The Complete Short Stories of Evelyn Waugh - Evelyn Waugh [62]
“Oh, I say,” said Alastair.
“And what’s more, you’re tipsy,” said Dr. Kakophilos relapsing suddenly into everyday speech. Then he became poetic again and Rip yawned and Alastair yawned.
At last Rip said: “Jolly decent of you to tell us all this, old boy; I’ll come in another time to hear the rest. Must be going now, you know.”
“Yes,” said Alastair. “A most interesting evening.”
Dr. Kakophilos removed his crimson hat and mopped his moist, hairless head. He surveyed his parting guests with undisguised disdain.
“Sots,” he said. “You are partakers in a mystery beyond your comprehension. In a few minutes your drunken steps will have straddled the centuries. Tell me, Sir Alastair,” he asked, his face alight with ghastly, facetious courtesy, “have you any preference with regard to your translation? You may choose any age you like.”
“Oh, I say, jolly decent of you . . . Never was much of a dab at History you know.”
“Say.”
“Well, any time really. How about Ethelred the Unready?—always had a soft spot for him.”
“And you, Mr. Van Winkle?”
“Well, if I’ve got to be moved about, being an American, I’d sooner go forwards—say five hundred years.”
Dr. Kakophilos drew himself up. “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.”
“I can answer that one. ‘Love is the law, Love under will.’ ”
“God, we’ve been a long time in that house,” said Alastair as at length they regained the Bentley. “Awful old humbug. Comes of getting tight.”
“Hell, I could do with another,” said Rip. “Know anywhere?”
“I do,” said Alastair and, turning a corner sharply, ran, broadside on, into a mail van that was thundering down Shaftesbury Avenue at forty-five miles an hour.
When Rip stood up, dazed but, as far as he could judge, without specific injury, he was scarcely at all surprised to observe that both cars had disappeared.
There was so much else to surprise him; a light breeze, a clear, star-filled sky, a wide horizon unobscured by buildings. The moon, in her last quarter, hung low above a grove of trees, illumined a slope of hummocky turf and a herd of sheep, peacefully cropping the sedge near Piccadilly Circus and, beyond, was reflected in a still pool, pierced here and there with reed.
Instinctively, for his head and eyes were still aflame from the wine he had drunk and there was a dry, stale taste in his mouth, Rip approached the water. His evening shoes sank deeper with each step and he paused, uncertain. The entrance of the Underground Station was there, transformed into a Piranesi ruin; a black aperture tufted about with fern and some crumbling steps leading down to black water. Eros had gone, but the pedestal rose above the reeds, moss grown and dilapidated.
“Golly,” said Mr. Van Winkle slowly, “the twenty-fifth century.”
Then he crossed the threshold of the underground station and, kneeling on the slippery fifth step, immersed his head in the water.
Absolute stillness lay all around him except for rhythmic, barely audible nibbling of the pastured sheep. Clouds drifted across the moon and Rip stood awed by the darkness; they passed and Rip stepped out into the light, left the grotto and climbed to a grass mound at the corner of the Haymarket.
To the south, between the trees, he could pick out the silver line of the river. Warily, for the ground was full of pits and crevices, he crossed what had once been Leicester and Trafalgar Squares. Great flats of mud, submerged at high water, stretched to his feet over the Strand, and at the margin of mud and sedge was a cluster of huts, built on poles; inaccessible because their careful householders had drawn up the ladders at sunset. Two campfires, almost extinct, glowed red upon platforms of beaten earth. A ragged guard slept with his head on his knees. Two or three dogs prowled below the huts, nosing for refuse, but the breeze was blowing from the riverbank and, though Rip had made some noise in his approach, they gave no alarm. Limitless calm lay on all sides among the monstrous shapes of grassgrown masonry and concrete.