第80章 A Thumb-print and What Came of It(1)

WE were approaching Napoleon,Arkansas.So I began to think about my errand there.Time,noonday;and bright and sunny.

This was bad--not best,anyway;for mine was not (preferably)a noonday kind of errand.The more I thought,the more that fact pushed itself upon me--now in one form,now in another.Finally,it took the form of a distinct question:is it good common sense to do the errand in daytime,when,by a little sacrifice of comfort and inclination,you can have night for it,and no inquisitive eyes around.This settled it.

Plain question and plain answer make the shortest road out of most perplexities.

I got my friends into my stateroom,and said I was sorry to create annoyance and disappointment,but that upon reflection it really seemed best that we put our luggage ashore and stop over at Napoleon.

Their disapproval was prompt and loud;their language mutinous.

Their main argument was one which has always been the first to come to the surface,in such cases,since the beginning of time:

'But you decided and AGREED to stick to this boat,etc.;as if,having determined to do an unwise thing,one is thereby bound to go ahead and make TWO unwise things of it,by carrying out that determination.

I tried various mollifying tactics upon them,with reasonably good success:

under which encouragement,I increased my efforts;and,to show them that Ihad not created this annoying errand,and was in no way to blame for it,I presently drifted into its history--substantially as follows:

Toward the end of last year,I spent a few months in Munich,Bavaria.

In November I was living in Fraulein Dahlweiner's PENSION,1a,Karlstrasse;but my working quarters were a mile from there,in the house of a widow who supported herself by taking lodgers.

She and her two young children used to drop in every morning and talk German to me--by request.One day,during a ramble about the city,I visited one of the two establishments where the Government keeps and watches corpses until the doctors decide that they are permanently dead,and not in a trance state.It was a grisly place,that spacious room.

There were thirty-six corpses of adults in sight,stretched on their backs on slightly slanted boards,in three long rows--all of them with wax-white,rigid faces,and all of them wrapped in white shrouds.

Along the sides of the room were deep alcoves,like bay windows;and in each of these lay several marble-visaged babes,utterly hidden and buried under banks of fresh flowers,all but their faces and crossed hands.

Around a finger of each of these fifty still forms,both great and small,was a ring;and from the ring a wire led to the ceiling,and thence to a bell in a watch-room yonder,where,day and night,a watchman sits always alert and ready to spring to the aid of any of that pallid company who,waking out of death,shall make a movement--for any,even the slightest,movement will twitch the wire and ring that fearful bell.I imagined myself a death-sentinel drowsing there alone,far in the dragging watches of some wailing,gusty night,and having in a twinkling all my body stricken to quivering jelly by the sudden clamor of that awful summons!So I inquired about this thing;asked what resulted usually?if the watchman died,and the restored corpse came and did what it could to make his last moments easy.

But I was rebuked for trying to feed an idle and frivolous curiosity in so solemn and so mournful a place;and went my way with a humbled crest.

Next morning I was telling the widow my adventure,when she exclaimed--'Come with me!I have a lodger who shall tell you all you want to know.

He has been a night-watchman there.'

He was a living man,but he did not look it.He was abed,and had his head propped high on pillows;his face was wasted and colorless,his deep-sunken eyes were shut;his hand,lying on his breast,was talon-like,it was so bony and long-fingered.The widow began her introduction of me.The man's eyes opened slowly,and glittered wickedly out from the twilight of their caverns;he frowned a black frown;he lifted his lean hand and waved us peremptorily away.But the widow kept straight on,till she had got out the fact that I was a stranger and an American.

The man's face changed at once;brightened,became even eager--and the next moment he and I were alone together.

I opened up in cast-iron German;he responded in quite flexible English;thereafter we gave the German language a permanent rest.

This consumptive and I became good friends.I visited him every day,and we talked about everything.At least,about everything but wives and children.

Let anybody's wife or anybody's child be mentioned,and three things always followed:the most gracious and loving and tender light glimmered in the man's eyes for a moment;faded out the next,and in its place came that deadly look which had flamed there the first time I ever saw his lids unclose;thirdly,he ceased from speech,there and then for that day;lay silent,abstracted,and absorbed;apparently heard nothing that I said;took no notice of my good-byes,and plainly did not know,by either sight or hearing,when I left the room.

When I had been this Karl Ritter's daily and sole intimate during two months,he one day said,abruptly--'I will tell you my story.'

Then he went on as follows:--

I have never given up,until now.But now I have given up.

I am going to die.I made up my mind last night that it must be,and very soon,too.You say you are going to revisit your river,by-and-bye,when you find opportunity.

Very well;that,together with a certain strange experience which fell to my lot last night,determines me to tell you my history--for you will see Napoleon,Arkansas;and for my sake you will stop there,and do a certain thing for me--a thing which you will willingly undertake after you shall have heard my narrative.

Let us shorten the story wherever we can,for it will need it,being long.