The Pilgrim's Regress (25 page)

‘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

‘N
OW,' 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 was 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,

Nor move, nor die; others would get the gold.

Kill, rather, Lord, the men and the other dragons

That I may sleep, go when I will to drink.'

As John listened to this song he forgot to be afraid. Disgust first, and then pity, chased fear from his mind: and after them came a strange desire to speak with the dragon and to suggest some sort of terms and division of the spoil: not that he desired the gold, but it seemed to him a not all ignoble desire to surround and contain so much within oneself. But while these things passed through his imagination, his body took care of him, keeping his grip steady on the sword hilt, his eyes strained into the darkness, and his feet ready to spring: so that he was not taken by surprise when he saw that in the rolling of the mist above him something else was rolling, and rolling round him to enclose him. But still he did not move. The dragon was paying its body out like a rope from a cave just above him. At first it swayed, the great head bobbing vertically, as a caterpillar sways searching for a new grip with half its length while the other half rests still on the leaf. Then the head dived and went behind him. He kept turning round to watch it, and it led the volume of the dragon's body round in a circle and finally went back into the cave, leaving a loop of dragon all round the man. Still John waited till the loop began to tighten, about on a level with his chest. Then he ducked and came up again with a jab of his sword into the under-side of the brute. It went in to the hilt, but there was no blood. At once the head came twisting back out of the cave. Eyes full of cruelty—cold cruelty without a spark of rage in it—stared into his face. The mouth was wide open—it was not red within, but grey like lead—and the breath of the creature was freezing cold. As soon as it touched John's face, everything was changed. A corselet of ice seemed to be closed about him, seemed to shut in his heart, so that it could never again flutter with panic or with greed. His strength was multiplied. His arms seemed to him iron. He found he was laughing and making thrust after thrust into the brute's throat. He found that the struggle was already over—perhaps hours ago. He was standing unwearied in a lonely place among rocks with a dead reptile at his feet. He remembered that he had killed it. And the time before he had killed it seemed very long ago.

IX

The Southern Dragon

J
OHN CAME LEAPING DOWN
the rocks into the road, whistling a tune. The Guide came to greet him, but before they had spoken a word they both turned round in wonder at a great cry from the South. The sun had come out so that the whole marsh glittered like dirty copper: and at first they thought that it was the sun upon his arms that made Vertue flash like flame as he came leaping, running, and dancing towards them. But as he drew nearer they saw that he was veritably on fire. Smoke came from him, and where his feet slipped into the bog holes there were little puffs of steam. Hurtless flames ran up and down his sword and licked over his hand. His breast heaved and he reeled like a drunk man. They made towards him, but he cried out:

‘I have come back with victory got—

But stand away—touch me not

Even with your clothes. I burn red-hot.

‘The worm was bitter. When she saw

My shield glitter beside the shaw

She spat flame from her golden jaw.

‘When on my sword her vomit split

The blade took fire. On the hilt

Beryl cracked, and bubbled gilt.

‘When sword and sword arm were all flame

With the very heat that came

Out of the brute, I flogged her tame.

‘In her own spew the worm died.

I rolled her round and tore her wide

And plucked the heart from her boiling side.

‘When my teeth were in the heart

I felt a pulse within me start

As though my breast would break apart.

‘It shook the hills and made them reel

And spun the woods round like a wheel.

The grass singed where I set my heel.

‘Behemoth is my serving man!

Before the conquered hosts of Pan

Riding tamed Leviathan,

Loud I sing for well I can

R
ESVRGAM
and I
O
P
AEAN
,

I
O
, I
O
, I
O
, P
AEAN
!!

‘Now I know the stake I played for,

Now I know what a worm's made for!'

X

The Brook

M
Y DREAM WAS FULL
of light and noise. I thought they went on their way singing and laughing like schoolboys. Vertue lost all his dignity, and John was never tired: and for ten miles or so they picked up an old fiddler who was going that way, who played them such jigs and they danced more than they walked. And Vertue invented doggerels to his tunes to mock the old Pagan virtues in which he had been bred.

But in the midst of all this gaiety, suddenly John stood still and his eyes filled with tears. They had come to a little cottage, beside a river, which was empty and ruinous. Then they all asked John what ailed him.

‘We have come back to Puritania,' he said, ‘and that was my father's house. I see that my father and mother are gone already beyond the brook. I had much I would have said to them. But it is no matter.'

‘No matter indeed,' said the Guide, ‘since you will cross the brook yourself before nightfall.'

‘For the last time?' said Vertue.

‘For the last time,' said the Guide, ‘all being well.'

And now the day was declining and the Eastern Mountains loomed big and black ahead of them. Their shadows lengthened as they went down towards the brook.