Читать книгу The Forest Farm: Tales of the Austrian Tyrol - Peter Rosegger - Страница 7

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The church of the Alpine village of Ratten contains a nearly life-size equestrian statue, standing to the left of the high altar. The horseman is a splendid warrior; he wears a crested helmet and moustaches black as ebony. He has drawn his broad and gleaming sword and is using it to cut his cloak in half. At the foot of the prancing steed cowers the figure of a ragged beggar-man.

My mother used to take me to this church when I was still a little whipper-snapper, hardly up to the height of an ordinary person's trousers. Near the church stands a lady-chapel, famed for its many graces; and here my mother loved to pray. Often, when there was not another soul remaining in the chapel and twelve o'clock struck and the steeple sent the midday Angelus clanging out across the summer Sunday, mother would still be kneeling on one of the chairs and sending up her plaint to Mary. The Blessed Virgin sat on the altar, with her hand in her lap, and moved not head, nor eyes, nor hands; and so, little by little, my mother was able to say what she wanted.

I preferred to stop in the church and gaze at the fine rider on his horse.

And once, when we were on our way home and mother leading me by the hand (and I had always to take three steps for every one of hers), I raised my little head to her kind face and asked:

"Why does the man on horseback keep on standing against the wall up there? Why does he not ride out through the window into the street?"

Then mother answered:

"Because you put such childish questions and because it is only a statue, the statue of St. Martin, who was a soldier and a very charitable and pious man and is now in Heaven."

"And is the horse in Heaven too?" I asked.

"I will tell you all about St. Martin," said mother, "when we come to a nice place where we can sit down and rest."

And she led me on and I skipped along beside her. But I was very anxious for the resting-place and constantly cried out:

"Mother, here's a nice place!"

But she was not content until we came to the shady wood, where a flat, mossy stone stood; and then we sat down. Mother fastened her kerchief tighter round her head and was silent, as though she had forgotten her promise. I stared and stared at her lips and then peeped through the trees; and once or twice it appeared to me as though I had seen the grand horseman riding through the wood.

"Yes, true enough, laddie," mother began, suddenly, "we must always help the poor, for the love of God. But you won't find many fine gentlemen like St. Martin nowadays, trotting about on their tall horses. You know how the icy blast rushes over our sheep-walk, when winter is nigh—your own little paws were nearly frozen there last year! Well, it was just such a stretch of heath that St. Martin came riding over one evening late in autumn. The earth is frozen hard as stone; and it makes a fine noise each time the horse puts hoof to ground. The snowflakes dance all round about; not one of them melts away. Night is just beginning to fall; and the horse clatters over the heath and the rider draws his white cloak round him as close as ever he can. Well, as he rides on like that, suddenly he sees a little beggar-man squatting on a stone, with nothing to cover him but a torn jacket; and he shivering with cold and lifting his sad eyes to the tall horse. Whoa! When the horseman sees that, he pulls up his steed and bends over and says to the beggar, 'Oh, my dear, poor man, what alms can I give you? Gold and silver I have none; and my sword you could never use. How can I help you?' Then the beggar lets his white head fall on his half-naked breast and heaves a sigh. But the horseman draws his sword, takes his cloak from his shoulders and cuts it across the middle. One half of the garment he hands down to the poor shivering grey-beard: 'Take this, my needy brother!' he says. The other half of the cloak he flings round his own body, as best he can, and rides away."

This was the story my mother told me; and, with those cold autumn evenings of hers, she made that lovely midsummer day feel so chilly that I shivered.

"But it's not quite finished yet, my child," mother continued. "You know now what the horseman with the beggar in the church means; but you have not heard what happened afterwards. When the rider, later on at night, lies sleeping peacefully on his hard bolster at home, the same beggar whom he met on the heath comes to his bedside, smiles and shows him the half cloak, shows him the marks of the nails in His hands and shows him His face, which is no longer old and sorrowful, but radiant as the sun. This same beggar from the heath was Our Lord Himself.—There, laddie, and now we must be getting on."

Then we stood up and climbed into the woods on the mountain-side.

On the way home, we met two beggar-men; I peered very closely into their faces; for I thought:

"Our Lord may be concealed behind one of them."

On the evening of the same day, I was told to take off my Sunday suit—for father was a thrifty man—and was playing and skipping about in my shabby workaday breeches, with only the brand-new grey jacket, which I did not want to take off and had begged to be allowed to wear for the rest of the day. Mother was attending to her household duties and I ran out to the sheep-walk, for it was my business to bring the sheep home to the fold, including a little white lamb that was my own property.

As I hopped along, throwing stones into the air and trying to hit the golden evening clouds, suddenly I saw an old, white-headed and very poorly dressed man squatting on a rock a little way off. I stopped, greatly startled; dared not take another step; and thought to myself:

"Now this is most certainly Our Lord."

I trembled with fear and joy and simply had no notion what to do.

"If it is Our Lord," I said to myself, "then surely I must give Him something. If I go home now, so that mother comes and looks out and sees me and tells me how the matter stands, He might be gone in the meantime; and that would be disgraceful and ridiculous. I think it is He beyond a doubt: the one whom the horseman met looked just like that."

I went a few steps back and began to tear at my grey jacket. It was no easy work: the coat fitted so tightly over my coarse linen shirt; and I did not want to be puffing and panting, lest the beggar-man should notice me too soon. I had a yellow-handled pocket-knife, brand-new and just lately sharpened. I took it out of my pocket, put the little coat under my knee and began to divide it down the middle.

It was soon done and I stole up to the beggar-man, who seemed to be half asleep, and put his part of my coat on his head:

"Take this, my needy brother!" I said, silently, in my thoughts.

Then I put my half of the coat under my arm, gazed at Our Lord a little longer and then drove the sheep from the walk.

"He is sure to come in the night," I thought, "and then father and mother will see Him and, if He wishes to stop with us, we can fit up the back room and the little altar for Him."

I lay in the cupboard-bedstead, beside father and mother, and I could not sleep. The night passed and He Whom I was expecting did not come.

But, early in the morning, when the barn-door cock crowed the men and maids out of their beds and when the noisy working-day began in the yard outside, an old man—he was nicknamed Mushroom Moses—came to my father, brought him the piece of my jacket which I had given away and told how I had wantonly cut it the evening before and flung one half at his head as he was taking a rest on the sheep-walk after hunting for mushrooms.

Thereupon my father came up softly to my bed, with one hand hidden behind his back.

"Look here, lad, just you tell me what you've done with your new Sunday jacket!"

That soft slinking with his hand behind his back at once struck me as suspicious; and my face fell; and, bursting into tears, I cried:

"Oh, father, I thought I was giving it to God!"

"Lord, lad, what a duffer—what an idiot you are!" cried my father. "You're much too good for this world and yet quite too silly to die! What you want is to have your soul thrashed out of your skin with a stout besom."

And then, when the hand with the twisted birch-rod came in view, I raised a great hullabaloo.

Mother came rushing up at once. As a rule, she seldom interfered when father was correcting me; but, this time, she caught hold of his hand and said:

"I dare say I can sew the jacket together again, father. Come with me: I have something to tell you."

They both went out into the kitchen; I think they must have discussed the story of St. Martin. Presently, they came back to the room.

Father said:

"All right now, be quiet; there's nothing going to be done to you."

And mother whispered in my ear:

"It's all right, your wanting to give your jacket to Our Lord; but it'll be better still if we give it to the poor boy down in the valley. Our Lord lies hidden in every poor man. St. Martin knew that too, you see. So there. And now, lad, jump out of bed and get your breeches on; father's not so very far off yet with that birch of his!"