Little Johannes

VI

It seemed to him, all the next few days, as though it was no longer so delightful or so beautiful to be with Windekind in the wood or on the sand-hills. His thoughts were no onger wholly occupied with all that Windekind told him or showed him. He could not help thinking of that Book, but he dared not speak of it. The things he saw seemed to him less fine and wonderful than before. The clouds were so black and heavy, he was afraid lest they should fall upon him. It distressed him when the unresting autumn wind shook and bowed the poor weary trees, so that the sallow under side of the leaves was seen, and yellow leaves and dry twigs were swept before the gale.

What Windekind told him had ceased to interest him. A great deal of it he did not understand, and he never got a perfectly clear and satisfactory answer when he asked one of his old questions.

And this again made him think of that Book in which everything was set forth so plainly and simply; and of that everlasting still and sunny autumn day which would ensue.

'Wistik! Wistik!' he murmured.

Windekind heard him.

'Johannes, I am afraid you ought to have remained a human being. Even your friendship is as that of men – the first person who has spoken to you after me has won all your confidence from me. Ah! my mother was right after all!'

'No, Windekind. But you are much wiser than Wistik – as wise as that Book. Why do you not tell me everything? See now! Why does the wind blow through the trees so that they bend and bow? Look, they can bear it no longer; the boughs snap and the leaves are flying by hundreds on all sides, though they are still green and fresh. They are so tired they can no longer hold on, and yet they are constantly shaken and thrashed by the rude, spiteful wind. Why is it so? What does the wind mean?'

'My poor Johannes, you are talking as men talk.'

'Make it stop, Windekind. I want calm and sunshine.'

'You question and want as a man; there is no answer, no fulfilment. If you cannot learn to ask or wish better, the autumn day will never dawn for you, and you will be like the thousands of human beings who have talked to Wistik.'

'What, so many?'

'Yes, thousands. Wistik affects great mystery, but he is a chatterbox who cannot keep his own secrets. He hoped to find the Book among men, and communicates his knowledge to every one who might be able to help him. And he has made many as unhappy as himself. They believe in him, and go forth to seek the Book with as much zeal as some use in seeking the art of making gold. They sacrifice everything, give up their calling and their happiness, and shut themselves up among big volumes or strange matters and instruments. They risk their lives and health, they forget the blue sky and kindly gentle Nature – nay, even their fellow-creatures. Some find good and useful things, as it were gold nuggets, which they throw out of their holes on to the bright sunlit surface of the earth; but they do not themselves care for these; they leave them for others to enjoy, while they dig and grub on in the dark without cessation or rest. They are not seeking gold but the Book. Some lose their wits over the work, forgetting their object and aim, and becoming mere miserable dotards. The sprite has made them quite childish. You may see them building up little castles of sand, and calculating how many grains more are needed to make them fall in; they make little watercourses, and estimate precisely the bends and bays the water will make; they dig trenches, and devote all their patience and reason to making them very smooth and free from stones. If these poor idiots are interrupted in their work and asked what they are doing, they look up with great importance, shake their heads and mutter, 'Wistik, Wistik!' Yes, it is all the fault of that little foolish Wood-Sprite. Have nothing to say to him, Johannes.'

But Johannes stared before him at the swaying, creaking trees. The smooth brow above his clear childish eyes puckered into furrows. He had never before looked so grave.

'And yet – you yourself said – that there is such a Book! And oh! I am quite sure that in it there is all about the Great Light, whose name you will not tell me.'

'Poor, poor little Johannes!' said Windekind, and his voice rose above the dizzy clamour of the storm like a peaceful hymn, sounding very far away. 'Love me, only love me with all your might. In me, you will find even more than you wish. You shall understand that which you cannot conceive of, and be, yourself, what you desire to know. Earth and heaven shall be familiar to you, the stars shall be your neighbours, infinitude shall be your dwelling-place. Love me! only love me! Cling to me as the hop-bine to the tree, be true to me as the lake is to its bed – in me alone shall you find rest, Johannes.'

Windekind ceased speaking, but the choral psalm still went on. It seemed to float at an immense distance, in solemn rhythm, through the raging and sighing of the wind – as tranquil as the moonlight shining between the driving clouds. Windekind opened his arms and Johannes fell asleep on his breast, under the shelter of the blue cloak.

But in the night he awoke. Peace had suddenly and imperceptibly fallen on the world; the moon was below the horizon; the leaves hung limp and motionless; the forest was full of silence and darkness.

And questions came back on Johannes' mind, in swift spectral succession, dislodging all his newly-born confidence. Why were men thus made? Why must he come away from them and lose their love? Why must the winter come? Why must the leaves fall and the flowers die? Why – why?

Down in the thicket the blue lights were dancing again. They came and went. Johannes gazed at them with eager attention. He saw the larger, brighter light shining on the dark tree-trunk. Windekind was sleeping soundly and peacefully.

