(The Kipling Society presents here Kipling’s work as he
wrote it, but wishes to alert readers that the text below
contains some derogatory and/or offensive language)

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IF the Order Above be but the reflection of the Order Below (as that Ancient affirms, who had some knowledge of the Order), it is not outside the Order of Things that there should have been confusion also in the Department of Death. The world’s steadily falling death-rate, the rising proportion of scientifically prolonged fatal illnesses, which allowed months of warning to all concerned, had weakened initiative throughout the Necrological Departments. When the War came, these were as unprepared as civilised mankind; and, like mankind, they improvised and recriminated in the face of Heaven.As Death himself observed to St. Peter, who had just come off The Gate for a rest: ‘One does the best one can with the means at one’s disposal, but——’

‘I know,’ said the good Saint sympathetically. ‘Even with what help I can muster, I’m on The Gate twenty-two hours out of the twenty-four.’

‘Do you find your volunteer staff any real use?’ Death went on. ‘Isn’t it easier to do the work oneself than——’

‘One must guard against that point of view,’ St. Peter returned, ‘but I know what you mean. Office officialises the best of us . . . What is it now?’ He turned to a prim-lipped Seraph who had followed him with an expulsion-form for signature. St. Peter glanced it over. ‘Private R. M. Buckland,’ he read, ‘on the charge of saying that there is no God. ’That all?’

‘He says he is prepared to prove it, sir, and—according to the Rules——’

‘If you will make yourself acquainted with the Rules, you’ll find they lay down that “the fool says in his heart, there is no God.” That decides it; probably shell-shock. Have you tested his reflexes?’

‘No, sir. He kept on saying that there——’

‘Pass him in at once! Tell off some one to argue with him and give him the best of the argument till St. Luke’s free. Anything else?’

‘A hospital-nurse’s record, sir. She has been nursing for two years.’

‘A long while.’ St. Peter spoke severely. ‘She may very well have grown careless.’

‘It’s her civilian record, sir. I judged best to refer it to you.’ The Seraph handed him a vivid scarlet docket.

‘The next time,’ said St. Peter, folding it down and writing on one corner, ‘that you get one of these—er—tinted forms, mark it Q.M.A. and pass bearer at once. Don’t worry over trifles.’ The Seraph flashed off and returned to the clamorous Gate.

‘Which Department is Q.M.A.?’ said Death. St. Peter chuckled .

‘It’s not a department. It’s a Ruling. “Quia multum amavit.” A most useful Ruling. I’ve stretched it to . . . Now, I wonder what that child actually did die of.’

‘I’ll ask,’ said Death, and moved to a public telephone near by. ‘Give me War Check and Audit: English side: non-combatant,’ he began. ‘Latest returns . . . Surely you’ve got them posted up to date by now! . . . Yes ! Hospital Nurse in France . . . No! Not “nature and aliases.” I said—what—was—nature—of—illness? . . . Thanks.’ He turned to St. Peter. ‘Quite normal,’ he said. ‘Heart-failure after neglected pleurisy following overwork.’

‘Good!’ St. Peter rubbed his hands. ‘That brings her under the higher allowanceC,.L.H. scale—“Greater love bath no man—” But my people ought to have known that from the first.’

‘Who is that clerk of yours?’ asked Death. ‘He seems rather a stickler for the proprieties.’

‘The usual type nowadays,’ St. Peter returned. ‘A young Power in charge of some half-baked Universe. Never having dealt with life yet, he’s somewhat nebulous.’

Death sighed. ‘It’s the same with my old Departmental Heads. Nothing on earth will make my fossils on the Normal Civil Side realise that we are dying in a new age. Come and look at them. They might interest you.’

‘Thanks, I will, but— Excuse me a minute! Here’s my zealous young assistant on the wing once more.’

The Seraph had returned to report the arrival of overwhelmingly heavy convoys at The Gate, and to ask what the Saint advised.

‘I’m just off on an inter-departmental inspection which will take me some time,’ said St. Peter. ‘You must learn to act on your own initiative. So I shall leave you to yourself for the next hour or two, merely suggesting (I don’t wish in any way to sway your judgment) that you invite St. Paul, St. Ignatius (Loyola, I mean) and—er—St. Christopher to assist as Supervising Assessors on the Board of Admission. Ignatius is one of the subtlest intellects we have, and an officer and a gentleman to boot. I assure you’—the Saint turned towards Death—‘he revels in dialectics. If he’s allowed to prove his case, he’s quite capable of letting off the offender. St. Christopher, of course, will pass anything that looks wet and muddy.’

‘They are nearly all that now, sir,’ said the Seraph.

‘So much the better; and—as I was going to say—St. Paul is an embarrass—a distinctly strong colleague. Still—we all have our weaknesses. Perhaps a well-timed reference to his seamanship in the Mediterranean—by the way, look up the name of his ship, will you? Alexandria register, I think—might be useful in some of those sudden maritime cases that crop up. I needn’t tell you to be firm, of course. That’s your besetting—er—I mean—reprimand ’em severely and publicly, but—’ the Saint’s voice broke—‘oh, my child, you don’t know what it is to need forgiveness. Be gentle with ’em—be very gentle with ’em!’

Swiftly as a falling shaft of light the Seraph kissed the sandalled feet and was away.

‘Aha!’ said St. Peter. ‘He can’t go far wrong with that Board of Admission as I’ve—er—arranged it.’

They walked towards the great central office of Normal Civil Death, which, buried to the knees in a flood of temporary structures, resembled a closed cribbage-board among spilt dominoes.

They entered an area of avenues and cross-avenues, flanked by long, low buildings, each packed with seraphs working wing to folded wing.

‘Our temporary buildings,’ Death explained. “Always being added to. This is the War-side. You’ll find nothing changed on the Normal Civil Side. They are more human than mankind.’

‘It doesn’t lie in my mouth to blame them,’ said St. Peter.

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‘No, I’ve yet to meet the soul you wouldn’t find excuse for,’ said Death tenderly; ‘but then I don’t—er—arrange my Boards of Admission.’

‘If one doesn’t help one’s Staff, one’s Staff will never help itself,’ St. Peter laughed, as the shadow of the main porch of the Normal Civil Death Offices darkened above them.

‘This facade rather recalls the Vatican, doesn’t it?’ said the Saint.

‘They’re quite as conservative. ’Notice how they still keep the old Holbein uniforms? ’Morning, Sergeant Fell. How goes it?’ said Death as he swung the dusty doors and nodded at a Commissionaire, clad in the grim livery of Death, even as Hans Holbein has designed it.

‘Sadly. Very sadly indeed, sir,’ the Commissionaire replied. ‘So many pore ladies and gentlemen, sir, ’oo might well ’ave lived another few years, goin’ off, as you might say, in every direction with no time for the proper obsequities.’

‘Too bad,’ said Death sympathetically. ‘Well, we’re none of us as young as we were, Sergeant.’

They climbed a carved staircase, behung with the whole millinery of undertaking at large. Death halted on a dark Aberdeen granite landing and beckoned a messenger.

‘We’re rather busy to-day, sir,’ the messenger whispered, ‘but I think His Majesty will see you.’

‘Who is the Head of this Department if it isn’t you?’ St. Peter whispered in turn.

‘You may well ask,’ his companion replied. ‘I’m only—’ he checked himself and went on. ‘The fact is, our Normal Civil Death side is controlled by a Being who considers himself all that I am and more. He’s Death as men have made him—in their own image.’ He pointed to a brazen plate, by the side of a black-curtained door, which read: ‘Normal Civil Death, K.G., K.T., K.P., P.C., etc.’ ‘He’s as human as mankind.’

‘I guessed as much from those letters. What do they mean?’

‘Titles conferred on him from time to time. King of Ghosts; King of Terrors; King of Phantoms; Pallid Conqueror, and so forth. There’s no denying he’s earned every one of them. A first-class mind, but just a leetle bit of a sn——’

‘His Majesty is at liberty,’ said the messenger.

Civil Death did not belie his name. No monarch on earth could have welcomed them more graciously; or, in St. Peter’s case, with more of that particularity of remembrance which is the gift of good kings. But when Death asked him how his office was working, he became at once the Departmental Head with a grievance.

‘Thanks to this abominable war,’ he began testily, ‘my N.C.D. has to spend all its time fighting for mere existence. Your new War-side seems to think that nothing matters except the war. I’ve been asked to give up two-thirds of my Archives Basement (E. 7—E. 64) to the Polish Civilian Casualty Check and Audit. Preposterous! Where am I to move my Archives? And they’ve just been cross-indexed, too!’

‘As I understood it,’ said Death, ’our War-side merely applied for desk-room in your basement. They were prepared to leave your Archives in situ.’

‘Impossible! We may need to refer to them at any moment. There’s a case now which is interesting Us all—a Mrs. Ollerby. Worcestershire by extraction—dying of an internal hereditary complaint. At any moment, We may wish to refer to her dossier, and how can We if Our basement is given up to people over whom We exercise no departmental control? This war has been made excuse for slackness in every direction.’

‘Indeed!’ said Death. ‘You surprise me. I thought nothing made any difference to the N.C.D.’

‘A few years ago I should have concurred,’ Civil Death replied. ‘But since this—this recent outbreak of unregulated mortality there has been a distinct lack of respect toward certain aspects of Our administration. The attitude is bound to reflect itself in the office. The official is, in a large measure, what the public makes him. Of course, it is only temporary reaction, but the merest outsider would notice what I mean. Perhaps you would like to see for yourself?’ Civil Death bowed towards St. Peter, who feared that he might be taking up his time.

‘Not in the least. If I am not the servant of the public, what am I?’ Civil Death said, and preceded them to the landing. ‘Now, this’—he ushered them into an immense but badly lighted office—‘is our International Mortuary Department—the I.M.D. as we call it. It works with the Check and Audit. I should be sorry to say offhand how many billion sterling it represents, invested in the funeral ceremonies of all the races of mankind.’ He stopped behind a very bald-headed clerk at a desk. ‘And yet We take cognizance of the minutest detail, do not We?’ he went on. ‘What have We here, for example?’

‘Funeral expenses of the late Mr. John Shenks Tanner.’ The clerk stepped aside from the redruled book. ‘Cut down by the executors on account of the War from £173:19:1 to £47:18:4. A sad falling off, if I may say so, Your Majesty.’

‘And what was the attitude of the survivors?’ Civil Death asked.

‘Very casual. It was a motor-hearse funeral.’

‘A pernicious example, spreading, I fear, even in the lowest classes,’ his superior muttered. ‘Haste, lack of respect for the Dread Summons, carelessness in the Subsequent Disposition of the Corpse and——’

‘But as regards people’s real feelings?’ St. Peter demanded of the clerk.

‘That isn’t within the terms of our reference, Sir,’ was the answer. ‘But we do know that, as often as not, they don’t even buy black-edged announcement-cards nowadays.’

‘Good Heavens!’ said Civil Death swellingly. ‘No cards! I must look into this myself. Forgive me, St. Peter, but we Servants of Humanity, as you know, are not our own masters. No cards, indeed!’ He waved them off with an official hand, and immersed himself in the ledger.

‘Oh, come along,’ Death whispered to St. Peter. ‘This is a blessed relief!’

They two walked on till they reached the far end of the vast dim office. The clerks at the desks here scarcely pretended to work. A messenger entered and slapped down a small autophonic reel.

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‘Here you are!’ he cried. ‘Mister Wilbraham Lattimer’s last dying speech and record. He made a shockin’ end of it.’

‘Good for Lattimer!’ a young voice called from a desk. ‘Chuck it over!’

‘Yes,’ the messenger went on.‘Lattimer said to his brother: “Bert, I haven’t time to worry about a little thing like dying these days, and what’s more important, you haven’t either. You go back to your Somme doin’s, and I’ll put it through with Aunt Maria. It’ll amuse her and it won’t hinder you.” That’s nice stuff for your boss!’ The messenger whistled and departed. A clerk groaned as he snatched up the reel.

‘How the deuce am I to knock this into official shape?’ he began. ‘Pass us the edifying Gantry Tubnell. I’ll have to crib from him again, I suppose.’

‘Be careful!’ a companion whispered, and shuffled a typewritten form along the desk. ‘I’ve used Tubby twice this morning already.’

The late Mr. Gantry Tubnell must have demised on approved departmental lines, for his record was much thumbed. Death and St. Peter watched the editing with interest.

‘I can’t bring in Aunt Maria any way,’ the clerk broke out at last. ‘Listen here, every one! She has heart-disease. She dies just as she’s lifted the dropsical Lattimer to change his sheets. She says: “Sorry, Willy! I’d make a dam’ pore ’ospital nurse!”; Then she sits down and croaks. Now I call that good! I’ve a great mind to take it round to the War-side as an indirect casualty and get a breath of fresh air.’

‘Then you’ll be hauled over the coals,’ a neighbour suggested.

‘I’m used to that, too,’ the clerk sniggered.

‘Are you?’ said Death, stepping forward suddenly from behind a high map-stand. ‘Who are you?’ The clerk cowered in his skeleton jacket.

‘I’m not on the Regular Establishment, Sir,’ he stammered. ‘I’m a—Volunteer. I—I wanted to see how people behaved when they were in trouble.’

‘Did you? Well, take the late Mr. Wilbraham Lattimer’s and Miss Maria Lattimer’s papers to the War-side General Reference Office. When they have been passed upon, tell the Attendance Clerk that you are to serve as probationer in—let’s see—in the Domestic Induced Casualty Side—7 G.S.’

The clerk collected himself a little and spoke through dry lips.

‘But—but I’m—I slipped in from the Lower Establishment, Sir,’ he breathed.

There was no need to explain. He shook from head to foot as with the palsy; and under all Heaven none tremble save those who come from that class which ‘also believe and tremble.’

