Windmills: A Book of Fables by Gilbert Cannan - HTML preview

 

Out of Work

I: MR. BLY’S HEART BREAKS

IN a little house, one of many such houses, in a town, one of many such towns in Fatland, sat Nicholas Bly, a small stationer and newsagent, by the bedside of his wife. She said: “Ain’t I thin, Nick?” and again she said: “My hair is only half what it was.” And he said: “It’s very pretty hair.” She smiled and took his hand in hers and she died. When Nicholas Bly was quite sure that she was dead, when he could believe that she was dead, he did not weep, for there were no tears in his eyes. He said nothing, for there were no words in his mind. He felt nothing, for his heart was breaking, and so little was he alive that he did not know it. His wife was dead, his two children were dead, his shop was closed, and he had two shillings in the world, and they were borrowed.

He went out into the street and when he saw a well-fed man he hated him: and when he saw a thin hungry man he despised him; on returning to his house he found there a Doctor and a Parson. The Doctor said his wife had died of something with two long Latin names.

“She starved,” said Nicholas Bly.

The Parson said something about the will and the love of God.

“The devil’s took her,” said Nicholas Bly.

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:

“Prison is the best the world can do for men like me.”

But he was determined to give the world a better reason for putting him in prison than sleeping in a brick-field because it was warm. The world was cold. He would make it warm. The devil was in the world: he would burn him out, use his own element against him.

He chose the largest timber-yard he could find, and that night he stole a can of petrol, and when he had placed it in a heap of shavings went out into the street to find some matches. He met a seedy individual in a coat with a fur collar and a broad-brimmed hat, who looked like an actor, and he asked him if he could oblige him with a match.

“Lucifers,” said the seedy individual and gave him three.

Nicholas Bly returned to the timber-yard with the matches. He struck one. It went off like a rocket. The second exploded like a Chinese cracker, and he was just lighting the third when he heard a melancholy chuckle. He turned his head and found the seedy individual gazing at him with an expression of wistfulness.

“Like old times,” said the seedy individual.

Nicholas Bly lit the third match and it flooded the whole yard with Bengal light, and still he had not set fire to his petrol.

“Gimme another match,” said Nicholas Bly; “watch me set fire to the yard and go and tell.”

“I have no more,” replied the stranger. “Those were my last. I no longer make fire or instruments of fire. No one wants my tricks. I have lost everything and am doomed.”

“I have lost my wife, my children and my work.”

“I have lost my kingdom, my power and my glory.”

“The devil took them,” answered Nicholas Bly.

“I wish I had,” replied the stranger.

IV: THE DARK GENTLEMAN’S STORY

NICHOLAS BLY fetched a screech loud enough to wake a whole parish. The dark gentleman pounced on him firmly and gagged him with his hand, and his fingers burnt into the newsagent’s cheek.

“Be silent,” said the dark gentleman, “you’ll have them coming and taking you away from me. Will you be silent?”

Nicholas Bly nodded to say he would be silent. Then he said:

“If you didn’t take them, who did?”

“Jah!” said the devil, for the dark gentleman was no other. “Jah took them. Jah does everything now, at least I am forced to the conclusion that he does, since I find everything going on much the same. I knew how it would be. I knew he would find it dull only dealing with virtuous people. It was very sudden. I was deposed without any notice just in the middle of the busiest time I’d had for centuries. I have had a horrible time. No one believed in me. For years now I have only been used to frighten children, and have occasionally been allowed to slip into their dreams. You must agree that it is galling for one who has lived on the fat of human faith—for in the good old days I had far more souls than Jah. I haven’t been in a grown man’s mind for years until I found yours open to me.”

“I don’t know about that,” said Nicholas Bly. “I want my wife. I want my two children. I want my work.”

“Anything may be possible if you will believe in me.”

“I’ll believe in anything, I’d go to Hell if I could get them back.”

“There is no Hell,” said the devil.

