The Mysterious Stranger Manuscripts (Literature) (49 page)

"Yes, I know," said 44, "he is summoning his underlings; they
will arrest me."

"Then come-come along!"

"What good would it do? It is written. What is written must
happen. But it is of no consequence, nothing will come of it."

They came running-half a dozen-and seized him and dragged
him away, cuffing him with fists and beating him with sticks till he
was red with his own blood. I followed, of course, but I was merely
a substanceless spirit, and there was nothing that I could do in his
defence. They chained him in a dim chamber under the monastery
and locked the doors and departed, promising him further attentions when they should be through with burning the witch. I was
troubled beyond measure, but he was not. He said he would use
this opportunity to increase the magician's reputation: he would
spread the report that the aged hand-crusher was the magician in
disguise.

"They will find nothing here but the prisoner's clothes when
they come," he said, "then they will believe."

He vanished out of the clothes, and they slumped down in a pile.
He could certainly do some wonderful things, feather-headed and
frivolous as he was! There was no way of accounting for 44. We
soared out through the thick walls as if they had been made of air,
and followed a procession of chanting monks to the place of the
burning. People were gathering, and soon they came flocking in
crowds, men, women, youths, maidens; and there were even children in arms.

There was a half hour of preparation: a rope ring was widely
drawn around the stake to keep the crowd at a distance; within this
a platform was placed for the use of the preacher-Adolf. When all was ready lie came, imposingly attended, and was escorted with
proper solemnity and ceremony to this pulpit. He began his sermon at once and with business-like energy. Ile was very bitter upon
witches, "familiars of the Fiend, enemies of God, abandoned of the
angels, foredoomed to hell;" and in closing he denounced this
present one unsparingly, and forbade any to pity her.

It was all lost upon the prisoner; she was warm, she was comfortable, she was worn out with fatigue and sorrow and privation, her
gray head was bowed upon her breast, she was asleep. The executioners moved forward and raised her upon her feet and drew her
chains tight, around her breast. She looked drowsily around upon
the people while the fagots were being piled, then her head
drooped again, and again she slept.

The fire was applied and the executioners stepped aside, their
mission accomplished. A hush spread everywhere: there was no
movement, there was not a sound, the massed people gazed, with
lips apart and hardly breathing, their faces petrified in a common
expression, partly of pity, mainly of horror. During more than a
minute that strange and impressive absence of motion and movement continued, then it was broken in a way to make any being
with a heart in his breast shudder-a man lifted his little child and
sat her upon his shoulder, that she might see the better!

The blue smoke curled up about the slumberer and trailed away
upon the chilly air; a red glow began to show at the base of the
fagots; this increased in size and intensity and a sharp crackling
sound broke upon the stillness; suddenly a sheet of flame burst
upward and swept the face of the sleeper, setting her hair on fire,
she uttered an agonizing shriek which was answered by a horrified
groan from the crowd, then she cried out "Thou art merciful and
good to Thy sinful servant, blessed be Thy holy Name-sweet
Jesus receive my spirit!"

Then the flames swallowed her up and hid her from sight. Adolf
stood sternly gazing upon his work. There was now a sudden
movement upon the outskirts of the crowd, and a monk came
plowing his way through and delivered a message to the priest-evidently a pleasant one to the receiver of it, if signs go for anything.
Adolf cried out-

"Remain, everybody! It is reported to me that that arch malignant the magician, that son of Satan, is caught, and lies a chained
prisoner under the monastery, disguised as an aged peasant. He is
already condemned to the flames, no preliminaries are needed, his
time is come. Cast the witch's ashes to the winds, clear the stake!
Go-you, and you, and you-bring the sorcerer!"

The crowd woke up! this was a show to their taste. Five minutes
passed-ten. What might the matter be? Adolf was growing
fiercely impatient. Then the messengers returned, crestfallen. They
said the magician was gone-gone, through the bolted doors and
the massive walls; nothing was left of him but his peasant clothes!
And they held them up for all to see.

The crowd stood amazed, wondering, speechless-and disappointed. Adolf began to storm and curse. FortyFour whispered-

"The opportunity is come. I will personate the magician and
make some more reputation for him. Oh, just watch me raise the
limit!"

So the next moment there was a commotion in the midst of the
crowd, which fell apart in terror exposing to view the supposed
magician in his glittering oriental robes; and his face was white
with fright, and he was trying to escape. But there was no escape
for him, for there was one there whose boast it was that he feared
neither Satan nor his servants-this being Adolf the admired.
Others fell back cowed, but not he; he plunged after the sorcerer,
he chased him, gained upon him, shouted, "Yieldin His Name I
command!"

An awful summons! Under the blasting might of it the spurious
magician reeled and fell as if he had been smitten by a bolt from
the sky. I grieved for him with all my heart and in the deepest
sincerity, and yet I rejoiced for that at last he had learned the power
of that Name at which he had so often and so recklessly scoffed.
And all too late, too late, forever and ever too late-ah, why had he
not listened to me!

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.

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?"