CHAPTER III.
We were soon comfortably settled in the old Hof. The spacious rooms, always deliciously cool, were fragrant with rare and delicate blossoms—Alpine roses from the rocks, white lilies from Moidel's special little garden-plot, grasses and nodding flowers, campanulas, veronicas, melisot, potentillas and lady's bedstraw, which, according to Anton, no cattle would touch, whilst the roots of others were good for man or beast, their various qualities being all known to him. But soon the waving flowers bent beneath the scythe. It was the eve of St. Peter and St. Paul's Day, a festival when all work must cease, and the Hofbauer, whose word was law, had given orders that the hay in the wood-meadow must be carried that evening. Seeing, therefore, that the more hands there were the better, the two Margarets seized each a rake and worked as hard as any woman in the field.
On we labored, the golden evening sun glinting down upon our picturesque row of haymakers, nor did we cease until the angelus sounded from the village spire. Then Anton, Jakob, Moidel, their men and maids, fell devoutly upon their knees and thanked God that Christ Jesus had been born. These humble Tyrolese remember thrice daily to praise the Lord, as David did. With a hushed, subdued look upon their honest faces, they arose, and we joining them the fresh, fragrant hay was carted triumphantly home. The hay is cut long before we should consider it ready, and is housed whilst still green and moist. The newer the hay the richer the cream, they say. The Hofbauer has three crops yearly, but his neighbors, who lie higher, have only two, and sometimes but one.
The good old Kathi stood at the door cooling a gigantic pan of buckwheat polenta, and when she had set down this dish, intended for the haymakers' supper, she brought us each, as our pay, a couple of krapfen, which are oblong dough-cakes fried in butter.
Although the haymakers were worn out and weary with a long day's work of twelve hours, still Rosenkranz sounded in the chapel like the humming of bees in lime trees. This pious custom duly impressed us, until on the very next day, as we walked up our village street on the evening of the festival, our solemn feelings received a great check. We observed that the prayer-leaders, who knelt at the open windows of each separate house, followed our every movement with their eyes, whilst their mouths mechanically repeated sonorous Ave Marias and Paternosters. Nay, there was our own pious Moidel watching us from the kitchen window, her Hail Marys mingling with her friendly greetings; but then Moidel was waiting upon us and our supper whilst her family were on their knees in the chapel. Still, we soon learnt to perceive that Rosenkranz was considered quite as efficacious if merely uttered by the tongue, whilst the mind was far away. This being a festival, and no one tired with work, the household trooped into the old pleasaunce after supper. The elders sat together in a row, whilst the younger members congregated on a second long stone bench and struck up singing, Moidel and her elder brother beginning with a duet:
Green, green is the clover
On the hills as I go,
And my maiden as fresh is
As spring water's flow.
And the chorus joined in—
As spring water's flow,
winding up with a jodel.
Nanni, the chief maid, next sang in a clear, flexible voice, which trembled no little when she perceived that the Herrschaft now formed part of the audience in the balcony—
A WEEK'S SORROW.
On Sunday I cried, for my heart was so sore,
Like a poor little child outside the church door;
On Monday I felt so afeard and alone,
And thought, Were I a swallow, I'd quickly begone:
Woe's me! were I but a swallow, were I but a swallow!
On Tuesday, and nothing could please me all day,
For him that I love best is far, far away;
On Wednesday whatever I did, I did ill,
For when the heart's heavy the hand has no skill;
On Thursday I was weary and sleepy all day;
On Friday, and one of the cows went astray;
On Saturday down poured my tears like the rain,
As though I should never be happy again.
Woe's me! never be happy again; woe's me! never again.
In order to catch the meaning of the words, which were sung in strong dialect, Margaret and I had descended to the garden. The Hofbauer looked sad when he saw us approach, and quietly brushed a tear away with his shirt-sleeve. We consequently asked Moidel when we stood alone with her whether anything were troubling her father.
"It strikes me not," she said. "I fancy that it is but the music. Father and uncle may both seem quiet and dull now, yet they have been celebrated singers; only when my mother died father left off singing, and so did uncle after Uncle Jakob's death."
"Ah yes!" said the aunt, who had also joined us, "they were the three handsomest, best—grown men in the parish, living happily together without an ill word, until four years ago Jakob was trampled upon by a yoke of vicious oxen, and in three days he was dead. Yes, that was a sorrow almost as cutting as the death of the Hofbauerin, so young when she died. Only married five years, and leaving four little children, not one of whom ever knew her! Yes, Moidel is a good girl, and is wearing her linen now, but she can never come up in looks to her mother. Ah ja! and now the trouble is about Jakob."
"About Jakob?" asked we in a low, astonished voice.
