The editorial office of _The Atheist_ had for some years past become
less and less prominently interesting as a feature of Ludgate Hill. The
paper was unsuited to the atmosphere. It showed an interest in the Bible
unknown in the district, and a knowledge of that volume to which nobody
else on Ludgate Hill could make any conspicuous claim. It was in vain
that the editor of _The Atheist_ filled his front window with fierce
and final demands as to what Noah in the Ark did with the neck of the
giraffe. It was in vain that he asked violently, as for the last time,
how the statement “God is Spirit” could be reconciled with the statement
“The earth is His footstool.” It was in vain that he cried with an
accusing energy that the Bishop of London was paid L12,000 a year for
pretending to believe that the whale swallowed Jonah. It was in vain
that he hung in conspicuous places the most thrilling scientific
calculations about the width of the throat of a whale. Was it nothing
to them all they that passed by? Did his sudden and splendid and truly
sincere indignation never stir any of the people pouring down Ludgate
Hill? Never. The little man who edited _The Atheist_ would rush from his
shop on starlit evenings and shake his fist at St. Paul's in the passion
of his holy war upon the holy place. He might have spared his emotion.
The cross at the top of St. Paul's and _The Atheist_ shop at the foot of
it were alike remote from the world. The shop and the Cross were equally
uplifted and alone in the empty heavens.
To the little man who edited _The Atheist_, a fiery little Scotchman,
with fiery, red hair and beard, going by the name of Turnbull, all this
decline in public importance seemed not so much sad or even mad, but
merely bewildering and unaccountable. He had said the worst thing that
could be said; and it seemed accepted and ignored like the ordinary
second best of the politicians. Every day his blasphemies looked more
glaring, and every day the dust lay thicker upon them. It made him feel
as if he were moving in a world of idiots. He seemed among a race of men
who smiled when told of their own death, or looked vacantly at the Day
of Judgement. Year after year went by, and year after year the death of
God in a shop in Ludgate became a less and less important occurrence.
All the forward men of his age discouraged Turnbull. The socialists
said he was cursing priests when he should be cursing capitalists.
The artists said that the soul was most spiritual, not when freed from
religion, but when freed from morality. Year after year went by, and at
least a man came by who treated Mr. Turnbull's secularist shop with a
real respect and seriousness. He was a young man in a grey plaid, and he
smashed the window.
He was a young man, born in the Bay of Arisaig, opposite Rum and the
Isle of Skye. His high, hawklike features and snaky black hair bore the
mark of that unknown historic thing which is crudely called Celtic, but
which is probably far older than the Celts, whoever they were. He was in
name and stock a Highlander of the Macdonalds; but his family took, as
was common in such cases, the name of a subordinate sept as a surname,
and for all the purposes which could be answered in London, he called
himself Evan MacIan. He had been brought up in some loneliness and
seclusion as a strict Roman Catholic, in the midst of that little wedge
of Roman Catholics which is driven into the Western Highlands. And he
had found his way as far as Fleet Street, seeking some half-promised
employment, without having properly realized that there were in the
world any people who were not Roman Catholics. He had uncovered himself
for a few moments before the statue of Queen Anne, in front of St.
Paul's Cathedral, under the firm impression that it was a figure of the
Virgin Mary. He was somewhat surprised at the lack of deference shown to
the figure by the people bustling by. He did not understand that their
one essential historical principle, the one law truly graven on their
hearts, was the great and comforting statement that Queen Anne is dead.
This faith was as fundamental as his faith, that Our Lady was alive. Any
persons he had talked to since he had touched the fringe of our fashion
or civilization had been by a coincidence, sympathetic or hypocritical.
Or if they had spoken some established blasphemies, he had been unable
to understand them merely owing to the preoccupied satisfaction of his
mind.
