Chapter M: E. K (4)

The wood-cutters now feasted in our house day after day. We children lost all liking for our daily food, at the sight of luxury and abundance. We became discontented; and our household, consisting of two half-grown servant-girls and a half-blind woman, heaved many a deep sigh. But the red one knew how to amuse us. He talked of towns and other countries; for the two men had been about a good deal and had worked in large factories. Then he regaled us with funny stories and tricks; in the early days also with riddles and droll plays upon words, at which the maids tittered a good deal, while father and mother sat silent and I did not rightly know what to make of it all. Then came songs, in which, to the great delight of our household, country courtship in all its forms found full expression. When this began, it was high time for us children to go to bed; but our straw bundles happened to be in the very room in which these merry things were going on. True, we closed our eyes, and I really had the firm intention to go to sleep; but my ears remained open, and the tighter I closed my eyes, the more I saw in my mind's eye.

The pale wood-cutter was quiet and proper in his behaviour and did not remain so long in the parlour, but always went betimes to his sleeping-place, which was outside in the hay-loft. But even the girls could not follow this decent example: they let the red one go on and were wholly absorbed in his chattering. My father once observed to the red fellow that the younger was more serious than the old one, whereupon the red one asked if the farmer disliked jolly songs: in that case, he would be pious and pray. And he began to recite comic sentences in the tone of the Lord's Prayer; got on to the hearth and, mimicking the preaching of a Capuchin, mocked at the holy apostles, martyrs, and virgins, until my mother went to my father with uplifted hands.

"I do beg and beseech you, Lenzel--throw that godless being out of the door, or I shall have to do it myself!"

"Do it yourself, little woman!" cried the red man and jumped off the hearthstone and tried to catch hold of mother and fondle her.

This was something unheard of. That this should suddenly happen in our house, where, year in, year out, no unseemly word was ever spoken! My father was downright paralysed with astonishment; but my mother seized the frivolous wood-cutter by the arm and cried:

"Now you get out of this, foul-mouth, and never enter my house again!"

The wood-cutter refused to budge an inch.

"If forest-farmer folk are so pious," he continued, still in his preaching tone, "as to forget what they have promised our employer, I shan't leave this roof for all that. Women and wet rags shan't drive me out."

"Perhaps men and dry logs will!" cried my father. And with a swiftness and determination which I had never before beheld in this mild-mannered man, he snatched a log of wood from the stack. The red one made a furious rush at his arms; and they wrestled. Mother tried to protect father; my brothers and sisters in their straw set up a cry of murder; I flew to the door, with nothing on me but my shirt, and called to the maids, who were already sleeping peacefully in their beds, to come and help. The blind one was the first to come hobbling safely across the yard, while one of the two who had the use of their eyes stumbled over the pigs' trough. And the youngest girl, terrified by my cries and the uproar in the house, came clattering down the step-ladder that led from the hay-loft to the yard. Without considering, at the time, the far-reaching effects of this last incident, I rushed back into the house, where the two men were engaged in a violent struggle, panting and groaning and going from one wall of the room to the other. The wood-cutter's long beard was flung in wild strands around my father's head; but father seemed to be gaining the upper hand; then came the younger wood-cutter, clad, it is true, in nothing but his shirt and his blue drawers, but with the full weight of his body. The women did what is their office on such occasions: they wrung their hands and wailed. Only, my mother, when she saw that all was lost, snatched a blazing fire-brand from the hearth.

"I'll drive you out, you ruffians, that I do know!" she cried and flew, with the brand, to the wooden inner wall.

"The fury means to set fire to us! And to the house with us!" yelled the wood-cutters and rushed out at the door, through the curling smoke.

We were rid of the nasty fellows, but the flames were leaping merrily along the wall. In hot haste, we succeeded--I no longer remember by what means--in smothering the fire.

That evening--the most terrible in my life--passed into a still and fearsome night. We had barred and bolted the door of the house; and, when we put out the rushlight, father took a last look at the window, to see if they were still outside.

It remained quiet; and not till the next morning did the young wood-cutter come to fetch his tools and his mate's. Then they built themselves a hut in the woods out of planks and bark; and here they lived half through the winter, until they had finished their work on the larch-trunks.

We felt convinced, however, that they must be plotting some mischief against us, whereupon the youngest of the maids remarked, with an air of great wisdom, that it might be best always to keep on good terms with that kind of people.

"It's easy for you to talk, wench," retorted my father. "What do you know?"

After that ... she said no more.

I had a fresh fright at that time. Prompted by curiosity to see the godless fellows once more and to spy out whether the devil, in the guise of a wood-cutter, was helping them with their work, I peeped one day from the forest path and through the thicket at their work-place. Then I saw that they were making coffins.

I announced the fact at home and caused the greatest excitement in consequence.

"As I said, they have some fresh thing in their minds!" said my mother.

Father suggested:

"Boy, you have been dreaming again, in broad daylight. Still, I will go and see."

We went into the woods. My father peered through the thicket at the wood-cutters; and then I saw him turn pale.

