The Quest

The sight of the pale, still sleeper, with her outspread black hair, made Johannes also feel drowsy. But he looked in his little mirror, holding his eyes open, hard, and called: "Heléne!"

The long dark lashes were lifted just a little.

"Pst! Not a word!" said the king. "Here we come to number two – a pretty and clever piece of work."

By a little door, so low and narrow that Johannes had to wriggle his way through it, they entered the next place. They were in an extremely smart little church – a dolls' church. The walls were bare and white, and little candles were burning. In the pulpit stood a tiny little dominie, preaching fervidly, gesticulating with hand and head.

"Dominie Kraalboom!" cried Johannes, in astonishment. "Who is he raving at?"

"Look at him, Johannes!" said Waan. "Only do not think he is dead. In order to come here one does not have to wait till death. And do you not see at whom he is raving? Take a good look."

"Reflectors!" exclaimed Johannes. In reality the little church was empty, but it was everywhere furnished with pretty little mirrors, and in each one of them was reflected the dominie's little face surrounded by a halo.

"Those mirrors are of peculiar manufacture. I make much use of them. The imported article alone I cannot endure. Look! here is the counterpart."

Another little church – just as smart and neat and light. But here there were many more candles, also flowers and images. The walls were gaudily painted with pictures, and Father Canisius stood in glittering, gold-embroidered garments, praying and mumbling before the altar.

Johannes looked up at the stained-glass windows. It was as dark as pitch behind them.

"What is outside there?" he asked. "Just let me look out." And he thought he could hear the snickering and giggling of the imps who were peering through the windows.

"Keep away! Silence!" cried the king, sternly.

"Wistik!" called Johannes.

"Ay!" sounded the voice, now very fine, and far away. And they kept falling, falling.

Through a long, narrow passage they went to the next number. It did not smell very fresh there, and Johannes soon noticed that this stale-smelling apartment corresponded with what they usually called at home "the best room."

In the middle of the white-wood floor stood an overturned waste-water pail. A puddle of thick, offensive fluid lay trickling around it.

"Under this," said King Waan, "sits one of the most remarkable specimens in my collection. It is a little creature having the habit of describing precisely everything it sees. His watchword is: 'Truth Above Everything!' He could not have a finer one. I make very interesting experiments with him. Sometimes I put him here, sometimes there. Just now he is under this pail. Listen to him!"

A light little voice came monotonously out from under the pail:

"A rich, soft greyish violet shading off through brown into cream-white, clot-curdling stripe coagulations; long flittery-fluttery down-trickling welter-whirls filtering through pale-yellow toned-down dully shining topazy vaults; faint phlegmy greyish-green dozing off…"

And thus the voice went on until Johannes began to get quite qualmish and drowsy.

"Is not that nice? Lately, I had him in a cuspidor. You should have heard him then. Here is his label."

And he pointed to a trim little tag on which was marked: Division, Fine Arts. Naturalist, var. Word-Artist. Locality: Terra Firma of Europe. Rather rare.

"Is Van Lieverlee here, also?" asked Johannes.

"To be sure! I have him a few centuries farther on, composing sonnets," said the Wicked One. "This is a very large place although you might not think so. I can show you only a small part of it."

Then they came to a division called "Sciences," and the Devil said:

"Look! That concerns you, Wisdom-Seeker!"

And he had Johannes look through the crack of the door, into a little room brightly lighted, cram-full of books. Professor Bommeldoos was there, standing on his head.

"Pluizer taught him that," said the Devil. "And do you see that clever contrivance he has made of mirrors and copper tubes? That is to look into his own brains with. He thinks to become still wiser."

The professor was utterly absorbed in his intricate apparatus, and gazed and gazed, with all his might, into an odd sort of twisted tubing, the end of which was attached to the back part of his head.

Johannes heard a low rushing and roaring, as if made by a gust of wind.

"Silence!" cried the Devil, testily.

But the roaring sound continued and grew louder.

"What is that?" asked Johannes.

"That is Death," said the Devil, spitefully. "He is called an ally of mine, but he often muddles up my affairs here, and he steals by the thousand the choicest specimens in my collection – especially the crack-brained."

