by C. S. Lewis
scullery and the kitchen, clapped to with a loud bang, isolating the three men from the women, and a large tin basin fell clattering into the sink. The stranger took a pace further into the room.
‘Sta,’ said Ransom in a loud voice. ‘In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti, dic mihi qui sis et quam ob causam veneris.’ *
The Stranger raised his hand and flung back the dripping hair from his forehead. The light fell full on his face, from which Ransom had the impression of an immense quietness. Every muscle of this man’s body seemed as relaxed as if he were asleep, and he stood absolutely still. Each drop of rain from the khaki coat struck the tiled floor exactly where the drop before it had fallen.
His eyes rested on Ransom for a second or two with no particular interest. Then he turned his head to his left, to where the door was flung back almost against the wall. MacPhee was concealed behind it.
‘Come out,’ said the Stranger in Latin. The words were spoken almost in a whisper, but so deep that even in that windshaken room they made a kind of vibration. But what surprised Ransom much more was the fact that MacPhee immediately obeyed. He did not look at Ransom but at the Stranger. Then, unexpectedly, he gave an enormous yawn. The Stranger looked him up and down and then turned to the Director.
‘Fellow,’ he said in Latin, ‘tell the Lord of this House that I am come.’ As he spoke, the wind from behind him was whipping the coat about his legs and blowing his hair over his forehead; but his great mass stood as if it had been planted like a tree and he seemed in no hurry. And the voice, too, was such as one might imagine to be the voice of a tree, large and slow and patient, drawn up through roots and clay and gravel from the depths of the Earth.
‘I am the Master here,’ said Ransom, in the same language.
‘To be sure!’ answered the Stranger. ‘And yonder whipper-snapper [mastigia] is without doubt your Bishop.’ He did not exactly smile, but a look of disquieting amusement came into his keen eyes. Suddenly he poked his head forward so as to bring his face much nearer to the Director’s.
‘Tell your master that I am come,’ he repeated in the same voice as before.
Ransom looked at him without the flicker of an eyelid.
‘Do you really wish,’ he said at last, ‘that I call upon my Masters?’
‘A daw that lives in a hermit’s cell has learned before now to chatter book-Latin,’ said the other. ‘Let us hear your calling, mannikin’ (homuncio).
‘I must use another language for it,’ said Ransom.
‘A daw could have Greek also in its bill.’
‘It is not Greek.’
‘Let us hear your Hebrew, then.’
‘It is not Hebrew.’
‘Nay,’ answered the other with something like a chuckle, a chuckle deep hidden in his enormous chest and betrayed only by a slight movement of his shoulders, ‘if you come to the gabble of barbarians, it will go hard but I shall out-chatter you. Here is excellent sport.’
‘It may happen to seem to you the speech of barbarians,’ said Ransom, ‘for it is long since it has been heard. Not even in Numinor was it heard in the streets.’
The Stranger gave no start and his face remained as quiet as before, if it did not become quieter. But he spoke with a new interest.
‘Your Masters let you play with dangerous toys,’ he said. ‘Tell me, slave, what is Numinor?’
‘The true West,’ said Ransom.
‘Well,’ said the other. Then, after a pause, he added, ‘You have little courtesy to guests in this house. It is a cold wind on my back, and I have been long in bed. You see, I have already crossed the threshold.’
‘I value that at a straw,’ said Ransom. ‘Shut the door, MacPhee,’ he added in English. But there was no response; and looking round for the first time, he saw that MacPhee had sat down in the one chair which the scullery contained and was fast asleep.
‘What is the meaning of this foolery?’ said Ransom looking sharply at the Stranger.
‘If you are indeed the Master of this house, you have no need to be told. If not, why should I give account of myself to such as you? Do not fear; your horse-boy will be none the worse.’
‘This shall be seen to shortly,’ said Ransom. ‘In the meantime, I do not fear your entering the house. I have more cause to fear your escaping. Shut the door if you will, for you see my foot is hurt.’
The Stranger without ever taking his eyes off Ransom swept back his left hand behind him, found the door handle, and slammed the door to. MacPhee never stirred. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘what of these Masters of yours?’
‘My Masters are the Oyéresu.’
‘Where did you hear that name?’ asked the Stranger. ‘Or, if you are truly of the College, why do they dress you like a slave?’
‘Your own garments,’ said Ransom, ‘are not those of a druid.’
