The Mysterious Stranger Manuscripts (Literature)

by Mark Twain

  "I am ashamed of myself; I must go to her; you must let me, mother. It is ungrateful in the happy to forsake the unhappy, whatever others may do."

  "No, no!" spoke up Joseph, alarmed; "none of that! Keep clear away from thereit is not safe!"

  Poor fellow, he naturally supposed that he was the cause of her happiness, and in his pride and joy he put what should have been an appeal into the form of a kind of bridegroom-elect command, without thinking. Lilly straightened up, gave him a freezing look, and said-

  "I beg your pardon. Who are you to dictate to me what I shall do?"

  It was pitiful to see how he was crushed. He couldn't say a word, but only fumbled with his hands and looked stunned and vacant. Neither my father nor my mother seemed to know anything to do to relieve the situation; and so, when Wilhelm Meidling came walking in, now, he seemed like a kind of angel of deliverance, specially commissioned by Providence, and I think he hadn't any doubts that my parents were glad to see him. Lilly's welcome was not so pronounced, by a good deal; he had interrupted her project, and she had to put it by and sit down-which she did, but she couldn't have looked sociable and amiable if she had tried.

  Five days had made a great and sorrowful change in Meidling. The old pleasant and friendly light had gone out of his eyes, his complexion was unwholesome, his skin puffy, his hands tremulous, his spirit moody and sour. He was a little under the influence of liquor, but not seriously so.

  By way of a beginning, mother asked after Marget.

  "I don't know how she is," answered Wilhelm drearily, and with a sigh.

  "You don't?" said mother, surprised at his manner and troubled by his statement. "Why, how does that come?"

  "I don't suppose it would interest you," he said, in that same dreary way, and looked around upon our faces wistfully, just as a person does who is carrying a burden upon his heart and finds it too heavy to bear, and is longing to talk about his trouble if he could find encouragement and a friendly ear. My mother saw and understood, for in her nature there was her sex's native sympathy for creatures in distress; she soon smoothed Wilhelm's path for him and made his traveling of it easy for him. Once more we heard about the chess games and the music; then this followed:

  "Next day Traum was there again. More than half an hour; and did another amazing musical miracle. Marget read a tale to him out of a book-a prose one; then he sat down and played it and sang it, turning it into rhymed verse as he went along-a marvelous achievement, one is obliged to confess. In the parts where the tale was military and stirring, he filled the place with the crash of military bands; and through the music you could hear the hoofbeats of charging cavalry, the boom and thunder of artillery, the clash of steel, along with another sound that was heartbreakingthe perfectly counterfeited shrieks and cries and supplications of wounded and dying men. Such human voices! and they seemed to be in the room. Of course in the room, though really the room was a battlefield, and we saw the fight, as in a vision. When the scene of the tale changed and was soft and tender and romantic, with moonlight, and shimmering lakes, and the breath of flowers in the air, you heard only the distant strains of violins and oboes and aeolian harps. You understand, he finds all this variety of instruments in that old crazy spinet.

  "When he was taking his departure Marget forgot all decorum and begged him, supplicated him, implored him to stay. And that was not all: she told him she could not live with him out of her sight!"

  It made the family jump; and Lilly turned a ghastly white, then flushed red and her eyes blazed. Her lips worked, but she held in. Joseph saw this, and there was a painful wonder in his eyes.

  My mother showed distress. She was doing aimless things and fumbling with her hands like a person who has been knocked out of his bearings. She started to ask, in a hesitating way, if Philip was in love with Marget, but Wilhelm was not conscious of anything but his own affair; so he never heard her, but went right on:

  "Traum wouldn't stay; but going out at the door, Marget still pleading, he said as indifferently as if he were asking the time of day, 'I can't stop now, but I'll come every day, if you like.' "

  "He doesn't love her!"

  It was Lilly. It was out before she could stop it; her feelings had got the best of her. Joseph's head was bowed; if he had been looking at his face in the glass, he would have seen a spasm. Wilhelm looked at Lilly in a vague half-conscious way as if he sort of wondered why she should show so much interest, then he touched his dry lips with his tongue and went on:

  "Marget's eyes were humid and brilliant, her face was flushed, she was in a state of exaltation, she was like a person intoxicated with adorable emotions. I said, `You are in love with him.' She answered, `I am, and I glory in it; I worship him!'"