'Just one more question!' thought Johannes, creeping out from under the blue mantle.

'So, here you are again!' cried Wistik, with a friendly nod, 'I am very pleased to see you. And where is your friend?'

'Out yonder. But I wanted to ask you one more question – alone. Will you answer it?'

'You have lived among men, I am sure. Has it anything to do with my secret?'

'Who will find the Book, Wistik?'

'Ay, ay! That's it, that's it. If I tell you, will you help me?'

'If I can – certainly.'

'Then listen, Johannes.' Wistik opened his eyes astonishingly wide, and raised his eyebrows higher than ever. Then he whispered behind his little hand. 'Men have the golden casket; elves have the golden key; the foe of the elves can never find it, the friend of men alone can open it. The first night of Spring is the right time, and Robin Redbreast knows the way.'

'Is that true, quite true?' cried Johannes, remembering his little key.

'Yes,' said Wistik.

'How is it that no one has found it yet?' asked Johannes, 'so many men are seeking for it.'

'I have never confided to any man, never to any man, what I have told you. I never before knew a friend of the Elves.'

'I have it, Wistik, I can help you!' Johannes leaped and clapped his hands. 'I will ask Windekind about it.'

Away he flew over the moss and dry leaves. But he stumbled now and then and his feet were heavy. Stout twigs snapped under his tread, while before, it had not even bent the blades of grass. There was the shady fern under which they had been sleeping. Their bed was empty.

'Windekind!' he called. But he started at the sound of his own voice. 'Windekind!' It sounded like a human voice.

A scared night-bird flew up with a shriek.

There was no one under the fern. Johannes could see no one. The blue lights had vanished. It was very cold and perfectly dark on all sides. Overhead, he saw the black tree-tops against the starry sky.

Once more he called. Then he dared no more; his voice was an insult to the silence, and Windekind's name a mockery. Poor Johannes fell on the ground and sobbed in helpless grief.

VII

The morning was cold and grey. The black shining boughs, swept bare by the storm, dripped in the fog. Little Johannes ran as fast as he could over the wet, down-beaten grass, looking before him in the distance where the wood was thinnest, as though he had some goal beyond. His eyes were red with crying, and dazed with fear and grief. He had been wandering about all night, seeking some light, – the feeling of being safe and at home had vanished with Windekind. The spirit of loneliness lurked in every dark corner; he dared not look round.

At last he came out of the wood; he looked over a meadowland, and fine close rain was pouring steadily. A horse was standing out in the rain close to a bare willow tree. It stood motionless, with bowed head, and the water trickled slowly off its shining flanks and plaited mane. Johannes ran on, along the skirt of the wood. He looked with dim, timid eyes at the lonely beast, and the grey drizzle, and he softly groaned.

'Now it is all over,' thought he. 'Now the sun will never come again. Now everything will always look the same to me as it does here.'

But he dared not stand still in his despair; something most dreadful would befall him, he thought. Then he espied the high wall of a garden, and a little house, under a lime-tree with faded yellow leaves. He went into the enclosure and ran along broad paths where the brown and gold lime-leaves thickly covered the ground. Purple asters and other gay autumn flowers grew by the grass plots in wild abundance. Then he came to a pond. By the side of it was a large house, with windows and doors all opening down to the ground. Climbing roses and other creepers grew against the walls. But it was all shut up and deserted. Half-stripped chestnut trees stood about the house, and on the earth, among the fallen leaves Johannes saw the shining brown chestnuts.

The cold, dead feeling about his heart disappeared. He thought of his own home – there two chestnut-trees grew, and at this season he always went out to pick up chestnuts. He suddenly longed to be there, as though an inviting voice had called him. He sat down on a bench close to the big house and cried himself to rest.

A peculiar smell made him look up. A man was standing by him, with a white apron on and a pipe in his mouth. Round his waist he had a wisp of bast with which he tied up the flowers. Johannes knew that smell so well! It reminded him of his own garden, and the gardener who brought him pretty caterpillars and showed him starling's eggs.

He was not frightened, – though it was a man who stood before him. He told the man that he had got lost and did not know his way, and thankfully followed him to the little cottage under the lime-tree.

Indoors, the gardener's wife sat knitting black stockings. A large kettle of water was hung to boil over the turf-fire in the hearth-place. On the mat by the fire lay a cat with her forepaws crossed, just as Simon had been lying when Johannes left home.

Johannes was made to sit down by the fire to dry his feet. 'Tick-tick, tick-tick,' said the great hanging clock. Johannes looked at the steam which came singing out of the kettle, and at the little flames which skipped and jumped fantastically about the peat blocks.

'Here I am among men,' thought he.

It was not alarming. He felt easy and safe. They were kind and friendly, and asked him what he would like to do.

