The Complete Short Stories of Mark Twain (69 page)

WAS IT HEAVEN? OR HELL?
                                                                                                                                       

1

Y
OU TOLD a
lie?
”

“You confess it—you actually confess it—you told a lie!”

2

The family consisted of four persons: Margaret Lester, widow, aged thirty-six; Helen Lester, her daughter, aged sixteen; Mrs. Lester’s maiden aunts, Hannah and Hester Gray, twins, aged sixty-seven. Waking and sleeping, the three women spent their days and nights in adoring the young girl; in watching the movements of her sweet spirit in the mirror of her face; in refreshing their souls with the vision of her bloom and beauty; in listening to the music of her voice; in gratefully recognizing how rich and fair for them was the world with this presence in it; in shuddering to think how desolate it would be with this light gone out of it.

By nature—and inside—the aged aunts were utterly dear and lovable and good, but in the matter of morals and conduct their training had been so uncompromisingly strict that it had made them exteriorly austere, not to say stern. Their influence was effective in the house; so effective that the mother and the daughter conformed to its moral and religious requirements cheerfully, contentedly, happily, unquestionably. To do this was become second nature to them. And so in this peaceful heaven there were no clashings, no irritations, no fault-findings, no heart-burnings.

In it a lie had no place. In it a lie was unthinkable. In it speech was restricted to absolute truth, iron-bound truth, implacable and uncompromising truth, let the resulting consequences be what they might. At last, one day, under stress of circumstances, the darling of the house sullied her lips with a lie—and confessed it, with tears and self-upbraidings. There are not any words that can paint the consternation of the aunts. It was as if the sky had crumpled up and collapsed and the earth had tumbled to ruin with a crash. They sat side by side, white and stern, gazing speechless upon the culprit, who was on her knees before them with her face buried first in one lap and then the other, moaning and sobbing, and appealing for sympathy and forgiveness and getting no response, humbly kissing the hand of the one, then of the other, only to see it withdrawn as suffering defilement by those soiled lips.

Twice, at intervals, Aunt Hester said, in frozen amazement:

“You told a
lie?
”

Twice, at intervals, Aunt Hannah followed with the muttered and amazed ejaculation:

“You confess it—you actually confess it—you told a lie!”

It was all they could say. The situation was new, unheard of, incredible; they could not understand it, they did not know how to take hold of it, it approximately paralyzed speech.

At length it was decided that the erring child must be taken to her mother, who was ill, and who ought to know what had happened. Helen begged, besought, implored that she might be spared this further disgrace, and that her mother might be spared the grief and pain of it; but this could not be: duty required this sacrifice, duty takes precedence of all things, nothing can absolve one from a duty, with a duty no compromise is possible.

Helen still begged, and said the sin was her own, her mother had had no hand in it—why must she be made to suffer for it?

But the aunts were obdurate in their righteousness, and said the law that visited the sins of the parent upon the child was by all right and reason reversible; and therefore it was but just that the innocent mother of a sinning child should suffer her rightful share of the grief and pain and shame which were the allotted wages of the sin.

The three moved toward the sick-room.

