The Mysterious Stranger Manuscripts (Literature) (19 page)

"Oh, yes, everybody does. My mother says she is so sweet and so
lovely that she is not like any other child. She says she will be the
pride of the village when she grows up; and its idol, too, just as she
is now.

"I will change her future."

"Make it better?" I asked, with some misgivings.

"Yes. And I will change the future of Nikolaus."

I was glad, this time, and said-

"I don't need to ask about his case; you will be sure to do
generously by him."

"It is my intention."

Straight off I was building that great future of Nicky's in my
imagination, and had already made a renowned General of him and
Hofineister at the Court, when I noticed that Satan was waiting for
me to get ready to listen again. I was ashamed of having exposed
my cheap imaginings to him, and was expecting some sarcasms, but
it did not happen. He proceeded with his subject:

"Nicky's appointed life is 62 years."

"That's grand!" I said.

"Lisa's, 36. But as I told you, I shall change their lives. Two
minutes and a quarter from now Nikolaus will wake out of his
sleep and find the rain blowing in. It was appointed that he should
turn over and go to sleep again. But I have appointed that he shall
get up and close the window first. That trifle will change his career
entirely. He will rise in the morning two minutes later than the
chain of his life had appointed him to rise. By consequence, thenceforth nothing will ever happen to him in accordance with the
details of the old chain."

Ile took out his watch and sat looking at it a few moments, then
said-

"Nikolaus has risen to close the window. His life is changed, his
new career has begun. There will be consequences."

It made me feel creepy, it was so uncanny.

"But for this change certain things would happen twelve days
from now. For instance, Nikolaus would save Lisa from drowning.
He would arrive on the scene at exactly the right moment-four
minutes past 10-the long-ago appointed instant of time-and the
water would be shoal, the achievement easy and certain. But he
will arrive some seconds too late, now; Lisa will have struggled into
deeper water. He will do his best, but both will drown."

"Oh, Satan, oh, dear Satan," I cried, with the tears rising in my
eyes, "save them! don't let it happen, I can't bear to lose Nikolaus,
he is my loving playmate and friend; and think of Lisa's poor
mother!"

I clung to him and begged and pleaded, but he was not moved.
He made me sit down again, and told me I must hear him out.

"I have changed Nikolaus's life, and this has changed Lisa's. If I
had not done this, Nikolaus would save Lisa; then he would catch
cold from his drenching; one of your race's fantastic and desolating
scarlet fevers would follow, with pathetic after-effects: for forty-six
years he would lie in his bed a paralytic log, deaf, dumb, blind, and
praying night and day for the blessed relief of death. Shall I change
his life back?"

"Oh, no! Oh, not for the world, not for the world! In charity and
pity, leave it as it is."

"It is best so. I could not have changed any other link in his life
and done him so good service. He had a billion possible careers, but
not one of them was worth living; they were charged full with
miseries and disasters. But for my intervention he would do his
brave deed twelve days from now,-a deed begun and ended in six
minutes-and get for all reward those forty-six years of sorrow and
suffering I told you of. It is one of the cases I was thinking of a
while ago when I said that sometimes an act which brings the actor
an hour's happiness and self-satisfaction is paid for-or punished?
-by years of suffering."

I wondered what poor little Lisa's early death would save her
from. He answered the thought:

"From ten years of pain and slow recovery from an accident, and
then from nineteen years of pollution, shame, depravity, crime, ending with death at the hands of the executioner. Twelve days
hence she will die; her mother would save her life if she could. Am
I not kinder than her mother?"

"Yes-oh, indeed yes; and wiser."

"Father Peter's case is coming on, presently. He will be acquitted, through unassailable proofs of his innocence."

"Why Satan, how can that be? Do you really think it?"

"Indeed I know it. His good name will be restored, and the rest
of his life will be happy."

"I can believe it. To restore his good name will have that
effect."

"His happiness will not proceed from that cause. I shall change
his life that day, for his good. He will never know his good name
has been restored."

In my mind-and modestly-I asked for particulars, but Satan
paid no attention to my thought. Next, my mind wandered to
Father Adolf, and I wondered where he might be.

"In the moon," said Satan, with a fleeting sound which I believed
was a chuckle. "I've got him on the cold side of it, too. Ile doesn't
know where he is, and is not having a pleasant time; still, it is good
enough for him. I shall need him presently; then I shall bring him
back and possess him again. He has a long and cruel and odious life
before him, but I will change that, for I have no feeling against him
and am quite willing to do him a kindness. I think I will get him
burnt."

He had such strange notions of kindness. But angels are made so,
and do not know any better. Their ways are not like our ways; and
besides, human beings are nothing to them; they think they are
only freaks.

It seemed to me odd that he should put the priest so far away; he
could have dumped him in Germany just as well, where he would
be handy.

"Far away?" said Satan. "To me no place is far away; distance
does not exist, for me. The sun is less than a hundred million miles
from here, and the light that is falling upon us has taken eight
minutes to come; but I can make that flight, or any other, in a fraction of time so minute that it cannot be measured by a watch. I
have but to think the journey, and it is accomplished."

I held out my hand and said-

"The light lies upon it; think it into a glass of wine, Satan."

He did it. I drank the wine.

"Break the glass," he said.

I broke it.

"There-you see it is real. The villagers thought the brass balls
were magic-stuff and as perishable as smoke. They were afraid to
touch them. You are a curious lot-your race. But come along, I
have business. I will put you to bed." Said and done. Then he was
gone; but his voice came back to me through the rain and darkness,
saying, "Yes, tell Seppi, but no other."

It was the answer to my thought.

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 at 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 behind the
veil, and we wish we could have them back again, if for only a
moment, so that we could go on our knees to them and say "I lave
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 blameable, 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."

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 said 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 homewards, 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, saving, 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.