‘That stroke was well put by,’ answered the other. ‘Since you have knowledge, answer me three questions, if you dare.’
‘I will answer them, if I can. But as for daring, we shall see.’
The Stranger mused for a few seconds; then, speaking in a slightly sing-song voice, as though he repeated an old lesson, he asked, in two Latin hexameters, the following question:
‘Who is called Sulva? What road does she walk? Why is the womb barren on one side? Where are the cold marriages?’
Ransom replied, ‘Sulva is she whom mortals call the Moon. She walks in the lowest sphere. The rim of the world that was wasted goes through her. Half of her orb is turned towards us and shares our curse. Her other half looks to Deep Heaven; happy would he be who could cross that frontier and see the fields on her further side. On this side, the womb is barren and the marriages cold. There dwell an accursed people, full of pride and lust. There when a young man takes a maiden in marriage, they do not lie together, but each lies with a cunningly fashioned image of the other, made to move and to be warm by devilish arts, for real flesh will not please them, they are so dainty [delicati] in their dreams of lust. Their real children they fabricate by vile arts in a secret place.’
‘You have answered well,’ said the Stranger. ‘I thought there were but three men in the world that knew this question. But my second may be harder. Where is the ring of Arthur the King? What Lord has such a treasure in his house?’
‘The ring of the King,’ said Ransom, ‘is on Arthur’s finger where he sits in the House of Kings in the cup-shaped land of Abhalljin, beyond the seas of Lur in Perelandra. For Arthur did not die; but Our Lord took him, to be in the body till the end of time and the shattering of Sulva, with Enoch and Elias and Moses and Melchisedec the King. Melchisedec is he in whose hall the steep-stoned ring sparkles on the fore-finger of the Pendragon.’
‘Well answered,’ said the Stranger. ‘In my college it was thought that only two men in the world knew this. But as for my third question, no man knew the answer but myself. Who shall be Pendragon in the time when Saturn descends from his sphere? In what world did he learn war?’
‘In the sphere of Venus I learned war,’ said Ransom. ‘In this age Lurga shall descend. I am the Pendragon.’
When he had said this, he took a step backwards for the big man had begun to move and there was a new look in his eyes. Any who had seen them as they stood thus face to face would have thought that it might come to fighting at any moment. But the Stranger had not moved with hostile purpose. Slowly, ponderously, yet not awkwardly, as though a mountain sank like a wave, he sank on one knee; and still his face was almost on a level with the Director’s.
‘This throws a quite unexpected burden on our resources,’ said Wither to Frost, where they both sat in the outer room with the door ajar. ‘I must confess I had not anticipated any serious difficulty about language.’
‘We must get a Celtic scholar at once,’ said Frost. ‘We are regrettably weak on the philological side. I do not at the moment know who has discovered most about ancient British. Ransom would be the man to advise us if he were available. I suppose nothing has b
een heard of him by your department?’
‘I need hardly point out,’ said Wither, ‘that Dr Ransom’s philological attainments are by no means the only ground on which we are anxious to find him. If the least trace had been discovered, you may rest assured that you would have long since had the–ah–gratification of seeing him here in person.’
‘Of course. He may not be in the Earth at all.’
‘I met him once,’ said Wither, half-closing his eyes.
‘He was a most brilliant man in his way. A man whose penetrations and intuitions might have been of infinite value, if he had not embraced the cause of reaction. It is a saddening reflection…’
‘Of course,’ said Frost, interrupting him. ‘Straik knows modern Welsh. His mother was a Welsh woman.’
‘It would certainly be much more satisfactory,’ said Wither, ‘if we could, so to speak, keep the whole matter in the family. There would be something very disagreeable to me–and I am sure you would feel the same way yourself–about introducing a Celtic expert from outside.’
‘The expert would, of course, be provided for as soon as we could dispense with his services,’ replied Frost. ‘It is the waste of time that is the trouble. What progress have you made with Straik?’
‘Oh, really excellent,’ said the Deputy Director. ‘Indeed I am almost a little disappointed. I mean, my pupil is advancing so rapidly that it may be necessary to abandon an idea which, I confess, rather attracts me. I had been thinking while you were out of the room that it would be specially fitting and–ah–proper and gratifying if your pupil and mine could be initiated together. We should both, I am sure, have felt…But, of course, if Straik is ready some time before Studdock, I should not feel myself entitled to stand in his way. You will understand, my dear fellow, that I am not trying to make this anything like a test case as to the comparative efficacy of our very different methods.’
