XIX. THE LAST PARLEY
Turnbull walked away, wildly trying to explain to himself the presenceof two personal acquaintances so different as Vane and the girl. As heskirted a low hedge of laurel, an enormously tall young man leapt overit, stood in front of him, and almost fell on his neck as if seeking toembrace him.
"Don't you know me?" almost sobbed the young man, who was in the highestspirits. "Ain't I written on your heart, old boy? I say, what did you dowith my yacht?"
"Take your arms off my neck," said Turnbull, irritably. "Are you mad?"
The young man sat down on the gravel path and went into ecstasies oflaughter. "No, that's just the fun of it--I'm not mad," he replied."They've shut me up in this place, and I'm not mad." And he went offagain into mirth as innocent as wedding-bells.
Turnbull, whose powers of surprise were exhausted, rolled his round greyeyes and said, "Mr. Wilkinson, I think," because he could not think ofanything else to say.
The tall man sitting on the gravel bowed with urbanity, and said: "Quiteat your service. Not to be confused with the Wilkinsons of Cumberland;and as I say, old boy, what have you done with my yacht? You see,they've locked me up here--in this garden--and a yacht would be a sortof occupation for an unmarried man."
"I am really horribly sorry," began Turnbull, in the last stage of batedbewilderment and exasperation, "but really----"
"Oh, I can see you can't have it on you at the moment," said Mr.Wilkinson with much intellectual magnanimity.
"Well, the fact is----" began Turnbull again, and then the phrase wasfrozen on his mouth, for round the corner came the goatlike face andgleaming eye-glasses of Dr. Quayle.
"Ah, my dear Mr. Wilkinson," said the doctor, as if delighted ata coincidence; "and Mr. Turnbull, too. Why, I want to speak to Mr.Turnbull."
Mr. Turnbull made some movement rather of surrender than assent, andthe doctor caught it up exquisitely, showing even more of his two frontteeth. "I am sure Mr. Wilkinson will excuse us a moment." And withflying frock-coat he led Turnbull rapidly round the corner of a path.
"My dear sir," he said, in a quite affectionate manner, "I do not mindtelling you--you are such a very hopeful case--you understand so wellthe scientific point of view; and I don't like to see you bothered bythe really hopeless cases. They are monotonous and maddening. The manyou have just been talking to, poor fellow, is one of the strongestcases of pure _idee fixe_ that we have. It's very sad, and I'm afraidutterly incurable. He keeps on telling everybody"--and the doctorlowered his voice confidentially--"he tells everybody that two peoplehave taken is yacht. His account of how he lost it is quite incoherent."
Turnbull stamped his foot on the gravel path, and called out: "Oh, Ican't stand this. Really----"
"I know, I know," said the psychologist, mournfully; "it is a mostmelancholy case, and also fortunately a very rare one. It is so rare, infact, that in one classification of these maladies it is entered undera heading by itself--Perdinavititis, mental inflammation creating theimpression that one has lost a ship. Really," he added, with a kind ofhalf-embarrassed guilt, "it's rather a feather in my cap. I discoveredthe only existing case of perdinavititis."
"But this won't do, doctor," said Turnbull, almost tearing his hair,"this really won't do. The man really did lose a ship. Indeed, not toput too fine a point on it, I took his ship."
Dr. Quayle swung round for an instant so that his silk-lined overcoatrustled, and stared singularly at Turnbull. Then he said with hurriedamiability: "Why, of course you did. Quite so, quite so," and withcourteous gestures went striding up the garden path. Under the firstlaburnum-tree he stopped, however, and pulling out his penciland notebook wrote down feverishly: "Singular development in theElenthero-maniac, Turnbull. Sudden manifestation of Rapinavititis--thedelusion that one has stolen a ship. First case ever recorded."
