The Great Divorce (6 page)

The shrill monotonous whine died away as the speaker, still accompanied by the bright patience at her side, moved out of hearing.

‘What troubles ye, son?' asked my Teacher.

‘I am troubled, Sir,' said I, ‘because that unhappy crea
ture doesn't seem to me to be the sort of soul that ought to be even in danger of damnation. She isn't wicked: she's only a silly, garrulous old woman who has got into a habit of grumbling, and feels that a little kindness, and rest, and change would do her all right.'

‘That is what she once was. That is maybe what she still is. If so, she certainly will be cured. But the whole question is whether she is now a grumbler.'

‘I should have thought there was no doubt about that!'

‘Aye, but ye misunderstand me. The question is whether she is a grumbler, or only a grumble. If there is a real woman—even the least trace of one—still there inside the grumbling, it can be brought to life again. If there's one wee spark under all those ashes, we'll blow it till the whole pile is red and clear. But if there's nothing but ashes we'll not go on blowing them in our own eyes forever. They must be swept up.'

‘But how can there be a grumble without a grumbler?'

‘The whole difficulty of understanding Hell is that the thing to be understood is so nearly Nothing. But ye'll have had experiences…it begins with a grumbling mood, and yourself still distinct from it: perhaps criticising it. And yourself, in a dark hour, may will that mood, embrace it. Ye can repent and come out of it again. But
there may come a day when you can do that no longer. Then there will be no
you
left to criticise the mood, nor even to enjoy it, but just the grumble itself going on forever like a machine. But come! Ye are here to watch and listen. Lean on my arm and we will go for a little walk.'

I obeyed. To lean on the arm of someone older than myself was an experience that carried me back to childhood, and with this support I found the going tolerable: so much so, indeed, that I flattered myself my feet were already growing more solid, until a glance at the poor transparent shapes convinced me that I owed all this ease to the strong arm of the Teacher. Perhaps it was because of his presence that my other senses also appeared to be quickened. I noticed scents in the air which had hitherto escaped me, and the country put on new beauties. There was water everywhere and tiny flowers quivering in the early breeze. Far off in the woods we saw the deer glancing past, and, once, a sleek panther came purring to my companion's side. We also saw many of the Ghosts.

I think the most pitiable was a female Ghost. Her trouble was the very opposite of that which afflicted the other, the lady frightened by the Unicorns. This one seemed quite unaware of her phantasmal appearance. More than one of the Solid People tried to talk to her, and
at first I was quite at a loss to understand her behaviour to them. She appeared to be contorting her all but invisible face and writhing her smokelike body in a quite meaningless fashion. At last I came to the conclusion—incredible as it seemed—that she supposed herself still capable of attracting them and was trying to do so. She was a thing that had become incapable of conceiving conversation save as a means to that end. If a corpse already liquid with decay had arisen from the coffin, smeared its gums with lipstick, and attempted a flirtation, the result could not have been more appalling. In the end she muttered, ‘Stupid creatures,' and turned back to the bus.

This put me in mind to ask my Teacher what he thought of the affair with the Unicorns. ‘It will maybe have succeeded,' he said. ‘Ye will have divined that he meant to frighten her, not that fear itself could make her less a Ghost, but if it took her mind a moment off herself, there might, in that moment, be a chance. I have seen them saved so.'

We met several Ghosts that had come so near to Heaven only in order to tell the Celestials about Hell. Indeed this is one of the commonest types. Others, who had perhaps been (like myself) teachers of some kind actually wanted to give lectures about it: they brought fat
notebooks full of statistics, and maps, and (one of them) a magic lantern. Some wanted to tell anecdotes of the notorious sinners of all ages whom they had met below. But the most part seemed to think that the mere fact of having contrived for themselves so much misery gave them a kind of superiority. ‘You have led a sheltered life!' they bawled. ‘You don't know the seamy side. We'll tell you. We'll give you some hard facts'—as if to tinge Heaven with infernal images and colours had been the only purpose for which they came. All alike, so far as I could judge from my own exploration of the lower world, were wholly unreliable, and all equally incurious about the country in which they had arrived. They repelled every attempt to teach them, and when they found that nobody listened to them they went back, one by one, to the bus.

