After Hell

 

He heard an English voice shouting, "Paiper! Paiper!" No mere

spelling of the word will give the intonation. It was the voice of

English towns he heard again. The very voice of London in the

morning. It seemed like magic, or like some wonderfully vivid dream.

 

He was only a hundred miles or so from England; it was not very long

since he had been there; yet what he heard seemed like an enchanted

dream, because only the day before he had been in the trenches.

 

They had been twelve days in the trenches and had marched out at

evening. They had marched five miles and were among tin huts in quite

a different world. Through the doorways of the huts green grass could

be seen and the sun was shining on it. It was morning. Everything was

strangely different. You saw more faces smiling. Men were not so calm

as they had been during the last twelve days, the last six

especially: someone was kicking a football at somebody else's hut and

there was excitement about it.

 

Guns were still firing: but they thought of death now as one who

walked on the other side of the hills, no longer as a neighbour, as

one who might drop in at any moment, and sometime did, while they

were taking tea. It was not that they had been afraid of him, but the

strain of expectancy was over; and that strain being suddenly gone in

a single night, they all had a need, whether they knew it or not, of

something to take its place, so the football loomed very large.

 

It was morning and he had slept long. The guns that grew active at

dawn had not woke him; in those twelve days they had grown too

familiar, but he woke wide when he heard the young English soldier

with a bundle of three-days-old papers under his arm calling "Paiper,

paiper!"--bringing to that strange camp the voice of the English

towns. He woke wide at that wonder; and saw the sun shining cheerily,

on desolation with a tinge of green in it, which even by itself

rejoiced him on that morning after those twelve days amongst mud,

looking at mud, surrounded by mud, protected by mud, sharing with mud

the liability to be suddenly blown high and to come down in a shower

on other men's helmets and coats.

 

He wondered if Dante when he came up from Hell heard anyone calling

amongst the Verdure, in sunlight, any familiar call such as merchants

use, some trivial song or cry of his native city.

 

 

The Bureau d'Echange de Maux

 

I often think of the Bureau d'Echange de Maux and the wondrously evil

old man that sate therein. It stood in a little street that there is

in Paris, its doorway made of three brown beams of wood, the top one

overlapping the others like the Greek letter _pi_, all the rest

painted green, a house far lower and narrower than its neighbours and

infinitely stranger, a thing to take one's fancy. And over the doorway

on the old brown beam in faded yellow letters this legend ran, Bureau

Universel d'Echanges de Maux.

 

I entered at once and accosted the listless man that lolled on a stool

by his counter. I demanded the wherefore of his wonderful house, what

evil wares he exchanged, with many other things that I wished to know,

for curiosity led me; and indeed had it not I had gone at once from

that shop, for there was so evil a look in that fattened man, in the

hang of his fallen cheeks and his sinful eye, that you would have said

he had had dealings with Hell and won the advantage by sheer

wickedness.

 

Such a man was mine host; but above all the evil of him lay in his

eyes, which lay so still, so apathetic, that you would have sworn that

he was drugged or dead; like lizards motionless on a wall they lay,

then suddenly they darted, and all his cunning flamed up and revealed

itself in what one moment before seemed no more than a sleepy and

ordinary wicked old man. And this was the object and trade of that

peculiar shop, the Bureau Universel d'Echange de Maux: you paid twenty

francs, which the old man proceeded to take from me, for admission to

the bureau and then had the right to exchange any evil or misfortune

with anyone on the premises for some evil or misfortune that he "could

afford," as the old man put it.

 

There were four or five men in the dingy ends of that low-ceilinged

room who gesticulated and muttered softly in twos as men who make a

bargain, and now and then more came in, and the eyes of the flabby

owner of the house leaped up at them as they entered, seemed to know

their errands at once and each one's peculiar need, and fell back

again into somnolence, receiving his twenty francs in an almost

lifeless hand and biting the coin as though in pure absence of mind.

 

"Some of my clients," he told me. So amazing to me was the trade of

this extraordinary shop that I engaged the old man in conversation,

repulsive though he was, and from his garrulity I gathered these

facts. He spoke in perfect English though his utterance was somewhat

thick and heavy; no language seemed to come amiss to him. He had been

in business a great many years, how many he would not say, and was far

older than he looked. All kinds of people did business in his shop.

What they exchanged with each other he did not care except that it had

to be evils, he was not empowered to carry on any other kind of

business.

 

There was no evil, he told me, that was not negotiable there; no evil

the old man knew had ever been taken away in despair from his shop. A

man might have to wait and come back again next day, and next day and

the day after, paying twenty francs each time, but the old man had the

addresses of all his clients and shrewdly knew their needs, and soon

the right two met and eagerly exchanged their commodities.

