“Now answer me, McNason,” it said, impressively—“Do you mean to say that you consider yourself a good man?”
Josiah looked at his inquisitor with one eye askew.
“As good as any man,”—he muttered—“And better than most!”
“Oh, hoo-roo!” and the dismal cry was like a hundred owls hooting in chorus—“Hoo-roo!—hoo-roo! How these conceited mortals deceive themselves!” Here it patted its paunch echoingly. “As good as any man, are you, McNason?—and better than most! Now what have you done in order to get such a very excellent opinion of yourself, eh?”
McNason hesitated. Then the recollection of his vast wealth, and of his wide-reaching business influence flashed across his mind and filled him with a sudden spirit of self-assertiveness.
“I’ve done a good deal in my time,”—he said, boldly—“For one thing, I’ve made my own way in the world!”
“Ah! And without assistance?” queried the Goblin—“Without trampling any poor person down? Without ‘sweating’ labour? Without cheating anybody less ‘sharp’ than yourself?”
McNason was silent.
“You haven’t made your own way in the world!”—went on the Goblin relentlessly—“The men who have worked for you have made it! And you’ve screwed their lives down, McNason!—screwed them down hard and fast to pittance wages in order to wrest every penny you could for yourself out of their labour! And you’ve made a pile of money! Too big a pile by far, McNason! No man in the world makes such a pile without having wronged his fellow-men in some way or other! He has tried to tip the balance of justice falsely—but there’s one thing about that balance, McNason—it always rights itself! When a man is too rich—when a man has gotten his money through close-fistedness, harshness and avarice, then WE come in! We of Hell’s United Empire Club! We give a bloated millionaire fits, I can tell you! When he has got enough gold to gorge himself with expensive food and wine every day in the week if he likes, we take away his digestion! That’s capital fun! We take away his digestion, and the doctors come and limit him to milk and soda! Oh, hoo-roo!” And the Goblin doubled itself up in a writhing tangle of delight,—“And when he marries for Money only and gets an heir to Money only, we take away the heir! And then by and bye he finds he can neither eat nor sleep, and that his Money isn’t such a valuable commodity as he thought it was, not even though it can buy a Peerage! And when he is harsh and unkind and uncharitable, we sk—k—in his soul!”
“I’m not uncharitable!” cried Josiah, goaded almost to frenzy by the darting menace of the terrible eyes that glared fixedly into his own—“Not even YOU can say that! I’ve given hundreds and hundreds of pounds away in charity——”