This curious wish to describe Hell turned out, however, to be only the mildest form of a desire very common among the Ghosts—the desire to
extend
Hell, to bring it bodily, if they could, into Heaven. There were tub-thumping Ghosts who in thin, bat-like voices urged the blessed spirits to shake off their fetters, to escape from their imprisonment in happiness, to tear down the mountains with their hands, to seize Heaven ‘for their own': Hell offered her co-operation. There were planning Ghosts
who implored them to dam the river, cut down the trees, kill the animals, build a mountain railway, smooth out the horrible grass and moss and heather with asphalt. There were materialistic Ghosts who informed the immortals that they were deluded: there was no life after death, and this whole country was a hallucination. There were Ghosts, plain and simple: mere bogies, fully conscious of their own decay, who had accepted the traditional role of the spectre, and seemed to hope they could frighten someone. I had had no idea that this desire was possible. But my Teacher reminded me that the pleasure of frightening is by no means unknown on Earth, and also of Tacitus' saying: ‘They terrify lest they should fear.' When the debris of a decayed human soul finds itself crumbled into ghosthood and realises ‘I myself am now that which all humanity has feared, I am just that cold churchyard shadow, that horrible thing which cannot be, yet somehow is', then to terrify others appears to it an escape from the doom of being a Ghost yet still fearing Ghosts—fearing even the Ghost it is. For to be afraid of oneself is the last horror.

But, beyond all these, I saw other grotesque phantoms in which hardly a trace of the human form remained; monsters who had faced the journey to the bus stop—perhaps for them it was thousands of miles—and come up
to the country of the Shadow of Life and limped far into it over the torturing grass, only to Spit and gibber out in one ecstasy of hatred their envy and (what is harder to understand) their contempt, of joy. The voyage seemed to them a small price to pay if once, only once, within sight of that eternal dawn, they could tell the prigs, the toffs, the sanctimonious humbugs, the snobs, the ‘haves', what they thought of them.

‘How do they come to be here at all?' I asked my Teacher.

‘I have seen that kind converted,' said he, ‘when those ye would think less deeply damned have gone back. Those that hate goodness are sometimes nearer than those that know nothing at all about it and think they have it already.'

 

‘Whisht, now!' said my Teacher suddenly. We were standing close to some bushes and beyond them I saw one of the Solid People and a Ghost who had apparently just that moment met. The outlines of the Ghost looked vaguely familiar, but I soon realized that what I had seen on Earth was not the man himself but photographs of him in the papers. He had been a famous artist.

‘God' said the Ghost, glancing round the landscape.

‘God what?' asked the Spirit.

‘What do you mean, “God what”?' asked the Ghost.

‘In our grammar God is a noun.'

‘Oh—I see. I only meant “By Gum” or something of the sort. I meant…well, all
this
. It's…it's…I should like to paint this.'

‘I shouldn't bother about that just at present if I were you.'

‘Look here; isn't one going to be allowed to go on painting?'

‘Looking comes first.'

‘But I've had my look. I've seen just what I want to do. God!—I wish I'd thought of bringing my things with me!'

The Spirit shook his head, scattering light from his hair as he did so. ‘That sort of thing's no good here,' he said.

‘What do you mean?' said the Ghost.

‘When you painted on earth—at least in your earlier days—it was because you caught glimpses of Heaven in the earthly landscape. The success of your painting was that it enabled others to see the glimpses too. But here you are having the thing itself. It is from here that the messages came. There is no good
telling
us about this country, for we see it already. In fact we see it better than you do.'

‘Then there's never going to be any point in painting here?'

‘I don't say that. When you've grown into a Person (it's all right, we all had to do it) there'll be some things which you'll see better than anyone else. One of the things you'll want to do will be to tell us about them. But not yet. At present your business is to see. Come and see. He is endless. Come and feed.'

There was a little pause. ‘That will be delightful,' said the Ghost presently in a rather dull voice.

‘Come, then,' said the Spirit, offering it his arm.

‘How soon do you think I
could
begin painting?' it asked.

The Spirit broke into laughter. ‘Don't you see you'll never paint at all if that's what you're thinking about?' he said.

‘What do you mean?' asked the Ghost.

‘Why, if you are interested in the country only for the sake of painting it, you'll never learn to see the country.'

‘But that's just how a real artist is interested in the country.'

‘No. You're forgetting,' said the Spirit. ‘That was not how you began. Light itself was your first love: you loved paint only as a means of telling about light.'

‘Oh, that's ages ago,' said the Ghost. ‘One grows out of that. Of course, you haven't seen my later works. One becomes more and more interested in paint for its own sake.'

‘One does, indeed. I also have had to recover from that. It was all a snare. Ink and catgut and paint were necessary down there, but they are also dangerous stimulants. Every poet and musician and artist, but for Grace, is drawn away from love of the thing he tells, to love of the telling till, down in Deep Hell, they cannot be interested in God at all but only in what they say about Him. For it doesn't stop at being interested in paint, you know. They sink lower—become interested in their own personalities and then in nothing but their own reputations.'

