The Ball and the Cross Read online

  III. SOME OLD CURIOSITIES

  The evening sky, a dome of solid gold, unflaked even by a single sunsetcloud, steeped the meanest sights of London in a strange and mellowlight. It made a little greasy street of St. Martin's Lane look as if itwere paved with gold. It made the pawnbroker's half-way down it shine asif it were really that Mountain of Piety that the French poetic instincthas named it; it made the mean pseudo-French bookshop, next but one toit, a shop packed with dreary indecency, show for a moment a kind ofParisian colour. And the shop that stood between the pawnshop and theshop of dreary indecency, showed with quite a blaze of old world beauty,for it was, by accident, a shop not unbeautiful in itself. The frontwindow 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-burnishedseventeenth-century swords ran like an ornate railing along the front ofthe window; behind was a darker glimmer of old oak and old armour;and higher up hung the most extraordinary looking South Sea tools orutensils, whether designed for killing enemies or merely for cookingthem, no mere white man could possibly conjecture. But the romance ofthe eye, which really on this rich evening, clung about the shop, hadits main source in the accident of two doors standing open, the frontdoor that opened on the street and a back door that opened on an oddgreen square of garden, that the sun turned to a square of gold. Thereis nothing more beautiful than thus to look as it were through thearchway of a house; as if the open sky were an interior chamber, and thesun a secret lamp of the place.

  I have suggested that the sunset light made everything lovely. To saythat it made the keeper of the curiosity shop lovely would be a tributeto it perhaps too extreme. It would easily have made him beautiful if hehad been merely squalid; if he had been a Jew of the Fagin type. Buthe was a Jew of another and much less admirable type; a Jew with a verywell-sounding name. For though there are no hard tests for separatingthe tares and the wheat of any people, one rude but efficient guide isthat the nice Jew is called Moses Solomon, and the nasty Jew is calledThornton Percy. The keeper of the curiosity shop was of the ThorntonPercy branch of the chosen people; he belonged to those Lost Ten Tribeswhose industrious object is to lose themselves. He was a man stillyoung, but already corpulent, with sleek dark hair, heavy handsomeclothes, and a full, fat, permanent smile, which looked at the firstglance kindly, and at the second cowardly. The name over his shop wasHenry Gordon, but two Scotchmen who were in his shop that evening couldcome upon no trace of a Scotch accent.

  These two Scotchmen in this shop were careful purchasers, butfree-handed payers. One of them who seemed to be the principal and theauthority (whom, indeed, Mr. Henry Gordon fancied he had seen somewherebefore), was a small, sturdy fellow, with fine grey eyes, a square redtie and a square red beard, that he carried aggressively forward as ifhe defied anyone to pull it. The other kept so much in the background incomparison that he looked almost ghostly in his grey cloak or plaid, atall, sallow, silent young man.

  The two Scotchmen were interested in seventeenth-century swords. Theywere fastidious about them. They had a whole armoury of these weaponsbrought out and rolled clattering about the counter, until they foundtwo of precisely the same length. Presumably they desired the exactsymmetry for some decorative trophy. Even then they felt the points,poised the swords for balance and bent them in a circle to see that theysprang straight again; which, for decorative purposes, seems carryingrealism rather far.

  "These will do," said the strange person with the red beard. "Andperhaps I had better pay for them at once. And as you are thechallenger, Mr. MacIan, perhaps you had better explain the situation."

  The tall Scotchman in grey took a step forward and spoke in a voicequite clear and bold, and yet somehow lifeless, like a man going throughan 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 graveand invaluable matter, which can only be atoned for by fighting.Unfortunately, as the police are in some sense pursuing us, we arehurried, and must fight now and without seconds. But if you will be sokind as to take us into your little garden and see far play, we shallfeel 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 murderon behalf of religion. Well, well my religion is a little respect forhumanity, and----"

  "Excuse me," cut in Turnbull, suddenly and fiercely, pointing towardsthe 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, pointingbackward to the pornographic bookseller.

  "What if I do?"

  "Why, then," cried Turnbull, with grating contempt. "I will leavethe religion of humanity confidently in your hands; but I am sorryI troubled you about such a thing as honour. Look here, my man. I dobelieve in humanity. I do believe in liberty. My father died for itunder 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 makesme doubt it it is your foul fat face. It is hard to believe you were notmeant to be ruled like a dog or killed like a cockroach. Don't try yourslave's philosophy on me. We are going to fight, and we are going tofight in your garden, with your swords. Be still! Raise your voice abovea whisper, and I run you through the body."

  Turnbull put the bright point of the sword against the gay waistcoat ofthe dealer, who stood choking with rage and fear, and an astonishment socrushing as to be greater than either.

  "MacIan," said Turnbull, falling almost into the familiar tone of abusiness partner, "MacIan, tie up this fellow and put a gag in hismouth. Be still, I say, or I kill you where you stand."

  The man was too frightened to scream, but he struggled wildly, whileEvan MacIan, whose long, lean hands were unusually powerful, tightenedsome old curtain cords round him, strapped a rope gag in his mouth androlled him on his back on the floor.

  "There's nothing very strong here," said Evan, looking about him. "I'mafraid 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 thesquirming thing on the floor.

  "And now," said Turnbull, twirling his fiery moustache and fingering hissword, "let us go into the garden. What an exquisite summer evening!"

  MacIan said nothing, but lifting his sword from the counter went outinto the sun.

  The brilliant light ran along the blades, filling the channels of themwith white fire; the combatants stuck their swords in the turf and tookoff their hats, coats, waistcoats, and boots. Evan said a short Latinprayer to himself, during which Turnbull made something of a parade oflighting a cigarette which he flung away the instant after, when he sawMacIan apparently standing ready. Yet MacIan was not exactly ready. Hestood 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 andstandards of the Saracens."

  "Jerusalem!" said Turnbull, laughing. "Well, we've taken the onlyinhabitant 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 orparodied with an impatient contempt; and in the stillness of the gardenthe swords came together with a clear sound like a bell. The instantthe blades touched, each felt them tingle to their very points with apersonal vitality, as if they were two naked nerves of steel.
Evan hadworn throughout an air of apathy, which might have been the stale apathyof one who wants nothing. But it was indeed the more dreadful apathyof one who wants something and will care for nothing else. And this wasseen suddenly; for the instant Evan engaged he disengaged and lungedwith an infernal violence. His opponent with a desperate promptitudeparried and riposted; the parry only just succeeded, the riposte failed.Something big and unbearable seemed to have broken finally out ofEvan in that first murderous lunge, leaving him lighter and cooler andquicker upon his feet. He fell to again, fiercely still, but now with afierce caution. The next moment Turnbull lunged; MacIan seemed to catchthe point and throw it away from him, and was thrusting back like athunderbolt, when a sound paralysed him; another sound beside theirringing weapons. Turnbull, perhaps from an equal astonishment, perhapsfrom chivalry, stopped also and forebore to send his sword through hisexposed enemy.

  "What's that?" asked Evan, hoarsely.

  A heavy scraping sound, as of a trunk being dragged along a litteredfloor, 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 crossedagain with the same sound like song, and the men went to work again withthe same white and watchful faces. Evan, in his impatience, went back alittle to his wildness. He made windmills, as the French duellists say,and though he was probably a shade the better fencer of the two, hefound the other's point pass his face twice so close as almost to grazehis cheek. The second time he realized the actual possibility of defeatand pulled himself together under a shock of the sanity of anger. Henarrowed, and, so to speak, tightened his operations: he fenced (as theswordsman's boast goes), in a wedding ring; he turned Turnbull's thrustswith a maddening and almost mechanical click, like that of a machine.Whenever Turnbull's sword sought to go over that other mere white streakit seemed to be caught in a complex network of steel. He turned onethrust, turned another, turned another. Then suddenly he went forward atthe lunge with his whole living weight. Turnbull leaped back, butEvan lunged and lunged and lunged again like a devilish piston rod orbattering ram. And high above all the sound of the struggle there brokeinto the silent evening a bellowing human voice, nasal, raucous, at thehighest pitch of pain. "Help! Help! Police! Murder! Murder!" The gag wasbroken; 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 onlythe noise of the swords but all other noises around it, but even throughits 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 thatmade him drop his sword. The atheist, with his grey eyes at theirwidest and wildest, was staring straight over his shoulder at the littlearchway of shop that opened on the street beyond. And he saw the archwayblocked and blackened with strange figures.

  "We must bolt, MacIan," he said abruptly. "And there isn't a damnedsecond to lose either. Do as I do."

  With a bound he was beside the little cluster of his clothes and bootsthat lay on the lawn; he snatched them up, without waiting to put any ofthem on; and tucking his sword under his other arm, went wildly atthe wall at the bottom of the garden and swung himself over it. Threeseconds after he had alighted in his socks on the other side, MacIanalighted beside him, also in his socks and also carrying clothes andsword in a desperate bundle.

  They were in a by-street, very lean and lonely itself, but so close toa crowded thoroughfare that they could see the vague masses of vehiclesgoing by, and could even see an individual hansom cab passing thecorner at the instant. Turnbull put his fingers to his mouth like agutter-snipe and whistled twice. Even as he did so he could hear theloud voices of the neighbours and the police coming down the garden.

  The hansom swung sharply and came tearing down the little lane at hiscall. When the cabman saw his fares, however, two wild-haired menin their shirts and socks with naked swords under their arms, henot unnaturally brought his readiness to a rigid stop and staredsuspiciously.

  "You talk to him a minute," whispered Turnbull, and stepped back intothe shadow of the wall.

  "We want you," said MacIan to the cabman, with a superb Scotch drawl ofindifference and assurance, "to drive us to St. Pancras Station--verraquick."

  "Very sorry, sir," said the cabman, "but I'd like to know it was allright. Might I arst where you come from, sir?"

