It is said that everyone’s character is influenced by the astrological sign he is born under: the Scorpion, the Twins, the Ram as they are called in the almanac. The councilor’s wife did not mention any of these when she referred to her husband. She said that he had been born under the sign of the wheelbarrow; he had to be pushed.
His father had pushed him into an office and his mother into matrimony; and then his wife had pushed him into becoming a councilor. This she never told anyone, for she was a clever woman who knew when to be silent, when to talk, and when to push.
He was not young any longer and had grown stout, which he himself called “well proportioned.” He was well read, good-natured, and “key-wise.” What the latter is will be explained in the story. He was full of good will toward everyone and would converse with anyone. This meant that when he went for a walk one never knew when he was coming home, unless his wife went along, for then she would push him home. He would talk to every one of his acquaintances and he had many of them, which meant that dinner often got cold.
His wife would watch from a window. “I see him!” she would call to the maid. “Put the pot on the fire.… No! he has met someone, take the pot off or the food will be spoiled.… Now put it on again, he is coming.”
But he didn’t come. Just as he was about to enter his home he spied a friend coming up the street, and he had to wait to say just a few friendly words to him. While he was thus engaged, another acquaintance came along, and so he had to stay for just a few minutes longer, to tell him about the weather.
It was a trial for his wife. At last she would open the window and call him, saying to herself at the same time, “He was born under the sign of the wheelbarrow; if he isn’t pushed, he won’t move.”
He loved to browse in a bookstore and look through the magazines. He even paid his own bookseller a small amount in order to be able to read all the new books without buying them. He was, himself, a living newspaper and knew all about engagements, marriages, funerals, literary gossip, and town gossip. Sometimes he would make mysterious allusions, and if anyone asked where he knew this or that from, he would say that he had it “directly from the key to his front door.”
The councilor and his wife had lived in the same house since they were married and had had the same front door key all the time; but at first they did not know of its strange power.
It was the time of King Frederik VI. Copenhagen still only had the old oil lamps; there were no streetcars or railroads, no Tivoli or Casino Theater. Sources of amusement were limited; it wasn’t as it is now. An excursion to the great churchyard outside the gates, where—after you had read the inscriptions on the tombstones—you could lie in the grass and eat your lunch, or a trip to Frederiksberg and the royal gardens was considered a treat. On Sunday, a regimental band played in front of Frederiksberg Castle, and after that you could watch the royal family sailing on the canals. Old King Frederik steered the boat himself and nodded to everyone, regardless of their station. Lots of the wealthier families would gather there in the summer for afternoon tea. Hot water could be bought at a little farmhouse just outside the park, but the teapot you had to bring yourself.
To partake of all this gaiety, the councilor, his wife, and the maid—she carried a basket containing sandwiches and the teapot—departed on foot from Copenhagen one Sunday afternoon.
“Remember to take the key to the front door,” said the councilor’s wife. “The door is locked at sunset and the bell rope broke this morning. We will be late coming home. On the way—after we have been to Frederiksberg—I want to see the pantomime at the Casortis Theater. It is called Harlequin Gives a Beating. In the last act they all descend from a cloud, it costs two marks per person!”
They walked to the royal gardens, where they heard the military band and saw the king and the white swans that swam behind the royal boat, as if they were guarding it. Then they drank their tea and hurried to get to the theater, but they arrived too late.
The tightrope walker and the jugglers had already done their acts and the pantomime had started. They always arrived too late and that was the councilor’s fault; he just had to stop and pass the time of day with everyone he knew. Also the theater was full of his acquaintances, and when the performance was over the councilor and his wife went home with a friend who lived outside the city gate, for a glass of punch. They were only going to stay for ten minutes, but they stayed for an hour. How they talked! Especially a Swedish baron—or was he German? the councilor could not recall where this gentleman came from—had been most entertaining. Although he could not recall the gentleman’s nationality, he would remember all his life the trick the baron had taught him with the key. It was most interesting! The baron could make the key answer all questions, even those most secret and personal.
The key to the councilor’s front door was particularly well suited for the game because it was heavy. The baron let the key hang by the loop from the index finger of his right hand, so loosely that the pulse in the finger could make it move. If by chance that did not happen, then the baron knew how to make it happen anyway. Every turning of the key was a different letter, from A to Z. As soon as the first letter was “stated,” the key turned to the opposite side and began the second letter; and this went on until it had spelled out the answer to a question.
“It is a lot of nonsense but most entertaining,” thought the councilor at first. But he changed his mind when the key showed how much it could unlock.
“Husband, husband!” exclaimed his wife. “It is late, the western gate to the city will be closed in fifteen minutes, we shall never make it.”
They had to hurry and they were not the only ones who had tarried too long. When the clock struck twelve they had just passed the first of the guardhouses. The gate closed and they were left outside. There they stood among the other latecomers: the councilor, his wife, and the maid, carrying the basket with the teapot in it. Each reacted to the calamity according to his own nature; a few were frightened, some angry, and many merely annoyed. But what was to be done?
