The place had long since been abandoned; moss was growing on the rocks, and almost all traces left by drills and wedges had been erased. But the miller’s son had cleared the interior of the secret cave and decorated it with great artfulness, and there he lived as chieftain of the world’s most daring robber band.
He rings a silver bell. A little manikin, a dwarf with a diamond clip in his cap, hops in. This is his valet. He prostrates himself before him. When Princess Victoria comes you will show her in! Johannes says in a loud voice. The dwarf prostrates himself once more and disappears. Johannes stretches himself easefully on the soft divan and ponders. That’s where she would be seated, while he offered her elegant dishes from receptacles of gold and silver; the cave would be illuminated by a blazing fire, and deep inside, behind a heavy curtain of gold brocade, her bed would be made, guarded by twelve knights. . . .
Johannes gets up, crawls out of the cave and listens. There is a rustle among the twigs and leaves on the path. “Victoria!” he calls.
“Yes,” comes the reply.
He goes to meet her. “I don’t think I dare,” she says.
Rocking his shoulders, he answers, “I’ve just been there. I came back this minute.”
They enter the cave. He motions her to sit down on a stone and says, “That’s the stone the giant sat on.”
“Ooh, not another word, don’t tell me! Weren’t you scared?”
“No.”
“You said he had only one eye, but it’s the trolls who have that.”
Johannes thought it over. “He had two eyes, but he was blind in one of them. He told me so himself.”
“What more did he say? No, don’t tell me!”
“He asked me if I would enter his service.”
“Oh, but surely you wouldn’t? God forbid!”
“Well, I didn’t say no. Not definitely.”
“Are you mad! Do you want to be locked up inside the mountain?”
“Well, I don’t know. It’s miserable here on earth too.”
Pause.
“After those city boys came, you’ve been with them all the time,” he says.
Another pause.
“Still, you know, I’m stronger than any of them for carrying you and for lifting you out of the boat,” Johannes continues. “I’m sure I could stand holding you for a whole hour. Look!”
He took her in his arms and lifted her. She held on to his neck.
“All right, but now you don’t have to stand me anymore.”
He put her down. “But Otto is also strong,” she said. “He has even fought with grownups.”
“With grownups?” Johannes asks doubtfully.
“Yes, he has. In town.”
Pause.
Johannes ponders. “Well,” he says, “that’s that. I know what I’ll do.”
“What will you do?”
“I’ll go into service with the giant.”
“Oh no! Say, are you mad?” Victoria screams.
“Oh, yes, that’s what I’ll do. I don’t care.”
Victoria thinks of a way out. “But perhaps he won’t be back anymore now.”
“He’ll be back,” Johannes replies.
“Here?” she asks quickly.
“Yes.”
Victoria gets up and withdraws to the mouth of the cave. “Come, we’d better leave.”
“No need to hurry,” says Johannes, who has himself turned pale. “He won’t be here until tonight. On the stroke of midnight.”
Victoria calms down and is about to go back to her seat. But Johannes finds it difficult to overcome the uneasiness he has himself awakened and, feeling the cave has become too dangerous for him, he says, “If you insist on leaving, I do have a stone with your name on it out there. I’ll be glad to show it to you.”
They crawl out of the cave and find the stone. Victoria is proud and happy. Johannes is touched and says, almost in tears, “You must think of me now and then when you look at it while I’m away. Send me a friendly thought.”
“Certainly,” Victoria answers. “But you’ll come back, won’t you?”
“Oh, God knows. No, I probably won’t.”
They started walking homeward. Johannes is close to tears.
“Good-bye, then,” Victoria says.
“No, I can walk you a little farther.”
However, her callous readiness to say good-bye to him—the sooner the better—makes him feel bitter and kindles anger in his lacerated heart. Stopping abruptly, he says with righteous indignation, “But I can tell you one thing, Victoria: you will never find anybody who would be as kind to you as I. I can tell you that much.”
“But Otto is also kind,” she retorts.
“All right, take him.”
