go when our time comes.’
‘That’s true,’ said the father, who was lighting his pipe. When it was lit he turned to the Steward and said: ‘Some of those pigs of George’s have won prizes.’
Everyone except John cheers up on the way home
‘I’d keep ’em if I were you,’ said the Steward. ‘It’s no time for selling now.’
‘Perhaps you’re right,’ said the father.
John walked behind with his mother.
‘Mother.’
‘Well, dear?’
‘Could any of us be turned out without notice like that any day?’
‘Well, yes. But it is very unlikely.’
‘But we might be?’
‘You oughtn’t to be thinking of that sort of thing at your age.’
‘Why oughtn’t I?’
‘It’s not healthy. A boy like you.’
‘Mother.’
‘Yes?’
‘Can we break off the lease without notice too?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Well, the Landlord can turn us out of the farm whenever he likes. Can we leave the farm whenever we like?’
‘No, certainly not.’
‘Why not?’
‘That’s in the lease. We must go when he likes, and stay as long as he likes.’
‘Why?’
‘I suppose because he makes the leases.’
‘What would happen if we did leave?’
‘He would be very angry.’
‘Would he put us in the black hole?’
‘Perhaps.’
‘Mother.’
‘Well, dear?’
‘Will the Landlord put Uncle George in the black hole?’
‘How dare you say such a thing about your poor uncle? Of course he won’t.’
‘But hasn’t Uncle George broken all the rules?’
‘Broken all the rules? Your Uncle George was a very good man.’
‘You never told me that before,’ said John.
Chapter Four
Leah for Rachel
Greed to recover Desire hides the real offer of its return
Then I turned over in my sleep and began to dream deeper still: and I dreamed that I saw John growing tall and lank till he ceased to be a child and became a boy. The chief pleasure of his life in these days was to go down the road and look through the window in the wall in the hope of seeing the beautiful Island. Some days he saw it well enough, especially at first, and heard the music and the voice. At first he would not look through the window into the wood unless he had heard the music. But after a time both the sight of the Island, and the sounds, became very rare. He would stand looking through the window for hours, and seeing the wood, but no sea or Island beyond it, and straining his ears but hearing nothing except the wind in the leaves. And the yearning for that sight of the Island and the sweet wind blowing over the water from it, though indeed these themselves had given him only yearning, became so terrible that John thought he would die if he did not have them again soon. He even said to himself, ‘I would break every rule on the card for them if I could only get them. I would go down into the black hole for ever if it had a window from which I could see the island.’ Then it came into his head that perhaps he ought to explore the wood and thus he might find his way down to the sea beyond it: so he determined that the next day, whatever he saw or heard at the window, he would go through and spend the whole day in the wood. When the morning came, it had been raining all night and a south wind had blown the clouds away at sunrise, and all was fresh and shining. As soon as he had had his breakfast John was out on the road. With the wind and the birds, and country carts passing, there were many noises about that morning, so that when John heard a strain of music long before he had reached the wall and the window—a strain like that which he desired, but coming from an unexpected quarter—he could not be absolutely certain that he had not imagined it. It made him stand still in the road for a minute, and in my dream I could hear him thinking—like this: ‘If I go after that sound—away off the road, up yonder—it is all luck whether I shall find anything at all. But if I go on to the window, there I know I shall reach the wood, and there I can have a good hunt for the shore and the Island. In fact, I shall insist on finding it. I am determined to. But if I go a new way I shall not be able to insist: I shall just have to take what comes.’
He tries to force himself to feel it, but finds (and accepts) Lust instead
So he went on to the place he knew and climbed through the window into the wood. Up and down and to and fro among the trees he walked, looking this way and that: but he found no sea and no shore, and indeed no end to the wood in any direction. When it came to the middle of the day he was so hot that he sat down and fanned himself. Often, of late, when the sight of the Island had been withheld, he had felt sad and despairing: but what he felt now was more like anger. ‘I must have it,’ he kept on saying to himself, and then, ‘I must have something.’ Then it occurred to him that at least he had the wood, which he would once have loved, and that he had not given it a thought all morning. Very well, thought John, I will enjoy the wood: I will enjoy it. He set his teeth and wrinkled his forehead and sat still until the sweat rolled off him in an effort to enjoy the wood. But the more he tried the more he felt that there was nothing to enjoy. There was the grass and there were the trees: ‘But what am I to do with them?’ said John. Next it came into his head that he might perhaps get the old feeling—for what, he thought, had the Island ever given him but a feeling?—by imagining. He shut his eyes and set his teeth again and made a picture of the Island in his mind: but he could not keep his attention on the picture because he wanted all the time to watch some other part of his mind to see if the feeling were beginning. But no feeling began: and then, just as he was opening his eyes he heard a voice speaking to him. It was quite close at hand, and very sweet, and not at all like the old voice of the wood. When he looked round he saw what he had never expected, yet he was not surprised. There in the grass beside him sat a laughing brown girl of about his own age, and she had no clothes on.
‘It was me you wanted,’ said the brown girl. ‘I am better than your silly Islands.’
And John rose and caught her, all in haste, and committed fornication with her in the wood.
Chapter
