The Quest

"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!"