Chapter M: E. K (6)

I walked round the hall, meaning well by everybody, but caring to talk to none. They were surprised that I could keep so indifferent; of the great excitement bubbling inside me I gave no sign.

Suddenly the entrance-door was locked, which made one of us whisper:

"Look, the trap's snapped to!"

On the other hand, a door opposite opened; and a couple of soldiers--but these were full-blown soldiers--walked about among us and pushed one after the other into the inner room. I then saw some of the palest faces I ever beheld in my life. Most of them, however, strode quite bravely through the fateful gate. But we were numbered. To prevent unfairness in any given age-class, the order of the muster--for it is usually to the recruit's advantage to be one of the last--the order is always arranged, a few weeks beforehand, by lot, which every man liable to military service can draw in person or allow to be drawn by such persons as he pleases. My number had been drawn by the Krieglach Town Council; and it bore the favourable number of 67.

Nearly half of the numbers up to 30 did not come back. A sergeant fetched their clothes. But those who did come back wore an all the gladder look, dressed themselves as quickly as they could, or, for fear lest the gentleman inside should repent of having let them go, bundled their clothes under their arms and slipped out through some hole or other.

Numbers 51 to 65 all came back. Number 66 did not reappear. The sergeant came for his things. Then, at last, Number 67 was called. I walked with the utmost composure--rather too fast than too slow--into the lions' den.

What was there so extraordinary? Three or four gentlemen in black coats, with shiny buttons, silver collars, clattering swords and warlike moustaches. The blades were smoking cigars. My first thought was, could they be bribed with a civil "Good morning"? But I had heard from the men before me that the gentlemen had not said so much as "Thank you" to this greeting. We were just "things." And who is going to exchange greetings with a _Number 67_? So I bit my teeth together and held my tongue and sported my most defiant air.

I was at once put against an upright post. One of the officers, with a soft pressure of the hand, pushed my chest out and my knees in and said:

"Sixty-four and a half!"

Another seemed to write it down.

"Chest sound. Muscles might be more developed."

"Give him another year to run about in," said a third.

"Go and dress yourself!"

That was the whole proceeding. I hardly know how I got back to the front room. As I went out by the steps, the soldiers on duty stuck their bayonets in my way: that means a request to the lucky ones for a tip. It did not need the bayonets: everyone gives, for it is the moment when he is free to leave the fatal building, with its often harsh consequences, and return to his dear home.

Those who are "kept" are mostly also allowed to go home once more and there await the muster-call; but they remain in custody on the day itself, until the gentlemen are finished with the inspection. Then they are drafted into the regiments and made to take the military oath; and then they are--soldiers.

We waited for them in the Bruck taverns. They were received with loud shouts and cheered with wine and song; and, if many a "kept" one felt like falling in the dumps because his glad young life in the green mountains was over to-day and because he had to march away, perhaps to a foreign country, perhaps to the distant battle-field, and because he, who was as fond of life as another, had to risk his young blood, the hurrahs of his boon companions soon roused him to fresh tavern joys; and, at last, all began to feel as though this were but one long day, without an end to it, sinking into the night and the night into wine.

But hours come and pass away; and so do drinking-bouts. The next day we separated; and to Krieglach-Alpel went what from Krieglach-Alpel came. Of our lot, two men had become soldiers: a bloodless, but very good-looking charcoal-burner's son; and a labourer. The labourer put on a jovial and almost wild air and tried to pick a quarrel with more than one stranger who greeted us in the street. The charcoal-burner's son was steeped in melancholy. We did not know what he was losing through a military life, nor he either: he just gazed at the great mountains and the glorious forest trees....

We others and the inns on the road took all the greater care to keep the mad recruiting-spirit alive. By the custom of our fathers, the rosette and ribbons are worn on the hat by the recruit who goes home a soldier and by no other. But we acted differently that day: we all kept our rosettes, so as to create a greater sensation and compel respect.

"Look, look! Expect we'll be having war soon," said many a little peasant, "for they're keeping them all now, every man jack of them. It'll be true what the old folks say, that the women will fight for the chair on which a he once sat."

Beyond the village of Fressnitz we came up with a beggar-man carrying a hurdy-gurdy on his back. One of us at once demanded the use of it; and, while a second led the old man like a bridle-horse, a third ground out on the beggar-man's back all the tunes which the organ contained; and we others danced and jumped about on the frozen road. In this array, we arrived at Krieglach, where we took our musical team to the tavern with us. The old man was in fine fettle and assured us that we were angels of recruits compared with those of his day. He had been one himself; and once they took a peasant who was sitting in a cart, letting his donkey pull him uphill, and harnessed him between the shafts and put the donkey in the cart instead; and they had done saucier things than that. He drank our healths and praised the days of old.

There was lots of singing as we crossed the mountain by the bridle-path. I should be sorry to repeat the songs. We sang ourselves warm, we sang ourselves hoarse. On the upper ridge, a hawker, known as Egg Mary, met us, carrying to Mürzzuschlag her baskets filled with those little things of which the songs says:

It's an oval fortress,
Has no towers, no portress
But lordly food inside.

