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 £12,000 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 fair 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 party, 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.”

“I am afraid I don’t understand,” answered Turnbull.

“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 country 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 tête-à-têtes 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 your 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 one 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 one 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 Eleuthero-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 girl’s 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.

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.”

Una discussione un po’ in aria

La nave volante del professor Lucifero cantava attraverso i cieli come una freccia d’argento; il suo acciaio bianco e desolato, che brillava nel vuoto azzurro cupo della sera. Non si poteva dire che fosse lontana dalla terra; per gli due uomini al suo interno, sembrava essere lontana dalle stelle. Il professore aveva inventato lui stesso la macchina volante e aveva anche inventato quasi tutto ciò che conteneva. Di conseguenza ogni sorta di strumento o apparecchiatura aveva pienamente quell’aspetto fantastico e distorto che appartiene ai miracoli della scienza. Perché il mondo della scienza e dell’evoluzione è molto più anonimo ed elusivo, simile a un sogno, rispetto al mondo della poesia e della religione; dato che in quest’ultimo le immagini e le idee rimangono eternamente se stesse, mentre l’idea stessa dell’evoluzione è che le identità si fondono tra loro come avviene in un incubo.

Tutti gli strumenti del professor Lucifero erano gli antichi strumenti umani impazziti, cresciuti in forme irriconoscibili, dimentichi della loro origine, dimentichi dei loro nomi. Quella cosa che sembrava una enorme chiave con tre ruote era in realtà un revolver brevettato e molto mortale. Quell’oggetto che sembrava essere creato dall’intreccio di due tappi a vite era in realtà la chiave. La cosa che avrebbe potuto essere scambiata per un triciclo capovolto era lo strumento inesprimibilmente importante al quale il tappo a vite faceva da chiave. Tutte queste cose, come dicevo, il professore le aveva inventate; aveva inventato tutto nella nave volante con l’eccezione, forse, di se stesso. Questo era nato troppo tardi per inaugurare realmente, ma credeva almeno che lo avesse notevolmente migliorato.

C’era però un altro uomo a bordo, per così dire, all’epoca. Anche lui, per una curiosa coincidenza, non era stato inventato dal professore, e nemmeno lo aveva molto migliorato, sebbene l’avesse pescato con un laccio dal suo retroorto, nella Bulgaria occidentale, col solo scopo di perfezionarlo. Era un uomo estremamente santo, quasi interamente ricoperto da capelli bianchi. Non si vedeva altro che i suoi occhi, e sembrava parlare con quelli. Un monaco di immensa erudizione e acuto intelletto, aveva saputo rendere felice se stesso in una piccola capanna di pietra e un piccolo orto sassoso nei Balcani, soprattutto scrivendo le più schiaccianti confutazioni delle denunce di certe eresie, i cui ultimi professori erano stati bruciati (generalmente l’uno dall’altro) esattamente 1.119 anni prima. Erano davvero eresie molto plausibili e ponderate, ed era veramente una circostanza meritevole o addirittura gloriosa che il vecchio monaco fosse stato abbastanza intelligente da individuarne l’errore; l’unica disgrazia era che nessuno nel mondo moderno era abbastanza intelligente nemmeno per capire la loro argomentazione. Il vecchio monaco, uno dei cui nomi era Michelangelo, e l’altro un nome del tutto impossibile da ricordare o ripetere nella nostra civiltà occidentale, si era però reso felice, come ho detto, mentre era in un eremo di montagna in compagnia di animali selvaggi. E ora che la sua fortuna lo aveva sollevato al disopra di tutte le montagne in compagnia di uno scienziato pazzo, si rendeva felice ancora.

«Non ho alcuna intenzione, mio buon Michelangelo», disse il professor Lucifero, «di tentare di convertirti con argomentazioni. L’imbecillità delle tue tradizioni può essere esposta in modo definitivo a chiunque abbia una semplice conoscenza ordinaria del mondo, lo stesso tipo di conoscenza che ci insegna a non sederci nelle correnti d’aria o a non incoraggiare la cordialità nelle persone senza soldi. È follia parlare di questo o quello come dimostrazione della filosofia razionalista. Tutto lo dimostra. Strofinarsi le spalle con uomini di ogni tipo----»

«Mi perdonerete», disse il monaco con umiltà da sotto i suoi folti baffi bianchi, «ma temo di non aver capito; è stato forse perché potessi sfregare la mia spalla contro uomini di ogni tipo che mi avete messo dentro questa cosa?»

«Una risposta divertente, nel modo ristretto e deduttivo del Medioevo», replicò il professore, con calma, «ma anche sulla base delle tue stesse premesse illustrerò il mio punto. Siamo in cielo. Nella tua religione e in tutte le religioni, per quanto ne so (e io so tutto), il cielo è fatto simbolo di tutto ciò che è sacro e misericordioso. Beh, ora sei in cielo, lo sai meglio. Formulalo come vuoi, distorcelo come vuoi, tu sai che ne sai più di prima. Tu sai quali sono i veri sentimenti di un uomo verso il cielo, quando si trova solo nel cielo, circondato dal cielo. Conosci la verità, e la verità è questa. Il cielo è malvagio, il cielo è malvagio, le stelle sono malvagie. Questo semplice spazio, questa mera quantità, terrorizza un uomo più di tigri o della terribile peste. Tu sai che da quando la nostra scienza ha parlato, il fondamento è caduto dell’Universo. Ora, il cielo è la cosa senza speranza, più senza speranza di qualsiasi inferno. Ora, se c’è qualche conforto per tutta la tua miserabile progenie di scimmie morbide, deve essere nella terra, sotto di te, sotto le radici dell’erba, nel luogo dove un tempo era l’inferno. Le cripte infuocate, i seminterrati lividi del mondo sotterraneo, a cui una volta condannavi i malvagi, sono abbastanza orribili, ma almeno sono più familiari del cielo in cui cavalchiamo. E verrà il tempo in cui vi nasconderete tutti in essi, per sfuggire all’orrore delle stelle.»

“Spero che mi perdonerete se vi interrompo”, disse Michael, con un leggero colpo di tosse, “ma ho sempre notato ----”

«Continuate pure, prego continuate», disse il professor Lucifero con un sorriso raggiante, «mi piace davvero farvi esprimere le vostre semplici idee.»

«Bene, il fatto è», disse l’altro, «che per quanto io ammiri la tua retorica e quella della tua scuola, da un punto di vista puramente verbale, lo scarso studio che ho potuto fare su te e sulla tua scuola nella storia umana mi ha portato a una —ehm— conclusione piuttosto singolare, che trovo molto difficile esprimere, specialmente in una lingua straniera.»

“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.”

“Su, su,” disse il Professore, con tono incoraggiante, “vi darò una mano. Come vi ha colpito la mia visione delle cose?”

“Ecco, la verità è che so di non esprimerla come si deve, ma in qualche modo mi è parso che voi trasmettiate sempre idee di quel genere con la massima eloquenza, quando… ehm… quando… …”

“Oh! andate avanti,” gridò Lucifer, in modo chiassoso.

“Ecco, in sostanza quando la vostra nave volante sta per andare a sbattere contro qualcosa. Ho pensato che non vi sarebbe dispiaciuto se ve lo facevo notare, ma proprio adesso sta andando a sbattere contro qualcosa.”

Lucifer proruppe in un’imprecazione e balzò in piedi, appoggiandosi con forza alla leva che fungeva da timone al veicolo. Negli ultimi dieci minuti erano precipitati in giù, tra grandi fenditure e caverne di nuvola. Ora, attraverso una sorta di foschia purpurea, si poteva scorgere relativamente vicino a loro quella che sembrava essere la parte superiore di un enorme, scuro globo o sfera, come un’isola in un mare di nuvole. Gli occhi del Professore fiammeggiavano come quelli di un pazzo.

“È un mondo nuovo,” gridò, con una gioia spaventosa. “È un nuovo pianeta e porterà il mio nome. Sarà questa stella, e non quell’altra volgare, a essere ‘Lucifer, astro del mattino.’ Qui non avremo follie sancite per statuto, qui non avremo dèi. Qui l’uomo sarà innocente come le margherite, innocente e crudele quanto loro… qui l’intelletto…”

“Pare,” disse Michael, timidamente, “che ci sia qualcosa che sporge in mezzo ad esso.”

“Difatti c’è,” disse il Professore, sporgendosi oltre la fiancata della nave, con gli occhiali che brillavano d’eccitazione intellettuale. “Che cosa può essere? Potrebbe naturalmente essere soltanto un…”

Poi d’improvviso gli eruppe di dosso un urlo indescrivibile, e levò in alto le braccia come uno spirito perduto. Il monaco prese il timone in modo stanco; non parve troppo stupito, poiché veniva da una parte ignorante del mondo in cui non è raro che gli spiriti perduti urlino quando vedono la curiosa forma che il Professore aveva appena veduto in cima alla misteriosa sfera, ma prese il timone appena in tempo, e spingendolo con forza verso sinistra impedì alla nave volante di fracassarsi contro la cattedrale di San Paolo.

Una pianura di nuvola dal colore mesto si stendeva all’altezza della sommità della cupola della cattedrale, sicché la sfera e la croce parevano una boa che galleggiava su un mare di piombo. Mentre la nave volante si avventava verso di essa, questa pianura di nuvola pareva arida e definita e rocciosa come un qualsiasi grigio deserto. Perciò diede alla mente e al corpo una sensazione acuta e ultraterrena quando la nave fendette e affondò nella nuvola come in una qualunque comune caligine, una cosa priva di resistenza. Vi fu, per così dire, un urto mortale nel fatto che non vi fosse alcun urto. Era come se avessero fenduto antiche rupi come tanto burro. Ma li attendevano sensazioni assai più strane di quelle dello sprofondare attraverso la terra solida. Per un istante i loro occhi e le loro narici furono ostruiti dall’oscurità e da opaca nuvola; poi l’oscurità si scaldò in una sorta di nebbia bruna. E lontano, lontano sotto di loro la nebbia bruna scendeva finché non si scaldava in fuoco. Attraverso la densa atmosfera di Londra potevano vedere sotto di loro le fiammeggianti luci di Londra; luci che giacevano al di sotto di loro in quadrati e rettangoli di fuoco. La nebbia e il fuoco erano mescolati in un vapore appassionato; si sarebbe potuto dire che la nebbia stava annegando le fiamme; oppure si sarebbe potuto dire che le fiamme avevano dato fuoco alla nebbia. Accanto alla nave e sotto di essa (poiché essa oscillava proprio sotto la sfera), l’incommensurabile cupola stessa si slanciava fuori e giù nel buio come una combinazione di cateratte senza voce. O era come una qualche ciclopica bestia marina seduta al di sopra di Londra che calava le sue tentacoli in modo sconcertante da ogni lato, una mostruosità in quel cielo senza stelle. Poiché le nuvole che appartenevano a Londra si erano chiuse sopra le teste dei viaggiatori, sigillando l’ingresso dell’aria superiore. Avevano sfondato un tetto ed erano entrati in un tempio di crepuscolo.

Erano così vicini alla sfera che Lucifer vi appoggiò contro la mano, tenendo il veicolo discosto, come gli uomini spingono una barca lontano dalla riva. Sopra di essa la croce, già ammantata nelle scure brume della terra di confine, era ombrosa e più tremenda nella forma e nelle dimensioni.

Il Professor Lucifer batté due volte la mano sulla superficie del grande globo come se stesse accarezzando un enorme animale. “Questo è il tipo giusto,” disse, “questo è quello che fa per me.”

“Posso, con tutto il rispetto, domandare,” chiese il vecchio monaco, “di che diavolo state parlando?”

“Ebbene, di questo,” gridò Lucifer, percuotendo di nuovo la sfera, “ecco l’unico simbolo, ragazzo mio. Così grasso. Così soddisfatto. Non come quell’altro individuo scarno, che tende le braccia in una spossatezza assoluta.” E indicò in su verso la croce, il viso scuro per un ghigno. “Ti stavo dicendo poco fa, Michael, che posso dimostrare la parte migliore della tesi razionalista e della fandonia cristiana a partire da qualunque simbolo tu volessi darmi, da qualunque esempio mi capitasse davanti. Ecco un esempio in tutta la sua evidenza. Cosa potrebbe mai esprimere la tua filosofia e la mia filosofia meglio della forma di quella croce e della forma di questa sfera? Questo globo è ragionevole; quella croce è irragionevole. È un animale a quattro zampe, con una zampa più lunga delle altre. Il globo è inevitabile. La croce è arbitraria. Soprattutto il globo è in unità con se stesso; la croce è anzitutto e sopra ogni cosa in inimicizia con se stessa. La croce è il conflitto di due linee ostili, di direzione inconciliabile. Quella cosa silenziosa lassù è essenzialmente una collisione, uno schianto, una lotta nella pietra. Puah! quel vostro sacro simbolo ha addirittura dato il proprio nome a una descrizione della disperazione e della confusione. Quando parliamo di uomini a un tempo ignari l’uno dell’altro e frustrati l’uno dall’altro, diciamo che agiscono a scopi incrociati. Via quella cosa! La sua forma stessa è una contraddizione in termini.”

“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.

“Quel che dite è perfettamente vero,” disse Michael, con serenità. “Ma a noi piacciono le contraddizioni nei termini. L’uomo è una contraddizione nei termini; è una bestia la cui superiorità sulle altre bestie consiste nell’essere caduta. Quella croce è, come dite voi, una collisione eterna; e così sono io. È una lotta impressa nella pietra. Ogni forma di vita è una lotta impressa nella carne. La forma della croce è irrazionale, esattamente come è irrazionale la forma dell’animale umano. Voi dite che la croce è un quadrupede con un arto più lungo degli altri. Io dico che l’uomo è un quadrupede che si serve soltanto di due delle sue zampe.”

Il Professore aggrottò la fronte pensieroso per un istante, e disse: “Naturalmente tutto è relativo, e non negherei che l’elemento di lotta e di autocontraddizione, rappresentato da quella croce, abbia un posto necessario a un certo stadio evolutivo. Ma di certo la croce è lo sviluppo inferiore e la sfera quello superiore. Dopotutto è abbastanza facile vedere che cosa c’è davvero di sbagliato nella disposizione architettonica del Wren.”

“E che cosa sarebbe, di grazia?” domandò Michael, mansueto.

“La croce è in cima alla palla,” disse il Professor Lucifer, con semplicità. “Questo è di sicuro sbagliato. La palla dovrebbe stare in cima alla croce. La croce è un mero puntello barbarico; la palla è la perfezione. La croce, nel suo meglio, non è che l’albero amaro della storia dell’uomo; la palla è il frutto tondeggiante, maturo e ultimo. E il frutto dovrebbe stare in cima all’albero, non alla sua base.”

“Oh!” disse il monaco, mentre una ruga gli affiorava sulla fronte, “così voi pensate che in uno schema razionalistico di simbolismo la palla dovrebbe stare in cima alla croce?”

“Riassume tutta la mia allegoria,” disse il professore.

“Ebbene, è davvero molto interessante,” riprese Michael lentamente, “perché credo che in tal caso vedreste un effetto assai singolare, un effetto che è stato generalmente conseguito da tutti quei sistemi abili e potenti che il razionalismo, ovvero la religione della palla, ha prodotto per guidare o istruire il genere umano. Vedreste, io credo, accadere quella cosa che è sempre l’ultima incarnazione e il logico esito del vostro schema logico.”

“Di che cosa state parlando?” chiese Lucifer. “Che cosa accadrebbe?”

“Voglio dire che crollerebbe,” disse il monaco, guardando malinconico nel vuoto.

Lucifer fece un movimento adirato e aprì la bocca per parlare, ma Michael, con tutta la sua aria di deliberazione, stava procedendo prima che egli potesse cavar fuori una parola.

“Una volta ho conosciuto un uomo come voi, Lucifer,” disse, con una esasperante monotonia e lentezza di articolazione. “Egli prese questa…”

“Non c’è uomo come me,” gridò Lucifer, con una violenza che scosse la nave.

“Come stavo osservando,” continuò Michael, “quest’uomo prese anch’egli il punto di vista secondo cui il simbolo del Cristianesimo fosse un simbolo di barbarie e di ogni irragionevolezza. La sua storia è piuttosto divertente. È anche una perfetta allegoria di ciò che accade ai razionalisti come voi. Cominciò, naturalmente, col rifiutare di ammettere un crocifisso in casa sua, o al collo di sua moglie, o perfino in un quadro. Diceva, come dite voi, che era una forma arbitraria e fantastica, che era una mostruosità, amata perché paradossale. Poi cominciò a farsi più feroce e più eccentrico; si mise a demolire le croci lungo le strade; poiché viveva in un paese cattolico romano. Infine, al culmine di una frenesia, si arrampicò sul campanile della Chiesa Parrocchiale e strappò via la croce, agitandola nell’aria, e pronunciando selvaggi soliloqui lassù sotto le stelle. Poi una quieta sera d’estate, mentre se ne tornava verso casa lungo un viottolo, il demone della sua follia lo colse con una violenza e una trasfigurazione che mutano il mondo. Se ne stava fermo a fumare, per un momento, davanti a un’interminabile fila di steccati, quando i suoi occhi si aprirono. Non una luce si spostò, non una foglia si mosse, ma egli vide, come per un improvviso mutamento della vista, che quello steccato era un esercito di innumerevoli croci congiunte l’una all’altra su per colle e valle. E fece roteare il suo pesante bastone e vi si scagliò contro come contro un esercito. Miglio dopo miglio, lungo il cammino verso casa, lo abbatté e lo divelse. Poiché odiava la croce e ogni steccato è un muro di croci. Quando fece ritorno alla sua casa era un pazzo in senso letterale. Si sedette su una sedia e poi ne balzò via, poiché le sbarre incrociate della falegnameria ripetevano l’immagine intollerabile. Si gettò su un letto solo per ricordare che anche questo, come tutte le cose fatte a regola d’arte, era costruito sul piano maledetto. Ruppe i suoi mobili perché erano fatti di croci. Bruciò la sua casa perché era fatta di croci. Fu ritrovato nel fiume.”

Lucifer lo guardava mordendosi il labbro.

“È davvero vera quella storia?” chiese.

“Oh, no,” disse Michael, con disinvoltura. “È una parabola. È una parabola di voi e di tutti i vostri razionalisti. Cominciate con lo spezzare la Cross; ma finite col mandare in pezzi il mondo abitabile. Vi lasciamo mentre dite che nessuno dovrebbe unirsi alla Chiesa contro la propria volontà. Vi ritroviamo mentre dite che nessuno ha più alcuna volontà con cui unirsi ad essa. Vi lasciamo mentre dite che non esiste alcun luogo come l’Eden. Vi ritroviamo mentre dite che non esiste alcun luogo come l’Irlanda. Cominciate odiando l’irrazionale e arrivate a odiare ogni cosa, poiché ogni cosa è irrazionale, e così…”

Lucifer gli si avventò contro con un grido pari a quello di una belva. “Ah,” strillò, “a ciascun uomo la sua follia. Voi siete pazzo per la croce. Che essa vi salvi.”

E con un’energia erculea spinse il monaco all’indietro fuori dalla vettura oscillante, sulla parte superiore della palla di pietra. Michael, con altrettanto brusca agilità, afferrò una delle travi della croce e si salvò dalla caduta. Nello stesso istante Lucifer abbassò di scatto una leva e la nave schizzò in alto con lui dentro, solo.

“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.

«Ah! ah!» urlò, «che razza di sostegno lo trovi, vecchio mio?»

«Per usi pratici di sostegno,» replicò Michael cupamente, «è in ogni caso assai migliore della palla. Posso chiederti se hai intenzione di lasciarmi qui?»

«Sì, sì. Io salgo! Io salgo!» gridò il professore in un’eccitazione incontenibile. «Altiora peto. La mia via è verso l’alto.»

«Quante volte mi avete detto, Professore, che nello spazio non c’è in realtà né alto né basso?» disse il monaco. «Salirò tanto in alto quanto salirete voi.»

«Davvero,» disse Lucifer, sogghignando oltre il fianco della nave volante. «Posso chiedere che cosa intendi fare?»

Il monaco indicò in basso, verso Ludgate Hill. «Ho intenzione,» disse, «di arrampicarmi su fino a una stella.»

Coloro che guardano la questione nel modo più superficiale considerano il paradosso come qualcosa che appartiene allo scherzo e al giornalismo leggero. Il paradosso di questa specie si trova nel detto del damerino, nella commedia decadente: «La vita è troppo importante per essere presa sul serio.» Coloro che guardano la questione un po’ più a fondo o con maggior delicatezza vedono che il paradosso è una cosa che appartiene in modo speciale a tutte le religioni. Il paradosso di questa specie si trova in un detto come «I miti erediteranno la terra.» Ma coloro che vedono e sentono il fondamentale fatto della questione sanno che il paradosso è una cosa che appartiene non solo alla religione, ma a tutte le crisi vivide e violente e pratiche del vivere umano. Questa specie di paradosso può essere chiaramente percepita da chiunque si trovi a penzolare nel vuoto dello spazio, aggrappato a un braccio della croce di San Paolo.

Padre Michael, a dispetto dei suoi anni, e a dispetto del suo ascetismo (o a causa di esso, per quel che ne so), era un vecchio gentiluomo assai sano e felice. E mentre dondolava su una sbarra sopra la nauseante vacuità dell’aria, comprese, con quella sorta di morta distaccatezza che appartiene ai cervelli di coloro che sono in pericolo, la contraddizione imperitura e disperata che è insita nella semplice idea del coraggio. Era un vecchio gentiluomo felice e sano e perciò se ne curava del tutto poco. E sentì, come ogni uomo sente nell’istante teso di un simile terrore, che il suo massimo pericolo era il terrore stesso; la sua unica forza possibile sarebbe stata una freddezza che sfiorava la noncuranza, una noncuranza che sfiorava quasi la spavalderia suicida. La sua unica folle possibilità di uscirne salvo sarebbe stata nel non desiderare troppo disperatamente di essere salvo. Potevano esserci appigli lungo quell’orribile facciata, purché egli potesse non curarsi se fossero appigli o no. Se fosse stato temerario, forse sarebbe scampato; se fosse stato saggio, si sarebbe fermato dov’era finché non fosse caduto dalla croce come una pietra. E questa antinomia continuava a ripetersi nella sua mente, una contraddizione tanto grande e sbalorditiva quanto l’immensa contraddizione della croce; ricordava di aver spesso udito le parole: «Chiunque perderà la propria vita, quello stesso la salverà.» Ricordava con una sorta di strana pietà che ciò era sempre stato inteso a significare che chiunque perdesse la propria vita fisica avrebbe salvato la propria vita spirituale. Ora egli conosceva la verità che è nota a tutti i combattenti, e cacciatori, e scalatori di rupi. Sapeva che perfino la sua vita animale poteva essere salvata soltanto attraverso una considerevole disponibilità a perderla.

Alcuni penseranno improbabile che un’anima umana che dondola disperatamente a mezz’aria possa riflettere su incoerenze filosofiche. Ma tali stati estremi sono cose pericolose su cui dogmatizzare. Sovente essi producono una certa inutile e gioiosa attività del puro intelletto, un pensiero divorziato non solo dalla speranza ma perfino dal desiderio. E se è impossibile dogmatizzare su tali stati, è ancor più impossibile descriverli. A questo spasimo di lucidità e chiarezza nella mente di Michael succedette uno spasimo del terrore elementare; il terrore dell’animale che è in noi, che considera l’intero universo come suo nemico; il quale, quando è vittorioso, non ha pietà, e così, quando è sconfitto, non ha speranza immaginabile. Di quei dieci minuti di terrore non è possibile parlare con parole umane. Ma poi di nuovo, in quella dannata oscurità, cominciò a spuntare una strana alba come di grigio e pallido argento. E di questa ultima rassegnazione o certezza è ancor meno possibile scrivere; è qualcosa di più strano dell’inferno stesso; è forse l’ultimo dei segreti di Dio. Al culmine di una qualche insanabile angoscia cadrà d’improvviso sull’uomo la quiete di una contentezza folle. Non è speranza, poiché la speranza è spezzata e romantica e rivolta al futuro; questa è completa e del presente. Non è fede, poiché la fede per sua stessa natura è feroce, e per così dire a un tempo dubbiosa e sfidante; ma questa è semplicemente una soddisfazione. Non è conoscenza, poiché l’intelletto sembra non avervi parte alcuna in particolare. Né è (come gli idioti moderni direbbero certamente che è) un mero intorpidimento o una paralisi negativa delle facoltà del dolore. Non è affatto negativa; è positiva quanto una buona novella. In un certo senso, invero, è una buona novella. Sembra quasi che vi fosse una qualche eguaglianza tra le cose, un qualche equilibrio in tutte le possibili contingenze che non ci è concesso di conoscere, per timore che apprendiamo l’indifferenza al bene e al male, ma che talvolta ci viene mostrato per un istante come ultimo soccorso nella nostra ultima agonia.

Michael certamente non avrebbe saputo dare alcuna sorta di resoconto razionale di questa vasta e insensata soddisfazione che lo pervadeva e lo colmava fino all’orlo. Sentiva con una sorta di scempia lucidità che la croce era là, e la palla era là, e la cupola era là, che stava per calare giù da esse, e che non gli importava minimamente se sarebbe stato ucciso o no. Questo misterioso stato d’animo durò abbastanza a lungo da avviarlo nella sua terribile discesa e da costringerlo a proseguirla. Ma sei volte prima che raggiungesse la più alta delle gallerie esterne il terrore era tornato su di lui come una tempesta volante di oscurità e tuono. Quando ebbe raggiunto quel luogo sicuro quasi sentiva (come in qualche impossibile accesso d’ebbrezza) di avere due teste; una era calma, noncurante ed efficiente; l’altra vedeva il pericolo come una mappa mortale, era saggia, prudente e inutile. Aveva immaginato che avrebbe dovuto calarsi verticalmente lungo la faccia dell’intero edificio. Quando si lasciò cadere nella galleria superiore sentiva ancora di essere tanto lontano dal globo terrestre come se fosse solo sceso dal sole alla luna. Si fermò un poco, ansimando nella galleria sotto la palla, e sbatacchiò oziosamente i talloni, spostandosi di qualche iarda lungo di essa. E mentre lo faceva un fulmine colpì la sua anima. Un uomo, un uomo pesante, ordinario, dal volto composto e indifferente, e con una prosaica sorta di uniforme, con una fila di bottoni, gli sbarrava il passo. Michael non aveva alcuna voglia di chiedersi se questo solido uomo attonito, con i baffi castani e i bottoni di nichel, fosse anch’egli giunto su una nave volante. Lasciò semplicemente che la sua mente fluttuasse in una felicità sconfinata riguardo all’uomo. Pensò a quanto sarebbe stato bello se avesse dovuto vivere lassù in quella galleria con quell’unico uomo per sempre. Pensò a come si sarebbe crogiolato nelle sfumature senza nome dell’anima di quest’uomo e poi udito con un interminabile eccitazione delle sfumature senza nome delle anime di tutte le sue zie e i suoi zii. Un attimo prima era stato morente e solo. Ora viveva nel medesimo mondo con un uomo; un’estasi inesauribile. Nella galleria sotto la palla Padre Michael aveva trovato quell’uomo che è il più nobile e più divino e più amabile di tutti gli uomini, migliore di tutti i santi, più grande di tutti gli eroi—l’uomo Venerdì.

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.

Nel colore confuso e nella musica del suo nuovo paradiso, Michael udì solo in modo fioco e lontano alcune osservazioni che quest’uomo bello e massiccio pareva rivolgergli; osservazioni su qualcosa che era fuori orario e contro il regolamento. Sembrava inoltre chiedergli come Michael fosse “salito” lassù. Quest’uomo bello sentiva evidentemente, proprio come Michael, che la terra era una stella, incastonata nel cielo.

Alla fine Michael si saziò della semplice musica sensuale della voce dell’uomo in bottoni. Cominciò ad ascoltare ciò che diceva, e persino a tentare qualche risposta a una domanda che pareva essergli stata posta più volte e che ora veniva posta con un certo eccesso di enfasi. Michael comprese che l’immagine di Dio in bottoni di nichel gli stava chiedendo come fosse giunto lassù. Disse di esservi giunto con la nave di Lucifer. A questa risposta, il contegno dell’immagine di Dio subì un cambiamento notevole. Da rivolgersi a Michael con tono burbero, come se fosse un malfattore, prese d’improvviso a parlargli con una sorta di premurosa e febbrile affabilità, come a un bambino. Pareva particolarmente ansioso di allontanarlo con le buone dalla balaustra. Lo condusse per il braccio verso una porta che dava nell’edificio stesso, rabbonendolo per tutto il tempo. Fornì quello che perfino Michael (per quanto scarsa fosse la sua conoscenza del mondo) sentì essere un improbabile resoconto dei sontuosi piaceri e dei svariati vantaggi che lo attendevano di sotto. Michael lo seguì, tuttavia, non fosse che per cortesia, giù per una spirale di scale apparentemente interminabile. A un certo punto una porta si aprì. Michael la varcò, e l’inspiegabile uomo in bottoni gli balzò dietro e lo tenne fermo là dove si trovava. Ma egli desiderava solo restare fermo; restare e fissare. Era entrato, per così dire, in un’altra infinità, sotto la cupola di un altro cielo. Ma questa era una cupola di cielo fatta dall’uomo. L’oro, il verde e il cremisi del suo tramonto non erano in nubi informi, ma in figure di cherubini e serafini, tremende figure umane dal piumaggio appassionato. Le sue stelle non erano in alto ma assai in basso, come stelle cadute e ancora disposte in costellazioni intatte; la cupola stessa era piena di oscurità. E laggiù in fondo, più in basso ancora delle luci, si scorgevano, striscianti o immobili, grandi masse nere di uomini. La lingua di un organo tremendo pareva scuotere l’aria stessa in tutto quel vuoto; e attraverso di essa saliva fino a Michael il suono di una lingua più tremenda ancora; la spaventosa voce eterna dell’uomo, che invoca i suoi dèi dal principio alla fine del mondo. Michael si sentì quasi un dio, e tutte quelle voci gli venivano scagliate contro.

“No, le cose belle non sono qui,” disse il semidio in bottoni, in tono carezzevole. “Le cose belle sono di sotto. Venga con me. C’è qualcosa che la sorprenderà di sotto; qualcosa che desidera moltissimo vedere.”

Evidentemente l’uomo in bottoni non si sentiva un dio, così Michael non tentò di spiegargli i propri sentimenti, ma lo seguì abbastanza docilmente giù per la traccia della scala serpentina. Non aveva idea di dove o a quale livello si trovasse. Era ancora pieno del freddo splendore dello spazio, e di ciò che uno scrittore francese ha brillantemente chiamato la “vertigine dell’infinito,” quando un’altra porta si aprì, e con uno shock indescrivibile si ritrovò sul familiare livello di terra, in una strada gremita di volti, con le case e perfino i lampioni al di sopra del suo capo. Si sentì d’improvviso felice e d’improvviso indescrivibilmente piccolo. Gli parve di essere tornato un bambino; i suoi occhi cercavano il selciato con serietà, come fanno quelli dei bambini, come se fosse una cosa con cui si potesse fare qualcosa di soddisfacente. Sentì tutto il tepore di quel piacere da cui i superbi si escludono; il piacere che non solo accompagna l’umiliazione, ma che quasi è umiliazione. Lo provano gli uomini scampati alla morte per un pelo, e gli uomini il cui amore è ricambiato da una donna inaspettatamente, e gli uomini a cui i peccati sono perdonati. Su ogni cosa su cui cadeva il suo occhio esso si saziava, non esteticamente, ma con un semplice, gioviale appetito, come di un ragazzo che mangia focacce. Assaporava la squadratura delle case; gli piacevano i loro angoli netti, come se li avesse appena tagliati con un coltello. I riquadri illuminati delle vetrine lo eccitavano come i giovani si eccitano davanti al palco illuminato di qualche promettente pantomima. Gli capitò di vedere in una bottega, che sporgeva con bombata baldanza sul marciapiede, alcune scatolette quadrate di carne in conserva, e gli parve un accenno di cento ilari e sostanziose merende in cento strade del mondo. Egli era, forse, il più felice di tutti i figli degli uomini. Poiché in quell’istante insopportabile in cui era rimasto appeso, mezzo scivolando, alla palla di San Paolo, l’intero universo era stato distrutto e ricreato.

D’improvviso, attraverso tutto il frastuono delle strade buie, giunse un fragore di vetri infranti. Con quella misteriosa subitaneità della folla londinese, ci fu uno slancio nella direzione giusta, verso un ufficio squallido, accanto alla bottega della carne in conserva. La lastra di vetro giaceva in schegge sul marciapiede. E la polizia aveva già le mani addosso a un giovanotto altissimo, dai capelli scuri e lisci e dagli occhi scuri e sbalorditi, con un plaid grigio sulle spalle, che aveva appena mandato in frantumi la vetrina della bottega con un solo colpo del suo bastone.

“Lo rifarei,” disse il giovane, con un viso bianco e furioso. “Chiunque l’avrebbe fatto. Avete visto cosa c’era scritto? Giuro che lo rifarei.” Poi i suoi occhi incontrarono l’abito monacale di Michael, ed egli si tolse il suo tam o’shanter grigio con il gesto di un cattolico.

“Padre, avete visto cosa dicevano?” gridò, tremando. “Avete visto cosa hanno osato dire? Sulle prime non capivo. L’ho letto per metà prima di rompere la vetrina.”

Michael sentì senza sapere come. Tutta la pace del mondo era racchiusa dolorosamente nel suo cuore. Il mondo nuovo e fanciullesco che egli aveva visto così d’improvviso, gli uomini non l’avevano visto affatto. Eccoli ancora ai loro vecchi litigi sconcertanti, perdonabili, inutili, con tanto da dire da entrambe le parti, e così poco che valesse la pena di dire. Una fiera ispirazione lo colse d’improvviso; li avrebbe colpiti là dove si trovavano con l’amore di Dio. Non si sarebbero mossi finché non avessero visto la propria dolce e sconvolgente esistenza. Non se ne sarebbero andati da quel luogo finché non fossero tornati a casa abbracciandosi come fratelli e gridando come uomini liberati. Dalla croce da cui era caduto scendeva l’ombra della sua fantastica misericordia; e le prime tre parole che pronunciò, con una voce come una tromba d’argento, tennero gli uomini immobili come pietre. Forse, se avesse parlato lì per un’ora nella sua illuminazione, avrebbe potuto fondare una religione su Ludgate Hill. Ma la pesante mano della sua guida gli cadde d’improvviso sulla spalla.

“Questo pover’uomo è tocco,” disse bonariamente alla folla. “L’ho trovato che vagava nella cattedrale. Dice di essere arrivato con una nave volante. C’è un agente disponibile per prendersi cura di lui?”

C’era un agente disponibile. Altri due agenti si occuparono del giovanotto alto in grigio; un quarto si prese cura del proprietario della bottega, che mostrava una certa tendenza a essere turbolento. Portarono il giovanotto alto davanti a un magistrato, dove lo seguiremo in un capitolo successivo. E portarono l’uomo più felice del mondo via, in un manicomio.

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 £12,000 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.

La sua tradizione familiare era ugualmente selvaggia e ultraterrena. Il suo bisnonno era stato falciato a Culloden, certo nel suo ultimo istante che Dio avrebbe restaurato il Re. Suo nonno, allora un ragazzo di dieci anni, aveva preso il terribile spadone dalla mano del morto e lo aveva appeso nella sua casa, lucidandolo e affilandolo per sessant’anni, per essere pronto alla prossima ribellione. Suo padre, l’ultimogenito e l’ultimo rimasto in vita, aveva rifiutato di rendere omaggio alla Regina Vittoria in Scozia. Ed Evan stesso era stato di un solo pezzo con i suoi progenitori; e non era morto con loro, ma vivo nel ventesimo secolo. Non era affatto il patetico giacobita di cui leggiamo, lasciato indietro da un ultimo avanzare di tutte le cose. Era, nella sua fantasia, un cospiratore, feroce e al passo coi tempi. Nei lunghi, oscuri pomeriggi dell’inverno delle Highlands, tramava e fremeva nel buio. Tracciava piani per la conquista di Londra sulla sabbia desolata di Arisaig.

Quando salì per conquistare Londra, non fu con un esercito di coccarde bianche, ma con un bastone e una borsa. Londra lo intimidì un poco, non perché la ritenesse grandiosa o persino terribile, ma perché lo sconcertava; non era la Città d’Oro né l’inferno; era il Limbo. Ebbe un sussulto di sentimento, quando svoltò quel meraviglioso angolo di Fleet Street e vide San Paolo assiso nel cielo.

«Ah,» disse, dopo una lunga pausa, «quel genere di cose fu costruito sotto gli Stuart!» Poi con un ghigno acido si chiese quale fosse il monumento corrispondente dei Brunswick e della Costituzione protestante. Dopo qualche esitazione, scelse un’insegna luminosa di certe pillole.

Mezz’ora dopo le sue emozioni lo lasciarono con la mente svuotata nello stesso punto. E fu in uno stato d’animo di pura oziosa indagine che gli capitò di fermarsi di fronte alla redazione di L’Ateo. Non vide la parola «ateo», o se la vide, è del tutto possibile che non ne conoscesse il significato. Anche così com’era, il documento non avrebbe scandalizzato nemmeno l’innocente montanaro, se non fosse stato per il fastidioso e del tutto imprevisto fatto che l’innocente montanaro lo lesse imperturbabile fino alla fine; cosa ignota tra i più entusiasti abbonati del giornale, e comunque tale da creare una situazione nuova.

Con un pronto istinto giornalistico caratteristico di tutta la sua scuola, il direttore de L’Ateo aveva messo per primo nel suo giornale e nel modo più cospicuo nella sua vetrina un articolo intitolato «La mitologia mesopotamica e i suoi effetti sul folclore siriaco». Il signor Evan MacIan cominciò a leggerlo del tutto oziosamente, come avrebbe letto un annuncio pubblico che comincia con una giovinetta morente a Brighton e finisce con le Pillole di Bile. Ricevette la considerevole quantità di informazioni accumulate dall’autore con quella stanca lucidità della mente che i bambini hanno nei greve pomeriggi d’estate—quella stanca lucidità che li induce a continuare a fare domande molto dopo aver perso interesse per l’argomento e a essere annoiati quanto la loro bambinaia. Le strade erano piene di gente e vuote di avventure. Tanto valeva che conoscesse gli dèi della Mesopotamia quanto no; così appiattì il suo lungo, magro volto contro il fioco squallido vetro della vetrina e lesse tutto quello che c’era da leggere sugli dèi mesopotamici. Lesse come i Mesopotami avessero un dio chiamato Sho (talvolta pronunciato Ji), e che veniva descritto come molto potente, sorprendente somiglianza con certe espressioni riguardo a Jahvè, il quale è pure descritto come dotato di potenza. Evan non aveva mai sentito parlare di Jahvè in vita sua, e immaginandolo qualche altro idolo mesopotamico, proseguì la lettura con una spenta curiosità. Apprese che il nome Sho, sotto la sua terza forma di Psa, ricorre in una leggenda antica che descrive come la divinità, alla maniera di Giove in tante occasioni, sedusse una Vergine e generò un eroe. Questo eroe, il cui nome non è essenziale alla nostra esistenza, era, si diceva, il principale eroe e Salvatore dello schema etico mesopotamico. Seguiva poi un paragrafo che dava altri esempi di simili eroi e Salvatori nati da qualche congiunzione dissoluta tra Dio e un mortale. Seguiva poi un paragrafo—ma Evan non lo capì. Lo rilesse e poi ancora. Poi lo capì. Il vetro cadde in frammenti tintinnanti sul selciato, ed Evan saltò oltre la barriera dentro il negozio, brandendo il bastone.

«Che roba è questa?» gridò il piccolo signor Turnbull, balzando su con i capelli in fiamme. «Come osate rompere la mia vetrina?»

«Perché era la via più rapida per arrivare a voi,» gridò Evan, pestando i piedi. «Alzatevi e battetevi, vigliacco da crapula. Sudicio lunatico, alzatevi, volete? Avete armi qui?»

«Siete pazzo?» chiese Turnbull, fulminandolo con lo sguardo.

«E voi?» gridò Evan. «Potete essere altro quando tappezzate la vostra stessa casa con quella sozzura che sfida Dio? Alzatevi e battetevi, dico.»

Una grande luce come l’alba apparve sul volto del signor Turnbull. Dietro i capelli e la barba rossi impallidì mortalmente di piacere. Ecco, dopo venti solitari anni di inutile fatica, la sua ricompensa. Qualcuno era in collera col giornale. Balzò in piedi come un ragazzo; vide una nuova giovinezza aprirsi davanti a sé. E come non di rado accade ai gentiluomini di mezza età quando vedono una nuova giovinezza aprirsi davanti a loro, si trovò al cospetto della polizia.

I poliziotti, dopo qualche ponderoso interrogatorio, acciuffarono entrambi i due entusiasti. Furono però più rispettosi verso il giovane che aveva mandato in frantumi la vetrina, che verso il malandrino a cui la vetrina era stata infranta. C’era un’aria di raffinato mistero attorno a Evan MacIan, che non esisteva nell’irascibile piccolo bottegaio, un’aria di raffinato mistero che faceva presa sui poliziotti, poiché i poliziotti, come la maggior parte degli altri tipi inglesi, sono al contempo snob e poeti. MacIan poteva forse essere un gentiluomo, sentivano; il direttore manifestamente non lo era. E i raffinati appelli razionali e repubblicani del direttore al suo rispetto per la legge, e la sua ardente voglia di essere giudicato dai suoi concittadini, parevano alla polizia altrettanto farfugliamento quanto avrebbe potuto parere il misticismo di Evan. La polizia non era avvezza a udire principi, neppure i principi della propria esistenza.

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?”

Il magistrato di polizia dinanzi al quale furono condotti in fretta e processati era un certo Mr. Cumberland Vane, un gentiluomo allegro e di mezza età, onorevolmente celebre per la mitezza delle sue sentenze e la leggerezza della sua conversazione. Di tanto in tanto si montava in una specie di collera teorica riguardo a certi particolari trasgressori, come gli uomini che prendevano l’attizzatoio contro le mogli; parlava in modo vago e sentimentale dell’opportunità di frustarli, ed era irrimediabilmente sconcertato dal fatto che le mogli sembravano ancora più in collera con lui che con i loro mariti. Era un uomo alto e azzimato, con un baffo nero arricciato e un impareggiabile abito da mattina. Aveva l’aspetto di un gentiluomo, e tuttavia, in qualche modo, di un gentiluomo da palcoscenico.

Aveva spesso trattato reati gravi contro il semplice ordine o la proprietà con una umana leggerezza. Perciò, riguardo alla mera rottura della finestra di un direttore di giornale, era quasi sguaiato.

“Suvvia, Mr. MacIan, suvvia,” disse, appoggiandosi allo schienale della sedia, “entra di solito nelle case dei suoi amici passando attraverso il vetro?” (Risate.)

“Non è mio amico,” disse Evan, con l’impassibilità di un bambino ottuso.

“Non è suo amico, eh?” disse il magistrato, scintillante. “È suo cognato?” (Risa forti e prolungate.)

“È mio nemico,” disse Evan, semplicemente; “è il nemico di Dio.”

Mr. Vane si spostò bruscamente sul sedile, lasciando cadere il monocolo dall’occhio in un momentaneo imbarazzo non indegno di un uomo.

“Non deve parlare così qui,” disse, rudemente, e con una specie di fretta, “questo non ha nulla a che vedere con noi.”

Evan spalancò i grandi occhi azzurri; “Dio,” cominciò.

“Stia zitto,” disse il magistrato, con collera, “è quanto mai sconveniente che cose di tal genere si dicano… ehm… in pubblico, e in un’ordinaria corte di giustizia. La religione è… ehm… una faccenda troppo personale per essere menzionata in un luogo simile.”

“Davvero?” rispose il montanaro, “e allora su che cosa hanno appena giurato quei poliziotti?”

“Non è affatto un parallelo,” rispose Vane, piuttosto irritato; “naturalmente c’è una formula di giuramento… da prestarsi con riverenza… con riverenza, e con ciò è finita. Ma parlare in un luogo pubblico dei propri sentimenti più sacri e più privati… ebbene, lo chiamo cattivo gusto. (Lievi applausi.) Lo chiamo irriverente. Lo chiamo irriverente, e non sono nemmeno particolarmente ortodosso.”

“Vedo che non lo è,” disse Evan, “ma io lo sono.”

“Ci stiamo allontanando dal punto,” disse il magistrato di polizia, ricomponendosi.

“Posso chiederle perché ha fracassato la finestra di questo degno cittadino?”

Evan impallidì un poco al solo ricordo, ma rispose con lo stesso letteralismo freddo e mortale che mostrò per tutto il tempo.

“Perché ha bestemmiato la Madonna.”

“Glielo dico una volta per tutte,” gridò Mr. Cumberland Vane, battendo con rabbia le nocche sul tavolo, “glielo dico, una volta per tutte, amico mio, che non tollererò che lei si metta a fare tirate o cantilene religiose qui. Non immagini che ciò mi impressionerà. Le persone più religiose non sono quelle che ne parlano. (Applausi.) Lei risponda alle domande e non faccia altro.”

“Non ho fatto altro,” disse Evan, con un lieve sorriso.

“Eh,” gridò Vane, fulminandolo con lo sguardo attraverso il monocolo.

“Mi ha chiesto perché ho rotto la sua finestra,” disse MacIan, con una faccia di legno. “Ho risposto: ‘Perché ha bestemmiato la Madonna.’ Non avevo altra ragione. Perciò non ho altra risposta.” Vane continuò a fissarlo con una severità a lui non abituale.

“Non sta prendendo la strada giusta, signore,” disse, con severità. “Non sta prendendo la strada giusta per… ehm… far trattare il suo caso con particolare riguardo. Se avesse semplicemente espresso rammarico per ciò che ha fatto, sarei stato fortemente propenso ad archiviare la faccenda come uno scatto d’ira. Anche adesso, se dice di essere spiacente, mi limiterò soltanto a…”

“Ma non sono affatto spiacente,” disse Evan, “sono molto contento.”

“Credo davvero che lei sia pazzo,” disse lo stipendiato, indignato, poiché aveva veramente fatto del suo meglio, da uomo bonario, per comporre la disputa. “Che diritto concepibile ha di rompere le finestre altrui perché le loro opinioni non concordano con le sue? Quest’uomo ha soltanto dato espressione alla sua sincera convinzione.”

“Anch’io,” disse il montanaro.

“E lei chi è?” esplose Vane. “Sono necessariamente le sue opinioni quelle giuste? È necessariamente in possesso della verità?”

“Sì,” disse MacIan.

Il magistrato proruppe in una risata sprezzante.

“Oh, lei ha bisogno di una balia che si prenda cura di lei,” disse. “Deve pagare 10 sterline.”

Evan MacIan affondò le mani nella sua ampia veste grigia e ne trasse una curiosa borsa di cuoio. Conteneva esattamente dodici sovrane. Pagò le dieci, moneta per moneta, in silenzio, e con altrettanto silenzio restituì le due rimanenti nel ricettacolo. Poi disse: “Posso dire una parola, vostro onore?”

Cumberland Vane sembrava mezzo ipnotizzato dal silenzio e dai movimenti automatici dello straniero; fece col capo un cenno che avrebbe potuto significare tanto “sì” quanto “no”. “Volevo soltanto dire, vostro onore,” disse MacIan, riponendo la borsa nella tasca dei pantaloni, “che fracassare la finestra di quella bottega è stato, lo confesso, un gesto inutile e piuttosto irregolare. Può essere scusato, tuttavia, come mero preliminare a ulteriori procedimenti, una sorta di prefazione. Ovunque e ogni volta che incontrerò quell’uomo,” e indicò il direttore di The Atheist, “sia fuori da questa porta tra dieci minuti, sia fra vent’anni in qualche paese lontano, ovunque e ogni volta che incontrerò quell’uomo, lo affronterò in duello. Non abbiate paura. Non mi avventerò su di lui come un bullo, né lo sopraffarò con alcuna bruta superiorità. Lo affronterò da gentiluomo; lo affronterò come combatterono i nostri padri. Sceglierà lui come: spada o pistola, cavallo o a piedi. Ma se rifiuta, scriverò la sua codardia su ogni muro del mondo. Se avesse detto di mia madre ciò che ha detto della Madre di Dio, non c’è circolo di uomini onesti in Europa che negherebbe il mio diritto di sfidarlo. Se l’avesse detto di mia moglie, voi inglesi stessi mi avreste perdonato di averlo bastonato come un cane in mezzo alla piazza del mercato. Vostro onore, io non ho madre; non ho moglie. Ho soltanto ciò che i poveri possiedono al pari dei ricchi; ciò che i soli possiedono al pari dell’uomo dai molti amici. Per me questo intero mondo strano è familiare, perché nel suo cuore c’è una casa; per me questo mondo crudele è benigno, perché più in alto dei cieli c’è qualcosa di più umano dell’umanità. Se un uomo non deve combattere per questo, per che cosa mai potrà combattere? Combatterei per il mio amico, ma se perdessi il mio amico, io ci sarei ancora. Combatterei per il mio paese, ma se perdessi il mio paese, esisterei ancora. Ma se ciò che quel demonio sogna fosse vero, io non sarei… scoppierei come una bolla e svanirei. Non potrei vivere in quell’universo imbecille. Non dovrò forse combattere per la mia stessa esistenza?”

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.”

Il magistrato ritrovò la voce e la presenza di spirito. La prima parte del discorso, la sfida ampollosa e brutalmente pratica, lo stordì di sorpresa; ma il resto delle osservazioni di Evan, diramandosi come facevano in frasi teoriche, diede alla sua mente vaga e assai inglese (piena di ricordi delle reticenze e dei compromessi dell’eloquenza pubblica inglese) un’indistinta sensazione di sollievo, come se l’uomo, benché pazzo, non fosse così pericoloso come aveva pensato. Si abbandonò a una sorta di stanca risata.

“Per amor del cielo, amico,” disse, “non parli tanto. Lasci una possibilità agli altri (risate). Confido che tutto ciò che ha detto riguardo allo sfidare Mr. Turnbull a battersi possa considerarsi fandonia. In caso di incidenti, tuttavia, devo obbligarla a mantenere la pace.”

“A mantenere la pace,” ripeté Evan, “con chi?”

“Con Mr. Turnbull,” disse Vane.

“Certamente no,” rispose MacIan. “Che cosa ha egli a che fare con la pace?”

“Vuol forse dire,” cominciò il magistrato, “che si rifiuta di…” La voce di Turnbull stesso si inserì per la prima volta.

“Potrei suggerire,” disse, “che io, vostro onore, posso sistemare in certa misura da me questa faccenda assurda. Questo gentiluomo piuttosto scapestrato promette che non mi assalirà con alcuna aggressione ordinaria… e se lo fa, potete star certo che la polizia ne verrà a conoscenza. Ma dice che non lo farà. Dice che mi sfiderà a duello; e non posso dire nulla di più forte sul suo stato mentale che dire che ritengo altamente probabile che lo faccia. (Risate.) Ma per fare un duello bisogna essere in due, vostro onore (risate rinnovate). Non m’importa minimamente d’essere descritto su ogni muro del mondo come il codardo che non volle battersi con un uomo a Fleet Street, sulla questione se la Vergine Maria avesse un parallelo nella mitologia mesopotamica. No, vostro onore. Non dovete darvi la pena di obbligarlo a mantenere la pace. Io mi obbligo da me a mantenere la pace, e potete restare del tutto soddisfatto che non vi sarà alcun duello che mi veda coinvolto.”

Mr. Cumberland Vane si sbellicava, ridendo in una specie di sollievo.

“Lei è come un soffio d’aprile, signore,” gridò. “Lei è ozono dopo quell’individuo. Ha perfettamente ragione. Forse ho preso la cosa troppo sul serio. Adorerei vederlo mandarle sfide e vedere lei sorridere. Ebbene, ebbene.”

Evan uscì dalla corte di giustizia libero, ma stranamente scosso, come un uomo malato. Qualunque castigo di soppressione l’avrebbe sentito come naturale; ma l’improvvisa congiunzione tra il riso del suo giudice e il riso dell’uomo cui aveva fatto torto lo fece sentire d’un tratto piccolo, o almeno sconfitto. Era davvero vero che il mondo moderno intero considerava il suo mondo come una bolla. Nessuna crudeltà avrebbe potuto mostrarlo, ma la loro benevolenza lo mostrava con una spaventosa chiarezza. Mentre rimuginava, si accorse d’improvviso di una piccola, severa figura che gli stava di fronte in silenzio. I suoi occhi erano grigi e terribili, e la sua barba rossa. Era Turnbull.

“Ebbene, signore,” disse il direttore di The Atheist, “dove ha da svolgersi il duello? Nomini il campo, signore.”

Evan restò come folgorato. Balbettò qualcosa, non sapeva che cosa; lo indovinò soltanto dalla risposta dell’altro.

“Voglio battermi? Voglio battermi?” gridò il furioso libero pensatore. “Ma via, spaventapasseri lunatico della superstizione, credi che i tuoi luridi santi siano gli unici che sappiano morire? Non avete impiccato gli atei, e non li avete bruciati, e bolliti, e mai essi rinnegarono la loro fede? Credi che noi non vogliamo batterci? Notte e giorno ho pregato… ho agognato… una rivoluzione atea… ho agognato di vedere il tuo sangue e il nostro sulle strade. Che sia il tuo o il mio?”

“Ma lei ha detto…” cominciò MacIan.

“Lo so,” disse Turnbull con disprezzo. “E tu che cosa hai detto? Stolto dannato, hai detto cose che avrebbero potuto farci sbattere dentro per un anno, e pedinare dagli sbirri per mezzo decennio. Se volevi batterti, perché hai detto a quell’asino che lo volevi? Ti ho tirato fuori, per batterci se lo vuoi. Ora, battiti se ne hai il coraggio.”

“Allora ti giuro,” disse MacIan, dopo una pausa. “Ti giuro che nulla si frapporrà tra noi. Ti giuro che nulla vi sarà nel mio cuore né nella mia mente finché le nostre spade non si incroceranno. Lo giuro per il Dio che hai negato, per la Beata Signora che hai bestemmiato; lo giuro per le sette spade nel suo cuore. Lo giuro per la Santa Isola dove riposano i miei padri, per l’onore di mia madre, per il segreto della mia gente, e per il calice del Sangue di Dio.”

L’ateo drizzò il capo. “E io,” disse, “do la mia parola.”

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 fair 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.”

III. ALCUNE VECCHIE CURIOSITÀ

Il cielo della sera, una cupola d’oro massiccio, non scalfita neppure da una sola nuvola di tramonto, immergeva le più misere vedute di Londra in una luce strana e dolce. Faceva sì che una viuzza untuosa di St. Martin’s Lane sembrasse lastricata d’oro. Faceva risplendere il banco dei pegni a metà della via come se fosse davvero quel Monte di Pietà che l’istinto poetico francese ha così chiamato; faceva sì che la meschina pseudo-francese libreria, a due porte da esso, una bottega gremita di squallida oscenità, mostrasse per un istante una sorta di colorito parigino. E la bottega che stava tra il banco dei pegni e la bottega della squallida oscenità mostrava un vero e proprio splendore di bellezza d’altri tempi, perché era, per caso, una bottega non priva di bellezza in sé. La finestra sul davanti aveva un baluginio di bronzo e d’acciaio azzurro, illuminato, come da poche stelle, dalle scintille di ciò che si diceva fossero gioielli; poiché era, in breve, una bottega di cianfrusaglie e vecchie curiosità. Una fila di spade seicentesche a mezza brunitura correva come un’ornata ringhiera lungo la fronte della finestra; dietro si scorgeva un più cupo baluginio di vecchia quercia e di vecchie armature; e più in alto pendevano i più straordinari arnesi o utensili dei Mari del Sud, se concepiti per uccidere i nemici o soltanto per cuocerli, nessun semplice uomo bianco avrebbe potuto congetturarlo. Ma l’incanto dell’occhio, che davvero in questa ricca sera si stringeva intorno alla bottega, aveva la sua fonte principale nel caso di due porte spalancate: la porta anteriore che dava sulla strada e una porta posteriore che dava su un curioso quadrato verde di giardino, che il sole tramutava in un quadrato d’oro. Non c’è nulla di più bello che guardare così, per così dire, attraverso l’arco di una casa; come se il cielo aperto fosse una camera interna, e il sole la lampada segreta del luogo.

Ho suggerito che la luce del tramonto rendeva bello ogni cosa. Dire che rendeva bello il custode del negozio di curiosità sarebbe forse un tributo ad essa troppo estremo. L’avrebbe reso facilmente bello se fosse stato semplicemente squallido; se fosse stato un ebreo del tipo di Fagin. Ma era un ebreo di un altro e assai meno ammirevole tipo; un ebreo dal nome molto ben sonante. Poiché, per quanto non vi siano prove sicure per separare la zizzania dal grano di un popolo qualsiasi, una guida rozza ma efficace è che l’ebreo simpatico si chiama Moses Solomon, e l’ebreo antipatico si chiama Thornton Percy. Il custode del negozio di curiosità apparteneva al ramo Thornton Percy del popolo eletto; apparteneva a quelle Dieci Tribù Perdute il cui industrioso proposito è perdere se stesse. Era un uomo ancora giovane, ma già corpulento, con lisci capelli scuri, abiti pesanti ed eleganti, e un sorriso pieno, grasso e permanente, che al primo sguardo appariva benevolo, e al secondo codardo. Il nome sopra la sua bottega era Henry Gordon, ma due scozzesi che si trovavano nel suo negozio quella sera non riuscirono a cogliere traccia alcuna di accento scozzese.

Questi due scozzesi in questa bottega erano acquirenti attenti, ma pagatori generosi. Uno di loro, che sembrava essere il principale e l’autorità (e che, in verità, Mr. Henry Gordon credeva di aver visto da qualche parte in precedenza), era un tipo piccolo e robusto, con begli occhi grigi, una cravatta rossa e squadrata e una barba rossa e squadrata, che portava aggressivamente in avanti come se sfidasse chiunque a tirargliela. L’altro, al confronto, se ne stava talmente in disparte da apparire quasi spettrale nel suo mantello grigio o plaid, un giovane alto, giallastro e silenzioso.

I due scozzesi si interessavano di spade seicentesche. Erano esigenti al riguardo. Si fecero tirar fuori un intero arsenale di queste armi e le fecero rotolare tintinnando sul bancone, finché non ne trovarono due esattamente della stessa lunghezza. Presumibilmente desideravano l’esatta simmetria per qualche trofeo decorativo. Anche allora ne tastarono le punte, ne soppesarono l’equilibrio e le piegarono in cerchio per vedere se scattavano di nuovo dritte; il che, per scopi decorativi, sembra spingere il realismo piuttosto lontano.

“Queste andranno bene,” disse lo strano individuo dalla barba rossa. “E forse farei meglio a pagarle subito. E dato che è lei lo sfidante, Mr. MacIan, forse farebbe meglio a spiegare lei la situazione.”

L’alto scozzese in grigio fece un passo avanti e parlò con voce del tutto chiara e ardita, e tuttavia in qualche modo priva di vita, come un uomo che compie un’antica formalità.

“Il fatto è, Mr. Gordon, che dobbiamo porre il nostro onore nelle sue mani. Sono corse parole tra Mr. Turnbull e me su una grave e inestimabile questione, che può essere espiata soltanto battendosi. Sfortunatamente, poiché la polizia in un certo senso ci insegue, siamo di fretta, e dobbiamo batterci ora e senza padrini. Ma se lei avrà la cortesia di condurci nel suo piccolo giardino e di vigilare sulla lealtà del combattimento, sentiremo quanto…”

Il bottegaio si riprese da una sbalorditiva sorpresa e proruppe:

“Signori, siete ubriachi? Un duello! Un duello nel mio giardino. Andate a casa, signori, andate a casa. Ma insomma, per che cosa avete litigato?”

“Abbiamo litigato,” disse Evan, con la stessa voce spenta, “per religione.” Il grasso negoziante si sbellicava sulla sedia dal divertimento.

“Ebbene, questo sì che è un gioco buffo,” disse. “Così volete commettere un omicidio in nome della religione. Ebbene, ebbene, la mia religione è un po’ di rispetto per l’umanità, e…”

“Mi scusi,” lo interruppe Turnbull, d’un tratto e con veemenza, indicando il banco dei pegni della porta accanto. “Non è forse suo quel negozio?”

“Ma… ehm… sì,” disse Gordon.