Turnbull stood for an instant staggered into stillness. Then he ranraging round the garden to find MacIan, just as a husband, even a badhusband, will run raging to find his wife if he is full of a furiousquery. He found MacIan stalking moodily about the half-lit garden, afterhis extraordinary meeting with Beatrice. No one who saw his slouchingstride and sunken head could have known that his soul was in the seventhheaven of ecstasy. He did not think; he did not even very definitelydesire. He merely wallowed in memories, chiefly in material memories;words said with a certain cadence or trivial turns of the neck or wrist.Into the middle of his stationary and senseless enjoyment were thrustabruptly the projecting elbow and the projecting red beard of Turnbull.MacIan stepped back a little, and the soul in his eyes came very slowlyto its windows. When James Turnbull had the glittering sword-pointplanted upon his breast he was in far less danger. For three pulsatingseconds after the interruption MacIan was in a mood to have murdered hisfather.
And yet his whole emotional anger fell from him when he saw Turnbull'sface, in which the eyes seemed to be bursting from the head likebullets. All the fire and fragrance even of young and honourable lovefaded for a moment before that stiff agony of interrogation.
"Are you hurt, Turnbull?" he asked, anxiously.
"I am dying," answered the other quite calmly. "I am in the quiteliteral sense of the words dying to know something. I want to know whatall this can possibly mean."
MacIan did not answer, and he continued with asperity: "You are stillthinking about that girl, but I tell you the whole thing is incredible.She's not the only person here. I've met the fellow Wilkinson, whoseyacht we lost. I've met the very magistrate you were hauled up to whenyou broke my window. What can it mean--meeting all these old peopleagain? One never meets such old friends again except in a dream."
Then after a silence he cried with a rending sincerity: "Are you reallythere, Evan? Have you ever been really there? Am I simply dreaming?"
MacIan had been listening with a living silence to every word, and nowhis face flamed with one of his rare revelations of life.
"No, you good atheist," he cried; "no, you clean, courteous, reverent,pious old blasphemer. No, you are not dreaming--you are waking up."
"What do you mean?"
"There are two states where one meets so many old friends," said MacIan;"one is a dream, the other is the end of the world."
"And you say----"
"I say this is not a dream," said Evan in a ringing voice.
"You really mean to suggest----" began Turnbull.
"Be silent! or I shall say it all wrong," said MacIan, breathing hard."It's hard to explain, anyhow. An apocalypse is the opposite of a dream.A dream is falser than the outer life. But the end of the world is moreactual than the world it ends. I don't say this is really the end of theworld, but it's something like that--it's the end of something. All thepeople are crowding into one corner. Everything is coming to a point."
"What is the point?" asked Turnbull.
"I can't see it," said Evan; "it is too large and plain."
Then after a silence he said: "I can't see it--and yet I will try todescribe it. Turnbull, three days ago I saw quite suddenly that our duelwas not right after all."
"Three days ago!" repeated Turnbull. "When and why did this illuminationoccur?"
"I knew I was not quite right," answered Evan, "the moment I saw theround eyes of that old man in the cell."
"Old man in the cell!" repeated his wondering companion. "Do you meanthe poor old idiot who likes spikes to stick out?"
"Yes," said MacIan, after a slight pause, "I mean the poor old idiotwho likes spikes to stick out. When I saw his eyes and heard his oldcroaking accent, I knew that it would not really have been right to killyou. It would have been a venial sin."
"I am much obliged," said Turnbull, gruffly.
"You must give me time," said MacIan, quite patiently, "for I am tryingto tell the whole truth. I am trying to tell more of it than I know."
"So you see I confess"--he went on with laborious distinctness--"Iconfess that all the people who called our duel mad were right in a way.I would confess it to old Cumberland Vane and his
eye-glass. I wouldconfess it even to that old ass in brown flannel who talked to us aboutLove. Yes, they are right in a way. I am a little mad."
