The Pilgrim’s Regress

Then John was sent up to his bedroom and told to put on the ugly and uncomfortable clothes; and when he came downstairs, itching all over, and tight under the arms, he was given a little mask to put on, and his parents put masks on too. Then I thought in my dream that they wanted to put a mask on Uncle George, but he was trembling so that it would not stay on. So they had to see his face as it was; and his face became so dreadful that everyone looked in a different direction and pretended not to see it. They got Uncle George to his feet with much difficulty, and then they all came out on to the road. The sun was just setting at one end of the road, for the road ran east and west. They turned their backs on the dazzling western sky and there John saw ahead of them the night coming down over the eastern mountains. The country sloped down and eastward to a brook, and all this side of the brook was green and cultivated: on the other side of the brook a great black moor sloped upward, and beyond that were the crags and chasms of the lower mountains, and high above them again the bigger mountains: and on top of the whole waste was one mountain so big and black that John was afraid of it. He was told that the Landlord had his castle up there.

He trudged on eastward, a long time, always descending, till they came to the brook. They were so slow now that the sunset behind them was out of sight. Before them, all was growing darker every minute, and the cold east wind was blowing out of the darkness, right from the mountain tops. When they had stood for a little, Uncle George looked round on them all once or twice, and said, ‘Oh, dear! Oh, dear!’ in a funny small voice like a child’s. Then he stepped over the brook and began to walk away up the moor. It was now so dark and there were so many ups and downs in the moorland that they lost sight of him almost at once. Nobody ever saw him again.

‘Well,’ said the Steward, untying his mask as they turned homeward. ‘We’ve all got to go when our time comes.’

‘That’s true,’ said the father, who was lighting his pipe. When it was lit he turned to the Steward and said: ‘Some of those pigs of George’s have won prizes.’

‘I’d keep ’em if I were you,’ said the Steward. ‘It’s no time for selling now.’

‘Perhaps you’re right,’ said the father.

John walked behind with his mother.

‘Mother.’

‘Well, dear?’

‘Could any of us be turned out without notice like that any day?’

‘Well, yes. But it is very unlikely.’

‘But we might be?’

‘You oughtn’t to be thinking of that sort of thing at your age.’

‘Why oughtn’t I?’

‘It’s not healthy. A boy like you.’

‘Mother.’

‘Yes?’

‘Can we break off the lease without notice too?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Well, the Landlord can turn us out of the farm whenever he likes. Can we leave the farm whenever we like?’

‘No, certainly not.’

‘Why not?’

‘That’s in the lease. We must go when he likes, and stay as long as he likes.’

‘Why?’

‘I suppose because he makes the leases.’

‘What would happen if we did leave?’

‘He would be very angry.’

‘Would he put us in the black hole?’

‘Perhaps.’

‘Mother.’

‘Well, dear?’

‘Will the Landlord put Uncle George in the black hole?’

‘How dare you say such a thing about your poor uncle? Of course he won’t.’

‘But hasn’t Uncle George broken all the rules?’

‘Broken all the rules? Your Uncle George was a very good man.’

‘You never told me that before,’ said John.

4 (#ulink_8866159a-a279-53a7-b615-cba908c0d115)

LEAH FOR RACHEL (#ulink_8866159a-a279-53a7-b615-cba908c0d115)

Greed to recover Desire hides the real offer of its return – John tries to force himself to feel it, but finds (and accepts) Lust instead

