by Mark Twain
"Come and sit down," I said, "and tell me what it is. You wish to speak with me about something?"
"Yes," he said, seating himself, "if you will kindly listen."
I gave a moment's thought to my defence, as regards the impending reproach, and was ready. He began, in a voice and manner which were in accord with the sadness which sat upon his young face-
"The master has been to me and has charged me with profaning the sanctity of his niece's chamber."
It was a strange place to stop, but there he stopped, and looked wistfully at me, just as a person might stop in a dream, and wait for another person to take up the matter there, without any definite text to talk to. I had to say something, and so for lack of anything better to offer, I said-
"I am truly sorry, and I hope you will be able to convince him that he is mistaken. You can, can't you?"
"Convince him?" he answered, looking at me quite vacantly, "Why should I wish to convince him?"
I felt pretty vacant myself, now. It was a most unlooked-for question. If I had guessed a week I should not have hit upon that one. I said-and it was the only thing a body would ever think of saying-
"But you do, don't you?"
The look he gave me was a look of compassion, if I know the signs. It seemed to say, gently, kindly, but clearly, "alas, this poor creature doesn't know anything." Then he uttered his answer-
"Wh-y, no, I do not see that I have that wish. It-why, you see, it isn't any matter."
"Good heavens! It isn't any matter whether you stand disgraced or not?"
He shook his head, and said quite simply-
"No, it isn't any matter, it is of no consequence."
It was difficult to believe my ears. I said-
"Well, then, if disgrace is nothing to you, consider this point. If the report gets around, it can mean disgrace for the young lady."
It had no effect that I could see! He said-
"Can it?" just as an idiot child might have said it.
"Can it? Why of course it can! You wouldn't want that to happen, would you?"
"We-11," (reflectively), "I don't know. I don't see the bearing of it.
"Oh, great guns, this infantile stu-this-this-why, it's perfectly disheartening! You love her, and yet you don't care whether her good name is ruined or not?"
"Love her?" and he had the discouraged aspect of a person who is trying to look through a fog and is not succeeding, "why, I don't love her; what makes you think I do?"
"Well, I must say! Well, certainly this is too many for me. Why, hang it, I know you've been courting her."
"Yes-oh, yes, that is true."
"Oh, it is, is it! Very well, then, how is it that you were courting her and yet didn't love her?"
"No, it isn't that way. No, I loved her."
"Oh-go on, I'll take a breath or two-I don't know where I am, I'm all at sea."
He said, placidly-
"Yes, I remember about that. I loved her. It had escaped me. No -it hadn't escaped me; it was not important, and I was thinking of something else."
"Tell me," I said, "is anything important to you?"
"Oh, yes!" he responded, with animation and a brightening face; then the animation and the brightness passed, and he added, wearily, "but not these things."
Somehow, it touched me; it was like the moan of an exile. We were silent a while, thinking, ruminating, then I said-
"Schwarz, I'm not able to make it out. It is a sweet young girl, you certainly did love her, and-"
"Yes," he said, tranquilly, "it is quite true. I believe it was yesterday . . . . yes, I think it was yesterday."
"Oh, you think it was! But of course it's not important. Dear me, why should it be?-a little thing like that. Now then, something has changed it. What was it? What has happened?"
"Happened? Nothing, I think. Nothing that I know of."
"Well, then, why the devil .. . . oh,-great Scott, I'll never get my wits back again! Why, look here, Schwarz, you wanted to marry her!"
"Yes. Quite true. I think . . . . yesterday? Yes, I think it was yesterday. I am to marry her to-day. I think it's to-day; anyway, it is pretty soon. The master requires it. He has told me so."
"Well . . . . upon my word!"
"What is the matter?"
'Why, you are as indifferent about this as you are about everything else. You show no feeling whatever, you don't even show interest. Come! surely you've got a heart hidden away somewhere; open it up; give it air; show at least some little corner of it. Land, I wish I were in your place! Don't you care whether you marry her or not?"