"You half-wit!"[8] he said; and then he groaned. "They're burying every peasant of us at Alpel!"

The coffins were stacked in great piles; and the men were still chopping and trimming new ones with their axes. We rushed away to inform the local magistrate, who, at that time, lived on the mountain on the other side of the Engthal, and tell him what we had seen. On the road to his house we met Michel the carpenter, to whom my father said that he had better have all his knives and choppers ready, for it looked as if we were in for bad times. The strangers who were working in his wood did nothing but make coffins.

"Yes," said Michel, "I've noticed that too: it's a good thing the coffins are not hollow!"

And the man of experience told us of the shape of the railway-sleepers, which were usually cut from the block in pairs, before being sawn asunder, and which, with their six corners, looked not unlike a coffin.

We turned back then and there, and as we went along the edge of the field, where the grass was nice and smooth, my father said to me:

"This gives us a good chance of laughing at ourselves, lest others should. That's the way things go: when we've fallen out with a man, we put down everything that's bad to him and are as blind as if Satan had stuck his horns into our eyes. When all is said, even those two wood-cutters are not so black as they appear to be. Still, I shall be glad when they have cleared out. And this much I do know: Clements buys no more larch of me."

"Because you have none left," was my wise comment on that.

Father did not seem to hear.

The wood-cutters went at last and the larch-wood sleepers with them. The red-brown stumps remained behind; and in their pores stood bright drops of rosin.

"It shows that they were not Christians," I remember my father saying, "that they did not cut a cross in a single stump."

For, at that time, it was still the custom, in the forest, for the wood-cutters to carve a little cross with the axe into each stump as soon as the tree had fallen. Why, I was never quite able to discover: it was probably for the same reason that makes the blacksmith give two taps with his hammer on the anvil, after the red-hot iron is removed. These things are intended to thwart the devil, who, as everybody knows, is never idle and interferes in all the works of man.

My father, whose whole life was bound up with the cross, went afterwards and cut crosses in the larch-stumps. And so things in the forest were once more in order and peaceful, as they used to be.

And that is the story of the strange wood-cutters, the children of the world, who had penetrated into our far-away forest-nook like the first wave of the turbulent sea of the world. How small this wave was and what an amount of unrest, discontent, and vexation was washed up with it! Gradually, the strange elements were forgotten: even mother ended by overcoming her indignation. Only our little serving-maid remained restless and wistful, even after the wave had flowed back again, and her eyes were often red with crying.

FOOTNOTE:

[8] _Halbnarr_: half-fool. According to German folk-lore, it is only the half-idiots who are really dangerous.--_Translator's Note._

IX

How Meisensepp Died

At home we had a book called _The Lives of Jesus Christ, Our Lady, and of many of God's Saints: a spiritual treasure by Peter Cochem_. It was an old book, the leaves were grey, and each chapter began with wonderful big letters in black and red. The wooden cover was worm-eaten in many places, and a mouse had nibbled away one of the leathern flaps. Since my grandfather's death there was nobody in our house who could have read it; no wonder, then, that these creatures had taken possession of it, and thus gained their bodily sustenance from the spiritual treasure. Then came I, the little book-worm, chasing the little beasts out of the book and devouring it myself instead. I read out of it daily to the members of our household. The younger farm-lads and girls did not care much for this new custom, for they dared not joke and yodel during the reading; the older people, however, being rather more God-fearing, listened devoutly and said, "It's just as if the parson were preaching; so solemnly done and with such a loud voice!"

I got quite a reputation as an able reader, and was much sought after. Whenever anybody in the neighbourhood lay ill or dying, or was even dead already, and there was watch being kept by the corpse during the night, my father was asked to let me go and read. On such occasions I took the weighty book under my arm and set off. It was hard work carrying it, for at that time I was but a little shrimp of a fellow.

Once, late at night, when I was already asleep in the sweet-scented hay-loft where I sometimes had my bed in summer-time, I was awakened by one of our men tugging at my coverlet. "You must get up quickly, Peter, get up! Meisensepp has sent his daughter, and begs that you'll come and read to him--he's dying. Get up!"

Of course, I got up, dressed myself hastily, took the book, and went with the girl from our house up across the heath and through the forest. Meisensepp's hut stood quite alone in the midst of the forest.

Meisensepp had been gamekeeper and woodward in his younger years; latterly he occupied himself mostly with sharpening saws for the wood-cutters. Then suddenly this severe illness overtook him.

While the girl and I were going through the wilderness in the still, starlit night neither of us spoke a word. Silently we went on together. Only once she whispered, "Let me have the book, Peter; I'll carry it for you."

"You couldn't do it," I answered; "you're even smaller than me."

After a two hours' tramp the girl said, "There's the light."

We saw a faint gleam coming from the window of Meisensepp's house. Going nearer, we met the priest who had administered the Last Sacrament to the dying man.

"Father, is he going to get well?" asked the girl, fearfully.

"He is not so very old," said the priest. "God's will be done, children; God's will be done."

