II

I failed--to return to our other circumstances--to take any pleasure in

the peasant's life and also I really lacked the strength for it. I then

took up a trade, but was not able to help my parents; I wanted to pay

my father for my Sunday board, which I had at home, but he would take

nothing from me, said that I was just as much his child as before, only

I must not burn so many rushes when I was home on Saturday nights.

"Oh, goodness me, let him have that pleasure: he hasn't so many!" my

mother would say and intercede for me.

Then things altered with me. I went into the world. It was hard parting

with my mother; but, in a short time, she was able to see that my life

had become happier.

And, now that happiness had come, envy soon came hobbling along--or was

it stupidity? A rumour passed through the forest hills:

"So far, it's all right with Peter; but, as always happens in town, he

is sure to fall away from the Christian faith."

And soon the talk grew:

"A nice story that! All of a sudden, he finds honest work too hard for

him and righteous fare not good enough, goes to town and eats

flesh-meat on Our Lady's day and falls away from the faith."

My mother laughed at first, when she heard that, for she knew her

child. But then the thought came to her: suppose it were true after

all! Suppose her dear child were forgetting God and going astray!

She knew no peace. She went and borrowed clothes from blind Julia and

borrowed three florins from a good-natured huckstress and

travelled--sick and infirm as she was, leaning with either hand on a

stick--to the capital. She wanted to see for herself what was true in

people's talk. She found her child a poor student in a black coat,

which he had had given him, and with his hair combed off his forehead.

None of this pleased her greatly, it is true; it succeeded, however, in

appeasing her. But, in the two days of her stay in town, she saw the

mad, frivolous doings on every side, saw the neglect of old customs

which she revered and the mocking of things that were sacred to her,

and she said to me:

"You will never be able to stay among people like those, child; they

would drag you down with them and ruin your soul."

"No, mother," I answered, "a man can think as he wishes; and people

can't take away good thoughts."

She said no more. But, when she returned to the forest hills and heard

the talk again, she was more dejected than ever.

It was all up now with the homestead. House and farm were sold, made

over to the creditors; my brothers and sisters engaged as servants with

strange farmers. The destitute parents were given a cottage that, until

then, had belonged to the property. My youngest brother, who was not

yet able to earn his bread, and one sister remained with them and

nursed poor mother. Father kept on going over the mountains to the

doctors', and all but promised them his own life, if they could save

the life of his wife.

In the cottage, things looked very wretched. The ailing woman suffered

in silence. The light of her eyes threatened to fail her, her mental

faculties appeared to fade. Death knocked at her heart with repeated

strokes. She often seemed to endure severe pain, but said nothing; she

no longer took any interest in the world, asked only after her husband,

after her children. And she lay years a-dying.

I often came to see her during that time. She hardly knew me, when I

stood by her bedside; but then again she would say, as in a dream:

"Is that you, Peterl? Praise and thanks be to God that you are here

again!"

During midsummer, we would carry her, once in a way, with bed and all,

out of the stuffy room into the air, so that she might see the sunshine

once more. I do not know if she saw it: she kept her eyes open and

looked up at the sun; her optic nerves seemed dead.

Then, suddenly, days came when she was different. She was cheerful and

longed to go out into the open.

"Do get quite well again, Maria," said her husband, "and we shall

remain together a long while yet."

"Yes," she answered.

I thought of all this on my way through the forest--and now it was all

over with this poor rich life.

When, at last, after walking for hours through the woods along the

mountain-path, I saw the thatched cottage on the hill-side, then it was

as though a misty shadow covered woods and plains and all; and yet the

sunlight hung over it. A puff of grey smoke rose from the little

chimney. Does she suspect my coming? thought I. Is she cooking my

favourite dish? No, strangers are preparing a funeral feast.

