First and Last Part 19

One day I met a man who was sitting quite silent near Whitney, in the Thames Valley, in a very large, long, low inn that stands in those parts, or at least stood then, for whether it stands now or not depends upon the Fussyites, whose business it is to Fuss, and in their Fussing to disturb mankind.

He had nothing to say for himself at all, and he looked not gloomy but sad. He was tall and thin, with high cheekbones. His face was the colour of leather that has been some time in the weather, and he despised us altogether: he would not say a word to us, until one of the company said, rising from his meat and drink: "Very well, there's a thing we shall never know till the end of the world" (he was talking about some discussion or other which the young men had been holding together).

"There's a thing we shall never know till the end of the world--and about that n.o.body knows!"

"You will pardon me," said the tall, thin, and elderly man with a face like leather that has been exposed to the weather, "I know about the End of the World, for I have been there."

This was so interesting that we all sat down again to listen.

"I wasn't talking of place, but of time," murmured the young man whom the stranger had answered.

"I cannot help that," said the stranger decisively; "the End of the World is the End of the World, and whether you are talking of s.p.a.ce or of time it does not matter, for when you have got to the end you have got to the end, as may be proved in several ways."

"How did you get to it?" said one of our companions.

"That is very simply answered," said the elder man; "you get to it by walking straight in front of you."

"Anyone could do that," said the other.

"Anyone could," said the elder man, "but n.o.body does. I did.... When I was quite a boy in my father's parsonage (for my father was a parson), having heard so much about the End of the World and seeing that people's descriptions of it differed so much and that everybody was quite sure of his own, I used to take my father's friends and guests aside privately, for I was afraid to take my father himself, and I used to ask them how they knew what the End of the World was really like, and whether they had seen it. Some laughed, others were silent, and others were angry; but no one gave me any information. At last I decided (and it was very wise of me) that the only way to find out a thing of that sort was to find it out for one's self, and not to go by hearsay, so I determined to go straight on without stopping until I got to the End of the World."

"Which way did you walk?" said yet another of my companions.

"Young man," said the stranger, with solemnity, "I walked westward toward the setting sun ... I walked and I walked and I walked, day after day and year after year. Whenever I came to the seacoast I would take work on board a ship--and remember it is always easy to get work if you will take the wages that are offered, and always difficult to get it if you will not. Well, then, I went in this way through all known lands and over all known seas, until at last I came to the sh.o.r.e of a sea beyond which (so the people told me who lived there) there was no further sh.o.r.e. 'I cannot help that,' said I; 'I have not yet come to the End of the World, and it is common sense that such a lot of water must have something at the back of it to hold it up; besides which there is a strong wind blowing out of the gates of the west and from the sunset.

Now that wind must rise somewhere, and I am going on to see where it rises.' One of them was kind enough to lend me a boat with oars; I thanked him prettily, and then I set out to row toward the End of the World, taking with me two or three days' provisions.

"When I had rowed a long time I went asleep, and when I woke up next morning I rowed again all day until the second night I went to sleep. On the third day I rowed again: a little before sunset on the third day I saw before me high hills, all in peaks like a great saw. On the very highest of the peaks there were streaks of snow, and at about six o'clock in the afternoon I grounded my boat upon that gravelly sh.o.r.e and pulled it up upon the shingle, though it was evident either that the tide was high or that there was no tide in these silent places.

"I offered up a prayer to the genius of the land, and tied the painter of the boat to two great stones, so that no wave reaching it might move it, and then I went on inland. When I had gone a little way I saw a signpost on which was written, 'To the End of the World One Mile' and there was a rough track along which it pointed. I went along this track.

Everything was completely silent. There were no birds, there was no wind, there was nothing in the sky. But one thing I did notice, which was that the sun was much larger than it used to be, and that as I went along this last mile or so it seemed to get larger still--but that may have been my imagination, for I must tell you my imagination is pretty strong.

"Well then, gentlemen, when I had gone a mile or so I saw another signpost, on which there was a large board marked 'Danger,' and a hundred yards beyond the track went between two great dark rocks--and there I was! The road had stopped short; it was broken off, jagged, just like a torn bit of paper ... and there was the End of the World."

