 Chapter 8
Sleep would not come. It was not because I was proud of my
travels and excited about having been around the big world to China, and feeling
contemptuous of Bartel Sperling, "the traveler," as he called himself, and
looked down upon us others because he had been to Vienna once and was the only
Eseldorf boy who had made such a journey and seen the world's wonders. At
another time that would have kept me awake, but it did not affect me now. No, my
mind was filled with Nikolaus, my thoughts ran upon him only, and the good days
we had seen together at romps and frolics in the woods and the fields and the
river in the long summer days, and skating and sliding in the winter when our
parents thought we were in school. And now he was going out of this young life,
and the summers and winters would come and go, and we others would rove and play
as before, but his place would be vacant; we should see him no more. To-morrow
he would not suspect, but would be as he had always been, and it would shock me
to hear him laugh, and see him do lightsome and frivolous things, for to me he
would be a corpse, with waxen hands and dull eyes, and I should see the shroud
around his face; and next day he would not suspect, nor the next, and all the
time his handful of days would be wasting swiftly away and that awful thing
coming nearer and nearer, his fate closing steadily around him and no one
knowing it but Seppi and me. Twelve days -- only twelve days. It was awful to
think of. I noticed that in my thoughts I was not calling him by his familiar
names, Nick and Nicky, but was speaking of him by his full name, and reverently,
as one speaks of the dead. Also, as incident after incident of our comradeship
came thronging into my mind out of the past, I noticed that they were mainly
cases where I had wronged him or hurt him, and they rebuked me and reproached
me, and my heart was wrung with remorse, just as it is when we remember our
unkindnesses to friends who have passed beyond the veil, and we wish we could
have them back again, if only for a moment, so that we could go on our knees to
them and say, "Have pity, and forgive."
Once when we were nine years old he went a long errand of
nearly two miles for the fruiterer, who gave him a splendid big apple for
reward, and he was flying home with it, almost beside himself with astonishment
and delight, and I met him, and he let me look at the apple, not thinking of
treachery, and I ran off with it, eating it as I ran, he following me and
begging; and when he overtook me I offered him the core, which was all that was
left; and I laughed. Then he turned away, crying, and said he had meant to give
it to his little sister. That smote me, for she was slowly getting well of a
sickness, and it would have been a proud moment for him, to see her joy and
surprise and have her caresses. But I was ashamed to say I was ashamed, and only
said something rude and mean, to pretend I did not care, and he made no reply in
words, but there was a wounded look in his face as he turned away toward his
home which rose before me many times in after years, in the night, and
reproached me and made me ashamed again. It had grown dim in my mind, by and by,
then it disappeared; but it was back now, and not dim.
Once at school, when we were eleven, I upset my ink and
spoiled four copy-books, and was in danger of severe punishment; but I put it
upon him, and he got the whipping.
And only last year I had cheated him in a trade, giving
him a large fish-hook which was partly broken through for three small sound
ones. The first fish he caught broke the hook, but he did not know I was
blamable, and he refused to take back one of the small hooks which my conscience
forced me to offer him, but said, "A trade is a trade; the hook was bad, but
that was not your fault."
No, I could not sleep. These little, shabby wrongs
upbraided me and tortured me, and with a pain much sharper than one feels when
the wrongs have been done to the living. Nikolaus was living, but no matter; he
was to me as one already dead. The wind was still moaning about the eaves, the
rain still pattering upon the panes.
In the morning I sought out Seppi and told him. It was
down by the river. His lips moved, but he did not say anything, he only looked
dazed and stunned, and his face turned very white. He stood like that a few
moments, the tears welling into his eyes, then he turned away and I locked my
arm in his and we walked along thinking, but not speaking. We crossed the bridge
and wandered through the meadows and up among the hills and the woods, and at
last the talk came and flowed freely, and it was all about Nikolaus and was a
recalling of the life we had lived with him. And every now and then Seppi said,
as if to himself:
"Twelve days! -- less than twelve days."
We said we must be with him all the time; we must have all
of him we could; the days were precious now. Yet we did not go to seek him. It
would be like meeting the dead, and we were afraid. We did not say it, but that
was what we were feeling. And so it gave us a shock when we turned a curve and
came upon Nikolaus face to face. He shouted, gaily:
"Hi-hi! What is the matter? Have you seen a ghost?"
