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
pitilessly 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 riposted 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 in 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 duellists 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 coloured 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-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 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
colourless 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 humour.
Dry Scotch humour. 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 duelling, 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
duelling.”
Waiting for some effect upon his wooden auditors, the stranger stood
beaming for a moment and then resumed:
“Now, they tell me in the newspapers 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 hearty, 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-humoured gravity.
“But you know this is a serious matter,” he said, eyeing Turnbull and
MacIan, 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 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 of
bloodshed.”
“Well, we won't quarrel about a word,” said the other, pleasantly.
“Why on earth not?” said MacIan, 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 casuist!” said the large man, wagging his head. “Now, do
you 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 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. MacIan, shall we engage?” MacIan plucked his sword
out 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 the
principle 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 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 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 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 MacIan, 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 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 the
black abyss of evil on whose brink we stand. If that man had not tried
to 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 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. Oh, 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?” 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,” said
Turnbull, quietly. “The police are coming up the hill.”