In the presence of these thought traditional morality falters

CHAPTER ONE

Vertue is Sick

I saw the two travellers get up from their sacking and bid good-bye to their hosts, and set out southwards. The weather had not changed, nor did I ever see any other weather over that part of the country than clouds and wind without rain. Vertue himself was out of sorts and made haste without the spirit of haste. Then at last he opened his mind to his companion and said, "John, I do not know what is coming over me. Long ago you asked me--or was it Media asked me--where I was going and why: and I remember that I brushed the question aside. At that time it seemed to me so much more important to keep my rules and do my thirty miles a day. But I am beginning to find that it will not do. In the old days it was always a question of doing what I chose instead of what I wanted: but now I am beginning to be uncertain what it is I choose."

"How has this come about?" said John.

"Do you know that I nearly decided to stay with Savage?"

"With Savage?"

"It sounds like raving, but think it over. Supposing there is no Landlord, no mountains in the East, no Island in the West, nothing but this country. A few weeks ago I would have said that all those things made no difference. But now--I don't know. It is quite clear that all the ordinary ways of living in this country lead to something which I certainly do not choose. I know that, even if I don't know what I do choose. I know that I don't want to be a Halfways, or a Clever, or a Sensible. Then there is the life I have been leading myself--marching on I don't know where. I can't see that there is any other good in it except the mere fact of imposing my will on my inclinations. And that seems to be good training, but training for what? Suppose after all it was training for battle? Is it so absurd to think that that might be the thing we were born for? A fight in a narrow place, life or death;--that must be the final act of will--the conquest of the deepest inclination of all."

"I think my heart will break," said John after they had gone many

Without Desire it finds no motive: with Desire, no morality

paces in silence. "I came out to find my Island. I am not high-minded like you, Vertue: it was never anything but sweet desire that led me. I have not smelled the air from that Island since--since--it is so long that I cannot remember. I saw more of it at home. And now my only friend talks of selling himself to the dwarfs."

"I am sorry for you," said Vertue, "and I am sorry for myself. I am sorry for every blade of grass and for this barren rock we are treading and the very sky above us. But I have no help to give you."

"Perhaps," said John, "there are things East and West of this country after all."

"Do you still understand me so little as that!" cried Vertue, turning on him. "Things East and West! Don't you see that that is the other fatal possibility? Don't you see that I am caught either way?"

"Why?" said John: and then, "Let us sit down. I am tired and we have nowhere to hurry to--not now."

Vertue sat down as one not noticing that he did it.

"Don't you see?" he said. "Suppose there is anything East and West. How can that give me a motive for going on? Because there is something pleasant ahead? That is a bribe. Because there is something dreadful behind? That is a threat. I meant to be a free man. I meant to choose things because I chose to choose them--not because I was paid for it. Do you think I am a child to be scared with rods and baited with sugar plums? It was for this reason that I never even inquired whether the stories about the Landlord were true; I saw that his castle and his black hole were there to corrupt my will and kill my freedom. If is was true it was a truth an honest man must not know."

Evening darkened on the tableland and they sat for a long time, immovable.

"I believe that I am mad," said Vertue presently. "The world cannot be as it seems to me. If there is something to go to, it is a bribe, and I cannot go to it: if I can go, then there is nothing to go to."

"Vertue," said John, "give in. For once yield to desire. Have done with your choosing. Want something."

"I cannot," said Vertue. "I must choose because I choose because I choose: and it goes on for ever, and in the whole world I cannot find a reason for rising from this stone."

Hence conscience can guide John no longer

"It is not reason enough that the cold will presently kill us here?"

It had grown dark, and Vertue made no reply.

"Vertue!" said John, and then suddenly again in a louder voice, frightened, "Vertue!!" But there was no answer. He groped for his friend in the dark and touched the cold dust of the tableland. He rose on his hands and knees and groped about calling. But he was confused and could not even find again the place whence he had risen himself. He could not tell how often he might have groped over the same ground or whether he was getting further and further from their resting-place. He could not be still; it was too cold. So all that night he rummaged to and fro in the dark, calling out Vertue's name: and often it came into his head that Vertue had been all along one of the phantoms of a dream and that he had followed a shade.

CHAPTER TWO

John Leading

I dreamed that morning broke over the plateau, and I saw John rise up, white and dirty, in the new twilight. He looked all round him and saw nothing but the heath. Then he walked this way and that, still looking, and so for a long time. And at last he sat down and wept: that also for a long time. And when he had wept enough he rose like a man determined and resumed his journey southward.

He had hardly gone twenty paces when he stopped with a cry, for there lay Vertue at his feet. I understood in my dream that during his groping in the darkness he had unwittingly gone further and further from the place where they had first sat down.

In a moment John was on his knees and feeling for Vertue's heart. It beat still. He laid his face to Vertue's lips. They breathed still. He caught him by the shoulder and shook him.

"Wake up," he cried, "the morning is here."

Then Vertue opened his eyes and smiled at John, a little foolishly.

"Are you well?" said John. "Are you fit to travel?"