We couldn't speak, but there was no occasion; he was
willing to talk for us all, for he had just seen Satan and was in high spirits
about it. Satan had told him about our trip to China, and he had begged Satan to
take him a journey, and Satan had promised. It was to be a far journey, and
wonderful and beautiful; and Nikolaus had begged him to take us, too, but he
said no, he would take us some day, maybe, but not now. Satan would come for him
on the 13th, and Nikolaus was already counting the hours, he was so impatient.
That was the fatal day. We were already counting the
hours, too.
We wandered many a mile, always following paths which had
been our favorites from the days when we were little, and always we talked about
the old times. All the blitheness was with Nikolaus; we others could not shake
off our depression. Our tone toward Nikolaus was so strangely gentle and tender
and yearning that he noticed it, and was pleased; and we were constantly doing
him deferential little offices of courtesy, and saying, "Wait, let me do that
for you," and that pleased him, too. I gave him seven fish-hooks -- all I had --
and made him take them; and Seppi gave him his new knife and a humming-top
painted red and yellow -- atonements for swindles practised upon him formerly,
as I learned later, and probably no longer remembered by Nikolaus now. These
things touched him, and he could not have believed that we loved him so; and his
pride in it and gratefulness for it cut us to the heart, we were so undeserving
of them. When we parted at last, he was radiant, and said he had never had such
a happy day.
As we walked along homeward, Seppi said, "We always prized
him, but never so much as now, when we are going to lose him."
Next day and every day we spent all of our spare time with
Nikolaus; and also added to it time which we (and he) stole from work and other
duties, and this cost the three of us some sharp scoldings, and some threats of
punishment. Every morning two of us woke with a start and a shudder, saying, as
the days flew along, "Only ten days left;" "only nine days left;" "only eight;"
"only seven." Always it was narrowing. Always Nikolaus was gay and happy, and
always puzzled because we were not. He wore his invention to the bone trying to
invent ways to cheer us up, but it was only a hollow success; he could see that
our jollity had no heart in it, and that the laughs we broke into came up
against some obstruction or other and suffered damage and decayed into a sigh.
He tried to find out what the matter was, so that he could help us out of our
trouble or make it lighter by sharing it with us; so we had to tell many lies to
deceive him and appease him.
But the most distressing thing of all was that he was
always making plans, and often they went beyond the 13th! Whenever that happened
it made us groan in spirit. All his mind was fixed upon finding some way to
conquer our depression and cheer us up; and at last, when he had but three days
to live, he fell upon the right idea and was jubilant over it -- a
boys-and-girls' frolic and dance in the woods, up there where we first met
Satan, and this was to occur on the 14th. It was ghastly, for that was his
funeral day. We couldn't venture to protest; it would only have brought a "Why?"
which we could not answer. He wanted us to help him invite his guests, and we
did it -- one can refuse nothing to a dying friend. But it was dreadful, for
really we were inviting them to his funeral.
It was an awful eleven days; and yet, with a lifetime
stretching back between to-day and then, they are still a grateful memory to me,
and beautiful. In effect they were days of companionship with one's sacred dead,
and I have known no comradeship that was so close or so precious. We clung to
the hours and the minutes, counting them as they wasted away, and parting with
them with that pain and bereavement which a miser feels who sees his hoard
filched from him coin by coin by robbers and is helpless to prevent it.
When the evening of the last day came we stayed out too
long; Seppi and I were in fault for that; we could not bear to part with
Nikolaus; so it was very late when we left him at his door. We lingered near
awhile, listening; and that happened which we were fearing. His father gave him
the promised punishment, and we heard his shrieks. But we listened only a
moment, then hurried away, remorseful for this thing which we had caused. And
sorry for the father, too; our thought being, "If he only knew -- if he only
knew!"
In the morning Nikolaus did not meet us at the appointed
place, so we went to his home to see what the matter was. His mother said:
"His father is out of all patience with these goings-on,
and will not have any more of it. Half the time when Nick is needed he is not to
be found; then it turns out that he has been gadding around with you two. His
father gave him a flogging last night. It always grieved me before, and many's
the time I have begged him off and saved him, but this time he appealed to me in
vain, for I was out of patience myself."
"I wish you had saved him just this one time," I said, my
voice trembling a little; "it would ease a pain in your heart to remember it
some day."
She was ironing at the time, and her back was partly
toward me. She turned about with a startled or wondering look in her face and
said, "What do you mean by that?"