"How do you mean?" said one of the younger men in an awed tone.

"What I say," said the stranger decidedly. "I had come to the end; there was nothing beyond. You looked down over a precipice where there was moss and steep gra.s.s, and on the ledges trees far below, and then more precipice, and then--oh, miles below--a few more trees or so clinging to the steep, then more precipice, and then darkness; and far away before me was the whole expanse of sky; and in the midst of it I saw the broad red sun setting into the brume; it was not yet dark enough to see the stars, and there was no moon in the sky.

"I a.s.sure you it was a very wonderful sight, and I was awed though I was not afraid. And how glad I was to find that the world had an edge to it, and that all that talk about its being round was nonsense!

"When the sun was set it grew dark, and I returned to find my boat; but I must have missed my way, for the track became broader and better, and at last I came to a gate of a human sort, with an initial on it, which showed that it had been put up by some landlord. It was an open gate, and after I had entered it I came upon a broad highway, beautifully metalled, and when I had gone along this for less than half a mile I came to this inn where I am now sitting. That was a week ago, and I have been here ever since. They took me in kindly enough, but they would not believe what I had to tell them about the End of the World. It is a great pity, gentlemen, for that wonderful sight is to be discovered somewhere hereabouts, and a mere accident of my losing my way in the darkness makes it difficult for me to find it by daylight."

Having said all this, the stranger was silent.

One of my companions whispered to me that the old man must be mad. The stranger overheard him, and said with a thin smile:

"Oh, I know all about that; several have suggested it already; but it is no answer, for if I did not come from the End of the World, where did I come from? No one has seen me hereabouts during the last few days until I came to this inn. And all the first part of my journey I can very easily explain, for I have notes of it, and it lasted for years. It is only this last part which seems to me so difficult.... I tell you I lost my way, and when a man has lost his way at night he can never find it again in the daytime."

As he spoke he took a little piece of folded paper, rather dirty, out of his inner pocket, on which a rough sketch-map was drawn, and he began touching it with a stump of pencil that he held in his hand. His eyes seemed to grow dimmer as he did so, and he leaned his head upon his hand. "I think I have got hold of it, gentlemen," he said.

We did not get up or go too near him, for we thought he might be dangerous.

"I think, gentlemen," he repeated in a more mumbling and lower and less certain voice, "I think I have got hold of it. I go backwards again through the gate to the right, just as then I went to the left, and after that it cannot be very far, for I see those two rocks in front of me. Besides which," he muttered less and less coherently, "I ought to have remembered of course those very high and silent hills with nothing living upon them...." And he added, half asleep, as his head dropped upon his hand, "It was westward.... I had forgotten that."

Having so spoken, he seemed to fall asleep altogether, and his head fell back upon the corner of the wainscoting behind the bench where he sat.

He made no noise in breathing as he slept.

It was the first time that any of us young men had come across this fairly common sight of a man who took things within for things without; some of us were frightened, and all of us wished to be rid of the place and to get away. As we went out we told the landlord nothing either of the old fellow's vagaries or of his sleep, but we went out and reached the town of Whitney, and when we had stayed there a couple of hours or so we went out southward to the station and waited there for the train which should take us back to Oxford.

While we were waiting there in the station two farmers were talking together. One said to the other:

"Ar, if he'd paid them they wouldn't have minded so much."

To which the other answered:

"Ar, 'tisn't only the paying: it's always an awkward thing when a man dies in your house, specially if it's licensed. My wife's brother was caught that way."

Then as they went on talking we found that they were talking of the man in the inn, who it seems had not slept very long, but was dead, and had died in that same room. It was a shocking thing to hear. The first farmer said to the second in the railway carriage when we had all got in:

"Where'd he come from?"

The other, who was an old man, grinned and said:

"Where we all come from, I suppose, and where we all go to." He touched his forehead with his hand. "He said he'd come from the End of the World."

"Ar," said the other gloomily in answer, "like enough!" And after that they talked no more about the matter.