The Ball and the Cross Read online

  VI. THE OTHER PHILOSOPHER

  Between high hedges in Hertfordshire, hedges so high as to create akind of grove, two men were running. They did not run in a scamperingor feverish manner, but in the steady swing of the pendulum. Across thegreat plains and uplands to the right and left of the lane, a long tideof sunset light rolled like a sea of ruby, lighting up the long terracesof the hills and picking out the few windows of the scattered hamletsin startling blood-red sparks. But the lane was cut deep in the hilland remained in an abrupt shadow. The two men running in it had animpression not uncommonly experienced between those wild green Englishwalls; a sense of being led between the walls of a maze.

  Though their pace was steady it was vigorous; their faces were heatedand their eyes fixed and bright. There was, indeed, something a littlemad in the contrast between the evening's stillness over the emptycountry-side, and these two figures fleeing wildly from nothing. Theyhad the look of two lunatics, possibly they were.

  "Are you all right?" said Turnbull, with civility. "Can you keep thisup?"

  "Quite easily, thank you," replied MacIan. "I run very well."

  "Is that a qualification in a family of warriors?" asked Turnbull.

  "Undoubtedly. Rapid movement is essential," answered MacIan, who neversaw a joke in his life.

  Turnbull broke out into a short laugh, and silence fell between them,the panting silence of runners.

  Then MacIan said: "We run better than any of those policemen. They aretoo 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 towardsmaking them thin. You'll see they will be as lean as rakes by the timethey catch us. They will look like your friend, Cardinal Manning."

  "But they won't catch us," said MacIan, in his literal way.

  "No, we beat them in the great military art of running away," returnedthe other. "They won't catch us unless----"

  MacIan turned his long equine face inquiringly. "Unless what?" hesaid, for Turnbull had gone silent suddenly, and seemed to be listeningintently as he ran as a horse does with his ears turned back.

  "Unless what?" repeated the Highlander.

  "Unless they do--what they have done. Listen." MacIan slackened histrot, and turned his head to the trail they had left behind them. Acrosstwo or three billows of the up and down lane came along the ground theunmistakable throbbing of horses' hoofs.

  "They have put the mounted police on us," said Turnbull, shortly. "GoodLord, one would think we were a Revolution."

  "So we are," said MacIan calmly. "What shall we do? Shall we turn onthem with our points?"

  "It may come to that," answered Turnbull, "though if it does, I reckonthat will be the last act. We must put it off if we can." And he staredand peered about him between the bushes. "If we could hide somewherethe beasts might go by us," he said. "The police have their faults, butthank God they're inefficient. Why, here's the very thing. Be quick andquiet. Follow me."

  He suddenly swung himself up the high bank on one side of the lane. Itwas almost as high and smooth as a wall, and on the top of it the blackhedge stood out over them as an angle, almost like a thatched roof ofthe lane. And the burning evening sky looked down at them through thetangle with red eyes as of an army of goblins.

  Turnbull hoisted himself up and broke the hedge with his body. As hishead and shoulders rose above it they turned to flame in the full glowas if lit up by an immense firelight. His red hair and beard lookedalmost scarlet, and his pale face as bright as a boy's. Somethingviolent, something that was at once love and hatred, surged in thestrange heart of the Gael below him. He had an unutterable sense of epicimportance, as if he were somehow lifting all humanity into a prouderand more passionate region of the air. As he swung himself up also intothe 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 orread in youth came back upon him in a cloudy splendour, purple talesof wrath and friendship, like Roland and Oliver, or Balin and Balan,reminding him of emotional entanglements. Men who had loved each otherand then fought each other; men who had fought each other and then lovedeach other, together made a mixed but monstrous sense of momentousness.The crimson seas of the sunset seemed to him like a bursting out of somesacred blood, as if the heart of the world had broken.

  Turnbull was wholly unaffected by any written or spoken poetry; his wasa powerful and prosaic mind. But even upon him there came for the momentsomething out of the earth and the passionate ends of the sky. The onlyevidence was in his voice, which was still practical but a shade morequiet.