They walk a few steps in silence.
“I’ll do just fine, don’t you worry. You don’t know yet how much I’ll get in wages.”
“No. What will you get?”
“Half the kingdom. For one.”
“Fancy that! You will, really?”
“And I’ll have the princess too.”
Victoria stops. “That’s not true, is it?”
“Oh yes, that’s what he said.”
Pause. Victoria mutters to herself, “I wonder what she looks like.”
“Oh, good Lord, she’s more beautiful than any earthly woman. Well, that we knew already.”
Victoria is crushed. “So you want her, then?” she asks.
“Yes, I guess it will come to that,” he answers. However, seeing that Victoria is really upset, he adds, “But it’s quite possible I’ll be back some day. That I’ll take a trip back to earth again.”
“But then you mustn’t take her with you,” she pleads. “What would you want her with you for?”
“Well, I can come alone.”
“Will you promise me that?”
“All right, I promise. But what do you care anyway! I really can’t expect you to care about that.”
“Don’t say such things, I tell you,” Victoria answers. “I’m positive she doesn’t love you as much as I do.”
His youthful heart trembles with a warm delight. He could have sunk into the ground with joy and bashfulness at her words. Not daring to face her, he looks away. Then he picks up a twig from the ground, gnaws off its bark and smacks his hand with it. Finally, in his embarrassment, he begins to whistle.
“Well, maybe I’d better get home,” he says.
“Good-bye then,” she answers, giving him her hand.
II
The miller’s son went away. He was away for a long time, going to school and learning many things; he grew, became big and strong, and began to have down on his upper lip. The town was so far away, the travel to and fro so expensive, that the frugal miller kept his son in town summer and winter for many years. He was studying the whole time.
But now he had turned into a grown man; he was some eighteen or twenty years old.
And so, one spring afternoon, he stepped ashore from the steamer. At the Castle, the flag had been run up for the son, who came home on vacation by the same ship; a carriage had been sent to the pier to pick him up. Johannes tipped his cap to the lord of the manor, his wife, and Victoria. How big and tall Victoria had grown! She didn’t return his greeting.
He tipped his cap once again, and he heard her ask her brother, “Tell me, Ditlef, who greeted me just now?”
“That was Johannes, the miller’s son,” her brother replied.
She gave him another glance or two, but now he was too embarrassed to bow to her again. The carriage drove off.
Johannes went home.
Goodness, how quaint and small the house was! He couldn’t walk upright through the door. His parents received him with a drink. He was seized by an intense emotion, everything was so dear and touching, his father and mother so good and gray as they received him; they held out their hands to him in turn, welcoming him home.
Already the same evening he took a walk to inspect everything: he visited the mill, the quarry and the fishing hole, listened wistfully to the familiar birds, which were already building their nests in the trees, and took a turn over to the enormous anthill in the woods. The ants were gone, the mound deserted. He poked in it, but there was no sign of life anymore. As he wandered about, he noticed that the manorial woods had been badly thinned out.
“Do you still recognize things around here?” his father asked in jest. “Did you meet those old thrushes of yours?”
“I don’t recognize everything. The forest has been cut.”
“The forest belongs to the Castle,” his father said. “It’s not for us to count the master’s trees. Everyone needs money, the master needs a lot of money.”
The days came and went, sweet, mild days, wonderful days in solitude, with tender recollections of childhood, a summons back to the earth and the sky, to the air and the mountains.
He was walking along the road to the Castle. In the morning he had been stung by a wasp and his upper lip was swollen; if he met someone he would simply bow and walk straight on. He met nobody. In the Castle garden he saw a lady, and when he got closer he made a deep bow and strolled past. It was the mistress herself. He still experienced palpitations as in the old days when he walked by the Castle. Respect for the great house and the many windows, for the stern, aristocratic figure of the proprietor, was still in his blood.
He took the road leading to the pier.
