The Mysterious Stranger Manuscripts (Literature) (24 page)

In a way it was dreadful; still it was brave in the people, seeing
they were not backed up by authority, but were willing to do their
Christian duty without it, a thing which was to our Church's credit,
and I said so; and said only Catholics could have this courage. But
Satan said-

"No, Protestants have it also. Come with me to Scotland and I
will show you that which will rebuke your pride."

So we went. The Protestants were chasing a middle-aged gentlewoman who was charged by a servant with secretly practising the
papist religion. She was large and strong, and horribly frightened,
and she ran like a deer, her gray hair flying out loose behind; and
whenever the mob came near to overtaking her she dodged quickly
off on another course and got ahead again, and it seemed as if they
would never catch her. But after two hours the clergyman arrived,
and he said "form a halfcircle and close in on her and drive her to
the sea-beach." That worked better, and I think she lost hope, then.
Still, she struggled on, in her despair, and it was another half hour
before they caught her, so many ingenious ways did she invent to
elude them. But at last she stumbled and fell, and before she could
rise they were upon her, and a great shout of triumph went up. She
struggled, but some held her down while others fetched a barn door
and laid it upon her and stood on it. Even dying she struggled with such power that she made the door rock and surge under their feet
for a little while; then all was still, and she was dead. And sure
enough, her daughter stood apart and saw it all, weeping, but afraid
to speak or try to help her mother. Satan said-

"There-you see? You have nothing to be proud of more than
these Protestants. Come back to Eseldorf."

We had been gone more than three hours, and yet were back just
as they finished making the noose. We had seen them begin it, it
took them only a minute to finish it; and in that little interval we
had spent all that time far away across the sea in Scotland. It was
wonderful. They hanged the lady, and I threw a stone at her,
although in my heart I was sorry for her; but all were throwing
stones and each was watching his neighbor, and if I had not done as
the others did it would have been noticed and spoken of. Satan
burst out laughing.

All that were near by turned upon him astonished and not
pleased. It was an ill time to laugh, for his free and scoffing ways
and his supernatural music had brought him under suspicion all
over the town and turned many privately against him. The big
blacksmith called attention to him, now, raising his voice so that all
should hear, and said-

"What are you laughing at? Answer! Moreover, please explain to
the company why you threw no stone."

"Are you sure I did not throw a stone?"

"Yes. You needn't try to get out of it; I had my eye on you."

"And I-I noticed you!" shouted two others.

"Three witnesses," said Satan. "Muller, the blacksmith; Klein,
the butcher's man; Pfeiffer, the weaver's journeyman. Three very
ordinary liars. Are there any more?"

"Never mind whether there are others or not, and never mind
about what you consider us-three's enough to settle your matter
for you. You'll prove that you threw a stone, or it shall go hard with
you.

"That's so!" shouted the crowd, and surged up as closely as they
could to the centre of interest.

"And first you will answer that other question," cried the black smith, pleased with himself for being mouthpiece to the public and
hero of the occasion. "What were you laughing at?"

Satan smiled, and answered pleasantly-

"To see three cowards stoning a dying lady when they were so
near to death themselves."

You could see the superstitious crowd shrink and catch their
breath under the sudden shock. The blacksmith, with a show of
bravado, said-

"Pooh! what do you know about it?"

"I? Everything. By profession I am a fortune-teller, and I read
the hands of you three-and some others-when you lifted them to
stone the woman. One of you will die to-morrow week; another of
you will die to-night; the third has but five minutes to live-and
yonder is the clock!"

It made a sensation. The faces of the crowd blenched, and
turned mechanically toward the clock. The butcher and the weaver
seemed smitten with an illness, but the blacksmith braced up and
said, with spirit-

"It is not long to wait for prediction Number One. If it fails,
young master, you will not live a whole minute after, I promise you
that."

No one said anything; all watched the clock in a deep stillness
which was impressive. When four and a half minutes were gone,
the blacksmith gave a sudden gasp and clapped his hand upon his
heart, saving, "Give me breath! give me room!" and began to sink
down. The crowd surged back, no one offering to support him, and
he fell lumbering to the ground and was dead. The people stared at
him, then at Satan, then at each other, and their lips moved but no
words came. Then Satan said-

"Three saw that I threw no stone. Perhaps there are others; let
them speak."

It struck a kind of panic into them, and although no one answered him, many began to violently accuse each other, saying,
'You said he didn't throw," and getting for reply, "It is a lie, and I
will make you eat it!" And so in a moment they were in a raging
and noisy turmoil, and beating and banging each other; and in the midst was the only indifferent one-the dead lady hanging from
her rope, her troubles forgotten, her spirit at peace.

So we walked away, and I was not at ease, but was saying to
myself, "He told them he was laughing at them, but it was a lie, he
was laughing at me."

That made him laugh again, and he said-

"Yes, I was laughing at you, because in fear of what others might
report about you, you stoned the woman when your heart revolted
at the act-but I was laughing at the others, too."

"Why?"

"Because their case was yours."

"How is that?"

"Well, there were sixty-eight people there, and sixty-two of them
had no more desire to throw a stone than you had."

"Satan!"

