“You don’t seem to think much of the human race; it’s a pity you have to belong to it.”
He looked a moment or two upon me, apparently in gentle wonder, then answered—
“What makes you think I belong to it?”
The bland audacity of it so mixed my emotions that it was a question which would get first expression, anger or mirth; but mirth got precedence, and I laughed. Expecting him to laugh, too, in response; but he did not. He looked a little hurt at my levity, and said, as in mild reproach—
“I think the human race is well enough, in its way, all things considered, but surely, August, I have never intimated that I belonged to it. Reflect. Now have I?”
It was difficult to know what to say; I seemed to be a little stunned. Presently I said, wonderingly—
“It makes me dizzy; I don’t quite know where I am; it is as if I had had a knock on the head. I have had no such confusing and bewildering and catastrophical experience as this before. It is a new and strange and fearful idea: a person who is a person and yet not a human being. I cannot grasp it, I do not know how it can be, I have never dreamed of so tremendous a thing, so amazing a thing! Since you are not a human being, what are you?”
“Ah,” he said, “now we have arrived at a point where words are useless; words cannot even convey human thought capably, and they can do nothing at all with thoughts whose realm and orbit are outside the human solar system, so to speak. I will use the language of my country, where words are not known. During half a moment my spirit shall speak to yours and tell you something about me. Not much, for it is not much of me that you would be able to understand, with your limited human mentality.”
While he was speaking, my head was illuminated by a single sudden flash as of lightning, and I recognised that it had conveyed to me some knowledge of him; enough to fill me with awe. Envy, too—I do not mind confessing it. He continued—
“Now then, things which have puzzled you heretofore are not a mystery to you any more, for you are now aware that there is nothing I cannot do—and lay it on the magician and increase his reputation; and you are also now aware that the difference between a human being and me is as the difference between a drop of water and the sea, a rushlight and the sun, the difference between the infinitely trivial and the infinitely sublime! I say—we’ll be comrades, and have scandalous good times!” and he slapped me on the shoulder, and his face was all alight with good-fellowship.
I said I was in awe of him, and was more moved to pay him reverence than to—
“Reverence!” he mocked; “put it away; the sun doesn’t care for the rushlight’s reverence, put it away. Come, we’ll be boys together and comrades! Is it agreed?”
He closed the door, and we sat down and began to talk, and he said it was good and generous of me to come and see him, and he hoped I would be his friend, for he was lonely and so wanted companionship. His words made me ashamed—so ashamed, and I felt so shabby and mean, that I almost had courage enough to come out and tell him how ignoble my errand was and how selfish. He smiled most kindly and winningly, and put out his hand and patted me on the knee, and said,
“Don’t mind it.”
I did not know what he was referring to, but the remark puzzled me, and so, in order not to let on, I thought I would throw out an observation—anything that came into my head; but nothing came but the weather, so I was dumb. He said,
“Do you care for it?”
“Care for what?”
“The weather.”
I was puzzled again; in fact astonished; and said to myself “This is uncanny; I’m afraid of him.”
He said cheerfully,
“Oh, you needn’t be. Don’t you be uneasy on my account.”
Then he said, with delicate consideration for me, “Treat me just as usual when others are around; it would injure you to befriend me in public, and I shall understand and not feel hurt.”
“You are just lovely!” I said, “and I honor you, and would brave them all if I had been born with any spirit—which I wasn’t.”
He opened his big wondering eyes upon me and said,
“Why do you reproach yourself? You did not make yourself; how then are you to blame?”
I was shocked, and deeply concerned; for I felt rising in me with urgency a suspicion which had troubled me several times before, but which I had ungently put from me each time—that he was indifferent to religion. I questioned him—he confessed it! I leave my distress and consternation to be imagined, I cannot describe them.
In that paralysing moment my life changed, and I was a different being; I resolved to devote my life, with all the affections and forces and talents which God had given me to the rescuing of this endangered soul. Then all my spirit was invaded and suffused with a blessed feeling, a divine sensation, which I recognized as the approval of God. I knew by that sign, as surely as if He had spoken to me, that I was His appointed instrument for this great work. I knew that He would help me in it; I knew that whenever I should need light and leading I could seek it in prayer, and have it; I knew—
“I get the idea,” said 44, breaking lightly in upon my thought, “it will be a Firm, with its headquarters up there and its hindquarters down here. There’s a duplicate of it in every congregation—in every family, in fact. Wherever you find a warty little devotee who isn’t in partnership with God—as he thinks—on a speculation to save some little warty soul that’s no more worth saving than his own, stuff him and put him in the museum, it is where he belongs.”
He came and sat down by me and rested his hand on my knee in his winning way, and smiled his beautiful smile, and asked me how I liked it. It was so evident that he was expecting a compliment, that I was obliged to furnish it. I had not the heart to hurt him, and he so innocently proud of his insane exhibition. I could not expose to him how undignified it was, and how degrading, and how difficult it had been for me to stand it through; I forced myself to say it was “ideal—more than ideal;” which was of course a perfectly meaningless phrase, but he was just hungry enough for a compliment to make him think this was one, and also make him overlook what was going on in my mind; so his face was fairly radiant with thanks and happiness, and he impulsively hugged me and said—
“It’s lovely of you to like it so. I’ll do it again!”
And at it he went, God assoil him, like a tempest. I couldn’t say anything, it was my own fault. Yet I was not really to blame, for I could not foresee that he would take that uninflamed compliment for an invitation to do the fiendish orgy over again. He kept it up and kept it up until my heart was broken and all my body and spirit so worn and tired and desperate that I could not hold in any longer, I had to speak out and beg him to stop, and not tire himself so. It was another mistake; damnation, he thought I was suffering on his account! so he piped out cheerily, as he whizzed by—
“Don’t worry about me; sit right where you are and enjoy it, I can do it all night.”
I thought I would go out and find a good place to die, and was starting.
I do wish you would become a Christian; won’t you try?”
He shook his head, and said—
“I should be too lonesome.”
“Lonesome? How?”
“I should be the only one.”
“Canvas-back,” he said, “hot from America!”
“What is America?”
“It’s a country.”
“A country?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“Oh, away off. It hasn’t been discovered yet. Not quite. Next fall.”
“Have you—”
“Been there? Yes; in the past, in the present, in the future. You should see it four or five centuries from now!"
“No, it is only a vice, merely a vice, but not a religious one. It originated in Mexico.”
“What is Mexico?”
“It’s a country.”
“A country?”
“Yes.”
“Where is it?”
“Away off. It hasn’t been discovered yet.”
“Have you ever—”
“Been there? Yes, many times. In the past, in the present, and in the future."