‘Do you tell Me this officially, or as one created being to another?’ Death asked after a pause.

‘Oh, non-officially, Sir. Strictly non-officially, so long as you know all about it.’

His awe-stricken fellow-workers could not restrain a smile at Death having to be told about anything. Even Death bit his lips.

‘I don’t think you will find the War-side will raise any objection,’ said he. ‘By the way, they don’t wear that uniform over there.’

Almost before Death ceased speaking, it was ripped off and flung on the floor, and that which had been a sober clerk of Normal Civil Death stood up an unmistakable, curly-haired, bat-winged, faun-eared Imp of the Pit. But where his wings joined his shoulders there was a patch of delicate dove-coloured feathering that gave promise to spread all up the pinion. St. Peter saw it and smiled, for it was a known sign of grace.

‘Thank Goodness!’ the ex-clerk gasped as he snatched up the Lattimer records and sheered sideways through the skylight.

‘Amen!’ said Death and St. Peter together, and walked through the door.

‘Weren’t you hinting something to me a little while ago about my lax methods?’ St. Peter demanded, innocently.

‘Well, if one doesn’t help one’s Staff, one’s Staff will never help itself,’ Death retorted. ‘Now, I shall have to pitch in a stiff demi-official asking how that young fiend came to be taken on in the N.C.D. without examination. And I must do it before the N.C.D. complain that I’ve been interfering with their departmental transfers. Aren’t they human? If you want to go back to The Gate I think our shortest way will be through here and across the War-Sheds.’

They carne out of a side-door into Heaven’s full light. A phalanx of Shining Ones swung across a great square singing

Death halted their leader, and asked a question.

‘We’re Volunteer Aid Serving Powers,’ the Seraph explained, ‘reporting for duty in the Domestic Induced Casualty Department—told off to help relatives, where we can.’

The shift trooped on—such an array of Powers, Honours, Glories, Toils, Patiences, Services, Faiths and Loves as no man may conceive even by favour of dreams. Death and St. Peter followed them into a D.I.C.D. Shed on the English side where, for the moment, work had slackened. Suddenly a name flashed on the telephone-indicator. ‘Mrs. Arthur Bedott, 317, Portsmouth Avenue, Brondesbury. Husband badly wounded. One child.’ Her special weakness was appended.

A Seraph on the raised dais that overlooked the Volunteer Aids waiting at the entrance, nodded and crooked a finger. One of the new shift—a temporary Acting Glory—hurled himself from his place and vanished earthward.

‘You may take it,’ Death whispered to St. Peter, ‘there will be a sustaining epic built up round Private Bedott’s wound for his wife and Baby Bedott to cling to. And here—’they heard wings that flapped wearily—‘here, I suspect, comes one of our failures.’

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A Seraph entered and dropped, panting, on a form. His plumage was ragged, his sword splintered to the hilt; and his face still worked with the passions of the world he had left, as his soiled vesture reeked of alcohol.

‘Defeat,’ he reported hoarsely, when he had given in a woman’s name. ‘Utter defeat! Look!’ He held up the stump of his sword. ‘I broke this on her gin-bottle.’

‘So? We try again,’ said the impassive Chief Seraph. Again he beckoned, and there stepped forward that very Imp whom Death had transferred from the N.C.D.

‘Go you!’ said the Seraph. ‘We must deal with a fool according to her folly. Have you pride enough?’

There was no need to ask. The messenger’s face glowed and his nostrils quivered with it. Scarcely pausing to salute, he poised and dived, and the papers on the desks spun beneath the draught of his furious vans.

St. Peter nodded high approval. ‘I see!’ he said. ‘He’ll work on her pride to steady her. By all means—“if by all means,” as my good Paul used to say. Only it ought to read “by any manner of possible means.” Excellent!’

‘It’s difficult, though,’ a soft-eyed Patience whispered. ‘I fail again and again. I’m only fit for an old-maid’s tea-party.’

Once more the record flashed—a multiple-urgent appeal on behalf of a few thousand men, worn-out body and soul. The Patience was detailed.

‘Oh, me!’ she sighed, with a comic little shrug of despair, and took the void softly as a summer breeze at dawning.

‘But how does this come under the head of Domestic Casualties? Those men were in the trenches. I heard the mud squelch,’ said St. Peter.

‘Something wrong with the installation—as usual. Waves are always jamming here,’ the Seraph replied.

‘So it seems,’ said St. Peter as a wireless cut in with the muffled note of some one singing (sorely out of tune), to an accompaniment of desultory poppings:

‘Unless you can love as the Angels love With the breadth of Heaven be——’

‘Twixt!’ It broke off. The record showed a name. The waiting Seraphs stiffened to attention with a click of tense quills.

‘As you were!’ said the Chief Seraph. ‘He’s met her.’

‘Who is she?’ said St. Peter.

‘His mother. You never get over your weakness for romance,’ Death answered, and a covert smile spread through the Office.

‘Thank Heaven, I don’t. But I really ought to be going——’

‘Wait one minute. Here’s trouble coming through, I think,’ Death interposed.

A recorder had sparked furiously in a broken run of S.O.S.’s that allowed no time for inquiry.

‘Name! Name!’ an impatient young Faith panted at last. ‘It can’t be blotted out.’ No name came up. Only the reiterated appeal.

‘False alarm!’ said a hard-featured Toil, well used to mankind. ‘Some fool has found out that he owns a soul. ‘Wants work. I’d cure him! . . .’

‘Hush!’ said a Love in Armour, stamping his mailed foot. The office listened.

‘’Bad case?’ Death demanded at last.

‘Rank bad, Sir. They are holding back the name,’ said the Chief Seraph. The S.O.S. signals grew more desperate, and then ceased with an emphatic thump. The Love in Armour winced.

‘Firing-party,’ he whispered to St. Peter. ‘’Can’t mistake that noise!’

‘What is it?’ St. Peter cried nervously.

‘Deserter; spy; murderer,’ was the Chief Seraph’s weighed answer. ‘It’s out of my department—now. No—hold the line! The name’s up at last.’

It showed for an instant, broken and faint as sparks on charred wadding, but in that instant a dozen pens had it written. St. Peter with never a word gathered his robes about him and bundled through the door, headlong for The Gate.

‘No hurry,’ said Death at his elbow. ‘With the present rush your man won’t come up for ever so long.’

‘’Never can be sure these days. Anyhow, the Lower Establishment will be after him like sharks. He’s the very type they’d want for propaganda. Deserter—traitor—murderer. Out of my way, please, babies!’

A group of children round a red-headed man who was telling them stories, scattered laughing. The man turned to St. Peter.

‘Deserter, traitor, murderer,’ he repeated. ‘Can I be of service?’

‘You can!’ St. Peter gasped. ‘Double on ahead to The Gate and tell them to hold up all expulsions till I come. Then,’ he shouted as the man sped off at a long hound-like trot, ‘go and picket the outskirts of the Convoys. Don’t let any one break away on any account. Quick!’

But Death was right. They need not have hurried. The crowd at The Gate was far beyond the capacities of the Examining Board even though, as St. Peter’s Deputy informed him, it had been enlarged twice in his absence.

‘We’re doing our best,’ the Seraph explained, ‘but delay is inevitable, Sir. The Lower Establishment are taking advantage of it, as usual, at the tail of the Convoys. I’ve doubled all pickets there, and I’m sending more. Here’s the extra list, Sir—Arc J., Bradlaugh C., Bunyan J., Calvin J. Iscariot J. reported to me just now, as under your orders, and took ’em with him. Also Shakespeare W. and——’

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‘Never mind the rest,’ said St. Peter. I I’m going there myself. Meantime, carry on with the passes—don’t fiddle over ’em—and give me a blank or two.’ He caught up a thick block of Free Passes, nodded to a group in khaki at a passport table, initialled their Commanding Officer’s personal pass as for ‘Officer and Party,’ and left the numbers to be filled in by a quite competent-looking Quarter-master-Sergeant. Then, Death beside him, he breasted his way out of The Gate against the incoming multitude of all races, tongues, and creeds that stretched far across the plain.

An old lady, firmly clutching a mottle-nosed, middle-aged Major by the belt, pushed across a procession of keen-faced poilus, and blocked his path, her captive held in that terrible mother-grip no Power has yet been able to unlock.

‘I found him! I’ve got him! Pass him !’ she ordered.

St. Peter’s jaw fell. Death politely looked elsewhere.

‘There are a few formalities,’ the Saint began.

‘With Jerry in this state? Nonsense! How like a man! My boy never gave me a moment’s anxiety in——’

‘Don’t, dear—don’t!’ The Major looked almost as uncomfortable as St. Peter.

‘Well, nothing compared with what he would give me if he weren’t passed.’

‘Didn’t I hear you singing just now?’ Death asked, seeing that his companion needed a breathing-space.

‘Of course you did,’ the Mother intervened. ‘He sings beautifully. And that’s another reason! You’re bass, aren’t you now, darling?’

St. Peter glanced at the agonised Major and hastily initialled him a pass. Without a word of thanks the Mother hauled him away.

‘Now, under what conceivable Ruling do you justify that ?’ said Death.

‘I.W.—the Importunate Widow. It’s scandalous!’ St. Peter groaned. Then his face darkened as he looked across the great plain beyond The Gate. ‘I don’t like this,’ he said. ‘The Lower Establishment is out in full force to-night. I hope our pickets are strong enough——’

The crowd here had thinned to a disorderly queue flanked on both sides by a multitude of busy, discreet emissaries from the Lower Establishment who continually edged in to do business with them, only to be edged off again by a line of watchful pickets. Thanks to the khaki everywhere, the scene was not unlike that which one might have seen on earth any evening of the old days outside the refreshment-room by the Arch at Victoria Station, when the Army trains started. St. Peter’s appearance was greeted by the usual outburst of cock-crowing from the Lower Establishment.

‘Dirty work at the cross-roads,’ said Death dryly.

‘I deserve it!’ St. Peter grunted, ‘but think what it must mean for Judas.’

He shouldered into the thick of the confusion where the pickets coaxed, threatened, implored, and in extreme cases bodily shoved the wearied men and women past the voluble and insinuating spirits who strove to draw them aside.

A Shropshire Yeoman had just accepted, together with a forged pass, the assurance of a genial runner of the Lower Establishment that Heaven lay round the corner, and was being stealthily steered thither, when a large hand jerked him back, another took the runner in the chest, and some one thundered: ‘Get out, you crimp!’ The situation was then vividly explained to the soldier in the language of the barrack-room.

‘Don’t blame me, Guv’nor,’ the man expostulated. ‘I ’aven’t seen a woman, let alone angels, for umpteen months. I’m from Joppa. Where ’you from?’

‘Northampton,’ was the answer. ‘Rein back and keep by me.’

‘What? You ain’t ever Charley B. that my dad used to tell about? I thought you always said——’

‘I shall say a deal more soon. Your Sergeant’s talking to that woman in red. Fetch him in—quick!’

Meantime, a sunken-eyed Scots officer, utterly lost to the riot around, was being button-holed by a person of reverend aspect who explained to him that, by the logic of his own ancestral creed, not only was the Highlander irrevocably damned, but that his damnation had been predetermined before Earth was made.

‘It’s unanswerable—just unanswerable,’ said the young man sorrowfully. ‘I’ll be with ye.’ He was moving off, when a smallish figure interposed, not without dignity.

‘Monsieur,’ it said, ‘would it be of any comfort to you to know that I am—I was—John Calvin?’ At this the reverend one cursed and swore like the lost Soul he was, while the Highlander turned to discuss with Calvin, pacing towards The Gate, some alterations in the fabric of a work of fiction called the Institutio.

Others were not so easily held. A certain Woman, with loosened hair, bare arms, flashing eyes and dancing feet, shepherded her knot of waverers, hoarse and exhausted. When the taunt broke out against her from the opposing line: ‘Tell ’em what you were! Tell ’em if you dare!’ she answered unflinchingly, as did Judas, who, worming through the crowd like an Armenian carpet-vendor, peddled his shame aloud that it might give strength to others.

‘Yes,’ he would cry, ‘I am everything they say, but if I’m here it must be a moral cert for you gents. This way, please. Many mansions, gentlemen! Go-ood billets! Don’t you notice these low people, Sar. Plees keep hope, gentlemen i’

When there were cases that cried to him from the ground—poor souls who could not stick it but had found their way out with a rifle and a boot-lace, he would tell them of his own end, till he made them contemptuous enough to rise up and curse him. Here St. Luke’s imperturbable bedside manner backed and strengthened the other’s almost too oriental flux of words.

In this fashion and step by step, all the day’s Convoy were piloted past that danger-point where the Lower Establishment are, for reasons not given us, allowed to ply their trade. The pickets dropped to the rear, relaxed, and compared notes.

‘What always impresses me most,’ said Death to St. Peter, ‘is the sheeplike simplicity of the intellectual mind.’ He had been watching one of the pickets apparently overwhelmed by the arguments of an advanced atheist who—so hot in his argument that he was deaf to the offers of the Lower Establishment to make him a god—had stalked, talking hard—while the picket always gave ground before him—straight past the Broad Road.

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‘He was plaiting of long-tagged epigrams,’ the sober-faced picket smiled. ‘Give that sort only an ear and they’ll follow ye gobbling like turkeys.’

‘And John held his peace through it all,’ a full fresh voice broke in. ‘“It may be so,” says John. “Doubtless, in your belief, it is so,” says John. “Your words move me mightily,” says John, and gorges his own beliefs like a pike going backwards. And that young fool, so busy spinning words—words—words—that he trips past Hell Mouth without seeing it! . . . Who’s yonder, Joan?’