And he went on, while we went into the house.

It was small, and, after the manner of forest huts, living-room and bedroom were all one with the kitchen. On the hearth in an iron holder a pine-torch was burning which veiled the ceiling in a cloud of smoke. Near by, on a bundle of straw, two little boys lay sleeping. I knew them well, for we had often gathered mushrooms and berries together in the woods and lost our herds while doing it: they were a few years younger than I. By the wall of the stove sat Sepp's wife, giving the breast to the baby and looking with wide-open eyes into the flame of the pine-torch; and behind the stove, on the only bed in the house, lay the sick man. He was sleeping; his face was wasted, the greyish hair and the beard round the chin had been cut short, which made the whole head appear smaller to me than formerly when I had seen Sepp on the way to church. Through his pale, half-open lips fluttered the broken breathing.

On our entrance his wife got up gently, made some apology for having had me disturbed in my sleep, and invited me to sit down and eat what the priest had left of a dish of eggs which still stood on the table.

And so, seated on the chair that was still warm from the holy man's sitting, I was soon actually eating with the same fork which he had carried to his mouth!

"Now he's sleeping fairly well," whispered the woman, indicating the sick man. "A little while ago he was constantly pulling threads from the coverlet."

I knew it was looked upon as a bad omen when a sick person pulled at and dug into the coverlet: "He's digging his grave," they say with us. I therefore answered, "Yes, that's what my father did, too, when he had typhoid fever; still, he got well again."

"I think so, too," she said; "and the priest was saying the same thing. I am so glad my Sepp has always gone to confession so regular, and I feel quite hopeful about his getting well again. Only," she added very low, "the light keeps flickering to and fro the whole time."

According to popular belief, when the light flickers, it is an omen that someone's candle is burning low in the socket. I believed in this sign myself, but to reassure the poor woman I said, "There's such a draught coming through the window, I can feel it too." She laid the sleeping baby upon the straw--the girl who had fetched me had already gone to rest there--and we stopped the cracks of the window with tow.

Then the woman said, "You'll stay with me overnight, won't you, Peter? I shouldn't know how to get along otherwise; and when he awakes you will read to us? I am sure you'll do us this kindness, won't you?"

I opened the book and looked for a suitable piece, but Father Cochem has not written much that would be of consolation to poor suffering mankind. Father Cochem's opinion is that God is infinitely just and that men are unutterably bad, and nine-tenths of them are bound straight for hell.

Maybe it is so, I used to think to myself; but even if it is one ought not to say so, because people would only worry, and for the rest would most likely remain as bad as ever. If they had wanted to mend, they would have done so long ago.

Terrifying thoughts went like a hissing adder through Cochem's book. Whenever I had to do with indifferent people, who only listened to me on account of my fine loud preaching voice, I thundered forth all the horrors and the eternal damnation of mankind with real pleasure; but when by a sick-bed I used to exert my imagination to the utmost while reading out of the book, in order to soften the hard sayings, to moderate the hideous representations of the Four Last Things, and to give a friendlier tone to the whole thought of the zealous Father.

And now again I planned how, while apparently reading from the book, I would speak to Meisensepp words from another Book about poverty, patience, and love towards our fellows, and how the true imitation of Christ consisted in the practice of these, and how--when the last hour should strike--this would lead us by way of a gentle death right into heaven.

At last Sepp awoke. He turned his head, looked at his wife and sleeping children, then, seeing me, he said in a loud, clear voice, "So you've come, Peter? God reward you for it! But we shall hardly have time for reading to-day. Anne, please wake the children up."

The woman shuddered, her hand went to her heart, but she said quietly, "Are you worse again, Seppel? You've been sleeping so nicely."

He saw at once that her calmness was not genuine.

"Don't you fret, wife," he said, "it must be so in this world. Wake the children up now, but gently, so that you don't scare them."

The poor woman went to the bed of straw, and with trembling hand shook the bundle, and the little ones started up only half awake.

"Anne, I beg you don't pull the children about so," the sick man reproached her, with a weaker voice, "and let little Martha sleep, she doesn't understand things yet."

I remained seated by the table, and my heart burned within me. The little family gathered round the bed, sobbing aloud.

"Quietly now," said Sepp to the children; "mother will let you sleep all the longer to-morrow morning. Josefa, draw the shirt together over your breast or you will get cold.--Now then, children, you must always be brave and good and obedient to your mother, and when you are grown up you must stand by her and don't leave her. All my days I've toiled and moiled, but for all that I've nothing else to leave you beyond this house, with the little garden and the ridge-acre with the stacks. If you want to divide it up, do so in a brotherly way; but it is better to keep the little property together, and keep the home going, somehow, and till the ground. Beyond that I make no will. I love you all alike. Don't forget me, and now and then say an Our Father for me. And you four boys, I beg from my very heart, don't start poaching--it leads to no good. Give me your hand on it. There, that's right! If one of you would like to learn saw-sharpening--I have earned many a penny with it and the tools are all there. And then, as you know already, if you plant potatoes on the ridge-acre, you must do so in May. It's quite true, what my father always used to say, 'Of potatoes it is said: "Plant me in April, I come when I will; plant me in May, I'm there in a day."' Bear that saying in mind! There, now go to bed again, or you will catch cold; always take care of your health; health is everything. Go to sleep, children."

