“You understand, you are the peasant Staehli.”
The answer came back mechanically:
“I am the peasant Staehli.”
The next day, Staehli the peasant went down with the herds from plateau to plateau, lingering while the weather favored. Late in the summer they reached the valley.
28
Winter in that little hidden-away corner of the world, snow without beginning, without end, scarcity of food, dread of the avalanche. The peasant is a fatalist, accepting the inevitable with silence, with awe. “God is good; He sends summer as a rich reward.”
The pastor shared the hard lot of his parish. The Devil was always there in the shape of “schnaaps,” driving the simple souls to madness, making cretins of their children. The pastor fought the “Evil One” with holy ire like his great ancestor Martin Luther. Every night he would take his lantern and tramp over to the Inn, sit with “his children,” drink with them moderately, see the liquor locked up, put the key in his pocket, and go his way. Many a morning he found the cupboard tampered with, pretending not to see the lock had been repaired. Now Martin went with him, sitting silent, answering laconically.
The pastor gave him much physical labor—washed out roads to remake, wood to cut and draw. There was a landslide; a part of the village was under snow. Martin worked with pick and shovel to dig out the people, carrying the women and children in his arms, his strength growing as the hardiest collapsed. When it was too cold for the old man, Martin went alone to the Inn to lock up.
One night, walking home, the sky like velvet studded with clustered diamonds, the mysterious blue light on the snow, the silence, the penetrating beauty, threw a spell over him. He wandered till the unseen sun shot up faint rays, turning the white world into faded rose; then memory stirred in him. Angela saw him tracing with a piece of charcoal on a board. She put slips of paper and pencil in his way; he scribbled on them, threw them down, forgot them. They were confused lines crossing, recrossing, impressionist shapes of mountains, and always the faint outlines of a woman’s head. She put them carefully in a box he would remember some day. She saw quick flashes in his eyes, sparks blazing up, dying out.
He sat outside the châlet, hammering nails into the soles of the mountain boots he had made for himself. The Staehlis had always learnt a trade—they were shoemakers, tanners, blacksmiths, herders, sons of toil and of the soil. The pastor stood watching him.