CHAPTER V.
We had not gone many yards when we noticed a grand old mansion with gray slopes of roof and stone galleries on arched pillars, and, asking its history, learned that it was a deserted seat of the counts of Arlberg, inhabited now by our guide in quality of forester, and where he had his sister Nanni and brother Hansel to live with him.
We kept gradually ascending by the side of deep, turfy meadows, passing many a rich brown wooden chalet, with views ever and anon of our distant village and its stately Hof. Soon we turned into a woody gorge and began climbing the steep saddle of the Scharst; and as we slowly toiled upward in the pleasant summer air, amongst the aromatic fir trees, some verses came into my head out of a little German book, Jakob Stainer, by Herr Reif, which we had given as a parting present to Schuster Alois:
The fiddle-maker Stainer
Goes whistling on his way:
A master like to Stainer
Is not found every day.
He passes lofty beech trees,
And old oaks stout and good,
Because that which he seeks for
Grows not in every wood.
But yonder in the sunshine,
Above the dark green shade,
Behold a hazel-fir tree—
"Jörgel," said I, "as you are a forester and know all the trees in the wood, I wish you would show me a hazel-fir tree."
"Wohl gut," he replied. "Higher up the chances are small but what we pass one. I only pray the gracious Fräulein to say those verses over again."
When I had done so he wished to know whether the fiddle-maker Stainer were a real man or no.
"Why, good Jörgel," I replied, "he was a real Tyroler like yourself, only you are not likely to have met with him, seeing that he died and was buried some two hundred years ago. Yes, a very real man, who did his work well, but to little profit. He was a peasant lad of Absam, who, probably going to Innspruck whilst the archduke Leopold and his Italian consort, Claudia dei Medici, kept their gay court there, thought Italian violins were harsh and unsatisfactory in tone, and so quietly worked out one of a different make from his own principles; which has since gained for him the name of 'the father of the German violin.' He never expected to earn such a title. He had begun making violins when he was twenty: he worked very slowly, only made a few, and sold them at a moderate price to the foreign dealers who came to the fairs at Hall. They soon became asked after, for they excelled as instruments from the first moment that they were touched, and retain to this day the clearest and the fullest notes, like the middle tones of the flute, wonderfully sympathetic and rich. The peculiar excellency is probably owing to the extreme care which he showed in the selection of the wood. He used the hazel-fir tree, it is said. He selected the wood himself, striking the trunk with his hammer to hear its tones before he felled it. He would wander for days through the mountain forests searching suitable trees. He studied each one, and only chose that which exactly answered his purpose—generally those of which the topmost boughs were already dead.
"When wood was being precipitated down the mountain-slides, he would seat himself in some safe spot near at hand, and listen to the different tones which the trunks uttered as they struck against the rocks in their fall. He chose from these 'singing trees' those which pleased his ear the most. He was also particular about the rings on the stems of the felled trees. They must be harmonious and regular, neither too near nor too far apart. For those portions of the violin which were made in separate pieces he used very old wood, preferring old inner doors and wainscoting.
"Although one of the most celebrated violin-makers that ever lived, this peasant always remained poor. It is true that one grand duke favored him, but then his patron died, and whilst the emperor permitted him to be the court fiddle-maker, he was scandalized, like the rest of the world, by his reading Lutheran books, picked up in the market at Hall. These books caused him to be thrown into prison as a heretic, and although in time released, debts and poverty embittering his life, he became introverted and melancholy, until finally the humble, patient worker, who had sent forth so much melody into the world, was strapped to the wooden bench of his cottage at Absam, a heart-broken maniac. The merciful messenger Death released him after several years, but the bench and the hole in the wood by means of which he was bound may still be seen.
"When the artist was forgotten his works increased greatly in value. This occasioned other makers to endeavor to multiply their number, introducing many spurious Stainer violins, which gradually brought down the market value. Nevertheless, genuine Stainer violins are recognizable, and still retain a fancy price. Mozart possessed one which he greatly prized, using it as his solo quartette instrument. It belongs now to a professor in the Mozarteum at Salzburg, and was played upon at the Mozart festival in 1856.
