IX. THE STRANGE LADY
Moonrise with a great and growing moon opened over all those flats,making them seem flatter and larger than they were, turning them to alake of blue light. The two companions trudged across the moonlit plainfor half an hour in full silence. Then MacIan stopped suddenly andplanted his sword-point in the ground like one who plants his tent-polefor the night. Leaving it standing there, he clutched his black-hairedskull with his great claws of hands, as was his custom when forcing thepace of his brain. Then his hands dropped again and he spoke.
"I'm sure you're thinking the same as I am," he said; "how long are weto be on this damned seesaw?"
The other did not answer, but his silence seemed somehow solid asassent; and MacIan went on conversationally. Neither noticed that bothhad instinctively stood still before the sign of the fixed and standingsword.
"It is hard to guess what God means in this business. But he meanssomething--or the other thing, or both. Whenever we have tried tofight each other something has stopped us. Whenever we have tried to bereconciled to each other, something has stopped us again. By the runof our luck we have never had time to be either friends or enemies.Something always jumped out of the bushes."
Turnbull nodded gravely and glanced round at the huge and hedgelessmeadow which fell away towards the horizon into a glimmering high road.
"Nothing will jump out of bushes here anyhow," he said.
"That is what I meant," said MacIan, and stared steadily at the heavyhilt of his standing sword, which in the slight wind swayed on itstempered steel like some huge thistle on its stalk.
"That is what I meant; we are quite alone here. I have not heard ahorse-hoof or a footstep or the hoot of a train for miles. So I think wemight stop here and ask for a miracle."
"Oh! might we?" said the atheistic editor with a sort of gusto ofdisgust.
"I beg your pardon," said MacIan, meekly. "I forgot your prejudices."He eyed the wind-swung sword-hilt in sad meditation and resumed: "WhatI mean is, we might find out in this quiet place whether there really isany fate or any commandment against our enterprise. I will engage on myside, like Elijah, to accept a test from heaven. Turnbull, let us drawswords here in this moonlight and this monstrous solitude. And if herein this moonlight and solitude there happens anything to interruptus--if it be lightning striking our sword-blades or a rabbit runningunder our legs--I will take it as a sign from God and we will shakehands for ever."
Turnbull's mouth twitched in angry humour under his red moustache. Hesaid: "I will wait for signs from God until I have any signs of Hisexistence; but God--or Fate--forbid that a man of scientific cultureshould refuse any kind of experiment."
"Very well, then," said MacIan, shortly. "We are more quiet here thananywhere else; let us engage." And he plucked his sword-point out of theturf.
Turnbull regarded him for a second and a half with a baffling visagealmost black against the moonrise; then his hand made a sharp movementto his hip and his sword shone in the moon.
As old chess-players open every game with established gambits, theyopened with a thrust and parry, orthodox and even frankly ineffectual.But in MacIan's soul more formless storms were gathering, and he madea lunge or two so savage as first to surprise and then to enrage hisopponent. Turnbull ground his teeth, kept his temper, and waiting forthe third lunge, and the worst, had almost spitted the lunger when ashrill, small cry came from behind him, a cry such as is not made by anyof the beasts that perish.
Turnbull must have been more superstitious than he knew, for he stoppedin the act of going forward. MacIan was brazenly superstitious, and hedropped his sword. After all, he had challenged the universe to sendan interruption; and this was an interruption, whatever else it was. Aninstant afterwards the sharp, weak cry was repeated. This time it wascertain that it was human and that it was female.
MacIan stood rolling those great blue Gaelic eyes that contrasted withhis dark hair. "It is the voice of God," he said again and again.
"God hasn't got much of a voice," said Turnbull, who snatched at everychance of cheap profanity. "As a matter of fact, MacIan, it isn't thevoice of God, but it's something a jolly sight more important--it is thevoice of man--or rather of woman. So I think we'd better scoot in itsdirection."
MacIan snatched up his fallen weapon without a word, and the two racedaway towards that part of the distant road from which the cry was nowconstantly renewed.