On that fantastic fringe of the Gaelic land where he walked as a boy,
the cliffs were as fantastic as the clouds. Heaven seemed to humble
itself and come closer to the earth. The common paths of his little
village began to climb quite suddenly and seemed resolved to go to
heaven. The sky seemed to fall down towards the hills; the hills took
hold upon the sky. In the sumptuous sunset of gold and purple and
peacock green cloudlets and islets were the same. Evan lived like a man
walking on a borderland, the borderland between this world and another.
Like so many men and nations who grow up with nature and the common
things, he understood the supernatural before he understood the natural.
He had looked at dim angels standing knee-deep in the grass before he
had looked at the grass. He knew that Our Lady's robes were blue before
he knew the wild roses round her feet were red. The deeper his memory
plunged into the dark house of childhood the nearer and nearer he came
to the things that cannot be named. All through his life he thought of
the daylight world as a sort of divine debris, the broken remainder
of his first vision. The skies and mountains were the splendid
off-scourings of another place. The stars were lost jewels of the Queen.
Our Lady had gone and left the stars by accident.
His private tradition was equally wild and unworldly. His
great-grandfather had been cut down at Culloden, certain in his last
instant that God would restore the King. His grandfather, then a boy of
ten, had taken the terrible claymore from the hand of the dead and hung
it up in his house, burnishing it and sharpening it for sixty years, to
be ready for the next rebellion. His father, the youngest son and the
last left alive, had refused to attend on Queen Victoria in Scotland.
And Evan himself had been of one piece with his progenitors; and was not
dead with them, but alive in the twentieth century. He was not in the
least the pathetic Jacobite of whom we read, left behind by a final
advance of all things. He was, in his own fancy, a conspirator, fierce
and up to date. In the long, dark afternoons of the Highland winter, he
plotted and fumed in the dark. He drew plans of the capture of London on
the desolate sand of Arisaig.
When he came up to capture London, it was not with an army of white
cockades, but with a stick and a satchel. London overawed him a little,
not because he thought it grand or even terrible, but because it
bewildered him; it was not the Golden City or even hell; it was Limbo.
He had one shock of sentiment, when he turned that wonderful corner of
Fleet Street and saw St. Paul's sitting in the sky.
“Ah,” he said, after a long pause, “that sort of thing was built under
the Stuarts!” Then with a sour grin he asked himself what was
the corresponding monument of the Brunswicks and the Protestant
Constitution. After some warning, he selected a sky-sign of some pill.
Half an hour afterwards his emotions left him with an emptied mind on
the same spot. And it was in a mood of mere idle investigation that he
happened to come to a standstill opposite the office of _The Atheist_.
He did not see the word “atheist”, or if he did, it is quite possible
that he did not know the meaning of the word. Even as it was, the
document would not have shocked even the innocent Highlander, but for
the troublesome and quite unforeseen fact that the innocent Highlander
read it stolidly to the end; a thing unknown among the most enthusiastic
subscribers to the paper, and calculated in any case to create a new
situation.
With a smart journalistic instinct characteristic of all his school, the
editor of _The Atheist_ had put first in his paper and most prominently
in his window an article called “The Mesopotamian Mythology and its
Effects on Syriac Folk Lore.” Mr. Evan MacIan began to read this quite
idly, as he would have read a public statement beginning with a young
girl dying in Brighton and ending with Bile Beans. He received the very
considerable amount of information accumulated by the author with
that tired clearness of the mind which children have on heavy summer
afternoons--that tired clearness which leads them to go on asking
questions long after they have lost interest in the subject and are
as bored as their nurse. The streets were full of people and empty of
adventures. He might as well know about the gods of Mesopotamia as not;
so he flattened his long, lean face against the dim bleak pane of the
window and read all there was to read about Mesopotamian gods. He read
how the Mesopotamians had a god named Sho (sometimes pronounced Ji), and
that he was described as being very powerful, a striking similarity to
some expressions about Jahveh, who is also described as having power.
