II
I failed—to return to our other circumstances—to take any pleasure in the peasant's life and also I really lacked the strength for it. I then took up a trade, but was not able to help my parents; I wanted to pay my father for my Sunday board, which I had at home, but he would take nothing from me, said that I was just as much his child as before, only I must not burn so many rushes when I was home on Saturday nights.
"Oh, goodness me, let him have that pleasure: he hasn't so many!" my mother would say and intercede for me.
Then things altered with me. I went into the world. It was hard parting with my mother; but, in a short time, she was able to see that my life had become happier.
And, now that happiness had come, envy soon came hobbling along—or was it stupidity? A rumour passed through the forest hills:
"So far, it's all right with Peter; but, as always happens in town, he is sure to fall away from the Christian faith."
And soon the talk grew:
"A nice story that! All of a sudden, he finds honest work too hard for him and righteous fare not good enough, goes to town and eats flesh-meat on Our Lady's day and falls away from the faith."
My mother laughed at first, when she heard that, for she knew her child. But then the thought came to her: suppose it were true after all! Suppose her dear child were forgetting God and going astray!
She knew no peace. She went and borrowed clothes from blind Julia and borrowed three florins from a good-natured huckstress and travelled—sick and infirm as she was, leaning with either hand on a stick—to the capital. She wanted to see for herself what was true in people's talk. She found her child a poor student in a black coat, which he had had given him, and with his hair combed off his forehead. None of this pleased her greatly, it is true; it succeeded, however, in appeasing her. But, in the two days of her stay in town, she saw the mad, frivolous doings on every side, saw the neglect of old customs which she revered and the mocking of things that were sacred to her, and she said to me:
"You will never be able to stay among people like those, child; they would drag you down with them and ruin your soul."
"No, mother," I answered, "a man can think as he wishes; and people can't take away good thoughts."
She said no more. But, when she returned to the forest hills and heard the talk again, she was more dejected than ever.
It was all up now with the homestead. House and farm were sold, made over to the creditors; my brothers and sisters engaged as servants with strange farmers. The destitute parents were given a cottage that, until then, had belonged to the property. My youngest brother, who was not yet able to earn his bread, and one sister remained with them and nursed poor mother. Father kept on going over the mountains to the doctors', and all but promised them his own life, if they could save the life of his wife.
In the cottage, things looked very wretched. The ailing woman suffered in silence. The light of her eyes threatened to fail her, her mental faculties appeared to fade. Death knocked at her heart with repeated strokes. She often seemed to endure severe pain, but said nothing; she no longer took any interest in the world, asked only after her husband, after her children. And she lay years a-dying.
I often came to see her during that time. She hardly knew me, when I stood by her bedside; but then again she would say, as in a dream:
"Is that you, Peterl? Praise and thanks be to God that you are here again!"
During midsummer, we would carry her, once in a way, with bed and all, out of the stuffy room into the air, so that she might see the sunshine once more. I do not know if she saw it: she kept her eyes open and looked up at the sun; her optic nerves seemed dead.
Then, suddenly, days came when she was different. She was cheerful and longed to go out into the open.
"Do get quite well again, Maria," said her husband, "and we shall remain together a long while yet."
"Yes," she answered.
I thought of all this on my way through the forest—and now it was all over with this poor rich life.
When, at last, after walking for hours through the woods along the mountain-path, I saw the thatched cottage on the hill-side, then it was as though a misty shadow covered woods and plains and all; and yet the sunlight hung over it. A puff of grey smoke rose from the little chimney. Does she suspect my coming? thought I. Is she cooking my favourite dish? No, strangers are preparing a funeral feast.
You stood long, Peterl, outside the half-open door; and your hand trembled when at last it touched the latch. The door opened, you walked in, it was dark in the narrow passage, with only a dim little oil-lamp flickering in a glass, and yet you saw it clearly: against the wall, under the smoky stairs, on a plank lay the bier, covered entirely with a big white cloth. At the head stood a crucifix and the holy-water stoup, with a sprig of fir in it….
You fell upon your knees…. And the tears came at last. The tears which the mother's heart once gave us to take with us into this world for our relief in sorrow and for our only consolation in the hour when no other comfort reaches the soul, when strangers cannot understand us and when the mother's heart has ceased to beat. Hail, O rich and eternal legacy!
Now the door of the parlour opened softly and Maria, the younger sister, stepped out. The girl at once began to cry when she saw the brother of whom they had all spoken so often, for whom mother's last glance had asked and who was far away when she closed her eyes. Now he lay there on his knees and cried over the memory of her life.
