The Mysterious Stranger Manuscripts (Literature) (13 page)

With the last word he vanished, to our sorrow and disappointment. We got the men and the priest, and we saw the man die.
Nobody cared but the d"o, but he mourned and grieved, and licked
the dead face, and could not be comforted. The man had died without the last sacraments, for he was unconscious and the priest refused them. We buried him where he was, and without a coffin, for
he had no money, and no friend but the dog, and he could not be
buried in holy ground, for he had died in sin. We buried him
without any funeral services, for in the circumstances the priest
would not perform them, of course, nor countenance the unholy
burial with his presence. If we had been an hour earlier the priest
would have been in time to send that poor creature to heaven, but
now he was gone down into the awful fires, to burn forever. It
seemed such a pity that in a world where so many people have
difficulty to put in their time, one little hour could not have been
spared for this poor creature who needed it so much, and to whom
it would have made the difference between eternal joy and eternal
pain. It gave me an appalling idea of the value of an hour, and I
thought I could never waste one again without remorse and terror.
Seppi was depressed and grieved, and said it must be so much
better to be a dog and not run such awful risks. We took this one
home with us and kept him for our own. Seppi had a very good
thought as we were walking along, and it cheered us up and made
us feel much better. He said the dog had forgiven the man that had
wronged him so, and maybe God would accept that absolution in place of the priest's, though it was furnished gratis and therefore
was not really official and regular.

HERE WAS a very dull week, now, for Satan did not come,
nothing much was going on, and we boys could not venture to go
and see Margot, because the nights were moonlit and our parents
might find us out if we tried. But we came across Ursula a couple
of times taking a walk in the meadows beyond the river to air the
cat, and we learned from her that things were going well. She had
natty new clothes on and bore a prosperous look. The four groschen
a day were arriving without a break but were not being spent for
food and wine and such things-the cat attended to all that. Nlarget was enduring her forsakenness and isolation fairly well, all
things considered, and was cheerful, by help of Wilhelm Meidling.
She spent an hour or two every night in the jail with her uncle, and
had fattened him up with the cat's contributions. But she was
curious to know more about Philip Traum, and hoped I would
bring him again. Ursula was curious about him herself, and asked a
good many questions about his uncle. It made the boys laugh, for I
had told them the nonsense Satan had been stuffing her with. She
got no satisfaction out of us, our tongues being tied. Ursula gave us
a small item of information: money being plenty now, she had
taken on a servant to help about the house and run errands. She
tried to tell it in a commonplace matterof-course way, but she was
so set up by it and so vain of it that her pride in it leaked out pretty
plainly. It was beautiful to see her veiled delight in this grandeur,
poor old thing, but when we heard the name of the servant we
wondered if she had been altogether wise; for although we were
young, and often thoughtless, we had fairly good perception in
some matters. This boy was Gottfried Narr, a dull good creature
with no harm in him and nothing against him, personally; still, he
was under a cloud, and properly so, for it had not been six months since a social blight had mildewed the family-his grandmother
had been burnt as a witch. When that kind of a malady is in the
blood it does not always come out with just one burning. Father
Adolf had often said so, and had warned the people to keep a
lookout on those Narrs. Just now was not a good time for Ursula
and Margot to be having dealings with a member of such a family,
for the witch-terror had risen higher during the past year than it
had ever reached in the memory of the oldest villagers. The mere
mention of a witch was almost enough to frighten us out of our
wits. This was natural enough, because of late years there were
more kinds of witches than there used to be; in old times it had
been only old women, but of late years they were of all ages-even
children of eight and nine; so it was getting so that anybody might
turn out to be a familiar of the devil-age and sex hadn't anything
to do with it. In our little region we had tried to extirpate the
Witches, but the more of them we burned the more of the breed
rose up in their places.

