharply disputes. You
+complain of Catholicism for setting up an ideal of virginity; it did
+nothing of the kind. The whole human race set up an ideal of virginity;
+the Greeks in Athene, the Romans in the Vestal fire, set up an ideal of
+virginity. What then is your real quarrel with Catholicism? Your
+quarrel can only be, your quarrel really only is, that Catholicism has
+_achieved_ an ideal of virginity; that it is no longer a mere piece
+of floating poetry. But if you, and a few feverish men, in top hats,
+running about in a street in London, choose to differ as to the ideal
+itself, not only from the Church, but from the Parthenon whose name
+means virginity, from the Roman Empire which went outwards from the
+virgin flame, from the whole legend and tradition of Europe, from the
+lion who will not touch virgins, from the unicorn who respects them, and
+who make up together the bearers of your own national shield, from the
+most living and lawless of your own poets, from Massinger, who wrote the
+_Virgin Martyr_, from Shakespeare, who wrote _Measure for Measure_--if
+you in Fleet Street differ from all this human experience, does it never
+strike you that it may be Fleet Street that is wrong?"
+
+"No," answered Turnbull; "I trust that I am sufficiently fair-minded to
+canvass and consider the idea; but having considered it, I think Fleet
+Street is right, yes--even if the Parthenon is wrong. I think that as
+the world goes on new psychological atmospheres are generated, and in
+these atmospheres it is possible to find delicacies and combinations
+which in other times would have to be represented by some ruder symbol.
+Every man feels the need of some element of purity in sex; perhaps
+they can only typify purity as the absence of sex. You will laugh if I
+suggest that we may have made in Fleet Street an atmosphere in which
+a man can be so passionate as Sir Lancelot and as pure as Sir
+Galahad. But, after all, we have in the modern world erected many such
+atmospheres. We have, for instance, a new and imaginative appreciation
+of children."
+
+"Quite so," replied MacIan with a singular smile. "It has been very well
+put by one of the brightest of your young authors, who said: 'Unless
+you become as little children ye shall in no wise enter the kingdom of
+heaven.' But you are quite right; there is a modern worship of children.
+And what, I ask you, is this modern worship of children? What, in the
+name of all the angels and devils, is it except a worship of virginity?
+Why should anyone worship a thing merely because it is small or
+immature? No; you have tried to escape from this thing, and the very
+thing you point to as the goal of your escape is only the thing again.
+Am I wrong in saying that these things seem to be eternal?"
+
+And it was with these words that they came in sight of the great
+plains. They went a little way in silence, and then James Turnbull said
+suddenly, "But I _cannot_ believe in the thing." MacIan answered nothing
+to the speech; perhaps it is unanswerable. And indeed they scarcely
+spoke another word to each other all that day.
+
+
+
+
+IX. THE STRANGE LADY
+
+Moonrise with a great and growing moon opened over all those flats,
+making them seem flatter and larger than they were, turning them to a
+lake of blue light. The two companions trudged across the moonlit plain
+for half an hour in full silence. Then MacIan stopped suddenly and
+planted his sword-point in the ground like one who plants his tent-pole
+for the night. Leaving it standing there, he clutched his black-haired
+skull with his great claws of hands, as was his custom when forcing the
+pace of his brain. Then his hands dropped again and he spoke.
+
+"I'm sure you're thinking the same as I am," he said; "how long are we
+to be on this damned seesaw?"
+
+The other did not answer, but his silence seemed somehow solid as
+assent; and MacIan went on conversationally. Neither noticed that both
+had instinctively stood still before the sign of the fixed and standing
+sword.
+
+"It is hard to guess what God means in this business. But he means
+something--or the other thing, or both. Whenever we have tried to
+fight each other something has stopped us. Whenever we have tried to be
+reconciled to each other, something has stopped us again. By the run
+of our luck we have never had time to be either friends or enemies.
+Something always jumped out of the bushes."
+
+Turnbull nodded gravely and glanced round at the huge and hedgeless
+meadow which fell away towards the horizon into a glimmering high road.
+
+"Nothing will jump out of bushes here anyhow," he said.
+
+"That is what I meant," said MacIan, and stared steadily at the heavy
+hilt of his standing sword, which in the slight wind swayed on its
+tempered steel like some huge thistle on its stalk.
+
+"That is what I meant; we are quite alone here. I have not heard a
+horse-hoof or a footstep or the hoot of a train for miles. So I think we
+might stop here and ask for a miracle."
+
+"Oh! might we?" said the atheistic editor with a sort of gusto of
+disgust.
+
+"I beg your pardon," said MacIan, meekly. "I forgot your prejudices."
+He eyed the wind-swung sword-hilt in sad meditation and resumed: "What
+I mean is, we might find out in this quiet place whether there really is
+any fate or any commandment against our enterprise. I will engage on my
+side, like Elijah, to accept a test from heaven. Turnbull, let us draw
+swords here in this moonlight and this monstrous solitude. And if here
+in this moonlight and solitude there happens anything to interrupt
+us--if it be lightning striking our sword-blades or a rabbit running
+under our legs--I will take it as a sign from God and we will shake
+hands for ever."
+
+Turnbull's mouth twitched in angry humour under his red moustache. He
+said: "I will wait for signs from God until I have any signs of His
+existence; but God--or Fate--forbid that a man of scientific culture
+should refuse any kind of experiment."
+
+"Very well, then," said MacIan, shortly. "We are more quiet here than
+anywhere else; let us engage." And he plucked his sword-point out of the
+turf.
+
+Turnbull regarded him for a second and a half with a baffling visage
+almost black against the moonrise; then his hand made a sharp movement
+to his hip and his sword shone in the moon.
+
+As old chess-players open every game with established gambits, they
+opened with a thrust and parry, orthodox and even frankly ineffectual.
+But in MacIan's soul more formless storms were gathering, and he made
+a lunge or two so savage as first to surprise and then to enrage his
+opponent. Turnbull ground his teeth, kept his temper, and waiting for
+the third lunge, and the worst, had almost spitted the lunger when a
+shrill, small cry came from behind him, a cry such as is not made by any
+of the beasts that perish.
+
+Turnbull must have been more superstitious than he knew, for he stopped
+in the act of going forward. MacIan was brazenly superstitious, and he
+dropped his sword. After all, he had challenged the universe to send
+an interruption; and this was an interruption, whatever else it was. An
+instant afterwards the sharp, weak cry was repeated. This time it was
+certain that it was human and that it was female.
+
+MacIan stood rolling those great blue Gaelic eyes that contrasted with
+his dark hair. "It is the voice of God," he said again and again.
+
+"God hasn't got much of a voice," said Turnbull, who snatched at every
+chance of cheap profanity. "As a matter of fact, MacIan, it isn't the
+voice of God, but it's something a jolly sight more important--it is the
+voice of man--or rather of woman. So I think we'd better scoot in its
+direction."
+
+MacIan snatched up his fallen weapon without a word, and the two raced
+away towards that part of the distant road from which the cry was now
+constantly renewed.
+
+They had to run over a curve of country that looked smooth but was very
+rough; a neglected field which they soon found to be full of the tallest
+grasses and the deepest rabbit-holes. Moreover, that great curve of the
+countryside which looked so slow and gentle when you glanced over it,
+proved to be highly precipitous when you scampered over it; and Turnbull
+was twice nearly flung on his face. MacIan, though much heavier, avoided
+such an overthrow only by having the quick and incalculable feet of the
+mountaineer; but both of them may be said to have leapt off a low cliff
+when they leapt into the road.
+
+The moonlight lay on the white road with a more naked and electric glare
+than on the grey-green upland, and though the scene which it revealed
+was complicated, it was not difficult to get its first features at a
+glance.
+
+A small but very neat black-and-yellow motor-car was standing stolidly,
+slightly to the left of the road. A somewhat larger light-green
+motor-car was tipped half-way into a ditch on the same side, and four
+flushed and staggering men in evening dress were tipped out of it. Three
+of them were standing about the road, giving their opinions to the
+moon with vague but echoing violence. The fourth, however, had
+already advanced on the chauffeur of the black-and-yellow car, and was
+threatening him with a stick. The chauffeur had risen to defend himself.
+By his side sat a young lady.
+
+She was sitting bolt upright, a slender and rigid figure gripping the
+sides of her seat, and her first few cries had ceased. She was clad in
+close-fitting dark costume, a mass of warm brown hair went out in two
+wings or waves on each side of her forehead; and even at that distance
+it could be seen that her profile was of the aquiline and eager sort,
+like a young falcon hardly free of the nest.
+
+Turnbull had concealed in him somewhere a fund of common sense and
+knowledge of the world of which he himself and his best friends were
+hardly aware. He was one of those who take in much of the shows of
+things absent-mindedly, and in an irrelevant reverie. As he stood at
+the door of his editorial shop on Ludgate Hill and meditated on the
+non-existence of God, he silently absorbed a good deal of varied
+knowledge about the existence of men. He had come to know types by
+instinct and dilemmas with a glance; he saw the crux of the situation in
+the road, and what he saw made him redouble his pace.
+
+He knew that the men were rich; he knew that they were drunk; and he
+knew, what was worst of all, that they were fundamentally frightened.
+And he knew this also, that no common ruffian (such as attacks ladies
+in novels) is ever so savage and ruthless as a coarse kind of gentleman
+when he is really alarmed. The reason is not recondite; it is simply
+because the police-court is not such a menacing novelty to the poor
+ruffian as it is to the rich. When they came within hail and heard the
+voices, they confirmed all Turnbull's anticipations. The man in the
+middle of the road was shouting in a hoarse and groggy voice that the
+chauffeur had smashed their car on purpose; that they must get to the
+Cri that evening, and that he would jolly well have to take them there.
+The chauffeur had mildly objected that he was driving a lady. "Oh! we'll
+take care of the lady," said the red-faced young man, and went off into
+gurgling and almost senile laughter.
+
+By the time the two champions came up, things had grown more serious.
+The intoxication of the man talking to the chauffeur had taken one of
+its perverse and catlike jumps into mere screaming spite and rage. He
+lifted his stick and struck at the chauffeur, who caught hold of it, and
+the drunkard fell backwards, dragging him out of his seat on the car.
+Another of the rowdies rushed forward booing in idiot excitement, fell
+over the chauffeur, and, either by accident or design, kicked him as he
+lay. The drunkard got to his feet again; but the chauffeur did not.
+
+The man who had kicked kept a kind of half-witted conscience or
+cowardice, for he stood staring at the senseless body and murmuring
+words of inconsequent self-justification, making gestures with his hands
+as if he were arguing with somebody. But the other three, with a mere
+whoop and howl of victory, were boarding the car on three sides at once.
+It was exactly at this moment that Turnbull fell among them like one
+fallen from the sky. He tore one of the climbers backward by the collar,
+and with a hearty push sent him staggering over into the ditch upon his
+nose. One of the remaining two, who was too far gone to notice anything,
+continued to clamber ineffectually over the high back of the car,
+kicking and pouring forth a rivulet of soliloquy. But the other dropped
+at the interruption, turned upon Turnbull and began a battering bout
+of fisticuffs. At the same moment the man crawled out of the ditch in a
+masquerade of mud and rushed at his old enemy from behind. The whole
+had not taken a second; and an instant after MacIan was in the midst of
+them.
+
+Turnbull had tossed away his sheathed sword, greatly preferring his
+hands, except in the avowed etiquette of the duel; for he had learnt to
+use his hands in the old street-battles of Bradlaugh. But to MacIan the
+sword even sheathed was a more natural weapon, and he laid about him
+on all sides with it as with a stick. The man who had the walking-stick
+found his blows parried with promptitude; and a second after, to his
+great astonishment, found his own stick fly up in the air as by a
+conjuring trick, with a turn of the swordsman's wrist. Another of the
+revellers picked the stick out of the ditch and ran in upon MacIan,
+calling to his companion to assist him.
+
+"I haven't got a stick," grumbled the disarmed man, and looked vaguely
+about the ditch.
+
+"Perhaps," said MacIan, politely, "you would like this one." With the
+word the drunkard found his hand that had grasped the stick suddenly
+twisted and empty; and the stick lay at the feet of his companion on the
+other side of the road. MacIan felt a faint stir behind him; the girl
+had risen to her feet and was leaning forward to stare at the fighters.
+Turnbull was still engaged in countering and pommelling with the third
+young man. The fourth young man was still engaged with himself, kicking
+his legs in helpless rotation on the back of the car and talking with
+melodious rationality.
+
+At length Turnbull's opponent began to back before the battery of his
+heavy hands, still fighting, for he was the soberest and boldest of the
+four. If these are annals of military glory, it is due to him to say
+that he need not have abandoned the conflict; only that as he backed
+to the edge of the ditch his foot caught in a loop of grass and he
+went over in a flat and comfortable position from which it took him a
+considerable time to rise. By the time he had risen, Turnbull had come
+to the rescue of MacIan, who was at bay but belabouring his two enemies
+handsomely. The sight of the liberated reserve was to them like that
+of Blucher at Waterloo; the two set off at a sullen trot down the road,
+leaving even the walking-stick lying behind them in the moonlight.
+MacIan plucked the struggling and aspiring idiot off the back of the car
+like a stray cat, and left him swaying unsteadily in the moon. Then he
+approached the front part of the car in a somewhat embarrassed manner
+and pulled off his cap.
+
+For some solid seconds the lady and he merely looked at each other, and
+MacIan had an irrational feeling of being in a picture hung on a
+wall. That is, he was motionless, even lifeless, and yet staringly
+significant, like a picture. The white moonlight on the road, when he
+was not looking at it, gave him a vision of the road being white with
+snow. The motor-car, when he was not looking at it, gave him a rude
+impression of a captured coach in the old days of highwaymen. And
+he whose whole soul was with the swords and stately manners of the
+eighteenth century, he who was a Jacobite risen from the dead, had an
+overwhelming sense of being once more in the picture, when he had so
+long been out of the picture.
+
+In that short and strong silence he absorbed the lady from head to foot.
+He had never really looked at a human being before in his life. He saw
+her face and hair first, then that she had long suede gloves; then that
+there was a fur cap at the back of her brown hair. He might, perhaps,
+be excused for this hungry attention. He had prayed that some sign might
+come from heaven; and after an almost savage scrutiny he came to the
+conclusion that his one did. The lady's instantaneous arrest of speech
+might need more explaining; but she may well have been stunned with
+the squalid attack and the abrupt rescue. Yet it was she who remembered
+herself first and suddenly called out with self-accusing horror:
+
+"Oh, that poor, poor man!"
+
+They both swung round abruptly and saw that Turnbull, with his recovered
+sword under his arm-pit, was already lifting the fallen chauffeur into
+the car. He was only stunned and was slowly awakening, feebly waving his
+left arm.
+
+The lady in long gloves and the fur cap leapt out and ran rapidly
+towards them, only to be reassured by Turnbull, who (unlike many of his
+school) really knew a little science when he invoked it to redeem the
+world. "He's all right," said he; "he's quite safe. But I'm afraid he
+won't be able to drive the car for half an hour or so."
+
+"I can drive the car," said the young woman in the fur cap with stony
+practicability.
+
+"Oh, in that case," began MacIan, uneasily; and that paralysing shyness
+which is a part of romance induced him to make a backward movement as
+if leaving her to herself. But Turnbull was more rational than he, being
+more indifferent.
+
+"I don't think you ought to drive home alone, ma'am," he said, gruffly.
+"There seem to be a lot of rowdy parties along this road, and the man
+will be no use for an hour. If you will tell us where you are going, we
+will see you safely there and say good night."
+
+The young lady exhibited all the abrupt disturbance of a person who is
+not commonly disturbed. She said almost sharply and yet with evident
+sincerity: "Of course I am awfully grateful to you for all you've
+done--and there's plenty of room if you'll come in."
+
+Turnbull, with the complete innocence of an absolutely sound motive,
+immediately jumped into the car; but the girl cast an eye at MacIan, who
+stood in the road for an instant as if rooted like a tree. Then he also
+tumbled his long legs into the tonneau, having that sense of degradedly
+diving into heaven which so many have known in so many human houses when
+they consented to stop to tea or were allowed to stop to supper. The
+slowly reviving chauffeur was set in the back seat; Turnbull and MacIan
+had fallen into the middle one; the lady with a steely coolness had
+taken the driver's seat and all the handles of that headlong machine. A
+moment afterwards the engine started, with a throb and leap unfamiliar
+to Turnbull, who had only once been in a motor during a general
+election, and utterly unknown to MacIan, who in his present mood thought
+it was the end of the world. Almost at the same instant that the car
+plucked itself out of the mud and whipped away up the road, the man who
+had been flung into the ditch rose waveringly to his feet. When he saw
+the car escaping he ran after it and shouted something which, owing
+to the increasing distance, could not be heard. It is awful to reflect
+that, if his remark was valuable, it is quite lost to the world.
+
+The car shot on up and down the shining moonlit lanes, and there was no
+sound in it except the occasional click or catch of its machinery; for
+through some cause or other no soul inside it could think of a word to
+say. The lady symbolized her feelings, whatever they were, by urging the
+machine faster and faster until scattered woodlands went by them in
+one black blotch and heavy hills and valleys seemed to ripple under the
+wheels like mere waves. A little while afterwards this mood seemed to
+slacken and she fell into a more ordinary pace; but still she did not
+speak. Turnbull, who kept a more common and sensible view of the case
+than anyone else, made some remark about the moonlight; but something
+indescribable made him also relapse into silence.
+
+All this time MacIan had been in a sort of monstrous delirium, like some
+fabulous hero snatched up into the moon. The difference between this
+experience and common experiences was analogous to that between waking
+life and a dream. Yet he did not feel in the least as if he were
+dreaming; rather the other way; as waking was more actual than dreaming,
+so this seemed by another degree more actual than waking itself. But it
+was another life altogether, like a cosmos with a new dimension.
+
+He felt he had been hurled into some new incarnation: into the midst
+of new relations, wrongs and rights, with towering responsibilities and
+almost tragic joys which he had as yet had no time to examine. Heaven
+had not merely sent him a message; Heaven itself had opened around him
+and given him an hour of its own ancient and star-shattering energy.
+He had never felt so much alive before; and yet he was like a man in a
+trance. And if you had asked him on what his throbbing happiness hung,
+he could only have told you that it hung on four or five visible facts,
+as a curtain hangs on four of five fixed nails. The fact that the lady
+had a little fur at her throat; the fact that the curve of her cheek
+was a low and lean curve and that the moonlight caught the height of
+her cheek-bone; the fact that her hands were small but heavily gloved as
+they gripped the steering-wheel; the fact that a white witch light was
+on the road; the fact that the brisk breeze of their passage stirred and
+fluttered a little not only the brown hair of her head but the black
+fur on her cap. All these facts were to him certain and incredible, like
+sacraments.
+
+When they had driven half a mile farther, a big shadow was flung across
+the path, followed by its bulky owner, who eyed the car critically but
+let it pass. The silver moonlight picked out a piece or two of pewter
+ornament on his blue uniform; and as they went by they knew it was a
+sergeant of police. Three hundred yards farther on another policeman
+stepped out into the road as if to stop them, then seemed to doubt his
+own authority and stepped back again. The girl was a daughter of the
+rich; and this police suspicion (under which all the poor live day and
+night) stung her for the first time into speech.
+
+"What can they mean?" she cried out in a kind of temper; "this car's
+going like a snail."
+
+There was a short silence, and then Turnbull said: "It is certainly very
+odd, you are driving quietly enough."
+
+"You are driving nobly," said MacIan, and his words (which had no
+meaning whatever) sounded hoarse and ungainly even in his own ears.
+
+They passed the next mile and a half swiftly and smoothly; yet among the
+many things which they passed in the course of it was a clump of eager
+policemen standing at a cross-road. As they passed, one of the policemen
+shouted something to the others; but nothing else happened. Eight
+hundred yards farther on, Turnbull stood up suddenly in the swaying car.
+
+"My God, MacIan!" he called out, showing his first emotion of that
+night. "I don't believe it's the pace; it couldn't be the pace. I
+believe it's us."
+
+MacIan sat motionless for a few moments and then turned up at his
+companion a face that was as white as the moon above it.
+
+"You may be right," he said at last; "if you are, I must tell her."
+
+"I will tell the lady if you like," said Turnbull, with his unconquered
+good temper.
+
+"You!" said MacIan, with a sort of sincere and instinctive astonishment.
+"Why should you--no, I must tell her, of course----"
+
+And he leant forward and spoke to the lady in the fur cap.
+
+"I am afraid, madam, that we may have got you into some trouble," he
+said, and even as he said it it sounded wrong, like everything he said
+to this particular person in the long gloves. "The fact is," he resumed,
+desperately, "the fact is, we are being chased by the police." Then
+the last flattening hammer fell upon poor Evan's embarrassment; for the
+fluffy brown head with the furry black cap did not turn by a section of
+the compass.
+
+"We are chased by the police," repeated MacIan, vigorously; then he
+added, as if beginning an explanation, "You see, I am a Catholic."
+
+The wind whipped back a curl of the brown hair so as to necessitate a
+new theory of aesthetics touching the line of the cheek-bone; but the
+head did not turn.
+
+"You see," began MacIan, again blunderingly, "this gentleman wrote in
+his newspaper that Our Lady was a common woman, a bad woman, and so we
+agreed to fight; and we were fighting quite a little time ago--but that
+was before we saw you."
+
+The young lady driving her car had half turned her face to listen; and
+it was not a reverent or a patient face that she showed him. Her Norman
+nose was tilted a trifle too high upon the slim stalk of her neck and
+body.
+
+When MacIan saw that arrogant and uplifted profile pencilled plainly
+against the moonshine, he accepted an ultimate defeat. He had expected
+the angels to despise him if he were wrong, but not to despise him so
+much as this.
+
+"You see," said the stumbling spokesman, "I was angry with him when he
+insulted the Mother of God, and I asked him to fight a duel with me; but
+the police are all trying to stop it."
+
+Nothing seemed to waver or flicker in the fair young falcon profile; and
+it only opened its lips to say, after a silence: "I thought people in
+our time were supposed to respect each other's religion."
+
+Under the shadow of that arrogant face MacIan could only fall back on
+the obvious answer: "But what about a man's irreligion?" The face only
+answered: "Well, you ought to be more broadminded."
+
+If anyone else in the world had said the words, MacIan would have
+snorted with his equine neigh of scorn. But in this case he seemed
+knocked down by a superior simplicity, as if his eccentric attitude were
+rebuked by the innocence of a child. He could not dissociate anything
+that this woman said or did or wore from an idea of spiritual rarity and
+virtue. Like most others under the same elemental passion, his soul was
+at present soaked in ethics. He could have applied moral terms to the
+material objects of her environment. If someone had spoken of
+"her generous ribbon" or "her chivalrous gloves" or "her merciful
+shoe-buckle," it would not have seemed to him nonsense.
+
+He was silent, and the girl went on in a lower key as if she were
+momentarily softened and a little saddened also. "It won't do, you
+know," she said; "you can't find out the truth in that way. There are
+such heaps of churches and people thinking different things nowadays,
+and they all think they are right. My uncle was a Swedenborgian."
+
+MacIan sat with bowed head, listening hungrily to her voice but hardly
+to her words, and seeing his great world drama grow smaller and smaller
+before his eyes till it was no bigger than a child's toy theatre.
+
+"The time's gone by for all that," she went on; "you can't find out the
+real thing like that--if there is really anything to find----" and
+she sighed rather drearily; for, like many of the women of our wealthy
+class, she was old and broken in thought, though young and clean enough
+in her emotions.
+
+"Our object," said Turnbull, shortly, "is to make an effective
+demonstration"; and after that word, MacIan looked at his vision again
+and found it smaller than ever.
+
+"It would be in the newspapers, of course," said the girl. "People read
+the newspapers, but they don't believe them, or anything else, I think."
+And she sighed again.
+
+She drove in silence a third of a mile before she added, as if
+completing the sentence: "Anyhow, the whole thing's quite absurd."
+
+"I don't think," began Turnbull, "that you quite realize----Hullo!
+hullo--hullo--what's this?"
+
+The amateur chauffeur had been forced to bring the car to a staggering
+stoppage, for a file of fat, blue policemen made a wall across the way.
+A sergeant came to the side and touched his peaked cap to the lady.
+
+"Beg your pardon, miss," he said with some embarrassment, for he knew
+her for a daughter of a dominant house, "but we have reason to believe
+that the gentlemen in your car are----" and he hesitated for a polite
+phrase.
+
+"I am Evan MacIan," said that gentleman, and stood up in a sort of
+gloomy pomp, not wholly without a touch of the sulks of a schoolboy.
+
+"Yes, we will get out, sergeant," said Turnbull, more easily; "my name
+is James Turnbull. We must not incommode the lady."
+
+"What are you taking them up for?" asked the young woman, looking
+straight in front of her along the road.
+
+"It's under the new act," said the sergeant, almost apologetically.
+"Incurable disturbers of the peace."
+
+"What will happen to them?" she asked, with the same frigid clearness.
+
+"Westgate Adult Reformatory," he replied, briefly.
+
+"Until when?"
+
+"Until they are cured," said the official.
+
+"Very well, sergeant," said the young lady, with a sort of tired common
+sense. "I am sure I don't want to protect criminals or go against
+the law; but I must tell you that these gentlemen have done me a
+considerable service; you won't mind drawing your men a little farther
+off while I say good night to them. Men like that always misunderstand."
+
+The sergeant was profoundly disquieted from the beginning at the mere
+idea of arresting anyone in the company of a great lady; to refuse one
+of her minor requests was quite beyond his courage. The police fell back
+to a few yards behind the car. Turnbull took up the two swords that were
+their only luggage; the swords that, after so many half duels, they were
+now to surrender at last. MacIan, the blood thundering in his brain
+at the thought of that instant of farewell, bent over, fumbled at the
+handle and flung open the door to get out.
+
+But he did not get out. He did not get out, because it is dangerous to
+jump out of a car when it is going at full speed. And the car was going
+at full speed, because the young lady, without turning her head or
+so much as saying a syllable, had driven down a handle that made the
+machine plunge forward like a buffalo and then fly over the landscape
+like a greyhound. The police made one rush to follow, and then dropped
+so grotesque and hopeless a chase. Away in the vanishing distance they
+could see the sergeant furiously making notes.
+
+The open door, still left loose on its hinges, swung and banged quite
+crazily as they went whizzing up one road and down another. Nor did
+MacIan sit down; he stood up stunned and yet staring, as he would have
+stood up at the trumpet of the Last Day. A black dot in the distance
+sprang up a tall black forest, swallowed them and spat them out again
+at the other end. A railway bridge grew larger and larger till it leapt
+upon their backs bellowing, and was in its turn left behind. Avenues of
+poplars on both sides of the road chased each other like the figures
+in a zoetrope. Now and then with a shock and rattle they went through
+sleeping moonlit villages, which must have stirred an instant in their
+sleep as at the passing of a fugitive earthquake. Sometimes in an
+outlying house a light in one erratic, unexpected window would give them
+a nameless hint of the hundred human secrets which they left behind them
+with their dust. Sometimes even a slouching rustic would be afoot on
+the road and would look after them, as after a flying phantom. But still
+MacIan stood up staring at earth and heaven; and still the door he had
+flung open flapped loose like a flag. Turnbull, after a few minutes of
+dumb amazement, had yielded to the healthiest element in his nature and
+gone off into uncontrollable fits of laughter. The girl had not stirred
+an inch.
+
+After another half mile that seemed a mere flash, Turnbull leant over
+and locked the door. Evan staggered at last into his seat and hid his
+throbbing head in his hands; and still the car flew on and its driver
+sat inflexible and silent. The moon had already gone down, and the whole
+darkness was faintly troubled with twilight and the first movement of
+beasts and fowls. It was that mysterious moment when light is coming as
+if it were something unknown whose nature one could not guess--a mere
+alteration in everything. They looked at the sky and it seemed as dark
+as ever; then they saw the black shape of a tower or tree against it and
+knew that it was already grey. Save that they were driving southward and
+had certainly passed the longitude of London, they knew nothing of their
+direction; but Turnbull, who had spent a year on the Hampshire coast in
+his youth, began to recognize the unmistakable but quite indescribable
+villages of the English south. Then a white witch fire began to burn
+between the black stems of the fir-trees; and, like so many things in
+nature, though not in books on evolution, the daybreak, when it did
+come, came much quicker than one would think. The gloomy heavens were
+ripped up and rolled away like a scroll, revealing splendours, as the
+car went roaring up the curve of a great hill; and above them and black
+against the broadening light, there stood one of those crouching and
+fantastic trees that are first signals of the sea.
+
+
+
+
+X. THE SWORDS REJOINED
+
+As they came over the hill and down on the other side of it, it is not
+too much to say that the whole universe of God opened over them and
+under them, like a thing unfolding to five times its size. Almost under
+their feet opened the enormous sea, at the bottom of a steep valley
+which fell down into a bay; and the sea under their feet blazed at them
+almost as lustrous and almost as empty as the sky. The sunrise opened
+above them like some cosmic explosion, shining and shattering and yet
+silent; as if the world were blown to pieces without a sound. Round
+the rays of the victorious sun swept a sort of rainbow of confused and
+conquered colours--brown and blue and green and flaming rose-colour;
+as though gold were driving before it all the colours of the world. The
+lines of the landscape down which they sped, were the simple, strict,
+yet swerving, lines of a rushing river; so that it was almost as if they
+were being sucked down in a huge still whirlpool. Turnbull had some such
+feeling, for he spoke for the first time for many hours.
+
+"If we go down at this rate we shall be over the sea cliff," he said.
+
+"How glorious!" said MacIan.
+
+When, however, they had come into the wide hollow at the bottom of that
+landslide, the car took a calm and graceful curve along the side of
+the sea, melted into the fringe of a few trees, and quietly, yet
+astonishingly, stopped. A belated light was burning in the broad morning
+in the window of a sort of lodge- or gate-keepers' cottage; and the girl
+stood up in the car and turned her splendid face to the sun.
+
+Evan seemed startled by the stillness, like one who had been born amid
+sound and speed. He wavered on his long legs as he stood up; he pulled
+himself together, and the only consequence was that he trembled from
+head to foot. Turnbull had already opened the door on his side and
+jumped out.
+
+The moment he had done so the strange young woman had one more mad
+movement, and deliberately drove the car a few yards farther. Then she
+got out with an almost cruel coolness and began pulling off her long
+gloves and almost whistling.
+
+"You can leave me here," she said, quite casually, as if they had met
+five minutes before. "That is the lodge of my father's place. Please
+come in, if you like--but I understood that you had some business."
+
+Evan looked at that lifted face and found it merely lovely; he was far
+too much of a fool to see that it was working with a final fatigue
+and that its austerity was agony. He was even fool enough to ask it a
+question. "Why did you save us?" he said, quite humbly.
+
+The girl tore off one of her gloves, as if she were tearing off her
+hand. "Oh, I don't know," she said, bitterly. "Now I come to think of
+it, I can't imagine."
+
+Evan's thoughts, that had been piled up to the morning star, abruptly
+let him down with a crash into the very cellars of the emotional
+universe. He remained in a stunned silence for a long time; and that, if
+he had only known, was the wisest thing that he could possibly do at the
+moment.
+
+Indeed, the silence and the sunrise had their healing effect, for when
+the extraordinary lady spoke again, her tone was more friendly and
+apologetic. "I'm not really ungrateful," she said; "it was very good of
+you to save me from those men."
+
+"But why?" repeated the obstinate and dazed MacIan, "why did you save us
+from the other men? I mean the policemen?"
+
+The girl's great brown eyes were lit up with a flash that was at once
+final desperation and the loosening of some private and passionate
+reserve.
+
+"Oh, God knows!" she cried. "God knows that if there is a God He has
+turned His big back on everything. God knows I have had no pleasure in
+my life, though I am pretty and young and father has plenty of money.
+And then people come and tell me that I ought to do things and I do
+them and it's all drivel. They want you to do work among the poor; which
+means reading Ruskin and feeling self-righteous in the best room in
+a poor tenement. Or to help some cause or other, which always means
+bundling people out of crooked houses, in which they've always lived,
+into straight houses, in which they often die. And all the time you have
+inside only the horrid irony of your own empty head and empty heart. I
+am to give to the unfortunate, when my whole misfortune is that I have
+nothing to give. I am to teach, when I believe nothing at all that I was
+taught. I am to save the children from death, and I am not even certain
+that I should not be better dead. I suppose if I actually saw a child
+drowning I should save it. But that would be from the same motive from
+which I have saved you, or destroyed you, whichever it is that I have
+done."
+
+"What was the motive?" asked Evan, in a low voice.
+
+"My motive is too big for my mind," answered the girl.
+
+Then, after a pause, as she stared with a rising colour at the
+glittering sea, she said: "It can't be described, and yet I am trying to
+describe it. It seems to me not only that I am unhappy, but that there
+is no way of being happy. Father is not happy, though he is a Member of
+Parliament----" She paused a moment and added with a ghost of a smile:
+"Nor Aunt Mabel, though a man from India has told her the secret of all
+creeds. But I may be wrong; there may be a way out. And for one stark,
+insane second, I felt that, after all, you had got the way out and that
+was why the world hated you. You see, if there were a way out, it would
+be sure to be something that looked very queer."
+
+Evan put his hand to his forehead and began stumblingly: "Yes, I suppose
+we do seem----"
+
+"Oh, yes, you look queer enough," she said, with ringing sincerity.
+"You'll be all the better for a wash and brush up."
+
+"You forget our business, madam," said Evan, in a shaking voice; "we
+have no concern but to kill each other."
+
+"Well, I shouldn't be killed looking like that if I were you," she
+replied, with inhuman honesty.
+
+Evan stood and rolled his eyes in masculine bewilderment. Then came
+the final change in this Proteus, and she put out both her hands for an
+instant and said in a low tone on which he lived for days and nights:
+
+"Don't you understand that I did not dare to stop you? What you are
+doing is so mad that it may be quite true. Somehow one can never really
+manage to be an atheist."
+
+Turnbull stood staring at the sea; but his shoulders showed that he
+heard, and after one minute he turned his head. But the girl had only
+brushed Evan's hand with hers and had fled up the dark alley by the
+lodge gate.
+
+Evan stood rooted upon the road, literally like some heavy statue hewn
+there in the age of the Druids. It seemed impossible that he should
+ever move. Turnbull grew restless with this rigidity, and at last,
+after calling his companion twice or thrice, went up and clapped him
+impatiently on one of his big shoulders. Evan winced and leapt away from
+him with a repulsion which was not the hate of an unclean thing nor the
+dread of a dangerous one, but was a spasm of awe and separation from
+something from which he was now sundered as by the sword of God. He did
+not hate the atheist; it is possible that he loved him. But Turnbull
+was now something more dreadful than an enemy: he was a thing sealed
+and devoted--a thing now hopelessly doomed to be either a corpse or an
+executioner.
+
+"What is the matter with you?" asked Turnbull, with his hearty hand
+still in the air; and yet he knew more about it than his innocent action
+would allow.
+
+"James," said Evan, speaking like one under strong bodily pain, "I asked
+for God's answer and I have got it--got it in my vitals. He knows how
+weak I am, and that I might forget the peril of the faith, forget the
+face of Our Lady--yes, even with your blow upon her cheek. But the
+honour of this earth has just this about it, that it can make a man's
+heart like iron. I am from the Lords of the Isles and I dare not be a
+mere deserter. Therefore, God has tied me by the chain of my worldly
+place and word, and there is nothing but fighting now."
+
+"I think I understand you," said Turnbull, "but you say everything tail
+foremost."
+
+"She wants us to do it," said Evan, in a voice crushed with passion.
+"She has hurt herself so that we might do it. She has left her good
+name and her good sleep and all her habits and dignity flung away on the
+other side of England in the hope that she may hear of us and that we
+have broken some hole into heaven."
+
+"I thought I knew what you mean," said Turnbull, biting his beard; "it
+does seem as if we ought to do something after all she has done this
+night."
+
+"I never liked you so much before," said MacIan, in bitter sorrow.
+
+As he spoke, three solemn footmen came out of the lodge gate and
+assembled to assist the chauffeur to his room. The mere sight of them
+made the two wanderers flee as from a too frightful incongruity, and
+before they knew where they were, they were well upon the grassy ledge
+of England that overlooks the Channel. Evan said suddenly: "Will they
+let me see her in heaven once in a thousand ages?" and addressed the
+remark to the editor of _The Atheist_, as on which he would be likely or
+qualified to answer. But no answer came; a silence sank between the two.
+
+Turnbull strode sturdily to the edge of the cliff and looked out, his
+companion following, somewhat more shaken by his recent agitation.
+
+"If that's the view you take," said Turnbull, "and I don't say you are
+wrong, I think I know where we shall be best off for the business. As it
+happens, I know this part of the south coast pretty well. And unless I
+am mistaken there's a way down the cliff just here which will land us on
+a stretch of firm sand where no one is likely to follow us."
+
+The Highlander made a gesture of assent and came also almost to the edge
+of the precipice. The sunrise, which was broadening over sea and shore,
+was one of those rare and splendid ones in which there seems to be no
+mist or doubt, and nothing but a universal clarification more and more
+complete. All the colours were transparent. It seemed like a triumphant
+prophecy of some perfect world where everything being innocent will be
+intelligible; a world where even our bodies, so to speak, may be as of
+burning glass. Such a world is faintly though fiercely figured in the
+coloured windows of Christian architecture. The sea that lay before
+them was like a pavement of emerald, bright and almost brittle; the
+sky against which its strict horizon hung was almost absolutely white,
+except that close to the sky line, like scarlet braids on the hem of a
+garment, lay strings of flaky cloud of so gleaming and gorgeous a red
+that they seemed cut out of some strange blood-red celestial metal, of
+which the mere gold of this earth is but a drab yellow imitation.
+
+"The hand of Heaven is still pointing," muttered the man of superstition
+to himself. "And now it is a blood-red hand."
+
+The cool voice of his companion cut in upon his monologue, calling to
+him from a little farther along the cliff, to tell him that he had found
+the ladder of descent. It began as a steep and somewhat greasy path,
+which then tumbled down twenty or thirty feet in the form of a fall of
+rough stone steps. After that, there was a rather awkward drop on to
+a ledge of stone and then the journey was undertaken easily and even
+elegantly by the remains of an ornamental staircase, such as might have
+belonged to some long-disused watering-place. All the time that the
+two travellers sank from stage to stage of this downward journey, there
+closed over their heads living bridges and caverns of the most varied
+foliage, all of which grew greener, redder, or more golden, in the
+growing sunlight of the morning. Life, too, of the more moving sort rose
+at the sun on every side of them. Birds whirred and fluttered in the
+undergrowth, as if imprisoned in green cages. Other birds were shaken
+up in great clouds from the tree-tops, as if they were blossoms detached
+and scattered up to heaven. Animals which Turnbull was too much of a
+Londoner and MacIan too much of a Northerner to know, slipped by among
+the tangle or ran pattering up the tree-trunks. Both the men, according
+to their several creeds, felt the full thunder of the psalm of life as
+they had never heard it before; MacIan felt God the Father, benignant
+in all His energies, and Turnbull that ultimate anonymous energy, that
+_Natura Naturans_, which is the whole theme of Lucretius. It was down
+this clamorous ladder of life that they went down to die.
+
+They broke out upon a brown semicircle of sand, so free from human
+imprint as to justify Turnbull's profession. They strode out upon
+it, stuck their swords in the sand, and had a pause too important
+for speech. Turnbull eyed the coast curiously for a moment, like one
+awakening memories of childhood; then he said abruptly, like a man
+remembering somebody's name: "But, of course, we shall be better off
+still round the corner of Cragness Point; nobody ever comes there at
+all." And picking up his sword again, he began striding towards a big
+bluff of the rocks which stood out upon their left. MacIan followed him
+round the corner and found himself in what was certainly an even finer
+fencing court, of flat, firm sand, enclosed on three sides by white
+walls of rock, and on the fourth by the green wall of the advancing sea.
+
+"We are quite safe here," said Turnbull, and, to the other's surprise,
+flung himself down, sitting on the brown beach.
+
+"You see, I was brought up near here," he explained. "I was sent from
+Scotland to stop with my aunt. It is highly probable that I may die
+here. Do you mind if I light a pipe?"
+
+"Of course, do whatever you like," said MacIan, with a choking voice,
+and he went and walked alone by himself along the wet, glistening sands.
+
+Ten minutes afterwards he came back again, white with his own whirlwind
+of emotions; Turnbull was quite cheerful and was knocking out the end of
+his pipe.
+
+"You see, we have to do it," said MacIan. "She tied us to it."
+
+"Of course, my dear fellow," said the other, and leapt up as lightly as
+a monkey.
+
+They took their places gravely in the very centre of the great square of
+sand, as if they had thousands of spectators. Before saluting, MacIan,
+who, being a mystic, was one inch nearer to Nature, cast his eye round
+the huge framework of their heroic folly. The three walls of rock all
+leant a little outward, though at various angles; but this impression
+was exaggerated in the direction of the incredible by the heavy load of
+living trees and thickets which each wall wore on its top like a
+huge shock of hair. On all that luxurious crest of life the risen and
+victorious sun was beating, burnishing it all like gold, and every bird
+that rose with that sunrise caught a light like a star upon it like the
+dove of the Holy Spirit. Imaginative life had never so much crowded upon
+MacIan. He felt that he could write whole books about the feelings of a
+single bird. He felt that for two centuries he would not tire of being
+a rabbit. He was in the Palace of Life, of which the very tapestries
+and curtains were alive. Then he recovered himself, and remembered his
+affairs. Both men saluted, and iron rang upon iron. It was exactly
+at the same moment that he realized that his enemy's left ankle was
+encircled with a ring of salt water that had crept up to his feet.
+
+"What is the matter?" said Turnbull, stopping an instant, for he had
+grown used to every movement of his extraordinary fellow-traveller's
+face.
+
+MacIan glanced again at that silver anklet of sea-water and then looked
+beyond at the next promontory round which a deep sea was boiling and
+leaping. Then he turned and looked back and saw heavy foam being shaken
+up to heaven about the base of Cragness Point.
+
+"The sea has cut us off," he said, curtly.
+
+"I have noticed it," said Turnbull with equal sobriety. "What view do
+you take of the development?"
+
+Evan threw away his weapon, and, as his custom was, imprisoned his big
+head in his hands. Then he let them fall and said: "Yes, I know what it
+means; and I think it is the fairest thing. It is the finger of God--red
+as blood--still pointing. But now it points to two graves."
+
+There was a space filled with the sound of the sea, and then MacIan
+spoke again in a voice pathetically reasonable: "You see, we both saved
+her--and she told us both to fight--and it would not be just that either
+should fail and fall alone, while the other----"
+
+"You mean," said Turnbull, in a voice surprisingly soft and gentle,
+"that there is something fine about fighting in a place where even the
+conqueror must die?"
+
+"Oh, you have got it right, you have got it right!" cried out Evan, in
+an extraordinary childish ecstasy. "Oh, I'm sure that you really believe
+in God!"
+
+Turnbull answered not a word, but only took up his fallen sword.
+
+For the third time Evan MacIan looked at those three sides of English
+cliff hung with their noisy load of life. He had been at a loss to
+understand the almost ironical magnificence of all those teeming
+creatures and tropical colours and smells that smoked happily to heaven.
+But now he knew that he was in the closed court of death and that all
+the gates were sealed.
+
+He drank in the last green and the last red and the last gold, those
+unique and indescribable things of God, as a man drains good wine at the
+bottom of his glass. Then he turned and saluted his enemy once more, and
+the two stood up and fought till the foam flowed over their knees.
+
+Then MacIan stepped backward suddenly with a splash and held up his
+hand. "Turnbull!" he cried; "I can't help it--fair fighting is more even
+than promises. And this is not fair fighting."
+
+"What the deuce do you mean?" asked the other, staring.
+
+"I've only just thought of it," cried Evan, brokenly. "We're very well
+matched--it may go on a good time--the tide is coming up fast--and I'm
+a foot and a half taller. You'll be washed away like seaweed before it's
+above my breeches. I'll not fight foul for all the girls and angels in
+the universe."
+
+"Will you oblige me," said Turnbull, with staring grey eyes and a voice
+of distinct and violent politeness; "will you oblige me by jolly well
+minding your own business? Just you stand up and fight, and we'll see
+who will be washed away like seaweed. You wanted to finish this fight
+and you shall finish it, or I'll denounce you as a coward to the whole
+of that assembled company."
+
+Evan looked very doubtful and offered a somewhat wavering weapon; but
+he was quickly brought back to his senses by his opponent's sword-point,
+which shot past him, shaving his shoulder by a hair. By this time the
+waves were well up Turnbull's thigh, and what was worse, they were
+beginning to roll and break heavily around them.
+
+MacIan parried this first lunge perfectly, the next less perfectly; the
+third in all human probability he would not have parried at all; the
+Christian champion would have been pinned like a butterfly, and the
+atheistic champion left to drown like a rat, with such consolation as
+his view of the cosmos afforded him. But just as Turnbull launched his
+heaviest stroke, the sea, in which he stood up to his hips, launched
+a yet heavier one. A wave breaking beyond the others smote him heavily
+like a hammer of water. One leg gave way, he was swung round and sucked
+into the retreating sea, still gripping his sword.
+
+MacIan put his sword between his teeth and plunged after his
+disappearing enemy. He had the sense of having the whole universe on top
+of him as crest after crest struck him down. It seemed to him quite a
+cosmic collapse, as if all the seven heavens were falling on him one
+after the other. But he got hold of the atheist's left leg and he did
+not let it go.
+
+After some ten minutes of foam and frenzy, in which all the senses at
+once seemed blasted by the sea, Evan found himself laboriously swimming
+on a low, green swell, with the sword still in his teeth and the editor
+of _The Atheist_ still under his arm. What he was going to do he had
+not even the most glimmering idea; so he merely kept his grip and swam
+somehow with one hand.
+
+He ducked instinctively as there bulked above him a big, black wave,
+much higher than any that he had seen. Then he saw that it was hardly
+the shape of any possible wave. Then he saw that it was a fisherman's
+boat, and, leaping upward, caught hold of the bow. The boat pitched
+forward with its stern in the air for just as much time as was needed
+to see that there was nobody in it. After a moment or two of desperate
+clambering, however, there were two people in it, Mr. Evan MacIan,
+panting and sweating, and Mr. James Turnbull, uncommonly close to being
+drowned. After ten minutes' aimless tossing in the empty fishing-boat he
+recovered, however, stirred, stretched himself, and looked round on
+the rolling waters. Then, while taking no notice of the streams of salt
+water that were pouring from his hair, beard, coat, boots, and trousers,
+he carefully wiped the wet off his sword-blade to preserve it from the
+possibilities of rust.
+
+MacIan found two oars in the bottom of the deserted boat and began
+somewhat drearily to row.
+
+           *                    *                   *
+
+A rainy twilight was clearing to cold silver over the moaning sea,
+when the battered boat that had rolled and drifted almost aimlessly all
+night, came within sight of land, though of land which looked almost
+as lost and savage as the waves. All night there had been but little
+lifting in the leaden sea, only now and then the boat had been heaved
+up, as on a huge shoulder which slipped from under it; such occasional
+sea-quakes came probably from the swell of some steamer that had passed
+it in the dark; otherwise the waves were harmless though restless. But
+it was piercingly cold, and there was, from time to time, a splutter of
+rain like the splutter of the spray, which seemed almost to freeze as
+it fell. MacIan, more at home than his companion in this quite barbarous
+and elemental sort of adventure, had rowed toilsomely with the heavy
+oars whenever he saw anything that looked like land; but for the most
+part had trusted with grim transcendentalism to wind and tide. Among the
+implements of their first outfit the brandy alone had remained to him,
+and he gave it to his freezing companion in quantities which greatly
+alarmed that temperate Londoner; but MacIan came from the cold seas and
+mists where a man can drink a tumbler of raw whisky in a boat without it
+making him wink.
+
+When the Highlander began to pull really hard upon the oars, Turnbull
+craned his dripping red head out of the boat to see the goal of his
+exertions. It was a sufficiently uninviting one; nothing so far as could
+be seen but a steep and shelving bank of shingle, made of loose little
+pebbles such as children like, but slanting up higher than a house. On
+the top of the mound, against the sky line, stood up the brown skeleton
+of some broken fence or breakwater. With the grey and watery dawn
+crawling up behind it, the fence really seemed to say to our philosophic
+adventurers that they had come at last to the other end of nowhere.
+
+Bent by necessity to his labour, MacIan managed the heavy boat with real
+power and skill, and when at length he ran it up on a smoother part of
+the slope it caught and held so that they could clamber out, not sinking
+farther than their knees into the water and the shingle. A foot or
+two farther up their feet found the beach firmer, and a few moments
+afterwards they were leaning on the ragged breakwater and looking back
+at the sea they had escaped.
+
+They had a dreary walk across wastes of grey shingle in the grey dawn
+before they began to come within hail of human fields or roads; nor had
+they any notion of what fields or roads they would be. Their boots were
+beginning to break up and the confusion of stones tried them severely,
+so that they were glad to lean on their swords, as if they were the
+staves of pilgrims. MacIan thought vaguely of a weird ballad of his own
+country which describes the soul in Purgatory as walking on a plain full
+of sharp stones, and only saved by its own charities upon earth.
+
+        If ever thou gavest hosen and shoon
+            Every night and all,
+        Sit thee down and put them on,
+            And Christ receive thy soul.
+
+Turnbull had no such lyrical meditations, but he was in an even worse
+temper.
+
+At length they came to a pale ribbon of road, edged by a shelf of rough
+and almost colourless turf; and a few feet up the slope there stood
+grey and weather-stained, one of those big wayside crucifixes which are
+seldom seen except in Catholic countries.
+
+MacIan put his hand to his head and found that his bonnet was not there.
+Turnbull gave one glance at the crucifix--a glance at once sympathetic
+and bitter, in which was concentrated the whole of Swinburne's poem on
+the same occasion.
+
+        O hidden face of man, whereover
+            The years have woven a viewless veil,
+        If thou wert verily man's lover
+            What did thy love or blood avail?
+        Thy blood the priests mix poison of,
+        And in gold shekels coin thy love.
+
+Then, leaving MacIan in his attitude of prayer, Turnbull began to look
+right and left very sharply, like one looking for something. Suddenly,
+with a little cry, he saw it and ran forward. A few yards from them
+along the road a lean and starved sort of hedge came pitifully to an
+end. Caught upon its prickly angle, however, there was a very small and
+very dirty scrap of paper that might have hung there for months, since
+it escaped from someone tearing up a letter or making a spill out of
+a newspaper. Turnbull snatched at it and found it was the corner of a
+printed page, very coarsely printed, like a cheap novelette, and just
+large enough to contain the words: "_et c'est elle qui_----"
+
+"Hurrah!" cried Turnbull, waving his fragment; "we are safe at last.
+We are free at last. We are somewhere better than England or Eden or
+Paradise. MacIan, we are in the Land of the Duel!"
+
+"Where do you say?" said the other, looking at him heavily and with
+knitted brows, like one almost dazed with the grey doubts of desolate
+twilight and drifting sea.
+
+"We are in France!" cried Turnbull, with a voice like a trumpet, "in the
+land where things really happen--_Tout arrive en France_. We arrive
+in France. Look at this little message," and he held out the scrap of
+paper. "There's an omen for you superstitious hill folk. _C'est elle
+qui--Mais oui, mais oui, c'est elle qui sauvera encore le monde_."
+
+"France!" repeated MacIan, and his eyes awoke again in his head like
+large lamps lighted.
+
+"Yes, France!" said Turnbull, and all the rhetorical part of him came to
+the top, his face growing as red as his hair. "France, that has always
+been in rebellion for liberty and reason. France, that has always
+assailed superstition with the club of Rabelais or the rapier of
+Voltaire. France, at whose first council table sits the sublime figure
+of Julian the Apostate. France, where a man said only the other day
+those splendid unanswerable words"--with a superb gesture--"'we have
+extinguished in heaven those lights that men shall never light again.'"
+
+"No," said MacIan, in a voice that shook with a controlled passion. "But
+France, which was taught by St. Bernard and led to war by Joan of
+Arc. France that made the crusades. France that saved the Church and
+scattered the heresies by the mouths of Bossuet and Massillon. France,
+which shows today the conquering march of Catholicism, as brain after
+brain surrenders to it, Brunetiere, Coppee, Hauptmann, Barres, Bourget,
+Lemaitre."
+
+"France!" asserted Turnbull with a sort of rollicking self-exaggeration,
+very unusual with him, "France, which is one torrent of splendid
+scepticism from Abelard to Anatole France."
+
+"France," said MacIan, "which is one cataract of clear faith from St.
+Louis to Our Lady of Lourdes."
+
+"France at least," cried Turnbull, throwing up his sword in schoolboy
+triumph, "in which these things are thought about and fought about.
+France, where reason and religion clash in one continual tournament.
+France, above all, where men understand the pride and passion which have
+plucked our blades from their scabbards. Here, at least, we shall not be
+chased and spied on by sickly parsons and greasy policemen, because we
+wish to put our lives on the game. Courage, my friend, we have come to
+the country of honour."
+
+MacIan did not even notice the incongruous phrase "my friend", but
+nodding again and again, drew his sword and flung the scabbard far
+behind him in the road.
+
+"Yes," he cried, in a voice of thunder, "we will fight here and _He_
+shall look on at it."
+
+Turnbull glanced at the crucifix with a sort of scowling good-humour and
+then said: "He may look and see His cross defeated."
+
+"The cross cannot be defeated," said MacIan, "for it is Defeat."
+
+A second afterwards the two bright, blood-thirsty weapons made the sign
+of the cross in horrible parody upon each other.
+
+They had not touched each other twice, however, when upon the hill,
+above the crucifix, there appeared another horrible parody of its shape;
+the figure of a man who appeared for an instant waving his outspread
+arms. He had vanished in an instant; but MacIan, whose fighting face was
+set that way, had seen the shape momentarily but quite photographically.
+And while it was like a comic repetition of the cross, it was also,
+in that place and hour, something more incredible. It had been only
+instantaneously on the retina of his eye; but unless his eye and mind
+were going mad together, the figure was that of an ordinary London
+policeman.
+
+He tried to concentrate his senses on the sword-play; but one half of
+his brain was wrestling with the puzzle; the apocalyptic and almost
+seraphic apparition of a stout constable out of Clapham on top of a
+dreary and deserted hill in France. He did not, however, have to puzzle
+long. Before the duellists had exchanged half a dozen passes, the big,
+blue policeman appeared once more on the top of the hill, a palpable
+monstrosity in the eye of heaven. He was waving only one arm now and
+seemed to be shouting directions. At the same moment a mass of blue
+blocked the corner of the road behind the small, smart figure of
+Turnbull, and a small company of policemen in the English uniform came
+up at a kind of half-military double.
+
+Turnbull saw the stare of consternation in his enemy's face and swung
+round to share its cause. When he saw it, cool as he was, he staggered
+back.
+
+"What the devil are you doing here?" he called out in a high, shrill
+voice of authority, like one who finds a tramp in his own larder.
+
+"Well, sir," said the sergeant in command, with that sort of heavy
+civility shown only to the evidently guilty, "seems to me we might ask
+what are you doing here?"
+
+"We are having an affair of honour," said Turnbull, as if it were
+the most rational thing in the world. "If the French police like to
+interfere, let them interfere. But why the blue blazes should you
+interfere, you great blue blundering sausages?"
+
+"I'm afraid, sir," said the sergeant with restraint, "I'm afraid I don't
+quite follow you."
+
+"I mean, why don't the French police take this up if it's got to be
+taken up? I always heard that they were spry enough in their own way."
+
+"Well, sir," said the sergeant reflectively, "you see, sir, the French
+police don't take this up--well, because you see, sir, this ain't
+France. This is His Majesty's dominions, same as 'Ampstead 'eath."
+
+"Not France?" repeated Turnbull, with a sort of dull incredulity.
+
+"No, sir," said the sergeant; "though most of the people talk French.
+This is the island called St. Loup, sir, an island in the Channel.
+We've been sent down specially from London, as you were such specially
+distinguished criminals, if you'll allow me to say so. Which reminds
+me to warn you that anything you say may be used against you at your
+trial."
+
+"Quite so," said Turnbull, and lurched suddenly against the sergeant,
+so as to tip him over the edge of the road with a crash into the shingle
+below. Then leaving MacIan and the policemen equally and instantaneously
+nailed to the road, he ran a little way along it, leapt off on to a part
+of the beach, which he had found in his journey to be firmer, and
+went across it with a clatter of pebbles. His sudden calculation was
+successful; the police, unacquainted with the various levels of
+the loose beach, tried to overtake him by the shorter cut and found
+themselves, being heavy men, almost up to their knees in shoals of
+slippery shingle. Two who had been slower with their bodies were quicker
+with their minds, and seeing Turnbull's trick, ran along the edge of the
+road after him. Then MacIan finally awoke, and leaving half his
+sleeve in the grip of the only man who tried to hold him, took the two
+policemen in the small of their backs with the impetus of a cannon-ball
+and, sending them also flat among the stones, went tearing after his
+twin defier of the law.
+
+As they were both good runners, the start they had gained was decisive.
+They dropped over a high breakwater farther on upon the beach, turned
+sharply, and scrambled up a line of ribbed rocks, crowned with a
+thicket, crawled through it, scratching their hands and faces, and
+dropped into another road; and there found that they could slacken their
+speed into a steady trot. In all this desperate dart and scramble,
+they still kept hold of their drawn swords, which now, indeed, in the
+vigorous phrase of Bunyan, seemed almost to grow out of their hands.
+
+They had run another half mile or so when it became apparent that
+they were entering a sort of scattered village. One or two whitewashed
+cottages and even a shop had appeared along the side of the road. Then,
+for the first time, Turnbull twisted round his red bear to get a glimpse
+of his companion, who was a foot or two behind, and remarked abruptly:
+"Mr. MacIan, we've been going the wrong way to work all along. We're
+traced everywhere, because everybody knows about us. It's as if one went
+about with Kruger's beard on Mafeking Night."
+
+"What do you mean?" said MacIan, innocently.
+
+"I mean," said Turnbull, with steady conviction, "that what we want is a
+little diplomacy, and I am going to buy some in a shop."
+
+
+
+
+XI. A SCANDAL IN THE VILLAGE
+
+In the little hamlet of Haroc, in the Isle of St. Loup, there lived a
+man who--though living under the English flag--was absolutely untypical
+of the French tradition. He was quite unnoticeable, but that was exactly
+where he was quite himself. He was not even extraordinarily French; but
+then it is against the French tradition to be extraordinarily French.
+Ordinary Englishmen would only have thought him a little old-fashioned;
+imperialistic Englishmen would really have mistaken him for the old John
+Bull of the caricatures. He was stout; he was quite undistinguished; and
+he had side-whiskers, worn just a little longer than John Bull's. He
+was by name Pierre Durand; he was by trade a wine merchant; he was by
+politics a conservative republican; he had been brought up a Catholic,
+had always thought and acted as an agnostic, and was very mildly
+returning to the Church in his later years. He had a genius (if one can
+even use so wild a word in connexion with so tame a person) a genius for
+saying the conventional thing on every conceivable subject; or rather
+what we in England would call the conventional thing. For it was not
+convention with him, but solid and manly conviction. Convention implies
+cant or affectation, and he had not the faintest smell of either. He was
+simply an ordinary citizen with ordinary views; and if you had told him
+so he would have taken it as an ordinary compliment. If you had asked
+him about women, he would have said that one must preserve their
+domesticity and decorum; he would have used the stalest words, but he
+would have in reserve the strongest arguments. If you had asked him
+about government, he would have said that all citizens were free and
+equal, but he would have meant what he said. If you had asked him about
+education, he would have said that the young must be trained up in
+habits of industry and of respect for their parents. Still he would
+have set them the example of industry, and he would have been one of the
+parents whom they could respect. A state of mind so hopelessly central
+is depressing to the English instinct. But then in England a man
+announcing these platitudes is generally a fool and a frightened fool,
+announcing them out of mere social servility. But Durand was anything
+but a fool; he had read all the eighteenth century, and could have
+defended his platitudes round every angle of eighteenth-century
+argument. And certainly he was anything but a coward: swollen and
+sedentary as he was, he could have hit any man back who touched him with
+the instant violence of an automatic machine; and dying in a uniform
+would have seemed to him only the sort of thing that sometimes
+happens. I am afraid it is impossible to explain this monster amid the
+exaggerative sects and the eccentric clubs of my country. He was merely
+a man.
+
+He lived in a little villa which was furnished well with comfortable
+chairs and tables and highly uncomfortable classical pictures and
+medallions. The art in his home contained nothing between the two
+extremes of hard, meagre designs of Greek heads and Roman togas, and on
+the other side a few very vulgar Catholic images in the crudest colours;
+these were mostly in his daughter's room. He had recently lost his wife,
+whom he had loved heartily and rather heavily in complete silence,
+and upon whose grave he was constantly in the habit of placing hideous
+little wreaths, made out of a sort of black-and-white beads. To his only
+daughter he was equally devoted, though he restricted her a good deal
+under a sort of theoretic alarm about her innocence; an alarm which was
+peculiarly unnecessary, first, because she was an exceptionally reticent
+and religious girl, and secondly, because there was hardly anybody else
+in the place.
+
+Madeleine Durand was physically a sleepy young woman, and might easily
+have been supposed to be morally a lazy one. It is, however, certain
+that the work of her house was done somehow, and it is even more rapidly
+ascertainable that nobody else did it. The logician is, therefore,
+driven back upon the assumption that she did it; and that lends a sort
+of mysterious interest to her personality at the beginning. She had very
+broad, low, and level brows, which seemed even lower because her warm
+yellow hair clustered down to her eyebrows; and she had a face just
+plump enough not to look as powerful as it was. Anything that was heavy
+in all this was abruptly lightened by two large, light china-blue eyes,
+lightened all of a sudden as if it had been lifted into the air by two
+big blue butterflies. The rest of her was less than middle-sized, and
+was of a casual and comfortable sort; and she had this difference from
+such girls as the girl in the motor-car, that one did not incline to
+take in her figure at all, but only her broad and leonine and innocent
+head.
+
+Both the father and the daughter were of the sort that would normally
+have avoided all observation; that is, all observation in that
+extraordinary modern world which calls out everything except strength.
+Both of them had strength below the surface; they were like quiet
+peasants owning enormous and unquarried mines. The father with his
+square face and grey side whiskers, the daughter with her square face
+and golden fringe of hair, were both stronger than they know; stronger
+than anyone knew. The father believed in civilization, in the storied
+tower we have erected to affront nature; that is, the father believed in
+Man. The daughter believed in God; and was even stronger. They neither
+of them believed in themselves; for that is a decadent weakness.
+
+The daughter was called a devotee. She left upon ordinary people the
+impression--the somewhat irritating impression--produced by such a
+person; it can only be described as the sense of strong water being
+perpetually poured into some abyss. She did her housework easily; she
+achieved her social relations sweetly; she was never neglectful and
+never unkind. This accounted for all that was soft in her, but not for
+all that was hard. She trod firmly as if going somewhere; she flung her
+face back as if defying something; she hardly spoke a cross word, yet
+there was often battle in her eyes. The modern man asked doubtfully
+where all this silent energy went to. He would have stared still more
+doubtfully if he had been told that it all went into her prayers.
+
+The conventions of the Isle of St. Loup were necessarily a compromise
+or confusion between those of France and England; and it was vaguely
+possible for a respectable young lady to have half-attached lovers, in a
+way that would be impossible to the _bourgeoisie_ of France. One man in
+particular had made himself an unmistakable figure in the track of this
+girl as she went to church. He was a short, prosperous-looking man,
+whose long, bushy black beard and clumsy black umbrella made him seem
+both shorter and older than he really was; but whose big, bold eyes, and
+step that spurned the ground, gave him an instant character of youth.
+
+His name was Camille Bert, and he was a commercial traveller who had
+only been in the island an idle week before he began to hover in the
+tracks of Madeleine Durand. Since everyone knows everyone in so small
+a place, Madeleine certainly knew him to speak to; but it is not very
+evident that she ever spoke. He haunted her, however; especially at
+church, which was, indeed, one of the few certain places for finding
+her. In her home she had a habit of being invisible, sometimes through
+insatiable domesticity, sometimes through an equally insatiable
+solitude. M. Bert did not give the impression of a pious man, though he
+did give, especially with his eyes, the impression of an honest one. But
+he went to Mass with a simple exactitude that could not be mistaken for
+a pose, or even for a vulgar fascination. It was perhaps this religious
+regularity which eventually drew Madeleine into recognition of him. At
+least it is certain that she twice spoke to him with her square and open
+smile in the porch of the church; and there was human nature enough in
+the hamlet to turn even that into gossip.
+
+But the real interest arose suddenly as a squall arises with the
+extraordinary affair that occurred about five days after. There was
+about a third of a mile beyond the village of Haroc a large but lonely
+hotel upon the London or Paris model, but commonly almost entirely
+empty. Among the accidental group of guests who had come to it at this
+season was a man whose nationality no one could fix and who bore the
+non-committal name of Count Gregory. He treated everybody with complete
+civility and almost in complete silence. On the few occasions when he
+spoke, he spoke either French, English, or once (to the priest) Latin;
+and the general opinion was that he spoke them all wrong. He was a
+large, lean man, with the stoop of an aged eagle, and even the eagle's
+nose to complete it; he had old-fashioned military whiskers and
+moustache dyed with a garish and highly incredible yellow. He had the
+dress of a showy gentleman and the manners of a decayed gentleman; he
+seemed (as with a sort of simplicity) to be trying to be a dandy when he
+was too old even to know that he was old. Ye he was decidedly a handsome
+figure with his curled yellow hair and lean fastidious face; and he wore
+a peculiar frock-coat of bright turquoise blue, with an unknown order
+pinned to it, and he carried a huge and heavy cane. Despite his silence
+and his dandified dress and whiskers, the island might never have heard
+of him but for the extraordinary event of which I have spoken, which
+fell about in the following way:
+
+In such casual atmospheres only the enthusiastic go to Benediction; and
+as the warm blue twilight closed over the little candle-lit church and
+village, the line of worshippers who went home from the former to the
+latter thinned out until it broke. On one such evening at least no one
+was in church except the quiet, unconquerable Madeleine, four old women,
+one fisherman, and, of course, the irrepressible M. Camille Bert. The
+others seemed to melt away afterwards into the peacock colours of the
+dim green grass and the dark blue sky. Even Durand was invisible instead
+of being merely reverentially remote; and Madeleine set forth through
+the patch of black forest alone. She was not in the least afraid of
+loneliness, because she was not afraid of devils. I think they were
+afraid of her.
+
+In a clearing of the wood, however, which was lit up with a last patch
+of the perishing sunlight, there advanced upon her suddenly one who was
+more startling than a devil. The incomprehensible Count Gregory, with
+his yellow hair like flame and his face like the white ashes of the
+flame, was advancing bareheaded towards her, flinging out his arms and
+his long fingers with a frantic gesture.
+
+"We are alone here," he cried, "and you would be at my mercy, only that
+I am at yours."
+
+Then his frantic hands fell by his sides and he looked up under his
+brows with an expression that went well with his hard breathing.
+Madeleine Durand had come to a halt at first in childish wonder, and
+now, with more than masculine self-control, "I fancy I know your face,
+sir," she said, as if to gain time.
+
+"I know I shall not forget yours," said the other, and extended once
+more his ungainly arms in an unnatural gesture. Then of a sudden there
+came out of him a spout of wild and yet pompous phrases. "It is as well
+that you should know the worst and the best. I am a man who knows no
+limit; I am the most callous of criminals, the most unrepentant of
+sinners. There is no man in my dominions so vile as I. But my dominions
+stretch from the olives of Italy to the fir-woods of Denmark, and there
+is no nook of all of them in which I have not done a sin. But when I
+bear you away I shall be doing my first sacrilege, and also my first act
+of virtue." He seized her suddenly by the elbow; and she did not scream
+but only pulled and tugged. Yet though she had not screamed, someone
+astray in the woods seemed to have heard the struggle. A short but
+nimble figure came along the woodland path like a humming bullet and
+had caught Count Gregory a crack across the face before his own could
+be recognized. When it was recognized it was that of Camille, with the
+black elderly beard and the young ardent eyes.
+
+Up to the moment when Camille had hit the Count, Madeleine had
+entertained no doubt that the Count was merely a madman. Now she was
+startled with a new sanity; for the tall man in the yellow whiskers and
+yellow moustache first returned the blow of Bert, as if it were a sort
+of duty, and then stepped back with a slight bow and an easy smile.
+
+"This need go no further here, M. Bert," he said. "I need not remind you
+how far it should go elsewhere."
+
+"Certainly, you need remind me of nothing," answered Camille, stolidly.
+"I am glad that you are just not too much of a scoundrel for a gentleman
+to fight."
+
+"We are detaining the lady," said Count Gregory, with politeness; and,
+making a gesture suggesting that he would have taken off his hat if
+he had had one, he strode away up the avenue of trees and eventually
+disappeared. He was so complete an aristocrat that he could offer his
+back to them all the way up that avenue; and his back never once looked
+uncomfortable.
+
+"You must allow me to see you home," said Bert to the girl, in a gruff
+and almost stifled voice; "I think we have only a little way to go."
+
+"Only a little way," she said, and smiled once more that night, in
+spite of fatigue and fear and the world and the flesh and the devil. The
+glowing and transparent blue of twilight had long been covered by the
+opaque and slatelike blue of night, when he handed her into the lamp-lit
+interior of her home. He went out himself into the darkness, walking
+sturdily, but tearing at his black beard.
+
+All the French or semi-French gentry of the district considered this a
+case in which a duel was natural and inevitable, and neither party had
+any difficulty in finding seconds, strangers as they were in the place.
+Two small landowners, who were careful, practising Catholics, willingly
+undertook to represent that strict church-goer Camille Burt; while the
+profligate but apparently powerful Count Gregory found friends in
+an energetic local doctor who was ready for social promotion and
+an accidental Californian tourist who was ready for anything. As no
+particular purpose could be served by delay, it was arranged that the
+affair should fall out three days afterwards. And when this was settled
+the whole community, as it were, turned over again in bed and thought
+no more about the matter. At least there was only one member of it who
+seemed to be restless, and that was she who was commonly most restful.
+On the next night Madeleine Durand went to church as usual; and as usual
+the stricken Camille was there also. What was not so usual was that when
+they were a bow-shot from the church Madeleine turned round and walked
+back to him. "Sir," she began, "it is not wrong of me to speak to you,"
+and the very words gave him a jar of unexpected truth; for in all the
+novels he had ever read she would have begun: "It is wrong of me to
+speak to you." She went on with wide and serious eyes like an animal's:
+"It is not wrong of me to speak to you, because your soul, or anybody's
+soul, matters so much more than what the world says about anybody. I
+want to talk to you about what you are going to do."
+
+Bert saw in front of him the inevitable heroine of the novels trying to
+prevent bloodshed; and his pale firm face became implacable.
+
+"I would do anything but that for you," he said; "but no man can be
+called less than a man."
+
+She looked at him for a moment with a face openly puzzled, and then
+broke into an odd and beautiful half-smile.
+
+"Oh, I don't mean that," she said; "I don't talk about what I don't
+understand. No one has ever hit me; and if they had I should not feel
+as a man may. I am sure it is not the best thing to fight. It would be
+better to forgive--if one could really forgive. But when people dine
+with my father and say that fighting a duel is mere murder--of course
+I can see that is not just. It's all so different--having a reason--and
+letting the other man know--and using the same guns and things--and
+doing it in front of your friends. I'm awfully stupid, but I know that
+men like you aren't murderers. But it wasn't that that I meant."
+
+"What did you mean?" asked the other, looking broodingly at the earth.
+
+"Don't you know," she said, "there is only one more celebration? I
+thought that as you always go to church--I thought you would communicate
+this morning."
+
+Bert stepped backward with a sort of action she had never seen in him
+before. It seemed to alter his whole body.
+
+"You may be right or wrong to risk dying," said the girl, simply; "the
+poor women in our village risk it whenever they have a baby. You men are
+the other half of the world. I know nothing about when you ought to die.
+But surely if you are daring to try and find God beyond the grave and
+appeal to Him--you ought to let Him find you when He comes and stands
+there every morning in our little church."
+
+And placid as she was, she made a little gesture of argument, of which
+the pathos wrung the heart.
+
+M. Camille Bert was by no means placid. Before that incomplete gesture
+and frankly pleading face he retreated as if from the jaws of a dragon.
+His dark black hair and beard looked utterly unnatural against the
+startling pallor of his face. When at last he said something it was:
+"O God! I can't stand this!" He did not say it in French. Nor did he,
+strictly speaking, say it in English. The truth (interesting only to
+anthropologists) is that he said it in Scotch.
+
+"There will be another mass in a matter of eight hours," said Madeleine,
+with a sort of business eagerness and energy, "and you can do it then
+before the fighting. You must forgive me, but I was so frightened that
+you would not do it at all."
+
+Bert seemed to crush his teeth together until they broke, and managed to
+say between them: "And why should you suppose that I shouldn't do as you
+say--I mean not to do it at all?"
+
+"You always go to Mass," answered the girl, opening her wide blue eyes,
+"and the Mass is very long and tiresome unless one loves God."
+
+Then it was that Bert exploded with a brutality which might have come
+from Count Gregory, his criminal opponent. He advanced upon Madeleine
+with flaming eyes, and almost took her by the two shoulders. "I do not
+love God," he cried, speaking French with the broadest Scotch accent; "I
+do not want to find Him; I do not think He is there to be found. I must
+burst up the show; I must and will say everything. You are the happiest
+and honestest thing I ever saw in this godless universe. And I am the
+dirtiest and most dishonest."
+
+Madeleine looked at him doubtfully for an instant, and then said with a
+sudden simplicity and cheerfulness: "Oh, but if you are really sorry it
+is all right. If you are horribly sorry it is all the better. You have
+only to go and tell the priest so and he will give you God out of his
+own hands."
+
+"I hate your priest and I deny your God!" cried the man, "and I tell you
+God is a lie and a fable and a mask. And for the first time in my life I
+do not feel superior to God."
+
+"What can it all mean?" said Madeleine, in massive wonder.
+
+"Because I am a fable also and a mask," said the man. He had been
+plucking fiercely at his black beard and hair all the time; now he
+suddenly plucked them off and flung them like moulted feathers in the
+mire. This extraordinary spoliation left in the sunlight the same face,
+but a much younger head--a head with close chestnut curls and a short
+chestnut beard.
+
+"Now you know the truth," he answered, with hard eyes. "I am a cad who
+has played a crooked trick on a quiet village and a decent woman for a
+private reason of his own. I might have played it successfully on any
+other woman; I have hit the one woman on whom it cannot be played. It's
+just like my damned luck. The plain truth is," and here when he came to
+the plain truth he boggled and blundered as Evan had done in telling it
+to the girl in the motor-car.
+
+"The plain truth is," he said at last, "that I am James Turnbull the
+atheist. The police are after me; not for atheism but for being ready to
+fight for it."
+
+"I saw something about you in a newspaper," said the girl, with a
+simplicity which even surprise could never throw off its balance.
+
+"Evan MacIan said there was a God," went on the other, stubbornly, "and
+I say there isn't. And I have come to fight for the fact that there
+is no God; it is for that that I have seen this cursed island and your
+blessed face."
+
+"You want me really to believe," said Madeleine, with parted lips, "that
+you think----"
+
+"I want you to hate me!" cried Turnbull, in agony. "I want you to be
+sick when you think of my name. I am sure there is no God."
+
+"But there is," said Madeleine, quite quietly, and rather with the air
+of one telling children about an elephant. "Why, I touched His body only
+this morning."
+
+"You touched a bit of bread," said Turnbull, biting his knuckles. "Oh, I
+will say anything that can madden you!"
+
+"You think it is only a bit of bread," said the girl, and her lips
+tightened ever so little.
+
+"I know it is only a bit of bread," said Turnbull, with violence.
+
+She flung back her open face and smiled. "Then why did you refuse to eat
+it?" she said.
+
+James Turnbull made a little step backward, and for the first time in
+his life there seemed to break out and blaze in his head thoughts that
+were not his own.
+
+"Why, how silly of them," cried out Madeleine, with quite a schoolgirl
+gaiety, "why, how silly of them to call _you_ a blasphemer! Why,
+you have wrecked your whole business because you would not commit
+blasphemy."
+
+The man stood, a somewhat comic figure in his tragic bewilderment,
+with the honest red head of James Turnbull sticking out of the rich and
+fictitious garments of Camille Bert. But the startled pain of his face
+was strong enough to obliterate the oddity.
+
+"You come down here," continued the lady, with that female emphasis
+which is so pulverizing in conversation and so feeble at a public
+meeting, "you and your MacIan come down here and put on false beards
+or noses in order to fight. You pretend to be a Catholic commercial
+traveller from France. Poor Mr. MacIan has to pretend to be a dissolute
+nobleman from nowhere. Your scheme succeeds; you pick a quite convincing
+quarrel; you arrange a quite respectable duel; the duel you have planned
+so long will come off tomorrow with absolute certainty and safety. And
+then you throw off your wig and throw up your scheme and throw over
+your colleague, because I ask you to go into a building and eat a bit of
+bread. And _then_ you dare to tell me that you are sure there is nothing
+watching us. Then you say you know there is nothing on the very altar
+you run away from. You know----"
+
+"I only know," said Turnbull, "that I must run away from you. This has
+got beyond any talking." And he plunged along into the village, leaving
+his black wig and beard lying behind him on the road.
+
+As the market-place opened before him he saw Count Gregory, that
+distinguished foreigner, standing and smoking in elegant meditation
+at the corner of the local cafe. He immediately made his way rapidly
+towards him, considering that a consultation was urgent. But he had
+hardly crossed half of that stony quadrangle when a window burst open
+above him and a head was thrust out, shouting. The man was in his
+woollen undershirt, but Turnbull knew the energetic, apologetic head of
+the sergeant of police. He pointed furiously at Turnbull and shouted
+his name. A policeman ran excitedly from under an archway and tried to
+collar him. Two men selling vegetables dropped their baskets and joined
+in the chase. Turnbull dodged the constable, upset one of the men into
+his own basket, and bounding towards the distinguished foreign Count,
+called to him clamorously: "Come on, MacIan, the hunt is up again."
+
+The prompt reply of Count Gregory was to pull off his large yellow
+whiskers and scatter them on the breeze with an air of considerable
+relief. Then he joined the flight of Turnbull, and even as he did so,
+with one wrench of his powerful hands rent and split the strange, thick
+stick that he carried. Inside it was a naked old-fashioned rapier. The
+two got a good start up the road before the whole town was awakened
+behind them; and half-way up it a similar transformation was seen to
+take place in Mr. Turnbull's singular umbrella.
+
+The two had a long race for the harbour; but the English police were
+heavy and the French inhabitants were indifferent. In any case, they got
+used to the notion of the road being clear; and just as they had come
+to the cliffs MacIan banged into another gentleman with unmistakable
+surprise. How he knew he was another gentleman merely by banging into
+him, must remain a mystery. MacIan was a very poor and very sober
+Scotch gentleman. The other was a very drunk and very wealthy English
+gentleman. But there was something in the staggered and openly
+embarrassed apologies that made them understand each other as readily
+and as quickly and as much as two men talking French in the middle of
+China. The nearest expression of the type is that it either hits or
+apologizes; and in this case both apologized.
+
+"You seem to be in a hurry," said the unknown Englishman, falling back
+a step or two in order to laugh with an unnatural heartiness. "What's
+it all about, eh?" Then before MacIan could get past his sprawling and
+staggering figure he ran forward again and said with a sort of shouting
+and ear-shattering whisper: "I say, my name is Wilkinson. _You_
+know--Wilkinson's Entire was my grandfather. Can't drink beer myself.
+Liver." And he shook his head with extraordinary sagacity.