  "Do you see that summer-house-looking thing over there?" he askedshortly. "That will do for us very well."

  Keeping himself free from the tangle of the hedge he strolled acrossa triangle of obscure kitchen garden, and approached a dismal shed orlodge a yard or two beyond it. It was a weather-stained hut of greywood, which with all its desolation retained a tag or two of trivialornament, which suggested that the thing had once been a sort ofsummer-house, and the place probably a sort of garden.

  "That is quite invisible from the road," said Turnbull, as he enteredit, "and it will cover us up for the night."

  MacIan looked at him gravely for a few moments. "Sir," he said, "I oughtto 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 louderand louder with inconceivable rapidity, and the cavalcade of policerushed by below them in the lane, almost with the roar and rattle of anexpress train.

  "I ought to tell you," continued MacIan, still staring stolidly at theother, "that you are a great chief, and it is good to go to war behindyou."

  Turnbull said nothing, but turned and looked out of the foolish latticeof the little windows, then he said, "We must have food and sleepfirst."

  When the last echo of their eluded pursuers had died in the distantuplands, Turnbull began to unpack the provisions with the easy air ofa man at a picnic. He had just laid out the last items, put a bottleof wine on the floor, and a tin of salmon on the window-ledge, when thebottomless silence of that forgotten place was broken. And it was brokenby three heavy blows of a stick delivered upon the door.

  Turnbull looked up in the act of opening a tin and stared silently athis companion. MacIan's long, lean mouth had shut hard.

  "Who the devil can that be?" said Turnbull.

  "God knows," said the other. "It might be God."

  Again the sound of the wooden stick reverberated on the wooden door. Itwas a curious sound and on consideration did not resemble the ordinaryeffects of knocking on a door for admittance. It was rather as if thepoint of a stick were plunged again and again at the panels in an absurdattempt to make a hole in them.

  A wild look sprang into MacIan's eyes and he got up half stupidly, witha kind of stagger, put his hand out and caught one of the swords. "Letus fight at once," he cried, "it is the end of the world."

  "You're overdone, MacIan," said Turnbull, putting him on one side. "It'sonly 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 dooropen. Almost as he did so the ferrule of an ordinary bamboo cane came athis eyes, so that he had actually to parry it with the naked weapon inhis hands. As the two touched, the point of the stick was dropped veryabruptly, and the man with the stick stepped hurriedly back.

  Against the heraldic background of sprawling crimson and gold offeredhim by the expiring sunset, the figure of the man with the stick showedat first merely black and fantastic. He was a small man with two wispsof long hair that curled up on each side, and seen in silhouette, lookedlike horns. He had a bow tie so big that the two ends showed on eachside of his neck like unnatural stunted wings. He had his long blackcane still til
ted in his hand like a fencing foil and half presentedat the open door. His large straw hat had fallen behind him as he leaptbackwards.

  "With reference to your suggestion, MacIan," said Turnbull, placidly, "Ithink it looks more like the Devil."

  "Who on earth are you?" cried the stranger in a high shrill voice,brandishing his cane defensively.

  "Let me see," said Turnbull, looking round to MacIan with the sameblandness. "Who are we?"

  "Come out," screamed the little man with the stick.

  "Certainly," said Turnbull, and went outside with the sword, MacIanfollowing.

  Seen more fully, with the evening light on his face, the strange manlooked a little less like a goblin. He wore a square pale-grey jacketsuit, on which the grey butterfly tie was the only indisputable touchof affectation. Against the great sunset his figure had looked merelysmall: seen in a more equal light it looked tolerably compact andshapely. His reddish-brown hair, combed into two great curls, lookedlike the long, slow curling hair of the women in some pre-Raphaelitepictures. But within this feminine frame of hair his face wasunexpectedly impudent, like a monkey's.

  "What are you doing here?" he said, in a sharp small voice.

  "Well," said MacIan, in his grave childish way, "what are _you_ doinghere?"