Evan had never heard of Jahveh in his life, and imagining him to be some
other Mesopotamian idol, read on with a dull curiosity. He learnt that
the name Sho, under its third form of Psa, occurs in an early legend
which describes how the deity, after the manner of Jupiter on so many
occasions, seduced a Virgin and begat a hero. This hero, whose name is
not essential to our existence, was, it was said, the chief hero and
Saviour of the Mesopotamian ethical scheme. Then followed a paragraph
giving other examples of such heroes and Saviours being born of
some profligate intercourse between God and mortal. Then followed a
paragraph--but Evan did not understand it. He read it again and then
again. Then he did understand it. The glass fell in ringing fragments
on to the pavement, and Evan sprang over the barrier into the shop,
brandishing his stick.
“What is this?” cried little Mr. Turnbull, starting up with hair aflame.
“How dare you break my window?”
“Because it was the quickest cut to you,” cried Evan, stamping. “Stand
up and fight, you crapulous coward. You dirty lunatic, stand up, will
you? Have you any weapons here?”
“Are you mad?” asked Turnbull, glaring.
“Are you?” cried Evan. “Can you be anything else when you plaster your
own house with that God-defying filth? Stand up and fight, I say.”
A great light like dawn came into Mr. Turnbull's face. Behind his red
hair and beard he turned deadly pale with pleasure. Here, after twenty
lone years of useless toil, he had his reward. Someone was angry with
the paper. He bounded to his feet like a boy; he saw a new youth opening
before him. And as not unfrequently happens to middle-aged gentlemen
when they see a new youth opening before them, he found himself in the
presence of the police.
The policemen, after some ponderous questionings, collared both the two
enthusiasts. They were more respectful, however, to the young man who
had smashed the window, than to the miscreant who had had his window
smashed. There was an air of refined mystery about Evan MacIan, which
did not exist in the irate little shopkeeper, an air of refined mystery
which appealed to the policemen, for policemen, like most other
English types, are at once snobs and poets. MacIan might possibly be a
gentleman, they felt; the editor manifestly was not. And the editor's
fine rational republican appeals to his respect for law, and his ardour
to be tried by his fellow citizens, seemed to the police quite as much
gibberish as Evan's mysticism could have done. The police were not used
to hearing principles, even the principles of their own existence.
The police magistrate, before whom they were hurried and tried, was
a Mr. Cumberland Vane, a cheerful, middle-aged gentleman, honourably
celebrated for the lightness of his sentences and the lightness of his
conversation. He occasionally worked himself up into a sort of theoretic
rage about certain particular offenders, such as the men who took
pokers to their wives, talked in a loose, sentimental way about the
desirability of flogging them, and was hopelessly bewildered by the fact
that the wives seemed even more angry with him than with their
husbands. He was a tall, spruce man, with a twist of black moustache
and incomparable morning dress. He looked like a gentleman, and yet,
somehow, like a stage gentleman.
He had often treated serious crimes against mere order or property
with a humane flippancy. Hence, about the mere breaking of an editor's
window, he was almost uproarious.
“Come, Mr. MacIan, come,” he said, leaning back in his chair, “do you
generally enter you friends' houses by walking through the glass?”
(Laughter.)
“He is not my friend,” said Evan, with the stolidity of a dull child.
“Not your friend, eh?” said the magistrate, sparkling. “Is he your
brother-in-law?” (Loud and prolonged laughter.)
“He is my enemy,” said Evan, simply; “he is the enemy of God.”
Mr. Vane shifted sharply in his seat, dropping the eye-glass out of his
eye in a momentary and not unmanly embarrassment.
“You mustn't talk like that here,” he said, roughly, and in a kind of
hurry, “that has nothing to do with us.”
Evan opened his great, blue eyes; “God,” he began.
“Be quiet,” said the magistrate, angrily, “it is most undesirable that
things of that sort should be spoken about--a--in public, and in an
ordinary Court of Justice. Religion is--a--too personal a matter to be
mentioned in such a place.”
“Is it?” answered the Highlander, “then what did those policemen swear
by just now?”
“That is no parallel,” answered Vane, rather irritably; “of course there
is a form of oath--to be taken reverently--reverently, and there's an
end of it. But to talk in a public place about one's most sacred and
private sentiments--well, I call it bad taste. (Slight applause.) I
call it irreverent. I call it irreverent, and I'm not specially orthodox
either.”
