"This is the best camp we've had," said the Bride, hooking her hands over her knee, and gazing into the fire.
"Sure," said Billy. "Every camp is the best in life, for me, honey!
Listen to the Professor, now--nobody heard!"
THE FEDERAL IMP COMPANY
THE PROFESSOR'S SECOND TALE
I can not bring myself to think lightly of devils and imps. Neither can I believe that the consensus of the opinions of so many millions of mankind associating eternal punishment with fire can be neglected by the student of ethnology or theology. These are filled with haunts of devils--if the opinions of those who named them are worth anything. In addition to those localities which have been mentioned, I have in my notes the following:
The Devil's Frying Pan, The Devil's Slide, The Devil's Kitchen, The Devil's Punch Bowl, The Devil's Broiler, The Devil's Bath Tub, The Devil's Den, The Devil's Workshop, The Devil's Stairway, The Devil's Caldron, The Devil's Well, The Devil's Elbow, The Devil's Thumb,
and I know not how many of the members of His Satanic Majesty--all in this Park! And yet we say there is no devil, no brood of imps set upon the capture of human souls?
I shall tell you a story that seems worth considering as evidence on the other side. It is the story of something that occurred when I was journeying by a branch railway to take the main line to Washington, after a visit to the Boggses' ancestral farm in Pennsylvania. I had been at Boston as an attendant upon the sessions of the National Teachers'
Association; with what recognition of my own small ability as an educator I have already mentioned. I boarded an old-fashioned, branch-line sleeping-car, and there met the being whose utterances and actions have so impressed me that I shall never forget them, never. I feel that this creature, so casually met, may be one of the actors in a series of events of the most appalling character, and cosmic scope.
When the porter came snooping about as if desiring to make up my berth, I went into the smoking compartment. I do not smoke; but it was the only place to go. I found there a person of striking appearance who told me the most remarkable story I ever heard in my life, and one which I feel it my duty to make public.
He had before him a bottle of ready-mixed cocktails, a glass, and a newspaper. With his bags and the little card table on which he rested his elbows, he was occupying most of the compartment. I sidled in hesitatingly, in that unobtrusive way which I believe to be the unfailing mark of the retiring and scholastic mind, and for want of a place to sit down, I leaned upon the lavatory. He was gazing fixedly at the half-empty bottle, his sweeping black mustaches curling back past his ears, his huge grizzled eyebrows shot through with the gleam of his eyes. He looked so formidable that I confess I was daunted, and should have escaped to the vestibule; but he saw me, rose, and with extreme politeness began tossing aside baggage to make room.
"I trust, Sir," said he with a capital S, "that you will pardon my occupancy of so much of a room in which your right is equal to mine! Be seated, I beg of you, Sir!"
I sat down; partly because, when not aroused, I am of a submissive temperament; and partly because he had thrown the table and grips across the door.
"Don't mention it," said I. "Thank you."
"Permit me, Sir," said he, "to offer you a drink."
"I hope you will excuse me," I replied, now slightly roused, for I abhor alcohol and its use. "I never drink!"
"It is creditable to any man, Sir," said he, "to carry around with him a correct estimate of his weaknesses."
This really aroused in me that indignation which sometimes renders me almost terrible; but his fixed and glittering gaze seemed to hold me back from making the protest which rose to my lips.
"Permit me, Sir," said he, "to offer you a cigar."
It was a strong-looking weed; but although I am not a smoker, I took and lighted it. He resumed his attention to his bottle and paper.
"Will you be so kind," said he, breaking silence, "as to read that item as it appears to you?"
"'Federal Improvement Company,'" I read. "'Organized under the laws of New Jersey, on January 4th, with a capital of $1,000,000. Charter powers very broad, taking in almost every field of business. The incorporators are understood to be New York men.'"
"'Imp,'" said he, "isn't it? not 'Improvement.'"
"I take it, sir," said I, "that the omission of the period is a printer's error, and that i-m-p means Improvement.'"
He leaned forward, grasped my wrist and peered like a hypnotist into my face.
"Just as badly mistaken," said he, "as if you had lost--as could be! It means 'Imp' just as it says 'Imp.' Have another drink!"
This time I really did not feel free to refuse him. He seemed greatly pleased at my tasting.
"Sit still," said he, "and I'll tell you the condemdest story you ever heard. That corporation means that we are now entering a governmental and sociological area of low pressure that will make the French Revolution look like a cipher with the rim rubbed out. In the end you'll be apt to have clearer views as to whether or not 'i-m-p' spells improvement'!"