"But a violin with a still more remarkable history figured during the festivities attending the marriage of the present emperor of Austria. During the visit of the emperor Charles VI., King Friedrich Wilhelm of Prussia and other princes to the great nobleman Count Wenzel von Trautmannsdorf, the generous and lavish host became sorely perplexed how to provide George Stezitzky, a splendid violinist, with a suitable instrument. At this point he opportunely heard that there was an old fiddler in the court who begged permission to play before the august company. The request being granted, the musician commenced playing, and immediately sent princes and nobles into raptures over the tones of his violin. The count therefore stopped him, and offered to buy it. This quite threw the old man into despair. 'It was a Stainer violin,' he replied, 'and his whole livelihood was bound up in it.' The count, however, was not to be thwarted: he gave him fifty ducats for the piece he had played, and then concluded the bargain on the following conditions: three hundred gulden for the violin, besides a house to live in, food and a quart of wine daily; ten gulden monthly, two barrels of beer and one suit of clothes yearly, fruit and as many hares as he needed for his kitchen. The agreement having been concluded, George Stezitzky played a solo on the violin: then received it as a present from the count. The man who had parted with it lived sixteen years more, thus costing the count in actual money 8733 florins 20 kreuzers, equal to 10,380 florins 24 kreuzers of the present currency. A large sum to give for a violin."
"Yes," replied Jörgel, who appeared to have been much interested by the whole history; "but what puzzles me is, how a poor devil who worked so slow could be a genius. I thought sharp people took more after the Almighty, and hurried up their work in the twinkling of an eye."
"Do the trees which you look after shoot up in the twinkling of an eye?"
"Why, no. Good, stout wood, with strength enough to resist storms and to cleave to the rocks of these mountainsides, takes a lifetime. I often warn the peasants against cutting their trees down. It is easy to destroy, but not to build up, I tell them; and the trees as they stand are the best preventatives against land-slips."
"Have you always been a forester?" we asked.
Not he. It was true that in fine weather he often wandered for thirty miles a day, his district reaching as far, but he had seen more of the world than these fir woods. He had been in the habit, as a young man, of taking horses for sale into Italy, where he had seen Milan cathedral and the town-hall in Bergamo. He, however, gave up his trade in 1831, as his father died in that year of dropsy, and his mother ten days after of sorrow, and he thought it only right to stay with his sister Nanni. Franz had gone off and married a rich widow against his advice, for he knew she would treat a second husband as a day-laborer; and what he had predicted proved true. However, she and her money were gone out of the family now. Her body lay in the graveyard, and he supposed that the priest who said masses for her soul knew where it was by this time. As for Hansel, he was still at liberty, and had well played his part in the world. He had protected the emperor Ferdinand when he fled with his consort to Innspruck in 1848, standing as sentinel at the gate of the faithful city. Later on he had marched with the Tyrolese imperial Jäger corps into Hungary, and fought for the same master there. Again in 1866 he was righting under the archduke Albert, until, on the feast of Johanni, he was disabled at the battle of Custozza by a wound in his foot. The victory over the Italians made him for a time forget the pain, but afterward it grew dreadful, lasting for seventeen months, and not an army surgeon could help him. Then, however, he determined to try a cow-doctor, who in two weeks set him on his pins again.
"And you might not believe it," continued Jörgel, who grew animated in his narration, "but I too have seen service. In the last war between Italy and Austria the students of Innspruck formed a corps, and young Count Arlberg, being an active volunteer, proposed that I should go as cook. The motion was carried, and I marched with one hundred and ninety-three young gentlemen to Bira. Sometimes with help and sometimes with none, I cooked for them all. I fed them on meat dumplings and plenten, until in a few weeks the cook and the soldaten—or the cook and the salaten, which you will—had to pull up stakes and beat an honorable retreat through the Breimer. At Brixen I bade farewell to my regiment, and have since, under Count Arlberg the father, looked after stocks and stones, and not soldiers. Well, well! Austria has lost Italy, but the Tyrol can hold up its head, for it stands now as a great natural rampart between the two countries."
