The Mysterious Stranger Manuscripts (Literature) (17 page)

"A pity, too, for I suppose they'll burn him, soon, and then you'll
naturally be sorry you haven't a sample to remember him by."

"Don't talk so!" said Lilly. "Such things are not matter for
jesting."

"Well, then, I won't. But seriously, you know, people are talking,
and he ought to be careful. That is what I tell him, and it's what
father tells him; but he is so young and volatile and carefree that it
hasn't any effect; he only laughs at it. Another thing: he has gone
and made an enemy of the very man who could be most useful to
him some day if he should get into trouble, and that man is
Wilhelm Meidling, a good lawyer and a rising one."

"How has that happened?"

"I don't know; but anyway it's so. Meidling let it out yesterday
evening. Meidling is drinking again-I suppose you know that?"

Mother said she had heard something of the sort.

"Well, it's true. He drops in at the Golden Stag pretty often just
here lately."

"Ah, poor Marget!" said Lilly; "she has troubles enough, she
might have been spared this one. She takes it hard-of course?"

"I suppose so, but one can't know-no one goes there."

That hit Lilly, right in the heart-I could see it. She got up,
saying-

"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 record 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.

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?"