The schoolteacher read and the gardener’s wife listened. And so did the little pixy, who had just taken up his post by the door, when the schoolteacher read the title: “The Little Pixy.”
“Why, it concerns me!” he thought. “What has she written about me? Why, I will steal her eggs and chickens and chase the fat off her calf. You’d better be careful, madam!”
He puckered his lips and listened with his long ears; but as he heard about the pixy’s glory and strength and his power over the gardener’s wife, his eyes began to gleam with happiness. She had meant it symbolically, but he took it all literally. Around the pixy’s mouth spread an expression of nobility. He stood on tiptoe, gaining by this a whole inch in height. He was immensely satisfied with the poem.
“Why, she has spirit and culture. I have done her a great injustice. She has composed a poem to me, it will be printed and read. I won’t allow the cat to touch her cream any more. I will drink it myself. One drinks less than two; that is a saving. I will introduce thrift into the household, because I honor and respect that woman.”
“He is a regular human being, that pixy,” said the cat. “One sweet meow from the mistress—a meow about himself—and he changes his mind. She is clever, madam.”
But the gardener’s wife wasn’t clever; it was the pixy that was human.
If you haven’t understood this story, ask someone to explain it to you, but don’t ask the gardener’s wife, or the pixy.
125
Peiter, Peter, and Peer
It is unbelievable how much children in our age know. Why, one hardly knows what they don’t know. That the stork has brought them from the well or the millpond and delivered them to their father and mother is such an old story that they don’t believe it; and that is too bad, for it is the truth.
But how do the little babies get in the millpond or the well? That is something not everybody knows, yet there are some who do. Have you ever looked at the heavens on a clear night when all the stars are out? Then you will have noticed the shooting stars. They look as if they were falling and then suddenly they disappear. The most learned cannot explain what they don’t understand themselves; but if you know, then you can, even if you are not learned. What looks like a little Christmas-tree candle falling from the heavens is the spark of a soul coming from God. It flies down toward the earth. As it comes into our heavy atmosphere, its glow becomes so faint that our eyes can no longer see it. It is so fine and fragile, it is a little child of the heavens, a little angel; but without wings, for it is going to be a human being. Slowly, it glides through the air, and the wind carries it and puts it down inside a flower. It may be a violet, a rose, or a dandelion. There it lies for a while. It is so tiny and airy that a fly—or, in any case, a bee—could fly away with it.
When the insects come to search for honey, the little air-child is in the way; but they don’t kick it out, they are too kind for that; no, they carry it to a water-lily leaf and leave it there. The air-children climb down into the water, where they sleep and grow until they have reached the right size. Then, when the stork thinks one of them is big enough, he picks it up and flies with it to a family who want a sweet little child. But whether the children are sweet or not, depends upon what they have drunk while they lay in the millpond; whether they have drunk clear water, or water filled with mud and duckweed, for that makes them very earthy.
The stork never tries to do any matching up, he thinks that the first place is the best. One baby comes to wonderful parents, another to a mother and father so hard and mean that it would have been better to stay in the millpond.
The little ones cannot remember what they have dreamed while they lay under the water lilies and the frogs sang for them, “Croak … croak … croak!” That, in human language, means: “Come sleep and dream.” They have no memory either of which flower they have lain in, though sometimes when they grow up, one of them will say, “I like that flower best.” And that is the flower they slept in when they were air-children.
The stork lives to be very old, and he always takes an interest in the children he has brought and how they fare in this world. He can’t do anything for them, he can’t change their circumstances, for he has his own family to look after. But he doesn’t forget them; on the contrary, he thinks about them often.
I know an old stork, a very honest bird, who is very learned. He has delivered a lot of children and knows the story of them all. There isn’t a one that doesn’t have a bit of duckweed and mud in it. I asked him to tell the biography of just one child, and he gave me three for the one I asked for. They all had the same family name: Peitersen.
Now the family Peitersen was very respectable. The husband was one of the town’s two-and-thirty councilors, and that was a great distinction, so he devoted his whole life to being a councilor, and that was what he lived for. Now first the stork brought them a little Peiter; that was the name they gave the child. And the next year he came with another boy, and they called him Peter. And the third year Peer was brought. Peiter, Peter, and Peer—all variations of the same name: Peitersen.
They were three brothers, three shooting stars. Each had lain in a flower and slept beneath the leaf of a water lily in the millpond, and from there they had been brought by the stork to the family Peitersen who lived in the house on the corner; and everyone in town knew whose house it was.
They grew in body and spirit, and all three wanted to be something finer than one of the town’s two-and-thirty men.
Peiter said he wanted to be a robber, but that was because he had seen the comedy, Fra Diavolo, which had convinced him that a robber’s trade was the best in the world. Peter wanted to be a trumpet player. And Peer, that sweet little well-behaved child, so plump and round, whose only fault was that he bit his nails, he wanted to be a “daddy.” These were the answers they gave when anyone asked them what they wanted to be when they grew up.
