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The General lived in the grand first floor, and the porter lived in
the cellar. There was a great distance between the two families—the
whole of the ground floor, and the difference in rank; but they
lived in the same house, and both had a view of the street, and of
the courtyard. In the courtyard was a grass-plot, on which grew a
blooming acacia tree (when it was in bloom), and under this tree sat
occasionally the finely-dressed nurse, with the still more
finely-dressed child of the General—little Emily. Before them danced
about barefoot the little son of the porter, with his great brown
eyes and dark hair; and the little girl smiled at him, and stretched
out her hands towards him; and when the General saw that from the
window, he would nod his head and cry, "Charming!" The General's
lady (who was so young that she might very well have been her
husband's daughter from an early marriage) never came to the window
that looked upon the courtyard. She had given orders, though, that
the boy might play his antics to amuse her child, but must never
touch it. The nurse punctually obeyed the gracious lady's orders.
The sun shone in upon the people in the grand first floor, and upon
the people in the cellar; the acacia tree was covered with blossoms,
and they fell off, and next year new ones came. The tree bloomed,
and the porter's little son bloomed too, and looked like a fresh
tulip.
The General's little daughter became delicate and pale, like the
leaf of the acacia blossom. She seldom came down to the tree now,
for she took the air in a carriage. She drove out with her mamma,
and then she would always nod at the porter's George; yes, she used
even to kiss her hand to him, till her mamma said she was too old to
do that now.
One morning George was sent up to carry the General the letters and
newspapers that had been delivered at the porter's room in the
morning. As he was running up stairs, just as he passed the door of
the sand-box, he heard a faint piping. He thought it was some young
chicken that had strayed there, and was raising cries of distress;
but it was the General's little daughter, decked out in lace and
finery.
"Don't tell papa and mamma," she whimpered; "they would be angry."
"What's the matter, little missie?" asked George.
"It's all on fire!" she answered. "It's burning with a bright
flame!" George hurried up stairs to the General's apartments; he
opened the door of the nursery. The window curtain was almost
entirely burnt, and the wooden curtain-pole was one mass of flame.
George sprang upon a chair he brought in haste, and pulled down the
burning articles; he then alarmed the people. But for him, the house
would have been burned down.
The General and his lady cross-questioned little Emily.
"I only took just one lucifer-match," she said, "and it was burning
directly, and the curtain was burning too. I spat at it, to put it
out; I spat at it as much as ever I could, but I could not put it
out; so I ran away and hid myself, for papa and mamma would be
angry."
"I spat!" cried the General's lady; "what an expression! Did you
ever hear your papa and mamma talk about spitting? You must have got
that from down stairs!"
And George had a penny given him. But this penny did not go to the
baker's shop, but into the savings-box; and soon there were so many
pennies in the savings-box that he could buy a paint-box and color
the drawings he made, and he had a great number of drawings. They
seemed to shoot out of his pencil and out of his fingers' ends. His
first colored pictures he presented to Emily.
"Charming!" said the General, and even the General's lady
acknowledged that it was easy to see what the boy had meant to draw.
"He has genius." Those were the words that were carried down into
the cellar.
The General and his gracious lady were grand people. They had two
coats of arms on their carriage, a coat of arms for each of them,
and the gracious lady had had this coat of arms embroidered on both
sides of every bit of linen she had, and even on her nightcap and
her dressing-bag. One of the coats of arms, the one that belonged to
her, was a very dear one; it had been bought for hard cash by her
father, for he had not been born with it, nor had she; she had come
into the world too early, seven years before the coat of arms, and
most people remembered this circumstance, but the family did not
remember it. A man might well have a bee in his bonnet, when he had
such a coat of arms to carry as that, let alone having to carry two;
and the General's wife had a bee in hers when she drove to the court
ball, as stiff and as proud as you please.