+
+"We really are in a hurry, as you say," said MacIan, summoning a
+sufficiently pleasant smile, "so if you will let us pass----"
+
+"I'll tell you what, you fellows," said the sprawling gentleman,
+confidentially, while Evan's agonized ears heard behind him the first
+paces of the pursuit, "if you really are, as you say, in a hurry, I know
+what it is to be in a hurry--Lord, what a hurry I was in when we all
+came out of Cartwright's rooms--if you really are in a hurry"--and he
+seemed to steady his voice into a sort of solemnity--"if you are in a
+hurry, there's nothing like a good yacht for a man in a hurry."
+
+"No doubt you're right," said MacIan, and dashed past him in despair.
+The head of the pursuing host was just showing over the top of the
+hill behind him. Turnbull had already ducked under the intoxicated
+gentleman's elbow and fled far in front.
+
+"No, but look here," said Mr. Wilkinson, enthusiastically running after
+MacIan and catching him by the sleeve of his coat. "If you want to hurry
+you should take a yacht, and if"--he said, with a burst of rationality,
+like one leaping to a further point in logic--"if you want a yacht--you
+can have mine."
+
+Evan pulled up abruptly and looked back at him. "We are really in the
+devil of a hurry," he said, "and if you really have a yacht, the truth
+is that we would give our ears for it."
+
+"You'll find it in harbour," said Wilkinson, struggling with his speech.
+"Left side of harbour--called _Gibson Girl_--can't think why, old
+fellow, I never lent it you before."
+
+With these words the benevolent Mr. Wilkinson fell flat on his face in
+the road, but continued to laugh softly, and turned towards his flying
+companion a face of peculiar peace and benignity. Evan's mind went
+through a crisis of instantaneous casuistry, in which it may be that he
+decided wrongly; but about how he decided his biographer can profess
+no doubt. Two minutes afterwards he had overtaken Turnbull and told the
+tale; ten minutes afterwards he and Turnbull had somehow tumbled into
+the yacht called the _Gibson Girl_ and had somehow pushed off from the
+Isle of St. Loup.
+
+
+
+
+XII. THE DESERT ISLAND
+
+Those who happen to hold the view (and Mr. Evan MacIan, now alive and
+comfortable, is among the number) that something supernatural, some
+eccentric kindness from god or fairy had guided our adventurers through
+all their absurd perils, might have found his strongest argument perhaps
+in their management or mismanagement of Mr. Wilkinson's yacht. Neither
+of them had the smallest qualification for managing such a vessel; but
+MacIan had a practical knowledge of the sea in much smaller and quite
+different boats, while Turnbull had an abstract knowledge of science and
+some of its applications to navigation, which was worse. The presence
+of the god or fairy can only be deduced from the fact that they never
+definitely ran into anything, either a boat, a rock, a quicksand, or a
+man-of-war. Apart from this negative description, their voyage would be
+difficult to describe. It took at least a fortnight, and MacIan, who
+was certainly the shrewder sailor of the two, realized that they were
+sailing west into the Atlantic and were probably by this time past the
+Scilly Isles. How much farther they stood out into the western sea it
+was impossible to conjecture. But they felt certain, at least, that they
+were far enough into that awful gulf between us and America to make
+it unlikely that they would soon see land again. It was therefore with
+legitimate excitement that one rainy morning after daybreak they
+saw that distinct shape of a solitary island standing up against the
+encircling strip of silver which ran round the skyline and separated
+the grey and green of the billows from the grey and mauve of the morning
+clouds.
+
+"What can it be?" cried MacIan, in a dry-throated excitement. "I didn't
+know there were any Atlantic islands so far beyond the Scillies--Good
+Lord, it can't be Madeira, yet?"
+
+"I thought you were fond of legends and lies and fables," said Turnbull,
+grimly. "Perhaps it's Atlantis."
+
+"Of course, it might be," answered the other, quite innocently and
+gravely; "but I never thought the story about Atlantis was very solidly
+established."
+
+"Whatever it is, we are running on to it," said Turnbull, equably, "and
+we shall be shipwrecked twice, at any rate."
+
+The naked-looking nose of land projecting from the unknown island was,
+indeed, growing larger and larger, like the trunk of some terrible and
+advancing elephant. There seemed to be nothing in particular, at least
+on this side of the island, except shoals of shellfish lying so thick as
+almost to make it look like one of those toy grottos that the children
+make. In one place, however, the coast offered a soft, smooth bay of
+sand, and even the rudimentary ingenuity of the two amateur mariners
+managed to run up the little ship with her prow well on shore and her
+bowsprit pointing upward, as in a sort of idiotic triumph.
+
+They tumbled on shore and began to unload the vessel, setting the
+stores out in rows upon the sand with something of the solemnity of
+boys playing at pirates. There were Mr. Wilkinson's cigar-boxes and Mr.
+Wilkinson's dozen of champagne and Mr. Wilkinson's tinned salmon and Mr.
+Wilkinson's tinned tongue and Mr. Wilkinson's tinned sardines, and every
+sort of preserved thing that could be seen at the Army and Navy stores.
+Then MacIan stopped with a jar of pickles in his hand and said abruptly:
+
+"I don't know why we're doing all this; I suppose we ought really to
+fall to and get it over."
+
+Then he added more thoughtfully: "Of course this island seems rather
+bare and the survivor----"
+
+"The question is," said Turnbull, with cheerful speculation, "whether
+the survivor will be in a proper frame of mind for potted prawns."
+
+MacIan looked down at the rows of tins and bottles, and the cloud of
+doubt still lowered upon his face.
+
+"You will permit me two liberties, my dear sir," said Turnbull at last:
+"The first is to break open this box and light one of Mr. Wilkinson's
+excellent cigars, which will, I am sure, assist my meditations; the
+second is to offer a penny for your thoughts; or rather to convulse the
+already complex finances of this island by betting a penny that I know
+them."
+
+"What on earth are you talking about?" asked MacIan, listlessly, in the
+manner of an inattentive child.
+
+"I know what you are really thinking, MacIan," repeated Turnbull,
+laughing. "I know what I am thinking, anyhow. And I rather fancy it's
+the same."
+
+"What are you thinking?" asked Evan.
+
+"I am thinking and you are thinking," said Turnbull, "that it is damned
+silly to waste all that champagne."
+
+Something like the spectre of a smile appeared on the unsmiling visage
+of the Gael; and he made at least no movement of dissent.
+
+"We could drink all the wine and smoke all the cigars easily in a week,"
+said Turnbull; "and that would be to die feasting like heroes."
+
+"Yes, and there is something else," said MacIan, with slight hesitation.
+"You see, we are on an almost unknown rock, lost in the Atlantic. The
+police will never catch us; but then neither may the public ever hear of
+us; and that was one of the things we wanted." Then, after a pause, he
+said, drawing in the sand with his sword-point: "She may never hear of
+it at all."
+
+"Well?" inquired the other, puffing at his cigar.
+
+"Well," said MacIan, "we might occupy a day or two in drawing up a
+thorough and complete statement of what we did and why we did it, and
+all about both our points of view. Then we could leave one copy on the
+island whatever happens to us and put another in an empty bottle and
+send it out to sea, as they do in the books."
+
+"A good idea," said Turnbull, "and now let us finish unpacking."
+
+As MacIan, a tall, almost ghostly figure, paced along the edge of sand
+that ran round the islet, the purple but cloudy poetry which was his
+native element was piled up at its thickest upon his soul. The unique
+island and the endless sea emphasized the thing solely as an epic. There
+were no ladies or policemen here to give him a hint either of its farce
+or its tragedy.
+
+"Perhaps when the morning stars were made," he said to himself, "God
+built this island up from the bottom of the world to be a tower and a
+theatre for the fight between yea and nay."
+
+Then he wandered up to the highest level of the rock, where there was a
+roof or plateau of level stone. Half an hour afterwards, Turnbull found
+him clearing away the loose sand from this table-land and making it
+smooth and even.
+
+"We will fight up here, Turnbull," said MacIan, "when the time comes.
+And till the time comes this place shall be sacred."
+
+"I thought of having lunch up here," said Turnbull, who had a bottle of
+champagne in his hand.
+
+"No, no--not up here," said MacIan, and came down from the height quite
+hastily. Before he descended, however, he fixed the two swords upright,
+one at each end of the platform, as if they were human sentinels to
+guard it under the stars.
+
+Then they came down and lunched plentifully in a nest of loose rocks. In
+the same place that night they supped more plentifully still. The smoke
+of Mr. Wilkinson's cigars went up ceaseless and strong smelling, like a
+pagan sacrifice; the golden glories of Mr. Wilkinson's champagne rose
+to their heads and poured out of them in fancies and philosophies. And
+occasionally they would look up at the starlight and the rock and see
+the space guarded by the two cross-hilted swords, which looked like two
+black crosses at either end of a grave.
+
+In this primitive and Homeric truce the week passed by; it consisted
+almost entirely of eating, drinking, smoking, talking, and occasionally
+singing. They wrote their records and cast loose their bottle. They
+never ascended to the ominous plateau; they had never stood there save
+for that single embarrassed minute when they had had no time to take
+stock of the seascape or the shape of the land. They did not even
+explore the island; for MacIan was partly concerned in prayer and
+Turnbull entirely concerned with tobacco; and both these forms of
+inspiration can be enjoyed by the secluded and even the sedentary. It
+was on a golden afternoon, the sun sinking over the sea, rayed like the
+very head of Apollo, when Turnbull tossed off the last half-pint from
+the emptied Wilkinsonian bottle, hurled the bottle into the sea with
+objectless energy, and went up to where his sword stood waiting for him
+on the hill. MacIan was already standing heavily by his with bent head
+and eyes reading the ground. He had not even troubled to throw a glance
+round the island or the horizon. But Turnbull being of a more active
+and birdlike type of mind did throw a glance round the scene. The
+consequence of which was that he nearly fell off the rock.
+
+On three sides of this shelly and sandy islet the sea stretched blue and
+infinite without a speck of land or sail; the same as Turnbull had first
+seen it, except that the tide being out it showed a few yards more of
+slanting sand under the roots of the rocks. But on the fourth side the
+island exhibited a more extraordinary feature. In fact, it exhibited
+the extraordinary feature of not being an island at all. A long, curving
+neck of sand, as smooth and wet as the neck of the sea serpent, ran
+out into the sea and joined their rock to a line of low, billowing, and
+glistening sand-hills, which the sinking sea had just bared to the sun.
+Whether they were firm sand or quicksand it was difficult to guess; but
+there was at least no doubt that they lay on the edge of some larger
+land; for colourless hills appeared faintly behind them and no sea could
+be seen beyond.
+
+"Sakes alive!" cried Turnbull, with rolling eyes; "this ain't an island
+in the Atlantic. We've butted the bally continent of America."
+
+MacIan turned his head, and his face, already pale, grew a shade paler.
+He was by this time walking in a world of omens and hieroglyphics, and
+he could not read anything but what was baffling or menacing in this
+brown gigantic arm of the earth stretched out into the sea to seize him.
+
+"MacIan," said Turnbull, in his temperate way, "whatever our eternal
+interrupted tete-a-tetes have taught us or not taught us, at least we
+need not fear the charge of fear. If it is essential to your emotions,
+I will cheerfully finish the fight here and now; but I must confess that
+if you kill me here I shall die with my curiosity highly excited and
+unsatisfied upon a minor point of geography."
+
+"I do not want to stop now," said the other, in his elephantine
+simplicity, "but we must stop for a moment, because it is a
+sign--perhaps it is a miracle. We must see what is at the end of the
+road of sand; it may be a bridge built across the gulf by God."
+
+"So long as you gratify my query," said Turnbull, laughing and letting
+back his blade into the sheath, "I do not care for what reason you
+choose to stop."
+
+They clambered down the rocky peninsula and trudged along the sandy
+isthmus with the plodding resolution of men who seemed almost to have
+made up their minds to be wanderers on the face of the earth. Despite
+Turnbull's air of scientific eagerness, he was really the less impatient
+of the two; and the Highlander went on well ahead of him with passionate
+strides. By the time they had walked for about half an hour in the
+ups and downs of those dreary sands, the distance between the two had
+lengthened and MacIan was only a tall figure silhouetted for an instant
+upon the crest of some sand-dune and then disappearing behind it. This
+rather increased the Robinson Crusoe feeling in Mr. Turnbull, and he
+looked about almost disconsolately for some sign of life. What sort of
+life he expected it to be if it appeared, he did not very clearly know.
+He has since confessed that he thinks that in his subconsciousness he
+expected an alligator.
+
+The first sign of life that he did see, however, was something more
+extraordinary than the largest alligator. It was nothing less than the
+notorious Mr. Evan MacIan coming bounding back across the sand-heaps
+breathless, without his cap and keeping the sword in his hand only by a
+habit now quite hardened.
+
+"Take care, Turnbull," he cried out from a good distance as he ran,
+"I've seen a native."
+
+"A native?" repeated his companion, whose scenery had of late been
+chiefly of shellfish, "what the deuce! Do you mean an oyster?"
+
+"No," said MacIan, stopping and breathing hard, "I mean a savage. A
+black man."
+
+"Why, where did you see him?" asked the staring editor.
+
+"Over there--behind that hill," said the gasping MacIan. "He put up his
+black head and grinned at me."
+
+Turnbull thrust his hands through his red hair like one who gives up the
+world as a bad riddle. "Lord love a duck," said he, "can it be Jamaica?"
+
+Then glancing at his companion with a small frown, as of one slightly
+suspicious, he said: "I say, don't think me rude--but you're a visionary
+kind of fellow--and then we drank a great deal. Do you mind waiting here
+while I go and see for myself?"
+
+"Shout if you get into trouble," said the Celt, with composure; "you
+will find it as I say."
+
+Turnbull ran off ahead with a rapidity now far greater than his rival's,
+and soon vanished over the disputed sand-hill. Then five minutes passed,
+and then seven minutes; and MacIan bit his lip and swung his sword, and
+the other did not reappear. Finally, with a Gaelic oath, Evan started
+forward to the rescue, and almost at the same moment the small figure of
+the missing man appeared on the ridge against the sky.
+
+Even at that distance, however, there was something odd about his
+attitude; so odd that MacIan continued to make his way in that
+direction. It looked as if he were wounded; or, still more, as if he
+were ill. He wavered as he came down the slope and seemed flinging
+himself into peculiar postures. But it was only when he came within
+three feet of MacIan's face, that that observer of mankind fully
+realized that Mr. James Turnbull was roaring with laughter.
+
+"You are quit right," sobbed that wholly demoralized journalist. "He's
+black, oh, there's no doubt the black's all right--as far as it goes."
+And he went off again into convulsions of his humorous ailment.
+
+"What ever is the matter with you?" asked MacIan, with stern impatience.
+"Did you see the nigger----"
+
+"I saw the nigger," gasped Turnbull. "I saw the splendid barbarian
+Chief. I saw the Emperor of Ethiopia--oh, I saw him all right. The
+nigger's hands and face are a lovely colour--and the nigger----" And he
+was overtaken once more.
+
+"Well, well, well," said Evan, stamping each monosyllable on the sand,
+"what about the nigger?"
+
+"Well, the truth is," said Turnbull, suddenly and startlingly, becoming
+quite grave and precise, "the truth is, the nigger is a Margate nigger,
+and we are now on the edge of the Isle of Thanet, a few miles from
+Margate."
+
+Then he had a momentary return of his hysteria and said: "I say,
+old boy, I should like to see a chart of our fortnight's cruise in
+Wilkinson's yacht."
+
+MacIan had no smile in answer, but his eager lips opened as if parched
+for the truth. "You mean to say," he began----
+
+"Yes, I mean to say," said Turnbull, "and I mean to say something
+funnier still. I have learnt everything I wanted to know from the
+partially black musician over there, who has taken a run in his
+war-paint to meet a friend in a quiet pub along the coast--the noble
+savage has told me all about it. The bottle containing our declaration,
+doctrines, and dying sentiments was washed up on Margate beach yesterday
+in the presence of one alderman, two bathing-machine men, three
+policemen, seven doctors, and a hundred and thirteen London clerks on a
+holiday, to all of whom, whether directly or indirectly, our composition
+gave enormous literary pleasure. Buck up, old man, this story of ours is
+a switchback. I have begun to understand the pulse and the time of it;
+now we are up in a cathedral and then we are down in a theatre, where
+they only play farces. Come, I am quite reconciled--let us enjoy the
+farce."
+
+But MacIan said nothing, and an instant afterwards Turnbull himself
+called out in an entirely changed voice: "Oh, this is damnable! This is
+not to be borne!"
+
+MacIan followed his eye along the sand-hills. He saw what looked like
+the momentary and waving figure of the nigger minstrel, and then he saw
+a heavy running policeman take the turn of the sand-hill with the smooth
+solemnity of a railway train.
+
+
+
+
+XIII. THE GARDEN OF PEACE
+
+Up to this instant Evan MacIan had really understood nothing; but when
+he saw the policeman he saw everything. He saw his enemies, all the
+powers and princes of the earth. He suddenly altered from a staring
+statue to a leaping man of the mountains.
+
+"We must break away from him here," he cried, briefly, and went like
+a whirlwind over the sand ridge in a straight line and at a particular
+angle. When the policeman had finished his admirable railway curve, he
+found a wall of failing sand between him and the pursued. By the time
+he had scaled it thrice, slid down twice, and crested it in the third
+effort, the two flying figures were far in front. They found the sand
+harder farther on; it began to be crusted with scraps of turf and in
+a few moments they were flying easily over an open common of rank
+sea-grass. They had no easy business, however; for the bottle which they
+had so innocently sent into the chief gate of Thanet had called to life
+the police of half a county on their trail. From every side across the
+grey-green common figures could be seen running and closing in; and it
+was only when MacIan with his big body broke down the tangled barrier of
+a little wood, as men break down a door with the shoulder; it was only
+when they vanished crashing into the underworld of the black wood, that
+their hunters were even instantaneously thrown off the scent.
+
+At the risk of struggling a little longer like flies in that black web
+of twigs and trunks, Evan (who had an instinct of the hunter or the
+hunted) took an incalculable course through the forest, which let them
+out at last by a forest opening--quite forgotten by the leaders of the
+chase. They ran a mile or two farther along the edge of the wood until
+they reached another and somewhat similar opening. Then MacIan stood
+utterly still and listened, as animals listen, for every sound in the
+universe. Then he said: "We are quit of them." And Turnbull said: "Where
+shall we go now?"
+
+MacIan looked at the silver sunset that was closing in, barred by plumy
+lines of purple cloud; he looked at the high tree-tops that caught the
+last light and at the birds going heavily homeward, just as if all these
+things were bits of written advice that he could read.
+
+Then he said: "The best place we can go to is to bed. If we can get some
+sleep in this wood, now everyone has cleared out of it, it will be worth
+a handicap of two hundred yards tomorrow."
+
+Turnbull, who was exceptionally lively and laughing in his demeanour,
+kicked his legs about like a schoolboy and said he did not want to go
+to sleep. He walked incessantly and talked very brilliantly. And when
+at last he lay down on the hard earth, sleep struck him senseless like a
+hammer.
+
+Indeed, he needed the strongest sleep he could get; for the earth
+was still full of darkness and a kind of morning fog when his
+fellow-fugitive shook him awake.
+
+"No more sleep, I'm afraid," said Evan, in a heavy, almost submissive,
+voice of apology. "They've gone on past us right enough for a good
+thirty miles; but now they've found out their mistake, and they're
+coming back."
+
+"Are you sure?" said Turnbull, sitting up and rubbing his red eyebrows
+with his hand.
+
+The next moment, however, he had jumped up alive and leaping like a
+man struck with a shock of cold water, and he was plunging after MacIan
+along the woodland path. The shape of their old friend the constable had
+appeared against the pearl and pink of the sunrise. Somehow, it always
+looked a very funny shape when seen against the sunrise.
+
+           *                    *                   *
+
+A wash of weary daylight was breaking over the country-side, and the
+fields and roads were full of white mist--the kind of white mist that
+clings in corners like cotton wool. The empty road, along which the
+chase had taken its turn, was overshadowed on one side by a very
+high discoloured wall, stained, and streaked green, as with
+seaweed--evidently the high-shouldered sentinel of some great
+gentleman's estate. A yard or two from the wall ran parallel to it a
+linked and tangled line of lime-trees, forming a kind of cloister along
+the side of the road. It was under this branching colonnade that the two
+fugitives fled, almost concealed from their pursuers by the twilight,
+the mist and the leaping zoetrope of shadows. Their feet, though beating
+the ground furiously, made but a faint noise; for they had kicked away
+their boots in the wood; their long, antiquated weapons made no jingle
+or clatter, for they had strapped them across their backs like guitars.
+They had all the advantages that invisibility and silence can add to
+speed.
+
+A hundred and fifty yards behind them down the centre of the empty
+road the first of their pursuers came pounding and panting--a fat but
+powerful policeman who had distanced all the rest. He came on at a
+splendid pace for so portly a figure; but, like all heavy bodies in
+motion, he gave the impression that it would be easier for him to
+increase his pace than to slacken it suddenly. Nothing short of a
+brick wall could have abruptly brought him up. Turnbull turned his head
+slightly and found breath to say something to MacIan. MacIan nodded.
+
+Pursuer and pursued were fixed in their distance as they fled, for some
+quarter of a mile, when they came to a place where two or three of the
+trees grew twistedly together, making a special obscurity. Past
+this place the pursuing policeman went thundering without thought or
+hesitation. But he was pursuing his shadow or the wind; for Turnbull had
+put one foot in a crack of the tree and gone up it as quickly and softly
+as a cat. Somewhat more laboriously but in equal silence the long legs
+of the Highlander had followed; and crouching in crucial silence in the
+cloud of leaves, they saw the whole posse of their pursuers go by and
+die into the dust and mists of the distance.
+
+The white vapour lay, as it often does, in lean and palpable layers;
+and even the head of the tree was above it in the half-daylight, like
+a green ship swinging on a sea of foam. But higher yet behind them, and
+readier to catch the first coming of the sun, ran the rampart of the
+top of the wall, which in their excitement of escape looked at once
+indispensable and unattainable, like the wall of heaven. Here,
+however, it was MacIan's turn to have the advantage; for, though less
+light-limbed and feline, he was longer and stronger in the arms. In two
+seconds he had tugged up his chin over the wall like a horizontal
+bar; the next he sat astride of it, like a horse of stone. With his
+assistance Turnbull vaulted to the same perch, and the two began
+cautiously to shift along the wall in the direction by which they had
+come, doubling on their tracks to throw off the last pursuit. MacIan
+could not rid himself of the fancy of bestriding a steed; the long, grey
+coping of the wall shot out in front of him, like the long, grey neck of
+some nightmare Rosinante. He had the quaint thought that he and Turnbull
+were two knights on one steed on the old shield of the Templars.
+
+The nightmare of the stone horse was increased by the white fog, which
+seemed thicker inside the wall than outside. They could make nothing of
+the enclosure upon which they were partial trespassers, except that the
+green and crooked branches of a big apple-tree came crawling at them out
+of the mist, like the tentacles of some green cuttlefish. Anything would
+serve, however, that was likely to confuse their trail, so they both
+decided without need of words to use this tree also as a ladder--a
+ladder of descent. When they dropped from the lowest branch to the
+ground their stockinged feet felt hard gravel beneath them.
+
+They had alighted in the middle of a very broad garden path, and the
+clearing mist permitted them to see the edge of a well-clipped lawn.
+Though the white vapour was still a veil, it was like the gauzy veil
+of a transformation scene in a pantomime; for through it there glowed
+shapeless masses of colour, masses which might be clouds of sunrise
+or mosaics of gold and crimson, or ladies robed in ruby and emerald
+draperies. As it thinned yet farther they saw that it was only flowers;
+but flowers in such insolent mass and magnificence as can seldom be seen
+out of the tropics. Purple and crimson rhododendrons rose arrogantly,
+like rampant heraldic animals against their burning background of
+laburnum gold. The roses were red hot; the clematis was, so to speak,
+blue hot. And yet the mere whiteness of the syringa seemed the most
+violent colour of all. As the golden sunlight gradually conquered the
+mists, it had really something of the sensational sweetness of the slow
+opening of the gates of Eden. MacIan, whose mind was always haunted
+with such seraphic or titanic parallels, made some such remark to his
+companion. But Turnbull only cursed and said that it was the back garden
+of some damnable rich man.
+
+When the last haze had faded from the ordered paths, the open lawns,
+and the flaming flower-beds, the two realized, not without an abrupt
+re-examination of their position, that they were not alone in the
+garden.
+
+Down the centre of the central garden path, preceded by a blue cloud
+from a cigarette, was walking a gentleman who evidently understood all
+the relish of a garden in the very early morning. He was a slim yet
+satisfied figure, clad in a suit of pale-grey tweed, so subdued that
+the pattern was imperceptible--a costume that was casual but not by
+any means careless. His face, which was reflective and somewhat
+over-refined, was the face of a quite elderly man, though his stringy
+hair and moustache were still quite yellow. A double eye-glass, with a
+broad, black ribbon, drooped from his aquiline nose, and he smiled, as
+he communed with himself, with a self-content which was rare and almost
+irritating. The straw panama on his head was many shades shabbier than
+his clothes, as if he had caught it up by accident.
+
+It needed the full shock of the huge shadow of MacIan, falling across
+his sunlit path, to rouse him from his smiling reverie. When this had
+fallen on him he lifted his head a little and blinked at the intruders
+with short-sighted benevolence, but with far less surprise than might
+have been expected. He was a gentleman; that is, he had social presence
+of mind, whether for kindness or for insolence.
+
+"Can I do anything for you?" he said, at last.
+
+MacIan bowed. "You can extend to us your pardon," he said, for he also
+came of a whole race of gentlemen--of gentlemen without shirts to their
+backs. "I am afraid we are trespassing. We have just come over the
+wall."
+
+"Over the wall?" repeated the smiling old gentleman, still without
+letting his surprise come uppermost.
+
+"I suppose I am not wrong, sir," continued MacIan, "in supposing that
+these grounds inside the wall belong to you?"
+
+The man in the panama looked at the ground and smoked thoughtfully for a
+few moments, after which he said, with a sort of matured conviction:
+
+"Yes, certainly; the grounds inside the wall really belong to me, and
+the grounds outside the wall, too."
+
+"A large proprietor, I imagine," said Turnbull, with a truculent eye.
+
+"Yes," answered the old gentleman, looking at him with a steady smile.
+"A large proprietor."
+
+Turnbull's eye grew even more offensive, and he began biting his red
+beard; but MacIan seemed to recognize a type with which he could deal
+and continued quite easily:
+
+"I am sure that a man like you will not need to be told that one sees
+and does a good many things that do not get into the newspapers. Things
+which, on the whole, had better not get into the newspapers."
+
+The smile of the large proprietor broadened for a moment under
+his loose, light moustache, and the other continued with increased
+confidence:
+
+"One sometimes wants to have it out with another man. The police won't
+allow it in the streets--and then there's the County Council--and in the
+fields even nothing's allowed but posters of pills. But in a gentleman's
+garden, now----"
+
+The strange gentleman smiled again and said, easily enough: "Do you want
+to fight? What do you want to fight about?"
+
+MacIan had understood his man pretty well up to that point; an instinct
+common to all men with the aristocratic tradition of Europe had guided
+him. He knew that the kind of man who in his own back garden wears good
+clothes and spoils them with a bad hat is not the kind of man who has
+an abstract horror of illegal actions of violence or the evasion of
+the police. But a man may understand ragging and yet be very far from
+understanding religious ragging. This seeming host of theirs might
+comprehend a quarrel of husband and lover or a difficulty at cards
+or even escape from a pursuing tailor; but it still remained doubtful
+whether he would feel the earth fail under him in that earthquake
+instant when the Virgin is compared to a goddess of Mesopotamia. Even
+MacIan, therefore (whose tact was far from being his strong point), felt
+the necessity for some compromise in the mode of approach. At last he
+said, and even then with hesitation:
+
+"We are fighting about God; there can be nothing so important as that."
+
+The tilted eye-glasses of the old gentleman fell abruptly from his nose,
+and he thrust his aristocratic chin so far forward that his lean neck
+seemed to shoot out longer like a telescope.
+
+"About God?" he queried, in a key completely new.
+
+"Look here!" cried Turnbull, taking his turn roughly, "I'll tell you
+what it's all about. I think that there's no God. I take it that it's
+nobody's business but mine--or God's, if there is one. This young
+gentleman from the Highlands happens to think that it's his business. In
+consequence, he first takes a walking-stick and smashes my shop; then he
+takes the same walking-stick and tries to smash me. To this I naturally
+object. I suggest that if it comes to that we should both have sticks.
+He improves on the suggestion and proposes that we should both have
+steel-pointed sticks. The police (with characteristic unreasonableness)
+will not accept either of our proposals; the result is that we run
+about dodging the police and have jumped over our garden wall into your
+magnificent garden to throw ourselves on your magnificent hospitality."
+
+The face of the old gentleman had grown redder and redder during this
+address, but it was still smiling; and when he broke out it was with a
+kind of guffaw.
+
+"So you really want to fight with drawn swords in my garden," he asked,
+"about whether there is really a God?"
+
+"Why not?" said MacIan, with his simple monstrosity of speech; "all
+man's worship began when the Garden of Eden was founded."
+
+"Yes, by----!" said Turnbull, with an oath, "and ended when the
+Zoological Gardens were founded."
+
+"In this garden! In my presence!" cried the stranger, stamping up and
+down the gravel and choking with laughter, "whether there is a God!"
+And he went stamping up and down the garden, making it echo with his
+unintelligible laughter. Then he came back to them more composed and
+wiping his eyes.
+
+"Why, how small the world is!" he cried at last. "I can settle the whole
+matter. Why, I am God!"
+
+And he suddenly began to kick and wave his well-clad legs about the
+lawn.
+
+"You are what?" repeated Turnbull, in a tone which is beyond
+description.
+
+"Why, God, of course!" answered the other, thoroughly amused. "How
+funny it is to think that you have tumbled over a garden wall and fallen
+exactly on the right person! You might have gone floundering about in
+all sorts of churches and chapels and colleges and schools of philosophy
+looking for some evidence of the existence of God. Why, there is no
+evidence, except seeing him. And now you've seen him. You've seen him
+dance!"
+
+And the obliging old gentleman instantly stood on one leg without
+relaxing at all the grave and cultured benignity of his expression.
+
+"I understood that this garden----" began the bewildered MacIan.
+
+"Quite so! Quite so!" said the man on one leg, nodding gravely. "I said
+this garden belonged to me and the land outside it. So they do. So does
+the country beyond that and the sea beyond that and all the rest of the
+earth. So does the moon. So do the sun and stars." And he added, with a
+smile of apology: "You see, I'm God."
+
+Turnbull and MacIan looked at him for one moment with a sort of notion
+that perhaps he was not too old to be merely playing the fool. But
+after staring steadily for an instant Turnbull saw the hard and horrible
+earnestness in the man's eyes behind all his empty animation. Then
+Turnbull looked very gravely at the strict gravel walls and the gay
+flower-beds and the long rectangular red-brick building, which the mist
+had left evident beyond them. Then he looked at MacIan.
+
+Almost at the same moment another man came walking quickly round the
+regal clump of rhododendrons. He had the look of a prosperous banker,
+wore a good tall silk hat, was almost stout enough to burst the buttons
+of a fine frock-coat; but he was talking to himself, and one of his
+elbows had a singular outward jerk as he went by.
+
+
+
+
+XIV. A MUSEUM OF SOULS
+
+The man with the good hat and the jumping elbow went by very quickly;
+yet the man with the bad hat, who thought he was God, overtook him. He
+ran after him and jumped over a bed of geraniums to catch him.
+
+"I beg your Majesty's pardon," he said, with mock humility, "but here is
+a quarrel which you ought really to judge."
+
+Then as he led the heavy, silk-hatted man back towards the group, he
+caught MacIan's ear in order to whisper: "This poor gentleman is mad;
+he thinks he is Edward VII." At this the self-appointed Creator slightly
+winked. "Of course you won't trust him much; come to me for everything.
+But in my position one has to meet so many people. One has to be
+broadminded."
+
+The big banker in the black frock-coat and hat was standing quite grave
+and dignified on the lawn, save for his slight twitch of one limb,
+and he did not seem by any means unworthy of the part which the other
+promptly forced upon him.
+
+"My dear fellow," said the man in the straw hat, "these two gentlemen
+are going to fight a duel of the utmost importance. Your own royal
+position and my much humbler one surely indicate us as the proper
+seconds. Seconds--yes, seconds----" and here the speaker was once more
+shaken with his old malady of laughter.
+
+"Yes, you and I are both seconds--and these two gentlemen can obviously
+fight in front of us. You, he-he, are the king. I am God; really, they
+could hardly have better supporters. They have come to the right place."
+
+Then Turnbull, who had been staring with a frown at the fresh turf,
+burst out with a rather bitter laugh and cried, throwing his red head in
+the air:
+
+"Yes, by God, MacIan, I think we have come to the right place!" And
+MacIan answered, with an adamantine stupidity:
+
+"Any place is the right place where they will let us do it."
+
+There was a long stillness, and their eyes involuntarily took in the
+landscape, as they had taken in all the landscapes of their everlasting
+combat; the bright, square garden behind the shop; the whole lift
+and leaning of the side of Hampstead Heath; the little garden of the
+decadent choked with flowers; the square of sand beside the sea
+at sunrise. They both felt at the same moment all the breadth and
+blossoming beauty of that paradise, the coloured trees, the natural and
+restful nooks and also the great wall of stone--more awful than the wall
+of China--from which no flesh could flee.
+
+Turnbull was moodily balancing his sword in his hand as the other spoke;
+then he started, for a mouth whispered quite close to his ear. With a
+softness incredible in any cat, the huge, heavy man in the black hat and
+frock-coat had crept across the lawn from his own side and was saying
+in his ear: "Don't trust that second of yours. He's mad and not so mad,
+either; for he frightfully cunning and sharp. Don't believe the story he
+tells you about why I hate him. I know the story he'll tell; I overheard
+it when the housekeeper was talking to the postman. It's too long to
+talk about now, and I expect we're watched, but----"
+
+Something in Turnbull made him want suddenly to be sick on the grass;
+the mere healthy and heathen horror of the unclean; the mere inhumane
+hatred of the inhuman state of madness. He seemed to hear all round him
+the hateful whispers of that place, innumerable as leaves whispering
+in the wind, and each of them telling eagerly some evil that had not
+happened or some terrific secret which was not true. All the rationalist
+and plain man revolted within him against bowing down for a moment in
+that forest of deception and egotistical darkness. He wanted to blow up
+that palace of delusions with dynamite; and in some wild way, which I
+will not defend, he tried to do it.
+
+He looked across at MacIan and said: "Oh, I can't stand this!"
+
+"Can't stand what?" asked his opponent, eyeing him doubtfully.
+
+"Shall we say the atmosphere?" replied Turnbull; "one can't use uncivil
+expressions even to a--deity. The fact is, I don't like having God for
+my second."
+
+"Sir!" said that being in a state of great offence, "in my position I am
+not used to having my favours refused. Do you know who I am?"
+
+The editor of _The Atheist_ turned upon him like one who has lost
+all patience, and exploded: "Yes, you are God, aren't you?" he said,
+abruptly, "why do we have two sets of teeth?"
+
+"Teeth?" spluttered the genteel lunatic; "teeth?"
+
+"Yes," cried Turnbull, advancing on him swiftly and with animated
+gestures, "why does teething hurt? Why do growing pains hurt? Why are
+measles catching? Why does a rose have thorns? Why do rhinoceroses have
+horns? Why is the horn on the top of the nose? Why haven't I a horn on
+the top of my nose, eh?" And he struck the bridge of his nose smartly
+with his forefinger to indicate the place of the omission and then
+wagged the finger menacingly at the Creator.
+
+"I've often wanted to meet you," he resumed, sternly, after a pause, "to
+hold you accountable for all the idiocy and cruelty of this muddled and
+meaningless world of yours. You make a hundred seeds and only one bears
+fruit. You make a million worlds and only one seems inhabited. What do
+you mean by it, eh? What do you mean by it?"
+
+The unhappy lunatic had fallen back before this quite novel form of
+attack, and lifted his burnt-out cigarette almost like one warding off a
+blow. Turnbull went on like a torrent.
+
+"A man died yesterday in Ealing. You murdered him. A girl had the
+toothache in Croydon. You gave it her. Fifty sailors were drowned off
+Selsey Bill. You scuttled their ship. What have you got to say for
+yourself, eh?"
+
+The representative of omnipotence looked as if he had left most of these
+things to his subordinates; he passed a hand over his wrinkling brow and
+said in a voice much saner than any he had yet used:
+
+"Well, if you dislike my assistance, of course--perhaps the other
+gentleman----"
+
+"The other gentleman," cried Turnbull, scornfully, "is a submissive
+and loyal and obedient gentleman. He likes the people who wear crowns,
+whether of diamonds or of stars. He believes in the divine right of
+kings, and it is appropriate enough that he should have the king for his
+second. But it is not appropriate to me that I should have God for my
+second. God is not good enough. I dislike and I deny the divine right of
+kings. But I dislike more and I deny more the divine right of divinity."
+
+Then after a pause in which he swallowed his passion, he said to MacIan:
+"You have got the right second, anyhow."
+
+The Highlander did not answer, but stood as if thunderstruck with one
+long and heavy thought. Then at last he turned abruptly to his second in
+the silk hat and said: "Who are you?"
+
+The man in the silk hat blinked and bridled in affected surprise, like
+one who was in truth accustomed to be doubted.
+
+"I am King Edward VII," he said, with shaky arrogance. "Do you doubt my
+word?"
+
+"I do not doubt it in the least," answered MacIan.
+
+"Then, why," said the large man in the silk hat, trembling from head to
+foot, "why do you wear your hat before the king?"
+
+"Why should I take it off," retorted MacIan, with equal heat, "before a
+usurper?"
+
+Turnbull swung round on his heel. "Well, really," he said, "I thought at
+least you were a loyal subject."
+
+"I am the only loyal subject," answered the Gael. "For nearly thirty
+years I have walked these islands and have not found another."
+
+"You are always hard to follow," remarked Turnbull, genially, "and
+sometimes so much so as to be hardly worth following."
+
+"I alone am loyal," insisted MacIan; "for I alone am in rebellion. I am
+ready at any instant to restore the Stuarts. I am ready at any instant
+to defy the Hanoverian brood--and I defy it now even when face to face
+with the actual ruler of the enormous British Empire!"
+
+And folding his arms and throwing back his lean, hawklike face,
+he haughtily confronted the man with the formal frock-coat and the
+eccentric elbow.
+
+"What right had you stunted German squires," he cried, "to interfere in
+a quarrel between Scotch and English and Irish gentlemen? Who made you,
+whose fathers could not splutter English while they walked in Whitehall,
+who made you the judge between the republic of Sidney and the monarchy
+of Montrose? What had your sires to do with England that they should
+have the foul offering of the blood of Derwentwater and the heart of
+Jimmy Dawson? Where are the corpses of Culloden? Where is the blood
+of Lochiel?" MacIan advanced upon his opponent with a bony and pointed
+finger, as if indicating the exact pocket in which the blood of that
+Cameron was probably kept; and Edward VII fell back a few paces in
+considerable confusion.
+
+"What good have you ever done to us?" he continued in harsher and
+harsher accents, forcing the other back towards the flower-beds. "What
+good have you ever done, you race of German sausages? Yards of barbarian
+etiquette, to throttle the freedom of aristocracy! Gas of northern
+metaphysics to blow up Broad Church bishops like balloons. Bad pictures
+and bad manners and pantheism and the Albert Memorial. Go back to
+Hanover, you humbug? Go to----"
+
+Before the end of this tirade the arrogance of the monarch had entirely
+given way; he had fairly turned tail and was trundling away down the
+path. MacIan strode after him still preaching and flourishing his large,
+lean hands. The other two remained in the centre of the lawn--Turnbull
+in convulsions of laughter, the lunatic in convulsions of disgust.
+Almost at the same moment a third figure came stepping swiftly across
+the lawn.
+
+The advancing figure walked with a stoop, and yet somehow flung his
+forked and narrow beard forward. That carefully cut and pointed yellow
+beard was, indeed, the most emphatic thing about him. When he clasped
+his hands behind him, under the tails of his coat, he would wag his
+beard at a man like a big forefinger. It performed almost all his
+gestures; it was more important than the glittering eye-glasses through
+which he looked or the beautiful bleating voice in which he spoke. His
+face and neck were of a lusty red, but lean and stringy; he always wore
+his expensive gold-rim eye-glasses slightly askew upon his aquiline
+nose; and he always showed two gleaming foreteeth under his moustache,
+in a smile so perpetual as to earn the reputation of a sneer. But for
+the crooked glasses his dress was always exquisite; and but for the
+smile he was perfectly and perennially depressed.
+
+"Don't you think," said the new-comer, with a sort of supercilious
+entreaty, "that we had better all come into breakfast? It is such a
+mistake to wait for breakfast. It spoils one's temper so much."
+
+"Quite so," replied Turnbull, seriously.
+
+"There seems almost to have been a little quarrelling here," said the
+man with the goatish beard.
+
+"It is rather a long story," said Turnbull, smiling. "Originally, it
+might be called a phase in the quarrel between science and religion."
+
+The new-comer started slightly, and Turnbull replied to the question on
+his face.
+
+"Oh, yes," he said, "I am science!"
+
+"I congratulate you heartily," answered the other, "I am Doctor Quayle."
+
+Turnbull's eyes did not move, but he realized that the man in the panama
+hat had lost all his ease of a landed proprietor and had withdrawn to
+a distance of thirty yards, where he stood glaring with all the
+contraction of fear and hatred that can stiffen a cat.
+
+           *                    *                   *
+
+MacIan was sitting somewhat disconsolately on a stump of tree, his large
+black head half buried in his large brown hands, when Turnbull strode
+up to him chewing a cigarette. He did not look up, but his comrade and
+enemy addressed him like one who must free himself of his feelings.
+
+"Well, I hope, at any rate," he said, "that you like your precious
+religion now. I hope you like the society of this poor devil whom your
+damned tracts and hymns and priests have driven out of his wits. Five
+men in this place, they tell me, five men in this place who might have
+been fathers of families, and every one of them thinks he is God the
+Father. Oh! you may talk about the ugliness of science, but there is no
+one here who thinks he is Protoplasm."
+
+"They naturally prefer a bright part," said MacIan, wearily. "Protoplasm
+is not worth going mad about."
+
+"At least," said Turnbull, savagely, "it was your Jesus Christ who
+started all this bosh about being God."
+
+For one instant MacIan opened the eyes of battle; then his tightened
+lips took a crooked smile and he said, quite calmly:
+
+"No, the idea is older; it was Satan who first said that he was God."
+
+"Then, what," asked Turnbull, very slowly, as he softly picked a flower,
+"what is the difference between Christ and Satan?"
+
+"It is quite simple," replied the Highlander. "Christ descended into
+hell; Satan fell into it."
+
+"Does it make much odds?" asked the free-thinker.
+
+"It makes all the odds," said the other. "One of them wanted to go up
+and went down; the other wanted to go down and went up. A god can be
+humble, a devil can only be humbled."
+
+"Why are you always wanting to humble a man?" asked Turnbull, knitting
+his brows. "It affects me as ungenerous."
+
+"Why were you wanting to humble a god when you found him in this
+garden?" asked MacIan.
+
+"That was an extreme case of impudence," said Turnbull.
+
+"Granting the man his almighty pretensions, I think he was very modest,"
+said MacIan. "It is we who are arrogant, who know we are only men. The
+ordinary man in the street is more of a monster than that poor fellow;
+for the man in the street treats himself as God Almighty when he knows
+he isn't. He expects the universe to turn round him, though he knows he
+isn't the centre."
+
+"Well," said Turnbull, sitting down on the grass, "this is a digression,
+anyhow. What I want to point out is, that your faith does end in asylums
+and my science doesn't."
+
+"Doesn't it, by George!" cried MacIan, scornfully. "There are a few men
+here who are mad on God and a few who are mad on the Bible. But I bet
+there are many more who are simply mad on madness."
+
+"Do you really believe it?" asked the other.
+
+"Scores of them, I should say," answered MacIan. "Fellows who have
+read medical books or fellows whose fathers and uncles had something
+hereditary in their heads--the whole air they breathe is mad."
+
+"All the same," said Turnbull, shrewdly, "I bet you haven't found a
+madman of that sort."
+
+"I bet I have!" cried Evan, with unusual animation. "I've been walking
+about the garden talking to a poor chap all the morning. He's simply
+been broken down and driven raving by your damned science. Talk about
+believing one is God--why, it's quite an old, comfortable, fireside
+fancy compared with the sort of things this fellow believes. He believes
+that there is a God, but that he is better than God. He says God will be
+afraid to face him. He says one is always progressing beyond the best.
+He put his arm in mine and whispered in my ear, as if it were the
+apocalypse: 'Never trust a God that you can't improve on.'"
+
+"What can he have meant?" said the atheist, with all his logic awake.
+"Obviously one should not trust any God that one can improve on."
+
+"It is the way he talks," said MacIan, almost indifferently; "but he
+says rummier things than that. He says that a man's doctor ought to
+decide what woman he marries; and he says that children ought not to
+be brought up by their parents, because a physical partiality will then
+distort the judgement of the educator."
+
+"Oh, dear!" said Turnbull, laughing, "you have certainly come across a
+pretty bad case, and incidentally proved your own. I suppose some men do
+lose their wits through science as through love and other good things."
+
+"And he says," went on MacIan, monotonously, "that he cannot see why
+anyone should suppose that a triangle is a three-sided figure. He says
+that on some higher plane----"
+
+Turnbull leapt to his feet as by an electric shock. "I never could have
+believed," he cried, "that you had humour enough to tell a lie. You've
+gone a bit too far, old man, with your little joke. Even in a lunatic
+asylum there can't be anybody who, having thought about the matter,
+thinks that a triangle has not got three sides. If he exists he must be
+a new era in human psychology. But he doesn't exist."
+
+"I will go and fetch him," said MacIan, calmly; "I left the poor fellow
+wandering about by the nasturtium bed."
+
+MacIan vanished, and in a few moments returned, trailing with him his
+own discovery among lunatics, who was a slender man with a fixed smile
+and an unfixed and rolling head. He had a goatlike beard just long
+enough to be shaken in a strong wind. Turnbull sprang to his feet
+and was like one who is speechless through choking a sudden shout of
+laughter.
+
+"Why, you great donkey," he shouted, in an ear-shattering whisper,
+"that's not one of the patients at all. That's one of the doctors."
+
+Evan looked back at the leering head with the long-pointed beard and
+repeated the word inquiringly: "One of the doctors?"
+
+"Oh, you know what I mean," said Turnbull, impatiently. "The medical
+authorities of the place."
+
+Evan was still staring back curiously at the beaming and bearded
+creature behind him.
+
+"The mad doctors," said Turnbull, shortly.
+
+"Quite so," said MacIan.
+
+After a rather restless silence Turnbull plucked MacIan by the elbow and
+pulled him aside.
+
+"For goodness sake," he said, "don't offend this fellow; he may be as
+mad as ten hatters, if you like, but he has us between his finger
+and thumb. This is the very time he appointed to talk with us about
+our--well, our exeat."
+
+"But what can it matter?" asked the wondering MacIan. "He can't keep us
+in the asylum. We're not mad."
+
+"Jackass!" said Turnbull, heartily, "of course we're not mad. Of course,
+if we are medically examined and the thing is thrashed out, they will
+find we are not mad. But don't you see that if the thing is thrashed out
+it will mean letters to this reference and telegrams to that; and at the
+first word of who we are, we shall be taken out of a madhouse, where
+we may smoke, to a jail, where we mayn't. No, if we manage this very
+quietly, he may merely let us out at the front door as stray revellers.
+If there's half an hour of inquiry, we are cooked."
+
+MacIan looked at the grass frowningly for a few seconds, and then said
+in a new, small and childish voice: "I am awfully stupid, Mr. Turnbull;
+you must be patient with me."
+
+Turnbull caught Evan's elbow again with quite another gesture. "Come,"
+he cried, with the harsh voice of one who hides emotion, "come and let
+us be tactful in chorus."
+
+The doctor with the pointed beard was already slanting it forward at a
+more than usually acute angle, with the smile that expressed expectancy.
+
+"I hope I do not hurry you, gentlemen," he said, with the faintest
+suggestion of a sneer at their hurried consultation, "but I believe you
+wanted to see me at half past eleven."
+
+"I am most awfully sorry, Doctor," said Turnbull, with ready amiability;
+"I never meant to keep you waiting; but the silly accident that has
+landed us in your garden may have some rather serious consequences to
+our friends elsewhere, and my friend here was just drawing my attention
+to some of them."
+
+"Quite so! Quite so!" said the doctor, hurriedly. "If you really want
+to put anything before me, I can give you a few moments in my
+consulting-room."
+
+He led them rapidly into a small but imposing apartment, which seemed
+to be built and furnished entirely in red-varnished wood. There was one
+desk occupied with carefully docketed papers; and there were several
+chairs of the red-varnished wood--though of different shape. All along
+the wall ran something that might have been a bookcase, only that it was
+not filled with books, but with flat, oblong slabs or cases of the same
+polished dark-red consistency. What those flat wooden cases were they
+could form no conception.
+
+The doctor sat down with a polite impatience on his professional perch;
+MacIan remained standing, but Turnbull threw himself almost with luxury
+into a hard wooden arm-chair.
+
+"This is a most absurd business, Doctor," he said, "and I am ashamed to
+take up the time of busy professional men with such pranks from outside.
+The plain fact is, that he and I and a pack of silly men and girls have
+organized a game across this part of the country--a sort of combination
+of hare and hounds and hide and seek--I dare say you've heard of it. We
+are the hares, and, seeing your high wall look so inviting, we tumbled
+over it, and naturally were a little startled with what we found on the
+other side."
+
+"Quite so!" said the doctor, mildly. "I can understand that you were
+startled."
+
+Turnbull had expected him to ask what place was the headquarters of the
+new exhilarating game, and who were the male and female enthusiasts who
+had brought it to such perfection; in fact, Turnbull was busy making up
+these personal and topographical particulars. As the doctor did not ask
+the question, he grew slightly uneasy, and risked the question: "I hope
+you will accept my assurance that the thing was an accident and that no
+intrusion was meant."
+
+"Oh, yes, sir," replied the doctor, smiling, "I accept everything that
+you say."
+
+"In that case," said Turnbull, rising genially, "we must not further
+interrupt your important duties. I suppose there will be someone to let
+us out?"
+
+"No," said the doctor, still smiling steadily and pleasantly, "there
+will be no one to let you out."
+
+"Can we let ourselves out, then?" asked Turnbull, in some surprise.
+
+"Why, of course not," said the beaming scientist; "think how dangerous
+that would be in a place like this."
+
+"Then, how the devil are we to get out?" cried Turnbull, losing his
+manners for the first time.
+
+"It is a question of time, of receptivity, and treatment," said the
+doctor, arching his eyebrows indifferently. "I do not regard either of
+your cases as incurable."
+
+And with that the man of the world was struck dumb, and, as in all
+intolerable moments, the word was with the unworldly.
+
+MacIan took one stride to the table, leant across it, and said: "We
+can't stop here, we're not mad people!"
+
+"We don't use the crude phrase," said the doctor, smiling at his
+patent-leather boots.
+
+"But you _can't_ think us mad," thundered MacIan. "You never saw us
+before. You know nothing about us. You haven't even examined us."
+
+The doctor threw back his head and beard. "Oh, yes," he said, "very
+thoroughly."
+
+"But you can't shut a man up on your mere impressions without documents
+or certificates or anything?"
+
+The doctor got languidly to his feet. "Quite so," he said. "You
+certainly ought to see the documents."
+
+He went across to the curious mock book-shelves and took down one of
+the flat mahogany cases. This he opened with a curious key at his
+watch-chain, and laying back a flap revealed a quire of foolscap covered
+with close but quite clear writing. The first three words were in such
+large copy-book hand that they caught the eye even at a distance. They
+were: "MacIan, Evan Stuart."
+
+Evan bent his angry eagle face over it; yet something blurred it and
+he could never swear he saw it distinctly. He saw something that began:
+"Prenatal influences predisposing to mania. Grandfather believed in
+return of the Stuarts. Mother carried bone of St. Eulalia with which she
+touched children in sickness. Marked religious mania at early age----"
+
+Evan fell back and fought for his speech. "Oh!" he burst out at last.
+"Oh! if all this world I have walked in had been as sane as my mother
+was."
+
+Then he compressed his temples with his hands, as if to crush them. And
+then lifted suddenly a face that looked fresh and young, as if he had
+dipped and washed it in some holy well.
+
+"Very well," he cried; "I will take the sour with the sweet. I will pay
+the penalty of having enjoyed God in this monstrous modern earth that
+cannot enjoy man or beast. I will die happy in your madhouse, only
+because I know what I know. Let it be granted, then--MacIan is a mystic;
+MacIan is a maniac. But this honest shopkeeper and editor whom I have
+dragged on my inhuman escapades, you cannot keep him. He will go free,
+thank God, he is not down in any damned document. His ancestor, I am
+certain, did not die at Culloden. His mother, I swear, had no relics.
+Let my friend out of your front door, and as for me----"
+
+The doctor had already gone across to the laden shelves, and after a few
+minutes' short-sighted peering, had pulled down another parallelogram of
+dark-red wood.
+
+This also he unlocked on the table, and with the same unerring
+egotistic eye on of the company saw the words, written in large letters:
+"Turnbull, James."
+
+Hitherto Turnbull himself had somewhat scornfully surrendered his part
+in the whole business; but he was too honest and unaffected not to
+start at his own name. After the name, the inscription appeared to run:
+"Unique case of Eleutheromania. Parentage, as so often in such cases,
+prosaic and healthy. Eleutheromaniac signs occurred early, however,
+leading him to attach himself to the individualist Bradlaugh. Recent
+outbreak of pure anarchy----"
+
+Turnbull slammed the case to, almost smashing it, and said with a burst
+of savage laughter: "Oh! come along, MacIan; I don't care so much, even
+about getting out of the madhouse, if only we get out of this room. You
+were right enough, MacIan, when you spoke about--about mad doctors."
+
+Somehow they found themselves outside in the cool, green garden, and
+then, after a stunned silence, Turnbull said: "There is one thing that
+was puzzling me all the time, and I understand it now."
+
+"What do you mean?" asked Evan.
+
+"No man by will or wit," answered Turnbull, "can get out of this garden;
+and yet we got into it merely by jumping over a garden wall. The whole
+thing explains itself easily enough. That undefended wall was an open
+trap. It was a trap laid for two celebrated lunatics. They saw us get in
+right enough. And they will see that we do not get out."
+
+Evan gazed at the garden wall, gravely for more than a minute, and then
+he nodded without a word.
+
+
+
+
+XV. THE DREAM OF MACIAN
+
+The system of espionage in the asylum was so effective and complete that
+in practice the patients could often enjoy a sense of almost complete
+solitude. They could stray up so near to the wall in an apparently
+unwatched garden as to find it easy to jump over it. They would only
+have found the error of their calculations if they had tried to jump.
+
+Under this insulting liberty, in this artificial loneliness, Evan MacIan
+was in the habit of creeping out into the garden after dark--especially
+upon moonlight nights. The moon, indeed, was for him always a positive
+magnet in a manner somewhat hard to explain to those of a robuster
+attitude. Evidently, Apollo is to the full as poetical as Diana; but it
+is not a question of poetry in the matured and intellectual sense of the
+word. It is a question of a certain solid and childish fancy. The sun is
+in the strict and literal sense invisible; that is to say, that by our
+bodily eyes it cannot properly be seen. But the moon is a much simpler
+thing; a naked and nursery sort of thing. It hangs in the sky quite
+solid and quite silver and quite useless; it is one huge celestial
+snowball. It was at least some such infantile facts and fancies which
+led Evan again and again during his dehumanized imprisonment to go out
+as if to shoot the moon.
+
+He was out in the garden on one such luminous and ghostly night, when
+the steady moonshine toned down all the colours of the garden until
+almost the strongest tints to be seen were the strong soft blue of the
+sky and the large lemon moon. He was walking with his face turned up to
+it in that rather half-witted fashion which might have excused the error
+of his keepers; and as he gazed he became aware of something little and
+lustrous flying close to the lustrous orb, like a bright chip knocked
+off the moon. At first he thought it was a mere sparkle or refraction
+in his own eyesight; he blinked and cleared his eyes. Then he thought
+it was a falling star; only it did not fall. It jerked awkwardly up and
+down in a way unknown among meteors and strangely reminiscent of the
+works of man. The next moment the thing drove right across the moon,
+and from being silver upon blue, suddenly became black upon silver;
+then although it passed the field of light in a flash its outline was
+unmistakable though eccentric. It was a flying ship.
+
+The vessel took one long and sweeping curve across the sky and came
+nearer and nearer to MacIan, like a steam-engine coming round a bend. It
+was of pure white steel, and in the moon it gleamed like the armour of
+Sir Galahad. The simile of such virginity is not inappropriate; for, as
+it grew larger and larger and lower and lower, Evan saw that the only
+figure in it was robed in white from head to foot and crowned with
+snow-white hair, on which the moonshine lay like a benediction. The
+figure stood so still that he could easily have supposed it to be a
+statue. Indeed, he thought it was until it spoke.
+
+"Evan," said the voice, and it spoke with the simple authority of some
+forgotten father revisiting his children, "you have remained here long
+enough, and your sword is wanted elsewhere."
+
+"Wanted for what?" asked the young man, accepting the monstrous event
+with a queer and clumsy naturalness; "what is my sword wanted for?"
+
+"For all that you hold dear," said the man standing in the moonlight;
+"for the thrones of authority and for all ancient loyalty to law."
+
+Evan looked up at the lunar orb again as if in irrational appeal--a moon
+calf bleating to his mother the moon. But the face of Luna seemed as
+witless as his own; there is no help in nature against the supernatural;
+and he looked again at the tall marble figure that might have been made
+out of solid moonlight.
+
+Then he said in a loud voice: "Who are you?" and the next moment was
+seized by a sort of choking terror lest his question should be answered.
+But the unknown preserved an impenetrable silence for a long space and
+then only answered: "I must not say who I am until the end of the world;
+but I may say what I am. I am the law."
+
+And he lifted his head so that the moon smote full upon his beautiful
+and ancient face.
+
+The face was the face of a Greek god grown old, but not grown either
+weak or ugly; there was nothing to break its regularity except a rather
+long chin with a cleft in it, and this rather added distinction than
+lessened beauty. His strong, well-opened eyes were very brilliant but
+quite colourless like steel.
+
+MacIan was one of those to whom a reverence and self-submission in
+ritual come quite easy, and are ordinary things. It was not artificial
+in him to bend slightly to this solemn apparition or to lower his voice
+when he said: "Do you bring me some message?"
+
+"I do bring you a message," answered the man of moon and marble. "The
+king has returned."
+
+Evan did not ask for or require any explanation. "I suppose you can take
+me to the war," he said, and the silent silver figure only bowed its
+head again. MacIan clambered into the silver boat, and it rose upward to
+the stars.
+
+To say that it rose to the stars is no mere metaphor, for the sky had
+cleared to that occasional and astonishing transparency in which one can
+see plainly both stars and moon.
+
+As the white-robed figure went upward in his white chariot, he said
+quite quietly to Evan: "There is an answer to all the folly talked about
+equality. Some stars are big and some small; some stand still and some
+circle around them as they stand. They can be orderly, but they cannot
+be equal."
+
+"They are all very beautiful," said Evan, as if in doubt.
+
+"They are all beautiful," answered the other, "because each is in his
+place and owns his superior. And now England will be beautiful after the
+same fashion. The earth will be as beautiful as the heavens, because our
+kings have come back to us."
+
+"The Stuart----" began Evan, earnestly.
+
+"Yes," answered the old man, "that which has returned is Stuart and yet
+older than Stuart. It is Capet and Plantagenet and Pendragon. It is all
+that good old time of which proverbs tell, that golden reign of Saturn
+against which gods and men were rebels. It is all that was ever lost
+by insolence and overwhelmed in rebellion. It is your own forefather,
+MacIan with the broken sword, bleeding without hope at Culloden. It is
+Charles refusing to answer the questions of the rebel court. It is Mary
+of the magic face confronting the gloomy and grasping peers and the
+boorish moralities of Knox. It is Richard, the last Plantagenet,
+giving his crown to Bolingbroke as to a common brigand. It is Arthur,
+overwhelmed in Lyonesse by heathen armies and dying in the mist,
+doubtful if ever he shall return."
+
+"But now----" said Evan, in a low voice.
+
+"But now!" said the old man; "he has returned."
+
+"Is the war still raging?" asked MacIan.
+
+"It rages like the pit itself beyond the sea whither I am taking you,"
+answered the other. "But in England the king enjoys his own again.
+The people are once more taught and ruled as is best; they are happy
+knights, happy squires, happy servants, happy serfs, if you will; but
+free at last of that load of vexation and lonely vanity which was called
+being a citizen."
+
+"Is England, indeed, so secure?" asked Evan.
+
+"Look out and see," said the guide. "I fancy you have seen this place
+before."
+
+They were driving through the air towards one region of the sky where
+the hollow of night seemed darkest and which was quite without stars.
+But against this black background there sprang up, picked out in
+glittering silver, a dome and a cross. It seemed that it was really
+newly covered with silver, which in the strong moonlight was like
+white flame. But, however, covered or painted, Evan had no difficult
+in knowing the place again. He saw the great thoroughfare that sloped
+upward to the base of its huge pedestal of steps. And he wondered
+whether the little shop was still by the side of it and whether its
+window had been mended.
+
+As the flying ship swept round the dome he observed other alterations.
+The dome had been redecorated so as to give it a more solemn and
+somewhat more ecclesiastical note; the ball was draped or destroyed,
+and round the gallery, under the cross, ran what looked like a ring of
+silver statues, like the little leaden images that stood round the hat
+of Louis XI. Round the second gallery, at the base of the dome, ran a
+second rank of such images, and Evan thought there was another round
+the steps below. When they came closer he saw that they were figures
+in complete armour of steel or silver, each with a naked sword, point
+upward; and then he saw one of the swords move. These were not statues
+but an armed order of chivalry thrown in three circles round the cross.
+MacIan drew in his breath, as children do at anything they think utterly
+beautiful. For he could imagine nothing that so echoed his own visions
+of pontifical or chivalric art as this white dome sitting like a vast
+silver tiara over London, ringed with a triple crown of swords.
+
+As they went sailing down Ludgate Hill, Evan saw that the state of the
+streets fully answered his companion's claim about the reintroduction
+of order. All the old blackcoated bustle with its cockney vivacity
+and vulgarity had disappeared. Groups of labourers, quietly but
+picturesquely clad, were passing up and down in sufficiently large
+numbers; but it required but a few mounted men to keep the streets in
+order. The mounted men were not common policemen, but knights with spurs
+and plume whose smooth and splendid armour glittered like diamond rather
+than steel. Only in one place--at the corner of Bouverie Street--did
+there appear to be a moment's confusion, and that was due to hurry
+rather than resistance. But one old grumbling man did not get out of
+the way quick enough, and the man on horseback struck him, not severely,
+across the shoulders with the flat of his sword.
+
+"The soldier had no business to do that," said MacIan, sharply. "The old
+man was moving as quickly as he could."
+
+"We attach great importance to discipline in the streets," said the man
+in white, with a slight smile.
+
+"Discipline is not so important as justice," said MacIan.
+
+The other did not answer.
+
+Then after a swift silence that took them out across St. James's Park,
+he said: "The people must be taught to obey; they must learn their own
+ignorance. And I am not sure," he continued, turning his back on Evan
+and looking out of the prow of the ship into the darkness, "I am not
+sure that I agree with your little maxim about justice. Discipline
+for the whole society is surely more important than justice to an
+individual."
+
+Evan, who was also leaning over the edge, swung round with startling
+suddenness and stared at the other's back.
+
+"Discipline for society----" he repeated, very staccato, "more
+important--justice to individual?"
+
+Then after a long silence he called out: "Who and what are you?"
+
+"I am an angel," said the white-robed figure, without turning round.
+
+"You are not a Catholic," said MacIan.
+
+The other seemed to take no notice, but reverted to the main topic.
+
+"In our armies up in heaven we learn to put a wholesome fear into
+subordinates."
+
+MacIan sat craning his neck forward with an extraordinary and
+unaccountable eagerness.
+
+"Go on!" he cried, twisting and untwisting his long, bony fingers, "go
+on!"
+
+"Besides," continued he, in the prow, "you must allow for a certain high
+spirit and haughtiness in the superior type."
+
+"Go on!" said Evan, with burning eyes.
+
+"Just as the sight of sin offends God," said the unknown, "so does the
+sight of ugliness offend Apollo. The beautiful and princely must, of
+necessity, be impatient with the squalid and----"
+
+"Why, you great fool!" cried MacIan, rising to the top of his tremendous
+stature, "did you think I would have doubted only for that rap with a
+sword? I know that noble orders have bad knights, that good knights have
+bad tempers, that the Church has rough priests and coarse cardinals;
+I have known it ever since I was born. You fool! you had only to say,
+'Yes, it is rather a shame,' and I should have forgotten the affair. But
+I saw on your mouth the twitch of your infernal sophistry; I knew that
+something was wrong with you and your cathedrals. Something is wrong;
+everything is wrong. You are not an angel. That is not a church. It is
+not the rightful king who has come home."
+
+"That is unfortunate," said the other, in a quiet but hard voice,
+"because you are going to see his Majesty."
+
+"No," said MacIan, "I am going to jump over the side."
+
+"Do you desire death?"
+
+"No," said Evan, quite composedly, "I desire a miracle."
+
+"From whom do you ask it? To whom do you appeal?" said his companion,
+sternly. "You have betrayed the king, renounced his cross on the
+cathedral, and insulted an archangel."
+
+"I appeal to God," said Evan, and sprang up and stood upon the edge of
+the swaying ship.
+
+The being in the prow turned slowly round; he looked at Evan with eyes
+which were like two suns, and put his hand to his mouth just too late to
+hide an awful smile.
+
+"And how do you know," he said, "how do you know that I am not God?"
+
+MacIan screamed. "Ah!" he cried. "Now I know who you really are. You are
+not God. You are not one of God's angels. But you were once."
+
+The being's hand dropped from his mouth and Evan dropped out of the car.
+
+
+
+
+XVI. THE DREAM OF TURNBULL
+
+Turnbull was walking rather rampantly up and down the garden on a gusty
+evening chewing his cigar and in that mood when every man suppresses
+an instinct to spit. He was not, as a rule, a man much acquainted with
+moods; and the storms and sunbursts of MacIan's soul passed before him
+as an impressive but unmeaning panorama, like the anarchy of Highland
+scenery. Turnbull was one of those men in whom a continuous appetite and
+industry of the intellect leave the emotions very simple and steady.
+His heart was in the right place; but he was quite content to leave it
+there. It was his head that was his hobby. His mornings and evenings
+were marked not by impulses or thirsty desires, not by hope or by
+heart-break; they were filled with the fallacies he had detected, the
+problems he had made plain, the adverse theories he had wrestled with
+and thrown, the grand generalizations he had justified. But even the
+cheerful inner life of a logician may be upset by a lunatic asylum, to
+say nothing of whiffs of memory from a lady in Jersey, and the little
+red-bearded man on this windy evening was in a dangerous frame of mind.
+
+Plain and positive as he was, the influence of earth and sky may have
+been greater on him than he imagined; and the weather that walked the
+world at that moment was as red and angry as Turnbull. Long strips and
+swirls of tattered and tawny cloud were dragged downward to the west
+exactly as torn red raiment would be dragged. And so strong and pitiless
+was the wind that it whipped away fragments of red-flowering bushes or
+of copper beech, and drove them also across the garden, a drift of red
+leaves, like the leaves of autumn, as in parody of the red and driven
+rags of cloud.
+
+There was a sense in earth and heaven as of everything breaking up, and
+all the revolutionist in Turnbull rejoiced that it was breaking up.
+The trees were breaking up under the wind, even in the tall strength
+of their bloom: the clouds were breaking up and losing even their large
+heraldic shapes. Shards and shreds of copper cloud split off continually
+and floated by themselves, and for some reason the truculent eye of
+Turnbull was attracted to one of these careering cloudlets, which seemed
+to him to career in an exaggerated manner. Also it kept its shape, which
+is unusual with clouds shaken off; also its shape was of an odd sort.
+
+Turnbull continued to stare at it, and in a little time occurred that
+crucial instant when a thing, however incredible, is accepted as a fact.
+The copper cloud was tumbling down towards the earth, like some gigantic
+leaf from the copper beeches. And as it came nearer it was evident,
+first, that it was not a cloud, and, second, that it was not itself
+of the colour of copper; only, being burnished like a mirror, it had
+reflected the red-brown colours of the burning clouds. As the thing
+whirled like a windswept leaf down towards the wall of the garden it was
+clear that it was some sort of air-ship made of metal, and slapping
+the air with big broad fins of steel. When it came about a hundred feet
+above the garden, a shaggy, lean figure leapt up in it, almost black
+against the bronze and scarlet of the west, and, flinging out a kind of
+hook or anchor, caught on to the green apple-tree just under the wall;
+and from that fixed holding ground the ship swung in the red tempest
+like a captive balloon.
+
+While our friend stood frozen for an instant by his astonishment, the
+queer figure in the airy car tipped the vehicle almost upside down by
+leaping over the side of it, seemed to slide or drop down the rope like
+a monkey, and alighted (with impossible precision and placidity) seated
+on the edge of the wall, over which he kicked and dangled his legs as he
+grinned at Turnbull. The wind roared in the trees yet more ruinous and
+desolate, the red tails of the sunset were dragged downward like red
+dragons sucked down to death, and still on the top of the asylum wall
+sat the sinister figure with the grimace, swinging his feet in tune with
+the tempest; while above him, at the end of its tossing or tightened
+cord, the enormous iron air-ship floated as light and as little noticed
+as a baby's balloon upon its string.
+
+Turnbull's first movement after sixty motionless seconds was to turn
+round and look at the large, luxuriant parallelogram of the garden and
+the long, low rectangular building beyond. There was not a soul or a
+stir of life within sight. And he had a quite meaningless sensation, as
+if there never really had been any one else there except he since the
+foundation of the world.
+
+Stiffening in himself the masculine but mirthless courage of the
+atheist, he drew a little nearer to the wall and, catching the man at
+a slightly different angle of the evening light, could see his face and
+figure quite plain. Two facts about him stood out in the picked colours
+of some piratical schoolboy's story. The first was that his lean brown
+body was bare to the belt of his loose white trousers; the other that
+through hygiene, affectation, or whatever other cause, he had a scarlet
+handkerchief tied tightly but somewhat aslant across his brow. After
+these two facts had become emphatic, others appeared sufficiently
+important. One was that under the scarlet rag the hair was plentiful,
+but white as with the last snows of mortality. Another was that under
+the mop of white and senile hair the face was strong, handsome, and
+smiling, with a well-cut profile and a long cloven chin. The length of
+this lower part of the face and the strange cleft in it (which gave the
+man, in quite another sense from the common one, a double chin) faintly
+spoilt the claim of the face to absolute regularity, but it greatly
+assisted it in wearing the expression of half-smiling and half-sneering
+arrogance with which it was staring at all the stones, all the flowers,
+but especially at the solitary man.
+
+"What do you want?" shouted Turnbull.
+
+"I want you, Jimmy," said the eccentric man on the wall, and with the
+very word he had let himself down with a leap on to the centre of the
+lawn, where he bounded once literally like an India-rubber ball and then
+stood grinning with his legs astride. The only three facts that Turnbull
+could now add to his inventory were that the man had an ugly-looking
+knife swinging at his trousers belt, that his brown feet were as bare
+as his bronzed trunk and arms, and that his eyes had a singular bleak
+brilliancy which was of no particular colour.
+
+"Excuse my not being in evening dress," said the newcomer with an
+urbane smile. "We scientific men, you know--I have to work my own
+engines--electrical engineer--very hot work."
+
+"Look here," said Turnbull, sturdily clenching his fists in his trousers
+pockets, "I am bound to expect lunatics inside these four walls; but I
+do bar their coming from outside, bang out of the sunset clouds."
+
+"And yet you came from the outside, too, Jim," said the stranger in a
+voice almost affectionate.
+
+"What do you want?" asked Turnbull, with an explosion of temper as
+sudden as a pistol shot.
+
+"I have already told you," said the man, lowering his voice and speaking
+with evident sincerity; "I want you."
+
+"What do you want with me?"
+
+"I want exactly what you want," said the new-comer with a new gravity.
+"I want the Revolution."
+
+Turnbull looked at the fire-swept sky and the wind-stricken woodlands,
+and kept on repeating the word voicelessly to himself--the word that did
+indeed so thoroughly express his mood of rage as it had been among those
+red clouds and rocking tree-tops. "Revolution!" he said to himself. "The
+Revolution--yes, that is what I want right enough--anything, so long as
+it is a Revolution."
+
+To some cause he could never explain he found himself completing the
+sentence on the top of the wall, having automatically followed the
+stranger so far. But when the stranger silently indicated the rope that
+led to the machine, he found himself pausing and saying: "I can't leave
+MacIan behind in this den."
+
+"We are going to destroy the Pope and all the kings," said the
+new-comer. "Would it be wiser to take him with us?"
+
+Somehow the muttering Turnbull found himself in the flying ship also,
+and it swung up into the sunset.
+
+"All the great rebels have been very little rebels," said the man with
+the red scarf. "They have been like fourth-form boys who sometimes
+venture to hit a fifth-form boy. That was all the worth of their
+French Revolution and regicide. The boys never really dared to defy the
+schoolmaster."
+
+"Whom do you mean by the schoolmaster?" asked Turnbull.
+
+"You know whom I mean," answered the strange man, as he lay back on
+cushions and looked up into the angry sky.
+
+They seemed rising into stronger and stronger sunlight, as if it were
+sunrise rather than sunset. But when they looked down at the earth
+they saw it growing darker and darker. The lunatic asylum in its large
+rectangular grounds spread below them in a foreshortened and infantile
+plan, and looked for the first time the grotesque thing that it was.
+But the clear colours of the plan were growing darker every moment. The
+masses of rose or rhododendron deepened from crimson to violet. The maze
+of gravel pathways faded from gold to brown. By the time they had
+risen a few hundred feet higher nothing could be seen of that darkening
+landscape except the lines of lighted windows, each one of which, at
+least, was the light of one lost intelligence. But on them as they swept
+upward better and braver winds seemed to blow, and on them the ruby
+light of evening seemed struck, and splashed like red spurts from the
+grapes of Dionysus. Below them the fallen lights were literally the
+fallen stars of servitude. And above them all the red and raging clouds
+were like the leaping flags of liberty.
+
+The man with the cloven chin seemed to have a singular power of
+understanding thoughts; for, as Turnbull felt the whole universe tilt
+and turn over his head, the stranger said exactly the right thing.
+
+"Doesn't it seem as if everything were being upset?" said he; "and if
+once everything is upset, He will be upset on top of it."
+
+Then, as Turnbull made no answer, his host continued:
+
+"That is the really fine thing about space. It is topsy-turvy. You have
+only to climb far enough towards the morning star to feel that you are
+coming down to it. You have only to dive deep enough into the abyss to
+feel that you are rising. That is the only glory of this universe--it is
+a giddy universe."
+
+Then, as Turnbull was still silent, he added:
+
+"The heavens are full of revolution--of the real sort of revolution. All
+the high things are sinking low and all the big things looking small.
+All the people who think they are aspiring find they are falling head
+foremost. And all the people who think they are condescending find they
+are climbing up a precipice. That is the intoxication of space. That is
+the only joy of eternity--doubt. There is only one pleasure the angels
+can possibly have in flying, and that is, that they do not know whether
+they are on their head or their heels."
+
+Then, finding his companion still mute, he fell himself into a smiling
+and motionless meditation, at the end of which he said suddenly:
+
+"So MacIan converted you?"
+
+Turnbull sprang up as if spurning the steel car from under his feet.
+"Converted me!" he cried. "What the devil do you mean? I have known him
+for a month, and I have not retracted a single----"
+
+"This Catholicism is a curious thing," said the man of the cloven chin
+in uninterrupted reflectiveness, leaning his elegant elbows over the
+edge of the vessel; "it soaks and weakens men without their knowing it,
+just as I fear it has soaked and weakened you."
+
+Turnbull stood in an attitude which might well have meant pitching the
+other man out of the flying ship.
+
+"I am an atheist," he said, in a stifled voice. "I have always been an
+atheist. I am still an atheist." Then, addressing the other's indolent
+and indifferent back, he cried: "In God's name what do you mean?"
+
+And the other answered without turning round:
+
+"I mean nothing in God's name."
+
+Turnbull spat over the edge of the car and fell back furiously into his
+seat.
+
+The other continued still unruffled, and staring over the edge idly as
+an angler stares down at a stream.
+
+"The truth is that we never thought that you could have been caught,"
+he said; "we counted on you as the one red-hot revolutionary left in
+the world. But, of course, these men like MacIan are awfully clever,
+especially when they pretend to be stupid."
+
+Turnbull leapt up again in a living fury and cried: "What have I got to
+do with MacIan? I believe all I ever believed, and disbelieve all I
+ever disbelieved. What does all this mean, and what do you want with me
+here?"
+
+Then for the first time the other lifted himself from the edge of the
+car and faced him.
+
+"I have brought you here," he answered, "to take part in the last war of
+the world."
+
+"The last war!" repeated Turnbull, even in his dazed state a little
+touchy about such a dogma; "how do you know it will be the last?"
+
+The man laid himself back in his reposeful attitude, and said:
+
+"It is the last war, because if it does not cure the world for ever, it
+will destroy it."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"I only mean what you mean," answered the unknown in a temperate voice.
+"What was it that you always meant on those million and one nights when
+you walked outside your Ludgate Hill shop and shook your hand in the
+air?"
+
+"Still I do not see," said Turnbull, stubbornly.
+
+"You will soon," said the other, and abruptly bent downward one iron
+handle of his huge machine. The engine stopped, stooped, and dived
+almost as deliberately as a man bathing; in their downward rush they
+swept within fifty yards of a big bulk of stone that Turnbull knew only
+too well. The last red anger of the sunset was ended; the dome of heaven
+was dark; the lanes of flaring light in the streets below hardly lit up
+the base of the building. But he saw that it was St. Paul's Cathedral,
+and he saw that on the top of it the ball was still standing erect, but
+the cross was stricken and had fallen sideways. Then only he cared to
+look down into the streets, and saw that they were inflamed with uproar
+and tossing passions.
+
+"We arrive at a happy moment," said the man steering the ship. "The
+insurgents are bombarding the city, and a cannon-ball has just hit the
+cross. Many of the insurgents are simple people, and they naturally
+regard it as a happy omen."
+
+"Quite so," said Turnbull, in a rather colourless voice.
+
+"Yes," replied the other. "I thought you would be glad to see your
+prayer answered. Of course I apologize for the word prayer."
+
+"Don't mention it," said Turnbull.
+
+The flying ship had come down upon a sort of curve, and was now rising
+again. The higher and higher it rose the broader and broader became the
+scenes of flame and desolation underneath.
+
+Ludgate Hill indeed had been an uncaptured and comparatively quiet
+height, altered only by the startling coincidence of the cross fallen
+awry. All the other thoroughfares on all sides of that hill were full
+of the pulsation and the pain of battle, full of shaking torches and
+shouting faces. When at length they had risen high enough to have a
+bird's-eye view of the whole campaign, Turnbull was already intoxicated.
+He had smelt gunpowder, which was the incense of his own revolutionary
+religion.
+
+"Have the people really risen?" he asked, breathlessly. "What are they
+fighting about?"
