by John Collier
«Come!» said the fiend. «We must not stay here all day. Doubtless you will want to see the rest of your domain.»
«Yes, indeed,» said George. «Show me where the prisoners are to be confined. I suppose that now and then I can have one haled up for special admonishment.»
The Devil then flew with him over the whole surface of the planet, which, once they were clear of the palace and its lands, proved to have an aspect not unlike that of the Great West Road, where it approaches London. On every hand, rows of cells were being run up. To add the final refinement of misery, they were designed exactly like houses in a modern building project. Imitation husbands, who could neither speak nor hear, were planted in armchairs with their feet on the mantelpieces. The wardrobes were full of unfashionable garments. Small imps disguised as children were already rehearsing by dozens in all the upper rooms. The peculiar property of the walls was to translate the noise of those next door into the sound of a party going on, while the windows were so designed as to make the dowdiest passer-by appear to be arrayed in the very latest mode.
Vast bunion factories belched smoke among the crazy villas; lorryloads of superfluous hair clattered along the streets. George was shown the towering gasometers of the halitosis works, and a number of other things I do not dare imagine. He saw a great concourse of fiends being instructed in door-to-door salesmanship; others were being fitted out as relations-in-law, rent-collectors, and bailiffs. He himself made two suggestions that were immediately put into force: one was for a stocking ladderer, and the other for an elastic that would break in the middle of any crowded thoroughfare.
As a final encouragement, the Devil took him over to the mainland of Hell itself, which is girdled by the Styx as Saturn by his ring. Charon's vast liner had just come to dock, and our hero had the pleasure of seeing a multitude of film stars, baby blondes, unfaithful wives, disobedient daughters, frivolous typists, lazy serving-maids, wantons, careless waitresses, cruel charmers, naggers, sirens, clogs, unpunctual sweethearts, bridge-playing grandmas, extravagant helpmeets, mischief-making gossips, tantalizers, female novelists, crazy debutantes, possessive mothers, neglectful mothers, modern mothers, unmarried mothers, would-be, should-be, in fact all who could be, mothers; they were all there, as naked as your hand, and they filed down the gangway, some weeping, some brazen, and some in attitudes of affected modesty.
«This is a magnificent sight,» remarked our hero.
«Well, my dear sir,» said the Devil, «are you the man for the job?»
«I will do my best!» cried George enthusiastically.
They shook hands on it. All the little details were arranged. Before evening George was installed as principal vassal of all the Devil's host, and overlord of a planet populated only by women and fiends.
It must be admitted he enjoyed himself with a vengeance. Every day he would go out, having donned his cap of invisibility, and regale himself upon his subject's endeavours to cope with the hardships he had designed for them. Sometimes he would hold up the ceaseless self-dirtying of plates, put the children to sleep, and amuse them with the prospect of a matinee. He saw to it, though, that they had to queue up for the cheap seats, and arranged for it to rain. In the end, he would announce that the show was postponed.
He had a thousand other ways of tantalizing them; I shall not enumerate them all. One of the best was to send for any newly arrived young thing who was reported to be vain of her beauty, and give her the impression for an hour or two that she had made a conquest of him, and then (as far as was possible) undeceive her.
When the day's work was done, he sat down to cards with his principal officers, and sure enough everyoue had a good hand, but his was the best. They drank like champions; the Devil was constantly sending over the choicest delicacies from Hell; the word «fine» was continually upon our hero's lips, and the time passed like lightning.
One day, toward the end of the second year, our potentate had just got through his levee, and was refreshing himself with a stroll on a little private terrace which he much affected, when word was brought to him that the senior port official desired an audience. Our hero was the easiest fellow in the world to approach, never stood upon his dignity: «Send the old chap along here,» said he. «And, hi! Bring a bottle and a couple of glasses back with you when you come.»
