Autobiography of Mark Twain

by Mark Twain

  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.

  III

  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 thundercloud. 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-bye, 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 a while 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!”

  The good old gentlewomen sat paralysed, pulverized, outraged, insulted, and brooded in bitterness and indignation over these blasphemies. They were hurt to the heart, poor old ladies, and said they could never forgive these injuries.

  “Reform!”

  They kept repeating that word resentfully. “Reform—and learn to tell lies!”

  Time slipped along, and in due course a change came over their spirits. They had completed the human being’s first duty—which is to
think about himself until he has exhausted the subject, then he is in a condition to take up minor interests and think of other people. This changes the complexion of his spirits—generally wholesomely. The minds of the two old ladies reverted to their beloved niece and the fearful disease which had smitten her; instantly they forgot the hurts their self-love had received, and a passionate desire rose in their hearts to go to the help of the sufferer and comfort her with their love, and minister to her, and labor for her the best they could with their weak hands, and joyfully and affectionately wear out their poor old bodies in her dear service if only they might have the privilege.

  “And we shall have it!” said Hester, with the tears running down her face. “There are no nurses comparable to us, for there are no others that will stand their watch by that bed till they drop and die, and God knows we would do that.”

  “Amen,” said Hannah, smiling approval and endorsement through the mist of moisture that blurred her glasses. “The doctor knows us, and knows we will not disobey again; and he will call no others. He will not dare!”

  “Dare?” said Hester, with temper, and dashing the water from her eyes; “he will dare anything—that Christian devil! But it will do no good for him to try it this time—but, laws! Hannah, after all’s said and done, he is gifted and wise and good, and he would not think of such a thing. . . . It is surely time for one of us to go to that room. What is keeping him? Why doesn’t he come and say so?”

  They caught the sound of his approaching step. He entered, sat down, and began to talk.

  “Margaret is a sick woman,” he said. “She is still sleeping, but she will wake presently; then one of you must go to her. She will be worse before she is better. Pretty soon a night-and-day watch must be set. How much of it can you two undertake?”

  “All of it!” burst from both ladies at once.

  The doctor’s eyes flashed, and he said, with energy:

  “You do ring true, you brave old relics! And you shall do all of the nursing you can, for there’s none to match you in that divine office in this town; but you can’t do all of it, and it would be a crime to let you.” It was grand praise, golden praise, coming from such a source, and it took nearly all the resentment out of the aged twins’ hearts. “Your Tilly and my old Nancy shall do the rest—good nurses both, white souls with black skins, watchful, loving, tender,—just perfect nurses!—and competent liars from the cradle. . . . Look you! keep a little watch on Helen; she is sick, and is going to be sicker.”

  The ladies looked a little surprised, and not credulous; and Hester said:

  “How is that? It isn’t an hour since you said she was as sound as a nut.”

  The doctor answered, tranquilly,

  “It was a lie.”

  The ladies turned upon him indignantly, and Hannah said,

  “How can you make an odious confession like that, in so indifferent a tone, when you know how we feel about all forms of—”

  “Hush! You are as ignorant as cats, both of you, and you don’t know what you are talking about. You are like all the rest of the moral moles: you lie from morning till night, but because you don’t do it with your mouths, but only with your lying eyes, your lying inflections, your deceptively misplaced emphasis, and your misleading gestures, you turn up your complacent noses and parade before God and the world as saintly and unsmirched Truth-Speakers, in whose cold-storage souls a lie would freeze to death if it got there! Why will you humbug yourselves with that foolish notion that no lie is a lie except a spoken one? What is the difference between lying with your eyes and lying with your mouth? There is none; and if you would reflect a moment you would see that it is so. There isn’t a human being that doesn’t tell a gross of lies every day of his life; and you—why, between you, you tell thirty thousand; yet you flare up here in a lurid hypocritical horror because I tell that child a benevolent and sinless lie to protect her from her imagination, which would get to work and warm up her blood to a fever in an hour, if I were disloyal enough to my duty to let it. Which I should probably do if I were interested in saving my soul by such disreputable means.

  “Come, let us reason together. Let us examine details. When you two were in the sick-room raising that riot, what would you have done if you had known I was coming?”

  “Well, what?”

  “You would have slipped out and carried Helen with you—wouldn’t you?”

  The ladies were silent.

  “What would be your object and intention?”

  “Well, what?”

  “To keep me from finding out your guilt; to beguile me to infer that Margaret’s excitement proceeded from some cause not known to you. In a word, to tell me a lie—a silent lie. Moreover, a possibly harmful one.”