“E non è forse suo quel negozio?” ripeté il secolarista, indicando all’indietro il libraio pornografico.

“E se anche lo fosse?”

“Ma allora,” gridò Turnbull, con stridente disprezzo. “Lascerò con fiducia la religione dell’umanità nelle sue mani; ma mi dispiace di averla disturbata per una cosa come l’onore. Mi ascolti, amico mio. Io credo davvero nell’umanità. Credo davvero nella libertà. Mio padre morì per essa sotto le spade della Yeomanry. Io morirò per essa, se necessario, sotto quella spada sul suo bancone. Ma se c’è una vista che me ne fa dubitare, è la sua turpe faccia grassa. È difficile credere che lei non fosse destinato a essere governato come un cane o ucciso come uno scarafaggio. Non provi con me la sua filosofia da schiavo. Noi ci batteremo, e ci batteremo nel suo giardino, con le sue spade. Stia fermo! Alzi la voce oltre un sussurro, e le trapasso il corpo.”

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.”

Turnbull appoggiò la lucente punta della spada contro il vistoso panciotto del mercante, che stava soffocando di rabbia e di paura, e di uno stupore così schiacciante da essere più grande di entrambe.

“MacIan,” disse Turnbull, cadendo quasi nel tono familiare di un socio d’affari, “MacIan, lega questo tizio e mettigli un bavaglio in bocca. Sta’ fermo, dico, o ti uccido dove sei.”

L’uomo era troppo spaventato per gridare, ma si dibatteva selvaggiamente, mentre Evan MacIan, le cui lunghe e magre mani erano insolitamente forti, gli stringeva attorno alcuni vecchi cordoni di tenda, gli legava in bocca un bavaglio di corda e lo rovesciava supino sul pavimento.

“Qui non c’è nulla di molto robusto,” disse Evan, guardandosi attorno. “Temo che riuscirà a liberarsi di quel bavaglio in una mezz’ora o giù di lì.”

“Sì,” disse Turnbull, “ma per quel momento uno di noi sarà morto.”

“Ebbene, speriamo di sì,” disse il montanaro, lanciando un’occhiata dubbiosa alla cosa che si contorceva sul pavimento.

“E ora,” disse Turnbull, arricciandosi i baffi fiammeggianti e tastando la sua spada, “andiamo nel giardino. Che squisita sera d’estate!”

MacIan non disse nulla, ma, sollevando la sua spada dal bancone, uscì al sole.

La luce sfolgorante correva lungo le lame, riempiendone le scanalature di bianco fuoco; i combattenti conficcarono le spade nell’erba e si tolsero cappelli, giacche, panciotti e stivali. Evan recitò tra sé una breve preghiera in latino, durante la quale Turnbull fece una specie di sfoggio nell’accendere una sigaretta che gettò via l’istante dopo, quando vide MacIan apparentemente pronto. Eppure MacIan non era esattamente pronto. Se ne stava a fissare come un uomo colto da una trance.

“Che cosa stai fissando?” chiese Turnbull. “Vedi gli sbirri?”

“Vedo Gerusalemme,” disse Evan, “tutta coperta dagli scudi e dagli stendardi dei Saraceni.”

“Gerusalemme!” disse Turnbull, ridendo. “Ebbene, ne abbiamo preso prigioniero l’unico abitante.”

E raccolse la sua spada e la fece fischiare come la bacchetta di un ragazzo.

“Ti chiedo scusa,” disse MacIan, seccamente. “Cominciamo.”

MacIan fece un saluto militare con la sua arma, che Turnbull imitò o parodiò con un impaziente disprezzo; e nella quiete del giardino le spade si incontrarono con un suono chiaro come quello di una campana. Nell’istante in cui le lame si toccarono, ciascuno le sentì vibrare fino alla punta con una vitalità personale, come se fossero due nudi nervi d’acciaio. Evan aveva mantenuto per tutto il tempo un’aria di apatia, che avrebbe potuto essere la stantia apatia di chi non vuole nulla. Ma era invece la più terribile apatia di chi vuole qualcosa e non si cura di nient’altro. E ciò si vide d’improvviso; poiché nell’istante in cui Evan ingaggiò lo scontro, disimpegnò e affondò con una violenza infernale. Il suo avversario con disperata prontezza parò e ribatté; la parata riuscì appena, la risposta fallì. Qualcosa di grande e di insopportabile sembrava essersi finalmente spezzato in Evan in quel primo omicida affondo, lasciandolo più leggero, più freddo e più svelto sui piedi. Tornò all’attacco, feroce e immobile, ma ora con una feroce cautela. L’istante dopo Turnbull affondò; MacIan parve afferrarne la punta e scagliarla lontano da sé, e stava spingendo indietro come una folgore, quando un suono lo paralizzò; un altro suono accanto alle loro armi tintinnanti. Turnbull, forse per un pari stupore, forse per cavalleria, si fermò anch’egli e si trattenne dal passare la spada attraverso il nemico scoperto.

“Che cos’è?” chiese Evan, con voce roca.

Un pesante rumore di trascinamento, come di un baule tirato lungo un pavimento ingombro, veniva dalla buia bottega alle loro spalle.

“Il vecchio ebreo ha spezzato uno dei suoi lacci, e si trascina in giro,” disse Turnbull. “Presto! Dobbiamo finire prima che si tolga il bavaglio.”

“Sì, sì, presto! In guardia!” gridò il montanaro. Le lame si incrociarono di nuovo con lo stesso suono di canto, e gli uomini si rimisero all’opera con le stesse facce bianche e vigili. Evan, nella sua impazienza, ricadde un poco nella sua foga. Faceva mulinelli, come dicono i duellanti francesi, e benché fosse probabilmente d’un soffio il migliore schermidore dei due, si trovò la punta dell’altro passargli davanti al viso due volte così vicino da quasi sfiorargli la guancia. La seconda volta comprese la reale possibilità della sconfitta e si ricompose sotto lo shock della lucidità dell’ira. Restrinse, e, per così dire, serrò le sue operazioni: tirava di scherma (come recita il vanto dello spadaccino) dentro un anello nuziale; deviava le stoccate di Turnbull con un click esasperante e quasi meccanico, come quello di una macchina. Ogni volta che la spada di Turnbull cercava di scavalcare quell’altra semplice striscia bianca, sembrava restare impigliata in una complessa rete d’acciaio. Deviò una stoccata, ne deviò un’altra, ne deviò un’altra ancora. Poi d’improvviso si spinse in avanti nell’affondo con tutto il suo vivo peso. Turnbull balzò all’indietro, ma Evan affondò e affondò e affondò ancora come un diabolico stantuffo o ariete. E alto al di sopra di tutto il rumore della lotta irruppe nella silenziosa sera una muggente voce umana, nasale, rauca, al più acuto grado del dolore. “Aiuto! Aiuto! Polizia! Assassinio! Assassinio!” Il bavaglio era stato spezzato; e la lingua del terrore era libera.

“Vai avanti!” ansimò Turnbull. “Uno può essere ucciso prima che arrivino.”

La voce del bottegaio che urlava era abbastanza forte da coprire non solo il rumore delle spade ma tutti gli altri rumori intorno, ma persino attraverso il suo lacerante fracasso sembrava esserci qualche altro movimento o trambusto. Ed Evan, nell’atto stesso di affondare su Turnbull, vide qualcosa nei suoi occhi che gli fece lasciar cadere la spada. L’ateo, con gli occhi grigi sbarrati al massimo e stralunati, fissava dritto oltre la sua spalla il piccolo arco della bottega che si apriva sulla strada al di là. E vide l’arco ostruito e annerito da strane figure.

“Dobbiamo filarcela, MacIan,” disse bruscamente. “E non c’è un dannato secondo da perdere. Fa’ come faccio io.”

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.”

Con un balzo fu accanto al piccolo mucchio dei suoi abiti e stivali che giacevano sul prato; li afferrò, senza aspettare di indossarne alcuno; e, cacciandosi la spada sotto l’altro braccio, si lanciò all’impazzata contro il muro in fondo al giardino e si issò dall’altra parte. Tre secondi dopo che era atterrato in calze dall’altro lato, MacIan atterrò accanto a lui, anch’egli in calze e anch’egli portando abiti e spada in un disperato fagotto.

Si trovavano in una via traversa, di per sé molto stretta e solitaria, ma così vicina a un affollato corso da poter vedere le vaghe masse dei veicoli che passavano, e da poter persino vedere un singolo calessino che in quell’istante svoltava l’angolo. Turnbull si portò le dita alla bocca come un monello di strada e fischiò due volte. Proprio mentre lo faceva poté udire le forti voci dei vicini e della polizia che scendevano per il giardino.

Il calessino sterzò di scatto e venne giù a tutta velocità per la stradina al suo richiamo. Quando il vetturino vide i suoi clienti, però, due uomini dai capelli arruffati in camicia e calze con spade sguainate sotto le braccia, non innaturalmente arrestò di colpo la sua prontezza e li fissò con sospetto.

“Parlaci tu un momento,” bisbigliò Turnbull, e si ritirò nell’ombra del muro.

“Vogliamo che lei,” disse MacIan al vetturino, con un superbo strascico scozzese d’indifferenza e sicurezza, “ci porti alla stazione di St. Pancras… assai in fretta.”

“Spiacente, signore,” disse il vetturino, “ma vorrei essere sicuro che sia tutto in regola. Potrei chiederle da dove venite, signore?”

Un secondo dopo che ebbe parlato MacIan udì una voce pesante dall’altra parte del muro, che diceva: “Immagino che farei meglio a scavalcare e a cercarli. Fammi la scaletta.”

“Vetturino,” disse MacIan, assumendo di nuovo la più deliberata e cadenzata intonazione scozzese delle pianure, “se davvero è tanto ansioso di sapere da dove vengo, glielo dirò come grandissimo segreto. Vengo dalla Scozia. E vado alla stazione di St. Pancras. Apra gli sportelli, vetturino.”

Il vetturino lo fissò, ma rise. La voce pesante dietro il muro disse: “Su, una scaletta migliore questa volta, Mr. Price.” E dall’ombra del muro Turnbull sgusciò fuori. Si era infilato all’impazzata la giacca (lasciando il panciotto sul marciapiede), e con una faccia pallida e feroce stava arrampicandosi sul calesse dietro il vetturino. MacIan non aveva la minima idea di che cosa stesse combinando, ma un istinto di disciplina, ereditato da cento uomini di guerra, gli fece attenersi alla propria parte e fidarsi di quella dell’altro.

“Apra gli sportelli, vetturino,” ripeté, con qualcosa dell’ostinata solennità di un ubriaco, “apra gli sportelli. Non mi ha sentito dire stazione di St. Pancras?”

La cima dell’elmo di un poliziotto apparve al di sopra del muro del giardino. Il vetturino non la vide, ma era ancora sospettoso e cominciò:

“Spiacente, signore, ma…” e con ciò il felino Turnbull lo strappò dal suo sedile e lo scagliò nella strada sottostante, dove giacque di colpo tramortito.

“Dammi il suo cappello,” disse Turnbull con voce argentina, cui l’altro obbedì come a uno squillo di tromba. “E sali dentro con le spade.”

E proprio mentre la faccia rossa e furibonda di un poliziotto appariva al di sopra del muro, Turnbull colpì il cavallo con una terribile sferzata di frusta e i due si allontanarono roteando come un boomerang.

Avevano attraversato vorticando sette strade e tre o quattro piazze prima che accadesse altro. Poi, nei pressi di Maida Vale, il conducente aprì la botola e vi parlò attraverso in una maniera non del tutto comune nelle conversazioni attraverso quell’apertura.

“Mr. MacIan,” disse, breve e cortese.

“Mr. Turnbull,” rispose il suo immobile passeggero.

“In circostanze come quelle in cui poc’anzi ci trovammo entrambi non c’era tempo per nulla se non per un’azione assai brusca. Confido perciò che lei non abbia motivo di lamentarsi di me se ho differito fino a questo momento una consultazione con lei sulla nostra presente posizione o sull’azione futura. La nostra presente posizione, Mr. MacIan, immagino di non avere alcuna speciale necessità di descriverla. Abbiamo infranto la legge e stiamo fuggendo dai suoi agenti. La nostra azione futura è cosa sulla quale io stesso nutro opinioni sufficientemente ferme; ma non ho il diritto di presumere o di anticipare le sue, benché possa essermi formato una decisa concezione del suo carattere e una decisa nozione di quali esse probabilmente saranno. Ciò nondimeno, per ogni principio di giustizia intellettuale, sono tenuto a chiederle ora e seriamente se lei desidera proseguire le nostre interrotte relazioni.”

MacIan appoggiò all’indietro sui cuscini il suo viso bianco e piuttosto stanco per poter parlare su, attraverso lo sportello aperto.

“Mr. Turnbull,” disse, “non ho nulla da aggiungere a ciò che ho detto prima. Mi è fortemente impresso nell’animo che lei ed io, unici occupanti di questo calesse in fuga, siamo in questo momento le due persone più importanti di Londra, forse d’Europa. Ho guardato tutte le strade mentre passavamo, ho guardato tutte le botteghe mentre passavamo, ho guardato tutte le chiese mentre passavamo. Dapprima mi sono sentito un poco stordito dalla vastità di tutto ciò. Non riuscivo a capire che cosa significasse tutto. Ma ora so esattamente che cosa significa tutto. Significa noi. Questa intera civiltà è soltanto un sogno. Lei ed io siamo le realtà.”

“Il simbolismo religioso,” disse Mr. Turnbull, attraverso la botola, “non fa presa, come lei probabilmente sa, di norma sui pensatori della scuola cui io appartengo. Ma nel simbolismo così come lei lo usa in questo caso, devo, credo, concedere una certa verità. Noi dobbiamo risolvere questa faccenda in qualche luogo; perché, come lei dice giustamente, abbiamo scoperto la reciproca realtà. Noi dobbiamo ucciderci a vicenda… o convertirci a vicenda. Solevo pensare che tutti i cristiani fossero ipocriti, e provavo davvero verso di loro sentimenti piuttosto blandi. Ma so che lei è sincero… e la mia anima è furente contro di lei. Allo stesso modo lei soleva, suppongo, pensare che tutti gli atei ritenessero che l’ateismo li avrebbe lasciati liberi per l’immoralità… eppure in cuor suo li tollerava del tutto. Ora lei sa che io sono un uomo onesto, e lei è furente contro di me, come io lo sono contro di lei. Sì, è proprio così. Non ci si può adirare con gli uomini malvagi. Ma un uomo buono in errore… ah, per il suo sangue si ha sete. Sì, lei apre per me una prospettiva di pensiero.”

“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 party, 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.

“Non andare a sbattere contro nulla,” disse Evan, immobile.

“C’è qualcosa anche in quella sua veduta,” disse Turnbull, e richiuse la botola.

Sfrecciavano lungo strade luccicanti che passavano loro accanto come frecce. Mr. Turnbull aveva evidentemente una gran quantità di talento pratico inutilizzato che si andava dispiegando in questa ridicola avventura. Se l’erano svignata con una prontezza così sbalorditiva che l’inseguimento della polizia, con ogni probabilità, non era nemmeno cominciato per bene. Ma nel caso lo fosse, il vetturino dilettante scelse la sua vertiginosa rotta attraverso Londra con una strana destrezza. Non fece ciò che sarebbe venuto in mente per primo a un qualunque estraneo desideroso di cancellare le proprie tracce. Non si infilò in viottoli né si contorse attraverso vie miserabili. Il suo buon senso di dilettante gli diceva che era proprio la strada povera, la via laterale, quella che con più probabilità avrebbe ricordato e segnalato il passaggio di un calessino, come il passaggio di una processione reale. Si tenne principalmente sui grandi corsi, così pieni di calessini che una coppia più scapestrata della loro sarebbe potuta facilmente passare nella ressa. In una delle strade più tranquille Evan si mise gli stivali.

Verso la cima di Albany Street il singolare vetturino aprì di nuovo la botola.

“Mr. MacIan,” disse, “intendo che ormai abbiamo definitivamente stabilito che, nel linguaggio convenzionale, l’onore non è soddisfatto. La nostra azione deve almeno spingersi oltre quanto si è spinta nelle recenti condizioni interrotte. Questo, credo, è inteso.”

“Perfettamente,” rispose l’altro con il laccio dello stivale fra i denti.

“In tali condizioni,” proseguì Turnbull, la voce che gli usciva dal foro con una lieve nota di trepidazione assai insolita in lui, “ho una proposta da fare, se può chiamarsi proposta, che probabilmente è venuta in mente a lei con la stessa prontezza che a me. Fino a quando l’evento vero e proprio non avrà luogo, siamo praticamente nella posizione, se non di compagni, almeno di soci d’affari. Fino a quando l’evento non avrà luogo, perciò, suggerirei che litigare sarebbe scomodo e piuttosto inartistico; mentre l’ordinario scambio di cortesie tra uomo e uomo sarebbe non solo elegante ma anche straordinariamente pratico.”

“Lei ha perfettamente ragione,” rispose MacIan, con la sua voce malinconica, “nel dire che tutto ciò è venuto in mente anche a me. Tutti i duellanti dovrebbero comportarsi da gentiluomini l’uno con l’altro. Ma noi, per la stranezza della nostra posizione, siamo qualcosa di ben più che duellanti o gentiluomini. Siamo, nel senso più bizzarro e più esatto del termine, fratelli… d’armi.”

“Mr. MacIan,” rispose Turnbull, con calma, “non c’è bisogno di dire altro.” E chiuse la botola ancora una volta.

Avevano raggiunto Finchley Road prima che egli la riaprisse.

Poi disse: “Mr. MacIan, posso offrirle un sigaro? Sarà un tocco di realismo.”

“Grazie,” rispose Evan. “Lei è molto gentile.” E cominciò a fumare nel calesse.

IV. UNA DISCUSSIONE ALL’ALBA

I duellanti, dal loro punto di vista, erano sfuggiti o avevano sconfitto le principali potenze del mondo moderno. Avevano soddisfatto il magistrato, avevano legato il negoziante mani e piedi, e si erano lasciati la polizia alle spalle. Per quanto riguardava i loro stessi sentimenti, si erano dissolti in un mostruoso mare; non erano che il passeggero e il conducente di uno dei milioni di calessini che riempiono le strade di Londra. Ma avevano dimenticato qualcosa; avevano dimenticato il giornalismo. Avevano dimenticato che esiste nel mondo moderno, forse per la prima volta nella storia, una classe di persone il cui interesse non è che le cose accadano bene o accadano male, che accadano con successo o senza successo, che accadano a vantaggio di questa parte o a vantaggio di quella, ma il cui interesse è semplicemente che le cose accadano.

È la grande debolezza del giornalismo come quadro della nostra esistenza moderna, che esso debba essere un quadro composto interamente di eccezioni. Annunciamo su manifesti sgargianti che un uomo è caduto da un’impalcatura. Non annunciamo su manifesti sgargianti che un uomo non è caduto da un’impalcatura. Eppure quest’ultimo fatto è fondamentalmente più eccitante, in quanto indica che quella mobile torre di terrore e di mistero, un uomo, è ancora in cammino sulla terra. Che l’uomo non sia caduto da un’impalcatura è davvero più sensazionale; ed è anche mille volte più comune. Ma non ci si può ragionevolmente aspettare che il giornalismo insista così sui miracoli permanenti. Non ci si può aspettare che direttori indaffarati mettano sui loro manifesti: “Mr. Wilkinson ancora salvo,” oppure “Mr. Jones, di Worthing, non ancora morto.” Non possono affatto annunciare la felicità del genere umano. Non possono descrivere tutte le forchette che non vengono rubate, o tutti i matrimoni che non vengono giudiziosamente sciolti. Perciò il quadro completo che danno della vita è per necessità fallace; possono rappresentare soltanto ciò che è insolito. Per quanto democratici possano essere, si occupano soltanto della minoranza.

L’episodio del fanatico religioso che ruppe una finestra a Ludgate Hill bastava da solo a fornire loro buona materia da stampa per la notte. Ma quando lo stesso uomo fu condotto dinanzi a un magistrato e sfidò il proprio nemico a mortale combattimento nell’aperta corte, allora le colonne a stento contenevano la lancinante informazione, e i titoli erano così grandi che a stento restava spazio per il testo. Il Daily Telegraph intitolò una colonna “Un duello sulla divinità,” e ne seguì una corrispondenza che durò per mesi, sul se i magistrati di polizia dovessero menzionare la religione. Il Daily Mail, nel suo modo ottuso e assennato, intitolò gli eventi “Voleva battersi per la Vergine.” Mr. James Douglas, in The Star, presumendo della sua conoscenza dei termini filosofici e teologici, descrisse lo scoppio del cristiano sotto il titolo “Dualista e duellista.” Il Daily News inserì un resoconto scialbo della faccenda, ma fu incalzato e divorato per alcune settimane da lettere di pastori di periferia, intitolate “Omicidio e mariolatria.” Ma la temperatura giornalistica veniva costantemente e coerentemente riscaldata da tutte queste influenze; i giornalisti avevano assaggiato il sangue, in prospettiva, ed erano in vena d’averne ancora; ogni cosa nella faccenda li preparava a ulteriori scoppi di indignazione morale. E quando un cronista trafelato irruppe nelle ultime ore della sera con l’annuncio che i due eroi della corte di polizia erano stati letteralmente trovati a battersi in un giardino sul retro a Londra, con un bottegaio legato e imbavagliato sul davanti della casa, i direttori e i vicedirettori restarono impietriti come sono gli uomini davanti alle grandi beatitudini.

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.”

Il mattino seguente, cinque o sei dei grandi quotidiani di Londra esplosero simultaneamente in grandi fioriture di eloquenti articoli di fondo. Verso la fine tutti gli editoriali tendevano a somigliarsi, ma cominciavano tutti in modo diverso. Il Daily Telegraph, per esempio, esordiva: “Vi sarà ben poca divergenza tra i nostri lettori, o tra tutti gli uomini veramente inglesi e rispettosi della legge, riguardo alla ecc., ecc.” Il Daily Mail diceva: “La gente deve imparare, nel mondo moderno, a tenersi per sé le proprie divergenze teologiche. La rissa, ecc., ecc.” Il Daily News attaccava: “Nulla potrebbe essere più nocivo alla causa della vera religione che, ecc., ecc.” Il Times cominciava con qualcosa sui turbamenti celtici dell’equilibrio dell’Impero, e il Daily Express si distinse splendidamente omettendo del tutto una faccenda così controversa e sostituendovi un editoriale sulle galosce.

E il mattino dopo ancora, i direttori e i giornali erano in tale stato che, come si suol dire, non c’era modo di trattenerli. Qualunque cosa segreta e ariosa sia quella che aleggia sui direttori e d’improvviso ne stravolge il cervello, quella cosa si era impadronita della storia del vetro rotto e del duello nel giardino. Divenne mostruosa e onnipresente, come lo sono al nostro tempo le irrilevanti gesta della setta degli Agapemoniti, o come lo furono in un tempo precedente le squallide disonestà dei finanzieri rhodesiani. Se ne fecero domande, e persino se ne diedero risposte, alla Camera dei Comuni. Il Governo fu solennemente denunciato sui giornali per non aver fatto qualcosa, nessuno sapeva cosa, onde impedire che la finestra venisse rotta. Fu avviata un’enorme sottoscrizione per risarcire il signor Gordon, l’uomo che era stato imbavagliato nella bottega. Il signor MacIan, uno dei contendenti, divenne per qualche misteriosa ragione, singolarmente e immensamente popolare come figura comica sui giornali umoristici e sul palco del music hall. Veniva sempre raffigurato (a dispetto dei fatti) con basette rosse, e un naso rosso rosso, e in pieno costume delle Highland. E una canzone, composta d’un numero inimmaginabile di strofe, in cui il suo nome faceva rima con ferro da stiro, il Leone britannico, dritto furbacchione, dente di leone, Spion (con Kop nel verso seguente), veniva cantata a teatri gremiti ogni notte. I giornali svilupparono una sete divorante per la cattura dei fuggiaschi; e quando questi non furono presi entro quarantotto ore, mutarono d’improvviso l’intera faccenda in un mistero poliziesco. Lettere sotto il titolo “Dove Sono?” affluirono a ogni giornale, con ogni concepibile sorta di spiegazione, che li stanavano nel Monumento, nel Twopenny Tube, nella Foresta di Epping, nell’Abbazia di Westminster, arrotolati nei tappeti da Shoolbreds, chiusi a chiave nelle casseforti di Chancery Lane. Sì, i giornali erano assai interessanti, e il signor Turnbull ne srotolò un intero fascio per il divertimento del signor MacIan mentre sedevano su un’alta brughiera a nord di Londra, nel sopraggiungere della bianca alba.

Le tenebre a oriente si erano spezzate con una barra di grigio; la barra di grigio si scisse con una spada d’argento e il mattino si sollevò faticosamente sopra Londra. Dal punto in cui Turnbull e MacIan sedevano su uno di quei brulli pendii dietro Hampstead, potevano vedere l’intera Londra prender forma vagamente e ampiamente nella luce grigia e crescente, finché il sole bianco non le stette sopra ed essa giacque ai loro piedi, la splendida mostruosità ch’essa è. I suoi sconcertanti riquadri e parallelogrammi erano compatti e perfetti come un rompicapo cinese; un enorme geroglifico che l’uomo deve decifrare o morire. Cadde su entrambi, ma su Turnbull più che sull’altro, perché egli sapeva meglio cosa la scena significasse, quel senso del tutto indescrivibile come d’una sublime e appassionata e commovente futilità, che non è mai evocato dai deserti o dai morti o dagli uomini trascurati e barbari, e che può essere invocato soltanto dalla vista dell’enorme genio dell’uomo applicato a qualcosa d’altro che non sia il meglio. Turnbull, il vecchio democratico idealista, aveva così spesso vituperato la democrazia e l’aveva vituperata a ragione per la sua indolenza, il suo snobismo, la sua malvagia venerazione per le cose oziose. Aveva ragione a sufficienza; poiché la nostra democrazia ha un solo grande difetto: non è democratica. E dopo aver denunciato così giustamente l’uomo comune e moderno per tanti anni come sofista e come schiavo, egli guardò in basso da un vuoto declivio di Hampstead e vide quali dèi essi siano. La loro impresa gli parve tanto più eroica e divina, in quanto pareva dubbio che valesse la pena di compierla. Pareva esservi qualcosa di più grande della mera esattezza nel commettere un errore come Londra. E quale doveva esserne la fine di tutto ciò? quale doveva essere l’ultima trasformazione di questo comune e incredibile uomo di Londra, questo operaio su un tram a Battersea, questo suo impiegato su un omnibus a Cheapside? Turnbull, mentre fissava tetramente, mormorò tra sé le parole del vecchio Swinburne ateo e rivoluzionario che aveva inebriato la sua gioventù:

“E ancora chiediamo se Dio o l’uomo possa scioglierti, Lazzaro; comandarti di levarti repubblicano, e salvare te stesso e tutti noi. Ma nessuna lingua di discepolo può dire se tu possa togliere via i nostri peccati.”

Turnbull rabbrividì lievemente come se dietro il mattino terreno sentisse la sera del mondo, il tramonto di tante speranze. Quelle parole erano tratte da “Canti prima dell’aurora”. Ma i canti di Turnbull, al loro meglio, erano canti dopo l’aurora, e l’aurora non era poi stata gran cosa dopotutto. Turnbull rabbrividì di nuovo nell’aria pungente del mattino. Anche MacIan guardava fisso col volto rivolto verso la città, ma vi era in quel suo sguardo cieco e mistico qualcosa che diceva, per così dire, che i suoi occhi erano rivolti all’interno. Quando Turnbull gli disse qualcosa a proposito di Londra, essi parvero muoversi come a un richiamo e uscir fuori come due padroni di casa che si affacciano sulle loro soglie.

“Sì,” disse, con una specie di ottusità. “È un posto molto grande.”

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.”

Ci fu un silenzio alquanto privo di significato, e poi MacIan disse di nuovo:

“È un posto molto grande. Quando ci entrai la prima volta ne ebbi paura. Paura esattamente come si avrebbe paura alla vista di un uomo alto dodici metri. Sono abituato alle cose grandi, là da dove vengo, grandi montagne che sembrano colmare l’infinito di Dio, e il grande mare che va fino ai confini del mondo. Ma quelle cose sono tutte informi e confuse, non plasmate in alcuna forma familiare. Ma vedere le cose semplici, squadrate, umane, così grandi, case così grandi e strade così grandi, e la città stessa così grande, era come essersi avvitato nell’occhio la lente d’ingrandimento di un demonio. Era come vedere una scodella di porridge grande come una casa, o una trappola per topi fatta per catturare elefanti.”

“Come il paese dei Brobdingnag,” disse Turnbull, sorridendo.

“Oh! E dov’è?” disse MacIan.

Turnbull disse amaramente: “In un libro,” e il silenzio tornò a cadere di colpo tra loro.

Sedevano in una sorta di disordine sul fianco della collina; tutte le cose che avevano raccolto in fretta, in vari luoghi, per la loro fuga, erano sparpagliate alla rinfusa intorno a loro. Le due spade con cui poco prima avevano cercato di togliersi la vita a vicenda giacevano gettate a caso sull’erba, come due oziosi bastoni da passeggio. Alcune provviste comprate la notte prima, in una bettola infima, in caso di imprecisate contingenze, erano sparse in giro come il materiale di un comune picnic, qui un cestino di cioccolato, là una bottiglia di vino. E ad aggiungere al disordine, infine, c’erano gettate sopra ogni cosa, le più disordinate delle cose moderne, giornali, e altri giornali, e ancora giornali, i ministri della moderna anarchia. Turnbull ne raccolse uno tristemente, e tirò fuori una pipa.

“C’è parecchio su di noi,” disse. “Ti dispiace se accendo?”

“Perché dovrebbe dispiacermi?” chiese MacIan.

Turnbull osservò con un certo studioso interesse l’uomo che non comprendeva nessuna delle cortesie verbali; accese la pipa e ne soffiò fuori grandi nuvole.

“Sì,” riprese. “La faccenda in cui io e te siamo impegnati è in questo momento davvero il miglior articolo d’Inghilterra. Sono un giornalista, e me ne intendo. Per la prima volta, forse, dopo molte generazioni, gli inglesi sono davvero più indignati per un torto commesso in Inghilterra di quanto lo siano per un torto commesso in Francia.”

“Non è un torto,” disse MacIan.

Turnbull rise. “Sembri incapace di comprendere l’uso ordinario del linguaggio umano. Se non sospettassi che sei un genio, saprei di certo che sei uno zuccone. Credo che faremmo meglio a incamminarci e raccogliere i nostri bagagli.”

E balzò in piedi e cominciò a ficcarsi i bagagli nelle tasche, o a legarseli sulla schiena. Mentre cacciava alla meglio una scatoletta di carne in conserva nella tasca laterale già scoppiante, disse con noncuranza:

“Volevo solo dire che io e te siamo le persone più in vista sui giornali inglesi.”

“Beh, cosa ti aspettavi?” chiese MacIan, spalancando i suoi grandi occhi azzurri e solenni.

“I giornali sono pieni di noi,” disse Turnbull, chinandosi a raccogliere una delle spade.

MacIan si chinò e raccolse l’altra.

“Sì,” disse, nel suo modo semplice. “Ho letto ciò che hanno da dire. Ma non sembrano cogliere il punto.”

“Il punto di cosa?” chiese Turnbull.

“Il punto della spada,” disse MacIan, con violenza, e piantò la punta d’acciaio nel terreno come chi pianta un albero.

“Quello è un punto,” disse Turnbull, torvo, “che discuteremo più tardi. Vieni.”

Turnbull si legò addosso disperatamente con dello spago l’ultima scatola di biscotti; e poi parlò, come un tuffatore cinto per l’immersione, breve e secco.

“Ora, signor MacIan, deve ascoltarmi. Deve ascoltarmi, non solo perché conosco il paese, cosa che lei potrebbe imparare guardando una carta geografica, ma perché conosco la gente del paese, che lei non potrebbe conoscere neppure vivendoci trent’anni. Quell’infernale città laggiù è sveglia; ed è sveglia contro di noi. Tutte quelle interminabili file di finestre e finestre sono occhi che ci fissano. Tutte quelle foreste di comignoli sono dita puntate contro di noi, mentre stiamo qui sul fianco della collina. La cosa ha attecchito. Per i prossimi sei mortali mesi non penseranno che a noi, come per sei mortali mesi non pensarono che al caso Dreyfus. Oh, lo so che è buffo. Lasciano che bambini affamati, che non vogliono morire, cadano a decine senza voltarsi. Ma poiché due gentiluomini, per privati sentimenti di delicatezza, vogliono morire, mobiliteranno esercito e marina per impedirlo. Per mezzo anno o più, io e lei, signor MacIan, saremo un ostacolo a ogni riforma dell’Impero britannico. Impediremo che i cinesi vengano mandati via dal Transvaal e che si sblocchi il traffico nello Strand. Saremo l’argomento di conversazione di ricambio ogni volta che qualcuno raccomanderà l’autonomia irlandese, o si lamenterà delle insegne luminose. Perciò non immagini, nella sua innocenza, che ci basti dileguarci tra queste colline inglesi come un predone delle Highlands potrebbe dileguarsi nelle sue derelitte montagne scozzesi. Dobbiamo stare eternamente in guardia; dobbiamo vivere la vita braccata di due illustri criminali. Dobbiamo aspettarci di essere riconosciuti tanto quanto se fossimo Napoleone in fuga dall’Elba. Dobbiamo prepararci a che le nostre descrizioni siano inviate a ogni minuscolo villaggio, e a che i nostri volti siano riconosciuti da ogni poliziotto ambizioso. Dovremo spesso dormire sotto le stelle come se fossimo in Africa. Ultima e più importante cosa, non dobbiamo neppure sognarci di attuare il nostro— il nostro regolamento finale, che sarà una faccenda famosa quanto gli omicidi di Phoenix Park, a meno che non abbiamo preso disposizioni reali e precise per il nostro isolamento—non dirò per la nostra sicurezza. Non dobbiamo, in breve, batterci finché non li avremo depistati, foss’anche solo per un istante. Perché, mi creda sulla parola, signor MacIan, se il Pubblico britannico ci mette una volta le mani addosso, il Pubblico britannico impedirà il duello, non fosse che rinchiudendoci entrambi in manicomio per il resto dei nostri giorni.”

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?”

MacIan guardava l’orizzonte con un’espressione piuttosto velata.

“Non mi sorprende affatto,” disse, “che il mondo sia contro di noi. Mi fa sentire che ho avuto ragione a----”

“A?” disse Turnbull.

“A sfondare la sua finestra,” disse MacIan. “Ho svegliato il mondo.”

“Benissimo, allora,” disse Turnbull, imperturbabile. “Guardiamo qualche fatto conclusivo. Oltre quella collina c’è un terreno relativamente sgombro. Per fortuna conosco bene quella zona, e se mi seguirà con esattezza, e, quando occorre, strisciando sul ventre, potremmo riuscire ad allontanarci di dieci miglia da Londra, letteralmente senza incontrare nessuno, il che sarà comunque il miglior inizio possibile. Abbiamo provviste per almeno due giorni e due notti, tre giorni se le razioniamo con cura. Potremmo riuscire ad allontanarci di cinquanta o sessanta miglia senza neppure mettere piede nella porta di una locanda. Io ho i biscotti e la carne in scatola, e il latte. Lei ha il cioccolato, mi pare? E il brandy?”

“Sì,” disse MacIan, come un soldato che riceve ordini.

“Benissimo, allora, andiamo. In marcia. Svoltiamo sotto quel terzo cespuglio e giù nella valle.” E si avviò davanti con passo dondolante.

Poi si fermò di colpo; perché si accorse che l’altro non lo seguiva. Evan MacIan era appoggiato alla sua spada con volto abbassato, come un uomo colpito d’improvviso e immobilizzato dal dubbio.

“Cosa diavolo c’è?” chiese Turnbull, fissandolo con una certa ira.

Evan non rispose.

“Cosa diamine ti prende?” domandò di nuovo il capo, il volto che a poco a poco si faceva rosso come la sua barba; poi disse, d’improvviso, e con voce più umana, “Soffri, MacIan?”

“Sì,” rispose il montanaro, senza alzare il volto.

“Prendi del brandy,” gridò Turnbull, avanzando in fretta verso di lui. “Ce l’hai.”

“Non è nel corpo,” disse MacIan, nel suo modo cupo e strano. “Il dolore è entrato nella mia mente. Una cosa spaventosa mi è appena venuta in mente.”

“Di cosa diavolo stai parlando?” chiese Turnbull.

MacIan proruppe con una voce strana e viva.

“Dobbiamo batterci ora, Turnbull. Dobbiamo batterci ora. Una cosa tremenda mi è piombata addosso, e so che dev’essere ora e qui. Devo ucciderti qui,” gridò, con una sorta di rabbia lacrimosa impossibile da descrivere. “Qui, qui, su quest’erba benedetta.”

“Ma, idiota,” cominciò Turnbull.

“L’ora è venuta—l’ora nera che Dio le ha destinato. Presto, tra poco sarà passata. Presto!”

E scagliò via il fodero con furia, e restò in piedi con la luce del sole che scintillava lungo la sua spada.

“Maledetto sciocco,” ripeté Turnbull. “Metti via quella cosa, somaro; la gente uscirà da quella casa al primo cozzo dell’acciaio.”

“Uno di noi sarà morto prima che escano,” disse l’altro, con voce roca, “perché questa è l’ora che Dio ha destinato.”

“Beh, non ho mai fatto gran conto di Dio,” disse il direttore de L’Ateo, perdendo ogni pazienza. “E ne faccio ancor meno adesso. Non m’importa cosa Dio abbia destinato. Abbi la bontà di illuminare le mie pagane tenebre su cosa diavolo intendi tu.”

“L’ora sarà presto passata. Tra un istante sarà passata,” disse il pazzo. “È adesso, adesso, adesso che devo inchiodare il tuo corpo blasfemo alla terra—adesso, adesso che devo vendicare Nostra Signora sul suo vile calunniatore. Ora o mai più. Perché il pensiero tremendo è nella mia mente.”

“E quale pensiero,” chiese Turnbull, con frenetica compostezza, “occupa ciò che tu chiami la tua mente?”

“Devo ucciderti ora,” disse il fanatico, “perché----”

“Beh, perché,” disse Turnbull, con pazienza.

“Perché ho cominciato ad affezionarmi a te.”

Il volto di Turnbull ebbe uno spasmo improvviso nella luce del sole, un mutamento così istantaneo da non lasciare traccia dietro di sé; e i suoi lineamenti parvero ancora scolpiti in uno sguardo freddo. Ma quando parlò di nuovo sembrò un uomo che placidamente fingeva di fraintendere qualcosa che comprendeva perfettamente bene.

“Il tuo affetto si esprime in forma brusca,” cominciò, ma MacIan mandò in pezzi il fragile e frivolo discorso con una voce violenta. “Non prenderti la briga di parlare così,” disse. “Sai cosa intendo tanto bene quanto lo so io. Vieni a batterti, ti dico. Forse provi esattamente quello che provo io.”

Il volto di Turnbull trasalì di nuovo nella luce spietata del sole, ma il suo atteggiamento conservò la sua sprezzante disinvoltura.

“La tua mente celtica corre davvero troppo per me,” disse; “mi sia concesso, nel mio pesante modo delle Lowlands, di comprendere questo nuovo sviluppo. Mio caro signor MacIan, cosa intende davvero?”

MacIan teneva ancora la punta lucente della spada rivolta verso il petto dell’altro.

“Sai cosa intendo. Tu stesso intendi la stessa cosa. Dobbiamo batterci ora o altrimenti----”

“O altrimenti?” ripeté Turnbull, fissandolo con una gravità quasi accecante.

“O altrimenti potremmo non voler più batterci affatto,” rispose Evan, e la fine del suo discorso fu come un grido disperato.

Turnbull sguainò d’improvviso la propria spada come per ingaggiare; poi, piantandola per un istante con la punta all’ingiù, disse: “Prima di cominciare, posso farti una domanda?”

MacIan chinò il capo con pazienza, ma con occhi ardenti.

“Hai detto, poco fa,” proseguì Turnbull dopo un momento, “che se non ci battessimo ora, potremmo non voler più batterci affatto. Come ti sentiresti a riguardo se arrivassimo a non voler più batterci affatto?”

“Mi sentirei,” rispose l’altro, “esattamente come mi sentirei se tu avessi sguainato la tua spada, e io fossi fuggito. Sentirei che, poiché sono stato debole, non è stata resa giustizia.”

“Giustizia,” rispose Turnbull, con un sorriso pensoso, “ma noi stiamo parlando dei tuoi sentimenti. E cosa intendi per giustizia, al di là dei tuoi sentimenti?”

MacIan fece un gesto di stanco riconoscimento! “Oh, Nominalismo,” disse, con una sorta di sospiro, “abbiamo risolto tutto questo nel dodicesimo secolo.”

“Vorrei che potessimo risolverlo adesso,” rispose l’altro, con fermezza. “Vuoi davvero dire che se arrivassi a ritenermi nel giusto, tu saresti certamente nel torto?”

“Se ricevessi un colpo sulla nuca, potrei arrivare a crederti un elefante verde,” rispose MacIan, “ma non ho forse il diritto di dire ora che, se lo pensassi, penserei una cosa sbagliata?”

“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.

«Allora siete proprio certo che sarebbe male provare simpatia per me?» chiese Turnbull, con un lieve sorriso.

«No,» disse Evan, pensieroso, «non dico questo. Potrebbe non essere il diavolo, potrebbe essere una parte di Dio che non mi è dato conoscere. Ma io avevo un compito da svolgere, e questo lo rende difficile.»

«E suppongo,» disse l’ateo, con molta dolcezza, «che voi e io sappiamo tutto su quale parte di Dio ci sia dato conoscere.»

MacIan proruppe come un uomo spinto alle strette che spiega ogni cosa.

«La Chiesa non è una cosa come il Circolo dell’Athenaeum,» gridò. «Se il Circolo dell’Athenaeum perdesse tutti i suoi membri, il Circolo dell’Athenaeum si scioglierebbe e cesserebbe di esistere. Ma quando apparteniamo alla Chiesa apparteniamo a qualcosa che è fuori di tutti noi; che è fuori di tutto ciò di cui parlate, fuori dei Cardinali e del Papa. Essi le appartengono, ma essa non appartiene a loro. Se cadessimo tutti morti d’improvviso, la Chiesa in qualche modo esisterebbe ancora in Dio. Diamine, non vedete che sono più sicuro della sua esistenza di quanto lo sia della mia? Eppure mi chiedete di fidarmi del mio temperamento, del mio proprio temperamento, che può essere rovesciato sottosopra da due bottiglie di chiaretto o da un attacco d’itterizia. Mi chiedete di fidarmene quando s’intenerisce verso di voi e di non fidarmi della cosa che credo essere fuori di me stesso e più reale del sangue nel mio corpo.»

«Fermatevi un momento,» disse Turnbull, col medesimo tono disinvolto, «Persino nel momento stesso in cui dite di credere questo o quello, implicate che vi è una parte di voi di cui vi fidate anche se ve ne sono molte altre di cui diffidate. Se è soltanto il vostro io che prova simpatia per me, di certo è soltanto il vostro io che crede nella Chiesa cattolica.»

Evan rimase in un atteggiamento immoto e grave. «Vi è una parte di me che è divina,» rispose, «una parte di cui ci si può fidare, ma vi sono anche affetti che sono interamente animali e oziosi.»

«E siete proprio certo, suppongo,» continuò Turnbull, «che se anche voi mi teneste in stima, la stima sarebbe del tutto animale e oziosa?» Per la prima volta MacIan sussultò, come non si aspettasse ciò che gli veniva detto. Alla fine disse:

«Qualunque cosa in terra o in cielo ci abbia uniti noi due insieme, pare essere qualcosa che rende impossibile mentire. No, non credo che il moto in me verso di voi fosse… fosse quella superficiale sorta di cosa. Può essere stato qualcosa di più profondo… qualcosa di strano. Non riesco affatto a comprendere la cosa. Ma comprendete questo e comprendetelo a fondo: se io vi amassi, il mio amore potrebbe essere divino. No, non è per un’inezia che ci battiamo. Non è per una superstizione o per un simbolo. Quando scriveste quelle parole su Nostra Signora, in quell’atto eravate un uomo malvagio che compiva un atto malvagio. Se vi odio è perché avete odiato la bontà. E se provo simpatia per voi… è perché siete buono.»

Il volto di Turnbull assunse un’espressione indecifrabile.

«Ebbene, ci battiamo ora?» disse.

«Sì,» disse MacIan, con una improvvisa contrazione delle nere sopracciglia, «sì, dev’essere ora.»

Le lucenti spade si incrociarono, e il loro primo contatto, correndo giù per la lama e per il braccio, disse a ciascun combattente che il cuore dell’altro si era destato. Non era in quel modo che le spade avevano risuonato insieme quando si erano scagliati l’uno contro l’altro nel piccolo giardino dietro la bottega del mercante.

Vi fu una pausa, e poi MacIan fece un movimento come per affondare, e quasi nello stesso istante Turnbull, d’improvviso e con calma, lasciò cadere la spada. Evan si guardò attorno con insolito sconcerto, e poi si accorse che un uomo massiccio, vestito di chiaro e con un panama in capo, avanzava serenamente verso di loro.

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.

V. IL PACIERE

Quando i contendenti, con le spade incrociate, divennero d’improvviso consapevoli di una terza persona, fecero entrambi lo stesso movimento. Fu rapido come lo scatto di una pistola, e lo corressero istantaneamente e ripresero la loro posa originaria, ma entrambi lo avevano fatto, entrambi lo avevano visto, ed entrambi sapevano cosa fosse. Non era un movimento di collera per essere stati interrotti. Che ne dicessero o pensassero ciò che volevano, era un movimento di sollievo. Una forza dentro di loro, eppure del tutto al di là di loro, sembrava lentamente e senza pietà dilavare l’adamante del loro giuramento. Come amanti delusi potrebbero contemplare l’inevitabile tramonto del primo amore, questi uomini contemplavano il tramonto del loro primo odio.

I loro cuori si facevano sempre più deboli l’uno contro l’altro. Quando le loro armi risuonavano e ribattevano nel piccolo giardino di Londra, avrebbero potuto essere ben certi che, se una terza persona li avesse interrotti, qualcosa almeno sarebbe accaduto. Si sarebbero uccisi a vicenda oppure avrebbero ucciso lei. Ma ora nulla poteva disfare o negare quel lampo di realtà, che per un secondo erano stati contenti di essere interrotti. Qualcosa di nuovo e strano saliva sempre più alto nei loro cuori come un mare grosso nella notte. Era qualcosa che sembrava tanto più spietato, perché poteva rivelarsi una misericordia immensa. C’era forse, nell’amicizia, una qualche fatalità di quelle di cui tutti gli amanti parlano nell’amore? Dio faceva forse gli uomini amarsi l’un l’altro contro la loro volontà?

“Sono certo che mi scuserete se vi rivolgo la parola,” disse lo sconosciuto, con una voce insieme ansiosa e deferente.

La voce era troppo cortese per essere buona educazione. Era incongrua con lo spettacolo eccentrico dei duellanti, che avrebbe dovuto sconcertare un uomo sano e libero. Era anche incongrua con il pieno e sano, sebbene alquanto flaccido, fisico dell’uomo che parlava. A prima vista aveva l’aria di un bell’animale, con barba e capelli biondi e ondulati, e occhi azzurri, insolitamente vividi. Era solo al secondo sguardo che la mente provava un’improvvisa e forse insensata irritazione per il modo in cui la barba d’oro arretrava dentro il panciotto, e per il modo in cui il naso finemente sagomato sporgeva in avanti come se fiutasse la strada. Ed era solo, forse, al centesimo sguardo che gli occhi azzurri e vividi, che normalmente prima e dopo quell’istante parevano brillanti d’intelligenza, parevano per così dire brillare d’idiozia. Era un uomo pesante, dall’aria robusta, che sembrava tanto più grosso per via degli abiti larghi e dai colori chiari che indossava, e che avevano, nella loro estrema leggerezza e ampiezza, quasi un tocco tropicale. Ma un esame più attento del suo abbigliamento avrebbe mostrato che perfino ai tropici sarebbe stato unico; esso era tutto tessuto secondo una qualche trama igienica di cui nessun essere umano aveva mai sentito parlare prima, e che era assolutamente necessaria anche solo per la salute di una giornata. Portava un enorme cappello a tesa larga, altrettanto igienico, molto arretrato sulla nuca, e la sua voce uscendo da un tipo d’uomo così pesante e gioviale era, come ho detto, sorprendentemente stridula e ossequiosa.

“Sono certo che mi scuserete se vi rivolgo la parola,” disse. “Ora, mi domando se non siate in qualche piccola difficoltà che, in fondo, potremmo risolvere assai comodamente insieme? Ora, non vi dispiace che io dica questo, vero?”

Il volto di entrambi i contendenti rimase alquanto impassibile a quest’appello. Ma lo sconosciuto, prendendo probabilmente il loro silenzio per un montante imbarazzo, continuò con una sorta di allegria:

“Dunque siete voi i giovani di cui ho letto sui giornali. Beh, certo, quando si è giovani, si è piuttosto romantici. Sapete cosa dico sempre ai giovani?”

Un vuoto silenzio seguì questa gaia domanda. Poi Turnbull disse con voce incolore:

“Dato che all’ultimo compleanno ho compiuto quarantasette anni, probabilmente sono venuto al mondo troppo presto per l’esperienza.”

“Molto bene, molto bene,” disse la persona cordiale. “Secco umorismo scozzese. Secco umorismo scozzese. Bene, dunque. Ho capito che voi due volete battervi in duello. Suppongo che non siate molto al corrente del mondo moderno. Il duello lo abbiamo del tutto superato, sapete. Anzi, Tolstoj ci dice che presto supereremo la guerra, che secondo lui è semplicemente un duello tra nazioni. Un duello tra nazioni. Ma non c’è alcun dubbio che abbiamo superato il duello.”

In attesa di un qualche effetto sui suoi legnosi ascoltatori, lo sconosciuto rimase raggiante per un momento e poi riprese:

“Ora, mi dicono i giornali che volete davvero battervi per qualcosa legato al cattolicesimo romano. Ora, sapete cosa dico sempre ai cattolici romani?”

“No,” disse Turnbull, pesantemente. “Lo sanno loro?” Pareva essere una caratteristica del gioviale, igienico gentiluomo il fatto che dimenticava sempre la frase che aveva pronunciato l’istante prima. Senza dilungarsi oltre sulla fissa formula del suo appello alla Chiesa di Roma, rise cordialmente alla risposta di Turnbull; poi i suoi erranti occhi azzurri colsero la luce del sole sulle spade, ed egli assunse una gravità bonaria.

“Ma sapete che questa è una cosa seria,” disse, squadrando Turnbull e MacIan, come se fino a un attimo prima avessero tenuto la tavolata a ridere con le loro frivolezze. “Sono certo che se mi appellassi alle vostre nature superiori…le vostre nature superiori. Ogni uomo ha una natura superiore e una natura inferiore. Ora, mettiamo la faccenda molto chiaramente, e senza alcuna romantica sciocchezza sull’onore o roba del genere. Non è forse lo spargimento di sangue un gran peccato?”

“No,” disse MacIan, parlando per la prima volta.

“Beh, davvero, davvero!” disse il paciere.

“L’omicidio è un peccato,” disse l’incrollabile montanaro. “Non esiste peccato di spargimento di sangue.”

“Beh, non litigheremo per una parola,” disse l’altro, affabilmente.

“E perché diavolo no?” disse MacIan, con improvvisa asprezza. “Perché non dovremmo litigare per una parola? A cosa servono le parole se non sono abbastanza importanti da farci litigare? Perché scegliamo una parola invece di un’altra se non c’è alcuna differenza tra loro? Se chiamaste una donna scimpanzé invece che angelo, non nascerebbe forse una lite per una parola? Se non avete intenzione di discutere sulle parole, su cosa avete intenzione di discutere? Avete intenzione di trasmettermi il vostro pensiero muovendo le orecchie? La Chiesa e le eresie hanno sempre combattuto sulle parole, perché sono le uniche cose per cui vale la pena combattere. Io dico che l’omicidio è un peccato, e lo spargimento di sangue no, e che c’è tanta differenza tra queste parole quanta ce n’è tra la parola ‘sì’ e la parola ‘no’; o piuttosto maggiore differenza, perché ‘sì’ e ‘no’, almeno, appartengono alla stessa categoria. L’omicidio è un evento spirituale. Lo spargimento di sangue è un evento fisico. Un chirurgo compie spargimento di sangue.

“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.”

“I am afraid I don’t understand,” answered Turnbull.

“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.”

“Ah, siete un casuista!” disse l’omone, scuotendo il capo. “Ora, sapete cosa dico sempre ai casuisti…?”

MacIan fece un gesto violento; e Turnbull scoppiò in una risata aperta. Il paciere non parve minimamente seccato, ma continuò nel suo immutato godimento.

“Su, su,” disse, “torniamo al punto. Ora Tolstoj ha dimostrato che la forza non è rimedio; sicché vedete la posizione in cui mi trovo. Faccio del mio meglio per fermare quella che, son certo non vi dispiacerà se la chiamo, questa violenza davvero inutile, questa violenza davvero del tutto sbagliata da parte vostra. Ma è contro i miei principi chiamare la polizia contro di voi, perché la polizia è ancora su un piano morale inferiore, per così dire, perché, in breve, la polizia indubbiamente talvolta impiega la forza. Tolstoj ha dimostrato che la violenza non fa che generare violenza nella persona verso cui è usata, mentre l’amore, d’altra parte, genera amore. Sicché vedete in che posizione mi trovo. Sono ridotto a usare l’amore per fermarvi. Sono costretto a usare l’amore.”

Diede alla parola un indescrivibile suono di qualcosa di duro e pesante, come se dicesse “stivali”. Turnbull afferrò d’improvviso la propria spada e disse, seccamente, “Vedo perfettamente bene in che posizione vi trovate, signore. Non chiamerete la polizia. Signor MacIan, ingaggiamo?” MacIan strappò la propria spada dall’erba.

“Devo e voglio fermare questo crimine sconvolgente,” gridò il tolstoiano, paonazzo in volto. “È contro tutte le idee moderne. È contro il principio dell’amore. Come voi, signore, che pretendete di essere cristiano…”

MacIan si voltò verso di lui con volto bianco e labbro amaro. “Signore,” disse, “parlate quanto volete del principio dell’amore. Mi sembrate più freddo di un blocco di pietra; ma sono disposto a credere che possiate, in qualche momento, aver amato un gatto, o un cane, o un bambino. Quando eravate un neonato, suppongo che amaste vostra madre. Parlate dell’amore, allora, finché il mondo non sia nauseato della parola. Ma non parlate del Cristianesimo. Non osate dire una sola parola, bianca o nera, su di esso. Il Cristianesimo è, per quel che vi riguarda, un mistero orribile. Statene alla larga, tacetene, come tacereste di un’abominazione. È una cosa che ha spinto gli uomini a uccidersi e torturarsi a vicenda; e voi non saprete mai perché. È una cosa che ha spinto gli uomini a fare il male affinché ne venisse il bene; e voi non comprenderete mai il male, tanto meno il bene. Il Cristianesimo è una cosa che potrebbe solo farvi vomitare, finché non sarete altro da ciò che siete. Non lo giustificherei a voi neppure se potessi. Odiatelo, in nome di Dio, come lo odia Turnbull, che è un uomo. È una cosa mostruosa, per cui gli uomini muoiono. E se resterete qui a parlare dell’amore per altri dieci minuti, è assai probabile che vedrete un uomo morire per esso.”

E si mise in guardia. Turnbull era intento a sistemare qualcosa di allentato nella sua elaborata impugnatura, e la pausa fu rotta dallo sconosciuto.

“E se chiamassi la polizia?” disse, con volto acceso.

“E rinnegaste il vostro dogma più sacro,” disse MacIan.

“Dogma!” gridò l’uomo, con una sorta di sgomento. “Oh, noi non abbiamo dogmi, sapete!”

Ci fu un altro silenzio, ed egli disse di nuovo, con leggerezza:

“Sapete, credo che ci sia qualcosa in ciò che Shaw insegna sul fatto che nessun principio morale sia del tutto fisso. Avete mai letto La quintessenza dell’ibsenismo? Naturalmente prese un grosso abbaglio sulla guerra.”

Turnbull, con volto chino e arrossato, stava legando con lo spago il pezzo allentato del pomolo. Con lo spago tra i denti, disse: “Oh, deciditi una buona volta, dannazione, e togliti di mezzo!”

“È una cosa seria,” disse il filosofo, scuotendo il capo. “Devo restare solo e considerare qual è il punto di vista più elevato. Ho piuttosto la sensazione che, in un caso così estremo come questo…” e se ne andò lentamente. Mentre spariva tra gli alberi, lo udirono mormorare con voce cantilenante, “Nuove occasioni insegnano nuovi doveri,” tratto da una poesia di James Russell Lowell.

“Ah,” disse MacIan, traendo un profondo respiro. “Non credi ora nella preghiera? Ho pregato per un angelo.”

“Temo di non capire,” rispose Turnbull.

“Un’ora fa,” disse il montanaro, nella sua pesante voce meditativa, “sentivo il diavolo indebolirmi il cuore e il mio giuramento contro di te, e pregai che Dio mandasse un angelo in mio aiuto.”

“Ebbene?” chiese l’altro, terminando la sua riparazione e avvolgendosi il resto dello spago intorno alla mano per stringere meglio la presa.

“Ebbene?”

“Ebbene, quell’uomo era un angelo,” disse MacIan.

“Non sapevo fossero brutti a tal punto,” rispose Turnbull.

“Sappiamo che i diavoli talvolta citano le Scritture e contraffanno il bene,” replicò il mistico. “Perché gli angeli non dovrebbero talvolta venire a mostrarci il nero abisso del male sull’orlo del quale ci troviamo. Se quell’uomo non avesse cercato di fermarci…avrei potuto…avrei potuto fermarmi.”

“So cosa intendi,” disse Turnbull, torvo.

“Ma poi lui è venuto,” proruppe MacIan, “e la mia anima mi ha detto: ‘Rinuncia a batterti, e diventerai come Quello. Rinuncia ai voti e ai dogmi, e alle cose fisse, e potrai diventare come Quello. Potrai apprendere, anche, quella nebbia di falsa filosofia. Potrai affezionarti a quel pantano di morali striscianti e codarde, e potrai arrivare a ritenere un colpo cattivo perché fa male, e non perché umilia. Potrai arrivare a ritenere l’omicidio sbagliato perché è violento, e non perché è ingiusto.’ Oh, tu bestemmiatore del bene, un’ora fa quasi ti amavo! Ma non temere ora per me. Ho udito la parola amore pronunciata nella sua intonazione; e so esattamente cosa significa. In guardia!”

Le spade si agganciarono l’una all’altra con un clangore e uno stridore tremendi, pieni della vecchia energia e del vecchio odio; e subito affondarono e riaffondarono. Ancora una volta il cuore di ciascuno era divenuto la calamita di una folle spada. D’improvviso, per quanto furiosi, restarono gelati per un momento immobili.

“Che rumore è quello?” chiese il montanaro, con voce roca.

“Credo di saperlo,” rispose Turnbull.

“Cosa?… Cosa?” gridò l’altro.

“L’allievo di Shaw e Tolstoj ha preso la sua notevole decisione,” disse Turnbull, con calma. “La polizia sta salendo la collina.”

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.

VI. L’ALTRO FILOSOFO

Tra alte siepi dell’Hertfordshire, siepi così alte da creare una sorta di boschetto, due uomini correvano. Non correvano in modo scomposto o febbrile, ma con l’oscillazione regolare di un pendolo. Sulle grandi pianure e sugli altipiani a destra e a sinistra della stradina, una lunga marea di luce del tramonto rotolava come un mare di rubino, illuminando le lunghe terrazze delle colline e facendo risaltare le poche finestre dei casolari sparsi in trasalenti scintille rosso sangue. Ma la stradina era incassata profonda nella collina e restava in un’ombra brusca. I due uomini che vi correvano avevano un’impressione non di rado provata tra quelle selvagge verdi pareti inglesi; una sensazione di essere condotti tra le pareti di un labirinto.

