“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 afterward. Aha! you feel
ashamed of it now!”
This was 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 anyway.”
“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 glazed 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! Oh! 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 bookcase, with
his thumb at his nose in token of derision. I flung the poker at him,
and missed. I fired the bootjack. In a blind rage I flew from place to
place, and snatched and hurled any missile that came handy; the storm of
books, inkstands, 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. Other wise 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 in 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 heavyhearted, 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 bookcase is all one riddle of--”