You stood long, Peterl, outside the half-open door; and your hand

trembled when at last it touched the latch. The door opened, you walked

in, it was dark in the narrow passage, with only a dim little oil-lamp

flickering in a glass, and yet you saw it clearly: against the wall,

under the smoky stairs, on a plank lay the bier, covered entirely with

a big white cloth. At the head stood a crucifix and the holy-water

stoup, with a sprig of fir in it....

You fell upon your knees.... And the tears came at last. The tears

which the mother's heart once gave us to take with us into this world

for our relief in sorrow and for our only consolation in the hour when

no other comfort reaches the soul, when strangers cannot understand us

and when the mother's heart has ceased to beat. Hail, O rich and

eternal legacy!

Now the door of the parlour opened softly and Maria, the younger

sister, stepped out. The girl at once began to cry when she saw the

brother of whom they had all spoken so often, for whom mother's last

glance had asked and who was far away when she closed her eyes. Now he

lay there on his knees and cried over the memory of her life.

Even her children here at home had slept through the night of the

death. Not till the glow of early morning lit up the little windows did

father go to the girls in the bedroom and say:

"Open your eyes and look out. The sun is already rising over the

Wechsel; and the Blessed Virgin is sitting on the mountain-top, with

the Child Jesus on her knee; and your mother is sitting on the stool

at her feet, with a spinning-wheel before her, weaving her heavenly

garment."

Then they knew at once that mother was dead.

"Would you like to look at her?" my sister now asked.

And she went to the head of the bier and slowly raised the shroud.

I saw my mother. Heaven's bliss still lay on the stiff, stark visage.

The load was gone from my heart, relieved and comforted; I looked upon

the dear features as though I were contemplating a white flower. It was

no longer the poor, sick, weary woman that lay before me: it was the

face lit up with a ray from the youthful days long past. She lay there

slumbering and was strong and well. She was young again and white and

gentle; she wore a little smile, as she often did when she looked at

the merry little fellow playing about with his toys at her feet. The

dark and glossy hair (she had no grey hairs yet) was carefully braided

and peeped out a little at the temples from under the brown kerchief,

the one which she loved best to wear upon her head when she went to

church on holidays. She held her hands folded over her breast, with the

rosary and the wax candle between them. She lay there just as though

she had fallen asleep in church on Whit Sunday, during the solemn High

Mass; and thus, even in death, she comforted her child. But the rough

hands clearly showed that the slumberer had led a hard and toilful

life.

And so you stood before this sacred image, nearly as still and

motionless as the sleeper.

At last, you whispered to your little sister, who stood softly weeping

by your side:

"Who closed her eyes?"

A sound of hammering came from the parlour. The carpenter was knocking

together the last dwelling-house.

After a while, Maria drew the shroud over the head again, as softly

and carefully as when she used to cover up our little mother, hundreds

and hundreds of times, in the long period of sickness.

Then I went into the small, warm parlour. Father, my elder sister, my

two brothers, of whom the younger was still a boy, came up to me with

mournful looks. They hardly spoke a word, they gave me their hands, all

but the little fellow, who hid himself in the chimney-corner, where we

could hear his sobbing.

Joseph the carpenter was calmly planing away at the coffin, which he

had now finished joining, and smoked his pipe as he did so.

Later, when the afternoon shadows had lengthened outside, far over the

glittering snow-clad meadow-land, when, in the parlour, Joseph was

painting the black cross on the coffin-lid, father sat down beside it

and said, softly:

"Please God, after all, she has a house of her own again."

On the first day after mother's death, no fire had been lit on the

cottage-hearth. One and all had forgotten that a mortal man wants a

basin of hot soup in the morning and at mid-day. On the other hand, a

blazing fire had been kindled on the field behind the little house, to

burn the straw bedding on which she had died, even as, long ago, the

forefathers had fanned their Odin fires, commending the beloved dead to

the Goddess Hella, the great concealer.[21]

I had sat down on the bench and lifted my little brother up to me. The

little man glanced at me quite fearsomely: I had a black coat on and a

white scarf round my neck and I looked very grand in his eyes. I held

his little hand, which already had horny blisters on it, in mine. Then

I asked father to tell us something of mother's life.

