The Mysterious Stranger Manuscripts (Literature)

by Mark Twain

  There were no cowards there, now! Everybody was brave, everybody was eager to help drag the victim to the stake, they swarmed about him like raging wolves; they jerked him this way and that, they beat him and reviled him, they cuffed him and kicked him, he wailing, sobbing, begging for pity, the conquering priest exulting, scoffing, boasting, laughing. Briskly they bound him to the stake and piled the fagots around him and applied the fire; and there the forlorn creature stood weeping and sniffling and pleading in his fantastic robes, a sorry contrast to that poor humble Christian who but a little while before had faced death there so bravely. Adolf lifted his hand and pronounced with impressive solemnity the words-

  "Depart, damned soul, to the regions of eternal woe!"

  Whereat the weeping magician laughed sardonically in his face and vanished away, leaving his robes empty and hanging collapsed in the chains! There was a whisper at my ear-

  "Come, August, let us to breakfast and leave these animals to gape and stare while Adolf explains to them the unexplainable-a job just in his line. By the time I have finished with the sorcerer he will have a dandy reputation-don't you think?"

  So all his pretence of being struck down by the Name was a blasphemous jest. And I had taken it so seriously, so confidingly, innocently, exultantly. I was ashamed. Ashamed of him, ashamed of myself. Oh, manifestly nothing was serious to him, levity was the blood and marrow of him, death was a joke; his ghastly fright, his moving tears, his frenzied supplications-by God, it was all just coarse and vulgar horse-play! The only thing he was capable of being interested in, was his damned magician's reputation! I was too disgusted to talk, I answered him nothing, but left him to chatter over his degraded performance unobstructed, and rehearse it and chuckle over it and glorify it up to his taste.

  Chapter 22

  IT WAS in my room. He brought it-the breakfast-dish after dish, smoking hot, from my empty cupboard, and briskly set the table, talking all the while-ah, yes, and pleasantly, fascinatingly, winningly; and not about that so-recent episode, but about these fragrant refreshments and the far countries he had summoned them from-Cathay, India, and everywhere; and as I was famishing, this talk was pleasing, indeed captivating, and under its influence my sour mood presently passed from me. Yes, and it was healing to my bruised spirit to look upon the rich and costly table-service-quaint of shape and pattern, delicate, ornate, exquisite, beautiful!-and presently quite likely to be mine, you see.

  "Hot corn-pone from Arkansas-split it, butter it, close your eyes and enjoy! Fried spring chicken-milk-and-flour gravy-from Alabama. Try it, and grieve for the angels, for they have it not! Cream-smothered strawberries, with the prairie-dew still on them -let them melt in your mouth, and don't try to say what you feel! Coffee from Vienna-fluffed cream-two pellets of saccharindrink, and have compassion for the Olympian gods that know only nectar!"

  I ate, I drank, I reveled in these alien wonders; truly I was in Paradise!

  "It is intoxication," I said, "it is delirium!"

  "It's a jag!" he responded.

  I inquired about some of the refreshments that had outlandish names. Again that weird detail: they were nonexistent as yet, they were products of the unborn future! Understand it? How could I? Nobody could. The mere trying muddled the head. And yet it was a pleasure to turn those curious names over on the tongue and taste them: Corn-pone! Arkansas! Alabama! Prairie! Coffee! Saccharin! FortyFour answered my thought with a stingy word of explanation-

  "Corn-pone is made from maize. Maize is known only in America. America is not discovered yet. Arkansas and Alabama will be States, and will get their names two or three centuries hence. Prairie-a future French-American term for a meadow like an ocean. Coffee: they have it in the Orient, they will have it here in Austria two centuries from now. Saccharin-concentrated sugar, 500 to 1; as it were, the sweetness of five hundred pretty maids concentrated in a young fellow's sweetheart. Saccharin is not due yet for nearly four hundred years; I am furnishing you several advance-privileges, you see."

  "Tell me a little, little more, 44-please! You starve me so! and I am so hungry to know how you find out these strange marvels, these impossible things."