  "I," said the man, indignantly, "I'm in my own garden."

  "Oh," said MacIan, simply, "I apologize."

  Turnbull was coolly curling his red moustache, and the stranger staredfrom 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 mysummer-house?"

  "Certainly," said MacIan. "We were just going to fight."

  "To fight!" repeated the man.

  "We had better tell this gentleman the whole business," broke inTurnbull. 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 tellyou at the beginning and to avoid waste of time or language, that wecannot admit any interference."

  "We were just going to take some slight refreshment when you interruptedus..."

  The little man had a dawning expression of understanding and stooped andpicked up the unused bottle of wine, eyeing it curiously.

  Turnbull continued:

  "But that refreshment was preparatory to something which I fear you willfind less comprehensible, but on which our minds are entirely fixed,sir. We are forced to fight a duel. We are forced by honour and aninternal intellectual need. Do not, for your own sake, attempt to stopus. I know all the excellent and ethical things that you will want tosay 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 aboutthe sacredness of human life; I have bored all my friends with it. Tryand understand our position. This man and I are alone in the modernworld in that we think that God is essentially important. I think Hedoes not exist; that is where the importance comes in for me. But thisman thinks that He does exist, and thinking that very properly thinksHim more important than anything else. Now we wish to make a greatdemonstration and assertion--something that will set the world on firelike the first Christian persecutions. If you like, we are attemptinga mutual martyrdom. The papers have posted up every town against us.Scotland Yard has fortified every police station with our enemies; weare driven therefore to the edge of a lonely lane, and indirectly totaking liberties with your summer-house in order to arrange our..."

  "Stop!" roared the little man in the butterfly necktie. "Put me out ofmy intellectual misery. Are you really the two tomfools I have read ofin all the papers? Are you the two people who wanted to spit each otherin the Police Court? Are you? Are you?"

  "Yes," said MacIan, "it began in a Police Court."

  The little man slung the bottle of wine twenty yards away like a stone.

  "Come up to my place," he said. "I've got better stuff than that. I'vegot the best Beaune within fifty miles of here. Come up. You're the verymen I wanted to see."

  Even Turnbull, with his typical invulnerability, was a little takenaback by this boisterous and almost brutal hospitality.

  "Why...sir..." he began.

  "Come up! Come in!" howled the little man, dancing with delight. "I'llgive you a dinner. I'll give you a bed! I'll give you a green smoothlawn and your choice of swords and pistols. Why, you fools, I adorefighting! It's the only good thing in God's world! I've walked aboutthese damned fields and longed to see somebody cut up and killed and theblood running. Ha! Ha!"

  And he made sudden lunges with his stick at the trunk of a neighbouringtree so that the ferrule made fierce prints and punctures in the bark.

  "Excuse me," said MacIan suddenly with the wide-eyed curiosity of achild, "excuse me, but..."

  "Well?" said the small fighter, brandishing his wooden weapon.

  "Excuse me," repeated MacIan, "but was that what you were doing at thedoor?"

  The little man stared an instant and then said: "Yes," and Turnbullbroke into a guffaw.

  "Come on!" cried the little man, tucking his stick under his arm andtaking quite suddenly to his heels. "Come on! Confound me, I'll see bothof you eat and then I'll see one of you die. Lord bless me, the godsmust exist after all--they have sent me one of my day-dreams! Lord! Aduel!"

  He had gone flying along a winding path between the borders of thekitchen garden, and in the increasing twilight he was as hard to followas a flying hare. But at length the path after many twists betrayed itspurpose and led abruptly up two or three steps to the door of a tiny butvery clean cottage. There was nothing about the outside to distinguishit from other cottages, except indeed its ominous cleanliness and onething that was out of all the custom and tradition of all cottagesunder the sun. In the middle of the little garden among the stocks andmarigolds there surged up in shapeless stone a South Sea Island idol.There was something gross and even evil in that eyeless and alien godamong the most innocent of the English flowers.