He stopped and wiped his brow as if he were literally doing heavylabour. Then he went on:
"I am a little mad; but, after all, it is only a little madness. Whenhundreds of high-minded men had fought duels about a jostle with theelbow or the ace of spades, the whole world need not have gone wild overmy one little wildness. Plenty of other people have killed themselvesbetween then and now. But all England has gone into captivity in orderto take us captive. All England has turned into a lunatic asylum inorder to prove us lunatics. Compared with the general public, I mightpositively be called sane."
He stopped again, and went on with the same air of travailing with thetruth:
"When I saw that, I saw everything; I saw the Church and the world. TheChurch in its earthly action has really touched morbid things--torturesand bleeding visions and blasts of extermination. The Church has had hermadnesses, and I am one of them. I am the massacre of St. Bartholomew.I am the Inquisition of Spain. I do not say that we have never gone mad,but I say that we are fit to act as keepers to our enemies. Massacre iswicked even with a provocation, as in the Bartholomew. But your modernNietzsche will tell you that massacre would be glorious without aprovocation. Torture should be violently stopped, though the Church isdoing it. But your modern Tolstoy will tell you that it ought not to beviolently stopped whoever is doing it. In the long run, which is mostmad--the Church or the world? Which is madder, the Spanish priest whopermitted tyranny, or the Prussian sophist who admired it? Which ismadder, the Russian priest who discourages righteous rebellion, or theRussian novelist who forbids it? That is the final and blasting test.The world left to itself grows wilder than any creed. A few days ago youand I were the maddest people in England. Now, by God! I believe we arethe sanest. That is the only real question--whether the Church is reallymadder than the world. Let the rationalists run their own race, and letus see where _they_ end. If the world has some healthy balance otherthan God, let the world find it. Does the world find it? Cut the worldloose," he cried with a savage gesture. "Does the world stand on its ownend? Does it stand, or does it stagger?"
Turnbull remained silent, and MacIan said to him, looking once more atthe earth: "It staggers, Turnbull. It cannot stand by itself; you knowit cannot. It has been the sorrow of your life. Turnbull, this gardenis not a dream, but an apocalyptic fulfilment. This garden is the worldgone mad."
Turnbull did not move his head, and he had been listening all the time;yet, somehow, the other knew that for the first time he was listeningseriously.
"The world has gone mad," said MacIan, "and it has gone mad about Us.The world takes the trouble to make a big mistake about every littlemistake made by the Church. That is why they have turned ten countiesto a madhouse; that is why crowds of kindly people are poured into thisfilthy melting-pot. Now is the judgement of this world. The Prince ofthis World is judged, and he is judged exactly because he is judging.There is at last one simple solution to the quarrel between the ball andthe cross----"
Turnbull for the first time started.
"The ball and----" he repeated.
"What is the matter with you?" asked MacIan.
"I had a dream," said Turnbull, thickly and obscurely, "in which I sawthe cross struck crooked and the ball secure----"
"I had a dream," said MacIan, "in which I saw the cross erect and theball invisible. They were both dreams from hell. There must besome round earth to plant the cross upon. But here is the awfuldifference--that the round world will not consent even to continueround. The astronomers are always telling us that it is shaped likean orange, or like an egg, or like a German sausage. They beat theold world about like a bladder and thump it into a thousand shapelessshapes. Turnbull, we cannot trust the ball to be always a ball; wecannot trust reason to be reasonable. In the end the great terrestrialglobe will go quite lop-sided, and only the cross will stand upright."
There was a long silence, and then Turnbull said, hesitatingly: "Hasit occurred to you that since--since those two dreams, or whatever theywere----"
"Well?" murmured MacIan.
"Since then," went on Turnbull, in the same low voice, "since then wehave never even looked for our swords."
"You are right," answered Evan almost inaudibly. "We have foundsomething which we both hate more than we ever hated each other, and Ithink I know its name."
Turnbull seemed to frown and flinch for a moment. "It does not muchmatter what you call it," he said, "so long as you keep out of its way."
