Self-Doomed: A Novel

by B. L. Farjeon

"From the first day I came here," said Anna, and there was really a touch of pathos in her voice, "everything has gone right in my kitchen. Never a joint have I spoiled, nor a bird, nor has an ounce of fat or a slice of bread been wasted. Out of what has been saved by careful management we have even been able to feed the beggars. Go down-stairs now, and you will see the saucepans, and the pans, and the moulds shining like new silver, and if you find a speck of dust on a plate or a glass you may cut off my head."

It was true, every word of it, and I should have melted into tears had it not been for the tragic tone in which my good Anna said I might cut off her head.

"And why," she continued, and now her voice began to swell, "do I tell you this? To praise myself--to make you think I am a miracle of a woman? No, Master Fink, you know better than that. I am no miracle; only an ordinary creature, who is contented when things go on in a quiet and honest fashion. It is to prove to you how easy it is for one pair of hands to do a thing well, and for another pair to make everything go wrong. Had I taken an apprentice, some wench who thought more of her own stomach than her master's, your meat would have been undone or done to rags, and your favorite dishes burned to a cinder. But I would have no apprentice; the work I had to do was done, and that was enough for me. I was not going to bring confusion upon the house. And your shop, before you took Gideon Wolf into it, was like my kitchen, a model. You got up in the morning, you had your meals in peace, you did with your own one pair of hands every bit of work there was to do, you were putting by money, and this house was a house of truth and honesty. No lies to disturb us then, Master Fink; no deceit, no treachery, no unholy work--"

"Stop, Anna," I exclaimed, "for Heaven's sake, stop! Everything you have said is true, except the last. Whatever else takes place in the house, there is no unholy work going on in it."

"I tell you, Master Fink," said Anna, and her voice became so solemn that I felt the hair rising on my head, "that there is unholy work being carried on in your house. The Evil One visits it regularly!"

I stared at her with my mouth wide open. Had the most savory morsel been popped into it at that moment I should not have been able to move my jaws; there it would have remained, uneaten.

"Explain to me what you mean," I managed to murmur.

"Explain to me," she retorted, "what Gideon Wolf means, by getting up in the middle of the night to play cards with the Devil!"

You may imagine my astonishment; you might have thrown me from my chair to the ground with your little finger. "Playing cards in the middle of the night with the Devil!" I gasped.

"Yes, Master Fink, with the Devil. Doesn't Gideon Wolf sleep in the next room to mine, and isn't there a hole in the wall behind the curtains of my bed, into which I have stuffed a piece of soft rag, and tied it with a string to my pillow, so that it can't be taken out on the other side without disturbing me? Well, then. The first time I saw anything of Gideon Wolf's unholy work was six months ago, when, waking up in the middle of the night, I heard him talking to Some One in his room. My room was dark--I have nothing on my conscience, and can sleep without a light--but in his the candle was burning, as I saw when I quietly took the rag out of the hole and peeped through. There was no harm in my doing it--I am old enough to be his grandmother. I knew that, lawfully, there should be only you, me, and Gideon in the house. You were asleep down-stairs. Who could it be, then, that Gideon Wolf was talking to? It was my duty to see, and I am thankful that I am not a coward. Gideon was sitting in his shirt-sleeves at his little table; his back was towards me, and, as I have told you, there was a candle alight. He was shuffling and dealing out a pack of cards, talking all the time in a voice you never heard, Master Fink, all the years he has been with you. It was not a natural voice; the bad passions expressed in it made me shudder. He dealt cards to himself and to Whoever it was that sat opposite to him. I did not see the Being he was playing with, but it could be nobody but Satan, who has the power of making himself invisible to any person he pleases--and he didn't choose to show himself to me. But Gideon saw him clearly enough, for he spoke to the Fiend, and shook his fist at him, and swore at him, and when he was winning, grinned in his face--a diabolical grin, such as I never saw on the face of a proper man. Now and then I thought I heard a faint, wicked laugh from the Fiend, but I could not make sure of it. Gideon kept an account of something--of his winnings and losings, I suppose--on pieces of paper, upon which he wrote figures at the end of every game. 'That makes five hundred,' Gideon said; 'that makes a thousand; that makes fifteen hundred; that makes two thousand. Where am I to get the money from? How am I to pay you?' I knew how he would have to pay; it was his soul that was being gambled away. It was when Gideon was speaking in that way that I thought I heard the laughing of the Fiend. This went on for nearly an hour, I should say, and then Gideon Wolf, dashing the pack of cards against the wall, rose from the table with a face as white as my table-cloths. Something seemed to vanish out of the room, and Gideon, after muttering to himself for a minute or two, burned all the little pieces of paper at the candle, and gathering the ashes put them in the stove. Having done this with great care, he collected the pack of cards, blew out the candle, and went to bed. The next morning when I went to his room I looked into his stove, and there I saw the burned ashes of the pieces of paper, and I knew I had not been dreaming."