The Mysterious Stranger Manuscripts (Literature) (21 page)

"What will he do?"

"He is doing it now-betraying her to a priest. 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 a while 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 sympathise 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 in 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 and
welcome, she did not want it, she would rather live with the
professional devils in perdition than with these amateurs 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 thin 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-gone 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-Seppi and I-and longing 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, and 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 lying drunk on Ararat.

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 temples 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.

Then the Holy Inquisition was born; "another step in your
progress," Satan said. He showed us thousands of torn and mutilated heretics shrieking under the torture, and other thousands and
thousands of heretics and witches burning at the stake, "always in
the pleasant shade flung by the peaceful banner of the cross," as
Satan remarked. And in the midst of these fearful spectacles, as an
incidental matter, we had a marvelous night-show, by the light of
flitting and flying torches-the butchery of Christian by Christian
in France on Bartholomew's Day.

And always we had wars, and more wars, and still other warsall over Europe, all over the world. "Sometimes in the private
interest of royal families," Satan said, "sometimes to get more land,
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 your 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. In a year or two we shall have
Blenheim and Ramillies. Look!"

He showed us those awful slaughters.

"You perceive," he said, "that you have made continual progress.
Cain did his murder with a club; the I did their murders
with javelins and swords; the Greeks and Romans added protective
armor and the fine arts of military organisation and generalship; the Christian has added guns and gunpowder; two centuries from now
he will have so greatly improved the deadly effectiveness of his
weapons of slaughter that all men will confess that without the
Christian Civilization war must have remained a poor and trifling
thing to the end of time. In that day the lands and peoples of the
whole pagan world will be at the mercy of the sceptred bandits of
Europe, and they will take them. Furnishing in return, the blessings of civilization.

"Nine years from now a Prussian prince will be born who will
steal Silesia; plunge several nations into bloody and desolating wars;
lead a life of treachery and general and particular villainy, and be
admiringly called `the Great.' Sixty-six years from now a Corsican
will be born who will deluge Europe with blood and spread the
Christian civilization far and wide. He also will be called `the
Great.' A trifle before his day, England will begin to swallow India.
In his early manhood there will be a Revolution in France whose
bloody exhibitions will be a more terrible thing to see than even
France will have known since the Bartholomew Day. All through
the next century there will be wars-wars everywhere in the earth.
Wars for gain-each one a crime on the part of the provoker of it.
An English queen will reign more than sixty years, and fight more
than sixty wars during her reign-spreading civilization generously; also with profit. England, desiring a weak State's diamond
mires, will take them-by robbery, but courteously. Desiring another weak State's gold mines, her statesmen will try to seize them
by piracy; failing, they will manufacture a war and take them in
that way; and with them the small State's independence.

The Christian missionary will exasperate the Chinese; they will
kill him in a riot. They will have to pay for him, in territory, cash,
and churches, sixty-two million times his value. This will exasperate the Chinese still more, and they will injudiciously rise in revolt
against the insults and oppressions of the intruder. This will be
Europe's chance to interfere and swallow China, and her band of
royal Christian pirates will not waste it. Now then, I will show you
this long array of crimson spectacles, so that you can note the progress of civilization from the time that Cain began it down to a
period a couple of centuries hence."

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.