The Quest

He stayed on, week after week, month after month, writing nothing to Holland, nor to Aunt Seréna – nothing to his Brother, nor to Marjon, either because of he knew not what, or because he was ashamed.

One thought alone prevailed over all others; what would she say when he should have another talk with Countess Dolores, and what should he reply? Would she stroke his hair, or even press a kiss upon it, as once she had done – the same as with her two little daughters?

Perhaps you have never yet been in love. If you never have, you cannot know what all this means. But it is not a slight matter, and there is nothing in it to rail about.

Johannes himself did not quite know what had happened. He only felt that never yet in his life had anything so perplexing and distressing come to him.

It was so wonderful, too. It gave him pain – sharp pain – and yet it was sweet to him, and he welcomed it. It caused him anguish and anxiety, and yet he would not run away from it. It was so contradictory – so confounding!

One sultry, stormy evening he took a lonely walk over the cliffs, and followed a narrow path lying close to the grey steeps at the foot of which the breakers were pounding.

He saw the sun go down behind great masses of clouds, just as he had formerly done. But now how different it was! How cold and strange it seemed! He felt left out. Life – cruel, human life – with its passions and entanglements, now had him in its grasp.

It seemed agonizing and frightful, as if a great monster had pursued him to the shore of the sea, and were still close behind. And now Nature had become strange and inhospitable.

He stretched out his hand, and cried to the clouds:

"Oh, help me, clouds with the silver lining!" But the clouds rolled on as if wholly unconscious of the wonderful shapes they assumed at every turn – ever changing, and adorned anew with glittering gold and gleaming silver. And all the while the sea was roaring just as if it had no memory whatever of Johannes.

And when he had cried "Help me, clouds with the silver lining!" the words clung to his mind, and, like shining angels, they beckoned other, sister words, still lingering in the depths of his soul, to come and join them. And so they came – one after another, in twinkling file, and fell into line. Their faces seemed more serious than did ever those of his own words.

"Help, oh, help me, ye silver-lined clouds!
Oh, save me, sun and stormy sea!
To thee I fly from stifling haunts of men.
Life, with its frightful, crimson-flaming hands,
Has laid its hold on me.
Once I was thy friend and confidant —
At home in thy mysterious loneliness.
I explored without fear thy boundless space
And celestial mansions builded I there
With the mere light of stars, and the waves of wind.
Peace I found in thy grandeur stern,
And rest in thy bright expanse.
Now, life sweeps me on with its current swift,
And a seething volcano I find where erst
Was an ocean serene of exalted delights.
Alas! thou doest rest in thy splendor immersed —
As cool as a lion licking his paws.
All slowly the cloud is transformed,
Letting the light stream through,
And the tossing main with sparks is clad,
As if with a golden coat of mail.
Ah, beautiful world! Untrue and unreal
Thou glidest away 'neath my anguished eyes.
The ocean roars ever, and silent are sun and clouds.
Sadly, I see the strange daylight fail.
It leaves me alone with still stranger night.
Oh! may I yet find there my Father's spirit,
That dwells beyond sun and sea and clouds?
Must I join with the hapless, hopeless throng
And bind my sorrowful fate to theirs,
Until the Great Leveler bring surcease?"

What Johannes meant by the "Great Leveler" he did not himself know at first. Neither did he at all realize that he had composed something better than formerly. But in the night he understood that it was Death he had meant. And he knew, also, that something within him had opened to the light, like an unfolding flower.

He felt that the verses might be sung like a song, but he could not hear the melody – or but faintly – like wind-wafted tones from the farthest distance. At night, he heard in his dreams the full strain, but in the morning he had entirely forgotten it. And Marjon was not there to help him.

You must remember that Little Johannes was no longer so very little. Nearly four years had passed since that morning when he had waked up in the dunes, with the little gold key.

He could not refrain from reading the poem to the countess on the following day. The making of it – the writing and rewriting – had calmed the unrest out of which it had come. He was curious, now, to learn what others would say of it – above all, the one who was ever in his thoughts.

"Ah, yes!" said she, after he had read it aloud, "life is fearful! And that 'surcease' is all that I long for. I fully agree with you."

This remark, however kind the intention of the speaker, gave Johannes, to his own astonishment, small pleasure. He would have preferred to hear something different.

"Do you think it good?" he asked, with a vague feeling that he really ought not to ask the question, because he had been so very much in earnest over the verses. And when one is deeply in earnest about anything one does not ask if it is good; no more than he would ask if he had wept beautifully. But yet he would have liked, so well, to know what she thought.

"I do not know, Johannes. You must not hope for a criticism from me. I think the idea very sympathetic, and the form seems to me also quite poetic. But whether or not it is good poetry, you must ask of Mijnheer van Lieverlee. He is a poet."

"Is Mijnheer van Lieverlee coming soon?"

"Yes; I expect him shortly."

One fine day Van Lieverlee put in an appearance. With him arrived a host of merrily creaking, yellow trunks, smelling delightfully like russia leather – ditto high-hat box, and a brisk, smooth-shaven, traveling-servant.

Van Lieverlee wore in his button-hole a dark-red rose, and pointed pale-green carnation leaves.

He was very much at his ease – contented and gay – and when he saw Johannes he did not appear to have a very clear remembrance of him.

That evening Johannes read to him the poem. Van Lieverlee listened, with an absent-minded expression of face, while he drummed on the arm of the low, easy-chair in which he lay indolently outstretched. It looked very much as if the verses bored him.

When it was over, and Johannes was waiting in painful suspense, he shook his head emphatically.

"All rhetoric, my worthy friend – mere bombast! 'Oh! Alas!' and 'Ah!' All those are impotent cryings which show that the business is beyond you. If you had full control of expression, you would not utter such cries – you would form, shape, knead, create, model —model! Plasticity, Johannes! That is the thing – vision, color, imagery! I see nothing in that poem. I want something to see and taste. Just think of that sonnet of mine! Every line full of form, of imagery, of real, actual things! With you, there is nothing but vague terms – weak swaggering – all about the spirit of your Father, and such things – none of them to be seen. And, to produce effect, you call upon the other words: 'Ah!' and 'Alas!' and 'Oh!' as if that helped, at all. Any cad could do that if he fell into the water. That is not poetry."

Johannes was completely routed. And although his hostess tried to console him with assurances that if he did his best things would go better with him by and by, when he was a little older, it was of no avail. Johannes already knew that it was quite in vain for him to attempt his best, so long as the inspiration he so much needed was withheld.

His night was a sad one; for the serious words of the poem were continually before him, and to think that they had been disdained was indeed torture. They would not be driven away, but remained to vindicate their worth. And then he wished that others, as well as he, should value them. But his powerlessness and his own mistrust, were a grievous vexation.

In the small hours, he had just fallen asleep – probably for only a few minutes – when he awoke again with the feeling that his room was full, but with what kind of company – human beings or other creatures – he could not tell. He did not see them; for just in the place where he was looking there was no one, and where he wanted to look, he could not. He seemed to be prevented from doing so by a strange power.

He heard a laugh, and the sound was very familiar to him. It was a dismal, old-time memory. It was Pluizer's laugh.

Could Pluizer be in the room?

Johannes tried his best to look at the spot whence the sound came. Exerting himself, he saw something at last – not an entire figure, but hands only – two, four, six little hands, busily doing something. Higher up, to what was above the hands, he could not look – but that they were the hands of Pluizer he was quite positive.

There was something in those hands – a white band – and the little hands were very busy tying all kinds of knots in it. And all the while there was continuous laughing and snickering, as if it was great fun.