We had been resting during Jörgel's narration: the long rays of the declining sun now warned us to hasten on. Margaret, full of energy and desirous of pushing forward up the almost vertical path, soon began to lag behind. Thus I, looking back and waiting for her, saw a comely peasant-woman who, quickly climbing the hill behind, offered her the assistance of her arm. Although this was gratefully declined, the stranger, apparently troubled at the sight of the tired lady, tarried at her side, trying to be of service. She had a melodious voice and a restful air, which made us, though she was but a poor illiterate woman, feel better for her presence. Thus she was allowed to carry our shawls, and whenever we rested she strayed into wayside glens, returning with offerings of mellow bilberries; and finally she cheered our lagging energies with the assurance that we should soon see blue sky peeping through the trees, and that then there would be no more climbing. At this point, Jörgel, who had been carefully examining each tree as we passed, expressed his fear that no actual hazel-fir tree grew along this path. He, however, pointed out a well grown fir tree, saying that a hazelfichte merely possessed a straighter and a smoother stem.
We had begun truly to descend, and our friendly woman, seeing that "Shank's mare" required no further encouragement, bade us a friendly good-evening, with a cheerful "May you live long and well!" She had almost dipped out of sight when our Jörgel, with praiseworthy forethought, called after her to apprise the bath people, as she passed, of our advent.
The path had become broader and more beaten. There was a gradual sense of some human being, either from personal or unselfish interests, having once been at work to make the woods still more attractive and enjoyable. Benches of flat stones were raised at points where snow-fields, fantastic and stern dolomite peaks and wooded slopes formed exquisite pictures set in frames of stately, well-grown fir trees—here a smooth lawn with its little shrine and wooden seat for the wayfarer to meditate on the Flight into Egypt, which Jörgel called the "witches' ground;" there, under a spreading tree, a rural table and seats—proofs that we must be approaching the bath-house; and no little were we pleased by these signs of care and judgment, especially as none of the rural bowers were either bran-new or in a state of decay, but harmonizing with the tidy negligence of the woods themselves.
"These paths promise well for the baths," we remarked to Jörgel.
"Might have done so once," he replied, "but it was the old Frau Wirthin who put them up. She was a woman with a head and a will, and she took a pride in the place, seeing that the baths are as old as the mountains, and they had been in her family since the Lord made the Tyrol. Now they are in the hands of her son Seppl and his sister Moidel. However, I never mix myself up in what does not concern me. The master is at liberty, and so is she, and it is not for me or my old Nanni to speak against unmarried people. Both they and we are bound for Herzing when we die, the spinsters to howl in the moor and we men in the wood. That is what the lads and lasses say of us;" and he gave a dry little laugh. "Ask my opinion of the water, and I'll answer you straightforward. It's an elixir, a perfect elixir;" and he repeated the sentence with the proud consciousness of using a dictionary word. "As for the house, the master and the old maid, judge for yourselves, or ask them that sent you here."
So saying, he sturdily marched on ahead, as if fearing to be compromised. We did not feel encouraged, especially with night steadily falling down upon us. Still less was the future hopeful when Jörgel pointed with his stick in advance, exclaiming, "Arrived at last!"
Yes, arrived at an old weatherbeaten chalet, with a crazy barn to keep it company, dilapidated and tottering as if in the bankruptcy court, standing abruptly on the borders of the black fir wood, the air filled with the odor of concentrated pigstye; dark male figures playing at skittles on the path, and having to stop the game to enable us to reach the door; black male figures playing at cards and drinking wine in the dusky, close old parlor or stube, made still more gloomy by the large, projecting brick stove, unlighted at this season of the year.
We should never have proceeded on a voyage of discovery had not the thick folds of a woman's yellow petticoat flickered before us on the steps of a smoke-stained ladder.
Jörgel, who, with the utmost determination, resolved to fulfill his duty as guide, marshaled us up this old creaking ladder, then up a second, until we stopped in an open gallery sheltered by the wooden eaves, where a feeble old woman nursed an idiot child in the gloaming. And yet what a landscape to relieve this desolate foreground!—slumbrous mountains, dewy meadows, peaceful villages, over which the calm of Sunday lay. We stood drinking in the tranquil scene, when a woman in blue apron and of rapid motion quickly touched my elbow with a large key; and bidding us follow she hastily flung open the door of a narrow wainscoted closet, smelling of hay. "She had no other room," she blurted forth, and then, without word of apology, disappeared as speedily as she had come. We found ourselves the owners of two large bedsteads and two dilapidated chairs: everywhere in the house we had caught glimpses of broken-backed chairs, witnesses either of poverty or riot.
