The New Collected Short Stories

  They were silent, watching their own sky. It approved. They had been cultivated men on earth, and these are capable of the nicer torments hereafter. Their memories will strike exquisite images to enhance their pain. ‘I will speak no more,’ said Micky to himself. ‘I will be silent through eternity.’ But the darkness prised open his lips, and immediately he was speaking.

  ‘Tell me more about this abode of bliss,’ he asked. ‘Are there grades in it? Are there ranks in our heaven?’

  ‘There are two heavens,’ the other replied, ‘the heaven of the hard and of the soft. We here lie in the heaven of the soft. It is a sufficient arrangement, for all men grow either hard or soft as they grow old.’

  As he spoke the clouds lifted, and, looking up the slope of the plain, Micky saw that in the distance it was bounded by mountains of stone, and he knew, without being told, that among those mountains Janet lay, rigid, and that he should never see her. She had not been saved. The darkness would mock her, too, for ever. With him lay the sentimentalists, the conciliators, the peacemakers, the humanists, and all who have trusted the warmer vision; with his wife were the reformers and ascetics and all sword-like souls. By different paths they had come to Hell, and Micky now saw what the bustle of life conceals: that the years are bound either to liquefy a man or to stiffen him, and that Love and Truth, who seem to contend for our souls like angels, hold each the seeds of our decay.

  ‘It is, indeed, a sufficient arrangement,’ he said; ‘both sufficient and simple. But answer one question more that my bliss may be perfected; in which of these two heavens are the young?’

  His neighbour answered, ‘In neither; there are no young.’

  He spoke no more, and settled himself more deeply in the dust. Micky did the same. He had vague memories of men and women who had died before reaching maturity, of boys and unwedded maidens and youths lowered into the grave before their parents’ eyes. Whither had they gone, that undeveloped minority? What was the point of their brief existence? Had they vanished utterly, or were they given another chance of accreting experiences until they became like Janet or himself? One thing was certain: there were no young, either in the mountains or the plain, and perhaps the very memory of such creatures was an illusion fostered by cloud.

  The time was now ripe for a review of his life on earth. He traced his decomposition – his work had been soft, his books soft, he had softened his relations with other men. He had seen good in everything, and this is itself a sign of decay. Whatever occurred he had been appreciative, tolerant, pliant. Consequently he had been a success; Adam was right; it was the moment in civilization for his type. He had mistaken self-criticism for self-discipline, he had muffled in himself and others the keen, heroic edge. Yet the luxury of repentance was denied him. The fault was his, but the fate humanity’s, for everyone grows hard or soft as he grows old.

  ‘This is my life,’ thought Micky; ‘my books forgotten, my work superseded. This is the whole of my life.’ And his agony increased, because all the same there had been in that life an elusive joy which, if only he could have distilled it, would have sweetened infinity. It was part of the jest that he should try, and should eternally oscillate between disgust and desire. For there is nothing ultimate in Hell; men will not lay aside all hope on entering it, or they would attain to the splendour of despair. To have made a poem about Hell is to mistake its very essence; it is the imaginations of men, who will have beauty, that fashion it as ice or flame. Old, but capable of growing older, Micky lay in the sandy country, remembering that once he had remembered a country – a country that had not been sand . . .

  He was roused by the mutterings of the spirits round him. An uneasiness such as he had not noted in them before had arisen. ‘A pillar of sand,’ said one. Another said, ‘It is not; it comes from the river.’

  He asked, ‘What river?’

  ‘The spirits of the damned dwell over it; we never speak of that river.’

  ‘Is it a broad river?’

  ‘Swift, and very broad.’

  ‘Do the damned ever cross it?’

  ‘They are permitted, we know not why, to cross it now and again.’

  And in these answers he caught a new tone, as if his companions were frightened, and were finding means to express their fear. When he said, ‘With permission, they can do us no harm,’ he was answered, ‘They harm us with light and a song.’ And again, ‘They harm us because they remember and try to remind.’

  ‘Of what would they remind us?’

  ‘Of the hour when we were as they.’