‘One of your English. ’Always late. Look!’ A young girl with short-cropped hair pointed with her sword across the plain towards a single faltering figure which made at first as though to overtake the Convoy, but then turned left towards the Lower Establishment, who were enthusiastically cheering him as a leader of enterprise.

‘That’s my traitor,’ said St. Peter. ‘He has no business to report to the Lower Establishment before reporting to Convoy.’

The figure’s pace slackened as he neared the applauding line. He looked over his shoulder once or twice, and then fairly turned tail and fled again towards the still Convoy.

‘Nobody ever gave me credit for anything I did,’ he began, sobbing and gesticulating. ‘They were all against me from the first. I only wanted a little encouragement. It was a regular conspiracy, but I showed ’em what I could do! I showed ’em! And—and—’ he halted again. ‘Oh, God! What are you going to do with me?’

No one offered any suggestion. He ranged sideways like a doubtful dog, while across the plain the Lower Establishment murmured seductively. All eyes turned to St. Peter.

‘At this moment,’ the Saint said half to himself, ‘I can’t recall any precise ruling under which——’

‘My own case?’ the ever-ready Judas suggested.

‘No-o ! That’s making too much of it. And yet——’

‘Oh, hurry up and get it over,’ the man wailed, and told them all that he had done, ending with the cry that none had ever recognised his merits; neither his own narrow-minded people, his inefficient employers, nor the snobbish jumped-up officers of his battalion.

‘You see,’ said St. Peter at the end. ‘It’s sheer vanity. It isn’t even as if we had a woman to fall back upon.’

‘Yet there was a woman or I’m mistaken,’ said the picket with the pleasing voice who had praised John.

‘Eh—what? When?’ St. Peter turned swiftly on the speaker. ‘Who was the woman?’

‘The wise woman of Tekoah,’ came the smooth answer. ‘I remember, because that verse was the private heart of my plays—some of ’em.’

But the Saint was not listening. ‘You have it!’ he cried. ‘Samuel Two, Double Fourteen. To think that I should have forgotten! “For we must needs die and are as water spilled on the ground which cannot be gathered up again. Neither Both God respect any person, yet—” Here, you! Listen to this!’

The man stepped forward and stood to attention. Some one took his cap as Judas and the picket John closed up beside him.

‘“Yet doth He devise means (d’you understand that?) devise means that His banished be not expelled from Him!” This covers your case. I don’t know what the means will be. That’s for you to find out. They’ll tell you yonder.’ He nodded towards the now silent Lower Establishment as he scribbled on a pass. ‘Take this paper over to them and report for duty there. You’ll have a thin time of it; but they won’t keep you a day longer than I’ve put down. Escort!’

‘Does—does that mean there’s any hope?’ the man stammered.

‘Yes—I’ll show you the way,’ Judas whispered. ‘I’ve lived there—a very long time.’

‘I’ll bear you company a piece,’ said John, on his left flank. ‘There’ll be Despair to deal with. Heart up, Mr. Littlesoul!’

The three wheeled off, and the Convoy watched them grow smaller and smaller across the plain.

St. Peter smiled benignantly and rubbed his hands.

‘And now we’re rested,’ said he, ‘I think we might make a push for billets this evening, gentlemen, eh?’

The pickets fell in, guardians no longer but friends and companions all down the line. There was a little burst of cheering and the whole Convoy strode away towards the not so distant Gate.

The Saint and Death stayed behind to rest awhile. It was a heavenly evening. They could hear the whistle of the low-flighting Cherubim, clear and sharp, under the diviner note of some released Seraph’s wings, where, his errand accomplished, he plunged three or four stars deep into the cool Baths of Hercules; the steady dynamo-like hum of the nearer planets on their axes; and, as the hush deepened, the surprised little sigh of some new-born sun a universe of universes away. But their minds were with the Convoy that their eyes followed.

Said St. Peter proudly at last: ‘If those people of mine had seen that fellow stripped of all hope in front of ’em, I doubt if they could have marched another yard to-night. Watch ’em stepping out now, though! Aren’t they human?’

‘To whom do you say it?’ Death answered, with something of a tired smile. ‘I’m more than human. I’ve got to die some time or other. But all other created Beings—afterwards . . .’

‘I know,’ said St. Peter softly. ‘And that is why I love you, O Azrael!’

For now they were alone Death had, of course, returned to his true majestic shape—that only One of all created beings who is doomed to perish utterly, and knows it.

‘Well, that’s that—for me!’ Death concluded as he rose. ‘And yet—’ he glanced towards the empty plain where the Lower Establishment had withdrawn with their prisoner. ‘“Yet doth He devise means.”’

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IT was change of the morning watch in Hades – the hour when, despite all precaution, fires die down, pressures drop, and the merciless dynamos that have been torturing poor souls all night slack a few revolutions, ere they picked up again for the long day’s load. The stokers of Nos. 47-53 Auxiliary Furnaces stood easy over their bowls of raw cocoa. A lost soul, with workmanlike dog-teeth and the shadow of a rudimentary tail, complained loudly against his fate.

‘I was the strongest of Our Primitive Community,’ he bellowed, ‘so, of course, I hit them and bit them till they did what I wanted. And just when I had brought them to their knees, some dog—yes, you, Haka! — found out that he could throw a stone farther than I could reach. He threw it and it killed me. Justice! Give me justice, Somebody!’

‘I’m sorry,’ a long-armed, heavily-scarred shape replied. ‘But I should never have thought of stone-throwing if you hadn’t torn me nearly to ribbons. Don’t bear malice. I got nothing out of the trick in the long run. I battered my Tribe to their knees with boulders, and then, just when they ought to have stayed quiet, Fenir yonder, a coward who couldn’t stand up to a friendly little tap on the head, invented some despicable weapons called bows and arrows and laid me out howling at eighty yards. Was that justice?’

A slim, keen-faced shadow laughed as it blew upon its drink. ‘Surely, Haka,’ it said, ‘you couldn’t expect me to stand still and be stoned for ever. Besides — you killed my sister, two wives, and an uncle with your ‘friendly little taps.’ You were welcome to Uncle, but two perfectly good wives was rank oppression. You forced me to think how I could get even with you, and the Bow was the result. I hope you liked it. It gave me power, and all the power, for a day’s march round about — brought the toughest Tribe to their knees whimpering. But they wouldn’t leave well alone. Oisinn, you poltroon,’ — he turned to a smiling companion seated on a barrow — ‘What in — in this place — led you to invent armour?’

‘Pain, chum — just pain,’ Oisinn replied. ‘With one of your arrows in my thigh and another in my forearm, it was a case of protecting myself or bleeding to death. So I protected myself. There’s nothing like armour! Does anyone remember how our knights in mail used to ride through the naked peasantry, sword in one hand, battle-axe in t’other, with the arrows hopping off their breast-plates like hail, while the poor wretches dropped on their knees and begged for mercy? Ah! That was the age of Chivalry! Here’s confusion to the charcoal-peddling churl who stumbled on gunpowder and put an end to it!’

He flung the dregs of his cup sizzling against a furnace-door.

‘That’s me, I suppose,’ a fat Friar grunted. ‘Surely to Badness, Oisinn, you didn’t think folk would line up twelve deep for the rest of their natural lives while your plated knights made hash of ’em! Chivalry indeed! People had to live! I remember the morning my powder put a cannon-ball through four armoured knights on end. You never saw such a mess! And when the news came to Milan, those Milanese armourers swore like — like that silversmith at Ephesus. Demetrius, wasn’t it? I don’t blame ’em. Their trade was gone. In less time than a generation we had all our iron-clad community clinking on its marrow-bones before a dirty little culverin. Here’s to good old powder, Oisinn! It blew me through my own cell-window, but it’s the greatest invention of my or any age.’

‘D’you really think so, Brother Roger?’ said a pale, intellectual- looking Pope, as he wiped his face with a sweat-rag. ‘When I held the Keys of—er—in short, when I held the Keys I confided more in spiritual weapons — Interdicts, Inquisitions, and such-like. I’ve seen whole nations on their knees at the mere threat of an Interdict. No marrying, no burying, no christening, no Church or parish feasts, nothing but black spiritual darkness till they had made their peace with Me! But ours was a perverse world! At the very moment that I had it neatly shepherded on the road to Heaven, some villains — I regret the Ringleaders are not with us today — invented an irreligious printing engine called a printing-press, which they offered as a substitute for Me! For Me and my Interdicts! Now why, in Reason’s name?’

A small, merry-faced compositor of Caxton’s chapel sniggered where he sprawled among a pile of cooling clinkers.

‘Your Holiness does not realise,’ he began, ‘how tired we grew of your Holiness’s Interdicts. We noticed, too, that no suit could lie against any of your Holiness’s priests for any torturous or tortuous act, because (your Holiness passed the law yourself, I think), because your priests could read and write. Naturally, we all wanted to read and write. It was purely a question of demand and supply. Your Holiness, if I may say so, created the demand with your Holiness’s strong hand. My illustrious Master supplied it with its press.’

‘Then it would seem,’ the Pope said slowly, ‘as though I were in a measure responsible for the new invention.’

‘So it struck us at the time,’ said the compositor.

‘I — I — I,’ the Tailed Man stammered, ‘was just going to say the same thing. By your argument, I am responsible for Haka’s stone- throwing.’ He scowled furiously at the scarred man.

‘Who else? You hit me and bit me into it. And so, it follows,’ Haka went on, ‘that I and not you, Fenir, invented the bow and arrow.’

‘I see,’ Fenir responded. ‘Then I with my little arrow drove Oisinn here to invent armour, which means —’

‘That I,’ Oisinn interrupted, pointing at Friar Bacon, ‘am really the creator of gunpowder! Evidently we are all public benefactors without knowing it. I suppose that’s why we’re put in the same watch.’

‘Here’s a new hand sent to join us. He doesn’t look much like a benefactor.’ Friar Bacon pointed to a trim little figure in black broad-cloth and starched linen that painfully descended tier after tier of the platforms and gratings which rise in illimitable perspective above the Auxiliary Furnaces. His neat boots slipped cruelly on the greasy floor- plate of the last descent.

‘Hello!’ said Oisinn, as he panted before them. ‘What’s your trouble?’

‘Me ‘eart,’ was the answer. ‘Overstrain through overwork. I’m another victim to the cause of Labour. Sugden’s my name. Better known as Honest Pete.’

‘Hooray, Honest Pete,’ Oisinn replied. ‘Honestly, now, what have you been up to?’

‘I’ve been bringing the Community to its knees,’ was the proud reply, received with shouts of mirth.

‘What! Again?’ the Tailed Man cried. ‘You don’t look as if you could bite much.’

‘What weight of bow do you draw?’ Oisinn inquired.

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‘His weapons are probably spiritual,’ said the Pope kindly.

‘Nonsense. Of course he blew up his Community with my gunpowder, the Friar put in, as Mr. Sugden turned smiling from one to the other.

‘Powder?’ he said scornfully. ‘Not at all! Power was our trick. We’ve starved the beggars! No cooking, no lighting, no heating, no travel, no traffic, no manufactures till they’ve made their peace with Us! That’s what We’ve done — all over England. You’ve ‘eard of England?’

‘I clapped an Interdict on it once,’ said the Pope. ‘But, if you’re speaking the truth, it strikes me I was an amateur at that job. And have you burned them much?’

‘Contrariwise. We’ve put ’em in cold storage. Froze ’em out! Now, by the look of you, it’s quite possible you’ve ‘eard talk of coal.’

The Pope’s uplifted hand checked any ribald comment. Mr. Sugden, throwing back his frock-coat, took the hot floor. ‘Well, Comrades,’ he said, ‘you’ll admit, I ‘ope, that Coal is Power — and all the Power. There’s no other way of getting Power, which means heat, light, and — and power — except through coal. Ther’fore, as you can readily understand, the men who produce the coal ‘ave the power and all the power over the Community.’

‘By the way,’ said Fenir of the Bow and Arrow. ‘How long have you thrown this stone — I mean, used this coal — that gives you this power?’

‘A matter of a hundred years or so,’ said Mr. Sugden. ‘But what’s that got to do with it? … I’ll just slip off my coat, if you don’t mind. I’m more used to shirt-sleeves.’

‘I don’t think you will.’ The Tailed Man bared his teeth once. Mr. Sugden winced.

‘No offence. I ain’t particular about my dress. But, as I was saying; that being realised, it only remained to organise the power. Which we did. We then issued a mandate that no more coal was to be produced by the producers till the Community ‘ad satisfied our demands.’

‘And what were your demands?’ the Pope inquired with interest.

‘Only justice an’ our rights. We weren’t pleased with Society as it existed. We were — or rather, I should say, we are — goin’ to reorganise Society from top to bottom; an’ if the Community don’t like it, it can lump it an’ be damned.’

‘Excuse me a moment,’ said the Pope. ‘But this happens to be one of the few places in the universe where it is not necessary to allude to one’s social conditions.’

‘Ho! ‘Mr. Sugden fetched up with a snort. ‘Well, I’m willin’ for the present to make allowance for the superstitions of the less advarnced brethren, but if I’m to explain our plan of campaign —’

‘We are very rarely pressed for time here,’ said the Pope. ‘But please go on. You have, I understand, put a comprehensive Interdict on the Community.’

‘We’ve brought ’em to their knees, I tell you.’

‘Then they’ll throw stones at you,’ said the Tailed Man, rubbing his skull. ‘I know ’em.’

‘Any stone-throwin’ that’s needed will be done by us,’ said Mr. Sugden grimly. ‘But they’ve no ‘eart for stone-throwing. They can’t make nothing, nor yet move it after it’s made. Yes, when I laid down on my bed just now to get a bit o’ sleep between telegrams, there was one million and a ‘alf o’ people not knowin’ where their food and fuel was comin’ from. In another few weeks there’ll be five million in the same situation. The luckiest of ’em will ‘ave drawn out all their savin’s, so they won’t be capitalists any more; an’ the rest’ll be starved. All of ’em will thus become ‘ot stuff for the real revolution. Because, between friends, I may tell you, gents, that this little kick-up of ours is only a dress-parade for the Social Armageddon.’

