I must some day make the experiment. I wonder if the joy, now, of eating tender young Bracken would be like that of the savage devouring his declared enemy?
Meanwhile, for the sake of the desired grass, the hecatomb must be repeated daily.
XXV
MORE BLACK SHEEP
This July, not remarkable for anything but rain and dark skies, has produced a perfect outbreak of wickedness in the village. Our black sheep have turned into tigers without even the excuse of torrid weather to inflame their passions. But, indeed, the public house is always ready to supply the stimulant necessary for driving average humanity into brutal and insane crime.
Caliban, whom the reader may remember as having once worked in our Fortunate Island, and always looking as if he had just risen from all-fours, has, in our recent absence, thrown away all pretence at humanity once and for all. Though, indeed, why should the poor beasts, who generally make excellent fathers and husbands, be compared to the type of man that deliberately ruins his home? To batter your wife, terrorize your children, to squander your substance for an indulgence which ultimately destroys your health, is a mystery of perversity reserved for the superior being.
Anyway, Caliban, having drifted from place to place, and lost his last chance of employment in this district by killing a whole hot-house full of Tomatoes through drunken neglect “on” the local market gardener, as we should say in Ireland, finally locked his wife and children out of the little cottage, and shut himself in with his drunkenness in company with his aged but not less drunken parent. The power of thought having returned in the morning, the precious pair put their boosy heads together and sold the furniture, possessed themselves of every available valuable, even of Mrs. Caliban’s solitary trinket, and decamped together from the district!
Mrs. Caliban, with an infant in arms and two little girls at her skirts, has now set to work to earn enough for all. She is a valiant woman; and no doubt when she has succeeded fairly well, Caliban will return to repeat the process. She is very anxious for a separation, but cannot accomplish this, as the whereabouts of her lord and master are unknown.