The Author surveyed the beggar and slapped his pockets. Never had he seen so miserable a face. It was by no means a prepossessing face, with its aquiline nose, its sloping brows, its dark, deep, bloodshot eyes much too close together, its V-shaped, dishonest mouth and drenched chin-tuft. And yet it was attractively animal and pitiful.
The idea flashed suddenly into the Author"s head: "Why not, instead of going on, thinking emptily, through this beastly weather--why not take this man back home now, to the warm, dry study, and give him a hot drink and something to smoke, and _draw him out_?"
Get something technical and first-hand that would rather score off Kipling.
"Its d.a.m.nably cold!" he shouted, in a sort of hearty, forecastle voice.
"It"s worse than that," said the strange stoker.
"It"s a h.e.l.l of a day!" said the Author, more forcible than ever.
"Don"t remind me of h.e.l.l," said the stoker, in a voice of inappeasable regret.
The Author slapped his pockets again. "You"ve got an infernal cold.
Look here, my man--confound it! would you like a hot grog?..."
[Ill.u.s.tration]
-- 3
The scene shifts to the Author"s study--a blazing coal fire, the stoker sitting dripping and steaming before it, with his feet inside the fender, while the Author fusses about the room, directing the preparation of hot drinks. The Author is acutely aware not only of the stoker but of himself. The stoker has probably never been in the home of an Author before; he is probably awe-stricken at the array of books, at the comfort, convenience, and efficiency of the home, at the pleasant personality entertaining him.... Meanwhile the Author does not forget that the stoker is material, is "copy," is being watched, _observed_. So he poses and watches, until presently he forgets to pose in his astonishment at the thing he is observing. Because this stoker is rummier than a stoker ought to be----
He does not simply accept a hot drink; he informs his host just how hot the drink must be to satisfy him.
"Isn"t there something you could put in it--something called red pepper? I"ve tasted that once or twice. It"s good. If you could put in a bit of red pepper."
"If you can stand that sort of thing?"
"And if there isn"t much water, can"t you set light to the stuff? Or let me drink it boiling, out of a pannikin or something? Pepper and all."
Wonderful fellows, these stokers! The Author went to the bell and asked for red pepper.
And then as he came back to the fire he saw something that he instantly dismissed as an optical illusion, as a mirage effect of the clouds of steam his guest was disengaging. The stoker was sitting, all crouched up, as close over the fire as he could contrive; and he was holding his black hands, not to the fire but _in_ the fire, holding them pressed flat against two red, glowing ma.s.ses of coal.... He glanced over his shoulder at the Author with a guilty start, and then instantly the Author perceived that the hands were five or six inches away from the coal.
Then came smoking. The Author produced one of his big cigars--for although a conscientious pipe-smoker himself he gave people cigars; and then, again struck by something odd, he went off into a corner of the room where a little oval mirror gave him a means of watching the stoker undetected. And this is what he saw.
He saw the stoker, after a furtive glance at him, deliberately turn the cigar round, place the lighted end in his mouth, inhale strongly, and blow a torrent of sparks and smoke out of his nose. His firelit face as he did this expressed a diabolical relief. Then very hastily he reversed the cigar again, and turned round to look at the Author.
The Author turned slowly towards him.
"You like that cigar?" he asked, after one of those mutual pauses that break down a pretence.
"It"s admirable."
"Why do you smoke it the other way round?"
The stoker perceived he was caught. "It"s a stokehole trick," he said.
"Do you mind if I do it? I didn"t think you saw."
"Pray smoke just as you like," said the Author, and advanced to watch the operation.
It was exactly like the fire-eater at a village fair. The man stuck the burning cigar into his mouth and blew sparks out of his nostrils.
"Ah!" he said, with a note of genuine satisfaction. And then, with the cigar still burning in the corner of his mouth, he turned to the fire and _began to rearrange the burning coals with his hands_ so as to pile up a great glowing ma.s.s. He picked up flaming and white-hot lumps as one might pick up lumps of sugar. The Author watched him, dumbfounded.
"I say!" he cried. "You stokers get a bit tough."
The stoker dropped the glowing piece of coal in his hand. "I forgot,"
he said, and sat back a little.
"Isn"t that a bit--_extra_?" asked the Author, regarding him. "Isn"t that some sort of trick?"
"We get so tough down there," said the stoker, and paused discreetly as the servant came in with the red pepper.
"Now you can drink," said the Author, and set himself to mix a drink of a pungency that he would have considered murderous ten minutes before. When he had done the stoker reached over and added more red pepper.
"I don"t quite see how it is your hand doesn"t burn," said the Author as the stoker drank. The stoker shook his head over the uptilted gla.s.s.
"Incombustible," he said, putting it down. "Could I have just a tiny drop more? Just brandy and pepper, if you _don"t_ mind. Set alight. I don"t care for water except when it"s super-heated steam."