"Commodities" was the old man's terrible word, said with a gruesome

smack of his heavy lips, for he took a pride in his business and evils

to him were goods.

 

I learned from him in ten minutes very much of human nature, more than

I have ever learned from any other man; I learned from him that a

man's own evil is to him the worst thing there is or ever could be,

and that an evil so unbalances all men's minds that they always seek

for extremes in that small grim shop. A woman that had no children had

exchanged with an impoverished half-maddened creature with twelve. On

one occasion a man had exchanged wisdom for folly.

 

"Why on earth did he do that?" I said.

 

"None of my business," the old man answered in his heavy indolent way.

He merely took his twenty francs from each and ratified the agreement

in the little room at the back opening out of the shop where his

clients do business. Apparently the man that had parted with wisdom

had left the shop upon the tips of his toes with a happy though

foolish expression all over his face, but the other went thoughtfully

away wearing a troubled and very puzzled look. Almost always it seemed

they did business in opposite evils.

 

But the thing that puzzled me most in all my talks with that unwieldy

man, the thing that puzzles me still, is that none that had once done

business in that shop ever returned again; a man might come day after

day for many weeks, but once do business and he never returned; so

much the old man told me, but when I asked him why, he only muttered

that he did not know.

 

It was to discover the wherefore of this strange thing and for no

other reason at all that I determined myself to do business sooner or

later in the little room at the back of that mysterious shop. I

determined to exchange some very trivial evil for some evil equally

slight, to seek for myself an advantage so very small as scarcely to

give Fate as it were a grip, for I deeply distrusted these bargains,

knowing well that man has never yet benefited by the marvellous and

that the more miraculous his advantage appears to be the more securely

and tightly do the gods or the witches catch him. In a few days more I

was going back to England and I was beginning to fear that I should be

sea-sick: this fear of sea-sickness, not the actual malady but only

the mere fear of it, I decided to exchange for a suitably little evil.

I did not know with whom I should be dealing, who in reality was the

head of the firm (one never does when shopping) but I decided that

neither Jew nor Devil could make very much on so small a bargain as

that.

 

I told the old man my project, and he scoffed at the smallness of my

commodity trying to urge me to some darker bargain, but could not move

me from my purpose. And then he told me tales with a somewhat boastful

air of the big business, the great bargains that had passed through

his hands. A man had once run in there to try and exchange death, he

had swallowed poison by accident and had only twelve hours to live.

That sinister old man had been able to oblige him. A client was

willing to exchange the commodity.

 

"But what did he give in exchange for death?" I said.

 

"Life," said that grim old man with a furtive chuckle.

 

"It must have been a horrible life," I said.

 

"That was not my affair," the proprietor said, lazily rattling

together as he spoke a little pocketful of twenty-franc pieces.

 

Strange business I watched in that shop for the next few days, the

exchange of odd commodities, and heard strange mutterings in corners

amongst couples who presently rose and went to the back room, the old

man following to ratify.

 

Twice a day for a week I paid my twenty francs, watching life with its

great needs and its little needs morning and afternoon spread out

before me in all its wonderful variety.

 

And one day I met a comfortable man with only a little need, he seemed

to have the very evil I wanted. He always feared the lift was going to

break. I knew too much of hydraulics to fear things as silly as that,

but it was not my business to cure his ridiculous fear. Very few words

were needed to convince him that mine was the evil for him, he never

crossed the sea, and I on the other hand could always walk upstairs,

and I also felt at the time, as many must feel in that shop, that so

absurd a fear could never trouble me. And yet at times it is almost

the curse of my life. When we both had signed the parchment in the

spidery back room and the old man had signed and ratified (for which

we had to pay him fifty francs each) I went back to my hotel, and

there I saw the deadly thing in the basement. They asked me if I would

go upstairs in the lift, from force of habit I risked it, and I held

my breath all the way and clenched my hands. Nothing will induce me to

try such a journey again. I would sooner go up to my room in a

balloon. And why? Because if a balloon goes wrong you have a chance,

it may spread out into a parachute after it has burst, it may catch in

a tree, a hundred and one things may happen, but if the lift falls

down its shaft you are done. As for sea-sickness I shall never be sick

again, I cannot tell you why except that I know that it is so.