The bushes broke and snapped abruptly behind them, and a very tallfigure towered above Turnbull with an arrogant stoop and a projectingchin, a chin of which the shape showed queerly even in its shadow uponthe path.
"You see that is not so easy," said MacIan between his teeth.
They looked up into the eyes of the Master, but looked only for amoment. The eyes were full of a frozen and icy wrath, a kind of utterlyheartless hatred. His voice was for the first time devoid of irony.There was no more sarcasm in it than there is in an iron club.
"You will be inside the building in three minutes," he said, withpulverizing precision, "or you will be fired on by the artillery atall the windows. There is too much talking in this garden; we intend toclose it. You will be accommodated indoors."
"Ah!" said MacIan, with a long and satisfied sigh, "then I was right."
And he turned his back and walked obediently towards the building.Turnbull seemed to canvass for a few minutes the notion of knocking theMaster down, and then fell under the same almost fairy fatalism as hiscompanion. In some strange way it did seem that the more smoothly theyyielded, the more swiftly would events sweep on to some great collision.
XX. DIES IRAE
As they advanced towards the asylum they looked up at its rows on rowsof windows, and understood the Master's material threat. By means ofthat complex but concealed machinery which ran like a network of nervesover the whole fabric, there had been shot out under every window-ledgerows and rows of polished-steel cylinders, the cold miracles of moderngunnery. They commanded the whole garden and the whole country-side, andcould have blown to pieces an army corps.
This silent declaration of war had evidently had its complete effect. AsMacIan and Turnbull walked steadily but slowly towards the entrance hallof the institution, they could see that most, or at least many, of thepatients had already gathered there as well as the staff of doctors andthe whole regiment of keepers and assistants. But when they entered thelamp-lit hall, and the high iron door was clashed to and locked behindthem, yet a new amazement leapt into their eyes, and the stalwartTurnbull almost fell. For he saw a sight which was indeed, as MacIan hadsaid--either the Day of Judgement or a dream.
Within a few feet of him at one corner of the square of standing peoplestood the girl he had known in Jersey, Madeleine Durand. She lookedstraight at him with a steady smile which lit up the scene of darknessand unreason like the light of some honest fireside. Her square faceand throat were thrown back, as her habit was, and there was somethingalmost sleepy in the geniality of her eyes. He saw her first, and fora few seconds saw her only; then the outer edge of his eyesight took inall the other staring faces, and he saw all the faces he had ever seenfor weeks and months past. There was the Tolstoyan in Jaeger flannel,with the yellow beard that went backward and the foolish nose and eyesthat went forward, with the curiosity of a crank. He was talking eagerlyto Mr. Gordon, the corpulent Jew shopkeeper whom they had once gaggedin his own shop. There was the tipsy old Hertfordshire rustic; hewas talking energetically to himself. There was not only Mr. Vane themagistrate, but the clerk of Mr. Vane, the magistrate. There was notonly Miss Drake of the motor-car, but also Miss Drake's chauffeur.Nothing wild or unfamiliar could have produced upon Turnbull such anightmare impression as that ring of familiar faces. Yet he had oneintellectual shock which was greater than all the others. He steppedimpulsively forward towards Madeleine, and then
wavered with a kindof wild humility. As he did so he caught sight of another square facebehind Madeleine's, a face with long grey whiskers and an austere stare.It was old Durand, the girls' father; and when Turnbull saw him he sawthe last and worst marvel of that monstrous night. He remembered Durand;he remembered his monotonous, everlasting lucidity, his stupefyinglysensible views of everything, his colossal contentment with truismsmerely because they were true. "Confound it all!" cried Turnbull tohimself, "if _he_ is in the asylum, there can't be anyone outside."He drew nearer to Madeleine, but still doubtfully and all the moreso because she still smiled at him. MacIan had already gone across toBeatrice with an air of fright.