Benché il loro passo fosse regolare, era vigoroso; i loro volti erano accaldati e i loro occhi fissi e lucenti. C’era, in effetti, qualcosa di un po’ folle nel contrasto tra la quiete della sera sulla campagna deserta, e queste due figure che fuggivano forsennatamente da nulla. Avevano l’aria di due lunatici, e forse lo erano.

“Tutto bene?” disse Turnbull, con cortesia. “Puoi continuare così?”

“Con tutta facilità, grazie,” rispose MacIan. “Corro molto bene.”

“È forse una qualità apprezzata in una famiglia di guerrieri?” chiese Turnbull.

“Indubbiamente. Il movimento rapido è essenziale,” rispose MacIan, che in vita sua non colse mai una battuta.

Turnbull proruppe in una breve risata, e cadde tra loro il silenzio, l’ansante silenzio dei corridori.

Poi MacIan disse: “Noi corriamo meglio di tutti quei poliziotti. Sono troppo grassi. Perché fate i vostri poliziotti così grassi?”

“Non ho fatto granché io stesso per ingrassarli,” rispose Turnbull, gioviale, “ma mi lusingo di star facendo ora qualcosa per farli dimagrire. Vedrai che saranno secchi come stecchi quando ci prenderanno. Avranno l’aria del tuo amico, il cardinale Manning.”

“Ma non ci prenderanno,” disse MacIan, nel suo modo letterale.

“No, li battiamo nella grande arte militare della fuga,” ribatté l’altro. “Non ci prenderanno a meno che----”

MacIan volse il suo lungo volto equino con aria interrogativa. “A meno che cosa?” disse, perché Turnbull era ammutolito di colpo, e pareva tendere l’orecchio con attenzione mentre correva, come fa un cavallo con le orecchie all’indietro.

“A meno che cosa?” ripeté il montanaro.

“A meno che facciano—ciò che hanno fatto. Ascolta.” MacIan rallentò il trotto, e volse il capo verso la traccia che si erano lasciati alle spalle. Attraverso due o tre ondulazioni della stradina che saliva e scendeva giungeva lungo il terreno l’inconfondibile pulsare di zoccoli di cavalli.

“Ci hanno messo alle calcagna la polizia a cavallo,” disse Turnbull, seccamente. “Buon Dio, si direbbe che siamo una Rivoluzione.”

“E infatti lo siamo,” disse MacIan con calma. “Cosa facciamo? Ci voltiamo contro di loro con le nostre punte?”

“Potremmo arrivarci,” rispose Turnbull, “anche se, se lo facciamo, credo che sarà l’ultimo atto. Dobbiamo rimandarlo se possiamo.” E fissò e scrutò intorno a sé tra i cespugli. “Se potessimo nasconderci da qualche parte, le bestie potrebbero passarci accanto,” disse. “La polizia ha i suoi difetti, ma grazie a Dio è inefficiente. Ecco, ecco proprio ciò che ci vuole. Sii svelto e silenzioso. Seguimi.”

Si issò d’improvviso su per l’alta scarpata su un lato della stradina. Era quasi tanto alta e liscia quanto un muro, e in cima la nera siepe si protendeva sopra di loro ad angolo, quasi come un tetto di paglia della stradina. E il cielo serale ardente li guardava dall’alto attraverso l’intrico con occhi rossi come un’armata di folletti.

Turnbull si issò e ruppe la siepe con il proprio corpo. Mentre il capo e le spalle si levarono al di sopra di essa divamparono in fiamma nel pieno bagliore come illuminati da un immenso fuoco. I suoi capelli e la sua barba rossi parevano quasi scarlatti, e il suo volto pallido luminoso come quello di un ragazzo. Qualcosa di violento, qualcosa che era insieme amore e odio, montò nello strano cuore del Gaelo sotto di lui. Ebbe un’indicibile sensazione di importanza epica, come se stesse in qualche modo sollevando tutta l’umanità in una regione più fiera e più appassionata dell’aria. Mentre si issava anch’egli su nella luce serale si sentì come se si stesse levando su enormi ali.

Leggende del mattino del mondo che aveva udito nell’infanzia o letto in gioventù gli tornarono in mente in un nuvoloso splendore, racconti purpurei d’ira e d’amicizia, come Orlando e Oliviero, o Balin e Balan, ricordandogli intrecci emotivi. Uomini che si erano amati e poi si erano combattuti; uomini che si erano combattuti e poi si erano amati, componevano insieme un senso misto ma mostruoso di solennità. I mari cremisi del tramonto gli parevano come uno sgorgare di qualche sangue sacro, come se il cuore del mondo si fosse spezzato.

Turnbull era del tutto insensibile a qualsiasi poesia scritta o parlata; la sua era una mente potente e prosaica. Ma perfino su di lui scese per un momento qualcosa che veniva dalla terra e dai confini appassionati del cielo. L’unica prova fu nella sua voce, che era ancora pratica ma d’una sfumatura più quieta.

“Vedi quella cosa laggiù che pare un padiglione estivo?” chiese seccamente. “Farà molto al caso nostro.”

Tenendosi libero dall’intrico della siepe attraversò a passo tranquillo un triangolo di oscuro orto, e si avvicinò a una squallida capanna o casotto un metro o due oltre di esso. Era una baracca segnata dalle intemperie, di legno grigio, che con tutta la sua desolazione conservava un brandello o due di banale ornamento, il che suggeriva che la cosa fosse stata un tempo una sorta di padiglione estivo, e il luogo probabilmente una sorta di giardino.

“Quello è del tutto invisibile dalla strada,” disse Turnbull, entrandovi, “e ci coprirà per la notte.”

MacIan lo guardò gravemente per qualche momento. “Signore,” disse, “devo dirvi una cosa. Devo dire----”

“Zitto,” disse Turnbull, alzando d’improvviso la mano; “fermo, amico.”

Nell’improvviso silenzio, il tambureggiare dei cavalli lontani si fece sempre più forte con inconcepibile rapidità, e la cavalcata di poliziotti si precipitò accanto a loro giù nella stradina, quasi con il rombo e lo strepito di un treno espresso.

“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…”

“Devo dirvi,” proseguì MacIan, sempre fissando impassibile l’altro, “che voi siete un grande capo, ed è bello andare in guerra dietro di voi.”

Turnbull non disse nulla, ma si voltò e guardò fuori dalla sciocca grata delle finestrelle, poi disse: “Prima dobbiamo procurarci cibo e sonno.”

Quando l’ultima eco dei loro inseguitori sfuggiti si spense sui lontani altipiani, Turnbull cominciò a disfare le provviste con l’aria disinvolta di un uomo a un picnic. Aveva appena disposto gli ultimi articoli, posato una bottiglia di vino sul pavimento, e una scatoletta di salmone sul davanzale della finestra, quando lo sconfinato silenzio di quel luogo dimenticato fu rotto. E fu rotto da tre pesanti colpi di bastone vibrati sulla porta.

Turnbull alzò lo sguardo nell’atto di aprire una scatoletta e fissò in silenzio il suo compagno. La lunga, magra bocca di MacIan si era serrata dura.

“Chi diavolo può essere?” disse Turnbull.

“Dio lo sa,” disse l’altro. “Potrebbe essere Dio.”

Di nuovo il suono del bastone di legno riecheggiò sulla porta di legno. Era un suono curioso e, a rifletterci, non somigliava ai comuni effetti del bussare a una porta per farsi ammettere. Era piuttosto come se la punta di un bastone venisse ficcata più e più volte contro i pannelli, in un assurdo tentativo di farvi un buco.

Uno sguardo folle balzò negli occhi di MacIan ed egli si alzò mezzo istupidito, con una sorta di barcollamento, tese la mano e afferrò una delle spade. “Battiamoci subito,” gridò, “è la fine del mondo.”

“Sei stravolto, MacIan,” disse Turnbull, mettendolo da parte. “È solo qualcuno che fa lo stupido. Lascia che apra io la porta.”

Ma raccolse anche lui una spada mentre si accostava ad aprirla.

Si soffermò un momento con la mano sulla maniglia e poi spalancò la porta. Quasi nell’atto di farlo, il puntale di un comune bastone di bambù gli venne agli occhi, tanto che dovette davvero pararlo con l’arma nuda che aveva in mano. Al toccarsi dei due, la punta del bastone fu abbassata assai bruscamente, e l’uomo con il bastone indietreggiò in fretta.

Contro lo sfondo araldico di cremisi e oro sparpagliati offertogli dal tramonto morente, la figura dell’uomo con il bastone appariva dapprima soltanto nera e fantastica. Era un ometto con due ciuffi di lunghi capelli che si arricciavano su ciascun lato e, visti in controluce, parevano corna. Aveva un cravattino a farfalla così grande che i due lembi spuntavano su ciascun lato del collo come innaturali ali atrofizzate. Teneva il suo lungo bastone nero ancora inclinato in mano come un fioretto da scherma e in parte presentato verso la porta aperta. Il suo grande cappello di paglia gli era caduto dietro mentre balzava all’indietro.

“Riguardo alla tua ipotesi, MacIan,” disse Turnbull, placidamente, “credo che assomigli più al Diavolo.”

“Chi diavolo siete voi?” gridò lo sconosciuto con voce acuta e stridula, brandendo il bastone in difesa.

“Vediamo un po’,” disse Turnbull, voltandosi verso MacIan con la stessa blandezza. “Chi siamo noi?”

“Uscite fuori,” strillò l’ometto con il bastone.

“Certamente,” disse Turnbull, e uscì con la spada, seguito da MacIan.

Visto più compiutamente, con la luce della sera sul volto, lo strano uomo pareva un po’ meno un folletto. Indossava un completo squadrato con giacca grigio pallido, sul quale la grigia cravatta a farfalla era l’unico indiscutibile tocco di affettazione. Contro il grande tramonto la sua figura era parsa soltanto piccola: vista in una luce più equa pareva discretamente compatta e ben fatta. I suoi capelli castano-rossicci, pettinati in due grandi boccoli, parevano i lunghi, lenti capelli ondulati delle donne in certi quadri preraffaelliti. Ma dentro questa femminea cornice di capelli il suo volto era inaspettatamente impudente, come quello di una scimmia.

“Che ci fate qui?” disse, con voce acuta e sottile.

“Beh,” disse MacIan, nel suo modo serio e infantile, “che ci fate voi qui?”

“Io,” disse l’uomo, indignato, “io sono nel mio giardino.”

“Oh,” disse MacIan, semplicemente, “chiedo scusa.”

Turnbull si arricciava freddamente i baffi rossi, e lo sconosciuto passava lo sguardo dall’uno all’altro, temporaneamente sbalordito dalla loro innocente sicurezza.

“Ma, posso chiedere,” disse infine, “che diavolo state facendo nel mio padiglione estivo?”

“Certamente,” disse MacIan. “Stavamo giusto per batterci.”

“Per battervi!” ripeté l’uomo.

“Faremmo meglio a raccontare a questo signore l’intera faccenda,” intervenne Turnbull. Poi, rivolgendosi allo sconosciuto, disse con fermezza, “Mi dispiace, signore, ma abbiamo qualcosa da fare che dev’essere fatto. E tanto vale che ve lo dica fin da principio, per evitare spreco di tempo o di parole, che non possiamo ammettere alcuna interferenza.”

“Stavamo giusto per prendere un piccolo rinfresco quando ci avete interrotti…”

L’ometto ebbe un’espressione nascente di comprensione e si chinò a raccogliere la bottiglia di vino non usata, osservandola con curiosità.

Turnbull continuò:

“Ma quel rinfresco era preparatorio a qualcosa che temo troverete meno comprensibile, ma su cui le nostre menti sono interamente fisse, signore. Siamo costretti a batterci in duello. Vi siamo costretti dall’onore e da un intimo bisogno intellettuale. Non tentate, per il vostro stesso bene, di fermarci. Conosco tutte le eccellenti ed etiche cose che vorrete dirci. So tutto degli essenziali requisiti dell’ordine civile: ho scritto articoli di fondo su tutti loro per tutta la vita. So tutto della sacralità della vita umana; ho annoiato tutti i miei amici con essa. Cercate di comprendere la nostra posizione. Quest’uomo e io siamo soli nel mondo moderno nel ritenere che Dio sia essenzialmente importante. Io penso che Egli non esista; è lì che sta l’importanza per me. Ma quest’uomo pensa che Egli esista, e pensando ciò, ben giustamente Lo ritiene più importante di ogni altra cosa. Ora, noi desideriamo compiere una grande dimostrazione e affermazione—qualcosa che darà fuoco al mondo come le prime persecuzioni cristiane. Se volete, stiamo tentando un reciproco martirio. I giornali hanno aizzato contro di noi ogni città. Scotland Yard ha fortificato ogni stazione di polizia con i nostri nemici; siamo dunque spinti sull’orlo di una stradina solitaria, e indirettamente a prenderci delle libertà con il vostro padiglione estivo per predisporre il nostro…”

“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.”

“Fermatevi!” ruggì l’uomo piccolo col papillon. “Ridatemi la mia pace intellettuale. Siete davvero i due sciocchi di cui ho letto su tutti i giornali? Siete le due persone che volevano sputarsi a vicenda nel Tribunale di Polizia? Lo siete? Lo siete?”

“Sì”, disse MacIan, “è cominciato in un Tribunale di Polizia Polizia.”

Il piccolo uomo scagliò la bottiglia di vino a venti iarde di distanza come se fosse una pietra.

«Venite a casa mia», disse, «ho cose migliori di quelle. Ho il miglior vino di Beaune in un raggio di ottanta chilometri da qui. Venite su. Siete proprio gli uomini che desideravo vedere».

Anche Turnbull, con la sua tipica invulnerabilità, rimase un po’ sorpreso da questa ospitalità rumorosa e quasi brutale.

“Perché… signore…” cominciò.

“Salite! Venite dentro!” ululò l’omino, danzando di gioia. “Vi offrirò una cena. Vi darò un letto! Vi darò un prato verde e soffice e la possibilità di scegliere tra spade e pistole. Ma perché, idioti che siete, io adoro combattere! È l’unica cosa buona in questo mondo di Dio! Ho vagabondato per questi dannati campi desiderando vedere qualcuno massacrato e ucciso con il sangue che scorreva. Ah! Ah!”

E faceva improvvise stoccate con il bastone contro il tronco di un albero vicino, tanto che la punta di metallo lasciava feroci impronte e buchi nella corteccia.

«Mi scusi», disse MacIan all’improvviso con la curiosità spalancata di un bambino, «mi scusi, ma…»

“Ebbene?” disse il piccolo combattente, brandendo la sua arma di legno legno.

«Mi scusi», ripeté MacIan «ma era questo che stava facendo alla porta?»

Il piccolo uomo fissò per un istante e poi disse: «Sì», e Turnbull scoppiò in una risata fragorosa.

“Vieni!” esclamò l’uomo piccolo, infilando il bastone sotto il braccio e mettendosi improvvisamente a correre. “Vieni! Maledizione, vi farò mangiare tutti e due e poi uno di voi morirà. Dio mi benedica, gli dei devono esistere dopotutto: mi hanno mandato uno dei miei sogni diurni! Signore! Un duello!”

Egli era volato lungo un sentiero tortuoso tra i confini dell’orto, e nella crescente penombra era difficile da seguire come una lepre in fuga. Ma alla fine il sentiero, dopo molti giri, rivelò la sua destinazione e portò bruscamente su due o tre gradini fino alla porta di un piccolo ma molto pulito cottage. Non c’era nulla all’esterno che lo distinguesse dagli altri cottage, tranne forse la sua inquietante pulizia e una cosa che era fuori da tutte le consuetudini e tradizioni di tutti i cottage sotto il sole. Nel mezzo del piccolo giardino, tra i papaveri e i calendule, si ergeva in pietra informe un idolo delle isole del Pacifico meridionale. C’era qualcosa di grossolano e persino di malvagio in quel dio senza occhi e alieno tra le più innocenti delle fiori inglesi.

«Entra!» gridò di nuovo la creatura «Entra! È meglio dentro!»

Che fosse meglio dentro o no, era almeno una sorpresa. Nel momento in cui i due duellanti spingevano la porta di quella casetta innocua, bianca di calce, scoprivano che l’interno era rivestito d’oro fiammeggiante. Era come entrare in una camera delle Mille e una notte. La porta che si chiudeva alle loro spalle escludeva l’Inghilterra e tutte le energie dell’Occidente. Gli ornamenti che brillavano e scintillavano da ogni parte erano sottilmente mescolati di molti periodi e terre, ma tutti orientali. Bas-rilievi crudeli assiri correvano lungo i lati del corridoio; spade e pugnali turchi crudeli brillavano sopra e sotto di loro; i due erano separati da ere e civiltà cadute. Eppure sembrava che si comprendessero, poiché entrambi erano armoniosi ed entrambi implacabili. La casa sembrava composta di camera in camera e creava quell’impressione come di un sogno che appartiene anche alle Mille e una notte stesse. La stanza più interna era come l’interno di un gioiello. Il piccolo uomo che ne possedeva tutto si gettò su un mucchio di cuscini scarlatti e dorati e batté le mani. Un negro in una veste bianca e turbante apparve improvvisamente e silenziosamente alle loro spalle.

«Selim», disse l’ospite, «questi due signori pernottano da me stasera. Porta subito su il miglior vino e la cena che abbiamo. E Selim, uno di questi signori probabilmente morirà domani. Fai i preparativi, ti prego».

Il negro si inchinò e uscì.

Evan MacIan uscì la mattina dopo nel piccolo giardino in una fresca giornata d’argento, il suo lungo viso appariva più austero che mai in quella luce fredda, le palpebre un po’ pesanti. Portava una delle spade. Turnbull era nella piccola casa dietro di lui, stava finendo la colazione e canticchiava una melodia per sé stesso, che si poteva sentire attraverso la finestra aperta. Un attimo dopo saltò in piedi ed uscì alla luce del sole, masticando ancora il pane tostato, con la sua spada infilata sotto il braccio come un bastone da passeggio.

Il loro eccentrico ospite era scomparso dalla vista, con un gesto cortese, una ventina di minuti prima. Lo immaginavano occupato in qualche faccenda all’interno della casa, e aspettavano il suo ritorno, camminando nel giardino in silenzio - il giardino di alti freschi fiori di campagna, al centro del quale l’idolo mostruoso del Sud Pacifico si ergeva bruscamente come la prua di una nave che naviga su un mare di rosso e bianco e oro.

Fu quindi con un sussulto che si imbatterono nell’uomo stesso già nel giardino. Erano ancora più sorpresi per la posa immobile in cui lo trovarono. Era inginocchiato davanti all’idolo di pietra, rigido e immobile, come un santo in trance o estasi. Eppure quando il passo di Turnbull ruppe un rametto, fu in piedi in un attimo.

«Mi scusi», disse con un’irradiazione di sorrisi, ma pure con una specie di smarrimento. «Mi dispiace tanto… preghiere in famiglia… antiquato… sulle ginocchia della mamma. Andiamo avanti verso il prato dietro».

E si chinò rapidamente dietro la statua fino ad uno spazio aperto d’erba dall’altra parte di essa.

“Questo ci farà al caso nostro, signor MacIan”, disse lui. Poi fece un gesto verso la pesante figura di pietra sul piedistallo che ora mostrava loro il suo dorso vuoto e informe. “Non abbia paura,” aggiunse, “ci può ancora vedere.”

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 country 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.

MacIan volse gli occhi azzurri e sbattuti che sembravano ancora offuscati dal sonno (o dall’insonnia) verso l’idolo, ma aggrottò le sopracciglia.

L’uomo piccolo dai capelli lunghi aveva anche lui gli occhi fissi sulla parte posteriore del dio. I suoi occhi erano allo stesso tempo liquidi e ardenti, e si strofinava lentamente le mani l’una contro l’altra.

«Sai», disse, «credo che ci veda meglio in questo modo. Spesso penso che questa cosa vuota sia il suo vero volto, che osserva anche se non può essere osservato. Ah! ah! Sì, credo che da dietro abbia un aspetto piacevole. Da dietro sembra più crudele, non trovi?»

«Che diavolo è questa cosa?» chiese Turnbull in tono burbero.

«È l’unica cosa che esiste», rispose l’altro. «È la Forza».

«Oh!», disse seccamente Turnbull.

“Sì, miei amici”, disse l’uomo piccolo, con un volto animato, agitando le dita nell’aria, “non è stato un caso a condurvi in questo giardino; sicuramente è stato il capriccio di qualche vecchio dio, qualche dio felice e spietato. Forse era la sua volontà, perché ama il sangue; e su quella pietra davanti a lui gli uomini sono stati macellati a centinaia nelle feroci isole festose del Sud. In questo luogo maledetto, vile non mi è stato permesso di uccidere uomini sul suo altare. Solo conigli e gatti, qualche volta.”

Nel silenzio MacIan fece un improvviso movimento, apparentemente senza significato, e poi rimase rigido.

«Ma oggi, oggi», continuò l’uomo piccolo con voce stridula, «oggi è venuta la sua ora. Oggi sarà fatta la sua volontà sulla terra come nel cielo. Gli uomini, gli uomini, gli uomini verseranno sangue davanti a lui oggi». E si morse il dito indice in una specie di febbre.

Tuttavia i due duellanti rimasero con le spade in mano immobili come statue, e il silenzio sembrò raffreddare l’eccentrico e richiamarlo a un discorso più razionale.

“Mi esprimo forse un po’ troppo liricamente”, disse con amichevole bruschezza, “ma la mia filosofia ha i suoi alti e bassi, anche se forse non siete ancora pronti per quelli. Limitiamoci a ciò che è indiscutibile. Signori, avete trovato il modo, grazie a un bel caso fortuito, di arrivare alla casa dell’unico uomo in Inghilterra (probabilmente) che favorirà e incoraggerà il vostro più ragionevole progetto. Da Cornovaglia al Capo Wrath, questo paese è un orribile, compatto blocco di umanitarismo. Troverete uomini che difenderanno questa o quella guerra in un continente lontano. La difenderanno su basi meschine come il commercio o peggio ancora, il bene sociale. Ma non pensate di trovare un’altra persona che comprenda un uomo forte che prende la spada e annienta il suo nemico. Mi chiamo Wimpey, Morrice Wimpey. Ero un borsista a Magdalen. Ma vi assicuro che ho dovuto rinunciarvi per aver detto qualcosa in una conferenza pubblica che andava contro il pregiudizio popolare contro quei grandi signori, gli assassini del Rinascimento italiano. Mi hanno lasciato dire queste cose a cena e così via, e sembravano gradirle. Ma in una conferenza pubblica… troppo inconsistente. Beh, come dicevo, qui è il vostro unico rifugio e tempio di onore. Qui potete fare affidamento su quell’arbitrato nudo e terribile che è l’unica cosa che bilancia le stelle: una violenza continua, immutabile. Vae Victis! Giù, giù, giù con i vinti! La vittoria è l’unico fatto definitivo. Cartagine fu distrutta, gli indiani d’America sono in via di estinzione: questa è l’unica certezza. Tra un’ora quel sole continuerà a splendere e quell’erba a crescere, e uno di voi sarà sconfitto; uno di voi sarà il vincitore. Quando sarà fatto, nulla lo cambierà. Eroi, vi offro l’ospitalità degna degli eroi. E saluto il sopravvissuto. Avanti!”

I due uomini presero le loro spade. Poi MacIan disse con fermezza: “Signor Turnbull, prestami per un momento la sua spada.”

Turnbull, con uno sguardo interrogativo, gli porse l’arma. MacIan prese la seconda spada nella mano sinistra e, con un gesto violento, la scagliò ai piedi del piccolo signor Wimpey.

«Combatti!» disse con voce forte e aspra. «Combatti contro di me adesso!»

Wimpey fece un passo indietro e parole confuse gli salirono alle labbra.

«Raccogli quella spada e combatti con me», ripeté MacIan, con le sopracciglia nere come il tuono.

L’omino si rivolse a Turnbull con un gesto che chiedeva giudizio o protezione.

«Davvero, signore», cominciò «questo gentiluomo confonde…»

“Vile piccolo codardo”, ruggì Turnbull, sfogando improvvisamente la sua ira. “Combatti, se ti piace tanto combattere! Combatti, se ti piace tutta quella sporca filosofia! Se vincere è tutto, vai e vinci! Se i deboli devono soccombere, soccombi! Combatti, topo! Combatti, o se non vuoi combattere… scappa!”

E si scagliò contro Wimpey con gli occhi in fiamme.

Wimpey indietreggiò di qualche passo come un uomo che lotta contro i propri arti. Poi sentì il furioso scozzese avvicinarsi a lui come un treno espresso, raddoppiando le sue dimensioni ogni secondo, con occhi grandi come finestre e una spada luminosa quanto il sole. Qualcosa si spezzò dentro di lui, e si ritrovò a scappare via, inciampando nei propri piedi per la paura, e gridando mentre correva.

“Inseguilo!” gridò Turnbull mentre MacIan afferrava la spada e si univa alla corsa. “Inseguilo attraverso una contea! Inseguilo fino al mare! Scappa! Scappa! Scappa!”

Il piccolo uomo si tuffò come un coniglio tra i folti fiori, seguito dai due duellanti. Turnbull gli rimase incollato al tallone con selvaggia esaltazione, continuando a scacciarlo come fa un gatto. Ma MacIan, mentre correva oltre l’idolo del Pacifico meridionale, si fermò per un istante per saltare sul suo piedistallo. Per cinque secondi si sforzò di spostare la massa inerte. Poi questa si mosse; e lui la fece cadere con un gran fracasso tra i fiori, che la inghiottirono del tutto. Poi si mise a correre veloce dietro al fuggitivo.

Nell’energia del suo allarme l’ex membro di Magdalen riuscì a saltare la staccionata del suo giardino. I due inseguitori lo seguirono come volanti uccelli. Fuggì freneticamente lungo un viale con i suoi due terrori alle calcagna finché non arrivò a una breccia nella siepe e attraversò un prato ripido come il vento. I due scozzesi, mentre correvano, mantenevano un allegro ruggito e agitavano le loro spade. Su tre pendii erbosi, giù per altri quattro pendii dall’altra parte, attraverso un altro sentiero, su una brughiera di felci scricchiolanti, attraverso un bosco, lungo un altro sentiero e fino al bordo di una grande pozza, inseguirono il filosofo in fuga. Ma quando arrivò alla pozza il suo passo era così precipitoso che non riuscì a fermarsi, e con una specie di barcollante inciampo cadde schizzando nell’acqua grassa. Rialzandosi gocciolante fino ai piedi, con l’acqua alle ginocchia, il cultore della forza e della vittoria guadò disperatamente sull’altra riva e si tirò su sulla sponda. E Turnbull si sedette sull’erba e scoppiò in risate fragorose. Un secondo dopo si videro le smorfie più straordinarie distorcere il volto rigido di MacIan, e da dentro provenivano suoni profani. Non aveva mai praticato la risata, e gli faceva molto male.

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.”

VII. IL VILLAGGIO DI GRASSLEY-IN-THE-HOLE

Verso l’una e mezzo, sotto un forte cielo azzurro, Turnbull si alzò dall’erba e dalle felci in cui era rimasto sdraiato, e la sua risata ancora intermittente si spense in una sorta di sbadiglio.

“Ho fame,” disse seccamente. “E tu?”

“Non ci ho fatto caso,” rispose MacIan. “Cosa hai intenzione di fare?”

“C’è un villaggio giù per la strada, oltre lo stagno,” rispose Turnbull. “Lo vedo da qui. Vedo i muri imbiancati a calce di alcune casupole e una specie di angolo della chiesa. Come sembra tutto allegro. Sembra così—non so quale sia la parola—così assennato. Non credere che io mi faccia illusioni sulla virtù arcadica e sugli innocenti villici. Là gli uomini si abbrutiscono con il bere, ma non si fanno deliberatamente demoni con il solo parlare. Uccidono animali selvatici nei boschi selvaggi, ma non uccidono gatti al Dio della Vittoria. Non----” S’interruppe e d’improvviso sputò per terra.

“Scusami,” disse; “era cerimoniale. Bisogna togliersi il sapore dalla bocca.”

“Il sapore di cosa?” chiese MacIan.

“Non so il nome esatto,” rispose Turnbull. “Forse sono le Isole dei Mari del Sud, o forse è il Magdalen College.”

Ci fu una lunga pausa, e anche MacIan sollevò le sue grandi membra da terra—gli occhi particolarmente sognanti.

“So cosa intendi, Turnbull,” disse, “ma…ho sempre creduto che voialtri foste d’accordo con tutto ciò.”

“Con tutto quel discorso sul fare ciò che si vuole, e l’individuo, e la natura che ama il più forte, e tutte le cose di cui parlava quello scarafaggio.”

I grandi occhi grigio-azzurri di Turnbull si spalancarono con un serio stupore.

“Vuoi davvero dirmi, MacIan,” disse, “che ti eri immaginato che noi, i liberi pensatori, che Bradlaugh, o Holyoake, o Ingersoll, credessimo a tutto quel sudicio, immorale misticismo sulla natura? Al diavolo la natura!”

“Supponevo di sì,” disse MacIan con calma. “Mi sembra la vostra posizione più conclusiva.”

“E vuoi dirmi,” ribatté l’altro, “che hai rotto la mia finestra, e mi hai sfidato a mortale combattimento, e hai legato un bottegaio con delle corde, e hai inseguito un professore di Oxford attraverso cinque prati— il tutto nella convinzione che io sia un idiota tanto ignorante da credere nella natura!”

“Supponevo di sì,” ripeté MacIan con la sua consueta mitezza; “ma ammetto di sapere ben poco dei dettagli della tua fede— o miscredenza.”

Turnbull si voltò di scatto, e si avviò verso il villaggio.

“Vieni,” gridò. “Scendiamo al villaggio. Scendiamo al più vicino pub decente e abitabile. Questo è un caso da birra.”

“Non ti seguo del tutto,” disse il montanaro.

“Sì che mi segui,” rispose Turnbull. “Mi segui dritto dentro la sala della locanda. Ripeto, questo è un caso da birra. Dobbiamo tirar fuori tutta questa faccenda a fondo prima di fare un passo più in là. Sai che mi è appena venuta in mente un’idea di grande semplicità e di una certa forza persuasiva. Non abbandoniamo affatto le nostre intenzioni di regolare le nostre divergenze con due spade d’acciaio. Ma non pensi che con due boccali di peltro potremmo fare ciò che finora non abbiamo mai pensato di fare—scoprire qual è la nostra divergenza?”

“Non mi era mai venuto in mente prima,” rispose MacIan con tranquillità. “È una buona proposta.”

E si avviarono con un passo disinvolto giù per la ripida strada verso il villaggio di Grassley-in-the-Hole.

Grassley-in-the-Hole era un rozzo parallelogramma di edifici, con due arterie che si sarebbero potute chiamare due vie principali se fosse stato possibile chiamarle vie. Una di queste strade era più in alto sul pendio dell’altra, l’intero parallelogramma giacendo, per così dire, di traverso sul fianco della collina. La più alta di queste due strade era ornata da una grande osteria, una macelleria, una piccola osteria, una bottega di dolciumi, una piccolissima osteria, e un cartello illeggibile. La più bassa delle due strade vantava uno stagno per cavalli, un ufficio postale, il giardino di un gentiluomo con siepi altissime, una osteria microscopicamente piccola, e due casupole. Dove vivessero tutte le persone che sostenevano tutte quelle osterie era, in questo come in molti altri villaggi inglesi, un silenzioso e sorridente mistero. La chiesa sorgeva un po’ più in alto e oltre il villaggio, con una squadrata torre grigia che la dominava con decisione.

Ma perfino la chiesa era a stento un’istituzione tanto centrale e solenne quanto la grande osteria, la Valencourt Arms. Era intitolata a una qualche splendida famiglia da tempo caduta in bancarotta, e la cui dimora era occupata da un uomo che aveva inventato un cavastivali igienico; ma l’insondabile sentimentalismo del popolo inglese si ostinava a considerare la Locanda, la dimora e chi vi sedeva, come parti ugualmente di una pura e marmorea antichità. E nella Valencourt Arms perfino la baldoria aveva una certa solennità e decoro; e la birra si beveva con reverenza, come si conviene. Nella sala principale di questo luogo entrarono due sconosciuti, che si trovarono, come è sempre il caso in tali osterie, oggetto, non di trepida curiosità o di sfrontata domanda, ma di un fisso, incessante, divorante studio oculare. Avevano lunghi cappotti che scendevano fino ai talloni, e portavano sotto ciascun cappotto qualcosa che pareva un bastone. Uno era alto e bruno, l’altro basso e dai capelli rossi. Ordinarono un boccale di birra a testa.

“MacIan,” disse Turnbull, sollevando il boccale, “lo sciocco che voleva farci amici ci ha fatto venir voglia di continuare a batterci. È solo naturale che lo sciocco che voleva farci battere debba renderci amici. MacIan, alla tua salute!”

Il crepuscolo già calava, i contadini nella taverna già barcollavano e uscivano goffamente a due a due e a tre a tre, gridando clamorose buonanotti a un solitario vecchio beone che restava, prima che MacIan e Turnbull avessero raggiunto la parte davvero importante della loro discussione.

MacIan aveva un’espressione di triste smarrimento in lui non rara. “Devo dunque intendere,” disse, “che tu non credi nella natura.”

“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?”

“Potete ben dirlo, in un senso del tutto speciale ed enfatico,” disse Turnbull. “Io non credo nella natura, così come non credo in Odino. Essa è un mito. Non è soltanto che io non creda che la natura possa guidarci. È che io non credo che la natura esista.”

“Esista?” disse MacIan col suo tono monotono, posando il boccale di peltro sul tavolo.

“Sì, in un senso reale la natura non esiste. Voglio dire che nessuno può scoprire quale sarebbe stata la natura originaria delle cose se le cose non l’avessero contrastata. Il primo filo d’erba cominciò a lacerare la terra e a divorarla; interferiva con la natura, se esiste una qualche natura. Il primo bue selvatico cominciò a strappare l’erba e a mangiarla; interferiva con la natura, se esiste una qualche natura. Allo stesso modo,” proseguì Turnbull, “l’uomo, quando afferma il proprio dominio sulla natura, è tanto naturale quanto la cosa che distrugge.”

“E allo stesso modo,” disse MacIan quasi sognante, “il sovrumano, il soprannaturale è tanto naturale quanto la natura che distrugge.”

Turnbull tirò fuori la testa dal suo boccale di peltro con una certa ira.

“Il soprannaturale, naturalmente,” disse, “è tutt’altra cosa; il caso del soprannaturale è semplice. Il soprannaturale non esiste.”

“Appunto,” disse MacIan con voce piuttosto spenta; “avete detto lo stesso del naturale. Se il naturale non esiste, il soprannaturale ovviamente non può esistere.” E sbadigliò un poco sulla sua birra.

Turnbull si fece per qualche ragione un poco rosso e osservò in fretta: “Sarà anche molto arguto, per quel che ne so io. Ma tutti sanno bene che c’è una divisione tra le cose che di fatto accadono comunemente e le cose che non accadono. Le cose che infrangono le evidenti leggi della natura----”

“La quale non esiste,” inserì MacIan con aria assonnata. Turnbull batté sul tavolo con una mano improvvisa.

“Buon Dio del cielo!” gridò----

“Il quale non esiste,” mormorò MacIan.

“Buon Dio del cielo!” tuonò Turnbull, senza curarsi dell’interruzione. “Volete davvero starvene lì seduto a dirmi che voi, come chiunque altro, non riconoscereste la differenza tra un evento naturale e uno soprannaturale—ammesso che una cosa simile potesse esistere? Se io volassi fino al soffitto----”

“Vi battereste malamente la testa,” gridò MacIan, balzando all’improvviso in piedi. “Di questa sorta di cose non si può parlare affatto sotto un soffitto. Venite fuori! Venite fuori e salite in cielo!”

Spalancò la porta su un azzurro abisso di sera ed essi vi uscirono: d’un tratto, e stranamente, faceva fresco.

“Turnbull,” disse MacIan, “avete detto certe cose così vere e certe così false che ho voglia di parlare; e cercherò di parlare in modo che voi capiate. Perché per ora non capite affatto. Non pare che intendiamo le stesse cose con le stesse parole.”

Rimase in silenzio per un secondo o due, poi riprese.

“Un minuto o due fa vi ho colto in una vera contraddizione. In quel momento, logicamente, avevo ragione. E in quel momento sapevo di avere torto. Sì, c’è una vera differenza tra il naturale e il soprannaturale: se voi in questo istante volaste su in quel cielo azzurro, penserei che foste mosso da Dio—o dal diavolo. Ma se volete sapere ciò che davvero penso… devo spiegarmi.”

Si fermò di nuovo, ficcando distrattamente la punta della sua spada nel terreno, e proseguì:

“Sono nato, cresciuto ed educato in un universo completo. Il soprannaturale non era naturale, ma era perfettamente ragionevole. Anzi, il soprannaturale per me è più ragionevole del naturale; poiché il soprannaturale è un messaggio diretto di Dio, che è ragione. Mi fu insegnato che alcune cose sono naturali e alcune cose divine. Voglio dire che alcune cose sono meccaniche e alcune cose divine. Ma qui sta la grande difficoltà, Turnbull. La grande difficoltà è che, secondo il mio insegnamento, voi siete divino.”

“Io! Divino?” disse Turnbull in tono truce. “Che cosa intendete?”

“È proprio questa la difficoltà,” continuò MacIan pensieroso. “Mi fu detto che c’era una differenza tra l’erba e la volontà di un uomo; e la differenza era che la volontà di un uomo era speciale e divina. Il libero arbitrio di un uomo, ho sentito dire, era soprannaturale.”

“Sciocchezze!” disse Turnbull.

“Oh,” disse MacIan con pazienza, “allora, se il libero arbitrio di un uomo non è soprannaturale, perché i vostri materialisti negano che esista?”

Turnbull tacque per un momento. Poi cominciò a parlare, ma MacIan proseguì con la stessa voce ferma e gli occhi tristi:

“Dunque ciò che sento è questo: ecco la grande creazione divina in cui mi fu insegnato a credere. Posso capire che voi non ci crediate, ma perché non credere in una sua parte soltanto? Per me era tutt’uno. Dio aveva autorità perché era Dio. L’uomo aveva autorità perché era uomo. Non potete provare che Dio sia migliore di un uomo; né potete provare che un uomo sia migliore di un cavallo. Perché permettere una cosa qualsiasi? Perché lasciate che si selli un cavallo?”

“Certi pensatori moderni lo disapprovano,” disse Turnbull con un lieve dubbio.

“Lo so,” disse MacIan cupamente; “quell’uomo che parlava d’amore, per esempio.”

Turnbull fece una smorfia divertita; poi disse: “Pare che parliamo in una sorta di stenografia; ma non fingerò di non capirvi. Ciò che intendete è questo: che avete appreso di tutti i vostri santi e angeli nello stesso tempo in cui avete appreso della comune moralità, dalle stesse persone, nello stesso modo. E volete dire che se una può essere messa in dubbio, così può l’altra. Ebbene, lasciamo correre per il momento. Ma lasciate che a mia volta vi ponga una domanda. Questo vostro sistema, che avete inghiottito tutto intero, non conteneva forse ogni sorta di cose che erano meramente locali: il rispetto per il capo del vostro clan, o cose del genere; il fantasma del villaggio, la faida di famiglia, e chi più ne ha più ne metta? Non avete forse assorbito anche quelle cose, insieme alla vostra teologia?”

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.”

MacIan fissava lungo la fioca strada del villaggio, giù per la quale l’ultimo ritardatario della locanda si trascinava per la sua via.

“Ciò che dite non è irragionevole,” disse. “Ma non è del tutto vero. La distinzione tra il capo e noi esisteva davvero; ma non fu mai qualcosa di simile alla distinzione tra l’umano e il divino, o tra l’umano e l’animale. Era più simile alla distinzione tra un animale e un altro. Ma----”

“Ebbene?” disse Turnbull.

MacIan taceva.

“Continuate,” ripeté Turnbull; “che cos’avete? Che cosa state fissando?”

“Sto fissando,” disse infine MacIan, “colui che ci giudicherà entrambi.”

“Oh, sì,” disse Turnbull con aria stanca, “immagino intendiate Dio.”

“No, non è così,” disse MacIan, scuotendo il capo. “Intendo lui.”

E indicò il bifolco mezzo brillo che avanzava a fatica lungo la strada.

“Che cosa intendete?” chiese l’ateo.

“Intendo lui,” ripeté MacIan con enfasi. “Esce alla prima alba; zappa o ara un campo. Poi torna e beve birra, e poi canta una canzone. Tutte le vostre filosofie e i vostri sistemi politici sono giovani a paragone di lui. Tutte le vostre canute cattedrali, sì, perfino la Chiesa Eterna sulla terra è nuova a paragone di lui. Gli dèi più tarlati del British Museum sono fatti nuovi accanto a lui. È lui che alla fine giudicherà tutti noi.”

E MacIan si alzò in piedi con una vaga eccitazione.

“Che cosa avete intenzione di fare?”

“Ho intenzione di chiedergli,” gridò MacIan, “chi di noi ha ragione.”

Turnbull proruppe in una specie di risata. “Chiedere a quell’ubriaco mangiatore di rape----” cominciò.

“Sì—chi di noi ha ragione,” gridò MacIan con violenza. “Oh, voi avete parole altisonanti e io ho parole altisonanti; e io parlo di ogni uomo che è l’immagine di Dio; e voi parlate di ogni uomo che è un cittadino e abbastanza illuminato per governare. Ma se ogni uomo raffigura Dio, ecco Dio. Se ogni uomo è un cittadino illuminato, ecco il vostro cittadino illuminato. Il primo uomo che si incontra è sempre l’uomo. Raggiungiamolo.”

E a passi giganteschi il lungo, magro Highlander si lanciò via nel grigio crepuscolo, seguito da Turnbull con un’imprecazione bonaria.

La traccia del campagnolo era facile da seguire, anche nel buio incerto; poiché egli ravvivava il suo passo malfermo con la canzone. Era un poema interminabile, che cominciava con un imprecisato re Guglielmo, il quale (a quanto pareva) viveva nella città di Londra e che dopo la seconda strofa scomparve piuttosto bruscamente dal filo del pensiero. Il resto trattava quasi interamente di birra ed era fitto di toponomastica locale di specie del tutto irriconoscibile. Il passo del cantore non era né molto rapido, né, in verità, eccezionalmente sicuro; così la canzone si fece sempre più forte e i due presto lo raggiunsero.

Era un uomo anziano, o piuttosto di età indefinibile, con radi capelli grigi e un magro volto rosso, ma con quella singolare fisionomia rustica in cui sembra che tutti i lineamenti si stacchino l’uno dall’altro dal viso; il ruvido naso rosso che sporgeva come un arto; gli occhi azzurri annebbiati che spiccavano come segnali.

Li salutò con l’elaborata cortesia del leggermente brillo. MacIan, che vibrava per una delle sue silenziose, violente decisioni, pose la questione senza indugio. Espose la posizione filosofica con parole quanto più brevi e semplici possibile. Ma quello strano vecchio dal magro volto rosso parve tenere in conto assai poco le parole brevi. Si aggrappò con feroce affetto a una o due di quelle lunghe.

“Atei!” ripeté con lussurioso disprezzo. “Atei! Conosco la loro razza, padrone. Atei! Non parlatemene. Atei!”

Le ragioni del suo sdegno parevano un po’ oscure e confuse; ma erano evidentemente sufficienti. MacIan riprese con un certo incoraggiamento:

“Voi la pensate come me, lo spero; voi pensate che un uomo debba essere legato alla Chiesa; al comune cristiano----”

Il vecchio protese un bastone tremante in direzione di una collina lontana.

“Ecco la chiesa,” disse con voce impastata. “La vecchia chiesa di Grassley, quella lì. L’hanno abbattuta, al tempo del vecchio castellano, e----”

“Voglio dire,” spiegò MacIan con cura, “che voi pensate che ci dovrebbe essere qualcuno che raffigura la religione, un prete----”

“Preti!” disse il vecchio con improvvisa passione. “Preti! Li conosco. Che cosa vogliono in Inghilterra? Ecco che dico io. Che cosa vogliono in Inghilterra?”

“Vogliono voi,” disse MacIan.

“Appunto,” disse Turnbull, “e me; ma non ci avranno. MacIan, il vostro tentativo sull’innocenza primitiva non pare troppo riuscito. Lasciate provare a me. Ciò che volete, amico mio, sono i vostri diritti. Non volete preti né chiese. Un voto, il diritto di parola è ciò che voi----”

“Chi dice che non ho il diritto di parlare?” disse il vecchio, voltandosi di scatto in un frenetico impeto irrazionale. “Ho il diritto di parlare. Sono un uomo, io. Non voglio né votazioni né preti. Dico che un uomo è un uomo; ecco quel che dico. Se un uomo non è un uomo, che cos’è? Ecco quel che dico, se un uomo non è un uomo, che cos’è? Quando vedo un uomo, dico ch’è un uomo.”

“Appunto,” disse Turnbull, “un cittadino.”

“Dico ch’è un uomo,” disse il campagnolo con furia, fermandosi e battendo il bastone per terra. “Non una città né altro. È un uomo.”

“Avete perfettamente ragione,” disse l’improvvisa voce di MacIan, calando come una spada. “E vi siete tenuto stretto a qualcosa che il mondo intero d’oggi cerca di dimenticare.”

“Buona notte.”

E il vecchio proseguì cantando follemente nella notte.

“Un vecchio allegro tipo,” disse Turnbull; “non pareva capace di andare molto oltre il fatto che un uomo è un uomo.”

“Qualcuno è mai andato oltre?” chiese MacIan.

Turnbull lo guardò con curiosità. “State diventando agnostico?” chiese.

“Oh, voi non capite!” esclamò MacIan. “Noi cattolici siamo tutti agnostici. Noi cattolici, in quel senso, siamo arrivati soltanto a renderci conto che l’uomo è un uomo. Ma i vostri Ibsen e i vostri Zola e i vostri Shaw e i vostri Tolstoj non sono nemmeno arrivati fin là.”

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.”

VIII. UN INTERLUDIO DI DISCUSSIONE

Il mattino spuntò in un aspro argento lungo la grigia e piatta pianura; e quasi nell’istante in cui ciò avvenne Turnbull e MacIan uscirono da un basso e stentato bosco sulle desolate distese vuote. Avevano camminato tutta la notte.

Avevano camminato tutta la notte e discusso tutta la notte, e se l’argomento fosse stato tale da poter essere esaurito lo avrebbero esaurito. La loro lunga e mutevole discussione li aveva condotti attraverso regioni e paesaggi ugualmente mutevoli. Avevano dibattuto di Haeckel su colline così alte e ripide che, malgrado il freddo della notte, sembrava che le stelle potessero bruciarli. Avevano spiegato e rispiegato il Massacro di San Bartolomeo in bianchi viottoli murati da grano ritto come da muraglie d’oro. Avevano parlato del signor Kensit in fioche e scintillanti pinete, tra la sconcertante monotonia dei pini. E fu con la fine di un lungo discorso di MacIan, che difendeva appassionatamente le realizzazioni pratiche e la solida prosperità della tradizione cattolica, che sbucarono sulla terra aperta.

MacIan aveva imparato molto e pensato ancor di più da quando era uscito dalle nebbiose alture di Arisaig. Aveva incontrato molte figure moderne tipiche in circostanze che erano nettamente simboliche; e, per di più, aveva assorbito la principale atmosfera moderna dalla semplice presenza e dalle frasi occasionali di Turnbull, come tali atmosfere si possono sempre assorbire dalla presenza e dalle frasi di ogni uomo di grande vitalità mentale. Aveva finalmente cominciato a comprendere a fondo quali siano i motivi per cui la massa del mondo moderno disapprova con fermezza il suo credo; e si gettò a rispondere loro con un ardente godimento intellettuale.

“Comincio a capire uno o due dei vostri dogmi, signor Turnbull,” aveva detto con enfasi mentre arrancavano su per una collina boscosa. “E ognuno che capisco lo nego. Prendetene uno qualsiasi a piacere. Voi sostenete che i vostri eretici e scettici hanno spinto avanti il mondo e tramandato una lampada di progresso. Io lo nego. Nulla è più chiaro dalla vera storia del fatto che ciascuno dei vostri eretici inventò un intero cosmo tutto suo che l’eretico successivo fece interamente a pezzi. Chi sa ora esattamente che cosa insegnò Nestorio? A chi importa? Ci sono solo due cose che ne sappiamo per certo. La prima è che Nestorio, come eretico, insegnò qualcosa di del tutto opposto all’insegnamento di Ario, l’eretico che venne prima di lui, e qualcosa di del tutto inutile a James Turnbull, l’eretico che viene dopo. Vi sfido a risalire ai liberi pensatori del passato e a trovarvi una qualsiasi dimora per voi stesso. Vi sfido a leggere Godwin o Shelley o i deisti del diciottesimo secolo o gli umanisti adoratori della natura del Rinascimento, senza scoprire che voi differite da loro il doppio di quanto differiate dal Papa. Voi siete uno scettico del diciannovesimo secolo, e mi andate sempre dicendo che io ignoro la crudeltà della natura. Se foste stato uno scettico del diciottesimo secolo mi avreste detto che io ignoro la bontà e la benevolenza della natura. Voi siete ateo, e lodate i deisti del diciottesimo secolo. Leggeteli invece di lodarli, e scoprirete che tutto il loro universo sta o cade con la divinità. Voi siete materialista, e ritenete Bruno un eroe scientifico. Guardate ciò che disse e lo riterrete un mistico folle. No, il grande libero pensatore, con la sua genuina abilità e onestà, non distrugge in pratica il Cristianesimo. Ciò che distrugge è il libero pensatore che lo precedette. Il libero pensiero può essere suggestivo, può essere corroborante, può avere quanto vi piace dei meriti che vengono dalla vivacità e dalla varietà. Ma c’è una cosa che il libero pensiero non potrà mai essere in alcun modo— il libero pensiero non potrà mai essere progressivo. Non potrà mai essere progressivo perché non accetterà nulla dal passato; ricomincia ogni volta daccapo dal principio; e va ogni volta in una direzione diversa. Tutti i filosofi razionali hanno percorso strade diverse, sicché è impossibile dire quale sia andato più lontano. Chi può discutere se Emerson fosse ottimista migliore di quanto Schopenhauer fosse pessimista? È come chiedere se questo grano è tanto giallo quanto quella collina è ripida. No; ci sono solo due cose che davvero progrediscono; ed entrambe accettano accumuli di autorità. Possono progredire in salita e in discesa; possono farsi costantemente migliori o costantemente peggiori; ma sono costantemente cresciute in certe materie definibili; sono costantemente avanzate in una certa direzione definibile; sono le uniche due cose, pare, che mai possano progredire. La prima è rigorosamente la scienza fisica. La seconda è la Chiesa cattolica.”

“La scienza fisica e la Chiesa cattolica!” disse Turnbull sarcasticamente; “e senza dubbio la prima deve molto alla seconda.”

“Se insisteste su quel punto potrei rispondere che è molto probabile,” rispose MacIan con calma. “Immagino spesso che le vostre generalizzazioni storiche poggino di frequente su istanze casuali; non mi stupirei se le vostre vaghe nozioni della Chiesa come persecutrice della scienza fossero una generalizzazione tratta da Galileo. Non mi stupirei affatto se, contando le indagini e le scoperte scientifiche dalla caduta di Roma, scopriste che gran parte di esse è stata compiuta da monaci. Ma la questione è irrilevante rispetto al mio pensiero. Dico che se volete un esempio di qualcosa che sia progredito nel mondo morale con lo stesso metodo con cui la scienza nel mondo materiale, aggiungendo continuamente senza sconvolgere ciò che c’era prima, allora dico che ne esiste un solo esempio. E siamo Noi.”

“Con questa enorme differenza,” disse Turnbull, “che per quanto elaborati siano i calcoli della scienza fisica, il loro risultato netto può essere verificato. Ammesso che ci siano voluti milioni di libri che non ho mai letto e milioni di uomini di cui non ho mai sentito parlare per scoprire la luce elettrica, posso comunque vedere la luce elettrica. Ma non posso vedere la suprema virtù che è il risultato di tutte le vostre teologie e i vostri sacramenti.”

“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.

“La virtù cattolica è spesso invisibile perché è la norma,” rispose MacIan. “Il Cristianesimo è sempre fuori moda perché è sempre sano; e tutte le mode sono lievi follie. Quando l’Italia impazzisce per l’arte la Chiesa sembra troppo puritana; quando l’Inghilterra impazzisce per il Puritanesimo la Chiesa sembra troppo artistica. Quando litigate con noi ora ci accostate alla regalità e al dispotismo; ma quando litigaste con noi la prima volta fu perché noi non volevamo accettare il dispotismo divino di Enrico VIII. La Chiesa sembra sempre essere indietro rispetto ai tempi, quando in realtà è al di là dei tempi; attende che l’ultima fisima abbia visto la sua ultima estate. Custodisce la chiave di una virtù permanente.”

“Oh, ho già sentito tutto questo!” disse Turnbull con genuino disprezzo. “Ho sentito dire che il Cristianesimo custodisce la chiave della virtù, e che se leggi Tom Paine ti taglierai la gola a Monte Carlo. Sono tali sciocchezze che non me ne adiro nemmeno. Dite che il Cristianesimo è il sostegno della morale; ma che altro fate voi? Quando un medico vi cura e potrebbe avvelenarvi con un pizzico di sale, gli chiedete forse se è cristiano? Chiedete se è un gentiluomo, se è un dottore in medicina—qualsiasi cosa tranne quella. Quando un soldato si arruola per morire per la sua patria o per disonorarla, gli chiedete forse se è cristiano? È più probabile che chiediate se è di Oxford o di Cambridge alla regata. Se ritenete il vostro credo essenziale alla morale, perché non ne fate un requisito per queste cose?”

“Un tempo ne facevamo davvero un requisito per queste cose,” disse MacIan sorridendo, “e allora ci diceste che imponevamo con la forza una fede non sostenuta dalla ragione. Pare piuttosto duro che, essendoci prima stato detto che il nostro credo doveva essere falso perché usavamo requisiti, ci si debba ora dire che deve essere falso perché non ne usiamo. Ma noto che la maggior parte degli argomenti anticristiani è nello stesso stile incoerente.”

“Va tutto benissimo come risposta da circolo di dibattito,” replicò Turnbull con buon umore, “ma la questione resta: perché non vi limitate maggiormente ai cristiani, se i cristiani sono gli unici uomini davvero buoni?”

“Chi ha mai parlato di simile follia?” chiese MacIan con sdegno. “Supponete forse che la Chiesa cattolica abbia mai sostenuto che i cristiani fossero gli unici uomini buoni? Ma i cattolici del cattolico Medioevo parlarono delle virtù di tutti i pagani virtuosi finché l’umanità non fu stanca dell’argomento. No, se volete davvero sapere che cosa intendiamo quando diciamo che il Cristianesimo ha uno speciale potere di virtù, ve lo dirò. La Chiesa è l’unica cosa sulla terra che possa perpetuare un tipo di virtù e renderlo qualcosa di più di una moda. La cosa è così evidente e storica che a stento credo che voi la negherete mai. Non potete negare che sia perfettamente possibile che domani mattina, in Irlanda o in Italia, possa comparire un uomo non solo buono, ma buono esattamente nello stesso modo di san Francesco d’Assisi. Benissimo, ora prendete gli altri tipi di virtù umana; molti di essi splendidi. Il gentiluomo inglese dell’epoca di Elisabetta era cavalleresco e idealista. Ma potete voi restarvene fermo qui in questo prato ed essere un gentiluomo inglese dell’epoca di Elisabetta? L’austero repubblicano del diciottesimo secolo, col suo severo patriottismo e la sua vita semplice, era un bravo tipo. Ma lo avete mai visto? avete mai visto un austero repubblicano? Sono passati solo cent’anni e quel vulcano di verità e valore rivoluzionari è freddo come le montagne della luna. E così è e così sarà con l’etica che ronza per Fleet Street proprio in questo istante mentre parlo. Quale frase ispirerebbe l’impiegato o l’operaio di Londra proprio ora? Forse che è un figlio dell’Impero Britannico su cui il sole non tramonta mai; forse che è un sostegno del suo Sindacato di mestiere, o un proletario con coscienza di classe o qualcosa del genere; forse semplicemente che è un gentiluomo quando è evidente che non lo è. Quei nomi e quelle nozioni sono tutti onorevoli; ma quanto dureranno? Gli imperi crollano; le condizioni industriali cambiano; i sobborghi non dureranno per sempre. Che cosa resterà? Ve lo dirò io. Resterà il santo cattolico.”

“E supponiamo che non mi piaccia?” disse Turnbull.

“Secondo la mia teoria la questione è piuttosto se piacerete voi a lui: o più probabilmente se avrà mai sentito parlare di voi. Ma vi concedo la ragionevolezza della vostra domanda. Avete il diritto, se parlate come l’uomo comune, di chiedere se il santo vi piacerà. Ma in quanto uomo comune, egli vi piace. Voi ne andate in visibilio. Se vi dispiace non è perché siete un simpatico uomo comune, ma perché siete (se mi permettete) un sofisticato saccente direttore di Fleet Street. È proprio questa la parte buffa. Il genere umano ha sempre ammirato le virtù cattoliche, per quanto poco possa praticarle; e stranamente ha ammirato soprattutto quelle che il mondo moderno contesta con maggior asprezza. Vi lamentate del cattolicesimo per aver eretto un ideale di verginità; non fece nulla del genere. Fu l’intero genere umano a erigere un ideale di verginità; i greci in Atena, i romani nel Fuoco vestale, eressero un ideale di verginità. Qual è dunque il vostro vero dissidio col cattolicesimo? Il vostro dissidio può soltanto essere, il vostro dissidio in realtà soltanto è, che il cattolicesimo ha realizzato un ideale di verginità; che non è più un semplice frammento di poesia fluttuante. Ma se voi, e pochi uomini febbrili, in cilindro, che corrono per una strada di Londra, scegliete di dissentire quanto all’ideale stesso, non solo dalla Chiesa, ma dal Partenone il cui nome significa verginità, dall’Impero Romano che si irradiò dalla fiamma verginale, da tutta la leggenda e la tradizione d’Europa, dal leone che non tocca le vergini, dall’unicorno che le rispetta, e che insieme compongono i sostenitori del vostro stesso stemma nazionale, dal più vivo e sfrenato dei vostri stessi poeti, da Massinger, che scrisse il Virgin Martyr, da Shakespeare, che scrisse Misura per misura—se voi in Fleet Street dissentite da tutta questa esperienza umana, non vi sfiora mai il pensiero che potrebbe essere Fleet Street ad avere torto?”

“No,” rispose Turnbull; “confido di essere sufficientemente equanime da vagliare e considerare l’idea; ma dopo averla considerata, penso che Fleet Street abbia ragione, sì—anche se il Partenone ha torto. Penso che, con l’andare del mondo, si generino nuove atmosfere psicologiche, e in queste atmosfere è possibile trovare delicatezze e combinazioni che in altri tempi avrebbero dovuto essere rappresentate da qualche simbolo più rozzo. Ogni uomo sente il bisogno di qualche elemento di purezza nel sesso; forse essi possono raffigurare la purezza solo come assenza di sesso. Riderete se suggerisco che possiamo aver creato in Fleet Street un’atmosfera in cui un uomo può essere tanto appassionato quanto Sir Lancillotto e tanto puro quanto Sir Galahad. Ma, dopo tutto, nel mondo moderno abbiamo eretto molte atmosfere di questo genere. Abbiamo, per esempio, un nuovo e immaginoso apprezzamento dei bambini.”

“Appunto,” replicò MacIan con un singolare sorriso. “È stato detto molto bene da uno dei più brillanti dei vostri giovani autori, il quale disse: ‘Se non diventerete come bambini, non entrerete in alcun modo nel regno dei cieli.’ Ma avete perfettamente ragione; esiste un moderno culto dei bambini. E che cos’è, vi chiedo, questo moderno culto dei bambini? Che cos’è, nel nome di tutti gli angeli e i diavoli, se non un culto della verginità? Perché mai si dovrebbe venerare una cosa solo perché è piccola o immatura? No; avete cercato di fuggire da questa cosa, e proprio la cosa che indicate come meta della vostra fuga non è che la stessa cosa di nuovo. Sbaglio a dire che queste cose paiono essere eterne?”

E fu con queste parole che giunsero in vista delle grandi pianure. Procedettero un breve tratto in silenzio, e poi James Turnbull disse d’un tratto: “Ma io non posso credere in quella cosa.” MacIan non rispose nulla a quelle parole; forse sono senza risposta. E in verità non si scambiarono quasi più una parola per tutto il giorno.

