The Forest Farm: Tales of the Austrian Tyrol

  V

  How Little Maxel's House was Burned Down

  How well I remember that night!

  A dull report, as if the trap-door of the hay-loft had slammed to, wokeme up. And then someone rapped on the window and called into theliving-room: whoever wanted to see little Maxel's house burning mustget up and go and look.

  My father sprang out of bed; I began to cry, and immediately thoughtabout rescuing my rabbit. When other people lost their heads in momentsof emergency it was always blind Julia, our old servant, who calmed usdown again. So now, too, she remarked it wasn't our house that wasburning, but little Maxel's, and that was half an hour away; that itwas not even certain that little Maxel's house was burning; that a wag,passing by, had thrown the lie in through the window; and that quitepossibly no one _had_ done so at all, but it had only happened to us ina dream.

  Meanwhile she pulled on my breeches and shoes, and we hurried out ofthe house to look.

  "Oh dear! oh dear!" cried my father. "It's all gone already!"

  Over the Waldr?cken, which stretches like a wide-bowed saddle acrossour part of the country, dividing it into Highlands and Lowlands, theflame streamed steady and clear toward us. No hissing nor cracklingwas to be heard; the beautiful new house, only finished a few weeksbefore, was burning like oil. The air was damp, the stars were hidden;now and again there was a growl of thunder, but the storm was drawinggently away in the direction of Berkfeld and Weitz.

  The lightning--so the man who had wakened us now said--had been dartinghither and thither, had described a great cross in the sky, and thendescended. The fiery point at its lower end had never died out, but hadgrown rapidly larger, and then he--the man--had thought to himself,"There now, it's gone and struck little Maxel's!"

  "We must go and see if we can't do something to help," said my father.

  "Help, would you?" rejoined the other. "Where the thunderbolt falls,_I_ shan't meddle! Man mustn't work against his Maker, and if He castsfire upon a house He certainly intends that house to burn. Besides, youknow, anything struck by lightning can't be quenched!"

  "Nor your idiocy neither!" cried my father; and then, angry as I hadseldom seen him, he shouted in his face, "You've been struck silly!"

  He left him standing there, and took me by the hand and quickly away.We descended into the Engtal and went along by the Fresenbach, where wecould see the fire no longer, only the fiery clouds. My father carrieda two-handled pail, and I advised him to fill it at the Fresen. Myfather didn't listen, but said several times to himself, "Maxel--tothink of that happening to Maxel!"

  I knew little Maxel quite well. He was an active, cheery little chap,somewhere in the forties; his face was full of pock-marks, and hishands were brown and rough as the bark of the forest trees. So long asI could remember he had been a woodcutter in Waldbach.

  "If it was anyone else's house that was burning down," said my father,"well--it would just be his house burning down!"

  "Isn't it the same with little Maxel?" I asked.

  "With him it's his all that's being burnt: everything that he hadyesterday, and has to-day, and might have had to-morrow."

  "D'you mean the lightning has struck Maxel himself?"

  "It were better so, boy! I don't grudge him his life--God knows I don'tgrudge it him--but if he might have confessed first, and not been inany mortal sin, I could say downright it were best for him if thelightning had struck him too."

  "Then he would be already up there in Heaven," I remarked.

  "Here, don't go paddling about in that wet grass. Keep close behind meand catch on by my coat-tail. About Maxel--I'll tell you somethingabout him."

