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Page 50
"I shall find him!" said the old man; but he never found him. The floor was
too open--the pewter soldier had fallen through a crevice, and there he lay as
in an open tomb.
That day passed, and the little boy went home, and that week passed, and
several weeks too. The windows were quite frozen, the little boy was obliged
to sit and breathe on them to get a peep-hole over to the old house, and there
the snow had been blown into all the carved work and inscriptions; it lay
quite up over the steps, just as if there was no one at home--nor was there
any one at home--the old man was dead!
In the evening there was a hearse seen before the door, and he was borne into
it in his coffin: he was now to go out into the country, to lie in his grave.
He was driven out there, but no one followed; all his friends were dead, and
the little boy kissed his hand to the coffin as it was driven away.
Some days afterwards there was an auction at the old house, and the little boy
saw from his window how they carried the old knights and the old ladies away,
the flower-pots with the long ears, the old chairs, and the old
clothes-presses. Something came here, and something came there; the portrait
of her who had been found at the broker's came to the broker's again; and
there it hung, for no one knew her more--no one cared about the old picture.
In the spring they pulled the house down, for, as people said, it was a ruin.
One could see from the street right into the room with the hog's-leather
hanging, which was slashed and torn; and the green grass and leaves about the
balcony hung quite wild about the falling beams. And then it was put to
rights.
"That was a relief," said the neighboring houses.
A fine house was built there, with large windows, and smooth white walls; but
before it, where the old house had in fact stood, was a little garden laid
out, and a wild grapevine ran up the wall of the neighboring house. Before the
garden there was a large iron railing with an iron door, it looked quite
splendid, and people stood still and peeped in, and the sparrows hung by
scores in the vine, and chattered away at each other as well as they could,
but it was not about the old house, for they could not remember it, so many
years had passed--so many that the little boy had grown up to a whole man,
yes, a clever man, and a pleasure to his parents; and he had just been
married, and, together with his little wife, had come to live in the house
here, where the garden was; and he stood by her there whilst she planted a
field-flower that she found so pretty; she planted it with her little hand,
and pressed the earth around it with her fingers. Oh! what was that? She had
stuck herself. There sat something pointed, straight out of the soft mould.
It was--yes, guess! It was the pewter soldier, he that was lost up at the old
man's, and had tumbled and turned about amongst the timber and the rubbish,
and had at last laid for many years in the ground.
The young wife wiped the dirt off the soldier, first with a green leaf, and
then with her fine handkerchief--it had such a delightful smell, that it was
to the pewter soldier just as if he had awaked from a trance.
"Let me see him," said the young man. He laughed, and then shook his head.
"Nay, it cannot be he; but he reminds me of a story about a pewter soldier
which I had when I was a little boy!" And then he told his wife about the old
house, and the old man, and about the pewter soldier that he sent over to him
because he was so very, very lonely; and he told it as correctly as it had
really been, so that the tears came into the eyes of his young wife, on
account of the old house and the old man.
"It may possibly be, however, that it is the same pewter soldier!" said she.
"I will take care of it, and remember all that you have told me; but you must
show me the old man's grave!"
"But I do not know it," said he, "and no one knows it! All his friends were
dead, no one took care of it, and I was then a little boy!"
"How very, very lonely he must have been!" said she.
"Very, very lonely!" said the pewter soldier. "But it is delightful not to be
forgotten!"
"Delightful!" shouted something close by; but no one, except the pewter
soldier, saw that it was a piece of the hog's-leather hangings; it had lost
all its gilding, it looked like a piece of wet clay, but it had an opinion,
and it gave it:
"The gilding decays,
But hog's leather stays!"
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