Tales, Speeches, Essays, and Sketches Page 15

  I said to myself, “I am thoroughly happy and content, now. If my most pitiless enemy could appear before me at this moment, I would freely right any wrong I may have done him.”

  Straightway the door opened, and a shriveled, shabby dwarf entered. He was not more than two feet high. He seemed to be about forty years old. Every feature and every inch of him was a trifle out of shape; and so, while one could not put his finger upon any particular part and say, “This is a conspicuous deformity,” the spectator perceived that this little person was a deformity as a whole—a vague, general, evenly-blended, nicely-adjusted deformity. There was a fox-like cunning in the face and the sharp little eyes, and also alertness and malice. And yet, this vile bit of human rubbish seemed to bear a sort of remote and ill-defined resemblance to me! It was dully perceptible in the mean form, the countenance, and even the clothes, gestures, manner, and attitudes of the creature. He was a far-fetched, dim suggestion of a burlesque upon me, a caricature of me in little. One thing about him struck me forcibly, and most unpleasantly; he was covered all over with a fuzzy, greenish mold, such as one sometimes sees upon mildewed bread. The sight of it was nauseating.

  He stepped along with a chipper air, and flung himself into a doll’s chair in a very free and easy way, without waiting to be asked. He tossed his hat into the waste basket. He picked up my old chalk pipe from the floor, gave the stem a wipe or two on his knee, filled the bowl from the tobacco-box at his side, and said to me in a tone of pert command,—

  “Gimme a match!”

  I blushed to the roots of my hair; partly with indignation, but mainly because it somehow seemed to me that this whole performance was very like an exaggeration of conduct which I myself had sometimes been guilty of in my intercourse with familiar friends;—but never, never with strangers, I observed to myself. I wanted to kick the pygmy into the fire, but some incomprehensible sense of being legally and legitimately under his authority forced me to obey his order. He applied the match to the pipe, took a contemplative whiff or two, and remarked, in an irritatingly familiar way,—

  “Seems to me it’s devilish odd weather for this time of year.”

  I flushed again, and in anger and humiliation as before; for the language was hardly an exaggeration of some that I have uttered in my day, and moreover was delivered in a tone of voice and with an exasperating drawl that had the seeming of a deliberate travesty of my style. Now there is nothing I am quite so sensitive about as a mocking imitation of my drawling infirmity of speech. I spoke up sharply and said,—

  “Look here, you miserable ash-cat! you will have to give a little more attention to your manners, or I will throw you out of the window!”

  The manikin smiled a smile of malicious content and security, puffed a whiff of smoke contemptuously toward me, and said, with a still more elaborate drawl,—

  “Come—go gently, now; don’t put on too many airs with your betters.”

  This cool snub rasped me all over, but it seemed to subjugate me, too, for a moment. The pygmy contemplated me a while with his weasel eyes, and then said, in a peculiarly sneering way,—

  “You turned a tramp away from your door this morning.”

  I said crustily,—

  “Perhaps I did, perhaps I didn’t. How do you know?”

  “Well, I know. It isn’t any matter how I know.”

  “Very well. Suppose I did turn a tramp away from the door—what of it?”

  “Oh, nothing; nothing in particular. Only you lied to him.”

  “I didn’t! That is, I”—

  “Yes, but you did; you lied to him.”

  I felt a guilty pang,—in truth I had felt it forty times before that tramp had traveled a block from my door,—but still I resolved to make a show of feeling slandered; so I said,—

  “This is a baseless impertinence. I said to the tramp”—

  “There—wait. You were about to lie again. I know what you said to him. You said the cook was gone down town and there was nothing left from breakfast. Two lies. You knew the cook was behind the door, and plenty of provisions behind her.”

  This astonishing accuracy silenced me; and it filled me with wondering speculations, too, as to how this cub could have got his information. Of course he could have culled the conversation from the tramp, but by what sort of magic had he contrived to find out about the concealed cook? Now the dwarf spoke again:—

  “It was rather pitiful, rather small, in you to refuse to read that poor young woman’s manuscript the other day, and give her an opinion as to its literary value; and she had come so far, too, and so hopefully. Now wasn’t it?”

  I felt like a cur! And I had felt so every time the thing had recurred to my mind, I may as well confess. I flushed hotly and said,—

  “Look here, have you nothing better to do than prowl around prying into other people’s business? Did that girl tell you that?”

  “Never mind whether she did or not. The main thing is, you did that contemptible thing. And you felt ashamed of it afterwards. Aha! you feel ashamed of it now!”

  This with a sort of devilish glee. With fiery earnestness I responded,—

  “I told that girl, in the kindest, gentlest way, that I could not consent to deliver judgment upon any one’s manuscript, because an individual’s verdict was worthless. It might underrate a work of high merit and lose it to the world, or it might overrate a trashy production and so open the way for its infliction upon the world. I said that the great public was the only tribunal competent to sit in judgment upon a literary effort, and therefore it must be best to lay it before that tribunal in the outset, since in the end it must stand or fall by that mighty court’s decision any way.”

