The Mysterious Stranger Manuscripts (Literature) (48 page)

I said I was in awe of him, and was more moved to pay him
reverence than to-

"Reverence!" he mocked; "put it away; the sun doesn't care for
the rushlight's reverence, put it away. Come, we'll be boys together
and comrades! Is it agreed?"

I said I was too much wounded, just now, to have any heart in
levities, I must wait a little and get somewhat over this hurt; that I
would rather beseech and persuade him to put all light things aside
for a season and seriously and thoughtfully study my unjustly
disesteemed race, whereby I was sure he would presently come to
estimate it at its right and true value, and worthy of the sublime
rank it had always held, undisputed, as the noblest work of God.

He was evidently touched, and said he was willing, and would do
according to my desire, putting light things aside and taking up this
small study in all heartiness and candor.

I was deeply pleased; so pleased that I would not allow his
thoughtless characterization of it as a "small" study to greatly mar
my pleasure; and to this end admonishing myself to remember that
he was speaking a foreign language and must not be expected to
perceive nice distinctions in the values of words. He sat musing a
little while, then he said in his kindest and thoughtfulest manner-

"I am sure I can say with truth that I have no prejudices against
the human race or other bugs, and no aversions, no malignities. I have known the race a long time, and out of my heart I can say that
I have always felt more sorry for it than ashamed of it."

He said it with the gratified look of a person who has uttered a
graceful and flattering thing. By God, I think he expected thanks!
He did not get them; I said not a word. That made a pause, and was
a little awkward for him for the moment; then he went on-

"I have often visited this world-often. It shows that I felt an
interest in this race; it is proof, proof absolute, that I felt an interest
in it." He paused, then looked up with one of those inane self-approving smiles on his face that are so trying, and added, "there is
nothing just like it in any other world, it is a race by itself, and in
many ways amusing.

He evidently thought he had said another handsome thing; he
had the satisfied look of a person who thought he was oozing
compliments at every pore. I retorted, with bitter sarcasm-I
couldn't help it-

"As `amusing' as a basket of monkeys, no doubt!"

It clean failed! He didn't know it was sarcasm.

"Yes," he said, serenely, "as amusing as those-and even more so,
it may be claimed; for monkeys, in their mental and moral freaks
show not so great variety, and therefore are the less entertaining."

This was too much. I asked, coldly—

But he was gone.

AWIEEKpassed.

Meantime, where was he? what was become of him? I had gone
often to his room, but had always found it vacant. I was missing him
sorely. Ali, he was so interesting! there was none that could approach
him for that. And there could not be a more engaging mystery than
he. He was always doing and saying strange and curious things, and
then leaving them but half explained or not explained at all. Who
was he? what was he? where was he from? I wished I knew. Could
he be converted? could he be saved? Ah, if only this could happen,
and I be in some humble way a helper toward it!

While I was thus cogitating about him, he appeared-gay, of
course, and even more gaily clad than he was that day that the
magician burnt him. fle said he had been "home." I pricked up my
ears hopefully, but was disappointed: with that mere touch he left
the subject, just as if because it had no interest for him it couldn't
have any for others. A chuckle-headed idea, certainly. He was
handy about disparaging other people's reasoning powers, but it
never seemed to occur to him to look nearer home. He smacked me
on the thigh and said,

"Come, you need an outing, you've been shut up here quite long
enough. I'll do the handsome thing by you, now-I'll show you
something creditable to your race."

That pleased me, and I said so; and said it was very kind and
courteous of him to find something to its credit, and be good
enough to mention it.

"Oh, ors," lie said, lightly, and paying no attention to my sarcasm, "I'll show you a really creditable thing. At the same time I'll
have to show you something discreditable, too, but that's nothing
-that's merely human, you know. Make yourself invisible."

I did so, and he did the like. We were presently floating away,
high in the air, over the frosty fields and hills.

