THE BELSNICKEL
ON the afternoon of the entertainment there was an air of excitement,
both within and without the schoolroom. Outside the clouds hung low; the
winter wheat in the Weygandt fields seemed to have yielded up some of
its brilliant green; there was no color on the mountain-side which had
been warm brown and purple in the morning sunshine. A snowstorm was
brewing, the first of the season, and Millerstown rejoiced, believing
that a green Christmas makes a fat graveyard. But in spite of the
threatening storm nearly all Millerstown moved toward the schoolhouse.
The schoolroom was almost unrecognizable. The walls were naturally a
dingy brown, except where the blackboards made them still duller; the
desks were far apart; the distance from the last row, where the
ill-behaved liked to sit, to the teacher's desk, to which they made
frequent trips for punishment, seemed on ordinary days interminable.
This afternoon, however, there was neither dullness nor extra space. The
walls were hidden by masses of crowfoot and pine, brought from the
mountain; the blackboards had vanished behind festoons of red flags and
bunting. Into one quarter of the room the children were so closely
crowded that one would have said they could never extricate themselves;
into the other three quarters had squeezed and pressed their admiring
relatives and friends.
Grandfather and Grandmother Gaumer were here, the latter with a large
and mysterious basket, which she helped Katy to hide in the attic, the
former laughing with his famous brother. The governor had come on the
afternoon train, and Katy had scarcely dared to look at him. He was
tall,--she could see that without looking,--and he had a deep, rich
voice and a laugh which made one smile to hear it. "Mommy Bets" Eckert
was here, a generation older than the Gaumer men, and dear, fat Sarah
Ann Mohr, who would not have missed a Christmas entertainment for
anything you could offer her. There were half a dozen babies who cooed
and crowed by turns, and at them cross Caleb Stemmel frowned--Caleb was
forever frowning; and there was Bevy Schnepp, moving about like a
restless grasshopper, her bright, bead-like eyes on her beloved Katy.
"She is a fine platform speaker, Katy is," boasted Bevy to those nearest
her. "She will beat them all."
Alvin Koehler, tall, slender, good-looking even to the eyes of older
persons than Katy Gaumer, was an usher; his presence was made clear to
Katy rather by a delicious thrill than by visual evidence. It went
without saying that his crazy father had not come to the entertainment,
though none of his small businesses of bricklaying, gardening, or bee
culture need have kept him away. When Koehler was not at work, he spent
no time attending entertainments; he sat at his door or window, watching
the mountain road, and scolding and praying by turns.
Upon the last seat crouched David Hartman, sullen, frowning, as ever.
The school entertainment was not worth the attention of so important a
person as his father, and his mother could not have been persuaded to
leave the constant toil with which she kept spotless her great,
beautiful house.
Millerstown's young bachelor doctor had come, and he, too, watched Katy
as she flew about in her scarlet dress. The doctor was a Gaumer on his
mother's side, and from her had inherited the Gaumer good looks and the
Gaumer brains. Katy's Uncle Edwin and her Aunt Sally had brought their
little Adam, a beautiful, blond little boy, who had his piece to say on
this great occasion. Uncle Edwin was a Gaumer without the Gaumer brains,
but he had all the Gaumer kindness of heart. Of these two kinsfolk,
Uncle Edwin and fat, placid Aunt Sally, Katy did not have a very high
opinion. Smooth, pretty little Essie Hill had not come; her pious soul
considered entertainments wicked.
But Katy gave no thought to Essie or to her absence; her mind was full
of herself and of the great visitor and of Alvin Koehler. For Katy the
play had begun. The governor was here; he looked kind and friendly;
perhaps he would help her to carry out some of her great plans for the
future. Since his coming had been announced, Katy had seen herself in a
score of rôles. She would be a great teacher, she would be a fine lady,
she would be a missionary to a place which she called "Africay." No
position seemed beyond Katy's attainment in her present mood.
Katy knew her part as well as she knew her own name. It was called
"Annie and Willie's Prayer." It was long and hard for a tongue, which,
for all its making fun of other people, could not itself say th and v
with ease. But Katy would not fail, nor would her little cousin Adam,
still sitting close between his father and mother, whom she had taught
to lisp through "Hang up the Baby's Stocking." If only Ollie Kuhns knew
the "Psalm of Life," and Jimmie Weygandt, "There is a Reaper whose Name
is Death," as well! When they began to practice, Ollie always said,
"Wives of great men," and Jimmie always talked about "deas" for "death."