And as the Author poured out another stiff gla.s.s of this incandescent brew, the stoker put up his hand and scratched the matted black hair over his temple. Then instantly he desisted and sat looking wickedly at the Author, while the Author stared at him aghast. For at the corner of his square, high, narrow forehead, revealed for an instant by the thrusting back of the hair, a curious stumpy excrescence had been visible; and the top of his ear--he had a pointed top to his ear!
"A-a-a-a-h!" said the Author, with dilated eyes.
"A-a-a-a-h!" said the stoker, in hopeless distress.
"But you aren"t----!"
"I know--I know I"m not. I know.... I"m a devil. A poor, lost, homeless devil."
And suddenly, with a gesture of indescribable despair, the apparent stoker buried his face in his hands and burst into tears.
"Only man who"s ever been decently kind to me," he sobbed. "And now--you"ll chuck me out again into the beastly wet and cold....
Beautiful fire.... Nice drink.... Almost homelike.... Just to torment me.... Boo-ooh!"
And let it be recorded to the credit of our little Author, that he did overcome his momentary horror, that he did go quickly round the table, and that he patted that dirty stoker"s shoulder.
"There!" he said. "There! Don"t mind my rudeness. Have another nice drink. Have a h.e.l.l of a drink. I won"t turn you out if you"re unhappy--on a day like this. Have just a mouthful of pepper, man, and pull yourself together."
And suddenly the poor devil caught hold of his arm. "n.o.body good to me," he sobbed. "n.o.body good to me." And his tears ran down over the Author"s plump little hand--scalding tears.
-- 4
All really wonderful things happen rather suddenly and without any great emphasis upon their wonderfulness, and this was no exception to the general rule. This Author went on comforting his devil as though this was nothing more than a chance encounter with an unhappy child, and the devil let his grief and discomfort have vent in a manner that seemed at the time as natural as anything could be. He was clearly a devil of feeble character and uncertain purpose, much broken down by harshness and cruelty, and it throws a curious light upon the general state of misconception with regard to matters diabolical that it came as a quite pitiful discovery to our Author that a devil could be unhappy and heart-broken. For a long time his most earnest and persistent questioning could gather nothing except that his guest was an exile from a land of great warmth and considerable entertainment, and it was only after considerable further applications of brandy and pepper that the sobbing confidences of the poor creature grew into the form of a coherent and understandable narrative.
And then it became apparent that this person was one of the very lowest types of infernal denizen, and that his role in the dark realms of Dis had been that of watcher and minder of a herd of sinister beings. .h.i.therto unknown to our Author, the Devil"s Wild a.s.ses, which pastured in a stretch of meadows near the Styx. They were, he gathered, unruly, dangerous, and enterprising beasts, amenable only to a certain formula of expletives, which instantly reduced them to obedience. These expletives the stoker-devil would not repeat; to do so except when actually addressing one of the Wild a.s.ses would, he explained, involve torments of the most terrible description. The bare thought of them gave him a shivering fit. But he gave the Author to understand that to crack these curses as one drove the Wild a.s.ses to and from their grazing on the Elysian fields was a by no means disagreeable amus.e.m.e.nt. The a.s.s-herds would try who could crack the loudest until the welkin rang.
And speaking of these things, the poor creature gave a picture of diabolical life that impressed the Author as by no means unpleasant for any one with a suitable const.i.tution. It was like the Idylls of Theocritus done in fire; the devils drove their charges along burning lanes and sat gossiping in hedges of flames, rejoicing in the warm, dry breezes (which it seems are rendered peculiarly bracing by the faint flavour of brimstone in the air), and watching the harpies and furies and witches circling in the perpetual afterglow of that inferior sky. And ever and again there would be holidays, and one would take one"s lunch and wander over the sulphur craters picking flowers of sulphur or fishing for the souls of usurers and publishers and house-agents and land-agents in the lakes of boiling pitch. It was good sport, for the usurers and publishers and house-agents and land-agents were always eager to be caught; they crowded round the hooks and fought violently for the bait, and protested vehemently and entertainingly against the Rules and Regulations that compelled their instant return to the lake of fire.
And sometimes when he was on holiday this particular devil would go through the saltpetre dunes, where the witches-brooms grow and the blasted heath is in flower, to the landing-place of the ferry whence the Great Road runs through the shops and banks of the Via Dolorosa to the New Judgement Hall, and watch the crowds of d.a.m.ned arriving by the steam ferry-boats of the Consolidated Charon Company. This steamboat-gazing seems about as popular down there as it is at Folkestone. Almost every day notable people arrive, and, as the devils are very well informed about terrestrial affairs--for of course all the earthly newspapers go straight to h.e.l.l--whatever else could one expect?--they get ovations of an almost undergraduate intensity. At times you can hear their cheering or booing, as the case may be, right away on the pastures where the Wild a.s.ses feed. And that had been this particular devil"s undoing.