V: COGITATION

THIS was a little difficult for Nicholas Bly. For a long time they sat brooding in the darkness of the timber-yard. Then said Nicholas Bly:

“Seeing’s believing. I see you. I believe in you. You’re the first critter that’s spoke to me honest and kindly this many a long day. You seem to be worse off than I am. We’re mates.”

“Thank you,” said the devil. “In the old days I used to offer those who believed in me women, wine, song and riches. But now we shall have to see what we can do.”

“I want to spite that there Jah.”

“We will do our best,” said the devil.

With that they rose to their feet, and as they left the timber-yard the devil shook a spark out of his tail on to the petrol, so that they had not gone above a mile when the wood was ablaze and they could see the red glow of the fire against the sky.

VI: CONFLAGRATION

GLEEFULLY the devil took Mr. Bly back to watch the blaze, and they were huddled and squeezed and pressed in the crowd. A fat woman took a fancy to the devil and put her arm round his waist.

“Where are you living, old dear?” she said.

“You leave my pal alone,” said Nicholas Bly.

But the devil gave her a smacking kiss, and she slapped his face and giggled, saying:

“Geeh! That was a warm one that was.”

And she persisted until the devil had confessed his name to be Mr. Nicodemus. Then she said she had a snug little room in her house which he could have—his pal too if they were not to be separated.

Mr. Bly demurred, but Mr. Nicodemus said:

“You can only get at Jah through the women.”

So they pursued the adventure and went home with the fat woman, but when she reached her parlour she plumped down on her knees and said her prayers, and the devil vanished, and she was so enraged that she swept Nicholas Bly out with her broom. He hammered on her door and told her why his friend had vanished, and that if she would say her prayers backward he would return. She said her prayers backwards and Mr. Nicodemus returned.

VII: TIB STREET

THE fat woman’s name was Mrs. Martin, and when she found that her beloved had a tail she was not at all put out, but to avoid scandal, cut it off.

All the same there was a scandal, for the fascination of Mr. Nicodemus was irresistible, and the house was always full of women, and whenever he went out he was followed by a herd of them. Mrs. Martin was jealous, Mr. Bly sulked and Mr. Nicodemus had a busy time placating indignant husbands and lovers. Not a house in Tib street but was in a state of upheaval. The men sought consolation in drink, and presently there was hardly one who had retained his work.

“We are getting on,” said Mr. Nicodemus. “We are getting on. In the good old times men left their work to follow me, and it used to be a favourite device of mine to make their work seem so repulsive to them that they preferred thieving or fighting or even suffering to it. If we end as we have begun, then Jah will be as isolated as you and I have been.”

And he chuckled in triumph and bussed Mrs. Martin.

“That,” said she, “reminds me of Martin; and he was a oner, he was. That’s worth anything to me.”

With that the good creature bustled off to arrange for a week’s charing to keep her lodgers in food.

Shortlived, however was the triumph of Mr. Nicodemus, for, with the women neglecting their homes and the men their work, the children sickened and died, and no day passed but two or three little coffins were taken to the cemetery. And in their grief the women remembered Jah, and went to church to appease His wrath. The men were sobered and returned to work, but at wages punitively reduced, so that their last state was worse than their first, for the women were now devoted to Jah and the children were empty and their bellies were pinched.

Nicholas Bly cursed Jah. The sight of the little coffins being taken out of Tib Street reminded him of his own children and he went near mad and vowed that Jah was taking them because He was a jealous God, one who had taken Hell from the devil and their children from men in the purblindness of His fury.

And he began to preach at the corner of Tib Street.

VIII: MR. BLY’S SERMON

HE said:

“There are many filthy streets in this town, but this is the filthiest. Who made it filthy? Jah! It is the nature of man to love his wife and his children, to dwell with them in peace and loving-kindness. But for all his love, wherewith shall a man feed his wife and children? What clothing shall he give them? What shelter find for them? Go you into this street and look into the houses. You will find crumbling walls, broken stairs, windows stuffed with clouts: you will find bare shelves and cupboards: you will find dead children with never so much as a whole shroud among them. You will say that perhaps they are better dead, but I say unto you that if a man’s children be dead wherewith shall he feed his love? And without a full love in his heart how shall a man work or live or die? Are we born only to die? And if life ends in death what matters it how life be lived? But, I say unto you, that because life ends in death a man must see to it that all his days are filled with love, which is beauty, which is truth. And I say unto you when your eyes are filled and bleeding with the pain of the sights you shall see here, go out into the fields and to the hills and the great waters and see the sun rise and shed his light and go down and cast his light upon the moon, and draw vapour from the earth and bring it again in the rain; and feel the wind upon your faces, and see the sodden air hang upon the earth until the coming of the storm to cleanse its foulness: and do you mark the flight of the birds, the nesting of the birds, the happy fish in the waters, the slow beasts in the fields: observe the growth of trees and plants, and grasses and corn. Then you shall know the richness of love among the creatures that know not Jah. They die and are visited with sickness even as we, but theirs is a free life and a free death unconfined by any sickness of the mind or tyranny of Gods and Demons. We alone among creatures are cheated of our desires and perish for the want of food amid plenty, and are cut off each from his full share of the abounding love of the world. Who takes our share? Jah! Who kills our love? Jah! Who filches the best of our thoughts, the keenest sap of our courage? Who fills our lives and homes with darkness and despair, and meanness and emptiness? Jah! I know not who Jah is, nor whence He came, but I will dethrone Him.”

IX: THE EFFECT OF MR. BLY’S SERMON

STREET oratory was at that time very common, but there was a note in Mr. Bly’s eloquence which attracted many of the inhabitants of the district, especially the young, and he achieved a certain fame. No one knew exactly what he was talking about, for, except for expletive purposes, the word Jah had dropped out of the vernacular. Mr. Bly was assumed to be some kind of politician, and he was certainly more exciting than most. Therefore his audiences were twice as large as those of any other speaker. Seeing this, a Labour Agitator came to him and offered him a place on his committee and a pound a week as a lecturer.

“I can speak about nothing but Jah,” said Mr. Bly.

“Speak about anything you like so long as you catch their ears,” said the agitator.

So Mr. Bly accepted the offer.

X: THE WIDOW MARTIN

WHEN Mr. Bly told his infernal companion of his engagement Mr. Nicodemus said:

“Talking is a very human way of creating a disturbance. My way and Jah’s way is the way of corruption. We unseat the mind and poison the soul with unsatisfiable desires. But if you wish it I will go with you. We have lit a fire in Tib Street that will burn itself out without us.”

“I should like your company,” replied Mr. Bly. “It helps me to be reminded that Jah has been unjust to more than human beings. It redoubles my fury and kindles my eloquence. I am determined to earn my pound a week and drive Jah out of the land.”

The devil began to draw on his shabby fur coat. Mrs. Martin had been listening to their conversation. She burst in upon them and vowed that her Nick should never, never leave her. With horrible callousness Mr. Nicodemus told her that he was pledged to Mr. Bly, and asked her for his tail. She refused to give it up, and was so stubborn that, at last, after they had argued with her, and pleaded and stormed, and bribed and bullied, she said she would produce his tail if she might go with them; and they consented, for Mr. Nicodemus said that if he were ever returned to power he would be in need of his tail, and indeed would be a ridiculous object without it, his system of damnation being supported by tradition and symbol and ritual.

They had a merry supper-party, and that night took train for the town appointed for Mr. Bly’s first appearance on a political platform.

XI: MAKING A STIR

WHERE other politicians dealt in statistics, which, after all, are but an intellectual excitement, a kind of mental cats’-cradle, our orator sounded three notes: he appealed to a man’s love of women, his love of children, and led his audience on to hatred of Jah. To the first two they responded, were persuaded that they were as he said, cheated and betrayed, and, though they could not follow him further without losing their heads, they lost them and were filled with hatred. And as Mr. Bly never made any reference either to Government or Opposition his speeches were reported in the newspapers on both sides, and aroused the greatest interest through the country. The well-to-do found breakfast insipid without his utterances, and, to support him, they subscribed largely to the funds of the organisation which promoted his efforts. His salary was raised to two pounds a week on the day when a Conservative organ published his portrait and a leading article on the golden sincerity of the Working Classes.

