IN THE EARLY MORNING
"Rise Mary! Night is darkening and the wintry storms are raging--but be comforted, in the early morning, in the Spring garden, you will see me again."
The countess woke from a short slumber as if some one had uttered the words aloud. She glanced around the dusky room, it was still early, scarcely a glimmer of light pierced through the chinks of the shutters. She tried to sleep again, but in vain. The words constantly rang in her ears: "In the early morning you will see me again." Now the chinks in the shutters grew brighter, and one golden arrow after another darted through. The countess threw aside the coverlet and started up. Why should she torment herself with trying to court sleep? Outside a dewy garden offered its temptations.
True, it was an autumn, not a spring garden. Yet for her it was Spring--it had dawned in her heart--the first springtime of her life.
Up and away! Should she wake Josepha, who slept above her? Nay, no sound, no word must disturb this sacred morning stillness.
She dressed and, half an hour later, glided lightly, unseen, into the garden.
The clock in the church steeple was striking six. A fresh autumn breeze swept like a band of jubilant sprites through the tops of the ancient trees, then rushing downward, tossed her silken hair as though it would fain bear away the filmy strands to some envious wood-nymph to weave nets from it for the poor mortals who might lose themselves in her domain.
On the ground at her feet, too, the grasses and shrubs swayed and rustled as if little gnomes were holding high revel there. A strange mood pervaded all nature.
Madeleine von Wildenau looked upward; there were huge cloud-shapes in the sky, but the sun was shining brightly in a broad expanse of blue. The bells were ringing for early mass. The countess clasped her hands. Everything was silent and lonely, no eye beheld, no ear heard her, save the golden orb above. The birds carolling their matin songs, the flowers whose cups were filled with morning dew, the buzzing, humming bees--all were celebrating the great matins of awakening nature--and she, whose heart was full of the morning dew of the first genuine feeling of her life, was she alone not to join in the chorus of gratitude of refreshed creation?
There is a language whose key we do not possess. It is the Sanscrit of Nature and of the human soul when it communes with the deity. The countess sank silently down on the dewy grass. She did not pray in set words--there was an interchange of thought, her heart spoke to God, and reason knew not what it confided to Him.