 

And the shop in which I made this remarkable bargain, the shop to

which none return when their business is done: I set out for it next

day. Blindfold I could have found my way to the unfashionable quarter

out of which a mean street runs, where you take the alley at the end,

whence runs the cul de sac where the queer shop stood. A shop with

pillars, fluted and painted red, stands on its near side, its other

neighbour is a low-class jeweller's with little silver brooches in the

window. In such incongruous company stood the shop with beams with its

walls painted green.

 

In half an hour I found the cul de sac to which I had gone twice a day

for the last week, I found the shop with the ugly painted pillars and

the jeweller that sold brooches, but the green house with the three

beams was gone.

 

Pulled down, you will say, although in a single night. That can never

be the answer to the mystery, for the house of the fluted pillars

painted on plaster and the low-class jeweller's shop with its silver

brooches (all of which I could identify one by one) were standing side

by side.

 

 

Charon

 

Charon leaned forward and rowed. All things were one with his

weariness.

 

It was not with him a matter of years or of centuries, but of wide

floods of time, and an old heaviness and a pain in the arms that had

become for him part of the scheme that the gods had made and was

of a piece with Eternity.

 

If the gods had even sent him a contrary wind it would have divided

all time in his memory into two equal slabs.

 

So grey were all things always where he was that if any radiance

lingered a moment among the dead, on the face of such a queen

perhaps as Cleopatra, his eyes could not have perceived it.

 

It was strange that the dead nowadays were coming in such numbers.

They were coming in thousands where they used to come in fifties. It

was neither Charon's duty nor his wont to ponder in his grey soul why

these things might be. Charon leaned forward and rowed.

 

Then no one came for a while. It was not usual for the gods to send

no one down from Earth for such a space. But the gods knew best.

 

Then one man came alone. And the little shade sat shivering on a

lonely bench and the great boat pushed off. Only one passenger:

the gods knew best. And great and weary Charon rowed on and on

beside the little, silent, shivering ghost.

 

And the sound of the river was like a mighty sigh that Grief in the

beginning had sighed among her sisters, and that could not die like

the echoes of human sorrow failing on earthly hills, but was as old

as time and the pain in Charon's arms.

 

Then the boat from the slow, grey river loomed up to the coast of

Dis and the little, silent shade still shivering stepped ashore, and

Charon turned the boat to go wearily back to the world. Then the

little shadow spoke, that had been a man.

 

"I am the last," he said.

 

No one had ever made Charon smile before, no one before had ever

made him weep.

 

 

The Home of Herr Schnitzelhaaser

 

The guns in the town of Greinstein were faintly audible. The family of

Schnitzelhaaser lived alone there in mourning, an old man and old

woman. They never went out or saw any one, for they knew they could

not speak as though they did not mourn. They feared that their secret

would escape them. They had never cared for the war that the War Lord

made. They no longer cared what he did with it. They never read his

speeches; they never hung out flags when he ordered flags: they hadn't

the heart to.

 

They had had four sons.

 

The lonely old couple would go as far as the shop for food. Hunger

stalked behind them. They just beat hunger every day, and so saw

evening: but there was nothing to spare. Otherwise they did not go out

at all. Hunger had been coming slowly nearer of late. They had nothing

but the ration, and the ration was growing smaller. They had one pig

of their own, but the law said you might not kill it. So the pig was

no good to them.

 

They used to go and look at that pig sometimes when hunger pinched.

But more than that they did not dare to contemplate.

 

Hunger came nearer and nearer. The war was going to end by the first

of July. The War Lord was going to take Paris on this day and that

would end the war at once. But then the war was always going to end.

It was going to end in 1914, and their four sons were to have come

home when the leaves fell. The War Lord had promised that. And even if

it did end, that would not bring their four sons home now. So what did

it matter what the War Lord said.

 

It was thoughts like these that they knew they had to conceal. It was

because of thoughts like these that they did not trust themselves to

go out and see other people, for they feared that by their looks if by

nothing else, or by their silence or perhaps their tears, they might

imply a blasphemy against the All Highest. And hunger made one so

hasty. What might one not say? And so they stayed indoors.

 

But now. What would happen now? The War Lord was coming to Greinstein

in order to hear the guns. One officer of the staff was to be billeted

in their house. And what would happen now?

 

They talked the whole thing over. They must struggle and make an

effort. The officer would be there for one evening. He would leave in

the morning quite early in order to make things ready for the return

to Potsdam: he had charge of the imperial car. So for one evening they

must be merry. They would suppose, it was Herr Schnitzelhaaser's

suggestion, they would think all the evening that Belgium and France

and Luxemburg all attacked the Fatherland, and that the Kaiser,

utterly unprepared, quite unprepared, called on the Germans to defend

their land against Belgium.