And the words came to my mouth:

"Raw eggs are good for hoarseness!"

"We'll make sure of that at once!" cried the others, took the woman's basket and sucked out all her eggs--the charcoal-burner's son with the rest of them--and I too.

All that Egg Mary could get out in her wrath was:

"You're a pack of scoundrels!"

"Never mind," answered Zedel-Zenz. "We'll pay as soon as we have any money."

Then she went back with an empty basket, grumbling and uttering her various views of us and our behaviour. We started singing again, and the eggs did their duty.

At Stocker's inn we once more gave rein to our spirits. I did not fail to renew my inquiries about my benefactress with the ribbons and was firmly determined, if ever I came across the girl, to love her with all my heart and soul. The old hostess blinked significantly with her little grey eyes, but I got nothing more out of her.

We lads parted outside the inn in the steadfast belief that, after these days spent in one another's company, we would remain the firmest of mutual friends. A farewell feast was ordered of the innkeeper for the day when the two who had been kept were to join the colours.

When the spree was over, I felt a sinking inside, as I wended my way home. A laughing face looked out at me from every window. My father walked slowly up to me and knocked the hat off my head with his arm, so that the ribbons rustled against the frozen snow. For the moment I did not know what this meant; but my father did not leave me long in ignorance.

"Is it all the same to you," he said, "that you come home with a blazing lie on your hat? As to _who_ gave you that besom, we'll talk about that later. All I ask you now is, how can you do a thing like that to your mother? I dare say you don't know--you blackguard young puppy you!--how her heart is torn with anxiety at the thought of losing a child. But that you could give her such a fright! I wouldn't have thought it of you! If Egg Mary hadn't happened to come and tell us that you had a lucky escape this time, you might have had a nice business to answer for, with that damned rosette of yours. And your mother so poorly this long while past and all!"

I trembled in every limb. My recruiting giddiness was gone; I suddenly saw my whole baseness. My heart cried out for my mother. And that same Egg Mary, whom we--not to mince matters--had robbed on the high-road, had gone on ahead, in her good nature, to tell my people, to whom she owed many a little kindness, that they must not be frightened at the soldier's favour with which I should most likely come home, and that I had come out of it with luck.

My mother's joyful, loving grip of my hand only deepened my contrition. But father was wagging the rosette under my nose:

"And now, boy, perhaps you'll be good enough to tell me where you got those fine feathers from! Are you walking out with somebody, young as you are? That's what I want to know!"

Many and sweet as were the thoughts of pretty girls that filled my mind, fond as I was of talking of it to fellows like myself, the thing looked very different in my father's presence. I assured him that I was walking out with nobody and that I did not know who had given me the favour. He laughed out loud and then flew at me angrily because of "the silly impudence of trying to make him believe a fib like that."

My mother interposed and said that they could rejoice that I was home again, and that they must not begin by scolding me so hard.

"Now you're backing him in his wickedness," he cried, "when he's lying straight in my face! But did you ever see such a booby as not to know from whom he got the ribbons in his hat?"

"Now it's my turn to laugh," said my mother. "This time the boy really can't tell, for _I_ had the favour stuck in his hat on the sly, so that he might have a bit of colour about him, as good as the rest of them."

She had done it secretly, because she suspected that her son was longing for a rosette from strange hands, and could easily have despised his mother's gift. She had prevented his ingratitude beforehand. And her home-coming son might have smitten her to the heart with that same rosette!...

The murder was out; father said nothing; and I ... I also did my share of thinking....

That children must always be striving after strange and far-away joys, hungering for love and yearning for love, which they will never find so pure and rich and endless as at home, in that perennial spring of tenderness, their mother's heart!

FOOTNOTES:

[14] Peter Rosegger was at that time a travelling tailor's apprentice.

[15] Lorenz, Lawrence.

XIV

A Forgotten Land

I always say that the world is becoming too small. There is no room left for hermits.

I frequently receive enquiries, from correspondents abroad, for cool summer resorts,--for nature resorts. Would I please--so runs the request--suggest a corner in the Alps where they will find clean rooms and good food in a farm-house kept by simple, kindly people. Added conditions: no railway, no telegraph, no post, no newspapers. A place where they can feel safe from meeting English people or people from Berlin and--forgive the imputation--Vienna. They want to have nothing but woods and fields around them, and, oblivious of all town luxuries and refinements, at least for a few weeks to bathe body and soul in the dew of a primitive life. This is the wish which--O curious sign of the times!--grows ever louder and louder. Is the return to nature, yearned for by the poets, at last beginning in earnest?

If only the company-promoters do not seize upon this need and found a colony for hermits! It is not so easy to recover nature once wantonly deserted. Our alps contain no valley, however secluded, into which artificial wines and brandy and American meat-extracts and cigars have not by this time made their way, in which the fences are bare of railway timetables and mineral-water posters and upon which some _News of the Day_ or other does not force its huge weekly doses of "culture" and information.

This is the case by now even in those districts whose "unfavourable" situation has hitherto for the most part spared them the two well-known "blessings" of civilisation. The floodgates are opened; and even those parts cannot be spared the deluge....

