powdered hair piled high on her head and a red rose in her hand. Both were surrounded by big wreaths of willow branches. There were lots of holes in the old portraits because the baron’s little children always shot their bow and arrows at the two old folks. It was the Councilman and his wife, from whom the family descended.
“But they aren’t really part of our family,” one of the small barons said. “He was a peddler, and she was a goose girl. They weren’t like Pappa and Mamma!”
The pictures were just poor rubbish, and when “everything in its proper place” was applied, great grandfather and great grandmother ended up in the servants’ quarters.
The minister’s son was the live-in tutor on the estate. He was out walking one day with the little boys and their elder sister, who had just been confirmed. They walked on the path down towards the old willow tree, and while they walked she bundled up a bouquet of wild flowers with “everything in its proper place,” and it made a beautiful whole. At the same time she listened carefully to everything that was said, and it pleased her so much to hear the minister’s son talk about the powers of nature and of history’s great men and women. She had a good, healthy disposition, noble in soul and thought, and with a heart that could embrace all of God’s creation.
They stopped by the old weeping willow. The smallest boy wanted a willow whistle made from the tree. He had had them whittled before from other willows. The minister’s son broke off a branch.
“Oh, don’t do that!” said the young baroness, but it was too late. “That’s our famous old tree, and I’m so very fond of it! They all laugh at me about it at home, but that doesn’t matter. There’s a legend about that tree—”
And she told everything that she had heard about the tree, about the old manor, about the goose girl and the peddler who met there, and became the ancestors of the distinguished family and the young baroness herself.
“They wouldn’t accept a title, the decent old folks,” she said. “They had a saying, ‘Everything in its proper place’ and they didn’t think they would be in the proper place if they were elevated to the nobility because of their money. It was their son, my grandfather, who would become a baron. It’s said that he had great knowledge and was highly regarded and thought of by princes and princesses, always invited to their parties. Everyone else in the family thinks the most of him, but—I I don’t really know why—there’s something about the old couple that draws my heart to them. It must have been so pleasant and patriarchal in those times in the manor, when the mistress sat spinning with all her maids, and the old gentleman read aloud from the Bible.”
“They were pious, sensible people,” said the minister’s son, and then they started talking about nobility and the middle class, and it was almost as if the minister’s son didn’t belong to the middle class, the way he talked about the nobility.
“It’s a good thing to belong to a family that has distinguished itself—to have an incentive in your blood, in a way, to continue doing good things! It’s wonderful to bear a family name that opens all doors to you. Nobility means noble. It’s the gold coin that has been stamped with what it’s truly worth. It’s a fashion of our times, and many poets share the view, that everything that is aristocratic is false and foolish, and that the lower in society you go, the more true nobility shines. But that’s not my opinion. I think that’s wrong, completely wrong. You can find many moving noble incidents in the upper classes. My mother told me one, and I could give others. She was visiting at a distinguished family in town. I think my grandmother had nursed the noble mistress. My mother was standing in the living room with the aristocratic old husband when he saw an old woman coming along the courtyard on crutches. She came every Sunday and was given a few shillings. ‘There’s the poor old thing,’ the man said. ‘It’s so hard for her to walk.’ And before my mother knew it, he was out the door and down the steps. The seventy-year-old Excellency went down to the old woman himself to save her the arduous trip up the steps for the money she came for. Of course, that’s just one poor little example, but just like the ‘widow’s mite’ it comes from the heart, from human decency. Poets should be pointing out, especially now in our time, things which inspire good, things that mitigate and reconcile. But when a human being throws his weight around in the street just because he has noble blood and a family tree like an Arabian horse, or says, ‘It smells like the street in here’ when a common person has been in the room, then nobility has rotted, become a mask as in Thespis,1 and then we laugh at such a person and satirize them.”
That was what the minister’s son said. It was somewhat long, but in the meantime the whistle had been whittled.
They were having a big party at the manor. Many guests had come from the surrounding area and from the capital. Some women were dressed tastefully, and others without taste. The big hall was full of people. The local ministers were standing respectfully in a group in a corner. It looked a little like a funeral, but it was entertainment, although it hadn’t really started yet.
There was going to be a big concert, and that’s why the little baron brought his willow flute along, but he couldn’t get a peep out of it. His pappa couldn’t either, so it wasn’t any good.
There was music and singing of the kind that is most fun for those who perform it, but lovely, by the way.
“You’re a virtuoso,” said a young cavalier, who was like his parents, to the young tutor. “You play the flute, even carve it yourself. Genius is certainly ruling here—sitting on the right hand side—God bless us! I keep up with the times, you have to do that. Won’t you please us all by playing your little instrument?” and he handed him the little willow flute that was carved from the willow tree down by the moat. Loudly and clearly he announced that the tutor was going to play a flute solo.
It was easy to see that he was making fun of the tutor, who didn’t want to play although he certainly could, but they insisted and pressed him, and so he took the flute and set it to his lips.
It was a strange flute! They heard a tone that was as persevering as what you hear from a steam locomotive, but even louder. It could be heard all over the estate, the garden, and the woods and for miles around the countryside, and with the sound came a stormy wind that roared, “Everything in its proper place.” And then Pappa, the Baron, was carried by the wind out of the manor house and right down into the cottage where the man lived who tended the cows. And the cattleman flew up—not to the great hall, he didn’t belong there—but up to the servants’ quarters among the finest servants who wore silk stockings. And those proud fellows were struck numb to think that such an inferior person dared sit at the table with them.
But in the great hall the young Baroness flew up to the head of the main table, where her place was, and the minister’s son sat beside her. They sat there together as if they were a bridal couple. An old count who belonged to one of the oldest families in the land remained in his place of honor because the flute played fair, as one should. The witty cavalier who was responsible for the flute playing, and who was like his parents, flew head-first into the henhouse, but he was not alone.
The flute could be heard for miles, and odd things happened. A rich merchant and his family, driving in a four- horse carriage, were blown completely out of the carriage and couldn’t even find a place on the back. Two rich farmers, who recently had grown too big for their own cornfields, were blown down into a muddy ditch. It was a dangerous flute. Fortunately it cracked with the first tone, and that was a good thing. It went back in the young man’s pocket: “Everything in its proper place!”
The next day nobody talked about what had happened, and that’s why we have a saying—“Stick a pipe in it.”