"Care? Why, no, of course I don't. You do ask the strangest questions! I wander, wander, wander! I try to make you out, I try to understand you, but it's all fog, fog, fog-you're just a riddle, nobody can understand you!"
Oh, the idea! the impudence of it! this to me!-from this frantic chaos of unimaginable incomprehensibilities, who couldn't by any chance utter so much as half a sentence that Satan himself could make head or tail of!
"Oh, I like that!" I cried, flying out at him. "You can't understand me! Oh, but that is good! It's immortal! Why, look here, when you came, I thought I knew what you came for-I thought I knew all about it-I would have said you were coming to reproach me for-for-"
I found it difficult to get it out, and so I left it in, and after a pause, added-
"Why, Schwarz, you certainly had something on your mind when you came-I could see it in your face-but if ever you've got to it I've not discovered it-oh, not even a sign of it! You haven't got to it, have you?"
"Oh, no!" he answered, with an outburst of very real energy. "These things were of no sort of consequence. May I tell it now? Oh, will you be good and hear me? I shall be so grateful, if you will!"
"Why, certainly, and glad to! Come, now you're waking up, at last! You've got a heart in you, sure enough, and plenty of feeling -why, it bums in your eye like a star! Go ahead-I'm all interest, all sympathy."
Oh, well, he was a different creature, now. All the fogs and puzzlings and perplexities were gone from his face, and had left it clear and full of life. He said-
"It was no idle errand that brought me. No, far from it! I came with my heart in my mouth, I came to beg, to plead, to pray-to beseech you, to implore you, to have mercy upon me!"
"Mercy-upon you?"
"Yes, mercy. Have mercy, oh, be merciful, and set me free!"
"Why, I-I-Schwarz, I don't understand. You say, yourself, that if they want you to marry, you are quite indif-"
"Oh, not that! I care nothing for that-it is these bonds"stretching his arms aloft-"oh, free me from them; these bonds of flesh-this decaying vile matter, this foul weight, and clog, and burden, this loathsome sack of corruption in which my spirit is imprisoned, her white wings bruised and soiled-oh, be merciful and set her free! Plead for me with that malicious magic-mongerhe has been here-I saw him issue from this door-he will come again-say you will be my friend, as well as brother! for brothers indeed we are; the same womb was mother to us both, I live by you, I perish when you die-brother, be my friend! plead with him to take away this rotting flesh and set my spirit free! Oh, this human life, this earthy life, this weary life! It is so groveling, and so mean; its ambitions are so paltry, its prides so trivial, its vanities so childish; and the glories that it values and applauds-lord, how empty! Oh, here I am a servant!-I who never served before; here I am a slave-slave among little mean kings and emperors made of clothes, the kings and emperors slaves themselves, to mud-built carrion that are their slaves!
"To think you should think I came here concerned about those other things-those inconsequentials! Why should they concern me, a spirit of air, habitant of the august Empire of Dreams? We have no morals; the angels have none; morals are for the impure; we have no principles, those chains are for men. We love the lovely whom we meet in dreams, we forget them the next day, and meet and love their like. They are dream-creatures-no others are real. Disgrace? We care nothing for disgrace, we do not know wha
t it is. Crime? we commit it every night, while you sleep; it is nothing to us. We have no character, no one character, we have all characters; we are honest in one dream, dishonest in the next; we fight in one battle and flee from the next. We wear no chains, we cannot abide them; we have no home, no prison, the universe is our province; we do not know time, we do not know space-we live, and love, and labor, and enjoy, fifty years in an hour, while you are sleeping, snoring, repairing your crazy tissues; we circumnavigate your little globe while you wink; we are not tied within horizons, like a dog with cattle to mind, an emperor with human sheep to watch-we visit hell, we roam in heaven, our playgrounds are the constellations and the Milky Way. Oh, help, help! be my friend and brother in my need-beseech the magician, beg him, plead with him; he will listen, he will be moved, he will release me from this odious flesh!"
