The Mysterious Stranger Manuscripts (Literature) (58 page)

"FortyFour, aren't you afraid to speak like that about a god?"

"No. Why?"

"Because it's irreverent."

"No, it isn't."

"Why isn't it? What do you call irreverence?"

"Irreverence is another person's disrespect to your god; there isn't
any word that tells what your disrespect to his god is."

I studied it over and saw that it was the truth, but I hadn't ever
happened to look at it in that way before.

"Now then, August, to come back to Atia's dream. It beat every
soothsayer. None of them got it right. The real meaning of it
was—

The cat dashed in, excited, and said, "I heard Katzenyammer say
there's hell to pay down below!" and out she dashed again. I
jumped up, but 44 said-

"Sit down. Keep your head. There's no hurry. Things are working; I think we can have a good time. I have shut down the prophecy-works and prepared for it."

"The prophecy-works?"

"Yes. Where I come from, we-"

'Where do you co-'

It was as far as I could get. My jaw caught, there, and he gave
me a look and went on as if nothing had happened:

"Where I come from we have a gift which we get tired of, now
and then. We foresee everything that is going to happen, and so
when it happens there's nothing to it, don't you see? we don't get
any surprises. We can't shut down the prophecy-works there, but
we can here. That is one of the main reasons that I come here so
much. I do love surprises! I'm only a youth, and it's natural. I love
shows and spectacles, and stunning dramatics, and I love to astonish
people, and show off, and be and do all the gaudy things a boy loves
to be and do; and whenever I'm here and have got matters worked
up to where there is a good prospect to the fore, I shut down the
works and have a time! I've shut them down now, two hours ago,
and I don't know a thing that's ahead, any more than you do. That's
all-now we'll go. I wanted to tell you that. I had plans, but I've
thrown them aside. I haven't any now. I will let things go their own
way, and act as circumstances suggest. Then there will be surprises. They may be small ones, and nothing to you, because you are used
to them; but even the littlest ones are grand to me!"

The cat came racing in, greatly excited, and said-

"Oh, I'm so glad I'm in time! Shut the door-there's people
everywhere-don't let them see in. Dear magician, get a disguise,
you are in greater danger now than ever before. You have been
seen, and everybody knows it, everybody is watching for you, it was
most imprudent in you to show yourself. Do put on a disguise and
come with me, I know a place in the castle where they'll never find
you. Oh, please, please hurry! don't you hear the distant noises?
they're hunting for you-do please hurry!"

FortyFour was that gratified, you can't think! He said-

"There it is, you see! I hadn't any idea of it, any more than you!
And there'll be more-I just feel it."

"Oh, please don't stop to talk, but get the disguise! you don't
know what may happen any moment. Everybody is searching for
me, and for you, too, Duplicate, and for your Original; they've been
at it some time, and are coming to think all three of us is murdered-"

"Now I know what I'll do!" cried 44; "oh but we'll have the
gayest time! go on with your news!"

"-and Katrina is wild to get a chance at you because you burnt
up 44, which was the idol of her heart, and she's got a carving knife
three times as long as my tail, and is ambushed behind a marble
column in the great hall, and it's awful to see how savagely she
rakes it and whets it up and down that column and makes the
sparks fly, and darts her head out, with her eyes glaring, to see if she
can see you-oh, do get the disguise and come with me, quick! and
laws bless me, there's a conspiracy, and-"

"Oh, it's grand, August, it's just grand! and I didn't know a thing
about it, any more than you. What conspiracy are you talking
about, pussy?"

"It's the strikers, going to kill the Duplicates-I sat in Fischer's
lap and heard them talk the whole thing in whispers; and they've
got signs and grips and passwords and all that, so't they can tell which is themselves and which is other people, though I hope to
goodness if I can, not if I had a thousand such; do get the disguise
and come, I'm just ready to cry!"

"Oh, bother the disguise, I'm going just so, and if they offer to do
anything to me I will give them a piece of my mind."