The fact is, George dearly loved a chat with these old petty officers, who occasionally brought him reports of diverting little incidents at the Ellis Island of Hell, or scraps of gossip concerning the irrelevant affairs of the world, such as sometimes strayed in among Charon's cargo, as lizards or butterflies travel to Covent Garden among the bananas.
On this occasion, however, the harbour-master's face bore an extremely worried expression. «I'm afraid, sir,» he said, «I've got a little irregularity to report.»
«Well, we all make mistakes sometimes,» said George. «What's the trouble?»
«It's like this here, sir,» replied the old salt. «Young gal come along o' the last cargo — seems as if she didn't ought to be here at all»
«Oh, that'll be all right,» cried George. «Bound to be. It's understood we take the whole issue in these days. She's a woman, and that's enough. What's on her charge-sheet, anyway?»
«Lot o' little things, sir, what don't amount to much,» replied the honest fellow. «Fact is, sir, it ain't added up.» And he pursed his lips.
«Not added up?» cried George in amazement
«That's how it is, sir,» said his subordinate glumly. «This young gal ain't properly dead.»
George was absolutely bowled over. «Whew!» said he. «But this is serious, my man.»
«It is serious, sir,» said the old chap. «I don't know what's to be done, I'm sure.»
A score of fine legal points were involved. George dispatched an S.O.S. for one of the leading casuists of Hell proper. Unfortunately they were all engaged in committee, on some fine point concerning an illuminated address which was being prepared for the saviours of Germany. George therefore had nothing but precedent to go on, and precedent made it clear that a mortal must sin in such and such a way, die in such and such a condition, be checked in, checked out — it was as complicated as a case in Court Leet under a Statute of Ed. Tert. Rex., that statute being based on precedents from the Saxon and Norman codes dually and differently derived from a Roman adaptation of a Greco-Egyptian principle influenced prehistorically by rites and customs from the basin of the Euphrates or the Indus. It was quite like an income-tax form. George scratched his head in despair.
What made it all the worse was, the Devil himself had given him a most serious warning against the least infringement of protocol «This is,» he had said, «little better than mandated territory. We have built up, step by step, and with incredible ingenuity, a system under which we live very tolerably, but we have only done it by sailing devilishly near the metaphysical wind. One single step beyoud the strict legal limits, and I am back on my red-hot throne, in that pit whose bottomlessness I shall heartily envy. As for you —»
George therefore had every incentive to caution. He turned over a large number of volumes, tapped his teeth: in the end he knew not what to make of it. «Send the young person in to me,» said he.
When she arrived, she proved to be no more than seventeen years of age. I should be telling a downright lie if I said she was less beautiful than a peri.
George was not a bad fellow at heart. Like most of us, he was capable of tyranny upon the featureless mass, but when he came to grips with an individual his bark was a good deal worse than his bite. Most of the young women he had had up for admonishment had complained of little except his fickleness.
This young girl was ushered into his presence; the very lackeys who brought her in rolled their eyes till the whites nickered like the Eddystone Lighthouse. She was complete in every particular, and all of the highest quality; she was a picture gallery, an anthology of the poets, a precipitation of all that has ever been dreamed of love: her goodly eyes like Saphyres shining bright,
her forehead yvory white, her cheeks lyke apples which the sun hath rudded, her lips lyke cherryes charming men to byte, her brest lyke to a bowle of creame uncrudded, her paps lyke lyllies budded, her snowie neck lyke to a marble towre; and all her body like a pallace fayre, ascending up, with many a stately stayre, to honours seat and chastities sweet bowre.
Her name was Rosie Dixon. Moreover she gained enormously in contrast to her surroundings, by the mere fact of being alive. It was as though a cowslip were to bloom miraculously between the dark and sterile metals of the Underground; as if its scent were wafted to one's nostrils on the nasty, sultry, canned sirocco of that region. It is no exaggeration to say that she was as good as she was beautiful. It is true her pretty face was a little blubbered with tears. «My dear,» said George, taking her hand, «there is no reason for you to cry in that fashion. Don't you know the good old saying, 'Never holler before you're hurt'?»
