Bondage gives place to liberty—for choices are no longer dictated by the chance occurrences of earlier history, but are made teleologically and in the light of a direct insight into the nature of things. Violence and mere inertia give place to peace—for violence is the manic, and inertia the depressive, phase of that cyclic insanity, which consists in regarding the ego or its social projections as real entities. Peace is the serene activity which springs from the knowledge that our ‘‘souls” are illusory and their creations insane, that all beings are potentially united in eternity. Compassion is an aspect of peace and a result of the same act of knowledge.
Walking at sunset up the castle hill, Pete kept thinking with a kind of tranquil exultation of all the things Mr. Propter had said to him. Barcelona had fallen. Spain, England, France, Germany, America—all were falling; falling even at such times as they seemed to be rising; destroying what they built in the very act of building. But any individual has it in his power to refrain from falling, to stop destroying himself. The solidarity with evil is optional, not compulsory.
On their way out of the carpenter’s shop Pete had brought himself to ask Mr. Propter if he would tell him what he ought to do.
Mr. Propter had looked at him intently. “If you want it,” he had said, “I mean, if you really want it . . .”
Pete had nodded without speaking.
The sun had set; and now the twilight was like the embodiment of peace—the peace of God, Pete said to himself, as he looked across the plain to the distant mountains, the peace that passes all understanding. To part with such loveliness was unbearable. Entering the castle, he went straight to the elevator, recalled the cage from somewhere up aloft, shut himself up with the Vermeer and pressed the highest of the buttons. Up there, at the top of the keep, he would be at the very heart of this celestial peace.
The elevator came to a halt. He opened the gates and stepped out. The swimming pool reflected a luminous tranquillity. He turped his eyes from the water to the sky and from the sky to the mountains; then walked round the pool in order to look down over the battlements on the further side.
“Go away!” a muffled voice suddenly said.
Pete started violently, turned and saw Virginia lying in the shadow almost at his feet.
“Go away,” the voice repeated. “I hate you.”
“I’m sorry,” he stammered, “I didn’t know . . .”
“Oh, it’s you.” She opened her eyes, and in the dim light he was able to see that she had been crying. “I thought it was Sig. He went to get a comb for my hair.” She was silent for a little; then suddenly she burst out, “I’m so unhappy, Pete.”
“Unhappy?” The word and her tone had utterly shattered the peace of God. In an anguish of love and anxiety he sat down beside her on the couch. (Under her bath robe, he couldn’t help noticing, she didn’t seem to be wearing anything at all.) “Unhappy?”
Virginia covered her face with her hands and began to sob. “Not even Our Lady,” she gasped in an inco-herency of grief. “I can’t even tell her. I feel so mean. . .”
“Darling.” he said in a voice of entreaty, as though imploring her to be happy. He began to stroke her hair. “My darling.”
Suddenly there was a violent commotion on the further side of the pool. A crash as the elevator gates were flung back; a rush of feet; an inarticulate yell of rage. Pete turned his head and was in time to see Mr. Stoyte rushing towards them, holding something in his hand, something that might almost have been an automatic pistol.
He had half risen to his feet, when Mr. Stoyte fired.
Arriving two or three minutes later with the comb for Virginia’s hair, Dr. Obispo found the old man on his knees, trying, with a pocket handkerchief, to staunch the blood that was still pouring out of the two wounds, one clean and small, the other cavernous, which the bullet had made as it passed through Pete’s head.
Crouching in the shadow of the battlements, the Baby was praying. “Holy-Mary-Mother-of-God-pray-for-us-sinners-now-and-in-the-hour-of-our-death-Amen,” she repeated, again and again, as fast as her sobs would permit her. Every now and then she would be seized and shaken by an access of nausea, and the praying would be interrupted for a moment. Then it began again where she had left off: “. . . us-sinners-now-and-in-the-hour-of-our-death-Amen-Holy-Mary-Mother-of-God . . .”
