The Quest

"Is there any good in that?" asked Johannes, thoughtlessly.

Marjon looked at him disdainfully, and said:

"Jimminy! You're just like Kees. He doesn't know either that he can do more with a quarter than with a cent. When I got my first quarter, I didn't catch on, either, but then I noticed that I could get a lot more candy with it than with a cent. Then I knew better what to do. So now I treasure the things Markus has said – all of them."

"Do you think as much of him as I do?" asked Johannes.

"More," said Marjon.

"That cannot be."

Then there was another long pause. The boat was not in a hurry, neither was the sun, and the broad stream made even less haste. And so the children, as well, took plenty of time in their talking.

"Yes, but you see," Johannes began again, "when people speak of our Father, they mean God, and God is…"

What was it again, that Windekind had said about God? The thought came to him, and clothed in the old terms. But Johannes hesitated. The terms were surely not attractive.

"What is God, now?" asked Marjon.

The old jargon must be used. There was nothing better.

"… An oil-lamp, where the flies stick fast."

Marjon whistled – a shrill whistle of authority – a circus-command. Keesje, who was sitting on the foremast, thoughtfully inspecting his outstretched hind foot, started up at once, and came sliding down the steel cable, in dutiful haste.

"Here, Kees! Attention!"

Kees grumbled assent, and was instantly on the alert, for he was well drilled. His sharp little brown eyes scarcely strayed for one second away from the face of his mistress.

"The young gentleman here says he knows what God is. Do you know?"

Keesje shook his head quickly, showing all his sharp little white teeth in a grin. One would have said he was laughing, but his small eyes peered as seriously as ever from Marjon's mouth to her hand. There was nothing to laugh at. He must pay attention. That was clear. Goodies were bound to follow – or blows.

But Marjon laughed loudly.

"Here, Kees! Good Kees!"

And then he had the dainties, and soon was up on the mast, smacking aloud as he feasted.

The result of this affront was quite unexpected to Marjon. Johannes, who had been lying prone on the deck, with his chin in his hands, gazed sadly for a while at the horizon, and then hid his face in his folded arms, his body shaking with sobs.

"Stop now, Jo; you're silly! Cry for that!" said Marjon, half frightened, trying to pull his arms away from his face. But Johannes shook his head.

"Hush! Let me think," said he.

Marjon gave him about a quarter of an hour, and then she spoke, gently and kindly, as if to comfort him:

"I know what you wanted to say, dear Jo. That's the reason, too, why I always speak of The Father. I understand that the best; because, you see, I never knew my earthly father, but he must have been much better than other fathers."

"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."

"But are they not all there, Jo?"

Gazing up into the great dome of the evening sky, where the pale stars were just beginning to sparkle, Johannes thought it over. He thought of the fine day he had had, and also of what he had felt coming into his head.

"Really," said Marjon, rather drily, "you'll just have to, whether you want to or not – to keep from starving."

Then, as if desperately alarmed, Johannes went in search of pencil and paper; and truly, in came the disorderly children, and he arranged them in file, prinked them up, and dealt them out flowers.

He first wrote this:

"Tell me what means the bright sunshine,The great and restless river Rhine,This teeming land of flocks and herds —The high, wide blue of summer sky,Where fleecy clouds in quiet lie.To catch the lilt of happy birds."The Father thinks, and spreads his dreamAs sun and heaven, field and stream.I feast on his creation —And when that thought is understood,Then shall my soul confess Him good,And kneel in adoration."

Marjon read it, and slowly remarked, as she nodded: "Very well, Jo, but I'm afraid I can't make a song of it. At least, not now. I must have something with more life and movement in it. This is too sober – I must have something that dances. Can't you say something about the stars? I just love them so! Or about the river, or the sun, or about the autumn?"

"I will try to," said Johannes, looking up at the twinkling dots sprinkled over the dark night-sky.

Then he composed the following song, for which Marjon quickly furnished a melody, and soon they were both singing:

"One by one from their sable foldCame the silent stars with twinkling eyes,And their tiny feet illumed like goldThe adamantine skies."And when they'd climbed the domed height —So happy and full of glee,There sang those stars with all their mightA song of jubilee."