A modest tap at the door announced worthy Jörgel. He tried to comfort us in his rough and honest way, with "They that sent you here are to blame."
We interrupted him, saying that the fault lay with ourselves.
"Well, well! how could you tell? But have no fears. This house is disorderly for the want of a head, but remember, there's an elixir of life in the water. I'm very much satisfied with what you have paid me, and the next time we meet we shall regard each other as old acquaintance."
He lifted his empty kraxe upon his shoulders, and went out. We waited to see his square figure appear in the path below, like those who were parting not only from a friend, but a protector. It was some minutes before he was visible. We discovered shortly afterward that not wishing to leave us in our desolation, and perceiving that some "Herrschaft" must be in the house, as the best room had not been given us, he had boldly introduced himself to them, and thus we found ourselves committed by Jörgel to a fresh Good Samaritan in the shape of a well-to-do draper's wife, Frau T——. We knew her by name, but did not deal at her shop. Still, she was ruled by no selfish thoughts, and out of the genuine kindliness of her heart she joyfully fulfilled Jörgel's commission. It was she who insisted on preparing our supper; it was her cloth that was spread on the table in the gallery as the quietest, most suitable spot in the riotous house, she smoothing our scruples by declaring it her pleasure, only regretting that we should have arrived on such a noisy night, for the house was usually very still. It was her servant who showed the deaf old woman, the one help of the establishment, how to make our beds.
The aged crone, Nanni—half the female population of the Tyrol are called either after the Virgin Mary or her traditionary mother, Saint Ann—gazed in intense astonishment when we screamed to her our simple requirements. We asked for a light, and she brought us a tallow candle stuck in a bottle. We asked for a pitcher of water, and she muttered something about the spout.
Worn-out, weary, very grateful to the good Frau T——, we went to bed, but not to sleep. That would have been a vain endeavor, for shrill laughter, loud words and boisterous songs, in which the high tones of wild female voices rose painfully above the gruff singing of half-besotted men, penetrated the room, whilst the old rafters groaned and creaked from the heavy tramp of dancers below. All our belief in the sobriety and goodness of the Tyrolese seemed swept away, and a sense of their coarseness and dissipation to have taken its place. We were in a very pandemonium, which never ceased until the sun was rising.
Nor was the evil mitigated when we learned from the landlord's sister a few hours later that the guests were only returning from Scapulary Sunday in Reischach. Most of them belonged to the next village, and had rested here on their way. After prayers it was right to sing and dance: why should they not? And, look you, when wine got into people's head, what could she do? She could not turn them out.
"Yes, but the master, her brother, might."
She shook her head ominously, and hurried into the kitchen—a smoky old kitchen, but quaint from the little windows with the old ox-eyed panes of thick glass.
It impressed itself forcibly on our minds that Seppl had compromised himself on the preceding night. He was to be seen nowhere; only the bustling sister Moidel, who had already swept out and cleaned the scene of the late dissipation, and was now busy over our coffee, and the old Nanni, who with bare feet and wet petticoats intimated that she had scrubbed the female bath-room and placed two freshly scoured tubs there at our disposition.
Both women meant kindly by us: the pleasant fir woods and the fresh air seemed to whisper to us to stay. So we gave up the plan which we had resolutely made in the night of leaving that very morning, and by so doing found Bad Scharst not only endurable, but really, in a very rough and ready way, enjoyable. The remembrance of the wild, riotous night even became enveloped with a certain interest when we recollected that this grim attempt at pleasure was in sober reality one of those Tyrolese peasant balls which are represented in such fair and attractive colors on the stage, in pictures or in novels. It was well to be undeceived, and to see the deep shadows as well as the bright side of Tyrolese life.
And what matter if for one night we had lost our sleep, whilst we breathed exhilarating ozone and drank water which, to quote Jörgel, was truly an elixir of life? For all our temporary and trifling inconveniences we found rich compensation when after an easy ascent of two hours we reached the topmost platform of the mountain, the Kronplatz. To the north, reaching from east to west, a long, unbroken chain of glaciers, from the Furtschläg to the Gross Venediger Spitze with its untrodden snows. Below us, at some four thousand feet, the broad, rich Pusterthal, with its comfortable villages and its pastoral tributary valleys. To the south, the stern limestone peaks of the dolomite region; the Vedretta Marmolata, with its breastplate of ice, king of these barbaric giants, the splintered pinnacles of the Drei Zinnen, the pyramidal Antalao, and many another jagged, appalling mountain, stern as the bewildering doctrines of election and reprobation, whilst the pure glistening snow, green meadows and pleasant woods opposite seemed to breathe forth the gentle, winning truths of the glad tidings of peace.
