it? We were damned from our birth; leave it there. O supreme jester, leave us. We have sinned, we know it, and this place is death and Hell.”
“Death comes,” the voice pealed, “and death is not a dream or a forgetting. Death is real. But I, too, am real, and whom I will I save. I see the scheme of things, and in it no place for me, the brain and the body against me. Therefore I rend the scheme in two, and make a place, and under countless names have harrowed Hell. Come.” Then, in tones of inexpressible sweetness, “Come to me all who remember. Come out of your eternity into mine. It is easy, for I am still at your eyes, waiting to look out of them; still in your hearts, waiting to beat. The years that I dwelt with you seemed short, but they were magical, and they outrun time.”
The shades were silent. They could not remember.
“Who desires to remember? Desire is enough. There is no abiding home for strength and beauty among men. The flower fades, the seas dry up in the sun, the sun and all the stars fade as a flower. But the desire for such things, that is eternal, that can abide, and he who desires me is I.”
Then Micky died a second death. This time he dissolved through terrible pain, scorched by the glare, pierced by the voice. But as he died he said, “I do desire,” and immediately the invader vanished, and he was standing alone on the sandy plain. It had been merely a dream. But he was standing. How was that? Why had he not thought to stand before? He had been unhappy in Hell, and all that he had to do was to go elsewhere. He passed downwards, pained no longer by the mockery of its cloud. The pillars brushed against him and fell, the nether darkness went over his head. On he went till he came to the banks of the infernal stream, and there he stumbled—stumbled over a piece of wood, no vague substance, but a piece of wood that had once belonged to a tree. At his impact it moved, and water gurgled against it. He had embarked. Someone was rowing. He could see the blades of oars moving towards him through the foam, but the rower was invisible in cloud. As they neared mid-channel the boat went more slowly, for the tide was ebbing, and Micky knew that once carried out he would be lost eternally; there was no second hope of salvation. He could not speak, but his heart beat time to the oars—one, two. Hell made her last effort, and all that is evil in creation, all the distortions of love and truth by which we are vexed, came surging down the estuary, and the boat hung motionless. Micky heard the pant of breath through the roaring, the crack of angelic muscles; then he heard a voice say, “The point of it …” and a weight fell off his body and he crossed midstream.
It was a glorious evening. The boat had sped without prelude into sunshine. The sky was cloudless, the earth gold, and gulls were riding up and down on the furrowed waters. On the bank they had left were some sand-dunes rising to majestic hills; on the bank in front was a farm, full to the brim with fire.
Coordination
“Don’t thump,” said Miss Haddon. “And each run ought to be like a string of pearls. It is not. Why is it not?”
“Ellen, you beast, you’ve got my note.”
“No, I haven’t. You’ve got mine.”
“Well, whose note is it?”
Miss Haddon looked between their pigtails. “It is Mildred’s note,” she decided. “Go back to the double bars. And don’t thump.”
The girls went back, and again the little finger of Mildred’s right hand disputed for middle G with the little finger of Ellen’s left.
“It can’t be done,” they said. “It’s the man who wrote it’s fault.”
“It can easily be done if you don’t hold on so long, Ellen,” said Miss Haddon.
struck. Mildred and Ellen went, and Rose and Enid succeeded them. They played the duet worse than Mildred, but not as badly as Ellen. At Margaret and Jane came. They played worse than Rose and Enid, but not as badly as Ellen. At Dolores and Violet came. They played worse than Ellen. At Miss Haddon went to tea with the Principal, who explained why she desired all the pupils to learn the same duet. It was part of her new coordinative system. The school was taking one subject for the year, only one—Napoleon—and all the studies were to bear on that one subject. Thus—not to mention French and History—the Repetition class was learning Wordsworth’s political poems, the literature class was reading extracts from War and Peace, the drawing class copied something of David’s, the needlework class designed Empire gowns, and the music pupils—they, of course, were practising Beethoven’s “Eroica” Symphony, which had been begun (though not finished) in honour of the Emperor. Several of the other mistresses were at tea, and they exclaimed that they loved coordinating, and that it was a lovely system: it made work so much more interesting to them as well as to the girls. But Miss Haddon did not respond. There had been no coordination in her day, and she could not understand it. She only knew that she was growing old, and teaching music worse and worse, and she wondered how soon the Principal would find this out and dismiss her.
Meanwhile, high up in heaven Beethoven sat, and all around him, ranged on smaller clouds, sat his clerks. Each made entries in a ledger, and he whose ledger was entitled “ ‘Eroica’ Symphony: arranged for four hands, by Carl Müller,” was making the following entries: “, Mildred and Ellen; conductor, Miss Haddon. , Rose and Enid; conductor, Miss Haddon. , Margaret and Jane;
