The Mysterious Stranger Manuscripts (Literature) (10 page)

"I am going on my errand, now."

"Don't!" we all said, "don't go; stay with us. You won't come
back."

"Yes, I will, I give you my word."

"When? To-night? To-morrow? Say when?"

"It won't be long. You will see."

"We like you."

"And I you. And as a proof of it I will show you something fine
to see. Usually when I go, I merely vanish; but now I will dissolve
myself and let you see me do it."

He stood up, and it was quickly finished. He thinned away and
thinned away until he was a soap-bubble, except that he kept his
shape. You could see the bushes through him as clearly as you see
things through a soap-bubble, and all over him played and flashed
the delicate iridescent colors of the bubble, and along with them
was that thing shaped like a window-sash which you always see on
the globe of the bubble. You have seen a bubble strike the carpet
and lightly bound along two or three times before it bursts. He did
that. He sprang-touched the grass-bounded-floated alongtouched again-and so on, and presently exploded,--puff! and in
his place was vacancy.

It was a strange and beautiful thing to see. We did not say
anything, but sat wondering, and dreaming, and blinking; and
finally Seppi roused up and said, mournfully and sighing-

"I reckon none of it has happened."

Nikolaus sighed and said about the same.

I was miserable to hear them say it, for it was the same cold fear
that was in my own mind. Then we saw poor old Father Peter
wandering along back, with his head bent down, searching the
ground. When he was pretty close to us he looked up and saw us,
and said-

"How long have you been here, boys?"

"A little while, Father."

"Then it is since I came by, and maybe you can help me. Did you
come up by the path?"

"Yes, Father."

"That is good. I came the same way. I have lost my wallet. There
wasn't much in it, but a very little is much to me, for it was all I
had. I suppose you haven't seen anything of it?"

"No, Father, but we will help you hunt."

"It is what I was going to ask of you. Why, here it is!"

We hadn't noticed it; yet there it lay, right where Satan stood
when he began to melt-if he did melt, and it wasn't a delusion.
Father Peter picked it up, and looked very much surprised.

"It is mine," he said, "but not the contents. This is fat; mine was
flat; mine was light, this is heavy."

He opened it; it was stuffed as full as it could hold, with gold
coins. He let us gaze our fill; and of course we did gaze, for we had
never seen so much money at one time before. All our mouths came
open to say "Satan did it!" but nothing came out. There it was, you
see-we couldn't tell what Satan didn't want told; he had said so
himself.

"Boys, did you do this?"

It made us laugh. And it made him laugh, too, as soon as he
thought what a foolish question it was.

"Who has been here?"

Our mouths came open to answer, but stood so for a moment,
because we couldn't say "nobody," for it wouldn't be so, and the
right word didn't seem to come; then I thought of the right one,
and said it-

"Not a human being."

"That is so," said the others, and let their mouths go shut.

"It is not so," said Father Peter, and looked at us very severely. "I
came by here a while ago, and there was no one here, but that is
nothing; some one has been here since. I don't mean to say that the
person didn't pass here before you came, and I don't mean to say
you saw him, but some one did pass, that I know. On your honoryou saw no one?"

"Not a human being."

"That is sufficient; I know you are telling me the truth."

He began to count the money on the path, we on our knees
eagerly helping to stack it in little piles.

"It's eleven hundred ducats-odd!" he said, "oh, dear, if it were
only mine-and I need it so!" and his voice broke and his lips
quivered.

"It is yours, sir!" we all cried out at once, "every heller!"

"No-it isn't mine. Only four ducats are mine; the rest ....."

He fell to dreaming, poor old soul, and caressing some of the
coins in his hands, and forgot where he was, sitting there on his
heels with his old gray head bare, and it was pitiful to see.

"No," he said, waking up, "it isn't mine. I can't account for it. I
think some enemy ..... it must be a trap."

Nikolaus said-

"Father Peter, with the exception of Father Adolf you haven't a
real enemy in the village-nor Marget, either. And not even a half
enemy that's rich enough to chance eleven hundred ducats at one
dash to do you a mean turn. I'll ask you if that's so, or not?"

