Chapter XIII
The preacher had come and gone. Sentence had been passed and the penalty paid. But Walter was depressed and despondent. Leentje did her best to put some animation into him, but in vain. Perhaps it was because she no longer understood her ward.
Those confidential communications of Walter’s were beyond her comprehension; and often she looked at him as if she doubted his sanity. From her meagre weekly allowance she saved a few doits, thinking to gladden Walter’s heart with some ginger cakes, which he had always enjoyed. It was no use: Walter’s soul had outgrown ginger cakes. This discovery caused Leentje bitter pain.
“But, my dear child, be reasonable, and don’t worry over such foolishness. This Fancy, or whatever the creature’s name is, has mocked you; or you have dreamed it all.”
“No, no, no, Leentje. It’s all true. I know everything she said, and it’s all true.”
“But, Walter, that story about your sister—you would have known that long ago.”
“I did know it, but I had forgotten it. I knew everything that Fancy told me. It had only slipped out of my mind. When she spoke, then it all came back to me distinctly.”
“I will go to those mills some day,” said Leentje.
And she did it. After Walter’s description she was able to find the place where that important meeting had taken place. She saw the timbers, the dirt, the ducks, the meadow—everything was there, even the ashes,—everything except Fancy and her stories.
Nor could Walter find Fancy now. In vain did he go out walking with those respectable Halleman boys as often as he was in the way at home. For hours he would stand on the bridge and listen to the rattling of the sawmills; but they told him nothing, and Fancy would not return.
“She has too much to do at my mother’s court,” Walter sighed, and went home sad and disappointed.
When he looked out the window and saw the beautiful stars twinkling encouragement to him, he cheered up a little. His sadness was less bitter, but it was still there. Pain passed into home-sickness, a sweet longing for home, and with tears in his eyes, but no longer despairing, he whispered “Omicron, Omicron!”
Who heard that call, or understood his grief over his exile? Who observed how that sigh for the “higher” and that fiery desire had passed into a nobler state?
After long deliberations and Walter’s express promise to do better, Master Pennewip had at last been prevailed upon to allow our young robber to return to school. He now had the opportunity to perfect himself in verse-writing, penmanship, verbs, “Holland Counts” and other equally important things.
The teacher said that the boy at Muiderberg had been still worse, and he had known what to prescribe. Walter would do all right now, he thought; but Juffrouw Pieterse must get another pastor, for the present one belonged to the class of “drinkers.” This she did. Walter was to receive religious instruction from a real preacher.
I don’t remember the title of the book, but the first lines were:
“Q. From whom did you and everything in existence have its origin?”
Walter wanted to say, From my mother; but the book said:
“Ans. From God, who made everything out of nothing.”
“Q. How do you know that?”
“Ans. From nature and revelation.”
Walter didn’t know what it meant, but like the good-natured, obedient child that he was, he repeated faithfully what he had memorized from the book. It was annoying for him to have his Sundays spoiled by recitations in the Kings of Israel—days so well suited for rambling. He was jealous of the Jews, who were always led away—a misfortune that seemed delightful to him. But he worked away patiently, and was not the worst of those apprentices in religion. At the end of the year he received a book containing three hundred and sixty-five scriptural texts, twenty-one prayers, as many graces, the Lord’s Prayer, the ten commandments and the articles of faith. It also contained directions for using it—once a day through the year, three times a day for a week, etc., etc.; or simply use as needed. On a leaf pasted in the front of the book was written:
To Walter Pieterse
as a
Reward
for
Excellent recitations
in the
Noorderkerk
and as an
Encouragement
for him to continue to
Honor God
in the manner in which he has begun.
Under this were the names of the preacher and the officers of the church, ornamented with flourishes that would have put Pennewip to shame.