And so he opened the door and started away, Mary following
him, with the tears running down, and saying-

"Oh, they won't care for your piece of mind-why will you be so
imprudent and throw your life away, and you know they'll abuse
me and bang me when you are gone!"

I became invisible and joined them.

IT WAS a dark, sour, gloomy morning, and bleak and cold, with a
slanting veil of powdery snow driving along, and a clamorous
hollow wind bellowing down the chimneys and rumbling around
the battlements and towers-just the right weather for the occasion, 44 said, nothing could improve it but an eclipse. That gave
him an idea, and he said he would do an eclipse; not a real one, but
an artificial one that nobody but Simon Newcomb could tell from
the original Jacobs-so he started it at once, and it certainly did
make those yawning old stone tunnels pretty dim and sepulchral,
and also of course it furnished an additional uncanniness and
muffledness to way-off footfalls, taking the harshness out of them
and the edge off their echoes, because when you walk on that kind
of eclipsy gloominess on a stone floor it squshes under the foot and
makes that dull effect which is so shuddery and uncomfortable in
these crumbly old castles where there has been such ages of cruelty
and captivity and murder and mystery. And to-night would be
Ghost-Night besides, and 44 did not forget to remember that, and
said he wished eclipses weren't so much trouble after sundown,
hanged if he wouldn't run this one all night, because it could be a
great help, and a lot of ghastly effects could be gotten out of it, because all the castle ghosts turn out then, on account of its coming
only every ten years, which makes it kind of select and distinguished, and still more so every Hundredth Year-which this one
was-because the best ghosts from many other castles come by
invitation, then, and take a hand at the great ball and banquet at
midnight, a good spectacle and full of interest, insomuch that 44
had come more than once on the Hundredth Night to see it, he
said, and it was very pathetic and interesting to meet up with
shadowy friends that way that you haven't seen for one or two
centuries and hear them tell the same mouldy things over again
that they've told you several times before; because they don't have
anything fresh, the way they are situated, poor things. And besides,
he was going to make this the swellest Hundredth Night that had
been celebrated in this castle in twelve centuries, and said he was
inviting A 1 ghosts from everywhere in the world and from all the
ages, past and future, and each could bring a friend if he likedany friend, character no object, just so he is dead-and if I wanted
to invite some I could, he hoped to accumulate a thousand or two,
and make this the Hundredth Night of Hundredth Nights, and
discourage competition for a thousand years.

We didn't see a soul, all the murky way from my door to the
central grand staircase and half way down it-then we began to see
plenty of people, our own and men from the village-and they
were armed, and stood in two ranks, waiting, a double fence across
the spacious hall-for the magician to pass between, if it might
please him to try it; and Katrina was there, between the fences,
grim and towering and soldierly, and she was watching and waiting, with her knife. I glanced back, by chance, and there was also a
living fence behind! dim forms, men who had been keeping watch
in ambush, and had silently closed in upon the magician's tracks as
he passed along. Mary G. had apparently had enough of this grisly
journey-she was gone.

When the people below saw that their plans had succeeded, and
that their quarry was in the trap they had set, they set up a loud
cheer of exultation, but it didn't seem to me to ring true; there was
a doubtful note in it, and I thought likely those folks were not as glad they had caught their bird as they were letting on to be; and
they kept crossing themselves industriously; I took that for a sign,
too.

FortyFour moved steadily down. When he was on the last step
there was turmoil down the hall, and a volley of shoutings, with
cries of "make way-Father Adolf is come!" then he burst panting
through one of the ranks and threw himself in the way, just as
Katrina was plunging for the disguised 44, and stormed out-

"Stop her, everybody! Donkeys, would you let her butcher him,
and cheat the Church's fires!"

They jumped for Katrina, and in a moment she was struggling in
the jumble of swaying forms, with nothing visible above it but her
head and her long arm with the knife in it; and her strong voice
was pouring out her feelings with energy, and easily making itself
heard above the general din and the priest's commands:

"Let me at him-he burnt my child, my darling!" .... "Keep
her off, men, keep her off!" . . . . "He is not the Church's, his
blood is mine by rights-out of my way! I will have it!" ... .
"Back! woman, back, I tell you-force her back, men, have you no
strength? are you nothing but boys?" . . . . "A hundred of you
shan't stay me, woman though I be!"

