“The formula. You know.”
“Yes?”
“On a man named Sir Edward Carson.”
“Well?”
“Ugh!” said the devil.
“Punishment?”
“Don’t speak of it. He was just a professional lawyer-politician who had lost his sense of values…. How was I to know?… But our people certainly know how to hurt….”
After that it would seem this poor devil desisted absolutely from any attempt to recover his lost charges. He just tried to live for the moment and make his earthly existence as tolerable as possible. It was clear he hated the world. He found it cold, wet, draughty…. “I can’t understand why everybody insists upon living outside of it,” he said. “If you went inside——”
He sought warmth and dryness. For a time he found a kind of contentment in charge of the upcast furnace of a mine, and then he was superseded by an electric-fan. While in this position he read a vivid account of the intense heat in the Red Sea, and he was struck by the idea that if he could get a job as stoker upon an Indian liner he might snatch some days of real happiness during that portion of the voyage. For some time his natural ineptitude prevented his realizing this project, but at last, after some bitter experiences of homelessness during a London December, he had been able to ship on an Indiaward boat—only to get stranded in Folkestone in consequence of a propeller breakdown. And so here he was!
He paused.