VIII THE FALL OF THE GOOSE GIRL

BACK of our house was a long row of tenements, inhabited by the poorer class of Gentiles. These peasants were at the verge of starvation, although usually in the summer and autumn they lived rather comfortably, indulging in such luxuries as palenka, salt pickles and smoked bacon, heavily covered by paprika. If in the winter they had cabbage soup and a scanty potful of beans they were fortunate; while only an occasional midnight incursion into some more fortunate neighbour’s kitchen brought a hasty mouthful of meat. My mother owned the tenements and as a result there was a certain deference paid me by these peasants, especially in the winter time, when I did not treat my mother’s well-stocked larder too honestly, answering their appeal for food.

Three races were represented by these tenants of ours; Slovaks, Magyars and Gypsies. The last named were the musicians of the town and had given up their nomadic habits, while the first two were almost literally “the hewers of wood and drawers of water.” I was on the best terms with the Gypsies, especially with one who played the cornet and played it with all the fervour of his Gypsy nature. Whatever musical education I have, I purchased its beginning from him, paying in buttered rolls and Sabbath cakes for Schubert’s Serenade and the Swan Song from Lohengrin—two of my favourite songs even yet. The goose girl’s parents were our tenants during this period. Her father was a pseudo Magyar: that is, a Slav who had changed his name and swore in the Magyar language while he continued to drink palenka like the Slovak he was, and beat or otherwise abused his family like the brute who is pretty much alike among all the fallen children of men. The goose girl had long ago stopped herding geese. She had been a nurse-maid and later a very indifferent house servant, accused by her many mistresses of theft, lying and excessive vanity. To the last named quality of her nature I could have borne abundant evidence, for she persuaded me on a moonlight night to bring her one of my younger sister’s ball dresses, which she put on in the shadow of a pear tree standing far back in our garden. As she emerged into the moonlight, looking to me like a fairy princess, she demanded my obeisance, and made me call her “Kis Aszonka,” which is the Hungarian term for a young lady of the upper class and is never applied to a peasant girl. As a peacock spreads his feathers, so the goose girl spread the train of my sister’s gown, dragging it over the dewy grass, much to my dismay then and more to my sorrow the next day, when my sister discovered the green spots upon her best gown.

Not long after this, I heard that my childhood’s friend had run away from home. Her father cursed more than usual, her mother cried and the neighbours said: “I told you so.” When later I asked her father what had become of his daughter he replied: “I suppose she has gone to the devil.”

I do not know how long a time had passed since her disappearance, when a certain spring came with unusual rapture, swept across the meadows, drove the ice out of the river in a night and climbed the foothills of the Carpathians, leaving the big mountains still covered by snow. It was a Sunday and May-day, the Gypsies had gone to the houses of the nobility and also to the lesser folk, in whose pockets they suspected small change which they would lure out by their stirring music. The peasant lads had gathered at the inn and were boasting of their prowess in climbing May-poles and of their eagerness to climb an unusually tall and smooth one, at whose top tempting prizes of coloured neckerchiefs and bottles of palenka awaited the man who could make his boast true. The room in which the peasants gathered was a bare one, although a few coloured prints of anæmic-looking saints hung upon the once whitewashed wall. In one corner on the beaten earth floor was a bundle of straw which served as beds for poorer wayfarers, while the better furnished adjoining room was reserved for the higher class of guests, none of whom had yet arrived, as it was still early. Even when a boy I had a curious interest in people and always disregarded class distinctions. I wanted to see that May-day celebration as the peasants saw it. I wasn’t merely curious; I know that I celebrated with them. I felt sorry if the rain spoiled their holidays and that day was unusually happy because the weather was fine. A square-jawed, heavy-faced lad, whom my mother had hired to work in the field, was my sponsor and guide. He wore his very best and most gorgeous garments and from his rakish hat hung rather defiantly the feather of a cock with whose erstwhile owner, this youth, whose name was Shimek, shared his predilection for a fight. “First music, then a fight and after the fight, a girl to love.” This was Shimek’s Sunday program, although to do him justice, he went to church in the morning. One must not believe, though, that he was seriously concerned about his soul; for the plan of salvation, if he ever thought of it, was expressed by him in the song, sung by just such youths through many generations:

While they had no fiddler to make merry for them, they had the goose girl’s father—who could evoke music out of a threshing flail. This he did by rubbing the flail over one of his fingers which he held on the table. The result was a rumbling sound, not unlike the monotonous notes of a bass viol. In a quavering voice he began singing to his accompaniment a familiar song, the swinging melody of which was snatched from his lips by the ever ready Shimek, who knew every song born in the merry heart of the Slovak and who taught me many of them, none of which I have forgotten. This is the song he sang:

All the half-drunk guests sang the chorus:

Above the noisy chorus came the rumbling of Matushek’s improvised instrument which he rubbed over his fingers until the blood came spurting out. Even then he would not stop, until every verse was sung:

Many times the crowd sang the ringing chorus, accompanying it with their feet upon the floor and their fists upon the table. As they sang, the sound of bells came nearer and nearer, not clear enough at first to disturb the revellers. Then it grew louder and louder, until just before it stopped, some one heard it. The tumult ceased and every one ran to the door to see the omnibus whose coming was still the event of the day. It had undergone some changes since I first knew it in my early boyhood, although the changes were only external. Upon its new covering of leather was printed in three languages, “Omnibus to Hodowin, tour et retour, one florin.” The “tour et retour” was the same in all the languages and at first puzzled every one except a few of the elect who, thanks to some French phrases which had filtered into our community, understood its meaning. To proceed rearward out of the stage was doubly difficult that day, as each of the passengers, who were all women, had a baby wrapped closely in a linen sheet, hanging from her shoulders. Some fifteen women finally drew themselves and their precious burdens out of the tunnel of the stage, and from the depths of sundry wrappings one could hear the voices of their charges. The fact that they could be heard at all out of the mass of feather pillows and linen sheets unto which they had sunk, proved their great lung capacity.

When the last passenger had left the stage, the peasants returned to the room which they had so lately deserted—followed by the women, who silenced the cries of the infants with milk, out of bottles in various stages of uncleanliness. The women themselves ate heartily of the rye bread which was sold them at the inn and drank freely of the palenka generously offered by the numerous Sunday guests.

Just one woman held her baby close to her breast and shamefacedly nourished it in the darkest corner she could find. She was the mother of her child. The other women, most of them much older than she, had been in Vienna and gathered these little ones as they would have garnered any remunerative crop.

In a high gray house facing the general hospital, these little ones were born, thousands of them every month, tens of thousands every year; some of them born on fine linen, out of love, most of them born on coarse cotton, out of love’s counterfeit; but all of them born out of wedlock.

Because the young mother wore the garb of the city, I felt free to talk to her. I addressed her in German and when she lifted her face and looked into mine, I recognized the long lost goose girl. Shimek, my guardian during these festal hours, recognized her as quickly as I had. “Boze muy, boze muy,” he cried, “it is Katuska!”

Her father, stick in hand, jumped to his feet at the mention of his daughter’s name and before we knew it the stick had fallen upon her head, and she was crying piteously while the baby, too, lifted up its voice. Mockingly the old man walked up and down before his daughter and called her “Kis Aszonka.” “With whose baby have I the honour of making acquaintance?” he asked. I do not recollect all that happened but the stick suddenly came down more heavily than before upon the girl’s back. “A bastard brat!” her father cried; “a bastard brat!” he repeated, almost insane from anger. “No, not into my house—not into my house!” Slamming the door of the inn behind him he left his daughter among the gaping crowd of men. Shimek drew me aside and whispered: “Would I stand by him if he took the goose girl and her baby into the loft above the stable? Would I intercede with my mother in his behalf if she should object?”

I remember distinctly the feeling which came over me when I held that poor little waif in my arms and carried it as far as the loft in which Shimek was domiciled, while he led the goose girl who was too weak to walk alone. I then felt for the first time what I have since felt a thousand times when holding children in my arms: a joyous sense of relationship which no one can dispute and the children cannot repudiate. I hovered around that stable many a day and heard with aching heart the crying of the baby.

My mother visited the goose girl in the stable loft and her baby in the manger. She made some kind of satisfactory arrangements with Shimek; for that evening we saw him, Katuska and the baby, sitting under the pear tree in the garden. He was singing lustily the love-song he had carelessly thrown at many a maiden before:

There was only one answer which the goose girl could give him and as soon as the bans were read in church, the marriage was solemnized. Mother and I were guests of honour and that which I enjoyed most about the wedding was, that I held the baby while the priest spoke the words which united in holy wedlock—Shimek and the goose girl.