  He reflected a while, then he said he was in a mood to enlighten me, and would like to do it, but did not know how to go about it, because of my mental limitations and the general meanness and poverty of my construction and qualities. He said this in a most casual and taken-for-granted way, just as an archbishop might say it to a cat, never suspecting that the cat could have any feelings about it or take a different view of the matter. My face flushed, and I said with dignity and a touch of heat-

  "I must remind you that I am made in the image of God."

  "Yes," he said carelessly, but did not seem greatly impressed by it, certainly not crushed, not overpowered. I was more indignant than ever, but remained mute, coldly rebuking him by my silence. But it was wasted on him; he did not see it, he was thinking. Presently he said-

  "It is difficult. Perhaps impossible, unless I should make you over again." He glanced up with a yearningly explanatory and apologetic look in his eyes, and added, "For you are an animal, you see-you understand that?"

  I could have slapped him for it, but I austerely held my peace, and answered with cutting indifference-

  "Quite so. It happens to happen that all of us are that."

  Of course I was including him, but it was only another wastehe didn't perceive the inclusion. He said, as one might whose way has been cleared of an embarrassing obstruction-

  "Yes, that is just the trouble! It makes it ever so difficult. With my race it is different; we have no limits of any kind, we comprehend all things. You see, for your race there is such a thing as time -you cut it up and measure it; to your race there is a past, a present and a future-out of one and the same thing you make three; and to your race there is also such a thing as distance-and hang it, you measure that, too! . . . . . Let me see: if I could only .... if I .... oh, no, it is of no use-there is no such thing as enlightening that kind of a mind!" He turned upon me despair ingly, pathetically, adding, "If it only had some capacity, some depth, or breadth, or-or-but you see it doesn't hold anything; one cannot pour the starred and shoreless expanses of the universe into a jug!"

  I made no reply; I sat in frozen and insulted silence; I would not have said a word to save his life. But again he was not aware of what was happening-he was thinking. Presently he said-

  "Well, it is so difficult! If I only had a starting-point, a basis to proceed from-but I can't find any. If-look here: can't you extinguish time? can't you comprehend eternity? can't you conceive of a thing like that-a thing with no beginning-a thing that always was? Try it!"

  "Don't! I've tried it a hundred times," I said, "It makes my brain whirl just to think of it!"

  He was in despair again.

  "Dear me-to think that there can be an ostensible Mind that cannot conceive of so simple a trifle as that! . .. . Look here, August: there are really no divisions of time-none at all. The past is always present when I want it-the real past, not an image of it; I can summon it, and there it is. The same with the future: I can summon it out of the unborn ages, and there it is, before my eyes, alive and real, not a fancy, an image, a creation of the imagination. Ah, these troublesome limitations of yours!-they hamper me. Your race cannot even conceive of something being made out of nothing -I am aware of it, your learned men and philosophers are always confessing it. They say there had to be something to start withmeaning a solid, a substance-to build the world out of. Man, it is perfectly simple-it was built out of thought. Can't you comprehend that?"

  "No, I can't! Thought! There is no substance to thought; then how is a material thing going to be constructed out of it?"

  "But August, I don't mean your kind of thought, I mean my kind, and the kind that the gods exercise."

  "Come, what is the difference? Isn't thought just thought, and all said?"

  "No. A man originates nothing in his head, he merely observes exte
rior things, and comhiucs them in his head-puts several observed things together and drays a conclusion. I Iis mind is merely a machine, that is all-an automatic one, and he has no control over it; it cannot conceive of a new thing, an original thing, it can only gather material from the outside and combine it into new forms and patterns. But it always has to have the materials from the outside, for it can't make them itself. That is to say, a man's mind cannot create-a god's can, and my race can. That is the difference. We need no contributed materials, we create them-out of thought. All things that exist were made out of thought-and out of nothing else."

  It seemed to me charitable, also polite, to take him at his word and not require proof, and I said so. Ile was not offended. He only said-

  "Your automatic mind has performed its function-its sole function-and without help from you. That is to say, it has listened, it has observed, it has put this and that together, and drawn a conclusion-the conclusion that my statement was a doubtful one. It is now privately beginning to wish for a test. Is that true?"

