II
The next morning, in the dirty little breakfast-room of the lodging-house, there mingled with the usual smell of fresh coffee and stale tobacco smoke the fragrance of wood-violets and of musk; for a pale lavender note, written with blue ink, was awaiting Johannes.
He opened it, and read the following:
Dearly beloved Soul-Brother:
Come to me to-day as soon as you can, upon the wings of our poet-friendship. Countess Dolores went yesterday, with her little daughters, and her servants; but she left something for you which will make you happy, and which I myself will place in your hand.
The following is the first delicate and downy fruit of our union of souls:
HYMEN MYSTICUM
To Little Johannes
In solemn state swim our two souls,
Like night-black, mystic swans.
O’er passion-seas profoundly deep—
Of briny, melancholy tears.
Oh! Thou supremely bitter ocean!
All wingless, bear we with us, thro’ the sky’s dark courses,
Thy ceaseless, lily-sorrow—
And the fell weight of this sad world’s woe.
Entwine with mine thy slender throat, my brother,
That, swooning, we may farther swim,
And with our song the dazzled race amaze.
Let us, in sensuous tenderness,
Like faded lilies intertwine,
With a death-sob of supremest ecstasy.
Would not your friend be able to compose music for this? And I hope soon to know her better.
Your soul’s kinsman,
Walter v. L. T. D.
Kurhotel,8th Sept. (Van Lieverlee tot Endegeest).
Just here, I wish I could say that Johannes immediately let Marjon read both the letter and the verses, and that, with her, he made merry over them. But that, alas! the truth will not permit. And now, for the sake of my small hero, I confess I should be heartily ashamed if I thought that none of you, in reading the above, would be as ingenuous as he was, in regarding the poem with the utmost seriousness—even hesitating, like himself, to doubt its quality, concluding that it must indeed be fine though a little too high for understanding, and, for that very reason, not at first sight so very striking and intelligible.
Are you certain that none of you would have been so stupid as to be deceived by it? Quite certain? Well, then, please do not forget how youthful Johannes still was; and consider, also, the wonderful progress of the age, due, no doubt, to the zealous and untiring efforts of our numerous literary critics.
Johannes did not mention the letter; but when he saw Marjon, he said:
“I saw somebody, yesterday. Can you think who it was?”
Marjon’s pale, dull face lighted up suddenly, and she stared at Johannes with fixed, bright eyes.
“Markus!” said she. Johannes nodded assent, and she continued:
“Thank God! I felt it. I heard that the laborers about here were soon to go on a strike, and then I supposed-well—Now everything will be all right again!”
Then she was silent, eating her bread contentedly. A little later, she asked:
“Where are you going? Is it far? What have you agreed to do?”
“I have settled nothing,” said Johannes. “But I will go to him with you before long. It is not far.” Then, affecting to make light of it, he said: “I have had an invitation to the hotel.”
“Gracious!” said Marjon, under her breath. “The deuce is to pay again.”
In the park Johannes met Mijnheer van Lieverlee. He stood on the grass in front of a thicket of withered shrubs, gazing at the mountains; and was clad in cream-white flannel, with a bright-purple silk handkerchief in his breast pocket. One hand rested upon his ebony walking-stick; with the other—thumb and forefinger pressed together, and little finger extended—he was making rhythmical movements in the air.
When he saw Johannes, he greeted him with a nod and a wink, as if there were a secret understanding between them.
“Superb! Is it not? Superb!”
Johannes did not exactly know what he meant—the verses he had received, the mountains opposite, or the fine, September morning. He selected the most obvious, and said:
“Yes, sir! Glorious weather!”
Van Lieverlee gave him a keen look, as if uncertain whether or not he was being made sport of, and then leisurely remarked:
“You do not appear to be impressed by the combination of white, mauve, and golden brown.”