  As he questioned a whisper arose from the low-lying verges. The spirits were crying to each other faintly. He heard, ‘It is coming; drive it back over the river, shatter it, compel it to be old.’ And then the darkness was cloven, and a star of pain broke in his soul. He understood now; a torment greater than any was at hand.

  ‘I was before choice,’ came the song. ‘I was before hardness and softness were divided. I was in the days when truth was love. And I am.’

  All the plain was convulsed. But the invader could not be shattered. When it pressed the air parted and the sand-pillars fell, and its path was filled with senile weeping.

  ‘I have been all men, but all men have forgotten me. I transfigured the world for them until they preferred the world. They came to me as children, afraid; I taught them, and they despised me. Childhood is a dream about me, experience a slow forgetting: I govern the magic years between them, and am.’

  ‘Why trouble us?’ moaned the shades. ‘We could bear our torment, just bear it, until there was light and a song. Go back again over the river. This is Heaven, we were saying, that darkness is God; we could praise them till you came. The book of our deeds is closed; why open it? We were damned from our birth; leave it there. O, supreme jester, leave us. We have sinned, we know it, and this place is death and Hell.’

  ‘Death comes,’ the voice pealed, ‘and death is not a dream or a forgetting. Death is real. But I, too, am real, and whom I will I save. I see the scheme of things, and in it no place for me, the brain and the body against me. Therefore I rend the scheme in two, and make a place, and under countless names have harrowed Hell. Come.’ Then, in tones of inexpressible sweetness, ‘Come to me all who remember. Come out of your eternity into mine. It is easy, for I am still at your eyes, waiting to look out of them; still in your hearts, waiting to beat. The years that I dwelt with you seemed short, but they were magical, and they outrun time.’

  The shades were silent. They could not remember.

  ‘Who desires to remember? Desire is enough. There is no abiding home for strength and beauty among men. The flower fades, the seas dry up in the sun, the sun and all the stars fade as a flower. But the desire for such things, that is eternal, that can abide, and he who desires me is I.’

  Then Micky died a second death. This time he dissolved through terrible pain, scorched by the glare, pierced by the voice. But as he died he said, ‘I do desire,’ and immediately the invader vanished, and he was standing alone on the sandy plain. It had been merely a dream. But he was standing. How was that? Why had he not thought to stand before? He had been unhappy in Hell, and all that he had to do was to go elsewhere. He passed downwards, pained no longer by the mockery of its cloud. The pillars brushed against him and fell, the nether darkness went over his head. On he went till he came to the banks of the infernal stream, and there he stumbled – stumbled over a piece of wood, no vague substance, but a piece of wood that had once belonged to a tree. At his impact it moved, and water gurgled against it. He had embarked. Some one was rowing. He could see the blades of oars moving towards him through the foam, but the rower was invisible in cloud. As they neared mid-channel the boat went more slowly, for the tide was ebbing, and Micky knew that once carried out he would be lost eternally; there was no second hope of salvation. He could not speak, but his heart beat time to the oars – one, two. Hell made her last effort, and all that is evil in creation, all the distortions of love and truth by which
we are vexed, came surging down the estuary, and the boat hung motionless. Micky heard the pant of breath through the roaring, the crack of muscles; then he heard a voice say, ‘The point of it . . .’ and a weight fell off his body and he crossed mid-stream.

  It was a glorious evening. The boat had sped without prelude into sunshine. The sky was cloudless, the earth gold, and gulls were riding up and down on the furrowed waters. On the bank they had left were some sand-dunes rising to majestic hills; on the bank in front was a farm, full to the brim with fire.

  MR ANDREWS

  The souls of the dead were ascending towards the Judgement Seat and the Gate of Heaven. The world soul pressed them on every side, just as the atmosphere presses upon rising bubbles, striving to vanquish them, to break their thin envelope of personality, to mingle their virtue with its own. But they resisted, remembering their glorious individual life on earth, and hoping for an individual life to come.

