V. THE PEACEMAKER
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."