They had to run over a curve of country that looked smooth but was veryrough; a neglected field which they soon found to be full of the tallestgrasses and the deepest rabbit-holes. Moreover, that great curve of thecountryside which looked so slow and gentle when you glanced over it,proved to be highly precipitous when you scampered over it; and Turnbullwas twice nearly flung on his face. MacIan, though much heavier, avoidedsuch an overthrow only by having the quick and incalculable feet of themountaineer; but both of them may be said to have leapt off a low cliffwhen they leapt into the road.
The moonlight lay on the white road with a more naked and electric glarethan on the grey-green upland, and though the scene which it revealedwas complicated, it was not difficult to get its first features at aglance.
A small but very neat black-and-yellow motor-car was standing stolidly,slightly to the left of the road. A somewhat larger light-greenmotor-car was tipped half-way into a ditch on the same side, and fourflushed and staggering men in evening dress were tipped out of it. Threeof them were standing about the road, giving their opinions to themoon with vague but echoing violence. The fourth, however, hadalready advanced on the chauffeur of the black-and-yellow car, and wasthreatening him with a stick. The chauffeur had risen to defend himself.By his side sat a young lady.
She was sitting bolt upright, a slender and rigid figure gripping thesides of her seat, and her first few cries had ceased. She was clad inclose-fitting dark costume, a mass of warm brown hair went out in twowings or waves on each side of her forehead; and even at that distanceit could be seen that her profile was of the aquiline and eager sort,like a young falcon hardly free of the nest.
Turnbull had concealed in him somewhere a fund of common sense andknowledge of the world of which he himself and his best friends werehardly aware. He was one of those who take in much of the shows ofthings absent-mindedly, and in an irrelevant reverie. As he stood atthe door of his editorial shop on Ludgate Hill and meditated on thenon-existence of God, he silently absorbed a good deal of variedknowledge about the existence of men. He had come to know types byinstinct and dilemmas with a glance; he saw the crux of the situation inthe road, and what he saw made him redouble his pace.
He knew that the men were rich; he knew that they were drunk; and heknew, what was worst of all, that they were fundamentally frightened.And he knew this also, that no common ruffian (such as attacks ladiesin novels) is ever so savage and ruthless as a coarse kind of gentlemanwhen he is really alarmed. The reason is not recondite; it is simplybecause the police-court is not such a menacing novelty to the poorruffian as it is to the rich. When they came within hail and heard thevoices, they confirmed all Turnbull's anticipations. The man in themiddle of the road was shouting in a hoarse and groggy voice that thechauffeur had smashed their car on purpose; that they must get to theCri that evening, and that he would jolly well have to take them there.The chauffeur had mildly objected that he was driving a lady. "Oh! we'lltake care of the lady," said the red-faced young man, and went off intogurgling and almost senile laughter.
By the time the two champions came up, things had grown more serious.The intoxication of the man talking to the chauffeur had taken one ofits perverse and catlike jumps into mere screaming spite and rage. Helifted his stick and struck at the chauffeur, who caught hold of it, andthe drunkard fell backwards, dragging him out of his seat on the car.Another of the rowdies rushed forward booing in idiot excitement, fellover the chauffeur, and, either by accident or design, kicked him as helay. The drunkard got to his feet again; but the chauffeur did not.
The man who
had kicked kept a kind of half-witted conscience orcowardice, for he stood staring at the senseless body and murmuringwords of inconsequent self-justification, making gestures with his handsas if he were arguing with somebody. But the other three, with a merewhoop and howl of victory, were boarding the car on three sides at once.It was exactly at this moment that Turnbull fell among them like onefallen from the sky. He tore one of the climbers backward by the collar,and with a hearty push sent him staggering over into the ditch upon hisnose. One of the remaining two, who was too far gone to notice anything,continued to clamber ineffectually over the high back of the car,kicking and pouring forth a rivulet of soliloquy. But the other droppedat the interruption, turned upon Turnbull and began a battering boutof fisticuffs. At the same moment the man crawled out of the ditch in amasquerade of mud and rushed at his old enemy from behind. The wholehad not taken a second; and an instant after MacIan was in the midst ofthem.