  Lilly patted the floor with her foot, and the indignant breath came short through her parted lips, but she kept control of her tongue this time.

  "I argued with her, reasoned with her, but it did no good. I said he was a stranger, an adventurer whom nobody knew. She said it was nothing to her; she loved him, and did not care who he was nor what he was. Still I reasoned and persuaded. I said he was possessed of a devil. She only said `I would God I were possessed of the mate to it.' It was awful to hear her say that. I told her he was indifferent to her, and that he had not shown by a single word or sign that he cared for her in anything more than a friendly way. She said, `I cannot help it, I love him; he does not love me now, but he is coming every day, and I have a right to hope and I will hope.' It was a bitter hour for me. We parted, without a caress; she did not even put out her hand; then her conscience smote her and she put it out, saying 'Forgive me-good-night-and let us be friends.'

  "It is a madness, you see; it is enchantment-she is not to blame. I have not been back. He goes every day; I have it from Gottfried. Marget's love was my whole fortune; and it is lost."

  A silence fell. Every one sat as still as a statue. And the pride and the hopes and the happiness of each had received a stroke and been brought low. It was dismal, and like a funeral. Presently Wilhelm cast an appealing glance at my father, who started to get up, but Wilhelm motioned him back, as if to say, "Never mind-I know the way." So he passed into the back room. The liquor was there.

  Soon we heard a brisk step, and the next moment Satan came tripping in as cheerful as a bird, and his coming was like the sea-breeze invading a sick-room. Everybody's spirits rose, and the welcome that shone in Lilly's face was another pang for Joseph. Satan greeted every one heartily by name and handshake; and in the midst of it Wilhelm came reeling in with our butcher-knife in his hand. Ile flourished it, and shouted "Stand back!" which they naturally did, being taken by surprise, and the women screamed; and as Satan faced about, Wilhelm sprang at him and brought down the knife with a deadly lunge. But it only touched Satan's breast, and fell to the floor.

  For just an instant Satan's eyes glowed with a dangerous light but it was gone as swiftly as it had come, and he was saying to the company-

  "Don't be disturbed, he was only playing."

  Wilhelm looked perplexed and ashamed, and said haltinglypunctuating with a hiccup here and there-

  "No, it is not entitled to so charitable a construction as that, and I make the humblest apologies to the company for my conduct. It was not myself that was acting, it is foreign to my nature; my sleep has been broken, I have been drinking more than is good for me, and for a moment my reason was affected, I think. I have done wrong, and am sorry. I had no right to proceed against his life."

  Satan could do what he pleased with any one. It pleased him to smooth away Wilhelm's feeling of humiliation, and soften his resentment, and banish the liquor-fogs from his brain and the dulness from his eye and the depression from his spirit, and restore to him his normal self and make him cheerful and comfortable; and by the crafts and witcheries of his tongue he did it. In no long time Wilhelm was discussing chess with him, the company were assisting in the debate, and things were going along as smoothly as ever. And at last when Wilhelm said he wished a r
ecord had been kept of those four remarkable games, so that he could lighten his dull hours by studying them, Satan said he would make the record.

  "From memory?" my father asked, "after five days?" I think he meant it for irony; but irony was not his best hold.

  Satan did not reply; but took some sheets of paper and filled them with the record of the games, in-well, in the time it takes to count ten, I should say, or perhaps fifteen. You could not see his hand move over the paper, it was just a whiz and a blur. Wilhelm examined the record in detail. Then,

  "It is correct," he said.

  "Marvelous!" said the others.

  "You've got your sample," murmured Joseph. Lilly gave him a look which excused him from further comment.

  Chapter 6

  WEN I looked in on Lilly that night after she was abed, her eyes were red and she had been crying; but I found that the source of it was not Satan's indiscriminate ways, but only resentment against Marget for her attitude toward him. She thought it was scandalous in Marget to act so, considering that she already had a lover. I was surprised at this remark; it seemed illogical, and I said so.

  "You are in love with Philip Traum yourself, and you had another lover."

  She flew out at me and said-

  "The cases are not the same-they are far different."