 

Yes, the old woman could imagine that; she could think it all the

evening.

 

And then,--it was no use not being cheerful altogether,--then one

must imagine a little more, just for the evening: it would come quite

easy; one must think that the four boys were alive.

 

Hans too? (Hans was the youngest).

 

Yes, all four. Just for the evening.

 

But if the officer asks?

 

He will not ask. What are four soldiers?

 

So it was all arranged; and at evening the officer came. He brought

his own rations, so hunger came no nearer. Hunger just lay down

outside the door and did not notice the officer.

 

A this supper the officer began to talk. The Kaiser himself, he said,

was at the Schartzhaus.

 

"So," said Herr Schnitzelhaaser; "just over the way." So close.

Such an honour.

 

And indeed the shadow of the Schartzhaus darkened their garden in the

morning.

 

It was such an honour, said Frau Schnitzelhaaser too. And they began

to praise the Kaiser. So great a War Lord, she said; the most glorious

war there had ever been.

 

Of course, said the officer, it would end on the first of July.

 

Of course, said Frau Schnitzelhaaser. And so great an admiral, too.

One must remember that also. And how fortunate we were to have him:

one must not forget that. Had it not been for him the crafty Belgians

would have attacked the Fatherland, but they were struck down before

they could do it. So much better to prevent a bad deed like that than

merely to punish after. So wise. And had it not been for him, if it

had not been for him...

 

The old man saw that she was breaking down and hastily he took up that

feverish praise. Feverish it was, for their hunger and bitter loss

affected their minds no less than illness does, and the things they

did they did hastily and intemperately. His praise of the War Lord

raced on as the officer ate. He spoke of him as of those that benefit

man, as of monarchs who bring happiness to their people. And now, he

said, he is here in the Schartzhaus beside us, listening to the guns

just like a common soldier.

 

Finally the guns, as he spoke, coughed beyond ominous hills.

Contentedly the officer went on eating. He suspected nothing of the

thoughts his host and hostess were hiding. At last he went upstairs to

bed.

 

As fierce exertion is easy to the fevered, so they had spoken; and it

wears them, so they were worn. The old woman wept when the officer

went out of hearing. But old Herr Schnitzelhaaser picked up a big

butcher's knife. "I will bear it no more," he said.

 

His wife watched him in silence as he went away with his knife. Out of

the house he went and into the night. Through the open door she saw

nothing; all was dark; even the Schartzhaus, where all was gay

to-night, stood dark for fear of aëroplanes. The old woman waited in

silence.

 

When Herr Schnitzelhaaser returned there was blood on his knife.

 

"What have you done?" the old woman asked him quite calmly. "I have

killed our pig," he said.

 

She broke out then, all the more recklessly for the long restraint of

the evening; the officer must have heard her.

 

"We are lost! We are lost!" she cried. "We may not kill our pig.

Hunger has made you mad. You have ruined us."

 

"I will bear it no longer," he said. "I have killed our pig."

 

"But they will never let us eat it," she cried. "Oh, you have

ruined us!"

 

"If you did not dare to kill our pig," he said, "why did you not

stop me when you saw me go? You saw me go with the knife?"

 

"I thought," she said, "you were going to kill the Kaiser."

 

 

The Punishment

 

An exhalation arose, drawn up by the moon, from an old battlefield

after the passing of years. It came out of very old craters and

gathered from trenches, smoked up from No Man's Land, and the ruins of

farms; it rose from the rottenness of dead brigades, and lay for half

the night over two armies; but at midnight the moon drew it up all

into one phantom and it rose and trailed away eastwards.

 

It passed over men in grey that were weary of war; it passed over a

land once prosperous, happy and mighty, in which were a people that

were gradually starving; it passed by ancient belfries in which there

were no bells now; it passed over fear and misery and weeping, and so

came to the palace at Potsdam. It was the dead of the night between

midnight and dawn, and the palace was very still that the Emperor

might sleep, and sentries guarded it who made no noise and relieved

others in silence. Yet it was not so easy to sleep. Picture to

yourself a murderer who had killed a man. Would you sleep? Picture

yourself the man that planned this war! Yes, you sleep, but nightmares

come.

 

The phantom entered the chamber. "Come," it said.

 

The Kaiser leaped up at once as obediently as when he came to

attention on parade, years ago, as a subaltern in the Prussian Guard,

a man whom no woman or child as yet had ever cursed; he leaped up and

followed. They passed the silent sentries; none challenged and none

saluted; they were moving swiftly over the town as the felon Gothas

go; they came to a cottage in the country. They drifted over a little

garden gate, and there in a neat little garden the phantom halted like

a wind that has suddenly ceased. "Look," it said.