"Why yes, that he has been drawn for the Landwehr. Ah, I thought you knew. It was last autumn that he was drawn. The Hofbauer would have sold his best acres to release him, but the recruiting-officer would have no nay: Jakobi was a fine, well-behaved young fellow, and such were needed in the army. He had to serve two months this spring, and with his comrades day by day had to run up the face of mountains some four thousand feet. It quite wore Jakob out, though he is so good-tempered. He declared that he was used, to be sure, at the Olm to climb up to the glaciers of the Hoch Gall after his goats, often bringing the kids in his arms down the precipices, but to have his back broken and his feet blistered in order to know how to shed human blood was what he hated. Yet he bore it so well, doing his best, that when the other recruits could return to their homes, Jakob, being so clever and well-behaved, had to stay a fortnight longer to brush, fold up and put away all the regimentals. However, the under-officer did have him to dine with him every day."
"Yes, and Jakob will in his turn be an officer," we replied, trying to reassure her.
"Oh, na, na, that can never be: eleven more long years must he serve, and always as a private. I thought like you, until the Hofbauer explained to me that all the officers were foreigners—Saxons, Bavarians, Würtembergers, put in by the Austrian ministry, who are tyrants to Tyrol. Ah, if the good emperor would only interfere, for he loves Tyrol! but he leaves everything to the ministry. Austria may itself be overthrown in these unrighteous days before my Jakobi is free." Now it was the good soul's turn to wipe her eye with the corner of her ample blue apron.
We were venturing some fresh attempt at consolation when fortunately an event occurred which drew her thoughts from the deep shadow which we had just discovered hung over the peaceful Hof. Jodokus, the village schoolmaster in the winter, when the children had time to learn, but during the busy summer months one of the men, had challenged Jakobi to a wrestling-match. Hardly had the two antagonists encountered each other on the grass in a stout set-to, when the sound of the goatherd's whip was heard on the hilly common above, sending forth a succession of reports like those of a pistol, becoming stronger and louder when the game and the assembled company were seen. At last the young "whipper-snapper," as we called him, made one long final succession of cracks and reports, and springing over the wall, and casting his instrument of torture on one side, he boldly challenged Anton.
The young man, whose skill and strength were well known, smiled, half amused, half incredulous, on his antagonist. The younger athlete, a lad of thirteen, firmly built and agile, mistook the look for a sneer, and the blood ran fast and hot into his face. So, Anton accepting the challenge, they immediately began to spar. They first fearlessly regarded each other, then bowing their heads they rushed forward, butting like rams. The lad, with his head fixed firm in Anton's chest, tried to find his adversary's weakest point, and with his arms round his waist endeavored cunningly to make him slip; but it was soon the young champion who was tripped up, and who in playful, half-serious anger dealt blows and tugs right and left, almost managing to bring Anton sprawling to the ground. The lad, however, suddenly stopped: he had lost a little tin ring off his finger and a four-kreuzer piece from his pocket—too great a loss for a shepherd-boy. The combat therefore was speedily closed, both antagonists and their partisans hunting in the unmowed grass until the treasures were again trove.
At the same time an elderly man approached and opened the gate—a peasant evidently, although, instead of the usual long white apron and bib, he wore one of new green linen, shining as satin—a man of a strong although delicate make, the head slightly stooping forward, and a face that beamed with genuine pleasure as half a dozen voices simultaneously burst forth with a "God greet you, Alois!"
This then was Schuster (or Shoe-maker) Alois, in preparation of whose advent the good aunt had scrubbed a bed-room, and Moidel had beautified the window with pots of blooming geraniums. The room was a large chamber, set apart for the different ambulatory work-people who came to the Hof in the course of the year. The weaver, who arrived in the spring to weave the flax which the busy womankind had spun through the winter, had been the last occupant of the room, and had woven no less than two hundred and ninety-three ells of linen, which now in long symmetrical lines were carefully pegged down on the turf of the pleasaunce by Moidel, who walked over them daily with her bare feet, busily watering until the gray threads were turning snowy white.
Later on in the year the sewing-woman would appear, and then the tailor, to make the clothing for this large household, the servants, according to an old custom long since extinct in most countries, being chiefly paid in kind. Schuster Alois had now come to make the boots for Jakob and the Senner Franz preparatory to their going with the cattle to the Alpine pastures.
I greatly doubt whether the tailor or the weaver was so well waited upon as the shoemaker: I fancy they were left more to the maids. Passing the open door of the family house-place, aunt and niece might now be seen sitting hour after hour, the elder lining the soles of Jakob's stockings with pieces of strong woolen to prevent mending on the Alp, or attending to other needs of his homely toilet; the younger at her paste-board or kneading-trough, whilst Schuster Alois sat between them in the sunny oriel window, and while he steadily plied his awl appeared to be either telling them tales or reciting poetry.