This he seemed to consider a very clever play upon words, and he sat for some time, laughing in the manner adopted by the stage villain in his moments of solitude. His Mephistophelean behavior, or something, made me giddy. His manner was quite calm, however, and after a while we lapsed back into the commonplace.
"Ever read a story," said he, "named _The Bottle Imp_?"
"Stevenson's _Bottle Imp_?" I exclaimed, glad to find a topic of common interest, and feeling that it could not be a dangerous thing to be shut into the same smoking compartment with any man who loved such things, no matter how Captain-Kiddish he might appear. "Why, yes, I have often read it. I am a teacher of literature and an admirer of Stevenson. He possesses--"
"Who? Adlai?" he said. "Did he ever have it?"
"I mean Robert Louis," said I. "He wrote it, you know."
"Oh!" said my companion meditatively, "he did, did he? Wrote it, eh?
It's as likely as not he did--I know _Adlai_. Met him once, when I was putting a bill through down at Springfield: nice man! Well about this Bottle Imp. You know the story tells how he was shut up in a bottle--the Imp was--and whoever owned it could have anything he ordered, just like the fellow with the lamp--"
"Except long life!" said I, venturing to interrupt.
"Of course, not that!" replied my strange traveling companion. "If the thing had been used to prolong life, where would the Imp come in? His side of the deal was to get a soul to torture. He couldn't be asked to give 'em length of days, you understand. It couldn't be expected."
I had to admit that, from the Imp's standpoint, there was much force in this remark.
"And that other clause in the contract that the owner could sell it," he went on. "That had to be in, or the Imp never could have found a man sucker enough to take the Bottle in the first place."
The cases of Faust, and the man who had the Wild Ass's Skin seemed to me authorities against this statement; but I allowed the error to pass uncorrected.
"On the other hand," he went on, "it was nothing more than fair to have that other clause in, providing that every seller must take less for it than he gave. Otherwise they'd have kept transferring it just before the owner croaked, and the Imp would never have got his victim. But with that rule in force the price just had to get down so low sometime that it couldn't get any lower, and the Imp would get his _quid pro quo_."
"You speak," said I indignantly, for it horrified me to hear the loss of a soul spoken of in this light manner; "you speak like a veritable devil's advocate!"
"When I've finished telling you of this Federal Imp Company that's just been chartered," said he, "you'll have to admit that there's at least one devil that's in need of the best advocate that money'll hire!"
Here he gave one of his sardonic chuckles, long-continued and rumbling, and peered into the bottle of cocktails, as if the prospective client of the advocate referred to had been confined there.
"When it doesn't cost anything," he added, "there's no harm in being fair, even with an Imp."
I failed to come to the defense of my position, and he went on.
"Well," said he, "do you remember the Bottle Imp's history that this man Stevenson gives us? Caesar had it once, and wished himself clear up to the head of the Roman Empire. Charlemagne, Napoleon, and a good many of the fellows who had everything coming their way, owed their successes to the Bottle Imp, and their failures to selling out too soon: got scared when they got a headache, or on the eve of battle, or something like that. It was owned in South Africa, and Barney Barnato and Cecil Rhodes both had it. That accounts for the way _they_ got up in the world. Then the Bottle and Imp went to the Nob Hill millionaire who bought it for eighty dollars and sold it to Keawe the Kanaka for fifty. The price was getting dangerously low, now, and Keawe was mighty glad when he had wished himself into a fortune and got rid of the thing. Then, just as he was about to get married, he discovered that he had leprosy, hunted up the Bottle, which he found in the possession of a fellow who had all colors of money and insomnia, both of which he had acquired by purchasing the Bottle Imp for two cents, you remember, and was out looking for a transferee, and about on the verge of nervous prostration because he couldn't find one,--not at that price! Keawe became so desperate from the danger of going to the leper colony and the loss of his sweetheart, that he bought the Bottle for a cent, in the face of the fact that, so far as he knew, a cent was the smallest coin in the world, and the bargain, accordingly, cinched him as the Imp's peculiar property, for all eternity. I'll be--hanged--if I know whether to despise him for his foolishness or to admire him for his sand!"
"You recall," said I, "that his wife directed his attention to the _centime_--"
"Yes," said he, "she put him on. And they threw away one transfer by placing it on the market at four _centimes_. They might just as well have started it at five."
"I don't see that," said I.