Turnbull had tossed away his sheathed sword, greatly preferring hishands, except in the avowed etiquette of the duel; for he had learnt touse his hands in the old street-battles of Bradlaugh. But to MacIan thesword even sheathed was a more natural weapon, and he laid about himon all sides with it as with a stick. The man who had the walking-stickfound his blows parried with promptitude; and a second after, to hisgreat astonishment, found his own stick fly up in the air as by aconjuring trick, with a turn of the swordsman's wrist. Another of therevellers picked the stick out of the ditch and ran in upon MacIan,calling to his companion to assist him.
"I haven't got a stick," grumbled the disarmed man, and looked vaguelyabout the ditch.
"Perhaps," said MacIan, politely, "you would like this one." With theword the drunkard found his hand that had grasped the stick suddenlytwisted and empty; and the stick lay at the feet of his companion on theother side of the road. MacIan felt a faint stir behind him; the girlhad risen to her feet and was leaning forward to stare at the fighters.Turnbull was still engaged in countering and pommelling with the thirdyoung man. The fourth young man was still engaged with himself, kickinghis legs in helpless rotation on the back of the car and talking withmelodious rationality.
At length Turnbull's opponent began to back before the battery of hisheavy hands, still fighting, for he was the soberest and boldest of thefour. If these are annals of military glory, it is due to him to saythat he need not have abandoned the conflict; only that as he backedto the edge of the ditch his foot caught in a loop of grass and hewent over in a flat and comfortable position from which it took him aconsiderable time to rise. By the time he had risen, Turnbull had cometo the rescue of MacIan, who was at bay but belabouring his two enemieshandsomely. The sight of the liberated reserve was to them like thatof Blucher at Waterloo; the two set off at a sullen trot down the road,leaving even the walking-stick lying behind them in the moonlight.MacIan plucked the struggling and aspiring idiot off the back of the carlike a stray cat, and left him swaying unsteadily in the moon. Then heapproached the front part of the car in a somewhat embarrassed mannerand pulled off his cap.
For some solid seconds the lady and he merely looked at each other, andMacIan had an irrational feeling of being in a picture hung on awall. That is, he was motionless, even lifeless, and yet staringlysignificant, like a picture. The white moonlight on the road, when hewas not looking at it, gave him a vision of the road being white withsnow. The motor-car, when he was not looking at it, gave him a rudeimpression of a captured coach in the old days of highwaymen. Andhe whose whole soul was with the swords and stately manners of theeighteenth century, he who was a Jacobite risen from the dead, had anoverwhelming sense of being once more in the picture, when he had solong been out of the picture.
In that short and strong silence he absorbed the lady from head to foot.He had never really looked at a human being before in his life. He sawher face and hair first, then that she had long suede gloves; then thatthere was a fur cap at the back of her brown hair. He might, perhaps,be excused for this hungry attention. He had prayed that some sign mightcome from heaven; and after an almost savage scrutiny he came to theconclusion that his one did. The lady's instantaneous arrest of speechmight need more explaining; but she may well have been stunned withthe squalid attack and the abrupt rescue. Yet it was she who rememberedherself first and suddenly called out with self-accusing horror:
"Oh, that poor, poor man!"
They both swung round abruptly and saw that Turnbull, with his recoveredsword under his arm-pit, was already lifting the fallen chauffeur intothe car. He was only stunned and was slowly awakening, feebly waving hisleft arm.
The lady in long gloves and the fur cap leapt out and ran rapidlytowards them, only to be reassured by Turnbull, who (unlike many of hisschool) really knew a little science when he invoked it to redeem theworld. "He's all right," said he; "he's quite safe. But I'm afraid hewon't be able to drive the car for half an hour or so."
"I can drive the car," said the young woman in the fur cap with stonypracticability.
"Oh, in that case," began MacIan, uneasily; and that paralysing shynesswhich is a part of romance induced him to make a backward movement asif leaving her to herself. But Turnbull was more rational than he, beingmore indifferent.
"I don't think you ought to drive home alone, ma'am," he said, gruffly."There seem to be a lot of rowdy parties along this road, and the manwill be no use for an hour. If you will tell us where you are going, wewill see you safely there and say good night."
The young lady exhibited all the abrupt disturbance of a person who isnot commonly disturbed. She said almost sharply and yet with evidentsincerity: "Of course I am awfully grateful to you for all you'vedone--and there's plenty of room if you'll come in."
