New Year's Eve Fairy Tales Read online

  "Do you wish to see the golden fruit?" said Summer. "Then look and rejoice!"

  He stretched out his arms, and the leaves of the forest were splendid in red and gold, while beautiful tints spread over the woodland. The rosebush glowed scarlet; the elder branches hung down with great heavy bunches of black-brown berries; the wild chestnuts were ripe in their dark-green husks; and deep in the forest the violets bloomed again.

  But the Queen was becoming more and more silent and pale.

  "It is growing cold," she said, "and the nights bring damp mists. I am longing for the land of my childhood."

  Then she watched the storks fly away, one after the other; and in longing she stretched forth her arms toward them. She looked up at the nests. They were empty. The long-stalked cornflower was growing in one of them; in another was a yellow mustard seed, looking as if the whole nest were there solely for its protection. And the sparrows flew up into the storks' nests, to take possession.

  "Peep! What happened to the stork family?" one of them asked. "I suppose they can't bear it when the wind blows on them, so they've left the country. I wish them a happy journey!"

  Gradually the forest leaves became more and more yellow, and leaf after leaf drifted down to earth; and the stormy winds of autumn howled; harvesttime was over. The Queen lay on the fallen yellow leaves and looked with lovely mild eyes at the glittering stars above, while her husband stood beside her. Suddenly a gust of wind whirled through the leaves, a shower of them fell again, and the Queen was gone! Only a butterfly, the last of the season, fluttered through the chilly air.

  The wet fogs came, the icy winds blew, and the nights became darker and longer. Now the Ruler of the year stood there with snow-white hair, but he was not aware of it. He thought it was the snowflakes that were falling from the sky.

  A thin layer of snow covered the green field, and then the church bells rang for the glad Christmas season.

  "The birthday bells are ringing," said the Ruler of the year slowly. "Soon the new King and Queen will be born, and I shall go to my rest as my wife has done; my rest in the gleaming star."

  And in the green fir wood, where the white snow lay, there stood the Angel of Christmas, and consecrated the young trees that would adorn the feast.

  In a few weeks the Ruler of the year had become a very old man, white as snow. "May there be joy in the room and under the green branches," he said. "My time for rest draws nigh, and the young pair of the new year shall receive my crown and scepter."

  "But you are still in power," said the Angel of Christmas, "and not yet shall you be granted rest. Let the snow lie close and warm upon the young seed. Learn to endure that another receive homage while you are still the Ruler. Learn to be forgotten and yet to live. The hour of your release shall come when spring appears!"

  "And when will spring come?" said Winter.

  "It will come when the stork returns!"

  With white locks and snowy beard, cold, bent, and old, but still strong as the winter storm and firm as the glittering ice, old Winter sat high up on the snowdrift on the hill, his gaze fixed toward the south, just as the Winter before him had. The ice and snow creaked with the cold; the skaters skimmed over the smooth lakes; the black ravens and crows looked fine against the white ground; no breath of wind stirred. In that quiet air old Winter clenched his fists, and the ice was fathoms thick between land and land. Then the sparrows flew out again from town, and demanded, "Who is that old man over there?"

  And the raven sat on the fence rail again - perhaps a son of the other one, which amounts to the same thing - and answered them. "It is Winter, the old Ruler of last year. He isn't dead as the calendar says, but he's the guardian of spring, which is coming."

  "When will spring come?" asked the sparrows. "Then we'll have good times and a better year. The old one was no good at all!"

  Winter nodded in silent thought at the leafless black forest, where

  every tree showed the graceful form and bend of its branches; and during the winter night icy mists came down from the clouds, and the Ruler dreamed of his childhood and young manhood; and toward the morning dawn the whole wood was clothed in glittering hoarfrost. That was the summer dream of winter, and soon the sun scattered the frost from the branches.

  "When will spring come?" asked the sparrows again.

  "Spring!" Again that word echoed back from the snow-covered hills. Now the sun shone more warmly, and the snow melted, and the birds sang, "Spring is coming!"

  And high through the air came the first stork, with the second close behind him. A lovely child rode on the back of each, and they alighted in an open field and kissed the earth. Then they embraced the silent old man, and, like Moses on the mount, he disappeared, wrapped in cloudy mists. And so the story of the year was ended.

  "That's all very well," said the sparrows. "And it's beautiful, too, but it's not according to the calendar, so it must be all wrong!"

  Ole, the Tower-Keeper

  "In this world things go up and down and down and up!" said Ole, the tower keeper. "Now I can't get any higher! Up and down and down and up; that's the fate of most of us; in fact, we all become tower keepers at last; we look at life and things from above."