"Here they are all crack-brained," said Johannes.

"Yes; but those you in the awake-life call that, he snatches away from me. Here we come to the division, "Happiness." This is the richest man in the world. Would you like a magnifying glass?"

The pen wherein sat the richest man in the world was all of gold, but so small that Johannes could not possibly enter it. The richest man in the world had a large head, quite bare and bald, above a very small insignificant body. He moved slowly back and forth, like a caterpillar incasing himself; and out of his little lips there driveled golden threads with which he made a cocoon of himself.

"Poor fellow!" said Johannes, shuddering.

"Nonsense! Nonsense!" returned the Devil. "Here they are all happy. They know no better. I never torment as does the Other with his Love eternal. I have also here the classification 'War.' You would naturally think that these must be unhappy. But quite the contrary. In general, I am an enemy of war. I prefer peace, as you will presently see. But this is a pleasant 'War.' In fact, the people enjoy it. For that reason it belongs here."

And now they came to a long row of very small pens in which was just such a bustle as one hears at night in a chicken-coop when the fowls are going to sleep. Over each little pen was: "Religious War," "Party Strife," "Class Strife," and as Johannes looked in through a small window, he saw a solitary little fellow, much excited and red in the face, who stood skirmishing in front of a mirror. The reflection of his own figure was so queer that it looked like someone's else.

In the third pen Johannes saw Dr. Felbeck. With furious fists, the little fellow rushed up to the mirror again and again, and stamped and scolded and raved until the foam flew from his mouth.

Then they came to a very long and diminishing little room that bore the words Love and Peace.

"There!" said the Devil. "Now we can talk aloud. They are not easily wakened here. Snug and cozy, is it not? A section of it also is Pure Living, and Piety, and Benevolence."

In the little ward stood many tiny beds, as in a hospital; and Johannes saw Labbekak and Goedzak in slovenly felt slippers, shuffling back and forth, distributing cups of warm tea and spoonfuls of a syrupy mixture. The beings in the little beds licked off the spoons, and fell asleep again.

Outside, the demons yelled and screeched still louder, and the downward motion was so apparent that Johannes grew dizzy.

"Here, also," said the Devil, "Death does me much harm."

Johannes looked at him. He now appeared wholly different. His brown suit had disappeared, and his smooth supple body – as shiny as a snakeskin – was as iridescent as water stirred by dripping tar. His face, too, was far less affable. Hollow and grinning, it began to look like a death's head.

"You are the real Death!" exclaimed Johannes. "The other is a good friend of mine. I have no more fear of him."

The Devil laughed and reached out his hand toward Johannes' little flower. But Johannes caught it up close to his breast. The flower hung limp and seemed to be perishing. The little mirror shook like a leaf in his hand, so that he could scarcely hold it.

"Wistik!" he cried.

He listened, but could hear nothing. And now he seemed to be falling with whizzing speed. Johannes was greatly alarmed. The long ward with its rows of little beds grew ever longer, ever narrower.

"Wistik! Marjon! Let me out! Let me out! Set me free!"

"I have also a classification 'Freedom'," remarked the Devil, pointing out a mannikin who, busy with a long ribbon inscribed with the words "Freedom and 'Justice," kept winding it around his head, arms, and legs until he could not move a muscle.

"No!" cried Johannes, banging with both hands – in which were still clutched his flower and mirror – at a hard, spotted door. This door was marked "Sin and Crime."

"Look out!" said the Devil. "Do you not see what it says over it?"

"I do not care what it says!" cried Johannes, pounding away.

"Take care! For God's sake, take care!" shouted Bangeling.

"Help! Wistik! Marjon! Markus! help!" cried Johannes, crashing through the door.

Before him he saw a black and bottomless night; but it was more spacious, and he felt his distress diminishing.

And now he saw the imps all racing after him, and they were playing with something. It glittered as they threw it, one to another, and they tugged and pulled and spit on it, and did things still worse – such as only very vile and impudent beings could do.

It was a book, and Johannes saw his name upon it – his own and his family name. Johannes was called the "Traveler" of his family.

