The Forest Farm: Tales of the Austrian Tyrol

XVI
The Stag on the Wall[17]

Heidepeter's[18] house was the very last in the Wilderness. It stood on the heath where the forests began, lying very high on a piece of almost level ground. The grey stones showed through the grass in many places before the house.

Upon the heath lay numberless rocks patched and traceried with moss. Here and there on the sandy ground between the rocks stood a silver-birch tree whose leaves were for ever whispering and trembling, until in late autumn they were blown away and lost over the moor.

This moorland house bore upon the king-post of the big living-room the date 1744; it was the first house ever built in the Wilderness.

Peter's forefathers must have been well-to-do, for they possessed much forest and were cattle-breeders as well. The trees had all been cut down and had grown up again, but now Count Frohn—who possessed a fine castle, the Frohnburg, on the other side of the hill, and, neighbouring the heath, a great deal of forest and its hunting, and hitherto a feudal right to the peasants' service—was gradually possessing himself of the squatters' forest as well; so that it had now come to this—that without his permission no tree might be felled nor branch broken. The poor outlying folk of the Wilderness were neglected by all the authorities and courts of justice—indeed, almost forgotten. So they clung to their grain-growing—to the scanty husbandry possible to the place.

To the moorland house was now left only the steep fields sloping down to the ravine, and a narrow strip of meadow. Everything else, such as rights of wood and pasture, was heavily burdened with taxation and feudal duty.

On the weather-stained wooden wall of the house, facing north, and beneath the deep, overhanging roof, was the figure of an animal, carved out of wood. Any stranger, when now and again such a one passed by the house on his wanderings among the mountains, came to a halt before this thing and gazed at it. Pedlars with their packs, Carniolas with sieves and all manner of wooden wares, glass-cutters, old-clothes men, who were always glad to go about the Wilderness in summer-time, would prop their back burdens against their sticks and have a good look at the figure before they entered the house. Even the beggars did the same, with a benevolent expression on their faces, as if admiring the man who had carved it.

But as to what the object represented opinions were very various. One said it was a cow, another a donkey, another a chamois; some, however, said it must be a stag. This last supposition was well founded. From the creature's head protruded two little bits of wood, notched saw-like on top, which just conceivably stood for the antlers. Heidepeter was very decided about the matter: the animal really was a stag.

All sorts of sayings and proverbs about the stag had become bound up with the household life inside the walls.

When Peter said to his little son Gabriel, "Laddie, we must hunt the red stag to-morrow!" he meant nothing else than that the child must get up at sunrise next morning. The stag was always glowing red at that hour.

When the wind blew from the north the figure beat its feet upon the wall, and the people inside would say, "The stag is knocking again; there'll be a change in the weather."

Through one whole summer Gabriel had been watching how two sparrows built their nest between the wooden antlers. (At that time a new bird's nest was the greatest joy on earth to Gabriel.) He could no longer resist the temptation, leant a ladder against the wall, and was going to climb up. Then, by chance, his father came along, and he, usually so mild, gave the boy quite unmistakably to understand that he must, once and for all, leave the stag in peace.

About this carved figure there clung a curious memory for Heidepeter.

While still in the early days of his married life there came some bad years, and there in the Wilderness nothing would grow or ripen save turnips and cabbage. Rye and oats started hopefully enough in the spring, greening and gathering strength for an output of ears. Then, in the heart of summer, came rain and cold, and the mists hung about the hills for weeks. The corn grew pale and stooped, as if it would rather creep back into the sheltering soil. There followed a few weeks of sunshine after that, but before even the grain could mature the snow had fallen. And so it happened several years running.

The people lost heart and hardly cared to sow in the following spring, or had no seed to sow with.

And Peter's grain-chest became empty, and he was unable to lend his neighbours seed, as he used to; indeed, he was barely able to provide for his own household. But he was not discouraged, for he had a young, careful, industrious wife in the house—a happy state of things which will always render bad years more bearable.

His wife had proposed that they should grow more turnips than usual, and a big plot of cabbages, to make up to some extent for the lack of grain. Peter followed her counsel, and by June new beautiful seedlings were set out. In July down came the rain and mist on the Wilderness again, but the garden stuff went on slowly, steadily growing.