The sick man became silent and fell to plucking at his covering again.

Turning to me the woman whispered, "I don't like it, he's talking too much." When a very sick person becomes suddenly talkative that too is looked upon as a bad omen with us.

Then he lay quite exhausted. The woman lit a death-taper.

"Not yet, Anne, not yet," he murmured, "a little later; but give me a drop of water, will you?"

After drinking he said, "Ah, fresh water is a good thing after all! Take good care of the well. Yes, and don't let me forget, the black breeches and the blue jacket--you know--and outside behind the door, where the saws hang, there leans the planing board; lay it across the grindstone and the bench--it will serve for the three days. To-morrow early, when Woodman Josel comes, he'll help to lay me out. But mind that the cat isn't about; cats are attracted and know at once when there is a corpse anywhere. It's all arranged what they'll do with me down at the Parish Church.--My brown coat and the big hat, give them to the poor. And to Peter you must give something because of his coming up here. Perhaps he will be good enough to read to-morrow. It will be a fine day to-morrow, but don't go far from home, for fear an accident might happen, when there's candles left burning in the entrance. Later on, Anne, look in the bedstraw and you will find an old stocking with a few gold pieces in it."

"Seppel, don't exert yourself with talking so much," sobbed the wife.

"Well, well, Anne--but I must tell you everything. We'll not be much longer together now. We have had twenty years, Anne. You have been everything to me; no one can repay you for what you have been to me. I shall never forget it, not in death, nor in heaven neither. I am only glad that in my last hour I am still able to talk to you, and that I am clear in my head to the last."

"Don't fret yourself, Seppel," murmured the wife, bending over him.

"No," he answered quietly, "with me it's just as it was with my father: content in life, content in death. You be the same, and don't take it too much to heart. Even though each of us must go as we came, alone, still we belong to each other and I shall keep you a place in heaven, Anne, close by my side. Only, for God's sake, bring the children up well."

The children lay quiet. It was very still, and it seemed to me as if, somewhere in the room, I could hear a slight whirring and humming.

Suddenly, Seppel called out, "Now, Anne, light the candle, quick!"

The woman ran about the room looking for matches, and yet the torch was still burning. "Now he is going to die!" she moaned.

When at last the red wax-taper was alight, and she had given it him and he held it clasped with both his hands, and she had taken the vessel of holy water from the shelf, she became apparently quite calm and prayed aloud: "Jesus, Mary, help him! Oh, Saints of God, stand by him in his direst need, do not let his soul be lost! Jesus, I pray by Thy holiest suffering! Mary, I call upon Thy seven Sacred Dolours! And Thou, his guardian angel, when the soul must quit the body, lead it at last to heavenly joy!"

And she prayed long. She neither sobbed nor cried now; not a single tear stood in her eye, she was wholly the devout petitioner and intercessor.

At length she became silent, bent over her husband's face, watched his weak breathing and whispered, "God be with you, Seppel; greet my parents for me and all our kinsfolk there in Eternity. God bless and keep you, my dearest man! May the holy angels attend you, and the Lord Jesus in His mercy await you at the heavenly door."

Perhaps he no longer heard her. His pale, half-open lips gave no answer. His eyes stared at the ceiling. The wax candle, held upright in the folded hands, was burning; it did not flicker. The flame was still and bright as a snow-white bud, his breath moved it no more.

"Now it's over--he's dead and gone from me!" cried his wife in a shrill, heartrending voice; then sank down upon a stool and began to weep bitterly. The children, now again wakened, wept with her, all except the baby, who was smiling.

The hour weighed upon us heavy as a stone. At last the poor woman--the widow--rose, dried her tears and laid two fingers on the eyes of the dead. The wax candle burned until the morning dawned.

A messenger had passed through the forest. Then came the Woodman Josel. He sprinkled the dead with holy water, murmuring, "So they go, one after the other."

Then they dressed Meisensepp out in his best clothes, carried him into the porch, and laid him on the board.

I left the book on the table for the vigil of the following nights at which I had promised the poor woman to read. When I was ready to go, she brought a green hat on which was fastened a spreading "Gemsbart."[9]

"Will you take the hat with you for your father?" she asked; "my Seppel has always been so fond of your father. The Gemsbart you may keep yourself as a remembrance. Say an Our Father for him now and then."

I uttered my thanks and cast one more timid look at the bier. There lay Sepp stretched at full length, and his hands folded across his breast. And I went away down through the forest. How bright and fresh with dew, how full of the song of birds, full of the scent of flowers--how full of life the forest was! And in the hut, stretched on the bier, lay a dead man.

I can never forget that night and that morning--that death amidst the forest's infinite source of life.