My forgotten land! He who would still bathe for a little in "the dew of a primitive life" may do so! I hasten to draw a fleeting picture of the land and its people before the floods of the world come and inundate it.

The region is locally and colloquially known as Sanct-Jakobs-Land, or "the Jackelland." It lies in Styria, between the Mürzthal and the Wechsel mountain-chain. Its river is the clear-running Feistritz, rich in trout, with its countless tributaries. When one crosses the top of the watershed over the Wechsel, or the Pfaffen, or from the Mürzthal, everything at once wears a different look. The mountains are lower, the forests more scattered, because they are broken up on every hand by cornfields. The farms lie isolated in the fields, on the skirts of the forests, often very high in the mountains. In the valley are the bright green pastures, with running brooks and corn-mills. The air is calm and peaceful, disturbed by the whistle of no locomotive, the chimney of no factory. The old farm-houses are humbly built; and the kitchen, living-room, hen-house and so on often form but one general room. This makes the new sort of houses, which are springing up on every side, look all the grander, with their sundry apartments and numerous windows,--from which many a pretty, fair-haired face peeps out at us, for it is an event when a stranger comes that way.

The farm premises are, for the most part, extensive, built of wood, straw-thatched and enclosed within a plank fence. Every farm has its open-air crucifix, often artistically carved, sometimes, I admit, adorned with a figure of Christ which faith alone can save from ridicule. On the spreading mountain-heights lie wide forests, such as Teufelstein, Fischbacherwald, Vorauerwald, Feistritzwald, Rabenwald. There are no work-houses, except the few on the Wechsel. For the rest, the region is well-populated and rich in compact villages and beautiful churches. The mountain-village of St. Jakob im Walde, which gives the Jakobsland its name, lies on a spur of the Wechsel, some four thousand feet above the level of the sea.

The inhabitants do not call themselves Jacklers: they are only so-called by the people in the districts round about; for the name does not stand for anything very fine, though it has grown old in honour. They simply call themselves after their parishes: the Rattners, the St. Jakobers, the Miesenbachers and so on. Almost every village has its own peculiarity. The Kathreiner goes in for finery, the Rattner for disputes and litigation; the Wenigzeller is a great man for backbiting and quarrelling; the Fischbacher is a notorious brawler.

The people are powerfully built and have tall and slender figures; they are mostly fair-haired. The men wear clothes of dark stuff, in the summer, and, in winter, the so-called _Wilfling_, a mixture of thread and sheep's wool; on workdays they tie on long blue aprons, a practice which prevails even among the schoolboys. The women favour a bunchy style of dress; and when one of them wants to look particularly smart (and this applies to many), she puts on three, or five, or more petticoats, one over the other. Many villages are already infected with the fashion of dress introduced from the Mürzthal.

A peculiarity of the Jackler is his love for flax, which he cultivates in great quantities; and the hackling, in autumn, gives rise to regular popular festivals. _During the winter, both men and women occupy themselves in spinning, and do so until late at night, passing the time as they work in telling stories, asking and guessing conundrums, and singing._ Only there is no spinning after supper on Thursdays: from flax spun at such a time the weaver weaves shrouds.

Their food is simple and consists mainly of milk, flour, pulse, potatoes and linseed-oil. The everyday beverage is new cider. In some places they grind dried pears, and from the flour thus produced, which is mixed into a pulp with milk, they make the so-called _Dalken_. Apples are also dried; and so are plums and cherries: these are all made into soup in the winter. The cattle are reared, fattened and sold; sheep or pigs are slaughtered for holiday needs. The fare is very rich on feast-days; and there is a tradition that, on Twelfth Night, nine different kinds of stews should be consumed in every house: formerly the Jacklers used to eat no fewer than three meals on that night, so that "Three Kings' Night"[16] is known as "Three Meal Night" to this day.

The population, which reminds one, in its habits and customs, of the inhabitants of the Böhmerwald, is descended from Bajuvar stock and immigrated in the sixth and seventh centuries. It is German by origin and German by nature. Settled here for over a thousand years, the individual members of this race have become so rooted to the soil that they never leave it, and only with difficulty admit anything foreign to the land. The cell of the first German monk who began to convert the heathen is said to have stood in the desert where the little village of Mönichwald now stands. The mission was afterwards continued by the monasteries of Vorau and Pöllau. The living is in the possession of the population to this day; in many places, the parish-priest fills at the same time the offices of parish-councillor, guardian of the poor and district school-inspector.

One can easily, therefore, picture the peace that reigns between church, school and municipality. Generally speaking, the clergy--in the absence of any defiant antagonism--are more liberal-minded here than in those outlying districts where they feel called upon to defend their compromised rule by the exercise of intolerance and severity.

The Jackler is favourably distinguished in one particular from the agricultural population of some other parts: he is not neutral. In the surrounding districts the peasant is apt to be indifferent towards matters of religious practice and equally indifferent towards other ideals and spiritual things. The Jackler is not like that. Gorgeous festivals, which he loves to celebrate in his stately village-churches, festivals which remind one of the Tyrol in their splendour, their often dramatic form, their mediæval love of God and veneration of the saints, delight him, stimulate him, give sustenance and substance to his spiritual life. A priest who is not prepared to celebrate the anniversaries of the church's patrons with due pomp and ceremony and to invite half a dozen neighbouring priests to read Mass and preach (and he must provide them with a good dinner into the bargain) would soon find himself at loggerheads with his flock.