  The twins colored, but did not speak.

  “You not only tell myriads of silent lies, but you tell lies with your mouths—you two.”

  “That is not so!”

  “It is so. But only harmless ones. You never dream of uttering a harmful one. Do you know that that is a concession—and a confession?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “It is an unconscious concession that harmless lies are not criminal; it is a confession that you constantly make that discrimination. For instance, you declined old Mrs. Foster’s invitation last week to meet those odious Higbies at supper—in a polite note in which you expressed regret and said you were very sorry you could not go. It was a lie. It was as unmitigated a lie as was ever uttered. Deny it, Hester—with another lie.”

  Hester replied with a toss of her head.

  “That will not do. Answer. Was it a lie, or wasn’t it?”

  The color stole into the cheeks of both women, and with a struggle and an effort they got out their confession:

  “It was a lie.”

  “Good—the reform is beginning; there is hope for you yet; you will not tell a lie to save your dearest friend’s soul, but you will spew out one without a scruple to save yourself the discomfort of telling an unpleasant truth.”

  He rose. Hester, speaking for both, said, coldly:

  “We have lied; we perceive it; it will occur no more. To lie is a sin. We shall never tell another one of any kind whatsoever, even lies of courtesy or benevolence, to save any one a pang or a sorrow decreed for him by God.”

  “Ah, how soon you will fall! In fact, you have fallen already; for what you have just uttered is a lie. Good-bye. Reform! One of you go to the sick-room now.”

  IV

  Twelve days later.

  Mother and child were lingering in the grip of the hideous disease. Of hope for either there was little. The aged sisters looked white and worn, but they would not give up their posts. Their hearts were breaking, poor old things, but their grit was steadfast and indestructible. All the twelve days the mother had pined for the child, and the child for the mother, but both knew that the prayer of these longings could not be granted. When the mother was told—on the first day—that her disease was typhoid, she was frightened, and asked if there was danger that Helen could have contracted it the day before, when she was in the sick-chamber on that confession visit. Hester told her the doctor had poo-poo’d the idea. It troubled Hester to say it, although it was true, for she had not believed the doctor; but when she saw the mother’s joy in the news, the pain in her conscience lost something of its force—a result which made her ashamed of the constructive deception which she had practised, though not ashamed enough to make her distinctly and definitely wish she had refrained from it. From that moment the sick woman understood that her daughter must remain away, and she said she would reconcile herself to the separation the best she could, for she would rather suffer death than have her child’s health imperiled. That afternoon Helen had to take to her bed, ill. She grew worse during the night. In the morning her mother asked after her:

  “Is she well?”

  Hester turned cold; she opened her lips, but the words refused to come. The mother lay languidly looking, musing, waiting; suddenly she
turned white and gasped out,

  “Oh, my God! what is it? is she sick?”

  Then the poor aunt’s tortured heart rose in rebellion, and words came:

  “No—be comforted; she is well.”

  The sick woman put all her happy heart in her gratitude:

  “Thank God for those dear words! Kiss me. How I worship you for saying them.”

  Hester told this incident to Hannah, who received it with a rebuking look, and said, coldly,

  “Sister, it was a lie.”

  Hester’s lips trembled piteously; she choked down a sob, and said,

  “Oh, Hannah, it was a sin, but I could not help it. I could not endure the fright and the misery that were in her face.”

  “No matter. It was a lie. God will hold you to account for it.”

  “Oh, I know it, I know it,” cried Hester, wringing her hands, “but even if it were now, I could not help it. I know I should do it again.”

  “Then take my place with Helen in the morning. I will make the report myself.”

  Hester clung to her sister, begging and imploring.

  “Don’t, Hannah, oh, don’t—you will kill her.”

  “I will at least speak the truth.”

  In the morning she had a cruel report to bear to the mother, and she braced herself for the trial. When she returned from her mission, Hester was waiting, pale and trembling, in the hall. She whispered,

  “Oh, how did she take it—that poor, desolate mother?”

  Hannah’s eyes were swimming in tears. She said,

  “God forgive me, I told her the child was well!”

  Hester gathered her to her heart, with a grateful “God bless you, Hannah!” and poured out her thankfulness in an inundation of worshiping praises.

  After that, the two knew the limit of their strength, and accepted their fate. They surrendered humbly, and abandoned themselves to the hard requirements of the situation. Daily they told the morning lie, and confessed their sin in prayer; not asking forgiveness, as not being worthy of it, but only wishing to make record that they realized their wickedness and were not desiring to hide it or excuse it.