To this day I keep the Gemsbart in memory of Meisensepp. And whenever a desire for the pleasures of this world gets hold of me, or when doubts of God's grace to man, or fear of my own possibly far-off, possibly quite near end assail me, I just stick Sepp's Gemsbart in my hat.

FOOTNOTE:

[9] Gemsbart: a little tuft of hair on the chamois' breast.

X

The Corpus Christi Altar

When the triumphant Saviour passes through the village in the shape of bread, they greet Him with palms. The palm of the alps is the birch. Even as the little fir-trees are doomed to lose their lives at Christmas-time, so do the birches at Corpus Christi. They are dragged to the village by the hundred, on great drays, and planted in rows on both sides of the streets through which the procession is intended to go. And, as they stand there in the fresh-turned earth, with their graceful branches rustling in the soft wind, it is as though they were still leading the young and happy lives of their brothers and sisters in the woods. And no one notices that the trunk stands in the earth without its roots, chopped off by the axe, that the sap no longer courses through its veins, that, in a few days, the pretty little notched and heart-shaped leaves will turn yellow; nor does the caterpillar on a yielding branch, as it dreams of its coming butterfly existence, suspect that it is rocking upon a corpse.

Life is fulfilled: lo, the Lord cometh.

At the Corpus Christi procession, the gospels are read in the open air at four different spots. For this purpose, the people set up four altars, so that "the Lord God may rest on His journey." By ancient custom, it falls to him upon whose ground the altar is to stand to erect this altar. Its several parts, all nicely carved and painted, have rested during the year in a dark corner of the loft and are now brought forth, cleansed of their dust and cobwebs and put together in the open. The result is often a noble building of the chapel order, with altar-table, tabernacle, worshipping angels, candlesticks and all. Farm-labourers, who but yesterday were digging manure, to-day prove themselves accomplished architects, building the altar before the sun-down and surrounding it with a little wood of birch or larch. The head of the house places all the images of the saints which he possesses on the altar, or fastens them high up on the pillars. The farmer's wife brings gaudy pots of crimson peonies to adorn the altar; and the little girls strew flowers and rose-leaves as a carpet for the steps.

The bells begin to ring, the mortars boom, music swells far and wide over the roofs, lights burn in every window; and the time has come for the farmer to light the candles on his altar too. Soon the first pennants come in sight, the hum is heard of the men's prayers and the echo of the women's singing; and the long lines of children approach, the girls in white, carrying gaily-coloured banners above their heads. Finally, the band, with shrill trumpets and rumbling drums, and then the _baldachino_, the red canopy upheld by four men, and, under it, surrounded by ministrants and acolytes, the priest, carrying the gleaming monstrance high before his face.

The monstrance, as we all know, is the house in which the Host resides surrounded by a wreath of golden rays, resting on a crescent-shaped holder and protected by a crystal glass.

The most important factor in this procession is faith; and that is present in abundance. They worship not the bread, but the symbolic mystery in whose lap rests our eternal destiny. It is really incorrect to speak of the worship of images, or of the idolatry of the heathen: they all mean one and the same thing, the symbolic divine mystery which each represents to himself after his own fashion and feels according to his nature. And the power to transfer the intangible, endless mystery to a substance which our senses can apprehend and thus to enter into more intimate relations with it: that power is the gift of faith.

The files of people reach the open-air altar and the foremost have to pass along until the priest arrives at the spot. When there, he places the Sacrament in the tabernacle and reads some verses from one of the four gospels. Then, to the booming of the cannon, he lifts the monstrance, turns with it to the four points of the compass and blesses the meadows, the fields and the air, that the summer may be fruitful and no storm destroy the husbandman's labour. And the procession moves on.

This is in the larger villages. In the small mountain districts, the feast is celebrated more simply, but no less solemnly. As, in such places, all the lanes and streets are formed of live trees and shrubs, there is no need to set up birches, except at the wayside crucifixes, where they keep holy guard, one on the right and one on the left. As the people of small places have not four altars to erect, there is a small, portable altar, a little four-legged table with a white cloth to cover it and a tabernacle with angels painted on a blue ground kneeling before the "Holy Name." Above this is a little canopy with gold tassels. Behind are straps by means of which a boy can take the altar on his back and carry it, during the procession, from one gospel-place to the other.

They have one of these little altars at Kathrein am Hauenstein. Should you care to see it, it stands, in summer, in the church, in front of the great picture of the Fourteen Helpers.[10] It has stood there as long as I can remember; and, in my young days, it was the duty and the privilege of Kaunigl, him with the hare-lip, to carry it from gospel-place to gospel-place. As soon as one gospel was read and the procession starting on its way again, he strapped the altar to his back, took the candlesticks and the hassock in his hands and hurried over the hill by the short cut through the woods, so as to obtain a lead and set up the altar in the next place. He would fix a stone or two under the feet of the little table to prevent any rocking, put the hassock in position and light the candles; and, by that time, the first banner was once more in sight.