  "Well, yes," I said, "I won't deny it, though for courtesy's sake I would have concealed it if I could have had my way."

  "Your mind is automatically suggesting that I offer a specific proof-that I create a dozen gold coins out of nothing; that is to say, out of thought. Open your hand-they are there."

  And so they were! I wondered; and yet I was not very greatly astonished, for in my private heart I judged-and not for the first time-that he was using magic learned from the magician, and that he had no gifts in this line that did not come from that source. But was this so? I dearly wanted to ask this question, and I started to do it. But the words refused to leave my tongue, and I realized that he had applied that mysterious check which had so often shut off a question which I wanted to ask. He seemed to be musing. Presently he ejaculated-

  "That poor old soul!"

  It gave me a pang, and brought back the stake, the flames and the death-cry; and I said-

  "It was a shame and a pity that she wasn't rescued."

  "Why a pity?"

  "Why? How can you ask, 44?"

  "What would she have gained?"

  "An extension of life, for instance; is that nothing?"

  "Oh, there spoke the human! He is always pretending that the eternal bliss of heaven is such a priceless boon! Yes, and always keeping out of heaven just as long as he can! At bottom, you see, he is far from being certain about heaven."

  I was annoyed at my carelessness in giving him that chance. But I allowed it to stand at that, and said nothing; it could not help the matter to go into it further. Then, to get away from it I observed that there was at least one gain that the woman could have had if she had been saved: she might have entered heaven by a less cruel death.

  "She isn't going there," said 44, placidly.

  It gave me a shock, and also it angered me, and I said with some heat-

  "You seem to know a good deal about it-how do you know?"

  Ile was not affected by my warmth, neither did he trouble to answer my question; he only said-

  "The woman could have gained nothing worth considering-certainly nothing worth measuring by your curious methods. What are ten years, subtracted from ten billion years? It is the ten-thousandth part of a second-that is to say, it is nothing at all. eery well, she is in hell now, she will remain there forever. Ten years subtracted from it wouldn't count. Her bodily pain at the stake lasted six minutes-to save her from that would not have been worthwhile. That poor creature is in hell; see for yourself!"

  Before I could beg him to spare me, the red billows were sweeping by, and she was there among the lost.

  The next moment the crimson sea was gone, with its evoker, and I was alone.

  Chapter 23

  YUNG AS I was-I was barely seventeen-my days were now sodden with depressions, there was little or no rebound. My interest in the affairs of the castle and of its occupants faded out and disappeared; I kept to myself and took little or no note of the daily happenings; my Duplicate performed all my duties, and I had nothing to do but wander aimlessly about and be unhappy.

  Thus the days wore heavily by, and meantime I was missing something; missing something, and growing more and more conscious of it. I hardly had the daring to acknowledge to myself what it was. It was the master's niece-;Target! I was a secret worshipper; I had been that a long time; I had worshipped her face and her form with my eyes, but to go further would have been quite beyond my courage. It was not for me to aspire so high; not yet, certainly; not in my timid and callow youth. Every time she had blessed me with a passing remark, the thrill of it, the bliss of it had tingled through me and swept along every nerve and fibre of me with a sort of celestial ecstasy and given me a wakeful night which was better than sleep. These casual and unconsidered remarks, unvalued by her were treasures to me, and I hoarded them in my memory, and knew when it was that she had uttered each of them, and the occasion and the circumstance that had produced each one, and the tone of her voice and the look of her face and the light in her eye; and there was not a night that I did not pass them through my mind caressingly, and turn them over and pet them and play with them, just as a poor girl possessed of half a dozen cheap seed-pearls might do with her small hoard. But that Marget should ever give me an actual thought-any word or notice above what she might give the cat-ah, I never dreamed of it! As a rule she had never been conscious of my presence at all; as a rule she gave me merely a glance of recognition and nothing more when she passed me by in ball or corridor.