  A second after he spoke MacIan heard a heavy voice on the other side ofthe wall, saying: "I suppose I'd better get over and look for them. Giveme a back."

  "Cabby," said MacIan, again assuming the most deliberate and lingeringlowland 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 shadowof the wall Turnbull crept out. He had struggled wildly into his coat(leaving his waistcoat on the pavement), and he was with a fierce paleface climbing up the cab behind the cabman. MacIan had no glimmeringnotion of what he was up to, but an instinct of discipline, inheritedfrom a hundred men of war, made him stick to his own part and trust theother man's.

  "Open the doors, cabby," he repeated, with something of the obstinatesolemnity 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. Thecabman did not see it, but he was still suspicious and began:

  "Very sorry, sir, but..." and with that the catlike Turnbull tore himout of his seat and hurled him into the street below, where he laysuddenly stunned.

  "Give me his hat," said Turnbull in a silver voice, that the otherobeyed like a bugle. "And get inside with the swords."

  And just as the red and raging face of a policeman appeared above thewall, Turnbull struck the horse with a terrible cut of the whip and thetwo went whirling away like a boomerang.

  They had spun through seven streets and three or four squares beforeanything further happened. Then, in the neighbourhood of Maida Vale,the driver opened the trap and talked through it in a manner not whollycommon 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 placedthere was no time for anything but very abrupt action. I trust thereforethat you have no cause to complain of me if I have deferred until thismoment a consultation with you on our present position or future action.Our present position, Mr. MacIan, I imagine that I am under no specialnecessity of describing. We have broken the law and we are fleeingfrom its officers. Our future action is a thing about which I myselfentertain sufficiently strong views; but I have no right to assume or toanticipate yours, though I may have formed a decided conception of yourcharacter and a decided notion of what they will probably be. Still, byevery principle of intellectual justice, I am bound to ask you now andseriously whether you wish to continue our interrupted relations."

  MacIan leant his white and rather weary face back upon the cushions inorder to speak up through the open door.

  "Mr. Turnbull," he said, "I have nothing to add to what I have saidbefore. It is strongly borne in upon me that you and I, the soleoccupants of this runaway cab, are at this moment the two most importantpeople in London, possibly in Europe. I have been looking at all thestreets as we went past, I have been looking at all the shops as we wentpast, I have been looking at all the churches as we went past. Atfirst, I felt a little dazed with the vastness of it all. I could notunderstand 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 therealities."

  "Religious symbolism," said
Mr. Turnbull, through the trap, "does not,as you are probably aware, appeal ordinarily to thinkers of the schoolto which I belong. But in symbolism as you use it in this instance, Imust, I think, concede a certain truth. We _must_ fight this thingout somewhere; because, as you truly say, we have found each other'sreality. We _must_ kill each other--or convert each other. I used tothink all Christians were hypocrites, and I felt quite mildly towardsthem 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 thoughtatheism would leave them free for immorality--and yet in your heart youtolerated them entirely. Now you _know_ that I am an honest man, and youare mad against me, as I am against you. Yes, that's it. You can't beangry with bad men. But a good man in the wrong--why one thirsts for hisblood. 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 shutdown 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 wasunrolling itself in this ridiculous adventure. They had got away withsuch stunning promptitude that the police chase had in all probabilitynot even properly begun. But in case it had, the amateur cabman chosehis dizzy course through London with a strange dexterity. He did notdo what would have first occurred to any ordinary outsider desiring todestroy his tracks. He did not cut into by-ways or twist his way throughmean streets. His amateur common sense told him that it was preciselythe poor street, the side street, that would be likely to rememberand report the passing of a hansom cab, like the passing of a royalprocession. He kept chiefly to the great roads, so full of hansoms thata wilder pair than they might easily have passed in the press. In one ofthe quieter streets Evan put on his boots.

  Towards the top of Albany Street the singular cabman again opened thetrap.

  "Mr. MacIan," he said, "I understand that we have now definitely settledthat in the conventional language honour is not satisfied. Our actionmust at least go further than it has gone under recent interruptedconditions. That, I believe, is understood."

  "Perfectly," replied the other with his bootlace in his teeth.

  "Under those conditions," continued Turnbull, his voice coming throughthe hole with a slight note of trepidation very unusual with him, "Ihave a suggestion to make, if that can be called a suggestion, whichhas probably occurred to you as readily as to me. Until the actual eventcomes off we are practically in the position if not of comrades, atleast of business partners. Until the event comes off, thereforeI should suggest that quarrelling would be inconvenient and ratherinartistic; while the ordinary exchange of politeness between man andman 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 behavelike gentlemen to each other. But we, by the queerness of our position,are something much more than either duellists or gentlemen. We are, inthe oddest and most exact sense of the term, brothers--in arms."

  "Mr. MacIan," replied Turnbull, calmly, "no more need be said." And heclosed 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 touchof realism."

  "Thank you," answered Evan. "You are very kind." And he began to smokein the cab.