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_The Bell_ was written by Hans Christian Andersen
(1805-1875), and was translated from the Danish by
M. R. James (1862-1936) as part of his
_Hans Andersen Forty-Two Stories_ (1930).

Title: Hans Andersen Forty-Two Stories -- The Bell
Author: Andersen, Hans Christian (1805-1875)
Translator: James, Montague Rhodes (1862-1936)
Date of first publication: 1930
Place and date of edition used as base for this ebook:
   London: Faber and Faber, 1953
Date first posted: 13 February 2010
Date last updated: 13 February 2010
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #481

This ebook was produced by:
David T. Jones, Mark Akrigg
& the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
at http://www.pgdpcanada.net




The Bell

by

Hans Christian Andersen

(from _Hans Andersen Forty-Two Stories_ [1930],
translated by M. R. James)


Towards evening, in the narrow streets of the big town, when the sun
was setting, and the clouds shone like gold high up among the
chimneys, there was often heard, sometimes by one person, sometimes by
another, a wonderful sound like the toll of a church bell. But it was
only for an instant that it was heard, for there was such a rumbling
of carts and such a clamour of voices--and that distracts one. People
would say: "There's the evening bell ringing! The sun's setting now."

Those who went out of the town, where the houses stand farther apart,
with gardens and little fields about them, saw the evening sky in yet
greater beauty and heard the sound of the bell far louder. It seemed
to come from a church hidden deep in the still, fragrant wood; and
people looked that way and became quite serious.

Well, a long time went by, and one would say to another: "Can there be
a church out there in the wood? That Bell has a strange beautiful
sound; hadn't we better go out there and look into the thing?" So the
rich folk set off, driving, and the poor folk, walking; but they found
the way uncommonly long, and when they got as far as a clump of
willows that grew on the outskirts of the wood, they sat down there
and gazed up into the tall boughs, and thought they had got right into
the good green wood. A confectioner came out there from the town and
put up a booth, and then another confectioner came too; and he hung up
a bell, right over his booth; and a bell, moreover, that was tarred
outside so as to stand the rain, and had no clapper. And when the
people got home again they said how romantic it had all been--and that
has a meaning of its own--quite apart from tea. Three people there
were who insisted that they had forced their way through the wood, to
the very end of it, and all the while they had heard the strange sound
of the bell; but to them it seemed as if it came from within the town.
One of them wrote a whole poem about it, and told how the bell rang
like the voice of a mother singing to the dearest and best of
children: no music was more lovely than the sound of the bell.

The Emperor of the country, too, had his attention drawn to the
matter, and promised that the man who could really find out where the
sound came from should have the title of "World's Bellman" given to
him, even if it proved not to be a bell at all.

A great many people now took to going to the wood for the sake of the
excellent victuals they got there, but there was only one who came
back with any sort of explanation. No one had been far enough into the
wood; neither had he for that matter, but still he said that the
bell-sound came from a very large owl in a hollow tree. It was a real
bird of wisdom, and it kept on beating its head against the tree, but
whether the sound came from its head or from the tree he could not say
even now with certainty. So he was appointed "World's Bellman", and
every year he wrote a little book about the owl, but the world was no
wiser than before.

Now there chanced to be a confirmation day. The priest had spoken
beautiful and moving words. The confirmands had been deeply touched;
it was a momentous day for them; from being children they were all at
once become grown people; their child-soul must now pass over, so to
say, into a being of more discretion. It was a day of the loveliest
sunshine; the confirmands went out of the town, and out from the wood
there rang with marvellous clearness the great unknown bell. Instantly
a great desire came upon them to go thither--all of them except three.
One of these had to go home and try on her ball-dress, for the dress
and the ball were the whole occasion of her being confirmed this time,
otherwise she wouldn't have come with the rest. The second was a poor
boy, who had borrowed a coat and boots, to be confirmed in, from the
innkeeper's son, and he had to return them by a certain time. The
third said that he never went to any strange place without his
parents, and that he had always been a good boy, and so he would
continue to be, even when he was confirmed; and that isn't a thing to
make game of. But they did make game of him all the same.

So three of them didn't go with the rest; the others trotted off. The
sun shone and the birds sang, and the young people sang too, and held
each others hands--for why? They hadn't yet got situations and were
all confirmands in the sight of God.

But, soon, two of the smallest got tired, and they turned back to the
town. Two little girls sat themselves down and began making wreaths,
so they got no farther; and when the rest came to the willow trees,
where the confectioner lived, they said: "Look here, we've got to the
place; there isn't really any bell, it's just a sort of thing people
fancy to themselves."

At that moment, in the depth of the wood, the bell sounded out, so
sweet and solemn that four or five made up their minds that they would
after all go a little farther into the wood. It was so thick and leafy
that it was really hard work to get through it; the woodruff and the
anemones were almost too tall, flowering convolvulus and brambles hung
in long festoons from tree to tree, where the nightingale sang and the
sunlight played. Oh, it was beautiful!--but it was no place for the
girls to make their way through, they would soon have their frocks
torn to rags. There stood great masses of rock grown all over with
moss of all colours, and the fresh spring water came babbling out and
talked in a strange fashion. "Cluck! Cluck!" it said.

