The Mysterious Stranger Manuscripts (Literature) (55 page)

"Turn again, please, if you will be so good . . . . Thank you
kindly."

I was to inspect the final detail, now-mentality. I had put it last, for I was reluctant, afraid, doubtful. Of course one glance was
enough-I was expecting that. It saddened me: he was of a loftier
world than I, he moved in regions where I could not tread, with my
earth-shod feet. I wished I had left that detail alone.

"Come and sit down," I said, "and tell me what it is. You wish to
speak with me about something?"

"Yes," he said, seating himself, "if you will kindly listen."

I gave a moment's thought to my defence, as regards the impending reproach, and was ready. He began, in a voice and manner
which were in accord with the sadness which sat upon his young
face-

"The master has been to me and has charged me with profaning
the sanctity of his niece's chamber."

It was a strange place to stop, but there he stopped, and looked
wistfully at me, just as a person might stop in a dream, and wait for
another person to take up the matter there, without any definite
text to talk to. I had to say something, and so for lack of anything
better to offer, I said-

"I am truly sorry, and I hope you will be able to convince him
that he is mistaken. You can, can't you?"

"Convince him?" he answered, looking at me quite vacantly,
"Why should I wish to convince him?"

I felt pretty vacant myself, now. It was a most unlooked-for
question. If I had guessed a week I should not have hit upon that
one. I said-and it was the only thing a body would ever think of
saying-

"But you do, don't you?"

The look he gave me was a look of compassion, if I know the
signs. It seemed to say, gently, kindly, but clearly, "alas, this poor
creature doesn't know anything." Then he uttered his answer-

"Wh-y, no, I do not see that I have that wish. It-why, you see,
it isn't any matter."

"Good heavens! It isn't any matter whether you stand disgraced
or not?"

He shook his head, and said quite simply-

"No, it isn't any matter, it is of no consequence."

It was difficult to believe my ears. I said-

"Well, then, if disgrace is nothing to you, consider this point. If
the report gets around, it can mean disgrace for the young lady."

It had no effect that I could see! He said-

"Can it?" just as an idiot child might have said it.

"Can it? Why of course it can! You wouldn't want that to
happen, would you?"

"We-11," (reflectively), "I don't know. I don't see the bearing of
it.

"Oh, great guns, this infantile stu-this-this-why, it's perfectly disheartening! You love her, and yet you don't care whether
her good name is ruined or not?"

"Love her?" and he had the discouraged aspect of a person who is
trying to look through a fog and is not succeeding, "why, I don't
love her; what makes you think I do?"

"Well, I must say! Well, certainly this is too many for me. Why,
hang it, I know you've been courting her."

"Yes-oh, yes, that is true."

"Oh, it is, is it! Very well, then, how is it that you were courting
her and yet didn't love her?"

"No, it isn't that way. No, I loved her."

"Oh-go on, I'll take a breath or two-I don't know where I am,
I'm all at sea."

He said, placidly-

"Yes, I remember about that. I loved her. It had escaped me. No
-it hadn't escaped me; it was not important, and I was thinking of
something else."

"Tell me," I said, "is anything important to you?"

"Oh, yes!" he responded, with animation and a brightening face;
then the animation and the brightness passed, and he added, wearily, "but not these things."

Somehow, it touched me; it was like the moan of an exile. We
were silent a while, thinking, ruminating, then I said-

"Schwarz, I'm not able to make it out. It is a sweet young girl,
you certainly did love her, and-"

"Yes," he said, tranquilly, "it is quite true. I believe it was
yesterday . . . . yes, I think it was yesterday."

"Oh, you think it was! But of course it's not important. Dear me, why should it be?-a little thing like that. Now then, something
has changed it. What was it? What has happened?"

"Happened? Nothing, I think. Nothing that I know of."

"Well, then, why the devil .. . . oh,-great Scott, I'll never get
my wits back again! Why, look here, Schwarz, you wanted to marry
her!"

"Yes. Quite true. I think . . . . yesterday? Yes, I think it was
yesterday. I am to marry her to-day. I think it's to-day; anyway, it is
pretty soon. The master requires it. He has told me so."

