He turned back down the path. This time something new had happened. He was beginning to feel the pressure of the maze, that was the only way that he could describe it. It was almost as if the maze were exerting a force over him. He stopped again and considered. In the beginning, when he had entered the maze in his white shirt, which now for some reason looked soiled, he had felt both in control of himself and the maze. It would be he who would decide what direction he would take, it would be he who would remain detached from the maze, much as one would remain detached from a crossword puzzle while solving it in front of the fire in the evening. But there had been a profound change which he only now recognised. The maze was in fact compelling him to choose, pushing him, making demands on him. It wasn’t simply an arrangement of paths and hedges. It was as if the maze had a will of its own.
Now he began to walk more quickly as if feeling that he didn’t have much time left. In fact he had an appointment with Diana at three o’clock and he mustn’t break it. It would be ridiculous if he arrived late and said, ‘I couldn’t come because I was powerless to do so. I was a prisoner.’ She was sure to think such an explanation odd, not to say astonishing. And in any case if he arrived late she wouldn’t be there. Not that deep down he was all that worried, except that his nonappearance would be bad manners. If he was going to give her a pretext for leaving him, then it must be a more considered pretext than that.
He noticed now that his legs were becoming tired and heavy. He supposed that this was quite logical, as the stone would be absorbing some of the energy that he was losing. But what bothered him more than anything was the feeling that it would be a long time before he would get out of the maze, that he was going round in circles. Indeed he recognised some of the empty cigarette packets that he was passing. They were mostly Players and he was sure that he had seen them before. In fact he bent down and marked some of them with a pen to make sure of later identification. This was the sort of thing that he had read of in books, people going round and round deserts in circles. And yet he thought that he was taking a different path each time. He wiped his face again and felt that he was losing control of himself. He must be if he was going round and round in helpless circles all the time. Maybe if he had a thread or something like that he would be able to strike out on fresh paths. But he didn’t have a thread and some remnant of pride determined that he would not use it, rather like his resolve not to use a dictionary except as a last resort when he was doing a crossword puzzle. He must keep calm. After all, the café and the cemetery were quite visible. It wasn’t as if he was in a prison and couldn’t shout for help if the worst came to the worst. It wasn’t as if he was stranded on a desert island. And yet he knew that he wouldn’t shout for help: he would rather die.
He didn’t see the father and son again but he saw other people. Once he passed a big heavy man with large black-rimmed spectacles who had a briefcase in his hand, which he thought rather odd. The man, who seemed to be in a hurry, seemed to know exactly where he was going. When they passed each other the man didn’t even glance at him, and didn’t smile. Perhaps he looked contemptible to him. It was exactly as if the man was going to his office and the path of the maze was an ordinary high road.
Then again he saw a tall ghostly-looking man passing, and he turned and stared after him. The man was quite tall, not at all squat like the previous one. He looked scholarly, abstracted and grave. He seemed to drift along, inside an atmosphere of his own, and he himself knew as if by instinct that the first man would have no difficulty in solving the riddle of the maze but that the second would. He didn’t know how he knew this, but he was convinced just the same. The maze he now realised was infested with people, men, women and children, young people, old people, middle-aged people. Confident people and ghostly people. It was like a warren and he felt his bones shiver as the thought came to him. How easy it had been to think at the beginning that there was only himself: and now there were so many other people. People who looked straight ahead of them and others who looked down at the ground.
One in particular, with the same brisk air as the black-spectacled man, he had an irresistible desire to follow. The man was grey-haired and soldierly. He, like the first one, didn’t look at him or even nod to him as he passed, and he knew that this was another one who would succeed and that he should follow him. But at the same time it came to him that this would be a failure of pride in himself, that he didn’t want to be like a dog following its master as if he were on a string. The analogy disgusted him. He must not lose control of his will, he must not surrender it to someone else. That would
