The Ball and the Cross Read online

  V. THE PEACEMAKER

  When the combatants, with crossed swords, became suddenly conscious ofa third party, they each made the same movement. It was as quick asthe snap of a pistol, and they altered it instantaneously and recoveredtheir 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 beinginterrupted. Say or think what they would, it was a movement of relief.A force within them, and yet quite beyond them, seemed slowly andpitilessly washing away the adamant of their oath. As mistaken loversmight watch the inevitable sunset of first love, these men watched thesunset of their first hatred.

  Their hearts were growing weaker and weaker against each other. Whentheir weapons rang and riposted in the little London garden, theycould have been very certain that if a third party had interrupted themsomething at least would have happened. They would have killed eachother or they would have killed him. But now nothing could undo ordeny that flash of fact, that for a second they had been glad to beinterrupted. Some new and strange thing was rising higher and higher intheir hearts like a high sea at night. It was something that seemed allthe more merciless, because it might turn out an enormous mercy. Wasthere, perhaps, some such fatalism in friendship as all lovers talkabout 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 avoice at once eager and deprecating.

  The voice was too polite for good manners. It was incongruous with theeccentric spectacle of the duellists which ought to have startled a saneand free man. It was also incongruous with the full and healthy, thoughrather loose physique of the man who spoke. At the first glance helooked a fine animal, with curling gold beard and hair, and blue eyes,unusually bright. It was only at the second glance that the mind felta sudden and perhaps unmeaning irritation at the way in which the goldbeard retreated backwards into the waistcoat, and the way in which thefinely shaped nose went forward as if smelling its way. And it wasonly, perhaps, at the hundredth glance that the bright blue eyes,which normally before and after the instant seemed brilliant withintelligence, seemed as it were to be brilliant with idiocy. He was aheavy, healthy-looking man, who looked all the larger because of theloose, light coloured clothes that he wore, and that had in theirextreme lightness and looseness, almost a touch of the tropics. Buta closer examination of his attire would have shown that even in thetropics it would have been unique; but it was all woven according tosome hygienic texture which no human being had ever heard of before, andwhich was absolutely necessary even for a day's health. He wore a hugebroad-brimmed hat, equally hygienic, very much at the back of his head,and his voice coming out of so heavy and hearty a type of man was, as Ihave said, startlingly shrill and deferential.

  "I'm sure you'll excuse my speaking to you," he said. "Now, I wonder ifyou are in some little difficulty which, after all, we could settle verycomfortably 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, ofcourse, when one is young, one is rather romantic. Do you know what Ialways say to young people?"

  A blank silence followed this gay inquiry. Then Turnbull said in acolourless voice:

  "As I was forty-seven last birthday, I probably came into the world toosoon for the experience."

  "Very good, very good," said the friendly person. "Dry Scotch humour.Dry Scotch humour. Well now. I understand that you two people want tofight a duel. I suppose you aren't much up in the modern world. We'vequite outgrown duelling, you know. In fact, Tolstoy tells us that weshall soon outgrow war, which he says is simply a duel between nations.A duel between nations. But there is no doubt about our having outgrownduelling."

  Waiting for some effect upon his wooden auditors, the stranger stoodbeaming for a moment and then resumed:

  "Now, they tell me in the newspapers that you are really wanting tofight about something connected with Roman Catholicism. Now, do you knowwhat I always say to Roman Catholics?"

  "No," said Turnbull, heavily. "Do _they_?" It seemed to be acharacteristic of the hearty, hygienic gentleman that he always forgotthe speech he had made the moment before. Without enlarging further onthe fixed form of his appeal to the Church of Rome, he laughed cordiallyat Turnbull's answer; then his wandering blue eyes caught the sunlighton the swords, and he assumed a good-humoured gravity.

  "But you know this is a serious matter," he said, eyeing Turnbull andMacIan, as if they had just been keeping the table in a roar with theirfrivolities. "I am sure that if I appealed to your higher natures...yourhigher natures. Every man has a higher nature and a lower nature. Now,let us put the matter very plainly, and without any romantic nonsenseabout honour or anything of that sort. Is not bloodshed a great sin?"

  "No," said MacIan, speaking for the first time.

  "Well, really, really!" said the peacemaker.

  "Murder is a sin," said the immovable Highlander. "There is no sin ofbloodshed."

  "Well, we won't quarrel about a word," said the other, pleasantly.

  "Why on earth not?" said MacIan, with a sudden asperity. "Why shouldn'twe quarrel about a word? What is the good of words if they aren'timportant enough to quarrel over? Why do we choose one word more thananother if there isn't any difference between them? If you called awoman a chimpanzee instead of an angel, wouldn't there be a quarrelabout a word? If you're not going to argue about words, what are yougoing to argue about? Are you going to convey your meaning to me bymoving your ears? The Church and the heresies always used to fight aboutwords, because they are the only things worth fighting about. I saythat murder is a sin, and bloodshed is not, and that there is as muchdifference between those words as there is between the word 'yes' andthe word 'no'; or rather more difference, for 'yes' and 'no', at least,belong to the same category. Murder is a spiritual incident. Bloodshedis a physical incident. A surgeon commits bloodshed.