  As I was saying, I had been missing her, a number of days. It was because her mother's malady was grown a trifle worse and Marget was spending all her time in the sick room. I recognized, now, that I was famishing to see her, and be near that gracious presence once more. Suddenly, not twenty steps away, she rose upon my sight-a fairy vision! That sweet young face, that dainty figure, that subtle exquisite something that makes seventeen the perfect year and its bloom the perfect bloom-oh, there it all was, and I stood transfixed and adoring! She was coming toward me, walking slowly, musing, dreaming, heeding nothing, absorbed, unconscious. As she drew near I stepped directly in her way; and as she passed through me the contact invaded my blood as with a delicious fire! She stopped, with a startled look, the rich blood rose in her face, her breath came quick and short through her parted lips, and she gazed wonderingly about her, saying twice, in a voice hardly above a whisper-

  "What could it have been?"

  I stood devouring her with my eyes, she remained as she was, without moving, as much as a minute, perhaps more; then she said in that same low soliloquising voice, "I was surely asleep-it was a dream-it must have been that-why did I wake?" and saying this, she moved slowly away, down the great corridor.

  Nothing can describe my joy. I believed she loved me, and had been keeping her secret, as maidens will; but now I would persuade it out of her; I would be bold, brave, and speak! I made myself visible, and in a minute had overtaken her and was at her side. Excited, happy, confident, I touched her arm, and the warm words began to leap from my mouth-

  "Dear Marget! oh, my own, my dar-"

  She turned upon me 'a look of gentle but most chilly and dignified rebuke, allowed it a proper time to freeze where it struck, then moved on, without a word, and left me there. I did not feel inspired to follow.

  No, I could not follow, I was petrified with astonishment. Why should she act like that? Why should she be glad to dream of me and not glad to meet me awake? It was a mystery; there was something very strange about this; I could make nothing out of it. I went on puzzling and puzzling over the enigma for a little while, still gazing after her and half crying for shame that I had been so fresh and had gotten such a blistering lesson for it, when I saw her stop. Dear me, she might turn back! I was invisible in half an instantI wouldn't have faced her again for a province.

  Sure enough, she did turn back. I stepped to the wall, and gave her the road. I wanted to fly, but I had no power to do that, the sight o
f her was a spell that I could not resist; I had to stay, and gaze, and worship. She came slowly along in that same absorbed and dreamy way, again; and just as she was passing by me she stopped, and stood quite still a moment-two or three moments, in fact-then moving on, she said, with a sigh, "I was mistaken, but I thought I faintly felt it again."

  Was she sorry it was a mistake? It certainly sounded like that. It put me in a sort of ecstasy of hope, it filled me with a burning desire to test the hope, and I could hardly refrain from stepping out and barring her way again, to see what would happen; but that rebuff was too recent, its smart was still too fresh, and I hadn't the pluck to do it.

  But I could feast my eyes upon her loveliness, at any rate, and in safety, and I would not deny myself that delight. I followed her at a distance, I followed all her wanderings; and when at last she entered her apartment and closed the door, I went to my own place and to my solitude, desolate. But the fever born of that marvelous first contact came back upon me and there was no rest for me. Hour after hour I fought it, but still it prevailed. Night came, and dragged along, there was no abatement. At ten the castle was asleep and still, but I could not sleep. I left my room and went wandering here and there, and presently I was floating through the great corridor again. In the vague light I saw a figure standing motionless in that memorable spot. I recognized it-even less light would have answered for that. I could not help approaching it, it drew me like a magnet. I came eagerly on; but when I was within two or three steps of it I remembered, with a chill, who I was, and stopped. No matter: To be so near to Marget was happiness enough, riches enough! With a quick movement she lifted her head and poised it in the attitude of one who listens-listens with a tense and wistful and breathless interest; it was a happy and longing face that I saw in the dim light; and out of it, as through a veil, looked darkling and humid the eyes I loved so well. I caught a whisper: "I cannot hear anything-no, there is no sound-but it is near, I know it is near, and the dream is come again!" My passion rose and overpowered me and I floated to her like a breath and put my arms about her and drew her to my breast and put my lips to hers, unrebuked, and drew intoxication from them! She closed her eyes, and with a sigh which seemed born of measureless content, she said dreamily, "I love you so-and have so longed for you!"