The General was old and gray, but he had a good seat on horseback,
and he knew it, and he rode out every day, with a groom behind him
at a proper distance. When he came to a party, he looked somehow as
if he were riding into the room upon his high horse; and he had
orders, too, such a number that no one would have believed it; but
that was not his fault. As a young man he had taken part in the
great autumn reviews which were held in those days. He had an
anecdote that he told about those days, the only one he knew. A
subaltern under his orders had cut off one of the princes, and taken
him prisoner, and the Prince had been obliged to ride through the
town with a little band of captured soldiers, himself a prisoner
behind the General. This was an ever-memorable event, and was always
told over and over again every year by the General, who, moreover,
always repeated the remarkable words he had used when he returned
his sword to the Prince; those words were, "Only my subaltern could
have taken your Highness prisoner; I could never have done it!" And
the Prince had replied, "You are incomparable." In a real war the
General had never taken part. When war came into the country, he had
gone on a diplomatic career to foreign courts. He spoke the French
language so fluently that he had almost forgotten his own; he could
dance well, he could ride well, and orders grew on his coat in an
astounding way. The sentries presented arms to him, one of the most
beautiful girls presented arms to him, and became the General's
lady, and in time they had a pretty, charming child, that seemed as
if it had dropped from heaven, it was so pretty; and the porter's
son danced before it in the courtyard, as soon as it could
understand it, and gave her all his colored pictures, and little
Emily looked at them, and was pleased, and tore them to pieces. She
was pretty and delicate indeed.
"My little Roseleaf!" cried the General's lady, "thou art born to
wed a prince."
The prince was already at the door, but they knew nothing of it;
people don't see far beyond the threshold.
"The day before yesterday our boy divided his bread and butter with
her!" said the porter's wife. There was neither cheese nor meat upon
it, but she liked it as well as if it had been roast beef. There
would have been a fine noise if the General and his wife had seen
the feast, but they did not see it.
George had divided his bread and butter with little Emily, and he
would have divided his heart with her, if it would have pleased her.
He was a good boy, brisk and clever, and he went to the night school
in the Academy now, to learn to draw properly. Little Emily was
getting on with her education too, for she spoke French with her "bonne,"
and had a dancing master.
"George will be confirmed at Easter," said the porter's wife; for
George had got so far as this.
"It would be the best thing, now, to make an apprentice of him,"
said his father. "It must be to some good calling—and then he would
be out of the house."
"He would have to sleep out of the house," said George's mother. "It
is not easy to find a master who has room for him at night, and we
shall have to provide him with clothes too. The little bit of eating
that he wants can be managed for him, for he's quite happy with a
few boiled potatoes; and he gets taught for nothing. Let the boy go
his own way. You will say that he will be our joy some day, and the
Professor says so too."
The confirmation suit was ready. The mother had worked it herself;
but the tailor who did repairs had cut them out, and a capital
cutter-out he was.
"If he had had a better position, and been able to keep a workshop
and journeymen," the porter's wife said, "he might have been a court
tailor."
The clothes were ready, and the candidate for confirmation was
ready. On his confirmation day, George received a great pinchbeck
watch from his godfather, the old iron monger's shopman, the richest
of his godfathers. The watch was an old and tried servant. It always
went too fast, but that is better than to be lagging behind. That
was a costly present. And from the General's apartment there arrived
a hymn-book bound in morocco, sent by the little lady to whom George
had given pictures. At the beginning of the book his name was
written, and her name, as "his gracious patroness." These words had
been written at the dictation of the General's lady, and the General
had read the inscription, and pronounced it "Charming!"
"That is really a great attention from a family of such position,"
said the porter's wife; and George was sent up stairs to show
himself in his confirmation clothes, with the hymn-book in his hand.
The General's lady was sitting very much wrapped up, and had the bad
headache she always had when time hung heavy upon her hands. She
looked at George very pleasantly, and wished him all prosperity, and
that he might never have her headache. The General was walking about
in his dressing-gown. He had a cap with a long tassel on his head,
and Russian boots with red tops on his feet. He walked three times
up and down the room, absorbed in his own thoughts and
recollections, and then stopped and said:
"So little George is a confirmed Christian now. Be a good man, and
honor those in authority over you. Some day, when you are an old
man, you can say that the General gave you this precept."
