The Quest. Frederik van Eeden
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and – oh, joy! – He was flying, free and clear, in the still, warm evening air!"
"And then?" asked Johannes.
"The continuation is not cheerful. I will tell it you a little later."
They had flown away over the pond. A pair of belated white butterflies fluttered along with them.
"Where are you going, elves?" they asked.
"To the big wild-rose that blossoms on yonder hill."
"We will go, too! We will go, too!"
In the distance, the rose-bush with its many pale-yellow satiny flowers was already visible. The buds were red, and the open roses showed little stripes of the same color, in token of the time when they still were buds.
In solitary calm, this sweet wild-rose bloomed, and filled the region with its marvelous fragrance. So delicious is this that the dune-elves live upon it alone.
The butterflies fluttered up to it, and kissed flower after flower.
"We come to entrust a treasure to you," said Windekind. "Will you take care of it for us?"
"Why not? why not?" whispered the wild-rose. "Watching does not tire me, and I do not think to go away from here, if no one carries me off. And I have sharp thorns."
Then came the field-mouse – the cousin of the mouse at the school. He dug a passage under the roots of the rose-bush, and pulled in the little key.
"If you want it back again, you must call on me. And then the rose need not be harmed."
The rose interlocked its thorny twigs close over the entrance, and took a solemn oath to guard the trust. The butterflies were witnesses.
The next morning, Johannes woke up in his own little bed, with Presto, the clock, and the wall-hangings. The cord around his neck, and the little key upon it, had disappeared.
IV
"Oh, boys, boys! How dreadfully tedious it is in summer!" sighed one of the three big stoves which stood together, fretting, in a dark corner of the garret in the old house. "For weeks I have not seen a living soul nor heard a sensible word. And that emptiness within. It is horrible!"
"I am full of spider-webs," said the other. "In winter that would not happen."
"And I am so dusty that I shall be shamed to death next winter when the black man appears, as Van Alphen says." This bit of learning the third stove had gotten, of course, from Johannes, as he sat before the hearth winters, reciting verses.
"You must not speak so disrespectfully of the Smith," said the first stove – which was the eldest. "It pains me."
And a number of shovels and tongs also, which lay here and there on the floor, wrapped in paper to keep them from rusting, expressed freely their indignation at the frivolous remark.
Suddenly, they all stopped talking; for the trap-door was lifted, a ray of light darted to the far corner, exposing the entire dusty company, to their surprise and confusion.
It was Johannes whose coming had disturbed their talk. He had always enjoyed a visit to the garret; and now, after all the recent happenings, he often went there to find quiet and seclusion. There, too, closed with a shutter was a window, which looked out over the hillside. It was a keen delight to open that shutter suddenly, and after the mysterious gloom of the garret, to see before him all at once the wide-spread, clearly lighted landscape, framed by the gently undulating lines of the hills.
Three weeks had passed away since that Friday evening, and Johannes had not seen nor heard anything of his friend. His little key was now gone, and there was nothing to prove to him that he had not been dreaming. Often, he could not reason away the fear that all had been only imagination. He kept his own counsel, and his father remarked with anxiety that Johannes, since that night in the dunes, had certainly been ill. Johannes, however, was only longing for Windekind.
"Ought not he to care as much for me as I do for him?" he mused, while he leaned against the garret window and gazed out over the verdant, flowery garden. "And why does he not come oftener, and stay longer? If I could!.. But perhaps he has other friends, and cares more for them than for me? I have no other friend – not one. I care only for him – so much, oh, so much!"
Then he saw defined against the deep blue sky a flock of six white doves which wheeled with flapping wings above the house. It seemed as if one thought impelled them, so swiftly and simultaneously, again and again, they altered their direction, as if to enjoy to the full the sea of sunlight in which they were circling.
All at once they flew toward Johannes' little attic-window, and, with much fluttering and flapping of wings, alighted on the gutter. There they cooed, and bustled back and forth, with little, mincing steps. One of them had a little red feather in his wing. He tugged and pulled at it until he held it in his beak. Then he flew up to Johannes and gave it to him.
Johannes had scarcely taken it when he felt that he had become as light and fleet as one of the doves. He stretched himself out, up flew the flock of doves, and Johannes soared in their midst, through the free, open air and the clear sunshine. Nothing was around him but the pure blue, and the bright gleaming of the white dove-wings.
They flew over the garden toward the woods, whose tree-tops were waving in the distance like the swell of a green sea. Johannes looked down below, and saw his father sitting at the open window of the living-room. Simon sat on the window-sill, his forepaws folded, basking in the sunshine. "Can they see me?" he thought; but he did not dare call to them.
Presto was tearing through the garden paths, sniffing about every shrub, behind every wall, and scratching against the door of every hot-house or out-building, trying to find his master.
"Presto! Presto!" cried Johannes. The dog looked up, and began to wag his tail and whimper, plaintively.
"I am coming back, Presto. Watch!" cried Johannes, but he was too far away.
They swept over the woods, and the crows flew croaking out of the high tree-tops where their nests were. It was midsummer, and the odor of the blossoming lindens streamed up from the green woods below them.
In an empty nest at the top of a tall linden tree sat Windekind with the wreath of wind-flowers upon his head. He nodded to Johannes.
"Is that you? That is good," said he. "I sent for you. Now we can stay together a long while – if you would like to."
"Indeed, I would like to," said Johannes.
Then he thanked the kind doves who had brought him thither, and dropped down with Windekind into the woods.
It was cool and shady there. The golden thrush was fluting his strain – nearly always the very same, but yet a little different.
"Poor bird!" said Windekind. "He was once a bird-of-paradise. That you can still see by his strange, yellow feathers; but he was given another covering and expelled from Paradise. There is a word which can bring back again his former glorious covering, and restore him to Paradise, but he has forgotten it. Day after day he tries to find that word. He sings something like it, but it is not the right word."
Countless flies were glistening like floating crystals in the sunbeams that fell through the dark foliage. Listening acutely, one could hear their buzzing like a great, monotonous concert, filling the entire forest. It was as if the sunbeams sang.
Thick, dark-green moss covered the ground, and Johannes had become so small again that it appeared to him like a new-grown woods at the bottom of the great forest. What elegant little stems and how closely they grew! It was difficult to pass between them, and the moss-woods seemed dreadfully large.
Then they came upon an ant-path. Hundreds of ants ran busily to and fro, some carrying bits of wood, little leaves, or blades of grass in their jaws. There was such a tumult that it almost made Johannes dizzy. They were all so busy it was a long time before one of the ants would stop to speak with them. At last they found an old ant who had been stationed to keep watch over the small plant-lice from which the ants draw their honey-dew. Since his small herd was quiet he could devote a little time to the strangers, and show them the great nest. It was situated at the foot of an old tree-trunk,