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.

IX. LA DAMA SCONOSCIUTA

Il sorgere della luna, con una grande e crescente luna, si dischiuse su tutte quelle distese, facendole sembrare più piatte e più vaste di quanto fossero, mutandole in un lago di luce azzurra. I due compagni arrancarono attraverso la pianura illuminata dalla luna per mezz’ora in pieno silenzio. Poi MacIan si fermò all’improvviso e piantò la punta della sua spada nel terreno come chi pianta il palo della tenda per la notte. Lasciandola ritta là, si strinse il cranio dai capelli neri con i suoi grandi artigli di mani, come era sua abitudine quando forzava l’andatura del cervello. Poi le mani ricaddero ed egli parlò.

“Sono certo che pensate la stessa cosa che penso io,” disse; “per quanto dovremo restare su questa maledetta altalena?”

L’altro non rispose, ma il suo silenzio pareva in qualche modo solido come un assenso; e MacIan proseguì in tono discorsivo. Nessuno dei due notò che entrambi si erano istintivamente fermati davanti al segno della fissa e ritta spada.

“È difficile indovinare che cosa intenda Dio in questa faccenda. Ma qualcosa intende—o l’altra cosa, o entrambe. Ogni volta che abbiamo cercato di batterci l’uno contro l’altro qualcosa ci ha fermati. Ogni volta che abbiamo cercato di riconciliarci l’uno con l’altro, qualcosa ci ha fermati di nuovo. Per il corso della nostra sorte non abbiamo mai avuto tempo di essere né amici né nemici. Qualcosa saltava sempre fuori dai cespugli.”

Turnbull annuì gravemente e si guardò intorno, verso l’enorme prato senza siepi che digradava verso l’orizzonte in una scintillante strada maestra.

“Qui, in ogni caso, non salterà nulla fuori dai cespugli,” disse.

“È ciò che intendevo,” disse MacIan, e fissò con costanza la pesante elsa della sua spada ritta, che nel lieve vento oscillava sul suo acciaio temprato come un enorme cardo sul gambo.

“È ciò che intendevo; qui siamo del tutto soli. Non ho sentito uno zoccolo di cavallo né un passo né il fischio di un treno per miglia. Perciò penso che potremmo fermarci qui e chiedere un miracolo.”

“Oh! potremmo davvero?” disse il direttore ateo con una sorta di gusto per il disgusto.

“Vi chiedo scusa,” disse MacIan, con umiltà. “Avevo dimenticato i vostri pregiudizi.” Adocchiò l’elsa della spada mossa dal vento in triste meditazione e riprese: “Ciò che intendo è che potremmo scoprire, in questo luogo quieto, se davvero ci sia un qualche destino o un qualche comandamento contro la nostra impresa. Mi impegnerò, da parte mia, come Elia, ad accettare una prova dal cielo. Turnbull, sguainiamo le spade qui in questo chiaro di luna e in questa mostruosa solitudine. E se qui in questo chiaro di luna e in questa solitudine accade qualcosa a interromperci—sia un fulmine che colpisce le lame delle nostre spade o un coniglio che corre tra le nostre gambe—lo prenderò come un segno di Dio e ci stringeremo la mano per sempre.”

La bocca di Turnbull ebbe un guizzo in un umore irato sotto i baffi rossi. Disse: “Aspetterò i segni di Dio finché non avrò un qualche segno della Sua esistenza; ma Dio—o il Fato—non voglia che un uomo di cultura scientifica rifiuti una qualsiasi sorta di esperimento.”

“Molto bene, allora,” disse MacIan, secco. “Qui siamo più quieti che in qualunque altro luogo; battiamoci.” E strappò la punta della sua spada dalla zolla.

Turnbull lo osservò per un secondo e mezzo con un volto sconcertante, quasi nero contro il sorgere della luna; poi la sua mano fece uno scatto netto verso l’anca e la sua spada brillò nella luna.

Come i vecchi scacchisti aprono ogni partita con gambetti consacrati, aprirono con un affondo e una parata, ortodossi e persino francamente inefficaci. Ma nell’anima di MacIan si andavano radunando tempeste più informi, ed egli sferrò un affondo o due tanto selvaggi da sorprendere dapprima e poi da far infuriare il suo avversario. Turnbull digrignò i denti, mantenne la calma, e, attendendo il terzo affondo, il peggiore, aveva quasi infilzato lo schermidore quando un grido acuto e sottile venne da dietro di lui, un grido come non ne emette alcuna delle bestie che periscono.

Turnbull doveva essere più superstizioso di quanto sapesse, perché si fermò nell’atto di avanzare. MacIan era spudoratamente superstizioso, e lasciò cadere la sua spada. Dopotutto, aveva sfidato l’universo a mandare un’interruzione; e questa era un’interruzione, qualunque altra cosa fosse. Un istante dopo il grido acuto e debole si ripeté. Questa volta fu certo che era umano e che era femminile.

MacIan stava roteando quei grandi occhi azzurri gaelici che contrastavano con i suoi capelli scuri. “È la voce di Dio,” diceva ripetutamente.

“Dio non ha una gran voce,” disse Turnbull, che afferrava ogni occasione di volgare empietà. “In effetti, MacIan, non è la voce di Dio, ma è qualcosa di ben più importante— è la voce dell’uomo—o meglio della donna. Perciò credo faremmo meglio a filare nella sua direzione.”

MacIan raccolse l’arma caduta senza una parola, e i due si lanciarono di corsa verso quel tratto della lontana strada da cui il grido si rinnovava ormai di continuo.

Dovettero correre su una curva di terreno che pareva liscia ma era molto accidentata; un campo abbandonato che presto trovarono pieno delle erbe più alte e delle più profonde tane di conigli. Per di più, quella grande curva della campagna che pareva così lenta e dolce quando la si guardava, si rivelò assai scoscesa quando la si percorse di corsa; e Turnbull fu due volte quasi scaraventato sul viso. MacIan, benché assai più pesante, evitò una simile caduta soltanto per il possesso dei piedi rapidi e imprevedibili del montanaro; ma di entrambi si può dire che balzarono da una bassa rupe quando balzarono sulla strada.

Il chiaro di luna posava sulla bianca strada con un bagliore più nudo ed elettrico che sull’altura grigioverde, e sebbene la scena che rivelava fosse complicata, non era difficile coglierne i primi tratti a colpo d’occhio.

Una piccola ma assai linda automobile nera e gialla stava impassibile, un poco a sinistra della strada. Un’automobile un po’ più grande, verde chiaro, era rovesciata per metà in un fosso sullo stesso lato, e quattro uomini paonazzi e barcollanti in abito da sera ne erano sbalzati fuori. Tre di loro se ne stavano attorno alla strada, esponendo le loro opinioni alla luna con vaga ma echeggiante violenza. Il quarto, invece, aveva già avanzato contro l’autista dell’automobile nera e gialla, e lo minacciava con un bastone. L’autista si era alzato per difendersi. Al suo fianco sedeva una giovane dama.

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.

Sedeva rigidamente eretta, una figura snella e irrigidita che stringeva i lati del sedile, e le sue prime poche grida erano cessate. Era vestita di un abito scuro e aderente, una massa di caldi capelli castani si dipartiva in due ali od onde su ciascun lato della fronte; e persino a quella distanza si poteva scorgere che il suo profilo era di quella sorta aquilina e ardente, come un giovane falco appena libero dal nido.

Turnbull celava in sé, chissà dove, una riserva di buon senso e di conoscenza del mondo di cui egli stesso e i suoi migliori amici erano appena consapevoli. Era uno di quelli che recepiscono molto delle apparenze delle cose distrattamente, e in una fantasticheria estranea. Mentre stava alla porta della sua bottega di direttore su Ludgate Hill e meditava sull’inesistenza di Dio, assorbiva in silenzio una buona dose di svariate cognizioni sull’esistenza degli uomini. Era giunto a conoscere i tipi per istinto e i dilemmi con un’occhiata; vide il nocciolo della situazione sulla strada, e ciò che vide lo indusse a raddoppiare il passo.

Sapeva che gli uomini erano ricchi; sapeva che erano ubriachi; e sapeva, cosa peggiore di tutte, che erano in fondo spaventati. E sapeva anche questo, che nessun comune malfattore (di quelli che assalgono le dame nei romanzi) è mai tanto feroce e spietato quanto una rozza sorta di gentiluomo quando è davvero allarmato. La ragione non è recondita; è semplicemente perché il tribunale di polizia non è una novità tanto minacciosa per il povero malfattore quanto lo è per il ricco. Quando giunsero a portata di voce e udirono le grida, confermarono tutte le previsioni di Turnbull. L’uomo in mezzo alla strada gridava con voce roca e impastata che l’autista aveva sfasciato la loro macchina apposta; che dovevano arrivare al Cri quella sera, e che lui ce li avrebbe ben dovuti portare. L’autista aveva blandamente obiettato che stava trasportando una dama. “Oh! ci penseremo noi alla dama,” disse il giovanotto dal volto rosso, e proruppe in una risata gorgogliante e quasi senile.

Quando i due campioni giunsero, le cose erano fatte più serie. L’ebbrezza dell’uomo che parlava con l’autista aveva compiuto uno dei suoi balzi perversi e felini nel puro dispetto urlante e nella rabbia. Alzò il bastone e colpì l’autista, il quale lo afferrò, e l’ubriaco cadde all’indietro, trascinandolo giù dal suo posto sulla macchina. Un altro dei teppisti si precipitò avanti schiamazzando in un’idiota eccitazione, inciampò sull’autista e, o per caso o di proposito, lo prese a calci mentre giaceva. L’ubriaco si rialzò in piedi; ma l’autista no.

L’uomo che aveva sferrato il calcio conservava una specie di coscienza o di viltà da mezzo scemo, poiché se ne stava fissando il corpo esanime e mormorando parole di incoerente auto-giustificazione, facendo gesti con le mani come se stesse discutendo con qualcuno. Ma gli altri tre, con un semplice grido e ululato di vittoria, stavano assalendo la macchina da tre lati insieme. Fu esattamente in questo momento che Turnbull piombò tra loro come uno caduto dal cielo. Strappò all’indietro per il colletto uno degli arrampicatori e, con una vigorosa spinta, lo mandò a barcollare a testa in giù nel fosso sul naso. Uno dei due rimasti, che era troppo andato per accorgersi di nulla, continuava ad arrampicarsi senza costrutto sull’alto schienale della macchina, sferrando calci e riversando un rivolo di soliloquio. Ma l’altro si staccò all’interruzione, si volse contro Turnbull e diede inizio a un’incalzante tenzone di pugni. Nello stesso istante l’uomo strisciò fuori dal fosso in una mascherata di fango e si precipitò contro il suo vecchio nemico alle spalle. Il tutto non aveva richiesto un secondo; e un istante dopo MacIan era in mezzo a loro.

Turnbull aveva gettato via la sua spada inguainata, preferendo di gran lunga le mani, salvo nella dichiarata etichetta del duello; poiché aveva imparato a usare le mani nelle vecchie battaglie di strada di Bradlaugh. Ma per MacIan la spada, anche inguainata, era un’arma più naturale, ed egli menava colpi da ogni lato con essa come con un bastone. L’uomo che aveva il bastone da passeggio si vide parare i colpi con prontezza; e un attimo dopo, con suo grande stupore, si vide volare in aria il proprio bastone come per un trucco di prestigio, con un giro di polso dello schermidore. Un altro dei gaudenti raccolse il bastone dal fosso e si avventò su MacIan, chiamando il suo compagno perché lo aiutasse.

“Non ho un bastone,” brontolò l’uomo disarmato, e si guardò vagamente attorno nel fosso.

“Forse,” disse MacIan, cortesemente, “vi piacerebbe questo.” E con la parola l’ubriaco si trovò la mano che aveva afferrato il bastone d’un tratto torta e vuota; e il bastone giaceva ai piedi del suo compagno dall’altro lato della strada. MacIan sentì un lieve movimento dietro di sé; la ragazza si era alzata in piedi e si sporgeva in avanti a fissare i combattenti. Turnbull era ancora impegnato a parare e a tempestare di pugni il terzo giovanotto. Il quarto giovanotto era ancora impegnato con se stesso, agitando le gambe in un’inutile rotazione sullo schienale della macchina e parlando con melodiosa razionalità.

Alla fine l’avversario di Turnbull cominciò ad arretrare davanti alla gragnuola delle sue pesanti mani, pur continuando a battersi, poiché era il più sobrio e il più ardito dei quattro. Se queste sono cronache di gloria militare, gli si deve dare atto che non era tenuto ad abbandonare il conflitto; solo che, mentre arretrava verso il ciglio del fosso, il piede gli si impigliò in un cappio d’erba ed egli finì disteso in una posizione piatta e comoda dalla quale gli occorse un considerevole tempo per rialzarsi. Quando si fu rialzato, Turnbull era venuto in soccorso di MacIan, che era alle strette ma bastonava egregiamente i suoi due nemici. La vista della riserva liberata fu per loro come quella di Blücher a Waterloo; i due se ne andarono al piccolo trotto imbronciato giù per la strada, lasciandosi dietro persino il bastone da passeggio nel chiaro di luna. MacIan staccò l’idiota che si dibatteva e si arrampicava dallo schienale della macchina come un gatto randagio, e lo lasciò a oscillare malfermo nella luna. Poi si avvicinò alla parte anteriore della macchina in maniera alquanto imbarazzata e si tolse il berretto.

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.

Per parecchi secondi interi la dama ed egli si guardarono soltanto l’un l’altra, e MacIan ebbe l’irrazionale sensazione di trovarsi in un quadro appeso a una parete. Vale a dire che era immobile, persino esanime, eppure fissamente significativo, come un quadro. Il bianco chiaro di luna sulla strada, quando non lo guardava, gli dava la visione della strada bianca di neve. L’automobile, quando non la guardava, gli dava una rozza impressione di una carrozza catturata nei vecchi tempi dei briganti da strada. Ed egli, la cui intera anima era con le spade e i modi solenni del diciottesimo secolo, egli che era un giacobita risorto dai morti, ebbe un travolgente senso di trovarsi ancora una volta nel quadro, dopo esserne stato così a lungo fuori.

In quel breve e intenso silenzio egli assorbì la dama dalla testa ai piedi. Non aveva mai davvero guardato un essere umano prima d’allora in vita sua. Vide dapprima il viso e i capelli di lei, poi che aveva lunghi guanti di camoscio; poi che c’era un berretto di pelliccia dietro i suoi capelli castani. Poteva forse essere scusato per questa affamata attenzione. Aveva pregato che un qualche segno venisse dal cielo; e dopo uno scrutinio quasi feroce giunse alla conclusione che il suo era venuto. L’istantaneo arresto di parola della dama poteva richiedere maggior spiegazione; ma poteva ben essere rimasta stordita dallo squallido assalto e dall’improvviso soccorso. Eppure fu lei a riprendersi per prima e a esclamare d’un tratto con orrore auto-accusatore:

“Oh, quel povero, povero uomo!”

Entrambi si voltarono di scatto e videro che Turnbull, con la sua spada ritrovata sotto l’ascella, stava già sollevando l’autista caduto dentro la macchina. Era soltanto stordito e si stava lentamente ridestando, agitando debolmente il braccio sinistro.

La dama dai lunghi guanti e dal berretto di pelliccia balzò fuori e corse rapida verso di loro, solo per essere rassicurata da Turnbull, il quale (a differenza di molti della sua scuola) conosceva davvero un poco di scienza quando la invocava per redimere il mondo. “Sta bene,” disse; “è del tutto al sicuro. Ma temo che non sarà in grado di guidare la macchina per una mezz’ oretta.”

“Posso guidare io la macchina,” disse la giovane donna dal berretto di pelliccia con impassibile senso pratico.

“Oh, in tal caso,” cominciò MacIan, a disagio; e quella paralizzante timidezza che è parte del Romanticismo lo indusse a fare un movimento all’indietro come se la lasciasse a se stessa. Ma Turnbull era più razionale di lui, essendo più indifferente.

“Non credo che dovreste guidare fino a casa da sola, signora,” disse, burbero. “Sembra esserci un mucchio di comitive turbolente lungo questa strada, e l’uomo non servirà a nulla per un’ora. Se ci direte dove siete diretta, vi accompagneremo fin là sani e salvi e vi diremo buona notte.”

La giovane dama manifestò tutto l’improvviso turbamento di una persona che di solito non si turba. Disse quasi seccamente eppure con evidente sincerità: “Naturalmente vi sono tremendamente grata per tutto quello che avete fatto—e c’è posto in abbondanza, se volete salire.”

Turnbull, con la completa innocenza di un movente assolutamente sano, saltò immediatamente nella macchina; ma la ragazza gettò un’occhiata a MacIan, che rimase sulla strada per un istante come radicato a un albero. Poi anche lui infilò le sue lunghe gambe nel tonneau, avendo quel senso di tuffarsi in modo abietto nel paradiso che tanti hanno provato in tante case umane quando hanno acconsentito a fermarsi per il tè o sono stati invitati a fermarsi per la cena. L’autista che lentamente rinveniva fu sistemato sul sedile posteriore; Turnbull e MacIan erano piombati in quello di mezzo; la dama con acciaiata freddezza aveva preso il posto di guida e tutte le leve di quella impetuosa macchina. Un momento dopo il motore si avviò, con un fremito e uno scatto ignoti a Turnbull, che era salito su un’automobile una sola volta durante certe elezioni generali, e del tutto sconosciuti a MacIan, il quale nel suo stato d’animo presente pensò fosse la fine del mondo. Quasi nello stesso istante in cui la macchina si strappò fuori dal fango e sfrecciò via su per la strada, l’uomo che era stato scaraventato nel fosso si alzò barcollando in piedi. Quando vide la macchina che fuggiva le corse dietro e gridò qualcosa che, a causa della distanza crescente, non poté essere udito. È tremendo pensare che, se la sua osservazione era preziosa, essa è del tutto perduta per il mondo.

La macchina proseguì di slancio su e giù per i vicoli splendenti al chiaro di luna, e non vi era suono in essa se non l’occasionale scatto o ingranaggio del suo meccanismo; poiché, per una causa o per l’altra, nessun’anima al suo interno riusciva a pensare una parola da dire. La dama simboleggiò i suoi sentimenti, quali che fossero, spingendo la macchina sempre più veloce finché sparsi boschetti sfilavano accanto a loro in un’unica macchia nera e pesanti colline e valli parevano ondeggiare sotto le ruote come mere onde. Un po’ più tardi questo umore parve allentarsi ed ella si mise a un’andatura più ordinaria; ma ancora non parlava. Turnbull, che manteneva della faccenda una visione più comune e assennata di chiunque altro, fece qualche osservazione sul chiaro di luna; ma qualcosa di indescrivibile lo fece anch’egli ricadere nel silenzio.

Per tutto questo tempo MacIan era stato in una sorta di mostruoso delirio, come un favoloso eroe rapito su nella luna. La differenza tra questa esperienza e le esperienze comuni era analoga a quella tra la vita da svegli e un sogno. Eppure non si sentiva minimamente come se stesse sognando; anzi, al contrario; come lo stato di veglia era più reale del sogno, così questo pareva di un altro grado più reale della veglia stessa. Ma era tutt’altra vita, come un cosmo con una nuova dimensione.

Sentiva di essere stato scagliato in qualche nuova incarnazione: in mezzo a nuove relazioni, torti e diritti, con torreggianti responsabilità e gioie quasi tragiche che non aveva ancora avuto tempo di esaminare. Il cielo non gli aveva semplicemente mandato un messaggio; il cielo stesso si era aperto attorno a lui e gli aveva dato un’ora della sua antica energia frantumatrice di stelle. Non si era mai sentito così vivo prima d’allora; eppure era come un uomo in trance. E se gli aveste chiesto a che cosa fosse appesa la sua palpitante felicità, avrebbe potuto dirvi soltanto che era appesa a quattro o cinque fatti visibili, come una tenda pende da quattro o cinque chiodi fissi. Il fatto che la dama avesse un po’ di pelliccia alla gola; il fatto che la curva della sua guancia fosse una curva bassa e sottile e che il chiaro di luna cogliesse l’altezza del suo zigomo; il fatto che le sue mani fossero piccole ma pesantemente inguantate mentre stringevano il volante; il fatto che una bianca luce da strega fosse sulla strada; il fatto che la vivace brezza del loro passaggio agitasse e facesse svolazzare un poco non solo i capelli castani del suo capo ma la nera pelliccia sul suo berretto. Tutti questi fatti erano per lui certi e incredibili, come sacramenti.

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.

Quando ebbero percorso ancora mezzo miglio, una grande ombra fu proiettata attraverso il sentiero, seguita dal suo corpulento padrone, che squadrò l’automobile con occhio critico ma la lasciò passare. Il chiaro di luna d’argento fece risaltare un pezzo o due di ornamento di peltro sulla sua uniforme blu; e mentre gli passavano accanto capirono che era un sergente di polizia. Trecento metri più avanti un altro poliziotto fece un passo sulla strada come per fermarli, poi parve dubitare della propria autorità e si tirò di nuovo indietro. La ragazza era figlia dei ricchi; e questo sospetto della polizia (sotto il quale tutti i poveri vivono giorno e notte) la punse per la prima volta fino a farla parlare.

“Che cosa vorranno mai?” esclamò con una specie di stizza; “quest’automobile va come una lumaca.”

Ci fu un breve silenzio, e poi Turnbull disse: “È certamente molto strano, lei sta guidando con abbastanza calma.”

“Lei guida nobilmente,” disse MacIan, e le sue parole (che non avevano alcun significato) suonarono roche e goffe perfino alle sue stesse orecchie.

Percorsero il miglio e mezzo successivo rapidamente e senza scosse; eppure tra le molte cose che oltrepassarono nel corso di esso vi era un capannello di poliziotti ansiosi fermi a un crocevia della strada. Mentre passavano, uno dei poliziotti gridò qualcosa agli altri; ma non accadde nient’altro. Ottocento metri più avanti, Turnbull si alzò all’improvviso nell’automobile ondeggiante.

“Mio Dio, MacIan!” gridò, mostrando la sua prima emozione di quella notte. “Non credo che sia l’andatura; non può essere l’andatura. Credo che siamo noi.”

MacIan rimase immobile per qualche istante e poi rivolse verso il suo compagno un volto bianco come la luna che lo sovrastava.

“Forse hai ragione,” disse infine; “se è così, devo dirglielo.”

“Lo dirò io alla signora, se vuoi,” disse Turnbull, con la sua imperturbabile buona indole.

“Tu!” disse MacIan, con una sorta di sincero e istintivo stupore. “Perché dovresti tu… no, devo dirglielo io, naturalmente…”

E si sporse in avanti e parlò alla signora dal berretto di pelliccia.

“Temo, signora, che possiamo averla cacciata in qualche guaio,” disse, e già nel dirlo suonò sbagliato, come tutto ciò che diceva a questa particolare persona dai lunghi guanti. “Il fatto è,” riprese, disperatamente, “il fatto è che siamo inseguiti dalla polizia.” Poi l’ultimo martello schiacciante calò sull’imbarazzo del povero Evan; poiché la vaporosa testa bruna con il peloso berretto nero non girò di una sola tacca della bussola.

“Siamo inseguiti dalla polizia,” ripeté MacIan, con vigore; poi aggiunse, come iniziando una spiegazione, “Vede, io sono cattolico.”

Il vento scostò all’indietro un ricciolo dei capelli bruni così da rendere necessaria una nuova teoria dell’estetica riguardo alla linea dello zigomo; ma la testa non girò.

“Vede,” cominciò MacIan, di nuovo maldestramente, “questo signore ha scritto nel suo giornale che la Nostra Signora era una donna comune, una donna cattiva, e così ci siamo accordati per batterci; e ci stavamo battendo appena poco fa… ma questo prima di aver visto lei.”

La giovane signora che guidava l’automobile aveva mezzo voltato il viso per ascoltare; e non era un viso riverente né paziente quello che gli mostrò. Il suo naso normanno era inclinato un po’ troppo in alto sullo stelo sottile del suo collo e del suo corpo.

Quando MacIan vide quel profilo arrogante e sollevato disegnato nettamente contro il chiaro di luna, accettò una sconfitta definitiva. Si era aspettato che gli angeli lo disprezzassero se avesse avuto torto, ma non che lo disprezzassero fino a questo punto.

“Vede,” disse l’incespicante oratore, “ero in collera con lui quando ha insultato la Madre di Dio, e gli ho chiesto di battersi a duello con me; ma la polizia sta facendo di tutto per impedirlo.”

Nulla parve vacillare o tremolare nel giovane e biondo profilo di falco; ed esso non schiuse le labbra che per dire, dopo un silenzio: “Credevo che ai nostri tempi si dovesse rispettare la religione altrui.”

Sotto l’ombra di quel volto arrogante MacIan poté solo ripiegare sulla risposta ovvia: “Ma che ne è dell’irreligione di un uomo?” Il volto rispose soltanto: “Beh, dovrebbe essere più di larghe vedute.”

Se chiunque altro al mondo avesse pronunciato quelle parole, MacIan avrebbe sbuffato col suo equino nitrito di scherno. Ma in questo caso parve atterrato da una superiore semplicità, come se la sua attitudine eccentrica fosse rimproverata dall’innocenza di un bambino. Non riusciva a dissociare nulla di ciò che questa donna diceva o faceva o indossava da un’idea di rarità e virtù spirituale. Come la maggior parte di coloro che sono in preda alla medesima elementare passione, la sua anima era al momento intrisa di etica. Avrebbe potuto applicare termini morali agli oggetti materiali del suo ambiente. Se qualcuno avesse parlato del “suo generoso nastro” o dei “suoi cavallereschi guanti” o della “sua misericordiosa fibbia della scarpa,” non gli sarebbe parso un’assurdità.

Egli tacque, e la ragazza proseguì in tono più basso, come se fosse per un momento addolcita e anche un poco rattristata. “Non va bene, sa,” disse; “non si può scoprire la verità in quel modo. Ci sono tali mucchi di chiese e di gente che oggigiorno la pensa in modo diverso, e tutti credono di aver ragione. Mio zio era swedenborghiano.”

MacIan sedeva a capo chino, ascoltando avidamente la sua voce ma a malapena le sue parole, e vedendo il suo grande dramma cosmico farsi sempre più piccolo davanti agli occhi finché non fu più grande del teatrino di giocattolo di un bambino.

“Il tempo per tutto questo è passato,” proseguì; “non si può scoprire la cosa vera in quel modo… ammesso che vi sia davvero qualcosa da scoprire…” e sospirò piuttosto tristemente; perché, come molte delle donne della nostra classe agiata, era vecchia e spezzata nel pensiero, benché giovane e abbastanza pura nelle sue emozioni.

“Il nostro scopo,” disse Turnbull, seccamente, “è fare una dimostrazione efficace”; e dopo quella parola, MacIan guardò di nuovo la sua visione e la trovò più piccola che mai.

“Finirebbe sui giornali, naturalmente,” disse la ragazza. “La gente legge i giornali, ma non ci crede, né a essi né ad altro, credo.” E sospirò di nuovo.

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.

Guidò in silenzio per un terzo di miglio prima di aggiungere, come completando la frase: “Comunque, tutta la faccenda è del tutto assurda.”

“Non credo,” cominciò Turnbull, “che lei si renda proprio conto… Ehilà! ehilà… ehilà… cos’è questo?”

L’autista dilettante era stato costretta a portare l’automobile a un arresto barcollante, poiché una fila di grassi poliziotti blu faceva muro attraverso la via. Un sergente si avvicinò al fianco e si toccò il berretto con visiera in segno di saluto alla signora.

“Chiedo scusa, signorina,” disse con un certo imbarazzo, poiché la conosceva come figlia di una casata dominante, “ma abbiamo motivo di credere che i signori nella sua automobile siano…” ed esitò in cerca di una frase cortese.

“Io sono Evan MacIan,” disse quel signore, e si alzò in una sorta di cupa pompa, non del tutto priva di un pizzico del broncio di uno scolaretto.

“Sì, scenderemo, sergente,” disse Turnbull, con maggiore disinvoltura; “il mio nome è James Turnbull. Non dobbiamo incomodare la signora.”

“Perché li state arrestando?” chiese la giovane donna, guardando dritto davanti a sé lungo la strada.

“È in base alla nuova legge,” disse il sergente, quasi scusandosi. “Incorreggibili turbatori della quiete pubblica.”

“Che ne sarà di loro?” chiese, con la stessa gelida chiarezza.

“Riformatorio per adulti di Westgate,” rispose, brevemente.

“Fino a quando?”

“Finché non saranno guariti,” disse il funzionario.

“Molto bene, sergente,” disse la giovane signora, con una sorta di stanco buon senso. “Sono certa di non voler proteggere criminali né di andare contro la legge; ma devo dirle che questi signori mi hanno reso un servizio considerevole; non le dispiacerà far ritirare i suoi uomini un po’ più in là mentre do loro la buona notte. Uomini così fraintendono sempre.”

Il sergente era profondamente turbato fin dal principio alla sola idea di arrestare qualcuno in compagnia di una gran dama; rifiutare una delle sue minori richieste era del tutto al di là del suo coraggio. La polizia si ritrasse a pochi metri dietro l’automobile. Turnbull raccolse le due spade che erano il loro unico bagaglio; le spade che, dopo tanti mezzi duelli, ora dovevano finalmente consegnare. MacIan, il sangue che gli rombava nel cervello al pensiero di quell’ istante d’addio, si chinò, armeggiò con la maniglia e spalancò la portiera per uscire.

Ma non uscì. Non uscì, perché è pericoloso saltare fuori da un’automobile quando va a piena velocità. E l’automobile andava a piena velocità, perché la giovane signora, senza voltare la testa né pronunciare una sola sillaba, aveva abbassato una leva che fece balzare in avanti la macchina come un bufalo per poi volare sul paesaggio come un levriero. La polizia fece un solo scatto per seguire, e poi lasciò cadere un inseguimento tanto grottesco e disperato. Lontano, nella distanza che svaniva, poterono vedere il sergente che prendeva furiosamente appunti.

La portiera aperta, ancora abbandonata sui suoi cardini, oscillava e sbatteva del tutto follemente mentre sfrecciavano su per una strada e giù per un’altra. Né MacIan si sedette; rimase in piedi stordito eppure fisso a guardare, come si sarebbe alzato al suono della tromba dell’Ultimo Giorno. Un punto nero in lontananza si drizzò in un’alta foresta nera, li inghiottì e li risputò all’altra estremità. Un ponte ferroviario si fece sempre più grande finché non balzò sulle loro spalle mugghiando, e fu a sua volta lasciato indietro. Filari di pioppi su entrambi i lati della strada si rincorrevano come le figure di uno zootropio. Di tanto in tanto con uno scossone e un fragore attraversavano villaggi addormentati e illuminati dalla luna, che devono aver trasalito un istante nel loro sonno come al passaggio di un terremoto fuggitivo. Talvolta in una casa isolata una luce a una qualche capricciosa, inattesa finestra dava loro un cenno senza nome dei cento segreti umani che si lasciavano dietro con la loro polvere. Talvolta perfino un villico dall’andatura strascicata era in piedi sulla strada e li seguiva con lo sguardo, come dietro un fantasma in volo. Ma ancora MacIan restava in piedi a fissare la terra e il cielo; e ancora la portiera che aveva spalancato sbatteva libera come una bandiera. Turnbull, dopo pochi minuti di muto stupore, aveva ceduto all’elemento più sano della sua natura e si era abbandonato a incontrollabili accessi di risa. La ragazza non si era mossa di un pollice.

Dopo un altro mezzo miglio che parve un semplice lampo, Turnbull si sporse e chiuse a chiave la portiera. Evan barcollò finalmente fino al suo posto e nascose la testa pulsante tra le mani; e ancora l’automobile volava e la sua guidatrice sedeva inflessibile e silenziosa. La luna era già tramontata, e l’intera oscurità era debolmente turbata dal crepuscolo e dai primi movimenti di bestie e di uccelli. Era quel misterioso momento in cui la luce sta arrivando come se fosse qualcosa di ignoto la cui natura non si potrebbe indovinare… una mera alterazione di ogni cosa. Guardarono il cielo e sembrava buio come sempre; poi videro la sagoma nera di una torre o di un albero contro di esso e capirono che era già grigio. Salvo che stavano guidando verso sud e avevano certamente oltrepassato la longitudine di Londra, non sapevano nulla della loro direzione; ma Turnbull, che aveva trascorso un anno sulla costa dell’Hampshire nella sua giovinezza, cominciò a riconoscere gli inconfondibili ma del tutto indescrivibili villaggi del sud dell’Inghilterra. Poi un bianco fuoco da strega cominciò ad ardere tra i neri fusti degli abeti; e, come tante cose in natura, anche se non nei libri sull’evoluzione, l’alba, quando venne, venne molto più in fretta di quanto si penserebbe. I cupi cieli furono squarciati e arrotolati via come un rotolo di pergamena, rivelando splendori, mentre l’automobile saliva ruggendo la curva di una grande collina; e sopra di loro e nero contro la luce che si allargava, si ergeva uno di quegli alberi accovacciati e fantastici che sono i primi segnali del mare.

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.

X. LE SPADE RIUNITE

Mentre valicavano la collina e scendevano dall’altro versante, non è troppo dire che l’intero universo di Dio si aprì sopra di loro e sotto di loro, come una cosa che si dispiega fino a cinque volte la sua misura. Quasi sotto i loro piedi si spalancava l’enorme mare, in fondo a una ripida valle che precipitava in una baia; e il mare sotto i loro piedi fiammeggiava verso di loro quasi lucente e quasi vuoto come il cielo. L’alba si aprì sopra di loro come una qualche esplosione cosmica, splendente e frantumante eppure silenziosa; come se il mondo fosse stato fatto a pezzi senza un suono. Attorno ai raggi del vittorioso sole si stendeva una sorta di arcobaleno di colori confusi e vinti… bruno e azzurro e verde e fiammeggiante color di rosa; come se l’oro sospingesse davanti a sé tutti i colori del mondo. Le linee del paesaggio giù per il quale sfrecciavano erano le semplici, severe, eppure sinuose, linee di un fiume impetuoso; sicché era quasi come se venissero risucchiati in un enorme e immobile vortice. Turnbull ebbe una sensazione del genere, perché parlò per la prima volta dopo molte ore.

“Se scendiamo a questa velocità finiremo oltre la scogliera sul mare,” disse.

“Che meraviglia!” disse MacIan.

Quando, tuttavia, furono giunti nell’ampio avvallamento in fondo a quella frana, l’automobile descrisse una curva calma e aggraziata lungo il fianco del mare, si fuse nella frangia di pochi alberi, e con quiete, eppure con stupore, si fermò. Una luce attardata stava ardendo nella vasta luce del mattino alla finestra di una specie di casetta del guardiano o del custode del cancello; e la ragazza si alzò nell’automobile e volse il suo splendido viso al sole.

Evan parve trasalire per l’immobilità, come chi fosse nato tra suono e velocità. Vacillò sulle lunghe gambe mentre si alzava; si ricompose, e l’unica conseguenza fu che tremava da capo a piedi. Turnbull aveva già aperto la portiera dal suo lato ed era saltato fuori.

Nell’istante in cui l’ebbe fatto la strana giovane donna ebbe un ultimo folle movimento, e deliberatamente spinse l’automobile qualche metro più avanti. Poi ne uscì con una freddezza quasi crudele e cominciò a sfilarsi i lunghi guanti quasi fischiettando.

“Potete lasciarmi qui,” disse, con tutta noncuranza, come se si fossero incontrati cinque minuti prima. “Quella è la casetta della tenuta di mio padre. Entrate pure, se volete… ma ho capito che avevate certi affari.”

Evan guardò quel viso sollevato e lo trovò semplicemente incantevole; era di gran lunga troppo sciocco per vedere che esso era travagliato da un’ultima stanchezza e che la sua austerità era agonia. Fu perfino tanto sciocco da porgli una domanda. “Perché ci hai salvati?” disse, del tutto umilmente.

La ragazza si strappò via uno dei guanti, come se si strappasse via la mano. “Oh, non lo so,” disse, amaramente. “Ora che ci penso, non riesco a immaginarlo.”

I pensieri di Evan, che si erano ammucchiati fino alla stella del mattino, di colpo lo lasciarono precipitare con uno schianto fino nelle cantine stesse dell’universo emotivo. Rimase in uno stordito silenzio per lungo tempo; e quella, se solo l’avesse saputo, era la cosa più saggia che potesse mai fare in quel momento.

In verità, il silenzio e l’alba ebbero il loro effetto risanatore, poiché quando la straordinaria signora parlò di nuovo, il suo tono era più amichevole e come di scusa. “Non sono davvero ingrata,” disse; “è stato molto gentile da parte vostra salvarmi da quegli uomini.”

“Ma perché?” ripeté l’ostinato e stordito MacIan, “perché ci hai salvati dagli altri uomini? Intendo dai poliziotti?”

I grandi occhi bruni della ragazza si accesero di un lampo che era a un tempo disperazione ultima e l’allentarsi di una qualche privata e appassionata riserva.

“Oh, Dio lo sa!” esclamò. “Dio sa che se esiste un Dio Egli ha voltato la sua grande schiena a ogni cosa. Dio sa che non ho avuto alcun piacere nella mia vita, benché io sia graziosa e giovane e mio padre abbia denaro in abbondanza. E poi la gente viene a dirmi che dovrei fare delle cose e io le faccio ed è tutta stupidaggine. Vogliono che tu faccia opere tra i poveri; il che significa leggere Ruskin e sentirsi farisaicamente virtuosi nella stanza migliore di un misero casamento. Oppure aiutare una qualche causa, il che significa sempre sloggiare la gente da case storte, in cui hanno sempre vissuto, per metterla in case dritte, in cui spesso muore. E per tutto il tempo hai dentro soltanto l’orrida ironia della tua stessa testa vuota e del tuo cuore vuoto. Devo dare agli sventurati, quando la mia intera sventura è che non ho nulla da dare. Devo insegnare, quando non credo affatto a niente di ciò che mi è stato insegnato. Devo salvare i bambini dalla morte, e non sono nemmeno certa che non starei meglio morta. Suppongo che se vedessi davvero un bambino annegare lo salverei. Ma sarebbe per lo stesso motivo per cui ho salvato voi, o vi ho distrutti, qualunque delle due cose io abbia fatto.”

“Qual era il motivo?” chiese Evan, a bassa voce.

“Il mio motivo è troppo grande per la mia mente,” rispose la ragazza.

Poi, dopo una pausa, mentre fissava con un colorito che le saliva il mare scintillante, disse: “Non si può descrivere, eppure sto cercando di descriverlo. Mi sembra non solo che io sia infelice, ma che non ci sia modo di essere felici. Mio padre non è felice, benché sia membro del Parlamento…” Si fermò un istante e aggiunse con un fantasma di sorriso: “Né zia Mabel, benché un uomo venuto dall’India le abbia rivelato il segreto di tutti i credi. Ma potrei sbagliarmi; potrebbe esserci una via d’uscita. E per un solo netto, folle secondo, ho sentito che, dopo tutto, voi avevate trovato la via d’uscita e che era per questo che il mondo vi odiava. Vedete, se ci fosse una via d’uscita, sarebbe di sicuro qualcosa dall’aspetto molto bizzarro.”

Evan si portò la mano alla fronte e cominciò incespicando: “Sì, suppongo che noi sembriamo proprio…”

“Oh, sì, avete un aspetto abbastanza bizzarro,” disse, con squillante sincerità. “Vi farà un gran bene una lavata e una ripulita.”

“Dimenticate i nostri affari, signora,” disse Evan, con voce tremante; “non abbiamo altra faccenda che ucciderci a vicenda.”

“Beh, al posto vostro non mi farei uccidere conciata così,” replicò, con inumana franchezza.

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.

Evan restò in piedi e roteò gli occhi in uno smarrimento virile. Poi venne il mutamento finale in questo Proteo, ed ella tese entrambe le mani per un istante e disse in tono sommesso, del quale egli visse per giorni e notti:

“Non capisci che non ho osato fermarti? Ciò che state facendo è tanto folle che potrebbe essere del tutto vero. In qualche modo non si riesce mai davvero a essere atei.”

Turnbull stava fissando il mare; ma le sue spalle mostravano che aveva udito, e dopo un minuto girò la testa. Ma la ragazza aveva soltanto sfiorato la mano di Evan con la sua ed era fuggita su per il buio vicolo accanto al cancello della casetta.

Evan restò radicato sulla strada, letteralmente come una pesante statua scolpita lì nell’età dei Druidi. Pareva impossibile che potesse mai muoversi. Turnbull si fece inquieto per quella rigidità, e alla fine, dopo aver chiamato il suo compagno due o tre volte, si avvicinò e gli batté impaziente la mano su una delle grosse spalle. Evan trasalì e balzò via da lui con una repulsione che non era l’odio per una cosa immonda né il timore per una cosa pericolosa, ma era uno spasimo di soggezione e separazione da qualcosa da cui ora era diviso come dalla spada di Dio. Non odiava l’ateo; è possibile che lo amasse. Ma Turnbull era ora qualcosa di più terribile di un nemico: era una cosa sigillata e consacrata… una cosa ormai irrimediabilmente condannata a essere o un cadavere o un carnefice.

“Che cos’hai?” chiese Turnbull, con la sua cordiale mano ancora in aria; eppure ne sapeva più di quanto il suo innocente gesto lasciasse intendere.

“James,” disse Evan, parlando come uno in preda a un forte dolore fisico, “ho chiesto la risposta di Dio e l’ho ottenuta… ottenuta nelle mie viscere. Egli sa quanto sono debole, e che potrei dimenticare il pericolo della fede, dimenticare il volto della Nostra Signora… sì, perfino con il tuo colpo sulla sua guancia. Ma l’onore di questa terra ha proprio questo, che può rendere il cuore di un uomo simile al ferro. Io discendo dai Signori delle Isole e non oso essere un semplice disertore. Perciò, Dio mi ha legato con la catena del mio posto e della mia parola nel mondo, e non c’è nient’altro ormai che combattere.”

“Credo di capirti,” disse Turnbull, “ma tu dici ogni cosa a rovescio.”

“Lei vuole che lo facciamo,” disse Evan, con voce schiacciata dalla passione. “Si è fatta del male perché noi lo facessimo. Ha gettato il suo buon nome e il suo buon sonno e tutte le sue abitudini e la sua dignità, buttati via dall’altra parte dell’Inghilterra nella speranza che possa udire di noi e che noi abbiamo aperto qualche varco in cielo.”

“Credevo di sapere cosa intendi,” disse Turnbull, mordendosi la barba; “sembra davvero che dovremmo fare qualcosa dopo tutto ciò che lei ha fatto questa notte.”

“Non mi sei mai piaciuto tanto prima d’ora,” disse MacIan, in amaro dolore.

Mentre parlava, tre solenni valletti uscirono dal cancello della casetta e si radunarono per aiutare la guidatrice a raggiungere la sua stanza. La sola vista di loro fece fuggire i due erranti come da un’incongruità troppo spaventosa, e prima che sapessero dove fossero, erano ormai proprio sulla cengia erbosa d’Inghilterra che domina la Manica. Evan disse all’improvviso: “Mi lasceranno rivederla in cielo una volta ogni mille evi?” e rivolse l’osservazione al direttore di The Atheist, come se fosse probabile o competente a rispondere. Ma nessuna risposta venne; un silenzio calò tra i due.

Turnbull avanzò risoluto fino all’orlo della scogliera e guardò fuori, il suo compagno seguendolo, alquanto più scosso dalla sua recente agitazione.

“Se questa è l’opinione che ne hai,” disse Turnbull, “e non dico che tu abbia torto, credo di sapere dove staremo meglio per la faccenda. Si dà il caso che io conosca piuttosto bene questa parte della costa meridionale. E se non m’inganno c’è una via giù per la scogliera proprio qui che ci porterà su una distesa di sabbia soda dove nessuno è probabile che ci segua.”

Il montanaro fece un gesto d’assenso e giunse anch’egli quasi all’orlo del precipizio. L’alba, che si andava allargando su mare e riva, era una di quelle rare e splendide albe in cui pare non esservi né bruma né dubbio, e nient’altro che una chiarificazione universale sempre più completa. Tutti i colori erano trasparenti. Sembrava una trionfante profezia di un qualche mondo perfetto dove ogni cosa, essendo innocente, sarà intelligibile; un mondo dove perfino i nostri corpi, per così dire, potrebbero essere come di vetro ardente. Un mondo simile è debolmente ma fieramente raffigurato nelle vetrate colorate dell’architettura cristiana. Il mare che si stendeva davanti a loro era come un lastricato di smeraldo, luminoso e quasi fragile; il cielo contro il quale pendeva il suo severo orizzonte era quasi assolutamente bianco, salvo che vicino alla linea del cielo, come trecce scarlatte sull’orlo di una veste, stavano file di nubi sfilacciate di un rosso tanto lucente e sfarzoso che parevano ritagliate da un qualche strano metallo celeste color del sangue, di cui il puro oro di questa terra non è che una scialba imitazione gialla.

“La mano del Cielo sta ancora indicando,” mormorò tra sé l’uomo della superstizione. “E ora è una mano color del sangue.”

La fredda voce del suo compagno s’intromise nel suo monologo, chiamandolo da poco più in là lungo la scogliera, per dirgli che aveva trovato la scala della discesa. Cominciava come un sentiero ripido e alquanto viscido, che poi precipitava giù per venti o trenta piedi sotto forma di una scarpata di rozzi gradini di pietra. Dopodiché, c’era un salto piuttosto scomodo su una cengia di pietra e poi il viaggio veniva intrapreso agevolmente e perfino con eleganza per mezzo dei resti di una scalinata ornamentale, quale poteva essere appartenuta a una qualche stazione balneare da tempo abbandonata. Per tutto il tempo in cui i due viaggiatori scendevano di gradino in gradino di questo cammino discendente, si chiudevano sopra le loro teste ponti viventi e caverne del più vario fogliame, tutto ciò che cresceva più verde, più rosso, o più dorato, nella luce crescente del mattino. Anche la vita, di specie più mobile, si levava al sole da ogni lato attorno a loro. Gli Uccelli frullavano e svolazzavano nel sottobosco, come imprigionati in gabbie verdi. Altri uccelli venivano scossi in grandi nubi dalle cime degli alberi, come fossero fiori staccati e sparpagliati su verso il cielo. Animali che Turnbull era troppo londinese e MacIan troppo nordico per conoscere, sgusciavano tra l’intrico o correvano zampettando su per i tronchi degli alberi. Entrambi gli uomini, secondo i loro diversi credi, sentirono il pieno tuono del salmo della vita come non l’avevano mai udito prima; MacIan sentì Dio Padre, benigno in tutte le sue energie, e Turnbull quell’ultima anonima energia, quella Natura Naturans, che è l’intero tema di Lucrezio. Fu giù per questa clamorosa scala della vita che scesero a morire.

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.”

Sbucarono su un bruno semicerchio di sabbia, tanto libero da impronte umane da giustificare l’affermazione di Turnbull. Vi avanzarono a gran passi, piantarono le spade nella sabbia, ed ebbero una pausa troppo importante per le parole. Turnbull scrutò la costa con curiosità per un momento, come uno che risveglia memorie d’infanzia; poi disse bruscamente, come un uomo che ricorda il nome di qualcuno: “Ma, naturalmente, staremo ancor meglio dietro l’angolo di Cragness Point; là non ci viene mai proprio nessuno.” E raccogliendo di nuovo la sua spada, cominciò a incamminarsi verso un grande sperone di rocce che spuntava sulla loro sinistra. MacIan lo seguì oltre l’angolo e si ritrovò in quello che era di certo un campo di scherma ancor più bello, di sabbia piatta e soda, racchiuso su tre lati da bianche pareti di roccia, e sul quarto dalla verde parete del mare che avanzava.

“Qui siamo del tutto al sicuro,” disse Turnbull, e, con sorpresa dell’altro, si buttò a terra, sedendosi sulla bruna spiaggia.

“Vedi, io sono cresciuto qui vicino,” spiegò. “Fui mandato dalla Scozia a stare con mia zia. È altamente probabile che io possa morire qui. Ti spiace se accendo la pipa?”

“Ma certo, fa’ quello che vuoi,” disse MacIan, con voce strozzata, e andò a camminare tutto solo lungo la sabbia umida e luccicante.

Dieci minuti dopo tornò di nuovo, bianco per il suo stesso turbine di emozioni; Turnbull era del tutto allegro e stava battendo via il fondo della sua pipa.

“Vedi, dobbiamo farlo,” disse MacIan. “Lei ci ha vincolati a questo.”

“Ma certo, mio caro amico,” disse l’altro, e balzò in piedi con leggerezza come una scimmia.

Presero posto gravemente proprio al centro del grande quadrato di sabbia, come se avessero migliaia di spettatori. Prima di salutare, MacIan, che, essendo un mistico, era di un pollice più vicino alla Natura, girò l’occhio attorno all’enorme cornice della loro eroica follia. Le tre pareti di roccia pendevano tutte un poco verso l’esterno, sebbene ad angoli vari; ma questa impressione era esagerata in direzione dell’incredibile dal pesante carico di alberi vivi e cespugli che ciascuna parete portava in cima come un’enorme chioma arruffata. Su tutta quella lussureggiante cresta di vita batteva il sole levato e vittorioso, brunendola tutta come oro, e ogni uccello che si levava con quell’alba coglieva su di sé una luce come una stella, simile alla colomba dello Spirito Santo. Mai la vita immaginativa si era tanto accalcata su MacIan. Sentiva che avrebbe potuto scrivere interi libri sui sentimenti di un solo uccello. Sentiva che per due secoli non si sarebbe stancato di essere un coniglio. Era nel Palazzo della Vita, di cui perfino gli arazzi e le tende erano vivi. Poi si riprese, e ricordò i suoi affari. Entrambi gli uomini salutarono, e ferro risuonò su ferro. Fu esattamente nello stesso momento che si accorse che la caviglia sinistra del suo nemico era cinta da un anello di acqua salata che era strisciato fino ai suoi piedi.

“Che c’è?” disse Turnbull, fermandosi un istante, poiché aveva imparato a conoscere ogni movimento del volto del suo straordinario compagno di viaggio.

MacIan lanciò di nuovo un’occhiata a quella cavigliera d’argento di acqua marina e poi guardò oltre, verso il promontorio successivo attorno al quale un mare profondo ribolliva e balzava. Poi si voltò e guardò indietro e vide pesante schiuma scagliata verso il cielo attorno alla base di Cragness Point.

“Il mare ci ha tagliato fuori,” disse, seccamente.

“Me ne sono accorto,” disse Turnbull con eguale gravità. “Che parere ti fai dello sviluppo?”

Evan gettò via la sua arma, e, com’era sua abitudine, imprigionò la sua grossa testa tra le mani. Poi le lasciò ricadere e disse: “Sì, so cosa significa; e credo che sia la cosa più giusta. È il dito di Dio… rosso come il sangue… che ancora indica. Ma ora indica due tombe.”

Ci fu uno spazio colmato dal suono del mare, e poi MacIan parlò di nuovo con una voce pateticamente ragionevole: “Vedi, l’abbiamo salvata entrambi… e lei ha detto a entrambi di batterci… e non sarebbe giusto che l’uno mancasse e cadesse solo, mentre l’altro…”

“Vuoi dire,” disse Turnbull, con una voce sorprendentemente dolce e gentile, “che c’è qualcosa di bello nel battersi in un luogo dove perfino il vincitore deve morire?”

“Oh, l’hai colto nel segno, l’hai colto nel segno!” esclamò Evan, in una straordinaria estasi infantile. “Oh, sono sicuro che tu credi davvero in Dio!”

Turnbull non rispose una parola, ma raccolse soltanto la sua spada caduta.

Per la terza volta Evan MacIan guardò quei tre lati di scogliera inglese appesantiti dal loro chiassoso carico di vita. Era rimasto perplesso a comprendere la magnificenza quasi ironica di tutte quelle brulicanti creature e colori e odori tropicali che fumavano felici verso il cielo. Ma ora sapeva di essere nella corte chiusa della morte e che tutte le porte erano sigillate.

Bevve l’ultimo verde e l’ultimo rosso e l’ultimo oro, quelle cose uniche e indescrivibili di Dio, come un uomo scola il buon vino sul fondo del suo bicchiere. Poi si voltò e salutò di nuovo il suo nemico, e i due si drizzarono e combatterono finché la schiuma non scorse sopra le loro ginocchia.

Poi MacIan fece all’improvviso un passo indietro con uno schizzo e alzò la mano. “Turnbull!” gridò; “non posso farci nulla… combattere lealmente conta ancor più delle promesse. E questo non è combattere lealmente.”

“Che diavolo intendi?” chiese l’altro, fissandolo.

“Ci ho pensato solo adesso,” esclamò Evan, con voce rotta. “Siamo molto ben assortiti… potrebbe durare parecchio tempo… la marea sale in fretta… e io sono più alto di un piede e mezzo. Tu sarai spazzato via come alga marina prima che l’acqua mi arrivi sopra i calzoni. Non voglio combattere slealmente per tutte le ragazze e gli angeli dell’universo.”

“Vuoi farmi il piacere,” disse Turnbull, con occhi grigi sbarrati e una voce di netta e violenta cortesia; “vuoi farmi il piacere di farti proprio gli affaracci tuoi? Su, mettiti in piedi e combatti, e vedremo chi sarà spazzato via come alga marina. Volevi finire questo duello e lo finirai, oppure ti denuncerò come vigliacco davanti a tutta quella compagnia radunata.”

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.

Evan pareva molto dubbioso e offrì un’arma alquanto malferma; ma fu prontamente richiamato alla ragione dalla punta della spada dell’avversario, che gli sfrecciò accanto, sfiorandogli la spalla per un pelo. A questo punto le onde erano ben su per la coscia di Turnbull, e, quel che è peggio, cominciavano a rotolare e a frangersi pesantemente attorno a loro.

MacIan parò questo primo affondo alla perfezione, il successivo meno perfettamente; il terzo, con ogni umana probabilità, non lo avrebbe parato affatto; il campione cristiano sarebbe stato inchiodato come una farfalla, e il campione ateo lasciato ad annegare come un topo, con quella consolazione che la sua visione del cosmo gli concedeva. Ma proprio mentre Turnbull vibrava il suo colpo più pesante, il mare, nel quale stava immerso fino ai fianchi, ne vibrò uno ancor più pesante. Un’onda che si frangeva oltre le altre lo colpì con violenza come un martello d’acqua. Una gamba cedette, egli fu fatto ruotare e risucchiato nel mare che si ritraeva, ancora stringendo la sua spada.

MacIan si mise la spada tra i denti e si tuffò dietro il suo nemico che spariva. Ebbe la sensazione di avere l’intero universo addosso mentre cresta dopo cresta lo abbatteva. Gli parve proprio un crollo cosmico, come se tutti e sette i cieli gli cadessero addosso l’uno dopo l’altro. Ma afferrò la gamba sinistra dell’ateo e non la lasciò andare.

Dopo circa dieci minuti di schiuma e frenesia, in cui tutti i sensi a un tempo parvero devastati dal mare, Evan si ritrovò a nuotare faticosamente su una bassa, verde onda lunga, con la spada ancora tra i denti e il direttore di The Atheist ancora sotto il braccio. Che cosa avesse intenzione di fare non ne aveva la più pallida idea; così mantenne semplicemente la presa e nuotò in qualche modo con una mano sola.

Si abbassò d’istinto poiché sopra di lui si profilò una grande, nera onda, molto più alta di qualunque ne avesse vista. Poi vide che essa aveva a malapena la forma di una qualunque onda possibile. Poi vide che era la barca di un pescatore e, balzando in alto, si aggrappò alla prua. La barca beccheggiò in avanti con la poppa in aria giusto per quel tanto di tempo necessario a vedere che non c’era nessuno a bordo. Dopo un paio di momenti di disperato arrampicarsi, però, ci furono due persone a bordo, il signor Evan MacIan, ansante e sudato, e il signor James Turnbull, straordinariamente vicino all’annegare. Dopo dieci minuti di sballottamento senza meta nella barca da pesca vuota egli si riprese, tuttavia, si mosse, si stiracchiò, e si guardò intorno sulle acque ondeggianti. Poi, senza far caso ai rivoli di acqua salata che gli colavano da capelli, barba, giacca, stivali e calzoni, asciugò con cura il bagnato dalla lama della sua spada per preservarla dalla possibilità della ruggine.

MacIan trovò due remi sul fondo della barca abbandonata e cominciò alquanto tristemente a vogare.

---

Un crepuscolo piovoso si andava schiarendo in freddo argento sul mare gemente, quando la barca malconcia, che aveva rollato e derivato quasi senza meta per tutta la notte, giunse in vista della terra, sebbene di una terra che appariva quasi tanto perduta e selvaggia quanto le onde. Per tutta la notte c’era stato ben poco sollevamento nel mare plumbeo, solo di tanto in tanto la barca era stata issata, come su un enorme spalla che le scivolava di sotto; tali occasionali sussulti marini provenivano probabilmente dal moto ondoso di qualche piroscafo che l’aveva oltrepassata nel buio; per il resto le onde erano innocue benché inquiete. Ma faceva un freddo pungente, e c’era, di tanto in tanto, uno spruzzo di pioggia come lo spruzzo dei frangenti, che pareva quasi gelare cadendo. MacIan, più a suo agio del compagno in questa avventura del tutto barbara ed elementare, aveva vogato faticosamente con i pesanti remi ogni volta che scorgeva qualcosa che pareva terra; ma per lo più si era affidato con cupo trascendentalismo al vento e alla marea. Tra gli attrezzi del loro primo equipaggiamento il brandy soltanto gli era rimasto, e lo diede al suo compagno intirizzito in quantità che allarmarono assai quel temperante londinese; ma MacIan veniva dai mari freddi e dalle brume dove un uomo può bere un bicchiere di whisky puro in barca senza che gli faccia battere ciglio.

Quando il montanaro cominciò a tirare davvero forte sui remi, Turnbull sporse la sua rossa testa gocciolante fuori dalla barca per vedere la meta dei suoi sforzi. Era una meta abbastanza poco invitante; nulla, per quanto si potesse vedere, se non una ripida e digradante riva di ghiaia, fatta di piccoli ciottoli sciolti come piacciono ai bambini, ma inclinata verso l’alto più di una casa. In cima al cumulo, contro la linea del cielo, si drizzava il bruno scheletro di una qualche rotta staccionata o frangiflutti. Con la grigia e acquosa alba che strisciava su dietro di esso, la staccionata pareva davvero dire ai nostri filosofici avventurieri che erano giunti finalmente all’altro capo del nulla.

Piegato dalla necessità alla sua fatica, MacIan governò la pesante barca con vera forza e abilità, e quando infine la spinse su una parte più liscia del pendio essa fece presa e si tenne così che poterono arrampicarsi fuori, affondando non più delle ginocchia nell’acqua e nella ghiaia. Un piede o due più su i loro piedi trovarono la spiaggia più soda, e pochi istanti dopo erano appoggiati al malandato frangiflutti e guardavano indietro verso il mare cui erano scampati.

Ebbero una tetra camminata attraverso distese di grigia ghiaia nella grigia alba prima di cominciare a giungere a portata di voce di campi o strade umane; né avevano alcuna idea di quali campi o strade sarebbero stati. I loro stivali cominciavano a sfasciarsi e la confusione delle pietre li provava severamente, sicché furono lieti di appoggiarsi alle loro spade, come se fossero i bordoni di pellegrini. MacIan pensò vagamente a una bizzarra ballata del suo paese che descrive l’anima in Purgatorio mentre cammina su una piana piena di pietre aguzze, e solo salvata dalle proprie opere di carità sulla terra.

Se mai donasti calze e scarpe Ogni notte e per sempre, Siediti e mettitele ai piedi, E Cristo accolga la tua anima.

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 non aveva simili meditazioni liriche, ma era di un umore anche peggiore.

Alla fine giunsero a un pallido nastro di strada, bordato da una fascia di erba ruvida e quasi incolore; e pochi piedi su per il pendio si ergeva grigio e sferzato dalle intemperie uno di quei grandi crocifissi lungo la strada che di rado si vedono se non nei paesi cattolici.

MacIan si portò la mano al capo e scoprì che il suo berretto non c’era. Turnbull gettò una sola occhiata al crocifisso… un’occhiata a un tempo solidale e amara, nella quale era concentrato l’intero poema di Swinburne sulla medesima occasione.