He couldn't get around that argument, and it cheered him up.

"But it isn't mine, you see-it isn't mine, in any case."

He said it in a wistful way, like a person that wouldn't be sorry,
but glad, if somebody would contradict him.

"It is yours, Father Peter, and we are witness to it-aren't we,
boys?"

"Yes, we are-and we'll stand by it, too."

"Bless your hearts, you do almost persuade me, you do, indeed. If
I had only a hundred and eighty ducats of it! The house is mortgaged for it, and we've no home for our heads if we don't pay
to-morrow. And that four ducats is all we've got in the-"

"It's yours, every bit of it, and you've got to take it-we are bail
that it's all right, aren't we Theodor? aren't we Seppi?"

We two said yes; and Nikolaus stuffed the money back into the
shabby old wallet and made the owner take it. So he said he would
use two hundred of it, for his house was good enough security for
that, and would put the rest at interest till the rightful owner came
for it; and on our side we must sign a paper showing how he got the money-a paper to show to the villagers as proof that he had not
got out of his troubles dishonestly.

IT MADE immense talk next day, when Father Peter paid Solomon
Isaacs in gold and left the rest of the money with him at interest.
Also, there was a pleasant change: many people called at the house
to congratulate, and a number of cool old friends became kind and
friendly again; and to top all, Marget was invited to a party.

And there was no mystery; Father Peter told the whole circumstance just as it happened, and said he could not account for it, only
it was the plain hand of Providence, so far as he could see. One or
two shook their heads and said privately it looked more like the
hand of Satan; and really that seemed a surprisingly good guess for
ignorant people like that. Some came slyly buzzing around and
tried to coax us boys to come out and "tell the truth;" and promised
they wouldn't ever tell, but only wanted to know for their own
satisfaction, because the whole thing was so curious. They even
wanted to buy the secret, and pay money for it; and if we could
have invented something that would answer-but we couldn't; we
hadn't the ingenuity, so we had to let the chance go by, and it was a
pity.

We carried that secret around without any trouble, but the other
one, the big one, the splendid one, burnt the very vitals of us, it was
so hot to get out and we so hot to let it out and astonish people with
it. But we had to keep it in; in fact it kept itself in: Satan said it
would, and it did. We went off every day and got to ourselves in the
woods, so that we could talk about Satan, and really that was the
only subject we thought of or cared anything about, and day and
night we watched for him and hoped he would come, and we got
more and more impatient all the time. We hadn't any interest in
the other boys any more and wouldn't take part in their games and
enterprises. That kind of boys seemed so tame, after Satan; and their doings so trifling and commonplace after his adventures in
antiquity and the constellations, and his miracles and meltings and
explosions and all that.

During the first day we were in a state of anxiety, on account of
one thing, and we kept going to Father Peter's house on one pretext
or another, to keep track of it. That was the gold coin; we were
afraid it would crumble and turn to dirt, like fairy money. If it did
.... but it didn't. At the end of the day no complaint had been
made about it; so after that we were satisfied that it was real gold,
and dropped the anxiety out of our minds.

There was a question which we wanted to ask Father Peter, and
finally we went there the second evening, a little diffidently, after
drawing straws, and I asked it, as casually as I could, though it did
not sound as casual as I wanted, because I did not know how-

"What is the moral sense, sir?"

He looked down surprised, over his great spectacles, and said-

"Why, it is the faculty which enables us to distinguish good from
evil."

It threw some light, but not a glare, and I was a little disappointed, also in some degree embarrassed. He was waiting for me to
go on; so, in default of anything else to say, I asked-

"Is it valuable?"

"Valuable! Heavens, lad, it is the one thing that lifts man above
the beasts that perish and makes him heir to immortality!"

This did not remind me of anything further to say, so I got out,
with the other boys, and we went away with that kind of indefinite
sense you have often had of being filled but not fatted. They
wanted me to explain, but I was tired.