But those faults had been diligently trained out of them. All the
children had known their parts this morning; they had known them so well
that Katy's elaborate test could not produce a single blunder, but would
they know them now? Their faces grew whiter and whiter; the very pine
branches seemed to quiver with nervousness; the teacher--Mr. Carpenter,
indeed!--tried in vain to recall the English speech which he had written
out and memorized. As he sat waiting for the time to open the
entertainment, he frantically reminded himself that the prospect of
examinations had always terrified him, but that he invariably recovered
his wits with the first question.
Once he caught Katy Gaumer's eye and tried to smile. But Katy did not
respond. Katy looked at him sternly, as though she were the teacher and
he the pupil. She saw plainly enough what ailed him, and prickles of
fright went up and down her backbone. His speech was to open the
entertainment; if he failed, everybody would fail. Katy had seen panic
sweep along the ranks of would-be orators in the Millerstown school
before this. She had seen Jimmie Weygandt turn green and tremble like a
leaf; she had heard Ellie Schindler cry. If the teacher would only let
her begin the entertainment, she would not fail!
But the teacher did not call on Katy. No such simple way out of his
difficulty occurred to his paralyzed brain. The Millerstonians expected
the fine English entertainment to begin; the stillness in the room grew
deathlike; the moments passed, and Mr. Carpenter sat helpless.
Then, suddenly, Mr. Carpenter jumped to his feet, gasping with relief.
He knew what he would do! He would say nothing at all himself; he would
call upon the stranger. It was perfectly true that precedent put a
visitor's speech at the end of an entertainment, rather than at the
beginning, but the teacher cared not a rap for precedent. The stranger
should speak now, and thus set an example to the children. Hearing his
easy _th's_ and _v's_, they would have less trouble with their English.
Color returned to the teacher's cheeks; only Katy Gaumer realized how
terrified he had been. So elated was he that he introduced the speaker
without stumbling.
"It is somebody here that we do not have often with us at such a time,"
announced Mr. Carpenter. "It is a governor here; he will make us a
speech."
The governor rose, smiling, and Millerstown, smiling, also, craned its
neck to see. Then Millerstown prepared itself to hear. What it heard, it
could scarcely believe.
The governor had spoken for at least two minutes before his hearers
realized anything but a sharp shock of surprise. The children looked and
listened, and gradually their mouths opened; the fathers and mothers
heard, and at once elbows sought neighboring sides in astonished nudges.
Bevy Schnepp actually exclaimed aloud; Mr. Carpenter flushed a
brilliant, apoplectic red. Only Katy Gaumer sat un-moved, being too much
astonished to stir. She had looked at the stranger with awe; she
regarded him now with incredulous amazement.
The governor had been away from Millerstown for thirty years; he was a
graduate of a university; he had honorary degrees; the teacher had
warned the children to look as though they understood him whether they
understood him or not.
"If he asks you any English questions and you do not know what he means,
I will prompt you a little," the teacher had promised. "You need only to
look once a little at me."
But the distinguished stranger asked no difficult English questions; the
distinguished stranger did not even speak English; he spoke his own
native, unenlightened Pennsylvania German!
It came out so naturally, he seemed so like any other Millerstonian
standing there, that they could hardly believe that he was distinguished
and still less that he was a stranger. He said that he had not been in
that schoolroom for thirty years, and that if any one had asked him its
dimensions, he would have answered that it would be hard to throw a ball
from one corner to the other. And now from where he stood he could
almost touch its sides!
He remembered Caleb Stemmel and called him by name, and asked whether he
had any little boys and girls there to speak pieces, at which everybody
laughed. Caleb Stemmel was too selfish ever to have cared for anybody
but himself.
Still talking as though he were sitting behind the stove in the store
with Caleb and Danny Koser and the rest, the governor said suddenly an
astonishing, an incredible, an appalling thing. Mr. Carpenter, already a
good deal disgusted by the speaker's lack of taste, did not realize at
first the purport of his statement, nor did the fathers and mothers,
listening entranced. But Katy Gaumer heard! _He said that he had come a
thousand miles to hear a Pennsylvania German Christmas entertainment!_
He said that it was necessary, of course, for every child to learn
English, that it was the language of his fatherland; but that at
Christmas time they should remember that they had an older fatherland,
and that no nation felt the Christmas spirit like the Germans. It was a
time when everybody should be grateful for his German blood, and should
practice his German speech. He said that a man with two languages was
twice a man. He had been looking forward to this entertainment for
weeks; he had told his friends about it, and had made them curious and
envious; he had thought about it on the long journey; he knew that there
was one place where he could hear "Stille Nacht." He almost dared to
hope that this entertainment would have a Belsnickel. If old men could
be granted their dearest wish, they would be young again. This
entertainment, he said, was going to make him young for one afternoon.