O nascosto volto dell’uomo, sopra il quale gli anni hanno tessuto un velo invisibile, se davvero fosti l’amante dell’uomo a che valse il tuo amore o il tuo sangue? Del tuo sangue i preti mescolano veleno, e in aurei sicli coniano il tuo amore.

Poi, lasciando MacIan nel suo atteggiamento di preghiera, Turnbull cominciò a guardare a destra e a sinistra molto attentamente, come uno che cerca qualcosa. Improvvisamente, con un piccolo grido, lo vide e corse in avanti. A pochi metri da loro lungo la strada una siepe magra e stenta finiva pietosamente. Impigliato però sul suo spinoso angolo, c’era un pezzetto di carta molto piccolo e molto sudicio che poteva essere rimasto lì per mesi, sfuggito a qualcuno che stracciava una lettera o faceva uno stoppino con un giornale. Turnbull vi si avventò e trovò che era l’angolo di una pagina stampata, stampata molto rozzamente, come un romanzetto a buon mercato, e appena grande abbastanza da contenere le parole: “et c’est elle qui----”

“Urrà!” gridò Turnbull, agitando il suo frammento; “siamo finalmente salvi. Siamo finalmente liberi. Siamo in un luogo migliore dell’Inghilterra o dell’Eden o del Paradiso. MacIan, siamo nella Terra del Duello!”

“Dove dici?” disse l’altro, guardandolo pesantemente e con le sopracciglia aggrottate, come uno quasi stordito dai grigi dubbi del desolato crepuscolo e del mare alla deriva.

“Siamo in Francia!” gridò Turnbull, con una voce come una tromba, “nella terra dove le cose accadono davvero… Tout arrive en France. Arriviamo in Francia. Guarda questo piccolo messaggio,” e porse il pezzo di carta. “Ecco un presagio per voi superstiziosa gente delle colline. C’est elle qui—Mais oui, mais oui, c’est elle qui sauvera encore le monde.”

“Francia!” ripeté MacIan, e i suoi occhi si ridestarono nel suo capo come grandi lampade accese.

“Sì, Francia!” disse Turnbull, e tutta la parte retorica di lui salì in superficie, il volto facendosi rosso come i capelli. “La Francia, che è sempre stata in rivolta per la libertà e la ragione. La Francia, che ha sempre assalito la superstizione con la clava di Rabelais o il fioretto di Voltaire. La Francia, al cui primo tavolo del consiglio siede la sublime figura di Giuliano l’Apostata. La Francia, dove un uomo l’altro giorno ha detto quelle splendide parole irrefutabili”… con un gesto superbo… “‘abbiamo spento in cielo quelle luci che gli uomini non riaccenderanno mai più.’”

“No,” disse MacIan, con una voce che tremava di una passione controllata. “Ma la Francia, che fu istruita da San Bernardo e condotta alla guerra da Giovanna d’Arco. La Francia che fece le crociate. La Francia che salvò la Chiesa e disperse le eresie per bocca di Bossuet e di Massillon. La Francia, che mostra oggi la marcia conquistatrice del cattolicesimo, mentre cervello dopo cervello vi si arrende, Brunetière, Coppée, Hauptmann, Barrès, Bourget, Lemaître.”

“Francia!” affermò Turnbull con una sorta di gioviale auto-esagerazione, molto insolita in lui, “la Francia, che è un solo torrente di splendido scetticismo da Abelardo ad Anatole France.”

“La Francia,” disse MacIan, “che è una sola cateratta di limpida fede da San Luigi alla Nostra Signora di Lourdes.”

“La Francia almeno,” gridò Turnbull, scagliando in alto la sua spada in un trionfo da scolaretto, “dove queste cose si pensano e si combattono. La Francia, dove ragione e religione si scontrano in un continuo torneo. La Francia, soprattutto, dove gli uomini comprendono l’orgoglio e la passione che hanno strappato le nostre lame dai foderi. Qui, almeno, non saremo inseguiti e spiati da smorti parroci e untuosi poliziotti, perché vogliamo mettere in gioco le nostre vite. Coraggio, amico mio, siamo giunti nella terra dell’onore.”

MacIan non notò nemmeno l’incongrua espressione “amico mio”, ma annuendo più e più volte, sguainò la sua spada e scagliò il fodero lontano dietro di sé nella strada.

“Sì,” gridò, con una voce di tuono, “combatteremo qui ed Egli starà a guardarci.”

Turnbull lanciò un’occhiata al crocifisso con una sorta di accigliato buon umore e poi disse: “Egli può guardare e vedere la sua croce sconfitta.”

“La croce non può essere sconfitta,” disse MacIan, “perché essa è la Sconfitta.”

Un secondo dopo le due lucenti armi assetate di sangue fecero il segno della croce in orribile parodia l’una contro l’altra.

Non si erano però toccati due volte, quando sulla collina, sopra il crocifisso, apparve un’altra orribile parodia della sua forma; la figura di un uomo che comparve per un istante agitando le braccia spalancate. Era svanito in un istante; ma MacIan, il cui volto da combattente era rivolto in quella direzione, aveva visto la figura per un momento ma in modo assolutamente fotografico. E benché fosse come una comica ripetizione della croce, era anche, in quel luogo e in quell’ora, qualcosa di più incredibile. Era stata solo istantaneamente sulla retina del suo occhio; ma a meno che il suo occhio e la sua mente non stessero impazzendo insieme, la figura era quella di un comune poliziotto di Londra.

Cercò di concentrare i sensi sul gioco della spada; ma una metà del suo cervello era alle prese con l’enigma; l’apocalittica e quasi serafica apparizione di un tozzo agente di Clapham in cima a una tetra e deserta collina in Francia. Non dovette, tuttavia, arrovellarsi a lungo. Prima che i duellanti avessero scambiato una mezza dozzina di passate, il grosso poliziotto blu apparve di nuovo sulla cima della collina, una palpabile mostruosità all’occhio del cielo. Ora agitava un braccio solo e pareva gridare istruzioni. Nello stesso momento una massa di blu ostruì l’angolo della strada dietro la piccola, elegante figura di Turnbull, e una piccola compagnia di poliziotti in uniforme inglese si fece avanti a una sorta di semi-militare passo di corsa.

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.”

Turnbull vide lo sguardo di costernazione sul volto del suo nemico e si girò per condividerne la causa. Quando la vide, per quanto fosse impassibile, indietreggiò barcollando.

“Che diavolo fate qui?” gridò con voce alta e stridula d’autorità, come chi trova un vagabondo nella propria dispensa.

“Ebbene, signore,” disse il sergente al comando, con quella sorta di pesante cortesia riservata solo ai palesemente colpevoli, “mi pare che potremmo chiedere noi che cosa fate qui.”

“Stiamo regolando una questione d’onore,” disse Turnbull, come se fosse la cosa più razionale del mondo. “Se la polizia francese vuole immischiarsi, che si immischi. Ma perché diavolo dovreste immischiarvi voi, grandi e goffe salsicce turchine?”

“Temo, signore,” disse il sergente con contegno, “temo di non seguirvi del tutto.”

“Voglio dire, perché la polizia francese non se ne occupa, se dev’essere qualcuno a occuparsene? Ho sempre sentito dire che erano abbastanza svelti a modo loro.”

“Ebbene, signore,” disse il sergente riflettendo, “vedete, signore, la polizia francese non se ne occupa — ebbene, perché, vedete, signore, questa non è la Francia. Questi sono i domini di Sua Maestà, come ‘Ampstead ‘eath.”

“Non la Francia?” ripeté Turnbull, con una sorta di ottusa incredulità.

“No, signore,” disse il sergente; “benché la maggior parte della gente parli francese. Questa è l’isola chiamata St. Loup, signore, un’isola nella Manica. Siamo stati mandati apposta da Londra, dato che eravate criminali tanto specialmente illustri, se mi permettete di dirlo. Il che mi ricorda di avvertirvi che tutto ciò che direte potrà essere usato contro di voi al processo.”

“Proprio così,” disse Turnbull, e s’avventò all’improvviso contro il sergente, in modo da spingerlo oltre il ciglio della strada con un tonfo giù nella ghiaia sottostante. Poi, lasciando MacIan e i poliziotti egualmente e istantaneamente inchiodati alla strada, corse un poco lungo di essa, balzò giù su un tratto di spiaggia che nel suo tragitto aveva trovato più solido, e lo attraversò con un fragore di ciottoli. Il suo improvviso calcolo ebbe successo; la polizia, ignara dei vari livelli della spiaggia sciolta, tentò di raggiungerlo per la via più breve e si ritrovò, essendo uomini pesanti, quasi fino alle ginocchia in banchi di ghiaia scivolosa. Due che erano stati più lenti di corpo furono più rapidi di mente e, vedendo il trucco di Turnbull, corsero lungo il bordo della strada dietro a lui. Allora MacIan finalmente si destò e, lasciando metà della sua manica nella stretta dell’unico uomo che tentò di trattenerlo, colpì i due poliziotti in mezzo alla schiena con l’impeto di una palla di cannone e, stendendo anche loro fra le pietre, si lanciò all’inseguimento del suo gemello sfidatore della legge.

Essendo entrambi buoni corridori, il vantaggio guadagnato fu decisivo. Scavalcarono un alto frangiflutti più avanti sulla spiaggia, svoltarono di netto, si arrampicarono su una fila di rocce nervate, coronate da un fitto boschetto, vi strisciarono attraverso, graffiandosi le mani e il viso, e sbucarono in un’altra strada; e là scoprirono di poter rallentare la loro andatura in un trotto costante. In tutta questa disperata volata e arrampicata, tenevano ancora strette le spade sguainate, che ora, in verità, secondo la vigorosa espressione di Bunyan, sembravano quasi crescere loro dalle mani.

Avevano corso un altro mezzo miglio o giù di lì quando si fece evidente che stavano entrando in una sorta di villaggio sparso. Uno o due cottage imbiancati a calce e perfino una bottega erano comparsi lungo il lato della strada. Allora, per la prima volta, Turnbull torse la sua barba rossa per gettare un’occhiata al compagno, che era un piede o due indietro, e osservò bruscamente: “Signor MacIan, abbiamo sbagliato metodo fin dal principio. Siamo rintracciati dappertutto, perché tutti sanno di noi. È come andare in giro con la barba di Kruger la Notte di Mafeking.”

“Che cosa intende?” chiese MacIan, ingenuamente.

“Intendo,” disse Turnbull, con salda convinzione, “che ciò di cui abbiamo bisogno è un po’ di diplomazia, e ho intenzione di comprarne un po’ in una bottega.”

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.

XI. UNO SCANDALO NEL VILLAGGIO

Nel piccolo borgo di Haroc, nell’Isola di St. Loup, viveva un uomo che—pur vivendo sotto la bandiera inglese—era assolutamente atipico rispetto alla tradizione francese. Era del tutto inosservabile, ma era proprio in questo che era pienamente sé stesso. Non era nemmeno straordinariamente francese; ma d’altronde è contro la tradizione francese essere straordinariamente francesi. Gli inglesi comuni lo avrebbero soltanto giudicato un po’ all’antica; gli inglesi imperialisti lo avrebbero davvero scambiato per il vecchio John Bull delle caricature. Era corpulento; era del tutto privo di distinzione; e portava basette, tenute appena un po’ più lunghe di quelle di John Bull. Si chiamava Pierre Durand; di mestiere era mercante di vino; per politica era un repubblicano conservatore; era stato allevato cattolico, aveva sempre pensato e agito da agnostico, e stava molto blandamente tornando alla Chiesa negli anni della sua vecchiaia. Aveva un genio (se pure si può usare una parola tanto ardita per una persona tanto mite) un genio per dire la cosa convenzionale su ogni concepibile argomento; o piuttosto ciò che noi in Inghilterra chiameremmo la cosa convenzionale. Perché in lui non era convenzione, ma solida e virile convinzione. La convenzione implica ipocrisia o affettazione, e di queste egli non aveva il minimo sentore. Era semplicemente un comune cittadino dalle idee comuni; e se gliel’aveste detto, l’avrebbe preso come un comune complimento. Se gli aveste chiesto delle donne, avrebbe detto che bisogna preservarne la domesticità e il decoro; avrebbe usato le parole più trite, ma avrebbe avuto in serbo gli argomenti più forti. Se gli aveste chiesto del governo, avrebbe detto che tutti i cittadini erano liberi e uguali, ma avrebbe pensato ciò che diceva. Se gli aveste chiesto dell’educazione, avrebbe detto che i giovani devono essere addestrati ad abitudini di operosità e di rispetto per i genitori. E tuttavia avrebbe dato loro egli stesso l’esempio dell’operosità, e sarebbe stato uno di quei genitori che potevano rispettare. Uno stato d’animo così irrimediabilmente centrale è deprimente per l’istinto inglese. Ma d’altronde in Inghilterra un uomo che proclama queste banalità è generalmente uno sciocco, e uno sciocco impaurito, che le proclama per pura servilità sociale. Ma Durand era tutt’altro che uno sciocco; aveva letto tutto il Settecento, e avrebbe potuto difendere le sue banalità da ogni angolatura del ragionamento settecentesco. E di certo era tutt’altro che un vigliacco: gonfio e sedentario com’era, avrebbe potuto restituire il colpo a chiunque lo toccasse con la violenza istantanea di una macchina automatica; e morire in uniforme gli sarebbe parso soltanto il genere di cosa che talvolta accade. Temo sia impossibile spiegare questo mostro fra le sette esagerate e i club eccentrici del mio paese. Era semplicemente un uomo.

Viveva in una piccola villa arredata bene con comode sedie e tavoli e con quadri e medaglioni classici estremamente scomodi. L’arte nella sua casa non conteneva nulla fra i due estremi di duri, magri disegni di teste greche e toghe romane, e dall’altra parte alcune immagini cattoliche assai volgari nei colori più crudi; queste stavano per lo più nella stanza di sua figlia. Aveva da poco perso la moglie, che aveva amato di cuore e piuttosto pesantemente in completo silenzio, e sulla cui tomba aveva la costante abitudine di deporre orribili piccole corone, fatte con una sorta di perline bianche e nere. Alla sua unica figlia era ugualmente devoto, benché la limitasse parecchio per una sorta di allarme teorico riguardo alla sua innocenza; un allarme che era particolarmente inutile, primo, perché ella era una ragazza eccezionalmente riservata e religiosa, e secondo, perché non c’era quasi nessun altro in quel luogo.

Madeleine Durand era fisicamente una giovane donna sonnolenta, e la si sarebbe potuta facilmente supporre moralmente pigra. È certo, tuttavia, che il lavoro della sua casa veniva in qualche modo sbrigato, ed è ancora più rapido appurare che nessun altro lo faceva. Il logico è dunque costretto a ripiegare sull’assunto che fosse lei a farlo; e ciò conferisce una sorta di misterioso interesse alla sua personalità fin dal principio. Aveva fronte assai larga, bassa e diritta, che sembrava persino più bassa perché i suoi caldi capelli biondi le scendevano a ciocche fino alle sopracciglia; e aveva un volto appena abbastanza pieno da non apparire potente quanto era. Tutto ciò che in questo vi era di pesante veniva bruscamente alleggerito da due grandi occhi chiari, azzurro porcellana, alleggerito d’un tratto come se fosse stato sollevato in aria da due grandi farfalle azzurre. Il resto di lei era meno che di media statura, ed era di un genere disinvolto e comodo; e in questo differiva da ragazze come quella dell’automobile: che non si era per nulla inclini a osservarne la figura, ma soltanto la sua testa larga, leonina e innocente.

Sia il padre sia la figlia erano del genere che normalmente avrebbe evitato ogni attenzione; cioè, ogni attenzione in quello straordinario mondo moderno che mette in risalto tutto tranne la forza. Entrambi avevano una forza sotto la superficie; erano come quieti contadini padroni di enormi miniere inesplorate. Il padre col suo volto quadrato e le grigie basette, la figlia col suo volto quadrato e la dorata frangia di capelli, erano entrambi più forti di quanto sapessero; più forti di quanto chiunque sapesse. Il padre credeva nella civiltà, nella torre leggendaria che abbiamo eretto per sfidare la natura; cioè, il padre credeva nell’Uomo. La figlia credeva in Dio; ed era ancora più forte. Nessuno dei due credeva in sé stesso; perché questa è una debolezza decadente.

La figlia era detta una devota. Lasciava sulle persone comuni l’impressione—l’impressione alquanto irritante— prodotta da una tale persona; la si può descrivere solo come la sensazione di un’acqua impetuosa versata perpetuamente in qualche abisso. Sbrigava le sue faccende domestiche con facilità; intratteneva i suoi rapporti sociali con dolcezza; non era mai negligente e mai scortese. Ciò spiegava tutto ciò che in lei era tenero, ma non tutto ciò che era duro. Camminava con fermezza come se andasse da qualche parte; gettava indietro il volto come sfidando qualcosa; non pronunciava quasi mai una parola aspra, eppure spesso c’era battaglia nei suoi occhi. L’uomo moderno si chiedeva dubbioso dove andasse a finire tutta questa silenziosa energia. Avrebbe fissato ancora più dubbioso se gli fosse stato detto che tutta quanta andava a finire nelle sue preghiere.

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.

Le convenzioni dell’Isola di St. Loup erano necessariamente un compromesso o una confusione fra quelle di Francia e d’Inghilterra; ed era vagamente possibile per una rispettabile signorina avere degli innamorati a metà, in un modo che sarebbe stato impossibile alla bourgeoisie di Francia. Un uomo in particolare si era reso figura inconfondibile sul cammino di questa ragazza mentre andava in chiesa. Era un uomo basso, dall’aria prospera, la cui lunga e folta barba nera e il goffo ombrello nero lo facevano sembrare più basso e più vecchio di quanto realmente fosse; ma i cui occhi grandi e arditi, e il passo che spregiava il terreno, gli conferivano all’istante un carattere di giovinezza.

Si chiamava Camille Bert, ed era un commesso viaggiatore che si trovava sull’isola soltanto da un’oziosa settimana quando cominciò ad aggirarsi sulle tracce di Madeleine Durand. Poiché in un luogo così piccolo tutti conoscono tutti, Madeleine certamente lo conosceva abbastanza da salutarlo; ma non è molto evidente che gli abbia mai parlato. Egli però la perseguitava; specialmente in chiesa, che era, in effetti, uno dei pochi luoghi sicuri in cui trovarla. Nella sua casa aveva l’abitudine di rendersi invisibile, talvolta per insaziabile domesticità, talvolta per una solitudine altrettanto insaziabile. M. Bert non dava l’impressione di un uomo pio, benché desse, soprattutto con gli occhi, l’impressione di un uomo onesto. Ma andava a Messa con una semplice esattezza che non poteva essere scambiata per una posa, né per una volgare infatuazione. Fu forse questa regolarità religiosa che alla fine indusse Madeleine a prendere atto di lui. Certo è, almeno, che due volte gli parlò col suo sorriso quadrato e aperto sotto il portico della chiesa; e c’era abbastanza natura umana nel borgo da trasformare persino questo in pettegolezzo.

Ma il vero interesse sorse d’improvviso come sorge una raffica con lo straordinario fatto che accadde circa cinque giorni dopo. A circa un terzo di miglio oltre il villaggio di Haroc c’era un grande ma solitario albergo sul modello di Londra o Parigi, ma comunemente quasi del tutto vuoto. Fra l’occasionale gruppo di ospiti che vi erano giunti in quella stagione c’era un uomo la cui nazionalità nessuno riusciva a stabilire e che portava il nome non compromettente di Conte Gregory. Trattava tutti con perfetta cortesia e quasi in perfetto silenzio. Nelle poche occasioni in cui parlava, parlava o francese, o inglese, o una volta (al prete) latino; e l’opinione generale era che li parlasse tutti male. Era un uomo alto e magro, con la curvatura di un’aquila invecchiata, e persino il naso dell’aquila a completarla; aveva basette e baffi all’antica militare tinti di un giallo sgargiante e assai poco credibile. Aveva l’abbigliamento di un gentiluomo vistoso e i modi di un gentiluomo decaduto; sembrava (come con una sorta di semplicità) cercare di fare il dandy quando era troppo vecchio perfino per sapere di essere vecchio. Eppure era decisamente una bella figura coi suoi capelli gialli inanellati e il magro volto schizzinoso; e portava una peculiare finanziera d’un vivo azzurro turchese, con una onorificenza sconosciuta appuntata sopra, e reggeva un enorme e pesante bastone. Nonostante il suo silenzio e il suo abito e le sue basette da dandy, l’isola non avrebbe forse mai sentito parlare di lui se non fosse stato per lo straordinario evento di cui ho parlato, che avvenne nel modo seguente:

In atmosfere così casuali soltanto gli entusiasti vanno alla Benedizione; e mentre il caldo crepuscolo azzurro si chiudeva sulla piccola chiesa illuminata a candele e sul villaggio, la fila dei fedeli che andavano a casa dalla prima al secondo si assottigliò fino a spezzarsi. In una tale sera almeno, in chiesa non c’era nessuno tranne la quieta e indomabile Madeleine, quattro vecchie, un pescatore e, naturalmente, l’irrefrenabile M. Camille Bert. Gli altri parvero dissolversi in seguito nei colori di pavone dell’erba verde e opaca e del cielo blu scuro. Persino Durand era invisibile invece di essere solo riverentemente remoto; e Madeleine si incamminò attraverso quel tratto di nera foresta sola. Non aveva affatto paura della solitudine, perché non aveva paura dei demoni. Credo fossero loro ad aver paura di lei.

In una radura del bosco, tuttavia, che era illuminata da un ultimo lembo del morente chiarore del sole, le si fece incontro d’improvviso qualcuno più sconvolgente di un demonio. L’incomprensibile Conte Gregory, coi suoi capelli gialli come fiamma e il volto come le bianche ceneri della fiamma, avanzava a capo scoperto verso di lei, protendendo le braccia e le lunghe dita con un gesto frenetico.

«Siamo soli qui», gridò, «e voi sareste alla mia mercé, se non fosse che io sono alla vostra.»

Poi le sue mani frenetiche ricaddero lungo i fianchi ed egli guardò in alto sotto le sopracciglia con un’espressione che si accordava bene col suo respiro affannoso. Madeleine Durand si era dapprima fermata in una fanciullesca meraviglia, e ora, con più che maschile autocontrollo, «Mi pare di conoscere il vostro volto, signore», disse, come per guadagnare tempo.

«Io so che non dimenticherò il vostro», disse l’altro, e stese ancora una volta le sue sgraziate braccia in un gesto innaturale. Poi d’un tratto gli uscì un fiotto di frasi selvagge e insieme pompose. «È bene che voi sappiate il peggio e il meglio. Sono un uomo che non conosce limiti; sono il più insensibile dei criminali, il più impenitente dei peccatori. Non c’è uomo nei miei domini tanto vile quanto me. Ma i miei domini si stendono dagli ulivi d’Italia alle abetaie di Danimarca, e non c’è angolo di tutti essi in cui io non abbia commesso un peccato. Ma quando vi porterò via compirò il mio primo sacrilegio, e anche il mio primo atto di virtù.» La afferrò d’improvviso per il gomito; ed ella non gridò ma si limitò a tirare e strattonare. Eppure, benché non avesse gridato, qualcuno smarrito nei boschi parve aver udito la lotta. Una figura bassa ma agile venne lungo il sentiero del bosco come un ronzante proiettile e aveva assestato al Conte Gregory un colpo secco sul volto prima che il proprio potesse essere riconosciuto. Quando fu riconosciuto era quello di Camille, con la nera barba invecchiata e i giovani occhi ardenti.

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.”

Fino al momento in cui Camille aveva colpito il Conte, Madeleine non aveva nutrito alcun dubbio che il Conte fosse semplicemente un pazzo. Ora fu sconcertata da una nuova lucidità; poiché l’uomo alto dalle basette gialle e dai baffi gialli dapprima restituì il colpo di Bert, come se fosse una sorta di dovere, e poi indietreggiò con un lieve inchino e un facile sorriso.

«Non occorre andare oltre qui, M. Bert», disse. «Non ho bisogno di ricordarvi fin dove la cosa debba andare altrove.»

«Certamente, non avete bisogno di ricordarmi nulla», rispose Camille, impassibile. «Sono lieto che voi non siate poi troppo furfante perché un gentiluomo possa battersi.»

«Stiamo trattenendo la signora», disse il Conte Gregory, con garbo; e, facendo un gesto che suggeriva che si sarebbe tolto il cappello se ne avesse avuto uno, si allontanò a grandi passi su per il viale d’alberi e alla fine scomparve. Era così completamente un aristocratico da poter offrire loro la schiena per tutta la lunghezza di quel viale; e la sua schiena non parve mai per un solo istante a disagio.

«Dovete permettermi di accompagnarvi a casa», disse Bert alla ragazza, con voce rude e quasi soffocata; «penso che ci sia solo un breve tratto da fare.»

«Solo un breve tratto», disse lei, e sorrise ancora una volta quella notte, nonostante la stanchezza e la paura e il mondo e la carne e il demonio. Il azzurro incandescente e trasparente del crepuscolo era da tempo stato coperto dall’azzurro opaco e ardesia della notte, quando egli la consegnò all’interno illuminato a lampada della sua casa. Uscì egli stesso nell’oscurità, camminando con passo fermo, ma tirandosi la barba nera.

Tutta la piccola nobiltà francese o semifrancese del distretto considerava questo un caso in cui un duello era naturale e inevitabile, e nessuna delle parti ebbe difficoltà a trovare i padrini, per quanto fossero forestieri in quel luogo. Due piccoli proprietari terrieri, che erano cattolici scrupolosi e praticanti, si assunsero volentieri l’incarico di rappresentare quell’assiduo frequentatore di chiesa Camille Burt; mentre il dissoluto ma apparentemente potente Conte Gregory trovò amici in un energico medico locale che era pronto a farsi strada in società e in un turista californiano capitato per caso che era pronto a tutto. Poiché nessuno scopo particolare poteva essere servito da un rinvio, si stabilì che la faccenda si svolgesse tre giorni dopo. E quando ciò fu deciso l’intera comunità, per così dire, si rigirò di nuovo nel letto e non pensò più alla cosa. Ce n’era almeno un solo membro che sembrava inquieto, ed era colei che era comunemente la più serena. La sera dopo Madeleine Durand andò in chiesa come al solito; e come al solito anche l’afflitto Camille era là. Ciò che non era così solito fu che, quando furono a un tiro d’arco dalla chiesa, Madeleine si voltò e tornò indietro verso di lui. «Signore», cominciò, «non è male da parte mia parlarvi», e proprio quelle parole gli diedero uno scossone di inattesa verità; poiché in tutti i romanzi che aveva mai letto ella avrebbe cominciato: «È male da parte mia parlarvi.» Proseguì con occhi ampi e seri come quelli di un animale: «Non è male da parte mia parlarvi, perché la vostra anima, o l’anima di chiunque, conta assai più di ciò che il mondo dice di chiunque. Voglio parlarvi di ciò che state per fare.»

Bert vide davanti a sé l’inevitabile eroina dei romanzi che cerca di impedire uno spargimento di sangue; e il suo pallido volto fermo si fece implacabile.

«Farei qualunque cosa tranne quella per voi», disse; «ma nessun uomo può essere chiamato meno di un uomo.»

Ella lo guardò per un momento con un volto apertamente perplesso, e poi ruppe in uno strano e bel mezzo sorriso.

«Oh, non intendo quello», disse; «non parlo di ciò che non capisco. Nessuno mi ha mai colpita; e se l’avessero fatto non proverei ciò che può provare un uomo. Sono certa che non è la cosa migliore battersi. Sarebbe meglio perdonare—se solo si potesse davvero perdonare. Ma quando la gente cena da mio padre e dice che battersi in duello è puro assassinio—certo, capisco che questo non è giusto. È tutto così diverso—avere una ragione—e far sapere all’altro—e usare le stesse armi e cose simili—e farlo davanti ai vostri amici. Sono terribilmente stupida, ma so che uomini come voi non sono assassini. Ma non era questo che intendevo.»

«Che cosa intendevate?» chiese l’altro, guardando cupamente la terra.

«Non sapete», disse lei, «che c’è solo una celebrazione in più? Pensavo che, dato che andate sempre in chiesa—pensavo che vi sareste comunicato stamattina.»

Bert fece un passo indietro con una sorta di movimento che lei non aveva mai visto in lui prima d’allora. Parve alterargli tutto il corpo.

«Potete aver ragione o torto a rischiare di morire», disse la ragazza, semplicemente; «le povere donne del nostro villaggio lo rischiano ogni volta che hanno un bambino. Voi uomini siete l’altra metà del mondo. Non so nulla di quando un uomo debba morire. Ma di sicuro, se osate cercare di trovare Dio al di là della tomba e appellarvi a Lui—dovreste lasciare che Lui trovi voi quando viene e si presenta là ogni mattina nella nostra piccola chiesa.»

E placida com’era, fece un piccolo gesto d’argomentazione, il cui pathos strinse il cuore.

M. Camille Bert non era affatto placido. Davanti a quel gesto incompiuto e a quel volto francamente supplice egli retrocedette come dalle fauci di un drago. I suoi capelli e la sua barba neri come il carbone apparivano del tutto innaturali contro il sorprendente pallore del suo volto. Quando finalmente disse qualcosa fu: «O Dio! Non posso sopportarlo!» Non lo disse in francese. Né, a rigore, lo disse in inglese. La verità (interessante solo per gli antropologi) è che lo disse in scozzese.

«Ci sarà un’altra messa entro otto ore», disse Madeleine, con una sorta di sollecitudine ed energia da faccenda pratica, «e potrete farlo allora, prima del combattimento. Dovete perdonarmi, ma avevo tanta paura che non l’avreste fatto affatto.»

Bert parve serrare i denti fino a spezzarli, e riuscì a dire tra essi: «E perché mai dovreste supporre che io non faccia come dite—intendo dire, che non lo faccia affatto?»

«Andate sempre a Messa», rispose la ragazza, spalancando i suoi grandi occhi azzurri, «e la Messa è molto lunga e noiosa a meno che non si ami Dio.»

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.

Fu allora che Bert esplose con una brutalità che avrebbe potuto venire dal Conte Gregory, il suo criminale avversario. Avanzò su Madeleine con occhi fiammeggianti, e quasi la prese per le due spalle. «Non amo Dio», gridò, parlando francese col più marcato accento scozzese; «non voglio trovarLo; non credo che sia là da trovare. Devo far saltare tutta la messinscena; devo e voglio dire ogni cosa. Voi siete la cosa più felice e più onesta che io abbia mai visto in questo universo senza Dio. E io sono la più sporca e la più disonesta.»

Madeleine lo guardò dubbiosa per un istante, e poi disse con un’improvvisa semplicità e allegria: «Oh, ma se siete davvero dispiaciuto va tutto bene. Se siete orribilmente dispiaciuto è ancora meglio. Non dovete far altro che andarlo a dire al prete ed egli vi darà Dio dalle sue stesse mani.»

«Odio il vostro prete e nego il vostro Dio!» gridò l’uomo, «e vi dico che Dio è una menzogna e una favola e una maschera. E per la prima volta nella mia vita non mi sento superiore a Dio.»

«Che cosa può mai significare tutto questo?» disse Madeleine, in massiccia meraviglia.

«Perché anch’io sono una favola e una maschera», disse l’uomo. Si era strappato con furia la barba e i capelli neri per tutto il tempo; ora d’improvviso se li strappò via e li gettò come penne mutate nel fango. Questa straordinaria spoliazione lasciò alla luce del sole lo stesso volto, ma una testa molto più giovane—una testa con fitti riccioli castani e una corta barba castana.

«Ora conoscete la verità», rispose, con occhi duri. «Sono un mascalzone che ha giocato un tiro subdolo a un quieto villaggio e a una donna perbene per un suo privato tornaconto. Avrei potuto giocarlo con successo su qualsiasi altra donna; ho colpito l’unica donna su cui non lo si può giocare. È proprio la mia dannata fortuna. La pura verità è», e qui, quando giunse alla pura verità, si impappinò e balbettò come aveva fatto Evan nel raccontarla alla ragazza nell’automobile.

«La pura verità è», disse alla fine, «che io sono James Turnbull l’ateo. La polizia mi dà la caccia; non per ateismo, ma per essere stato pronto a battermi per esso.»

«Ho letto qualcosa su di voi in un giornale», disse la ragazza, con una semplicità che nemmeno la sorpresa riusciva a scuotere dal suo equilibrio.

«Evan MacIan diceva che c’era un Dio», proseguì l’altro, ostinatamente, «e io dico che non c’è. E sono venuto a battermi per il fatto che non c’è alcun Dio; è per questo che ho visto questa maledetta isola e il vostro volto benedetto.»

«Volete davvero che io creda», disse Madeleine, con le labbra socchiuse, «che voi pensiate----»

«Voglio che mi odiate!» gridò Turnbull, in agonia. «Voglio che proviate nausea quando pensate al mio nome. Sono certo che non c’è alcun Dio.»

«Ma c’è», disse Madeleine, del tutto quietamente, e piuttosto con l’aria di chi racconta ai bambini di un elefante. «Ma sì, ho toccato il Suo corpo proprio stamattina.»

«Avete toccato un pezzo di pane», disse Turnbull, mordendosi le nocche. «Oh, dirò qualunque cosa possa farvi impazzire!»

«Voi pensate che sia solo un pezzo di pane», disse la ragazza, e le sue labbra si strinsero appena appena.

«Io so che è solo un pezzo di pane», disse Turnbull, con violenza.

Ella gettò indietro il volto aperto e sorrise. «Allora perché avete rifiutato di mangiarlo?» disse.

James Turnbull fece un piccolo passo indietro, e per la prima volta nella sua vita parvero prorompere e divampare nella sua testa pensieri che non erano i suoi.

«Ma, che sciocchi», esclamò Madeleine, con una gaiezza del tutto da collegiale, «ma, che sciocchi a chiamare voi un bestemmiatore! Ma, voi avete mandato in rovina tutto il vostro affare perché non avete voluto commettere blasfemia.»

L’uomo stava là, figura alquanto comica nel suo tragico sconcerto, con l’onesta testa rossa di James Turnbull che sporgeva dalle ricche e fittizie vesti di Camille Bert. Ma il dolore sbigottito del suo volto era abbastanza forte da cancellarne la bizzarria.

«Voi venite quaggiù», proseguì la signora, con quell’enfasi femminile che è così polverizzante in una conversazione e così fiacca in un’assemblea pubblica, «voi e il vostro MacIan venite quaggiù e vi mettete false barbe o falsi nasi per battervi. Fingete di essere un commesso viaggiatore cattolico venuto dalla Francia. Il povero signor MacIan deve fingere di essere un nobile dissoluto venuto dal nulla. Il vostro piano riesce; provocate una lite del tutto convincente; organizzate un duello del tutto rispettabile; il duello che avete progettato così a lungo si svolgerà domani con assoluta certezza e sicurezza. E poi vi togliete la parrucca e mandate all’aria il vostro piano e piantate in asso il vostro collega, perché io vi chiedo di entrare in un edificio e mangiare un pezzo di pane. E poi osate dirmi che siete sicuro che non c’è nulla che ci osservi. Poi dite di sapere che non c’è nulla sull’altare stesso da cui fuggite. Voi sapete----»

«Io so solo», disse Turnbull, «che devo fuggire da voi. Questo è andato oltre ogni parola.» E si precipitò dentro il villaggio, lasciandosi dietro sulla strada la sua parrucca e la sua barba nere.

Mentre la piazza del mercato gli si apriva davanti, egli scorse il Conte Gregory, quel distinto forestiero, in piedi a fumare in elegante meditazione all’angolo del caffè locale. Si diresse immediatamente rapidamente verso di lui, ritenendo che una consultazione fosse urgente. Ma aveva appena attraversato metà di quel pietroso quadrilatero quando una finestra si spalancò sopra di lui e una testa si sporse, gridando. L’uomo era in canottiera di lana, ma Turnbull riconobbe l’energica e apologetica testa del sergente di polizia. Egli additò furiosamente Turnbull e ne gridò il nome. Un poliziotto uscì di corsa concitato da sotto un arco e tentò di afferrarlo. Due uomini che vendevano verdura lasciarono cadere le loro ceste e si unirono all’inseguimento. Turnbull schivò l’agente, rovesciò uno degli uomini nella sua stessa cesta e, balzando verso il distinto Conte forestiero, gli gridò clamorosamente: «Andiamo, MacIan, la caccia è ripresa.»

La pronta risposta del Conte Gregory fu quella di strapparsi le grandi basette gialle e spargerle al vento con un’aria di considerevole sollievo. Poi si unì alla fuga di Turnbull, e proprio mentre lo faceva, con uno strappo delle sue potenti mani squarciò e spaccò lo strano, spesso bastone che portava. Dentro vi era un nudo spadino all’antica. I due presero un buon vantaggio su per la strada prima che l’intera città si fosse svegliata dietro di loro; e a metà strada una simile trasformazione si vide avvenire nel singolare ombrello del signor Turnbull.

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.

I due fecero una lunga corsa fino al porto; ma la polizia inglese era pesante e gli abitanti francesi erano indifferenti. In ogni caso, si abituarono all’idea che la strada fosse libera; e proprio mentre erano giunti alle scogliere MacIan andò a sbattere contro un altro gentiluomo con inconfondibile sorpresa. Come sapesse che era un altro gentiluomo semplicemente sbattendogli contro, deve rimanere un mistero. MacIan era un gentiluomo scozzese assai povero e assai sobrio. L’altro era un gentiluomo inglese assai ubriaco e assai ricco. Ma c’era qualcosa nelle scuse barcollanti e apertamente imbarazzate che li faceva capire l’uno con l’altro tanto prontamente e rapidamente e appieno quanto due uomini che parlano francese nel bel mezzo della Cina. L’espressione più prossima del tipo è che esso o colpisce o si scusa; e in questo caso entrambi si scusarono.

«Sembrate avere fretta», disse lo sconosciuto inglese, indietreggiando di un passo o due per ridere con un’innaturale cordialità. «Di che si tratta, eh?» Poi, prima che MacIan potesse superare la sua figura sbracata e vacillante, corse di nuovo avanti e disse con una sorta di sussurro gridato e lacerante: «Sentite, il mio nome è Wilkinson. Voi sapete—la Wilkinson’s Entire era di mio nonno. Non posso bere birra io. Il fegato.» E scosse il capo con straordinaria saggezza.

«Abbiamo davvero fretta, come dite voi», disse MacIan, evocando un sorriso sufficientemente affabile, «così, se ci lasciate passare----»

«Vi dirò una cosa, ragazzi miei», disse il gentiluomo sbracato, in tono confidenziale, mentre le orecchie in agonia di Evan udivano dietro di sé i primi passi dell’inseguimento, «se davvero avete, come dite, fretta, io so cosa vuol dire aver fretta—Signore, che fretta avevo quando noi tutti uscimmo dalle stanze di Cartwright—se davvero avete fretta»— e parve rassodare la voce in una sorta di solennità—«se avete fretta, non c’è niente come un buon yacht per un uomo che ha fretta.»

«Non c’è dubbio che abbiate ragione», disse MacIan, e gli sfrecciò accanto in disperazione. La testa della schiera inseguitrice stava proprio spuntando sopra la cima della collina dietro di lui. Turnbull si era già abbassato sotto il gomito del gentiluomo ubriaco ed era fuggito assai più avanti.

«No, ma sentite», disse il signor Wilkinson, correndo con entusiasmo dietro a MacIan e afferrandolo per la manica della giacca. «Se volete far presto dovreste prendere uno yacht, e se»—disse, con uno scoppio di razionalità, come chi balza a un punto ulteriore nella logica—«se volete uno yacht—potete avere il mio.»

Evan si fermò di colpo e si voltò a guardarlo. «Abbiamo davvero una fretta del diavolo», disse, «e se davvero avete uno yacht, la verità è che daremmo le orecchie per averlo.»

«Lo troverete in porto», disse Wilkinson, lottando con la parola. «Lato sinistro del porto—si chiama Gibson Girl—non so proprio perché, vecchio mio, non ve l’ho mai prestato prima.»

Con queste parole il benevolo signor Wilkinson cadde lungo disteso sul volto sulla strada, ma continuò a ridere sommessamente, e volse verso il suo compagno in fuga un volto di peculiare pace e benignità. La mente di Evan attraversò una crisi di istantanea casuistica, nella quale può darsi che decise male; ma su come decise il suo biografo non può professare alcun dubbio. Due minuti dopo egli aveva raggiunto Turnbull e gli aveva raccontato la vicenda; dieci minuti dopo egli e Turnbull si erano in qualche modo ritrovati a bordo dello yacht chiamato Gibson Girl e in qualche modo avevano preso il largo dall’Isola di St. Loup.

XII. L’ISOLA DESERTA

Coloro che per caso sono di quel parere (e il signor Evan MacIan, ora vivo e a suo agio, è tra il numero) che qualcosa di soprannaturale, qualche eccentrica benevolenza di un dio o di una fata avesse guidato i nostri avventurieri attraverso tutti i loro assurdi pericoli, potrebbero trovare il loro argomento più forte forse nella gestione o cattiva gestione dello yacht del signor Wilkinson. Nessuno dei due aveva la benché minima qualifica per governare un simile vascello; ma MacIan aveva una conoscenza pratica del mare su barche assai più piccole e del tutto diverse, mentre Turnbull aveva una conoscenza astratta della scienza e di alcune sue applicazioni alla navigazione, il che era peggio. La presenza del dio o della fata può essere dedotta solo dal fatto che non andarono mai decisamente a sbattere contro nulla, né una barca, né una roccia, né una sabbia mobile, né una nave da guerra. A parte questa descrizione negativa, il loro viaggio sarebbe difficile da descrivere. Durò almeno una quindicina di giorni, e MacIan, che era certamente il più accorto marinaio dei due, si rese conto che stavano navigando verso ovest nell’ Atlantico ed erano probabilmente a quel tempo già oltre le Isole Scilly. Quanto più lontano si fossero spinti nel mare occidentale era impossibile congetturarlo. Ma erano certi, almeno, di essere abbastanza addentro in quel terribile golfo tra noi e l’America da rendere improbabile che rivedessero terra presto. Fu dunque con legittima eccitazione che una mattina piovosa dopo l’alba videro quella nitida sagoma di un’isola solitaria che si ergeva contro la fascia avvolgente d’argento che correva intorno all’orizzonte e separava il grigio e il verde dei flutti dal grigio e malva delle nubi del mattino.

«Che cosa può essere?» gridò MacIan, in un’eccitazione dalla gola secca. «Non sapevo che ci fossero isole atlantiche così al di là delle Scilly—Buon Dio, non può essere Madera, no?»

«Credevo che foste amante di leggende e menzogne e favole», disse Turnbull, arcigno. «Forse è Atlantide.»

«Certo, potrebbe essere», rispose l’altro, del tutto innocentemente e gravemente; «ma non ho mai pensato che la storia di Atlantide fosse molto solidamente accertata.»

«Qualunque cosa sia, ci stiamo andando addosso», disse Turnbull, con calma, «e faremo naufragio due volte, in ogni caso.»

Il nudo naso di terra che sporgeva dall’isola sconosciuta stava, in effetti, facendosi sempre più grande, come la proboscide di un terribile elefante in avanzata. Non pareva esserci nulla di particolare, almeno da questo lato dell’isola, tranne banchi di molluschi giacenti così fitti da quasi far sembrare il tutto una di quelle grotte-giocattolo che fanno i bambini. In un punto, tuttavia, la costa offriva una morbida, liscia baia di sabbia, e persino la rudimentale ingegnosità dei due marinai dilettanti riuscì a spingere la piccola nave con la prua ben sulla riva e il bompresso puntato verso l’alto, come in una sorta di idiota trionfo.

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.

Ruzzolarono a riva e cominciarono a scaricare il vascello, disponendo le provviste in file sulla sabbia con qualcosa della solennità di ragazzi che giocano ai pirati. C’erano le scatole di sigari del signor Wilkinson e la dozzina di champagne del signor Wilkinson e il salmone in scatola del signor Wilkinson e la lingua in scatola del signor Wilkinson e le sardine in scatola del signor Wilkinson, e ogni sorta di cosa conservata che si potesse vedere agli empori dell’Esercito e della Marina. Poi MacIan si fermò con un barattolo di sottaceti in mano e disse bruscamente:

«Non so perché stiamo facendo tutto questo; suppongo che dovremmo davvero metterci all’opera e farla finita.»

Poi aggiunse più pensoso: «Certo, quest’isola sembra piuttosto spoglia, e il sopravvissuto----»

«La questione è», disse Turnbull, con allegra speculazione, «se il sopravvissuto sarà nella giusta disposizione d’animo per dei gamberetti in vasetto.»

MacIan abbassò lo sguardo sulle file di scatolette e bottiglie, e la nube del dubbio gravava ancora sul suo volto.

«Mi permetterete due libertà, mio caro signore», disse infine Turnbull: «La prima è di scassinare questa scatola e accendere uno degli eccellenti sigari del signor Wilkinson, che, ne sono certo, favorirà le mie meditazioni; la seconda è di offrire un penny per i vostri pensieri; o piuttosto di sconvolgere le già complesse finanze di quest’isola scommettendo un penny che li conosco.»

«Ma di che diavolo state parlando?» chiese MacIan, svogliatamente, alla maniera di un bambino disattento.

«So che cosa state realmente pensando, MacIan», ripeté Turnbull, ridendo. «So che cosa sto pensando io, in ogni caso. E ho la mezza impressione che sia la stessa cosa.»

«Che cosa state pensando?» chiese Evan.

«Sto pensando, e voi state pensando», disse Turnbull, «che è una dannata sciocchezza sprecare tutto quello champagne.»

Qualcosa come lo spettro di un sorriso apparve sul non sorridente volto del Gaelico; e non fece almeno alcun movimento di dissenso.

«Potremmo bere tutto il vino e fumare tutti i sigari facilmente in una settimana», disse Turnbull; «e sarebbe morire banchettando come eroi.»

«Sì, e c’è qualcos’altro», disse MacIan, con una lieve esitazione. «Vedete, siamo su una roccia quasi sconosciuta, sperduta nell’Atlantico. La polizia non ci prenderà mai; ma allora forse nemmeno il pubblico sentirà mai parlare di noi; e questa era una delle cose che volevamo.» Poi, dopo una pausa, disse, tracciando nella sabbia con la punta della sua spada: «Può darsi che lei non ne senta mai parlare affatto.»

«Ebbene?» chiese l’altro, tirando una boccata dal suo sigaro.

«Ebbene», disse MacIan, «potremmo occupare un giorno o due a stendere una minuziosa e completa dichiarazione di ciò che abbiamo fatto e perché lo abbiamo fatto, e di tutti e due i nostri punti di vista. Poi potremmo lasciare una copia sull’isola qualunque cosa ci accada e mettere l’altra in una bottiglia vuota e affidarla al mare, come fanno nei libri.»

«Una buona idea», disse Turnbull, «e ora finiamo di scaricare.»

Mentre MacIan, alta figura quasi spettrale, camminava lungo l’orlo di sabbia che correva intorno all’isolotto, la purpurea ma nuvolosa poesia che era il suo elemento natio si ammassava al suo massimo spessore sulla sua anima. L’unica isola e il mare senza fine mettevano in risalto la cosa unicamente come un’epopea. Non c’erano dame né poliziotti qui a dargli un accenno della sua farsa o della sua tragedia.

«Forse quando furono create le stelle del mattino», disse fra sé, «Dio innalzò quest’isola dal fondo del mondo perché fosse una torre e un teatro per la lotta tra il sì e il no.»

Poi vagò fino al livello più alto della roccia, dove c’era un tetto o pianoro di pietra piana. Mezz’ora dopo, Turnbull lo trovò intento a sgombrare la sabbia sciolta da quell’altopiano rendendolo liscio e uniforme.

«Ci batteremo quassù, Turnbull», disse MacIan, «quando verrà il momento. E finché il momento non verrà questo luogo sarà sacro.»

«Pensavo di far pranzo quassù», disse Turnbull, che aveva una bottiglia di champagne in mano.

«No, no—non quassù», disse MacIan, e scese dall’altura piuttosto in fretta. Prima di scendere, tuttavia, piantò le due spade ritte, una a ciascun capo della piattaforma, come se fossero sentinelle umane a custodirla sotto le stelle.

Poi scesero e pranzarono abbondantemente in un nido di rocce sciolte. Nello stesso luogo, quella notte, cenarono ancora più abbondantemente. Il fumo dei sigari del signor Wilkinson saliva incessante e dall’odore forte, come un sacrificio pagano; le dorate glorie dello champagne del signor Wilkinson salirono alle loro teste e ne traboccarono in fantasie e filosofie. E di tanto in tanto alzavano lo sguardo al chiarore delle stelle e alla roccia e vedevano lo spazio custodito dalle due spade dall’elsa a croce, che parevano due nere croci a ciascun capo di una tomba.

In questa primitiva e omerica tregua trascorse la settimana; consisté quasi interamente nel mangiare, bere, fumare, parlare e occasionalmente cantare. Scrissero i loro resoconti e affidarono al mare la loro bottiglia. Non salirono mai all’ominoso pianoro; non vi erano mai stati salvo per quell’unico imbarazzato minuto in cui non avevano avuto tempo di prendere atto del paesaggio marino o della forma della terra. Non esplorarono nemmeno l’isola; poiché MacIan era in parte occupato nella preghiera e Turnbull interamente occupato col tabacco; ed entrambe queste forme di ispirazione possono essere godute dagli appartati e persino dai sedentari. Fu in un dorato pomeriggio, col sole che calava sul mare, raggiante come la testa stessa di Apollo, che Turnbull tracannò l’ultima mezza pinta dalla svuotata bottiglia wilkinsoniana, scagliò la bottiglia in mare con energia senza scopo, e salì là dove la sua spada lo attendeva sulla collina. MacIan era già in piedi pesantemente accanto alla sua, col capo chino e gli occhi che leggevano il terreno. Non si era nemmeno preso il disturbo di gettare uno sguardo attorno all’isola o all’orizzonte. Ma Turnbull, essendo di indole più attiva e più simile a un uccello, gettò invece uno sguardo attorno alla scena. La conseguenza fu che per poco non cadde giù dalla roccia.

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 tête-à-têtes 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?”

Su tre lati di questo isolotto sabbioso e ghiaioso il mare si stendeva blu e infinito senza un pezzetto di terra o una vela; lo stesso che Turnbull aveva visto per la prima volta, tranne che la bassa marea mostrava qualche metro in più di sabbia inclinata sotto le radici delle rocce. Ma sul quarto lato l’isola presentava una caratteristica più straordinaria. In effetti, presentava la caratteristica straordinaria di non essere affatto un’isola. Un lungo collo curvo di sabbia, liscio e bagnato come il collo del serpente marino, si protendeva verso il mare e univa la loro roccia a una linea di basse colline di sabbia ondulate e lucenti che il mare in ritirata aveva appena scoperto al sole. Se fossero state sabbia compatta o sabbie mobili era difficile da indovinare; ma non c’era dubbio che si trovassero sul bordo di una terra più grande; infatti colline senza colore apparivano debolmente dietro di loro e non si vedeva il mare oltre.

«Perbacco!» esclamò Turnbull, con occhi spalancati; «questa non è un’isola nell’Atlantico. Abbiamo urtato il dannato continente dell’America.»

MacIan girò la testa e il suo volto, già pallido, divenne ancora più pallido. In quel momento camminava in un mondo di presagi ed ideogrammi, e non riusciva a leggere altro che ciò che era sconcertante o minaccioso in quell’immensa braccia marrone della terra protesa verso il mare per catturarlo.

“MacIan”, disse Turnbull nel suo modo equilibrato, “qualunque cosa i nostri eterni tête-à-tête interrotti ci abbiano insegnato o non ci abbiano insegnato, almeno non dobbiamo temere l’accusa di paura. Se è essenziale per le tue emozioni, finirò volentieri la lotta qui e ora; ma devo confessare che se mi uccidi qui morirò con una curiosità molto eccitata e insoddisfatta su un punto minore di geografia.”

“Non voglio fermarmi ora,” disse l’altro, nella sua semplicità elefantina, “ma dobbiamo fermarci per un momento, perché è un segno— forse è un miracolo. Dobbiamo vedere cosa c’è alla fine della strada di sabbia; potrebbe essere un ponte costruito da Dio attraverso il golfo.”

«Finché soddisfate la mia curiosità», disse Turnbull ridendo e rimettendo la lama nel fodero, «non mi interessa per quale motivo decidiate di fermarvi.»

Scendevano lungo la penisola rocciosa e procedevano con fatica sull’istmo sabbioso con la risolutezza ostinata di uomini che sembravano aver quasi deciso di diventare vagabondi sulla faccia della terra. Nonostante l’aria di entusiasmo scientifico di Turnbull, era in realtà il meno impaziente dei due; e l’Altoatesino procedeva bene avanti a lui con passi appassionati. Al tempo che avevano camminato per circa mezz’ora tra i saliscendi di quelle sabbie desolate, la distanza tra i due si era allungata e MacIan era solo una figura alta che si stagliava per un istante sulla cresta di qualche duna e poi spariva dietro di essa. Questo aumentò il senso di isolamento di Robinson Crusoe in Mr. Turnbull, che guardava intorno quasi disperato alla ricerca di qualche segno di vita. Che tipo di vita si aspettasse se fosse apparsa, non lo sapeva molto chiaramente. Ha poi confessato che pensa che nella sua sottocoscienza si aspettasse un alligatore.

Il primo segno di vita che vide fu però qualcosa di più straordinario del più grande alligatore. Non era niente meno che il famigerato signor Evan MacIan che tornava saltellando tra le dune di sabbia senza fiato, senza berretto e tenendo la spada in mano solo per una abitudine ormai radicata.

«Fai attenzione, Turnbull», gridò da una certa distanza mentre correva, «ho visto un indigeno».

«Un indigeno?» ripeté il suo compagno, che ultimamente aveva avuto come scenario principalmente molluschi. «Che diavolo! Vuoi dire una ostrica?»

«No», disse MacIan fermandosi e respirando affannosamente, «voglio dire un selvaggio, un uomo di colore.»

«Perché, dove l’ha visto?» chiese il redattore fissandolo.

“Là dietro… dietro quella collina”, disse il senza fiato MacIan, “ha alzato la sua testa nera e mi ha fatto un ghigno”.

Turnbull si passò le mani tra i capelli rossi come uno che abbandona il mondo perché un brutto enigma. «Dio benedica l’anatra», disse, «sarà la Giamaica?»

Poi, lanciando un’occhiata al suo compagno con una piccola espressione corrucciata, come se fosse leggermente sospettoso, disse: «Non pensate che io sia scortese… ma voi siete un tipo visionario… e poi abbiamo bevuto parecchio. Vi dispiace aspettare qui mentre vado a vedere con i miei occhi?»

«Urlate se vi trovate nei guai», disse il celtico con calma, «e vedrete che avrò ragione».

Turnbull corse avanti con una rapidità ora molto maggiore di quella del suo rivale e presto scomparve oltre la contesa collina di sabbia. Poi passarono cinque minuti, poi sette; MacIan si morse il labbro e fece roteare la sua spada, ma l’altro non riapparve. Infine, con un giuramento gaelico, Evan partì in avanti per andarlo a salvare e quasi nello stesso momento apparve sulla cresta contro il cielo la piccola figura dell’uomo scomparso.

Anche a quella distanza, tuttavia, c’era qualcosa di strano nel suo comportamento; così strano che MacIan continuò ad avvicinarsi in quella direzione. Sembrava ferito; o, ancora più, sembrava malato. Vacillava mentre scendeva lungo il pendio e pareva assumere posture particolari. Ma fu solo quando si trovò a tre piedi dal viso di MacIan che quest’osservatore dell’umanità comprese pienamente che il signor James Turnbull stava scoppiando dalle risate.

“Avete perfettamente ragione,” singhiozzò quel giornalista completamente demoralizzato. “È nero, oh, non c’è dubbio che il nero sia giusto - fino a un certo punto.” E ricadde ancora in convulsioni del suo umorismo malato.

«Che cosa le succede?» chiese MacIan con severa impazienza. «Ha visto il negro…»

“Ho visto il negro”, ansimò Turnbull. “Ho visto lo splendido capo barbaro. Ho visto l’imperatore d’Etiopia — oh, l’ho visto benissimo. Le mani e la faccia del negro sono di un colore bellissimo — e il negro ----” E fu nuovamente sopraffatto.

“Ebbene, ebbene, ebbene,” disse Evan, battendo ogni monosillabo sulla sabbia, “e il negro che diremo di lui?”

“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.

“Bene, la verità è”, disse Turnbull, improvvisamente e in modo sorprendente, diventando del tutto serio e preciso, “la verità è che il negro è un negro di Margate, e ci troviamo ora ai margini dell’Isola di Thanet, a poche miglia da Margate.”

Poi ebbe un attimo di ritorno alla sua isteria e disse: «Senta, vecchio mio, mi piacerebbe vedere una carta della nostra crociera di due settimane sullo yacht di Wilkinson».

MacIan non aveva un sorriso in risposta, ma le sue labbra ansiose si aprirono come se fossero assetate per la verità. «Volete dire», cominciò…

“Sì, voglio dire,” disse Turnbull, “e voglio dire qualcosa di ancora più divertente. Ho imparato tutto ciò che volevo sapere dal musicista parzialmente nero laggiù, che si è dato una corsa con il suo trucco da guerra per incontrare un amico in un pub tranquillo lungo la costa: il nobile selvaggio mi ha raccontato tutto. La bottiglia contenente la nostra dichiarazione, le dottrine e i sentimenti morenti è stata portata a riva sulla spiaggia di Margate ieri alla presenza di un assessore, due addetti alle cabine da bagno, tre poliziotti, sette medici e centotredici impiegati di Londra in vacanza, a tutti i quali, direttamente o indirettamente, la nostra composizione ha dato un enorme piacere letterario. Tirati su, vecchio mio, questa storia è una montagna russa. Ho cominciato a capire il ritmo e la musica della cosa; ora siamo in cima in una cattedrale e poi siamo giù in un teatro, dove rappresentano solo farse. Vieni, sono perfettamente riconciliato: godiamoci la farsa.”

Ma MacIan non disse nulla e un attimo dopo lo stesso Turnbull esclamò con voce completamente diversa: «Oh, questo è intollerabile! Non si può sopportare!»

MacIan seguì il suo sguardo lungo le dune di sabbia. Vide quello che sembrava la figura momentanea e ondeggiante del cantante negro, e poi vide un robusto poliziotto in corsa prendere la curva della duna con la fluida solennità di un treno ferroviario.

XIII. IL GIARDINO DELLA PACE

Fino a quel momento, Evan MacIan non aveva capito nulla; ma quando vide il poliziotto comprese tutto. Vide i suoi nemici, tutti i poteri e i principi della terra. Improvvisamente si trasformò da una statua immobile in un uomo agile delle montagne.

“Dobbiamo separarci da lui qui”, gridò brevemente e si allontanò come un turbine oltre la cresta di sabbia in linea retta e a un angolo particolare. Quando l’agente ebbe completato la sua ammirevole curva ferroviaria, trovò una parete di sabbia crollante tra sé e il perseguitato. Al tempo in cui era riuscito a scalare tre volte la cresta, scivolare giù due volte e superarla al terzo tentativo, le due figure in fuga erano già lontane davanti di lui. Trovarono la sabbia più dura più avanti; cominciò ad essere ricoperta da brandelli di terreno erboso e dopo pochi momenti volavano facilmente sopra un ampio spazio aperto di alto mare-grass. Non avevano però una missione facile; perché la bottiglia che avevano così innocentemente inviato al cancello principale di Thanet aveva risvegliato la polizia di mezza contea sulle loro tracce. Da ogni lato attraverso il comune grigio-verde si potevano vedere figure correre e chiudersi; ed è stato solo quando MacIan con il suo grande corpo ha abbattuto la barriera intricata di un piccolo bosco, come gli uomini abbattano una porta con la spalla; è stato solo quando sono scomparsi schiantandosi nell’oltretomba del nero bosco che i loro cacciatori furono anche istantaneamente messi fuori pista.

A rischio di lottare un po’ più a lungo come mosche in quella nera ragnatela di rami e tronchi, Evan (che aveva l’istinto del cacciatore o della preda) intraprese un percorso imprevedibile attraverso la foresta, che alla fine li fece uscire da una radura — completamente dimenticata dai capi della caccia. Corsero ancora un paio di miglia lungo il bordo del bosco fino a raggiungere un’altra apertura, piuttosto simile alla prima. Poi MacIan si fermò immobile e ascoltò, come ascoltano le bestie, ogni suono dell’universo. Poi disse: “Li abbiamo seminati.” E Turnbull chiese: “E adesso dove andiamo?”