‘It would be impossible for you to do so,’ said Frost, ‘since I have interviewed Studdock only once, and that one interview has had all the success that could be expected. I mentioned Straik only to find out whether he were already so far committed that he might properly be introduced to our guest.’
‘Oh…as to being committed,’ said Wither, ‘in some sense…ignoring certain fine shades for the moment, while fully recognising their ultimate importance… I should not hesitate…we should be perfectly justified.’
‘I was thinking,’ said Frost, ‘that there must be someone on duty here. He may wake at any moment. Our pupils–Straik and Studdock–could take it in turns. There is no reason why they should not be useful even before their full initiation. They would, of course, be under orders to ring us up the moment anything happened.’
‘You think Mr–ah–Studdock is far enough on?’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Frost. ‘What harm can he do? He can’t get out. And, in the meantime, we only want someone to watch. It would be a useful test.’
MacPhee who had just been refuting both Ransom and Alcasan’s head by a two-edged argument which seemed unanswerable in the dream but which he never afterwards remembered, found himself violently waked by someone shaking his shoulder. He suddenly perceived that he was cold and his left foot was numb. Then he saw Denniston’s face looking into his own. The scullery seemed full of people–Denniston and Dimble and Jane. They appeared extremely bedraggled, torn and muddy and wet.
‘Are you all right?’ Denniston was saying. ‘I’ve been trying to wake you for several minutes.’
‘All right?’ said MacPhee swallowing once or twice and licking his lips. ‘Aye. I’m all right.’ Then he sat upright. ‘There’s been a–a man here,’ he said.
‘What sort of a man?’ asked Dimble.
‘Well,’ said MacPhee. ‘As to that…it’s not just so easy…I fell asleep talking to him, to tell you the truth. I can’t just bring to mind what we were saying.’
The others exchanged glances. Though MacPhee was fond of a little hot toddy on winter nights, he was a sober man: they had never seen him like this before. Next moment he jumped to his feet.
‘Lord save us!’ he exclaimed. ‘He had the Director here. Quick! We must search the house and the garden. It was some kind of impostor or spy. I know now what’s wrong with me. I’ve been hypnotised. There was a horse too. I mind the horse.’
This last detail had an immediate effect on his hearers. Denniston flung open the kitchen door and the whole party surged in after him. For a second they saw indistinct forms in the deep, red light of a large fire which had not been attended to for some hours; then, as Denniston found the switch and turned on the light, all drew a deep breath. The four women sat fast asleep. The jackdaw slept, perched on the back of an empty chair. Mr Bultitude, stretched out on his side across the hearth, slept also; his tiny, child-like snore, so disproportionate to his bulk, was audible in the momentary silence. Mrs Dimble, bunched in what seemed an uncomfortable position, was sleeping with her head on the table, a half-darned sock still clasped on her knees. Dimble looked at her with that incurable pity which men feel for any sleeper, but specially for a wife. Camilla, who had been in the rocking chair, was curled up in an attitude which was full of grace, like that of an animal accustomed to sleep anywhere. Mrs Maggs slept with her kind, commonplace mouth wide open; and Grace Ironwood, bolt upright as if she were awake, but with her head sagging a little to one side, seemed to submit with austere patience to the humiliation of unconsciousness.
‘They’re all right,’ said MacPhee from behind. ‘It’s just the same as he did to me. We’ve no time to wake them. Get on.’
They passed from the kitchen into the flagged passage. To all of them except MacPhee the silence of the house seemed intense after their buffeting in the wind and rain. The lights as they switched them on successively revealed empty rooms and empty passages which wore the abandoned look of indoor midnight–fires dead in the grates, an evening paper on a sofa, a clock that had stopped. But no one had really expected to find much else on the ground floor. ‘Now for upstairs,’ said Dimble.
‘The lights are on upstairs,’ said Jane as they all came to the foot of the staircase.
‘We turned them on ourselves from the passage,’ said Dimble.
‘I don’t think we did,’ said Denniston.
‘Excuse me,’ said Dimble to MacPhee, ‘I think perhaps I’d better go first.’