Once, in a school for girls only ten miles away, the nuns found
that the back of one of the girls was all red and inflamed, and they
were greatly frightened, believing it to be the devil's marks. The
girl was scared, and begged them not to denounce her, and said it
was only fleas; and indeed that is what it looked like; but of course
it would not do to let the matter rest there. All the girls were
examined, and eleven out of the fifty were badly marked, the rest
less so. A commission was appointed, but the eleven only cried for
their mothers and would not confess. Then they were shut up, each
by herself, in the dark, and put on black bread and water, for ten
days and nights; and by that time they were haggard and wild, and
their eyes were dry and they did not cry any more, but only sat and
mumbled, and would not take the food. Then one of them confessed, and said they had often ridden through the air on broomsticks to the witches' sabbath, and in a bleak place high up in the
mountains had danced and drunk and caroused with several
hundred other witches and with Satan, and all had conducted
themselves in a scandalous way and had reviled the priests and blasphemed God. That is what she said-not in narrative form, for she was not able to remember any of the details without having them
called to her mind one after the other; but the commission did that,
for they knew just what questions to ask, they being all written
down by the Pope for the use of witch-commissions two centuries
before. They asked "Did you do so and so?" and she always said yes,
and looked weary and tired and took no interest in it. And so when
the other ten heard that this one had confessed, they confessed too,
and answered yes to the questions. Then they were burnt at the
stake all together, which was just and right; and everybody went
from all the countryside to see it. I went, too; but when I saw that
one of them was a bonny sweet girl I used to play with, and looked
so pitiful there chained to the stake and her mother crying over her
and devouring her with kisses and clinging around her neck and
saying "Oh, my God! oh, my God!" it was too dreadful and I went
away.

It was bitter cold weather when Gottfried's grandmother was
burnt. It was charged that she had cured bad headaches by kneading the person's head and neck with her fingers-as she said-but
really by the devil's help, as everybody knew. They were going to
examine her, but she stopped them, and confessed straight off that
her power was from the devil. So they appointed to burn her next
morning early, in our market square. The officer who was to prepare the fire was there first, and prepared it. She was there next,brought by the constables, who left her and went to fetch another
witch. Her family did not come with her. They might be reviled,
maybe stoned, if the people were excited. I came, and gave her an
apple. She was squatting at the fire, warming herself, and waiting;
and her old lips and hands were blue with the cold. A stranger
came next. He was a traveler, passing through; and he spoke to her
gently, and seeing nobody but me there to hear, said he was sorry
for her. And he asked her if what she had confessed was true, and
she said no. He looked surprised, and still more sorry, then, and
asked her-

"Then why did you confess?"

"I am old and very poor," she said, "and I work for my living.
There was no way but to confess. If I hadn't, they might have set me free. That would ruin me; for no one would forget that I had
been suspected of being a witch, and so I would get no more work,
and wherever I went they would set the dogs on me. In a little
while I should starve. The fire is best, it is soon over. You have been
good to me, you two, and I thank you."

She snuggled closer to the fire, and put out her hands to warm
them, the snow-flakes descending soft and still on her old gray head
and making it white and whiter. The crowd was gathering, now,
and an egg came flying, and struck her in the eye, and broke and
ran down her face. There was a laugh, at that.

I told Satan all about the eleven girls and the old woman, once,
but it did not affect him. He only said it was the human race, and
what the human race did was of no consequence. And he said he
had seen it made; and it was not made of clay, it was made of mud
-part of it was, anyway. I knew what he meant by that-the
Moral Sense. He saw the thought in my head, and it tickled him
and made him laugh. Then he called a bullock out of a pasture and
petted it and talked with it, and said-

"There-lie wouldn't drive children mad with hunger and fright
and loneliness, and then burn them for confessing to things invented for them which had never happened. And neither would he
break the hearts of innocent poor old women and make them afraid
to trust themselves among their own race; and he would not insult
them in their death-agony. For he is not besmirched with the Moral
Sense, but is as pure from it as the angels are, and knows no wrong
and never does it."

Lovely as he was, Satan could be cruelly offensive when he
chose; and he always chose, when the human race was brought to
his attention. He always turned up his nose at it, and never had a
kind word for it. I do not see how a person can act so.