"That can't be the bell, can it?" said one of the young people; and he
lay down and listened to it. "This must be looked into properly." So
there he stayed and let the rest go on.

They came to a hut of bark and branches; a big crab apple tree leant
down over it as if it would shake all its wealth of blossom over the
roof, which was gay with roses; the long boughs stretched straight
towards the gable, and on it hung a little bell. Could that be the one
they had heard? Yes! They were all agreed about it, except one. He
said that the bell was far too small and shrill to be heard so far off
as they had heard the other, and that those were quite different
sounds that so moved people's hearts. The one who said this was a
king's son, so the others said: "That sort, of course, must always be
cleverer than anybody else!"

So they let him go on alone, and as he went his heart filled more and
more with the forest loneliness; but still he heard the little bell
with which the others had been so delighted, and now and again, when
the breeze came from the confectioner's way, he could hear as well how
the people sang at their tea. But the deep stroke of the bell still
sounded louder; it was as if an organ was playing, too, and the sound
came from the left, from the side where the heart is set.

Suddenly there was a rustling in the bushes, and there before the
king's son stood a little boy, a boy in wooden shoes and a jacket so
short that you could see exactly how long his wrists were. They
recognized one another. The boy was that very one who hadn't been able
to come with the rest because he had had to go home and give back the
coat and boots to the innkeeper's son. He had done that, and then, in
his wooden shoes and his shabby clothes, he had started off alone, for
the bell rang so loud and so deep that out he must go.

"Ah, now we can go on together," said the King's son; but the poor boy
with the wooden shoes was quite embarrassed. He pulled at his short
sleeves and said he was afraid he couldn't get along so fast, and
besides he thought the bell ought to be looked for on the right, for
everything that is great and noble is on that side.

"Well, at that rate we shan't meet again," said the King's son; and he
nodded to the poor boy, who plunged into the darkest and thickest part
of the wood, where the thorns tore his shabby clothes to bits, and
scratched his face and hands and feet till the blood came.

The King's son, too, got a good few scratches; but the sun shone on
his path, and he is the one we will follow, for a brisk lad was he.

"I must and will find the bell," said he, "if I have to go to the
world's end for it."

The ugly baboons, sitting in the trees, grinned at him with every
tooth in their heads. "Shall we smash him?" said they. "Shall we smash
him? He's a king's son!"

But on he went, undaunted, deeper and deeper into the wood, where grew
the strangest flowers. There stood white star lilies with blood-red
stamens, sky-blue tulips that glistened in the breezes, and apple
trees whose apples, one and all, looked like great shining soap
bubbles--just think how those trees must have shone in the sunlight!
Round the most beautiful green glades, where hart and hind played on
the turf, grew splendid oaks and beeches, and whenever one of the
trees had had its bark split, grass and long tendrils had grown in the
cleft. There, too, were great glens with calm lakes, on which white
swans swam and flapped their wings. Often did the King's son stop and
listen; often he thought that it was from one of those deep lakes that
the bell rang upward to him; but then he was aware that it was not
there, but from a further depth of the forest, that the bell sounded.

And now the sun was sinking and the sky shone red as fire, and a great
stillness was over all the forest. He sank on his knees and sang his
evening hymn, and said: "Never shall I find that which I seek! Now the
sun is sinking. Now night, dark night is coming on; yet once again,
perhaps, I may see the round red sun before it sinks wholly behind the
earth. I will climb this cliff that stands there, with the great trees
on the top."

And he clutched at creepers and roots and clambered up towards the wet
rocks, where the water snakes twined into knots, and the toads seemed
really to bark at him--yet up he got before the sun, seen from that
height, was quite down. Oh, what splendour! The sea, the great
majestic sea, that rolled its long billows toward the coast, stretched
out before him, and the sun stood like a huge shining altar, far out,
where sea and sky met, all fused together in glowing colours. The
forest sang, and the sea sang, and his heart sang with them. All
nature was a vast solemn cathedral, wherein the trees and floating
clouds were the columns, the flowers and grass the woven hangings of
silk, the heaven itself the mighty dome. Up there the red hues were
dying as the sun disappeared. But millions of stars were being lit,
millions of diamond lamps shone there, and the King's son stretched
out his arms towards the heavens, the sea, the forest--and just then
there came from the path on the right the poor boy with the scanty
coat-sleeves and the wooden shoes. He had come there just as soon,
come by his own way; and they ran to meet each other, and caught each
other by the hand in the great cathedral of Nature and of song.

And above them rang out the unseen solemn bell, and about it happy
spirits hovered, circling in a joyful song of praise to God.




[End of _The Bell_ by Hans Christian Andersen, from
_Hans Andersen Forty-Two Stories_, translated by M. R. James]