  I suppose it was a mistake to ask her to point out the difference, but I did it, not knowing much about women then-nor now, probably. Her temper warmed up, and she said-

  "If you can't see the difference, it would be useless for me to try to make you. Oh, you are so stupid!"

  I could not see that that was an answer, and I said so. I said-

  "Look at the cases-coolly and dispassionately-just as if it were other people, and you not concerned. There's Marget and Wilhelm, engaged; on the other side you and Joseph, as good as engaged. A stranger comes along, and you and Marget brush your lovers aside and fall in love with him. If it is scandalous in Margot, why then it seems to me-

  "Now that's enough-I don't want to hear any more about it. I never saw such a wandering mind."

  "Wandering mind, indeed! Where is my mind wandering, I'd like to know?"

  "Yes, I should think you would. But don't try-nobody can find out. You'll only fatigue yourself."

  It was a shame to put me down like that and walk over me, so to speak, when I was certainly in the right. I ought to have known that when a woman gets her head set, particularly in a love matter, she hasn't any sense and isn't any more movable by argument than a stump is; but I was but a lad, and didn't know the crazy make of them.

  I dropped the matter, since I had to, and then I went at the matter which I had mainly come to talk about. For Lilly's own happiness I wanted to save her while there was yet time, from irrevocably engaging her heart in this hopeless chase. So I led up to it in a grave and impressive introduction of some length, and when I believed I had sufficiently prepared her for the blow, I said-

  "My dear, dear sister, be warned: he does not love you, and he never can."

  Storm-fires began to gather in her eyes, and she rose and sat up in the bed and looked me over, much as a comet looks a little dog over that has been trying to help it conduct its excursion in the safest way.

  "You think so!" she said. "I wish to ask you a question or two-you who are so fond of reasoning and arguing and inferring, and think yourself so competent in such matters. What do you know about Philip Traum? Nothing. Are you intimate with him? Certainly not. Is your mind capable of intimacy with a mind like his? Hardly. Have you ever encountered such a mind before? Answer me."

  "Well-no."

  "Is there any one else in the world who can bring out of a simpering old spinet the music of the spheres?"

  "No."

  "Is there any one else who can carry four games of chess in his memory a week? Or transmute prose into poetry without reflection or preparation? Or turn a would-be assassin into a fireside comrade in ten minutes by the clock? Or do this?" and she drew that embroidery from under her pillow and displayed it. "Come-infer me an inference. What do you infer from these things?"

  "Well, that he-that he is not like anybody else."

  She snatched at that as triumphantly as if I had given my whole case away:

  "You've said it! Very well, then, since he is not like anybody else, it is argument that he is governed by laws that are not the laws which govern other people's actions. Do we know what the laws are which govern him?"

  Of course I knew, but it was not my privilege to let out that fact, so I blinked the truth and said no.

  "Very well, then, you see where you have landed. You don't know, and can't know, that he will never love me; so you need not bother yourself any more about the matter. Through my sympathies, my perceptions and my love I know him; know him as no one else knows him; know him as no one else can ever know him. And you shall not take my golden hope from me-no one shall! He will love me yet, and only me."

  There was a glory in her eyes that made her beautiful. I had not the heart to spoil it; so I kept back the words that were upon my lips: "Marget is probably saying these same things herself."

  I went to my bed with heavy thoughts. What a lot of dismal haps had befallen the village, and certainly Satan seemed to he the father of the whole of them: Father Peter in prison, on account of the money laid in his way by Satan, which furnished Father Adolf the handy pretext he needed; Nlarget's household shunned and under perilous suspicion on account of that cat's work-cat furnished by Satan; Father Adolf acquiring a frightful and odious reputation, and likely to be burnt at the stake presently-Satan responsible for it; my parents worried, perplexed, distressed about their daughter's new love-freak and the doubtfulness of its outlook; Joseph crushed and shamed; Wilhelm's heart broken and dissipation laying its blight upon his character, his ambition and his fair repute; Nlarget gone silly, and our Lilly following after; the whole village prodded and pestered into a pathetic delirium about nonexistent witches and quaking in its shoes: the whole wide wreck and desolation of hearts and hopes and industries the work of Satan's enthusiastic diligence and morbid passion for business. And he, the author of all the trouble, was the only person concerned that got any rapture out of it. By his spirits one would think he was grateful to be alive and improving things.