Turnbull, with the complete innocence of an absolutely sound motive,immediately jumped into the car; but the girl cast an eye at MacIan, whostood in the road for an instant as if rooted like a tree. Then he alsotumbled his long legs into the tonneau, having that sense of degradedlydiving into heaven which so many have known in so many human houses whenthey consented to stop to tea or were allowed to stop to supper. Theslowly reviving chauffeur was set in the back seat; Turnbull and MacIanhad fallen into the middle one; the lady with a steely coolness hadtaken the driver's seat and all the handles of that headlong machine. Amoment afterwards the engine started, with a throb and leap unfamiliarto Turnbull, who had only once been in a motor during a generalelection, and utterly unknown to MacIan, who in his present mood thoughtit was the end of the world. Almost at the same instant that the carplucked itself out of the mud and whipped away up the road, the man whohad been flung into the ditch rose waveringly to his feet. When he sawthe car escaping he ran after it and shouted something which, owingto the increasing distance, could not be heard. It is awful to reflectthat, if his remark was valuable, it is quite lost to the world.
The car shot on up and down the shining moonlit lanes, and there was nosound in it except the occasional click or catch of its machinery; forthrough some cause or other no soul inside it could think of a word tosay. The lady symbolized her feelings, whatever they were, by urging themachine faster and faster until scattered woodlands went by them inone black blotch and heavy hills and valleys seemed to ripple under thewheels like mere waves. A little while afterwards this mood seemed toslacken and she fell into a more ordinary pace; but still she did notspeak. Turnbull, who kept a more common and sensible view of the casethan anyone else, made some remark about the moonlight; but somethingindescribable made him also relapse into silence.
All this time MacIan had been in a sort of monstrous delirium, like somefabulous hero snatched up into the moon. The difference between thisexperience and common experiences was analogous to that between wakinglife and a dream. Yet he did not feel in the least as if he weredreaming; rather the other way; as waking was more actual than dreaming,so this seemed by another degree more actual than waking itself. But itwas another life altogether, like a cosmos with a new dimension.
He felt he had been hurled into some new
incarnation: into the midstof new relations, wrongs and rights, with towering responsibilities andalmost tragic joys which he had as yet had no time to examine. Heavenhad not merely sent him a message; Heaven itself had opened around himand given him an hour of its own ancient and star-shattering energy.He had never felt so much alive before; and yet he was like a man in atrance. And if you had asked him on what his throbbing happiness hung,he could only have told you that it hung on four or five visible facts,as a curtain hangs on four of five fixed nails. The fact that the ladyhad a little fur at her throat; the fact that the curve of her cheekwas a low and lean curve and that the moonlight caught the height ofher cheek-bone; the fact that her hands were small but heavily gloved asthey gripped the steering-wheel; the fact that a white witch light wason the road; the fact that the brisk breeze of their passage stirred andfluttered a little not only the brown hair of her head but the blackfur on her cap. All these facts were to him certain and incredible, likesacraments.
When they had driven half a mile farther, a big shadow was flung acrossthe path, followed by its bulky owner, who eyed the car critically butlet it pass. The silver moonlight picked out a piece or two of pewterornament on his blue uniform; and as they went by they knew it was asergeant of police. Three hundred yards farther on another policemanstepped out into the road as if to stop them, then seemed to doubt hisown authority and stepped back again. The girl was a daughter of therich; and this police suspicion (under which all the poor live day andnight) stung her for the first time into speech.
"What can they mean?" she cried out in a kind of temper; "this car'sgoing like a snail."
There was a short silence, and then Turnbull said: "It is certainly veryodd, you are driving quietly enough."
"You are driving nobly," said MacIan, and his words (which had nomeaning whatever) sounded hoarse and ungainly even in his own ears.
They passed the next mile and a half swiftly and smoothly; yet among themany things which they passed in the course of it was a clump of eagerpolicemen standing at a cross-road. As they passed, one of the policemenshouted something to the others; but nothing else happened. Eighthundred yards farther on, Turnbull stood up suddenly in the swaying car.
"My God, MacIan!" he called out, showing his first emotion of thatnight. "I don't believe it's the pace; it couldn't be the pace. Ibelieve it's us."