  Thus spoke my friend Ole, in his tower - a chatty, jolly fellow who seemed to say whatever came into his head yet had so many serious thoughts concealed deep in his heart. He came from a good family; there were some who said that he was a conference councilor's son, or might have been. He had a good education, had been the assistant to a schoolmaster, the deputy of a parish clerk, but what help could that have been! When he lived with the parish clerk it was agreed that he should have free use of everything in the house. He was then young and a bit of a dandy as we call it, and he wanted shoe polish to brush and shine his boots with; but the parish clerk would only allow him grease, and so they had a quarrel. One spoke of stinginess, the other of vanity; the shoe polish became the black cause of their strife, and so they separated.

  But what he wanted from the parish clerk he wanted of the world generally - the very best polish, and he always got its substitute, grease, so he turned his back on everybody and finally became a hermit. But in a big city, hermitage with a livelihood is to be found only in the church tower, so up it he went, and there he would smoke his pipe and pace up and down on his lonely walks, looking upward and downward, and talking in his own way about what he saw or didn't see, what he read in books or in himself.

  I often lent him books to read, good books, for by the company one keeps shall he be known. He didn't care for the English-governess type of novel, he said, nor for the French ones, either, which he called a brew of empty wind and rose stalks; no, he liked biographies and books about the wonders of nature. I visited him at least once a year, generally soon after the new year; he always had something to tell which the change of year suggested to his thoughts.

  I shall tell about two visits, and use his own words as far as I can.

  The Porter's Son

  The General's family lived on the first floor, and the Porter's family lived in the cellar. There was a vast distance between them - the whole first floor, as well as all the grades of society; but both families lived under the same roof, and their windows looked out in the same street and the same garden.

  In this garden there was a blooming acacia - whenever it did bloom - and sometimes the smartly dressed nurse would sit under it with the still more smartly dressed child, the General's "Little Emilie."

  The Porter's little son, with his dark hair and large brown eyes, used to dance barefoot before them; and the little girl would laugh and stretch her tiny hands out to him. And if the General saw this from his window he would nod down at them and say, "Charmant!" The General's wife, who was so young that she might almost have been her husband's daughter by an earlier marriage, never herself looked out into the yard; but she had given orders that the Porter's boy could play near her own child, but never touch it. And the nurse strictly carried out the lady's orders.
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  The sun shone in upon those who dwelt on the first floor and those who lived in the cellar. The acacia put out its blossoms, they fell away, and new ones came the next year. The tree bloomed, and the Porter's little son bloomed; he looked like a fresh tulip.

  The General's little daughter grew to be a delicate child, as dainty as the rosy petal of the acacia blossom. Now she seldom sat under the tree, for she took the fresh air in a carriage, She went with her mother on drives, and always nodded to the Porter's son, George; yes, and even kissed her fingers toward him, till her mother told her she was now too grown-up for that.

  One morning he had to bring the General some papers and mail that had been left in the Porter's room. He had mounted the staircase and was passing the door of the broom closet when he heard a peep from inside it. He thought perhaps it was a stray chicken chirping, but it was the General's little daughter, dressed in muslin and lace.

  "Don't tell Papa and Mamma, for they would be angry!"

  "What's the matter, little lady?" asked George.

  "It's all burning everywhere!" she said. "It's in full blaze!"

  George flung open the door to the little nursery, where the window curtain was nearly all burned; the curtain rod had caught fire and was flaming! Quickly he sprang forward, pulled it down, and called for help: without him the whole house would have caught fire.

  The General and his wife questioned Little Emilie.

  "I just took only one single match," she said, "and that lighted up and then the whole curtain lighted up! I spit to put out the fire; I spit all I could, but I didn't have enough spit, so I came out and hid, 'cause I knew Papa and Mamma would be angry!"

  "Spit!" said the General. "What sort of word is that? "When did you ever hear your papa or your mamma talk of spitting? You must have learned that word downstairs!"

  But little George received a penny. It didn't go to the candy store, but into his savings bank, and there were soon so many pennies there that he could buy himself a paintbox and color his drawings.

  He had many of these drawings, for they seemed to come out of his very pencil and finger tips. He presented the first colored pictures to Little Emilie.

  "Charmant!" said the General.

  The General's wife admitted that it was quite clear what the little one meant in his pictures.

  "There's genius in him!"

  Those were the words the Porter's wife brought back down into the cellar.

  The General and his lady were of the nobility; they had two coats of arms on their carriage, one for each of them. The lady had a crest worked on every piece of clothing, inside and outside, in her nightcap, and even on her night cover. This, her own coat of arms, was an expensive one, bought by her father for bright dollars, for he hadn't been born with it, and neither had she.

  She had come into the world seven years before the crest, a fact that was remembered by most people, though forgotten by the family. The General's coat of arms was old and large; one's back might well creak with dignity of this one alone, to say nothing of the two of them. And there was indeed a creaking in the lady's back when she drove stiff and stately to the court balls.