Even her children here at home had slept through the night of the death. Not till the glow of early morning lit up the little windows did father go to the girls in the bedroom and say:
"Open your eyes and look out. The sun is already rising over the Wechsel; and the Blessed Virgin is sitting on the mountain-top, with the Child Jesus on her knee; and your mother is sitting on the stool at her feet, with a spinning-wheel before her, weaving her heavenly garment."
Then they knew at once that mother was dead.
"Would you like to look at her?" my sister now asked.
And she went to the head of the bier and slowly raised the shroud.
I saw my mother. Heaven's bliss still lay on the stiff, stark visage. The load was gone from my heart, relieved and comforted; I looked upon the dear features as though I were contemplating a white flower. It was no longer the poor, sick, weary woman that lay before me: it was the face lit up with a ray from the youthful days long past. She lay there slumbering and was strong and well. She was young again and white and gentle; she wore a little smile, as she often did when she looked at the merry little fellow playing about with his toys at her feet. The dark and glossy hair (she had no grey hairs yet) was carefully braided and peeped out a little at the temples from under the brown kerchief, the one which she loved best to wear upon her head when she went to church on holidays. She held her hands folded over her breast, with the rosary and the wax candle between them. She lay there just as though she had fallen asleep in church on Whit Sunday, during the solemn High Mass; and thus, even in death, she comforted her child. But the rough hands clearly showed that the slumberer had led a hard and toilful life.
And so you stood before this sacred image, nearly as still and motionless as the sleeper.
At last, you whispered to your little sister, who stood softly weeping by your side:
"Who closed her eyes?"
A sound of hammering came from the parlour. The carpenter was knocking together the last dwelling-house.
After a while, Maria drew the shroud over the head again, as softly and carefully as when she used to cover up our little mother, hundreds and hundreds of times, in the long period of sickness.
Then I went into the small, warm parlour. Father, my elder sister, my two brothers, of whom the younger was still a boy, came up to me with mournful looks. They hardly spoke a word, they gave me their hands, all but the little fellow, who hid himself in the chimney-corner, where we could hear his sobbing.
Joseph the carpenter was calmly planing away at the coffin, which he had now finished joining, and smoked his pipe as he did so.
Later, when the afternoon shadows had lengthened outside, far over the glittering snow-clad meadow-land, when, in the parlour, Joseph was painting the black cross on the coffin-lid, father sat down beside it and said, softly:
"Please God, after all, she has a house of her own again."
On the first day after mother's death, no fire had been lit on the cottage-hearth. One and all had forgotten that a mortal man wants a basin of hot soup in the morning and at mid-day. On the other hand, a blazing fire had been kindled on the field behind the little house, to burn the straw bedding on which she had died, even as, long ago, the forefathers had fanned their Odin fires, commending the beloved dead to the Goddess Hella, the great concealer.[21]
I had sat down on the bench and lifted my little brother up to me. The little man glanced at me quite fearsomely: I had a black coat on and a white scarf round my neck and I looked very grand in his eyes. I held his little hand, which already had horny blisters on it, in mine. Then I asked father to tell us something of mother's life.
"Wait a little," answered father and looked on at the drawing of the cross, as in a dream.
At last, he heaved a deep sigh and said:
"So it's finished now. Her cross and suffering lasted long, that's true; but her life was short. Children, I tell you, not everyone has a mother like yours. For you, Peter, she nearly gave up her life, when you came into the world. And so they followed one after the other: joys and sorrows, care and want, poverty and wretchedness! And, when I was sick unto death and the doctors agreed that I must go the way of all flesh, that there was no remedy for it, my wife never gave up hope, never abandoned me. Day and night she stayed by my side, forgetting to sleep, forgetting to eat a bit of bread. She almost poured life back into me with her own breath—my dear, good wife."
His voice seemed about to break; he wiped the moisture from his eyes with his coat-sleeve.
"No one would believe what good nursing can do," he continued. "I became quite hale again. We lived on, faithfully and fondly; and that you, Peter, found success and happiness away from home, that was your mother's greatest joy. You yourselves know how she lay sick and dying for seven years and more, how they turned us out of house and home, how spitefully people talked and how, nevertheless, we had the greatest trust in you children. For fully thirty years, we lived together in wedlock. I always prayed that God might take me first; now He has chosen rather to take her. You mustn't cry like that, children: you were always a help and a comfort to your mother."
He said no more.
When the carpentering of the coffin was done, father put shavings inside it as a pillow. He had always had the habit, when he had done his work, of going to his wife and saying:
"I've finished now."
