The Parson cast up his eyes and exhorted the blasphemer to seek comfort in duty and distraction in hard work.
“I’m out of work,” said Nicholas Bly; “the devil’s took my work and my wife and my two children. Hell’s full up and overflowed into this ’ere town and this ’ere street. We must fight the devil with fire and bloody murders.”
The Parson and the Doctor agreed that the poor fellow was mad.
II: MR. BLY IS IMPRISONED
Nicholas Bly’s stomach was full of emptiness, the heat of his blood parched his brains, and his sleep was crowded with huddling bad dreams. He ate crusts and cabbage stalks picked up out of the gutter, and when he was near mad with thirst he snatched beer jugs from children as they turned into the entries leading to their houses. His days he spent looking for the devil. Three nights he spent moving from one square with seats round it to another, and on the fourth night he heard of a brick-field where there was some warmth. He slept there that night and was arrested. The magistrate said:
“I am satisfied that you are a thoroughly worthless character, an incurable vagabond, and if not yet a danger, a nuisance to society....”
(The magistrate said a great deal more. He was newly appointed and needed to persuade himself of his dignity by talk.)
Nicholas Bly was sent to prison.
III: THE DARK GENTLEMAN
When he left the prison Nicholas Bly realised that he had legs to walk with but nowhere to go, hands to work with but nothing to do, a brain to think with but never a thought. He was almost startled to find himself utterly alone, and his loneliness drove him into a hot rage. In prison he had thought vaguely of the world as a warm place outside, to which in the course of days he would return. Now that he had returned the world had nothing to do with him and he had nothing to do with it. He prowled through the streets, but a sort of pride forbade him to eat the cabbage stalks and crusts of the gutters, and to rob children of their parents’ beer he was ashamed. He looked for work, but was everywhere refused, and he said to himself: