The Forest Farm: Tales of the Austrian Tyrol

by Peter Rosegger

I

It was high carnival in Gratz city. In the evenings, a mad thronging in the streets, a well-nigh deafening rattling of carriages, a yelling and shouting, a flaring and glaring from the shops and stalls and from the hundreds of lamps and numberless transparencies in the windows. Gold and silver, silks and damasks gleamed in the shop-fronts. Masks of every hue and shape grinned beside them. Ha, what a mad thing life can be!

I hurried through the crowd. The clock on the castle hill struck six: six strokes so clear that they outrang all the din and re-echoed from the tall, light-pierced walls of the houses. The summons of the clock is a stern admonisher: let man play as childishly as he will with tinsel pleasures and light dalliance, it counts the hours out to him and gives him not a minute's grace.

I went home to my quiet room and was soon in bed.

Next morning, the winter sun lay shining on the snow-clad roofs; and I was jotting down the fairy-tale of the Lost Child, when someone knocked at my door. A man entered and handed me a telegram:

"Dear son, yesterday evening, at six o'clock, our dear mother passed away. Come home, we are expecting you in the greatest affliction. Your father."

Last evening it had happened, in the poor cottage, while I was striding through the worldly turmoil. And at six o'clock!

Early next morning, I was in the parish village. I entered on the road alone, over hills glittering with snow and through long woods, far into the lonely mountain valley. I had walked that road endless times before, had always delighted in the glistening snow, in the sparkling icicles, in the snowy mantles of the boughs, or, if it was summer, in the green leaves and the blossoms and the fragrance, in the song of the birds, in the drops of light that trickled through the branches, in the profound peace and loneliness. How often had I gone that way with mother, when she was still well and in her prime, and, later, when, crippled through illness, she tottered along on my arm! And, on this forest road, I thought of my parents' life.

He had come to the forest farm a young man.

People called him Lenz, not because he was young and blooming and joyful as the Lenz, or spring, but because his name was Lorenz.

His father had been severely wounded in a brawl, lain ill for but a little while and died an early death.

So now Lenz was the owner of the forest farm. To recover in a measure from his sadness for his father's sake, he did a capital thing: he looked about him for a wife. He took almost the poorest and the most disregarded that the forest valley contained: a girl who was frightfully black all through the week, but had quite a nice little white face on Sundays. She was the daughter of a charcoal-burning woman and worked for her aged mother, but had never seen her father.

One year after the wedding, in the summer, the young woodman's wife presented her Lenz with a first-born. He received the name of Peter and now runs all over the world with it, an everlasting child.

Her life was so peculiar, her life was so good, her life had a crown of thorns.

Our farm was no small one and its days were well-ordered; but my mother did not play the grand farmer's wife: she was housewife and servant-maid in one.

My mother was an educated woman: she could "read print"; she had learnt that from a charcoal-burner. She knew the story of the Bible by heart; and she had no end of legends, fairy-tales and songs from her mother. Moreover, she was always ready with help in word and deed and never lost her head in any mishap and always knew the right thing to do.

"That's how my mother used to do, that's what my mother used to say," she was constantly remarking; and this continued her rule and precept, long after her mother was laid to rest in the churchyard.

No doubt, there was at times a little bigotry, what we call "charcoal-burner's faith," mixed up with it, yet in such a way that it did no harm, but rather spread a gentle poetry over the poor life in the houses in the wood.

The poor knew my mother from far and wide: none knocked at her door in vain; none was sent hungry away. To him whom she considered really poor and who asked her for a piece of bread she gave half a loaf; and, if he begged for a gill of flour, she handed him a lump of lard with it. And "God bless you!" she said, in addition: that she always said.

"What will be the end of us, if you give everything away wholesale?" my father often said to her, almost angrily.

"Heaven, perhaps," she answered. "My mother often used to say that the angels register every 'God reward you' of the poor before God's holy throne. How glad we shall be one day, when we have the poor to intercede for us with Our Lord!"

