XVII
Forest-Lily in the Snow
(A chapter from _The Forest Schoolmaster_)
A load is off our hearts. The storm has fallen. A soft wind came andgently relieved the trees of their burdens. There were a few mild days;then the snow settled and we can now go where we will with snow-shoes.
Nevertheless, something has happened lately over in the Karw?sser.Berthold, whose family increases from year to year, and from year toyear has less to eat--Berthold has turned poacher. A wood-cutter is abetter hand at this than any of us, who remain faint-hearted humbugsall our lives long.--Poor people need not marry, says the wood-cutter.Well, according to custom and practice, they have not married, but theyhave kneeled before me in the forest ... and ... and now they are allstarving together.
So Berthold has turned poacher. Wood-cutting brings in far too littlefor a roomful of children. I send them all the food I can, but it isnot enough. He must have good, strong soup for the ailing wife and apiece of meat for the children; so he shoots the roe that comes hisway. To this, then, has passion brought him, until Berthold, who once,as a herd, was such a good and jolly fellow, has, through poverty,pride, and the love of his own, grown into a pretty criminal.
I have once already pleaded with the gamekeeper for God's sake to be alittle, just a little lenient with the poor husband and father: he wassure to mend his ways, I said, and I would go bail for him. Up to thepresent he has not mended his ways; but the events of these wild winterdays have made him weep aloud, for he loves his Lily-of-the-Forestabove everything.
It happened on a murky winter evening. The little windows are walled upwith moss; outside new flakes are falling on the old snow. Berthold issitting up with the children and with his sick Aga, only waiting untilthe eldest girl, Lily, comes back with the milk which she has gone tobeg of a neighbouring hermit on the Hinterkar. For the goats at homehave been killed and eaten; and, if only Lily would return, Bertholdmeans to go into the forest with his gun. For the roe cannot be far toseek in this weather.
But it grows dark and Lily does not return. The snow falls thicker andheavier, night draws in and Lily does not come. The children by now arecrying for their milk; the father is eager to be after his game; themother sits up in bed:
"Lily!" she calls. "Wherever are you, child, trotting about in thatpitch-dark forest? Come home!"
How can the sick woman's weak voice reach the wanderer through thefierce snowstorm?
As the night grows darker and stormier, Berthold's craving to gopoaching grows deeper, while his fears for his Lily-of-the-Forest risehigher and higher. She is a frail little twelve-year-old girl. True,she knows the precipices and the wooded mountain-paths; but the pathsare hidden by the snow and the precipices by the darkness.
At last, the man leaves his house to go in search of his child. Forhours he roams and shouts through the storm-swept wilderness; the windfills his eyes and mouth with snow; he has to put forth all hisstrength to get back to his hut.
And now two days pass. The snow keeps on falling; Berthold's hut isalmost snowed in. They do their noisy best to console themselves: Lilyis sure to be at the hermit's. This hope is destroyed on the third day,when Berthold, after struggling for hours over the snow-clad landscape,succeeds in reaching the hermitage. True, Lily was at the hermit'sthree days ago, but left early on her way home with the milk-pot.
"Then my Lily-of-the-Forest lies buried in the snow," says Berthold.
Whereupon he goes to other wood-cutters and begs, as no one has everseen this man beg before, that they will come and help him look for hisdead child.
They find Lily-of-the-Forest on the evening of the same day.
Down a lonely forest-glen, in a dark and tangled thicket of young pinesand larches, through which no snowflake can make its way and upon whichthe loads of snow lie heaped and arched till the young branches groanagain, in this thicket Forest-Lily is found sitting on the ground, onthe dry pine-needles, amid a family of six roe-deer.
It is a very wonderful story. The child, returning home, lost her wayin the forest-glen; and, as she was no longer able to cope with themasses of snow, she crept into the dry thicket to rest. She did notlong remain alone. Hardly had her eyes begun to close, when a herd ofdeer, old and young together, came up to her and sniffed at the littlegirl and looked at her with gentle eyes of pity and understanding, andwere not the least afraid of this human thing, but stayed and lay downand gnawed the little trees and licked one another and were quite tame:the thicket was their winter home.
The next day everything was muffled up in snow. Forest-Lily sat in thedark, which was only tempered by a faint twilight, and refreshedherself with the milk which she was taking to her people, and nestledup against the kind animals so as not to become quite numb with cold.
Thus passed the grim hours while she was lost. And, whenLily-of-the-Forest had already laid her down to die and, with hersimple fancy, asked the animals to stay with her faithfully in her lastdying hour, suddenly the roe-deer began to snuffle very strangely, andlifted their heads, and pricked up their ears, and broke through thethicket with wild bounds, and darted away with shrill cries.
And now the men work their way through the snow and underwood and seethe little maiden and hurrah for joy; and old R?pel, who is among them,shouts:
"Didn't I tell you to come and look in here with me,--that perhaps shewas with the deer?"
And so it was; and when Berthold heard that the beasts of the foresthad saved his child from being frozen to death, he yelled like amadman:
"Never again! As long as I live, never again!"
And he took the rifle with which for many years he had killed thebeasts of the forest and smashed it on a stone.
I saw it myself; for I and the parish priest were in the Karw?sser tohelp look for Lily-of-the-Forest.
This Lily-of-the-Forest is almost as soft and white as snow and has theeyes of a roe-deer in her little head.