The outward respectability of the Hallemans continued to increase. The parents of these children had hired a garden on the “Overtoom.” That was so “far out,” they said; and then they “couldn’t stay in the city forever.” Besides, the expense was “not so much”; for there was one gardener for everybody; and then, there were plenty of berries growing there, and that was always very nice. There would be grass enough for bleaching the linen—an important item, for just lately, said the mother of the Hallemans, there had been iron-rust in Betty’s dress. For that reason it was the very thing to rent the garden; and if people said anything about it, it would only be because they were jealous. And, too, there was a barrel there for rainwater; and Mrs. Karels had said it leaked, but it was not true; for everyone must know what he’s doing; but when you do anything, everybody is talking about it. If one paid any attention to it, one would never get anything done—and it would be such a recreation for the children. Juffrouw Karels ought to attend to her own business—and when Gustave’s birthday came, he might invite some “young gentlemen.”
Gustave’s birthday came. “Young gentlemen” were to be invited, and—Walter was among that select number.
It would lead me too far from the subject to enter upon an investigation of the motives that prompted Gustave and Franz to invite their former partner in the peppermint business. The list was made out and approved by their mother; and as Juffrouw Pieterse felt flattered, there was no objection from her side. Walter must promise, of course, to behave properly and be “respectable,” not to soil his clothes, not to wrestle and tear his clothes, and many other things of a similar nature. Juffrouw Pieterse added that it was a great favor on her part to let him go, for such visits made a lot of work for her.
Yes, Walter was to make a visit! Eat, drink and enjoy himself under a strange roof. It was a great event in his life, and already he was becoming less jealous of the Jews, who went away so often, and finally never came back home at all.
It was midday now—that glorious midday. With indescribable dignity, for a boy, Walter stepped through the gate-way. “A little to right—to the left, to the left again, then over a bridge, and then to the right straight ahead. You can’t miss it,” Gustave had said. The name of the garden was “City Rest,” so all Walter had to do was to “ask,” and he would “find it.”
And so it was.
Anyone making a call or visit for the first time always arrives too early. So it was with Walter, who reached City Rest before any of the other guests. But the boys received him cordially and presented him to their mother, who said that Walter had a pretty face, if it were only not so pale.
The other playmates came then, and running and throwing began, in the customary boyish style. This was interrupted with waffles and lemonade, which they “must drink quite slowly,” because they were “wet with perspiration.”
When the proud mother of the Hallemans was speaking of berries and the grossly slandered rainwater barrel, she might have mentioned the advantages of the leafy bower, where Betty was now sitting with a gentleman.
“Who is that?” asked Walter of little Emma, who was playing with the boys.
“That? That’s Betty’s sweetheart.”
From that touching story of slender Cecilia we know that Walter already had his first love affair behind him; but still Emma’s statement was to him something new. Up to that time he had thought that a sweetheart was a girl to whom one gives slatepencils and bonbons. But she seemed to be above such things. Walter saw immediately that he had not taken the right course with Cecilia; and all at once a desire came over him to know how a grown man treats a girl who is through school.
“Her sweetheart?”
“Oh yes—engagé!”
That word was too modern for Walter. If the reader is sharp he can calculate in what year that girl married the barber’s apprentice. All that is necessary is to determine when that stupid engagé came into use in this sense in “III. 7, a.”
“What did you say?” asked Walter.
“Engagé—they go together.”
“What is that?”
“Oh, they’re going to get married. Don’t you know?”
Walter was ashamed not to know such a simple thing; and, as is often the case, he was ashamed of being ashamed.
“Certainly, of course I know. I hadn’t understood right well. Emma—will you marry me?”
For the moment Emma was unable to accommodate him, as she was engagé with her mother; but as soon as she was free she would consider the matter, and Walter would probably be favored. She looked at him sweetly—and then the game called her to another part of the yard.
Love is the instinct for unity—and the instinct for multiplicity. As everywhere, nature is simple here in principle, but manifold in application. The love of a thief means: Come, we will go steal together. The servant of the Word unites with his loved one in prayer and psalm, etc., every animal after his kind.
Or is this instinct to share, to be together, to be united at the same the instinct for the good?
In Walter’s case it was, even though he himself did not know it. Had he not, in the name of Cecilia, liberated a bird that fluttered about its narrow cage in distress? Of course Cecilia had laughed and asked Walter if he was crazy. She did not know that there was any connection between his sympathy for the poor little bird and the beating of his heart when he scratched her name on the frozen window-pane in the back room. Perhaps she would have understood if she had loved Walter; but that was impossible, because he still wore his jacket stuffed in his trousers.