And so, when he had put the shavings straight and made the other preparations, he went out to the bier in the passage and said:
"I've finished now."
Late in the evening, when the crescent moon stood in the dark, clear sky and shed its twilight over the woods and gleaming, snow-clad meadows and over the little house in the forest on the hill-side, the snow creaked continually on the roads and people came up from farmsteads and distant cottages. Even though they had carried on loud and cheerful conversations with one another on the paths by which they had come, they became silent now that they were nearing the cottage and we heard only the crackling of their footsteps on the snow.
In the small front passage, which was dimly lit by the little lamp, everyone knelt on the cold clay floor and prayed silently before the bier and then sprinkled it with holy water. After that, he went into the parlour to the others, who sat round the table and the fireplace, singing hymns and uttering pious reflections. They were all there to accompany the poor woman of the house to her last resting-place.
I would have kept on standing by the bier, if the people had not been there, so that I might look at my mother. I read my childhood and my youth in her features. I thought that the bright eyes must open once more and smile to me, that the word must once more come from those lips which, in her loving-kindness, had been so soft and tender. But, though I was her dear son and however long I might stand beside her—she now slept the eternal sleep.
I went into the low-ceilinged kitchen, where the neighbours' wives were cooking the funeral meal; I looked round in the smoke for my brothers and sisters, that I might comfort them.
Inside, in the parlour, all were now as still as mice and in great tension. Mathias, the old chamois-hunter, who wore a brown shirt and a white beard, sat at the table and told a story:
"There was once a farmer," he began, "who had a wife, just a poor sick wife. And, one day, one holy Easter morning, the wife died. The soul departed from her body and stood there all alone in dark Eternity. No angel was willing to come and lead her and show her in to the heavenly Paradise. 'They are celebrating Christ's resurrection in Heaven'—so the story ran—'and, at such times, no saint or angel has time to show a poor soul the way.' But the poor soul was in inexpressible fear and terror, for she reflected that, because of her illness, it was long since she had been to church. And she already heard the devil whining and whimpering and whistling and she thought that she was lost. 'O my holy guardian angel and patron saint!' she cried. 'Come to my help in this my need, or I must depart into hell-fire!' But they were all in Heaven together, celebrating Our Lord's resurrection. Thereupon the poor woman was nigh to fainting away, without comfort or support; but suddenly Our Lady stood by her side, draped in a snow-white garment with a wreath of roses as a beautiful ornament in her hand. 'Hail to thee and comfort, thou poor woman!' she said, gently, to the departed soul. 'Thou hast been a pious sufferer all thy life long and every Saturday thou hast fasted, for my sake, and what thou hadst left over through the fasting thou hast given to the poor, for my sake. This I will never forget to thee; and, though my dear Son is commemorating His glorious resurrection this day, yet will I think of thee and carry thee to His golden throne and to thy joyful place in the rose-garden by the angels, which I have prepared for thy sake and where thou canst wait for thy husband and thy children.' And then Our Lady took the poor woman by the hand and carried her up to Heaven. That is why I say that fasting and alms-giving in honour of Our Lady are a right good work."
So spake Mathias in his brown shirt.
"Our dear woodman's wife, whom we are burying to-morrow, was also fond of fasting," said one little woman, "and very fond of giving."
Father sobbed for emotion. The thought that his wife was now in Heaven lit a very welcome light in his sad heart.
The hands of the old soot-browned clock upon the wall—the same which had faithfully told the hours, the joyful hours and the sorrowful, since the woodman's glad wedding-day; which pointed to the hour of one, early on Sunday morning, when the little boy was born; which, after many years, showed the hour of six, when the delivering angel passed through the room and pressed his kiss on the sufferer's forehead—the hands now met at twelve o'clock.
And, when that departed life was thus measured, like a single day, from sunrise to sunset, my father said:
"Boy, go outside to the cow-shed and lie down for a while in the straw and rest a bit. I will wake you when the time comes."
I went outside, took a last look at the bier in the passage and then stepped out into the free, cold, starry night. The sickle of the moon had sunk behind the woods; it had sent its last beam gliding through the crevice of the door on the shroud that covered the bier: to-morrow, when it rose again, the poor creature would be lying in the dark earth.
So now I lay in the shed on the straw, where my two brothers generally slept. The three chained oxen stood or lay beside me, grinding their teeth as they chewed the cud. It was warm and damp in the stable; and the moisture trickled from the half-rotten ceiling down on my straw couch.