+
+"The programme is rather elaborate," said his entertainer with some
+indifference. "I think Dr. Hertz drew it up."
+
+Turnbull wrinkled his forehead. "Are all the poor people with the
+Revolution?" he asked.
+
+The other shrugged his shoulders. "All the instructed and
+class-conscious part of them without exception," he replied. "There
+were certainly a few districts; in fact, we are passing over them just
+now----"
+
+Turnbull looked down and saw that the polished car was literally lit
+up from underneath by the far-flung fires from below. Underneath whole
+squares and solid districts were in flames, like prairies or forests on
+fire.
+
+"Dr. Hertz has convinced everybody," said Turnbull's cicerone in a
+smooth voice, "that nothing can really be done with the real slums. His
+celebrated maxim has been quite adopted. I mean the three celebrated
+sentences: 'No man should be unemployed. Employ the employables. Destroy
+the unemployables.'"
+
+There was a silence, and then Turnbull said in a rather strained voice:
+"And do I understand that this good work is going on under here?"
+
+"Going on splendidly," replied his companion in the heartiest voice.
+"You see, these people were much too tired and weak even to join the
+social war. They were a definite hindrance to it."
+
+"And so you are simply burning them out?"
+
+"It _does_ seem absurdly simple," said the man, with a beaming smile,
+"when one thinks of all the worry and talk about helping a hopeless
+slave population, when the future obviously was only crying to be rid of
+them. There are happy babes unborn ready to burst the doors when these
+drivellers are swept away."
+
+"Will you permit me to say," said Turnbull, after reflection, "that I
+don't like all this?"
+
+"And will you permit me to say," said the other, with a snap, "that I
+don't like Mr. Evan MacIan?"
+
+Somewhat to the speaker's surprise this did not inflame the sensitive
+sceptic; he had the air of thinking thoroughly, and then he said: "No, I
+don't think it's my friend MacIan that taught me that. I think I should
+always have said that I don't like this. These people have rights."
+
+"Rights!" repeated the unknown in a tone quite indescribable. Then he
+added with a more open sneer: "Perhaps they also have souls."
+
+"They have lives!" said Turnbull, sternly; "that is quite enough for me.
+I understood you to say that you thought life sacred."
+
+"Yes, indeed!" cried his mentor with a sort of idealistic animation.
+"Yes, indeed! Life is sacred--but lives are not sacred. We are improving
+Life by removing lives. Can you, as a free-thinker, find any fault in
+that?"
+
+"Yes," said Turnbull with brevity.
+
+"Yet you applaud tyrannicide," said the stranger with rationalistic
+gaiety. "How inconsistent! It really comes to this: You approve of
+taking away life from those to whom it is a triumph and a pleasure.
+But you will not take away life from those to whom it is a burden and a
+toil."
+
+Turnbull rose to his feet in the car with considerable deliberation, but
+his face seemed oddly pale. The other went on with enthusiasm.
+
+"Life, yes, Life is indeed sacred!" he cried; "but new lives for old!
+Good lives for bad! On that very place where now there sprawls one
+drunken wastrel of a pavement artist more or less wishing he were
+dead--on that very spot there shall in the future be living pictures;
+there shall be golden girls and boys leaping in the sun."
+
+Turnbull, still standing up, opened his lips. "Will you put me down,
+please?" he said, quite calmly, like on stopping an omnibus.
+
+"Put you down--what do you mean?" cried his leader. "I am taking you to
+the front of the revolutionary war, where you will be one of the first
+of the revolutionary leaders."
+
+"Thank you," replied Turnbull with the same painful constraint. "I have
+heard about your revolutionary war, and I think on the whole that I
+would rather be anywhere else."
+
+"Do you want to be taken to a monastery," snarled the other, "with
+MacIan and his winking Madonnas."
+
+"I want to be taken to a madhouse," said Turnbull distinctly, giving the
+direction with a sort of precision. "I want to go back to exactly the
+same lunatic asylum from which I came."
+
+"Why?" asked the unknown.
+
+"Because I want a little sane and wholesome society," answered Turnbull.
+
+There was a long and peculiar silence, and then the man driving the
+flying machine said quite coolly: "I won't take you back."
+
+And then Turnbull said equally coolly: "Then I'll jump out of the car."
+
+The unknown rose to his full height, and the expression in his eyes
+seemed to be made of ironies behind ironies, as two mirrors infinitely
+reflect each other. At last he said, very gravely: "Do you think I am
+the devil?"
+
+"Yes," said Turnbull, violently. "For I think the devil is a dream,
+and so are you. I don't believe in you or your flying ship or your last
+fight of the world. It is all a nightmare. I say as a fact of dogma and
+faith that it is all a nightmare. And I will be a martyr for my faith as
+much as St. Catherine, for I will jump out of this ship and risk waking
+up safe in bed."
+
+After swaying twice with the swaying vessel he dived over the side as
+one dives into the sea. For some incredible moments stars and space and
+planets seemed to shoot up past him as the sparks fly upward; and yet in
+that sickening descent he was full of some unnatural happiness. He could
+connect it with no idea except one that half escaped him--what Evan had
+said of the difference between Christ and Satan; that it was by Christ's
+own choice that He descended into hell.
+
+When he again realized anything, he was lying on his elbow on the
+lawn of the lunatic asylum, and the last red of the sunset had not yet
+disappeared.
+
+
+
+
+XVII. THE IDIOT
+
+Evan MacIan was standing a few yards off looking at him in absolute
+silence.
+
+He had not the moral courage to ask MacIan if there had been anything
+astounding in the manner of his coming there, nor did MacIan seem to
+have any question to ask, or perhaps any need to ask it. The two men
+came slowly towards each other, and found the same expression on each
+other's faces. Then, for the first time in all their acquaintance, they
+shook hands.
+
+Almost as if this were a kind of unconscious signal, it brought Dr.
+Quayle bounding out of a door and running across the lawn.
+
+"Oh, there you are!" he exclaimed with a relieved giggle. "Will you come
+inside, please? I want to speak to you both."
+
+They followed him into his shiny wooden office where their damning
+record was kept. Dr. Quayle sat down on a swivel chair and swung round
+to face them. His carved smile had suddenly disappeared.
+
+"I will be plain with you gentlemen," he said, abruptly; "you know
+quite well we do our best for everybody here. Your cases have been under
+special consideration, and the Master himself has decided that you ought
+to be treated specially and--er--under somewhat simpler conditions."
+
+"You mean treated worse, I suppose," said Turnbull, gruffly.
+
+The doctor did not reply, and MacIan said: "I expected this." His eyes
+had begun to glow.
+
+The doctor answered, looking at his desk and playing with a key: "Well,
+in certain cases that give anxiety--it is often better----"
+
+"Give anxiety," said Turnbull, fiercely. "Confound your impudence! What
+do you mean? You imprison two perfectly sane men in a madhouse because
+you have made up a long word. They take it in good temper, walk and talk
+in your garden like monks who have found a vocation, are civil even to
+you, you damned druggists' hack! Behave not only more sanely than any of
+your patients, but more sanely than half the sane men outside, and you
+have the soul-stifling cheek to say that they give anxiety."
+
+"The head of the asylum has settled it all," said Dr. Quayle, still
+looking down.
+
+MacIan took one of his immense strides forward and stood over the doctor
+with flaming eyes.
+
+"If the head has settled it let the head announce it," he said. "I won't
+take it from you. I believe you to be a low, gibbering degenerate. Let
+us see the head of the asylum."
+
+"See the head of the asylum," repeated Dr. Quayle. "Certainly not."
+
+The tall Highlander, bending over him, put one hand on his shoulder with
+fatherly interest.
+
+"You don't seem to appreciate the peculiar advantages of my position as
+a lunatic," he said. "I could kill you with my left hand before such a
+rat as you could so much as squeak. And I wouldn't be hanged for it."
+
+"I certainly agree with Mr. MacIan," said Turnbull with sobriety and
+perfect respectfulness, "that you had better let us see the head of the
+institution."
+
+Dr. Quayle got to his feet in a mixture of sudden hysteria and clumsy
+presence of mind.
+
+"Oh, certainly," he said with a weak laugh. "You can see the head of the
+asylum if you particularly want to." He almost ran out of the room,
+and the two followed swiftly on his flying coat tails. He knocked at an
+ordinary varnished door in the corridor. When a voice said, "Come in,"
+MacIan's breath went hissing back through his teeth into his chest.
+Turnbull was more impetuous, and opened the door.
+
+It was a neat and well-appointed room entirely lined with a medical
+library. At the other end of it was a ponderous and polished desk with
+an incandescent lamp on it, the light of which was just sufficient
+to show a slender, well-bred figure in an ordinary medical black
+frock-coat, whose head, quite silvered with age, was bent over neat
+piles of notes. This gentleman looked up for an instant as they
+entered, and the lamplight fell on his glittering spectacles and
+long, clean-shaven face--a face which would have been simply like an
+aristocrat's but that a certain lion poise of the head and long cleft in
+the chin made it look more like a very handsome actor's. It was only for
+a flash that his face was thus lifted. Then he bent his silver head over
+his notes once more, and said, without looking up again:
+
+"I told you, Dr. Quayle, that these men were to go to cells B and C."
+
+Turnbull and MacIan looked at each other, and said more than they could
+ever say with tongues or swords. Among other things they said that
+to that particular Head of the institution it was a waste of time to
+appeal, and they followed Dr. Quayle out of the room.
+
+The instant they stepped out into the corridor four sturdy figures
+stepped from four sides, pinioned them, and ran them along the
+galleries. They might very likely have thrown their captors right and
+left had they been inclined to resist, but for some nameless reason
+they were more inclined to laugh. A mixture of mad irony with childish
+curiosity made them feel quite inclined to see what next twist would
+be taken by their imbecile luck. They were dragged down countless cold
+avenues lined with glazed tiles, different only in being of different
+lengths and set at different angles. They were so many and so monotonous
+that to escape back by them would have been far harder than fleeing from
+the Hampton Court maze. Only the fact that windows grew fewer, coming
+at longer intervals, and the fact that when the windows did come they
+seemed shadowed and let in less light, showed that they were winding
+into the core or belly of some enormous building. After a little time
+the glazed corridors began to be lit by electricity.
+
+At last, when they had walked nearly a mile in those white and polished
+tunnels, they came with quite a shock to the futile finality of a
+cul-de-sac. All that white and weary journey ended suddenly in an oblong
+space and a blank white wall. But in the white wall there were two iron
+doors painted white on which were written, respectively, in neat black
+capitals B and C.
+
+"You go in here, sir," said the leader of the officials, quite
+respectfully, "and you in here."
+
+But before the doors had clanged upon their dazed victims, MacIan had
+been able to say to Turnbull with a strange drawl of significance: "I
+wonder who A is."
+
+Turnbull made an automatic struggle before he allowed himself to be
+thrown into the cell. Hence it happened that he was the last to enter,
+and was still full of the exhilaration of the adventures for at least
+five minutes after the echo of the clanging door had died away.
+
+Then, when silence had sunk deep and nothing happened for two and a half
+hours, it suddenly occurred to him that this was the end of his life. He
+was hidden and sealed up in this little crack of stone until the flesh
+should fall off his bones. He was dead, and the world had won.
+
+His cell was of an oblong shape, but very long in comparison with its
+width. It was just wide enough to permit the arms to be fully extended
+with the dumb-bells, which were hung up on the left wall, very dusty. It
+was, however, long enough for a man to walk one thirty-fifth part of a
+mile if he traversed it entirely. On the same principle a row of fixed
+holes, quite close together, let in to the cells by pipes what was
+alleged to be the freshest air. For these great scientific organizers
+insisted that a man should be healthy even if he was miserable. They
+provided a walk long enough to give him exercise and holes large enough
+to give him oxygen. There their interest in human nature suddenly
+ceased. It seemed never to have occurred to them that the benefit
+of exercise belongs partly to the benefit of liberty. They had not
+entertained the suggestion that the open air is only one of the
+advantages of the open sky. They administered air in secret, but in
+sufficient doses, as if it were a medicine. They suggested walking,
+as if no man had ever felt inclined to walk. Above all, the asylum
+authorities insisted on their own extraordinary cleanliness. Every
+morning, while Turnbull was still half asleep on his iron bedstead
+which was lifted half-way up the wall and clamped to it with iron, four
+sluices or metal mouths opened above him at the four corners of the
+chamber and washed it white of any defilement. Turnbull's solitary soul
+surged up against this sickening daily solemnity.
+
+"I am buried alive!" he cried, bitterly; "they have hidden me under
+mountains. I shall be here till I rot. Why the blazes should it matter
+to them whether I am dirty or clean."
+
+Every morning and evening an iron hatchway opened in his oblong cell,
+and a brown hairy hand or two thrust in a plate of perfectly cooked
+lentils and a big bowl of cocoa. He was not underfed any more than he
+was underexercised or asphyxiated. He had ample walking space, ample
+air, ample and even filling food. The only objection was that he had
+nothing to walk towards, nothing to feast about, and no reason whatever
+for drawing the breath of life.
+
+Even the shape of his cell especially irritated him. It was a long,
+narrow parallelogram, which had a flat wall at one end and ought to
+have had a flat wall at the other; but that end was broken by a wedge or
+angle of space, like the prow of a ship. After three days of silence and
+cocoa, this angle at the end began to infuriate Turnbull. It maddened
+him to think that two lines came together and pointed at nothing. After
+the fifth day he was reckless, and poked his head into the corner. After
+twenty-five days he almost broke his head against it. Then he became
+quite cool and stupid again, and began to examine it like a sort of
+Robinson Crusoe.
+
+Almost unconsciously it was his instinct to examine outlets, and he
+found himself paying particular attention to the row of holes which let
+in the air into his last house of life. He soon discovered that these
+air-holes were all the ends and mouths of long leaden tubes which
+doubtless carried air from some remote watering-place near Margate.
+One evening while he was engaged in the fifth investigation he noticed
+something like twilight in one of these dumb mouths, as compared with
+the darkness of the others. Thrusting his finger in as far as it would
+go, he found a hole and flapping edge in the tube. This he rent open and
+instantly saw a light behind; it was at least certain that he had struck
+some other cell.
+
+It is a characteristic of all things now called "efficient", which means
+mechanical and calculated, that if they go wrong at all they go entirely
+wrong. There is no power of retrieving a defeat, as in simpler and more
+living organisms. A strong gun can conquer a strong elephant, but a
+wounded elephant can easily conquer a broken gun. Thus the Prussian
+monarchy in the eighteenth century, or now, can make a strong army
+merely by making the men afraid. But it does it with the permanent
+possibility that the men may some day be more afraid of their enemies
+than of their officers. Thus the drainage in our cities so long as it
+is quite solid means a general safety, but if there is one leak it means
+concentrated poison--an explosion of deathly germs like dynamite, a
+spirit of stink. Thus, indeed, all that excellent machinery which is the
+swiftest thing on earth in saving human labour is also the slowest
+thing on earth in resisting human interference. It may be easier to
+get chocolate for nothing out of a shopkeeper than out of an automatic
+machine. But if you did manage to steal the chocolate, the automatic
+machine would be much less likely to run after you.
+
+Turnbull was not long in discovering this truth in connexion with the
+cold and colossal machinery of this great asylum. He had been shaken
+by many spiritual states since the instant when he was pitched head
+foremost into that private cell which was to be his private room till
+death. He had felt a high fit of pride and poetry, which had ebbed
+away and left him deadly cold. He had known a period of mere scientific
+curiosity, in the course of which he examined all the tiles of his cell,
+with the gratifying conclusion that they were all the same shape and
+size; but was greatly puzzled about the angle in the wall at the end,
+and also about an iron peg or spike that stood out from the wall, the
+object of which he does not know to this day. Then he had a period of
+mere madness not to be written of by decent men, but only by those few
+dirty novelists hallooed on by the infernal huntsman to hunt down and
+humiliate human nature. This also passed, but left behind it a feverish
+distaste for many of the mere objects around him. Long after he had
+returned to sanity and such hopeless cheerfulness as a man might have on
+a desert island, he disliked the regular squares of the pattern of wall
+and floor and the triangle that terminated his corridor. Above all, he
+had a hatred, deep as the hell he did not believe in, for the objectless
+iron peg in the wall.
+
+But in all his moods, sane or insane, intolerant or stoical, he
+never really doubted this: that the machine held him as light and as
+hopelessly as he had from his birth been held by the hopeless cosmos of
+his own creed. He knew well the ruthless and inexhaustible resources of
+our scientific civilization. He no more expected rescue from a medical
+certificate than rescue from the solar system. In many of his Robinson
+Crusoe moods he thought kindly of MacIan as of some quarrelsome
+school-fellow who had long been dead. He thought of leaving in the cell
+when he died a rigid record of his opinions, and when he began to
+write them down on scraps of envelope in his pocket, he was startled
+to discover how much they had changed. Then he remembered the Beauchamp
+Tower, and tried to write his blazing scepticism on the wall, and
+discovered that it was all shiny tiles on which nothing could be either
+drawn or carved. Then for an instant there hung and broke above him like
+a high wave the whole horror of scientific imprisonment, which manages
+to deny a man not only liberty, but every accidental comfort of bondage.
+In the old filthy dungeons men could carve their prayers or protests in
+the rock. Here the white and slippery walls escaped even from bearing
+witness. The old prisoners could make a pet of a mouse or a beetle
+strayed out of a hole. Here the unpierceable walls were washed every
+morning by an automatic sluice. There was no natural corruption and
+no merciful decay by which a living thing could enter in. Then James
+Turnbull looked up and saw the high invincible hatefulness of the
+society in which he lived, and saw the hatefulness of something else
+also, which he told himself again and again was not the cosmos in which
+he believed. But all the time he had never once doubted that the five
+sides of his cell were for him the wall of the world henceforward, and
+it gave him a shock of surprise even to discover the faint light through
+the aperture in the ventilation tube. But he had forgotten how close
+efficiency has to pack everything together and how easily, therefore, a
+pipe here or there may leak.
+
+Turnbull thrust his first finger down the aperture, and at last managed
+to make a slight further fissure in the piping. The light that came up
+from beyond was very faint, and apparently indirect; it seemed to fall
+from some hole or window higher up. As he was screwing his eye to peer
+at this grey and greasy twilight he was astonished to see another human
+finger very long and lean come down from above towards the broken pipe
+and hook it up to something higher. The lighted aperture was abruptly
+blackened and blocked, presumably by a face and mouth, for something
+human spoke down the tube, though the words were not clear.
+
+"Who is that?" asked Turnbull, trembling with excitement, yet wary and
+quite resolved not to spoil any chance.
+
+After a few indistinct sounds the voice came down with a strong
+Argyllshire accent:
+
+"I say, Turnbull, we couldn't fight through this tube, could we?"
+
+Sentiments beyond speech surged up in Turnbull and silenced him for a
+space just long enough to be painful. Then he said with his old gaiety:
+"I vote we talk a little first; I don't want to murder the first man I
+have met for ten million years."
+
+"I know what you mean," answered the other. "It has been awful. For a
+mortal month I have been alone with God."
+
+Turnbull started, and it was on the tip of his tongue to answer: "Alone
+with God! Then you do not know what loneliness is."
+
+But he answered, after all, in his old defiant style: "Alone with
+God, were you? And I suppose you found his Majesty's society rather
+monotonous?"
+
+"Oh, no," said MacIan, and his voice shuddered; "it was a great deal too
+exciting."
+
+After a very long silence the voice of MacIan said: "What do you really
+hate most in your place?"
+
+"You'd think I was really mad if I told you," answered Turnbull,
+bitterly.
+
+"Then I expect it's the same as mine," said the other voice.
+
+"I am sure it's not the same as anybody's," said Turnbull, "for it has
+no rhyme or reason. Perhaps my brain really has gone, but I detest
+that iron spike in the left wall more than the damned desolation or the
+damned cocoa. Have you got one in your cell?"
+
+"Not now," replied MacIan with serenity. "I've pulled it out."
+
+His fellow-prisoner could only repeat the words.
+
+"I pulled it out the other day when I was off my head," continued the
+tranquil Highland voice. "It looked so unnecessary."
+
+"You must be ghastly strong," said Turnbull.
+
+"One is, when one is mad," was the careless reply, "and it had worn a
+little loose in the socket. Even now I've got it out I can't discover
+what it was for. But I've found out something a long sight funnier."
+
+"What do you mean?" asked Turnbull.
+
+"I have found out where A is," said the other.
+
+Three weeks afterwards MacIan had managed to open up communications
+which made his meaning plain. By that time the two captives had fully
+discovered and demonstrated that weakness in the very nature of modern
+machinery to which we have already referred. The very fact that they
+were isolated from all companions meant that they were free from all
+spies, and as there were no gaolers to be bribed, so there were none to
+be baffled. Machinery brought them their cocoa and cleaned their cells;
+that machinery was as helpless as it was pitiless. A little patient
+violence, conducted day after day amid constant mutual suggestion,
+opened an irregular hole in the wall, large enough to let in a small
+man, in the exact place where there had been before the tiny ventilation
+holes. Turnbull tumbled somehow into MacIan's apartment, and his first
+glance found out that the iron spike was indeed plucked from its socket,
+and left, moreover, another ragged hole into some hollow place behind.
+But for this MacIan's cell was the duplicate of Turnbull's--a long
+oblong ending in a wedge and lined with cold and lustrous tiles. The
+small hole from which the peg had been displaced was in that short
+oblique wall at the end nearest to Turnbull's. That individual looked at
+it with a puzzled face.
+
+"What is in there?" he asked.
+
+MacIan answered briefly: "Another cell."
+
+"But where can the door of it be?" said his companion, even more
+puzzled; "the doors of our cells are at the other end."
+
+"It has no door," said Evan.
+
+In the pause of perplexity that followed, an eerie and sinister feeling
+crept over Turnbull's stubborn soul in spite of himself. The notion of
+the doorless room chilled him with that sense of half-witted curiosity
+which one has when something horrible is half understood.
+
+"James Turnbull," said MacIan, in a low and shaken voice, "these people
+hate us more than Nero hated Christians, and fear us more than any man
+feared Nero. They have filled England with frenzy and galloping in order
+to capture us and wipe us out--in order to kill us. And they have killed
+us, for you and I have only made a hole in our coffins. But though this
+hatred that they felt for us is bigger than they felt for Bonaparte, and
+more plain and practical than they would feel for Jack the Ripper, yet
+it is not we whom the people of this place hate most."
+
+A cold and quivering impatience continued to crawl up Turnbull's spine;
+he had never felt so near to superstition and supernaturalism, and it
+was not a pretty sort of superstition either.
+
+"There is another man more fearful and hateful," went on MacIan, in his
+low monotone voice, "and they have buried him even deeper. God knows how
+they did it, for he was let in by neither door nor window, nor lowered
+through any opening above. I expect these iron handles that we both hate
+have been part of some damned machinery for walling him up. He is there.
+I have looked through the hole at him; but I cannot stand looking at him
+long, because his face is turned away from me and he does not move."
+
+Al Turnbull's unnatural and uncompleted feelings found their outlet in
+rushing to the aperture and looking into the unknown room.
+
+It was a third oblong cell exactly like the other two except that it was
+doorless, and except that on one of the walls was painted a large black
+A like the B and C outside their own doors. The letter in this case was
+not painted outside, because this prison had no outside.
+
+On the same kind of tiled floor, of which the monotonous squares had
+maddened Turnbull's eye and brain, was sitting a figure which was
+startlingly short even for a child, only that the enormous head
+was ringed with hair of a frosty grey. The figure was draped, both
+insecurely and insufficiently, in what looked like the remains of a
+brown flannel dressing-gown; an emptied cup of cocoa stood on the floor
+beside it, and the creature had his big grey head cocked at a particular
+angle of inquiry or attention which amid all that gathering gloom and
+mystery struck one as comic if not cocksure.
+
+After six still seconds Turnbull could stand it no longer, but called
+out to the dwarfish thing--in what words heaven knows. The thing got
+up with the promptitude of an animal, and turning round offered the
+spectacle of two owlish eyes and a huge grey-and-white beard not unlike
+the plumage of an owl. This extraordinary beard covered him literally to
+his feet (not that that was very far), and perhaps it was as well
+that it did, for portions of his remaining clothing seemed to fall off
+whenever he moved. One talks trivially of a face like parchment, but
+this old man's face was so wrinkled that it was like a parchment loaded
+with hieroglyphics. The lines of his face were so deep and complex that
+one could see five or ten different faces besides the real one, as one
+can see them in an elaborate wall-paper. And yet while his face seemed
+like a scripture older than the gods, his eyes were quite bright, blue,
+and startled like those of a baby. They looked as if they had only an
+instant before been fitted into his head.
+
+Everything depended so obviously upon whether this buried monster spoke
+that Turnbull did not know or care whether he himself had spoken. He
+said something or nothing. And then he waited for this dwarfish voice
+that had been hidden under the mountains of the world. At last it did
+speak, and spoke in English, with a foreign accent that was neither
+Latin nor Teutonic. He suddenly stretched out a long and very dirty
+forefinger, and cried in a voice of clear recognition, like a child's:
+"That's a hole."
+
+He digested the discovery for some seconds, sucking his finger, and then
+he cried, with a crow of laughter: "And that's a head come through it."
+
+The hilarious energy in this idiot attitude gave Turnbull another sick
+turn. He had grown to tolerate those dreary and mumbling madmen who
+trailed themselves about the beautiful asylum gardens. But there was
+something new and subversive of the universe in the combination of so
+much cheerful decision with a body without a brain.
+
+"Why did they put you in such a place?" he asked at last with
+embarrassment.
+
+"Good place. Yes," said the old man, nodding a great many times and
+beaming like a flattered landlord. "Good shape. Long and narrow, with a
+point. Like this," and he made lovingly with his hands a map of the room
+in the air.
+
+"But that's not the best," he added, confidentially. "Squares very
+good; I have a nice long holiday, and can count them. But that's not the
+best."
+
+"What is the best?" asked Turnbull in great distress.
+
+"Spike is the best," said the old man, opening his blue eyes blazing;
+"it sticks out."
+
+The words Turnbull spoke broke out of him in pure pity. "Can't we do
+anything for you?" he said.
+
+"I am very happy," said the other, alphabetically. "You are a good man.
+Can I help you?"
+
+"No, I don't think you can, sir," said Turnbull with rough pathos; "I am
+glad you are contented at least."
+
+The weird old person opened his broad blue eyes and fixed Turnbull with
+a stare extraordinarily severe. "You are quite sure," he said, "I cannot
+help you?"
+
+"Quite sure, thank you," said Turnbull with broken brevity. "Good day."
+
+Then he turned to MacIan who was standing close behind him, and whose
+face, now familiar in all its moods, told him easily that Evan had heard
+the whole of the strange dialogue.
+
+"Curse those cruel beasts!" cried Turnbull. "They've turned him to an
+imbecile just by burying him alive. His brain's like a pin-point now."
+
+"You are sure he is a lunatic?" said Evan, slowly.
+
+"Not a lunatic," said Turnbull, "an idiot. He just points to things and
+says that they stick out."
+
+"He had a notion that he could help us," said MacIan moodily, and began
+to pace towards the other end of his cell.
+
+"Yes, it was a bit pathetic," assented Turnbull; "such a Thing offering
+help, and besides---- Hallo! Hallo! What's the matter?"
+
+"God Almighty guide us all!" said MacIan.
+
+He was standing heavy and still at the other end of the room and staring
+quietly at the door which for thirty days had sealed them up from the
+sun. Turnbull, following the other's eye, stared at the door likewise,
+and then he also uttered an exclamation. The iron door was standing
+about an inch and a half open.
+
+"He said----" began Evan, in a trembling voice--"he offered----"
+
+"Come along, you fool!" shouted Turnbull with a sudden and furious
+energy. "I see it all now, and it's the best stroke of luck in the
+world. You pulled out that iron handle that had screwed up his cell, and
+it somehow altered the machinery and opened all the doors."
+
+Seizing MacIan by the elbow he bundled him bodily out into the open
+corridor and ran him on till they saw daylight through a half-darkened
+window.
+
+"All the same," said Evan, like one answering in an ordinary
+conversation, "he did ask you whether he could help you."
+
+All this wilderness of windowless passages was so built into the heart
+of that fortress of fear that it seemed more than an hour before the
+fugitives had any good glimpse of the outer world. They did not even
+know what hour of the day it was; and when, turning a corner, they saw
+the bare tunnel of the corridor end abruptly in a shining square of
+garden, the grass burning in that strong evening sunshine which makes
+it burnished gold rather than green, the abrupt opening on to the earth
+seemed like a hole knocked in the wall of heaven. Only once or twice
+in life is it permitted to a man thus to see the very universe from
+outside, and feel existence itself as an adorable adventure not yet
+begun. As they found this shining escape out of that hellish labyrinth
+they both had simultaneously the sensation of being babes unborn, of
+being asked by God if they would like to live upon the earth. They were
+looking in at one of the seven gates of Eden.
+
+Turnbull was the first to leap into the garden, with an earth-spurning
+leap like that of one who could really spread his wings and fly. MacIan,
+who came an instant after, was less full of mere animal gusto and fuller
+of a more fearful and quivering pleasure in the clear and innocent
+flower colours and the high and holy trees. With one bound they were in
+that cool and cleared landscape, and they found just outside the door
+the black-clad gentleman with the cloven chin smilingly regarding them;
+and his chin seemed to grow longer and longer as he smiled.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII. A RIDDLE OF FACES
+
+Just behind him stood two other doctors: one, the familiar Dr. Quayle,
+of the blinking eyes and bleating voice; the other, a more commonplace
+but much more forcible figure, a stout young doctor with short,
+well-brushed hair and a round but resolute face. At the sight of the
+escape these two subordinates uttered a cry and sprang forward, but
+their superior remained motionless and smiling, and somehow the lack
+of his support seemed to arrest and freeze them in the very gesture of
+pursuit.
+
+"Let them be," he cried in a voice that cut like a blade of ice; and not
+only of ice, but of some awful primordial ice that had never been water.
+
+"I want no devoted champions," said the cutting voice; "even the folly
+of one's friends bores one at last. You don't suppose I should have let
+these lunatics out of their cells without good reason. I have the best
+and fullest reason. They can be let out of their cell today, because
+today the whole world has become their cell. I will have no more
+medieval mummery of chains and doors. Let them wander about the earth as
+they wandered about this garden, and I shall still be their easy master.
+Let them take the wings of the morning and abide in the uttermost parts
+of the sea--I am there. Whither shall they go from my presence and
+whither shall they flee from my spirit? Courage, Dr. Quayle, and do
+not be downhearted; the real days of tyranny are only beginning on this
+earth."
+
+And with that the Master laughed and swung away from them, almost as if
+his laugh was a bad thing for people to see.
+
+"Might I speak to you a moment?" said Turnbull, stepping forward with
+a respectful resolution. But the shoulders of the Master only seemed to
+take on a new and unexpected angle of mockery as he strode away.
+
+Turnbull swung round with great abruptness to the other two doctors, and
+said, harshly: "What in snakes does he mean--and who are you?"
+
+"My name is Hutton," said the short, stout man, "and I am--well, one of
+those whose business it is to uphold this establishment."
+
+"My name is Turnbull," said the other; "I am one of those whose business
+it is to tear it to the ground."
+
+The small doctor smiled, and Turnbull's anger seemed suddenly to steady
+him.
+
+"But I don't want to talk about that," he said, calmly; "I only want to
+know what the Master of this asylum really means."
+
+Dr. Hutton's smile broke into a laugh which, short as it was, had the
+suspicion of a shake in it. "I suppose you think that quite a simple
+question," he said.
+
+"I think it a plain question," said Turnbull, "and one that deserves
+a plain answer. Why did the Master lock us up in a couple of cupboards
+like jars of pickles for a mortal month, and why does he now let us walk
+free in the garden again?"
+
+"I understand," said Hutton, with arched eyebrows, "that your complaint
+is that you are now free to walk in the garden."
+
+"My complaint is," said Turnbull, stubbornly, "that if I am fit to walk
+freely now, I have been as fit for the last month. No one has examined
+me, no one has come near me. Your chief says that I am only free because
+he has made other arrangements. What are those arrangements?"
+
+The young man with the round face looked down for a little while
+and smoked reflectively. The other and elder doctor had gone pacing
+nervously by himself upon the lawn. At length the round face was lifted
+again, and showed two round blue eyes with a certain frankness in them.
+
+"Well, I don't see that it can do any harm to tell you know," he said.
+"You were shut up just then because it was just during that month that
+the Master was bringing off his big scheme. He was getting his bill
+through Parliament, and organizing the new medical police. But of course
+you haven't heard of all that; in fact, you weren't meant to."
+
+"Heard of all what?" asked the impatient inquirer.
+
+"There's a new law now, and the asylum powers are greatly extended. Even
+if you did escape now, any policeman would take you up in the next town
+if you couldn't show a certificate of sanity from us."
+
+"Well," continued Dr. Hutton, "the Master described before both Houses
+of Parliament the real scientific objection to all existing legislation
+about lunacy. As he very truly said, the mistake was in supposing
+insanity to be merely an exception or an extreme. Insanity, like
+forgetfulness, is simply a quality which enters more or less into all
+human beings; and for practical purposes it is more necessary to know
+whose mind is really trustworthy than whose has some accidental taint.
+We have therefore reversed the existing method, and people now have to
+prove that they are sane. In the first village you entered, the village
+constable would notice that you were not wearing on the left lapel of
+your coat the small pewter S which is now necessary to any one who walks
+about beyond asylum bounds or outside asylum hours."
+
+"You mean to say," said Turnbull, "that this was what the Master of the
+asylum urged before the House of Commons?"
+
+Dr. Hutton nodded with gravity.
+
+"And you mean to say," cried Turnbull, with a vibrant snort, "that that
+proposal was passed in an assembly that calls itself democratic?"
+
+The doctor showed his whole row of teeth in a smile. "Oh, the assembly
+calls itself Socialist now," he said, "But we explained to them that
+this was a question for men of science."
+
+Turnbull gave one stamp upon the gravel, then pulled himself together,
+and resumed: "But why should your infernal head medicine-man lock us up
+in separate cells while he was turning England into a madhouse? I'm not
+the Prime Minister; we're not the House of Lords."
+
+"He wasn't afraid of the Prime Minister," replied Dr. Hutton; "he isn't
+afraid of the House of Lords. But----"
+
+"Well?" inquired Turnbull, stamping again.
+
+"He is afraid of you," said Hutton, simply. "Why, didn't you know?"
+
+MacIan, who had not spoken yet, made one stride forward and stood with
+shaking limbs and shining eyes.
+
+"He was afraid!" began Evan, thickly. "You mean to say that we----"
+
+"I mean to say the plain truth now that the danger is over," said
+Hutton, calmly; "most certainly you two were the only people he ever
+was afraid of." Then he added in a low but not inaudible voice: "Except
+one--whom he feared worse, and has buried deeper."
+
+"Come away," cried MacIan, "this has to be thought about."
+
+Turnbull followed him in silence as he strode away, but just before he
+vanished, turned and spoke again to the doctors.
+
+"But what has got hold of people?" he asked, abruptly. "Why should all
+England have gone dotty on the mere subject of dottiness?"
+
+Dr. Hutton smiled his open smile once more and bowed slightly. "As to
+that also," he replied, "I don't want to make you vain."
+
+Turnbull swung round without a word, and he and his companion were lost
+in the lustrous leafage of the garden. They noticed nothing special
+about the scene, except that the garden seemed more exquisite than ever
+in the deepening sunset, and that there seemed to be many more people,
+whether patients or attendants, walking about in it.
+
+From behind the two black-coated doctors as they stood on the lawn
+another figure somewhat similarly dressed strode hurriedly past them,
+having also grizzled hair and an open flapping frock-coat. Both his
+decisive step and dapper black array marked him out as another medical
+man, or at least a man in authority, and as he passed Turnbull the
+latter was aroused by a strong impression of having seen the man
+somewhere before. It was no one that he knew well, yet he was certain
+that it was someone at whom he had at sometime or other looked steadily.
+It was neither the face of a friend nor of an enemy; it aroused neither
+irritation nor tenderness, yet it was a face which had for some reason
+been of great importance in his life. Turning and returning, and making
+detours about the garden, he managed to study the man's face again and
+again--a moustached, somewhat military face with a monocle, the sort of
+face that is aristocratic without being distinguished. Turnbull could
+not remember any particular doctors in his decidedly healthy existence.
+Was the man a long-lost uncle, or was he only somebody who had sat
+opposite him regularly in a railway train? At that moment the man
+knocked down his own eye-glass with a gesture of annoyance; Turnbull
+remembered the gesture, and the truth sprang up solid in front of him.
+The man with the moustaches was Cumberland Vane, the London police
+magistrate before whom he and MacIan had once stood on their trial. The
+magistrate must have been transferred to some other official duties--to
+something connected with the inspection of asylums.
+
+Turnbull's heart gave a leap of excitement which was half hope. As a
+magistrate Mr. Cumberland Vane had been somewhat careless and shallow,
+but certainly kindly, and not inaccessible to common sense so long as
+it was put to him in strictly conventional language. He was at least an
+authority of a more human and refreshing sort than the crank with the
+wagging beard or the fiend with the forked chin.
+
+He went straight up to the magistrate, and said: "Good evening, Mr.
+Vane; I doubt if you remember me."
+
+Cumberland Vane screwed the eye-glass into his scowling face for an
+instant, and then said curtly but not uncivilly: "Yes, I remember you,
+sir; assault or battery, wasn't it?--a fellow broke your window. A tall
+fellow--McSomething--case made rather a noise afterwards."
+
+"MacIan is the name, sir," said Turnbull, respectfully; "I have him here
+with me."
+
+"Eh!" said Vane very sharply. "Confound him! Has he got anything to do
+with this game?"
+
+"Mr. Vane," said Turnbull, pacifically, "I will not pretend that either
+he or I acted quite decorously on that occasion. You were very lenient
+with us, and did not treat us as criminals when you very well might.
+So I am sure you will give us your testimony that, even if we were
+criminals, we are not lunatics in any legal or medical sense whatever. I
+am sure you will use your influence for us."
+
+"My influence!" repeated the magistrate, with a slight start. "I don't
+quite understand you."
+
+"I don't know in what capacity you are here," continued Turnbull,
+gravely, "but a legal authority of your distinction must certainly be
+here in an important one. Whether you are visiting and inspecting the
+place, or attached to it as some kind of permanent legal adviser, your
+opinion must still----"
+
+Cumberland Vane exploded with a detonation of oaths; his face was
+transfigured with fury and contempt, and yet in some odd way he did not
+seem specially angry with Turnbull.
+
+"But Lord bless us and save us!" he gasped, at length; "I'm not here
+as an official at all. I'm here as a patient. The cursed pack of
+rat-catching chemists all say that I've lost my wits."
+
+"You!" cried Turnbull with terrible emphasis. "You! Lost your wits!"
+
+In the rush of his real astonishment at this towering unreality Turnbull
+almost added: "Why, you haven't got any to lose." But he fortunately
+remembered the remains of his desperate diplomacy.
+
+"This can't go on," he said, positively. "Men like MacIan and I may
+suffer unjustly all our lives, but a man like you must have influence."
+
+"There is only one man who has any influence in England now," said Vane,
+and his high voice fell to a sudden and convincing quietude.
+
+"Whom do you mean?" asked Turnbull.
+
+"I mean that cursed fellow with the long split chin," said the other.
+
+"Is it really true," asked Turnbull, "that he has been allowed to buy up
+and control such a lot? What put the country into such a state?"
+
+Mr. Cumberland Vane laughed outright. "What put the country into such a
+state?" he asked. "Why, you did. When you were fool enough to agree to
+fight MacIan, after all, everybody was ready to believe that the Bank of
+England might paint itself pink with white spots."
+
+"I don't understand," answered Turnbull. "Why should you be surprised at
+my fighting? I hope I have always fought."
+
+"Well," said Cumberland Vane, airily, "you didn't believe in religion,
+you see--so we thought you were safe at any rate. You went further in
+your language than most of us wanted to go; no good in just hurting
+one's mother's feelings, I think. But of course we all knew you were
+right, and, really, we relied on you."
+
+"Did you?" said the editor of _The Atheist_ with a bursting heart. "I am
+sorry you did not tell me so at the time."
+
+He walked away very rapidly and flung himself on a garden seat, and for
+some six minutes his own wrongs hid from him the huge and hilarious fact
+that Cumberland Vane had been locked up as a lunatic.
+
+The garden of the madhouse was so perfectly planned, and answered so
+exquisitely to every hour of daylight, that one could almost fancy that
+the sunlight was caught there tangled in its tinted trees, as the wise
+men of Gotham tried to chain the spring to a bush. Or it seemed as if
+this ironic paradise still kept its unique dawn or its special sunset
+while the rest of the earthly globe rolled through its ordinary hours.
+There was one evening, or late afternoon, in particular, which Evan
+MacIan will remember in the last moments of death. It was what artists
+call a daffodil sky, but it is coarsened even by reference to a
+daffodil. It was of that innocent lonely yellow which has never heard of
+orange, though it might turn quite unconsciously into green. Against it
+the tops, one might say the turrets, of the clipt and ordered trees
+were outlined in that shade of veiled violet which tints the tops of
+lavender. A white early moon was hardly traceable upon that delicate
+yellow. MacIan, I say, will remember this tender and transparent
+evening, partly because of its virgin gold and silver, and partly
+because he passed beneath it through the most horrible instant of his
+life.
+
+Turnbull was sitting on his seat on the lawn, and the golden evening
+impressed even his positive nature, as indeed it might have impressed
+the oxen in a field. He was shocked out of his idle mood of awe by
+seeing MacIan break from behind the bushes and run across the lawn with
+an action he had never seen in the man before, with all his experience
+of the eccentric humours of this Celt. MacIan fell on the bench,
+shaking it so that it rattled, and gripped it with his knees like one in
+dreadful pain of body. That particular run and tumble is typical only of
+a man who has been hit by some sudden and incurable evil, who is bitten
+by a viper or condemned to be hanged. Turnbull looked up in the white
+face of his friend and enemy, and almost turned cold at what he saw
+there. He had seen the blue but gloomy eyes of the western Highlander
+troubled by as many tempests as his own west Highland seas, but there
+had always been a fixed star of faith behind the storms. Now the star
+had gone out, and there was only misery.
+
+Yet MacIan had the strength to answer the question where Turnbull, taken
+by surprise, had not the strength to ask it.
+
+"They are right, they are right!" he cried. "O my God! they are right,
+Turnbull. I ought to be here!"
+
+He went on with shapeless fluency as if he no longer had the heart to
+choose or check his speech. "I suppose I ought to have guessed long
+ago--all my big dreams and schemes--and everyone being against us--but I
+was stuck up, you know."
+
+"Do tell me about it, really," cried the atheist, and, faced with the
+furnace of the other's pain, he did not notice that he spoke with the
+affection of a father.
+
+"I am mad, Turnbull," said Evan, with a dead clearness of speech, and
+leant back against the garden seat.
+
+"Nonsense," said the other, clutching at the obvious cue of benevolent
+brutality, "this is one of your silly moods."
+
+MacIan shook his head. "I know enough about myself," he said, "to allow
+for any mood, though it opened heaven or hell. But to see things--to see
+them walking solid in the sun--things that can't be there--real mystics
+never do that, Turnbull."
+
+"What things?" asked the other, incredulously.
+
+MacIan lowered his voice. "I saw _her_," he said, "three minutes
+ago--walking here in this hell yard."
+
+Between trying to look scornful and really looking startled, Turnbull's
+face was confused enough to emit no speech, and Evan went on in
+monotonous sincerity:
+
+"I saw her walk behind those blessed trees against that holy sky of gold
+as plain as I can see her whenever I shut my eyes. I did shut them,
+and opened them again, and she was still there--that is, of course, she
+wasn't---- She still had a little fur round her neck, but her dress was
+a shade brighter than when I really saw her."
+
+"My dear fellow," cried Turnbull, rallying a hearty laugh, "the fancies
+have really got hold of you. You mistook some other poor girl here for
+her."
+
+"Mistook some other----" said MacIan, and words failed him altogether.
+
+They sat for some moments in the mellow silence of the evening garden,
+a silence that was stifling for the sceptic, but utterly empty and final
+for the man of faith. At last he broke out again with the words: "Well,
+anyhow, if I'm mad, I'm glad I'm mad on that."
+
+Turnbull murmured some clumsy deprecation, and sat stolidly smoking to
+collect his thoughts; the next instant he had all his nerves engaged in
+the mere effort to sit still.
+
+Across the clear space of cold silver and a pale lemon sky which was
+left by the gap in the ilex-trees there passed a slim, dark figure, a
+profile and the poise of a dark head like a bird's, which really pinned
+him to his seat with the point of coincidence. With an effort he got
+to his feet, and said with a voice of affected insouciance: "By George!
+MacIan, she is uncommonly like----"
+
+"What!" cried MacIan, with a leap of eagerness that was heart-breaking,
+"do you see her, too?" And the blaze came back into the centre of his
+eyes.
+
+Turnbull's tawny eyebrows were pulled together with a peculiar frown of
+curiosity, and all at once he walked quickly across the lawn. MacIan sat
+rigid, but peered after him with open and parched lips. He saw the sight
+which either proved him sane or proved the whole universe half-witted;
+he saw the man of flesh approach that beautiful phantom, saw their
+gestures of recognition, and saw them against the sunset joining hands.
+
+He could stand it no longer, but ran across to the path, turned the
+corner and saw standing quite palpable in the evening sunlight, talking
+with a casual grace to Turnbull, the face and figure which had filled
+his midnights with frightfully vivid or desperately half-forgotten
+features. She advanced quite pleasantly and coolly, and put out her
+hand. The moment that he touched it he knew that he was sane even if the
+solar system was crazy.
+
+She was entirely elegant and unembarrassed. That is the awful thing
+about women--they refuse to be emotional at emotional moments, upon some
+such ludicrous pretext as there being someone else there. But MacIan was
+in a condition of criticism much less than the average masculine one,
+being in fact merely overturned by the rushing riddle of the events.
+
+Evan does not know to this day what particular question he asked, but
+he vividly remembers that she answered, and every line or fluctuation of
+her face as she said it.
+
+"Oh, don't you know?" she said, smiling, and suddenly lifting her level
+brown eyebrows. "Haven't you heard the news? I'm a lunatic."
+
+Then she added after a short pause, and with a sort of pride: "I've got
+a certificate."
+
+Her manner, by the matchless social stoicism of her sex, was entirely
+suited to a drawing-room, but Evan's reply fell somewhat far short of
+such a standard, as he only said: "What the devil in hell does all this
+nonsense mean?"
+
+"Really," said the young lady, and laughed.
+
+"I beg your pardon," said the unhappy young man, rather wildly, "but
+what I mean is, why are you here in an asylum?"
+
+The young woman broke again into one of the maddening and mysterious
+laughs of femininity. Then she composed her features, and replied with
+equal dignity: "Well, if it comes to that, why are you?"
+
+The fact that Turnbull had strolled away and was investigating
+rhododendrons may have been due to Evan's successful prayers to the
+other world, or possibly to his own pretty successful experience of this
+one. But though they two were as isolated as a new Adam and Eve in a
+pretty ornamental Eden, the lady did not relax by an inch the rigour of
+her badinage.
+
+"I am locked up in the madhouse," said Evan, with a sort of stiff pride,
+"because I tried to keep my promise to you."
+
+"Quite so," answered the inexplicable lady, nodding with a perfectly
+blazing smile, "and I am locked up because it was to me you promised."
+
+"It is outrageous!" cried Evan; "it is impossible!"
+
+"Oh, you can see my certificate if you like," she replied with some
+hauteur.
+
+MacIan stared at her and then at his boots, and then at the sky and then
+at her again. He was quite sure now that he himself was not mad, and the
+fact rather added to his perplexity.
+
+Then he drew nearer to her, and said in a dry and dreadful voice: "Oh,
+don't condescend to play the fool with such a fool as me. Are you really
+locked up here as a patient--because you helped us to escape?"
+
+"Yes," she said, still smiling, but her steady voice had a shake in it.
+
+Evan flung his big elbow across his forehead and burst into tears.
+
+The pure lemon of the sky faded into purer white as the great sunset
+silently collapsed. The birds settled back into the trees; the moon
+began to glow with its own light. Mr. James Turnbull continued his
+botanical researches into the structure of the rhododendron. But the
+lady did not move an inch until Evan had flung up his face again; and
+when he did he saw by the last gleam of sunlight that it was not only
+his face that was wet.
+
+Mr. James Turnbull had all his life professed a profound interest in
+physical science, and the phenomena of a good garden were really a
+pleasure to him; but after three-quarters of an hour or so even the
+apostle of science began to find rhododendrus a bore, and was somewhat
+relieved when an unexpected development of events obliged him
+to transfer his researches to the equally interesting subject of
+hollyhocks, which grew some fifty feet farther along the path. The
+ostensible cause of his removal was the unexpected reappearance of his
+two other acquaintances walking and talking laboriously along the
+way, with the black head bent close to the brown one. Even hollyhocks
+detained Turnbull but a short time. Having rapidly absorbed all the
+important principles affecting the growth of those vegetables, he jumped
+over a flower-bed and walked back into the building. The other two came
+up along the slow course of the path talking and talking. No one but
+God knows what they said (for they certainly have forgotten), and if I
+remembered it I would not repeat it. When they parted at the head of the
+walk she put out her hand again in the same well-bred way, although it
+trembled; he seemed to restrain a gesture as he let it fall.
+
+"If it is really always to be like this," he said, thickly, "it would
+not matter if we were here for ever."
+
+"You tried to kill yourself four times for me," she said, unsteadily,
+"and I have been chained up as a madwoman for you. I really think that
+after that----"
+
+"Yes, I know," said Evan in a low voice, looking down. "After that we
+belong to each other. We are sort of sold to each other--until the stars
+fall." Then he looked up suddenly, and said: "By the way, what is your
+name?"
+
+"My name is Beatrice Drake," she replied with complete gravity. "You can
+see it on my certificate of lunacy."
+
+
+
+
+XIX. THE LAST PARLEY
+
+Turnbull walked away, wildly trying to explain to himself the presence
+of two personal acquaintances so different as Vane and the girl. As he
+skirted a low hedge of laurel, an enormously tall young man leapt over
+it, stood in front of him, and almost fell on his neck as if seeking to
+embrace him.
+
+"Don't you know me?" almost sobbed the young man, who was in the highest
+spirits. "Ain't I written on your heart, old boy? I say, what did you do
+with my yacht?"
+
+"Take your arms off my neck," said Turnbull, irritably. "Are you mad?"
+
+The young man sat down on the gravel path and went into ecstasies of
+laughter. "No, that's just the fun of it--I'm not mad," he replied.
+"They've shut me up in this place, and I'm not mad." And he went off
+again into mirth as innocent as wedding-bells.
+
+Turnbull, whose powers of surprise were exhausted, rolled his round grey
+eyes and said, "Mr. Wilkinson, I think," because he could not think of
+anything else to say.
+
+The tall man sitting on the gravel bowed with urbanity, and said: "Quite
+at your service. Not to be confused with the Wilkinsons of Cumberland;
+and as I say, old boy, what have you done with my yacht? You see,
+they've locked me up here--in this garden--and a yacht would be a sort
+of occupation for an unmarried man."
+
+"I am really horribly sorry," began Turnbull, in the last stage of bated
+bewilderment and exasperation, "but really----"
+
+"Oh, I can see you can't have it on you at the moment," said Mr.
+Wilkinson with much intellectual magnanimity.
+
+"Well, the fact is----" began Turnbull again, and then the phrase was
+frozen on his mouth, for round the corner came the goatlike face and
+gleaming eye-glasses of Dr. Quayle.
+
+"Ah, my dear Mr. Wilkinson," said the doctor, as if delighted at
+a coincidence; "and Mr. Turnbull, too. Why, I want to speak to Mr.
+Turnbull."
+
+Mr. Turnbull made some movement rather of surrender than assent, and
+the doctor caught it up exquisitely, showing even more of his two front
+teeth. "I am sure Mr. Wilkinson will excuse us a moment." And with
+flying frock-coat he led Turnbull rapidly round the corner of a path.
+
+"My dear sir," he said, in a quite affectionate manner, "I do not mind
+telling you--you are such a very hopeful case--you understand so well
+the scientific point of view; and I don't like to see you bothered by
+the really hopeless cases. They are monotonous and maddening. The man
+you have just been talking to, poor fellow, is one of the strongest
+cases of pure _idee fixe_ that we have. It's very sad, and I'm afraid
+utterly incurable. He keeps on telling everybody"--and the doctor
+lowered his voice confidentially--"he tells everybody that two people
+have taken is yacht. His account of how he lost it is quite incoherent."
+
+Turnbull stamped his foot on the gravel path, and called out: "Oh, I
+can't stand this. Really----"
+
+"I know, I know," said the psychologist, mournfully; "it is a most
+melancholy case, and also fortunately a very rare one. It is so rare, in
+fact, that in one classification of these maladies it is entered under
+a heading by itself--Perdinavititis, mental inflammation creating the
+impression that one has lost a ship. Really," he added, with a kind of
+half-embarrassed guilt, "it's rather a feather in my cap. I discovered
+the only existing case of perdinavititis."
+
+"But this won't do, doctor," said Turnbull, almost tearing his hair,
+"this really won't do. The man really did lose a ship. Indeed, not to
+put too fine a point on it, I took his ship."
+
+Dr. Quayle swung round for an instant so that his silk-lined overcoat
+rustled, and stared singularly at Turnbull. Then he said with hurried
+amiability: "Why, of course you did. Quite so, quite so," and with
+courteous gestures went striding up the garden path. Under the first
+laburnum-tree he stopped, however, and pulling out his pencil
+and notebook wrote down feverishly: "Singular development in the
+Elenthero-maniac, Turnbull. Sudden manifestation of Rapinavititis--the
+delusion that one has stolen a ship. First case ever recorded."
+
+Turnbull stood for an instant staggered into stillness. Then he ran
+raging round the garden to find MacIan, just as a husband, even a bad
+husband, will run raging to find his wife if he is full of a furious
+query. He found MacIan stalking moodily about the half-lit garden, after
+his extraordinary meeting with Beatrice. No one who saw his slouching
+stride and sunken head could have known that his soul was in the seventh
+heaven of ecstasy. He did not think; he did not even very definitely
+desire. He merely wallowed in memories, chiefly in material memories;
+words said with a certain cadence or trivial turns of the neck or wrist.
+Into the middle of his stationary and senseless enjoyment were thrust
+abruptly the projecting elbow and the projecting red beard of Turnbull.
+MacIan stepped back a little, and the soul in his eyes came very slowly
+to its windows. When James Turnbull had the glittering sword-point
+planted upon his breast he was in far less danger. For three pulsating
+seconds after the interruption MacIan was in a mood to have murdered his
+father.
+
+And yet his whole emotional anger fell from him when he saw Turnbull's
+face, in which the eyes seemed to be bursting from the head like
+bullets. All the fire and fragrance even of young and honourable love
+faded for a moment before that stiff agony of interrogation.
+
+"Are you hurt, Turnbull?" he asked, anxiously.
+
+"I am dying," answered the other quite calmly. "I am in the quite
+literal sense of the words dying to know something. I want to know what
+all this can possibly mean."
+
+MacIan did not answer, and he continued with asperity: "You are still
+thinking about that girl, but I tell you the whole thing is incredible.
+She's not the only person here. I've met the fellow Wilkinson, whose
+yacht we lost. I've met the very magistrate you were hauled up to when
+you broke my window. What can it mean--meeting all these old people
+again? One never meets such old friends again except in a dream."
+
+Then after a silence he cried with a rending sincerity: "Are you really
+there, Evan? Have you ever been really there? Am I simply dreaming?"
+
+MacIan had been listening with a living silence to every word, and now
+his face flamed with one of his rare revelations of life.
+
+"No, you good atheist," he cried; "no, you clean, courteous, reverent,
+pious old blasphemer. No, you are not dreaming--you are waking up."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"There are two states where one meets so many old friends," said MacIan;
+"one is a dream, the other is the end of the world."
+
+"And you say----"
+
+"I say this is not a dream," said Evan in a ringing voice.
+
+"You really mean to suggest----" began Turnbull.
+
+"Be silent! or I shall say it all wrong," said MacIan, breathing hard.
+"It's hard to explain, anyhow. An apocalypse is the opposite of a dream.
+A dream is falser than the outer life. But the end of the world is more
+actual than the world it ends. I don't say this is really the end of the
+world, but it's something like that--it's the end of something. All the
+people are crowding into one corner. Everything is coming to a point."
+
+"What is the point?" asked Turnbull.
+
+"I can't see it," said Evan; "it is too large and plain."
+
+Then after a silence he said: "I can't see it--and yet I will try to
+describe it. Turnbull, three days ago I saw quite suddenly that our duel
+was not right after all."
+
+"Three days ago!" repeated Turnbull. "When and why did this illumination
+occur?"
+
+"I knew I was not quite right," answered Evan, "the moment I saw the
+round eyes of that old man in the cell."
+
+"Old man in the cell!" repeated his wondering companion. "Do you mean
+the poor old idiot who likes spikes to stick out?"
+
+"Yes," said MacIan, after a slight pause, "I mean the poor old idiot
+who likes spikes to stick out. When I saw his eyes and heard his old
+croaking accent, I knew that it would not really have been right to kill
+you. It would have been a venial sin."
+
+"I am much obliged," said Turnbull, gruffly.
+
+"You must give me time," said MacIan, quite patiently, "for I am trying
+to tell the whole truth. I am trying to tell more of it than I know."
+
+"So you see I confess"--he went on with laborious distinctness--"I
+confess that all the people who called our duel mad were right in a way.
+I would confess it to old Cumberland Vane and his eye-glass. I would
+confess it even to that old ass in brown flannel who talked to us about
+Love. Yes, they are right in a way. I am a little mad."
+
+He stopped and wiped his brow as if he were literally doing heavy
+labour. Then he went on:
+
+"I am a little mad; but, after all, it is only a little madness. When
+hundreds of high-minded men had fought duels about a jostle with the
+elbow or the ace of spades, the whole world need not have gone wild over
+my one little wildness. Plenty of other people have killed themselves
+between then and now. But all England has gone into captivity in order
+to take us captive. All England has turned into a lunatic asylum in
+order to prove us lunatics. Compared with the general public, I might
+positively be called sane."
+
+He stopped again, and went on with the same air of travailing with the
+truth:
+
+"When I saw that, I saw everything; I saw the Church and the world. The
+Church in its earthly action has really touched morbid things--tortures
+and bleeding visions and blasts of extermination. The Church has had her
+madnesses, and I am one of them. I am the massacre of St. Bartholomew.
+I am the Inquisition of Spain. I do not say that we have never gone mad,
+but I say that we are fit to act as keepers to our enemies. Massacre is
+wicked even with a provocation, as in the Bartholomew. But your modern
+Nietzsche will tell you that massacre would be glorious without a
+provocation. Torture should be violently stopped, though the Church is
+doing it. But your modern Tolstoy will tell you that it ought not to be
+violently stopped whoever is doing it. In the long run, which is most
+mad--the Church or the world? Which is madder, the Spanish priest who
+permitted tyranny, or the Prussian sophist who admired it? Which is
+madder, the Russian priest who discourages righteous rebellion, or the
+Russian novelist who forbids it? That is the final and blasting test.
+The world left to itself grows wilder than any creed. A few days ago you
+and I were the maddest people in England. Now, by God! I believe we are
+the sanest. That is the only real question--whether the Church is really
+madder than the world. Let the rationalists run their own race, and let
+us see where _they_ end. If the world has some healthy balance other
+than God, let the world find it. Does the world find it? Cut the world
+loose," he cried with a savage gesture. "Does the world stand on its own
+end? Does it stand, or does it stagger?"
+
+Turnbull remained silent, and MacIan said to him, looking once more at
+the earth: "It staggers, Turnbull. It cannot stand by itself; you know
+it cannot. It has been the sorrow of your life. Turnbull, this garden
+is not a dream, but an apocalyptic fulfilment. This garden is the world
+gone mad."
+
+Turnbull did not move his head, and he had been listening all the time;
+yet, somehow, the other knew that for the first time he was listening
+seriously.
+
+"The world has gone mad," said MacIan, "and it has gone mad about Us.
+The world takes the trouble to make a big mistake about every little
+mistake made by the Church. That is why they have turned ten counties
+to a madhouse; that is why crowds of kindly people are poured into this
+filthy melting-pot. Now is the judgement of this world. The Prince of
+this World is judged, and he is judged exactly because he is judging.
+There is at last one simple solution to the quarrel between the ball and
+the cross----"
+
+Turnbull for the first time started.
+
+"The ball and----" he repeated.
+
+"What is the matter with you?" asked MacIan.
+
+"I had a dream," said Turnbull, thickly and obscurely, "in which I saw
+the cross struck crooked and the ball secure----"
+
+"I had a dream," said MacIan, "in which I saw the cross erect and the
+ball invisible. They were both dreams from hell. There must be
+some round earth to plant the cross upon. But here is the awful
+difference--that the round world will not consent even to continue
+round. The astronomers are always telling us that it is shaped like
+an orange, or like an egg, or like a German sausage. They beat the
+old world about like a bladder and thump it into a thousand shapeless
+shapes. Turnbull, we cannot trust the ball to be always a ball; we
+cannot trust reason to be reasonable. In the end the great terrestrial
+globe will go quite lop-sided, and only the cross will stand upright."
+
+There was a long silence, and then Turnbull said, hesitatingly: "Has
+it occurred to you that since--since those two dreams, or whatever they
+were----"
+
+"Well?" murmured MacIan.
+
+"Since then," went on Turnbull, in the same low voice, "since then we
+have never even looked for our swords."
+
+"You are right," answered Evan almost inaudibly. "We have found
+something which we both hate more than we ever hated each other, and I
+think I know its name."
+
+Turnbull seemed to frown and flinch for a moment. "It does not much
+matter what you call it," he said, "so long as you keep out of its way."
+
+The bushes broke and snapped abruptly behind them, and a very tall
+figure towered above Turnbull with an arrogant stoop and a projecting
+chin, a chin of which the shape showed queerly even in its shadow upon
+the path.
+
+"You see that is not so easy," said MacIan between his teeth.
+
+They looked up into the eyes of the Master, but looked only for a
+moment. The eyes were full of a frozen and icy wrath, a kind of utterly
+heartless hatred. His voice was for the first time devoid of irony.
+There was no more sarcasm in it than there is in an iron club.
+
+"You will be inside the building in three minutes," he said, with
+pulverizing precision, "or you will be fired on by the artillery at
+all the windows. There is too much talking in this garden; we intend to
+close it. You will be accommodated indoors."
+
+"Ah!" said MacIan, with a long and satisfied sigh, "then I was right."
+
+And he turned his back and walked obediently towards the building.
+Turnbull seemed to canvass for a few minutes the notion of knocking the
+Master down, and then fell under the same almost fairy fatalism as his
+companion. In some strange way it did seem that the more smoothly they
+yielded, the more swiftly would events sweep on to some great collision.
+
+
+
+
+XX. DIES IRAE
+
+As they advanced towards the asylum they looked up at its rows on rows
+of windows, and understood the Master's material threat. By means of
+that complex but concealed machinery which ran like a network of nerves
+over the whole fabric, there had been shot out under every window-ledge
+rows and rows of polished-steel cylinders, the cold miracles of modern
+gunnery. They commanded the whole garden and the whole country-side, and
+could have blown to pieces an army corps.
+
+This silent declaration of war had evidently had its complete effect. As
+MacIan and Turnbull walked steadily but slowly towards the entrance hall
+of the institution, they could see that most, or at least many, of the
+patients had already gathered there as well as the staff of doctors and
+the whole regiment of keepers and assistants. But when they entered the
+lamp-lit hall, and the high iron door was clashed to and locked behind
+them, yet a new amazement leapt into their eyes, and the stalwart
+Turnbull almost fell. For he saw a sight which was indeed, as MacIan had
+said--either the Day of Judgement or a dream.
+
+Within a few feet of him at one corner of the square of standing people
+stood the girl he had known in Jersey, Madeleine Durand. She looked
+straight at him with a steady smile which lit up the scene of darkness
+and unreason like the light of some honest fireside. Her square face
+and throat were thrown back, as her habit was, and there was something
+almost sleepy in the geniality of her eyes. He saw her first, and for
+a few seconds saw her only; then the outer edge of his eyesight took in
+all the other staring faces, and he saw all the faces he had ever seen
+for weeks and months past. There was the Tolstoyan in Jaeger flannel,
+with the yellow beard that went backward and the foolish nose and eyes
+that went forward, with the curiosity of a crank. He was talking eagerly
+to Mr. Gordon, the corpulent Jew shopkeeper whom they had once gagged
+in his own shop. There was the tipsy old Hertfordshire rustic; he
+was talking energetically to himself. There was not only Mr. Vane the
+magistrate, but the clerk of Mr. Vane, the magistrate. There was not
+only Miss Drake of the motor-car, but also Miss Drake's chauffeur.
+Nothing wild or unfamiliar could have produced upon Turnbull such a
+nightmare impression as that ring of familiar faces. Yet he had one
+intellectual shock which was greater than all the others. He stepped
+impulsively forward towards Madeleine, and then wavered with a kind
+of wild humility. As he did so he caught sight of another square face
+behind Madeleine's, a face with long grey whiskers and an austere stare.
+It was old Durand, the girls' father; and when Turnbull saw him he saw
+the last and worst marvel of that monstrous night. He remembered Durand;
+he remembered his monotonous, everlasting lucidity, his stupefyingly
+sensible views of everything, his colossal contentment with truisms
+merely because they were true. "Confound it all!" cried Turnbull to
+himself, "if _he_ is in the asylum, there can't be anyone outside."
+He drew nearer to Madeleine, but still doubtfully and all the more
+so because she still smiled at him. MacIan had already gone across to
+Beatrice with an air of fright.
+
+Then all these bewildered but partly amicable recognitions were cloven
+by a cruel voice which always made all human blood turn bitter. The
+Master was standing in the middle of the room surveying the scene like a
+great artist looking at a completed picture. Handsome as he looked, they
+had never seen so clearly what was really hateful in his face; and even
+then they could only express it by saying that the arched brows and the
+long emphatic chin gave it always a look of being lit from below, like
+the face of some infernal actor.
+
+"This is indeed a cosy party," he said, with glittering eyes.
+
+The Master evidently meant to say more, but before he could say anything
+M. Durand had stepped right up to him and was speaking.
+
+He was speaking exactly as a French bourgeois speaks to the manager of a
+restaurant. That is, he spoke with rattling and breathless rapidity,
+but with no incoherence, and therefore with no emotion. It was a steady,
+monotonous vivacity, which came not seemingly from passion, but
+merely from the reason having been sent off at a gallop. He was saying
+something like this:
+
+"You refuse me my half-bottle of Medoc, the drink the most wholesome
+and the most customary. You refuse me the company and obedience of my
+daughter, which Nature herself indicates. You refuse me the beef and
+mutton, without pretence that it is a fast of the Church. You now forbid
+me the promenade, a thing necessary to a person of my age. It is useless
+to tell me that you do all this by law. Law rests upon the social
+contract. If the citizen finds himself despoiled of such pleasures
+and powers as he would have had even in the savage state, the social
+contract is annulled."
+
+"It's no good chattering away, Monsieur," said Hutton, for the Master
+was silent. "The place is covered with machine-guns. We've got to obey
+our orders, and so have you."
+
+"The machinery is of the most perfect," assented Durand, somewhat
+irrelevantly; "worked by petroleum, I believe. I only ask you to admit
+that if such things fall below the comfort of barbarism, the social
+contract is annulled. It is a pretty little point of theory."
+
+"Oh! I dare say," said Hutton.
+
+Durand bowed quite civilly and withdrew.
+
+"A cosy party," resumed the Master, scornfully, "and yet I believe some
+of you are in doubt about how we all came together. I will explain
+it, ladies and gentlemen; I will explain everything. To whom shall I
+specially address myself? To Mr. James Turnbull. He has a scientific
+mind."
+
+Turnbull seemed to choke with sudden protest. The Master seemed only
+to cough out of pure politeness and proceeded: "Mr. Turnbull will agree
+with me," he said, "when I say that we long felt in scientific circles
+that great harm was done by such a legend as that of the Crucifixion."
+
+Turnbull growled something which was presumably assent.
+
+The Master went on smoothly: "It was in vain for us to urge that the
+incident was irrelevant; that there were many such fanatics, many such
+executions. We were forced to take the thing thoroughly in hand,
+to investigate it in the spirit of scientific history, and with the
+assistance of Mr. Turnbull and others we were happy in being able to
+announce that this alleged Crucifixion never occurred at all."
+
+MacIan lifted his head and looked at the Master steadily, but Turnbull
+did not look up.
+
+"This, we found, was the only way with all superstitions," continued the
+speaker; "it was necessary to deny them historically, and we have done
+it with great success in the case of miracles and such things. Now
+within our own time there arose an unfortunate fuss which threatened (as
+Mr. Turnbull would say) to galvanize the corpse of Christianity into a
+fictitious life--the alleged case of a Highland eccentric who wanted to
+fight for the Virgin."
+
+MacIan, quite white, made a step forward, but the speaker did not alter
+his easy attitude or his flow of words. "Again we urged that this duel
+was not to be admired, that it was a mere brawl, but the people were
+ignorant and romantic. There were signs of treating this alleged
+Highlander and his alleged opponent as heroes. We tried all other means
+of arresting this reactionary hero worship. Working men who betted on
+the duel were imprisoned for gambling. Working men who drank the
+health of a duellist were imprisoned for drunkenness. But the popular
+excitement about the alleged duel continued, and we had to fall back on
+our old historical method. We investigated, on scientific principles,
+the story of MacIan's challenge, and we are happy to be able to inform
+you that the whole story of the attempted duel is a fable. There
+never was any challenge. There never was any man named MacIan. It is a
+melodramatic myth, like Calvary."
+
+Not a soul moved save Turnbull, who lifted his head; yet there was the
+sense of a silent explosion.
+
+"The whole story of the MacIan challenge," went on the Master, beaming
+at them all with a sinister benignity, "has been found to originate in
+the obsessions of a few pathological types, who are now all fortunately
+in our care. There is, for instance, a person here of the name of
+Gordon, formerly the keeper of a curiosity shop. He is a victim of the
+disease called Vinculomania--the impression that one has been bound or
+tied up. We have also a case of Fugacity (Mr. Whimpey), who imagines
+that he was chased by two men."
+
+The indignant faces of the Jew shopkeeper and the Magdalen Don started
+out of the crowd in their indignation, but the speaker continued:
+
+"One poor woman we have with us," he said, in a compassionate voice,
+"believes she was in a motor-car with two such men; this is the
+well-known illusion of speed on which I need not dwell. Another wretched
+woman has the simple egotistic mania that she has caused the duel.
+Madeleine Durand actually professes to have been the subject of the
+fight between MacIan and his enemy, a fight which, if it occurred at
+all, certainly began long before. But it never occurred at all. We have
+taken in hand every person who professed to have seen such a thing, and
+proved them all to be unbalanced. That is why they are here."
+
+The Master looked round the room, just showing his perfect teeth with
+the perfection of artistic cruelty, exalted for a moment in the enormous
+simplicity of his success, and then walked across the hall and vanished
+through an inner door. His two lieutenants, Quayle and Hutton, were left
+standing at the head of the great army of servants and keepers.
+
+"I hope we shall have no more trouble," said Dr. Quayle pleasantly
+enough, and addressing Turnbull, who was leaning heavily upon the back
+of a chair.
+
+Still looking down, Turnbull lifted the chair an inch or two from the
+ground. Then he suddenly swung it above his head and sent it at the
+inquiring doctor with an awful crash which sent one of its wooden legs
+loose along the floor and crammed the doctor gasping into a corner.
+MacIan gave a great shout, snatched up the loose chair-leg, and, rushing
+on the other doctor, felled him with a blow. Twenty attendants rushed
+to capture the rebels; MacIan flung back three of them and Turnbull
+went over on top of one, when from behind them all came a shriek as of
+something quite fresh and frightful.
+
+Two of the three passages leading out of the hall were choked with blue
+smoke. Another instant and the hall was full of the fog of it, and red
+sparks began to swarm like scarlet bees.
+
+"The place is on fire!" cried Quayle with a scream of indecent terror.
+"Oh, who can have done it? How can it have happened?"
+
+A light had come into Turnbull's eyes. "How did the French Revolution
+happen?" he asked.
+
+"Oh, how should I know!" wailed the other.
+
+"Then I will tell you," said Turnbull; "it happened because some people
+fancied that a French grocer was as respectable as he looked."
+
+Even as he spoke, as if by confirmation, old Mr. Durand re-entered the
+smoky room quite placidly, wiping the petroleum from his hands with a
+handkerchief. He had set fire to the building in accordance with the
+strict principles of the social contract.
+
+But MacIan had taken a stride forward and stood there shaken and
+terrible. "Now," he cried, panting, "now is the judgement of the world.
+The doctors will leave this place; the keepers will leave this place.
+They will leave us in charge of the machinery and the machine-guns at
+the windows. But we, the lunatics, will wait to be burned alive if only
+we may see them go."
+
+"How do you know we shall go?" asked Hutton, fiercely.
+
+"You believe nothing," said MacIan, simply, "and you are insupportably
+afraid of death."
+
+"So this is suicide," sneered the doctor; "a somewhat doubtful sign of
+sanity."
+
+"Not at all--this is vengeance," answered Turnbull, quite calmly; "a
+thing which is completely healthy."
+
+"You think the doctors will go," said Hutton, savagely.
+
+"The keepers have gone already," said Turnbull.
+
+Even as they spoke the main doors were burst open in mere brutal panic,
+and all the officers and subordinates of the asylum rushed away across
+the garden pursued by the smoke. But among the ticketed maniacs not a
+man or woman moved.
+
+"We hate dying," said Turnbull, with composure, "but we hate you even
+more. This is a successful revolution."
+
+In the roof above their heads a panel shot back, showing a strip of
+star-lit sky and a huge thing made of white metal, with the shape and
+fins of a fish, swinging as if at anchor. At the same moment a steel
+ladder slid down from the opening and struck the floor, and the cleft
+chin of the mysterious Master was thrust into the opening. "Quayle,
+Hutton," he said, "you will escape with me." And they went up the ladder
+like automata of lead.
+
+Long after they had clambered into the car, the creature with the cloven
+face continued to leer down upon the smoke-stung crowd below. Then at
+last he said in a silken voice and with a smile of final satisfaction:
+
+"By the way, I fear I am very absent minded. There is one man specially
+whom, somehow, I always forget. I always leave him lying about. Once
+I mislaid him on the Cross of St. Paul's. So silly of me; and now I've
+forgotten him in one of those little cells where your fire is burning.
+Very unfortunate--especially for him." And nodding genially, he climbed
+into his flying ship.
+
+MacIan stood motionless for two minutes, and then rushed down one of the
+suffocating corridors till he found the flames. Turnbull looked once at
+Madeleine, and followed.
+
+           *                    *                   *
+
+MacIan, with singed hair, smoking garments, and smarting hands and face,
+had already broken far enough through the first barriers of burning
+timber to come within cry of the cells he had once known. It was
+impossible, however, to see the spot where the old man lay dead or
+alive; not now through darkness, but through scorching and aching light.
+The site of the old half-wit's cell was now the heart of a standing
+forest of fire--the flames as thick and yellow as a cornfield. Their
+incessant shrieking and crackling was like a mob shouting against an
+orator. Yet through all that deafening density MacIan thought he heard
+a small and separate sound. When he heard it he rushed forward as if to
+plunge into that furnace, but Turnbull arrested him by an elbow.
+
+"Let me go!" cried Evan, in agony; "it's the poor old beggar's
+voice--he's still alive, and shouting for help."
+
+"Listen!" said Turnbull, and lifted one finger from his clenched hand.
+
+"Or else he is shrieking with pain," protested MacIan. "I will not
+endure it."
+
+"Listen!" repeated Turnbull, grimly. "Did you ever hear anyone shout for
+help or shriek with pain in that voice?"
+
+The small shrill sounds which came through the crash of the
+conflagration were indeed of an odd sort, and MacIan turned a face of
+puzzled inquiry to his companion.
+
+"He is singing," said Turnbull, simply.
+
+A remaining rampart fell, crushing the fire, and through the diminished
+din of it the voice of the little old lunatic came clearer. In the heart
+of that white-hot hell he was singing like a bird. What he was singing
+it was not very easy to follow, but it seemed to be something about
+playing in the golden hay.
+
+"Good Lord!" cried Turnbull, bitterly, "there seem to be some advantages
+in really being an idiot." Then advancing to the fringe of the fire he
+called out on chance to the invisible singer: "Can you come out? Are you
+cut off?"
+
+"God help us all!" said MacIan, with a shudder; "he's laughing now."
+
+At whatever stage of being burned alive the invisible now found himself,
+he was now shaking out peals of silvery and hilarious laughter. As he
+listened, MacIan's two eyes began to glow, as if a strange thought had
+come into his head.
+
+"Fool, come out and save yourself!" shouted Turnbull.
+
+"No, by Heaven! that is not the way," cried Evan, suddenly. "Father," he
+shouted, "come out and save us all!"
+
+The fire, though it had dropped in one or two places, was, upon the
+whole, higher and more unconquerable than ever. Separate tall flames
+shot up and spread out above them like the fiery cloisters of some
+infernal cathedral, or like a grove of red tropical trees in the garden
+of the devil. Higher yet in the purple hollow of the night the topmost
+flames leapt again and again fruitlessly at the stars, like golden
+dragons chained but struggling. The towers and domes of the oppressive
+smoke seemed high and far enough to drown distant planets in a London
+fog. But if we exhausted all frantic similes for that frantic scene,
+the main impression about the fire would still be its ranked upstanding
+rigidity and a sort of roaring stillness. It was literally a wall of
+fire.
+
+"Father," cried MacIan, once more, "come out of it and save us all!"
+Turnbull was staring at him as he cried.
+
+The tall and steady forest of fire must have been already a portent
+visible to the whole circle of land and sea. The red flush of it lit up
+the long sides of white ships far out in the German Ocean, and picked
+out like piercing rubies the windows in the villages on the distant
+heights. If any villagers or sailors were looking towards it they must
+have seen a strange sight as MacIan cried out for the third time.
+
+That forest of fire wavered, and was cloven in the centre; and then the
+whole of one half of it leaned one way as a cornfield leans all one way
+under the load of the wind. Indeed, it looked as if a great wind had
+sprung up and driven the great fire aslant. Its smoke was no longer sent
+up to choke the stars, but was trailed and dragged across county after
+county like one dreadful banner of defeat.
+
+But it was not the wind; or, if it was the wind, it was two winds
+blowing in opposite directions. For while one half of the huge fire
+sloped one way towards the inland heights, the other half, at exactly
+the same angle, sloped out eastward towards the sea. So that earth and
+ocean could behold, where there had been a mere fiery mass, a thing
+divided like a V--a cloven tongue of flame. But if it were a prodigy for
+those distant, it was something beyond speech for those quite near. As
+the echoes of Evan's last appeal rang and died in the universal uproar,
+the fiery vault over his head opened down the middle, and, reeling back
+in two great golden billows, hung on each side as huge and harmless as
+two sloping hills lie on each side of a valley. Down the centre of this
+trough, or chasm, a little path ran, cleared of all but ashes, and down
+this little path was walking a little old man singing as if he were
+alone in a wood in spring.
+
+When James Turnbull saw this he suddenly put out a hand and seemed to
+support himself on the strong shoulder of Madeleine Durand. Then after a
+moment's hesitation he put his other hand on the shoulder of MacIan.
