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“Jump out!” cried Wistik, excitedly, swinging his little red cap. “Come on—jump!”
Johannes saw no way of doing so. The window was high and quite too small. Perhaps by climbing still higher he might find a way out. A flight of stairs, and another garret. Still another narrow passage, and another stairway. Then he caught another glimpse of Wistik, astride a large eagle.
“Come on, Johannes!” cried he. “You must dare to—then nothing can happen.”
Johannes was ready to venture, but he could not do it. The little window was again out of reach. Back again. Empty garrets, steep stairs—stairs without end. And there was the octopus! He knew it. Again and again he saw one of the long arms with its hundreds of suckers. Sometimes one of them lay stretched along the garret floor, so that he had to step over it. Sometimes one meandered over the stairs that Johannes was obliged to mount. The whole house was full of them.
And out-of-doors the sun was shining, and the blue air was clear and bright. Wistik was circling around the house, seated on the great eagle—the very same eagle they had come across before, in Phrygia.
Out-of-doors also rang the voice of Marjon. Hark! She was singing. She, too, was in the open air. She seemed to have made a little song, herself—words and melody—for Johannes had never before heard either of them.
“Nightly there come to me,
White as the snow,
Wings that I know to be
Strange, here below.
“Up into ether blue,
Pure and so high,
Mounting on pinions true,
Singing, I fly.
“Sea-gull like then I soar—
Not light more swift—
So near to Heaven’s door
To rock and drift!”
Alas! Johannes could not yet do that. He had no wings. He did, indeed, see rays of light at times, and here and there a bit of blue sky. But he could not get to it—he could not get out! And on he went again—upstairs, downstairs, through doorways, halls, and great garrets. And the terrible arms lay everywhere.
Again Marjon sang:
“Marvelous, matchless blue
I cleave in flight.
The spheres are not so fleet
As my winged feet.
“World after world speed by
Under my hand,
New ones I ever espy,
Countless as sand.
“Blue of the skies!
Blue of the deep!
Now make me wise—No
more to weep.”
Johannes also heard the blue calling him; but what the magic word was he could not guess. He was on his knees now, before a small, garret window through which he could barely thrust his arm. Behind him he could hear a shuffling and sliding. It was the long arm again!
“It’s a shame!” said Wistik again, his little face red with anger, “the way they have maligned me! I ought to be hail-fellow with the Evil One for not letting you be. What a rascal he is! Do you want to be rid of me, Johannes?”
“No, Wistik. I believe that you are good even if you have often disappointed me and made me very restless. You have shown me so much that is beautiful. But why do you not help me now? If you call me you ought to help me.
“No,” said Wistik; “you must help yourself. You must act, you understand? Act! You know that It is behind you, do you not?”
“Yes, yes!” shrieked Johannes.
“But, boy, do not shriek at me! Shriek at It. It is much more afraid of you than you are of It. Try!”
That was an idea. Johannes set his teeth, clenched his fists, turned round and shouted:
“Out, I say! Out with you—you ugly, miserable wretch!”
I even believe he used a swear-word. But one ought to forgive him, because it was from sudden excitement. When he saw that the long arms shriveled and drew away, and that it grew still in the house—when he felt his distress abating and saw the sunlight burst out, revealing a spacious deep-blue sky—then his anger calmed down, and he felt rather ashamed of having been so vehement.
“That is good!” said Wistik. “But do not be unmannerly—do not scold. That is hateful. But nevertheless, act, and learn compassion.”
Johannes was now no longer afraid; he shouted for joy. Yes, he was bathed in tears of thankfulness and relief. Oh, the glorious blue sky!
“Now you know it, once for all,” said Wistik.
Marjon’s voice again in song. But this time very different—the air of one of her old songs merely hummed: a customary calling sound—a soft suppressed little tune. And thereupon followed a “tap, tap, tap,” at his chamber door, to tell him that it was half-past eight and time to get up.
Fresh energy, a feeling of high spirits and courage, filled Johannes that day. At last he was going to act—to do something to end his difficulties.
