Boon, The Mind of the Race, The Wild Asses of the Devil, and The Last Trump Part 16

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Mr. Osborn, in a moment of virile indignation, swiping St. Francis of a.s.sisi one with a club._]

[Ill.u.s.tration: _The soul of Mr. Osborn doing a war dance (as a Spartan Red Indian) in order to work itself up for a_ "Morning Post"

_article._]

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Mr. Osborn's dream of himself as a Prussian Spartan refres.h.i.+ng himself with Hero's food (fresh human liver) and drink (blood and champagne) after a good Go In at some Pacificist softs._]

-- 7

Boon's pessimistic outlook on the war had a profoundly depressing effect upon me. I do all in my power to believe that Wilkins is right, and that the hopelessness that darkened Boon's last days was due to the overshadowing of his mind by his illness. It was not simply that he despaired of the world at large; so far as I am concerned, he pointed and barbed his opinion by showing how inevitable it was that the existing publis.h.i.+ng and book trade would be shattered to fragments. Adapted as I am now to the necessities of that trade, incapable as I am of the fresh exertions needed to bring me into a successful relations.h.i.+p to the unknown exigencies of the future, the sense of complete personal ruin mingled with and intensified the vision he imposed upon me of a world laid waste. I lay awake through long stretches of the night contemplating now my own life, no longer in its first vigour, pinched by harsh necessities and the fiercer compet.i.tion of a young and needy generation, and now all life with its habits and traditions strained and broken. My daily fatigues at drill and the universal heavy cold in the head that has oppressed all Britain this winter almost more than the war, have added their quota to my nightly discomfort. And when at last I have slept I have been oppressed with peculiar and melancholy dreams.

One is so vividly in my mind that I am obliged to tell it here, although I am doubtful whether, except by a very extreme stretching of the meaning of words, we can really consider it among the Remains of George Boon.

It was one of those dreams of which the scenery is not so much a desolate place as desolation itself, and I was there toiling up great steepnesses with a little box of something in my hand. And I knew, in that queer confused way that is peculiar to dreams, that I was not myself but that I was the Author who is the hero of the Wild a.s.ses of the Devil, and also that I was neither he nor I, but all sorts of authors, the spirit of authors.h.i.+p, no Author in particular but the Author at large, and that, since the melancholy devil had deserted me--he had sneaked off Heaven knows whither--it rested with me and with me alone to discover and catch and send out of this tormented world those same Wild a.s.ses of the Devil of which you have read. And so I had salt in my box, Attic Salt, a precious trust, the one thing in all the universe with which I could subdue them.

And then suddenly there I was amidst all those very a.s.ses of which I have told you. There they were all about me, and they were more wild and horrible than I can describe to you. It was not that they were horrible in any particular way, they were just horrible, and they kicked up far over head, and leapt and did not even seem to trouble to elude my poor ineffectual efforts to get within salting distance of them. I toiled and I pursued amidst mad mountains that were suddenly marble flights of stairs that sloped and slid me down to precipices over which I floated; and then we were in soft places knee-deep in blood-red mud; and then they were close to my face, eye to eye, enormous revolving eyes, like the lanterns of lighthouses; and then they swept away, and always I grew smaller and feebler and more breathless, and always they grew larger, until only their vast legs danced about me on the sward, and all the rest was hidden. And all the while I was tugging at my box of Attic Salt, to get it open, to get a pinch. Suddenly I saw they were all coming down upon me, and all the magic salt I had was in the box that would not open....

I saw the sward they trampled, and it was not sward, it was living beings, men hurt by dreadful wounds, and poor people who ran in streaming mult.i.tudes under the beating hoofs, and a lichenous growth of tender things and beautiful and sweet and right things on which they beat, splas.h.i.+ng it all to blood and dirt. I could not open my box. I could not open my box. And a voice said: "Your box! Your box!

Laugh at them for the fools they are, and at the salt sting of laughter back they will fly to h.e.l.l!"

But I could not open my box, for I thought of my friend's sons and dear friends of my own, and there was no more spirit in me. "We cannot laugh!" I cried. "We cannot laugh! Another generation! Another generation may have the heart to do what we cannot do."

And the voice said: "Courage! Only your poor courage can save us!"

But in my dream I could do no more than weep pitifully and weep, and when I woke up my eyes were wet with tears.

CHAPTER THE TENTH

The Story of the Last Trump

-- 1

"After this war," said Wilkins, "after its revelation of horrors and waste and destruction, it is impossible that people will tolerate any longer that system of diplomacy and armaments and national aggression that has brought this catastrophe upon mankind. This is the war that will end war."

"Osborn," said Boon, "Osborn."

"But after all the world has seen----!"

"The world doesn't see," said Boon....

Boon's story of the Last Trump may well come after this to terminate my book. It has been by no means an easy task to a.s.semble the various portions of this ma.n.u.script. It is written almost entirely in pencil, and sometimes the writing is so bad as to be almost illegible. But here at last it is, as complete, I think, as Boon meant it to be. It is his epitaph upon his dream of the Mind of the Race.

-- 2

The Story of the Last Trump

The story of the Last Trump begins in Heaven and it ends in all sorts of places round about the world....