Dr. Obispo opened his mouth to make an exclamation, then closed it again, whispered, “Christ!” and walked quickly and silently round the pool. Before making his presence known, he took the precaution of picking up the pistol and slipping it into his pocket. One never knew. Then he called Mr. Stoyte’s name. The old man started and a hideous expression of terror appeared on his face. Fear gave place to relief as he turned round and saw who it was that had spoken to him.
“Thank God, it’s you,” he said; then suddenly remembered that this was the man he had meant to kill. But all that had been a million years ago, a million miles away. The near, immediate, urgent fact was not the Baby, not love or anger; it was fear and this thing that lay here on the ground.
“You got to save him,” he said in a hoarse whisper. “We can say it was an accident. I’ll pay him anything he likes. Anything in reason,” an old reflex impelled him to add. “But you got to save him.” Laboriously, he heaved himself to his feet and motioned Dr. Obispo to his vacated place.
The only movement Dr. Obispo made was one of withdrawal. The old man was covered with blood, and he had no wish to spoil a ninety-five dollar suit. “Save him?” he repeated. “You’re mad. Look at all the brain lying there on the floor.”
From the shadows behind him, Virginia interrupted the sobbing mutter of her prayers to scream. “On the floor,” she kept wailing. “On the floor.”
Dr. Obispo turned on her savagely. “Shut up, do you hear?”
The screams abruptly ceased; but a few seconds later there was a sound of violent retching; then “Holy-Mary-Mother-of-God-pray-for-us-sinners-now-and-in-the-hour of-our-death-Amen-Holy-Mary-Mother-of-God-pray-for-us-sinners . . .”
“If we’re going to try and save anybody” Dr. Obispo went on, “it had better be you. And believe me,” he added emphatically, throwing all his weight on his left leg and using the toe of his right shoe to point at the body, “you need some saving. It’s either the gas chamber or San Quentin for life.”
“But it was an accident,” Mr, Stoyte began to protest with a breathless eagerness. “I mean, it was all a mistake. I never wanted to shoot him. I meant to . . .” He broke off and stood in silence, his mouth working, as though he were trying to swallow some unspoken word.
“You meant to kill me,” said Dr. Obispo completing the sentence for him and smiling, as he did so, with the expression of wolfish good humour which was characteristic of him in any situation where the joke was at all embarrassing or painful. Secure in the knowledge that the old buzzard was much too scared to be angry and that anyhow the gun was in his own pocket, he prolonged the joke by saying, “Well,” sententiously, “that’s what comes of snooping.”
“. . . now-and-in-the-hour-of-our-death-Amen,” Virginia gabbled in the ensuing silence. “Holy-Mary-Mother . . .”
“I never meant it,” Mr. Stoyte reiterated. “I just got mad. Guess I didn’t really figure out what I was doing . . .”
“Tell that to the jury,” said Dr. Obispo sarcastically.
“But I swear it: I didn’t really know,” Mr. Stoyte pro tested. His harsh voice broke grotesquely into a squeak. His face was white with fear.
The doctor shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe,” he said. “But not knowing doesn’t make any difference to that.” He stood on one leg again to point an elegantly shod foot in the direction of the body.
“But what shall I do?” Mr. Stoyte almost screamed in the anguish of his terror.
“Don’t ask me.”
Mr. Stoyte initiated the gesture of laying his hand imploringly on the other’s sleeve; but Dr. Obispo quickly drew back; “No, don’t touch me,” he said, “Just look at your hands.”
Mr. Stoyte looked. The thick, carrot-like fingers were red; under the horny nails the blood was already caked and dry, like clay. “God!” he whispered. “Oh, my God!”
“. . . and-at-the-hour-of-our-death-Amen-Holy-Mary . . .”
At the word “death,” the old man started as though he had been struck with a whip. “Obispo,” he began again, breathless with apprehension, “Obispo! Listen here—you got to help me out of this. You got to help me,” he entreated.
“After you did your best to do that to me?” The white-and-tan shoe shot out again.
“You wouldn’t let them get me?” Mr. Stoyte wheedled, abject in his terror.
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“But you can’t,” he almost shouted. “You can’t.”
Dr. Obispo