First, he sought an opportunity to speak with Van Lieverlee. He went to brave him in his own rooms where he had never yet been. There he saw a confused medley of dissimilar things: some rare old pieces of furniture, and oriental rugs; a large collection of pipes and weapons; a few modern books; on the wall some picture-studies of which Johannes could not glean the meaning; some French posters picturing frivolous girls. With the same glance he saw mediæval prints of saints in ecstasy, and plaster casts of wanton women, and the heads of emaciated monks. There were images of Christ in hideous nakedness, and lithographs and casts so blood-curdling, crazy, and bizarre that they made Johannes think of his most frightful dreams.
“What are you here for?” asked Van Lieverlee tot Endegeest who, with an empty pipe in his mouth and a face full of displeasure, lay stretched out languidly on the floor.
“I have come to ask something,” said Johannes, not exactly knowing how to begin.
“Not in the mood for it,” drawled Van Lieverlee.
The day before, Johannes would have wilted. Not so to-day. He seated himself, and thought of what Wistik had said—“Act!”
“I will not wait any longer,” he began again. “I have waited too long already.”
“The big priest has had you in hand, has he not?” said Van Lieverlee, with a little more interest.
“Yes,” replied Johannes; “did you know it? What do you think of him?”
Van Lieverlee gaped, nodded, and said: “A knowing one! Just let him alone. Biceps! you know—biceps! All physique and intellectuality. Representative of his entire organization. Can’t help respecting it, Johannes. How those fellows can thunder at the masses! One can’t help taking off his hat to them. The whole lot of the Reformed aren’t in it with them! Theirs is only half-work; they are irresolute in everything they give or take; krita-krita, as we say in Sanscrit. Whether you do good or do ill, aways do it wholly, not by halves; otherwise you yourself become the dupe. If you would keep the people down, hold them down completely. To establish a church, and at the same time talk of liberty of conscience, as do the Protestants—that is stuff and nonsense —nothing comes of it. You may see that from the results. Every dozen Protestants have their own church with its own dogmas, with its own little faith which alone can save, and with its little coterie of the elect! No, compared with them the Roman Church is at least a respectable piece of work—a formidable concern.”
“Do you believe in it?” asked Johannes.
Van Lieverlee shrugged his shoulders.
“I shall have to think it over a while longer. If I think it agreeable to believe in it, then I shall do so. But it will be in the genuine old Church, with Adam and Eve, and the sun which circles around the earth; not in that modernized, up-to-date Church, altered according to the advancement of science—with electric light and the doctrine of heredity. How disgusting! No, I must have the church of Dante, with a real hell full of fire and brimstone, right here under our earth, and Galileo inside of it.”
“But I did not come to inquire about that,” said Johannes, sticking to his point. “I am not content, and you ought to help me. What I have heard in the Pleiades, and from Father Canisius does not satisfy me. I am sure, also, that it is not in this way I shall find my friend again; and now I am determined to find him.”
“Where, then, do you wish to look for him?”
“I believe,” said Johannes, “that if he is to be found anywhere, it is among the poor—the laborers.”
“Ah! Would you take part in the labor agitation? Well, you can do so, but I do not agree to go with you. You know what I think about that. Socialism has got to come, but I am not going to concern myself with it. It smells too much of the proletariat. I am very glad of the birth of a new society, but a birth is always an unsavory incident. I leave that to the midwife. I’ll wait until the infant is thoroughly washed and tidy before making its acquaintance.”
“But I wish to look for my friend.”
Van Lieverlee stood up and stretched himself.
“You bore me,” said he, “with that eternal chatter about your friend.”
“Act!” thought Johannes, and he went on:
“You promised to show me the way to what I am seeking, and to give an explanation of my experiences. But I know no more than I knew before.”
“Your own fault, my friend. Result of pride and self-seeking. Why have you had so little to do with me? You kept yourself with those two little girls. Did they enlighten you?”
“Quite as much as you did,” replied Johannes.
Van Lieverlee looked up in surprise. That was insubordination—open resistance. However, he thought it better to take no notice, so he said:
“But since you will join the labor movement, then you must find out for yourself. I won’t hold you back. Go, then, and look for your Mahatma!”
“But how am I to begin? You have so many friends—do you know some one who can help me?”