MacIan sat motionless for a few moments and then turned up at hiscompanion a face that was as white as the moon above it.
"You may be right," he said at last; "if you are, I must tell her."
"I will tell the lady if you like," said Turnbull, with his unconqueredgood temper.
"You!" said MacIan, with a sort of sincere and instinctive astonishment."Why should you--no, I must tell her, of course----"
And he leant forward and spoke to the lady in the fur cap.
"I am afraid, madam, that we may have got you into some trouble," hesaid, and even as he said it it sounded wrong, like everything he saidto this particular person in the long gloves. "The fact is," he resumed,desperately, "the fact is, we are being chased by the police." Thenthe last flattening hammer fell upon poor Evan's embarrassment; for thefluffy brown head with the furry black cap did not turn by a section ofthe compass.
"We are chased by the police," repeated MacIan, vigorously; then headded, as if beginning an explanation, "You see, I am a Catholic."
The wind whipped back a curl of the brown hair so as to necessitate anew theory of aesthetics touching the line of the cheek-bone; but thehead did not turn.
"You see," began MacIan, again blunderingly, "this gentleman wrote inhis newspaper that Our Lady was a common woman, a bad woman, and so weagreed to fight; and we were fighting quite a little time ago--but thatwas before we saw you."
The young lady driving her car had half turned her face to listen; andit was not a reverent or a patient face that she showed him. Her Normannose was tilted a trifle too high upon the slim stalk of her neck andbody.
When MacIan saw that arrogant and uplifted profile pencilled plainlyagainst the moonshine, he accepted an ultimate defeat. He had expectedthe angels to despise him if he were wrong, but not to despise him somuch as this.
"You see," said the stumbling spokesman, "I was angry with him when heinsulted the Mother of God, and I asked him to fight a duel with me; butthe police are all trying to stop it."
Nothing seemed to waver or flicker in the fair young falcon profile; andit only opened its lips to say, after a silence: "I thought people inour time were supposed to respect each other's religion."
Under the shadow of that arrogant face MacIan could only fall back onthe obvious answer: "But what about a man's irreligion?" The face onlyanswered: "Well, you ought to be more broadminded."
If anyone else in the world had said the words, MacIan would havesnorted with his equine neigh of scorn. But in this case he seemedknocked down by a superior simplicity, as if his eccentric attitude wererebuked by the innocence of a child. He could not dissociate anythingthat this woman said or did or wore from an idea of spiritual rarity andvirtue. Like most others under the same elemental passion, his soul wasat present soaked in ethics. He could have applied moral terms to thematerial objects of her environment. If someone had spoken of"her generous ribbon" or "her chivalrous gloves" or "her mercifulshoe-buckle," it would not have seemed to him nonsense.
He was silent, and the girl went on in a lower key as if she weremomentarily softened and a little saddened also. "It won't do, youknow," she said; "you can't find out the truth in that way. There aresuch heaps of churches and people thinking different things nowadays,and they all think they are right. My uncle was a Swedenborgian."
MacIan sat with bowed head, listening hungrily to her voice but hardlyto her words, and seeing his great world drama grow smaller and smallerbefore his eyes till it was no bigger than a child's toy theatre.
"The time's gone by for all that," she went on; "you can't find out thereal thing like that--if there is really anything to find----" andshe sighed rather drearily; for, like many of the women of our wealthyclass, she was old and broken in thought, though young and clean enoughin her emotions.
"Our object," said Turnbull, shortly, "is to make an effectivedemonstration"; and after that word, MacIan looked at his vision againand found it smaller than ever.
"It would be in the newspapers, of course," said the girl. "People readthe newspapers, but they don't believe them, or anything else, I think."And she sighed again.
She drove in silence a third of a mile before she added, as ifcompleting the sentence: "Anyhow, the whole thing's quite absurd."
"I don't think," began Turnbull, "that you quite realize----Hullo!hullo--hullo--what's this?"
The amateur chauffeur had been forced to bring the car to a staggeringstoppage, for a file of fat, blue policemen made a wall across the way.A sergeant came to the side and touched his peaked cap to the lady.
