Part 10

This was horrible. I did not know whether Kickel or House-father Zutrum had killed his son. I dared question no farther, and when I did try it later Simmerl gave no answer, for he was asleep.

Next morning we were awakened by a clear voice, "Schoolboys, it's time!" A bough of elder swayed about in front of the heart-shaped opening in the shutter, and through it the sun shone hot and bright on to our snow-white beds, and the house-spring splashed outside. I should have liked to dress at the same time as Simmerl, but was shy about drawing my legs from under the coverlet. With a long arm I drew my trousers from the bench into bed, and slipped them on to my limbs with a suggestive slickness, and so out to the spring. After the washing the morning prayers. Simmerl, out of consideration for his guest, would have gone out during these, suggesting that he would then take me to the grey horse in the stable; but his mother said, "He will see enough grey horses during his life; you need the Holy Spirit in school. Now say your morning prayer. Both kneel together."

We knelt on the bench before the table, and each said an Our Father to himself, while it occurred to me, "We are not so strict at home." Certainly, our mother said one ought to say one's prayers, but she did not order one straight away on to the bench.

Now I was to see too what came of the prayers. We had hardly raised our elbows from the table when it was spread with a white cloth, and set with white platters and with white bread, and a brown soup was poured out of the spout of a bright tin pot. At home it was just the other way round, everything else brown and the soup white. There was no milk-soup for breakfast here, but coffee! I had already heard about it, that the grand people ate coffee, but that an old charcoal-burner had said, "My dear people, I am certainly black. Look at me and see if I'm black or no! But I'm not so black and bad as the black broth from Morocco. The devil has invented it, and the peasant will come to an end if he eats it."

I do not know if the charcoal-burner knew how wisely he had spoken, and I do not know if they had believed him. I only know that everyone was crazy for coffee, and that I could not help putting my spoon into the black soup--Ugh! that isn't good, that is as bitter as gall! The devil has certainly invented it----

"You haven't put any sugar," laughed Simmerl, and threw some pieces out of a cup into my bowl. Now it was a little different. Simmerl looked at me and grinned to himself. I should have liked to know why.

After breakfast it was "God keep you!" to the Zutrum people and off to school. I had become quite brave and held out my right hand when saying "Good-bye and thank you," just like a well-mannered, grown-up man, and it occurred to me, "How easy it is to be good when one is not at home!"

As we went along the hill-meadow old Kickel was to be seen with a wooden fork spreading haycocks out so that they should dry better in the new sunshine. To-day I saw, for the first time, that he was very decrepit, bent double almost to cracking-point, and swaying and limping at every step. His knee-breeches had certainly once been leather, but now they had many, many patches of other stuffs stuck on with large, ungainly stitches. His feet and very brown ankles were bare. Breast and arms were covered by a coarse brown shirt; the old felt hat sat like a battered inverted kettle on the little grey head, but all the same it was decorated by an eagle's feather, which stood up high into the air. Knees, elbows and fingers were all so terribly bony that one felt as if the old man would never be able to do anything properly for the rest of his life; he was like a deformed and twisted oak tree up on the high land where the storm-wind cripples everything. When he caught sight of us he raised his hat politely and then he went on working.

"Oh, I say," I questioned my schoolfellow, "what is the matter with Kickel?"

"When we are higher up I'll tell you," answered Simmerl, and when we came into the wood, where the ground became more level, he put his arm in mine, and said, "He had a son, and he shot him."

"By accident? On purpose?" I asked, horrified.

"On purpose--quite on purpose."

"What had he done then--the son?"

"Nothing; he was a thorough good fellow, my father said."

"Good God! And did he hate his son so dreadfully then?"

"He loved his son ever so much; much too much."

"And therefore shot him down?"

"Well, I don't know myself how it was," acknowledged Simmerl.

"So Kickel is mad?" I put in.

"Not mad, but a bit crazy, certainly; a bit crazy all his life, and people say one can't imagine how sharp he used to be, and what a fine keeper he was up there, and how well educated! But the people say that the many books he read must have sent him silly."

I quickened my steps.

"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."

I went thoughtfully along the woodland path, and said:

"It's almost beyond belief."

"It was best," continued my companion, "that they fetched him away at once and took him to Loeben. He couldn't have lived after knowing the worst of all."

"What the woodman said--was it not true, then?" I asked it with my breath stopping.

"Yes, the lightning had certainly struck the hill-hut and it was burnt down, but nothing had happened to Oswald's family."

* * * * *

It's awful to think of the fate of some men!

We went on together for a while; neither said a word.