The great man sat down, and at once the little man arose. Mr. Carpenter
did not pause as though he were frightened, he was no longer
panic-stricken; he was, instead, furious, furious with himself for
having called on Daniel Gaumer first, furious with Daniel Gaumer for
thus upsetting his teaching. He said to himself that he did not care
whether the children failed or not. He announced "Annie and Willie's
Prayer."
It seemed for a moment as though Katy herself would fail. She stared
into the teacher's eyes, and the teacher thought that she was crying. He
could not have prompted her if his life had depended upon it. He glanced
at the programme in his hand to see who was to follow Katy.
But Katy had begun. Katy's tears were those of emotion, not those of
fright. She wore a red dress, her best, which was even redder than her
everyday apparel; her eyes were bright, her cheeks flushed, she moved
lightly; she felt as though all the world were listening, and as
though--if her swelling heart did not choke her before she began--as
though she might thrill the world. She knew how the stranger felt; this
was one of the moments when she, too, loved Millerstown, and her native
tongue and her own people. The governor had come back; this was his
home; should he find it an alien place? No, Katy Gaumer would keep it
home for him!
Katy bowed to the audience, she bowed to the teacher, she bowed to the
stranger--she had effective, stagey ways; then she began. To the staring
children, to the astonished fathers and mothers, to the delighted
stranger, she recited a new piece. They had heard it all their lives,
they could have recited it in concert. It was not "Annie and Willie's
Prayer"; it was not even a Christmas piece; but it was as appropriate to
the occasion as either. It was "Das alt Schulhaus an der Krick," and the
translation compared with the original as the original Christmas
entertainment compared with Katy Gaumer's.
"To-day it is just twenty years
Since I began to roam;
Now, safely back, I stand once more,
Before the quaint old schoolhouse door,
Close by my father's home."
Katy was perfectly self-possessed throughout; it must be confessed that
praised and petted Katy was often surer of herself than a child should
be. There were thirty-one stanzas in her recitation; there was time to
look at each one in her audience. At the fathers and mothers she did not
look at all; at Ollie Kuhns and Jimmie Weygandt and little Sarah Knerr,
however, she looked hard and long. She was still staring at Ollie when
she reached her desk, staring so hard that she scarcely heard the
applause which the stranger led. She did not sit down gracefully, but
hung halfway out of her seat, bracing herself with her arm round little
Adam and still gazing at Ollie Kuhns. She had ceased to be an actor; she
was now stage-manager.
The teacher failed to announce Ollie's speech, but no one noticed the
omission. Ollie rose, grinning. This was a beautiful joke to him. He
knew what Katy meant; he was always quick to understand. Katy was not
the only bright child in Millerstown. He knew a piece entitled "Der
Belsnickel," a description of the masked, fur-clad creature, the St.
Nicholas with a pelt, who in Daniel Gaumer's day had brought cakes for
good children and switches for the "nixnutzige." Ollie had terrified his
schoolmates a hundred times with his representation of "Bosco, the Wild
Man, Eats 'em Alive"; it would be a simple thing to make the audience
see a fearful Belsnickel.
And little Sarah Knerr, did she not know "Das Krischkindel," which told
of the divine Christmas spirit? She had learned it last year for a
Sunday School entertainment; now, directed by Katy, she rose and
repeated it with exquisite and gentle painstaking. When Sarah had
finished, Katy went to the Sunday School organ, borrowed for the
occasion, on which she had taught herself to play. There was, of course,
only one thing to be sung, and that was "Stille Nacht." The children
sang and their fathers and mothers sang, and the stranger led them all
with his strong voice.
Only Katy Gaumer, fixing one after the other of the remaining performers
with her eye, sang no more after the tune was started. There was Coonie
Schnable; she said to herself that he would fail in whatever he tried to
say. It would make little difference whether Coonie's few unintelligible
words were English or German. Coonie had always been the clown of the
entertainments of the Millerstown school; he would be of this one, also.
But Coonie did not fail. Ellie Schindler recited a German description of
"The County Fair" without a break; then Coonie Schnable rose. He had
once "helped" successfully in a dialogue. For those who know no
Pennsylvania German it must suffice that the dialogue was a translation
of a scene in "Hamlet." For the benefit of those who are more fortunate,
a translation is appended. Coonie recited all the parts, and also the
names of the speakers.