  "Come in!" cried the creature again. "Come in! it's better inside!"

  Whether or no it was better inside it was at least a surprise. Themoment the two duellists had pushed open the door of that inoffensive,whitewashed cottage they found that its interior was lined with fierygold. It was like stepping into a chamber in the Arabian Nights. Thedoor that closed behind them shut out England and all the energies ofthe West. The ornaments that shone and shimmered on every side of themwere subtly mixed from many periods and lands, but were all oriental.Cruel Assyrian bas-reliefs ran along the sides of the passage; cruelTurkish swords and daggers glinted above and below them; the twowere separated by ages and fallen civilizations. Yet they seemed tosympathize since they were both harmonious and both merciless. The houseseemed to consist of chamber within chamber and created that impressionas of a dream which belongs also to the Arabian Nights themselves. Theinnermost room of all was like the inside of a jewel. The little man whoowned it all threw himself on a heap of scarlet and golden cushions andstruck his hands together. A negro in a white robe and turban appearedsuddenly and silently behind them.

  "Selim," said the host, "these two gentlemen are staying with metonight. Send up the very best wine and dinner at once. And Selim,one of these gentlemen will probably die tomorrow. Make arrangements,please."

  The negro bowed and withdrew.

  Evan MacIan came out the next morning into the little garden to a freshsilver day, his long face looking more austere than ever in thatcold light, his eyelids a little heavy. He carried one of the swords.Turnbull was in the little house behind him, demolishing the end ofan early breakfast and humming a tune to himself, which could be heardthrough the open window. A moment or two later he leapt to his feet andcame out into the sunlight, still munching toast, his own sword stuckunder 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 onsome concerns in the interior of the house, and they waited for hisemergence, stamping
the garden in silence--the garden of tall, freshcountry flowers, in the midst of which the monstrous South Sea idollifted itself as abruptly as the prow of a ship riding on a sea of redand white and gold.

  It was with a start, therefore, that they came upon the man himselfalready in the garden. They were all the more startled because of thestill posture in which they found him. He was on his knees in frontof the stone idol, rigid and motionless, like a saint in a trance orecstasy. Yet when Turnbull's tread broke a twig, he was on his feet in aflash.

  "Excuse me," he said with an irradiation of smiles, but yet with a kindof bewilderment. "So sorry...family prayers...old fashioned...mother'sknee. Let us go on to the lawn behind."

  And he ducked rapidly round the statue to an open space of grass on theother side of it.

  "This will do us best, Mr. MacIan," said he. Then he made a gesturetowards the heavy stone figure on the pedestal which had now its blankand shapeless back turned towards them. "Don't you be afraid," he added,"he can still see us."

  MacIan turned his blue, blinking eyes, which seemed still misty withsleep (or sleeplessness) towards the idol, but his brows drew together.

  The little man with the long hair also had his eyes on the back viewof the god. His eyes were at once liquid and burning, and he rubbed hishands slowly against each other.

  "Do you know," he said, "I think he can see us better this way. I oftenthink that this blank thing is his real face, watching, though it cannotbe watched. He! he! Yes, I think he looks nice from behind. He looksmore 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 tothis 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 thatstone in front of him men have been butchered by hundreds in the fierce,feasting islands of the South. In this cursed, craven place I havenot been permitted to kill men on his altar. Only rabbits and cats,sometimes."

  In the stillness MacIan made a sudden movement, unmeaning apparently,and then remained rigid.

  "But today, today," continued the small man in a shrill voice. "Todayhis 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 ina kind of fever.

  Still, the two duellists stood with their swords as heavily as statues,and the silence seemed to cool the eccentric and call him back to morerational speech.