“I see you are not,” said Evan, “but I am.”
“We are wondering from the point,” said the police magistrate, pulling
himself together.
“May I ask why you smashed this worthy citizen's window?”
Evan turned a little pale at the mere memory, but he answered with the
same cold and deadly literalism that he showed throughout.
“Because he blasphemed Our Lady.”
“I tell you once and for all,” cried Mr. Cumberland Vane, rapping his
knuckles angrily on the table, “I tell you, once and for all, my man,
that I will not have you turning on any religious rant or cant here.
Don't imagine that it will impress me. The most religious people are
not those who talk about it. (Applause.) You answer the questions and do
nothing else.”
“I did nothing else,” said Evan, with a slight smile.
“Eh,” cried Vane, glaring through his eye-glass.
“You asked me why I broke his window,” said MacIan, with a face of wood.
“I answered, 'Because he blasphemed Our Lady.' I had no other reason. So
I have no other answer.” Vane continued to gaze at him with a sternness
not habitual to him.
“You are not going the right way to work, Sir,” he said, with severity.
“You are not going the right way to work to--a--have your case treated
with special consideration. If you had simply expressed regret for what
you had done, I should have been strongly inclined to dismiss the matter
as an outbreak of temper. Even now, if you say that you are sorry I
shall only----”
“But I am not in the least sorry,” said Evan, “I am very pleased.”
“I really believe you are insane,” said the stipendiary, indignantly,
for he had really been doing his best as a good-natured man, to compose
the dispute. “What conceivable right have you to break other people's
windows because their opinions do not agree with yours? This man only
gave expression to his sincere belief.”
“So did I,” said the Highlander.
“And who are you?” exploded Vane. “Are your views necessarily the right
ones? Are you necessarily in possession of the truth?”
“Yes,” said MacIan.
The magistrate broke into a contemptuous laugh.
“Oh, you want a nurse to look after you,” he said. “You must pay L10.”
Evan MacIan plunged his hands into his loose grey garment and drew out a
queer looking leather purse. It contained exactly twelve sovereigns.
He paid down the ten, coin by coin, in silence, and equally silently
returned the remaining two to the receptacle. Then he said, “May I say a
word, your worship?”
Cumberland Vane seemed half hypnotized with the silence and automatic
movements of the stranger; he made a movement with his head which might
have been either “yes” or “no”. “I only wished to say, your worship,”
said MacIan, putting back the purse in his trouser pocket, “that
smashing that shop window was, I confess, a useless and rather irregular
business. It may be excused, however, as a mere preliminary to further
proceedings, a sort of preface. Wherever and whenever I meet that man,”
and he pointed to the editor of _The Atheist_, “whether it be outside
this door in ten minutes from now, or twenty years hence in some distant
country, wherever and whenever I meet that man, I will fight him. Do not
be afraid. I will not rush at him like a bully, or bear him down with
any brute superiority. I will fight him like a gentleman; I will fight
him as our fathers fought. He shall choose how, sword or pistol, horse
or foot. But if he refuses, I will write his cowardice on every wall
in the world. If he had said of my mother what he said of the Mother of
God, there is not a club of clean men in Europe that would deny my
right to call him out. If he had said it of my wife, you English would
yourselves have pardoned me for beating him like a dog in the market
place. Your worship, I have no mother; I have no wife. I have only that
which the poor have equally with the rich; which the lonely have equally
with the man of many friends. To me this whole strange world is homely,
because in the heart of it there is a home; to me this cruel world is
kindly, because higher than the heavens there is something more human
than humanity. If a man must not fight for this, may he fight for
anything? I would fight for my friend, but if I lost my friend, I should
still be there. I would fight for my country, but if I lost my country,
I should still exist. But if what that devil dreams were true, I should
not be--I should burst like a bubble and be gone. I could not live in
that imbecile universe. Shall I not fight for my own existence?”