"Well . . . . upon my word!"

"What is the matter?"

'Why, you are as indifferent about this as you are about everything else. You show no feeling whatever, you don't even show
interest. Come! surely you've got a heart hidden away somewhere;
open it up; give it air; show at least some little corner of it. Land, I
wish I were in your place! Don't you care whether you marry her or
not?"

"Care? Why, no, of course I don't. You do ask the strangest
questions! I wander, wander, wander! I try to make you out, I try to
understand you, but it's all fog, fog, fog-you're just a riddle,
nobody can understand you!"

Oh, the idea! the impudence of it! this to me!-from this frantic
chaos of unimaginable incomprehensibilities, who couldn't by any
chance utter so much as half a sentence that Satan himself could
make head or tail of!

"Oh, I like that!" I cried, flying out at him. "You can't understand me! Oh, but that is good! It's immortal! Why, look here,
when you came, I thought I knew what you came for-I thought I
knew all about it-I would have said you were coming to reproach
me for-for-"

I found it difficult to get it out, and so I left it in, and after a
pause, added-

"Why, Schwarz, you certainly had something on your mind
when you came-I could see it in your face-but if ever you've got
to it I've not discovered it-oh, not even a sign of it! You haven't
got to it, have you?"

"Oh, no!" he answered, with an outburst of very real energy.
"These things were of no sort of consequence. May I tell it now?
Oh, will you be good and hear me? I shall be so grateful, if you
will!"

"Why, certainly, and glad to! Come, now you're waking up, at
last! You've got a heart in you, sure enough, and plenty of feeling
-why, it bums in your eye like a star! Go ahead-I'm all interest,
all sympathy."

Oh, well, he was a different creature, now. All the fogs and
puzzlings and perplexities were gone from his face, and had left it
clear and full of life. He said-

"It was no idle errand that brought me. No, far from it! I came
with my heart in my mouth, I came to beg, to plead, to pray-to
beseech you, to implore you, to have mercy upon me!"

"Mercy-upon you?"

"Yes, mercy. Have mercy, oh, be merciful, and set me free!"

"Why, I-I-Schwarz, I don't understand. You say, yourself,
that if they want you to marry, you are quite indif-"

"Oh, not that! I care nothing for that-it is these bonds"stretching his arms aloft-"oh, free me from them; these bonds of
flesh-this decaying vile matter, this foul weight, and clog, and
burden, this loathsome sack of corruption in which my spirit is
imprisoned, her white wings bruised and soiled-oh, be merciful
and set her free! Plead for me with that malicious magic-mongerhe has been here-I saw him issue from this door-he will come
again-say you will be my friend, as well as brother! for brothers
indeed we are; the same womb was mother to us both, I live by you,
I perish when you die-brother, be my friend! plead with him to
take away this rotting flesh and set my spirit free! Oh, this human
life, this earthy life, this weary life! It is so groveling, and so mean;
its ambitions are so paltry, its prides so trivial, its vanities so childish; and the glories that it values and applauds-lord, how empty!
Oh, here I am a servant!-I who never served before; here I am a
slave-slave among little mean kings and emperors made of clothes,
the kings and emperors slaves themselves, to mud-built carrion that
are their slaves!

"To think you should think I came here concerned about those
other things-those inconsequentials! Why should they concern me,
a spirit of air, habitant of the august Empire of Dreams? We have no
morals; the angels have none; morals are for the impure; we have
no principles, those chains are for men. We love the lovely whom
we meet in dreams, we forget them the next day, and meet and love
their like. They are dream-creatures-no others are real. Disgrace?
We care nothing for disgrace, we do not know what it is. Crime?
we commit it every night, while you sleep; it is nothing to us. We
have no character, no one character, we have all characters; we are
honest in one dream, dishonest in the next; we fight in one battle
and flee from the next. We wear no chains, we cannot abide them;
we have no home, no prison, the universe is our province; we do not
know time, we do not know space-we live, and love, and labor,
and enjoy, fifty years in an hour, while you are sleeping, snoring,
repairing your crazy tissues; we circumnavigate your little globe
while you wink; we are not tied within horizons, like a dog with
cattle to mind, an emperor with human sheep to watch-we visit
hell, we roam in heaven, our playgrounds are the constellations and
the Milky Way. Oh, help, help! be my friend and brother in my
need-beseech the magician, beg him, plead with him; he will
listen, he will be moved, he will release me from this odious flesh!"