At last I stood still and asked, "When did he learn it?"

"When after nine years he had been free for half a year, and he came home and was always laughing in the air, then I told it him myself."

"How did you say it to him?"

"'Father Kickel, your daughter-in-law and your grandson Anderl are still alive, and all is well with them.'"

"And what did he say to that?"

"'So,' said he, 'they are still alive? And I had always dreamt that they were all dead, all! God, what tales the young people tell!' And then he laughed again."

"Ah--mad then!"

"It must have been so," said my companion. "For a while after that he tried to earn his bread as a farm-servant, but later on, as he couldn't succeed in that, he came on the parish. As a rule, one saw nothing amiss with him, but many a time one did--many a time one did."

"You knew him quite well?" I asked the young fellow.

"Well, naturally," was his answer; "he was my grandfather."

XII

How I Came to the Plough

This is one of the very shortest, but also one of the most important chapters in my story. It takes me out of my first childish youth and my herding time, and brings me to the days of my young manhood and of work filled with conscious purpose.

It needed many an artful trick before I managed to get promoted from cowherd to ploughman. I had to sprain my foot, so that I could not run after the cattle properly; I had to find birds' nests in the meadow, which inclined my younger brother to take over my herdsman's duties in my stead; lastly, I had to coax Markus the farm-hand, who had driven the plough till then, into declaring that it was an easy-going implement, as simple to handle as a pocket-knife, and that I--the callow lad--was fairly strong enough and fit to guide the plough.

And I stood there and drew myself up until I reached at least as high as long Markus's shoulders, and I shook one of the fence-posts until it groaned--as a proof of my fitness for the plough. But my father laughed and said:

"Get out, you're a little swaggerer! What you need is a good breeches-dusting given you every day. And now he's pretending to be grown up. Very well, take hold; it won't last long!"

We were in the fields when he spoke. Markus stood back; and I took the plough by the horns.

The plough in the neighbourhood of my home is different, certainly, from the bent bough of the savage, but it remains a clumsy, imperfect implement. The farmer puts it together himself out of birch-wood, fetching only the iron portions from the smith and the wheels from the cartwright. The chief parts of the plough are the coulter, or plough-iron, which cuts the turf vertically, and the share, which slices it horizontally, thus creating a grassy sod which has four sides to it, and is about a span wide and half a span thick. Then there is the mould-board, which lifts the cut sod out of the furrow and turns it over, so that the grassy side comes to lie at the bottom. Further portions, by means of which these chief parts are fastened to the body of the plough, are called the coulter-beam, the sill-beam, the "cat." All these appliances have to be in duplicate, as required by the progress up and down the hilly field, turn and turn about. In front is the beam, lying on the axle-tree, to which a pair of oxen are usually harnessed. At the back of the plough, three "horns" or tails stick out; these are the handles by which the plough is driven by a powerful man. It depends upon the driving of this ploughman whether the sod be made wide or narrow and the furrow deep or shallow; it is this man's duty to fix and lift the plough at the edge of the field; he must also be able, on stony ground, to pull the plough out of the way of any larger stone than usual, for the oxen cannot be brought suddenly to a standstill; and the plough, if left to itself, would soon go to wreck and ruin.

Over and above this ploughman, the vehicle also needs a driver, who leads the oxen in such a way that one of the pair is always stepping in the furrow and the other on the sod. Then, lastly, there has to be a "follower." This is usually a girl, who comes after the plough with a hoe, presses down the sods that have not been well turned, cuts out faulty furrows, and, in short, acts as the corrector of the plough.

You see that the thing is far from simple. It means a long day's work to dig an acre and a half of sloping land with one plough. Well, how did the young ploughman fare?

I had taken the bull firmly by the horns. But it really was a bull. The apparatus had allowed Markus to handle it like a toy; it looked as though he only held on to the handles for fun. It was quite a different business with me. The cattle pulled. I was plunged to right and left by the handles; the plough tried to jump out of the rut; and my little bare feet got caught now and then under the clods.

"He's too short in the buttocks!" I heard father and the labourer say, laughing.

This speech roused me. My honour, my manhood were at stake. I no longer wanted to be the duffer who had to sit at the bottom corner of the table, who dared not put a word in edgewise, who, if he knew of anything that had happened, was free to go and talk it over with the sheep and calves outside. I had the most ambitious views; I wanted to be big and strong and independent, like the farm-labourer. And behold, the higher a man aims, the taller he grows! I drove the plough and cut a passable furrow. The earth-worms, disturbed by the plough, lifted their heads in surprise and looked up to see who was ploughing to-day!