 CHAPTER IV The dualists 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 tradesmen 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 handsoms that fill London's streets. But they had forgotten something, they had forgotten journalism, they had forgotten that there exists in the modern world, perhaps for the first time in history, a class of people whose interest is not that things should happen well or happen badly, should happen successfully or happen unsuccessfully, should happen to the advantage of this party or the advantage of that part, but whose interest simply is that things should happen. It is the one great weakness of journalism as a picture of our modern existence that it must be a picture made up entirely of exceptions. We announce on flaring posters that a man has fallen off a scaffolding. We do not announce on flaring posters that a man has not fallen off a scaffolding. Yet this latter fact is fundamentally more exciting as indicating that that moving tower of terror and mystery a man is still abroad upon the earth. That the man has not fallen off a scaffolding is really more sensational and it is also some thousand times more common. But journalism cannot reasonably be expected thus to insist upon the permanent miracles. Busy editors cannot be expected to put on their posters, Mr. Wilkinson still safe or Mr. Jones of Worthing not dead yet. They cannot announce the happiness of mankind at all. They cannot describe all the forks that are not stolen or all the marriages that are not judiciously dissolved. Hence the complete picture they give of life is of necessity fallacious. They can only represent what is unusual. However democratic they may be, they are only concerned with the minority. The incident of the religious fanatic who broke a window on Ludgate Hill was alone enough to set them up in good copy for the night. But when the same man was brought before a magistrate and defied his enemy to mortal combat in the open court, then the columns would hardly hold the excruciating information, and the headlines were so large that there was hardly room for any of the text. The Daily Telegraph headed a column, A Duel on Divinity, and there was a correspondence afterwards which lasted for months about whether police magistrates ought to mention religion. The Daily Mail, in its dull, sensible way, headed the events, wanted to fight for the virgin. Mr. James Douglas, in The Star, presuming on his knowledge of philosophical and theological terms, described the Christian's outbreak under the title of dualist and dualist. The Daily News inserted a colorless account of the matter, but was pursued and eaten up for some weeks with letters from outlying ministers headed murder and mereoletry. 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 thee, 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 in substituting a leader about galoshes. 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 agape-monites, 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. McKeon, 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, slyon, dandelion, spyon, with cop 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 into every paper, with every conceivable kind of explanation, running them to earth in the monument, the two-penny tube, epping forest, Westminster Abbey, rolled up in carpets at shulbreds, 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. McKeehan, 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 sort of silver, and mourning lifted itself laboriously over London. From the spot where Turnbull and McKeehan 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 glowing 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 knew 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 in 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 Cheepside? 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 the Lazarus, bid thee rise up Republican and save thyself and all of us, but no disciples tongue can say if thou canst 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. Mekian 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 Mekian 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 as like having screwed some devil's magnifying glass into one's eye. It was like seeing a porridge bowl as big as a house, where a mousetrap made to catch elephants. Like the land of the brobding Nagians, said Turnbull smiling. Oh, where is that? said Mekian. 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 Mekian. 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 Mekian. 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 onto 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 Mekian, opening his great grave blue eyes. The papers are full of us, said Turnbull, stooping to pick up one of the swords. Mekian 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 Mekian 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. Mekian, 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. Mekian, 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 complaints of sky signs. Therefore do not imagine in your innocence that we have only to melt away among those English hills as a Highland Caterin might into your God-Persaican 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 affecting 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. Mekian, 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. Mekian 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 Mekian, 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 any one 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 indoor. I have the biscuits and the tinned meat and the milk. You have the chocolate, I think, and the brandy? Yes, said Mekian, like a soldier taking orders. Very well, then, come on, march! We turn under that third bush and sew 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 Mekian 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, Mekian? 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 Mekian, 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. Mekian 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 asked. 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 McKeein 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. McKeein, what do you really mean? McKeein 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? McKeein 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? McKeein 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 McKeein. 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. McKeein 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. Heaven 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 esteemed me, the esteem would be holy animal and idle? For the first time McKeean 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 McKeean, with a sudden contraction of his black brows. Yes, it must be now. The bright swords crossed, and the first touch of them traveling 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 McKeean 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 in a Panama hat was trolling serenely towards them. End of Chapter 4. Recording by Tricia G. Chapter 5 of The Ball and the Cross. The Slibervox recording is in the public domain. The Ball and the Cross by G. K. Chesterton. Chapter 5. 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 piteously 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 reposted 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 and 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 dualists 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-colored 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-rimmed hat, equally hygienic, very much at the back of his head, and his voice coming out of so heavy and hardy 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 colorless 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 humor, dry scotch humor. 