«Pray, sir,» cried she, having taken a long dewy peep at his monkey-phiz, and seeing a vast amount of good nature there, «Pray, sir,» said she, «tell me only, where am I?»
«Why, in Hell, to be sure,» said he, with a hearty laugh.
«Oh, thank goodness!» cried she, «I thought I was in Buenos Aires.»
«Most of 'em think that,» said our hero, «owing to the liner. But I must say you are the first who has shown any gratification on learning otherwise.»
They had a little more conversation of this sort; he questioned her pretty closely as to how she came to be stowed away on Charon's vessel. It appeared that she was a shop-girl who had been much tormented by her workmates; why, she could not say. However, she had to serve a young man who came in to buy some stockings for his sister. This young man had addressed to her a remark that brought her soul fluttering to her lips. At that very moment, the cruellest of her envious colleagues had manoeuvred to pass behind her, and had bestowed on her a pinch so spiteful, so sudden, and so intensely and laceratingly agonizing, that her poised soul was jolted from its perch. It had spread its wings and borne off her swooning body as a woodcock bears off its young. When she had regained her senses, she was locked in one of the narrow staterooms of a vast ship, stewarded by what she took to be black men, and resounding with the hysterical laughter and screams of captives of her own sex, all of whom seemed to think they were on the way to Buenos Aires.
George was very thorough. He minutely examined what little evidence she had to offer. «There is no doubt,» said he at length, speaking in tones of the greatest sympathy, «that you have received a very cruel pinch. When your tormentor comes into my hands, I myself will repay it a hundredfold.»
«No, no,» said she. «She did not mean so much harm. I'm sore she is a good girl at heart. It is just her little way.»
George was overcome with admiration at this remark, which, however, caused a tremor to pass through the whole of the vast black palace. «Upon my word!» said he. «I can't keep you here. You will bring the whole place crashing about my ears. I dare not put you in one of our punishment cells, for, if I did so against your will, all our system of home rule would be snatched away from us, and we should return to the crude discomforts of primitive times. That would be intolerable. There is a museum over on the mainland that would make your blood run cold.»
«Could you not send me back to earth?» said she.
«No woman has ever left this place alone!» cried he in despair. «My position is so delicate I dare not make an innovation.»
«Do not take on so,» said she. «I cannot bear to think of so kind a gentleman being plunged into fiery torments. I will stay voluntarily, and perhaps then no fuss will be made. I hope it will not be terribly painful.»
«You adorable creature!» cried he. «I must give you a kiss for that I believe you have solved the difficulty.»
She gave him back his kiss, as sweetly and purely as you can possibly imagine. «This is terrible,» he cried in great anguish of spirit. «I cannot bear to think of you undergoing the miseries of this place. My dear, good girl —»
«I don't mind,» she said. «I have worked in a shop in Oxford Street»
He gave her a pat or two, and signed up a form for her: «Remanded in custody at own request»
«It is only temporary, after all,» he said. «Otherwise I would not permit it»
Very well, she kept a stiff upper lip, and was carted off to a hateful box as cruelly equipped as any of the others. For a whole week George kept his head, reading love lyrics to distract his mind. At the end, he could put the matter behind him no longer. «I must go,» said he, «and see how she is getting on.»
In Hell, all the officials travel with incredible speed. In a very few minutes George had passed over a couple of continents, and was tapping at the mean front door of poor Rosie's little habitation. He had not chosen to put on his cap of fern-seed virtue, or perhaps he never thought of it. Anyway, she came to the door with three or four of the imps hanging about her apron-strings, and recognized him at once. He observed that she was wearing the drab and unfashionable garments provided by the authorities, in which her appearance was that of a rose in a jam-pot
What raised an intolerable burden from his heart was the fact that the superfluous hair had obviously failed to take root upon her living flesh. He found on inquiry that she had used it to stuff a pillow with, which she had placed behind the head of the snoring imitation husband who gracelessly sprawled before the fire. She admitted a little tuft flourished on the bruise, where she had been pinched.
