MacIan

“ I will pay the penalty of having enjoyed God in this monstrous modern earth that cannot enjoy man or beast. I will die happy in your madhouse, only because I know what I know. Let it be granted, then—MacIan is a mystic; MacIan is a maniac. But this honest shopkeeper and editor whom I have dragged on my inhuman escapades, you cannot keep him. He will go free, thank God, he is not down in any damned document. His ancestor, I am certain, did not die at Culloden. ”

“ It was rather as if the point of a stick were plunged again and again at the panels in an absurd attempt to make a hole in them.
A wild look sprang into MacIan's eyes and he got up half stupidly, with a kind of stagger, put his hand out and caught one of the swords. “Let us fight at once,” he cried, “it is the end of the world.”
“You're overdone, MacIan,” said Turnbull, putting him on one side. “It's only someone playing the goat. Let me open the door.”
But he also picked up a sword as he stepped to open it. ”

“ 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." ”

“ But MacIan, as he ran past the South Sea idol, paused an instant to spring upon its pedestal. For five seconds he strained against the inert mass. Then it stirred; and he sent it over with a great crash among the flowers, that engulfed it altogether. Then he went bounding after the runaway.
In the energy of his alarm the ex-Fellow of Magdalen managed to leap the paling of his garden. The two pursuers went over it after him like flying birds. He fled frantically down a long lane with his two terrors on his trail till he came to a gap in the hedge and went across a steep meadow like the wind. ”

“ And MacIan rose to his feet with a vague excitement.
“What are you going to do?”
“I am going to ask him,” cried MacIan, “which of us is right.”
Turnbull broke into a kind of laugh. “Ask that intoxicated turnip-eater——” he began.
“Yes—which of us is right,” cried MacIan violently. “Oh, you have long words and I have long words; and I talk of every man being the image of God; and you talk of every man being a citizen and enlightened enough to govern. But if every man typifies God, there is God. If every man is an enlightened citizen, there is your enlightened citizen. ”

“ Nothing seemed to waver or flicker in the fair young falcon profile; and it only opened its lips to say, after a silence: "I thought people in our time were supposed to respect each other's religion."
Under the shadow of that arrogant face MacIan could only fall back on the obvious answer: "But what about a man's irreligion?" The face only answered: "Well, you ought to be more broadminded."
If anyone else in the world had said the words, MacIan would have snorted with his equine neigh of scorn. ”

“ By the time he had risen, Turnbull had come to the rescue of MacIan, who was at bay but belabouring his two enemies handsomely. The sight of the liberated reserve was to them like that of 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 car like a stray cat, and left him swaying unsteadily in the moon. ”

“ MacIan was brazenly superstitious, and he dropped his sword. After all, he had challenged the universe to send an interruption; and this was an interruption, whatever else it was. An instant afterwards the sharp, weak cry was repeated. This time it was certain that it was human and that it was female.
MacIan stood rolling those great blue Gaelic eyes that contrasted with his 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 every chance of cheap profanity. ”

“ MacIan shook his head. “I know enough about myself,” he said, “to allow for any mood, though it opened heaven or hell. But to see things—to see them walking solid in the sun—things that can't be there—real mystics never do that, Turnbull.” ”

“ He was a man elderly or rather of any age, with lean grey hair and a lean red face, but with that remarkable rustic physiognomy in which it seems that all the features stand out independently from the face; the rugged red nose going out like a limb; the bleared blue eyes standing out like signals.
He gave them greeting with the elaborate urbanity of the slightly intoxicated. MacIan, who was vibrating with one of his silent, violent decisions, opened the question without delay. ”

“ As MacIan would thus at least be deprived of any share in the money distributed to win over the chiefs, he had no interest in the success of the negotiations, and he used every effort to thwart them. It was not till he learned that every other chief but himself had succumbed to bribes or threats that he became convinced of the necessity of taking the prescribed oath and thus saving his clan. ”

“ MacIan had understood his man pretty well up to that point; an instinct common to all men with the aristocratic tradition of Europe had guided him. He knew that the kind of man who in his own back garden wears good clothes and spoils them with a bad hat is not the kind of man who has an abstract horror of illegal actions of violence or the evasion of the police. But a man may understand ragging and yet be very far from understanding religious ragging. ”

“ MacIan parried this first lunge perfectly, the next less perfectly; the third in all human probability he would not have parried at all; the Christian champion would have been pinned like a butterfly, and the atheistic champion left to drown like a rat, with such consolation as his view of the cosmos afforded him. But just as Turnbull launched his heaviest stroke, the sea, in which he stood up to his hips, launched a yet heavier one. A wave breaking beyond the others smote him heavily like a hammer of water. ”

“ MacIan took one stride to the table, leant across it, and said: "We can't stop here, we're not mad people!"
"We don't use the crude phrase," said the doctor, smiling at his patent-leather boots.
"But you can't think us mad," thundered MacIan. "You never saw us before. You know nothing about us. You haven't even examined us."
The doctor threw back his head and beard. "Oh, yes," he said, "very thoroughly."
"But you can't shut a man up on your mere impressions without documents or certificates or anything?"
The doctor got languidly to his feet. "Quite so," he said. ”

“ Turnbull tied the last tin of biscuits desperately to himself with string; and then spoke, like a diver girt for plunging, short and sharp.
“Now, Mr. MacIan, you must listen to me. You must listen to me, not merely because I know the country, which you might learn by looking at a map, but because I know the people of the country, whom you could not know by living here thirty years. That infernal city down there is awake; and it is awake against us. All those endless rows of windows and windows are all eyes staring at us. ”

