How well I remember that night!
A dull report, as if the trap-door of the hay-loft had slammed to, woke
me up. And then someone rapped on the window and called into the
living-room: whoever wanted to see little Maxel's house burning must
get up and go and look.
My father sprang out of bed; I began to cry, and immediately thought
about rescuing my rabbit. When other people lost their heads in moments
of emergency it was always blind Julia, our old servant, who calmed us
down again. So now, too, she remarked it wasn't our house that was
burning, but little Maxel's, and that was half an hour away; that it
was not even certain that little Maxel's house was burning; that a wag,
passing by, had thrown the lie in through the window; and that quite
possibly no one _had_ done so at all, but it had only happened to us in
a dream.
Meanwhile she pulled on my breeches and shoes, and we hurried out of
the house to look.
"Oh dear! oh dear!" cried my father. "It's all gone already!"
Over the Waldrücken, which stretches like a wide-bowed saddle across
our part of the country, dividing it into Highlands and Lowlands, the
flame streamed steady and clear toward us. No hissing nor crackling
was to be heard; the beautiful new house, only finished a few weeks
before, was burning like oil. The air was damp, the stars were hidden;
now and again there was a growl of thunder, but the storm was drawing
gently away in the direction of Berkfeld and Weitz.
The lightning--so the man who had wakened us now said--had been darting
hither and thither, had described a great cross in the sky, and then
descended. The fiery point at its lower end had never died out, but had
grown rapidly larger, and then he--the man--had thought to himself,
"There now, it's gone and struck little Maxel's!"
"We must go and see if we can't do something to help," said my father.
"Help, would you?" rejoined the other. "Where the thunderbolt falls,
_I_ shan't meddle! Man mustn't work against his Maker, and if He casts
fire upon a house He certainly intends that house to burn. Besides, you
know, anything struck by lightning can't be quenched!"
"Nor your idiocy neither!" cried my father; and then, angry as I had
seldom seen him, he shouted in his face, "You've been struck silly!"
He left him standing there, and took me by the hand and quickly away.
We descended into the Engtal and went along by the Fresenbach, where we
could see the fire no longer, only the fiery clouds. My father carried
a two-handled pail, and I advised him to fill it at the Fresen. My
father didn't listen, but said several times to himself, "Maxel--to
think of that happening to Maxel!"
I knew little Maxel quite well. He was an active, cheery little chap,
somewhere in the forties; his face was full of pock-marks, and his
hands were brown and rough as the bark of the forest trees. So long as
I could remember he had been a woodcutter in Waldbach.
"If it was anyone else's house that was burning down," said my father,
"well--it would just be his house burning down!"
"Isn't it the same with little Maxel?" I asked.
"With him it's his all that's being burnt: everything that he had
yesterday, and has to-day, and might have had to-morrow."
"D'you mean the lightning has struck Maxel himself?"
"It were better so, boy! I don't grudge him his life--God knows I don't
grudge it him--but if he might have confessed first, and not been in
any mortal sin, I could say downright it were best for him if the
lightning had struck him too."
"Then he would be already up there in Heaven," I remarked.
"Here, don't go paddling about in that wet grass. Keep close behind me
and catch on by my coat-tail. About Maxel--I'll tell you something
about him."
The path sloped gently upwards. My father said, "It must be about
thirty years since Maxel came. Poor people's child. At first he went
out as herdboy among the peasants; later, when he'd grown up a bit, he
went in for the woodcutting--a thorough workman, and always industrious
and thrifty. When he became foreman, he asked the landlord to allow him
to clear the Sour Meadow on the Gfarerhöhe and keep it for life,
because he was so mighty set upon having his own little bit of land.
This was willingly granted, and so, every day, when his woodcutting
hours were over, Maxel was up there on the Sour Meadow, cutting away
the undergrowth and trenching it, and grubbing up stones and burning
the roots of the weeds; and in two years the whole place was drained;
and there's good grass growing there, and he's even sown a little patch
of rye. When he'd got on so far that he had tried it with cabbage and
seen how much the hares relished it, he set about getting some timber.