Now it happened, one day, that this was the occasion of my being mixed up in a business that threatened the destruction of my immortal soul. I had just reached the age when nobody knows how a young scamp is going to turn out. He may develop into a more or less decent fellow, or else into a lout of the first water: who can tell? None but God really; and even He leaves the choice to the lanky, pale-faced lad himself. On the day in question, I had either overslept myself in my forest home or had more trouble than usual in getting my lace-boots on; or perhaps breakfast was not ready in time. Anyhow, by the time I reached Kathrein church, everything was in full swing, with the red banners waving and the candles twinkling between the trees. I stole round to the back, for I was mortally ashamed to do the right thing and simply go straight up to the procession and mix with the people. Here again God left the choice to me, to join the worshippers or slink away through the bushes like a gaol-bird. I slunk like a gaol-bird through the bushes and there met Kaunigl with the altar. He at once asked me to help him carry it. This suited me perfectly, for it justified the roundabout road which I had taken. I relieved Kaunigl of the hassock and candlesticks; and we hurried through the young trees up to the Föhrenriegel, behind the church, where the last gospel was to be read. We worked together loyally; and soon the little altar was fixed against the rock, with the candles burning upon it. The procession was not yet in sight, for it had taken a longer road through the green fields; but this Kaunigl boy was not the fellow to let time slip by and be wasted. He thrust his hand in his trousers-pocket, produced a pack of cards and flung it on the altar so that the candles flickered before the fluttering bits of pasteboard. Silently, as though what he was doing were a matter of course, he dealt himself and me a hand at _Brandel_. It was not the first time that he and I had "taken each other on"; so I picked up the cards and we played a strict game on the Corpus Christi altar, by the light of the wax candles burning solemnly. There was time for a second "bout"; and then, while Kaunigl was dealing the cards again, the men at the head of the procession appeared round the corner, praying aloud with heads uncovered. No cat could have pounced upon nimble mouse quicker than Kaunigl gathered up those cards and shoved them in his pocket. Then we took up our positions on either side, in all innocence, and pulled off our caps.

Soon the musicians hove in sight: Eggbauer with the bugle-horn, his son with the first trumpet, Naz the tailor (who afterwards became my master) with the second, Erhard's boy with the clarionet, Zenz the smith with the kettle-drum, while long-nosed Franz carried the big drum on his back, to be pounded with might and main by the Haustein innkeeper. Ferdl the huntsman handled the "tinklers."

Behind this loud music came the _baldachino_. The old white-haired parish priest carried the Most Holy high in front of him and held his head bowed low, partly in veneration and partly because age had already greatly bent his neck. He walked up to the little altar to place the monstrance on it. He was on the point of doing so when suddenly he stopped and stood for a moment with a stare upon his face. He had caught sight of the ten of clubs peeping from between the folds of the white altar-cloth! The confounded card had remained there hidden and unperceived! To decorate the Corpus Christi altar with "green" of this kind[11] could hardly seem correct in the eyes of his reverence. Without a word, without a sign of displeasure, he turned to the rock and placed the monstrance on a projecting stone.

Only a very few people had realised why this was done. The gospel was read and the benediction given without further incident, but I peeped through the hazel-bushes and saw that the old priest was white to the lips. Had he shown anger at his discovery on the altar, had he stormed and ordered the culprit to be taken by the ears, I should have thought it no more than just; but his humble silence, his look of sorrow, and the fact that he had to place the Saviour, rendered homeless by that sacrilegious game at cards, upon the bare rock: these were things that cut into me as with a knife. He cannot have known who the accomplice was, but he could easily have found out by my conscience-stricken face, however much it might try to hide itself behind the hazel-bushes.

Afterwards, when high mass began in church, Kaunigl pulled me by the skirt of my jacket and invited me to climb into the tower with him, where we could toll the bell at the Sanctus and the elevation and play cards in between. He had recovered possession of the ten of clubs. True, I did not accept; but I remained lost, for all that. From that day forward I no longer ventured into the confessional. Kaunigl did venture in; but it was not quite so simple as he imagined, as he himself told me afterwards.

"I have played cards," he confessed. "Once."

"Well," said the priest, "card-playing is no sin in itself, as long as you do not play for money."

"No, I didn't play for money."

"Where did it happen?"

"On a table."

"What sort of a table?"

"A wooden one."

"Was it on the Corpus Christi table, by any chance?" asked the priest.

"Oh, no!" said Kaunigl.

And then he received absolution.

"Then you lied in your confession!" I said to Kaunigl, reproachfully.

"That doesn't matter," Kaunigl replied, promptly. "I can easily mention the lie next time: I'll get that through the grating right enough. The thing is to have the card-playing off my chest. Hang it all, though, I was nearly caught: Old Nick might have grabbed me finely!"

