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!”
That sounded strangely to him, for when irritated one is not apt to be compassionate toward others nor toward one’s self. He thought, rather, to find abhorrence of his blood-thirsty plan. But she said it so sincerely and fervently that he began to weaken, although not to the point of crying.
“You will not do it, will you? It would not help at all. And you would... you would make me so frightfully unhappy.”
“I cannot endure it, Marjon—I cannot endure it!”
Marjon kneeled down by the table, and rested her chin in her hands. Her clear, true eyes were now looking steadily at Johannes, and as she spoke they grew more tranquil. Johannes continued to look at her with the irresolute expression of one in despair who yet hoped for deliverance.
“Poor Jo!” repeated Marjon. And then, slowly, with frequent pauses, she said: “Do you know why I can speak so?... I know exactly how you feel. I have felt that way, too. I did not think that this would be the way of it—the way it now is. I only thought, ‘She is going to have him, not I.’ And then I too said, ‘It cannot—cannot be!’ But yet it might have been. And now you say, ‘It cannot be.’ But it can, just the same.”
Here she waited a while, and Johannes looked at her more attentively, and with less irresolution.
“And now listen, Jo. You want to stab that prig, don’t you? And you well know that I never had any liking for him. But now let me tell you that I myself, for days and for weeks, have wanted to do the same thing.”
“What!” exclaimed Johannes, in astonishment.
Marjon hid her face and said: “It is the truth, Jo. Not him, of course, but... but her.”
“You do not mean it, Marjon,” said Johannes, indignantly.
“I am in earnest, Jo. I am not even sure whether I came into her service for that very reason, or for a better one.”
“My God! How frightful!” exclaimed Johannes, deeply moved.
“There you are—alarmed and probably angry. Naturally you think her lovely, and are fond of her. And I am ashamed of myself—heartily ashamed.”
Again they were silent, and in both those young heads were many turbulent thoughts.
“And do you know what helped me most to give it up? Not fear of punishment, nor of judgment, for I dreaded nothing so much as, worst of all, that she might succeed in getting you. But it helped me when I thought how much you loved her, and how you would cry and suffer if you should see her lying dead.”
Again they looked at each other, steadily and frankly, and their eyes were dimmed with tears. Then said Marjon:
“And now, Jo, think of this. I care nothing about that man, nor do you; and doubtless he would not be a great loss. But to her he would be, and indeed if you should kill him, you would bring it about that she would see him dead, and would have to cry. Do you wish to do that?”
Johannes’ eyes opened wide, and he looked into the lamplight.
“Yes,” said he, deliberately. “He deceives her and she deceives herself. He is altogether different from what she fancies.”
Then Marjon, taking both hands from the table, and resting them upon Johannes’ arm, said with rising voice:
“But Jo, Jo—indeed everything is different from what we think! Who can see just how and what people and things are? I thought that woman hateful, and you thought her lovely. You think that fellow odious, while she thinks him charming. Really, only the Father, knows how things are. Believe me, the Father only. We are poor, poor creatures. We know nothing—nothing.”
Then, resting her head, with its fair, fine hair, upon his arm, she sobbed bitterly; and Johannes, now completely broken down and mollified, wept with her.
Then they heard a door open in the hall. Probably, in their agitation, they had been talking too loudly.
Marjon took flight. In a moment of less excitement she would have been too shrewd for that. Johannes did indeed quickly put out the light, but he saw, through the crack of the door, that some one with a candle was standing in the hall. There was a meeting, and Johannes overheard a brief exchange of angry words, in vehement, suppressed tones.
The last he understood was: “To-morrow morning you leave.”