The Diabolist - Page 2

stranger
still, perhaps, that he liked my society. For hours of the day he
would talk with me about Milton or Gothic architecture; for hours
of the night he would go where I have no wish to follow him, even
in speculation. He was a man with a long, ironical face, and close
and red hair; he was by class a gentleman, and could walk like one,
but preferred, for some reason, to walk like a groom carrying two
pails. He looked like a sort of Super-jockey; as if some archangel
had gone on the Turf. And I shall never forget the half-hour in
which he and I argued about real things for the first and the last
time.

. . . . .

Along the front of the big building of which our school
was a part ran a huge slope of stone steps, higher, I think,
than those that lead up to St. Paul's Cathedral. On a black
wintry evening he and I were wandering on these cold heights,
which seemed as dreary as a pyramid under the stars.
The one thing visible below us in the blackness was a burning
and blowing fire; for some gardener (I suppose) was burning
something in the grounds, and from time to time the red sparks went
whirling past us like a swarm of scarlet insects in the dark.
Above us also it was gloom; but if one stared long enough
at that upper darkness, one saw vertical stripes of grey
in the black and then became conscious of the colossal façade
of the Doric building, phantasmal, yet filling the sky, as if
Heaven were still filled with the gigantic ghost of Paganism.

. . . . .

The man asked me abruptly why I was becoming orthodox. Until he said
it, I really had not known that I was; but the moment he had said it
I knew it to be literally true. And the process had been so long and
full that I answered him at once out of existing stores of explanation.

"I am becoming orthodox," I said, "because I have come, rightly or
wrongly, after stretching my brain till it bursts, to the old belief

that heresy is worse even than sin. An error is more menacing than a
crime, for an error begets crimes. An Imperialist is worse than a
pirate. For an Imperialist keeps a school for pirates; he teaches
piracy disinterestedly and without an adequate salary.
A Free Lover is worse than a profligate. For a profligate is
serious and reckless even in his shortest love; while a Free Lover
is cautious and irresponsible even in his longest devotion.
I hate modern doubt because it is dangerous."

"You mean dangerous to morality," he said in a voice of wonderful
gentleness. "I expect you are right. But why do you care about morality?"

I glanced at his face quickly. He had thrust out his neck as he had
a trick of doing; and so brought his face abruptly into the