They were sent to school, and one was the head of the class; another in the middle; and the third was the dunce, which doesn’t mean that they weren’t equally clever and good. Their parents, who had insight, swore that they were. The boys attended their first children’s ball, smoked cigars when no one was looking, and generally became cleverer and more and more educated.
Peiter was the most difficult, which is not unusual for a robber. He was, in truth, a very naughty child; but that was caused, according to his mother, by worms. Naughty children always suffer from worms, they have mud in their stomachs. Once his stubbornness and obstinacy brought about the ruin of his mother’s new silk dress.
“Don’t shake the coffee table, my little lamb,” she had said. “You might upset the cream pitcher and splash my new silk dress.”
The little “lamb” grabbed the handle of the cream pitcher and poured its contents right down in Mama’s lap. The poor woman could not help saying, “My lamb, my little lamb, how could you do such a thing?” That the child had a will of his own she had no doubt. A will of one’s own is the same as character; and that to a mother is a sign of great promise.
He could have become a robber but he didn’t; he only dressed like one. He wore an old hat and let his hair grow. He was going to be an artist, but he never got any further than dressing like one. More than anything else, he looked like a bedraggled hollyhock. As a matter of fact, he drew all his models so terribly tall that they looked like hollyhocks. It was the flower he loved best of all; the stork said that he had once lain in one.
Peter had lain in a buttercup, and he looked greasy around the corner of his mouth. His skin was so yellow that, if the barber had cut his cheek, I am sure butter would have oozed out instead of blood. He was born to sell butter, and could have had his own shop with a sign about it, except that, deep inside himself, he was a trumpet player. He was the musical member of the Peitersen family, and that single one was noisy enough for them all, said the neighbors. He composed seventeen polkas in one week and then transcribed them into an opera for trumpet and drums. Ugh! Was it lovely!
Peer was white and pink, little and ordinary; he had lain in a daisy. He didn’t fight back when the older boys hit him; he was sensible, and the sensible person always gives up. When he was very small he collected slate pencils; later he collected stamps; and finally he was given a little cabinet to keep a zoological collection in. He had a dried fish, three newborn blind rats in alcohol, and a stuffed mole. Peer was a scientist and a naturalist. His parents were very proud of him and Peer was very proud of himself. He preferred a walk in the forest to going to school. Nature attracted him more than education.
Both his brothers were engaged, while Peer was still dedicating his life to completing his collection of the eggs of web-footed birds. He knew a great deal more about animals than he did about human beings. As for the highest feeling, love, he was of the opinion that man was inferior to the animal. He knew that the male nightingale would serenade his wife the whole night through, while she was sitting on the eggs. He—Peer—could never have done that; nor could he, like the stork, have stood on one leg on top of the roof all night, just to guard his wife and family; he couldn’t have stood there an hour.
One day, as he was studying a spider and its web, he gave up the idea of marrying altogether. Mr. Spider weaves his nets to catch thoughtless flies, young or old, fat or thin; he exists only to weave nets and support his family. But Mrs. Spider has only one thought in her mind: her husband. She eats him up, out of love. She eats his head, his heart, and his body; only the long thin legs are left dangling in the web, where he used to sit worrying about the family. This is the truth, taken right out of a zoology book. Peer saw it, and thought about it. “To be so adored by one’s wife that she eats one up—no human being can love like that, and maybe it’s just as well.”
Peer decided never to get married and never to give any girl a kiss, for that is the first step toward marriage. But he got a kiss, the kiss none of us escapes, the final kiss of death. When we have lived long enough, the order is given to Death: “Kiss away!” and away we go. A light comes from God, so bright that it blinds us and everything grows dark. The human soul that came as a falling star flies away again, but not to rest in a flower or dream beneath the water-lily leaf. Now its journey is more important; it flies into eternity and what that is like, no one knows. No one has seen that far, not even the stork, however good his eyesight is, and however much he knows.
He didn’t know any more about Peer, but a great deal more about Peiter and Peter. I had heard enough about them, and I am sure you have too. I said thank you to the bird. And imagine, for such an ordinary story, the stork wanted payment. He wanted it in kind: three frogs and grass snakes. Will you pay him? I won’t! I have neither frogs nor grass snakes on me.
126
Hidden but Not Forgotten
There was an old manor house with a moat around it and a drawbridge. The drawbridge was raised as much as it was down, for not every guest who came was welcome. In the upper part of the walls there were holes to shoot through, and to pour boiling water or lead down over the enemy, should they try to cross the moat. Inside, in the hall, the ceilings were high, which was fortunate, for the wet wood, burning in the fireplace, smoked. On the walls hung portraits of knights clad in armor and their noble wives wearing heavy, embroidered dresses. But the noblest and most honorable of them was still alive; she was called Mette Mogens and she was the mistress of the castle.
