Part 13 (1/2)
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 fis.h.i.+ng 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----”