XII: MAKING A STIRABOUT

WHERE other orators damned everything from sewing cotton to battleships, and so could not avoid giving offence, Mr. Bly damned only Jah and hurt nobody’s feelings. But he produced an effect. He laid every grievance at Jah’s door, and roused so much enthusiasm that at last he began to believe in his power.

It is not often that the people find a leader, and when they do they expect him to lead. They were impatient for Mr. Bly to reveal to them a line of action, and here he was puzzled. It was one thing (he found) to talk about Jah, another to bring Jah to book. He had no other machinery than that of the Labour Agitators, who had been making elaborate preparations for a strike. Their preparations were excellent, but their followers were reluctant. They could provide them with no adequate motive. In vain did they talk of the dawn of Labour, the Rights of the Worker, and a Place in the Sun; to all these the people preferred the prospect of pay on Saturday. Nothing could stir them, until, at last, at one of Mr. Bly’s meetings when he was being hailed as a leader and implored to lead, and at his wit’s end what to do, upon a whisper from behind, he said:

“Strike! Strike against Jah! You are workers! Why do you work? To feed your children. Your children die. Strike, I say, strike while the iron is hot, the iron that has entered into your souls from the cruel tyranny of Jah! There is no other enemy. You have no other foe....”

He did not need to say more. The fat was in the fire.

XIII. SPARKS FLYING

THE fat crackled and sputtered. In thirty-six hours the business of the town was at a standstill, and by that time Mr. Bly had visited three other towns, and they too succumbed to his passion. At every town he visited he was welcomed with brass bands and red carpets, and his orders were obeyed. The Labour Agitators of the neighbouring countries desired his services and cabled for him, and he promised to go as soon as Jah was driven out of Fatland.

The strikes were begun in feasting and merrymaking, and things were done that delighted Mr. Nicodemus and the widow Martin’s heart:

“The men are becoming quite themselves again.”

And Mr. Nicodemus gazed upon it all and sighed:

“Ah! If only Hell were open!”

The widow Martin gazed upon him voluptuously and muttered:

“It would be just ’Eaven to keep that public you’re always talking about for ever and ever with you.”

XIV: SMOULDERING

THE strikers soon came to grips with want and the very poor were brought to starvation. Only the more fiercely for that did their passion glow. They forgot all about Mr. Bly and Jah: they were only determined not to give in. They knew not wherefore they were fighting, and were savagely resolved not to return to their old ways without some palpable change. Forces and emotions had been stirred which led them to look for a miracle, and without the miracle they preferred to die. The miracle did not come and many of them died.

XV: SUCCOUR

WITH a moderate but assured income the Fattish are humane, that is to say, they grope like shadows through life and shun the impenetrable shadow of death. They shuddered to think of the very poor dying with their eyes gazing forward for the miracle that never came, and they said:

“To think of their finding no miracle but death! It is too horrible. Can such things be in Fatland? Why don’t we do something?”

So they formed committees and wrote to the newspapers and started various funds; and they invited Mr. Bly to lecture in aid of them.

He came to Bondon, lectured, and became the fashion. He discovered to his amazement that there were rich people in Fatland, and these rich people formed Anti-Jah societies. Enormous sums of money were collected for the strikers, because the rich were so delighted to be amused. Mr. Bly amused them enormously. Mr. Nicodemus gave a course of lectures on the Kingdom from which Jah had deposed him, and Mrs. Martin held meetings for women only, to expound her views of men. For years the rich people had not been so vastly entertained, and they poured out money for the strikers.

Unfortunately their subscriptions could buy little else for the very poor but coffins, and of them the supply soon came to an end.

Famine and pestilence stalked abroad, but only the more fiercely did Mr. Bly urge the destruction of Jah, and the more blindly and desperately did the starving poor of Fatland look for the miracle.

But soon not only were the poor starving, but the comfortable, the tradespeople, the professional classes, the humane persons with moderate but assured incomes were faced with want. Rats were now five shillings a brace, and a nest of baby mice was known to fetch four shillings.