MacIan guardò il tramonto d’argento che si chiudeva, barrato da linee piumate di nuvole viola; guardò le cime degli alberi più alti che coglievano l’ultima luce e uccelli che tornavano a casa pesantemente, come se tutte queste cose fossero pezzi di consiglio scritto che poteva leggere.

Poi disse: «Il posto migliore dove possiamo andare è il letto. Se riusciamo ad avere un po’ di sonno in questo bosco, ora che tutti se ne sono andati, domani ci sarà utile come uno svantaggio di duecento iarde».

Turnbull, che era eccezionalmente vivace e rideva nel suo comportamento, agitava le gambe come un scolaretto e diceva di non voler andare a dormire. Camminava incessantemente e parlava con grande brillantezza. E quando alla fine si sdraiò sulla terra dura, il sonno lo colpì rendendolo insensibile come un martello.

Infatti aveva bisogno del più forte sonno possibile, perché la terra era ancora piena di oscurità e una specie di nebbia mattutina quando il suo compagno fuggitivo lo scosse per svegliarlo.

“Niente più sonno, temo”, disse Evan con una voce grave, quasi sottomessa, di scusa. “Sono andati avanti oltre noi per almeno trenta miglia; ma ora hanno scoperto il loro errore e stanno tornando indietro.”

«Ne è sicuro?», disse Turnbull, sedendosi e strofinandosi con la mano le sopracciglia rosse.

Il momento successivo, tuttavia, era balzato in piedi vivo e saltellante come un uomo colpito da uno shock di acqua fredda, e si stava tuffando dietro MacIan lungo il sentiero del bosco. La sagoma del loro vecchio amico l’agente era apparsa contro il perlaceo e rosa dell’alba. In qualche modo, sembrava sempre una forma molto buffa quando vista all’alba.

---

Una luce diurna stanca stava sorgendo sul paesaggio, e i campi e le strade erano pieni di nebbia bianca - quel tipo di nebbia bianca che si attacca agli angoli come la lana di cotone. La strada vuota, lungo cui la caccia aveva preso la sua svolta, era ombreggiata da un lato da un muro molto alto e decolorato, macchiato e striato di verde come dalle alghe - evidentemente il sentinella a spalle larghe di qualche grande tenuta. A un paio di metri dal muro correva parallela ad esso una linea intrecciata e intricata di tigli, formando una sorta di chiostro lungo il lato della strada. Era sotto questa colonnata ramificata che i due fuggitivi fuggivano, quasi nascosti dai loro inseguitori dalla penombra, dalla nebbia e dallo zoetro saltellante delle ombre. I loro piedi, pur battendo furiosamente il terreno, facevano solo un rumore debole; perché avevano calciato via le scarpe nel bosco; le loro lunghe armi antiquate non facevano tintinnio né fracasso, perché se le erano legate in spalla come chitarre. Avevano tutti i vantaggi che l’invisibilità e il silenzio possono aggiungere alla velocità.

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.

Centocinquanta metri dietro di loro, giù per il centro della vuota strada, il primo dei loro inseguitori arrivava correndo e ansimando— un poliziotto grasso ma poderoso che aveva distanziato tutti gli altri. Procedeva a un’andatura splendida per una figura così corpulenta; ma, come tutti i corpi pesanti in movimento, dava l’impressione che gli sarebbe stato più facile accelerare il passo che rallentarlo di colpo. Nulla di meno di un muro di mattoni avrebbe potuto fermarlo bruscamente. Turnbull voltò leggermente la testa e trovò fiato per dire qualcosa a MacIan. MacIan annuì.

Inseguitore e inseguiti restarono fissi nella loro distanza mentre fuggivano, per circa un quarto di miglio, finché giunsero a un punto dove due o tre degli alberi crescevano contorti insieme, formando un’oscurità particolare. Oltre quel punto il poliziotto inseguitore proseguì tuonando senza pensiero né esitazione. Ma stava inseguendo la sua ombra o il vento; poiché Turnbull aveva messo un piede in una fessura dell’albero e vi era salito tanto rapidamente e silenziosamente quanto un gatto. Con qualche maggior fatica ma in eguale silenzio le lunghe gambe dell’Altoatesino avevano seguito; e, acquattati in un cruciale silenzio nella nube di foglie, videro l’intera squadra dei loro inseguitori passare e spegnersi nella polvere e nelle brume della distanza.

Il bianco vapore giaceva, come spesso accade, in magri e palpabili strati; e persino la cima dell’albero ne era al di sopra nella mezza luce del giorno, come una verde nave che dondola su un mare di schiuma. Ma più in alto ancora dietro di loro, e più pronto a cogliere il primo arrivo del sole, correva il bastione della sommità del muro, che nella loro eccitazione di fuga appariva insieme indispensabile e irraggiungibile, come il muro del cielo. Qui, tuttavia, fu la volta di MacIan ad avere il vantaggio; poiché, benché meno agile e felino, era più lungo e più forte nelle braccia. In due secondi ebbe issato il mento oltre il muro come su una sbarra orizzontale; l’attimo dopo vi sedette a cavalcioni, come un cavallo di pietra. Col suo aiuto Turnbull si issò allo stesso trespolo, e i due cominciarono a spostarsi cautamente lungo il muro nella direzione da cui erano venuti, tornando sui propri passi per sviare l’ultimo inseguimento. MacIan non riusciva a liberarsi della fantasia di stare in groppa a un destriero; il lungo, grigio spigolo del muro si protendeva davanti a lui, come il lungo, grigio collo di qualche Ronzinante da incubo. Ebbe il bizzarro pensiero che lui e Turnbull fossero due cavalieri su un solo destriero sull’antico scudo dei Templari.

L’incubo del cavallo di pietra era accresciuto dalla bianca nebbia, che pareva più fitta dentro il muro che fuori. Non riuscivano a capir nulla del recinto sul quale erano in parte intrusi, tranne che i verdi e storti rami di un grande melo venivano strisciando verso di loro fuori dalla foschia, come i tentacoli di qualche verde seppia. Qualunque cosa andava bene, tuttavia, purché potesse confondere la loro traccia, così entrambi decisero senza bisogno di parole di usare anche questo albero come scala—una scala di discesa. Quando si lasciarono cadere dal ramo più basso al suolo i loro piedi inguainati nelle calze sentirono sotto di sé una dura ghiaia.

Erano atterrati nel mezzo di un vialetto assai largo di un giardino, e la nebbia che si diradava permise loro di vedere l’orlo di un prato ben rasato. Benché il bianco vapore fosse ancora un velo, era come il velo diafano di una scena di trasformazione in una pantomima; poiché attraverso di esso riardevano informi masse di colore, masse che potevano essere nubi d’aurora o mosaici d’oro e cremisi, o dame vestite di drappeggi di rubino e smeraldo. Man mano che si assottigliava ancora di più videro che erano soltanto fiori; ma fiori in una tanto insolente massa e magnificenza quanto se ne può raramente vedere fuori dei tropici. Rododendri purpurei e cremisi si levavano arroganti, come rampanti animali araldici contro il loro ardente sfondo d’oro di maggiociondolo. Le rose erano rosse arroventate; la clematide era, per così dire, blu arroventata. Eppure il mero candore della siringa pareva il colore più violento di tutti. Man mano che la dorata luce del sole gradualmente conquistava le brume, essa aveva davvero qualcosa della sensazionale dolcezza del lento aprirsi delle porte dell’Eden. MacIan, la cui mente era sempre ossessionata da tali parallelismi serafici o titanici, fece qualche osservazione del genere al compagno. Ma Turnbull si limitò a imprecare e disse che era il giardino sul retro di qualche dannato riccone.

Quando l’ultima foschia si fu dissolta dai vialetti ordinati, dai prati aperti e dalle fiammeggianti aiuole, i due si resero conto, non senza un brusco riesame della propria posizione, di non essere soli nel giardino.

Giù per il centro del vialetto centrale del giardino, preceduto da un’azzurra nuvola di sigaretta, camminava un gentiluomo che evidentemente comprendeva tutto il gusto di un giardino nel primissimo mattino. Era una figura snella eppure soddisfatta, vestita d’un abito di tweed grigio pallido, tanto smorzato che il disegno era impercettibile—un costume che era disinvolto ma per nulla trasandato. Il suo volto, che era riflessivo e alquanto troppo raffinato, era il volto di un uomo del tutto anziano, benché i suoi capelli filamentosi e i baffi fossero ancora del tutto gialli. Un doppio occhialino, con un largo nastro nero, pendeva dal suo naso aquilino, ed egli sorrideva, mentre conversava fra sé, con un autocompiacimento che era raro e quasi irritante. Il panama di paglia sul suo capo era di molte tonalità più liso dei suoi abiti, come se lo avesse afferrato per caso.

Ci volle tutto lo shock dell’enorme ombra di MacIan, che cadeva attraverso il suo sentiero soleggiato, per riscuoterlo dalla sua sorridente fantasticheria. Quando questa gli fu caduta addosso egli sollevò un poco il capo e sbatté le palpebre verso gli intrusi con una benevolenza da miope, ma con assai meno sorpresa di quanto ci si sarebbe potuto aspettare. Era un gentiluomo; vale a dire, aveva presenza di spirito sociale, fosse per gentilezza o per insolenza.

«Posso fare qualcosa per voi?» disse, alla fine.

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 your 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.

MacIan s’inchinò. “Potete concederci il vostro perdono”, disse, perché anch’egli discendeva da un’intera stirpe di gentiluomini—di gentiluomini senza una camicia sulla schiena. “Temo che stiamo violando la proprietà. Siamo appena venuti scavalcando il muro.”

“Scavalcando il muro?” ripeté il vecchio gentiluomo sorridente, senza però lasciare che la sorpresa prendesse il sopravvento.

“Suppongo di non sbagliarmi, signore”, proseguì MacIan, “nel supporre che questi terreni entro il muro appartengano a voi?”

L’uomo dal panama guardò il suolo e fumò pensoso per qualche istante, dopodiché disse, con una sorta di convinzione maturata:

“Sì, certamente; i terreni entro il muro appartengono davvero a me, e anche i terreni fuori dal muro.”

“Un grande proprietario, immagino”, disse Turnbull, con occhio truce.

“Sì”, rispose il vecchio gentiluomo, guardandolo con un sorriso fermo. “Un grande proprietario.”

L’occhio di Turnbull si fece ancor più offensivo, ed egli cominciò a mordersi la barba rossa; ma MacIan parve riconoscere un tipo d’uomo con cui sapeva trattare, e proseguì con tutta disinvoltura:

“Sono certo che un uomo come voi non avrà bisogno che gli si dica che si vedono e si fanno molte cose che non finiscono sui giornali. Cose che, tutto sommato, è meglio non finiscano sui giornali.”

Il sorriso del grande proprietario s’allargò per un istante sotto i baffi molli e chiari, e l’altro proseguì con maggiore sicurezza:

“A volte si vuol regolare i conti con un altro uomo. La polizia non lo permette per le strade—e poi c’è il Consiglio di Contea— e nei campi non è ammesso nulla se non i manifesti delle pillole. Ma nel giardino di un gentiluomo, ecco----”

Lo strano gentiluomo sorrise di nuovo e disse, con abbastanza facilità: “Volete battervi? E per che cosa volete battervi?”

MacIan aveva capito il suo uomo abbastanza bene fino a quel punto; un istinto comune a tutti gli uomini con la tradizione aristocratica d’Europa lo aveva guidato. Sapeva che il genere d’uomo che nel proprio giardino sul retro porta abiti buoni e li rovina con un cattivo cappello non è il genere d’uomo che nutre un orrore astratto per le azioni illegali di violenza o per l’elusione della polizia. Ma un uomo può capire una scaramuccia e tuttavia essere ben lontano dal capire una scaramuccia religiosa. Questo loro presunto ospite avrebbe forse compreso un litigio tra marito e amante o una difficoltà alle carte o perfino la fuga da un sarto all’inseguimento; ma restava comunque dubbio se avrebbe sentito la terra mancargli sotto i piedi in quell’istante di terremoto in cui la Vergine viene paragonata a una dea della Mesopotamia. Perfino MacIan, dunque (il cui tatto era ben lungi dall’essere il suo forte), sentì la necessità di qualche compromesso nel modo d’accostarsi. Alla fine disse, e anche allora con esitazione:

“Ci battiamo a proposito di Dio; non vi può essere nulla di così importante.”

Le lenti inclinate del vecchio gentiluomo gli caddero di scatto dal naso, ed egli spinse il suo mento aristocratico tanto in avanti che il collo magro parve allungarsi come un cannocchiale.

“A proposito di Dio?” domandò, in un tono del tutto nuovo.

“Sentite un po’!” gridò Turnbull, prendendo la parola con rudezza, “ve lo dico io di che si tratta. Io penso che Dio non esista. Ritengo che non siano affari di nessuno tranne miei—o di Dio, se ne esiste uno. A questo giovane gentiluomo delle Highlands capita di pensare che siano affari suoi. Di conseguenza, prima prende un bastone da passeggio e mi fracassa la bottega; poi prende lo stesso bastone e cerca di fracassare me. A ciò mi oppongo naturalmente. Suggerisco che, se si arriva a tanto, si debba avere entrambi un bastone. Egli perfeziona il suggerimento e propone che si abbia entrambi un bastone dalla punta d’acciaio. La polizia (con caratteristica irragionevolezza) non accetta nessuna delle nostre proposte; il risultato è che corriamo qua e là schivando la polizia e abbiamo scavalcato il muro del vostro giardino per gettarci nel vostro magnifico giardino e affidarci alla vostra magnifica ospitalità.”

Il volto del vecchio gentiluomo s’era fatto sempre più rosso durante questo discorso, ma sorrideva ancora; e quando proruppe, fu con una sorta di sghignazzo.

“Dunque volete davvero battervi a spade sguainate nel mio giardino”, chiese, “sulla questione se vi sia davvero un Dio?”

“E perché no?” disse MacIan, con la sua semplice mostruosità di parola; “ogni culto dell’uomo cominciò quando fu fondato il giardino dell’Eden.”

“Sì, per----!” disse Turnbull, con una bestemmia, “e finì quando furono fondati i Giardini Zoologici.”

“In questo giardino! Alla mia presenza!” gridò lo sconosciuto, pestando i piedi su e giù sulla ghiaia e soffocando dalle risa, “se vi sia un Dio!” E se ne andava pestando i piedi su e giù per il giardino, facendolo echeggiare della sua risata incomprensibile. Poi tornò da loro più composto, asciugandosi gli occhi.

“Ma quanto è piccolo il mondo!” gridò infine. “Posso risolvere l’intera faccenda. Ma come, io sono Dio!”

E all’improvviso prese a scalciare e ad agitare le gambe ben vestite sul prato.

“Voi siete cosa?” ripeté Turnbull, in un tono che è al di là di ogni descrizione.

“Ma come, Dio, naturalmente!” rispose l’altro, del tutto divertito. “Che buffo pensare che abbiate ruzzolato oltre il muro d’un giardino e siate caduti proprio sulla persona giusta! Avreste potuto arrancare in ogni sorta di chiese e cappelle e collegi e scuole di filosofia in cerca di qualche prova dell’esistenza di Dio. Ebbene, non c’è prova alcuna, se non il vederlo. E ora l’avete visto. L’avete visto danzare!”

E l’accondiscendente vecchio gentiluomo si mise all’istante su una gamba sola senza allentare minimamente la grave e colta benevolenza della sua espressione.

“Avevo capito che questo giardino----” cominciò il perplesso MacIan.

“Proprio così! Proprio così!” disse l’uomo su una gamba sola, annuendo gravemente. “Ho detto che questo giardino apparteneva a me, e così la terra al di fuori. E infatti è così. E così anche il paese al di là, e il mare al di là ancora, e tutto il resto della terra. E così la luna. E così il sole e le stelle.” E aggiunse, con un sorriso di scusa: “Vedete, io sono Dio.”

Turnbull e MacIan lo guardarono per un istante con la vaga idea che forse non fosse troppo vecchio per fare semplicemente lo sciocco. Ma dopo aver fissato con fermezza per un attimo, Turnbull scorse la dura e orribile serietà negli occhi dell’uomo dietro tutta la sua vuota animazione. Poi Turnbull guardò con molta gravità i severi muri di ghiaia e le allegre aiuole fiorite e il lungo edificio rettangolare di mattoni rossi, che la nebbia aveva lasciato evidente al di là di essi. Poi guardò MacIan.

Quasi nello stesso momento un altro uomo venne camminando in fretta attorno al regale cespuglio di rododendri. Aveva l’aspetto di un prospero banchiere, portava un buon cilindro di seta, era quasi tanto corpulento da far scoppiare i bottoni di una bella finanziera; ma parlava tra sé, e uno dei suoi gomiti aveva un singolare scatto verso l’esterno mentre passava.

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----”

XIV. UN MUSEO DI ANIME

L’uomo dal buon cappello e dal gomito sussultante passò molto in fretta; eppure l’uomo dal cattivo cappello, che si credeva Dio, lo raggiunse. Gli corse dietro e saltò oltre un’aiuola di gerani per acciuffarlo.

“Chiedo perdono a Vostra Maestà”, disse, con finta umiltà, “ma ecco una lite che dovreste davvero giudicare voi.”

Poi, mentre riconduceva verso il gruppo l’uomo pesante dal cilindro di seta, afferrò l’orecchio di MacIan per sussurrargli: “Questo povero gentiluomo è pazzo; si crede Edoardo VII.” A ciò il sé proclamatosi Creatore ammiccò lievemente. “Naturalmente non vi fiderete troppo di lui; rivolgetevi a me per ogni cosa. Ma nella mia posizione si deve incontrare tanta gente. Bisogna avere ampie vedute.”

Il grosso banchiere in finanziera e cilindro neri se ne stava tutto grave e dignitoso sul prato, salvo per il lieve tremolio di un arto, e non pareva affatto indegno della parte che l’altro gli imponeva prontamente.

“Mio caro amico”, disse l’uomo dal cappello di paglia, “questi due gentiluomini stanno per battersi in un duello della massima importanza. La vostra regale posizione e la mia assai più umile ci indicano di certo come i padrini appropriati. Padrini—sì, padrini----” e qui l’oratore fu di nuovo scosso dal suo vecchio male della risata.

“Sì, voi ed io siamo entrambi padrini—e questi due gentiluomini possono ovviamente battersi davanti a noi. Voi, eh-eh, siete il re. Io sono Dio; davvero, non avrebbero potuto avere sostenitori migliori. Sono capitati nel posto giusto.”

Allora Turnbull, che aveva fissato con un cipiglio la fresca zolla erbosa, proruppe in una risata piuttosto amara e gridò, buttando la sua rossa testa all’aria:

“Sì, per Dio, MacIan, credo che siamo capitati nel posto giusto!” E MacIan rispose, con adamantina stupidità:

“Ogni posto è quello giusto, purché ci lascino farlo.”

Vi fu una lunga immobilità, e i loro occhi involontariamente colsero il paesaggio, come avevano colto tutti i paesaggi del loro eterno combattimento; il luminoso, quadrato giardino dietro la bottega; tutto lo slancio e il declivio del fianco di Hampstead Heath; il piccolo giardino del decadente soffocato di fiori; il quadrato di sabbia in riva al mare all’alba. Entrambi sentirono nello stesso istante tutta l’ampiezza e la fiorente bellezza di quel paradiso, gli alberi colorati, i cantucci naturali e riposanti e anche il gran muro di pietra— più tremendo del muro della Cina—da cui nessuna carne poteva fuggire.

Turnbull soppesava cupamente la spada in mano mentre l’altro parlava; poi trasalì, perché una bocca sussurrò vicinissima al suo orecchio. Con una morbidezza incredibile in qualsiasi gatto, l’enorme, pesante uomo dal cilindro nero e dalla finanziera aveva strisciato attraverso il prato dal proprio lato e gli stava dicendo all’orecchio: “Non fidatevi di quel vostro padrino. È pazzo e non così pazzo, poi; perché è spaventosamente astuto e sagace. Non credete alla storia che vi racconta sul perché lo odio. Conosco la storia che vi racconterà; l’ho sentita per caso quando la governante parlava col postino. È troppo lunga da raccontare ora, e credo che ci sorveglino, ma----”

Qualcosa in Turnbull lo fece all’improvviso desiderare di vomitare sull’erba; il puro, sano e pagano orrore dell’impuro; il puro, disumano odio dello stato disumano della follia. Gli parve di udire tutt’intorno a sé gli odiosi sussurri di quel luogo, innumerevoli come foglie sussurranti al vento, e ciascuno di essi che raccontava con avidità qualche male non accaduto o qualche terrificante segreto che non era vero. Tutto il razionalista e l’uomo comune in lui si rivoltavano contro l’inchinarsi anche per un istante in quella foresta di inganno e tenebra egoista. Voleva far saltare in aria quel palazzo di illusioni con la dinamite; e, in qualche modo selvaggio, che non intendo difendere, tentò di farlo.

Guardò dall’altra parte verso MacIan e disse: “Oh, non lo sopporto!”

“Non sopporti cosa?” chiese l’avversario, squadrandolo dubbioso.

“Diciamo l’atmosfera?” rispose Turnbull; “non si possono usare espressioni scortesi neppure con una—divinità. Il fatto è che non mi va di avere Dio per padrino.”

“Signore!” disse quell’essere in stato di grande offesa, “nella mia posizione non sono abituato a vedermi rifiutare i favori. Sapete chi sono io?”

Il direttore de L’Ateo si volse verso di lui come chi ha perduto ogni pazienza, ed esplose: “Sì, voi siete Dio, non è così?” disse, di scatto, “perché mai abbiamo due dentature?”

“Denti?” farfugliò il gentile lunatico; “denti?”

“Sì”, gridò Turnbull, avanzando su di lui rapidamente e con gesti animati, “perché fa male mettere i denti? Perché fanno male i dolori della crescita? Perché il morbillo è contagioso? Perché una rosa ha le spine? Perché i rinoceronti hanno il corno? Perché il corno sta in cima al naso? Perché io non ho un corno in cima al naso, eh?” E si batté il dorso del naso con energia con l’indice per indicare il luogo dell’omissione, poi agitò il dito minacciosamente verso il Creatore.

“Ho spesso desiderato incontrarvi”, riprese, severo, dopo una pausa, “per chiamarvi a rendere conto di tutta l’idiozia e la crudeltà di questo confuso e insensato mondo vostro. Fate cento semi e uno solo porta frutto. Fate un milione di mondi e uno solo pare abitato. Che cosa intendete con ciò, eh? Che cosa intendete con ciò?”

L’infelice lunatico era indietreggiato davanti a questa forma d’attacco del tutto inedita, e sollevò la sigaretta spenta quasi come chi para un colpo. Turnbull continuava come un torrente.

“Un uomo è morto ieri a Ealing. L’avete assassinato voi. Una ragazza ha avuto il mal di denti a Croydon. Gliel’avete dato voi. Cinquanta marinai sono annegati al largo di Selsey Bill. Avete affondato la loro nave. Che cosa avete da dire a vostra discolpa, eh?”

Il rappresentante dell’onnipotenza aveva l’aria di chi aveva lasciato la gran parte di queste cose ai suoi subalterni; si passò una mano sulla fronte corrugata e disse con voce assai più sana di ogni altra usata fin lì:

“Beh, se la mia assistenza vi dispiace, certo—forse l’altro gentiluomo----”

“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.”

“L’altro gentiluomo”, gridò Turnbull, con disprezzo, “è un gentiluomo remissivo e leale e obbediente. Gli piace la gente che porta corone, siano di diamanti o di stelle. Crede nel diritto divino dei re, ed è del tutto appropriato che egli abbia il re per padrino. Ma non è appropriato per me avere Dio per padrino. Dio non è abbastanza buono. Detesto e nego il diritto divino dei re. Ma detesto di più e nego di più il diritto divino della divinità.”

Poi, dopo una pausa in cui ingoiò la sua collera, disse a MacIan: “Comunque tu il padrino giusto ce l’hai.”

Il montanaro non rispose, ma rimase come fulminato da un unico, lungo e pesante pensiero. Poi alla fine si volse di scatto al suo padrino dal cilindro di seta e disse: “Chi siete voi?”

L’uomo dal cilindro di seta batté le palpebre e s’impennò in finta sorpresa, come chi in verità era abituato a essere messo in dubbio.

“Sono Re Edoardo VII”, disse, con traballante arroganza. “Dubitate della mia parola?”

“Non ne dubito minimamente”, rispose MacIan.

“E allora perché”, disse il grosso uomo dal cilindro di seta, tremando da capo a piedi, “perché tenete il cappello in testa davanti al re?”

“E perché dovrei toglierlo”, ribatté MacIan, con pari ardore, “davanti a un usurpatore?”

Turnbull si girò sui tacchi. “Beh, davvero”, disse, “pensavo che almeno tu fossi un suddito leale.”

“Sono l’unico suddito leale”, rispose il gaelico. “Per quasi trent’anni ho percorso queste isole e non ne ho trovato un altro.”

“Sei sempre difficile da seguire”, osservò Turnbull, bonariamente, “e a volte tanto da non valere quasi la pena di seguirti.”

“Io solo sono leale”, insisté MacIan; “perché io solo sono in ribellione. Sono pronto a ogni istante a restaurare gli Stuart. Sono pronto a ogni istante a sfidare la stirpe hannoveriana—e la sfido ora perfino faccia a faccia con l’effettivo sovrano dell’enorme Impero Britannico!”

E incrociando le braccia e gettando indietro il magro volto da falco, affrontò altezzosamente l’uomo dalla finanziera formale e dal gomito eccentrico.

“Che diritto avevate voi, tozzi cavalieri tedeschi”, gridò, “d’immischiarvi in una lite tra gentiluomini scozzesi e inglesi e irlandesi? Chi ha fatto di voi, i cui padri non sapevano biascicare l’inglese mentre passeggiavano a Whitehall, chi ha fatto di voi il giudice fra la repubblica di Sidney e la monarchia di Montrose? Che avevano da spartire i vostri avi con l’Inghilterra, per meritare l’immonda offerta del sangue di Derwentwater e del cuore di Jimmy Dawson? Dove sono i cadaveri di Culloden? Dov’è il sangue di Lochiel?” MacIan avanzò sul suo avversario con un dito ossuto e puntato, come a indicare la tasca esatta in cui era probabilmente custodito il sangue di quel Cameron; ed Edoardo VII arretrò di qualche passo in notevole confusione.

“Che bene ci avete mai fatto?” proseguì in accenti sempre più aspri, respingendo l’altro verso le aiuole fiorite. “Che bene avete mai fatto, voi razza di salsicce tedesche? Metri di etichetta barbarica, per strozzare la libertà dell’aristocrazia! Gas di metafisica nordica per gonfiare come palloni i vescovi della Chiesa Larga. Brutti quadri e brutte maniere e panteismo e l’Albert Memorial. Tornate ad Hannover, impostori! Andate al----”

Prima della fine di questa tirata l’arroganza del monarca aveva del tutto ceduto; s’era addirittura voltato e si allontanava rotolando giù per il sentiero. MacIan gli marciò dietro ancora predicando e agitando le sue grandi, magre mani. Gli altri due rimasero al centro del prato—Turnbull in convulsioni di risa, il lunatico in convulsioni di disgusto. Quasi nello stesso momento una terza figura venne avanti a passo svelto attraverso il prato.

La figura che avanzava camminava curva, eppure in qualche modo protendeva in avanti la barba biforcuta e stretta. Quella barba gialla accuratamente tagliata e appuntita era, in verità, la cosa più marcata di lui. Quando congiungeva le mani dietro la schiena, sotto le falde della giacca, agitava la barba contro un uomo come un grosso indice. Essa compiva quasi tutti i suoi gesti; era più importante degli scintillanti occhiali attraverso cui guardava o della bella voce belante con cui parlava. Il volto e il collo erano di un rosso gagliardo, ma magri e fibrosi; portava sempre i suoi costosi occhiali dalla montatura d’oro un po’ storti sul naso aquilino; e mostrava sempre due lucenti incisivi sotto i baffi, in un sorriso così perpetuo da guadagnargli la fama di ghigno. Se non fosse stato per gli occhiali storti, il suo abbigliamento era sempre squisito; e se non fosse stato per il sorriso, era perfettamente e perennemente depresso.

“Non pensate”, disse il nuovo venuto, con una sorta di sdegnosa supplica, “che faremmo meglio a entrare tutti a colazione? È un tale errore aspettare per la colazione. Guasta talmente l’umore.”

“Proprio così”, rispose Turnbull, con serietà.

“Pare quasi che qui ci sia stato un piccolo litigio”, disse l’uomo dalla barba caprina.

“È una storia piuttosto lunga”, disse Turnbull, sorridendo. “In origine, la si potrebbe chiamare una fase nella lite tra scienza e religione.”

Il nuovo venuto trasalì lievemente, e Turnbull rispose alla domanda sul suo volto.

“Oh, sì”, disse, “io sono la scienza!”

“Mi congratulo di cuore”, rispose l’altro, “io sono il dottor Quayle.”

Gli occhi di Turnbull non si mossero, ma egli si accorse che l’uomo dal panama aveva perduto tutta la sua disinvoltura di proprietario terriero e si era ritirato a una distanza di trenta iarde, dove stava fulminando con tutta la contrazione di paura e odio che può irrigidire un gatto.

---

MacIan sedeva alquanto sconsolato su un ceppo d’albero, la grande testa nera per metà sepolta nelle grandi mani brune, quando Turnbull gli si avvicinò a grandi passi masticando una sigaretta. Non alzò lo sguardo, ma il suo compagno e nemico lo apostrofò come chi deve liberarsi dei propri sentimenti.

“Beh, spero, in ogni caso”, disse, “che ora ti piaccia la tua preziosa religione. Spero ti piaccia la compagnia di questo povero diavolo che i tuoi maledetti opuscoli e inni e preti hanno fatto uscire di senno. Cinque uomini in questo posto, mi dicono, cinque uomini in questo posto che avrebbero potuto essere padri di famiglia, e ciascuno di loro si crede Dio Padre. Oh! puoi pure parlare della bruttezza della scienza, ma qui non c’è nessuno che si creda Protoplasma.”

“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.”

“È naturale che preferiscano una parte brillante”, disse MacIan, stancamente. “Il Protoplasma non vale la pena d’impazzirci.”

“Almeno”, disse Turnbull, ferocemente, “fu il tuo Gesù Cristo a dare inizio a tutta questa sciocchezza dell’essere Dio.”

Per un istante MacIan aprì gli occhi della battaglia; poi le sue labbra serrate presero un sorriso storto ed egli disse, con tutta calma:

“No, l’idea è più antica; fu Satana il primo a dire di essere Dio.”

“E allora qual è”, chiese Turnbull, assai lentamente, mentre coglieva pian piano un fiore, “qual è la differenza tra Cristo e Satana?”

“È molto semplice”, rispose il montanaro. “Cristo discese nell’inferno; Satana vi cadde dentro.”

“Fa poi tanta differenza?” chiese il libero pensatore.

“Fa tutta la differenza”, disse l’altro. “Uno di loro voleva salire e discese; l’altro voleva scendere e salì. Un dio può umiliarsi, un diavolo può soltanto essere umiliato.”

“Perché vuoi sempre umiliare un uomo?” chiese Turnbull, aggrottando le sopracciglia. “Mi pare poco generoso.”

“E perché volevi umiliare un dio quando lo hai trovato in questo giardino?” chiese MacIan.

“Quello era un caso estremo di impudenza”, disse Turnbull.

“Ammesse all’uomo le sue pretese onnipotenti, io penso che fosse molto modesto”, disse MacIan. “Siamo noi a essere arroganti, noi che sappiamo di essere solo uomini. L’uomo comune della strada è più un mostro di quel poveretto; perché l’uomo della strada tratta se stesso come Dio Onnipotente pur sapendo di non esserlo. Si aspetta che l’universo gli giri intorno, pur sapendo di non esserne il centro.”

“Beh”, disse Turnbull, sedendosi sull’erba, “questa è comunque una digressione. Ciò che voglio far notare è che la tua fede finisce sì nei manicomi, e la mia scienza no.”

“Non ci finisce, per Giorgio!” gridò MacIan, con disprezzo. “Ci sono alcuni uomini qui che sono pazzi di Dio e alcuni che sono pazzi della Bibbia. Ma scommetto che ce ne sono molti di più che sono semplicemente pazzi di follia.”

“Lo credi davvero?” chiese l’altro.

“A decine, direi”, rispose MacIan. “Tizi che hanno letto libri di medicina o tizi i cui padri e zii avevano qualcosa di ereditario nella testa—l’aria stessa che respirano è folle.”

“Ciò nonostante”, disse Turnbull, con acume, “scommetto che non hai trovato un pazzo di quella sorta.”

“Scommetto di sì!” gridò Evan, con insolita animazione. “Ho passato la mattinata a passeggiare per il giardino parlando con un pover’uomo. È stato semplicemente distrutto e ridotto a delirare dalla tua maledetta scienza. Parla pure del credersi Dio—ma è una fantasia vecchia, comoda, da cantuccio del focolare, in confronto al genere di cose che quest’uomo crede. Egli crede che ci sia un Dio, ma che lui sia migliore di Dio. Dice che Dio avrà paura d’affrontarlo. Dice che si progredisce sempre oltre il meglio. Mi mise il braccio sotto il mio e sussurrò al mio orecchio, come se fosse l’apocalisse: ‘Non fidarti mai di un Dio che non riesci a migliorare.’”

“Che cosa può aver voluto dire?” chiese l’ateo, con tutta la sua logica sveglia. “È ovvio che non ci si dovrebbe fidare di alcun Dio che si possa migliorare.”

“È il suo modo di parlare”, disse MacIan, quasi con indifferenza; “ma dice cose ancor più strampalate. Dice che il medico di un uomo dovrebbe decidere quale donna egli sposi; e dice che i figli non dovrebbero essere allevati dai genitori, perché una parzialità fisica finirebbe poi per distorcere il giudizio dell’educatore.”

“Oh, povero me!” disse Turnbull, ridendo, “hai certamente incontrato un bel caso disperato, e per giunta hai provato il tuo. Suppongo che qualche uomo perda davvero il senno per la scienza come per l’amore e altre cose buone.”

“E dice”, proseguì MacIan, monotono, “che non riesce a capire perché mai si debba supporre che un triangolo sia una figura a tre lati. Dice che su un piano superiore----”

Turnbull balzò in piedi come per una scossa elettrica. “Non avrei mai potuto credere”, gridò, “che tu avessi abbastanza umorismo da dire una bugia. Ti sei spinto un po’ troppo oltre, vecchio mio, con questo tuo scherzetto. Neppure in un manicomio ci può essere qualcuno che, dopo aver riflettuto sulla questione, pensi che un triangolo non abbia tre lati. Se esiste, dev’essere una nuova era nella psicologia umana. Ma non esiste.”

“Andrò a prenderlo”, disse MacIan, con calma; “ho lasciato il pover’uomo a girovagare intorno all’aiuola dei nasturzi.”

MacIan scomparve, e dopo pochi istanti tornò, trascinandosi dietro la sua scoperta tra i lunatici, che era un uomo snello dal sorriso fisso e dalla testa non fissa e ondeggiante. Aveva una barbetta caprina lunga giusto quanto bastava per essere scossa da un forte vento. Turnbull scattò in piedi e fu come chi resta senza parola per aver soffocato un improvviso scoppio di risa.

“Ma, grande asino”, tuonò, in un sussurro assordante, “quello non è affatto uno dei pazienti. Quello è uno dei medici.”

Evan ricambiò lo sguardo alla testa sogghignante dalla lunga barba a punta e ripeté la parola con aria interrogativa: “Uno dei medici?”

“Oh, sai cosa intendo”, disse Turnbull, spazientito. “Le autorità mediche del posto.”

Evan stava ancora fissando incuriosito la raggiante e barbuta creatura alle sue spalle.

“I medici dei pazzi”, disse Turnbull, seccamente.

“Proprio così”, disse MacIan.

Dopo un silenzio piuttosto inquieto, Turnbull afferrò MacIan per il gomito e lo tirò da parte.

“Per l’amor del cielo”, disse, “non offendere questo tizio; potrà anche essere matto come dieci cappellai, se vuoi, ma ci tiene tra pollice e indice. Questo è proprio il momento che aveva fissato per parlarci del nostro— beh, del nostro permesso d’uscita.”

“Ma che importanza può avere?” chiese lo stupito MacIan. “Non può tenerci nel manicomio. Non siamo pazzi.”

“Testone!” disse Turnbull, di cuore, “certo che non siamo pazzi. Certo, se ci fanno una visita medica e la cosa viene sviscerata, scopriranno che non siamo pazzi. Ma non vedi che, se la cosa viene sviscerata, significherà lettere a questa referenza e telegrammi a quell’altra; e alla prima parola su chi siamo, verremo tolti da un manicomio, dove si può fumare, per finire in una prigione, dove non si può. No, se gestiamo la faccenda con molta calma, egli potrebbe semplicemente lasciarci uscire dalla porta principale come festaioli di passaggio. Se c’è mezz’ora d’indagine, siamo cotti.”

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 one 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.

MacIan guardò l’erba corrucciato per qualche secondo, poi disse con voce nuova, sommessa e infantile: “Sono terribilmente stupido, signor Turnbull; dovete avere pazienza con me.”

Turnbull afferrò di nuovo il gomito di Evan con tutt’altro gesto. “Vieni”, gridò, con la voce aspra di chi nasconde l’emozione, “vieni, mostriamoci pieni di tatto in coro.”

Il medico dalla barba a punta la stava già inclinando in avanti a un angolo più acuto del solito, con il sorriso che esprimeva attesa.

“Spero di non mettervi fretta, signori”, disse, con la più tenue sfumatura di scherno per la loro affrettata consultazione, “ma credo che desideraste vedermi alle undici e mezza.”

“Sono terribilmente spiacente, dottore”, disse Turnbull, con pronta amabilità; “non intendevo affatto farvi aspettare; ma lo sciocco incidente che ci ha fatti finire nel vostro giardino potrebbe avere conseguenze piuttosto gravi per i nostri amici altrove, e il mio amico qui stava proprio richiamando la mia attenzione su alcune di esse.”

“Proprio così! Proprio così!” disse il medico, in fretta. “Se davvero volete esporre qualcosa, posso concedervi qualche momento nel mio studio.”

Li condusse rapidamente in un piccolo ma imponente appartamento, che pareva costruito e ammobiliato interamente in legno verniciato di rosso. C’era una scrivania occupata da carte accuratamente etichettate; e c’erano diverse sedie di legno verniciato di rosso—benché di forma diversa. Lungo tutta la parete correva qualcosa che poteva sembrare una libreria, solo che non era piena di libri, bensì di lastre piatte, oblunghe, o custodie della medesima lucida consistenza rosso scuro. Che cosa fossero quelle custodie di legno piatte, non riuscivano a immaginarlo.

Il medico si sedette con cortese impazienza sul suo trespolo professionale; MacIan rimase in piedi, ma Turnbull si gettò quasi con voluttà in una dura poltrona di legno.

“È una faccenda assurdissima, dottore”, disse, “e mi vergogno di sottrarre tempo a occupatissimi professionisti con simili scherzi venuti da fuori. Il fatto puro e semplice è che io e lui e un branco di sciocchi uomini e ragazze abbiamo organizzato un gioco per questa parte della campagna—una specie di combinazione di lepre e cani e nascondino—immagino ne abbiate sentito parlare. Noi siamo le lepri e, vedendo il vostro alto muro parere così invitante, lo scavalcammo ruzzolando, e naturalmente ci spaventammo un poco per ciò che trovammo dall’altra parte.”

“Proprio così!” disse il medico, con dolcezza. “Capisco che vi siate spaventati.”

Turnbull s’era aspettato che egli chiedesse quale luogo fosse il quartier generale del nuovo e stimolante gioco, e chi fossero gli appassionati, maschi e femmine, che l’avevano portato a tale perfezione; anzi, Turnbull era intento a inventarsi questi particolari personali e topografici. Poiché il medico non pose la domanda, egli si fece lievemente inquieto, e azzardò la domanda: “Spero accetterete la mia assicurazione che la cosa è stata un incidente e che non s’intendeva alcuna intrusione.”

“Oh, sì, signore”, rispose il medico, sorridendo, “accetto tutto ciò che dite.”

“In tal caso”, disse Turnbull, alzandosi con cordialità, “non dobbiamo interrompere oltre i vostri importanti doveri. Suppongo che ci sarà qualcuno per farci uscire?”

“No”, disse il medico, sorridendo ancora fermo e cortese, “non ci sarà nessuno per farvi uscire.”

“Possiamo allora uscire da soli?” chiese Turnbull, con una certa sorpresa.

“Ma no, certo che no”, disse lo scienziato raggiante; “pensate quanto sarebbe pericoloso in un luogo come questo.”

“E allora come diavolo dobbiamo uscire?” gridò Turnbull, perdendo le buone maniere per la prima volta.

“È una questione di tempo, di ricettività e di trattamento”, disse il medico, inarcando le sopracciglia con indifferenza. “Non considero incurabile nessuno dei vostri due casi.”

E a ciò l’uomo di mondo restò ammutolito, e, come in tutti i momenti intollerabili, la parola spettò a chi era estraneo al mondo.

MacIan fece un passo verso il tavolo, vi si sporse sopra, e disse: “Non possiamo restare qui, non siamo pazzi!”

“Non usiamo l’espressione cruda”, disse il medico, sorridendo ai suoi stivali di vernice.

“Ma non potete crederci pazzi”, tuonò MacIan. “Non ci avete mai visti prima. Non sapete nulla di noi. Non ci avete neppure esaminati.”

Il medico gettò all’indietro la testa e la barba. “Oh, sì”, disse, “molto accuratamente.”

“Ma non potete rinchiudere un uomo sulle vostre semplici impressioni, senza documenti o certificati o alcunché?”

Il medico si alzò languidamente in piedi. “Proprio così”, disse. “Dovreste senz’altro vedere i documenti.”

Attraversò verso le curiose finte scaffalature e ne trasse una delle piatte custodie di mogano. La aprì con una curiosa chiave alla catena dell’orologio e, ripiegando all’indietro un lembo, rivelò una risma di carta protocollo coperta di una scrittura fitta ma del tutto chiara. Le prime tre parole erano vergate in caratteri da quaderno di calligrafia così grandi da attirare l’occhio anche a distanza. Erano: “MacIan, Evan Stuart.”

Evan chinò il suo adirato volto d’aquila su di esse; eppure qualcosa le offuscava ed egli non avrebbe mai potuto giurare di averle viste distintamente. Vide qualcosa che cominciava: “Influenze prenatali predisponenti alla mania. Il nonno credeva nel ritorno degli Stuart. La madre portava un osso di sant’Eulalia con cui toccava i figli nelle malattie. Marcata mania religiosa in tenera età----”

Evan si ritrasse e lottò per ritrovare la parola. “Oh!” proruppe alla fine. “Oh! se solo tutto questo mondo in cui ho camminato fosse stato tanto sano quanto lo era mia madre.”

Poi si comprimeva le tempie con le mani, come per schiacciarle. E poi sollevò all’improvviso un volto che appariva fresco e giovane, come se lo avesse immerso e lavato in qualche santo pozzo.

“Molto bene”, gridò; “prenderò l’aspro col dolce. Pagherò la pena d’aver goduto di Dio in questa mostruosa terra moderna che non sa godere né dell’uomo né della bestia. Morirò felice nel vostro manicomio, solo perché so ciò che so. Sia concesso, dunque—MacIan è un mistico; MacIan è un maniaco. Ma questo onesto bottegaio e direttore che ho trascinato nelle mie disumane scorribande, lui non potete trattenerlo. Uscirà libero, grazie a Dio, lui non è annotato in nessun maledetto documento. Il suo avo, ne sono certo, non morì a Culloden. Sua madre, lo giuro, non aveva reliquie. Lasciate uscire il mio amico dalla vostra porta principale, e quanto a me----”

Il medico era già andato verso gli scaffali carichi e, dopo qualche minuto di miope scrutinio, aveva tirato giù un altro parallelogramma di legno rosso scuro.

Anche questo aprì sul tavolo e, con lo stesso infallibile occhio egoista, uno della compagnia scorse le parole, scritte a grandi lettere: “Turnbull, James.”

Fino ad allora Turnbull stesso aveva alquanto sdegnosamente rinunciato alla sua parte in tutta la faccenda; ma era troppo onesto e schietto per non trasalire al proprio nome. Dopo il nome, l’iscrizione pareva proseguire: “Caso unico di Eleuteromania. Genealogia, come tanto spesso in simili casi, prosaica e sana. I segni eleuteromaniaci comparvero però presto, inducendolo a legarsi all’individualista Bradlaugh. Recente esplosione di pura anarchia----”

Turnbull richiuse di scatto la custodia, quasi frantumandola, e disse con uno scoppio di feroce risata: “Oh! andiamo, MacIan; non m’importa poi tanto, neppure d’uscire dal manicomio, purché usciamo da questa stanza. Avevi ragione, MacIan, quando parlavi dei— dei medici dei pazzi.”

In qualche modo si ritrovarono fuori nel fresco, verde giardino, e poi, dopo un silenzio sbigottito, Turnbull disse: “C’è una cosa che mi ha lasciato perplesso per tutto il tempo, e ora la capisco.”

“Che cosa vuoi dire?” chiese Evan.

“Nessun uomo con la volontà o con l’ingegno”, rispose Turnbull, “può uscire da questo giardino; eppure noi vi entrammo semplicemente scavalcando un muro di giardino. Tutta la faccenda si spiega abbastanza facilmente. Quel muro indifeso era una trappola aperta. Era una trappola tesa per due celebri lunatici. Ci videro entrare senza fallo. E baderanno che non usciamo.”

Evan fissò il muro del giardino, gravemente, per più di un minuto, e poi annuì senza una parola.

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.”

XV. IL SOGNO DI MACIAN

Il sistema di spionaggio nel manicomio era così efficace e completo che in pratica i pazienti potevano spesso godere di un senso di quasi completa solitudine. Potevano avvicinarsi tanto al muro in un giardino all’apparenza non sorvegliato da trovar facile scavalcarlo. Si sarebbero accorti dell’errore dei loro calcoli soltanto se avessero tentato di saltare.

Sotto questa oltraggiosa libertà, in questa artificiale solitudine, Evan MacIan aveva l’abitudine di sgusciar fuori nel giardino dopo il calar del buio—specie nelle notti di luna. La luna, in verità, era per lui sempre una vera calamita in un modo alquanto difficile da spiegare a chi ha un’indole più robusta. Evidentemente Apollo è tanto poetico quanto Diana; ma non è una questione di poesia nel senso maturo e intellettuale della parola. È una questione di una certa solida e fanciullesca fantasia. Il sole, in senso stretto e letterale, è invisibile; vale a dire che coi nostri occhi corporei non può propriamente essere veduto. Ma la luna è una cosa assai più semplice; una cosa nuda e da camera di bambini. Pende nel cielo tutta solida e tutta d’argento e tutta inutile; è un’unica enorme palla di neve celeste. Furono almeno tali puerili fatti e fantasie a indurre Evan più e più volte durante la sua disumanizzata prigionia a uscire come per prendere la luna a fucilate.

Era fuori nel giardino in una di tali notti luminose e spettrali, quando il costante chiaro di luna smorzava tutti i colori del giardino finché quasi le tinte più forti visibili erano l’azzurro forte e morbido del cielo e la grande luna color limone. Egli camminava col viso rivolto in su verso di essa in quella maniera piuttosto ebete che avrebbe potuto scusare l’errore dei suoi guardiani; e mentre fissava si accorse di qualcosa di piccolo e lucente che volava vicino al lucente disco, come una scheggia luminosa staccata dalla luna. Dapprima pensò fosse un semplice scintillio o una rifrazione nella sua stessa vista; batté le palpebre e si stropicciò gli occhi. Poi pensò fosse una stella cadente; solo che non cadeva. Sussultava goffamente su e giù in un modo ignoto tra le meteore e stranamente memore delle opere dell’uomo. L’attimo dopo la cosa passò dritta attraverso la luna, e da argento su azzurro divenne all’improvviso nera su argento; poi, benché attraversasse il campo di luce in un lampo, il suo profilo era inconfondibile per quanto bizzarro. Era una nave volante.

Il vascello compì una lunga e ampia curva attraverso il cielo e venne sempre più vicino a MacIan, come una locomotiva a vapore che gira una curva. Era di puro acciaio bianco, e nella luna luccicava come l’armatura di Sir Galahad. Il paragone con tale verginità non è inappropriato; poiché, man mano che si faceva più grande e più bassa, Evan vide che l’unica figura in essa era ammantata di bianco da capo a piedi e incoronata di capelli bianchi come neve, su cui il chiaro di luna posava come una benedizione. La figura stava tanto immobile che egli avrebbe facilmente potuto supporla una statua. Anzi, la credette tale finché non parlò.

“Evan”, disse la voce, e parlò con la semplice autorità di qualche padre dimenticato che torni a visitare i figli, “sei rimasto qui abbastanza a lungo, e la tua spada è richiesta altrove.”

“Richiesta per cosa?” chiese il giovane, accettando il mostruoso evento con una strana e goffa naturalezza; “per cosa è richiesta la mia spada?”

“Per tutto ciò che ti è caro”, disse l’uomo ritto nel chiaro di luna; “per i troni dell’autorità e per ogni antica lealtà alla legge.”

Evan alzò di nuovo lo sguardo al disco lunare come in irrazionale appello— un vitello della luna che bela alla madre la luna. Ma il volto di Luna pareva sciocco quanto il suo; non v’è aiuto nella natura contro il soprannaturale; ed egli guardò di nuovo l’alta figura di marmo che avrebbe potuto essere fatta di solido chiaro di luna.

Poi disse ad alta voce: “Chi siete?” e l’attimo dopo fu preso da una sorta di soffocante terrore che alla sua domanda venisse data risposta. Ma l’ignoto serbò un impenetrabile silenzio per un lungo spazio e poi rispose soltanto: “Non devo dire chi sono fino alla fine del mondo; ma posso dire ciò che sono. Io sono la legge.”

E sollevò il capo così che la luna colpì in pieno il suo bello e antico volto.

Il volto era il volto d’un dio greco invecchiato, ma non divenuto né debole né brutto; nulla ne rompeva la regolarità tranne un mento piuttosto lungo con una fossetta in mezzo, e ciò piuttosto aggiungeva distinzione che sminuire la bellezza. I suoi occhi forti e ben aperti erano assai brillanti ma del tutto incolori come acciaio.

MacIan era uno di quelli a cui una riverenza e un’auto-sottomissione nel rituale vengono con tutta facilità, e sono cose ordinarie. Non era artificioso in lui inchinarsi lievemente a questa solenne apparizione o abbassare la voce quando disse: “Mi recate qualche messaggio?”

“Sì, ti reco un messaggio”, rispose l’uomo di luna e marmo. “Il re è tornato.”

Evan non chiese né pretese alcuna spiegazione. “Suppongo che possiate condurmi alla guerra”, disse, e la silente figura d’argento si limitò a chinare di nuovo il capo. MacIan si arrampicò nella barca d’argento, ed essa salì verso le stelle.

Dire che salì alle stelle non è mera metafora, perché il cielo s’era rischiarato in quell’occasionale e stupefacente trasparenza in cui si possono vedere distintamente sia le stelle sia la luna.

Mentre la figura vestita di bianco saliva nel suo bianco carro, disse con tutta calma a Evan: “C’è una risposta a tutta la follia che si dice sull’uguaglianza. Alcune stelle sono grandi e alcune piccole; alcune stanno immobili e altre girano loro intorno mentre esse stanno ferme. Possono essere ordinate, ma non possono essere uguali.”

“Sono tutte bellissime”, disse Evan, come in dubbio.

“Sono tutte belle”, rispose l’altro, “perché ciascuna è al suo posto e riconosce il suo superiore. E ora l’Inghilterra sarà bella allo stesso modo. La terra sarà bella come i cieli, perché i nostri re ci sono tornati.”

“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.

“Lo Stuart----” cominciò Evan, con fervore.

“Sì”, rispose il vecchio, “ciò che è tornato è Stuart e tuttavia più antico di Stuart. È Capeto e Plantageneto e Pendragon. È tutto quel buon vecchio tempo di cui narrano i proverbi, quel dorato regno di Saturno contro cui dèi e uomini furono ribelli. È tutto ciò che fu mai perduto per insolenza e travolto nella ribellione. È il tuo stesso antenato, MacIan dalla spada spezzata, che sanguina senza speranza a Culloden. È Carlo che rifiuta di rispondere alle domande della ribelle corte. È Maria dal volto magico che affronta i cupi e avidi pari e le rozze moralità di Knox. È Riccardo, l’ultimo Plantageneto, che dà la sua corona a Bolingbroke come a un comune brigante. È Artù, travolto in Lyonesse da eserciti pagani e morente nella nebbia, incerto se mai tornerà.”

“Ma ora----” disse Evan, a voce bassa.

“Ma ora!” disse il vecchio; “egli è tornato.”

“Infuria ancora la guerra?” chiese MacIan.

“Infuria come l’abisso stesso al di là del mare dove ti sto portando”, rispose l’altro. “Ma in Inghilterra il re gode di nuovo di ciò che è suo. Il popolo è di nuovo istruito e governato come è meglio; sono cavalieri felici, scudieri felici, servitori felici, servi della gleba felici, se vuoi; ma liberi finalmente da quel peso di afflizione e di solitaria vanità che veniva chiamato l’essere cittadino.”

“È davvero così sicura, l’Inghilterra?” chiese Evan.

“Guarda fuori e vedi”, disse la guida. “Credo che tu abbia già visto questo luogo.”

Filavano attraverso l’aria verso una regione del cielo dove la cavità della notte pareva più oscura e che era del tutto priva di stelle. Ma contro questo nero sfondo si ergeva, stagliata in scintillante argento, una cupola e una croce. Pareva che fosse davvero da poco ricoperta d’argento, che nel forte chiaro di luna era come bianca fiamma. Comunque, ricoperta o dipinta, Evan non ebbe difficoltà a riconoscere di nuovo il luogo. Vide la grande arteria che saliva in pendio fino alla base dell’enorme piedistallo di gradini. E si domandò se la piccola bottega fosse ancora al suo fianco e se la sua vetrina fosse stata riparata.

Mentre la nave volante girava attorno alla cupola, egli notò altre modifiche. La cupola era stata ridecorata in modo da darle una nota più solenne e alquanto più ecclesiastica; la palla era drappeggiata o distrutta, e attorno alla galleria, sotto la croce, correva ciò che sembrava un anello di statue d’argento, come le piccole immagini di piombo che stavano attorno al cappello di Luigi XI. Attorno alla seconda galleria, alla base della cupola, correva una seconda fila di tali immagini, ed Evan pensò che ve ne fosse un’altra attorno ai gradini sottostanti. Quando furono più vicini vide che erano figure in completa armatura d’acciaio o d’argento, ciascuna con una spada nuda, la punta all’insù; e poi vide una delle spade muoversi. Non erano statue ma un ordine cavalleresco in armi disposto in tre cerchi attorno alla croce. MacIan trattenne il respiro, come fanno i bambini davanti a qualcosa che ritengono del tutto bello. Poiché non riusciva a immaginare nulla che così echeggiasse le sue proprie visioni d’arte pontificale o cavalleresca come questa bianca cupola posata come un vasto diadema d’argento sopra Londra, cinta da una triplice corona di spade.

Mentre discendevano veleggiando per Ludgate Hill, Evan vide che lo stato delle strade rispondeva pienamente all’affermazione del suo compagno circa la reintroduzione dell’ordine. Tutto il vecchio trambusto in nero con la sua vivacità e volgarità da cockney era scomparso. Gruppi di operai, sobriamente ma pittorescamente vestiti, andavano su e giù in numero abbastanza cospicuo; ma bastavano pochi uomini a cavallo a tenere le strade in ordine. Gli uomini a cavallo non erano comuni poliziotti, ma cavalieri con speroni e pennacchio la cui liscia e splendida armatura scintillava come diamante più che come acciaio. Soltanto in un luogo—all’angolo di Bouverie Street—pareva esserci un momento di confusione, e ciò era dovuto alla fretta più che alla resistenza. Ma un vecchio brontolone non si tolse di mezzo abbastanza in fretta, e l’uomo a cavallo lo colpì, non con violenza, sulle spalle col piatto della sua spada.

“Il soldato non aveva diritto di farlo”, disse MacIan, aspramente. “Il vecchio si stava spostando più in fretta che poteva.”

“Attribuiamo grande importanza alla disciplina nelle strade”, disse l’uomo in bianco, con un lieve sorriso.

“La disciplina non è importante quanto la giustizia”, disse MacIan.

L’altro non rispose.

Poi, dopo uno svelto silenzio che li portò fuori attraverso St. James’s Park, egli disse: “Il popolo dev’essere educato a obbedire; deve imparare la propria ignoranza. E non sono sicuro”, proseguì, voltando le spalle a Evan e guardando fuori dalla prua della nave verso l’oscurità, “non sono sicuro di concordare con quella tua piccola massima sulla giustizia. La disciplina per l’intera società è di certo più importante della giustizia verso un individuo.”

Evan, anch’egli sporto oltre il bordo, si voltò con sorprendente subitaneità e fissò la schiena dell’altro.

“La disciplina per la società----” ripeté, molto staccato, “più importante— la giustizia verso l’individuo?”

Poi, dopo un lungo silenzio, gridò: “Chi e che cosa siete?”

“Sono un angelo”, disse la figura vestita di bianco, senza voltarsi.

“Non siete un cattolico”, disse MacIan.

L’altro parve non farci caso, ma tornò all’argomento principale.

“Nei nostri eserciti lassù in cielo impariamo a mettere una salutare paura nei subalterni.”

MacIan sedeva protendendo il collo in avanti con uno straordinario e inspiegabile fervore.

“Continuate!” gridò, intrecciando e sciogliendo le sue lunghe, ossute dita, “continuate!”

“Inoltre”, proseguì quello, alla prua, “dovete tener conto di un certo alto spirito e di una certa alterigia nel tipo superiore.”

“Continuate!” disse Evan, con occhi ardenti.

“Proprio come la vista del peccato offende Dio”, disse l’ignoto, “così la vista della bruttezza offende Apollo. Il bello e il principesco devono, per necessità, essere insofferenti verso lo squallido e----”

“Ma come, grande sciocco!” gridò MacIan, ergendosi in tutta la sua tremenda statura, “credevate che avrei dubitato soltanto per quel colpetto con una spada? So che nobili ordini hanno cattivi cavalieri, che buoni cavalieri hanno cattivo carattere, che la Chiesa ha preti rozzi e cardinali grossolani; lo so da quando sono nato. Sciocco! bastava che diceste, ‘Sì, è piuttosto una vergogna’, e avrei dimenticato la faccenda. Ma vidi sulla vostra bocca la contrazione della vostra infernale sofistica; capii che qualcosa non andava in voi e nelle vostre cattedrali. Qualcosa non va; tutto non va. Voi non siete un angelo. Quella non è una chiesa. Non è il legittimo re a essere tornato a casa.”

“Questo è spiacevole”, disse l’altro, con voce quieta ma dura, “perché state per vedere Sua Maestà.”

“No”, disse MacIan, “sto per saltare oltre il bordo.”

“Desiderate la morte?”

“No”, disse Evan, con tutta compostezza, “desidero un miracolo.”

“A chi lo chiedete? A chi vi appellate?” disse il suo compagno, severamente. “Avete tradito il re, rinnegato la sua croce sulla cattedrale e insultato un arcangelo.”

“Mi appello a Dio”, disse Evan, e balzò su e si drizzò sul bordo della nave ondeggiante.

L’essere nella prua si voltò lentamente; guardò Evan con occhi che erano come due soli, e si portò la mano alla bocca appena troppo tardi per celare un orribile sorriso.

“E come sapete”, disse, “come sapete che io non sono Dio?”

MacIan urlò. “Ah!” gridò. “Ora so chi siete davvero. Non siete Dio. Non siete uno degli angeli di Dio. Ma un tempo lo eravate.”

La mano dell’essere cadde dalla bocca ed Evan cadde giù dal carro.

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.