I was not prepared, and didn't know anything to say; so it
was awkward, for she kept looking at me; but Seppi was alert and spoke up:
"Why, of course it would be pleasant to remember, for the
very reason we were out so late was that Nikolaus got to telling how good you
are to him, and how he never got whipped when you were by to save him; and he
was so full of it, and we were so full of the interest of it, that none of us
noticed how late it was getting."
"Did he say that? Did he?" and she put her apron to her
eyes.
"You can ask Theodor -- he will tell you the same."
"It is a dear, good lad, my Nick," she said. "I am sorry I
let him get whipped; I will never do it again. To think -- all the time I was
sitting here last night, fretting and angry at him, he was loving me and
praising me! Dear, dear, if we could only know! Then we shouldn't ever go wrong;
but we are only poor, dumb beasts groping around and making mistakes. I shan't
ever think of last night without a pang."
She was like all the rest; it seemed as if nobody could
open a mouth, in these wretched days, without saying something that made us
shiver. They were "groping around," and did not know what true, sorrowfully true
things they were saying by accident.
Seppi asked if Nikolaus might go out with us.
"I am sorry," she answered, "but he can't. To punish him
further, his father doesn't allow him to go out of the house to-day."
We had a great hope! I saw it in Seppi's eyes. We thought,
"If he cannot leave the house, he cannot be drowned." Seppi asked, to make sure:
"Must he stay in all day, or only the morning?"
"All day. It's such a pity, too; it's a beautiful day, and
he is so unused to being shut up. But he is busy planning his party, and maybe
that is company for him. I do hope he isn't too lonesome."
Seppi saw that in her eye which emboldened him to ask if
we might go up and help him pass his time.
"And welcome!" she said, right heartily. "Now I call that
real friendship, when you might be abroad in the fields and the woods, having a
happy time. You are good boys, I'll allow that, though you don't always find
satisfactory ways of improving it. Take these cakes -- for yourselves -- and
give him this one, from his mother."
The first thing we noticed when we entered Nikolaus's room
was the time -- a quarter to 10. Could that be correct? Only such a few minutes
to live! I felt a contraction at my heart. Nikolaus jumped up and gave us a glad
welcome. He was in good spirits over his plannings for his party and had not
been lonesome.
"Sit down," he said, "and look at what I've been doing.
And I've finished a kite that you will say is a beauty. It's drying, in the
kitchen; I'll fetch it."
He had been spending his penny savings in fanciful trifles
of various kinds, to go as prizes in the games, and they were marshaled with
fine and showy effect upon the table. He said:
"Examine them at your leisure while I get mother to touch
up the kite with her iron if it isn't dry enough yet."
Then he tripped out and went clattering down-stairs,
whistling.
We did not look at the things; we couldn't take any
interest in anything but the clock. We sat staring at it in silence, listening
to the ticking, and every time the minute-hand jumped we nodded recognition --
one minute fewer to cover in the race for life or for death. Finally Seppi drew
a deep breath and said:
"Two minutes to ten. Seven minutes more and he will pass
the death-point. Theodor, he is going to be saved! He's going to -- "
"Hush! I'm on needles. Watch the clock and keep still."
Five minutes more. We were panting with the strain and the
excitement. Another three minutes, and there was a footstep on the stair.
"Saved!" And we jumped up and faced the door.
The old mother entered, bringing the kite. "Isn't it a
beauty?" she said. "And, dear me, how he has slaved over it -- ever since
daylight, I think, and only finished it awhile before you came." She stood it
against the wall, and stepped back to take a view of it. "He drew the pictures
his own self, and I think they are very good. The church isn't so very good,
I'll have to admit, but look at the bridge -- any one can recognize the bridge
in a minute. He asked me to bring it up.... Dear me! it's seven minutes past
ten, and I -- "
"But where is he?"
"He? Oh, he'll be here soon; he's gone out a minute."
"Gone out?"
"Yes. Just as he came down-stairs little Lisa's mother
came in and said the child had wandered off somewhere, and as she was a little
uneasy I told Nikolaus to never mind about his father's orders -- go and look
her up.... Why, how white you two do look! I do believe you are sick. Sit down;
I'll fetch something. That cake has disagreed with you. It is a little heavy,
but I thought -- "
She disappeared without finishing her sentence, and we
hurried at once to the back window and looked toward the river. There was a
great crowd at the other end of the bridge, and people were flying toward that
point from every direction.
"Oh, it is all over -- poor Nikolaus! Why, oh, why did she
let him get out of the house!"