My father believed in fasting on Saturdays and often did not take a morsel of food before the shadows began to lengthen. He did this in honour of the Blessed Virgin.[20]

"I tell you, Lenz, that sort of fasting serves no useful purpose!" my mother would sometimes say, in protest. "What you go without to-day, you simply eat to-morrow. My mother always used to say, 'What you have through fasting left, give to the poor so sore bereft.' I somehow think it does no good otherwise."

My father used to pray in the evenings, especially at "rosary-time," and on Saturdays prayed long and loud, but often did odd jobs at the same time, such as nailing his shoes, patching his trousers or even shaving himself. In so doing, he not seldom lost the thread of his prayers, until my mother would snatch the things from his hands and cry:

"Heavens alive, what manner of praying is this! Kneeling beside the table and saying three Our Fathers with application is better than three rosaries during which the evil one steals away your good thoughts while you're playing about!"

At times of hard work, my mother was fond of a good table:

"Who works with a will may eat with a will," she said. "My mother used always to say, 'Who dares not risk to lose a tittle, dares not either win a little.'"

My father was content with scanty fare; he was always fearing that the home would be ruined.

These were the only differences in their married life; and even those did not go deep. They uttered them only to each other: when father talked to strangers, he praised mother; when mother talked to strangers, she praised father.

They were of one mind as regarded the bringing-up of children. Work and prayer, thrift and honesty, were our main precepts.

I only once received a proper thrashing. In front of the house was a young copse of larch—and fir-trees, which gradually grew up so high that it shut out the view of the mountains on that side. Now I loved this view and I thought that father would be sure to thank me if I—who was an enterprising lad in those days—cut down the little trees. And, true enough, one afternoon, when everyone was in the fields, I stole into the little wood with an axe and began to cut down young trees. Before long, my father appeared upon the scene; but the thanks which he gave me had a very queer look.

"Lend me the hatchet, boy!" he said, quietly.

I thought, "Now he'll tackle to himself: so much the better"; and I passed him the axe.

He used it to chop off a birch-switch and flattened it across my back.

"Wait a bit!" he cried. "Do you want to do for the young wood? It has more rods for you, where this came from!"

I had a thrashing just once from my mother too. I liked sitting by the hearth when mother was cooking; and, one day, I knocked over the stock-pot full of soup, half putting out the fire and nearly burning my little bare feet. My mother was not there at the moment; and, when she came running in at the sound of the mighty hissing, I cried out, crimson in the face:

"The cat, the cat has upset the stock-pot!"

"Yes, that same cat has two legs and tells lies!" mother retorted.

And she took me and thrashed me for a long time with the rod.

"If ever you tell me a lie again," she cried, when she had done, "I'll cut you to pieces with the flue-rake!"

A serious threat! Thank goodness, it never had to be fulfilled.

On the other hand, when I was good and obedient, I was rewarded. My reward took the form of songs which she sang to me, tales which she told me, when we walked through the forest together or when she sat by my bedside in the evening. All that is best in me I have from her. She had a worldful of poetry within her.

When my brothers and sisters came one after the other, mother loved us all alike and favoured none. Afterwards, when two died in their childhood, I saw mother for the first time crying. We others cried with her and thenceforth always cried whenever we saw mother shedding tears.

And this was quite often, from that time onwards. Father lay sick for two years on end. We had ill-luck in the farm and in the fields; hail and murrain came; our corn-mill was burnt down.

Then mother wept in secret, lest we children should see her. And she worked without ceasing, fretted, and ended by falling ill. The doctors of the whole neighbourhood around were called in to advise: they could do nothing but charge fat fees; only one of them said:

"I won't take payment from such poor people."

Yes, in spite of all our jollity, we had become poor people. The goods and chattels were all gone; of the once big property nothing remained to us but the taxes. My father now resolved to sell the encumbered farm as well as he could. But mother would not have it: she worked on, ill as she was, with trouble and zeal, and never gave up hope. She could not bear to think of giving up her home, the house where her children were born. She denied her illness, said that she had never felt better in her life and that she would work for three.

