"Now it is all over," thought he. "Now the sun will never come again.
Now everything will always look the same to me as it does here."
But he dared not stand still in his despair; something most dreadful would befall him, he thought. Then he espied the high wall of a garden, and a little house, under a lime-tree with faded yellow leaves. He went into the enclosure and ran along broad paths where the brown and gold lime-leaves thickly covered the ground. Purple asters and other gay autumn flowers grew by the gra.s.s plots in wild abundance. Then he came to a pond. By the side of it was a large house, with windows and doors all opening down to the ground. Climbing roses and other creepers grew against the walls. But it was all shut up and deserted. Half-stripped chestnut trees stood about the house, and on the earth, among the fallen leaves Johannes saw the shining brown chestnuts.
The cold, dead feeling about his heart disappeared. He thought of his own home--there two chestnut-trees grew, and at this season he always went out to pick up chestnuts. He suddenly longed to be there, as though an inviting voice had called him. He sat down on a bench close to the big house and cried himself to rest.
A peculiar smell made him look up. A man was standing by him, with a white ap.r.o.n on and a pipe in his mouth. Round his waist he had a wisp of bast with which he tied up the flowers. Johannes knew that smell so well! It reminded him of his own garden, and the gardener who brought him pretty caterpillars and showed him starling"s eggs.
He was not frightened,--though it was a man who stood before him. He told the man that he had got lost and did not know his way, and thankfully followed him to the little cottage under the lime-tree.
Indoors, the gardener"s wife sat knitting black stockings. A large kettle of water was hung to boil over the turf-fire in the hearth-place.
On the mat by the fire lay a cat with her forepaws crossed, just as Simon had been lying when Johannes left home.
Johannes was made to sit down by the fire to dry his feet. "Tick-tick, tick-tick," said the great hanging clock. Johannes looked at the steam which came singing out of the kettle, and at the little flames which skipped and jumped fantastically about the peat blocks.
"Here I am among men," thought he.
It was not alarming. He felt easy and safe. They were kind and friendly, and asked him what he would like to do.
"I would rather stay here," he replied.
Here he was at peace, and if he went home there would be scolding and tears. He would have to listen in silence, and he would be told that he had been very naughty. He would be obliged to look back on the past, and think everything over once more.
He longed, to be sure, for his little room, for his father, for Presto--but he could better endure the quiet longing for them here than the painful, miserable meeting. And he felt as though here he could still think of Windekind, while at home he could not. Windekind was now certainly quite gone. Gone far away to the sunny land where palm-trees bend over the blue sea. He would do penance here and await his friend"s return.
So he begged the two good folks to let him live with them. He would be obedient and work for them. He would help to take care of the garden and the flowers, at any rate through this winter; for he hoped in his heart that Windekind would return with the Spring.
The gardener and his wife supposed that Johannes had run away from home because he had been hardly treated. They pitied him, and promised to let him stay. So he remained and helped to work in the garden and attend to the flowers. They gave him a little room to sleep in with a bedstead painted blue. Out of it, in the morning, he could see the wet yellow lime-leaves flutter past the window, and at night the black boughs waving to and fro, and the stars playing hide-and-seek between them. And he gave names to the stars, and the brightest of them he called Windekind.
He told his history only to the flowers, most of which he had known before at home; to the large, solemn asters, the many-hued zinnias, and the white chrysanthemums which bloom on so late into the bl.u.s.tering autumn. When all the rest of the flowers were dead the chrysanthemums still stood upright--even when one morning the first snow had fallen and Johannes came to see how they were getting on, they held up their cheerful faces and said: "Yes, we are still here. You would never have thought it!" And they looked very brave; but two days later they were all dead.
But palms and tree-ferns were still thriving in the hot-house, and the strange blossoms of orchids hung in the damp heat. Johannes peeped with amazement into their gorgeous cups, and thought of Windekind. How cold and colourless everything seemed then when he came out again--the sloppy snow with black footmarks, and the sighing, dripping branches of the trees!
But when the snow-flakes had been noiselessly falling hour after hour so that the boughs bent under the growing burthen, Johannes ran off gleefully into the purple twilight of the snow-laden wood. That was silence--but not death. It was almost more lovely than summer verdure, as the dazzling whiteness of the tangled twigs made lace-work against the light-blue sky, or as one of the over-weighted boughs shook off its load of snow, which fell in a cloud of glittering powder.