‘I don't think I'm much troubled in
that
way,' said the Ghost stiffly.

‘That's excellent,' said the Spirit. ‘Not many of us had quite got over it when we first arrived. But if there is any of that inflammation left it will be cured when you come to the fountain.'

‘What fountain's that?'

‘It is up there in the mountains,' said the Spirit. ‘Very cold and clear, between two green hills. A little like Lethe. When you have drunk of it you forget forever all proprietorship in your own works. You enjoy them just
as if they were someone else's: without pride and without modesty.'

‘That'll be grand,' said the Ghost without enthusiasm.

‘Well, come,' said the Spirit: and for a few paces he supported the hobbling shadow forward to the East.

‘Of course,' said the Ghost, as if speaking to itself, ‘there'll always be interesting people to meet…'

‘Everyone will be interesting.'

‘Oh—ah—yes, to be sure. I was thinking of people in our own line. Shall I meet Claude? Or Cézanne? Or—.'

‘Sooner or later—if they're here.'

‘But don't you know?'

‘Well, of course not. I've only been here a few years. All the chances are against my having run across them…there are a good many of us, you know.'

‘But surely in the case of distinguished people, you'd hear?'

‘But they aren't distinguished—no more than anyone else. Don't you understand? The Glory flows into everyone, and back from everyone: like light and mirrors. But the light's the thing.'

‘Do you mean there are no famous men?'

‘They are all famous. They are all known, remembered, recognised by the only Mind that can give a perfect judgement.'

‘Oh, of course, in
that
sense…' said the Ghost.

‘Don't stop,' said the Spirit, making to lead him still forward.

‘One must be content with one's reputation among posterity, then,' said the Ghost.

‘My friend,' said the Spirit. ‘Don't you know?'

‘Know what?'

‘That you and I are already completely forgotten on the Earth?'

‘Eh? What's that?' exclaimed the Ghost, disengaging its arm. ‘Do you mean those damned Neo-Regionalists have won after all?'

‘Lord love you, yes!' said the Spirit, once more shaking and shining with laughter. ‘You couldn't get five pounds for any picture of mine or even of yours in Europe or America to-day. We're dead out of fashion.'

‘I must be off at once,' said the Ghost. ‘Let me go! Damn it all, one has one's duty to the future of Art. I must go back to my friends. I must write an article. There must be a manifesto. We must start a periodical. We must have publicity. Let me go. This is beyond a joke!'

And without listening to the Spirit's reply, the spectre vanished.

This conversation also we overheard.

‘That is quite,
quite
out of the question,' said a female Ghost to one of the bright Women, ‘I should not dream of staying if I'm expected to meet Robert. I am ready to forgive him, of course. But anything more is quite impossible. How he comes to be here…but that is your affair.'

‘But if you have forgiven him,' said the other, ‘surely—.'

‘I forgive him as a Christian,' said the Ghost. ‘But there are some things one can never forget.'

‘But I don't understand…' began the She-Spirit.

‘Exactly,' said the Ghost with a little laugh. ‘You never did. You always thought Robert could do no wrong.
I
know. Please don't interrupt for
one
moment. You haven't the faintest conception of what I went through with your dear Robert. The ingratitude! It was I who made a man of him! Sacrificed my whole life to him! And
what was my reward? Absolute, utter selfishness. No, but listen. He was pottering along on about six hundred a year when I married him. And mark my words, Hilda, he'd have been in that position to the day of his death if it hadn't been for me. It was I who had to drive him every step of the way. He hadn't a spark of ambition. It was like trying to lift a sack of coal. I had to positively nag him to take on that extra work in the other department, though it was really the beginning of everything for him. The laziness of men! He said, if you please, he couldn't work more than thirteen hours a day! As if I weren't working far longer. For
my
day's work wasn't over when his was. I had to keep him going all evening, if you understand what I mean. If he'd had his way he'd have just sat in an armchair and sulked when dinner was over. It was I who had to draw him out of himself and brighten him up and make conversation. With no help from him, of course. Sometimes he didn't even listen. As I said to him, I should have thought good manners, if nothing else…he seemed to have forgotten that I was a lady even if I
had
married him, and all the time I was working my fingers to the bone for him: and without the slightest appreciation. I used to spend simply
hours
arranging flowers to make that poky little house nice, and instead of thanking
me, what do you think he said? He said he wished I wouldn't fill up the writing desk with them when he wanted to use it: and there was a perfectly frightful fuss one evening because I'd spilled one of the vases over some papers of his. If was all nonsense really, because they weren't anything to do with his work. He had some silly idea of writing a book in those days…as if he could. I cured him of that in the end.