The Alp, or Olm (to use the provincial word), lay at the distance of about six hours, and the Hofbauer went up to examine the state of the pasturage before his son and the cattle finally started. In two days he returned. "The going up of the cattle must be postponed at least a week," he said, "for snow had fallen at the huts the depth of a man; and the river had swollen to such a height that it had carried two houses away in St. Wolfgang, the highest mountain-village; and even life had been lost."
This delay caused a respite from hard work. The next morning Alois's arms did not move like unwearying machinery, and, the ten o'clock-dinner being over, we saw him seated at his ease on the adjoining hillside. Should we go and speak to him? He appeared different from the ordinary run of his class (though cobblers are often clever men enough), and moreover of a decidedly friendly turn of mind. We determined that we would. We joined Alois on the stony, waste hillside, crowned by two trees with a crucifix in the centre, which formed from the house, with its background of mountains, ever a melancholy, soul-touching little poem.
"You have not quite such hard work to-day, Schuster?"
He smiled and said, "Do your work betimes, and then rest; and where better than under the shadow of the cross?"
"Yes, and the crucifix which you have chosen is more pleasing than the generality which are sown broadcast over the fields of the Tyrol. Why are they made so hideous and revolting?"
We spoke out freely, because the unusually intelligent face before us evidently belonged to a thinker. Candor of speech pleased him. Nevertheless, he answered as if musing, "They appear ugly to you: well they may be. Ja, but the most who look upon them are men and women acquainted with many sorrows—sudden deaths by falls from precipices, destruction of house and home by lightning, floods, avalanches, failure of crops, and many another visitation—and it soothes their perhaps selfish natures to see these anguished features, these blood-stained limbs—signs of still greater suffering—whilst they pray that only such crosses may be laid on them as will keep them in obedience to His will. Just before you came up the hill I was thinking of a strange history connected with a crucifix—one that I read only ten days ago in the house of a Hochmair himself."
It merely needed silence for Schuster Alois to repeat the tale, and he soon began: "It is the Tyroler Adolph Pichler who narrates it. He says that once in his rambles he came to a little chapel, over which hung a blasted larch—such a desolate wreck of a tree that he naturally asked the guide he had with him why it was not cut down. Now, the guide was an old man who knew every, tradition and legend, besides all the family histories in that part of the Tyrol. 'That tree,' said he, 'is left there purposely, as the reminder of a great crime, and nobody would think of touching it. If you look into the chapel, you'll see a Christ on the cross which has been shot through the breast. That was once a crucifix under this very tree.' Then the guide made a remark which had often struck myself—that there are some families in which everything that is strange and dreadful happens, whilst there are others that go on for generations and are no more distinguishable than the very weeds themselves. In that valley were the Hochmairs, and they were of this prominent sort, and odd enough, as I said before, it was at a Hochmair's house that I read this account. Well, some generations back there was a Hochmair who was a regular ruffian. He cared no more for the life of a man than that of a chamois. The government kept the game strictly on the mountains, and he was suspected of having put more than one of their keepers out of the way. In short, he had such a bad character that when he went to confession the priest would not give him absolution. This put him in a great rage, and it is remarkable that from that day his luck in hunting forsook him. He could not take aim—a sort of mist was ever before his eyes, his hand trembled. People believed that he was perpetually haunted by the ghost of a young man whom, after he had shot, he had beaten to death with his gunstock, and then flung down a crevasse. Be that as it may, he would be absent for weeks in the mountains. He did no good, and the little he possessed fell into ruin.
"His creditors were about to sell him up, stick and stone, when he put, as one may say, the finishing stroke to everything himself. It was Corpus Christi Day: the bells were ringing and the procession moving through the fields, the holy banners waving, the choir-boys singing the sanctus, when just as the priest lifted the Host in the golden monstrance, a shot was fired from the bushes in front of a crucifix. Lightning flashed from heaven, and the house of the wicked Hochmair, which was at no great distance, burst into flames. An awful cry rang from the bushes: the procession rushed forward, the priest only remaining with the Host and a few attendants. And what did they see? There was the image of the crucified Saviour pierced by a bullet, and out in the road stood the wretched Hochmair, with his hands clasped on the lock of his gun and his eyes rolling in frenzy. Everybody perceived the crime he had committed, and remained motionless, whilst he beckoned wildly to the priest, who came up in gloomy silence. After they had talked together alone for some time, the priest went into the church, where he remained all night in prayer. The wretched man, whom nobody dared to touch, disappeared into the thicket, and all trace was lost of him. In the mean while the injured image of the Saviour was removed into the church. So years went on, and then one Sunday after service the priest announced from the pulpit that the former sinner Hochmair was dead, but that after years of penitence he had received the forgiveness of the Church and of God. 'Therefore,' said the good man, 'let all forgive him, and remember only their own sins, and pray Christ to be merciful to them.' After that it was known that he had become possessed with the crazy notion that if he fired into the breast of the Saviour on Corpus Christi Day, just when the Host was being elevated and the benediction spoken, it would make his gun unerring. He fired therefore, and at the same moment the Saviour on the cross raised His head and, fixing on him His eyes full of tears, gave him a look which pierced him to the very marrow, and that terrified him far more than the lightning which, flashing from his forehead, set fire to his house, whilst the thorn-crowned countenance seemed to float before him, and he knew that this was his punishment. Such was his confession at the time to the priest who laid the penance of the Church upon him. So he went out into the world like another Cain, and God in His own time was merciful to him. Still, the wounded effigy of the Saviour and the blasted larch tree remain as witnesses on earth against him.