  I fell asleep to pleasant music presently-the patter of rain upon the panes and the dull growling of distant thunder. Away in the night Satan came and roused me and said-

  "Come with me. Where shall we go?"

  "Anywhere-so it is with you."

  Then there was a fierce glare of sunlight, and he said-

  "This is China."

  That was a grand surprise, and made me sort of drunk with vanity and gladness to think I had come so far-and so much, much further than anybody else in our village, including Bartel Sperling, who had such a great opinion of his travels. We buzzed around over that Empire for more than half an hour and saw the whole of it. It was wonderful, the spectacles we saw; and some were beautiful, others too horrible to think. For instance-however, I will go into that by and by, and also why Satan chose China for this excursion instead of another place-it would interrupt my tale to do it now. Finally we stopped flitting, and lit.

  We sat upon a mountain commanding a vast landscape of mountain-range and gorge and valley and plain and river, with cities and villages slumbering in the sunlight, and a glimpse of blue sea on the further verge. It was a tranquil and dreamy picture, beautiful to the eye and restful to the spirit. If we could only make a change like that whenever we wanted to, the world would be easier to live in than it is, for change of scene shifts the mind's burdens to the other shoulder and banishes old shop-worn wearinesses from mind and body both.

  We talked together, and I had the idea of trying to reform Satan and persuade him to lead a better life. I told him about all those things he had been doing, and begged him to be more considerate and stop making people unhappy. I said I knew he did not mean any harm, but that he ought to stop and consider
the possible consequences of an act before launching it in that impulsive and random way of his; then he would not make so much trouble. He was not hurt by this plain speech, he only looked amused and surprised, and said-

  "What, I do random things? Indeed I never do. I stop and consider possible consequences? Where is the need? I know what the consequences are going to be-always."

  "Oh, Satan, then how could you do those things?"

  "Well, I will tell you, and you must understand it if you can. You belong to a singular race. Every man is a suffering-machine and a happiness-machine combined. The two functions work together harmoniously, with a fine and delicate precision, on the give-and-take principle. For every happiness turned out in the one department the other one stands ready to modify it with a sorrow or a pain-maybe a dozen. In most cases the man's life is about equally divided between happiness and unhappiness. When this is not the case the unhappiness predominates-always; never the other. Sometimes a man's make and disposition are such that his misery-machinery is able to do nearly all the business. Such a man goes through life almost ignorant of what happiness is. Everything lie touches, everything he does, brings a misfortune upon him. You have seen such people? To that kind of a person life is not an advantage, is it? it is only a disaster. Sometimes, for an hour's happiness a man's machinery makes him pay years of misery. Don't you know that? It happens every now and then. I will give you a case or two, presently. Now the people of your village are nothing to me-you know that, don't you?"

  I did not like to speak out too flatly, so I only said I had suspected it.

  "Well, it is true that they are nothing to me. It is not possible that they should be. The difference between them and me is abysmal, immeasurable. They have no intellect."

  "No intellect?"

  "Nothing that resembles it. At a future time I will examine what man calls his mind and give you the details of that chaos, then you will see and understand. Men have nothing in common with methere is no point of contact. They have foolish little feelings, and foolish little vanities and impertinences and ambitions, their foolish little life is but a laugh, a sigh, and extinction; and they have no sense. Only the Moral Sense. I will show you what I mean. Here is a red spider, not so big as a pin's head; can you imagine an elephant being interested in him; caring whether he is happy or isn't; or whether he is wealthy or poor; or whether his sweetheart returns his love or not; or whether his mother is sick or well; or whether he is looked up to in society or not; or whether his enemies will smite him or his friends desert him; or whether his hopes will suffer blight or his political ambitions fail; or whether he shall die in the bosom of his family or neglected and despised in a foreign land? These things can never be important to the elephant, they are nothing to him, he cannot shrink his sympathies to the microscopic size of them. Man is to me as the red spider is to the elephant. The elephant has nothing against the spider, he cannot get down to that remote level-I have nothing against man. The elephant is indifferent, I am indifferent. The elephant would not take the trouble to do the spider an ill turn; if he took the notion he might do him a good turn, if it came in his way and cost nothing. I have done men good service, but no ill turns.