The Pilgrim's Regress Read online

  Unwindowed monad, unindebted and unstained.’

  John and the Guide were hurrying past, but Vertue hesitated.

  ‘Her means may be wrong,’ he said, ‘but there is something to be said for her idea of the End.’

  ‘What idea?’ said the Guide.

  ‘Why—self-sufficiency, integrity. Not to commit herself, you know. All said and done, there is something foul about all these natural processes.’

  ‘You had better be careful of your thoughts here,’ said the Guide. ‘Do not confuse Repentance with Disgust: for the one comes from the Landlord and the other from the Enemy.’

  ‘And yet disgust has saved many a man from worse evils.’

  ‘By the power of the Landlord it may be so—now and then. But don’t try to play that game for yourself. Fighting one vice with another is about the most dangerous strategy there is. You know what happens to kingdoms that use alien mercenaries.’

  ‘I suppose you are right,’ said Vertue, ‘and yet this feeling goes very deep. Is it wholly wrong to be ashamed of being in the body?’

  ‘The Landlord’s Son was not. You know the verses—“When thou tookest upon thee to deliver man.” ’

  ‘That was a special case.’

  ‘It was a special case because it was the archtypal case. Has no one told you that that Lady spoke and acted for all that bears, in the presence of all that begets: for this country as against the things East and West: for matter as against form and patiency against agency? Is not the very word Mother akin to Matter? Be sure that the whole of this land, with all its warmth and wetness and fecundity with all the dark and the heavy and the multitudinous for which you are too dainty, spoke through her lips when she said that He had regarded the lowliness of His handmaiden. And if that Lady was a maid though a mother, you need not doubt that the nature which is, to human sense, impure, is also pure.’

  ‘Well,’ said Vertue, turning away from Superbia, ‘I will think this over.’

  ‘One thing you may as well know,’ remarked the Guide, ‘whatever virtues you may attribute to the Landlord, decency is not one of them. That is why so few of your national jokes have any point in my country.’

  And as they continued their journey, Vertue sang:

  ‘Because of endless pride

  Reborn with endless error,

  Each hour I look aside

  Upon my secret mirror

  Trying all postures there

  To make my image fair.

  ‘Thou givest grapes, and I,

  Though starving, turn to see

  How dark the cool globes lie

  In the white hand of me,

  And linger gazing thither

  Till the live clusters wither.

  ‘So should I quickly die

  Narcissus-like of want,

  But, in the glass, my eye

  Catches such forms as haunt

  Beyond nightmare, and make

  Pride humble for pride’s sake.

  ‘Then and then only turning

  The stiff neck round, I grow

  A molten man all burning

  And look behind and know

  Who made the lass, whose light makes dark, whose fair

  Makes foul, my shadowy form reflected there

  That Self-Love, brought to bed of Love may die and bear

  Her sweet son in despair.’

  VI

  Ignorantia

  STILL I LAY DREAMING and saw these three continue their journey through that long and narrow land with the rocks upon their left and the swamps on their right. They had much talk on the way of which I have remembered only snatches since I woke. I remember that they passed Ignorantia some miles beyond her sister Superbia and that led the pilgrims to question their Guide as to whether the Ignorance of the Tough-minded and the Clevers would some day be cured. He said there was less chance of that now than there had ever been: for till recently the Northern people had been made to learn the languages of Pagus ‘and that meant,’ said the Guide, ‘that at least they started no further from the light than the old Pagans themselves and had therefore the chance to come at last to Mother Kirk. But now they are cutting themselves off even from that roundabout route.’

  ‘Why have they changed?’ asked one of the others.

  ‘Why did the shadow whom you call Sensible leave his old house and go to practise in a hotel? Because his Drudge revolted. The same thing is happening all over the plateau and in Mammon’s country: their slaves are escaping further north and becoming dwarfs, and therefore the masters are turning all their attention to machinery, by which they hope to be able to lead their old life without slaves. And this seems to them so important that they are suppressing every kind of knowledge except mechanical knowledge. I am speaking of the sub-tenants. No doubt the great landowners in the back-ground have their own reasons for encouraging this movement.’

  ‘There must be a good side somewhere to this revolution,’ said Vertue. ‘It is too solid—it looks too lasting—to be a mere evil. I cannot believe that the Landlord would otherwise allow the whole face of nature and the whole structure of life to be so permanently and radically changed.’

  The Guide laughed. ‘You are falling into their own error,’ he said. ‘The change is not radical, nor will it be permanent. That idea depends on a curious disease which they have all caught—an inability to disbelieve advertisements. To be sure, if the machines did what they promised, the change would be very deep indeed. Their next war, for example, would change the state of their country from disease to death. They are afraid of this themselves—though most of them are old enough to know by experience that a gun is no more likely than a toothpaste or a cosmetic to do the things its makers say it will do. It is the same with all their machines. Their labour-saving devices multiply drudgery; their aphrodisiacs make them impotent: their amusements bore them: their rapid production of food leaves half of them starving, and their devices for saving them have banished leisure from their country. There will be no radical change. And as for permanence—consider how quickly all machines are broken and obliterated. The black solitudes will some day be green again, and of all cities that I have seen these iron cities will break most suddenly.’