"We shall go to a small town fifty miles removed," he said.
"Thirty years ago Father Adolf was priest there, and was thirty
years old. Johann Brinker, twenty years old, resided there, with his
widowed mother and his four sisters-three younger than himself,
and one a couple of years older, and marriageable. lie was a rising
young artist. Indeed one might say that lie had already risen, for he
had exhibited a picture in Vienna which had brought him great
praise, and made him at once a celebrity. The family had been very
poor, but now his pictures were wanted, and he sold all of his little
stock at fine prices, and took orders for as many more as he could
paint in two or three years. It was a happy family! and was suddenly become courted, caressed and-envied, of course, for that is
human. To be envied is the human being's chiefest joy.

"Then a thing happened. On a winter's morning Johann was
skating, when he heard a choking cry for help, and saw that a man
had broken through the ice and was struggling; he flew to the spot, and recognised Father Adolf, who was becoming exhausted by the
cold and by his unwise strugglings, for he was not a swimmer.
There was but one way to do, in the circumstances, and that was, to
plunge in and keep the priest's head up until further help should
come-which was on the way. Both men were quickly rescued by
the people. Within the hour Father Adolf was as good as new, but
it was not so with Johann. He had been perspiring freely, from
energetic skating, and the icy water had consequences for him.
Here is his small house, we will go in and see him."

We stood in the bedroom and looked about us. An elderly
woman with a profoundly melancholy face sat at the fireside with
her hands folded in her lap, and her head bowed, as with age-long
weariness-that pathetic attitude which says so much! Without
audible words the spirit of 44 explained to me-

"The marriageable sister. There was no marriage."

On a bed, half reclining and propped with pillows and swathed
in wraps was a grizzled man of apparently great age, with hollow
cheeks, and with features drawn by immemorial pains; and now
and then he stirred a little, and softly moaned-whereat a faint
spasm flitted across the sister's face, and it was as if that moan had
carried a pain to her heart. The spirit of 44 breathed upon me
again:

"Since that day it has been like this-thirty years!-"

"My God!"

"It is true. Thirty years. He has his wits-the worse for himthe cruelty of it! He cannot speak, he cannot hear, he cannot see, he
is wholly helpless, the half of him is paralysed, the other half is but
a house of entertainment for bodily miseries. At risk of his life he
saved a fellow-being. It has cost him ten thousand deaths!"

Another sad-faced woman entered. She brought a bowl of gruel
with her, and she fed it to the man with a spoon, the other woman
helping.

"August, the four sisters have stood watches over this bed day
and night for thirty years, ministering to this poor wreck. Marriage,
and homes and families of their own was not for them; they gave
up all their hopeful young dreams and suffered the ruin of their
lives, in order to ameliorate as well as they might the miseries of their brother. They laid him upon this bed in the bright morning of
his youth and in the golden glory of his new-born fame-and look
at him now! I mother's heart broke, and she went mad. Add up
the sum: one broken heart, five blighted and blasted young lives.
All this it costs to save a priest for a lifelong career of vice and all
forms of shameless rascality! Come, come, let us go, before these
enticing rewards for well-doing unbalance my judgment and persuade me to become a human being myself!"

In our flight homeward I was depressed and silent, there was a
heavy weight upon my spirit; then presently came a slight uplift
and a glimmer of cheer, and I said-

"Those poor people will be richly requited for all they have
sacrificed and suffered."

"Oh, perhaps," he said, indifferently.

"It is my belief," I retorted. "And certainly a large mercy has
been shown the poor mother, in granting her a blessed mental
oblivion and thus emancipating her from miseries which the others,
being younger, were better able to bear."

"The madness was a mercy, you think?"

"With the broken heart, yes; for without doubt death resulted
quickly and she was at rest from her troubles."

A faint spiritual cackle fell upon my ear. After a moment 44
said-

"At dawn in the morning I will show you something."

