Chapter M: E. K (5)

In the room, where it was already nearly dark, stood two great square tables. When grace had been said out loud by everybody and all together, and the great big soup-tureens were sending up their warm, savoury clouds, about twelve young men, older men, young girls and old women sat themselves down to the one table. At the other table right in the corner the house-father took his place, a stout, comfortable, cheerful man with a smooth-shaven face and a double chin; then came his children, from the merry grown-up Sennerl right down to Simmerl, and still further down to two quite tiny babies, who had their milk-soup spooned into their little mouths by the servant-maid. I was allowed to sit by Simmerl, and, because the common bowl was rather a long way from us, we received a little special basin, out of which we ladled the pieces. It was wheaten bread, which was not every day to be had at home with us! The house-mother went to and fro, looking after the tables, and now and then she sat down with us for a short time, just to eat a morsel as she passed by. Ah, yes, that was like my mother at home. "Who cooks needs nothing to eat," say overwise people.

I was obliged to keep thinking of home, where just then they would be waiting for me with supper, and wondering why that boy didn't come home and where he could possibly be. Then, probably, it would occur to one or other of them, "Oh, he has gone home with his school-friend to Zutrum."

After the milk-soup came a bowl of salad in vinegar. That again was something new for me; at my home there was only salad in butter-milk, which is acid and wet and can therefore well take the place of expensive vinegar. At home we ate the greenstuff with a spoon, here one did it with a fork. I several times stabbed my mouth with the strange tool, but dared make no noise; whereas at home if such a thing happened there would have been a fine outcry.

After the salad came the largest dish of all, and this contained stewed cherries in their own juice. Now I might use the spoon again. If only it had been a bit bigger--for this black cherry stew was delicious! The company was very ceremonious. They squeezed the stones out of their mouths and put them back either on to a plate or into their fists. At home we ate the stones with the cherries.

I do not know what was talked about at table, and I was certainly quite indifferent to it, because mere talk is nothing to eat. They were louder and gayer at the servants' table than we were over at the house-father's table, because there was an old man amongst them who said the strangest things in the gravest manner at which they all laughed, until a maid said, "No, no; one must not laugh so at Kickel. It isn't right that Kickel should be laughed at."

"Who's laughing at _him_?" laughed a boy. "We're only laughing because we please to."

I must have overheard that, as otherwise I should not have known it. I know also that suddenly the old Kickel jumped up from his place, and with his shirt-sleeve fluttering from his wide, strong arm, chucked a cherry-stone at the door opposite, which fell back again into the middle of the room. At that he cried "Bang!" and shouted with laughter. He did this several times, whereupon the others said, "It was quite right, and he must make a hole in the door so that one could look out into the kitchen to see whether or no stew was being cooked to-day." Then Kickel raised his other arm, and "Bang!"--he threw the entire handful at the door, so that it rattled like a hail-storm. At the same moment the old man wrinkled up his wizened face and shouted out an angry curse.

Then the house-father got up from our table, went to the infuriated old fellow and said soothingly, "Now, now, Kickel, don't be so vexed. Sowing so many cherry-trees in the rooms! None of them will grow, you know. Be sensible, Kickel." At my home the father would have talked very differently if such a person had strewn the room full of cherry-stones!

Then the old servant stood before the house-father with folded hands, and in a voice of groaning anxiety he cried, "Zutrum, Zutrum, I don't know how to help myself, it's coming on again!"

"Michel! Natzel!" said the house-father to the other two men, "take Kickel to bed. It is time for him to go to sleep."

Then they led Kickel away. Whatever did it mean?

"It's time for the children to go to sleep also," added the house-father. "The Forest-farm boy must sleep in the top room."

The disappointment was bitter. I had thought that Simmerl and I would have been able to lie near each other on a pile of hay, and this was actually the reason that I had come with him into this strange house. Tears came into my eyes in proportion to the anguish of finding out that it was all up with the hay, and that I had to sleep by myself in a dark little room. The house-mother must have noticed something, for she said, "He can very well sleep in the little room with Simmerl; there's a bed empty there."

"Well and good, but don't talk long, boys." So the house-father, after which Simmerl went to his parents, kissed their hands and said "Good night."

This custom pleased me mightily, and I resolved to introduce it also into my home. I never got so far as that; I had always been ashamed of being entirely naughty to my parents, but also of being quite good, and in particular it had been impossible to me to show certain courtesies, much as I liked them.

I gathered from the order "not to talk long" that we had permission to talk, and as we lay, each in his little bed, having put out the light, so that nothing more was to be seen than the two faintly lighted square windows, I asked Simmerl, "What was wrong with that fellow Kickel?"

"Cherry-stones," answered the lad.

"Why did he get so wild?"

"Oh, poor old Kickel!" said my comrade. "Don't you know that he was in prison for ten years? Last year they let him out."

"Why?"

"Because the Kaiser was married."

"What, they locked him up for that?"

"No, that's why they let him out."

"But, good Lord, I want to know why they put him in prison," I cried.

"If you shout like that father will come with the strap. He killed his son."

This was horrible. I did not know whether Kickel or House-father Zutrum had killed his son. I dared question no farther, and when I did try it later Simmerl gave no answer, for he was asleep.

Next morning we were awakened by a clear voice, "Schoolboys, it's time!" A bough of elder swayed about in front of the heart-shaped opening in the shutter, and through it the sun shone hot and bright on to our snow-white beds, and the house-spring splashed outside. I should have liked to dress at the same time as Simmerl, but was shy about drawing my legs from under the coverlet. With a long arm I drew my trousers from the bench into bed, and slipped them on to my limbs with a suggestive slickness, and so out to the spring. After the washing the morning prayers. Simmerl, out of consideration for his guest, would have gone out during these, suggesting that he would then take me to the grey horse in the stable; but his mother said, "He will see enough grey horses during his life; you need the Holy Spirit in school. Now say your morning prayer. Both kneel together."

We knelt on the bench before the table, and each said an Our Father to himself, while it occurred to me, "We are not so strict at home." Certainly, our mother said one ought to say one's prayers, but she did not order one straight away on to the bench.

Now I was to see too what came of the prayers. We had hardly raised our elbows from the table when it was spread with a white cloth, and set with white platters and with white bread, and a brown soup was poured out of the spout of a bright tin pot. At home it was just the other way round, everything else brown and the soup white. There was no milk-soup for breakfast here, but coffee! I had already heard about it, that the grand people ate coffee, but that an old charcoal-burner had said, "My dear people, I am certainly black. Look at me and see if I'm black or no! But I'm not so black and bad as the black broth from Morocco. The devil has invented it, and the peasant will come to an end if he eats it."

I do not know if the charcoal-burner knew how wisely he had spoken, and I do not know if they had believed him. I only know that everyone was crazy for coffee, and that I could not help putting my spoon into the black soup--Ugh! that isn't good, that is as bitter as gall! The devil has certainly invented it----

"You haven't put any sugar," laughed Simmerl, and threw some pieces out of a cup into my bowl. Now it was a little different. Simmerl looked at me and grinned to himself. I should have liked to know why.

After breakfast it was "God keep you!" to the Zutrum people and off to school. I had become quite brave and held out my right hand when saying "Good-bye and thank you," just like a well-mannered, grown-up man, and it occurred to me, "How easy it is to be good when one is not at home!"

As we went along the hill-meadow old Kickel was to be seen with a wooden fork spreading haycocks out so that they should dry better in the new sunshine. To-day I saw, for the first time, that he was very decrepit, bent double almost to cracking-point, and swaying and limping at every step. His knee-breeches had certainly once been leather, but now they had many, many patches of other stuffs stuck on with large, ungainly stitches. His feet and very brown ankles were bare. Breast and arms were covered by a coarse brown shirt; the old felt hat sat like a battered inverted kettle on the little grey head, but all the same it was decorated by an eagle's feather, which stood up high into the air. Knees, elbows and fingers were all so terribly bony that one felt as if the old man would never be able to do anything properly for the rest of his life; he was like a deformed and twisted oak tree up on the high land where the storm-wind cripples everything. When he caught sight of us he raised his hat politely and then he went on working.

"Oh, I say," I questioned my schoolfellow, "what is the matter with Kickel?"

"When we are higher up I'll tell you," answered Simmerl, and when we came into the wood, where the ground became more level, he put his arm in mine, and said, "He had a son, and he shot him."

"By accident? On purpose?" I asked, horrified.

"On purpose--quite on purpose."

"What had he done then--the son?"

"Nothing; he was a thorough good fellow, my father said."

"Good God! And did he hate his son so dreadfully then?"

"He loved his son ever so much; much too much."

"And therefore shot him down?"

"Well, I don't know myself how it was," acknowledged Simmerl.

"So Kickel is mad?" I put in.

"Not mad, but a bit crazy, certainly; a bit crazy all his life, and people say one can't imagine how sharp he used to be, and what a fine keeper he was up there, and how well educated! But the people say that the many books he read must have sent him silly."

I quickened my steps.

"Why do you hurry so, Peter?"

"Supposing he runs after us!"

"Oh, Kickel won't do anything to us. People say he would not have killed his son if he hadn't been so fond of him."

"Oh, Simmerl, supposing he is fond of us?"

"Oh, not so fond as he was of his son!"

"But, Simmerl, I don't understand."

"Some time I'll ask father just how it all was."

Nothing more. On that particular day I was not much use in school. Just think!--My father is very fond of _me_. He certainly has never told me so, but mother has said it to me. If things are like this, one will never trust oneself again with people who are fond of one.

"What is the matter with Peter?" asked the schoolmaster, "he is so absent-minded to-day."

In the afternoon I came back to my parents' house. I stood awhile rooted to the sandy ground behind the pines. What was going to happen next? My father came towards me with a clacking wheelbarrow. "Go in and eat," he called to me, "and afterwards come out into the wood. We must cut down some wood for firing."

"Did you sleep at Zutrum last night?" asked my mother, as she set before me the dinner which had been saved for me.

"Mother, Simmerl wouldn't let go of me until I went home with him."

"It's quite right, child. Just lately Mistress Zutrum was complaining to your father that you did not come to see your cousins and aunt and uncle. My mother and the mother of Mistress Zutrum were sisters."

The danger was quite over. Out in the forest I asked my father whether he knew the Zutrums' old servant, Kickel, and what was the matter with him.

"It isn't the time for gossip now, it's the time for cutting firewood,"--that was his answer.

A few weeks later I was with my father in the cattle pasture. It was already dusk, and the oxen, who had been yoked to the plough all day, thrust their muzzles into the food and grazed busily. We stood by and waited until they were satisfied. It occurred to me that now was the time for gossip, and I asked him again about Kickel.

"Child, let Kickel be," answered my father. "He's never harmed you--and may God Almighty preserve from all craziness! See--they won't eat the grass--they're not hungry any more."

Soon after, we led the oxen into the farmyard. If I had died at that time, reader, you would hardly ever have learnt anything about Kickel. Meanwhile, I grew into a thin, but sadly tall lad, too narrow for a peasant, but long enough for a town gentleman--well, you know all about that!

And once on a time, in summer, as I was going to visit far-away Alpel again, in the forest on the way I overtook a peasant lad--a young, handsome but earnest fellow, in Sunday clothes although it was a work-day. He had an upright carriage, and moved his legs lightly and regularly in walking, so that I thought, "He has been a soldier, or is one still." His auburn hair, too, was cut short and shaved behind in such fashion that his round, fresh-coloured neck was bare for a couple of inches down to his shirt-collar. The long face, with the somewhat thinly modelled nose, the very fair little moustache and the open, shrewd eyes, suggested that he was by no means one of the most foolish and simple of people. In those days I was as glad to have company on such a road as now I am to go alone. So I tried it on with him. My question was, where he went? He was going home to his wood-cutting in Fischbacherwald. "Where had he been?" In Krieglach, in the churchyard. "What had so lively a young fellow to do with the churchyard?"

"Well, it's just what happens often enough," answered he. "It was on account of old Kickel."

Old Kickel! I had often heard the name mentioned. Ah, yes! it was the old servant at Zutrum, who----"We'll go together, so that it will be more entertaining. I am Peter from the Forest farm." That was my introduction.

"I've known you before," was his answer. "I have often met you in Graz when I was with the soldiers, but you have never recognised me."

"And why have you never made yourself known since you were from home?"

"I wanted to speak to you once, but I thought, 'A common soldier! Who knows if he'd like it?'"

"Naturally--you a common soldier--and I absolutely nothing."

"Ah--not that," he rejoined. "You are already somebody. I know it well."

"So they have buried Kickel to-day! And where are the others, then?"

"The few people have already gone on. Not many of them followed him. He was only a poor pauper."

"You have surely been one of the bearers?"

"No," said he; "I have only followed on after. There has been no praying even, because they said he had been a heathen. I thought to myself that he wasn't any worse than most other people, and that he had had bad luck--it was certainly his fate. Now in God's name he has rest."

"What bad luck did he have, then?" was my question. I believed that I was at last near to the satisfaction of my old and now re-awakened curiosity.

"You will have heard of the story before," said my road companion.

"Yes, just rumours; but never knew where they came from. Do you know anything exactly?"

"I know all about it," said he.

And I had led him on so far that he began to tell me everything. It is again many years since then, but one never forgets such things, and now I will tell the story of Kickel.

* * * * *

"Isidor Kickel was the only son of a steward at the Schloss of Prince Schwarzenberg, in Muran. He had to study, and wanted to also, but suddenly dropped it all in his seventeenth year, just when he should have repeated his annual course. After that he tried an agricultural school, learnt forestry and became a forester. But he only got as far as being a forester's assistant or huntsman, and as this he was placed in the Imperial forests at Neuberg. He ought, perhaps, to have been a scholar, for there was something speculative in him, and he read many books in his spare time. He was much too much in books. He said such things oftentimes, and kept so away from church, that the people said: 'Huntsman Kickel has fallen away from the Christian faith.' That often happens to-day," commented my travelling companion. "At that time it was something novel. No one knew how he felt about it himself inside; the people said it could not feel quite right. Otherwise he was not a bad man. Once when he was in the church during a feast, he took money out of his purse and wanted to give it to the bell-pocket man, but the man passed by him as if to say, 'You monster, your money is too bad for me.' Whereupon Kickel gave the coins to a poor little old woman; they were not too bad for her, and the people laughed no end! Once a swallow flew into the church and could not get out again, because the windows have wire-netting and the door was at the far end. And no one could catch her, either. So Kickel went into the church every day and the sacristan thought he had been converted. Kickel, however, was only taking in bird's food so that the swallow should not starve. And as to conversion, there was nothing of that sort at all. In spite of everything, people liked him well, and nobody could accuse him of anything wrong. Then he married a schoolmaster's daughter from the Veitsch, and had seven children; and of these he lost six by death while they were quite little, three at one time, and his wife also through consumption. Only one single child remained to him, a boy called Oswald. One often sees that people who are unable to believe in a future life are all the more thirsty for life here, and for love too. It was just that way with Kickel. His love for this only child became an overwhelming passion, and all and everything which lay in his power that could make life lovely for the handsome, merry young Oswald, he gave him. He had him taught, and when he was twelve years old wanted to send him to an Institute in Vienna; but, on the other hand, Oswald wanted to stay among his home mountains, and the huntsman had to force himself to thrust him out. A few years later he secured him a clerkship in the State Forestry Office at Neuberg, and a few years after that there was a wedding.

"Oswald's choice was a pretty daughter of a burgher of Mürzzuschlag. The love-story apparently was just like other love-stories, and went much the same road as they. Oswald became master-woodman in the Hochschlag, behind Mürzsteg, on the high Veitsch. After barely a year, naturally enough, the 'little lad' was there, and Oswald could say to his father, 'I can wish nothing better for myself, and only fear lest things should become worse!' So he must have been a much more contented man than his father, and no one ever heard how he stood with regard to religion. His wife," continued my lad, "has often told me since, that he laid his arm round her neck and said, 'God be praised and thanked that I have you!' So he must have believed _something_. And his father, Kickel, just revelled in joy because all went so well for his Oswald.

"Huntsman Kickel lived in an old dismantled farm-house, in the only room which was still habitable. At that time he was suffering with a wound in his foot, which he had got by leaping from a rock, and for months he had been unable to go into the coverts. As Oswald on Sundays went up to his mountain-hut from the valley, his way led him past, and he spoke to his father to ask him how the sick leg was, and to bring him this thing or the other and to chat with him about his wife and his dear boy. He often brought the boy with him, too, and then Huntsman Kickel would throw his boxes and cupboards open and invite son and grandson to take with them anything that particularly pleased them.

"'Take--just take them all,' he would always say; 'they're mere nothings. The little bit of pleasure in this world! I've had my share, and there's nothing beyond. And if things get worse--end it!'

"Then that Sunday came. It was in August, and so hot in the morning that the young master-woodman Oswald begged a glass of water of his father on his way to church.

"'When I come back after noon,' he said to his father, 'I will pay you for the well with St. John's blessing.' He meant by that he would bring wine with him. The old man answered that he ought to take it up to the little wife and the laddie. But they were in want of nothing; the little wife sang from dawn onwards like a lark, and little Anderl had laughed in his sleep as he, Oswald, before going out, had kissed him.

"'Ah, you poor burdened fellow!' Huntsman Kickel said again, and clapped his son on the shoulder and then 'Good-bye till this afternoon.'

"About midday a storm arose over the Hochschwab Mountain. It did not rain much, but the thunder crashed heavily several times. An hour later a woodman came down from the hill, who called into the open windows, 'Huntsman Kickel, look up if you want to see the smoke!'

"'What's the matter? What are you shouting for?' asked Kickel, who was quite alone in the house.

"'The mountain-hut is burning--the lightning struck it.'

"'What do you say, woodman?'

"'When the master-woodman comes home he will find nothing left. Everything has gone!'

"'The wife? The child?'

"'Everything's gone. If your son goes home, prepare him for it. I must go to Niederalpel.'

"That was what the woodman said--and then he was off."

I cannot repeat as my fellow-wayfarer told it; it went straight into my heart like a knife. But the young fellow remained unmoved, and went on telling:

"No one knows what Huntsman Kickel thought of this message. At first he wanted to go up to the heights where the black smoke was making the whole heavens dark. But he was unable, because of the bad foot. 'His wife and his child! His wife and his child! His wife and his child!' The whole time just that. 'End it!' Kickel went into the parlour and stared out of the window. 'Now he's coming--and now he's coming.' He took the gun from the wall and stood in the middle of the parlour and looked out through the window to the path outside. At last he came, Oswald, out from the green wood; he did not look up, and still did not know anything about it, and came so quickly and gaily to the house where his father lived. And Huntsman Kickel aimed through the window and shot him down."

"Jesus Christ!" I cried. "Had he gone mad?"

"One cannot say that," answered the lad. "When his old housekeeper came home, he sent her at once for a cart, went to the police, and when examined he said he could not endure that his Oswald should have trouble and go on living, and he had thought to himself, 'He knows nothing, and needs to know nothing. That useless grieving for many a day and year is quite unnecessary. A quick death, and you are after them, you are set free from everything--and I, your father, can do you no better service than that.' He said, 'I did not aim badly; and now, your honours, please make an end of me.' I believe they gave him fifteen years, but when the Kaiser married in fifty-four they let him off the rest."

I went thoughtfully along the woodland path, and said:

"It's almost beyond belief."

"It was best," continued my companion, "that they fetched him away at once and took him to Loeben. He couldn't have lived after knowing the worst of all."

"What the woodman said--was it not true, then?" I asked it with my breath stopping.

"Yes, the lightning had certainly struck the hill-hut and it was burnt down, but nothing had happened to Oswald's family."

* * * * *

It's awful to think of the fate of some men!

We went on together for a while; neither said a word.

At last I stood still and asked, "When did he learn it?"

"When after nine years he had been free for half a year, and he came home and was always laughing in the air, then I told it him myself."

"How did you say it to him?"

"'Father Kickel, your daughter-in-law and your grandson Anderl are still alive, and all is well with them.'"

"And what did he say to that?"

"'So,' said he, 'they are still alive? And I had always dreamt that they were all dead, all! God, what tales the young people tell!' And then he laughed again."

"Ah--mad then!"

"It must have been so," said my companion. "For a while after that he tried to earn his bread as a farm-servant, but later on, as he couldn't succeed in that, he came on the parish. As a rule, one saw nothing amiss with him, but many a time one did--many a time one did."

"You knew him quite well?" I asked the young fellow.

"Well, naturally," was his answer; "he was my grandfather."

XII

How I Came to the Plough

This is one of the very shortest, but also one of the most important chapters in my story. It takes me out of my first childish youth and my herding time, and brings me to the days of my young manhood and of work filled with conscious purpose.

It needed many an artful trick before I managed to get promoted from cowherd to ploughman. I had to sprain my foot, so that I could not run after the cattle properly; I had to find birds' nests in the meadow, which inclined my younger brother to take over my herdsman's duties in my stead; lastly, I had to coax Markus the farm-hand, who had driven the plough till then, into declaring that it was an easy-going implement, as simple to handle as a pocket-knife, and that I--the callow lad--was fairly strong enough and fit to guide the plough.

And I stood there and drew myself up until I reached at least as high as long Markus's shoulders, and I shook one of the fence-posts until it groaned--as a proof of my fitness for the plough. But my father laughed and said:

"Get out, you're a little swaggerer! What you need is a good breeches-dusting given you every day. And now he's pretending to be grown up. Very well, take hold; it won't last long!"

We were in the fields when he spoke. Markus stood back; and I took the plough by the horns.

The plough in the neighbourhood of my home is different, certainly, from the bent bough of the savage, but it remains a clumsy, imperfect implement. The farmer puts it together himself out of birch-wood, fetching only the iron portions from the smith and the wheels from the cartwright. The chief parts of the plough are the coulter, or plough-iron, which cuts the turf vertically, and the share, which slices it horizontally, thus creating a grassy sod which has four sides to it, and is about a span wide and half a span thick. Then there is the mould-board, which lifts the cut sod out of the furrow and turns it over, so that the grassy side comes to lie at the bottom. Further portions, by means of which these chief parts are fastened to the body of the plough, are called the coulter-beam, the sill-beam, the "cat." All these appliances have to be in duplicate, as required by the progress up and down the hilly field, turn and turn about. In front is the beam, lying on the axle-tree, to which a pair of oxen are usually harnessed. At the back of the plough, three "horns" or tails stick out; these are the handles by which the plough is driven by a powerful man. It depends upon the driving of this ploughman whether the sod be made wide or narrow and the furrow deep or shallow; it is this man's duty to fix and lift the plough at the edge of the field; he must also be able, on stony ground, to pull the plough out of the way of any larger stone than usual, for the oxen cannot be brought suddenly to a standstill; and the plough, if left to itself, would soon go to wreck and ruin.

Over and above this ploughman, the vehicle also needs a driver, who leads the oxen in such a way that one of the pair is always stepping in the furrow and the other on the sod. Then, lastly, there has to be a "follower." This is usually a girl, who comes after the plough with a hoe, presses down the sods that have not been well turned, cuts out faulty furrows, and, in short, acts as the corrector of the plough.

You see that the thing is far from simple. It means a long day's work to dig an acre and a half of sloping land with one plough. Well, how did the young ploughman fare?

I had taken the bull firmly by the horns. But it really was a bull. The apparatus had allowed Markus to handle it like a toy; it looked as though he only held on to the handles for fun. It was quite a different business with me. The cattle pulled. I was plunged to right and left by the handles; the plough tried to jump out of the rut; and my little bare feet got caught now and then under the clods.

"He's too short in the buttocks!" I heard father and the labourer say, laughing.

This speech roused me. My honour, my manhood were at stake. I no longer wanted to be the duffer who had to sit at the bottom corner of the table, who dared not put a word in edgewise, who, if he knew of anything that had happened, was free to go and talk it over with the sheep and calves outside. I had the most ambitious views; I wanted to be big and strong and independent, like the farm-labourer. And behold, the higher a man aims, the taller he grows! I drove the plough and cut a passable furrow. The earth-worms, disturbed by the plough, lifted their heads in surprise and looked up to see who was ploughing to-day!