"And," continued Schuster Alois, "that is only one tale amongst the hundreds which could be related concerning these crucifixes. Ah, there is many an old, bleached, weather-beaten crucifix on crag or highway-side from which the anguished face of the Saviour has both smitten and healed the sinner. Crucifixes cut deeper into most Tyrolese hearts than shrines, some way."
"Strange," we replied, "for these old shrines are not only quaint, but often beautiful, as, for instance, the one on the roadside turning into town."
"Ah, I am glad you like it," said Alois, "for there are those who would wish it pulled down and a lofty wooden cross, as a landmark, placed there instead. The Capuchins in the adjoining monastery are opposed to it, however, and no wonder. Have you ever remarked," he continued, becoming quite aglow, "that although it is greatly injured and many of the figures lost, still there are others who look at you so calmly and seriously with their marred, dilapidated countenances that you feel a peace steal into your heart? And whoever the painter was, he must have loved his work, for Saint Gregory could never have been more dignified in real life than he looks in the shrine."
"Are you a painter?" we asked, almost without knowing what we were saying, for it was hardly probable.
"Oh, I only touch colors now and then, when there's a purpose in it or I can serve the Church," he returned. He became embarrassed, and explained that it was time to return to his work.
We afterward learnt from Moidel that Alois bore in the neighborhood far and wide the reputation of an artist, although he did not consider himself such, seeing he could not paint saints and angels. It was, however, a great source of pleasure to him to paint mottoes and devices and to arrange floral decorations, especially when they could serve as a surprise for some private name-day or church festival.
One afternoon we were told that the boots were made, that Anton had brought the flour from the mill, that two hundred loaves of rye bread were baked, and, the weather being sufficiently fine and all the preparations being completed, the cattle would now start for the Olm. First, Anton and the Senner Franz set off at four o'clock in the afternoon, with the calves in advance, the young things being unable to keep up with the cattle. Then a leiterwagen which had been drawn into the lower corridor and filled with sacks of flour, meal, salt and the two hundred loaves, was driven by the Hofbauer as far as Taufers, whence the supplies for the Alpine residents would be borne on men's backs up to the huts.
In the evening Jakob came into the grand old sitting-room to bid us good-bye. He appeared in his shirt-sleeves and the indispensable white apron, and with the utmost self-possession and refinement of manner he presented us with a little bouquet of edelweiss, promising to send us down a larger supply by his brother. We talked with him about the Olm, and found him enthusiastic on the subject, his one regret being that, as he must return for several weeks of drilling on August 22d, his stay there this summer would be greatly curtailed. The Olm was very extensive, lying on a mountain-platform which was only bare of snow for about three months in the year. When, however, the snow was off, the flowers came up by thousands, the grass sprang up by magic, all the mountains were filled with the rushing and roaring sound of waters, which came down in foaming cascades, often of wonderful beauty, amongst the rocks and the pine woods which clothed the steeper mountain-sides. Nor was the life at all solitary, for various farmers were sending up their cattle to other Olms about the same time, so that no one was without neighbors, although they might be at a considerable distance apart.
Jakob spoke on until we became wild to go up to the Olm too. "Could we go thither," we asked, "and pay him a visit?"
"That we could," he replied, "if we did not mind sleeping in the hay. Only we had better wait for settled weather in August."
There was now no talk of our leaving the Hof at St. Jakobi. The Hofbauer had declared that the house was at our disposal until Martinmas—longer if we wanted it. He also fell into the scheme of our visiting his Olm, where he intimated his desire to be host, saying that all the dairy produce would be at our service.
In the night, exactly at one o'clock, Jakob and Jodokus started: we heard them go, the cattle-bells ringing and the "Leben Sie wohl!" "Behüt Euch Gott!" shouted lovingly after them from the open door and the lower windows of the silent old mansion. Six and twenty head of cattle: the goats, pigs and sheep were to follow later. It was a calm and beautiful night, the three-quarters moon just dropping behind the mountains, and the stars shining out brightly from the dark cloudless sky.