Fancies and Goodnights - Collier John - Страница 46
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Next morning, he had to telephone his report to the Devil. «I'll hold your hand,» said Rosie.
«Very well, my darling,» said he. «I shall feel better so.»
His call was put through like lightning. The Devil, like thunder, asked him how he had got on.
«The young woman is seduced,» said George, in a rather brusque tone.
«Excellent!» returned his master. «Now tell me exactly how it happened.»
«I thought,» said George, «that you were supposed to be a gentleman.»
«I am inquiring,» said the Devil, «in a strictly professional capacity. What I wish to get at is her motive in yielding to your almost subtle charm.»
«Why?» cried George. «You don't think that splendid girl would see me frilling and frying in a lake of boiling brimstone?»
«Do you mean to say,» cried the Devil in a terrifying voice, «that she has sacrificed her virtue merely to save you from punishment?»
«What other inducement,» asked our hero, «do you imagine would have been likely to prevail?»
«You besotted fool!» cried his master, and proceeded to abuse him ten times more roundly than before.
George listened in fear and rage. When he had done cursing him, the Devil continued in a calmer voice, «There is only one thing to be done,» said he, «and you may consider yourself very fortunate that you (you worm!) are needed to play a part in it. Otherwise you would be frizzling before sunset. As it is, I see I must give the matter my individual attention, and the first step is that you must marry the girl.»
«By all means,» replied our hero briskly.
«I shall send you a bishop to perform the ceremony,» continued the fiend, «and next week, if I am better of my present fit of gout, I shall require you to present me to your wife, and I myself will undertake her temptation.»
«Temptation to what?» asked George, in a tone of great anxiety.
«To that sin to which wives are peculiarly fitted,» replied the Devil. «Does she like a waxed mustache?»
«Oh, dear! He says,» whispered George to Rosie, «do you like a waxed mustache?»
«No, darling,» said Rosie. «I like a bristly, sandy one, like yours.»
«She says she likes a bristly, sandy one, like mine,» said George, not entirely without complacency.
«Excellent! I will appear in one yet bristlier and sandier,» replied the fiend. «Keep her by you. I have never failed yet. And, Postlethwaite —»
«Oh, yes, yes,» said George. «What is it now?»
«Be discreet,» said the Devil, in a menacing tone. «If she gets wind of my intentions, you shall be in the brimstone within an hour.»
George hung up the receiver. «Excuse me, my dear,» he said. «I really must go and think over what I have just heard.»
He walked out among his groves of willows, which were then all freshened by the morning dew, and resounding with the songs of birds. It was, of all the mornings of his life, that on which he would most have appreciated his first cigarette, had it not been for his conversation with the Devil. As it was, he did not bother to light one. «The thing is,» he said to himself, «he must either succeed or fail. In the latter case his fury will be intolerable; in the former case mine will be.»
The problem seemed to defy solution, and so it would have done, had it not been that love, whose bemusing effects have been celebrated often enough in song and story, has another and an ungratefully neglected aspect, in which the mind receives the benefits of clarifying calm. When the first flurry of his perturbation had passed, our hero found himself in possession of a mind as cool and unclouded as the sea-strand sky of earliest dawn. He immediately lit his cigarette.
«After all, we have some days to go,» he murmured, «and time is entirely relative. Consider, for example, that fellow Prior, who is at this very moment about to drink up the universe, and who will still be arrested in the act of doing so long after all our little lives have passed away. On the other hand, it is certainly not for me to deny that certain delightful moments can take on the aspect of eternity. Besides, we might always escape.»
The thought had entered his mind as unostentatiously as, no doubt, the notion of writing Paradise Lost entered Milton's — «H'm, I'll write Paradise Lost.» «Besides, we might always escape.» Just a few words, which, however, made all the difference. All that remained, in one case as in the other, was to work out the little details.
Our hero was ingenious. What's more, he was assisted in his reflections by the hoarse cry, like that of a homing swan, of Charon's siren. It was the hour when that worthy, having cast loose from the quays of Hell, where he dropped his male cargo, turned his great ship towards George's planet. It came into sight, cleaving the morning blue, flashing in the beams of the local sun, leaving behind it a wake like that of a smoke-trailing aeroplane, only altogether better. It was a glorious sight. Soon George could see the women scampering up and down the decks, and hear their cry: «Is that Buenos Aires?»
He lost no time. Repairing to his palace, and seating himself in the most impressive of its salons, he sent forth a messenger to the docks, saying, «Bid the skipper come up and have a word with, me.»
Charon soon came stumping along in the wake of the messenger. He might have been inclined to grumble, but his eyes brightened at the sight of a bottle George had on his desk. This contained nothing less than the Old Original Rum of Hell, a liquor of the fieriest description, and now as rare as it is unappreciated.
«Skipper,» said George, «you and I have got on well enough hitherto, I believe. I have to ask you a question, which may seem to reflect a little on your capacities. However, I don't ask it on my own behalf, you may be sure, and in order to show my private estimation of you as a friend, as a man, and above all as a sea-dog of the old school, I am going to ask you to do me the favour of taking a little tipple with me first.»
Charon was a man of few words. «Aye! Aye!» said he.
George then poured out the rum. When Charon had wet his whistle, «The chief,» said George, «is in a secret fury with you over Mrs. Soames of Bayswater.»
«Avast,» said Charon, with a frown.
«Has it slipped your memory that I mentioned her to you on two previous occasions?» continued our hero. «She is now a hundred and four, and as cross as two sticks. The chief wants to know why you have not brought her along months ago.» As he spoke, he refilled Charon's glass.
«Avast,» said that worthy again.
«Perhaps,» said George, «among your manifold onerous duties, his express commands concerning one individual may have seemed unworthy of your attention. I'm sure I should have forgotten the matter altogether, had I such a job as yours. Still, you know what he is. He has been talking of changes at the Admiralty; however, pay no attention to that. I have to visit the earth myself on important business, and I find that the young woman you brought by such a regrettable mistake has had training as a hospital nurse. Between us, I assure you, we will shanghai the old geezer in a brace of shakes; the chief will find her here when he recovers from his gout, and foul weather between you will be entirely averted.»
With that he poured the rest of the rum into the old salt's glass.
«Aye! Aye!» said that worthy.
George at once pressed the bell, and had Rosie ushered in, in a bewitching uniform. «To the ship, at once!» he cried.
«Aye! Aye!» cried Charon.
«I can take you back,» whispered George to his beloved, «as long as you don't cast a glance behind you. If you do, we are lost.»
«Depend upon me,» she said. «I have too much to look forward to.»
Very well, they got aboard. Charon believed all landlubbers were mad; moreover, he had long suspected machinations against him at headquarters, and was obliged to George for giving him word of them. George ordered a whole case of the admirable rum (the last case in existence) to be placed in his cabin, lest Charon should remember that old Mrs. Soames had never been mentioned to him at all.
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