The Great Divorce Read Online Free PDF Page A

whole pack of you…’ In the end, still grumbling, but whimpering also a little as it picked its way over the sharp grasses, it made off.

5
    For a moment there was silence under the cedar trees and then— pad, pad, pad —it was broken. Two velvet-footed lions came bouncing into the open space, their eyes fixed upon each other, and started playing some solemn romp. Their manes looked as if they had been just dipped in the river whose noise I could hear close at hand, though the tree hid it. Not greatly liking my company, I moved away to find that river, and after passing some thick flowering bushes, I succeeded. The bushes came almost down to the brink. It was as smooth as the Thames but flowed swiftly like a mountain stream: pale green where trees overhung it but so clear that I could count the pebbles at the bottom. Close beside me I saw another of the Bright People in conversation with a ghost. It was that fat ghost with the cultured voice who had addressed me in the bus, and it seemed to be wearing gaiters.
    â€˜My dear boy, I’m delighted to see you,’ it was saying to the Spirit, who was naked and almost blindingly white. ‘I was talking to your poor father the other day and wondering where you were.’
    â€˜You didn’t bring him?’ said the other.
    â€˜Well, no. He lives a long way from the bus, and, to be quite frank, he’s been getting a little eccentric lately. A little difficult. Losing his grip. He never was prepared to make any great efforts, you know. If you remember, he used to go to sleep when you and I got talking seriously! Ah, Dick, I shall never forget some of our talks. I expect you’ve changed your views a bit since then. You became rather narrow-minded towards the end of your life: but no doubt you’ve broadened out again.’
    â€˜How do you mean?’
    â€˜Well, it’s obvious by now, isn’t it, that you weren’t quite right. Why, my dear boy, you were coming to believe in a literal Heaven and Hell!’
    â€˜But wasn’t I right?’
    â€˜Oh, in a spiritual sense, to be sure. I still believe in them in that way. I am still, my dear boy, looking for the Kingdom. But nothing superstitious or mythological…’
    â€˜Excuse me. Where do you imagine you’ve been?’
    â€˜Ah, I see. You mean that the grey town with its continual hope of morning (we must all live by hope, must we not?), with its field for indefinite progress, is, in a sense, Heaven, if only we have eyes to see it? That is a beautiful idea.’
    â€˜I didn’t mean that at all. Is it possible you don’t know where you’ve been?’
    â€˜Now that you mention it, I don’t think we ever do give it a name. What do you call it?’
    â€˜We call it Hell.’
    â€˜There is no need to be profane, my dear boy. I may not be very orthodox, in your sense of that word, but I do feel that these matters ought to be discussed simply, and seriously, and reverently.’
    â€˜Discuss Hell reverently ? I meant what I said. You have been in Hell: though if you don’t go back you may call it Purgatory.’
    â€˜Go on, my dear boy, go on. That is so like you. No doubt you’ll tell me why, on your view, I was sent there. I’m not angry.’
    â€˜But don’t you know? You went there because you are an apostate.’
    â€˜Are you serious, Dick?’
    â€˜Perfectly.’
    â€˜This is worse than I expected. Do you really thinkpeople are penalised for their honest opinions? Even assuming, for the sake of argument, that those opinions were mistaken.’
    â€˜Do you really think there are no sins of intellect?’
    â€˜There are indeed, Dick. There is hide-bound prejudice, and intellectual dishonesty, and timidity, and stagnation. But honest opinions fearlessly followed—they are not sins.’
    â€˜I know we used to talk that way. I did it too until the end of my life when I became what you