Fifty-One Tales by Lord Dunsany 1915

The Reward

One's spirit goes further in dreams than it does by day.

Wandering once by night from a factory city I came to the

edge of Hell.

   The place was foul with cinders and cast-off things, and

jagged, half-buried things with shapeless edges, and there

was a huge angel with a hammer building in plaster and

steel.  I wondered what he did in that dreadful place.  I

hesitated, then asked him what he was building.  "We are

adding to Hell," he said, "to keep pace with the times."

"Don't be too hard on them," I said, for I had just come out

of a compromising age and a weakening country.  The angel

did not answer.  "It won't be as bad as the old hell, will

it?" I said.  "Worse," said the angel.

   "How can you reconcile it with your conscience as a

Minister of Grace," I said, "to inflict such a punishment?"

(They talked like this in the city whence I had come and I

could not avoid the habit of it.)

   "They have invented a new cheap yeast," said the angel.

   I looked at the legend on the walls of the hell that the

angel was building, the words were written in flame, every

fifteen seconds they changed their color, "Yeasto, the great

new yeast, it builds up body and brain, and something more."

   "They shall look at it for ever," the angel said.

   "But they drove a perfectly legitimate trade," I said,

"the law allowed it."

   The angel went on hammering into place the huge steel

uprights.

   "You are very revengeful," I said.  "Do you never rest

from doing this terrible work?"

   "I rested one Christmas Day," the angel said, "and looked

and saw little children dying of cancer.  I shall go on now

until the fires are lit."

   "It is very hard to prove," I said, "that the yeast is as

bad as you think."

   "After all," I said, "they must live."

   And the angel made no answer but went on building his

hell.