During the raw days Clara stayed a good deal within doors, because Peter, mindful of her condition, would not have her out in the cold. But one day he came to her room, saying:

"I don't know what it means, Clara; there must have been some animal about—a whole row of the best cabbages has been eaten."

The farm-hand said he had that morning seen a stag running from the kitchen-garden towards the forest.

Heidepeter set to work and heightened the wooden paling round the garden. When, very soon after, he saw Count Frohn crossing the field with his gun and gilded powder-horn and proudly curving cock's feather, he called to him, "Your honour, I humbly beg pardon—but there's a stag that's always coming out of the forest, and he'll eat up all our cabbages."

"Indeed?" answered the huntsman, laughing, and whistled to his dogs and went on.

A night or two later the beast came again and ate a whole row of cabbages. And so the next time Peter met the Count he said, for the second time, and with his hat under his arm, "I hope your honour won't be angry with me—but I've no help for it, save this. There's been so many bad seasons, and we've hardly anything left to eat. Please rid us of that stag, for he's eating up our food-stuff, leaf and root and all."

"Aha!" remarked the Count facetiously. "You'd prefer eating the stag with your cabbages to that, wouldn't you, eh?"

He whistled to his dog and went on.

Quite downhearted, Peter went home, sat down on the bench, and for some time did not say anything. Suddenly he struck his fist upon the table and sprang up. Before he went out again, however, he went to his wife and said quietly:

"Clara, I'm the sort of man that people can twist round their finger—they call me a milksop; but it may be I'm going to pick a quarrel for once. Don't you take on about it. I thought it'd never have to come to this, but now I see quite plain that it must."

Then he went out and made the garden fence higher still, and plaited thorns in and out, and chained the house-dog at the corner of the garden.

But the stag still came and ate the cabbages.

Then Heidepeter got up, and took the road under his feet, and climbed over the steep slope until he came to Castle Frohnburg on the other side of the mountain. There a great shooting party were assembled, noblemen and gentlemen, and all drinking out of foaming beakers "Good luck to the sportsman!"

Peter strode through the midst of them and right up to his master. He seemed like another man than himself to-day. "I must defend my bread, sir," he said in a stifled voice; "but so that I mayn't do any wrong, I've come all this way to tell you I'm going to shoot the stag."

Then the Count roared with laughter and called out:

"You little fool! why do you put yourself to the trouble?" He whistled for his two bulldogs. Heidepeter said never another word, but went away. And that night he shot the stag.

Early next morning the huntsmen came to his house and clapped irons on his hands. He suffered this quietly, and said to his inconsolable wife:

"Don't you take on about it—don't you take on. The Lord will come and do justice yet!" And so Peter was taken away and thrown into prison as a poacher.

Week after week he sat there. He was thinking neither about his cabbages, nor the stag, nor the Count, but only about his wife. "Perhaps her hour will come to-morrow, perhaps even to-day, and thy wife is giving thee thy first-born. She is holding him out to thee, but thou dost not hold out thy arms to take him! Or there may be some difficulty about the sponsors, and thou art not by her side to help her in her great need; and when thou returnest to thy house thou wilt find a mother without her child, or an orphan—or perhaps neither mother nor child"——

In his anguish he could have dashed his head against the wall, but he remained quiet, only constantly murmuring to himself as he stared at the brick floor:

"The life of a man is a wheel. To-day I'm down and you're up; to-morrow it's the other way about. Yes, Count Frohn, round and rolling—that's how God has made this world!"

At last, when his time was up, Heidepeter was set free. He hurried to his home, and found his wife and child both doing well.

The very next day he went into his workshop and planed and carved a stag out of some boards. And this he nailed to the weather-stained grey wooden wall of his house in everlasting remembrance.

The dwellers of the Wilderness had by now come to respect the determined Heidepeter, because he had been brave enough to tackle the old devil—as they called the Count under their breath; they had never expected this of the good-natured man. It was, however, the first and last time it happened: Peter saw there was nothing to be gained that way, and the burden of years and oppression took the heart out of him. He came to the conclusion this world is a valley of sorrow, and who can better it? The reasonablest thing is to endure. He no longer opposed himself to the Count; indeed, he used to say it was better to suffer wrong than do wrong. And he went on in his own quiet way, and the people, because of his gentle, submissive bearing, called him a milksop.[19]