The Mysterious Stranger Manuscripts (Literature) (44 page)

For that was Ernest's common word, and you could know him by
it in the dark.

Katrina couldn't say a word, she just stood there dazed. She saw
the boxes stowed in the wagon, she saw the gang file back and
disappear, and still she couldn't get her voice till then; and even
then all she could say, was-

"Well, it beats the band!"

Doangivadam followed them a little way, and wanted to have a
supper and a night of it, but they answered him roughly and he had
to give it up.

THE FREIGHT wagon left at dawn; the honored guests had a late
breakfast, paid down the money on the contract, then after a
good-bye bottle they departed in their carriage. About ten the
master, full of happiness and forgiveness and benevolent feeling,
had the men assembled in the beer-and-chess room, and began a
speech that was full of praises of the generous way they had thrown
ill-will to the winds at the last moment and loaded the wagon last
night and saved the honor and the life of his house-and went on
and on, like that, with the water in his eyes and his voice trembling;
and there the men sat and stared at one another, and at the master, with their mouths open and their breath standing still; till at last
Katzenyammer burst out with-

"What in the nation are you mooning about? Havc you lost your
mind? We've saved you nothing; we've carried no boxes"-here he
rose excited and banged the table-"and what's more, we've arranged that nobody else shall carry a box or load that wagon till our
waiting-time's paid!"

Well, think of it! The master was so astonished that for a
moment or two he couldn't pull his language; then he turned sadly
and uncertainly to Doangivadam and said-

"I could not have dreamed it. Surely you told me that they-"

"Certainly I did. I told you they brought down the boxes-"

"Listen at him!" cried Binks, springing to his feet.

"-those five there-Katzenvammcr at the head, Wasserman at
the tail-"

"As sure as my name's \ as-

"-each with a box on his shoulders-"

All were on their feet, now, and they drowned out the speaker
with a perfect deluge of derisive laughter, out of the midst of which
burst Katzenyammer's bull-voice shouting-

"Oh, listen to the maniac! Each carrying a box weighing fivehundred-pounds!"

Everybody took up that telling refrain and screamed it and yelled
it with all his might. Doangivadam saw the killing force of the
argument, and began to look very foolish-which the men saw, and
they roared at him, challenging him to get up and purge his soul
and trim his imagination. Ile was caught in a difficult place, and he
did not try to let on that he was in easy circumstances. He got up
and said, quietly, and almost humbly-

"I don't understand it, I can't explain it. I realize that no man
here could carry one of those boxes; and yet as sure as I am alive I
saw it done, just as I have said. Katrina saw it too. We were awake,
and not dreaming. I spoke to every one of the five. I saw them load
the boxes into the wagon. I-"

Moses Baas interrupted:

"Excuse me, nobody loaded any boxes into the wagon. It
wouldn't have been allowed. We've kept the wagon under watch."
Then he said, ironically, "Next, the gentleman will work his imagination up to saying the wagon is gone and the master paid."

It was good sarcasm, and they-all laughed; but the master said,
gravely, "Yes, I have been paid," and Doangivadam said, "Certainly
the wagon is gone."

"Oh, come!" said Moses, leaving his seat, "this is going a little too
far; it's a trifle too brazen; come out and say it to the wagon's face. If
you've got the cheek to do it, follow me."

He moved ahead, and everybody swarmed after him, eager to see
what would happen. I was getting worried; nearly half convinced,
too; so it was a relief to me when I saw that the court was empty.
Moses said-

"Now then, what do you call that? Is it the wagon, or isn't it?"

Doangivadam's face took on the light of a restored confidence
and a great satisfaction, and he said-

"I see no wagon."

'What!" in a general chorus.

"No-I don't see any wagon."

"Oh, great guns! perhaps the master will say he doesn't see a
wagon.

"Indeed I see none," said the master.

"Wel-l, well, well!" said Moses, and was plumb nonplussed.
Then he had an idea, and said, "Come, Doangivadam, you seem to
be near-sighted-please to follow me and touch the wagon, and see
if you'll have the hardihood to go on with this cheap comedy."