  The General was old and gray, but he knew how to sit on a horse, and rode out every day, with a groom at a respectful distance behind him. When he arrived at a party it was as if he had ridden into the room on his high horse, and he wore so many decorations that it was almost unbelievable, but that was by no means his fault. When a very young man he had performed military duties by taking part in the great autumnal war games that used to be held in times of peace. He always told an anecdote of those days - his only one. The officer under him cut off and captured one of the princes; and the prince and his little troop, all prisoners like himself, had to ride back to towns behind the General. It was and event never to be forgotten, and the General told it again and again, year after year, always ending with the remarkable words he had spoken when he returned the prince's sword to him: "Only my subaltern officer could have made your Royal Highness a prisoner; I - never!" Whereupon the prince had answered, "You are incomparable!"

  The General had never seen active service, for when war came to his native land he went on diplomatic missions, through three foreign countries. He spoke French until he had almost forgotten his own language; he danced beautifully, and he rode well; decorations blossomed on his blouse in indescribable abundance; sentinels presented arms to him; one of the prettiest of the girls presented herself to him - and became his wife. And they had a lovely little girl, so pretty that she seemed to have fallen from heaven; and the Porter's son danced in the garden before her as soon as she was old enough to take notice, and gave her all his colored drawings; and she looked at them and was so delighted with them that she tore them to pieces. She was so beautiful and charming.

  "My rose petal!" said the General's wife. "You were born to be the bride of a prince!"

  The prince was already standing outside the door, but no one knew it. People can't see much farther than the doorstep.

  "The other day our boy shared his bread and butter with her," said the Porter's wife. "There was neither cheese nor meat with it, but she enjoyed it every bit as much as roast beef. There'd have been a fine hullabaloo if the General and his wife had seen that little party, but they didn't!"

  George had shared his bread and butter with Little Emilie, and gladly would he have shared his very heart with her, if only it would have pleased her. He was a good boy, wide-awake and intelligent, and now he was studying drawing at the evening school at the academy. Little Emilie, too, was advancing in learning; she talked French and had a dancing master.

  "George is going to be confirmed at Easter," said the Porter's wife. That was how far George was advanced.

  "It would be very sensible to have him serve an apprenticeship," said the father; "in some good profession, of course; and then we would have him out of the house!"

  "But he could come home at nights to sleep," said the mother.

  "It wouldn't be easy to find a master who had a spare room. And we'd have to give him clothes, too; the little food he eats now we can easily afford to give him; he is happy with a couple of boiled potatoes; then he has his teaching free. Just let him go on the way he is, and he'll turn out a blessing to us, you may be sure! Didn't the professor say so?"

  The confirmation clothes were ready. Mother did the sewing herself, but the cloth had been cut by the tailor, and he knew how to cut it. The Porter's wife said that if he had only been better placed, and could have opened a shop with apprentices, he could have become court tailor.

  Yes, the clothes were ready, and the candidate was ready. On confirmation day George received a great pocket watch from his godfather, the flax dealer's old clerk, the wealthiest of George's godfathers. The watch was old and honored; it was always a little fast, but that's better than being too slow. It was a precious present. And from the General's there came a hymnbook bound in leather, sent by the little lady to whom George had given his pictures. On the flyleaf were written his name and her name as "his gracious well-wisher." This was written according to the dictation of the General's wife, and the General himself had read it through and said, " Charmant!"

  "That was really a great courtesy from a family of such rank," said the Porter's wife. And George would have to go upstairs, in his confirmation clothes and carrying his hymnbook, to thank them.

  The General's wife had a number of compresses on her head, for she had one of her bad headaches, which always came when she was bored. She looked very kindly at George and wished him the best of luck and none of her headaches.

  The General was wearing his dressing gown, with a tasseled cap and red- legged Russian boots. He paced up and down the floor three times, engrossed in his own thoughts and memories. Then he stood still and said, "So now little George is a Christian man! Let him be also and honest man, paying due respect to his government! Someday, when you are old, you can say the General taught you that sentence." That was a much longer speech t
han the General usually made; and he returned to his inner thoughts and looked impressive.

  But George heard and saw little of all that up there; nothing remained fixed in his memory so firmly as little Miss Emilie. How lovely she was, and how gentle; how she flitted about, and how delicate she was! If one should draw her portrait it would have to be in a soap bubble. There was a fragrance about her clothing and her curly blonde hair as if she were a rosebush that had just burst into bloom. And he had once shared his bread and butter with her, and she had eaten it with a huge appetite and smiled at him with every second mouthful. Could she possibly still remember it? Surely she did; it was in memory of this that she had given him the beautiful hymnbook.

  And so, on New Year's Day, just as the new moon of the new year rose, he went out-of-doors with a loaf and a shilling and opened the book at random to see what hymn should appear. It was a song of praise and thanksgiving. Then he opened it again to see what should come forth for Little Emilie. He tried very hard not to dip into the part of the book containing the funeral hymns, but in spite of his care he did dip in between death and the grave. You couldn't believe in that sort of thing - not in the least! And yet he was terribly frightened when soon afterward the dainty little girl was laid up with sickness and the doctor's carriage came to the street door daily.