The Pilgrim's Regress (12 page)

The two young men informed him that they were continuing their journey after breakfast.

‘This,' said Mr. Sensible, ‘is getting really serious. Do you mean to say that you are going to desert me? I am to be reduced to absolute solitude—deprived of the common decencies of life—compelled to spend my day in menial offices? Very well, sir. I am unacquainted with modern manners: no doubt this is the way in which young men return hospitality.'

‘I beg your pardon, sir,' said Vertue. ‘I had not seen it in that light. I will certainly act as your servant for a day or so if you wish it. I had not understood that it would be such a burden to you to cook for yourself. I don't remember that you said anything about servants when you were outlining the good life last night.'

‘Why, sir,' said Mr. Sensible. ‘When I outline the principles of the steam engine I do not explicitly state that I expect fire to burn or the laws of gravity to operate. There are certain things that one always takes for granted. When I speak of the art of life I presuppose the ordinary conditions of life which that art utilizes.'

‘Such as wealth,' said Vertue.

‘A competence, a competence,' said Mr. Sensible.

‘And health, too?' said Vertue.

‘Moderate health,' said Mr. Sensible.

‘Your art, then,' said Vertue, ‘seems to teach men that the best way of being happy is to enjoy unbroken good fortune in every respect. They would not all find the advice helpful. And now, if Drudge will show me his scullery, I will wash up the breakfast things.'

‘You may save yourself the trouble, sir,' said Mr. Sensible drily. ‘I cannot pretend to your intensity, and I do not choose to be lectured at the breakfast table. When you have mixed more with the world you will learn not to turn the social board into a schoolroom. In the meantime, forgive me if I feel that I should find your continued society a little fatiguing. Conversation should be like the bee which darts to the next flower before the last has ceased swaying from its airy visit: you make it more like a wood beetle eating its way through a table.'

‘As you wish,' said Vertue, ‘but how will you do?'

‘I shall shut up the house,' said Mr. Sensible, ‘and practise
in a hotel until I have fitted this place up with such mechanical devices as will henceforth render me wholly independent. I see that I have let myself get behind the times. I should have listened more to certain good friends of mine in the city of Claptrap who have kept abreast of modern invention. They assure me that machinery will soon put the good life beyond the reach of chance: and if mechanism alone will not do it I know a eugenist who promises to breed us a race of peons who will be psychologically incapable of playing me a trick like this of Drudge's.'

So it fell out that all four left the house together. Mr. Sensible was astonished to find that Drudge (who parted from his employer very civilly) was accompanying the young men. He only shrugged his shoulders, however, and said, ‘
Vive la bagatelle!
You have stayed in my house which is called Thelema, and its motto is
Do what you will.
So many men, so many minds. I hope I can tolerate anything except intolerance.' Then he went his way and they saw him no more.

BOOK
SIX

NORTHWARD ALONG THE CANYON

For being unlike the magnanimous man, they yet ape him; and that in such particulars as they can.

ARISTOTLE

Much of the soul they talk, but all awry,

And in themselves seek virtue.

MILTON

I do not admire the excess of some one virtue unless I am shewn at the same time the excess of the opposite virtue. A man does not prove his greatness by standing at an extremity, but by touching both extremities at once and filling all that lies between them.

PASCAL

Contempt is a well-recognized defensive reaction.

I. A. RICHARDS

I

First Steps to the North

‘I
T IS OF NO USE
keeping to the road,' said Vertue. ‘We must explore the cliff-edge as we go along and make trial descents from point to point.'

‘Begging your pardon, sir,' said Drudge, ‘I know these parts very well and there is no way down, at least within thirty miles. You'll miss nothing by keeping to the road for to-day at any rate.'

‘How do you know?' asked Vertue. ‘Have you ever tried?'

‘Oh, bless you, yes,' said Drudge. ‘I've often tried to get across the canyon when I was a youngster.'