XVI. IL SOGNO DI TURNBULL

Turnbull passeggiava piuttosto irruento su e giù per il giardino in una sera ventosa, masticando il sigaro e in quello stato d’animo in cui ogni uomo reprime l’istinto di sputare. Non era, di regola, un uomo molto avvezzo agli umori; e le tempeste e gli squarci di sole dell’anima di MacIan gli passavano davanti come un panorama imponente ma privo di senso, simile all’anarchia dei paesaggi delle Highlands. Turnbull era uno di quegli uomini in cui un continuo appetito e un’operosità dell’intelletto lasciano le emozioni assai semplici e salde. Aveva il cuore al posto giusto; ma era ben contento di lasciarvelo. Era la testa il suo passatempo. Le sue mattine e le sue sere erano scandite non da impulsi o da desideri assetati, non da speranza o da crepacuore; erano colme delle fallacie che aveva scovato, dei problemi che aveva chiarito, delle teorie avverse con cui aveva lottato e che aveva atterrato, delle grandi generalizzazioni che aveva giustificato. Ma persino la serena vita interiore di un logico può essere sconvolta da un manicomio, per non dire delle folate di memoria di una dama nel Jersey, e il piccolo uomo dalla barba rossa, in quella sera ventosa, era in una pericolosa disposizione d’animo.

Per quanto schietto e concreto fosse, l’influsso della terra e del cielo può aver avuto su di lui più potere di quanto immaginasse; e il tempo che percorreva il mondo in quel momento era rosso e adirato quanto Turnbull. Lunghe strisce e vortici di nubi lacere e fulve erano trascinati giù verso occidente esattamente come sarebbero trascinate vesti rosse stracciate. E tanto forte e spietato era il vento che strappava via brandelli di cespugli dai fiori rossi o di faggio purpureo, e li sospingeva anch’essi attraverso il giardino, una deriva di rosse foglie, come le foglie d’autunno, quasi a parodia dei rossi cenci di nube sospinti dal vento.

C’era nella terra e nel cielo come un senso che tutto andasse in frantumi, e tutto ciò che di rivoluzionario era in Turnbull si rallegrava che andasse in frantumi. Gli alberi si sfaldavano sotto il vento, persino nell’alta forza della loro fioritura: le nubi si sfaldavano e perdevano perfino le loro grandi forme araldiche. Schegge e brandelli di nube color rame si staccavano di continuo e fluttuavano per conto proprio, e per qualche ragione l’occhio truce di Turnbull fu attratto da una di quelle nuvolette impazzite, che gli parve corresse in modo esagerato. Inoltre conservava la sua forma, cosa insolita per le nubi che si distaccano; e per giunta la sua forma era di un tipo bizzarro.

Turnbull continuò a fissarla, e dopo poco tempo si verificò quell’istante cruciale in cui una cosa, per quanto incredibile, viene accettata come un fatto. La nube color rame stava precipitando verso la terra, come un gigantesco fogliame staccato dai faggi purpurei. E man mano che si avvicinava fu evidente, primo, che non era una nube, e, secondo, che non era essa stessa del colore del rame; soltanto, essendo brunita come uno specchio, aveva riflesso i colori rosso-bruni delle nubi in fiamme. Mentre la cosa turbinava come una foglia sospinta dal vento giù verso il muro del giardino, fu chiaro che si trattava di una sorta di nave aerea fatta di metallo, che schiaffeggiava l’aria con grandi larghe pinne d’acciaio. Quando giunse a un centinaio di piedi sopra il giardino, una figura ispida e magra vi balzò in piedi, quasi nera contro il bronzo e lo scarlatto dell’occidente e, scagliando fuori una specie di gancio o d’àncora, si agganciò al verde melo proprio sotto il muro; e da quell’appiglio fisso la nave oscillava nella rossa tempesta come un pallone prigioniero.

Mentre il nostro amico restava impietrito per un istante dallo stupore, la strana figura nel carro aereo capovolse quasi del tutto il veicolo scavalcandone il bordo, parve scivolare o lasciarsi cadere lungo la fune come una scimmia, e si posò (con impossibile precisione e placidità) seduta sull’orlo del muro, oltre il quale scalciava e dondolava le gambe mentre ghignava a Turnbull. Il vento ruggiva tra gli alberi ancor più rovinoso e desolato, le rosse code del tramonto erano trascinate in basso come rossi draghi risucchiati giù verso la morte, e ancora in cima al muro del manicomio sedeva la figura sinistra dalla smorfia, agitando i piedi al ritmo della tempesta; mentre sopra di lui, all’estremità della sua fune sballottata o tesa, l’enorme nave aerea di ferro fluttuava lieve e inosservata come il palloncino di un bambino sul suo spago.

Il primo movimento di Turnbull, dopo sessanta secondi d’immobilità, fu di voltarsi e guardare l’ampio, lussureggiante parallelogramma del giardino e il lungo, basso edificio rettangolare al di là. Non c’era in vista un’anima né un fremito di vita. Ed egli ebbe una sensazione del tutto priva di senso, come se non ci fosse mai davvero stato nessun altro lì all’infuori di lui fin dalla fondazione del mondo.

Irrigidendo in sé il coraggio virile ma privo di allegria dell’ateo, si avvicinò un poco al muro e, cogliendo l’uomo sotto un’angolazione leggermente diversa della luce serale, poté vederne il volto e la figura con chiarezza. Due fatti che lo riguardavano spiccavano nei colori vividi di qualche racconto di pirati da scolaretto. Il primo era che il suo magro corpo bruno era nudo fino alla cintola dei larghi calzoni bianchi; l’altro che, per igiene, per affettazione o per qualunque altra causa, portava un fazzoletto scarlatto legato stretto ma un po’ di traverso sulla fronte. Dopo che questi due fatti si furono imposti, altri apparvero abbastanza importanti. Uno era che sotto lo straccio scarlatto i capelli erano folti, ma bianchi come per le ultime nevi della mortalità. Un altro era che sotto la zazzera di capelli bianchi e senili il volto era forte, bello e sorridente, con un profilo ben disegnato e un lungo mento fesso. La lunghezza di questa parte inferiore del viso e la strana fenditura in essa (che davano all’uomo, in tutt’altro senso da quello comune, un doppio mento) sciupavano lievemente la pretesa del volto a un’assoluta regolarità, ma lo aiutavano assai a indossare quell’espressione di arroganza a metà sorridente e a metà sprezzante con cui fissava tutte le pietre, tutti i fiori, ma soprattutto l’uomo solitario.

“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.

«Che cosa volete?» gridò Turnbull.

«Voglio voi, Jimmy» disse l’uomo eccentrico sul muro, e con quella stessa parola si era calato con un balzo al centro del prato, dove rimbalzò una volta, letteralmente come una palla di caucciù, e poi restò lì a ghignare a gambe divaricate. Gli unici tre fatti che ora Turnbull poteva aggiungere al suo inventario erano che l’uomo aveva un coltello dall’aria sinistra che gli penzolava dalla cintola dei calzoni, che i suoi piedi bruni erano nudi come il tronco e le braccia abbronzati, e che i suoi occhi avevano una singolare, gelida brillantezza che non era di alcun colore particolare.

«Scusate se non sono in abito da sera» disse il nuovo venuto con un sorriso cortese. «Noi uomini di scienza, sapete… devo far funzionare io stesso i miei motori… ingegnere elettrotecnico… un lavoro molto caldo.»

«Sentite un po’» disse Turnbull, serrando risoluto i pugni nelle tasche dei calzoni, «sono tenuto ad aspettarmi dei pazzi dentro queste quattro mura; ma mi rifiuto proprio che vengano da fuori, sbucando di colpo dalle nubi del tramonto.»

«Eppure anche voi siete venuto da fuori, Jim» disse lo straniero con voce quasi affettuosa.

«Che cosa volete?» chiese Turnbull, con un’esplosione di collera improvvisa come un colpo di pistola.

«Ve l’ho già detto» disse l’uomo, abbassando la voce e parlando con evidente sincerità; «voglio voi.»

«Che cosa volete da me?»

«Voglio esattamente ciò che volete voi» disse il nuovo venuto con rinnovata gravità. «Voglio la Rivoluzione.»

Turnbull guardò il cielo spazzato dal fuoco e i boschi flagellati dal vento, e continuò a ripetere fra sé quella parola senza voce… la parola che davvero esprimeva così pienamente il suo stato d’animo di rabbia, così com’era stato fra quelle rosse nubi e quelle cime d’albero ondeggianti. «Rivoluzione!» diceva fra sé. «La Rivoluzione… sì, è proprio questo che voglio… qualunque cosa, purché sia una Rivoluzione.»

Per qualche ragione che non seppe mai spiegare, si ritrovò a completare la frase in cima al muro, avendo seguito automaticamente lo straniero fin lassù. Ma quando lo straniero indicò in silenzio la fune che conduceva alla macchina, si ritrovò a esitare e a dire: «Non posso lasciare MacIan in questa tana.»

«Andiamo a distruggere il Papa e tutti i re» disse il nuovo venuto. «Sarebbe più saggio portarlo con noi?»

In qualche modo il borbottante Turnbull si ritrovò anch’egli nella nave volante, che si sollevò nel tramonto.

«Tutti i grandi ribelli sono stati ribelli piccolissimi» disse l’uomo dalla sciarpa rossa. «Sono stati come ragazzi di quarta che ogni tanto osano colpire un ragazzo di quinta. Ecco tutto il valore della loro Rivoluzione francese e del regicidio. I ragazzi non hanno mai osato davvero sfidare il maestro.»

«Chi intendete per il maestro?» chiese Turnbull.

«Sapete bene chi intendo» rispose lo strano uomo, mentre si adagiava all’indietro sui cuscini e guardava su, verso il cielo adirato.

Sembravano salire in una luce solare sempre più forte, come se fosse un’alba anziché un tramonto. Ma quando guardavano giù verso la terra la vedevano farsi sempre più buia. Il manicomio, nei suoi ampi terreni rettangolari, si stendeva sotto di loro in una pianta scorciata e infantile, e appariva per la prima volta la cosa grottesca che era. Ma i colori nitidi di quella pianta si facevano più cupi a ogni istante. Le masse di rose o di rododendri si incupivano dal cremisi al violetto. Il dedalo dei vialetti di ghiaia sbiadiva dall’oro al bruno. Nel tempo in cui furono saliti di qualche centinaio di piedi ancora, di quel paesaggio che si oscurava non si poteva più scorgere altro che le file delle finestre illuminate, ciascuna delle quali, almeno, era la luce di un’intelligenza perduta. Ma su di loro, mentre si slanciavano verso l’alto, parevano soffiare venti migliori e più arditi, e su di loro pareva battere la luce rubino della sera, e spruzzava come rossi zampilli dai grappoli di Dioniso. Sotto di loro le luci cadute erano letteralmente le cadute stelle della servitù. E sopra di loro tutte le rosse e furiose nubi erano come le bandiere ondeggianti della libertà.

L’uomo dal mento fesso pareva possedere un singolare potere di comprendere i pensieri; poiché, mentre Turnbull sentiva l’intero universo inclinarsi e rovesciarsi sopra la sua testa, lo straniero disse esattamente la cosa giusta.

«Non sembra che tutto stia venendo capovolto?» disse. «E una volta che tutto è capovolto, Lui sarà capovolto in cima al tutto.»

Poi, poiché Turnbull non rispose, il suo ospite continuò:

«È questa la cosa davvero magnifica dello spazio. È a rovescio. Basta arrampicarsi abbastanza in alto verso la stella del mattino per sentire che vi si sta scendendo. Basta tuffarsi abbastanza a fondo nell’abisso per sentire che si sta salendo. È l’unica gloria di questo universo: è un universo vertiginoso.»

Poi, poiché Turnbull taceva ancora, aggiunse:

«I cieli sono pieni di rivoluzione… del genere autentico di rivoluzione. Tutte le cose alte sprofondano in basso e tutte le cose grandi appaiono piccole. Tutti coloro che credono di ascendere scoprono di precipitare a capofitto. E tutti coloro che credono di degnarsi scoprono di arrampicarsi su un precipizio. È questa l’ebbrezza dello spazio. È questa l’unica gioia dell’eternità: il dubbio. C’è un solo piacere che gli angeli possano avere nel volare, ed è che non sanno se stiano sulla testa o sui talloni.»

Poi, trovando il suo compagno ancora muto, cadde egli stesso in una meditazione sorridente e immobile, al termine della quale disse d’un tratto:

«Così MacIan vi ha convertito?»

Turnbull balzò in piedi come respingendo da sotto i piedi il carro d’acciaio. «Convertito me!» gridò. «Che diavolo intendete? Lo conosco da un mese, e non ho ritrattato una sola…»

«Questo cattolicesimo è una cosa curiosa» disse l’uomo dal mento fesso in ininterrotta riflessività, appoggiando gli eleganti gomiti sull’orlo del vascello; «impregna e indebolisce gli uomini senza che se ne accorgano, proprio come temo abbia impregnato e indebolito voi.»

Turnbull stava in un atteggiamento che ben avrebbe potuto significare l’intenzione di scaraventare l’altro fuori dalla nave volante.

“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.”

«Sono un ateo» disse, con voce soffocata. «Sono sempre stato un ateo. Sono ancora un ateo.» Poi, rivolgendosi alla schiena indolente e indifferente dell’altro, gridò: «In nome di Dio, che cosa intendete?»

E l’altro rispose senza voltarsi:

«Non intendo nulla in nome di Dio.»

Turnbull sputò oltre l’orlo del carro e si lasciò ricadere furioso al suo posto.

L’altro continuava imperturbabile, e fissava oltre il bordo con la stessa oziosità con cui un pescatore fissa giù una corrente.

«La verità è che non pensavamo che poteste esser preso» disse; «contavamo su di voi come sull’unico rivoluzionario incandescente rimasto al mondo. Ma, certo, questi uomini come MacIan sono terribilmente astuti, specialmente quando fingono di essere stupidi.»

Turnbull balzò di nuovo in piedi in un furore vivo e gridò: «Che cosa ho a che fare io con MacIan? Credo tutto ciò che ho sempre creduto, e non credo a tutto ciò a cui non ho mai creduto. Che cosa significa tutto questo, e che cosa volete da me qui?»

Allora per la prima volta l’altro si sollevò dall’orlo del carro e gli si volse in faccia.

«Vi ho portato qui» rispose «a prender parte all’ultima guerra del mondo.»

«L’ultima guerra!» ripeté Turnbull, che persino nel suo stato stordito era un po’ suscettibile su un simile dogma; «come sapete che sarà l’ultima?»

L’uomo si riadagiò nel suo atteggiamento riposato, e disse:

«È l’ultima guerra, perché se non guarisce il mondo per sempre, lo distruggerà.»

«Che cosa intendete?»

«Intendo soltanto ciò che intendete voi» rispose lo sconosciuto con voce temperata. «Che cosa intendevate sempre in quel milione e una notte in cui camminavate fuori dalla vostra bottega di Ludgate Hill e scuotevate la mano nell’aria?»

«Continuo a non capire» disse Turnbull, ostinato.

«Capirete presto» disse l’altro, e piegò bruscamente verso il basso una maniglia di ferro della sua enorme macchina. Il motore si arrestò, si chinò e si tuffò quasi con la stessa deliberatezza di un uomo che fa il bagno; nella loro corsa verso il basso passarono a meno di cinquanta iarde da una grossa mole di pietra che Turnbull conosceva fin troppo bene. L’ultima rossa collera del tramonto era spenta; la cupola del cielo era buia; le corsie di luce guizzante nelle strade sottostanti rischiaravano a stento la base dell’edificio. Ma egli vide che era la cattedrale di San Paolo, e vide che sulla sua sommità la palla stava ancora ritta, ma la croce era stata colpita e s’era piegata di lato. Solo allora si curò di guardare giù nelle strade, e vide che erano infiammate di tumulto e di passioni ondeggianti.

«Arriviamo in un momento felice» disse l’uomo che governava la nave. «Gli insorti stanno bombardando la città, e una palla di cannone ha appena colpito la croce. Molti degli insorti sono gente semplice, e naturalmente lo considerano un lieto presagio.»

«Proprio così» disse Turnbull, con voce piuttosto incolore.

«Sì» replicò l’altro. «Pensavo che sareste stato lieto di veder esaudita la vostra preghiera. Naturalmente mi scuso per la parola preghiera.»

«Non fa niente» disse Turnbull.

La nave volante era scesa lungo una sorta di curva, e ora risaliva. Più in alto e più in alto saliva, più ampie e più ampie si facevano le scene di fiamma e di desolazione sottostanti.

Ludgate Hill era in effetti un’altura non conquistata e relativamente tranquilla, alterata soltanto dalla sorprendente coincidenza della croce caduta di traverso. Tutte le altre strade su ogni lato di quella collina erano piene della pulsazione e della pena della battaglia, piene di torce tremolanti e di volti urlanti. Quando alfine furono saliti abbastanza in alto da avere una veduta a volo d’uccello dell’intera campagna, Turnbull era già inebriato. Aveva fiutato la polvere da sparo, che era l’incenso della sua stessa religione rivoluzionaria.

«Il popolo si è davvero sollevato?» chiese, col fiato mozzo. «Per che cosa combattono?»

«Il programma è piuttosto elaborato» disse il suo anfitrione con una certa indifferenza. «Credo che l’abbia steso il dottor Hertz.»

Turnbull corrugò la fronte. «Sono tutti i poveri con la Rivoluzione?» chiese.

L’altro scrollò le spalle. «Tutta la parte istruita e dotata di coscienza di classe, senza eccezione» rispose. «C’erano certamente alcuni quartieri; anzi, stiamo passando proprio ora sopra di essi…»

Turnbull guardò giù e vide che il carro lucido era letteralmente illuminato dal basso dai fuochi lanciati lontano da sotto. Sotto, interi isolati e solidi quartieri erano in fiamme, come praterie o foreste in fuoco.

«Il dottor Hertz ha convinto tutti» disse il cicerone di Turnbull con voce suadente, «che con i veri bassifondi non si può davvero far nulla. La sua celebre massima è stata pienamente adottata. Intendo le tre celebri frasi: ‘Nessun uomo dovrebbe essere disoccupato. Impiegate gli impiegabili. Distruggete gli inimpiegabili.’»

Vi fu un silenzio, e poi Turnbull disse con voce piuttosto tesa: «E devo intendere che questa buona opera è in corso qui sotto?»

«Procede splendidamente» replicò il suo compagno con la voce più cordiale. «Vedete, questa gente era troppo stanca e debole persino per unirsi alla guerra sociale. Erano un vero e proprio ostacolo ad essa.»

«E così li state semplicemente bruciando via?»

«Sembra assurdamente semplice» disse l’uomo, con un sorriso radioso, «quando si pensa a tutto l’affanno e le chiacchiere sull’aiutare una disperata popolazione di schiavi, mentre il futuro ovviamente non faceva che implorare di esserne sbarazzato. Ci sono felici bimbi non ancora nati pronti a sfondare le porte quando questi rimbambiti saranno spazzati via.»

«Mi permettete di dire» disse Turnbull, dopo aver riflettuto, «che tutto questo non mi piace?»

«E mi permettete di dire» disse l’altro, di scatto, «che a me non piace il signor Evan MacIan?»

Con una certa sorpresa di chi parlava, ciò non infiammò il sensibile scettico; egli ebbe l’aria di riflettere a fondo, e poi disse: «No, non credo sia stato il mio amico MacIan a insegnarmelo. Credo che avrei sempre detto che questo non mi piace. Questa gente ha dei diritti.»

«Diritti!» ripeté lo sconosciuto in un tono del tutto indescrivibile. Poi aggiunse con un ghigno più aperto: «Forse hanno anche un’anima.»

“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 one 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.

«Hanno delle vite!» disse Turnbull, severo; «e per me questo basta. Mi era parso di capire che consideraste la vita sacra.»

«Sì, certo!» esclamò il suo mentore con una sorta di animazione idealistica. «Sì, certo! La Vita è sacra… ma le vite non sono sacre. Miglioriamo la Vita eliminando delle vite. Voi, da libero pensatore, sapete trovarci qualche difetto?»

«Sì,» disse Turnbull con concisione.

«Eppure applaudite il tirannicidio,» disse lo straniero con gaiezza razionalistica. «Che incoerenza! In fondo si riduce a questo: approvate che si tolga la vita a coloro per i quali essa è un trionfo e un piacere. Ma non volete togliere la vita a coloro per i quali essa è un peso e una fatica.»

Turnbull si alzò in piedi nella vettura con notevole ponderatezza, ma il suo volto pareva stranamente pallido. L’altro proseguì con entusiasmo.

«La Vita, sì, la Vita è davvero sacra!» gridò; «ma vite nuove per vite vecchie! Vite buone per vite cattive! In quel medesimo luogo dove ora giace disteso un ubriaco buono a nulla, un artista da marciapiede più o meno bramoso d’esser morto… in quel medesimo punto vi saranno in futuro quadri viventi; vi saranno fanciulle e fanciulli d’oro che balzeranno nel sole.»

Turnbull, ancora in piedi, dischiuse le labbra. «Volete farmi scendere, per favore?» disse, del tutto tranquillo, come chi ferma un omnibus.

«Farvi scendere… che intendete?» gridò il suo capo. «Vi sto portando al fronte della guerra rivoluzionaria, dove sarete uno dei primi capi rivoluzionari.»

«Vi ringrazio,» rispose Turnbull con la medesima penosa costrizione. «Ho sentito parlare della vostra guerra rivoluzionaria, e credo tutto sommato che preferirei trovarmi in qualunque altro luogo.»

«Volete forse essere condotto in un monastero,» ringhiò l’altro, «con MacIan e le sue Madonne che ammiccano?»

«Voglio essere condotto in un manicomio,» disse Turnbull distintamente, dando l’indicazione con una sorta di precisione. «Voglio tornare esattamente allo stesso manicomio da cui sono venuto.»

«Perché?» chiese lo sconosciuto.

«Perché voglio un po’ di compagnia sana e salubre,» rispose Turnbull.

Vi fu un lungo e singolare silenzio, e poi l’uomo che guidava la macchina volante disse con la massima freddezza: «Non vi riporterò indietro.»

E allora Turnbull disse con eguale freddezza: «Allora salterò giù dalla vettura.»

Lo sconosciuto si levò in tutta la sua statura, e l’espressione dei suoi occhi pareva fatta di ironie dietro ironie, come due specchi che si riflettono infinitamente l’un l’altro. Alla fine disse, molto gravemente: «Credete che io sia il diavolo?»

«Sì,» disse Turnbull, con violenza. «Perché io credo che il diavolo sia un sogno, e così siete voi. Non credo in voi né nella vostra nave volante né nella vostra ultima battaglia del mondo. È tutto un incubo. Dico come fatto di dogma e di fede che è tutto un incubo. E sarò martire della mia fede non meno di santa Caterina, perché salterò giù da questa nave e correrò il rischio di svegliarmi sano e salvo nel mio letto.»

Dopo aver oscillato due volte col vascello oscillante, si tuffò oltre il bordo come ci si tuffa nel mare. Per alcuni istanti incredibili stelle e spazio e pianeti parvero sfrecciargli accanto verso l’alto come volano in alto le scintille; eppure in quella discesa nauseante era colmo di una felicità innaturale. Non riusciva a collegarla ad alcuna idea, tranne una che gli sfuggiva a metà… ciò che Evan aveva detto della differenza tra Christ e Satan; che fu per libera scelta di Christ che Egli discese all’inferno.

Quando tornò a percepire qualcosa, giaceva sul gomito sul prato del manicomio, e l’ultimo rosso del tramonto non era ancora scomparso.

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.

XVII. L’IDIOTA

Evan MacIan se ne stava a pochi metri di distanza, guardandolo in assoluto silenzio.

Non ebbe il coraggio morale di chiedere a MacIan se ci fosse stato qualcosa di sbalorditivo nel modo in cui era giunto lì, né MacIan pareva avere alcuna domanda da fare, o forse alcun bisogno di farla. I due uomini si mossero lentamente l’uno verso l’altro, e trovarono la medesima espressione sul volto l’uno dell’altro. Poi, per la prima volta in tutta la loro conoscenza, si strinsero la mano.

Quasi fosse una sorta di segnale inconscio, ciò fece sbucare il dottor Quayle da una porta e attraversare di corsa il prato.

«Oh, eccovi qui!» esclamò con una risatina di sollievo. «Volete entrare, per favore? Desidero parlare con entrambi.»

Lo seguirono nel suo lindo ufficio di legno lucido dove era custodito il loro registro accusatore. Il dottor Quayle si sedette su una sedia girevole e si voltò verso di loro. Il suo sorriso scolpito era d’un tratto scomparso.

«Sarò franco con voi, signori» disse, bruscamente; «sapete benissimo che qui facciamo del nostro meglio per tutti. I vostri casi sono stati oggetto di particolare considerazione, e il Direttore in persona ha deciso che dovreste essere trattati in modo speciale e… ehm… in condizioni alquanto più semplici.»

«Trattati peggio, suppongo» disse Turnbull, burbero.

Il dottore non rispose, e MacIan disse: «Me l’aspettavo.» I suoi occhi avevano cominciato a brillare.

Il dottore rispose, guardando la scrivania e giocherellando con una chiave: «Ebbene, in certi casi che destano inquietudine… è spesso meglio…»

«Destano inquietudine» disse Turnbull, con foga. «Al diavolo la vostra sfacciataggine! Che cosa intendete? Rinchiudete due uomini perfettamente sani in un manicomio perché avete inventato una parola lunga. Loro la prendono di buon umore, passeggiano e discorrono nel vostro giardino come monaci che abbiano trovato una vocazione, sono cortesi persino con voi, brutto galoppino da speziali! Si comportano non solo più sensatamente di qualunque vostro paziente, ma più sensatamente della metà dei sani là fuori, e voi avete la faccia tosta, soffocante per l’anima, di dire che destano inquietudine.»

«Il capo del manicomio ha deciso tutto» disse il dottor Quayle, sempre guardando in giù.

MacIan fece uno dei suoi immensi passi in avanti e si ergette sopra il dottore con occhi fiammeggianti.

«Se il capo ha deciso, che sia il capo ad annunciarlo» disse. «Non lo accetterò da voi. Vi credo un basso, farneticante degenerato. Portateci a vedere il capo del manicomio.»

«Vedere il capo del manicomio» ripeté il dottor Quayle. «Assolutamente no.»

L’alto montanaro, chinandosi su di lui, gli posò una mano sulla spalla con paterno interesse.

«Non pare che apprezziate i particolari vantaggi della mia posizione di pazzo» disse. «Potrei uccidervi con la mano sinistra prima che un topo come voi riesca anche solo a squittire. E non verrei impiccato per questo.»

«Concordo senz’altro col signor MacIan» disse Turnbull con sobrietà e perfetta compostezza, «che fareste meglio a lasciarci vedere il capo dell’istituto.»

Il dottor Quayle si alzò in piedi in un misto di improvvisa isteria e goffa presenza di spirito.

«Oh, certamente» disse con una debole risata. «Potete vedere il capo del manicomio se proprio lo desiderate.» Corse quasi fuori dalla stanza, e i due lo seguirono spediti sulle falde svolazzanti della sua giacca. Bussò a una comune porta verniciata nel corridoio. Quando una voce disse «Avanti», il respiro di MacIan gli tornò sibilando fra i denti nel petto. Turnbull fu più impetuoso, e aprì la porta.

Era una stanza ordinata e ben arredata, interamente rivestita di una biblioteca medica. All’altra estremità c’era una scrivania massiccia e lucida con sopra una lampada a incandescenza, la cui luce bastava appena a mostrare una figura snella e ben educata in un comune abito nero medico a redingote, la cui testa, tutta inargentata dall’età, era china su ordinate pile di appunti. Questo signore alzò lo sguardo per un istante mentre entravano, e la luce della lampada cadde sui suoi occhiali scintillanti e sul suo lungo volto ben rasato… un volto che sarebbe stato semplicemente simile a quello di un aristocratico se non fosse che un certo portamento leonino della testa e la lunga fenditura nel mento lo facevano somigliare piuttosto a quello di un attore assai bello. Fu solo per un lampo che il suo viso si sollevò così. Poi chinò di nuovo la testa d’argento sui suoi appunti, e disse, senza più alzare lo sguardo:

«Vi ho detto, dottor Quayle, che questi uomini dovevano andare nelle celle B e C.»

Turnbull e MacIan si guardarono, e dissero più di quanto avrebbero mai potuto dire con la lingua o con la spada. Fra le altre cose, dissero che a quel particolare Capo dell’istituto era uno spreco di tempo appellarsi, e seguirono il dottor Quayle fuori dalla stanza.

Nell’istante in cui misero piede nel corridoio, quattro robuste figure sbucarono da quattro lati, li immobilizzarono e li spinsero lungo le gallerie. Molto probabilmente avrebbero potuto scaraventare i loro catturatori a destra e a sinistra, se fossero stati inclini a resistere, ma per qualche ragione senza nome erano piuttosto inclini a ridere. Un misto di folle ironia e di puerile curiosità li faceva sentire assai disposti a vedere quale nuova piega avrebbe preso la loro imbecille sorte. Furono trascinati giù per innumerevoli fredde corsie rivestite di piastrelle smaltate, diverse solo per essere di lunghezze diverse e disposte ad angoli diversi. Erano così tante e così monotone che tornare indietro per esse sarebbe stato assai più arduo che fuggire dal labirinto di Hampton Court. Solo il fatto che le finestre si facevano più rade, ricorrendo a intervalli più lunghi, e il fatto che quando le finestre comparivano parevano adombrate e lasciavano entrare meno luce, mostravano che stavano avvolgendosi verso il nucleo o il ventre di qualche enorme edificio. Dopo un po’ di tempo i corridoi smaltati cominciarono a essere illuminati dall’elettricità.

Alfine, quando ebbero camminato quasi un miglio in quei bianchi e lucidi tunnel, giunsero con un vero e proprio urto alla futile finalità di un vicolo cieco. Tutto quel bianco e sfibrante viaggio terminava d’un tratto in uno spazio oblungo e in una nuda parete bianca. Ma nella parete bianca c’erano due porte di ferro dipinte di bianco su cui erano scritte, rispettivamente, in nitide maiuscole nere, B e 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.

«Voi entrate qui, signore» disse il capo dei funzionari, con tutto rispetto, «e voi qui.»

Ma prima che le porte si fossero richiuse con fragore sulle loro vittime stordite, MacIan era riuscito a dire a Turnbull con uno strano strascico di significato: «Mi domando chi sia A.»

Turnbull oppose una lotta automatica prima di lasciarsi gettare nella cella. Accadde così che fu l’ultimo a entrare, e rimase ancora colmo dell’esaltazione dell’avventura per almeno cinque minuti dopo che l’eco della porta sbattuta si fu spenta.

Poi, quando il silenzio fu calato profondo e per due ore e mezza non accadde nulla, gli venne d’un tratto in mente che quella era la fine della sua vita. Era nascosto e sigillato in quella piccola fessura di pietra finché la carne non gli fosse caduta dalle ossa. Era morto, e il mondo aveva vinto.

La sua cella era di forma oblunga, ma molto lunga rispetto alla sua larghezza. Era appena larga abbastanza da permettere di distendere del tutto le braccia con i manubri, che erano appesi alla parete di sinistra, assai polverosi. Era, tuttavia, lunga abbastanza perché un uomo potesse percorrere un trentacinquesimo di miglio se la attraversava per intero. Sullo stesso principio, una fila di fori fissi, assai ravvicinati, lasciavano entrare nelle celle attraverso tubi quella che si diceva fosse l’aria più fresca. Poiché questi grandi organizzatori scientifici insistevano che un uomo dovesse essere sano anche se era infelice. Gli fornivano una passeggiata lunga abbastanza da dargli esercizio e fori grandi abbastanza da dargli ossigeno. Lì il loro interesse per la natura umana cessava di colpo. Pareva non fosse mai venuto loro in mente che il beneficio dell’esercizio appartiene in parte al beneficio della libertà. Non avevano preso in considerazione il fatto che l’aria aperta è solo uno dei vantaggi del cielo aperto. Somministravano aria in segreto, ma in dosi sufficienti, come se fosse una medicina. Suggerivano di camminare, come se nessun uomo si fosse mai sentito incline a camminare. Soprattutto, le autorità del manicomio insistevano sulla propria straordinaria pulizia. Ogni mattina, mentre Turnbull era ancora mezzo addormentato sul suo lettino di ferro, che era sollevato a metà della parete e ad essa serrato con ferro, quattro chiuse o bocche metalliche si aprivano sopra di lui ai quattro angoli della camera e la lavavano candida da ogni contaminazione. La solitaria anima di Turnbull insorgeva contro quella nauseante solennità quotidiana.

«Sono sepolto vivo!» gridava, amaramente; «mi hanno nascosto sotto le montagne. Resterò qui finché non marcirò. Che diavolo può importar loro se sono sporco o pulito.»

Ogni mattina e ogni sera uno sportello di ferro si apriva nella sua cella oblunga, e una o due mani brune e pelose vi spingevano dentro un piatto di lenticchie perfettamente cotte e una grande ciotola di cacao. Non era nutrito troppo poco, così come non gli era negato l’esercizio o l’ossigeno. Aveva ampio spazio per camminare, aria in abbondanza, cibo abbondante e persino saziante. L’unica obiezione era che non aveva nulla verso cui camminare, nulla di cui far festa, e nessuna ragione al mondo per trarre il respiro della vita.

Persino la forma della sua cella lo irritava in modo particolare. Era un lungo, stretto parallelogramma, che aveva una parete piatta a un’estremità e avrebbe dovuto averne una piatta anche all’altra; ma quell’estremità era interrotta da un cuneo o angolo di spazio, come la prua di una nave. Dopo tre giorni di silenzio e di cacao, quell’angolo all’estremità cominciò a mandare Turnbull in bestia. Lo faceva impazzire pensare che due linee si congiungessero e puntassero verso il nulla. Dopo il quinto giorno divenne temerario, e cacciò la testa nell’angolo. Dopo venticinque giorni per poco non vi si spaccò la testa. Poi tornò del tutto freddo e ottuso, e cominciò a esaminarlo come una sorta di Robinson Crusoe.

Quasi inconsciamente era suo istinto esaminare le vie d’uscita, e si ritrovò a prestare particolare attenzione alla fila di fori che lasciavano entrare l’aria nella sua ultima dimora di vita. Scoprì presto che questi fori d’aria erano tutti le estremità e le bocche di lunghi tubi di piombo che senza dubbio portavano aria da qualche remota stazione balneare presso Margate. Una sera, mentre era impegnato nella quinta indagine, notò qualcosa come un crepuscolo in una di quelle bocche mute, in confronto all’oscurità delle altre. Spingendovi dentro il dito fin dove poté, trovò un foro e un lembo sporgente nel tubo. Questo lo lacerò aprendolo, e all’istante vide una luce dietro; era per lo meno certo che aveva urtato qualche altra cella.

È caratteristica di tutte le cose oggi chiamate “efficienti”, il che significa meccaniche e calcolate, che se vanno storte, vanno storte del tutto. Non v’è alcun potere di rimediare a una sconfitta, come negli organismi più semplici e più vivi. Un cannone potente può vincere un elefante potente, ma un elefante ferito può facilmente vincere un cannone rotto. Così la monarchia prussiana nel diciottesimo secolo, o anche oggi, può creare un esercito potente semplicemente rendendo gli uomini spaventati. Ma lo fa con la permanente possibilità che gli uomini possano un giorno aver più paura dei loro nemici che dei loro ufficiali. Così le fognature nelle nostre città, finché sono del tutto salde, significano una sicurezza generale, ma se c’è una sola falla significano veleno concentrato… un’esplosione di germi mortali come dinamite, uno spirito di fetore. Così, in verità, tutto quell’eccellente macchinario che è la cosa più veloce sulla terra nel risparmiare fatica umana è anche la cosa più lenta sulla terra nel resistere all’interferenza umana. Può essere più facile ottenere cioccolato per nulla da un bottegaio che da una macchina automatica. Ma se riuscivate a rubare il cioccolato, la macchina automatica avrebbe molte meno probabilità di corrervi dietro.

Turnbull non tardò a scoprire questa verità in rapporto al freddo e colossale macchinario di quel grande manicomio. Era stato scosso da molti stati spirituali fin dall’istante in cui era stato scaraventato a capofitto in quella cella privata che doveva essere la sua stanza privata fino alla morte. Aveva provato un alto accesso di orgoglio e di poesia, che si era ritirato lasciandolo mortalmente freddo. Aveva conosciuto un periodo di mera curiosità scientifica, nel corso del quale esaminò tutte le piastrelle della sua cella, con la gratificante conclusione che erano tutte della medesima forma e grandezza; ma rimase assai perplesso riguardo all’angolo nella parete all’estremità, e anche riguardo a un piolo o punta di ferro che sporgeva dalla parete, il cui scopo egli non conosce fino a questo giorno. Poi ebbe un periodo di pura follia, che non può essere descritto da uomini perbene, ma solo da quei pochi sudici romanzieri aizzati dal cacciatore infernale a dar la caccia e a umiliare la natura umana. Anche questo passò, ma lasciò dietro di sé un febbrile disgusto per molti dei semplici oggetti che lo circondavano. A lungo dopo essere tornato alla ragione e a quella disperata giovialità che un uomo potrebbe avere su un’isola deserta, gli erano invisi i regolari quadrati del disegno della parete e del pavimento e il triangolo che terminava il suo corridoio. Soprattutto, provava un odio, profondo come l’inferno in cui non credeva, per l’inutile piolo di ferro nella parete.

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.

Ma in tutti i suoi umori, sani o folli, intolleranti o stoici, egli non dubitò mai davvero di questo: che la macchina lo tenesse tanto lievemente e tanto disperatamente quanto lo aveva tenuto fin dalla nascita il disperato cosmo del suo stesso credo. Conosceva bene le spietate e inesauribili risorse della nostra civiltà scientifica. Non si aspettava un soccorso da un certificato medico più di quanto se ne aspettasse dal sistema solare. In molti dei suoi umori alla Robinson Crusoe pensava con affetto a MacIan come a qualche litigioso compagno di scuola morto da tempo. Pensava di lasciare nella cella, alla sua morte, un rigido resoconto delle sue opinioni, e quando cominciò a scriverle su ritagli di busta che aveva in tasca, si stupì di scoprire quanto fossero cambiate. Poi ricordò la Torre di Beauchamp, e tentò di scrivere il suo ardente scetticismo sulla parete, e scoprì che era tutto piastrelle lucide su cui non si poteva né disegnare né incidere nulla. Poi per un istante gli si sospese e s’infranse sopra come un’alta ondata tutto l’orrore della prigionia scientifica, che riesce a negare a un uomo non solo la libertà, ma ogni casuale conforto della schiavitù. Nelle vecchie sudicie segrete gli uomini potevano incidere le loro preghiere o le loro proteste nella roccia. Qui le pareti bianche e sdrucciolevoli sfuggivano persino al recare testimonianza. I vecchi prigionieri potevano farsi un cucciolo di un topo o di uno scarabeo sbucato da un buco. Qui le pareti impenetrabili erano lavate ogni mattina da una chiusa automatica. Non v’era corruzione naturale né alcun misericordioso decadimento per cui una cosa vivente potesse entrare. Allora James Turnbull alzò lo sguardo e vide l’alta, invincibile odiosità della società in cui viveva, e vide l’odiosità di qualcos’altro ancora, che ripeteva a sé stesso ancora e ancora non essere il cosmo in cui credeva. Ma per tutto il tempo non aveva mai dubitato neppure una volta che i cinque lati della sua cella fossero per lui, d’ora in avanti, la parete del mondo, e provò uno shock di sorpresa persino nello scoprire la debole luce attraverso l’apertura nel tubo di ventilazione. Ma aveva dimenticato quanto strettamente l’efficienza debba stipare ogni cosa insieme e quanto facilmente, perciò, un tubo qua o là possa perdere.

Turnbull spinse il primo dito giù per l’apertura, e alfine riuscì a produrre una lieve ulteriore fenditura nella tubatura. La luce che saliva dall’aldilà era assai debole, e apparentemente indiretta; pareva cadere da qualche foro o finestra più in alto. Mentre stringeva l’occhio per scrutare quel grigio e untuoso crepuscolo, si stupì di veder scendere dall’alto verso il tubo rotto un altro dito umano, assai lungo e magro, e agganciarlo a qualcosa di più in alto. L’apertura illuminata fu bruscamente annerita e ostruita, presumibilmente da un volto e da una bocca, poiché qualcosa di umano parlò giù per il tubo, benché le parole non fossero chiare.

«Chi è là?» chiese Turnbull, tremando per l’eccitazione, eppure guardingo e ben deciso a non guastare alcuna possibilità.

Dopo qualche suono indistinto la voce scese con un forte accento dell’Argyllshire:

«Senti un po’, Turnbull, non potremmo batterci attraverso questo tubo, che ne dici?»

Sentimenti al di là della parola sorsero in Turnbull e lo ammutolirono per un tratto giusto abbastanza lungo da essere doloroso. Poi disse con la sua antica allegria: «Propongo di parlare un po’ prima; non voglio assassinare il primo uomo che incontro dopo dieci milioni di anni.»

«So cosa vuoi dire» rispose l’altro. «È stato spaventoso. Per un mese mortale sono stato solo con Dio.»

Turnbull trasalì, e gli fu sulla punta della lingua rispondere: «Solo con Dio! Allora non sai che cosa sia la solitudine.»

Ma alla fine rispose, nel suo antico stile di sfida: «Solo con Dio, eri? E suppongo che tu abbia trovato la compagnia di Sua Maestà piuttosto monotona?»

«Oh, no» disse MacIan, e la sua voce rabbrividì; «è stata fin troppo emozionante.»

Dopo un silenzio assai lungo la voce di MacIan disse: «Che cosa odi davvero di più nel tuo posto?»

«Penseresti che sia davvero pazzo se te lo dicessi» rispose Turnbull, amaramente.

«Allora m’aspetto sia la stessa cosa che odio io» disse l’altra voce.

«Sono sicuro che non è la stessa di nessun altro» disse Turnbull, «perché non ha né capo né coda. Forse il mio cervello se n’è andato davvero, ma detesto quella punta di ferro nella parete di sinistra più della maledetta desolazione o del maledetto cacao. Ne hai una nella tua cella?»

«Non più» rispose MacIan con serenità. «L’ho tirata via.»

Il suo compagno di prigionia poté soltanto ripetere le parole.

«L’ho tirata via l’altro giorno, quando ero fuori di senno» continuò la tranquilla voce delle Highlands. «Sembrava così superflua.»

«Devi essere spaventosamente forte» disse Turnbull.

«Lo si è, quando si è pazzi» fu la noncurante risposta, «e s’era un po’ allentata nel suo alloggiamento. Persino ora che l’ho tirata fuori non riesco a scoprire a che cosa servisse. Ma ho scoperto una cosa molto più buffa.»

«Che cosa vuoi dire?» chiese Turnbull.

«Ho scoperto dov’è A» disse l’altro.

Tre settimane dopo MacIan era riuscito ad aprire comunicazioni che rendevano chiaro il suo significato. A quel tempo i due prigionieri avevano pienamente scoperto e dimostrato quella debolezza nella natura stessa del macchinario moderno cui abbiamo già accennato. Il fatto stesso che fossero isolati da ogni compagno significava che erano liberi da ogni spia, e poiché non c’erano carcerieri da corrompere, così non ce n’erano da beffare. Il macchinario portava loro il cacao e puliva le loro celle; quel macchinario era tanto impotente quanto spietato. Un po’ di paziente violenza, condotta giorno dopo giorno tra un continuo scambio di suggerimenti, aprì un foro irregolare nella parete, abbastanza grande da lasciar passare un piccolo uomo, nel punto esatto dove prima c’erano stati i minuscoli fori di ventilazione. Turnbull ruzzolò in qualche modo nell’appartamento di MacIan, e la sua prima occhiata scoprì che la punta di ferro era davvero divelta dal suo alloggiamento, e lasciava, per giunta, un altro foro frastagliato in qualche cavità dietro. Ma a parte questo, la cella di MacIan era il duplicato di quella di Turnbull: un lungo rettangolo che terminava in un cuneo e rivestito di piastrelle fredde e lucenti. Il piccolo foro da cui il piolo era stato rimosso si trovava in quella corta parete obliqua all’estremità più vicina a quella di Turnbull. Costui lo guardava con volto perplesso.

“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.”

«Che cosa c’è là dentro?» chiese.

MacIan rispose brevemente: «Un’altra cella.»

«Ma dove può essere la sua porta?» disse il compagno, ancor più perplesso; «le porte delle nostre celle sono all’altra estremità.»

«Non ha porta» disse Evan.

Nella pausa di perplessità che seguì, una sensazione strana e sinistra strisciò sull’ostinata anima di Turnbull suo malgrado. L’idea della stanza senza porta lo agghiacciò con quel senso di curiosità mezza ebete che si ha quando qualcosa di orribile è compreso a metà.

«James Turnbull» disse MacIan, con voce bassa e scossa, «questa gente ci odia più di quanto Nerone odiasse i cristiani, e ci teme più di quanto qualsiasi uomo temesse Nerone. Hanno riempito l’Inghilterra di frenesia e di cavalcate per catturarci e cancellarci… per ucciderci. E ci hanno uccisi, poiché tu e io abbiamo soltanto fatto un buco nelle nostre bare. Ma sebbene questo odio che hanno provato per noi sia più grande di quello che provarono per Bonaparte, e più concreto e pratico di quello che proverebbero per Jack lo Squartatore, pure non siamo noi che la gente di questo luogo odia di più.»

Una fredda e tremante impazienza continuava a strisciar su per la spina dorsale di Turnbull; non si era mai sentito così vicino alla superstizione e al soprannaturalismo, e non era nemmeno un bel genere di superstizione.

«C’è un altro uomo più spaventoso e più odioso» proseguì MacIan, nella sua bassa voce monotona, «e lo hanno sepolto ancora più a fondo. Dio sa come abbiano fatto, poiché non fu introdotto né da porta né da finestra, né calato attraverso qualche apertura in alto. M’aspetto che quelle maniglie di ferro che entrambi odiamo siano state parte di qualche maledetto macchinario per murarlo. Egli è là. L’ho guardato attraverso il foro; ma non riesco a sopportare di guardarlo a lungo, perché il suo volto è rivolto lontano da me e non si muove.»

Tutti i sentimenti innaturali e incompiuti di Turnbull trovarono il loro sfogo nel precipitarsi all’apertura e nel guardare dentro la stanza sconosciuta.

Era una terza cella oblunga esattamente come le altre due, salvo che era senza porta, e salvo che su una delle pareti era dipinta una grande A nera come la B e la C fuori dalle loro porte. In questo caso la lettera non era dipinta all’esterno, perché questa prigione non aveva un esterno.

Sullo stesso tipo di pavimento piastrellato, i cui monotoni quadrati avevano fatto impazzire l’occhio e il cervello di Turnbull, sedeva una figura che era sorprendentemente bassa persino per un bambino, solo che l’enorme testa era cinta di capelli d’un grigio gelido. La figura era ammantata, in modo insieme malsicuro e insufficiente, in quelli che parevano i resti di una veste da camera di flanella marrone; una tazza vuota di cacao stava sul pavimento accanto a lei, e la creatura teneva la sua grossa testa grigia inclinata a un particolare angolo d’interrogazione o d’attenzione che, in mezzo a tutta quella tenebra e a quel mistero che si addensavano, colpiva come comico se non addirittura tracotante.

Dopo sei immobili secondi Turnbull non poté più sopportarlo, e chiamò quella cosa nanesca… con quali parole il cielo lo sa. La cosa si alzò con la prontezza di un animale, e voltandosi offrì lo spettacolo di due occhi da civetta e di un’enorme barba grigia e bianca non dissimile dal piumaggio di una civetta. Questa straordinaria barba lo copriva letteralmente fino ai piedi (non che questi fossero molto lontani), e forse fu un bene che lo facesse, poiché porzioni delle vesti che gli rimanevano parevano cadergli di dosso ogni volta che si muoveva. Si parla banalmente di un volto simile a pergamena, ma il volto di questo vecchio era così rugoso da parere una pergamena carica di geroglifici. Le linee del suo volto erano così profonde e complesse che vi si potevano scorgere cinque o dieci volti diversi oltre a quello reale, come li si può scorgere in un’elaborata carta da parati. E tuttavia, mentre il suo volto pareva una scrittura più antica degli dèi, i suoi occhi erano assai vividi, azzurri e trasaliti come quelli di un neonato. Sembravano essere stati calati nella sua testa solo un istante prima.

Tutto dipendeva così evidentemente dal fatto che questo mostro sepolto parlasse, che Turnbull non seppe né gli importò se lui stesso avesse parlato. Disse qualcosa o nulla. E poi attese quella voce nanesca che era stata nascosta sotto le montagne del mondo. Alfine essa parlò, e parlò in inglese, con un accento straniero che non era né latino né teutonico. D’un tratto tese un lungo e assai sudicio dito indice, e gridò con voce di chiara scoperta, come quella di un bambino: «Quello è un buco.»

Digerì la scoperta per qualche secondo, succhiandosi il dito, e poi gridò, con uno scoppio di risa: «E quella è una testa venuta attraverso di esso.»

L’ilare energia in quell’atteggiamento idiota diede a Turnbull un altro colpo di nausea. Era arrivato a tollerare quei tetri e biascicanti pazzi che si trascinavano per i bei giardini del manicomio. Ma c’era qualcosa di nuovo e di sovversivo dell’universo nella combinazione di tanta gioviale risolutezza con un corpo privo di cervello.

«Perché vi hanno messo in un posto simile?» chiese infine con imbarazzo.

«Bel posto. Sì» disse il vecchio, annuendo un gran numero di volte e raggiante come un locandiere lusingato. «Bella forma. Lungo e stretto, con una punta. Come questo» e con le mani tracciò amorevolmente nell’aria una mappa della stanza.

«Ma non è questo il meglio» aggiunse, in tono confidenziale. «I quadrati molto buoni; ho una bella lunga vacanza, e posso contarli. Ma non è questo il meglio.»

«Qual è il meglio?» chiese Turnbull in grande angoscia.

«La punta è il meglio» disse il vecchio, spalancando gli occhi azzurri fiammeggianti; «sporge in fuori.»

Le parole che Turnbull pronunciò gli sgorgarono da pura pietà. «Non possiamo far nulla per voi?» disse.

«Sono molto felice» disse l’altro, alfabeticamente. «Voi siete un buon uomo. Posso aiutarvi io?»

«No, non credo che possiate, signore» disse Turnbull con rude pathos; «sono lieto che almeno siate contento.»

Lo strano vecchio spalancò i suoi larghi occhi azzurri e fissò Turnbull con uno sguardo straordinariamente severo. «Siete proprio sicuro» disse «che io non possa aiutarvi?»

«Del tutto sicuro, grazie» disse Turnbull con spezzata brevità. «Buona giornata.»

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?”

Poi si voltò verso MacIan, che gli stava ritto proprio alle spalle, e il cui volto, ormai familiare in ogni suo umore, gli disse senza fatica che Evan aveva udito per intero lo strano dialogo.

“Maledette quelle bestie crudeli!” gridò Turnbull. “L’hanno ridotto a un imbecille semplicemente seppellendolo vivo. Il suo cervello adesso è ridotto a una capocchia di spillo.”

“Sei sicuro che sia un pazzo?” disse Evan, lentamente.

“Non un pazzo,” disse Turnbull, “un idiota. Non fa che indicare le cose e dire che sporgono.”

“Aveva l’idea di poterci aiutare,” disse MacIan cupamente, e cominciò a camminare avanti e indietro verso l’altro capo della cella.

“Sì, c’era qualcosa di patetico,” convenne Turnbull; “una Cosa simile che offriva aiuto, e per giunta---- Ehi! Ehi! Che succede?”

“Dio Onnipotente ci guidi tutti!” disse MacIan.

Se ne stava pesante e immobile all’altro capo della stanza, fissando in silenzio la porta che per trenta giorni li aveva sigillati lontano dal sole. Turnbull, seguendo lo sguardo dell’altro, fissò anch’egli la porta, e poi anche lui emise un’esclamazione. La porta di ferro era socchiusa di circa un pollice e mezzo.

“Lui ha detto----” cominciò Evan, con voce tremante—“lui ha offerto----”

“Andiamo, sciocco che non sei altro!” gridò Turnbull con improvvisa e furiosa energia. “Adesso capisco tutto, ed è il più bel colpo di fortuna del mondo. Hai tirato fuori quella maniglia di ferro che aveva serrato la sua cella, e in qualche modo ha alterato il meccanismo e ha aperto tutte le porte.”

Afferrando MacIan per il gomito lo sospinse di peso fuori nel corridoio aperto e lo trascinò avanti finché non videro la luce del giorno attraverso una finestra quasi oscurata.

“Comunque sia,” disse Evan, come uno che risponde in una conversazione qualunque, “lui ti ha chiesto se poteva aiutarti.”

Tutto quel dedalo di corridoi senza finestre era così intrecciato nel cuore di quella fortezza della paura che parve trascorrere più di un’ora prima che i fuggiaschi cogliessero un buon scorcio del mondo esterno. Non sapevano neppure che ora del giorno fosse; e quando, svoltando un angolo, videro il nudo cunicolo del corridoio terminare d’un tratto in un quadrato splendente di giardino, l’erba avvampante in quella forte luce serale che la rende oro brunito più che verde, l’improvviso spalancarsi sulla terra parve un varco aperto a colpi nella parete del cielo. Solo una o due volte nella vita è concesso a un uomo di vedere così l’universo stesso dall’esterno, e di sentire l’esistenza medesima come un’adorabile avventura non ancora cominciata. Trovando questa splendente via di fuga da quel labirinto infernale ebbero entrambi simultaneamente la sensazione di essere pargoli non nati, di essere interrogati da Dio se desiderassero vivere sulla terra. Stavano guardando dentro una delle sette porte dell’Eden.

Turnbull fu il primo a balzare nel giardino, con un salto che sfidava la terra come quello di chi potesse davvero spiegare le ali e volare. MacIan, che giunse un istante dopo, era meno colmo di puro gusto animale e più pieno di un piacere più timoroso e trepidante nei limpidi e innocenti colori dei fiori e negli alti e sacri alberi. Con un solo balzo furono in quel paesaggio fresco e nitido, e trovarono proprio fuori della porta il gentiluomo vestito di nero dal mento bifido che li osservava sorridente; e il suo mento pareva allungarsi sempre di più mentre sorrideva.

XVIII. UN ENIGMA DI VOLTI

Proprio dietro di lui stavano altri due medici: uno, il familiare Dr. Quayle, dagli occhi ammiccanti e dalla voce belante; l’altro, una figura più comune ma assai più energica, un giovane medico tarchiato dai capelli corti, ben spazzolati, e dal volto tondo ma risoluto. Alla vista della fuga questi due subalterni emisero un grido e scattarono avanti, ma il loro superiore rimase immobile e sorridente, e in qualche modo la mancanza del suo appoggio parve arrestarli e gelarli nel gesto stesso dell’inseguimento.

“Lasciateli,” gridò con una voce che tagliava come una lama di ghiaccio; e non solo di ghiaccio, ma di un terribile ghiaccio primordiale che non era mai stato acqua.

“Non voglio campioni devoti,” disse la voce tagliente; “persino la follia degli amici alla fine annoia. Non crederete che io avrei lasciato uscire questi pazzi dalle loro celle senza una buona ragione. Ho la migliore e più piena delle ragioni. Possono essere lasciati fuori dalla loro cella oggi, perché oggi il mondo intero è diventato la loro cella. Non voglio più pantomime medievali di catene e di porte. Che vaghino per la terra come hanno vagato per questo giardino, e io sarò ancora il loro agevole padrone. Prendano le ali dell’aurora e vadano a dimorare negli estremi confini del mare—io sono là. Dove andranno lontano dalla mia presenza e dove fuggiranno dal mio spirito? Coraggio, Dr. Quayle, e non lasciatevi abbattere; i veri giorni della tirannia stanno appena cominciando su questa terra.”

E con ciò il Padrone rise e si allontanò da loro, quasi come se la sua risata fosse una cosa che è male vedere.

“Potrei parlarvi un momento?” disse Turnbull, facendosi avanti con rispettosa risolutezza. Ma le spalle del Padrone parvero soltanto assumere un nuovo e inatteso angolo di scherno mentre si allontanava a grandi passi.

Turnbull si girò di scatto verso gli altri due medici, e disse, aspramente: “Che diavolo intende dire—e voi chi siete?”

“Il mio nome è Hutton,” disse l’uomo basso e tarchiato, “e sono—beh, uno di coloro il cui compito è sostenere questa istituzione.”

“Il mio nome è Turnbull,” disse l’altro; “io sono uno di coloro il cui compito è raderla al suolo.”

Il piccolo medico sorrise, e l’ira di Turnbull parve d’un tratto rasserenarlo.

“Ma non voglio parlare di questo,” disse, con calma; “voglio soltanto sapere che cosa intende davvero il Padrone di questo manicomio.”

Il sorriso del Dr. Hutton si sciolse in una risata che, per quanto breve, aveva il sospetto di un tremito. “Suppongo che riteniate questa una domanda affatto semplice,” disse.

“La ritengo una domanda schietta,” disse Turnbull, “e una che merita una risposta schietta. Perché il Padrone ci ha rinchiusi in un paio di stipetti come barattoli di sottaceti per un mese intero, e perché adesso ci lascia camminare liberi di nuovo nel giardino?”

“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.

“Se ho ben capito,” disse Hutton, inarcando le sopracciglia, “la vostra lagnanza è che ora siete libero di passeggiare nel giardino.”

“La mia lagnanza è,” disse Turnbull, ostinato, “che se sono idoneo a camminare libero adesso, lo sono stato altrettanto per tutto il mese scorso. Nessuno mi ha esaminato, nessuno mi si è avvicinato. Il vostro capo dice che sono libero soltanto perché ha preso altre disposizioni. Quali sono queste disposizioni?”

Il giovane dal volto tondo abbassò lo sguardo per un poco e fumò meditabondo. L’altro medico, più anziano, se ne era andato camminando nervosamente per conto suo sul prato. Alla fine il volto tondo si rialzò, e mostrò due tondi occhi azzurri con una certa franchezza.

“Beh, non vedo che male possa fare dirvelo, ormai,” disse. “Voi foste rinchiuso proprio allora perché fu proprio durante quel mese che il Padrone stava portando a compimento il suo grande disegno. Stava facendo passare la sua legge in Parlamento, e organizzando la nuova polizia medica. Ma naturalmente voi non avete saputo nulla di tutto ciò; in effetti, non era previsto che sapeste.”

“Saputo tutto che cosa?” chiese l’impaziente investigatore.

“C’è una nuova legge adesso, e i poteri dei manicomi sono grandemente estesi. Anche se ora evadeste, qualunque poliziotto vi arresterebbe nella prima città in cui giungeste, se non poteste esibire un certificato di sanità mentale rilasciato da noi.”

“Beh,” continuò il Dr. Hutton, “il Padrone ha esposto dinanzi a entrambe le Camere del Parlamento la vera obiezione scientifica a tutta la legislazione esistente in materia di follia. Come ha detto giustissimamente, l’errore stava nel supporre che la pazzia fosse una mera eccezione o un estremo. La pazzia, come la smemoratezza, è semplicemente una qualità che entra più o meno in tutti gli esseri umani; e per fini pratici è più necessario sapere di chi la mente sia davvero degna di fiducia che di chi ne abbia qualche accidentale macchia. Abbiamo perciò rovesciato il metodo esistente, e ora le persone devono provare di essere sane di mente. Nel primo villaggio in cui entraste, la guardia del villaggio noterebbe che non portate sul risvolto sinistro della giacca la piccola S di peltro che è ora necessaria a chiunque cammini oltre i confini del manicomio o fuori dalle ore consentite dal manicomio.”

“Volete dirmi,” disse Turnbull, “che questo è ciò che il Padrone del manicomio ha sostenuto dinanzi alla Camera dei Comuni?”

Il Dr. Hutton annuì con gravità.

“E volete dirmi,” gridò Turnbull, con uno sbuffo vibrante, “che quella proposta è stata approvata in un’assemblea che si dice democratica?”

Il medico mostrò l’intera fila dei denti in un sorriso. “Oh, l’assemblea si dice Socialista adesso,” disse, “ma abbiamo spiegato loro che questa era una questione da uomini di scienza.”

Turnbull batté una volta il piede sulla ghiaia, poi si ricompose, e riprese: “Ma perché il vostro infernale medicastro capo doveva rinchiuderci in celle separate mentre trasformava l’Inghilterra in un manicomio? Io non sono il Primo Ministro; noi non siamo la Camera dei Lord.”