+His blue eyes looked extraordinarily brilliant and beautiful. In many
+sceptical papers and magazines afterwards he was sadly or sternly
+rebuked for having abandoned the certainties of materialism. All
+his life up to that moment he had been most honestly certain that
+materialism was a fact. But he was unlike the writers in the magazines
+precisely in this--that he preferred a fact even to materialism.
+
+As the little singing figure came nearer and nearer, Evan fell on his
+knees, and after an instant Beatrice followed; then Madeleine fell on
+her knees, and after a longer instant Turnbull followed. Then the little
+old man went past them singing down that corridor of flames. They had
+not looked at his face.
+
+When he had passed they looked up. While the first light of the fire
+had shot east and west, painting the sides of ships with fire-light or
+striking red sparks out of windowed houses, it had not hitherto struck
+upward, for there was above it the ponderous and rococo cavern of its
+own monstrous coloured smoke. But now the fire was turned to left and
+right like a woman's hair parted in the middle, and now the shafts of
+its light could shoot up into empty heavens and strike anything, either
+bird or cloud. But it struck something that was neither cloud nor bird.
+Far, far away up in those huge hollows of space something was flying
+swiftly and shining brightly, something that shone too bright and flew
+too fast to be any of the fowls of the air, though the red light lit it
+from underneath like the breast of a bird. Everyone knew it was a flying
+ship, and everyone knew whose.
+
+As they stared upward the little speck of light seemed slightly tilted,
+and two black dots dropped from the edge of it. All the eager, upturned
+faces watched the two dots as they grew bigger and bigger in their
+downward rush. Then someone screamed, and no one looked up any more. For
+the two bodies, larger every second flying, spread out and sprawling in
+the fire-light, were the dead bodies of the two doctors whom Professor
+Lucifer had carried with him--the weak and sneering Quayle, the cold and
+clumsy Hutton. They went with a crash into the thick of the fire.
+
+"They are gone!" screamed Beatrice, hiding her head. "O God! The are
+lost!"
+
+Evan put his arm about her, and remembered his own vision.
+
+"No, they are not lost," he said. "They are saved. He has taken away no
+souls with him, after all."
+
+He looked vaguely about at the fire that was already fading, and there
+among the ashes lay two shining things that had survived the fire, his
+sword and Turnbull's, fallen haphazard in the pattern of a cross.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Ball and The Cross, by G.K. Chesterton
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Ball and The Cross, by G.K. Chesterton
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+Title: The Ball and The Cross
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+Author: G.K. Chesterton
+
+Release Date: March, 2004 [EBook #5265]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on June 19, 2002]
+[Date last updated: July 10th, 2002]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BALL AND THE CROSS ***
+
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Ben Crowder <crowderb@blankslate.net>
+
+
+
+
+
+THE BALL AND THE CROSS
+
+G.K. Chesterton
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+    I. A Discussion Somewhat in the Air
+   II. The Religion of the Stipendiary Magistrate
+  III. Some Old Curiosities
+   IV. A Discussion at Dawn
+    V. The Peacemaker
+   VI. The Other Philosopher
+  VII. The Village of Grassley-in-the-Hole
+ VIII. An Interlude of Argument
+   IX. The Strange Lady
+    X. The Swords Rejoined
+   XI. A Scandal in the Village
+  XII. The Desert Island
+ XIII. The Garden of Peace
+  XIV. A Museum of Souls
+   XV. The Dream of MacIan
+  XVI. The Dream of Turnbull
+ XVII. The Idiot
+XVIII. A Riddle of Faces
+  XIX. The Last Parley
+   XX. Dies Irae
+
+
+
+I. A DISCUSSION SOMEWHAT IN THE AIR
+
+The flying ship of Professor Lucifer sang through the skies like
+a silver arrow; the bleak white steel of it, gleaming in the
+bleak blue emptiness of the evening.  That it was far above the
+earth was no expression for it; to the two men in it, it seemed
+to be far above the stars.  The professor had himself invented
+the flying machine, and had also invented nearly everything in
+it.  Every sort of tool or apparatus had, in consequence, to the
+full, that fantastic and distorted look which belongs to the
+miracles of science.  For the world of science and evolution is
+far more nameless and elusive and like a dream than the world of
+poetry and religion; since in the latter images and ideas remain
+themselves eternally, while it is the whole idea of evolution
+that identities melt into each other as they do in a nightmare.
+
+All the tools of Professor Lucifer were the ancient human tools
+gone mad, grown into unrecognizable shapes, forgetful of their
+origin, forgetful of their names.  That thing which looked like an
+enormous key with three wheels was really a patent and very
+deadly revolver.  That object which seemed to be created by the
+entanglement of two corkscrews was really the key.  The thing
+which might have been mistaken for a tricycle turned upside-down
+was the inexpressibly important instrument to which the corkscrew
+was the key.  All these things, as I say, the professor had
+invented; he had invented everything in the flying ship, with the
+exception, perhaps, of himself.  This he had been born too late
+actually to inaugurate, but he believed at least, that he had
+considerably improved it.
+
+There was, however, another man on board, so to speak, at the
+time.  Him, also, by a curious coincidence, the professor had not
+invented, and him he had not even very greatly improved, though
+he had fished him up with a lasso out of his own back garden, in
+Western Bulgaria, with the pure object of improving him.  He was
+an exceedingly holy man, almost entirely covered with white hair.
+You could see nothing but his eyes, and he seemed to talk with
+them.  A monk of immense learning and acute intellect he had made
+himself happy in a little stone hut and a little stony garden in
+the Balkans, chiefly by writing the most crushing refutations of
+exposures of certain heresies, the last professors of which had
+been burnt (generally by each other) precisely 1,119 years
+previously.  They were really very plausible and thoughtful
+heresies, and it was really a creditable or even glorious
+circumstance, that the old monk had been intellectual enough to
+detect their fallacy; the only misfortune was that nobody in the
+modern world was intellectual enough even to understand their
+argument.  The old monk, one of whose names was Michael, and the
+other a name quite impossible to remember or repeat in our
+Western civilization, had, however, as I have said, made himself
+quite happy while he was in a mountain hermitage in the society
+of wild animals.  And now that his luck had lifted him above all
+the mountains in the society of a wild physicist, he made himself
+happy still.
+
+"I have no intention, my good Michael," said Professor Lucifer,
+"of endeavouring to convert you by argument.  The imbecility of
+your traditions can be quite finally exhibited to anybody with
+mere ordinary knowledge of the world, the same kind of knowledge
+which teaches us not to sit in draughts or not to encourage
+friendliness in impecunious people.  It is folly to talk of this
+or that demonstrating the rationalist philosophy.  Everything
+demonstrates it.  Rubbing shoulders with men of all kinds----"
+
+"You will forgive me," said the monk, meekly from under loads of
+white beard, "but I fear I do not understand; was it in order
+that I might rub my shoulder against men of all kinds that you
+put me inside this thing?"
+
+"An entertaining retort, in the narrow and deductive manner of
+the Middle Ages," replied the Professor, calmly, "but even upon
+your own basis I will illustrate my point.  We are up in the sky.
+In your religion and all the religions, as far as I know (and I
+know everything), the sky is made the symbol of everything that
+is sacred and merciful.  Well, now you are in the sky, you know
+better.  Phrase it how you like, twist it how you like, you know
+that you know better.  You know what are a man's real feelings
+about the heavens, when he finds himself alone in the heavens,
+surrounded by the heavens.  You know the truth, and the truth is
+this.  The heavens are evil, the sky is evil, the stars are evil.
+This mere space, this mere quantity, terrifies a man more than
+tigers or the terrible plague.  You know that since our science
+has spoken, the bottom has fallen out of the Universe.  Now,
+heaven is the hopeless thing, more hopeless than any hell.  Now,
+if there be any comfort for all your miserable progeny of morbid
+apes, it must be in the earth, underneath you, under the roots of
+the grass, in the place where hell was of old.  The fiery crypts,
+the lurid cellars of the underworld, to which you once condemned
+the wicked, are hideous enough, but at least they are more homely
+than the heaven in which we ride.  And the time will come when you
+will all hide in them, to escape the horror of the stars."
+
+"I hope you will excuse my interrupting you," said Michael, with
+a slight cough, "but I have always noticed----"
+
+"Go on, pray go on," said Professor Lucifer, radiantly, "I really
+like to draw out your simple ideas."
+
+"Well, the fact is," said the other, "that much as I admire your
+rhetoric and the rhetoric of your school, from a purely verbal
+point of view, such little study of you and your school in human
+history as I have been enabled to make has led me to--er--rather
+singular conclusion, which I find great difficulty in expressing,
+especially in a foreign language."
+
+"Come, come," said the Professor, encouragingly, "I'll help you
+out. How did my view strike you?"
+
+"Well, the truth is, I know I don't express it properly, but
+somehow it seemed to me that you always convey ideas of that kind
+with most eloquence, when--er--when----"
+
+"Oh! get on," cried Lucifer, boisterously.
+
+"Well, in point of fact when your flying ship is just going to
+run into something.  I thought you wouldn't mind my mentioning it,
+but it's running into something now."
+
+Lucifer exploded with an oath and leapt erect, leaning hard upon
+the handle that acted as a helm to the vessel.  For the last ten
+minutes they had been shooting downwards into great cracks and
+caverns of cloud.  Now, through a sort of purple haze, could be
+seen comparatively near to them what seemed to be the upper part
+of a huge, dark orb or sphere, islanded in a sea of cloud.  The
+Professor's eyes were blazing like a maniac's.
+
+"It is a new world," he cried, with a dreadful mirth.  "It is a
+new planet and it shall bear my name.  This star and not that
+other vulgar one shall be 'Lucifer, sun of the morning.'  Here we
+will have no chartered lunacies, here we will have no gods.  Here
+man shall be as innocent as the daisies, as innocent and as
+cruel--here the intellect----"
+
+"There seems," said Michael, timidly, "to be something sticking
+up in the middle of it."
+
+"So there is," said the Professor, leaning over the side of the
+ship, his spectacles shining with intellectual excitement.  "What
+can it be? It might of course be merely a----"
+
+Then a shriek indescribable broke out of him of a sudden, and he
+flung up his arms like a lost spirit.  The monk took the helm in a
+tired way; he did not seem much astonished for he came from an
+ignorant part of the world in which it is not uncommon for lost
+spirits to shriek when they see the curious shape which the
+Professor had just seen on the top of the mysterious ball, but he
+took the helm only just in time, and by driving it hard to the
+left he prevented the flying ship from smashing into St. Paul's
+Cathedral.
+
+A plain of sad-coloured cloud lay along the level of the top of
+the Cathedral dome, so that the ball and the cross looked like a
+buoy riding on a leaden sea.  As the flying ship swept towards it,
+this plain of cloud looked as dry and definite and rocky as any
+grey desert.  Hence it gave to the mind and body a sharp and
+unearthly sensation when the ship cut and sank into the cloud as
+into any common mist, a thing without resistance.  There was, as
+it were, a deadly shock in the fact that there was no shock.  It
+was as if they had cloven into ancient cliffs like so much
+butter.  But sensations awaited them which were much stranger than
+those of sinking through the solid earth.  For a moment their eyes
+and nostrils were stopped with darkness and opaque cloud; then
+the darkness warmed into a kind of brown fog.  And far, far below
+them the brown fog fell until it warmed into fire.  Through the
+dense London atmosphere they could see below them the flaming
+London lights; lights which lay beneath them in squares and
+oblongs of fire.  The fog and fire were mixed in a passionate
+vapour; you might say that the fog was drowning the flames; or
+you might say that the flames had set the fog on fire.  Beside the
+ship and beneath it (for it swung just under the ball), the
+immeasurable dome itself shot out and down into the dark like a
+combination of voiceless cataracts.  Or it was like some cyclopean
+sea-beast sitting above London and letting down its tentacles
+bewilderingly on every side, a monstrosity in that starless
+heaven.  For the clouds that belonged to London had closed over
+the heads of the voyagers sealing up the entrance of the upper
+air.  They had broken through a roof and come into a temple of
+twilight.
+
+They were so near to the ball that Lucifer leaned his hand
+against it, holding the vessel away, as men push a boat off from
+a bank.  Above it the cross already draped in the dark mists of
+the borderland was shadowy and more awful in shape and size.
+
+Professor Lucifer slapped his hand twice upon the surface of the
+great orb as if he were caressing some enormous animal.  "This is
+the fellow," he said, "this is the one for my money."
+
+"May I with all respect inquire," asked the old monk, "what on
+earth you are talking about?"
+
+"Why this," cried Lucifer, smiting the ball again, "here is the
+only symbol, my boy.  So fat.  So satisfied. Not like that scraggy
+individual, stretching his arms in stark weariness."  And he
+pointed up to the cross, his face dark with a grin.  "I was
+telling you just now, Michael, that I can prove the best part of
+the rationalist case and the Christian humbug from any symbol you
+liked to give me, from any instance I came across.  Here is an
+instance with a vengeance.  What could possibly express your
+philosophy and my philosophy better than the shape of that cross
+and the shape of this ball?  This globe is reasonable; that cross
+is unreasonable.  It is a four-legged animal, with one leg longer
+than the others.  The globe is inevitable.  The cross is arbitrary.
+Above all the globe is at unity with itself; the cross is
+primarily and above all things at enmity with itself.  The cross
+is the conflict of two hostile lines, of irreconcilable
+direction.  That silent thing up there is essentially a collision,
+a crash, a struggle in stone.  Pah! that sacred symbol of yours
+has actually given its name to a description of desperation and
+muddle.  When we speak of men at once ignorant of each other and
+frustrated by each other, we say they are at cross-purposes.  Away
+with the thing!  The very shape of it is a contradiction in
+terms."
+
+"What you say is perfectly true," said Michael, with serenity.
+"But we like contradictions in terms.  Man is a contradiction in
+terms; he is a beast whose superiority to other beasts consists
+in having fallen.  That cross is, as you say, an eternal
+collision; so am I.  That is a struggle in stone. Every form of
+life is a struggle in flesh.  The shape of the cross is
+irrational, just as the shape of the human animal is irrational.
+You say the cross is a quadruped with one limb longer than the
+rest.  I say man is a quadruped who only uses two of his legs."
+
+The Professor frowned thoughtfully for an instant, and said: "Of
+course everything is relative, and I would not deny that the
+element of struggle and self-contradiction, represented by that
+cross, has a necessary place at a certain evolutionary stage.
+But surely the cross is the lower development and the sphere the
+higher.  After all it is easy enough to see what is really wrong
+with Wren's architectural arrangement."
+
+"And what is that, pray?" inquired Michael, meekly.
+
+"The cross is on top of the ball," said Professor Lucifer,
+simply.  "That is surely wrong.  The ball should be on top of the
+cross.  The cross is a mere barbaric prop; the ball is perfection.
+The cross at its best is but the bitter tree of man's history;
+the ball is the rounded, the ripe and final fruit.  And the fruit
+should be at the top of the tree, not at the bottom of it."
+
+"Oh!" said the monk, a wrinkle coming into his forehead, "so you
+think that in a rationalistic scheme of symbolism the ball should
+be on top of the cross?"
+
+"It sums up my whole allegory," said the professor.
+
+"Well, that is really very interesting," resumed Michael slowly,
+"because I think in that case you would see a most singular
+effect, an effect that has generally been achieved by all those
+able and powerful systems which rationalism, or the religion of
+the ball, has produced to lead or teach mankind.  You would see, I
+think, that thing happen which is always the ultimate embodiment
+and logical outcome of your logical scheme."
+
+"What are you talking about?" asked Lucifer. "What would happen?"
+
+"I mean it would fall down," said the monk, looking wistfully
+into the void.
+
+Lucifer made an angry movement and opened his mouth to speak, but
+Michael, with all his air of deliberation, was proceeding before
+he could bring out a word.
+
+"I once knew a man like you, Lucifer," he said, with a maddening
+monotony and slowness of articulation.  "He took this----"
+
+"There is no man like me," cried Lucifer, with a violence that
+shook the ship.
+
+"As I was observing," continued Michael, "this man also took the
+view that the symbol of Christianity was a symbol of savagery and
+all unreason.  His history is rather amusing.  It is also a perfect
+allegory of what happens to rationalists like yourself.  He began,
+of course, by refusing to allow a crucifix in his house, or round
+his wife's neck, or even in a picture.  He said, as you say, that
+it was an arbitrary and fantastic shape, that it was a
+monstrosity, loved because it was paradoxical.  Then he began to
+grow fiercer and more eccentric; he would batter the crosses by
+the roadside; for he lived in a Roman Catholic country.  Finally
+in a height of frenzy he climbed the steeple of the Parish Church
+and tore down the cross, waving it in the air, and uttering wild
+soliloquies up there under the stars.  Then one still summer
+evening as he was wending his way homewards, along a lane, the
+devil of his madness came upon him with a violence and
+transfiguration which changes the world.  He was standing smoking,
+for a moment, in the front of an interminable line of palings,
+when his eyes were opened.  Not a light shifted, not a leaf
+stirred, but he saw as if by a sudden change in the eyesight that
+this paling was an army of innumerable crosses linked together
+over hill and dale.  And he whirled up his heavy stick and went at
+it as if at an army.  Mile after mile along his homeward path he
+broke it down and tore it up.  For he hated the cross and every
+paling is a wall of crosses.  When he returned to his house he was
+a literal madman.  He sat upon a chair and then started up from it
+for the cross-bars of the carpentry repeated the intolerable
+image.  He flung himself upon a bed only to remember that this,
+too, like all workmanlike things, was constructed on the accursed
+plan.  He broke his furniture because it was made of crosses.  He
+burnt his house because it was made of crosses.  He was found in
+the river."
+
+Lucifer was looking at him with a bitten lip.
+
+"Is that story really true?" he asked.
+
+"Oh, no," said Michael, airily.  "It is a parable.  It is a parable
+of you and all your rationalists.  You begin by breaking up the
+Cross; but you end by breaking up the habitable world.  We leave
+you saying that nobody ought to join the Church against his will.
+When we meet you again you are saying that no one has any will to
+join it with.  We leave you saying that there is no such place as
+Eden.  We find you saying that there is no such place as Ireland.
+You start by hating the irrational and you come to hate
+everything, for everything is irrational and so----"
+
+Lucifer leapt upon him with a cry like a wild beast's.  "Ah," he
+screamed, "to every man his madness.  You are mad on the cross.
+Let it save you."
+
+And with a herculean energy he forced the monk backwards out of
+the reeling car on to the upper part of the stone ball.  Michael,
+with as abrupt an agility, caught one of the beams of the cross
+and saved himself from falling.  At the same instant Lucifer drove
+down a lever and the ship shot up with him in it alone.
+
+"Ha! ha!" he yelled, "what sort of a support do you find it, old
+fellow?"
+
+"For practical purposes of support," replied Michael grimly, "it
+is at any rate a great deal better than the ball.  May I ask if
+you are going to leave me here?"
+
+"Yes, yes. I mount! I mount!" cried the professor in ungovernable
+excitement.  "_Altiora peto_.  My path is upward."
+
+"How often have you told me, Professor, that there is really no
+up or down in space?" said the monk.  "I shall mount up as much as
+you will."
+
+"Indeed," said Lucifer, leering over the side of the flying ship.
+"May I ask what you are going to do?"
+
+The monk pointed downward at Ludgate Hill.  "I am going," he said,
+"to climb up into a star."
+
+Those who look at the matter most superficially regard paradox as
+something which belongs to jesting and light journalism.  Paradox
+of this kind is to be found in the saying of the dandy, in the
+decadent comedy, "Life is much too important to be taken
+seriously."  Those who look at the matter a little more deeply or
+delicately see that paradox is a thing which especially belongs
+to all religions.  Paradox of this kind is to be found in such a
+saying as "The meek shall inherit the earth."  But those who see
+and feel the fundamental fact of the matter know that paradox is
+a thing which belongs not to religion only, but to all vivid and
+violent practical crises of human living.  This kind of paradox
+may be clearly perceived by anybody who happens to be hanging in
+mid-space, clinging to one arm of the Cross of St. Paul's.
+
+Father Michael in spite of his years, and in spite of his
+asceticism (or because of it, for all I know), was a very healthy
+and happy old gentleman.  And as he swung on a bar above the
+sickening emptiness of air, he realized, with that sort of dead
+detachment which belongs to the brains of those in peril, the
+deathless and hopeless contradiction which is involved in the
+mere idea of courage.  He was a happy and healthy old gentleman
+and therefore he was quite careless about it.  And he felt as
+every man feels in the taut moment of such terror that his chief
+danger was terror itself; his only possible strength would be a
+coolness amounting to carelessness, a carelessness amounting
+almost to a suicidal swagger.  His one wild chance of coming out
+safely would be in not too desperately desiring to be safe.  There
+might be footholds down that awful facade, if only he could not
+care whether they were footholds or no.  If he were foolhardy he
+might escape; if he were wise he would stop where he was till he
+dropped from the cross like a stone.  And this antinomy kept on
+repeating itself in his mind, a contradiction as large and
+staring as the immense contradiction of the Cross; he remembered
+having often heard the words, "Whosoever shall lose his life the
+same shall save it."  He remembered with a sort of strange pity
+that this had always been made to mean that whoever lost his
+physical life should save his spiritual life.  Now he knew the
+truth that is known to all fighters, and hunters, and climbers of
+cliffs.  He knew that even his animal life could only be saved by
+a considerable readiness to lose it.
+
+Some will think it improbable that a human soul swinging
+desperately in mid-air should think about philosophical
+inconsistencies.  But such extreme states are dangerous things to
+dogmatize about.  Frequently they produce a certain useless and
+joyless activity of the mere intellect, thought not only divorced
+from hope but even from desire.  And if it is impossible to
+dogmatize about such states, it is still more impossible to
+describe them.  To this spasm of sanity and clarity in Michael's
+mind succeeded a spasm of the elemental terror; the terror of the
+animal in us which regards the whole universe as its enemy;
+which, when it is victorious, has no pity, and so, when it is
+defeated has no imaginable hope.  Of that ten minutes of terror it
+is not possible to speak in human words.  But then again in that
+damnable darkness there began to grow a strange dawn as of grey
+and pale silver.  And of this ultimate resignation or certainty it
+is even less possible to write; it is something stranger than
+hell itself; it is perhaps the last of the secrets of God.  At the
+highest crisis of some incurable anguish there will suddenly fall
+upon the man the stillness of an insane contentment.  It is not
+hope, for hope is broken and romantic and concerned with the
+future; this is complete and of the present.  It is not faith, for
+faith by its very nature is fierce, and as it were at once
+doubtful and defiant; but this is simply a satisfaction.  It is
+not knowledge, for the intellect seems to have no particular part
+in it.  Nor is it (as the modern idiots would certainly say it is)
+a mere numbness or negative paralysis of the powers of grief.  It
+is not negative in the least; it is as positive as good news.  In
+some sense, indeed, it is good news.  It seems almost as if there
+were some equality among things, some balance in all possible
+contingencies which we are not permitted to know lest we should
+learn indifference to good and evil, but which is sometimes shown
+to us for an instant as a last aid in our last agony.
+
+Michael certainly could not have given any sort of rational
+account of this vast unmeaning satisfaction which soaked through
+him and filled him to the brim.  He felt with a sort of
+half-witted lucidity that the cross was there, and the ball was
+there, and the dome was there, that he was going to climb down
+from them, and that he did not mind in the least whether he was
+killed or not.  This mysterious mood lasted long enough to start
+him on his dreadful descent and to force him to continue it.  But
+six times before he reached the highest of the outer galleries
+terror had returned on him like a flying storm of darkness and
+thunder.  By the time he had reached that place of safety he
+almost felt (as in some impossible fit of drunkenness) that he
+had two heads; one was calm, careless, and efficient; the other
+saw the danger like a deadly map, was wise, careful, and useless.
+He had fancied that he would have to let himself vertically down
+the face of the whole building.  When he dropped into the upper
+gallery he still felt as far from the terrestrial globe as if he
+had only dropped from the sun to the moon.  He paused a little,
+panting in the gallery under the ball, and idly kicked his heels,
+moving a few yards along it.  And as he did so a thunderbolt
+struck his soul.  A man, a heavy, ordinary man, with a composed
+indifferent face, and a prosaic sort of uniform, with a row of
+buttons, blocked his way.  Michael had no mind to wonder whether
+this solid astonished man, with the brown moustache and the
+nickel buttons, had also come on a flying ship.  He merely let his
+mind float in an endless felicity about the man.  He thought how
+nice it would be if he had to live up in that gallery with that
+one man for ever.  He thought how he would luxuriate in the
+nameless shades of this man's soul and then hear with an endless
+excitement about the nameless shades of the souls of all his
+aunts and uncles.  A moment before he had been dying alone.  Now
+he was living in the same world with a man; an inexhaustible
+ecstasy.  In the gallery below the ball Father Michael had found
+that man who is the noblest and most divine and most lovable of
+all men, better than all the saints, greater than all the
+heroes--man Friday.
+
+In the confused colour and music of his new paradise, Michael
+heard only in a faint and distant fashion some remarks that this
+beautiful solid man seemed to be making to him; remarks about
+something or other being after hours and against orders.  He also
+seemed to be asking how Michael "got up" there.  This beautiful
+man evidently felt as Michael did that the earth was a star and
+was set in heaven.
+
+At length Michael sated himself with the mere sensual music of
+the voice of the man in buttons.  He began to listen to what he
+said, and even to make some attempt at answering a question which
+appeared to have been put several times and was now put with some
+excess of emphasis.  Michael realized that the image of God in
+nickel buttons was asking him how he had come there.  He said that
+he had come in Lucifer's ship.  On his giving this answer the
+demeanour of the image of God underwent a remarkable change.  From
+addressing Michael gruffly, as if he were a malefactor, he began
+suddenly to speak to him with a sort of eager and feverish
+amiability as if he were a child.  He seemed particularly anxious
+to coax him away from the balustrade.  He led him by the arm
+towards a door leading into the building itself, soothing him all
+the time.  He gave what even Michael (slight as was his knowledge
+of the world) felt to be an improbable account of the sumptuous
+pleasures and varied advantages awaiting him downstairs.  Michael
+followed him, however, if only out of politeness, down an
+apparently interminable spiral of staircase.  At one point a door
+opened.  Michael stepped through it, and the unaccountable man in
+buttons leapt after him and pinioned him where he stood.  But he
+only wished to stand; to stand and stare.  He had stepped as it
+were into another infinity, out under the dome of another heaven.
+But this was a dome of heaven made by man.  The gold and green and
+crimson of its sunset were not in the shapeless clouds but in
+shapes of cherubim and seraphim, awful human shapes with a
+passionate plumage.  Its stars were not above but far below, like
+fallen stars still in unbroken constellations; the dome itself
+was full of darkness.  And far below, lower even than the lights,
+could be seen creeping or motionless, great black masses of men.
+The tongue of a terrible organ seemed to shake the very air in
+the whole void; and through it there came up to Michael the sound
+of a tongue more terrible; the dreadful everlasting voice of man,
+calling to his gods from the beginning to the end of the world.
+Michael felt almost as if he were a god, and all the voices were
+hurled at him.
+
+"No, the pretty things aren't here," said the demi-god in
+buttons, caressingly.  "The pretty things are downstairs.  You
+come along with me.  There's something that will surprise you
+downstairs; something you want very much to see."
+
+Evidently the man in buttons did not feel like a god, so Michael
+made no attempt to explain his feelings to him, but followed him
+meekly enough down the trail of the serpentine staircase.  He had
+no notion where or at what level he was.  He was still full of the
+cold splendour of space, and of what a French writer has
+brilliantly named the "vertigo of the infinite," when another
+door opened, and with a shock indescribable he found himself on
+the familiar level, in a street full of faces, with the houses
+and even the lamp-posts above his head.  He felt suddenly happy
+and suddenly indescribably small.  He fancied he had been changed
+into a child again; his eyes sought the pavement seriously as
+children's do, as if it were a thing with which something
+satisfactory could be done.  He felt the full warmth of that
+pleasure from which the proud shut themselves out; the pleasure
+which not only goes with humiliation, but which almost is
+humiliation.  Men who have escaped death by a hair have it, and
+men whose love is returned by a woman unexpectedly, and men whose
+sins are forgiven them.  Everything his eye fell on it feasted on,
+not aesthetically, but with a plain, jolly appetite as of a boy
+eating buns.  He relished the squareness of the houses; he liked
+their clean angles as if he had just cut them with a knife.  The
+lit squares of the shop windows excited him as the young are
+excited by the lit stage of some promising pantomime.  He
+happened to see in one shop which projected with a bulging
+bravery on to the pavement some square tins of potted meat, and
+it seemed like a hint of a hundred hilarious high teas in a
+hundred streets of the world.  He was, perhaps, the happiest of
+all the children of men.  For in that unendurable instant when he
+hung, half slipping, to the ball of St. Paul's, the whole
+universe had been destroyed and re-created.
+
+Suddenly through all the din of the dark streets came a crash of
+glass.  With that mysterious suddenness of the Cockney mob, a rush
+was made in the right direction, a dingy office, next to the shop
+of the potted meat.  The pane of glass was lying in splinters
+about the pavement.  And the police already had their hands on a
+very tall young man, with dark, lank hair and dark, dazed eyes,
+with a grey plaid over his shoulder, who had just smashed the
+shop window with a single blow of his stick.
+
+"I'd do it again," said the young man, with a furious white face.
+"Anybody would have done it.  Did you see what it said?  I swear
+I'd do it again."  Then his eyes encountered the monkish habit of
+Michael, and he pulled off his grey tam-o'-shanter with the
+gesture of a Catholic.
+
+"Father, did you see what they said?" he cried, trembling.  "Did
+you see what they dared to say?  I didn't understand it at first.
+I read it half through before I broke the window."
+
+Michael felt he knew not how.  The whole peace of the world was
+pent up painfully in his heart.  The new and childlike world which
+he had seen so suddenly, men had not seen at all.  Here they were
+still at their old bewildering, pardonable, useless quarrels,
+with so much to be said on both sides, and so little that need be
+said at all.  A fierce inspiration fell on him suddenly; he would
+strike them where they stood with the love of God.  They should
+not move till they saw their own sweet and startling existence.
+They should not go from that place till they went home embracing
+like brothers and shouting like men delivered.  From the Cross
+from which he had fallen fell the shadow of its fantastic mercy;
+and the first three words he spoke in a voice like a silver
+trumpet, held men as still as stones.  Perhaps if he had spoken
+there for an hour in his illumination he might have founded a
+religion on Ludgate Hill.  But the heavy hand of his guide fell
+suddenly on his shoulder.
+
+"This poor fellow is dotty," he said good-humouredly to the
+crowd.  "I found him wandering in the Cathedral.  Says he came in
+a flying ship.  Is there a constable to spare to take care of him?"
+
+There was a constable to spare.  Two other constables attended to
+the tall young man in grey; a fourth concerned himself with the
+owner of the shop, who showed some tendency to be turbulent.  They
+took the tall young man away to a magistrate, whither we shall
+follow him in an ensuing chapter.  And they took the happiest man
+in the world away to an asylum.
+
+
+
+II. THE RELIGION OF THE STIPENDIARY MAGISTRATE
+
+The editorial office of _The Atheist_ had for some years past
+become less and less prominently interesting as a feature of
+Ludgate Hill.  The paper was unsuited to the atmosphere.  It showed
+an interest in the Bible unknown in the district, and a knowledge
+of that volume to which nobody else on Ludgate Hill could make
+any conspicuous claim.  It was in vain that the editor of _The
+Atheist_ filled his front window with fierce and final demands as
+to what Noah in the Ark did with the neck of the giraffe.  It was
+in vain that he asked violently, as for the last time, how the
+statement "God is Spirit" could be reconciled with the statement
+"The earth is His footstool."  It was in vain that he cried with
+an accusing energy that the Bishop of London was paid L12,000 a
+year for pretending to believe that the whale swallowed Jonah.  It
+was in vain that he hung in conspicuous places the most thrilling
+scientific calculations about the width of the throat of a whale.
+Was it nothing to them all they that passed by?  Did his sudden
+and splendid and truly sincere indignation never stir any of the
+people pouring down Ludgate Hill?  Never.  The little man who
+edited _The Atheist_ would rush from his shop on starlit evenings
+and shake his fist at St. Paul's in the passion of his holy war
+upon the holy place.  He might have spared his emotion.  The cross
+at the top of St. Paul's and _The Atheist_ shop at the foot of it
+were alike remote from the world.  The shop and the Cross were
+equally uplifted and alone in the empty heavens.
+
+To the little man who edited _The Atheist_, a fiery little
+Scotchman, with fiery, red hair and beard, going by the name of
+Turnbull, all this decline in public importance seemed not so
+much sad or even mad, but merely bewildering and unaccountable.
+He had said the worst thing that could be said; and it seemed
+accepted and ignored like the ordinary second best of the
+politicians.  Every day his blasphemies looked more glaring, and
+every day the dust lay thicker upon them.  It made him feel as if
+he were moving in a world of idiots.  He seemed among a race of
+men who smiled when told of their own death, or looked vacantly
+at the Day of Judgement.  Year after year went by, and year after
+year the death of God in a shop in Ludgate became a less and less
+important occurrence.  All the forward men of his age discouraged
+Turnbull.  The socialists said he was cursing priests when he
+should be cursing capitalists.  The artists said that the soul was
+most spiritual, not when freed from religion, but when freed from
+morality.  Year after year went by, and at least a man came by who
+treated Mr. Turnbull's secularist shop with a real respect and
+seriousness.  He was a young man in a grey plaid, and he smashed
+the window.
+
+He was a young man, born in the Bay of Arisaig, opposite Rum and
+the Isle of Skye.  His high, hawklike features and snaky black
+hair bore the mark of that unknown historic thing which is
+crudely called Celtic, but which is probably far older than the
+Celts, whoever they were.  He was in name and stock a Highlander
+of the Macdonalds; but his family took, as was common in such
+cases, the name of a subordinate sept as a surname, and for all
+the purposes which could be answered in London, he called himself
+Evan MacIan.  He had been brought up in some loneliness and
+seclusion as a strict Roman Catholic, in the midst of that little
+wedge of Roman Catholics which is driven into the Western
+Highlands.  And he had found his way as far as Fleet Street,
+seeking some half-promised employment, without having properly
+realized that there were in the world any people who were not
+Roman Catholics.  He had uncovered himself for a few moments
+before the statue of Queen Anne, in front of St. Paul's
+Cathedral, under the firm impression that it was a figure of the
+Virgin Mary.  He was somewhat surprised at the lack of deference
+shown to the figure by the people bustling by.  He did not
+understand that their one essential historical principle, the one
+law truly graven on their hearts, was the great and comforting
+statement that Queen Anne is dead.  This faith was as fundamental
+as his faith, that Our Lady was alive.  Any persons he had talked
+to since he had touched the fringe of our fashion or civilization
+had been by a coincidence, sympathetic or hypocritical.  Or if
+they had spoken some established blasphemies, he had been unable
+to understand them merely owing to the preoccupied satisfaction
+of his mind.
+
+On that fantastic fringe of the Gaelic land where he walked as a
+boy, the cliffs were as fantastic as the clouds.  Heaven seemed to
+humble itself and come closer to the earth.  The common paths of
+his little village began to climb quite suddenly and seemed
+resolved to go to heaven.  The sky seemed to fall down towards the
+hills; the hills took hold upon the sky.  In the sumptuous sunset
+of gold and purple and peacock green cloudlets and islets were
+the same.  Evan lived like a man walking on a borderland, the
+borderland between this world and another.  Like so many men and
+nations who grow up with nature and the common things, he
+understood the supernatural before he understood the natural.  He
+had looked at dim angels standing knee-deep in the grass before
+he had looked at the grass.  He knew that Our Lady's robes were
+blue before he knew the wild roses round her feet were red.  The
+deeper his memory plunged into the dark house of childhood the
+nearer and nearer he came to the things that cannot be named.
+All through his life he thought of the daylight world as a sort
+of divine debris, the broken remainder of his first vision.  The
+skies and mountains were the splendid off-scourings of another
+place.  The stars were lost jewels of the Queen.  Our Lady had
+gone and left the stars by accident.
+
+His private tradition was equally wild and unworldly.  His
+great-grandfather had been cut down at Culloden, certain in his
+last instant that God would restore the King.  His grandfather,
+then a boy of ten, had taken the terrible claymore from the hand
+of the dead and hung it up in his house, burnishing it and
+sharpening it for sixty years, to be ready for the next
+rebellion.  His father, the youngest son and the last left alive,
+had refused to attend on Queen Victoria in Scotland.  And Evan
+himself had been of one piece with his progenitors; and was not
+dead with them, but alive in the twentieth century.  He was not
+in the least the pathetic Jacobite of whom we read, left behind
+by a final advance of all things.  He was, in his own fancy, a
+conspirator, fierce and up to date.  In the long, dark afternoons
+of the Highland winter, he plotted and fumed in the dark.  He
+drew plans of the capture of London on the desolate sand of
+Arisaig.
+
+When he came up to capture London, it was not with an army of
+white cockades, but with a stick and a satchel.  London overawed
+him a little, not because he thought it grand or even terrible,
+but because it bewildered him; it was not the Golden City or even
+hell; it was Limbo.  He had one shock of sentiment, when he turned
+that wonderful corner of Fleet Street and saw St. Paul's sitting
+in the sky.
+
+"Ah," he said, after a long pause, "that sort of thing was built
+under the Stuarts!"  Then with a sour grin he asked himself what
+was the corresponding monument of the Brunswicks and the
+Protestant Constitution.  After some warning, he selected a
+sky-sign of some pill.
+
+Half an hour afterwards his emotions left him with an emptied
+mind on the same spot.  And it was in a mood of mere idle
+investigation that he happened to come to a standstill opposite
+the office of _The Atheist_.  He did not see the word "atheist",
+or if he did, it is quite possible that he did not know the
+meaning of the word.  Even as it was, the document would not have
+shocked even the innocent Highlander, but for the troublesome and
+quite unforeseen fact that the innocent Highlander read it
+stolidly to the end; a thing unknown among the most enthusiastic
+subscribers to the paper, and calculated in any case to create a
+new situation.
+
+With a smart journalistic instinct characteristic of all his
+school, the editor of _The Atheist_ had put first in his paper
+and most prominently in his window an article called "The
+Mesopotamian Mythology and its Effects on Syriac Folk Lore."  Mr.
+Evan MacIan began to read this quite idly, as he would have read
+a public statement beginning with a young girl dying in Brighton
+and ending with Bile Beans.  He received the very considerable
+amount of information accumulated by the author with that tired
+clearness of the mind which children have on heavy summer
+afternoons--that tired clearness which leads them to go on asking
+questions long after they have lost interest in the subject and
+are as bored as their nurse.  The streets were full of people and
+empty of adventures.  He might as well know about the gods of
+Mesopotamia as not; so he flattened his long, lean face against
+the dim bleak pane of the window and read all there was to read
+about Mesopotamian gods.  He read how the Mesopotamians had a god
+named Sho (sometimes pronounced Ji), and that he was described as
+being very powerful, a striking similarity to some expressions
+about Jahveh, who is also described as having power.  Evan had
+never heard of Jahveh in his life, and imagining him to be some
+other Mesopotamian idol, read on with a dull curiosity.  He learnt
+that the name Sho, under its third form of Psa, occurs in an
+early legend which describes how the deity, after the manner of
+Jupiter on so many occasions, seduced a Virgin and begat a hero.
+This hero, whose name is not essential to our existence, was, it
+was said, the chief hero and Saviour of the Mesopotamian ethical
+scheme.  Then followed a paragraph giving other examples of such
+heroes and Saviours being born of some profligate intercourse
+between God and mortal.  Then followed a paragraph--but Evan did
+not understand it.  He read it again and then again.  Then he did
+understand it.  The glass fell in ringing fragments on to the
+pavement, and Evan sprang over the barrier into the shop,
+brandishing his stick.
+
+"What is this?" cried little Mr. Turnbull, starting up with hair
+aflame.  "How dare you break my window?"
+
+"Because it was the quickest cut to you," cried Evan, stamping.
+"Stand up and fight, you crapulous coward.  You dirty lunatic,
+stand up, will you? Have you any weapons here?"
+
+"Are you mad?" asked Turnbull, glaring.
+
+"Are you?" cried Evan.  "Can you be anything else when you plaster
+your own house with that God-defying filth?  Stand up and fight, I
+say."
+
+A great light like dawn came into Mr. Turnbull's face.  Behind his
+red hair and beard he turned deadly pale with pleasure.  Here,
+after twenty lone years of useless toil, he had his reward.
+Someone was angry with the paper.  He bounded to his feet like a
+boy; he saw a new youth opening before him.  And as not
+unfrequently happens to middle-aged gentlemen when they see a new
+youth opening before them, he found himself in the presence of
+the police.
+
+The policemen, after some ponderous questionings, collared both
+the two enthusiasts.  They were more respectful, however, to the
+young man who had smashed the window, than to the miscreant who
+had had his window smashed.  There was an air of refined mystery
+about Evan MacIan, which did not exist in the irate little
+shopkeeper, an air of refined mystery which appealed to the
+policemen, for policemen, like most other English types, are at
+once snobs and poets.  MacIan might possibly be a gentleman, they
+felt; the editor manifestly was not.  And the editor's fine
+rational republican appeals to his respect for law, and his
+ardour to be tried by his fellow citizens, seemed to the police
+quite as much gibberish as Evan's mysticism could have done.  The
+police were not used to hearing principles, even the principles
+of their own existence.
+
+The police magistrate, before whom they were hurried and tried,
+was a Mr. Cumberland Vane, a cheerful, middle-aged gentleman,
+honourably celebrated for the lightness of his sentences and the
+lightness of his conversation.  He occasionally worked himself up
+into a sort of theoretic rage about certain particular offenders,
+such as the men who took pokers to their wives, talked in a
+loose, sentimental way about the desirability of flogging them,
+and was hopelessly bewildered by the fact that the wives seemed
+even more angry with him than with their husbands.  He was a tall,
+spruce man, with a twist of black moustache and incomparable
+morning dress.  He looked like a gentleman, and yet, somehow, like
+a stage gentleman.
+
+He had often treated serious crimes against mere order or
+property with a humane flippancy.  Hence, about the mere breaking
+of an editor's window, he was almost uproarious.
+
+"Come, Mr. MacIan, come," he said, leaning back in his chair, "do
+you generally enter you friends' houses by walking through the
+glass?"  (Laughter.)
+
+"He is not my friend," said Evan, with the stolidity of a dull
+child.
+
+"Not your friend, eh?" said the magistrate, sparkling.  "Is he
+your brother-in-law?"  (Loud and prolonged laughter.)
+
+"He is my enemy," said Evan, simply; "he is the enemy of God."
+
+Mr. Vane shifted sharply in his seat, dropping the eye-glass out
+of his eye in a momentary and not unmanly embarrassment.
+
+"You mustn't talk like that here," he said, roughly, and in a
+kind of hurry, "that has nothing to do with us."
+
+Evan opened his great, blue eyes; "God," he began.
+
+"Be quiet," said the magistrate, angrily, "it is most undesirable
+that things of that sort should be spoken about--a--in public,
+and in an ordinary Court of Justice.  Religion is--a--too personal
+a matter to be mentioned in such a place."
+
+"Is it?" answered the Highlander, "then what did those policemen
+swear by just now?"
+
+"That is no parallel," answered Vane, rather irritably; "of
+course there is a form of oath--to be taken reverently--
+reverently, and there's an end of it.  But to talk in a public
+place about one's most sacred and private sentiments--well, I
+call it bad taste.  (Slight applause.)  I call it irreverent.
+I call it irreverent, and I'm not specially orthodox either."
+
+"I see you are not," said Evan, "but I am."
+
+"We are wondering from the point," said the police magistrate,
+pulling himself together.
+
+"May I ask why you smashed this worthy citizen's window?"
+
+Evan turned a little pale at the mere memory, but he answered
+with the same cold and deadly literalism that he showed
+throughout.
+
+"Because he blasphemed Our Lady."
+
+"I tell you once and for all," cried Mr. Cumberland Vane, rapping
+his knuckles angrily on the table, "I tell you, once and for all,
+my man, that I will not have you turning on any religious rant or
+cant here.  Don't imagine that it will impress me.  The most
+religious people are not those who talk about it.  (Applause.)
+You answer the questions and do nothing else."
+
+"I did nothing else," said Evan, with a slight smile.
+
+"Eh," cried Vane, glaring through his eye-glass.
+
+"You asked me why I broke his window," said MacIan, with a face
+of wood.  "I answered, 'Because he blasphemed Our Lady.'  I had
+no other reason.  So I have no other answer."  Vane continued to
+gaze at him with a sternness not habitual to him.
+
+"You are not going the right way to work, Sir," he said, with
+severity.  "You are not going the right way to work to--a--have
+your case treated with special consideration.  If you had simply
+expressed regret for what you had done, I should have been
+strongly inclined to dismiss the matter as an outbreak of temper.
+Even now, if you say that you are sorry I shall only----"
+
+"But I am not in the least sorry," said Evan, "I am very
+pleased."
+
+"I really believe you are insane," said the stipendiary,
+indignantly, for he had really been doing his best as a
+good-natured man, to compose the dispute.  "What conceivable right
+have you to break other people's windows because their opinions
+do not agree with yours?  This man only gave expression to his
+sincere belief."
+
+"So did I," said the Highlander.
+
+"And who are you?" exploded Vane.  "Are your views necessarily the
+right ones?  Are you necessarily in possession of the truth?"
+
+"Yes," said MacIan.
+
+The magistrate broke into a contemptuous laugh.
+
+"Oh, you want a nurse to look after you," he said. "You must pay
+L10."
+
+Evan MacIan plunged his hands into his loose grey garment and
+drew out a queer looking leather purse.  It contained exactly
+twelve sovereigns.  He paid down the ten, coin by coin, in
+silence, and equally silently returned the remaining two to the
+receptacle.  Then he said, "May I say a word, your worship?"
+
+Cumberland Vane seemed half hypnotized with the silence and
+automatic movements of the stranger; he made a movement with his
+head which might have been either "yes" or "no".  "I only wished
+to say, your worship," said MacIan, putting back the purse in his
+trouser pocket, "that smashing that shop window was, I confess, a
+useless and rather irregular business.  It may be excused,
+however, as a mere preliminary to further proceedings, a sort of
+preface.  Wherever and whenever I meet that man," and he pointed
+to the editor of _The Atheist_, "whether it be outside this door
+in ten minutes from now, or twenty years hence in some distant
+country, wherever and whenever I meet that man, I will fight him.
+Do not be afraid. I will not rush at him like a bully, or bear
+him down with any brute superiority.  I will fight him like a
+gentleman; I will fight him as our fathers fought.  He shall
+choose how, sword or pistol, horse or foot.  But if he refuses, I
+will write his cowardice on every wall in the world.  If he had
+said of my mother what he said of the Mother of God, there is not
+a club of clean men in Europe that would deny my right to call
+him out.  If he had said it of my wife, you English would
+yourselves have pardoned me for beating him like a dog in the
+market place.  Your worship, I have no mother; I have no wife.  I
+have only that which the poor have equally with the rich; which
+the lonely have equally with the man of many friends.  To me this
+whole strange world is homely, because in the heart of it there
+is a home; to me this cruel world is kindly, because higher than
+the heavens there is something more human than humanity.  If a man
+must not fight for this, may he fight for anything?  I would fight
+for my friend, but if I lost my friend, I should still be there.
+I would fight for my country, but if I lost my country, I should
+still exist.  But if what that devil dreams were true, I should
+not be--I should burst like a bubble and be gone. I could not
+live in that imbecile universe.  Shall I not fight for my own
+existence?"
+
+The magistrate recovered his voice and his presence of mind.  The
+first part of the speech, the bombastic and brutally practical
+challenge, stunned him with surprise; but the rest of Evan's
+remarks, branching off as they did into theoretic phrases, gave
+his vague and very English mind (full of memories of the hedging
+and compromise in English public speaking) an indistinct
+sensation of relief, as if the man, though mad, were not so
+dangerous as he had thought.  He went into a sort of weary
+laughter.
+
+"For Heaven's sake, man," he said, "don't talk so much. Let other
+people have a chance (laughter).  I trust all that you said about
+asking Mr. Turnbull to fight, may be regarded as rubbish.  In case
+of accidents, however, I must bind you over to keep the peace."
+
+"To keep the peace," repeated Evan, "with whom?"
+
+"With Mr. Turnbull," said Vane.
+
+"Certainly not," answered MacIan.  "What has he to do with peace?"
+
+"Do you mean to say," began the magistrate, "that you refuse
+to..."  The voice of Turnbull himself clove in for the first time.
+
+"Might I suggest," he said, "That I, your worship, can settle to
+some extent this absurd matter myself.  This rather wild gentleman
+promises that he will not attack me with any ordinary assault--
+and if he does, you may be sure the police shall hear of it.  But
+he says he will not.  He says he will challenge me to a duel; and
+I cannot say anything stronger about his mental state than to say
+that I think that it is highly probable that he will.  (Laughter.)
+But it takes two to make a duel, your worship (renewed laughter).
+I do not in the least mind being described on every wall in the
+world as the coward who would not fight a man in Fleet Street,
+about whether the Virgin Mary had a parallel in Mesopotamian
+mythology.  No, your worship.  You need not trouble to bind him
+over to keep the peace.  I bind myself over to keep the peace,
+and you may rest quite satisfied that there will be no duel with
+me in it."
+
+Mr. Cumberland Vane rolled about, laughing in a sort of relief.
+
+"You're like a breath of April, sir," he cried. "You're ozone
+after that fellow.  You're perfectly right.  Perhaps I have taken
+the thing too seriously.  I should love to see him sending you
+challenges and to see you smiling.  Well, well."
+
+Evan went out of the Court of Justice free, but strangely shaken,
+like a sick man.  Any punishment of suppression he would have felt
+as natural; but the sudden juncture between the laughter of his
+judge and the laughter of the man he had wronged, made him feel
+suddenly small, or at least, defeated.  It was really true that
+the whole modern world regarded his world as a bubble.  No cruelty
+could have shown it, but their kindness showed it with a ghastly
+clearness.  As he was brooding, he suddenly became conscious of a
+small, stern figure, fronting him in silence.  Its eyes were grey
+and awful, and its beard red.  It was Turnbull.
+
+"Well, sir," said the editor of _The Atheist_, "where is the
+fight to be?  Name the field, sir."
+
+Evan stood thunderstruck.  He stammered out something, he knew not
+what; he only guessed it by the answer of the other.
+
+"Do I want to fight?  Do I want to fight?" cried the furious
+Free-thinker.  "Why, you moonstruck scarecrow of superstition, do
+you think your dirty saints are the only people who can die?
+Haven't you hung atheists, and burned them, and boiled them, and
+did they ever deny their faith?  Do you think we don't want to
+fight?  Night and day I have prayed--I have longed--for an atheist
+revolution--I have longed to see your blood and ours on the
+streets.  Let it be yours or mine?"
+
+"But you said..." began MacIan.
+
+"I know," said Turnbull scornfully.  "And what did you say?  You
+damned fool, you said things that might have got us locked up for
+a year, and shadowed by the coppers for half a decade.  If you
+wanted to fight, why did you tell that ass you wanted to?  I got
+you out, to fight if you want to.  Now, fight if you dare."
+
+"I swear to you, then," said MacIan, after a pause.  "I swear to
+you that nothing shall come between us.  I swear to you that
+nothing shall be in my heart or in my head till our swords clash
+together.  I swear it by the God you have denied, by the Blessed
+Lady you have blasphemed; I swear it by the seven swords in her
+heart.  I swear it by the Holy Island where my fathers are, by the
+honour of my mother, by the secret of my people, and by the
+chalice of the Blood of God."
+
+The atheist drew up his head.  "And I," he said, "give my word."
+
+
+
+III. SOME OLD CURIOSITIES
+
+The evening sky, a dome of solid gold, unflaked even by a single
+sunset cloud, steeped the meanest sights of London in a strange
+and mellow light.  It made a little greasy street of St. Martin's
+Lane look as if it were paved with gold.  It made the pawnbroker's
+half-way down it shine as if it were really that Mountain of
+Piety that the French poetic instinct has named it; it made the
+mean pseudo-French bookshop, next but one to it, a shop packed
+with dreary indecency, show for a moment a kind of Parisian
+colour.  And the shop that stood between the pawnshop and the shop
+of dreary indecency, showed with quite a blaze of old world
+beauty, for it was, by accident, a shop not unbeautiful in
+itself.  The front window had a glimmer of bronze and blue steel,
+lit, as by a few stars, by the sparks of what were alleged to be
+jewels; for it was in brief, a shop of bric-a-brac and old
+curiosities.  A row of half-burnished seventeenth-century swords
+ran like an ornate railing along the front of the window; behind
+was a darker glimmer of old oak and old armour; and higher up
+hung the most extraordinary looking South Sea tools or utensils,
+whether designed for killing enemies or merely for cooking them,
+no mere white man could possibly conjecture.  But the romance of
+the eye, which really on this rich evening, clung about the shop,
+had its main source in the accident of two doors standing open,
+the front door that opened on the street and a back door that
+opened on an odd green square of garden, that the sun turned to a
+square of gold.  There is nothing more beautiful than thus to look
+as it were through the archway of a house; as if the open sky
+were an interior chamber, and the sun a secret lamp of the place.
+
+I have suggested that the sunset light made everything lovely.  To
+say that it made the keeper of the curiosity shop lovely would be
+a tribute to it perhaps too extreme.  It would easily have made
+him beautiful if he had been merely squalid; if he had been a Jew
+of the Fagin type.  But he was a Jew of another and much less
+admirable type; a Jew with a very well-sounding name.  For though
+there are no hard tests for separating the tares and the wheat of
+any people, one rude but efficient guide is that the nice Jew is
+called Moses Solomon, and the nasty Jew is called Thornton Percy.
+The keeper of the curiosity shop was of the Thornton Percy branch
+of the chosen people; he belonged to those Lost Ten Tribes whose
+industrious object is to lose themselves.  He was a man still
+young, but already corpulent, with sleek dark hair, heavy
+handsome clothes, and a full, fat, permanent smile, which looked
+at the first glance kindly, and at the second cowardly.  The name
+over his shop was Henry Gordon, but two Scotchmen who were in his
+shop that evening could come upon no trace of a Scotch accent.
+
+These two Scotchmen in this shop were careful purchasers, but
+free-handed payers.  One of them who seemed to be the principal
+and the authority (whom, indeed, Mr. Henry Gordon fancied he had
+seen somewhere before), was a small, sturdy fellow, with fine
+grey eyes, a square red tie and a square red beard, that he
+carried aggressively forward as if he defied anyone to pull it.
+The other kept so much in the background in comparison that he
+looked almost ghostly in his grey cloak or plaid, a tall, sallow,
+silent young man.
+
+The two Scotchmen were interested in seventeenth-century swords.
+They were fastidious about them.  They had a whole armoury of
+these weapons brought out and rolled clattering about the
+counter, until they found two of precisely the same length.
+Presumably they desired the exact symmetry for some decorative
+trophy.  Even then they felt the points, poised the swords for
+balance and bent them in a circle to see that they sprang
+straight again; which, for decorative purposes, seems carrying
+realism rather far.
+
+"These will do," said the strange person with the red beard.
+"And perhaps I had better pay for them at once. And as you are
+the challenger, Mr. MacIan, perhaps you had better explain the
+situation."
+
+The tall Scotchman in grey took a step forward and spoke in a
+voice quite clear and bold, and yet somehow lifeless, like a man
+going through an ancient formality.
+
+"The fact is, Mr. Gordon, we have to place our honour in your
+hands.  Words have passed between Mr. Turnbull and myself on a
+grave and invaluable matter, which can only be atoned for by
+fighting.  Unfortunately, as the police are in some sense pursuing
+us, we are hurried, and must fight now and without seconds.  But
+if you will be so kind as to take us into your little garden and
+see far play, we shall feel how----"
+
+The shopman recovered himself from a stunning surprise and burst
+out:
+
+"Gentlemen, are you drunk?  A duel!  A duel in my garden.  Go
+home, gentlemen, go home.  Why, what did you quarrel about?"
+
+"We quarrelled," said Evan, in the same dead voice, "about
+religion."  The fat shopkeeper rolled about in his chair with
+enjoyment.
+
+"Well, this is a funny game," he said.  "So you want to commit
+murder on behalf of religion.  Well, well my religion is a little
+respect for humanity, and----"
+
+"Excuse me," cut in Turnbull, suddenly and fiercely, pointing
+towards the pawnbroker's next door.  "Don't you own that shop?"
+
+"Why--er--yes," said Gordon.
+
+"And don't you own that shop?" repeated the secularist, pointing
+backward to the pornographic bookseller.
+
+"What if I do?"
+
+"Why, then," cried Turnbull, with grating contempt.  "I will leave
+the religion of humanity confidently in your hands; but I am
+sorry I troubled you about such a thing as honour.  Look here, my
+man. I do believe in humanity.  I do believe in liberty.  My father
+died for it under the swords of the Yeomanry.  I am going to die
+for it, if need be, under that sword on your counter.  But if
+there is one sight that makes me doubt it it is your foul fat
+face.  It is hard to believe you were not meant to be ruled like a
+dog or killed like a cockroach.  Don't try your slave's philosophy
+on me.  We are going to fight, and we are going to fight in your
+garden, with your swords.  Be still!  Raise your voice above a
+whisper, and I run you through the body."
+
+Turnbull put the bright point of the sword against the gay
+waistcoat of the dealer, who stood choking with rage and fear,
+and an astonishment so crushing as to be greater than either.
+
+"MacIan," said Turnbull, falling almost into the familiar tone of
+a business partner, "MacIan, tie up this fellow and put a gag in
+his mouth.  Be still, I say, or I kill you where you stand."
+
+The man was too frightened to scream, but he struggled wildly,
+while Evan MacIan, whose long, lean hands were unusually
+powerful, tightened some old curtain cords round him, strapped a
+rope gag in his mouth and rolled him on his back on the floor.
+
+"There's nothing very strong here," said Evan, looking about him.
+"I'm afraid he'll work through that gag in half an hour or so."
+
+"Yes," said Turnbull, "but one of us will be killed by that
+time."
+
+"Well, let's hope so," said the Highlander, glancing doubtfully
+at the squirming thing on the floor.
+
+"And now," said Turnbull, twirling his fiery moustache and
+fingering his sword, "let us go into the garden.  What an
+exquisite summer evening!"
+
+MacIan said nothing, but lifting his sword from the counter went
+out into the sun.
+
+The brilliant light ran along the blades, filling the channels of
+them with white fire; the combatants stuck their swords in the
+turf and took off their hats, coats, waistcoats, and boots.  Evan
+said a short Latin prayer to himself, during which Turnbull made
+something of a parade of lighting a cigarette which he flung away
+the instant after, when he saw MacIan apparently standing ready.
+Yet MacIan was not exactly ready.  He stood staring like a man
+stricken with a trance.
+
+"What are you staring at?" asked Turnbull.  "Do you see the
+bobbies?"
+
+"I see Jerusalem," said Evan, "all covered with the shields and
+standards of the Saracens."
+
+"Jerusalem!" said Turnbull, laughing.  "Well, we've taken the only
+inhabitant into captivity."
+
+And he picked up his sword and made it whistle like a boy's wand.
+
+"I beg your pardon," said MacIan, dryly.  "Let us begin."
+
+MacIan made a military salute with his weapon, which Turnbull
+copied or parodied with an impatient contempt; and in the
+stillness of the garden the swords came together with a clear
+sound like a bell.  The instant the blades touched, each felt them
+tingle to their very points with a personal vitality, as if they
+were two naked nerves of steel.  Evan had worn throughout an air
+of apathy, which might have been the stale apathy of one who
+wants nothing.  But it was indeed the more dreadful apathy of one
+who wants something and will care for nothing else.  And this was
+seen suddenly; for the instant Evan engaged he disengaged and
+lunged with an infernal violence.  His opponent with a desperate
+promptitude parried and riposted; the parry only just succeeded,
+the riposte failed.  Something big and unbearable seemed to have
+broken finally out of Evan in that first murderous lunge, leaving
+him lighter and cooler and quicker upon his feet.  He fell to
+again, fiercely still, but now with a fierce caution.  The next
+moment Turnbull lunged; MacIan seemed to catch the point and
+throw it away from him, and was thrusting back like a
+thunderbolt, when a sound paralysed him; another sound beside
+their ringing weapons.  Turnbull, perhaps from an equal
+astonishment, perhaps from chivalry, stopped also and forebore to
+send his sword through his exposed enemy.
+
+"What's that?" asked Evan, hoarsely.
+
+A heavy scraping sound, as of a trunk being dragged along a
+littered floor, came from the dark shop behind them.
+
+"The old Jew has broken one of his strings, and he's crawling
+about," said Turnbull.  "Be quick! We must finish before he gets
+his gag out."
+
+"Yes, yes, quick! On guard!" cried the Highlander.  The blades
+crossed again with the same sound like song, and the men went to
+work again with the same white and watchful faces.  Evan, in his
+impatience, went back a little to his wildness.  He made
+windmills, as the French duellists say, and though he was
+probably a shade the better fencer of the two, he found the
+other's point pass his face twice so close as almost to graze his
+cheek.  The second time he realized the actual possibility of
+defeat and pulled himself together under a shock of the sanity of
+anger.  He narrowed, and, so to speak, tightened his operations:
+he fenced (as the swordsman's boast goes), in a wedding ring; he
+turned Turnbull's thrusts with a maddening and almost mechanical
+click, like that of a machine.  Whenever Turnbull's sword sought
+to go over that other mere white streak it seemed to be caught in
+a complex network of steel.  He turned one thrust, turned another,
+turned another.  Then suddenly he went forward at the lunge with
+his whole living weight.  Turnbull leaped back, but Evan lunged
+and lunged and lunged again like a devilish piston rod or
+battering ram.  And high above all the sound of the struggle there
+broke into the silent evening a bellowing human voice, nasal,
+raucous, at the highest pitch of pain.  "Help!  Help!  Police!
+Murder!  Murder!"  The gag was broken; and the tongue of terror
+was loose.
+
+"Keep on!" gasped Turnbull.  "One may be killed before they come."
+
+The voice of the screaming shopkeeper was loud enough to drown
+not only the noise of the swords but all other noises around it,
+but even through its rending din there seemed to be some other
+stir or scurry.  And Evan, in the very act of thrusting at
+Turnbull, saw something in his eyes that made him drop his sword.
+The atheist, with his grey eyes at their widest and wildest, was
+staring straight over his shoulder at the little archway of shop
+that opened on the street beyond.  And he saw the archway blocked
+and blackened with strange figures.
+
+"We must bolt, MacIan," he said abruptly.  "And there isn't a
+damned second to lose either.  Do as I do."
+
+With a bound he was beside the little cluster of his clothes and
+boots that lay on the lawn; he snatched them up, without waiting
+to put any of them on; and tucking his sword under his other arm,
+went wildly at the wall at the bottom of the garden and swung
+himself over it.  Three seconds after he had alighted in his socks
+on the other side, MacIan alighted beside him, also in his socks
+and also carrying clothes and sword in a desperate bundle.
+
+They were in a by-street, very lean and lonely itself, but so
+close to a crowded thoroughfare that they could see the vague
+masses of vehicles going by, and could even see an individual
+hansom cab passing the corner at the instant.  Turnbull put his
+fingers to his mouth like a gutter-snipe and whistled twice.  Even
+as he did so he could hear the loud voices of the neighbours and
+the police coming down the garden.
+
+The hansom swung sharply and came tearing down the little lane at
+his call.  When the cabman saw his fares, however, two wild-haired
+men in their shirts and socks with naked swords under their arms,
+he not unnaturally brought his readiness to a rigid stop and
+stared suspiciously.
+
+"You talk to him a minute," whispered Turnbull, and stepped back
+into the shadow of the wall.
+
+"We want you," said MacIan to the cabman, with a superb Scotch
+drawl of indifference and assurance, "to drive us to St. Pancras
+Station--verra quick."
+
+"Very sorry, sir," said the cabman, "but I'd like to know it was
+all right.  Might I arst where you come from, sir?"
+
+A second after he spoke MacIan heard a heavy voice on the other
+side of the wall, saying: "I suppose I'd better get over and look
+for them.  Give me a back."
+
+"Cabby," said MacIan, again assuming the most deliberate and
+lingering lowland Scotch intonation, "if ye're really verra
+anxious to ken whar a' come fra', I'll tell ye as a verra great
+secret.  A' come from Scotland.  And a'm gaein' to St. Pancras
+Station.  Open the doors, cabby."
+
+The cabman stared, but laughed.  The heavy voice behind the wall
+said: "Now then, a better back this time, Mr. Price."  And from
+the shadow of the wall Turnbull crept out.  He had struggled
+wildly into his coat (leaving his waistcoat on the pavement), and
+he was with a fierce pale face climbing up the cab behind the
+cabman.  MacIan had no glimmering notion of what he was up to, but
+an instinct of discipline, inherited from a hundred men of war,
+made him stick to his own part and trust the other man's.
+
+"Open the doors, cabby," he repeated, with something of the
+obstinate solemnity of a drunkard, "open the doors.  Did ye no
+hear me say St. Pancras Station?"
+
+The top of a policeman's helmet appeared above the garden wall.
+The cabman did not see it, but he was still suspicious and began:
+
+"Very sorry, sir, but..." and with that the catlike Turnbull tore
+him out of his seat and hurled him into the street below, where
+he lay suddenly stunned.
+
+"Give me his hat," said Turnbull in a silver voice, that the
+other obeyed like a bugle.  "And get inside with the swords."
+
+And just as the red and raging face of a policeman appeared above
+the wall, Turnbull struck the horse with a terrible cut of the
+whip and the two went whirling away like a boomerang.
+
+They had spun through seven streets and three or four squares
+before anything further happened.  Then, in the neighbourhood of
+Maida Vale, the driver opened the trap and talked through it in a
+manner not wholly common in conversations through that aperture.
+
+"Mr. MacIan," he said shortly and civilly.
+
+"Mr. Turnbull," replied his motionless fare.
+
+"Under circumstances such as those in which we were both recently
+placed there was no time for anything but very abrupt action.  I
+trust therefore that you have no cause to complain of me if I
+have deferred until this moment a consultation with you on our
+present position or future action.  Our present position, Mr.
+MacIan, I imagine that I am under no special necessity of
+describing.  We have broken the law and we are fleeing from its
+officers.  Our future action is a thing about which I myself
+entertain sufficiently strong views; but I have no right to
+assume or to anticipate yours, though I may have formed a decided
+conception of your character and a decided notion of what they
+will probably be.  Still, by every principle of intellectual
+justice, I am bound to ask you now and seriously whether you wish
+to continue our interrupted relations."
+
+MacIan leant his white and rather weary face back upon the
+cushions in order to speak up through the open door.
+
+"Mr. Turnbull," he said, "I have nothing to add to what I have
+said before.  It is strongly borne in upon me that you and I, the
+sole occupants of this runaway cab, are at this moment the two
+most important people in London, possibly in Europe.  I have been
+looking at all the streets as we went past, I have been looking
+at all the shops as we went past, I have been looking at all the
+churches as we went past.  At first, I felt a little dazed with
+the vastness of it all.  I could not understand what it all meant.
+But now I know exactly what it all means.  It means us.  This whole
+civilization is only a dream.  You and I are the realities."
+
+"Religious symbolism," said Mr. Turnbull, through the trap, "does
+not, as you are probably aware, appeal ordinarily to thinkers of
+the school to which I belong.  But in symbolism as you use it in
+this instance, I must, I think, concede a certain truth.  We
+_must_ fight this thing out somewhere; because, as you truly say,
+we have found each other's reality.  We _must_ kill each other--or
+convert each other.  I used to think all Christians were
+hypocrites, and I felt quite mildly towards them really.  But I
+know you are sincere--and my soul is mad against you.  In the same
+way you used, I suppose, to think that all atheists thought
+atheism would leave them free for immorality--and yet in your
+heart you tolerated them entirely.  Now you _know_ that I am an
+honest man, and you are mad against me, as I am against you.  Yes,
+that's it.  You can't be angry with bad men.  But a good man in the
+wrong--why one thirsts for his blood.  Yes, you open for me a
+vista of thought."
+
+"Don't run into anything," said Evan, immovably.
+
+"There's something in that view of yours, too," said Turnbull,
+and shut down the trap.
+
+They sped on through shining streets that shot by them like
+arrows.  Mr. Turnbull had evidently a great deal of unused
+practical talent which was unrolling itself in this ridiculous
+adventure.  They had got away with such stunning promptitude that
+the police chase had in all probability not even properly begun.
+But in case it had, the amateur cabman chose his dizzy course
+through London with a strange dexterity.  He did not do what would
+have first occurred to any ordinary outsider desiring to destroy
+his tracks.  He did not cut into by-ways or twist his way through
+mean streets.  His amateur common sense told him that it was
+precisely the poor street, the side street, that would be likely
+to remember and report the passing of a hansom cab, like the
+passing of a royal procession.  He kept chiefly to the great
+roads, so full of hansoms that a wilder pair than they might
+easily have passed in the press.  In one of the quieter streets
+Evan put on his boots.
+
+Towards the top of Albany Street the singular cabman again opened
+the trap.
+
+"Mr. MacIan," he said, "I understand that we have now definitely
+settled that in the conventional language honour is not
+satisfied.  Our action must at least go further than it has gone
+under recent interrupted conditions.  That, I believe, is
+understood."
+
+"Perfectly," replied the other with his bootlace in his teeth.
+
+"Under those conditions," continued Turnbull, his voice coming
+through the hole with a slight note of trepidation very unusual
+with him, "I have a suggestion to make, if that can be called a
+suggestion, which has probably occurred to you as readily as to
+me.  Until the actual event comes off we are practically in the
+position if not of comrades, at least of business partners. Until
+the event comes off, therefore I should suggest that quarrelling
+would be inconvenient and rather inartistic; while the ordinary
+exchange of politeness between man and man would be not only
+elegant but uncommonly practical."
+
+"You are perfectly right," answered MacIan, with his melancholy
+voice, "in saying that all this has occurred to me.  All duellists
+should behave like gentlemen to each other.  But we, by the
+queerness of our position, are something much more than either
+duellists or gentlemen.  We are, in the oddest and most exact
+sense of the term, brothers--in arms."
+
+"Mr. MacIan," replied Turnbull, calmly, "no more need be said."
+And he closed the trap once more.
+
+They had reached Finchley Road before he opened it again.
+
+Then he said, "Mr. MacIan, may I offer you a cigar.  It will be a
+touch of realism."
+
+"Thank you," answered Evan.  "You are very kind."  And he began to
+smoke in the cab.
+
+
+
+IV. A DISCUSSION AT DAWN
+
+The duellists had from their own point of view escaped or
+conquered the chief powers of the modern world.  They had
+satisfied the magistrate, they had tied the tradesman neck and
+heels, and they had left the police behind.  As far as their own
+feelings went they had melted into a monstrous sea; they were but
+the fare and driver of one of the million hansoms that fill
+London streets.  But they had forgotten something; they had
+forgotten journalism.  They had forgotten that there exists in
+the modern world, perhaps for the first time in history, a class
+of people whose interest is not that things should happen well or
+happen badly, should happen successfully or happen
+unsuccessfully, should happen to the advantage of this party or
+the advantage of that part, but whose interest simply is that
+things should happen.
+
+It is the one great weakness of journalism as a picture of our
+modern existence, that it must be a picture made up entirely of
+exceptions.  We announce on flaring posters that a man has fallen
+off a scaffolding.  We do not announce on flaring posters that a
+man has not fallen off a scaffolding.  Yet this latter fact is
+fundamentally more exciting, as indicating that that moving tower
+of terror and mystery, a man, is still abroad upon the earth.
+That the man has not fallen off a scaffolding is really more
+sensational; and it is also some thousand times more common.  But
+journalism cannot reasonably be expected thus to insist upon the
+permanent miracles.  Busy editors cannot be expected to put on
+their posters, "Mr. Wilkinson Still Safe," or "Mr. Jones, of
+Worthing, Not Dead Yet."  They cannot announce the happiness of
+mankind at all.  They cannot describe all the forks that are not
+stolen, or all the marriages that are not judiciously dissolved.
+Hence the complete picture they give of life is of necessity
+fallacious; they can only represent what is unusual.  However
+democratic they may be, they are only concerned with the
+minority.
+
+The incident of the religious fanatic who broke a window on
+Ludgate Hill was alone enough to set them up in good copy for the
+night.  But when the same man was brought before a magistrate and
+defied his enemy to mortal combat in the open court, then the
+columns would hardly hold the excruciating information, and the
+headlines were so large that there was hardly room for any of the
+text.  The _Daily Telegraph_ headed a column, "A Duel on
+Divinity," and there was a correspondence afterwards which lasted
+for months, about whether police magistrates ought to mention
+religion.  The _Daily Mail_ in its dull, sensible way, headed the
+events, "Wanted to fight for the Virgin."  Mr. James Douglas, in
+_The Star_, presuming on his knowledge of philosophical and
+theological terms, described the Christian's outbreak under the
+title of "Dualist and Duellist."  The _Daily News_ inserted a
+colourless account of the matter, but was pursued and eaten up
+for some weeks, with letters from outlying ministers, headed
+"Murder and Mariolatry."  But the journalistic temperature was
+steadily and consistently heated by all these influences; the
+journalists had tasted blood, prospectively, and were in the mood
+for more; everything in the matter prepared them for further
+outbursts of moral indignation.  And when a gasping reporter
+rushed in in the last hours of the evening with the announcement
+that the two heroes of the Police Court had literally been found
+fighting in a London back garden, with a shopkeeper bound and
+gagged in the front of the house, the editors and sub-editors
+were stricken still as men are by great beatitudes.
+
+The next morning, five or six of the great London dailies burst
+out simultaneously into great blossoms of eloquent
+leader-writing.  Towards the end all the leaders tended to be the
+same, but they all began differently.  The _Daily Telegraph_, for
+instance began, "There will be little difference among our
+readers or among all truly English and law-abiding men touching
+the, etc. etc."  The _Daily Mail_ said, "People must learn, in the
+modern world, to keep their theological differences to
+themselves.  The fracas, etc. etc."  The _Daily News_ started,
+"Nothing could be more inimical to the cause of true religion
+than, etc. etc."  The _Times_ began with something about Celtic
+disturbances of the equilibrium of Empire, and the _Daily
+Express_ distinguished itself splendidly by omitting altogether
+so controversial a matter and substituting a leader about
+goloshes.
+
+And the morning after that, the editors and the newspapers were
+in such a state, that, as the phrase is, there was no holding
+them.  Whatever secret and elvish thing it is that broods over
+editors and suddenly turns their brains, that thing had seized on
+the story of the broken glass and the duel in the garden.  It
+became monstrous and omnipresent, as do in our time the
+unimportant doings of the sect of the Agapemonites, or as did at
+an earlier time the dreary dishonesties of the Rhodesian
+financiers.  Questions were asked about it, and even answered, in
+the House of Commons.  The Government was solemnly denounced in
+the papers for not having done something, nobody knew what, to
+prevent the window being broken.  An enormous subscription was
+started to reimburse Mr. Gordon, the man who had been gagged in
+the shop.  Mr. MacIan, one of the combatants, became for some
+mysterious reason, singly and hugely popular as a comic figure in
+the comic papers and on the stage of the music hall.  He was
+always represented (in defiance of fact), with red whiskers, and
+a very red nose, and in full Highland costume.  And a song,
+consisting of an unimaginable number of verses, in which his name
+was rhymed with flat iron, the British Lion, sly 'un, dandelion,
+Spion (With Kop in the next line), was sung to crowded houses
+every night.  The papers developed a devouring thirst for the
+capture of the fugitives; and when they had not been caught for
+forty-eight hours, they suddenly turned the whole matter into a
+detective mystery.  Letters under the heading, "Where are They,"
+poured in to every paper, with every conceivable kind of
+explanation, running them to earth in the Monument, the Twopenny
+Tube, Epping Forest, Westminster Abbey, rolled up in carpets at
+Shoolbreds, locked up in safes in Chancery Lane.  Yes, the papers
+were very interesting, and Mr. Turnbull unrolled a whole bundle
+of them for the amusement of Mr. MacIan as they sat on a high
+common to the north of London, in the coming of the white dawn.
+
+The darkness in the east had been broken with a bar of grey; the
+bar of grey was split with a sword of silver and morning lifted
+itself laboriously over London. From the spot where Turnbull and
+MacIan were sitting on one of the barren steeps behind Hampstead,
+they could see the whole of London shaping itself vaguely and
+largely in the grey and growing light, until the white sun stood
+over it and it lay at their feet, the splendid monstrosity that
+it is.  Its bewildering squares and parallelograms were compact
+and perfect as a Chinese puzzle; an enormous hieroglyphic which
+man must decipher or die.  There fell upon both of them, but upon
+Turnbull more than the other, because he know more what the scene
+signified, that quite indescribable sense as of a sublime and
+passionate and heart-moving futility, which is never evoked by
+deserts or dead men or men neglected and barbarous, which can
+only be invoked by the sight of the enormous genius of man
+applied to anything other than the best.  Turnbull, the old
+idealistic democrat, had so often reviled the democracy and
+reviled them justly for their supineness, their snobbishness,
+their evil reverence for idle things.  He was right enough; for
+our democracy has only one great fault; it is not democratic.  And
+after denouncing so justly average modern men for so many years
+as sophists and as slaves, he looked down from an empty slope in
+Hampstead and saw what gods they are.  Their achievement seemed
+all the more heroic and divine, because it seemed doubtful
+whether it was worth doing at all.  There seemed to be something
+greater than mere accuracy in making such a mistake as London.
+And what was to be the end of it all? what was to be the ultimate
+transformation of this common and incredible London man, this
+workman on a tram in Battersea, his clerk on an omnibus in
+Cheapside?  Turnbull, as he stared drearily, murmured to himself
+the words of the old atheistic and revolutionary Swinburne who
+had intoxicated his youth:
+
+        "And still we ask if God or man
+        Can loosen thee Lazarus;
+        Bid thee rise up republican,
+        And save thyself and all of us.
+        But no disciple's tongue can say
+        If thou can'st take our sins away."
+
+Turnbull shivered slightly as if behind the earthly morning he
+felt the evening of the world, the sunset of so many hopes.  Those
+words were from "Songs before Sunrise".  But Turnbull's songs at
+their best were songs after sunrise, and sunrise had been no such
+great thing after all.  Turnbull shivered again in the sharp
+morning air.  MacIan was also gazing with his face towards the
+city, but there was that about his blind and mystical stare that
+told one, so to speak, that his eyes were turned inwards.  When
+Turnbull said something to him about London, they seemed to move
+as at a summons and come out like two householders coming out
+into their doorways.
+
+"Yes," he said, with a sort of stupidity.  "It's a very big
+place."
+
+There was a somewhat unmeaning silence, and then MacIan said
+again:
+
+"It's a very big place.  When I first came into it I was
+frightened of it.  Frightened exactly as one would be frightened
+at the sight of a man forty feet high.  I am used to big things
+where I come from, big mountains that seem to fill God's
+infinity, and the big sea that goes to the end of the world.  But
+then these things are all shapeless and confused things, not made
+in any familiar form.  But to see the plain, square, human things
+as large as that, houses so large and streets so large, and the
+town itself so large, was like having screwed some devil's
+magnifying glass into one's eye.  It was like seeing a porridge
+bowl as big as a house, or a mouse-trap made to catch elephants."
+
+"Like the land of the Brobdingnagians," said Turnbull, smiling.
+
+"Oh! Where is that?" said MacIan.
+
+Turnbull said bitterly, "In a book," and the silence fell
+suddenly between them again.