A new civic order had just gone into effect: the northern gate of the city was to remain open all night for pedestrians. It was a good walk but the night was pleasant, the stars were out, and the frogs gave a free concert from every pond and ditch. The unfortunate all walked on together. Soon someone started singing and the rest joined in. The councilor did not sing, neither did he admire the stars, nor did he even look where he was going, for he fell in the ditch. One might have thought that he was drunk from too much punch. It wasn’t the punch but the key that had gone to his head; he could not think of anything else.
Finally they reached the northern gate, crossed the bridge, and through the “small” door entered the city.
“Now I am happy again, at last we are home,” said the councilor’s wife. “Here we are in front of our own door.”
“But where is the key?” The councilor’s voice sounded a little disturbed. “It is not in my coat pocket and it is not in my back pocket!”
“For mercy’s sake!” screamed his wife. “Don’t you have the key? You know that the bell rope broke this morning and the night watchman doesn’t have the key to our front door. You must have lost it playing that silly game with the baron. Oh, what a desperate situation!”
The maid started to cry. The councilor was the only one who kept his head. In the cellar of the house there was a small general store. “We can break a window in the basement and get Petersen to open up for us,” declared the master of the family.
First he broke one window and, when that did not help, he broke another. “Petersen!” he called. Then he pushed his umbrella through the broken window and waved it, which so frightened the storekeeper’s daughter, who had just got up, that she screamed.
Petersen opened his door and shouted for the night watchman; then he recognized the councilor and his wife and let them in.
The night watchman was blowing his whistle and other watchmen were answering it. Windows opened an
d heads peered out. “Where is the fire?” several people shouted.
By that time the councilor was up in his own apartment, taking off his coat. He found the key! It had slipped through a hole in his pocket—that shouldn’t have been there—down into the lining.
From that evening on the key took on increasing importance. It was not only of use when the family left the house, it was the center of attention when they stayed at home. The councilor would ask questions of the key and then he would manipulate its answers; that is to say, he thought of the most reasonable answers and let the key say them. But as time went by he actually began to believe in its powers.
The apothecary didn’t. He was a young relative of the councilor’s wife, and a skeptic. He was known to be a clever and very critical person. When he was still a schoolboy he had produced reviews of books and plays for a newspaper—anonymously, because that is safer. He was spirited, but he didn’t believe in spirits—at least, not in key spirits.
“I believe it, I believe it,” he declared one evening to everyone’s surprise. “My good Councilor, I am not only sure that your front door key has a spirit, I think all keys have one. It is a new science that is just becoming known. Table-tilting it is called. Have you heard of it? Every piece of furniture has a spirit, both the new and the old. I was doubtful. You know how much of a skeptic I am, but I have been convinced by an article in a foreign newspaper. It is a monstrous story, but I will tell you exactly what I read:
“There were two sweet and clever children who had watched their parents arouse the spirit of a large dining-room table. The next evening, when they were home alone, they decided to awaken the spirit of a chest of drawers. They succeeded, the spirit woke, but it would not take orders from children. It got angry, its drawers jumped out; and with the help of its little legs, it put each child in a drawer. Then it ran out of the house. Down to the nearby canal it went and jumped in, which resulted, of course, in the poor children getting drowned. The corpses of the victims were given Christian burial, but the chest of drawers was taken to the courthouse, where the city councilors declared that it was a murderer, and it was publicly burned.
“I read it all in a foreign newspaper. It’s not just something I have made up. I will swear to that by the Keys of the Kingdom; and that oath is binding!”
The councilor found the story too coarse even for a joke. He refused to discuss keys with the apothecary, for he was convinced that they would never agree: he himself was key-wise and the apothecary “key-stupid.” The councilor’s study of keyology progressed. It was his favorite amusement and occupation.
One evening when the councilor was just about to retire—indeed, he was half undressed—there was a knock at the door. It was the grocer, Mr. Petersen. He was sorry to disturb the councilor so late at night, but he himself had been just about to go to bed when he got such a good idea that he couldn’t wait until morning to tell it to the councilor.
“You know my daughter Lotte-Lene, I must talk to you about her. She is both a good and a good-looking girl. She has been confirmed and now I should like to see her well taken care of.”
“Well, I am sure it does you credit,” said the councilor, “but I am not a widower and I have no son that I can offer her.”
“Oh, please! You must try to understand me!” the grocer begged. “The girl can play the piano and sing; you must have heard her. But that is not the half of it, she can imitate anyone, even walk as they do. I thought to myself: ‘She is made for the stage.’ It is a good living for a girl of decent family; and many an actress has married into the nobility. Not that my Lotte-Lene has any such thoughts. She can play the piano and she can sing; so not long ago I went up to the music school with her. She sang for them, but unfortunately she couldn’t screech like a canary, and that seems to be necessary today. ‘Well,’ I thought, ‘if she can’t be a singer, then she can be an actress, for that she only needs to be able to speak.’ Today I talked to one of the producers, as they are called, and he asked if she had done any readings! I answered, not that I knew of, and then he said that to have done some reading was a necessity for an artist of the stage.
