The Pilgrim's Regress Read online

  ‘As soon as the dwarfs brought me in, Savage rapped on the table and bellowed out, “Lay the board for us men,” and she set about laying it. He didn’t say anything to me for a long time. He just sat and looked and sang. He had only one song and he was singing it off and on all the time I was there. I remember bits of it.

  ‘Wind age, wolf age,

  Ere the world crumbles:

  Shard age, spear age,

  Shields are broken. . . .

  ‘Then there was another bit began:

  ‘East sits the Old’Un

  In Iron-forest;

  Feeds amidst it

  Fenris’ children. . . .

  I sat down after a bit, for I did not want him to think I was afraid of him. When the food was on the table he asked me to have some, so I had it. He offered me a sweet drink, very strong, in a horn, so I drank it. Then he shouted and drank himself and said that mead in a horn was all he could offer me at present: “But soon,” he said, “I shall drink the blood of men from skulls.” There was a lot of this sort of stuff. We ate roast pork, with our fingers. He kept on singing his song and shouting. It was only after dinner that he began to talk connectedly. I wish I could remember it all. This is the important part of my story.

  ‘It is hard to understand it without being a biologist. These dwarfs are a different species and an older species than ours. But, then, the specific variation is always liable to reappear in human children. They revert to the dwarf. Consequently, they are multiplying very fast; they are being increased both by ordinary breeding among themselves and also from without by those hark-backs or changelings. He spoke of lots of sub-species besides the Marxomanni—Mussolimini, Swastici, Gangomanni. . . . I can’t remember them all. For a long time I couldn’t see where he himself came in.

  ‘At last he told me. He is breeding and training them for a descent on this country. When I tried to find out why, for a long time he would only stare at me and sing his song. Finally—as near as I could get it—his theory seemed to be that fighting was an end in itself.

  ‘Mind you, he was not drunk. He said that he could understand old-fashioned people who believed in the Landlord and kept the rules and hoped to go up and live in the Landlord’s castle when they had to leave this country. “They have something to live for,” he said. “And if their belief was true, their behaviour would be perfectly sensible. But as their belief is not true, there remains only one way of life fit for a man.” This other way of life was something he called Heroism, or Master-Morality, or Violence. “All the other people in between,” he said, “are ploughing the sand.” He went on railing at the people in Claptrap for ages, and also at Mr. Sensible. “These are the dregs of man,” he said. “They are always thinking of happiness. They are scraping together and storing up and trying to build. Can they not see that the law of the world is against them? Where will any of them be a hundred years hence?” I said they might be building for posterity. “And who will posterity build for?” he asked. “Can’t you see that it is all bound to come to nothing in the end? And the end may come to-morrow: and however late it comes, to those who look back all their ‘happiness’ will seem but a moment that has slipped away and left nothing behind. You can’t gather happiness. Do you go to bed with any more in hand on the day you have had a thousand pleasures?” I asked if his “Heroism” left anything behind it either: but he said it did. “The excellent deed,” he said, “is eternal. The hero alone has this privilege, that death for him is not defeat, and the lamenting over him and the memory is part of the good he aimed for; and the moment of battle fears nothing from the future because it has already cast security away.”

  ‘He talked a lot like that. I asked him what he thought of the Eschropolitans and he roared with laughter and said: “When the Cruels meet the Clevers there will not be even the ghost of a tug of war.” Then I asked him if he knew you three and he laughed louder still. He said that Angular might turn out an enemy worth fighting when he grew up. “But I don’t know,” he said. “Likely enough he is only an Eschropolitan turned inside-out—poacher turned game-keeper. As for the other pair, they are the last even of the last men.” I asked him what he meant. “The men of Claptrap,” he said, “may have some excuse for their folly, for they at least still believe that your country is a place where Happiness is possible. But your two friends are madmen without qualification. They claim to have reached rock-bottom, they talk of being disillusioned. They think that they have reached the furthest North—as if I were not here to the North of them. They live on a rock that will never feed man, between a chasm that they cannot cross and the home of a giant to whom they dare not return: and still they maunder of a culture and a security. If all men who try to build are but polishing the brasses on a sinking ship, then your pale friends are the supreme fools who polish with the rest though they know and admit that the ship is sinking. Their Humanism and whatnot is but the old dream with a new name. The rot in the world is too deep and the leak in the world is too wide. They may patch and tinker as they please, they will not save it. Better give in. Better cut the wood with the grain. If I am to live in a world of destruction let me be its agent and not its patient.”