The magistrate recovered his voice and his presence of mind. The first
part of the speech, the bombastic and brutally practical challenge,
stunned him with surprise; but the rest of Evan's remarks, branching off
as they did into theoretic phrases, gave his vague and very English
mind (full of memories of the hedging and compromise in English public
speaking) an indistinct sensation of relief, as if the man, though mad,
were not so dangerous as he had thought. He went into a sort of weary
laughter.
“For Heaven's sake, man,” he said, “don't talk so much. Let other people
have a chance (laughter). I trust all that you said about asking Mr.
Turnbull to fight, may be regarded as rubbish. In case of accidents,
however, I must bind you over to keep the peace.”
“To keep the peace,” repeated Evan, “with whom?”
“With Mr. Turnbull,” said Vane.
“Certainly not,” answered MacIan. “What has he to do with peace?”
“Do you mean to say,” began the magistrate, “that you refuse to...” The
voice of Turnbull himself clove in for the first time.
“Might I suggest,” he said, “That I, your worship, can settle to some
extent this absurd matter myself. This rather wild gentleman promises
that he will not attack me with any ordinary assault--and if he does,
you may be sure the police shall hear of it. But he says he will not. He
says he will challenge me to a duel; and I cannot say anything stronger
about his mental state than to say that I think that it is highly
probable that he will. (Laughter.) But it takes two to make a duel, your
worship (renewed laughter). I do not in the least mind being described
on every wall in the world as the coward who would not fight a man
in Fleet Street, about whether the Virgin Mary had a parallel in
Mesopotamian mythology. No, your worship. You need not trouble to bind
him over to keep the peace. I bind myself over to keep the peace, and
you may rest quite satisfied that there will be no duel with me in it.”
Mr. Cumberland Vane rolled about, laughing in a sort of relief.
“You're like a breath of April, sir,” he cried. “You're ozone after
that fellow. You're perfectly right. Perhaps I have taken the thing too
seriously. I should love to see him sending you challenges and to see
you smiling. Well, well.”
Evan went out of the Court of Justice free, but strangely shaken, like
a sick man. Any punishment of suppression he would have felt as natural;
but the sudden juncture between the laughter of his judge and the
laughter of the man he had wronged, made him feel suddenly small, or at
least, defeated. It was really true that the whole modern world regarded
his world as a bubble. No cruelty could have shown it, but their
kindness showed it with a ghastly clearness. As he was brooding, he
suddenly became conscious of a small, stern figure, fronting him
in silence. Its eyes were grey and awful, and its beard red. It was
Turnbull.
“Well, sir,” said the editor of _The Atheist_, “where is the fight to
be? Name the field, sir.”
Evan stood thunderstruck. He stammered out something, he knew not what;
he only guessed it by the answer of the other.
“Do I want to fight? Do I want to fight?” cried the furious
Free-thinker. “Why, you moonstruck scarecrow of superstition, do you
think your dirty saints are the only people who can die? Haven't you
hung atheists, and burned them, and boiled them, and did they ever deny
their faith? Do you think we don't want to fight? Night and day I have
prayed--I have longed--for an atheist revolution--I have longed to see
your blood and ours on the streets. Let it be yours or mine?”
“But you said...” began MacIan.
“I know,” said Turnbull scornfully. “And what did you say? You damned
fool, you said things that might have got us locked up for a year, and
shadowed by the coppers for half a decade. If you wanted to fight, why
did you tell that ass you wanted to? I got you out, to fight if you want
to. Now, fight if you dare.”
“I swear to you, then,” said MacIan, after a pause. “I swear to you that
nothing shall come between us. I swear to you that nothing shall be in
my heart or in my head till our swords clash together. I swear it by the
God you have denied, by the Blessed Lady you have blasphemed; I swear it
by the seven swords in her heart. I swear it by the Holy Island where my
fathers are, by the honour of my mother, by the secret of my people, and
by the chalice of the Blood of God.”
The atheist drew up his head. “And I,” he said, “give my word.”