"Oh, it's true. I know your race. It is made up of sheep. It is
governed by minorities, seldom or never by majorities. It suppresses
its feelings and its beliefs and follows the handful that makes the
most noise. Sometimes the noisy handful is right, sometimes wrong;
but no matter, the crowd follows it. The vast majority of the race,
whether savage or civilized, are secretly kind-hearted, and shrink
from inflicting pain; but in the presence of the aggressive and
pitiless minority they don't dare to assert themselves. Think of it!
one kind-hearted creature spies upon another, and sees to it that he
loyally helps in iniquities which revolt both of them. Speaking as
an expert, I know that ninety-nine out of a hundred of your race
were strongly against the killing of witches when that foolishness
was first agitated by a handful of pious lunatics in the long ago.
And I know that even to-day, after ages of transmitted prejudice
and silly teaching, only one person in twenty puts any real heart
into the harrying of a witch. And yet apparently everybody hates
witches and wants them killed. Some day a handful will rise up on
the other side and make the most noise-perhaps even a single
daring man with a big voice and a determined front will do it-and
in a week all the sheep will wheel and follow him, and witch-hunt ing will come o a sudden end. In fact this happened within these
ten years, in a little country called New England.

"Monarchies, aristocracies and religions are all based upon that
large defect in your race-the individual's distrust of his neighbor,
and his desire, for safety's or comfort's sake, to stand well in his
neighbor's eyes. These institutions will always remain, always flourish, and always oppress you, affront you and degrade you, because
you will always be and remain slaves of minorities. There was
never a country where the majority of the people were in their
secret hearts loyal to either of these institutions."

I did not like to hear our race called sheep, and said I did not
think they were.

"Still, it is true, lamb," said Satan. "Look at you in war-what
mutton you are, and how ridiculous."

"In war? How?"

"There has never been a just one, never an honorable one-on
the part of the instigator of the war. I can see a million years ahead,
and this rule will never change in so many as half a dozen instances. The loud little handful-as usual-will shout for the war.
The pulpit will-warily and cautiously-object-at first; the great
big dull bulk of the nation will rub its sleepy eyes and try to make
out why there should be a war, and will say, earnestly and indignantly, "It is unjust and dishonorable, and there is no necessity for
it." Then the handful will shout louder. A few fair men on the
other side will argue and reason against the war with speech and
pen, and at first will have a hearing and be applauded; but it will
not last long; those others will out-shout them, and presently the
anti-war audiences will thin out and lose popularity. Before long
you will see this curious thing: the speakers stoned from the platform and free speech strangled, by hordes of furious men who in
their secret hearts are still at one with those stoned speakers, as
earlier,-but do not dare to sav so! And now the whole nationpulpit and all-will take up the war-cry, and shout itself hoarse,
and mob any honest man who ventures to open his mouth; and
presently such mouths will cease to open. Next, the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing
falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any
refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself
that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he
enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception."

"But Satan, as civilization advances-"

Of course he broke in with a laugh. He never could hear that
word without jeering at it and making fun of it. He said he had
seen thirteen of them rise in the world and decay and perish to
savagery-three of them the superiors in every way to any now
known to the histories or to be known to the histories in the next
ten thousand years-and they were all poor things: shams and
hypocrisies and tyrannies, every one.

"Two centuries from now," he said, "the Christian civilization
will reach its highest mark. Yet its kings will still be, then, what
they are now, a close corporation of land-thieves. Is that an advance? England will be prodigious and strong; she will bear the
most honorable name that ever a nation bore, and will lose it in a
single little shameful war and carry the stench of it and the blot of
it to the end of her days. To please a dozen rich adventurers her
statesmen will pick a quarrel with a couple of wee little Christian
farmer-communities, and send against that half dozen villages the
mightiest army that ever invaded any country, and will crush
those little nations and rob them of their independence and their
land. She will make a noisy pretence of being proud of these things,
but deep down in her heart she will be ashamed of them and will
grieve for her soiled flag-once the symbol of liberty and honor and
justice, now the pirate's emblem."

"Satan," I said, "this would not happen if she could have the true
religion."

"Ah, yes-the kind of treasure which you have here in Austria.
My uncle is thinking of introducing it into his dominions."

It was shocking to hear him talk so.

"Satan," I said, "it would defile it!"

He only pulled down the corner of his eye with his finger.

DAYS AND DAYS went by, now, and no Satan. It was dull
without him. But Father Adolf was around braving public opinion
in his impudent way and getting a stone in the middle of his back
now and then when some witch-hater got a safe chance to throw it
and dodge out of sight. Meantime two influences had been working
well for Marget. Satan, who was quite indifferent to her, had
stopped going to her house, and this had hurt her pride and she had
set herself the task of banishing him from her heart; the reports of
Wilhelm Meidling's dissipation brought to her from time to time
by old Ursula had touched her with remorse, she being the cause of
it; and so now, these two matters working upon her together, she
was getting a good profit out of the combination: her interest in
Satan was steadily cooling, her interest in Wilhelm as steadily
warming. All that was needed to complete her conversion was that
Wilhelm should brace up and do something that should cause
favorable talk and incline the public toward him again.

The opportunity came, now. Marget sent and asked him to
defend her uncle in the approaching trial, and he was greatly
pleased, and stopped drinking and began his preparations with
diligence. With more diligence than hope, in fact, for it was not a
promising case. He had many interviews in his office with Seppi
and me, and thrashed out our testimony pretty thoroughly, thinking to find some valuable grains among the chaff, but the harvest
was poor, of course.

If Satan would only come! That was my constant thought. He
could invent some way to win the case; for he had said it would be
won, so he necessarily knew how it could be done. But the days
dragged on, and still he did not come. Of course I did not doubt
that it would win, and that Father Peter would be happy for the
rest of his life, since Satan had said so; yet I knew I should be much
more comfortable if he would come and tell us how to manage it. It was getting high time for Father Peter to have a saving change
toward happiness, for by general report he was worn out with his
imprisonment and the ignominy that was burdening him, and was
like to die of his miseries unless he got relief soon.