"Come away," said Seppi, half sobbing, "come quick -- we
can't bear to meet her; in five minutes she will know."
But we were not to escape. She came upon us at the foot of
the stairs, with her cordials in her hands, and made us come in and sit down and
take the medicine. Then she watched the effect, and it did not satisfy her; so
she made us wait longer, and kept upbraiding herself for giving us the
unwholesome cake.
Presently the thing happened which we were dreading. There
was a sound of tramping and scraping outside, and a crowd came solemnly in, with
heads uncovered, and laid the two drowned bodies on the bed.
"Oh, my God!" that poor mother cried out, and fell on her
knees, and put her arms about her dead boy and began to cover the wet face with
kisses. "Oh, it was I that sent him, and I have been his death. If I had obeyed,
and kept him in the house, this would not have happened. And I am rightly
punished; I was cruel to him last night, and him begging me, his own mother, to
be his friend."
And so she went on and on, and all the women cried, and
pitied her, and tried to comfort her, but she could not forgive herself and
could not be comforted, and kept on saying if she had not sent him out he would
be alive and well now, and she was the cause of his death.
It shows how foolish people are when they blame themselves
for anything they have done. Satan knows, and he said nothing happens that your
first act hasn't arranged to happen and made inevitable; and so, of your own
motion you can't ever alter the scheme or do a thing that will break a link.
Next we heard screams, and Frau Brandt came wildly plowing and plunging through
the crowd with her dress in disorder and hair flying loose, and flung herself
upon her dead child with moans and kisses and pleadings and endearments; and by
and by she rose up almost exhausted with her outpourings of passionate emotion,
and clenched her fist and lifted it toward the sky, and her tear-drenched face
grew hard and resentful, and she said:
"For nearly two weeks I have had dreams and presentiments
and warnings that death was going to strike what was most precious to me, and
day and night and night and day I have groveled in the dirt before Him praying
Him to have pity on my innocent child and save it from harm -- and here is His answer!"
Why, He had saved it from harm -- but she did not know.
She wiped the tears from her eyes and cheeks, and stood
awhile gazing down at the child and caressing its face and its hair with her
hands; then she spoke again in that bitter tone: "But in His hard heart is no
compassion. I will never pray again."
She gathered her dead child to her bosom and strode away,
the crowd falling back to let her pass, and smitten dumb by the awful words they
had heard. Ah, that poor woman! It is as Satan said, we do not know good fortune
from bad, and are always mistaking the one for the other. Many a time since I
have heard people pray to God to spare the life of sick persons, but I have
never done it.
Both funerals took place at the same time in our little
church next day. Everybody was there, including the party guests. Satan was
there, too; which was proper, for it was on account of his efforts that the
funerals had happened. Nikolaus had departed this life without absolution, and a
collection was taken up for masses, to get him out of purgatory. Only two-thirds
of the required money was gathered, and the parents were going to try to borrow
the rest, but Satan furnished it. He told us privately that there was no
purgatory, but he had contributed in order that Nikolaus's parents and their
friends might be saved from worry and distress. We thought it very good of him,
but he said money did not cost him anything.
At the graveyard the body of little Lisa was seized for
debt by a carpenter to whom the mother owed fifty groschen for work done the
year before. She had never been able to pay this, and was not able now. The
carpenter took the corpse home and kept it four days in his cellar, the mother
weeping and imploring about his house all the time; then he buried it in his
brother's cattle-yard, without religious ceremonies. It drove the mother wild
with grief and shame, and she forsook her work and went daily about the town,
cursing the carpenter and blaspheming the laws of the emperor and the church,
and it was pitiful to see. Seppi asked Satan to interfere, but he said the
carpenter and the rest were members of the human race and were acting quite
neatly for that species of animal. He would interfere if he found a horse acting
in such a way, and we must inform him when we came across that kind of horse
doing that kind of human thing, so that he could stop it. We believed this was
sarcasm, for of course there wasn't any such horse.
But after a few days we found that we could not abide that
poor woman's distress, so we begged Satan to examine her several possible
careers, and see if he could not change her, to her profit, to a new one. He
said the longest of her careers as they now stood gave her forty-two years to
live, and her shortest one twenty-nine, and that both were charged with grief
and hunger and cold and pain. The only improvement he could make would be to
enable her to skip a certain three minutes from now; and he asked us if he
should do it. This was such a short time to decide in that we went to pieces
with nervous excitement, and before we could pull ourselves together and ask for
particulars he said the time would be up in a few more seconds; so then we
gasped out, "Do it!"