‘But I don’t see’ — a Lancastrian Baron of the Wars of the Roses shouldered forward — ‘I don’t see how my class could find themselves starved in a few weeks. I was besieged for six months once by the neighbourhood, and except for missing my daily ride and having to drink small beer instead of Burgundy the last ten days, I wasn’t inconvenienced.’

‘And from what I remember of the clergy,’ the Pope began —

‘If I know anything of drilled troops,’ said the Friar, ‘I wager they didn’t suffer first.’

Caxton’s proof-puller grinned. ‘Dies erit praegelida sinistra quum typographer’, he quoted.

‘Her, oh, these capitalists,’ Mr. Sugden replied, with large scorn, ‘was warned in time —worse luck— an’ they got their coal early. But I’m talkin’ of the entire Community taken in bulk. That’s where we are bringin’ pressure to bear. They can’t stand it.”

‘They’ll play you some dirty trick or other,’ the Tailed Man insisted. ‘Communities are like snakes. If you catch ’em by the head they sting; if you catch ’em by the tail they wriggle away; and if you step on ’em in the middle they coil round you and choke you.’

‘They can’t, I tell you!’ Mr. Sugden almost shouted. ‘We’ve got ’em in a cleft stick. Coal’s the sole source of power, ain’t it? Take that away, and the Community, man, woman, an’ child, is bound to come to its knees, or be starved.’

‘Then you’ve starved women and children,’ Friar Bacon said.

‘War’s war,” Mr. Sugden replied. ‘We can’t make exceptions. Besides, we ain’t fools. We took good care to get ourselves protected under the Trades Disputes Act before we began. Are you aware that, no action against any Trade Union for anything it sees fit to do in furtherance of a trade dispute, shall be considered in a Court of Law?’

‘Infallibility! O my Triple Hat!’ cried the Pope enviously. ‘That’s beyond even my wildest dreams.’

‘Not bad for a first step,’ Mr. Sugden smiled. ‘So you can take it from me, Comrades, the Unions are the Gov’ment. Wait a little longer an’ you’ll see what we’ve done for our clarse. ‘Ere!’ he cried, and spun round. ‘You leave go of my coat-tails.’

An adhesive succubus in the shape of a starved week-old baby clung squalling at the skirts of the silk-faced frock-coat.

‘Mind!’ cried Oisinn, ‘there’s another between your feet! Don’t step back! There are a couple behind you.’

page 3

‘Then take ’em away where they belong. What are they doin’ here?’ Mr. Sugden hopped nervously among the squirming horrors on the floor.

‘I expect they’ve followed you,’ said the Pope. ‘One’s works very often do.’

The others stared coolly, as the stokehold filled with shapes. It was long since their works had ceased to follow them in active shape, but they were always appreciative of another’s discomfort. The shape of a grey-haired woman, her head coquettishly slewed to one side, her blackened tongue clacking outside her puffed lips, swung herself, rather than ran, into Mr. Sugden’s arms, stuttering, ‘Kiss me, Mr. Sugden. I only ‘ung myself on Thursday.’

‘Ah!’ said the Pope, who in his appointed times had been visited by his own victims. ‘Then there were suicides, too?’

‘The papers said so,’ Mr. Sugden panted, as he fenced with the lurching terror. ‘But — don’t ‘ug me, you devil — the Cap’talist Press was always against us. We must alter all that.’ He stepped back on a babe, whose strained ribs cracked like a wine-glass.

‘Do be careful, Pete,’ the woman croaked. ‘That’s my little ‘Erb.’

‘Well, I ain’t legally responsible,’ Mr. Sugden retorted. Upon this the shape turned into a middle-aged man who by signs — for his lower jaw was shot away — implored Sugden to tie up his shattered skull, and so collapsed to the floor, rhythmically patting Mr. Sugden’s boots.

‘Get up!’ Mr. Sugden quavered. ‘You ain’t really ‘urt. I’ve never seen a suicide. Gov’ment oughtn’t to let ’em happen. Lend me a ‘andkerchief. No, don’t! I never could stand the sight o’ blood. Oh, get up, chum, an’ you and me’ll go an’ look for the capitalist that brought you to this. I ain’t legally responsible — s’welp me Gawd, I ain’t.’

‘So we see,’ said Friar Bacon, as the stokehold began to fill and they smelt the heavy sour smell of extreme poverty. The shapes of girls that had been maids, and wives that had been faithful ere the strike overtook them, linked arms and danced merrily in what garments were unpawned, till angry men, blazing with their own secret shames, thrust them aside and asked Sugden questions not to be hinted at above the breath. Then came the elderly toothless dead, cut off before their time by a few days’ cold and underfeeding, who wailed for the dear remnant of life out of which they said Sugden had defrauded them. Behind them were ranged the drawn and desperate faces of such as had spent all their savings in one month and now looked forward to certain pinch and woe — not for themselves, as they muttered, but for their families.

On the floor, in a lively dado, lay some few score coal-seeking men and boys with here and there a woman or two, who were being pressed to death by falls of dirt and rock. Between their outcries, which were of astonishing volume, they bit their own hands with their teeth.

‘Ah!’ said the Lancastrian Baron with a smile. ‘This is something like a class war. Nothing but villeins, serfs, vassals and wenches.’

‘An’ all of ’em loyal to us,’ said Mr. Sugden proudly. ‘See ‘ow they stand it! There’s spirit for you — an’ no legal liability attachin’. They do this because they like it.’

‘As a show,’ the Pope purred, ‘this is, of course, nothing compared with what some of us are responsible for; but we must look deeper than the mere shadows of things. What I am sure we all admire most is the purely logical chain of consequences which Mr. Sugden has called into action. They should fructify and ramify for generations. Mere killing — even by pressing to death — is so distressingly finite. The dead, when dead, cease to function towards any useful end. But to drag down, to debauch, to weaken, to starve — and — er — morally disorientate the living by the million is a stroke of genius. And to see the whole noble work confined entirely to your own class must be a source of peculiar gratification to you, is it not?’

‘Look ‘ere!’ said Mr. Sugden furiously, as a dozen babies tried to climb up his back. ‘That tone o’ voice may ‘ave suited the Feudalistic Ages, but times advarnce, me good friend, and it’s obsolete. Labour ‘as come into its own at larst, and there ain’t a court in the land which dare say I’ve done wrong. You can put that in your pipe and smoke it!’

Here a whistle rang through the stokehold, and Accusing Voices bade them prepare for inspection.

‘It’s the Old Man himself,’ Something cried from an upper grating, as the shapes trailed away, and Friar Bacon dragged Mr. Sugden to his feet.

It had pleased His Majesty’s ever kindly heart to clothe himself that morning in coolest white ducks with white-covered yachting cap and creamy-white pipe-clayed shoes, so that he looked not unlike Captain Kettle and spoke with that officer’s directness when his silk handkerchief picked up smear or grime from any bright-work.

‘You gentlemen,’ he began as he entered the stokehold, ‘seem to think you’re running a refrigerator.’ He pointed with a palm-leaf fan to the dropping gauges and thermometers. ‘What’s your excuse? A new hand has been sent down and he’s been seeing things, has he? And that has interfered with your stoking, has it? Are you aware, my sons, that you’re talking to the Father of Lies? You are, eh? Then let me warn you —’

At this moment somebody put the watch-bill into his hands.

‘You’re right — I’m wrong — as usual,’ he went on after scanning it. ‘Good morning, Mr. Sugden, or, if you will pardon the liberty, Honest Pete.’ He bowed elaborately. ‘Inexcusable of me to forget you. Any man with ‘Honest’ before his name is always sure of a warm place in my regard. You were mixed up in the coal strike, weren’t you? Well, you’ve come to the right shop. We’ve got coal to burn, and you’re going to help burn it. Your heart troubling you? Beating one hundred and twenty-six to the minute, is it? Never mind! We’ve done with minutes down here. I give you my word you aren’t in any danger of dying. We can’t afford to lose a man like you.’

He turned to the other cheerily.

‘Boys, I want you to appreciate our Pete. He’s not much to look at, but between you and me and the Pit, he’s one of the world’s greatest benefactors — just like yourselves. That’s why I’ve put him in your watch. Pete has achieved what Kings and Armies and Emperors couldn’t. Don’t blush, my son. It’s the Devil’s own truth. You’ve starved and frozen and ruined a few thousand and, what’s better, you’ve worried and inconvenienced forty million people in England alone, plus three or four hundred million white men elsewhere, thinking hard how to avoid cold, darkness, and starvation. You’ve concentrated the master-minds of the age just on one problem — how to do without coal — and they’ve solved it!’

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The Tailed Man laughed aloud. ‘I warned you,’ he cried to Sugden, ‘I know what a Community is like if you bite it too hard. It never changes.’ Haka, Fenir, and Oisinn nodded assent.

‘Yes,’ said the Old Man relishingly. ‘You’re all in the procession, but Pete’s the latest and greatest Lord High Makee-do, up to date. Who killed King Coal? Pete! Three cheers for —’

‘I don’t believe it,’ Mr. Sugden interrupted. ‘Coal is one of the vital services of the Community.’

‘It would have been, my son, if you’d left it alone, but, thanks to you, it’s dead as —’ The Old Man checked himself, because it must be left to the Dead to realise their first and second death. ‘Your Community, that you are so fond of, carried on with oil and patent fuels for a while just to ease off the pressure, and then they harnessed the tides — the greatest step since fire-making.’

‘How much? It can’t be done,’ Mr. Sugden shouted. He was still enjoying, so to speak, the privileges of the new boy.

‘Harnessed up the tide — the cool, big, wet, deep, blue sparkling sea. It was purely a question of demand and supply. I believe they did it on the pneumatic principle, not on the hydraulic, if you’re interested in those things.’

‘I ain’t,’ Mr. Sugden retorted. ‘I’m only concerned with outstanding social facts. We leave machinery to the intellectuals.’

‘The inventor of this particular gadget wasn’t in the least intellectual. He was the son of a woman who committed suicide somewhere in the Potteries, I’m told.’

‘Well, war’s war,’ said Mr. Sugden, glancing uneasily over his shoulder for the shades of more non-combatants.

‘Just what he said when all the coal-mines were closed inside of two years. Anyway, Power’s a little cheaper up topside, nowadays, than water. I haven’t got the figures with me, but that’s the outstanding social fact, Pete.’

Mr. Sugden shook his head. ”Tain’t possible. ‘Tain’t in reason,’ he said. ‘An’ for another thing, the Boilermakers’ Union wouldn’t stand it.’

‘Oh, Demetrius!’ Friar Bacon exploded and came to attention again.

‘They had to! You didn’t leave the Community a loophole of escape.’

”Course we didn’t. I’ve told you we weren’t fools!’

‘I see you weren’t. But it was a case of ‘root, hog, or die’ for the Community. And they didn’t like dying; so they rooted; and Coal and Steam went pungo, Pete.’

‘You expect me to believe that Steam’s gone too?’ Mr. Sugden was very scornful.

‘Yes. There used to be an old prophecy in the Pit — one of Napoleon’s, I think — that Democracy came in with Steam and will go out with it. And that’s fulfilled.’

Mr. Sugden smashed his fat right hand into his still plumper left.

‘Look ‘ere! You can’t run the world without Democracy, any more than you can run it without coal. You’re mad. You’ve got no comprehension of the simplest facts o’ life.’

There was a hush of awed delight and expectation among his mates, as he drew breath and went on: —

‘I don’t know ‘oo in ‘ell you may be, but let me tell you’ — down came the hand again —’ that you’re either crazy or an ‘opeless, ‘elpless, malignant and unscrupulous Liar, Because, standin’ where I do to-day, I answer you to your face an’ say to you that — that I don’t believe one bloomin’ word of it!’

‘I thought you wouldn’t,’ the Old Man replied, with that bland smile before which the instructed cringe. ‘But if you’ll oblige me by hustling into that starboard bunker (you needn’t take your collar off) and trimming it until further orders, you may get some sense of the weight of your present responsibilities. Jump, my son! There are at present two hundred and eighty-seven million tons per annum of coal in Great Britain alone, for which no one except ourselves has any use. You’ll find every ounce of it there!’

In due time Mr. Sugden realised that the Old Man spoke the truth.

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“KENCH with a long hand, lazy one,” I said to the punkah coolie. “But I am tired,” said the coolie. “Then go to Jehannum and get another man to pull,” I replied, which was rude and, when you come to think of it, unnecessary.

“Happy thought—go to Jehannum!” said a voice at my elbow. I turned and saw, seated on the edge of my bed, a large and luminous Devil. “I’m not afraid,” I said. “You’re an illusion bred by too much tobacco and not enough sleep. If I look at you steadily for a minute you will disappear. You are an ignis fatuus.”

“Fatuous yourself!” answered the Devil blandly. “Do you mean to say you don’t know me?” He shrivelled up to the size of a blob of sediment on the end of a pen, and I recognised my old friend the Devil of Discontent, who lived in the bottom of the inkpot, but emerges half a day after each story has been printed with a host of useless suggestions for its betterment.

“Oh, it’s you, is it?” I said. “You’re not due till next week. Get back to your inkpot.”

“Hush!” said the Devil. “I have an idea.”

“Too late, as usual. I know your ways.”

“No. It’s a perfectly practicable one. Your swearing at the coolie suggested it. Did you ever hear of a man called Dante—ch’armin’ fellow, friend o’ mine?”

‘Dante once prepared to paint a picture, ’ I quoted.

