The Mysterious Stranger, and Other Stories
down in ruins about him; he saw Caesar's death; he told of the daily
life in heaven; he had seen the damned writhing in the red waves of
hell; and he made us see all these things, and it was as if we were on
the spot and looking at them with our own eyes. And we felt them,
too, but there was no sign that they were anything to him beyond mere
entertainments. Those visions of hell, those poor babes and women and
girls and lads and men shrieking and supplicating in anguish--why, we
could hardly bear it, but he was as bland about it as if it had been so
many imitation rats in an artificial fire.
And always when he was talking about men and women here on the earth
and their doings--even their grandest and sublimest--we were secretly
ashamed, for his manner showed that to him they and their doings were
of paltry poor consequence; often you would think he was talking about
flies, if you didn't know. Once he even said, in so many words, that
our people down here were quite interesting to him, notwithstanding they
were so dull and ignorant and trivial and conceited, and so diseased and
rickety, and such a shabby, poor, worthless lot all around. He said it
in a quite matter-of-course way and without bitterness, just as a person
might talk about bricks or manure or any other thing that was of no
consequence and hadn't feelings. I could see he meant no offense, but in
my thoughts I set it down as not very good manners.
“Manners!” he said. “Why, it is merely the truth, and truth is good
manners; manners are a fiction. The castle is done. Do you like it?”
Any one would have been obliged to like it. It was lovely to look at,
it was so shapely and fine, and so cunningly perfect in all its
particulars, even to the little flags waving from the turrets. Satan
said we must put the artillery in place now, and station the halberdiers
and display the cavalry. Our men and horses were a spectacle to see,
they were so little like what they were intended for; for, of course, we
had no art in making such things. Satan said they were the worst he
had seen; and when he touched them and made them alive, it was just
ridiculous the way they acted, on account of their legs not being of
uniform lengths. They reeled and sprawled around as if they were drunk,
and endangered everybody's lives around them, and finally fell over and
lay helpless and kicking. It made us all laugh, though it was a shameful
thing to see. The guns were charged with dirt, to fire a salute, but
they were so crooked and so badly made that they all burst when they
went off, and killed some of the gunners and crippled the others. Satan
said we would have a storm now, and an earthquake, if we liked, but
we must stand off a piece, out of danger. We wanted to call the people
away, too, but he said never mind them; they were of no consequence, and
we could make more, some time or other, if we needed them.
A small storm-cloud began to settle down black over the castle, and the
miniature lightning and thunder began to play, and the ground to quiver,
and the wind to pipe and wheeze, and the rain to fall, and all the
people flocked into the castle for shelter. The cloud settled down
blacker and blacker, and one could see the castle only dimly through it;
the lightning blazed out flash upon flash and pierced the castle and set
it on fire, and the flames shone out red and fierce through the cloud,
and the people came flying out, shrieking, but Satan brushed them back,
paying no attention to our begging and crying and imploring; and in
the midst of the howling of the wind and volleying of the thunder the
magazine blew up, the earthquake rent the ground wide, and the castle's
wreck and ruin tumbled into the chasm, which swallowed it from sight,
and closed upon it, with all that innocent life, not one of the five
hundred poor creatures escaping. Our hearts were broken; we could not
keep from crying.
“Don't cry,” Satan said; “they were of no value.”
“But they are gone to hell!”
“Oh, it is no matter; we can make plenty more.”
It was of no use to try to move him; evidently he was wholly without
feelings, and could not understand. He was full of bubbling spirits, and
as gay as if this were a wedding instead of a fiendish massacre. And
he was bent on making us feel as he did, and of course his magic
accomplished his desire. It was no trouble to him; he did whatever he
pleased with us. In a little while we were dancing on that grave, and
he was playing to us on a strange, sweet instrument which he took out
of his pocket; and the music--but there is no music like that, unless
perhaps in heaven, and that was where he brought it from, he said. It
made one mad, for pleasure; and we could not take our eyes from him, and
the looks that went out of our eyes came from our hearts, and their dumb
speech was worship. He brought the dance from heaven, too, and the bliss
of paradise was in it.
Presently he said he must go away on an errand. But we could not bear
the thought of it, and clung to him, and pleaded with him to stay; and
that pleased him, and he said so, and said he would not go yet, but
would wait a little while and we would sit down and talk a few minutes
longer; and he told us Satan was only his real name, and he was to be
known by it to us alone, but he had chosen another one to be called
by in the presence of others; just a common one, such as people
have--Philip Traum.
It sounded so odd and mean for such a being! But it was his decision,
and we said nothing; his decision was sufficient.
We had seen wonders this day; and my thoughts began to run on the
pleasure it would be to tell them when I got home, but he noticed those
thoughts, and said:
“No, all these matters are a secret among us four. I do not mind your
trying to tell them, if you like, but I will protect your tongues, and
nothing of the secret will escape from them.”