I was powerfully stirred-so moved, indeed, that in my pity for him I brushed aside unheeded or but half-heeded the scoffs and slurs which he had flung at my despised race, and jumped up and seized him by both hands and wrung them passionately, declaring that with all my heart and soul I would plead for him with the magician, and would not rest from these labors until my prayers should succeed or their continuance be peremptorily forbidden.
Chapter 28
HE COULD not speak, for emotion; for the same cause my voice forsook me; and so, in silence we grasped hands again; and that grip, strong and warm, said for us what our tongues could not utter. At that moment the cat entered, and stood looking at us. Under her grave gaze a shame-faced discomfort, a sense of embarrassment, began to steal over me, just as would have been the case if she had been a human being who had caught me in that gushy and sentimental situation, and I felt myself blushing. Was it because I was aware that she had lately been that kind of a being? It annoyed me to see that my brother was not similarly affected. And yet, why mind it? didn't I already know that no human intelligence could guess what occurrence would affect him and what event would leave him cold? With an uncomfortable feeling of being critically watched by the cat, I pressed him with clumsy courtesy into his seat again, and slumped into my own.
The cat sat down. Still looking at us in that disconcerting way, she tilted her head first to one side and then the other, inquiringly and cogitatively, the way a cat does when she has struck the unexpected and can't quite make out what she had better do about it. Next she washed one side of her face, making such an awkward and unscientific job of it that almost anybody would have seen that she was either out of practice or didn't know how. She stopped with the one side, and looked bored, and as if she had only been doing it to put in the time, and wished she could think of something else to do to put in some more time. She sat a while, blinking drowsily, then she hit an idea, and looked as if she wondered she hadn't thought of it earlier. She got up and went visiting around among the furniture and belongings, sniffing at each and every article, and elaborately examining it. If it was a chair, she examined it all around, then jumped up in it and sniffed all over its seat and its back; if it was any other thing she could examine all around, she examined it all around; if it was a chest and there was room for her between it and the wall, she crowded herself in behind there and gave it a thorough overhauling; if it was a tall thing, like a washstand, she would stand on her hind toes and stretch up as high as she could, and reach across and paw at the toilet things and try to rake them to where she could smell them; if it was the cupboard, she stood on her toes and reached up and pawed the knob; if it was the table she would squat, and measure the distance, and make a leap, and land in the wrong place, owing to newness to the business; and, part of her going too far and sliding over the edge, she would scramble, and claw at things desperately, and save herself and make good; then she would smell everything on the table, and archly and daintily paw everything around that was movable, and finally paw something off, and skip cheerfully down and paw it some more, throwing herself into the prettiest attitudes, rising on her hind feet and curving her front paws and flirting her head this way and that and glancing down cunningly at the object, then pouncing on it and spatting it half the length of the room, and chasing it up and spatting it again, and again, and racing after it and fetching it another smack-and so on and so on; and suddenly she would tire of it and try to find some way to get to the top of the cupboard or the wardrobe, and if she couldn't she would look troubled and disappointed; and toward the last, when you could see she was getting her bearings well lodged in her head and was satisfied with the place and the arrangements, she relaxed her intensities, and got to purring a little to herself, and praisefully waving her tail between inspections-and at last she was donedone, and everything satisfactory and to her taste.
Being fond of cats, and acquainted with their ways, if I had been a stranger and a person had told me that this cat had spent half an hour in that room before, but hadn't happened to think to examine it until now, I should have been able to say with conviction, "Keep an eye on her, that's no orthodox cat, she's an imitation, there's a flaw in her make-up, you'll find she's bom out of wedlock or some other arrested-development accident has happened, she's no true Christian cat, if I know the signs."