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 dueling, 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 dueling. Waiting for some effect upon his wooden auditors, the stranger stood beaming for a moment and then resumed. Now they tell me in the papers 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 hardy, 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-humored gravity. But you know this is a serious matter, he said, eyeing Turnbull and McKeon, 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 honor or anything of that sort, is not bloodshed a great sin? No, said McKeon, 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 McKeon, 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 casualist, said the large man waging his head. Now, do you know what I always say to casualists? Mickey and 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. McKeehan, shall we engage? McKeehan plucked his sword out of the grass. I must and will stop this shocking crime, cried the Tolstoyan 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? McKeehan 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 called the police, he said with a heated face. And deny your most sacred dogma, said McKeon. Dogma cried the man in a sort of dismay. Oh, we have no dogmas, you know. There was another silence, and he said again, eerily, you know, I think there's something in what Shah 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 McKeon, drawing a deep breath. Don't you believe in prayer now? I prayed for an angel. An hour ago, said the Highlander in his heavy meditative voice, I felt the devil weakening my heart and my oath against you, and I prayed that God would send an angel to my aid. Well, inquired the other, finishing his mending and wrapping the rest of the string around his hand to get a firmer grip. Well, well, that man was an angel, said McKeon. 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 have stopped. I know what you mean, said Turnbull grimly. But then he came, broke out McKeon, 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. O 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? said 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. End of Chapter 5, Recording by Tricia G. Chapter 6 of The Ball and the Cross. 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 stillness over the empty countryside, 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 McKeen. I run very well. Is that a qualification in a family of warriors? asked Turnbull. Undoubtedly rapid movement is essential, answered McKeen, 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 McKeen 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 McKeen 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... McKeen 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. McKeen 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 hooves. They have put the mounted police on us, said Turnbull shortly. Good Lord, one would think we were a revolution. So we are, said McKeen 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 fire-light. 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 gale 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 splendor, purple tales of wrath and friendship like Roland and Oliver or Baleen and Boulan 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. McKeon 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 McKeon, 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. McKeon's long, lean mouth had shut hard. Who the devil can it 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 McKeon'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 over done, McKeon, 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 feral of an ordinary bamboo keen 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, Mckeen, 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 Mckeen 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 Mckeen 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 gray jacket suit on which the gray 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 Mckeen in his grave childish way, what are you doing here? I, said the man indignantly, I am in my own garden. Oh, said Mckeen simply, I apologize. Turnbull was coolly curling his red mustache, 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 Mckeen, 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 donning 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 honor 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 Tom fools 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 McKee-in. 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 bone 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 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 neighboring tree, so that the feral made fierce prints and punctures in the bark. Excuse me, said McKee-in suddenly, with the wide-eyed curiosity of a child. Excuse me, but— Well, said the small fighter, brandishing his wooden weapon. Excuse me, repeated McKee-in, 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 gaffah. 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 daydreams. 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 self-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 know it was better inside, it was at least a surprise. The moment the two dualists 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. Salim, said the host, these two gentlemen are staying with me tonight. Send up the very best wine and dinner at once. And Salim, one of these gentlemen, will probably die tomorrow. Make arrangements, please. The negro bowed and withdrew. Evan McKeehan 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. McKee-en, 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. McKee-en 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 can't 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, McKee and 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 dualists 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 unquestion. You have found your way, gentlemen, by a beautiful accident to the house of the only man in England, probably, who will favor 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 Wimpy, Maurice Wimpy. I had a fellowship at Magdalene. 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 honor. Here you can fall back on that naked and awful arbitration, which is the only thing that balances the stars, a still, continuous violence. They victus, down, down, down with the defeated. Victory is the only ultimate fact. Carthage was destroyed. The red Indians are being exterminated. It is the single certainty. In an hour from now, that sun will still be shining in 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 McKeen said steadily, Mr. Turnbull, lend me your sword a moment. Turnbull, with a questioning glance, handed him the weapon. McKeen took the second sword in his left hand, and with a violent gesture hurled it at the feet of little Mr. Wimpy. Fight! he said in a loud, harsh voice. Fight me now! Wimpy took a step backward and bewildered words bubbled on his lips. Pick up that sword and fight me, repeated McKeen, with brows as black as thunder. The little man turned to Turnbull with a gesture demanding judgment 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 Wimpy with blazing eyes. Wimpy 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 McKeon 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 dualists after him. Turnbull kept at his tail with savage ecstasy, still shooing him like a cat. But McKeon, 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 pailing 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 tail 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 onto 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 McKeon, and unholy sounds came from within. He had never practiced laughing and had hurt him very much. CHAPTER VII THE VILLAGE OF GRASSLY IN THE WHOLE 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 McKeon. "'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 white-washed 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 am 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 McKeon. "'I don't know the exact name for it,' replied Turnbull. "'Perhaps it is the South Sea Islands, or it may be Magdalene College.' There was a long pause, and McKeon 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-gray eyes stood open with a grave astonishment. "'Do you really mean to say, McKeon,' he said, that you fancied that we, the free thinkers, that Bradla or Holyoke or Ingersoll believe all that dirty immoral mysticism about nature? Damn nature!' "'I supposed you did,' said McKeon 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 McKeon 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 imparler. 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 McKeon with tranquility. 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 a slant, 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-gray tower dominating it decisively. But even the church was scarcely so central and solemn an institution as the large public house, the Velen court 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 boot jack. 