He had always been interested in the career of the Rt. Hon. W. E.
Gladstone....
He was minding the Wild a.s.ses. He knew the risks. He knew the penalties. But when he heard the vast uproar, when he heard the eager voices in the lane of fire saying, "It"s Gladstone at last!" when he saw how quietly and unsuspiciously the Wild a.s.ses cropped their pasture, the temptation was too much. He slipped away. He saw the great Englishman landed after a slight struggle. He joined in the outcry of "Speech! Speech!" He heard the first delicious promise of a Home Rule movement which should break the last feeble links of Celestial Control....
And meanwhile the Wild a.s.ses escaped--according to the rules and the prophecies....
-- 5
The little Author sat and listened to this tale of a wonder that never for a moment struck him as incredible. And outside his rain-lashed window the strung-out fishing smacks pitched and rolled on their way home to Folkestone harbour....
The Wild a.s.ses escaped.
They got away to the world. And his superior officers took the poor herdsman and tried him and bullied him and pa.s.sed this judgement upon him: that he must go to the earth and find the Wild a.s.ses, and say to them that certain string of oaths that otherwise must never be repeated, and so control them and bring them back to h.e.l.l. That--or else one pinch of salt on their tails. It did not matter which. One by one he must bring them back, driving them by spell and curse to the cattle-boat of the ferry. And until he had caught and brought them all back he might never return again to the warmth and comfort of his accustomed life. That was his sentence and punishment. And they put him into a shrapnel sh.e.l.l and fired him out among the stars, and when he had a little recovered he pulled himself together and made his way to the world.
But he never found his Wild a.s.ses and after a little time he gave up trying.
He gave up trying because the Wild a.s.ses, once they had got out of control, developed the most amazing gifts. They could, for instance, disguise themselves with any sort of human shape, and the only way in which they differed then from a normal human being was--according to the printed paper of instructions that had been given to their custodian when he was fired out--that "their general conduct remains that of a Wild a.s.s of the Devil."
"And what interpretation can we put upon _that_?" he asked the listening Author.
And there was one night in the year--Walpurgis Night, when the Wild a.s.ses became visibly great black wild a.s.ses and kicked up their hind legs and brayed. They had to. "But then, of course," said the devil, "they would take care to shut themselves up somewhere when they felt that coming on."
Like most weak characters, the stoker devil was intensely egotistical.
He was anxious to dwell upon his own miseries and discomforts and difficulties and the general injustice of his treatment, and he was careless and casually indicative about the peculiarities of the Wild a.s.ses, the matter which most excited and interested the Author. He bored on with his doleful story, and the Author had to interrupt with questions again and again in order to get any clear idea of the situation.
The devil"s main excuse for his nervelessness was his profound ignorance of human nature. "So far as I can see," he said, "they might all be Wild a.s.ses. I tried it once----"
"Tried what?"
"The formula. You know."
"Yes?"
"On a man named Sir Edward Carson."
"Well?"
"_Ugh!_" said the devil.
"Punishment?"
"Don"t speak of it. He was just a professional lawyer-politician who had lost his sense of values.... How was _I_ to know?... But our people certainly know how to hurt...."
After that it would seem this poor devil desisted absolutely from any attempt to recover his lost charges. He just tried to live for the moment and make his earthly existence as tolerable as possible. It was clear he hated the world. He found it cold, wet, draughty.... "I can"t understand why everybody insists upon living outside of it," he said.
"If you went inside----"
He sought warmth and dryness. For a time he found a kind of contentment in charge of the upcast furnace of a mine, and then he was superseded by an electric-fan. While in this position he read a vivid account of the intense heat in the Red Sea, and he was struck by the idea that if he could get a job as stoker upon an Indian liner he might s.n.a.t.c.h some days of real happiness during that portion of the voyage. For some time his natural inept.i.tude prevented his realizing this project, but at last, after some bitter experiences of homelessness during a London December, he had been able to ship on an Indiaward boat--only to get stranded in Folkestone in consequence of a propeller breakdown. And so here he was!
He paused.
"But about these Wild a.s.ses?" said the Author.
The mournful, dark eyes looked at him hopelessly.
"Mightn"t they do a lot of mischief?" asked the Author.
"They"ll do no end of mischief," said the despondent devil.
"Ultimately you"ll catch it for that?"
"Ugh!" said the stoker, trying not to think of it.
-- 6
Now the spirit of romantic adventure slumbers in the most unexpected places, and I have already told you of our plump Author"s discontents.
He had been like a smouldering bomb for some years. Now, he burst out.
He suddenly became excited, energetic, stimulating, uplifting.
[Ill.u.s.tration: _The Author uplifts the devil._]
He stood over the drooping devil.
"But my dear chap!" he said. "You must pull yourself together. You must do better than this. These confounded brutes may be doing all sorts of mischief. While you--shirk...."
And so on. Real ginger.
"If I had some one to go with me. Some one who knew his way about."
The Author took whisky in the excitement of the moment. He began to move very rapidly about his room and make short, sharp gestures. You know how this sort of emotion wells up at times. "We must work from some central place," said the Author. "To begin with, London perhaps."
It was not two hours later that they started, this Author and this devil he had taken to himself, upon a mission. They went out in overcoats and warm underclothing--the Author gave the devil a thorough outfit, a double lot of Jaeger"s extra thick--and they were resolved to find the Wild a.s.ses of the Devil and send them back to h.e.l.l, or at least the Author was, in the shortest possible time. In the picture you will see him with a field-gla.s.s slung under his arm, the better to watch suspected cases; in his pocket, wrapped in oiled paper, is a lot of salt to use if by chance he finds a Wild a.s.s when the devil and his string of oaths is not at hand. So he started. And when he had caught and done for the Wild a.s.ses, then the Author supposed that he would come back to his nice little villa and his nice little wife, and to his little daughter who said the amusing things, and to his popularity, his large gilt-edged popularity, and--except for an added prestige--be just exactly the man he had always been. Little knowing that whosoever takes unto himself a devil and goes out upon a quest, goes out upon a quest from which there is no returning----
Nevermore.
[Ill.u.s.tration: _Precipitate start of the Wild a.s.s hunters._]
CHAPTER THE NINTH
The Hunting of the Wild a.s.ses of the Devil
-- 1