The Mysterious Stranger Manuscripts (Literature) (26 page)

"Are they?"

"Oh, aren't they! Often they cannot sleep for laughing at their
dependents. It would surprise you to know the names they privately
call them by."

"But republics and democracies see, don't they?"

"Oh, no-and never will. While they scoff with their mouths
they reverence them in their hearts. That democrat will never live
who will marry a democrat into his family when he can get a duke.
All forms of government-including republican and democraticare rich in funny shams and absurdities, but their supporters do not
see it."

It took him an hour to list a lot of the comicalities which the race
is not capable of perceiving, then he left off. He said it would take
him a month to name the rest.

Intercourse with him had colored my mind, of course, he being a
strong personality and I a weak one; therefore I was inclined to
think his position correct, but I did not say it. I only said our race
was progressing, and that in time its sense of humor would develop
to a point where it would enable us to perceive many things which
we cannot see now.

But he only made fun of that idea, and said-

"The race had as much humor-perception when it was created as
it has now, and it will never have any more. Look at the Pope's
infallibility. Does any one see the humor of that? Not a soul, except
the Pope and the Conclave. Look at his loosing-and-binding author-itv-which is not confined to earth, but which even God on Ilis
throne is obliged to submit to-as per the claim. Does any one see
the humor of that? Not a soul outside the Vatican. Heretics rage
about it, but no one laughs at it. Will a day come when the race
will detect the funniness of these juvenilities and laugh at themand by laughing at them destroy them? For your race, in its poverty,
has unquestionably one really effective weapon-laughter. Power, Money, Persuasion, Supplication, Persecution-these can lift at a
colossal humbug,-push it a little-crowd it a little-weaken it a
little, century by century: but only Laughter can blow it to rags
and atoms at a blast. Against the assault of Laughter nothing can
stand. You are always fussing and fighting with your other weapons: do you ever use that one? No, you leave it lying rusting. As a
race, do you ever use it at all? No-you lack sense and the courage.
Once in an age a single hero lifts it, delivers his blow, and a hoary
humbug goes to ruin. Before this century closes, Robert Burns, a
peasant, will break the back of the Presbyterian Church with it,
and set Scotland free. I ask you again: will a day come when the
race will have so developed its humor-perception as to be able to
detect the funniness of Papal Infallibility and God-subordinating
Papal Authority?"

"I think so."

'When?"

"Well, not in my time, maybe, but in a century, anyway."

A newspaper flashed into his hand.

"Not in two centuries," he said. "I will prove it. Two centuries
from now, a king of Italy will be assassinated. He will be under
excommunication at the time-that is to say, damned to perdition
by the Pope; and whom the Pope damns, Heaven itself is impotent
to save-as per the claim. Here is a journal which will issue from
the press in those days; we may cull from it some historical facts in
advance of their occurrence; details that are full of hideous humor,
but in that day the race will be as unconscious of it as it would be
to-day. In her grief the widowed Queen will compose a prayer.
What will she do with it? Prostrate herself and pour it into the ear
of God? No. Being a good Catholic, she will know the forms of
holy etiquette better. She will submit it to a Bishop, in the hope
that through his influence she may get permission to pray it, in case
it shall be found to be a proper kind of prayer-and regular. Is that
funny? Your race will not suspect it. The Bishop will inspect the
prayer, dissect it, analyse it, submit it to an ecclesiastical fire-assay,
and will decide that it is innocuous. He will then lay it before the
Pope, together with his expert-report and the mourner's supplica tion for permission to pray it. Now it is not good form to intrude my
uncle's acquired subjects upon the Deity's attention, and the Pope
will know that; but being a kind-hearted old man he will waive
etiquette for charity's sake, and by his express sanction' the widow
will get leave to say her prayer-at last. This is an utter and
thorough endorsement of the prayer by an authority whose judgments are infallible and whose verdicts cannot be set aside by any
Power in heaven or earth. The Pope will carry his generosity still
further: he will order fifty pulpits to pump that same prayer into
heaven. Why? If it is bad form to allow one person to intrude a
subject of Satan upon the Deity's attention, is it better form to set
fifty at it? Will the people of that day see the grotesqueness of the
situation? No, they will contemplate it with petrified gravity. Next,
'the French clerical press' will 'complain that the interests of the
Church are compromised by this display of Christian spirit,' and
the Pope's note will be 'abruptly changed.' The official organ of the
Vatican will announce that the religious services for the dead King
were 'tolerated,' but that the Queen's prayer must be suppressed as
'incompatible with the I Liturgy.' It will be considered 'impolitic' to show Christian gentleness to a sorrowing widow, and so 'the
concession which was made to her' will be 'rudely withdrawn.' This
is Papal 'infallibility.' Will the humor of it be perceived? No-not
by the public. Meantime the prayer has been received in heaven
from fifty-one sources-and recorded. The record will be meekly
expunged-by order from below. Is that funny-or isn't it? I think
it is; in fact I know it is; but none of your race will find it out. Why
don't you laugh?"