+
+They were sitting in a sort of litter on the hillside; all the
+things they had hurriedly collected, in various places, for their
+flight, were strewn indiscriminately round them.  The two swords
+with which they had lately sought each other's lives were flung
+down on the grass at random, like two idle walking-sticks.  Some
+provisions they had bought last night, at a low public house, in
+case of undefined contingencies, were tossed about like the
+materials of an ordinary picnic, here a basket of chocolate, and
+there a bottle of wine.  And to add to the disorder finally, there
+were strewn on top of everything, the most disorderly of modern
+things, newspapers, and more newspapers, and yet again
+newspapers, the ministers of the modern anarchy.  Turnbull picked
+up one of them drearily, and took out a pipe.
+
+"There's a lot about us," he said.  "Do you mind if I light up?"
+
+"Why should I mind?" asked MacIan.
+
+Turnbull eyed with a certain studious interest, the man who did
+not understand any of the verbal courtesies; he lit his pipe and
+blew great clouds out of it.
+
+"Yes," he resumed. "The matter on which you and I are engaged is
+at this moment really the best copy in England.  I am a
+journalist, and I know.  For the first time, perhaps, for many
+generations, the English are really more angry about a wrong
+thing done in England than they are about a wrong thing done in
+France."
+
+"It is not a wrong thing," said MacIan.
+
+Turnbull laughed.  "You seem unable to understand the ordinary use
+of the human language.  If I did not suspect that you were a
+genius, I should certainly know you were a blockhead.  I fancy we
+had better be getting along and collecting our baggage."
+
+And he jumped up and began shoving the luggage into his pockets,
+or strapping it on to his back.  As he thrust a tin of canned
+meat, anyhow, into his bursting side pocket, he said casually:
+
+"I only meant that you and I are the most prominent people in the
+English papers."
+
+"Well, what did you expect?" asked MacIan, opening his great
+grave blue eyes.
+
+"The papers are full of us," said Turnbull, stooping to pick up
+one of the swords.
+
+MacIan stooped and picked up the other.
+
+"Yes," he said, in his simple way.  "I have read what they have to
+say.  But they don't seem to understand the point."
+
+"The point of what?" asked Turnbull.
+
+"The point of the sword," said MacIan, violently, and planted the
+steel point in the soil like a man planting a tree.
+
+"That is a point," said Turnbull, grimly, "that we will discuss
+later. Come along."
+
+Turnbull tied the last tin of biscuits desperately to himself
+with string; and then spoke, like a diver girt for plunging,
+short and sharp.
+
+"Now, Mr. MacIan, you must listen to me.  You must listen to me,
+not merely because I know the country, which you might learn by
+looking at a map, but because I know the people of the country,
+whom you could not know by living here thirty years.  That
+infernal city down there is awake; and it is awake against us.
+All those endless rows of windows and windows are all eyes
+staring at us.  All those forests of chimneys are fingers pointing
+at us, as we stand here on the hillside.  This thing has caught
+on.  For the next six mortal months they will think of nothing but
+us, as for six mortal months they thought of nothing but the
+Dreyfus case.  Oh, I know it's funny.  They let starving children,
+who don't want to die, drop by the score without looking round.
+But because two gentlemen, from private feelings of delicacy, do
+want to die, they will mobilize the army and navy to prevent
+them.  For half a year or more, you and I, Mr. MacIan, will be an
+obstacle to every reform in the British Empire.  We shall prevent
+the Chinese being sent out of the Transvaal and the blocks being
+stopped in the Strand.  We shall be the conversational substitute
+when anyone recommends Home Rule, or complains of sky signs.
+Therefore, do not imagine, in your innocence, that we have only
+to melt away among those English hills as a Highland cateran
+might into your god-forsaken Highland mountains.  We must be
+eternally on our guard; we must live the hunted life of two
+distinguished criminals.  We must expect to be recognized as much
+as if we were Napoleon escaping from Elba.  We must be prepared
+for our descriptions being sent to every tiny village, and for
+our faces being recognized by every ambitious policeman.  We must
+often sleep under the stars as if we were in Africa.  Last and
+most important we must not dream of effecting our--our final
+settlement, which will be a thing as famous as the Phoenix Park
+murders, unless we have made real and precise arrangements for
+our isolation--I will not say our safety.  We must not, in short,
+fight until we have thrown them off our scent, if only for a
+moment.  For, take my word for it, Mr. MacIan, if the British
+Public once catches us up, the British Public will prevent the
+duel, if it is only by locking us both up in asylums for the rest
+of our days."
+
+MacIan was looking at the horizon with a rather misty look.
+
+"I am not at all surprised," he said, "at the world being against
+us.  It makes me feel I was right to----"
+
+"Yes?" said Turnbull.
+
+"To smash your window," said MacIan.  "I have woken up the world."
+
+"Very well, then," said Turnbull, stolidly.  "Let us look at a few
+final facts.  Beyond that hill there is comparatively clear
+country.  Fortunately, I know the part well, and if you will
+follow me exactly, and, when necessary, on your stomach, we may
+be able to get ten miles out of London, literally without meeting
+anyone at all, which will be the best possible beginning, at any
+rate.  We have provisions for at least two days and two nights,
+three days if we do it carefully.  We may be able to get fifty or
+sixty miles away without even walking into an inn door.  I have
+the biscuits and the tinned meat, and the milk.  You have the
+chocolate, I think?  And the brandy?"
+
+"Yes," said MacIan, like a soldier taking orders.
+
+"Very well, then, come on.  March.  We turn under that third bush
+and so down into the valley."  And he set off ahead at a swinging
+walk.
+
+Then he stopped suddenly; for he realized that the other was not
+following.  Evan MacIan was leaning on his sword with a lowering
+face, like a man suddenly smitten still with doubt.
+
+"What on earth is the matter?" asked Turnbull, staring in some
+anger.
+
+Evan made no reply.
+
+"What the deuce is the matter with you?" demanded the leader,
+again, his face slowly growing as red as his beard; then he said,
+suddenly, and in a more human voice, "Are you in pain, MacIan?"
+
+"Yes," replied the Highlander, without lifting his face.
+
+"Take some brandy," cried Turnbull, walking forward hurriedly
+towards him.  "You've got it."
+
+"It's not in the body," said MacIan, in his dull, strange way.
+"The pain has come into my mind.  A very dreadful thing has just
+come into my thoughts."
+
+"What the devil are you talking about?" asked Turnbull.
+
+MacIan broke out with a queer and living voice.
+
+"We must fight now, Turnbull.  We must fight now.  A frightful
+thing has come upon me, and I know it must be now and here.  I
+must kill you here," he cried, with a sort of tearful rage
+impossible to describe.  "Here, here, upon this blessed grass."
+
+"Why, you idiot," began Turnbull.
+
+"The hour has come--the black hour God meant for it.  Quick, it
+will soon be gone. Quick!"
+
+And he flung the scabbard from him furiously, and stood with the
+sunlight sparkling along his sword.
+
+"You confounded fool," repeated Turnbull.  "Put that thing up
+again, you ass; people will come out of that house at the first
+clash of the steel."
+
+"One of us will be dead before they come," said the other,
+hoarsely, "for this is the hour God meant."
+
+"Well, I never thought much of God," said the editor of _The
+Atheist_, losing all patience.  "And I think less now.  Never mind
+what God meant.  Kindly enlighten my pagan darkness as to what the
+devil _you_ mean."
+
+"The hour will soon be gone.  In a moment it will be gone," said
+the madman.  "It is now, now, now that I must nail your
+blaspheming body to the earth--now, now that I must avenge Our
+Lady on her vile slanderer.  Now or never.  For the dreadful
+thought is in my mind."
+
+"And what thought," asked Turnbull, with frantic composure,
+"occupies what you call your mind?"
+
+"I must kill you now," said the fanatic, "because----"
+
+"Well, because," said Turnbull, patiently.
+
+"Because I have begun to like you."
+
+Turnbull's face had a sudden spasm in the sunlight, a change so
+instantaneous that it left no trace behind it; and his features
+seemed still carved into a cold stare.  But when he spoke again he
+seemed like a man who was placidly pretending to misunderstand
+something that he understood perfectly well.
+
+"Your affection expresses itself in an abrupt form," he began,
+but MacIan broke the brittle and frivolous speech to pieces with
+a violent voice.  "Do not trouble to talk like that," he said.
+"You know what I mean as well as I know it.  Come on and fight, I
+say.  Perhaps you are feeling just as I do."
+
+Turnbull's face flinched again in the fierce sunlight, but his
+attitude kept its contemptuous ease.
+
+"Your Celtic mind really goes too fast for me," he said; "let me
+be permitted in my heavy Lowland way to understand this new
+development.  My dear Mr. MacIan, what do you really mean?"
+
+MacIan still kept the shining sword-point towards the other's
+breast.
+
+"You know what I mean.  You mean the same yourself.  We must
+fight now or else----"
+
+"Or else?" repeated Turnbull, staring at him with an almost
+blinding gravity.
+
+"Or else we may not want to fight at all," answered Evan, and the
+end of his speech was like a despairing cry.
+
+Turnbull took out his own sword suddenly as if to engage; then
+planting it point downwards for a moment, he said, "Before we
+begin, may I ask you a question?"
+
+MacIan bowed patiently, but with burning eyes.
+
+"You said, just now," continued Turnbull, presently, "that if we
+did not fight now, we might not want to fight at all.  How would
+you feel about the matter if we came not to want to fight at
+all?"
+
+"I should feel," answered the other, "just as I should feel if
+you had drawn your sword, and I had run away from it.  I should
+feel that because I had been weak, justice had not been done."
+
+"Justice," answered Turnbull, with a thoughtful smile, "but we
+are talking about your feelings.  And what do you mean by justice,
+apart from your feelings?"
+
+MacIan made a gesture of weary recognition!  "Oh, Nominalism," he
+said, with a sort of sigh, "we had all that out in the twelfth
+century."
+
+"I wish we could have it out now," replied the other, firmly.  "Do
+you really mean that if you came to think me right, you would be
+certainly wrong?"
+
+"If I had a blow on the back of my head, I might come to think
+you a green elephant," answered MacIan, "but have I not the right
+to say now, that if I thought that I should think wrong?"
+
+"Then you are quite certain that it would be wrong to like me?"
+asked Turnbull, with a slight smile.
+
+"No," said Evan, thoughtfully, "I do not say that.  It may not be
+the devil, it may be some part of God I am not meant to know.  But
+I had a work to do, and it is making the work difficult."
+
+"And I suppose," said the atheist, quite gently, "that you and I
+know all about which part of God we ought to know."
+
+MacIan burst out like a man driven back and explaining
+everything.
+
+"The Church is not a thing like the Athenaeum Club," he cried.
+"If the Athenaeum Club lost all its members, the Athenaeum Club
+would dissolve and cease to exist.  But when we belong to the
+Church we belong to something which is outside all of us; which
+is outside everything you talk about, outside the Cardinals and
+the Pope.  They belong to it, but it does not belong to them.  If
+we all fell dead suddenly, the Church would still somehow exist
+in God.  Confound it all, don't you see that I am more sure of its
+existence than I am of my own existence?  And yet you ask me to
+trust my temperament, my own temperament, which can be turned
+upside down by two bottles of claret or an attack of the
+jaundice.  You ask me to trust that when it softens towards you
+and not to trust the thing which I believe to be outside myself
+and more real than the blood in my body."
+
+"Stop a moment," said Turnbull, in the same easy tone, "Even in
+the very act of saying that you believe this or that, you imply
+that there is a part of yourself that you trust even if there are
+many parts which you mistrust.  If it is only you that like me,
+surely, also, it is only you that believe in the Catholic
+Church."
+
+Evan remained in an unmoved and grave attitude.  "There is a part
+of me which is divine," he answered, "a part that can be trusted,
+but there are also affections which are entirely animal and
+idle."
+
+"And you are quite certain, I suppose," continued Turnbull, "that
+if even you esteem me the esteem would be wholly animal and
+idle?"  For the first time MacIan started as if he had not
+expected the thing that was said to him.  At last he said:
+
+"Whatever in earth or heaven it is that has joined us two
+together, it seems to be something which makes it impossible to
+lie.  No, I do not think that the movement in me towards you
+was...was that surface sort of thing.  It may have been something
+deeper...something strange.  I cannot understand the thing at all.
+But understand this and understand it thoroughly, if I loved you
+my love might be divine.  No, it is not some trifle that we are
+fighting about.  It is not some superstition or some symbol.  When
+you wrote those words about Our Lady, you were in that act a
+wicked man doing a wicked thing.  If I hate you it is because you
+have hated goodness.  And if I like you...it is because you are
+good."
+
+Turnbull's face wore an indecipherable expression.
+
+"Well, shall we fight now?" he said.
+
+"Yes," said MacIan, with a sudden contraction of his black brows,
+"yes, it must be now."
+
+The bright swords crossed, and the first touch of them,
+travelling down blade and arm, told each combatant that the heart
+of the other was awakened.  It was not in that way that the swords
+rang together when they had rushed on each other in the little
+garden behind the dealer's shop.
+
+There was a pause, and then MacIan made a movement as if to
+thrust, and almost at the same moment Turnbull suddenly and
+calmly dropped his sword.  Evan stared round in an unusual
+bewilderment, and then realized that a large man in pale clothes
+and a Panama hat was strolling serenely towards them.
+
+
+
+V. THE PEACEMAKER
+
+When the combatants, with crossed swords, became suddenly
+conscious of a third party, they each made the same movement.  It
+was as quick as the snap of a pistol, and they altered it
+instantaneously and recovered their original pose, but they had
+both made it, they had both seen it, and they both knew what it
+was.  It was not a movement of anger at being interrupted.  Say or
+think what they would, it was a movement of relief.  A force
+within them, and yet quite beyond them, seemed slowly and
+pitilessly washing away the adamant of their oath.  As mistaken
+lovers might watch the inevitable sunset of first love, these men
+watched the sunset of their first hatred.
+
+Their hearts were growing weaker and weaker against each other.
+When their weapons rang and riposted in the little London garden,
+they could have been very certain that if a third party had
+interrupted them something at least would have happened.  They
+would have killed each other or they would have killed him.  But
+now nothing could undo or deny that flash of fact, that for a
+second they had been glad to be interrupted.  Some new and strange
+thing was rising higher and higher in their hearts like a high
+sea at night.  It was something that seemed all the more
+merciless, because it might turn out an enormous mercy.  Was
+there, perhaps, some such fatalism in friendship as all lovers
+talk about in love?  Did God make men love each other against
+their will?
+
+"I'm sure you'll excuse my speaking to you," said the stranger,
+in a voice at once eager and deprecating.
+
+The voice was too polite for good manners.  It was incongruous
+with the eccentric spectacle of the duellists which ought to have
+startled a sane and free man.  It was also incongruous with the
+full and healthy, though rather loose physique of the man who
+spoke.  At the first glance he looked a fine animal, with curling
+gold beard and hair, and blue eyes, unusually bright.  It was only
+at the second glance that the mind felt a sudden and perhaps
+unmeaning irritation at the way in which the gold beard retreated
+backwards into the waistcoat, and the way in which the finely
+shaped nose went forward as if smelling its way.  And it was only,
+perhaps, at the hundredth glance that the bright blue eyes, which
+normally before and after the instant seemed brilliant with
+intelligence, seemed as it were to be brilliant with idiocy.  He
+was a heavy, healthy-looking man, who looked all the larger
+because of the loose, light coloured clothes that he wore, and
+that had in their extreme lightness and looseness, almost a touch
+of the tropics.  But a closer examination of his attire would have
+shown that even in the tropics it would have been unique; but it
+was all woven according to some hygienic texture which no human
+being had ever heard of before, and which was absolutely
+necessary even for a day's health.  He wore a huge broad-brimmed
+hat, equally hygienic, very much at the back of his head, and his
+voice coming out of so heavy and hearty a type of man was, as I
+have said, startlingly shrill and deferential.
+
+"I'm sure you'll excuse my speaking to you," he said.  "Now, I
+wonder if you are in some little difficulty which, after all, we
+could settle very comfortably together?  Now, you don't mind my
+saying this, do you?"
+
+The face of both combatants remained somewhat solid under this
+appeal.  But the stranger, probably taking their silence for a
+gathering shame, continued with a kind of gaiety:
+
+"So you are the young men I have read about in the papers.  Well,
+of course, when one is young, one is rather romantic.  Do you know
+what I always say to young people?"
+
+A blank silence followed this gay inquiry.  Then Turnbull said in
+a colourless voice:
+
+"As I was forty-seven last birthday, I probably came into the
+world too soon for the experience."
+
+"Very good, very good," said the friendly person.  "Dry Scotch
+humour.  Dry Scotch humour.  Well now. I understand that you two
+people want to fight a duel.  I suppose you aren't much up in the
+modern world.  We've quite outgrown duelling, you know.  In fact,
+Tolstoy tells us that we shall soon outgrow war, which he says is
+simply a duel between nations.  A duel between nations.  But there
+is no doubt about our having outgrown duelling."
+
+Waiting for some effect upon his wooden auditors, the stranger
+stood beaming for a moment and then resumed:
+
+"Now, they tell me in the newspapers that you are really wanting
+to fight about something connected with Roman Catholicism.  Now,
+do you know what I always say to Roman Catholics?"
+
+"No," said Turnbull, heavily.  "Do _they_?"  It seemed to be a
+characteristic of the hearty, hygienic gentleman that he always
+forgot the speech he had made the moment before.  Without
+enlarging further on the fixed form of his appeal to the Church
+of Rome, he laughed cordially at Turnbull's answer; then his
+wandering blue eyes caught the sunlight on the swords, and he
+assumed a good-humoured gravity.
+
+"But you know this is a serious matter," he said, eyeing Turnbull
+and MacIan, as if they had just been keeping the table in a roar
+with their frivolities.  "I am sure that if I appealed to your
+higher natures...your higher natures.  Every man has a higher
+nature and a lower nature.  Now, let us put the matter very
+plainly, and without any romantic nonsense about honour or
+anything of that sort.  Is not bloodshed a great sin?"
+
+"No," said MacIan, speaking for the first time.
+
+"Well, really, really!" said the peacemaker.
+
+"Murder is a sin," said the immovable Highlander.  "There is no
+sin of bloodshed."
+
+"Well, we won't quarrel about a word," said the other,
+pleasantly.
+
+"Why on earth not?" said MacIan, with a sudden asperity.  "Why
+shouldn't we quarrel about a word?  What is the good of words if
+they aren't important enough to quarrel over?  Why do we choose
+one word more than another if there isn't any difference between
+them?  If you called a woman a chimpanzee instead of an angel,
+wouldn't there be a quarrel about a word?  If you're not going to
+argue about words, what are you going to argue about?  Are you
+going to convey your meaning to me by moving your ears?  The
+Church and the heresies always used to fight about words, because
+they are the only things worth fighting about.  I say that murder
+is a sin, and bloodshed is not, and that there is as much
+difference between those words as there is between the word 'yes'
+and the word 'no'; or rather more difference, for 'yes' and 'no',
+at least, belong to the same category.  Murder is a spiritual
+incident.  Bloodshed is a physical incident.  A surgeon commits
+bloodshed.
+
+"Ah, you're a casuist!" said the large man, wagging his head.
+"Now, do you know what I always say to casuists...?"
+
+MacIan made a violent gesture; and Turnbull broke into open
+laughter.  The peacemaker did not seem to be in the least annoyed,
+but continued in unabated enjoyment.
+
+"Well, well," he said, "let us get back to the point.  Now Tolstoy
+has shown that force is no remedy; so you see the position in
+which I am placed.  I am doing my best to stop what I'm sure you
+won't mind my calling this really useless violence, this really
+quite wrong violence of yours.  But it's against my principles to
+call in the police against you, because the police are still on a
+lower moral plane, so to speak, because, in short, the police
+undoubtedly sometimes employ force.  Tolstoy has shown that
+violence merely breeds violence in the person towards whom it is
+used, whereas Love, on the other hand, breeds Love.  So you see
+how I am placed.  I am reduced to use Love in order to stop you.
+I am obliged to use Love."
+
+He gave to the word an indescribable sound of something hard and
+heavy, as if he were saying "boots".  Turnbull suddenly gripped
+his sword and said, shortly, "I see how you are placed quite
+well, sir.  You will not call the police.  Mr. MacIan, shall we
+engage?"  MacIan plucked his sword out of the grass.
+
+"I must and will stop this shocking crime," cried the Tolstoian,
+crimson in the face.  "It is against all modern ideas.  It is
+against the principle of love.  How you, sir, who pretend to be a
+Christian..."
+
+MacIan turned upon him with a white face and bitter lip.  "Sir,"
+he said, "talk about the principle of love as much as you like.
+You seem to me colder than a lump of stone; but I am willing to
+believe that you may at some time have loved a cat, or a dog, or
+a child.  When you were a baby, I suppose you loved your mother.
+Talk about love, then, till the world is sick of the word.  But
+don't you talk about Christianity.  Don't you dare to say one
+word, white or black, about it.  Christianity is, as far as you
+are concerned, a horrible mystery.  Keep clear of it, keep silent
+upon it, as you would upon an abomination.  It is a thing that has
+made men slay and torture each other; and you will never know
+why.  It is a thing that has made men do evil that good might
+come; and you will never understand the evil, let alone the good.
+Christianity is a thing that could only make you vomit, till you
+are other than you are.  I would not justify it to you even if I
+could.  Hate it, in God's name, as Turnbull does, who is a man.
+It is a monstrous thing, for which men die.  And if you will stand
+here and talk about love for another ten minutes it is very
+probable that you will see a man die for it."
+
+And he fell on guard.  Turnbull was busy settling something loose
+in his elaborate hilt, and the pause was broken by the stranger.
+
+"Suppose I call the police?" he said, with a heated face.
+
+"And deny your most sacred dogma," said MacIan.
+
+"Dogma!" cried the man, in a sort of dismay.  "Oh, we have no
+_dogmas_, you know!"
+
+There was another silence, and he said again, airily:
+
+"You know, I think, there's something in what Shaw teaches about
+no moral principles being quite fixed.  Have you ever read _The
+Quintessence of Ibsenism_?  Of course he went very wrong over the
+war."
+
+Turnbull, with a bent, flushed face, was tying up the loose piece
+of the pommel with string.  With the string in his teeth, he said,
+"Oh, make up your damned mind and clear out!"
+
+"It's a serious thing," said the philosopher, shaking his head.
+"I must be alone and consider which is the higher point of view.
+I rather feel that in a case so extreme as this..." and he went
+slowly away.  As he disappeared among the trees, they heard him
+murmuring in a sing-song voice, "New occasions teach new duties,"
+out of a poem by James Russell Lowell.
+
+"Ah," said MacIan, drawing a deep breath.  "Don't you believe in
+prayer now?  I prayed for an angel."
+
+"An hour ago," said the Highlander, in his heavy meditative
+voice, "I felt the devil weakening my heart and my oath against
+you, and I prayed that God would send an angel to my aid."
+
+"Well?" inquired the other, finishing his mending and wrapping
+the rest of the string round his hand to get a firmer grip.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Well, that man was an angel," said MacIan.
+
+"I didn't know they were as bad as that," answered Turnbull.
+
+"We know that devils sometimes quote Scripture and counterfeit
+good," replied the mystic.  "Why should not angels sometimes come
+to show us the black abyss of evil on whose brink we stand.  If
+that man had not tried to stop us...I might...I might have
+stopped."
+
+"I know what you mean," said Turnbull, grimly.
+
+"But then he came," broke out MacIan, "and my soul said to me:
+'Give up fighting, and you will become like That.  Give up vows
+and dogmas, and fixed things, and you may grow like That.  You may
+learn, also, that fog of false philosophy.  You may grow fond of
+that mire of crawling, cowardly morals, and you may come to think
+a blow bad, because it hurts, and not because it humiliates.  You
+may come to think murder wrong, because it is violent, and not
+because it is unjust.  Oh, you blasphemer of the good, an hour ago
+I almost loved you!  But do not fear for me now.  I have heard the
+word Love pronounced in _his_ intonation; and I know exactly what
+it means. On guard!'"
+
+The swords caught on each other with a dreadful clang and jar,
+full of the old energy and hate; and at once plunged and
+replunged.  Once more each man's heart had become the magnet of a
+mad sword.  Suddenly, furious as they were, they were frozen for a
+moment motionless.
+
+"What noise is that?" asked the Highlander, hoarsely.
+
+"I think I know," replied Turnbull.
+
+"What?... What?" cried the other.
+
+"The student of Shaw and Tolstoy has made up his remarkable
+mind," said Turnbull, quietly.  "The police are coming up the
+hill."
+
+
+
+VI. THE OTHER PHILOSOPHER
+
+Between high hedges in Hertfordshire, hedges so high as to create
+a kind of grove, two men were running.  They did not run in a
+scampering or feverish manner, but in the steady swing of the
+pendulum.  Across the great plains and uplands to the right and
+left of the lane, a long tide of sunset light rolled like a sea
+of ruby, lighting up the long terraces of the hills and picking
+out the few windows of the scattered hamlets in startling
+blood-red sparks.  But the lane was cut deep in the hill and
+remained in an abrupt shadow.  The two men running in it had an
+impression not uncommonly experienced between those wild green
+English walls; a sense of being led between the walls of a maze.
+
+Though their pace was steady it was vigorous; their faces were
+heated and their eyes fixed and bright.  There was, indeed,
+something a little mad in the contrast between the evening's
+stillness over the empty country-side, and these two figures
+fleeing wildly from nothing.  They had the look of two lunatics,
+possibly they were.
+
+"Are you all right?" said Turnbull, with civility.  "Can you keep
+this up?"
+
+"Quite easily, thank you," replied MacIan.  "I run very well."
+
+"Is that a qualification in a family of warriors?" asked
+Turnbull.
+
+"Undoubtedly.  Rapid movement is essential," answered MacIan, who
+never saw a joke in his life.
+
+Turnbull broke out into a short laugh, and silence fell between
+them, the panting silence of runners.
+
+Then MacIan said: "We run better than any of those policemen.
+They are too fat.  Why do you make your policemen so fat?"
+
+"I didn't do much towards making them fat myself," replied
+Turnbull, genially, "but I flatter myself that I am now doing
+something towards making them thin.  You'll see they will be as
+lean as rakes by the time they catch us.  They will look like your
+friend, Cardinal Manning."
+
+"But they won't catch us," said MacIan, in his literal way.
+
+"No, we beat them in the great military art of running away,"
+returned the other.  "They won't catch us unless----"
+
+MacIan turned his long equine face inquiringly.  "Unless what?" he
+said, for Turnbull had gone silent suddenly, and seemed to be
+listening intently as he ran as a horse does with his ears turned
+back.
+
+"Unless what?" repeated the Highlander.
+
+"Unless they do--what they have done.  Listen."  MacIan slackened
+his trot, and turned his head to the trail they had left behind
+them.  Across two or three billows of the up and down lane came
+along the ground the unmistakable throbbing of horses' hoofs.
+
+"They have put the mounted police on us," said Turnbull, shortly.
+"Good Lord, one would think we were a Revolution."
+
+"So we are," said MacIan calmly.  "What shall we do? Shall we turn
+on them with our points?"
+
+"It may come to that," answered Turnbull, "though if it does, I
+reckon that will be the last act.  We must put it off if we can."
+And he stared and peered about him between the bushes.  "If we
+could hide somewhere the beasts might go by us," he said.  "The
+police have their faults, but thank God they're inefficient.  Why,
+here's the very thing.  Be quick and quiet.  Follow me."
+
+He suddenly swung himself up the high bank on one side of the
+lane.  It was almost as high and smooth as a wall, and on the top
+of it the black hedge stood out over them as an angle, almost
+like a thatched roof of the lane.  And the burning evening sky
+looked down at them through the tangle with red eyes as of an
+army of goblins.
+
+Turnbull hoisted himself up and broke the hedge with his body.  As
+his head and shoulders rose above it they turned to flame in the
+full glow as if lit up by an immense firelight.  His red hair and
+beard looked almost scarlet, and his pale face as bright as a
+boy's.  Something violent, something that was at once love and
+hatred, surged in the strange heart of the Gael below him.  He had
+an unutterable sense of epic importance, as if he were somehow
+lifting all humanity into a prouder and more passionate region of
+the air.  As he swung himself up also into the evening light he
+felt as if he were rising on enormous wings.
+
+Legends of the morning of the world which he had heard in
+childhood or read in youth came back upon him in a cloudy
+splendour, purple tales of wrath and friendship, like Roland and
+Oliver, or Balin and Balan, reminding him of emotional
+entanglements.  Men who had loved each other and then fought each
+other; men who had fought each other and then loved each other,
+together made a mixed but monstrous sense of momentousness.  The
+crimson seas of the sunset seemed to him like a bursting out of
+some sacred blood, as if the heart of the world had broken.
+
+Turnbull was wholly unaffected by any written or spoken poetry;
+his was a powerful and prosaic mind.  But even upon him there came
+for the moment something out of the earth and the passionate ends
+of the sky.  The only evidence was in his voice, which was still
+practical but a shade more quiet.
+
+"Do you see that summer-house-looking thing over there?" he asked
+shortly.  "That will do for us very well."
+
+Keeping himself free from the tangle of the hedge he strolled
+across a triangle of obscure kitchen garden, and approached a
+dismal shed or lodge a yard or two beyond it.  It was a
+weather-stained hut of grey wood, which with all its desolation
+retained a tag or two of trivial ornament, which suggested that
+the thing had once been a sort of summer-house, and the place
+probably a sort of garden.
+
+"That is quite invisible from the road," said Turnbull, as he
+entered it, "and it will cover us up for the night."
+
+MacIan looked at him gravely for a few moments.  "Sir," he said,
+"I ought to say something to you.  I ought to say----"
+
+"Hush," said Turnbull, suddenly lifting his hand; "be still,
+man."
+
+In the sudden silence, the drumming of the distant horses grew
+louder and louder with inconceivable rapidity, and the cavalcade
+of police rushed by below them in the lane, almost with the roar
+and rattle of an express train.
+
+"I ought to tell you," continued MacIan, still staring stolidly
+at the other, "that you are a great chief, and it is good to go
+to war behind you."
+
+Turnbull said nothing, but turned and looked out of the foolish
+lattice of the little windows, then he said, "We must have food
+and sleep first."
+
+When the last echo of their eluded pursuers had died in the
+distant uplands, Turnbull began to unpack the provisions with the
+easy air of a man at a picnic.  He had just laid out the last
+items, put a bottle of wine on the floor, and a tin of salmon on
+the window-ledge, when the bottomless silence of that forgotten
+place was broken.  And it was broken by three heavy blows of a
+stick delivered upon the door.
+
+Turnbull looked up in the act of opening a tin and stared
+silently at his companion.  MacIan's long, lean mouth had shut
+hard.
+
+"Who the devil can that be?" said Turnbull.
+
+"God knows," said the other.  "It might be God."
+
+Again the sound of the wooden stick reverberated on the wooden
+door.  It was a curious sound and on consideration did not
+resemble the ordinary effects of knocking on a door for
+admittance.  It was rather as if the point of a stick were plunged
+again and again at the panels in an absurd attempt to make a hole
+in them.
+
+A wild look sprang into MacIan's eyes and he got up half
+stupidly, with a kind of stagger, put his hand out and caught one
+of the swords.  "Let us fight at once," he cried, "it is the end
+of the world."
+
+"You're overdone, MacIan," said Turnbull, putting him on one
+side.  "It's only someone playing the goat.  Let me open the
+door."
+
+But he also picked up a sword as he stepped to open it.
+
+He paused one moment with his hand on the handle and then flung
+the door open.  Almost as he did so the ferrule of an ordinary
+bamboo cane came at his eyes, so that he had actually to parry it
+with the naked weapon in his hands.  As the two touched, the point
+of the stick was dropped very abruptly, and the man with the
+stick stepped hurriedly back.
+
+Against the heraldic background of sprawling crimson and gold
+offered him by the expiring sunset, the figure of the man with
+the stick showed at first merely black and fantastic.  He was a
+small man with two wisps of long hair that curled up on each
+side, and seen in silhouette, looked like horns.  He had a bow tie
+so big that the two ends showed on each side of his neck like
+unnatural stunted wings.  He had his long black cane still tilted
+in his hand like a fencing foil and half presented at the open
+door.  His large straw hat had fallen behind him as he leapt
+backwards.
+
+"With reference to your suggestion, MacIan," said Turnbull,
+placidly, "I think it looks more like the Devil."
+
+"Who on earth are you?" cried the stranger in a high shrill
+voice, brandishing his cane defensively.
+
+"Let me see," said Turnbull, looking round to MacIan with the
+same blandness.  "Who are we?"
+
+"Come out," screamed the little man with the stick.
+
+"Certainly," said Turnbull, and went outside with the sword,
+MacIan following.
+
+Seen more fully, with the evening light on his face, the strange
+man looked a little less like a goblin.  He wore a square
+pale-grey jacket suit, on which the grey butterfly tie was the
+only indisputable touch of affectation.  Against the great sunset
+his figure had looked merely small: seen in a more equal light it
+looked tolerably compact and shapely.  His reddish-brown hair,
+combed into two great curls, looked like the long, slow curling
+hair of the women in some pre-Raphaelite pictures.  But within
+this feminine frame of hair his face was unexpectedly impudent,
+like a monkey's.
+
+"What are you doing here?" he said, in a sharp small voice.
+
+"Well," said MacIan, in his grave childish way, "what are _you_
+doing here?"
+
+"I," said the man, indignantly, "I'm in my own garden."
+
+"Oh," said MacIan, simply, "I apologize."
+
+Turnbull was coolly curling his red moustache, and the stranger
+stared from one to the other, temporarily stunned by their
+innocent assurance.
+
+"But, may I ask," he said at last, "what the devil you are doing
+in my summer-house?"
+
+"Certainly," said MacIan. "We were just going to fight."
+
+"To fight!" repeated the man.
+
+"We had better tell this gentleman the whole business," broke in
+Turnbull.  Then turning to the stranger he said firmly, "I am
+sorry, sir, but we have something to do that must be done.  And I
+may as well tell you at the beginning and to avoid waste of time
+or language, that we cannot admit any interference."
+
+"We were just going to take some slight refreshment when you
+interrupted us..."
+
+The little man had a dawning expression of understanding and
+stooped and picked up the unused bottle of wine, eyeing it
+curiously.
+
+Turnbull continued:
+
+"But that refreshment was preparatory to something which I fear
+you will find less comprehensible, but on which our minds are
+entirely fixed, sir.  We are forced to fight a duel.  We are forced
+by honour and an internal intellectual need.  Do not, for your own
+sake, attempt to stop us.  I know all the excellent and ethical
+things that you will want to say to us.  I know all about the
+essential requirements of civil order: I have written leading
+articles about them all my life.  I know all about the sacredness
+of human life; I have bored all my friends with it.  Try and
+understand our position.  This man and I are alone in the modern
+world in that we think that God is essentially important.  I think
+He does not exist; that is where the importance comes in for me.
+But this man thinks that He does exist, and thinking that very
+properly thinks Him more important than anything else.  Now we
+wish to make a great demonstration and assertion--something that
+will set the world on fire like the first Christian persecutions.
+If you like, we are attempting a mutual martyrdom.  The papers
+have posted up every town against us.  Scotland Yard has fortified
+every police station with our enemies; we are driven therefore to
+the edge of a lonely lane, and indirectly to taking liberties
+with your summer-house in order to arrange our..."
+
+"Stop!" roared the little man in the butterfly necktie.  "Put me
+out of my intellectual misery.  Are you really the two tomfools I
+have read of in all the papers?  Are you the two people who wanted
+to spit each other in the Police Court?  Are you?  Are you?"
+
+"Yes," said MacIan, "it began in a Police Court."
+
+The little man slung the bottle of wine twenty yards away like a
+stone.
+
+"Come up to my place," he said.  "I've got better stuff than that.
+I've got the best Beaune within fifty miles of here.  Come up.
+You're the very men I wanted to see."
+
+Even Turnbull, with his typical invulnerability, was a little
+taken aback by this boisterous and almost brutal hospitality.
+
+"Why...sir..." he began.
+
+"Come up!  Come in!" howled the little man, dancing with delight.
+"I'll give you a dinner.  I'll give you a bed!  I'll give you a
+green smooth lawn and your choice of swords and pistols.  Why, you
+fools, I adore fighting!  It's the only good thing in God's world!
+I've walked about these damned fields and longed to see somebody
+cut up and killed and the blood running.  Ha!  Ha!"
+
+And he made sudden lunges with his stick at the trunk of a
+neighbouring tree so that the ferrule made fierce prints and
+punctures in the bark.
+
+"Excuse me," said MacIan suddenly with the wide-eyed curiosity of
+a child, "excuse me, but..."
+
+"Well?" said the small fighter, brandishing his wooden weapon.
+
+"Excuse me," repeated MacIan, "but was that what you were doing
+at the door?"
+
+The little man stared an instant and then said: "Yes," and
+Turnbull broke into a guffaw.
+
+"Come on!" cried the little man, tucking his stick under his arm
+and taking quite suddenly to his heels.  "Come on!  Confound me,
+I'll see both of you eat and then I'll see one of you die.  Lord
+bless me, the gods must exist after all--they have sent me one of
+my day-dreams!  Lord!  A duel!"
+
+He had gone flying along a winding path between the borders of
+the kitchen garden, and in the increasing twilight he was as hard
+to follow as a flying hare.  But at length the path after many
+twists betrayed its purpose and led abruptly up two or three
+steps to the door of a tiny but very clean cottage.  There was
+nothing about the outside to distinguish it from other cottages,
+except indeed its ominous cleanliness and one thing that was out
+of all the custom and tradition of all cottages under the sun.
+In the middle of the little garden among the stocks and marigolds
+there surged up in shapeless stone a South Sea Island idol.  There
+was something gross and even evil in that eyeless and alien god
+among the most innocent of the English flowers.
+
+"Come in!" cried the creature again.  "Come in! it's better
+inside!"
+
+Whether or no it was better inside it was at least a surprise.
+The moment the two duellists had pushed open the door of that
+inoffensive, whitewashed cottage they found that its interior was
+lined with fiery gold.  It was like stepping into a chamber in the
+Arabian Nights.  The door that closed behind them shut out England
+and all the energies of the West.  The ornaments that shone and
+shimmered on every side of them were subtly mixed from many
+periods and lands, but were all oriental.  Cruel Assyrian
+bas-reliefs ran along the sides of the passage; cruel Turkish
+swords and daggers glinted above and below them; the two were
+separated by ages and fallen civilizations.  Yet they seemed to
+sympathize since they were both harmonious and both merciless.
+The house seemed to consist of chamber within chamber and created
+that impression as of a dream which belongs also to the Arabian
+Nights themselves.  The innermost room of all was like the inside
+of a jewel.  The little man who owned it all threw himself on a
+heap of scarlet and golden cushions and struck his hands
+together.  A negro in a white robe and turban appeared suddenly
+and silently behind them.
+
+"Selim," said the host, "these two gentlemen are staying with me
+tonight.  Send up the very best wine and dinner at once.  And
+Selim, one of these gentlemen will probably die tomorrow.  Make
+arrangements, please."
+
+The negro bowed and withdrew.
+
+Evan MacIan came out the next morning into the little garden to a
+fresh silver day, his long face looking more austere than ever in
+that cold light, his eyelids a little heavy.  He carried one of
+the swords.  Turnbull was in the little house behind him,
+demolishing the end of an early breakfast and humming a tune to
+himself, which could be heard through the open window.  A moment
+or two later he leapt to his feet and came out into the sunlight,
+still munching toast, his own sword stuck under his arm like a
+walking-stick.
+
+Their eccentric host had vanished from sight, with a polite
+gesture, some twenty minutes before.  They imagined him to be
+occupied on some concerns in the interior of the house, and they
+waited for his emergence, stamping the garden in silence--the
+garden of tall, fresh country flowers, in the midst of which the
+monstrous South Sea idol lifted itself as abruptly as the prow of
+a ship riding on a sea of red and white and gold.
+
+It was with a start, therefore, that they came upon the man
+himself already in the garden.  They were all the more startled
+because of the still posture in which they found him.  He was on
+his knees in front of the stone idol, rigid and motionless, like
+a saint in a trance or ecstasy.  Yet when Turnbull's tread broke a
+twig, he was on his feet in a flash.
+
+"Excuse me," he said with an irradiation of smiles, but yet with
+a kind of bewilderment.  "So sorry...family prayers...old
+fashioned...mother's knee.  Let us go on to the lawn behind."
+
+And he ducked rapidly round the statue to an open space of grass
+on the other side of it.
+
+"This will do us best, Mr. MacIan," said he.  Then he made a
+gesture towards the heavy stone figure on the pedestal which had
+now its blank and shapeless back turned towards them.  "Don't you
+be afraid," he added, "he can still see us."
+
+MacIan turned his blue, blinking eyes, which seemed still misty
+with sleep (or sleeplessness) towards the idol, but his brows
+drew together.
+
+The little man with the long hair also had his eyes on the back
+view of the god.  His eyes were at once liquid and burning, and he
+rubbed his hands slowly against each other.
+
+"Do you know," he said, "I think he can see us better this way.
+I often think that this blank thing is his real face, watching,
+though it cannot be watched.  He! he!  Yes, I think he looks nice
+from behind.  He looks more cruel from behind, don't you think?"
+
+"What the devil is the thing?" asked Turnbull gruffly.
+
+"It is the only Thing there is," answered the other.  "It is
+Force."
+
+"Oh!" said Turnbull shortly.
+
+"Yes, my friends," said the little man, with an animated
+countenance, fluttering his fingers in the air, "it was no chance
+that led you to this garden; surely it was the caprice of some
+old god, some happy, pitiless god.  Perhaps it was his will, for
+he loves blood; and on that stone in front of him men have been
+butchered by hundreds in the fierce, feasting islands of the
+South.  In this cursed, craven place I have not been permitted to
+kill men on his altar.  Only rabbits and cats, sometimes."
+
+In the stillness MacIan made a sudden movement, unmeaning
+apparently, and then remained rigid.
+
+"But today, today," continued the small man in a shrill voice.
+"Today his hour is come.  Today his will is done on earth as it
+is in heaven.  Men, men, men will bleed before him today."  And
+he bit his forefinger in a kind of fever.
+
+Still, the two duellists stood with their swords as heavily as
+statues, and the silence seemed to cool the eccentric and call
+him back to more rational speech.
+
+"Perhaps I express myself a little too lyrically," he said with
+an amicable abruptness.  "My philosophy has its higher ecstasies,
+but perhaps you are hardly worked up to them yet.  Let us confine
+ourselves to the unquestioned.  You have found your way,
+gentlemen, by a beautiful accident, to the house of the only man
+in England (probably) who will favour and encourage your most
+reasonable project.  From Cornwall to Cape Wrath this county is
+one horrible, solid block of humanitarianism.  You will find men
+who will defend this or that war in a distant continent.  They
+will defend it on the contemptible ground of commerce or the more
+contemptible ground of social good.  But do not fancy that you
+will find one other person who will comprehend a strong man
+taking the sword in his hand and wiping out his enemy.  My name
+is Wimpey, Morrice Wimpey.  I had a Fellowship at Magdalen.  But I
+assure you I had to drop it, owing to my having said something in
+a public lecture infringing the popular prejudice against those
+great gentlemen, the assassins of the Italian Renaissance.  They
+let me say it at dinner and so on, and seemed to like it.  But in
+a public lecture...so inconsistent.  Well, as I say, here is your
+only refuge and temple of honour.  Here you can fall back on that
+naked and awful arbitration which is the only thing that balances
+the stars--a still, continuous violence.  _Vae Victis!_  Down,
+down, down with the defeated!  Victory is the only ultimate fact.
+Carthage _was_ destroyed, the Red Indians are being exterminated:
+that is the single certainty.  In an hour from now that sun will
+still be shining and that grass growing, and one of you will be
+conquered; one of you will be the conqueror.  When it has been
+done, nothing will alter it.  Heroes, I give you the hospitality
+fit for heroes.  And I salute the survivor.  Fall on!"
+
+The two men took their swords.  Then MacIan said steadily: "Mr.
+Turnbull, lend me your sword a moment."
+
+Turnbull, with a questioning glance, handed him the weapon.
+MacIan took the second sword in his left hand and, with a violent
+gesture, hurled it at the feet of little Mr. Wimpey.
+
+"Fight!" he said in a loud, harsh voice.  "Fight me now!"
+
+Wimpey took a step backward, and bewildered words bubbled on his
+lips.
+
+"Pick up that sword and fight me," repeated MacIan, with brows as
+black as thunder.
+
+The little man turned to Turnbull with a gesture, demanding
+judgement or protection.
+
+"Really, sir," he began, "this gentleman confuses..."
+
+"You stinking little coward," roared Turnbull, suddenly releasing
+his wrath.  "Fight, if you're so fond of fighting!  Fight, if
+you're so fond of all that filthy philosophy!  If winning is
+everything, go in and win!  If the weak must go to the wall, go to
+the wall!  Fight, you rat!  Fight, or if you won't fight--run!"
+
+And he ran at Wimpey, with blazing eyes.
+
+Wimpey staggered back a few paces like a man struggling with his
+own limbs.  Then he felt the furious Scotchman coming at him like
+an express train, doubling his size every second, with eyes as
+big as windows and a sword as bright as the sun.  Something broke
+inside him, and he found himself running away, tumbling over his
+own feet in terror, and crying out as he ran.
+
+"Chase him!" shouted Turnbull as MacIan snatched up the sword and
+joined in the scamper.  "Chase him over a county!  Chase him into
+the sea!  Shoo!  Shoo!  Shoo!"
+
+The little man plunged like a rabbit among the tall flowers, the
+two duellists after him.  Turnbull kept at his tail with savage
+ecstasy, still shooing him like a cat.  But MacIan, as he ran past
+the South Sea idol, paused an instant to spring upon its
+pedestal.  For five seconds he strained against the inert mass.
+Then it stirred; and he sent it over with a great crash among the
+flowers, that engulfed it altogether.  Then he went bounding after
+the runaway.
+
+In the energy of his alarm the ex-Fellow of Magdalen managed to
+leap the paling of his garden.  The two pursuers went over it
+after him like flying birds.  He fled frantically down a long lane
+with his two terrors on his trail till he came to a gap in the
+hedge and went across a steep meadow like the wind.  The two
+Scotchmen, as they ran, kept up a cheery bellowing and waved
+their swords.  Up three slanting meadows, down four slanting
+meadows on the other side, across another road, across a heath of
+snapping bracken, through a wood, across another road, and to the
+brink of a big pool, they pursued the flying philosopher.  But
+when he came to the pool his pace was so precipitate that he
+could not stop it, and with a kind of lurching stagger, he fell
+splash into the greasy water.  Getting dripping to his feet, with
+the water up to his knees, the worshipper of force and victory
+waded disconsolately to the other side and drew himself on to the
+bank.  And Turnbull sat down on the grass and went off into
+reverberations of laughter.  A second afterwards the most
+extraordinary grimaces were seen to distort the stiff face of
+MacIan, and unholy sounds came from within.  He had never
+practised laughing, and it hurt him very much.
+
+
+
+VII. THE VILLAGE OF GRASSLEY-IN-THE-HOLE
+
+At about half past one, under a strong blue sky, Turnbull got up
+out of the grass and fern in which he had been lying, and his
+still intermittent laughter ended in a kind of yawn.
+
+"I'm hungry," he said shortly. "Are you?"
+
+"I have not noticed," answered MacIan.  "What are you going to
+do?"
+
+"There's a village down the road, past the pool," answered
+Turnbull.  "I can see it from here.  I can see the whitewashed
+walls of some cottages and a kind of corner of the church.  How
+jolly it all looks.  It looks so--I don't know what the word
+is--so sensible.  Don't fancy I'm under any illusions about
+Arcadian virtue and the innocent villagers.  Men make beasts of
+themselves there with drink, but they don't deliberately make
+devils of themselves with mere talking.  They kill wild animals in
+the wild woods, but they don't kill cats to the God of Victory.
+They don't----"  He broke off and suddenly spat on the ground.
+
+"Excuse me," he said; "it was ceremonial.  One has to get the
+taste out of one's mouth."
+
+"The taste of what?" asked MacIan.
+
+"I don't know the exact name for it," replied Turnbull.  "Perhaps
+it is the South Sea Islands, or it may be Magdalen College."
+
+There was a long pause, and MacIan also lifted his large limbs
+off the ground--his eyes particularly dreamy.
+
+"I know what you mean, Turnbull," he said, "but...I always
+thought you people agreed with all that."
+
+"With all that about doing as one likes, and the individual, and
+Nature loving the strongest, and all the things which that
+cockroach talked about."
+
+Turnbull's big blue-grey eyes stood open with a grave
+astonishment.
+
+"Do you really mean to say, MacIan," he said, "that you fancied
+that we, the Free-thinkers, that Bradlaugh, or Holyoake, or
+Ingersoll, believe all that dirty, immoral mysticism about
+Nature?  Damn Nature!"
+
+"I supposed you did," said MacIan calmly.  "It seems to me your
+most conclusive position."
+
+"And you mean to tell me," rejoined the other, "that you broke my
+window, and challenged me to mortal combat, and tied a tradesman
+up with ropes, and chased an Oxford Fellow across five
+meadows--all under the impression that I am such an illiterate
+idiot as to believe in Nature!"
+
+"I supposed you did," repeated MacIan with his usual mildness;
+"but I admit that I know little of the details of your belief--or
+disbelief."
+
+Turnbull swung round quite suddenly, and set off towards the
+village.
+
+"Come along," he cried.  "Come down to the village.  Come down to
+the nearest decent inhabitable pub.  This is a case for beer."
+
+"I do not quite follow you," said the Highlander.
+
+"Yes, you do," answered Turnbull.  "You follow me slap into the
+inn-parlour.  I repeat, this is a case for beer.  We must have the
+whole of this matter out thoroughly before we go a step farther.
+Do you know that an idea has just struck me of great simplicity
+and of some cogency.  Do not by any means let us drop our
+intentions of settling our differences with two steel swords.
+But do you not think that with two pewter pots we might do what
+we really have never thought of doing yet--discover what our
+difference is?"
+
+"It never occurred to me before," answered MacIan with
+tranquillity.  "It is a good suggestion."
+
+And they set out at an easy swing down the steep road to the
+village of Grassley-in-the-Hole.
+
+Grassley-in-the-Hole was a rude parallelogram of buildings, with
+two thoroughfares which might have been called two high streets
+if it had been possible to call them streets.  One of these ways
+was higher on the slope than the other, the whole parallelogram
+lying aslant, so to speak, on the side of the hill.  The upper of
+these two roads was decorated with a big public house, a
+butcher's shop, a small public house, a sweetstuff shop, a very
+small public house, and an illegible signpost.  The lower of the
+two roads boasted a horse-pond, a post office, a gentleman's
+garden with very high hedges, a microscopically small public
+house, and two cottages.  Where all the people lived who supported
+all the public houses was in this, as in many other English
+villages, a silent and smiling mystery.  The church lay a little
+above and beyond the village, with a square grey tower dominating
+it decisively.
+
+But even the church was scarcely so central and solemn an
+institution as the large public house, the Valencourt Arms.  It
+was named after some splendid family that had long gone bankrupt,
+and whose seat was occupied by a man who had invented a hygienic
+bootjack; but the unfathomable sentimentalism of the English
+people insisted in regarding the Inn, the seat and the sitter in
+it, as alike parts of a pure and marmoreal antiquity.  And in the
+Valencourt Arms festivity itself had some solemnity and decorum;
+and beer was drunk with reverence, as it ought to be.  Into the
+principal parlour of this place entered two strangers, who found
+themselves, as is always the case in such hostels, the object,
+not of fluttered curiosity or pert inquiry, but of steady,
+ceaseless, devouring ocular study.  They had long coats down to
+their heels, and carried under each coat something that looked
+like a stick.  One was tall and dark, the other short and
+red-haired.  They ordered a pot of ale each.
+
+"MacIan," said Turnbull, lifting his tankard, "the fool who
+wanted us to be friends made us want to go on fighting.  It is
+only natural that the fool who wanted us to fight should make us
+friendly.  MacIan, your health!"
+
+Dusk was already dropping, the rustics in the tavern were already
+lurching and lumbering out of it by twos and threes, crying
+clamorous good nights to a solitary old toper that remained,
+before MacIan and Turnbull had reached the really important part
+of their discussion.
+
+MacIan wore an expression of sad bewilderment not uncommon with
+him.  "I am to understand, then," he said, "that you don't believe
+in nature."
+
+"You may say so in a very special and emphatic sense," said
+Turnbull.  "I do not believe in nature, just as I do not believe
+in Odin.  She is a myth.  It is not merely that I do not believe
+that nature can guide us.  It is that I do not believe that nature
+exists."
+
+"Exists?" said MacIan in his monotonous way, settling his pewter
+pot on the table.
+
+"Yes, in a real sense nature does not exist.  I mean that nobody
+can discover what the original nature of things would have been
+if things had not interfered with it.  The first blade of grass
+began to tear up the earth and eat it; it was interfering with
+nature, if there is any nature.  The first wild ox began to tear
+up the grass and eat it; he was interfering with nature, if there
+is any nature.  In the same way," continued Turnbull, "the human
+when it asserts its dominance over nature is just as natural as
+the thing which it destroys."
+
+"And in the same way," said MacIan almost dreamily, "the
+superhuman, the supernatural is just as natural as the nature
+which it destroys."
+
+Turnbull took his head out of his pewter pot in some anger.
+
+"The supernatural, of course," he said, "is quite another thing;
+the case of the supernatural is simple.  The supernatural does not
+exist."
+
+"Quite so," said MacIan in a rather dull voice; "you said the
+same about the natural.  If the natural does not exist the
+supernatural obviously can't."  And he yawned a little over his
+ale.
+
+Turnbull turned for some reason a little red and remarked
+quickly, "That may be jolly clever, for all I know.  But everyone
+does know that there is a division between the things that as a
+matter of fact do commonly happen and the things that don't.
+Things that break the evident laws of nature----"
+
+"Which does not exist," put in MacIan sleepily.  Turnbull struck
+the table with a sudden hand.
+
+"Good Lord in heaven!" he cried----
+
+"Who does not exist," murmured MacIan.
+
+"Good Lord in heaven!" thundered Turnbull, without regarding the
+interruption.  "Do you really mean to sit there and say that you,
+like anybody else, would not recognize the difference between a
+natural occurrence and a supernatural one--if there could be such
+a thing?  If I flew up to the ceiling----"
+
+"You would bump your head badly," cried MacIan, suddenly starting
+up.  "One can't talk of this kind of thing under a ceiling at all.
+Come outside!  Come outside and ascend into heaven!"
+
+He burst the door open on a blue abyss of evening and they
+stepped out into it: it was suddenly and strangely cool.
+
+"Turnbull," said MacIan, "you have said some things so true and
+some so false that I want to talk; and I will try to talk so that
+you understand.  For at present you do not understand at all.  We
+don't seem to mean the same things by the same words."
+
+He stood silent for a second or two and then resumed.
+
+"A minute or two ago I caught you out in a real contradiction.  At
+that moment logically I was right.  And at that moment I knew I
+was wrong.  Yes, there is a real difference between the natural
+and the supernatural: if you flew up into that blue sky this
+instant, I should think that you were moved by God--or the devil.
+But if you want to know what I really think...I must explain."
+
+He stopped again, abstractedly boring the point of his sword into
+the earth, and went on:
+
+"I was born and bred and taught in a complete universe.  The
+supernatural was not natural, but it was perfectly reasonable.
+Nay, the supernatural to me is more reasonable than the natural;
+for the supernatural is a direct message from God, who is reason.
+I was taught that some things are natural and some things divine.
+I mean that some things are mechanical and some things divine.
+But there is the great difficulty, Turnbull.  The great difficulty
+is that, according to my teaching, you are divine."
+
+"Me! Divine?" said Turnbull truculently.  "What do you mean?"
+
+"That is just the difficulty," continued MacIan thoughtfully.  "I
+was told that there was a difference between the grass and a
+man's will; and the difference was that a man's will was special
+and divine.  A man's free will, I heard, was supernatural."
+
+"Rubbish!" said Turnbull.
+
+"Oh," said MacIan patiently, "then if a man's free will isn't
+supernatural, why do your materialists deny that it exists?"
+
+Turnbull was silent for a moment.  Then he began to speak, but
+MacIan continued with the same steady voice and sad eyes:
+
+"So what I feel is this: Here is the great divine creation I was
+taught to believe in.  I can understand your disbelieving in it,
+but why disbelieve in a part of it?  It was all one thing to me.
+God had authority because he was God.  Man had authority because
+he was man.  You cannot prove that God is better than a man; nor
+can you prove that a man is better than a horse.  Why permit any
+ordinary thing?  Why do you let a horse be saddled?"
+
+"Some modern thinkers disapprove of it," said Turnbull a little
+doubtfully.
+
+"I know," said MacIan grimly; "that man who talked about love,
+for instance."
+
+Turnbull made a humorous grimace; then he said: "We seem to be
+talking in a kind of shorthand; but I won't pretend not to
+understand you.  What you mean is this: that you learnt about all
+your saints and angels at the same time as you learnt about
+common morality, from the same people, in the same way.  And you
+mean to say that if one may be disputed, so may the other.  Well,
+let that pass for the moment.  But let me ask you a question in
+turn.  Did not this system of yours, which you swallowed whole,
+contain all sorts of things that were merely local, the respect
+for the chief of your clan, or such things; the village ghost,
+the family feud, or what not?  Did you not take in those things,
+too, along with your theology?"
+
+MacIan stared along the dim village road, down which the last
+straggler from the inn was trailing his way.
+
+"What you say is not unreasonable," he said.  "But it is not quite
+true.  The distinction between the chief and us did exist; but it
+was never anything like the distinction between the human and the
+divine, or the human and the animal.  It was more like the
+distinction between one animal and another.  But----"
+
+"Well?" said Turnbull.
+
+MacIan was silent.
+
+"Go on," repeated Turnbull; "what's the matter with you?  What are
+you staring at?"
+
+"I am staring," said MacIan at last, "at that which shall judge
+us both."
+
+"Oh, yes," said Turnbull in a tired way, "I suppose you mean
+God."
+
+"No, I don't," said MacIan, shaking his head.  "I mean him."
+
+And he pointed to the half-tipsy yokel who was ploughing down the
+road.
+
+"What do you mean?" asked the atheist.
+
+"I mean him," repeated MacIan with emphasis.  "He goes out in the
+early dawn; he digs or he ploughs a field.  Then he comes back and
+drinks ale, and then he sings a song.  All your philosophies and
+political systems are young compared to him.  All your hoary
+cathedrals, yes, even the Eternal Church on earth is new compared
+to him.  The most mouldering gods in the British Museum are new
+facts beside him.  It is he who in the end shall judge us all."
+
+And MacIan rose to his feet with a vague excitement.
+
+"What are you going to do?"
+
+"I am going to ask him," cried MacIan, "which of us is right."
+
+Turnbull broke into a kind of laugh.  "Ask that intoxicated
+turnip-eater----" he began.
+
+"Yes--which of us is right," cried MacIan violently.  "Oh, you
+have long words and I have long words; and I talk of every man
+being the image of God; and you talk of every man being a citizen
+and enlightened enough to govern.  But if every man typifies God,
+there is God.  If every man is an enlightened citizen, there is
+your enlightened citizen.  The first man one meets is always man.
+Let us catch him up."
+
+And in gigantic strides the long, lean Highlander whirled away
+into the grey twilight, Turnbull following with a good-humoured
+oath.
+
+The track of the rustic was easy to follow, even in the faltering
+dark; for he was enlivening his wavering walk with song.  It was
+an interminable poem, beginning with some unspecified King
+William, who (it appeared) lived in London town and who after the
+second rise vanished rather abruptly from the train of thought.
+The rest was almost entirely about beer and was thick with local
+topography of a quite unrecognizable kind.  The singer's step was
+neither very rapid, nor, indeed, exceptionally secure; so the
+song grew louder and louder and the two soon overtook him.
+
+He was a man elderly or rather of any age, with lean grey hair
+and a lean red face, but with that remarkable rustic physiognomy
+in which it seems that all the features stand out independently
+from the face; the rugged red nose going out like a limb; the
+bleared blue eyes standing out like signals.
+
+He gave them greeting with the elaborate urbanity of the slightly
+intoxicated.  MacIan, who was vibrating with one of his silent,
+violent decisions, opened the question without delay.  He
+explained the philosophic position in words as short and simple
+as possible.  But the singular old man with the lank red face
+seemed to think uncommonly little of the short words.  He fixed
+with a fierce affection upon one or two of the long ones.
+
+"Atheists!" he repeated with luxurious scorn.  "Atheists!  I
+know their sort, master.  Atheists!  Don't talk to me about 'un.
+Atheists!"
+
+The grounds of his disdain seemed a little dark and confused; but
+they were evidently sufficient. MacIan resumed in some
+encouragement:
+
+"You think as I do, I hope; you think that a man should be
+connected with the Church; with the common Christian----"
+
+The old man extended a quivering stick in the direction of a
+distant hill.
+
+"There's the church," he said thickly.  "Grassley old church that
+is.  Pulled down it was, in the old squire's time, and----"
+
+"I mean," explained MacIan elaborately, "that you think that
+there should be someone typifying religion, a priest----"
+
+"Priests!" said the old man with sudden passion.  "Priests!  I
+know 'un.  What they want in England?  That's what I say.  What
+they want in England?"
+
+"They want you," said MacIan.
+
+"Quite so," said Turnbull, "and me; but they won't get us.
+MacIan, your attempt on the primitive innocence does not seem
+very successful.  Let me try.  What you want, my friend, is your
+rights.  You don't want any priests or churches.  A vote, a right
+to speak is what you----"
+
+"Who says I a'n't got a right to speak?" said the old man, facing
+round in an irrational frenzy.  "I got a right to speak.  I'm a
+man, I am.  I don't want no votin' nor priests.  I say a man's a
+man; that's what I say.  If a man a'n't a man, what is he?  That's
+what I say, if a man a'n't a man, what is he?  When I sees a man,
+I sez 'e's a man."
+
+"Quite so," said Turnbull, "a citizen."
+
+"I say he's a man," said the rustic furiously, stopping and
+striking his stick on the ground.  "Not a city or owt else. He's a
+man."
+
+"You're perfectly right," said the sudden voice of MacIan,
+falling like a sword.  "And you have kept close to something the
+whole world of today tries to forget."
+
+"Good night."
+
+And the old man went on wildly singing into the night.
+
+"A jolly old creature," said Turnbull; "he didn't seem able to
+get much beyond that fact that a man is a man."
+
+"Has anybody got beyond it?" asked MacIan.
+
+Turnbull looked at him curiously.  "Are you turning an agnostic?"
+he asked.
+
+"Oh, you do not understand!" cried out MacIan.  "We Catholics are
+all agnostics.  We Catholics have only in that sense got as far as
+realizing that man is a man.  But your Ibsens and your Zolas and
+your Shaws and your Tolstoys have not even got so far."
+
+
+
+VIII. AN INTERLUDE OF ARGUMENT
+
+Morning broke in bitter silver along the grey and level plain;
+and almost as it did so Turnbull and MacIan came out of a low,
+scrubby wood on to the empty and desolate flats.  They had walked
+all night.
+
+They had walked all night and talked all night also, and if the
+subject had been capable of being exhausted they would have
+exhausted it.  Their long and changing argument had taken them
+through districts and landscapes equally changing.  They had
+discussed Haeckel upon hills so high and steep that in spite of
+the coldness of the night it seemed as if the stars might burn
+them.  They had explained and re-explained the Massacre of St.
+Bartholomew in little white lanes walled in with standing corn as
+with walls of gold.  They had talked about Mr. Kensit in dim and
+twinkling pine woods, amid the bewildering monotony of the pines.
+And it was with the end of a long speech from MacIan,
+passionately defending the practical achievements and the solid
+prosperity of the Catholic tradition, that they came out upon the
+open land.
+
+MacIan had learnt much and thought more since he came out of the
+cloudy hills of Arisaig.  He had met many typical modern figures
+under circumstances which were sharply symbolic; and, moreover,
+he had absorbed the main modern atmosphere from the mere presence
+and chance phrases of Turnbull, as such atmospheres can always be
+absorbed from the presence and the phrases of any man of great
+mental vitality.  He had at last begun thoroughly to understand
+what are the grounds upon which the mass of the modern world
+solidly disapprove of her creed; and he threw himself into
+replying to them with a hot intellectual enjoyment.
+
+"I begin to understand one or two of your dogmas, Mr. Turnbull,"
+he had said emphatically as they ploughed heavily up a wooded
+hill.  "And every one that I understand I deny.  Take any one of
+them you like.  You hold that your heretics and sceptics have
+helped the world forward and handed on a lamp of progress.  I deny
+it.  Nothing is plainer from real history than that each of your
+heretics invented a complete cosmos of his own which the next
+heretic smashed entirely to pieces.  Who knows now exactly what
+Nestorius taught?  Who cares?  There are only two things that we
+know for certain about it.  The first is that Nestorius, as a
+heretic, taught something quite opposite to the teaching of
+Arius, the heretic who came before him, and something quite
+useless to James Turnbull, the heretic who comes after.  I defy
+you to go back to the Free-thinkers of the past and find any
+habitation for yourself at all.  I defy you to read Godwin or
+Shelley or the deists of the eighteenth century of the
+nature-worshipping humanists of the Renaissance, without
+discovering that you differ from them twice as much as you differ
+from the Pope.  You are a nineteenth-century sceptic, and you are
+always telling me that I ignore the cruelty of nature.  If you had
+been an eighteenth-century sceptic you would have told me that I
+ignore the kindness and benevolence of nature.  You are an
+atheist, and you praise the deists of the eighteenth century.
+Read them instead of praising them, and you will find that their
+whole universe stands or falls with the deity.  You are a
+materialist, and you think Bruno a scientific hero.  See what he
+said and you will think him an insane mystic.  No, the great
+Free-thinker, with his genuine ability and honesty, does not in
+practice destroy Christianity.  What he does destroy is the
+Free-thinker who went before.  Free-thought may be suggestive, it
+may be inspiriting, it may have as much as you please of the
+merits that come from vivacity and variety.  But there is one
+thing Free-thought can never be by any possibility--Free-thought
+can never be progressive.  It can never be progressive because it
+will accept nothing from the past; it begins every time again
+from the beginning; and it goes every time in a different
+direction.  All the rational philosophers have gone along
+different roads, so it is impossible to say which has gone
+farthest.  Who can discuss whether Emerson was a better optimist
+than Schopenhauer was pessimist?  It is like asking if this corn
+is as yellow as that hill is steep.  No; there are only two things
+that really progress; and they both accept accumulations of
+authority.  They may be progressing uphill and down; they may be
+growing steadily better or steadily worse; but they have steadily
+increased in certain definable matters; they have steadily
+advanced in a certain definable direction; they are the only two
+things, it seems, that ever _can_ progress.  The first is strictly
+physical science.  The second is the Catholic Church."
+
+"Physical science and the Catholic Church!" said Turnbull
+sarcastically; "and no doubt the first owes a great deal to the
+second."
+
+"If you pressed that point I might reply that it was very
+probable," answered MacIan calmly.  "I often fancy that your
+historical generalizations rest frequently on random instances; I
+should not be surprised if your vague notions of the Church as
+the persecutor of science was a generalization from Galileo.  I
+should not be at all surprised if, when you counted the
+scientific investigations and discoveries since the fall of Rome,
+you found that a great mass of them had been made by monks.  But
+the matter is irrelevant to my meaning.  I say that if you want an
+example of anything which has progressed in the moral world by
+the same method as science in the material world, by continually
+adding to without unsettling what was there before, then I say
+that there _is_ only one example of it.  And that is Us."
+
+"With this enormous difference," said Turnbull, "that however
+elaborate be the calculations of physical science, their net
+result can be tested.  Granted that it took millions of books I
+never read and millions of men I never heard of to discover the
+electric light.  Still I can see the electric light.  But I cannot
+see the supreme virtue which is the result of all your theologies
+and sacraments."
+
+"Catholic virtue is often invisible because it is the normal,"
+answered MacIan.  "Christianity is always out of fashion because
+it is always sane; and all fashions are mild insanities.  When
+Italy is mad on art the Church seems too Puritanical; when
+England is mad on Puritanism the Church seems too artistic.  When
+you quarrel with us now you class us with kingship and despotism;
+but when you quarrelled with us first it was because we would not
+accept the divine despotism of Henry VIII.  The Church always
+seems to be behind the times, when it is really beyond the times;
+it is waiting till the last fad shall have seen its last summer.
+It keeps the key of a permanent virtue."
+
+"Oh, I have heard all that!" said Turnbull with genial contempt.
+"I have heard that Christianity keeps the key of virtue, and that
+if you read Tom Paine you will cut your throat at Monte Carlo.  It
+is such rubbish that I am not even angry at it.  You say that
+Christianity is the prop of morals; but what more do you do?  When
+a doctor attends you and could poison you with a pinch of salt,
+do you ask whether he is a Christian?  You ask whether he is a
+gentleman, whether he is an M.D.--anything but that.  When a
+soldier enlists to die for his country or disgrace it, do you ask
+whether he is a Christian?  You are more likely to ask whether he
+is Oxford or Cambridge at the boat race.  If you think your creed
+essential to morals why do you not make it a test for these
+things?"
+
+"We once did make it a test for these things," said MacIan
+smiling, "and then you told us that we were imposing by force a
+faith unsupported by argument.  It seems rather hard that having
+first been told that our creed must be false because we did use
+tests, we should now be told that it must be false because we
+don't.  But I notice that most anti-Christian arguments are in the
+same inconsistent style."
+
+"That is all very well as a debating-club answer," replied
+Turnbull good-humouredly, "but the question still remains: Why
+don't you confine yourself more to Christians if Christians are
+the only really good men?"
+
+"Who talked of such folly?" asked MacIan disdainfully.  "Do you
+suppose that the Catholic Church ever held that Christians were
+the only good men?  Why, the Catholics of the Catholic Middle Ages
+talked about the virtues of all the virtuous Pagans until
+humanity was sick of the subject.  No, if you really want to know
+what we mean when we say that Christianity has a special power of
+virtue, I will tell you.  The Church is the only thing on earth
+that can perpetuate a type of virtue and make it something more
+than a fashion.  The thing is so plain and historical that I
+hardly think you will ever deny it.  You cannot deny that it is
+perfectly possible that tomorrow morning, in Ireland or in Italy,
+there might appear a man not only as good but good in exactly the
+same way as St. Francis of Assisi.  Very well, now take the other
+types of human virtue; many of them splendid.  The English
+gentleman of Elizabeth was chivalrous and idealistic.  But can you
+stand still here in this meadow and _be_ an English gentleman of
+Elizabeth?  The austere republican of the eighteenth century, with
+his stern patriotism and his simple life, was a fine fellow.  But
+have you ever seen him? have you ever seen an austere republican?
+Only a hundred years have passed and that volcano of
+revolutionary truth and valour is as cold as the mountains of the
+moon.  And so it is and so it will be with the ethics which are
+buzzing down Fleet Street at this instant as I speak.  What phrase
+would inspire the London clerk or workman just now?  Perhaps that
+he is a son of the British Empire on which the sun never sets;
+perhaps that he is a prop of his Trades Union, or a
+class-conscious proletarian something or other; perhaps merely
+that he is a gentleman when he obviously is not.  Those names and
+notions are all honourable; but how long will they last?  Empires
+break; industrial conditions change; the suburbs will not last
+for ever.  What will remain?  I will tell you.  The Catholic Saint
+will remain."
+
+"And suppose I don't like him?" said Turnbull.
+
+"On my theory the question is rather whether he will like you: or
+more probably whether he will ever have heard of you.  But I grant
+the reasonableness of your query.  You have a right, if you speak
+as the ordinary man, to ask if you will like the saint.  But as
+the ordinary man you do like him.  You revel in him.  If you
+dislike him it is not because you are a nice ordinary man, but
+because you are (if you will excuse me) a sophisticated prig of a
+Fleet Street editor.  That is just the funny part of it.  The human
+race has always admired the Catholic virtues, however little it
+can practise them; and oddly enough it has admired most those of
+them that the modern world most sharply disputes.  You complain of
+Catholicism for setting up an ideal of virginity; it did nothing
+of the kind.  The whole human race set up an ideal of virginity;
+the Greeks in Athene, the Romans in the Vestal fire, set up an
+ideal of virginity.  What then is your real quarrel with
+Catholicism?  Your quarrel can only be, your quarrel really only
+is, that Catholicism has _achieved_ an ideal of virginity; that
+it is no longer a mere piece of floating poetry.  But if you, and
+a few feverish men, in top hats, running about in a street in
+London, choose to differ as to the ideal itself, not only from
+the Church, but from the Parthenon whose name means virginity,
+from the Roman Empire which went outwards from the virgin flame,
+from the whole legend and tradition of Europe, from the lion who
+will not touch virgins, from the unicorn who respects them, and
+who make up together the bearers of your own national shield,
+from the most living and lawless of your own poets, from
+Massinger, who wrote the _Virgin Martyr_, from Shakespeare, who
+wrote _Measure for Measure_--if you in Fleet Street differ from
+all this human experience, does it never strike you that it may
+be Fleet Street that is wrong?"
+
+"No," answered Turnbull; "I trust that I am sufficiently
+fair-minded to canvass and consider the idea; but having
+considered it, I think Fleet Street is right, yes--even if the
+Parthenon is wrong.  I think that as the world goes on new
+psychological atmospheres are generated, and in these atmospheres
+it is possible to find delicacies and combinations which in other
+times would have to be represented by some ruder symbol.  Every
+man feels the need of some element of purity in sex; perhaps they
+can only typify purity as the absence of sex.  You will laugh if I
+suggest that we may have made in Fleet Street an atmosphere in
+which a man can be so passionate as Sir Lancelot and as pure as
+Sir Galahad.  But, after all, we have in the modern world erected
+many such atmospheres.  We have, for instance, a new and
+imaginative appreciation of children."
+
+"Quite so," replied MacIan with a singular smile.  "It has been
+very well put by one of the brightest of your young authors, who
+said: 'Unless you become as little children ye shall in no wise
+enter the kingdom of heaven.'  But you are quite right; there is a
+modern worship of children.  And what, I ask you, is this modern
+worship of children?  What, in the name of all the angels and
+devils, is it except a worship of virginity?  Why should anyone
+worship a thing merely because it is small or immature?  No; you
+have tried to escape from this thing, and the very thing you
+point to as the goal of your escape is only the thing again.  Am
+I wrong in saying that these things seem to be eternal?"
+
+And it was with these words that they came in sight of the great
+plains.  They went a little way in silence, and then James
+Turnbull said suddenly, "But I _cannot_ believe in the thing."
+MacIan answered nothing to the speech; perhaps it is
+unanswerable.  And indeed they scarcely spoke another word to
+each other all that day.
+
+
+
+IX. THE STRANGE LADY
+
+Moonrise with a great and growing moon opened over all those
+flats, making them seem flatter and larger than they were,
+turning them to a lake of blue light.  The two companions trudged
+across the moonlit plain for half an hour in full silence.  Then
+MacIan stopped suddenly and planted his sword-point in the ground
+like one who plants his tent-pole for the night.  Leaving it
+standing there, he clutched his black-haired skull with his great
+claws of hands, as was his custom when forcing the pace of his
+brain.  Then his hands dropped again and he spoke.
+
+"I'm sure you're thinking the same as I am," he said; "how long
+are we to be on this damned seesaw?"
+
+The other did not answer, but his silence seemed somehow solid as
+assent; and MacIan went on conversationally.  Neither noticed that
+both had instinctively stood still before the sign of the fixed
+and standing sword.
+
+"It is hard to guess what God means in this business.  But he
+means something--or the other thing, or both.  Whenever we have
+tried to fight each other something has stopped us.  Whenever we
+have tried to be reconciled to each other, something has stopped
+us again.  By the run of our luck we have never had time to be
+either friends or enemies.  Something always jumped out of the
+bushes."
+
+Turnbull nodded gravely and glanced round at the huge and
+hedgeless meadow which fell away towards the horizon into a
+glimmering high road.
+
+"Nothing will jump out of bushes here anyhow," he said.
+
+"That is what I meant," said MacIan, and stared steadily at the
+heavy hilt of his standing sword, which in the slight wind swayed
+on its tempered steel like some huge thistle on its stalk.
+
+"That is what I meant; we are quite alone here.  I have not heard
+a horse-hoof or a footstep or the hoot of a train for miles.  So I
+think we might stop here and ask for a miracle."
+
+"Oh! might we?" said the atheistic editor with a sort of gusto of
+disgust.
+
+"I beg your pardon," said MacIan, meekly.  "I forgot your
+prejudices."  He eyed the wind-swung sword-hilt in sad meditation
+and resumed: "What I mean is, we might find out in this quiet
+place whether there really is any fate or any commandment against
+our enterprise.  I will engage on my side, like Elijah, to accept
+a test from heaven.  Turnbull, let us draw swords here in this
+moonlight and this monstrous solitude.  And if here in this
+moonlight and solitude there happens anything to interrupt us--if
+it be lightning striking our sword-blades or a rabbit running
+under our legs--I will take it as a sign from God and we will
+shake hands for ever."
+
+Turnbull's mouth twitched in angry humour under his red
+moustache.  He said: "I will wait for signs from God until I have
+any signs of His existence; but God--or Fate--forbid that a man
+of scientific culture should refuse any kind of experiment."
+
+"Very well, then," said MacIan, shortly.  "We are more quiet here
+than anywhere else; let us engage."  And he plucked his
+sword-point out of the turf.
+
+Turnbull regarded him for a second and a half with a baffling
+visage almost black against the moonrise; then his hand made a
+sharp movement to his hip and his sword shone in the moon.
+
+As old chess-players open every game with established gambits,
+they opened with a thrust and parry, orthodox and even frankly
+ineffectual.  But in MacIan's soul more formless storms were
+gathering, and he made a lunge or two so savage as first to
+surprise and then to enrage his opponent.  Turnbull ground his
+teeth, kept his temper, and waiting for the third lunge, and the
+worst, had almost spitted the lunger when a shrill, small cry
+came from behind him, a cry such as is not made by any of the
+beasts that perish.
+
+Turnbull must have been more superstitious than he knew, for he
+stopped in the act of going forward.  MacIan was brazenly
+superstitious, and he dropped his sword.  After all, he had
+challenged the universe to send an interruption; and this was an
+interruption, whatever else it was.  An instant afterwards the
+sharp, weak cry was repeated.  This time it was certain that it
+was human and that it was female.
+
+MacIan stood rolling those great blue Gaelic eyes that contrasted
+with his dark hair.  "It is the voice of God," he said again and
+again.
+
+"God hasn't got much of a voice," said Turnbull, who snatched at
+every chance of cheap profanity.  "As a matter of fact, MacIan, it
+isn't the voice of God, but it's something a jolly sight more
+important--it is the voice of man--or rather of woman.  So I think
+we'd better scoot in its direction."
+
+MacIan snatched up his fallen weapon without a word, and the two
+raced away towards that part of the distant road from which the
+cry was now constantly renewed.
+
+They had to run over a curve of country that looked smooth but
+was very rough; a neglected field which they soon found to be
+full of the tallest grasses and the deepest rabbit-holes.
+Moreover, that great curve of the countryside which looked so
+slow and gentle when you glanced over it, proved to be highly
+precipitous when you scampered over it; and Turnbull was twice
+nearly flung on his face.  MacIan, though much heavier, avoided
+such an overthrow only by having the quick and incalculable feet
+of the mountaineer; but both of them may be said to have leapt
+off a low cliff when they leapt into the road.
+
+The moonlight lay on the white road with a more naked and
+electric glare than on the grey-green upland, and though the
+scene which it revealed was complicated, it was not difficult to
+get its first features at a glance.