The district is often visited by fanatical missionaries, who promptly arouse excitement for miles around. The parish-priest is not always filled with the friendliest feelings towards these hunters of souls, but he has to invite them for fear of offending his superiors. The costs of the mission are more than gladly covered by the parishioners.

The Jackler is notable not only for his pious tendencies, but also for his business subtlety; and he will swindle his parish-priest over a deal in oxen, to-day, after being moved to tears by his sermon yesterday--and this without the least prejudice to his own religious sentiments.

"If I can't cheat my best friend," says the Wenigzeller, "whom _can_ I cheat? My enemy doesn't trust me!"

The so-called lesser "holidays," of which there are over thirty in the year, are also conscientiously kept: in the morning, by a sung Mass in church; in the afternoon, in the tavern or on the bowling-green. Many servants work on those days on their own account; and, if their employer needs their services, he must pay them a special wage.

The Jackler is quick in his work and moderate and discreet in his pleasures. There are rich and poor in this region as in others, but not in the ordinary sense. The householder is "rich" who is not in debt in respect of his real or movable estate; "rich" is applied to the carrier who has saved a little silver, to a farm-girl who has flax and linen in her trunk and perhaps hides a savings-bank book beneath it, with the amount of her reaping pay. "Poor" are the debt-ridden cottager, the landlord whose property is mortgaged up to the hilt, the incompetent salter or pickler. No one is ruined by privation: people, it is true, are often harsh to the poor man, but they help him.

Nearly everything that the peasant needs is produced by his industry; there is little ready-money in the district; but, for that reason, it has two or three times the value as compared with the prices ruling in the railway districts.

"A thousand gulden!"

That expresses their utmost conception of wealth. The occasional stranger who happens to have strayed into this region is surprised when he finds himself charged no more than eighty kreuzer for a good night's lodging and an excellent supper and breakfast. On the other hand, when a Jackler, for once in a way, travels on the railway, his wonder never ceases at the high fares which he is called upon to pay; and he considers that the shorter time the train takes to cover a distance, the less the charge should be.

The inhabitants of the Feistritz district supply the Mürzthal with poultry, eggs and fruit at a very cheap rate; and the women who carry and deliver them earn barely twenty kreuzer a day. Wood and coal also find their way into that ravenous and industrious valley; and the Jackler artisans make their bit of money there. They have the making of good masons, carpenters, shoemakers, tailors, smiths, watchmakers, gunsmiths and so on. These workmen from the Jackelland are greatly appreciated in the Mürzthal and round about; they work hard, well and cheaply, and are not particular in the matter of board and lodging.

Many maid-servants, who enter a farmer's service for a year at Christmas, do so for a trifling annual wage of fifteen or twenty gulden. On the other hand, they stipulate with their employers that, in summer, when there is hardly any pressing work to be done at home, they shall be allowed to follow their own business for a few weeks. The lasses then go reaping. In the month of June they wander away, with bundle and sickle, to the lowlands or the Mürzthal, where the corn is ripe early; and they find plenty of work and amaze everybody by their eager and indefatigable diligence. This done, they cheerfully come home again with their reaping wages and once more apply themselves briskly to the needs of field and garden. It is very seldom that one of them, lured by love or other worldly advantages, remains away; they like home best, where they form part, so to speak, of the family of their employer, with whom maid and man alike live on fraternal terms.

A fine characteristic of this little land is the cohesion that reigns among neighbours. If one of them is visited with misfortune, the others stand by him fairly and squarely; do his urgent work for him, if he be ill; come to his aid with building materials, carpenters and masons, if fire or water have destroyed his house; send in food as well; and generally put the sorely-tried one on his legs once more. Again, in certain forms of labour, such as copse-cutting, flax-scutching, corn-mowing, they gladly work for the common cause--on this farm to-day, on that to-morrow--with the result that everything goes sociably and cheerfully. One for all and all for one!

The young lads stick together for their particular objects. They form clubs--each district according to its own requirements--through which they mutually support one another in their feuds and love-adventures. They help and protect one another in "window-haunting" and "street-strolling," as the nocturnal love-walks are called; they humbug the father, when one of them is after the pretty daughter; they help to defeat the rivals; and, in addition, they play all sorts of practical jokes, which their brains are very quick at inventing. The youth of one parish will often hatch deliberate plots against that of another; and bloody fights take place on many a Sunday and holiday.

Amorous relations between unengaged couples do not, as yet, occur to the same extent in the Jackelland as elsewhere; morals are stricter, opportunities fewer and frivolity less marked. Manners, upon the whole, are more serious and sober, a fact which is in no way detrimental to the pleasure of living, but, on the contrary, increases it and keeps it fresh and clean.