  And the Guide sang:

  ‘Iron will eat the world’s old beauty up.

  Girder and grid and gantry will arise,

  Iron forest of engines will arise,

  Criss-cross of iron crotchet. For your eyes

  No green or growth. Over all, the skies

  Scribbled from end to end with boasts and lies.

  (When Adam ate the irrevocable apple, Thou

  Saw’st beyond death the resurrection of the dead.)

  ‘Clamour shall clean put out the voice of wisdom,

  The printing-presses with their clapping wings,

  Fouling your nourishment. Harpy wings,

  Filling your minds all day with foolish things,

  Will tame the eagle Thought: till she sings

  Parrot-like in her cage to please dark kings.

  (When Israel descended into Egypt, Thou

  Didst purpose both the bondage and the coming out.)

  ‘The new age, the new art, the new ethic and thought,

  And fools crying, Because it has begun

  It will continue as it has begun!

  The wheel runs fast, therefore the wheel will run

  Faster for ever. The old age is done,

  We have new lights and see without the sun.

  (Though they lay flat the mountains and dry up the sea,

  Wilt thou yet change, as though God were a god?)’

  VII

  Luxuria

  AFTER THIS, JOHN LOOKED up and saw that they were approaching a concourse of living creatures beside the road. Their way was so long and desolate (and he was footsore too) that he welcomed any diversion, and he cast his eyes curiously upon this new thing. When he was nearer he saw that the concourse was of men, but they lay about in such attitudes and were so dis
figured that he had not recognized them for men: moreover, the place was to the south of the road, and therefore the ground was very soft and some of them were half under water and some hidden in the reeds. All seemed to be suffering from some disease of a crumbling and disintegrating kind. It was doubtful whether all the life that pulsated in their bodies was their own: and soon John was certain, for he saw what seemed to be a growth on a man’s arm slowly detach itself under his eyes and become a fat reddish creature, separable from the parent body, though it was in no hurry to separate itself. And once he had seen that, his eyes were opened and he saw the same thing happening all round him, and the whole assembly was but a fountain of writhing and reptilian life quickening as he watched and sprouting out of the human forms. But in each form the anguished eyes were alive, sending to him unutterable messages from the central life which survived, self-conscious, though the self were but a fountain of vermin. One old cripple, whose face was all gone but the mouth and eyes, was sitting up to receive drink from a cup which a woman held to his lips. When he had as much as she thought good, she snatched the cup from his hands and went on to her next patient. She was dark but beautiful.

  ‘Don’t lag,’ said the Guide, ‘this is a very dangerous place. You had better come away. This is Luxuria.’

  But John’s eyes were caught by a young man to whom the witch had just come in her rounds. The disease, by seeming, had hardly begun with him: there was an unpleasant suspicion about his fingers—something a little too supple for joints—a little independent of his other movements—but, on the whole, he was still a well-looking person. And as the witch came to him the hands shot out to the cup, and the man drew them back again: and the hands went crawling out for the cup a second time, and again the man wrenched them back, and turned his face away, and cried out:

  ‘Quick! The black, sulphurous, never quenched,

  Old festering fire begins to play

  Once more within. Look! By brute force I have wrenched

  Unmercifully my hands the other way.

  ‘Quick, Lord! On the rack thus, stretched tight,

  Nerves clamouring as at nature’s wrong.

  Scorched to the quick, whipp’d raw—Lord, in this plight

  You see, you see no man can suffer long.

  ‘Quick, Lord! Before new scorpions bring

  New venom—ere fiends blow the fire

  A second time—quick, show me that sweet thing

  Which, ‘spite of all, more deeply I desire.’

  And all the while the witch stood saying nothing, but only holding out the cup and smiling kindly on him with her dark eyes and her dark, red mouth. Then, when she saw that he would not drink, she passed on to the next: but at the first step she took, the young man gave a sob and his hands flew out and grabbed the cup and he buried his head in it: and when she took it from his lips clung to it as a drowning man to a piece of wood. But at last he sank down in the swamp with a groan. And the worms where there should have been fingers were unmistakable.

  ‘Come on,’ said Vertue.

  They resumed their journey, John lagging a bit. I dreamed that the witch came to him walking softly in the marshy ground by the roadside and holding out the cup to him also: when he went faster she kept pace with him.

  ‘I will not deceive you,’ she said. ‘You see there is no pretence. I am not trying to make you believe that this cup will take you to your Island. I am not saying it will quench your thirst for long. But taste it, none the less, for you are very thirsty.’

  But John walked forward in silence.

  ‘It is true,’ said the witch, ‘that you never can tell when you have reached the point beyond which there is no return. But that cuts both ways. If you can never be certain that one more taste is safe, neither can you be certain that one more taste is fatal. But you can be certain that you are terribly thirsty.’

  But John continued as before.

  ‘At least,’ said the witch, ‘have one more taste of it, before you abandon it for ever. This is a bad moment to choose for resistance, when you are tired and miserable and have already listened to me too long. Taste this once, and I will leave you. I do not promise never to come back: but perhaps when I come again you will be strong and happy and well able to resist me—not as you are now.’

