The Pilgrim's Regress (7 page)

‘You needn't wait,' he said presently.

V

Under Arrest

T
HEN I TURNED ROUND
and immediately began to dream again and I saw John plodding westward in the dark and the rain, in great distress, because he was too tired to go on and too cold to stop. And after a time there came a north wind that drove the rain away and skinned the puddles with ice and set the bare boughs clashing in the trees. And the moon came out. Now John looked up with his teeth chattering and saw that he was entering into a long valley of rocks with high cliffs on the right and the left. And the far end of the valley was barred with a high cliff all across except for one narrow pass in the middle. The moonlight lay white on this cliff and right amidst it was a huge shadow like a man's head. John glanced over his shoulder and saw that the shadow was thrown by a mountain behind him, which he had passed in the darkness.

It was far too cold for a man to stay still in the wind, and I dreamed of John going stumblingly forward up the valley till now he had come to the rock-wall and was about to enter the pass. But just as he rounded a great boulder and came full in sight of the pass he saw some armed men sitting in it by a brazier; and immediately they sprang up and barred his way.

‘You can't pass here,' said their leader.

‘Where can I pass?' said John.

‘Where are you going to?'

‘I am going to find the sea in order to set sail for an Island that I have seen in the West.'

‘Then you cannot pass.'

‘By whose orders?'

‘Do you not know that all this country belongs to the Spirit of the Age?'

‘I am sorry,' said John, ‘I didn't know. I have no wish to trespass, I will go round some other way. I will not go through his country at all.'

‘You fool,' said the captain, ‘you are in his country
now.
This pass is the way out of it, not the way into it. He welcomes strangers. His quarrel is with runaways.' Then he called to one of his men and said, ‘Here, Enlightenment, take this fugitive to our Master.'

A young man stepped out and clapped fetters upon John's hands: then putting the length of chain over his own shoulder and giving it a jerk he began to walk down the valley dragging John after him.

VI

Poisoning the Wells

T
HEN I SAW THEM
going down the valley, the way John had come up, with the moon full in their faces: and up against the moon was the mountain which had cast the shadow, and now it looked more like a man than before.

‘Mr. Englightenment,' said John at last. ‘Is it really you?'

‘Why should it not be?' said the guard.

‘You looked so different when I met you before.'

‘We have never met before.'

‘What? Did you not meet me at the inn on the borders of Puritania and drive me five miles in your pony trap?'

‘Oh,
that
?' said the other. ‘That must have been my father, old Mr. Enlightenment. He is a vain and ignorant old man, almost a Puritanian, and we never mention him in the family. I am Sigismund Enlightenment and I have long since quarrelled with my father.'

They went on in silence for a bit. Then Sigismund spoke again.

‘It may save trouble if I tell you at once the best reason for not trying to escape: namely, that there is nowhere to escape to.'

‘How do you know there is no such place as my Island?'

‘Do you wish very much that there was?'

‘I do.'

‘Have you never before imagined anything to be true because you greatly wished for it?'

John thought for a little, and then he said ‘Yes.'

‘And your Island is
like
an imagination—isn't it?'

‘I suppose so.'

‘It is just the sort of thing you
would
imagine merely through wanting it—the whole thing is very suspicious. But answer me another question. Have you ever—ever once yet—had a vision of the Island that did not end in brown girls?'

‘I don't know that I have. But they weren't what I wanted.'

‘No. What you wanted was to have them, and with them, the satisfaction of feeling that you were good. Hence the Island.'

‘You mean—'

‘The Island was the pretence that you put up to conceal your own lusts from yourself.'

‘All the same—I was disappointed when it ended like that.'

‘Yes. You were disappointed at finding that you could not have it both ways. But you lost no time in having it the way you could: you did not reject the brown girls.'

They went on in silence for a time and always the mountain with its odd shape grew bigger in front of them; and now they were in its shadow. Then John spoke again, half in his sleep, for he was very tired.

‘After all, it isn't only my Island. I might go back—back East and try the mountains.'

‘The mountains do not exist.'

‘How do you know?'

‘Have you ever been there? Have you ever seen them except at night or in a blaze of sunrise?'

‘No.'

‘And your ancestors must have enjoyed thinking that when their leases were out they would go up to the mountains and live in the Landlord's castle—It is a more cheerful prospect than going—nowhere.'

‘I suppose so.'

‘It is clearly one more of the things people
wish
to believe.'

‘But do we never do anything else? Are all the things I see at this moment there only because I wish to see them?'

‘Most of them,' said Sigismund. ‘For example—you would like that thing in front of us to be a mountain; that is why you think it is a mountain.'

‘Why?' cried John. ‘What is it?'

And then in my nightmare I thought John became like a terrified child and put his hands over his eyes not to see the giant; but young Mr. Enlightenment tore his hands away and forced his face round and made him see the Spirit of the Age where it sat like one of the stone giants, the size of a mountain, with its eyes shut. Then Mr. Enlightenment opened a little door among the rocks and flung John into a pit made in the side of a hill, just opposite the giant, so that the giant could look into it through its gratings.

‘He will open his eyes presently,' said Mr. Enlightenment. Then he locked the door and left John in prison.