“Yes. Iinspired that notion—but never mind. Are you willing to play Dante to my Virgil? I can’t guarantee a nine-circle Inferno, any more than you can turn out a cantoed epic, but there’s absolutely no risk and—it will run to three columns at least.”

“But what sort of Hell do you own?” I said. I fancied your operations were mostly above ground. You have no jurisdiction over the dead.

“Sainted Leopardi!” rapped the Devil, resuming natural size. “Is that all you know? I’m proprietor of one of the largest Hells in existence—the Limbo of Lost Endeavor, where the souls of all the Characters go.”

“Characters? What Characters?”

“All the characters that are drawn in books, painted in novels, sketched in magazine articles, thumb-nailed in feuilletons or in any way created by anybody and everybody who has had the fortune or misfortune to put his or her writings into print.”

“That sounds like a quotation from a prospectus. What do you herd Characters for? Aren’t there enough souls in the Universe?”

“Who possess souls and who do not? For aught you can prove, man may be soulless and the creatures he writes about immortal. Anyhow, about a hundred years after printing became an established nuisance, the loose Characters used to blow about interplanetary space in legions which interfered with traffic. So they were collected, and their charge became mine by right. Would you care to see them? Your own are there.”

“That decides me. But is it hotter than Northern India?”

“On my Devildom, no. Put your arms round my neck and sit tight. I’m going to dive!”

He plunged from the bed headfirst into the floor. There was a smell of jail-durrie and damp earth; and then fell the black darkness of night.

• • • • •

We stood before a door in a topless wall, from the further side of which came faintly the roar of infemal fires.

“But you said there was no danger!” I cried in an extremity of terror.

“No more there is,” said the Devil. “That’s only the Furnace of First Edition. Will you go on? No other human being has set foot here in the flesh. Let me bring the door to your notice. Pretty design, isn’t it? A joke of the Master’s.”

I shuddered, for the door was nothing more than 8 coffin, the backboard knocked out, set on end in the thickness of the wall. As I hesitated, the silence of space was cut by a sharp, shrill whistle, like that of a live shell, which rapidly grew louder and louder. “Get away from the door,” said the Devil of Discontent quickly. “Here’s a soul coming to its place.” I took refuge under the broad vans of the Devil’s wings. The whistle rose to an earsplitting shriek and a naked soul flashed past me.

“Always the same,” said the Devil quietly. “These little writers are so anxious to reach their reward. H’m, I don’t think he likes his’n, though.” A yell of despair reached my ears and I shuddered afresh. “Who was he?” I asked. “Hack-writer for a pornographic firm in Belgium, exporting to London, you’ll understand presently—and now we’ll go in,” said the Devil. “I must apologise for that creature’s rudeness. He should have stopped at the distance-signal for line-clear. You can hear the souls whistling there now.”

“Are they the souls of men?” I whispered.

“Yes—writer-men. That’s why they are so shrill and querulous. Welcome to the Limbo of Lost Endeavour!”

They passed into a domed hall, more vast than visions could embrace, crowded to its limit by men, women and children. Round the eye of the dome ran, a flickering fire, that terrible quotation from Job: “Oh, that mine enemy had written a book!”

“Neat, isn’t it?” said the Devil, following my glance. “Another joke of the Master’s. Man of Us, y’ know. In the old days we used to put the Characters into a disused circle of Dante’s Inferno, but they grew overcrowded. So Balzac and Théophile Gautier were commissioned to write up this building. It took them three years to complete, and is one of the finest uder earth. Don’t attempt to describe it unless you are quite sure you are equal to Balzac and Gautier in collaboration. “Look at the crowds and tell me what you think of them.”

I looked long and earnestly, and saw that many of the multitude were cripples. They walked on their heels or their toes, or with a list to the right or left. A few of them possessed odd eyes and parti-coloured hair; more threw themselves into absurd and impossible attitudes; and every fourth woman seemed to be weeping.

“Who are these?” I said.

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“Mainly the population of three-volume novels that never reach the six-shilling stage. See that beautiful girl with one grey eye and one brown, and the black and yellow hair? Let her be an awful warning to you how you correct your proofs. She was created by a careless writer a month ago, and he changed all colours in the second volume. So she came here as you see her. There will be trouble when she meets her author. He can’t alter her now, and she says she’ll accept no apology.”

“But when will she meet her author?”

“Not in my department. Do you notice a general air of expectancy among all the Characters? They are waiting for their authors. Look! That explains the system better than I can.”

A lovely maiden, at whose feet I would willingly have fallen and worshipped, detached herself from the crowd and hastened to the door through which I had just come. There was a prolonged whistle without, a soul dashed through the coffin and fell upon her neck. The girl with the parti-coloured hair eyed the couple enviously as they departed arm in arm to the other side of the hall.

“That man,” said the Devil, “wrote one magazine story, of twenty-four pages, ten years ago when he was desperately in love with a flesh and blood woman. He put all his heart into the work, and created the girl you have just seen. The flesh and blood woman married some one else and died—it’s a way they have—but the man has this girl for his very own, and she will everlastingly grow sweeter.”

“Then the Characters are independent?”

“Slightly! Have you never known one of your Characters—even yours—get beyond control as soon as they are made?”

“That’s true. Where are those two happy creatures going?”

“To the Levels. You’ve heard of authors finding their levels? We keep all the Levels here. As each writer enters, he picks up his Characters, or they pick him up, as the case may be, and to the Levels he goes.”

“I should like to see——”

“So you shall, when you come through that door a second time—whistling. I can’t take you there now.”

“Do you keep only the Characters of living scribblers in this hall?”

“We should be crowded out if we didn’t draft them off somehow. Step this way and I’ll take you to the Master. One moment, though. There’s John Ridd with Lorna Doone, and there are Mr. Maliphant and the Bormalacks—clannish folk, those Besant Characters—don’t let the twins talk to you about Literature and Art. Come along. What’s here?”

The white face of Mr. John Oakhurst, gambler, broke through the press. “I wish to explain,” said he in a level voice, “that had I been consulted I should never have blown out my brains with the Duchess and all that Poker Flat lot. I wish to add that the only woman I ever loved was the wife of Brown of Calaveras.” He pressed his hand behind him suggestively. “All right, Mr. Oakhurst,” I said hastily; “I believe you.” “Kin you set it right?” he asked, dropping into the Doric of the Gulches. I caught a trigger’s cloth-muffled click. “Just heavens!” I groaned. “Must I be shot for the sake of another man’s Characters?” Oakhurst levelled his revolver at my head, but the weapon was struck up by the hand of < Yuba Bill. “You dumed fooll” said the stage-driver. “Hevn’t I told you no one but a blamed idiot shoots at sight now? Let the galoot go. You kin see by his eyes he’s no party to your matrimonial arrangements.” Oakhurst retired with an irreproachable bow, but in my haste to escape I fell over, his head in a melon and his tame orc under his arm. He spat like a wildcat.

“Manners none, customs beastly,” said the Devil. “We’ll take the Bishop with us. They all respect the Bishop.” And the great Bishop Blougram joined us, calm and smiling, with the news, for my private ear, that Mr. Gigadibs despised him no longer.

We were arrested by a knot of semi-nude Bacchantes kissing a clergyman. The Bishop’s eyes twinkled, and I turned to the Devil for explanation.

“That’s Robert Elsmere—what’s left of him,” said the Devil. “Those are French feuilleton women and scourings of the Opera Comique. He has been lecturing ’em, and they don’t like it.” “He lectured me!” said the Bishop with a bland smile. “He has been a nuisance ever since he came here. By the Holy Law of Proportion, he had the audacity to talk to the Master! Called him a ‘pot-bellied barbarian’! That is why he is walking so stiffly now,” said the DeviL “Listen! Marie Pigeonnier is swearing deathless love to him. On my word, we ought to segregate the French characters entirely. By the way, your regiment came in very handy for Zola’s importations.”

“My regiment?” I said. “How do you mean?”

“You wrote something about the Tyneside Tail-Twisters, just enough to give the outline of the regiment, and of course it came down here—one thousand and eighty strong. I told it off in hollow squares to pen up the Rougon-Macquart series. There they are.” I looked and saw the Tyneside Tail-Twisters ringing an inferno of struggling, shouting, blaspheming men and women in the costumes of the Second Empire. Now and again the shadowy ranks brought down their butts on the toes of the crowd inside the square, and shrieks of pain followed. “You should have indicated your men more clearly; they are hardly up to their work,” said the Devil. “If the Zola tribe increase, I’m afraid I shall have to use up your two companies of the Black Tyrone and two of the Old Regiment.”

“I am proud——” I began.

“Go slow,” said the Devil. “You won’t be half so proud in a little while, and I don’t think much of your regiments, anyway. But they are good enough to fight the French. Can you hear Coupeau raving in the left angle of the square? He used to run about the hall seeing pink snakes, till the children’s story-book Characters protested. Come along!”

Never since Caxton pulled his first proof and made for the world a new and most terrible God of Labour had mortal man such an experience as mine when I followed the Devil of Discontent through the shifting crowds below the motto of the Dome. A few—a very few—of the faces were of old friends, but there were thousands whom I did not recognise. Men in every conceivable attire and of every possible nationality, deformed by intention, or the impotence of creation that could not create—blind, unclean, heroic, mad, sinking under the weight of remorse, or with eyes made splendid by the light of love and fixed endeavour; women fashioned in ignorance and mourning the errors of their creator, life and thought at variance with body and soul; perfect women such as walk rarely upon this earth, and horrors that were women only because they had not sufficient self-control to be fiends; little children, fair as the morning, who put their hands into mine and made most innocent confidences; loathsome, lank-haired infant-saints, curious as to the welfare of my soul, and delightfully mischievous boys, generalled by the irrepressible, who played among murderers, harlots, professional beauties, nuns, Italian bandits and politicians of state.

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The ordered peace of Arthur’s Court was broken up by the incursions of Mr. John Wellington Wells, and Dagonet, the jester, found that his antics drew no attention so long as the “dealer in magic and spells,” taking Tristram’s harp, sang patter-songs to the Round Table; while a Zulu Impi, headed by Allan Quatermain, wheeled and shouted in sham fight for the pleasure of Little Lord Fauntleroy. Every century and every type was jumbled in the confusion of one colossal fancyhall where all the characters were living their parts.

“Aye, look long,” said the Devil. “You will never be able to describe it, and the next time you come you won’t have the chance. Look long, and look at”—Good’s passing with a maiden of the Zu-Vendi must have suggested the idea—“look at their legs,” I looked, and for the second time noticed the lameness that seemed to be almost universal in the Limbo of Lost Endeavour. Brave men and stalwart to all appearance had one leg shorter than the other; some paced a few inches above the floor, never touching it, and others found the greatest difficulty in preserving their feet at all. The stiffness and laboured gait of these thousands was pitiful to witness. I was sorry for them. I told the Devil as much.

“H’m,” said he reflectively, “that’s the world’s work. Rather cockeye, ain’t it? They do everything but stand on their feet. You could improve them, I suppose?” There was an unpleasant sneer in his tone, and I hastened to change the subject.

“I’m tired of walking,” I said. “I want to see some of my own Characters, and go on to the Master, whoever he may be, afterwards.”

“Reflect,” said the Devil. “Are you certain—do you know how many they be?”

“No—but I want to see them. That’s what I came for.”

“Very well. Don’t abuse me if you don’t like the view. There are one-and-fifty of your make up to date, and—it’s rather an appalling thing to be confronted with fifty-one children. However, here’s a special favourite of yours. Go and shake hands with her!”

A limp-jointed, staring-eyed doll was hirpling towards me with a strained smile of recognition. I felt that I knew her only too well—if indeed she were she. “Keep her off. Devil!” I cried, stepping back. “I never made that!” “‘She began to weep and she began to cry. Lord ha’ mercy on me, this is none of I!’ You’re very rude to— Mrs. Hauksbee, and she wants to speak to you,” said the Devil. My face must have betrayed my dismay, for the Devil went on soothingly: “That’s as she is, remember. I knew you wouldn’t like it. Now what will you give if I make her as she ought to be? No, I don’t want your soul, thanks. I have it already, and many others of better quality. Will you, when you write your story, own that I am the best and greatest of all the Devils?” The doll was creeping nearer. “Yes,” I said hurriedly. “Anything you like. Only I can’t stand her in that state.”

“You’ll have to when you come next again. Look! No connection with Jekyll and Hyde!” The Devil pointed a lean and inky finger towards the doll, and lo! radiant, bewitching, with a smile of dainty malice, her high heels clicking on the floor like castanets, advanced Mrs. Hauksbee as I had imagined her in the beginning.

“Ah!” she said. “You are here so soon? Not dead yet? That will come. Meantime, a thousand congratulations. And now, what do you think of me?” She put her hands on her hips, revealed a glimpse of the smallest foot in Simla and hummed: “‘Just look at that—just look at this! And then you’ll see I’m not amiss.’”

“She’ll use exactly the same words when you meet her next time,” said the
Devil warningly, “You dowered her with any amount of vanity, if you left out—— Excuse me a minute! I’ll fetch up the rest of your menagerie.” Cut I was looking at Mrs. Hauksbee.

“Well?” she said. “Am I what you expected?” I forgot the Devil and all his works, forgot that this was not the woman I had made, could only murmur rapturously: “by Jove! You are a beauty.” Then incuatiously: “And you stand on your feet.” “Good heavens!” said Mrs. Hauksbee. “Would you, at my time of life, have me stand on my head?” She folded her arms and looked me up and down. I was grinning imbecilely”the woman was so alive. “Talk,” I said absently; “I want to hear you talk.” “I am not used to being spoken to like a coolie,” she replied. “Never mid,” I said, “that may be right for outsiders, but I made you and I’ve a right——”

“You have a right? You made me? My dear sir, if I didn’t know that we would bore each other so inextinguishable hereafter I should read you an hour’s lecture this instant. You made me! I suppose you will have the audacity to pretend that you understand me—that you ever understoof me. Oh, man, man—foolish man! If only you knew!”