Up to the first landing they were in darkness; on the second and last the light from the first floor fell. At each landing the stair made a right-angled turn, so that till you reached the second you could not see the lobby on the floor above. Jane and Denniston, who were last, saw MacPhee and Dimble stopped dead on the second landing; their faces in profile lit up, the backs of their heads in darkness. The Ulsterman’s mouth was shut like a trap, his expression hostile and afraid. Dimble was open-mouthed. Then, forcing her tired limbs to run, Jane got up beside them and saw what they saw.
Looking down on them from the balustrade were two men, one clothed in sweepy garments of red and the other in blue. It was the Director who wore blue, and for one instant a thought that was pure nightmare crossed Jane’s mind. The two robed figures looked to be two of the same sort…and what, after all, did she know of this Director who had conjured her into his house and made her dream dreams and taught her the fear of Hell that very night? And there they were, the pair of them, talking their secrets and doing whatever such people would do, when they had emptied the house or laid its inhabitants to sleep. The man who had been dug up out of the earth and the man who had been in outer space…and the one had told them that the other was an enemy, and now, the moment they met, here were the two of them, run together like two drops of quicksilver. All this time she had hardly looked at the Stranger. The Director seemed to have laid aside his crutch, and Jane had hardly seen him standing so straight and still before. The light so fell on his beard that it became a kind of halo; and on top of his head also she caught the glint of gold. Suddenly, while she thought of these things, she f
ound that her eyes were looking straight into the eyes of the Stranger. Next moment she had noticed his size. The man was monstrous. And the two men were allies. And the Stranger was speaking and pointing at her as he spoke.
She did not understand the words; but Dimble did, and heard Merlin saying in what seemed to him a rather strange kind of Latin:
‘Sir, you have in your house the falsest lady of any at this time alive.’
And Dimble heard the Director answer him in the same language:
‘Sir, you are mistaken. She is doubtless like all of us a sinner; but the woman is chaste.’
‘Sir,’ said Merlin, ‘know well that she has done in Logres a thing of which no less sorrow shall come than came of the stroke that Balinus struck. For, Sir, it was the purpose of God that she and her lord should between them have begotten a child by whom the enemies should have been put out of Logres for a thousand years.’
‘She is but lately married,’ said Ransom. ‘The child may yet be born.’
‘Sir,’ said Merlin, ‘be assured that the child will never be born, for the hour of its begetting is passed. Of their own will they are barren: I did not know till now that the usages of Sulva were so common among you. For a hundred generations in two lines the begetting of this child was prepared; and unless God should rip up the work of time, such seed, and such an hour, in such a land, shall never be again.’
‘Enough said,’ answered Ransom. ‘The woman perceives that we are speaking of her.’
‘It would be great charity,’ said Merlin, ‘if you gave order that her head should be cut from her shoulders; for it is a weariness to look at her.’
Jane, though she had a smattering of Latin, had not understood their conversation. The accent was unfamiliar, and the old druid used a vocabulary that was far beyond her reading–the Latin of a man to whom Apuleius and Martianus Capella were the primary classics and whose elegances resembled those of the Hisperica Famina. But Dimble had followed it. He thrust Jane behind him and called out, ‘Ransom! What in Heaven’s name is the meaning of this?’
Merlin spoke again in Latin and Ransom was just turning to answer him, when Dimble interrupted,
‘Answer us,’ he said. ‘What has happened? Why are you dressed up like that? What are you doing with that bloodthirsty old man?’
MacPhee, who had followed the Latin even less than Jane, but who had been staring at Merlin as an angry terrier stares at a Newfoundland dog which has invaded its own garden, broke into the conversation: ‘Dr Ransom,’ he said. ‘I don’t know who the big man is and I’m no Latinist. But I know well that you’ve kept me under your eyes all this night against my own expressed will, and allowed me to be drugged and hypnotised. It gives me little pleasure, I assure you, to see yourself dressed up like something out of a pantomime and standing there hand in glove with that yogi, or shaman, or priest, or whatever he is. And you can tell him he need not look at me the way he’s doing. I’m not afraid of him. And as for my own life and limb–if you, Dr Ransom, have changed sides after all that’s come and gone, I don’t know that I’ve much more use for either. But though I may be killed, I’m not going to be made a fool of. We’re waiting for an explanation.’
The Director looked down on them in silence for a few seconds.
‘Has it really come to this?’ he said. ‘Does not one of you trust me?’