  “Yes, you said all that. So you did, you juggling, small-souled shuffler! And yet when the happy hopefulness faded out of that poor girl’s face, when you saw her furtively slip beneath her shawl the scroll she had so patiently and honestly scribbled at,—so ashamed of her darling now, so proud of it before,—when you saw the gladness go out of her eyes and the tears come there, when she crept away so humbly who had come so”—

  “Oh, peace! peace! peace! Blister your merciless tongue, haven’t all these thoughts tortured me enough, without your coming here to fetch them back again?”

  Remorse! remorse! It seemed to me that it would eat the very heart out of me! And yet that small fiend only sat there leering at me with joy and contempt, and placidly chuckling. Presently he began to speak again. Every sentence was an accusation, and every accusation a truth. Every clause was freighted with sarcasm and derision, every slow-dropping word burned like vitriol. The dwarf reminded me of times when I had flown at my children in anger and punished them for faults which a little inquiry would have taught me that others, and not they, had committed. He reminded me of how I had disloyally allowed old friends to be traduced in my hearing, and been too craven to utter a word in their defense. He reminded me of many dishonest things which I had done; of many which I had procured to be done by children and other irresponsible persons; of some which I had planned, thought upon, and longed to do, and been kept from the performance by fear of consequences only. With exquisite cruelty he recalled to my mind, item by item, wrongs and unkindnesses I had inflicted and humiliations I had put upon friends since dead, “who died thinking of those injuries, maybe, and grieving over them,” he added, by way of poison to the stab.

  “For instance,” said he, “take the case of your younger brother, when you two were boys together, many a long year ago. He always lovingly trusted in you with a fidelity that your manifold treacheries were not able to shake. He followed you about like a dog, content to suffer wrong and abuse if he might only be with you; patient under these injuries so long as it was your hand that inflicted them. The latest picture you have of him in health and strength must be such a comfort to you! You pledged your honor that if he would let you blindfold him no harm should come to him; and then, giggling and choking over the rare fun of the joke, you led him to a brook thinly gla
zed with ice, and pushed him in; and how you did laugh! Man, you will never forget the gentle, reproachful look he gave you as he struggled shivering out, if you live a thousand years! Oho! you see it now, you see it now!”

  “Beast, I have seen it a million times, and shall see it a million more! and may you rot away piecemeal, and suffer till doomsday what I suffer now, for bringing it back to me again!”

  The dwarf chuckled contentedly, and went on with his accusing history of my career. I dropped into a moody, vengeful state, and suffered in silence under the merciless lash. At last this remark of his gave me a sudden rouse:—

  “Two months ago, on a Tuesday, you woke up, away in the night, and fell to thinking, with shame, about a peculiarly mean and pitiful act of yours toward a poor ignorant Indian in the wilds of the Rocky Mountains in the winter of eighteen hundred and”—

  “Stop a moment, devil! Stop! Do you mean to tell me that even my very thoughts are not hidden from you?”

  “It seems to look like that. Didn’t you think the thoughts I have just mentioned?”

  “If I didn’t, I wish I may never breathe again! Look here, friend—look me in the eye. Who are you?”

  “Well, who do you think?”

  “I think you are Satan himself. I think you are the devil.”

  “No.”

  “No? Then who can you be?”

  “Would you really like to know?”

  “Indeed I would.”

  “Well, I am your Conscience!”

  In an instant I was in a blaze of joy and exultation. I sprang at the creature, roaring,—

  “Curse you, I have wished a hundred million times that you were tangible, and that I could get my hands on your throat once! Oh, but I will wreak a deadly vengeance on”—

  Folly! Lightning does not move more quickly than my Conscience did! He darted aloft so suddenly that in the moment my fingers clutched the empty air he was already perched on the top of the high book-case, with his thumb at his nose in token of derision. I flung the poker at him, and missed. I fired the boot-jack. In a blind rage I flew from place to place, and snatched and hurled any missile that came handy; the storm of books, ink-stands, and chunks of coal gloomed the air and beat about the manikin’s perch relentlessly, but all to no purpose; the nimble figure dodged every shot; and not only that, but burst into a cackle of sarcastic and triumphant laughter as I sat down exhausted. While I puffed and gasped with fatigue and excitement, my Conscience talked to this effect:—

  “My good slave, you are curiously witless—no, I mean characteristically so. In truth, you are always consistent, always yourself, always an ass. Otherwise it must have occurred to you that if you attempted this murder with a sad heart and a heavy conscience, I would droop under the burdening influence instantly. Fool, I should have weighed a ton, and could not have budged from the floor; but instead, you are so cheerfully anxious to kill me that your conscience is as light as a feather; hence I am away up here out of your reach. I can almost respect a mere ordinary sort of fool; but you—pah!”

  I would have given anything, then, to be heavy-hearted, so that I could get this person down from there and take his life, but I could no more be heavy-hearted over such a desire than I could have sorrowed over its accomplishment. So I could only look longingly up at my master, and rave at the ill-luck that denied me a heavy conscience the one only time that I had ever wanted such a thing in my life. By and by I got to musing over the hour’s strange adventure, and of course my human curiosity began to work. I set myself to framing in my mind some questions for this fiend to answer. Just then one of my boys entered, leaving the door open behind him, and exclaimed,—

  “My! what has been going on, here! The book-case is all one riddle of”—

  I sprang up in consternation, and shouted,—“Out of this! Hurry! Jump! Fly! Shut the door! Quick, or my Conscience will get away!”

