Dvanajst potnikov s poštno kočijo

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Dvanajst potnikov s poštno kočijo

There was a biting frost; the sky was bright with stars, and not a breath of wind stirred. “Crash!” went a pot against a door. “Bang!” went the guns, firing in the New Year. It was New Year’s Eve, and now the clock struck twelve.

“Tra-la-la!” There came the mail coach. The great coach drew up outside the town gate, bringing twelve passengers. There was room for no more; every seat was taken.

“Hurrah! Hurrah!” rang out from the houses, where people were celebrating New Year’s Eve and had just risen, glasses full, to drink a toast to the New Year:

“Health and happiness in the New Year!” they said. “A little wife! Plenty of money! An end to all the nonsense!” Yes, those were their wishes, and glasses clinked—and the mail coach stood outside the town gate with its strangers, the twelve travellers.

What sort of people were they? They had passports and luggage with them—yes, and presents for you and me and everyone in town. Who were these strangers? What did they want, and what had they brought?

“Good morning!” they said to the sentry at the gate. “Good morning!” he replied, for the clock had struck twelve, after all. “Your name? Your occupation?” the sentry asked the first man to step out of the coach.

“Look in my passport!” said the man. “I am myself!” And a fine figure of a man he was, in a bearskin coat and sleigh boots. “I am the man in whom a great many people place their hopes. Come tomorrow, and you shall have your New Year’s gift! I scatter shillings and thalers for people to scramble after; I give presents—yes, and I give balls, thirty-one balls in all, for I have no more nights to give away. My ships are frozen in, but my office is warm. I am a wholesale merchant, and my name is January. I have brought nothing but bills!”

Then came the next man. He was a merry fellow, director of plays, masquerades, and every sort of amusement anyone could devise. His luggage was a large barrel.

“At Shrovetide we shall knock a good deal more than the cat out of that!” he said. “I mean to amuse other people, and myself as well, for mine is the shortest life in the whole family. I only live to be twenty-eight! Yes, perhaps they will slip in another day, but that makes no difference. Hurrah!”

“You mustn’t shout so loudly!” said the sentry. “Oh, indeed I may!” said the man. “I am Prince Carnival, travelling under the name of Februarius!”

Now came the third. He looked the very image of fasting, but held his head high, for he was related to the Forty Knights and was a weather prophet. That, however, is no fat living, which was why he sang the praises of Lent. His only adornment was a bunch of violets in his buttonhole, and very small they were.

“March, march!” cried the fourth, giving the third a shove. “March, march! Into the guardroom—there’s punch in there! I can smell it!” But it was not true; he meant to make an April fool of him, and that was how the fourth fellow began. He looked a lively sort. He probably did very little work, but kept a great many holidays! “My spirits go up and down!” he said. “Rain and sunshine, moving out and moving in! I am also the moving-day commissioner; I am an undertaker; I can both laugh and cry. I have summer clothes in my trunk, but it would be quite wrong to put them on. Here I am! When I dress up, I wear silk stockings and carry a muff!”

Now a lady stepped out of the coach. “Miss May!” she said. She wore summer clothes and galoshes; her silk dress was as green as beech leaves, there were anemones in her hair, and she smelled so strongly of sweet woodruff that the sentry had to sneeze. “God bless you!” she said; that was her greeting. She was lovely! And she was a singer—not in the theatres, but in the woods; not in the entertainment tents, no, she wandered through the fresh green woods, singing for her own pleasure. In her sewing bag she carried Christian Winther’s “Woodcuts,” for they are like the beech woods themselves, and “Short Poems by Richardt,” which are like sweet woodruff.

“Here comes the lady, the young lady!” cried those inside the coach, and out she came, young and elegant, proud and lovely. You could see at once that she was born to celebrate Seven Sleepers’ Day. She gave her feast on the longest day of the year, so that there would be time to eat all the many dishes. She could afford to travel in her own carriage, but had come by mail coach like the others, to show that she was not haughty. Nor was she travelling alone; her younger brother Julius had come with her.

He was a stout fellow, dressed for summer and wearing a Panama hat. He carried very little travelling gear; it was such a nuisance in the heat. All he had was a bathing cap and swimming trunks, and that is not much.

Now came Mother, Madam August, a fruit seller by the barrelful, owner of many fishponds, a farmer in a great crinoline. She was stout and hot, took a hand in everything, and carried the beer keg out to the workers in the fields herself. “You must eat your bread in the sweat of your brow,” she said. “That is what the Bible says; afterwards you may have a woodland dance and a harvest feast!” She was quite the mother.

Now came another man, a painter by profession, a master of colour, as the woods were to discover. The leaves had to change their colours whenever he wished, but how beautiful they became! Soon the woods would be red, yellow, and brown. The master whistled like a black starling, was a skilful worker, and hung a brownish-green hop vine round his beer mug. It looked handsome, and he had an eye for handsome things. There he stood with his paint pot; it was all the luggage he had.

Next came the landowner, thinking of the sowing season, of ploughing and tending the soil, and, yes, a little of the pleasures of hunting too. He had a dog and a gun, and nuts in his bag—crick, crack! He had brought a fearful amount of luggage, and an English plough. He talked of agricultural economics, but little could be heard for the coughing and wheezing—it was November coming along.

He had a cold, a terrible cold, so that he used a bedsheet instead of a handkerchief, and yet he had to see the servant girls to their new places, he said! But the cold would surely pass once he began chopping firewood, and that was what he meant to do, for he was master sawyer of the guild. He spent his evenings carving skates; he knew that in a few weeks there would be a call for that entertaining footwear.

Now came the last, the dear old mother with her fire pot. She was cold, but her eyes shone like two bright stars. She carried a flowerpot with a little fir tree in it. “I shall tend it and care for it, so that by Christmas Eve it will be tall, reaching from the floor right up to the ceiling, and will grow lighted candles, gilded apples, and paper cutouts. The fire pot warms me like a stove. I take the storybook out of my pocket and read aloud, until all the children in the room fall silent, but the dolls on the tree come alive, and the little wax angel at the very top shakes its wings of crinkled gold, flies down from the green treetop, and kisses everyone in the room, young and old—yes, and the poor children too, who stand outside singing the Christmas carol about the star over Bethlehem!”

“And now the coach can be off again!” said the sentry. “We have the dozen. Let a new coach drive up!” “First let the twelve come safely inside!” said the captain on duty. “One at a time! I shall keep the passports; each is valid for one month. When that month is over, I shall write on it how its owner has behaved. Now then, Mr January, will you please step inside!”

And in he went.—When a year has passed, I shall tell you what the twelve have brought you, me, and all of us. I do not know yet, and very likely they do not know themselves—for these are strange times we live in!