+
+A small but very neat black-and-yellow motor-car was standing
+stolidly, slightly to the left of the road.  A somewhat larger
+light-green motor-car was tipped half-way into a ditch on the
+same side, and four flushed and staggering men in evening dress
+were tipped out of it.  Three of them were standing about the
+road, giving their opinions to the moon with vague but echoing
+violence.  The fourth, however, had already advanced on the
+chauffeur of the black-and-yellow car, and was threatening him
+with a stick.  The chauffeur had risen to defend himself.  By
+his side sat a young lady.
+
+She was sitting bolt upright, a slender and rigid figure gripping
+the sides of her seat, and her first few cries had ceased.  She
+was clad in close-fitting dark costume, a mass of warm brown hair
+went out in two wings or waves on each side of her forehead; and
+even at that distance it could be seen that her profile was of
+the aquiline and eager sort, like a young falcon hardly free of
+the nest.
+
+Turnbull had concealed in him somewhere a fund of common sense
+and knowledge of the world of which he himself and his best
+friends were hardly aware.  He was one of those who take in much
+of the shows of things absent-mindedly, and in an irrelevant
+reverie.  As he stood at the door of his editorial shop on Ludgate
+Hill and meditated on the non-existence of God, he silently
+absorbed a good deal of varied knowledge about the existence of
+men.  He had come to know types by instinct and dilemmas with a
+glance; he saw the crux of the situation in the road, and what he
+saw made him redouble his pace.
+
+He knew that the men were rich; he knew that they were drunk; and
+he knew, what was worst of all, that they were fundamentally
+frightened.  And he knew this also, that no common ruffian (such
+as attacks ladies in novels) is ever so savage and ruthless as a
+coarse kind of gentleman when he is really alarmed.  The reason is
+not recondite; it is simply because the police-court is not such
+a menacing novelty to the poor ruffian as it is to the rich.  When
+they came within hail and heard the voices, they confirmed all
+Turnbull's anticipations.  The man in the middle of the road was
+shouting in a hoarse and groggy voice that the chauffeur had
+smashed their car on purpose; that they must get to the Cri that
+evening, and that he would jolly well have to take them there.
+The chauffeur had mildly objected that he was driving a lady.
+"Oh! we'll take care of the lady," said the red-faced young man,
+and went off into gurgling and almost senile laughter.
+
+By the time the two champions came up, things had grown more
+serious.  The intoxication of the man talking to the chauffeur had
+taken one of its perverse and catlike jumps into mere screaming
+spite and rage.  He lifted his stick and struck at the chauffeur,
+who caught hold of it, and the drunkard fell backwards, dragging
+him out of his seat on the car.  Another of the rowdies rushed
+forward booing in idiot excitement, fell over the chauffeur, and,
+either by accident or design, kicked him as he lay.  The drunkard
+got to his feet again; but the chauffeur did not.
+
+The man who had kicked kept a kind of half-witted conscience or
+cowardice, for he stood staring at the senseless body and
+murmuring words of inconsequent self-justification, making
+gestures with his hands as if he were arguing with somebody.  But
+the other three, with a mere whoop and howl of victory, were
+boarding the car on three sides at once.  It was exactly at this
+moment that Turnbull fell among them like one fallen from the
+sky.  He tore one of the climbers backward by the collar, and with
+a hearty push sent him staggering over into the ditch upon his
+nose.  One of the remaining two, who was too far gone to notice
+anything, continued to clamber ineffectually over the high back
+of the car, kicking and pouring forth a rivulet of soliloquy.  But
+the other dropped at the interruption, turned upon Turnbull and
+began a battering bout of fisticuffs.  At the same moment the man
+crawled out of the ditch in a masquerade of mud and rushed at his
+old enemy from behind.  The whole had not taken a second; and an
+instant after MacIan was in the midst of them.
+
+Turnbull had tossed away his sheathed sword, greatly preferring
+his hands, except in the avowed etiquette of the duel; for he had
+learnt to use his hands in the old street-battles of Bradlaugh.
+But to MacIan the sword even sheathed was a more natural weapon,
+and he laid about him on all sides with it as with a stick.  The
+man who had the walking-stick found his blows parried with
+promptitude; and a second after, to his great astonishment, found
+his own stick fly up in the air as by a conjuring trick, with a
+turn of the swordsman's wrist.  Another of the revellers picked
+the stick out of the ditch and ran in upon MacIan, calling to his
+companion to assist him.
+
+"I haven't got a stick," grumbled the disarmed man, and looked
+vaguely about the ditch.
+
+"Perhaps," said MacIan, politely, "you would like this one."  With
+the word the drunkard found his hand that had grasped the stick
+suddenly twisted and empty; and the stick lay at the feet of his
+companion on the other side of the road.  MacIan felt a faint stir
+behind him; the girl had risen to her feet and was leaning
+forward to stare at the fighters.  Turnbull was still engaged in
+countering and pommelling with the third young man. The fourth
+young man was still engaged with himself, kicking his legs in
+helpless rotation on the back of the car and talking with
+melodious rationality.
+
+At length Turnbull's opponent began to back before the battery of
+his heavy hands, still fighting, for he was the soberest and
+boldest of the four.  If these are annals of military glory, it is
+due to him to say that he need not have abandoned the conflict;
+only that as he backed to the edge of the ditch his foot caught
+in a loop of grass and he went over in a flat and comfortable
+position from which it took him a considerable time to rise.  By
+the time he had risen, Turnbull had come to the rescue of MacIan,
+who was at bay but belabouring his two enemies handsomely.  The
+sight of the liberated reserve was to them like that of Blucher
+at Waterloo; the two set off at a sullen trot down the road,
+leaving even the walking-stick lying behind them in the
+moonlight.  MacIan plucked the struggling and aspiring idiot off
+the back of the car like a stray cat, and left him swaying
+unsteadily in the moon.  Then he approached the front part of the
+car in a somewhat embarrassed manner and pulled off his cap.
+
+For some solid seconds the lady and he merely looked at each
+other, and MacIan had an irrational feeling of being in a picture
+hung on a wall.  That is, he was motionless, even lifeless, and
+yet staringly significant, like a picture.  The white moonlight on
+the road, when he was not looking at it, gave him a vision of the
+road being white with snow.  The motor-car, when he was not
+looking at it, gave him a rude impression of a captured coach in
+the old days of highwaymen.  And he whose whole soul was with the
+swords and stately manners of the eighteenth century, he who was
+a Jacobite risen from the dead, had an overwhelming sense of
+being once more in the picture, when he had so long been out of
+the picture.
+
+In that short and strong silence he absorbed the lady from head
+to foot.  He had never really looked at a human being before in
+his life.  He saw her face and hair first, then that she had long
+suede gloves; then that there was a fur cap at the back of her
+brown hair.  He might, perhaps, be excused for this hungry
+attention.  He had prayed that some sign might come from heaven;
+and after an almost savage scrutiny he came to the conclusion
+that his one did.  The lady's instantaneous arrest of speech
+might need more explaining; but she may well have been stunned
+with the squalid attack and the abrupt rescue.  Yet it was she
+who remembered herself first and suddenly called out with
+self-accusing horror:
+
+"Oh, that poor, poor man!"
+
+They both swung round abruptly and saw that Turnbull, with his
+recovered sword under his arm-pit, was already lifting the fallen
+chauffeur into the car.  He was only stunned and was slowly
+awakening, feebly waving his left arm.
+
+The lady in long gloves and the fur cap leapt out and ran rapidly
+towards them, only to be reassured by Turnbull, who (unlike many
+of his school) really knew a little science when he invoked it to
+redeem the world.  "He's all right," said he; "he's quite safe.
+But I'm afraid he won't be able to drive the car for half an hour
+or so."
+
+"I can drive the car," said the young woman in the fur cap with
+stony practicability.
+
+"Oh, in that case," began MacIan, uneasily; and that paralysing
+shyness which is a part of romance induced him to make a backward
+movement as if leaving her to herself.  But Turnbull was more
+rational than he, being more indifferent.
+
+"I don't think you ought to drive home alone, ma'am," he said,
+gruffly.  "There seem to be a lot of rowdy parties along this
+road, and the man will be no use for an hour.  If you will tell
+us where you are going, we will see you safely there and say good
+night."
+
+The young lady exhibited all the abrupt disturbance of a person
+who is not commonly disturbed.  She said almost sharply and yet
+with evident sincerity: "Of course I am awfully grateful to you
+for all you've done--and there's plenty of room if you'll come
+in."
+
+Turnbull, with the complete innocence of an absolutely sound
+motive, immediately jumped into the car; but the girl cast an eye
+at MacIan, who stood in the road for an instant as if rooted like
+a tree.  Then he also tumbled his long legs into the tonneau,
+having that sense of degradedly diving into heaven which so many
+have known in so many human houses when they consented to stop to
+tea or were allowed to stop to supper.  The slowly reviving
+chauffeur was set in the back seat; Turnbull and MacIan had
+fallen into the middle one; the lady with a steely coolness had
+taken the driver's seat and all the handles of that headlong
+machine.  A moment afterwards the engine started, with a throb and
+leap unfamiliar to Turnbull, who had only once been in a motor
+during a general election, and utterly unknown to MacIan, who in
+his present mood thought it was the end of the world.  Almost at
+the same instant that the car plucked itself out of the mud and
+whipped away up the road, the man who had been flung into the
+ditch rose waveringly to his feet.  When he saw the car escaping
+he ran after it and shouted something which, owing to the
+increasing distance, could not be heard.  It is awful to reflect
+that, if his remark was valuable, it is quite lost to the world.
+
+The car shot on up and down the shining moonlit lanes, and there
+was no sound in it except the occasional click or catch of its
+machinery; for through some cause or other no soul inside it
+could think of a word to say.  The lady symbolized her feelings,
+whatever they were, by urging the machine faster and faster until
+scattered woodlands went by them in one black blotch and heavy
+hills and valleys seemed to ripple under the wheels like mere
+waves.  A little while afterwards this mood seemed to slacken and
+she fell into a more ordinary pace; but still she did not speak.
+Turnbull, who kept a more common and sensible view of the case
+than anyone else, made some remark about the moonlight; but
+something indescribable made him also relapse into silence.
+
+All this time MacIan had been in a sort of monstrous delirium,
+like some fabulous hero snatched up into the moon.  The difference
+between this experience and common experiences was analogous to
+that between waking life and a dream.  Yet he did not feel in the
+least as if he were dreaming; rather the other way; as waking was
+more actual than dreaming, so this seemed by another degree more
+actual than waking itself.  But it was another life altogether,
+like a cosmos with a new dimension.
+
+He felt he had been hurled into some new incarnation: into the
+midst of new relations, wrongs and rights, with towering
+responsibilities and almost tragic joys which he had as yet had
+no time to examine.  Heaven had not merely sent him a message;
+Heaven itself had opened around him and given him an hour of its
+own ancient and star-shattering energy.  He had never felt so much
+alive before; and yet he was like a man in a trance.  And if you
+had asked him on what his throbbing happiness hung, he could only
+have told you that it hung on four or five visible facts, as a
+curtain hangs on four of five fixed nails.  The fact that the lady
+had a little fur at her throat; the fact that the curve of her
+cheek was a low and lean curve and that the moonlight caught the
+height of her cheek-bone; the fact that her hands were small but
+heavily gloved as they gripped the steering-wheel; the fact that
+a white witch light was on the road; the fact that the brisk
+breeze of their passage stirred and fluttered a little not only
+the brown hair of her head but the black fur on her cap.  All
+these facts were to him certain and incredible, like sacraments.
+
+When they had driven half a mile farther, a big shadow was flung
+across the path, followed by its bulky owner, who eyed the car
+critically but let it pass.  The silver moonlight picked out a
+piece or two of pewter ornament on his blue uniform; and as they
+went by they knew it was a sergeant of police.  Three hundred
+yards farther on another policeman stepped out into the road as
+if to stop them, then seemed to doubt his own authority and
+stepped back again.  The girl was a daughter of the rich; and this
+police suspicion (under which all the poor live day and night)
+stung her for the first time into speech.
+
+"What can they mean?" she cried out in a kind of temper; "this
+car's going like a snail."
+
+There was a short silence, and then Turnbull said: "It is
+certainly very odd, you are driving quietly enough."
+
+"You are driving nobly," said MacIan, and his words (which had no
+meaning whatever) sounded hoarse and ungainly even in his own
+ears.
+
+They passed the next mile and a half swiftly and smoothly; yet
+among the many things which they passed in the course of it was a
+clump of eager policemen standing at a cross-road.  As they
+passed, one of the policemen shouted something to the others; but
+nothing else happened.  Eight hundred yards farther on, Turnbull
+stood up suddenly in the swaying car.
+
+"My God, MacIan!" he called out, showing his first emotion of
+that night.  "I don't believe it's the pace; it couldn't be the
+pace. I believe it's us."
+
+MacIan sat motionless for a few moments and then turned up at his
+companion a face that was as white as the moon above it.
+
+"You may be right," he said at last; "if you are, I must tell
+her."
+
+"I will tell the lady if you like," said Turnbull, with his
+unconquered good temper.
+
+"You!" said MacIan, with a sort of sincere and instinctive
+astonishment.  "Why should you--no, I must tell her, of
+course----"
+
+And he leant forward and spoke to the lady in the fur cap.
+
+"I am afraid, madam, that we may have got you into some trouble,"
+he said, and even as he said it it sounded wrong, like everything
+he said to this particular person in the long gloves.  "The fact
+is," he resumed, desperately, "the fact is, we are being chased
+by the police."  Then the last flattening hammer fell upon poor
+Evan's embarrassment; for the fluffy brown head with the furry
+black cap did not turn by a section of the compass.
+
+"We are chased by the police," repeated MacIan, vigorously; then
+he added, as if beginning an explanation, "You see, I am a
+Catholic."
+
+The wind whipped back a curl of the brown hair so as to
+necessitate a new theory of aesthetics touching the line of the
+cheek-bone; but the head did not turn.
+
+"You see," began MacIan, again blunderingly, "this gentleman
+wrote in his newspaper that Our Lady was a common woman, a bad
+woman, and so we agreed to fight; and we were fighting quite a
+little time ago--but that was before we saw you."
+
+The young lady driving her car had half turned her face to
+listen; and it was not a reverent or a patient face that she
+showed him.  Her Norman nose was tilted a trifle too high upon
+the slim stalk of her neck and body.
+
+When MacIan saw that arrogant and uplifted profile pencilled
+plainly against the moonshine, he accepted an ultimate defeat.
+He had expected the angels to despise him if he were wrong, but
+not to despise him so much as this.
+
+"You see," said the stumbling spokesman, "I was angry with him
+when he insulted the Mother of God, and I asked him to fight a
+duel with me; but the police are all trying to stop it."
+
+Nothing seemed to waver or flicker in the fair young falcon
+profile; and it only opened its lips to say, after a silence: "I
+thought people in our time were supposed to respect each other's
+religion."
+
+Under the shadow of that arrogant face MacIan could only fall
+back on the obvious answer: "But what about a man's irreligion?"
+The face only answered: "Well, you ought to be more broadminded."
+
+If anyone else in the world had said the words, MacIan would have
+snorted with his equine neigh of scorn.  But in this case he
+seemed knocked down by a superior simplicity, as if his eccentric
+attitude were rebuked by the innocence of a child.  He could not
+dissociate anything that this woman said or did or wore from an
+idea of spiritual rarity and virtue.  Like most others under the
+same elemental passion, his soul was at present soaked in ethics.
+He could have applied moral terms to the material objects of her
+environment.  If someone had spoken of "her generous ribbon" or
+"her chivalrous gloves" or "her merciful shoe-buckle," it would
+not have seemed to him nonsense.
+
+He was silent, and the girl went on in a lower key as if she were
+momentarily softened and a little saddened also.  "It won't do,
+you know," she said; "you can't find out the truth in that way.
+There are such heaps of churches and people thinking different
+things nowadays, and they all think they are right.  My uncle was
+a Swedenborgian."
+
+MacIan sat with bowed head, listening hungrily to her voice but
+hardly to her words, and seeing his great world drama grow
+smaller and smaller before his eyes till it was no bigger than a
+child's toy theatre.
+
+"The time's gone by for all that," she went on; "you can't find
+out the real thing like that--if there is really anything to
+find----" and she sighed rather drearily; for, like many of the
+women of our wealthy class, she was old and broken in thought,
+though young and clean enough in her emotions.
+
+"Our object," said Turnbull, shortly, "is to make an effective
+demonstration"; and after that word, MacIan looked at his vision
+again and found it smaller than ever.
+
+"It would be in the newspapers, of course," said the girl.
+"People read the newspapers, but they don't believe them, or
+anything else, I think."  And she sighed again.
+
+She drove in silence a third of a mile before she added, as if
+completing the sentence: "Anyhow, the whole thing's quite
+absurd."
+
+"I don't think," began Turnbull, "that you quite realize----
+Hullo! hullo--hullo--what's this?"
+
+The amateur chauffeur had been forced to bring the car to a
+staggering stoppage, for a file of fat, blue policemen made a
+wall across the way.  A sergeant came to the side and touched his
+peaked cap to the lady.
+
+"Beg your pardon, miss," he said with some embarrassment, for he
+knew her for a daughter of a dominant house, "but we have reason
+to believe that the gentlemen in your car are----" and he
+hesitated for a polite phrase.
+
+"I am Evan MacIan," said that gentleman, and stood up in a sort
+of gloomy pomp, not wholly without a touch of the sulks of a
+schoolboy.
+
+"Yes, we will get out, sergeant," said Turnbull, more easily; "my
+name is James Turnbull.  We must not incommode the lady."
+
+"What are you taking them up for?" asked the young woman, looking
+straight in front of her along the road.
+
+"It's under the new act," said the sergeant, almost
+apologetically.  "Incurable disturbers of the peace."
+
+"What will happen to them?" she asked, with the same frigid
+clearness.
+
+"Westgate Adult Reformatory," he replied, briefly.
+
+"Until when?"
+
+"Until they are cured," said the official.
+
+"Very well, sergeant," said the young lady, with a sort of tired
+common sense.  "I am sure I don't want to protect criminals or go
+against the law; but I must tell you that these gentlemen have
+done me a considerable service; you won't mind drawing your men a
+little farther off while I say good night to them.  Men like that
+always misunderstand."
+
+The sergeant was profoundly disquieted from the beginning at the
+mere idea of arresting anyone in the company of a great lady; to
+refuse one of her minor requests was quite beyond his courage.
+The police fell back to a few yards behind the car.  Turnbull took
+up the two swords that were their only luggage; the swords that,
+after so many half duels, they were now to surrender at last.
+MacIan, the blood thundering in his brain at the thought of that
+instant of farewell, bent over, fumbled at the handle and flung
+open the door to get out.
+
+But he did not get out.  He did not get out, because it is
+dangerous to jump out of a car when it is going at full speed.
+And the car was going at full speed, because the young lady,
+without turning her head or so much as saying a syllable, had
+driven down a handle that made the machine plunge forward like a
+buffalo and then fly over the landscape like a greyhound.  The
+police made one rush to follow, and then dropped so grotesque and
+hopeless a chase.  Away in the vanishing distance they could see
+the sergeant furiously making notes.
+
+The open door, still left loose on its hinges, swung and banged
+quite crazily as they went whizzing up one road and down another.
+Nor did MacIan sit down; he stood up stunned and yet staring, as
+he would have stood up at the trumpet of the Last Day.  A black
+dot in the distance sprang up a tall black forest, swallowed them
+and spat them out again at the other end.  A railway bridge grew
+larger and larger till it leapt upon their backs bellowing, and
+was in its turn left behind.  Avenues of poplars on both sides of
+the road chased each other like the figures in a zoetrope.  Now
+and then with a shock and rattle they went through sleeping
+moonlit villages, which must have stirred an instant in their
+sleep as at the passing of a fugitive earthquake.  Sometimes in an
+outlying house a light in one erratic, unexpected window would
+give them a nameless hint of the hundred human secrets which they
+left behind them with their dust.  Sometimes even a slouching
+rustic would be afoot on the road and would look after them, as
+after a flying phantom.  But still MacIan stood up staring at
+earth and heaven; and still the door he had flung open flapped
+loose like a flag.  Turnbull, after a few minutes of dumb
+amazement, had yielded to the healthiest element in his nature
+and gone off into uncontrollable fits of laughter.  The girl had
+not stirred an inch.
+
+After another half mile that seemed a mere flash, Turnbull leant
+over and locked the door.  Evan staggered at last into his seat
+and hid his throbbing head in his hands; and still the car flew
+on and its driver sat inflexible and silent.  The moon had already
+gone down, and the whole darkness was faintly troubled with
+twilight and the first movement of beasts and fowls.  It was that
+mysterious moment when light is coming as if it were something
+unknown whose nature one could not guess--a mere alteration in
+everything.  They looked at the sky and it seemed as dark as ever;
+then they saw the black shape of a tower or tree against it and
+knew that it was already grey.  Save that they were driving
+southward and had certainly passed the longitude of London, they
+knew nothing of their direction; but Turnbull, who had spent a
+year on the Hampshire coast in his youth, began to recognize the
+unmistakable but quite indescribable villages of the English
+south.  Then a white witch fire began to burn between the black
+stems of the fir-trees; and, like so many things in nature,
+though not in books on evolution, the daybreak, when it did come,
+came much quicker than one would think.  The gloomy heavens were
+ripped up and rolled away like a scroll, revealing splendours, as
+the car went roaring up the curve of a great hill; and above them
+and black against the broadening light, there stood one of those
+crouching and fantastic trees that are first signals of the sea.
+
+
+
+X. THE SWORDS REJOINED
+
+As they came over the hill and down on the other side of it, it
+is not too much to say that the whole universe of God opened over
+them and under them, like a thing unfolding to five times its
+size.  Almost under their feet opened the enormous sea, at the
+bottom of a steep valley which fell down into a bay; and the sea
+under their feet blazed at them almost as lustrous and almost as
+empty as the sky.  The sunrise opened above them like some cosmic
+explosion, shining and shattering and yet silent; as if the world
+were blown to pieces without a sound.  Round the rays of the
+victorious sun swept a sort of rainbow of confused and conquered
+colours--brown and blue and green and flaming rose-colour; as
+though gold were driving before it all the colours of the world.
+The lines of the landscape down which they sped, were the simple,
+strict, yet swerving, lines of a rushing river; so that it was
+almost as if they were being sucked down in a huge still
+whirlpool.  Turnbull had some such feeling, for he spoke for the
+first time for many hours.
+
+"If we go down at this rate we shall be over the sea cliff," he
+said.
+
+"How glorious!" said MacIan.
+
+When, however, they had come into the wide hollow at the bottom
+of that landslide, the car took a calm and graceful curve along
+the side of the sea, melted into the fringe of a few trees, and
+quietly, yet astonishingly, stopped.  A belated light was burning
+in the broad morning in the window of a sort of lodge- or
+gate-keepers' cottage; and the girl stood up in the car and
+turned her splendid face to the sun.
+
+Evan seemed startled by the stillness, like one who had been born
+amid sound and speed.  He wavered on his long legs as he stood up;
+he pulled himself together, and the only consequence was that he
+trembled from head to foot.  Turnbull had already opened the door
+on his side and jumped out.
+
+The moment he had done so the strange young woman had one more
+mad movement, and deliberately drove the car a few yards farther.
+Then she got out with an almost cruel coolness and began pulling
+off her long gloves and almost whistling.
+
+"You can leave me here," she said, quite casually, as if they had
+met five minutes before.  "That is the lodge of my father's place.
+Please come in, if you like--but I understood that you had some
+business."
+
+Evan looked at that lifted face and found it merely lovely; he
+was far too much of a fool to see that it was working with a
+final fatigue and that its austerity was agony.  He was even fool
+enough to ask it a question.  "Why did you save us?" he said,
+quite humbly.
+
+The girl tore off one of her gloves, as if she were tearing off
+her hand.  "Oh, I don't know," she said, bitterly.  "Now I come
+to think of it, I can't imagine."
+
+Evan's thoughts, that had been piled up to the morning star,
+abruptly let him down with a crash into the very cellars of the
+emotional universe.  He remained in a stunned silence for a long
+time; and that, if he had only known, was the wisest thing that
+he could possibly do at the moment.
+
+Indeed, the silence and the sunrise had their healing effect, for
+when the extraordinary lady spoke again, her tone was more
+friendly and apologetic.  "I'm not really ungrateful," she said;
+"it was very good of you to save me from those men."
+
+"But why?" repeated the obstinate and dazed MacIan, "why did you
+save us from the other men?  I mean the policemen?"
+
+The girl's great brown eyes were lit up with a flash that was at
+once final desperation and the loosening of some private and
+passionate reserve.
+
+"Oh, God knows!" she cried.  "God knows that if there is a God He
+has turned His big back on everything.  God knows I have had no
+pleasure in my life, though I am pretty and young and father has
+plenty of money.  And then people come and tell me that I ought to
+do things and I do them and it's all drivel.  They want you to do
+work among the poor; which means reading Ruskin and feeling
+self-righteous in the best room in a poor tenement.  Or to help
+some cause or other, which always means bundling people out of
+crooked houses, in which they've always lived, into straight
+houses, in which they often die.  And all the time you have inside
+only the horrid irony of your own empty head and empty heart.  I
+am to give to the unfortunate, when my whole misfortune is that I
+have nothing to give.  I am to teach, when I believe nothing at
+all that I was taught.  I am to save the children from death, and
+I am not even certain that I should not be better dead.  I suppose
+if I actually saw a child drowning I should save it.  But that
+would be from the same motive from which I have saved you, or
+destroyed you, whichever it is that I have done."
+
+"What was the motive?" asked Evan, in a low voice.
+
+"My motive is too big for my mind," answered the girl.
+
+Then, after a pause, as she stared with a rising colour at the
+glittering sea, she said: "It can't be described, and yet I am
+trying to describe it.  It seems to me not only that I am unhappy,
+but that there is no way of being happy.  Father is not happy,
+though he is a Member of Parliament----"  She paused a moment and
+added with a ghost of a smile: "Nor Aunt Mabel, though a man from
+India has told her the secret of all creeds.  But I may be wrong;
+there may be a way out.  And for one stark, insane second, I felt
+that, after all, you had got the way out and that was why the
+world hated you.  You see, if there were a way out, it would be
+sure to be something that looked very queer."
+
+Evan put his hand to his forehead and began stumblingly: "Yes, I
+suppose we do seem----"
+
+"Oh, yes, you look queer enough," she said, with ringing
+sincerity.  "You'll be all the better for a wash and brush up."
+
+"You forget our business, madam," said Evan, in a shaking voice;
+"we have no concern but to kill each other."
+
+"Well, I shouldn't be killed looking like that if I were you,"
+she replied, with inhuman honesty.
+
+Evan stood and rolled his eyes in masculine bewilderment. Then
+came the final change in this Proteus, and she put out both her
+hands for an instant and said in a low tone on which he lived for
+days and nights:
+
+"Don't you understand that I did not dare to stop you?  What you
+are doing is so mad that it may be quite true.  Somehow one can
+never really manage to be an atheist."
+
+Turnbull stood staring at the sea; but his shoulders showed that
+he heard, and after one minute he turned his head.  But the girl
+had only brushed Evan's hand with hers and had fled up the dark
+alley by the lodge gate.
+
+Evan stood rooted upon the road, literally like some heavy statue
+hewn there in the age of the Druids.  It seemed impossible that he
+should ever move.  Turnbull grew restless with this rigidity, and
+at last, after calling his companion twice or thrice, went up and
+clapped him impatiently on one of his big shoulders.  Evan winced
+and leapt away from him with a repulsion which was not the hate
+of an unclean thing nor the dread of a dangerous one, but was a
+spasm of awe and separation from something from which he was now
+sundered as by the sword of God.  He did not hate the atheist; it
+is possible that he loved him.  But Turnbull was now something
+more dreadful than an enemy: he was a thing sealed and devoted--a
+thing now hopelessly doomed to be either a corpse or an
+executioner.
+
+"What is the matter with you?" asked Turnbull, with his hearty
+hand still in the air; and yet he knew more about it than his
+innocent action would allow.
+
+"James," said Evan, speaking like one under strong bodily pain,
+"I asked for God's answer and I have got it--got it in my vitals.
+He knows how weak I am, and that I might forget the peril of the
+faith, forget the face of Our Lady--yes, even with your blow upon
+her cheek.  But the honour of this earth has just this about it,
+that it can make a man's heart like iron.  I am from the Lords of
+the Isles and I dare not be a mere deserter.  Therefore, God has
+tied me by the chain of my worldly place and word, and there is
+nothing but fighting now."
+
+"I think I understand you," said Turnbull, "but you say
+everything tail foremost."
+
+"She wants us to do it," said Evan, in a voice crushed with
+passion.  "She has hurt herself so that we might do it.  She has
+left her good name and her good sleep and all her habits and
+dignity flung away on the other side of England in the hope that
+she may hear of us and that we have broken some hole into
+heaven."
+
+"I thought I knew what you mean," said Turnbull, biting his
+beard; "it does seem as if we ought to do something after all she
+has done this night."
+
+"I never liked you so much before," said MacIan, in bitter
+sorrow.
+
+As he spoke, three solemn footmen came out of the lodge gate and
+assembled to assist the chauffeur to his room.  The mere sight of
+them made the two wanderers flee as from a too frightful
+incongruity, and before they knew where they were, they were well
+upon the grassy ledge of England that overlooks the Channel.  Evan
+said suddenly: "Will they let me see her in heaven once in a
+thousand ages?" and addressed the remark to the editor of _The
+Atheist_, as on which he would be likely or qualified to answer.
+But no answer came; a silence sank between the two.
+
+Turnbull strode sturdily to the edge of the cliff and looked out,
+his companion following, somewhat more shaken by his recent
+agitation.
+
+"If that's the view you take," said Turnbull, "and I don't say
+you are wrong, I think I know where we shall be best off for the
+business.  As it happens, I know this part of the south coast
+pretty well.  And unless I am mistaken there's a way down the
+cliff just here which will land us on a stretch of firm sand
+where no one is likely to follow us."
+
+The Highlander made a gesture of assent and came also almost to
+the edge of the precipice.  The sunrise, which was broadening over
+sea and shore, was one of those rare and splendid ones in which
+there seems to be no mist or doubt, and nothing but a universal
+clarification more and more complete.  All the colours were
+transparent.  It seemed like a triumphant prophecy of some perfect
+world where everything being innocent will be intelligible; a
+world where even our bodies, so to speak, may be as of burning
+glass.  Such a world is faintly though fiercely figured in the
+coloured windows of Christian architecture.  The sea that lay
+before them was like a pavement of emerald, bright and almost
+brittle; the sky against which its strict horizon hung was almost
+absolutely white, except that close to the sky line, like scarlet
+braids on the hem of a garment, lay strings of flaky cloud of so
+gleaming and gorgeous a red that they seemed cut out of some
+strange blood-red celestial metal, of which the mere gold of this
+earth is but a drab yellow imitation.
+
+"The hand of Heaven is still pointing," muttered the man of
+superstition to himself.  "And now it is a blood-red hand."
+
+The cool voice of his companion cut in upon his monologue,
+calling to him from a little farther along the cliff, to tell him
+that he had found the ladder of descent.  It began as a steep and
+somewhat greasy path, which then tumbled down twenty or thirty
+feet in the form of a fall of rough stone steps.  After that,
+there was a rather awkward drop on to a ledge of stone and then
+the journey was undertaken easily and even elegantly by the
+remains of an ornamental staircase, such as might have belonged
+to some long-disused watering-place.  All the time that the two
+travellers sank from stage to stage of this downward journey,
+there closed over their heads living bridges and caverns of the
+most varied foliage, all of which grew greener, redder, or more
+golden, in the growing sunlight of the morning.  Life, too, of the
+more moving sort rose at the sun on every side of them.  Birds
+whirred and fluttered in the undergrowth, as if imprisoned in
+green cages.  Other birds were shaken up in great clouds from the
+tree-tops, as if they were blossoms detached and scattered up to
+heaven.  Animals which Turnbull was too much of a Londoner and
+MacIan too much of a Northerner to know, slipped by among the
+tangle or ran pattering up the tree-trunks.  Both the men,
+according to their several creeds, felt the full thunder of the
+psalm of life as they had never heard it before; MacIan felt God
+the Father, benignant in all His energies, and Turnbull that
+ultimate anonymous energy, that _Natura Naturans_, which is the
+whole theme of Lucretius.  It was down this clamorous ladder of
+life that they went down to die.
+
+They broke out upon a brown semicircle of sand, so free from
+human imprint as to justify Turnbull's profession.  They strode
+out upon it, stuck their swords in the sand, and had a pause too
+important for speech.  Turnbull eyed the coast curiously for a
+moment, like one awakening memories of childhood; then he said
+abruptly, like a man remembering somebody's name: "But, of
+course, we shall be better off still round the corner of Cragness
+Point; nobody ever comes there at all."  And picking up his sword
+again, he began striding towards a big bluff of the rocks which
+stood out upon their left.  MacIan followed him round the corner
+and found himself in what was certainly an even finer fencing
+court, of flat, firm sand, enclosed on three sides by white walls
+of rock, and on the fourth by the green wall of the advancing
+sea.
+
+"We are quite safe here," said Turnbull, and, to the other's
+surprise, flung himself down, sitting on the brown beach.
+
+"You see, I was brought up near here," he explained.  "I was sent
+from Scotland to stop with my aunt.  It is highly probable that I
+may die here.  Do you mind if I light a pipe?"
+
+"Of course, do whatever you like," said MacIan, with a choking
+voice, and he went and walked alone by himself along the wet,
+glistening sands.
+
+Ten minutes afterwards he came back again, white with his own
+whirlwind of emotions; Turnbull was quite cheerful and was
+knocking out the end of his pipe.
+
+"You see, we have to do it," said MacIan. "She tied us to it."
+
+"Of course, my dear fellow," said the other, and leapt up as
+lightly as a monkey.
+
+They took their places gravely in the very centre of the great
+square of sand, as if they had thousands of spectators.  Before
+saluting, MacIan, who, being a mystic, was one inch nearer to
+Nature, cast his eye round the huge framework of their heroic
+folly.  The three walls of rock all leant a little outward, though
+at various angles; but this impression was exaggerated in the
+direction of the incredible by the heavy load of living trees and
+thickets which each wall wore on its top like a huge shock of
+hair.  On all that luxurious crest of life the risen and
+victorious sun was beating, burnishing it all like gold, and
+every bird that rose with that sunrise caught a light like a star
+upon it like the dove of the Holy Spirit.  Imaginative life had
+never so much crowded upon MacIan.  He felt that he could write
+whole books about the feelings of a single bird.  He felt that for
+two centuries he would not tire of being a rabbit.  He was in the
+Palace of Life, of which the very tapestries and curtains were
+alive.  Then he recovered himself, and remembered his affairs.
+Both men saluted, and iron rang upon iron.  It was exactly at the
+same moment that he realized that his enemy's left ankle was
+encircled with a ring of salt water that had crept up to his
+feet.
+
+"What is the matter?" said Turnbull, stopping an instant, for he
+had grown used to every movement of his extraordinary
+fellow-traveller's face.
+
+MacIan glanced again at that silver anklet of sea-water and then
+looked beyond at the next promontory round which a deep sea was
+boiling and leaping.  Then he turned and looked back and saw heavy
+foam being shaken up to heaven about the base of Cragness Point.
+
+"The sea has cut us off," he said, curtly.
+
+"I have noticed it," said Turnbull with equal sobriety.  "What
+view do you take of the development?"
+
+Evan threw away his weapon, and, as his custom was, imprisoned
+his big head in his hands.  Then he let them fall and said: "Yes,
+I know what it means; and I think it is the fairest thing.  It is
+the finger of God--red as blood--still pointing.  But now it
+points to two graves."
+
+There was a space filled with the sound of the sea, and then
+MacIan spoke again in a voice pathetically reasonable: "You see,
+we both saved her--and she told us both to fight--and it would
+not be just that either should fail and fall alone, while the
+other----"
+
+"You mean," said Turnbull, in a voice surprisingly soft and
+gentle, "that there is something fine about fighting in a place
+where even the conqueror must die?"
+
+"Oh, you have got it right, you have got it right!" cried out
+Evan, in an extraordinary childish ecstasy.  "Oh, I'm sure that
+you really believe in God!"
+
+Turnbull answered not a word, but only took up his fallen sword.
+
+For the third time Evan MacIan looked at those three sides of
+English cliff hung with their noisy load of life.  He had been
+at a loss to understand the almost ironical magnificence of all
+those teeming creatures and tropical colours and smells that
+smoked happily to heaven.  But now he knew that he was in the
+closed court of death and that all the gates were sealed.
+
+He drank in the last green and the last red and the last gold,
+those unique and indescribable things of God, as a man drains
+good wine at the bottom of his glass.  Then he turned and saluted
+his enemy once more, and the two stood up and fought till the
+foam flowed over their knees.
+
+Then MacIan stepped backward suddenly with a splash and held up
+his hand.  "Turnbull!" he cried; "I can't help it--fair fighting
+is more even than promises.  And this is not fair fighting."
+
+"What the deuce do you mean?" asked the other, staring.
+
+"I've only just thought of it," cried Evan, brokenly.  "We're very
+well matched--it may go on a good time--the tide is coming up
+fast--and I'm a foot and a half taller.  You'll be washed away
+like seaweed before it's above my breeches.  I'll not fight foul
+for all the girls and angels in the universe."
+
+"Will you oblige me," said Turnbull, with staring grey eyes and a
+voice of distinct and violent politeness; "will you oblige me by
+jolly well minding your own business?  Just you stand up and
+fight, and we'll see who will be washed away like seaweed.  You
+wanted to finish this fight and you shall finish it, or I'll
+denounce you as a coward to the whole of that assembled company."
+
+Evan looked very doubtful and offered a somewhat wavering weapon;
+but he was quickly brought back to his senses by his opponent's
+sword-point, which shot past him, shaving his shoulder by a hair.
+By this time the waves were well up Turnbull's thigh, and what
+was worse, they were beginning to roll and break heavily around
+them.
+
+MacIan parried this first lunge perfectly, the next less
+perfectly; the third in all human probability he would not have
+parried at all; the Christian champion would have been pinned
+like a butterfly, and the atheistic champion left to drown like a
+rat, with such consolation as his view of the cosmos afforded
+him.  But just as Turnbull launched his heaviest stroke, the sea,
+in which he stood up to his hips, launched a yet heavier one.  A
+wave breaking beyond the others smote him heavily like a hammer
+of water.  One leg gave way, he was swung round and sucked into
+the retreating sea, still gripping his sword.
+
+MacIan put his sword between his teeth and plunged after his
+disappearing enemy.  He had the sense of having the whole universe
+on top of him as crest after crest struck him down.  It seemed to
+him quite a cosmic collapse, as if all the seven heavens were
+falling on him one after the other.  But he got hold of the
+atheist's left leg and he did not let it go.
+
+After some ten minutes of foam and frenzy, in which all the
+senses at once seemed blasted by the sea, Evan found himself
+laboriously swimming on a low, green swell, with the sword still
+in his teeth and the editor of _The Atheist_ still under his arm.
+What he was going to do he had not even the most glimmering idea;
+so he merely kept his grip and swam somehow with one hand.
+
+He ducked instinctively as there bulked above him a big, black
+wave, much higher than any that he had seen.  Then he saw that it
+was hardly the shape of any possible wave.  Then he saw that it
+was a fisherman's boat, and, leaping upward, caught hold of the
+bow.  The boat pitched forward with its stern in the air for just
+as much time as was needed to see that there was nobody in it.
+After a moment or two of desperate clambering, however, there
+were two people in it, Mr. Evan MacIan, panting and sweating, and
+Mr. James Turnbull, uncommonly close to being drowned.  After ten
+minutes' aimless tossing in the empty fishing-boat he recovered,
+however, stirred, stretched himself, and looked round on the
+rolling waters.  Then, while taking no notice of the streams of
+salt water that were pouring from his hair, beard, coat, boots,
+and trousers, he carefully wiped the wet off his sword-blade to
+preserve it from the possibilities of rust.
+
+MacIan found two oars in the bottom of the deserted boat and
+began somewhat drearily to row.
+
+           *                    *                   *
+
+A rainy twilight was clearing to cold silver over the moaning
+sea, when the battered boat that had rolled and drifted almost
+aimlessly all night, came within sight of land, though of land
+which looked almost as lost and savage as the waves.  All night
+there had been but little lifting in the leaden sea, only now and
+then the boat had been heaved up, as on a huge shoulder which
+slipped from under it; such occasional sea-quakes came probably
+from the swell of some steamer that had passed it in the dark;
+otherwise the waves were harmless though restless.  But it was
+piercingly cold, and there was, from time to time, a splutter of
+rain like the splutter of the spray, which seemed almost to
+freeze as it fell.  MacIan, more at home than his companion in
+this quite barbarous and elemental sort of adventure, had rowed
+toilsomely with the heavy oars whenever he saw anything that
+looked like land; but for the most part had trusted with grim
+transcendentalism to wind and tide.  Among the implements of their
+first outfit the brandy alone had remained to him, and he gave it
+to his freezing companion in quantities which greatly alarmed
+that temperate Londoner; but MacIan came from the cold seas and
+mists where a man can drink a tumbler of raw whisky in a boat
+without it making him wink.
+
+When the Highlander began to pull really hard upon the oars,
+Turnbull craned his dripping red head out of the boat to see the
+goal of his exertions.  It was a sufficiently uninviting one;
+nothing so far as could be seen but a steep and shelving bank of
+shingle, made of loose little pebbles such as children like, but
+slanting up higher than a house.  On the top of the mound, against
+the sky line, stood up the brown skeleton of some broken fence or
+breakwater.  With the grey and watery dawn crawling up behind it,
+the fence really seemed to say to our philosophic adventurers
+that they had come at last to the other end of nowhere.
+
+Bent by necessity to his labour, MacIan managed the heavy boat
+with real power and skill, and when at length he ran it up on a
+smoother part of the slope it caught and held so that they could
+clamber out, not sinking farther than their knees into the water
+and the shingle.  A foot or two farther up their feet found the
+beach firmer, and a few moments afterwards they were leaning on
+the ragged breakwater and looking back at the sea they had
+escaped.
+
+They had a dreary walk across wastes of grey shingle in the grey
+dawn before they began to come within hail of human fields or
+roads; nor had they any notion of what fields or roads they would
+be.  Their boots were beginning to break up and the confusion of
+stones tried them severely, so that they were glad to lean on
+their swords, as if they were the staves of pilgrims. MacIan
+thought vaguely of a weird ballad of his own country which
+describes the soul in Purgatory as walking on a plain full of
+sharp stones, and only saved by its own charities upon earth.
+
+        If ever thou gavest hosen and shoon
+            Every night and all,
+        Sit thee down and put them on,
+            And Christ receive thy soul.
+
+Turnbull had no such lyrical meditations, but he was in an even
+worse temper.
+
+At length they came to a pale ribbon of road, edged by a shelf of
+rough and almost colourless turf; and a few feet up the slope
+there stood grey and weather-stained, one of those big wayside
+crucifixes which are seldom seen except in Catholic countries.
+
+MacIan put his hand to his head and found that his bonnet was not
+there.  Turnbull gave one glance at the crucifix--a glance at once
+sympathetic and bitter, in which was concentrated the whole of
+Swinburne's poem on the same occasion.
+
+        O hidden face of man, whereover
+            The years have woven a viewless veil,
+        If thou wert verily man's lover
+            What did thy love or blood avail?
+        Thy blood the priests mix poison of,
+        And in gold shekels coin thy love.
+
+Then, leaving MacIan in his attitude of prayer, Turnbull began to
+look right and left very sharply, like one looking for something.
+Suddenly, with a little cry, he saw it and ran forward.  A few
+yards from them along the road a lean and starved sort of hedge
+came pitifully to an end.  Caught upon its prickly angle, however,
+there was a very small and very dirty scrap of paper that might
+have hung there for months, since it escaped from someone tearing
+up a letter or making a spill out of a newspaper.  Turnbull
+snatched at it and found it was the corner of a printed page,
+very coarsely printed, like a cheap novelette, and just large
+enough to contain the words: "_et c'est elle qui_----"
+
+"Hurrah!" cried Turnbull, waving his fragment; "we are safe at
+last.  We are free at last.  We are somewhere better than England
+or Eden or Paradise.  MacIan, we are in the Land of the Duel!"
+
+"Where do you say?" said the other, looking at him heavily and
+with knitted brows, like one almost dazed with the grey doubts of
+desolate twilight and drifting sea.
+
+"We are in France!" cried Turnbull, with a voice like a trumpet,
+"in the land where things really happen--_Tout arrive en France_.
+We arrive in France.  Look at this little message," and he held
+out the scrap of paper.  "There's an omen for you superstitious
+hill folk.  _C'est elle qui--Mais oui, mais oui, c'est elle qui
+sauvera encore le monde_."
+
+"France!" repeated MacIan, and his eyes awoke again in his head
+like large lamps lighted.
+
+"Yes, France!" said Turnbull, and all the rhetorical part of him
+came to the top, his face growing as red as his hair.  "France,
+that has always been in rebellion for liberty and reason.  France,
+that has always assailed superstition with the club of Rabelais
+or the rapier of Voltaire.  France, at whose first council table
+sits the sublime figure of Julian the Apostate.  France, where a
+man said only the other day those splendid unanswerable
+words"--with a superb gesture--"'we have extinguished in heaven
+those lights that men shall never light again.'"
+
+"No," said MacIan, in a voice that shook with a controlled
+passion.  "But France, which was taught by St. Bernard and led to
+war by Joan of Arc.  France that made the crusades.  France that
+saved the Church and scattered the heresies by the mouths of
+Bossuet and Massillon.  France, which shows today the conquering
+march of Catholicism, as brain after brain surrenders to it,
+Bruneti�re, Copp�e, Hauptmann, Barr�s, Bourget, Lema�tre."
+
+"France!" asserted Turnbull with a sort of rollicking
+self-exaggeration, very unusual with him, "France, which is one
+torrent of splendid scepticism from Abelard to Anatole France."
+
+"France," said MacIan, "which is one cataract of clear faith from
+St. Louis to Our Lady of Lourdes."
+
+"France at least," cried Turnbull, throwing up his sword in
+schoolboy triumph, "in which these things are thought about and
+fought about.  France, where reason and religion clash in one
+continual tournament.  France, above all, where men understand the
+pride and passion which have plucked our blades from their
+scabbards.  Here, at least, we shall not be chased and spied on by
+sickly parsons and greasy policemen, because we wish to put our
+lives on the game.  Courage, my friend, we have come to the
+country of honour."
+
+MacIan did not even notice the incongruous phrase "my friend",
+but nodding again and again, drew his sword and flung the
+scabbard far behind him in the road.
+
+"Yes," he cried, in a voice of thunder, "we will fight here and
+_He_ shall look on at it."
+
+Turnbull glanced at the crucifix with a sort of scowling
+good-humour and then said: "He may look and see His cross
+defeated."
+
+"The cross cannot be defeated," said MacIan, "for it is Defeat."
+
+A second afterwards the two bright, blood-thirsty weapons made
+the sign of the cross in horrible parody upon each other.
+
+They had not touched each other twice, however, when upon the
+hill, above the crucifix, there appeared another horrible parody
+of its shape; the figure of a man who appeared for an instant
+waving his outspread arms.  He had vanished in an instant; but
+MacIan, whose fighting face was set that way, had seen the shape
+momentarily but quite photographically.  And while it was like a
+comic repetition of the cross, it was also, in that place and
+hour, something more incredible.  It had been only instantaneously
+on the retina of his eye; but unless his eye and mind were going
+mad together, the figure was that of an ordinary London
+policeman.
+
+He tried to concentrate his senses on the sword-play; but one
+half of his brain was wrestling with the puzzle; the apocalyptic
+and almost seraphic apparition of a stout constable out of
+Clapham on top of a dreary and deserted hill in France.  He did
+not, however, have to puzzle long.  Before the duellists had
+exchanged half a dozen passes, the big, blue policeman appeared
+once more on the top of the hill, a palpable monstrosity in the
+eye of heaven.  He was waving only one arm now and seemed to be
+shouting directions.  At the same moment a mass of blue blocked
+the corner of the road behind the small, smart figure of
+Turnbull, and a small company of policemen in the English uniform
+came up at a kind of half-military double.
+
+Turnbull saw the stare of consternation in his enemy's face and
+swung round to share its cause.  When he saw it, cool as he was,
+he staggered back.
+
+"What the devil are you doing here?" he called out in a high,
+shrill voice of authority, like one who finds a tramp in his own
+larder.
+
+"Well, sir," said the sergeant in command, with that sort of
+heavy civility shown only to the evidently guilty, "seems to me
+we might ask what are you doing here?"
+
+"We are having an affair of honour," said Turnbull, as if it were
+the most rational thing in the world.  "If the French police like
+to interfere, let them interfere.  But why the blue blazes should
+you interfere, you great blue blundering sausages?"
+
+"I'm afraid, sir," said the sergeant with restraint, "I'm afraid
+I don't quite follow you."
+
+"I mean, why don't the French police take this up if it's got to
+be taken up?  I always heard that they were spry enough in their
+own way."
+
+"Well, sir," said the sergeant reflectively, "you see, sir, the
+French police don't take this up--well, because you see, sir,
+this ain't France.  This is His Majesty's dominions, same as
+'Ampstead 'eath."
+
+"Not France?" repeated Turnbull, with a sort of dull incredulity.
+
+"No, sir," said the sergeant; "though most of the people talk
+French.  This is the island called St. Loup, sir, an island in the
+Channel.  We've been sent down specially from London, as you were
+such specially distinguished criminals, if you'll allow me to say
+so.  Which reminds me to warn you that anything you say may be
+used against you at your trial."
+
+"Quite so," said Turnbull, and lurched suddenly against the
+sergeant, so as to tip him over the edge of the road with a crash
+into the shingle below.  Then leaving MacIan and the policemen
+equally and instantaneously nailed to the road, he ran a little
+way along it, leapt off on to a part of the beach, which he had
+found in his journey to be firmer, and went across it with a
+clatter of pebbles.  His sudden calculation was successful; the
+police, unacquainted with the various levels of the loose beach,
+tried to overtake him by the shorter cut and found themselves,
+being heavy men, almost up to their knees in shoals of slippery
+shingle.  Two who had been slower with their bodies were quicker
+with their minds, and seeing Turnbull's trick, ran along the edge
+of the road after him.  Then MacIan finally awoke, and leaving
+half his sleeve in the grip of the only man who tried to hold
+him, took the two policemen in the small of their backs with the
+impetus of a cannon-ball and, sending them also flat among the
+stones, went tearing after his twin defier of the law.
+
+As they were both good runners, the start they had gained was
+decisive.  They dropped over a high breakwater farther on upon the
+beach, turned sharply, and scrambled up a line of ribbed rocks,
+crowned with a thicket, crawled through it, scratching their
+hands and faces, and dropped into another road; and there found
+that they could slacken their speed into a steady trot.  In all
+this desperate dart and scramble, they still kept hold of their
+drawn swords, which now, indeed, in the vigorous phrase of
+Bunyan, seemed almost to grow out of their hands.
+
+They had run another half mile or so when it became apparent that
+they were entering a sort of scattered village.  One or two
+whitewashed cottages and even a shop had appeared along the side
+of the road.  Then, for the first time, Turnbull twisted round his
+red bear to get a glimpse of his companion, who was a foot or two
+behind, and remarked abruptly: "Mr. MacIan, we've been going the
+wrong way to work all along.  We're traced everywhere, because
+everybody knows about us.  It's as if one went about with Kruger's
+beard on Mafeking Night."
+
+"What do you mean?" said MacIan, innocently.
+
+"I mean," said Turnbull, with steady conviction, "that what we
+want is a little diplomacy, and I am going to buy some in a
+shop."
+
+
+
+XI. A SCANDAL IN THE VILLAGE
+
+In the little hamlet of Haroc, in the Isle of St. Loup, there
+lived a man who--though living under the English flag--was
+absolutely untypical of the French tradition.  He was quite
+unnoticeable, but that was exactly where he was quite himself.  He
+was not even extraordinarily French; but then it is against the
+French tradition to be extraordinarily French.  Ordinary
+Englishmen would only have thought him a little old-fashioned;
+imperialistic Englishmen would really have mistaken him for the
+old John Bull of the caricatures.  He was stout; he was quite
+undistinguished; and he had side-whiskers, worn just a little
+longer than John Bull's.  He was by name Pierre Durand; he was by
+trade a wine merchant; he was by politics a conservative
+republican; he had been brought up a Catholic, had always thought
+and acted as an agnostic, and was very mildly returning to the
+Church in his later years.  He had a genius (if one can even use
+so wild a word in connexion with so tame a person) a genius for
+saying the conventional thing on every conceivable subject; or
+rather what we in England would call the conventional thing.  For
+it was not convention with him, but solid and manly conviction.
+Convention implies cant or affectation, and he had not the
+faintest smell of either.  He was simply an ordinary citizen with
+ordinary views; and if you had told him so he would have taken it
+as an ordinary compliment.  If you had asked him about women, he
+would have said that one must preserve their domesticity and
+decorum; he would have used the stalest words, but he would have
+in reserve the strongest arguments.  If you had asked him about
+government, he would have said that all citizens were free and
+equal, but he would have meant what he said.  If you had asked him
+about education, he would have said that the young must be
+trained up in habits of industry and of respect for their
+parents.  Still he would have set them the example of industry,
+and he would have been one of the parents whom they could
+respect.  A state of mind so hopelessly central is depressing to
+the English instinct.  But then in England a man announcing these
+platitudes is generally a fool and a frightened fool, announcing
+them out of mere social servility.  But Durand was anything but a
+fool; he had read all the eighteenth century, and could have
+defended his platitudes round every angle of eighteenth-century
+argument.  And certainly he was anything but a coward: swollen and
+sedentary as he was, he could have hit any man back who touched
+him with the instant violence of an automatic machine; and dying
+in a uniform would have seemed to him only the sort of thing that
+sometimes happens.  I am afraid it is impossible to explain this
+monster amid the exaggerative sects and the eccentric clubs of my
+country.  He was merely a man.
+
+He lived in a little villa which was furnished well with
+comfortable chairs and tables and highly uncomfortable classical
+pictures and medallions.  The art in his home contained nothing
+between the two extremes of hard, meagre designs of Greek heads
+and Roman togas, and on the other side a few very vulgar Catholic
+images in the crudest colours; these were mostly in his
+daughter's room.  He had recently lost his wife, whom he had loved
+heartily and rather heavily in complete silence, and upon whose
+grave he was constantly in the habit of placing hideous little
+wreaths, made out of a sort of black-and-white beads.  To his only
+daughter he was equally devoted, though he restricted her a good
+deal under a sort of theoretic alarm about her innocence; an
+alarm which was peculiarly unnecessary, first, because she was an
+exceptionally reticent and religious girl, and secondly, because
+there was hardly anybody else in the place.
+
+Madeleine Durand was physically a sleepy young woman, and might
+easily have been supposed to be morally a lazy one.  It is,
+however, certain that the work of her house was done somehow, and
+it is even more rapidly ascertainable that nobody else did it.
+The logician is, therefore, driven back upon the assumption that
+she did it; and that lends a sort of mysterious interest to her
+personality at the beginning.  She had very broad, low, and level
+brows, which seemed even lower because her warm yellow hair
+clustered down to her eyebrows; and she had a face just plump
+enough not to look as powerful as it was.  Anything that was heavy
+in all this was abruptly lightened by two large, light china-blue
+eyes, lightened all of a sudden as if it had been lifted into the
+air by two big blue butterflies.  The rest of her was less than
+middle-sized, and was of a casual and comfortable sort; and she
+had this difference from such girls as the girl in the motor-car,
+that one did not incline to take in her figure at all, but only
+her broad and leonine and innocent head.
+
+Both the father and the daughter were of the sort that would
+normally have avoided all observation; that is, all observation
+in that extraordinary modern world which calls out everything
+except strength.  Both of them had strength below the surface;
+they were like quiet peasants owning enormous and unquarried
+mines.  The father with his square face and grey side whiskers,
+the daughter with her square face and golden fringe of hair, were
+both stronger than they know; stronger than anyone knew.  The
+father believed in civilization, in the storied tower we have
+erected to affront nature; that is, the father believed in Man.
+The daughter believed in God; and was even stronger.  They neither
+of them believed in themselves; for that is a decadent weakness.
+
+The daughter was called a devotee.  She left upon ordinary people
+the impression--the somewhat irritating impression--produced by
+such a person; it can only be described as the sense of strong
+water being perpetually poured into some abyss.  She did her
+housework easily; she achieved her social relations sweetly; she
+was never neglectful and never unkind.  This accounted for all
+that was soft in her, but not for all that was hard.  She trod
+firmly as if going somewhere; she flung her face back as if
+defying something; she hardly spoke a cross word, yet there was
+often battle in her eyes.  The modern man asked doubtfully where
+all this silent energy went to.  He would have stared still more
+doubtfully if he had been told that it all went into her prayers.
+
+The conventions of the Isle of St. Loup were necessarily a
+compromise or confusion between those of France and England; and
+it was vaguely possible for a respectable young lady to have
+half-attached lovers, in a way that would be impossible to the
+_bourgeoisie_ of France.  One man in particular had made himself
+an unmistakable figure in the track of this girl as she went to
+church.  He was a short, prosperous-looking man, whose long, bushy
+black beard and clumsy black umbrella made him seem both shorter
+and older than he really was; but whose big, bold eyes, and step
+that spurned the ground, gave him an instant character of youth.
+
+His name was Camille Bert, and he was a commercial traveller who
+had only been in the island an idle week before he began to
+hover in the tracks of Madeleine Durand.  Since everyone knows
+everyone in so small a place, Madeleine certainly knew him to
+speak to; but it is not very evident that she ever spoke.  He
+haunted her, however; especially at church, which was, indeed,
+one of the few certain places for finding her.  In her home she
+had a habit of being invisible, sometimes through insatiable
+domesticity, sometimes through an equally insatiable solitude.  M.
+Bert did not give the impression of a pious man, though he did
+give, especially with his eyes, the impression of an honest one.
+But he went to Mass with a simple exactitude that could not be
+mistaken for a pose, or even for a vulgar fascination.  It was
+perhaps this religious regularity which eventually drew Madeleine
+into recognition of him.  At least it is certain that she twice
+spoke to him with her square and open smile in the porch of the
+church; and there was human nature enough in the hamlet to turn
+even that into gossip.
+
+But the real interest arose suddenly as a squall arises with the
+extraordinary affair that occurred about five days after.  There
+was about a third of a mile beyond the village of Haroc a large
+but lonely hotel upon the London or Paris model, but commonly
+almost entirely empty.  Among the accidental group of guests who
+had come to it at this season was a man whose nationality no one
+could fix and who bore the non-committal name of Count Gregory.
+He treated everybody with complete civility and almost in
+complete silence.  On the few occasions when he spoke, he spoke
+either French, English, or once (to the priest) Latin; and the
+general opinion was that he spoke them all wrong.  He was a large,
+lean man, with the stoop of an aged eagle, and even the eagle's
+nose to complete it; he had old-fashioned military whiskers and
+moustache dyed with a garish and highly incredible yellow.  He had
+the dress of a showy gentleman and the manners of a decayed
+gentleman; he seemed (as with a sort of simplicity) to be trying
+to be a dandy when he was too old even to know that he was old.
+Ye he was decidedly a handsome figure with his curled yellow hair
+and lean fastidious face; and he wore a peculiar frock-coat of
+bright turquoise blue, with an unknown order pinned to it, and he
+carried a huge and heavy cane.  Despite his silence and his
+dandified dress and whiskers, the island might never have heard
+of him but for the extraordinary event of which I have spoken,
+which fell about in the following way:
+
+In such casual atmospheres only the enthusiastic go to
+Benediction; and as the warm blue twilight closed over the little
+candle-lit church and village, the line of worshippers who went
+home from the former to the latter thinned out until it broke.  On
+one such evening at least no one was in church except the quiet,
+unconquerable Madeleine, four old women, one fisherman, and, of
+course, the irrepressible M. Camille Bert.  The others seemed to
+melt away afterwards into the peacock colours of the dim green
+grass and the dark blue sky.  Even Durand was invisible instead of
+being merely reverentially remote; and Madeleine set forth
+through the patch of black forest alone.  She was not in the least
+afraid of loneliness, because she was not afraid of devils.  I
+think they were afraid of her.
+
+In a clearing of the wood, however, which was lit up with a last
+patch of the perishing sunlight, there advanced upon her suddenly
+one who was more startling than a devil.  The incomprehensible
+Count Gregory, with his yellow hair like flame and his face like
+the white ashes of the flame, was advancing bareheaded towards
+her, flinging out his arms and his long fingers with a frantic
+gesture.
+
+"We are alone here," he cried, "and you would be at my mercy,
+only that I am at yours."
+
+Then his frantic hands fell by his sides and he looked up under
+his brows with an expression that went well with his hard
+breathing.  Madeleine Durand had come to a halt at first in
+childish wonder, and now, with more than masculine self-control,
+"I fancy I know your face, sir," she said, as if to gain time.
+
+"I know I shall not forget yours," said the other, and extended
+once more his ungainly arms in an unnatural gesture.  Then of a
+sudden there came out of him a spout of wild and yet pompous
+phrases.  "It is as well that you should know the worst and the
+best.  I am a man who knows no limit; I am the most callous of
+criminals, the most unrepentant of sinners.  There is no man in my
+dominions so vile as I.  But my dominions stretch from the olives
+of Italy to the fir-woods of Denmark, and there is no nook of all
+of them in which I have not done a sin.  But when I bear you away
+I shall be doing my first sacrilege, and also my first act of
+virtue."  He seized her suddenly by the elbow; and she did not
+scream but only pulled and tugged.  Yet though she had not
+screamed, someone astray in the woods seemed to have heard the
+struggle.  A short but nimble figure came along the woodland path
+like a humming bullet and had caught Count Gregory a crack across
+the face before his own could be recognized.  When it was
+recognized it was that of Camille, with the black elderly beard
+and the young ardent eyes.
+
+Up to the moment when Camille had hit the Count, Madeleine had
+entertained no doubt that the Count was merely a madman.  Now she
+was startled with a new sanity; for the tall man in the yellow
+whiskers and yellow moustache first returned the blow of Bert, as
+if it were a sort of duty, and then stepped back with a slight
+bow and an easy smile.
+
+"This need go no further here, M. Bert," he said.  "I need not
+remind you how far it should go elsewhere."
+
+"Certainly, you need remind me of nothing," answered Camille,
+stolidly.  "I am glad that you are just not too much of a
+scoundrel for a gentleman to fight."
+
+"We are detaining the lady," said Count Gregory, with politeness;
+and, making a gesture suggesting that he would have taken off his
+hat if he had had one, he strode away up the avenue of trees and
+eventually disappeared.  He was so complete an aristocrat that he
+could offer his back to them all the way up that avenue; and his
+back never once looked uncomfortable.
+
+"You must allow me to see you home," said Bert to the girl, in a
+gruff and almost stifled voice; "I think we have only a little
+way to go."
+
+"Only a little way," she said, and smiled once more that night,
+in spite of fatigue and fear and the world and the flesh and the
+devil.  The glowing and transparent blue of twilight had long been
+covered by the opaque and slatelike blue of night, when he
+handed her into the lamp-lit interior of her home.  He went out
+himself into the darkness, walking sturdily, but tearing at his
+black beard.
+
+All the French or semi-French gentry of the district considered
+this a case in which a duel was natural and inevitable, and
+neither party had any difficulty in finding seconds, strangers as
+they were in the place.  Two small landowners, who were careful,
+practising Catholics, willingly undertook to represent that
+strict church-goer Camille Burt; while the profligate but
+apparently powerful Count Gregory found friends in an energetic
+local doctor who was ready for social promotion and an accidental
+Californian tourist who was ready for anything.  As no particular
+purpose could be served by delay, it was arranged that the affair
+should fall out three days afterwards.  And when this was settled
+the whole community, as it were, turned over again in bed and
+thought no more about the matter.  At least there was only one
+member of it who seemed to be restless, and that was she who was
+commonly most restful.  On the next night Madeleine Durand went to
+church as usual; and as usual the stricken Camille was there
+also.  What was not so usual was that when they were a bow-shot
+from the church Madeleine turned round and walked back to him.
+"Sir," she began, "it is not wrong of me to speak to you," and
+the very words gave him a jar of unexpected truth; for in all the
+novels he had ever read she would have begun: "It is wrong of me
+to speak to you."  She went on with wide and serious eyes like an
+animal's: "It is not wrong of me to speak to you, because your
+soul, or anybody's soul, matters so much more than what the world
+says about anybody.  I want to talk to you about what you are
+going to do."
+
+Bert saw in front of him the inevitable heroine of the novels
+trying to prevent bloodshed; and his pale firm face became
+implacable.
+
+"I would do anything but that for you," he said; "but no man can
+be called less than a man."
+
+She looked at him for a moment with a face openly puzzled, and
+then broke into an odd and beautiful half-smile.
+
+"Oh, I don't mean that," she said; "I don't talk about what I
+don't understand.  No one has ever hit me; and if they had I
+should not feel as a man may.  I am sure it is not the best thing
+to fight.  It would be better to forgive--if one could really
+forgive.  But when people dine with my father and say that
+fighting a duel is mere murder--of course I can see that is not
+just.  It's all so different--having a reason--and letting the
+other man know--and using the same guns and things--and doing it
+in front of your friends.  I'm awfully stupid, but I know that men
+like you aren't murderers.  But it wasn't that that I meant."
+
+"What did you mean?" asked the other, looking broodingly at the
+earth.
+
+"Don't you know," she said, "there is only one more celebration?
+I thought that as you always go to church--I thought you would
+communicate this morning."
+
+Bert stepped backward with a sort of action she had never seen in
+him before.  It seemed to alter his whole body.
+
+"You may be right or wrong to risk dying," said the girl, simply;
+"the poor women in our village risk it whenever they have a baby.
+You men are the other half of the world.  I know nothing about
+when you ought to die.  But surely if you are daring to try and
+find God beyond the grave and appeal to Him--you ought to let Him
+find you when He comes and stands there every morning in our
+little church."
+
+And placid as she was, she made a little gesture of argument, of
+which the pathos wrung the heart.
+
+M. Camille Bert was by no means placid.  Before that incomplete
+gesture and frankly pleading face he retreated as if from the
+jaws of a dragon.  His dark black hair and beard looked utterly
+unnatural against the startling pallor of his face.  When at last
+he said something it was: "O God!  I can't stand this!"  He did not
+say it in French.  Nor did he, strictly speaking, say it in
+English.  The truth (interesting only to anthropologists) is that
+he said it in Scotch.
+
+"There will be another mass in a matter of eight hours," said
+Madeleine, with a sort of business eagerness and energy, "and you
+can do it then before the fighting.  You must forgive me, but I
+was so frightened that you would not do it at all."
+
+Bert seemed to crush his teeth together until they broke, and
+managed to say between them: "And why should you suppose that I
+shouldn't do as you say--I mean not to do it at all?"
+
+"You always go to Mass," answered the girl, opening her wide blue
+eyes, "and the Mass is very long and tiresome unless one loves
+God."
+
+Then it was that Bert exploded with a brutality which might have
+come from Count Gregory, his criminal opponent.  He advanced upon
+Madeleine with flaming eyes, and almost took her by the two
+shoulders.  "I do not love God," he cried, speaking French with
+the broadest Scotch accent; "I do not want to find Him; I do not
+think He is there to be found.  I must burst up the show; I must
+and will say everything.  You are the happiest and honestest thing
+I ever saw in this godless universe.  And I am the dirtiest and
+most dishonest."
+
+Madeleine looked at him doubtfully for an instant, and then said
+with a sudden simplicity and cheerfulness: "Oh, but if you are
+really sorry it is all right.  If you are horribly sorry it is all
+the better.  You have only to go and tell the priest so and he
+will give you God out of his own hands."
+
+"I hate your priest and I deny your God!" cried the man, "and I
+tell you God is a lie and a fable and a mask.  And for the first
+time in my life I do not feel superior to God."
+
+"What can it all mean?" said Madeleine, in massive wonder.
+
+"Because I am a fable also and a mask," said the man.  He had been
+plucking fiercely at his black beard and hair all the time; now
+he suddenly plucked them off and flung them like moulted feathers
+in the mire.  This extraordinary spoliation left in the sunlight
+the same face, but a much younger head--a head with close
+chestnut curls and a short chestnut beard.
+
+"Now you know the truth," he answered, with hard eyes.  "I am a
+cad who has played a crooked trick on a quiet village and a
+decent woman for a private reason of his own.  I might have played
+it successfully on any other woman; I have hit the one woman on
+whom it cannot be played.  It's just like my damned luck.  The
+plain truth is," and here when he came to the plain truth he
+boggled and blundered as Evan had done in telling it to the girl
+in the motor-car.
+
+"The plain truth is," he said at last, "that I am James Turnbull
+the atheist.  The police are after me; not for atheism but for
+being ready to fight for it."
+
+"I saw something about you in a newspaper," said the girl, with a
+simplicity which even surprise could never throw off its balance.
+
+"Evan MacIan said there was a God," went on the other,
+stubbornly, "and I say there isn't.  And I have come to fight for
+the fact that there is no God; it is for that that I have seen
+this cursed island and your blessed face."
+
+"You want me really to believe," said Madeleine, with parted
+lips, "that you think----"
+
+"I want you to hate me!" cried Turnbull, in agony.  "I want you to
+be sick when you think of my name.  I am sure there is no God."
+
+"But there is," said Madeleine, quite quietly, and rather with
+the air of one telling children about an elephant.  "Why, I
+touched His body only this morning."
+
+"You touched a bit of bread," said Turnbull, biting his knuckles.
+"Oh, I will say anything that can madden you!"
+
+"You think it is only a bit of bread," said the girl, and her
+lips tightened ever so little.
+
+"I know it is only a bit of bread," said Turnbull, with violence.
+
+She flung back her open face and smiled.  "Then why did you refuse
+to eat it?" she said.
+
+James Turnbull made a little step backward, and for the first
+time in his life there seemed to break out and blaze in his head
+thoughts that were not his own.
+
+"Why, how silly of them," cried out Madeleine, with quite a
+schoolgirl gaiety, "why, how silly of them to call _you_ a
+blasphemer!  Why, you have wrecked your whole business because you
+would not commit blasphemy."
+
+The man stood, a somewhat comic figure in his tragic
+bewilderment, with the honest red head of James Turnbull sticking
+out of the rich and fictitious garments of Camille Bert.  But the
+startled pain of his face was strong enough to obliterate the
+oddity.
+
+"You come down here," continued the lady, with that female
+emphasis which is so pulverizing in conversation and so feeble at
+a public meeting, "you and your MacIan come down here and put on
+false beards or noses in order to fight.  You pretend to be a
+Catholic commercial traveller from France.  Poor Mr. MacIan has to
+pretend to be a dissolute nobleman from nowhere.  Your scheme
+succeeds; you pick a quite convincing quarrel; you arrange a
+quite respectable duel; the duel you have planned so long will
+come off tomorrow with absolute certainty and safety.  And then
+you throw off your wig and throw up your scheme and throw over
+your colleague, because I ask you to go into a building and eat a
+bit of bread.  And _then_ you dare to tell me that you are sure
+there is nothing watching us.  Then you say you know there is
+nothing on the very altar you run away from.  You know----"
+
+"I only know," said Turnbull, "that I must run away from you.
+This has got beyond any talking."  And he plunged along into the
+village, leaving his black wig and beard lying behind him on the
+road.
+
+As the market-place opened before him he saw Count Gregory, that
+distinguished foreigner, standing and smoking in elegant
+meditation at the corner of the local caf�.  He immediately made
+his way rapidly towards him, considering that a consultation was
+urgent.  But he had hardly crossed half of that stony quadrangle
+when a window burst open above him and a head was thrust out,
+shouting.  The man was in his woollen undershirt, but Turnbull
+knew the energetic, apologetic head of the sergeant of police.  He
+pointed furiously at Turnbull and shouted his name.  A policeman
+ran excitedly from under an archway and tried to collar him.  Two
+men selling vegetables dropped their baskets and joined in the
+chase.  Turnbull dodged the constable, upset one of the men into
+his own basket, and bounding towards the distinguished foreign
+Count, called to him clamorously: "Come on, MacIan, the hunt is
+up again."
+
+The prompt reply of Count Gregory was to pull off his large
+yellow whiskers and scatter them on the breeze with an air of
+considerable relief.  Then he joined the flight of Turnbull, and
+even as he did so, with one wrench of his powerful hands rent and
+split the strange, thick stick that he carried.  Inside it was a
+naked old-fashioned rapier.  The two got a good start up the road
+before the whole town was awakened behind them; and half-way up
+it a similar transformation was seen to take place in Mr.
+Turnbull's singular umbrella.
+
+The two had a long race for the harbour; but the English police
+were heavy and the French inhabitants were indifferent.  In any
+case, they got used to the notion of the road being clear; and
+just as they had come to the cliffs MacIan banged into another
+gentleman with unmistakable surprise.  How he knew he was another
+gentleman merely by banging into him, must remain a mystery.
+MacIan was a very poor and very sober Scotch gentleman.  The other
+was a very drunk and very wealthy English gentleman.  But there
+was something in the staggered and openly embarrassed apologies
+that made them understand each other as readily and as quickly
+and as much as two men talking French in the middle of China.  The
+nearest expression of the type is that it either hits or
+apologizes; and in this case both apologized.
+
+"You seem to be in a hurry," said the unknown Englishman, falling
+back a step or two in order to laugh with an unnatural
+heartiness.  "What's it all about, eh?"  Then before MacIan could
+get past his sprawling and staggering figure he ran forward again
+and said with a sort of shouting and ear-shattering whisper: "I
+say, my name is Wilkinson.  _You_ know--Wilkinson's Entire was my
+grandfather.  Can't drink beer myself.  Liver."  And he shook his
+head with extraordinary sagacity.
+
+"We really are in a hurry, as you say," said MacIan, summoning a
+sufficiently pleasant smile, "so if you will let us pass----"
+
+"I'll tell you what, you fellows," said the sprawling gentleman,
+confidentially, while Evan's agonized ears heard behind him the
+first paces of the pursuit, "if you really are, as you say, in a
+hurry, I know what it is to be in a hurry--Lord, what a hurry I
+was in when we all came out of Cartwright's rooms--if you really
+are in a hurry"--and he seemed to steady his voice into a sort of
+solemnity--"if you are in a hurry, there's nothing like a good
+yacht for a man in a hurry."
+
+"No doubt you're right," said MacIan, and dashed past him in
+despair.  The head of the pursuing host was just showing over the
+top of the hill behind him.  Turnbull had already ducked under the
+intoxicated gentleman's elbow and fled far in front.
+
+"No, but look here," said Mr. Wilkinson, enthusiastically running
+after MacIan and catching him by the sleeve of his coat.  "If you
+want to hurry you should take a yacht, and if"--he said, with a
+burst of rationality, like one leaping to a further point in
+logic--"if you want a yacht--you can have mine."
+
+Evan pulled up abruptly and looked back at him.  "We are really in
+the devil of a hurry," he said, "and if you really have a yacht,
+the truth is that we would give our ears for it."
+
+"You'll find it in harbour," said Wilkinson, struggling with his
+speech.  "Left side of harbour--called _Gibson Girl_--can't think
+why, old fellow, I never lent it you before."
+
+With these words the benevolent Mr. Wilkinson fell flat on his
+face in the road, but continued to laugh softly, and turned
+towards his flying companion a face of peculiar peace and
+benignity.  Evan's mind went through a crisis of instantaneous
+casuistry, in which it may be that he decided wrongly; but about
+how he decided his biographer can profess no doubt.  Two minutes
+afterwards he had overtaken Turnbull and told the tale; ten
+minutes afterwards he and Turnbull had somehow tumbled into the
+yacht called the _Gibson Girl_ and had somehow pushed off from
+the Isle of St. Loup.
+
+
+
+XII. THE DESERT ISLAND
+
+Those who happen to hold the view (and Mr. Evan MacIan, now alive
+and comfortable, is among the number) that something
+supernatural, some eccentric kindness from god or fairy had
+guided our adventurers through all their absurd perils, might
+have found his strongest argument perhaps in their management or
+mismanagement of Mr. Wilkinson's yacht.  Neither of them had the
+smallest qualification for managing such a vessel; but MacIan had
+a practical knowledge of the sea in much smaller and quite
+different boats, while Turnbull had an abstract knowledge of
+science and some of its applications to navigation, which was
+worse.  The presence of the god or fairy can only be deduced from
+the fact that they never definitely ran into anything, either a
+boat, a rock, a quicksand, or a man-of-war.  Apart from this
+negative description, their voyage would be difficult to
+describe.  It took at least a fortnight, and MacIan, who was
+certainly the shrewder sailor of the two, realized that they were
+sailing west into the Atlantic and were probably by this time
+past the Scilly Isles.  How much farther they stood out into the
+western sea it was impossible to conjecture.  But they felt
+certain, at least, that they were far enough into that awful gulf
+between us and America to make it unlikely that they would soon
+see land again.  It was therefore with legitimate excitement that
+one rainy morning after daybreak they saw that distinct shape of
+a solitary island standing up against the encircling strip of
+silver which ran round the skyline and separated the grey and
+green of the billows from the grey and mauve of the morning
+clouds.
+
+"What can it be?" cried MacIan, in a dry-throated excitement.  "I
+didn't know there were any Atlantic islands so far beyond the
+Scillies--Good Lord, it can't be Madeira, yet?"
+
+"I thought you were fond of legends and lies and fables," said
+Turnbull, grimly.  "Perhaps it's Atlantis."
+
+"Of course, it might be," answered the other, quite innocently
+and gravely; "but I never thought the story about Atlantis was
+very solidly established."
+
+"Whatever it is, we are running on to it," said Turnbull,
+equably, "and we shall be shipwrecked twice, at any rate."
+
+The naked-looking nose of land projecting from the unknown island
+was, indeed, growing larger and larger, like the trunk of some
+terrible and advancing elephant.  There seemed to be nothing in
+particular, at least on this side of the island, except shoals of
+shellfish lying so thick as almost to make it look like one of
+those toy grottos that the children make.  In one place, however,
+the coast offered a soft, smooth bay of sand, and even the
+rudimentary ingenuity of the two amateur mariners managed to run
+up the little ship with her prow well on shore and her bowsprit
+pointing upward, as in a sort of idiotic triumph.
+
+They tumbled on shore and began to unload the vessel, setting the
+stores out in rows upon the sand with something of the solemnity
+of boys playing at pirates.  There were Mr. Wilkinson's
+cigar-boxes and Mr. Wilkinson's dozen of champagne and Mr.
+Wilkinson's tinned salmon and Mr. Wilkinson's tinned tongue and
+Mr. Wilkinson's tinned sardines, and every sort of preserved
+thing that could be seen at the Army and Navy stores.  Then MacIan
+stopped with a jar of pickles in his hand and said abruptly:
+
+"I don't know why we're doing all this; I suppose we ought really
+to fall to and get it over."
+
+Then he added more thoughtfully: "Of course this island seems
+rather bare and the survivor----"
+
+"The question is," said Turnbull, with cheerful speculation,
+"whether the survivor will be in a proper frame of mind for
+potted prawns."
+
+MacIan looked down at the rows of tins and bottles, and the cloud
+of doubt still lowered upon his face.
+
+"You will permit me two liberties, my dear sir," said Turnbull at
+last: "The first is to break open this box and light one of Mr.
+Wilkinson's excellent cigars, which will, I am sure, assist my
+meditations; the second is to offer a penny for your thoughts; or
+rather to convulse the already complex finances of this island by
+betting a penny that I know them."
+
+"What on earth are you talking about?" asked MacIan, listlessly,
+in the manner of an inattentive child.
