Devil Stories Part 30

... It was late. A rain fell, heavy clouds hung in the sky, and the author rattled his bones as he marched rapidly to his grave.... The devil walked behind him and whistled merrily.

My reader is, of course, dissatisfied. My reader is surfeited with literature, and even the people that write only to please him, are rarely to his taste. In the present case my reader is also dissatisfied because I have said nothing about h.e.l.l. As my reader is justly convinced that after death he will find his way there, he would like to know something about h.e.l.l during his lifetime. Really, I can't tell anything pleasant to my reader on that score, because there is no h.e.l.l, no fiery h.e.l.l which it is so easy to imagine. Yet, there is something else and infinitely more terrible.

The moment the doctor will have said about you to your friends: "He is dead!" you will enter an immeasurable, illuminated s.p.a.ce, and that is the s.p.a.ce of the consciousness of your mistakes.

You lie in the grave, in a narrow coffin, and your miserable life rotates about you like a wheel.

It moves painfully slow, and pa.s.ses before you from your first conscious step to the last moment of your life.

You will see all that you have hidden from yourself during your lifetime, all the lies and meanness of your existence: you will think over anew all your past thoughts, and you will see every wrong step of yours,--all your life will be gone over, to its minutest details!

And to increase your torments, you will know that on that narrow and stupid road which you have traversed, others are marching, and pushing each other, and hurrying, and lying.... And you understand that they are doing it all only to find out in time how shameful it is to live such a wretched, soulless life.

And though you see them hastening on towards their destruction, you are in no way able to warn them: you will not move nor cry, and your helpless desire to aid them will tear your soul to pieces.

Your life pa.s.ses before you, and you see it from the start, and there is no end to the work of your conscience, and there will be no end ...

and to the horror of your torments there will never be an end ...

never!

THE DEVIL AND THE OLD MAN[31]

BY JOHN MASEFIELD

[31] From _A Mainsail Haul_, by John Masefield [Copyright 1913 by The Macmillan Company. Reprinted by permission of the Author and the Publishers.]

Up away north, in the old days, in Chester, there was a man who never throve. Nothing he put his hand to ever prospered, and as his state worsened, his friends fell away, and he grew desperate. So one night when he was alone in his room, thinking of the rent due in two or three days and the money he couldn't sc.r.a.pe together, he cried out, "I wish I could sell my soul to the devil like that man the old books tell about."

Now just as he spoke the clock struck twelve, and, while it chimed, a sparkle began to burn about the room, and the air, all at once, began to smell of brimstone, and a voice said:

"Will these terms suit you?"

He then saw that some one had just placed a parchment there. He picked it up and read it through; and being in despair, and not knowing what he was doing, he answered, "Yes," and looked round for a pen.

"Take and sign," said the voice again, "but first consider what it is you do; do nothing rashly. Consider."

So he thought awhile; then "Yes," he said, "I'll sign," and with that he groped for the pen.

"Blood from your left thumb and sign," said the voice.

So he p.r.i.c.ked his left thumb and signed.

"Here is your earnest money," said the voice, "nine and twenty silver pennies. This day twenty years hence I shall see you again."

Now early next morning our friend came to himself and felt like one of the drowned. "What a dream I've had," he said. Then he woke up and saw the nine and twenty silver pennies and smelt a faint smell of brimstone.

So he sat in his chair there, and remembered that he had sold his soul to the devil for twenty years of heart's-desire; and whatever fears he may have had as to what might come at the end of those twenty years, he found comfort in the thought that, after all, twenty years is a good stretch of time, and that throughout them he could eat, drink, merrymake, roll in gold, dress in silk, and be care-free, heart at ease and jib-sheet to windward.

So for nineteen years and nine months he lived in great state, having his heart's desire in all things; but, when his twenty years were nearly run through, there was no wretcheder man in all the world than that poor fellow. So he threw up his house, his position, riches, everything, and away he went to the port of Liverpool, where he signed on as A. B., aboard a Black Ball packet, a tea clipper, bound to the China seas.

They made a fine pa.s.sage out, and when our friend had only three days more, they were in the Indian Ocean lying lazy, becalmed.

Now it was his wheel that forenoon, and it being dead calm, all he had to do was just to think of things; the ship of course having no way on her.

So he stood there, hanging on to the spokes, groaning and weeping till, just twenty minutes or so before eight bells were made, up came the Captain for a turn on deck.

He went aft, of course, took a squint aloft, and saw our friend crying at the wheel. "h.e.l.lo, my man," he says, "why, what's all this? Ain't you well? You'd best lay aft for a dose o'salts at four bells tonight."

"No, Cap'n," said the man, "there's no salts'll ever cure my sickness."

"Why, what's all this?" says the old man. "You must be sick if it's as bad as all that. But come now; your cheek is all sunk, and you look as if you ain't slept well. What is it ails you, anyway? Have you anything on your mind?"

"Captain," he answers very solemn, "I have sold my soul to the devil."

"Oh," said the old man, "why, that's bad. That's powerful bad. I never thought them sort of things ever happened outside a book."

"But," said our friend, "that's not the worst of it, Captain. At this time three days hence the devil will fetch me home."

"Good Lord!" groaned the old man. "Here's a nice hurrah's nest to happen aboard my ship. But come now," he went on, "did the devil give you no chance--no saving-clause like? Just think quietly for a moment."

"Yes, Captain," said our friend, "just when I made the deal, there came a whisper in my ear. And," he said, speaking very quietly, so as not to let the mate hear, "if I can give the devil three jobs to do which he cannot do, why, then, Captain," he says, "I'm saved, and that deed of mine is cancelled."

Well, at this the old man grinned and said, "You just leave things to me, my son. _I'll_ fix the devil for you. Aft there, one o' you, and relieve the wheel. Now you run forrard, and have a good watch below, and be quite easy in your mind, for I'll deal with the devil for you.

You rest and be easy."

And so that day goes by, and the next, and the one after that, and the one after that was the day the Devil was due.

Soon as eight bells was made in the morning watch, the old man called all hands aft.

"Men," he said, "I've got an all-hands job for you this forenoon."

"Mr. Mate," he cried, "get all hands on to the main-tops'l halliards and bowse the sail stiff up and down."

So they pa.s.sed along the halliards, and took the turns off, and old John Chantyman piped up--

There's a Black Ball clipper Comin' down the river.

And away the yard went to the mast-head till the bunt-robands jammed in the sheave.

"Very well that," said the old man. "Now get my dinghy off o' the half-deck and let her drag alongside."

So they did that, too.

"Very well that," said the old man. "Now forrard with you, to the chain-locker, and rouse out every inch of chain you find there."