JACK told a lie.
That was the beginning of the foundation of his House.
There was no necessity for him to tell the lie. There never is really
any necessity for telling a Lie, and no good ever comes of it. Yet
Jack told it. He lied to those who loved him best,--to those who had
given him all he had in the world,--to those who had done everything
for him, and who had set their hearts on his turning out a true-hearted
lad, and an honest man. Well,--he didn’t think about those folks at
all;--he simply thought about Himself. He wished to protect Himself
from the consequences of an act of folly. And he thought the best way
to do that was to tell a good, thumping Lie, and put it up as a sort
of brazen shield between Himself and a disagreeable half-hour. So he
told it, quite cheerfully, and with a delightfully candid air of truth,
chuckling secretly to himself when he saw that the people who loved
him were foolish enough to believe him and trust to his honour.
He had, however, missed one awkward point in the matter. He did
not know that the telling of one Lie would necessitate the telling
of another to keep the first one up. But it was so. The first Lie
was terribly unsafe at certain moments, and he was afraid that the
foundation of his House would give in. However, the second Lie was
easily invented, and the two false bricks in the human building were
successfully set together with a little mortar of hypocrisy, and so
steadied each other.
After that, things progressed quickly, and the House grew up so
rapidly, and to such a size, that it seemed as if a whole army of
little demon bricklayers and plasterers from the lower regions of the
wicked had come of their own accord to assist Jack in carrying out his
design. One on top of the other the Lies were set in order, till Jack
became so delighted with the showy appearance of his building that he
altogether forgot there was such a thing as Truth in the world. Lies
became so much a part of his existence that he told them on every
occasion.
From a Boy he grew, with his House, into a Man, and went on lying.
With an air of the most ingenuous candour he looked his neighbours
smilingly in the face and lied to them all day long. He lied in
business, he lied at home. He lied to friends, he lied to foes. Nobody
knew where to have him, his lies were so cunningly and cleverly
adjusted. When through dint of cheating, corruption, and fraud, he had
managed to amass a large fortune through the ruin of others, he lied to
Himself and said he was a good man. Thus you see he had nearly reached
the top of the House he was building. Still entirely satisfied with his
palatial Residence, he kept on adding a brick or two here, an archway
there, an additional column or extra ornamental pinnacle in various
directions, till at last, when he was getting on in life, and was
beginning to be rather fat and pursy, he decided to put the Roof on.
He went down to a great Money-market to do that, and floated a large
company on a big Lie.
And so the Roof, all sparkling with gold and silver, was put on the
splendid House that Jack built, and Jack went home to eat a gorgeous
dinner within its walls, and take his ease for the remainder of his
days.
But just as he arrived at the door of his grand Establishment, he
saw a little beggar-lad, about as young as he had been himself when
he first began to build. And this little beggar-lad, ragged and
dirty and foot-sore, was actually presuming to stand in Jack’s great
entrance-hall as if he had every right to be there!--in fact, as if the
house belonged to him! Jack was furious.
“What are you doing here, you rascal?” he spluttered. “How dare you
come here? Who the devil are you?”
The little beggar-lad looked him full in the face, and did not budge an
inch.
“My name is Truth,” he said; “and I am here to knock down your House of
Lies!”
Whereupon he raised his little child’s hand--and lo! without any sound
at all, but as rapidly as a heap of snow melting away in hot sunshine,
the house that Jack built with so much care and concern crumbled to
atoms and disappeared, leaving no trace of itself but a faint bad smell
like the passing of an open dust-cart.
Now some people passing by looked at the blank space where it had once
stood, and said: “Dear me! There used to be a House of Lies here, and
everybody thought it would last for ever!”
“Not everybody,” said the little beggar-lad, as he stepped out among
them: “only the Jack that built it!”
And with that he also disappeared.
And where was Jack? What had become of him? Well, he had fallen with
the ruin of his House--and he must have died in a very strange and
awful fashion; for just near the dust of the two first Lies he had set
together in boyhood as a foundation for the after-building of his life
there was seen a crawling Worm, writhing itself in and out through the
wet mould. And the Worm was the coward Soul of a false lad who never
became a true Man!