Page - 146 - in The Forest Farm - Tales of the Austrian Tyrol

XIX About my Mother I IT was high carnival in Gratz city. In the evenings, a mad thronging in the streets, a well-nigh deafening rattling of carriages, a yelling and shouting, a flaring and glaring from the shops and stalls and from the hundreds of lamps and numberless transparencies in the windows. Gold and silver, silks and damasks gleamed in the shop-fronts. Masks of every hue and shape grinned beside them. Ha, what a mad thing life can be! I hurried through the crowd. The clock on the castle hill struck six: six strokes so clear that they outrang all the din and re-echoed from the tall, light- pierced walls of the houses. The summons of the clock is a stern admonisher: let man play as childishly as he will with tinsel pleasures and light dalliance, it counts the hours out to him and gives him not a minute’s grace. I went home to my quiet room and was soon in bed. Next morning, the winter sun lay shining on the snow-clad roofs; and I was jotting down the fairy-tale of the Lost Child, when someone knocked at my door. A man entered and handed me a telegram: “Dear son, yesterday evening, at six o’clock, our dear mother passed away. Come home, we are expecting you in the greatest affliction. Your father.” Last evening it had happened, in the poor cottage, while I was striding through the worldly turmoil. And at six o’clock! Early next morning, I was in the parish village. I entered on the road alone, over hills glittering with snow and through long woods, far into the lonely mountain valley. I had walked that road endless times before, had always delighted in the glistening snow, in the sparkling icicles, in the snowy mantles of the boughs, or, if it was summer, in the green leaves and the blossoms and the fragrance, in the song of the birds, in the drops of light that trickled through the branches, in the profound peace and loneliness. How often had I gone that way with mother, when she was still well and in her prime, and,