I said I was too much hurt to laugh. I said our religion was our
stay, our solace and our hope; it was the most precious thing we
had, and I could not hear to hear its sacred servants derided.

I think it touched him; for he became gentle and kind at once,
and set about banishing my trouble from my mind. It did not take
him long-it never did. He flashed me around the globe, stopping
an hour or a week, at intervals, in one or another strange country,
and doing the whole journey in a few minutes by the clock, and I
was in a condition of contentment before we had covered the first stage. Satan was always good and considerate, that way. He liked to
rough a person up, but he liked to smooth him down again just as
well.

We stopped at a little city in India and looked on while a juggler
did his tricks before a group of natives. They were wonderful, but I
knew Satan could beat that game, and I begged him to show off a
little, and he said he would. He changed himself into a native, in
turban and breech-clout, and very considerately conferred on me a
temporary knowledge of the language.

The juggler exhibited a seed, covered it with earth in a small
flower-pot, then put a rag over the pot; after a minute the rag began
to rise; in ten minutes it had risen a foot; then the rag was removed
and a little tree was exposed, which had leaves upon it and ripe
fruit. We ate the fruit, and it was good. But Satan said-

"Why do you cover the pot? Can't you grow the tree in the
sunlight?"

"No," said the juggler; "no one can do that."

"You are only an apprentice; you don't know your trade. Give me
seed-I will show you."

He took the seed, and said-

"What shall I raise from it?"

"It is a cherry seed; of course you will raise a cherry."

"Oh, no-that is a trifle; any novice can do it. Shall I raise an
orange tree from it?"

"Oh, yes!" and the juggler laughed.

"And shall I make it bear other fruits as well as oranges?"

"If God wills!" and they all laughed.

Satan put the seed on the ground, put a handful of dust on it,
and said-

"Rise!"

A tiny stem shot up and began to grow; and grew so fast that
in five minutes it was a great tree and we were sitting in the
shade of it. There was a murmur of wonder, then all looked up and
saw a strange and pretty sight; for the branches were heavy with
fruits of many kinds and colors-oranges, grapes, bananas, peaches,
cherries, apricots and so on. Baskets were brought, and the unlad ing of the tree began; and the people crowded around Satan and
kissed his hand, and praised him, calling him the prince of jugglers.
The news went about the town, and everybody came running to see
the wonder-and they remembered to bring baskets, too. But the
tree was equal to the occasion; it put out new fruits as fast as any
were removed; baskets were filled by the score and by the hundred,
but always the supply remained undiminished. At last a foreigner in
white linen and sun-helmet arrived, and exclaimed angrily-

"Away from here! Clear out, you dogs; the tree is on my lands,
and is my property."

The natives put down their baskets and made humble obeisance.
Satan made humble obeisance, too, with his fingers to his forehead,
in the native way, and said-

"Please let them have their pleasure for an hour, sir-only that,
and no longer. Afterward you may forbid them; and you will still
have more fruit than you and the State together can consume in a
year."