'I would rather stay here,' he replied.

Here he was at peace, and if he went home there would be scolding and tears. He would have to listen in silence, and he would be told that he had been very naughty. He would be obliged to look back on the past, and think everything over once more.

He longed, to be sure, for his little room, for his father, for Presto – but he could better endure the quiet longing for them here than the painful, miserable meeting. And he felt as though here he could still think of Windekind, while at home he could not. Windekind was now certainly quite gone. Gone far away to the sunny land where palm-trees bend over the blue sea. He would do penance here and await his friend's return.

So he begged the two good folks to let him live with them. He would be obedient and work for them. He would help to take care of the garden and the flowers, at any rate through this winter; for he hoped in his heart that Windekind would return with the Spring.

The gardener and his wife supposed that Johannes had run away from home because he had been hardly treated. They pitied him, and promised to let him stay. So he remained and helped to work in the garden and attend to the flowers. They gave him a little room to sleep in with a bedstead painted blue. Out of it, in the morning, he could see the wet yellow lime-leaves flutter past the window, and at night the black boughs waving to and fro, and the stars playing hide-and-seek between them. And he gave names to the stars, and the brightest of them he called Windekind.

He told his history only to the flowers, most of which he had known before at home; to the large, solemn asters, the many-hued zinnias, and the white chrysanthemums which bloom on so late into the blustering autumn. When all the rest of the flowers were dead the chrysanthemums still stood upright – even when one morning the first snow had fallen and Johannes came to see how they were getting on, they held up their cheerful faces and said: 'Yes, we are still here. You would never have thought it!' And they looked very brave; but two days later they were all dead.

But palms and tree-ferns were still thriving in the hot-house, and the strange blossoms of orchids hung in the damp heat. Johannes peeped with amazement into their gorgeous cups, and thought of Windekind. How cold and colourless everything seemed then when he came out again – the sloppy snow with black footmarks, and the sighing, dripping branches of the trees!

But when the snow-flakes had been noiselessly falling hour after hour so that the boughs bent under the growing burthen, Johannes ran off gleefully into the purple twilight of the snow-laden wood. That was silence – but not death. It was almost more lovely than summer verdure, as the dazzling whiteness of the tangled twigs made lace-work against the light-blue sky, or as one of the over-weighted boughs shook off its load of snow, which fell in a cloud of glittering powder.

Once in the course of such a walk, when he had gone so far that all round him there was nothing to be seen but snow and snow-wrapped woods, half white and half black, and every sound of life seemed stifled under the glistening downy shroud, it happened that he thought he saw a tiny white creature running swiftly in front of him. He followed it – it resembled no animal that he knew; but when he tried to catch it, it promptly vanished into a hollow trunk. Johannes stared into the hole where it had disappeared and thought to himself: 'I wonder if it was Wistik?'

But he did not think much about him. He fancied it was wrong, and he would not spoil his fit of repentance. And his life with these two kind people left him little to ask for. In the evenings he had indeed to read aloud out of a thick book in which a great deal was said about God; but he was familiar with the book, and read unheeding.

That night, however, after his walk in the snow, he lay awake in his bed, looking at the cold gleam of the moonlight on the floor. All at once he saw two tiny hands which came out from below the bedstead and firmly clutched the edge. Then the top of a little white fur cap came into sight between the two hands, and at last he saw a pair of grave eyes under uplifted eyebrows.

'Good-evening, Johannes!' said Wistik. 'I am come to remind you of your promise. You cannot yet have found the Book, for it is not yet Spring time. But do you ever think it over? What is that thick book which you are made to read? But that cannot be the right book. Do not imagine that.'

'I do not imagine that, Wistik,' said Johannes.

He turned over to go to sleep again; but he could not get the gold key out of his head. Before now, when reading the big Book, he had thought of that, and he saw plainly that it could not be the right Book.

VIII

'Now he will come back,' thought Johannes, the first time the snow had melted here and there, and the snowdrops peeped out in bunches. 'Will he come now?' he asked of the snowdrops. But they did not know, and stood there with hanging heads, looking down at the earth as if they were ashamed of their haste to come out, and would gladly creep back again.

If only they could have done so! The numbing east wind soon began to blow again, and the snow drifted deep over the foolish, forward little things. Some weeks later came the violets; their sweet smell betrayed them among the brushwood; and when the sun had shone warmly on the mossy ground the pale primroses came out by hundreds and thousands.

The shy violets with their fine fragrance were the mysterious harbingers of coming splendour, but the glad primroses were the glorious reality. The waking earth had caught and captured the first sunbeams and turned them into a golden jewel.

'Now – now he will certainly come!' thought Johannes. He eagerly watched the leaf-buds on the trees as they slowly swelled day by day and freed themselves from the bark, till the first pale-green tips peeped out between the brown scales. Johannes would stand gazing for long at the little young leaves – he could never see them move, but if he only turned round, they seemed to have grown bigger. 'They dare not, so long as I am looking at them,' thought he.

The shade had already begun to be green. Still Windekind did not come, no dove had settled near him, no little mouse had spoken to him. When he spoke to the flowers they merely nodded and never answered.

'My punishment is not yet ended,' thought he.

One sunny spring morning he went to the pond by the great house. The windows were all wide open. Had the people who lived there come back?

The bird-cherry which grew by the water-side was entirely covered with fresh leaves; every twig had a crop of delicate green winglets. On the grass by the tree lay a young girl; Johannes could only see that she had a light-blue dress and fair hair. A robin, sitting on her shoulder, fed out of her hand. She suddenly turned her head and looked at Johannes.

'Good-day, little man!' said she, with a friendly nod.

Johannes felt a glow from head to foot. Those were Windekind's eyes; that was Windekind's voice.

'Who are you?' he asked. His lips trembled with excitement.

'I am Robinetta, and this is my bird. He will not be afraid of you. Are you fond of birds?'

The Redbreast was not afraid of Johannes; it flew on to his arm. This was just as it used to be. The being in blue must be Windekind.

'And tell me what your name is, boy,' said Windekind's voice.

'Do you not know me? Do you not know that my name is Johannes?'

'How should I know that?'

What did this mean? For it was the sweet familiar voice, and those were the same dark, heavenly-deep blue eyes.

'Why do you look at me so, Johannes? Have you ever seen me before?'

'Yes I have, indeed.'

'You must surely have dreamed it.'

'Dreamed it?' thought Johannes. 'Can I have dreamed it? Or can I be dreaming now?'

'Where were you born?' he inquired.

'A long way from hence, in a great town.'

'Among human beings?'

Robinetta laughed – it was Windekind's laugh. 'Why, I should think so. Were not you?'

'Oh yes, I was too.'

'Do you object to that? Do you not like human beings?'

'No. Who could?'

'Who? – Well, Johannes, you are a very strange little boy. Do you like beasts better?'

'Oh, much better, – and flowers.'

'So do I myself sometimes; just for once in a while. But it is not right. We ought to love our fellow-men, my father says.'

'Why is it not right? I love whom I choose, whether it is right or not.'

'Fie, Johannes! Have you no parents or any one to take care of you? And do you not love them?'

'Yes,' said Johannes thoughtfully, 'I love my father. But not because it is right – nor yet because he is a man.'

'Why then?'

'That I do not know, – because he is not like other men; because he too is fond of birds and flowers.'

'And so am I, Johannes, as you may see.' And Robinetta called the robin to sit on her hand and talked to him fondly.

'That I know,' replied Johannes, 'and I love you very much.'

'Already? That is quick work!' laughed the girl. 'And whom, then, do you love best?'

Johannes hesitated. Should he utter Windekind's name? The fear that he might accidentally speak it in the presence of other persons was never out of his thoughts. And yet, was not this fair-haired creature in blue Windekind in person? How else could she give him such a sense of rest and gladness?

'You,' he suddenly replied, looking full into those deep blue eyes. He boldly made a complete surrender; but he was a little alarmed nevertheless, and anxiously awaited her reception of his precious offering.

Robinetta laughed again, a light clear laugh; but she took his hand and her look was no colder nor her voice less full of feeling.

'Why, Johannes,' said she, 'what have I done to deserve it all at once?'

Johannes made no reply, but stood looking at her with trustful eyes. Robinetta rose and laid her arm on his shoulder. She was taller than he. Thus they wandered on through the wood, gathering great bunches of cowslips till they could have hidden under the mass of bright yellow blossoms. The robin flew, as they went on, from branch to branch, and watched them with his glittering little black eyes.

They did not talk much, but looked at each other now and then, with a side glance. They were both embarrassed by this meeting and did not know what to think of each other.

But Robinetta had soon to turn back. It was growing late.

'I must go now, Johannes. But will you come and walk with me again? I think you are a nice little boy,' she said as they turned round.

'Weet, weet!' piped the robin, and flew after her.

When she was away and he had only her image left to think of, he had not a moment's doubt as to who she was. She it was to whom he had given his friendship: the name of Windekind faded from his mind, and that of Robinetta took its place.

And now everything was the same to him again as it had formerly been. The flowers nodded gaily, and their scent drove away the melancholy home-sickness which he had felt and encouraged now and then. Amid the tender greenery, in the warm, soft breeze of spring, he all at once felt himself at home, like a bird that has found its nest. He spread out his arms and drew a deep breath; he was so happy. As he went homewards the figure in light blue with yellow hair, floated before him whichever way he turned his gaze. It was as though he had looked on the sun, and its image danced before his eyes where-ever he looked.