“ MacIan made a military salute with his weapon, which Turnbull copied or parodied with an impatient contempt; and in the stillness of the garden the swords came together with a clear sound like a bell. The instant the blades touched, each felt them tingle to their very points with a personal vitality, as if they were two naked nerves of steel. Evan had worn throughout an air of apathy, which might have been the stale apathy of one who wants nothing. But it was indeed the more dreadful apathy of one who wants something and will care for nothing else. ”

“ MacIan did not even notice the incongruous phrase "my friend", but nodding again and again, drew his sword and flung the scabbard far behind him in the road.
"Yes," he cried, in a voice of thunder, "we will fight here and He shall look on at it."
Turnbull glanced at the crucifix with a sort of scowling good-humour and then said: "He may look and see His cross defeated."
"The cross cannot be defeated," said MacIan, "for it is Defeat." ”

“ Evan MacIan coming bounding back across the sand-heaps breathless, without his cap and keeping the sword in his hand only by a habit now quite hardened.
"Take care, Turnbull," he cried out from a good distance as he ran, "I've seen a native."
"A native?" repeated his companion, whose scenery had of late been chiefly of shellfish, "what the deuce! Do you mean an oyster?"
"No," said MacIan, stopping and breathing hard, "I mean a savage. A black man." ”

“ MacIan wore an expression of sad bewilderment not uncommon with him. “I am to understand, then,” he said, “that you don't believe in nature.”
“You may say so in a very special and emphatic sense,” said Turnbull. “I do not believe in nature, just as I do not believe in Odin. She is a myth. It is not merely that I do not believe that nature can guide us. It is that I do not believe that nature exists.”
“Exists?” said MacIan in his monotonous way, settling his pewter pot on the table.
“Yes, in a real sense nature does not exist. ”

“ If he exists he must be a new era in human psychology. But he doesn't exist."
"I will go and fetch him," said MacIan, calmly; "I left the poor fellow wandering about by the nasturtium bed."
MacIan vanished, and in a few moments returned, trailing with him his own discovery among lunatics, who was a slender man with a fixed smile and an unfixed and rolling head. He had a goatlike beard just long enough to be shaken in a strong wind. Turnbull sprang to his feet and was like one who is speechless through choking a sudden shout of laughter. ”

“ “I swear to you, then,” said MacIan, after a pause. “I swear to you that nothing shall come between us. I swear to you that nothing shall be in my heart or in my head till our swords clash together. I swear it by the God you have denied, by the Blessed Lady you have blasphemed; I swear it by the seven swords in her heart. I swear it by the Holy Island where my fathers are, by the honour of my mother, by the secret of my people, and by the chalice of the Blood of God.”
The atheist drew up his head. ”

“ Indeed, the silence and the sunrise had their healing effect, for when the extraordinary lady spoke again, her tone was more friendly and apologetic. "I'm not really ungrateful," she said; "it was very good of you to save me from those men."
"But why?" repeated the obstinate and dazed MacIan, "why did you save us from the other men? I mean the policemen?" ”

“ But MacIan had taken a stride forward and stood there shaken and terrible. “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 at the windows. But we, the lunatics, will wait to be burned alive if only we may see them go.”
“How do you know we shall go?” asked Hutton, fiercely.
“You believe nothing,” said MacIan, simply, “and you are insupportably afraid of death.”
“So this is suicide,” sneered the doctor; “a somewhat doubtful sign of sanity.” ”

“ MacIan, the chief of the MacDonalds of Glencoe, was an old man, stately, venerable, sagacious. He now charged Breadalbane with having defrauded him of his share of the government money; the earl retorted that MacIan and his tribe had been persistent marauders over his Campbell clansmen’s lands round Glencoe, which was probably true enough, as there had been a feud of long standing between the clans. ”

“ Turnbull's singular umbrella.
The two had a long race for the harbour; but the English police were heavy and the French inhabitants were indifferent. In any case, they got used to the notion of the road being clear; and just as they had come to the cliffs MacIan banged into another gentleman with unmistakable surprise. How he knew he was another gentleman merely by banging into him, must remain a mystery. MacIan was a very poor and very sober Scotch gentleman. The other was a very drunk and very wealthy English gentleman. ”

“ But a plot was made against him by the Campbells, whose flocks and herds, it was said, the MacDonalds had often raided, and it was decided to punish MacIan and to exterminate his clan; and a company of the Earl of Argyle's regiment, commanded by Captain Campbell of Glenlyon, was sent to Glen Coe to await orders. MacIan's sons heard that the soldiers were coming, and thought that they were coming to disarm them, so they removed their arms to a place of safety, and, with a body of men, they went to meet the soldiers to ask if they were coming as friends or foes. ”

“ As the clime is, so the heart of man. The Macdonalds were worthy of their savage scenery, and more savage weather. True children of the mist were they, strong, fearless, living principally on plunder, at feud with the adjacent Campbells to which clan Breadalbane belonged, and often had the blood of the race of Dermid smoked on their swords. [Pg 135] MacIan, their chieftain, was a noble specimen of the Highland character. ”

“ Three weeks afterwards MacIan had managed to open up communications which made his meaning plain. By that time the two captives had fully discovered and demonstrated that weakness in the very nature of modern machinery to which we have already referred. The very fact that they were isolated from all companions meant that they were free from all spies, and as there were no gaolers to be bribed, so there were none to be baffled. Machinery brought them their cocoa and cleaned their cells; that machinery was as helpless as it was pitiless. ”