I based my own inferences upon this experience. If card-playing was no sin in itself--and we did not play for money--then there was no need to confess the story. Nor is it stated in either the Lesser or the Greater Catechism that man shall not play cards on altars. However, this subtle interpretation helped me not at all. When I thought of that Corpus Christi sacrilege, in which I had so foolishly taken part, I often felt quite ill. I dreamt of it at nights, in the most uncomfortable way, and, sitting in church on Sundays, I dared not look at that little altar-table, which stood there so oddly, as though at any moment it might burst into speech and betray me. Moreover, about this time, I read in an old devotional book the story of a blasphemous shoemaker's assistant who had mimicked the elevation of the Host in a public-house and how his upraised arms had stiffened in the act, so that he could not bend them back again and had to go about with his arms sticking up in the air, until he was released by receiving absolution from a pious father. It was much as though I were doomed to go about with arm uplifted, holding the best trump in my hand, while the people laughed at me: "Now then, Peter, play! Why don't you play?" and as though I played the card, at last, and, in so doing, played my poor soul to perdition. That was the sort of thing; and a nice thing too!

I could never manage to settle it by myself: that was quite clear. So, one evening, after working-hours, I went to see the parish-priest at St. Catherine's. He was standing just outside the house, beside his fish-pond, which was covered over with a rusty wire netting, while a fine spring bubbled away in the middle. The priest no doubt thought that I was merely passing by accident, for he beckoned to me with his black straw hat to come to him.

"What do you say, Peter?" he cried to me, in his soft voice. "Nine and five and seven: doesn't that make twenty-one?"

I was never much good at mental arithmetic; however, this time, I hazarded, on the off-chance:

"Yes, that should be about right. Twenty-one."

"Now then," he said, "just look here." And he pointed to the fish-pond. "A fortnight ago, the Blasler boy sold me nine live trout and I put them in the pond. A week ago, he sold me five more and I put them in too; and, to-day, he sold me seven and I put them in as well. And how many are there now, all told? Eight, eight; and not one more! And I know all about it: they are the same which he brought me a fortnight ago; and it must be so: the scoundrel, I was almost saying, stole the fish each time out of the pond and sold them to me over again. It's a ... a ..."

And he shook his fist in the air.

The fact was that the Blasler boy must have stolen the trout to begin with, before he sold them for the first time, for Blasler had no fishing licence. This, I dare say, hardly occurred to the good priest's mind: he was thinking only of his fast-days. The commandments of the Church allow fish on Fridays and Saturdays,[12] but do not say whether the fish may be stolen or not.

It was not a favourable opportunity to confess one's sins. So I forbore for the present, kissed the sleeve of his coat, because the clenched fist did not look inviting for a kiss of the hand, and passed on. On the way, I pondered the question at length, which was the greater sin, the Blasler boy's or mine. His appeared to me in the light of a piece of roguery, whereas mine might easily be a sin against the Holy Ghost; and those sins are not remitted.

A few days later, Cap Casimir, of Kressbachgraben, was driving a grey nanny-goat with two kids along the road. The old goat had a full udder; and the young ones skipped around her and wanted to have a drink. But Cap Casimir hissed, in his sloppy brogue:

"Sshh, shtop that now! We musht bring the full udder to hish reverensh!"

I was at once curious to know what it meant; and Casimir, who was an immigrant Tyrolese and still wore his pointed "star-pricker,"[13] said:

"It'sh like thish, you shee, my wife'sh dead. 'The goat,' said she, 'and the kidsh,' said she, 'I leave to the parish-priesht of Kathrein. For prayers and masshes.' That was her will; and then she died. Sho now I'm driving the animalsh to the reverend gentleman'sh."

"All right," thought I to myself. "And I'll follow in an hour's time. He'll be in a good humour to-day; and I shall never find a better opportunity."

So far, the thing was well thought out. I went off that same afternoon. The old gentleman was quite jolly and invited me to have a cup of coffee with him, telling me that there was fresh milk in it from Kressbachgraben.

And it was in the midst of the coffee that I suddenly said:

"I've had something on my mind for ever so long, your reverence!"

"You, something on your mind?" he laughed. "Well, that's a nice state of affairs, when even little boys have things on their minds!"

I stirred my cup of coffee vigorously with my spoon, so as not to have to look his reverence in the face, and told him the story of the game of cards on the altar.

Contrary to all my expectations, the priest remained quite calm. Then he asked:

"Did you do it wilfully? Did you intend to mock the holy altar?"

"Good God, no, your reverence!" I replied, thoroughly shocked at the mere thought.

"Very well," said the old man.

Then he was silent for a little while and finished his coffee, after which he spoke as follows:

"It was not a proper thing to do; let me tell you that at once. And I will let Kaunigl know also that what people take to church is prayer-books and not playing-cards! But, if you had no bad intention in doing this silly trick, we will say no more about it this time. At any rate, you did quite right to tell me. Would you like a drop more?"

As the Corpus Christi incident was now closed in the best possible way, the second cup of coffee tasted twice as good as the first. When, presently, I got up to go, the old man laid his hand on my shoulder and said, kindly:

"I feel easier now that I know exactly what happened on that Corpus Christi Day. But you must never do it again, Peterkin. Just think,--our dear Lord!..."