At all events, it was not possible for him to think of anything bad when he called “Omicron.” He had now forgotten Cecilia, and would have been greatly surprised if she had appeared in answer to his call. Little Emma would have come nearer meeting his requirements.
Walter felt that he must know just how the young man was proceeding with Betty in the bower. He soon found an excuse to separate himself from his companions; and then he heard all sorts of things that did not make him much wiser.
“Yes, I said so too. In May——”
“Certainly, on account of the top story——”
“It’s annoying! And what does your mother say?”
“Hm—she says we must wait another year, that it isn’t respectable to get married in such a hurry—it’s just as if——”
“Yes, four years. Louw and Anna have been engaged for seven.”
Walter was proud that he knew exactly what it all meant. To rent an upper story together, preferably in May!—that was the way he understood it.
“And do you get that press for the linen?”
“No, mother wants to keep it. But if we will only wait a year she will give us another one—a small one.”
“The big one would have been nicer.”
“I think so too, but she says young people don’t need a big press. But when my sister was married she got a big one.”
“Tell them you want a big one too.”
“It’s no use.”
“Try it. I won’t marry without that big one.”
“I will make them——”
This is a fair sample of what Walter overheard. He was dissatisfied and slipped away and hid himself, lost in thought. He didn’t even know himself what was the matter with him; but when Emma came and called him he looked as if he had been thinking of anything else but presses and vacant flats, for in a tone at once joyous and fearful he cried:
“Could it be she—my little sister?”
It was evening now, and the children were to continue their games indoors. As the little party was tired, one of the grown-ups was going to tell a story.
Just what “grown-up” had been requisitioned to narrate the story of Paradise and Peri, I don’t know. Anyway the story hardly harmonized with Betty’s engagement and that love-obstructing clothes-press. But just as Fortune is said to smile on everyone once in a lifetime, so, in the midst of the flatness and insipidity of everyday life, it seems that something always happens which gives that one who lays hold of it opportunity to lift himself above the ordinary and commonplace. To the drowning man a voice calls: “Stretch out thy arms, thou canst swim.”
“After Peri had begged long, but in vain, at the gates of paradise to be admitted to the land of the blessed, she brought at last, as the most beautiful thing in the world, the sigh of a repentant sinner; and she found favor with the keeper of the gate on account of the sacredness of the gift she had brought——”
“Let’s play forfeits now!” cried Gustave.
“Forfeits! Forfeits!” everybody called out after him.
And they played forfeits. Pawns were redeemed; and of course there was some kissing done. Riddles were given that nobody could guess; and who ever knew must not tell—a usual condition in this game.
“Heavy, heavy hangs over your head; what shall the owner do to possess it?”
“Stand on one leg for five minutes.”
“Let him jump over a straw—or recite a poem!”
“No, a fable—la cigale, or something like that.”
“Yes, yes!”
It was Walter’s pawn.
“I don’t know any fable,” he said, embarrassed; “and I don’t know French either.”
“I will help you,” cried Emma. “Le pere, du pere——”
“That’s no fable! Go ahead, Walter!”
For some of the party it was a joy that Walter knew no Fable and no French. If it were only known how often one can do a kindness by being stupid, perhaps many, out of love for humanity, would affect stupidity.
But Walter did not think of the pleasure of the others—which he could not have understood. He wept, and was angry at Master Pennewip, who had taught him no French and no fable.
“Forward, Walter, forward!” insisted the holder of the pawn.
“It needn’t be French. Just tell a fable.”
“But I don’t know what a fable is.”
“Oh, it’s a story with animals.”
“Yes, or with trees! Le chêne un jour dit au roseau—don’t you see, you can have one without animals.”
“Yes, yes, a fable is just a story—nothing else. You can have in it anything you want to.”
“But it must rhyme!”
Walter was thinking about reciting his robber song, but fortunately he reconsidered the matter. That would have been scandalous in the home of the Hallemans, who were so particularly respectable.
