The Ball and the Cross

by Gilbert Keith Chesterton

  “Well, because,” said Turnbull, patiently.

  “Because I have begun to like you.”

  Turnbull’s face had a sudden spasm in the sunlight, a change so instantaneous that it left no trace behind it; and his features seemed still carved into a cold stare. But when he spoke again he seemed like a man who was placidly pretending to misunderstand something that he understood perfectly well.

  “Your affection expresses itself in an abrupt form,” he began, but MacIan broke the brittle and frivolous speech to pieces with a violent voice. “Do not trouble to talk like that,” he said. “You know what I mean as well as I know it. Come on and fight, I say. Perhaps you are feeling just as I do.”

  Turnbull’s face flinched again in the fierce sunlight, but his attitude kept its contemptuous ease.

  “Your Celtic mind really goes too fast for me,” he said; “let me be permitted in my heavy Lowland way to understand this new development. My dear Mr. MacIan, what do you really mean?”

  MacIan still kept the shining sword-point towards the other’s breast.

  “You know what I mean. You mean the same yourself. We must fight now or else–”

  “Or else?” repeated Turnbull, staring at him with an almost blinding gravity.

  “Or else we may not want to fight at all,” answered Evan, and the end of his speech was like a despairing cry.

  Turnbull took out his own sword suddenly as if to engage; then planting it point downwards for a moment, he said, “Before we begin, may I ask you a question?”

  MacIan bowed patiently, but with burning eyes.

  “You said, just now,” continued Turnbull, presently, “that if we did not fight now, we might not want to fight at all. How would you feel about the matter if we came not to want to fight at all?”

  “I should feel,” answered the other, “just as I should feel if you had drawn your sword, and I had run away from it. I should feel that because I had been weak, justice had not been done.”

  “Justice,” answered Turnbull, with a thoughtful smile, “but we are talking about your feelings. And what do you mean by justice, apart from your feelings?”

  MacIan made a gesture of weary recognition! “Oh, Nominalism,” he said, with a sort of sigh, “we had all that out in the twelfth century.”

  “I wish we could have it out now,” replied the other, firmly. “Do you really mean that if you came to think me right, you would be certainly wrong?”

  “If I had a blow on the back of my head, I might come to think you a green elephant,” answered MacIan, “but have I not the right to say now, that if I thought that I should think wrong?”

  “Then you are quite certain that it would be wrong to like me?” asked Turnbull, with a slight smile.

  “No,” said Evan, thoughtfully, “I do not say that. It may not be the devil, it may be some part of God I am not meant to know. But I had a work to do, and it is making the work difficult.”

  “And I suppose,” said the atheist, quite gently, “that you and I know all about which part of God we ought to know.”

  MacIan burst out like a man driven back and explaining everything.

  “The Church is not a thing like the Athenaeum Club,” he cried. “If the Athenaeum Club lost all its members, the Athenaeum Club would dissolve and cease to exist. But when we belong to the Church we belong to something which is outside all of us; which is outside everything you talk about, outside the Cardinals and the Pope. They belong to it, but it does not belong to them. If we all fell dead suddenly, the Church would still somehow exist in God. Confound it all, don’t you see that I am more sure of its existence than I am of my own existence? And yet you ask me to trust my temperament, my own temperament, which can be turned upside down by two bottles of claret or an attack of the jaundice. You ask me to trust that when it softens towards you and not to trust the thing which I believe to be outside myself and more real than the blood in my body.”

  “Stop a moment,” said Turnbull, in the same easy tone, “Even in the very act of saying that you believe this or that, you imply that there is a part of yourself that you trust even if there are many parts which you mistrust. If it is only you that like me, surely, also, it is only you that believe in the Catholic Church.”

  Evan remained in an unmoved and grave attitude. “There is a part of me which is divine,” he answered, “a part that can be trusted, but there are also affections which are entirely animal and idle.”

  “And you are quite certain, I suppose,” continued Turnbull, “that if even you esteem me the esteem would be wholly animal and idle?” For the first time MacIan started as if he had not expected the thing that was said to him. At last he said:

  “Whatever in earth or heaven it is that has joined us two together, it seems to be something which makes it impossible to lie. No, I do not think that the movement in me towards you was...was that surface sort of thing. It may have been something deeper...something strange. I cannot understand the thing at all. But understand this and understand it thoroughly, if I loved you my love might be divine. No, it is not some trifle that we are fighting about. It is not some superstition or some symbol. When you wrote those words about Our Lady, you were in that act a wicked man doing a wicked thing. If I hate you it is because you have hated goodness. And if I like you...it is because you are good.”

  Turnbull’s face wore an indecipherable expression.

  “Well, shall we fight now?” he said.

  “Yes,” said MacIan, with a sudden contraction of his black brows, “yes, it must be now.”

  The bright swords crossed, and the first touch of them, travelling down blade and arm, told each combatant that the heart of the other was awakened. It was not in that way that the swords rang together when they had rushed on each other in the little garden behind the dealer’s shop.

  There was a pause, and then MacIan made a movement as if to thrust, and almost at the same moment Turnbull suddenly and calmly dropped his sword. Evan stared round in an unusual bewilderment, and then realized that a large man in pale clothes and a Panama hat was strolling serenely towards them.

  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 voic
e, “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.