«No doubt it will fall off,» said our hero scientifically, «when the tissues resume their normal condition. These things were designed to flourish upon carrion only, whereas you —» and he smacked his lips.
«I hope it will fall off,» said she, «for scissors will not cut it. And since I promised some to the eldest of these toddlers, to make him a false mustache of, no more has arrived.»
«Shall I try to cut it off?» said our hero.
«No, no,» said she, with a blush. «He has stopped crying now. They were all very querulous when first I came here, but now they are improved out of all knowledge.»
While she spoke, she busied her fingers with a succession of little tasks. «You seem to be terribly busy,» complained George.
«Forgive me,» said she, with a smile, «but there is such a terrible lot to do. Still, it makes the time pass.»
«Do you never,» said he, «wish to go to the matinee?»
«That would never do,» she replied. «Supposing he should wake up» (pointing to the imitation husband) «and call for his tea. Besides, I have plenty of entertainment. The people next door seem always to have a party; it does me good to hear them laugh and sing. What's more, when I'm cleaning the windows, as needs doing rather often, I see girls going by, dressed more beautifully than you can possibly imagine. I love to see people in pretty clothes.»
«Your own are not very attractive,» said George in a melancholy tone.
«They are plain enough,» said she, with a laugh. «But I'm far too busy to think about that. All I could wish is that they were of slightly stronger materials. The stockings laddered so often I've had to give up wearing them. And whenever I go out shopping — Still, you don't want to hear all this.»
George was so devoured by remorse that he had not the spirit to ask an interesting question. «Goodbye,» said he, pressing her hand.
She gave him the sweetest glance; he felt it no more than his duty to offer her an encouraging kiss. At once the doors began to bang, the fire belched smoke, the imps opened their mouths to yell.
«No, no,» said she, with just so much of inexpressible regret as to soften the cruelty of it. And she pointed to the dummy husband before the fire.
«Don't worry about him!» cried our hero. «He's only a dummy.» With that, be gave the image a kick, capsizing it into the hearth.
«Well, if he's not a real husband,» said Rosie, «I suppose there is nothing wrong in it.» And with that she gave George a kiss, which he found altogether delightful, except that, as it in
creased the high esteem in which he held her, so also it increased his misery in having placed her in such a predicament.
When he got home, the poor fellow could neither eat nor sleep. He called up a few of his officers to pass away the night at poker, but though he held four straight flushes in succession, he could take no pleasure in it. In the morning, the telephone bell rang. George's was the only instrument on the planet which did not go wrong as soon as one began to speak; on this occasion he would willingly have surrendered the advantage. The Devil was at the other end, and he was in a towering rage. He made no bones about accusing our hero of downright morality.
«You curse and swear very well,» said the victim in an injured tone. «All the same, it was not my fault she came here. I clearly see she may prove a disintegrating influence if I keep her, but, if I may not send her back, I don't see what else I can do.»
«Why, tempt her, you idiot!» replied the Devil. «Have you never tempted woman before?»
«As far as I know, no,» said George frankly.
«Well, do so now,» said the Devil in quite a silky tone, which nevertheless caused blue sparks to crackle from the instrument. «Once we get possession of her soul, there will not be much fuss made about her body. I leave the matter in your hands entirely. If you fail me, there are one or two ancient institutions over here which I shall take pleasure in reviving entirely for your benefit.»
George detested the idea of tempting this singularly good and beautiful young girl; however, the prospect was not so unredeemedly repulsive as that of immersion in boiling brimstone. He took a glass or two, to stifle what regrets he had, and sent for Rosie to attend him in a silken pavilion, which he had had rigged up among the groves and fountains which surrounded his citadel. He considered this fabric to be preferable to blocks of black basalt, in the event of some disruptive phrase of hers bringing the roof about their ears.