It was a success. Their fresh young voices were floating and gliding and intertwining like two bright garlands, or two supple fishes sporting in clear water, or two butterflies fluttering about each other in the sunshine. The brown old skipper grinned, and the grimy-faced stokers looked at them approvingly. They did not understand it, but felt sure it must be a merry love-song. Three times – four times through – the children sang the song. Then, little by little, the night fell. But Johannes had still more to say. The sun, and the splendid summer day that had now taken its leave, had left behind a sweet, sad longing, and this he wanted to put upon paper. Lying stretched out on the deck, he wrote the following, by the light of the lantern:

"Oh, golden sun – oh, summer light,I would that I might see thee brightThro' long, drear, winter days!Thy brightest rays have all been shed —Full soon thy glory will have fled,And cold winds blow;While all dear, verdant waysLie deep in snow."

As he read the last line aloud, his voice was full of emotion.

"That's fine, Jo!" said Marjon. "I'll soon have it ready."

And after a half-hour of trying and testing, she found for the verses a sweet air, full of yearning.

And they sang it, in the dusk, and repeated the former one, until a troupe of street musicians of the sort called "footers" came boisterously out of a beer-house on the shore, and drowned their tender voices with a flood of loud, dissonant, and brazen tones.

"Mum, now," said Marjon, "we can't do anything against that braying. But never mind. We have two of them now —The Star Song and The Autumn Song. At this rate we shall get rich. And I'll make something yet out of The Father Song; but in the morning, I think – not to-night. We've earned at least our day's wages, and we can go on a lark with contented minds. Will you go, Jo?"

"Marjon," said Johannes, musingly, hesitating an instant before he consented, "do you know who Pluizer is?"

"No!" said Marjon, bluntly.

"Do you know what he would say?"

"Well?" asked Marjon, with indifference.

"That you are altogether impossible."

"Impossible? Why?"

"Because you cannot exist, he would say. Such beings do not and cannot exist."

"Oh, he must surely mean that I ought only to steal and swear and drink gin. Is that it? Because I'm a circus-girl, hey?"

"Yes, he would say something like that. And he would also call this about the Father nothing but rot. He says the clouds are only wetness, and the sunshine quiverings, and nothing else; that they could be the expression of anything is humbug."

"Then he would surely say that, too, of a book of music?" asked Marjon.

"That I do not know," replied Johannes, "but he does say that light and darkness are exactly the same thing."

"Oh! Then I know him very well. Doesn't he say, also, that it's the same thing if you stand on your head or on your heels?"

"Exactly – that is he," said Johannes, delighted. "What have you to say about it?"

"That for all I care he can stay standing on his head; and more, too, he can choke!"

"Is that enough?" asked Johannes, somewhat doubtfully.

"Certainly," said Marjon, very positively. "Should I have to tell him that daytimes it is light, and night-times it is dark? But what put you in mind of that Jackanapes?"

"I do not know," said Johannes. "I think it was those footers."

Then they went into the deck-house where Keesje was already lying on the broad, leather-cushioned settee, all rolled up in a little ball, and softly snoring; and this cabin served the two children as a lodging-house.

XIV

On the second day they came to the great cathedral which, fortunately, was then not yet complete, and made Johannes think of a magnificent, scrag-covered cliff. And when he heard that it was really going to be completed, up to the highest spire, he was filled with respect for those daring builders and their noble creation. He did not yet know that it is often better to let beautiful conceptions rest, for the reason that, upon earth, consummated works are sometimes really less fine and striking than incomplete projects.

And when at last, on the third evening, he found himself among the mountains, he was in raptures. It was a jovial world. Moving, over the Rhine in every direction were brightly lighted steamboats laden with happy people, feasting and singing. Between the dark, vine-covered mountains the river reflected the rosy, evening light. Music rang on the water; music came from both banks. People were sitting on terraces, under leafy bowers, around pretty, shining lamps – drinking gold-colored wine out of green goblets; and the clinking of glasses and sound of loud laughter came from the banks. And, singing as they stepped, down the mountains came others, in their shirt sleeves, carrying their jackets on alpenstocks over their shoulders. The evening sky was aflame in the west, and the vineyard foliage and the porphyry rocks reflected the glowing red. Hurrah! One ought to be happy here. Truly, it seemed a jolly way of living.

Johannes and Marjon bade their long ark farewell, and went ashore. It saddened Johannes to leave the dear boat, for he was still a sentimental little fellow, who promptly attached himself by delicate tendrils to that which gave him happiness. And so the parting was painful.

They now began the work of earning their livelihood. And Keesje's idle days were over, as well. They put his little red jacket upon him, and he had to climb trees, and pull up pennies in a basin.

And the children had to sing their songs until they lost their charm, and Johannes grew weary enough with them.