‘Clearly we had better follow the road,' said John.

‘I do not feel quite satisfied,' said Vertue. ‘But we can always take the cliffs on the way back. I have an idea that if there is a way down it will be at the extreme north where this gorge opens on the sea: or failing everything, we might manipulate the mouth of the gorge by boat. In the meantime I dare say we might do worse than press on by road.'

‘I quite agree,' said John.

Then I saw the three set forward on a more desolate march than I had yet beheld. On every side of them the tableland seemed perfectly flat, but their muscles and lungs soon told them that there was a slight but continuous rise. There was little vegetation—here a shrub, and there some grass: but the most of it was brown earth and moss and rock, and the road beneath them was stone. The grey sky was never broken and I do not remember that they saw a single bird: and it was so bleak that if they stopped at any time to rest, the sweat grew cold on them instantly.

Vertue never abated his pace and Drudge kept even with him though always a respectful yard behind: but I saw that John grew footsore and began to lag. For some hours he was always inventing pretexts to stop and finally he said, ‘Friends, it is no use, I can go no further.'

‘But you must,' said Vertue.

‘The young gentleman is soft, sir, very soft,' said Drudge. ‘He is not used to this sort of thing. We'll have to help him along.'

So they took him, one by each arm, and helped him along for a few hours. They found nothing to eat or drink in the waste. Towards evening they heard a desolate voice crying ‘Maiwi-maiwi,' and looked up, and there was a seagull hanging in the currents of the wind as though it sauntered an invisible stair towards the low rain-clouds.

‘Good!' cried Vertue. ‘We are nearing the coast.'

‘It's a good step yet, sir,' said Drudge. ‘These gulls come forty miles inland and more in bad weather.'

Then they plodded on for many more miles. And the sky began to turn from sunless grey to starless black. And they looked and saw a little shanty by the roadside and there they knocked on the door.

II

Three Pale Men

W
HEN THEY WERE
let in they found three young men, all very thin and pale, seated by a stove under the low roof of the hut. There was some sacking on a bench along one wall and little comfort else.

‘You will fare badly here,' said one of the three men. ‘But I am a Steward and it is my duty according to my office to share my supper with you. You may come in.' His name was Mr. Neo-Angular.

‘I am sorry that my convictions do not allow me to repeat my friend's offer,' said one of the others. ‘But I have had to abandon the humanitarian and egalitarian fallacies.' His name was Mr. Neo-Classical.

‘I hope,' said the third, ‘that your wanderings in lonely places do not mean that you have any of the romantic virus still in your blood.' His name was Mr. Humanist.

John was too tired and Drudge too respectful to reply: but Vertue said to Mr. Neo-Angular, ‘You are very kind. You are saving our lives.'

‘I am not kind at all,' said Mr. Neo-Angular with some warmth. ‘I am doing my duty. My ethics are based on dogma, not on feeling.'

‘I understand you very well,' said Vertue. ‘May I shake hands with you?'

‘Can it be,' said the other, ‘that you are one of us? You are a Catholic? A scholastic?'

‘I know nothing about that,' said Vertue, ‘but I know that the rule is to be obeyed because it is a rule and not because it appeals to my feelings at the moment.'

‘I see you are not one of us,' said Angular, ‘and you are undoubtedly damned.
Virtutes paganorum splendida vitia.
Now let us eat.'

Then I dreamed that the three pale men produced three tins of bully beef and six biscuits, and Angular shared his with the guests. There was very little for each and I thought that the best share fell to John and Drudge, for Vertue and the young Steward entered into a kind of rivalry who should leave most for the others.

‘Our fare is simple,' said Mr. Neo-Classical. ‘And perhaps unwelcome to palates that have been reared on the kickshaws of lower countries. But you see the perfection of form. This beef is a perfect cube: this biscuit a true square.'

‘You will admit,' said Mr. Humanist, ‘that, at least, our meal is quite free from any lingering flavour of the old romantic sauces.'