My father's fields had tough, yellowish-red earth, interwoven with grass-roots; and the sods formed an endless gut, and were hardly once in a way interrupted throughout the tract of land to be ploughed. I was glad of that, for it made the plough remain always evenly in position, and the furrow became more regular than any pond-digger's work. But my father was not so glad; he would rather have had black, soft sods:

"Black earth, white bread!" says the proverb.

When I was driving the plough across the field for the third time, I took a peep to see how high the sun stood in the sky. Alas, that clock had stopped! There were clouds in front of it. Suppose God should be angry and refuse to let it become noon to-day!...

It seemed a long time before mother, when dinner was ready, appeared in the loft at the top of the house, as my grandmother had done before her, put two fingers to her mouth, and sent forth the shrill, peculiar whistle which I knew so well. I let go the handles and confessed that mother had never whistled so musically before.

Then came dinner. I took good care not to wipe the earth from my hands, for even this crust gave me a certain air; I was no longer the duffer, I was the ploughman, I enjoyed equal rights with the labourers. I sat down beside the head man and did my best to talk in a weighty fashion. They spoke of my performance; then I was silent, for my performance spoke for itself.

It is a small incident in one's youth, it is hardly big enough to be worth mentioning; but, for the farmer, it is a great and momentous day when he puts his hand to the plough for the first time--it is a sacred act. The sword, the Cross, are objects of respect; and I look upon the plough also as a symbol of the redemption of the world. The grey earth-dust which clung to my hands that time, and with which I went in to dinner--I have not wiped it off to this day--was to me what the golden pollen-dust is to the bee.

And so I may be permitted to add that, in that same year, I tilled the whole of that field; that my father sowed the seed there with a pious hand; and that, next spring, the corn stood glad and green and glorious.

"I haven't seen such a field of corn these ten years past," said my father, when he saw it.

XIII

The Recruit

Never in my life shall I forget that February morning. It was only to be expected; and yet it took us by surprise.

I was a little over twenty years of age. Though I already felt a regular young man and did my very best to act as such, still I always looked upon myself as a child, for I was ever so considered by my parents and to a certain extent so treated by my teacher. I had to stoop nowadays, when I entered the house through the door; and, when I stood by the table-corner in the parlour, my head reached up to the Holy Trinity on the wall, to espy whose mystery I had so often, as a boy, scrambled up chair and table. But people still always called me by my short pet name; and I still answered to it. And so, silently, that February morning came upon us.

It was a Sunday. I had come back from a long job,[14] and meant to have a pleasant rest. When I awoke, my father was standing by the bed and said it was high time for me to get up, he wanted to speak to me.

"Do you owe any money to Bürscher the innkeeper at Krieglach?" he asked, and waited anxiously for my answer.

I asked him why he put such a question to me: what I had drunk at Bürscher's I had always paid for.

"So I should have thought. It's only because Bürscher has sent me a paper to-day, which belongs to you, I'm thinking."

He gave me the paper: it was grey; and I turned red. Father noticed this and said:

"Seems to me there's some disgrace about it, for all that!"

"Not a disgrace," said I, with my eyes fixed on the lines, which were part in print and part in writing. "An honour rather. _Present myself_, that's what I have to do."

The paper ran:

"MILITARY SUMMONS

"Take note that you, Peter Rosegger, living at house No. 18 at
Alpel, born in the year 1843, in the parish of Krieglach, are
hereby called upon to fulfil your military obligations by
presenting yourself for inspection, at 8 o'clock in the morning
on the 14th of March, 1864, at the appointed place at Bruck,
clean-washed and in clean linen, failing which you will be
treated as a deserter and undergo the usual consequences
prescribed by law.

"KINDBERG, 15 February, 1864.
"For the Town Council,
"WESTREICHER,
"_Chairman_.
"Lot No. 67. Age-class I."

By this time, my mother was there too. She could not believe it. Why, it wasn't so long since I was just a little bit of a chap! And now, all at once, a soldier!

"He's not that yet," said father.

"Give them time. And look at him. They won't send _him_ home in a hurry. Jesu, Mary! And the chest is spreading, too, now! That narrow little chest of yours was always my comfort. And to think that you have grown so broad all in a year!"

I had jumped out of bed, but did not know how to defend myself against my disconsolate mother's reproaches.

My father said to her:

"Thank your stars that he's healthy. Do you want a cripple for a son? Would you rather have had that than a fine, well-set-up soldier?"

"You're right, of course, Lenzel:[15] if only I could keep him with me, though. Sooner or later, he'll have to go to the front; and I simply can't bear to think of that."

She wept.

"Get back into bed again," said father to me. "You could have stayed in bed, if you'd wanted to."

I didn't care about bed now. I was glowing in every limb. True, I had been secretly awaiting this summons, in fear and trembling; but, now that it had come, I had an ever so pleasant and cheerful feeling inside me. I was filled with joy and pride. The Emperor had sent for me! I rushed to the door; I could have shouted from house to house, from hill to hill:

"I'm a recruit!"