There was once a time—ay, the drops came quivering down as now—the dew-drops from the trees, when mother was taking you to make your first communion. I see you now, Peterl. You have a new jacket on, with a sprig of rosemary in your hat. Your little snow-white shirt shows round your neck above the waistcoat; and your cheeks are rosy red with scrubbing. Mother is wearing a bright-coloured dress, a brown apron and a black, tight-fitting jacket. Her broad neckerchief is of red silk and shines like fire and flame. A white-and-green spray of flowers sticks out of her bosom. On her head, she wears a high and costly golden cap, as was the fashion thenadays throughout the country; and the curls peep out on either side of the forehead, gleaming black like the two great pupils of her eyes and soft and dainty like the lashes on her lids. Her cheeks are tinged with the pink of the dawn; her chin is white and daintily curved. Her red lips wear a little smile and, at the same time, scold you, my little man, because you are skipping so pertly over the stones and roots and knocking the nails out of your shoes. No child alive has ever seen his mother in the full flower of her beauty; and yet how splendid it is, boy, even now! All's aglow in the wood and alight in the young larches; and the blooms are fragrant and the birds singing in every tree-top.
Ah, child-time is May-time!
A dull, heavy knocking roused me from my dream; I started up. Now they are laying my mother in the coffin; now they are nailing down the lid.
I rushed out of the shed and into the house. There, in the passage, stood the narrow, white, closed coffin; and the dimly-flickering oil-lamp now lit up only the empty, desolate plank on which the bier had stood.
I should have liked to see her once more….
The people were preparing the litter. Father knelt behind the door and prayed; the sisters wept in their pinafores; and my little brother sobbed terribly. The poor little fellow tried to keep in his tears, for he had heard that all was for the best with mother and that she was now enjoying peace in Heaven: he had smiled a little at that; but now, when the people were making ready to carry mother away for good and all, there was no comfort left in his sorely-afflicted little heart.
I took little brother by the hand and we went into the furthermost dark corner of the room, where no one else was and where only our sick mother had cared to sit. There we sat down on the bench. And there we sat while everything was being prepared outside, while the people sat down to table and shared the funeral repast.
They had come to show us sympathy; now they were eating, now they were laughing and then again they acted as was customary; and they actually rejoiced that one more person had died and, in so doing, brought variety into their everyday lives.
Suddenly, loud words were heard outside:
"Where is the Überthan? We can't find the Überthan."
The Überthan is a thin linen pall which is wrapped round the coffin like a veil and, in the popular belief, serves him or her who has risen from the dead as a garment on the Day of Judgment.
Father was roused from his prayers by the shouting; he now staggered around and looked for the linen sheet in his press, on the shelves and in every nook and corner. Why, he had brought it home only yesterday; and now it was nowhere to be found! He had really lost his head: he had to see that all got something to eat; he had to change into his Sunday clothes to go to church; he had to comfort his children; he had to fetch a new candle, because the old one was burnt down to its socket and the people were like to find themselves in the dark; he had to go to the shed and give the cattle fodder enough to last them all day, for there would be no one at home; and now he was expected to say where he had put the pall yesterday, in his confusion. And, in the next few minutes, they would be carrying his wife out of the house!
"So the old man has no pall!" they grumbled. "Such a thing has never been known: carrying out a dead person all naked and bare. But it must be true with the poor woodman's wife: a pauper she lived and a pauper she died!"
My two sisters began to hunt in their turn; and Maria exclaimed, plaintively:
"Dear Jesus, my mother mustn't be buried without a pall; she would do better than that to stay at home here; and I will give my christening-money and buy her her last dress. Who was it put away the linen sheet? O God, they want to deny her the last thing of all, as well as all the rest!"
I tried to calm the girl and said we should be sure to get a linen sheet out in the village and, if not, then she must rest in peace under the bare deal boards.
"How can you speak like that!" she cried. "Didn't mother in her time buy your clothes for you out of her hard-saved kreuzers? And now you want her to rise on the Day of Judgment in her shabby clothes, when all the others are wearing a white garment!"
She burst into loud crying and leant her glowing forehead against the wall.
But, soon after, the people breathed again: they had found the pall.
And, when they had eaten—we others did not take a bite—and everything was ready, they opened the door of the front passage and knelt down before the coffin and prayed aloud, saying Our Lord's Five Wounds.
Then four men placed the coffin on the litter and lifted it up and carried it out of the poor dwelling into the wood and thence over the commons and fields and through mountain forests.
And round about was the winter night and over all hung the starry sky.
One more look at the empty bier-plank and then I quickly drew my little brother out with me; and father and sisters also hurried after; and the elder brother locked the door; and then the cottage in the wood lay there in the dark and in the deepest stillness. Life had left it—and death had left it: there is no greater loneliness possible.