I was powerfully stirred-so moved, indeed, that in my pity for
him I brushed aside unheeded or but half-heeded the scoffs and
slurs which he had flung at my despised race, and jumped up and
seized him by both hands and wrung them passionately, declaring
that with all my heart and soul I would plead for him with the
magician, and would not rest from these labors until my prayers
should succeed or their continuance be peremptorily forbidden.

HE COULD not speak, for emotion; for the same cause my voice
forsook me; and so, in silence we grasped hands again; and that
grip, strong and warm, said for us what our tongues could not utter.
At that moment the cat entered, and stood looking at us. Under her grave gaze a shame-faced discomfort, a sense of embarrassment,
began to steal over me, just as would have been the case if she had
been a human being who had caught me in that gushy and sentimental situation, and I felt myself blushing. Was it because I was
aware that she had lately been that kind of a being? It annoyed me
to see that my brother was not similarly affected. And yet, why
mind it? didn't I already know that no human intelligence could
guess what occurrence would affect him and what event would
leave him cold? With an uncomfortable feeling of being critically
watched by the cat, I pressed him with clumsy courtesy into his seat
again, and slumped into my own.

The cat sat down. Still looking at us in that disconcerting way,
she tilted her head first to one side and then the other, inquiringly
and cogitatively, the way a cat does when she has struck the
unexpected and can't quite make out what she had better do
about it. Next she washed one side of her face, making such an
awkward and unscientific job of it that almost anybody would have
seen that she was either out of practice or didn't know how. She
stopped with the one side, and looked bored, and as if she had only
been doing it to put in the time, and wished she could think of
something else to do to put in some more time. She sat a while,
blinking drowsily, then she hit an idea, and looked as if she wondered she hadn't thought of it earlier. She got up and went visiting
around among the furniture and belongings, sniffing at each and
every article, and elaborately examining it. If it was a chair, she
examined it all around, then jumped up in it and sniffed all over its
seat and its back; if it was any other thing she could examine all
around, she examined it all around; if it was a chest and there was
room for her between it and the wall, she crowded herself in
behind there and gave it a thorough overhauling; if it was a tall
thing, like a washstand, she would stand on her hind toes and
stretch up as high as she could, and reach across and paw at the
toilet things and try to rake them to where she could smell them; if
it was the cupboard, she stood on her toes and reached up and
pawed the knob; if it was the table she would squat, and measure
the distance, and make a leap, and land in the wrong place, owing
to newness to the business; and, part of her going too far and sliding over the edge, she would scramble, and claw at things desperately,
and save herself and make good; then she would smell everything
on the table, and archly and daintily paw everything around that
was movable, and finally paw something off, and skip cheerfully
down and paw it some more, throwing herself into the prettiest
attitudes, rising on her hind feet and curving her front paws and
flirting her head this way and that and glancing down cunningly at
the object, then pouncing on it and spatting it half the length of
the room, and chasing it up and spatting it again, and again, and
racing after it and fetching it another smack-and so on and so on;
and suddenly she would tire of it and try to find some way to get to
the top of the cupboard or the wardrobe, and if she couldn't she
would look troubled and disappointed; and toward the last, when
you could see she was getting her bearings well lodged in her head
and was satisfied with the place and the arrangements, she relaxed
her intensities, and got to purring a little to herself, and praisefully
waving her tail between inspections-and at last she was donedone, and everything satisfactory and to her taste.

Being fond of cats, and acquainted with their ways, if I had been
a stranger and a person had told me that this cat had spent half an
hour in that room before, but hadn't happened to think to examine
it until now, I should have been able to say with conviction, "Keep
an eye on her, that's no orthodox cat, she's an imitation, there's a
flaw in her make-up, you'll find she's bom out of wedlock or some
other arrested-development accident has happened, she's no true
Christian cat, if I know the signs."