“Non aveva paura del Primo Ministro,” replicò il Dr. Hutton; “non ha paura della Camera dei Lord. Ma----”

“Beh?” incalzò Turnbull, pestando di nuovo il piede.

“Ha paura di voi,” disse Hutton, semplicemente. “Come, non lo sapevate?”

MacIan, che non aveva ancora parlato, fece un solo passo avanti e restò ritto con le membra tremanti e gli occhi splendenti.

“Aveva paura!” cominciò Evan, con voce impastata. “Volete dire che noi----”

“Voglio dire la pura verità, ora che il pericolo è passato,” disse Hutton, con calma; “senza dubbio voi due eravate le sole persone di cui egli avesse mai avuto paura.” Poi aggiunse con voce bassa ma non inudibile: “Tranne una—che temeva ancora di più, e che ha sepolto ancora più a fondo.”

“Vieni via,” gridò MacIan, “su questo bisogna riflettere.”

Turnbull lo seguì in silenzio mentre si allontanava a grandi passi, ma poco prima di sparire, si voltò e parlò di nuovo ai medici.

“Ma che cosa ha preso la gente?” chiese, di scatto. “Perché mai tutta l’Inghilterra sarebbe impazzita sul mero argomento della pazzia?”

Il Dr. Hutton sorrise ancora una volta del suo sorriso aperto e s’inchinò leggermente. “Anche in quanto a questo,” replicò, “non voglio rendervi vanitoso.”

Turnbull si girò di scatto senza una parola, e lui e il suo compagno si persero nel lucente fogliame del giardino. Non notarono nulla di particolare nella scena, se non che il giardino pareva più squisito che mai nel tramonto che si faceva più intenso, e che vi parevano esserci molte più persone, fossero pazienti o inservienti, che vi passeggiavano.

Da dietro i due medici in nero, mentre stavano sul prato, un’altra figura vestita in modo alquanto simile passò loro accanto in fretta, avendo anch’essa i capelli brizzolati e un’aperta redingote svolazzante. Sia il suo passo deciso sia il lindo abbigliamento nero lo segnalavano come un altro uomo di medicina, o almeno un uomo d’autorità, e mentre passava accanto a Turnbull, questi fu colpito dalla forte impressione di aver già visto quell’uomo da qualche parte. Non era nessuno che conoscesse bene, eppure era certo che fosse qualcuno che in un momento o nell’altro aveva guardato fissamente. Non era né il volto di un amico né quello di un nemico; non suscitava né irritazione né tenerezza, eppure era un volto che per qualche ragione aveva avuto grande importanza nella sua vita. Girando e rigirando, e facendo deviazioni intorno al giardino, riuscì a studiare di nuovo, più e più volte, il volto di quell’uomo—un volto baffuto, alquanto militaresco, con un monocolo, quel genere di volto che è aristocratico senza essere distinto. Turnbull non riusciva a ricordare alcun medico in particolare nella sua esistenza decisamente sana. Era forse l’uomo uno zio perduto da tempo, o era soltanto qualcuno che gli si era seduto regolarmente di fronte in un treno? In quel momento l’uomo fece cadere il proprio monocolo con un gesto di stizza; Turnbull ricordò il gesto, e la verità gli si drizzò davanti, solida. L’uomo dai baffi era Cumberland Vane, il magistrato di polizia di Londra dinanzi al quale lui e MacIan si erano un tempo trovati sotto processo. Il magistrato doveva essere stato trasferito a qualche altro incarico ufficiale— a qualcosa connesso con l’ispezione dei manicomi.

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.

Il cuore di Turnbull ebbe un balzo di eccitazione che era per metà speranza. Come magistrato il signor Cumberland Vane era stato alquanto negligente e superficiale, ma certamente benevolo, e non insensibile al buon senso, purché gli fosse esposto in un linguaggio rigorosamente convenzionale. Era per lo meno un’autorità di specie più umana e ristoratrice del maniaco dalla barba dondolante o del demonio dal mento biforcuto.

Andò dritto dal magistrato, e disse: “Buonasera, signor Vane; dubito che vi ricordiate di me.”

Cumberland Vane si avvitò il monocolo nel volto accigliato per un istante, e poi disse seccamente ma non sgarbatamente: “Sì, mi ricordo di voi, signore; aggressione o percosse, non è vero?—un tale vi ruppe la finestra. Un tale alto—Mc-qualcosa—il caso fece parecchio rumore in seguito.”

“MacIan è il nome, signore,” disse Turnbull, rispettosamente; “l’ho qui con me.”

“Eh!” fece Vane molto seccamente. “Al diavolo! Ha forse qualcosa a che fare con questa faccenda?”

“Signor Vane,” disse Turnbull, in tono conciliante, “non pretenderò che né lui né io ci comportammo del tutto decorosamente in quell’occasione. Voi foste molto indulgente con noi, e non ci trattaste da criminali quando ben avreste potuto. Perciò sono certo che ci renderete testimonianza che, anche se fummo criminali, non siamo pazzi in alcun senso legale o medico, di sorta. Sono certo che userete la vostra influenza in nostro favore.”

“La mia influenza!” ripeté il magistrato, con un lieve sussulto. “Non vi comprendo bene.”

“Non so in quale veste voi vi troviate qui,” continuò Turnbull, gravemente, “ma un’autorità legale della vostra distinzione deve certamente trovarsi qui in una veste importante. Che voi stiate visitando e ispezionando il luogo, o vi siate legato ad esso come una sorta di consulente legale permanente, la vostra opinione dovrà pur----”

Cumberland Vane esplose con una detonazione di bestemmie; il suo volto era trasfigurato dalla furia e dal disprezzo, eppure in qualche strano modo non pareva particolarmente adirato con Turnbull.

“Ma che il Signore ci benedica e ci salvi!” ansimò, alla fine; “Non sono qui affatto come funzionario. Sono qui come paziente. Quella maledetta banda di chimici acchiappatopi dice tutta che ho perduto il senno.”

“Voi!” gridò Turnbull con terribile enfasi. “Voi! Perduto il senno!”

Nell’impeto del suo autentico stupore dinanzi a questa torreggiante irrealtà Turnbull per poco non aggiunse: “Ma se non ne avete affatto da perdere.” Ma per fortuna si ricordò dei resti della sua disperata diplomazia.

“Questo non può continuare,” disse, deciso. “Uomini come MacIan e me possono soffrire ingiustamente per tutta la vita, ma un uomo come voi deve avere influenza.”

“C’è un solo uomo che abbia una qualche influenza in Inghilterra ora,” disse Vane, e la sua voce acuta cadde in un’improvvisa e convincente quiete.

“Chi intendete?” chiese Turnbull.

“Intendo quel maledetto individuo dal lungo mento spaccato,” disse l’altro.

“È davvero vero,” chiese Turnbull, “che gli è stato permesso di comprarsi e controllare così tanto? Che cosa ha ridotto il paese in un simile stato?”

Il signor Cumberland Vane rise apertamente. “Che cosa ha ridotto il paese in un simile stato?” chiese. “Ma voi, siete stato voi. Quando foste sciocco abbastanza da acconsentire a battervi con MacIan, dopotutto, chiunque era pronto a credere che la Banca d’Inghilterra potesse verniciarsi di rosa a pallini bianchi.”

“Non capisco,” rispose Turnbull. “Perché mai dovreste essere sorpreso del fatto che io mi battessi? Spero di essermi sempre battuto.”

“Beh,” disse Cumberland Vane, con leggerezza, “voi non credevate nella religione, capite—e così pensavamo che foste al sicuro, in ogni caso. Con il vostro linguaggio andaste più in là di quanto la maggior parte di noi volesse andare; non serve a nulla ferire i sentimenti della propria madre, credo. Ma naturalmente sapevamo tutti che avevate ragione e, davvero, contavamo su di voi.”

“Contavate?” disse il direttore di L’Ateo con il cuore che scoppiava. “Mi dispiace che non me l’aveste detto al momento.”

Si allontanò a passi rapidissimi e si gettò su un sedile del giardino, e per una buona sei minuti i propri torti gli nascosero l’enorme e esilarante fatto che Cumberland Vane fosse stato rinchiuso come pazzo.

Il giardino del manicomio era così perfettamente disegnato, e rispondeva così squisitamente a ogni ora del giorno, che si sarebbe quasi potuto immaginare che la luce del sole vi fosse catturata, impigliata tra i suoi alberi tinti, come i saggi di Gotham cercarono di incatenare la primavera a un cespuglio. Oppure pareva come se questo ironico paradiso conservasse ancora la sua unica alba o il suo particolare tramonto mentre il resto del globo terrestre rotolava attraverso le sue ore ordinarie. Vi fu una sera, o tardo pomeriggio, in particolare, che Evan MacIan ricorderà negli ultimi istanti della morte. Era ciò che gli artisti chiamano un cielo color giunchiglia, ma è già reso volgare persino dal riferimento a una giunchiglia. Era di quel giallo innocente e solitario che non ha mai sentito parlare dell’arancione, benché potesse volgersi, del tutto inconsapevolmente, al verde. Contro di esso le cime, si potrebbe dire le torrette, degli alberi potati e ordinati si stagliavano in quella sfumatura di violetto velato che tinge le cime della lavanda. Una bianca luna precoce era appena rintracciabile su quel delicato giallo. MacIan, dico, ricorderà questa sera tenera e trasparente, in parte per il suo verginale oro e argento, e in parte perché vi passò sotto attraverso l’istante più orribile della sua vita.

Turnbull sedeva sul suo sedile sul prato, e la dorata sera fece impressione persino sulla sua positiva natura, come del resto avrebbe potuto fare impressione sui buoi in un campo. Fu scosso dal suo ozioso umore di soggezione nel vedere MacIan sbucare da dietro i cespugli e correre attraverso il prato con un’azione che non aveva mai visto nell’uomo prima, con tutta la sua esperienza degli eccentrici umori di questo Celta. MacIan si abbatté sulla panca, scuotendola tanto che sferragliò, e la strinse con le ginocchia come uno in preda a spaventoso dolore del corpo. Quella particolare corsa e caduta è tipica solo di un uomo che è stato colpito da qualche subitaneo e incurabile male, che è morso da una vipera o condannato all’impiccagione. Turnbull alzò lo sguardo al bianco volto del suo amico e nemico, e per poco non si raggelò a ciò che vi vide. Aveva veduto gli occhi azzurri ma cupi del montanaro delle Highlands occidentali turbati da tante tempeste quante i suoi propri mari delle Highlands occidentali, ma vi era sempre stata una stella fissa di fede dietro le tempeste. Ora la stella si era spenta, e non c’era che desolazione.

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.

Eppure MacIan ebbe la forza di rispondere alla domanda là dove Turnbull, colto di sorpresa, non aveva la forza di porla.

“Hanno ragione, hanno ragione!” gridò. “Oh, mio Dio! hanno ragione, Turnbull. Il mio posto è qui!”

Proseguì con informe scioltezza, come se non avesse più il coraggio di scegliere o frenare le sue parole. “Suppongo che avrei dovuto intuirlo molto tempo fa—tutti i miei grandi sogni e progetti—e tutti contro di noi— ma ero pieno di boria, sai.”

“Raccontami tutto, davvero,” gridò l’ateo e, di fronte alla fornace del dolore dell’altro, non si accorse di parlare con l’affetto di un padre.

“Sono pazzo, Turnbull,” disse Evan, con una morta chiarezza di parola, e si abbandonò all’indietro contro il sedile del giardino.

“Sciocchezze,” disse l’altro, aggrappandosi all’ovvio spunto di una brutalità benevola, “questo è uno dei tuoi sciocchi umori.”

MacIan scosse il capo. “So abbastanza di me stesso,” disse, “da fare la tara a qualunque umore, anche se aprisse il cielo o l’inferno. Ma vedere cose—vederle camminare solide nel sole— cose che non possono essere lì—i veri mistici non fanno mai così, Turnbull.”

“Quali cose?” chiese l’altro, incredulo.

MacIan abbassò la voce. “Ho visto lei,” disse, “tre minuti fa— che camminava qui, in questo cortile infernale.”

Tra il tentare di apparire sprezzante e l’apparire davvero trasecolato, il volto di Turnbull era abbastanza confuso da non emettere parola, ed Evan proseguì con monotona sincerità:

“L’ho vista camminare dietro quegli alberi benedetti contro quel sacro cielo d’oro, distinta come la vedo ogni volta che chiudo gli occhi. Li ho proprio chiusi, e riaperti, e lei era ancora lì— cioè, naturalmente, lei non c’era---- Aveva ancora una pelliccetta intorno al collo, ma il suo vestito era di una sfumatura più viva di quando la vidi davvero.”

“Mio caro amico,” gridò Turnbull, richiamando una risata cordiale, “le fantasie ti hanno davvero preso. Hai scambiato per lei qualche altra povera ragazza qui.”

“Scambiato qualche altra----” disse MacIan, e le parole gli mancarono del tutto.

Sedettero per alcuni momenti nel morbido silenzio del giardino serale, un silenzio che era soffocante per lo scettico, ma del tutto vuoto e definitivo per l’uomo di fede. Alla fine egli proruppe di nuovo con le parole: “Beh, in ogni caso, se sono pazzo, sono lieto di essere pazzo per questo.”

Turnbull mormorò qualche goffa protesta, e sedette fumando impassibile per raccogliere i pensieri; l’istante seguente aveva tutti i nervi impegnati nel puro sforzo di restare immobile.

Attraverso lo spazio limpido di freddo argento e di un pallido cielo color limone che era lasciato dal varco tra gli elci, passò una figura snella e scura, un profilo e il portamento di un capo scuro come quello di un uccello, che davvero lo inchiodò al suo posto con la punta della coincidenza. Con uno sforzo si alzò in piedi, e disse con una voce di affettata noncuranza: “Per Giove! MacIan, lei è straordinariamente simile a----”

“Cosa!” gridò MacIan, con un balzo di brama che spezzava il cuore, “la vedi anche tu?” E la fiamma tornò al centro dei suoi occhi.

Le fulve sopracciglia di Turnbull si strinsero in un peculiare cipiglio di curiosità, e d’un tratto attraversò rapidamente il prato. MacIan restò rigido, ma lo scrutò con labbra aperte e riarse. Vide lo spettacolo che o lo provava sano di mente o provava l’intero universo dissennato; vide l’uomo di carne accostarsi a quel bel fantasma, vide i loro gesti di riconoscimento, e li vide contro il tramonto congiungere le mani.

Non poté più sopportarlo, ma corse fino al viale, svoltò l’angolo e vide, ritta del tutto palpabile nella luce serale, mentre parlava con disinvolta grazia a Turnbull, il volto e la figura che avevano riempito le sue mezzenotti di lineamenti spaventosamente vividi o disperatamente semidimenticati. Lei avanzò in modo del tutto piacevole e calmo, e gli porse la mano. Nell’istante in cui la toccò seppe di essere sano di mente anche se il sistema solare era impazzito.

Lei era interamente elegante e disinvolta. È questa la cosa terribile delle donne—si rifiutano di essere emotive nei momenti emotivi, con qualche ridicolo pretesto, come che ci sia qualcun altro presente. Ma MacIan si trovava in una condizione di critica assai inferiore alla media maschile, essendo di fatto semplicemente sconvolto dall’incalzante enigma degli eventi.

Evan non sa fino a oggi quale precisa domanda pose, ma ricorda vividamente che lei rispose, e ogni linea od oscillazione del suo volto mentre lo diceva.

“Oh, non lo sapete?” disse lei, sorridendo, e sollevando d’un tratto le sue diritte sopracciglia brune. “Non avete sentito la notizia? Sono una pazza.”

Poi aggiunse dopo una breve pausa, e con una sorta di orgoglio: “Ho un certificato.”

Il suo contegno, per l’impareggiabile stoicismo sociale del suo sesso, si addiceva del tutto a un salotto, ma la risposta di Evan cadde alquanto al di sotto di un tale standard, poiché egli disse soltanto: “Che diavolo d’inferno significa tutta questa assurdità?”

“Davvero,” disse la giovane signora, e rise.

“Vi chiedo scusa,” disse l’infelice giovane, piuttosto stralunato, “ma quel che intendo è: perché siete qui in un manicomio?”

La giovane donna proruppe di nuovo in una di quelle esasperanti e misteriose risate della femminilità. Poi ricompose i lineamenti, e replicò con pari dignità: “Beh, se è per questo, perché ci siete voi?”

Il fatto che Turnbull si fosse allontanato a passeggio e stesse esaminando dei rododendri può essere stato dovuto alle riuscite preghiere di Evan all’altro mondo, o forse alla sua stessa esperienza abbastanza riuscita di questo. Ma benché essi due fossero isolati come un nuovo Adamo ed Eva in un grazioso Eden ornamentale, la signora non allentò di un pollice il rigore del suo motteggio.

“Sono rinchiuso nel manicomio,” disse Evan, con una sorta di rigido orgoglio, “perché ho cercato di mantenere la promessa che vi feci.”

“Proprio così,” rispose l’inspiegabile signora, annuendo con un sorriso perfettamente sfolgorante, “e io sono rinchiusa perché fu a me che voi la prometteste.”

“È scandaloso!” gridò Evan; “è impossibile!”

“Oh, potete vedere il mio certificato, se volete,” replicò lei con una certa alterigia.

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.”

MacIan fissò lei, poi i propri stivali, poi il cielo e poi di nuovo lei. Ormai era del tutto certo di non essere pazzo, e questo, anzi, non faceva che accrescere la sua perplessità.

Poi le si avvicinò e disse con voce arida e terribile: “Oh, non abbassarti a fare la sciocca con uno sciocco come me. Sei davvero rinchiusa qui come paziente… perché ci hai aiutati a fuggire?”

“Sì,” disse lei, sempre sorridendo, ma la sua voce ferma aveva un tremito.

Evan si gettò il grosso gomito sulla fronte e scoppiò in lacrime.

Il puro limone del cielo sbiadì in un bianco più puro mentre il grande tramonto crollava in silenzio. Gli uccelli si posarono di nuovo sugli alberi; la luna cominciò a splendere di luce propria. Il signor James Turnbull proseguiva le sue ricerche botaniche sulla struttura del rododendro. Ma la dama non si mosse di un pollice finché Evan non risollevò il volto; e quando lo fece, vide all’ultimo bagliore del sole che non era solo il suo volto a essere bagnato.

Il signor James Turnbull aveva professato per tutta la vita un profondo interesse per la scienza fisica, e i fenomeni di un buon giardino erano davvero un piacere per lui; ma dopo tre quarti d’ora circa persino l’apostolo della scienza cominciò a trovare i rododendri una noia, e provò un certo sollievo quando uno sviluppo inatteso degli eventi lo costrinse a trasferire le sue ricerche all’argomento altrettanto interessante delle malvarose, che crescevano una cinquantina di piedi più avanti lungo il sentiero. La causa apparente del suo spostamento fu la ricomparsa inattesa dei suoi due altri conoscenti che camminavano e discorrevano faticosamente per la via, con la testa nera china vicino a quella bruna. Persino le malvarose trattennero Turnbull solo per breve tempo. Assorbiti rapidamente tutti i principi importanti che governano la crescita di quei vegetali, saltò un’aiuola e rientrò nell’edificio. Gli altri due risalivano lungo il lento corso del sentiero parlando e parlando. Nessuno all’infuori di Dio sa cosa dissero (poiché di certo loro l’hanno dimenticato), e se pure lo ricordassi non lo ripeterei. Quando si separarono in cima al viale, lei tese di nuovo la mano nello stesso modo beneducato, sebbene tremasse; lui parve frenare un gesto mentre la lasciava ricadere.

“Se dev’essere davvero sempre così,” disse lui, con voce impastata, “non importerebbe restare qui per sempre.”

“Hai tentato di ucciderti quattro volte per me,” disse lei, con voce incerta, “e io sono stata incatenata come una folle per te. Credo davvero che dopo questo…”

“Sì, lo so,” disse Evan a voce bassa, guardando in basso. “Dopo questo apparteniamo l’uno all’altra. Siamo in qualche modo venduti l’uno all’altra… finché non cadranno le stelle.” Poi alzò gli occhi all’improvviso e disse: “A proposito, come ti chiami?”

“Mi chiamo Beatrice Drake,” rispose lei con perfetta gravità. “Puoi leggerlo sul mio certificato di follia.”

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 Eleuthero-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.”

XIX. L’ULTIMO COLLOQUIO

Turnbull si allontanò, cercando febbrilmente di spiegarsi la presenza di due conoscenze personali così diverse come Vane e la ragazza. Mentre costeggiava una bassa siepe di alloro, un giovanotto enormemente alto la scavalcò con un balzo, gli si piantò davanti, e per poco non gli cadde al collo come cercando di abbracciarlo.

“Non mi riconosci?” quasi singhiozzò il giovanotto, che era del più allegro degli umori. “Non sono scritto nel tuo cuore, vecchio mio? Di’, che ne hai fatto del mio yacht?”

“Togliti le braccia dal mio collo,” disse Turnbull, irritato. “Sei pazzo?”

Il giovanotto si sedette sul sentiero di ghiaia e si abbandonò a estasi di risate. “No, è proprio questo il bello—non sono pazzo,” replicò. “Mi hanno rinchiuso in questo posto, e non sono pazzo.” E si abbandonò di nuovo a un’ilarità innocente come campane nuziali.

Turnbull, i cui poteri di sorpresa erano esauriti, roteò i suoi tondi occhi grigi e disse: “Il signor Wilkinson, mi pare,” perché non riusciva a pensare a nient’altro da dire.

Il tale alto seduto sulla ghiaia s’inchinò con urbanità, e disse: “Del tutto al vostro servizio. Da non confondersi con i Wilkinson del Cumberland; e come dico, vecchio mio, che ne hai fatto del mio yacht? Vedi, mi hanno rinchiuso qui—in questo giardino—e uno yacht sarebbe una sorta di occupazione per uno scapolo.”

“Mi dispiace davvero orribilmente,” cominciò Turnbull, all’ultimo stadio del trattenuto sconcerto e dell’esasperazione, “ma davvero----”

“Oh, vedo bene che non puoi averlo con te in questo momento,” disse il signor Wilkinson con molta magnanimità intellettuale.

“Beh, il fatto è----” ricominciò Turnbull, e poi la frase gli si gelò in bocca, perché dietro l’angolo comparvero il volto caprino e gli scintillanti occhiali del Dr. Quayle.

“Ah, mio caro signor Wilkinson,” disse il medico, come deliziato da una coincidenza; “e il signor Turnbull, pure. Ma guarda, volevo proprio parlare al signor Turnbull.”

Il signor Turnbull fece un qualche movimento più di resa che di assenso, e il medico lo raccolse squisitamente, mostrando anche di più i suoi due denti anteriori. “Sono certo che il signor Wilkinson ci scuserà un momento.” E con la redingote svolazzante condusse Turnbull rapidamente dietro l’angolo di un sentiero.

“Mio caro signore,” disse, in modo del tutto affettuoso, “non mi dispiace dirvelo—voi siete un caso talmente promettente— comprendete così bene il punto di vista scientifico; e a me non piace vedervi importunato dai casi davvero disperati. Sono monotoni e fanno impazzire. L’uomo con cui avete appena parlato, pover’uomo, è uno dei più forti casi di pura idée fixe che abbiamo. È molto triste, e temo del tutto incurabile. Continua a dire a tutti”—e il medico abbassò la voce in tono confidenziale—“dice a tutti che due persone gli hanno preso lo yacht. Il suo racconto di come lo perse è del tutto incoerente.”

Turnbull batté il piede sul sentiero di ghiaia, ed esclamò: “Oh, non posso sopportarlo. Davvero----”

“Lo so, lo so,” disse lo psicologo, mestamente; “è un caso quanto mai malinconico, e per fortuna anche molto raro. È così raro, di fatto, che in una classificazione di questi mali è registrato sotto una voce a sé—Perdinavititis, infiammazione mentale che genera l’impressione di aver perduto una nave. Davvero,” aggiunse, con una sorta di colpa mezzo imbarazzata, “è piuttosto una piuma sul mio cappello. Ho scoperto l’unico caso esistente di perdinavititis.”

“Ma questo non va, dottore,” disse Turnbull, quasi strappandosi i capelli, “questo davvero non va. L’uomo ha davvero perduto una nave. Anzi, per non mettere la cosa troppo per il sottile, sono io che gli ho preso la nave.”

Il Dr. Quayle si girò di scatto per un istante, così che il suo soprabito foderato di seta frusciò, e fissò Turnbull in modo singolare. Poi disse con affrettata amabilità: “Ma certo che l’avete fatto. Proprio così, proprio così,” e con cortesi gesti se ne andò a grandi passi su per il sentiero del giardino. Sotto il primo maggiociondolo si fermò, però, e tirando fuori la matita e il taccuino scrisse febbrilmente: “Sviluppo singolare nell’Eleutero-maniaco, Turnbull. Improvvisa manifestazione di Rapinavititis—l’illusione di aver rubato una nave. Primo caso mai registrato.”

Turnbull restò per un istante impietrito nell’immobilità. Poi corse infuriato intorno al giardino a cercare MacIan, proprio come un marito, anche un cattivo marito, corre infuriato a cercare la moglie se è pieno di una furiosa domanda. Trovò MacIan che vagava cupamente per il giardino semibuio, dopo il suo straordinario incontro con Beatrice. Nessuno che avesse visto il suo passo strascicato e il capo chino avrebbe potuto sapere che la sua anima era nel settimo cielo dell’estasi. Non pensava; non desiderava neppure in modo molto definito. Si crogiolava semplicemente nei ricordi, per lo più in ricordi materiali; parole dette con una certa cadenza o insignificanti torsioni del collo o del polso. Nel bel mezzo del suo statico e insensato godimento furono cacciati d’un tratto il gomito sporgente e la sporgente barba rossa di Turnbull. MacIan indietreggiò un poco, e l’anima nei suoi occhi tornò molto lentamente alle sue finestre. Quando James Turnbull ebbe la scintillante punta della spada piantata sul petto era in ben minor pericolo. Per tre pulsanti secondi dopo l’interruzione MacIan fu in uno stato d’animo tale da poter uccidere suo padre.

Eppure tutta la sua collera emotiva lo abbandonò quando vide il volto di Turnbull, in cui gli occhi parevano schizzargli dalla testa come proiettili. Tutto il fuoco e la fragranza persino di un giovane e onorevole amore svanirono per un momento dinanzi a quella rigida agonia dell’interrogativo.

“Sei ferito, Turnbull?” chiese, ansiosamente.

“Sto morendo,” rispose l’altro con tutta calma. “Sto, nel senso più letterale delle parole, morendo dalla voglia di sapere una cosa. Voglio sapere che cosa può mai significare tutto questo.”

MacIan non rispose, ed egli continuò con asprezza: “Tu stai ancora pensando a quella ragazza, ma ti dico che la cosa è tutta incredibile. Non è la sola persona qui. Ho incontrato quel tale Wilkinson, il cui yacht perdemmo. Ho incontrato proprio il magistrato dinanzi al quale fosti trascinato quando rompesti la mia finestra. Che cosa può significare—incontrare di nuovo tutte queste vecchie conoscenze? Non si incontrano mai di nuovo simili vecchi amici se non in un sogno.”

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.

Poi, dopo un silenzio, gridò con una lacerante sincerità: “Sei davvero lì, Evan? Ci sei mai stato davvero? Sto semplicemente sognando?”

MacIan aveva ascoltato con un vivo silenzio ogni parola, e ora il suo volto avvampò in una delle sue rare rivelazioni di vita.

“No, mio buon ateo,” gridò; “no, mio pulito, cortese, riverente, pio vecchio bestemmiatore. No, non stai sognando—ti stai destando.”

«Che cosa intendete?»

“Ci sono due stati in cui si incontrano tanti vecchi amici,” disse MacIan; “uno è un sogno, l’altro è la fine del mondo.”

“E tu dici----”

“Dico che questo non è un sogno,” disse Evan con voce squillante.

“Vuoi davvero suggerire----” cominciò Turnbull.

“Taci! o dirò tutto storto,” disse MacIan, respirando affannosamente. “È difficile da spiegare, in ogni caso. Un’apocalisse è l’opposto di un sogno. Un sogno è più falso della vita esteriore. Ma la fine del mondo è più reale del mondo che essa termina. Non dico che questa sia davvero la fine del mondo, ma è qualcosa del genere—è la fine di qualcosa. Tutta la gente si sta accalcando in un angolo. Ogni cosa converge verso un punto.”

“Qual è il punto?” chiese Turnbull.

“Non riesco a vederlo,” disse Evan; “è troppo grande e chiaro.”

Poi, dopo un silenzio, disse: “Non riesco a vederlo—eppure cercherò di descriverlo. Turnbull, tre giorni fa vidi d’un tratto che il nostro duello, dopotutto, non era giusto.”

“Tre giorni fa!” ripeté Turnbull. “Quando e perché avvenne questa illuminazione?”

“Seppi di non essere del tutto nel giusto,” rispose Evan, “nel momento in cui vidi gli occhi tondi di quel vecchio nella cella.”

“Il vecchio nella cella!” ripeté il suo attonito compagno. “Vuoi dire il povero vecchio idiota a cui piace che le punte sporgano?”

“Sì,” disse MacIan, dopo una lieve pausa, “voglio dire il povero vecchio idiota a cui piace che le punte sporgano. Quando vidi i suoi occhi e udii il suo vecchio accento gracchiante, seppi che in realtà non sarebbe stato giusto ucciderti. Sarebbe stato un peccato veniale.”

“Ti sono molto obbligato,” disse Turnbull, burbero.

“Devi darmi tempo,” disse MacIan, con tutta pazienza, “perché sto cercando di dire l’intera verità. Sto cercando di dirne più di quanto io ne sappia.”

“Così vedi, confesso”—proseguì con laboriosa precisione— “confesso che tutte le persone che chiamarono folle il nostro duello avevano ragione, in un certo senso. Lo confesserei al vecchio Cumberland Vane e al suo monocolo. Lo confesserei persino a quel vecchio somaro in flanella marrone che ci parlò dell’amore. Sì, hanno ragione, in un certo senso. Io sono un po’ pazzo.”

Si fermò e si asciugò la fronte come se stesse letteralmente compiendo una dura fatica. Poi proseguì:

“Io sono un po’ pazzo; ma, dopotutto, è solo una piccola follia. Quando centinaia di uomini di alti principi si erano battuti in duello per un urto di gomito o per l’asso di picche, il mondo intero non aveva bisogno di impazzire per la mia unica piccola stravaganza. Molte altre persone si sono uccise tra allora e adesso. Ma tutta l’Inghilterra è caduta in schiavitù per rendere schiavi noi. Tutta l’Inghilterra si è trasformata in un manicomio per provare che noi siamo pazzi. In confronto al pubblico in generale, potrei positivamente essere chiamato sano di mente.”

Si fermò di nuovo, e proseguì con la stessa aria di travagliarsi con la verità:

“Quando vidi ciò, vidi ogni cosa; vidi la Chiesa e il mondo. La Chiesa nella sua azione terrena ha davvero toccato cose morbose— torture e visioni sanguinanti e soffi di sterminio. La Chiesa ha avuto le sue follie, e io sono una di esse. Io sono il massacro di San Bartolomeo. Io sono l’Inquisizione di Spagna. Non dico che non siamo mai impazziti, ma dico che siamo adatti a fare da custodi ai nostri nemici. Il massacro è malvagio anche con una provocazione, come nel caso di San Bartolomeo. Ma il tuo moderno Nietzsche ti dirà che il massacro sarebbe glorioso senza una provocazione. La tortura andrebbe fermata con la violenza, per quanto sia la Chiesa a praticarla. Ma il tuo moderno Tolstoj ti dirà che non andrebbe fermata con la violenza, chiunque la pratichi. Alla lunga, chi è più pazzo— la Chiesa o il mondo? Chi è più pazzo, il prete spagnolo che permise la tirannia, o il sofista prussiano che l’ammirava? Chi è più pazzo, il prete russo che scoraggia la giusta ribellione, o il romanziere russo che la vieta? Questa è la prova finale e folgorante. Il mondo, lasciato a se stesso, si fa più selvaggio di qualunque credo. Pochi giorni fa tu e io eravamo le persone più pazze d’Inghilterra. Ora, per Dio! credo che siamo le più sane. Questa è la sola vera domanda—se la Chiesa sia davvero più pazza del mondo. Lascia che i razionalisti corrano la loro corsa, e vediamo dove finiscono loro. Se il mondo ha un qualche sano equilibrio diverso da Dio, lascia che il mondo lo trovi. Lo trova, il mondo? Sciogli il mondo dagli ormeggi,” gridò con un gesto feroce. “Sta forse in piedi da solo, il mondo? Sta ritto, o vacilla?”

Turnbull rimase in silenzio, e MacIan gli disse, guardando ancora una volta la terra: “Vacilla, Turnbull. Non può reggersi da solo; tu lo sai che non può. È stato il dolore della tua vita. Turnbull, questo giardino non è un sogno, ma un compimento apocalittico. Questo giardino è il mondo impazzito.”

Turnbull non mosse il capo, ed era stato in ascolto per tutto il tempo; eppure, in qualche modo, l’altro comprese che per la prima volta egli stava ascoltando seriamente.

“Il mondo è impazzito,” disse MacIan, “ed è impazzito per causa Nostra. Il mondo si prende la briga di commettere un grande errore su ogni piccolo errore commesso dalla Chiesa. È per questo che hanno ridotto dieci contee a un manicomio; è per questo che folle di gente benevola vengono riversate in questo lurido crogiolo. Ora è il giudizio di questo mondo. Il Principe di questo Mondo è giudicato, ed è giudicato precisamente perché egli giudica. C’è finalmente una semplice soluzione alla contesa tra la palla e la Croce----”

Turnbull, per la prima volta, sussultò.

“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.

“La sfera e…”, ripeté.

“Che cos’hai?” chiese MacIan.

“Ho fatto un sogno”, disse Turnbull, con voce impastata e oscura, “in cui vedevo la croce piantata storta e la sfera al sicuro…”

“Ho fatto un sogno”, disse MacIan, “in cui vedevo la croce eretta e la sfera invisibile. Erano entrambi sogni usciti dall’inferno. Ci vuole pure una terra rotonda su cui piantare la croce. Ma qui sta la differenza tremenda: che il mondo rotondo non consente neppure a restare rotondo. Gli astronomi ci ripetono sempre che ha forma d’arancia, o d’uovo, o di salsiccia tedesca. Sballottano il vecchio mondo come una vescica e lo pestano fino a mille forme informi. Turnbull, non possiamo fidarci che la sfera sia sempre una sfera; non possiamo fidarci che la ragione sia ragionevole. Alla fine il gran globo terrestre pencolerà tutto da un lato, e solo la croce resterà diritta.”

Vi fu un lungo silenzio, e poi Turnbull disse, esitante: “Ti è venuto in mente che dacché… dacché quei due sogni, o qualunque cosa fossero…”

“Ebbene?” mormorò MacIan.

“Da allora”, proseguì Turnbull, con la stessa voce bassa, “da allora non abbiamo mai neppure cercato le nostre spade.”

“Hai ragione”, rispose Evan quasi impercettibilmente. “Abbiamo trovato qualcosa che entrambi odiamo più di quanto ci siamo mai odiati a vicenda, e credo di sapere come si chiama.”

Turnbull parve aggrottarsi e trasalire per un istante. “Non ha molta importanza come lo chiami”, disse, “purché tu gli stia alla larga.”

I cespugli si ruppero e si spezzarono di scatto dietro di loro, e una figura altissima si stagliò su Turnbull con una curva arrogante e un mento sporgente, un mento la cui forma spiccava stranamente perfino nella sua ombra sul sentiero.

“Vedi che non è così facile”, disse MacIan tra i denti.

Alzarono lo sguardo negli occhi del Maestro, ma solo per un istante. Gli occhi erano colmi di un’ira gelata e glaciale, una specie di odio del tutto senza cuore. La sua voce fu per la prima volta priva d’ironia. Non c’era in essa più sarcasmo di quanto ve ne sia in una mazza di ferro.

“Sarete dentro l’edificio entro tre minuti”, disse, con precisione polverizzante, “oppure sarete presi di mira dall’artiglieria a tutte le finestre. Si parla troppo in questo giardino; intendiamo chiuderlo. Sarete alloggiati all’interno.”

“Ah!” disse MacIan, con un lungo e soddisfatto sospiro, “allora avevo ragione.”

E volse le spalle e camminò docilmente verso l’edificio. Turnbull parve vagliare per qualche minuto l’idea di stendere il Maestro con un pugno, e poi cadde sotto il medesimo fatalismo quasi fatato del compagno. In qualche modo strano pareva davvero che quanto più docilmente cedevano, tanto più rapidamente gli eventi si sarebbero precipitati verso qualche grande collisione.

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 girl’s 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.”

XX. DIES IRAE

Mentre avanzavano verso il manicomio alzarono lo sguardo alle sue file su file di finestre, e compresero la minaccia materiale del Padrone. Per mezzo di quel complesso ma nascosto macchinario che correva come una rete di nervi su tutta la struttura, erano stati fatti scattare fuori sotto il davanzale di ogni finestra file su file di cilindri d’acciaio lucidato, i freddi prodigi della moderna artiglieria. Dominavano l’intero giardino e l’intera campagna, e avrebbero potuto fare a pezzi un corpo d’armata.

Questa silenziosa dichiarazione di guerra aveva evidentemente avuto il suo pieno effetto. Mentre MacIan e Turnbull camminavano fermi ma lenti verso l’atrio d’ingresso dell’istituzione, poterono vedere che la maggior parte, o almeno molti, dei pazienti si erano già radunati lì, come pure il personale di medici e l’intero reggimento di custodi e assistenti. Ma quando entrarono nell’atrio illuminato a lampada, e l’alta porta di ferro fu sbattuta e chiusa a chiave dietro di loro, un nuovo stupore balzò ancora nei loro occhi, e il robusto Turnbull per poco non cadde. Poiché vide uno spettacolo che era davvero, come aveva detto MacIan— o il Giorno del Giudizio o un sogno.

A pochi piedi da lui, a un angolo del quadrato di persone in piedi, stava la ragazza che aveva conosciuto a Jersey, Madeleine Durand. Lo guardava dritto negli occhi con un sorriso costante che illuminava la scena di tenebra e di dissennatezza come la luce di un onesto focolare. Il suo volto quadrato e la gola erano gettati all’indietro, com’era sua abitudine, e c’era qualcosa di quasi assonnato nella cordialità dei suoi occhi. Vide lei per prima, e per alcuni secondi vide lei sola; poi il bordo esterno della sua vista abbracciò tutti gli altri volti che fissavano, e vide tutti i volti che avesse mai visto per settimane e mesi trascorsi. C’era il tolstoiano in flanella Jaeger, con la barba gialla che andava all’indietro e il naso sciocco e gli occhi che andavano avanti, con la curiosità di un maniaco. Parlava con foga al signor Gordon, il corpulento bottegaio ebreo che una volta avevano imbavagliato nella sua stessa bottega. C’era il vecchio villico ubriaco dell’Hertfordshire; parlava animatamente da solo. C’era non solo il signor Vane il magistrato, ma anche il cancelliere del signor Vane, il magistrato. C’era non solo la signorina Drake dell’automobile, ma anche l’autista della signorina Drake. Nulla di selvaggio o di ignoto avrebbe potuto produrre su Turnbull un’impressione da incubo pari a quell’anello di volti familiari. Eppure ebbe uno shock intellettuale che fu maggiore di tutti gli altri. Si fece avanti d’impulso verso Madeleine, e poi vacillò con una sorta di selvaggia umiltà. Nel far ciò scorse un altro volto quadrato dietro quello di Madeleine, un volto dalle lunghe basette grigie e da uno sguardo austero. Era il vecchio Durand, il padre della ragazza; e quando Turnbull lo vide vide l’ultima e peggiore meraviglia di quella mostruosa notte. Ricordava Durand; ricordava la sua monotona, eterna lucidità, le sue vedute stupefacentemente assennate su ogni cosa, la sua colossale contentezza di fronte alle ovvietà solo perché erano vere. “Al diavolo tutto!” gridò tra sé Turnbull, “se lui è nel manicomio, non può esserci nessuno fuori.” Si avvicinò a Madeleine, ma sempre con dubbio e tanto più perché lei continuava a sorridergli. MacIan era già andato da Beatrice con un’aria di spavento.

Poi tutti questi sconcertati ma in parte amichevoli riconoscimenti furono fenduti da una voce crudele che faceva sempre inasprire ogni sangue umano. Il Padrone stava ritto in mezzo alla stanza contemplando la scena come un grande artista che guarda un quadro compiuto. Bello com’era, non avevano mai visto così chiaramente ciò che era davvero odioso nel suo volto; e persino allora poterono esprimerlo soltanto dicendo che le sopracciglia arcuate e il lungo mento marcato gli davano sempre un’aria di essere illuminato dal basso, come il volto di un qualche attore infernale.

“Questa è davvero una riunione accogliente,” disse, con occhi scintillanti.

Il Padrone intendeva evidentemente dire di più, ma prima che potesse dire alcunché il signor Durand gli si era piantato proprio davanti e stava parlando.

Parlava esattamente come un borghese francese parla al direttore di un ristorante. Cioè, parlava con crepitante e affannosa rapidità, ma senza alcuna incoerenza, e perciò senza alcuna emozione. Era una vivacità costante e monotona, che pareva provenire non dalla passione, ma semplicemente dalla ragione lanciata al galoppo. Diceva qualcosa di simile a questo:

“Voi mi negate la mia mezza bottiglia di Médoc, la bevanda più salubre e più consueta. Voi mi negate la compagnia e l’obbedienza di mia figlia, che la Natura stessa indica. Voi mi negate il manzo e il montone, senza pretendere che sia un digiuno della Chiesa. Voi ora mi vietate la passeggiata, cosa necessaria a una persona della mia età. È inutile dirmi che fate tutto questo per legge. La legge riposa sul contratto sociale. Se il cittadino si trova spogliato di quei piaceri e poteri che avrebbe avuto persino allo stato selvaggio, il contratto sociale è annullato.”

“È inutile cianciare, Monsieur,” disse Hutton, poiché il Padrone taceva. “Il luogo è coperto di mitragliatrici. Noi dobbiamo obbedire ai nostri ordini, e altrettanto dovete fare voi.”

“Il macchinario è dei più perfetti,” convenne Durand, in modo alquanto inconferente; “azionato a petrolio, credo. Vi chiedo soltanto di ammettere che, se cose simili scendono al di sotto della comodità della barbarie, il contratto sociale è annullato. È un grazioso piccolo punto di teoria.”

“Oh! può ben darsi,” disse Hutton.

Durand s’inchinò molto civilmente e si ritirò.

“Una riunione accogliente,” riprese il Padrone, sprezzante, “eppure credo che alcuni di voi siano in dubbio su come ci siamo tutti riuniti. Lo spiegherò, signore e signori; spiegherò ogni cosa. A chi dovrò rivolgermi in particolare? Al signor James Turnbull. Egli ha una mente scientifica.”

Turnbull parve soffocare per un’improvvisa protesta. Il Padrone parve tossire soltanto per pura cortesia e proseguì: “Il signor Turnbull sarà d’accordo con me,” disse, “quando dico che a lungo sentimmo, nei circoli scientifici, che gran danno era fatto da una leggenda come quella della Crocifissione.”

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.”

Turnbull borbottò qualcosa che era presumibilmente un assenso.

Il Maestro proseguì con scioltezza: “Fu vano da parte nostra insistere che l’episodio fosse irrilevante; che vi fossero molti di questi fanatici, molte di queste esecuzioni. Fummo costretti a prendere la cosa fermamente in mano, a investigarla nello spirito della storia scientifica, e con l’assistenza del signor Turnbull e di altri fummo lieti di poter annunciare che questa presunta Crocifissione non ebbe mai luogo affatto.”

MacIan sollevò il capo e guardò il Maestro con fermezza, ma Turnbull non alzò lo sguardo.

“Questo, scoprimmo, era l’unico modo per trattare tutte le superstizioni,” continuò l’oratore; “era necessario negarle storicamente, e lo abbiamo fatto con grande successo nel caso dei miracoli e di cose simili. Ora, entro il nostro stesso tempo, sorse uno sciagurato clamore che minacciava (come direbbe il signor Turnbull) di galvanizzare il cadavere del cristianesimo in una vita fittizia: il presunto caso di un eccentrico delle Highland che voleva battersi per la Vergine.”

MacIan, del tutto pallido, fece un passo avanti, ma l’oratore non mutò né il suo atteggiamento disinvolto né il suo fiume di parole. “Di nuovo insistemmo che questo duello non fosse da ammirare, che fosse una semplice rissa, ma il popolo era ignorante e romantico. Vi erano segni che si trattavano questo presunto montanaro e il suo presunto avversario come eroi. Provammo ogni altro mezzo per arrestare questo reazionario culto dell’eroe. Gli operai che scommettevano sul duello furono incarcerati per gioco d’azzardo. Gli operai che brindavano alla salute di un duellante furono incarcerati per ubriachezza. Ma l’eccitazione popolare intorno al presunto duello continuò, e dovemmo ripiegare sul nostro vecchio metodo storico. Investigammo, secondo principi scientifici, la storia della sfida di MacIan, e siamo felici di potervi informare che l’intera storia del tentato duello è una favola. Non vi fu mai alcuna sfida. Non vi fu mai alcun uomo di nome MacIan. È un mito melodrammatico, come il Calvario.”

Non un’anima si mosse tranne Turnbull, che sollevò il capo; eppure si avvertì il senso di una silenziosa esplosione.

“L’intera storia della sfida di MacIan,” proseguì il Maestro, sorridendo a tutti loro con una sinistra benevolenza, “si è scoperto che ha origine nelle ossessioni di alcuni tipi patologici, che ora sono fortunatamente tutti sotto la nostra cura. Vi è, per esempio, una persona qui di nome Gordon, un tempo custode di un negozio di curiosità. È vittima della malattia detta Vincolomania: l’impressione di essere stato legato o vincolato. Abbiamo anche un caso di Fugacità (il signor Whimpey), che immagina di essere stato inseguito da due uomini.”

Le facce indignate del bottegaio ebreo e del Don di Magdalen sporsero dalla folla nella loro indignazione, ma l’oratore continuò:

“Una povera donna che abbiamo con noi,” disse, con voce compassionevole, “crede di essere stata in un’automobile con due di questi uomini; questa è la ben nota illusione della velocità su cui non ho bisogno di soffermarmi. Un’altra sventurata donna ha la semplice mania egotistica di aver causato il duello. Madeleine Durand professa addirittura di essere stata l’oggetto della lotta tra MacIan e il suo nemico, una lotta che, se mai avvenne, cominciò certamente molto tempo prima. Ma non avvenne mai affatto. Abbiamo preso in mano ogni persona che professava di aver visto una cosa simile, e le abbiamo dimostrate tutte squilibrate. Ecco perché sono qui.”

Il Maestro si guardò intorno per la sala, mostrando appena i suoi denti perfetti con la perfezione di una crudeltà artistica, esaltato per un istante nell’enorme semplicità del suo successo, e poi attraversò l’atrio e svanì attraverso una porta interna. I suoi due luogotenenti, Quayle e Hutton, rimasero in piedi alla testa della grande armata di servitori e custodi.

“Spero non avremo altri guai,” disse il dottor Quayle assai piacevolmente, rivolgendosi a Turnbull, che si appoggiava pesantemente allo schienale di una sedia.

Ancora guardando in basso, Turnbull sollevò la sedia di un pollice o due da terra. Poi d’improvviso la fece roteare sopra la testa e la scagliò contro il dottore che lo interrogava con uno schianto tremendo che liberò una delle sue gambe di legno lungo il pavimento e ricacciò il dottore ansimante in un angolo. MacIan lanciò un grande grido, afferrò la gamba di sedia staccata e, precipitandosi sull’altro dottore, lo abbatté con un colpo. Venti inservienti si precipitarono a catturare i ribelli; MacIan ne respinse tre e Turnbull rovinò addosso a uno, quando da dietro tutti loro giunse uno strillo come di qualcosa di del tutto nuovo e spaventoso.

Due dei tre passaggi che conducevano fuori dalla sala erano soffocati da fumo azzurro. Un altro istante e la sala fu piena della sua nebbia, e scintille rosse cominciarono a sciamare come api scarlatte.

“Il posto va a fuoco!” gridò Quayle con un urlo di terrore sconveniente. “Oh, chi può averlo fatto? Come può essere accaduto?”

Una luce era comparsa negli occhi di Turnbull. “Come accadde la Rivoluzione francese?” chiese.

“Oh, e che ne so io!” gemette l’altro.

“Allora te lo dirò io,” disse Turnbull; “accadde perché certa gente s’immaginò che un droghiere francese fosse rispettabile quanto sembrava.”

Proprio mentre parlava, come per conferma, il vecchio signor Durand rientrò nella stanza fumosa del tutto placidamente, asciugandosi il petrolio dalle mani con un fazzoletto. Aveva dato fuoco all’edificio in conformità con i rigorosi principi del contratto sociale.

Ma MacIan aveva fatto un balzo in avanti e stava lì scosso e terribile. “Ora,” gridò, ansimando, “ora è il giudizio del mondo. I dottori lasceranno questo luogo; i custodi lasceranno questo luogo. Ci lasceranno in custodia dei macchinari e delle mitragliatrici alle finestre. Ma noi, i pazzi, aspetteremo di essere bruciati vivi pur di vederli andar via.”

“Come sai che ce ne andremo?” chiese Hutton, con ferocia.

“Voi non credete in nulla,” disse MacIan, semplicemente, “e avete un’insopportabile paura della morte.”

“Dunque questo è suicidio,” sogghignò il dottore; “un segno alquanto dubbio di sanità mentale.”

“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.

“Niente affatto: questa è vendetta,” rispose Turnbull, con perfetta calma; “una cosa del tutto sana.”

“Tu pensi che i dottori se ne andranno,” disse Hutton, con ferocia.

“I custodi se ne sono già andati,” disse Turnbull.

Proprio mentre parlavano le porte principali furono spalancate in un puro panico brutale, e tutti gli ufficiali e i subalterni del manicomio fuggirono via attraverso il giardino inseguiti dal fumo. Ma tra i maniaci schedati non un uomo né una donna si mosse.

“Odiamo morire,” disse Turnbull, con compostezza, “ma vi odiamo ancora di più. Questa è una rivoluzione riuscita.”

Nel tetto sopra le loro teste un pannello scivolò indietro, mostrando una striscia di cielo stellato e un’enorme cosa fatta di metallo bianco, con la forma e le pinne di un pesce, dondolante come se fosse all’ancora. Nello stesso istante una scala d’acciaio scese scivolando dall’apertura e colpì il pavimento, e il mento fesso del misterioso Maestro si sporse nell’apertura. “Quayle, Hutton,” disse, “voi fuggirete con me.” E salirono la scala come automi di piombo.

A lungo dopo che si furono arrampicati nel veicolo, la creatura dal volto biforcuto continuò a sogghignare verso la folla in basso, punta dal fumo. Poi finalmente disse con voce di seta e con un sorriso di soddisfazione finale:

“A proposito, temo di essere molto distratto. Vi è un uomo in particolare che, chissà come, dimentico sempre. Lo lascio sempre in giro. Una volta lo smarrii sulla Croce di San Paolo. Che sciocco sono; e ora l’ho dimenticato in una di quelle piccole celle dove sta bruciando il vostro fuoco. Assai sfortunato… specialmente per lui.” E, annuendo cordialmente, salì sulla sua nave volante.

MacIan rimase immobile per due minuti, poi si precipitò lungo uno dei corridoi soffocanti finché non trovò le fiamme. Turnbull guardò una volta Madeleine, e lo seguì.

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MacIan, coi capelli strinati, le vesti fumanti e le mani e il volto brucianti, si era già aperto un varco abbastanza profondo attraverso le prime barriere di legname in fiamme da giungere a portata di voce dalle celle che un tempo aveva conosciuto. Era impossibile, tuttavia, scorgere il punto dove il vecchio giaceva morto o vivo; non più a causa dell’oscurità, ma di una luce cocente e dolorosa. Il luogo della cella del vecchio mezzo scemo era ora il cuore di una foresta eretta di fuoco: le fiamme fitte e gialle come un campo di grano. Il loro incessante stridere e crepitare era come una folla che urla contro un oratore. Eppure attraverso tutta quella densità assordante MacIan credette di udire un suono piccolo e distinto. Quando lo udì si slanciò in avanti come per tuffarsi in quella fornace, ma Turnbull lo trattenne per un gomito.

“Lasciami andare!” gridò Evan, in agonia; “è la voce del povero vecchio mendicante… è ancora vivo, e grida aiuto.”

“Ascolta!” disse Turnbull, e sollevò un dito dal pugno serrato.

“Oppure sta strillando dal dolore,” protestò MacIan. “Non lo sopporterò.”

“Ascolta!” ripeté Turnbull, cupamente. “Hai mai sentito qualcuno gridare aiuto o strillare dal dolore con quella voce?”

I piccoli suoni acuti che giungevano attraverso il fragore dell’incendio erano davvero di una specie bizzarra, e MacIan volse al compagno un volto d’interrogazione perplessa.

“Sta cantando,” disse Turnbull, semplicemente.

Un bastione residuo crollò, schiacciando il fuoco, e attraverso il frastuono diminuito la voce del piccolo vecchio pazzo giunse più chiara. Nel cuore di quell’inferno incandescente egli cantava come un uccello. Cosa cantasse non era molto facile da seguire, ma sembrava essere qualcosa a proposito del giocare nel fieno d’oro.

“Buon Dio!” gridò Turnbull, con amarezza, “sembra che vi siano davvero dei vantaggi nell’essere un idiota.” Poi, avvicinandosi al margine del fuoco, chiamò a caso il cantore invisibile: “Puoi uscire? Sei tagliato fuori?”

“Che Dio ci aiuti tutti!” disse MacIan, con un brivido; “ora sta ridendo.”

A qualunque stadio dell’essere bruciato vivo si trovasse ora l’invisibile, egli scuoteva adesso scoppi di risa argentine e ilari. Mentre ascoltava, i due occhi di MacIan cominciarono ad ardere, come se uno strano pensiero gli fosse entrato in testa.

“Stolto, esci e salvati!” gridò Turnbull.

“No, per il Cielo! non è quella la via,” gridò Evan, d’improvviso. “Padre,” gridò, “esci e salvaci tutti!”

Il fuoco, benché fosse calato in uno o due punti, era, nel complesso, più alto e più indomabile che mai. Fiamme alte e separate si levavano e si spandevano sopra di loro come i chiostri infuocati di qualche cattedrale infernale, o come un boschetto di rossi alberi tropicali nel giardino del diavolo. Più in alto ancora, nella purpurea cavità della notte, le fiamme più alte balzavano ancora e ancora invano verso le stelle, come draghi d’oro incatenati ma dibattentisi. Le torri e le cupole del fumo opprimente parevano alte e lontane abbastanza da annegare pianeti distanti in una nebbia di Londra. Ma se esaurissimo tutte le frenetiche similitudini per quella frenetica scena, l’impressione principale intorno al fuoco resterebbe la sua rigidità eretta e schierata e una sorta di ruggente immobilità. Era letteralmente un muro di fuoco.

“Padre,” gridò MacIan, ancora una volta, “esci di lì e salvaci tutti!” Turnbull lo fissava mentre gridava.

L’alta e ferma foresta di fuoco doveva essere già un portento visibile all’intero cerchio di terra e mare. Il suo rossore ardente illuminava i lunghi fianchi delle bianche navi al largo nel Mare di Germania, e faceva risaltare come rubini penetranti le finestre nei villaggi sulle alture lontane. Se qualche abitante o marinaio guardava verso di essa, dovette vedere uno strano spettacolo mentre MacIan gridava per la terza volta.

Quella foresta di fuoco vacillò, e si spaccò nel centro; e poi tutta una metà di essa si piegò da un lato come un campo di grano si piega tutto da una parte sotto il peso del vento. Anzi, sembrava che un gran vento si fosse levato e avesse spinto il gran fuoco di traverso. Il suo fumo non era più mandato in alto a soffocare le stelle, ma era trascinato e strascicato di contea in contea come un tremendo vessillo di sconfitta.

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.

Ma non era il vento; o, se era il vento, erano due venti che soffiavano in direzioni opposte. Poiché mentre una metà dell’immenso fuoco si piegava da un lato verso le alture interne, l’altra metà, esattamente con lo stesso angolo, si piegava verso oriente in direzione del mare. Sicché la terra e l’oceano poterono contemplare, dove non v’era stata che una mera massa di fiamme, una cosa divisa come una V — una lingua di fiamma biforcuta. Ma se era un prodigio per quei lontani, era qualcosa oltre ogni parola per quei ben vicini. Come gli echi dell’ultimo grido di Evan risuonarono e si spensero nel frastuono universale, la volta di fuoco sul suo capo si aprì lungo il mezzo, e, ripiegandosi indietro in due grandi flutti d’oro, pendette da ogni lato, tanto immensa e innocua quanto due colli in pendio giacciono ai due lati di una valle. Giù per il centro di questo solco, o abisso, correva un sentiero piccolo, sgombro di tutto tranne le ceneri, e giù per questo piccolo sentiero camminava un piccolo vecchio che cantava come se fosse solo in un bosco in spring.

Quando James Turnbull vide ciò, d’improvviso protese una mano e parve sostenersi sulla robusta spalla di Madeleine Durand. Poi, dopo un istante di esitazione, posò l’altra mano sulla spalla di MacIan. I suoi occhi azzurri parevano straordinariamente brillanti e belli. In molti giornali e riviste scettiche in seguito fu tristemente o severamente rimproverato di aver abbandonato le certezze del materialismo. Per tutta la vita fino a quel momento egli era stato onestissimamente certo che il materialismo fosse un fatto. Ma differiva dagli scrittori delle riviste precisamente in questo: che preferiva un fatto perfino al materialismo.

Come la piccola figura cantante si faceva sempre più vicina, Evan cadde in ginocchio, e dopo un istante lo seguì Beatrice; poi Madeleine cadde in ginocchio, e dopo un più lungo istante Turnbull seguì. Poi il piccolo vecchio passò oltre loro cantando giù per quel corridoio di fiamme. Non ne avevano guardato il volto.

Quando fu passato, alzarono lo sguardo. Mentre la prima luce del fuoco era balzata a oriente e a occidente, dipingendo i fianchi delle navi di luce di fuoco o strappando rosse scintille dalle case dalle finestre, essa non aveva finora colpito verso l’alto, poiché sopra vi era la ponderosa e rococò caverna del suo stesso mostruoso fumo colorato. Ma ora il fuoco era volto a sinistra e a destra come i capelli di una donna divisi nel mezzo, e ora gli aste della sua luce potevano saettare in su nei cieli vuoti e colpire qualsiasi cosa, uccello o nuvola. Ma colpì qualcosa che non era né nuvola né uccello. Lontano, lontano, in su, in quegli immensi vuoti dello spazio, qualcosa volava veloce e splendeva luminoso, qualcosa che splendeva troppo forte e volava troppo rapido per essere uno dei volatili dell’aria, per quanto la rossa luce lo illuminasse da sotto come il petto di un uccello. Tutti sapevano che era una nave volante, e tutti sapevano di chi.

Mentre fissavano in alto, la piccola macchia di luce parve leggermente inclinarsi, e due punti neri caddero dal suo orlo. Tutti i visi impazienti, levati in su, guardarono i due punti mentre si facevano sempre più grandi nella loro corsa in giù. Poi qualcuno urlò, e nessuno guardò più in alto. Poiché i due corpi, più grandi a ogni secondo di volo, distesi e sparpagliati nella luce del fuoco, erano i corpi morti dei due dottori che il professor Lucifer aveva portato con sé — il debole e sogghignante Quayle, il freddo e goffo Hutton. Precipitarono con uno schianto nel folto del fuoco.

“Se ne sono andati!” urlò Beatrice, nascondendo il capo. “O Dio! Sono perduti!”

Evan le pose il braccio attorno, e ricordò la propria visione.

“No, non sono perduti,” disse. “Sono salvi. Non ha portato via alcuna anima con sé, dopotutto.”

Guardò vagamente il fuoco che già svaniva, e là tra le ceneri giacevano due cose lucenti che erano sopravvissute al fuoco, la sua spada e quella di Turnbull, cadute a caso nella figura di una croce.