She couldn't think of anything further to do, now, so she thought she would wash the other side of her face, but she couldn't remember which one it was, so she gave it up, and sat down and went to nodding and blinking; and between nods she would jerk herself together and make remarks. I heard her say-
"One of them's the Duplicate, the other's the Original, but I can't tell t'other from which, and I don't suppose they can. I am sure I couldn't if I were them. The missuses said it was the Duplicate that broke in there last night, and I voted with the majority for policy's sake, which is a servant's only protection from trouble, but I would like to know how they knew. I don't believe they could tell them apart if they were stripped. Now my idea is-"
I interrupted, and intoned musingly, as if to myself,-
and stopped there, and seemed to sink into a reverie.
It gave her a start! She muttered-
"That's the Duplicate. Duplicates know languages-everything, sometimes, and then again they don't know anything at all. That is what Fischer says, though of course it could have been his Duplicate that said it, there's never any telling, in this bewitched place, whether you are talking to a person himself, or only to his heathen image. And Fischer says they haven't any morals nor any principles -though of course it could have been his Duplicate that said it-one never knows. Half the time when you say to a person he said so-and-so, he says he didn't-so then you recognize it was the other one. As between living in such a place as this and being crazy, you don't know which it is, the most of the time. I would rather be a cat and not have any Duplicate, then I always know which one I am. Otherwise, not. If they haven't any principles, it was this Duplicate that broke in there, though of course, being drunk he wouldn't know which one he was, and so it could be the other without him suspecting it, which leaves the matter where it was before-not certain enough to be certain, and just uncertain enough to be uncertain. So I don't see that anything's decided. In fact I know it isn't. Still, I think this one that wailed is the Duplicate, because sometimes they know all languages a minute, and next minute they don't know their own, if they've got one, whereas a man doesn't. Doesn't, and can't even learn it-can't learn cat-language, anyway. It's what Fischer says-Fischer or his Duplicate. So this is the one-that's decided. He couldn't talk cataract, nor ever learn it, either, if it was the Christian one .. . . . I'm awful tired!"
I didn't let on, but pretended to be dozing; my brother was a little further along than that-he was softly snoring. I wanted to wait and see, if I could, what was troubling the cat, for it seemed plain to me that she had something on her mind, she certainly was not at her ease. By and by she cleared her throat, and I stirred up and looked at her, as much as to say, "well, I'm listening-proceed." Then she said, with studied politeness-
"It is very late. I am sorry to disturb you gentlemen, but
I am very tired, and would like to go to bed."
"Oh, dear me," I said, "don't wait up on our account I beg of you. Turn right in!"
She looked astonished.
"With you present?" she said.
So then I was astonished myself, but did not reveal it.
"Do you mind it?" I asked.
"Do I mind it! You will grant, I make no doubt, that so extraordinary a question is hardly entitled to the courtesy of an answer from one of my sex. You are offensive, sir; I beg that you will relieve me of your company at once, and take your friend with you."
"Remove him? I could not do that. He is my guest, and it is his place to make the first move. This is my room."
I said it with a submerged chuckle, as knowing quite well, that soft-spoken as it was, it would knock some of the starch out of her. As indeed it did.
'Your room! Oh, I beg a thousand pardons, I am ashamed of my rude conduct, and will go at once. I assure you sir, I was the innocent victim of a mistake: I thought it was my room."
"And so it is. There has been no mistake. Don't you see?-there is your bed."
She looked whither I was pointing, and said with surprise-
"How strange that is! it wasn't there five seconds ago. Oh, isn't it a love!"
She made a spring for it-cat-like, forgetting the old interest in the new one; and feminine-like, eager to feast her native appetite for pretty things upon its elegancies and daintinesses. And really it was a daisy! It was a canopied four-poster, of rare wood, richly carved, with bed twenty inches wide and thirty long, sumptuously bepillowed and belaced and beruffled and besatined and all that; and when she had petted it and patted it and searched it and sniffed it all over, she cried out in an agony of delight and longing-
"Oh, I would just love to stretch out on that!"
The enthusiasm of it melted me, and I said heartily-
"Turn right in, Mary Florence Fortescue Baker G. Nightingale, and make yourself at home-that is the magician's own present to you, and it shows you he's no imitation-friend, but the true thing!"