At last one of the imps caught hold of it by a leaf, and flung it high up in air to tear it to pieces. The leaves fluttered and glittered, but held together. And the book, ceasing to fall, went higher and higher up into the dark night until it seemed in the far distance to be a little star.

Johannes kept looking at it with all his might, and it seemed to him as if he were a light bit of wood, or a bubble, rising swifter and swifter to the surface – from out the awful depths of the sea. Then, slowly, the heavens grew blue and bright.

At last he was drifting in the full light of day. His eyes were still closed, but he felt that he had returned to his day body, and he rested – still a little longer – in the light, motionless, blissful slumber of a convalescent, or of one come home again after a long and weary journey.

XII

"Shall we go to the beach this morning?" asked Countess Dolores after breakfast. "It will be fresh and cool there now."

It was a merry morning trip. Both of the little girls went with them, and Johannes carried a small folding chair, and his friend's book. The countess took a seat in a beach-chair, and Johannes sat at her feet and read aloud to her, while the two children – their skirts tucked up, and their little feet and legs bare and pink in the clear light – busied themselves in the water and sand, with their pails and shovels.

Everything was flooded with sunshine, and clearly, beautifully tinted: – the knotted blonde tresses of the little girls – beneath their broad-brimmed white beach-hats – against the delicate blue of the horizon; the still deeper blue of the sea wherein could be seen the bright figures of the bathers in their red and blue bathing-dresses; and right and left the pure white sand, and the snowy foam.

Johannes had indeed become quite accustomed to what had so pained him at first – the profanation of the sea by human beings – so they were happy hours.

He resolved this morning to resume his inquiries after Markus, as soon as he was at liberty to do so.

They had not been sitting long on the beach when Van Lieverlee came sauntering-up, arrayed in white flannel. He was without a waistcoat, but wore a lilac shirt, and a wide, black-silk girdle, and had on a straw hat.

He gave the countess a graceful cordial greeting, and immediately said to Johannes, this time without irony:

"I sent to my uncle, this morning, for information. Your friend is not there now. He received his discharge last Saturday on account of his disorderly conduct."

"What had he done?" asked Johannes.

"He had delivered an address at the exchange when, mark you, he had gone there on a matter of business. Now," said Van Lieverlee, looking at the countess with a smile, "it is quite obvious that a man of affairs could not retain such a clerk as that. It takes my uncle Van Trigt, who is so jealous of his good name, to deal with such cases."

"Yes, I understand," said Dolores.

"It depends, though, upon what he said," ventured Johannes.

"No! One talks about business at the exchange – not about reason and morality. There is a time and a place for everything. My uncle was well satisfied with him in all else. He had taken him for a rather well-bred person, he said. But the man has a remarkable propensity for discoursing in public places."

"Where is he now?"

"Where is any idler who has received his discharge? Off looking for an easy berth, L should say."

"Is your friend so very poor?" asked the countess, in a serious whisper, as one would speak over the shame of a kinsman.

"Of course," replied Johannes, with a positiveness that was a challenge. "Indeed, he would be ashamed not to be poor."

"I think such men insufferable!" exclaimed Van Lieverlee. "As Socrates said, their conceit can be seen through the holes in their clothes. Without even opening their mouths they – every one of them – seem to be forever preaching morals and finding fault. I hate the tribe. They are of all men the most turbulent and dangerous."

Johannes had never yet seen Van Lieverlee so angry, but he remained cool throughout the tirade, and kept his temper.

The countess said in a languid voice:

"He certainly is very immoderate. I cannot say, either, that such pronounced types are to my taste."

Johannes was silent, and the other two talked together a while longer. The children came up nearer, and lying down in the clean, clear sand, they listened to the conversation. It was a bright group, for they were all dressed in white, except Johannes.

At last Van Lieverlee rose to go, and the countess, clinging to his hand, with a certain warmth of manner said:

"Of course you are coming to dinner?"

"Most assuredly!" replied Van Lieverlee.

After he had gone, there were several moments of constrained silence – a sort of suspense so obvious that even the children did not resume their chatter as usual, but continued silently playing with the sand, as if waiting for something to be said.

Johannes also began to comprehend that something was pending, but he had no idea of what it could be.