The lover of a healthy and intelligent people must needs feel himself at home and stimulated in the Jackelland. When, on a Sunday, he sits among the peasants in the Tafés, or inns run by the church, he will not be bored; he will rather be soon inclined to join in the conversation. But the stranger--if he think for a moment that he is ruling the talk--must be on his guard lest he be made a butt of! They have at their command an exceedingly witty and subtle form of ridicule, which often is understood only by the natives themselves. Many a townsman who has tried to preach wisdom to the Jacklers has been delightfully hoaxed by them and ultimately laughed out of court.

Place-hunting, party-hatred, pessimism and such-like flowers of our time have not yet blossomed in the Jackelland. The people there are people in whom hard bodily labour rouses no complaint, in whom pleasure is not marred by a subsequent reaction, people whose life, usually a long one, is spent peacefully, rich in great toils and small sins. Thanks to their moderation and contentment, they are free lords, who can easily make fun of others who have fettered themselves in the chains of worldly advancement.

The only sinister inhabitants are the civil engineers, who for years have been exploring the length and breadth of the little land, in the hope of sooner or later turning the iron horse to graze in those green pastures.

FOOTNOTE:

[16] _Dreikönigsnacht_, the German name for Twelfth Night.--_Translator's Note._

XV

The Schoolmaster

It was getting dark; the autumn mists were sinking over the wooded mountains. The herdsman was trudging his way home to the tinkling bells of his cattle. For some time longer the farm-hand was heard beating the oat-stalks over a beam that lay on the threshing-floor, until the last grain was separated. The barn door closed at last; and the little houseful of people gathered in the parlour to eat their rye soup and potato mash. Then they betook themselves to their straw beds.

The children were soon asleep.

A rushlight burnt in the room, and the farmer's wife kept putting it straight on its spike. Peter wound up the smoke-browned clock on the wall.

Just as husband and wife were about to get into bed, the watch-dog in the yard began to bark. There came a light tapping at the window-pane.

"Who's that?" cried the farmer.

And his wife added crossly:

"There's no peace for us to-day!"

"It's someone begging for a night's shelter," said a hoarse voice outside.

"I expect it's a poor man," said the farmer's wife. "That's quite a different thing. Go and unbolt the door, Peter."

Soon after a man stumbled into the room, weary and bent, grasping a long stick in his right hand and carrying a little bundle in his left. A wide-brimmed, discoloured, crushed felt hat was on his head, and under the brim hung snow-white strands of hair.

Peter took the rush in his hand and threw a light upon the stranger's face. Then he exclaimed:

"Heavens! It can't be possible----! Why, it's the schoolmaster of Rattenstein!"

"Aye, aye, my dear Heath--Peter," said the old man, recovering his breath, "that's so. With your permission, I will sit down at once."

The farmer's wife pulled on her dress again and hurried into the kitchen to warm some soup; then she called back into the parlour:

"Go and light a candle, Peter. The rush won't burn properly, and the smoke makes one's eyes fairly smart."

Then, when a tallow candle was burning on the table and the old man had wiped the sweat from his careworn face, Heath Peter almost shyly offered him his hand and said:

"Well, how do you come wandering into the Wilderness like this, Schoolmaster?"

"It had to be," replied the old man. "It's a case, with me, of 'Forsaken and beat, like the stones in the street.' I just turned up a footpath and went on over hill and dale as the Lord willed. And so, in the end, I came to you people in the Wilderness."

"And, if I may ask, where do you mean to go, Schoolmaster?"

The old man made no reply. His head sank down upon his chest. His fingers clutched at his blue handkerchief; but, before he could raise it with trembling hand to his face, he burst into heavy sobs.

"Lord Jesus! Schoolmaster!" cried Peter, springing to support him, for the old man threatened to collapse.

"Never would I have thought," he sobbed at last, "that such an hour as this would come to me in my old days. God above, Thou knowest, that I have not deserved it!"

"There must have been some great misfortune," the farmer said. "But Schoolmaster must not take it too much to heart. And if there is anything I can do he must let me know."