FOOTNOTES:

[10] _Die vierzehn Nothelfer_, often mentioned in the German hagiology. "Emergency saints" has been suggested as an equivalent rendering.--[_Translator's Note._]

[11] The clubs are printed in green, in the cheap packs of cards used in the Tyrol, and the ten of this suit is called _der Grühnzehner_: the ten of greens.--[_Translator's Note._]

[12] In some parts of Southern Austria, the practice prevails of abstaining from flesh-meat on Saturdays, as well as on Fridays, in honour of the Blessed Virgin Mary.--[_Translator's Note._]

[13] The popular nickname for the pointed Tyrolese, "sugar-loaf" hat.--[_Translator's Note._]

XI

About Kickel, who went to Prison

You were on for a bit of gipsying, were you, Peterkin? Home, everlastingly home, isn't very cheerful--always having the green-glazed mug to drink from, always having your face wiped over by the mother with a wet rag, always having to sleep in the little box-bed by the stove--it's no fun! One can't help wanting sometimes to gather a dinner from the whortleberry plants and drink from the brook, to roll on the ground sometimes, and even to walk about in mud; and now and again one wants to sleep in an old hay barn, with water never seen before rushing along outside, in an unknown gorge, with quite strange trees standing in the red sunshine when you wake up in the morning, and unknown people mowing the grass in the meadows.

Suppose you long for this, and then your father forbids it! "Children belong at home!" And, "After school, you will come home by the shortest way!" The shortest way! There isn't such a thing in our high lands, especially if Zutrum Simmerl is in school, and if Zutrum Simmerl says, "Peterl, come with me; at home, in Zutrumshaus, there are all sorts of jolly things; a spotted white yard-dog, who's got puppies; cherry-trees, which are all just red and black; and behind the house is a charcoal-burner's hut with straw that one can lie on, and in the stream you can catch trout and crayfish with your hand, which your mother can bake and cook afterwards."

The Zutrum family were far-away cousins of ours, so that when young Cousin Simmerl said "Come with me," one naturally went. It was a whole hour's walk from my parents' house there, and as the school where we, from Alpel and Trabachgraben, met together, lay just half-way, the world became stranger and stranger to me with each step of my way to Zutrum. And when the sun sank down over the black saddle of the wooded range, and the sycamores threw long shadows across the newly mown meadows, I felt very strange. The hay smelt, the grasshoppers chirped, the frogs quacked as they did at home, but all else was different, the mountains much steeper, the coombs much deeper. I was oppressed. We looked down at last on the grey shingled roofs of the farm, from whose whitewashed chimneys thin smoke was going up. It was already dusk, and the homely smell of charcoal-burning, which I knew so well, came from among the tall pines. On the road we made many halts by ant-heaps, foxes' holes, hedge-stiles, little streams and puddles; but now Simmerl hurried up. I did not want to go on, I wanted to turn back. I should be going into a strange house for the first time in my life--my courage gave way. But Simmerl gripped me quickly by the arm and led me into the farmyard and through the great door into the house.

The air was cool in the entrance and scented with fruit; the kitchen was plastered and had nearly white walls, like an inn. At the open hearth women were busy with pots and kettles, and to one of them, who had a pale, pretty, kind face, went Simmerl, gave her his hand and said, "God greet you, mother!" It was in this house that I first heard children reverently greeting their parents at coming in and going out, just as if they were going to a distant country or were coming back from one. In our district at home we ran out like a calf from its stall, and the most that I ever said in the morning when I was off to school was, "I'm going now," and the mother answered, "Well, go, in God's name." That was certainly something, but it was not so cordial and fine as when the Zutrum children said "God greet you!" or "God keep you!" and clasped their parents' hands. In short, this entrance into the Zutrums' house appeared very splendid to me.

"And that is my school-friend, Peterl, from the Forest farm," so Simmerl introduced me to his mother.

"Now, that's nice!" she said; wiped her right hand on her blue apron and held it out to me. I was not quite sure if my little paw ought to be stretched out too, hesitated, but finally did it.

"Mother," called Simmerl, "we are running down to the brook."

"Not too far--it will soon be supper-time."

We were in the open air again, and it had all gone off very smoothly. We did not get to the brook that evening, for there was the white, spotted yard-dog with puppies! These last were all together in mottled heap, which constantly surged and twisted, while every now and then a tiny creature hardly bigger than a rat got loose and rolled clumsily away. These things were absolutely all head, and the head again was all muzzle, and the muzzles burrowed to the teats which the old white dapple placed ready for use. All that, and the anxious growling of the old dog and the frightened whimpering of the young ones, and the doggy smell which came out of the kennel, nearly stupefied me with sheer delight.

"Does she bite?" I asked Simmerl; for I wanted to stroke the puppies.

"Not now, so we have taken the chain off her. My father says, 'She has no enemies now, she is just a mother now.'" But still, when he wanted to lift one of the young ones, she snapped at his finger.

"Have you got a church?" I asked, for a little bell rang. Simmerl laughed, for it was the house-bell, and it was calling people to supper.