Heaven, you must know, is a kindly place, and the blessed ones do not go on for ever singing Alleluia, whatever you may have been told. For they too are finite creatures, and must be fed with their eternity in little bits, as one feeds a chick or a child. So that there are mornings and changes and freshness, there is time to condition their lives. And the children are still children, gravely eager about their playing and ready always for new things; just children they are, but blessed as you see them in the pictures beneath the careless feet of the Lord G.o.d. And one of these blessed children routing about in an attic--for Heaven is, of course, full of the most heavenly attics, seeing that it has children--came upon a number of instruments stored away, and laid its little chubby hands upon them....

Now indeed I cannot tell what these instruments were, for to do so would be to invade mysteries.... But one I may tell of, and that was a great brazen trumpet which the Lord G.o.d had made when He made the world--for the Lord G.o.d finishes all His jobs--to blow when the time for our Judgement came round. And He had made it and left it; there it was, and everything was settled exactly as the Doctrine of Predestination declares. And this blessed child conceived one of those unaccountable pa.s.sions of childhood for its smoothness and bra.s.siness, and he played with it and tried to blow it, and trailed it about with him out of the attic into the gay and golden streets, and, after many fitful wanderings, to those celestial battlements of crystal of which you have doubtless read. And there the blessed child fell to counting the stars, and forgot all about the Trumpet beside him until a flourish of his elbow sent it over....

Down fell the trump, spinning as it fell, and for a day or so, which seemed but moments in heaven, the blessed child watched its fall until it was a glittering little speck of brightness....

When it looked a second time the trump was gone....

I do not know what happened to that child when at last it was time for Judgement Day and that s.h.i.+ning trumpet was missed. I know that Judgement Day is long overpa.s.sed, because of the wickedness of the world; I think perhaps it was in A.D. 1000 when the expected Day should have dawned that never came, but no other heavenly particulars do I know at all, because now my scene changes to the narrow ways of this Earth....

And the Prologue in Heaven ends.

-- 3

And now the scene is a dingy little shop in Caledonian Market, where things of an incredible worthlessness lie in wait for such as seek after an impossible cheapness. In the window, as though it had always been there and never anywhere else, lies a long, battered, discoloured trumpet of bra.s.s that no prospective purchaser has ever been able to sound. In it mice shelter, and dust and fluff have gathered after the fas.h.i.+on of this world. The keeper of the shop is a very old man, and he bought the shop long ago, but already this trumpet was there; he has no idea whence it came, nor its country or origin, nor anything about it. But once in a moment of enterprise that led to nothing he decided to call it an Ancient Ceremonial Shawm, though he ought to have known that whatever a shawm may be the last thing it was likely to be is a trumpet, seeing that they are always mentioned together.

And above it hung concertinas and melodeons and cornets and tin whistles and mouth-organs and all that rubbish of musical instruments which delight the hearts of the poor. Until one day two blackened young men from the big motor works in the Pansophist Road stood outside the window and argued.

They argued about these instruments in stock and how you made these instruments sound, because they were fond of argument, and one a.s.serted and the other denied that he could make every instrument in the place sound a note. And the argument rose high, and led to a bet.

"Supposing, of course, that the instrument is in order," said Hoskin, who was betting he could.

"That's understood," said Briggs.

And then they called as witnesses certain other young and black and greasy men in the same employment, and after much argument and discussion that lasted through the afternoon, they went in to the little old dealer about teatime, just as he was putting a blear-eyed, stinking paraffin-lamp to throw an unfavourable light upon his always very unattractive window. And after great difficulty they arranged that for the sum of one s.h.i.+lling, paid in advance, Hoskin should have a try at every instrument in the shop that Briggs chose to indicate.

And the trial began.

The third instrument that was pitched upon by Briggs for the trial was the strange trumpet that lay at the bottom of the window, the trumpet that you, who have read the Introduction, know was the trumpet for the Last Trump. And Hoskin tried and tried again, and then, blowing desperately, hurt his ears. But he could get no sound from the trumpet. Then he examined the trumpet more carefully and discovered the mice and fluff and other things in it, and demanded that it should be cleaned; and the old dealer, nothing loth, knowing they were used to automobile-horns and such-like instruments, agreed to let them clean it on condition that they left it s.h.i.+ney. So the young men, after making a suitable deposit (which, as you shall hear, was presently confiscated), went off with the trumpet, proposing to clean it next day at the works and polish it with the peculiarly excellent bra.s.s polish employed upon the honk-honk horns of the firm. And this they did, and Hoskin tried again.

But he tried in vain. Whereupon there arose a great argument about the trumpet, whether it was in order or not, whether it was possible for any one to sound it. For if not, then clearly it was outside the condition of the bet.

Others among the young men tried it, including two who played wind instruments in a band and were musically knowing men. After their own failure they were strongly on the side of Hoskin and strongly against Briggs, and most of the other young men were of the same opinion.

"Not a bit of it," said Briggs, who was a man of resource. "_I_'ll show you that it can be sounded."

And taking the instrument in his hand, he went towards a peculiarly powerful foot blow-pipe that stood at the far end of the toolshed.

"Good old Briggs!" said one of the other young men, and opinion veered about.

Briggs removed the blow-pipe from its bellows and tube, and then adjusted the tube very carefully to the mouthpiece of the trumpet.

Then with great deliberation he produced a piece of bees-waxed string from a number of other strange and filthy contents in his pocket and tied the tube to the mouthpiece. And then he began to work the treadle of the bellows.

"Good old Briggs!" said the one who had previously admired him.

And then something incomprehensible happened.