 

Should he look? Yet he must look. The Kaiser looked; and saw a window

shining and a neat room in the cottage: there was nothing dreadful

there; thank the good German God for that; it was all right, after

all. The Kaiser had had a fright, but it was all right; there was only

a woman with a baby sitting before the fire, and two small children

and a man. And it was quite a jolly room. And the man was a young

soldier; and, why, he was a Prussian Guardsman,--there was his

helmet hanging on the wall,--so everything was all right. They were

jolly German children; that was well. How nice and homely the room

was. There shone before him, and showed far off in the night, the

visible reward of German thrift and industry. It was all so tidy and

neat, and yet they were quite poor people. The man had done his work

for the Fatherland, and yet beyond all that had been able to afford

all those little knickknacks that make a home so pleasant and that in

their humble little way were luxury. And while the Kaiser looked the

two young children laughed as they played on the floor, not seeing

that face at the window.

 

Why! Look at the helmet. That was lucky. A bullet hole right through

the front of it. That must have gone very close to the man's head. How

ever did it get through? It must have glanced upwards as bullets

sometimes do. The hole was quite low in the helmet. It would be

dreadful to have bullets coming by close like that. The firelight

flickered, and the lamp shone on, and the children played on the

floor, and the man was smoking out of a china pipe; he was strong and

able and young, one of the wealth-winners of Germany.

 

"Have you seen?" said the phantom.

 

"Yes," said the Kaiser. It was well, he thought, that a Kaiser

should see how his people lived.

 

At once the fire went out and the lamp faded away, the room fell

sombrely into neglect and squalor, and the soldier and the children

faded away with the room; all disappeared phantasmally, and nothing

remained but the helmet in a kind of glow on the wall, and the woman

sitting all by herself in the darkness.

 

"It has all gone," said the Kaiser.

 

"It has never been," said the phantom.

 

The Kaiser looked again. Yes, there was nothing there, it was just a

vision. There were the grey walls all damp and uncared for, and that

helmet standing out solid and round, like the only real thing among

fancies. No, it had never been. It was just a vision.

 

"It might have been," said the phantom.

 

Might have been? How might it have been?

 

"Come," said the phantom.

 

They drifted away down a little lane that in summer would have had

roses, and came to an Uhlan's house; in times of peace a small farmer.

Farm buildings in good repair showed even in the night, and the black

shapes of haystacks; again a well-kept garden lay by the house. The

phantom and the Kaiser stood in the garden; before them a window

glowed in a lamplit room.

 

"Look," said the phantom.

 

The Kaiser looked again and saw a young couple; the woman played with

a baby, and all was prosperous in the merry room. Again the hard-won

wealth of Germany shone out for all to see, the cosy comfortable

furniture spoke of acres well cared for, spoke of victory in the

struggle with the seasons on which wealth of nations depends.

 

"It might have been," said the phantom. Again the fire died out and

the merry scene faded away, leaving a melancholy, ill-kept room, with

poverty and mourning haunting dusty corners and the woman sitting

alone.

 

"Why do you show me this?" said the Kaiser. "Why do you show me

these visions?"

 

"Come," said the phantom.

 

"What is it?" said the Kaiser. "Where are you bringing me?"

 

"Come," said the phantom.

 

They went from window to window, from land to land. You had seen, had

you been out that night in Germany, and able to see visions, an

imperious figure passing from place to place, looking on many scenes.

He looked on them, and families withered away, and happy scenes faded,

and the phantom said to him "Come." He expostulated but obeyed; and

so they went from window to window of hundreds of farms in Prussia,

till they came to the Prussian border and went on into Saxony; and

always you would have heard, could you hear spirits speak, "It might

have been," "It might have been," repeated from window to window.

 

They went down through Saxony, heading for Austria. And for long the

Kaiser kept that callous, imperious look. But at last he, even he, at

last he nearly wept. And the phantom turned then and swept him back

over Saxony, and into Prussia again and over the sentries' heads, back

to his comfortable bed where it was so hard to sleep.

 

And though they had seen thousands of merry homes, homes that can

never be merry now, shrines of perpetual mourning; though they had

seen thousands of smiling German children, who will never be born now,

but were only the visions of hopes blasted by him; for all the leagues

over which he had been so ruthlessly hurried, dawn was yet barely

breaking.

 

He had looked on the first few thousand homes of which he had robbed

all time, and which he must see with his eyes before he may go hence.

The first night of the Kaiser's punishment was accomplished.