But Vertue only smiled. He was dumb. Then John held out his

"Sick, wearied out with contrarieties, he yields up moral questions in despair"¹⁰⁵ hands and pulled Vertue to his feet: and Vertue stood up uncertainly, but as soon as he made a stride he stumbled and fell, for he was blind. It was long before John understood. Then at last I saw him take Vertue by the hand and, leading him, resume their journey to the South. And there fell upon John that last loneliness which comes when the comforter himself needs comforting, and the guide is to be guided.

CHAPTER THREE

The Main Road Again

They found Mr. Sensible's house empty, as John had expected, with the shutters up and the chimneys smokeless. John decided to push on to the main road and then, if the worst came to the worst, they could go to Mother Kirk: but he hoped it would not come to that.

All their journey South had been a descent, from the northern mountains to Mr. Sensible's: but after his house it began to rise again a little to the main road, which ran along a low ridge, so that, when they had gained the road, the country South of it was suddenly all opened before them. At the same moment there came a gleam of sunshine, the first for many days. The road was unfenced to the heath on its northern side, but in its southern side there was a hedge with a gate in it: and the first thing John saw through the gate was a long low mound of earth. He had not been a farmer's son for nothing. Having led Vertue to the bank of the road and seated him, he lost no time in climbing the gate and digging with both hands into the earthen mound. It contained, as he had expected, turnips; and in a minute he was seated by Vertue, cutting a fine root into chunks, feeding the blind man and teaching him how to feed himself. The sun grew warmer every moment. The spring seemed further on in this place, and the hedge behind them was already more green than brown. Among many notes of birds John thought he could distinguish a lark. They had breakfasted well, and as the warmth increased pleasantly over their aching limbs, they fell asleep.

He looks longingly towards less comfortless modes of thought

CHAPTER FOUR

Going South

When John awoke his first look was towards Vertue, but Vertue was still sleeping. John stretched himself and rose: he was warm and well, but a little thirsty. It was four-cross-road where they had been sitting, for the northern road, at which John looked with a shudder, was but the continuation of a road from the South. He stood and looked down the latter. To his eyes, long now accustomed to the dusty flats of the northern plateau, the country southward was as a rich counterpane. The sun had passed noon by an hour or so, and the slanting light freckled with rounded shadows a green gland, that fell ever away before him, opening as it sank into valleys, and beyond then into deeper valleys again, so that places on the same level where now he stood, yonder were mountain tops. Nearer hand were fields and hedgerows, ruddy ploughland, winding woods, and frequent farm-houses white among their trees. He went back and raised Vertue and was about to show it all to him when he remembered his blindness. Then, sighing, he took him by the hand and went down the new road.

Before they had gone far he heard a bubbling sound by the roadside, and found a little spring pouring itself into a stream that ran henceforth with the road, now at the left, now at the right, and often crossed their way. He filled his hat with water and gave Vertue to drink. Then he drank himself and they went on, always downhill. The road nestled deeper each half-mile between banks of grass. There were primroses, first one or two, then clustered, then innumerable. From many turns of the road John caught sight of the deeper valleys to which they were descending, blue with distance and rounded with the weight of trees: but often a little wood cut off all remoter prospect.

The first house they came to was a red house, old and ivied, and well back from the road, and John thought it had the look of a Steward's house: as they came nearer, there was the Steward himself, without his mask, pottering about at some light gardening labour on the sunny side

and meets Broad Church, modernising, "religion"

of the hedge. John leaned over the gate and asked for hospitality, explaining at the same time his friend's condition.

"Come in, come in," said the Steward. "It will be a great pleasure."

Now I dreamed that this Steward was the same Mr. Broad who had sent a case of sherry to Mr. Sensible. He was about sixty years of age.

CHAPTER FIVE

Tea on the Lawn

"It is almost warm enough to have tea on the lawn," said Mr. Broad. "Martha, I think we will have tea on the lawn."

Chairs were set and all three sat down. On the smooth lawn, surrounded by laurels and laburnum, it was even warmer than in the road, and suddenly a sweet bird-note shot out from the thickets.

"Listen!" said Mr. Broad, "it is a thrush. I really believe it is a thrush."

Maidservants in snowy aprons opened the long windows of the library and came over the grass carrying the tables and trays, the silver teapot and the stand of cakes. There was honey for tea. Mr. Broad asked John some questions about his travels.

"Dear me," he said, when he heard of Mr. Savage, "dear me! I ought to go and see him. And such a clever man, too, by your account...it is very sad."

John went on to describe the three pale men.

"Ah, to be sure," said Mr. Broad. "I knew their father very well. A very able man. I owed a good deal to him at one time. Indeed, as a young man, he formed my mind, I suppose I ought to go and see his boys. Young Angular I have met. He is a dear, good fellow--a little narrow; I would venture to say, even a little old-fashioned, though of course I wouldn't for the world--the two brothers are doing splendidly I have no doubt. I really ought to go and see them. But I am getting on, and I confess it never suits me up there."

"It is a very different climate from this," said John.

"I always think it possible for a place to be too bracing. They call it the land of the Tough-minded--tough-skinned would be a better