At this time the doctor was approaching the house. He was still a good distance away, however. He was a good doctor and a good man, and he had a good heart, but one had to know him a year to get over hating him, two years to learn to endure him, three to learn to like him, and four or five to learn to love him. It was a slow and trying education, but it paid. He was of great stature; he had a leonine head, a leonine face, a rough voice, and an eye which was sometimes a pirate’s and sometimes a woman’s, according to the mood. He knew nothing about etiquette, and cared nothing about it; in speech, manner, carriage, and conduct he was the reverse of conventional. He was frank, to the limit; he had opinions on all subjects; they were always on tap and ready for delivery, and he cared not a farthing whether his listener liked them or didn’t. Whom he loved he loved, and manifested it; whom he didn’t love he hated, and published it from the housetops. In his young days he had been a sailor, and the salt-airs of all the seas blew from him yet. He was a sturdy and loyal Christian, and believed he was the best one in the land, and the only one whose Christianity was perfectly sound, healthy, full-charged with common sense, and had no decayed places in it. People who had an ax to grind, or people who for any reason wanted to get on the soft side of him, called him The Christian—a phrase whose delicate flattery was music to his ears, and whose capital T was such an enchanting and vivid object to him that he could
see
it when it fell out of a person’s mouth even in the dark. Many who were fond of him stood on their consciences with both feet and brazenly called him by that large title habitually, because it was a pleasure to them to do anything that would please him; and with eager and cordial malice his extensive and diligently cultivated crop of enemies gilded it, beflowered it, expanded it to “The
Only
Christian.” Of these two titles, the latter had the wider currency; the enemy, being greatly in the majority, attended to that. Whatever the doctor believed, he believed with all his heart, and would fight for it whenever he got the chance; and if the intervals between chances grew to be irksomely wide, he would invent ways of shortening them himself. He was severely conscientious, according to his rather independent lights, and whatever he took to be a duty he performed, no matter whether the judgment of the professional moralists agreed with his own or not. At sea, in his young days, he had used profanity freely, but as soon as he was converted he made a rule, which he rigidly stuck to ever afterward, never to use it except on the rarest occasions, and then only when duty commanded. He had been a hard drinker at sea, but after his conversion he became a firm and outspoken teetotaler, in order to be an example to the young, and from that time forth he seldom drank; never, indeed, except when it seemed to him to be a duty—a condition which sometimes occurred a couple of times a year, but never as many as five times.

Necessarily, such a man is impressionable, impulsive, emotional. This one was, and had no gift at hiding his feelings; or if he had it he took no trouble to exercise it. He carried his soul’s prevailing weather in his face, and when he entered a room the parasols or the umbrellas went up—figuratively speaking—according to the indications. When the soft light was in his eye it meant approval, and delivered a benediction; when he came with a frown he lowered the temperature ten degrees. He was a well-beloved man in the house of his friends, but sometimes a dreaded one.

He had a deep affection for the Lester household, and its several members returned this feeling with interest. They mourned over his kind of Christianity, and he frankly scoffed at theirs; but both parties went on loving each other just the same.

He was approaching the house—out of the distance; the aunts and the culprit were moving toward the sick-chamber.

3

The three last named stood by the bed; the aunts austere, the transgressor softly sobbing. The mother turned her head on the pillow; her tired eyes flamed up instantly with sympathy and passionate mother-love when they fell upon her child, and she opened the refuge and shelter of her arms.

“Wait!” said Aunt Hannah, and put out her hand and stayed the girl from leaping into them.

“Helen,” said the other aunt, impressively, “tell your mother all. Purge your soul; leave nothing unconfessed.”

Standing stricken and forlorn before her judges, the young girl mourned her sorrowful tale through to the end, then in a passion of appeal cried out:

“Oh, mother, can’t you forgive me? won’t you forgive me?—I am so desolate!”

“Forgive you, my darling? Oh, come to my arms!—there, lay your head upon my breast, and be at peace. If you had told a thousand lies—”

There was a sound—a warning—the clearing of a throat. The aunts glanced up, and withered in their clothes—there stood the doctor, his face a thunder-cloud. Mother and child knew nothing of his presence; they lay locked together, heart to heart, steeped in immeasurable content, dead to all things else. The physician stood many moments glaring and glooming upon the scene before him; studying it, analyzing it, searching out its genesis; then he put up his hand and beckoned to the aunts. They came trembling to him, and stood humbly before him and waited. He bent down and whispered:

“Didn’t I tell you this patient must be protected from all excitement? What the hell have you been doing? Clear out of the place!”

They obeyed. Half an hour later he appeared in the parlor, serene, cheery, clothed in sunshine, conducting Helen, with his arm about her waist, petting her, and saying gentle and playful things to her; and she also was her sunny and happy self again.