  ‘In the end he said: “I will make this concession to your friends. They do live further North than anyone but me. They are more like men than any of their race. They shall have this honour when I lead the dwarfs to war, that Humanist’s skull shall be the first from which I drink the blood of a man: and Grimhild here shall have Classical’s.”

  ‘That was about all he said. He made me go out on the cliffs with him. It was all I could do to keep my footing. He said, “This wind blows straight from the pole; it will make a man of you.” I think he was trying to frighten me. In the end I got away. He loaded me with food for myself and you. “Feed them up,” he said. “There is not enough blood in them at present to quench the thirst of a dwarfish sword.” Then I came away. And I am very tired.’

  VII

  Fools’ Paradise

  ‘I SHOULD LIKE TO MEET this Savage,’ said Angular. ‘He seems to be a very clear-headed man.’

  ‘I don’t know about that,’ said Humanist. ‘He and his dwarfs seem to me to be just the thing I am fighting against—the logical conclusion of Eschropolis against which I raise the banner of Humanism. All the wild atavistic emotions which old Halfways sets free under false pretences—I am not at all surprised that he likes a valkyrie for a daughter—and which young Halfways unmasks, but cherishes when he has unmasked them; where can they end but in a complete abandonment of the human? I am glad to hear of him. He shows how necessary I am.’

  ‘I agree,’ said John in great excitement, ‘But how are you going to fight? Where are your troops? Where is your base of supplies? You can’t feed an army on a garden of stones and sea-shells.’

  ‘It is intelligence that counts,’ said Humanist.

  ‘It moves nothing,’ said John. ‘You see that Savage is scalding hot and you are cold. You must get heat to rival his heat. Do you think you can rout a million armed dwarfs by being “not romantic”?’

  ‘If Mr. Vertue will not be offended,’ said Classical, ‘I would suggest that he dreamed the whole thing. Mr. Vertue is romantic: he is paying for his wish-fulfilment dreams as he will always pay—with a fear-fulfilment dream. It is well-known that nobody lives further North than we.’ But Vertue was too tired to defend his story and soon all the occupants of the hut were asleep.

  BOOK SEVEN

  SOUTHWARD ALONG THE CANYON

  Now is the seventh winter since Troy fell, and we

  Still search beneath unfriendly stars, through every sea

  And desert isle, for Italy’s retreating strand.

  But here is kinsman’s country and Acestes’ land;

  What hinders here to build a city and remain?

  Oh fatherland, oh household spirits preserved in vain

  From the enemy, shall no new Troy arise? Shall no

  New Simois there, re-named for Hector’s mem
ory, flow?

  Rather, come!—burn with me the boats that work us harm!

  VIRGIL

  Through this and through no other fault we fell,

  Nor, being fallen, bear other pain than this,

  —Always without hope in desire to dwell.

  DANTE

  Some also have wished that the next way to their Father’s house were here that they might be troubled no more with either Hills or Mountains to go over; but the way is the way, and there’s an end.

  BUNYAN

  I

  Vertue is Sick

  I SAW THE TWO TRAVELLERS get up from their sacking and bid good-bye to their hosts, and set out southwards. The weather had not changed, nor did I ever see any other weather over that part of the country than clouds and wind without rain. Vertue himself was out of sorts and made haste without the spirit of haste. Then at last he opened his mind to his companion and said, ‘John, I do not know what is coming over me. Long ago you asked me—or was it Media asked me—where I was going and why: and I remember that I brushed the question aside. At that time it seemed to me so much more important to keep my rules and do my thirty miles a day. But I am beginning to find that it will not do. In the old days it was always a question of doing what I chose instead of what I wanted: but now I am beginning to be uncertain what it is I choose.’