When the rich found their meals were costing them more than a pound a head then they forgot their craze and Mr. Bly, and Mr. Nicodemus and the widow Martin withdrew from Bondon. Mr. Bly was no longer reported in the newspapers. His name had become offensive, the bloom had gone from his novelty, the varnish from his reputation, and the sting out of his power.

In all the towns gaunt spectre-like men began to sneak back to work, and Mr. Bly was nigh frenzied with rage, disgust and despair.

“It is Jah!” he said. “It is Jah. He has crept into the hearts of men. He has stirred their minds against me. Oh! my grief. He has used me to bring men lower yet, so that they will live in viler dwellings, and eat of fouler food, and be more meanly clad, more verminous than ever. The women will be lower sluts and shrews than they have ever been, and of their children it will be hard to see how they can ever grow into men and women. Deeper and deeper into the pit has Jah brought us, and there is now no hope.”

And in his agony he remembered how in his childhood he had been taught to pray to Jah, and he knelt and prayed that he might come face to face with Jah, to tell Him what He had done, and to implore Him to make an end of His cruelty and to destroy all at once.

Hearing him pray Mr. Nicodemus fled from his side and left him alone with the Widow Martin. Said she:

“Don’t take on so, dearie. A man’s no call to take on so when he has a woman by his side. There’s nothing else in the nature of things, but men and women only. If we starve, we starve: and if we die, we die, it’s all one. Have done, I say, there’s always room for a bit o’ fun.”

“Fun!” cried Mr. Bly.

And the comfortable creature took his head to her bosom, and there he sobbed out his grief.

XVI: ON THE ROAD

SO the strike ended, and Nicholas Bly walked from town to town marking its effects. It was as he had foreseen, and men were lower than before, and every night he prayed that he might meet Jah to curse Him to His face. For days on end he would utter never a word, but the widow Martin stayed with him and saw that he ate and drank, stealing, begging, wheedling, selling herself to get him food. She would say:

“It’s not like Mr. Nicodemus. There’s very little fun in him, but a woman doesn’t care for fun when she’s sorry for a man.”

He was a grim sight now, was Nicholas Bly. His ragged clothes hung and flapped on him as on a scarecrow. His cheeks were sunken and patched with a dirty grey stubble. His eyes glared feverishly out of red sockets, and they seemed to see nothing but to be asking for a sight of something. There was a sort of film on them, but the light in the man shone through it. His shoulders were bowed and his thin arms hung limply by his side, but always his face was upturned, and he shook as he walked, like a flame.

The malady in him drove him to the heights. His desire was to be near the sky. Presently he forsook the towns and went from one range of hills to another seeking the highest in Fatland.

At last after many days he reached the highest hill, and there he lay flat on his face and would neither eat nor drink. By his side sat the widow Martin, and she made certain that he was going to die, and produced two pennies to lay upon his eyelids when death should come.

On the third day he turned over on his back and said:

“Jah is coming.”

And it was so.

Up the steep path came a man with a great beard and a huge nose and eyes that twinkled with the light of merriment and shone with the tenderness of irony, and blazed with the fire of genius. By his side walked a slim dark figure, and with a joyful cry the widow Martin declared it to be Mr. Nicodemus.

Nicholas Bly sat up and began to rehearse all the curses that in his bitterness he had prepared.

XVII: JAH

HE began:

“By the dead bodies of the children of men; by the plagues and diseases of the bodies of women; by the festering——”

Very quietly Jah took His seat by his side and motioned to Mr. Nicodemus to take up his position in front of them. In a voice of the most musical sweetness and with a rich full diction He said:

“As we made the ascent I was expostulating with my friend here for the absurdity of his attempt to reinstate himself in the world. There is no Hell. Neither is there a Heaven. These places live by faith as we have done. It is a little difficult for us to understand, but we have no occasion for resentment. Separately it is impossible for us to understand. My meeting with my dark friend here led me a little way on the road towards a solution. The four of us may arrive at something.”