They couldn't give him that, like the Sour Meadow--he must purchase it
with labour. So he let his wages stand, and he felled the trees and
hewed them square and cut them up for building timber, and all that in
the free time when the other workmen were long since lying on their
stomachs smoking their pipes! And the next thing was he began to get
some of the other woodcutters to help him at such work as a man
couldn't do single-handed, and this way he built his house on the Sour
Meadow. Five years he laboured at it, but there--you've seen for
yourself how it stood there with the golden-red walls, with the clear
windows, and the decoration all round the roof--something grand to see!
There's quite a fine little property been made of the Sour Meadow; and
how long ago was it that our pastor in the catechism class held little
Maxel up as an example of energy and industry? Next month he was
meaning to get married: and to think he's risen from being a poor
pauper lad to the brave householder and house-father!--Take off your
cap to him, boy--And now suddenly there's an end of everything; all the
industry and toil of years has gone for nothing; Maxel stands again
to-day on the same spot as he did at the very beginning."
At that time I derived all my piety from the Bible, and so I met my
father's story with: "Our Heavenly Father has punished Maxel because he
was set upon earthly things like the heathen, and has probably taken
too little thought for Eternity. Look at the birds of the air, they sow
not, neither do they reap----"
"Hold your tongue!" interrupted my father angrily. "The man who said
that was King Solomon--it's easy enough for _him_ to say it: only let
some of our sort try it! I wouldn't be sure of myself; if it happened
to me like little Maxel, I should just lose all heart--I'd just turn
idle and good for nothing. Why, if a man puts a match to a thatched
roof he's put in prison, and quite right too--he doesn't deserve
anything better. But when Someone throws fire down out of Heaven on a
brand-new house that a poor, plucky working-man has built----"
He stopped himself. We were now upon the height, and in front of us
blazed the homestead of little Maxel. The house was just falling in.
Several people were there with axes and pails, but there was nothing to
be done but just stand and look on as the last charred bits tumbled
into ruins. The fire wasn't raging, it didn't roar nor crackle, it
didn't flicker wildly in the air: the whole house was just one flame
rising, hot and steady, towards the Heaven whence it had come.
A little way off from the conflagration lay the stone-heap where Maxel
had carried the stones from the Sour Meadow. Thereon he was now
sitting, the little brown, pock-marked man, and looking at the furnace,
the heat of which was streaming towards him. He was half clad, had
thrown his black Sunday coat, the only thing he had rescued, over him.
The neighbours were holding a little aloof. My father greatly desired
to utter a word of sympathy and comfort, but somehow he too didn't
venture to go near him. Maxel went on sitting there in a way that made
us think every moment, now, _now_ he would leap up and utter some
fearful curse against Heaven, and then throw himself into the flames!
And at last, when the fire was only licking the ground and the bare
wall of the hearth was staring out of the ashes, Maxel got up. He
walked over to the glowing mass, picked up an ember, and lighted his
pipe with it.
I was still very small at that time and didn't think much. But this I
remember: when I saw little Maxel in that dawn-twilight standing before
the burnt ruin of his home, sucking the blue smoke from his pipe and
blowing it away from him, my heart grew suddenly hot within me. As if I
felt how mighty man is, how much greater than his fate, and how there
was no finer scorning of it than calmly blowing tobacco-smoke in its
face.
And when the pipe was well alight, he sat down again on the stone-heap
and gazed away into the distance. You would like to know what he was
thinking? So should I.
Later, little Maxel went rummaging among the ashes of his house, and
drew from them his great wood-axe, and made it sharp again on a
grindstone of the neighbourhood and set to work again. Since then many
years have passed, and to-day on the Sour Meadow there lie beautiful
fields, and on the place of the burnt-out farm a new one has arisen. It
is lively with young folk, and the house-father, little Maxel, teaches
his sons to work--but also allows them to smoke. Not too much, but just
a pipe in due season.