"It is done," he said; "she was going around a corner; I
have turned her back; it has changed her career."
"Then what will happen, Satan?"
"It is happening now. She is having words with Fischer,
the weaver. In his anger Fischer will straightway do what he would not have done
but for this accident. He was present when she stood over her child's body and
uttered those blasphemies."
"What will he do?"
"He is doing it now -- betraying her. In three days she
will go to the stake."
We could not speak; we were frozen with horror, for if we
had not meddled with her career she would have been spared this awful fate.
Satan noticed these thoughts, and said:
"What you are thinking is strictly human-like -- that is
to say, foolish. The woman is advantaged. Die when she might, she would go to
heaven. By this prompt death she gets twenty-nine years more of heaven than she
is entitled to, and escapes twenty-nine years of misery here."
A moment before we were bitterly making up our minds that
we would ask no more favors of Satan for friends of ours, for he did not seem to
know any way to do a person a kindness but by killing him; but the whole aspect
of the case was changed now, and we were glad of what we had done and full of
happiness in the thought of it.
After a little I began to feel troubled about Fischer, and
asked, timidly, "Does this episode change Fischer's life-scheme, Satan?"
"Change it? Why, certainly. And radically. If he had not
met Frau Brandt awhile ago he would die next year, thirty-four years of age. Now
he will live to be ninety, and have a pretty prosperous and comfortable life of
it, as human lives go."
We felt a great joy and pride in what we had done for
Fischer, and were expecting Satan to sympathize with this feeling; but he showed
no sign and this made us uneasy. We waited for him to speak, but he didn't; so,
to assuage our solicitude we had to ask him if there was any defect in Fischer's
good luck. Satan considered the question a moment, then said, with some
hesitation:
"Well, the fact is, it is a delicate point. Under his
several former possible life-careers he was going to heaven."
We were aghast. "Oh, Satan! and under this one -- "
"There, don't be so distressed. You were sincerely trying
to do him a kindness; let that comfort you."
"Oh, dear, dear, that cannot comfort us. You ought to have
told us what we were doing, then we wouldn't have acted so."
But it made no impression on him. He had never felt a pain
or a sorrow, and did not know what they were, in any really informing way. He
had no knowledge of them except theoretically -- that is to say, intellectually.
And of course that is no good. One can never get any but a loose and ignorant
notion of such things except by experience. We tried our best to make him
comprehend the awful thing that had been done and how we were compromised by it,
but he couldn't seem to get hold of it. He said he did not think it important
where Fischer went to; in heaven he would not be missed, there were "plenty
there." We tried to make him see that he was missing the point entirely; that
Fischer, and not other people, was the proper one to decide about the importance
of it; but it all went for nothing; he said he did not care for Fischer -- there
were plenty more Fischers.
The next minute Fischer went by on the other side of the
way, and it made us sick and faint to see him, remembering the doom that was
upon him, and we the cause of it. And how unconscious he was that anything had
happened to him! You could see by his elastic step and his alert manner that he
was well satisfied with himself for doing that hard turn for poor Frau Brandt.
He kept glancing back over his shoulder expectantly. And, sure enough, pretty
soon Frau Brandt followed after, in charge of the officers and wearing jingling
chains. A mob was in her wake, jeering and shouting, "Blasphemer and heretic!"
and some among them were neighbors and friends of her happier days. Some were
trying to strike her, and the officers were not taking as much trouble as they
might to keep them from it.
"Oh, stop them, Satan!" It was out before we remembered
that he could not interrupt them for a moment without changing their whole
after-lives. He puffed a little puff toward them with his lips and they began to
reel and stagger and grab at the empty air; then they broke apart and fled in
every direction, shrieking, as if in intolerable pain. He had crushed a rib of
each of them with that little puff. We could not help asking if their life-chart
was changed.
"Yes, entirely. Some have gained years, some have lost
them. Some few will profit in various ways by the change, but only that few."
We did not ask if we had brought poor Fischer's luck to
any of them. We did not wish to know. We fully believed in Satan's desire to do
us kindnesses, but we were losing confidence in his judgment. It was at this
time that our growing anxiety to have him look over our life-charts and suggest
improvements began to fade out and give place to other interests.