  "Ah, you're a casuist!" said the large man, wagging his head. "Now, doyou know what I always say to casuists...?"

  MacIan made a violent gesture; and Turnbull broke into open laughter.The peacemaker did not seem to be in the least annoyed, but continued inunabated enjoyment.

  "Well, well," he said, "let us get back to the point. Now Tolstoy hasshown that force is no remedy; so you see the position in which I amplaced. I am doing my best to stop what I'm sure you won't mind mycalling this really useless violence, this really quite wrong violenceof yours. But it's against my principles to call in the police againstyou, 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 persontowards 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 stopyou. 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 andsaid, shortly, "I see how you are placed quite well, sir. You will notcall the police. Mr. MacIan, shall we engage?" MacIan plucked his swordout of the grass.

  "I must and will stop this shocking crime," cried the Tolstoian,crimson in the face. "It is against all modern ideas. It is against theprinciple of love. How you, sir, who pretend to be a Christian..."

  MacIan turned upon him with a white face and bitter lip. "Sir," he said,"talk about the principle of love as much as you like. You seem to mecolder than a lump of stone; but I am willing to believe that you may atsome 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 worldis sick of the word. But don't you talk about Christianity. Don't youdare to say one word, white or black, about it. Christianity is, as faras you are concerned, a horrible mystery. Keep clear of
it, keep silentupon it, as you would upon an abomination. It is a thing that has mademen slay and torture each other; and you will never know why. It is athing that has made men do evil that good might come; and you will neverunderstand the evil, let alone the good. Christianity is a thing thatcould only make you vomit, till you are other than you are. I would notjustify it to you even if I could. Hate it, in God's name, as Turnbulldoes, who is a man. It is a monstrous thing, for which men die. And ifyou will stand here and talk about love for another ten minutes it isvery probable that you will see a man die for it."

  And he fell on guard. Turnbull was busy settling something loose in hiselaborate hilt, and the pause was broken by the stranger.

  "Suppose I call the police?" he said, with a heated face.

  "And deny your most sacred dogma," said MacIan.

  "Dogma!" cried the man, in a sort of dismay. "Oh, we have no _dogmas_,you know!"

  There was another silence, and he said again, airily:

  "You know, I think, there's something in what Shaw teaches about nomoral principles being quite fixed. Have you ever read _The Quintessenceof Ibsenism_? Of course he went very wrong over the war."

  Turnbull, with a bent, flushed face, was tying up the loose piece of thepommel with string. With the string in his teeth, he said, "Oh, make upyour damned mind and clear out!"

  "It's a serious thing," said the philosopher, shaking his head. "I mustbe alone and consider which is the higher point of view. I rather feelthat in a case so extreme as this..." and he went slowly away. As hedisappeared among the trees, they heard him murmuring in a sing-songvoice, "New occasions teach new duties," out of a poem by James RussellLowell.

  "Ah," said MacIan, drawing a deep breath. "Don't you believe in prayernow? I prayed for an angel."

  "An hour ago," said the Highlander, in his heavy meditative voice, "Ifelt the devil weakening my heart and my oath against you, and I prayedthat God would send an angel to my aid."

  "Well?" inquired the other, finishing his mending and wrapping the restof the string round his hand to get a firmer grip.

  "Well?"

  "Well, that man was an angel," said MacIan.

  "I didn't know they were as bad as that," answered Turnbull.

  "We know that devils sometimes quote Scripture and counterfeit good,"replied the mystic. "Why should not angels sometimes come to show us theblack abyss of evil on whose brink we stand. If that man had not triedto stop us...I might...I might have stopped."

  "I know what you mean," said Turnbull, grimly.

  "But then he came," broke out MacIan, "and my soul said to me: 'Give upfighting, and you will become like That. Give up vows and dogmas, andfixed things, and you may grow like That. You may learn, also, thatfog of false philosophy. You may grow fond of that mire of crawling,cowardly morals, and you may come to think a blow bad, because it hurts,and not because it humiliates. You may come to think murder wrong,because it is violent, and not because it is unjust. Oh, you blasphemerof 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 knowexactly what it means. On guard!'"

  The swords caught on each other with a dreadful clang and jar, full ofthe old energy and hate; and at once plunged and replunged. Once moreeach man's heart had become the magnet of a mad sword. Suddenly, furiousas they were, they were frozen for a moment motionless.

  "What noise is that?" asked the Highlander, hoarsely.

  "I think I know," replied Turnbull.

  "What?... What?" cried the other.

  "The student of Shaw and Tolstoy has made up his remarkable mind," saidTurnbull, quietly. "The police are coming up the hill."