‘No, Hilda, you
must
listen to me. The trouble I went to, entertaining! Robert's idea was that he'd just slink off by himself every now and then to see what he called his old friends…and leave me to amuse myself! But I knew from the first that those friends were doing him no good. “No, Robert,” said I, “your friends are now mine. It is my duty to have them
here,
however tired I am and however little we can afford it.” You'd have thought that would have been enough. But they did come for a bit. That is where I had to use a certain amount of tact. A woman who has her wits about her can always drop in a word here and there. I wanted Robert to see them against a different background. They weren't quite at their ease, somehow, in my drawing-room: not at their best. I couldn't help laughing sometimes. Of course Robert was uncomfortable while the treatment was going on, but it
was all for his own good in the end. None of that set were friends of his any longer by the end of the first year.

‘And then, he got the new job. A great step up. But what
do
you think? Instead of realising that we now had a chance to spread out a bit, all he said was “Well
now,
for God's sake let's have some peace.” That nearly finished me. I nearly gave him up altogether: but I knew my duty. I have always done my duty. You can't believe the work I had getting him to agree to a bigger house, and then finding a house. I wouldn't have grudged it one scrap if only he'd taken it in the right spirit—if only he'd seen the
fun
of it all. If he'd been a different sort of man it
would
have been fun meeting him on the doorstep as he came back from the office and saying, “Come along, Bobs, no time for dinner to-night. I've just heard of a house near Watford and I've got the keys and we can get there and back by one o'clock.” But with
him!
It was perfect misery, Hilda. For by this time your wonderful Robert was turning into the sort of man who cares about nothing but food.

‘Well, I got him into the new house at last. Yes, I know. It was a little more than we could really afford at the moment, but all sorts of things were opening out before him. And, of course, I began to entertain properly. No
more of his sort of friends, thank you. I was doing it all for his sake. Every useful friend he ever made was due to me. Naturally, I had to dress well. They ought to have been the happiest years of both our lives. If they weren't, he had no one but himself to thank. Oh, he was a maddening man, simply maddening! He just set himself to get old and silent and grumpy. Just sank into himself. He could have looked years younger if he'd taken the trouble. He needn't have walked with a stoop—I'm sure I warned him about that often enough. He was the most miserable host. Whenever we gave a party everything rested on my shoulders: Robert was simply a wet blanket. As I said to him (and if I said it once, I said it a hundred times) he hadn't always been like that. There had been a time when he took an interest in all sorts of things and had been quite ready to make friends. “What on earth is coming over you?” I used to say. But now he just didn't answer at all. He would sit staring at me with his great big eyes (I came to hate a man with dark eyes) and—I know it now—just hating me. That was my reward. After all I'd done. Sheer wicked, senseless hatred: at the very moment when he was a richer man that he'd ever dreamed of being! As I used to say to him, “Robert, you're simply letting yourself go to seed.” The younger men who came to the house—it wasn't my fault if they
liked me better than my old bear of a husband—used to laugh at him.

‘I did my duty to the very end. I
forced
him to take exercise—that was really my chief reason for keeping a great Dane. I kept on giving parties. I took him for the most wonderful holidays. I saw that he didn't drink too much. Even, when things became desperate, I encouraged him to take up his writing again. It couldn't do any harm by then. How could I help it if he
did
have a nervous breakdown in the end? My conscience is clear. I've done my duty by him, if ever a woman has. So you see why it would be impossible to…

‘And yet…I don't know. I believe I have changed my mind. I'll make them a fair offer, Hilda. I will
not
meet him, if it means just meeting him and no more. But if I'm given a free hand I'll take charge of him again. I will take up my burden once more. But I must have a free hand. With all the time one would have here, I believe I could still make something of him. Somewhere quiet to ourselves. Wouldn't that be a good plan? He's not fit to be on his own. Put me in charge of him. He wants firm handling. I know him better than you do. What's that? No, give him to me, do you hear? Don't consult
him:
just give him to me. I'm his wife, aren't I?
I was only beginning. There's lots, lots, lots of things I still want to do with him. No, listen, Hilda. Please, please! I'm so miserable. I must have someone to—to do things to. It's simply frightful down there. No one minds about me at all. I can't alter them. It's dreadful to see them all sitting about and not be able to do anything with them. Give him back to me. Why should he have everything his own way? It's not good for him. It isn't right, it's not fair. I want Robert. What right have you to keep him from me? I hate you. How can I pay him out if you won't let me have him?'

The Ghost which had towered up like a dying candle-flame snapped suddenly. A sour, dry smell lingered in the air for a moment and then there was no Ghost to be seen.