‘Quite free,' said John, staring at the empty tin.

‘It's better than radishes, sir,' said Drudge.

‘Do you
live
here, gentlemen?' said Vertue when the empty tins had been removed.

‘We do,' said Mr. Humanist. ‘We are founding a new community. At present we suffer the hardships of pioneers and have to import our food: but when we have brought the country under cultivation we shall have plenty—as much plenty as is needed for the practice of temperance.'

‘You interest me exceedingly,' said Vertue. ‘What are the principles of this community?'

‘Catholicism, Humanism, Classicism,' said all three.

‘Catholicism! Then you are all Stewards?'

‘Certainly not,' said Classical and Humanist.

‘At least you all believe in the Landlord?'

‘I have no interest in the question,' said Classical.

‘And I,' said Humanist, ‘know perfectly well that the Landlord is a fable.'

‘And I,' said Angular, ‘know perfectly well that he is a fact.'

‘This is very surprising,' said Vertue. ‘I do not see how you have come together, or what your common principles can possibly be.'

‘We are united by a common antagonism to a common enemy,' said Humanist. ‘You must understand that we are three brothers, the sons of old Mr. Enlightenment of the town of Claptrap.'

‘I know him,' said John.

‘Our father was married twice,' continued Humanist. ‘Once to a lady name Epichaerecacia, and afterwards to Euphuia. By his first wife he had a son called Sigmund who is thus our step-brother.'

‘I know him too,' said John.

‘We are the children of his second marriage,' said Humanist.

‘Then,' cried Vertue, ‘we are related—if you care to acknowledge the kinship. You have probably heard that Euphuia had a child before she married your father. I was that child—though I confess that I never discovered who my father was and enemies have hinted that I am a bastard.'

‘You have said quite sufficient,' replied Angular. ‘You can hardly expect that the subject should be agreeable to us. I might add that my office, if there were nothing else, sets me apart even from my legitimate relations.'

‘And what about the common antagonism?' said John.

‘We were all brought up,' said Humanist, ‘by our step-brother in the university at Eschropolis, and we learned there to see that whoever stays with Mr. Halfways must either come on to Eschropolis or else remain at Thrill as the perpetual minion of his brown daughter.'

‘You had not been with Mr. Halfways yourselves, then?' asked John.

‘Certainly not. We learned to hate him from watching the effect which his music had on other people. Hatred of him is the first thing that unites us. Next, we discovered how residence in Eschropolis inevitably leads to the giant's dungeon.'

‘I know all about that too,' said John.

‘Our common hatred therefore links us together against the giant, against Eschropolis, and against Mr. Halfways.'

‘But specially against the latter,' said Classical.

‘I should rather say,' remarked Angular, ‘against half-measures and compromises of all sorts—against any pretence that there is any kind of goodness or decency, any even tolerable temporary resting place, on this side of the Grand Canyon.'

‘And that,' said Classical, ‘is why Angular is for me, in one sense,
the
enemy, but, in another,
the
friend. I cannot agree with his notions about the other side of the canyon: but just because he relegates his delusions to the
other
side, he is free to agree with me about this side and to be an implacable exposer (like myself) of all attempts to foist upon us any transcendental, romantical, optimistic trash.'

‘My own feeling,' said Humanist, ‘is rather that Angular is with me in guarding against any confusion of the
levels
of experience. He
canalizes
all the mystical nonsense—the
sehnsucht
and
Wanderlust and Nympholepsy
—and transfers them to the far side: that prevents their drifting about on this side and hindering our real function. It leaves us free to establish a really tolerable and even comfortable civilization here on the plateau; a culture based alike on those truths which Mr. Sensible acknowledges and on those which the giant reveals, but throwing over both alike a graceful veil of illusion. And that way we shall remain human: we shall not become beasts with the giant nor abortive angels with Mr. Halfways.'