Johannes thought himself very sensitive to the effect of color; so he felt ashamed of not having noticed the color-composition. He saw it now, fully—the white flannel, the purple pocket-handkerchief, and the faded, yellow-brown shrub. That Van Lieverlee should thus include himself in this symphony of color seemed to him in the highest degree pertinent.
“I was engaged in making a ‘pantoem’ in harmony with that color-scheme,” said Van Lieverlee; and then, seeing the blank look on Johannes’ face, he added, “Do you know what a ‘pantoem’ is?”
“I do not, sir.”
“Oh, boy! boy! and you call yourself a poet! What did you receive this morning? Do you know what that is?”
“A sonnet,” said Johannes, eagerly.
“Is that so? Did you think it a fine one?”
That was a disquieting question. Johannes was quite at a loss about it; but it seemed that poets were wont to ask such questions, so he overcame what he considered his childishness, and said:
“I think it is splendid!”
“You think so! Well, I know it. There is no need to make a secret of it. I call what is good, good, whether it was I who made it, or somebody else.”
That seemed both just and true to Johannes. Now that he was again with Van Lieverlee, and heard him talk in such a grand style, with that easy, fluent enunciation, and those elegant gestures, he found him, on the whole, not bad, but, on the contrary, attractive and admirable. He knew that Marjon would think otherwise; but his confidence in her judgment declined as his confidence in Van Lieverlee augmented.
“Now, Johannes, I have something for you which ought to make you very happy,” said Van Lieverlee, at the same time taking from a pretty, red portfolio, that smelled delightfully like Russia leather, a note embellished with a crown and sealed with blue wax. “This was written by Countess Dolores with her own hand, and I know what it contains. Treat it with respect.”
Before handing it over to him, Van Lieverlee, with a sweeping flourish, pressed it to his own lips. Johannes felt himself to be a dolt; for he knew it would be an impossibility for him to imitate that.
The note contained a very brief, though cordial, invitation to stay at her home sometime, when she should be with her children, at her country-seat in England. There was, too, within the note, a pretty bit of paper. Johannes had never seen its like. It meant money.
“How kind of her!” he exclaimed rapturously. He felt greatly honored. Immediately, however, his thoughts turned toward Markus—toward Marjon and Keesje. How about them? Something must be done about it; to decline was impossible.
“Well?” said Van Lieverlee. “You do not appear to be half pleased about it. Or do not you believe it yet? It really is not a joke!”
“Oh, no!” said Johannes. “I know it is not... but....”
“Your friend may go with you, you know; or does she not care to?”
“I have not asked her yet,” said Johannes, “for, you see, we have... we have finally found him.”
“What do you mean? w hat are you talking about? Speak out plainly, boy. You need never keep secrets from me.
“It is no secret, sir,” said Johannes, greatly embarrassed.
“Then why are you stuttering so? And why do you say ‘sir’? Did I not write you my name? Or do you reject my offer of brotherhood?”
“I will accept it, gladly, but I have still another brother that I think a great deal of. It is he whom we are seeking—my comrade and I. And now we have found him.”
“A real, ordinary brother?”
“Oh, no!” said Johannes. And then, after a moment of hesitation, softly, but with emphasis, “It is... Markus.... Do you know whom I mean?”
“Markus? Who is Markus?” asked Van Lieverlee, with some impatience, as if completely mystified.
“I do not know who he is,” replied Johannes, in a baffled manner. “I hoped that you might know because you are so clever, and have seen so much.”
Then he related what had happened to him after he had fallen in with the dark figure, on the way to the city where mankind was—with its sorrows.
Van Lieverlee listened, staring into space at first, with a rather incredulous and impatient countenance, now and then giving Johannes a scrutinizing look. At last he smiled.
Then, slowly and decisively, he said, “It is very clear who he is.”
“Who is he?” asked Johannes in breathless expectancy.
“Well, a Mahatma, of course—a member of the sacred brotherhood from Thibet. We will surely introduce him, also, to the Pleiades. He will feel quite at home there.”
That sounded very pleasing and reassuring. Was the great enigma about to be solved now, and every trouble smoothed away?