_Hamlet:_ Oh, du armes Schpook!
_Ghost:_ Pity mich net, aber geb mir now dei' Ohre,
For ich will dir amohl eppas sawga.
_Hamlet:_ Schwets rous, for ich will es now aw hera.
_Ghost:_ Und wann du heresht, don nemhst aw satisfaction.
_Hamlet:_ Well was is's? Rous mit!
_Ghost:_ Ich bin dei'm Dawdy sei' Schpook!
To the children Coonie's least word and slightest motion were
convulsing; now they shrieked with glee, and their fathers and mothers
with them. The stranger seemed to discover still deeper springs of
mirth; he laughed until he cried.
Only Katy, stealing out, was not there to see the end. Nor was she at
hand to speed little Adam, who was to close the entertainment with "Hang
up the Baby's Stocking." But little Adam had had his whispered
instructions. He knew no German recitation--this was his first essay at
speech-making--but he knew a German Bible verse which his Grandmother
Gaumer had taught him, "Ehre sei Gott in der Höhe, und Friede auf Erden,
und Den Menschen ein Wohlgefallen." (Glory to God in the Highest and on
earth, peace, good will toward men.) He looked like a Christmas spirit
as he said it, with his flaxen hair and his blue eyes, as the stranger
might have looked sixty years ago. Daniel Gaumer started the applause,
and as little Adam passed him, lifted him to his knee.
It is not like the Millerstonians to have any entertainment without
refreshments, and for this entertainment refreshments had been provided.
Grandmother Gaumer's basket was filled to the brim with cookies,
ginger-cakes, sand-tarts, flapjacks, in all forms of bird and beast and
fish, and these Katy went to the attic to fetch. She ran up the steps;
she had other and more exciting plans than the mere distribution of the
treat.
In the attic, by the window, sullen, withdrawn as usual, sat David
Hartman.
"You must get out of here," ordered Katy in her lordly way. "I have
something to do here, and you must go quickly. You ought to be ashamed
to sit here alone. You are always ugly. Perhaps"--this both of them knew
was flippant nonsense--"perhaps you have been after my cakes!"
David made no answer; he only looked at her from under his frowning
brows, then shambled down the steps and out the door into the cold, gray
afternoon. Let him take his sullenness and meanness away! Then Katy's
bright eyes began to search the room.
In another moment, down in the schoolroom, little Adam cried out and hid
his face against the stranger's breast; then another child screamed in
excited rapture. The Belsnickel had come! It was covered with the dust
of the schoolhouse attic; it was not of the traditional huge size--it
was, indeed, less than five feet tall; but it wore a furry coat--the
distinguished stranger leaped to his feet, saying that it was not
possible that that old pelt still survived!--it opened its mouth "like
scissors," as Ollie Kuhns's piece had said. It had not the traditional
bag, but it had a basket, Grandmother Gaumer's, and the traditional
cakes were there. It climbed upon a desk, its black-stockinged legs and
red dress showing through the rents of the old, ragged coat, and the
children surrounded it, laughing, begging, screaming with delight.
The stranger stood and looked at Katy. He did not yet realize how large
a part she had had in the entertainment, though about that a proud
grandfather would soon inform him; he saw the Gaumer eyes and the Gaumer
bright face, and he remembered with sharp pain the eyes of a little
sister gone fifty years ago.
"Who is that child?" he asked.
Katy's grandfather called her to him, and she came slowly, slipping like
a crimson butterfly from the old coat, which the other children seized
upon with joy. She heard the governor's question and her grandfather's
answer.
"It is my Abner's only child."
Then Katy's eyes met the stranger's bright gaze. She halted in the
middle of the room, as though she did not know exactly what she was
doing. Their praise embarrassed her, her foolish anger at David Hartman
hurt her, her head swam. Even her joy seemed to smother her. This great
man had hated Millerstown, as she hated Millerstown, sometimes, or he
would not have gone away; he had loved it as she did, or he would not
have come back to laugh and weep with his old friends. Perhaps he, too,
had wanted everything and had not known how to get it; perhaps he, too,
had wanted to fly and had not known where to find wings! A consciousness
of his friendliness, of his kinship, seized upon her. He would
understand her, help her! And like the child she was, Katy ran to him.
Indeed, he understood even now, for stooping to kiss her, he hid her
foolish tears from Millerstown.