My brothers and sisters also considered that they could not leave the homestead; besides, none of them had one good pair of shoes left to put on. And mother, when, once in a way, she wished to go to the parish church, had to borrow a jacket free from patches from some journeyman-woodman's wife or other. And the greatest pain of all was people's arrogance and their scorn if ever they did lend any assistance. They had forgotten the kindnesses which my mother had once shown to one and all according to her power. At that time, she was the most honoured farmer's wife in all the houses in the forest. But—misfortune destroys friendship! As, indeed, her mother, the charcoal-burner, had often said.

I will relate an experience of that sad time, when my mother was ailing. It begins with a bright and sunny Whitsuntide.

That bright and sunny Whit Monday was her thirty-ninth birthday. It was a gladsome day. The crops were green in the fields; and the herds grazed in the high meadow: true, they did not belong to us, but to our neighbour; and yet we delighted in them, because they were fat and jolly. My father had already paid last year's taxes; the financial position, which had been disturbed during father's long illness, seemed gradually coming to rights; and consequently we were once more rising in people's opinions. On this day, we walked through the meadows together; and the little ones picked flowers and the grown-ups praised God's works with a cheerful word or a song. Then mother sat down on a stone and was like to die.

We dragged her home, we put her to bed, where she lay for long: weeks long, months long. All the neighbours came and brought their well-meant sympathy; all the doctors from near and far came and brought their well-meant medicine. The patient, as they admitted behind her back, had had a stroke; she was languishing. But, when the cool autumn came, she grew better: she now no longer lay in bed by day, but sat on the bench by the fire or at the table, where the children played, or by the hearth, where she instructed clumsy father in the art of cooking. She was not cheerful, nor was she cast down; she took things as they came and did not complain: only, between whiles, when she was alone, she heaved a deep sigh. Thus winter passed. The delightful Whitsuntide came again and mother was ill.

At this festival, the old woman from the Riegelberg came to see us and brought a few rolls with her. She suggested all sorts of household remedies and reckoned up a number of hale and hearty people who had become hale and hearty through taking the aforesaid remedies. And at last she asked, hadn't we been to Stegthomerl—Tom of the Footpath—yet?

No, we confessed, we had not been to him as yet.

Then how could we have been so remiss and however could we have neglected to go to Tom of the Footpath? He was the very first to whom one ought to send in that sort of illness!

But it was such a distance to get there, father objected. "And, if it was a three days' journey, it is not too far for health's sake."

"That's very true, I grant you: it would not be too far for health," said father. "And think you, Riegelbergerin, that he could cure her?"

"Curing, my dear woodman, is in God's hands," answered the woman from the Riegelberg, with her wonted superiority. "Even the best doctors cannot work miracles. But he knows, does Tom of the Footpath, and he'll tell you whether a cure is still possible or not." The very next day, a messenger was sent over the mountains to the valley where Tom of the Footpath lived. He went off early and he came home late and he brought the answer that Tom of the Footpath had said he could say nothing at all as long as he did not see the invalid for himself.

The next day, another messenger went off (for the first had gone lame on the long road) to fetch Tom of the Footpath. He came back late at night alone and brought the news that Tom of the Footpath didn't visit patients: Thomas himself was not as young as he had been; also he did not wish to be locked up again because the qualified doctors suffered from an infernal professional jealousy and wanted to bury everybody themselves. If the sick woodman's wife cared to come to him, there might be something to be done. But he did not go running after sick people.

This was manfully spoken, after all, and we all of us understood that a man who knows his own value does not exactly care to make himself cheap. But now came a great embarrassment. The weather, to be sure, was fine and warm; the days were long, and mother was quite ready to go. But how were we to carry her on that many-hours' road to Tom of the Footpath? It was impossible. Drive? We had no cart; and the last pair of draught-oxen had been taken from us by the creditors to whom we had had to apply once more during mother's illness. The neighbours were using their oxen just now for ploughing the fields. The jobbing farmer had two horses: he was willing to let them out to us, but his charge for the day—father struck his hands together at the thought—was five florins and their oats.

And, as we were all sitting in deep distress around our sick mother, seeking for a way out of the difficulty and finding none, the door opened and the lad from the road-side tavern walked in.

