The Quest

"Why?" asked Johannes.

"Because I am much better than all those people round about me, and better than that common, dark woman who had another father."

Marjon said this quite simply, thinking it to be so. She said it in a modest manner, while feeling that it was something which ought to be spoken.

"Not that I have been so very good. Oh, no! But yet I have been better than the others, and that was because of the father; for my mother, too, was only a member of a troupe. And now it is so lovely that I can say 'Father' just as Markus does!"

Johannes looked at her, with the sadness still in his eyes.

"Yes, but all the meanness, the ugliness, and the sorrow that our Father permits! First, He launches us into the world, helpless and ignorant, without telling us anything. And then, when we do wrong because we know no better, we are punished, Is that fatherly?"

But Marjon said:

"Did you fancy it was not? Kees gets punished, too, so he will learn. And now that he is clever and well taught he gets hardly any blows – only tid-bits. Isn't that so, Kees?"

"But, Marjon, did you not tell me how you found Kees – shy, thin, and mangy – his coat all spoiled with hunger and beatings; and how he has remained timid ever since, because a couple of rascally boys had mistreated him?"

Marjon nodded, and said:

"There are rascals, and deucedly wicked boys, and very likely there is a Devil, also; but I am my Father's child and not afraid of Him, nor what He may do with me."

"But if He makes you ill, and lets you be ill-treated? If He lets you do wrong, and then leaves you to cry about it? And if He makes you foolish?"

Keesje was coming down from the mast, very softly and deliberately. With his black, dirty little hands he cautiously and hesitatingly touched the boy's clothes that Marjon was wearing. He wanted to go to sleep, and had been used to a soft lap. But his mistress took him up, and hid him in her jacket. Then he yawned contentedly, like a little old man, and closed his pale eyelids in sleep – his little face looking very pious with its eyebrows raised in a saintly arch. Marjon said:

"If I should go and ill-treat Keesje, he would make a great fuss about it, but still he would stay with me."

"Yes; but he would do the same with a common tramp," said Johannes.

Marjon shook her head, doubtfully.

"Kees is rather stupid – much more so than you or I, but yet not altogether stupid. He well knows who means to treat him rightly. He knows well that I do not ill-treat him for my own pleasure. And you see, Jo, I know certainly, ever so certainly – that my Father will not ill-treat me without a reason."

Johannes pressed her hand, and asked passionately:

"How do you know that? How do you know?"

Marjon smiled, and gave him a gentle look.

"Exactly as I know you to be a good boy – one who does not lie. I can tell that about you in various ways I could not explain – by one thing and another. So, too, I can see that my Father means well by me. By the flowers, the clouds, the sparkling water. Sometimes it makes me cry – it is so plain."

Then Johannes remembered how he had once been taught to pray, and his troubled thoughts grew calmer. Yet he could not refrain from asking – because he had been so much with Pluizer:

"Why might not that be a cheat?"

Suddenly Keesje waked up and looked behind him at Johannes, in a frightened way.

"Ah, there you are!" exclaimed Marjon, impatiently. "That's exactly as if you asked why the summer might not perchance be the winter. You can ask that, any time. I know my Father just for the very reason that He does not deceive. If Markus was only here he would give it to you!"

"Yes, if he was only here!" repeated Johannes, not appearing to be afraid of what Markus might do to him.

Then in a milder way, Marjon proceeded:

"Do you know what Markus says, Jo? When the Devil stands before God, his heart is pierced by genuine trust."

"Should I trust the Devil, then?" asked Johannes.

"Well, no! How could that be? Nobody can do that. You must trust the Father alone. But even if you are so unlucky as to see the Devil before you see the Father, that makes no difference, for he has no chance against sincere trust. That upsets his plans, and at the same time pleases the Father."

"Oh, Marjon! Marjon!" said Johannes, clasping his hands together in his deep emotion. She smiled brightly and said:

"Now you see that was a quarter out of my savings-box!"

Really, it was a very happy day for Johannes. He saw great, white, piled-up clouds, tall trees in the light of the rising sun, still houses on the river-banks, and the rushing stream – with violet and gold sparkling in the broad bends – ever flowing through a fruitful, verdant country; and over all, the deep, deep blue – and he whispered: "Father – Father!" In an instant, he suddenly comprehended all the things he saw as splendid, glorious Thoughts of the Father, which had always been his to observe, but only now to be wholly understood. The Father said all this to him, as a solemn admonition that He it was – pure and true, eternally guarding, ever waiting and accessible, behind the unlovely and the deceitful.

"Will you always stay with me, Marjon?" he asked earnestly.

"Yes, Jo, that I will. And you with me?"

Then Little Johannes intrepidly gave his promise, as if he really knew what the future held for him, and as if he had power over his entire unknown existence.

"Yes, dear Marjon, I will never leave you again. I promise you. We remain together, but as friends. Do you agree? No foolishness!"

"Very well, Jo. As you like," said Marjon. After that they were very still.

XIII

It was evening, and they were nearing Germany. The dwellings on the river-banks no longer looked fresh and bright colored, but faded and dirty. Then they came to a poor, shabby-looking town, with rusty walls, and grey houses inscribed with flourishing black letters.

The boats went up the stream to lie at anchor, and the custom-house officers came. Then Marjon, rousing up from the brown study into which Johannes' last question had plunged her, said:

"We must sing something, Jo. Only think! Your Aunt's money will soon be gone. We must earn some more."

"Can we do it?" asked Johannes.

"Easy. You just furnish the words and I'll take care of the music. If it isn't so fine at first, that doesn't matter. You'll see how the money rains down, even if they don't understand a thing."

Marjon knew her public. It came out as she said it would. When they began to sing, the brusque customs collectors, the old skipper, and other ships' folk in the boats lying next them, all listened; and the stokers of the little tugboat stuck their soot-begrimed faces out of the machine-room hatch, and they, also, listened. For those two young voices floated softly and harmoniously out over the calmly flowing current, and there was something very winning in the two slender brothers – something fine and striking. They were quite unlike the usual circus-people. There was something about them which instantly made itself felt, even upon a rude audience, although no one there could tell in what it consisted, nor understand what they were singing about, nor even the words.

At first they sang their old songs —The Song of the Butterfly, and the melancholy song that Marjon had made alone, and which Johannes, rather disdainfully, had named The Nurse-Maid's Song, and also the one Marjon had composed in the evening, in the boat. But when Marjon said, "You must make something new," Johannes looked very serious, and said:

"You cannot make verses – they are born as much as children are."

Marjon blushed; and, laughing in her confusion, she replied: "What silly things you do say, Jo. It's well that the dark woman doesn't hear you. She might take you in hand."

After a moment of silence, she resumed: "I believe you talk trash, Jo. When I make songs the music does come of itself; but I have to finish it off, though. I must make– compose, you know. It's exactly," she continued, after a pause, "as if a troop of children came in, all unexpected – wild and in disorder, and as if, like a school-teacher, I made them pass in a procession – two by two – and stroked their clothing smooth, and put flowers in their hands, and then set them marching. That's the way I make songs, and so must you make verses. Try now!"

"Exactly," said Johannes;'"but yet the children must first come of themselves."