The widow Martin scanned Jah closely:

“You’ve been a fine man in your time.”

“I have never been a man,” replied Jah sadly. “Nor have I been able to play my part in human affairs. Like my friend here I have been an exile. I have been forced to dwell in the mists of superstition, even as he has been confined in the dark depths of lust. Until now I never understood our interdependence. I am the imagination of man. He is man’s passion. Together we can bring about the release of love in his soul. Separately we can do nothing to break his folly, his stupidity, his brutality, his vain selfishness. Without us he can be inquisitive and clever, vigorous and energetic, but he remains insensible, unjust, cruel and cowardly.”

And Nicholas Bly roused himself and he seemed to grow, and the film fell from his eyes and he cried:

“Blessed be Jah, blessed be Nicodemus, blessed be man and the heart of man, blessed be woman and the love of woman, blessed be life, blessed be death!”

So saying he rose to his feet. Before his face the sun was sinking in the evening glory: behind him the moon rose.

XVIII: JAH SPEAKS

A GREAT wind blew through Nicholas Bly’s hair and he bowed his head in acceptance of the wonder of the universe.

As the moon rose to her zenith Jah said:

“There are Wonders beyond me and God is beyond imagination. My dwelling is in the mind of men, but I have been driven therefrom. My friend here should dwell in the heart of man, but he has been unseated. Together we should win for man his due share of the world’s dominion and power, and should be his sweetest stops in the instrument of life. For without us is no joy, and with us joy is fierce. I speak, of the woman also, for she is the equal of man and his comrade.”

And as the moon was sinking to the west Jah said:

“We have suffered too long, and we have brought forth nothing. Let us no longer be separate, but let us, man, woman, God and Devil, join together to bring forth joy, for until there is joy on earth there shall not be justice, nor kindness, nor understanding, nor any good thing. We are but one spirit, for the spirit is one, and none but the undivided spirit can see the light of the sun.”

Even as he spoke the sun came up in his majesty, dwarfing the mighty hills, and Nicholas Bly raised his head and saw Nicodemus in the likeness of a lusty young man, fine and splendid in his desire, and Jah in the shape of a winged boy. And as he saw them they disappeared, and he said:

“They have vanished into the air.”

From the scarred hillside came an echo:

“Into the air.”

XIX: SONG

THEN did Nicholas Bly sing:

“I have lived, I have loved, I have died,

And my spirit has burned like a flame;

In the furnace of life my soul has been tried,

I have dwindled to ashes of shame.

I have glowed to the winds of my own desire,

I have flickered and flared and roared,

Through the endless night has flashed my delight

To declare my joy in the Lord.

For the Lord is life and I am His,

And His are my shame and my pride.

My song is His: my Lord sings this:

I have lived, I have loved, I have died.”

XX: MORNING

WAKING, the woman said:

“How is it with you, my man?”

He answered:

“I feel truly that I am a man.”

Gazing upon the woman, he saw that she was beautiful.

XXI: HOPE

THEY came down from the hills, and a mist descended upon them, and presently a driving rain. They were glad of each other, and smiled their joy upon all whom they met. Nicholas Bly never ceased to make songs, and as he sang the woman laughed merrily. The songs he made he sang to many men, but none would listen except the drunken man in the public-houses.

One day a very drunken man asked Nicholas Bly to sing a song again, and he refused, because he wished to sing a better song. The man offered him a mug of beer to sing again, but he refused, saying:

“I do not sing for hire.”

The man despised him and drank the beer himself, saying:

“It’s a silly kind of sod will sing for nothing.”

And he would hear no more.

So it was everywhere. None could understand that Nicholas Bly should sing for the delight of it or that there could be a joy to set him singing. In the end, and that soon, his heart broke and he died, and Fatland is as it is.

Mr. Nicodemus and Jah were never seen again, nor in Fatland is there trace or memory of them.

But within the womb of the woman was the child of her man, so that she gazed in upon herself with a great hope. In this she was so absorbed that the insensibility of the Fattish moved her not at all and she forgot to apply for her maternity benefit.

 

THE END OF
 WINDMILLS