  ‘How has this come about?’ said John.

  ‘Do you know that I nearly decided to stay with Savage?’

  ‘With Savage?’

  ‘It sounds like raving, but think it over. Supposing there is no Landlord, no mountains in the East, no Island in the West, nothing but this country. A few weeks ago I would have said that all those things made no difference. But now—I don’t know. It is quite clear that all the ordinary ways of living in this country lead to something which I certainly do not choose. I know that, even if I don’t know what I do choose. I know that I don’t want to be a Halfways, or a Clever, or a Sensible. Then there is the life I have been leading myself—marching on I don’t know where. I can’t see that there is any other good in it except the mere fact of imposing my will on my inclinations. And that seems to be good training, but training for what? Suppose after all it was training for battle? Is it so absurd to think that that might be the thing we were born for? A fight in a narrow place, life or death;—that must be the final act of will—the conquest of the deepest inclination of all.’

  ‘I think my heart will break,’ said John after they had gone many paces in silence. ‘I came out to find my Island. I am not high-minded like you, Vertue: it was never anything but sweet desire that led me. I have not smelled the air from that Island since—since—it is so long that I cannot remember. I saw more of it at home. And now my only friend talks of selling himself to the dwarfs.’

  ‘I am sorry for you,’ said Vertue, ‘and I am sorry for myself. I am sorry for every blade of grass and for this barren rock we are treading and the very sky above us. But I have no help to give you.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said John, ‘there are things East and West of this country after all.’

  ‘Do you still understand me so little as that!’ cried Vertue, turning on him. ‘Things East and West! Don’t you see that that is the other fatal possibility? Don’t you see that I am caught either way?’

  ‘Why?’ said John: and then, ‘Let us sit down. I am tired and we have nowhere to hurry to—not now.’

  Vertue sat down as one not noticing that he did it.

  ‘Don’t you see?’ he said. ‘Suppose there is anything East and West. How can that give me a motive for going on? Because there is something dreadful behind? That is a threat. I meant to be a free man. I meant to choose things because I chose to choose them—not because I was paid for it. Do you think I am a child to be scared with rods and baited with sugar plums? It was for this reason that I never even inquired whether the stories about the Landlord were true; I saw that his castle and his black hole were there to corrupt my will and kill my freedom. If it was true it was a truth an honest man must not know.’

  Evening darkened on the tableland and they sat for a long time, immovable.

  ‘I believe that I am mad,’ said Vertue presently. ‘The world cannot be as it seems to me. If there is something to go to, it is a bribe, and I cannot go to it: if I can go, then there is nothing to go to.’

  ‘Vertue,’ said John, ‘give in. For once yield to desire. Have done with your choosing. Want something.’

  ‘I cannot,’ said Vertue. ‘I must choose because I choose because I choose: and it goes on for ever, and in the whole world I cannot find a reason for rising from this stone.’

  ‘Is it not reason enough that the cold will presently kill us here?’

  It had grown quite dark and Vertue made no reply.

  ‘Vertue!’ said John, and then suddenly again in a louder voice, frightened, ‘Vertue!!’ But there was no answer. He groped for his friend in the dark and touched the cold dust of the tableland. He rose on his hands and knees and groped all about, calling. But he was confused and could not even find again the place whence he had risen himself. He could not tell how often he might have groped over the same ground or whether he was getting further and further from their resting-place. He could not be still; it was too cold. So all that night he rummaged to and fro in the dark, calling out Vertue’s name: and often it came into his head that Vertue had been all along one of the phantoms of a dream and that he had followed a shade.