“Is that the person who thinks he understood us, Loo?” drawled a voice at her elbow. The devil had returned with a cloud of witnesses, and it was Mrs. Mallowe who was speaking.

“I’ve touched ’em all up,” said the Devil in an aside. “You couldn’t stand ’em raw. But don’t run away with the notion that they are your work. I show you what they ought to be. You must find out for yourself how to make ’em so.”

“Am I allowed to remodel the batch—up above?” I asked anxiously.

“Litera scripta manet. That’s in the Delectus and Eternity.” He turned round to the semi-circle of Characters: “Ladies and gentlemen, who are all a great deal better than you should be by virtue of my power, let me introduce you to your maker. If you have anything to say to him, you can say it.”

“What insolence!” said Mrs. Hauksbee between her teeth. “This isn’t a Peterhoff drawing-room. I haven’t the slightest intention of being leveed by this person. Polly, come here and we’ll watch the animals go by.” She and Mrs. Mallowe stood at my side. I turned crimson with shame, for it is an awful thing to see one’s Characters in the solid.

“Wal,” said Gilead P. Beck as he passed, “I would not be you at this pre-cise moment of time, not for all the ile in the univarsal airth. No, sirri I thought my dinner-party was soul-shatterin’, but it’s mush—mush and milk—to your circus. Let the good work go on!”

I turned to the company and saw that they were men and women, standing upon their feet as folks should stand. Again I forgot the Devil, who stood apart and sneered. From the distant door of entry I could hear the whistle of arriving souls, from the semi-darkness at the end of the hall came the thunderous roar of the Furnace of First Edition, and everywhere the restless crowds of Characters muttered and rustled like windblown autiunn leaves. But I looked upon my own people and was perfectly content as man could be.

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“I have seen you study a new dress with just such an expression of idiotic beatitude,” whispered Mrs. Mallowe to Mrs. Hauksbee. “Hushl” said the latter. “He thinks he understands.” Then to me: “Please trot them out. Eternity is long enough in all conscience, but that is no reason for wasting it. Pro-ceed, or shall I call them up? Mrs. Vansuythen, Mr. Boult, Mrs. Boult, Captain Kurrel and the Majorl” The European population in Kashima in the Dosehri hills, the actors in the Wayside Comedy, moved towards me; and I saw with delight that they were human. “So you wrote about us?” said Mrs. Boult. “About my confession to my husband aad my hatred of that Vansuythen woman? Did you think that you understood? Are all men such fools?” “That woman is bad form,” said Mrs. Hauksbee, “but she speaks the truth. I wonder what these soldiers have to say,” Gunner Barnabas and Private Shacklock stopped, saluted, and hoped I would take no offence if they gave it as their opinion that I had not “got them down quite right.” I gasped.

A spurred Hussar succeeded, his wife on his arm. It was Captain Gadsby and Minnie, and close behind them swaggered Jack Mafflin, the Brigadier-General in his arms. “Had the cheek to try to describe our life, had you?” said Gadsby carelessly. “Ha-hmm! S’pose he understood, Minnie?” Mrs. Gadsby raised her face to her husband and murmured: “I’m sure he didn’t, Pip,” while Poor Dear Mamma, still in her riding-habit, hissed: “I’m sure he didn’t understand me” And these also went their way.

One after another they filed by—Trewinnard, the pet of his Department; Otis Yeere, lean and lanthomjawed; Crook O’Neil and Bobby Wick arm in arm; Janki Meah, the blind miner in the Jimahari coal fields; Afzul Khan, the policeman; the murderous Fathan horse-dealer, Durga Dass; the bunnia, Boh Da Thone; the dacoit, Dana Da, weaver of false magic; the Leander of the Barhwi ford; Peg Barney, drunk as a coot; Mrs, Delville, the dowd; Dinah Shadd, large, red-cheeked and resolute; Simmons, Slane and Losson; Georgie Porgie and his Burmese helpmate; a shadow in a high collar, who was all that I had ever indicated of the Hawley Boy—the nameless men and women who had trod the Hill of Illusion and lived in the Tents of Eedar, and last, His Majesty the King.

Each one in passing told me the same tale, and the burden thereof was: “You did not understand.” My heart turned sick within me. “Where’s Wee Willie Winkie?” I shouted. “Little children don’t lie.”

A clatter of pony’s feet followed, and the child appeared, habited as on the day he rode into Afghan territory to warn Coppy’s love against the “bad men.” “I’ve been playing,” he sobbed, “playing on ve Levels wiv Jackanapes and Lollo, an’ he says I’m only just borrowed. I’m isn’t borrowed. I’m Willie Wi-inkie! Vere’s Coppy?”

“‘Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings’,“ whispered the Devil, who had drawn nearer. “You know the rest of the proverb. Don’t look as if you were going to be shot in the morning! Here are the last of your gang.”

I turned despairingly to the Three Musketeers, dearest of all my children to me—to Privates Mulvaney, Ortheris and Learoyd. Surely the Three would not turn against me as the others had done! I shook hands with Mulvaney. “Terence, how goes? Are you going to make fun of me, too?” “’Tis not for me to make fun av you, sorr,” said the Irishman, “knowin’ as I du know, fwat good friends we’ve been for the matter av three years.”

“Fower,” said Ortheris, “’twas in the Helanthami barricks, H block, we was become acquaint, an’ ’ere’s thankin’ you kindly for all the beer we’ve drunk twix’ that and now.”

“Four ut is, then,” said Mulvaney. “He an’ Dinah Shadd are your friends, but——” He stood uneasily.

“But what?” I said.

“Savin’ your presence, sorr, an’ it’s more than onwillin’ I am to be hurtin’ you; you did not ondersthand. On my sowl an’ honour, sorr, you did not ondersthand. Come along, you two.”

But Ortheris stayed for a moment to whisper: “It’s Gawd’s own trewth, but there’s this ’ere to think. ’Tain’t the bloomin’ belt that’s wrong, as Peg Barney sez, when he’s up for bein’ dirty on p’rade. ’Tain’t the bloomin’ belt, sir; it’s the bloomin’ pipeclay.” Ere I could seek an explanation he had joined his companions.

“For a private soldier, a singularly shrewd man,” said Mrs. Hauksbee, and she repeated Ortheris’s words. The last drop filled my cup, and I am ashamed to say that I bade her be quiet in a wholly unjustifiable tone. I was rewarded by what would have been a notable lecture on propriety, had I not said to the Devil: “Change that woman to a d—d doll again! Change ’em all back as they were—as they are. I’m sick of them.”

“Poor wretch!” said the Devil of Discontent very quietly. “They are changed.”

The reproof died on Mrs. Hauksbee’s lips, and she moved away marionette-fashion, Mrs. Mallowe trailing after her. I hastened after the remainder of the Characters, and they were changed indeed—even as the Devil had said, who kept at my side.

They limped and stuttered and staggered and mouthed and staggered round me, till I could endure no more.

“So I am the master of this idiotic puppetshow, am I?” I said bitterly, watching Mulvaney trying to come to attention by spasms.

“In saecula saeculorum,” said the Devil, bowing his head; “and you needn’t kick, my dear fellow, because they will concern no one but yourself by the time you whistle up to the door. Stop reviling me and uncover. Here’s the Master!”

Uncover! I would have dropped on my knees, had not the Devil prevented me, at sight of the portly form of Maitre François Rabelais, some time Curé of Meudon. He wore a smoke-stained apron of the colour’s of Gargantua. I made a sign which was duly returned. “An Entered Apprentice in difficulties with his rough ashlar, Worshipful Sir,” explained the Devil. I was too angry to speak.

Said the Master, rubbing his chin: “Are those things yours?” “Even so. Worshipful Sir,” I muttered, praying inwardly that the Characters would at least keep quiet while the Master was near. He touched one or two thoughtfully, put his hand upon my shoulder and started: “By the Great Bells of Notre Dame, you are in the flesh—the warm flesh!—the flesh I quitted so long—ah, so long! And you fret and behave unseemly because of these shadows!s Listen now! I, even I, would give my Three, Panurge, Gargantua and Pantagruel, for one little hour of the life that is in you. And I am the Master!”

But the words gave me no comfort. I could hear Mrs. Mallowe’s joints cracking—or it might have been merely her stays.

“Worshipful Sir, he will not believe that,” said the Devil. “Who live by shadows lust for shadows. Tell him something more to his need.”

The Master grunted contemptuously: “And he is flesh and blood! Know this, then. The First Law is to make them stand upon their feet, and the Second is to make them stand upon their feet, and the Third is to make them stand upon their feet. But, for all that, Trajan is a fisher of frogs.” He passed on, and I could hear him say to himself: “One hour—one minute—of life in the flesh, and I would sell the Great Perhaps thrice over!”

“Well,” said the Devil, “you’ve made the Master angry, seen about all there is to be seen, except the Furnace of First Edition, and, as the Master is in charge of that, I should avoid it. Now you’d better go. You know what you ought to do?”

“I don’t need all Hell——”

“Pardon me. Better men than you have called this Paradise.”

“All Hell, I said, and the Master to tell me what I knew before. What I want to know is how?” “Go and find out,” said the Devil. We turned to the door, and I was aware ihat my Characters had grouped themselves at the exit. “They are going to give you an ovation. Think o’ that, now!” said the Devil. I shuddered and dropped my eyes, while one-and-fifty voices broke into a wailing song, whereof the words, so far as I recollect, ran:

But we brought forth and reared in hours
Of change, alarm, surprise.
What shelter to grow ripe is ours—
What leisure to grow wise?

I ran the gauntlet, narrowly missed collision with an impetuous soul (I hoped he liked his Characters when he tnet them), and flung free into the night, where I should have knocked my head against the stars. But the Devil caught me.

The brain-fever bird was fluting across the grey, dewy lawn, and the punkah had stopped again. “Go to Jehannum and get another man to pull,” I said drowsily. “Exactly,” said a voice from the inkpot.

Now the proof that this story is absolutely true lies in the fact that there will be no other to follow it.

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IF the Order Above be but the reflection of the Order Below, as that Ancient affirms who has had experience of the Orders, it follows that in the Administration of the Universe all Departments must work together.This explains why Azrael, Angel of Death, and Gabriel, Adam’s First Servant and Courier of the Thrones, were talking with the Prince of Darkness in the office of the Archangel of the English, who—Heaven knows—is more English than his people.

Two Guardian Spirits had been reported to the Archangel for allowing their respective charges to meet against Orders. The affair involved Gabriel, as official head of all Guardian Spirits, and also Satan, since Guardian Spirits are exhuman souls, reconditioned for re-issue by the Lower Hierarchy. There was a doubt, too, whether the Orders which the couple had disobeyed were absolute or conditional. And, further, Ruya’il, the female spirit, had refused to tell the Archangel of the English what the woman in her charge had said or thought when she met the man, for whom Kalka’il, the male Guardian Spirit, was responsible. Kalka’il had been equally obstinate; both Spirits sheltering themselves behind the old Ruling:—‘Who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward, and the spirit of the beast that goeth downward to the earth?’ The Archangel of the English, ever anxious to be just, had therefore invited Azrael, who separates the Spirit from the Flesh, to assist at the inquiry.

The four Powers were going over the case in detail.

‘I am afraid,’ said Gabriel at last, ‘no Guardian Spirit is obliged to—er—give away, as your people say, his or her charge. But’—he turned towards the Angel of Death—‘what’s your view of the Ruling?’

‘“Ecclesiastes, Three, Twenty-one,”’ Satan prompted.

‘Thank you so much. I should say that it depends on the interpretation of “Who,”’ Azrael answered. ‘And it is certainly laid down that Whoever Who may be’—his halo paled as he bowed his head—‘it is not any member of either Hierarchy.’

‘So I have always understood,’ said Satan.

‘To my mind’—the Archangel of the English spoke fretfully—‘this lack of—er—loyalty in the rank and file of the G.S. comes from our pernicious system of employing reconditioned souls on such delicate duties.’

The shaft was to Satan’s address, who smiled in acknowledgment.

‘They have some human weaknesses, of course,’ he returned. ‘By the way, where on earth were that man and the woman allowed to meet?’

‘Under the Clock at —— Terminus, I understand.’

‘How interesting! ’By appointment?’

‘Not at all. Ruya’il says that her woman stopped to look for her ticket in her bag. Kalka’il says that his man bumped into her. Pure accident, but a breach of Orders—trivial, in my judgment, for——’

‘Was it a breach of Orders for Life?’ Azrael asked.

He referred to that sentence, written on the frontal sutures of the skull of every three-year-old child, which is supposed, by the less progressive Departments, to foreshadow his or her destiny.

‘As a matter of detail,’ said the Archangel, ‘there were Orders for Life—identical in both cases. Here’s the copy. But nowadays we rely on training and environment to counteract this sort of auto-suggestion.’

‘Let’s make sure,’ Satan picked up the typed slip, and read aloud:—‘“If So-and-so shall meet So-and-So, their state at the last shall be such as even Evil itself shall pity.” H’m! That’s not absolutely prohibitive. It’s conditional—isn’t it? ’There’s great virtue in your “if,” and’—he muttered to himself—‘it will all come back to me.’

‘Nonsense!’ the Archangel replied. ‘I intend that man and that woman for far better things. Orders for Life nowadays are no more than Oriental flourishes—aren’t they?’

But the level-browed Gabriel, in whose department these trifles lie, was not to be drawn.

‘I hope you’re right,’ Satan said after a pause. ‘So you intend that couple for better things?’

