The Ball and The Cross | Page 9

with fiery, red hair and
beard, going by the name of Turnbull, all this decline in public importance seemed not so
much sad or even mad, but merely bewildering and unaccountable. He had said the worst
thing that could be said; and it seemed accepted and ignored like the ordinary second best
of the politicians. Every day his blasphemies looked more glaring, and every day the dust
lay thicker upon them. It made him feel as if he were moving in a world of idiots. He
seemed among a race of men who smiled when told of their own death, or looked
vacantly at the Day of Judgement. Year after year went by, and year after year the death
of God in a shop in Ludgate became a less and less important occurrence. All the forward
men of his age discouraged Turnbull. The socialists said he was cursing priests when he
should be cursing capitalists. The artists said that the soul was most spiritual, not when
freed from religion, but when freed from morality. Year after year went by, and at least a
man came by who treated Mr. Turnbull's secularist shop with a real respect and
seriousness. He was a young man in a grey plaid, and he smashed the window.
He was a young man, born in the Bay of Arisaig, opposite Rum and the Isle of Skye. His
high, hawklike features and snaky black hair bore the mark of that unknown historic
thing which is crudely called Celtic, but which is probably far older than the Celts,
whoever they were. He was in name and stock a Highlander of the Macdonalds; but his
family took, as was common in such cases, the name of a subordinate sept as a surname,
and for all the purposes which could be answered in London, he called himself Evan
MacIan. He had been brought up in some loneliness and seclusion as a strict Roman
Catholic, in the midst of that little wedge of Roman Catholics which is driven into the
Western Highlands. And he had found his way as far as Fleet Street, seeking some
half-promised employment, without having properly realized that there were in the world
any people who were not Roman Catholics. He had uncovered himself for a few
moments before the statue of Queen Anne, in front of St. Paul's Cathedral, under the firm
impression that it was a figure of the Virgin Mary. He was somewhat surprised at the lack
of deference shown to the figure by the people bustling by. He did not understand that
their one essential historical principle, the one law truly graven on their hearts, was the
great and comforting statement that Queen Anne is dead. This faith was as fundamental
as his faith, that Our Lady was alive. Any persons he had talked to since he had touched
the fringe of our fashion or civilization had been by a coincidence, sympathetic or
hypocritical. Or if they had spoken some established blasphemies, he had been unable to
understand them merely owing to the preoccupied satisfaction of his mind.
On that fantastic fringe of the Gaelic land where he walked as a boy, the cliffs were as
fantastic as the clouds. Heaven seemed to humble itself and come closer to the earth. The
common paths of his little village began to climb quite suddenly and seemed resolved to
go to heaven. The sky seemed to fall down towards the hills; the hills took hold upon the
sky. In the sumptuous sunset of gold and purple and peacock green cloudlets and islets
were the same. Evan lived like a man walking on a borderland, the borderland between
this world and another. Like so many men and nations who grow up with nature and the
common things, he understood the supernatural before he understood the natural. He had
looked at dim angels standing knee-deep in the grass before he had looked at the grass.
He knew that Our Lady's robes were blue before he knew the wild roses round her feet
were red. The deeper his memory plunged into the dark house of childhood the nearer

and nearer he came to the things that cannot be named. All through his life he thought of
the daylight world as a sort of divine debris, the broken remainder of his first vision. The
skies and mountains were the splendid off-scourings of another place. The stars were lost
jewels of the Queen. Our Lady had gone and left the stars by accident.
His private tradition was equally wild and unworldly. His great-grandfather had been cut
down at Culloden, certain in his last instant that God would restore the King. His
grandfather, then a boy of ten, had taken the terrible claymore from the hand of the dead
and hung it