They walked briskly out a piece, then Moses turned pale and
stopped.

"By God, it's gone!" he said.

There was more than one startled face in the crowd. They crept
out, silent and looking scared; then they stopped, and sort of
moaned-

"It is gone; it was a ghost-wagon."

Then they walked right over the place where it had been, and
crossed themselves and muttered prayers. Next they broke into a fury, and went storming back to the chess-room, and sent for the
magician, and charged him with breaking his pledge, and swore the
Church should have him now; and the more he begged the more
they scared him, till at last they grabbed him to carry him off-then
he broke down, and said that if they would spare his life he would
confess. They told him to go ahead, and said if his confession was
not satisfactory it would be the worse for him. He said-

"I hate to say it-I wish I could be spared it-oh, the shame of it,
the ingratitude of it! But-pity me, pity me!-I have been nourishing a viper in my bosom. That boy, that pupil whom I have so loved
-in my foolish fondness I taught him several of my enchantments,
and now he is using them for your hurt and my ruin!"

It turned me sick and faint, the way the men plunged at 44,
crying "Kill him, kill him!" but the master and Doangivadam
jumped in and stood them off and saved him. Then Doangivadam
talked some wisdom and reasonableness into the gang which had
good effect. He said-

"What is the use to kill the boy? He isn't the source; whatever
power he has, he gets from his master, this magician here. Don't
you believe that if the magician wants to, he can put a spell on the
boy that will abolish his power and make him harmless?"

Of course that was so, and everybody saw it and said so. So then
Doangivadam worked some more wisdom: instead of letting on to
know it all himself, he gave the others a chance to seem to know a
little of what was left. He asked them to assist him in this difficult
case and suggest some wise and practical way to meet this emergency. It flattered them, and they unloaded the suggestion that the
magician be put under bond to shut off the boy's enchantments, on
pain of being delivered to the Church if anything happened again.

Doangivadam said it was the very thing; and praised the idea,
and let on to think it was wonderfully intelligent, whereas it was
only what he had suggested himself, and what anybody would have
thought of and suggested, including the cat, there being no other
way with any sense in it.

So they bonded the magician, and he didn't lose any time in
furnishing the pledge and getting a new lease on his hide. Then he turned on the boy and reproached him for his ingratitude, and then
he fired up on his subject and turned his tongue and his temper
loose, and most certainly he did give him down the banks and roll
Jordan roll! I never felt so sorry for a person, and I think others
were sorry for him, too, though they would have said that as long as
he deserved it he couldn't expect to be treated any gentler, and it
would be a valuable lesson to him anyway, and save him future
trouble, and worse. The way the magician finished, was awful; it
made your blood run cold. He walked majestically across the room
with his solemn professional stride, which meant that something
was going to happen. He stopped in the door and faced around,
everybody holding their breath, and said, slow and distinct, and
pointing his long finger-

"Look at him, there where he sits-and remember my words, and
the doom they are laden with. I have put him under my spells; if he
thinks he can dissolve them and do you further harm, let him try.
But I make this pledge and compact: on the day that he succeeds I
will put an enchantment upon him, here in this room, which shall
slowly consume him to ashes before your eyes!"

Then he departed. Dear me, but it was a startled crowd! Their
faces were that white-and they couldn't seem to say a word. But
there was one good thing to see-there was pity in every face of
them! That was human nature, wasn't it-when your enemy is in
awful trouble, to be sorry for him, even when your pride won't let
you go and say it to him before company? But the master and
Doangivadam went and comforted him and begged him to be
careful and work no spells and run no risks; and even Gustav
Fischer ventured to go by, and heave out a kindly word in passing;
and pretty soon the news had gone about the castle, and Marget
and Katrina came; they begged him, too, and both got to crying,
and that made him so conspicuous and heroic, that Ernest Wasserman was bursting with jealousy, and you could see he wished he
was advertised for roasting, too, if this was what you get for it.

