XV. THE DREAM OF MACIAN
The system of espionage in the asylum was so effective and
complete that in practice the patients could often enjoy a sense
of almost complete solitude. They could stray up so near to the
wall in an apparently unwatched garden as to find it easy to jump
over it. They would only have found the error of their
calculations if they had tried to jump.
Under this insulting liberty, in this artificial loneliness, Evan
MacIan was in the habit of creeping out into the garden after
dark--especially upon moonlight nights. The moon, indeed, was for
him always a positive magnet in a manner somewhat hard to explain
to those of a robuster attitude. Evidently, Apollo is to the full
as poetical as Diana; but it is not a question of poetry in the
matured and intellectual sense of the word. It is a question of a
certain solid and childish fancy. The sun is in the strict and
literal sense invisible; that is to say, that by our bodily eyes
it cannot properly be seen. But the moon is a much simpler thing;
a naked and nursery sort of thing. It hangs in the sky quite
solid and quite silver and quite useless; it is one huge
celestial snowball. It was at least some such infantile facts and
fancies which led Evan again and again during his dehumanized
imprisonment to go out as if to shoot the moon.
He was out in the garden on one such luminous and ghostly night,
when the steady moonshine toned down all the colours of the
garden until almost the strongest tints to be seen were the
strong soft blue of the sky and the large lemon moon. He was
walking with his face turned up to it in that rather half-witted
fashion which might have excused the error of his keepers; and as
he gazed he became aware of something little and lustrous flying
close to the lustrous orb, like a bright chip knocked off the
moon. At first he thought it was a mere sparkle or refraction in
his own eyesight; he blinked and cleared his eyes. Then he
thought it was a falling star; only it did not fall. It jerked
awkwardly up and down in a way unknown among meteors and
strangely reminiscent of the works of man. The next moment the
thing drove right across the moon, and from being silver upon
blue, suddenly became black upon silver; then although it passed
the field of light in a flash its outline was unmistakable though
eccentric. It was a flying ship.
The vessel took one long and sweeping curve across the sky and
came nearer and nearer to MacIan, like a steam-engine coming
round a bend. It was of pure white steel, and in the moon it
gleamed like the armour of Sir Galahad. The simile of such
virginity is not inappropriate; for, as it grew larger and larger
and lower and lower, Evan saw that the only figure in it was
robed in white from head to foot and crowned with snow-white
hair, on which the moonshine lay like a benediction. The figure
stood so still that he could easily have supposed it to be a
statue. Indeed, he thought it was until it spoke.
"Evan," said the voice, and it spoke with the simple authority of
some forgotten father revisiting his children, "you have remained
here long enough, and your sword is wanted elsewhere."
"Wanted for what?" asked the young man, accepting the monstrous
event with a queer and clumsy naturalness; "what is my sword
wanted for?"
"For all that you hold dear," said the man standing in the
moonlight; "for the thrones of authority and for all ancient
loyalty to law."
Evan looked up at the lunar orb again as if in irrational
appeal--a moon calf bleating to his mother the moon. But the face
of Luna seemed as witless as his own; there is no help in nature
against the supernatural; and he looked again at the tall marble
figure that might have been made out of solid moonlight.
Then he said in a loud voice: "Who are you?" and the next moment
was seized by a sort of choking terror lest his question should
be answered. But the unknown preserved an impenetrable silence
for a long space and then only answered: "I must not say who I am
until the end of the world; but I may say what I am. I am the
law."
And he lifted his head so that the moon smote full upon his
beautiful and ancient face.
The face was the face of a Greek god grown old, but not grown
either weak or ugly; there was nothing to break its regularity
except a rather long chin with a cleft in it, and this rather
added distinction than lessened beauty. His strong, well-opened
eyes were very brilliant but quite colourless like steel.
MacIan was one of those to whom a reverence and self-submission
in ritual come quite easy, and are ordinary things. It was not
artificial in him to bend slightly to this solemn apparition or
to lower his voice when he said: "Do you bring me some message?"
"I do bring you a message," answered the man of moon and marble.
"The king has returned."
Evan did not ask for or require any explanation. "I suppose you
can take me to the war," he said, and the silent silver figure
only bowed its head again. MacIan clambered into the silver boat,
and it rose upward to the stars.
To say that it rose to the stars is no mere metaphor, for the sky
had cleared to that occasional and astonishing transparency in
which one can see plainly both stars and moon.
As the white-robed figure went upward in his white chariot, he
said quite quietly to Evan: "There is an answer to all the folly
talked about equality. Some stars are big and some small; some
stand still and some circle around them as they stand. They can
be orderly, but they cannot be equal."
"They are all very beautiful," said Evan, as if in doubt.
"They are all beautiful," answered the other, "because each is in
his place and owns his superior. And now England will be
beautiful after the same fashion. The earth will be as beautiful
as the heavens, because our kings have come back to us."
"The Stuart----" began Evan, earnestly.
"Yes," answered the old man, "that which has returned is Stuart
and yet older than Stuart. It is Capet and Plantagenet and
Pendragon. It is all that good old time of which proverbs tell,
that golden reign of Saturn against which gods and men were
rebels. It is all that was ever lost by insolence and overwhelmed
in rebellion. It is your own forefather, MacIan with the broken
sword, bleeding without hope at Culloden. It is Charles refusing
to answer the questions of the rebel court. It is Mary of the
magic face confronting the gloomy and grasping peers and the
boorish moralities of Knox. It is Richard, the last Plantagenet,
giving his crown to Bolingbroke as to a common brigand. It is
Arthur, overwhelmed in Lyonesse by heathen armies and dying in
the mist, doubtful if ever he shall return."
