Page - 165 - in The Forest Farm - Tales of the Austrian Tyrol

Father sobbed for emotion. The thought that his wife was now in Heaven lit a very welcome light in his sad heart. The hands of the old soot-browned clock upon the wall—the same which had faithfully told the hours, the joyful hours and the sorrowful, since the woodman’s glad wedding-day; which pointed to the hour of one, early on Sunday morning, when the little boy was born; which, after many years, showed the hour of six, when the delivering angel passed through the room and pressed his kiss on the sufferer’s forehead—the hands now met at twelve o’clock. And, when that departed life was thus measured, like a single day, from sunrise to sunset, my father said: “Boy, go outside to the cow-shed and lie down for a while in the straw and rest a bit. I will wake you when the time comes.” I went outside, took a last look at the bier in the passage and then stepped out into the free, cold, starry night. The sickle of the moon had sunk behind the woods; it had sent its last beam gliding through the crevice of the door on the shroud that covered the bier: to-morrow, when it rose again, the poor creature would be lying in the dark earth. So now I lay in the shed on the straw, where my two brothers generally slept. The three chained oxen stood or lay beside me, grinding their teeth as they chewed the cud. It was warm and damp in the stable; and the moisture trickled from the half-rotten ceiling down on my straw couch. There was once a time—ay, the drops came quivering down as now—the dew-drops from the trees, when mother was taking you to make your first communion. I see you now, Peterl. You have a new jacket on, with a sprig of rosemary in your hat. Your little snow-white shirt shows round your neck above the waistcoat; and your cheeks are rosy red with scrubbing. Mother is wearing a bright-coloured dress, a brown apron and a black, tight-fitting jacket. Her broad neckerchief is of red silk and shines like fire and flame. A white-and-green spray of flowers sticks out of her bosom. On her head, she wears a high and costly golden cap, as was the fashion thenadays throughout the country; and the curls peep out on either side of the forehead, gleaming black like the two great pupils of her eyes and soft and dainty like the lashes on her lids. Her cheeks are tinged with the pink of the dawn; her chin is white and daintily curved. Her red lips wear a little smile and, at the same time, scold you, my little man, because you are skipping so pertly over the stones and roots and knocking the nails out of your shoes. No child alive has ever seen his mother in the full flower of her beauty; and yet how splendid it is, boy, even now! All’s aglow in the wood and alight in the young larches; and