"What do you want, my boy?" asked my father.

The boy stood dangling his arms.

"Ay," he said, "it's this way: Samersteffel sends word to say that, if the woodman likes to have his horse and cart, he can have them."

Samersteffel was what Stephen, the local carrier, was called.

"Where is Carrier Steve?"

"He's with us and he's put up his horse and cart at our place."

My father thought over what he had better say; then he said:

"Steve is sure to want a good price; tell him from me, no, but I'm obliged to him."

The boy went away; and, in an hour's time, Carrier Steve came round in person. He was a little fat man, who, in the old days, before the road was made, used to carry all sorts of things over the mountain-path with a pack-horse. Now that the road was there, he had set up a little light cart, in which he conveyed corn, salt, cider and so on, but all for money, of course, as that was what he lived by; and not only that, but he wanted to get rich, so as to build a big inn on the new road. To be an innkeeper was the dream of his life; and he had the making of one in him, for he was always in a good temper and would certainly know how to entertain his visitors.

But to-day, when he walked into our parlour, he was in anything but a good temper.

"You're making a lot of useless trouble for one of us," he said, and sat down puffing and panting on the bench against the wall. "Have you ever heard, woodman, that I have pressed myself on anyone for the sake of gain? You can't have heard such a thing said about me, for, thank God, I don't need it. Once I myself propose to carry anything, I carry it gratis. I heard that your wife wanted to go to Tom of the Footpath and that she had no trap of any kind. My mother, God rest her soul, was also ill for a long time; I know what it means: it's a misery. If you like, woodman, I'll drive your wife over to Tom of the Footpath to-morrow."

Then we all felt really glad. We did not give a further thought to the question whether the long drive would do good or harm, or whether the new physic would take effect, or how the illness would turn out afterwards. To Tom of the Footpath, just to Tom of the Footpath: that would put everything right.

I was awakened early next day, when the morning star peeped through the great black ash-trees. Father had to stay behind to look after the farm; and I, the thirteen-year-old lad, must go with mother to see that nothing happened to her. Mother was already at her breakfast and did as if she thoroughly relished the milk-porridge. Carrier Steve and I ate a bowl of curds and whey and then we drove off. Steve sat on the little driver's seat and talked out loud to his nag, telling it to be a good horse and trot over the mountains briskly "so that we can bring woodman's wife home again before the day is out." My mother sat, wrapped up in all her clothes, and my father's storm-cloak into the bargain, on a leather cushion, with straw at her feet and a heavy blanket over all, allowing only a part of her head to show above it. I sat beside this sick-bed and was heavy at heart.

It was still chilly night; the sky began to turn a little pale over the Wechselberg. The road led across the meadows. Now the birds woke; now the glory of the dawn commenced; now the great sun rose in the heavens. My mother drew back the blanket a little and gazed up at the sun:

"I feel full of hope," she whispered and felt for my hand, "if only the summer helps a bit and Tom of the Footpath too. After all, I'm not so old yet. What do you think, my child? Shall I be able to look at the world again a hale woman?"

I was as confident as she; I felt quite relieved. The morning sun! The dear warm morning sun!

Mother became chatty.

"It's silly, when you come to think of it," she said, suddenly, and laughed almost aloud, "how fond a body is of being in the world. Of course, I should be sorry to leave my folk. And it would be a pity for my Lenzel, your father, to be left all alone; the children are so small yet."

"But I'm getting pretty big now," I protested.

Then mother turned her face right round to me and said:

"It's just you, my Peter, it's just you about whom I'm most anxious. You see, you appear to me quite different from other boys of your age. You've no real mind for work, that is to say, you have the mind, perhaps, but you take no honest pleasure in it. Yes, yes, deny it as you may, I know you, you don't care about farming, you hang around and you want something else, you yourself don't know what. You see, that's really the worst of it. And so I should like to pray to God and ask Him to leave me with you, so that I can keep a hold on you until I know what's to become of you."

"Will you be a carrier? How would that suit you, boy?" cried Steve, over his shoulder, to us in the cart.

