nsult to the
Virgin Mary. MacIan thereupon puts his stick through the window.
Turnbull comes out, there is a scuffle, and both are arrested and taken
before a Dickensian magistrate. The sketch of Mr. Cumberland Vane is
very pleasing: it is clear that the author knew what he was copying.
Lord Melbourne is alleged to have said, "No one has more respect for the
Christian religion than I have; but really, when it comes to intruding
it into private life. . . ." Mr. Vane felt much the same way when he
heard MacIan's simple explanation: "He is my enemy. He is the enemy of
God." He said, "It is most undesirable that things of that sort should
be spoken about--a--in public, and in an ordinary Court of Justice.
Religion is--a--too personal a matter to be mentioned in such a place."
However, MacIan is fined. After which he and Turnbull, as men of honour,
buy themselves swords and proceed to fight the matter out. With
interruptions due to argument and the police, the fight lasts several
weeks. Turnbull and MacIan fight in the back garden of the man from whom
they bought the swords,[1] until the police intervene. They escape the
police and gain the Northern Heights of London, and fight once more,
with a madness renewed and stimulated by the peace-making efforts of a
stray and silly Tolstoyan. Then the police come again, and are once more
outdistanced. This time mortal combat is postponed on account of the
sanguinolence of a casual lunatic who worshipped blood to such a
nauseating extent that the duellists deferred operations in order to
chase him into a pond. Then follows an interminable dialogue,
paradoxical, thoroughly Shavian, while the only two men in England to
whom God literally is a matter of life and death find that they begin to
regard the slaughter of one by the other as an unpleasant duty. Again
they fight and are separated. They are motored by a lady to the
Hampshire coast, and there they fight on the sands until the rising tide
cuts them off. An empty boat turns up to rescue them from drowning; in
it they reach one of the Channel Islands. Again they fight, and again
the police come. They escape from them, but remain on the island in
disguise, and make themselves an opportunity to pick a quarrel and so
fight a duel upon a matter in keeping with local prejudice. But Turnbull
has fallen in love. His irritatingly calm and beautiful devotee argues
with him on religion until he is driven to cast off his disguise. Then
the poli