Gilbert Chesterton - The Ball and the Cross

Everything depended so obviously upon whether this buried monster spoke that Turnbull did not know or care whether he himself had spoken. He said something or nothing. And then he waited for this dwarfish voice that had been hidden under the mountains of the world. At last it did speak, and spoke in English, with a foreign accent that was neither Latin nor Teutonic. He suddenly stretched out a long and very dirty forefinger, and cried in a voice of clear recognition, like a child’s: “That’s a hole.”

He digested the discovery for some seconds, sucking his finger, and then he cried, with a crow of laughter: “And that’s a head come through it.”

The hilarious energy in this idiot attitude gave Turnbull another sick turn. He had grown to tolerate those dreary and mumbling madmen who trailed themselves about the beautiful asylum gardens. But there was something new and subversive of the universe in the combination of so much cheerful decision with a body without a brain.

“Why did they put you in such a place?” he asked at last with embarrassment.

“Good place. Yes,” said the old man, nodding a great many times and beaming like a flattered landlord. “Good shape. Long and narrow, with a point. Like this,” and he made lovingly with his hands a map of the room in the air.

“But that’s not the best,” he added, confidentially. “Squares very good; I have a nice long holiday, and can count them. But that’s not the best.”

“What is the best?” asked Turnbull in great distress.

“Spike is the best,” said the old man, opening his blue eyes blazing; “it sticks out.”

The words Turnbull spoke broke out of him in pure pity. “Can’t we do anything for you?” he said.

“I am very happy,” said the other, alphabetically. “You are a good man. Can I help you?”

“No, I don’t think you can, sir,” said Turnbull with rough pathos; “I am glad you are contented at least.”

The weird old person opened his broad blue eyes and fixed Turnbull with a stare extraordinarily severe. “You are quite sure,” he said, “I cannot help you?”

“Quite sure, thank you,” said Turnbull with broken brevity. “Good day.”

Then he turned to MacIan who was standing close behind him, and whose face, now familiar in all its moods, told him easily that Evan had heard the whole of the strange dialogue.

“Curse those cruel beasts!” cried Turnbull. “They’ve turned him to an imbecile just by burying him alive. His brain’s like a pin-point now.”

“You are sure he is a lunatic?” said Evan, slowly.

“Not a lunatic,” said Turnbull, “an idiot. He just points to things and says that they stick out.”

“He had a notion that he could help us,” said MacIan moodily, and began to pace towards the other end of his cell.

“Yes, it was a bit pathetic,” assented Turnbull; “such a Thing offering help, and besides– Hallo! Hallo! What’s the matter?”

“God Almighty guide us all!” said MacIan.

He was standing heavy and still at the other end of the room and staring quietly at the door which for thirty days had sealed them up from the sun. Turnbull, following the other’s eye, stared at the door likewise, and then he also uttered an exclamation. The iron door was standing about an inch and a half open.

“He said–” began Evan, in a trembling voice–“he offered–”

“Come along, you fool!” shouted Turnbull with a sudden and furious energy. “I see it all now, and it’s the best stroke of luck in the world. You pulled out that iron handle that had screwed up his cell, and it somehow altered the machinery and opened all the doors.”

Seizing MacIan by the elbow he bundled him bodily out into the open corridor and ran him on till they saw daylight through a half-darkened window.

“All the same,” said Evan, like one answering in an ordinary conversation, “he did ask you whether he could help you.”

All this wilderness of windowless passages was so built into the heart of that fortress of fear that it seemed more than an hour before the fugitives had any good glimpse of the outer world. They did not even know what hour of the day it was; and when, turning a corner, they saw the bare tunnel of the corridor end abruptly in a shining square of garden, the grass burning in that strong evening sunshine which makes it burnished gold rather than green, the abrupt opening on to the earth seemed like a hole knocked in the wall of heaven. Only once or twice in life is it permitted to a man thus to see the very universe from outside, and feel existence itself as an adorable adventure not yet begun. As they found this shining escape out of that hellish labyrinth they both had simultaneously the sensation of being babes unborn, of being asked by God if they would like to live upon the earth. They were looking in at one of the seven gates of Eden.

Turnbull was the first to leap into the garden, with an earth-spurning leap like that of one who could really spread his wings and fly. MacIan, who came an instant after, was less full of mere animal gusto and fuller of a more fearful and quivering pleasure in the clear and innocent flower colours and the high and holy trees. With one bound they were in that cool and cleared landscape, and they found just outside the door the black-clad gentleman with the cloven chin smilingly regarding them; and his chin seemed to grow longer and longer as he smiled.

Just behind him stood two other doctors: one, the familiar Dr. Quayle, of the blinking eyes and bleating voice; the other, a more commonplace but much more forcible figure, a stout young doctor with short, well-brushed hair and a round but resolute face. At the sight of the escape these two subordinates uttered a cry and sprang forward, but their superior remained motionless and smiling, and somehow the lack of his support seemed to arrest and freeze them in the very gesture of pursuit.

“Let them be,” he cried in a voice that cut like a blade of ice; and not only of ice, but of some awful primordial ice that had never been water.

“I want no devoted champions,” said the cutting voice; “even the folly of one’s friends bores one at last. You don’t suppose I should have let these lunatics out of their cells without good reason. I have the best and fullest reason. They can be let out of their cell today, because today the whole world has become their cell. I will have no more medieval mummery of chains and doors. Let them wander about the earth as they wandered about this garden, and I shall still be their easy master. Let them take the wings of the morning and abide in the uttermost parts of the sea–I am there. Whither shall they go from my presence and whither shall they flee from my spirit? Courage, Dr. Quayle, and do not be downhearted; the real days of tyranny are only beginning on this earth.”

And with that the Master laughed and swung away from them, almost as if his laugh was a bad thing for people to see.

“Might I speak to you a moment?” said Turnbull, stepping forward with a respectful resolution. But the shoulders of the Master only seemed to take on a new and unexpected angle of mockery as he strode away.

Turnbull swung round with great abruptness to the other two doctors, and said, harshly: “What in snakes does he mean–and who are you?”

“My name is Hutton,” said the short, stout man, “and I am–well, one of those whose business it is to uphold this establishment.”

“My name is Turnbull,” said the other; “I am one of those whose business it is to tear it to the ground.”

The small doctor smiled, and Turnbull’s anger seemed suddenly to steady him.

“But I don’t want to talk about that,” he said, calmly; “I only want to know what the Master of this asylum really means.”