He had a horrible fairness of the intellect that made
me despair of his soul. A common, harmless atheist
would have denied that religion produced humility
or humility a simple joy: but he admitted both.
He only said, “But shall I not find in evil a
life of its own? Granted that for every woman
I ruin one of those red sparks will go out: will
not the expanding pleasure of ruin . . .”
“Do you see that fire ?” I asked.
“If we had a real fighting democracy, some
one would burn you in it; like the devil-worshipper
that you are.”
“Perhaps,” he said, in his tired, fair
way. “Only what you call evil I call good.”
He went down the great steps alone, and I felt as
if I wanted the steps swept and cleaned. I followed
later, and as I went to find my hat in the low, dark
passage where it hung, I suddenly heard his voice
again, but the words were inaudible. I stopped,
startled: then I heard the voice of one of the
vilest of his associates saying, “Nobody can
possibly know.” And then I heard those
two or three words which I remember in every syllable
and cannot forget. I heard the Diabolist say,
“I tell you I have done everything else.
If I do that I shan’t know the difference between
right and wrong.” I rushed out without
daring to pause; and as I passed the fire I did not
know whether it was hell or the furious love of God.
I have since heard that he died: it may be said,
I think, that he committed suicide; though he did
it with tools of pleasure, not with tools of pain.
God help him, I know the road he went; but I have
never known, or even dared to think, what was that
place at which he stopped and refrained.
A Glimpse of My Country
Whatever is it that we are all looking for?
I fancy that it is really quite close. When
I was a boy I had a fancy that Heaven or Fairyland
or whatever I called it, was immediately behind my
own back, and that this was why I could never manage
to see it, however often I twisted and turned to take
it by surprise. I had a notion of a man perpetually
spinning round on one foot like a teetotum in the
effort to find that world behind his back which continually
fled from him. Perhaps this is why the world
goes round. Perhaps the world is always trying
to look over its shoulder and catch up the world which
always escapes it, yet without which it cannot be
itself.
In any case, as I have said, I think that we must
always conceive of that which is the goal of all our
endeavours as something which is in some strange way
near. Science boasts of the distance of its stars;
of the terrific remoteness of the things of which it
has to speak. But poetry and religion always
insist upon the proximity, the almost menacing closeness
of the things with which they are concerned.
Always the Kingdom of Heaven is “At Hand”;
and Looking-glass Land is only through the looking-glass.
So I for one should never be astonished if the next
twist of a street led me to the heart of that maze
in which all the mystics are lost. I should
not be at all surprised if I turned one corner in
Fleet Street and saw a yet queerer-looking lamp; I
should not be surprised if I turned a third corner
and found myself in Elfland.
