“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 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.”