Katrina had sassed the magician more than once and had not
seemed to be afraid of him, but this time her heart was concerned
and her pluck was all gone. She went to him, with the crowd at her heels, and went on her knees and begged him to be good to her boy,
and stay his hand from practising enchantments, and be his guardian and protector and save him from the fire. Everybody was
moved. Except the boy. It was one of his times to be an ass and a
wooden-head. He certainly could choose them with the worst judgment I ever saw. Katrina was alarmed; she was afraid his seeming
lack of interest would have a bad effect with the magician, so she
did his manners for him and conveyed his homage and his pledges
of good behavior, and hurried him out of the presence.

Well, to my mind there is nothing that makes a person interesting like his being about to get burnt up. We had to take 44 to the
sick lady's room and let her gaze at him, and shudder, and shrivel,
and wonder how he would look when he was done; she hadn't had
such a stirring up for years, and it acted on her kidneys and her
spine and her livers and all those things and her other works, and
started up her flywheel and her circulation, and she said, herself, it
had done her more good than any bucketful of medicine she had
taken that week. And begged him to come again, and he promised
he would if he could. Also said if he couldn't he would send her
some of the ashes; for he certainly was a good boy at bottom, and
thoughtful.

They all wanted to see him, even people that had taken hardly
any interest in him before-like Sara and Duffles and the other
maids, and Fritz and Jacob and the other men-servants. And they
were all tender toward him, and ever so gentle and kind, and gave
him little things out of their poverty, and were ever so sorry, and
showed it by the tears in their eyes. But not a tear out of him, you
might have squeezed him in the hydraulic press and you wouldn't
have got dampness enough to cloud a razor, it being one of his
blamed wooden times, you know.

Why, even Frau Stein and Maria were full of interest in him,
and gazed at him, and asked him how it felt-in prospect, you
know-and said a lot of things to him that came nearer being kind,
than anything they were used to saying, by a good deal. It was
surprising how popular he was, all of a sudden, now that he was in
such awful danger if he didn't behave himself. And although I was around with him I never got a sour look from the men, and so I
hadn't a twinge of fear the whole time. And then the supper we
had that night in the kitchen!-Katrina laid out her whole strength
on it, and cried all over it, and it was wonderfully good and salty.

Katrina told us to go and pray all night that God would not lead
44 into temptation, and she would do the same. I was ready and
anxious to begin, and we went to my room.

BUT WHEN we got there I saw that 44 was not minded to pray,
but was full of other and temporal interests. I was shocked, and
deeply concerned; for I felt rising in me with urgency a suspicion
which had troubled me several times before, but which I had
ungently put from me each time-that he was indifferent to religion. I questioned him-he confessed it! I leave my distress and
consternation to be imagined, I cannot describe them.

In that paralysing moment my life changed, and I was a different
being; I resolved to devote my life, with all the affections and forces
and talents which God had given me to the rescuing of this endangered soul. Then all my spirit was invaded and suffused with a
blessed feeling, a divine sensation, which I recognized as the approval of God. I knew by that sign, as surely as if He had spoken to
me, that I was His appointed instrument for this great work. I knew
that He would help me in it; I knew that whenever I should need
light and leading I could seek it in prayer, and have it; I knew-

"I get the idea," said 44, breaking lightly in upon my thought, "it
will be a Firm, with its headquarters up there and its hindquarters
down here. There's a duplicate of it in every congregation-in
every family, in fact. Wherever you find a warty little devotee who
isn't in partnership with God-as he thinks-on a speculation to
save some little warty soul that's no more worth saving than his
own, stuff him and put him in the museum, it is where he belongs."

"Oh, don't say such things, I beseech you! They are so shocking, and so awful. And so unjust; for in the sight of God all souls are
precious, there is no soul that is not worth saving."

But the words had no effect. He was in one of his frivolous
moods, and when these were upon him one could not interest him
in serious things. For all answer to what I had been saying, he said
in a kindly but quite unconcerned way that we would discuss this
trifle at another time, but not now. That was the very word he used;
and plainly he used it without any sense of its gross impropriety.
Then he added this strange remark-