The Mysterious Stranger Manuscripts (Literature)

by Mark Twain

  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.

  Chapter 20

  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 so
mething."

  Chapter 21

  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-

  "Yes, I know," said 44, "he is summoning his underlings; they will arrest me."

  "Then come-come along!"

  "What good would it do? It is written. What is written must happen. But it is of no consequence, nothing will come of it."

  They came running-half a dozen-and seized him and dragged him away, cuffing him with fists and beating him with sticks till he was red with his own blood. I followed, of course, but I was merely a substanceless spirit, and there was nothing that I could do in his defence. They chained him in a dim chamber under the monastery and locked the doors and departed, promising him further attentions when they should be through with burning the witch. I was troubled beyond measure, but he was not. He said he would use this opportunity to increase the magician's reputation: he would spread the report that the aged hand-crusher was the magician in disguise.

  "They will find nothing here but the prisoner's clothes when they come," he said, "then they will believe."

  He vanished out of the clothes, and they slumped down in a pile. He could certainly do some wonderful things, feather-headed and frivolous as he was! There was no way of accounting for 44. We soared out through the thick walls as if they had been made of air, and followed a procession of chanting monks to the place of the burning. People were gathering, and soon they came flocking in crowds, men, women, youths, maidens; and there were even children in arms.

  There was a half hour of preparation: a rope ring was widely drawn around the stake to keep the crowd at a distance; within this a platform was placed for the use of the preacher-Adolf. When all was ready lie came, imposingly attended, and was escorted with proper solemnity and ceremony to this pulpit. He began his sermon at once and with business-like energy. Ile was very bitter upon witches, "familiars of the Fiend, enemies of God, abandoned of the angels, foredoomed to hell;" and in closing he denounced this present one unsparingly, and forbade any to pity her.

  It was all lost upon the prisoner; she was warm, she was comfortable, she was worn out with fatigue and sorrow and privation, her gray head was bowed upon her breast, she was asleep. The executioners moved forward and raised her upon her feet and drew her chains tight, around her breast. She looked drowsily around upon the people while the fagots were being piled, then her head drooped again, and again she slept.

  The fire was applied and the executioners stepped aside, their mission accomplished. A hush spread everywhere: there was no movement, there was not a sound, the massed people gazed, with lips apart and hardly breathing, their faces petrified in a common expression, partly of pity, mainly of horror. During more than a minute that strange and impressive absence of motion and movement continued, then it was broken in a way to make any being with a heart in his breast shudder-a man lifted his little child and sat her upon his shoulder, that she might see the better!

  The blue smoke curled up about the slumberer and trailed away upon the chilly air; a red glow began to show at the base of the fagots; this increased in size and intensity and a sharp crackling sound broke upon the stillness; suddenly a sheet of flame burst upward and swept the face of the sleeper, setting her hair on fire, she uttered an agonizing shriek which was answered by a horrified groan from the crowd, then she cried out "Thou art merciful and good to Thy sinful servant, blessed be Thy holy Name-sweet Jesus receive my spirit!"

  Then the flames swallowed her up and hid her from sight. Adolf st
ood sternly gazing upon his work. There was now a sudden movement upon the outskirts of the crowd, and a monk came plowing his way through and delivered a message to the priest-evidently a pleasant one to the receiver of it, if signs go for anything. Adolf cried out-

  "Remain, everybody! It is reported to me that that arch malignant the magician, that son of Satan, is caught, and lies a chained prisoner under the monastery, disguised as an aged peasant. He is already condemned to the flames, no preliminaries are needed, his time is come. Cast the witch's ashes to the winds, clear the stake! Go-you, and you, and you-bring the sorcerer!"

  The crowd woke up! this was a show to their taste. Five minutes passed-ten. What might the matter be? Adolf was growing fiercely impatient. Then the messengers returned, crestfallen. They said the magician was gone-gone, through the bolted doors and the massive walls; nothing was left of him but his peasant clothes! And they held them up for all to see.

  The crowd stood amazed, wondering, speechless-and disappointed. Adolf began to storm and curse. FortyFour whispered-

  "The opportunity is come. I will personate the magician and make some more reputation for him. Oh, just watch me raise the limit!"

  So the next moment there was a commotion in the midst of the crowd, which fell apart in terror exposing to view the supposed magician in his glittering oriental robes; and his face was white with fright, and he was trying to escape. But there was no escape for him, for there was one there whose boast it was that he feared neither Satan nor his servants-this being Adolf the admired. Others fell back cowed, but not he; he plunged after the sorcerer, he chased him, gained upon him, shouted, "Yieldin His Name I command!"

  An awful summons! Under the blasting might of it the spurious magician reeled and fell as if he had been smitten by a bolt from the sky. I grieved for him with all my heart and in the deepest sincerity, and yet I rejoiced for that at last he had learned the power of that Name at which he had so often and so recklessly scoffed. And all too late, too late, forever and ever too late-ah, why had he not listened to me!