  The door slammed to, and I locked it. I glanced up and was grateful, to the bottom of my heart, to see that my owner was still my prisoner. I said,—

  “Hang you, I might have lost you! Children are the heedlessest creatures. But look here, friend, the boy did not seem to notice you at all; how is that?”

  “For a very good reason. I am invisible to all but you.”

  I made mental note of that piece of information with a good deal of satisfaction. I could kill this miscreant now, if I got a chance, and no one would know it. But this very reflection made me so light-hearted that my Conscience could hardly keep his seat, but was like to float aloft toward the ceiling like a toy balloon. I said, presently,—

  “Come, my Conscience, let us be friendly. Let us fly a flag of truce for a while. I am suffering to ask you some questions.”

  “Very well. Begin.”

  “Well, then, in the first place, why were you never visible to me before?”

  “Because you never asked to see me before; that is, you never asked in the right spirit and the proper form before. You were just in the right spirit this time, and when you called for your most pitiless enemy I was that person by a very large majority, though you did not suspect it.”

  “Well, did that remark of mine turn you into flesh and blood?”

  “No. It only made me visible to you. I am unsubstantial, just as other spirits are.”

  This remark prodded me with a sharp misgiving. If he was unsubstantial, how was I going to kill him? But I dissembled, and said persuasively,—

  “Conscience, it isn’t sociable of you to keep at such a distance. Come down and take another smoke.”

  This was answered with a look that was full of derision, and with this observation added:—

  “Come where you can get at me and kill me? The invitation is declined with thanks.”

  “All right,” said I to myself; “so it seems a spirit can be killed, after all; there will be one spirit lacking in this world, presently, or I lose my guess.” Then I said aloud,—

  “Friend”—

  “There; wait a bit. I am not your friend, I am your enemy; I am not your equal, I am your master. Call me ‘my lord,’ if you please. You are too familiar.”

  “I don’t like such titles. I am willing to call you sir. That is as far as”—

  “We will have no argument about this. Just obey; that is all. Go on with your chatter.”

  “Very well, my lord,—since nothing but my lord will suit you,—I was going to ask you how long you will be visible to me?”

  “Always!”

  I broke out with strong indignation: “This is simply an outrage. That is what I think of it. You have dogged, and dogged, and dogged me, all the days of my life, invisible. That was misery enough; now to have such a looking thing as you tagging after me like another shadow all the rest of my days is an intolerable prospect. You have my opinion, my lord; make the most of it.”

  “My lad, there was never so pleased a conscience in this world as I was when you made me visible. It gives me an inconceivable advantage. Now, I can look you straight in the eye, and call you names, and leer at you, jeer at you, sneer at you; and you know what eloquence there is in visible gesture and expression, more especially when the effect is heightened by audible speech. I shall always address you henceforth in your o-w-n s-n-i-v-e-l-i-n-g d-r-a-w-l-baby!”

  I let fly with the coal-hod. No result. My lord said,—

  “Come, come! Remember the flag of truce!”

  “Ah, I forgot that. I will try to be civil; and you try it, too, for a novelty. The idea of a civil conscience! It is a good joke; an excellent joke. All the consciences I have ever heard of were nagging, badgering, fault-finding, execrable savages! Yes; and always in a sweat about some poor little insignificant trifle or other—destruction catch the lot of them, I say! I would trade mine for the small-pox and seven kinds of consumption, and be glad of the chance. Now tell me, why is it that a conscience can’t haul a man over the coals once, for an offense, and then let him alone? Why is it that it wants to keep on pegging at him, day and night and n
ight and day, week in and week out, forever and ever, about the same old thing? There is no sense in that, and no reason in it. I think a conscience that will act like that is meaner than the very dirt itself.”

  “Well, we like it; that suffices.”

  “Do you do it with the honest intent to improve a man?”

  That question produced a sarcastic smile, and this reply:—

  “No, sir. Excuse me. We do it simply because it is ‘business.’ It is our trade. The purpose of it is to improve the man, but we are merely disinterested agents. We are appointed by authority, and haven’t anything to say in the matter. We obey orders and leave the consequences where they belong. But I am willing to admit this much: we do crowd the orders a trifle when we get a chance, which is most of the time. We enjoy it. We are instructed to remind a man a few times of an error; and I don’t mind acknowledging that we try to give pretty good measure. And when we get hold of a man of a peculiarly sensitive nature, oh, but we do haze him! I have known consciences to come all the way from China and Russia to see a person of that kind put through his paces, on a special occasion. Why, I knew a man of that sort who had accidentally crippled a mulatto baby; the news went abroad, and I wish you may never commit another sin if the consciences didn’t flock from all over the earth to enjoy the fun and help his master exercise him. That man walked the floor in torture for forty-eight hours, without eating or sleeping, and then blew his brains out. The child was perfectly well again in three weeks.”