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with your summer-house in order to arrange our..."
"Stop!" roared the little man in the butterfly necktie. "Put me
out of my intellectual misery. Are you really the two tomfools I
have read of in all the papers? Are you the two people who wanted
to spit each other in the Police Court? Are you? Are you?"
"Yes," said MacIan, "it began in a Police Court."
The little man slung the bottle of wine twenty yards away like a
stone.
"Come up to my place," he said. "I've got better stuff than that.
I've got the best Beaune within fifty miles of here. Come up.
You're the very men I wanted to see."
Even Turnbull, with his typical invulnerability, was a little
taken aback by this boisterous and almost brutal hospitality.
"Why...sir..." he began.
"Come up! Come in!" howled the little man, dancing with delight.
"I'll give you a dinner. I'll give you a bed! I'll give you a
green smooth lawn and your choice of swords and pistols. Why, you
fools, I adore fighting! It's the only good thing in God's world!
I've walked about these damned fields and longed to see somebody
cut up and killed and the blood running. Ha! Ha!"
And he made sudden lunges with his stick at the trunk of a
neighbouring tree so that the ferrule made fierce prints and
punctures in the bark.
"Excuse me," said MacIan suddenly with the wide-eyed curiosity of
a child, "excuse me, but..."
"Well?" said the small fighter, brandishing his wooden weapon.
"Excuse me," repeated MacIan, "but was that what you were doing
at the door?"
The little man stared an instant and then said: "Yes," and
Turnbull broke into a guffaw.
"Come on!" cried the little man, tucking his stick under his arm
and taking quite suddenly to his heels. "Come on! Confound me,
I'll see both of you eat and then I'll see one of you die. Lord
bless me, the gods must exist after all--they have sent me one of
my day-dreams! Lord! A duel!"
He had gone flying along a winding path between the borders of
the kitchen garden, and in the increasing twilight he was as hard
to follow as a flying hare. But at length the path after many
twists betrayed its purpose and led abruptly up two or three
steps to the door of a tiny but very clean cottage. There was
nothing about the outside to distinguish it from other cottages,
except indeed its ominous cleanliness and one thing that was out
of all the custom and tradition of all cottages under the sun.
In the middle of the little garden among the stocks and marigolds
there surged up in shapeless stone a South Sea Island idol. There
was something gross and even evil in that eyeless and alien god
among the most innocent of the English flowers.
"Come in!" cried the creature again. "Come in! it's better
inside!"
Whether or no it was better inside it was at least a surprise.
The moment the two duellists had pushed open the door of that
inoffensive, whitewashed cottage they found that its interior was
lined with fiery gold. It was like stepping into a chamber in the
Arabian Nights. The door that closed behind them shut out England
and all the energies of the West. The ornaments that shone and
shimmered on every side of them were subtly mixed from many
periods and lands, but were all oriental. Cruel Assyrian
bas-reliefs ran along the sides of the passage; cruel Turkish
swords and daggers glinted above and below them; the two were
separated by ages and fallen civilizations. Yet they seemed to
sympathize since they were both harmonious and both merciless.
The house seemed to consist of chamber within chamber and created
that impression as of a dream which belongs also to the Arabian
Nights themselves. The innermost room of all was like the inside
of a jewel. The little man who owned it all threw himself on a
heap of scarlet and golden cushions and struck his hands
together. A negro in a white robe and turban appeared suddenly
and silently behind them.
"Selim," said the host, "these two gentlemen are staying with me
tonight. Send up the very best wine and dinner at once. And
Selim, one of these gentlemen will probably die tomorrow. Make
arrangements, please."
The negro bowed and withdrew. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]