That was a longer speech than the General was accustomed to make,
and then he went back to his ruminations, and looked very
aristocratic. But of all that George heard and saw up there, little
Miss Emily remained most clear in his thoughts. How graceful she
was, how gentle, and fluttering, and pretty she looked. If she were
to be drawn, it ought to be on a soap-bubble. About her dress, about
her yellow curled hair, there was a fragrance as of a fresh-blown
rose; and to think that he had once divided his bread and butter
with her, and that she had eaten it with enormous appetite, and
nodded to him at every second mouthful! Did she remember anything
about it? Yes, certainly, for she had given him the beautiful
hymn-book in remembrance of this; and when the first new moon in the
first new year after this event came round, he took a piece of
bread, a penny, and his hymn-book, and went out into the open air,
and opened the book to see what psalm he should turn up. It was a
psalm of praise and thanksgiving. Then he opened the book again to
see what would turn up for little Emily. He took great pains not to
open the book in the place where the funeral hymns were, and yet he
got one that referred to the grave and death. But then he thought
this was not a thing in which one must believe; for all that he was
startled when soon afterwards the pretty little girl had to lie in
bed, and the doctor's carriage stopped at the gate every day.
"They will not keep her with them," said the porter's wife. "The
good God knows whom He will summon to Himself."
But they kept her after all; and George drew pictures and sent them
to her. He drew the Czar's palace; the old Kremlin at Moscow, just
as it stood, with towers and cupolas; and these cupolas looked like
gigantic green and gold cucumbers, at least in George's drawing.
Little Emily was highly pleased, and consequently, when a week had
elapsed, George sent her a few more pictures, all with buildings in
them; for, you see, she could imagine all sorts of things inside the
windows and doors.
He drew a Chinese house, with bells hanging from every one of
sixteen stories. He drew two Grecian temples with slender marble
pillars, and with steps all round them. He drew a Norwegian church.
It was easy to see that this church had been built entirely of wood,
hewn out and wonderfully put together; every story looked as if it
had rockers, like a cradle. But the most beautiful of all was the
castle, drawn on one of the leaves, and which he called "Emily's
Castle." This was the kind of place in which she must live. That is
what George had thought, and consequently he had put into this
building whatever he thought most beautiful in all the others. It
had carved wood-work, like the Norwegian church; marble pillars,
like the Grecian temple; bells in every story; and was crowned with
cupolas, green and gilded, like those of the Kremlin of the Czar. It
was a real child's castle, and under every window was written what
the hall or the room inside was intended to be; for instance: "Here
Emily sleeps;" "Here Emily dances;" "Here Emily plays at receiving
visitors." It was a real pleasure to look at the castle, and right
well was the castle looked at accordingly.
"Charming!" said the General.
But the old Count—for there was an old Count there, who was still
grander than the General, and had a castle of his own—said nothing
at all; he heard that it had been designed and drawn by the porter's
little son. Not that he was so very little, either, for he had
already been confirmed. The old Count looked at the pictures, and
had his own thoughts as he did so.
One day, when it was very gloomy, gray, wet weather, the brightest
of days dawned for George; for the Professor at the Academy called
him into his room.
"Listen to me, my friend," said the Professor; "I want to speak to
you. The Lord has been good to you in giving you abilities, and He
has also been good in placing you among kind people. The old Count
at the corner yonder has been speaking to me about you. I have also
seen your sketches; but we will not say any more about those, for
there is a good deal to correct in them. But from this time forward
you may come twice a-week to my drawing-class, and then you will
soon learn how to do them better. I think there's more of the
architect than of the painter in you. You will have time to think
that over; but go across to the old Count this very day, and thank
God for having sent you such a friend."
It was a great house—the house of the old Count at the corner. Round
the windows elephants and dromedaries were carved, all from the old
times; but the old Count loved the new time best, and what it
brought, whether it came from the first floor, or from the cellar,
or from the attic.