‘Yes!’ the Archangel of the English cleared his throat ominously. ‘Rightly or wrongly, I’m an optimist. I do believe in the general upward trend of life. It connotes, of course, a certain restlessness among my people—the English, you know.’

‘The English I know,’ said Satan.

‘But in my humble judgment, they are developing on new planes. They must be met and guided by new methods. Surely in your dealings with the—er—more temperamental among them, you must have noticed this new sense of a larger outlook.’

‘In a measure—ye-es,’ Satan replied. ‘But I remember much the same sort of thing after printing was invented. Your people used to come down to me then, reeking—positively Caxtonised—with words. Some of ’em were convinced they had invented new sins. We-ell! Boiled and peeled (we had to do a little of that, of course) their novelties were only variations on the Imperfect Octave—Pride, Envy, Anger, Sloth, Gluttony, Covetousness, Lust. Technique, I grant you. Originality, nil. You may find it so with this new Zeitgeist of theirs.’

‘Ah, but you’re such a pessimist,’ the Archangel retorted, smiling. ‘I do wish you could meet these two I have in my eye. Charmin’ people. Cultured, capable, devout, of the happiest influences on their respective entourages; practical, earnest, and—er—so forth—they will each, in their spheres, supply just that touch which My People need at the present moment for their development. Therefore, I am giving them each full advantages for self-expression and realisation. These will include impeccable surroundings, wealth, culture, health, felicity (unhappy people can’t make other people happy, can they?), and—everything else commensurate with the greatness of the destiny for which I—er—destine them.’

The Archangel of the English rubbed his soft hands and beamed on his colleagues.

‘I hope you’re justified,’ said Satan. ‘But are you quite sure that your method of—may I call it cosseting people, gets the best out of them?’

‘’Rather what I was thinking,’ said Azrael. ‘I’ve seen wonderful work done—with My Sword practically at people’s throats—even when I’ve had to haggle a bit. They’re a hard lot sometimes.’

‘Let’s take Job’s case.’ Satan continued. ‘He didn’t reach the top of his form, as your people say, till I had handled him a little—did he?’

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‘Possibly not—by the standards of his age. But nowadays we don’t give very high marks to the Man of Uz. Qua Literature, rhetorical, Qua Theology, anthropomorphic and unobserved. No-o, you can’t get away from the fact that new standards demand new methods, new outlooks, and above all, enlarged acceptances—yes, enlarged acceptances. That reminds me’—the Archangel of the English addressed himself to Azrael ‘I’ve sent in—perhaps it hasn’t come up to you yet—a Demi-Official asking if you can’t see your way towards mitigating some of your Departmental methods, so far as those affect your—er—final despatch-work. My people’s standards of comfort have risen, you know; and they’re complaining of the—the crudity of certain vital phenomena which lie within your provenance.’

For one instant Azrael lifted his eyes full on the hopeful countenance of the Archangel of the English, but no muscle twitched round his mouth as he replied:—‘Death is a little crude. For that matter, so’s Birth; but the two seem, somehow, to hang together. What would you say to an Inter-Departmental Committee——’

‘Or Commission—that gives ampler powers—to explore all possible avenues with a view to practical co-ordination? The very thing,’ the Archangel ran on. ‘As a matter of fact, I’ve had the terms of reference for such a conference drafted in the Office. I’ll run through ’em with you—if you can spare a few minutes.’

‘’Nothing I should like better,’ Satan cried whole-heartedly. ‘Unluckily, I’m not always master of my time.’ He rose. The others followed his example and, due leave taken, launched into the Void that lay flush with the Office windows.

‘Now, that,’ Satan observed after an interval which had sunk three Universes behind them, ‘is a perfect example of the dyer’s hand being subdued to what it works in. “We don’t give high marks to the Man of Uz.” Don’t we? I’m glad I’ve always dealt faithfully with all schoolmasters.’

‘And he objects to my methods!’ Azrael muttered. ‘If he weren’t immortal—unfortunately—I—I could show him something.’

The notion set them laughing so much that the Ruler of an Unconditioned Galaxy hailed them from his throne; and to Satan’s half-barked ‘No!—No!’—sign that they were Powers in flight and not halting—returned a courteous ‘On You be the Blessing.’

‘He has left out “and the Peace,”’ said Azrael critically.

‘There is no need. They’ve never conceived of Your existence in these parts,’ Gabriel explained, as one free of all the Creations.

‘Really?’ Azreal seemed a little dashed. ‘Our young English friend ought to apply for a transfer here. I fancy I should have to follow him before long.’

‘Oh no,’ Gabriel chuckled. ‘He’d eliminate you by training and environment. You’re only an Oriental flourish—like Orders for Life to a soul. D’you suppose there’s no one in his Office who knows what Kismet means?’

‘I should say not—from the quality of the stuff he sends down to us,’ Satan complained. ‘Did you notice his dig at me about “our pernicious system” of Guardian Spirits? I do my best to recondition his damned souls for reissue, but——’

‘You do it very thoroughly indeed,’ said Gabriel. ‘I’ve said as much in my last Report on Our Personnel.’

‘Thank you. It’s heavier work than you’d imagine. If you’re free for a little, I’d like to show you how heavy——’

‘You’re sure it wouldn’t——?’ Gabriel began politely.

‘Not in the least. Come along, then! . . . Take Space! Drop Time! Forgive my going first. . . . Now!’

The Three nose-dived at that point where Infinity returns upon itself, till they folded their wings beneath the foundations of Time and Space, whose double weight bore down on them through the absolute Zeroes of Night and Silence.

Gabriel breathed uneasily; for, the greater the glory, the more present the imperfections.

‘It’s the pressures,’ Satan reassured him. ‘We came down too quickly. Swallow a little and they’ll go off. Meantime, we’ll have some light on our subjects.’

The glare of the halo he wore in His Own Place fought against the Horror of Great Darkness.

‘Have we gone beyond The Mercy?’ Azrael whispered, appalled at the little light it won.

‘They’re delivered into My hands now,’ Satan answered.

‘Usen’t there to be a notice hereabouts, requesting visitors to leave all their hopes behind them?’ Gabriel peered into the Gulf as he spoke.

‘We’ve taken it down. We work on hope deferred now,’ Satan answered. ‘It acts more certainly.’

‘But I’m not conscious of anything going on,’ Azrael remarked.

‘The processes are largely mental. But now and again . . . For example!’ There was a minute sound, hardly louder than the parting of fever-gummed lips in delirium, but the Silence multiplied it like thunders in a nightmare. ‘That is one reconditioning now,’ Satan explained.

‘A hard lot. They frighten me sometimes,’ said Azrael.

‘And me always,’ Gabriel added. ‘I suppose that is because We are their servants.’

‘Of whom I am the hardest-worked,’ Satan insisted.

‘Oh, but you’ve every sort of labour-saving device, these days, haven’t you?’ Gabriel said vaguely.

‘None that eliminate responsibility. Take the case of that man and that woman we were talking about just now. What conclusion did you draw from the evidence of their Guardian Spirits?’

‘There was only one conclusion possible—if they should meet,’ Gabriel replied. ‘You yourself read the copy of their Orders for Life.’

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‘And what did our young friend do? ’Rode off on glittering generalities about uplift and idealism and his precious scheme for debauching them both with all the luxuries, because “unhappy people can’t make others happy.” You heard him say it? He’s hopeless.’ Satan spoke indignantly.

‘Oh, I wouldn’t go as far as that. He’s English.’ Gabriel smiled.

‘And then,’ Satan held on, ‘did you see him look at me when I read out “Evil itself shall pity?” That means, if and when the worst comes to the worst I shall have to put it straight again. I shall be expected to do the whole of his dirty work—unofficially—and shoulder the unpopularity—officially. I shall have to give that couple Hell—and our young friend will take the credit of my success.’

‘The attitude is not unknown elsewhere,’ said Azrael. ‘Ve-ry little would persuade our worthy Michael, for instance, that his Sword is as effective as mine.’

‘I’ll prove my contention now,’ Satan turned to Gabriel, ‘if you’ll permit—we don’t need both of ’em—the woman’s guardian, Ruya’il, to report here for a moment. It’s night in England now. I can jam “all ill dreams” while she’s off duty. We shall have to manage the interview like one of their own cinemas, but you’ll overlook that, I hope.’

Gabriel gave the permission without which no Guardian Spirit may quit station, even for a breath, and on the instant, monstrously enlarged upon Space, her eyes shut against the glare that revealed her, stood Ruya’il in her last human shape as a woman upon earth.

Azrael moved forward.

‘One instant,’ said he. ‘I think I have had the pleasure of meeting you, Mrs. ——’ (he gave her her name, address, and the date of her death). ‘You called for me at the time. You seemed glad to meet me. Why?’

‘Because I wanted to meet Gregory,’ came the answer, in the flat tones of the held.

‘There’s our trouble in a nutshell,’ said Satan, and took over the inquiry, saying:—‘You were under Our Hand for recondition and re-issue, Mrs.——. For what cause?’

‘Because of Gregory.’

‘Who was re-issued as Kalka’il. And he because of you?’

‘Yes.’

‘On what terms were you issued as Guardian Spirits, please?’

‘There were no terms. Gregory and I were free to meet in the course of our duties, if we could. So we did. It wasn’t his fault.’

‘Those, by the way, were the last words Eve ever spoke to me,’ Azrael whispered to Gabriel.

‘Indeed! ‘ Satan resumed. ‘So you met and, incidentally, your charges met, too. I think that will be all—oh, one minute more. You know ——?’ he named a railway terminus.

‘Yes.’ The eyelids quivered.

‘In London and—Ours here?’

‘Oh, please, don’t! Yes!’ A tear forced its way out, and glittered horribly on the cheek.

‘I beg your pardon! Thank you so much. I needn’t detain you any longer.’

‘Now you see my position,’ said Satan to the others. ‘Our young friend should have had all this information on his blotter before his inquiry began. When he called me in, he should have communicated it to me. Then I should have known where I stood. But he didn’t. He makes my job ten times more difficult than it need be by burking the essentials of it—stabs me in the back with his crazy schemes of betterment—and expects me to carry on! ‘

‘I’m afraid my Department must be responsible for the original error of detailing those two particular Guardian Spirits to those two particular people,’ said Gabriel. ‘At any rate, I accept the responsibility, and apologise.’

Satan laughed frankly. ‘No need. We’ve been opposite numbers since Adam. Mistakes will happen. I merely wished to show you something of our young friend’s loyal and helpful nature.’

‘Meantime, what steps are you taking with that man and that woman?’ Azrael asked.

‘Tentative, only. Listen!’

He lifted his hand for silence. A broken whisper that seemed one with all Space fought itself into their hearing:

‘My God! My God! Why hast Thou forsaken me?’

‘Was that an echo?’ said Gabriel presently. ‘Or was it in duplicate?’

‘In duplicate. But we don’t attach too much value to that class of expression. Very often it’s only hysteria—or vanity. One can’t be sure till much later.’

‘What were those curious metallic clicks after the message? ‘ Azrael asked.

‘In the woman’s case,’ Satan explained, ‘it was one of her rings against her tiara as she was putting it on to go to Court. In the second, it was the Star of some Order that the man was being invested with by his Sovereign. That proves how happy they are!’

A certain amount of human time passed.

‘Surely there’s music, too,’ Gabriel went on. ‘And words?’

page 4

Both were most faint, but quite clear:

‘I have a song to sing, oh!
Sing me your song, oh!’

A break, a patter of verse, and then—on an almost unendurable movement that seemed to brush the heart-strings:

‘Misery me! Lackaday-dee!
He died for the love of a lady!’

Last, the fall of a body.

‘Oh, that’s on a stage somewhere,’ said Satan. ‘They must be enjoying themselves now at a theatre. Everything’s coming their way. “Unhappy people can’t make people happy, y’know.” Well! Now you’ve heard them, I suggest that, if it doesn’t bore you too much, you meet me here on—Azrael must know the dates—they are due for filing and we’ll watch the result.’

After a glance into the future, Azrael gave a date in time as earth reckons it, and they parted.

As Death returned to his own sphere, by way of that Galaxy which had been denied knowledge of his existence, its Ruler heard a voice under the stars framing words, to him meaningless, such as these

‘His speech is a burning fire,
With his lips he travaileth.
At his heart is a blind desire,
In his eye foreknowledge of Death.’

The Archangel of the English, to whom, as to his people, the years had brought higher education, was more optimistic than ever. This time, he confided to the Three Archangels that, since Mass-Action was the Note of the Age, he had discovered and was training an entire battalion of hand-picked souls, whose collective efforts towards the world’s well-being he would aid with improved sanitary appliances and gratuitous sterilised public transport.

‘What grasp and vision you have!’ said Satan. ‘By the way, do you remember a man and a woman you were rather interested in, some time ago? “Male and female created He them”—didn’t He? Ruya’il, I think, was the woman’s Guardian Spirit.’

‘Perfectly,’ said the Archangel of the English. ‘They had a certain—not quite so large, perhaps, as they thought, but a certain—share in paving the way towards these present developments, which I have the honour to direct a little, perhaps, from my inconspicuous post in the background.’

‘Good! I remember you spoke rather highly of them.’

‘None the less ’—the Archangel joined his hands across a stomach that insisted a little—‘none the less I should ha-ardly mark those two definitely as among the Saviours of Society. We say in the Department that social service can be divided into two categories—Saviours and Paviours. Ha! Ha!’

‘How very neat!’ and Satan laughed, too.

‘You see it? As a matter of fact, it arose out of one of my own marginal notes on an Hierarchical docket. No-o! I think I should be constrained to mark that couple as first-class among second-class Paviours of Society.’

‘And what has happened to them?’ Satan pursued.

The Archangel of the English glanced towards Azrael, who replied: ‘Both filed.’