"God bless you, Heath Peter! You are a good soul, and I've known you this many a long day: why, it must be nigh on five-and-thirty years. It was I pushed back your little bonnet when the priest christened you. Ah me, if the same priest were only still alive! He was a good man, indeed, and would not have discharged me like a day-labourer at the end of his day's work, no, not though I _did_ ring ten bells for Louis the herdsman. True, I'm old now, and can't look after the school as I used to. Also I can't get accustomed to the new church government. You know how the new provisor called me a prophet of Beelzebub? I knew that I had done nothing wrong, for all that, and went on holding my extra classes. Lastly, you also must have heard that poor crazy Louis the herdsman took his own life lately. The provisor refused to have the passing-bell tolled for the poor wretch; and then the dead man's mother came to me--for I am sacristan as well--and begged me, for God's sake, to toll the bell for her son. Louis had always been an upright man; the old woman had all her life long thought the world of a Christian burial-bell; and my soul was filled with pity for her when she cried so bitterly. Then thought I to myself, 'The provisor has gone to see a colleague at Grosshöfen, so I will take it upon myself and, as she asks me to do it for God's sake, I will ring the bells: surely it's the best consolation we can offer the poor woman in her distress.' Louis was buried in the ditch where they found him; and, when the bells rang out, the mother ran to the grave and said an Our Father for his soul. The provisor did not hear the bells nor the prayer, and he didn't feel the sorrow nor the joy of that mother's heart either; but folks' tongues told him all about the bell-ringing. Yesterday, as I was helping him on with his chasuble, he gave me a smile, and I thought, 'Aye, the provisor is a good enough gentleman, after all; and I shall get on with him well enough!' Thereupon I went off to collect my corn dues from the farmers. (The people are well disposed toward me, and look after me finely: I did not have to buy a single slice of bread for myself all last winter!) It's a couple of hard days' work for one like me; but that's nothing--who wouldn't willingly cart away a heap of stones if he knew there was a treasure underneath? It had begun to grow dusk when I reached the village with my last load. Then, as I stood outside my door and was taking the key from my pocket and looking forward to my rest, I said to myself, 'Goodness, what's that? Who's been having a game with me?' The lock was sealed up. I put down my load to have a closer look at the thing. Yes, Peter, I was quite right, the school-house was sealed against me with the parish seal. 'Well,' I thought to myself, 'this _is_ a pretty business!' I threw down my carrier and ran to the presbytery, which is now also the municipal offices. I called out for the provisor. 'Not at home,' cries the housekeeper, tells me to look under the stone-heap if I have lost anything, and slams the door in my face. Then the blood rushed to my heart."

The old man was nearly choking, and the words came half stifled from his throat.

"But I did not remain standing outside the presbytery door, and I did not knock either. I ran down to the stone-heap, and there I found my Sunday washing, my black coat, and my fiddle. And in between the strings was a little tiny bit of paper. Well, here it is; you can read it, Heath Peter."

"So I would, and gladly," said Heath Peter civilly, "but there's just this about it, that I don't know one letter from another."

"Well, well, in that case reading would certainly be a miracle," said the schoolmaster. "However, sometimes it's better not to know how to read. Here's what the note says to the old man that I am: 'We sincerely regret to have to make the following communication to you in the name of the honourable Consistory and of the local parish. Whereas you, Michel Bieder, school teacher in the aforesaid parish, have repeatedly, in the instruction of the youth entrusted to your care, acted contrary to the regulations, and whereas, but recently, you took it upon yourself, in an unprecedented manner, on your own responsibility, to perform an ecclesiastical function, and this, moreover, in favour of a suicide, so now take note and be it known to you that we have relieved you of your post. Given at the presbytery at Rattenstein.'"

The old man ceased.

Peter snuffed the candle in great perplexity, and then said:

"Yes, Mr. Schoolmaster, you might have known that it does not do to toll everyone promiscuous-like into the grave. That much would have occurred even to me, Heath Peter."

"And so there I sat upon the stone-heap, and I wanted nothing to make me a complete beggar but a stick and wallet. The stars were out by this time, and an owl hooting in the forest was hooting at me it seemed. Then I did not know what to do. There I was cast out, a poor old man, that had buried a parish and christened one. So I lay down upon the stone-heap and my white hairs were wet with dew. And the church clock ticked just like a bird pecking the naked grains in a field in autumn, that clock ticked away second after second from the little bit left of my life. 'Tick on, tick on, you honest pendulum,' thought I. 'It's late.' And then, suddenly, I wondered, 'Who will ring the vesper-bell to-night?' I darted up and on, over the mound, to the church, and into the belfry, took hold of the ropes, and rang all the bells at once. And that was my farewell to my dear church and to the congregation. I should have liked to wake the dead in their graves and tell them all about my unfair treatment. But they slept on in peace, while I rang in my beggarhood. Then I cut myself a stick from the bushes by the churchyard walls and went on and on. Oh, I can walk right enough still! It took me barely three hours here to the Wilderness."

The old man bent his head and held his hand before his eyes.

"What nonsense!" said the farmer's wife, who had been standing some time by the table with the soup-plate in her hand. "And you are going up to the wilds next, Schoolmaster?"

"Must I go to the wilds?" cried the old schoolmaster. "God! what should I do in that stony place?"

He hid his face again.

"'It's a proper cross, and no Lord upon it,' says the old proverb. And the old proverb's right," said the wife. "Only eat your soup now, in Heaven's name, Schoolmaster, and get some warmth into your poor body. God will put things straight; don't let that fret you. I say, Peter, come into the kitchen for a minute; I want you to shut the chimney-slide; I can't quite manage it."

But it was nothing to do with the chimney-slide, really.

When the pair were in the kitchen the wife said:

"You must see, Peter, that we can't let the schoolmaster go like this. I went to him for schooling, and he taught me to use my Prayer Book. As long as I live I should never relish a morsel of bread again if I had to say to myself, 'Your old teacher's had to go a-begging!'--What would you say to having the top room fitted up for him? He could cut the rushes for us in the winter; and he could look after the children in the summer, when we were out in the fields; and he could teach them a bit too. You see, it would be just as well if they knew how to read a little, and the boy would love it so and writing too; and I shan't rest content till he can write his name."

"There's no need for that, Klara," answered Peter. "Who is there in the Wilderness that knows how to write his name? Not a soul. Besides, working men's hands are too rough for that kind of thing; and, if it comes to a pinch, we can always make our cross."