"I think," said, the porter's wife, "the grander people are, the
fewer airs do they give themselves. How kind and straightforward the
old count is! and he talks exactly like you and me. Now, the General
and his lady can't do that. And George was fairly wild with delight
yesterday at the good reception he met with at the Count's, and so
am I to-day, after speaking to the great man. Wasn't it a good thing
that we didn't bind George apprentice to a handicraftsman? for he
has abilities of his own."
"But they must be helped on by others," said the father.
"That help he has got now," rejoined the mother; "for the Count
spoke out quite clearly and distinctly."
"But I fancy it began with the General," said the father, "and we
must thank them too."
"Let us do so with all my heart," cried the mother, "though I fancy
we have not much to thank them for. I will thank the good God; and I
will thank Him, too, for letting little Emily get well."
Emily was getting on bravely, and George got on bravely too. In the
course of the year he won the little silver prize medal of the
Academy, and afterwards he gained the great one too.
"It would have been better, after all, if he had been apprenticed to
a handicraftsman," said the porter's wife, weeping; "for then we
could have kept him with us. What is he to do in Rome? I shall never
get a sight of him again, not even if he comes back; but that he
won't do, the dear boy."
"It is fortune and fame for him," said the father.
"Yes, thank you, my friend," said the mother; "you are saying what
you do not mean. You are just as sorrowful as I am."
And it was all true about the sorrow and the journey. But everybody
said it was a great piece of good fortune for the young fellow. And
he had to take leave, and of the General too. The General's lady did
not show herself, for she had her bad headache. On this occasion the
General told his only anecdote, about what he had said to the
Prince, and how the Prince had said to him, "You are incomparable."
And he held out a languid hand to George.
Emily gave George her hand too, and looked almost sorry; and George
was the most sorry of all.
Time goes by when one has something to do; and it goes by, too, when
one has nothing to do. The time is equally long, but not equally
useful. It was useful to George, and did not seem long at all,
except when he happened to be thinking of his home. How might the
good folks be getting on, up stairs and down stairs? Yes, there was
writing about that, and many things can be put into a letter—bright
sunshine and dark, heavy days. Both of these were in the letter
which brought the news that his father was dead, and that his mother
was alone now. She wrote that Emily had come down to see her, and
had been to her like an angel of comfort; and concerning herself,
she added that she had been allowed to keep her situation as
porteress.
The General's lady kept a diary, and in this diary was recorded
every ball she attended and every visit she received. The diary was
illustrated by the insertion of the visiting cards of the diplomatic
circle and of the most noble families; and the General's lady was
proud of it. The diary kept growing through a long time, and amid
many severe headaches, and through a long course of half-nights,
that is to say, of court balls. Emily had now been to a court ball
for the first time. Her mother had worn a bright red dress, with
black lace, in the Spanish style; the daughter had been attired in
white, fair and delicate; green silk ribbons fluttered like
flag-leaves among her yellow locks, and on her head she wore a
wreath of water-lillies. Her eyes were so blue and clear, her mouth
was so delicate and red, she looked like a little water spirit, as
beautiful as such a spirit can be imagined. The Princes danced with
her, one after another of course; and the General's lady had not a
headache for a week afterwards.
But the first ball was not the last, and Emily could not stand it;
it was a good thing, therefore, that summer brought with it rest,
and exercise in the open air. The family had been invited by the old
Count to visit him at him castle. That was a castle with a garden
which was worth seeing. Part of this garden was laid out quite in
the style of the old days, with stiff green hedges; you walked as if
between green walls with peep-holes in them. Box trees and yew trees
stood there trimmed into the form of stars and pyramids, and water
sprang from fountains in large grottoes lined with shells. All
around stood figures of the most beautiful stone—that could be seen
in their clothes as well as in their faces; every flower-bed had a
different shape, and represented a fish, or a coat of arms, or a
monogram. That was the French part of the garden; and from this part
the visitor came into what appeared like the green, fresh forest,
where the trees might grow as they chose, and accordingly they were
great and glorious. The grass was green, and beautiful to walk on,
and it was regularly cut, and rolled, and swept, and tended. That
was the English part of the garden.
Click Here for Part
2 of The Porter's Son
The Porter's Son
A Classic Children's Short Story
by
Hans Christian Andersen |