  II

  John Leading

  I DREAMED THAT MORNING BROKE over the plateau, and I saw John rise up, white and dirty, in the new twilight. He looked all round him and saw nothing but the heath. Then he walked this way and that, still looking, and so for a long time. And at last he sat down and wept: that also for a long time. And when he had wept enough he rose like a man determined and resumed his journey southward.

  He had hardly gone twenty paces when he stopped with a cry, for there lay Vertue at his feet. I understood in my dream that during his groping in the darkness he had unwittingly gone further and further from the place where they had first sat down.

  In a moment John was on his knees and feeling for Vertue’s heart. It beat still. He laid his face to Vertue’s lips. They breathed still. He caught him by the shoulder and shook him.

  ‘Wake up,’ he cried, ‘the morning is here.’

  Then Vertue opened his eyes and smiled at John, a little foolishly.

  ‘Are you well?’ said John. ‘Are you fit to travel?’

  But Vertue only smiled. He was dumb. Then John held out his hands and pulled Vertue to his feet: and Vertue stood up uncertainly but as soon as he made a stride he stumbled and fell, for he was blind. It was long before John understood. Then at last I saw him take Vertue by the hand and, leading him, resume their journey to the South. And there fell upon John that last loneliness which comes when the comforter himself needs comforting, and the guide is to be guided.

  III

  The Main Road Again

  THEY FOUND MR. SENSIBLE’S house empty, as John had expected, with the shutters up and the chimneys smokeless. John decided to push on to the main road and then, if the worst came to the worst, they could go to Mother Kirk: but he hoped it would not come to that.

  All their journey South had been a descent, from the northern mountains to Mr. Sensible’s: but after his house it began to rise again a little to the main road, which ran along a low ridge, so that, when they had gained the road, the country South of it was suddenly all opened before them. At the same moment there came a gleam of sunshine, the first for many days. The road was unfenced to the heath on its northern side, but in its southern side there was a hedge with a gate in it: and the first thing John saw through the gate was a long how mound of earth. He had not been a farmer’s son for nothing. Having led Vertue to the bank of the road and seated him, he lost no time in climbing the gate and digging with both hands into the earthern mound. It contained, as he had expected, turnips; and in a minute he was seated by Vertue,
cutting a fine root into chunks, feeding the blind man and teaching him how to feed himself. The sun grew warmer every moment. The spring seemed further on in this place, and the hedge behind them was already more green than brown. Among many notes of birds John though he would distinguish a lark. They had breakfasted well, and as the warmth increased pleasantly over their aching limbs, they fell asleep.

  IV

  Going South

  WHEN JOHN AWOKE his first look was towards Vertue, but Vertue was still sleeping. John stretched himself and rose: he was warm and well, but a little thirsty. It was a four-cross-road where they had been sitting, for the northern road, at which John looked with a shudder, was but the continuation of a road from the South. He stood and looked down the latter. To his eyes, long now accustomed to the dusty flats of the northern plateau, the country southward was as a rich counterpane. The sun had passed noon by an hour or so, and the slanting light freckled with rounded shadows a green land, that fell ever away before him, opening as it sank into valleys, and beyond then into deeper valleys again, so that places on the same level where now he stood, yonder were mountain tops. Nearer hand were fields and hedgerows, ruddy ploughland, winding woods, and frequent farmhouses white among their trees. He went back and raised Vertue and was about to show it all to him when he remembered his blindness. Then, sighing, he took him by the hand and went down the new road.

  Before they had gone far he heard a bubbling sound by the roadside, and found a little spring pouring itself into a stream that ran henceforth with the road, now at the left, now at the right, and often crossed their way. He filled his hat with water and gave Vertue to drink. Then he drank himself and they went on, always downhill. The road nestled deeper each half-mile between banks of grass. There were primroses, first one or two, then clustered, then innumerable. From many turns of the road John caught sight of the deeper valleys to which they were descending, blue with distance and rounded with the weight of trees: but often a little wood cut off all remoter prospect.