Then all these bewildered but partly amicable recognitions were clovenby a cruel voice which always made all human blood turn bitter. TheMaster was standing in the middle of the room surveying the scene like agreat artist looking at a completed picture. Handsome as he looked, theyhad never seen so clearly what was really hateful in his face; and eventhen they could only express it by saying that the arched brows and thelong emphatic chin gave it always a look of being lit from below, likethe face of some infernal actor.
"This is indeed a cosy party," he said, with glittering eyes.
The Master evidently meant to say more, but before he could say anythingM. Durand had stepped right up to him and was speaking.
He was speaking exactly as a French bourgeois speaks to the manager of arestaurant. That is, he spoke with rattling and breathless rapidity,but with no incoherence, and therefore with no emotion. It was a steady,monotonous vivacity, which came not seemingly from passion, butmerely from the reason having been sent off at a gallop. He was sayingsomething like this:
"You refuse me my half-bottle of Medoc, the drink the most wholesomeand the most customary. You refuse me the company and obedience of mydaughter, which Nature herself indicates. You refuse me the beef andmutton, without pretence that it is a fast of the Church. You now forbidme the promenade, a thing necessary to a person of my age. It is uselessto tell me that you do all this by law. Law rests upon the socialcontract. If the citizen finds himself despoiled of such pleasuresand powers as he would have had even in the savage state, the socialcontract is annulled."
"It's no good chattering away, Monsieur," said Hutton, for the Masterwas silent. "The place is covered with machine-guns. We've got to obeyour orders, and so have you."
"The machinery is of the most perfect," assented Durand, somewhatirrelevantly; "worked by petroleum, I believe. I only ask you to admitthat if such things fall below the comfort of barbarism, the socialcontract is annulled. It is a pretty little point of theory."
"Oh! I dare say," said Hutton.
Durand bowed quite civilly and withdrew.
"A cosy party," resumed the Master, scornfully, "and yet I believe someof you are in doubt about how we all came together. I will explainit, ladies and gentlemen; I will explain everything. To whom shall Ispecially address myself? To Mr. James Turnbull. He has a scientificmind."
Turnbull seemed to choke with sudden protest. The Master seemed onlyto cough out of pure politeness and proceeded: "Mr. Turnbull will agreewith me," he said, "when I say that we long felt in scientific circlesthat great harm was done by such a legend as that of the Crucifixion."
Turnbull growled something which was presumably assent.
The Master went on smoothly: "It was in vain for us to urge that theincident was irrelevant; that there were many such fanatics, many suchexecutions. We were forced to take the thing thoroughly in hand,to investigate it in the spirit of scientific history, and with theassistance of Mr. Turnbull and others we were happy in being able toannounce that this alleged Crucifixion never occurred at all."
MacIan lifted his head and looked at the Master steadily, but Turnbulldid not look up.
"This, we found, was the only way with all superstitions," continued thespeaker; "it was necessary to deny them historically, and we have doneit with great success in the case of miracles and such things. Nowwithin our own time there arose an unfortunate fuss which threatened (asMr. Turnbull would say) to galvanize the corpse of Christianity into afictitious life--the alleged case of a Highland eccentric who wanted tofight for the Virgin."
MacIan, quite white, made a step forward, but the speaker did not alterhis easy attitude or his flow of words. "Again we urged that this duelwas not to be admired, that it was a mere brawl, but the people wereignorant and romantic. There were signs of treating this allegedHighlander and his alleged opponent as heroes. We tried all other meansof arresting this reactionary hero worship. Working men who betted onthe duel were imprisoned for gambling. Working men who drank thehealth of a duellist were imprisoned for drunkenness. But the popularexcitement about the alleged duel continued, and we had to fall back onour old historical method. We investigated, on scientific principles,the story of MacIan's challenge, and we are happy to be able to informyou that the whole story of the attempted duel is a fable. Therenever was any challenge. There never was any man named MacIan. It is amelodramatic myth, like Calvary."