This made the foreigner very angry, and he cried out-

"Who are you, you vagabond, to tell your betters what they may
do and what they mayn't!" and he struck Satan with his cane and
followed this error with a kick.

The fruits rotted on the branches, and the leaves withered and
fell.

The foreigner gazed at the bare limbs with the look of one who is
surprised, and not gratified. Satan said-

"Take good care of the tree, for its health and yours are bound up
together. It will never bear again, but if you tend it well it will live
long. Water its roots once in each hour every night-and do it
yourself, it must not be done by proxy, and to do it in daylight will
not answer. If you fail only once in any night, the tree will die, and
you likewise. Do not go home to your own country any more-you
would not reach there; make no business or pleasure engagements
which require you to go outside your gate at night-you cannot
afford the risk; do not rent or sell this place-it would be injudicious.

The foreigner was proud, and wouldn't beg, but I thought he looked as if he would like to. While he stood gazing at Satan, we
vanished away and landed in Ceylon.

I was sorry for that man; sorry Satan hadn't been his customary
self and killed him. It would have been a mercy. Satan overheard
the thought, and said-

"I would have done it, but for his wife, who has not offended
me. She is coming to him presently from their native land, Portugal.
She is well, but has not long to live, and has been yearning to see
him and persuade him to go back with her next year. She will die
without knowing he can't leave that place."

"He won't tell her?"

"He? He will not trust that secret with any one; he will reflect
that it could be revealed in sleep, in the hearing of some Portuguese
guest's servant, some time or other."

"Did none of those natives understand what you said to him?"

"None of them understood, but he will always be afraid that
some of them did. That fear will be a torture to him; for he has
been a harsh master to them. In his dreams he will imagine them
chopping his tree down. That will make his days uncomfortable-I
have already arranged for his nights."

It grieved me, though not sharply, to see him take such a malicious satisfaction in his plans for this foreigner.

"Does he believe what you told him, Satan?"

"He thought he didn't, but our vanishing helped. The tree,
where there had been no tree before-that helped. The insane and
uncanny variety of fruits-the sudden withering-all these things
are helps. Let him think as he may, reason as he may, one thing is
certain-he will water the tree. But between this and night he will
begin his changed career with a very natural precaution-for him."

"What is that?"

"He will fetch a priest to cast out the tree's devil. You are such a
humorous race-and don't suspect it."

"Will he tell the priest?"

"No. He will say a juggler from Bombay created it, and that he
wants the juggler's devil driven out of it, so that it will thrive and be fruitful again. The priest's incantations will fail; then the Portuguese will give up that scheme and get his watering-pot ready."

"But the priest will burn the tree. I know it; he will not allow it
to remain."

"Yes, and anywhere in Europe he would burn the man, too. But
in India the people are civilized, and these things will not happen.
The man will drive the priest away and take care of the tree."

I reflected a little, then said-

"Satan, you have given him a hard life, I think."

"Comparatively. It must not be mistaken for a holiday."

"What is the man doing now?"

"Sorrowing. Sorrowing, and getting ready for the night. He will
sit with his clothes on and an alarm-clock at his elbow. Last night
he slept in a bed for the last time in this life-at night, I mean."

"Satan, it is horrible!"

"Comparatively. To-morrow he will lay in fifteen alarm-clocks;
he will never trust his life to one, nor to half a dozen."

"What will he tell his wife when she comes?"

"Several quite excusable lies."

"Won't the alarm clocks disturb her, when they all go off at
once?"

"Along at first, yes. They will make her jump out of bed. Eight
times the first night. She will go and expostulate with her husband,
and complain that her sleep is too periodical. lle will explain-with
lies-saying he is engaged in important scientific experiments; and
he will plead with her to be patient with them and learn to love
them, for his sake. And he will pet her and persuade her. But this
cannot last for long."