The countess gazed into his face with timid admiration. He seemed to her the gloomy messenger of whom he spoke, she fancied she could hear the rustle of his wings as he drew nearer and nearer in ever narrowing circles, till escape was no longer possible. Like a hunted animal she took to flight--seeking deliverance at any cost. Thank Heaven, the carriage! Martin was driving up. A cold: "Farewell, I hope you may gain consolation and strength for the sad journey!" was murmured to the father who was going to bring home the body of his dead child--then she entered the carriage.
Freyer wrapped the fur robe carefully around the delicate form of his wife, but not another word escaped his lips. What he said afterward to his God, when he returned to the deserted house, Countess Wildenau must answer for at some future day.
[CHAPTER XXIII.]
NOLI ME TANGERE
"I have attracted you by a Play--for you were a child, and children are taught by games. But when one method of instruction is exhausted it is cast aside and exchanged for a higher one, that the child may ripen to maturity." Thus spoke the voice of the Heavenly Teacher to the countess as, absorbed in her grief, she drove through the dusk of a wintry morning. She almost wondered, as she gazed out into the grey dawn, that the day-star was not weary of pursuing its course. Aye, the mysterious voice spoke the truth: the play was over, that method of instruction was exhausted, but she did not yet feel ready for a sterner one and trembled at the thought of it.
Instead of the divine Kindergarten instructor, came the gloomy teacher death, forcing the attention of the refractory pupil by the first pitiless blow upon her own flesh and blood! Day was dawning--in nature as well as in her own soul, but the sun shone upon a winding sheet, outside as well as in, a world dead in the clasp of winter. Where was the day when the redeeming love for which she hoped would appear to her in the spring garden? Woe to all who believed in spring. Their best gift was a cold winter sunlight on snow-covered graves.
The corpse of her spring dream was lying on the laughing shores of the Riviera.
The God whom she sought was very different from the one she intended to banish from her heart. The new teacher seized her hand with bony fingers and forced her to look closely at the God whom she herself had created, and whom she now upbraided with having deceived her. "What kind of God would this creature of your imagination be?" rang in her ears with pitiless mockery. Aye, she had believed Him to be the Jupiter who loved mortal women, only in the course of the ages he had changed his name and now appeared as Christ. But she was now forced to learn that He was no offspring of the sensual fancy of the nations, but a contrast to every natural tendency and desire--a true God, not a creation of mankind. Were it not so, men would have invented a more complaisant one. Must not that be a divine power which, in opposition to all human, all earthly passions, with neither splendor, nor power, with the most insignificant means has established an empire throughout the world? Aye, she recognized with reverent awe that this was a God, though unlike the one whom she sought, Christ was not Jupiter--and Freyer was not Christ. The latter cannot be clasped in the arms, does not yield to earthly yearning, no matter how fervently devout. Spirit as He is, He vanishes, even where He reveals Himself in material form, and whoever thinks to grasp Him, holds but the poor doll, whom He gave for a momentary support to the childish mind, which seeks solely what is tangible!
Mary Magdalene was permitted to serve and anoint Him when He walked on earth in human form, but when she tried to clasp the risen Lord the "noli me tangere" thundered in her ears, and God withdrew from mortal touch. In Mary Magdalene, however, the love kindled by the visible Master was strong enough to burn on for the invisible One--she no longer sought Him among the living, but went into solitude and lived for the vanished Christ. But the countess had not advanced so far. What "God of Love" was this, who imposed conditions which made the warm blood freeze, killed the warm life-pulses? What possession was this, which could only be obtained by renunciation, what joy that could be attained solely by mortification? Her passionate nature could not comprehend this contradiction. She longed to clasp His knees and wipe His feet with her hair, at least that, nothing more, only that--she would be modest! But not even that was allowed her.
This was the great impulse of religious materialism, in which divinity and humanity met, the Magdalene element in the history of the conversion of mankind, which attracted souls like that of Madeleine von Wildenau, made them feel for an instant the bliss of the immediate presence of God, and then left them disappointed and alone until they perceived that in that one instant wings have grown--strong enough to bear them up to Heaven, if they once learned to use them.