"A good carrier, who takes poor people driving: I wouldn't mind that," remarked my mother, whereupon Steve gave a little smirk.

The road led straight up and became stony; Steve and I got down and walked beside the creaking cart. The sun had become hot. It was a tiring drive and we only got on slowly.

When we were up at the top and driving along through the almost level, but dark woods of the Fischbacheralpe, we no longer heard the cart-wheels, for the ground was thickly strewn with pine-needles, save that, every now and again, the wheels struck against a root. The birds had become silent, for the hot day lay over the tree-tops. My mother had fallen asleep. I looked at her pale face and thought:

"Tom of the Footpath is sure to know of something that will do her good; it's a lucky thing that we were able to drive to Tom of the Footpath."

"Like a bit of bread, Peter?" asked Steve.

"I should be glad of a bit."

And, when I got my piece of bread, there was a piece of bacon on it; and now my distress began. I held the thing in my hand for ever so long and looked at it and looked up at my mother: she was asleep. I did not want to offend Steve, who meant so well by us. As, however, I could not leave the thing as it was, lying in my hand, I at last began, first quite softly, but gradually louder, to call out:

"Steve!"

"What do you want?" he asked, at last.

"I should only like to beg as a favour," I said, quite despondently, "just as a favour, that I need not eat the bacon. For indeed I don't like bacon."

"You don't know what's good," said the driver, laughing, and relieved me of my difficulty.

At last, we began to go downhill; and now the cart jolted over the burning stones and shook the invalid out of her sleep; and the sun burnt into her marrow; and she felt chilled all the same.

Steve muttered:

"Tom of the Footpath must be the devil of a good doctor to make a drive like this worth while. Hold up, Sorrel: we've not much further to go."

It was late in the afternoon when we reached the valley and stopped at the little house where Tom of the Footpath lived.

We carried mother into the musty, stuffy parlour, in which all the little windows were tight shut. There we let her down on the bench and asked for Tom.

A grumpy old woman answered that Tom was not there.

"We can see that," said Steve, "but might we ask where he is?"

"Can't say."

"When's he coming in?"

"Maybe he won't stay out long, maybe he won't be back till night, maybe he's gone to the ale-house."

The old woman left the room; and there we sat. My mother drew a deep breath.

Steve went after the old woman and asked her for a spoonful of hot soup for the invalid.

"Where should I get hot soup from at this time of day? The fire's been out on the hearth this long since."

That was the answer. Thereupon the driver himself set to and lit the fire, looked for milk and boiled it.

Mother ate only a little of the soup and pushed the bowl to us, so that we should have some warm food too.

When that was done, Steve gave the woman a silver ten-kreuzer for the milk and for the hay which the sorrel ate.

After a time, during which it turned quite dark in the parlour, once or twice, because clouds were passing in front of the sun outside, Tom of the Footpath walked into the room. He was a short, spindle-shanked man, but had a big head, broad shoulders, a very high chest and a great hump on his back. And his head was sunk into his shoulders, so that the mannikin had to turn right round, with his whole body, whenever he wanted to turn his head. I can see him plainly to this day, as he stepped in through the door and looked at us, first sharply and then smilingly, with his wandering, vacant face.

My mother at once became fidgety and tried to rise from her seat, in order to put her request to him in a respectful fashion.

Tom made a sign with his hand that she need not trouble and presently said, in a rather sing-song voice:

"I know, I know, you're the woodman's wife from the Alpel; you had a stroke a year ago."

"I had a stroke?" asked the invalid, in dismay.

"You've been doctoring all round the place, far and wide; and now, because no one else can do you any good, you come to me. They're all alike: they come to me when they're dying; and if, after that, Tom of the Footpath's physic doesn't work a miracle and the patient goes the way of all flesh, then they say that Tom of the Footpath has been the cause of his death."

These words were terrible to listen to, in themselves, but still they were bearable because they were spoken with a smiling face and because Tom went on to add:

"Hope it'll prove an exception in your case, woodman's wife. I'll just examine you now."