“Now, then,” he said, “good-by, dear. Go to your room, and keep away from your mother, and behave yourself. But wait—put out your tongue. There, that will do—you’re as sound as a nut!” He patted her cheek and added, “Run along now; I want to talk to these aunts.”

She went from the presence. His face clouded over again at once; and as he sat down he said:

“You two have been doing a lot of damage—and maybe some good. Some good, yes—such as it is. That woman’s disease is typhoid! You’ve brought it to a show-up, I think, with your insanities, and that’s a service—such as it is. I hadn’t been able to determine what it was before.”

With one impulse the old ladies sprang to their feet, quaking with terror.

“Sit down! What are you proposing to do?”

“Do? We must fly to her. We—”

“You’ll do nothing of the kind; you’ve done enough harm for one day. Do you want to squander all your capital of crimes and follies on a single deal? Sit down, I tell you. I have arranged for her to sleep; she needs it; if you disturb her without my orders, I’ll brain you—if you’ve got the materials for it.”

They sat down, distressed and indignant, but obedient, under compulsion. He proceeded:

“Now, then, I want this case explained.
They
wanted to explain it to me—as if there hadn’t been emotion and excitement enough already. You knew my orders; how did you dare to go in there and get up that riot?”

Hester looked appealingly at Hannah; Hannah returned a beseeching look at Hester—neither wanted to dance to this unsympathetic orchestra. The doctor came to their help. He said:

“Begin, Hester.”

Fingering at the fringes of her shawl, and with lowered eyes, Hester said, timidly:

“We should not have disobeyed for any ordinary cause, but this was vital. This was a duty. With a duty one has no choice; one must put all lighter considerations aside and perform it. We were obliged to arraign her before her mother. She had told a lie.”

The doctor glowered upon the woman a moment, and seemed to be trying to work up in his mind an understanding of a wholly incomprehensible proposition; then he stormed out:

“She told a lie!
Did
she? God bless my soul! I tell a million a day! And so does every doctor. And so does everybody—including you—for that matter. And
that
was the important thing that authorized you to venture to disobey my orders and imperil that woman’s life! Look here, Hester Gray, this is pure lunacy; that girl
couldn’t
tell a lie that was intended to injure a person. The thing is impossible—absolutely impossible. You know it yourselves—both of you; you know it perfectly well.”

Hannah came to her sister’s rescue:

“Hester didn’t mean that it was that kind of a lie, and it wasn’t. But it was a lie.”

“Well, upon my word, I never heard such nonsense! Haven’t you got sense enough to discriminate between lies? Don’t you know the difference between a lie that helps and a lie that hurts?”

“
All
lies are sinful,” said Hannah, setting her lips together like a vise; “all lies are forbidden.”

The Only Christian fidgeted impatiently in his chair. He wanted to attack this proposition, but he did not quite know how or where to begin. Finally he made a venture:

“Hester, wouldn’t you tell a lie to shield a person from an undeserved injury or shame?”

“No.”

“Not even a friend?”

“No.”

“Not even your dearest friend?”

“No. I would not.”

The doctor struggled in silence awhile with this situation; then he asked:

“Not even to save him from bitter pain and misery and grief?”

“No. Not even to save his life.”

Another pause. Then:

“Nor his soul?”

There was a hush—a silence which endured a measurable interval—then Hester answered, in a low voice, but with decision:

“Nor his soul.”

No one spoke for a while; then the doctor said:

“Is it with you the same, Hannah?”

“Yes,” she answered.

“I ask you both—why?”

“Because to tell such a lie, or any lie, is a sin, and could cost us the loss of our own souls—
would
, indeed, if we died without time to repent.”

“Strange . . . strange . . . it is past belief.” Then he asked, roughly: “Is such a soul as that
worth
saving?” He rose up, mumbling and grumbling, and started for the door, stumping vigorously along. At the threshold he turned and rasped out an admonition: “Reform! Drop this mean and sordid and selfish devotion to the saving of your shabby little souls, and hunt up something to do that’s got some dignity to it!
Risk
your souls! risk them in good causes; then if you lose them, why should you care? Reform!”