It was delicious to lie on the short turf in an ethereal region with a perception of the burden and heat of the day in the valley below; yet the fresh breeze of the mountain drove us with a sense of hunger back to the baths.
Having spoken of the scenery, let us now speak of the guests. There were not many. Frau T——, ourselves and a young woman, a sewing-machinist, occupied the available chambers of the chalet. The rest were used as receptacles for hay and milk: the ground floor contained the stube, the kitchen, the pigstye, or rather the room set apart for the pig, and the cow-house. Several poor guests, men and woman, hovered about the door of the barn. They slept in the various lofts, divided into rooms, and cooked for themselves in a common kitchen adjoining the bath-rooms. These were two long wooden sheds, in which rows of large tubs were placed. The patients bathed twice a day, being covered over with boards and a horse-rug, but the head was left free. There was no doctor: each could doctor himself by lying in the hot water and drinking more or fewer glasses of the iron water daily. It poured from a spout into a wooden trough between the chalet and the barn; and this explained old Nanni's mutterings after our arrival.
Although the peasant bathers as a class made no distinct impression on us, the half dozen men looking like facsimiles of each other, and the seven women appearing always to be one and the same, still there were one or two figures which stand prominently forth, from the more direct relations into which we came with them.
First, an old peasant-woman, whom we heard, as we descended from the Kronplatz, singing to a crying baby as we approached the house:
Engeli, Bengeli, wilt thou go to America?
Rumelti, Pumelti, wilt thou go to England?
She instantly stopped her ditty when she saw us emerge from the wood.
Curious, was it not? and yet we had neither brought our passports with us, nor had we followed the example of previous guests and proved our learning by writing our names and birthplaces in the visitors' book—a large volume for which every door-lintel and piece of wainscot in the house acted as leaves. No, but some little bird had been whispering about us on the mountain-side.
The next figure is another peasant-woman, tall and somewhat thin, with a patient, beseeching look in her face. This I quietly perceived whilst I sat busily writing near the house at a table which Moidel had carried out for me, yet I would not look up, because she stood eyeing me with an innocent stare, as if wishful to enter into conversation. A few minutes later a buxom matron stepped forth from the passage of the chalet. It acted as a convenient thoroughfare on the road between Reischach and Geisselburg. Her daughter, a girl of sixteen, who was with her, wore two beaver hats, the uppermost evidently bran-new and a fresh purchase. The first peasant-woman addressed the newcomer with a "God greet thee, Trina! Thou hast been shopping, I see."
"God greet thee, Gertraud! It is only a new hat for the moidel. We were going down for Scapulary Sunday; so I thought I might go on to town and sell thirty pounds of cow-hair, the savings of ten years; for, now there's to be a railway, beds are wanted, and as I received more than I expected, Moidel got her hat."
Then lowering her voice and pointing in my direction: "One of the strange ladies? I saw the other in the wood gathering strawberries. I heard she came from America, but she was quite pretty, without either black skin or thick lips. There must be some mistake. But, Gertraud, how's the sick little maid?"
"Very weak—cannot last long. The doctor was up yesterday, and he said it was useless his coming again: however, he left it something soothing. Adieu, Trina: greet all at home."
At first amused by the notions these fellow-creatures possessed of us, then forgetting them in the trouble which I perceived occupied the poor woman's mind, I lifted up my head when her friends were gone and inquired if she had a sick child.
"Oh, na, na! not of my own. I'm nursing a little maid of five years old: the father is a government postilion and the mother in service, and so she brought her up here to see if the air and the water would strengthen her. She is their only child. No, I myself live about an hour from here: you can see my cottage amongst the cherry trees on the slopes yonder. It looks nearer than it is, for there is a hidden ravine between. Ah, Herr je! I've had children too, and have had to give them all up. They are waiting for me with the dear God; but, Herr je! it's long toiling and hoping to reach them. However, you'll oblige me and tell me where you have really come from?"