There were many weeks yet before the 14th of March. Mother wanted me not to go on any more jobs, but to stay at home so that she could have me with her for that short time. My master, indulgent as ever, yielded to her. She gave herself up to thinking and planning how to make this time, the last that I should spend with her, pleasant to me. She called to mind all my pet dishes. She asked the market-woman to get beetroot for her and dried cherries, two things which my palate specially relished at the time. She scattered more and more oats before the hens and tried to explain to them that they would be dispensed from duty the whole of next summer if only they would lay eggs now, at this great time; otherwise there would be nothing for it but to cut off their heads; for a soldier, if he got no eggs to eat, was not averse to roast fowls, however old and tough--they never saw such teeth as a young fellow had who was just going for a soldier!

Dear mother-heart, once so warm and true, can it be possible that you are now but a cold bit of clay? How I yearn for you these days! How I pray that you will let me love you, as you once prayed to me! You are almost colder to me now than I was then to you. I never thought what endless loving-kindness and cheerfulness and self-sacrifice lay hidden in the little gifts and pleasures which you prepared for me! I took you, O my mother's heart, as a man takes the breath of the morning and the sunshine, without so much as a "Thank you"!

So, at that time, with the conscription near at hand, I accepted my mother's tenderness rather casually and, instead of staying at home with her, went about the neighbourhood and forgathered with the lads who had received their summons like myself. True, there were some among them for whom I had but little fellow-feeling--I did not care much for the lads of my neighbourhood, our tastes lay too far asunder--but the common lot now united us, we consorted together, we drank together in the taverns; and, full of esprit de corps as I was, I behaved just as wildly as the rest.

Everybody smoked; and it was no longer pipes, but cigars, to make people think that the Emperor already had sent army tobacco on ahead for his young recruits. Everybody strove to walk grand and straight and upright, though, as I presently found, this resulted rather in a sort of strut or swagger. Whether everybody had a sweetheart I can't quite say; but this much is certain, that everybody sang about his sweetheart. There are songs about the pretty and the ugly, the faithless and the deserted, the cold and the warm-hearted; songs for daily use and songs for special occasions. I joined boldly in every ditty, as though I owned girls of all sorts and descriptions. And yet, all the while, I was secretly afraid because of my recruiting-favour.

Here let me explain that every lad who is called upon for conscription gets a many-coloured bunch of ribbons pinned to his hat by his sweetheart. The ribbons are mostly red and wave in the breeze--when their wearers bluster as they should--like flags. The rose or bud-shaped favours are generally cut out of coloured linen or paper and have the advantage of always keeping bright and fresh and not drooping, as real flowers do;--for a drooping air won't do for recruits. Only, there is just one green sprig of rosemary with it, forming the heart of the favour; and in this green spray the beloved talks to her lover, saying I know not what sweet and good things! So long as the beloved has to do with rosemary, it is the May-time of love.

Now where was _I_ to get my favour from? A sweetheart! I knew of one, but I had none: I had never reflected how indispensable the sweetheart is to the recruit.

Must I, while all the others marched away with fluttering top-knots, trot favourless behind? And what was the good of marching and what the good of going for a soldier, if I left no sobbing girl behind me?

The day arrived.

My mother made as if she were calm, at times even cheerful, but she had always red eyes. Once she went to my master and wept and was surprised that he did not cry too. But he only laughed and said that he did not see what there was to grieve about: Peter need not be afraid of soldiering; he would have a good time; he had learnt tailoring; he might even become a cutter in the army tailors' department; and then he could laugh at all of them. But my dear mother wouldn't hear about laughing, for the time being; she remained disconsolate: under the circumstances she felt better so. She got ready for me the finest linen she could lay hold of and marked each garment with a little cross; but nothing further was said about the recruiting, until the last moment, when I was starting and mother wished to go with me as far as Krieglach.

"For God's sake, don't!" I cried; for how would it have gone off if I had marched with mother by my side and the lads in front of us with their wild songs and chaff! Pretty badly: such young devils are lads that there are times when the gentlest mother's son of them all blushes for his parents.

"Nay, nay, mother," said father to her, "you can't go; you're no good at that; and they would only poke fun at the boy."

My mother did not say another word. She did not even come as far as the front door with me, for fear of getting me laughed at by the passers-by. Inside, in the parlour, she dipped her finger in the holy-water stoup and made a cross with it over my face and then hurried into the next room, to let her tears flow freely. I felt just a queer sort of choking at the throat, but did not let it master me. And I won't warrant that, when, in the dark passage, I made a quick movement over my eyes, I did not at the same time wipe off the wet mark of the cross.

We all met at Stocker's inn on the bridle-path. Everyone, as I expected, had his hat full of finery; my head alone was smooth as that of a poor little ram that has grown no horns yet and has just to be content with its long ears. Therefore I was still mortally unhappy at the first glass; at the second, however, I thought of the shako with the flaunting imperial eagle on it, which I was as certain of wearing as any of the rest.