For a day or two the whole village was a chattering
turmoil over Frau Brandt's case and over the mysterious calamity that had
overtaken the mob, and at her trial the place was crowded. She was easily
convicted of her blasphemies, for she uttered those terrible words again and
said she would not take them back. When warned that she was imperiling her life,
she said they could take it in welcome, she did not want it, she would rather
live with the professional devils in perdition than with these imitators in the
village. They accused her of breaking all those ribs by witchcraft, and asked
her if she was not a witch? She answered scornfully:
"No. If I had that power would any of you holy hypocrites
be alive five minutes? No; I would strike you all dead. Pronounce your sentence
and let me go; I am tired of your society."
So they found her guilty, and she was excommunicated and
cut off from the joys of heaven and doomed to the fires of hell; then she was
clothed in a coarse robe and delivered to the secular arm, and conducted to the
market-place, the bell solemnly tolling the while. We saw her chained to the
stake, and saw the first film of blue smoke rise on the still air. Then her hard
face softened, and she looked upon the packed crowd in front of her and said,
with gentleness:
"We played together once, in long-agone days when we were
innocent little creatures. For the sake of that, I forgive you."
We went away then, and did not see the fires consume her,
but we heard the shrieks, although we put our fingers in our ears. When they
ceased we knew she was in heaven, notwithstanding the excommunication; and we
were glad of her death and not sorry that we had brought it about.
One day, a little while after this, Satan appeared again.
We were always watching out for him, for life was never very stagnant when he
was by. He came upon us at that place in the woods where we had first met him.
Being boys, we wanted to be entertained; we asked him to do a show for us.
"Very well," he said; "would you like to see a history of
the progress of the human race? -- its development of that product which it
calls civilization?"
We said we should.
So, with a thought, he turned the place into the Garden of
Eden, and we saw Abel praying by his altar; then Cain came walking toward him
with his club, and did not seem to see us, and would have stepped on my foot if
I had not drawn it in. He spoke to his brother in a language which we did not
understand; then he grew violent and threatening, and we knew what was going to
happen, and turned away our heads for the moment; but we heard the crash of the
blows and heard the shrieks and the groans; then there was silence, and we saw
Abel lying in his blood and gasping out his life, and Cain standing over him and
looking down at him, vengeful and unrepentant.
Then the vision vanished, and was followed by a long
series of unknown wars, murders, and massacres. Next we had the Flood, and the
Ark tossing around in the stormy waters, with lofty mountains in the distance
showing veiled and dim through the rain. Satan said:
"The progress of your race was not satisfactory. It is to have another chance now."
The scene changed, and we saw Noah overcome with wine.
Next, we had Sodom and Gomorrah, and "the attempt to
discover two or three respectable persons there," as Satan described it. Next,
Lot and his daughters in the cave.
Next came the Hebraic wars, and we saw the victors
massacre the survivors and their cattle, and save the young girls alive and distribute them around.
Next we had Jael; and saw her slip into the tent and drive
the nail into the temple of her sleeping guest; and we were so close that when
the blood gushed out it trickled in a little, red stream to our feet, and we
could have stained our hands in it if we had wanted to.
Next we had Egyptian wars, Greek wars, Roman wars, hideous
drenchings of the earth with blood; and we saw the treacheries of the Romans
toward the Carthaginians, and the sickening spectacle of the massacre of those
brave people. Also we saw Caesar invade Britain -- "not that those barbarians
had done him any harm, but because he wanted their land, and desired to confer
the blessings of civilization upon their widows and orphans," as Satan explained.
Next, Christianity was born. Then ages of Europe passed in
review before us, and we saw Christianity and Civilization march hand in hand
through those ages, "leaving famine and death and desolation in their wake, and
other signs of the progress of the human race," as Satan observed.
And always we had wars, and more wars, and still other
wars -- all over Europe, all over the world. "Sometimes in the private interest
of royal families," Satan said, "sometimes to crush a weak nation; but never a
war started by the aggressor for any clean purpose -- there is no such war in
the history of the race."
"Now," said Satan, "you have seen your progress down to
the present, and you must confess that it is wonderful -- in its way. We must
now exhibit the future."
He showed us slaughters more terrible in their destruction
of life, more devastating in their engines of war, than any we had seen.