Suddenly he ran across Ditlef and Victoria. Johannes felt ill at ease—they were liable to think he was stalking them. Besides, his lip was swollen. He slowed down, uncertain whether to go on. He did. While still far off he bowed and removed his cap, holding it in his hand as he passed. They both answered his greeting in silence and strode slowly by. Victoria looked straight at him; her face changed slightly.
Johannes continued down to the jetty; he had been seized by restlessness and his walk became nervous. How tall Victoria had become, completely grown up, and lovelier than ever! Her eyebrows nearly came together above her nose, they were like two delicate lines of velvet. Her eyes had turned darker, a very dark blue.
When on his way home, he turned into a path that led through the forest well beyond the Castle garden. Nobody was going to say he was dogging the footsteps of the Castle children. He reached the top of a hill, picked up a stone and sat down. The birds were making a wild, passionate music, giving their mating calls, pairing off, and flying about with twigs in their beaks. A sweetish smell of earth, of sprouting leaves and rotting trees, hung in the air.
He had happened onto Victoria’s path, she was coming straight at him from the opposite direction.
A feeling of helpless irritation came over him, he wished he were far, far away; this time she was bound to think he had been following her. Should he greet her again? Perhaps he could simply look the other way, what with that wasp sting and all.
But when she got close enough, he stood up and tipped his cap. She smiled and nodded. “Good evening. Welcome home,” she said.
Again her lips seemed to tremble slightly, but she quickly regained her composure.
“This may appear a bit strange,” he said, “but I didn’t know you were here, Victoria.”
“No, you didn’t,” she replied. “It was a whim of mine, it just occurred to me to come this way.”
Ouch! He had spoken as though he were on intimate terms with her.
“How long will you be home?” she asked.
“Till vacation is over.”
He had trouble answering her, she had suddenly become so distant. Why had she spoken to him anyway?
“Ditlef tells me you are such a good student, Johannes. You’re doing so well in your exams. And he also tells me you write poetry. Is that true?”
Squirming, he answered curtly, “To be sure. Everyone does.” She would probably soon be on her way, for she said nothing in return.
“Can you believe it, I was stung by a wasp today,” he said, showing her his lip. “That’s why I look like this.”
“Then you have been away for too long, our wasps don’t recognize you anymore.”
She didn’t care whether he had been disfigured by a wasp or not. Very well. She stood there twirling a red parasol on her shoulder, its handle topped with a gold knob, and nothing else concerned her. And yet he had carried the young lady in his arms more than once.
“I don’t recognize the wasps,” he replied. “They used to be my friends.”
But she didn’t grasp his deep meaning; she didn’t answer. It was such a deep meaning, though.
“I don’t recognize anything around here. Even the woods have been cut down.”
A light spasm passed across her face.
“Then you probably can’t write poetry here?” she said. “What if you wrote a poem to me sometime! Oh, what am I saying! That shows you how little I know about it.”
He lowered his eyes, mute and angered. She was making amiable fun of him, speaking snootily and observing what effect it had on him. Begging her pardon, he had not only wasted his time writing, he had also read more than most people. . . .
“Well, I trust we’ll meet again. So long.”
He doffed his cap and left without answering.
If she only knew that it was to her and no one else he had written his poems, every one of them, even the one to Night, even the one to the Spirit of the Bog. She would never know.
On Sunday Ditlef came and wanted Johannes to go to the island with him. I’m to be the oarsman again, he thought. He went along. Down by the pier some people were taking their Sunday stroll, otherwise everything was very quiet and the sun shone warmly in the sky. Suddenly the sound of music was heard in the distance, it was coming from the sea, from the islands out there; the packet boat was turning in a wide arc as it approached the dock, and it had a band on board.
Johannes untied the boat and sat down at the oars. He was in a soft, lightsome mood this sunny day, and the music from the ship was weaving a veil of flowers and golden grain before his eyes.
Why didn’t Ditlef come? He stood on shore watching the people and the ship, as if he weren’t going any farther. I won’t sit here at the oars any longer, Johannes thought, I’ll go ashore. He began turning the boat.