And sure enough, with one massy surge she wrenched herself
free, and flourished her knife, and bent her head and body forward
like a foot-racer and came charging down the living lane through
the gathering darkness—

Then suddenly there was a great light! she lifted her head and
caught it full in her swarthy face, which it transfigured with its
white glory, as it did also all that place, and its marble pillars, and
the frightened people, and Katrina dropped her knife and fell to
her knees, with her hands clasped, everybody doing the same; and
so there they were, all kneeling, like that, with hands thrust forward
or clasped, and they and the stately columns all awash in that
unearthly splendor; and there where the magician had stood, stood
44 now, in his supernal beauty and his gracious youth; and it was
from him that that flooding light came, for all his form was clothed
in that immortal fire, and flashing like the sun; and Katrina crept on her knees to him, and bent down her old head and kissed his
feet, and he bent down and patted her softly on the shoulder and
touched his lips to the gray hair-and was gone!-and for two or
three minutes you were so blinded you couldn't see your next
neighbor in that submerging black darkness. Then after that it
was better, and you could make out the murky forms, some still
kneeling, some lying prone in a swoon, some staggering about,
here and there, with their hands pressed over their eyes, as if that
light had hurt them and they were in pain. Katrina was wandering
off, on unsteady feet, and her knife was lying there in the midst.

It was good he thought of the eclipse, it helped out ever so much;
the effects would have been fine and great in any case, but the
eclipse made them grand and stunning-just letter-perfect, as it
seemed to me; and he said himself it beat Barnum and Bailey hands
down, and was by as much as several shades too good for the
provinces-which was all Sanscrit to me, and hadn't any meaning
even in Sanscrit I reckon, but was invented for the occasion, because it had a learned sound, and he liked sound better than sense
as a rule. There's been others like that, but he was the worst.

I judged it would take those people several hours to get over that,
and accumulate their wits again and get their bearings, for it had
knocked the whole bunch dizzy; meantime there wouldn't be anything doing. I must put in the time some way until they should be
in a condition to resume business at the old stand. I went to my
room and put on my flesh and stretched myself out on a lounge
before the fire with a book, first setting the door ajar, so that the cat
could fetch news if she got hold of any, which I wished she might;
but in a little while I was asleep. I did not stir again until ten at
night. I woke then, and found the cat finishing her supper, and my
own ready on the table and hot; and very welcome, for I hadn't
eaten anything since breakfast. Mary came and occupied a chair at
my board, and washed herself and delivered her news while I ate.
She had witnessed the great transformation scene, and had been so
astonished by it and so interested in it that she did not wait to see
the end, but went up a chimney and stayed there half an hour
freezing, until somebody started a fire under her, and then she was thankful and very comfortable. But it got too comfortable, and she
climbed out and came down a skylight stairway and went visiting
around, and a little while ago she caught a rat, and did it as easy as
nothing, and would teach me how, sometime, if I cared for such
things; but she didn't eat it, it wasn't a fresh rat, or was out of
season or something, but it reminded her that she was hungry, so
she came home. Then she said-

"If you like to be astonished, I can astonish you. The magician
isn't dead!"

I threw my hands up and did the astonishment-act like an old
expert, crying out-

"Mary Florence Fortescue, what can you mean!"

She was delighted, and exclaimed-

"There, it's just as I said! I told him you wouldn't ever believe it;
but I can lay my paw on my heart, just so, and I wish I may never
stir if I haven't seen him!-seen him, you hear?-and he's just as
alive as ever he was since the day he was born!"

"Oh, go'long, you're deceiving me!"

She was almost beside herself with joy over the success of her
astonisher, and said-

"Oh, it's lovely, it's too lovely, and just as I said it would be-I
told him you wouldn't, and it's come out just so!"