I SPENT a wearying and troubled night, for in my dreams I was a
member of that ruined family and suffering with it through a
dragging long stretch of years; and the infamous priest whose life
had been saved at cost of these pains and sorrows seemed always
present and drunk and mocking. At last I woke. In the dimmest of
cold gray dawns I made out a figure sitting by my bed-an old and
white-headed man in the coarse dress of a peasant.

"Ah," I said, "who are you, good man?"

It was 44. I-ic said, in a wheezy old voice, that he was merely
showing himself to me so that I would recognize him when I saw
him later. Then lie disappeared, and I did the same, by his order.
Soon we were sailing over the village in the frosty air, and presently
we came to earth in an open space behind the monastery. It was a
solitude, except that a thinly and rustily clad old woman was there,
sitting on the frozen ground and fastened to a post by a chain
around her waist. She could hardly hold her head up for drowsiness
and the chill in her bones. A pitiful spectacle she was, in the vague
dawn and the stillness, with the faint winds whispering around her
and the powdery snow-whorls frisking and playing and chasing
each other over the black ground. FortyFour made himself visible,
and stood by, looking down upon her. She raised her old head
wearily, and when she saw that it was a kindly face that was before
her she said appealingly-

"Have pity on me-I am so tired and so cold, and the night has
been so long, so long! light the fire and put me out of my misery!"

"Ah, poor soul, I am not the executioner, but tell me if I can
serve you, and I will."

She pointed to a pile of fagots, and said,

"They are for me, a few can be spared to warm me, they will not
be missed, there will be enough left to burn me with, oh, much
more than enough, for this old body is sapless and dry. Be good to
me!"

"You shall have your wish," said 44, and placed a fagot before
her and lit it with a touch of his finger.

The flame flashed crackling up, and the woman stretched her
lean hands over it, and out of her eyes she looked the gratitude that
was too deep for words. It was weird and pathetic to see her getting
comfort and happiness out of that fuel that had been provided to
inflict upon her an awful death! Presently she looked up wistfully
and said-

"You are good to me, you are very good to me, and I have no
friends. I am not bad-you must not think I am bad, I am only poor
and old, and smitten in my wits these many many years. They
think I am a witch; it is the priest, Adolf, that caught me, and it is he that has condemned me. But I am not that-no, God forbid!
You do not believe I am a witch?-say you do not believe that of
me.

"Indeed I do not."

"Thank you for that kind word! . . . . . I long it is that I
have wandered homeless-oh, many years, many! . . . . Once I
had a home-I do not know where it was; and four sweet girls and
a son-how dear they were! The name . . . . . the name . . . . .
but I have forgotten the name. All dead, now, poor things, these
many years . . . . . . If you could have seen my son! ah, so good he
was, and a painter . . . . oh, such pictures he painted! . . . . Once
he saved a man's life . . . . . or it could have been a woman's
a person drowning in the ice-"

She lost her way in a tangle of vague memories, and fell to
nodding her head and mumbling and muttering to herself, and I
whispered anxiously in the ear of 44-

"You will save her? You will get the word to the priest, and when
he knows who she is he will set her free and we will restore her to
her family, God be praised!"

"No," answered 44.

"No? Why?"

"She was appointed from the beginning of time to die at the
stake this day."

"How do you know?"

He made no reply. I waited a moment, in growing distress, then
said-

"At least I will speak! I will tell her story. I will make myself
visible, and I-"

"It is not so written," he said; "that which is not foreordained will
not happen."

He was bringing a fresh fagot. A burly man suddenly appeared,
from the monastery, and ran toward him and struck the fagot from
his hand, saving roughly-

"You meddling old fool, mind what you are about! Pick it up and
carry it back."

"And if I don't-what then?"

In his fury at being so addressed by so mean and humble a person
the man struck a blow at 44's jaw with his formidable fist, but 44
caught the fist in his hand and crushed it; it was sickening to hear
the bones crunch. The man staggered away, groaning and cursing,
and 44 picked up the fagot and renewed the old woman's fire with
it. I whispered-

"Quick-disappear, and let us get away from here; that man will
soon-