We passed out through the parlor, and there was Marget at the
spinet teaching Marie Lueger. So one of the deserting pupils was
back; and an influential one, too: the others would follow. Marget
jumped up and ran and thanked us again, with the tears in her eyes
-this was the third time-for saving her and her uncle from being
turned into the street, and we told her again we hadn't done it; but
that was her way, she never could be grateful enough for anything
a person did for her; so we let her have her say. And as we passed through the garden, there was Wilhelm Meidling sitting there
waiting, for it was getting toward the edge of the evening, and he
would be asking Marget to take a walk along the river with him
when she was done with the lesson. He was a young lawyer, and
succeeding fairly well and working his way along, little by little. He
was very fond of Marget, and she of him. He had not deserted
along with the others, but had stood his ground all through, although it had in him in people's esteem and made his business
fall off more or less. His faithfulness was not lost on Marget and
her uncle. He hadn't so very much talent, but he was handsome
and good, and these are a kind of talents themselves and help along.
He asked us how the lesson was getting along, and we told him it
was about done. And maybe it was so; we didn't know anything
about it, but we judged it would please him, and it did; and didn't
cost us anything.

On the fourth day comes Father Adolf home from the ancient
priory up the valley, where he had heard the news, I reckon. He
had a private talk with us, and was very much interested, and we
told him all about it. He sat there studying and studying a while to
himself, then he asked-

"How many ducats did you say?"

"Eleven hundred and seven, sir.

Then he said, as if he was talking to himself-

"It is ve-ry singular. Yes . . . . . very strange. A curious coincidence."

Then he began to ask questions, and went over the whole
ground, from the beginning, we answering. By and by he said-

"Eleven hundred and six ducats. It is a large sum."

"Seven," said Seppi, correcting him.

"Oh, seven, was it? Of course a duet more or less isn't of
consequence, but you said eleven hundred and six, before."

It would not have become us to say he was mistaken, but we
knew he was. Nikolaus said-

"Since your reverence says we said it, we did; but we meant to
say seven.

"Oh, it is no matter, lad, it was merely that I noticed the discrep ancy. It is several days, and you cannot be expected to remember
precisely. One is apt to be inexact when there is no particular
circumstance to impress the count upon the memory."

"But there was one, Father," said Seppi, eagerly.

"What was it, my son," asked Father Adolf, indifferently.

"First, we all counted the piles of coin, each in turn, and all made
it the same-eleven hundred and six. But I had slipped one out, for
fun, when the count began, and now I slipped it back and said, `I
think there is a mistake-there are eleven hundred and seven; let
us count again.' We did, and of course I was right. They were
astonished; then I told how it came about."

Father Adolf asked us if this was so, and we said it was.

"That settles it," he said. "I know the thief, now. Lads, the
money was stolen."

Then he went away, leaving us very much troubled, and wondering what he could mean. In about an hour we found out; for by
that time it was all over the village that Father Peter had been
arrested for stealing a great sum of money from Father Adolf.
Everybody's tongue was loose and going. Many said it was not in
Father Peter's character and must be a mistake; but the others
shook their heads and said misery and want could drive a suffering
man to almost anything. About one detail there were no differences: all agreed that Father Peter's account of how the money
came into his hands was just about unbelievable, it had such an
impossible look. Our characters began to suffer, now. We were
Father Peter's only witnesses; how much did he probably pay us to
hack up his fantastic tale? People talked that kind of talk to us
pretty freely and frankly, and were full of scoflings when we
begged them to believe we had really told only the truth. Our
parents were harder on us than any one else. Our fathers said we
were disgracing our families, and they commanded us to purge
ourselves of our lie, and there was no limit to their anger when we
continued to say we had spoken true. Our mothers cried over us
and begged us to give back our bribe and get back our honest
names and save our families from shame, and come out and honorably confess. And at last we were so worried and harassed that we tried to tell the whole thing, Satan and all-but no, it wouldn't
come out. We were hoping and longing, all the time, that Satan
would come and help us out of our trouble, but there was no sign of
him.