  And John continued as before.

  ‘Come,’ said the witch. ‘You are only wasting time. You know you will give in, in the end. Look ahead at the hard road and the grey sky. What other pleasure is there in sight?’

  So she accompanied him for a long way, till the weariness of her importunity tempted him far more than any positive desire. But he forced his mind to other things and kept himself occupied for a mile or so by making the following verses:

  When Lilith means to draw me

  Within her secret bower,

  She does not overawe me

  With beauty’s pomp and power,

  Nor, with angelic grace

  Of courtesy, and the pace

  Of gliding ships, comes veiled at evening hour.

  Eager, unmasked, she lingers

  Heart-sick and hunger sore

  With hot, dry, jewelled fingers

  Stretched out, beside her door,

  Offering with gnawing haste

  Her cup, whereof who taste,

  (She promises no better) thirst far more.

  What moves me, then, to drink it?

  —Her spells, which all around

  So change the land, we think it

  A great waste where a sound

  Of wind like tales twice told

  Blusters, and cloud is rolled

  Always above yet no rain falls to ground.

  Across drab iteration

  Of bare hills, line on line,

  The long road’s sinuation

  Leads on. The witch’s wine,

  Though promising nothing, seems

  In that land of no streams,

  To promise best—the unrelished anodyne.

  And by the time he had reached the word anodyne the witch was gone. But he had never in his life felt more weary, and for a while the purpose of his pilgrimage woke no desire in him.

  VIII

  The Northern Dragon

  ‘NOW,’ SAID THE GUIDE, ‘our time is come.’

  They looked at him inquiringly.

  ‘We are come,’ said he, ‘to that point of the road which lies midway between the two land bridges that I spoke of. The cold dragon is here on our left, and the hot dragon on our right. Now is the time to show what you are made of. Wolf is waiting in the wood southward: in the rocks northward, raven wheeling, in hope of carrion. Behoves you both be on guard quickly. God defend you.’

  ‘Well,’ said Vertue. And he drew his sword and slung his shield round from his back. Then he held out his hand first to the Guide, and then to John. ‘So long,’ he said.

  ‘Go where it is least green,’ said Guide, ‘for there the ground is firmest. And good luck.’

  Vertue left the road and began to pick his way cautiously southward, feeling out the fen-paths. The Guide turned to John.

  ‘Have you any practice with a sword?’ he said.

  ‘None, sir,’ answered John.

  ‘None is better than a smattering. You must trust to mother wit. Aim at his belly—an upward jab. I shouldn’t try cutting, if I were you: you don’t know enough.’

  ‘I will do the best I can,’ said John. And then, after a pause: ‘There is only one dragon, I suppose. I don’t need to guard my back.’

  ‘Of course there is only one, for he has eaten all the others. Otherwise he would not be a dragon. You know the maxim—serpens nisi serpentem comederit—’

  Then I saw John also settle his gear and step off the road to the left. The ascent began at once, and before he was ten yards from the road he was six feet above it: but the formation of the rocks was such that it was like mounting a huge stair, and was tiring rather than difficult. When he first stopped to wipe the sweat out of his eyes the mist wa
s already so dense that he could hardly see the road beneath him. Ahead the grey darkness shaded quickly into black. Then suddenly John heard a dry, rattling sound in front of him, and a little above. He got a better grip on his sword, and took one pace towards it, listening intently. Then came the sound again: and after that he heard a croaking voice, as of a gigantic frog. The dragon was singing to himself:

  ‘Once the worm-laid egg broke in the wood.

  I came forth shining into the trembling wood,

  The sun was on my scales, dew upon the grasses.

  The cool, sweet grasses and the budding leaves.

  I wooed my speckled mate. We played at druery

  And sucked warm milk dropping from the goats’ teats.

  ‘Now I keep watch on the gold in my rock cave

  In a country of stones: old, deplorable dragon,

  Watching my hoard. In winter night the gold

  Freezes through toughest scales my cold belly.

  The jagged crowns and twisted cruel rings

  Knobbly and icy are old dragon’s bed.

  ‘Often I wish I hadn’t eaten my wife,

  Though worm grows not to dragon till he eat worm.

  She could have helped me, watch and watch about,

  Guarding the hoard. Gold would have been the safer.

  I could uncoil my weariness at times and take

  A little sleep, sometimes when she was watching.

  ‘Last night under the moonset a fox barked,

  Woke me. Then I knew I had been sleeping.

  Often an owl flying over the country of stones

  Startles me, and I think I must have slept.

  Only a moment. That very moment a man

  Might have come out of the cities, stealing, to get my gold.

  ‘They make plots in the towns to steal my gold.

  They whisper of me in a low voice, laying plans,

  Merciless men. Have they not ale upon the benches,

  Warm wife in bed, singing, and sleep the whole night?

  But I leave not the cave but once in winter

  To drink of the rock pool: in summer twice.

  ‘They feel no pity for the old, lugubrious dragon.

  Oh, Lord, that made the dragon, grant me Thy peace!

  But ask not that I should give up the gold,