One night robbers attacked the castle. They killed three of the servants and the watchdog; then they fastened the dog’s chain around Mistress Mette’s neck, and let her stand outside the doghouse while they sat in the great hall, drinking the wine and good beer from her cellar.
Mistress Mette was chained where the dog had been, but she could not even bark. A young boy who was with the robbers sneaked down to her. Had the others known what he was up to, they would have killed him.
“Mistress Mette Mogens,” whispered the boy, “do you remember that, when my father was punished by having to ride the wooden horse, you begged your husband to be merciful? It did not help; he was hard and wanted my father to ride until he became a cripple. Then you sneaked down as I have sneaked down now, and put two stones under my father’s feet so that he could rest. Nobody saw it or acted as if they had seen it—for you were the young, noble mistress. My father has told me about it, and that story I have hidden in my heart, but I have not forgotten it. Now I will loosen you from your chain, Mistress Mette Mogens.”
They ran to the stable and saddled two horses and rode through the night to friends for help.
“I have been well paid for the good deed that I did for your father,” said Mette Mogens.
“Hidden but not forgotten,” said the boy. The robbers were hanged.
Once there was an ancient castle. As a matter of fact, it is still there. It wasn’t Mette Mogens’ but belonged to another noble family.
We are in our own times. The sun is shining on the tower’s golden spire; little forest-clad islands lie like bouquets in the lake near the castle and among them swim white swans; in the garden the roses are blooming. The lady of the manor is herself the fairest rose of them all, blooming in joy: the joy of good deeds, not the ones that are done in the big world but those that are done with the heart, those that are unseen but not unnoticed.
She walks from the castle down to a little cottage where an invalid girl lives. Yesterday the only window in her room faced north; the sun never reached it. She could only see a bit of a field, for her view was cut off by a high hedge. But today there is sunshine, God’s warm, wonderful sun is shining in through another window, facing south. The invalid can sit in the warm sunshine and look out over the lake and see the forest beyond it. Her world has become so much larger and so much more beautiful, and that just because of a word from the lady of the manor.
“That word was easily spoken and the deed so small,” she said. “But the happiness I received in return was great and blessed.”
And that is why she does her good deeds and thinks about the poor in the cottages and of the rich, too; for unhappiness and sorrow are not privileges of the poor. They are often hidden but are not forgotten by God.
There was a large house in the busy city. It contained many fine rooms, but we won’t enter them, we will stay in the kitchen. It was comfortably warm and light and airy and spotlessly clean. The copper pots and pans were shiny, the floor varnished, and the table by the sink scrubbed as clean as a carving board. It was one girl’s work, and yet she had had time to get as properly dressed as if she were going to church. The bonnet she wore was black. That is a sign of mourning, yet the girl had neither parent nor other relations; and she was not engaged, although she had been once. She was a poor girl and so had been the young man who had loved her.
One day he had come and said, “We have nothing—we two. The rich widow who lives down the street has looked at me kindly. She would make me rich, but you are in my heart. What shall I do?”
“What you believe is best for you,” she answered. “But treat her well and kindly, and remember that from now on we can never see each other again.”
Some years passed and she met by chance her former fiancé. He looked sick and unhappy, and she could not help asking him how he was.
“I am rich and I have nothing to complain of,” he answered. “My wife is both kind and good, but you are still in my heart. I have fought my battle. It will soon be over, and we shall not see each other again before we are with God.”
A week later she read in the newspaper that he was dead. That is why the girl’s bonnet is black. Her beloved is dead. He died leaving a wife and three stepchildren. The bell sounds cracked, but the bronze is pure.
The color of the bonnet tells of mourning, and the expression in the girl’s face tells of it even more plainly. The sorrow is hidden in the heart but it will never be forgotten.
Yes, they were three little stories, three leaves on one stem. Would you like some more leaves of clover? There are many in the book of the heart: hidden but not
forgotten.
127
The Janitor’s Son
The general lived on the second floor and the janitor in the cellar. There was a great distance between them: all of the ground floor plus the class difference. Still they slept under the same roof and had the same view of the street and the back yard. In the yard there was a little lawn and in the middle of it stood a flowering acacia tree. Sometimes the nurse from the general’s household, who was very finely dressed, would sit under the tree with the even more elegantly dressed daughter of the general, little Emilie. The janitor’s son would dance for them. He always walked barefoot in the summer. He had brown eyes and dark hair. The little girl would laugh and reach out toward him with her little arms. The general, looking down from the window of his apartment, would nod his head and say, “Charmant!” The general’s wife, who was so young that she could almost have been his daughter, never looked out the back window. She had given her orders that the janitor’s boy might play near her little daughter but that he might not touch her; and the nurse obeyed them.
The sun shone in through the windows on the second floor and through the windows of the cellar. The acacia tree bloomed, lost its flowers, and then next year bloomed again. The tree flourished and the janitor’s little son flourished; he looked like a fresh tulip.
The Complete Fairy Tales Page 97