VII

Facing the Facts

J
OHN LAY IN HIS
fetters all night in the cold and stench of the dungeon. And when morning came there was a little light at the grating, and, looking round, John saw that he had many fellow prisoners, of all sexes and ages. But instead of speaking to him, they all huddled away from the light and drew as far back into the pit, away from the grating, as they could. But John thought that if he could breathe a little fresh air he would be better, and he crawled up to the grating. But as soon as he looked out and saw the giant, it crushed the heart out of him: and even as he looked, the giant began to open his eyes and John, without knowing why he did it, shrank from the grating. Now I dreamed that the giant's eyes had this property, that whatever they looked on became transparent. Consequently, when John looked round into the dungeon, he retreated from his fellow prisoners in terror, for the place seemed to be thronged with demons. A woman was seated near him, but he did not know it was a woman, because, through the face, he saw the skull and through that the brains and the passages of the nose, and the larynx, and the saliva moving in the glands and the blood in the veins: and lower down the lungs panting like sponges, and the liver, and the intestines like a coil of snakes. And when he averted his eyes from her they fell on an old man, and this was worse for the old man had a cancer. And when John sat down and drooped his head, not to see the horrors, he saw only the working of his own inwards. Then I dreamed of all these creatures living in that hole under the giant's eye for many days and nights. And John looked round on it all and suddenly he fell on his face and thrust his hands into his eyes and cried out, ‘It is the black hole. There may be no Landlord, but it is true about the black hole. I am mad. I am dead. I am in hell for ever.'

VIII

Parrot Disease

E
VERY DAY A JAILOR
brought the prisoners their food, and as he laid down the dishes he would say a word to them. If their meal was flesh he would remind them that they were eating corpses, or give them some account of the slaughtering: or, if it was the inwards of some beast, he would read them a lecture in anatomy and show the likeness of the mess to the same parts in themselves—which was the more easily done because the giant's eyes were always staring into the dungeon at dinner time. Or if the meal were eggs he would recall to them that they were eating the menstruum of a verminous fowl, and crack a few jokes with the female prisoner. So he went on day by day. Then I dreamed that one day there was nothing but milk for them, and the jailor said as he put down the pipkin:

‘Our relations with the cow are not delicate—as you can easily see if you imagine eating any of her other secretions.'

Now John had been in the pit a shorter time than any of the others: and at these words something seemed to snap in his head and he gave a great sigh and suddenly spoke out in a loud, clear voice:

‘Thank heaven! Now at last I know that you are talking nonsense.'

‘What do you mean?' said the jailor, wheeling round upon him.

‘You are trying to pretend that unlike things are like. You are trying to make us think that milk is the same sort of thing as sweat or dung.'

‘And pray, what difference is there except by custom?'

‘Are you a liar or only a fool, that you see no difference between that which Nature casts out as refuse and that which she stores up as food?'

‘So Nature is a person, then, with purposes and consciousness,' said the jailor with a sneer. ‘In fact, a Landlady. No doubt it comforts you to imagine you can believe that sort of thing;' and he turned to leave the prison with his nose in the air.

‘I know nothing about that,' shouted John after him. ‘I am talking of what happens. Milk does feed calves and dung does not.'

‘Look here,' cried the jailor, coming back, ‘we have had enough of this. It is high treason and I shall bring you before the Master.' Then he jerked John up by his chain and began to drag him towards the door; but John as he was being dragged, cried out to the others, ‘Can't you see it's all a cheat?' Then the jailor struck him in the teeth so hard that his mouth was filled with blood and he became unable to speak: and while he was silent the jailor addressed the prisoners and said:

‘You see he is trying to argue. Now tell me, someone, what is argument?'

There was a confused murmur.

‘Come, come,' said the jailor. ‘You must know your catechisms by now. You, there' (and he pointed to a prisoner little older than a boy whose name was Master Parrot), ‘what is argument?'

‘Argument,' said Master Parrot, ‘is the attempted rationalization of the arguer's desires.'

‘Very good,' replied the jailor, ‘but you should turn out your toes and put your hands behind your back. That is better. Now: what is the proper answer to an argument providing the existence of the Landlord?'

‘The proper answer is, “You say that because you are a Steward.” '

‘Good boy. But hold your head up. That's right. And what is the answer to an argument proving that Mr. Phally's songs are just as brown as Mr. Halfways'?'

‘There are two only generally necessary to damnation,' said Master Parrot. ‘The first is, “You say that because you are a Puritanian,” and the second is, “You say that because you are a sensualist.” '

‘Good. Now just one more. What is the answer to an argument turning on the belief that two and two make four?'

‘The answer is, “You say that because you are a mathematician.” '

‘You are a very good boy,' said the jailor. ‘And when I come back I shall bring you something nice. And now for
you,
' he added, giving John a kick and opening the grating.

IX

The Giant Slayer

W
HEN THEY CAME
out into the air John blinked a little, but not much, for they were still only in a half-light under the shadow of the giant, who was very angry, with smoke coming from his mouth, so that he looked more like a volcano than an ordinary mountain. And now John gave himself up for lost, but just as the jailor had dragged him up to the giant's feet, and had cleared his throat, and begun ‘The case against this prisoner—' there was a commotion and a sound of horse's hoofs. The jailor looked round, and even the giant took his terrible eyes off John and looked round: and last of all, John himself looked round too. They saw some of the guard coming towards them leading a great black stallion, and in it was seated a figure wound in a cloak of blue which was hooded over the head and came down concealing the face.

‘Another prisoner, Lord,' said the leader of the guards.

Then very slowly the giant raised his great, heavy finger and pointed to the mouth of the dungeon.

‘Not yet,' said the hooded figure. Then suddenly it stretched out its hands with the fetters on them and made a quick movement of the wrists. There was a tinkling sound as the fragments of the broken chain fell on the rock at the horse's feet: and the guardsmen let go the bridle and fell back, watching. Then the rider threw back the cloak and a flash of steel smote light into John's eyes and on the giant's face. John saw that it was a woman in the flower of her age: she was so tall that she seemed to him a Titaness, a sun-bright virgin clad in complete steel, with a sword naked in her hand. The giant bent forward in his chair and looked at her.