Not a soul moved save Turnbull, who lifted his head; yet there was thesense of a silent explosion.
"The whole story of the MacIan challenge," went on the Master, beamingat them all with a sinister benignity, "has been found to originate inthe obsessions of a few pathological types, who are now all fortunatelyin our care. There is, for instance, a person here of the name ofGordon, formerly the keeper of a curiosity shop. He is a victim of thedisease called Vinculomania--the impression that one has been bound ortied up. We have also a case of Fugacity (Mr. Whimpey), who imaginesthat he was chased by two men."
The indignant faces of the Jew shopkeeper and the Magdalen Don startedout of the crowd in their indignation, but the speaker continued:
"One poor woman we have with us," he said, in a compassionate voice,"believes she was in a motor-car with two such men; this is thewell-known illusion of speed on which I need not dwell. Another wretchedwoman has the simple egotistic mania that she has caused the duel.Madeleine Durand actually professes to have been the subject of thefight between MacIan and his enemy, a fight which, if it occurred atall, certainly began long before. But it never occurred at all. We havetaken in hand every person who professed to have seen such a thing, andproved them all to be unbalanced. That is why they are here."
The Master looked round the room, just showing his perfect teeth withthe perfection of artistic cruelty, exalted for a moment in the enormoussimplicity of his success, and then walked across the hall and vanishedthrough an inner door. His two lieutenants, Quayle and Hutton, were leftstanding at the head of the great army of servants and keepers.
"I hope we shall have no more trouble," said Dr. Quayle pleasantlyenough, and addressing Turnbull, who was leaning heavily upon the backof a chair.
Still looking down, Turnbull lifted the chair an inch or two from theground. Then he suddenly swung it above his head and sent it at theinquiring doctor with an awful crash which sent one of its wooden legsloose along the floor and crammed the doctor gasping into a corner.MacIan gave a great shout, snatched up the loose chair-leg, and, rushingon the other doctor, felled him with a blow. Twenty attendants rushedto capture the rebels; MacIan flung back three of them and Turnbullwent over on top of one, when from behind them all came a shriek as ofsomething quite fresh and frightful.
Two of the three passages leading out of the hall were choked with bluesmoke. Another instant and the hall was full of the fog of it, and redsparks began to swarm like scarlet bees.
"The place is on fire!" cried Quayle with a scream of indecent terror."Oh, who can have done it? How can it have happened?"
A light had come into Turnbull's eyes. "How did the French Revolutionhappen?" he asked.
"Oh, how should I know!" wailed the other.
"Then I will tell you," said Turnbull; "it happened because some peoplefancied that a French grocer was as respectable as he looked."
Even as he spoke, as if by confirmation, old Mr. Durand re-entered
thesmoky room quite placidly, wiping the petroleum from his hands with ahandkerchief. He had set fire to the building in accordance with thestrict principles of the social contract.
But MacIan had taken a stride forward and stood there shaken andterrible. "Now," he cried, panting, "now is the judgement of the world.The doctors will leave this place; the keepers will leave this place.They will leave us in charge of the machinery and the machine-guns atthe windows. But we, the lunatics, will wait to be burned alive if onlywe may see them go."
"How do you know we shall go?" asked Hutton, fiercely.
"You believe nothing," said MacIan, simply, "and you are insupportablyafraid of death."
"So this is suicide," sneered the doctor; "a somewhat doubtful sign ofsanity."
"Not at all--this is vengeance," answered Turnbull, quite calmly; "athing which is completely healthy."
"You think the doctors will go," said Hutton, savagely.
"The keepers have gone already," said Turnbull.
Even as they spoke the main doors were burst open in mere brutal panic,and all the officers and subordinates of the asylum rushed away acrossthe garden pursued by the smoke. But among the ticketed maniacs not aman or woman moved.
"We hate dying," said Turnbull, with composure, "but we hate you evenmore. This is a successful revolution."