At last the lady said, rather hesitatingly, while tracing all kinds of curious figures in the sand, with her parasol:

"Have you not observed anything, Johannes?"

"Observed anything? I? No, Mevrouw," replied Johannes, with some discomposure. He surely had observed nothing.

"I have!" said Olga, decidedly, without looking up.

"I, too!" lisped Frieda after her.

"Hear the little smarties!" said Mevrouw, laughing in confusion, and blushing. "Well, what have you observed?"

"A new papa!" replied Olga.

"A new papa!" repeated Frieda.

Johannes looked up in some surprise and perplexity, into the beautiful, laughing eyes, and exquisite, blushing face of his friend.

Her laugh was a confirmation; and accompanying her question with a shake of the head, she continued:

"Really, do you not understand yet?"

"No," replied Johannes, in all seriousness. "Who is the new papa?"

"There he goes," said Olga, pointing with her little white finger after Van Lieverlee. And Frieda, too, stretched out her little hand in his direction.

"Fie, children! Do not point," said Mevrouw.

And Johannes began to comprehend – much as one does who has fallen out of a window, or has been struck on the head with a stone. As in the latter case, his first thought was astonishment at the cause of the blow, and that he could possibly survive it.

The blue air, the sea, the sand, the series of light-green dunes, the houses, the white figures – everything reeled and whirled, and then grew altogether black. He could not think, but only felt that he was extremely uncomfortable and qualmish. He was obliged to go.

As he stood up, he heard the words: "How pale you are!" That was the last. Then he walked away, beside the sea, hearing nothing save the washing of the waves upon the sand and the rushing of the blood in his ears.

He staggered a little back and forth, as if he had been drinking too much, and he wondered how that could be.

At last he could no longer see the people or houses – only water, sky, and sand.

It seemed to have been his intention; for, weak and limp, he went and lay down in the loose sand, and fell into a drowse.

XIII

Such drowsing is not real sleep, neither does it refresh. When Johannes awoke after a quarter of an hour, his throat was parched, and he felt as if his heart were shriveled in his breast. He essayed to think over what had happened, but it was too bitter and too frightful. He looked at the imprinted sand where he had been lying, as if he would go to sleep again. But now he could not sleep, and must stay awake.

He sat up and stared at the sea, and then again at the dunes. What was it that had befallen him? A very long time – he knew not himself how long – he sat looking. Then he stood up, feeling stiff and sluggish, as if dead tired from a long journey. Slowly and aimlessly he dragged himself into the dunes, and tried to take an interest in the beetles and the flowers. Sometimes, from force of habit, he succeeded; but immediately there returned the shudderings which that cruel blow had caused.

It had never entered his head that he himself would marry his friend. Why, then, should it go to his heart as if he were flung aside and trampled upon, now that another was about to take the place of her husband?

"It must not —must not be!" was all he could say. He very well knew that the world did not always concern itself with his thoughts, and that his day-life was conducted quite differently from his night-life where everything proceeded from his will and wish. But this was so squarely against his desires and ideas that it seemed to him as if the world must care about it.

Naturally, the world continued not to mind anything about it, because the world is a far greater and stronger thought than that of Little Johannes.

And if he had been sensible he would have modestly admitted it, because it is true. Then, at the most, that truth would only have saddened him.

But he was not yet very wise, and he did not wish to admit that his mind and thought were still weak and small compared with the great world-thought. And therefore he was not only sad, but angry as well.

Do not judge him too harshly, for he was still more boy than man. And how few men even there are with such clear good sense that they impute the variance solely to their own weakness and stupidity, and do not become dismayed and embittered when the world differs from them.

Johannes, then, was angry – furiously angry. That surely was not sensible, but yet it proved that he had more stamina than had Labbekak and Goedzak.

And all his anger was directed against that person who had thrust him aside from the place which he had so long, without being aware of it, considered his own. He thought Van Lieverlee not only a tiresome fool, but also an odious, abominable monster that ought to be exterminated.

And as his fancy pictured other figures, and he thought of that other hated being, Marjon's sister, and then again of Van Lieverlee, and his dear, beautiful, winsome friend, he found himself closely and frightfully besieged by insupportable thoughts – as if in a fire-begirt city, all aglow and scorching, with ever narrowing streets.