It was a disappointment, but it couldn't be helped, and it cost us a
sigh or two. We talked pleasantly along, and he was always reading our
thoughts and responding to them, and it seemed to me that this was the
most wonderful of all the things he did, but he interrupted my musings
and said:
“No, it would be wonderful for you, but it is not wonderful for me. I
am not limited like you. I am not subject to human conditions. I can
measure and understand your human weaknesses, for I have studied them;
but I have none of them. My flesh is not real, although it would seem
firm to your touch; my clothes are not real; I am a spirit. Father Peter
is coming.” We looked around, but did not see any one. “He is not in
sight yet, but you will see him presently.”
“Do you know him, Satan?”
“No.”
“Won't you talk with him when he comes? He is not ignorant and dull,
like us, and he would so like to talk with you. Will you?”
“Another time, yes, but not now. I must go on my errand after a little.
There he is now; you can see him. Sit still, and don't say anything.”
We looked up and saw Father Peter approaching through the chestnuts. We
three were sitting together in the grass, and Satan sat in front of
us in the path. Father Peter came slowly along with his head down,
thinking, and stopped within a couple of yards of us and took off his
hat and got out his silk handkerchief, and stood there mopping his face
and looking as if he were going to speak to us, but he didn't. Presently
he muttered, “I can't think what brought me here; it seems as if I were
in my study a minute ago--but I suppose I have been dreaming along for
an hour and have come all this stretch without noticing; for I am not
myself in these troubled days.” Then he went mumbling along to himself
and walked straight through Satan, just as if nothing were there. It
made us catch our breath to see it. We had the impulse to cry out, the
way you nearly always do when a startling thing happens, but something
mysteriously restrained us and we remained quiet, only breathing fast.
Then the trees hid Father Peter after a little, and Satan said:
“It is as I told you--I am only a spirit.”
“Yes, one perceives it now,” said Nikolaus, “but we are not spirits. It
is plain he did not see you, but were we invisible, too? He looked at
us, but he didn't seem to see us.”
“No, none of us was visible to him, for I wished it so.”
It seemed almost too good to be true, that we were actually seeing these
romantic and wonderful things, and that it was not a dream. And there he
sat, looking just like anybody--so natural and simple and charming, and
chatting along again the same as ever, and--well, words cannot make you
understand what we felt. It was an ecstasy; and an ecstasy is a thing
that will not go into words; it feels like music, and one cannot tell
about music so that another person can get the feeling of it. He was
back in the old ages once more now, and making them live before us. He
had seen so much, so much! It was just a wonder to look at him and try
to think how it must seem to have such experience behind one.
But it made you seem sorrowfully trivial, and the creature of a day, and
such a short and paltry day, too. And he didn't say anything to raise up
your drooping pride--no, not a word. He always spoke of men in the same
old indifferent way--just as one speaks of bricks and manure-piles and
such things; you could see that they were of no consequence to him, one
way or the other. He didn't mean to hurt us, you could see that; just as
we don't mean to insult a brick when we disparage it; a brick's emotions
are nothing to us; it never occurs to us to think whether it has any or
not.
Once when he was bunching the most illustrious kings and conquerors
and poets and prophets and pirates and beggars together--just a
brick-pile--I was shamed into putting in a word for man, and asked
him why he made so much difference between men and himself. He had to
struggle with that a moment; he didn't seem to understand how I could
ask such a strange question. Then he said:
“The difference between man and me? The difference between a mortal and
an immortal? between a cloud and a spirit?” He picked up a wood-louse
that was creeping along a piece of bark: “What is the difference between
Caesar and this?”
I said, “One cannot compare things which by their nature and by the
interval between them are not comparable.”
“You have answered your own question,” he said. “I will expand it. Man
is made of dirt--I saw him made. I am not made of dirt. Man is a
museum of diseases, a home of impurities; he comes to-day and is
gone to-morrow; he begins as dirt and departs as stench; I am of the
aristocracy of the Imperishables. And man has the Moral Sense. You
understand? He has the moral Sense. That would seem to be difference
enough between us, all by itself.”
He stopped there, as if that settled the matter. I was sorry, for at
that time I had but a dim idea of what the Moral Sense was. I merely
knew that we were proud of having it, and when he talked like that about
it, it wounded me, and I felt as a girl feels who thinks her dearest
finery is being admired and then overhears strangers making fun of it.
For a while we were all silent, and I, for one, was depressed. Then
Satan began to chat again, and soon he was sparkling along in such a
cheerful and vivacious vein that my spirits rose once more. He told some
very cunning things that put us in a gale of laughter; and when he was
telling about the time that Samson tied the torches to the foxes' tails
and set them loose in the Philistines' corn, and Samson sitting on the
fence slapping his thighs and laughing, with the tears running down his
cheeks, and lost his balance and fell off the fence, the memory of that
picture got him to laughing, too, and we did have a most lovely and
jolly time. By and by he said:
“I am going on my errand now.”