"Why do you hurry so, Peter?"
"Supposing he runs after us!"
"Oh, Kickel won't do anything to us. People say he would not have
killed his son if he hadn't been so fond of him."
"Oh, Simmerl, supposing he is fond of us?"
"Oh, not so fond as he was of his son!"
"But, Simmerl, I don't understand."
"Some time I'll ask father just how it all was."
Nothing more. On that particular day I was not much use in school. Just
think!--My father is very fond of _me_. He certainly has never told me
so, but mother has said it to me. If things are like this, one will
never trust oneself again with people who are fond of one.
"What is the matter with Peter?" asked the schoolmaster, "he is so
absent-minded to-day."
In the afternoon I came back to my parents' house. I stood awhile
rooted to the sandy ground behind the pines. What was going to happen
next? My father came towards me with a clacking wheelbarrow. "Go in and
eat," he called to me, "and afterwards come out into the wood. We must
cut down some wood for firing."
"Did you sleep at Zutrum last night?" asked my mother, as she set
before me the dinner which had been saved for me.
"Mother, Simmerl wouldn't let go of me until I went home with him."
"It's quite right, child. Just lately Mistress Zutrum was complaining
to your father that you did not come to see your cousins and aunt and
uncle. My mother and the mother of Mistress Zutrum were sisters."
The danger was quite over. Out in the forest I asked my father whether
he knew the Zutrums' old servant, Kickel, and what was the matter with
him.
"It isn't the time for gossip now, it's the time for cutting
firewood,"--that was his answer.
A few weeks later I was with my father in the cattle pasture. It was
already dusk, and the oxen, who had been yoked to the plough all day,
thrust their muzzles into the food and grazed busily. We stood by and
waited until they were satisfied. It occurred to me that now was the
time for gossip, and I asked him again about Kickel.
"Child, let Kickel be," answered my father. "He's never harmed you--and
may God Almighty preserve from all craziness! See--they won't eat the
grass--they're not hungry any more."
Soon after, we led the oxen into the farmyard. If I had died at that
time, reader, you would hardly ever have learnt anything about Kickel.
Meanwhile, I grew into a thin, but sadly tall lad, too narrow for a
peasant, but long enough for a town gentleman--well, you know all about
that!
And once on a time, in summer, as I was going to visit far-away Alpel
again, in the forest on the way I overtook a peasant lad--a young,
handsome but earnest fellow, in Sunday clothes although it was a
work-day. He had an upright carriage, and moved his legs lightly and
regularly in walking, so that I thought, "He has been a soldier, or is
one still." His auburn hair, too, was cut short and shaved behind in
such fashion that his round, fresh-coloured neck was bare for a couple
of inches down to his shirt-collar. The long face, with the somewhat
thinly modelled nose, the very fair little moustache and the open,
shrewd eyes, suggested that he was by no means one of the most foolish
and simple of people. In those days I was as glad to have company on
such a road as now I am to go alone. So I tried it on with him. My
question was, where he went? He was going home to his wood-cutting in
Fischbacherwald. "Where had he been?" In Krieglach, in the churchyard.
"What had so lively a young fellow to do with the churchyard?"
"Well, it's just what happens often enough," answered he. "It was on
account of old Kickel."
Old Kickel! I had often heard the name mentioned. Ah, yes! it was the
old servant at Zutrum, who----"We'll go together, so that it will be
more entertaining. I am Peter from the Forest farm." That was my
introduction.
"I've known you before," was his answer. "I have often met you in Graz
when I was with the soldiers, but you have never recognised me."
"And why have you never made yourself known since you were from home?"
"I wanted to speak to you once, but I thought, 'A common soldier! Who
knows if he'd like it?'"
"Naturally--you a common soldier--and I absolutely nothing."
"Ah--not that," he rejoined. "You are already somebody. I know it
well."
"So they have buried Kickel to-day! And where are the others, then?"
"The few people have already gone on. Not many of them followed him. He
was only a poor pauper."
"You have surely been one of the bearers?"
"No," said he; "I have only followed on after. There has been no
praying even, because they said he had been a heathen. I thought to
myself that he wasn't any worse than most other people, and that he had
had bad luck--it was certainly his fate. Now in God's name he has
rest."
"What bad luck did he have, then?" was my question. I believed that I
was at last near to the satisfaction of my old and now re-awakened
curiosity.
"You will have heard of the story before," said my road companion.
"Yes, just rumours; but never knew where they came from. Do you know
anything exactly?"
"I know all about it," said he.
And I had led him on so far that he began to tell me everything. It is
again many years since then, but one never forgets such things, and now
I will tell the story of Kickel.
* * * * *
"Isidor Kickel was the only son of a steward at the Schloss of Prince
Schwarzenberg, in Muran. He had to study, and wanted to also, but
suddenly dropped it all in his seventeenth year, just when he should
have repeated his annual course. After that he tried an agricultural
school, learnt forestry and became a forester. But he only got as far
as being a forester's assistant or huntsman, and as this he was placed
in the Imperial forests at Neuberg. He ought, perhaps, to have been a
scholar, for there was something speculative in him, and he read many
books in his spare time. He was much too much in books. He said such
things oftentimes, and kept so away from church, that the people said:
'Huntsman Kickel has fallen away from the Christian faith.' That often
happens to-day," commented my travelling companion. "At that time it
was something novel. No one knew how he felt about it himself inside;
the people said it could not feel quite right. Otherwise he was not a
bad man. Once when he was in the church during a feast, he took money
out of his purse and wanted to give it to the bell-pocket man, but the
man passed by him as if to say, 'You monster, your money is too bad for
me.' Whereupon Kickel gave the coins to a poor little old woman; they
were not too bad for her, and the people laughed no end! Once a swallow
flew into the church and could not get out again, because the windows
have wire-netting and the door was at the far end. And no one could
catch her, either. So Kickel went into the church every day and the
sacristan thought he had been converted. Kickel, however, was only
taking in bird's food so that the swallow should not starve. And as to
conversion, there was nothing of that sort at all. In spite of
everything, people liked him well, and nobody could accuse him of
anything wrong. Then he married a schoolmaster's daughter from the
Veitsch, and had seven children; and of these he lost six by death
while they were quite little, three at one time, and his wife also
through consumption. Only one single child remained to him, a boy
called Oswald. One often sees that people who are unable to believe in
a future life are all the more thirsty for life here, and for love too.