Van Lieverlee thought about it while looking steadily at Johannes. Then he said, deliberately:
“Very well. I know of one who is in the middle of it. Would you like to go to him?”
“Yes, at once, if you please.”
“Good,” said Van Lieverlee. Together they set out. The friend referred to was the editor of a journal—a Doctor of Laws. Felbeck was his name.
His office was far from luxurious in appearance. The steps were worn, and the door-mat was trodden to shreds. It was a dreary and sombre place. Large posters and caricatures were pasted on the walls, and on the table, lay many pamphlets and papers. Also there were writing-desks, letter-boxes, and rush-bottomed chairs. Two clerks sat there writing, and a few men, with hats on and cigars in their mouths, were talking. There was a continual running to and fro of people—printers’ devils, and men in slouch hats.
Dr. Felbeck himself had a pale, thin face, square jaws, bristling hair, and a black goatee and moustache. His eyes were deep-set, and they looked at Johannes keenly, in a manner not fitted to put him into a restful and confiding state of mind.
“This young person,” said Van Lieverlee, “wishes, as you express it, to turn his back upon his bourgeois status, and to swell the ranks of the struggling proletariat. Is that what you call it?”
“Well!” said Dr. Felbeck. “He need not be ashamed of it, and you might follow his example, Van Lieverlee.”
“Who knows what I may yet do,” said Van Lieverlee, “when the proletariat shall have learned to wash itself?”
“What!” said Felbeck. “Would you, a poet, have washed and combed proletarians, with collars and silk hats? No, my friend; with their vile and callous fists they will smash your refined and coddled civilization, like an etagère of bric-à-brac in a parlor!” Dr. Felbeck vented his feelings in a blow at the imaginary etagère. The attention of a clerk on the other side of the room was arrested, and he stopped his work. Van Lieverlee, too, looked somewhat interested.
“A revolution appeals to me,” said Van Lieverlee. “With barricades, and fellows on them with red flags, straggling hair, and bloodshot eyes. That isn’t bad. But you people of the Society of the Future!—Heaven preserve us from that tedious and kill-joy crowd! I would ten times over prefer an obese, over-rich banker with his jeweled rings, who, waxing fat through the misfortunes of simpletons, builds a villa in Corfu, to your future citizen.”
“You do not at all understand it yet,” said Felbeck, with a slighting laugh. “You are bound to have such notions because you belong to the bourgeois class of which you are an efflorescence. You are obliged to talk like a bourgeois, and versify like one. You cannot do otherwise. You cannot possibly comprehend the proletarian civilization of the future. It is to be evolved from the proletarian class to which we belong, and with which your young friend wishes to connect himself, as I perceive with pleasure.”
The clerk across the room came nearer, to listen to the speech of his chief. He was an under-sized young man whose pomaded black hair was parted in the middle. He had a crooked nose straddled by eye-glasses, and thick lips from between which dangled a cigar—even while he spoke. He wore a well-fitting suit, and pointed shoes with gaiters.
“May I introduce myself,” said he. “I am Kaas—fellow-partner Isadore Kaas.”
“Pleased to meet you,” said Van Lieverlee. And Johannes also received a handshake.
“Have you come to register yourself?” the partner asked.
“In what?” asked Johannes, who had not yet exactly gotten the idea of things. “In the proletarian class?”
“As a member of the party,” said Kaas.
“What does that imply?” asked Johannes, hesitating.
“It implies,” said Felbeck, “that you renounce the privileges of the class to which you are native, and that you range yourself, under the red flag, in the ranks of the International Workingmen’s Party—with the struggling proletariat—the party of the future.”
“Then what have I to do?”
“Sign your name, make a small contribution, attend the meetings, read our paper, spread our doctrines, and vote for our candidates in the elections.”
“Nothing else?” asked Johannes.
“Well, is not that enough?”
“Did you not speak of privileges I must renounce?”
“There, there!” said partner Kaas, “do not make too much of that, to begin with. Don’t be frightened. For the present, nothing further is required of you.”
“Oh, I was not afraid,” said Johannes, a trifle vexed that he should have been misunderstood. “I was even hoping that I might be able to do more.”