  Among them ascended the soul of a Mr Andrews who, after a beneficent and honourable life, had recently deceased at his house in town. He knew himself to be kind, upright and religious, and though he approached his trial with all humility, he could not be doubtful of its result. God was not now a jealous God. He would not deny salvation merely because it was expected. A righteous soul may reasonably be conscious of its own righteousness and Mr Andrews was conscious of his.

  ‘The way is long,’ said a voice, ‘but by pleasant converse the way becomes shorter. Might I travel in your company?’

  ‘Willingly,’ said Mr Andrews. He held out his hand, and the two souls floated upwards together.

  ‘I was slain fighting the infidel,’ said the other exultantly, ‘and I go straight to those joys of which the Prophet speaks.’

  ‘Are you not a Christian?’ asked Mr Andrews gravely.

  ‘No, I am a Believer. But you are a Moslem, surely?’

  ‘I am not,’ said Mr Andrews. ‘I am a Believer.’

  The two souls floated upwards in silence, but did not release each other’s hands. ‘I am broad church,’ he added gently. The word ‘broad’ quavered strangely amid the inter-spaces.

  ‘Relate to me your career,’ said the Turk at last.

  ‘I was born of a decent middle-class family, and had my education at Winchester and Oxford. I thought of becoming a missionary, but was offered a post in the Board of Trade, which I accepted. At thirty-two I married, and had four children, two of whom have died. My wife survives me. If I had lived a little longer I should have been knighted.’

  ‘Now I will relate my career. I was never sure of my father, and my mother does not signify. I grew up in the slums of Salonika. Then I joined a band and we plundered the villages of the infidel. I prospered and had three wives, all of whom survive me. Had I lived a little longer I should have had a band of my own.’

  ‘A son of mine was killed travelling in Macedonia. Perhaps you killed him.’

  ‘It is very possible.’

  The two souls floated upward, hand in hand. Mr Andrews did not speak again, for he was filled with horror at the approaching tragedy. This man, so godless, so lawless, so cruel, so lustful, believed that he would be admitted into Heaven. And into what a heaven – a place full of the crude pleasures of a ruffian’s life on earth! But Mr Andrews felt neither disgust nor moral indignation. He was only conscious of an immense pity, and his own virtues confronted him not at all. He longed to save the man whose hand he held more tightly, who, he thought, was now holding more tightly on to him. And when he reached the Gate of Heaven, instead of saying ‘Can I enter?’ as he had intended, he cried out, ‘Cannot he enter?’

  And at the same moment the Turk uttered the same cry. For the same spirit was working in each of them.

  From the gateway a voice replied, ‘Both can enter.’ They were filled with joy and pressed forward together.

  Then the voice said, ‘In what clothes will you enter?’

  ‘In my best clothes,’ shouted the Turk, ‘the ones I stole.’ And he clad himself in a splendid turban and a waistcoat embroidered with silver, and baggy trousers, and a great belt in which were stuck pipes and pistols and knives.

  ‘And in what clothes will you enter?’ said the voice to Mr Andrews.

  Mr Andrews thought of his best clothes, but he had no wish to wear them again. At last he remembered and said, ‘Robes.’

  ‘Of what colour and fashion?’ asked the voice.

  Mr Andrews had never thought about the matter much. He replied, in hesitating tones, ‘White, I suppose, of some flowing soft material,’ and he was immediately given a garment such as he had described. ‘Do I wear it rightly?’ he asked.

  ‘Wear it as it pleases you,’ replied the voice. ‘What else do you desire?’

  ‘A harp,’ suggested Mr Andrews. ‘A small one.’

  A small gold harp was placed in his hand.

  ‘And a palm – no, I cannot have a palm, for it is the reward of martyrdom; my life has been tranquil and happy.’

  ‘You can have a palm if you desire it.’

  But Mr Andrews refused the palm, and hurried in his white robes after the Turk, who had already entered Heaven. As he passed in at the open gate, a man, dressed like himself, passed out with gestures of despair.

  ‘Why is he not happy?’ he asked.

  The voice did not reply.

  ‘And who are all those figures, seated inside on thrones and mountains? Why are some of them terrible, and sad, and ugly?’