  The path sloped gently upwards. My father said, "It must be aboutthirty years since Maxel came. Poor people's child. At first he wentout as herdboy among the peasants; later, when he'd grown up a bit, hewent in for the woodcutting--a thorough workman, and always industriousand thrifty. When he became foreman, he asked the landlord to allow himto clear the Sour Meadow on the Gfarerh?he and keep it for life,because he was so mighty set upon having his own little bit of land.This was willingly granted, and so, every day, when his woodcuttinghours were over, Maxel was up there on the Sour Meadow, cutting awaythe undergrowth and trenching it, and grubbing up stones and burningthe roots of the weeds; and in two years the whole place was drained;and there's good grass growing there, and he's even sown a little patchof rye. When he'd got on so far that he had tried it with cabbage andseen how much the hares relished it, he set about getting some timber.They couldn't give him that, like the Sour Meadow--he must purchase itwith labour. So he let his wages stand, and he felled the trees andhewed them square and cut them up for building timber, and all that inthe free time when the other workmen were long since lying on theirstomachs smoking their pipes! And the next thing was he began to getsome of the other woodcutters to help him at such work as a mancouldn't do single-handed, and this way he built his house on the SourMeadow. Five years he laboured at it, but there--you've seen foryourself how it stood there with the golden-red walls, with the clearwindows, and the decoration all round the roof--something grand to see!There's quite a fine little property been made of the Sour Meadow; andhow long ago was it that our pastor in the catechism class held littleMaxel up as an example of energy and industry? Next month he wasmeaning to get married: and to think he's risen from being a poorpauper lad to the brave householder and house-father!--Take off yourcap to him, boy--And now suddenly there's an end of everything; all theindustry and toil of years has gone for nothing; Maxel stands againto-day on the same spot as he did at the very beginning."

  At that time I derived all my piety from the Bible, and so I met myfather's story with: "Our Heavenly Father has punished Maxel because hewas set upon earthly things like the heathen, and has probably takentoo little thought for Eternity. Look at the birds of the air, they sownot, neither do they reap----"

  "Hold your tongue!" interrupted my father angrily. "The man who saidthat was King Solomon--it's easy enough for _him_ to say it: only letsome of our sort try it! I wouldn't be sure of myself; if it happenedto me like little Maxel, I should just lose all heart--I'd just turnidle and good for nothing. Why, if a man puts a match to a thatchedroof he's put in prison, and quite right too--he doesn't deserveanything better. But when Someone throws fire down out of Heaven on abrand-new house that a poor, plucky working-man has built----"

  He stopped himself. We were now upon the height, and in front of usblazed the homestead of little Maxel. The house was just falling in.Several people were there with axes and pails, but there was nothing tobe done but just stand and look on as the last charred bits tumbledinto ruins. The fire wasn't raging, it didn't roar nor crackle, itdidn't flicker wildly in the air: the whole house was just one flamerising, hot and steady, towards the Heaven whence it had come.

  A little way off from the conflagration lay the stone-heap where Maxelhad carried the stones from the Sour Meadow. Thereon he was nowsitting, the little brown, pock-marked man, and looking at the furnace,the heat of which was streaming towards him. He was half clad, hadthrown his black Sunday coat, the only thing he had rescued, over him.The neighbours were holding a little aloof. My father greatly desiredto utter a word of sympathy and comfort, but somehow he too didn'tventure to go near him. Maxel went on sitting there in a way that madeus think every moment, now, _now_ he would leap up and utter somefearful curse against Heaven, and then throw himself into the flames!

  And at last, when the fire was only licking the ground and the barewall of the hearth was staring out of the ashes, Maxel got up. Hewalked over to the glowing mass, picked up an ember, and lighted hispipe with it.

  I was still very small at that time and didn't think much. But this Iremember: when I saw little Maxel in that dawn-twilight standing beforethe burnt ruin of his home, sucking the blue smoke from his pipe andblowing it away from him, my heart grew suddenly hot within me. As if Ifelt how mighty man is, how much greater than his fate, and how therewas no finer scorning of it than calmly bl
owing tobacco-smoke in itsface.

  And when the pipe was well alight, he sat down again on the stone-heapand gazed away into the distance. You would like to know what he wasthinking? So should I.

  Later, little Maxel went rummaging among the ashes of his house, anddrew from them his great wood-axe, and made it sharp again on agrindstone of the neighbourhood and set to work again. Since then manyyears have passed, and to-day on the Sour Meadow there lie beautifulfields, and on the place of the burnt-out farm a new one has arisen. Itis lively with young folk, and the house-father, little Maxel, teacheshis sons to work--but also allows them to smoke. Not too much, but justa pipe in due season.