Then I turned over in my sleep and began to dream deeper still: and I dreamed that I saw John growing tall and lank till he ceased to be a child and became a boy. The chief pleasure of his life in these days was to go down the road and look through the window in the wall in the hope of seeing the beautiful Island. Some days he saw it well enough, especially at first, and heard the music and the voice. At first he would not look through the window into the wood unless he had heard the music. But after a time both the sight of the Island, and the sounds, became very rare. He would stand looking through the window for hours, and seeing the wood, but no sea or Island beyond it, and straining his ears but hearing nothing except the wind in the leaves. And the yearning for that sight of the Island and the sweet wind blowing over the water from it, though indeed these themselves had given him only yearning, became so terrible that John thought he would die if he did not have them again soon. He even said to himself, ‘I would break every rule on the card for them if I could only get them. I would go down into the black hole for ever if it had a window from which I could see the Island.’ Then it came into his head that perhaps he ought to explore the wood and thus he might find his way down to the sea beyond it: so he determined that the next day, whatever he saw or heard at the window, he would go through and spend the whole day in the wood. When the morning came, it had been raining all night and a south wind had blown the clouds away at sunrise, and all was fresh and shining. As soon as he had had his breakfast John was out on the road. With the wind and the birds, and country carts passing, there were many noises about that morning, so that when John heard a strain of music long before he had reached the wall and the window – a strain like that which he desired, but coming from an unexpected quarter – he could not be absolutely certain that he had not imagined it. It made him stand still in the road for a minute, and in my dream I could hear him thinking – like this: ‘If I go after that sound – away off the road, up yonder – it is all luck whether I shall find anything at all. But if I go on to the window, there I know I shall reach the wood, and there I can have a good hunt for the shore and the Island. In fact, I shall insist on finding it. I am determined to. But if I go a new way I shall not be able to insist: I shall just have to take what comes.’ So he went on to the place he knew and climbed through the window into the wood. Up and down and to and fro among the trees he walked, looking this way and that: but he found no sea and no shore, and indeed no end to the wood in any direction. When it came to the middle of the day he was so hot that he sat down and fanned himself. Often, of late, when the sight of the Island had been withheld, he had felt sad and despairing: but what he felt now was more like anger. ‘I must have it,’ he kept on saying to himself, and then, ‘I must have something.’ Then it occurred to him that at least he had the wood, which he would once have loved, and that he had not given it a thought all morning. Very well, thought John, I will enjoy the wood: I will enjoy it. He set his teeth and wrinkled his forehead and sat still until the sweat rolled off him in an effort to enjoy the wood. But the more he tried the more he felt that there was nothing to enjoy. There was the grass and there were the trees: ‘But what am I to do with them?’ said John. Next it came into his head that he might perhaps get the old feeling – for what, he thought, had the Island ever given him but a feeling? – by imagining. He shut his eyes and set his teeth again and made a picture of the Island in his mind: but he could not keep his attention on the picture because he wanted all the time to watch some other part of his mind to see if the feeling were beginning. But no feeling began: and then, just as he was opening his eyes he heard a voice speaking to him. It was quite close at hand, and very sweet, and not at all like the old voice of the wood. When he looked round he saw what he had never expected, yet he was not surprised. There in the grass beside him sat a laughing brown girl of about his own age, and she had no clothes on.

‘It was me you wanted,’ said the brown girl. ‘I am better than your silly Islands.’

And John rose and caught her, all in haste, and committed fornication with her in the wood.

5 (#ulink_89431325-a215-57b1-8bfd-43e5be4b7673)

ICHABOD (#ulink_89431325-a215-57b1-8bfd-43e5be4b7673)

The deception does not last: but it leaves a habit of sin behind it

After that John was always going to the wood. He did not always have his pleasure of her in the body, though it often ended that way: sometimes he would talk to her about himself, telling her lies about his courage and his cleverness. All that he told her she remembered, so that on other days she could tell it over to him again. Sometimes, even, he would go with her through the wood looking for the sea and the Island, but not often. Meanwhile the year went on and the leaves began to fall in the wood and the skies were more often grey: until now, as I dreamed, John had slept in the wood, and he woke up in the wood. The sun was low and a blustering wind was stripping the leaves from the branches. The girl was still there and the appearance of her was hateful to John: and he saw that she knew this, and the more she knew it the more she stared at him, smiling. He looked round and saw how small the wood was after all – a beggarly strip of trees between the road and a field that he knew well. Nowhere in sight was there anything that he liked at all.

‘I shall not come back here,’ said John. ‘What I wanted is not here. It wasn’t you I wanted, you know.’

‘Wasn’t it?’ said the brown girl. ‘Then be off. But you must take your family with you.’

With that she put up her hands to her mouth and called. Instantly from behind every tree there slipped out a brown girl: each of them was just like herself: the little wood was full of them.

‘What are these?’