We heard the hum of the praying funeral procession, we saw the flicker of the two or three lanterns among the trunks of the trees. The bearers walked at a quick pace; those who followed and prayed could hardly keep up with them on the rough, snow-covered paths. I was a long way behind with my little brother: the boy could not walk so fast. Mother would never have left us behind like that, when living: she would have waited, laughing a little and chiding a little, and led the child by the hand. Now, however, she only longed for rest.
Outside the parish village stands a tall cross, with a life-size figure of the Saviour. Here, after a many-hours' progress up and down hill, they set the coffin on the ground and waited for the doctor, who came from the village to view the corpse and give the death-certificate. But, by the time that we two, who had lagged behind, came up, the coffin-lid was hammered down again. And so I was never able to see you again on earth, my mother!
They entered the parish church in the morning twilight.
The clear bells rang out together. A great catafalque was set up in the middle of the dark church; many candles gleamed; and a solemn funeral service began. The parish priest, an old, blind man, with snow-white hair, a venerable figure, intoned the requiem, surrounded by priests in rich vestments. His voice was clear and solemn; a choir chanted the responses; and trumpets and sackbuts echoed through the church.
I looked at father and he at me; we knew not who had ordered all this so. To-day I know that it was my friends at Krieglach who gave us this beautiful token of their love.
When the funeral service was over, the catafalque was removed, all the festal candles on the high-altar were lit and three priests, no longer clad in the hue of mourning, but in red, gold-stitched chasubles, climbed the steps of the altar and a grand High Mass was celebrated, with gay bell-ringing and joyous music.
"That is because she is released from her suffering," said I to the boy.
At last, the coffin, richly decked with flowers, swayed out of the parish church, where, in the old days, the woodman's wife had been baptised and married, on its way to the cemetery. The priests and the choir sang the loud, clear requiem, the bells tolled over the village far out into the woods and the candles flickered in the sunlight. A long train of men and women passed through the broad village street. We walked behind the coffin, carrying lighted candles in our hands and praying as we went.
The cemetery lies outside the village, on a gentle eminence, between fields and meadows. It is far from small, for the parish stretches to a great distance over hill and dale. It is enclosed with a plank fence and contains many crosses of wood and rusty iron; and in the middle rises the image of Christ crucified.
Before this image, on the right, was the deep grave, at the exact spot where, years ago, they had buried our mother's two children who had died. A mound of freshly-dug earth lay on either side of the grave.
Here the bearers let the coffin down to the ground and stripped it of all its finery; and it slid down into the pit as poor as it had left the cottage in the wood.
"Thou to-day, I to-morrow; and so I am content," murmured father.
And the priest said:
"May she rest in the Lord!"
Then they cast clods of earth into the grave and went away, went to the inn, tasted bread and wine and talked of everyday things. When it was twelve o'clock and, according to custom, the bells began to toll once more, as a last farewell to the departed, the men and women of the forest set out to return to their mountain valley.
We who belonged to one another sat together for a while longer and spoke sadly of the time that must now come and how to arrange for it. Then we took leave of one another: my father and brothers and sisters went home to the cottage in the wood, to live and die where mother had lived and died.
Footnotes:
[20] Fasting or abstaining from flesh-meat on Saturdays, in honour of Our Lady, is a custom, an act of voluntary discipline, prevailing almost exclusively in the German and Austrian Highlands.—Translator's Note.
[21] Hella, daughter of Laki and goddess of the dead, is the Persephone of Norse mythology.—Translator's Note.
THE END
Transcriber's notes:
In the text version italics are represented with _underscore_ and small caps with ALL CAPS.
In the caption to the Frontispiece, the artist is named as Milicent Norris, elsewhere Melicent is used.
Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained.
The following corrections have been made:
Table of Contents: who went to prison -> period added after prison
p. 16: in the Murztal; -> Murztal changed to Mürztal
p. 18: bellettristic newspapers -> bellettristic changed to belletristic
p. 27: Sünders was printed with a breve mark above the u instead of ü
p. 76: something about him. -> added closing quotation mark after him.
p. 129: diff erently -> differently
p. 154: liked carved -> liked changed to like
p. 171: It can't be possible---- Why -> added exclamation mark after possible----
p. 172: as Grosshöfen -> as changed to at
p. 174: schoo teacher -> schoo changed to school
p. 195: a telegram -> added colon after telegram
p. 201: came to us see -> came to see us
Everything else has been retained as printed, including archaic, uncommon and inconsistent spelling and inconsistent hyphenation.