“So much the better! So much the better!” said Kaas, stepping hurriedly over to his desk again, and eagerly hunting for a pen. “That settles it. Your name, if you please.”
But Johannes was not, for the time being, in a very compliant mood. Since he had dared the octopus he had found that he had more than one string to his bow.
“No, I came for something else. I have a dear friend who lives and works for the poor and oppressed. I am looking for him. I saw him last, at the great strike of the miners, in Germany. Since that time I have heard nothing from him, but I know, surely, that he is with the working people. Mijnheer van Lieverlee has told me that you were in the midst of the labor movement. Could you not help me?”
“What’s his name?” asked Dr. Felbeck.
“They know him as Markus,” replied Johannes, although it cost him an effort to speak the dear name in that place.
“Markus?” repeated the gentleman, considering. “Markus only?”
“Markus Vis,” said Johannes, with yet more reluctance.
“Oh! He!” exclaimed partner Kaas.
“Markus Vis?” said Felbeck, turning round to the others in the office. “Is that—?”
“Yes, yes!” interrupted Kaas, “the very same who caused that row at the Exchange.”
“Gee! That confounded anarchist!” cried one of the soft-hatted smokers.
“Is he a friend of yours?” asked Dr. Felbeck, with a disdainful sniff.
“Yes, Mijnheer, my best friend,” said Johannes, firmly.
“Well, young man, you consort with odd and dangerous friends.
“Do you know where he is?” asked Johannes, quite undisturbed.
“Not I,” declared Felbeck, scornfully. “Do any of you happen to know?”
“I rather think somewhere in the neighborhood of Bedlam,” said another man.
“Trommel,” called Felbeck to a clerk who had kept on writing, “where does Vis hang out at present?”
“Markus Vis?” said partner Trommel. “Well, for the nonce, at the office of an iron foundry. He has a job there.”
“That’s a neat berth for him,” remarked one of the smokers. “You’ll see what a boot-licker he’ll be after he puts on a collar.”
“What foundry is that?” asked Van Lieverlee.
“In the ‘de Ruiter,’ of your uncle Mijnheer van Trigt,” replied partner Trommel.
“How long has he been there?” asked Van Lieverlee.
“For two or three weeks past.”
“Is he a tall dark fellow with a beard, and curling hair, and a jumper?”
“That is it—exactly!” said various voices.
Van Lieverlee swung round, strode up to the window, threw back his head, pulled out his handkerchief, and snorted into it. The bystanders could hardly tell whether he was sneezing, or laughing, or indisposed.
“Excuse me!” he cried out. “Something comical occurred to me.”
Then he snorted again, and one could plainly see that he was laughing.
“A Mahatma!” they heard him murmur, in the middle of his laughing. “Oh! Oh! but that is good! A Mahatma!”
Those present looked rather perplexed at this outburst, as if waiting for further explanation.
“If I only had had that description earlier, Johannes,” said Van Lieverlee, recovering from his fit of laughter, “we need not have annoyed these gentlemen. Your friend is in my uncle’s office. I have seen him several times.”
“Then will you go there with me?” asked Johannes. His voice was still firm, but I assure you his eyes were full of tears. However, he controlled himself in the presence of those men and partners.
“Of course, of course! Sometime!” said Van Lieverlee, in high glee; and he actually began laughing again. He made a pretense of trying to control this outburst, but such was his manner that Johannes would have liked to strike him straight in the face.
He did not do it, however, but went down the steps with Van Lieverlee without having enrolled in the proletarian class.
“Well, good-by!” said Van Lieverlee, when they were in the street, giving Johannes’ hand an immoderate shake. “I must go to the Soos.1 Sometime we will go to the foundry. I’ll make some inquiries, first. We’ll go sometime—of course—of course!”
With his mouth still twisted in irony, and humming a song, he passed on, in affected indifference. That evening—alone—Johannes hunted for the foundry. But the office was closed and dark, and there was no one about to give him information.
He found in his own little room a small bit of cheer—a vase of forget-me-nots, from Marjon.
Notes
1 Soos = Abbreviation of Societeit, or Club.