First of all, of course, he felt her pulse:

"It hops," he muttered, "it hops."

Then, with his broad fingers, he pushed her eyebrows apart and looked into the whites—and said nothing. Next, she had to bare her neck and he put his ear to it—and said nothing. Furthermore, he attentively studied the lines of her hand, then asked after the sick woman's actual state of health and went on to examine the arteries and the respiration, so that I at once conceived a high opinion of the man's conscientiousness.

And, when he had finished his examination, he sat down on a chair opposite my mother, who was slowly wrapping herself up again in her clothes, spread out his legs, sank his chin into his body and, with his arms crossed over his chest, said:

"Yes, my dear woodman's wife, you've got to die."

My mother gave a light start, I sprang to my feet. Steve, however, remained sitting quite calmly in his seat, looked hard at Tom of the Footpath for a while and then said, suddenly:

"And you haven't, I suppose? No, you old camel, your day's coming too, God damn it all!"

It was now high time to go. We hurriedly packed up and drove off homeward.

It was sultry and shady; the sky was covered with clouds; there was not a living thing in sight; not a tree-top stirred; our cart rattled heavily along. My mother lay silently in her corner and gazed at the darkling world with her great, black eyes.

Steve sat fuming on his box, but gradually became quieter; and he now grunted:

"To think of a man being as drunk as all that!"

"Who?" I asked.

"Such a drunken bout is really worth making a day's journey to go and have a look at," Steve continued. "True enough, I'd heard tell that the old camel was seldom sober; and he'd come straight from the ale-house to-day."

"I dare say it was just as well," my mother said. "If he had been sober, perhaps he would not have told me the truth."

And so we drove away in great sadness. The thunder rolled over the mountains, quite hoarse and dull; the Fischbach storm-bell rang in the distance. Then my mother sat upright and said:

"You must do something to please me, Peter; and I'll ask Steve as well: it's no use telling father, my husband, what Tom of the Footpath said."

"Indeed, it would never do to repeat such fool's talk," cried the driver, very loudly, "but I'm going to the magistrate! I shall inform against him! That's what I shall do!"

"I beg of you, Steve, let it be," my mother asked. "You mustn't think that I take it so much to heart. I myself have often thought that the thing will end with me as it ends with all ailing people. What can Tom of the Footpath do against that! We did not go to him to get him to tell us lies. I'm only sorry that we never once asked what we owed him for his straightforwardness."

Now Steve burst out laughing and sent the whip whizzing once or twice through the air, notwithstanding that the horse was doing its best.

When we drove along over the heights, the threatening storm had dispersed entirely; the setting sun shone with a faint golden gleam over the wide landscape, over wood and meadows; and a cool breeze blew in our faces.

A bright tear lay on my mother's pale cheeks.

As, silent and tired, we drove through our home meadows, the stars appeared in the sky. On every side, the song of the crickets purled and chirped in the grass. By the fence, where our hillside began, stood a black figure that accosted us and asked if it was we.

It was my father, who had come to meet us. My mother called him by name; her voice was weak and trembling.

Father took us indoors, without asking a question.

Not until we were in the parlour and the rushlight was burning did he ask how we had fared.

"Not badly," said Steve, "not at all badly: we have been very cheerful."

"And Tom of the Footpath: what did he say?"

"He said that, like other people, woodman's wife wouldn't live for ever, but that she has plenty of time before her, oh, plenty of time. Only you're to take care: give her lots of good air in the summer, not too much work and no excitement, good food and drink and no physic, no physic at all, he said. And then she'll get all right again."

A time elapsed after that. My father tried to nurse mother according to Steve's dictum, which he believed to be Tom of the Footpath's dictum; and, when winter came, she sat at the spinning-wheel and span. The mouse had not bitten the thread in two.

That same winter brought the news that Tom of the Footpath had been found frozen to death in the snow, not far from the ale-house on the Fischbacheralpe. We said an Our Father for his soul.

Carrier Steve, who came to see us now and then and always remained the good, cheerful man he was, had also forgiven Thomas: true, it was wholly and solely because he had proved wrong that time.