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 memorial antiquity. And in the Velen court arms festivity itself had some solemnity and decorum, and beer was drunk with reverence as it ought to be. Into the principal parlor 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. Mckian, 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. Mckian, 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 Mckian and Turnbull had reached the really important part of their discussion. Mckian wore an expression of sadbie Wildermint 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 Mckian 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 Mckian 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 Mckian, 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 Mckian sleepily. Turnbull struck the table with a sudden hand. Good Lord in heaven, he cried, who does not exist, murmured Mckian. 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 Mckian, suddenly starting up. One can't talk of this kind of a 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 Mckian, 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, abstractly 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 truckulently, what do you mean? That is just the difficulty, continued McKeeam 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 McKeeam 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 McKeeam continued with the same steady voice and sad eyes. So what I feel is this. Here is this great divine creation I was taught to believe in. I can understand you're 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 McKeeam 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 learned all about your saints and angels at the same time as you learned 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 whatnot? Did you not take in those things, too, along with your theology? McKeeam 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. McKeeam was silent. Go on, repeated Turnbull. What's the matter with you? What are you staring at? I am staring, said McKeeam 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 McKeeam, shaking his head. I mean him. And he pointed to the half-tipsy yokel who was plowing down the road. What do you mean, asked the atheist. I mean him, repeated McKeeam with emphasis. He goes out in the early dawn. He digs or he plows 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 moldering gods in the British Museum are new facts beside him. It is he who in the end shall judge us all. And McKeeam rose to his feet with a vague excitement. What are you going to do? I am going to ask him, cried McKeeam. Cryed McKeeam, which of us is right? Turnbull broke into a kind of laugh. Asked that intoxicated turnipeter, he began. Yes, which of us is right? cried McKeeam 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 great twilight, Turnbull following with a good humored oaf. 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 banished 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 gray 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. McKeon, 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 lean 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 them. Atheists. The grounds of his disdain seemed a little dark and confused, but they were evidently sufficient. McKeon 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. Grastly old church, that is, pulled down it was in the old squire's time, and I mean, explained McKeon elaborately, that you think that there should be someone typifying religion, a priest. Priests, said the old man with sudden passion. Priests, I know one. What they want in England, that's what I say. What they want in England. They want you, said McKeon. Quite so, said Turnbull, and me, but they won't get us. McKeon, 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 ain't got a right to speak? said the old man, facing round an irrational frenzy. I got a right to speak. I'm a man I am. I don't want no voting nor priests. I say a man's a man, that's what I say. If a man ain't a man, what is he? That's what I say. If a man ain't a man, what is he? When I sees a man, I says he'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 a dels, he's a man. You're perfectly right, said the sudden voice of McKeon, 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 McKeon. Turnbull looked at him curiously. Are you turning an agnostic? he asked. Oh, you don't understand, cried out McKeon. We Catholics are all agnostics. We Catholics have only, in that sense, got as far as realizing that man is a man. But your Ibsen's and your Zola's and your Shah's and your Tolstoy's have not even got so far. An Interlude of Argument Morning broke in bitter silver along the gray and level plain, and almost as it did so, Turnbull and McKeon came out of a low, scrubby wood onto 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 Hacoal 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. Kensett in dim and twinkling pine woods amid the bewildering monotony of the pines. And it was with the end of a long speech from McKeon, passionately defending the practical achievements and the solid prosperity of the Catholic tradition, that they came out upon the open land. McKeon had learned much and thought more, since he came out of the cloudy hills of Eresaig. 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 began 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 plowed 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 skeptics 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 heretics 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 18th century of the nature worshiping humanists of the Renaissance without discovering that you differ from them twice as much as you differ from the Pope. You are a 19th century skeptic and you are always telling me that I ignore the cruelty of nature. If you had been an 18th century skeptic, 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 18th 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 in spiriting. 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 McKee and 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 can 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 McKee and Christianity is always out of fashion because it is always same and all fashions are mild and sanities. 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 quarreled 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 Payne 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 MD, 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 is central to morals why do you not make it a test for these things? We once did make it a test for these things, said McKee and 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 noticed that most anti-Christian arguments are in the same inconsistent style. That is all very well as a debating club answer, replied Turnbull good humordly, 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 McKee indistainfully. 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 Saint 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 18th century, with his stern patriotism and his simple life, was a fine fellow. But have you ever seen him? Have you ever been an austere Republican? Only a hundred years have passed, and that volcano of revolutionary truth and valor 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 the 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 forever. 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 practice 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 Athena, 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 the 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 Massenger who wrote the Virgin Martyr, from Shakespeare who wrote Measure for Measure. If you and 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 canvas and consider the idea, that 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 rude or symbol. Every man feels the need of some element of purity and 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 Gala had. 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 Mackeon 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 inside of the great planes. They went a little way in silence, and then James Turnbull said suddenly, but I cannot believe in the thing. Mackeon answered nothing to the speech, perhaps it is unanswerable, and indeed they scarcely spoke another word to each other all that day.