  "Perhaps I express myself a little too lyrically," he said with anamicable abruptness. "My philosophy has its higher ecstasies, butperhaps you are hardly worked up to them yet. Let us confine ourselvesto the unquestioned. You have found your way, gentlemen, by a beautifulaccident, to the house of the only man in England (probably) who willfavour and encourage your most reasonable project. From Cornwall to CapeWrath this county is one horrible, solid block of humanitarianism. Youwill 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 morecontemptible ground of social good. But do not fancy that you will findone other person who will comprehend a strong man taking the sword inhis hand and wiping out his enemy. My name is Wimpey, Morrice Wimpey. Ihad a Fellowship at Magdalen. But I assure you I had to drop it, owingto my having said something in a public lecture infringing the popularprejudice against those great gentlemen, the assassins of the ItalianRenaissance. They let me say it at dinner and so on, and seemed to likeit. But in a public lecture...so inconsistent. Well, as I say, here isyour only refuge and temple of honour. Here you can fall back on thatnaked and awful arbitration which is the only thing that balances thestars--a still, continuous violence. _Vae Victis!_ Down, down, downwith the defeated! Victory is the only ultimate fact. Carthage _was_destroyed, the Red Indians are being exterminated: that is the singlecertainty. In an hour from now that sun will still be shining and thatgrass growing, and one of you will be conquered; one of you will be theconqueror. When it has been done, nothing will alter it. Heroes, I giveyou the hospitality fit for heroes. And I salute the survivor. Fall on!"

  The two men took their swords. Then MacIan said steadily: "Mr. Turnbull,lend me your sword a moment."

  Turnbull, with a questioning glance, handed him the weapon. MacIan tookthe second sword in his left hand and, with a violent gesture, hurled itat the feet of little Mr. Wimpey.

  "Fight!" he said in a loud, harsh voice. "Fight me now!"

  Wimpey took a step backward, and bewildered words bubbled on his lips.

  "Pick up that sword and fight me," repeated MacIan, with brows as blackas thunder.

  The little man turned to Turnbull with a gesture, demanding judgement orprotection.

  "Really, sir," he began, "this gentleman confuses..."

  "You stinking little coward," roared Turnbull, suddenly releasing hiswrath. "Fight, if you're so fond of fighting! Fight, if you're so fondof all that filthy philosophy! If winning is everything, go in and win!If the weak must go to the wall, go to the wall! Fight, you rat! Fight,or if you won't fight--run!"

  And he ran at Wimpey, with blazing eyes.

  Wimpey staggered back a few paces like a man struggling with his ownlimbs. Then he felt the furious Scotchman coming at him like an expresstrain, doubling his size every second, with eyes as big as windows anda sword as bright as the sun. Something broke inside him, and he foundhimself running away, tumbling over his own feet in terror, and cryingout as he ran.

  "Chase him!" shouted Turnbull as MacIan snatched up the sword and joinedin 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 twoduellists after him. Turnbull kept at his tail with savage ecstasy,still shooing him like a cat. But MacIan, as he ran past the South Seaidol, paused an instant to spring upon its pedestal. For five secondshe strained against the inert mass. Then it stirred; and he sent it overwith a great crash among the flowers, that engulfed it altogether. Thenhe went bounding after the runaway.

  In the energy of his alarm the ex-Fellow of Magdalen managed to leapthe paling of his garden. The two pursuers went over it after him likeflying birds. He fled frantically down a long lane with his two terrorson his trail till he came to a gap in the hedge and went across a steepmeadow like the wind. The two Scotchmen, as they ran, kept up a cheerybellowing and waved their swords. Up three slanting meadows, down fourslanting meadows on the other side, across another road, across a heathof snapping bracken, through a wood, across another road, and to thebrink of a big pool, they pursued the flying philosopher. But when hecame to the pool his pace was so precipitate that he could not stopit, and with a kind of lurching stagger, he fell splash into the greasywater. Getting dripping to his feet, with the water up to his knees, theworshipper of force and victory waded disconsolately to the other sideand drew himself on to the bank. And Turnbull sat down on the grass andwent off into reverberations of laughter. A second afterwards the mostextraordinary grimaces were seen to distort the stiff face of MacIan,and unholy sounds came from within. He had never practised laughing, andit hurt him very much.