Well, as I was saying, we boys doubted if it was a good time for
Ursula to be hiring a member of the Narr family. We were right.
When the people found it out they were naturally indignant. And
moreover, since Marget and Ursula hadn't enough to eat, themselves, where was the money to come from to feed another mouth?
That is what they wanted to know; and in order to find out, they stopped avoiding Gottfried and began to seek his society and have
sociable conversations with him. He was pleased-not thinking any
harm, and not seeing the trap-and so he talked innocently along,
and was no discreeter than a cow.

"Money!" he said, "they've got plenty of it. They pay me two
groschen a week, besides my keep. And they live on the fat of the
land, I can tell you; the Prince himself can't beat their table."

This astonishing statement was conveyed to Father Adolf on a
Sunday morning when he was returning from mass. He was deeply
moved, and said-

"Hell and Hinders! this must be looked into."

He said there was witchcraft at the bottom of this outrage, and
told the villagers to resume relations with Margot and Ursula in a
private and unostentatious way and keep both eyes open. They
were to keep their own counsel, and not rouse the suspicions of the
household. The villagers were at first a bit reluctant to enter such a
dreadful place, but the priest said they would be under his protection while there, and no harm would come to them, particularly if
they carried a trifle of holy water along and kept their beads and
crosses handy. This satisfied them and made them willing to go;
envy and malice made the baser sort even eager to go.

And so poor Marget began to have company again, and was as
pleased as a cat. She was like 'most anybody else-just human, and
happy in her prosperities and not averse from showing them off a
little; and she was humanly grateful to have the warm shoulder
turned to her and be smiled upon by her friends and the village
again; for of all the hard things to bear, to be cut by your neighbors
and left in contemptuous solitude is maybe the hardest.

The bars were down, and we could all go there now, and we did
-our parents and all. Day after day. The cat began to strain
herself. She provided the top of everything for those companies,
and in abundance-among them many a dish and many a wine
which they had not tasted before and which they had not even
heard of except at second hand from the Prince's servants. And the
table-ware was much above ordinary, too.

Marget was troubled at first, and pursued Ursula with questions to an uncomfortable degree; but Ursula stood her ground and stuck
to it that it was Providence, and said no word about the cat. Marget
knew that nothing was impossible to Providence, but she could not
help having doubts that this effort was from thence, though she was
afraid to say so, lest disaster come of it. Witchcraft occurred to her,
but she put the thought aside, for this was before Gottfried joined
the household, and she knew Ursula was pious and a bitter hater of
witches. By the time Gottfried arrived Providence was established,
unshakably intrenched, and getting all the gratitude. The cat made
no murmur, but went on composedly working the commissariat and
improving in style and prodigality by experience.

In any community, big or little, there is always a fair proportion
of people who are not malicious or unkind by nature, and who
never do unkind things except when they are overmastered by fear,
or when their self-interest is greatly in danger, or some such matter
as that. Eseldorf had its proportion of such people, and ordinarily
their good and gentle influence was felt, but these were not ordinary times-on account of the witch-dread-and so we did not
seem to have any gentle and compassionate hearts left, to speak of.
Every person was frightened at the unaccountable state of things at
Marget's house, not doubting that witchcraft was at the bottom of
it, and fright frenzied their reason. Naturally there were some who
pitied Marget and Ursula for the danger that was gathering about
them, but naturally they did not say so-it would not have been
safe. So the others had it all their own way, and there was none to
advise the ignorant girl and the foolish old woman and warn them
to modify their doings. We boys wanted to warn them, but we
backed down when it came to the pinch, being afraid Father Adolf
would find it out. We found that we were not manly enough nor
brave enough to do a generous action when there was a chance that
it could get us into trouble. Neither of us confessed this poor spirit
to the others, but did as other people would have done-dropped
the subject and talked about something else. And I know we all felt
mean, eating and drinking Marget's fine things along with those
companies of spies, and petting her and complimenting her with the rest, and seeing with self-reproach how foolishly happy she was,
and never saying a word to put her on her guard. And indeed she
was happy, and as proud as a princess, and so grateful to have
friends again. And all the time those people were watching with all
their eyes and reporting all they saw to Father Adolf.