Whereupon his wife:

"After that, I don't wonder that we have so many crosses to bear in the Wilderness! But I don't hold with it, and I think that with the schoolmaster's help we might rise a bit."

"You're looking at only one side of the question. You know quite well that we only grow enough corn to make a bushel and a half, and that we have no milk and no bacon in the winter; you know that we have no meat in the larder, that we have no proper bedding, and that we are poor all round, in every nook and corner. And now you want to take the schoolmaster in as well! There can't be any question of it, good wife."

And she:

"Well, if you're beginning to grieve about the bit of bread and the morsel of bacon which the schoolmaster would eat, I'll save it out of my own mouth, and lie on the bare straw, in Heaven's name, and think it an honour if I can have the old teacher under my roof."

And he:

"Yes; and by the time you've done you'll sew a beggar's sack for him and one for me and one for yourself, and we'll fasten the children on to each other's backs."

"Because you have no trust in the Lord!" answered the farmer's wife, a little nettled. "My mother always used to say, 'Every good action done on earth is engraved by the angels in heaven on God's golden throne.' But I am beginning to think that you can't want to see _your_ name there."

"Who _has_ nothing can _give_ nothing," said Peter resignedly. "How can it help a beggar-man if I offer him an empty hand?"

"Well, he can take hold of it and have a support."

"Go on! One _must_ look to one's own children first and not to strangers. And, lastly, we should most likely get into trouble with the priest; and how would that suit you?"

"You're a regular old silly, that's what you are!" cried the wife, and banged a saucepan on the stove till it rang again. "It wants a special grace of God to argue with you. How glad you would be if one day your guardian angel came and said to God, 'Here is Heath Peter, who was good to the poor; and he also took the unfortunate schoolmaster of Rattenstein into his house and looked after him and cared for him in his old age, but he did it for love of Thee, O God our Father, and therefore do Thou mercifully forgive him, if he had other faults, and lead him into Thy heaven, and his children with him and his wife as well!' Wouldn't you be glad, Peter, if that ever happened?"

Peter had been scratching his head a little, and, at last, he answered in a softer voice:

"You're shouting so loud you'll wake the children, and the schoolmaster himself will hear.--You can keep him for all that I care; I say no more."

There was not much to be done with Peter with arguments based on worldly logic; you could say white or black, but he invariably followed his own nose. But his wife knew him inside and out, as well as she knew her own nightcap; she took a higher standpoint, and when, in her clever way of talking, she held up heaven and God before him, he came kneeling, as people say, to the cross--to the matrimonial cross.

When the couple returned to the parlour Klara said:

"One would think that chimney-slide wasn't meant to be reached; one has to stand on tip-toe to get at it. Well, don't you like your soup, Schoolmaster? I did my best to make it good, and I put plenty of caraway seeds in it, against the cramp. Ah! and now there's something else to discuss. I don't know what's come into my Peter's head, but he wants to keep you in the house, here and now, Schoolmaster, so that you can teach our children a bit of reading! What I said was, 'Schoolmaster won't stay with us. A man like that,' said I, 'has something better to do. Even if we were to fit up the top room for him and wait upon him as an honoured guest, he wouldn't stay with us.--And then we can't give him any school fees,' I said, 'and only such poor fare as we have ourselves.--If that's enough for him, I shall be delighted if he will stay.'"

The old man rose from his seat and, in a voice of deep emotion, said:

"Oh, you dear, good people! As you yourselves were the first to suggest it, I now venture to implore you. I have nowhere to go, and I hardly dare risk myself in the wilds. Only give me a roof over my head and a spoonful of soup for a few days and I will go back again to Rattenstein and start my entreaties. The people will take pity on me; and surely the parish provisor will not be stony-hearted."

"I wouldn't throw myself on his mercy exactly, that I wouldn't," said the farmer's wife. "And Heath Peter here was thinking that it would be all right, and that you had better make the house on the heath your home, Schoolmaster, as long as the Lord does not order things differently."

Then little Gabriel suddenly called out something in his sleep.

"There, the child's got the nightmare!" said Klara.

And she went to the little bed and, with her thumb, made the sign of the cross on the boy's forehead.

Peter fixed up a bed in the barn for his guest to sleep in that night; and soon all was dark and silent in the house on the heath.

XVI

The Stag on the Wall[17]

Heidepeter's[18] house was the very last in the Wilderness. It stood on the heath where the forests began, lying very high on a piece of almost level ground. The grey stones showed through the grass in many places before the house.

Upon the heath lay numberless rocks patched and traceried with moss. Here and there on the sandy ground between the rocks stood a silver-birch tree whose leaves were for ever whispering and trembling, until in late autumn they were blown away and lost over the moor.

This moorland house bore upon the king-post of the big living-room the date 1744; it was the first house ever built in the Wilderness.