  There was no answer. Mr Andrews entered, and then he saw that those seated figures were all the gods who were then being worshipped on the earth. A group of souls stood round each, singing his praises. But the gods paid no heed, for they were listening to the prayers of living men, which alone brought them nourishment. Sometimes a faith would grow weak, and then the god of that faith also drooped and dwindled and fainted for his daily portion of incense. And sometimes, owing to a revivalist movement, or to a great commemoration, or to some other cause, a faith would grow strong, and the god of that faith grow strong also. And, more frequently still, a faith would alter, so that the features of its god altered and became contradictory, and passed from ecstasy to respectability, or from mildness and universal love to the ferocity of battle. And at times a god would divide into two gods, or three, or more, each with his own ritual and precarious supply of prayer.

  Mr Andrews saw Buddha, and Vishnu, and Allah, and Jehovah, and the Elohim. He saw little ugly determined gods who were worshipped by a few savages in the same way. He saw the vast shadowy outlines of the neo-Pagan Zeus. There were cruel gods, and coarse gods, and tortured gods, and, worse still, there were gods who were peevish, or deceitful, or vulgar. No aspiration of humanity was unfulfilled. There was even an intermediate state for those who wished it, and for the Christian Scientists a place where they could demonstrate that they had not died.

  He did not play his harp for long, but hunted vainly for one of his dead friends. And though souls were continually entering Heaven, it still seemed curiously empty. Though he had all that he expected, he was conscious of no great happiness, no mystic contemplation of beauty, no mystic union with good. There was nothing to compare with that moment outside the gate, when he prayed that the Turk might enter and heard the Turk uttering the same prayer for him. And when at last he saw his companion, he hailed him with a cry of human joy.

  The Turk was seated in thought, and round him, by sevens, sat the virgins who are promised in the Koran.

  ‘Oh, my dear friend!’ he called out. ‘Come here and we will never be parted, and such as my pleasures are, they shall be yours also. Where are my other friends? Where are the men whom I love, or whom I have killed?’

  ‘I, too, have only found you,’ said Mr Andrews. He sat down by the Turk, and the virgins, who were all exactly alike, ogled them with coal black eyes.

  ‘Though I have all that I expected,’ said the Turk, ‘I am conscious of no great happiness. There is nothing to compare with that moment outside the gate when I prayed tha
t you might enter, and heard you uttering the same prayer for me. These virgins are as beautiful and good as I had fashioned, yet I could wish that they were better.’

  As he wished, the forms of the virgins became more rounded, and their eyes grew larger and blacker than before. And Mr Andrews, by a wish similar in kind, increased the purity and softness of his garment and the glitter of his harp. For in that place their expectations were fulfilled, but not their hopes.

  ‘I am going,’ said Mr Andrews at last. ‘We desire infinity and we cannot imagine it. How can we expect it to be granted? I have never imagined anything infinitely good or beautiful excepting in my dreams.’

  ‘I am going with you,’ said the other.

  Together they sought the entrance gate, and the Turk parted with his virgins and his best clothes, and Mr Andrews cast away his robes and his harp.

  ‘Can we depart?’ they asked.

  ‘You can both depart if you wish,’ said the voice, ‘but remember what lies outside.’

  As soon as they passed the gate, they felt again the pressure of the world soul. For a moment they stood hand in hand resisting it. They they suffered it to break in upon them, and they, and all the experience they had gained, and all the love and wisdom they had generated, passed into it, and made it better.

  CO-ORDINATION

  ‘Don’t thump,’ said Miss Haddon. ‘And each run ought to be like a string of pearls. It is not. Why is it not?’

  ‘Ellen, you beast, you’ve got my note.’

  ’No, I haven’t. You’ve got mine.’

  ‘Well, whose note is it?’

  Miss Haddon looked between their pigtails. ‘It is Mildred’s note,’ she decided. ‘Go back to the double bars. And don’t thump.’

  The girls went back, and again the little finger of Mildred’s right hand disputed for middle G with the little finger of Ellen’s left.