+
+"I know what you are really thinking, MacIan," repeated Turnbull,
+laughing.  "I know what I am thinking, anyhow.  And I rather fancy
+it's the same."
+
+"What are you thinking?" asked Evan.
+
+"I am thinking and you are thinking," said Turnbull, "that it is
+damned silly to waste all that champagne."
+
+Something like the spectre of a smile appeared on the unsmiling
+visage of the Gael; and he made at least no movement of dissent.
+
+"We could drink all the wine and smoke all the cigars easily in a
+week," said Turnbull; "and that would be to die feasting like
+heroes."
+
+"Yes, and there is something else," said MacIan, with slight
+hesitation.  "You see, we are on an almost unknown rock, lost in
+the Atlantic.  The police will never catch us; but then neither
+may the public ever hear of us; and that was one of the things we
+wanted."  Then, after a pause, he said, drawing in the sand with
+his sword-point: "She may never hear of it at all."
+
+"Well?" inquired the other, puffing at his cigar.
+
+"Well," said MacIan, "we might occupy a day or two in drawing up
+a thorough and complete statement of what we did and why we did
+it, and all about both our points of view.  Then we could leave
+one copy on the island whatever happens to us and put another in
+an empty bottle and send it out to sea, as they do in the books."
+
+"A good idea," said Turnbull, "and now let us finish unpacking."
+
+As MacIan, a tall, almost ghostly figure, paced along the edge of
+sand that ran round the islet, the purple but cloudy poetry which
+was his native element was piled up at its thickest upon his
+soul.  The unique island and the endless sea emphasized the thing
+solely as an epic.  There were no ladies or policemen here to give
+him a hint either of its farce or its tragedy.
+
+"Perhaps when the morning stars were made," he said to himself,
+"God built this island up from the bottom of the world to be a
+tower and a theatre for the fight between yea and nay."
+
+Then he wandered up to the highest level of the rock, where there
+was a roof or plateau of level stone.  Half an hour afterwards,
+Turnbull found him clearing away the loose sand from this
+table-land and making it smooth and even.
+
+"We will fight up here, Turnbull," said MacIan, "when the time
+comes.  And till the time comes this place shall be sacred."
+
+"I thought of having lunch up here," said Turnbull, who had a
+bottle of champagne in his hand.
+
+"No, no--not up here," said MacIan, and came down from the height
+quite hastily.  Before he descended, however, he fixed the two
+swords upright, one at each end of the platform, as if they were
+human sentinels to guard it under the stars.
+
+Then they came down and lunched plentifully in a nest of loose
+rocks.  In the same place that night they supped more plentifully
+still.  The smoke of Mr. Wilkinson's cigars went up ceaseless and
+strong smelling, like a pagan sacrifice; the golden glories of
+Mr. Wilkinson's champagne rose to their heads and poured out of
+them in fancies and philosophies.  And occasionally they would
+look up at the starlight and the rock and see the space guarded
+by the two cross-hilted swords, which looked like two black
+crosses at either end of a grave.
+
+In this primitive and Homeric truce the week passed by; it
+consisted almost entirely of eating, drinking, smoking, talking,
+and occasionally singing.  They wrote their records and cast loose
+their bottle.  They never ascended to the ominous plateau; they
+had never stood there save for that single embarrassed minute
+when they had had no time to take stock of the seascape or the
+shape of the land.  They did not even explore the island; for
+MacIan was partly concerned in prayer and Turnbull entirely
+concerned with tobacco; and both these forms of inspiration can
+be enjoyed by the secluded and even the sedentary.  It was on a
+golden afternoon, the sun sinking over the sea, rayed like the
+very head of Apollo, when Turnbull tossed off the last half-pint
+from the emptied Wilkinsonian bottle, hurled the bottle into the
+sea with objectless energy, and went up to where his sword stood
+waiting for him on the hill.  MacIan was already standing heavily
+by his with bent head and eyes reading the ground.  He had not
+even troubled to throw a glance round the island or the horizon.
+But Turnbull being of a more active and birdlike type of mind did
+throw a glance round the scene.  The consequence of which was that
+he nearly fell off the rock.
+
+On three sides of this shelly and sandy islet the sea stretched
+blue and infinite without a speck of land or sail; the same as
+Turnbull had first seen it, except that the tide being out it
+showed a few yards more of slanting sand under the roots of the
+rocks.  But on the fourth side the island exhibited a more
+extraordinary feature.  In fact, it exhibited the extraordinary
+feature of not being an island at all.  A long, curving neck of
+sand, as smooth and wet as the neck of the sea serpent, ran out
+into the sea and joined their rock to a line of low, billowing,
+and glistening sand-hills, which the sinking sea had just bared
+to the sun.  Whether they were firm sand or quicksand it was
+difficult to guess; but there was at least no doubt that they lay
+on the edge of some larger land; for colourless hills appeared
+faintly behind them and no sea could be seen beyond.
+
+"Sakes alive!" cried Turnbull, with rolling eyes; "this ain't an
+island in the Atlantic.  We've butted the bally continent of
+America."
+
+MacIan turned his head, and his face, already pale, grew a shade
+paler.  He was by this time walking in a world of omens and
+hieroglyphics, and he could not read anything but what was
+baffling or menacing in this brown gigantic arm of the earth
+stretched out into the sea to seize him.
+
+"MacIan," said Turnbull, in his temperate way, "whatever our
+eternal interrupted tete-a-tetes have taught us or not taught us,
+at least we need not fear the charge of fear.  If it is essential
+to your emotions, I will cheerfully finish the fight here and
+now; but I must confess that if you kill me here I shall die with
+my curiosity highly excited and unsatisfied upon a minor point of
+geography."
+
+"I do not want to stop now," said the other, in his elephantine
+simplicity, "but we must stop for a moment, because it is a
+sign--perhaps it is a miracle.  We must see what is at the end of
+the road of sand; it may be a bridge built across the gulf by
+God."
+
+"So long as you gratify my query," said Turnbull, laughing and
+letting back his blade into the sheath, "I do not care for what
+reason you choose to stop."
+
+They clambered down the rocky peninsula and trudged along the
+sandy isthmus with the plodding resolution of men who seemed
+almost to have made up their minds to be wanderers on the face of
+the earth.  Despite Turnbull's air of scientific eagerness, he was
+really the less impatient of the two; and the Highlander went on
+well ahead of him with passionate strides.  By the time they had
+walked for about half an hour in the ups and downs of those
+dreary sands, the distance between the two had lengthened and
+MacIan was only a tall figure silhouetted for an instant upon the
+crest of some sand-dune and then disappearing behind it.  This
+rather increased the Robinson Crusoe feeling in Mr. Turnbull, and
+he looked about almost disconsolately for some sign of life.  What
+sort of life he expected it to be if it appeared, he did not very
+clearly know.  He has since confessed that he thinks that in his
+subconsciousness he expected an alligator.
+
+The first sign of life that he did see, however, was something
+more extraordinary than the largest alligator.  It was nothing
+less than the notorious Mr. Evan MacIan coming bounding back
+across the sand-heaps breathless, without his cap and keeping the
+sword in his hand only by a habit now quite hardened.
+
+"Take care, Turnbull," he cried out from a good distance as he
+ran, "I've seen a native."
+
+"A native?" repeated his companion, whose scenery had of late
+been chiefly of shellfish, "what the deuce!  Do you mean an
+oyster?"
+
+"No," said MacIan, stopping and breathing hard, "I mean a savage.
+A black man."
+
+"Why, where did you see him?" asked the staring editor.
+
+"Over there--behind that hill," said the gasping MacIan.  "He put
+up his black head and grinned at me."
+
+Turnbull thrust his hands through his red hair like one who gives
+up the world as a bad riddle.  "Lord love a duck," said he, "can
+it be Jamaica?"
+
+Then glancing at his companion with a small frown, as of one
+slightly suspicious, he said: "I say, don't think me rude--but
+you're a visionary kind of fellow--and then we drank a great
+deal.  Do you mind waiting here while I go and see for myself?"
+
+"Shout if you get into trouble," said the Celt, with composure;
+"you will find it as I say."
+
+Turnbull ran off ahead with a rapidity now far greater than his
+rival's, and soon vanished over the disputed sand-hill.  Then five
+minutes passed, and then seven minutes; and MacIan bit his lip
+and swung his sword, and the other did not reappear.  Finally,
+with a Gaelic oath, Evan started forward to the rescue, and
+almost at the same moment the small figure of the missing man
+appeared on the ridge against the sky.
+
+Even at that distance, however, there was something odd about his
+attitude; so odd that MacIan continued to make his way in that
+direction.  It looked as if he were wounded; or, still more, as if
+he were ill.  He wavered as he came down the slope and seemed
+flinging himself into peculiar postures.  But it was only when he
+came within three feet of MacIan's face, that that observer of
+mankind fully realized that Mr. James Turnbull was roaring with
+laughter.
+
+"You are quit right," sobbed that wholly demoralized journalist.
+"He's black, oh, there's no doubt the black's all right--as far
+as it goes."  And he went off again into convulsions of his
+humorous ailment.
+
+"What ever is the matter with you?" asked MacIan, with stern
+impatience.  "Did you see the nigger----"
+
+"I saw the nigger," gasped Turnbull.  "I saw the splendid
+barbarian Chief.  I saw the Emperor of Ethiopia--oh, I saw him all
+right.  The nigger's hands and face are a lovely colour--and the
+nigger----" And he was overtaken once more.
+
+"Well, well, well," said Evan, stamping each monosyllable on the
+sand, "what about the nigger?"
+
+"Well, the truth is," said Turnbull, suddenly and startlingly,
+becoming quite grave and precise, "the truth is, the nigger is a
+Margate nigger, and we are now on the edge of the Isle of Thanet,
+a few miles from Margate."
+
+Then he had a momentary return of his hysteria and said: "I say,
+old boy, I should like to see a chart of our fortnight's cruise
+in Wilkinson's yacht."
+
+MacIan had no smile in answer, but his eager lips opened as if
+parched for the truth.  "You mean to say," he began----
+
+"Yes, I mean to say," said Turnbull, "and I mean to say something
+funnier still.  I have learnt everything I wanted to know from the
+partially black musician over there, who has taken a run in his
+war-paint to meet a friend in a quiet pub along the coast--the
+noble savage has told me all about it.  The bottle containing our
+declaration, doctrines, and dying sentiments was washed up on
+Margate beach yesterday in the presence of one alderman, two
+bathing-machine men, three policemen, seven doctors, and a
+hundred and thirteen London clerks on a holiday, to all of whom,
+whether directly or indirectly, our composition gave enormous
+literary pleasure.  Buck up, old man, this story of ours is a
+switchback.  I have begun to understand the pulse and the time of
+it; now we are up in a cathedral and then we are down in a
+theatre, where they only play farces.  Come, I am quite
+reconciled--let us enjoy the farce."
+
+But MacIan said nothing, and an instant afterwards Turnbull
+himself called out in an entirely changed voice: "Oh, this is
+damnable!  This is not to be borne!"
+
+MacIan followed his eye along the sand-hills.  He saw what looked
+like the momentary and waving figure of the nigger minstrel, and
+then he saw a heavy running policeman take the turn of the
+sand-hill with the smooth solemnity of a railway train.
+
+
+
+XIII. THE GARDEN OF PEACE
+
+Up to this instant Evan MacIan had really understood nothing; but
+when he saw the policeman he saw everything.  He saw his enemies,
+all the powers and princes of the earth.  He suddenly altered from
+a staring statue to a leaping man of the mountains.
+
+"We must break away from him here," he cried, briefly, and went
+like a whirlwind over the sand ridge in a straight line and at a
+particular angle.  When the policeman had finished his admirable
+railway curve, he found a wall of failing sand between him and
+the pursued.  By the time he had scaled it thrice, slid down
+twice, and crested it in the third effort, the two flying figures
+were far in front.  They found the sand harder farther on; it
+began to be crusted with scraps of turf and in a few moments they
+were flying easily over an open common of rank sea-grass.  They
+had no easy business, however; for the bottle which they had so
+innocently sent into the chief gate of Thanet had called to life
+the police of half a county on their trail.  From every side
+across the grey-green common figures could be seen running and
+closing in; and it was only when MacIan with his big body broke
+down the tangled barrier of a little wood, as men break down a
+door with the shoulder; it was only when they vanished crashing
+into the underworld of the black wood, that their hunters were
+even instantaneously thrown off the scent.
+
+At the risk of struggling a little longer like flies in that
+black web of twigs and trunks, Evan (who had an instinct of the
+hunter or the hunted) took an incalculable course through the
+forest, which let them out at last by a forest opening--quite
+forgotten by the leaders of the chase.  They ran a mile or two
+farther along the edge of the wood until they reached another and
+somewhat similar opening.  Then MacIan stood utterly still and
+listened, as animals listen, for every sound in the universe.
+Then he said: "We are quit of them."  And Turnbull said: "Where
+shall we go now?"
+
+MacIan looked at the silver sunset that was closing in, barred by
+plumy lines of purple cloud; he looked at the high tree-tops that
+caught the last light and at the birds going heavily homeward,
+just as if all these things were bits of written advice that he
+could read.
+
+Then he said: "The best place we can go to is to bed.  If we can
+get some sleep in this wood, now everyone has cleared out of it,
+it will be worth a handicap of two hundred yards tomorrow."
+
+Turnbull, who was exceptionally lively and laughing in his
+demeanour, kicked his legs about like a schoolboy and said he did
+not want to go to sleep.  He walked incessantly and talked very
+brilliantly.  And when at last he lay down on the hard earth,
+sleep struck him senseless like a hammer.
+
+Indeed, he needed the strongest sleep he could get; for the earth
+was still full of darkness and a kind of morning fog when his
+fellow-fugitive shook him awake.
+
+"No more sleep, I'm afraid," said Evan, in a heavy, almost
+submissive, voice of apology.  "They've gone on past us right
+enough for a good thirty miles; but now they've found out their
+mistake, and they're coming back."
+
+"Are you sure?" said Turnbull, sitting up and rubbing his red
+eyebrows with his hand.
+
+The next moment, however, he had jumped up alive and leaping like
+a man struck with a shock of cold water, and he was plunging
+after MacIan along the woodland path.  The shape of their old
+friend the constable had appeared against the pearl and pink of
+the sunrise.  Somehow, it always looked a very funny shape when
+seen against the sunrise.
+
+           *                    *                   *
+
+A wash of weary daylight was breaking over the country-side, and
+the fields and roads were full of white mist--the kind of white
+mist that clings in corners like cotton wool.  The empty road,
+along which the chase had taken its turn, was overshadowed on one
+side by a very high discoloured wall, stained, and streaked
+green, as with seaweed--evidently the high-shouldered sentinel of
+some great gentleman's estate.  A yard or two from the wall ran
+parallel to it a linked and tangled line of lime-trees, forming a
+kind of cloister along the side of the road.  It was under this
+branching colonnade that the two fugitives fled, almost concealed
+from their pursuers by the twilight, the mist and the leaping
+zoetrope of shadows.  Their feet, though beating the ground
+furiously, made but a faint noise; for they had kicked away their
+boots in the wood; their long, antiquated weapons made no jingle
+or clatter, for they had strapped them across their backs like
+guitars.  They had all the advantages that invisibility and
+silence can add to speed.
+
+A hundred and fifty yards behind them down the centre of the
+empty road the first of their pursuers came pounding and
+panting--a fat but powerful policeman who had distanced all the
+rest.  He came on at a splendid pace for so portly a figure; but,
+like all heavy bodies in motion, he gave the impression that it
+would be easier for him to increase his pace than to slacken it
+suddenly.  Nothing short of a brick wall could have abruptly
+brought him up.  Turnbull turned his head slightly and found
+breath to say something to MacIan.  MacIan nodded.
+
+Pursuer and pursued were fixed in their distance as they fled,
+for some quarter of a mile, when they came to a place where two
+or three of the trees grew twistedly together, making a special
+obscurity.  Past this place the pursuing policeman went thundering
+without thought or hesitation.  But he was pursuing his shadow or
+the wind; for Turnbull had put one foot in a crack of the tree
+and gone up it as quickly and softly as a cat.  Somewhat more
+laboriously but in equal silence the long legs of the Highlander
+had followed; and crouching in crucial silence in the cloud of
+leaves, they saw the whole posse of their pursuers go by and die
+into the dust and mists of the distance.
+
+The white vapour lay, as it often does, in lean and palpable
+layers; and even the head of the tree was above it in the
+half-daylight, like a green ship swinging on a sea of foam.  But
+higher yet behind them, and readier to catch the first coming of
+the sun, ran the rampart of the top of the wall, which in their
+excitement of escape looked at once indispensable and
+unattainable, like the wall of heaven.  Here, however, it was
+MacIan's turn to have the advantage; for, though less
+light-limbed and feline, he was longer and stronger in the arms.
+In two seconds he had tugged up his chin over the wall like a
+horizontal bar; the next he sat astride of it, like a horse of
+stone.  With his assistance Turnbull vaulted to the same perch,
+and the two began cautiously to shift along the wall in the
+direction by which they had come, doubling on their tracks to
+throw off the last pursuit.  MacIan could not rid himself of the
+fancy of bestriding a steed; the long, grey coping of the wall
+shot out in front of him, like the long, grey neck of some
+nightmare Rosinante.  He had the quaint thought that he and
+Turnbull were two knights on one steed on the old shield of the
+Templars.
+
+The nightmare of the stone horse was increased by the white fog,
+which seemed thicker inside the wall than outside.  They could
+make nothing of the enclosure upon which they were partial
+trespassers, except that the green and crooked branches of a big
+apple-tree came crawling at them out of the mist, like the
+tentacles of some green cuttlefish.  Anything would serve,
+however, that was likely to confuse their trail, so they both
+decided without need of words to use this tree also as a
+ladder--a ladder of descent.  When they dropped from the lowest
+branch to the ground their stockinged feet felt hard gravel
+beneath them.
+
+They had alighted in the middle of a very broad garden path, and
+the clearing mist permitted them to see the edge of a
+well-clipped lawn.  Though the white vapour was still a veil, it
+was like the gauzy veil of a transformation scene in a pantomime;
+for through it there glowed shapeless masses of colour, masses
+which might be clouds of sunrise or mosaics of gold and crimson,
+or ladies robed in ruby and emerald draperies.  As it thinned yet
+farther they saw that it was only flowers; but flowers in such
+insolent mass and magnificence as can seldom be seen out of the
+tropics.  Purple and crimson rhododendrons rose arrogantly, like
+rampant heraldic animals against their burning background of
+laburnum gold.  The roses were red hot; the clematis was, so to
+speak, blue hot.  And yet the mere whiteness of the syringa seemed
+the most violent colour of all.  As the golden sunlight gradually
+conquered the mists, it had really something of the sensational
+sweetness of the slow opening of the gates of Eden.  MacIan, whose
+mind was always haunted with such seraphic or titanic parallels,
+made some such remark to his companion.  But Turnbull only cursed
+and said that it was the back garden of some damnable rich man.
+
+When the last haze had faded from the ordered paths, the open
+lawns, and the flaming flower-beds, the two realized, not without
+an abrupt re-examination of their position, that they were not
+alone in the garden.
+
+Down the centre of the central garden path, preceded by a blue
+cloud from a cigarette, was walking a gentleman who evidently
+understood all the relish of a garden in the very early morning.
+He was a slim yet satisfied figure, clad in a suit of pale-grey
+tweed, so subdued that the pattern was imperceptible--a costume
+that was casual but not by any means careless.  His face, which
+was reflective and somewhat over-refined, was the face of a quite
+elderly man, though his stringy hair and moustache were still
+quite yellow.  A double eye-glass, with a broad, black ribbon,
+drooped from his aquiline nose, and he smiled, as he communed
+with himself, with a self-content which was rare and almost
+irritating.  The straw panama on his head was many shades shabbier
+than his clothes, as if he had caught it up by accident.
+
+It needed the full shock of the huge shadow of MacIan, falling
+across his sunlit path, to rouse him from his smiling reverie.
+When this had fallen on him he lifted his head a little and
+blinked at the intruders with short-sighted benevolence, but with
+far less surprise than might have been expected.  He was a
+gentleman; that is, he had social presence of mind, whether for
+kindness or for insolence.
+
+"Can I do anything for you?" he said, at last.
+
+MacIan bowed.  "You can extend to us your pardon," he said, for he
+also came of a whole race of gentlemen--of gentlemen without
+shirts to their backs.  "I am afraid we are trespassing.  We have
+just come over the wall."
+
+"Over the wall?" repeated the smiling old gentleman, still
+without letting his surprise come uppermost.
+
+"I suppose I am not wrong, sir," continued MacIan, "in supposing
+that these grounds inside the wall belong to you?"
+
+The man in the panama looked at the ground and smoked
+thoughtfully for a few moments, after which he said, with a sort
+of matured conviction:
+
+"Yes, certainly; the grounds inside the wall really belong to me,
+and the grounds outside the wall, too."
+
+"A large proprietor, I imagine," said Turnbull, with a truculent
+eye.
+
+"Yes," answered the old gentleman, looking at him with a steady
+smile.  "A large proprietor."
+
+Turnbull's eye grew even more offensive, and he began biting his
+red beard; but MacIan seemed to recognize a type with which he
+could deal and continued quite easily:
+
+"I am sure that a man like you will not need to be told that one
+sees and does a good many things that do not get into the
+newspapers.  Things which, on the whole, had better not get into
+the newspapers."
+
+The smile of the large proprietor broadened for a moment under
+his loose, light moustache, and the other continued with
+increased confidence:
+
+"One sometimes wants to have it out with another man.  The police
+won't allow it in the streets--and then there's the County
+Council--and in the fields even nothing's allowed but posters of
+pills.  But in a gentleman's garden, now----"
+
+The strange gentleman smiled again and said, easily enough: "Do
+you want to fight?  What do you want to fight about?"
+
+MacIan had understood his man pretty well up to that point; an
+instinct common to all men with the aristocratic tradition of
+Europe had guided him.  He knew that the kind of man who in his
+own back garden wears good clothes and spoils them with a bad hat
+is not the kind of man who has an abstract horror of illegal
+actions of violence or the evasion of the police.  But a man may
+understand ragging and yet be very far from understanding
+religious ragging.  This seeming host of theirs might comprehend a
+quarrel of husband and lover or a difficulty at cards or even
+escape from a pursuing tailor; but it still remained doubtful
+whether he would feel the earth fail under him in that earthquake
+instant when the Virgin is compared to a goddess of Mesopotamia.
+Even MacIan, therefore (whose tact was far from being his strong
+point), felt the necessity for some compromise in the mode of
+approach.  At last he said, and even then with hesitation:
+
+"We are fighting about God; there can be nothing so important as
+that."
+
+The tilted eye-glasses of the old gentleman fell abruptly from
+his nose, and he thrust his aristocratic chin so far forward that
+his lean neck seemed to shoot out longer like a telescope.
+
+"About God?" he queried, in a key completely new.
+
+"Look here!" cried Turnbull, taking his turn roughly, "I'll tell
+you what it's all about.  I think that there's no God.  I take it
+that it's nobody's business but mine--or God's, if there is one.
+This young gentleman from the Highlands happens to think that
+it's his business.  In consequence, he first takes a walking-stick
+and smashes my shop; then he takes the same walking-stick and
+tries to smash me.  To this I naturally object.  I suggest that if
+it comes to that we should both have sticks.  He improves on the
+suggestion and proposes that we should both have steel-pointed
+sticks.  The police (with characteristic unreasonableness) will
+not accept either of our proposals; the result is that we run
+about dodging the police and have jumped over our garden wall
+into your magnificent garden to throw ourselves on your
+magnificent hospitality."
+
+The face of the old gentleman had grown redder and redder during
+this address, but it was still smiling; and when he broke out it
+was with a kind of guffaw.
+
+"So you really want to fight with drawn swords in my garden," he
+asked, "about whether there is really a God?"
+
+"Why not?" said MacIan, with his simple monstrosity of speech;
+"all man's worship began when the Garden of Eden was founded."
+
+"Yes, by----!" said Turnbull, with an oath, "and ended when the
+Zoological Gardens were founded."
+
+"In this garden!  In my presence!" cried the stranger, stamping up
+and down the gravel and choking with laughter," whether there is
+a God!"  And he went stamping up and down the garden, making it
+echo with his unintelligible laughter.  Then he came back to them
+more composed and wiping his eyes.
+
+"Why, how small the world is!" he cried at last.  "I can settle
+the whole matter.  Why, I am God!"
+
+And he suddenly began to kick and wave his well-clad legs about
+the lawn.
+
+"You are what?" repeated Turnbull, in a tone which is beyond
+description.
+
+"Why, God, of course!" answered the other, thoroughly amused.
+"How funny it is to think that you have tumbled over a garden
+wall and fallen exactly on the right person!  You might have gone
+floundering about in all sorts of churches and chapels and
+colleges and schools of philosophy looking for some evidence of
+the existence of God.  Why, there is no evidence, except seeing
+him.  And now you've seen him.  You've seen him dance!"
+
+And the obliging old gentleman instantly stood on one leg without
+relaxing at all the grave and cultured benignity of his
+expression.
+
+"I understood that this garden----" began the bewildered MacIan.
+
+"Quite so!  Quite so!" said the man on one leg, nodding gravely.
+"I said this garden belonged to me and the land outside it.  So
+they do.  So does the country beyond that and the sea beyond that
+and all the rest of the earth.  So does the moon.  So do the sun
+and stars."  And he added, with a smile of apology: "You see, I'm
+God."
+
+Turnbull and MacIan looked at him for one moment with a sort of
+notion that perhaps he was not too old to be merely playing the
+fool.  But after staring steadily for an instant Turnbull saw the
+hard and horrible earnestness in the man's eyes behind all his
+empty animation.  Then Turnbull looked very gravely at the strict
+gravel walls and the gay flower-beds and the long rectangular
+red-brick building, which the mist had left evident beyond them.
+Then he looked at MacIan.
+
+Almost at the same moment another man came walking quickly round
+the regal clump of rhododendrons.  He had the look of a prosperous
+banker, wore a good tall silk hat, was almost stout enough to
+burst the buttons of a fine frock-coat; but he was talking to
+himself, and one of his elbows had a singular outward jerk as he
+went by.
+
+
+
+XIV. A MUSEUM OF SOULS
+
+The man with the good hat and the jumping elbow went by very
+quickly; yet the man with the bad hat, who thought he was God,
+overtook him.  He ran after him and jumped over a bed of geraniums
+to catch him.
+
+"I beg your Majesty's pardon," he said, with mock humility, "but
+here is a quarrel which you ought really to judge."
+
+Then as he led the heavy, silk-hatted man back towards the group,
+he caught MacIan's ear in order to whisper: "This poor gentleman
+is mad; he thinks he is Edward VII."  At this the self-appointed
+Creator slightly winked.  "Of course you won't trust him much;
+come to me for everything.  But in my position one has to meet so
+many people.  One has to be broadminded."
+
+The big banker in the black frock-coat and hat was standing quite
+grave and dignified on the lawn, save for his slight twitch of
+one limb, and he did not seem by any means unworthy of the part
+which the other promptly forced upon him.
+
+"My dear fellow," said the man in the straw hat, "these two
+gentlemen are going to fight a duel of the utmost importance.
+Your own royal position and my much humbler one surely indicate
+us as the proper seconds.  Seconds--yes, seconds----" and here
+the speaker was once more shaken with his old malady of
+laughter.
+
+"Yes, you and I are both seconds--and these two gentlemen can
+obviously fight in front of us.  You, he-he, are the king.  I am
+God; really, they could hardly have better supporters.  They have
+come to the right place."
+
+Then Turnbull, who had been staring with a frown at the fresh
+turf, burst out with a rather bitter laugh and cried, throwing
+his red head in the air:
+
+"Yes, by God, MacIan, I think we have come to the right place!"
+And MacIan answered, with an adamantine stupidity:
+
+"Any place is the right place where they will let us do it."
+
+There was a long stillness, and their eyes involuntarily took in
+the landscape, as they had taken in all the landscapes of their
+everlasting combat; the bright, square garden behind the shop;
+the whole lift and leaning of the side of Hampstead Heath; the
+little garden of the decadent choked with flowers; the square of
+sand beside the sea at sunrise.  They both felt at the same moment
+all the breadth and blossoming beauty of that paradise, the
+coloured trees, the natural and restful nooks and also the great
+wall of stone--more awful than the wall of China--from which no
+flesh could flee.
+
+Turnbull was moodily balancing his sword in his hand as the other
+spoke; then he started, for a mouth whispered quite close to his
+ear.  With a softness incredible in any cat, the huge, heavy man
+in the black hat and frock-coat had crept across the lawn from
+his own side and was saying in his ear: "Don't trust that second
+of yours.  He's mad and not so mad, either; for he frightfully
+cunning and sharp.  Don't believe the story he tells you about why
+I hate him.  I know the story he'll tell; I overheard it when the
+housekeeper was talking to the postman.  It's too long to talk
+about now, and I expect we're watched, but----"
+
+Something in Turnbull made him want suddenly to be sick on the
+grass; the mere healthy and heathen horror of the unclean; the
+mere inhumane hatred of the inhuman state of madness.  He seemed
+to hear all round him the hateful whispers of that place,
+innumerable as leaves whispering in the wind, and each of them
+telling eagerly some evil that had not happened or some terrific
+secret which was not true.  All the rationalist and plain man
+revolted within him against bowing down for a moment in that
+forest of deception and egotistical darkness.  He wanted to blow
+up that palace of delusions with dynamite; and in some wild way,
+which I will not defend, he tried to do it.
+
+He looked across at MacIan and said: "Oh, I can't stand this!"
+
+"Can't stand what?" asked his opponent, eyeing him doubtfully.
+
+"Shall we say the atmosphere?" replied Turnbull; "one can't use
+uncivil expressions even to a--deity.  The fact is, I don't like
+having God for my second."
+
+"Sir!" said that being in a state of great offence, "in my
+position I am not used to having my favours refused.  Do you know
+who I am?"
+
+The editor of _The Atheist_ turned upon him like one who has lost
+all patience, and exploded: "Yes, you are God, aren't you?" he
+said, abruptly, "why do we have two sets of teeth?"
+
+"Teeth?" spluttered the genteel lunatic; "teeth?"
+
+"Yes," cried Turnbull, advancing on him swiftly and with animated
+gestures, "why does teething hurt?  Why do growing pains hurt?  Why
+are measles catching?  Why does a rose have thorns?  Why do
+rhinoceroses have horns?  Why is the horn on the top of the nose?
+Why haven't I a horn on the top of my nose, eh?"  And he struck
+the bridge of his nose smartly with his forefinger to indicate
+the place of the omission and then wagged the finger menacingly
+at the Creator.
+
+"I've often wanted to meet you," he resumed, sternly, after a
+pause, "to hold you accountable for all the idiocy and cruelty of
+this muddled and meaningless world of yours.  You make a hundred
+seeds and only one bears fruit.  You make a million worlds and
+only one seems inhabited.  What do you mean by it, eh?  What do you
+mean by it?"
+
+The unhappy lunatic had fallen back before this quite novel form
+of attack, and lifted his burnt-out cigarette almost like one
+warding off a blow.  Turnbull went on like a torrent.
+
+"A man died yesterday in Ealing.  You murdered him.  A girl had the
+toothache in Croydon.  You gave it her.  Fifty sailors were drowned
+off Selsey Bill.  You scuttled their ship.  What have you got to
+say for yourself, eh?"
+
+The representative of omnipotence looked as if he had left most
+of these things to his subordinates; he passed a hand over his
+wrinkling brow and said in a voice much saner than any he had yet
+used:
+
+"Well, if you dislike my assistance, of course--perhaps the other
+gentleman----"
+
+"The other gentleman," cried Turnbull, scornfully, "is a
+submissive and loyal and obedient gentleman.  He likes the people
+who wear crowns, whether of diamonds or of stars.  He believes in
+the divine right of kings, and it is appropriate enough that he
+should have the king for his second.  But it is not appropriate to
+me that I should have God for my second.  God is not good enough.
+I dislike and I deny the divine right of kings.  But I dislike
+more and I deny more the divine right of divinity."
+
+Then after a pause in which he swallowed his passion, he said to
+MacIan: "You have got the right second, anyhow."
+
+The Highlander did not answer, but stood as if thunderstruck with
+one long and heavy thought.  Then at last he turned abruptly to
+his second in the silk hat and said: "Who are you?"
+
+The man in the silk hat blinked and bridled in affected surprise,
+like one who was in truth accustomed to be doubted.
+
+"I am King Edward VII," he said, with shaky arrogance.  "Do you
+doubt my word?"
+
+"I do not doubt it in the least," answered MacIan.
+
+"Then, why," said the large man in the silk hat, trembling from
+head to foot, "why do you wear your hat before the king?"
+
+"Why should I take it off," retorted MacIan, with equal heat,
+"before a usurper?"
+
+Turnbull swung round on his heel.  "Well, really," he said, "I
+thought at least you were a loyal subject."
+
+"I am the only loyal subject," answered the Gael.  "For nearly
+thirty years I have walked these islands and have not found
+another."
+
+"You are always hard to follow," remarked Turnbull, genially,
+"and sometimes so much so as to be hardly worth following."
+
+"I alone am loyal," insisted MacIan; "for I alone am in
+rebellion.  I am ready at any instant to restore the Stuarts.  I
+am ready at any instant to defy the Hanoverian brood--and I defy
+it now even when face to face with the actual ruler of the
+enormous British Empire!"
+
+And folding his arms and throwing back his lean, hawklike face,
+he haughtily confronted the man with the formal frock-coat and
+the eccentric elbow.
+
+"What right had you stunted German squires," he cried, "to
+interfere in a quarrel between Scotch and English and Irish
+gentlemen?  Who made you, whose fathers could not splutter English
+while they walked in Whitehall, who made you the judge between
+the republic of Sidney and the monarchy of Montrose?  What had
+your sires to do with England that they should have the foul
+offering of the blood of Derwentwater and the heart of Jimmy
+Dawson?  Where are the corpses of Culloden?  Where is the blood of
+Lochiel?"  MacIan advanced upon his opponent with a bony and
+pointed finger, as if indicating the exact pocket in which the
+blood of that Cameron was probably kept; and Edward VII fell back
+a few paces in considerable confusion.
+
+"What good have you ever done to us?" he continued in harsher and
+harsher accents, forcing the other back towards the flower-beds.
+"What good have you ever done, you race of German sausages?  Yards
+of barbarian etiquette, to throttle the freedom of aristocracy!
+Gas of northern metaphysics to blow up Broad Church bishops like
+balloons.  Bad pictures and bad manners and pantheism and the
+Albert Memorial.  Go back to Hanover, you humbug?  Go to----"
+
+Before the end of this tirade the arrogance of the monarch had
+entirely given way; he had fairly turned tail and was trundling
+away down the path.  MacIan strode after him still preaching and
+flourishing his large, lean hands.  The other two remained in the
+centre of the lawn--Turnbull in convulsions of laughter, the
+lunatic in convulsions of disgust.  Almost at the same moment a
+third figure came stepping swiftly across the lawn.
+
+The advancing figure walked with a stoop, and yet somehow flung
+his forked and narrow beard forward.  That carefully cut and
+pointed yellow beard was, indeed, the most emphatic thing about
+him.  When he clasped his hands behind him, under the tails of his
+coat, he would wag his beard at a man like a big forefinger.  It
+performed almost all his gestures; it was more important than the
+glittering eye-glasses through which he looked or the beautiful
+bleating voice in which he spoke.  His face and neck were of a
+lusty red, but lean and stringy; he always wore his expensive
+gold-rim eye-glasses slightly askew upon his aquiline nose; and
+he always showed two gleaming foreteeth under his moustache, in a
+smile so perpetual as to earn the reputation of a sneer.  But for
+the crooked glasses his dress was always exquisite; and but for
+the smile he was perfectly and perennially depressed.
+
+"Don't you think," said the new-comer, with a sort of
+supercilious entreaty, "that we had better all come into
+breakfast?  It is such a mistake to wait for breakfast.  It spoils
+one's temper so much."
+
+"Quite so," replied Turnbull, seriously.
+
+"There seems almost to have been a little quarrelling here," said
+the man with the goatish beard.
+
+"It is rather a long story," said Turnbull, smiling.  "Originally,
+it might be called a phase in the quarrel between science and
+religion."
+
+The new-comer started slightly, and Turnbull replied to the
+question on his face.
+
+"Oh, yes," he said, "I am science!"
+
+"I congratulate you heartily," answered the other, "I am Doctor
+Quayle."
+
+Turnbull's eyes did not move, but he realized that the man in the
+panama hat had lost all his ease of a landed proprietor and had
+withdrawn to a distance of thirty yards, where he stood glaring
+with all the contraction of fear and hatred that can stiffen a
+cat.
+
+           *                    *                   *
+
+MacIan was sitting somewhat disconsolately on a stump of tree,
+his large black head half buried in his large brown hands, when
+Turnbull strode up to him chewing a cigarette.  He did not look
+up, but his comrade and enemy addressed him like one who must
+free himself of his feelings.
+
+"Well, I hope, at any rate," he said, "that you like your
+precious religion now.  I hope you like the society of this poor
+devil whom your damned tracts and hymns and priests have driven
+out of his wits.  Five men in this place, they tell me, five men
+in this place who might have been fathers of families, and every
+one of them thinks he is God the Father.  Oh! you may talk about
+the ugliness of science, but there is no one here who thinks he
+is Protoplasm."
+
+"They naturally prefer a bright part," said MacIan, wearily.
+"Protoplasm is not worth going mad about."
+
+"At least," said Turnbull, savagely, "it was your Jesus Christ
+who started all this bosh about being God."
+
+For one instant MacIan opened the eyes of battle; then his
+tightened lips took a crooked smile and he said, quite calmly:
+
+"No, the idea is older; it was Satan who first said that he was
+God."
+
+"Then, what," asked Turnbull, very slowly, as he softly picked a
+flower, "what is the difference between Christ and Satan?"
+
+"It is quite simple," replied the Highlander.  "Christ descended
+into hell; Satan fell into it."
+
+"Does it make much odds?" asked the free-thinker.
+
+"It makes all the odds," said the other.  "One of them wanted to
+go up and went down; the other wanted to go down and went up.  A
+god can be humble, a devil can only be humbled."
+
+"Why are you always wanting to humble a man?" asked Turnbull,
+knitting his brows.  "It affects me as ungenerous."
+
+"Why were you wanting to humble a god when you found him in this
+garden?" asked MacIan.
+
+"That was an extreme case of impudence," said Turnbull.
+
+"Granting the man his almighty pretensions, I think he was very
+modest," said MacIan.  "It is we who are arrogant, who know we are
+only men.  The ordinary man in the street is more of a monster
+than that poor fellow; for the man in the street treats himself
+as God Almighty when he knows he isn't.  He expects the universe
+to turn round him, though he knows he isn't the centre."
+
+"Well," said Turnbull, sitting down on the grass, "this is a
+digression, anyhow.  What I want to point out is, that your faith
+does end in asylums and my science doesn't."
+
+"Doesn't it, by George!" cried MacIan, scornfully.  "There are a
+few men here who are mad on God and a few who are mad on the
+Bible.  But I bet there are many more who are simply mad on
+madness."
+
+"Do you really believe it?" asked the other.
+
+"Scores of them, I should say," answered MacIan.  "Fellows who
+have read medical books or fellows whose fathers and uncles had
+something hereditary in their heads--the whole air they breathe
+is mad."
+
+"All the same," said Turnbull, shrewdly, "I bet you haven't found
+a madman of that sort."
+
+"I bet I have!" cried Evan, with unusual animation.  "I've been
+walking about the garden talking to a poor chap all the morning.
+He's simply been broken down and driven raving by your damned
+science.  Talk about believing one is God--why, it's quite an old,
+comfortable, fireside fancy compared with the sort of things this
+fellow believes.  He believes that there is a God, but that he is
+better than God.  He says God will be afraid to face him.  He says
+one is always progressing beyond the best.  He put his arm in mine
+and whispered in my ear, as if it were the apocalypse: 'Never
+trust a God that you can't improve on.'"
+
+"What can he have meant?" said the atheist, with all his logic
+awake.  "Obviously one should not trust any God that one can
+improve on."
+
+"It is the way he talks," said MacIan, almost indifferently; "but
+he says rummier things than that.  He says that a man's doctor
+ought to decide what woman he marries; and he says that children
+ought not to be brought up by their parents, because a physical
+partiality will then distort the judgement of the educator."
+
+"Oh, dear!" said Turnbull, laughing, "you have certainly come
+across a pretty bad case, and incidentally proved your own.  I
+suppose some men do lose their wits through science as through
+love and other good things."
+
+"And he says," went on MacIan, monotonously, "that he cannot see
+why anyone should suppose that a triangle is a three-sided
+figure.  He says that on some higher plane----"
+
+Turnbull leapt to his feet as by an electric shock.  "I never
+could have believed," he cried, "that you had humour enough to
+tell a lie.  You've gone a bit too far, old man, with your little
+joke.  Even in a lunatic asylum there can't be anybody who, having
+thought about the matter, thinks that a triangle has not got
+three sides.  If he exists he must be a new era in human
+psychology.  But he doesn't exist."
+
+"I will go and fetch him," said MacIan, calmly; "I left the poor
+fellow wandering about by the nasturtium bed."
+
+MacIan vanished, and in a few moments returned, trailing with him
+his own discovery among lunatics, who was a slender man with a
+fixed smile and an unfixed and rolling head.  He had a goatlike
+beard just long enough to be shaken in a strong wind.  Turnbull
+sprang to his feet and was like one who is speechless through
+choking a sudden shout of laughter.
+
+"Why, you great donkey," he shouted, in an ear-shattering
+whisper, "that's not one of the patients at all.  That's one of
+the doctors."
+
+Evan looked back at the leering head with the long-pointed beard
+and repeated the word inquiringly: "One of the doctors?"
+
+"Oh, you know what I mean," said Turnbull, impatiently.  "The
+medical authorities of the place."
+
+Evan was still staring back curiously at the beaming and bearded
+creature behind him.
+
+"The mad doctors," said Turnbull, shortly.
+
+"Quite so," said MacIan.
+
+After a rather restless silence Turnbull plucked MacIan by the
+elbow and pulled him aside.
+
+"For goodness sake," he said, "don't offend this fellow; he may
+be as mad as ten hatters, if you like, but he has us between his
+finger and thumb.  This is the very time he appointed to talk with
+us about our--well, our exeat."
+
+"But what can it matter?" asked the wondering MacIan.  "He can't
+keep us in the asylum.  We're not mad."
+
+"Jackass!" said Turnbull, heartily, "of course we're not mad.  Of
+course, if we are medically examined and the thing is thrashed
+out, they will find we are not mad.  But don't you see that if the
+thing is thrashed out it will mean letters to this reference and
+telegrams to that; and at the first word of who we are, we shall
+be taken out of a madhouse, where we may smoke, to a jail, where
+we mayn't.  No, if we manage this very quietly, he may merely let
+us out at the front door as stray revellers.  If there's half an
+hour of inquiry, we are cooked."
+
+MacIan looked at the grass frowningly for a few seconds, and then
+said in a new, small and childish voice: "I am awfully stupid,
+Mr. Turnbull; you must be patient with me."
+
+Turnbull caught Evan's elbow again with quite another gesture.
+"Come," he cried, with the harsh voice of one who hides emotion,
+"come and let us be tactful in chorus."
+
+The doctor with the pointed beard was already slanting it forward
+at a more than usually acute angle, with the smile that expressed
+expectancy.
+
+"I hope I do not hurry you, gentlemen," he said, with the
+faintest suggestion of a sneer at their hurried consultation,
+"but I believe you wanted to see me at half past eleven."
+
+"I am most awfully sorry, Doctor," said Turnbull, with ready
+amiability; "I never meant to keep you waiting; but the silly
+accident that has landed us in your garden may have some rather
+serious consequences to our friends elsewhere, and my friend here
+was just drawing my attention to some of them."
+
+"Quite so!  Quite so!" said the doctor, hurriedly.  "If you really
+want to put anything before me, I can give you a few moments in
+my consulting-room."
+
+He led them rapidly into a small but imposing apartment, which
+seemed to be built and furnished entirely in red-varnished wood.
+There was one desk occupied with carefully docketed papers; and
+there were several chairs of the red-varnished wood--though of
+different shape.  All along the wall ran something that might have
+been a bookcase, only that it was not filled with books, but with
+flat, oblong slabs or cases of the same polished dark-red
+consistency.  What those flat wooden cases were they could form no
+conception.
+
+The doctor sat down with a polite impatience on his professional
+perch; MacIan remained standing, but Turnbull threw himself
+almost with luxury into a hard wooden arm-chair.
+
+"This is a most absurd business, Doctor," he said, "and I am
+ashamed to take up the time of busy professional men with such
+pranks from outside.  The plain fact is, that he and I and a pack
+of silly men and girls have organized a game across this part of
+the country--a sort of combination of hare and hounds and hide
+and seek--I dare say you've heard of it.  We are the hares, and,
+seeing your high wall look so inviting, we tumbled over it, and
+naturally were a little startled with what we found on the other
+side."
+
+"Quite so!" said the doctor, mildly.  "I can understand that you
+were startled."
+
+Turnbull had expected him to ask what place was the headquarters
+of the new exhilarating game, and who were the male and female
+enthusiasts who had brought it to such perfection; in fact,
+Turnbull was busy making up these personal and topographical
+particulars.  As the doctor did not ask the question, he grew
+slightly uneasy, and risked the question: "I hope you will accept
+my assurance that the thing was an accident and that no intrusion
+was meant."
+
+"Oh, yes, sir," replied the doctor, smiling, "I accept everything
+that you say."
+
+"In that case," said Turnbull, rising genially, "we must not
+further interrupt your important duties.  I suppose there will be
+someone to let us out?"
+
+"No," said the doctor, still smiling steadily and pleasantly,
+"there will be no one to let you out."
+
+"Can we let ourselves out, then?" asked Turnbull, in some
+surprise.
+
+"Why, of course not," said the beaming scientist; "think how
+dangerous that would be in a place like this."
+
+"Then, how the devil are we to get out?" cried Turnbull, losing
+his manners for the first time.
+
+"It is a question of time, of receptivity, and treatment," said
+the doctor, arching his eyebrows indifferently.  "I do not regard
+either of your cases as incurable."
+
+And with that the man of the world was struck dumb, and, as in
+all intolerable moments, the word was with the unworldly.
+
+MacIan took one stride to the table, leant across it, and said:
+"We can't stop here, we're not mad people!"
+
+"We don't use the crude phrase," said the doctor, smiling at his
+patent-leather boots.
+
+"But you _can't_ think us mad," thundered MacIan.  "You never saw
+us before.  You know nothing about us.  You haven't even examined
+us."
+
+The doctor threw back his head and beard.  "Oh, yes," he said,
+"very thoroughly."
+
+"But you can't shut a man up on your mere impressions without
+documents or certificates or anything?"
+
+The doctor got languidly to his feet.  "Quite so," he said.  "You
+certainly ought to see the documents."
+
+He went across to the curious mock book-shelves and took down one
+of the flat mahogany cases.  This he opened with a curious key at
+his watch-chain, and laying back a flap revealed a quire of
+foolscap covered with close but quite clear writing.  The first
+three words were in such large copy-book hand that they caught
+the eye even at a distance.  They were: "MacIan, Evan Stuart."
+
+Evan bent his angry eagle face over it; yet something blurred it
+and he could never swear he saw it distinctly.  He saw something
+that began: "Prenatal influences predisposing to mania.
+Grandfather believed in return of the Stuarts.  Mother carried
+bone of St. Eulalia with which she touched children in sickness.
+Marked religious mania at early age----"
+
+Evan fell back and fought for his speech.  "Oh!" he burst out at
+last.  "Oh! if all this world I have walked in had been as sane as
+my mother was."
+
+Then he compressed his temples with his hands, as if to crush
+them.  And then lifted suddenly a face that looked fresh and
+young, as if he had dipped and washed it in some holy well.
+
+"Very well," he cried; "I will take the sour with the sweet.  I
+will pay the penalty of having enjoyed God in this monstrous
+modern earth that cannot enjoy man or beast.  I will die happy in
+your madhouse, only because I know what I know.  Let it be
+granted, then--MacIan is a mystic; MacIan is a maniac.  But this
+honest shopkeeper and editor whom I have dragged on my inhuman
+escapades, you cannot keep him.  He will go free, thank God, he is
+not down in any damned document.  His ancestor, I am certain, did
+not die at Culloden.  His mother, I swear, had no relics.  Let my
+friend out of your front door, and as for me----"
+
+The doctor had already gone across to the laden shelves, and
+after a few minutes' short-sighted peering, had pulled down
+another parallelogram of dark-red wood.
+
+This also he unlocked on the table, and with the same unerring
+egotistic eye on of the company saw the words, written in large
+letters: "Turnbull, James."
+
+Hitherto Turnbull himself had somewhat scornfully surrendered his
+part in the whole business; but he was too honest and unaffected
+not to start at his own name.  After the name, the inscription
+appeared to run: "Unique case of Eleutheromania.  Parentage, as so
+often in such cases, prosaic and healthy.  Eleutheromaniac signs
+occurred early, however, leading him to attach himself to the
+individualist Bradlaugh.  Recent outbreak of pure anarchy----"
+
+Turnbull slammed the case to, almost smashing it, and said with a
+burst of savage laughter: "Oh! come along, MacIan; I don't care
+so much, even about getting out of the madhouse, if only we get
+out of this room.  You were right enough, MacIan, when you spoke
+about--about mad doctors."
+
+Somehow they found themselves outside in the cool, green garden,
+and then, after a stunned silence, Turnbull said: "There is one
+thing that was puzzling me all the time, and I understand it
+now."
+
+"What do you mean?" asked Evan.
+
+"No man by will or wit," answered Turnbull, "can get out of this
+garden; and yet we got into it merely by jumping over a garden
+wall.  The whole thing explains itself easily enough.  That
+undefended wall was an open trap.  It was a trap laid for two
+celebrated lunatics.  They saw us get in right enough.  And they
+will see that we do not get out."
+
+Evan gazed at the garden wall, gravely for more than a minute,
+and then he nodded without a word.
+
+
+
+XV. THE DREAM OF MACIAN
+
+The system of espionage in the asylum was so effective and
+complete that in practice the patients could often enjoy a sense
+of almost complete solitude.  They could stray up so near to the
+wall in an apparently unwatched garden as to find it easy to jump
+over it.  They would only have found the error of their
+calculations if they had tried to jump.
+
+Under this insulting liberty, in this artificial loneliness, Evan
+MacIan was in the habit of creeping out into the garden after
+dark--especially upon moonlight nights.  The moon, indeed, was for
+him always a positive magnet in a manner somewhat hard to explain
+to those of a robuster attitude.  Evidently, Apollo is to the full
+as poetical as Diana; but it is not a question of poetry in the
+matured and intellectual sense of the word.  It is a question of a
+certain solid and childish fancy.  The sun is in the strict and
+literal sense invisible; that is to say, that by our bodily eyes
+it cannot properly be seen.  But the moon is a much simpler thing;
+a naked and nursery sort of thing.  It hangs in the sky quite
+solid and quite silver and quite useless; it is one huge
+celestial snowball.  It was at least some such infantile facts and
+fancies which led Evan again and again during his dehumanized
+imprisonment to go out as if to shoot the moon.
+
+He was out in the garden on one such luminous and ghostly night,
+when the steady moonshine toned down all the colours of the
+garden until almost the strongest tints to be seen were the
+strong soft blue of the sky and the large lemon moon.  He was
+walking with his face turned up to it in that rather half-witted
+fashion which might have excused the error of his keepers; and as
+he gazed he became aware of something little and lustrous flying
+close to the lustrous orb, like a bright chip knocked off the
+moon.  At first he thought it was a mere sparkle or refraction in
+his own eyesight; he blinked and cleared his eyes.  Then he
+thought it was a falling star; only it did not fall.  It jerked
+awkwardly up and down in a way unknown among meteors and
+strangely reminiscent of the works of man.  The next moment the
+thing drove right across the moon, and from being silver upon
+blue, suddenly became black upon silver; then although it passed
+the field of light in a flash its outline was unmistakable though
+eccentric.  It was a flying ship.
+
+The vessel took one long and sweeping curve across the sky and
+came nearer and nearer to MacIan, like a steam-engine coming
+round a bend.  It was of pure white steel, and in the moon it
+gleamed like the armour of Sir Galahad.  The simile of such
+virginity is not inappropriate; for, as it grew larger and larger
+and lower and lower, Evan saw that the only figure in it was
+robed in white from head to foot and crowned with snow-white
+hair, on which the moonshine lay like a benediction.  The figure
+stood so still that he could easily have supposed it to be a
+statue.  Indeed, he thought it was until it spoke.
+
+"Evan," said the voice, and it spoke with the simple authority of
+some forgotten father revisiting his children, "you have remained
+here long enough, and your sword is wanted elsewhere."
+
+"Wanted for what?" asked the young man, accepting the monstrous
+event with a queer and clumsy naturalness; "what is my sword
+wanted for?"
+
+"For all that you hold dear," said the man standing in the
+moonlight; "for the thrones of authority and for all ancient
+loyalty to law."
+
+Evan looked up at the lunar orb again as if in irrational
+appeal--a moon calf bleating to his mother the moon.  But the face
+of Luna seemed as witless as his own; there is no help in nature
+against the supernatural; and he looked again at the tall marble
+figure that might have been made out of solid moonlight.
+
+Then he said in a loud voice: "Who are you?" and the next moment
+was seized by a sort of choking terror lest his question should
+be answered.  But the unknown preserved an impenetrable silence
+for a long space and then only answered: "I must not say who I am
+until the end of the world; but I may say what I am.  I am the
+law."
+
+And he lifted his head so that the moon smote full upon his
+beautiful and ancient face.
+
+The face was the face of a Greek god grown old, but not grown
+either weak or ugly; there was nothing to break its regularity
+except a rather long chin with a cleft in it, and this rather
+added distinction than lessened beauty.  His strong, well-opened
+eyes were very brilliant but quite colourless like steel.
+
+MacIan was one of those to whom a reverence and self-submission
+in ritual come quite easy, and are ordinary things.  It was not
+artificial in him to bend slightly to this solemn apparition or
+to lower his voice when he said: "Do you bring me some message?"
+
+"I do bring you a message," answered the man of moon and marble.
+"The king has returned."
+
+Evan did not ask for or require any explanation.  "I suppose you
+can take me to the war," he said, and the silent silver figure
+only bowed its head again.  MacIan clambered into the silver boat,
+and it rose upward to the stars.
+
+To say that it rose to the stars is no mere metaphor, for the sky
+had cleared to that occasional and astonishing transparency in
+which one can see plainly both stars and moon.
+
+As the white-robed figure went upward in his white chariot, he
+said quite quietly to Evan: "There is an answer to all the folly
+talked about equality.  Some stars are big and some small; some
+stand still and some circle around them as they stand.  They can
+be orderly, but they cannot be equal."
+
+"They are all very beautiful," said Evan, as if in doubt.
+
+"They are all beautiful," answered the other, "because each is in
+his place and owns his superior.  And now England will be
+beautiful after the same fashion.  The earth will be as beautiful
+as the heavens, because our kings have come back to us."
+
+"The Stuart----" began Evan, earnestly.
+
+"Yes," answered the old man, "that which has returned is Stuart
+and yet older than Stuart.  It is Capet and Plantagenet and
+Pendragon.  It is all that good old time of which proverbs tell,
+that golden reign of Saturn against which gods and men were
+rebels.  It is all that was ever lost by insolence and overwhelmed
+in rebellion.  It is your own forefather, MacIan with the broken
+sword, bleeding without hope at Culloden.  It is Charles refusing
+to answer the questions of the rebel court.  It is Mary of the
+magic face confronting the gloomy and grasping peers and the
+boorish moralities of Knox.  It is Richard, the last Plantagenet,
+giving his crown to Bolingbroke as to a common brigand.  It is
+Arthur, overwhelmed in Lyonesse by heathen armies and dying in
+the mist, doubtful if ever he shall return."
+
+"But now----" said Evan, in a low voice.
+
+"But now!" said the old man; "he has returned."
+
+"Is the war still raging?" asked MacIan.
+
+"It rages like the pit itself beyond the sea whither I am taking
+you," answered the other.  "But in England the king enjoys his own
+again.  The people are once more taught and ruled as is best; they
+are happy knights, happy squires, happy servants, happy serfs, if
+you will; but free at last of that load of vexation and lonely
+vanity which was called being a citizen."
+
+"Is England, indeed, so secure?" asked Evan.
+
+"Look out and see," said the guide.  "I fancy you have seen this
+place before."
+
+They were driving through the air towards one region of the sky
+where the hollow of night seemed darkest and which was quite
+without stars.  But against this black background there sprang up,
+picked out in glittering silver, a dome and a cross.  It seemed
+that it was really newly covered with silver, which in the strong
+moonlight was like white flame.  But, however, covered or painted,
+Evan had no difficult in knowing the place again.  He saw the
+great thoroughfare that sloped upward to the base of its huge
+pedestal of steps.  And he wondered whether the little shop was
+still by the side of it and whether its window had been mended.
+
+As the flying ship swept round the dome he observed other
+alterations.  The dome had been redecorated so as to give it a
+more solemn and somewhat more ecclesiastical note; the ball was
+draped or destroyed, and round the gallery, under the cross, ran
+what looked like a ring of silver statues, like the little leaden
+images that stood round the hat of Louis XI.  Round the second
+gallery, at the base of the dome, ran a second rank of such
+images, and Evan thought there was another round the steps below.
+When they came closer he saw that they were figures in complete
+armour of steel or silver, each with a naked sword, point upward;
+and then he saw one of the swords move.  These were not statues
+but an armed order of chivalry thrown in three circles round the
+cross.  MacIan drew in his breath, as children do at anything they
+think utterly beautiful.  For he could imagine nothing that so
+echoed his own visions of pontifical or chivalric art as this
+white dome sitting like a vast silver tiara over London, ringed
+with a triple crown of swords.
+
+As they went sailing down Ludgate Hill, Evan saw that the state
+of the streets fully answered his companion's claim about the
+reintroduction of order.  All the old blackcoated bustle with its
+cockney vivacity and vulgarity had disappeared.  Groups of
+labourers, quietly but picturesquely clad, were passing up and
+down in sufficiently large numbers; but it required but a few
+mounted men to keep the streets in order.  The mounted men were
+not common policemen, but knights with spurs and plume whose
+smooth and splendid armour glittered like diamond rather than
+steel.  Only in one place--at the corner of Bouverie Street--did
+there appear to be a moment's confusion, and that was due to
+hurry rather than resistance.  But one old grumbling man did not
+get out of the way quick enough, and the man on horseback struck
+him, not severely, across the shoulders with the flat of his
+sword.
+
+"The soldier had no business to do that," said MacIan, sharply.
+"The old man was moving as quickly as he could."
+
+"We attach great importance to discipline in the streets," said
+the man in white, with a slight smile.
+
+"Discipline is not so important as justice," said MacIan.
+
+The other did not answer.
+
+Then after a swift silence that took them out across St. James's
+Park, he said: "The people must be taught to obey; they must
+learn their own ignorance.  And I am not sure," he continued,
+turning his back on Evan and looking out of the prow of the ship
+into the darkness, "I am not sure that I agree with your little
+maxim about justice.  Discipline for the whole society is surely
+more important than justice to an individual."
+
+Evan, who was also leaning over the edge, swung round with
+startling suddenness and stared at the other's back.
+
+"Discipline for society----" he repeated, very staccato, "more
+important--justice to individual?"
+
+Then after a long silence he called out: "Who and what are you?"
+
+"I am an angel," said the white-robed figure, without turning
+round.
+
+"You are not a Catholic," said MacIan.
+
+The other seemed to take no notice, but reverted to the main
+topic.
+
+"In our armies up in heaven we learn to put a wholesome fear into
+subordinates."
+
+MacIan sat craning his neck forward with an extraordinary and
+unaccountable eagerness.
+
+"Go on!" he cried, twisting and untwisting his long, bony
+fingers, "go on!"
+
+"Besides," continued he, in the prow, "you must allow for a
+certain high spirit and haughtiness in the superior type."
+
+"Go on!" said Evan, with burning eyes.
+
+"Just as the sight of sin offends God," said the unknown, "so
+does the sight of ugliness offend Apollo.  The beautiful and
+princely must, of necessity, be impatient with the squalid
+and----"
+
+"Why, you great fool!" cried MacIan, rising to the top of his
+tremendous stature, "did you think I would have doubted only for
+that rap with a sword?  I know that noble orders have bad knights,
+that good knights have bad tempers, that the Church has rough
+priests and coarse cardinals; I have known it ever since I was
+born.  You fool! you had only to say, 'Yes, it is rather a shame,'
+and I should have forgotten the affair.  But I saw on your mouth
+the twitch of your infernal sophistry; I knew that something was
+wrong with you and your cathedrals.  Something is wrong;
+everything is wrong.  You are not an angel.  That is not a church.
+It is not the rightful king who has come home."
+
+"That is unfortunate," said the other, in a quiet but hard voice,
+"because you are going to see his Majesty."
+
+"No," said MacIan, "I am going to jump over the side."
+
+"Do you desire death?"
+
+"No," said Evan, quite composedly, "I desire a miracle."
+
+"From whom do you ask it?  To whom do you appeal?" said his
+companion, sternly.  "You have betrayed the king, renounced his
+cross on the cathedral, and insulted an archangel."
+
+"I appeal to God," said Evan, and sprang up and stood upon the
+edge of the swaying ship.
+
+The being in the prow turned slowly round; he looked at Evan with
+eyes which were like two suns, and put his hand to his mouth just
+too late to hide an awful smile.
+
+"And how do you know," he said, "how do you know that I am not
+God?"
+
+MacIan screamed.  "Ah!" he cried.  "Now I know who you really are.
+You are not God.  You are not one of God's angels.  But you were
+once."
+
+The being's hand dropped from his mouth and Evan dropped out of
+the car.
+
+
+
+XVI. THE DREAM OF TURNBULL
+
+Turnbull was walking rather rampantly up and down the garden on a
+gusty evening chewing his cigar and in that mood when every man
+suppresses an instinct to spit.  He was not, as a rule, a man much
+acquainted with moods; and the storms and sunbursts of MacIan's
+soul passed before him as an impressive but unmeaning panorama,
+like the anarchy of Highland scenery.  Turnbull was one of those
+men in whom a continuous appetite and industry of the intellect
+leave the emotions very simple and steady.  His heart was in the
+right place; but he was quite content to leave it there.  It was
+his head that was his hobby.  His mornings and evenings were
+marked not by impulses or thirsty desires, not by hope or by
+heart-break; they were filled with the fallacies he had detected,
+the problems he had made plain, the adverse theories he had
+wrestled with and thrown, the grand generalizations he had
+justified.  But even the cheerful inner life of a logician may be
+upset by a lunatic asylum, to say nothing of whiffs of memory
+from a lady in Jersey, and the little red-bearded man on this
+windy evening was in a dangerous frame of mind.
+
+Plain and positive as he was, the influence of earth and sky may
+have been greater on him than he imagined; and the weather that
+walked the world at that moment was as red and angry as Turnbull.
+Long strips and swirls of tattered and tawny cloud were dragged
+downward to the west exactly as torn red raiment would be
+dragged.  And so strong and pitiless was the wind that it whipped
+away fragments of red-flowering bushes or of copper beech, and
+drove them also across the garden, a drift of red leaves, like
+the leaves of autumn, as in parody of the red and driven rags of
+cloud.
+
+There was a sense in earth and heaven as of everything breaking
+up, and all the revolutionist in Turnbull rejoiced that it was
+breaking up.  The trees were breaking up under the wind, even in
+the tall strength of their bloom: the clouds were breaking up and
+losing even their large heraldic shapes.  Shards and shreds of
+copper cloud split off continually and floated by themselves, and
+for some reason the truculent eye of Turnbull was attracted to
+one of these careering cloudlets, which seemed to him to career
+in an exaggerated manner.  Also it kept its shape, which is
+unusual with clouds shaken off; also its shape was of an odd
+sort.
+
+Turnbull continued to stare at it, and in a little time occurred
+that crucial instant when a thing, however incredible, is
+accepted as a fact.  The copper cloud was tumbling down towards
+the earth, like some gigantic leaf from the copper beeches.  And
+as it came nearer it was evident, first, that it was not a cloud,
+and, second, that it was not itself of the colour of copper;
+only, being burnished like a mirror, it had reflected the
+red-brown colours of the burning clouds.  As the thing whirled
+like a windswept leaf down towards the wall of the garden it was
+clear that it was some sort of air-ship made of metal, and
+slapping the air with big broad fins of steel.  When it came about
+a hundred feet above the garden, a shaggy, lean figure leapt up
+in it, almost black against the bronze and scarlet of the west,
+and, flinging out a kind of hook or anchor, caught on to the
+green apple-tree just under the wall; and from that fixed holding
+ground the ship swung in the red tempest like a captive balloon.
+
+While our friend stood frozen for an instant by his astonishment,
+the queer figure in the airy car tipped the vehicle almost upside
+down by leaping over the side of it, seemed to slide or drop down
+the rope like a monkey, and alighted (with impossible precision
+and placidity) seated on the edge of the wall, over which he
+kicked and dangled his legs as he grinned at Turnbull.  The wind
+roared in the trees yet more ruinous and desolate, the red tails
+of the sunset were dragged downward like red dragons sucked down
+to death, and still on the top of the asylum wall sat the
+sinister figure with the grimace, swinging his feet in tune with
+the tempest; while above him, at the end of its tossing or
+tightened cord, the enormous iron air-ship floated as light and
+as little noticed as a baby's balloon upon its string.
+
+Turnbull's first movement after sixty motionless seconds was to
+turn round and look at the large, luxuriant parallelogram of the
+garden and the long, low rectangular building beyond.  There was
+not a soul or a stir of life within sight.  And he had a quite
+meaningless sensation, as if there never really had been any one
+else there except he since the foundation of the world.
+
+Stiffening in himself the masculine but mirthless courage of the
+atheist, he drew a little nearer to the wall and, catching the
+man at a slightly different angle of the evening light, could see
+his face and figure quite plain.  Two facts about him stood out in
+the picked colours of some piratical schoolboy's story.  The first
+was that his lean brown body was bare to the belt of his loose
+white trousers; the other that through hygiene, affectation, or
+whatever other cause, he had a scarlet handkerchief tied tightly
+but somewhat aslant across his brow.  After these two facts had
+become emphatic, others appeared sufficiently important.  One was
+that under the scarlet rag the hair was plentiful, but white as
+with the last snows of mortality.  Another was that under the mop
+of white and senile hair the face was strong, handsome, and
+smiling, with a well-cut profile and a long cloven chin.  The
+length of this lower part of the face and the strange cleft in it
+(which gave the man, in quite another sense from the common one,
+a double chin) faintly spoilt the claim of the face to absolute
+regularity, but it greatly assisted it in wearing the expression
+of half-smiling and half-sneering arrogance with which it was
+staring at all the stones, all the flowers, but especially at the
+solitary man.
+
+"What do you want?" shouted Turnbull.
+
+"I want you, Jimmy," said the eccentric man on the wall, and with
+the very word he had let himself down with a leap on to the
+centre of the lawn, where he bounded once literally like an
+India-rubber ball and then stood grinning with his legs astride.
+The only three facts that Turnbull could now add to his inventory
+were that the man had an ugly-looking knife swinging at his
+trousers belt, that his brown feet were as bare as his bronzed
+trunk and arms, and that his eyes had a singular bleak brilliancy
+which was of no particular colour.
+
+"Excuse my not being in evening dress," said the newcomer with an
+urbane smile.  "We scientific men, you know--I have to work my own
+engines--electrical engineer--very hot work."
+
+"Look here," said Turnbull, sturdily clenching his fists in his
+trousers pockets, "I am bound to expect lunatics inside these
+four walls; but I do bar their coming from outside, bang out of
+the sunset clouds."
+
+"And yet you came from the outside, too, Jim," said the stranger
+in a voice almost affectionate.
+
+"What do you want?" asked Turnbull, with an explosion of temper
+as sudden as a pistol shot.
+
+"I have already told you," said the man, lowering his voice and
+speaking with evident sincerity; "I want you."
+
+"What do you want with me?"
+
+"I want exactly what you want," said the new-comer with a new
+gravity.  "I want the Revolution."
+
+Turnbull looked at the fire-swept sky and the wind-stricken
+woodlands, and kept on repeating the word voicelessly to
+himself--the word that did indeed so thoroughly express his mood
+of rage as it had been among those red clouds and rocking
+tree-tops.  "Revolution!" he said to himself.  "The
+Revolution--yes, that is what I want right enough--anything, so
+long as it is a Revolution."
+
+To some cause he could never explain he found himself completing
+the sentence on the top of the wall, having automatically
+followed the stranger so far.  But when the stranger silently
+indicated the rope that led to the machine, he found himself
+pausing and saying: "I can't leave MacIan behind in this den."
+
+"We are going to destroy the Pope and all the kings," said the
+new-comer.  "Would it be wiser to take him with us?"
+
+Somehow the muttering Turnbull found himself in the flying ship
+also, and it swung up into the sunset.
+
+"All the great rebels have been very little rebels," said the man
+with the red scarf.  "They have been like fourth-form boys who
+sometimes venture to hit a fifth-form boy.  That was all the worth
+of their French Revolution and regicide.  The boys never really
+dared to defy the schoolmaster."
+
+"Whom do you mean by the schoolmaster?" asked Turnbull.
+
+"You know whom I mean," answered the strange man, as he lay back
+on cushions and looked up into the angry sky.
+
+They seemed rising into stronger and stronger sunlight, as if it
+were sunrise rather than sunset.  But when they looked down at the
+earth they saw it growing darker and darker.  The lunatic asylum
+in its large rectangular grounds spread below them in a
+foreshortened and infantile plan, and looked for the first time
+the grotesque thing that it was.  But the clear colours of the
+plan were growing darker every moment.  The masses of rose or
+rhododendron deepened from crimson to violet.  The maze of gravel
+pathways faded from gold to brown.  By the time they had risen a
+few hundred feet higher nothing could be seen of that darkening
+landscape except the lines of lighted windows, each one of which,
+at least, was the light of one lost intelligence.  But on them as
+they swept upward better and braver winds seemed to blow, and on
+them the ruby light of evening seemed struck, and splashed like
+red spurts from the grapes of Dionysus.  Below them the fallen
+lights were literally the fallen stars of servitude.  And above
+them all the red and raging clouds were like the leaping flags of
+liberty.
+
+The man with the cloven chin seemed to have a singular power of
+understanding thoughts; for, as Turnbull felt the whole universe
+tilt and turn over his head, the stranger said exactly the right
+thing.
+
+"Doesn't it seem as if everything were being upset?" said he;
+"and if once everything is upset, He will be upset on top of it."
+
+Then, as Turnbull made no answer, his host continued:
+
+"That is the really fine thing about space.  It is topsy-turvy.
+You have only to climb far enough towards the morning star to
+feel that you are coming down to it.  You have only to dive deep
+enough into the abyss to feel that you are rising.  That is the
+only glory of this universe--it is a giddy universe."
+
+Then, as Turnbull was still silent, he added:
+
+"The heavens are full of revolution--of the real sort of
+revolution.  All the high things are sinking low and all the big
+things looking small.  All the people who think they are aspiring
+find they are falling head foremost.  And all the people who think
+they are condescending find they are climbing up a precipice.
+That is the intoxication of space.  That is the only joy of
+eternity--doubt.  There is only one pleasure the angels can
+possibly have in flying, and that is, that they do not know
+whether they are on their head or their heels."
+
+Then, finding his companion still mute, he fell himself into a
+smiling and motionless meditation, at the end of which he said
+suddenly:
+
+"So MacIan converted you?"
+
+Turnbull sprang up as if spurning the steel car from under his
+feet.  "Converted me!" he cried.  "What the devil do you mean?  I
+have known him for a month, and I have not retracted a
+single----"
+
+"This Catholicism is a curious thing," said the man of the cloven
+chin in uninterrupted reflectiveness, leaning his elegant elbows
+over the edge of the vessel; "it soaks and weakens men without
+their knowing it, just as I fear it has soaked and weakened you."
+
+Turnbull stood in an attitude which might well have meant
+pitching the other man out of the flying ship.
+
+"I am an atheist," he said, in a stifled voice.  "I have always
+been an atheist.  I am still an atheist."  Then, addressing the
+other's indolent and indifferent back, he cried: "In God's name
+what do you mean?"
+
+And the other answered without turning round:
+
+"I mean nothing in God's name."
+
+Turnbull spat over the edge of the car and fell back furiously
+into his seat.
+
+The other continued still unruffled, and staring over the edge
+idly as an angler stares down at a stream.
+
+"The truth is that we never thought that you could have been
+caught," he said; "we counted on you as the one red-hot
+revolutionary left in the world.  But, of course, these men like
+MacIan are awfully clever, especially when they pretend to be
+stupid."
+
+Turnbull leapt up again in a living fury and cried: "What have I
+got to do with MacIan?  I believe all I ever believed, and
+disbelieve all I ever disbelieved.  What does all this mean, and
+what do you want with me here?"
+
+Then for the first time the other lifted himself from the edge of
+the car and faced him.
+
+"I have brought you here," he answered, "to take part in the last
+war of the world."
+
+"The last war!" repeated Turnbull, even in his dazed state a
+little touchy about such a dogma; "how do you know it will be the
+last?"
+
+The man laid himself back in his reposeful attitude, and said:
+
+"It is the last war, because if it does not cure the world for
+ever, it will destroy it."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"I only mean what you mean," answered the unknown in a temperate
+voice.  "What was it that you always meant on those million and
+one nights when you walked outside your Ludgate Hill shop and
+shook your hand in the air?"
+
+"Still I do not see," said Turnbull, stubbornly.
+
+"You will soon," said the other, and abruptly bent downward one
+iron handle of his huge machine.  The engine stopped, stooped, and
+dived almost as deliberately as a man bathing; in their downward
+rush they swept within fifty yards of a big bulk of stone that
+Turnbull knew only too well.  The last red anger of the sunset was
+ended; the dome of heaven was dark; the lanes of flaring light in
+the streets below hardly lit up the base of the building.  But he
+saw that it was St. Paul's Cathedral, and he saw that on the top
+of it the ball was still standing erect, but the cross was
+stricken and had fallen sideways.  Then only he cared to look down
+into the streets, and saw that they were inflamed with uproar and
+tossing passions.
+
+"We arrive at a happy moment," said the man steering the ship.
+"The insurgents are bombarding the city, and a cannon-ball has
+just hit the cross.  Many of the insurgents are simple people, and
+they naturally regard it as a happy omen."
+
+"Quite so," said Turnbull, in a rather colourless voice.
+
+"Yes," replied the other.  "I thought you would be glad to see
+your prayer answered.  Of course I apologize for the word prayer."
+
+"Don't mention it," said Turnbull.
+
+The flying ship had come down upon a sort of curve, and was now
+rising again.  The higher and higher it rose the broader and
+broader became the scenes of flame and desolation underneath.
+
+Ludgate Hill indeed had been an uncaptured and comparatively
+quiet height, altered only by the startling coincidence of the
+cross fallen awry.  All the other thoroughfares on all sides of
+that hill were full of the pulsation and the pain of battle, full
+of shaking torches and shouting faces.  When at length they had
+risen high enough to have a bird's-eye view of the whole
+campaign, Turnbull was already intoxicated.  He had smelt
+gunpowder, which was the incense of his own revolutionary
+religion.
+
+"Have the people really risen?" he asked, breathlessly.  "What are
+they fighting about?"
+
+"The programme is rather elaborate," said his entertainer with
+some indifference.  "I think Dr. Hertz drew it up."
+
+Turnbull wrinkled his forehead.  "Are all the poor people with the
+Revolution?" he asked.
+
+The other shrugged his shoulders.  "All the instructed and
+class-conscious part of them without exception," he replied.
+"There were certainly a few districts; in fact, we are passing
+over them just now----"
+
+Turnbull looked down and saw that the polished car was literally
+lit up from underneath by the far-flung fires from below.
+Underneath whole squares and solid districts were in flames, like
+prairies or forests on fire.
+
+"Dr. Hertz has convinced everybody," said Turnbull's cicerone in
+a smooth voice, "that nothing can really be done with the real
+slums.  His celebrated maxim has been quite adopted.  I mean the
+three celebrated sentences: 'No man should be unemployed.  Employ
+the employables.  Destroy the unemployables.'"
+
+There was a silence, and then Turnbull said in a rather strained
+voice: "And do I understand that this good work is going on under
+here?"
+
+"Going on splendidly," replied his companion in the heartiest
+voice.  "You see, these people were much too tired and weak even
+to join the social war.  They were a definite hindrance to it."
+
+"And so you are simply burning them out?"
+
+"It _does_ seem absurdly simple," said the man, with a beaming
+smile, "when one thinks of all the worry and talk about helping a
+hopeless slave population, when the future obviously was only
+crying to be rid of them.  There are happy babes unborn ready to
+burst the doors when these drivellers are swept away."
+
+"Will you permit me to say," said Turnbull, after reflection,
+"that I don't like all this?"
+
+"And will you permit me to say," said the other, with a snap,
+"that I don't like Mr. Evan MacIan?"
+
+Somewhat to the speaker's surprise this did not inflame the
+sensitive sceptic; he had the air of thinking thoroughly, and
+then he said: "No, I don't think it's my friend MacIan that
+taught me that.  I think I should always have said that I don't
+like this.  These people have rights."
+
+"Rights!" repeated the unknown in a tone quite indescribable.
+Then he added with a more open sneer: "Perhaps they also have
+souls."
+
+"They have lives!" said Turnbull, sternly; "that is quite enough
+for me.  I understood you to say that you thought life sacred."
+
+"Yes, indeed!" cried his mentor with a sort of idealistic
+animation.  "Yes, indeed!  Life is sacred--but lives are not
+sacred.  We are improving Life by removing lives.  Can you, as a
+free-thinker, find any fault in that?"
+
+"Yes," said Turnbull with brevity.
+
+"Yet you applaud tyrannicide," said the stranger with
+rationalistic gaiety.  "How inconsistent!  It really comes to
+this: You approve of taking away life from those to whom it is a
+triumph and a pleasure.  But you will not take away life from
+those to whom it is a burden and a toil."
+
+Turnbull rose to his feet in the car with considerable
+deliberation, but his face seemed oddly pale.  The other went on
+with enthusiasm.
+
+"Life, yes, Life is indeed sacred!" he cried; "but new lives for
+old!  Good lives for bad!  On that very place where now there
+sprawls one drunken wastrel of a pavement artist more or less
+wishing he were dead--on that very spot there shall in the future
+be living pictures; there shall be golden girls and boys leaping
+in the sun."
+
+Turnbull, still standing up, opened his lips.  "Will you put me
+down, please?" he said, quite calmly, like on stopping an
+omnibus.
+
+"Put you down--what do you mean?" cried his leader.  "I am taking
+you to the front of the revolutionary war, where you will be one
+of the first of the revolutionary leaders."
+
+"Thank you," replied Turnbull with the same painful constraint.
+"I have heard about your revolutionary war, and I think on the
+whole that I would rather be anywhere else."
+
+"Do you want to be taken to a monastery," snarled the other,
+"with MacIan and his winking Madonnas."
+
+"I want to be taken to a madhouse," said Turnbull distinctly,
+giving the direction with a sort of precision.  "I want to go back
+to exactly the same lunatic asylum from which I came."
+
+"Why?" asked the unknown.
+
+"Because I want a little sane and wholesome society," answered
+Turnbull.
+
+There was a long and peculiar silence, and then the man driving
+the flying machine said quite coolly: "I won't take you back."
+
+And then Turnbull said equally coolly: "Then I'll jump out of the
+car."