"Wait a little," answered father and looked on at the drawing of the

cross, as in a dream.

At last, he heaved a deep sigh and said:

"So it's finished now. Her cross and suffering lasted long, that's

true; but her life was short. Children, I tell you, not everyone has a

mother like yours. For you, Peter, she nearly gave up her life, when

you came into the world. And so they followed one after the other: joys

and sorrows, care and want, poverty and wretchedness! And, when I was

sick unto death and the doctors agreed that I must go the way of all

flesh, that there was no remedy for it, my wife never gave up hope,

never abandoned me. Day and night she stayed by my side, forgetting to

sleep, forgetting to eat a bit of bread. She almost poured life back

into me with her own breath--my dear, good wife."

His voice seemed about to break; he wiped the moisture from his eyes

with his coat-sleeve.

"No one would believe what good nursing can do," he continued. "I

became quite hale again. We lived on, faithfully and fondly; and that

you, Peter, found success and happiness away from home, that was your

mother's greatest joy. You yourselves know how she lay sick and dying

for seven years and more, how they turned us out of house and home, how

spitefully people talked and how, nevertheless, we had the greatest

trust in you children. For fully thirty years, we lived together in

wedlock. I always prayed that God might take _me_ first; now He has

chosen rather to take _her_. You mustn't cry like that, children: you

were always a help and a comfort to your mother."

He said no more.

When the carpentering of the coffin was done, father put shavings

inside it as a pillow. He had always had the habit, when he had done

his work, of going to his wife and saying:

"I've finished now."

And so, when he had put the shavings straight and made the other

preparations, he went out to the bier in the passage and said:

"I've finished now."

Late in the evening, when the crescent moon stood in the dark, clear

sky and shed its twilight over the woods and gleaming, snow-clad

meadows and over the little house in the forest on the hill-side, the

snow creaked continually on the roads and people came up from

farmsteads and distant cottages. Even though they had carried on loud

and cheerful conversations with one another on the paths by which they

had come, they became silent now that they were nearing the cottage and

we heard only the crackling of their footsteps on the snow.

In the small front passage, which was dimly lit by the little lamp,

everyone knelt on the cold clay floor and prayed silently before the

bier and then sprinkled it with holy water. After that, he went into

the parlour to the others, who sat round the table and the fireplace,

singing hymns and uttering pious reflections. They were all there to

accompany the poor woman of the house to her last resting-place.

I would have kept on standing by the bier, if the people had not been

there, so that I might look at my mother. I read my childhood and my

youth in her features. I thought that the bright eyes must open once

more and smile to me, that the word must once more come from those lips

which, in her loving-kindness, had been so soft and tender. But, though

I was her dear son and however long I might stand beside her--she now

slept the eternal sleep.

I went into the low-ceilinged kitchen, where the neighbours' wives were

cooking the funeral meal; I looked round in the smoke for my brothers

and sisters, that I might comfort them.

Inside, in the parlour, all were now as still as mice and in great

tension. Mathias, the old chamois-hunter, who wore a brown shirt and a

white beard, sat at the table and told a story:

"There was once a farmer," he began, "who had a wife, just a poor sick

wife. And, one day, one holy Easter morning, the wife died. The soul

departed from her body and stood there all alone in dark Eternity. No

angel was willing to come and lead her and show her in to the heavenly

Paradise. 'They are celebrating Christ's resurrection in Heaven'--so

the story ran--'and, at such times, no saint or angel has time to show

a poor soul the way.' But the poor soul was in inexpressible fear and

terror, for she reflected that, because of her illness, it was long

since she had been to church. And she already heard the devil whining

and whimpering and whistling and she thought that she was lost. 'O my

holy guardian angel and patron saint!' she cried. 'Come to my help in

this my need, or I must depart into hell-fire!' But they were all in

Heaven together, celebrating Our Lord's resurrection. Thereupon the

poor woman was nigh to fainting away, without comfort or support; but

suddenly Our Lady stood by her side, draped in a snow-white garment

with a wreath of roses as a beautiful ornament in her hand. 'Hail to

thee and comfort, thou poor woman!' she said, gently, to the departed

soul. 'Thou hast been a pious sufferer all thy life long and every

Saturday thou hast fasted, for my sake, and what thou hadst left over

through the fasting thou hast given to the poor, for my sake. This I

will never forget to thee; and, though my dear Son is commemorating His

glorious resurrection this day, yet will I think of thee and carry thee

to His golden throne and to thy joyful place in the rose-garden by the

angels, which I have prepared for thy sake and where thou canst wait

for thy husband and thy children.' And then Our Lady took the poor

woman by the hand and carried her up to Heaven. That is why I say that

fasting and alms-giving in honour of Our Lady are a right good work."

So spake Mathias in his brown shirt.

"Our dear woodman's wife, whom we are burying to-morrow, was also fond

of fasting," said one little woman, "and very fond of giving."

Father sobbed for emotion. The thought that his wife was now in Heaven

lit a very welcome light in his sad heart.

The hands of the old soot-browned clock upon the wall--the same which

had faithfully told the hours, the joyful hours and the sorrowful,

since the woodman's glad wedding-day; which pointed to the hour of one,

early on Sunday morning, when the little boy was born; which, after

many years, showed the hour of six, when the delivering angel passed

through the room and pressed his kiss on the sufferer's forehead--the

hands now met at twelve o'clock.

And, when that departed life was thus measured, like a single day, from

sunrise to sunset, my father said:

"Boy, go outside to the cow-shed and lie down for a while in the straw

and rest a bit. I will wake you when the time comes."

I went outside, took a last look at the bier in the passage and then

stepped out into the free, cold, starry night. The sickle of the moon

had sunk behind the woods; it had sent its last beam gliding through

the crevice of the door on the shroud that covered the bier: to-morrow,

when it rose again, the poor creature would be lying in the dark earth.

So now I lay in the shed on the straw, where my two brothers generally

slept. The three chained oxen stood or lay beside me, grinding their

teeth as they chewed the cud. It was warm and damp in the stable; and

the moisture trickled from the half-rotten ceiling down on my straw

couch.

There was once a time--ay, the drops came quivering down as now--the

dew-drops from the trees, when mother was taking you to make your first

communion. I see you now, Peterl. You have a new jacket on, with a

sprig of rosemary in your hat. Your little snow-white shirt shows round

your neck above the waistcoat; and your cheeks are rosy red with

scrubbing. Mother is wearing a bright-coloured dress, a brown apron and

a black, tight-fitting jacket. Her broad neckerchief is of red silk and

shines like fire and flame. A white-and-green spray of flowers sticks

out of her bosom. On her head, she wears a high and costly golden cap,

as was the fashion thenadays throughout the country; and the curls peep

out on either side of the forehead, gleaming black like the two great

pupils of her eyes and soft and dainty like the lashes on her lids. Her

cheeks are tinged with the pink of the dawn; her chin is white and

daintily curved. Her red lips wear a little smile and, at the same

time, scold you, my little man, because you are skipping so pertly over

the stones and roots and knocking the nails out of your shoes. No child

alive has ever seen his mother in the full flower of her beauty; and

yet how splendid it is, boy, even now! All's aglow in the wood and

alight in the young larches; and the blooms are fragrant and the birds

singing in every tree-top.

Ah, child-time is May-time!

A dull, heavy knocking roused me from my dream; I started up. Now they

are laying my mother in the coffin; now they are nailing down the lid.

I rushed out of the shed and into the house. There, in the passage,

stood the narrow, white, closed coffin; and the dimly-flickering

oil-lamp now lit up only the empty, desolate plank on which the bier

had stood.