It was impossible to cry. At other times, as you surely must have observed, his tears came quickly enough. But now his eyes seemed to have been cauterized. Eyes, heart, brains, and ideas – all were equally hot and dry, and strained and distressed.

He went home at night with no idea of the hour. He had eaten nothing, but felt neither hunger nor thirst. Where he had been for so long, he was unable to tell. He went to his room and began trifling with his knickknacks – his souvenirs, books, and little treasures – for he was a collector.

His hostess came to rap at his door and to ask what was the matter – where he had been, and why he had been absent from his afternoon lessons. But Johannes did not invite her in, and said that he wished to be alone. And she, half surmising the truth, and distressed about it, did not insist.

Then, among his treasures, Johannes found a pair of compasses – a large pair, one arm of which could be loosened for the attachment of a tracing-pen. And that single, loosened compass-arm was a shining, three-cornered bit of steel, about a finger long, and as sharp as a lancet.

With some wood and leather he contrived a handle for that bit of steel, and then he had a dagger – a real, wicked, dangerous dagger.

Apparently he did this merely to pass away the time, but after it was finished he began to think what could be done with it. Then what he wished to do with it. And at last how he should do it, if, indeed, he was to do it.

Thus, he was already a good bit on in an ugly way.

The octopus that he had defied so bravely had laid for him a trap of which he was not aware; for it has many more than eight arms, and there are many more demons than those whose acquaintance Johannes had already made.

He was going to step up to Van Lieverlee and say to him, "You or I." And if Van Lieverlee should then laugh at him, as he most likely would, he would stab him to death.

Such thoughts as that actually took possession of Little Johannes' head; for, I have told you, indeed, that Love is nothing to be ridiculed. Fortunately, a wide gulf yawns between thought and deed, otherwise there would be a great many more accidents upon this earth.

It was already past midnight, and he still sat pottering and burnishing and sharpening, when he heard again the creaking of the stair, that he now instantly recognized, and Marjon's step at the door.

She opened the door, and Johannes looked into her distended, anguished eyes. Her blonde hair fell straight and free over her shoulders, and her long white night-dress reached down to her bare feet.

"What are you doing, Jo?" she asked. "You make me so anxious! What has happened? Where have you been the whole long day? Why do you eat nothing? And why are you still sitting up, with a light, till after midnight?"

Startled and distressed, Johannes made no reply. The dagger was still in his hand. He tried to hide it, without being observed, under his handkerchief. But Marjon saw it, and asked excitedly:

"What is that?"

"Nothing," said Johannes, in shame and confusion, like a detected child.

Marjon snatched away the handkerchief, and looked from the shining little object to Johannes with an expression of mingled pain and fright.

In silence they looked into each other's eyes a long time – Marjon with a searching, beseeching gaze, until Johannes lowered his lids and let his head droop.

"Who is it for?" she whispered. "Yourself?"

Without speaking or looking up, Johannes shook his head. Marjon sighed deeply, as if relieved.

"For whom, then?" again she asked. "For … him?"

Johannes nodded. Then she said:

"Poor Jo!"

That sounded strangely to him, for when irritated one is not apt to be compassionate toward others nor toward one's self. He thought, rather, to find abhorrence of his blood-thirsty plan. But she said it so sincerely and fervently that he began to weaken, although not to the point of crying.

"You will not do it, will you? It would not help at all. And you would … you would make me so frightfully unhappy."

"I cannot endure it, Marjon – I cannot endure it!"

Marjon kneeled down by the table, and rested her chin in her hands. Her clear, true eyes were now looking steadily at Johannes, and as she spoke they grew more tranquil. Johannes continued to look at her with the irresolute expression of one in despair who yet hoped for deliverance.

"Poor Jo!" repeated Marjon. And then, slowly, with frequent pauses, she said: "Do you know why I can speak so?.. I know exactly how you feel. I have felt that way, too. I did not think that this would be the way of it – the way it now is. I only thought, 'She is going to have him, not I.' And then I too said, 'It cannot —cannot be!' But yet it might have been. And now you say, 'It cannot be.' But it can, just the same."