There were pretty fellows among them, but also wretched pigmies who needed their streaming ribbons to hide their humps, their goitres, and even--if I may be allowed a little exaggeration--their weedy spindle-shanks. Now where had _they_ got their sweethearts from, that they sported such fine favours? They all had their hats on; I alone had flung mine into a corner, to avoid the scorn with which, for that matter, they had already overwhelmed me.

When we broke up at last and I was obliged to fish out my hat again, I could not find it. For in its place was another, with a splendid rosette and two ribbons, one red and the other white; and I now saw that it _was_ my hat which had been so gloriously favoured by an unknown hand. Perhaps I had a sweetheart after all! I reflected, but could hit upon none whom I thought capable of liking such a "Marry-me-not" as myself. Stocker, the innkeeper, had nice-looking daughters, but they were all married. His old wife was reported to have once been young herself, but the ribbons and that wonderful, dainty sprig of rosemary could not possibly date back to that period. And the old woman played no other part in the business than to whisper to me that someone had been past the house and secretly prigged a rosette for me.

Anyway, I had it--that was the great thing--and it looked finer and grander than all the rest. Goodness, how I racked my brains under that favour! To the others, however, I behaved as if I knew right well from whom it came, and I even carried this plan to such a pitch that I myself began to fix on a definite person and believed and was soon convinced that it was she I loved. It's inconceivable how soon a certainty of this sort makes a man of one! I was now the liveliest of them all as we went along; and more than one of them said they never knew that Lenzel's son was such a devil of a fellow. Which made me feel not a trifle flattered.

One of our numberless jokes was to "make the railway-train stop." We posted ourselves outside the station and, as the train came up, yelled and shouted:

"Hi! Stop!"

Then the train stopped and we laughed.

But things did not always end so harmlessly. We were seated in the railway-carriage--the Krieglach Town Council had given us our fares, which, as we believed, were sent direct by the Emperor--when one of us, Zedel-Zenz, proposed that we should all examine our tufts of rosemary: he whose spray was beginning to fade had lain oftenest in his sweetheart's arms. And then it turned out that the green sprig in my hat was clinging a little wearily and languidly to the red linen flowers. This, of course, caused me a fresh inward alarm. Could this sprig of rosemary know more about her and more about me than I myself did? Had I really been favoured already?

"Yes, that goes without saying!" I laughed, swaggering like anything.

But instead of impressing the others, I only brought down ridicule upon myself. They spoke of rocking the cradle and drew all sorts of conclusions from the fading of the rosemary, until at last I protested angrily. What had it to do with them? I asked. If anybody had anything to complain of, let him come on! For it at once occurred to me, a real recruit must put up with nothing, must know how to be rude and raise a brawl in due season. And so I blustered away until I had blustered myself into a regular, genuine rage, stamping my feet, waving my arms and actually managing to shatter a window-pane.

The guard at once appeared. Who had broken the glass?

"Lenzel's son!" crowed one. "The tailor!"

But the others shouted that it wasn't true and that we mustn't tell who had done it.

"I want no hushing up from any of you!" I broke in. "I smashed the pane. What's the damage?"

"We'll see to that at Bruck," answered the guard. "I'll speak to the captain; the army'll soon tame you, my lad!"

"Now you've done it," thought I to myself; "now you're a soldier, Lenzel's son."

And I became quite quiet, as if the wintry air, rushing in through the broken window, had cooled me to good purpose.

At the station at Bruck there was no more said about that pane of glass; and, when we went shouting through the town, I slung my arms round the necks of my companions on either side of me and felt grateful to them for their willingness to screen the felon that I was.

From the windows of the houses, the town misses looked down upon our mad doings; and we were convinced that they must all be in love with us and that, the more rudely we behaved and the more wildly the ribbons streamed from our hats, the more ardent their love must grow. We had a lurking suspicion that even a farmer's lad from the mountains, bawling with brag and arrogance and marching away as the champion of his country, may, when all is said, possess some little interest for the city dame.

Now escorted by corporals, we marched back into the town by the other side and up to a building standing by itself. Then we went indoors. All of us were a little flurried; none knew in what condition he would leave this house again. And here, in the town, the soldier's life no longer looked so glorious as at home in the still woods. Most of us--even though we were not the most pious--sighed an "In God's name!" as we blundered up the steps.

We went into a large hall which was almost like a barn and in which over a hundred young men were already gathered. There was a tremendous buzzing and pushing; and it was a very curious sight. Some, filled with the gaiety of despair, were jumping up and down on their stocking-feet or barefoot; others tied up their clothes and sat down on the bundles and were sad as death. Others again leant or stood against the walls, like carved saints, with the cold sweat on their foreheads. One might say even of the dwarfs and cripples that their hearts sank into their trousers, had they still had their trousers on!