"But now----" said Evan, in a low voice.
"But now!" said the old man; "he has returned."
"Is the war still raging?" asked MacIan.
"It rages like the pit itself beyond the sea whither I am taking
you," answered the other. "But in England the king enjoys his own
again. The people are once more taught and ruled as is best; they
are happy knights, happy squires, happy servants, happy serfs, if
you will; but free at last of that load of vexation and lonely
vanity which was called being a citizen."
"Is England, indeed, so secure?" asked Evan.
"Look out and see," said the guide. "I fancy you have seen this
place before."
They were driving through the air towards one region of the sky
where the hollow of night seemed darkest and which was quite
without stars. But against this black background there sprang up,
picked out in glittering silver, a dome and a cross. It seemed
that it was really newly covered with silver, which in the strong
moonlight was like white flame. But, however, covered or painted,
Evan had no difficult in knowing the place again. He saw the
great thoroughfare that sloped upward to the base of its huge
pedestal of steps. And he wondered whether the little shop was
still by the side of it and whether its window had been mended.
As the flying ship swept round the dome he observed other
alterations. The dome had been redecorated so as to give it a
more solemn and somewhat more ecclesiastical note; the ball was
draped or destroyed, and round the gallery, under the cross, ran
what looked like a ring of silver statues, like the little leaden
images that stood round the hat of Louis XI. Round the second
gallery, at the base of the dome, ran a second rank of such
images, and Evan thought there was another round the steps below.
When they came closer he saw that they were figures in complete
armour of steel or silver, each with a naked sword, point upward;
and then he saw one of the swords move. These were not statues
but an armed order of chivalry thrown in three circles round the
cross. MacIan drew in his breath, as children do at anything they
think utterly beautiful. For he could imagine nothing that so
echoed his own visions of pontifical or chivalric art as this
white dome sitting like a vast silver tiara over London, ringed
with a triple crown of swords.
As they went sailing down Ludgate Hill, Evan saw that the state
of the streets fully answered his companion's claim about the
reintroduction of order. All the old blackcoated bustle with its
cockney vivacity and vulgarity had disappeared. Groups of
labourers, quietly but picturesquely clad, were passing up and
down in sufficiently large numbers; but it required but a few
mounted men to keep the streets in order. The mounted men were
not common policemen, but knights with spurs and plume whose
smooth and splendid armour glittered like diamond rather than
steel. Only in one place--at the corner of Bouverie Street--did
there appear to be a moment's confusion, and that was due to
hurry rather than resistance. But one old grumbling man did not
get out of the way quick enough, and the man on horseback struck
him, not severely, across the shoulders with the flat of his
sword.
"The soldier had no business to do that," said MacIan, sharply.
"The old man was moving as quickly as he could."
"We attach great importance to discipline in the streets," said
the man in white, with a slight smile.
"Discipline is not so important as justice," said MacIan.
The other did not answer.
Then after a swift silence that took them out across St. James's
Park, he said: "The people must be taught to obey; they must
learn their own ignorance. And I am not sure," he continued,
turning his back on Evan and looking out of the prow of the ship
into the darkness, "I am not sure that I agree with your little
maxim about justice. Discipline for the whole society is surely
more important than justice to an individual."
Evan, who was also leaning over the edge, swung round with
startling suddenness and stared at the other's back.
"Discipline for society----" he repeated, very staccato, "more
important--justice to individual?"
Then after a long silence he called out: "Who and what are you?"
"I am an angel," said the white-robed figure, without turning
round.
"You are not a Catholic," said MacIan.
The other seemed to take no notice, but reverted to the main
topic.
"In our armies up in heaven we learn to put a wholesome fear into
subordinates."
MacIan sat craning his neck forward with an extraordinary and
unaccountable eagerness.
"Go on!" he cried, twisting and untwisting his long, bony
fingers, "go on!"
"Besides," continued he, in the prow, "you must allow for a
certain high spirit and haughtiness in the superior type."
"Go on!" said Evan, with burning eyes.
"Just as the sight of sin offends God," said the unknown, "so
does the sight of ugliness offend Apollo. The beautiful and
princely must, of necessity, be impatient with the squalid
and----"
"Why, you great fool!" cried MacIan, rising to the top of his
tremendous stature, "did you think I would have doubted only for
that rap with a sword? I know that noble orders have bad knights,
that good knights have bad tempers, that the Church has rough
priests and coarse cardinals; I have known it ever since I was
born. You fool! you had only to say, 'Yes, it is rather a shame,'
and I should have forgotten the affair. But I saw on your mouth
the twitch of your infernal sophistry; I knew that something was
wrong with you and your cathedrals. Something is wrong;
everything is wrong. You are not an angel. That is not a church.
It is not the rightful king who has come home."
"That is unfortunate," said the other, in a quiet but hard voice,
"because you are going to see his Majesty."
"No," said MacIan, "I am going to jump over the side."
"Do you desire death?"
"No," said Evan, quite composedly, "I desire a miracle."
"From whom do you ask it? To whom do you appeal?" said his
companion, sternly. "You have betrayed the king, renounced his
cross on the cathedral, and insulted an archangel."
"I appeal to God," said Evan, and sprang up and stood upon the
edge of the swaying ship.
The being in the prow turned slowly round; he looked at Evan with
eyes which were like two suns, and put his hand to his mouth just
too late to hide an awful smile.
"And how do you know," he said, "how do you know that I am not
God?"
MacIan screamed. "Ah!" he cried. "Now I know who you really are.
You are not God. You are not one of God's angels. But you were
once."
The being's hand dropped from his mouth and Evan dropped out of
the car.