"From Rome," was the reply.
"Mein Gott! as far off as heaven! The creation is frightfully big! Well, I must not loiter. I came out to say a prayer, then to chop wood for Moidel."
An hour later, while sitting at supper in the passage, the most convenient and quiet place as we imagined, we found all the guests marching past us, each saluting us with "A good appetite to you!" or else "May you eat well!" They had been called together by Frau T—— and the sewing-machinist, Fraülein Magdalena, for Rosenkranz.
Hardly were they kneeling in the chapel, a small building at the farther side of the chalet, when the pig marched also up the passage, and grunting out his "Guten appetit," proposed taking his place at our table. We drove him out of doors: he waited behind the house corner to avoid detection until we were comfortably seated, when again he was at our side, snuffing the dishes in the air and grunting his "Guten appetit."
We were in despair. Moidel was not forthcoming, and we found that we could not shut the door against our intruding visitor.
"Was thust du? Na, na! Draus, draus, Kloane!" ("What dost thou? No, no! Out with thee, little one!"), said a voice in the passage; and a short man, with a good-natured, half-foolish face, after releasing himself from a heavily-laden basket which he carried on his back, walked through the passage and out of the farther door, attended by the pig, who lovingly rubbed his snout against him. The stranger knelt down at one of the shattered windows of the chapel, his four-footed companion standing patiently by him, until the orison was over and the worshipers trooped out of the little chapel. Then the knowing pig trotted off to his own quarters, whilst one voice exclaimed, "You are back again, Seppl?"
"You've not forgotten my bread?" said a second.
"You've brought me the knitting needles?" said a third.
"You left the letter at the Lamb and Flag?" added a fourth.
This, then, was the master, evidently the common messenger of all, who, whilst the guests called him behind his back "Headless Seppl," had managed to fulfill two dozen verbal commissions to everybody's satisfaction. This was the landlord, whom we had pictured lying in a drunken lethargy in some hay barn after the bout of the night before. How we had maligned an evidently simple, honest soul, who had been toiling from early morning, and who, having discharged the orders of his different customers, started up the steep mountain-side, and we heard him calling "Koos, koos, koos," lovingly to his cows! It was only when he had milked them, patted them, called each by its name, seen them comfortably housed for the night, that he had time to think of resting or eating his dumplings for supper.
It was the fourth morning of our stay, and we were preparing to leave. Seppl's basket was already packed with our belongings, and he, the good beast of burden, had orders in half an hour to act as our guide, when suddenly Moidel flew out of the kitchen, exclaiming, "He is coming! he is coming!" and wiping her arms on her apron rushed down the green meadows beyond the chapel. Fräulein Magdalena, dropping her work, uttered a joyful cry. "Yes, it is he! it's Herr Pflersch!" she said, turning to us. "The king of Bad Scharst. Ah! why don't you stay, for glorious days will begin? I've been here eleven years at the same time as Herr Pflersch, and we have none of us gone to bed for seven days together. We play at cards and he tells us tales."
The excitement in the whole establishment became universal. Herr Pflersch was our grocer, a burly, good-natured man, who bowed politely to us when he arrived at the house, led by a troop of admiring and rejoicing friends. He was attended by his cook, and had brought with him a sackful of provisions and his feather bed, which came toiling up the hill in a cart.
Fräulein Magdalena stood rapturously before the welcome guest, offering him a quart glass of water: "No beer to offer you, Herr Pflersch, but glorious water, Herr Pflersch."
Moidel apologized for not going a step of the way with us, "But Herr Pflersch had come;" and whilst she said so she began putting one of Herr Pflersch's own wax candles into a brass candlestick. "I have, however, a favor to ask of you," she continued: "that is, if we ever happen to meet on the high-road in the Pusterthal, you'll allow me to recognize you." A humble request indeed, poor soul!
Gertraud came down from the barn to say good-bye to us. The "little maid" was still lingering, but she added mysteriously, "She'll be knocking thrice at her mother's door to-morrow."
Walking across the meadows, this time taking a different way from that by which we had arrived, we met several groups of peasant-men carrying bundles in their hands, who asked Seppl if the Herr had arrived, and being answered in the affirmative, they hurried on, as if desirous to act as Knights of the Round Table to King Pflersch.