+
+The unknown rose to his full height, and the expression in his
+eyes seemed to be made of ironies behind ironies, as two mirrors
+infinitely reflect each other.  At last he said, very gravely: "Do
+you think I am the devil?"
+
+"Yes," said Turnbull, violently.  "For I think the devil is a
+dream, and so are you.  I don't believe in you or your flying ship
+or your last fight of the world.  It is all a nightmare.  I say as
+a fact of dogma and faith that it is all a nightmare.  And I will
+be a martyr for my faith as much as St. Catherine, for I will
+jump out of this ship and risk waking up safe in bed."
+
+After swaying twice with the swaying vessel he dived over the
+side as one dives into the sea.  For some incredible moments stars
+and space and planets seemed to shoot up past him as the sparks
+fly upward; and yet in that sickening descent he was full of some
+unnatural happiness.  He could connect it with no idea except one
+that half escaped him--what Evan had said of the difference
+between Christ and Satan; that it was by Christ's own choice that
+He descended into hell.
+
+When he again realized anything, he was lying on his elbow on the
+lawn of the lunatic asylum, and the last red of the sunset had
+not yet disappeared.
+
+
+
+XVII. THE IDIOT
+
+Evan MacIan was standing a few yards off looking at him in
+absolute silence.
+
+He had not the moral courage to ask MacIan if there had been
+anything astounding in the manner of his coming there, nor did
+MacIan seem to have any question to ask, or perhaps any need to
+ask it.  The two men came slowly towards each other, and found the
+same expression on each other's faces.  Then, for the first time
+in all their acquaintance, they shook hands.
+
+Almost as if this were a kind of unconscious signal, it brought
+Dr. Quayle bounding out of a door and running across the lawn.
+
+"Oh, there you are!" he exclaimed with a relieved giggle.  "Will
+you come inside, please?  I want to speak to you both."
+
+They followed him into his shiny wooden office where their
+damning record was kept.  Dr. Quayle sat down on a swivel chair
+and swung round to face them.  His carved smile had suddenly
+disappeared.
+
+"I will be plain with you gentlemen," he said, abruptly; "you
+know quite well we do our best for everybody here.  Your cases
+have been under special consideration, and the Master himself has
+decided that you ought to be treated specially and--er--under
+somewhat simpler conditions."
+
+"You mean treated worse, I suppose," said Turnbull, gruffly.
+
+The doctor did not reply, and MacIan said: "I expected this."  His
+eyes had begun to glow.
+
+The doctor answered, looking at his desk and playing with a key:
+"Well, in certain cases that give anxiety--it is often
+better----"
+
+"Give anxiety," said Turnbull, fiercely.  "Confound your
+impudence!  What do you mean?  You imprison two perfectly sane men
+in a madhouse because you have made up a long word.  They take it
+in good temper, walk and talk in your garden like monks who have
+found a vocation, are civil even to you, you damned druggists'
+hack!  Behave not only more sanely than any of your patients, but
+more sanely than half the sane men outside, and you have the
+soul-stifling cheek to say that they give anxiety."
+
+"The head of the asylum has settled it all," said Dr. Quayle,
+still looking down.
+
+MacIan took one of his immense strides forward and stood over the
+doctor with flaming eyes.
+
+"If the head has settled it let the head announce it," he said.
+"I won't take it from you.  I believe you to be a low, gibbering
+degenerate.  Let us see the head of the asylum."
+
+"See the head of the asylum," repeated Dr. Quayle.  "Certainly
+not."
+
+The tall Highlander, bending over him, put one hand on his
+shoulder with fatherly interest.
+
+"You don't seem to appreciate the peculiar advantages of my
+position as a lunatic," he said.  "I could kill you with my left
+hand before such a rat as you could so much as squeak.  And I
+wouldn't be hanged for it."
+
+"I certainly agree with Mr. MacIan," said Turnbull with sobriety
+and perfect respectfulness, "that you had better let us see the
+head of the institution."
+
+Dr. Quayle got to his feet in a mixture of sudden hysteria and
+clumsy presence of mind.
+
+"Oh, certainly," he said with a weak laugh.  "You can see the head
+of the asylum if you particularly want to."  He almost ran out of
+the room, and the two followed swiftly on his flying coat tails.
+He knocked at an ordinary varnished door in the corridor.  When a
+voice said, "Come in," MacIan's breath went hissing back through
+his teeth into his chest.  Turnbull was more impetuous, and opened
+the door.
+
+It was a neat and well-appointed room entirely lined with a
+medical library.  At the other end of it was a ponderous and
+polished desk with an incandescent lamp on it, the light of which
+was just sufficient to show a slender, well-bred figure in an
+ordinary medical black frock-coat, whose head, quite silvered
+with age, was bent over neat piles of notes.  This gentleman
+looked up for an instant as they entered, and the lamplight fell
+on his glittering spectacles and long, clean-shaven face--a face
+which would have been simply like an aristocrat's but that a
+certain lion poise of the head and long cleft in the chin made it
+look more like a very handsome actor's.  It was only for a flash
+that his face was thus lifted.  Then he bent his silver head over
+his notes once more, and said, without looking up again:
+
+"I told you, Dr. Quayle, that these men were to go to cells B and
+C."
+
+Turnbull and MacIan looked at each other, and said more than they
+could ever say with tongues or swords.  Among other things they
+said that to that particular Head of the institution it was a
+waste of time to appeal, and they followed Dr. Quayle out of the
+room.
+
+The instant they stepped out into the corridor four sturdy
+figures stepped from four sides, pinioned them, and ran them
+along the galleries.  They might very likely have thrown their
+captors right and left had they been inclined to resist, but for
+some nameless reason they were more inclined to laugh.  A mixture
+of mad irony with childish curiosity made them feel quite
+inclined to see what next twist would be taken by their imbecile
+luck.  They were dragged down countless cold avenues lined with
+glazed tiles, different only in being of different lengths and
+set at different angles.  They were so many and so monotonous that
+to escape back by them would have been far harder than fleeing
+from the Hampton Court maze.  Only the fact that windows grew
+fewer, coming at longer intervals, and the fact that when the
+windows did come they seemed shadowed and let in less light,
+showed that they were winding into the core or belly of some
+enormous building.  After a little time the glazed corridors began
+to be lit by electricity.
+
+At last, when they had walked nearly a mile in those white and
+polished tunnels, they came with quite a shock to the futile
+finality of a cul-de-sac.  All that white and weary journey ended
+suddenly in an oblong space and a blank white wall.  But in the
+white wall there were two iron doors painted white on which were
+written, respectively, in neat black capitals B and C.
+
+"You go in here, sir," said the leader of the officials, quite
+respectfully, "and you in here."
+
+But before the doors had clanged upon their dazed victims, MacIan
+had been able to say to Turnbull with a strange drawl of
+significance: "I wonder who A is."
+
+Turnbull made an automatic struggle before he allowed himself to
+be thrown into the cell.  Hence it happened that he was the last
+to enter, and was still full of the exhilaration of the
+adventures for at least five minutes after the echo of the
+clanging door had died away.
+
+Then, when silence had sunk deep and nothing happened for two and
+a half hours, it suddenly occurred to him that this was the end
+of his life.  He was hidden and sealed up in this little crack of
+stone until the flesh should fall off his bones.  He was dead, and
+the world had won.
+
+His cell was of an oblong shape, but very long in comparison with
+its width.  It was just wide enough to permit the arms to be fully
+extended with the dumb-bells, which were hung up on the left
+wall, very dusty.  It was, however, long enough for a man to walk
+one thirty-fifth part of a mile if he traversed it entirely.  On
+the same principle a row of fixed holes, quite close together,
+let in to the cells by pipes what was alleged to be the freshest
+air.  For these great scientific organizers insisted that a man
+should be healthy even if he was miserable.  They provided a walk
+long enough to give him exercise and holes large enough to give
+him oxygen.  There their interest in human nature suddenly ceased.
+It seemed never to have occurred to them that the benefit of
+exercise belongs partly to the benefit of liberty.  They had not
+entertained the suggestion that the open air is only one of the
+advantages of the open sky.  They administered air in secret, but
+in sufficient doses, as if it were a medicine.  They suggested
+walking, as if no man had ever felt inclined to walk.  Above all,
+the asylum authorities insisted on their own extraordinary
+cleanliness.  Every morning, while Turnbull was still half asleep
+on his iron bedstead which was lifted half-way up the wall and
+clamped to it with iron, four sluices or metal mouths opened
+above him at the four corners of the chamber and washed it white
+of any defilement.  Turnbull's solitary soul surged up against
+this sickening daily solemnity.
+
+"I am buried alive!" he cried, bitterly; "they have hidden me
+under mountains.  I shall be here till I rot.  Why the blazes
+should it matter to them whether I am dirty or clean."
+
+Every morning and evening an iron hatchway opened in his oblong
+cell, and a brown hairy hand or two thrust in a plate of
+perfectly cooked lentils and a big bowl of cocoa.  He was not
+underfed any more than he was underexercised or asphyxiated.  He
+had ample walking space, ample air, ample and even filling food.
+The only objection was that he had nothing to walk towards,
+nothing to feast about, and no reason whatever for drawing the
+breath of life.
+
+Even the shape of his cell especially irritated him.  It was a
+long, narrow parallelogram, which had a flat wall at one end and
+ought to have had a flat wall at the other; but that end was
+broken by a wedge or angle of space, like the prow of a ship.
+After three days of silence and cocoa, this angle at the end
+began to infuriate Turnbull.  It maddened him to think that two
+lines came together and pointed at nothing.  After the fifth day
+he was reckless, and poked his head into the corner.  After
+twenty-five days he almost broke his head against it.  Then he
+became quite cool and stupid again, and began to examine it like
+a sort of Robinson Crusoe.
+
+Almost unconsciously it was his instinct to examine outlets, and
+he found himself paying particular attention to the row of holes
+which let in the air into his last house of life.  He soon
+discovered that these air-holes were all the ends and mouths of
+long leaden tubes which doubtless carried air from some remote
+watering-place near Margate.  One evening while he was engaged in
+the fifth investigation he noticed something like twilight in one
+of these dumb mouths, as compared with the darkness of the
+others.  Thrusting his finger in as far as it would go, he found a
+hole and flapping edge in the tube.  This he rent open and
+instantly saw a light behind; it was at least certain that he had
+struck some other cell.
+
+It is a characteristic of all things now called "efficient",
+which means mechanical and calculated, that if they go wrong at
+all they go entirely wrong.  There is no power of retrieving a
+defeat, as in simpler and more living organisms.  A strong gun can
+conquer a strong elephant, but a wounded elephant can easily
+conquer a broken gun.  Thus the Prussian monarchy in the
+eighteenth century, or now, can make a strong army merely by
+making the men afraid.  But it does it with the permanent
+possibility that the men may some day be more afraid of their
+enemies than of their officers.  Thus the drainage in our cities
+so long as it is quite solid means a general safety, but if there
+is one leak it means concentrated poison--an explosion of deathly
+germs like dynamite, a spirit of stink.  Thus, indeed, all that
+excellent machinery which is the swiftest thing on earth in
+saving human labour is also the slowest thing on earth in
+resisting human interference.  It may be easier to get chocolate
+for nothing out of a shopkeeper than out of an automatic machine.
+But if you did manage to steal the chocolate, the automatic
+machine would be much less likely to run after you.
+
+Turnbull was not long in discovering this truth in connexion with
+the cold and colossal machinery of this great asylum.  He had been
+shaken by many spiritual states since the instant when he was
+pitched head foremost into that private cell which was to be his
+private room till death.  He had felt a high fit of pride and
+poetry, which had ebbed away and left him deadly cold.  He had
+known a period of mere scientific curiosity, in the course of
+which he examined all the tiles of his cell, with the gratifying
+conclusion that they were all the same shape and size; but was
+greatly puzzled about the angle in the wall at the end, and also
+about an iron peg or spike that stood out from the wall, the
+object of which he does not know to this day.  Then he had a
+period of mere madness not to be written of by decent men, but
+only by those few dirty novelists hallooed on by the infernal
+huntsman to hunt down and humiliate human nature.  This also
+passed, but left behind it a feverish distaste for many of the
+mere objects around him.  Long after he had returned to sanity and
+such hopeless cheerfulness as a man might have on a desert
+island, he disliked the regular squares of the pattern of wall
+and floor and the triangle that terminated his corridor.  Above
+all, he had a hatred, deep as the hell he did not believe in, for
+the objectless iron peg in the wall.
+
+But in all his moods, sane or insane, intolerant or stoical, he
+never really doubted this: that the machine held him as light and
+as hopelessly as he had from his birth been held by the hopeless
+cosmos of his own creed.  He knew well the ruthless and
+inexhaustible resources of our scientific civilization.  He no
+more expected rescue from a medical certificate than rescue from
+the solar system.  In many of his Robinson Crusoe moods he thought
+kindly of MacIan as of some quarrelsome school-fellow who had
+long been dead.  He thought of leaving in the cell when he died a
+rigid record of his opinions, and when he began to write them
+down on scraps of envelope in his pocket, he was startled to
+discover how much they had changed.  Then he remembered the
+Beauchamp Tower, and tried to write his blazing scepticism on the
+wall, and discovered that it was all shiny tiles on which nothing
+could be either drawn or carved.  Then for an instant there hung
+and broke above him like a high wave the whole horror of
+scientific imprisonment, which manages to deny a man not only
+liberty, but every accidental comfort of bondage.  In the old
+filthy dungeons men could carve their prayers or protests in the
+rock.  Here the white and slippery walls escaped even from bearing
+witness.  The old prisoners could make a pet of a mouse or a
+beetle strayed out of a hole.  Here the unpierceable walls were
+washed every morning by an automatic sluice.  There was no natural
+corruption and no merciful decay by which a living thing could
+enter in.  Then James Turnbull looked up and saw the high
+invincible hatefulness of the society in which he lived, and saw
+the hatefulness of something else also, which he told himself
+again and again was not the cosmos in which he believed.  But all
+the time he had never once doubted that the five sides of his
+cell were for him the wall of the world henceforward, and it gave
+him a shock of surprise even to discover the faint light through
+the aperture in the ventilation tube.  But he had forgotten how
+close efficiency has to pack everything together and how easily,
+therefore, a pipe here or there may leak.
+
+Turnbull thrust his first finger down the aperture, and at last
+managed to make a slight further fissure in the piping.  The light
+that came up from beyond was very faint, and apparently indirect;
+it seemed to fall from some hole or window higher up.  As he was
+screwing his eye to peer at this grey and greasy twilight he was
+astonished to see another human finger very long and lean come
+down from above towards the broken pipe and hook it up to
+something higher.  The lighted aperture was abruptly blackened and
+blocked, presumably by a face and mouth, for something human
+spoke down the tube, though the words were not clear.
+
+"Who is that?" asked Turnbull, trembling with excitement, yet
+wary and quite resolved not to spoil any chance.
+
+After a few indistinct sounds the voice came down with a strong
+Argyllshire accent:
+
+"I say, Turnbull, we couldn't fight through this tube, could we?"
+
+Sentiments beyond speech surged up in Turnbull and silenced him
+for a space just long enough to be painful.  Then he said with his
+old gaiety: "I vote we talk a little first; I don't want to
+murder the first man I have met for ten million years."
+
+"I know what you mean," answered the other.  "It has been awful.
+For a mortal month I have been alone with God."
+
+Turnbull started, and it was on the tip of his tongue to answer:
+"Alone with God!  Then you do not know what loneliness is."
+
+But he answered, after all, in his old defiant style: "Alone with
+God, were you?  And I suppose you found his Majesty's society
+rather monotonous?"
+
+"Oh, no," said MacIan, and his voice shuddered; "it was a great
+deal too exciting."
+
+After a very long silence the voice of MacIan said: "What do you
+really hate most in your place?"
+
+"You'd think I was really mad if I told you," answered Turnbull,
+bitterly.
+
+"Then I expect it's the same as mine," said the other voice.
+
+"I am sure it's not the same as anybody's," said Turnbull, "for
+it has no rhyme or reason.  Perhaps my brain really has gone, but
+I detest that iron spike in the left wall more than the damned
+desolation or the damned cocoa.  Have you got one in your cell?"
+
+"Not now," replied MacIan with serenity.  "I've pulled it out."
+
+His fellow-prisoner could only repeat the words.
+
+"I pulled it out the other day when I was off my head," continued
+the tranquil Highland voice.  "It looked so unnecessary."
+
+"You must be ghastly strong," said Turnbull.
+
+"One is, when one is mad," was the careless reply, "and it had
+worn a little loose in the socket.  Even now I've got it out I
+can't discover what it was for.  But I've found out something a
+long sight funnier."
+
+"What do you mean?" asked Turnbull.
+
+"I have found out where A is," said the other.
+
+Three weeks afterwards MacIan had managed to open up
+communications which made his meaning plain.  By that time the two
+captives had fully discovered and demonstrated that weakness in
+the very nature of modern machinery to which we have already
+referred.  The very fact that they were isolated from all
+companions meant that they were free from all spies, and as there
+were no gaolers to be bribed, so there were none to be baffled.
+Machinery brought them their cocoa and cleaned their cells; that
+machinery was as helpless as it was pitiless.  A little patient
+violence, conducted day after day amid constant mutual
+suggestion, opened an irregular hole in the wall, large enough to
+let in a small man, in the exact place where there had been
+before the tiny ventilation holes.  Turnbull tumbled somehow into
+MacIan's apartment, and his first glance found out that the iron
+spike was indeed plucked from its socket, and left, moreover,
+another ragged hole into some hollow place behind.  But for this
+MacIan's cell was the duplicate of Turnbull's--a long oblong
+ending in a wedge and lined with cold and lustrous tiles.  The
+small hole from which the peg had been displaced was in that
+short oblique wall at the end nearest to Turnbull's.  That
+individual looked at it with a puzzled face.
+
+"What is in there?" he asked.
+
+MacIan answered briefly: "Another cell."
+
+"But where can the door of it be?" said his companion, even more
+puzzled; "the doors of our cells are at the other end."
+
+"It has no door," said Evan.
+
+In the pause of perplexity that followed, an eerie and sinister
+feeling crept over Turnbull's stubborn soul in spite of himself.
+The notion of the doorless room chilled him with that sense of
+half-witted curiosity which one has when something horrible is
+half understood.
+
+"James Turnbull," said MacIan, in a low and shaken voice, "these
+people hate us more than Nero hated Christians, and fear us more
+than any man feared Nero.  They have filled England with frenzy
+and galloping in order to capture us and wipe us out--in order to
+kill us.  And they have killed us, for you and I have only made a
+hole in our coffins.  But though this hatred that they felt for us
+is bigger than they felt for Bonaparte, and more plain and
+practical than they would feel for Jack the Ripper, yet it is not
+we whom the people of this place hate most."
+
+A cold and quivering impatience continued to crawl up Turnbull's
+spine; he had never felt so near to superstition and
+supernaturalism, and it was not a pretty sort of superstition
+either.
+
+"There is another man more fearful and hateful," went on MacIan,
+in his low monotone voice, "and they have buried him even deeper.
+God knows how they did it, for he was let in by neither door nor
+window, nor lowered through any opening above.  I expect these
+iron handles that we both hate have been part of some damned
+machinery for walling him up.  He is there.  I have looked through
+the hole at him; but I cannot stand looking at him long, because
+his face is turned away from me and he does not move."
+
+Al Turnbull's unnatural and uncompleted feelings found their
+outlet in rushing to the aperture and looking into the unknown
+room.
+
+It was a third oblong cell exactly like the other two except that
+it was doorless, and except that on one of the walls was painted
+a large black A like the B and C outside their own doors.  The
+letter in this case was not painted outside, because this prison
+had no outside.
+
+On the same kind of tiled floor, of which the monotonous squares
+had maddened Turnbull's eye and brain, was sitting a figure which
+was startlingly short even for a child, only that the enormous
+head was ringed with hair of a frosty grey.  The figure was
+draped, both insecurely and insufficiently, in what looked like
+the remains of a brown flannel dressing-gown; an emptied cup of
+cocoa stood on the floor beside it, and the creature had his big
+grey head cocked at a particular angle of inquiry or attention
+which amid all that gathering gloom and mystery struck one as
+comic if not cocksure.
+
+After six still seconds Turnbull could stand it no longer, but
+called out to the dwarfish thing--in what words heaven knows.  The
+thing got up with the promptitude of an animal, and turning round
+offered the spectacle of two owlish eyes and a huge
+grey-and-white beard not unlike the plumage of an owl.  This
+extraordinary beard covered him literally to his feet (not that
+that was very far), and perhaps it was as well that it did, for
+portions of his remaining clothing seemed to fall off whenever he
+moved.  One talks trivially of a face like parchment, but this old
+man's face was so wrinkled that it was like a parchment loaded
+with hieroglyphics.  The lines of his face were so deep and
+complex that one could see five or ten different faces besides
+the real one, as one can see them in an elaborate wall-paper.  And
+yet while his face seemed like a scripture older than the gods,
+his eyes were quite bright, blue, and startled like those of a
+baby.  They looked as if they had only an instant before been
+fitted into his head.
+
+Everything depended so obviously upon whether this buried monster
+spoke that Turnbull did not know or care whether he himself had
+spoken.  He said something or nothing.  And then he waited for this
+dwarfish voice that had been hidden under the mountains of the
+world.  At last it did speak, and spoke in English, with a foreign
+accent that was neither Latin nor Teutonic.  He suddenly stretched
+out a long and very dirty forefinger, and cried in a voice of
+clear recognition, like a child's: "That's a hole."
+
+He digested the discovery for some seconds, sucking his finger,
+and then he cried, with a crow of laughter: "And that's a head
+come through it."
+
+The hilarious energy in this idiot attitude gave Turnbull another
+sick turn.  He had grown to tolerate those dreary and mumbling
+madmen who trailed themselves about the beautiful asylum gardens.
+But there was something new and subversive of the universe in the
+combination of so much cheerful decision with a body without a
+brain.
+
+"Why did they put you in such a place?" he asked at last with
+embarrassment.
+
+"Good place.  Yes," said the old man, nodding a great many times
+and beaming like a flattered landlord.  "Good shape.  Long and
+narrow, with a point.  Like this," and he made lovingly with his
+hands a map of the room in the air.
+
+"But that's not the best," he added, confidentially.  "Squares
+very good; I have a nice long holiday, and can count them.  But
+that's not the best."
+
+"What is the best?" asked Turnbull in great distress.
+
+"Spike is the best," said the old man, opening his blue eyes
+blazing; "it sticks out."
+
+The words Turnbull spoke broke out of him in pure pity.  "Can't we
+do anything for you?" he said.
+
+"I am very happy," said the other, alphabetically.  "You are a
+good man.  Can I help you?"
+
+"No, I don't think you can, sir," said Turnbull with rough
+pathos; "I am glad you are contented at least."
+
+The weird old person opened his broad blue eyes and fixed
+Turnbull with a stare extraordinarily severe.  "You are quite
+sure," he said, "I cannot help you?"
+
+"Quite sure, thank you," said Turnbull with broken brevity.  "Good
+day."
+
+Then he turned to MacIan who was standing close behind him, and
+whose face, now familiar in all its moods, told him easily that
+Evan had heard the whole of the strange dialogue.
+
+"Curse those cruel beasts!" cried Turnbull.  "They've turned him
+to an imbecile just by burying him alive.  His brain's like a
+pin-point now."
+
+"You are sure he is a lunatic?" said Evan, slowly.
+
+"Not a lunatic," said Turnbull, "an idiot.  He just points to
+things and says that they stick out."
+
+"He had a notion that he could help us," said MacIan moodily, and
+began to pace towards the other end of his cell.
+
+"Yes, it was a bit pathetic," assented Turnbull; "such a Thing
+offering help, and besides---- Hallo!  Hallo!  What's the matter?"
+
+"God Almighty guide us all!" said MacIan.
+
+He was standing heavy and still at the other end of the room and
+staring quietly at the door which for thirty days had sealed them
+up from the sun.  Turnbull, following the other's eye, stared at
+the door likewise, and then he also uttered an exclamation.  The
+iron door was standing about an inch and a half open.
+
+"He said----" began Evan, in a trembling voice--"he offered----"
+
+"Come along, you fool!" shouted Turnbull with a sudden and
+furious energy.  "I see it all now, and it's the best stroke of
+luck in the world.  You pulled out that iron handle that had
+screwed up his cell, and it somehow altered the machinery and
+opened all the doors."
+
+Seizing MacIan by the elbow he bundled him bodily out into the
+open corridor and ran him on till they saw daylight through a
+half-darkened window.
+
+"All the same," said Evan, like one answering in an ordinary
+conversation, "he did ask you whether he could help you."
+
+All this wilderness of windowless passages was so built into the
+heart of that fortress of fear that it seemed more than an hour
+before the fugitives had any good glimpse of the outer world.
+They did not even know what hour of the day it was; and when,
+turning a corner, they saw the bare tunnel of the corridor end
+abruptly in a shining square of garden, the grass burning in that
+strong evening sunshine which makes it burnished gold rather than
+green, the abrupt opening on to the earth seemed like a hole
+knocked in the wall of heaven.  Only once or twice in life is it
+permitted to a man thus to see the very universe from outside,
+and feel existence itself as an adorable adventure not yet begun.
+As they found this shining escape out of that hellish labyrinth
+they both had simultaneously the sensation of being babes unborn,
+of being asked by God if they would like to live upon the earth.
+They were looking in at one of the seven gates of Eden.
+
+Turnbull was the first to leap into the garden, with an
+earth-spurning leap like that of one who could really spread his
+wings and fly.  MacIan, who came an instant after, was less full
+of mere animal gusto and fuller of a more fearful and quivering
+pleasure in the clear and innocent flower colours and the high
+and holy trees.  With one bound they were in that cool and cleared
+landscape, and they found just outside the door the black-clad
+gentleman with the cloven chin smilingly regarding them; and his
+chin seemed to grow longer and longer as he smiled.
+
+
+
+XVIII. A RIDDLE OF FACES
+
+Just behind him stood two other doctors: one, the familiar Dr.
+Quayle, of the blinking eyes and bleating voice; the other, a
+more commonplace but much more forcible figure, a stout young
+doctor with short, well-brushed hair and a round but resolute
+face.  At the sight of the escape these two subordinates uttered a
+cry and sprang forward, but their superior remained motionless
+and smiling, and somehow the lack of his support seemed to arrest
+and freeze them in the very gesture of pursuit.
+
+"Let them be," he cried in a voice that cut like a blade of ice;
+and not only of ice, but of some awful primordial ice that had
+never been water.
+
+"I want no devoted champions," said the cutting voice; "even the
+folly of one's friends bores one at last.  You don't suppose I
+should have let these lunatics out of their cells without good
+reason.  I have the best and fullest reason.  They can be let out
+of their cell today, because today the whole world has become
+their cell.  I will have no more medieval mummery of chains and
+doors.  Let them wander about the earth as they wandered about
+this garden, and I shall still be their easy master.  Let them
+take the wings of the morning and abide in the uttermost parts of
+the sea--I am there.  Whither shall they go from my presence and
+whither shall they flee from my spirit?  Courage, Dr. Quayle, and
+do not be downhearted; the real days of tyranny are only
+beginning on this earth."
+
+And with that the Master laughed and swung away from them, almost
+as if his laugh was a bad thing for people to see.
+
+"Might I speak to you a moment?" said Turnbull, stepping forward
+with a respectful resolution.  But the shoulders of the Master
+only seemed to take on a new and unexpected angle of mockery as
+he strode away.
+
+Turnbull swung round with great abruptness to the other two
+doctors, and said, harshly: "What in snakes does he mean--and who
+are you?"
+
+"My name is Hutton," said the short, stout man, "and I am--well,
+one of those whose business it is to uphold this establishment."
+
+"My name is Turnbull," said the other; "I am one of those whose
+business it is to tear it to the ground."
+
+The small doctor smiled, and Turnbull's anger seemed suddenly to
+steady him.
+
+"But I don't want to talk about that," he said, calmly; "I only
+want to know what the Master of this asylum really means."
+
+Dr. Hutton's smile broke into a laugh which, short as it was, had
+the suspicion of a shake in it.  "I suppose you think that quite a
+simple question," he said.
+
+"I think it a plain question," said Turnbull, "and one that
+deserves a plain answer.  Why did the Master lock us up in a
+couple of cupboards like jars of pickles for a mortal month, and
+why does he now let us walk free in the garden again?"
+
+"I understand," said Hutton, with arched eyebrows, "that your
+complaint is that you are now free to walk in the garden."
+
+"My complaint is," said Turnbull, stubbornly, "that if I am fit
+to walk freely now, I have been as fit for the last month.  No one
+has examined me, no one has come near me.  Your chief says that I
+am only free because he has made other arrangements.  What are
+those arrangements?"
+
+The young man with the round face looked down for a little while
+and smoked reflectively.  The other and elder doctor had gone
+pacing nervously by himself upon the lawn.  At length the round
+face was lifted again, and showed two round blue eyes with a
+certain frankness in them.
+
+"Well, I don't see that it can do any harm to tell you know," he
+said.  "You were shut up just then because it was just during that
+month that the Master was bringing off his big scheme.  He was
+getting his bill through Parliament, and organizing the new
+medical police.  But of course you haven't heard of all that; in
+fact, you weren't meant to."
+
+"Heard of all what?" asked the impatient inquirer.
+
+"There's a new law now, and the asylum powers are greatly
+extended.  Even if you did escape now, any policeman would take
+you up in the next town if you couldn't show a certificate of
+sanity from us."
+
+"Well," continued Dr. Hutton, "the Master described before both
+Houses of Parliament the real scientific objection to all
+existing legislation about lunacy.  As he very truly said, the
+mistake was in supposing insanity to be merely an exception or an
+extreme.  Insanity, like forgetfulness, is simply a quality which
+enters more or less into all human beings; and for practical
+purposes it is more necessary to know whose mind is really
+trustworthy than whose has some accidental taint.  We have
+therefore reversed the existing method, and people now have to
+prove that they are sane.  In the first village you entered, the
+village constable would notice that you were not wearing on the
+left lapel of your coat the small pewter S which is now necessary
+to any one who walks about beyond asylum bounds or outside asylum
+hours."
+
+"You mean to say," said Turnbull, "that this was what the Master
+of the asylum urged before the House of Commons?"
+
+Dr. Hutton nodded with gravity.
+
+"And you mean to say," cried Turnbull, with a vibrant snort,
+"that that proposal was passed in an assembly that calls itself
+democratic?"
+
+The doctor showed his whole row of teeth in a smile.  "Oh, the
+assembly calls itself Socialist now," he said, "But we explained
+to them that this was a question for men of science."
+
+Turnbull gave one stamp upon the gravel, then pulled himself
+together, and resumed: "But why should your infernal head
+medicine-man lock us up in separate cells while he was turning
+England into a madhouse?  I'm not the Prime Minister; we're not
+the House of Lords."
+
+"He wasn't afraid of the Prime Minister," replied Dr. Hutton; "he
+isn't afraid of the House of Lords.  But----"
+
+"Well?" inquired Turnbull, stamping again.
+
+"He is afraid of you," said Hutton, simply.  "Why, didn't you
+know?"
+
+MacIan, who had not spoken yet, made one stride forward and stood
+with shaking limbs and shining eyes.
+
+"He was afraid!" began Evan, thickly.  "You mean to say that
+we----"
+
+"I mean to say the plain truth now that the danger is over," said
+Hutton, calmly; "most certainly you two were the only people he
+ever was afraid of."  Then he added in a low but not inaudible
+voice: "Except one--whom he feared worse, and has buried deeper."
+
+"Come away," cried MacIan, "this has to be thought about."
+
+Turnbull followed him in silence as he strode away, but just
+before he vanished, turned and spoke again to the doctors.
+
+"But what has got hold of people?" he asked, abruptly.  "Why
+should all England have gone dotty on the mere subject of
+dottiness?"
+
+Dr. Hutton smiled his open smile once more and bowed slightly.
+"As to that also," he replied, "I don't want to make you vain."
+
+Turnbull swung round without a word, and he and his companion
+were lost in the lustrous leafage of the garden.  They noticed
+nothing special about the scene, except that the garden seemed
+more exquisite than ever in the deepening sunset, and that there
+seemed to be many more people, whether patients or attendants,
+walking about in it.
+
+From behind the two black-coated doctors as they stood on the
+lawn another figure somewhat similarly dressed strode hurriedly
+past them, having also grizzled hair and an open flapping
+frock-coat.  Both his decisive step and dapper black array marked
+him out as another medical man, or at least a man in authority,
+and as he passed Turnbull the latter was aroused by a strong
+impression of having seen the man somewhere before.  It was no one
+that he knew well, yet he was certain that it was someone at
+whom he had at sometime or other looked steadily.  It was neither
+the face of a friend nor of an enemy; it aroused neither
+irritation nor tenderness, yet it was a face which had for some
+reason been of great importance in his life.  Turning and
+returning, and making detours about the garden, he managed to
+study the man's face again and again--a moustached, somewhat
+military face with a monocle, the sort of face that is
+aristocratic without being distinguished.  Turnbull could not
+remember any particular doctors in his decidedly healthy
+existence.  Was the man a long-lost uncle, or was he only somebody
+who had sat opposite him regularly in a railway train?  At that
+moment the man knocked down his own eye-glass with a gesture of
+annoyance; Turnbull remembered the gesture, and the truth sprang
+up solid in front of him.  The man with the moustaches was
+Cumberland Vane, the London police magistrate before whom he and
+MacIan had once stood on their trial.  The magistrate must have
+been transferred to some other official duties--to something
+connected with the inspection of asylums.
+
+Turnbull's heart gave a leap of excitement which was half hope.
+As a magistrate Mr. Cumberland Vane had been somewhat careless
+and shallow, but certainly kindly, and not inaccessible to common
+sense so long as it was put to him in strictly conventional
+language.  He was at least an authority of a more human and
+refreshing sort than the crank with the wagging beard or the
+fiend with the forked chin.
+
+He went straight up to the magistrate, and said: "Good evening,
+Mr. Vane; I doubt if you remember me."
+
+Cumberland Vane screwed the eye-glass into his scowling face for
+an instant, and then said curtly but not uncivilly: "Yes, I
+remember you, sir; assault or battery, wasn't it?--a fellow broke
+your window.  A tall fellow--McSomething--case made rather a noise
+afterwards."
+
+"MacIan is the name, sir," said Turnbull, respectfully; "I have
+him here with me."
+
+"Eh!" said Vane very sharply.  "Confound him!  Has he got anything
+to do with this game?"
+
+"Mr. Vane," said Turnbull, pacifically, "I will not pretend that
+either he or I acted quite decorously on that occasion.  You were
+very lenient with us, and did not treat us as criminals when you
+very well might.  So I am sure you will give us your testimony
+that, even if we were criminals, we are not lunatics in any legal
+or medical sense whatever.  I am sure you will use your influence
+for us."
+
+"My influence!" repeated the magistrate, with a slight start.  "I
+don't quite understand you."
+
+"I don't know in what capacity you are here," continued Turnbull,
+gravely, "but a legal authority of your distinction must
+certainly be here in an important one.  Whether you are visiting
+and inspecting the place, or attached to it as some kind of
+permanent legal adviser, your opinion must still----"
+
+Cumberland Vane exploded with a detonation of oaths; his face was
+transfigured with fury and contempt, and yet in some odd way he
+did not seem specially angry with Turnbull.
+
+"But Lord bless us and save us!" he gasped, at length; "I'm not
+here as an official at all.  I'm here as a patient.  The cursed
+pack of rat-catching chemists all say that I've lost my wits."
+
+"You!" cried Turnbull with terrible emphasis.  "You!  Lost your
+wits!"
+
+In the rush of his real astonishment at this towering unreality
+Turnbull almost added: "Why, you haven't got any to lose."  But he
+fortunately remembered the remains of his desperate diplomacy.
+
+"This can't go on," he said, positively.  "Men like MacIan and I
+may suffer unjustly all our lives, but a man like you must have
+influence."
+
+"There is only one man who has any influence in England now,"
+said Vane, and his high voice fell to a sudden and convincing
+quietude.
+
+"Whom do you mean?" asked Turnbull.
+
+"I mean that cursed fellow with the long split chin," said the
+other.
+
+"Is it really true," asked Turnbull, "that he has been allowed to
+buy up and control such a lot?  What put the country into such a
+state?"
+
+Mr. Cumberland Vane laughed outright.  "What put the country into
+such a state?" he asked.  "Why, you did.  When you were fool enough
+to agree to fight MacIan, after all, everybody was ready to
+believe that the Bank of England might paint itself pink with
+white spots."
+
+"I don't understand," answered Turnbull.  "Why should you be
+surprised at my fighting?  I hope I have always fought."
+
+"Well," said Cumberland Vane, airily, "you didn't believe in
+religion, you see--so we thought you were safe at any rate.  You
+went further in your language than most of us wanted to go; no
+good in just hurting one's mother's feelings, I think.  But of
+course we all knew you were right, and, really, we relied on
+you."
+
+"Did you?" said the editor of _The Atheist_ with a bursting
+heart.  "I am sorry you did not tell me so at the time."
+
+He walked away very rapidly and flung himself on a garden seat,
+and for some six minutes his own wrongs hid from him the huge and
+hilarious fact that Cumberland Vane had been locked up as a
+lunatic.
+
+The garden of the madhouse was so perfectly planned, and answered
+so exquisitely to every hour of daylight, that one could almost
+fancy that the sunlight was caught there tangled in its tinted
+trees, as the wise men of Gotham tried to chain the spring to a
+bush.  Or it seemed as if this ironic paradise still kept its
+unique dawn or its special sunset while the rest of the earthly
+globe rolled through its ordinary hours.  There was one evening,
+or late afternoon, in particular, which Evan MacIan will remember
+in the last moments of death.  It was what artists call a daffodil
+sky, but it is coarsened even by reference to a daffodil.  It was
+of that innocent lonely yellow which has never heard of orange,
+though it might turn quite unconsciously into green.  Against it
+the tops, one might say the turrets, of the clipt and ordered
+trees were outlined in that shade of veiled violet which tints
+the tops of lavender.  A white early moon was hardly traceable
+upon that delicate yellow.  MacIan, I say, will remember this
+tender and transparent evening, partly because of its virgin gold
+and silver, and partly because he passed beneath it through the
+most horrible instant of his life.
+
+Turnbull was sitting on his seat on the lawn, and the golden
+evening impressed even his positive nature, as indeed it might
+have impressed the oxen in a field.  He was shocked out of his
+idle mood of awe by seeing MacIan break from behind the bushes
+and run across the lawn with an action he had never seen in the
+man before, with all his experience of the eccentric humours of
+this Celt.  MacIan fell on the bench, shaking it so that it
+rattled, and gripped it with his knees like one in dreadful pain
+of body.  That particular run and tumble is typical only of a man
+who has been hit by some sudden and incurable evil, who is bitten
+by a viper or condemned to be hanged.  Turnbull looked up in the
+white face of his friend and enemy, and almost turned cold at
+what he saw there.  He had seen the blue but gloomy eyes of the
+western Highlander troubled by as many tempests as his own west
+Highland seas, but there had always been a fixed star of faith
+behind the storms.  Now the star had gone out, and there was only
+misery.
+
+Yet MacIan had the strength to answer the question where
+Turnbull, taken by surprise, had not the strength to ask it.
+
+"They are right, they are right!" he cried.  "O my God! they are
+right, Turnbull.  I ought to be here!"
+
+He went on with shapeless fluency as if he no longer had the
+heart to choose or check his speech.  "I suppose I ought to have
+guessed long ago--all my big dreams and schemes--and everyone
+being against us--but I was stuck up, you know."
+
+"Do tell me about it, really," cried the atheist, and, faced with
+the furnace of the other's pain, he did not notice that he spoke
+with the affection of a father.
+
+"I am mad, Turnbull," said Evan, with a dead clearness of speech,
+and leant back against the garden seat.
+
+"Nonsense," said the other, clutching at the obvious cue of
+benevolent brutality, "this is one of your silly moods."
+
+MacIan shook his head.  "I know enough about myself," he said, "to
+allow for any mood, though it opened heaven or hell.  But to see
+things--to see them walking solid in the sun--things that can't
+be there--real mystics never do that, Turnbull."
+
+"What things?" asked the other, incredulously.
+
+MacIan lowered his voice.  "I saw _her_," he said, "three minutes
+ago--walking here in this hell yard."
+
+Between trying to look scornful and really looking startled,
+Turnbull's face was confused enough to emit no speech, and Evan
+went on in monotonous sincerity:
+
+"I saw her walk behind those blessed trees against that holy sky
+of gold as plain as I can see her whenever I shut my eyes.  I did
+shut them, and opened them again, and she was still there--that
+is, of course, she wasn't---- She still had a little fur round
+her neck, but her dress was a shade brighter than when I really
+saw her."
+
+"My dear fellow," cried Turnbull, rallying a hearty laugh, "the
+fancies have really got hold of you.  You mistook some other poor
+girl here for her."
+
+"Mistook some other----" said MacIan, and words failed him
+altogether.
+
+They sat for some moments in the mellow silence of the evening
+garden, a silence that was stifling for the sceptic, but utterly
+empty and final for the man of faith.  At last he broke out again
+with the words: "Well, anyhow, if I'm mad, I'm glad I'm mad on
+that."
+
+Turnbull murmured some clumsy deprecation, and sat stolidly
+smoking to collect his thoughts; the next instant he had all his
+nerves engaged in the mere effort to sit still.
+
+Across the clear space of cold silver and a pale lemon sky which
+was left by the gap in the ilex-trees there passed a slim, dark
+figure, a profile and the poise of a dark head like a bird's,
+which really pinned him to his seat with the point of
+coincidence.  With an effort he got to his feet, and said with a
+voice of affected insouciance: "By George!  MacIan, she is
+uncommonly like----"
+
+"What!" cried MacIan, with a leap of eagerness that was
+heart-breaking, "do you see her, too?"  And the blaze came back
+into the centre of his eyes.
+
+Turnbull's tawny eyebrows were pulled together with a peculiar
+frown of curiosity, and all at once he walked quickly across the
+lawn.  MacIan sat rigid, but peered after him with open and
+parched lips.  He saw the sight which either proved him sane or
+proved the whole universe half-witted; he saw the man of flesh
+approach that beautiful phantom, saw their gestures of
+recognition, and saw them against the sunset joining hands.
+
+He could stand it no longer, but ran across to the path, turned
+the corner and saw standing quite palpable in the evening
+sunlight, talking with a casual grace to Turnbull, the face and
+figure which had filled his midnights with frightfully vivid or
+desperately half-forgotten features.  She advanced quite
+pleasantly and coolly, and put out her hand.  The moment that he
+touched it he knew that he was sane even if the solar system was
+crazy.
+
+She was entirely elegant and unembarrassed.  That is the awful
+thing about women--they refuse to be emotional at emotional
+moments, upon some such ludicrous pretext as there being someone
+else there.  But MacIan was in a condition of criticism much less
+than the average masculine one, being in fact merely overturned
+by the rushing riddle of the events.
+
+Evan does not know to this day what particular question he asked,
+but he vividly remembers that she answered, and every line or
+fluctuation of her face as she said it.
+
+"Oh, don't you know?" she said, smiling, and suddenly lifting her
+level brown eyebrows.  "Haven't you heard the news?  I'm a
+lunatic."
+
+Then she added after a short pause, and with a sort of pride:
+"I've got a certificate."
+
+Her manner, by the matchless social stoicism of her sex, was
+entirely suited to a drawing-room, but Evan's reply fell somewhat
+far short of such a standard, as he only said: "What the devil in
+hell does all this nonsense mean?"
+
+"Really," said the young lady, and laughed.
+
+"I beg your pardon," said the unhappy young man, rather wildly,
+"but what I mean is, why are you here in an asylum?"
+
+The young woman broke again into one of the maddening and
+mysterious laughs of femininity.  Then she composed her features,
+and replied with equal dignity: "Well, if it comes to that, why
+are you?"
+
+The fact that Turnbull had strolled away and was investigating
+rhododendrons may have been due to Evan's successful prayers to
+the other world, or possibly to his own pretty successful
+experience of this one.  But though they two were as isolated as a
+new Adam and Eve in a pretty ornamental Eden, the lady did not
+relax by an inch the rigour of her badinage.
+
+"I am locked up in the madhouse," said Evan, with a sort of stiff
+pride, "because I tried to keep my promise to you."
+
+"Quite so," answered the inexplicable lady, nodding with a
+perfectly blazing smile, "and I am locked up because it was to me
+you promised."
+
+"It is outrageous!" cried Evan; "it is impossible!"
+
+"Oh, you can see my certificate if you like," she replied with
+some hauteur.
+
+MacIan stared at her and then at his boots, and then at the sky
+and then at her again.  He was quite sure now that he himself was
+not mad, and the fact rather added to his perplexity.
+
+Then he drew nearer to her, and said in a dry and dreadful voice:
+"Oh, don't condescend to play the fool with such a fool as me.
+Are you really locked up here as a patient--because you helped us
+to escape?"
+
+"Yes," she said, still smiling, but her steady voice had a shake
+in it.
+
+Evan flung his big elbow across his forehead and burst into
+tears.
+
+The pure lemon of the sky faded into purer white as the great
+sunset silently collapsed.  The birds settled back into the trees;
+the moon began to glow with its own light.  Mr. James Turnbull
+continued his botanical researches into the structure of the
+rhododendron.  But the lady did not move an inch until Evan had
+flung up his face again; and when he did he saw by the last gleam
+of sunlight that it was not only his face that was wet.
+
+Mr. James Turnbull had all his life professed a profound interest
+in physical science, and the phenomena of a good garden were
+really a pleasure to him; but after three-quarters of an hour or
+so even the apostle of science began to find rhododendrus a bore,
+and was somewhat relieved when an unexpected development of
+events obliged him to transfer his researches to the equally
+interesting subject of hollyhocks, which grew some fifty feet
+farther along the path.  The ostensible cause of his removal was
+the unexpected reappearance of his two other acquaintances
+walking and talking laboriously along the way, with the black
+head bent close to the brown one.  Even hollyhocks detained
+Turnbull but a short time.  Having rapidly absorbed all the
+important principles affecting the growth of those vegetables, he
+jumped over a flower-bed and walked back into the building.  The
+other two came up along the slow course of the path talking and
+talking.  No one but God knows what they said (for they certainly
+have forgotten), and if I remembered it I would not repeat it.
+When they parted at the head of the walk she put out her hand
+again in the same well-bred way, although it trembled; he seemed
+to restrain a gesture as he let it fall.
+
+"If it is really always to be like this," he said, thickly, "it
+would not matter if we were here for ever."
+
+"You tried to kill yourself four times for me," she said,
+unsteadily, "and I have been chained up as a madwoman for you.
+I really think that after that----"
+
+"Yes, I know," said Evan in a low voice, looking down.  "After
+that we belong to each other.  We are sort of sold to each
+other--until the stars fall."  Then he looked up suddenly, and
+said: "By the way, what is your name?"
+
+"My name is Beatrice Drake," she replied with complete gravity.
+"You can see it on my certificate of lunacy."
+
+
+
+XIX. THE LAST PARLEY
+
+Turnbull walked away, wildly trying to explain to himself the
+presence of two personal acquaintances so different as Vane and
+the girl.  As he skirted a low hedge of laurel, an enormously tall
+young man leapt over it, stood in front of him, and almost fell
+on his neck as if seeking to embrace him.
+
+"Don't you know me?" almost sobbed the young man, who was in the
+highest spirits.  "Ain't I written on your heart, old boy?  I say,
+what did you do with my yacht?"
+
+"Take your arms off my neck," said Turnbull, irritably.  "Are you
+mad?"
+
+The young man sat down on the gravel path and went into ecstasies
+of laughter.  "No, that's just the fun of it--I'm not mad," he
+replied.  "They've shut me up in this place, and I'm not mad."  And
+he went off again into mirth as innocent as wedding-bells.
+
+Turnbull, whose powers of surprise were exhausted, rolled his
+round grey eyes and said, "Mr. Wilkinson, I think," because he
+could not think of anything else to say.
+
+The tall man sitting on the gravel bowed with urbanity, and said:
+"Quite at your service.  Not to be confused with the Wilkinsons of
+Cumberland; and as I say, old boy, what have you done with my
+yacht?  You see, they've locked me up here--in this garden--and a
+yacht would be a sort of occupation for an unmarried man."
+
+"I am really horribly sorry," began Turnbull, in the last stage
+of bated bewilderment and exasperation, "but really----"
+
+"Oh, I can see you can't have it on you at the moment," said Mr.
+Wilkinson with much intellectual magnanimity.
+
+"Well, the fact is----" began Turnbull again, and then the phrase
+was frozen on his mouth, for round the corner came the goatlike
+face and gleaming eye-glasses of Dr. Quayle.
+
+"Ah, my dear Mr. Wilkinson," said the doctor, as if delighted at
+a coincidence; "and Mr. Turnbull, too.  Why, I want to speak to
+Mr. Turnbull."
+
+Mr. Turnbull made some movement rather of surrender than assent,
+and the doctor caught it up exquisitely, showing even more of his
+two front teeth.  "I am sure Mr. Wilkinson will excuse us a
+moment."  And with flying frock-coat he led Turnbull rapidly round
+the corner of a path.
+
+"My dear sir," he said, in a quite affectionate manner, "I do not
+mind telling you--you are such a very hopeful case--you
+understand so well the scientific point of view; and I don't like
+to see you bothered by the really hopeless cases.  They are
+monotonous and maddening.  The man you have just been talking to,
+poor fellow, is one of the strongest cases of pure _idee fixe_
+that we have.  It's very sad, and I'm afraid utterly incurable.  He
+keeps on telling everybody"--and the doctor lowered his voice
+confidentially--"he tells everybody that two people have taken is
+yacht.  His account of how he lost it is quite incoherent."
+
+Turnbull stamped his foot on the gravel path, and called out:
+"Oh, I can't stand this.  Really----"
+
+"I know, I know," said the psychologist, mournfully; "it is a
+most melancholy case, and also fortunately a very rare one.  It is
+so rare, in fact, that in one classification of these maladies it
+is entered under a heading by itself--Perdinavititis, mental
+inflammation creating the impression that one has lost a ship.
+Really," he added, with a kind of half-embarrassed guilt, "it's
+rather a feather in my cap.  I discovered the only existing case of
+perdinavititis."
+
+"But this won't do, doctor," said Turnbull, almost tearing his
+hair, "this really won't do.  The man really did lose a ship.
+Indeed, not to put too fine a point on it, I took his ship."
+
+Dr. Quayle swung round for an instant so that his silk-lined
+overcoat rustled, and stared singularly at Turnbull.  Then he said
+with hurried amiability: "Why, of course you did.  Quite so, quite
+so," and with courteous gestures went striding up the garden
+path.  Under the first laburnum-tree he stopped, however, and
+pulling out his pencil and notebook wrote down feverishly:
+"Singular development in the Elenthero-maniac, Turnbull.  Sudden
+manifestation of Rapinavititis--the delusion that one has stolen
+a ship.  First case ever recorded."
+
+Turnbull stood for an instant staggered into stillness.  Then he
+ran raging round the garden to find MacIan, just as a husband,
+even a bad husband, will run raging to find his wife if he is
+full of a furious query.  He found MacIan stalking moodily about
+the half-lit garden, after his extraordinary meeting with
+Beatrice.  No one who saw his slouching stride and sunken head
+could have known that his soul was in the seventh heaven of
+ecstasy.  He did not think; he did not even very definitely
+desire.  He merely wallowed in memories, chiefly in material
+memories; words said with a certain cadence or trivial turns of
+the neck or wrist.  Into the middle of his stationary and
+senseless enjoyment were thrust abruptly the projecting elbow and
+the projecting red beard of Turnbull.  MacIan stepped back a
+little, and the soul in his eyes came very slowly to its windows.
+When James Turnbull had the glittering sword-point planted upon
+his breast he was in far less danger.  For three pulsating seconds
+after the interruption MacIan was in a mood to have murdered his
+father.
+
+And yet his whole emotional anger fell from him when he saw
+Turnbull's face, in which the eyes seemed to be bursting from the
+head like bullets.  All the fire and fragrance even of young and
+honourable love faded for a moment before that stiff agony of
+interrogation.
+
+"Are you hurt, Turnbull?" he asked, anxiously.
+
+"I am dying," answered the other quite calmly.  "I am in the quite
+literal sense of the words dying to know something.  I want to
+know what all this can possibly mean."
+
+MacIan did not answer, and he continued with asperity: "You are
+still thinking about that girl, but I tell you the whole thing is
+incredible.  She's not the only person here.  I've met the fellow
+Wilkinson, whose yacht we lost.  I've met the very magistrate you
+were hauled up to when you broke my window.  What can it
+mean--meeting all these old people again?  One never meets such
+old friends again except in a dream."
+
+Then after a silence he cried with a rending sincerity: "Are you
+really there, Evan?  Have you ever been really there?  Am I simply
+dreaming?"
+
+MacIan had been listening with a living silence to every word,
+and now his face flamed with one of his rare revelations of life.
+
+"No, you good atheist," he cried; "no, you clean, courteous,
+reverent, pious old blasphemer.  No, you are not dreaming--you are
+waking up."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"There are two states where one meets so many old friends," said
+MacIan; "one is a dream, the other is the end of the world."
+
+"And you say----"
+
+"I say this is not a dream," said Evan in a ringing voice.
+
+"You really mean to suggest----" began Turnbull.
+
+"Be silent! or I shall say it all wrong," said MacIan, breathing
+hard.  "It's hard to explain, anyhow.  An apocalypse is the
+opposite of a dream.  A dream is falser than the outer life.  But
+the end of the world is more actual than the world it ends.  I
+don't say this is really the end of the world, but it's something
+like that--it's the end of something.  All the people are crowding
+into one corner.  Everything is coming to a point."
+
+"What is the point?" asked Turnbull.
+
+"I can't see it," said Evan; "it is too large and plain."
+
+Then after a silence he said: "I can't see it--and yet I will try
+to describe it.  Turnbull, three days ago I saw quite suddenly
+that our duel was not right after all."
+
+"Three days ago!" repeated Turnbull.  "When and why did this
+illumination occur?"
+
+"I knew I was not quite right," answered Evan, "the moment I saw
+the round eyes of that old man in the cell."
+
+"Old man in the cell!" repeated his wondering companion.  "Do you
+mean the poor old idiot who likes spikes to stick out?"
+
+"Yes," said MacIan, after a slight pause, "I mean the poor old
+idiot who likes spikes to stick out.  When I saw his eyes and
+heard his old croaking accent, I knew that it would not really
+have been right to kill you.  It would have been a venial sin."
+
+"I am much obliged," said Turnbull, gruffly.
+
+"You must give me time," said MacIan, quite patiently, "for I am
+trying to tell the whole truth.  I am trying to tell more of it
+than I know."
+
+"So you see I confess"--he went on with laborious distinctness--
+"I confess that all the people who called our duel mad were right
+in a way.  I would confess it to old Cumberland Vane and his
+eye-glass.  I would confess it even to that old ass in brown
+flannel who talked to us about Love.  Yes, they are right in a
+way.  I am a little mad."
+
+He stopped and wiped his brow as if he were literally doing heavy
+labour.  Then he went on:
+
+"I am a little mad; but, after all, it is only a little madness.
+When hundreds of high-minded men had fought duesl about a jostle
+with the elbow or the ace of spades, the whole world need not
+have gone wild over my one little wildness.  Plenty of other
+people have killed themselves between then and now.  But all
+England has gone into captivity in order to take us captive.  All
+England has turned into a lunatic asylum in order to prove us
+lunatics.  Compared with the general public, I might positively be
+called sane."
+
+He stopped again, and went on with the same air of travailing
+with the truth:
+
+"When I saw that, I saw everything; I saw the Church and the
+world.  The Church in its earthly action has really touched morbid
+things--tortures and bleeding visions and blasts of
+extermination.  The Church has had her madnesses, and I am one of
+them.  I am the massacre of St. Bartholomew.  I am the Inquisition
+of Spain.  I do not say that we have never gone mad, but I say
+that we are fit to act as keepers to our enemies.  Massacre is
+wicked even with a provocation, as in the Bartholomew.  But your
+modern Nietzsche will tell you that massacre would be glorious
+without a provocation.  Torture should be violently stopped,
+though the Church is doing it.  But your modern Tolstoy will tell
+you that it ought not to be violently stopped whoever is doing
+it.  In the long run, which is most mad--the Church or the world?
+Which is madder, the Spanish priest who permitted tyranny, or the
+Prussian sophist who admired it?  Which is madder, the Russian
+priest who discourages righteous rebellion, or the Russian
+novelist who forbids it?  That is the final and blasting test.  The
+world left to itself grows wilder than any creed.  A few days ago
+you and I were the maddest people in England.  Now, by God!  I
+believe we are the sanest.  That is the only real question--
+whether the Church is really madder than the world.  Let the
+rationalists run their own race, and let us see where _they_ end.
+If the world has some healthy balance other than God, let the
+world find it.  Does the world find it?  Cut the world loose," he
+cried with a savage gesture.  "Does the world stand on its own
+end?  Does it stand, or does it stagger?"
+
+Turnbull remained silent, and MacIan said to him, looking once
+more at the earth: "It staggers, Turnbull.  It cannot stand by
+itself; you know it cannot.  It has been the sorrow of your life.
+Turnbull, this garden is not a dream, but an apocalyptic
+fulfilment.  This garden is the world gone mad."
+
+Turnbull did not move his head, and he had been listening all the
+time; yet, somehow, the other knew that for the first time he was
+listening seriously.
+
+"The world has gone mad," said MacIan, "and it has gone mad about
+Us.  The world takes the trouble to make a big mistake about every
+little mistake made by the Church.  That is why they have turned
+ten counties to a madhouse; that is why crowds of kindly people
+are poured into this filthy melting-pot.  Now is the judgement of
+this world.  The Prince of this World is judged, and he is judged
+exactly because he is judging.  There is at last one simple
+solution to the quarrel between the ball and the cross----"
+
+Turnbull for the first time started.
+
+"The ball and----" he repeated.
+
+"What is the matter with you?" asked MacIan.
+
+"I had a dream," said Turnbull, thickly and obscurely, "in which
+I saw the cross struck crooked and the ball secure----"
+
+"I had a dream," said MacIan, "in which I saw the cross erect and
+the ball invisible.  They were both dreams from hell.  There must
+be some round earth to plant the cross upon.  But here is the
+awful difference--that the round world will not consent even to
+continue round.  The astronomers are always telling us that it is
+shaped like an orange, or like an egg, or like a German sausage.
+They beat the old world about like a bladder and thump it into a
+thousand shapeless shapes.  Turnbull, we cannot trust the ball to
+be always a ball; we cannot trust reason to be reasonable.  In the
+end the great terrestrial globe will go quite lop-sided, and only
+the cross will stand upright."
+
+There was a long silence, and then Turnbull said, hesitatingly:
+"Has it occurred to you that since--since those two dreams, or
+whatever they were----"
+
+"Well?" murmured MacIan.
+
+"Since then," went on Turnbull, in the same low voice, "since
+then we have never even looked for our swords."
+
+"You are right," answered Evan almost inaudibly.  "We have found
+something which we both hate more than we ever hated each other,
+and I think I know its name."
+
+Turnbull seemed to frown and flinch for a moment.  "It does not
+much matter what you call it," he said, "so long as you keep out
+of its way."
+
+The bushes broke and snapped abruptly behind them, and a very
+tall figure towered above Turnbull with an arrogant stoop and a
+projecting chin, a chin of which the shape showed queerly even in
+its shadow upon the path.
+
+"You see that is not so easy," said MacIan between his teeth.
+
+They looked up into the eyes of the Master, but looked only for a
+moment.  The eyes were full of a frozen and icy wrath, a kind of
+utterly heartless hatred.  His voice was for the first time devoid
+of irony.  There was no more sarcasm in it than there is in an
+iron club.
+
+"You will be inside the building in three minutes," he said, with
+pulverizing precision, "or you will be fired on by the artillery
+at all the windows.  There is too much talking in this garden; we
+intend to close it.  You will be accommodated indoors."
+
+"Ah!" said MacIan, with a long and satisfied sigh, "then I was
+right."
+
+And he turned his back and walked obediently towards the
+building.  Turnbull seemed to canvass for a few minutes the notion
+of knocking the Master down, and then fell under the same almost
+fairy fatalism as his companion.  In some strange way it did seem
+that the more smoothly they yielded, the more swiftly would
+events sweep on to some great collision.
+
+
+
+XX. DIES IRAE
+
+As they advanced towards the asylum they looked up at its rows on
+rows of windows, and understood the Master's material threat.  By
+means of that complex but concealed machinery which ran like a
+network of nerves over the whole fabric, there had been shot out
+under every window-ledge rows and rows of polished-steel
+cylinders, the cold miracles of modern gunnery.  They commanded
+the whole garden and the whole country-side, and could have blown
+to pieces an army corps.
+
+This silent declaration of war had evidently had its complete
+effect.  As MacIan and Turnbull walked steadily but slowly towards
+the entrance hall of the institution, they could see that most,
+or at least many, of the patients had already gathered there as
+well as the staff of doctors and the whole regiment of keepers and
+assistants.  But when they entered the lamp-lit hall, and the high
+iron door was clashed to and locked behind them, yet a new
+amazement leapt into their eyes, and the stalwart Turnbull almost
+fell.  For he saw a sight which was indeed, as MacIan had
+said--either the Day of Judgement or a dream.
+
+Within a few feet of him at one corner of the square of standing
+people stood the girl he had known in Jersey, Madeleine Durand.
+She looked straight at him with a steady smile which lit up the
+scene of darkness and unreason like the light of some honest
+fireside.  Her square face and throat were thrown back, as her
+habit was, and there was something almost sleepy in the geniality
+of her eyes.  He saw her first, and for a few seconds saw her
+only; then the outer edge of his eyesight took in all the other
+staring faces, and he saw all the faces he had ever seen for
+weeks and months past.  There was the Tolstoyan in Jaeger flannel,
+with the yellow beard that went backward and the foolish nose and
+eyes that went forward, with the curiosity of a crank.  He was
+talking eagerly to Mr. Gordon, the corpulent Jew shopkeeper whom
+they had once gagged in his own shop.  There was the tipsy old
+Hertfordshire rustic; he was talking energetically to himself.
+There was not only Mr. Vane the magistrate, but the clerk of Mr.
+Vane, the magistrate.  There was not only Miss Drake of the
+motor-car, but also Miss Drake's chauffeur.  Nothing wild or
+unfamiliar could have produced upon Turnbull such a nightmare
+impression as that ring of familiar faces.  Yet he had one
+intellectual shock which was greater than all the others.  He
+stepped impulsively forward towards Madeleine, and then wavered
+with a kind of wild humility.  As he did so he caught sight of
+another square face behind Madeleine's, a face with long grey
+whiskers and an austere stare.  It was old Durand, the girls'
+father; and when Turnbull saw him he saw the last and worst
+marvel of that monstrous night.  He remembered Durand; he
+remembered his monotonous, everlasting lucidity, his stupefyingly
+sensible views of everything, his colossal contentment with
+truisms merely because they were true.  "Confound it all!" cried
+Turnbull to himself, "if _he_ is in the asylum, there can't be
+anyone outside."  He drew nearer to Madeleine, but still
+doubtfully and all the more so because she still smiled at him.
+MacIan had already gone across to Beatrice with an air of fright.
+
+Then all these bewildered but partly amicable recognitions were
+cloven by a cruel voice which always made all human blood turn
+bitter.  The Master was standing in the middle of the room
+surveying the scene like a great artist looking at a completed
+picture.  Handsome as he looked, they had never seen so clearly
+what was really hateful in his face; and even then they could
+only express it by saying that the arched brows and the long
+emphatic chin gave it always a look of being lit from below, like
+the face of some infernal actor.
+
+"This is indeed a cosy party," he said, with glittering eyes.
+
+The Master evidently meant to say more, but before he could say
+anything M. Durand had stepped right up to him and was speaking.
+
+He was speaking exactly as a French bourgeois speaks to the
+manager of a restaurant.  That is, he spoke with rattling and
+breathless rapidity, but with no incoherence, and therefore with
+no emotion.  It was a steady, monotonous vivacity, which came not
+seemingly from passion, but merely from the reason having been
+sent off at a gallop.  He was saying something like this:
+
+"You refuse me my half-bottle of Medoc, the drink the most
+wholesome and the most customary.  You refuse me the company and
+obedience of my daughter, which Nature herself indicates.  You
+refuse me the beef and mutton, without pretence that it is a fast
+of the Church.  You now forbid me the promenade, a thing necessary
+to a person of my age.  It is useless to tell me that you do all
+this by law.  Law rests upon the social contract.  If the citizen
+finds himself despoiled of such pleasures and powers as he would
+have had even in the savage state, the social contract is
+annulled."
+
+"It's no good chattering away, Monsieur," said Hutton, for the
+Master was silent.  "The place is covered with machine-guns.  We've
+got to obey our orders, and so have you."
+
+"The machinery is of the most perfect," assented Durand, somewhat
+irrelevantly; "worked by petroleum, I believe.  I only ask you to
+admit that if such things fall below the comfort of barbarism,
+the social contract is annulled.  It is a pretty little point of
+theory."
+
+"Oh!  I dare say," said Hutton.
+
+Durand bowed quite civilly and withdrew.
+
+"A cosy party," resumed the Master, scornfully, "and yet I
+believe some of you are in doubt about how we all came together.
+I will explain it, ladies and gentlemen; I will explain
+everything.  To whom shall I specially address myself?  To Mr.
+James Turnbull.  He has a scientific mind."
+
+Turnbull seemed to choke with sudden protest.  The Master seemed
+only to cough out of pure politeness and proceeded: "Mr. Turnbull
+will agree with me," he said, "when I say that we long felt in
+scientific circles that great harm was done by such a legend as
+that of the Crucifixion."
+
+Turnbull growled something which was presumably assent.
+
+The Master went on smoothly: "It was in vain for us to urge that
+the incident was irrelevant; that there were many such fanatics,
+many such executions.  We were forced to take the thing thoroughly
+in hand, to investigate it in the spirit of scientific history,
+and with the assistance of Mr. Turnbull and others we were happy
+in being able to announce that this alleged Crucifixion never
+occurred at all."
+
+MacIan lifted his head and looked at the Master steadily, but
+Turnbull did not look up.
+
+"This, we found, was the only way with all superstitions,"
+continued the speaker; "it was necessary to deny them
+historically, and we have done it with great success in the case
+of miracles and such things.  Now within our own time there arose
+an unfortunate fuss which threatened (as Mr. Turnbull would say)
+to galvanize the corpse of Christianity into a fictitious
+life--the alleged case of a Highland eccentric who wanted to
+fight for the Virgin."
+
+MacIan, quite white, made a step forward, but the speaker did not
+alter his easy attitude or his flow of words.  "Again we urged
+that this duel was not to be admired, that it was a mere brawl,
+but the people were ignorant and romantic.  There were signs of
+treating this alleged Highlander and his alleged opponent as
+heroes.  We tried all other means of arresting this reactionary
+hero worship.  Working men who betted on the duel were imprisoned
+for gambling.  Working men who drank the health of a duellist were
+imprisoned for drunkenness.  But the popular excitement about the
+alleged duel continued, and we had to fall back on our old
+historical method.  We investigated, on scientific principles, the
+story of MacIan's challenge, and we are happy to be able to
+inform you that the whole story of the attempted duel is a fable.
+There never was any challenge.  There never was any man named
+MacIan.  It is a melodramatic myth, like Calvary."
+
+Not a soul moved save Turnbull, who lifted his head; yet there
+was the sense of a silent explosion.
+
+"The whole story of the MacIan challenge," went on the Master,
+beaming at them all with a sinister benignity, "has been found to
+originate in the obsessions of a few pathological types, who are
+now all fortunately in our care.  There is, for instance, a person
+here of the name of Gordon, formerly the keeper of a curiosity
+shop.  He is a victim of the disease called Vinculomania--the
+impression that one has been bound or tied up.  We have also a
+case of Fugacity (Mr. Whimpey), who imagines that he was chased
+by two men."
+
+The indignant faces of the Jew shopkeeper and the Magdalen Don
+started out of the crowd in their indignation, but the speaker
+continued:
+
+"One poor woman we have with us," he said, in a compassionate
+voice, "believes she was in a motor-car with two such men; this
+is the well-known illusion of speed on which I need not dwell.
+Another wretched woman has the simple egotistic mania that she
+has caused the duel.  Madeleine Durand actually professes to have
+been the subject of the fight between MacIan and his enemy, a
+fight which, if it occurred at all, certainly began long before.
+But it never occurred at all.  We have taken in hand every person
+who professed to have seen such a thing, and proved them all to
+be unbalanced.  That is why they are here."
+
+The Master looked round the room, just showing his perfect teeth
+with the perfection of artistic cruelty, exalted for a moment in
+the enormous simplicity of his success, and then walked across
+the hall and vanished through an inner door.  His two lieutenants,
+Quayle and Hutton, were left standing at the head of the great
+army of servants and keepers.
+
+"I hope we shall have no more trouble," said Dr. Quayle
+pleasantly enough, and addressing Turnbull, who was leaning
+heavily upon the back of a chair.
+
+Still looking down, Turnbull lifted the chair an inch or two from
+the ground.  Then he suddenly swung it above his head and sent it
+at the inquiring doctor with an awful crash which sent one of its
+wooden legs loose along the floor and crammed the doctor gasping
+into a corner.  MacIan gave a great shout, snatched up the loose
+chair-leg, and, rushing on the other doctor, felled him with a
+blow.  Twenty attendants rushed to capture the rebels; MacIan
+flung back three of them and Turnbull went over on top of one,
+when from behind them all came a shriek as of something quite
+fresh and frightful.
+
+Two of the three passages leading out of the hall were choked
+with blue smoke.  Another instant and the hall was full of the fog
+of it, and red sparks began to swarm like scarlet bees.
+
+"The place is on fire!" cried Quayle with a scream of indecent
+terror.  "Oh, who can have done it?  How can it have happened?"
+
+A light had come into Turnbull's eyes.  "How did the French
+Revolution happen?" he asked.
+
+"Oh, how should I know!" wailed the other.
+
+"Then I will tell you," said Turnbull; "it happened because some
+people fancied that a French grocer was as respectable as he
+looked."
+
+Even as he spoke, as if by confirmation, old Mr. Durand
+re-entered the smoky room quite placidly, wiping the petroleum
+from his hands with a handkerchief.  He had set fire to the
+building in accordance with the strict principles of the social
+contract.
+
+But MacIan had taken a stride forward and stood there shaken and
+terrible.  "Now," he cried, panting, "now is the judgement of the
+world.  The doctors will leave this place; the keepers will leave
+this place.  They will leave us in charge of the machinery and the
+machine-guns at the windows.  But we, the lunatics, will wait to
+be burned alive if only we may see them go."
+
+"How do you know we shall go?" asked Hutton, fiercely.
+
+"You believe nothing," said MacIan, simply, "and you are
+insupportably afraid of death."
+
+"So this is suicide," sneered the doctor; "a somewhat doubtful
+sign of sanity."
+
+"Not at all--this is vengeance," answered Turnbull, quite calmly;
+"a thing which is completely healthy."
+
+"You think the doctors will go," said Hutton, savagely.
+
+"The keepers have gone already," said Turnbull.
+
+Even as they spoke the main doors were burst open in mere brutal
+panic, and all the officers and subordinates of the asylum rushed
+away across the garden pursued by the smoke.  But among the
+ticketed maniacs not a man or woman moved.
+
+"We hate dying," said Turnbull, with composure, "but we hate you
+even more.  This is a successful revolution."
+
+In the roof above their heads a panel shot back, showing a strip
+of star-lit sky and a huge thing made of white metal, with the
+shape and fins of a fish, swinging as if at anchor.  At the same
+moment a steel ladder slid down from the opening and struck the
+floor, and the cleft chin of the mysterious Master was thrust
+into the opening.  "Quayle, Hutton," he said, "you will escape
+with me."  And they went up the ladder like automata of lead.
+
+Long after they had clambered into the car, the creature with the
+cloven face continued to leer down upon the smoke-stung crowd
+below.  Then at last he said in a silken voice and with a smile of
+final satisfaction:
+
+"By the way, I fear I am very absent minded.  There is one man
+specially whom, somehow, I always forget.  I always leave him
+lying about.  Once I mislaid him on the Cross of St. Paul's.  So
+silly of me; and now I've forgotten him in one of those little
+cells where your fire is burning.  Very unfortunate--especially
+for him."  And nodding genially, he climbed into his flying ship.
+
+MacIan stood motionless for two minutes, and then rushed down one
+of the suffocating corridors till he found the flames.  Turnbull
+looked once at Madeleine, and followed.
+
+           *                    *                   *
+
+MacIan, with singed hair, smoking garments, and smarting hands
+and face, had already broken far enough through the first
+barriers of burning timber to come within cry of the cells he had
+once known.  It was impossible, however, to see the spot where the
+old man lay dead or alive; not now through darkness, but through
+scorching and aching light.  The site of the old half-wit's cell
+was now the heart of a standing forest of fire--the flames as
+thick and yellow as a cornfield.  Their incessant shrieking and
+crackling was like a mob shouting against an orator.  Yet through
+all that deafening density MacIan thought he heard a small and
+separate sound.  When he heard it he rushed forward as if to
+plunge into that furnace, but Turnbull arrested him by an elbow.
+
+"Let me go!" cried Evan, in agony; "it's the poor old beggar's
+voice--he's still alive, and shouting for help."
+
+"Listen!" said Turnbull, and lifted one finger from his clenched
+hand.
+
+"Or else he is shrieking with pain," protested MacIan.  "I will
+not endure it."
+
+"Listen!" repeated Turnbull, grimly.  "Did you ever hear anyone
+shout for help or shriek with pain in that voice?"
+
+The small shrill sounds which came through the crash of the
+conflagration were indeed of an odd sort, and MacIan turned a
+face of puzzled inquiry to his companion.
+
+"He is singing," said Turnbull, simply.
+
+A remaining rampart fell, crushing the fire, and through the
+diminished din of it the voice of the little old lunatic came
+clearer.  In the heart of that white-hot hell he was singing like
+a bird.  What he was singing it was not very easy to follow, but
+it seemed to be something about playing in the golden hay.
+
+"Good Lord!" cried Turnbull, bitterly, "there seem to be some
+advantages in really being an idiot."  Then advancing to the
+fringe of the fire he called out on chance to the invisible
+singer: "Can you come out?  Are you cut off?"
+
+"God help us all!" said MacIan, with a shudder; "he's laughing
+now."
+
+At whatever stage of being burned alive the invisible now found
+himself, he was now shaking out peals of silvery and hilarious
+laughter.  As he listened, MacIan's two eyes began to glow, as if
+a strange thought had come into his head.
+
+"Fool, come out and save yourself!" shouted Turnbull.
+
+"No, by Heaven! that is not the way," cried Evan, suddenly.
+"Father," he shouted, "come out and save us all!"
+
+The fire, though it had dropped in one or two places, was, upon
+the whole, higher and more unconquerable than ever.  Separate tall
+flames shot up and spread out above them like the fiery cloisters
+of some infernal cathedral, or like a grove of red tropical trees
+in the garden of the devil.  Higher yet in the purple hollow of
+the night the topmost flames leapt again and again fruitlessly at
+the stars, like golden dragons chained but struggling.  The towers
+and domes of the oppressive smoke seemed high and far enough to
+drown distant planets in a London fog.  But if we exhausted all
+frantic similes for that frantic scene, the main impression about
+the fire would still be its ranked upstanding rigidity and a sort
+of roaring stillness.  It was literally a wall of fire.
+
+"Father," cried MacIan, once more, "come out of it and save us
+all!"  Turnbull was staring at him as he cried.
+
+The tall and steady forest of fire must have been already a
+portent visible to the whole circle of land and sea.  The red
+flush of it lit up the long sides of white ships far out in the
+German Ocean, and picked out like piercing rubies the windows in
+the villages on the distant heights.  If any villagers or sailors
+were looking towards it they must have seen a strange sight as
+MacIan cried out for the third time.
+
+That forest of fire wavered, and was cloven in the centre; and
+then the whole of one half of it leaned one way as a cornfield
+leans all one way under the load of the wind.  Indeed, it looked
+as if a great wind had sprung up and driven the great fire
+aslant.  Its smoke was no longer sent up to choke the stars, but
+was trailed and dragged across county after county like one
+dreadful banner of defeat.
+
+But it was not the wind; or, if it was the wind, it was two
+winds blowing in opposite directions.  For while one half of the
+huge fire sloped one way towards the inland heights, the other
+half, at exactly the same angle, sloped out eastward towards the
+sea.  So that earth and ocean could behold, where there had been a
+mere fiery mass, a thing divided like a V--a cloven tongue of
+flame.  But if it were a prodigy for those distant, it was
+something beyond speech for those quite near.  As the echoes of
+Evan's last appeal rang and died in the universal uproar, the
+fiery vault over his head opened down the middle, and, reeling
+back in two great golden billows, hung on each side as huge and
+harmless as two sloping hills lie on each side of a valley.  Down
+the centre of this trough, or chasm, a little path ran, cleared
+of all but ashes, and down this little path was walking a little
+old man singing as if he were alone in a wood in spring.
+
+When James Turnbull saw this he suddenly put out a hand and
+seemed to support himself on the strong shoulder of Madeleine
+Durand.  Then after a moment's hesitation he put his other hand on
+the shoulder of MacIan.  His blue eyes looked extraordinarily
+brilliant and beautiful.  In many sceptical papers and magazines
+afterwards he was sadly or sternly rebuked for having abandoned
+the certainties of materialism.  All his life up to that moment he
+had been most honestly certain that materialism was a fact.  But
+he was unlike the writers in the magazines precisely in this--
+that he preferred a fact even to materialism.
+
+As the little singing figure came nearer and nearer, Evan fell on
+his knees, and after an instant Beatrice followed; then Madeleine
+fell on her knees, and after a longer instant Turnbull followed.
+Then the little old man went past them singing down that corridor
+of flames.  They had not looked at his face.
+
+When he had passed they looked up.  While the first light of the
+fire had shot east and west, painting the sides of ships with
+fire-light or striking red sparks out of windowed houses, it had
+not hitherto struck upward, for there was above it the ponderous
+and rococo cavern of its own monstrous coloured smoke.  But now
+the fire was turned to left and right like a woman's hair parted
+in the middle, and now the shafts of its light could shoot up
+into empty heavens and strike anything, either bird or cloud.  But
+it struck something that was neither cloud nor bird.  Far, far
+away up in those huge hollows of space something was flying
+swiftly and shining brightly, something that shone too bright and
+flew too fast to be any of the fowls of the air, though the red
+light lit it from underneath like the breast of a bird.  Everyone
+knew it was a flying ship, and everyone knew whose.
+
+As they stared upward the little speck of light seemed slightly
+tilted, and two black dots dropped from the edge of it.  All the
+eager, upturned faces watched the two dots as they grew bigger
+and bigger in their downward rush.  Then someone screamed, and no
+one looked up any more.  For the two bodies, larger every second
+flying, spread out and sprawling in the fire-light, were the dead
+bodies of the two doctors whom Professor Lucifer had carried with
+him--the weak and sneering Quayle, the cold and clumsy Hutton.
+They went with a crash into the thick of the fire.
+
+"They are gone!" screamed Beatrice, hiding her head.  "O God!  The
+are lost!"
+
+Evan put his arm about her, and remembered his own vision.
+
+"No, they are not lost," he said.  "They are saved.  He has taken
+away no souls with him, after all."
+
+He looked vaguely about at the fire that was already fading, and
+there among the ashes lay two shining things that had survived
+the fire, his sword and Turnbull's, fallen haphazard in the
+pattern of a cross.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Ball and The Cross, by G.K. Chesterton
+
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