“No,” cried another, who was again wiser than all the rest, “it needn’t rhyme. The cow gives milk—Jack saw the plums hanging—Prince William the First was a great thinker. Don’t you see, Walter, it’s as easy as rolling off of a log. Go ahead and tell something, or else you won’t get your pawn.”
Walter began.
“A little boy died once who was not allowed to go to heaven——”
“Oho! That’s the story of Peri. Tell something else.”
“I was going to change it,” said Walter, embarrassed. “And so the little boy couldn’t enter the heavenly gates, because he didn’t know French, and because he had sometimes been bad, and because he hadn’t learned his lessons, and also because he—because he”——I believe Walter had something on the end of his tongue about his mother’s box of savings, but he swallowed it, that he might not offend the Hallemans by any allusion to the peppermint business—“because he once laughed during prayers. For it is certain, boys, that if you laugh during prayers you’ll never get to heaven.”
“So—o-oo?” asked several, conscious of their guilt.
“Yes, they can’t go to heaven. Now the boy had had a sister, who died one year before him. He had loved her a lot, and when he died he began to hunt for his sister right away. ‘Who is your sister?’ he was asked.”
“Who asked him that?”
“Be still! Don’t interrupt him. Let Walter tell his story!”
“I don’t know who asked that. The boy said that his little sister had on a blue dress and had dimples in her cheeks, and——”
“Just like Emma!”
“Yes, exactly like Emma. They told him that there was a little girl in heaven that looked just like that. She had come the year before, and had asked them to let her brother in, who would certainly inquire after her. But the boy could not go in. I have already said why.”
“Had the little girl always learned her lessons?”
“Of course! Don’t you see she had? Let Walter go on with his story!”
“It was sad that he could not get to see his sister any more. He felt that it hadn’t really been worth the trouble to die. ‘Oh, just let me in!’ he begged the gentleman at the door——”
“At the gate!” corrected several simultaneously, who, though untouched by the sublimity of Walter’s conception of death, were offended by the commonplaceness of the word door. But such things happen frequently.
“All right!” said Walter. He was ashamed that he had offended against propriety. “The gentleman at the gate said, ‘No!’ and then the poor boy returned to the earth.”
“That won’t do,” cried the philosophical contingency, “whoever is dead remains dead.”
“Don’t interrupt him. Of course it’s only a story!”
Walter continued: “He returned to the earth and learned French. Then he appeared at the gate again and said, ‘Oui, Monsieur!’ but it did no good; he was not admitted.”
“I should think not; he ought to have said: ‘j’aime, tu aimes.’”
“I don’t know anything about that,” Walter replied.
“Then he went to the earth again and learned his lessons till he could say them backwards. He did this for the keeper of the gate; but all this did no good; he was not allowed to go in.”
“Of course not,” cried one of the wise ones, “to get to heaven you must be confirmed. Had he been confirmed?”
“No. That’s the reason it was so difficult. Then he tried something else. He said that he was engaged to his sister.”
“Just like Betty,” cried Emma.
“Yes, like Betty—and that he loved her and wanted to marry her. But it was all of no use; they wouldn’t let him into heaven.
“Finally he didn’t dare go to the gate any more, for fear the keeper would get angry at him.”
“And then? What happened?”
“I don’t know,” Walter stuttered. “I don’t know what he ought to do to get to heaven.”
Walter knew the rest of the story very well, but he couldn’t put it into words. This was shown in a peculiar manner an hour later.
On the way home the party was almost run over by a wagon just as they were crossing a bridge. In the commotion Emma slipped under the railing and fell into the stream. Somebody screamed, and Walter sprang after her.
If he had died at that moment the keeper of the gate would hardly have turned him away because he didn’t know French and had not been confirmed.
When he was brought home, wet and dirty, Juffrouw Pieterse said that one ought not to tempt the Master, and that’s what one did when one jumped into the water without being able to swim.
But I find that the man who can’t swim is the very one to expect something of the Master; for the man who can swim has some prospect of helping himself.
And Juffrouw Pieterse complained that there was “always something the matter with that boy.” There was something the matter with him.