In the roof above their heads a panel shot back, showing a strip ofstar-lit sky and a huge thing made of white metal, with the shape andfins of a fish, swinging as if at anchor. At the same moment a steelladder slid down from the opening and struck the floor, and the cleftchin of the mysterious Master was thrust into the opening. "Quayle,Hutton," he said, "you will escape with me." And they went up the ladderlike automata of lead.
Long after they had clambered into the car, the creature with the clovenface continued to leer down upon the smoke-stung crowd below. Then atlast he said in a silken voice and with a smile of final satisfaction:
"By the way, I fear I am very absent minded. There is one man speciallywhom, somehow, I always forget. I always leave him lying about. OnceI mislaid him on the Cross of St. Paul's. So silly of me; and now I'veforgotten him in one of those little cells where your fire is burning.Very unfortunate--especially for him." And nodding genially, he climbedinto his flying ship.
MacIan stood motionless for two minutes, and then rushed down one of thesuffocating corridors till he found the flames. Turnbull looked once atMadeleine, and followed.
* * *
MacIan, with singed hair, smoking garments, and smarting hands and face,had already broken far enough through the first barriers of burningtimber to come within cry of the cells he had once known. It wasimpossible, however, to see the spot where the old man lay dead oralive; not now through darkness, but through scorching and aching light.The site of the old half-wit's cell was now the heart of a standingforest of fire--the flames as thick and yellow as a cornfield. Theirincessant shrieking and crackling was like a mob shouting against anorator. Yet through all that deafening density MacIan thought he hearda small and separate sound. When he heard it he rushed forward as if toplunge into that furnace, but Turnbull arrested him by an elbow.
"Let me go!" cried Evan, in agony; "it's the poor old beggar'svoice--he's still alive, and shouting for help."
"Listen!" said Turnbull, and lifted one finger from his clenched hand.
"Or else he is shrieking with pain," protested MacIan. "I will notendure it."
"Listen!" repeated Turnbull, grimly. "Did you ever hear anyone shout forhelp or shriek with pain in that voice?"
The small shrill sounds which came through the crash of theconflagration were indeed of an odd sort, and MacIan turned a face ofpuzzled inquiry to his companion.
"He is singing," said Turnbull, simply.
A remaining rampart fell, crushing the fire, and through the diminisheddin of it the voice of the little old lunatic came clearer. In the heartof that white-hot hell he was singing like a bird. What he was singingit was not very easy to follow, but it seemed to be something aboutplaying in the golden hay.
"Good Lord!" cried Turnbull, bitterly, "there seem to be some advantagesin really being an idiot." Then advancing to the fringe of the fire hecalled out on chance to the invisible singer: "Can you come out? Are youcut off?"
"God help us all!" said MacIan, with a shudder; "he's laughing now."
At whatever stage of being burned alive the invisible now found himself,he was now shaking out peals of silvery and hilarious laughter. As helistened, MacIan's two eyes began to glow, as if a strange thought hadcome into his head.
"Fool, come out and save yourself!" shouted Turnbull.
"No, by Heaven! that is not the way," cried Evan, suddenly. "Father," heshouted, "come out and save us all!"
The fire, though it had dropped in one or two places, was, upon thewhole, higher and more unconquerable than ever. Separate tall flamesshot up and spread out above them like the fiery cloisters of someinfernal cathedral, or like a grove of red tropical trees in the gardenof the devil. Higher yet in the purple hollow of the night the topmostflames leapt again and again fruitlessly at the stars, like goldendragons chained but struggling. The towers and domes of the oppressivesmoke seemed high and far enough to drown distant planets in a Londonfog. But if we exhausted all frantic similes for that frantic scene,the main impression about the fire would still be its ranked upstandingrigidity and a sort of roaring stillness. It was literally a wall offire.
"Father," cried MacIan, once more, "come out of it and save us all!"Turnbull was staring at him as he cried.