But they earned more – much more than Markus with his scissors-grinding. The big, heavily moustached, and whiskered gentlemen, the prettily dressed and perfumed ladies, sitting on the hotel terraces, looked at them with intolerable arrogance, saying all kinds of jesting things – things which Johannes only half understood, but at which they themselves laughed loudly. But in the end they almost all gave – some copper, some silver – until the friséd waiters, in their black coats and white shirt-fronts, crossly drove them away, fearing that their own fees might be diminished.

Marjon it was who dictated the next move, who was never at a loss, who dared the waiters with witty speeches, and always furnished advice. And when they had been singing rather too much, she began twirling and balancing plates. She spoke the strange tongue with perfect fluency, and she also looked for their night's resting-place.

The public – the stupid, proud, self-satisfied people who seemed to think only of their pleasure – did not wound Marjon so much as they did Johannes.

When their snobbishness and rudeness brought tears to his eyes, or when he was hurt on account of their silly jests, Marjon only laughed.

"But do not you care, Marjon?" asked Johannes, indignantly. "Does it not annoy you that they, every one of them, seem to think themselves so much finer, more important, and fortunate beings than you and I, when, instead, they are so stupid and ugly?"

And he thought of the people Wistik had shown him.

"Well, but what of it?" said Marjon, merrily. "We get our living out of them. If they only give, I don't care a rap. Kees is much uglier, and you laugh about it as much as I do. Then why don't you laugh at the snobs?"

Johannes meditated a long time, and then replied:

"Keesje never makes me angry; but sometimes, when he looks awfully like a man, then I have to cry over him, because he is such a poor, dirty little fellow. But those people make me angry because they fancy themselves to be so much."

Marjon looked at him very earnestly, and said:

"What a good boy you are! As to the people – the public – why, I've always been taught to get as much out of 'em as I could. I don't care for them so much as I care for their money. I make fun of them. But you do not, and that's why you're better. That's why I like you."

And she pressed her fair head, with its glossy, short-cut hair, closer against his shoulder, thinking a little seriously about those hard words, "no foolishness."

They were happy days – that free life, the fun of earning the pennies, and the beautiful, late-summer weather amid the mountains. But the nights were less happy. Oh! what damp, dirty rooms and beds they had to use, because Fair-people could not, for even once, afford to have anything better. They were so rank with onions, and frying fat, and things even worse! On the walls, near the pillows, were suspicious stains; and the thick bed-covers were so damp, and warm, and much used! Also, without actual reason for it, but merely from imagination, Johannes felt creepy all over when their resting-place was recommended to them, with exaggerated praise, as a "very tidy room."

Marjon took all this much more calmly, and always fell asleep in no time, while Johannes sometimes lay awake for hours, restless and shrinking because of the uncleanliness.

"It's nothing, if only you don't think about it," said Marjon, "and these people always live in this way."

And what astonished Johannes still more in Marjon was that she dared to step up so pluckily to the German functionaries, constables, officers, and self-conceited citizens.

It is fair to say that Johannes was afraid of such people. A railway official with a gruff, surly voice; a policeman with his absolutely inexorable manner; a puffed-out, strutting peacock of an officer, looking down upon the world about him, right and left; a red-faced, self-asserting man, with his moustache trained up high, and with ring-covered fingers, calling vociferously for champagne, and appearing very much satisfied with himself, – all these Marjon delighted to ridicule, but Johannes felt a secret dread of them. He was as much afraid of all these beings as of strange, wild animals; and he could not understand Marjon's calm impudence toward them.

Once, when a policeman asked about their passport, Johannes felt as if all were lost. Face to face with the harsh voice, the broad, brass-buttoned breast, and the positive demand for the immediate showing of the paper, Johannes felt as if he had in front of him the embodied might of the great German Empire, and as if, in default of the thing demanded, there remained for him no mercy.

But, in astonishment, he heard Marjon whisper in Dutch: "Hey, boy! Don't be upset by that dunce!"

To dare to say "that dunce," and of such an awe-inspiring personage, was, in his view, an heroic deed; and he was greatly ashamed of his own cowardice.

And Marjon actually knew how, with her glib tongue and the exhibition of some gold-pieces, to win this representative of Germany's might to assume a softer tone, and to permit them to escape without an inspection.

But it was another matter when Keesje, seated upon the arm of a chair, behind an unsuspecting lieutenant, took it into his little monkey-head to reach over the shining epaulet, and grasp the big cigar – probably with the idea of discovering what mysterious enjoyment lay hidden in such an object. Keesje missed the cigar, but caught hold of the upturned moustache, and then, perceiving he had missed his mark, he kept on pulling, spasmodically, from nervous fright.