"You perceive," he said, "that you have made continual
progress. Cain did his murder with a club; the Hebrews did their murders with
javelins and swords; the Greeks and Romans added protective armor and the fine
arts of military organization and generalship; the Christian has added guns and
gunpowder; a few centuries from now he will have so greatly improved the deadly
effectiveness of his weapons of slaughter that all men will confess that without
Christian civilization war must have remained a poor and trifling thing to the
end of time."
Then he began to laugh in the most unfeeling way, and make
fun of the human race, although he knew that what he had been saying shamed us
and wounded us. No one but an angel could have acted so; but suffering is
nothing to them; they do not know what it is, except by hearsay.
More than once Seppi and I had tried in a humble and
diffident way to convert him, and as he had remained silent we had taken his
silence as a sort of encouragement; necessarily, then, this talk of his was a
disappointment to us, for it showed that we had made no deep impression upon
him. The thought made us sad, and we knew then how the missionary must feel when
he has been cherishing a glad hope and has seen it blighted. We kept our grief
to ourselves, knowing that this was not the time to continue our work.
Satan laughed his unkind laugh to a finish; then he said:
"It is a remarkable progress. In five or six thousand years five or six high
civilizations have risen, flourished, commanded the wonder of the world, then
faded out and disappeared; and not one of them except the latest ever invented
any sweeping and adequate way to kill people. They all did their best -- to kill
being the chiefest ambition of the human race and the earliest incident in its
history -- but only the Christian civilization has scored a triumph to be proud
of. Two or three centuries from now it will be recognized that all the competent
killers are Christians; then the pagan world will go to school to the Christian
-- not to acquire his religion, but hiss guns. The Turk and the Chinaman will buy
those to kill missionaries and converts with."
By this time his theater was at work again, and before our
eyes nation after nation drifted by, during two or three centuries, a mighty
procession, an endless procession, raging, struggling, wallowing through seas of
blood, smothered in battle-smoke through which the flags glinted and the red
jets from the cannon darted; and always we heard the thunder of the guns and the
cries of the dying.
"And what does it amount to?" said Satan, with his evil
chuckle. "Nothing at all. You gain nothing; you always come out where you went
in. For a million years the race has gone on monotonously propagating itself and
monotonously reperforming this dull nonsense -- to what end? No wisdom can
guess! Who gets a profit out of it? Nobody but a parcel of usurping little
monarchs and nobilities who despise you; would feel defiled if you touched them;
would shut the door in your face if you proposed to call; whom you slave for,
fight for, die for, and are not ashamed of it, but proud; whose existence is a
perpetual insult to you and you are afraid to resent it; who are mendicants
supported by your alms, yet assume toward you the airs of benefactor toward
beggar; who address you in the language of master to slave, and are answered in
the language of slave to master; who are worshiped by you with your mouth, while
in your heart -- if you have one -- you despise yourselves for it. The first man
was a hypocrite and a coward, qualities which have not yet failed in his line;
it is the foundation upon which all civilizations have been built. Drink to
their perpetuation! Drink to their augmentation! Drink to -- " Then he saw by
our faces how much we were hurt, and he cut his sentence short and stopped
chuckling, and his manner changed. He said, gently: "No, we will drink one
another's health, and let civilization go. The wine which has flown to our hands
out of space by desire is earthly, and good enough for that other toast; but
throw away the glasses; we will drink this one in wine which has not visited
this world before."
We obeyed, and reached up and received the new cups as
they descended. They were shapely and beautiful goblets, but they were not made
of any material that we were acquainted with. They seemed to be in motion, they
seemed to be alive; and certainly the colors in them were in motion. They were
very brilliant and sparkling, and of every tint, and they were never still, but
flowed to and fro in rich tides which met and broke and flashed out dainty
explosions of enchanting color. I think it was most like opals washing about in
waves and flashing out their splendid fires. But there is nothing to compare the
wine with. We drank it, and felt a strange and witching ecstasy as of heaven go
stealing through us, and Seppi's eyes filled and he said worshipingly:
"We shall be there some day, and then -- "
He glanced furtively at Satan, and I think he hoped Satan
would say, "Yes, you will be there some day," but Satan seemed to be thinking
about something else, and said nothing. This made me feel ghastly, for I knew he
had heard; nothing, spoken or unspoken, ever escaped him. Poor Seppi looked
distressed, and did not finish his remark. The goblets rose and clove their way
into the sky, a triplet of radiant sundogs, and disappeared. Why didn't they
stay? It seemed a bad sign, and depressed me. Should I ever see mine again?
Would Seppi ever see his?
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Chapter 5
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Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
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