The Mysterious Stranger Manuscripts (Literature) (20 page)

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 a 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, a while, 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 case a pain in your heart to remember it
some day."

She ryas 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 us 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 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 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 proving 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 clock. A quarter to 10. Could that be correct? Only such a few
minutes left 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 daisy. 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
"Die Trommeln sagen pom-pom-pom."

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 lie 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 a while
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 recognise 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 you 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 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 hand, 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 her hair flying loose, and flung herself
upon her dead child with moans and kisses and pleadings and
endearments; and by and by 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, Ile 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
hand, 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 then, 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, now, it having been discarded because it did not pay, there
being none but Catholic custom for it; 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 and the
Emperor and the church, and it was pitiful to see. Seppi asked
Satan to interfere, but he said that 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 a horse doing that kind of a 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 link 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."