Once in the course of such a walk, when he had gone so far that all round him there was nothing to be seen but snow and snow-wrapped woods, half white and half black, and every sound of life seemed stifled under the glistening downy shroud, it happened that he thought he saw a tiny white creature running swiftly in front of him. He followed it--it resembled no animal that he knew; but when he tried to catch it, it promptly vanished into a hollow trunk. Johannes stared into the hole where it had disappeared and thought to himself: "I wonder if it was Wistik?"
But he did not think much about him. He fancied it was wrong, and he would not spoil his fit of repentance. And his life with these two kind people left him little to ask for. In the evenings he had indeed to read aloud out of a thick book in which a great deal was said about G.o.d; but he was familiar with the book, and read unheeding.
That night, however, after his walk in the snow, he lay awake in his bed, looking at the cold gleam of the moonlight on the floor. All at once he saw two tiny hands which came out from below the bedstead and firmly clutched the edge. Then the top of a little white fur cap came into sight between the two hands, and at last he saw a pair of grave eyes under uplifted eyebrows.
"Good-evening, Johannes!" said Wistik. "I am come to remind you of your promise. You cannot yet have found the Book, for it is not yet Spring time. But do you ever think it over? What is that thick book which you are made to read? But that cannot be the right book. Do not imagine that."
"I do not imagine that, Wistik," said Johannes.
He turned over to go to sleep again; but he could not get the gold key out of his head. Before now, when reading the big Book, he had thought of that, and he saw plainly that it could not be the right Book.
VIII
"Now he will come back," thought Johannes, the first time the snow had melted here and there, and the snowdrops peeped out in bunches. "Will he come now?" he asked of the snowdrops. But they did not know, and stood there with hanging heads, looking down at the earth as if they were ashamed of their haste to come out, and would gladly creep back again.
If only they could have done so! The numbing east wind soon began to blow again, and the snow drifted deep over the foolish, forward little things. Some weeks later came the violets; their sweet smell betrayed them among the brushwood; and when the sun had shone warmly on the mossy ground the pale primroses came out by hundreds and thousands.
The shy violets with their fine fragrance were the mysterious harbingers of coming splendour, but the glad primroses were the glorious reality.
The waking earth had caught and captured the first sunbeams and turned them into a golden jewel.
"Now--now he will certainly come!" thought Johannes. He eagerly watched the leaf-buds on the trees as they slowly swelled day by day and freed themselves from the bark, till the first pale-green tips peeped out between the brown scales. Johannes would stand gazing for long at the little young leaves--he could never see them move, but if he only turned round, they seemed to have grown bigger. "They dare not, so long as I am looking at them," thought he.
The shade had already begun to be green. Still Windekind did not come, no dove had settled near him, no little mouse had spoken to him. When he spoke to the flowers they merely nodded and never answered.
"My punishment is not yet ended," thought he.
One sunny spring morning he went to the pond by the great house. The windows were all wide open. Had the people who lived there come back?
The bird-cherry which grew by the water-side was entirely covered with fresh leaves; every twig had a crop of delicate green winglets. On the gra.s.s by the tree lay a young girl; Johannes could only see that she had a light-blue dress and fair hair. A robin, sitting on her shoulder, fed out of her hand. She suddenly turned her head and looked at Johannes.
"Good-day, little man!" said she, with a friendly nod.
Johannes felt a glow from head to foot. Those were Windekind"s eyes; that was Windekind"s voice.
"Who are you?" he asked. His lips trembled with excitement.
"I am Robinetta, and this is my bird. He will not be afraid of you. Are you fond of birds?"
The Redbreast was not afraid of Johannes; it flew on to his arm. This was just as it used to be. The being in blue must be Windekind.
"And tell me what your name is, boy," said Windekind"s voice.
"Do you not know me? Do you not know that my name is Johannes?"
"How should I know that?"
What did this mean? For it was the sweet familiar voice, and those were the same dark, heavenly-deep blue eyes.
"Why do you look at me so, Johannes? Have you ever seen me before?"
"Yes I have, indeed."
"You must surely have dreamed it."
"Dreamed it?" thought Johannes. "Can I have dreamed it? Or can I be dreaming now?"
"Where were you born?" he inquired.