IV
In the heat of the afternoon the Fair-folk went to sleep. They lay snoring everywhere—on straw or heaps of rags, in ugly, ungainly postures. But the children continued in motion, and often here and there the sound of their teasing and crying could be heard.
Johannes strolled around dejectedly. To go and lie calmly down, to sleep between those vile men, as Markus did, was impossible. Rank odors pervaded everything, and he was afraid, too, of vermin. Should he go walk in the town park, or between the sunny polders? Although he was ashamed to run away, he could not remain in peace. Again that frightful feeling arose, of unfitness for his great task. He was too weak—too sensitive.
He thought, with a painful longing, of the cool, stately, and peaceful parlors in the houses of the town, with furniture neatly dusted by tidy maids. He thought, too, of Aunt Seréna and her pretty, old-fashioned house, and of her large, shady garden, where surely the raspberries were now ripe.
Strolling moodily along, he came upon the green wagon, and behold, there was Marjon, lying in peaceful sleep. She lay on a shaggy, red-and-yellow horse-blanket, and her lean arms and scrawny neck were bare. She was so still—her knees drawn up and her cheek in her hand—that one could not tell whether she was really sleeping, or lying awake with closed eyes.
The monkey sat close beside her in the hot sun, contentedly playing with a cocoanut.
Johannes felt touched, and went to sit down against the wheel of the wagon. Looking intently at the dear little girl, he thought over her troubled, wandering life.
In thinking of that he forgot his own grief; and from the depths of his discontent he passed over to a mood of tender melancholy full of compassion. And then there awakened in him words which he was careful to remember. He thought of a butterfly that he had once seen flying seaward over the strand; and thinking of Marjon he said to himself:
"Out to the sea a white butterfly passed—It
looked at the sunshine, not at the shore;
Now it must flutter in every blast,
And may rest never more."