Peter's forefathers must have been well-to-do, for they possessed much forest and were cattle-breeders as well. The trees had all been cut down and had grown up again, but now Count Frohn--who possessed a fine castle, the Frohnburg, on the other side of the hill, and, neighbouring the heath, a great deal of forest and its hunting, and hitherto a feudal right to the peasants' service--was gradually possessing himself of the squatters' forest as well; so that it had now come to this--that without his permission no tree might be felled nor branch broken. The poor outlying folk of the Wilderness were neglected by all the authorities and courts of justice--indeed, almost forgotten. So they clung to their grain-growing--to the scanty husbandry possible to the place.

To the moorland house was now left only the steep fields sloping down to the ravine, and a narrow strip of meadow. Everything else, such as rights of wood and pasture, was heavily burdened with taxation and feudal duty.

On the weather-stained wooden wall of the house, facing north, and beneath the deep, overhanging roof, was the figure of an animal, carved out of wood. Any stranger, when now and again such a one passed by the house on his wanderings among the mountains, came to a halt before this thing and gazed at it. Pedlars with their packs, Carniolas with sieves and all manner of wooden wares, glass-cutters, old-clothes men, who were always glad to go about the Wilderness in summer-time, would prop their back burdens against their sticks and have a good look at the figure before they entered the house. Even the beggars did the same, with a benevolent expression on their faces, as if admiring the man who had carved it.

But as to what the object represented opinions were very various. One said it was a cow, another a donkey, another a chamois; some, however, said it must be a stag. This last supposition was well founded. From the creature's head protruded two little bits of wood, notched saw-like on top, which just conceivably stood for the antlers. Heidepeter was very decided about the matter: the animal really was a stag.

All sorts of sayings and proverbs about the stag had become bound up with the household life inside the walls.

When Peter said to his little son Gabriel, "Laddie, we must hunt the red stag to-morrow!" he meant nothing else than that the child must get up at sunrise next morning. The stag was always glowing red at that hour.

When the wind blew from the north the figure beat its feet upon the wall, and the people inside would say, "The stag is knocking again; there'll be a change in the weather."

Through one whole summer Gabriel had been watching how two sparrows built their nest between the wooden antlers. (At that time a new bird's nest was the greatest joy on earth to Gabriel.) He could no longer resist the temptation, leant a ladder against the wall, and was going to climb up. Then, by chance, his father came along, and he, usually so mild, gave the boy quite unmistakably to understand that he must, once and for all, leave the stag in peace.

About this carved figure there clung a curious memory for Heidepeter.

While still in the early days of his married life there came some bad years, and there in the Wilderness nothing would grow or ripen save turnips and cabbage. Rye and oats started hopefully enough in the spring, greening and gathering strength for an output of ears. Then, in the heart of summer, came rain and cold, and the mists hung about the hills for weeks. The corn grew pale and stooped, as if it would rather creep back into the sheltering soil. There followed a few weeks of sunshine after that, but before even the grain could mature the snow had fallen. And so it happened several years running.

The people lost heart and hardly cared to sow in the following spring, or had no seed to sow with.

And Peter's grain-chest became empty, and he was unable to lend his neighbours seed, as he used to; indeed, he was barely able to provide for his own household. But he was not discouraged, for he had a young, careful, industrious wife in the house--a happy state of things which will always render bad years more bearable.

His wife had proposed that they should grow more turnips than usual, and a big plot of cabbages, to make up to some extent for the lack of grain. Peter followed her counsel, and by June new beautiful seedlings were set out. In July down came the rain and mist on the Wilderness again, but the garden stuff went on slowly, steadily growing.

During the raw days Clara stayed a good deal within doors, because Peter, mindful of her condition, would not have her out in the cold. But one day he came to her room, saying:

"I don't know what it means, Clara; there must have been some animal about--a whole row of the best cabbages has been eaten."

The farm-hand said he had that morning seen a stag running from the kitchen-garden towards the forest.

Heidepeter set to work and heightened the wooden paling round the garden. When, very soon after, he saw Count Frohn crossing the field with his gun and gilded powder-horn and proudly curving cock's feather, he called to him, "Your honour, I humbly beg pardon--but there's a stag that's always coming out of the forest, and he'll eat up all our cabbages."

"Indeed?" answered the huntsman, laughing, and whistled to his dogs and went on.

A night or two later the beast came again and ate a whole row of cabbages. And so the next time Peter met the Count he said, for the second time, and with his hat under his arm, "I hope your honour won't be angry with me--but I've no help for it, save this. There's been so many bad seasons, and we've hardly anything left to eat. Please rid us of that stag, for he's eating up our food-stuff, leaf and root and all."

"Aha!" remarked the Count facetiously. "You'd prefer eating the stag with your cabbages to that, wouldn't you, eh?"

He whistled to his dog and went on.

Quite downhearted, Peter went home, sat down on the bench, and for some time did not say anything. Suddenly he struck his fist upon the table and sprang up. Before he went out again, however, he went to his wife and said quietly:

"Clara, I'm the sort of man that people can twist round their finger--they call me a milksop; but it may be I'm going to pick a quarrel for once. Don't you take on about it. I thought it'd never have to come to this, but now I see quite plain that it must."

Then he went out and made the garden fence higher still, and plaited thorns in and out, and chained the house-dog at the corner of the garden.

But the stag still came and ate the cabbages.