The tall and steady forest of fire must have been already a portentvisible to the whole circle of land and sea. The red flush of it lit upthe long sides of white ships far out in the German Ocean, and pickedout like piercing rubies the windows in the villages on the distantheights. If any villagers or sailors were looking towards it they musthave seen a strange sight as MacIan cried out for the third time.
That forest of fire wavered, and was cloven in the centre; and then thewhole of one half of it leaned one way as a cornfield leans all one wayunder the load of the wind. Indeed, it looked as if a great wind hadsprung up and driven the great fire aslant. Its smoke was no longer sentup to choke the stars, but was trailed and dragged across county aftercounty like one dreadful banner of defeat.
But it was not the wind; or, if it was the wind, it was two windsblowing in opposite directions. For while one half of the huge firesloped one way towards the inland heights, the other half, at exactlythe same angle, sloped out eastward towards the sea. So that earth andocean could behold, where there had been a mere fiery mass, a thingdivided like a V--a cloven tongue of flame. But if it were a prodigy forthose distant, it was something beyond speech for those quite near. Asthe echoes of Evan's last appeal rang and died in the universal uproar,the fiery vault over his head opened down the middle, and, reeling backin two great golden billows, hung on each side as huge and harmless astwo sloping hills lie on each side of a valley. Down the centre of thistrough, or chasm, a little path ran, cleared of all but ashes, and downthis little path was walking a little old man singing as if he werealone in a wood in spring.
When James Turnbull saw this he suddenly put out a hand and seemed tosupport himself on the strong shoulder of Madeleine Durand. Then after amoment's hesitation he put his other hand on the shoulder of MacIan.His blue eyes looked extraordinarily brilliant and beautiful. In manysceptical papers and magazines afterwards he was sadly or sternlyrebuked for having abandoned the certainties of materialism. Allhis life up to that moment he had been most honestly certain thatmaterialism was a fact. But he was unlike the writers in the magazinesprecisely in this--that he preferred a fact even to materialism.
As the little singing figure came nearer and nearer, Evan fell on hisknees, and after an instant Beatrice followed; then Madeleine fell onher knees, and after a longer instant Turnbull followed. Then the littleold man went past them singing down that corridor of flames
. They hadnot looked at his face.
When he had passed they looked up. While the first light of the firehad shot east and west, painting the sides of ships with fire-light orstriking red sparks out of windowed houses, it had not hitherto struckupward, for there was above it the ponderous and rococo cavern of itsown monstrous coloured smoke. But now the fire was turned to left andright like a woman's hair parted in the middle, and now the shafts ofits light could shoot up into empty heavens and strike anything, eitherbird or cloud. But it struck something that was neither cloud nor bird.Far, far away up in those huge hollows of space something was flyingswiftly and shining brightly, something that shone too bright and flewtoo fast to be any of the fowls of the air, though the red light lit itfrom underneath like the breast of a bird. Everyone knew it was a flyingship, and everyone knew whose.
As they stared upward the little speck of light seemed slightly tilted,and two black dots dropped from the edge of it. All the eager, upturnedfaces watched the two dots as they grew bigger and bigger in theirdownward rush. Then someone screamed, and no one looked up any more. Forthe two bodies, larger every second flying, spread out and sprawling inthe fire-light, were the dead bodies of the two doctors whom ProfessorLucifer had carried with him--the weak and sneering Quayle, the cold andclumsy Hutton. They went with a crash into the thick of the fire.
"They are gone!" screamed Beatrice, hiding her head. "O God! The arelost!"
Evan put his arm about her, and remembered his own vision.
"No, they are not lost," he said. "They are saved. He has taken away nosouls with him, after all."
He looked vaguely about at the fire that was already fading, and thereamong the ashes lay two shining things that had survived the fire, hissword and Turnbull's, fallen haphazard in the pattern of a cross.
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