“Well, I thought it not too late to start—there is a lending library down the street—but then it occurred to me that there was no reason to throw away money renting books if one could borrow them. And I thought, ‘The councilor has lots of books, I will ask him if she can read them.’ Books are books and those she can read for free.”
“Lotte-Lene is a sweet girl,” replied the councilor. “A good-looking girl. She shall have all the books that she desires. But tell me, has she got spirit, talent, and genius? Has she got something that is even more important: luck?”
“She has won twice in a lottery,” her father said proudly. “Once she got a clothes closet; and another time, two pairs of sheets. If that isn’t luck, then I don’t know what luck is.”
“We’d better ask the key,” said the councilor, and the key was brought forth and hung on his index finger. It turned first one way, then the other and spelled out: “Victory and Happiness.”
That decided Lotte-Lene’s future. The councilor immediately gave her two books to read; one of them was Dyveke, the other Knigge’s Associating with Human Beings.
From that day on the councilor’s apartment was frequented by Lotte-Lene. She almost became one of the family. The councilor thought her very clever; she had faith in both him and the key. The councilor’s wife loved the naïve way the young girl showed her ignorance; she was almost like a child. They liked her and she liked them.
“It smells so lovely up there,” said Lotte-Lene. The councilor’s wife had a whole barrel of apples standing in the hall, and there were dried lavender and rose leaves in all the drawers.
“They are so refined,” thought Lotte-Lene, and she loved to look at the many beautiful flowers the councilor’s wife had, even in the winter. Lilac and cherry branches were brought into the warm rooms and put in water; soon they blossomed as if it were already spring.
The councilor’s wife said to the girl, “Out in nature the branches look dead, as if all life had gone from them. But look at them now; it is a resurrection.”
“I never thought of it that way before.” Lotte-Lene was impressed. “Nature is beautiful.”
The councilor let her see his “key-book,” in which he had written down all the questions he had asked the key and the strange and curious answers it had given. Here everything was recorded, even the time that half an apple pie had been missing, on the very day when the maid’s young man had come visiting. The councilor had asked the key to tell him who had eaten the pie: the cat or the young man.
“The young man,” answered the key. That was what the councilor had suspected, and the maid had confessed at once. For what could a poor servant girl do against magic?
“Yes, isn’t it strange!” sighed the councilor. “That key, that key. And about you it has said: ‘Victory and Happiness.’ I am sure it will come true.”
“That will be lovely,” said Lotte-Lene.
The councilor’s wife did not have the same faith in the key, but this she never let her husband know. Once, in the deepest confidence, she told Lotte-Lene that when the councilor was a young man he had been completely addicted to the theater. If anybody had pushed him, he would have become an actor; but the family, wisely enough, had pushed the other way. Well, if he couldn’t become an actor, he thought he could become a playwright; and the councilor had written a comedy.
“It is a great secret that I am telling you, little Lotte-Lene. The comedy was good. It was performed at the Royal Theater but it was booed. Now it is quite forgotten, and for that I am not sorry. I am his wife and I know him. Now you want to try your luck in theater. I wish you well, but I don’t believe you will succeed. I do not trust the key.”
But Lotte-Lene did, she trusted and believed in it; and in their faith in the key’s wisdom, the hearts of the councilor and the girl met.
The girl had other virtues which the
councilor’s wife appreciated: Lotte-Lene knew how to make starch from potato flower, new silk gloves out of old silk stockings, and could replace the silk on dancing shoes—not that the girl needed to do any of these things, for she had, according to her father, money in the drawer of her night table and bonds in the safe.
“She would make a good wife for the apothecary,” thought the councilor’s wife. But she didn’t say it out loud, nor did she let the key say it. The apothecary was soon to set up shop in one of the larger country towns.
Lotte-Lene was still reading Dyveke and Knigge’s Associating with Human Beings. She had kept the books for two years, but by now she knew one of them by heart: Dyveke; and she could play all the parts, but the only one she wanted to play was the female lead. She did not want to have her debut in Copenhagen; it was so filled with envy and she couldn’t find a theater director who would engage her. No, she would take her first step on the “artistic path,” as the councilor called it, in the provinces.
Now it happened, by chance, that the town where she was to have her debut was the same one in which the apothecary had just settled, and where he was the youngest if not the only apothecary.
The great and longed-for evening finally came. Lotte-Lene was to appear before an audience for the first time. She was to be “Victorious and Happy,” as the key had predicted. The councilor could not attend her opening night; he was sick. His wife stayed home, too, because she had to prepare camomile tea and hot compresses for her husband: the compresses for the outside of his stomach, and the tea for the inside. They did not see the performance of Dyveke.
But the apothecary did, and sent a letter to his relative, the councilor’s wife. “It was too marvelous,” he wrote. “If I had had the councilor’s key in my pocket, I would have taken it out and whistled through it. She deserved it; and the key, too, for having lied to the poor girl. ‘Victory and Happiness,’ indeed!”