"Beg your pardon, miss," he said with some embarrassment, for he knewher for a daughter of a dominant house, "but we have reason to believethat the gentlemen in your car are----" and he hesitated for a politephrase.
"I am Evan MacIan," said that gentleman, and stood up in a sort ofgloomy pomp, not wholly without a touch of the sulks of a schoolboy.
"Yes, we will get out, sergeant," said Turnbull, more easily; "my nameis James Turnbull. We must not incommode the lady."
"What are you taking them up for?" asked the young woman, lookingstraight in front of her along the road.
"It's under the new act," said the sergeant, almost apologetically."Incurable disturbers of the peace."
"What will happen to them?" she asked, with the same frigid clearness.
"Westgate Adult Reformatory," he replied, briefly.
"Until when?"
"Until they are cured," said the official.
"Very well, sergeant," said the young lady, with a sort of tired commonsense. "I am sure I don't want to protect criminals or go againstthe law; but I must tell you that these gentlemen
have done me aconsiderable service; you won't mind drawing your men a little fartheroff while I say good night to them. Men like that always misunderstand."
The sergeant was profoundly disquieted from the beginning at the mereidea of arresting anyone in the company of a great lady; to refuse oneof her minor requests was quite beyond his courage. The police fell backto a few yards behind the car. Turnbull took up the two swords that weretheir only luggage; the swords that, after so many half duels, they werenow to surrender at last. MacIan, the blood thundering in his brainat the thought of that instant of farewell, bent over, fumbled at thehandle and flung open the door to get out.
But he did not get out. He did not get out, because it is dangerous tojump out of a car when it is going at full speed. And the car was goingat full speed, because the young lady, without turning her head orso much as saying a syllable, had driven down a handle that made themachine plunge forward like a buffalo and then fly over the landscapelike a greyhound. The police made one rush to follow, and then droppedso grotesque and hopeless a chase. Away in the vanishing distance theycould see the sergeant furiously making notes.
The open door, still left loose on its hinges, swung and banged quitecrazily as they went whizzing up one road and down another. Nor didMacIan sit down; he stood up stunned and yet staring, as he would havestood up at the trumpet of the Last Day. A black dot in the distancesprang up a tall black forest, swallowed them and spat them out againat the other end. A railway bridge grew larger and larger till it leaptupon their backs bellowing, and was in its turn left behind. Avenues ofpoplars on both sides of the road chased each other like the figuresin a zoetrope. Now and then with a shock and rattle they went throughsleeping moonlit villages, which must have stirred an instant in theirsleep as at the passing of a fugitive earthquake. Sometimes in anoutlying house a light in one erratic, unexpected window would give thema nameless hint of the hundred human secrets which they left behind themwith their dust. Sometimes even a slouching rustic would be afoot onthe road and would look after them, as after a flying phantom. But stillMacIan stood up staring at earth and heaven; and still the door he hadflung open flapped loose like a flag. Turnbull, after a few minutes ofdumb amazement, had yielded to the healthiest element in his nature andgone off into uncontrollable fits of laughter. The girl had not stirredan inch.
After another half mile that seemed a mere flash, Turnbull leant overand locked the door. Evan staggered at last into his seat and hid histhrobbing head in his hands; and still the car flew on and its driversat inflexible and silent. The moon had already gone down, and the wholedarkness was faintly troubled with twilight and the first movement ofbeasts and fowls. It was that mysterious moment when light is coming asif it were something unknown whose nature one could not guess--a merealteration in everything. They looked at the sky and it seemed as darkas ever; then they saw the black shape of a tower or tree against it andknew that it was already grey. Save that they were driving southward andhad certainly passed the longitude of London, they knew nothing of theirdirection; but Turnbull, who had spent a year on the Hampshire coast inhis youth, began to recognize the unmistakable but quite indescribablevillages of the English south. Then a white witch fire began to burnbetween the black stems of the fir-trees; and, like so many things innature, though not in books on evolution, the daybreak, when it didcome, came much quicker than one would think. The gloomy heavens wereripped up and rolled away like a scroll, revealing splendours, as thecar went roaring up the curve of a great hill; and above them and blackagainst the broadening light, there stood one of those crouching andfantastic trees that are first signals of the sea.