‘’Sorry for that—’sorry for that,’ the Archangel chirped briskly. ‘But of course I was only concerned to get the best work out of them which their limitations permitted. And I think, without unduly vaunting my methods, I have succeeded. By the way, I have just drafted a little bit of propaganda on the Interdependence of True Happiness and Vital Effort. It won’t take ten minutes to——’

But once again it appeared that his hearers had business elsewhere. And indeed they met, soon after, on the Edge of the Abyss.

‘If I had nerves,’ said Satan, ‘my young friend would arride them, as he’d say. What was he telling you when we left?’

‘Oh,’ said Azrael, ‘our Interdepartmental Commission hadn’t come up to his expectations. We couldn’t agree on a form of words for a modus moriendi.’

‘And then,’ Gabriel added, ‘he said Azrael hadn’t the judicial mind.’

‘How can! have?’ said Azrael simply. ‘I’m strictly executive. My instructions are to dismiss to the Mercy. Apropos—what has happened to that couple you were talking over with him, just now?’

‘I’ll show you in a minute.’ Satan looked about him. The light from his halo was answered by a throb of increased productivity through all the Hells. He shaped some wordless questions across Space, and nodded. ‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘She’s been in one of our shops, on test for Breaking Strain. He’s due for final test too. We’—Satan parodied the manner of the Archangel of the English—‘took the liberty of thinking that there was a little more work to be got out of him in the Paviour line, after our young friend above had dropped him. So we made him do it—rather as job did—on an annuity bought by his friends, in what they call a Rowton lodginghouse, with an incurable disease on him. In our humble judgment, his last five years’ realisation-output was worth all his constructive efforts.’

‘Does—did he know it?’ Gabriel asked.

‘Hardly. He was down and out, as the English say. I’ll show them both to you in a little. They met first at —— Terminus; didn’t they? . . . Good! . . . Follow me till you see me check!—So I . . . And here we are!’

‘But this is the Terminus! Line for line and’—Gabriel pointed to the newspaper posters—‘letter for letter!’

page 5

‘Of course it is. We don’t babble about Progress. We keep up with it.’

‘Then why’—Gabriel coughed as a locomotive belched smoke to the roof—‘why don’t you electrify your system? I never smelt such fuel.’

‘I have,’ said Azrael, expert in operations. ‘It’s ether—’he sniffed again—‘it’s nitrous oxide—it’s—it’s every sort of anaesthetic.’

‘It is. Smells wake memory,’ said Satan.

‘But what’s the idea?’ Gabriel demanded.

‘Quite simple. A large number of persons in Time have weaknesses for making engagements—on oath, I regret to say—to meet other persons for all Eternity. Most of these appointments are forgotten or overlaid by later activities which have first claim on our attention. But the residue—say two per cent—comes here. Naturally, it represents a high level. of character, passion, and tenacity which, ipso facto, reacts generously to our treatments. At first we used to put ’em into pillories and chaff ’em. When coaches came in, we accommodated them in replicas of roadside inns. With the advance of transportation, we duplicated all the leading London stations. (You ought to see some of ’em on a Saturday night!) But that’s a detail. The essence of our idea is that every soul here is waiting for a train, which may or may not bring the person with whom they have contracted to spend Eternity. And, as the English say, they don’t half have to wait either.’

Satan smiled on Hell’s own —— Terminus as that would appear to men and women at the end of a hot, stale, sticky, petrol-scented summer afternoon under summer-time—twenty past six o’clock standing for twenty past seven.

A train came in. Porters cried the number of its platform; many of the crowd grouped by the barriers, but some stood fast under the Clock, men straightening their ties and women tweaking their hats. An elderly female with a string-bag observed to a stranger: ‘I always think it’s best to stay where you promised you would. ’Less chance o’ missing ’im that way.’ ‘Oh, quite,’ the other answered. ‘That’s what I always do’; and then both moved towards the barrier as though drawn by cords.

The passengers filed out—they and the waiting crowd devouring each other with their eyes. Some, misled by a likeness or a half-heard voice, hurried forward crying a name or even stretching out their arms. To cover their error, they would pretend they had made no sign and bury themselves among their uninterested neighbours. As the last passenger came away, a little moan rose from the assembly.

A fat Jew suddenly turned and butted his way back to the ticket-collector, who was leaving for another platform.

‘Every living soul’s out, sir,’ the man began, ‘but—thank ye, sir—you can make sure if you like.’

The Jew was already searching beneath each seat and opening each shut door, till, at last, he pulled up in tears at the emptied luggage-van. He was followed on the same errand by a looseknit person in golfing-kit, seeking, he said, a bag of clubs, who swore bitterly when a featureless woman behind him asked: ‘Was you looking for a sweetheart, ducky?’

Another train was called. The crowd moved over—some hopeful in step and bearing; others upheld only by desperate will. Several ostentatiously absorbed themselves in newspapers and magazines round the bookstalls; but their attention would not hold and when people brushed against them they jumped.

‘They are all under moderately high tension,’ Satan said. ‘Come into the Hotel—it’s less public there—in case any of them come unstuck.’

The Archangels moved slowly till they were blocked by a seedy-looking person button-holing the Stationmaster between two barrows of unlabelled luggage. He talked thickly. The official disengaged himself with practised skill. ‘That’s all right, Sir. I understand,’ he said. ‘Now, if I was you I’d slip over to the Hotel and sit down and wait a bit. You can be quite sure, Sir, that the instant your friend arrives I’ll slip over and advise you.’

The man, muttering and staring, drifted on.

‘That’s him,’ said Satan. ‘“And behold he was in My hand ”—with a vengeance. Did you hear him giving his titles to impress the Stationmaster?’

‘What will happen to him?’ said Gabriel.

‘One can’t be certain. My Departmental Heads are independent in their own spheres. They arrange all sorts of effects. There’s one, yonder, for instance, that ’ud never be allowed in the other station up above.’

A woman with a concertina and a tin cup took her stand on the kerb of the road by Number One platform, where a crowd was awaiting a train. After a pitiful flourish she began to sing:—

‘The Sun stands still in Heaven—
Dusk and the stars delay.
There is no order given
To cut the throat of the day.
My Glory is gone with my Power,
Only my torments remain.
Hear me! Oh, hear me!
All things wait on the hour
That sets me my doom again.’

But the song seemed unpopular, and few coins fell into the cup.

‘They used to pay anything you please to hear her—once,’ Satan said, and gave her name. ‘She’s saving up her pennies now to escape.’

‘Do they ever? ‘ Gabriel asked.

‘Oh, yes—often. They get clear away till—the very last. Then they’re brought back again. It’s an old Inquisition effect, but they never fail to react to it. You’ll see them in the ReadingRooms making their plans and looking up Continental Bradshaws. By the way, we’ve taken some liberties with the decorations of the Hotel itself. I hope you’ll approve.’

page 6

He ushered them into an enormously enlarged Terminus Hotel with passages and suites of public rooms, giving on to a further confusion of corridors and saloons. Through this maze men and women wandered and whispered, opening doors into hushed halls whence polite attendants reconducted them to continue their cycle of hopeless search elsewhere. Others, at little writing-tables in the suites of overheated rooms, made notes for honeymoons, as Satan had said, from the Bradshaws and steamer-folders, or wrote long letters which they posted furtively. Often, one of them would hurry out into the yard, with some idea of stopping a taxi which seemed to be carrying away a known face. And there were women who fished frayed correspondence out of their vanity-bags and read it with moist eyes close up to the windows.

‘Everything is provided for—“according to their own imaginations,”’ said Satan with some pride. ‘Now I wonder what sort of test our man will——’

The seedy-looking person was writing busily when a page handed him a telegram. He turned, his face transfigured with joy, read, stared deeply at the messenger, and collapsed in a fit. Satan picked up the paper which ran:—‘Reconsidered. Forgive. Forget.’

‘Tck!’ said Satan. ‘That isn’t quite cricket. But we’ll see how he takes it.’

Well-trained attendants bore the snorting, inert body out, into a little side-room, and laid it on a couch. When Satan and the others entered they found a competent-looking doctor in charge.

‘“He that sinneth—let him fall into the hands of the Physician,”’ said Satan. ‘I wonder what choice he’ll make?’

‘Has he any?’ said Gabriel.

‘Always. This is his last test. I can’t say I exactly approve of the means, but if one interferes with one’s subordinates it weakens initiative.’

‘Do you mean to say, then, that that telegram was forged?’ cried Gabriel hotly.

‘“There are lying spirits also, was the smooth answer.” Wait and see.’

The man had been brought to with brandy and salvolatile. As he recovered consciousness he groaned.

‘I remember now,’ said he.

‘You needn’t;’ the doctor spoke slowly. ‘We can take away your memory——’

‘If—if,’ said Satan, as one prompting a discourteous child.

‘If you please,’ the doctor went on, looking Satan full in the face, and adding under his breath:—‘Am I in charge here or are You? “Who knoweth—”’

‘If I please?’ the man stammered.

‘Yes. If you authorise me,’ the doctor went on.

‘Then what becomes of me?’

‘You’ll be free from that pain at any rate. Do you authorise me?’

‘I do not. I’ll see you damned first.’

The doctor’s face lit, but his answer was not cheering.

‘Then you’d better go.’

‘Go? Where in Hell to?’

‘That’s not my business. This room’s needed for other patients.’

‘Well, if that’s the case, I suppose I’d better.’ He rebuttoned his loosed flannel shirt all awry, rolled off the couch, and fumbled towards the door, where he turned and said thickly:—‘Look here—I’ve got something to say—I think . . . ’I—I charge you at the Judgment—make it plain. Make it plain, y’know . . . I charge you——’

But whatever the charge may have been, it ended in indistinct mutterings as he went out, and the doctor followed him with the bottle of spirits that had clogged his tongue.

‘There!’ said Satan. ‘You’ve seen a full test for Ultimate Breaking Strain.’

‘But now?’ Gabriel demanded.

‘Why do you ask?’

‘Because it was written: “Even Evil itself shall pity.”’

‘I told you long ago it would all be laid on me at last,’ said Satan bitterly.

Here Azrael interposed, icy and resplendent. ‘My orders,’ said he, ‘are to dismiss to the Mercy. Where is it?’

Satan put out his hand, but did not speak.

The Three waited in that casualty room, with its porcelain washstand beneath the glass shelf of bottles, its oxygen cylinders tucked under the leatherette couch, and its heart-lowering smell of spent anaesthetics—waited till the agony of waiting that shuffled and mumbled outside crept in and laid hold; dimming, first, the lustre of their pinions; bowing, next, their shoulders as the motes in the never-shifted sunbeam filtered through it and settled on them, masking, finally, the radiance of Robe, Sword, and very Halo, till only their eyes had light.

The groan broke first from Azrael’s lips. ‘How long?’ he muttered. ‘How long?’ But Satan sat dumb and hooded under cover of his wings.

There was a flurry of hysterics at the opening door. An uniformed nurse half supported, half led a woman to the couch.

page 7

‘But I can’t! I mustn’t!’ the woman protested, striving to push away the hands. ‘I—I’ve got an appointment. I’ve got to meet the 7.12. I have really. It’s rather—you don’t know how important it is. Won’t you let me go? Please, let me go I If you’ll let me go, I’ll give you all my diamonds.’

‘Just a little lay-down and a nice cup o’ tea. I’ll fetch it in a minute,’ the nurse cooed.

‘Tea? How do I know it won’t be poisoned. It will be poisoned—I know it will. Let me go I I’ll tell the police if you don’t let me go! I’ll tell—I’ll tell! Oh God!—who can I tell? . . . Dick! Dick! They’re trying to drug me! Come and help me! Oh, help me! It’s me, Dickie!’

Presently the unbridled screams exhausted themselves and turned into choking, confidential, sobbing whispers: ‘Nursie! I’m so sorry I made an exhibition of myself just now. I won’t do it again—on my honour I won’t—if you’ll just let me—just let me slip out to meet the 7.12. I’ll be back the minute it’s in, and then I’ll be good. Please, take your arm away!’

But it was round her already. The nurse’s head bent down as she blew softly on the woman’s forehead till the grey hair parted and the Three could see the Order for Life, where it had been first written. The body began to relax for sleep.

‘Don’t—don’t be so silly,’ she murmured. ‘Well, only for a minute, then. You mustn’t make me late for the 7.12, because—because . . . Oh! Don’t forget . . . “I charge you at the Judgment make it plain—I charge you——”’She ceased. The nurse looked as Kalka’il had done, straight into Satan’s eyes, and:—‘Go!’ she commanded.

Satan bowed his head.

There was a knock, a scrabbling at the door, and the seedy-looking man shambled in.

‘Sorry!’ he began, ‘but I think I left my hat here.’

The woman on the couch waked and, turning, chin in hand, chuckled deliciously:—‘What does it matter now, dear?’

The Three found themselves whirled into the Void—two of them a little ruffled, the third somewhat apologetic.

‘How did it happen?’ Gabriel smoothed his plumes.

‘Well—as a matter of fact, we were rather ordered away,’ said Satan.

‘Ordered away? I?’ Azrael cried.

‘Not to mention your senior in the Service,’

Satan answered. ‘I don’t know whether you noticed that that nurse happened to be Ruya’il——’

‘Then I shall take official action.’ But Azrael’s face belied his speech.

‘I think you’ll find she is protected by that ruling you have so lucidly explained to our young friend. It all turns upon the interpretation of “Who,” you know.’

‘Even so,’ said Gabriel, ‘that does not excuse the neck-and-crop abruptness—the cinema—like trick—of our—our expulsion.’

‘I’m afraid, as the little girl said about her spitting at her nurse, that that was my invention. But, my Brothers’—the Prince of Darkness smiled—‘did you really think that we were needed there much longer?’