“But,” said Johannes, hesitating, “Markus feels really at home only when he is among poor and neglected people—Kermis-folk, and working men. He looks like a laborer, too—almost like a tramp—he is so very poor. I never look at him without wanting to cry. He is very different from you—utterly unlike!”
“That is nothing. That does not signify,” said Van Lieverlee, with an impatient toss of his head. “He dissembles.”
“Then you, also, think....” said Johannes, hesitating, and resuming with an effort, “You think, Walter, that the poor are downtrodden, and that there is injustice in wealth?”
Van Lieverlee threw back his head, and made a sweeping gesture with his right arm.
“My dear boy, there is no need for you to enlighten me upon that subject. I was a socialist before you began to think. It is very natural for any kind-hearted man to begin with such childish fancies. The poor are imposed upon, and the rich are at fault. Every newsboy, nowadays, knows that. But when one grows somewhat older, and gets to be-hold things from an esoteric standpoint, the matter is not so simple.”
“There you are,” thought Johannes. “As Markus told it, it was much too simple to be true.”
“Do not forget,” resumed Van Lieverlee, “that we all come into the world with an individual Karma. Nothing can alter it. Each one must bring with him his past, and either expiate or else enjoy it. We all receive an appointed task which we are obliged to perform. The poor and downtrodden must attribute their sad fate to the inevitable outcome of former deeds; and the trials they endure are the best medium for their purification and absolution. There are others, on the contrary, who behold their course in life more clear and smooth because their hardest struggles lie behind them. I really sympathize deeply with the unhappy proletarian; but I do not on that account venture to lower myself to his pitiful condition. The Powers hold him there, and me here—each at his post. He still needs material misery to make him wiser. I need it no longer, because I have learned enough in former incarnations. My task, instead, is the elevation, refinement, and preservation of the beautiful. Therefore I am assigned to a more privileged position. I am a watch-man in the high domain of Art. This must be kept pure and undefiled in the great, miry medley of coarse, rude, and apathetic people who compose the greater part of mankind. This cultivation of the beautiful is my sacred duty. To it I must devote myself in all possible ways, and for all time. The beautiful! The beautiful! in its highest refinement—sleeping or waking—in voice, in movement, in food, and in clothing! That is my existence, and to it I must subordinate everything else.”
This oration Van Lieverlee delivered with great emphasis while slowly moving forward over the short, smooth grass, accompanying the cadences of the well-chosen sentences with wide time-beats of the ebony walking-stick.
Johannes was convinced—to such a degree that he perceived in it naught else than the complement and completion of that which Markus, up to the present, had taught him.
Yes, he might go to his children now. He was sure of it. Markus would approve.
“I wish that Marjon might hear you—just once,” said he.
“Marjon? Is that your comrade? Then why does he not come? Bless me! It was a girl, though, truly! What are you to each other?”
Van Lieverlee stopped, and, stroking his small, flaxen beard gave Johannes another keen look.
“Do you not really think, Johannes,” he proceeded, with significant glances, and in a judicial tone, “do you not think... h’m... to put it mildly, that you are rather free and easy?”
“What do you mean?” asked Johannes, looking straight at him, unsuspiciously.
“You are a sly little customer, and you know remarkably well how to conduct yourself; but there is not a bit of need for your troubling yourself about me. I am not one of the narrow-minded, every-day sort of people. Such things are nothing to me—no more than a dry leaf. I only wish you to bear in mind the difficulties. We must not expose our esoteric position. There are too many who understand nothing about it, and would get us into all kinds of difficulties. Countess Dolores, for example, is still very backward in that respect.”
Johannes understood next to nothing of this harangue, but he was afraid of being taken for a fool if he let it be evident. So he ventured the remark:
“I will do my best.”
Van Lieverlee burst out laughing, and Johannes laughed with him, pleased that he appeared to have said something smart. Thereupon he took his leave, and went to look up Marjon, that they might go to the city of the miners.