It was just that way with Kickel. His love for this only child became
an overwhelming passion, and all and everything which lay in his power
that could make life lovely for the handsome, merry young Oswald, he
gave him. He had him taught, and when he was twelve years old wanted to
send him to an Institute in Vienna; but, on the other hand, Oswald
wanted to stay among his home mountains, and the huntsman had to force
himself to thrust him out. A few years later he secured him a clerkship
in the State Forestry Office at Neuberg, and a few years after that
there was a wedding.
"Oswald's choice was a pretty daughter of a burgher of Mürzzuschlag.
The love-story apparently was just like other love-stories, and went
much the same road as they. Oswald became master-woodman in the
Hochschlag, behind Mürzsteg, on the high Veitsch. After barely a year,
naturally enough, the 'little lad' was there, and Oswald could say to
his father, 'I can wish nothing better for myself, and only fear lest
things should become worse!' So he must have been a much more contented
man than his father, and no one ever heard how he stood with regard to
religion. His wife," continued my lad, "has often told me since, that
he laid his arm round her neck and said, 'God be praised and thanked
that I have you!' So he must have believed _something_. And his
father, Kickel, just revelled in joy because all went so well for his
Oswald.
"Huntsman Kickel lived in an old dismantled farm-house, in the only
room which was still habitable. At that time he was suffering with a
wound in his foot, which he had got by leaping from a rock, and for
months he had been unable to go into the coverts. As Oswald on Sundays
went up to his mountain-hut from the valley, his way led him past, and
he spoke to his father to ask him how the sick leg was, and to bring
him this thing or the other and to chat with him about his wife and his
dear boy. He often brought the boy with him, too, and then Huntsman
Kickel would throw his boxes and cupboards open and invite son and
grandson to take with them anything that particularly pleased them.
"'Take--just take them all,' he would always say; 'they're mere
nothings. The little bit of pleasure in this world! I've had my share,
and there's nothing beyond. And if things get worse--end it!'
"Then that Sunday came. It was in August, and so hot in the morning
that the young master-woodman Oswald begged a glass of water of his
father on his way to church.
"'When I come back after noon,' he said to his father, 'I will pay you
for the well with St. John's blessing.' He meant by that he would bring
wine with him. The old man answered that he ought to take it up to the
little wife and the laddie. But they were in want of nothing; the
little wife sang from dawn onwards like a lark, and little Anderl had
laughed in his sleep as he, Oswald, before going out, had kissed him.
"'Ah, you poor burdened fellow!' Huntsman Kickel said again, and
clapped his son on the shoulder and then 'Good-bye till this
afternoon.'
"About midday a storm arose over the Hochschwab Mountain. It did not
rain much, but the thunder crashed heavily several times. An hour later
a woodman came down from the hill, who called into the open windows,
'Huntsman Kickel, look up if you want to see the smoke!'
"'What's the matter? What are you shouting for?' asked Kickel, who was
quite alone in the house.
"'The mountain-hut is burning--the lightning struck it.'
"'What do you say, woodman?'
"'When the master-woodman comes home he will find nothing left.
Everything has gone!'
"'The wife? The child?'
"'Everything's gone. If your son goes home, prepare him for it. I must
go to Niederalpel.'
"That was what the woodman said--and then he was off."
I cannot repeat as my fellow-wayfarer told it; it went straight into my
heart like a knife. But the young fellow remained unmoved, and went on
telling:
"No one knows what Huntsman Kickel thought of this message. At first he
wanted to go up to the heights where the black smoke was making the
whole heavens dark. But he was unable, because of the bad foot. 'His
wife and his child! His wife and his child! His wife and his child!'
The whole time just that. 'End it!' Kickel went into the parlour and
stared out of the window. 'Now he's coming--and now he's coming.' He
took the gun from the wall and stood in the middle of the parlour and
looked out through the window to the path outside. At last he came,
Oswald, out from the green wood; he did not look up, and still did not
know anything about it, and came so quickly and gaily to the house
where his father lived. And Huntsman Kickel aimed through the window
and shot him down."
"Jesus Christ!" I cried. "Had he gone mad?"
"One cannot say that," answered the lad. "When his old housekeeper came
home, he sent her at once for a cart, went to the police, and when
examined he said he could not endure that his Oswald should have
trouble and go on living, and he had thought to himself, 'He knows
nothing, and needs to know nothing. That useless grieving for many a
day and year is quite unnecessary. A quick death, and you are after
them, you are set free from everything--and I, your father, can do you
no better service than that.' He said, 'I did not aim badly; and now,
your honours, please make an end of me.' I believe they gave him
fifteen years, but when the Kaiser married in fifty-four they let him
off the rest."